Encouraging Shepherds

Posted on November 19, 2013 by ehurst

We are at war, but our weapons are not as their weapons.

All men and women can embrace the shepherd’s call of adulthood. The actions and internal motivations and mechanisms differ between the sexes, but the outcome is basically the same goal of bringing divine justice to life on the earth. Yes, it’s the same thing as encouraging folks to act like adults, but those words tend come with baggage wholly inappropriate to the image we need to paint. We aren’t encouraging Western adulthood, but something more universal and eternal.

In the Network Age, the starting point is recognizing that the vast majority of humanity in any given context is a clueless herd of sheep wandering and lost. If you lack the instinct to shepherd, then you can’t be classed as an adult. Shepherds are not cattle drivers. We lead by calling out to those who will hear, all the while knowing a large number of the rest are likely to follow along because they can’t think of anything else to do. We can extend only so much protection as they permit, and steel our hearts to watch people die needlessly. As always, the ANE position is that murder is evil but death itself is not; death is just a circumstance.

So we promote truth in the sense of uncovering secrets. As always, the definition of “secret” is anything hidden that affects others, that is quite justly their business to know. Whether the sheeple will act, and act sanely, on the knowledge is not the question. Divine justice insists they have free access so they can choose. Our power to act is limited, but this is the driving force of our existence.

We who represent the rising Network Civilization are at war with the West. We intend to crush the West and vanquish our enemies and bring in a new golden age. That was sarcasm. With full cynicism we recognize it will be golden for only a precious few; it’s a long-running joke among those morally aware. What we actually intend to do is jump on the bandwagon of where God is at work, and whether or not we find it pleasant to our tastes is not the point. With full prophetic seriousness I warn you: The Network Age is the future for mankind, and it won’t be stopped by all the pitiful efforts of government thugs to prevent it. Their time is passing quickly.

But the nature of our warfare is the essence of what has conquered every other civilization of the past: human awareness. There is something deeply true and ineffable behind it, but the methods and goals for which our human minds are equipped focus on uncovering truth. It’s not the agitation and demonstrations, nor the discrete combat of weapons and bloodshed, but the battle of simply blabber-mouthing things the plutocrats try to keep hidden. Pull out the facts; analyze and characterize at will. Plunder their vast stores of information and scatter it to the mindless crowds. How the crowds react is not really our concern, though we can predict things somewhat. All the political agitation we’ve seen in our lifetimes is partly due to revelations. That’s our part.

With full cynicism we know that from within the same evil system will come a false opposition to sponsor the biggest and best agitation and warfare, pretending to oppose the “other side” that is “evil.” They pretend to represent the people, but they are driving them, not leading them. Two or more wings of the same bird; the flight plan never changes. From outside that system we recognize the random response of sheeple. You can drive them briefly before their attention is deflected and they scatter. Cattle may fight drovers, but sheeple simply lose interest and stop paying attention. The people are not cattle, and this is why political activity is so pointless unless you are directly related to the sheep in some way that the sheep will recognize. This is a strong parable.

So our warfare as Netisans (Network Partisans) is simply revealing. We search for truth we can recognize and share it as best we know. Step back a moment and recognize what is actually happening. It’s not as if we all need to synchronize our content. It’s not about the content; that’s merely our individual frame of reference. That’s how we organize our participation in the much larger task. Your part is to tell the truth as best you understand it, and as best you can pass it on. This alone is by far the most powerful warfare of all against our enemies.

Our single greatest weapon is shouting from the housetops what we dig up from the trove of secrecy kept by those currently in power.

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Quantum Marketing

Posted on November 18, 2013 by ehurst

There is no virtue in suffering; the virtue is in recognizing suffering as wholly normal.

Don’t make the mistake that has confused the entire course of Western Civilization in thinking that truth is an objective quality. Truth is a quality of persons, in particular a quality of commitment. Even if truth were an objective reality, no human could grasp it on those terms. Truth is a personal quality, a human trait, something we inject into our jumbled reality. It is entirely a matter of perception and should never be assumed a quality of the world in which we exist. You don’t find truth, nor recognize it when you hear it. You recognize things that work for you, things that resonate and give you a comfortable vibe on some level, nothing more.

Pursuing truth in that sense is the summum bonum of human existence. From a Christian Mystical point of view, I can always trust God for whatever internal thirst drives you. My only real concern is getting you to pursue it with full ardor. Where that takes you is none of my business in the sense that I have no business choosing it for you. Where it takes you is God’s concern, though it could surely be instructive and entertaining to me.

Thus, I merely restate once again what I’ve written here repeatedly.

As we move into the Networked Civilization, some things won’t change at all. One of those things is the underlying moral fabric of the universe. The manifestation will drift with the context, but the underlying and indefinable meaning of it remains eternally the same. More bluntly, what brings shalom tomorrow is substantially the same as what brought it yesterday. In a certain sense of application, what prospers you in the Networked Age is no different from what prospered men in the ancient past. It may pay off well to understand the mechanism, but if you invest all your energy in that, you’ll miss the point. The ultimate failure of Western Civilization is mistaking contextual mechanism for fundamental nature.

Human needs don’t change. What changes is the perception of need, typically as a thick crust over the juicy truth that’s harder to hold in your hands. We see the dying business model of controlling access to the product as the primary means of profit. A vast range of what people consume can no longer be kept behind a gate. What can be digitized will be, and by the nature of existence itself, that stuff must be freely accessible or it might as well not exist. We will see a return to ancient times in one sense: There will be profit in greatness itself.

In ancient times, it didn’t matter much how someone became great. Virtuosity and talent may or may not be a factor; sheer random chance might be the major reason. But holding power and attention was itself profitable simply because people paid to be in your shadow. People brought tribute voluntarily as a fundamental human instinct. For a time this was hidden behind the apparent gate-keeping model, but that’s coming apart. Folks might not pay directly for access to your performance and presence, but they will offer tribute to keep your performance and presence alive because they’ll want a fresh sample of it tomorrow. Tribute is a way of sharing in greatness. We need only seek new kinds of tribute that would translate into usable resources.

I’m not in a position to work out the mechanism for this shift. It may well be something that awaits discovery by those not yet ready to do the work. What I know is what I can see with moral vision, what I know in the depth of my soul.

This is a fundamental feature of human nature; this is ultimate truth. Seize upon that business of tribute and act upon it, and you’ll tend to prosper. That’s how the moral imperative works. It was never meant to be measurable with any precision; it’s not an ATM with precise accounting. It’s a broad moral tendency. Those who received much tribute tended also to be the most generous in giving it away. They understood instinctively the necessity of passing great amounts of resources as the best way of being in a position to scrape off what you could use.

If you believe in the truth itself and desire it more fervently than mere material consequences, you’ll understand how it works on that super-conscious level of ultimate truth. Yes, you individually could still suffer and die young from poverty, but if that’s all you can see, you will never understand truth in the first place. In the broad scheme of things, you play the moral fabric and take what comes.

A single loss is not losing any more than a single gain is gaining. Don’t get lost in the details, because the details of human experience have no meaning without the moral frame of reference.

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Linux Ghost in the Machine

Posted on November 18, 2013 by ehurst

(Thinking out loud on a curriculum for migration to Linux…)

Linux is inherently a CLI; it doesn’t run without a console.

In yesterday’s post, we looked at the two primary implications of what it means when we say Linux is Open Source: (1) There is a large community of folks involved and they tend to be pretty helpful, but (2) your use of Linux remains largely DIY. A corollary to this is that you have a great many options in configuring your system and no one can give you exactly what you want.

Another very significant concept in running Linux is the command line. Unlike Windows, the graphical face of Linux is just an add-on. The best part of Linux remains hidden behind all those pretty pixels. It’s entirely possible to avoid using the CLI directly, but only if you have some help from someone else who does use it. No matter what kind of crazy problem arises, if someone can get a command line on the system, things can be fixed without having to reboot.

There are several hundred really fine applications available for the CLI. Most people have heard of Lynx, the plain text CLI browser. It’s capable of far more than most people could even guess. Sadly, it’s blocked by a large number of ill-informed website administrators, and some sites simply cannot be used because the entire content is graphical or served up using something like JavaScript. You can check the archives of discussions going back to the dawn of the Internet and find requests for all sorts of things for the CLI. Recently one of the most popular requests has been answers: a dedicated Linux CLI word processor called WordGrinder. There have long been spreadsheets, email clients and other CLI browsers, too. Because of the framebuffer capability of virtually all graphical chipsets, you can watch videos from a Linux console, too, using things like MPlayer without X. That’s because there are multiple different CLI tool sets.

Virtually everything Linux can do is possible on the CLI. Despite this, there are no valid projects to offer a CLI version for daily desktop use. Several projects were started over the years, but they never went anywhere. The most successful effort was INX, which is currently moribund. An obsolete version is still currently offered, but there is apparently no activity at all on the project. Apparently the folks who might use such a thing aren’t interested in something ready-made.

None of which changes the basic fact: Significant use of Linux is impossible without some use of the command line from time to time. Some of the most basic functions are best done from the command line. A great many GUI applications are simply CLI scripting with pretty colors, and frequently reducing the features possible in the process.

If you don’t use the CLI, you aren’t really using Linux.

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Linux, Security and Control

Posted on November 17, 2013 by ehurst

Running Linux doesn’t merely put you in charge of things; it grants a sense of power you won’t easily get from Windows or Mac. But it’s really about the people involved.

The primary reason Linux computers seldom get viruses is the Linux user culture. Just the introductory readings for those considering migrating their computers to Linux will teach you constructive paranoia. You won’t get this from Windows users unless you go looking for it, but in Linux it is the first assumption of the entire user community. You do get a version of paranoia from using Windows, with all the alerts and antivirus, anti-malware, etc. However, the big difference is with Windows you know you are helpless in the sense you will ever remain dependent on others.

In Linux land, you are only as dependent as you want to be. Real experts in Windows have a reflex to keep their information out of public view. All the Windows security forums are terribly elitist in the peculiar sense of, “We know what’s best and we will tell you what we want you to know.” Linux communities are not at all like that. Plenty of Linux users don’t have a clue, but those who do will gladly explain way more than you care to learn. So rarely would you get that from a Windows expert, you tend to grab that information and save a copy of it somewhere. And the places where they post such information often flies under the radar. Linux information is paraded in the streets.

You don’t have to become an expert to run Linux, but it’s actually difficult to avoid some level of expertise uncommon among Windows users. This is partly the dynamic of what sort of people are drawn to Linux in the first place. They are looking for something they can’t get with Windows, and the various somethings people search for often includes open access to expertise.

Yes, there are precious few viruses and malwares that run on Linux. Some major portion of that is proof-of-concept. Most of them require the kind of clueless user behavior common among Windows users and wholly uncommon among Linux users. Ever hear of Android, the smartphone OS? It caters to stupid users and gets plenty of malware. Almost no desktop version of Linux does that. Besides, it’s the cellphone functions of Android that open so darn many doors to malware in the first place, functions you won’t find in any other type of Linux. Android is typically not considered “Linux” in the minds of most people because it has such a highly specialized use. Every other use of Linux tends to be secure.

Indeed, Linux servers get more attacks than Linux desktops. Again, that’s because the single greatest likelihood of idiocy is a server admin who runs the simplest, and most easily cracked, software their Linux server. They use a Linux server because the OS is free and/or they believe it’s secure, but then dump some goofy, trendy server junk on top of it. Worse, as non-participants in the Linux user culture, they have no clue how to perform the most basic security checks and chores. A truly large percentage of the Internet runs on good, secure Linux servers controlled by well-clued server admins (not to mention a lot of BSD and other types of Unix).

And if it matters to you, there are free AV packages for Linux; just check with AVG or BitDefender, for example. You’ll notice they protect against Windows viruses because the whole point is wiping out such threats before they get passed on to a Windows machine. At last count, I believe the total count for Linux viruses is less than 100, and most of those are obsolete. Frankly, it’s the mutual incompatibility of the various distributions of Linux that almost necessitates each virus be built specifically for the particular machine it attacks. Then again, the default desktop installation isn’t running very many services, particularly those commonly exploited as entry points.

But the number one selling point for Linux is not all the crap you are likely to read from the fanboys. They ooze with religious fervor about running their favorite brand of Linux. They’ll go on at length describing the joys of things almost no one except a fanboy cares about. They assume every computer user will appreciate what drives them. That’s the primary reason the wider computer user base is so slow to adopt Linux.

The single greatest selling point is not even the control Linux gives you, but the sense of control.

Real security? Who can really say just how secure something is until it’s attacked? You’d have to learn a lot just to know how to check for such attacks, never mind discerning whether the attacks were even competent. With Windows, that is pretty obscure stuff, and often requires specialized tools to interpret the raw data. With Linux, it’s less obscure data dumped into a fairly simple log file, if you want it. The instructions for reading that data are already installed on your computer, most likely — try looking in /usr/share/doc/ for a folder like iptables. Or the man command in conjunction with any command you might know about. When the documentation on your system is scant, you’ll often find something telling you where to get more on the Net.

But if you learn the basic information for one thing, it applies to just about everything in Linux. And if that’s too obscure for you, just use a search engine. It’s all over the place. Just use the terms you are familiar with, or join any user forum, or ask any individual Linux user. They only reason they might not answer is they are trying to help lots of other folks. There are thousands of folks out there who’ve faced really small troubles and are glad to tell about it, along with those few who faced more serious trouble. The entire Linux user base wants you to be secure and successful. Most likely they will not be patronizing to readers.

In other words, it’s more about the people than about the operating system itself. You get to choose what matters to you, and how much you want to learn. It’s all there in the open because of the user culture.

Addenda: As someone noted offline, Linux is all about DIY and taking control, becoming self-reliant.

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Job 16

Posted on November 16, 2013 by ehurst

Do we tire yet of the endless back and forth between Job and his foolish comforters? We should tire even more quickly of Western theologians. They consistently fail to understand Job and, despite lip service to the contrary, end up echoing the sentiments Job’s accusers. Job states the facts: God is sovereign and is also incomprehensible to fallen human reasoning. God can stop the suffering of Job. Whatever is at work here, it is not punishment for specific sins; Job’s spirit is at peace with God. Job does not accuse God of injustice. He cries out to God for some hope of relief.

Job says his friends offer nothing wiser than the common failure of wisdom he sees all the time. When they were silent, they were as much comfort as anyone could be in such a situation. Were he visiting them in a time of sorrow, he could do the same and make pointless demands for repentance from sins he might imagine. But he wouldn’t do that. Instead, he would offer just a few words of hope.

What difference would it make if Job voiced his sorrows or remained silent? It would not change the situation. In that cultural context, to speak of God’s anger does not reflect the same concept as it would for us. It marks here a reverse pleasure; God’s pleasure is for Job to suffer. That would be inexcusable in a Western ruler, but Ancient Near Eastern morality is wholly different. We cannot evaluate this text from our late Western prejudices. Even were Job speaking of a human sheikh, this would be wholly proper. It surely lies in God’s authority to end the suffering, but He chooses not. The reasons are not revealed and this is also within His prerogative. God remains holy a just. It need not be seen merely as punishment and Job insists such is not the case. Further, the same authority has placed these false comforters with Job to inflict even greater sorrow.

Job calls for Creation itself to witness to his right standing before God. Is there not some advocate somewhere in Heaven to plead his case? Job assumes there must be. Whatever the case, Job knew he wouldn’t live that much longer in this state.

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Virtual Doors Wide Open

Posted on November 15, 2013 by ehurst

I’m tired; I don’t want to work on computers any more.

But I must. The motto for my computer ministry is: “Helping you to need less help.” If computers weren’t so complicated and took so much time, I would have to do something else. It’s not simple and I learn new stuff every day. Of all the things I could study, computers are very interesting. But I assure you, if it was as simple as just picking this or that and not thinking too much about it ever again, I would be so very happy. There are other things I’d rather be doing.

The Lord calls all adult humans into a covenant with Him, and that includes taking up the shepherd’s care of others. Life on this planet is so complicated that we simply have to divide it up into things each of us can do best. If we fail to pursue it, cosmic justice suffers. If we fail to embrace our duty, the whole universe is just a bit nastier than it has to be. Something is lost to all Creation when we come up short.

A certain amount of failure is expected; God made plans for that with generous portions of mercy. He picks up the slack for a lot of things you’ll never know about. But there is a certain amount of human suffering that is just completely our own fault. Not just upon our own heads, but my failure touches the creatures in the farthest reaches of the universe. That’s how moral justice works; that’s a reflection of God’s character.

So I keep digging into computer technology because it seems to do some good. For my own sake, I do my best to tell everyone as much as they can handle. I would love to work myself out of a job; that’s one of my expressed goals. I want other folks to know as much as I do, and more. That’s the nature of the Internet. I might be mistaken, might not know everything, but what I have you get for free.

That’s the bottom line in Christian Mysticism. The first pillar I list is a commitment to ultimate truth. I learned this not so much from written materials as the fundamental response of my soul when my spirit began seeking redemption. This is written in my convictions by the finger of God, part of the package that comes with spiritual awareness. It’s the thing almost every other human agency on this planet seems to deny, because the majority are all about controlling access to information. Not me; you can have all I’ve got. I heartily support anyone or any group that aims to open the door.

If you don’t see what you need, just ask.

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Bits and Pieces 14

Posted on November 15, 2013 by ehurst

Sometimes the best you can get is broken.

I can’t post on Facebook this morning. I can click a few “likes” if I use a plain text browser and log in via the mobile interface FB offers but I still can’t post anything. Am I targeted, part of a sweep or something? FB would never tell and they don’t give a rat’s butt unless they thought it might hurt their ad revenue. Since I actively block most advertising in my browsers, they won’t notice my absence from the activity.

I use several different extensions on my browsers. Each of them are available for Firefox and Chrome/Chromium (or various versions of those two) via the menu system built into the browser. Each one has a repository of approved add-ons that can help you a lot.

I like Adblock, but not Adblock Plus because the latter reduces user control. With the original tool, you have the option to add specific annoying ads on various sites, blocking them from where they are served or only where you happen to see them. You get fine control over what you block.

Ghostery reduces the threat of tracking via tagged images in your cache. It’s easy to hide unique identifying markers inside any image file and these can be read by the servers that provide them, or by their advertising affiliates. In Firefox, you also have the option of blocking en masse certain tracking cookies, too. This is part of Mozilla’s long-standing fine-toothed control over cookies. However, it’s wise to set Chrome/Chromium to treat all cookies as session cookies (automatically deleting them when you close the browser).

I also like Click & Clean as a way to clean your browser caches without having to run a separate cleaner (BleachBit or CCleaner). Some sites are so aggressive about packing images, cookies and JavaScript junk into your browser that you should stop and clean before moving on to the next site. This particular add-on has gotten a little overly complicated these days, but if you poke around the menu system for it, you’ll find a way to set it up and clean all the stuff.

This is just like Slimboat‘s “clean trace” found in the menu system under Tools > Privacy. The standard cleaners don’t recognize Slimboat, but it does most of the privacy stuff itself, and rather aggressively at that. Slimboat still has a lot of bugs, but it’s coming along.

A lot of what you need to do for your own safety depends on your choice of activities online. In my case, it’s a matter of controlling my virtual identity. I noted some time ago that when you run one of those Internet traces on my name through the advertising data collectors, you’ll get a lot of false data. That’s how it should be. I don’t want them knowing much about me. It’s not as if I can hide from the government; I’m already deeply compromised simply because I use the VA medical care system. It’s only slightly less intrusive than applying for food stamps, but much easier for the federal government to check. So it’s the advertisers I can still avoid and they are creepier in many ways. They don’t have guns, so they have to use all sorts of hideous manipulation strategies that governments don’t bother with. Advertisers won’t hesitate to take advantage of knowledge about how humans react in various contexts, and will do all they can to prevent you finding out. Most of them act like it’s some kind of game, like online virtual battles — real people are reduced to mere avatars.

The difference between a crook and a marketer is too thin to notice. Crooks dance around the laws they want to exploit; marketers only pretend to support our legal system. I tend to lump them together a lot because they act so much the same in virtual space. Currently the most egregious malware exploits come via advertising that many sites insert into their webpages. They are so desperate for a few bucks that the site administrators simply allow just about anyone to place a linking window on their page. Most ads are served up from external servers. And most of those advertising companies are egregiously irresponsible about checking their advertisers. So any crook can get an account that places their nasty tricks on some of the most mainstream websites as part of the ad rotation system. These ads exploit some hole in your browser or operating system and allow all sorts of evil things, giving someone else virtual control over your computer.

One of the main reasons I run Linux and recommend it is because it resists such efforts to infect and infest computers. Virtually all malware is for Windows, with a small portion for Macs. Precious little of it works on Linux in any way at all. I’m not going to pretend I can block the NSA; if they want into my system, they’ll get in. But the vast majority of criminal efforts won’t mess with Linux computers except as servers, not as ordinary desktop machines. They’ll crack into a Linux server because it offers better use than many Windows servers. Desktop machines aren’t worth their trouble, and it would be an awful lot of work for them to come up with an exploit that plants malware on a Linux system. And it’s too easy for Linux users to fix their machines, unlike Windows, which has tons of obscure secret ways the user is locked out of controlling their own computer.

The thing with government snooping — while governments can hold a gun to your head, they are generally less competent. Their heads are in the wrong place, a broken frame of reference. That is, the NSA idiots scoop up all the data they can get, but can’t even stop an amateur terrorist. Frankly, what they are after is commercial data. It’s industrial spying with a badge. They’ll stop a terrorist who might hurt the big corporations based in the US or owned by the right plutocrats, but they can’t be bothered to protect ordinary people.

And none of the rules apply to government. Laws are their property, so they obey only what suits them. If there is any physical possibility of intercepting data on the Net, they are doing it. Remember that noise a couple of weeks ago when we found out the NSA had a physical tap on the interior networks? The folks working at Google were pissed and started encrypting their internal traffic wherever the cables ran out of their physical control between various locations. MS says they are thinking about it, and Yahoo won’t even say.

Old timers with out-of-date morals still insist the government is not really evil, that it built the Internet. That’s false; the government simply allowed some really smart private individuals to build it, then took control as much as they understood it. Even today most elected and appointed government officials are nearly clueless about it. It’s the likes of the NSA, not even really the CIA or FBI, who have a clue. The NSA got their spies into every part of the Internet business and all the private, corporate and government agencies involved in running it. But they still are probably the least competent among them in certain ways. They are so obsessed with control that they can’t understand what’s obvious before their eyes, that this thing will soon escape their control by its very nature. They don’t see the rising Network Civilization. Oh, they may understand it as an artifact of how folks think and act, but not as a truth that will crush them.

They don’t see how the folks pushing out in the interest of their own needs will find a way to completely bypass the old world government controls.

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More Busy Day

Posted on November 14, 2013 by ehurst

Today I worked on my own systems a bit.

First, I now remember why I don’t like Mint: They have an irresponsible attitude about security and bug-fix updates coming from their upstream source, Ubuntu. You really have to go out of your way to get those updates. There are other problems with Mint, but that’s a big one.

Second, I’ve really been trying to harmonize my desktop and laptop on one OS. I really like Xubuntu and have been trying to overcome the known problems. So I got it all working fine on my desktop. When you install the old “seahorse” package, it allows you encrypt your passwords for Chrome/Chromium browser, for example. That was a major complaint of mine. I suppose on Windows you’ll have to use something like KeePass or another cloud-based password encryption service. Several of them are free and have a free add-on for Chrome.

The laptop remained a bigger issue. This is a Toshiba Satellite C855D-S5104 — one of dozens of models all rather similar but with slight variations in hardware configuration. Almost everything works out of the box; it was easy to accept the standard offered FGLRX proprietary driver for the Radeon video chipset. The big problem here is the RealTek 8188CE wifi chipset. Starting around the 12.04 release, the various version of Ubuntu started having trouble keeping the connection alive. The solution was simply waiting long enough for the backports team of build an updated driver set for the various wireless chipsets. They took the work from a team of Linux kernel developers who took the time to recode the most recent drivers so that they can be built for earlier kernels. At any rate, on the Ubuntus, you simply enable the “backport” repo and look for a more recent backport of the collected wireless drivers (linux-backports-modules-cw-3.8-precise-generic-pae was the one I used). For now, it seems to hold a steady connection with my wifi. The alternative is building the driver yourself, and there are some clumsy extra precautions you have to take the make sure it installs properly. Then you have to do it again every time the kernel gets an update. I’d rather not try to teach that to my clients.

That’s the whole point of this exercise: Making sure I understand and use what I intend to recommend to others. I’m getting the hang of it. This particular version of Xubuntu comes with a WINE package that runs MS Office 2003, for example. I don’t have to install a virtual machine. Most of this is stuff I can teach to clients with relative ease.

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Busy Day

Posted on November 13, 2013 by ehurst

This is what my posts look like when I’m too busy actually working to do a lot of deep contemplation.

I fixed a Vista laptop being passed from elder to younger relative. Simple answer: First, unlock the Administrator account. Kill the previous user account and delete all the files. That’s where most of the virus and malware infections were hiding. Then create a new account for the new owner and lock the Administrator account back up. But not before running a bunch of scanners and removal tools and turning off services no one needs. If something refuses to uninstall, drop into Safe Mode and simply delete whole directories where the stuff resides, then use a Registry cleaner to break any links left over. Then defrag — it easily takes 18 hours on a Vista machine that hasn’t been defragged before. Install good free software and make sure the settings favor privacy, with addons that help (Adblock, Ghostery, etc.)

It actually runs half-way fast now.

Lots of people are getting hit with Conduit. It’s almost like a Trojan, pulling in other, nastier stuff. Malwarebytes gets most of it, but you still need a tool like CCleaner to clear associated installs and clear the Registry. You also really need to kill the cache regularly on Vista, as I noted in a previous post some weeks back.

I do it because I like people and enjoy poking at computers. I hate Windows, but I’m willing to mess with it because some folks can’t imagine computer use with it. Such is life.

I did make it to the gym and during that ride out and through the workout itself I thought about how Obamacare had two main purposes. One was to empower the health care insurance industry and associates. The other was to ensure Americans suffer yet another woe on top of a trashed economy and oppressive government: Now we can be forced to accept torturous medical care that does nothing but kill us off sooner. I suppose it’s one of the reasons God prompted me to get as fit as possible, and to keep pushing these two years later because I have to maintain what I got. It was not a simple matter of lifting weights and going for a run or ride. There are complications in my joints, but I’m still at it and not giving up. Honestly, I don’t have a simple goal. It’s just get as fit as possible. Seems to me the less obvious meaning is have no reason for medical care.

While it’s obvious the dominant power behind this Obamacare is the money and power, but I feel certain there’s a few folks cackling with glee at the prospect of added suffering and earlier deaths.

To some degree, I’m doing what I can to make computers fit, as well. I want folks to have healthy computers because the Internet is currently our one and only way to get around all the lies and sneaky efforts to kill us off and keep us from learning truth from each other. I suppose there will come a day when folks will stop asking me to fix Windows and start installing alternatives that aren’t so easily ruined.

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Networking Goats

Posted on November 12, 2013 by ehurst

We can’t imagine life prior to the time of Noah. All we know is that folks weren’t what we now call “civilized.” Civilization is defined as a social structure sufficient to allow living in cities. That structure would include both customs and a government.

Regular readers are aware of my insistence we are hard-wired in our current human state to live in the tribal society common to Noah’s day, and common to most of human history until relatively recent times. The content of the culture is not the point here, but the order maintained by a tribal structure. Not only have all other social and government systems failed the test of time, but you simply cannot live God’s justice — according to revealed Law Covenants — in any other society. The Laws of God require a tribal society to work; everything else is abject failure. Nothing else will bring the optimal existence that is possible.

Intrinsic in that structure is the image of government as your elder family head ruling in the fashion of a shepherd. In the Ancient Near Eastern tradition, that means a truly minimal interference in personal behavior. Not anything like our Western individualism, but we should see a reliance on those closest to you to keep your behavior on track. Social pressure is assumed and is known to work rather well. Not in Western strictness, but in the ANE fluidity of give and take, of passionate noise and lots of wasted time negotiating and keeping people as the central concern. Meanwhile, your higher status elders give themselves to truly long-term contemplation of what this or that choice means in terms of cosmic justice.

Regular readers also know I am promoting bringing back some of that as we move into a new civilization. It’s not enough to catalog all the ways Western Civilization has done it wrong. We have to provide a corrective, something that drives humans to leave behind what is dying and take up what is aborning. It has to match the reality of the new organizing principle. To gain full advantage of God’s divine blessings, we have to discern how we can implement His divine justice in the new system. We have to renew what it means to be a civilized people in a way that fulfills divine moral imperatives.

So we note in passing what is totally wrong with the current system particularly where it confronts the rising new system. Discerning the clash is highly instructive. We have in place a system of governing that encourages evil. The means to deciding who gains the privileges of power simply cannot provide any useful barrier to psychopaths. Instead, it encourages them and discourages good people. We end up with a government that is highly secretive and abusive, with abuse that runs inevitably to extremes. It would be hard to have a government more evil than what naturally arises from our current civilization.

We should understand that in any given context, the majority of humanity will always act like sheep. That’s intrinsic in the model of referring to a just government as shepherding. It’s not a good human trait, but it is what we have and effectively impossible to change. We cannot pretend we are going to fix human behavior once and for all with some finely tuned system. It will always be messy and our system has to allow for that, and if possible, take advantage of that. Something inherent in the virtual world offers grand opportunities in this direction.

It’s not for me to lay out expansive details. The whole point is helping people think for themselves as much as they will. Shepherding humanity includes a little prodding now and then to make a significant portion of them alert to predation. We need the flock salted with a few goats. Goats are more alert and combative than sheep. What goats produce isn’t quite as useful on the whole as what sheep produce, but it does protect the sheep when ornery goats range alongside them. The image is not what is in the full nature of the difference between them, but the limited application of how they act differently in the same context. Don’t make the parable walk on all fours.

The definition of “predator” in this parable includes our current Western governments. That is, within the offices of government we have a dominant presence of people who do not love the sheep. It shows up in how the plutocrats seek to build a false impression of what is safe and what is harmful. We have wolves dressed as sheep and shepherds who utterly fail to embrace the noble calling. More noteworthy, the plutocrats are attacking the one means most likely to take away their power: the network. As with most things in Western government, TPTB demand that we expose ourselves to every predator, because they are the least competent of all predators and cannot operate in the presence of resistance. Remaining open to government predation means most certainly being open to all others. The line dividing ruler and crook is that real crooks don’t need government power to get what they want.

I would encourage everyone to be a little more of a goat when it comes to the Network.

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