I don't know why people need to surf anonymously. At home I rarely surf anonymously. However, when I'm at a hotel, coffee shop, on campus, etc I always browse anonymously. If I'm doing casual browsing I'm using either JAP or Tor+Privoxy. If I'm logging in to, say, Gmail or Slashdot I OpenVPN into my home network and browse from there.
You never know who's monitoring you, especially on an open wifi network.
Also, if you're using Tor or JAP it's a good idea to also run Adblock+ (use easylist and add the tracking filter), Flashblock, and Noscript to make sure you keep your anonymity.
So if you are doing something that you don't want people to know you are doing, my question is, what the hell is wrong with you? Please post your full name, address, pictures of yourself and your family, and a full log of everything you've done in the last month. Don't want to? What are you trying to hide?
I just replaced Windows with Gentoo Linux. Worked better.:-) Good.
Frankly I blame Intel for not having standard drivers on their f'ing website anywhere. Intel's site is awful. It's the reason I initially started to use DriverPacks since I couldn't find several drivers anywhere on it. I don't trust the ad infested driver download sites, so those are not an option.
The standard HDA driver works fine in Linux, why can't their be a standard HDA driver for WinXP? Because that would make sense.
In Ubuntu or Kubuntu you need to replace both GNOME and KDE to get something stable. They apply a bunch of experimental patches to "improve" the experience, but the patches often creates more bugs. Hmm. Have you actually used Ubuntu? With both Dapper and Edgy the Gnome desktop works perfectly out of the box. Better than any other distro I've tried, and I've been using Linux as my primary OS since '96. KDE in Dapper worked well, though I dropped it in favor of Gnome due to how nice Gnome was in Dapper. KDE was my desktop of choice since '99, BTW. I haven't tried KDE with Edgy, but I do use several KDE apps (Quanta, Krita, Kate (gEdit sucks, IMHO), etc) and they work very well.
I know with Fedora, the Gnome desktop was very irritating (still is with FC6). It's KDE wasn't usable which is why the first thing I did to a Fedora install is replace it's KDE with the kde-redhat builds.
With Ubuntu I have not had these problems.
There also seems to lack mature features for installing 3rd party content. This might not be much of a problem for really basic desktop user It's easy to install third party software. For example, download a.deb for Exaile or Opera. Double click it and it will install. If you want libdvdcss2 and w32codecs, for example, add one line* to add Medibuntu and you're good.
Also, Ubuntu contains a massive amount of packages. Just make sure to enable Universe, Multiverse, and Backports (these are all official but are commented out by default in/etc/apt/sources.list). Just take a look:
user@localhost:~$ apt-cache pkgnames|wc -l 26362
That's 26,362 packages...
but for a standard Linux users not being able to install and run tar-balls is a real problem What are you talking about? apt-get install build-essentials and you get the base packages for building source files. Though due to the massive amount of packages available it's not really necessary to build much from source.
(ubuntu doesn't even include/usr/local to PATH!) Bullshit.
user@localhost:~$ echo $PATH/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin: /sbin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games
and they have obscured everything but/home and/mnt in the file-browsers I have not experienced that with Nautilus or the command line.
Finding drivers for Windows is often a PITA. However, if you're doing a clean install you should look into DriverPacks. This includes nearly every driver available for Windows XP. I use this with RyanVM Update Packs to integrate all updates, a patched uxtheme.dll, themes that aren't so Fisher Price, replace notepad with Notepad2, etc. Works great.
After getting burned by wgatray a few times (with fully legal installs, they were from HP's restore partition) I disabled automatic updates. I do this on all new installs now. For updates, I use Offline Update. Keep in mind, though, that all updates phone home. To prevent this I disable networking before installing them and block *.microsoft.com and 207.46.0.0/16 at the router.
An alternative to Offline Update is Autopatcher which does have releases for Vista. I used Autopatcher for XP for a while before switching to Offline Update. It works well. I haven't tried it for Vista yet, though.
(BTW, I exclusively use Linux and FreeBSD at home and have for the last 11 years. I have to deal with Windows for family and work)
Who is modding down all critique of Ubuntu? I use Ubuntu every day, and it is really a immature* piece of shit. Can you elaborate? Ubuntu provides a Usable desktop out of the box. Fedora and RHEL need a good amount of tweaking to get decent. Ie, the default Gnome config is rather bad and it's KDE needs to be replaced to work adequately.
IMHO, the main area Ubuntu lacks is in configuration. It's a step backwards in that regard as it does require editing config files if the default doesn't cut it. Ie, if you need to change something with X you have to modify/etc/X11/xorg.conf wile Fedora/RHEL have system-config-display. This really needs to be addressed.
Hmm. Perhaps you haven't heard of the LTS release. Dapper is supported on the desktop for 3 years, 5 on the server. Packages are stable, only getting security and bug fixes. Similar to RHEL. I'm sure this is what they're planning on using. If not, they need to fire the implementers.
I think it may have ended, but when I was at college, I got full copies of Windows, Visual Studio, and Office for less than $15 each. The fees were for the CDs and shipping from Microsoft. If you didn't care about having the media, you could borrow the CDs from the library, get a product key from Microsoft's website and pay nothing. Well, at least until last year I was able to get free copies of anything. You just had to go to a website and request the license (it was emailed instantly) and then the school would burn you a copy of the cd. I got Office 2003, XP Pro, Visual Studio 2003 and 2005, Visio, Project, Frontpage, SQL Server, etc for free.
Just as a note, I use Linux, but when I was getting a degree in programing (finished now) nearly every computer class had "Microsoft" in the title or exclusively used Microsoft products (ie, database classes required SQL Server). The only class that didn't was Java. During this time I grew to love VMWare Workstation...
The GPL gives you a right you would otherwise not have. That is, redistributing and modifying the software. All it asks in return is that you give others the same freedoms you received yourself. This is in contrast to the BSD license which would allow you to profit off of the work of others without giving back and denying everyone else the freedom you received. The GPL gives everyone more freedom.
For my home wireless network I require an OpenVPN connection to actually get online. With no OpenVPN, every page access goes to a local Last Measure mirror. Heh...
I change the ssid every few weeks and always get people attempting to access through it. Quite fun...
That would allow access during lunch and before and after work.
If you want to block against proxies, use SquidGuard plus some blacklists. The ones at urlblacklist are good, as is the isakurldb list (it's based on dmoz). Another one is the one from shalla.de. All have social networking categories as well as proxy sites, though shalla's proxy and spyware lists tend to overblock.
I'd recommend merging urlblacklist's lists with isakurldb, and also shalla (but remove yimg.com from the redirector list manually) for both proxy and social networking. Then use SquidGuard to restrict the access.
Our plan is to move several systems over to a few new servers (from Dell) running VMWare with Linux guest OS's. If your goal is to run Linux as the guest OS, why bother with VMWare? Spend the 10 minutes to learn how to use Xen. It's very easy once you get the hang of it. It runs very fast, too. I used VMWare Server for a two months before switching. The only way I'd go back is if I had to virtualize a Windows server.
Here's a tutorial that got me started with Xen, though I now use a mix of CentOS and Debian as guests with FC6 as the host.
Macs and Linux/UNIX machines will never have the same problem even if they become as popular as Windows is today because the virus/trojan culture cannot get sufficient traction to be successfully propogated in sufficient numbers to make it worthwhile. While it would never be likely for a UNIX-like system to be as bad as Windows due it enforcing a properly security model, don't be overconfident.
I could for example write a "virus" in Perl that would put itself in ~/.kde/Autostart and start attacking other machines or erase your files. Every time you log back in it will start again. Still, it wouldn't be very easy for a virus to infect the system, but the important part of your system is your files and the "virus" will have full access to that.
It could even be written to wait for a user to run sudo and then use sudo to install itself system-wide (most sudo configurations keep a session up for a few minutes). Or just keylog it and then sudo/su itself.
Another problem can be with "installers". A site could distribute a.deb or.rpm with spyware in it. When it's being installed it has full root privileges since you have to either sudo or su dpkg or rpm to actually install it.
Isn't this HUGE? Yes. I trust that Sun will make this plugin work perfectly unlike current alternatives. If this release doesn't, it should soon enough. Next time I fire up VMWare I'm giving this a try.
Maybe it's better when using Word 2007, but I tried the 1.0 release with Word 2003 and it wasn't very good. I created a basic letter in Word and exported it as a ODF. When I imported it it looked fine. When I opened it in OpenOffice 2.1 the margins were off. I tried doing the opposite. When importing the new filed created in OO 2.1, the margins were off. Doing the same file with.doc and.rtf works perfectly.
The next test I did was with tabled. I created a three row table with four columns. In the middle row I merged the two middle columns. In the fields I put text with different font sizes, and styles. Ie, bold, italic, bold-italic. I exported it as ODF and then imported it. The bold-italic was just bold. When I opened it in OO 2.1, same thing, but again the margins were off. The table formatting seems okay, though. Same thing when doing the opposite. Again, doing the same file with.doc and.rtf works perfectly.
Hopefully the plugin is better with 2007, but with 2003 I'm not trusting it at all until a new release of it comes out.
Slashdot Mirror
You never know who's monitoring you, especially on an open wifi network.
Also, if you're using Tor or JAP it's a good idea to also run Adblock+ (use easylist and add the tracking filter), Flashblock, and Noscript to make sure you keep your anonymity. So if you are doing something that you don't want people to know you are doing, my question is, what the hell is wrong with you? Please post your full name, address, pictures of yourself and your family, and a full log of everything you've done in the last month. Don't want to? What are you trying to hide?
I know with Fedora, the Gnome desktop was very irritating (still is with FC6). It's KDE wasn't usable which is why the first thing I did to a Fedora install is replace it's KDE with the kde-redhat builds.
With Ubuntu I have not had these problems. There also seems to lack mature features for installing 3rd party content. This might not be much of a problem for really basic desktop user It's easy to install third party software. For example, download a
* Here is that one line:
deb http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/ edgy free non-free
Also, Ubuntu contains a massive amount of packages. Just make sure to enable Universe, Multiverse, and Backports (these are all official but are commented out by default in
user@localhost:~$ apt-cache pkgnames|wc -l
26362
That's 26,362 packages... but for a standard Linux users not being able to install and run tar-balls is a real problem What are you talking about? apt-get install build-essentials and you get the base packages for building source files. Though due to the massive amount of packages available it's not really necessary to build much from source. (ubuntu doesn't even include
user@localhost:~$ echo $PATH
and they have obscured everything but
Finding drivers for Windows is often a PITA. However, if you're doing a clean install you should look into DriverPacks. This includes nearly every driver available for Windows XP. I use this with RyanVM Update Packs to integrate all updates, a patched uxtheme.dll, themes that aren't so Fisher Price, replace notepad with Notepad2, etc. Works great.
After getting burned by wgatray a few times (with fully legal installs, they were from HP's restore partition) I disabled automatic updates. I do this on all new installs now. For updates, I use Offline Update. Keep in mind, though, that all updates phone home. To prevent this I disable networking before installing them and block *.microsoft.com and 207.46.0.0/16 at the router.
An alternative to Offline Update is Autopatcher which does have releases for Vista. I used Autopatcher for XP for a while before switching to Offline Update. It works well. I haven't tried it for Vista yet, though.
(BTW, I exclusively use Linux and FreeBSD at home and have for the last 11 years. I have to deal with Windows for family and work)
IMHO, the main area Ubuntu lacks is in configuration. It's a step backwards in that regard as it does require editing config files if the default doesn't cut it. Ie, if you need to change something with X you have to modify
Hmm. Perhaps you haven't heard of the LTS release. Dapper is supported on the desktop for 3 years, 5 on the server. Packages are stable, only getting security and bug fixes. Similar to RHEL. I'm sure this is what they're planning on using. If not, they need to fire the implementers.
Just as a note, I use Linux, but when I was getting a degree in programing (finished now) nearly every computer class had "Microsoft" in the title or exclusively used Microsoft products (ie, database classes required SQL Server). The only class that didn't was Java. During this time I grew to love VMWare Workstation...
Penny Arcade covers this with this comic.
Any software that phones home is unacceptable.
The GPL gives you a right you would otherwise not have. That is, redistributing and modifying the software. All it asks in return is that you give others the same freedoms you received yourself. This is in contrast to the BSD license which would allow you to profit off of the work of others without giving back and denying everyone else the freedom you received. The GPL gives everyone more freedom.
The article you're referring to is this one.
For my home wireless network I require an OpenVPN connection to actually get online. With no OpenVPN, every page access goes to a local Last Measure mirror. Heh...
I change the ssid every few weeks and always get people attempting to access through it. Quite fun...
Java 1.5 was released 09/29/2004, so it's over two years old. 1.6 was release 12/12/2006.
(Wonder woman is flying through the sky in a sitting position)
Superman: So, I see you're flying the invisible plane.
Wonder Woman: Oooh, um...er...this is...kinda embarrassing. You see...I'm actually, in the lavatory of the invisible plane.
Superman: Oh...so, you mean...right now, you're...
Wonder Woman: Yeah.
(Wonder Woman stands up and walks forwards, sitting down again and gripping the invisible steering wheel)
Superman: So...I noticed you didn't wash your hands in the invisible sink...
Squid+SquidGuard
.myspace.com
I had to do this for a school. Basically, set up Squid to act transparently. Set up an acl like:
acl myspace dstdomain
acl work_hours MTWHF 09:00-12:00
acl work_hours MTWHF 13:00-17:00
http_access allow myspace !work_hours
http_access deny myspace
That would allow access during lunch and before and after work.
If you want to block against proxies, use SquidGuard plus some blacklists. The ones at urlblacklist are good, as is the isakurldb list (it's based on dmoz). Another one is the one from shalla.de. All have social networking categories as well as proxy sites, though shalla's proxy and spyware lists tend to overblock.
I'd recommend merging urlblacklist's lists with isakurldb, and also shalla (but remove yimg.com from the redirector list manually) for both proxy and social networking. Then use SquidGuard to restrict the access.
The Penny Arcade comic you're referring to is this one (02/09/2007).
You are making a joke. Cancel/Allow?
That's what Amanda Tapping blow up dolls are for...
Not to be an ass or anything, but what is worth watching OTA? Heroes, Family Guy, and The Simpsons are the only things that come to mind.
Just get satellite or cable. You can get HD or continue to use analog TV with it. Dish Network is a good choice.
Here's a tutorial that got me started with Xen, though I now use a mix of CentOS and Debian as guests with FC6 as the host.
http://www.howtoforge.com/xen_3.0_ubuntu_dapper_d
I wasn't talking about the one released by Sun. I'm talking about the Clever Age one the GGP linked to. AFAIK, it contains no OOo code.
I could for example write a "virus" in Perl that would put itself in ~/.kde/Autostart and start attacking other machines or erase your files. Every time you log back in it will start again. Still, it wouldn't be very easy for a virus to infect the system, but the important part of your system is your files and the "virus" will have full access to that.
It could even be written to wait for a user to run sudo and then use sudo to install itself system-wide (most sudo configurations keep a session up for a few minutes). Or just keylog it and then sudo/su itself.
Another problem can be with "installers". A site could distribute a
Maybe it's better when using Word 2007, but I tried the 1.0 release with Word 2003 and it wasn't very good. I created a basic letter in Word and exported it as a ODF. When I imported it it looked fine. When I opened it in OpenOffice 2.1 the margins were off. I tried doing the opposite. When importing the new filed created in OO 2.1, the margins were off. Doing the same file with .doc and .rtf works perfectly.
.doc and .rtf works perfectly.
The next test I did was with tabled. I created a three row table with four columns. In the middle row I merged the two middle columns. In the fields I put text with different font sizes, and styles. Ie, bold, italic, bold-italic. I exported it as ODF and then imported it. The bold-italic was just bold. When I opened it in OO 2.1, same thing, but again the margins were off. The table formatting seems okay, though. Same thing when doing the opposite. Again, doing the same file with
Hopefully the plugin is better with 2007, but with 2003 I'm not trusting it at all until a new release of it comes out.
I think what you're looking for is SQLite. It's pretty powerful, very fast, and just links to the program as a library.