Barry Ritholtz wonders aboout Seeking the Truth — Or Obscuring It?. He lists three reasons for seeking this sort of Truth.

1) intellectual interest: “So few people seem to understand what objective reality is that it is a rarified space to even get near, much less inhabit.”

2) professional: “Fund managers whose universe deviate from reality eventually come to major losses, under-performance, and professional ruin.”

3) political: “we live in a society where decision-making takes place with less and less reverence for the Truth, with terrible consequences.”

One of the surprising things this blog has taught me about Reality is how long it takes to go viral. There are entrenched interests opposed to the truth, and they release their grip on their subjective fantasies very, very slowly.

Barry wonders “Are you a truth seeker, or a truth obscurer?” That is a question about intellectual integrity. It is a question one must always use to qualify communications from others.

Judge Bolton has roiled the politics in her injunction against parts of Arizona’s immigration law. Andy McCarthy has a synopsis of the rationales used at the corner. A key is the idea that it isn’t federal law but rather enforcement practice and policy that preempt state’s rights. Bolton provides some other interesting ideas such as the requirement for aliens to carry, and show on demand, their green cards as being anti-American. Such lack of integrity is judicial activism and will feed the wrong fires.

Also on the matter of state’s rights is the number of states giving them away. Arnold Ahlert describes it as The United Cities of America. There are now six states that have decided the votes of their citizens and their presence as a state are to be subjugated to popular vote in Presidential elections. It may feel good to have your state in the winner’s column in such elections but there are issues that the electoral college was created to solve that are being ignored.

Then there’s how governmental funding works as When Funding Battles Trump Mission. This example is one where the noisy interests flavor how governmental entities adjust their mission in order to better rationalize their need for funds. Whether it is the Forest Service jumping on the climate change bandwagon, the space agency going for Muslim self esteem, or the whole issue of climate research funding itself, government shows that the votes that count are not always the votes at the ballot box.

Scott says it’s In a silent way citing York’s notice of a story that didn’t make it to the Big Voices, the NASA Muslim self esteem goal. He notes that “The silent treatment accorded York’s story is not uncommon. Much the same occurred with the widely reported story of the phantom n-word supposedly shouted at black congressmen by Obamacare protesters on Capitol Hill on March 20.”

On something the BV does like, try fear of technology. Bruce Schneier says the Threat of ‘cyberwar’ has been hugely hyped. Take note that he does not minimize the problem with fraud but rather says it is “within the context of normal life” just as fraud has always been. It is a matter for individuals and not for armies.

We surely need to improve our cybersecurity. But words have meaning, and metaphors matter. There’s a power struggle going on for control of our nation’s cybersecurity strategy, and the NSA and DoD are winning. If we frame the debate in terms of war, if we accept the military’s expansive cyberspace definition of “war,” we feed our fears.

We reinforce the notion that we’re helpless — what person or organization can defend itself in a war? — and others need to protect us. We invite the military to take over security, and to ignore the limits on power that often get jettisoned during wartime.

If, on the other hand, we use the more measured language of cybercrime, we change the debate. Crime fighting requires both resolve and resources, but it’s done within the context of normal life. We willingly give our police extraordinary powers of investigation and arrest, but we temper these powers with a judicial system and legal protections for citizens.

Dr. Ball takes on the latest climate whitewash taking note of just how obvious it is.

But the omissions are more basic and ones everyone can understand. For example, why didn’t they trace the source of the leaks? Why were only some of the emails leaked? Russell’s report chastises CRU for failing to provide data on request and for being secretive or refusing Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. What drove them to do this with information obtained and produced by public funding? It doesn’t matter how much climate science you understand, the level and extent of avoidance goes beyond laziness, time consumption as they tried to claim or any other excuse.

That should be contrasted to Monbiot’s column in the Guardian where he whines about the awful email he gets and cites some very ugly words. The contrast is that the skeptic, in this case Dr. Ball, addresses the substance with known sources while the defender cites unknown extreme sources that even he qualifies as incompetent. Another skeptic, Dr. McIntyre, also shows how logic and the values of science can be applied to strengthen this contrast.

These investigations should be considered in context of the problems with peer review and how it is presented as what it is not. Megan McArdle says Peer Review is No Panacea.

This is not to say that the peer review system is worthless. But it’s limited. Peer review doesn’t prove that a paper is right; it doesn’t even prove that the paper is any good (and it may serve as a gatekeeper that shuts out good, correct papers that don’t sit well with the field’s current establishment for one reason or another). All it proves is that the paper has passed the most basic hurdles required to get published–that it be potentially interesting, and not obviously false. This may commend it to our attention–but not to our instant belief.

The DoJ problems continue to be discussed. People are wondering why the feds are going after Arizona and not Rhode Island or the ‘sanctuary cities.’ The Adams testimony about the DoJ dropping an almost settled case of blatant voter discrimination is getting into other related issues. John Fund describes this as Another voter fraud scandal involving the Justice Department.

Mr. Adams’ allegations would seem to call for the senior management of Justice to be compelled to testify under oath to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. But Justice is making none of its officials available and is refusing to enforce subpoenas issued by the commission. The more this story develops, the more it appears Justice is engaged in a massive coverup of its politicization of voting rights cases.

Dr. Hanson reminds us that American Decline Is a State of Mind and not a historical inevitability.

The United States still remains the most racially diverse, stable, free, productive, and militarily strong country in the world. Its current crises are largely the political and cultural creations of the most affluent and leisured generation in civilization’s history — not due to longstanding civil unrest, structural weakness, or a sudden shortage of natural resources.

Where the US goes from here will be where it chooses to go and that direction is set by its state of mind.

Is submission feminism? That would mean much of the fringe feminist movement was rather masculine which is the caveat that generalizations need care before you slam them up against the stops. William Kilpatrick notes the success of Islam in prisons and suggests that this is due to the unabashed masculine character of the religion as seen in its aggression and how “We’ve grown accustomed to video images of ten-year-old boys in Palestinian training camps, dressed like mujahideen and wielding AK-47’s.” But he thinks The Warrior Code vs. The Da Vinci Code runs much deeper as a problem in society.

A feminized Christianity may work to attract a certain type of man, but he’s probably not the man you want around when the local Imam starts practicing taqiyya on your congregation. … Of course, feminization is not just a problem for Christians, but also for the culture as a whole. If Islam is all about submission, Western culture, of late, seems to be all about submissiveness. … Nevertheless, because it’s a large part of American culture, the health of Christianity ought to be of concern to all. Our culture derives much of its strength from its Christian faith, but a Christianity without a strong masculine presence won’t be able to keep young men from defecting to the religion of guns n’ poses. There are a lot of young men in our world who are uncertain whether to follow the sign of the crescent moon or the sign of the cross, but it’s a good bet not many of them will be interested in following the “yield” sign which some contemporary Christians have taken as their emblem.

There are other paradigms that could be used for this than gender but they are rather more nuanced and less familiar. Identity of self as separate from, but still a part of, the whole is a basic component of human nature. We cannot exist alone yet we also want to be ourselves. This yearning is seen in the survivalist movement which also shows many of the stereotypical aggressive masculine values but is also tempered by similar feminine nurturing values needed for sustenance and health. You have to go out, find, and kill the food as well as store, prepare and manage it.

The issue is, of course, balance. What Kilpatrick is saying is that Western culture and its Christianity basis is tending off balance on the submissive end while Islam and the Muslim culture is tending off balance on the aggresive end. When the heavy weights are at the ends of the beam away from the supports, the center tends to break. That is a concern.

It sometimes seems there is a cancer within, a pessimism that is often at odds with the evidence, a pessimism that can be a self fulfilling prophecy. Such a view seems to meet some internal emotional need. The cure may be to lift one’s eyes and look beyond the buffeting of the storms one encounters and get a broader picture placed in the context of reality. Thomas Barnett talks about some of this in WPR Article | The New Rules: The Naughties Were Plenty Nice.

Why are we so convinced that the last 10 years, the decade of the Naughts, have lived up to their name by coming to naught? … First and most obviously, there is a Western-centric tone to all this hyperbole. … What does humankind gain by lifting hundreds of millions out of chronic poverty, if tens of millions of Western middle-class-niks are condemned to a decade of wealth stagnation? Should we good people be denied our rightful retirement age simply to accommodate all these colorful types in regions far, far away? …

Ask the average person on the street today and he or she will tell you that the entire world is consumed by war — perpetual war, even — when, on a per capita basis, we are indisputably living through the most peaceful era in human history. No other period even comes close. …

Now we get to the heart of our fears concerning the Naughts: the “suddenly” discovered transfer of global power — allegedly “zero-sum” — from West to East. … The first thing you must do to even find yourself asking this question is purge from your mind all memory of the bad fiscal habits acquired by Americans and Europeans across a quarter-century economic boom, and accept as truth the premise that all that technology innovation and wealth creation was a complete lie! …

Or simply realize that we Americans have plenty to be thankful for, plenty to be proud of, and plenty to look forward to — so long as we remember that we are facing a present and a future that we long sought to create, but not dominate.

For those still stuck in the terrible naughties paradigm, see what Say Anything has in response to a Reason video that exemplifies the EOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it) illness in Were The 2000’s The Worst Decade Ever?. Another perspective at the Christian Science Monitor is A New Year’s resolution: Don’t accept US decline

The airwaves and netwaves are full of reviews of the decadem horribilis – a decade of terror attacks, two hot wars, hurricane Katrina, a great recession, a record federal deficit, and more. … There’s no denying that these past years have been tough for many in the United States, … The US is still the world’s largest economy … Corporate spending on R&D may have slowed, but peek inside engineering schools and home offices. Innovation is humming. The Wall Street Journal reported recently a surge in “tinkering” as plummeting prices on materials and equipment allow individuals to turn their ideas into inventions. Engineering schools are reporting more students wanting to do hands-on work. “Hackerspaces,” where tinkerers can share ideas and tools, are blossoming across the country. … Americans also want to help others. Community service has soared over the last 20 years.

why?

Too often, I think, we end up thinking that everything is awful not because things really are awful but rather because that’s what various factions want us to think. Because that’s what best serves their purpose.

Whatever the reason or motivation for all of the doom and gloom and pessimism, a bit of intellectual integrity might be worthwhile. A concentration on problems can help in finding solutions but an obsession with problems can be an illness. There is much to be thankful for and many blessings to be acknowledged.

Climate research problems are not the only issues on the plate. Others still simmer and are being figured out.

The decisions of the USAG about who to prosecute have puzzled some. ACORN is one example. Jennifer Rubin describes the current activity on another in DOJ Employees Subpoenaed: Will Holder Interfere?. That one involves the blatant voter intimidation witness in the last major election. Another USAG issue is the terrorists trials and Kejda Gjermani covers some of the action there in the idea that The True Administration of Justice is the Firmest Pillar of Good Government. An alternative view at Slate is about Why the critics of the KSM trial are wrong. Rick has some additional thoughts on this topic in Theocentrism vs. Egocentrism. That cites Deborah Tyler who suggests that

liberalism is not insane. It is a highly adaptive ego device that enables people to violate commitments, vilify those who are true to their faith, and avoid personal sacrifice while feeling great about themselves. The only defense against hypocrisy is self-knowledge; the politics, spirituality, and morality of liberalism are well-constructed firmaments of self-delusion.

That gets back to the Roadkill Diaries taking note of the Christopher Essex commentary to the point that

Governments leaders wanted something where they could absolve themselves of the responsibility for making informed decisions. They would have to read science stuff otherwise. They ordered up a kind of unnatural scientist that would tell them precisely what they wanted to hear.

And then there’s Sarah. Going Rogue has sold more than a million copies at a record pace and now Palin wows them at the Gridiron Club. That shows a side many have denied she has, again. The truth can sometimes take a long time to sink in for some folks.

Then there’s Afghanistan (see The worst and the dimmest) and the troop strength versus pullout schedule; net neutrality and related issues (see Will Google be Neutral and Transparent with its new service?); Technology and the future of journalism as seen with the Tiger Woods story; and the Muslim conundrum such as described in Gaddafi: Swiss minaret ban invites al-Qaeda attacks.

Therein lies the assumption that all acts of jihadist terrorism must be a response to some kind of provocation (real or imagined) from non-Muslims: after all, the apologists keep telling us “defensive” jihad is quite alright, caliph or no caliph.

Now to check out the Skeptics Handbook and see if it fits the denial of reality paradigm often ascribed to those who dare question authority in certain matters.

Don’t we live in interesting times?

Dr. Sowell has a ‘must read’ in Dismantling America: Part II. He seems worried based on experience.

The memory of that long-ago episode has come back more than once while observing both the actions of the Obama administration and the fierce reactions of its supporters to any questioning or criticism.

Almost never do these reactions include factual or logical arguments against the administration’s critics. Instead, there is indignation, accusations of bad faith and even charges of racism.

Here too, it seems as if so many people have invested so much hope and trust in Barack Obama that it is intolerable that anyone should come along and stir up any doubts that could threaten their house of cards.

The potential consequence of action is one thing. Being unable to even discuss one’s fears and insights and opinions is another.

That was quite a gathering. Powerline notes that CNN, “making it up” as usual as a contrast to a personal report.

It was a very civil crowd, and a very large one. … There were many, many signs, and I’d say that 95% + were hand made. The slogans ran the gamut, but most were on the general theme of spending and government intervention is out of control, we can’t afford it, we’re scared by where Obama is trying to take the country, and the like. … Quite a few came as part of groups, but we encountered more who had come on their own … Several folks remarked — and a few signs hit this point — how incensed they were that their elected representatives had not bothered to read the legislation, and were shown to be flat wrong in their general statements about it when read passages of the actual bill in town hall meetings. These folks were watching, and it’s easy to see why so many Senators and Representatives chose to duck instead of engaging the issues with their constituents. … One other phenomenon: Joe Wilson was a hero today. Not I think, that the crowd generally approved of intemperate outbursts … It should not be necessary to say this, but given a particularly partisan segment I just watched on CNN, I will: There was not a trace of “race” in all of this. It was all about the substantive issues. … We did not return thinking naively that these “tea parties” will lead to a sea change in the balance of political power, but it is heartening to see that many Americans are watching and willing to say out loud that they do not like what they see

And you can see for yourself at Looking at the Left’s Conservative Woodstock Rocks the Capital.

Many of the attendees were quite meek and timid and were unsure of exactly what to expect, this being the first time in their lives they’d been involved in a protest movement. Their fears evaporated early in the day and I saw people reveling in the camaraderie , the joy and sheer civility that was exhibited at the entire event.

Reports of events like this in the past such as the “million man march” have made a lot of people associate anger and violence and bigotry and intolerance and a lack of civility with major protests. It appears that many Americans have found out that civil protest does not need such behavior and that they are not alone in seeking a civil manner to express their concern in public.

Mark D. Roberts discusses the Sunday Inspiration from The High Calling, defending truth, humility and justice. He notes that we are called to properly express intellectual integrity as a ‘High Calling.”

As people of truth, we will speak and live in a way that reflects God and his revelation. In a world of falsehood, in which truth itself is under attack, we will seek the truth in all things, stand for the truth in what we say and do.

As people of humility, we will never speak the truth in a way that is haughty, as if the truth belongs to us. Moreover, we will always see ourselves as subjects of the King of kings, and offer our lives to him and to others as servants. Thus we will imitate the humble servanthood of Jesus.

As people of justice, we will treat all people fairly and will work for a world that offers justice to all. We will be especially committed to doing justice for the poor and powerless. Where we have been given authority, in our work, our families, our churches, or our community, we will strive for just systems that reflect the character of God.

It is often easiest to find truth or integrity when truth, humility, or justice is missing. We can detect or measure logical fallacies, emotional diatribes, arrogance, or unbalanced justice in others. We need to keep in mind that sometimes detecting it in ourselves can be difficult. That is why we need to keep post such as that of Mark Roberts in mind.

Joan Swirsky, The Canada Free Press, describes The President Who Hates His Country.

Bizarre and, yes, repugnant as it is to our essentially centrist country, America now has a president who has broken that time-honored tradition. Barack Obama, on the campaign trail and as the leader of the free world is the first U.S. president to proclaim to anyone within earshot that he, like his wife, is not proud of his country, and is all-too-willing to offer serial apologies – for America! – to Americans and foreigners alike.
..
Scan you[r] memory. Can you think of any other leader in world history who so consistently badmouths his own country, or fails to defend it? I can’t.

Swirsky cites a long list of quotations, citations, and events as well as some of the responses. The focus is a worry about an elected leader who does not show an enthusiasm for what he leads but an additional worry should be how such behavior feeds the response and helps to build and support conspiracy theories and wild exaggerations. The previous administration did not provide anywhere near the stimulus for such things but they were built anyway, even when requiring a complete reversal of positions taken and historical revision. The list provided by Swirsky starts out with a fairly extensive list of incidents that could only be rationalized but never supported as a political will.

The BrothersJudd blog digs out the archives and examines Easter.

In The Essential Tension, the tension between “Greek philosophy and Jerusalem’s spiritual aspiration” is described,

An enormous amount is at stake here. “Athens” stands for the view that truth is discovered through intellect. “Jerusalem” stands for the view that truth is delivered through the insights of recognized genius. “Athens” stands for cognition, philosophy, and science. “Jerusalem” stands for the spiritual aspiration to holiness, or purity of soul.

The Thin Gruel of Experience cites a story about Thomas and the problem of a tangible source for belief.

Thomas believed because he saw. But our Lord did not call him blessed. He had been allowed to “see,” to see the hands and the side, and to touch the blessed wounds, yet he was not blessed!

Perhaps Thomas had a narrow escape from a great danger. He wanted proofs, wanted to see and touch; but then, too, it might have been rebellion deep within him, the vainglory of an intelligence that would not surrender, a sluggishness and coldness of heart. He got what he asked for: a look and a touch. But it must have been a concession he deplored having received, when he thought on it afterwards. He could have believed and been saved, not because he got what he demanded; he could have believed because God’s mercy had touched his heart and given him the grace of interior vision, the gift of the opening of the heart, and of its surrender.

Men by Themselves Are Priced looks at the implications of how we see our faults.

Our unwillingness to see our sins as they really are, as God sees them, leads us to embrace another falsehood: that is, that we can make things right. Even though our culture is, in many respects, post-Christian, it still clings to the idea of redemption. However, just as with our ideas about sin and guilt, our ideas about redemption are pitiful and impoverished. … One need not believe directly in this truth to understand that it is the only basis for a decent state.

The, at Slate, Larry Hurtado takes a historical perspective about Why Was Jesus Crucified? that touches on the efforts to sanitize the process as a means of trying to come to grips with the horror.

In fact, Jesus’ crucifixion posed a whole clutch of potential problems for early Christians. It meant that at the origin and heart of their faith was a state execution and that their revered savior had been tried and found guilty by the representative of Roman imperial authority. This likely made a good many people wonder if the Christians weren’t some seriously subversive movement. It was, at least, not the sort of group that readily appealed to those who cared about their social standing.

Jesus’ crucifixion represented a collision between Jesus and Roman governmental authority, an obvious liability to early Christian efforts to promote their faith. Yet, remarkably, they somehow succeeded. Centuries of subsequent Christian tradition have made the image of the crucified Jesus so familiar that the offensiveness of the event that it portrays has been almost completely lost.

The intellect is in a battle. It demands, like Thomas, to see tangible evidence and to have an understandable hypothesis – one that we can model in terms of our everyday experience. There are times when this demand is not met and this is one of them.

For Easter this year, Pastor Mark D. Roberts undertakes a review of The Stations of the Cross: Reflections for Lent and Holy Week. These stations are steps on the path Jesus took from the Mount of Olives to his tomb.

There are a lessons in the history of this story about the Stations of the Cross and each step along the way can provide insight into an understanding of Christianity and of one’s self. There are many questions for those whose faith is not blind and who want to better understand the basis for their belief. It is easy to leave out nuance and keep things at a simple level but there is also much to learn by thinking about the nature of a confession of sin and what it really means to accept the Christ as savior and what can be learned by the actions of Jesus as well as the words of Jesus. Those are the questions that Pastor Roberts explores.

Patterico Pontificates about David Horowitz Is Right — And Also, Terribly Wrong and hits a powerful insight about personal intellectual integrity.

Now that our guy is out of power, we have to decide: did we hate those tactics because they were wrong? Or only because they were used in service of the other guy?

David Horowitz and others worry that the right will exhibit the same behaviors that Krauthammer labeled as ‘Bush Derangement Syndrome’ (BSD). This worry illustrates a difference between schools of thought. Such concerns did not seem to be of an issue for those who opposed the previous administration. They do seem to be a concern for those who oppose the current administration. The difference is a sensitivity to the problems of ‘ad hominem’ debate and how it poisons viewpoints.

The key here was illustrated by the Limbaugh expressed desire for failure. Limbaugh was after a failure of policy and ideology but it was misrepresented as a desire for personal failure. Those prone to BSD seem to be after the person while the current opposition is trying to stay focused on the policy and ideology. The misperceptions about Limbaugh’s statements worry Patterico. It seems he wants to ‘fight fair’ in the old school manner where cheating and distortion was not considered appropriate.

Concurring Opinions describes Why the Innocent Are Punished More Harshly Than the Guilty in the criminal ‘justice’ system.

The keys issues focus on the idea that pleading guilty is good. That puts pressure on the innocent to proclaim their guilt to relieve pressure and reduce punishment. Federal sentencing guidelines call this an “acceptance of responsibility” and many jurisdictions use this idea as a means of arranging a plea deal to reduce the costs of trial.

These factors lead to the rather perverse outcome that defendants who are innocent are punished more harshly than the guilty. The innocent defendant faces a terrible choice — either falsely admit guilt, in exchange for a lighter punishment, or defend his or her innocence but pay dearly if he or she loses. Innocent defendants are probably much more likely to choose the latter strategy. Timothy Cole turned down a plea deal for probation because he didn’t want to confess to a crime he didn’t commit. That’s a decision made on principle, one that an innocent person might very well make but rather unusual for a guilty person to make.

It is fortunate that not many innocent are subjected to this but it is a tragedy, both for the innocent and for society, when it does happen. It is a torture because it leaves permanent emotional scars and destroys lives. It illustrates how a values are corrupted by well meaning practice that has unintended effects. collateral damage, that was not properly considered.

The blog Whispers is focused on straight thinking about current issues, discussion, debate, and reporting. “We all have an obligation to each other and to ourselves to ‘get it right’ to help each other understand what really is and what things actually mean – not what we think might be or wish might be.”

As a renewal of this focus, the techno-geek stuff has been moved to TechComm Labs and categories for justice and finance have been added here to better cover the range of ideas that influence how we live and think.

The idea here is not to opine so much as it is to highlight how others see the world around them and to make note of discrepancies between what is written and what may be observed or logically concluded; it is about seeing a bigger picture and realizing the implications of what you think.

On November 4 the FCC cleared the way for the use of TV channel guard bands for I’net access. As TV moves from analog to digital, the need for an empty space, a guard band, between channels to prevent them from interfering with each other is reduced. Getting more TV in less spectrum is the promise of digital TV and this FCC action is an attempt to utilize that promise. It is a second step after auctioning off the upper UHF channels (51 to 80) freed up in the planned transition.

The idea on this use of the guard bands for I’net access is that, while the equipment must still be FCC approved, transmissions do not need a license. There will have to be provision to make sure the equipment does not interfere with nearby digital TV transmissions. This will likely mostly depend upon a location database more than it will signal sensing.

A key feature of using this part of the spectrum is that it is at a lower frequency than the traditional 2.4 GHz WiFi which means it will suffer less attenuation getting into and out of buildings and other solid objects. It will tend to have a longer range with some trade-off for lower data rates.

Joshua Breitbart has a good description in Open the airwaves and the sky’s the limit and why the ‘free is good’ folks are very happy.

Wireless access is not a full replacement for wired connections, but it is a much cheaper way to bring people the Internet. Mobile phones are far more widespread than in-home computers with broadband connections, especially among the groups currently marginalized from the Internet. …

Once you don’t have to rely on big, corporate license-holders to get a connection, you can start to invent entirely new devices and applications. The FCC used the same kind of open platform for innovation with the 2.4 gigahertz band. That led to an astounding array of inventions — cordless phones, remote controls, microwave ovens, and wi-fi routers — all sharing one tiny piece of the airwaves.

Google has been one the primary backers of this idea. Catherine Holahan described their effort in Business Week’s Google’s Plans for the Space Between Your TV Channels

Companies such as Clearwire are providing I’net service similar to that envisioned by Google. This FCC action will make that type of service easier to implement over more area.

As an approach to network administration, eBox is intended for those who don’t want to gain the expertise or spend the time needed to understand all of the nuance and interrelationships between services of a modern office network server. There are two basic approaches to simplifying things like this. One is to handle interdependencies automatically and the other is to depend upon a standard model or template for the system. eBox has a lot of work to do in both of these areas.

The sales pitch for eBox does not clearly indicate that its standard model is a server with two interfaces, each on its own network. In the eBox network settings, the interface with the ‘external’ box checked serves what is usually known as the WAN (wide area network) side that is attached to the I’net. The interface without this ‘external’ box checked is for the LAN (local area network) side. In the standard eBox network model, the eBox machine provides many services that are usually provided by standalone NAT router devices. See the eBox Network Scenario.

In the first scenario eBox is placed between your router and your local network. In the second one, eBox is installed just like another machine in your network. The latter has some limitations as we explain later.

Many micro businesses and home based businesses have a modem that connects to the broadband service, usually DSL or cable, provided by an I’net service provider. This connects to a NAT router that will have several ethernet ports and perhaps a wireless network that services the local machines. These NAT routers can run from well under $40 to several hundred and provide services such as network address translation, firewall, DHCP, and DNS configured by a web based interface. They are standard ‘off the shelf’ appliances that work very well for the basic WAN to LAN interface. If you set up an eBox machine that is a peer under this router with the other local machines, its capabilities become limited due to its model and that model’s necessary interdependencies.

The key here is whether to model is based on the assumption in between the source and destination of network traffic or just sitting in the network providing services to its peers. The eBox model is mostly based on the presumption of throughput.

Services that are strictly for a LAN, such as file sharing and user definition can avoid any interaction with upstream firewalls and traffic controls. Services like traffic shaping and load sharing seem to need to cooperate closely with firewalls yet eBox does not appear to define this interaction for the user. Then there is the proxy service which lists a dependency upon the firewall yet has no obvious need for that dependency. This is a state of confusion noted in the Firewall rework discussion.

The firewall module is one of the most criticised and controversial parts in eBox. Abstracting the firewall configuration is a tricky work, we tried our best, and it seems our approach can be improved.

It appears that eBox is rather young. It does not yet have the service coverage that its competitors like Webmin do, partly due to its primary feature of automatically managing interdependencies between services. This automation feature is perhaps also a reason why flexibility in configuring services like file sharing and web services is limited. A conservative approach to management of interdepencies is also why users may find the feature set restricted in ways that make like difficult for them, especially if not adhering to the network model presumed by eBox developers.

Patrick Stephens discussed the Smart & Principled meme that arose from the ‘experience’ rationale some used to support their discomforts. Kim du Toit selected a quote of the day from the discussion that is worth thinking about.

When foundering in ignorance, Obama reverts to platitudes, Biden makes stuff up, McCain suspends his campaign, and Palin asks for clarification.

Patrick notes this in support of his view that the campaign is a choice between random and wrong rather than the often cited “change” or “experience” or relationships. Along the way he touches on the bedrock provided by principle and value system and that threads back to the success of Reagan.

Both solar and nuclear are hitting the news with advances in efficiency and utility. CEO of Hyperion Power Generation interviewed about the Uranium Hydride reactor provides some numbers that yield scope and scale in thinking about energy sources.

• specifically designed to fit on the back of a flatbed truck at about 20 tons weight and a meter and a half wide by 2 tall.
• reactor life is 8 – 10 years with 70 Mw thermal or 30 Mw electrical output at about $100 million each. That appears to be about a nickel per kWh.
• certified ‘walk a way’ design does not need continuous operator monitoring or attention
• expected factory output is 400 reators per year or 10-12 Gw output – that’s like building more than 10 typical major sized power plants every year. The estimated market opportunity is for half a million of these units.
• “The waste that comes out of our reactor after powering 20,000 homes for 8-10 years is about the size of a football.”

That’s a pre-packaged solution for powering a 20,000 home community for near ten years.

File sharing services are perhaps one of the most common uses for a network services box. Samba allows sharing files using the Microsoft Windows methods. It does a good job meshing the Linux ideas and Windows ideas – most of the time. Sharing a linked file has a problem, though.

eBox puts its Samba shares in the /home/samba/… and doesn’t allow tinkering with the samba configuration files. This means that, if you have a file or folder somewhere else, you have to use a link to have it appear in your shared files folder.

If you have the Samba Unix Extensions enabled, which they are by default, a Linux client won’t be able to access files on that share through the link as it sees the link as being local. To fix this, you have to disable the Unix Extensions. See the bug report at contribs.org.

The Unix Extensions allow users to set their own file permissions and such things. Since eBox won’t allow tweaking the server configuration file to turn them off, you need to turn them off when you mount the share on the client. The key option to use is ‘nounix’ as in the following example:

sudo mount.cifs //serverIPaddress/sharename localmountpoint -o user=workgroup/userid%password,noperm,file_mode=0666,dir_mode=0777,nounix