Sullivan: Ruthless

While my wife seeths about the Clintons and Clark-gate (of course a Navy squadron commander doesn't buy you much -- I'd say you need to be at least at Division commander) here is money quotes:

But Obama's post-primary pivot to neutralize all the usual GOP attacks - and reintroduce himself to Middle America - has been more than usually pronounced. He can live with FISA telecom immunity; he's flexible on troop withdrawal from Iraq; he's happy with executing child rapists; he doesn't need public financing; he'll out-patriot the Right; he's touting his support for welfare reform; he'll expand Bush's faith-based programs; and he's okay with the Supreme Court's view of the Second Amendment. Oh, and he'll reduce taxes on the middle class, while hiking them for the rich or successful or whatever you'll let me call them.

and

It's been clear for a long time: A man who beat the Clintons is as ruthless as they are. Just smarter, and less susceptible to losing his grip on the core principles he still believes in.

Netgear "Open Source" Routers

Although the KWGR614 is essentially just a marketing ploy (since you've been able to run Linux on Broadcom chipsets for quite a while) I'm not complaining and MyOpenRouter is definitely to be applauded.

They'll definitely get my money (over Linksys) the next time I need a new router. Really, it couldn't hurt the share price of my Cisco stock that much, now could it?

Finally Cured My Home NAT Pain

Although in the past I've run into issues (on the job) where NAT (or multiple webs proxy chains) made troubleshooting connectivity issues difficult, closer to home my crappy WRT54Gv5 (VxWorks based, I believe which unlike the older Linux 54g's does not allow you to disable NAT) has not only obscured my wireless activity but made access controls difficult. Although I had a Nessus scanner running on the WLAN segment all the PVS data was obscured by the router.

I'm sure there are probably ways I could use different username/password combinations with Squid to provide limited access to my kids computers and full access to anything else, but I'm a bit lazy and its a painful enough just to keep changing the proxy configs on the laptops my wife uses.

So I was about ready to order an Honest to God AP so I could finally get useful PVS data, until I finally realized I had a perfectly good 851w sitting in the closet. I've always found wireless painfully difficult to configure on this router. I think the problem which I finally overcame last night, was configuring a subinterface on the radio interface which the right VLAN, but that is probably worth a separate blog. With ACLs on the 851 only allowing DNS (the Debian dnsmasq package works great) and TCP/3128 to the firewall. I know can distinguish distinguish my kids browsing habits. Not that it is hard. As you can see from the squidview screenshot my daughter is playing dragontales games on pbskids.org. What's the harm in opening up all the entire .gov domain, anyway?

This week I'll span the 851's WAN port on my 2940 and plop in a PVS sensor and I'll have even better visibility!

Frederick County Broadband -- looks like Sprint EVDO it is!

I was sort of worried about broadband in New Market because I would rather die that use Comcast and it doesn't look like DSL is possible, so I guess I'll be rigging up my home grown EVDO router again. Well the fact that I'm under contract for God knows how long is certainly an incentive to stick with it, too.

BTW I actually hit 1.5/1.0 earlier which I thought was pretty amazing.

So is SCADA Security "Pushing Rope" Too?

Rothman has his doubts on VirtSec. Hell, if IT has 18 month buying cycle's and SCADA has 15 (or even 25 year, depending on who you talk to) what does that say about the SCADA security Market?

Leaving Chicagoland Videos

A unlike the photos none of these were staged.


Better than Austin?



Driving out!




Surely is a dream...

Leaving Skokie

My 9 year old took these pictures on Friday.



With all this Hillary nonsense behind us, the Rustbelt never looked prettier!

Should you work where you want to live? (or vice versa)

So my oldest son is pretty nervous about our move from Skokie to Frederick and our old cat that won't die and I are the only one's that can't sleep in a LaQuinta somewhere in Ohio. This time, my son and I (and the three pets) are make the final drive from Illinois to Maryland.

As we were driving across Indiana, he asked, "Dad, how do we know we are making the right decision?"

Kids are funny that way. I have been asking myself the same question. Of course the brutally honest answer is your really never know. You have a set of data at a given point in time and you go for it. You make your best effort and you could be wrong and you recalibrate as your dataset changes. But you don't tell that to a 9 year old that is anxious enough already.

* * *

When it came time to leave College Station in 1994 we picked San Antonio because it was a large city in Texas that I sort of familiar with (I had drilled at Camp Bullis) and because it wasn't Houston or Dallas. I had lived in Houston when the Oilers had a good team and never much cared for most folks that said they were from Dallas (or Plano or Richardson) while at A&M.

We really liked Austin, but we weren't sure if we could get teaching jobs there. And we just barely managed to find jobs before September, but San Antonio was definitely not our kind of town. Eventually we started driving up to Austin almost every weekend. And finally I managed to get a job working out of the Huntland office for Southwestern Bell. Then Cisco 9 months later. And we loved it. Too bad I got sick of Cisco and working at home at Digital Bond. I tried hard for Seattle getting shot down at both Amazon and Microsoft after the on-site interviews. Then Chicago came up -- with Hewitt. We felt we needed a change. Our last Summer in Austin sucked the life out of us, old houses with weak AC's and minimal insulation -- my wife said move somewhere cooler or put in a pool. The job was good. A more security ops related role that involved Open Source and development and the money was good, so we went for it.

That was 18 months ago. I really don't know how long we would have stayed in Chicagoland even if there hadn't been the an "act of God".

Skokie was definitely a unique plassI've been meaning to blog on it and I'm sure I will in the coming months, but it really wasn't us. And I'm not sure anyplace in Chicago was, either.

* * *

So I asked my son, "What is different about moving to Maryland than when we moved from Austin to Chicago?" And I managed to get him to admit that we know people there, we have family there and "I have two friends there," he said, referring to the two girls of my Dad's executive assistant that live on a farm.

And I told him that (like Austin) we picked Maryland -- then I found a job there. I'm not sure it put his mind at ease that is good enough for me.

97s vs. 98s (or why I believe in surveillance but not torture)

Seems like forever since I blogged but on the way out of Chicago (I'll have a blog or two on that later) they were hyperventilating about the FISA compromise legislation on Air America. So horrible, the telco's got immunity. Boo hoo. I'm glad they got it. Damn right you shouldn't let folks (like the nasty ACLU) sue them.

So I was wondering why I find "domestic surveillance" far less problematic than torture.

And I think might have something to do with clean and dirty Intel. Or perhaps I've just watched one too many episodes of The Wire and now firmly believe that listening to folks phone calls is always a good thing.

Now the 97 series MOS's in MI are primarily HUMINT folks. Counterintelligence and Interrogators. HUMINT is dirty, nasty work, and not for folks like me.

To engage in MI stereotypes (and I'll leave the 05H's out of this) many of the 97's (especially the one's that manage your clearances) I knew were sort of creepy folks. They liked to fuck with you. They liked to play mind games. 98's (SIGINT guys like myself) on the other hand might be sort of geeky (and there were a fair number of folks at Goodfellow that dressed up in those weird Mid-Evil costumes and did jousting and God knows what else), but they weren't so creepy.

But maybe its about the what you can get. Abusing someone's human rights with SIGINT (violating their privacy) does not impact the quality of the intel (since like sniffing network traffic, it is fundamentally a passive process and you can never have too many intercepts) -- while that is certainly not the case with interrogation because obviously they do know they are being water-boarded, sodomized, or whatever your "enhanced interrogation" technique of choice that were authorized by the Bush administration.

Keeping the Creative Juices Flowing

Not that I've needed that the last few days.



More energy drinks and 3mm contractor bags please!

How long did it take you to figure out what this commercial was about?

Detecting CitectSCADA with Nessus

For the most part, I try not to put product specific content on my blog but given all the bellyaching about CORE-2008-0125 and to avoid "advertising" on SCADASEC-L it is worth noting that this plugin now joins the other 36 SCADA Plugins in the Direct (soon to be renamed Professional) Feed. The majority these were developed by Digital Bond in 2006.

Maintaining Perspective

Selling a house (under any circumstances) can be stressful, but these days... Well, with bad news everyday about the economy, mortgage industry, etc. well it can be a bit much. Fortunately, little suprises can bring things back into perspective.

Tonight, as I was un-shelving books off of one of the many unfinished bookshelves we purchased from the shop on Guadalupe back in Austin (right close to 45th street) I found a copy of a A Prayer Book of The Armed Forces that I was given in November 2001 by our new church that we had just joined in Austin.

In the heady months following September 11, I watched on the web as, one by one, Army Reserve and National Guard Intelligence units were activated. Finally the call came that selected members my Information Operations unit would be ordered to Fort Belvoir. My CO (or XO, I can't remember) asked if there were any reasons I could not go. I said, "no." The events are kind of hazy but I believe my wife and I started talking with my son, not yet 3, who we still called "Kolya" at the time ( because that nickname is used in the message from a St. David's parishioner who wrote of encouragement in the prayer book) about Dada going away for a while. I remember sitting down at the retro table in our retro kitchen in our 1948 1200 sq ft house on Brentwood -- the one that sold for full price the first day on the market.

I started packing my duffle bag, looking at activation checklists, wondering if how hard it would be to get on Camp Mabry to visit the JAG office. Camp Mabry on MOPAC was not the same place I had gone to every month while in college. I notified Cisco of my impending activation and found out that I could keep my salary for a year. I believe they ended up extending it to two years (as did many companies) which was important since I was an E-6 who made just a little bit less than a Software Engineer III at Cisco.

In the end, the orders were rescinded somewhere at the Army level, and like many others who had enlisted in the last days of the Cold War for college money, I did not re-enlist. Something I feel a little bit guilty about. And over a year later, my final ETS date came and went -- a month before the stop-loss on Intelligence personnel (and aviation and special forces and more), but I always wonder how things would have turned out if events had happened differently.

A Little Comic Relief for the Citect Weary

Well those bad boys from Argentina are at it again stirring up quite a June SCADASEC-L storm. I lost count at 50-60 messages. You know it's bad when folks start talking about type safe languages. And of course every classic SCADASEC-L thread has to have an *APOLOGY*.

Thank God I resubscribed.

But somebody better get Walt his blood pressure meds (I've been baiting that hook for months and I finally got a bite -- maybe I can reel in Joe on the next cast!) cause he is getting legal on their ass

I have said for a long time that I think this "nanny-nanny-boo-boo" vulnerability reporting is counterproductive and dangerous.

I further say that if as a result of Core releasing this vulnerability to the Associated Press, if a Citect system gets hacked and property damage occurs or lives are lost (which CAN happen) that the victims can pursue Core as well as Citect. specially since Core states that this vulnerability has not been previously exploited.

IANAL, but that's perilously close to inciting to commit a crime in my book.

Patience. Breath in. Breath out. Resisted the urge to quote some CORE's disclosure timeline, which I actually haven't read, but I can guess....

Hmm... Maybe Citect should sue Core. Oh wait Cisco tried that already.

But back to the title, this Onion article on Cheney is brilliant

WASHINGTON—Reports surfaced Tuesday that the New York–based Fox News Channel has obtained a tape which purportedly features another cryptic video message from U.S. vice president and known extremist Dick Cheney, widely regarded as the most feared man in America.

"We have analyzed the tape, and the voice on it matches up with earlier recordings of the vice president," said CIA spokesman George Little, who claimed the tape may contain valuable clues regarding the location of the elusive Cheney, who was last sighted in late 2005 along the border of Maryland and Virginia

"Though more specific details on his whereabouts have yet to emerge, we do know two things," Little added. "Dick Cheney is still alive, and he is out there somewhere."

Yikes, and I'm moving to Maryland real soon now.

Oh and if you are a visual learner (more fun if you've watched the 9/11 conspiracy theories on Youtube)

9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says

We can always dream....

A nice idea but oh well... no Chinese hackers this time

A recent report from the National Journal cited computer security executives and U.S. intelligence officials blaming Chinese government hackers for two major U.S. power outages. We already debunked the claim with respect to the massive 2003 northeast blackout. Now the Florida Reliability Coordinating Council has released its preliminary report (.pdf) on the February 26th 2008 Florida outage, and -- no surprise -- human error, not cyber terrorism, is to blame.

And from the money quote from the FEAT Report

Although the initiating cause of the event is still under review by the Field Personnel Actions Review Team (FPART), a sub-team of the FEAT, the preliminary cause is currently linked to the disabling, by a relay field engineer, of all local protective relay equipment while troubleshooting
an associated 138 kV switch. The FRCC Handbook requires that “each system operator shall notify the FRCC Security Coordinator when a protective relay or equipment failure that reduces system reliability occurs.” Although the FEAT has not come to any conclusions regarding this part of the analysis, the nature of this procedure and its importance warrants that it be reaffirmed by the FRCC OC to ensure that FRCC system operators and relay field personnel
understand the intent and importance of the procedure when performing maintenance on FRCC bulk power system elements.

But a nice thought than an Nmap scan summoned a blackout...

Hat Tip: Fergdawg on SCADASEC-L

Another one on Obama as Reagan

From RealClear Politics. I guess the Reagan nostalgia is irresistible. Yeah, I remember gas lines in Houston in 1979, the morning I heard on the Today show about "Desert One" before I went to school (4th grade). Oh, and the Mickey Mouse stickers on the back of pickups. Yeah, happy times.

An unpopular incumbent president sits in the Oval Office. His party's brand is badly tarnished. The economy is in shambles, unemployment on the rise. The housing market is in crisis. Gasoline has become a major issue.

America is enmeshed in a protracted crisis in the Middle East with no end in sight. We are near war footing with Iran. The reputation of the United States is diminished world wide. In historically high numbers, voters believe the country is on the wrong track.

The opposition party has nominated a charismatic candidate for president whose oratorical skills are compared to JFK, perhaps better. He had been introduced to the majority of Americans by way of a spellbinding keynote speech at a previous national party convention.

He has a fervent core of supporters and has emerged as the leader of his party through an insurgency that challenged and ultimately defeated his party's establishment. He runs against Washington and the special interests that control the Capitol. His message is change and hope.

If ever the public demanded change in Washington, it is in this presidential year. It could not be a better political environment for the party out of power.

Yet with all the stars aligned perfectly for a party change in the White House, national polls show the opposition candidate barely ties, and often trails, his opponent.

There is little doubt about the voter's desire for change, but there is plenty of doubt about this candidate who pledges to deliver it. Who is the candidate?

Maybe my wife was on to something

And I thought it was just delirium cause by infant-induced sleep deprivation, but apparently Komodo dragons are a real threat

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Scuba divers swept away in strong currents survived 12 hours in shark-infested waters before scrambling onto a remote Indonesian island where they faced yet another threat: a Komodo dragon.

The divers — three from Britain and one each from France and Sweden — came face-to-face with the giant, carnivorous lizard on Rinca's palm-fringed beach, and fought it off by pelting it with rocks and pieces of wood, Pariman, a port official said Sunday.

[snip]

Komodo dragons, which can grow up to 10 feet long and weigh as much as 365 pounds, are only found in the wild on Rinca and Komodo island. There are believed to be 4,000 left in the world.

History and Geography

Commentary
This is the first section of some prose poetry that I wrote back in the mid 1990s. The imagery is a mix of San Antonio (in particular what it looked like if you took a busride from the affluent Northwest side downtown) and Kuala Lumpur and the pseudo-historical references were heavily influenced by the texts I was reading while teaching Texas history to 7th graders in Northside Independent School District. And I believe there is much that was intentionally derivative of Kafka and Borges. And there are some metafictional (and historiagraphical) aspects similar to some similar writings from about 1991.

See In the Colonial City for the introduction to this series. See The Legacy of Conquest for the next section.



1. History and Geography

In the colonial city, you recognize changes slowly. Time thickens. Perception is delayed. The place transforms itself until suddenly you realize you are there, it has always been this way—you have been standing at this exact same spot your entire life.

A ride on one of the city buses illustrates this phenomenon. At each stop further South (or North relative to the side of the equator where you happen to find yourself) the ratio of brown bodies gradually increases; the streets begin to fork and crack; the metal shopfronts pulled down to protect the glass become more and more prominent (by this point, bars will no longer do) until old men with shotguns loiter in turbans with long white beards[1]

You will know when you arrive downtown in the colonial city. You will know when you have made it, because there will be tourists everywhere. Tourists are the ones who take the time to look under statues or peek behind silkscreen portraits—lifting the edges of the gold “made in” sticker, checking for authenticity. Tourists are the ones who have a use for the souvenirs that only a colonial city can provide[2]

Tourists also share an appreciation for History, for they know how much has happened here. It is true, the brass plagues on every street-corner prove it—as does the guide book that is available at information kiosks everywhere. This book is useful for foreigners and locals alike, because it contains the texts of all that has happened here. The entries in the guidebook are identical to what is written on historical markers.

On the top of each page is a symbol that corresponds exactly to the one of the marker.[3] It is in this manner that you can precisely determine what happened wherever you happen to find yourself standing.

Now, it would be irresponsible of me if I did not mention that it is possible to navigate the streets of our city without the use of this guide book. There is a slight chance you can put these events into a logical sequence. You just might be able to make sense of it all on your midnight strolls here—but it is not recommended.

You see, many of the letters on the plagues have become worn or corroded (particularly in less desirable sections of town,) making the markers difficult if not impossible to read[4]

I know what you are thinking. There is an easy solution to that…
But alas, if there is one law that is rigorously enforced here, it is that metal polish (or any of the strong solvents) must not be carried on your person. This provision may seem strange, perhaps even archaic, but there is certain logic to it (much like the ban on wire cutters in the outer provinces.) You see the past must be preserved—left as it was. History must not be polished, embellished or made clean.

This is one of the guiding principles here in the colonial city and it applies to each of the many historical sites, both large and small—even for our most famous shrine, for which the city gets its name.[5]

It is for this reason that you need the book.

Footnotes
1 - In the colonial city, hair has been known to grow to infinite lengths.
2 - There is no kitsch in the colonial city.
3 - It is impossible to reproduce these symbols in the current typeface.
4 - Only the blind are permitted to make rubbings of historical markers.
5 - In the colonial city, we form our most precious memories in wax.

In the Colonial City (a guide for tourists)

Commentary

Although it is starting to get old, there are a couple of big pluses about moving frequently: you throw away lots of stuff and you find old stuff forgot about because it was packed away. As I was going through old file folders tonight, I came across a piece I wrote in 1995 or 1996. Can't remember exactly when, but I know it was written during a summer training session for English teachers. This was a "writing process" workshop. A whole week. All very scripted and taught by a senior high school teacher.

We read works of our choosing and then we wrote. I remember the novel I read The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński. Awesome book if you haven't read it. (Interestingly enough, the Wikipedia article quotes DG Meyers from Texas A&M who was my wife's advisor when she was a brand new English grad student back in 1990)

Anyway, during this teacher training, I missed out on the fact that we were supposed to be writing personal narratives. I should have been clued in all the other Language Art's teachers were writing their dead grandmother's or some equally trite stuff freshmen comp students would write about.

In any cause, I worked on this prose poem that I found tonight, which I ended up calling "In the Colonial (a guide for tourist)" I worked on it during the writing sessions and even "shared" some of it when given the opportunities. I remember writing some of it using a dumb terminal connected to my UNIX account on TENET (the texas educators network).

Near the end of the week, we were going to "publish" our work (that is the end of the writing process, you know) in some happy-ass little collection of all the language art's teachers' writish, but that didn't happen. I don't remember the term (for a first person narrative) but they said this isn't a "blah" piece. They said there wasn't enough "me" in it. Now the "they" I'm referring to was a middle-aged high school teacher that was terribly patronizing and actually treated me like her one of her kids. Now patronizing, middle-age female teachers with more seniority (and thought they knew everything) than were the 3rd worst thing about being in the public schools (the first two things were grading and making parent phone calls).

I've always had the bad habit of going against the grain. Not five years earlier a sympathetic Master Sergeant had taken me out of my PLDC class at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas and said I needed to shape up, quit questioning the curriculum and the primary instructor or I'd get sent back home. So "Specialist Franz" kept his mouth shut for the next week or so, so he could graduate and get his Sergeant's stripes a few years later because he was so lazy about putting in promotion packets.

The long and short of it, is they ended up publishing some poem I'd written in college that had even less of me in it than this piece.

* * *

As a failed writer (yeah I was an English/Creative writing major in College), I was fairly competent at imagery but horrible at plot. I hated stories, even though I tried to write short fiction. Nothing ever really happened in the stuff I wrote and when I tried to add plot elements I hated what a wrote.

* * *

In The Colonial City
(a guide for tourists)

1. History and Geography
2. The Legacy of Conquest
3. Illnesses of Time and Space
4. The Open Plain

Obama on Leadership

Anyone who has seen examples of strong leadership in the military from their CO or 1SG, from their CEO, or even their principal. My first boss out of college, when I was a public school teacher, actually stands out was one of the best leaders I had the pleasure of working for in the last 15 years.

Notice the humility, the focus on strong organizations, teamwork, and putting egos aside to solve a common purpose. This is definitely worth watching regardless of the politics (or your thoughts on Obama), but this sort of talk is impossible to imagine from a Dubya or Clinton. Not sure about McCain.

Childhood Psychiatric Meds on NYT Cover

As I picked up the bagels on the little shop on Dempster with the kindly older lady with the Russian accent (yes I will miss hearing just as much Russian as Spanish--and the fresh bagels) I was surprised to see this article on the front page of the NY Times on potential conflict of interest

Dr. Biederman is one of the most influential researchers in child psychiatry and is widely admired for focusing the field’s attention on its most troubled young patients. Although many of his studies are small and often financed by drug makers, his work helped to fuel a controversial 40-fold increase from 1994 to 2003 in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder, which is characterized by severe mood swings, and a rapid rise in the use of antipsychotic medicines in children. The Grassley investigation did not address research quality.

Doctors have known for years that antipsychotic drugs, sometimes called major tranquilizers, can quickly subdue children. But youngsters appear to be especially susceptible to the weight gain and metabolic problems caused by the drugs, and it is far from clear that the medications improve children’s lives over time, experts say.

In the last 25 years, drug and device makers have displaced the federal government as the primary source of research financing, and industry support is vital to many university research programs. But as corporate research executives recruit the brightest scientists, their brethren in marketing departments have discovered that some of these same scientists can be terrific pitchmen.

I'm not sure what is bringing this out in the open but there definitely seems to be increased coverage in the media about the challenges of diagnosing and treating childhood bipolar. And regardless of where one sides with the issue, that is a good thing -- because diagnosis is tricky, treatment is tricky and the meds are tricky. None of it is for the feint of heart.

Another Clinton Post Mortem on Kos

There is another quite witty Why Clinton Lost blog over on Kos:

Wow, Clinton strategy as Intelligent Design?

We heard that Clinton was liked by this demographic or that one, and it was asserted that those demographics were the important ones, and the ones won by others were less important. We heard that caucuses were not a sufficient measure of electability, despite their actually doing electing. We heard that entire states were also-rans.

It was not a narrative, but a meta-narrative. She was electable because she was electable, and anything that disproved that theory was dismissed as an exception. It was the campaign equivalent of Intelligent Design.

It was, in short, a terrible, mind-bendingly awful strategy. That is not to say that there was not substance discussed, in the debates -- but the campaign was not about that substance. That is not to say that there were not good points to be made in "electability" -- but her spokesmen made them shabbily. In the end, it was not an argument that could convince.

and scathing critique of how lame past Democratic campaigns have been run:

The goal is to assemble the broadest coalition possible -- by saying nothing that could possibly offend anyone. The premise is to appeal to "independents", and "centrists", and most of all the "undecided", that group of people so uninterested in politics that they cannot fathom the difference between the parties, but who allegedly can be mobilized into action if only you do absolutely nothing that will get them the slightest bit worked up. It is a cynical, wretched excuse for leadership, but more to the point it provides absolutely no room for error: it is an all-defensive strategy. If your opponent is a block of wood, incapable of making any positive plays on their own, you may pull it off; but if your opponent scores any point, you are left unable to answer it.

and the stuff of History

This primary season featured, after all, a classic contest: the irresistible force of Barack Obama against the immovable object that was Hillary Clinton. By any stretch, that would have been a barnstormer of a primary, but coupled with the historic nature of the year, a year in which a black American and a woman not only competed for the presidency against the white men that have held exclusive keys to the office since the nation was first founded, but competed for the first time on essentially equal ground, the first in which race and gender, while remaining issues, were relegated to fringe issues as opposed to all-defining, unambiguously disqualifying characteristics -- now that is the stuff of history.

Looking back, we should remember that, because that will be what will end up in the history books. Obama could have lost. Clinton could have won. McCain may yet still win. But they were all judged, if not entirely on their merits, at least as much on their merits as any politicians are, in today's environment. Martin Luther King Jr. said he had a dream, and was killed for it, but in the end equality is an unstoppable force. All that is required is that people desire it, and the rest, though it may take generations, or be slowed, or momentarily dammed, will happen.

Clinton Campaign like Bush Iraq Strategy

There have obviously been a lot of Clinton post-mortems but only Ben Smith's made me think of the similarities.

“There was a constant push and pull on what the overall message would be,” said a senior staffer, who recalled the endless delays on everything from Clinton’s speeches to her policies to her very schedule. “A lot of that paralysis went as high as her.”

and

As a result, when Clinton — as had been predicted by polls — lost Iowa, she and her aides were left with no set plan.

“There was not a plan in place — the plan was: Win Iowa,” said a senior staffer.

and

“After Iowa, everyone looked at her said, ‘Well, you were winning, so we didn’t feel the need to tell you all these things that were f---ed up,’” said an aide.

Bottom line in both: no contingency planning, too much reliance on other's judgement, and surrounding yourself with yes-[wo]men who won't tell you the truth.

Well Done (If there is any truth to this) and more Anti-Meds Talk (this time about the troops)

If this is true somebody deserves a medal for this one. Meaning, someone in Iranian intel.

Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.

and

The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.

and if you are into conspiracies theories like the nutcase that comes on AM 820 after Rachel Maddow (who is actually quite good).

According to the report, Ledeen, however, persisted, presenting then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith with a new 100-day plan to provide, among other things, evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that supposedly had been moved to Iran — Saddam Hussein's archenemy. This time, the report said, Ledeen solicited support from former speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich and from three then-GOP senators, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Jon Kyl of Arizona and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

Yeah, this Malloy character was talking was how shocked it was that 11% of troops in Iraq (17% in Afghanistan) were taking antidepressants (not sure about the stats, but from the Time article).

In 1994 then Major E. Cameron Ritchie, an Army psychiatrist, was among the first to suggest that SSRIs should deploy with Army combat units. In a paper written and published after she returned from a combat deployment to Somalia, Ritchie noted that the sick-call chests used by military doctors "contain either outdated or no psychiatric medications." She concluded, "If depressive symptoms are moderate and manageable, medication may be preferable to medical evacuation."

I would have expected much higher and it would be curious to see how those rates compare with comparably stressful occupations or with the population at large. But its frightening to think about the troops when they come back trying to get psychiatric care for even "mild" mental health issues such depression or PTSD or even given limitations of emergency hospitalization with top notch health insurance. "Just go the emergency rooom..." (if you didn't read my blog entry from last November during more stressful times).

And if Magellan is such joke, what must it be like to try to get treatment from the VA? But Sertaline is relatively cheap, so there is some hope.

Best Cheap Painless PCI Wireless Adapter for Linux that Supports WPA without using ndiswrapper?

Yeah, asking a lot.

The Encore ENLWI-G2 looks like a possibility. It uses the Realtek 8185. Or should I go with an Ralink chipset?

Or here's a crazy idea. Get a rock solid Intel driver and one of these MiniPCI to PCI adapters?

Hitler's ^H^H^H^H^H^H Hillary's Bunker

Given all the talk of "Hillary's Bunker" and that it got pulled from Youtube, it is worth watching again.



Warning: the subtitles are not workplace (or family friendly)

SCADASEC-L: The Best of Times and Worst of Times

The great thing about small communities (like the world of SCADA Security) is that the egos of folks are often inversely proportional to the size of the overall community.

As a result, people get their feelings hurt easily. Partly because everybody has either worked for the other guy (or tried to work for them) or tried to get them to work for you. And more often than not, you've bid against them for security services somewhere, some time. Or at least you've presented at their conference. (Of course everybody has their own conference now, so that isn't so hard.)

Small pie. Big frog. Get it?

(CAVEAT: If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you obviously haven't been following the thread on "Advertising" on SCADASEC-L)

Random Thoughts on Hardy Virtualization (Redux) and Other Topics

Although the shoddy support of dom0 across most distributions not just Hardy (at least my hardware) is depressing (but not as depressing as the last episode of Season 4 of The Wire, talk about bleak, although after reading the summary I may have misinterpreted much of the episode) the one bright spot has been KVM with Virtual Machine Manager. Everything is built in, no threat of custom kernel. (VirtualBox worked reasonably well but even when I installed the xVM binary off the Sun site, ubuntu kept wanting to install a new *-rt kernel). Trying again on Ubuntu, since my first attempt to get Tracks (an interesting-looking rails GTD app) on CentOS failed miserably, much like my attempts to do the cgi version of MoinMoin running under Apache. Disabled selinux, disabled suExec and it stilled didn't work -- before deciding just to run the Desktop Edition until I have time mess with it again. The good thing was a got some custom themes working for the first time (had never tried) and ended up getting sinorca4moin working pretty easily.

Bring on the generation, race, gender, culture wars?

So like many folks Andrew Sullivan's article article on Obama back in December made a significant impact on my views of this year's presidential race -- and what was at stake. The notion that we can somehow get past 30 years of culture wars, 16 years of gridlock, and somehow move past the same tired, superficial debates that characterize our presidential campaigns seemed tremendously appealing -- and might even be possible.

But with the anger and spectacle of irate Hillary supporters leaving the DNC Rules & Bylaws meeting or those outside and countless interviews of West Virginian's and Kentuckians, I'm not so sure.

The first supporter from Manhattan (who thought the person asking for her name might be CIA) identified herself first and foremost as a "older American woman" who bitter about the success "inadequate Black male." The raw emotion was shocking, but it should come as no surprise that a party that has assembled a heterogeneous coalition based on identity politics (race, class, gender, sexual orientation) would come undone because of identity politics.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

(Perhaps a similar argument can be made for the Republicans and Christian fundamentalists, but that is best left for another post)

But this campaign has revealed a number of things about the Democrats. The notion that the Democratic party has a monopoly on diversity and tolerance has been ripped apart not only by YouTube but by the statements of its party leaders. As long has African Americans (and those better educated and those more economically secure and those more religious) supported the "right kind of nominees" it was a big tent, but the tent get's a lot smaller (or at least less full). You see this in the comments of Bill Clinton attacking Moveon.org, when Hillary talks about White Americans (this is code word for how dare Blacks...) or when the "Latte-sipping" Democrats are attacked for being elitist.

With ex-Republican-voters (like myself) supporting Obama, and Boomer Feminists proclaiming their support for McCain, it ought to be an interesting campaign.

Stunned Ickes?

So getting the kids back into a routine after a trip is always a challenge, but it was complicated by the DNC meeting. Just too hard not to watch. Even for my 9 year old. He was transfixed, although he obviously didn't get it all. We started watching when at the "15" vote and chants of "Denver, Denver, Denver" and I wasn't really sure who wont until it became obvious.

And Ickes was quite a treat. How many times did he say "ass?" He did say that, right? And who did he say became more eloquent the more he drank?

Classy, if a bit bitter. But didn't really represent himself (or Clinton) all that well, but I guess we should have expected that. "Hijacked!?"

These Democrats. First Florida in 2000 and now this circus.

(LULAC, hehe, I remember them from Texas)

Pretty rich. The real question is the all this an act to fire up the Hillary supporter and torpedo Obama or do they really believe what they are saying?

(You know, the whole are you a liar if you know you are a liar question. And Is lying to yourself really lying?)

So the new count is Obama: 2,052, and Clinton: 1,877.5 with 2118 necessary to win?

But maybe the fun is really over and I can go back to blogging mostly on Linux again

This Hillary Supporter is an "American" who will vote for McCain

It would be pretty fun to be in DC right now to see stuff like this

PLA vs. SCADA

From China’s Cyber-Militia: Chinese hackers pose a clear and present danger to U.S. government and private-sector computer networks and may be responsible for two major U.S. power blackouts.

One prominent expert told National Journal he believes that China’s People’s Liberation Army played a role in the power outages. Tim Bennett, the former president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a leading trade group, said that U.S. intelligence officials have told him that the PLA in 2003 gained access to a network that controlled electric power systems serving the northeastern United States. The intelligence officials said that forensic analysis had confirmed the source, Bennett said. “They said that, with confidence, it had been traced back to the PLA.” These officials believe that the intrusion may have precipitated the largest blackout in North American history, which occurred in August of that year. A 9,300-square-mile area, touching Michigan, Ohio, New York, and parts of Canada, lost power; an estimated 50 million people were affected

And Nmap cause the Florida blackout?

A second information-security expert independently corroborated Bennett’s account of the Florida blackout. According to this individual, who cited sources with direct knowledge of the investigation, a Chinese PLA hacker attempting to map Florida Power & Light’s computer infrastructure apparently made a mistake. “The hacker was probably supposed to be mapping the system for his bosses and just got carried away and had a ‘what happens if I pull on this’ moment.” The hacker triggered a cascade effect, shutting down large portions of the Florida power grid, the security expert said. “I suspect, as the system went down, the PLA hacker said something like, ‘Oops, my bad,’ in Chinese.”

And who has heard of Cybrinth or Stephen Spoonamore?

Stephen Spoonamore, CEO of Cybrinth, a cyber-security firm that works for government and corporate clients, said that Chinese hackers attempt to map the IT networks of his clients on a daily basis. He said that executives from three Fortune 500 companies, all clients, had document-stealing code planted in their computers while traveling in China, the same fate that befell Gutierrez.

I saw prove it. Show me the logs of an informed attacker demonstrating knowledge of their target device, protocol, or application. Not, random script-kiddie crap from Chinese Universities. Been there seen that -- as has anyone that has set up a honeynet.

Show me a journalist that has a clue on this topic.

Hat Tip: Marc Ambinder.

Air America: MIA in the Rustbelt

So I'm smack dab in the middle of a rustbelt rest area (my daughter is struggling with her PBJ bagel from Einsteins, yeah nice than the ones in Indiana) and scanning the dial there must have been a half-dozen different AM stations playing Limbaugh, and no Air America. No wonder this neck of the woods went to Hillary.

So was forced to listen to RUSH and it was quite amusing (before I became too disgusted) This half-wit women calling in asking for advice from Rush on how to "sell McCain" to her liberal California friends. And I swear there was a 30 seconds and lots of groans before Rush could come up with an answer. "He loves his country. He is for the war," was about the best he could come up with. Wasn't sure he supported the Bush tax cuts or not. Back on the road.

My VPS (yearly) cost 2.85 Tanks of Gas

So I've been running a VPS box over on RimuHosting for a couple of years now and have been really happy, but I'm trying to "get lean with my IT" just like at my last employer. Plus my wiki has been down since the MoinMoin Vulns, and I really haven't missed it so I figure I'll pull the plug and create a wiki over on http://code.google.com/p/blogfranz/ as well as use there SVN repo for config files and code snippets I want to remember. (For example I just comitted my fluxbox keys and startup scripts)

Why the hell not? Google already owns the keys to the kingdom might as well give them everything else, so that if some dangerous Web 2.0 hacker would compromise my whole virtual presence. What you can do!

Olbermann: Unforgiveable

OpenSolaris 2008.5 Isn't So Bad

OpenSolaris has come along way from that nasty red and blue console based installer I remember using back in the 90s. A nice GNOME based LiveCD. 32/64 bit. GRUB & GNOME. Tolerable package management although there must be some other repos somewhere. Imagine, having to have to built pcap and tcpdump from scratch in 2008, the horror. But it worked!

What didn't work (on my T-61):

• Xen Dom0 (this is a known issue)
• Sound
• Intel 4965 has been sporadic
• Novatel 727 EVDO card (probably just haven't figure it out yet)
• VirtualBox/xVM (problems with kernel modules. probably fixable)
• Compiz (totally hangs the box)
  

Sort of weird that the JDK isn't installed. But overall they did a nice job with the GNOME theme. Fonts look better than most Linux distributions and seems quite snappy. And of all things nmap (4.20) and NmapFE are in default install. Funny.

Is there a distro that supports dom0 out of the box (on my T-61)?

Not Hardy, Not Edgy, Not FC 8 or 9, Not OpenSolaris 2008.5, Not OpenSUSE 10.3/11. Not CentOS 5.1.

I give up.

Anatomy of An SSH Brute Force Attempt (In Pictures)

Just for fun I decided to turn on SSH on the dirty interface on my highly secure Debian firewall to see what shows up in LCE.

First I filter on all TCP/22 activity



I'm actually most concerned with the valid logins first so I check them



Whew. Only 2 logins, those are probably OK.I could check and see who they are but I'm too lazy and I'm anxious to get to the invalid logins:



But I want to get a better sense of time. Big spike right has I was recovering from getting the kids ready for school.


I back up to look at the two types of events I'm seeing during this period of attack: failed passwords and invalid users. I actually discovered the other day that there is an SSH error message for failed login attempts where the username is valid but when it doesn't match the address in the AllowUser option of sshd_config. I thought that was cool. Not sure why I'm not seeing these here.



and





Yep, Italy again

inetnum:        141.250.0.0 - 141.250.255.255
netname:        UNIPG-NET
descr:          Universita' degli Studi di Perugia
descr:          Centro Ateneo Servizi Informatici, CASI
country:        IT
admin-c:        OG6-RIPE
tech-c:         FG757-RIPE
status:         ASSIGNED PI
remarks:        Perugia Academic and Research Network
mnt-by:         GARR-LIR
source:         RIPE # Filtered

OpenSUSE 11 Beta 3 Impressions

My Thinkpad's started dying today, so after doing the long slow drive wipe to what was left, I tried OpenSUSE 11 (64 Bit) Gnome LiveCD, and here the first impressions:

• Much prettier than Ubuntu, I like all the green (vs. the Ubuntu brown)
  
• First Linux distro to get the resolution right through the GUI for a widescreen flat screen with my Thinkpad (only got display mirroring
• Wireless worked flawlessly
• Compiz worked flawlessly and snappily (although sound died after it installed)
  
• Gstreamer plugins (for Totem) worked if a bit clumsily and Flash plugin auto installation failed (in contrast to Gutsy and Hardy)
• Seems snappier, not sure if that is the 64 bit kicking in (always been too conservative) about that.
• Repository auto updates have improved significantly since the last time I used SUSE much

No reason to try this on the server, but I may run this when my new drive shows up in the mail.

Where did you obtain your academic qualifications to make these statements, Mr. Aitel?

Dave Aitel wrote a must read editorial over on Security focus called Thinking Beyond the Ivory Towers

In the information-security industry, there are clear and vast gaps in the way academia interacts with professional researchers. While these gaps will be filled in due time, their existence means that security professionals outside the hallowed halls of colleges and universities need to be aware of the differences in how researchers and professionals think.

I saw firsthand this gap when my group at Cisco funded security research at some of the leading Computer Science (and even information security) programs (that should know better) in the nation. You'd be surprised how difficult it was to find 4-5 projects to fund a quarter.

Anecdotally, I saw an absolute lack of understanding by some doctoral students (and their well credentialed advisors) about which attacks (against protocols, for example, like basic concepts of the what sort access was needed to the network) were practical or even how they would go about conducting them. No clue. And all the formal methods and literature review meant nothing.

And all I needed was my lame English & History degree from Texas A&M to see that -- well and some experience developing (or even just running) an attack tool or two. Even script-kiddie knowledge would suffice.


BTW, the title comes from the comment from Dr. Neal Krawetz, PhD

UUID and Fstab and Reiserfs (or lack therof) in CentOS

About a month ago, I forgot to blog on the Ubuntu wiki page UsingUIID which shows you how to get the UUID of a filesystem which is now necessary for fstab (has been since at least Edgy).

In short, use the vol_id command:

root@gx620:~# vol_id /dev/sda2
ID_FS_USAGE=filesystem
ID_FS_TYPE=reiserfs
ID_FS_VERSION=3.6
ID_FS_UUID=15987a57-dd66-4276-8645-931291ef7fc4
ID_FS_UUID_ENC=15987a57-dd66-4276-8645-931291ef7fc4
ID_FS_LABEL=
ID_FS_LABEL_ENC=
ID_FS_LABEL_SAFE=

And given all the Debian pain (yes, code and operational diversity is good--and not blindly following the results of automated tools!), I actually put CentOS 5 on my main server at home until I realized that reiserfs (which I've used for quite some time for some irrational reason) is only available with CentOS Plus. Screw that. Ubuntu 8.04 LTS it is.

Best Kids Video: Sabatoge vs. Jozin z Bazin

Which is the least inappropriate for a 9 year old?



or (warning very catchy and gets stuck in your head)

Forgot about Iran, Obliterate W VA (But Spare Jessco!)

This Huffington Post Article has some pretty scary stuff. My wife (who was raised in the Mississippi Delta) thinks this is WORSE than Mississippi.

Encrypting Firmwire and Logic (who would have thought)

Haven't read any of my Control Engineering spam for ages but
Protect intellectual property: Encrypt firmware, control code caught my eye tonight:

Opto 22 released the “Secure Strategy Distribution System, as part of PAC Project version 8.2, the company's flagship automation software suite that includes control programming, HMI development, OPC connectivity, and enterprise database integration components. The software gives OEMs and machine builders the ability to encrypt firmware and control programs so they can only be uploaded or downloaded to a controller via use of a secure encryption key," the company says.

AppleCare has been great, well, except...

So I finally wiped my 12" G4 last week and decided to finally get it looked at. Wednesday, less than a 5 minute wait with tech support, who spoke English (obviously one of of those hard working white Americans) and didn't even seem like she was reading off a script. Friday, brought into the Genius Bar. She (notice a pattern here, kind of like when mid year of my 2nd year of teaching, I realized the class that I had the best discussions with was 70% girls) ran some diagnostics could reproduce the problem, but shipped it out anyway and I got it back today by Fedex. They replaced the hard drive. Great! Should have done this a long time.

Except the the awful grinding noise is back again there (obviously a fan) and I've already started populating my PowerBook with apps.

Repeat the process or live with it?

Simon vs. Hoff: Who is Baiting? Who is Switching? And why does this smell like SCADA?

Mainly because I need to get a non-political blog in the top position again (because I'm certainly no expert on virtualization security, but I am a virtualization end user who wants to know! ) but Simon Crosby's reaction to Hoff gives me a feeling of deja view in terms of the bait-and-switch approach to vulns I've heard from some SCADA vendors (or control systems standards efforts) over the years.

Although slightly more sophisticated than spouting off how many bits of encryption a protocol uses, saying that a given protocol is not Internet-facing, or claiming that to fix an implementation flaw in a weak protocol you should upgrade to protocol that uses SSL, some of the security cliches (or at worst, half truths) that undermine his credibility, and even I can recognize include:

• Open source is more secure...
• He mentions viruses and virus vendors in his first breath.
• Equating security fixes with security/insecurity (and slamming VMWare!)
• Bringing up EAL something or other
  
• Mentioning TPM in any context

Knowing a thing or two about mania, I'm also curious about this sort of manic efforts (apart from making it so small you can't even see it) to secure the hypervisor, and whether he is willing to admit that there are some classes of attacks against guests (or, obviously, against the hypervisor) that are unique (or perhaps only possible) in a virtualized environment and that they care about? Or will the AV vendors solve these, too?

Done. There no more faux Hillary (or Hilter) on top. Can sleep now.

Sore Loser, Racist, Unethical (All you need!)

And I could have just watched this instead of Tuesday night

Funniest YouTube in A While

Even better if you've seen Der Untergang but amazingly well done!

But obviously quite vulgar so don't watch if you are easily offended. (I warned you!)

Best Line: "The Voters have stolen my nomination"

Runner Up: "I'm so sick of drinking whisky with those pigs"

EVDO airframe drivers and Hardy

Turns out (big surprise!) I was full of it the other night for contemplating leaving Linux for OpenSolaris to get better USB throughput.

[ 63.558567] /build/buildd/linux-2.6.24/drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for airprime
[ 63.558587] airprime 2-1:1.0: airprime converter detected
[ 63.558675] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[ 63.558719] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB1
[ 63.558761] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB2
[ 63.558768] airprime 2-1:1.1: airprime converter detected
[ 63.558812] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB3
[ 63.558854] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB4
[ 63.558897] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB5
[ 63.558903] airprime 2-1:1.2: airprime converter detected
[ 63.558946] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB6
[ 63.558995] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB7
[ 63.559037] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB8
[ 63.559043] airprime 2-1:1.3: airprime converter detected
[ 63.559088] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB9
[ 63.559129] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB10
[ 63.559171] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB11
[ 63.559180] usbcore: registered new interface driver airprime
[ 63.577915] /build/buildd/linux-2.6.24/drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for GSM modem (1-port)
[ 63.577937] usbcore: registered new interface driver option
[ 63.577939] /build/buildd/linux-2.6.24/drivers/usb/serial/option.c: USB Driver for GSM modems: v0.7.1

And

mfranz@ubuntu-t61:~$ lsmod | grep usb
usbserial 35688 5 option,airprime
usb_storage 73408 0
libusual 18980 1 usb_storage
scsi_mod 151180 6 usb_storage,sbp2,sr_mod,sg,sd_mod,libata
usbcore 146028 8 option,airprime,usbserial,usb_storage,libusual,ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd

Port Forwarding on Windows (Python to the rescue)

If there are Windows equivalents of redir I'm not aware of them, but the first proxy I tried on A list of open-source HTTP proxies written in python (a cool site I ran into several years ago) was TCPWatch and it worked great (at least on Python 2.5.1 under cygwin.)

(Truth be told, the first tool I ran across was pinhole in an ASPN recipe but it ran into some issues, possbly thread related)

He's closed it

Finishing up the dishes (2 and half kids in bed) and listening to Obama's victory speech and it feels like a winner. The high road. Classy. Presidential. Finally an uplifting Tuesday.

"We will end it by telling the truth..."

Nice.

A Quarter from Report to Disclosure: Respectable

From the CORE Advisory on Wonderware

WTF is Python?

* 2008-03-03: Core sends proof-of-concept code written in Python.
* 2008-03-05: Vendor asks for compiler tools required to use the PoC code.
* 2008-03-05: Core sends a link to http://www.python.org where a Python interpreter can be downloaded.

and

of the advisory is re-scheduled to March 31st 2008. With regards to the questions and requests about the contents of the security advisory, Core indicates that Core's technical publications are aimed at providing legitimate security practitioners worldwide with the technical details necessary to understand the nature of the security issues reported; so they are able to devise, by their own judgment, the risk mitigation approach that fits them the best. For that purpose, Core believes that it is fundamental that they have precise and accurate technical details about security issues -- as Wonderware itself has demonstrated with the request for further technical details and proof-of-concept code -- and that the whole reporting and disclosure process is transparent for scrutiny of all interested parties.

And back at ya..

The vendor says that is having trouble understanding what the value is in providing specific detail as to what technical issue is happening and asks for clarification to understand how this information would benefit organizations. The vendor acknowledges that the proof of concept code did help to replicate the issue and that without it, it would have needed more time to identify it from the report alone. The concern is that the details provided in the report may give a hacker a specific direction to look for the vulnerability. Finally, the vendor indicates that will have a better estimation for the rlease date of a fix by Friday March 28th, 2008.

A level playing field?

Thus, Core believes that it is necessary not only to indicate the mere existence of the bug, but also to explain how to uniquely identify it in the vulnerable software (to avoid confusion with all other known bugs or to differentiate it from others that may be discovered in the future). It is also important to determine how the vulnerability could be used by potential attackers so that proper detection mechanisms can be built, for example firewall rules, or IDS and antivirus signatures. While Core recognizes that this may provide some additional data to would-be attackers, clearly it also provides preciously needed information to the defenders thus, leveling a field on which Core believes the attackers are initially at advantage.

And all for just a DOS?

Welcome to the party!

A Spade?

Interesting Nation article that unpacks this notion of "electability"

So, in the name of another personal quality--honesty--I'd like Hillary Clinton to make the following statement: "Though my opponent has run a terrific campaign, in primary after primary, I have proven that I am the more electable candidate. I am more electable because I am white. Barack Obama--Wow!--he's certainly inspired a lot of hope, but as voters in Indiana and North Carolina make up their minds, as the superdelegates make up their minds, they should remember that Barack Obama is black. They should also remember that a whole lot of white working-class Americans are racists. White racists are an important part of the Democratic Party, and time and time again, they've supported me because I am white. I am ready on day one to govern as your white American president."

Faster EVDO: Maybe A Reason to Try OpenSolaris?

So the Linux USB serial driver is capped at 500Kb and as I found tonight (piece of shit RCN is averaging about 50% uptime these days) it was pretty much impossible to watch 30 Rock (or any of the other streaming NBC shows) with my EVDO card plugged into my Linux router. (or now that I think of it, maybe this is a just QoS issue since I'm going from 100Mb to 500kb?) but of course when I plopped the card into XP got 1MB easy and we could watch all about the Teamster sandwiches with no problems.

But this OpenSolaris WWAN project looks promising.... Wonder if I can get my Novatel card working with Nexenta Core?

Or are there any of the EVDO routers (that take USB) that don't run Linux or have somehow managed to work around the 500Kb cap?

To answer my own question, it looks like the airpime drivers might actually do the trick.

The Cheap Thrill of Using Enterprise Security Tools to Monitor Your Kid's Surfing Habits

One of the nice things about working for a security vendor is being able to able to run cool product on your home network (like when I brought a Cisco 7120 home!). And given the complexity of my home network (4-5 routing/forwarding devices, 2-3 switches, and 10-20 hosts up at any given time) it's not as much overkill as you might think.

The image below shows a 5-day view of my network events using LCE.

The 2nd row is the "firewall" category which primarily consists of syslog's from my two Cisco 851's. The events drop off 2-3 days ago when I disabled the ACLs and forgot to turn them back on.

Oops.



The last row is "web" which you'll see a spike during the last day.

What happened is I finally qot squid up an running for my son so he could use the Linux box in his room. Yeah normally a bad idea but probably not relevant if have security tools that cost as a midsize car watching your network.

If I drill down on the "web" events and find that they are all from squid logs (access.log) which I'm monitoring with an LCE client.



Most of the denies were to sb.google.com so I went into the whitelist and added that so that should flatten that plot.

Drilling down on the cache hits, I can see many of the thumbnails for one of the game sites I let him go to are being cached:

1209917543.808 7 192.168.2.170 TCP_HIT/200 19581 GET http://media.y8.com/gfx/y8bartender1.jpg - NONE/- image/jpeg
1209917543.870 52 192.168.2.170 TCP_HIT/200 12089 GET http://media.y8.com/gfx/thumb_399.jpg - NONE/- image/jpeg
1209917543.871 4 192.168.2.170 TCP_HIT/200 15471 GET http://media.y8.com/gfx/y8family_restaurant.jpg - NONE/- image/jpeg

And a one of the misses shows the sort of games my 9-year old likes to play.

1209906995.596 154086 192.168.2.170 TCP_MISS/503 1420 GET http://y8.com/tags/Killing - DIRECT/y8.com text/html

No More Suit/Tie in Indiana

A while back, my wife and I were talking about what it is that sounds fundamentally different about the way Obama, Bill Clinton (and Reagan, for that matter) speak and the last few Democratic candidates such as Gore, Kerry, and Hillary.

Whether they actually are or not, the latter sound like they are talking down to you, like they are patronizing you, lecturing you. And when try to talk "at your level" they sound inauthentic, scripted, stilted. I think is one of the factors why Kerry (and Gore, if you believe he actually lost) were beaten by a W.

Hillary knows this and this and she wants to paint Obama like Dukakis and Kerry were painted. This is why Clinton (channeling Rove, attacking strengths not weaknesses) attacked Obama as an elitist. I don't know much about community organizing, but I know that most people that have had non-elite jobs, those that have not had the upper advantages on their side from day one. I'm talking about public school teachers, the police, like those serving in the military (even as an officers) that have force you to be exposed (and work alongside, even when in a position of authority) folks from all walks of life -- do not talk this this.

Then of course there is a regional/dialectal element as well Gore is Southern but the patrician, old money South. Kerry, Dukakis, and Hillary are "Yankees" (as my wife would say) and just they can they can lose this from their identity that no more than Stringer Bell or D'Angelo Barksdale could lose the street.

Your Little Friend Alsamixer

So I totally managed to screw up my kernel-modules (hint: trying to uninstall a running kernel package is never a good idea) so I ended up doing a new install of Hardy late last night. I only had server image so I used that. But no sound? So I ended up following the quite excellent SoundTroubleshooting wiki page and ran across the alsamixer command. I may have used it before. Not sure, but it helped me track down that the speaker was on mute. I'm still running into some weird GNOME (or GDM) startup issues when using XFCE or standing GNOME bootup.

A Little Post-Ikea Saturday Humor

East-west trips from Skokie to Schaumburg can be brutal. And then with three kids in the big yellow and blue (although we have discovered Smaland, thank God) but today wasn't too bad.

But watch this before they pull it down (or Youtube's CDN goes down). The last few weeks have been pretty depressing politics wise, but this is good fun.

Prez & Pedagogy on The Wire

I wouldn't know about policing or politics (although all the SIGINT doesn't seemed too far-fetched) but in Season 4, much of the school story line is spot on. Or at least based on my 3 years teaching in a Middle School.

Of course I wasn't in a failing inner city Middle School like Mr. P (coincidentally, so many of my kid's teachers here on the Chicago North Shore have have even more unpronounceable Polish names, but I digress...) but a lot of it still rings true.

After college (think Netscape IPO time), I taught 7th and 8th in a school that implemented many of Ted Sizer's ideas on school reform on the Northwest side of San Antonio, where kids lived in the same gated community as David Robinson and George Strait.

Although I had my share of "challenging" kids not I can't remember being told to Fuck Off like Mr. P and the only blood I ever saw in the class room was from bloody noses.

And although I left teaching (for tech) over ten years ago, so many of the scenes in the latest (meaning what we are watching now) season take me (and my wife, who was also a teacher) back to our frightening "first year" and give me a sick feeling in my stomach.

Stuff like getting your classroom ready. Never being prepared enough. That awful silence in the morning that will soon be broken when the door opens. The perceived weakness and lack of confidence that let's your classes get out of control (relatively speaking, of course). The older female teachers that get the respect you wish you could command -- and the fear, which you hope you never will. The making it up as you go along, figuring out a month in what you should have done the first day (like come up with a classroom management plan). And then there's the good stuff, too. Creating that fragile bond with your students. And the humor and the tragedy. We've just finished Disc 2 so it will be interesting to see where this ends up.