Author: Ian

This is going to be interesting to see what happens with the immigration law.
Washington Post

After working inside the system for 8 years I object to any kind of amnisty that allows people to switch from legal to legal without first leaving the country. If they introduce a cheap way to stay in the US then I want the option of using that as well. I have heard that one possibility is that before being able to convert you must pay back taxes, social security etc. This is a good idea but since the people were paid under the table in the first place how would you prove how much they were paid. It would be easier to assume that each person earn 2x min wage x40 hours a week for however long they have been in the US. The next question is how long do you say that someone has been in the US? Again there is no documented date of entry so I could just say I came across the border yesterday.

The USCIS would need to come up with an easy way to to check legal status. Then it would be easy for employeers to check that visa is valid. Then again how do you prove that a US citizen is a US citizen. This basically comes down to a birth certificate and each state issues their own and have probably changed the forms multiple times over the last 90 years. So even that becomes almost improssible.

All I know is that the legal way to stay in the US is broken. I have been waiting since sept 2002 for my labor cert (proves that my company can’t hire a US citizen) which is the first stage in getting an employment based greencard. Its 4 years later and don’t want to spend another 2 years waiting for a greencard. My last H1b extension was filed in September and it was approved last week, that six months for a 1 year visa.

I have been using vmware player for a few months now and was very impressed so I tried the free vmware server at work and now at home. The is server version is the one I really want to use. It allows you to run multiple instances and have them bootup and shutdown with the host computer. I have been noticing some serious hard disk slowness on the server at work. I was originally putting it down to a slow raid driver on linux but after whiching asterisk from vmware player to server this week I am going to blame vmware server. Asterisk was running very well with vmplayer but with server the cpu is sitting at a load of 2-3. Anything above 1 is bad news in linux land. I just created a new instance using asterisk@home 2.7 to see if anything has changed, otherwise I am flipping it back to vmware player till server comes outof beta. I have heard that the debug code in the beta server is to blame for a large chunk of the slowness.

Geek weekend. I finally bit the bullet and hacked my hr10-250. Not exactly what I would call easy. First need to find a kernel that cna be hacked. The one that comes with 3.1.5f doesn’t work. I ended up buying a iso that had the hacked kernel on it. Installed the kernel then loaded some kernel modules to support the linksys usb100M Rev 2. This all took about 7 attempts and much gnashing of teeth. I finally got the network card to light up and now I have tivoweb, telnet and ftp running on the machine.

I spent that last 2 days that the Institute for applied network security forum in Tysons Corner VA. If you are into computer security check out their web site The conference is more about meeting and discussing issues with your peers than attending lectures. It was very refreshing. I also gave a 15-20 min presentation on vulnerability management.

One of the items that came up was how to aduit password strength in Active Directory. Someone mentioned Lofphtcrack, but according to this Symantec recently killed it off.

No more 8% beer

Please remind me never to drink 8% beer again. I started the night we Clipper City Loose Cannon (7.5%). This was a surprising nice beer. It is described as having 3 pounds of hops per barrel and was hopped 3 ways, in the kettle, in the hop back, and dry hopped. Then I moved on to Harviestoun Brewery’s Old Engine Oil. This is listed on some web sites as being 6% but I think it was slightly higher than that. It is brewed in scotland and is dark beer and I mean heavy beer and aged in whiskey casks for 6 months . If you were to think engine oil you would be close. The first taste is a surprise and hits you hard. They only sold this by the half pint and after the shock of the first sip it really went down well. The final beer for Lancaster Brewery’s Doppel Bock. I think it was an 8%. This was the one that killed me and it was just an average dark beer. if you see it buy a sampler before drinking a full pint. So I admit it I got drunk on 2 1/2 pints of beer. but they were 20oz Glasses. For the non beer drinker miller lite is 4.2% and sold in 12oz bottles. Wine is between 9 and 14%