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11 | § ¶Oppose Driver Licenses for Illegal Inmigrants
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I strongly oppose providing driving licenses for illegal inmigrants. Doing so just motivates them to remain in the legal limbo where they are, without the protections and responsibilities associated with legal status. Please write to your representative about this issue. To find out who he/she is (if you live in Massachusetts) please go to the legislative branch website. My representative is Stephen P. LeDuc (D) to which I wrote a letter requesting him to vote against this meassure from passing.
Read more to view the letter, and understand the reasons for my possition against this meassure. Feel free to copy and/or edit the text if you want to send a letter to your representative opposing the meassure.
Read More 8 2 | § ¶Wapack Trail - Section 2
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Last sunday (October 26, 2003) we continued our traverse of the Wapack Trail in the north direction, just where we left off the previous weekend. Soon, it will be the first long distance trail we complete from start to end. Read More
5 5 | § ¶Wapack Trail - Section 1
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The Wapack trail has the advantage of being real close to the Boston metropolitan area and yet, it passes through the beautifull New England countryside, and the mountain ridges between Mt. Watatic (Ashburnham, MA) to North Pack Monadnock (Greenfield, NH). On October 18th, we went up this trail to enjoy magnificent views and interesting Fall folliage. |
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4 7 | § ¶The Fight Against SpyWare (and other Pests)
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Hasn't it happened to us all? We download some new application from the internet, we run through the installation screens, don't even look at the software agreement (who reads those, anyway?), and by the time we finish installing we have aligators, and pest programs installed on our system.
They say they help us in our browsing experience, but in reality, they are collecting information about our browsing habits, and shoving adds into our faces whenever they please. There may even be a couple of the most intrusive ones that allow nasty things to happen in our systems or to reveal private/sensitive information we have stored there.
Take a look at the sites provided here. One of them provides good descriptions about these lame tactics. The other two, help you defend against them.
- Counterexplotation - Very good description about most of the Spyware and Adware, and other forms of system explotation.
- Spybot Search and Destroy - The most complete suite to detect and remove spyware, and prevent new spyware from being installed in the future. (Free)
- Adware - detects and removes most adware products. (Free)
Thanks Heather. You reminded me about these kinds of applications (when repliying to a previous post). I thought I ought to mention the way to defend against them.
7 2 | § ¶HTTP Tunneling - Instant Messaging on Paranoid Networks
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During the day I am behind a firewall managed by paranoid Network Administrators.
They don't even allow Secure Shell (SSL) traffic anymore, much less direct connections to ICQ, AIM, MSN, and Yahoo Messenger applications.
Fortunately, there are products that offer public http tunneling service. They allow highly available full access to all major internet services (including web, instant messenging, Secure Shell, and peer 2 peer networking). You can either set them up if you own a server with unrestricted access to the internet, or use a publicly available service (some free, but quickly moving to a nominal fee schedule).
Read More 7 4 | § ¶Cannon Mountain (4100ft)
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In Winter it is a premier ski destination. In Fall it can provide you with a great leaf peeping hike and another White Mountains 4K footer to bag.
On Saturday the 11th (October 2003 Columbus Day weekend) we did our traditional leaf peeping tour in the Franconia Notch area. But this time, instead of going to the Flume Gorge, we went up Cannon Mt through the Hi-Cannon Trail.
Read More 7 3 | § ¶Wapack Trail - Pack Monadnocks
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| On sunday we hiked Pack Monadnock and North Pack Monadnock with a couple of friends and our canine comanion Zoey. It was a moderately steep hike, cold already on this mid fall new england weather, but highly rewarding whenever we got a chance to admire the views the two mountains and the rocky overlooks offered. Highly recomended if you live in the Boston or Metrowest area and want a nice hike close to home. |  |
3 6 | § ¶You break it, you buy it.
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Some people are against funding Iraq reconstruction. They argue that there are better things to do with our nation's money. I have to agree: there are better things to do with our nation's money.
And then, just as we have to buy the expensive figurine we broke while handling it when we entered that store, or we have to repair our friend's car when he loans it to us and we crash it, we have to fix the mess we caused when we invaded Iraq. It is the only responsible thing to do, and I have the impression American people want to be known as responsible.
Now, you can argue that we do not need to continue searching for those WMD that will never appear. We do not have to pay for keeping more troops in the area than we need for the safe reconstruction. You may even argue we do not have to pay for any intelligence gathering operations not related to Iraq's reconstruction. But repairing the infraestructure we broke: that is something we have to do. We do it because we are responsible.
My mother told me: always leave the place in the same or better shape than you found it. Thats the least we can do.
8 3 | § ¶Digital Signatures for the Masses?
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Recently, a customer asked me if I could provide a digital signature for our releases. They wanted to be sure the file we published on our website was indeed the original, unadultered one. In these days, everyone is a bit paranoid about security (and they have reasons to be).
I thought this would require a big effort. How wrong I was. This couldn't be easier!
I am still surprised I never gave any thought into this.
MD5 Digital Signatures was all I needed, and it was available out there for free. http://www.fourmilab.ch/md5/
You can find an approach of the process in this log, just to make it sound formal (click on the Read More). But anyone would be able to figure out how to do this on their own.
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