An artist puts out a CD with one song that you like and 15 that you don't? Of course it's not fair to buy such a CD. You don't really like enough of it, do you?
Maybe you should like bands that suck a little less. Really. I mean, shouldn't someone have at least 5 good songs before putting out their own album? If you only have 3 good songs, you can put out a split CD with a similar band or something, but...
Admittedly, working as a music director at at a (largely) independant radio station, I have a bit of an axe to grind. But it's a really good axe:) I've really only been listening to independant music for a few years; it was all my local "modern alternative rock" station before then. But I've discovered that, to me, the overall quality of the songs is better. The CDs are also less expensive. Sure, there are plenty of indie bands that suck, too, but the good ones are really good, and there's a lot of original sounds that don't ever make it to commercial radio.
A large benefit of this is that most of those stations are not RIAA members. Yes, kids! You can buy CDs, good ones, for less money, and not support the RIAA!
Of course, they don't have the marketing machine that you pay for when you buy the overpriced CDs, so how can you find out about them? College radio station people read the College Music Journal . There are also many good review sites; do a Google search and find a site where people have reviewed Quasi, Built to Spill, Autechre, The Czars, etc.
You could also listen to my station online:) There are many like it; some are freeform, and some adhere more strictly to a specific genre. But try it out; you just might like it. I did.
It might be just like the RIAA and _your_ favorite band, but almost none of the music that I like comes from a label who has anything to do with the RIAA.
Of course, I'm not going to say I got here completely on principles. I started using Linux for other reasons, but now I like it so much more than Windows that it's easy to not use Microsoft products. I started listening to independant music because I thought it was better (note: this is an average, on-the-whole measurement; there are plenty of bad indie bands too). Now it's pretty easy for me to take a stand against the RIAA.
I still do go to a movie every once and a while, but I don't rent or buy them, and I don't watch TV. This is because most visual entertainment these days is not worth the time spent (ie, I could be spending my time playing music, or something else).
Blah, blah, blah...my point is that you don't have to be this way. You will be able to find lots of independant music that you like. Squaresoft makes great games, and I don't recall them being a force of evil. Yeah, you have to buy the hardware from Sony, but they either make little profit on it or turn a loss. Most/. readers could have a great desktop experience with Mac OS X or Linux. You can see independant films at The Charles (if you live in Baltimore).
IOW, you might have to give up a few things that are cool, but there are plenty of non-evil alternatives that are just as cool. True, you have to look for them a bit harder since they're not shoved in your face by advertising, but that's part of the reason some of us like them...
Fonts? libttf2 does a perfectly good job of using TrueType fonts, and Debian even includes a virtual "package" (ttf-commercial, IIRC) for copying the fonts from a Windows partition or CD and doing the whole mkfontdir thing. I believe they're also available for download.
The latest version of mozilla has support for libttf, as do many other programs. For someone who is complaining about "old news"...where have you been?
Actually, I've found that the reverse is often true. There are certainly many people who speak English as a second language and do so poorly, or at the very least with interesting sentence structure (tomshardware.com used to be this way years ago, "And itemX did never do this...", etc.).
In my job at freshmeat, I correct a lot of grammar and spelling. It seems that whenever someone replies with the disclaimer, "Please forgive my bad English", their English is mostly fine. On the other hand, most people that I know who are native speakers of English mangle it badly and often.
I personally think that Japanese is much more difficult than English (nihongo muzukashi desu yo), but I wonder if language native mangling is as much a problem in Japan as it is here. There's no shortage of studies showing that our schools suck compared to other countries.
Homeschooling is certainly "a degree of some sort." Some of my friends were schooled in the CHEN (Christian Home Educator's Network) program. They got their high school degree in 3 years, and certainly a better education than public school would have provided. I credit myself for any knowledge I picked up while in public school:)
And homeschooling doesn't necessarily mean always being at home. At least with CHEN, there are a few classes a week (such as art classes) where everyone in the surrounding area goes to learn in a classroom setting (because obviously, not everyone has parents who can really teach art).
Most homeschoolers I know also started going to college part time at age 15 while they were still finishing up "high school."
College radio! You can probably find an _entire_radio_station_ dedicated to playing the type of music you like to hear. If you like the Dead Milkmen, then you might like the Infinite Xs or Piebald, two bands which recently released albums. Or you might like...and you will know us by the Trail Of Dead, whose new album is just now hitting college stations.
Of course, I'm a bit biased (note my sig), but I think that there's a lot of great new music happening, and college radio can do a pretty good job of collecting it all in once place. Sure, it might not all be your thing, and most stations have "problem shows" (also known as "people who really like Metallica"), but overall, it's not bad.
Re:Through which logic did you reach this conclusi
on
iMac LCD Impostors
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· Score: 3, Insightful
We'll start with the fact that Windows XP doesn't run all of that software perfectly. No Microsoft operating system has maintained perfect backwards compatibility, and there are many programs which have fallen through the cracks.
Also, I don't understand this obsession with "more applications". How many applications do you use on your computer? Do I care that there are more applications available for Windows XP than there are for Debian or Mac OS X? No, because most of those applications are useless, or duplicates.
freshmeat.net lists over 18,000 applications. I work there, and even I'm not crazy enough to say that they're all important. I'm certainly not going to use more than a tiny percentage of them myself, and again, there are plenty of duplicates (different things for different people, but how many different Web server programs do you have running?)
If you've got that all important Windows application, Connectix will happily sell you VirtualPC to run that app on MacOS. But chances are you can find a replacement, either in X11, OS 9, or OS X software.
Another poster mentioned the fact that the majority of PC software available is games. I own a Playstation 2 and a Dreamcast. My (Debian) computer is for old console emulators and xScorch.:). Other than that, I use it for Web browsing, work, music, etc. Even Windows XP can't compare with the amount of RPGs available for consoles (Square, Capcom, and Working Designs, mostly). I'd rather have a modern *nix workstation (either OS X or Debian) for my largely non-gaming tasks, and buy the right tool for the job WRT games.
As for what OS X has that XP doesn't: there's a reason that print publications still use Macs for DTP, and it's called ColorSync. I know, because I also work for a print publication:).
If you're using a filtering proxy like Junkbuster so that you don't have to see the annoying Java/Flash/blink 10,000 times per second/etc. advertisements on other sites, but there are a few sites (such as slashdot) on which you are willing to view advertising because:
1. You want to support them 2. They've agreed to not have horribly annoying ads
Then it's easy. Just go to the proxy configuration page (Advanced -> Proxies) in a recent version of mozilla. Put ".slashdot.org" in the "No Proxy for" field. Done.
I've had to use this at the office since I can't seem to make junkbuster want to work correctly with our message form or fax gateway.
I haven't had any problems opening MS Word or Excel docs that were sent to me, and I'm using OpenOffice now (was using SO 5.2).
As far as IM clients, I've found Gaim and everybuddy to be quite good, and in some ways (not the least of which being a lack of advertising) better than the Windows client. They have support for AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, jabber, ICQ, etc.
As for games, I have a Playstation 2 and a Dreamcast, but I realise that's not the solution for everyone:)
So, according to you "IT IS ILLEGAL" if I want to distribute MP3s made of the track from my former band's CD, which we recorded ourselves? Or my recording (I play everything!) of my funk arrangement of "Amazing Grace"? There's no label involved, and I did all the recording myself, in an academic studio. All my recordings are belong to me, and I can distribute them however I choose.
Morpheus and Gnutella have a single purpose: to let people exchange files. VCRs allow people to record and play back programs. Hammers are effective striking tools. All of these things can be used for both legal and illegal activities.
It's OK if you want to say that _most_ things traded on these networks are illegal; it's probably true. But please don't make the "MP3s are illegal" mistake.
No, advertising is not "just as big a part" of the content as the music. Artists like Built to Spill, Quasi, Ed Harcourt, Chan Poling, Clinic, Hefner, Black Box Recorder, Blanket Music, Noise For Pretend...none of them are out making gazillions of dollars for their music, which is far better than almost everything played on commercial radio. They're not good because of advertising; they're good because they write good music and perform it well. Please stop trying to think of art in purely commercial terms. That's what independant radio fights against every day.
Word and Excel run using Wine (not sure about Publisher...never really heard of it). OpenOffice is also a suitable replacement for those programs in almost every case (hasn't failed on me for any Word or Excel documents, and sometimes opens documents better than the "real" Office!)
There's a program called Scribus which is released under the GPL and aims to be a free replacement for software like Quark and Indesign. I wrote an article about it a short while ago:
As I pointed out, it does have some shortcomings (though I was very surprised to learn that Quark has a pathetic undo feature...maybe I shouldn't have been, since I've experienced many bad things with Quark.). However, it already has things such as text kerning which made Quark the default app for publishing (despite the fact that Quark doesn't actually do things well, it just does everything you need well enough that people have gotten used to it...except for opening files across a network without exploding and destroying them).
I think software like this and the GIMP have real promise, though I am aware that there are those few things (like getting colours right for print publications) that still tie many people (like me!) to Quark and Photoshop on MacOS.
Re:What about security???
on
Understanding NFS
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· Score: 5, Informative
As someone else has already mentioned, you could use the Self-certifying File System .
You could also establish an encrypted tunnel between the two machines using whatever implementation of IPSEC they have (Linux has FreeSWAN, OpenBSD has something built into the kernel, not sure about others). Then you could share stuff however you wanted.
We're currently using NFS to share our MP3 collections on our private network (behind the firewall/gateway), and it's not a big problem there. But for any network I don't trust (and I'm not very trustworthy:), I'd stay away from it.
Re:NFS does have problems...
on
Understanding NFS
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· Score: 3, Informative
For the Windows clients, I just use Samba . It gets the job done quite well, though to use encrypted passwords you do have to maintain a separate password file for it. It does have a facility to sync the *nix passwd file to its own, though.
For the other problem, you should look into the root_squash option.
Other studies have shown that different people need different amounts of sleep to function best. The "average" is between 5 and 10 hours of sleep.
If you really need 10 hours of sleep, and you believe in the old "8 hours per night for everyone", you will be tired all the time. You'll probably sleep in on weekends, which disrupts your sleep cycle, and makes you even more tired when you get up on Monday.
On the other hand, if you should really be sleeping 7 hours per night and you get 8 or 9, you will also feel tired. Many people have found that a gradual, planned cutback of the number of hours they sleep has led to increased energy. This has also been used as an effective treatment for depression.
The important thing is to figure out how much sleep you need, and keep up (as near as possible) a steady sleep schedule, even through the weekend. You should also avoid things like alchohol and caffeine up to several hours before bedtime, as these will decrease the quality of your sleep, though they might not keep you awake.
Yes, musicians often have trouble with CTS. Someone above linked to an article that says that improper typing (moving wrists side to side too much) can cause injury. Think about how you play the piano!
Interestingly, I play several instruments and also use the computer a fair amount, but I don't seem to have problems. It's probably because the motions aren't exactly the same.
What I try to do is not be crazy; I don't go for 5 hours at a stretch if I can help it, and I try to use the mouse as little as possible. I also stretch my wrists out frequently (I take two martial arts).
Eek! No! Use of amd is not exactly encouraged any more; you should really be using autofs. You need to compile support for this in the kernel, and your distribution should have the userspace tools.
"It relies on the user executing the attachment, it doesn't execute itself."
Unless, of course, it's something like Javascript code, or an unruly image tag. Exploits of this nature have been discussed on BUGTRAQ (more recently as an example of how poor PHP programming can cause security problems [duh!], so don't think I'm picking on Outlook here). Any mailer that displays even plain HTML as soon as you view the message can be attacked, and ones that do Javascript are INSANE.
A class in Systems Analysis and design will tell you that you never start off thinking about the implementation. The first thing to do is to figure out your entities and relationships between them, design _everything_, and _then_ pick a language/platform/whatever.
That said, my current personal favourite for cross-platform database-backend stuff is the combination of PHP and PostgreSQL. Using a web interface is completely cross-platform, and I personally think this combination is fast and enjoyable to the programmer. It's easy to maintain as long as you comment your code:)
PHP always seems to have everything I need, including both Perl and POSIX-compatible regexp syntax. And the online, user-annotated manual is a great reference, as is phpbuilder.com.
MySQL is fine for an obscenely simple project, but for any reasonably complex data (ie, anything with at least a one-to-many relationship), I'd recommend something like PostgreSQL. The database should be ensuring data integrity for you with foreign key constraints; you shouldn't have to do it yourself. And subselects are very nice to have. Again, the online manual is quite good.
I started off learning from a PHP+MySQL Webmonkey tutorial (many online tutorials are terrible WRT security, including this one, so watch yourself), and ran from there. I'm currently rewriting the site for our student newspaper in PHP and PostgreSQL. It's mostly complete; check it out here:
http://trw.umbc.edu
I'll be releasing the code on freshmeat.net as soon as it's reasonably done, which should be right before September.
Personally, I'm all for splitting the blame between the ISP and the user. When the Comcast (or whoever) representative comes out and installs your cable, they should have you sign some sort of statement of security, peform a few basic checks on your machine, and leave a card telling you basic ways to keep your machine secure. These would be something like:
1. At least once per week, preferably more often, use the update feature of your OS. Win32 has Windows Update, MacOS has a control panel, Debian has apt-get. This alone would prevent much of the successful attacks going on today.
2. If possible, leave file and print sharing off. Use a password, if you must turn them on. (for *nix machines, this could be extended to "don't run things like r-services, telnet, etc.)
3. Buy one of those nifty little $100 routers, or use one of (list of approved software).
After that, it's all upon the user. If someone can pay for access which is fast enough to make them a target, they can certainly take a few minutes every week to keep things up to date. If not, then they get to pay $$. It's the same with people who can't bother to cook for themselves, or who have to have designer blue jeans. You pay, I don't. What a wonderful life.
Will this work? Ha! This will probably work at about the same time people check the fluids in their car once per week like they're supposed to do. However, if their computer gets 0wn3d, and they have to pay $$ for it, that might be a pretty good motivator.
Bothered by filling out that Apple registration form? Lie.
I think that when I registered the iMac a certain company bought to do web compatibility testing, it wound up being used primarily for scientific research. In an elementary school.
They ask you for _your_ email address. But all they require is _an_ email address. Besides, you have a throwaway webmail account for everything that asks for your address where there's a slight chance that they might actually need to use it to achieve something you want, right?
On the other hand, the WinXP product verification collects true information about your computer. Perhaps the one for OS X does also, but they haven't mentioned anything about not being able to install that copy of OS X on another Mac. There are indications that changing your hardware "too much" will invalidate your XP product verification. People have asked Microsoft, "How much is too much?", and they're not telling. That certainly seems worse to me.
I suppose this would bother me more if I were ever going to use one of these operating systems at home, but I'm not. This is one of the main reasons I use free software. If I see an operating system or program that looks useful, I download it and use it. If I like it, I continue to use it. If not, I discard it with no sense of loss. The most invasive thing I've ever encountered was when someone wanted me to send them a postcard for using their software.
As another poster pointed out, hot water causes clothing to wear out faster, as does bleach. I was complaining to a fellow jujitsu student about how my ghi (uniform) never seemed to come completely clean any more, and he said "Oh, I just use bleach." I then realised why his was starting to wear out after only a year (those things are TOUGH, and they also cost $60 which, to someone who likes to shop at Sunny's Surplus and thrift stores, is quite a bit).
Dark clothing, especially cotton, is supposed to be washed in cold water. I've had some black concert T-shirts for _years_ (washing them with the design on the inside helps, too).
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An artist puts out a CD with one song that you like and 15 that you don't? Of course it's not fair to buy such a CD. You don't really like enough of it, do you?
:) I've really only been listening to independant music for a few years; it was all my local "modern alternative rock" station before then. But I've discovered that, to me, the overall quality of the songs is better. The CDs are also less expensive. Sure, there are plenty of indie bands that suck, too, but the good ones are really good, and there's a lot of original sounds that don't ever make it to commercial radio.
:) There are many like it; some are freeform, and some adhere more strictly to a specific genre. But try it out; you just might like it. I did.
Maybe you should like bands that suck a little less. Really. I mean, shouldn't someone have at least 5 good songs before putting out their own album? If you only have 3 good songs, you can put out a split CD with a similar band or something, but...
Admittedly, working as a music director at at a (largely) independant radio station, I have a bit of an axe to grind. But it's a really good axe
A large benefit of this is that most of those stations are not RIAA members. Yes, kids! You can buy CDs, good ones, for less money, and not support the RIAA!
Of course, they don't have the marketing machine that you pay for when you buy the overpriced CDs, so how can you find out about them? College radio station people read the College Music Journal . There are also many good review sites; do a Google search and find a site where people have reviewed Quasi, Built to Spill, Autechre, The Czars, etc.
You could also listen to my station online
It might be just like the RIAA and _your_ favorite band, but almost none of the music that I like comes from a label who has anything to do with the RIAA.
/. readers could have a great desktop experience with Mac OS X or Linux. You can see independant films at The Charles (if you live in Baltimore).
Of course, I'm not going to say I got here completely on principles. I started using Linux for other reasons, but now I like it so much more than Windows that it's easy to not use Microsoft products. I started listening to independant music because I thought it was better (note: this is an average, on-the-whole measurement; there are plenty of bad indie bands too). Now it's pretty easy for me to take a stand against the RIAA.
I still do go to a movie every once and a while, but I don't rent or buy them, and I don't watch TV. This is because most visual entertainment these days is not worth the time spent (ie, I could be spending my time playing music, or something else).
Blah, blah, blah...my point is that you don't have to be this way. You will be able to find lots of independant music that you like. Squaresoft makes great games, and I don't recall them being a force of evil. Yeah, you have to buy the hardware from Sony, but they either make little profit on it or turn a loss. Most
IOW, you might have to give up a few things that are cool, but there are plenty of non-evil alternatives that are just as cool. True, you have to look for them a bit harder since they're not shoved in your face by advertising, but that's part of the reason some of us like them...
Fonts? libttf2 does a perfectly good job of using TrueType fonts, and Debian even includes a virtual "package" (ttf-commercial, IIRC) for copying the fonts from a Windows partition or CD and doing the whole mkfontdir thing. I believe they're also available for download.
The latest version of mozilla has support for libttf, as do many other programs. For someone who is complaining about "old news"...where have you been?
Actually, I've found that the reverse is often true. There are certainly many people who speak English as a second language and do so poorly, or at the very least with interesting sentence structure (tomshardware.com used to be this way years ago, "And itemX did never do this...", etc.).
In my job at freshmeat, I correct a lot of grammar and spelling. It seems that whenever someone replies with the disclaimer, "Please forgive my bad English", their English is mostly fine. On the other hand, most people that I know who are native speakers of English mangle it badly and often.
I personally think that Japanese is much more difficult than English (nihongo muzukashi desu yo), but I wonder if language native mangling is as much a problem in Japan as it is here. There's no shortage of studies showing that our schools suck compared to other countries.
Homeschooling is certainly "a degree of some sort." Some of my friends were schooled in the CHEN (Christian Home Educator's Network) program. They got their high school degree in 3 years, and certainly a better education than public school would have provided. I credit myself for any knowledge I picked up while in public school :)
And homeschooling doesn't necessarily mean always being at home. At least with CHEN, there are a few classes a week (such as art classes) where everyone in the surrounding area goes to learn in a classroom setting (because obviously, not everyone has parents who can really teach art).
Most homeschoolers I know also started going to college part time at age 15 while they were still finishing up "high school."
Put a little effort into your search:
http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/354/
From the _front_page_ of freshmeat.net. Sheesh.
--Ray
http://www.cmj.com
...and you will know us by the Trail Of Dead, whose new album is just now hitting college stations.
College radio! You can probably find an _entire_radio_station_ dedicated to playing the type of music you like to hear. If you like the Dead Milkmen, then you might like the Infinite Xs or Piebald, two bands which recently released albums. Or you might like
Of course, I'm a bit biased (note my sig), but I think that there's a lot of great new music happening, and college radio can do a pretty good job of collecting it all in once place. Sure, it might not all be your thing, and most stations have "problem shows" (also known as "people who really like Metallica"), but overall, it's not bad.
We'll start with the fact that Windows XP doesn't run all of that software perfectly. No Microsoft operating system has maintained perfect backwards compatibility, and there are many programs which have fallen through the cracks.
:). Other than that, I use it for Web browsing, work, music, etc. Even Windows XP can't compare with the amount of RPGs available for consoles (Square, Capcom, and Working Designs, mostly). I'd rather have a modern *nix workstation (either OS X or Debian) for my largely non-gaming tasks, and buy the right tool for the job WRT games.
:) .
Also, I don't understand this obsession with "more applications". How many applications do you use on your computer? Do I care that there are more applications available for Windows XP than there are for Debian or Mac OS X? No, because most of those applications are useless, or duplicates.
freshmeat.net lists over 18,000 applications. I work there, and even I'm not crazy enough to say that they're all important. I'm certainly not going to use more than a tiny percentage of them myself, and again, there are plenty of duplicates (different things for different people, but how many different Web server programs do you have running?)
If you've got that all important Windows application, Connectix will happily sell you VirtualPC to run that app on MacOS. But chances are you can find a replacement, either in X11, OS 9, or OS X software.
Another poster mentioned the fact that the majority of PC software available is games. I own a Playstation 2 and a Dreamcast. My (Debian) computer is for old console emulators and xScorch.
As for what OS X has that XP doesn't: there's a reason that print publications still use Macs for DTP, and it's called ColorSync. I know, because I also work for a print publication
A few clicks from the front page of apple.com:
http://www.apple.com/imac/superdrive.html
It's a combination DVD-R/CD-RW drive, which is oh so many times better than the DVD-ROM that Gateway gives you.
If you're using a filtering proxy like Junkbuster so that you don't have to see the annoying Java/Flash/blink 10,000 times per second/etc. advertisements on other sites, but there are a few sites (such as slashdot) on which you are willing to view advertising because:
1. You want to support them
2. They've agreed to not have horribly annoying ads
Then it's easy. Just go to the proxy configuration page (Advanced -> Proxies) in a recent version of mozilla. Put ".slashdot.org" in the "No Proxy for" field. Done.
I've had to use this at the office since I can't seem to make junkbuster want to work correctly with our message form or fax gateway.
I haven't had any problems opening MS Word or Excel docs that were sent to me, and I'm using OpenOffice now (was using SO 5.2).
As far as IM clients, I've found Gaim and everybuddy to be quite good, and in some ways (not the least of which being a lack of advertising) better than the Windows client. They have support for AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, jabber, ICQ, etc.
As for games, I have a Playstation 2 and a Dreamcast, but I realise that's not the solution for everyone
So, according to you "IT IS ILLEGAL" if I want to distribute MP3s made of the track from my former band's CD, which we recorded ourselves? Or my recording (I play everything!) of my funk arrangement of "Amazing Grace"? There's no label involved, and I did all the recording myself, in an academic studio. All my recordings are belong to me, and I can distribute them however I choose.
Morpheus and Gnutella have a single purpose: to let people exchange files. VCRs allow people to record and play back programs. Hammers are effective striking tools. All of these things can be used for both legal and illegal activities.
It's OK if you want to say that _most_ things traded on these networks are illegal; it's probably true. But please don't make the "MP3s are illegal" mistake.
No, advertising is not "just as big a part" of the content as the music. Artists like Built to Spill, Quasi, Ed Harcourt, Chan Poling, Clinic, Hefner, Black Box Recorder, Blanket Music, Noise For Pretend...none of them are out making gazillions of dollars for their music, which is far better than almost everything played on commercial radio. They're not good because of advertising; they're good because they write good music and perform it well. Please stop trying to think of art in purely commercial terms. That's what independant radio fights against every day.
Word and Excel run using Wine (not sure about Publisher...never really heard of it). OpenOffice is also a suitable replacement for those programs in almost every case (hasn't failed on me for any Word or Excel documents, and sometimes opens documents better than the "real" Office!)
There's a program called Scribus which is released under the GPL and aims to be a free replacement for software like Quark and Indesign. I wrote an article about it a short while ago:
4 /1 79247&mode=thread
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/02/0
As I pointed out, it does have some shortcomings (though I was very surprised to learn that Quark has a pathetic undo feature...maybe I shouldn't have been, since I've experienced many bad things with Quark.). However, it already has things such as text kerning which made Quark the default app for publishing (despite the fact that Quark doesn't actually do things well, it just does everything you need well enough that people have gotten used to it...except for opening files across a network without exploding and destroying them).
I think software like this and the GIMP have real promise, though I am aware that there are those few things (like getting colours right for print publications) that still tie many people (like me!) to Quark and Photoshop on MacOS.
As someone else has already mentioned, you could use the Self-certifying File System .
:), I'd stay away from it.
You could also establish an encrypted tunnel between the two machines using whatever implementation of IPSEC they have (Linux has FreeSWAN, OpenBSD has something built into the kernel, not sure about others). Then you could share stuff however you wanted.
We're currently using NFS to share our MP3 collections on our private network (behind the firewall/gateway), and it's not a big problem there. But for any network I don't trust (and I'm not very trustworthy
For the Windows clients, I just use Samba . It gets the job done quite well, though to use encrypted passwords you do have to maintain a separate password file for it. It does have a facility to sync the *nix passwd file to its own, though.
For the other problem, you should look into the root_squash option.
Other studies have shown that different people need different amounts of sleep to function best. The "average" is between 5 and 10 hours of sleep.
If you really need 10 hours of sleep, and you believe in the old "8 hours per night for everyone", you will be tired all the time. You'll probably sleep in on weekends, which disrupts your sleep cycle, and makes you even more tired when you get up on Monday.
On the other hand, if you should really be sleeping 7 hours per night and you get 8 or 9, you will also feel tired. Many people have found that a gradual, planned cutback of the number of hours they sleep has led to increased energy. This has also been used as an effective treatment for depression.
The important thing is to figure out how much sleep you need, and keep up (as near as possible) a steady sleep schedule, even through the weekend. You should also avoid things like alchohol and caffeine up to several hours before bedtime, as these will decrease the quality of your sleep, though they might not keep you awake.
Yes, musicians often have trouble with CTS. Someone above linked to an article that says that improper typing (moving wrists side to side too much) can cause injury. Think about how you play the piano!
Interestingly, I play several instruments and also use the computer a fair amount, but I don't seem to have problems. It's probably because the motions aren't exactly the same.
What I try to do is not be crazy; I don't go for 5 hours at a stretch if I can help it, and I try to use the mouse as little as possible. I also stretch my wrists out frequently (I take two martial arts).
Eek! No! Use of amd is not exactly encouraged any more; you should really be using autofs. You need to compile support for this in the kernel, and your distribution should have the userspace tools.
"It relies on the user executing the attachment, it doesn't execute itself."
Unless, of course, it's something like Javascript code, or an unruly image tag. Exploits of this nature have been discussed on BUGTRAQ (more recently as an example of how poor PHP programming can cause security problems [duh!], so don't think I'm picking on Outlook here). Any mailer that displays even plain HTML as soon as you view the message can be attacked, and ones that do Javascript are INSANE.
Sotto la panca, la capra crepa
A class in Systems Analysis and design will tell you that you never start off thinking about the implementation. The first thing to do is to figure out your entities and relationships between them, design _everything_, and _then_ pick a language/platform/whatever.
:)
That said, my current personal favourite for cross-platform database-backend stuff is the combination of PHP and PostgreSQL. Using a web interface is completely cross-platform, and I personally think this combination is fast and enjoyable to the programmer. It's easy to maintain as long as you comment your code
PHP always seems to have everything I need, including both Perl and POSIX-compatible regexp syntax. And the online, user-annotated manual is a great reference, as is phpbuilder.com.
MySQL is fine for an obscenely simple project, but for any reasonably complex data (ie, anything with at least a one-to-many relationship), I'd recommend something like PostgreSQL. The database should be ensuring data integrity for you with foreign key constraints; you shouldn't have to do it yourself. And subselects are very nice to have. Again, the online manual is quite good.
I started off learning from a PHP+MySQL Webmonkey tutorial (many online tutorials are terrible WRT security, including this one, so watch yourself), and ran from there. I'm currently rewriting the site for our student newspaper in PHP and PostgreSQL. It's mostly complete; check it out here:
http://trw.umbc.edu
I'll be releasing the code on freshmeat.net as soon as it's reasonably done, which should be right before September.
Sotto la panca, la capra crepa
Re: security:
Personally, I'm all for splitting the blame between the ISP and the user. When the Comcast (or whoever) representative comes out and installs your cable, they should have you sign some sort of statement of security, peform a few basic checks on your machine, and leave a card telling you basic ways to keep your machine secure. These would be something like:
1. At least once per week, preferably more often, use the update feature of your OS. Win32 has Windows Update, MacOS has a control panel, Debian has apt-get. This alone would prevent much of the successful attacks going on today.
2. If possible, leave file and print sharing off. Use a password, if you must turn them on. (for *nix machines, this could be extended to "don't run things like r-services, telnet, etc.)
3. Buy one of those nifty little $100 routers, or use one of (list of approved software).
After that, it's all upon the user. If someone can pay for access which is fast enough to make them a target, they can certainly take a few minutes every week to keep things up to date. If not, then they get to pay $$. It's the same with people who can't bother to cook for themselves, or who have to have designer blue jeans. You pay, I don't. What a wonderful life.
Will this work? Ha! This will probably work at about the same time people check the fluids in their car once per week like they're supposed to do. However, if their computer gets 0wn3d, and they have to pay $$ for it, that might be a pretty good motivator.
Sotto la panca, la capra crepa
Bothered by filling out that Apple registration form? Lie.
I think that when I registered the iMac a certain company bought to do web compatibility testing, it wound up being used primarily for scientific research. In an elementary school.
They ask you for _your_ email address. But all they require is _an_ email address. Besides, you have a throwaway webmail account for everything that asks for your address where there's a slight chance that they might actually need to use it to achieve something you want, right?
On the other hand, the WinXP product verification collects true information about your computer. Perhaps the one for OS X does also, but they haven't mentioned anything about not being able to install that copy of OS X on another Mac. There are indications that changing your hardware "too much" will invalidate your XP product verification. People have asked Microsoft, "How much is too much?", and they're not telling. That certainly seems worse to me.
I suppose this would bother me more if I were ever going to use one of these operating systems at home, but I'm not. This is one of the main reasons I use free software. If I see an operating system or program that looks useful, I download it and use it. If I like it, I continue to use it. If not, I discard it with no sense of loss. The most invasive thing I've ever encountered was when someone wanted me to send them a postcard for using their software.
Sotto la panca, la capra crepa
So, everything you wear is white/bright coloured?
As another poster pointed out, hot water causes clothing to wear out faster, as does bleach. I was complaining to a fellow jujitsu student about how my ghi (uniform) never seemed to come completely clean any more, and he said "Oh, I just use bleach." I then realised why his was starting to wear out after only a year (those things are TOUGH, and they also cost $60 which, to someone who likes to shop at Sunny's Surplus and thrift stores, is quite a bit).
Dark clothing, especially cotton, is supposed to be washed in cold water. I've had some black concert T-shirts for _years_ (washing them with the design on the inside helps, too).
Sotto la panca, la capra crepa