text:
* 1 *
The road trip between San Francisco and Austin is much longer
than you might imagine and, if you dare to steer clear of the monocultural
interstates, harrowing as well. Somewhere
East of Taos, New Mexico, the cutting edges of visionary culture blunt into a
rusting wasteland of stagnant Americana that relents no reprieve until you roll
into South Austin-though even that cultural outpost has increasingly become a
mecca for douchebag masculinity. Somewhere
along the way, for example, a series of Chase Bank billboards encourages — without
a smirk of irony — to Chase Freedom with
their new MasterCard, like some jackass after a PVC carrot under the yoke of
high-interest consumer credit, even going so far as to evoke Henry David
Thoreau's transcendental masterpiece Walden:
But perhaps the synecdoche of the entire journey was a Dairy
Queen billboard in New Mexico cajoling travelers to Stop Dreaming, Start Eating!,
because yes, less vision and more consumption is just what the historical
moment demands:
Eventually, after pulling over for a picnic beneath the
boughs of an attractive tree and discovering a junkie's littered syringe, my
partner and I decided to abandon any notions of the slow road and head straight
to Austin. Pulling over for gas in
none other than Muleshoe, Texas, however, I am embarrassed to admit that I promptly
locked the keys in the car, thereby condemning our evening to hanging out at a
gas station, examining and re-examining their selection of fat, salt, caffeine,
sugar, nicotine, and alcohol (my God, I realized — and here I'll reveal something
about my eating habits — my God, there's scarcely an item in here I would dare
consume absent civilizational collapse), waiting for a locksmith to assist.
Fortunately for my girlfriend and me, being reasonably attractive
and — more importantly, as it turned out — white, the locals were very friendly,
sharing much more of their lives than an intolerant health food snob like
myself might care to discover. One
particularly loquacious and rotund truck-driver, wearing a smiley-face t-shirt
stretched taut over his expectant belly-a t-shirt that incidentally exclaimed "Happiness Is A Mushroom Cloud" —
— boasted that he makes 6 grand a month hauling milk (and more
if the gawdamn highway patrol didn't keep ticketing him 500 bucks for driving
more than 70 hours a week) and then spent the better part of half an hour obliviously
trampling back and forth over a dead magpie and attempting to discern our
attitudes toward race. He regaled
us with tales of a fabled town in Florida that posted signs proclaiming,
"nigger don't let the sun go down on your ass," ever since — in the tradition of
the worst racist apocrypha — a traveling African-American male raped a white
teenage girl, and going so far as to assure us that he knows people (and here he
spoke sotto voce) who said they would contribute to the KKK if the Klan would
assassinate Obama (and now let us pause and respectfully welcome the Secret
Service to this otherwise harmless conversation…). Helpless and surrounded by friendly yokels nonetheless volatile
in their ignorance, there wasn't much we could muster by way of response other
than to wince inward and wow hmm and nod no kidding.
Shortly after his detailed description of a cuckolded coitus
interruptus rage-begotten ass-kicking that led to his second divorce, we
managed some plausible reason to excuse ourselves from his attentions and leaned
relieved against our car. It was
there, under the fluorescent, befumed, and mosquitoed canopy of the gas station,
watching as he roared his Harley off to Sturgis, that I considered my own classist,
of Walmart revulsions and thought,
But for the grace of God, there go I.
* 2 *
Starting the car at last, I was greeted by the lyrics of a song by Ray LaMontagne, in which he
How come
I can't tell
the free world
from a living hell?
I said how come
all I see
is a child of god
in misery?
And there, beneath my own contemptuous misanthropy, I
discovered the same compassionate dismay as Ray. What is more, as no less a champion for misanthropy than the
late George Carlin
once paraphrased, "Scratch any cynic and you'll find a disappointed idealist." So let me be perfectly clear: Despite my politically-incorrect and regurgitant
disgust at the chimpy-grinned and knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers that
populate so much of the landscape of late capitalism, and despite the fact that
my own t-shirt broadcast John Lennon's We All Shine On rather than Give War a Chance, I do not believe that I am so very
different from the self-same primate cousin I have here described. If I am different at all, I am somehow
luckier. But the question
remains: Why are so many so
incredibly, so indelibly,
ignorant? I maintain that any one
of us — and every one of us — possesses potentials of consciousness that rival any
redeemer, except that we fail, and miserably so, for most of us are not even
trying, and part of the reason for this was to be found within the aisles of a gas
station convenient store in Muleshoe, Texas.
Why, for example, is there any such thing as health food? In the same way as there is basketball and women's
basketball and the default category presumes a male sport, the default category
of food apparently presumes disease.
The offerings inside the gas station were instructive: Cigarettes sprayed with neurotoxic
pesticides and hyper-addictive additives; genetically-modified corn chips fried
in waste oils and dusted with an excess of chemically-derived salt and
artificial flavors; black elixirs of fizzy syrup and brain-boring alcohols
brewed with minimal attention to quality and maximal attention to marketing; municipal
tap water polluted with artificial hormones and heavy metals and
pharmaceuticals and agricultural runoff all sealed within a plastic bottle
leaching endocrine-disrupting petrochemicals; doughnuts deep fried in rancid, excitotoxic,
and atherosclerotic oils overlaid with processed diabetogenic sugars and obesifying
high-fructose corn syrups to distract the bitter aftertaste echoing across the
tongue's palette like the belching breath of slow death, shrink-wrapped and forever
preserved in a suspended state of decomposition by a mortician's cocktail of carcinogenic
preservatives, and am I really such a snob to be revolted by such a menu?
Consider: Reportedly,
the average American consumes 300 pounds of sugar per year — that's more than a
5-pound sack of sugar per week — and the sugar industry is prepared to sue anyone
who says that 600 calories of sugar a day — or 30% of your daily caloric intake — is
maybe too much, all while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts
that 1 in 3 Americans will have diabetes by the year 2025. But hey, at least the United States of
America is alone among the self-described advanced industrial democracies in
promoting amalgam dental fillings for the sugar caries rotting its teeth. Unfortunately, however, amalgam
fillings are approximately 50% mercury, a potent neurotoxin, but no worries
there, as the United States of America is also alone in fluoridating its
municipal water supplies, allegedly to protect our teeth. But fluoride is an industrial waste
product and another neurotoxin, interfering with normal metabolism and possibly
calcifying the pineal gland, the presumed seat of the dimethyltryptamine soul
and the origin of lucid dreaming and mystical experiences, and apparently this
is a project that is especially important for baby teeth. Recently, I was escorted out of a Walmart
for taking the following picture of a product's label:
Who needs an imagination, though, let alone a spiritual
vision, when the average American watches 6 hours of television per day, and by
the time they are dead, they will have spent 2 years of their life doing
nothing but watching television commercials?
Stop dreaming and start eating.
* 3 *
I do not mean to give the impression that the titular origin
of spiritual retardation is sugar, or mercury, or fluoride, or television. It is indeed all of the above, but this
brief survey is a far from comprehensive catalogue. Indeed, that entire comprehensive catalogue may be nothing
more than a collected synonymy for the metastatic root that spawns each of
these malignant tentacles, for the closer one examines any one structure of our
society, the more appalling, abhorrent, and absurd it becomes. From the skeletal and cognitive
scoliosis of our educational system to the warping of our sexuality via
advertising, from the pharmaceutical interdiction of moods to the sharecropper
system of indentured servitude that imagines itself middle-class, everything
appears exactly wrong. According to The Wall Street Journal, for example, the typical college student
today graduates with an average albatross of $22,700 of student loan debt. Thirty-odd years ago, prior to 1978,
student loans were virtually unheard of, and a generation of college students
graduated educated, free, and wild with fresh ideas, dreams, and visions. It is challenging to escape the
impression that this social world has been designed at every turn to distract
the freeborn ferocity of the human spirit into an obtuse and obese
And consumerism, by the way, means more than merely buying whiz-bang
gizmos and shrink-wrapped plastic garbage made in Asia. Consumerism means consuming a culture
manufactured to pacify our
passions rather than seizing our birthright to be visionary creators of our
own culture. Consumerism deskills
us of the fundamental tasks of living, robs us of our ability to define our own
experience, and I hope this makes you very, very mad. There is a malevolent, perhaps Palpatine force afoot in this
world, an historical movement to transform humanity's wild-begotten beauty into
a panopticon so ubiquitous that the very concept of escape becomes an archaic
But as to the notion that we have been socialized into the
intentional constructs of a dark cabal of international bankers — Illuminati sith
lords, if you will — bent upon a high-tech planetary fiefdom, I'll admit that my
mind peers occasionally behind the possibility of that door. But the door always closes — never
slamming, mind you — when I remember that a conspiracy need not be aware of
itself to exist. All that is
required is an alignment of interests, and the elite — that 1% that controls 40%
of all wealth — has an inescapable interest in promoting and protecting a system
that grants them their grotesque vulgarities of dubious privilege, no matter
how heartbreakingly obsolete that system becomes. But it is the system of social structures, and the social
roles of which it is constructed, and the consciousness that consents to occupy
those social roles, that compels its own collapse merely by pretending against
its own evolution.
In short, everything appears exactly wrong because it is. We're not making dental fillings, we're
making money. We're not making
medicines, we're making money. We're
not making food, we're making money. Our world is the ongoing ramification of a countless series
of decisions made on the basis of one deeply-flawed economic premise. Sex and sugar sells, and douchebag
masculinity and insulin-dependent diabetes are mere artifacts of that
fact. Mercury fillings are cheaper,
preservatives protect profit, debt compels compliance, and ignorance is
The circumstance may seem bleak, as if they
are guarding all the doors and holding all the keys, but those doors after
all are made out of only ourselves, and the mere fact that it requires such
relentless distraction and toxication to contain the human spirit only points
to our potency. As it turns out, we
are each of us capable of astounding creativity and boundless
love, and as we witness these broken social systems into which our lives
have been hurled crumble, there is little else to do but rejoice as we reinvent
ourselves from these stupefying arrangements at last. We can surely do so much better.
* Epilogue *
For the hell of it, we drove through Muleshoe, Texas again
on our way from South Austin back to San Francisco. We even stopped for gas at the very same gas station, and
what do you know but that the same trucker was there, this time wearing a
t-shirt that simply broadcast the busty silhouette usually
seen on the mud flaps of eighteen-wheelers. Apparently he parks his fifth wheel nearby (39 feet, he
emphasized, with 4 slide-outs, not too shabby), and the gas station is the most
happening place in town. Anyway,
as it turns out he'd listened far more carefully than I'd given him credit for
when I'd idly shared my disgust with the utter lack of anything resembling
living food inside the gas station and how I wished things were different. Grimacing from nearby diesel fumes, he nonetheless
showed me the cab of his rig, where he'd removed the passenger seat and installed
an ingenious, custom-built sprouting system for growing and consuming his own
supply of living foods while still logging seventy hours of hauling milk per
week. Grows a dozen different varieties
of sprouts and wheatgrass, says it changed his life. Calls himself the Wheatgrass
Trucker, and even has a youtube channel.
But actually, no, that never happened, not at all, not really. I don't know why I just said that. Everything else I've said is true, I swear,
but that last paragraph was not. I've
never been back to Muleshoe, Texas, nor do I expect I ever will. I've never met the Wheatgrass Trucker, although
I am pleased to know that he exists.
I don't know anything about where he lives or fifth wheels with 4
slide-outs or happening gas stations or mud flap breast fetishes or any of
it. It was all just exaggeration, creative
embellishment, I suppose. I got
carried away with the earnest entreaty I was trying to make, which is simply
this: Although that particular
paragraph has never happened to me, such a thing could happen, it can happen,
it has happened, and it does happen.
Everything we know we have learned from one another, and all that is
required is to teach a better legacy.
As H.G. Wells wrote, "History is a race between education and
catastrophe," and today, the pace of that race-and the stakes-have never been greater.
Take care of yourselves, and take care of one another.
And keep on truckin'.
Teaser image by miz_giverna, courtesy of Creative Commons license.


text:
NAPERVILLE – Judy Biggert, candidate for Congress in Illinois' 11th Congressional District, issued the following statement Monday after receiving the endorsement of the Log Cabin Republicans:
"I'm thrilled to have the endorsement of the Log Cabin Republicans, a group that shares my commitment to an inclusive, big tent GOP," said Congresswoman Judy Biggert. "Together, we can work towards a smaller, smarter federal government that respects the rights and privacy of all Americans."
"Congresswoman Biggert is a good friend and staunch ally for Log Cabin Republicans," said R. Clarke Cooper, Executive Director of Log Cabin Republicans. "In addition to standing for fiscal restraint, she has once again earned our endorsement through her fearless support of employment nondiscrimination, open military service and protecting LGBT victims of domestic abuse. Log Cabin Republicans are proud to stand with Judy and look forward to working with her for years to come."

subset: commoncrawl


text:
My Assistant
Custom Search
Useful tool list
Aug 15 2006, 03:19 PM
VIP Emeritus
Posts: 1,269
Joined: 1-May 03
From: Los Angeles, CA, USA
This page has a lot of tools that I find useful in cleaning and protecting computers:
Edited by: DB2ME on Tue Aug 15 16:20:21 EDT 2006.
Mar 16 2019, 07:03 PM
Posts: 3
Joined: 23-February 19
Are these tools for spies avoiding or anything other also? Just curious.
Mar 16 2019, 09:12 PM
UtterAccess VIP
Posts: 7,438
Joined: 30-June 11
I've used several of those when dealing with infected client PCs. I have a few other one listed on http://www.devhut.net/2013/10/09/how-to-re...rom-a-computer/.
Another useful tool is https://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Daniel Pineault (2010-2020 Microsoft MVP, UA VIP, EE Distinguished Expert 2018)
Professional Help: https://www.cardaconsultants.com
Free MS Access Code, Tips, Tricks and Samples: https://www.devhut.net
* Design should never say "Look at me". It should always say "Look at this". -- David Craib
* A user interface is like a joke, if you have to explain it, it's not that good! -- Martin LeBlanc
All code samples, demonstration databases, links,... are provided 'AS IS' and are to be used at your own risk! Take the necessary steps to check, validate ...(you are responsible for your choices and actions)
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|7th August 2020 - 06:26 PM


text:
Phyllis Doig '85 Builds the Business Case for New IT Solutions at EMC
When Stevens alumna Phyllis Doig (B.E. in Mechanical Engineering, 1985) was growing up on Long Island, hardly anyone had a personal computer. When she first entered the workforce in the mid-1980s, it was well before the Internet.
But none of that stopped her from becoming an accomplished business analyst in one of the world's leading information technology companies, a career she said would not have been possible without her engineering education.
"When you have an engineering background, nothing fazes you. You feel like you can learn and do anything," said Phyllis, a consultant-level business analyst for EMC Corporation.
Phyllis, whose uncle David Peterson attended Stevens in the 1960s and who was personally introduced to the University at a Women in Engineering Day panel discussion, came to Stevens on a full-tuition scholarship in 1981. Although she was Salutatorian of her high school, was active in four varsity sports, and participated in every orchestra, band and choir group that her high school had to offer, she said that she was not truly aware of her potential until Stevens "took a chance" on her.
"The fact that Stevens recognized my aptitude, even when I didn't – and especially in being awarded that scholarship – truly sparked my confidence, which was so helpful entering a male-dominated school and pursuing engineering as a career," she said.
Phyllis majored in a Mechanical Engineering, but she also enjoyed the diversity of coursework that Stevens has to offer, with Physics being one of her favorite subjects and Professor George Yevick being one of her favorite instructors.
"When Stevens sent me to Scotland on an exchange program, I remember travelling to Luxembourg during school vacation to meet a pen-pal I had been writing to since junior high school," said Phyllis. "What a surprise to see that she had the same physics textbook by Halliday and Resnick, and even more of a surprise that I could (almost) read it in German because it was so familiar to me!"
"Learning so many different subjects gave us a great foundation for real-life experiences in industry," she added. "Any type of problem is most easily resolved when it is approached by a group of people with diverse backgrounds and experiences."
Upon graduation, Phyllis – who calls herself a "child of the space race generation" – joined Grumman Aerospace as a mechanical engineer, following in the footsteps of her father and grandfather, who both worked in the airline industry, and her uncle, who worked for NASA and had a role in rescuing the astronauts from the ocean once they arrived back on earth. A member of the Navy's F-14 fighter jet "Tiger team," Phyllis participated in engineering design reviews for the design, testing and manufacturing of avionics equipment. Her main responsibility was performing heat transfer analyses and writing computer programs to analyze thermodynamics test results.
"I loved that it was a team effort and that right out of college I was on equal footing with engineers from different disciplines with much more experience," Phyllis said. "Grumman was truly a great place to work. I loved it there!"
However, three years into her time at Grumman Aerospace, Phyllis came to a crossroads – should she specialize further, or broaden her skills? Although she loved mechanical engineering, she decided that pursuing a business degree would give her more opportunities and more diverse life experiences. In 1990, Phyllis earned her MBA in General Business from the University of Virginia, a decision she said changed her life.
"Although getting my MBA took me away from engineering, it also carried me through the highs and lows of the economy," she said. "When I graduated we were in a recession and high tech companies weren't hiring. There have been many such economic bumps in the road during my career, but I always seemed to do very well."
From UVA, Phyllis went to Wyeth, where she did operations analysis and designed databases and management information systems to support business operations. Although it seems like a far cry from her engineering background, she said it really wasn't so different.
"I looked at it is a form of systems integration, but instead of dealing with machines and mechanisms I was dealing with a corporation and its business groups and systems," she said.
Next, Phyllis spent six years at Oracle Corporation as a functional and technical consultant for their financial and manufacturing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software applications, consulting at more than 25 client organizations. It was a time of constant change and growth in the industry, given the many acquisitions and mergers that occurred. Phyllis was tasked with designing IT systems to work both through those turbulent times and into the long term.
"It was a very exciting and challenging time," she said. "At that point I had the business and technological acumen to implement really good systems for the companies I was consulting for."
Finally, Phyllis landed at EMC Corporation, where she has worked in a variety of positions for the past 12 years. At first she served as a technical expert on Oracle's financial and distribution applications, and later moved into broader IT analyst roles.
Currently Phyllis is a consultant business analyst in the Office of Architecture and Innovation, responsible for preparing the business case for promising new IT projects and initiatives. A part of the "Solution Desk" group, her responsibilities include leading new initiative teams through the process of developing a case for IT investment, which includes identifying and evaluating technology solutions and preparing their resource plans and financials. In addition, she provides program management support for the IT Technology Advisory Board, a group that prepares and presents the IT technology roadmaps on a quarterly basis.
"Even today, when I'm so far removed from where I started, I find that a well-rounded engineering education is a huge asset," she said. "It's the best kind of mindset for when you are working on teams with people from different backgrounds, perspectives, abilities and points of view."
Outside of work, Phyllis continues to support the engineering community as well as her alma mater. She is active in the Society of Women Engineers and has volunteered at local high schools to teach students about STEM careers and robotics. Through her church, she sponsors exchange students in the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship Program, which for the past 30 years has been bringing mid-career professionals from all over the world to the United States for a year of cultural and professional exchange. She is also the membership chair of Stevens' Boston Alumni Club, where she organizes networking and social activities.


text:
So you want a successful career in acting in film and television? Well, fall in line; there are thousands of other aspiring actors with the same ambition: to see their name in lights and their billing above the title.
Unfortunately, it's not that easy to get your start in the movies, especially considering all the competition out there. It is estimated that at any given time, eight out of 10 actors in the US are unemployed. If this figure does not daunt you, here are some suggestions on how you can get your big break in the movies.
Attend open casting calls. Many TV and movie productions hold open casting calls that are open to non-SAG members. (SAG is an acronym for Screen Actor's Guild which is a union for actors working on American productions.) You can usually find open casting call announcements in sites such as Backstage and Actor's Access. However, these are pay sites, meaning you have to shell out some money to become a member. But in exchange for your membership fee, you get access to services such as being able to upload your headshot and demo reel to their site for casting agents to view, and to reply to casting calls online. Even if you don't get the job, these casting calls may at least bring you to the attention of filmmakers and casting directors who may decide to use you in future productions. Most of all, networking with people in the industry will help. Look beyond making friends with only fellow actors and actresses. Networking with people who work in different areas in production such as the movie costumes, make up, or props department will give you more contacts in the industry. You can never have too many friends in the industry so your social skills will play a big part in how successful you can navigate yourself in Hollywood.
Another option is to get work on a low-budget film. While this is not a sure-fire way to get noticed in Hollywood, it will at least help get your foot in the door. Not having a SAG card is actually advantageous in working on low-budget shows because the producers cannot afford to pay actors scale so they are willing to cast less experienced actors new to the industry. This is a great way for you to gain experience and meet people. It may not be as glamorous as a Hollywood product but don't be put off by the low budget film equipment and amateur production crew because they can be a stepping stone for your future. The list of film actors who have gotten their start on independent productions is a fairly long one, and includes stars such as Jack Nicholson (who started in several low-budget films directed by Roger Corman, including The Terror and The Raven), Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellwegger (who appeared in The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and Holly Hunter (whose first movie credit was the low-budget horror film The Burning). How do you get work in an independent movie production? Get in touch with the film department of your local community college, since this is where many independent filmmakers look for talent to use in their movie.
Work on a student film. While acting on a student short will likely not give you the same exposure as appearing in an independent film, it can at least provide you with footage for your demo reel, which you can use to market your talents as an actor. To find student films that might be looking for acting talent, get in touch with film departments of colleges. Another tip: look for student films that are being directed by graduate students, since they have more experience and will generally produce a more professional-looking film.


text:
Walking through the streets of the Cateel, on the eastern coast of Mindanao, the devastation left by Typhoon Bopha (known locally as Pablo) is evident everywhere. Most houses are covered by tarpaulins, debris fills the spaces where family homes once stood and the fragile structures of damaged houses punctuate the streets. Bopha was the most deadly storm globally in 2012, killing more than 1000 people and affecting 6.2 million.
Passing by Evangeline Lim's small grocery shop, you first notice her friendly, welcoming smile, the typical cans of coca cola, packs of instant coffee and local sweets and the sign advertising charging services for mobile phones that is on shop fronts and houses throughout the town.
In this area, which has been without electricity since Bopha struck in December 2012, mobile phones are now the only means many people have of receiving information. Most people do not have access to a television, radio or newspapers; traditional means of communication suffered extensive damage.
"People use their mobile phone to access weather updates from PAGASA (the Philippines National weather bureau)," Evangeline explains, as well as to stay in touch with friends and family. Shop owners and families, who can afford to buy generators to power their homes and businesses, offer charging services as an additional source of income. People pay by the hour; the typical cost is 20-30 Pesos (70 cents – US$1).
The typhoon made landfall here on the coast, damaging or destroying all the buildings in Canteel and neighbouring towns and causing extensive damage to infrastructure and agriculture. Coconut and banana plantations were decimated, leaving tens of thousands of people without an income and in need of food assistance. For people here, who had never experienced a storm like this before and had no idea of what was coming, the storm had a serious psychological impact.
"After Bopha there have been rumours about more typhoons and floods, so it is very important to have accurate information on the weather," explains Evangeline. "People really panic if they think it is going to happen again and they run away."
Evangeline is one of the few people in the community who owns a computer, which she managed to salvage from the storm. Along with the weather updates she receives from PAGASA on her mobile phone, she checks the weather online using an internet dongle and shares the information with her neighbours and others. That way, they are kept informed and are better able to make decisions about what measures to take to protect themselves and their families.
"80% of households own a mobile phone ... 1bn text messages are sent per day"
Time and again in emergencies, communities have demonstrated both their need for reliable information to make informed decisions about events that affect themselves and their families, as well as their need to be heard. In disaster-prone Philippines, home to over 100 million people, access to accurate and timely weather reports and early warning information can be life-saving.
OCHA in the Philippines is working with humanitarian partners, including CDAC Network members the International Organization for Migration (IOM), to improve access to vital information including weather updates, emergency shelter, livelihood support, health and education services, as well as to ensure that the voices of affected communities are heard and considered in the response. Activities include weekly radio programmes, an informative cartoon series, text message campaigns and film screenings in camps.
These activities are particularly appropriate in the Philippines, which has been described as the text messaging capital of the world. Some 80 per cent of households own a mobile phone and an estimated one billion text messages are sent per day. Mobile phones are therefore one of the most pervasive and accessible means of sharing and receiving information.
The Government and other emergency responders have also used social media to share early warning updates and information on the emergency response. However, in the aftermath of Typhoon Bopha, in many rural areas, telephone networks are still down which, along with damage to roads and infrastructure, as well recurrent flooding, is making it very hard to reach remote communities with information and other assistance.
In Cateel and neighbouring communities, the rebuilding process is underway, but it will take a long time before all the tarpaulins disappear and homes are rebuilt. It will take even longer for the fear of what the weather might bring to subside, especially as heavy monsoon rains began this month. It is important that people in these communities are provided not only with aid to help them rebuild their homes and livelihoods, but also with access to information to enable them to make informed decisions about the safety and welfare of their families.
Image: January 2013, Mindanao: Evangeline in her small corner shop in Cateel. Along with basic groceries she also sells mobile phone charging services.
Originally posted on: http://www.unocha.org/top-stories/all-stories/philippines-when-weather-report-saves-lives.
Reporting by Eva Modvig/ OCHA


text:
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Joined: 05 Sep 2006
Posts: 13129
Location: Stratford, Ontario
Posted: Thu 07 Feb 2013, 12:09
Post subject:
greengeek wrote:
So are you saying that the boot folder and menu.lst are on HDD, but this grub stanza tells the system that the puppy files are on a usb drive?
Are you asking this because of the UUID entry? Hard drive partitions can also be identified by a UUID.
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Joined: 03 Mar 2012
Posts: 601
Posted: Thu 07 Feb 2013, 12:57
Post subject:
kooliepup wrote:
This is a bit of a diversion, which is not intended to demean the project at hand.
I also am keen to see a .pet to enable HDD ISO booting.
Since I wont myself do it this way I cannot test or develop.
Of course it is free for anyone else to take this up.
kooliepup wrote:
My machine does not boot from USB.
You could try plop too boot from cd first and then USB.
but it doesnt work with the automated approach of Easy2Boot.
But I guess this wouldnt be so nice a solution. Harddrive install is better.
Last edited by Scooby on Thu 07 Feb 2013, 13:34; edited 1 time in total
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Joined: 03 Mar 2012
Posts: 601
Posted: Thu 07 Feb 2013, 13:34
Post subject:
gcmartin wrote:
Would it be favorable to make a PET to ONLY delete the files presented by GRUB4DOS versus trashing all information on the drive?
Is there another system tool to merely prep the boot record of the drive without running GRUB4DOS, such that the drive will be prepared without the effort of GRUB4DOS and without destruction of the drive's current information?
The reason for the questions is that it seems to me that the drive can be setup without the need to destroy the existing data that the drive may already contain so that this thread's can guide appropriately.
Martin after re-reading your post a few times I believe you want to install grub4dos
on internal HD and want to preserve data.
However although the Easy2Boot solution is good to use on HDD I will not make an installer for it.
Since I wont myself do it this way I cannot test or develop.
I will do for USB only.
Of course it is free for anyone else to take this up.
I think its better you search the web for how to install Grub4Dos to hd
for your particular situation
There is information how its done for example on a windows installation
Then if you want you can have the system boot the menu.lst of Easy2Boot
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Joined: 07 Feb 2013
Posts: 30
Location: Manchester, England
Posted: Thu 07 Feb 2013, 13:40
Post subject:
hi Scooby,
Thanks for the work you have done here! Seems ideal for my case, as I want to run Puppy from a USB stick and do not have a CD drive nor a Windows system to start from. I will run the "second easiest" method from another Linux distro.
Question: Do I use the multi-boot Puppy as a "CD" and use that to do an "install to USB" onto a second USB stick?
Or can I miss out that step, and immediately start using the multi-boot Puppy as my long term Puppy? Would I need to tweak it at all? (I am wonderimg if it might need settings like noatime to avoid wearing out the flash drive, for example)?
Incidentally, any other users like me who are not starting from a working puppy may like to know that the bootlace program (used in the second easiest method) is in the grub4dos zip file downloadable from
grub4dos version 0.4.5c
or check
the project's downloads page
for an even newer version.
edit: updated link to download info for grub4dos (link originally given was to a much older version, sorry)
Last edited by trueriver on Sun 10 Feb 2013, 10:16; edited 2 times in total
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Joined: 03 Mar 2012
Posts: 601
Posted: Thu 07 Feb 2013, 14:12
Post subject:
trueriver wrote:
Thanks for the work you have done here
I am just the prophet, the god is steve at
trueriver wrote:
Question: Do I use the multi-boot Puppy as a "CD" and use that to do an "install to USB" onto a second USB stick?
Or can I miss out that step, and immediately start using the multi-boot Puppy as my long term Puppy?
You can miss out that step and immediately start using the multi-boot Puppy as your long term Puppy!
trueriver wrote:
Would I need to tweak it at all? (I am wondering if it might need settings like noatime to avoid wearing out the flash drive, for example)?
I dont think you have to worry about that. Its the issue with savefile and the solution with
psavemark but Im working on a solution for that. In the interim there is a solution under
Save File
trueriver wrote:
Incidentally, any other users like me who are not starting from a working puppy may like to know that the bootlace program (used in the second easiest method) is in the grub4dos zip file downloadable from the grub4dos project at http://sourceforge.net/projects/grub4dos/files/
I must confess I only thought of windows and puppy linux users. I will take your suggestion and update for regular Linux users. I dont however know how to make
a solution for an automated install across other Linuxes. Bash-script?
I am originally a Windows user but now a puppy convert. Only limited experience
with other Linuxes and my favourite puppy is Archpuppy.
The update will take some time though
Last edited by Scooby on Thu 07 Feb 2013, 14:14; edited 1 time in total
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Joined: 20 Jul 2010
Posts: 5834
Location: Republic of Novo Zelande
Posted: Thu 07 Feb 2013, 14:12
Post subject:
rcrsn51 wrote:
Are you asking this because of the UUID entry? Hard drive partitions can also be identified by a UUID.
Yes, I made the assumption that a UUID would only be relevant to USB devices (Doh! wrong again!)
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Joined: 07 Feb 2013
Posts: 30
Location: Manchester, England
Posted: Thu 07 Feb 2013, 15:01
Post subject:
Scooby wrote:
I must confess I only thought of windows and puppy linux users. I will take your suggestion and update for regular Linux users. I dont however know how to make
a solution for an automated install across other Linuxes. Bash-script?
You could wrap a bash script together with bootlace.com as an add on for non-puppy users. The issue would be getting the right drive...
If you wanted to produce a GUI program, I'd suggest Python -- but that would be a *lot* more work.
I will post an even easier way in, later tonight, if I can get it working
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Joined: 03 Mar 2012
Posts: 601
Posted: Thu 07 Feb 2013, 15:12
Post subject:
I have a question about implementation.
Two solutions to choose between
1. edit boot option on ISO itself with script
. The default use is
./PSaveMarkelyfy precise-5.4.3.iso
2. Have to folders on USB stick one called Linux for regular booting with chainloading.
for Linux Live CD and puppy linux without savefile. And one folder called puppy
with puppy linux isos which gets called with boot option psavemark that makes
savefiles work
I myself tend to go with option 1. Let users use my bash-script to edit a configfile on ISO
It is really easy to run.
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Joined: 07 Feb 2013
Posts: 30
Location: Manchester, England
Posted: Thu 07 Feb 2013, 15:49
Post subject: Re: HOWTO create easy multi-boot USB Puppy from Linux
Subject description: Adjustments to "second easiest" method (working from non-Puppy Linux)
Scooby wrote:
[b][u]Alternative 2 - the second easiest way
This did not work for me with the instructions as given (at least if I understood them correctly). I did find a slightly different way to do things.
I was working from a terminal window running in Ubuntu 12.10, though the exact flavour of Linux should not matter, Puppy does tend to mount filesystems differently to most larger flavours of Linux (*)
2. ...
mkdosfs - F 32 -I /dev/sdxx
where sdxx is exchanged for your label
and -I is i and not the L character.
Firstly: a typo: there must not be a space between the - and the F.
Here I was not quite sure what you meant by "label". To Linux users usually (*) means a human readable name for the disk whereas sdxx looks like a Linux disk identifier.
If sdxx is a label, the syntax on many Linux distros (*) is /dev/disk/by-label/sdxx
If sdxx is a partition (eg sdc1) then /dev/sdc1 is the more usual form (*), and /mnt/sdc1 is specific to Puppy's way of doing things.
So I used /dev/sdc1 here instead of /mnt/sdc1
Thinking of labels, you might actually want a label on this partition: this is how you do that:
mkdosfs -F 32 -n easy2boot -I /dev/sdxx
Then when you look at the drive in Windows and in most (*) Linux versions it will show as easy2boot
3. Make USB drive bootable with Grub4Dos.
bootlace.com --floppy=y /dev/sdxx
where y is exchanged for the number of the partion you want to install the bootloader on(most commonly 1
and sdxx is exchanged for your label
Here I typed --floppy=1 /dev/sdc1. That appeared to work at the time, but at the end of the process the bios failed to find the bootsector.
Referring back to the grub4dos manual, this is because your form of the command installs to the *Partition* MBR, and the BIOS looks at the *disk* MBR. (+)
So I changed the command to refer to the disk, and bootlace then complained that the --floppy option is illegal
So I left that out, and the version of this that worked for me was as follows:
bootlace.com /dev/sdx
where sdx is the disk not the partition (for example sdc not sdc1)
Having done that, I followed the remaining instructions as given and it booted nicely. After setting up the wifi, the first thing I did from my *new* *working* Puppy was to post this.
edit to add footnotes
(*) In this post, "Linux usually" and "most Linux" means the mainstream distros like Debian, SuSE, Fedora, Red Hat, Ubuntu; and in contrast to how Puppy does things.
Anyone swapping in either direction between "most Linux" and "Puppy" has some learning to do. Most of these differences arise from BarryK's efforts to reduce bloat.
(+) Looking back, I wonder if my mistake was simpler - did I check that the "boot" flag was set on that partition? I'm not going to go back and test that now I have got a bootable Puppy
Last edited by trueriver on Fri 08 Feb 2013, 06:42; edited 3 times in total
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Joined: 13 Jan 2012
Posts: 302
Location: Victoria, Australia
Posted: Fri 08 Feb 2013, 00:43
Post subject:
You can replace the UUID line with the more common
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /TESTRUN/initrd.gz
It is usually quicker booting using the UUID, but not always.
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Joined: 14 Oct 2005
Posts: 6730
Location: Earth
Posted: Fri 08 Feb 2013, 00:54
Post subject:
The following are 3 different ways to tell the boot process which USB/HDD device to boot go looking for the additional info needed for booting the system.
find --set-root /TESTRUN/initrd.gz
root (hd0,1)
uuid 65a8ce93-769e-425a-b02b-e32494af59ef
EITHER one of them, each, do about the same exact thing in identifying where to look.
Here to help
Get ACTIVE Create Circles; Do those good things which benefit people's needs!
We are all related ... Its time to show that we know this!
3 Different Puppy Search Engines
or use
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Joined: 06 May 2011
Posts: 126
Location: TerraAustralis
Posted: Fri 08 Feb 2013, 03:53
Post subject:
The easiest way for a novice to get the UUIDs for this is to use the attached Grub4DOS .pet.
It is from Puppy Precise 5.42, and should work on all 5x series Pups.
I have used it on most of them.
Just install over the current one.
Don't know about earlier Pups. Should be ok.
492 Time(s)
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Joined: 07 Feb 2013
Posts: 30
Location: Manchester, England
Posted: Fri 08 Feb 2013, 07:40
Post subject:
Subject description: Some untested workarounds for the savefile issue
Scooby wrote:
During boot press F2 key
and then write the following
puppy psavemark=1
then savefile will work, This can be somewhat tedious so will see if it can be automated somehow?
This problem arises because easy2boot presents the puppy files on an iso, and isofs is defined to be a readonly filesystem. Effectively Puppy "thinks" it is running from a CD not a USB stick.
1. Extension of Puppy's repertoire to recognise when it is on iso-on-a-flash
This option is serious work for someone who really knows Puppy internals. (Puppy vetinarian?) and would be beyond me to implement
An isofs can be extended by writing another "session" to it (which is how Puppy works on a CDR when you save your work to the same CD). Incidentally, multi-session was invented by Kodak for their photo-CDs so you could burn extra pics to an existing Kodak photoCD.
This would be the best way of doing this, if you know enough about writing iso filesystems: write a into a "second session" iso and append that to the original iso. That is *exactly* what happens when you burn a second session onto the disk, but you'd have to do it using dd rather than a disk burner.
This would need extra functionality built into Puppy, so that it somehow recognises it is running from cd-on-flash mode. Once Puppy isos are released with the new capability the problem goes away
2. Workaround for existing Puppy iso
Extract the iso file to a folder on disk, alter the file isolinux.cfg changing cd to usbflash so the last line now reads
append initrd=initrd.gz pmedia=usbflash
and then re-create the iso from that folder. This process of extract->replace->rebuild could easily be automated.
WARNING: this modified iso would no longer be suitable for burning to CD unless you changed it back. If you burnt this new file, Puppy would boot but would believe it was running on a flash stick ... goodness knows what issues this would cause. For this reason, I personally don't like this workaround.
3. Use easy2boot as an installation & testing platform.
BarryK has always said the best way to get Puppy on a USB stick is to burn a CD first, then use the CD to install to USB.
This workaround uses two usb sticks, one temporary and one permanent. First, you would get Puppy working under easy2boot, but only use that system for testing and (if happy with the test) installing to the permanent USB stick just as you would from the CD.
I have tested this, it works. And also the second-stage USB boots a lot faster than easy2boot (because it only has to do one thing, not scan for isos, work out what to do with them, and then offer you a lot of other options).
4. Make a "mongrel" easy2boot and permanent system.
Like 3 above, but you install onto the same usb stick that you are using for easy2boot, somewhere outside of the easy2boot directories. Don't let the installer alter the mbr in any way.
Then add an apprpriate grub stanza to menu.lst, so that the first option in the menu is the grub equivalent of the above syslinux line.
Once installed delete the iso.
Then you can use the installed Puppy for serious work, and get the efficiency savings of not working through an extra filesystem all the time. When you want to test a new Puppy, or another flavour of Linux, drop that iso into the \_ISO\Linux\AUTO folder and use the easy2boot intelligence to boot that system. But again: whether it is Puppy or some other Linux, use that platform to test or install, not as a permanent installation.
5. Separate partitions on a USB stick / USB drive
Like 4 above, but on separate partitions on the same USB stick. Though most people think of this only for internal drives, GParted will quite happily partition a usb stick for you.
Note that easy2boot creates a "virtual" primary partition no 4, so you are limited to two primiary partitions, plus an extended partition to hold any further partitions. Make sure GParted numbers these as 1,2,3 so that 4 remains free for easy2boot.
Number 3 is my current recommendation, I have done this and it works.
I will be testing number 4 and reporting back eventually, but not soon as I have other stuff that is becoming pressing. It would be great to be able to download onto a usbstick and then boot the new iso with no further ado. This is something I have wanted to do since around the time that Vista was released.
I am not doing any work on 1,2, or 5 at present, just offer then as ideas in case they inspire anyone else to continue / extend the good work.
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Joined: 06 Jan 2013
Posts: 17
Posted: Fri 08 Feb 2013, 09:10
Post subject:
You can boot from ISO but you need to extract the sfs file - so you might as well just extract all three files.
here are both menu entries for precise sku - use whichever one you like and you can change the folder name if you like to match your distro.
# Extract files to /precise (only vmlinuz, initrd.gz and sfs needed)
# rename PUPPY_PR.SFS to lower case puppy_precise_5.4.3.sfs
title Precise
kernel /precise/vmlinuz pmedia=usbflash psubdir=precise fix=fsck psavemark=1
initrd /precise/initrd.gz
# Extract sfs to /precise
# rename PUPPY_PR.SFS to lower case puppy_precise_5.4.3.sfs and place in \precise folder
title puppy boot from ISO
map /_ISO/Linux/precise-5.4.3.iso (0xff)
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /vmlinuz pmedia=usbflash psavemark=1 fix=fsck psubdir=precise
initrd /initrd.gz
I am not sure if the fix=fsck is required - seems to work OK without it.
Note: ONLY WORKS ON REAL SYSTEM and NOT in QEMU!
I used a FAT32 USB boot drive and settings were
saved on exit.
They may be saved if you use ext2 format.
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Joined: 03 Mar 2012
Posts: 601
Posted: Fri 08 Feb 2013, 13:33
Post subject: Re: HOWTO create easy multi-boot USB Puppy from Linux
Subject description: Adjustments to "second easiest" method (working from non-Puppy Linux)
trueriver wrote:
Scooby wrote:
[b][u]Alternative 2 - the second easiest way
This did not work for me with the instructions as given (at least if I understood them correctly). I did find a slightly different way to do things.
Thank you for comments
I agree it needs some reworking and I will do it.
I'm sure you can help me test it then.
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text:
I, for one, would like to welcome our new Mozilla Firefox overload directly from deep space 😉
V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon) is a variable star in the constellation Monoceros about 20,000 light years from the Sun. The star experienced a major outburst in early 2002. Originally believed to be a typical nova eruption, it was then realized to be something completely different. The reason for the outburst is still uncertain, but several theories have been put forward, including an eruption related to stellar death processes and a merger of a binary star or planets.
On January 10, 2002, a previously unknown star was seen to brighten up in Monoceros, the Unicorn. Being a new variable star, it was designated V838 Monocerotis, the 838th variable star of Monoceros.
(Fig. 01: Monocerotis as Firefox logo (Image credit NASA and Wired blog)
=> Firefox Logo Spied In Deep Space (via digg)


text:
A sure sign I'm beginning to show signs of suffering from word drown this month. Did not immediately begin reading the new Atlantic fiction issue when it showed up on my door this week. Was even a little cranky when I looked through the contents and saw the ubiquitous "Fiction in the Age of E-Books" piece in the essay section. Oh, but then saw it is by Paul Theroux. I'll probably read that. And "How to Write in 700 Easy Lessons" looks like an amusing send-up of the writer's manual. And there is a short story by T.C. Boyle. Love him. And a bunch of other good stuff. See contents with links here.
Have read like an obsessed person all month but have yet to finish a single book. I reside in the land of chunksters. Now I need some fluff. In the home stretch on the reading plan for April. Love all three books, two much more than the third, but, as my littlest friends like to say, "I think my brain hurts." Maybe I'll sit and read this magazine now after all.


text:
"Sherlock Holmes" was a pleasant enough romp, carried gamely by a pair of likable stars, Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, whose bro-mosexual chemistry made things all the better. But the recipe is formulaic, and director Guy Ritchie's style is so rigid, that joining Holmes and Watson for another adventure in "A Game of Shadows" feels like simply going through the motions.
This time around, Holmes matches wits with his arch-nemesis, Prof. Moriarty (Jared Harris), a mathematics genius who's got a beef with Sherlock. A budding war profiteer and master of puppets, the invisible hand of Moriarty is wreaking havoc across Europe of the late 1800s, with the secondary aim of causing Holmes misery.
Downey and Law have their shtick down cold—they're total pros who could do this in their sleep, and maybe that's part of the problem. They're not bad or flat, they just lack a certain gonzo zeal. Noomi Rapace, on the other hand, is something of a disappointment as Sim, the gypsy who helps Holmes prevent a European-wide war. In her first English-language role since become globally famous for playing Lisbeth Slander in the Millennium trilogy mini-series, Rapace's accent is a mess, something from the Kevin Costner Robin Hood School. But the real problem is the part is a throwaway—a totally static and under-developed character with no arc. You have to wonder who sold her on it. Harris, however is perfectly cast, his reptilian sneer serving as just the right face for Moriarty's arrogant, vain and deadly genius.
Ritchie's ability to choreograph epic fights and chases is impressive, but, as he did in the first, he constantly subjects you to re-viewings. If you need 128 minutes to tell your story, by all means, take it—but not if it includes 20 minutes of instant replay. And in perhaps one of the most mind-bogglingly unnecessary plots devices in cinematic history, the sniper murder of a man is covered up with a bombing that kills everyone else in the room. In inspecting the crime scene, Holmes notes that no one would look for a bullet in a bombed room. Well sure… and the flip side is, no one would leave behind extra ballistics evidence in the body of their specific target in a room they just blew to kingdom come.
Watching "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" is like playing a parlor game, where you must catalog every little detail, and then anticipate when and how they'll be deployed. It's fun the first couple of times until you realize how easy the game is, and then it's just tiring.
"Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" opens everywhere this Friday


text:
CanSecWest 2010 CALL FOR PAPERS (deadline Nov 30, conf. Mar22-26) and PacSec (Nov 4/5) Selections Oct 16 2009 10:42PM
dr kyx net (Dragos Ruiu)
We extend our apologies if you are inconvenienced by multiple copies of this messages.
We would like to announce the PacSec 2009 Paper Selections, and
the opening of the 2010 CanSecWest Call For Papers. Given
the proximity of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver one month
before the conference, we would advise all planning to attend
to make travel preparations well in advance for next year...
PacSec 2009 Presentations
Keynote Presentation November 4: Mitsugu Okatani, National Information Security Center / Ministry of Defense / Japan Air Self-Defense Force
Keynote Presentation November 5: Hideaki Kobayashi, Information Technology Promotion Agency
Virtualisation security and the Intel privilege model - Tavis Ormandy & Julien Tinnes, Google
Silicon Chips: No More Secrets - Karsten Nohl
Filter Resistant Code Injection on ARM - Yves Younan, University of Leuven
iPhone SMS Fuzzing and Exploitation - Charlie Miller, Independent Security Evaluators
The Microsoft View of the 2008 Threat Landscape - Tony Lee, Microsoft
Cloud Defense in the Post-BotWar Era - Ikuo Takahashi
The Android Security Story: Challenges and Solutions for Secure Open Systems - Rich Cannings & Alex Stamos, Google, iSec Partners
Stealthy Rootkit : How malware fools live memory forensics - Tsukasa Ooi, Livegrid
Defending a Social Network - Alex Rice, Facebook
Museum of API Obfuscation on Win32 - Masaki Suenaga, Symantec
!exploitable and Effective Fuzzing Strategies as a Regular Part of Test - Jason Shirk, Microsoft
Analyzing Word and Excel Document Encryption - Eric Filiol, ESIEA - Operational cryptology and Virology Lab
English Dojo: Auditing Java Security, Marc Schoenefeld
Japanese Dojo: Assembler Programming and Reverse Engineering Malware, Yuji Ukai, fourteenforty
Pacsec will be held on November 4 and 5th, in Aoyama, Tokyo.
CanSecWest 2010 CALL FOR PAPERS
VANCOUVER, Canada -- The eleventh annual CanSecWest applied
technical security conference - where the eminent figures in
the international security industry will get together share
best practices and technology - will be held in downtown
Vancouver at the the Sheraton Wall Centre on March 22-26,
2010. The most significant new discoveries about computer
network hack attacks and defenses, commercial security
solutions, and pragmatic real world security experience will
be presented in a series of informative tutorials.
The CanSecWest meeting provides international researchers a
relaxed, comfortable environment to learn from informative
tutorials on key developments in security technology, and
collaborate and socialize with their peers in one of the
world's most scenic cities - a short drive away from one of
North America's top skiing areas.
The CanSecWest conference will also feature the availability
of the Security Masters Dojo expert network security sensei
instructors, and their advanced, and intermediate, hands-on
training courses - featuring small class sizes and practical
application excercises to maximize information transfer.
We would like to announce the opportunity to submit papers,
and/or lightning talk proposals for selection by the
CanSecWest technical review committee. This year we will be
doing one hour talks, and some shorter talk sessions.
Please make your paper proposal submissions before November
30th, 2009.
Some invited papers have been confirmed, but a limited number
of speaking slots are still available. The conference is
responsible for travel and accomodations for the speakers. If
you have a proposal for a tutorial session then please make
your submission using our new online form, available at
https://cansecwest.com/submissions/. If the on-line form is
not available you can alternatively email a synopsis of the
material and your biography, papers and, speaking background
to secwest09 [at] cansecwest.com . Only slides will be needed
for the March paper deadline, full text does not have to be
submitted - but will be accepted if available. This year we
will be opening up the presentation guidelines to include
talks not in English which we will offer to translate for
the speaker if they are not a native English speaker.
The CanSecWest 2010 conference consists of tutorials on
technical details about current issues, innovative techniques
and best practices in the information security realm. The
audiences are a multi-national mix of professionals involved
on a daily basis with security work: security product
vendors, programmers, security officers, and network
administrators. We give preference to technical details and
new education for a technical audience.
The conference itself is a single track series of
presentations in a lecture theater environment. The
presentations offer speakers the opportunity to showcase
on-going research and collaborate with peers while educating
and highlighting advancements in security products and
techniques. The focus is on innovation, tutorials, and
education instead of product pitches. Some commercial content
is tolerated, but it needs to be backed up by a technical
presenter - either giving a valuable tutorial and best
practices instruction or detailing significant new technology
in the products.
Paper proposals should consist of the following information:
1. Presenter, and geographical location (country of
origin/passport) and contact info (e-mail, postal
address, phone, fax).
2. Employer and/or affiliations.
3. Brief biography, list of publications and papers.
4. Any significant presentation and educational
5. Topic synopsis, Proposed paper title, and a one paragraph
6. Reason why this material is innovative or significant or
an important tutorial.
7. Optionally, any samples of prepared material or outlines
8. Will you have full text available or only slides?
9. Language of preference for submission.
10. Please list any other publications or conferences where
this material has been or will be published/submitted.
11. If you have multiple speakers, please outline why each
presenter is necessary and what each is presenting.
Please include the plain text version of this information in
your email as well as any file, pdf, sxw, ppt, or html
Please forward the above information to secwest09 [at]
cansecwest.com or use our on-line submissions form at
https://cansecwest.com/submissions/ to be considered for
placement on the speaker roster, or have your lightning talk
scheduled. If you contact anyone else at our organization
please ensure you also cc the submission address with your
proposal or use the on-line submissions system or else it may
be omitted from the review process.
P.S. please accept my apologies if your submission feedback
hasn't arrived yet from PacSec (but no news is good news for
a few which will be invited to Vancouver ;-).
World Security Pros. Cutting Edge Training, Tools, and Techniques
Tokyo, Japan November 4/5 2009 http://pacsec.jp
Vancouver, Canada March 22-26 2010 http://cansecwest.com
Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 16/17 2010 http://eusecwest.com
pgpkey http://dragos.com/ kyxpgp
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Superfood hot chocolate - a healthy holiday treat. Naturally sweetened with maple and full of cozy flavor from cinnamon, cocao, and maca. Vegan.
Happy December! That feels so weird to say because in Texas it never truly feels like December (and I'm ok with that), but we did wake up to an especially chilly morning the other day. I went downstairs, made my daily ice cold smoothie, and brought it to my desk. I sat here shivering, realizing that I'm doing this late-fall morning thing all wrong.
Since then, I've been mixing up this concoction for Jack and me – it's a healthier hot chocolate than the Swiss Miss from the snow days of my childhood. Instead of cocoa, I decided to use a combo of cacao powder and maca powder. Cacao is the most pure form of chocolate and it's packed with antioxidants, fiber, and magnesium. Maca (powder from the Peruvian maca root) has a malty vanilla flavor, and it's good for fatigue, memory, and a slew of other things.* It offers a little pick me up that's similar but not as extreme as coffee. Perfect for a little morning boost.
I don't actually serve this with whipped cream for breakfast, but if you're making this for dessert, go ahead and make it pretty with a dollop coconut whip (recipe below) and shaved chocolate.
Maca Cacao Hot Chocolate
- 2½ cups almond milk (I use Almond Breeze Original)
- 2 tablespoons cacao powder (I use Nativas Naturals)
- 1 tablespoon maca powder (I use Essential Living Foods)
- 2 tablespoon maple syrup, or to taste
- ½ teaspoon coconut oil
- Pinch of cinnamon
- Tiny pinch of sea salt
- Coconut whip** (see homemade instructions below)
- Shaved dark chocolate
- In a blender, mix the almond milk, cacao powder, maca, maple syrup, coconut oil, cinnamon and salt. (You can also whisk this together by hand). Transfer to a medium saucepan and heat. Taste and adjust the sweetness if desired. If it's too thick, add a little bit more almond milk.
- Serve with coconut whip and shaved dark chocolate, both optional.
solids from 1 (14-ounce) can full-fat coconut milk, refrigerated overnight
⅓ cup powdered sugar
Few drops of vanilla extract
Make the coconut whip by combining the ingredients in a mixer and mix until whipped and fluffy. Note: some cans of coconut milk are duds - meaning that the solids and the water do not separate and the whip cream will not whip. I've had the best luck using Whole Foods 365 brand full fat canned coconut milk.
*I'm not a nutritionist, but you can google to read about the benefits of cacao and maca. Most sites list these same attributes.


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EDFU, Egypt, Feb. 3 (UPI) -- Archaeologists report they've uncovered a 4,600-year-old step pyramid near the Egyptian city of Edfu built decades before the Great Pyramid at Giza.
It is the seventh such "provincial" pyramid discovered, all constructed before the better known pyramids at Giza, LiveScience reported Monday.
The solid step-pyramids have been found in various part of Egypt and are nearly identical, archaeologists say.
Step pyramids were not used for royal burials and contain no inner chamber like the Giza pyramids, and their exact purpose is still debated, although archaeologists theorize they may have been monuments to living Egyptian royalty.
An area adjacent to one of the recently discovered pyramid's sides appears to have been used for food offerings, but it apparently was abandoned around 50 years after its creation, possible in response to the new focus on the pyramids at Giza, they said.
The newly discovered pyramid stands about 16 feet tall, but when it was new, its three step levels would have reached a height or more than 40 feet, they said.


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"Well, I'm not sure what the issue is. I mean obviously that's why you get briefings to try to deep dive into it to see whether it's a lack of intelligence gathering or whether there were some signs that analysts just didn't see.
The Crotchniks and Christniks are blaming our President for not anticipating Putin's next moves. How dare they! The Pube Party has been having a field day making laws that shame the human penis and vagina, while the real big bad wolf, is seen as their bosom crotch buddy.
Despite Russian President Vladimir Putin's history as a tough-as-nails leader bent on restoring Russia's sphere of influence, the U.S. intelligence community failed to read the signs when it came to Ukraine.
That has members of Congress asking why there was no clear warning that Russia would respond militarily to the abrupt departure of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych by sending troops into Crimea — and what intelligence agencies plan to do about the oversight.
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"We have to better deploy our resources… because we have large resources and it should not be possible for Russia to walk in and take over the Crimea and it's a done deal by the time we know about it," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told POLITICO as she left a closed-door briefing for committee members on Ukraine and other issues. Feinstein indicated that the intelligence community has already moved to re-focus on the region.
(PHOTOS: Ukraine turmoil)
"We're going to look at the priorities and talk with the administration and talk with various people in the intelligence community," she added. "I think some changes have already been made."
The top Republican on the panel, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, agreed something was missed.
"Well, I'm not sure what the issue is. I mean obviously that's why you get briefings to try to deep dive into it to see whether it's a lack of intelligence gathering or whether there were some signs that analysts just didn't see. But it's pretty clear that there was no indication that this was coming like it did," Chambliss said Tuesday.
"I'm not pointing the finger at anything because I don't know what the answer is," he said. "I don't know who dropped the ball."
A range of lawmakers and intelligence community experts are puzzled about why U.S. intelligence agencies seem to have misjudged Putin's intentions and whether the lack of warning fits a pattern of other significant intelligence shortcomings in recent years.
(WATCH: Driving the Day: Hill, business brace for Ukraine aid)
The answers could affect how the huge but shrinking intelligence budget is allocated in the future, possibly focusing more attention and resources on traditional adversaries like Russia and China and a somewhat less on the overarching focus of the past decade: terrorism.
Earlier warning of Putin's move might have given the U.S. and other allies more time to try to dissuade him and prompted more effort in doing so. But it's unclear whether the Russian leader would have bowed to such pressure.
Other senators leaving the same briefing Tuesday afternoon described the present state of intelligence on the issue as muddled and sketchy.
"There just seemed to be a lack of current intelligence, but I can't go into details," said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). She called questions about a lack of warning "very valid," but declined to elaborate.
(Also on POLITICO: Hillary Clinton's Ukraine — and 2016 — problem)
Over the weekend, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — who's been highly critical of President Barack Obama's foreign policy — portrayed the U.S. as being blindsided by Putin's actions. "I think it's very clear that this whole operation took this administration and the intelligence community by surprise, but it shouldn't have," McCain told the Daily Beast.
"From everything I've seen, this was not anticipated," Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview Monday. "I think there will have to be a whole evaluation of what our links into Russia are and [into] determining their policy."
King said it was evident that U.S. policymakers such as Obama viewed Putin's move as unlikely — until it happened.
"As far as the administration, I think they had to be taken off guard," he said. "They were making these very tough pronouncements that there will be consequences and he won't do it. I don't think they would have done that if they were thinking that Putin would do this."
(Also on POLITICO: What the White House is thinkin on Ukraine)
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said Tuesday that he also plans a review of Ukraine-related intelligence, but he stopped short of calling it an intelligence failure. "It was the analytic product, the certain conclusion in one particular case that nothing was going to happen in 24 hours—that was just wrong," Rogers told the Daily Beast. "There was another thing out there from another agency that was different."
A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on whether Obama was satisfied with the intelligence he received on Russian intentions in Ukraine. But spokesmen for the U.S. intelligence community defended its work.
"Prior to and throughout the situation in Ukraine, the intelligence community has provided timely and valuable information that has helped policy makers understand the situation on the ground and make informed decisions. That continues to be the case today," said Shawn Turner, a spokesman for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. "Any suggestion that there were intelligence shortcomings related to the situation in Ukraine are uninformed and misleading."
The Central Intelligence Agency says it's always noted the possibility of aggressive military action.
"Since the beginning of the political unrest in Ukraine, the CIA has regularly updated policymakers to ensure they have an accurate and timely picture of the unfolding crisis," agency spokesman Todd Ebitz said in an email. "These updates have included warnings of possible scenarios for a Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Any suggestion otherwise is flat wrong."
While officials appear to disagree about the insights offered by U.S. intelligence, it's beyond dispute that a lot of public commentary pundits offered as the Ukraine crisis unfolded was less than clairvoyant.
"Why Russia Won't Interfere" blared the headline on a Feb. 24 op-ed by Carnegie Moscow Center's Dmitri Trenin in the New York Times's international edition .
"Moscow does not need to govern more people; it needs to raise the health, education and work standards in its own people's lives," Trenin wrote. "Despite what some Ukrainians suspect, Moscow is unlikely to try bringing about the breakup of Ukraine in order to annex its southern and eastern parts. That would mean civil war next door, and Russia abhors the idea. Moscow's best option at this point is to stand back and wait, while quietly favoring decentralization in Ukraine."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/united-states-barack-obama-ukraine-crimea-russia-vladimir-putin-104264.html#ixzz2vDC6nwYK


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Baked stuffed Romano peppers
Nutrition and extra info
- Vegetarian
- Healthy
Nutrition: per serving
- kcal241
- fat21g
- saturates3g
- carbs9g
- sugars8g
- fibre4g
- protein6g
- salt0.6g
- 2 Romano peppers, halved and deseeded (use normal peppers if unavailable)
Also known as capsicums, bell peppers, sweet peppers or by their colours, for example red and…
- 2 tbsp olive oil, plus 1 tsp
Olive oilol-iv oyl
Probably the most widely-used oil in cooking, olive oil is pressed from fresh olives. It's…
- 1 slice wholegrain bread
- 2 tbsp pine nuts
- 2 tbsp grated parmesan (or vegetarian alternative)
Parmesan is a straw-coloured hard cheese with a natural yellow rind and rich, fruity flavour. It…
- 1 red or green chilli, deseeded and chopped
Part of the capsicum family, chillies come in scores of varieties and colours (from green…
- 2 tsp capers
Capers are the small flower buds of the Capparis shrub that grows in the Mediterranean. As they…
- good handful parsley, roughly chopped
One of the most ubiquitous herbs in British cookery, parsley is also popular in European and…
- 200g young spinach leaves
Used in almost every cuisine across the world, spinach is an enormously popular green vegetable…
Heat oven to 190C/fan 170C/gas 5. Put peppers in a roasting tin, then drizzle with a tsp of oil and a little pepper. Bake for 20 mins.
Meanwhile, toast the bread, then blitz into rough crumbs in the food processor. Mix with the pine nuts, Parmesan, chilli, capers, parsley and remaining oil. Boil the kettle. Put the spinach in a colander, then pour over the boiling water to wilt the leaves. Press out as much liquid as possible.
Divide the spinach between the peppers, then top with the crumbs. Return to the oven for 15 mins.


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This is part 1 in a series of posts on prayer. Please use the links at the top and bottom of each post to navigate through the parts.
first, define prayer
It's always important to define your terms. Especially in debate with someone that believes in a particular religion — it's horrible to get knee deep into a theological argument only to have them suddenly say "But I'm a Southern Baptist Episcopalian Wesleyan, I don't believe THAT!" It makes the whole theism-vs-atheism debate ultimately futile, because while on the one hand you have the blanket position "there is insufficient evidence for any deities", on the other you have a unique flavor of belief with such subtle nuances as to be shared by absolutely nobody else in the history of mankind. There are as many versions of God as there are people who believe in God. So figure out what your goalposts are before you start trying to make the punt.
The same is true with prayer. There are a number of different varieties of belief about prayer, which are usually coupled with specific properties ascribed to the deity to which you're praying. Of course, in this list, I'm probably missing a bunch of important variations, but like I said, this isn't meant to be exhaustive. The one major commonality is that praying involves actively directing one's thoughts to a deity, usually also assuming a physical pose of piety (e.g. one one's knees with hands clasped, bowed low so your forehead touches the ground, etc.) They may have other names in more seasoned theologians' vernacular, but I break them down like this:
- Interventionary prayer — prayer where you petition your deity to intervene in a particular event
- Imprecatory prayer — asking your deity to do something evil to, or curse, another person. I've only separated this from interventionary prayer because of its diametrical opposition to omnibenevolence.
- Prayer for guidance — wherein you ask for help or more information in making decisions (the "show me a sign" prayer)
- Sycophantic prayer — wherein one proclaims how much they love or adore their deity, or giving thanks for events or prosperity that has been ascribed to divine provenance
- Meditative prayer — prayer whose only purpose is to either calm oneself or convince oneself to accept a situation as God's will
- Redemptive prayer — praying for forgiveness for an act that one feels transgresses some law or another, looking for divine absolution (which sometimes comes in the form of not being smote — no smiting, no anger from God, right?)
- Ouroboros prayer — when a person's faith is flagging, praying to the deity for the sole purpose of reinforcing their faith in the deity's existence (e.g., because you're having a conversation with this deity, it must exist) — a self-feeding prayer
I'm sure someone will come along and offer other kinds of prayer that they believe to be totally worth doing, but any new addition would likely be nothing more than a slight variation of one of the above. Of these, the only one that at all resembles anything actually proven to work is the meditative prayer, because science has already proven meditation causing brain changes, it's an old saw that blocking off a time for quiet introspection has net positive effects on your well-being and clarity of mind, and the effects of attempted mental self-discipline in the face of growing panic during desperate situations is self-evidently beneficial in the event you need to take some drastic action. So, because meditative prayer so resembles meditation itself, it says nothing about the deity involved (or not involved as the case may be), and so can be, by and large, ignored for the purposes of this series. Let's just say "we know meditative prayer can help because it's just meditation" and move along.
Please keep these definitions in mind through the rest of the series. Knowing these different kinds of prayer helps decide whether each is effective in the presence of certain types of deities.


text: Systema is more than just martial art, it is a way of life. It enhances and preserves your life in many different ways going far beyond the physical confrontations we automatically think of. Recently I fell off while driving my Harley Davidson motorcycle, and I walked away without ANY injuries. I fi..read more >>


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When last we reported on the beleaguered adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, it was to tell you that the property had moved from Universal to Warner Bros. and that principal actor Javier Bardem may have been lost in the transition. Now we have word that Russell Crowe is in talks to star as the gunslinger, Roland Deschain. There's no deal currently inked out, but the studio will be factoring Crowe's involvement with the picture into their decision on whether or not to greenlight the film at all. Here's the rub: the yay or nay will come within the next two weeks. Much more on the latest developments surrounding The Dark Tower after the jump.
Deadline reports that screenwriter Akiva Goldsman has recently turned in another draft of The Dark Tower script, which prompted the two week deadline looming over the potential franchise. The plan is for the epic eight-volume story to be told over three feature films (the first of which, at least, will be directed by Ron Howard) and two limited-run TV series, likely at HBO. It's safe to say that quite a few bucks (and the hopes of countless fans) ride on this pending decision. For those of you I've lost along the way, here's a brief summary of The Dark Tower:
In the story, Roland Deschain is the last living member of a knightly order known as gunslingers and the last of the line of "Arthur Eld", his world's analogue of King Arthur. The world he lives in is quite different from our own, yet it bears striking similarities to it. Politically organized along the lines of a feudal society, it shares technological and social characteristics with the American Old West but is also magical. While the magical aspects are largely gone from Mid-World, some vestiges of them remain, along with the relics of a highly advanced, but long vanished, society.
Roland's quest is to find the Dark Tower, a fabled building said to be the nexus of all universes. Roland's world is said to have "moved on", and indeed it appears to be coming apart at the seams as mighty nations have been torn apart by war, entire cities and regions vanish without a trace and time does not flow in an orderly fashion. Even the Sun sometimes rises in the north and sets in the east. As the series opens, Roland's motives, goals and age are unclear, though later installments shed light on these mysteries. [Wikipedia]
While Crowe doesn't exactly fit the literal description of Deschain, his name certainly carries the weight that might help push the project over the edge. But what do you think about his potential casting?