Cain Manor

This article, written by Bruce Schneier, was in Wired Magazine in 2006. Even though time has passed, this is the best explanation as to why privacy - my privacy and your privacy - is so very important. I’ve always had a hard time explaining it, and when I reference this article, I always have a hard time finding it again.

The most common retort against privacy advocates — by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures — is this line: “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?” Continue reading ‘The Eternal Value of Privacy’ »

Try -

sudo defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType none

Running Cisco VPN on OS-X I would get “Error 51: Unable to communicate with the VPN subsystem” whenever I would try to connect. I tried rebooting, moving from Wireless to Wired (and rebooting in between), and nothing would work. However,

sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart

seems to fix the issue.

It’s been a bad day for those of us that aren’t happy with our government. The latest news…

Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In other words, they can take your laptop for as long as they want, for any reason, and share it with anyone they want.

In other news (from MSNBC and The Washington Post)..

A Bush administration proposal aimed at protecting health-care workers who object to abortion, and to birth-control methods they consider tantamount to abortion, has escalated a bitter debate over the balance between religious freedom and patients’ rights.

The Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing a draft regulation that would deny federal funding to any hospital, clinic, health plan or other entity that does not accommodate employees who want to opt out of participating in care that runs counter to their personal convictions, including providing birth-control pills, IUDs and the Plan B emergency contraceptive.

This means that if a nutjob that thinks the Birth Control pill is the same as having an abortion, they can deny you the pill. Should a hospital try to put rules in place forcing Pharmacist to dispense the pill regardless of their personal beliefs, the government will pull their funding.

I really want my country back.

To keep from typing your password when using VI Client 2.5, instead of

"C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\VpxClient.exe"

Use

"C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\VpxClient.exe" -passthroughAuth -s [admin console DNS Name]

Your would need to be logged in with the appropriate credentials on your client.

Open “Image Capture”

Open “Image Capture” preferences

Change “When Camera is Connected, open [no application]“

The Heroes Act of 2008 was passed in, well, 2008, to increase benefits for Veterans. Can’t argue with that, can you. However, there was a provision of the bill that taxes you on your property value if you change your citizenship, as capital gains, regardless of you sell it or not. To quote the Chicago Sun Times

But Richard Kohan of Price WaterhouseCoopers drew my attention to one section of the act — the portion that states anyone voluntarily giving up his or her citizenship will be taxed on ALL of his assets as if he or she had sold them — paying capital gains on assets that have increased in value, even though they have not been sold!

That’s right. While everyone in the media is focused on keeping aliens out of America, Congress has voted to lock its citizens — or at least a good portion of their assets — into — America! Maybe they’re thinking that patriotism won’t be enough to keep the smart money from recognizing the coming increases in the tax burden.

So our government doesn’t want immigrants coming in, nor do they people leaving.   I guess you have to pay for that debt somehow.    But Seriously, WTF?

I live by Woodland Park Zoo. Every year they have a concert series that makes parking impossible, but in return, I get free tickets to two concerts. I went looking for a calendar I could subscribe, so I would know which concerts to attend, and when I need to get home early so I can get a parking spot. I couldn’t find such a calendar, so I created one -> Zoo Tunes Calendar <- (presented in ics format for use in most major calendar applications.)

The schedule, from http://www.zoo.org/zootunes/index.html

Continue reading ‘2008 Zoo Tunes Calendar’ »

Something you don’t see every day…

When I first set up CainManor on slicehost, e-mail wasn’t working. The solution, based on this thread, was to install postfix.

apt-get install postfix  -Install postfix

edit /etc/postfix/main.cf

mydomain = cainmanor.com
myorigin = cainmanor.com
mynetworks_style = host

service postfix start -start the service to see if it works as expected.

chkconfig –list postfix - make sure it will start on boot.  The default install takes care of this