Tag: use

How to surf anonymously on the mobile- Use Orbot

This is an interesting use case of anonymous surfing through mobile by using Tor Project on the Android Mobile OS.

Source- https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/
 

Orbot requires different configuration depending on the Android operating system version it is used on.

For standard Android 1.x devices (G1, MyTouch3G, Hero, Droid Eris, Cliq, Moment)

  • WEB BROWSING: You can use the Orweb Privacy Browser which we offer, which only works via Orbot and Tor.
  • For Instant Messsaging, please try Gibberbot which provides integrated, optional support for Orbot and Tor.

For Android 2.x devices: Droid, Nexus, Evo, Galaxy

  • WEB BROWSING: Non-rooted devices should use Firefox for Android with our ProxyMob Add-On to browse via the Tor network. Rooted devices can take advantage of transparent proxying (see below) and do not need an additional app installed.
  • Transparent Proxying: You must root your device in order for Orbot to work transparently for all web and DNS traffic. If you root your device, whether it is 1.x or 2.x based, Orbot will automatically, transparently proxy all web traffic on port 80 and 443 and all DNS requests. This includes the built-in Browser, Gmail, YouTube, Maps and any other application that uses standard web traffic.
  • For Instant Messsaging, please try Gibberbot which provides integrated, optional support for Orbot and Tor.

Developers

Credit Downgrade of USA and Triple A Whining

As a person trained , deployed and often asked to comment on macroeconomic shenanigans- I have the following observations to make on the downgrade of US Debt by S&P

1) Credit rating is both a mathematical exercise of debt versus net worth as well as intention to repay. Given the recent deadlock in United States legislature on debt ceiling, it is natural and correct to assume that holding US debt is slightly more risky in 2011 as compared to 2001. That means if the US debt was AAA in 2001 it sure is slightly more risky in 2011.

2) Politicians are criticized the world over in democracies including India, UK and US. This is natural , healthy and enforced by checks and balances by constitution of each country. At the time of writing this, there are protests in India on corruption, in UK on economic disparities, in US on debt vs tax vs spending, Israel on inflation. It is the maturity of the media as well as average educational level of citizenry that amplifies and inflames or dampens sentiment regarding policy and business.

3) Conspicuous consumption has failed both at an environmental and economic level. Cheap debt to buy things you do not need may have made good macro economic sense as long as the things were made by people locally but that is no longer the case. Outsourcing is not all evil, but it sure is not a perfect solution to economics and competitiveness. Outsourcing is good or outsourcing is bad- well it depends.

4) In 1944 , the US took debt to fight Nazism, build atomic power and generally wage a lot of war and lots of dual use inventions. In 2004-2010 the US took debt to fight wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and bail out banks and automobile companies. Some erosion in the values represented by a free democracy has taken place, much to the delight of authoritarian regimes (who have managed to survive Google and Facebook).

5) A Double A rating is still quite a good rating. Noone is moving out of the US Treasuries- I mean seriously what are your alternative financial resources to park your government or central bank assets, euro, gold, oil, rare earth futures, metals or yen??

6) Income disparity as a trigger for social unrest in UK, France and other parts is an ominous looming threat that may lead to more action than the poor maths of S &P. It has been some time since riots occured in the United States and I believe in time series and cycles especially given the rising Gini coefficients .

Gini indices for the United States at various times, according to the US Census Bureau:[8][9][10]

  • 1929: 45.0 (estimated)
  • 1947: 37.6 (estimated)
  • 1967: 39.7 (first year reported)
  • 1968: 38.6 (lowest index reported)
  • 1970: 39.4
  • 1980: 40.3
  • 1990: 42.8
    • (Recalculations made in 1992 added a significant upward shift for later values)
  • 2000: 46.2
  • 2005: 46.9
  • 2006: 47.0 (highest index reported)
  • 2007: 46.3
  • 2008: 46.69
  • 2009: 46.8

7) Again I am slightly suspicious of an American Corporation downgrading the American Governmental debt when it failed to reconcile numbers by 2 trillion and famously managed to avoid downgrading Lehman Brothers.  What are the political affiliations of the S &P board. What are their backgrounds. Check the facts, Watson.

The Chinese government should be concerned if it is holding >1000 tonnes of Gold and >1 trillion plus of US treasuries lest we have a third opium war (as either Gold or US Treasuries will burst)

. Opium in 1850 like the US Treasuries in 2010 have no inherent value except for those addicted to them.

8   ) Ron Paul and Paul Krugman are the two extremes of economic ideology in the US.

Reminds me of the old saying- Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Both the Pauls seem equally unhappy and biased.

I have to read both WSJ and NYT to make sense of what actually is happening in the US as opinionated journalism has managed to elbow out fact based journalism. Do we need analytics in journalism education/ reporting?

9) Panic buying and selling would lead to short term arbitrage positions. People like W Buffet made more money in the crash of 2008 than people did in the boom years of 2006-7

If stocks are cheap- buy. on the dips. Acquire companies before they go for IPOs. Go buy your own stock if you are sitting on  a pile of cash. Buy some technology patents in cloud , mobile, tablet and statistical computing if you have a lot of cash and need to buy some long term assets.

10) Follow all advice above at own risk and no liability to this author 😉

 

The best of Google Plus this week

Its been slightly over a month- and I noticed Google Plus stream is now getting to look like my Facebook stream as more of my friends join up. However there is no (share this on Google Plus button still!)

Top Meme’s this week on Google Plus

1) Points of View

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US-CERT Incident Reporting System

Here are some resources if your cyber resources have been breached. Note the form doesnot use CAPTCHA at all

US-CERT Incident Reporting System (their head Randy Vickers quit last week)

https://forms.us-cert.gov/report/

Using the US-CERT Incident Reporting SystemIn order for us to respond appropriately, please answer the questions as completely and accurately as possible. Questions that must be answered are labeled “Required”. As always, we will protect your sensitive information. This web site uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to provide secure communications. Your browser must allow at least 40-bit encryption. This method of communication is much more secure than unencrypted email.  Continue reading “US-CERT Incident Reporting System”

Interview Mike Boyarski Jaspersoft

Here is an interview with Mike Boyarski , Director Product Marketing at Jaspersoft

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the largest BI community with over 14 million downloads, nearly 230,000 registered members, representing over 175,000 production deployments, 14,000 customers, across 100 countries.

Ajay- Describe your career in science from Biology to marketing great software.
Mike- I studied Biology with the assumption I’d pursue a career in medicine. It took about 2 weeks during an internship at a Los Angeles hospital to determine I should do something else.  I enjoyed learning about life science, but the whole health care environment was not for me.  I was initially introduced to enterprise-level software while at Applied Materials within their Microcontamination group.  I was able to assist with an internal application used to collect contamination data.  I later joined Oracle to work on an Oracle Forms application used to automate the production of software kits (back when documentation and CDs had to be physically shipped to recognize revenue). This gave me hands on experience with Oracle 7, web application servers, and the software development process.
I then transitioned to product management for various products including application servers, software appliances, and Oracle’s first generation SaaS based software infrastructure. In 2006, with the Siebel and PeopleSoft acquisitions underway, I moved on to Ingres to help re-invigorate their solid yet antiquated technology. This introduced me to commercial open source software and the broader Business Intelligence market.  From Ingres I joined Jaspersoft, one of the first and most popular open source Business Intelligence vendors, serving as head of product marketing since mid 2009.
Ajay- Describe some of the new features in Jaspersoft 4.1 that help differentiate it from the rest of the crowd. What are the exciting product features we can expect from Jaspersoft down the next couple of years.
Mike- Jaspersoft 4.1 was an exciting release for our customers because we were able to extend the latest UI advancements in our ad hoc report designer to the data analysis environment. Now customers can use a unified intuitive web-based interface to perform several powerful and interactive analytic functions across any data source, whether its relational, non-relational, or a Big Data source.
 The reality is that most (roughly 70%) of todays BI adoption is in the form of reports and dashboards. These tools are used to drive and measure an organizations business, however, data analysis presents the most strategic opportunity for companies because it can identify new opportunities, efficiencies, and competitive differentiation.  As more data comes online, the difference between those companies that are successful and those that are not will likely be attributed to their ability to harness data analysis techniques to drive and improve business performance. Thus, with Jaspersoft 4.1, and our improved ad hoc reporting and analysis UI we can effectively address a broader set of BI requirements for organizations of all sizes.
Ajay-  What do you think is a good metric to measure influence of an open source software product – is it revenue or is it number of downloads or number of users. How does Jaspersoft do by these counts.
Mike- History has shown that open source software is successful as a “bottoms up” disrupter within IT or the developer market.  Today, many new software projects and startup ventures are birthed on open source software, often initiated with little to no budget. As the organization achieves success with a particular project, the next initiative tends to be larger and more strategic, often displacing what was historically solved with a proprietary solution. These larger deployments strengthen the technology over time.
Thus, the more proven and battle tested an open source solution is, often measured via downloads, deployments, community size, and community activity, usually equates to its long term success. Linux, Tomcat, and MySQL have plenty of statistics to model this lifecycle. This model is no different for open source BI.
The success to date of Jaspersoft is directly tied to its solid proven technology and the vibrancy of the community.  We proudly and openly claim to have the largest BI community with over 14 million downloads, nearly 230,000 registered members, representing over 175,000 production deployments, 14,000 customers, across 100 countries.  Every day, 30,000 developers are using Jaspersoft to build BI applications.  Behind Excel, its hard to imagine a more widely used BI tool in the market.  Jaspersoft could not reach these kind of numbers with crippled or poorly architected software.
Ajay- What are your plans for leveraging cloud computing, mobile and tablet platforms and for making Jaspersoft more easy and global  to use.

Google Speed Test

Here is a new service in beta for helping test your website for speed. It is continuing series of initiatives for Google to help the internet (and their own computing resources)

If you want to request access to the limited beta

Request Access – Here

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dDdjcmNBZFZsX2c0SkJPQnR3aGdnd0E6MQ&ifq

 

Continue reading “Google Speed Test”