I’m loving: Chuck, Pushing Daisies
I’m liking: Journeyman
Pretty disappointed with: Reaper, Bionic Woman
So over: Life, Kid Nation
Might take a look at: Dirty Sexy Money

When it comes to Cambridge city politics, I’m just your average uninformed citizen. I’m new to the area and just not incredibly interested in the local political scene. And so I’m the sort of person that people like me decry in national elections for making bad choices based solely on misleading campaign ads and biased press coverage.

But sometimes things hit a little too close to home, and you find yourself becoming That Guy.

There have been reports in recent months of increased crime in the seedier part of North Cambridge near Alewife station. Armed robberies, assault, even gun shots. And then two weeks ago at around midnight we heard five shots across the tracks at the Peabody School. A couple minutes later police cars were combing the area, zooming back and forth on Pemberton St., just 500 feet from the kitchen window.

When there are gunshots in your neighborhood, when violence and crime is increasing, you want immediate and decisive action. You start to ask questions like, would more CCTV cameras around Alewife cut down on crime there? Do we need more police patrols? How about random ID checks? Stricter gun control laws? Some sort of a buffer zone around the school? A curfew?

I’m not really wondering those things, not seriously. Well, except perhaps the first one. But if things got worse, don’t you think people would? Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you demand action? Some sort of change? When people feel powerless to control their own fates, they need something, even if it is a placebo, in which they can take comfort and feel safe. Some sort of action must be taken, some concrete step, some forward momentum. If we’re lucky, the action chosen might even make things better.

In my little laughably partisan local newspaper today is an ad by one Gregg Moree, candidate for Cambridge City Council. He writes that:

Most of us are tired of meetings and excuses. On the City Council, I will demand action. We need more police patrols and more police cooperation with the residents to solve crimes and enforce the law.

I don’t know anything about Gregg, except that he has a three-“g” first name. I don’t know anything about his opponents or about the current councilor. I don’t know what steps have been taken to prevent and contain street crime, and I don’t know what steps are in the works. All I know is that Gregg, who lives down the street, who has a picture in the paper with him standing in the underpass I walked through yesterday, the underpass by the gun fire, says he will take this issue seriously and he will make change.

We always have imperfect information. My choice at the poll next month is between Gregg and anyone else. I don’t know anything about anyone except that Gregg says he’s going to do something about the street crime. So really, armed with that information, why wouldn’t I vote for Gregg?

Wouldn’t it make sense for Bank of America to alert you *before* it attempts to pay a big e-bill that you don’t have sufficient funds to cover it? Oh wait, no, it makes more sense to try and pay it anyway, and then ding you with a $20 fee. My mistake, clearly I misunderstand customer service.

I had a dream I met a girl in a dying world. It was an amazing place. Good and evil, light and dark, a place where you could solve riddles and magic would result, where you could defeat the evil with cunning and skill, a carnival world that strayed to the edge of madness, teetered there at the abyss, but then pulled back. Surrounded by friends, I soldiered on in a great quest, but a tiny one, discovered a deep truth, but not one that tore the world apart. There was dénouement and catharsis, everyone lived, hugs all around. We promised to write, we broke apart, and with that I was pulled out, the sun called to me, and I awoke.

It was perfect. But quickly, nearly instantly, the memory of the thing faded to mere fancy. Still, a URL burned in my mind. I won’t say what it was, it’s too embarrassing. A URL and a beautiful but indistinct face, a blog that I was to “check out and comment on.” What else could I do? I typed it into my web browser, in some desperate hope that I would find some connection to that nether world, that somehow the strange facts of the night could actually exist in this world.

It turns out wanting something doesn’t make it real.

The above is true, but with apologies to Randall Munroe. (See also.)

This morning I went for a bike ride along the Minuteman trail. My intent was to check out the part near me that I didn’t know existed, instead I would up going all the way to the end. A few miles in I came upon a girl who was going at my same pace, and I ended up following her all the way out to Bedford. I stopped for a drink of water and then turned around, only to find that she had just started back as well. The path was beautiful: amazing foliage and great weather and light traffic (at least at the beginning). I just sort of kept going, with the mysterious rider ahead of me urging me on, going the perfect speed, passing all the slow pokes and joggers and people with their kids, until a few miles from the end I stopped at Trader Joe’s for some groceries and she kept riding, disappearing into the distance.

The ride felt easy, but I guess by the end I was more tired than I realized, because a quarter mile from home I ran into a railing and fell over, which was pretty embarrassing, and then a few hours after I got back I fell asleep. Still, 20 miles and no aches or pains (besides where I hit the ground), so I guess I must be getting into better shape after all.

Photo by presta

Slashdot has an article on “when not to use chroot” which links to a KernelTrap discussion. The basic summary is, there is a UNIX command that lets you change the root (top level) directory to somewhere else, and it is effective for several sysadmin tasks, including “jailing” programs by making sure they can’t see anything other than the files necessary for them to run.

I’ve used chroots several times to fix systems with bad kernels. I’ve used chroots to compile Debian software. I’ve used them to bootstrap system installs. And I’ve used them, in fact continue to use them, even as we speak, for security. And I like to think that I’m not incompetent.

In any endeavor there are people with different levels of skill. I know that I’m not on top in terms of Linux expertise — there are people who were doing Linux before I even had a computer. But I do cringe when I see this sort of ridiculous blanket criticism of a commonly used implementation of a versatile tool. So Bill Joy invented chroots in the 70s because he was having problems with some compiler. Who cares. Today many important programs use or support chroots for improved security, and they do it because it works. So why the need to call people who use tools in effective ways idiots, just because they aren’t using something as it was originally intended?

That sounds like the sort of thing an Apple CEO should say, not an open-source kernel hacker. It’s sort of sad, really. Meanwhile, a have two dozen Apaches humming away, safely jailed in their own chroots, serving up web pages as they have been doing for the last year and a half.