The Wedding Party

Matthew 22
The Parable of the Wedding Banquet

1. Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2.The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

4. Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’

Continue Reading Matthew 22…..

Recently I have been researching the parable of the wedding party and thought I would attempt to shed some light on it. When reading this chapter it is very important to understand the symbolism behind each of the characters. This is what I have come up with:

The Father: God
The Son: Jesus
The Bride: “The Church”
Servants That Were Sent: Prophets
The Initial Guests: Israel
The Second Guests: Gentiles

Taking into consideration the symbolism it is much easier to summarize the parable.

It was ritual in Jewish societies for the father to prepare the wedding banquet. God the father sent out his prophets to bring the initially chosen guests (Israel) to a Wedding of Jesus (salvation). The guests refused his invitation (denied Christ as messiah) and mistreated and killed the servants (Prophets are persecuted for the sake of Christ). God then sent out his prophets to bring in his second guests (the gentiles). The father would also prepare clothing for the guest so that they could wear it in honor of the father’s invitation. The guest that was not wearing his clothing showed that he did not “honor the father” by putting on the garment (garment of salvation and righteousness). For this he was cast into darkness (eternal separation from God, AKA hell).

Here are a few verses for clarification:

Romans 1:16
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew (first guests), then for the Gentile (second guests).

Romans 11:11
Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious.

Isaiah 61:10 Significance of Wedding Garment
I delight greatly in the LORD ;
my soul rejoices in my God.
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

Questions for thought
Which group are you in based on how you have responded to God’s invitation to join the wedding feast of His Son Jesus?

What do you need to do in order to be sure you into the banquet hall?

What do you need to do in order to be allowed to stay at the wedding feast?

License Plate Scanning From Helicopters With Automatic Plate Recognition (APR)

So it appears that there is technology on the way that will allow helicopters to scan up to five car license plates a second despite weather conditions. I became aware of this by reading a post over at Schneier on Security (which is a great daily read for anyone interested in security).

This technology brings up the questions of, “Is it an invasion of privacy”. Once the technology is provided there is no limit to what they can do with the data. Once the plates are read they could immediately be put into a database with the time and location for future reference. Is it the government’s right to track you in a government licensed vehicle on a government owned and funded road? Some believe that Automatic Plate Recognition (APR) will only encourage criminals to swap license plates or obtain another individual’s vehicle (which they do already). On top of this, I’m not sure that that the government will be able to monitor vehicles unless they suspect criminal activity (legally speaking). The idea that the government can have a running database of where cars were at what times based on scans from helicopters is a scary thought. Schneier believes that the answer to this whole situation is to “not field this sort of system in the first place”.

I think we can all agree that the system would be useful in catching legitimate criminals or terrorist in some situations. The problem is once this technology is in the air on police helicopters; it will be tuff to determine who and what gets scanned. It would be to easy to just scan everything for future reference. The United States has implemented the technology in stationary locations and have seen results. One particular instance in Ohio claims that it was very effective in helping them recover 24 stolen cars in its pilot run.

For more on this technology check the following:
Westminster International LTD
HomeOffice.gov

What is your view on the use of this technology? Is it an invasion of privacy? Is it the goverment’s right?

This Is How People Are Cheating on WhatPulse

Well after about two hours of total investigation time, I have discovered how people are able to cheat WhatPulse.org. I took the time to build up exactly 5004 keystrokes and an unknown amount of clicks for the next pulse. I ran Ethereal and then executed the PULSE! from the WhatPulse.org systray and stopped the capture. I then executed the following display filter for ethereal.

http contains “whatpulse”;

Below are the results.

There is the WhatPulse.org packet that updates your keystrokes. Isn’t she a beauty? I then examined the contents of the packet and the contents are as follows:

You will notice that in the contents is the following php execution:

/bin/pulse.php?an=dmacattack&pwd=ilvnjkolnpkjpxighh&kc=ktMmtjnvcnr5on
SfpZfoAfphgeKhieio4jl8kl0kuSmkCdjwekMfhdglqhrskulmpxmuGnvgpkS&mc=ihMj
hjkic&tsec=1113336962

Now, all one has to do is add the previous line to http://www.whatpulse.org/ and execute it from a browser to receive the same amount of keystrokes again. You will receive something like the following message if it is successful.

As you can see, it is very easy for someone to jack up their totals. There are limitations to the amount of keystrokes or mouse clicks that can be contained in a single PULSE (its is based on average keys per second). Therefore, calculate what size pulse you will need to average a target keys per second on a given interval (I recommend 4 KPS). Lets say you want 30 minute intervals.

30m(60s)(4kps)= 7200 Keys

Take the time to build up a 7200 key pulse and capture the packet. At this point you can use Windows Task Manager or Cron to execute the php get request located in the packet on 30 minute intervals. Now just sit back and watch your totals go through the roof and feel the guilt of being a CHEATER!!! Just think, by clicking this link you will be adding 25000 keystrokes to my WhatPulse total. I wouldn’t recommend it. That would be cheating

PS. Please remeber that if you get the following message when clicking my link, other people are having to much fun clicking it.

Also, I do realize that my username and password hash are revealed in the command. Please don’t waist your time hacking it. Whats the worst that could happen, you interfere with my account on an already flawed game.

WhatPulse Leads to Increased Chances of Carpal Tunnel

Ok so the folks over at WhatPulse have a nifty little app that you install on your computer and it transmits the amount of keystrokes you make to their site. You can then compete against other people for keystrokes and clicks. I immediately thought of the security aspect of this and after some investigation it seems that everything is clean. It is only transmitting your number of keystrokes and the data it is passing contains nothing in regards to the actual information you are typing.

I noticed that some people have reached some keystroke leveld that seem to be a bit unrealistic. It makes you think they set a cup on a key and walked away. The great thing about that is that it does not count repetitive keystrokes. It only counts a repetitive string as one stroke. So I figured they were using a SendKey script to jack up their counts. I created one real quick to see if it would do the trick (not to cheat, but to determine if it were possible). The script is as follows:

set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)
WshShell.Run “notepad”
WScript.Sleep 100
WshShell.AppActivate “notepad”
WScript.Sleep 100

For i=1 to 100
WshShell.SendKeys “1{ }”
Next

This script opened notepad and typed the number one followed by a space 100 times. The space would eliminate the repetitive key and hopefully jack up some numbers. Unfortunately, it did not. So it appears that they have protected against several methods of jacking up your key count. I will continue to look into it out of pure curiosity and boredom.

Meanwhile, get an account and see how you compare to others. If you want to join the team that I am in, just leave a comment and I will get you the info.

3rd Design Since Its Creation

The site has changed once again. I created this style in 45 minutes at work and should get me by for a while. If you have any suggestions leave a comment. The main thing to remember is despite its artistic impact, it is no longer boring.