AndrewEnsley.com

"Do Not Track" = "Do Not Think"

Andrew — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 04:54:02 +0000

Source: o5com on Flickr

There's a new bill on the horizon from California Democrat Jackie Speier.

The Do Not Track Me Online Act claims to be the "Do Not Call" Registry of the Internet.

Sounds like a great idea, right? Unfortunately, it sounds fantastic. I say "unfortunately," because the proposed bill is incredibly dangerous.

There are few ideas coming from California lately that have worried me like this, and that's saying a lot. All this bill does is show just how clueless lawmakers are about technology. The concept itself is fundamentally-flawed, completely impractical, and will almost certainly do more damage than good.

First of all, there's no mention in the bill of how exactly this would be accomplished. It's not nearly as simple as the "Do Not Call" registry. Everyone has a phone number that - for the most part - never changes. Not so on the Internet.

People are using a growing number of diverse devices to access the Internet: Desktops, Laptops, Netbooks, Tablets, Smartphones, Webphones, Game consoles, and even TVs; just to name a few.

Almost every device has several browsers available to them, and I'm not even going to get into the varied ways these devices connect to the Internet in the first place (Cable, DSL, Satellite, business networks, Wimax, Cellphone connections, etc.).

A "Do Not Track" option has been on the wishlist of privacy advocates like Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Digital Democracy for quite some time, and eight such organizations have announced their support. The FTC also indicated that it would back a "Do Not Track" option in December report.

~Mashable

This has all the stink of the gun control ideology (or should I say "idiology"? /stupid pun). "The solution to gun violence is more gun control laws." Nope. Sorry. Wrong. Tell that to the poor victims of the Fort Hood shooting, the Virginia Tech shooting, or any other school shooting you can think of. Those "safe zones" only prevented the victims from being able to protect themselves.

Now, of course this isn't the same thing. Stopping ad companies from tracking people isn't going to put anyone in mortal danger. It will, however, cripple productivity and the Internet economy as we know it.

Why? Who follows the laws? People who follow the laws. Who breaks the laws? People who break the laws. Read that again in case you missed it.

I can absolutely guarantee that whatever method used to implement this list would be easily detected and bypassed by Internet tracking companies. The only way it couldn't is if the country spent every last dime on this effort and didn't eat for five years.

So what will happen then? The law-abiding companies will obey, stop making money, and go under. The less-concerned-with-legality companies won't obey, and will make a killing because their services will be in much higher demand by the people who use tracking information.

How would this affect the rest of the world? Would ad companies in China, Russia, or any other country really be concerned with our laws on privacy? Probably not.

All this bill could possibly do is hurt U.S. companies who follow the rules and provide more incentive for others not to follow the rules. Internet advertising (especially targeted advertising) literally makes everything we take for granted on the Internet possible. Without the current infrastructure, the Internet as we know it, would not exist.

Plenty of (free) tools already exist that effectively protect privacy: TOR, Adblock, Noscript, etc. Heck, every major modern browser even has a privacy mode built right in (I would highly recommend TOR for anyone serious about protecting their privacy).

Want to help people protect their privacy? Raise *awareness* about those existing options.

But please, please, PLEASE don't create yet another inefficient, ineffective bureaucratic placebo that kills productivity and the economy of the Internet.

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Clamdscan in Ubuntu

Andrew — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 20:43:45 +0000

handbook

This is a just a quick post. I need an answer to this question on Ask Ubuntu (powered by the ever-helpful StackExchange community).

I've even offered a 50+ reputation bounty on it if you happen to be a member of that site. If anyone has any input, it would be greatly appreciated. I've also posted the same question on ubuntuforums.org with no luck so far.

I will accept any advice, but I need to scan whole directories recursively with clamdscan.

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What Thanksgiving Is All About

Andrew — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 17:25:57 +0000

privacy

"Prayer at Valley Forge" by Arnold Friberg

Today is an important day for our country. It is the national holiday of Thanksgiving, characterized by a parade, a huge turkey dinner, football, and a day of sale-fueled insanity to follow.

These days, so many people try to break us away from the distractions and tell us what Thanksgiving is all about. They say it's spending time with family, thanking the people around us, remembering how fortunate we are, etc. While these sentiments are all true in some respect, they miss the whole truth of why Thanksgiving was established in the first place.

Rather than trying to explain it, why not refer to the words of the man who declared it as a holiday in the first place?

That man was our first president, George Washington, and this is what he said:

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLIC THANKSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; ...

Source: Early America

You should also check out the image of the original document, "Thankfgiving" spelling and all.

So take a minute today to remember where we came from, what has happened before us, and most importantly, to pray and give thanks to God for this country and everything else with which He has blessed us.

After all, that is, in fact, what this holiday is all about.

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New WordPress Plugin: Youtube Feeder

Andrew — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 22:32:35 +0000

handbook

Inspired by my most recent post about embedding a Youtube feed with a shortcode, some features I wanted to add to it, and a certain amount of interest in expanding it, I have written my second WordPress plugin.

It's interesting that today is almost exactly 1 year from the date I released my first wordpress plugin (which I'll hopefully be updating soon).

Here's what the plugin does:

Youtube Feeder allows you to embed a dynamic Youtube video feed anywhere in your WordPress blog. The feed is always up to date because it pulls directly from Youtube's data api, but it can also cache the Youtube feed based on configurable settings.

The plugin is very flexible because every aspect is configurable. Each video feed can be configured separately, or you can use defaults that take effect site-wide. Each component is given highly accessible classes for complete customization of the display through CSS.

Head on over to the Youtube Feeder project page for more details!

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WordPress: Embed Youtube Feed With a Simple Shortcode

Andrew — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 02:20:15 +0000

privacy

UPDATE: Looking for more functionality and an easier installation method?

Check out my WordPress plugin: Youtube Feeder

It's based on this code and has a LOT more features

WordPress shortcodes are great. They let you perform complex operations or display dynamic content with just a tiny bit of text in any page or post.

I recently needed a way to embed the most recent videos from a Youtube channel (very dynamic information) in a WordPress page, so I decided to write a shortcode for it.

The code is actually pretty simple. Just add the following to your theme's functions.php file:

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function youtube_feed_shortcode($atts)
{
// Defaults:
extract(shortcode_atts(array(
'user' => 'flamadiddle86', // youtube user
'limit' => 5, // maximum number of videos
'height' => 385, // video height
'width' => 480 // video width
), $atts));
$data = @json_decode(file_get_contents('http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/'.$user.'/uploads?alt=json'), TRUE);
$counter = 0;
$content = '

';
foreach($data['feed']['entry'] as $vid)
{
$url = $vid['media$group']['media$content'][0]['url'];
$title = $vid['title']['$t'];
$ycontent = $vid['content']['$t'];
$content.= '.$width.'" height="'.$height.'">'.
'.$url.'">'.
''.
''.
'.$url.'" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="'.$width.'" height="'.$height.'">'.
'

'.$title.'

'.
'

'.$ycontent.'

'."\n";
$counter++;
if($counter == $limit)
{
break;
}
}
$content .= '

';
return $content;
}

add_shortcode('youtubefeed', 'youtube_feed_shortcode');

And it couldn't be easier to use. The videos you see below were embedded simply by putting this code in the post:

1	[youtubefeed]

Neytiri Attacks

Mia "Stay" -ing

We've only been teaching this trick for a couple days. She learns fast.

Mia playing tug of war

Mia, our 11-week-old weimaraner, playing tug of war with a friend's dog.

Mantis kung fu

rm -rf /*

I've always wanted to do this.

The shortcode is completely configurable. The following code would have resulted in the exact same output:

1	[youtubefeed user="flamadiddle86" limit="5" height="385" width="480"]

You can change any option as needed.

You might have noticed the code gives each element a particular class to make it CSS friendly. All you have to do is add CSS rules for three classes: .youtubefeed, .youtubetitle, and .youtubecontent.

My stylesheet looks like this:

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.youtubefeed {
margin: 10px;
text-align: center;
}

.youtubetitle {
font-size: 1.6em;
font-weight: bold;
margin: 3px;
}

.youtubecontent {
margin-bottom: 20px;
}

A quick note about requirements:

Your server's PHP configuration needs to have allow_url_fopen set to On.
You'll also need the PHP JSON extension

Most hosts meet those requirements.

So there you have it. It's a quick and dirty way to get functional, always up-to-date Youtube streams in your WordPress posts and pages.

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Recover WordPress from broken theme

Andrew — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:42:16 +0000

handbook

If you ever find yourself with a broken theme and can't even access the admin side of your wordpress blog, here's a quick way to get back on your feet.

Simply run the following query from the command line or via a tool like phpMyAdmin

UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = 'default'
WHERE option_name IN ('template','stylesheet','current_theme');

(Make sure to select your wordpress database first, of course)

Sure. Your site looks like it was just setup 2 seconds ago, but at least now you can access all the GUI-licious tools of the WordPress Admin panel to fix whatever broke your theme.

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PHP: Validate an IP Address

Andrew — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 05:14:47 +0000

privacy

So you need to check if some string is a valid IP address. You could simply test it against a regular expression:

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function is_valid_ipv4($ip)
{
return preg_match('/\b(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.'.
'(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.'.
'(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.'.
'(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\b/', $ip) !== 0;
}

Regular Expression obtained here

This will actually work for most situations, but it's lacking in a few ways. Suppose you want to exclude private or reserved IP addresses. Maybe you want to validate IPv6 addresses too; not just IPv4.

Enter PHP's Data Filtering Extension. It just works, and you don't have to worry about maintaining (or properly applying) complex regular expressions.

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function is_valid_ip($ip, $include_priv_res = true)
{
return $include_priv_res ?
filter_var($ip, FILTER_VALIDATE_IP) !== false :
filter_var($ip, FILTER_VALIDATE_IP, FILTER_FLAG_NO_PRIV_RANGE | FILTER_FLAG_NO_RES_RANGE) !== false;
}

Now to test it.

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$ips = array('72.215.140.69',
'192.168.0.1',
'127.0.0.1',
'10.0.0.1',
'255.255.255.0',
'andrewensley.com',
'255.255.256.0',
'::1',
'fe00::0',
'2001:4860:0:1001::68');

foreach($ips as $ip)
{
echo $ip,' ', is_valid_ip($ip, false) ? 'yes' : 'no','
';
}

The above will output:

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72.215.140.69 yes
192.168.0.1 no
127.0.0.1 yes
10.0.0.1 no
255.255.255.0 no
andrewensley.com no
255.255.256.0 no
::1 yes
fe00::0 yes
2001:4860:0:1001::68 yes

Thank you PHP for making this otherwise complex task very simple. And even better: it's fast!

I tested the regular expression and the filter_var functions by running each 100,000 times. Here are the timings for each test:

1.53423094749 seconds with the filter_var function
3.1516289711 seconds with the regular expression function

Not bad! Happy filtering.

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terms

Nancy Pelosi is a liar, and I can prove it (stop the health care bill)

Andrew — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:09:51 +0000

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has been at the center of this very heated controversy about health care. She has relentlessly pushed this legislation trying to "make history."

For those that don't know the history of this bill, I'll break it down for you:

November 7, 2009 - The House - under enormous pressure from Pelosi - passed The Affordable Health Care for America Act H.R. 3962
- This included the Stupak-Pitts amendment which enforced long-standing law banning federal funding of abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the life of the mother.
December 24, 2009 - The Senate passes their version of the bill - The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act H.R.3590
- This did not include the Nelson-Hatch amendment which contained the same language as the Stupak-Pitts amendment.
February 25, 2010 - President Obama holds his "Health Care Summit" in which nothing is really accomplished. Well... almost. More on that later.
The current strategy is to pass the Senate version of the bill through the House, which is supposed to happen in a vote on March 18, 2010

Nancy Pelosi is - of course - putting huge pressure on pro-life Democrats that voted for the Stupak-Pitts amendment to now support the Senate bill without the anti-abortion language included.

Now it starts to get ridiculous. The one thing that was accomplished at the Health Care Summit? The country got to see first-hand just how corruptly this entire proceeding has been handled.

At the Health Care Summit, Pelosi had this to say:

Ms. Pelosi, have you read this bill you're trying so hard to pass?

The current health care reform proposal:

Includes government funding of abortion
Imposes a brand-new "abortion fee" on taxpayers
Directs $11 BILLION in new funding to groups like Planned Parenthood — the nation’s largest abortion chain that took in over $349,000,000 in tax funding last year while aborting 305,310 babies
Would result in the largest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade

The Family Research Council does a great job of breaking down even further exactly how this bill provides federal funding of abortion:

Eight Reasons Abortion Is in the Health Care Overhaul

1. The legislation specifically includes it. The President’s bill to amend the Senate bill leaves several abortion provisions in place. In Section 1303 it allows tax credit subsidies for plans that include abortion and leaves the abortion surcharge in place. It maintains the proposal to create a multi-state plan that includes abortion in Sec. 1334. Even worse, it would increase the Senate bill funding from $7 billion to $11 billion for community health centers in Sec. 10503 without any abortion funding restrictions. (H.R. 3590, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.)

2. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has said it is. “And I would say that the Senate language, which was negotiated by Senators Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray, who are very strong defenders of women’s health services and choices for women, take a big step forward from where the House left it with the Stupak amendment, and I think do a good job making sure there are choices for women. . .That would be an accounting procedure, but everybody in the exchange would do the same thing, whether you’re male or female, whether you’re 75 or 25, you would all set aside a portion of your premium that would go into a fund.” (Sebelius: Everyone will pay into abortion-coverage fund.)

3. Senate Democrats refused to ban it. Instead of allowing for an up or down vote on a Senate amendment similar to the Stupak Amendment in the House which bans federal funding of abortion, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) “tabled” the amendment, effectively killing it. This was the only amendment dealt with in this way. (Vote No. 369 S.Amdt. 2962 to S.Amdt. 2786 to H.R. 3590)

4. House Pro-life Democrats, who support a government takeover, say it is. “The Senate language is a significant departure from current law and is unacceptable.” (House Representative Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), February 23, 2010, CBS News)… “I think abortion’s wrong. The problem is that I’ve lived too long. When they say they can keep this money separate, I just don’t believe it.” (House Representative Marion Berry (D-Ark.), March 6, 2010, Arkansas News.)

5. House Pro-abortion Democrats say it is. “The good news is that the Senate bill does allow [abortion coverage],” (Chairwoman of the House pro-abortion caucus, Dianne DeGette (D-Colo.), March 5, 2010, Washington Post.

6. The Abortion industry has sent out alerts in favor of it. The abortion giant Planned Parenthood sent out alerts on March 6, 2010: “President Obama’s health care reform proposal would make a real difference for the women and families who rely on Planned Parenthood. . . . and [the bill] significantly increase access to reproductive health care.” (Planned Parenthood alert, March 6, 2010.)

7. Candidate Obama said it would be included, and the Obama administration includes it in its definition of reproductive health care. Presidential candidate Barack Obama stated he “believes that reproductive health care is basic health care.” (Rhealitycheck.org questionnaire, 2008.) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed up on this in 2009: “Reproductive health care includes access to abortion.” (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, April 22, House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing)

8. House Democratic Majority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has indicated he wants to “fix” the abortion coverage problem in the Senate bill. “House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Thursday that lawmakers could draft separate pieces of legislation with abortion language to earn the support of anti-abortion rights Democrats on healthcare reform legislation.” (March 4, 2010, The Hill)

For more resources in the health care debate, check out FRC Action’s resource page: “Standing Against the Government Takeover of Health Care.” Also check out why the Hyde Amendment does not apply to the current bill by reading “Q and A: Government Health Care and Abortion.”

Considering all of that, Pelosi is either a liar or completely incompetent.

Neither is acceptable.

At the very least, even those who support abortion should be concerned about such a blatant lie from one of the largest supporters of this bill about the most controversial issue in it!

We need to stop this bill now, before it's too late.

Contact your Senators

Contact your Representative

Tell them we don't want this bill! And hurry! We only have until March 18th to make our voices heard.

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Senator Nelson Responds to Health Care Concerns

Andrew — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:47:20 +0000

terms

Senator Nelson (D-FL) has finally responded to my e-mail about his vote on the Nelson-Hatch-Casey Amendment.

Since this is an open letter, I'm copying his entire response below (minus the "don't reply to this e-mail, etc." message).

From: Bill@billnelson.senate.gov
To: Andrew Ensley
Sent: Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 8:49 AM
Subject: RE: Your response from Senator Bill Nelson

Dear Mr. Ensley:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the health care reform process as it relates to abortion.

On December 8, I voted against Senator Ben Nelson's amendment to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that would have imposed further restrictions on abortion, making it virtually impossible for a woman to purchase an insurance policy that covers abortion, even if she pays entirely with her own money. The health care bill now under consideration in the Senate follows the precedent set by the Hyde Amendment, that no Federal funds shall be used to provide abortions except in the case of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother. This compromise has been the law of the land since 1976, and I see no need to make any changes to this policy as a part of health care reform.

I believe in a woman's constitutional right to choose and in reducing the number of abortions in America by encouraging adoption. The Senate bill represents a reasonable compromise, crafted in good faith by both sides. As the bill makes its way through the legislative process, I will keep your views in mind.

Sincerely,
Senator Bill Nelson

Today, I sent my reply.

Senator Nelson,

I have received your response to my initial e-mail, and I am again disappointed by your point of view on the subject of the Nelson-Hatch-Casey amendment.

There are two possibilities here:

You have fallen for the rhetoric that your fellow Democrats have been spouting, in which case you have failed to understand legislation fully before voting on it. Or...

You are part of the rhetoric and willfully misleading others.

Which is it, Senator?

Rep. Capps herself admits that she is against the Hyde amendment (here in the second paragraph), and her voting record has always supported the expansion of abortion in every way. How are people to believe, then, that she would be at the forefront in implementing the very language she is against without altering it in even the smallest regard to favor her point of view? You insult my intelligence again, sir.

The Stupak amendment was overwhelmingly supported in the House (240 to 194), and all the Nelson amendment did was apply the same language to the senate bill.

Again, you have failed to represent the wishes of the majority, and - worse - you are lying to the general public (whether it's intentional or not).

Please listen to reason. Please do not support Senator Reid's health care bill. It is a terrible bill in many ways, but the most important issues are the respect for and defense of life. This bill does neither.

Sincerely,

Andrew Ensley

If you would also like to tell him how you feel,

Contact him by e-mail
Contact him by phone: (202) 224-5274

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international

Sen. Bill Nelson did NOT represent us today

Andrew — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:26:10 +0000

Some of you may know already that today, the Nelson-Hatch-Casey Amendment (which bans federal funding of abortion in the new health care bill) was tabled and thus defeated by a vote of 54 to 45.

You may also know that our distinguished senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) was one of those 54.

He has not responded to my first e-mail yet, but I sent him another one to let him know what I think of his actions today.

I would encourage you to contact him by e-mail and do the same.

Mr. Nelson,

I am extremely disappointed in your action today as you voted to table the Nelson-Hatch-Casey Amendment. I am dumbfounded by your inability to represent your constituents.

Why did you choose not to stand up for life? Why did you choose to ignore the wishes of the majority? You were not elected to do whatever you want, sir. You were elected to represent the views of the citizens of Florida.

If Sen. Reid's health care bill passes with the CAPPS language as it is now, I will do everything in my power to show fellow voters in Florida how you were directly responsible.

Please, stop ignoring the citizens. Do not vote for this health care reform bill. Do not vote for the 2000-page bill that will cost our weakened economy over 1 TRILLION dollars and 5.5 MILLION jobs. I'm not stupid. I know that this bill WILL increase taxes and premiums and cut benefits for everyone.

Health care reform is needed. But this bill is wrong in every way.

Thank you for your time,

Andrew Ensley

It was difficult to be this polite.

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