Just some photographs from around the city when the weather was nice enough for pictures.
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- Me outside the Guinness Storehouse
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- Dublin General Post Office
It’s a fitting time to take a break from the United States and go abroad to see how the majority of the world lives. The United States is starting to feel the withdrawal symptoms of high oil after consuming oil at a rate that would make multi-pack-per-day smokers blanch. The economy is starting to slow considerably due to a multitude of factors purported by media and politicians, who strangely omit the Iraq War which eats up every dollar in sight. While on the subject of politics, candidates that won primaries on a platform of “change” seem to have only changed their platform as they rush towards the center, abandoning proposals to limit wiretapping and hold telecommunications companies liable for wrongdoing. More appalling is the sudden declaration that “faith based initiatives” which have been accused of corruption and unconstitutionality, are now deemed essential to a new administration.
While having low expectations from the outset for the media, I must say that recently my wildest expectations have been surpassed. Unfortunately for me, the expectations were surpassed in the wrong direction. With the tragic passing of Tim Russert, few are left in the media that are willing and able to ask hard questions and demand results. In addition to the tragic passing of Tim Russert, I was dissapointed with Keith Olbermann’s special comment on Barak Obama’s stunning reversal on telecommunications immunity. In the special comment, Olbermann suggests that if Obama is going to support the bill for the sake of preventing accusations that he supports terrorism, he should as President pursue criminal investigations against the telecommunications companies for collusion with the National Security Agency and President Bush in illegal wiretapping.
While Olbermann’s words are as usual, frank, harsh, and truthful I cannot shake the feeling that Olbermann is now carrying water for a candidate that is only now showing that he will do anything to win. We already know that John McCain will do anything to win, including associating with consultants and political spin-doctors who destroyed him in the 2000 elections with innuendo that is so heinous that I only provide a link and nothing more. We already know that Hillary Clinton was willing to do anything to win, with her support of Bush doctrine stonewalling of Iran and joining John McCain in endorsing a “tax holiday” on gasoline right before oil blasted through the $140 marker.
The likelihood of a President criminally prosecuting powerful icons of business (which may or may not have contributed money to his campaign) who participated in a government program to domestically spy on Americans is in the terms of mathematics “approaching zero.” You’d more likely to beat both Achilles and the Tortoise with one step while traveling through time to kick Zeno in the face.
Dumb policy runs rampant through the corridors of American power, regardless of party affiliation. Complicity lurks in every newsroom and boardroom and apathy sits comfortably between the ears of the American people. It is with a long sigh and a short glance that I will board a plane bound for foreign soil.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen there is yet another privilege escalation vulnerability in fully patched Mac OS X systems. It’s very telling that after Apple switched to Intel and saw an increase in sales, the security community began to look at Mac OS X and found holes just waiting to be exploited. Naturally nobody at Apple or the community at large will ever admit it but it seems that the assertion from many in the security community that OS X was protected from exploits due to an insignificant marketshare is beginning to ring true.
It’s just a shame to watch a BSD UNIX derived operating system go down in flames so spectacularly. The upside is that I never completed my order for a handful of XServes to run a business venture, so I’m not sitting on thousands of dollars worth of hardware just begging to be rooted. I can’t run a computing grid and remote backup service when trivial root escalation vulnerabilities start coming out of the woodwork. How can I say to a client that I will protect their data when I can’t protect root?
Been following some leads. There are some cases where you can get a hold of SecurityAgent and pass it shell commands. Leopard has it running as its’ own UID & GID so the security problems are not very severe but there might be a chance that in Tiger it had wheel as the GID. Either way it’s a slippery fish. If I’m able to reliably reproduce the behavior on Leopard I’ll post the code. I have to wait until Monday to try it on a Tiger machine.