Journal of Omnifarious

23:51 - Clearwire is being very annoying

I purchased Clearwire for tazfrog because Speakeasy was being annoying about getting DSL into her place (so annoying that I dropped them myself) and Comcast was totally unpalatable for any number of reasons.

It worked out well. I set up a nice Linux based router for her that would automatically configure a nice 6to4 IPv6 tunnel with the public IP address that Clearwire assigned to it. It would act as a NAT and a firewall for all the machines inside the network.

Well, recently Clearwire 'upgraded' all of their boxes. And now the boxes assign themselves the public IP address and force all of your computers to use NAT. No more IPv6 tunnel. It's very, very irritating, and also just plain wrong. If you get a fake IP address, you aren't really getting Internet service.

They claim that Motorola, the manufacturer of these boxes, just delivered them that way and there is no way to turn the NATting behavior off. The nice support person gave me a way to log into the web UI of the Motorola box and set up port forwards and such (which doesn't really help for what I actually want to do). But poking around the UI makes it seem like Motorola was intending to support more modes of operation and just never got around to finishing them.

I'm kinda peeved. I was considering outright anger as I was suspecting this was a policy decision on Clearwire's part. But it appears to be simply incompetence and not a policy decision. Being evil by accident seems somehow more excusable than being evil on purpose. And I think giving people NATted IP addresses is definitely evil and wrong. It's not real Internet service.

It's like the phone company putting you behind a PBX and not telling you the extension. Sure you can make all the calls you want, but nobody can call you. And, of course, when you complain you're asked "Of course you have phone service! You can call anybody you want to. What? Why would anybody want to call you?! You're just a dumb consumer! Everybody wants to call in to the radio shows and stuff, that's what the phone is for. We can't be bothered to support your little 1% use-case here! Look, if you want people to talk to you, just dial up one of those conference line places like everybody else. They'll hook you up.".

Current Mood: annoyed

19:09 - Haloween parties

I hate costumes. I hate dressing up in general. I feel woefully incompetent at anything where physical appearance plays a big role. It's not that I think I'm inherently bad to look at or anything like that. It's that I think there is a certain skill to presenting yourself well from a pure visual appearance standpoint that I don't think I possess.

So I've been staying away from almost any event or social gathering in which clothing is mentioned.

Previously, I've gone for minimalist conceptual costumes as a way to avoid the whole question all together. "I'm a college student." (in actuality a bit bitter than I wasn't really a college student by the official definition and therefore didn't qualify for any financial aid) or "I'm an amorphous blob named Xylex who's eaten me and taken my form." or "Starman." (that was a bunch of big steel marbles I was holding in my hand, sadly they didn't glow).

Now, somehow, that isn't working for me. I'm not sure why, but I don't really want to try the conceptual costume route, and I don't really want to dress up either. I have nothing to dress up in and no skill at doing it. In fact, it's often a huge effort for me to get out to various events in the first place, and I kind of resent being presented with an additional requirement to dress a certain way if I'm going to be there.

Current Mood: intimidated

14:21 - Well, my collaborator wants a patent :-(

And the only way I'll let myself be associated with a patent is if it's clear the patent will never be asserted against any software meeting the open source definition or meeting the free software definition. This is a concession he's unwilling to make. In particular, he wants some kind of definition for 'commercial' against which the patent can be asserted.

Oh, well. I'm going to generously allow him to use it in proprietary software if he so chooses. I'm trying to think up a set of conditions that will make sure the source never appears in public so nobody is ever tempted to put themselves in the way of a patent, should he choose to file one.

He thinks I'm completely nuts, and also thinks my principles are antithetical to his ability to make a living. *sigh* That's not how things work. The only power in ideas is if they're shared widely and freely.

I think the idea is a neat idea, but not that neat. Like all ideas it builds on and incorporates existing ones. For all I know, someone has already thought of doing something like it. I know at least one project of mine was something close.

Current Mood: disappointed

15:41 - I sympathize with Dick here

The Daily WTF is a publication I generally really enjoy. Their recent article Java is Slow! is one I sort of take issue with.

I don't like Java or anything to do with it. I've said that before in this blog and I'll say it again. I can write a Python script to print "Hello world!" that takes less time to run than an equivalent Java program.

There are sweet spot for being simple to develop in, speed and language verbosity. Java completely fails to hit any of them. It has many of the ills of a compiled language with regards to how easy it is to develop in, and is even slower in many regards than most interpreted languages, and it's almost as verbose as COBOL.

And many of you will complain that Python is definitely slower than Java and point at benchmarks. The benchmark I care the most about though is "Hello world!", and that's a benchmark Java fails miserably at.

The reason I care so much about that particular benchmark is that Java's miserable failure at it is seen by people who want to use Java as a reason absolutely EVERYTHING should be in Java. Because the JVM is so expensive to start, you should only start it once, and then Java should become your OS.

I'm sorry, but no. Python has a perfectly acceptable VM, and it starts up in 10s of milliseconds or less. It's not compiled, so it's quick and easy to develop in, and maybe it isn't as fast in the long haul, but those other attributes more than make up for it.

If I really care about speed and want to use a compiled language, I will use C++. If I don't and I want a nice, easy to develop in language, I will use Python. Others can use Perl or Ruby if they want to. Java has no reasonable place in the development landscape, and it never will.

Current Mood: annoyed

04:02 - SHA-1 has been broken

It's sort of been broken for awhile. There were some attacks on it that were cheaper to perform than you'd expect given it's 160-bit hash length, but they were still not in the practical range for current computing hardware. Now there's an attack in 2⁵² steps, which is well within the range of current computing hardware. Still not in the range for a desktop PC to be sure, but definitely doable.

The problem is that all of the replacements are woefully undertested and/or based on the same design principles as SHA-1 and so are also not particularly safe. The NIST hash function won't have good results for at least another 2-3 years. :-(

Current Mood: worried

09:47 - The Colbert Flu

The World Health Organization wants people to stop calling it "the swine flu" citing the fact that middle easterner's feel that swine is unclean. I suspect the real reason is the pork industry, but...

Stephen Colbert is famous for a number of things. And largely I think he's an excellent comedian. I really appreciated his George Bush impersonation a few years ago.

But I do think he should be ashamed of a few things. First he should be ashamed of having his audience attack Wikipedia, and I think he should be ashamed of asking people to stuff a NASA poll to ask that an ISS module be named after him. In both instances he encouraged people to abuse a public resource to make a comic point, and I don't think either instance is OK.

But, as payback, I think we should all start calling "the swine flu" "the Colbert flu". I picked this idea up from a Slashdot article. I want this partly because I can't see how this flu is any more deadly than any other flu that's been spreading around and consequently can't see the reaction of governments world-wide as anything but panic and/or asserting their dominance and giving themselves an apparent reason to exert power. Naming the flu after a comedian is, I think, the appropriate response. Secondly, he deserves it. If he wants an ISS component named after himself as a joke, he can certainly take a joke and have a flu virus named after him.

Current Mood: amused

15:13 - Rant about filesystems

Here is a response I wrote to the Slashdot article titled: Apps That Rely On Ext3's Commit Interval May Lose Data In Ext4 . In particular, some people are trying to say that it is unreasonable of app makers to create thousands of small files and they ought to use a database like sqlite or something instead.

Filesystems that cannot handle thousands of tiny files efficiently are completely broken. I think the Linux filesystem people have been complete idiots for years for not considering this use case to be worth it. Too many big iron database vendors whispering in their ears apparently.

I want to be able to use the filesystem to appropriately name and reference my data. I do not want to have to rely on some completely different set of tools to actually see what data I have stored on my filesystem. If that's the case, I'll just use LVM for my 'filesystem' and use something vaguely decent to actually hold my data and use those tools instead of the Unix filesystem tools.

Now, those applications that are broken because they are written incorrectly should be re-written so they are correct and coincidentally god-awful slow on ext4. Then maybe the designers of ext4 will get a clue and actually write a filesystem instead of a glorified version of LVM with fancy hierarchical namespace for partitions instead of the the flat one LVM has.

Current Mood: aggravated

13:22 - A really interesting perspective on the bailout

Sadly, it's a youtube video. But, it does have choice C-SPAN excerpts: $700 Billion Bailout LAW - YOU WERE ROBBED

Current Mood: angry

09:09 - My untimely disappearance

My LJ was suspended by the LJ abuse team when they mass suspended a whole bunch of journals because they were infested with russian spammer accounts.

How my journal, one with hundreds of entries that's over 6 years old and is a permanent account got caught in this roundup is beyond me. But it apparently did. Maybe it's because I reported several of these russian spammers who left spam comments in my journal.

Anyway, I'm back now, and more motivated than ever to replace this thing. It's run by an organization I do not trust. The organization has made frequent awful mistakes both in the overall running of the site, and in the handling of individual users.

Many thanks to catherinew for emailing me when she noticed something amiss. And thanks to any of you who contacted LJ in some way regarding my suspended journal. I'm sure that all the attention helped.

To all of you, it is highly, highly unlikely that I would ever delete my journal without giving a lot of warning first. If my journal ever looks like it's been deleted, that means something is very seriously wrong somewhere. The most unfortunate thing is that when your journal is suspended, there is no vehicle for telling anybody exactly what happened. :-(

Here is the exact text of the response:

Thank you for contacting us, and I sincerely apologize for this situation. Upon reviewing this situation, it appears your account was mistakenly suspended during a recent round of mass suspensions that were performed. I have unsuspended your account at this time and you should have full use of it. Again, my apologies that your account was mistakenly suspended.

Note: I just noticed... nice use of passive voice in "that were performed". Perhaps "we performed" was taking just a bit more responsibility than the support person was comfortable with. *sigh* I'm actually not that bitter about the support person who is likely just a poor harried human just like me doing their job as best they can, but still.

Current Mood: annoyed

10:51 - Well, my job is going away

But, not until the end of April. And I will get at least health insurance for 1-2 months after that.

First, I really appreciate that attachmate is handling this in this way. I greatly appreciate having that kind of trust extended to my co-workers and I, and I will do my best to honor it.

Secondly, it looks like its time to dust off the resume again. I really liked this job, and I'm really sad it's going away.

I did get some experience working with a security product to put on my resume. So I'm pretty hopeful. Or maybe I'll be able to get one or another of my business ideas off the ground.

*sigh*

Current Mood: anxious

16:15 - New kind of phishing

I just fell for a new kind of phishing scheme. They sent me a message which looked exactly like messages from my bank usually do and asked me to call an 800 number regarding restrictions places on my check card. The 800 number then put me through an automated process asking for my card # and my PIN. I didn't give them then PIN because I've forgotten it for that card.

Since I didn't know the PIN I hung up on the call and tried calling a different # for my bank to ask them what the heck was up. I'm glad I did that. I had the card cancelled immediately. :-(

I feel a little stupid. But I'd never seen a phisher actually set up an 800 # before. In retrospect it's obvious. They have money. It's not hard.

If the mail had had a link to a website I would've noticed that it was a phishing scheme immediately. It had a link to an email address @ my bank, but that was secretly a link to a website. I didn't mouse over it to find out though until after I realized it was a phishing scheme.

It also happened to hit me at just the right time. I'd happened to be using that card about the same amount in the past month as I'd been using it in the past 4-5 (I don't use that card often at all), so it was plausible they'd see that as a fraud issue.

Anyway, I'm posting this as a warning that phone #s in email messages are an even worse problem than links because there's nothing that really identifies who owns a phone # at all.

Current Mood: annoyed

14:26 - The current state of PKI

Whee, PKCS#12 is such a fantastic standard! I was assigned to implement it using the OpenSSL C API, yet another fantastic (and well documented) standard.

The state of cryptography standards and implementations is utterly awful. And everybody is so afraid of making a mistake that it seems that nobody wants to fix it or create better ones. *sigh*

Current Mood: annoyed

14:48 - Why the iPhone is evil

I think the iPhone is evil, and doubly so because it is so nice and pretty. The reason I think it is evil is because it is laden with DRM. Apple controls it completely. By putting your life into your iPhone, you've basically sold your soul to Apple.

Apple must approve any application that runs on the iPhone. Any application must be signed by Apple in order to run. So, as an example, Apple is refusing to allow an iTunes competitor to run on the iPhone. Why anybody would want to pay money for a device that basically isn't really their's is beyond me.

I think the iPhone is especially evil because it is such a neat and pretty device. Many people would be tempted to think that really they do actually get the value they pay money for and ignore the fact that really, the device exists only to benefit Apple and any benefit it provides to them is like the lure of a angler fish. The iPhone is basically a trojan horse, and the fact that you are tricked into paying for it only adds insult to injury.

Current Mood: annoyed

15:14 - Upsetting conversation

I became really angry over some things toxic_pink37 said today. She criticized my friends in a way that was sort of fair, but also not, and rather exceedingly rude in my opinion. I have my theories about what's going on here, but those aren't for public consumption. Aside from that, I would like to talk about what she said.

Her specific criticism was that my friends complain bitterly about our society being a classist one while enjoying the benefits of such and/or not doing anything about it but complain. She then named a few specific exceptions among people I know.

Current Mood: angry

11:44 - I fixed my main workstation

I fixed my main workstation. I've been meaning to do this for a long time. I partly didn't out of fear that the problem wasn't the fairly simple one I thought it was and partly because my main workstation is old enough now to be disappointing.

The problem was the video card, which is what I thought it was. It was bad. I swapped it out for a really cheap video card I had spare and it worked great.

The video card that I swapped in is largely inadequate for what I use that computer for though, so I'm going to have to replace it with a much better video card a soon as I can afford to. *sigh*

The whole workstation should be replaced. It's old, comparatively slow, and the motherboard has a hardware glitch that causes the system to lock during periods of heavy drive write activity and network access.

Current Mood: frustrated

08:48 - I broke my glasses

I broke my glasses yesterday. They are the ones I got when I moved to Seattle (I picked option 4 in the linked to poll). They had been rather stressed already and the bridge was somehow very recently severely weakened and broke where it connected to the frame around one of the lenses.

I've never had a pair of glasses break before. I sort of have a back-up pair, but they are very ugly and I don't want to wear them most of the time. I can't really afford to replace the decent ones right now though. :-(

Current Mood: annoyed

06:34 - The My Family thing

At least, this is how I sort of feel right now. But, hopefully that will be changing in not too long. :-)

Edit 11:55: To be clear, I'm not actually feeling that lonely right this instant. But I am feeling sort of bereft of family. Partly because this meme has been floating around, and partly because it seems like it might be tantalizingly close to happening.

Create your own family sticker graphic at pYzam.com

The pyzam.com site is really sneaky and underhanded.

Please do not use the 'auto-post' tool as it requires you give your LJ password to some random 3rd-party site. And note that the code it gives you includes a web bug (a 0-size image designed for tracking purposes). It's a web bug that I've removed from my posting.

Wow, that whole thing is an über-sneaky way of basically collecting a whole bunch of information from hapless social networking site users. How distressing. The web bug doesn't show up in the code they say they're giving you to copy, it only shows up in the code you paste.

I do not think I trust gigya.com much. And trusting these people with your LJ password would be the height of foolishness. If they're willing to be sneaky and underhanded in one way, they certainly are willing to treat your password with the same level of disregard for you and your wishes.

Current Mood: lonely

10:57 - My main workstation has died

It died before, when I moved, and that was the power supply. It's died again now, and I suspect this time that it's something more serious like the video card or possibly one or both of the CPUs frying from overheating. The fans all turn on but the BIOS screen never comes up.

I want to replace it. The newer dual core AMD CPUs generate even less heat and are a lot faster. But replacing it with technology that mirrors the level of current I sprung for when I bought what I have now would run me about $3000, and I don't have that and won't have it anytime really soon. :-(

My monitor also needs replacing. It's a pretty nice LCD monitor from 2003, but it has problems. The main problem is that it gets muddy when things are moving or changing quickly because the pixel change lag is fairly high. The pixel change time is 25ms or so which means a maximum effective frame rate of 40 frames a second and anything faster is muddy. It's not even that great for watching DVDs. The secondary problem is that it is very slow (often a minute or more) to recognize that the video card is trying to bring it out of sleep mode. I usually get frustrated and push the signal select button to force it, but it's irritating.

Actually, scratch that, a pixel change rate of 25ms means an effective frame rate of 20 frames per second. This is because a pixel should be at the color it's supposed to be for at least half the time in order for it not to be muddy. 20 frames per second means a possible change in pixel color every 50ms leaving a pixel that takes 25ms to change to be at the new value for 25ms before changing again.

Current Mood: worried

11:58 - This makes me sad

This is a really excellent article on why our birthrate has been falling: The Baby Boycott by Stephanie Mencimer.

Sadly, I think the article is pretty close to correct. I've been really sad to notice that women who are smart and capable (the ones I'd most like to have children with) are generally not very interested in having children.

One reason I've become interested in polyamory is that I feel it offers a partial way out of this problem by distributing some of the burden of raising children over more people. But it still is a real issue.

I'm not so much for all the government mandated stuff since I generally feel that lots of government mandated stuff is both inherently unfair and tends to backfire in unexpected ways. But I am interested in changing this situation in some way.

Current Mood: sad

12:56 - I'm powerful sick

I haven't had an upper-respiratory illness hit me this hard for awhile. :-/ I hope it goes away soon, this is very irritating. I do not like feeling miserable.

Current Mood: sick