Tag: linux

Secure Browsing from Mobile and PC ( Tor ,PeerNet, WasteAgain)

While Tor remains the tool of choice with pseudo-techie hacker wannabes , there is enough juice and smoke and mirrors on the market to confuse your average Joe.

For a secure browsing experience on Mobile – do NOT use either Apple or Windows OS

Use Android  and this app called Orbot in particular

Installing Tor with a QR code

Orbot is easy to install by simply scanning the following QR code with your Android Barcode scanner.

Android QR code

Installing Tor from the Android Market

Orbot is available in the Android Market.

ENTER PEERNET

If you have a Dell PC, well just use PeerNet to configure and set up your own network around the neighbourhood. This is particularly applicable if you are in country that is both repressive and not so technologically advanced. Wont work in China or USA.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/network/p70008/EN/vista_7/peernet.htm

What is a peer network?

A peer network is a network in which one computer can connect directly to another computer. This capability is accomplished by enabling access point (AP) functionality on one of the computers. Other computers can then connect to this computer in the same way that they would connect to a physical AP. If Internet Connection Sharing is enabled on the computer that has the AP functionality, computers that connect to that computer have Internet connectivity as well.

A basic peer network, which requires no networking knowledge or experience to set up, should meet the needs of most home users and small businesses. By default, a basic peer network is configured with the strongest available security (see How do I set up a basic peer network?).

For users who are familiar with wireless networking technology, advanced configuration features are available to do the following:

• Change security settings (see How do I configure my peer network?)
• Choose which method (push button or PIN) computers with Wi-Fi Protected Setup™ capability can join your peer network (see How do I allow peer devices to join my peer network using Wi-Fi Protected Setup technology?)
• Change the DHCP Server IP address (see How do I configure my peer network?).
• Change the channel on which to operate your peer network (see How do I configure my peer network?)

 If you are really really in a need for secure browsing (like you are maybe a big hot shot in the tech world), I suggest go over to VMWare

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

create a seperate Linux (Ubuntu for ease) virtual disc, then download the Tor Browser Bundle from

https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en for surfing and a Peernet (above) or  a prepaid one time use disposable mobile pre-paid wireless card. It is also quite easy to delete your virtual disc in times of emergencies (but it is best to use encryption even when in Ubuntu https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EncryptedHome)

IRC chat is less secure than you think it is thanks to BOT  Trawlers- so I am hoping someone in the open source community updates Waste Again for encrypted chats http://wasteagain.sourceforge.net/

What is “WASTE again”?

“WASTE again” enables you to create a decentralized and secure private mesh network using an unsecure network, such as the internet. Once the public encryption keys are exchanged, sending messages, creating groupchats and transferring files is easy and secure.

Creating a mesh

To create a mesh you need at least two computers with “WASTE again” installed. During installation, a unique pair of public and private keys for each computer is being generated. Before the first connection can be established, you need to exchange these public keys. These keys enable “WASTE again” to authenticate every connection to other “WASTE again” clients.

After exchanging the keys, you simply type in the computers IP address to connect to. If that computer is located behind a firewall or a NAT-router, you have to create a portmap first to enable incoming connections.

At least one computer in your mesh has to be able to accept incoming connections, making it a “public node”. If no direct connection between two firewalled computers can be made, “WASTE again” automatically routes your traffic through one or more of the available public nodes.

Every new node simply has to exchange keys with one of the connected nodes and then connect to it. All the other nodes will exchange their keys automatically over the mesh.

A Brief Overview of Open vs Closed in Computing

1984 – IBM   (Big Brother) vs Apple  (Computing opened for individuals)

1988- Apple (Closed Hardware and Software) vs Microsoft (  Licensed to all software)

1998- Microsoft (Source code is closed but licenses to all) vs Linux (Open Source Code)

2008- Apple (Closed Hardware and Software) vs Google (Android/Linux) -(Free and Open Source)

2010 – Google (Web open to search) vs Facebook (Closed to search)

2018 (?)-Google (Code is open for all non revenue generating software, but search engine algorithm is closed) VS       TBD

Moving data between Windows and Ubuntu VMWare partition

I use Windows 7 on my laptop (it came pre-installed) and Ubuntu using the VMWare Player. What are the advantages of using VM Player instead of creating a dual-boot system? Well I can quickly shift from Ubuntu to Windows and bakc again without restarting my computer everytime. Using this approach allows me to utilize software that run only on Windows and run software like Rattle, the R data mining GUI, that are much easier installed on Linux.

However if your statistical software is on your Virtual Disk , and your data is on your Windows disk, you need a way to move data from Windows to Ubuntu.

The solution to this as per Ubuntu forums is –http://communities.vmware.com/thread/55242

Open My Computer, browse to the folder you want to share.  Right-click on the folder, select Properties.  Sharing tab.  Select the radio button to “Share this Folder”.  Change the default generated name if you wish; add a description if you wish.  Click the Permissions button to modify the security settings of what users can read/write to the share.

On the Linux side, it depends on the distro, the shell, and the window manager.

Well Ubuntu makes it really easy to configure the Linux steps to move data within Windows and Linux partitions.

 

NEW UPDATE-

VMmare makes it easy to share between your Windows (host) and Linux (guest) OS

 

Step 1

and step 2

Do this

 

and

Start the Wizard

when you finish the wizard and share a drive or folder- hey where do I see my shared ones-

 

see this folder in Linux- /mnt/hgfs (bingo!)

Hacker HW – Make this folder //mnt/hgfs a shortcut in Places your Ubuntu startup

Hacker Hw 2-

Upload using an anon email your VM dark data to Ubuntu one

Delete VM

Purge using software XX

Reinstall VM and bring back backup

 

Note time to do this

 

 

 

-General Sharing in Windows

 

 

Just open the Network tab in Ubuntu- see screenshots below-

Windows will now ask your Ubuntu user for login-

Once Logged in Windows from within Ubuntu Vmware, this is what happens

You see a tab called “users on “windows username”- pc appear on your Ubuntu Desktop  (see top right of the screenshot)

If you double click it- you see your windows path

You can now just click and drag data between your windows and linux partitions , just the way you do it in Windows .

So based on this- if you want to build  decision trees, artifical neural networks, regression models, and even time series models for zero capital expenditure- you can use both Ubuntu/R without compromising on your IT policy of Windows only in your organization (there is a shortage of Ubuntu trained IT administrators in the enterprise world)

Revised Installation Procedure for utilizing both Ubuntu /R/Rattle data mining on your Windows PC.

Using VMWare to build a free data mining system in R, as well as isolate your analytics system (thus using both Linux and Windows without overburdening your machine)

First Time

  1. http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_player/4_0Download and Install
  2. http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/downloadDownload Only
  3. Create New Virtual Image in VM Ware Player
  4. Applications—–Terminal——sudo apt get-install R (to download and install)
  5.                                          sudo R (to open R)
  6. Once R is opened type this  —-install.packages(rattle)—– This will install rattle
  7. library(rattle) will load Rattle—–
  8. rattle() will open the GUI—-
Getting Data from Host to Guest VM
Next Time
  1. Go to VM Player
  2. Open the VM
  3. sudo R in terminal to bring up R
  4. library(rattle) within R
  5. rattle()
At this point even if you dont know any Linux and dont know any R, you can create data mining models using the Rattle GUI (and time series model using E pack in the R Commander GUI) – What can Rattle do in data mining? See this slideshow-http://www.decisionstats.com/data-mining-with-r-gui-rattle-rstats/
If Google Docs is banned as per your enterprise organizational IT policy of having Windows Explorer only- well you can see these screenshots http://rattle.togaware.com/rattle-screenshots.html

10 Ways We will miss Steve Jobs

I am not an Apple fanboy.In fact I dont use a Mac (because Linux works well for me at much cheaper rates)

I am going to miss Steve Jobs like I miss …… still.

1) The Original Pirate – I liked Steve Jobs ever since I saw Pirates of Silicon Valley, I wanted to be like the Jobs who created jobs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_Silicon_Valley

Artists steal. Yeah baby!

2) Music -Itunes Improbably the man who came up with the idea of music @ 99 cents helped more artists earn money in the era of Napster. Music piracy is not dead, but at 99 cents you CAN afford the songs

3) Aesthetics- and Design- as competitive barriers. It was all about the interface. People care about interfaces. Shoody software wont sell.

4) Portable Music- yes I once wrote a poem on my first Ipod. http://www.decisionstats.com/ode-to-an-ipod/ No , it doesnot rank as the top ten poems on Ipod in SERP

Walkman ‘s evolution was the Ipod – and it was everywhere.

5) Big Phones can be cool too- I loved my IPhone and so did everyone. But thats because making cool phones before that was all about making the tiniest thinnest phone. Using Videochat on Iphone and webs surfing were way much cooler than anything before or since.

6) Apps for Money for Geeks. Yes the Apps marketplace was more enriching to the geek universe than all open source put together.

7) Turtleneck Steve- You know when Steve Jobs was about to make a presentation because one week before and one week later the whole tech media behaved like either a fanboy or we are too cool to be an Apple fanboy but we will report it still. The man who wrote no code sold more technology than everyone else using just a turtleneck and presentations.

8) Pixar toons- Yes Pixar toons made sure cartoons were pieces of art and not just funny stuff anymore. This one makes me choke up

9) Kicking Microsoft butt- Who else but Steve can borrow money from MS and then beat it in every product it wanted to.

10) Not being evil. Steve Jobs made more money for more geeks than anyone. and he made it look good! The original DONT BE EVIL guy who never needed to say it aloud

Take a bow Steve Jobs (or touch the first Apple product that comes to your hand after reading this!)

The article was first written on Aug 25,2011 on Steve Jobs resignation news.It has been updated to note his departing from this planet as of yesterday.

 

 

 

 

Open Source Analytics

My guest blog at Allanalytics.com is now up

http://www.allanalytics.com/ is the exciting community which looks at the business aspects to the analytics market with a great lineup of pedigree writers.

It is basically a point/counterpoint for and against open source analytics. I feel there is a scope of lot of improvement before open source dominates the world of analytics software like Android, Linux Web Server do in their markets. Part of this reason is – there needs to be more , much more investment in analytics research, development, easier to use interfaces, Big Data integration and rewarding ALL the writers of code regardless of whether the code is proprietary or open source.

A last word- I think open source analytics AND proprietary analytics software will have to learn to live with one another, with game theory dictating their response and counter-response. More competition is good, and open source is an AND option not an OR option to existing status quo.

You can read the full blog discussion at http://www.allanalytics.com/author.asp?section_id=1408&doc_id=233454&piddl_msgorder=thrd#msgs

Hopefully discussion would be more analytical than passionate 🙂 and greater investments in made in analytics by all sides.

 

Running R Studio on a cloud computer for #rstats

So I decided to test the next iteration of http://cloudnumbers.com and I was pleasantly surprised to see how easy it is to start a Linux Cluster and start doing #Rstats computing

on the cloud using R Studio.

Here are some screenshots of my journey.

 

 

 

Register here if you like it-

https://my.cloudnumbers.com/register/65E97A

Amazon Ec2 goes Red Hat

message from Amazing Amazon’s cloud team- this will also help for #rstats users given that revolution Analytics full versions on RHEL.

—————————————————-

on-demand instances of Amazon EC2 running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for as little as $0.145 per instance hour. The offering combines the cost-effectiveness, scalability and flexibility of running in Amazon EC2 with the proven reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Highlights of the offering include:

  • Support is included through subscription to AWS Premium Support with back-line support by Red Hat
  • Ongoing maintenance, including security patches and bug fixes, via update repositories available in all Amazon EC2 regions
  • Amazon EC2 running RHEL currently supports RHEL 5.5, RHEL 5.6, RHEL 6.0 and RHEL 6.1 in both 32 bit and 64 bit formats, and is available in all Regions.
  • Customers who already own Red Hat licenses will continue to be able to use those licenses at no additional charge.
  • Like all services offered by AWS, Amazon EC2 running Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers a low-cost, pay-as-you-go model with no long-term commitments and no minimum fees.

For more information, please visit the Amazon EC2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux page.

which is

Amazon EC2 Running Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Amazon EC2 running Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a dependable platform to deploy a broad range of applications. By running RHEL on EC2, you can leverage the cost effectiveness, scalability and flexibility of Amazon EC2, the proven reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and AWS premium support with back-line support from Red Hat.. Red Hat Enterprise Linux on EC2 is available in versions 5.5, 5.6, 6.0, and 6.1, both in 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.

Amazon EC2 running Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides seamless integration with existing Amazon EC2 features including Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon CloudWatch, Elastic-Load Balancing, and Elastic IPs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux instances are available in multiple Availability Zones in all Regions.

Sign Up

Pricing

Pay only for what you use with no long-term commitments and no minimum fee.

On-Demand Instances

On-Demand Instances let you pay for compute capacity by the hour with no long-term commitments.

Region:US – N. VirginiaUS – N. CaliforniaEU – IrelandAPAC – SingaporeAPAC – Tokyo
Standard Instances Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Small (Default) $0.145 per hour
Large $0.40 per hour
Extra Large $0.74 per hour
Micro Instances Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Micro $0.08 per hour
High-Memory Instances Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Extra Large $0.56 per hour
Double Extra Large $1.06 per hour
Quadruple Extra Large $2.10 per hour
High-CPU Instances Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Medium $0.23 per hour
Extra Large $0.78 per hour
Cluster Compute Instances Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Quadruple Extra Large $1.70 per hour
Cluster GPU Instances Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Quadruple Extra Large $2.20 per hour

Pricing is per instance-hour consumed for each instance type. Partial instance-hours consumed are billed as full hours.

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and

Available Instance Types

Standard Instances

Instances of this family are well suited for most applications.

Small Instance – default*

1.7 GB memory
1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit)
160 GB instance storage
32-bit platform
I/O Performance: Moderate
API name: m1.small

Large Instance

7.5 GB memory
4 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each)
850 GB instance storage
64-bit platform
I/O Performance: High
API name: m1.large

Extra Large Instance

15 GB memory
8 EC2 Compute Units (4 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each)
1,690 GB instance storage
64-bit platform
I/O Performance: High
API name: m1.xlarge

Micro Instances

Instances of this family provide a small amount of consistent CPU resources and allow you to burst CPU capacity when additional cycles are available. They are well suited for lower throughput applications and web sites that consume significant compute cycles periodically.

Micro Instance

613 MB memory
Up to 2 EC2 Compute Units (for short periodic bursts)
EBS storage only
32-bit or 64-bit platform
I/O Performance: Low
API name: t1.micro

High-Memory Instances

Instances of this family offer large memory sizes for high throughput applications, including database and memory caching applications.

High-Memory Extra Large Instance

17.1 GB of memory
6.5 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 3.25 EC2 Compute Units each)
420 GB of instance storage
64-bit platform
I/O Performance: Moderate
API name: m2.xlarge

High-Memory Double Extra Large Instance

34.2 GB of memory
13 EC2 Compute Units (4 virtual cores with 3.25 EC2 Compute Units each)
850 GB of instance storage
64-bit platform
I/O Performance: High
API name: m2.2xlarge

High-Memory Quadruple Extra Large Instance

68.4 GB of memory
26 EC2 Compute Units (8 virtual cores with 3.25 EC2 Compute Units each)
1690 GB of instance storage
64-bit platform
I/O Performance: High
API name: m2.4xlarge

High-CPU Instances

Instances of this family have proportionally more CPU resources than memory (RAM) and are well suited for compute-intensive applications.

High-CPU Medium Instance

1.7 GB of memory
5 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 2.5 EC2 Compute Units each)
350 GB of instance storage
32-bit platform
I/O Performance: Moderate
API name: c1.medium

High-CPU Extra Large Instance

7 GB of memory
20 EC2 Compute Units (8 virtual cores with 2.5 EC2 Compute Units each)
1690 GB of instance storage
64-bit platform
I/O Performance: High
API name: c1.xlarge

Cluster Compute Instances

Instances of this family provide proportionally high CPU resources with increased network performance and are well suited for High Performance Compute (HPC) applications and other demanding network-bound applications. Learn more about use of this instance type for HPC applications.

Cluster Compute Quadruple Extra Large Instance

23 GB of memory
33.5 EC2 Compute Units (2 x Intel Xeon X5570, quad-core “Nehalem” architecture)
1690 GB of instance storage
64-bit platform
I/O Performance: Very High (10 Gigabit Ethernet)
API name: cc1.4xlarge

Cluster GPU Instances

Instances of this family provide general-purpose graphics processing units (GPUs) with proportionally high CPU and increased network performance for applications benefitting from highly parallelized processing, including HPC, rendering and media processing applications. While Cluster Compute Instances provide the ability to create clusters of instances connected by a low latency, high throughput network, Cluster GPU Instances provide an additional option for applications that can benefit from the efficiency gains of the parallel computing power of GPUs over what can be achieved with traditional processors. Learn more about use of this instance type for HPC applications.

Cluster GPU Quadruple Extra Large Instance

22 GB of memory
33.5 EC2 Compute Units (2 x Intel Xeon X5570, quad-core “Nehalem” architecture)
2 x NVIDIA Tesla “Fermi” M2050 GPUs
1690 GB of instance storage
64-bit platform
I/O Performance: Very High (10 Gigabit Ethernet)
API name: cg1.4xlarge

 

Getting Started

To get started using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Amazon EC2, perform the following steps:

  • Open and log into the AWS Management Console
  • Click on Launch Instance from the EC2 Dashboard
  • Select the Red Hat Enterprise Linux AMI from the QuickStart tab
  • Specify additional details of your instance and click Launch
  • Additional details can be found on each AMI’s Catalog Entry page

The AWS Management Console is an easy tool to start and manage your instances. If you are looking for more details on launching an instance, a quick video tutorial on how to use Amazon EC2 with the AWS Management Console can be found here .
A full list of Red Hat Enterprise Linux AMIs can be found in the AWS AMI Catalog.

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Support

All customers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on EC2 will receive access to repository updates from Red Hat. Moreover, AWS Premium support customers can contact AWS to get access to a support structure from both Amazon and Red Hat.

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Resources

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About Red Hat

Red Hat, the world’s leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 50 satellite offices spanning the globe. Red Hat provides high-quality, low-cost technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide.

 

also from Revolution Analytics- in case you want to #rstats in the cloud and thus kill all that talk of RAM dependency, slow R than other softwares (just increase the RAM above in the instances to keep it simple)

,or Revolution not being open enough

http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/downloads/gpl-sources.php

GPL SOURCES

Revolution Analytics uses an Open-Core Licensing model. We provide open- source R bundled with proprietary modules from Revolution Analytics that provide additional functionality for our users. Open-source R is distributed under the GNU Public License (version 2), and we make our software available under a commercial license.

Revolution Analytics respects the importance of open source licenses and has contributed code to the open source R project and will continue to do so. We have carefully reviewed our compliance with GPLv2 and have worked with Mark Radcliffe of DLA Piper, the outside General Legal Counsel of the Open Source Initiative, to ensure that we fully comply with the obligations of the GPLv2.

For our Revolution R distribution, we may make some minor modifications to the R sources (the ChangeLog file lists all changes made). You can download these modified sources of open-source R under the terms of the GPLv2, using either the links below or those in the email sent to you when you download a specific version of Revolution R.

Download GPL Sources

Product Version Platform Modified R Sources
Revolution R Community 3.2 Windows R 2.10.1
Revolution R Community 3.2 MacOS R 2.10.1
Revolution R Enterprise 3.1.1 RHEL R 2.9.2
Revolution R Enterprise 4.0 Windows R 2.11.1
Revolution R Enterprise 4.0.1 RHEL R 2.11.1
Revolution R Enterprise 4.1.0 Windows R 2.11.1
Revolution R Enterprise 4.2 Windows R 2.11.1
Revolution R Enterprise 4.2 RHEL R 2.11.1
Revolution R Enterprise 4.3 Windows & RHEL R 2.12.2