I recently moved to one of Sprint’s CDMA Android offerings, the HTC Hero. I just finished the flashing/rooting process, since I don’t particularly care for devices that try to lock me out of their own functionality. (The key to doing this with the “newer” Sprint CDMA Hero phones is apparently using an older version of the recovery image and making sure you have enough available memory to run the image flash, but that’s beside the point.) This particular device came with a 5 megapixel built-in camera, and though I know that resolution != quality, it does seem to produce *passable* images. Not great, but passable. I’m hoping to see an improvement when the CDMA Hero sees “official” Android 2.1 support. This OS version fragmentation is bunk, but at least I can upgrade as soon as the pieces are available for another model. Suck that, closed source technology.

Am I giving up the 40D? Hell emphatically *no*. But I can capture a few things I might miss fumbling for the camera bag. At least, I hope I can.

The code can be check out of anonymous Subversion from https://svn.master.freemedsoftware.org/freemed-utilities/org.freemedsoftware.util.JasperWrapper/ if anyone is interested in building it. (It obviously should require Java 6 JDK to compile properly.) Hopefully I’ll get around to tagging and releasing versions of it for download shortly, if anyone shows interest in it.

It’s a pretty funny send-up of scifi movies which take themselves too seriously. I think that after watching it, it’s pretty apparent that none of the actors were told that it was supposed to be a comedy. Peter Weller plays the entire movie completely straight, which makes his lines all the funnier. John Lithgow was very funny, in his strange and quirky way.

It was apparently very difficult for the studio that owned it to release “Buckaroo Banzai” because of some legal issues, but it finally made it to DVD in the last few years.

• iMDB Link
• Netflix Link


* * * * * /usr/bin/gmetric -c /etc/gmond.conf -n pf_states -v $(/usr/local/sbin/pftop -b | grep pfTop | cut -d/ -f2 | cut -d, -f1) -t int32 -d 120 2>&1 | logger -t pf_states


and install the pftop package along with a gmetric binary and a working /etc/gmond.conf configuration file. It might be advantageous to check for the maximum number of states as well.

In addition, you might want to know which pf rules are passing how much traffic. A nice easy way of doing this is to create this file as ./pfstates (make it executable, of course):

#!/usr/bin/perl
# pfstates
# jeff@ourexchange.net
my $limit = shift  || 0;

my $seg = 0;
my @s = [];

while (chomp( my $line = <>)) {
        $s[$seg] = $line;
        if ($seg == 2) {
                $seg = 0;
                if ($s[1] !~ /States\: 0/) {
                        my $states = 0;
                        if ($s[1] =~ m/States\: (\d+)/) {
                                $states = $1;
                        }
                        if ($states >= $limit) {
                                print "[$states] $s[0]\n";
                        }
                }
        } else {
                $seg++;
        }
}

…. then you would pipe pfctl’s state output to it:

pfctl -v -s rules | ./pfstates

Optionally you could add a “minimum level” of connections you want to see:

pfctl -v -s rules | ./pfstates 100

for example to see only rules passing 100 or more active connections.

Why someone would design a system to expose every bit of data for a system through a nice standard protocol like IMAP, then only allow certain things to be viewed through a piece of crap proprietary protocol like MAPI just boggles the mind. I’m sure it’s part of their “vendor lock-in” thing, but it just pisses me off.

Anyway, I found out that to completely backup an Exchange account (as I have been doing over the last week or so for different accounts), you also have to backup the non-mail portions. I ended up using a deprecated library called Jakarta Slide for WebDAV client support, which helpfully came with a SearchMethod call which was capable of running the specialized XML query required to backup the data.

The XML I ended up using was:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<a:searchrequest xmlns:a="DAV:">
<a:sql>
SELECT * FROM "URL"
</a:sql>
</a:searchrequest>

in case anyone is interested. Again, I have a fatjar of this utility, but I have to check with work to make sure they’re okay with me releasing it before I can post it anywhere.

In an effort to migrate users from one *shudder* Exchange provider to another (after getting shot down for proposing first Zimbra, then standard mail server stuff, then Openchange), I have been going through all of the available IMAP sync software that I could find.

mbsync (http://isync.sourceforge.net/mbsync.html) – We use this for IMAP backup, so I figured it would be a good idea to try it for syncing between two IMAP servers. *Crash*. *Segfault*. This is one of the reasons I’m not a big fan of really low-level apps written in C.

imapsync (http://www.linux-france.org/prj/imapsync/) – Written using a Perl library, this offered the promise of fast syncing, and appeared to work in test runs. That is, until it encountered folders with spaces in them, and threw up all over the terminal. Really, it wasn’t a use-case for *anyone* to have spaces in folder names? I could have put some effort into fixing the library and/or script, but I figured that if something that basic wasn’t working for a fairly mature library, this wasn’t going to be pretty.

The Imap Migration Tool (http://migrationtool.sourceforge.net/) – Written in PHP, with a two or three step process. Was meant for moving stuff, not keeping them in sync, so running multiple times would cause additional copies of messages to be created. Also, it seems to have been written in some prehistoric form of PHP, which required hacking to get it even marginally functional. Even then, it spat tons of warnings and nasties, which made me a little nervous to use it on any important mailboxes.

mailsync (http://mailsync.sourceforge.net/) – I don’t even remember why this one didn’t work, only that I wasted a fair amount of time playing with it to get it to try to migrate using the scheme we were working with to no avail. Scratch another one.

Solution … I had to roll my own. This is *stupid* to the highest degree, but I rolled something using javamail into a self-contained “fat jar” using fatjar. It works sickeningly well, and actually respects existing messages by message id, so that if for any reason I have to break the sync process, it’ll skip past anything it has already done. I made it non-destructive because it seemed like seriously bad juju to have a sync tool purge out email…. If I get permission from work, I’ll post the jar for anyone with Java 1.6 to use.

As an aside, it took a little bit of hackery to get fatjar running outside eclipse. The relevant section of build.xml was:

  <path id="fatJarPath" location="lib/fatjar.jar"/>
  <property name="ant.reuse.loader" value="true"/>

  <taskdef name="fatjar.build" classname="net.sf.fjep.anttask.FJBuildTask" classpathref="fatJarPath"/>
  <typedef name="fatjar.manifest" classname="net.sf.fjep.anttask.FJManifestType" classpathref="fatJarPath"/>
  <typedef name="fatjar.exclude" classname="net.sf.fjep.anttask.FJExcludeType" classpathref="fatJarPath"/>
  <typedef name="fatjar.jarsource" classname="net.sf.fjep.anttask.FJJarSourceType" classpathref="fatJarPath"/>
  <typedef name="fatjar.filesource" classname="net.sf.fjep.anttask.FJFileSourceType" classpathref="fatJarPath"/>

  <target name="main" depends="build">
    <fatjar.build output="ImapSynchronizer.jar">
      <fatjar.manifest mainclass="...myclasspath...ImapSynchronizer"/>
      <fatjar.filesource path="bin" relpath=""/>
      <fatjar.jarsource file="lib/mail-1.4.3.jar" relpath=""/>
    </fatjar.build>
  </target>

First of all, the mod_proxy pieces have to be enabled using a2enmod proxy.

A fragment has to be added with the proxying bits and some limitation:

<Proxy proxy:http://SERVER:PORT/URL>
     Order allow,deny
     Allow from all
</Proxy>

ProxyPass /EXPOSEDURL http://SERVER:PORT/URL
ProxyPassReverse /EXPOSEDURL http://SERVER:PORT/URL

Reloading apache configuration should enable the proxy properly. The only other possible issue is that in addition to the WSDL URL, you’re going to have to specify a “proxy” URL, which is just the service URL without ?wsdl at the end of it. A fragment of PHP’s SoapClient would look like this:

$url = "http://server.domain:8180/services/MySoapService?wsdl";
$sc = new SoapClient( file_get_contents($url), array(
          'login' => $my_username // optional for basic auth
        , 'password' => $my_password // optional for basic auth
        , 'compression' => SOAP_COMPRESSION_ACCEPT | SOAP_COMPRESSION_GZIP
        , 'location' => str_replace('?wsdl', '', $url) // force this to work through proxies
));

The magic in that last segment was the “location” parameter, as it specifies the proxy. Good luck!

Way to build community, Canonical.

I quote:

The buildds[sic] have no internet access, so you can’t use installer packages (packages which need to download the undistributable archive from the official location) on buildds (e.g. as build dependencies).

I swear, it’s a feature, not a bug. </sarcasm>

I’m as shocked as anyone else that I’m agreeing with morons who wear teabags on their hats and think that universal healthcare is some bizarre form of fascism, and that everyone is a Nazi. Not to fear, I’m not agreeing with them on *everything*, just on one thing: this “healthcare” bill sucks.

We saw a 100+ bump in the DJIA this morning after the Senate passed their bastardization of a health insurance industry subsidy bill. Of course, it had to do with the excise tax being delayed, supposedly. Not anything having to do with 25+ million new customers being forced into an industry with little or no regulation. Nope, not that.

Progressives are counting on the bill to be improved on its way back from the House, claiming that it will be better than the version that the Senate watered down. Y’know, because it makes so much sense that these cretins who tear every good measure out of a bill with the mere threat of a tantrum (without having to do the “Mr Smith Goes to Washington” thing) are just going to smile and say “I know we didn’t do this before, but of *course* we’ll do it, now that the House of Representatives said it was okay!” I can’t figure out who are the bigger morons, the Senate democratic leadership or the guys in the Progressive movement eating this up like Frosted Shit Flakes.

All our lame duck president had to do was push single payer, really. It might have been the end of his political career, but would have, much as the civil rights movement revolutionized America, drastically changed the way we live our lives in this country. No more would medical bankruptcy be something with which many families are familiar, and no longer would people fear financial ruin from attempting to seek medical care. I can’t condone mandated private insurance with no real caps on what they can charge or what horrible things they can do to you when you don’t play by their rules.

What happened to this guy? Who traded him out for this dud? With what? Oh yeah. Money. Power.

Give up the idea that you as a person can do anything. We’re peons, slaves to a country bought and paid for by large industries.

If you don’t believe single payer is not only superior in every imaginable way to the nightmare we have now and would also save us *billions* of dollars, please visit Physicians for a National Healthcare Plan. The huge list of studies, including CBO ones, are eye-opening.

Is it the best possible thing? No. I’m sure there are better systems, somewhere. It’s not socialized healthcare, just socializing the payment structure for it. And that’s not a dirty word, morons. We socialize a lot of things for the common good. Haven’t heard too many fiscal conservatives griping about that 636 *billion* dollar spending bill. Oh yeah. ‘Cause it helps us kill the Al-Qaedas that aren’t in Afghanistan and continue blowing holes in the sand to fill them with bundles of freshly printed dollars. Like that ever helped anything. Would you like a terrorist-repellent rock?

But we’re going to mouse and complain that the government wants to take away our liberty and little American flags. I’d be more concerned with ceding government power to corporations. Privatization doesn’t make things better, it just tacks on a profit “tax” to a social venture. Look at California… that shit is falling apart.

Not to worry. Your healthcare system will be following suit. Please try not to die on the sidewalk.

Warning: Political and healthcare-related opinions below, linked to various reputable sources.

Public Option, Single Payer, Medicare for All? The most contentious part of healthcare reform has been the concept of a government run health care plan. HR 676 refers to the idea of “Medicare for All”, extending our Medicare program for seniors to cover all Americans, effectively creating a single payer system in America. As expected, people who didn’t give a crap about running up deficits to blow holes in the sand halfway across the globe were outraged, *outraged* at the idea that we could possibly spend money on healthcare. So much, in fact, that they paraded around like morons, complaining about how large and awful government has gotten. (You know, after they didn’t say jack since the *last* Democrat was president.) A simple google search seems to show that the only places that are worried about Medicare deficits are right-wing thinktanks like the “Heritage Society” and Pravda-like news organizations like “Fox News”. Did I forget to mention that Kaiser and BCBS were up there as well? Trusting insurance companies to control costs in healthcare is like handing over a chicken farm to a drooling fox. No mention whatsoever that estimates of savings with single payer are in the hundreds of *billions* of dollars. And those estimates aren’t some cherry-picked thinktank garbage. It’s from the CBO. PNHP has a substantial list of studies which all seem to conclude that we’re flushing money into private insurance companies. Not to mention that 59% of doctors favor it.

Don’t let that fool you. The Insurance companies *love* this new bill. For all their hemming and hawing, the health insurance complex is almost giddy with this new bill, which would allow them to effectively dump the lowest income, highest risk people onto a publically subsidized but privately run healthcare system. All the profits, none of the risk. Sounds like Goldman Sachs 101 to me. In a related vein, one of the major reasons that the banking and financial industry has come out against HR 676 was that part of it . In case you didn’t see those numbers, those were a quarter to half of a percent. Twenty five to fifty cents from each hundred dollars.

“But the Free Market! Socialism! The Commies Are Coming!” Healthcare is an essential service in the same way that fire and police service is an essential service — serving everyone in the same capacity. We have created an artificial tier system valuing some peoples’ lives over others by allowing access to healthcare dependent on job and income level. We can blame Richard Nixon for the birth of the HMO, but we would have to thank FDR for valuing the idea of a public health plan. “Free markets” are also a really bankrupt idea, as every time we let the “market regulate itself” by deregulating, we end up with crap and more crap.

“Death Panels! Rationing!” If you believe either of those, you’re an idiot. I mean, really. Factcheck.org did an excellent job debunking the latest figures. (If you *still* believe that crap, go back to bitching about immigration. I’m sure *your* anscestors formed themselves out of ancient American clay, and had no need to come here.)

“Trillions! Trillions! Deficit! Deficit!” If you care that much, defund our wasteful military and use part of that for public works and the rest for tax refunds. In 2000, the Pentagon admitted they “lost” $2.3 trillion dollars. Almost 2 1/2 times the total cost for universal healthcare in the long haul. Even the Cato Institude reported this stuff, and those guys are right of the Pope.

Washington isn’t about to push any of this through, they’re too busy being bankrolled by the same fuckers who have us over a barrel. So, nothing is going to change. If the bill passes, we get some more efficiency and the insurance complex gets amazingly huge subsidies. If it fails, don’t worry, we’ll come up with something worse, while the rest of us are drowning in medical bills. HR 676 isn’t a panacea, and certainly doesn’t fix all of the problems in our system, but HR 3200 (or whatever it’s called now) is far worse. I’m almost at the point of hoping it fails miserably. Is something horrible with fringes of benefit better than nothing at all?

Sadly, I don’t think that any amount of reading is going to convince some people that the gub’mint isn’t going to take their freedoms and guns and bibles and heterosexuality in the interests of *gasp* treating their medical ailments.