Journal of a Sysadmin

Wordpress automatic upgrade

Woot, it worked. Maybe I won’t have to diff/patch every time there’s an upgrade from now on!

House cleaning while the birds tweet

Two impressive moves for me today:

• I’ve obviously changed my journal theme, it’s only been the same for the past 5 years.
• I’ve signed up for a twitter account and am actually trying to use it, is it useful?

So, #1 was easy. I had to upgrade WP today anyway on 4 different journals (which took all of 5 minutes) and wanted to find a new theme so there you go. Hey, who’da thunk I could change…

#2 is odd. I’m trying to see if it’s going to add any additional value beyond following Jaime’s tweets. So far I’ve observed that the people who are at the top (timoreilly and timbray for example) are actually spouting useful stuff, for the most part and it makes you stop and think. This is good.

gtrend is actually kind of neat. Funny how the collective gravitates from one thing to the next in an amoeba like fashion, so I’m following that one if for nothing else entertainment.

I think though I see one bad thing about twitter, besides the entire time hole continuum thing: Twitter needs authentication, I can easily foresee a fake IDC tweet messing with the markets like the Apple/Jobs heart attack thing.

What I envision for twitter would be a simple to use (read automatically generated, uploaded, and managed) GnuPG pub/priv key signature to send each tweet into twitter. The signed messages would then be verifiable as being from the actual person. Maintaining a key ring with signed keys and a return key signing parties or even better, meetings where you share keys at the end along with your business cards (oh, my GnuPG finger print is on the back of the card so you can verify my tweets)?

Mind you, anyone running an insecure computing platform will not be verifiable because if you give me time and you use the machine I’ll control your actions. Also the nature of people is to give up information in the guise of being “helpful”, compromising their accounts in the process (at least 1% of receivers of a mail phishing attempt will divulge their account information). Of course on a scale of magnitude Aunt Bessie may give up information to phishers but her tweets won’t cause the apple stock to plummet but IDC authorized tweeters would know better and would know to not allow access to their private keys.

As it stands now we don’t know if that really is timoreilly or one of his staff (from reading some of his work though I’m thinking it may actually be him. If he doesn’t tweet for more then say, 12 hours can we say he’s dead?). Naturally having never met Tim (Mr. O’Reilly?) and likely I never will can I ever actually verify his GnuPG key except to download his pub key from a specific location?

Well, I put the new idea out. Maybe I’ll do something about it tomorrow.

Tags: GnuPG, O'Reilly, Twitter, wordpress theme

iPhones and Upgrades

Had Friday and today off work as we were going dog camping on the weekend. That went well(ish) and today we had to go and do something about phones…

See, we wouldn’t have had to today really except that I had to wash Jaime’s with the HE washer. I guess it washes phones as well as it washes cloths, as it washed the good out of it. The phone is now only usable as a wedge type door stop (the razor is too small to use as a coaster).

Of course, as soon as her phone went missing my phone decided too completely croak so a good part of the day was spent digging around finding papers and deciding what phone and plan to get Jaime. We then proceeded to go to the Fido store and pickup a new Z310 for me (to replace the dead one) and an iPhone for Jaime…

All the hype I think is worth it. The phone seems solid and she’s posted to flickr, facebook, and now her journal. Mail works, we works and most importantly the phone actually works. Visual Voicemail btw is kind of cool, integrating the iPhone with voicemail so that you can navigate your voicemail from the phone menu instead of having to call it. Nice feature.

Data plans still suck here. Currently we are on the limited time offer $30 6G plan. Hopefully it goes down from that.

Tonight I upgraded all 4 installs of WP here. I’m happy to report that my diff and patch method still works!

Yay, it means 3 minutes instead of 15 per journal!.

This just isn’t right

This just isn’t right.

Why is it that anyone has the power, through either the courts or via threats, to force another person to take down a site which did contain useful information to the internet community?

This is exactly what net neutrality is. Through the use of scare tactics and force the Telco’s are pushing people to use services which only serve to line the pockets of the telco’s.

I’ve sent an email message to my MP Lee Richardson. I would suggest that you all do the same. Anti-neutrality tactics by the telco’s will lead Canada to be a dark spot on the Internet. Speak up and make your elected officials speak out in Parliment!

Go Stats Canada! Census 2006 final update.

So, in follow up to the whole Stats Canada thing today is census day (we have to have our census done today). I also read on their web site:

The census online application now accessible to Linux operating system

In response to demand, Statistics Canada has removed the restriction for Linux. This change takes effect May 13th, 2006.

This broadened access to open-source users is available to those who have a valid browser and JVM. These minimum requirements are necessary in order to maintain the same level of data encryption with Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).

With the addition of this new operating system, the capacity of the Census Help Line operators to respond to technical calls from open source users may be limited. However, we expect this will not be a major obstacle for the vast majority of these users.

A pat on the back and two thumbs up to Stats Canada for allowing us open source users to do our census online!

Census 2006 update

So, the census people finally replied to me and their reply actually makes sense, kind of.

They use a PKI java applet which is supposed to provide encryption and authentication all the way through the connection to the database. The fact that they responded and the fact that they are addressing (or attempting to address) the issue is good, thank you to Stats Canada for that.

Here’s the reply

Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 09:05:23 -0400
From: census-recensement@statcan.ca
To: jbourne@hardrock.org
Subject: RE: census 2006 restrictions

Hello,

Thank-you for contacting Statistics Canada. Please excuse the delay of
this response.

Statistics Canada has chosen to use PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)
encryption to provide the industrial strength security and data privacy
that the 2006 Census Internet application requires. The PKI encryption
of data starts at the browser and goes all the way to the end server at
Statistics Canada. In order to enable PKI encryption at the respondent’s
browser, the application uses a small Java applet based on Entrust
TruePass technology. At the time the Census application was developed,
the version 7.1 of TruePass did not provide support for Linux.

Although the most recent upgrade, TruePass version 8, now includes
Linux, that development came too late for the census production
schedule. We are currently investigating the feasibility of offering
one option to open source users. Consult www.census2006.ca for the most
recent update on our test results.

If you cannot complete your questionnaire online, I encourage you to
fill in the paper questionnaire and return it in the envelope provided.

Thank-you for taking the time to e-mail us.

Regards,
Statistics Canada

The question I’m asking now, why were Linux and MacOSX/Firefox not originally tested?

Proof that patents stifle innovation

Someone (thanks timball) posted this on IRC tonight and I read part of it. I found this was interesting because due to patents he stopped working in data compression.

Just imagine where he would have been if he had not had to deal with patent injustice. Just imagine what we as computer users would have if this person who was eating data compression for breakfast over 10 years ago would have been allowed to continue his work.

It’s a shame really, and a crime, that this is not only allowed to happen but encouraged by governments all over the world. Does anyone really think that hiding the details of how specific processes, possibly ones that could be improved upon by outsiders to a company, can actually do anything but impede progress? Where is BetaMAX today?
Just my 00000010 bits.

Stats Canada Excludes during Census

Statistics Canada has the 2006 Census available to be filled out online which is great, for some… Let me explain.

If you are a windows XP, 2000, 98, or Win NT user (Windows NT?) you can happily use pretty much whatever browser you want, well except Safari of course. That is the only browser you can use on the Mac it seems (Firefox and Mozilla although included are not supported on Mac, only Windows).
Linux and the BSD family (as well as Sun Solaris) didn’t even make the list! If they support Firefox and Mozilla on Windows they certainly should on Linux as well!

Do like I did, email infostats@statcan.ca (the only email I could find on their site).

Canadian Music Creators Coalition

Go directly to www.musiccreators.ca and sign up for their mailing list. If you know of a Canadian musician that would support their cause, tell that musician to sign up and support their cause.

We need to have a lot of involvment with this. Put a link to their site on your web page. Blog or Journal about it. Make it known.

I’d like to say thank you to those who decided to start this coalition. Without Canadian musicians speaking out we would not have the true picture of this issue. Thank you again to every single musician that signs up to show their support.

Muscian questions copy protection

Perfect example of the self serving mega corps.

A musician states in this New York Times article (free login required):

To be clear, I certainly don’t encourage people to pirate our music. I have poured my life into my band, and after two major label records, our accountants can tell you that we’re not real rock stars yet. But before a million people can buy our record, a million people have to hear our music and like it enough to go looking for it. That won’t happen without a lot of people playing us for their friends, which, in turn, won’t happen without a fair amount of file sharing.

As listeners we don’t want it. As a systems administrator I wouldn’t want this software on a machine on my network. Musicians have not asked for and can not really use this software.

DRM software serves one single purpose. The large mega corporations which control the music we listen to think it will drive money into their hands. They no longer control the means of distribution and they want to fight that until the end.

I hope the end comes soon.

Thank you to the New York Times for having the balls to publish this and to Damian Kulash Jr. for writing it. Flakey name for a band (OK Go), but maybe I’ll have to check it out anyway