Posted on by lhl

SSH Tunnel manager is a great GUI for SSH tunneling for OS X. If there was a way to disable ports when not tunnelled, that would be stupendously useful (I’m thinking about in conference situations, when you have say an overly aggressive chat client)…

For Windows, I tried pTunnel, but for some reason it didn’t work. Putty works, of course, although it’d be nice to not have to have a running shell in the taskbar/screen.

— Bothered enough by the last thought that I talked w/ a few people about it. I initially started by thinking about laptop wakeup scripts, but that doesn’t solve collapsing tunnels and still doesn’t insure stuff going out encrypted. Cal suggested a firewall level solution, which I think is on the right track. A 90% solution (and one that’ll definitely solve the chat client problem) is to drop outgoing packets on the tunnel ports for everything but the SSH tunneling server. The other 10%, cleartext communication to the tunneling server shouldn’t happen if you can use secure communications (HTTPS, IMAP-SSL, SMTP-AUTH). The 100% solution is to write firewall rules to pass all data through a local proxy/daemon that will do packet analysis to make sure that there’s no plaintext (basically running everything through ethereal/ettercap. Sure you’ll take a performance hit, but for conferences/other insecure locations, it’s much better than the alternative) — actually, it’d probably be possible/easier to simply be a tunnel manager that will make sure that tunnels are up…

Posted on by lhl

I watched a bunch of presentations yesterday afternoon. A reminder that most people are horrible at them (ref: presentations) , but also something that got me thinking about slides. I’ve mostly settled on using an HTML shell(based off of Tantek’s) w/ some JS/CSS doodadery added to break in all browsers but Mozilla (ex), but it’d might be pretty keen to take that same data and chew it into a more dynamic visualizing tool. (Like a custom 3D engine). Tufte would not approve, but it’d look frickin’ cool.

Posted on by lhl

Made a quick overnight trip up to San Jose for GDC. Southwest works great here; if you buy in advance, it’s only $39 each way (!) — also, if you get there early, they’ll switch you to an earlier flight w/o hassle on the spot.

More GDC pics on my IM bloog.

While I was up there, I hung out at Yahoo for a little bit and had dinner at Google w/ friends. Ernie posted a little summary.

Posted on by lhl

Hah, got this piece of mail ostensibly from BushCheney04@GeorgeWBush.com (coming from a Saudi Arabian IP, interesting … oh, it’s online 212.100.197.254). Hmm, joe-jobbing comes to campaign politics. Can’t say I approve… However, this is funny:

Return-path: 
Received: from usc.edu (usc.edu [128.125.253.136])
by postal.usc.edu (iPlanet Messaging Server 5.2 HotFix 1.21 (built Sep  8
2003)) with ESMTP id <0HV6007TH7YR6M@postal.usc.edu>; Thu,
25 Mar 2004 22:42:27 -0800 (PST)
Received: from mcphail.usc.edu (mcphail.usc.edu [128.125.253.51])
by usc.edu (8.9.3.1/8.9.3/usc) with SMTP  id WAA11674; Thu,
25 Mar 2004 22:42:27 -0800 (PST)
Received: from unknown(212.100.197.254) by mcphail.usc.edu via csmap id
c4c5275a_7ef0_11d8_9298_0002b3c946b2_2348; Thu,
25 Mar 2004 22:42:46 -0800 (PST)
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 01:42:32 -0500
From: "BushCheney04@GeorgeWBush.com" 
Subject: Please Consider My Experience When Voting in 2004
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Reply-to: BushCheney04@GeorgeWBush.com
Message-id: <200403260642.WAA11674@usc.edu>
MIME-version: 1.0
X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
Content-type: text/plain; charset=Windows-1251
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 1
X-MSMail-priority: High
X-CRM114-Status: SPAM  ( pR: -8.8216 )
Resume of George W. Bush
February 26, 2004, 05:15 PM
Past Work Experience:
I ran for U.S. Congress and lost. I produced a Hollywood slasher B movie. I
bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas; the company went
bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock. I bought the Texas Rangers baseball
team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money. With my father's
help and name, I was elected Governor of Texas. 
Accomplishments as Governor:
I changed pollution laws in favor of the power and oil companies and made Texas
the most polluted state in the Union. I replaced Los Angeles with Houston as
the most smog-ridden city in America. I cut taxes and bankrupted Texas
government to the tune of billions in borrowed money. I set the record for the
most executions by any Governor in American history. I became U.S. President
after losing the popular vote by over 500,000 votes with the help of major
Enron money and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court.
Accomplishments as President:
I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury. I
entered my office with the strongest economy in U.S. history and have turned
every single economic category downward -- all in less than two years. I
shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history. I garnered
the most sympathy for the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks and less
than a year later made the U.S. the most resented country in the world,
possibly the largest failure of diplomacy in World history. I am the first
president in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record. I set the the
all-time record for most days on vacation in any one year period. I am
supporting development of a "Tactical Bunker Buster" nuke, a WMD. I am getting
our troops killed, under the lie of Saddam's procurement of Yellow Cake Nuke
WMD components, then blaming the lie on our British friends. I set the record
for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. president. In my first year in
o!
ffice over 2-million Americans l
Records and References:
I have at least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine. My Texas driving
record has been erased and is not available. I was AWOL from the National
Guard. I refuse to take a drug test or even answer any questions about drug
use. All records of my tenure as Governor of Texas are now in my father's
library, sealed, and unavailable for public view. All records of SEC
investigations into insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy
and unavailable for public view. All records or minutes from meetings that I,
or my Vice-President, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in
secrecy and unavailable for public review.
Please consider my experience when voting in 2004.
Show you care about our country's future and forward this to every voter you
know.  Protest is patriotism.
Posted on by lhl
  • CSS white-space – pre-wrap in CSS 2.1 is nice (well, would be if anyone supported it; until then, there’s still -moz-pre-wrap)
  • Word Wrap and MTCodeBeautifier – write up of the problem
  • CSS Precode & code/pre… – other way around (although whether you should use an inline w/o a block level is another question)
  • StellarCOM.org vim macros – some good macros and a pretty nice vimrc
  • Vim documentation: Editing formatted text – very informative
  • TnTLuoma’s NS/Opera Sidebars
  • Jeepers – Chris Clark did a 12″ PB vs ThinkPad X31 comparison last month. My comparison from last May [XLS – for HTML, see Google cache], while older, is a bit more comprehensive. Chris sites the weight being the only place the X31 wins out, which definitely isn’t true – the X31 is much faster, has a different set of ports, and both CF and PC Card slots, better battery life, expansion. The X40 takes those advantages and builds on it. Note: we both still came to the same conclusion, but a G5 laptop would be nice. (as would better battery-life; I’ve never had better than 2 hours of battery life, and with the 10.3.3 update, now the fan spins constantly even when my CPU usage is idling under 10%) Ultimately though, it’s the software that makes the real difference.
  • ahem
Posted on by lhl

SydShamino comments insightfully on the Kahle v Ashcroft /. discussion:

So does the author have the right to say “I don’t want my work released, ever, so any old copies out there can degrade until they are unuseable but no one can make any new copies.”????

Answer honestly. Do you believe that this is true, that an original content creator has perpetual rights to control the use of his work?

If so, congratulations, you believe in the European model of copyright, where it is an inherent right of a person.

In the US, however, copyright is not an inherent right. Instead, public domain is the inherent right, and the constitution grants a limited monopoly on creative works ONLY so that the public domain is improved. Thus, in the US, once an author/creator/etc. chooses to write down and release a work, he or she has given up perpetual control of that work. The constitution demands that, after a limited monopoly, the public domain shall inherit the work.

Frankly, I agree with the constitution. Some things belong to humanity, not to the greed or whims of those in control. The sum body of human creativity is one of them.