CircleSoft

Resyncing a FreeBSD perl 5 installation

nospam@example.com (Gerard J. Cerchio) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:19:23 -0800

In the course of updating our FreeBSD 8 system the perl 5 modules were left out of sync with perl_mod and the new threaded perl 5 we updated to.

Symptoms included Bugzilla throwing a Undefined symbol "PL_markstack_ptr" error and losing functionality on various perl components.

This was completely resolved running portupgrade with the following command:

portupgrade -fr p5*

The entire perl module set was downloaded and re-installed.

SCSI LTO encryption test program

nospam@example.com (Gerard J. Cerchio) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:09:49 -0800

I have been trying to get IBM LTO5 tape drives to encrypt the data on a 2.6 Linux box without much success. Ron Allred emailed me on the question and provided a pointer to some code on the Zmanda forum written by Andrew Schretter that works on his HP LTO5 drives. I reworked the code to provide more error reporting and am publishing it here in the extended body. find the code here:

nospam@example.com (Gerard J. Cerchio) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:13:20 -0800

CircleSoft has published a response to the Computerworld article bemoaning the loss of the United States of America lead in High Technology:

Exascale is merely a symptom of the real problems the US is facing in technology. I'll just mention a few fundamental flaws that, until corrected, will continue the backslide of the US technical lead, if indeed it has any lead at all at the present time..

1. Greed. The outrageously high "compensation" that top executives steal from corporate funds disillusion anyone that is actually working to increase the corporate funds. Furthermore, the greed of these top few is such an overriding principal of their behavior, they see contribution to the common welfare a burden instead of a responsibility. The 99% tax pre-regan income tax bracket should be reinstated.

2. Patent Process. Today our latest technology is not designed by engineers, it is designed by patent lawyers. The patent code is so screwed up you need only flip over a rock and look carefully to win a patent. All gene and software patents must be immediately voided. Copyrights should not be extended beyond the life of the author(s).

3. Patent Royalties. The founders created patent law "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and discoveries;" The US has lost it way. Authors and Inventors receive minimal, if any share of the patent royalties generated by their work. If these creative people received the wealth they deserved they would effect major changes in society, unlike the greed group creative people generally see the common welfare as a good thing. Patent law should mandate a minimum of 50% of the patent royalties be remitted to the inventor(s) on record.

4. Education. By the time a kid graduates from even a state school she already owes "the system" the price of a home. The US must stop preying on its young at the most vulnerable time of their lives. The US must, as most industrial countries do, provide free college education to everyone, including textbooks.

5. Outsourcing. Not every kid can get through college. Outsourcing and transferring manufacturing jobs outside of the US removes an agile resource that can produce and upgrade product quickly. The US should cease these "Free Trade" agreements and invest capital within its borders. The richest country in the world has a "official" poverty rate of almost 10%.

6. Pure Science. NASA is in its death throes, Fermi Lab is dead. If it does not make a buck or can't kill people there is no US funding. The corporations should be thrown out of publicly funded schools, their influence not only makes bad science it crushes the life out of new ideas.

7. Corporate person-hood. Corporations, including labor unions are potentailly immortal, they can't be people, they can't have personal rights.

This list can go on and on. Note that no matter what, Greed is always part of the problem. Greed is not good.

ASnap 1.0 is released

nospam@example.com (Gerard J. Cerchio) — Tue, 10 May 2011 09:56:10 -0700

CircleSoft has released ASnap, a screen shot utility that simplifies taking screen shots of all Android devices.

Works on un-rooted Android devices. No need to put your phone or tablet at risk.

One download. No need to download Android SDK, Java JRE or other software.

No guessing about which driver to download. ASnap does it for you.

Free Demo! See if ASnap works for you before you buy.

Great for App developers, web designers, and tech bloggers.

ASNAP license is $19.95 for each Android device

Visit our Products page to download a free demo.

CircleSoft releases its lsusb command for windows

nospam@example.com (Gerard J. Cerchio) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 18:01:07 -0700

lsusb.exe v 1.0 provides the windows user the common UNIX style lsusb command to asses all of the USB devices plugged into their system. This is the first pass of the command that was required for the ASnap Android program.

If there is a great amount of interest in this program,I shall enhance it with the UNIX switches:

-v, --verbose

    Tells lsusb to be verbose and display detailed information about the devices shown. This includes configuration descriptors for the device's current speed. Class descriptors will be shown, when available, for USB device classes including hub, audio, HID, communications, and chipcard.
-s [[bus]:][devnum]
    Show only devices in specified bus and/or devnum. Both ID's are given in decimal and may be omitted.
-d [vendor]:[product]
    Show only devices with the specified vendor and product ID. Both ID's are given in hexadecimal.
-D device
    Do not scan the /proc/bus/usb directory, instead display only information about the device whose device file is given. The device file should be something like /proc/bus/usb/001/001. This option displays detailed information like the v option; you must be root to do this.
-t

Tells lsusb to dump the physical USB device hierarchy as a tree.
-V, --version
    Print version information on standard output, then exit successfully.

Enjoy!

Download lsusb

CircleCalc and Amazon

nospam@example.com (Gerard J. Cerchio) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 10:52:00 -0700

Amazon Appstore

Monday, April 11th, 2011

The Android version of CircleCalc is now available in the Amazon Appstore.

CircleCalc for Android

nospam@example.com (Gerard J. Cerchio) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

CircleCalc and Android

CircleCalc is ready to purchase in the Android Market for $1.99

CircleCalc can be downloaded from the Android Market app and installed directly to any Android phone.

Stuxnet

nospam@example.com (Gerard J. Cerchio) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 06:52:27 -0800

This particular Pandora's box may be of mixed blessing. Now that it only takes a small team of very talented technicians to attack critical civilian infrastructure, we may see the end of large centralized technologies. Multi-megawatt power plants and fossil fuel installations are the prime targets in Stuxwarfare and there are enough psychotic billionaires in this world to keep these teams funded for centuries.

We have no recourse but to move the basis of our technological civilization to decentralized small sustainable technologies that are easier protected.

Android TextFitTextView object

nospam@example.com (Gerard J. Cerchio) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 17:58:03 -0800

CircleCalc makes the most out of screen space by fitting the value of cell into the cell's space. User dunni, published a first pass solution for this functionality on the stack overflow site

Continue reading "Android TextFitTextView object"

CircleSoft announces OEM deal with PurfyCalc

nospam@example.com (Gerard J. Cerchio) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:45:21 -0800

CircleSoft has sealed a OEM agreement with Joe Purfy of PurfyCalc to produce a family of financial application using CircleSoft's CircleCalc engine.
More more details to follow.

CircleSoft submits CircleCalc to the app store

nospam@example.com (Gerard J. Cerchio) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:11:00 -0700

CircleSoft submitted CircleCalc 1.0 to the Apple Application Store this Halloween.

The CircleCalc calculator is a new paradigm for hand held calculation.

see the CircleCalc website

iPhone Home Page Icon for a Google Map

nospam@example.com (Gerard J. Cerchio) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:16:57 -0700

I do not have a very crowded set of home screens on my iPhone, but when I want some thing on them, it is a function that I use regularly. I found it non obvious to put a San Francisco Bay Area traffic Google Map icon on my iPhone home screen.

Here is an almost quick solution:

1. Create a Tiny URL of the target Google Map. SF Bay Area Traffic is http://tiny.cc/gZKMO

2. Mail yourself the Tiny URL.

3. Select the URL in the email application.

4. Before Safari realizes that it is a Google Map url, touch the x on the url line to cancel the transfer to the Google Map App.

5. Touch the + at the bottom of Safari and touch "Add to Home Screen"

Name it appropriately and, there you have it, a Google Map entry on your home screen.

Buyer Beware

nospam@example.com (Gerard J. Cerchio) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 19:18:39 -0700

Please beware, there is a hukster named Gurmeet Kaur who is trying to usurp the good name of CircleSoft.

He acquired the name circlesoftindia.com earlier this year, obviously hoping to capitalize on the good name of CircleSoft Llc.

CircleSoft in currently not in any discussions nor negotiations to extend our 35 year old franchise to any other organization. CircleSoft does not ever send unsolicited email.

Gerard J. Cerchio
Founder CircleSoft.Llc.
www.circlesoft.com

Continue reading "Buyer Beware"

CircleSoft Joins the Apple iPhone developer group

nospam@example.com (Gerard J. Cerchio) — Thu, 28 May 2009 11:20:18 -0700

CircleSoft has become a member of Apple's developer connection.

CircleSoft takes a position on Bayen's cell phone traffic system

nospam@example.com (Gerard J. Cerchio) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:09:27 -0800

CircleSoft is concerned that the safeguards implemented in Dr. Bayen's traffic monitoring system are entirely software in nature. It would take literally seconds to bypass these safeguards and allow the described system to report the identity of the cell phone data. In fact, if the system were to be compromised, it is possible the identity information may be tapped without the administrating body knowing that it is being reported.

CircleSoft wishes to point out that the public would have never been aware of the out-going administration's illegal phone taps without the extra hardware that was discovered by an alert technician in the city of San Francisco. The taping of the identity information from Dr. Bayen's traffic system would not require any extra hardware and therefore will be impossible to detect. The argument that the privacy aware citizen may easily opt out of the system by simply turning off her phone greatly inconveniences the citizen.

This traffic monitoring system, as implemented, is at fiscal discretion of private telecommunication corporations. These corporations are well known to have initial attractor rates to draw new business. Once the American public user is committed to this service, there will be rate raises. I am not aware of any federal or state regulations that will cap the price of these services.

This system need not be restricted to monitoring and reporting the location of cell phones on the nation's roads. There is no technical reason which prevents the removal of the velocity and road location filters from this data stream. These filters reasonably restrict reports to cell phones which are only in motion on a recognized road. These filters are also implemented in software. This means that the abusers of the system will have the whereabouts of every cellphone user in the country at their fingertips.

CircleSoft urges public officials examining this technology not to adopt it.

Link to San Francisco Chronicle article on Bayen's prototype

Link to University of California News Article on Bayen's system

Examination of Bayen's security techniques in the publication Virtual Trip Lines for Distributed Privacy-Preserving Traffic Monitoring exposes flaws in the system's privacy protection.

There are three points of penetration, two of which need only be momentary to collect encryption keys, and then a single point of penetration thereafter that will enable an intruder to abscond with the entire data set.

Bayen's system does not protect the public from intentional illegal government intrusion, the likes of which we have already observed in this country. The legal solution to this type of intrusion was that congress legalized the criminal act and protected the participating conspirators with immunity from prosecution. Bayen's privacy system will certainly fail in these perilous times.

Even if Bayen were to adopt a peer to peer anonymous transfer of VTL data along multiple clients before turning the report over to the central servers, a motivated government would simply update the clients to directly report, as they do in Bayen's system.

IR optics at high vantage points would be just as effective to report traffic conditions, assure anonymity, and would not provide the government with an exploitable surveillance tool.