[An article][0] describes how a school district in Texas is attempting to force
its students to wear RFID tags at all times in order to track their location to
``stem the rampant truancy devastating the school's funding''.
What?
This is deeply concerning. Not only does this raise serious security and privacy
concerns (as mentioned near the end of the article), but it also costed the
schools over a half a million dollars to implement. In order words: Texas
taxpayer money has been wasted in an effort to track our children.
Good thing they don't have anything better to spend that money on.[1]
[0] http://rt.com/usa/news/texas-school-id-hernandez-033/
[1] http://fedupwithlunch.com/
I saw [this post][0] appear on HackerNews, talking about how building a game for
iOS is ``fun'' and ``cool''. The poster lures the reader in with talk of making
money and talks of a ``unique sense of fulfillment'' that comes with development
of these games, and then goes on to invite kids to learn how to develop games
for the iPhone (and presumably other iOS devices).
This is a terrible idea.
Getting children involved with hacking is an excellent idea, but introducing
them to the evils of Apple and associating that with a feeling of pleasure does
a great disservice; all software developed for iOS must be ``purchased'' (even
if it's of zero cost) through a walled garden called the ``App Store''. The
problem with this is that [the App Store is hostile toward free
software][1]---its overly restrictive terms are incompatible with free software
licenses like the GPL. Teaching children to develop software for this crippled,
DRM-laden system is teaching them that it is good to prevent sharing, stifle
innovation and deny aid to your neighbor.
A better solution would be to suggest developing software for a completely free
mobile operating system instead of iOS, such as Replicant[2] (a fully free
Android distribution). Even if Replicant itself were not used, Android itself,
so long as proprietary implementations and ``stores'' are avoided[3], is much
more [compatible with education][4] than iOS, since the children are then able
to freely write and distribute the software without being controlled by
malicious entities like Apple. Furthermore, they would then be able to use a
fully free operating system such as GNU/Linux to *write* the software.
Do not let fun and wealth disguise this ugly issue. Even more importantly---do
not pass this practice and woeful acceptance down to our children. I receive a
``unique sense of fulfillment'' each and every day hacking free software far
away from Apple's grasp.
[0] http://blog.makegameswith.us/post/33263097029/call-to-arms
[1] http://www.fsf.org/news/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement
[2] http://replicant.us/
[3] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/android-and-users-freedom.html
[4] http://www.gnu.org/education/edu-schools.html
There have been a lot of elections going on lately---local, state and national.
The majority of those ads are attack ads: immature and disrespectful; if you
want my vote, give me something positive to vote for instead of spending all of
your time and money attacking your candidate. If my vote is to go to the "least
horrible" candidate, then there is no point in voting at all.
Even more frustrating is the deceptiveness of the ads---intentional
deceptiveness, nonetheless. And these are the ads that many in the United States
will be basing the majority of, if not all, of their vote on come election time
(how many will realistically research instead of sitting in front of the TV
absorbing all of the useless bullshit that they are spoonfed?).
Frightening.
Many people use SSH keys for the sole purpose of avoiding password entry when
logging into remote boxes. That is legtimate, especially if you frequently run
remote commands or wish to take advantage of remote tab complation, but creating
a key with an empty password is certainly the wrong approach---if an attacker
gets a hold of the key, then they have access to all of your boxes before you
have the chance to notice and revoke the key.
ssh-agent exists for this purpose. The problem is---creating an agent only to
place the key in memory indefinately is also a terrible idea. If your system
does become compromised and the attacker is either root access or access as your
user, then they can simply connect to the ssh-agent (unless it's password
protected) and start using your key. Also consider that, should you leave your
box unattended for even a moment without locking it (for whatever reason---shit
happens), an attacker could gain physical access to your PC (and an attacker may
just be a coworker looking to play a prank).
Every morning at work, I begin the day by typing ssh-add followed by an
appropriate lifetime (be it the duration of the work day, or the duration that I
think I will need the key). This way, your key is in memory when you are likely
to be physically present at the box and it is automatically removed from memory
after a given lifetime. Additionally, I like to add `ssh-add -D` to the script
that locks my PC when I walk away from my desk: that will immediately clear all
keys from memory, just in case.
concept to me, primarily due to my ignorance on the topic.
Trademarks, unless abused, are intended to protect consumers' interests---are
they getting the brand that they think they're getting? If you download Firefox,
are you getting Firefox, or a derivative?
Firefox is precicely one of those things that has brought this issue to light
for me personally: the name is trademarked and derivatives must use their own
names, leading to IceCat, IceWeasel, Abrowser, etc. Even though FF is free
software, the trademark imposes additional restrictions that seem contrary to
the free software philosophy. As such, it was my opinion that trademarks should
be avoided or, if they exist, should not be exercised. (GNU, for example, is
trademarked[0], but the FSF certainly does not exercise it[1]; consider GNUplot,
a highly popular graphing program, which is not even part of the GNU project.)
[This article][2] provides some perspective on the topic and arrives at much the
same conclusions: trademark enforcement stifles adoption and hurts the project
overall.
I recommend that trademarks not be used for free software projects, though I am
not necessarily opposed to registering a trademark "just in case" (for example,
to prevent others from maliciously attempting to register a trademark for your
project).
[0] uspto.gov; serial number 85380218; reg. number 4125065*
[1] http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Trademarks.html
[2] http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20120902-00
* From what I could find from the USPTO website, it was submitted by
Aaron Williamson of the SFLC (http://www.softwarefreedom.org/about/team/)
This has been normal since becoming a father. I can't complain---I love being a
father. Of course, I also love hacking. I also love sleep. Knowing that my son
is going to wake me up a 6:00 in the morning has a slight influence in a
situation like this.
I'd like to just suffer through it, but being a fiancé also has another
obligation: going to bed when your significant other decides that it's bed time
(and by ``bed time'' I mean sleep). I still manage to fit it in somehow.
I don't. This is just some place safe to store random thoughts that people
probably don't care about (like most comments on most social networking
services), with the added benefit of distributed backup, a simple system and no
character limit.
All the thoughts are commit messages; in particular, this means no versioning.
That's okay, because I'm not going to go back and modify them, but I do want
dates and I do want GPG signatures (to show that it's actually me thinking this
crap).
This isn't a journal.
This will mostly be a hacker's thought cesspool.
This isn't a blog.
Though, considering how much I ramble (look at this message), certain thoughts
could certainly seem like blog entries. Don't get the two confused---one
requires only thought defecation and the other endures the disturbing task of
arranging the thought matter into something coherent and useful to present to
others.
Yeah. Enjoy. Or don't. You probably shouldn't, even if you do. If you don't,
you probably should just to see that you shouldn't.
Mike Gerwitz