RATs!

So, I wrote this app.  Ok, I didn't really write it, I scripted it and packaged it with IEXPRESS.EXE.  The "app" is basically a scripted install of TightVNC Server.  I write a vbscript to install all the appropriate registry entries, start the server, wait for a message box OK, and when the session it kills the server and deletes the registry entries.  The executables themselves are deleted by IEXPRESS when everything finishes.  It's neat! 

Basically the executable starts up tightvnc server and initiates a "reverse connection" to a listener at a specified IP.  Initially I wrote it such that the IP can be entered when the thing is run or hard-coded.  So, yesterday I wrote a perl script that takes an IP and port from an HTML form, generates text files with that data, and calls IEXPRESS to package the thing up with the custom text files.  I also modified the original vbscript to look to the text file for port and IP information.

And you know what?  It works!  It's pretty snappy, too.

So now I need to monetize it.  There are a bunch of issues that I'm not capable of dealing with right now, such as security (on my web server), account information, payment information, etc.

Hopefully I can get my web-enabled friend to help me with those aspects.

Well, the Neurex project has taken a bit of a back seat due to life stuff. Moving closer to work, 2 year old is in preschool, and I'm trying to convince an african immigrant in the UK to send me a stolen check.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it after I get it, though. I might turn it into the authorities, or frame it and put it on the wall. Maybe I can even get this guy to do funny things for it.

Interface

I've had some good thoughts, realizations, and ideas about how best to live one's life. I suppose everybody has, and I really have no right to think that mine are any better than anyone else's. So why share them? I suppose that it's part of a larger system of neural cross-pollination happening across networks of individual minds, and that I had better be willing to accept a few new ones as well as pass some of my own out.

That's what bugs me about fundamentalists, no matter what you tell them, they're so convinced that you're wrong that they'll never absorb anything from what you're saying. It's sort of like talking to a bot in chat. And you can tell it, too, that's what annoys me.

Really though, it's a protection mechanism for a meta-organism built of memes. I suppose I have my own, to protect my mind from being absorbed into the amoeba-like mass of any particular religion.

But is it so bad to be absorbed by a particular religion? In discussion tonight I noticed that religion is the combination of philosophy and ritual. Those are the two really important aspects to an effective method of subconscious control. Ritual without philosophy is aimless and ultimately ineffective and potentially harmful; and philosophy without ritual still allows the subconscious free-reign of your life. Sort of like having a network plan without actually implementing it.

And that network plan will be tested by the implementation. If the philosophy is lacking, then no amount of ritual will make it an effective method of managing anything. So then you've got to have a corrective mechanism, which I suppose would be (in our case) some sort of analog measurement of whatever state you're trying to adjust.

I think a good one would be "overall sense of well-being". There are others, like mass, energy, productivity as defined by financial income, reproductive success, physical prowess, etc.

Although those things, I think, ultimately are discarded as the person realizes the true goal, whatever that is that brings about a strong, lasting sense of well-being that can stand up to the tests of everyday existence (other people).

I'm sure it's easier to be zenlike when you're a hermit.

To the end of creating more peace in my life, I'm going to try to incorporate ritual and philosophy into my life. There are some other components which are better left for another post, but I plan to create a "church", to use the vernacular.

What is a church? It's a group of people who attempt to synchronize their memeset as it is expressed in their behavior, ultimately attempting to achieve a particular goal. This is done constantly and naturally in every small group of people, and also in large ones. Sort of like cellular/organ/system cooperation.

I have a very strong aversion to the idea of a church, but that is because of the ones that I have been exposed to. Whenever anyone's attempted to get me to join their church I feel unsettled, and I think they sense it. I think they sense that, No, I'm not going to go to your church. The feudalistic nature of the modern Christian religion is what irks me.

I know I have to give up control, but I don't want to give it up to physical incarnation. I like my gods amorphous. I think that's a dangerous precedent, really, and I completely understand why Muhammad didn't want people to draw his picture (that doesn't explain why anybody would try to kill someone else for doing so, that's really missing the point).

Time for sleep.

Restrict shutdown but not restart

Users at my company like to shut their systems down when they leave. That's all well and good, but it prevents late-night virus scanning and windows update... updates. So, I found a good way to stop this nonsense.

1. Using a User GPO, set the "Add Logoff to the Start Menu" and "Remove and prevent access to the Shut Down command" to "enabled". This is under User, Admin templates, Start menu and taskbar.

2. Using a Computer GPO, set the "Shutdown: Force shutdown from a remote system" and "Shutdown: Shut down the system" user right assignments to "INTERACTIVE". That's in Computer, Windows Settings, Security Settings, Local Policies/User Rights Assignment".

3. Make a shortcut to "%WINDIR%\System32\Shutdown.EXE -r -t 00". Make a startup script that will copy that shortcut to "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Start Menu".

4. Add the startup script to the Computer GPO and put the files in that GPO's startup script directory. The syntax of the file path for the shortcut that the script should reference is something like "\\mydomain.local\sysvol\mydomain.local\Policies\{GUID-OF-POLICY}\Machine\Scripts\Startup"



The vital piece was adding the "Shutdown: Force shutdown from a remote system" entry. Apparently this is a bug. I found the answer at Aaron Margosis's blog. Link

Good lord...

For the last few days I've been struggling to get a user's Moto Q working with the ActiveSYNC over SSL. 0x80072F17, 0x80072f7d, 0x85010014, etc. Many error codes. As it turns out, the first stupid post I read about this was the answer, but it didn't fit my understanding of the situation so I didn't implement it.

Essentially, Microsoft says that ActiveSYNC won't work with ssl, so you have to disable it. Not a good solution, right? I need that data to be encrypted, not having it ssl is just not an option. Besides, the phone itself has an option in the account settings, "This server requires SSL", so it must be implemented, right?

Well, the activesync virtual directory doesn't like to communicate with the exchange virtual directory over SSL, that is, INSIDE THE FRIGGIN' SERVER. You can enable SSL on the activesync directory and the default website, but not the exchange virtual directory itself. ARGH. Three days to figure that out.

Also, you have to import the root cert into the phone if you're not using a "public" root cert, and the activesync virtual directory has to be in the exchange application pool, or you'll get "the shared memory heap could not be created" errors in the application log.

I've acquired the data that I need for this project. I have hour-by-hour data for EURUSD for the last nine years. Now I need to find a way to display it in the needed way.

I think I'm going to look for glasstrons.

The Neurex Project

I think I've got a live one here. I'm tired of playing ball. I'm going to use this brain of mine to make money so I don't have to trade my labor for it all the time. I've begun work on something I'm calling "The Neurex Project". The following is some of my thoughts on it so far.

Warning: If you think hypnosis is bullshit, don't bother reading.


Neural Forex

The basis of this project is the ability of a neural network to solve problems.

In this instance, the challenge is to be able to predict with a reasonable degree of accuracy the movement of international currency exchange markets. This happens already, in the form of the "hunches" of seasoned traders. Digital processors also perform these calculations in the form of algorithms, however they are almost always taken with a grain of salt (read: inaccurate).

I suggest that the neural network found between one's ears can be, under the right conditions, trained to perform pattern-analysis on a set of data to the end of predicting future fluctuations. This happens daily, but the subconscious calculations happen as a side-effect of long-term exposure to the data during conscious attempts to do the same work resulting in the aforementioned "hunch".

I believe that it is possible to get a faster and more accurate "hunch generator" by doing away with conscious attempts to interpret the data and exposing the subconscious directly to the data in question - in such a way as to facilitate the analysis and prediction process.

So far I've come up with a few points that need to be addressed:

Raw Data

The neural net will require massive amounts of raw data from which to extract the "black box" algorithm necessary for accuracy. This data must be presented in such a way as to be easily assimilatable and also to facilitate the output of prediction data. This is complicated somewhat by the specific qualities of forex data, such as timescale, trade volume, and currency pair.

Historical data will not only need to be obtained, but also processed. At the present time the interface of choice seems to be the retinas, and the form of choice seems to be a line graph. Other formats may work just as well. Perhaps for the sight-impaired, the forex data could be translated into sounds. For the time being let us focus on the sight-enabled.

Similar to the technology displayed in the film "lawnmower man", I think that the end result may be a device or program that scrolls through a visual display of historical data. The scale and rate of speed will need to be tweaked for greatest accuracy, however.

I think a possible display would consist of a tiered graph of varying resolutions. Perhaps a double graph, the top layer an hour-by-hour for a 24 hour period, the bottom perhaps a 3 day period.


Output

This project is predicated on the ability of a person to allow their subconscious mind to directly control or influence some external, measurable variable to the end of outputting pattern-analysis results. Making this process as simple and easy as possible may be paramount to getting best results in the shortest amount of time.