Some Thoughts on "Obamacare"

This was taken from a post about Papa John's reaction to Obamacare.  I made this comment after some brief research and reflection about the issue at hand.

I think a key thing to remember about "Obamacare" is that it was passed by Congress (Who we elected to run our government and set policy for us), withstood the test in the supreme court (With conservative Chief Justice Roberts siding in favor of the law), and has survived 30 attempts (As of 7/9/12) at repeal starting two weeks after the Republicans regained House majority after the 2010 election. We live in the most powerful country in the world, shouldn't we have the best healthcare for every person that lives in this country and makes it what it is? Since the US was founded, we've enacted laws and policies to protect our citizens. Unions were created to protect factory workers from abuse and unsafe working conditions. Laws relating to fair and equal treatment despite differences in sex or race gave everyone a chance to succeed. We created oversight of corporations to prevent them from forming monopolies that would send citizens into a new breed of sharecropping. I say "we" throughout all this because we are a representative democracy. We have elected our government to act on our behalf. If we don't like the way things are being done, we elect someone else or we convince our representative to feel differently about the issue. The problem many of the States and companies like Papa John's is facing is that they had hoped Romney would win and get the law repealed. As an aside, it shocks me that they think he would have been able to do much since every attempt in the House to repeal it failed. Since these States and companies were hoping the law would be repealed they failed to plan ahead and prepare for the different clauses of the law that take affect over time. Now everyone is scrambling to make up for lost time, hiring freezes and layoffs are happening because they didn't create a plan to deal with the consequences of the law. If they'd been ready, this wouldn't be happening.

Our two island animals

Kitty is a little too overly attached to her food bowl

Kitty and her brother

Momma monkey with a baby in St. Kitts

How Secure is Our Information

I'm not really sure where this post will end up going but it's something that needs to come up a lot more. How secure is our information? Is information safer in the digital realm or the physical realm?

With the growth of cloud storage products, large amounts of information that should be kept extremely secure is being sent all over the world through data networks. I use online banking, store credit card numbers online, store passwords online and locally on the computer. In reality, the information is only as secure as the weakest password that needs to be cracked to access the information. I put a lot of faith that in the hope that I can prevent security breaches. The harsh truth is that even if I do the best to ensure security on my end there is still the possibility that security on the server end could be compromised.

When it comes to the physical world I have that same faith that I can keep things secure. I have locks on my doors but that doesn't protect everything. It's still possible to break a window and get in.

I think what it comes down to is using common sense and hoping for good luck. I know that I'm not the most careful person with my information, I hope I don't regret my choice.

A Complaint Against Apple

From time to time I still pick up a freelance computer repair job. I took a job fixing a MacBook Pro that turned into a multi-day endeavor. It turned out the hard drive was failing (in my opinion). The bigger problem I found was that a Mac OS X install DVD will not necessarily work on any Mac. The OS X DVD came from another Mac user and was even for the same model (13" MacBook Pro) and stock OS (10.6 Snow Leopard). In my opinion the DVD should be able to install Snow Leopard on any Mac capable of running it. It's impractical to assume that people will hang on to their install media at all times.

I see this as Apple's method to make sure people are stuck bringing their computers into the Apple store for repairs.

Adventures in Cloud Security

Malicious hackers have made computer security breaches a constant concern.  Groups like Anonymous have shown that even some of the most secure networks in the world are vulnerable to attack.  When I bought the domain it occurred to me that there is always the possibility that someone could break into my website.  To keep costs low for the site I picked a host that uses shared hosting.  There is nothing I can do to improve the security of the server itself.  The only action I can take is to make sure that my password for cPanel is secure.  My hosting provider was hacked some time ago before I was a customer and I can only hope they've learned their lesson and keep a better eye on security.

To protect the site I set up two cloud based security measures.  The first tool is CodeGuard.com.  CodeGuard backs up my site daily using delta backups to minimize storage consumption.  This protects the content of the site if my server is hacked or taken offline.  The second tool I'm using is CloudFlare.com.  CloudFlare is a content delivery network and security service.  CloudFlare is installed by changing the name servers for the site.  This means that all visitor traffic to my site passes through CloudFlare's security screen first.  All the reviews I read about CloudFlare before I set it up were amazingly positive.  This company has the chance to turn the tide in the internet security war.  The content distribution portion of CloudFlare is an added bonus that speeds up loading times.

The other set of security measures I set up were meant to protect the blog as well as the other modules of the site, forum and photo gallery.  WordPress has made a lot of improvement in the inherent security of the software over the years.  That being said, there is still some vulnerability.  There are two plugins I installed to protect the blog.  First, I installed BulletProof Security (BPS).  BPS modifies the .htaccess files to prevent hackers from accessing certain portions of the site.  It was a little complicated to set up but I have a lot of confidence in the security it provides.  The second plugin I installed was Better WP Security.  This plugin automates backups of the WordPress MySQL database and monitors the files in the WordPress directory for changes.  In addition, the plugin also prevents brute force login attacks on the blog and prevents attackers for scanning through the blog for vulnerabilities.  The last security measure is probably the simplest of all, make sure the software is running the most current version.  WordPress makes updating painless.  phpBB hasn't needed to be updated yet but I think the process is also automated.  Coppermine photo gallery is the one that is difficult to update but it's still not too bad.

I put links at the bottom of my homepage to support the companies that have provided the tools to build this site.  Check them out.

Hosting my own domain

This post is from the blog on my new site (BrianRThomas.com):

This is the first time I've worked with a site where I've had significant control. BrianRThomas.com is being hosted by WebHostingHub. My main blog, through its many incarnations has always been hosted by Blogger. It's nice to try something I can have more control over. The only possible downside is I'm now exposed to downtime from my hosting company. Blogger has been super reliable over the years and Google hosted services have a lot of redundancy. I don't think I'll run into any issues but it's something I want to keep an eye on. As a side note it's a bit humorous that I insist on great uptime for a site that may never get much traffic.

For my own redundancy I'll probably mirror all the posts between the two blogs. I tried to run an importer to get the Blogger posts listed here but the formatting transferred poorly.

I want to test some formatting so this post is going up in multiple parts.

R.I.P. Elvis

Bonfire for my friend, Elvis Stanley, after his passing.