Why are cell phone kill switches a bad idea? Let’s consider a couple perspectives. Good People with Good Intentions Someone believes that their cell phone has been stolen, so they call the cell phone company to report that their phone has been stolen. The cell phone company triggers the kill switch. 5 minutes later, the person discovers that they had simply misplaced their phone. Now they have a useless paperweight. Bad People with Bad Intentions A cell phone is stolen and the robber immediately takes out the battery. With no way to communicate with the cell networks, the phone cannot be remotely disabled. The bad guy sells the phone to someone who reconditions stolen phones. Makes a few quick bucks. The person who reconditions phones brings the phone into room specially designed to not have any wireless coverage (faraday cage). He then proceeds to reprogram the phone to change the phone’s electronic serial number. When the phone returns on a cellular network, it can no...
Since the governments and news organizations have not been able to find anything substantial out about the bizarre disappearance of flight 370, I figure that I will try constructing my own theory. Here goes.. Facts / Analysis The copilot was in his 20’s. The pilot was in his 50’s. People in their 20’s are much more impressionable and more likely to participate in terrorism. Learned that from all of the television after 9/11. It was largely reported that people’s cell phones were “ringing”, despite there not being anyone answering. Either the entire population on the flight were too timid to stand up to terrorists, or perhaps they were unconscious. Also, after the plane diverted (and probably changed altitude), it supposedly flew over Malaysia again. Cell towers would have been available and instant messages or emails or phone calls could have made it through. Even if a person was unconscious, as long as their phone was on, it would have been receiving emails. Mail...
First, you need to install Grub2 on a USB drive. That is usually done with a command like this: grub-install /dev/sda1 –root-device=/media/usb0 –no-floppy Then, edit the grub.conf file like so: nano /media/usb0/grub/grub.cfg Add the following: menuentry “Debian Wheezy Installer” { set root=(hd0,1) linux /debian/vmlinuz root=/ boot=USB vga=791 rootdelay=10 udev initrd /debian/initrd.gz } If you intend to install the 64-bit version of Debian, you will want to download the files here: http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/wheezy/main/installer-amd64/current/images/hd-media/ Place the boot.img.gz, initrd.gz, and vmlinuz files into the /media/usb0 folder. Reboot, and you should be able to boot up Debian from your USB stick.
Oliviana is more than a month old and we have certainly had our fair share of blessings and challenges. Her pattern of eating (every 2 hours) exceeded both mine and my wife’s expectations. Brandyce has said at times, “I thought this would be easier!” Taking care of a newborn is a lot of work, but it pays off every time she smiles at us, falls asleep on one of us, or is simply wide-eyed taking in the world around her. This past week has been uncharacteristically difficult for us, though, because both Brandyce and Oliviana have a cold. I find myself worrying about both of them – but where the priority for me used to be taking the best care of Brandyce, now my priority is taking the best care of Oliviana and checking-in on Brandyce. It has been challenging enough for us to call in reinforcements – my in-laws. My mother-in-law was here yesterday while I was at work, and she slept here last night. It was a tremendous help having someone that could take care of Brandyce so that...
12/3/2013 Brandyce went into labor on Friday. We went to the doctor’s office on Saturday and they told us that it was false labor due to dehydration. But then Sunday night she started having more contractions. That lasted all night Sunday and Monday. On Monday we went to the doctor’s again and they told us that she has started to dilate. So we came into the hospital at around 8pm and Brandyce decided almost immediately to get an epidural. Now it’s a waiting game. It is presently 3:00am on Tuesday and there is no sign yet of Oliviana. I am awake watching the monitor and I can see that Brandyce’s contractions are about 7 minutes apart still. It’s a mixed bag of emotions that I am feeling right now. I am excited, anxious, apprehensive, impatient, and cautious. Some of those are mutually exclusive to each other, further adding to the tension. Updates to follow. Update – 12/17/2013 Just a few hours after I posted this original message, Brandyce was ready for the final phase. ...
One of my pet peeves in the professional world is when people send emails with the body empty and the entire message in the subject line. In my experience, I have isolated a few different characteristics of many (not all) people who exhibit this behavior. Technologically Antiquated Arogant Narcissistic Undoubtedly, there are more than just these three characteristics, but these capture my experiences. A very well-intentioned, educated, good mannered person might have a very good reason for sending such a succinct notice. These three categories simply represent the majority of people who I have encountered over the years who exhibit this behavior. Not everyone. But most. If we have the luxury of time and the subject matter is not of urgent nature – that is when I cringe upon reading one of these specially crafted messages. The truth is that the all star over-achieving employees do always take the time to share enough words to properly convey their thoughts and use technology as it was...
I discovered a web fax solution for Asterisk that works quite well. First, let’s install ghostscript and spandsp. For a Ubuntu or Debian, you can type: If you compiled Asterisk by source, you can access the configuration dialog by typing: Now you need to enable the following modules. Resources -> res\fax Resources -> rs\fax\_spandsp Now let’s compile by typing the following: Now, download the webfax package from sourceforge. Now, extract the files into your web root. Something like this should do the trick: Now tidy up the files. You can edit the /var/www/html/webfax/index.php file, for example, if you want to add default information to each form. Lastly, edit the faxnotify.php file and update the email addresses. At this point, you should be able to upload a PDF and send a fax. Hope this helps. Enjoy!
Every once in a while I read about how the tax code needs to be rewritten and how it should be simplified. When I hear it, I smile first, but then I sigh. I sigh because the act of simplifying something that is complex is, in itself, a complex task. Therefore, saying that we simply need to simplify something is understating the effort that will be required to accomplish said goal. What our politicians should say, is that they want to make strides toward simplifying our tax code. Even a 1% gain in simplification would keep them true to their word. That is a goal that I would believe.
So, I just made that up. But I truly believe that this is becoming an epidemic due in no small part to the heads-down “connected” culture that we are all a part of today. There is no substitute for a face-to-face conversation, where there are real consequences for bad behavior, innuendos, or blatant and excessive criticism. In the digital world, though, those rules do not apply. Emails are ripe with innuendos, and unlike face-to-face conversations, people do not typically wait to calm down before hastily typing a digital message that embodies their real and present, but short-lived, emotional state. Sending emails or other digital communications is only half of the problem, though. The other half of the problem is quickly and accurately detecting the emotional state of the person who sent. The ability to assess this is critically important so that you can properly disarm them and have a meaningful and constructive conversation. Even through digital communications, there are...
