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GRAFFITI -- June 21, 2004 thru June 27, 2004

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Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable.     About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message.

Ron Paul in 2008

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MONDAY    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
June 21, 2004

1058 - Good morning. We had a short outage here yesterday morning, about an hour long. The notification service from the hosting provider either just doesn't work, or fell on it's ass in this case. Anyway, I spent a lot of yesterday afternoon and evening reading, understanding and configuring Nagios on another machine to keep an eye on key services here on Zidane, and notify Greg and I via SMS when problems arise. The best part was making Greg's cell phone beep a bunch of times while he was doing the Father's Day gig with his folks. Heh!.

I have some gardening pix to share with you, but as this day got started in a rush, and I've just stopped long enough to catch my breath here, I'll try for that tomorrow morning. Happy Monday, and welcome to Summer for us Northern Hemisphere types. Reverse that if you need to, you know who you are! Have a great day!

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Mon    TUESDAY    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
June 22, 2004

0635 - Good morning. I'm getting an early start because this is a three-stop day, with the first one halfway around the beltway, which might as well be halfway around the world from the perspective of bad traffic. Oh, well. I promised pictures...

Lucy sleeps awkwardly...Finished wall and door, almost.The first is an old one, maybe a repeat, but cute all the same. Sally used to have this habit of sleeping in awkward and horridly uncomfortable looking positions, with her head and bodyparts jammed up against various sharp-cornered pieces of furniture. Usually Lucy is much smarter, and curls up between pillows on one couch or another through the house. But in this snap at left, from the fourth of this month, she's bent herself half-backwards around the corner of the nightstand. Eeeesh! At right, that's a shot from the inside of the workshop, showing the almost finished wall and ... dare I say it ... not quite ... a door that's hung, um, well. That is, it swings level and doesn't bind on the frame or jamb anywhere. I'm pleased. The frame and door are painted with an acrylic semi-gloss, while the wall is in a flat. I still have the floor trim to do inside and out, but other than that, it's done. Now for garden and flower pictures:

Herbs, part one. Herbs, part two. Squash left foreground, cucumbers along the right. Triumphant tomatoes.

The herbs are all in pots up on the deck. In picture order from the left two above, there's parsley, tarragon, basil, rosemary, purple basil, oregano, and cilantro. Not pictured is the sage. I'm about to harvest all of the green basil for a pesto, and start a fresh batch or two. Then in the garden, you can see squashes (zucchini, yellow summer and pumpkin), cucumber, tomatoes and the corn back and left. In the tomato shot at right, you can see they're loaded with fruit, and in the foreground there is the corn from the second planting, up about mid-shin.

Amazing corn. A pretty flower. Front yard left flower bed. Front yard right flower bed.

At right above, the first planting of corn. Yeah, they're between 2.5 and 4 feet tall already, with ears forming on the tallest ones. Amazing and early! Then, back up on the deck for a shot of the pretty yellow flowers blooming in a pot on a stand. Out front, the hard work didn't go to waste - most of the plants live, except for most of the white petunias, which must have come from a weak batch. Still, one flat out of all that I planted ... that's not bad. You can see in the rightmost that the lilies are all coming up (Thanks again, Pat!!!).


I suppose it's time for me to roll. Have a great day. Oh, and yay, Knoppix for getting a positive mention and linkage in Jerry's column segment this week in Byte. Now bye, really.

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Mon    Tues    WEDNESDAY    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
June 23, 2004


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0708 - Good morning. A moderately successful day yesterday - more wins than losses, and I'm still breathing air instead of dirt. That's a good thing. Larry sent me this (I put some of the bowdlerized words back in, adlibbing where necessary):

If General George Patton were alive and President of the USA, this would be his Fireside Speech:

My fellow Americans:

As you all know, the defeat of Iraq's regime has been completed.

Since congress does not want to spend any more money on this war, our mission in Iraq is complete.

This morning I gave the order for a complete removal of all American forces from Iraq. This action will be complete within 30 days. It is now time to begin the reckoning.

Before me, I have two lists. One list contains the names of countries which have stood by our side during the Iraq conflict. This list is short: The United Kingdom, Spain, Bulgaria, Australia, Norway and Poland are some of the countries listed there.

The other list contains everyone not on the first list. Most of the world's nations are on that list.

My press secretary will be distributing copies of both lists later this evening.

Let me start by saying that effective immediately, foreign aid to those nations on List 2 ceases immediately and indefinitely. The money saved during the first year alone will pretty much pay for the costs of the Iraqi war.

The American people are no longer going to pour money into third world hell-holes and watch those government leaders grow fat on corruption.

Need help with a famine? Wrestling with an epidemic? Call France.

In the future, together with Congress, I will work to cut taxes and solve some local problems.

On that note, a word to terrorist organizations. Fuck with us and we will hunt you down and eliminate you and all your friends from the face of the earth.

Thirsting for a gutsy country to terrorize? Try France, or maybe China.

To Israel and the Palestinian Authority. You, boys. Work out a peace deal now. Just note that Camp David is closed.

Maybe all of you can go to Russia for negotiations. They have some great palaces there. Big tables, too.

I'm ordering the immediate severing of diplomatic relations with France, Germany, and Russia. Thanks for all your help, comrades. We are retiring from NATO as well. Bon chance, mes amis.

I have instructed the Mayor of New York City to begin towing the many UN diplomatic vehicles located in Manhattan with more than two unpaid tickets to sites where those vehicles will be stripped, shredded and crushed.

I don't care about whatever treaty pertains to this. Pay your tickets tomorrow or watch your precious Benzes, Beamers, and limos be turned over to some of the finest chop shops in the world. I love New York.

A special note to our neighbors. Canada is on List 2. Since we are going to be seeing a lot more of each other, you folks might want to try not piss us off for a change. Mexico is also on List 2. President Fox and his entire corrupt government really need an attitude adjustment. I have a couple of extra tank and infantry divisions sitting around. Guess where I'm gonna put 'em? Yep, border security. So start doing something with your oil.

Oh, by the way, the United States is abrogating the NAFTA treaty--starting now.

It is time for America to focus on its own welfare and its own citizens. Some will accuse us of isolationism. I answer them by saying darn tootin'.

Nearly a century of trying to help folks live a decent life around the world has only earned us the undying enmity of just about everyone on the planet. It is time to cut taxes here because we will not be spending on other peoples problems.

To the nations on List 1, a final thought. Thanks guys. We owe you.

To the nations on List 2, a final thought. . God bless America.

Thank you and good night.

If they took a poll, and asked people if they'd really rather help rip terrorist scum to pieces with their bare hands or take the alternative path we're going down today: Give away our civil rights piecemeal, slowly, to a bunch of scared Supremes, to a passle of hassled bureaucrats whose goal in life is job security, and harassing the public, to the well-intentioned people in Justice and Homeland security who believe the Press, that says we're scared. I say we're angry, and TAKING AWAY MY CIVIL RIGHTS AND CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS IS ONLY MAKING ME ANGRIER!!! What are the three branches of our government trying to do, finish the job for the terrorists? Take back America, throw the bastards out of office, and the lick-boot staffers and agency deadwood along with them!


Now let's go geek today - here's the next installment of the Mailbox series:

Building a Mailbox using Postfix with AV and UCE controls, Part Four.

We left off as I was struggling with getting Postfix to authenticate to a remote smart host for relaying...

"Okay, it's failed again. There are more complexities here than I remember. I could just cheat and go with the config for a real Internet mail host... Let me think about that."

"More when I know more!"

And there it sat, for just a few days. Eventually I remembered that we'd just moved to a new mail host with a new scheme for user account names, and all was good in Mailbox world. So, to review progress to date:

I installed Debian Sarge on a VMware 4.5 virtual machine running here on Goldfinger, my dual Athlon main workstation. After installation and initial update was complete, over the course of the first three articles, I installed the following packages (and various dependencies):

vim exuberant-ctags vim-doc postfix postfix-mysql postfix-pcre postfix-doc 
postfix-tls sasl2-bin cyrus-pop3d cyrus-admin cyrus-imapd tclreadline
libsasl2-modules mimencode metamail openssl

I've configured postfix to forward non-local mail out to a smarthost by adding a variation on the following lines to /etc/postfix/main.cf:

relayhost = [smarthost.example.com]
smtp_sasl_auth_enable=yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps=hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options=

The /etc/postfix/sasl_password file is created in the following form:

smarthost.example.com someusername:a#pa55word

Then the sasl_passwd file is protected by chmod and chown, and processed into the database format that Postfix can use:

chown root:root /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
chmod 600 /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

postmap hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

Now when I send a mail to one of my addresses, the log files reflect the correct sending (shortened, and suitably sanitized):

Jun 22 19:52:02 mailbox postfix/smtp[564]: starting new SASL client
Jun 22 19:52:02 mailbox postfix/smtp[564]: smtp_sasl_authenticate:
smarthost.example.com[192.168.1.254]: SASL mechanisms PLAIN LOGIN
Jun 22 19:52:02 mailbox postfix/smtp[564]: smtp_sasl_get_user: someusername
Jun 22 19:52:02 mailbox postfix/smtp[564]: smtp_sasl_get_passwd: a#pa55word
Jun 22 19:52:02 mailbox postfix/smtp[564]: smtp_sasl_authenticate:
smarthost.example.com[192.168.1.254]: uncoded initial reply: someusername
 . . .
Jun 22 19:52:02 mailbox postfix/smtp[564]: <
smarthost.example.com[192.168.1.254]: 250 Ok: queued as 6397345C002
Jun 22 19:52:02 mailbox postfix/smtp[564]: 731633014:
to=, relay=smarthost.example.com[192.168.1.254],
delay=1, status=sent (250 Ok: queued as 6397345C002)

That last log entry is the kicker - it worked!

Now, on to setting up the assorted bits needed for doing virtual users, POP and IMAP boxes, etc. I'm going to closely follow this HOWTO for now:

http://www.delouw.ch/linux/Postfix-Cyrus-Web-cyradm-HOWTO/html/index.html

This is a HOWTO for configuring Postfix, Cyrus, MySQL and a web-based administrative tool to bring the whole thing together. First-off, do I have all the important bits on-system already? The HOWTO asks for MySQL, I have to get that yet:

apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client mysql-doc

Once installed and started (by the installation, I set the root user password:

mysqladmin -u root password A-NewPassword

Then the HOWTO wants Berkeley DB, I have several installed. Checking saslauthd, I see that libdb-4.1 is used in the building, so it should be alright for my purposes. There may or not be problems down the road with this HOWTO as a result of using distribution packages instead of building everything from scratch. We'll burn that bridge when we get to it!

OpenSSL is installed already, of precisely the version recommended. Cyrus in its various forms (non-monolithic in Debian), SASL, Postfix are all installed. Pam is installed, and I can get pam_mysql in Debian Sarge:

apt-get install libpam-mysql

Ah, and now a little back-tracking. I installed the assorted Cyrus stuff, and it turns out that I want the 2.X series

apt-get remove cyrus-admin cyrus-common cyrus-imapd cyrus-pop3d --purge

apt-get install cyrus21-admin cyrus21-clients cyrus21-common cyrus21-dev
cyrus21-doc cyrus21-docs cyrus21-imapd cyrus21-murder cyrus21-pop3d

And with the assorted dependencies, I might be on the right track again. Web-Cyradm doesn't have an installation candidate in Debian that I can find. There is, on the web-cyradm site, a Debian howto that I just noticed. But it's for Woody. I'm not going there. No. I'm not. Sigh.

So if I want a web-based administration tool, I'll need Apache.

apt-get install apache2-common apache2-doc apache2-mpm-prefork
libapache2-mod-php4 libapache2-mod-security php4-pear phpdoc

/etc/init.d/apache2 start

Now I can get and install Web-cyradm:

cd /tmp
wget http://www.web-cyradm.org//web-cyradm-0.5.4.tar.gz
tar zxvf web-cyradm-0.5.4.tar.gz 
cd web-cyradm-0.5.4
less README
less INSTALL

We learn that software is sharp, like sissors, and if you fall while running with sissors, you can put your eye out. But that's true with a hardened piece of old pizza, too, so we'll just take our chances. The HOWTO tells us to move the tree someplace into the web tree. I'll first edit the Apache2 default site config (found in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default) to point to /var/www/apache2-default, correcting a packaging oversight. Then I can copy the tree over. I'll rename it as I do so, as typing is hard for a lazy person like myself.

cp -r web-cyradm-0.5.4 /var/www/apache2-default/wca

touch /var/log/web-cyradm.log
chown www-data /var/log/web-cyradm.log

That last bit of information is a change from the HOWTO. The user that runs Apache is called www-data. I found that by typing

ps -aux | grep apache

Therein, I saw a bunch of apache2 child processes running as the user www-data. That's in contrast to nobody or httpd or apache, depending on your distribution. Now it's time to go and edit the mysql user and db creation scripts supplied with Web-cyradm:

cd /var/www/apache2-default/wca/scripts

There, I need to modify create_mysql.sql and insertuser_mysql.sql, changing the username and passwords therein before building the databases. If I don't, and I put this online, someone who checks against vendor-supplied admin and password will own the mailsystem in seconds.

vim insertuser_mysql.sql

In the first insert statement, I modified

... 'mail', PASSWORD('secret') ... 

to something like this:

'briadmin', PASSWORD('a-newP4ss')

Then in the second INSERT statement, the values are Host, Db, User and so on, so in the VALUES section there, I modify the third field 'mail' to match the username I changed in the previous INSERT: 'briadmin'

Then I can edit the second file:

vim create_mysql.sql

There I edit the three lines at the bottom to look something like this:

INSERT INTO adminuser (username, password) VALUES ('bmin', ENCRYPT('pass666'));
INSERT INTO domainadmin (domain_name,adminuser) VALUES ('*','bmin');
INSERT INTO accountuser (username, password) VALUES ('cmin', ENCRYPT('555jones'));

Now I should be able to run those scripts against the mysql daemon:

mysql -u root -p < insertuser_mysql.sql 
Enter password: 

There I give the root user password I set with mysqladmin a bit above. Then for the tables:

mysql -u root -p < create_mysql.sql 
Enter password: 
ERROR 1046 at line 17: No Database Selected

Ha! I can figure that problem out... At the end of the first script, we created a database called mail. Now we are creating the tables. But early in the script, we need a

USE mail; 

So I put that in just below the comments in create_mysql.sql and try again.

mysql -u root -p < create_mysql.sql
Enter password:

No further problems, excellent. The next stop in the HOWTO involve restricting MySQL from listening on external ports. The Debian default here is to NOT use tcp ports at all, but just the UNIX socket interface. I'll see if that can be configured properly, if not then we'll return to this topic soon... good news, the default is to do just what I want, as you'll see in a moment. Now to change into the config directory and edit the conf.php.dist file (I may be jumping the gun, here, but I want to get these values down while they're clear in my head, or at least on the top page of notes):

cd /var/www/apache2-default/wca/config

vim conf.php.dist

There I'll edit things to match the setting I created in the other files and configuration stuff. Here's the key bits already modified. Look above to see why I set the values I did:

 . . .
# The Cyrus login stuff
 = array(
        'HOST'  => 'localhost',
        'PORT'  => 143,
        'ADMIN' => 'cmin',
        'PASS'  => '555jones'
);
 . . .
 = array(
        'TYPE'  => 'mysql',
        'USER'  => 'briadmin',
        'PASS'  => 'a-newP4ss',
        'PROTO' => 'unix',      // set to "tcp" for TCP/IP
        'HOST'  => 'localhost',
        'NAME'  => 'mail'
);
 . . .

And there, in the section, the 'PROTO' is set to 'unix', thus using the socket. I don't even have to expose mysql on even an internal tcp port.

 . . .
# Where should web-cyradm write its log to?
 = "/var/log/";
 . . .

I changed that from /var/log/web-cyradm/, since a previous direction in the HOWTO had me pre-touch the logfile directly in /var/log. You can (and should) look at all the other settings, but those are sufficient, I think.

Back in the flow of the HOWTO, I'm to configure PAM. I have to modify the default config files in /etc/pam.d for imap, pop, sieve and smtp. First I'll copy those out of the way:

cd /etc/pam.d
mv imap ORIGINAL.imap
mv pop ORIGINAL.pop
mv sieve ORIGINAL.sieve

There's no smtp there, so I'm good to go. The directions say to create an /etc/pam.d/imap that looks like this:

auth sufficient pam_mysql.so user=briadmin passwd=a-newP4ss host=localhost
db=mail table=accountuser usercolumn=username passwdcolumn=password
crypt=1 logtable=log logmsgcolumn=msg logusercolumn=user
loghostcolumn=host logpidcolumn=pid logtimecolumn=time

auth sufficient pam_unix_auth.so

account required pam_mysql.so user=briadmin passwd=a-newP4ss host=localhost
db=mail table=accountuser usercolumn=username passwdcolumn=password
crypt=1 logtable=log logmsgcolumn=msg logusercolumn=user
loghostcolumn=host logpidcolumn=pid logtimecolumn=time

account  sufficient       pam_unix_acct.so

Those two larger groups are actually one long line each. Make sure you make it so. Also note that I modified the user and password to match my actual setup. Now I can copy that file to all the other names:

cp imap pop
cp imap sieve
cp imap smtp

Now it's time to configure Postfix further. I'm going to vary from the description in the HOWTO again, to conform to actual installed stuff on this Debian Sarge box. In /etc/postfix/master.cf, I need to modify the cyrus line:

cyrus     unix  -       n       n       -       -       pipe
  flags=R user=cyrus argv=/usr/sbin/cyrdeliver -e -r  -m "" 

That's the final result for my setup. Your deliver program may have another path, or be called deliver - check on it. But there's just that one line to edit at this time. In main.cf, we've already done most of the configuration in getting postfix running and forwarding to the smarthost. Now we want to be sure that local delivery is handled by cyrus, going forward, and a couple of mysql setups for virtual mailboxen. I added the following several lines to the bottom of /etc/postfix/main.cf:

mailbox_transport = cyrus
virtual_alias_maps = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual.cf
sender_canonical_maps = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-canonical.cf

smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_sasl_authenticated,
permit_mynetworks, rej
ect_unauth_destination
smtpd_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
smtpd_sasl_local_domain =
broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes

And I modify the mydestination = line to include the following:

mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-mydestination.cf

Next, I'll create those three .cf files, copying them from the HOWTO and personalizing them as necessary for my local installation (usernames, passwords and whatnot):

vim /etc/postfix/mysql-virtual.cf 
vim /etc/postfix/mysql-canonical.cf
vim /etc/postfix/mysql-mydestination.cf

Then I'll create the file for doing SASL authentication for SMTP sending:

cd /usr/lib/sasl2

vim smtpd.conf

That previously non-existent file now contains:

pwcheck_method: saslauthd

And that's it. The next step in the HOWTO is basic spam-fighting with Postfix. I'll leave that until next time. I hope this is enough to get you through the next few days... soon there'll be enough of a configuration to continue testing.


Yeah, I was a busy boy last night. That's about 340 lines written in vim while I did the work in another terminal or two. Of course a fair bit was simply pasted over, but I count it anyway, neh? Now I need to get to work. Lots of small tasks and a couple of new-client type meetings to attend. Have a great day!

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Mon    Tues    Wed    THURSDAY    Fri    Sat    Sun   
June 24, 2004

2123 - Good evening. No post today, see you tomorrow.

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    FRIDAY    Sat    Sun   
June 25, 2004

0623 - Hullo. It's been a long few days. Wednesday night, I fully took the evening off. We went out to supper at Ruby Tuesdays, then came home. Then Marcia firmly trounced me at cards. We watched a bit of TV and collapsed early. Thursday in the morning, I was up and out like a shot, not running late, nor intending to be. I was going to do a small post from work, but the time didn't allow.

Last night I made fresh pesto. I harvested out a bunch of green basil, then whipped down to the store to pick up pine nuts and fresh parmesan cheese. I grated the cheese, and combined the pine-nuts (about 1/4 cup); 6 large garlic cloves, smashed; 2/3 cup of parmesan, 1/3 cup of Bertolli Gentile al Palato extra virgin olive oil, and all of the basil leaves - neatly filling the standard Cuisinart to the top with some pressing down of the basil. Blend to sand-sized chunks of cheese, garlic and pine nut coated with basil puree/oil emulsion. Serve with pasta, bread, over breakfast cereal, whatever. Yummy. Refrigerate, freeze if kept more than a week.

One more long day ahead before the weekend. I'd best be about it. Have a great day!

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    SATURDAY    Sun   
June 26, 2004

0900 - Good morning. I've made a slower start of things than I originally planned, but then, I keep forgetting to drink my coffee. That explains a lot. Today is going to be an inside day, tomorrow an outside one. I've the last trim for the woodshop wall to pick up, prime and paint. Our vacuum cleaner doesn't anymore, and the more I read about the bagless cleaners, the less impressed I am with their longevity and efficiency. I'm going to have a look-see for a high-quality Eureka bag model today. Additionally, I'm going to re-fettle Grendel one last time, into a box that can be used as a give-away at an upcoming LUG meeting. And I'm going to convert Gryphon, the Sony laptop and my main "work" box over to Xandros. I spend more time than I should mucking about with that machine. Xandros just works. I'll leave Gentoo on Goldfinger the workstation, but there I've leeway in case of breakage. I really don't with Gryphon.

Do you think I've set too high a bar for the day? I may have, but that means I won't run out of things to do. That said, I'd best get started, or I'll get none of them done! Have a great day.

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    SUNDAY  
June 27, 2004

0853 - Good morning. I made significant progress in almost all areas yesterday. The trim was purchased, painted, installed and caulked. The new vacuum, a bag model by Eureka, works wonderfully, the whole house got a thorough going over. I also dealt with some moisture issues on the breakfast nook floor. On the tech front, Xandros is now installed on Gryphon, and most of the personal data migration is completed. I still have some menu work to do, and I've got to set up the multiple network boot environment that I use. Grendel was the only laggard yesterday. I only got the 20G drive installed, and put him back together. I'll work on the installation of a couple of distros today if I get the chance. But first there's the shopping, the lawns and a bit of flower-bed care.

On Slashdot this morning,, I spotted a link to the new NOAA/NWS policy - a remarkably forward-thinking and fair updating of a Federal entity's data-dissemination process in light of new technology. So of course this is being opposed by the CWSA. I have made a comment to the NOAA on this:

I approve of the new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Weather Service (NOAA/NWS) "Proposed Policy on Partnerships in the Provision of Weather, Water, Climate and Related Environmental Information".

The primary stakeholders in the Federal Government - US Citizens - clearly deserve equal and direct access to the data generated by the NOAA/NWS, and that data should be in easily disseminated, publicly documented formats. This Proposed Policy goes a long way towards recognizing these requirements. As an example, the XML data feeds available at http://weather.gov/xml/ are an excellent tool for public access to weather data in a clearly defined format that can be easily parsed for a variety of display and warning purposes. Bravo!

The Commercial Weather Services Association (CWSA) appears to be opposed to and actively lobbying against the new policy. I say that the Federal government in general, and the NOAA/NWS in particular have no responsibility to restrict public availability of data or access thereto in order to enhance the worth of CWSA member businesses. The government did not ban automobiles to protect buggy whip manufacturers, and has no such mandate for the CWSA, either.

I support the clear and specific language of the new Proposed Policy. I support equal public access to the data generated by the NOAA/NWS.

I am sending copies of this comment to my Representative and Senators, as well as other interested parties, and posting it on my website.

Best regards,

Brian P. Bilbrey,
Bowie, MD USA

As usual, I didn't even go looking for sample language to use in providing a comment, I wrote my own. Then I closed the browser window by accident (instead of just one tab, sigh), and rewrote the whole thing again. I don't like form letters, and I'm told that they don't go over well in Government either. That's why, when I hear something that motivates me, I read and learn enough to write a (sometimes) coherent comment on my own.

Now it's time to get on into the day. Have a good 'un!

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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.

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