Slashdot Mirror
Software For Slackers: Lockout
Matijs van Zuijlen writes "Having trouble getting work done? Reading Slashdot too much? Lockout will enforce some dicipline. It will lock you out of your internet connection, and then lock you out of your root account so you can't unlock it. For a limited time of course. Use at your own peril."
Hello Knoppix boot CD....
Apparently it locks you out of this thread, too.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
But I use the internet to _get_ work done! This would only help me slack and smoke more.
Sure, I'll get my work done MUCH faster, now that I can't use the internet...or the computer...
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
-Arthur C. Clarke
This is software for masochists. There is a less painful solution, which can also come with some nice 'features', if you choose wisely: get married.
Simpy
there is still the small matter of the porn that's ALREADY been downloaded.
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
Slashdot reports a 68.9% drop in server traffic in the hours of 9-5.....
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
This is not really comparable to the utility described and is not supposed to teach you discipline, but here's some prank software for Windows. Advanced Clippy is the best-sounding one.
I think it'd be a better idea to build some discipline, than intentionally crippling your PC. What if you need access to some internet-bound information during your work?
Just pick an activity (jogging, gym, studying, whatever) and involve a friend in it - if two people , however slack, are depending on each other at a set time to show up, they'll have much better luck sticking to it than if they were alone. Not wanting to let a friend down and all that.
- HOORAY!
didn't read the article did ya?
A @reboot entry in root's crontab file ensures that rebooting your machine will put the original root password back in place.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Just disconnect your network cable and give it to your boss telling him that you can't work with the internet distracting you. Problem solved. Unfortunately(!), I don't have the discipline to do even this.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
is called -- "Getting Fired!!!"
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Learn a little bit of self-discipline if you are a work time web junkie. Do you really need this on your machine? Sure, lots of safeguards to prevent it from irretrievably changing your root password (yeah, I RTFA'd), but how about this for two last sentences:
"Worst case scenario is that you have to reboot your computer. Well, that's not really true: worst case scenario is that things fail badly and you end up not knowing your root password. "
Well, you won't be browsing the web for quite some time while you restore from backup. Ooops, I forgot, you don't have enough self-discipline to keep from browsing the web and need a script to lock you out. Guess backing up would be asking way too much.
This will decrease my productivity even further!
Now I will not only waste my time reading and trolling in slashdot, but also by trying to hack this application.
And if I succeed, I will waste even more time bragging about it!
You see, I haven't even downloaded it, and I am already posting on slashdot!
Cheers,
Adolfo
I need the internet AND my root account (and several others) to do work. It sounds like it would only get people hard-rebooting to recover, perhaps doing more harm than good...
It's tragic. Laugh.
My work computer has a HOSTS file with several hundred sites on it that I absolutely do not want to visit at work. Somehow I misspelled slashdot.org and I can still get here. :(
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Let's face it, it'll only give them time to develop new ways to terrorize their users. If they're not web browsing they'll only be reading people's email or planting porn in home directories.
For gods sake keep them occupied.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
The Fine Article mentions that a reboot will restore root, but that brings up an interesting point. A system like this MUST have a way to turn it off if you need to, so what's preventing you from doing that when you want to slack?
Really all this is good for is a reminder that you should be working...and for that, simpler methods (PostIt?) would probably suffice.
I was gonna do something like this a while ago, but then I found a really cool site I just had to read...
Shoot first, read later...
Take a coffee break and wait for it to come back.
Mama, I got 'dem ole cosmic blues again.
Usually when i have to work I xinit the word processor and at least make cheating a little harder on myself.
Now back to work for 5 minutes.
All i need is for this on slashdot, can this go in the slash-code? In my settings i could set daily quotas/limits and my account would just be locked out from posting or my IP banned for x hours. Locking out root and taking your internet connection away isnt going to help most people since their work needs the internet and maybe root. I got through most addiction problems by just getting rid of all my games, after 2 days you don't even miss them although damn soldat, those assholes have to make it only 10mb! i just download it when ever i want it and then delete it. Of course there were afew times when i got weak and tried to recover things from my HD but i got wise to that and overwrote. Now slashdot is pretty much my only distraction from work, damn i hate slashdot you are ruining my life you hear!?! must stop using slashdot! the reason this would work best in slash code is that there's pretty much no way to by-pass it. Of-course it will never happen, the page-views for adverts would just go down the drain.. maybe a subscription only option? really you guys would have that happy feeling of knowing that you had increased productivity in the entire world geek community!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Not that I would ever do that ...
When I was biking around Australia in 2002-2003, I was having to shell out $5-12 AUD per hour for net access ($24 AUD an hour at the WA/SA border on the Nullabor!). I found myself to be insanely productive when it came to programming, answering email, etc when it was costing me by the minute. No Slashdot, random looks at IMDB.com for a movie I saw 15 years ago, etc.
So I've half joked with billing myself for time on the internet, with the money going into a jar or some thing like that...now that I'm back and messing around on the net when I should be working. I would be more productive, and be quite rich at the end of the year!
I already offer this service. Just send me your root password and I'll make sure you're locked out of your root account as well. That way you don't have to worry that a bug in this program will keep you locked out. You'll be able to rest easily knowing that your system is in my capable hands. Just trying to do my part.
... and whatever the equivelent is in other bootloaders.
I.e. with physical acess to the box (which, in the case of this software, you will), you can always recover a lost root password, by booting single user, and then changing it.
In the event that you've locked up your bootloader with a password, this util doesn't change that.
If you've really locked it up the wazoo with crypto all over the place, I think it's recoverable with a boot disc (as you'll have the bios password, or be able to wipe it, to re-enable booting from CD). Mind you, if you've done that then you're not likely to be the sort of person who needs this util.
Frankly, I'd agree with you about self-discipline - there are very few cases where an externally imposed discipline is useful as anything other than a tempory measure. This is not one of those cases, in my opinion.
It is, however, always worth knowing how to recover from any problem, where it is possible. Backups not needed in this case.
This was going to be the first post... Damned Lockout!
> SO when you ABSOLUTELY HAVE to get on line what do you do?
What you always do when your connection is down: use your neighbor's wireless access point.
I remember I'd sometimes end up doing a "apt-get remove mozilla" in order to get more work done. Then I'd find myself using lynx to procrastinate, so I'd have to "apt-get remove lynx". Then I started ssh'ing into the University servers and running mozilla off those machines...
Sigh.
Incidentally, I also gave up Slashdot for Lent last year. I actually managed to hold out for a few weeks, but eventually my will collapsed.
Maybe. But marriage can abnormally ternminate too. It might not be your PC that you get locked out of.
Discipline is a learned skill. I'd say that a person who is willing to install a piece of software like this one to improve their self-discipline is already showing a great degree of it.
If discipline could simply be called up from the depths of your being at will, like a fart for example, we'd have no need for military boot camps.
This is Slashdot. We don't RTFA here.
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suwain_2