Apple Store Visit

Yesterday I went over to the Apple Store in King of Prussia, PA with a friend, mainly to check out the new MacBooks and MB Pros.  The new machines are nice, though IMHO the deletion of the FireWire 400 port from the MacBooks was a mistake.  I also would like to see two FireWire ports on the MacBook Pros (Rohan, my almost two year-old MBP has FW 800 and FW 400 ports).  The MBs have two USB 2.0 ports but IME, FW400 provides better sustained throughput than the supposedly faster USB 2.0.

The new trackpads are nice and address one problem (IMHO) that Apple needed to.  Namely, the lack of a two button mouse.  The entire trackpad acts like a mouse button, even down to the click.  But if you go into System Preferences > Trackpad, you can configure either the lower left or right corner as a secondary mouse button.  Voila, you now have a two button mouse.  Sweet.

The other reason for taking a trip to the KoP store was to get a new power supply for my wife's G4 iBook.  The iBook was issued to her by the School District of Philadelphia about 2.5 - 3 years ago and it's been great.  A few days ago she noticed it wasn't charging and Friday night, I discovered that this was because the cord was frayed near where it plugs into the iBook.  It was delivering enough juice to slowly charge the machine when it was off, but not nearly enough when the box was powered on.  Worse, it's a fire hazard.

Luckily, I was able to use the power supply from the G4 iBook I used as my primary machine before buying Rohan.  That box gets occasional use by my daughters, and the Apple power supply design could be more robust, so I didn't want to share it between the two iBooks.

Unfortunately, the school district is strapped for cash and the odds of getting a replacement power supply through it are about nil, so I reluctantly coughed up the cash for a new one.  If and when Judith has to return the iBook to the school district, I'll keep the new power supply as a spare.

OS X Server

I've spent the past couple days at work setting up one of the two Apple XServs that we received last month.  So far, I'm liking the GUI admin tools included with Leopard Server, though I am also doing some tweaking via the command line accessed via ssh.  Also, to add some flexibility, I installed X11 and the XCode Developer Tools.  For one thing, I need gcc.

Specifically, I want to run Cacti on the box to provide SNMP monitoring of devices in our lab network, e.g., routers, switches, and CMTSes.  Cacti is basically a graphical front end to RRDTools, providing a web interface using PHP.  I installed MacPorts to simplify installing Cacti and its dependencies.  Unfortunately, the MacPorts install of net-snmp bombed so I wound up installing it by hand.  (This wasn't a big surprise.  I've had ports fail to install using MacPorts before on other boxes.)  With net-snmp installed I was able to get RRDTool installed, including the MySQL dependency.  Being an MySQL n00b, I'm working my way through getting that configured.

Aside from the Xserv providing network management and monitoring, I'm using it as a web server to provide a portal for our lab management group.  The initial version of the portal is based on a simple, static HTML page with links to forms and informtational documents.

However, OS X.5 Server includes a wiki server to build workgroup intranets.  I've managed to create a pretty decent looking wiki for our group.  I still need to figure out how to enable read-only access for people not in our group, so they can view our procedures and download forms.  The default workgroup wiki settings require users to authenticate before they can view the pages we create.

Future services on the box will also include file sharing, once I get an XRAID connected.

New Blackberry Curve

My employer issues me a Blackberry 8330 Curve since I am one of the floor captains in our building.  We have an unlimited data plan and I've never gotten any complaints about using it to surf the web outside of normal business hours, though I didn't feel comfortable putting my personal email accounts on the device.  It does have a few disadvantages, though:

1. The camera is disabled for security purposes.  Nevermind the fact that plenty of personally owned camera phones are allowed in the building.
2. Tethering is disabled, so I can't use it to get my laptop online.  Even if tethering was enabled, T-Mobile just lit up their 3G network in Philly and my device supports only their EDGE network, which is much slower.
   
3. Our carrier is T-Mobile.  We used to have Sprint, who has decent service in the Philadelphia area.  T-Mobile's network coverage is much spottier.

Last week I became eligible for Verizon's "New Every 2" promotion on my personal cell phone.  This is a promo wherein they give you $49.99 credit towards a new phone every two years.  Verizon also has the best cell network in this area, IMHO.

So, yesterday I went to the local Verizon store and bought a Blackberry Curve 8330 pretty much the same as the T-Mobile one from work.  Aside from the $49.99 credit, there's also a $79.99 mail-in rebate, so the final cost of the phone, belt case, car charger, and a 2 GB Micro SD card will be only $100.

The T-Mobile phone is configured to use wifi connections when available.  The Verizon Blackberry doesn't have that capability, but it doesn't really need it due to Verizon's better network coverage.

My employer has a deal worked out with Verizon for a 20% discount on cell phone plans, including data plans.  So I got the 5 GB/month data plan and the $15/month tethering plan, with the first month's tethering free.

Since my laptop is a MacBook Pro I specifically asked about Mac support tethering and syncronization.  The Verizonbot told that both are supported but that I'd need to download the PocketMac sync tool from Blackberry.com.  The tethering software would be included on the CD in the phone box.

Nope.

After inserting the CD and finding Windows-only tethering software, I hit Google.  I found two ways to tether the Blackberry to Rohan:

1. Via Bluetooth, which requires no additional software.
2. Via USB, which required me to download Verizon's connection manager software for one of their EVDO cards.

This was a PITA, to put it mildly.  Although I was able to get tethering up and running pretty quickly, a non-technical Mac user would have been in a real bind.  Is it really that hard for Verizon to include at least the tethering app on the Blackberry CD?

Oh well, bitching aside, I'm able to get about a meg down using the USB connection to Verizon's EVDO network.  Bluetooth speeds are about half that.  Web browsing speeds using Opera Mini are better than the T-Mobile Blackberry.  Accessing my Gmail account, using Google's downloadable app, works much more smoothly.  So far I've made only a couple phone calls but call quality was better than my old Motorola Razr.

The Gun Show Loophole

Clayton Cramer comments on the so-called "gun show loophole:"

Most gun owners know that there is no loophole. Federal law does not currently prohibit two private parties transferring a firearm. Some states have laws about this, but the federal government does not. There is no more a gun show "loophole" than there is a newspaper advertisement "loophole" because newspapers accept ads for guns for sale.

As Clayton details, there is no correlation between gun shows and increased crime.

Red Hat Training

The Red Hat Linux training class I took this week wrapped up early on Friday, allowing me to leave and work from home the rest of the day.  I'm currently on the back porch with Rohan, a glass of water (booze will wait for later), and an H. Uppman Vintage Cameroon cigar.  May as well take advantage of a beautiful Fall day, before they're gone.  ;-)

Overall the class -- Guru Labs GL250 Enterprise Linux System Administration was pretty good.  It could have been a bit more organized the first day or two.  E.g., the server in room needed the full Fedora Core 6 repository setup but otherwise it went well.

The exercises in our lab book were geared towards Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 or Fedora Core 6.  This was my first time working with FC and it seems decent (I am aware that FC9 is the current release).

I'm considering going for RHCT and maybe RHCE certification.  I figure with the current state of the economy the more certs I have the better.  That means I'll need to setup a lab here at the house.  What I may do is rebuild Bagend -- currently sitting sans hard disk -- with additional RAM and a bigger disk than I had in it, loading CentOS 5.2, and installing a couple of different virtual Linux boxes under VirtualBox.  Earlier this week I did setup FC6 in VirtualBox on Rohan but for the purposes of lab exercises more machines would be beneficial.  Since I have limited physical space virtualized servers makes the most sense for me.

Bagend, which I build back in the Fall of 2004, currently has 1 GB of RAM, an AlthonXP at around 2 GHz, and had an 80 GB disk in it.  I have some old IDE disks I could add for additional space but recently, Microcenter advertised a 1 terabyte drive for about $129.  What I'll probably do is put the 80 GB disk back in and leave its XP Pro install alone, then add a large secondary disk and install CentOS on that, so I have a dual boot setup.  Then I'll add another gig or so of RAM and it should be good to go.

The Bailout Mess

So far I haven't commented on the bailout proposed by Bush and is working its way through Congress. Two people who's opinions I respect, Jerry Pournelle and Robert Bruce Thompson, have differing opinions (both are linked in my blogroll if you want to see what they have to say).

Jerry supports a bailout and Robert opposes it. In the end, I have to come down on Robert's side in this debate and oppose the bill in its current form, or in any form for that matter. It is a disaster waiting to happen. At best, a bailout will prop up the house of cards a bit longer, merely delaying the necessary correction. I am concerned that by doing so, the eventual collapse will be made worse.  Much worse.

It is the nature of capitalism for bubbles to happen and then pop. The market needs a serious correction. Now. Actions must have consequence. The proposed bailout seeks to take private errors of judgement and socialize the poor consequnces, shifting the burden of poor decisions by investment bankers onto the backs of taxpayers.

Worse, by intertwining the Federal government even further into the market it lays the ground for fascism* or socialism. Both ideologies flourish in hard econimc times. Whether or not a completely laissez-faire capitalist system is the best can be debated among reasonable people. But fascism and socialism lead to tyranny.

Unfortunately too many useful idiots would welcome total goverment control over the market. Not me. Surely, the same people who brought us the IRS (renowned for customer service, and who couldn't run a profit at the Mustang Ranch when they seized it for back taxes), Amtrak, and No Child Gets Ahead Left Behind, couldn't possibly fuck up the economy beyond repair, could they?





* One of the biggest con jobs of 20th Century was the success of socialists and communists in getting fascism painted as a right-wing ideology. It's not. Fascism is more accurately described as socialism with a nationalist twist. Mussolini started out as a socialist. The formal name of the Nazi party in Germany was the NSDAP - the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

New Security System

Yesterday I got to work from home while an experimental home security and monitoring system got installed.  It's broadband-enabled, so that instead of using a phone line to contact the monitoring service, it uses my cable modem connection, with a cellular backup in case the cable modem connection goes down due to a system outage or tampering.

Included in the system are some door and window sensors, a motion sensor, a couple video cameras capable of streaming live video, a controller which can be used to automatically turn a lamp on or off, and a touch screen control panel.  Everything connects back to the central hub via wireless and the door/window sensors are battery powered with an ~5 year battery life.

Overall it's pretty slick and I look forward to exploring its capabilities.

Some Lab PC Upgrades

Roughly six months ago I submitted a request for various items for our lab.  E.g., some video cables and RAM upgrades for a few PCs and two G5 Power Macs.  The request finally made its way through my employer's bureaucracy and we got the items earlier this week.

Three of the PCs which we use for evaluating software and networking hardware in my lab are boxes that we got a couple years ago from Intel.  They have 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo CPUs, 120 GB SATA hard disks, and DVD burners.  Graphics and sound aren't anything special, but they are solid, well-built boxes.  Unfortunately, they only had one gig of RAM eachs.  So, I upgraded two of them with an additional 2 GB of RAM, bringing them to a total of 3 gigs.  This is the most that 32 bit XP will recognize, so maxing the boxes out with 8 GB (the maximum supported by the hardware) would be pointless.

I added another 4 GB to the remaining PC, however, for a total of 5 GB.  That box will get a fresh install of 64 bit Vista Enterprise.  I currently have 32 bit Vista Ultimate on it and with only 1 GB, it runs like a dog.  It's currently being used for some browser testing by another groups. Installing Vista x64 will have to wait until their current project is finished, however.

The G5s only had 512 MB of RAM each.  One is running OS 10.4.11 while the other has 10.5.5.  Tiger was OK on 512 MB but Leopard was pretty pokey.  Both boxes are noticeably snappier with 2 GB of RAM.

Updates at Obama Exposed

Just a reminder to check out my other blog Obama Exposed.  Plenty of recent updates.

Philadelphia's Gun Laws Struck Down

A victory for the rule of law:

Commonwealth Court on Friday dismissed a lawsuit against the legislature filed last year by two members of Philadelphia's City Council (related stories).  The court says several gun ordinances the council passed last year include language saying they can't take effect unless the legislature allows municipalities to enact stricter laws. That hasn't happened.
 
Those measures would have limited gun purchases to one a month and banned assault weapons....

Full story.

Pennsylvania law is clear to anyone who can read on a 6th grade level.  Only the state government is allowed to regulate firearms, localities are not.  I just heard on KYW-1060 AM that the city will probably appeal to the state supreme court.  Thankfully, the last time Philadelphia tried to enact its own assault weapons ban, the state supreme court smacked it down hard.

The law is so clear that Philadelphia should be forced to pay the attorneys' fees and costs of the parties challenging their patently illegal ordinance.

I Got to Meet Alan Gura Today

This afternoon I had the pleasure of meeting Alan Gura, Dick Anthony Heller's attorney in the Supreme Court's landmark case, District of Columbia vs. Heller.  This was at the Pennsylvania Bar Institute's continuing legal education program, "The Right to Bear Arms."

The program today consisted of a debate between Mr. Gura and Brian Siebel from the Brady Center to Prevent Handgun violence.  The general topic of the debate was over the meaning of the Heller decision.  For example, now that the Supreme Court has declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, what exactly does this mean?  What arms are protected?  Is the right limited to the home or does it extend to carrying arms in public?  Will the Second Amendment be incorporated against the states?  Assuming that the Second Amendment is incorporated, what state laws might be struck down as unconstitutional?

Based on Heller, Gura believes that some gun control laws will be held constitutional, but that outright bans -- including any "assault weapons bans" -- will be struck down.  It's his opinion that it will eventually lead to a right to carry in some manner, maybe concealed, maybe open carry.  E.g., it might be permissible for a state to bar concealed carry so long as open carry was legal (or the reverse).

Regarding machineguns, Gura does not believe that Heller will lead to getting rid of the NFA, but not because that the Second Amendment doesn't protect machineguns, but rather because he doesn't believe that we can get judges to rule that it protects machineguns.  In other words, regardless of how gun rights activist view the issue, he feels that it's a loosing argument in the courts.  I tend to agree with him.

Gura also feels that laws requiring background checks will probably pass consititutional muster, as long as they are instant.  Waiting periods will likely be struck down.

I asked Gura was whether he thought that Heller could lead to a loosening of restrictions on lesser arms, namely switchblade knives.  He thinks it may, and mentioned that in fact, some state courts have struck down laws banning certain kinds of knives and clubs based on RKBA provisions.  He didn't list any specific cases, however.  Siebel, in contrast, mentioned that this was the first time he'd heard of anyone applying the Second Amendment to knives, and didn't really opine either way.

I thought that Gura did a fine job of explaining the case and its potential implications.  He also said a couple of times that we're in the beginning of this fight (paraphrasing here).  On the other hand, Siebel did little more than rehash old, discredited prohibitionist arguments in favor of gun control, including statistics purporting to show that having a handgun in the home is more dangerous to the occupants than a potential burglar.  He also placed a lot of emphasis on Scalia's wording referring to the Second Amendment protecting the right to bear arms in defense of one's home.  This of course ignores the fact that in the case what was at issue was whether Heller could get a gun permit from D.C. to keep a self defense gun at home.  Carrying a gun outside the home was not at issue in the case, so the court did not rule on that particular question.

As an aside, at one point in the session Siebel asked for a show of hands from the attendees indicating support for background checks as being reasonable.  Of the twenty or thirty attendees, only one or two raised their hands.  Heh.

After the class was over I went up to Gura and thanked him for the job he's done on our behalf.  Kudos to the PBI for hosting this class.

Sony Shipping Rootkits Again

A couple of years ago, Sony BMG got caught shipping music CDs with "rootkits" on them, which installed software onto PCs when the buyer put the CD in to play it.  A rootkit is software which allows a hacker to remotely take over a system.

Sony is AGAIN shipping products with rootkits installed.  This time it's USB drives.  Here's the story at Computer World, an IT industry journal.

It is not specified in the article what systems are vulnerable.  Windows PCs certainly, Macs unlikely but possible based on the limited information that's been publicly released.

Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  I regard buying Sony technology products as too risky.

EDIT 9/24/08: I had a brainfart and misread the date on the article to which I linked.  It's from August 2007, not last month as I originally thought.  That said, Sony still won't be getting any of my business.

New Server Is Up

Friday morning I took the old IBM 2 GHz P4 at my desk, added a second disk drive, and installed CentOS 5.  My disk layout is as follows:

/hda - ~18 GB for / and ~2 GB swap
/hdb - ~ 40 GB for /home, with /home/dave shared using Samba

I'd like to have a ginormous hard disk in there and use it as a Time Machine backup destination but I'm using scrounged parts.

My original plan was to use Samba running on the Linux box to share out my home directory and use Cronosync to syncronize them.  After futzing with it for far too long, and hitting Google quite a bit, I've discovered that Leopard's implementation of Samba is broken to the point where I haven't been able to get it to work with Samba running on Linux.  Bah.

Rather than wasting any more time trying to get it working, I decided to sync the Documents folder on Rohan with /home/dave/Documents on the Linux box over SFTP, using Transmit's built-in syncronize function.  Over my 100 Mb network, it took the better part of an hour to transfer 8.79 GB.  Future syncs should be much faster since only those files which have changed will need to be copied over.

ARRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!

It's Talk Like A Pirate Day, ye scurvy lubbers!  Arrrrr!!!!

Follow up on why we make backups

After I got home I was able to retrieve a backup of the TrueCrypt volume from my Time Machine disk.  Unfortunately, the backup was from 9/11.  Time Machine does its differential backups based on the time a file was last modified.  Strangely, when decrypting a TrueCrypt volume (and this one is accessed at least five days per week), the "Date Modified" for the file is not changed.

So, to ensure that the volume is backed up every time I connect my Time Machine disk, I wrote an AppleScript to run the UNIX "touch" command, then placed that script in my login items.  Thus, everytime I login the volume's Date Modified attribute will be updated.  The AppleScript is one line:

do shell script "touch /Users/davemarkowitz/Documents/files.tc"

In my previous post I mentioned that I may implement an online backup system.  Instead of doing that, I think I'll setup a backup routine to copy the volume to a Linux box at my office, saving me a few bucks but still allowing me to have an easily accessed backup at work.

That may be an interim solution, though.  Yesterday I received two Apple XServes, each of which will be connected to an XServe RAID with over a terabyte of disk space.  One of the intended uses for them is to create workgroups storage space and backing up Rohan fits into that perfectly.

And this is why we make backups

I keep confidential data on my MacBook Pro inside of a 4GB TrueCrypt volume.  This morning after getting into the office, I launched TrueCrypt, attempted to open the volume, and got a file not found error.

Thinking that I may have accidentally dragged it into a different folder, using Spotlight I ran a search for the volume's name on the entire hard disk.  It's gone, nowhere to be found.

{Insert sinking feeling here.}

I do have a couple backup copies of the file, the oldest dating to no older than Sunday night.   So, while I've lost some data, I haven't lost much.

My backup regimen includes using Time Machine several times a week when I use Rohan at my desk at home, and a file sync every Thursday night using Cronosync.  Time Machine backs up to a LaCie 320 GB FireWire drive, while Cronosync backs up to a 160 GB portable disk from Otherworld Computing.  Periodically, I also copy the TrueCrypt volume to a flash drive that I always keep in my pocket.

I've been considering a fourth, online backup and this may put me over the edge.  I'm leaning towards Amazon's S3 service using Jungledisk.  Both my external hard disks are located at home, which means (a) I cannot access them from work, and (b) I'm SOL if the house burns down.  Online backup means I'll be able to access my files from the office or anywhere with an Internet connection.

Seven Years Ago

Remember.

Message from an Iraqi Veteran to Obama

Watch this one all the way through.

NJ vs. PA Match at LRGC

I shot in the NJ vs. PA practical rifle match yesterday at Langhorne Rod & Gun Club. The course of fire included:

1. From 10 yards, two rifle mags, 3 rounds each, followed by a transition to pistol, 2 mags of 3 rounds each. Timed.
2. From 100 yards, three rifle mags, 5 rounds each, standing, kneeling, prone.
3. From 200 yards, three rifle mags of 5 rounds each, rollover prone, prone, weak side prone.
4. From 200 yards, 10 shots on three gongs, the smallest of which is hardly visible w/o magnification.
5. From 200 yards behind a barricade, two mags of 8 rounds each on gongs, plus 15 rounds at the top half of an IPSC target. First 8 rounds on steel kneeling, then switch to a different position, i.e., sitting or prone. Alternatively, you could shoot at the same half IPSC target at 100 yards, but not from prone. 2 minute time limit.

We had a large turnout and to get everyone through took about 6 hours.

I did OK but need more practice, especially from rollover prone and weak side. When I switched to the right shoulder I had a hard time finding the exit pupil of my scope. I also need to break in my holster. I used a new Don Hume rig for my Springfield M1911 and it is still tight, which killed my time during the first evolution. (At least my raw score on that stage was 58/60.)

The rifle I shot was my Colt AR-15A3 with an IOR-Valdada 3x25mm CQB scope. I used 30 round Magpul P-Mags and Federal American Eagle .223 55 grain FMJ loads. No malfs.

Some pics here.

Kudos to the staff at LRGC for putting on a safe, fun shoot.

Range Report

I'm on vacation this week and got to the range today with my Polish Tokarev pistol, Springfield 1911, and Remington 870.

I got the Remington 870 last month and shot it for the first time today. I patterned it at 12 and 25 yards with Remington 00 buck and Federal Low Recoil 00 buck with Flite Control wads. I also put a box of Federal LR Tru Ball slugs through it. The Remington buck stays on a paper plate at 12 yards, but opens up a bit at 25. Most pellets would hit a torso, though. The Federal Flite Control load is impressive. Patterns at 12 yards were about as big as my hand, while at 25 they opened up to about the size of the plate. Assuming it performs as well in my Mossberg 500 Mariner, it'll become my load of choice. Both buckshot loads shoot right to POA at 12 yards, and a bit high at 25.

The Tru Ball slugs shot well. I was able to keep them on the plate at 25 yards once I found the elevation.

I'm happy with both the shotgun and all the ammo I tested today.

I bought the Tokarev last Fall but every time I took it to the range, something happened so today was the first time I've actually fired it. The Tokarev digested 70 rounds of Yugo surplus 7.62x25 Ball without a hitch. It's more pleasant to shoot than my CZ-52, which has some trigger slap. Shooting the Tok feels like shooting a 9mm, but one that's a bit louder. At 12 yards I kept them on the plate, which is about as good as I can do with the Tok's heavy trigger and small sights. I have 70 more rounds of the Yugo ammo, and then it'll be time for me to crack open the spam can of Romanian Ball that I picked up last year.

I've had the Springfield 1911 for several years. For the first 600 rounds or so through the gun it was extremely reliable. After swapping out the FLGR for a GI type setup I started getting stovepipes. After the last time I had it at the range I detail stripped it, paying special attention to ensuring that the extractor channel was clean. That was awhile ago and I finally shot it again today. In 84 rounds, I had one stovepipe with a Springfield brand magazine, one of the two which came with the gun. The other 83 rounds ran fine through 4 Chip McCormick and one other mag marked "NM 45," which came with the gun. I am pretty certain that the stovepipe was magazine induced (it's happened before with that mag), so I junked it. I plan to run more ammo through the Springer before I regard it as reliable, but I'm confident that I've diagnosed what was wrong.