Getting Out of Debt photo: lemonjenny Last week, we announced a five-week long giveaway of Hot (broke) Messes, a financial how-to book for young adults written by Nancy Trejos, the personal finance columnist at the Washington Post. To enter the giveaway, we asked you — our readers — to share your own “getting out of debt” stories. Deferred Student Loans to Focus on Credit Card Debt Emily Holden of Brighton, Mass., wrote: I’m pretty lucky: I don’t have too much debt for a 25-year old. Recently, I joined Mint.com to help keep my budget in check. I have sworn off buying clothes for the remainder of the month, but when I do, I try to stick to inexpensive, thrift-store clothes. I never let my checking account get below $1,000 and I check my balances every day. The key is: always know where your money is going. Created a “Debt Management” Budget to Keep Spending In Check Pamela A., Atlanta, GA: When I graduated from college just a year and a half ago, I thought I was made–financially that is! Cathi C., Chattanooga, TN
State of the Nation The first thing you need to understand about healthcare reform is what Jane Hamsher identified long ago: nothing--absolutely nothing--is going to trump the White House's deal with PhRMA and the insurance industry. The question you need to ask yourselves is: why? If you're intellectually mature enough to get past "personal betrayal" as your best answer, you'll be on the right track. While you ponder that one, you might want to also consider why nothing has been done--nor will anything serious actually be done--about financial industry reform. Standing up to the financial industry in the current political environment should be a no-brainer. The problem is people like me, and the people I work for. Give us a little money to test some things out, and we can work magic. For a little coin, we can even make poor people hate inheritance taxes, just by using a few little words that work. So here's what you have to understand. And each and every one of you is being taken for fools.
99 ways to make your computer blazingly fast Over the last several years working in IT for various companies as a Systems Administrator, Network Administrator, and Help Desk professional, I’ve written and learned about many ways to increase the performance of not only my PC, but also of the many PCs on my networks ranging from Windows 98 to Windows Vista. In this article, I hope to compile a complete list of all the different methods and tricks that I’ve used to get the last bit of juice out of a slow PC. Whether you are using an old PC or the latest and greatest in hardware, you can still use some of these to make your PC run faster. Note that since I write two blogs, Help Desk Geek and Online Tech Tips, I have previously written about many performance tips already which I will link back to throughout. If I have not written about it, I’ve throw in a link to a relevant article from some of my other favorite sites. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.
Wonk Room » Glenn Beck: Up With Child Labor! By Guest Contributor on February 21, 2010 at 3:32 pm "Glenn Beck: Up With Child Labor!" Our guest blogger is senior fellow John Halpin, co-director of the Progressive Studies Program at the Center for American Progress. Glenn Beck’s dire warning yesterday at CPAC against progressivism — “the cancer in America” — was truly one for the Texas state history books. What is a concerned patriot to do to recover his lost country? According to the iron-clad logic of the chalkboard, the only way to combat this oppression is to fight for the repeal of the Progressive and New Deal eras and everything progressivism has ever done to this country. – No one will ever again have to work an 8-hour day or a 40-hour week or be forced to relax on the weekend. The Revolution starts today.
10 Cool Ways to Use Nmap Nmap (“Network Mapper”) is a free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. In addition to my list you can also check out this Comprehensive Guide to Nmap here and of course the man pages Here are some really cool scanning techniques using Nmap 1) Get info about remote host ports and OS detection nmap -sS -P0 -sV -O <target> Where < target > may be a single IP, a hostname or a subnet -sS TCP SYN scanning (also known as half-open, or stealth scanning) -P0 option allows you to switch off ICMP pings. -sV option enables version detection -O flag attempt to identify the remote operating system Other option: -A option enables both OS fingerprinting and version detection -v use -v twice for more verbosity. nmap -sS -P0 -A -v < target > 2) Get list of servers with a specific port open
The Key Differences Between Progressive and Liberal, and how "Liberal" Thinking Can be Part of the Problem March 28, 2010 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. As a progressive, I'm often asked if there is a real difference between progressivism and liberalism, or if progressivism is merely a nicer-sounding term for the less popular L-word. It's a fair question, considering that Democratic politicians regularly substitute "progressive" for "liberal" in news releases and speeches. However, that doesn't mean the ideologies are synonymous. Some background: Economic liberalism has typically focused on using the government's treasury as a means to ends, whether those ends are better healthcare (Medicare/Medicaid), stronger job growth (tax credits) or more robust export businesses (corporate subsidies). Economic progressivism, by contrast, has historically trumpeted the government fiat as the best instrument of social change -- think food safety, minimum wage and labor laws, and also post-Depression financial rules and enforcement agencies.
Future proof » Tim’s laptop service manuals Have you come to this webpage looking for Toshiba laptop service manuals? Please read this. Introduction In the same vein as in my driver guide, I’ve started finding laptop service manuals and hosting them on my site. These are the professional, official documents published by the various laptop makers, either for their own technicians or for the use of the general public. They generally detail the exact list of parts in each model of laptop – often down to individual screws, if you happen to have lost some and need to know the exact size for a replacement – and describe the procedure for disassembling and reassembling the entire machine, including panels, RAM, wireless cards, keyboards and touchpads and LCD screens, all the way down to the motherboard itself. They’re difficult to find – you have to know where to look in their support site, or come up with the right Google search string, or beg and steal from someone you know in the industry. Practical stuff Organisation Feedback Acer Apple
Bill Moyers Articulates Progressives’ Frustrations With Obama Last night, Bill Moyers was a guest on Bill Maher’s show. The “conscience of American journalism” gave a 30 minutes interview that was a comprehensive and brilliant analysis, and should be used, quite frankly, as a manifesto for the progressive Democrats. If President Obama wants to be more than just a one term President, he should listen to the wise words of Bill Moyers, and he should revamp his political strategy accordingly. The main topics of the interview were health care reform, Afghanistan and the decline of the American empire. On the health care reform debate, Moyers blamed the Democratic party. Bill Moyers said:” On Afghanistan, Moyers drew a dual analogy between Vietnam & Afghanistan and JFK & Obama. On America as an empire in decline, Bill Moyers said:” Let’s hope the passing of his friend and mentor, Ted Kennedy, will give President Obama an epiphany of some sort, and get him out of his White House bubble so he can remember what he was elected to do.
Three locks for your SSH door Introduction If you require remote access to your computer and you enable Secure Shell (SSH) connections, you must accept that you will automatically attract hackers who will try to break your defenses and take command of your machine. Although there's no guarantee that your machine won't be "0wn3d" by a "h4x0r," a few simple solutions can help reinforce your SSH door and make life a bit more difficult for anybody trying to break in. This article considers three such techniques: Changing SSH's standard port to an unusual value and reinforcing SSH configuration so that simple-minded attacks just bounce back. To apply these techniques, you need to access the root account. Back to top Reinforcing the door The concept "security through obscurity" is well known—and well derided—because doing things in an obscure way, hoping that no one will get wise to your method, is just asking for problems. Everybody knows that the standard port for SSH connections is 22. ssh -p 22960 your.machine.url
Reports - Nader Was Right: Liberals Are Going Nowhere With Obama Nader Was Right: Liberals Are Going Nowhere With Obama Posted on Aug 10, 2009 By Chris Hedges The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. The sad reality is that all the well-meaning groups and individuals who challenge our permanent war economy and the doctrine of pre-emptive war, who care about sustainable energy, fight for civil liberties and want corporate malfeasance to end, were once again suckered by the Democratic Party. We owe Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney and the Green Party an apology. “Something is broken,” Nader said when I reached him at his family home in Connecticut. “There comes a point when the public imbibes the ultimatum of the plutocracy,” Nader said when asked about public apathy. “This is the third television generation,” Nader said. “They have been broken,” Nader said of the working class. Our task is to build movements that can act as a counterweight to the corporate rape of America. New and Improved Comments