peachuk

Current Mood: surprised

Tags: economics, politics, war

• Microsoft's revenues during Q1 2007 were reported to be much higher than in previous quarters.

• The already publicized reason - it is not known whether those licenses represent PCs and laptops already sold to the public, or still in warehouses.
• How many developers received licenses as part of their MSDN subscriptions?
• How many licenses were disbursed at no extra cost to those, who paid for Software Assurance during the last few years?

Tags: business, software

Current Mood: productive
Tags: accessibility, deafness

Current Mood: accomplished
Tags: legal, software

1. Tell you why I befriended you.
2. Associate you with a song/movie.
3. Tell a random fact about you.
4. Tell my first memory of you.
5. Associate you with an animal/fruit.
6. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
7. In return, you MUST spread this disease in your lj.

moshez

Tags: curiosity, memes, trivia

Current Mood: surprised

Rabbi Eliashiv, an Haredi rabbi, issued a ruling forbidding schools under his control to admit children, whose parents are using non-"kosher" cellphones (cellphones with intact ability to use SMS, Internet and video).

This ruling adversely affects deaf people, who need to be in contact those parents due to reasons like:

1. They work with those parents and need to communicate them as part of their job.
2. They themselves are deaf children of those parents.

It is necessary to take legal action, with the aim of outlawing cellphones without functional SMS, and outlawing discrimination against deaf parents of haredi school children, who use video for Sign Language communication via 3G cellphones.

Sources (in Hebrew for the time being):

• http://news.walla.co.il/?w=/1/1051758
• http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtPE.jhtml?itemNo=821530&contrassID=2&subContrassID=21&sbSubContrassID=0

Current Mood: angry
Tags: accessibility, deafness, legal, war

Current Mood: angry
Tags: accessibility, deafness, legal, politics, war

shlomif

Tags: accessibility, crazy ideas

The cause was that my ADSL connection got stuck due to sudden disconnection.
The problem was solved by resetting the ADSL connection from Bezeq's side.

For future reference, I am writing some information which I collected during the process.

I use the following script to connect to ADSL:

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# Supports hidden pap-secrets and chap-secrets files.
#
# Copyright (C) 2004 by Omer Zak, all rights reserved.
# Licensed under the GPL (version 2 or later).
#

($prog = $0) =~ s/.*\///;
$usage = <<EOT;
Usage: $prog [ start | stop ]
  OPTIONS:
    start - Starts the connection
    stop - Stops it
    !!! implement also clean - to clean if the script
    !!! was aborted and did not clean up its act
EOT

######### Parameters ################################################
## 1. Hardwired parameters needed for both adsl.pl start and adsl.pl stop
$ramdisk = "/dev/ram2";
$ramdisk_mountpoint = "/tmp/ram_adsl";
$ramdisk_log = "/tmp/ramdisk_log$$";   # For messages created by RAMdisk related commands
$pap_secrets = "$ramdisk_mountpoint/alternate-pap-secrets";
$chap_secrets = "$ramdisk_mountpoint/alternate-chap-secrets";
$fw_adsl = "fw-adsl.sh";
## 2. User configurable parameters
$username = "your-username";
$ispname = "your-ISP";  # iactcom, to connect to Actcom
$debug = 0;
######### End of Parameters #########################################

######### Prepare RAMdisk for the secrets files #####################
sub prepare_ramdisk {
    $old_umask = umask(0177);
    $rc = system("dd if=/dev/zero of=$ramdisk bs=1k count=256 >& $ramdisk_log");    # RAMdisk size = 256K
    die "RAMdisk clear operation failed!\n" unless (($rc/256) == 0);
    $rc = system("/sbin/mke2fs -vm0 $ramdisk 256 >> $ramdisk_log 2>&1");
    die "Filesystem construction in RAMdisk failed!\n" unless (($rc/256) == 0);
    die "Could not make RAMdisk mountpoint!\n" unless mkdir($ramdisk_mountpoint,0600);
    $rc = system("mount $ramdisk $ramdisk_mountpoint");
    die "Attempt to mount the RAMdisk failed!\n" unless (($rc/256) == 0);
    umask($old_umask);
}
######### End of RAMdisk preparation ################################

######### Create a secrets file in RAMdisk ##########################
sub write_secrets_file {
    local($secret_type,$ramdisk_filename,$psw) = @_;
    # $secret_type is either "pap" or "chap"
    # $ramdisk_filename is the actual RAMdisk filename to which we
    #      establish a symbolic link.
    # $psw is the password which we do not want to actually save on disk.

    $old_umask = umask(0177);

    # Replace /etc/ppp/$secret_type-secrets (if any) by link into the RAMdisk.
    if (-e "/etc/ppp/$secret_type-secrets")
    {
	die "Could not rename existing /etc/ppp/$secret_type-secrets!\n" unless rename("/etc/ppp/$secret_type-secrets","/etc/ppp/$secret_type-secrets.old.$$");
	print "Existing /etc/ppp/$secret_type-secrets was renamed as /etc/ppp/$secret_type-secrets.old.$$\n";
    }
    die "Could not set up symbolic link at /etc/ppp/$secret_type-secrets!\n" unless symlink($ramdisk_filename,"/etc/ppp/$secret_type-secrets");

    ######### Write secrets file ########################################

    die "Failed to open the alternate $secret_type secrets file!\n" unless open(SECRETS,">$ramdisk_filename");
    print SECRETS "\"$username\@$ispname\" \"10.0.0.138 RELAY_PPP1\" $psw\n";
    die "Failed to close the alternate $secret_type secrets file!\n" unless close(SECRETS);
    umask($old_umask);
}
###### End of procedure for creation of a RAMdisk secrets file ######


unless ($ARGV[0]) {
    die $usage;
}
if ($ARGV[0] =~ /^start/) {
    $start = 1;
}
elsif ($ARGV[0] =~ /^stop/) {
    $stop = 1;
}
elsif ($ARGV[0] =~ /^clean/) {
    die "The clean option is not implemented yet.\n"
}
else {
        die $usage;
}


if ($start) {

    ##### Validate ##################################################
    $who = `whoami`;
    die "Only the superuser is permitted to run this script!\n" unless ($who eq "root\n");

    ##### Obtain user's password ####################################
    if (-t STDIN) {
	system 'stty', '-echo';
    }
    $| = 1;   # Unbuffer STDOUT
    print "Password: ";
    chop($password = );
    print "\n";
    if (-t STDIN) {
	system 'stty', 'echo';
    }
    # NOTE:  !!! The above is not protected against signals.
    #        !!! Aborting the script file at this point will
    #        !!! cause the terminal to enter Helen Keller mode.

    ##### Debian Addition:  need to create /dev/ppp if nonexistent ##
    if (!-e "/dev/ppp") {
	print "/dev/ppp does not exist, creating it.\n";
	$rc = system("mknod /dev/ppp c 108 0");
	die "Attempt to create /dev/ppp failed!\n" unless (($rc/256) == 0);
    }
    else {
	die "/dev/ppp is not a character special file!\n" unless(-c "/dev/ppp");
    }

    ##### Prepare RAM disk and links ################################
    prepare_ramdisk();

    # Replace /etc/ppp/pap-secrets (if any) by link into the RAMdisk.
    write_secrets_file("pap",$pap_secrets,$password);
    # Replace /etc/ppp/chap-secrets (if any) by link into the RAMdisk.
    write_secrets_file("chap",$chap_secrets,$password);

    # Now can start the ADSL connection.
    print "Calling Actcom via ADSL...\n";
    system("/usr/sbin/pptp 10.0.0.138 --quirks=BEZEQ_ISRAEL debug user $username\@$ispname remotename \"10.0.0.138 RELAY_PPP1\" defaultroute mtu 1452 mru 1452 noauth &");
    sleep 5;  # Should wait until a connection is really established.
    system($fw_adsl);
}

if ($stop) {

    print "Disconnecting from Actcom...\n";
    system("/sbin/ifconfig ppp0 down");
    system("killall pppd");
    sleep 2;
    print "Restoring regular iptables settings...\n";
    system("/etc/rc.d/init.d/iptables restart");

    # Now wipe out the PAP secrets and chat script files and do
    # other cleanup activities.
    die "Could not remove the symbolic link at /etc/ppp/pap-secrets!\n" unless unlink("/etc/ppp/pap-secrets");
    die "Could not remove the symbolic link at /etc/ppp/chap-secrets!\n" unless unlink("/etc/ppp/chap-secrets");
    $rc = system("umount $ramdisk_mountpoint");
    die "Attempt to unmount the RAMdisk failed!\n" unless (($rc/256) == 0);
    die "Could not remove RAMdisk mountpoint!\n" unless rmdir($ramdisk_mountpoint);
    $rc = system("dd if=/dev/zero of=$ramdisk bs=1k count=256 >> $ramdisk_log 2>&1");    # RAMdisk size = 256K
    die "RAMdisk wipe operation failed!\n" unless (($rc/256) == 0);
    #### End of hidden pap-secrets support ##############################
}

######## Hidden pap-secrets file support code ###########################
if ($debug <= 0)
{
    die "Could not remove $ramdisk_log!\n" unless unlink($ramdisk_log);
}
######## End of hidden pap-secrets support ##############################


# End of adsl.pl perl script.

(The above script calls another script - fw-adsl.sh - to configure the firewall. This script is not reproduced here.)

When my ADSL connection was stuck, pppd yielded the following error-message:

[pppd] LCP: timeout sending Config-Requests_

I took the following steps:

1. Turned off and back on the ADSL modem.
2. Ensured that the two rightmost lights in the modem are green and light steadily. Other lights blinked when there were connection attempts.
3. Pinging the ADSL modem itself worked.
4. Bezeq provides a special username for testing - 1@1, with empty password. If you can connect to this special username, but not to your ISP then the problem is with your ISP's infrastructure. I could not connect to 1@1, proving that the problem was with Bezeq's infrastructure.
5. Since Bezeq does not support Linux, they need the user to connect a MS-Windows PC to ADSL and try to connect via it, and to note the error message given by MS-Windows! Since I do not have such a machine at home, I was stuck.
6. I turned to a friend who might have such a laptop. He did not have a laptop, but told me his war story and advised me to ask Bezeq to reset my ADSL connection from their side. This advice worked!

Moral: we need a table relating pptp/pppd error messages to MS-Windows error codes, which Bezeq support personnel know.

The following FAX numbers are relevant to the problem resolution efforts:

• Actcom - FAX 04-8676116 - active both during daytime and at night, but support personnel must be notified some other way to look at the FAX machine.
• Bezeq Internet support center - FAX 03-6829048 - not clear if they answer FAX messages also at night and during weekend, because I contacted them also by alternative means (an hearing person making a phone call in my behalf).

Current Mood: relieved
Tags: accessibility

• The bastards stole my car shortly before it was going to need overhaul!
• My car succumbed to the charms of a car thief and eloped with him.
• My car has been organlegged (inspired by Larry Niven).
• I suspect that my car was enlisted to assist in a bank robbery.
• My car was sold, in exchange for $0 and notification of the police, to a car thief.
• The powers from the Guild of Car Thieves decided for me that it is the time to explore the antics of public transportation and my friends' cars, as a passenger.

Current Mood: stressed
Tags: crazy ideas, memes

Current Mood: busy
Tags: crazy ideas, memes, trivia

Current Mood: amused
Tags: crazy ideas, sinning

Current Mood: amused
Tags: crazy ideas, memes, trivia

• I saw nowhere any mention of the fact that when the Neturei Karta accuse the Zionists of causing the Holocaust, they imply that the Holocaust did happen.
• The story about Iranian attitudes during the Holocaust is not given wide publicity either. Those were different times altogether.
• Nor are the stories of the "Tehran Children" being publicized. They were Jewish children, who were sent to Tehran to be rescued from the Nazis. They lived there during the World War II and eventually immigrating to Israel.

Tags: politics

1. Factors affecting formation, destruction and strength of synapses connecting two neurons to each other (see also: Hebbian learning).
2. Growth of axons and dendrites - where do they prefer to grow?
3. Initial wiring in a fetus' brain.
4. Existence and effect of any chemical means for non-local communication between neurons.
5. How are new neurons created and how do they integrate into the existing network?

Tags: crazy ideas, curiosity

Tags: crazy ideas, economics, politics

• Itzhak Rabin's Funeral Broadcast was not Accessible to the Deaf
• Accessibility of Itzhak rabin's Memorial Event at Nov. 12^th, 2005

Current Mood: cynical
Tags: accessibility, deafness, politics