Kindle Fire vs Nexus 7: Which is the better ereader?

First and foremost I like to read. When ereaders first came out there were quite a few studies indicating that people read faster when reading an actual book. This may be true. However I have found that I read a lot more when using an ereader. I specifically use the term ereader here instead of electronic device since I do not enjoy reading on a computer (this includes laptops, netbooks and ultrabooks). More specifically my reading list includes at least 5 dissertations (1000+ pages) in the last couple of months. If I had 15 minutes to spare I would pick of the ereader instead of the actual dissertation and edit as many pages as I could in the time allotted. With the paper copy I would wait for a sufficient chunk of time where I could knock out an entire chapter, which is typically "never". I even used an ereader to catch up on the 300+ journal articles that I wanted to "read later". Even journal articles that I review get done at a faster pace when using an ereader.

Most of the aforementioned reading and editing was done on my Kindle Fire. Consequently, I was really excited to when the Nexus 7. With the Nexus 7 I could ssh into my VPS, skype, install my favorite keyboard for sending emails on a a tablet, utilize all of my Google apps and still use it as an ereader. Personally I feel that the Nexus 7 is the "do it all tablet".

So which device do I use to read now? Answer... the Kindle Fire. Why? Because given the opportunity to do the aforementioned list, the Nexus 7 lets me do exactly that. Especially when I think of things to do while I am reading. Since I can't do those things on the Kindle Fire I get a lot more reading done with it:)

Project Sputnik

I just recently setup my Dell XPS 13 laptop. I downloaded the ISO image and instead of following the directions I used unetbootin. The only hiccup I had doing this way was when I tried to replace the operating system from the installation menu; GRUB was installed in my thumb drive instead of the hard drive. I had to reboot of the thumb drive and do a manual installation choosing to install the boot manager on the hard drive.  This worked and know I have Ubuntu installed. I haven't had a chance to play with it much but it does have gVIM and emacs already installed. Now I need to install the android SDK package.

SSH server

I found this over at the Hak5 site. I highly recommend watching the full video:

Basic Client Setup in Linux

ssh -D 8080 user@host

The -D option, from the man pages

-D [bind_address:]port
Specifies a local dynamic application-level port forwarding. This works by allocating a socket to listen to port on the local side, optionally bound to the specified bind_address. Whenever a connection is made to this port, the connection is forwarded over the secure channel, and the application protocol is then used to determine where to connect to from the remote machine

Setting up a Linux OpenSSH Server
On a Debian based Linux machine setting up ssh can be as simple as issuing "sudo apt-get install ssh". In this segment Darren goes over some of the configuration lines you would find useful to modify in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

AllowTcpForwarding yes GatewayPorts yes RSAAuthentication yes PubkeyAuthentication yes AuthorizedKeysFile %h/.ssh/authorized_keys AllowUsers bob alice PermitRootLogin no Protocol 2 Port 222 LoginGraceTime 1m ListenAddress ClientAliveInterval 60 ClientAliveCountMax 0

Be sure to restart the SSH deamon after editing the configuration. stop ssh;start ssh;service ssh restart;/etc/init.d/ssh restart #one of these should do it! :)
On a Linux OpenSSH server for example these key pairs will be found in /etc/ssh/*key*. The public keys will be world readable while the private keys can only be read by a superuser.
On a Linux client for example the key fingerprints of remembered servers are stored in ~/.ssh/known_hosts. Since SSH version 4 the username and hostnames associated with these servers are hashed.
To remotely verify the key fingerprint of an SSH server

ssh-keyscan -t rsa,dsa REMOTEHOSTNAME > /tmp/ssh_host_rsa_dsa_key.pub ssh-keygen -l -f /tmp/ssh_host_rsa_dsa_key.pub

Alternatively, on the remote server the key fingerprints can be found by:

cd /etc/ssh ls *key* cat ssh_host_key # this is the private key # permission will be denied if not superuser cat ssh_host_key.pub # this is the public key ssh-keygen -lf ssh_host_rsa_key.pub # field 1 = bit length of key # field 2 = fingerprint of key # field 3 = name of key
Setting up Key Pair Authentication in Linux with OpenSSH
On the remote host:

mkdir .ssh chmod 700 .ssh cd .ssh

On the local host:

ssh-keygen -t rsa scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub user@host:.ssh/authorized_keys2

Back on the remote host:

ls -la authorized_keys2 chmod 600 authorized_keys2 exit

On the local host:

ssh user@host

CAC

This is a helpful tool for setting up CAC access in linux.  Here is what I could find on it:

pcsc_tools

he pcsc_tools package provides an especially handy utility, pcsc_scan, which can help verify that your CAC reader really is talking to the OS, regardless of what any application is telling you:

$ pcsc_scan

The original way to install DoD root certificates, even on Windows XP, was to visit http://dodpki.c3pki.chamb.disa.mil/rootca.html and just click on each one to install.

Firefox Client Certificate Setup

1. Insert CAC into reader - the green light should flash.
   
2. Add CAC Module to Firefox as a Security Device
   1. Preferences Menu
   2. Advanced Section
   3. Encryption Tab
   4. Security Devices Button
   5. Load Button
   6. Enter CAC Module as the module name, and browse to /usr/lib/pkcs11/libcoolkeypk11.so for the module filename (or /usr/bin/libcackey.so or /usr/lib/libcackey.so if using the CACKey custom PKCS#11 library available from cackey).

Cisco vpn installer

Cisco vpn installer:

sudo apt-get install network-manager-vpnc

Now you need to select IPV4 Settings tab click on routes

Here you need to select “Use this connection only for resources on its network” click ok otherwise your traffic significantly slowed down

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