Excuses for Tyranny (Updated)

Posted on January 9, 2011 by ehurst

Update: Never mind what I wrote. My pitiful attempt pales in comparison to Will Grigg’s masterful handling of this issue.

The only difference between democracy and slavery is with democracy you don’t see the chains.

You have probably heard about Representative Gabrielle Giffords (AZ) being shot by a crazed gunman. From what I’ve read so far, the man was currently seeking military service, but schizophrenic. What you can’t miss is the large number of reports somehow twisting all this into a political commentary. There was no politics involved. The gunman was a lone nut. Had it not been Giffords, it would be someone else he shot.

The idea we have some threat here from anti-government types is a blatant lie. Jared Loughner wanted to be a government employee, had been processed for military recruiting. This guy was pure, 100% government employee material. The military can claim he was rejected, but that’s after the fact. I can assure you from direct experience in uniform the military is full of Jared’s type. The threat is government employees, in that the system which hires them, trains them and arms them enslaves them to psychopaths. With all seriousness I remind you we are ruled by psychopaths. Were the bulk of our government officers tested for psychopathy using the standard diagnostics, they would score very high on the scale. Not because of something inherently wrong in the wiring of their brains — that simply can’t be proven with what we now know. It’s because of the net result of their motives and actions.

What we can prove with what we now know is the people in charge have zero empathy, a complete alienation from human emotional connections. They can know sorrow and frustration, and there are people meaningful to them, but it’s not at all the same thing as with normal humans. Their motives in taking government positions is an intent to force the rest of the world to do things their way. They may have decided to accept the system and its limitations along the path to the goal, but that’s just an intelligent and well-adjusted psychopath. They are still crazy and will most certainly do us harm in the long run.

The real threat is government.

Gabrielle Giffords participates in this awful madness of enslaving vast portions of the human population of this earth. She may not be a psychopath herself, but she enables them by considering their world “normal.” That twisted norm allows schizophrenic people to serve in the military because they have some use to the psychopaths in the military. One kind of nut is more comfortable with other kinds of nuts. Real people with a strong moral inclination are their biggest threat. They’d rather have the random acts of violence from within their own ranks than the purposeful rejection of violence from real people.

The path to peace is too radical. It means people left to their own devices until they cross the line into harming others more than is natural to human activity as a whole. That means we can’t have anything approaching total safety; it means dismissing the obsession with controlling all the factors in your daily existence because you can’t, and shouldn’t try. It means accepting a certain amount of inconvenience from each other, and rejecting a ruling class who won’t tolerate any inconvenience to their rule. It means not being manipulated because we reject any system of control which squelches and squashes the unique individual differences inherent in human character.

This horrific act of murder and injury is purely the fault of government, not some imaginary anti-government conspiracy, or some reputedly wicked philosophical inclination to reject the chains of slavery Congress is determined to put on us. What the propaganda machine intends to do is get peace for themselves while they rape the rest of us.

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RHEL for the Clueless: Securing Firefox

Posted on January 9, 2011 by ehurst

How secure is “secure”? Nobody can decide for you. What I offer here is the measures I take before browsing the Net. From what I can tell, these measures are effective in that the data-mining and marketing industry has a very poor idea of who and where I am. Try looking yourself up on sites like Spokeo or Zabasearch to get an estimate of your online data trail. While your webbrowser is not the only source, nor even a major source, of such information, it is a part of the bigger effort. The whole idea is to make those data mining sites as inaccurate as possible. And maybe you don’t care, but for those who do, I’d like to suggest a few configuration changes to improve things.

In the Firefox menu, select Edit > Preferences, then go to the Privacy tab. It’s almost blank, but if you hit the first drop-down button, you’ll see the option “Use custom settings for history.” This gives you access to detailed settings otherwise hidden. I set my browsing history at 9, and consider that loose, but convenient. It also speeds up the response of the URL bar when typing directly into it, since it’s not keeping a mile-long list. On the cookies settings, I accept third party cookies because too many sites I use require it for login. Then I select the “keep” policy at “Ask me every time.” That way I can train Firefox to block cookies I don’t want.

The policy of cookie blocking is three levels: (1)accept always, (2) session cookies only (temporary until you close the browser) and (3) blocked. Every time you go to a site, you get to set the policy for each individual source of all the cookies that site tries to give you. It’s work, but eventually your browser learns enough you won’t see the popup control dialog so often. It helps if you are familiar with the major advertising and tracking companies out there, as I am. Also, if it matters to you, come back to this tab from time to time and click the button marked “Show Cookies…” to see what is in your browser’s cookie cache at that time. To see what the policies are regarding each server domain name you’ve encountered — maybe you clicked the wrong button one one when the dialog popped up — try the button marked “Exceptions…” You can reset them by removing the server name, and even re-enter it manually right then if you like.

Now let’s add some extensions which will make your security stronger. In the menu line, click Tools > Add-ons. At the top of the dialog window select “Get Add-ons”. This will take you directly to the repository for Firefox addons. First, type in the search box “flashblock” — the first item it lists should be the Flashblock add-on. This is more than just an annoyance issue of uncontrolled Flash advertising. Flashplayer keeps cookies, too, in a separate place. If you only play the ones you want, there are fewer Flash cookies to deal with. Install it and restart Firefox. You don’t have Flashplayer, yet, but we’ll fix that soon enough.

Next, in similar fashion search down Adblock. Again, it’s not just the annoyance, but the images have cookies buried in them. They sit in your browser’s image cache and can be read by other servers trying to assemble a profile by tracking your habits. Each image will contain an identifying tag which is invisible when the image is displayed. Configure this to connect to the default listing server.

Do this for the Ghostery add-on, too. This actively blocks the most egregious tracking companies. Once installed, it has a wizard to set it up. Among the options, you should enable the active blocking and click “All” for the listing it shows. For fun, I enable the “bubble” option which opens a tiny square listing the servers blocked on each page. The wizard doesn’t show it, but if go back later and click on Ghostery in your Tools > Add-ons dialog, you’ll see a button for setting preferences, which offers more detail. I set the bubble to appear in the lower right-hand corner.

Thus far, these are things you can do on Windows, Mac, and every other operating system for which you can get Firefox. I find the other security add-ons a nuisance to use, because it requires too much specialized knowledge or are simply annoying to use. I really do not like No-Script. Though I actively hate JavaScript in the first place, too many sites are simply inaccessible unless you happen to select the correct combination of scripts to allow. It’s more control than I want or need.

Then there is the threat from “evercookies” — the cookies buried in some seven places in your system and can be regenerated each time you go online. In Windows land, you can install an add-on called “Click & Clean” and configure it to run CCleaner (from Piriform) every time the browser closes. CCleaner is quite intelligent about your cookies and keeps the ones you really have to have, and offers you a chance to change the default settings on them. The closest thing to that for Linux is BleachBit, which is Open Source and even has a Windows version. It’s not fully developed yet, so it may eventually offer features competitive with CCleaner. For now, it’s pretty darn good at eating evercookies.

Chase the link on that page for Linux, then notice they make a package for quite a few Linux distributions. There is currently no RHEL 6, but if there were, it would work fine with CentOS and Scientific Linux 6. Instead, we have to keep in mind: RHEL is basically built from the base of Fedora 13 (FC13). Remember that, and for now, download the Bleachbit package for Fedora 13.

Keep that download tool window open. You can install it from there. Just double click on the name once it has finished downloading. RHEL will pop up a dialog about installing it with the package manager. Once you say “yes” and give your root password, it should find the dependencies automatically, in this case, something called “python-simplejson”. If not, we’ll have to work on that later. Right now, the point is this process is automated enough you shouldn’t have to struggle with knowing too much detail.

Once it’s installed, you can find Bleachbit in the menu: Applications > System Tools. Open the application and take a look at the check boxes for different applications it knows how to clean. For Firefox, I recommend you check only Cache, DOM Storage, Session restore, and Vacuum. Then you’ll need to find where Flash is listed and click both
items, Cache and Cookies. These are the places evercookies hide. I run it at the end of every day, to finish the process of what we accomplished in the other steps taken above.

That’s about as much as we can do without some extended training on paranoid surfing habits. Your Firefox is now pretty secure from the worst of the online tracking measures.

By the way, I’ve not found any spyware or viruses online which affect Linux, particularly Red Hat. There are several reasons, the main one being no one writes malware for Linux. It isn’t practical, though we could debate why. There is also this thing called SELinux, a set of measures developed by NSA so they could secure government Linux servers. In RHEL 5, it caused some trouble, and I always recommended folks disable it. But it’s come quite a long way since then, and we will be keeping it for RHEL 6. Part of what it does is prevent harmful changes to the system. Also, RHEL has a default firewall which is pretty tight. Given there are currently precious few real online security threats to Linux computers compared to Windows, what you have right now is about as secure as it gets and is still reasonably usable on the Internet.

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RHEL 6 for the Clueless: Initial Configuration of the Desktop

Posted on January 8, 2011 by ehurst

Orient yourself to the desktop. The main menu system is in the upper left-hand corner. In the upper right is the notification area (“Systray”). On the lower toolbar, the left is where the open windows are listed, and the lower right is an iconic representation of multiple desktops with your desktop “trashcan.”

Windows does have a way to create multiple virtual desktops, but it’s not simple and many say it’s pretty cranky and unstable. I see this as a serious hindrance, because I’m often working with six or eight application windows open, and that’s too many for one desktop. In Linux, multiple desktops are the default. Right click on that display and you’ll see an option to configure preferences. Select that and you’ll see you can have even more desktops, and can configure them to display stacked in rows. Unless you make that bottom toolbar wider, it usually works best to keep them in a single horizontal row. But get used to the idea of having multiple desktops, because it allows you to organize the way you use Linux to get work done, by grouping open windows according to your work pattern on different desktops. To switch between the windows simply click on the miniature display at the lower right for the desktop you want, noticing as you do the open windows on each are thumb-nailed.

You make the toolbars wider by right-clicking on any blank space and select “Properties” to see the options. In the second tab, you can change the colors or even use a background graphic. You can also elect to add other nifty applets to the toolbars, if you look around in the context menu system. The GNOME desktop is loaded with similar features. Play around and get to know things. Setting more of the features at once comes by clicking the “System” menu, then “Preferences” followed by “Appearance”. You can change the window frame style, the color scheme, and the fonts. We’ll do more with fonts — a whole lot with fonts — later. You can change the wallpaper on your desktop by right-clicking on the wallpaper itself.

The context menu is the same idea as in Windows. For example, I prefer the clock in 24-hour mode, so I right-click on the time display and set the properties. You can get a reasonable weather report right next to your date and time display, once you tell the applet where you want the report sited. Explore; you’ll find it. You can also find the screensaver and power usage settings under the System > Preferences menu. Further, check the item marked “Sounds” — if you like audible cues coming from the interface, you’ll need to enable them.

One of the first things you need to watch for is a bright orange icon up in that notification area, looking like an explosion. That’s the update notification. It will require you to use the root password because it means changing the system. Click on it, read and follow the instructions. Let it do what it wants to do. If it lists an update using the word “kernel” you’ll have to reboot. This was actually one of the first updates after Red Hat released this version, so if you don’t see that notification within the first fifteen minutes, we’ll need to take action later to wake it up. It’s rare when you install any variant of Red Hat something or other without updates already waiting.

When you first install RHEL, it’s pretty light on desktop applications. They can be added easily enough, once you know what sort of things you find missing, and what RHEL calls them. Click on the “System” menu, then “Administration” and find at the top “Add/remove software.” You’ll have to use your root password again, but it should open a window and display what’s available. You may find the logic behind the layout a little hard at first, but you’ll get used to it.

In Linux generally, whoever supplies the operating system typically offers a wide array of software for it. For example, rare is the distribution of Linux which doesn’t have OpenOffice (or one of the variants, LibreOffice and Go-OO). RHEL 6 and clones call it OpenOffice, and it’s the latest, version 3.2.1 (at this writing). It’s not installed under the Software Development Workstation profile, but you can probably find it in the software installer utility and add it. The system automatically takes care of matching up the dependencies. Because it’s such a large package, it will take awhile.

Also, look for something called “alacarte” — that’s the package you need so you can edit the menus. We’ll need that later. Tomorrow we’ll secure Firefox, the one thing most people want to use first.

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RHEL 6 for the Clueless: Installation

Posted on January 7, 2011 by ehurst

Please get a copy of the Installation Guide from this page; I recommend you keep a copy of the PDF version. Scan through it, because the visuals will help you understand what to expect.

Now, drop the DVD into the player and reboot.

The first thing you may encounter is display troubles. Some Intel chipsets cause the installer to freeze. If the entire screen goes black and stays that way, then try again. Reboot from the DVD and at the first screen which displays, select “Install with basic video driver.” This should get you past that well known problem. You’ll get a very primitive text-mode display for the next few steps, but at some point, if RHEL can use the graphics chips at all, it should give you a graphical display of some sort later.

The next issue is a very long pause while RHEL checks the hard drives available, as well as the networking environment. Depending on the circumstances, the installer will pause for an awfully long time, with the message about initializing the hardware. Be patient. As long as the screen is not simply blank, it’s okay.

The next step is the DVD media test. Run it the first time you use that particular DVD. RHEL is running a check to make sure it can read the entire disk. If you use the same disk again on another machine, it shouldn’t be necessary to scan it again, and you hit the tab key, highlight the word “skip” and hit enter. Either way, when it asks if you want to check another, select “continue” because we don’t have another.

This is where the installer’s hardware detector, called Anaconda, tries to pull up a graphical display if it hasn’t already. As with Windows, the “display” includes keyboard and mouse. Make sure you select the proper keyboard layout and default language. Then, it will check the hard drives again. RHEL will ask you if you have any specialized drives, which is highly unlikely. Just select “Basic storage device.” Sometimes RHEL will think it has found something odd and will throw up a warning about reinitializing the drive. There’s nothing you can do, really, so let it go ahead and do so. Then select “fresh install.”

Next is some networking configuration. Unless you have a LAN with some internal domain name, simply give your computer a name meaningful to you, a single word using all lower case letters. Unless you connect to the Internet via dialup, click that button for “Configure Network.” It will show you what RHEL has found possible so far. The main point here is to put a checkmark in the box marked “Connect Automatically.” This way you won’t struggle to configure it later, wondering why it’s not connecting. If you are limited to dialup, you cannot configure that here.

Select your timezone; the list is alphabetical by well known cities in your timezone. Here in the US, that’s choices like New York (Eastern Time), Chicago (Central Time), Denver (Mountain Time) or Los Angeles (Pacific Time). For the rest, just hunt around until you see something close to you. Unless you know your computer’s internal clock is set to UTC (Greenwich Mean Time), uncheck the box.

Next is where you enter your root password we discussed in the previous lesson. At some point later you will create your user account. Two or more letters for the username is fine, but really long names can be hard to type, so keep it simple.

Then we come to drive selection. If you have more than one hard drive in your computer, this can be pretty complicated. All the more so if they aren’t connect via the same bus. Some computers, like mine, can run both the older PATA drives with the flat wide gray cable, and SATA drives with the slender cable. Most operating systems will default to booting from the PATA drives, which is fine for the most part. You get to select which drives will be installed and which should be simply mounted to preserve the data. If anything is going to go wrong, this is most likely where it will be. It works best if all you have is a single drive large enough to run Linux, or the drives are of the same type. Again, I highly recommend you devote all the drive space to RHEL. Dual booting is dicey for Linux newbies, and RHEL doesn’t make it simple. But RHEL can figure out how to configure and use the drives just fine by itself if you don’t complicate things. Once you make up your mind, it will format immediately.

When RHEL asks you to select an installation profile, I am going to recommend you choose the “Development Workstation” — that’s Desktop plus the means to compile software. If you don’t have at least 80GB, your system may be too small for anything but the basic Desktop profile. Otherwise, we will need to build some packages soon, a lot of them if you have special needs. We’ll cover that later. RHEL 6 comes rather stripped down, even when you install the full set of development libraries, and you will inevitably build some libraries before you build the packages which rely on them. Once you finish choosing your profile, RHEL will write the packages to the hard drive. Take a break, because this won’t be quick at some 1400+ packages.

If all goes well, the installer will eject the DVD tray and wait for you to acknowledge the need to reboot. Shortly you will see a nice boot screen animation, then the welcome screen with some notes you should read. Next is the Linux equivalent of the “click-wrap” license. You can read it, but it simply declares the software could not possibly have a warranty, and if you play with any of the source code and make changes, you have to share it back with the community.

For users of the official RHEL release, you can enter your login credentials here, and connect to the Red Hat Network (RHN) for updates and so forth. Both CentOS and Scientific Linux (SL) skip that. Eventually you will have a chance to login to your user account.

Welcome to Linux.

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RHEL 6 for the Clueless: Prepare to Install

Posted on January 6, 2011 by ehurst

Take your time.

RHEL 6 will install on most computers. Perform due diligence and research your hardware against Linux. Major computer brands can be checked by model name with the word “linux” in your favorite search engine. Look for indications there are particular problems, and decide if there’s any hope you can overcome them. Especially look for a specific blog post reviewing how Linux installs on that or a similar computer. There will also be forum discussions, mailing list threads, or something similar regarding your computer. If you built it yourself, check the individual hardware components the same way. Chances are things will work.

Create at least two strong passwords, one for the administrator account (root) and for your primary user alias. You should never simply run Linux as root for anything but administrative tasks. Linux applications are typically far better organized to work without admin credentials compared to what you may have experienced with Windows. You always run from a user account, and bump up the credentials only when you need them for a specific task. For quite some time now, it has been known the best passwords are made from any phrase or song title you might tend to remember and associate with your login procedure. The old favorite example comes from an Elvis fan: “Ladies and Gentlemen, Elvis has left the building” — heard after his live concerts. Taking the first letter of each word and the punctuation as it appears, we get this: L&G,Ehltb. Notice it is case sensitive. The word “and” is replaced with an ampersand. You can also replace other words or initial letters with symbols and numbers, or abbreviations. You should strive to have at least one punctuation/symbol and one numerical digit. Seven characters is the absolute minimum, and eight or nine is better. Keep in mind: The whole point is it has to make sense to you, and be memorable, yet very unguessable.

I highly recommend you dedicate the machine in question solely to the job of running Linux. Adding the task of formatting for dual-booting is not exactly simple on RHEL, and complicates the job greatly. I won’t be covering that in this series. I also recommend you don’t use a laptop until you’ve had plenty of time getting used to Linux in general. It’s probably better you run some other Linux distribution, such as Ubuntu, on laptops.

You also need to prepare your mind. Persistence is more than just being hard-headed. It includes realizing the first time you read something you may not get it, but if you come back to it and read it again, it usually gets better. Sometime you simply need to get help, perhaps join one of those forums or a mailing list. (You could pay enough to Red Hat for phone support, if you like.) This is probably the best way to stay sane once you get involved in Linux. It would be impossible for me to recommend any one community simply because there are so many, catering to different collections of Linux distributions, and widely varying standards and personalities. The whole idea is to eventually put some help back into the community which helps you. If Linux is worth it in the first place, it’s worth getting involved as it exists, which means discarding your dreams and fantasies about how it should be.

Finally, never forget the heart of your Linux system is the commandline. This is how Linux began, and it remains a major element in how Linux users think and operate. You will need to become comfortable with the idea of opening a commandline window, typically called a “terminal window” or similar names. A large number of tasks are simply not available with a GUI front-end. Those which are often lose options and flexibility. You may never learn to like it as much as some folks — I love it — but you must make up your mind now you can’t escape it.

As a related concept, the Linux GUI is not simply one thing. By default, RHEL uses what is called GNOME. It’s fairly simple to use, comes with a wide array of appearance options, and includes a big set of integrated tools. It reminds a lot of folks more of the Mac interface. There is another major contender called KDE. You may like it better, but you’ll have to add it later. At one time it was more like the Windows interface, but this is not so readily apparent any more. There are a couple of other lighter interface projects (LXDE, XFCE, etc.) which also integrate lots of tools, but fewer of them. They are lighter in the sense of using less computer power to run, but also offering fewer options for personalizing. Then there is a whole class of projects called “window managers.” There are too many to count, all doing even less integration, and are yet faster and lighter, performing only the most basic functions of organizing how windows are displayed on the desktop, and so forth. The heart of Linux is the commandline, and the GUI is simply an add-on.

We will stick with the default GNOME interface along with using the commandline in this series of articles. If you want something else, you’ll be on your own.

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RHEL/CentOS 6 for the Clueless: Overview

Posted on January 5, 2011 by ehurst

Reader note: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 is currently available but not exactly free. In a month or so we can expect the free version, CentOS 6 to be released. The difference is purely cosmetic, because CentOS simply removes the Red Hat branding. You can also try Scientific Linux, but it’s not as widely known and its focus is different, with a different way of handling the project. In terms of user experience, the difference is negligible. For the most part, what I say about RHEL here applies to the other two.

Your motives matter. The reason why you choose one distribution (“brand”) of Linux over another is to match your needs, your reason for switching from Windows to Linux. I want control, security, and long term support. I don’t want bloat, but I’m as lazy as anyone else about wanting the system to do all the work for me; automation usually means bloat. I want something which works the way I do, which solves the problems I don’t want to face. I’ll be willing to work a little for the rest of it.

In the past few years I’ve surveyed a wide variety of Open Source and commercial operating systems. They all stink. The question is not getting perfection, but the best balance, the least irritation over the inevitable imperfections. Since first playing with Linux over a decade ago, there have been very few which really came close, which is why I keep playing with it.

I really liked the old Redhat 6.2 and 7.3, SuSE 8.2, Debian 4, and a few others, but those are now ancient history, obsolete and increasingly unable to deliver security of usability. More recently I found RHEL/CentOS 5 really good, and it’s still supported and quite valid for aging hardware.

We can still recommend Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (“Lucid Lynx”) for folks who aren’t as interested in asserting their individual character. It is so easy to use. Lucid supportwill continue for a few more years, and it is very reliable, working with a very wide variety of hardware. It’s particularly good on laptops; I use it on mine (Dell Inspiron 1525). The Ubuntu developers go the extra mile providing specialty drivers which the Open Source purists don’t like because of licensing restrictions. With the huge collection of software packages built for it, it’s hard to imagine anything you can’t do with it, among the things possible on Linux. But I do not recommend using Ubuntu as a server unless you’ve had some time getting used to Linux, because the server edition is entirely commandline oriented. This is a hard jump to make for Linux newbies.

My ministry requires I know a good bit about running a server, while also offering the accommodations of a desktop. Many distributions of Linux can match Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as a server, but few are better for my needs. Meanwhile, RHEL also offers the desktop usability which is just enough within reach, and will be supported with fixes and security updates far longer than just about any other distribution. I don’t like frequent changes which come with rolling release or punctuated release schedules where longevity and stability just don’t matter. Most computer users are like that, but in the Linux world, most developers don’t care or simply don’t have a clue. Red Hat gets it, offering a minimum of seven years support.

This particular release of RHEL is one of those “wow” Linux products for me. It’s visually very quick and responsive, and I’m hardly the only one to notice. What Red Hat developers don’t provide by default is easily available by third party projects or you can build it yourself. Indeed, it is hard for me to imagine you won’t need something extra. It’s possible the default is everything you need, but that would make you a tiny minority of the computer users in the world. The default assumption of this series is you’ll need to learn how to build software the generic Linux way, along with the unique Red Hat way.

If you care to join me in this exploration, please fasten your seatbelts. You’ll be learning fast and furious at first, and it can be rough. You could read the Installation Guide and Deployment Guide (user guide) yourself, but that would leave out too many important parts essential for Linux newbies, and at the same time covers a wide array of confusing options which simply aren’t likely to apply to you. I’ll do my best to bridge the gap and get you where you need to go. You’ll be in a position to call yourself a “Linux geek” and take charge of your computer without so much hand holding.

Central Oklahoma Computer Ministry — helping you to need less help.

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Migrating from Windows to Linux: Security Considerations

Posted on January 4, 2011 by ehurst

First, we have to establish the context. The Internet itself is insecure, and it cannot be made secure. Even if you made your computer or your information cryptologically secure, you cannot prevent physical access to your computer or your person. Should the powers that be (government, corporate or criminal) determine to have your data, they will get it, or take your life instead. Quite often they will settle for simply gaining some measure of control over your system even as you have your hands on the keyboard. This is something easier to prevent.

There are things which can mitigate the risk. Those same powers that be are limited. They are limited in manpower and talent. Precious few are the truly talented computer experts they can hire, not only because there is a limited supply, but a great many of them are unwilling to work for those three entities. The simplest reason is those tend to be run by psychopaths, and psychopaths require a type and degree of control which the most talented of people seldom can tolerate. So there are a very large number of lesser talented people they hire, ranging all the way down to useless-but-loyal. The threat is mitigated by overwhelming size of the victim pool against a tiny pool of talented attackers.

In other words, the likelihood of you provoking sufficient interest from them that they would actively attack you, is tiny. They rely on automation, which has distinct limits. It relies on the vulnerability of the victim computers on the virtual level. This requires a high degree of expertise by them in crafting attacks which can’t be resisted, or which human behavior patterns indicate won’t be resisted. The latter is simpler and cheaper by far in terms of return on investment.

So the greatest threat to your computer security is the profit motive. Not all profit is measured in terms of currency, but each of those three primary threats are seeking profit in some way at your expense. They seek control over your computer and the data on it. You are seeking to raise the barrier against low-level threats requiring little effort from them, yet staying below the radar of more serious threats from a directly targeted attack. Your greatest weakness is ignorance.

For most Windows users, you are simply not permitted to know too much about securing your system. Thus, even if you have plenty of money to invest in computer security, and an honest supplier, it’s only as good as the underlying system itself. Windows is inherently less secure than any other system, because the fundamental design philosophy is aimed at something else. Microsoft feels compelled to play nice with corporate partners and governments, and against the common user. The user is not the primary customer. Criminals invariably find the same hidden entrances to your computer reserved for corporations and governments. The playing field is tilted against you. It’s not impossible to have good security, but with Windows the gap between default settings and high security is very wide, and often quite expensive to bridge in terms of third-party protection measures.

The path to greater security is highly obscured, actively hidden by Microsoft beyond a certain minimal level. You have to be a member of the club, pay the high fees for access to the official source of information, and agree not to divulge it under very heavy financial threat. The inner workings are very tightly guarded from you also by a significant wall of commercial advertising. The average user is constantly assured by the governments, corporations and criminals, too: This is as good as it gets. Those corporations include the ones which dominate the public information franchises. Breaking out of this matrix requires breaking strong taboos in the global merchant culture. It requires a significant bad experience, along with a general public sense of malfeasance in the entire ecosystem, for people to being seeking change.

The real issue is not superior technology, but different technology, a different approach to the basic questions of what computers should do. The Open Source approach is different from what everyone else expects. It is a matter of human cultural factors broad and subtle. Computer security is more about humans than their computers, but it’s a complex matrix of the humans involved on all sides of the virtual world — the users, the developers, the big players who have a hand in the final result. There are fewer commercial big players in the Linux world, and it’s almost off the radar of the average consumer.

In Linux generally, the default security is much higher from the start. Naturally, this means Linux is a also a bit more difficult to use at first; the learning curve is steep. It’s all the more steep because the majority of humans who have used computers have used Windows first, and Linux is quite different in many ways. Plenty of people make the transition easily enough, but frankly the candidates for migration are self-selecting — the sort of people who tend to be dissatisfied with Windows, looking for something different. That something different, at least with Open Source, costs less in terms of wealth, and more in terms of effort. It is also generally more secure, though we could argue all day why and how. The primary difference which no one can dispute is the lack of catering to governments, corporations and criminals. It’s also not user-centric, but developer-centric, and Open Source developers are almost uniformly paranoid about computer security.

On top of this, I’ve noted already in yesterday’s post how using Linux compels the user to learn more, to take more responsibility, thus, changing the security habits. Again, it is the user’s ignorance which is his worst enemy, and Linux as an environment strengthens that weakest link. The broader community of Linux users seldom operate from the profit motive, at least not directly. Since the software itself is an open product, the money has to come from service and support. The primary reason this makes so much money is because there is a huge market of folks who want the security they perceive Linux offers without the learning. The primary big money in Linux is service and support, followed by books and education courses. But if you are willing to learn, you don’t have to pay, because the same information is already freely available, to any depth you wish to explore.

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Migrating from Windows to Linux: User Considerations (revised)

Posted on January 3, 2011 by ehurst

Everyone has biases; wiser people are aware and admit them. All operating systems stink. You have to select the issues which your virtual nose can tolerate. My single strongest reason for using Linux instead of Windows is control. I find the lack of control I have in the Windows environment revolting.

You do not own your copy of Windows. If you examine the license, you will see Microsoft maintains ownership of the software; you merely have a license to use it. It is a limited permit, tightly restricted, and by running it, you give Microsoft permission to do anything they please with the copy of their software running on your computer. The operating system itself is wide open to their remote manipulation, with access built into the very design of it. Furthermore, you have absolutely no legal grounds for suing them if you don’t like how that turns out.

Nobody owns Linux. Once you have it on your computer, you are on your own, but there are neither legal grounds, nor technical design which forfeits control to any outside agency. That’s not to say it can’t be done, but it’s a whole lot harder.

There are different kinds of control and different things people want to control. In my case the issue is not so much a concrete list of items to control, but the overall sense of control I have as a user. On the one hand, I’m not a coder who can write drivers or any other part of the operating system. But the link I have to those who do write them in the Open Source community is much stronger, and much more open, than it would be for Windows. In Windows land, closure and unresponsiveness is the rule. In Linux, while unresponsiveness remains an issue, it is not nearly so bad, but openness is the rule.

A poor response to the user varies from project to project in Open Source. The field is developer-centric, and the primary audience is the fanboy crowd and other developers. However, the code is open, and among the users are a higher concentration of those capable of making intelligent discussion of why something didn’t work for them. These discussions, while not always open to public participation, are invariably open to public inspection. Read enough of this banter and you begin to get a feel for why things are the way they are, and possible solutions are easier to find. Try that with a for-profit corporation; rarely do they care a whit what the actual user experience is once the product is sold. And don’t you dare ask to examine the code.

The whole question of open versus closed source code access is a reflection of much more substantial differences in the user experience. Rare is the Open Source developer who will slip into their code anything that takes control from the user. Even when it is absolutely necessary for something in the system to “phone home,” it typically connects with services which are designed by people who would be the last humans on earth to compromise your privacy and the security of your system. Those systems themselves will be open to public inspection, so you can verify the claims for protecting your interests. Almost every commercial entity lies about it, if they bother addressing it at all.

Only a fool will believe I’m offering absolutes here. The issue is not whether bad things happen, but the likelihood. In the Windows environment, bad things of this sort always happen; in Open Source, it’s quite rare. In Windows Land, you are the product sold to advertisers and government snoops. Failures are denied, hidden, or require you to spend lots of money. In Open Source Land, the software is the product, and its failures are honest. Some of the best software for Windows is also Open Source. If the flaws in Windows don’t bother you, then you aren’t likely to read stuff like this in the first place.

The second, and related bias I have against Windows is the user environment itself. This is much harder to quantify. It boils down to Linux in particular, and Open Source in general, is more likely to meet my peculiar needs. Again, all software sucks, but the combination of factors in the way I experience Linux as a user makes it superior to Windows. I like the commandline, and Linux excels here above every other OS I’ve tested. It’s not just better; it’s opulent. The options for how it is displayed onscreen alone are worth the change, but the whole atmosphere, even the user guides available, are incomparably better. The Open source environment will encourage you to become a much smarter user, taking a greater responsibility for your user experience.

I like the variations possible, and that I can recompile just about any software package to suit me. Very early in the game I learned about the highly scripted build process, and how to toggle various options to suit my tastes. One size does not fit all, and Open Source developers know it instinctively. It simply is not that hard to do, and I’ve often recommended to newbies they try it, walking them through it. It’s a very empowering experience for them. When the build process fails, most of the time I can find a solution because of all the open discussions about such things scattered around the Net.

That’s the whole point about Open Source: openness. For those of us who sense a need to control some elements of how our computer works, when clicking options on the interface are not enough, whatever is possible is wide open to our inspection. A path of action is possible without learning to write the code ourselves. Best of all, this translates into a sense of security about the nasty miscreants out there seeking to prey on the rest of the world. As much privacy, security and control as is possible is easier to obtain with Open Source. The underlying cultural philosophy says the computer belongs to you, and what you run on it shouldn’t be loaded with secrets which work against you. Even when you need an expensive solution with all the bells, whistles and chrome, you’d be surprised how often someone makes that for Linux, too. While the Open Source purists complain of pollution with closed source drivers and software running on your Linux box, it remains possible because they can’t close out the commercial vendors when the source itself remains open.

So while the Open Source developer may not be your friend, he is most certainly not your enemy. The commercial closed source company is almost certainly not your friend, and my encounters indicate they are the single greatest threat to the computer owner and user. They are the ones who won’t bother asking you, but will simply leave you vulnerable every time it improves their profits. They are the ones holding the gate open for those who most want to prey on you.

When control is an issue of any significance for you, the path is much less difficult with Linux versus Windows.

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The Meat of the Issue (Updated)

Posted on January 2, 2011 by ehurst

I don’t make New Years’ resolutions. I consider the Western calendar artificial, and the placement of the year’s end is arbitrary, not matching the natural rhythm of human existence. It’s just another day. Time itself is arbitrary, a fundamental element in what traps us in this Vale of Sorrow.

I questions the orthodoxy of everything, largely because of my cynicism about fallen mankind. Without being paranoid, I think it’s utterly sensible to fear the motives and plans of anyone with more political power or wealth than me. I highly recommend you do the same. Not cowering in fear, but a sane caution, an open-eyed skepticism regarding everything you encounter. Reality itself is quite dubious.

Don’t let that stop you from going about the business of living out whatever you find truthful. The most important thing you can do is learn to despise your own suffering and sorrows. You can’t trust your own body to truthfully communicate what is good and bad, because it is wedded to this prison plane of existence. When your consciousness on the higher plane demands something, be fully aware of the likely consequences and drive through them.

A critical element of that truth from a higher plane is recognizing logic and reason are not useless, simply limited. They belong in their own sphere, and are subject to the imperatives outside the sphere. We do what seems most reasonable to us until that higher moral imperative makes a call. Human flesh serves one purpose: Flesh is the vehicle in which we defy the falseness of this prison existence, even as flesh is bound by it. We adhere to the higher imperatives as much as our reasoning mind can discern how to implement. We will inevitably fail because that is the nature of flesh. It’s the paradox of knowing our commitment to truth cannot ever be fully realized, but we know truth is not bounded by our failures.

In seeking to embrace the truth of things regarding the flesh itself, I have to be careful not to swallow orthodoxy. No two of us can go about it the same, and each of us must find a balance between too cavalier about the care and feeding of the flesh, and too obsessed with it. For me, the crux of the issue is maintaining sufficient physical health to make maximum use of this fleshly tool until my sojourn is finished. Just as I am deeply cynical about the information authorities try to feed my mind, I’m deeply cynical about the food this worldly system wants to put in my body.

There are no absolutes in truth, not as we think of them in the West. The truth for me is I can no longer trust the vast majority of food sources. But in particular, I find the threat from commercially provided meat in the US is too high to risk eating much of it. If I can’t get it from trustworthy sources, I’ll do without, thank you.

So it’s not a New Years’ resolution, despite the timing. I’m going almost meatless because I believe the threat of toxins in my food environment is high enough to hinder my pursuit of truth. Nor is this some doctrinaire vegetarian or vegan thing. I believe God gave us canine teeth for a reason, and the Covenant of Noah specifically grants animal flesh as a divine provision for our welfare, but the circumstances make it unwise.

Update: Not sure why folks keep reading this ancient history, but it seems necessary for the sake of honesty to update. As of summer 2012, local grocers have begun offering grass-fed beef, bison products and even grass-fed hogs. Anything unstained by the CAFO environment is probably pretty good: no GMO corn, no antibiotics or hormones, room to roam and natural foods. While it’s still more expensive than the standard meat counter stuff, safe meat is now available and I’m eating it.

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Reprise: Question Is the Answer

Posted on January 1, 2011 by ehurst

It was hardly original of me to say questioning is itself the answer, but I have made it a recurring theme here. It remains a fundamental element in commitment to truth, one of my three pillars of mysticism. Because some things can’t be described in clinical language, but are absorbed by pattern and symbolism, it bears repeating that paradox on a regular basis. To the degree you fail to question what is presented to you, truth is not your commitment.

For example, today I bumped into an article on Immanuel Velikovsky. I was too young to care when his book first hit the public notice, and I admit I’ve not read any of his stuff since then. But his name and his ideas aren’t hard to find, since he is almost universally excoriated by authorities. That’s the whole point, as the linked article notes. Don’t buy his authority any more than anyone else’s authority. Just so, I’d be the last person to insist you have to take my word for anything.

Were I to give it a name, the one thing which I believe drives me hardest from the very core of my convictions is a burning desire to set everyone free from bondage. If you consider your fetters jewelry, then by all means, wear them and be happy. If you simply don’t know where to start, I can make some useful suggestions, I believe. Learn about mind control, become a sweet-tempered cynic and skeptic, and only embrace what you cannot escape from within your own character.

I’ll be glad to explain what I can about my own convictions, but only as an example for you in exploring yours. What I consider the bedrock of my existence may be useless clutter for you. It’s not a question of who is right between us, but something far less easy to declare. Again, that would be a part of the whole point — it can’t be packaged, so don’t expect me to hand you a package which fits you.

I have a friend who loves to talk to me. I admit I don’t like talking to him; it’s very frustrating. He clings to things I would never accept, but he keeps coming back and asking more questions. So I keep trying to serve his personal growth because my commitment to his freedom is much stronger than my annoyance at his weaknesses. My very broken human self would rather shut him out, but my spiritual side realizes it won’t much matter what we discuss because that’s not what draws him. What draws him is my spirit breathes on him a taste of something beyond what either of our minds can grasp. I can stifle the simple repulsion of my mind in order to let him experience the power of mysticism, even as he questions the very assertions I make about it.

What really frightens me is someone who fawns over my every word, treating me like some demigod. That’s utterly repulsive. I’ve run into it often enough to fear it. It’s got a clinical name — cathexis — and is the single greatest source of sorrow among humans. It’s a part of the human tendency to grab hold of any one thing as your sole source of authority, a short cut to the path of refusing to think and evaluate on your own. It amounts to denying your responsibilities, passing the buck. I’m not going to accept your bucks. I’m not trying to avoid human intimacy, that desperate need we all have for connectedness, but I’m not willing to take control of your choices, when I don’t particularly trust myself.

The greatest crime of humanity is seeking to take authority over anyone else. No one worthy of following desires to lead, and anyone seeking to rule is morally disqualified by seeking it. As a Christian Mystic who is quite evangelistic, I know the single best way to offer you Christ is to show you how to reject Him. That is, I will be first in line to offer advice on bypassing religious traditions and teachings, because if you are going to come to Christ, it will be a miracle which defies all logic and human power. I’m the atheist’s best ally, as I am with anyone else who questions my Christian faith on any grounds you like. Not only can I not justify faith on human grounds, but it’s the worst betrayal I could offer my Savior.

If you are going to come up with any answers worth having, they won’t come from any authority structure rooted on this earth.

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