I saw the most extraordinary thing yesterday during lunch. It was a CNN piece on a Libyan man who was fighting against Ghaddafi’s forces. He and his friends were trying to get into some government barracks and he realized they had no chance. So he, a humble oil worker, husband, and father, loaded his car up with a…
Archives for March 2011
How to Connect to an Astaro SSL VPN using OS X
I’ve been stupid for Astaro since the early 00’s and I remain so today. Today I run it in a virtual machine on an ESXi server instead of on a dedicated box, but it remains my favorite firewall of all time. Checkpoint comes close, but doesn’t quite make it. Anyway, here’s how to use your Mac to connect…
Programming: Decompiler vs. Disassembler
Many are confused by the terms decompiler and disassembler. As with most confusion of this type, most just use the words interchangeably. Don’t do that; they are not the same. A decompiler takes one from a binary to source code–or something similarly high-level that can easily be read by humans. A disassembler takes one from binary to assembler–which…
Our Position on Free Will Shapes Our Politics
Many believe the discussion of free will is pointless. This is usually because one believes it’s been settled (for the religious who believe God gave it to us) or because one believes it doesn’t matter (for the secular types who believe there is no practical benefit to having the discussion). I will attempt to convince the second group…
Bypassing a Web Proxy Using Chrome on OS X
It’s highly annoying when you are trying to read or download something at a client site only to be denied by their proxy. Luckily there’s a way around it that normally works, and here’s how to set it up in OS X or Linux. 1 Basically, you’re setting up an SSH tunnel between you and your own SSH…