MichaelCrawford

It is easy now to explain but not always easy to reach my reader. I often dont make sense to others even with my technical writing. I regard that as my own fault and so feel it is beholden upon me to find a way to enable others to understand either by editing my work or by writing new material.

I once struggled to paas, that is to pass as that which I am not, but I decided to go public in part because working as a coder contributed to my recovery:

Programming and Madness

http://www.warplife.com/mdc/essays/mental-illness/programmin...

... and in part because It is important that others understand that reality is not as concrete as it at first appears. There are many ways to induce delusion in the minds of even completely sane, rational people; I published my first web page about my manic depression in respnse to the 1997 Heaven's Gate UFO cult mass suicide in 1997. The following is version 2.0:

http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/schizoaffective-disorder/r...

While informed by my studies of anthropology, psychology and social psychology it also draws on my own experience with cults. The world recoiled in horror in 1997 because Heavens Gate made no sense, while I recoiled in horror because it made quite a lot of sense to me.

Perhaps I could make more sense to you by pointing out that I was diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in 2004. My OCD was plainly apparent to everyone long before that but in 2004 I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist.

OCD is driven by anxiety; carrying out one's compulsive activities eases one's anxiety but does not eliminate it as that anxiety arises for reasons unrelated to one's compulsive behavior.

Other OCD people do stuff like straighten the fringes on their rugs or clean dirt that others cannot see.

I write.

That does have the benefit that it helps with my consultancy websites SEO and at times I can earn some coin from AdSense but it does have the disadvantage that everyone around me goes absolutely bananas if they try to read even a little bit of what I write.

I understand all too well that my writing makes me intolerable to many of those that I know in real life. Bonita compared my getting an idea for a new article or essay to an alcholic proudly announced he had scored a bottle of liquor.

I am able to learn a few things from my time with Bonita, maybe I can do better with some other lover someday.

Most of those who know me really well agree that were I not Schizoaffective I would be a tenured professor by now. We will never know but maybe I would be well on the way to that Physics Nobel I always coveted.

"Coveted" is the just the right word.

I would still be down with that but these days the Nobel I covet is Literature.

But Life is what happens when you're making other plans.

No worries.

The OP requested an explanation so I provided one, however I readily agree that what he requested is not what HN is for.

I can post this stuff at my own website if it comes up again in the future.

My mail is mdcrawford@gmail.com if you have any other concerns to bring up.

Back in the day one of JFK's more-insightful aids was pictured in Time (or maybe Life) magazine while holding a handbag that contained a document whose "TOP SECRET ULTRA" stamp was clearly visible.

The United States Congress swiftly outlawed the expression "TOP SECRET ULTRA" then replaced it with something but I will never know because that classification is itself TOP SECRET something-or-other.

After the dust settled from the document-stamping party the Director of the NSA dropped a dime to JFK's insightful aid to thank him for setting The American Taxpayer back a quarter-million dollars.

New rubber stamps, see.

Just now I looked up the United States Marine Corps Forces Cyber Command only to find that it's know known as the United States Marine Core Forces Cyberspace. Each branch seems to have its own take on how to take on America's enemies by dropping too many documents on Mom's iMac thereby running it completely out of "gigabytes".

Mom and I failed to have a meeting of the minds until she came up with "gigabytes". It is of no use to point out that she really means "storage" so I just say "gigabytes" when I talk shop with my mother.

Doubtlessly widespread unemployment would result in the Congressional Districts where rubber stamp factories may be found were our Joint Forces not to adopt new names every time three sane men simultaneously saw the very first crescent moon after the new moon.

Do Marines serve aboard Naval vessels?

I do understand that the Marine Corps was created because the Navy wasn't having a whole lot of luck with attacking the Barbary Pirates on land, so the Navy delivered the Marines to Tunisia or Morocco or what have you then the Marines dealt with the pirates after going ashore in a Ground Effect Vehicle.

I have only been aboard just one of my father's boats, the USS Springfield in Gaeta, Italy in 1970 and '71. I clearly remember this huge battleship but when I visited in 1997 what I expect was the same kind of ship looked more like a canoe.

I think the Springfield was either a Light Cruiser or a Missile Cruiser but Dad never made a whole lot of sense when he tried to explain things verbally.

Anyway I don't recall ever seeing any Marines there in Gaeta.

I do understand that in These Modern Times the United States Marine Corps jets around aboard Virgin Air.

"Hey Dad, why is the flag at half mast?"

"I dunno. Some Marine Corps General died."

My high school newspaper was named "The Joint Union" after the "Armijo Joint Union High School District".

When one rolled a copy up a certain way, one got a long, narrow, cylindrical paper object that said "Joint" along its length.

Your Wish Is My Command:

   I State This That It May Be Rejected:
   The Lysistrata Manifesto
   http://www.warplife.com/manifestos/lysistrata/

tl;dr: I shall withhold sex until the computer industry fixes its product defects.

I applied for the US Air Force Cyber Command in 2008. While there is no way I could get a clearance I hoped to work in a purely defensive position.

At the time every branch of the military wanted its own computer security force; eventually they were unified under the Joint Forces Cyber Command, which is under the Stategic Command (STRATCOM); the Strategic Command is the joint successor to the Strategic Air Command.

(The military is heavily into the word "Joint". I cannot possibly speculate as to why.)

Each branch has its own force, MARFORCYBER for the Marines and so on.

They are all based in Ft. Meade however Ft. Meade really isn't that big. I expect they just use Ft. Meade to receive snail mail, but if you look up its Zip Code at http://www.usps.com/ in bright red text the resulting page says "The Postal Service does not deliver mail to Ft. Meade" but then provides the Zip Code.

(At least it did last time I checked.)

Also at Ft. Meade and open to the public is the National Cryptological Museum. You can see stuff like a U-2 and a real Enigma machine there.

You can apply to work for These United States at http://www.usajobs.gov/

I watched some recruiting videos when I applied to the USAF Cyber Command; one of pointed out that cell phones are not permitted in secure areas because they have a maintenance mode that enables The Phone Company to listen in without your knowledge. Have A Nice Day.

But not by many of the countries we actually trade with. :-D

I think the NSA is also behind the EDP Audit, Control and Security Newsletter. I was once invited to contribute a paper but had to cancel because I get a little loopy sometimes.

There is the CIA World Fact Book. The CIA also has an online library that I haven't really looked into other than that someone posted a link to some advice for intelligence analysts, on the general topic of avoiding personal bias.

entertainmentliason@ucia.gov will send you real spy stories that you may Feed The Monster, that is, write movie or TV scripts.

Both the CIA and NSA have "For Kids" sections for those of our younguns who want to grow up to be spies.

One of my very best friends is an FBI agent. A former girlfriend endangered national security by listing her work address on our alumni website; she's heavily into math and there aren't many reasons one receives mail at Ft. Meade. That's what post office boxen are for.

My second cousin Glenn Thobe speaks better Russian than Vladimir Lenin. Because he had "some connections in the State Department" he was permitted an unescorted five-month visit to the Soviet Union at a time when the Commies feared the Free World far, far more than we feared them - and for good reason.

Glenn is a soft-spoken, quiet, good-looking guy, he was young at the time so I expect the Soviet chicks were hurling themselves at him like beached whales.

He is also a physicist and an electrical engineer. If you want to win a Cold War when it suddenly grows Hot, you want lots of Physicists and Electrical Engineer but then Uncle Sam launches an Intercontinental Ballistic Vegetarian who doesn't even have a driver's license because he prefers public transport.

No it's not.

RAID HBAs are commonly used by banks.

My apologies, I will edit to make my point clear.

A common application of RAID is fault-tolerant storage.

If one does not test one's product in the same configuration as used by one's customers, one's customers may find a failure mode that one's tests are incapable of finding. In AMCC's case I was concerned about the Special Magic that Apple used to convert 64-bit system calls to 32-bit.

The opinion of the engineer who originally wrote the driver I maintained was that a 32-bit tool was sufficient to test a 32-bit driver.

My opinion is that a 64-bit tool was required to test Apple's Special Magic. I have found and reported numerous bugs in Apple's kernels, all but two were promptly fixed.

I struggled to convince Apple to fix the other two, but was refused. One was fixed a year later after someone else reported it, the other is a spectacular zero-day that I could exploit in a heartbeat but I won't tell you what it is not so much because Apple refuses to fix it but because the fix would break a lot of existing code.

In 1990 I was testing MacTCP 1.0.1 or maybe 1.1. My manager Bruce Southwick suggested I beta test A/UX 2.0, in large part so I could help with A/UX' MacTCP emulation which was a wrapper around Berkeley sockets.

Among the first things I did was to verify A/UX' compliance with each of the CERT recommendations. When I found a security hole I dropped a dime to some random A/UX team member:

"May I speak to your Security Manager?"

"What's a Security Manager?"

Me and the A/UX people went back and forth for quite a long time until I attached a 12 or maybe 15 line remote root exploit to a Radar bug report. I then blasted an eMail all over G-d's Creation that pointed out that "The United States Air Force isn't going to want to pay seventy million dollars for this."

Their reply?

"We'll let the Air Force take care of it."

I could have fixed the zero day in ten minutes without breaking anything whatsover. Even so it was not fixed until A/UX 3.0.

There is a straightforward fix for this:

  C T Corporation System
  818 W Seventh St Ste 930
  Los Angeles CA 90017

C T Corporation System is Apple's Agent for Service of Process.

Don't Say I Never Did Nothin' Fer Ya.

My point is that data loss can lead to more than inconvenience and expense, it can lead to the loss of cherished, irreplaceable memories.

While I have since backed up my friend's photos, there are ways they could have been lost forever.

   127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com

   127.0.0.1 ssl.google-analytics.com

   127.0.0.1 www.hosted-pixel.com # I Swear I'm Not Making This Up

On some but not all operating systems it's better to use 0.0.0.0.

It's better to block it with a firewall but your aged grandmother doesn't know how to configure them.

iOS and I expect Android have hosts files but you must jailbreak to edit them. On iOS you can do that with iFile from the Cydia store. iFile once cost money but it's free now.

Is there some reason you are downvoting this?

My server logs tell me that a whole bunch of people who are in a position to fix this problem just read my essay.

The draft I presently have is quite half-baked. It's hard for me to write not because the topic is so painful but because I have persistent insomnia; the insomnia causes bad headaches.

But I am very determined.

I stand corrected.

Apple's Deep Insight Into User Interface Design

http://www.warplife.com/mdc/essays/jump-the-shark.html

Tylenol killed my father. He was only sixty-eight years old.

I am fifty one. It has been years since I have been able to read the labels on any over the counter drugs, even when I wear glasses. Whenever my prescription medicines change the pharmacists explains them to me.

Pharmacists are happy to explain nonprescription drugs to but no one ever asks them to.

I puzzled over a wrongful death lawsuit but that would not bring him back. There have been many such lawsuits yet acetaminophen is not only stll on the market but found in more than one thousand nonprescription drugs.

Remembering Dad

http://www.warplife.com/mdc/family/charles-russell-crawford/...

I wrote Living with Schizoaffective Disorder specifically to help people like you.

That is, many work tirelessly to help mentally ill people such as me. But I myself work tirelessly to help those such as yourself who are not mentally understand people like your family, as well as to point out to the sane that reality is not as concrete as it commonly seems.

Consider that of all those who "shed their vehicles" in the 1997 Heavens Gate mass suicide, only one was truly mentally ill. The the minds of the others were captivated by their cult leader Marshall Applewhite.

I once escaped what should have been a veryy, very secure osychiatric intensive care unit by inducing a psychiatric nurse to hallucinate. I did so not to hurt anyone but so I would have a topic for yet another essay. There was an All Points Bulletin out fir me all over the San Francisco Bay Area. San Mateo PD Officer Wayne Haas pissed himself laughing when I dropped him a dime to explain that I had been staying in the guest room if a wealthy friend, dining in the very finest restaurants and posting new drafts if my essay from one of my very favorite cafes.

Thatbessay is no longer online but I will repost it, tonight maybe but I am very tired as I exoerience chronic insomnia.

I know a woman who was held in sexual bondage for five years by a serial killer. I believe her because I know her quite well and because I once met the serial killer.

She went to the FBI but they did not believe her.

My plan is to substantiate her claims then turn the evidence over to law enforcement. The reason I have not already done so is opportunity cost.

I know many unusual people, not just my friend and her sexual predator.

A while back I did report the murder of a drug informant. I dont know how that turned out because law enforcement officers do not discuss their investigations with the public until after they make an arrest.

I also scared the crap out of an FBI agent by explaining how to make a high explosive detonator out of any flavor of Kool-Ade mix other than lemon. There are other precursors but all can be purchased at any supermarket.

I know several convicted murderers; some are good friends of mine. A few I met in the forensic unit of Western State Hospital in Lakewood Washington. Were they to overcome their madness they would be discharged but that is uncommon.

Among the reasons that I am busted flat is that I regard publicly traded companies as a profoundly bad idea. I am very strongly in favor of investment but feel the investors should be paid with dividends, as well as by the growing value of their equity.

Value and price are quite different things.

Despite that I was - until recently - unemployed, I avoid applying either to publicly traded companies or privately held ones whose investors intend to exit.

The company I work for now is a privately funded partnership. Thats how it commonly works in most fields other than tech. There are lots of privately held tech companies too but they are hard to find because they dont get much press.

Yes.

The reason that American Civil Engineers require a Professional Engineer license is that an incompetently designed gas pipe exploded and killed three hundred people. There are other kinds of PEs as well - aerospace, mechanical, chemical engineers and so on.

In Canada, one must have the Canadian equivalent of a PE to practice as an engineer of any sort. That includes MCSEs; the Ontario Society of Engineers just loves to sue MCSEs and their exam "preparation" schools - and the OSE always wins its cases.

Here is my take:

Every Engineer's Solemn Duty

http://www.warplife.com/ethics/duty.html

Law enforcement officers appreciate the assistance.

The reason I discuss the Challenger Disaster was to explain my ethical stance on who is really to blame when something bad happens. When a bad person does a bad thing I regard them as doing what comes naturally; those who I regard as morally reprehensible are the ones who were in a position to prevent the problem, or to fix it afterward yet chose not to.

I have been discussing this with law enforcement since 2013, and with my shrinks since 1985.

In 1979, when I was in the youth conservation corps an electrical fault set fire to our dormitory's payphone. That being our only phone I figured everyone would exit the building. Instead everyone including the adult staff sat quietly as the flames grew. Our only exit was through the flames.

So finally I grabbed a paper bag out of a trash can, covered my hand with it then slapped my palm over the melted burning plastic, cutting off it's air supply.

Everyone else called me a hero. I pointed out that I was taught how to put out fires when I was a Boy Scout.

It is quite common that a Boy Scout gives his lfe to save that of another

Give them this link: http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/

email me at mdcrawford@gmail.com and I will post what listings I already have for your area, and will find some more. (Presently I have the Portland Oregon area, Seattle and six or eight others actually posted but I have at least a few listings each for hundreds of cities in dozens of countries.)

Ask your local government's employment office for help with outplacement.

Say nice things in their linkedin profiles.

Give them all hardcopy letters if recommendation.