I whole heartedly agree. Merrell shoes rock, and for the budget concious, you can pick up last years models at famous footwear for pennies on the dollar. I bought 5 pair last year for less than $12 each!!!
It can create a bootable CD image. Essentially, it can be used to clone/backup a harddrive. I use it to setup a customized distro. Using the recue CD your "install" image can be put on bare hardware and be up in running in less than 20 minutes. If you are using a distro with KUDZU, after the first boot it will recognize your hardware.
I have been very pleased thus far, it has allowed me to build "base" configuration of dedicated servers and quickly migrate data and test new hardware.
The Boomer explanation is the easiest. Six told Boltar that there could be sleepers who did not even know they were cylons. Its seems Boomer falls into that category.
I do suspect you are right in assuming the cylon motivation is much more complex, and we are already seeing the beginings of a faction in Six's blantant helping of Boltar. I did get a little confused by Boltars "finding" the cylon operative. Did he really invent a "cylon test", or was he merely faking it (and got lucky)? Prior to Adama discovery of the cylon on the muntions depot (which was a bit hard to swallow as well), Boltar said he was going to implicate a Cylon operative and picked out the PR guy before even testing. Adamas "discovery " made it even easier and more convenient. Anyway, those few scenes confused me, but not enough to take away my over all enjoyment of the show.
Though I did think it was strange that there were two operatoves on the decpmmissioned Galatica. My personal theory on this, is that The Galatica was from the original War so they felt "sentimental". Though that admittantly is a long shot. The other thing is who is to say that on the other battlestars they place 4,5,6 or more cyclon operatives on them. Maybe using *only* two on the Galatica was by design?
I also agree that the cylon logic regarding the muntions depot was hard to follow. They obvisously knew about it, and could survive in the storm long enough to visit so why did not they just bomb it with a few nukes. They obvously had more than enough of those. ..
CUPS as a printing BACKEND is fine, it is the printing "front-end" that is frustrating to my users.
For example a user wants to print an email from evolution, Print dialog box #1 pops up. Got to print from Konqueror a totally different (and much nicer IMHO) dialog box pops up. Goto print from Open Office, yet another differnet dialog box is there. Go to print from Firebird and a fourht dialog box is there. Print from the GIMP and there is yet another different dialog.
Each print dialog boxes has different options and settings and confuses the heck out of my inexperienced users, they have to have icons on the desktop for all their apps because they get to confused in the "start menu". (The big problem with my users ios they totally lack computer confidence, and do not like to assume the default selections are correct, so constantly call me to confirm they have the correct printer selected and equally trivial questions)
I'm not a developer of desktop apps, so I am rather ignorant when it comes to this. I prefer KDE's implementation (I like seeting the pages per sheet and other settings - which I assue is just a fancy front end to mpage, but noetheless it is cool because I don't have to rememeber syntax and pipes and all the other fun command line voodoo to get 2 pages printed per sheet, but I digress).
Anyway I would settle for an ugly, less usefull frontend, if it was unified across all applications. I just think it is going to be hard for Linux to ever get to the desktop when something as simple as printing appears so unpolished.
I imagine this issue is a NON-issue in the windows world because the printing front and backend are so closely tied to the ui. We in Linux land have the "freedom" to implement printing independently for each application, much like the good old days in DOS, where each application had a seperate print dialog box (along with drivers.)
Xprint may be a standard printing front end application that existing applications can easily pass a file reference to or even a simple PS or PDF file to and have that frontend do the preview, select the pages to print, the number of pages, etc, since it has a server component. Is there any Xprint developers / user out there that can clarify this for me? The website / FAQ seems to be geared more toward the output side of things.
I didn't see any screenshots of the XPRINTs "client" side, and what the print dialog boxes look like in supported applications. But from the description on the website it looks like the Xprint client may be the universal print dialog I have been looking for. I will definately check it out (thanks for the suggestion). At the very least it says it supports motif, Star OFfice (hoefully open office too, mozilla, and will Have QT support soon), this looks promising so maybe we are headed int he right direction.
Sorry for the rant, it just seems there should be a better way to present printing to end users, Xprint may eventually be it. Until then the concept of "Desktop Linux" will remain solely a niche for more technical users.
Not necessarily the drivers, but printing from differnet applications all have differnet dialogs and printoing subsystems. I LOVE the KDE printer dialog, and CUPS front end. The GNOME equivelent is ok. The Print dialog in Mozilla and other non-KDE/Gnome apps is frustrating at best if you are a new user.
I have been slowly switching one of my clients over to Linux desktops, but the printing situation made the move stall. I settled for XP with Open Office, Firebird and Thunderbird as the base.
Though to give yuou an idea of the level of user I am dealing with they all still think they are using new versions of IE, Outlook and Office (they all swore they would only use MS products). The management approved of the alternatives, the users are none the wiser at this point.
I forgot to mention I am working on a version for blind folks, that works pretty much the say way,but instead of stitching together images, it will stitch together sound bytes of the alphabet to make the pass phrase. To help avoid confusin I started with "A - Alpha", "B - Bravo" "C - Charlie", etc though I don't have enough done to test however average users respond to this format.
There has not been much demand, so I have not made much progress since my initial tests.
Overall it will be a little weaker in that I cannot have a "red" voice, "blue" voice etc. But I'll probably be able to add some other sort of verbal instruction to trip up the bastard bots! At the very least I can probably use a female and male voice, and perhaps synthetic voices as well.
Chances are the pass phrase can be a little longer, if the audio loops. That would help make up for the audio version being weaker.
There will still be a problem with non-english speakers, but if the content is english, what good is it for them to visit or send email?
Anyway, non english speakers, can use these methods to create CAPTCHAs in their own native tongue for their target audience.
I'm working on another version, which I believe is unique at this point. (At least I didn't find anything like in on Google a few weeks ago).
See a sample at the link below. (DISCLAIMER:: This site is a small self run hosting company, and has "sales" links, and is of commercial nature. So if you're going to get all pissed off because I am trying to feed my kids please do not click through. The sample does not collect or log anything outside of what Apache routinely collects. )
http://webshowhost.com/main.php?smPID=PHP::ui_huma n_verify.php&caseFlag=SAMPLE
What makes this implementation unique is that in
the pattern user must identify color and characters. It combines multiple levels of recognition. The user must understand the concept of COLOR and the characters. This should make it particularly difficult for SPAM bots to dicipher, since color is very subjective. I am posting this here mainly to establish prior art (as I have not seen any test use these concepts before) in case some joker tries to patent this variety of CAPTCHA.
My variety integrates into a toolkit I've developed, but basically uses imagemagik montage to fuse pre-rendered image bitmaps into a single JPEG.
It is obviously weak in the sense that it discriminates against blind folks and illiterate folks. On the bright side it has definately eliminated ALL of my spam!
If your interested in this contact me at captcha1@webshowpro.com
** Note you'll have to verify yourself with the prototype system to sendmail to that account.
I'll do my best to provide you with the relevent code. I don't have time at this point to lead a project (as my company is a oneman show barely scraping by at this point). So my apologies in advance if I cannot support the code to your satisfaction.
I have a human verification engine that I use to "protect" web logs, email, and other public, but sensitive pages (like contact pages on my website).
My image mangling uses base images that each have three sets of letters Red, Blue and Black, then forms random words out of 5-8 images. So to verify you have to enter either the RED, BLUE or BLACK word. If you entered it correctly you are allowed to post, send mail, look at the page, etc.
There are no accounts to create, profiles, etc. I set it up to work as a module in the content management system I worte (which can accept POST NUKE plugins). Anyway, in the limited testing I have done thus far it seems to work, but since none of my sites have had a huge SPAMBOT problem, it is hard to tell. Though I am pretty confident they cannot read and understand the form, because as of now one of my bigger problems is getting people to properly read and recognize what to do.
-MS2k
If you have a lot invested in Canon Lenses the digital rebel is the way to go if you just want to get started. Between my father and I we've had about 20 digital cameras (mostly highend "prosumer" cameras.) and the digital canon definately has the most bang for the buck.
Ifyou just want to learn, the basics and get a feel for manual photography, I suggest scouring ebay for an olympus e10, it has all the controls, and takes great pictures. The drawback is it does not have an interchangable lens. Though for learning, and everyday use it is almost an advantage, (you can still get macro and zoom and wide angle attachments, and you don't have to worry aout your CCD getting dusty,which is still a major concern). The other thing i like about the older e10/e20 is they don't take proprietary atteries, so you can affordably pack spares, and can pickup extras at the corner store in a pinch.
Overall I recommend spending as little as possible for the features you want when starting in digital photography, because it is still a relatively new industry, and as such MAJOR improvements come almost every year,so even if you buy the top of the line (which i did when I got my e10) you'll be itching for more fairly soon.
So start inexpensive and get a good feel for exactly what you want, check ebay for prices and resalevalue, so if you change your mind you know what your options are. Also as mentioned several times before goto dpreview and check out the extremely thorough reviews. You'll have a much better idea of what you want/need after spending a few hours there than after reading the comments here.
-MS2k
Not really, but I do make a standard installation CD of my prefered distro.
I have to manage a lot of similarly configured boxes. I use my favorite distro as a starting point then, trim off any fat/bloat, etc. Add specialized tools, which usually involved modifying some SPEC files for RPMS. to build a new RPM.
Once I get all the RPMs installed and build I remove the development RPMS, and other development tools.
and build a bootable rescue disk. I then use that disk to quickly deploy preconfigured boxes. Seems like this would work for your firewall needs.
My distro of choice is Redhat, so you'll probably not use that for firewall, but the nice thing is anaconda does recongise a good amount of hardware, so that upon boot it will autoconfigure most hardware if you install the image onto a different machine.
This basically allows me to get a new webserver, with all my custom applications, and configurations from bare metal to running in about 20 minutes. So while it may not be exactly what you are looking for, it may be work for you.
Consider this: You see an open door at your neighbors house. You know the guy is on vacation.
Do you call the cops? Probably not, you just go over and check out the place for him. Most of the time the door was not securely latched, or the kids watering the plants forgot to close it.
But what if you discover that the place has been trashed and stuff presumably stolen. I would call the cops, and my neighbor. Would they be suspicious of me? Yes probably at first, but in the long run they'll more likely be grateful.
Obvisously, there are good reason for laws, tresspassing is one of the fundemental laws throughout history. But, I'm willing to give up a little privacy if and when someone goes out of their way to HELP me protect my property. I'd much rather a neighbor walk through my house in my absence if they think something is wrong.
I also happen to own a tiny hosting company, and I would definately rather have a white hat let me in on specific exploits my system is vulnerable to rather than leave it alone and let the script kiddies do their thing, if I have screwed up.
Unfortunately for Mr. Lamo a law is a law, and with the overzealous (at least on high profile cases) FBI on the case, they'll probably try to make him into another Mitnick.
It is a sad world, everywhere we go policies, principles, and even laws try to dissuade people from working together and co-operating. Capitalism, democracy are great in principle, and can be in practice, but even the best ideals can be bastardized by people in power.
Free software is said to be communism by its critics, sharing code in a CS course is bound to get you expelled, make a backup copy of a CD and face the rather of the RIAA, the world will probably end if the same DVD Can be played in europe, japan and the USA.
This is in my opinion another example of moral decay. We have all these rules and laws that do not promote morals, but rather promote some arbitrary standard of "rightness".
It is the principles of openess, and co-operation that have drawn me to Linux, and free speech software. I'm trying to raise my children right, to teach them to help others for the sake of helping. When something needs to be done, if you can do it, do it. I try to instill them with team values, that together they can accomplish more than they can by themselves.
Its just ashame that the way things are going I'll likely end up looking like a bad parent...
They have just redone Greenfield village and are calling the entire attraction "the Henry Ford". We were memebers last summer for the kids, and it is great, there is a museum and IMAX theatre for rainy days, and the village for summer days. I love the rounds house and seeing old steam engines in various states of repair and restoreation.
Truely worth the trip.
If you do happen to make it to michigan I suggest hitting Traverse City (about 5 hours drive north), the sand dunes and Lake Michigan. Northern Michigan is great. That time of year the fall colors on the trees should be peaking, it is quite beautiful.
3D graphics, like nearly every other complex software package in the computing industry evolves, and with it so does the interface.
I suggest at this stage learning the concepts, techniques and "general" skills, with whatever you can reasonably afford. When the time comes for you to be on the job market in a few years, the software will have changed a lot, but you'll be prepared because you'll know how to craft a 3D model. As opposed to simply knowing which menu selections to use to apply a texture, or add a special effect.
I've had several people ask me the same question about Photoshop vs. The Gimp. Obviously the cost issue is not nearly so huge, but nevertheless the answer should be the same.
When you get closer to the time when you actually start to interview, you can begin the process of translationing your skills to another package. Until then save your cash so you can by the latest version a few years down the road when you'll need it.
I learned this lesson the hard way, spending cash on software that by the time I needed to use it professionally it was way obsolete. (This was back when DOS was ceding its claim to Windows, and applications ALL had proprietary interfaces.)
What is the exchange rate? Isn't $100 Candanian less than $81 US. At any rate they should be close...So why not just get the static DSL from the DSL provider in Canada?
There must be hundreds of prior art examples of multiple submissions of a query to various search engines. It seems like people have been doing that since the first search engines started competing.
I seem to remember one of my first web/cgi books using a multi-search engine results application as an example script. Unfortunately I don't recall which book at the moment, I am sure someone out there has that info.
Regardless at face value it seems like another example of amazon & company trying to patent blantantly obvious techniques.
unison is a great cross platform tool, I do web development and Iuse it in lieu of sftp/ftp to keep my sites updated on my work station, development and production boxes.
For the few customers that do their own updates I have them use the windows version, and it works great!
It is very quick, and intuitive. The only drawback I have seen is that it does not preserve the file ownerships when uploading remotely, when using the ssh tunnel. The files will be ownedby the remote user, not the localuser, this is normally nota big deal forpersonal development files and such, but it does mean that it isnot good forbacking up system files/directories. Rsync is better in that case.
There may be ways around that limitation, I just am reporting here on the features I use...
-MS2k
The trouble with this question is you're asking small business owners/employees, who've probably only been involved in one state. It is hard to be objective with such limited experience.
I suggest looking first at where you want to live in terms of climate, urban / rural, proximity to family,(it ay not be important now, but might be in a few years when you have kids). I'msure you probably have someother "intangibles", preferences as to where you live that are subjective (I personally swore I would never live in Ohio).
Anyway, once you narrow the list, then start investigating the business climate. I have to believe that for small businesses the tax advantages of one state over another are mimimal. since there are so many other factors involved in starting a business, since the tax laws will depend on the organization structure of the business (LLC, SubChapter S, Sole proprietor, partnership, etc)
That said,I like Michigan, I have operated a home based Internet businesses for 5 years, and spent time in Kalamazoo, Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Traverse City and Clinton twp.
My family's primary concern was staying close to extended family. Pretty much everywhere we've been has had broadband.
I have a client who moved his on-line sales operation to Michigan's Upper Pennisula, and he seems to like it.
My advise is: this is a big decision, and involves a lot of variables, you need to look at everything, and make the choice based on the variables that are most important to your long term happiness. -ms2k
The million dollar question is not whether the average user prefers ".name", but is willing to pay for ".name".
Almost all the doctors we approached with the.md names loved the concept, but few really saw the value.
Personally I like the idea of personalized domains. I realize that overlap can be dealt with in a variety of ways using nicknames, pet names, intials, we even reversed surnames and first names smith@john.md on occasion.
Part of the problem with these strategies though is they dilute the market message, and are unacceptable to a lot of people.
The ignorance was more of a problem for us because we were offering more than just webmail. (we tried to sell offices on the group features of IMAP), for a couple of reasons. First, was that web mail did not meet all the needs at the time, considering contrary to popular belief the doctors were almost all on slow dialup connections, if they had internet at the office at all. Also webmail didn't work as well for us because we tried to encourage them to simply forward their new email to an existing account (to make setup easier).
SPAM was an concern (not really an issue since we never achieved the kind of penetration we expected) because it was targeted. It is pretty easy to get a list of doctors names in a state or area, so it would be very easy to do targeted SPAMing (as opposed to the normal SPAM that just carpet bombs everything).
We marketed the www. in front of the domain name, because we found at the time most people still expected to see the www, especially when there was a third level. Remember we were doing this over three years ago now.
I realize the Internet community is more savvy now, but in order to tap users who see the words AOL and Internet / Web as synonomous, the message and service need to be crystal clear. Part of the problem with ignorance that I didn't make clear earlier was not just with our customers directly but was with other people who our customers shared the email with.
For example I had a first@last.md email for a couple of years, and at the time most people would question my email address, some flat out didn;t believe me when I told them. I got a lot of "testing 123" email to the address just to see if it was real and they could send to it. I also had minor problems with poorly written web scripts that didn't like ccTLD addresses. These issues when looked at by themselves were small, but all required time and education in the market to address.
The business card issue was two fold one being aethestics, the other being length. Obvisously it is very subjective. Something like this looks fine (albeit a bit repetitive)
John Jackson Jackson Works, LLC john@jackson.name
This starts getting awkward: George Wojonowseski Jackson Works, LLC george@wojonowseski.name
Then the issue of duplication comes up: John Jackson Jackson Works, LLC johnmichael@jackson.name
The three "examples" illustrate three "real-world" problems I see (again these are subjective, but they are issues that our customers brought up.)
In the first case there was too much repition, people kind of thought it looked silly. I never agreed personally with that assessment, but I think part of it had to do witht he general unfamiliarity and novelty of the personalized domain. I suspect this is nolonger an issue.
the second case, the personalized email is longer than most emails, and as such awkward for most people to remember and use. "George" himself probably wouldn't mind because its his name, but the people he shares his address with probably would prefer a shorter and easier to type address. The other issue Using it on a business card, the email does not reflect the company. Again, this is probably not an issue for.name, as they are targeted at end users, but was an issue when we were trying to sell doctors on.md. e attempted to sell to whole practices/offices/hospitals. Many simply prefered to have the office affiliatation. Other who wanted just a personal email were usually happier with their med school alumni addresses. f.last@med.havard.edu or fist.last@johns-hopskins.edu where prefered for the vanity value in my experience.
The third "real world" issue is the problem overlap causes, especially if you are promoting the first@last.name in your marketign media. The Fact that the email address is not the same as the guys name defeats the whole purpose. If the John Jackson own Jackson Works LLC, what email will have more value to him?
The first one MIGHT have the most value, but the "overlap" email address almost certainly will have less value. So again it boils down to your marketing and reaching the people your after.
Anyway, you've obviously done better than we did in our attempt, simply because your company still exists. The question is whether you can ultimately convince enough "AOL" users that having a personal email is valuable enough to keep paying for after the novelty wears off. In other words is it sustainable?
I worked for a startup that was selling "third-level" domains to doctors under the.md domain. The company purchased severalthousand.md domains that represented "surnames". So we owned "smith.md", "wilson.md", etc.
We provided web hosting (http://www.john.smith.md), email (john@smith.md), easy to use templates, for non tech savvy doctors.
Several issues worked against us. First the company controlling the second level domains (i.e. the "surnames") that we had to purchase, charged too much for the business model (upwards of $300/per year for a single second level.md domain).
The other issue was we couldnever have all the names. so we could not do large "instatutional sales" effectively.
these first two issues shouldnot effect.name, but the other issues we had problems with would:
1. Name Overlap -names are not unique, we never achieved a large enough user base for this to be much of an issue, but it did come up occasionally.
2. SPAM- the addresses are pretty easy to guess, since first@last is pretty easy to guess. the other SPAM issue was that more and more ISPs require the outgoing mail address to be on their network, and sothe users needed to configure the IMAP/POP accounts to use our sevrers, rather than their local ones.
3. User ignorance, the way the email was/is built of the second level domain (john@smith.md) and the website is off the third level - john.smith.md confused the users, the sales people, and management. We never effectively explained the subtle difference to non savvy users.
4. Long names. http://www.john.smith.md is an ok sized domain name,but if you had a long orhyphenated name, the email address and domain name become excessively long, and awkward to work with in "real world" applications,likeputting on business cards and letterhead.
In short it sees the.name folks are making some of the same mistakes, and not addressesing the inherent problems needed to overcome the issues. In retrospect there are several more trouble issues that both our.md plan and.name share, but no sense in beating a dead horse, they definately need some help, some luck, and cash if they expect to succeed.
I wish 'emluck cause I think they will need it... -MS2k
"Bibles" are pretty good as manuals
on
Red Hat Linux 8 Bible
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
First background: I have been using linux since the mid 90's, but would not call myself an expert. I have found the bibles to be a good "manual" akin to the good old days when every software package came with 3 ring bound 1000+ page manuals.
The "bible" does a good job introducing new features of RH distro, (like the alternates system) that are not "standard" or in wide use yet. They also have a nice charty of all the applications and where the config files live. While a lot of them are obvisous, it helps when setting up something for the first time, or trying to tracking down security settings etc in unfamiliar apps.
They have helped me immensely while getting started with current information. The one area where a book has an advantage over the Internet for me is the specific target. It is frustrating to wade through newsgroups, and websites, when there is so many variations and versions of software in use. I like the book as a starting point because it is a references how to complete a task w/ RH and you can use that to start, then if you do need to advance beyond what the book offers, you have a lot better background to refine your google search to save a lot of time.
While the review says its too big and simultaneously too small, I disagree. If you take the book more as a manual, it is a good size (considering the monstrocity that RH is growing into). It touches on virtually everything that RH includes in the distro, and explains what it does. This makes it a lot easier to tune and trim your RH system.
Overall, for $50 bucks, these books have saved me a lot of time, and are worth the price to me even if they only serve as a starting point for further investigation. The book is like any other tool, it is only as useful as the person using it makes it.
I have been wondering if a CD/DVD Burner Carosel is available, like the kind you can get fro your stereo that hold 200+ discs.
It would be great to load one up with about a Terabyte worth of optical storage. The software that controls it could track the dics, and the space left, and you just keep feeding it new discs.
Incremental backups this solutions would probably be pretty good, if it ever exists. I envision something in a 4U rackmount case. It could have a seperate "restore" head, so that it can read and restore data, while performing a backup.
Anyone know if anything like this exists? I tried a quick google search, but all I found were audio units, and tape carousels.
-ms2k
Slashdot Mirror
The stuff is Aerogel, as already reported. It gained a little more publicity recently as the stuff used to capture particles in the comets tail...
I whole heartedly agree. Merrell shoes rock, and for the budget concious, you can pick up last years models at famous footwear for pennies on the dollar. I bought 5 pair last year for less than $12 each!!!
-MS2k
Try Mondo Rescue / Mindi http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/
It can create a bootable CD image. Essentially, it can be used to clone/backup a harddrive. I use it to setup a customized distro. Using the recue CD your "install" image can be put on bare hardware and be up in running in less than 20 minutes. If you are using a distro with KUDZU, after the first boot it will recognize your hardware.
I have been very pleased thus far, it has allowed me to build "base" configuration of dedicated servers and quickly migrate data and test new hardware.
-MS2k
The Boomer explanation is the easiest. Six told Boltar that there could be sleepers who did not even know they were cylons. Its seems Boomer falls into that category.
.
I do suspect you are right in assuming the cylon motivation is much more complex, and we are already seeing the beginings of a faction in Six's blantant helping of Boltar. I did get a little confused by Boltars "finding" the cylon operative. Did he really invent a "cylon test", or was he merely faking it (and got lucky)? Prior to Adama discovery of the cylon on the muntions depot (which was a bit hard to swallow as well), Boltar said he was going to implicate a Cylon operative and picked out the PR guy before even testing. Adamas "discovery " made it even easier and more convenient. Anyway, those few scenes confused me, but not enough to take away my over all enjoyment of the show.
Though I did think it was strange that there were two operatoves on the decpmmissioned Galatica. My personal theory on this, is that The Galatica was from the original War so they felt "sentimental". Though that admittantly is a long shot. The other thing is who is to say that on the other battlestars they place 4,5,6 or more cyclon operatives on them. Maybe using *only* two on the Galatica was by design?
I also agree that the cylon logic regarding the muntions depot was hard to follow. They obvisously knew about it, and could survive in the storm long enough to visit so why did not they just bomb it with a few nukes. They obvously had more than enough of those. .
CUPS as a printing BACKEND is fine, it is the printing "front-end" that is frustrating to my users.
For example a user wants to print an email from evolution, Print dialog box #1 pops up. Got to print from Konqueror a totally different (and much nicer IMHO) dialog box pops up. Goto print from Open Office, yet another differnet dialog box is there. Go to print from Firebird and a fourht dialog box is there. Print from the GIMP and there is yet another different dialog.
Each print dialog boxes has different options and settings and confuses the heck out of my inexperienced users, they have to have icons on the desktop for all their apps because they get to confused in the "start menu". (The big problem with my users ios they totally lack computer confidence, and do not like to assume the default selections are correct, so constantly call me to confirm they have the correct printer selected and equally trivial questions)
I'm not a developer of desktop apps, so I am rather ignorant when it comes to this. I prefer KDE's implementation (I like seeting the pages per sheet and other settings - which I assue is just a fancy front end to mpage, but noetheless it is cool because I don't have to rememeber syntax and pipes and all the other fun command line voodoo to get 2 pages printed per sheet, but I digress).
Anyway I would settle for an ugly, less usefull frontend, if it was unified across all applications. I just think it is going to be hard for Linux to ever get to the desktop when something as simple as printing appears so unpolished.
I imagine this issue is a NON-issue in the windows world because the printing front and backend are so closely tied to the ui. We in Linux land have the "freedom" to implement printing independently for each application, much like the good old days in DOS, where each application had a seperate print dialog box (along with drivers.)
Xprint may be a standard printing front end application that existing applications can easily pass a file reference to or even a simple PS or PDF file to and have that frontend do the preview, select the pages to print, the number of pages, etc, since it has a server component. Is there any Xprint developers / user out there that can clarify this for me? The website / FAQ seems to be geared more toward the output side of things.
I didn't see any screenshots of the XPRINTs "client" side, and what the print dialog boxes look like in supported applications. But from the description on the website it looks like the Xprint client may be the universal print dialog I have been looking for. I will definately check it out (thanks for the suggestion). At the very least it says it supports motif, Star OFfice (hoefully open office too, mozilla, and will Have QT support soon), this looks promising so maybe we are headed int he right direction.
Sorry for the rant, it just seems there should be a better way to present printing to end users, Xprint may eventually be it. Until then the concept of "Desktop Linux" will remain solely a niche for more technical users.
Not necessarily the drivers, but printing from differnet applications all have differnet dialogs and printoing subsystems. I LOVE the KDE printer dialog, and CUPS front end. The GNOME equivelent is ok. The Print dialog in Mozilla and other non-KDE/Gnome apps is frustrating at best if you are a new user.
I have been slowly switching one of my clients over to Linux desktops, but the printing situation made the move stall. I settled for XP with Open Office, Firebird and Thunderbird as the base.
Though to give yuou an idea of the level of user I am dealing with they all still think they are using new versions of IE, Outlook and Office (they all swore they would only use MS products). The management approved of the alternatives, the users are none the wiser at this point.
When is printing going to be unified?
I forgot to mention I am working on a version for blind folks, that works pretty much the say way,but instead of stitching together images, it will stitch together sound bytes of the alphabet to make the pass phrase. To help avoid confusin I started with "A - Alpha", "B - Bravo" "C - Charlie", etc though I don't have enough done to test however average users respond to this format.
There has not been much demand, so I have not made much progress since my initial tests.
Overall it will be a little weaker in that I cannot have a "red" voice, "blue" voice etc. But I'll probably be able to add some other sort of verbal instruction to trip up the bastard bots! At the very least I can probably use a female and male voice, and perhaps synthetic voices as well.
Chances are the pass phrase can be a little longer, if the audio loops. That would help make up for the audio version being weaker.
There will still be a problem with non-english speakers, but if the content is english, what good is it for them to visit or send email?
Anyway, non english speakers, can use these methods to create CAPTCHAs in their own native tongue for their target audience.
I'm working on another version, which I believe is unique at this point. (At least I didn't find anything like in on Google a few weeks ago).
See a sample at the link below. (DISCLAIMER:: This site is a small self run hosting company, and has "sales" links, and is of commercial nature. So if you're going to get all pissed off because I am trying to feed my kids please do not click through. The sample does not collect or log anything outside of what Apache routinely collects. ) http://webshowhost.com/main.php?smPID=PHP::ui_huma n_verify.php&caseFlag=SAMPLE
What makes this implementation unique is that in the pattern user must identify color and characters. It combines multiple levels of recognition. The user must understand the concept of COLOR and the characters. This should make it particularly difficult for SPAM bots to dicipher, since color is very subjective. I am posting this here mainly to establish prior art (as I have not seen any test use these concepts before) in case some joker tries to patent this variety of CAPTCHA.
My variety integrates into a toolkit I've developed, but basically uses imagemagik montage to fuse pre-rendered image bitmaps into a single JPEG.
It is obviously weak in the sense that it discriminates against blind folks and illiterate folks. On the bright side it has definately eliminated ALL of my spam!
If your interested in this contact me at captcha1@webshowpro.com ** Note you'll have to verify yourself with the prototype system to sendmail to that account.
I'll do my best to provide you with the relevent code. I don't have time at this point to lead a project (as my company is a oneman show barely scraping by at this point). So my apologies in advance if I cannot support the code to your satisfaction.
I have a human verification engine that I use to "protect" web logs, email, and other public, but sensitive pages (like contact pages on my website). My image mangling uses base images that each have three sets of letters Red, Blue and Black, then forms random words out of 5-8 images. So to verify you have to enter either the RED, BLUE or BLACK word. If you entered it correctly you are allowed to post, send mail, look at the page, etc. There are no accounts to create, profiles, etc. I set it up to work as a module in the content management system I worte (which can accept POST NUKE plugins). Anyway, in the limited testing I have done thus far it seems to work, but since none of my sites have had a huge SPAMBOT problem, it is hard to tell. Though I am pretty confident they cannot read and understand the form, because as of now one of my bigger problems is getting people to properly read and recognize what to do. -MS2k
If you have a lot invested in Canon Lenses the digital rebel is the way to go if you just want to get started. Between my father and I we've had about 20 digital cameras (mostly highend "prosumer" cameras.) and the digital canon definately has the most bang for the buck. Ifyou just want to learn, the basics and get a feel for manual photography, I suggest scouring ebay for an olympus e10, it has all the controls, and takes great pictures. The drawback is it does not have an interchangable lens. Though for learning, and everyday use it is almost an advantage, (you can still get macro and zoom and wide angle attachments, and you don't have to worry aout your CCD getting dusty,which is still a major concern). The other thing i like about the older e10/e20 is they don't take proprietary atteries, so you can affordably pack spares, and can pickup extras at the corner store in a pinch. Overall I recommend spending as little as possible for the features you want when starting in digital photography, because it is still a relatively new industry, and as such MAJOR improvements come almost every year,so even if you buy the top of the line (which i did when I got my e10) you'll be itching for more fairly soon. So start inexpensive and get a good feel for exactly what you want, check ebay for prices and resalevalue, so if you change your mind you know what your options are. Also as mentioned several times before goto dpreview and check out the extremely thorough reviews. You'll have a much better idea of what you want/need after spending a few hours there than after reading the comments here. -MS2k
Not really, but I do make a standard installation CD of my prefered distro.
I have to manage a lot of similarly configured boxes. I use my favorite distro as a starting point then, trim off any fat/bloat, etc. Add specialized tools, which usually involved modifying some SPEC files for RPMS. to build a new RPM.
Once I get all the RPMs installed and build I remove the development RPMS, and other development tools.
I then run MONDO ARCHIVE http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/
and build a bootable rescue disk. I then use that disk to quickly deploy preconfigured boxes. Seems like this would work for your firewall needs.
My distro of choice is Redhat, so you'll probably not use that for firewall, but the nice thing is anaconda does recongise a good amount of hardware, so that upon boot it will autoconfigure most hardware if you install the image onto a different machine.
This basically allows me to get a new webserver, with all my custom applications, and configurations from bare metal to running in about 20 minutes. So while it may not be exactly what you are looking for, it may be work for you.
-MS2k
Consider this:
You see an open door at your neighbors house. You know the guy is on vacation.
Do you call the cops? Probably not, you just go over and check out the place for him. Most of the time the door was not securely latched, or the kids watering the plants forgot to close it.
But what if you discover that the place has been trashed and stuff presumably stolen. I would call the cops, and my neighbor. Would they be suspicious of me? Yes probably at first, but in the long run they'll more likely be grateful.
Obvisously, there are good reason for laws, tresspassing is one of the fundemental laws throughout history. But, I'm willing to give up a little privacy if and when someone goes out of their way to HELP me protect my property. I'd much rather a neighbor walk through my house in my absence if they think something is wrong.
I also happen to own a tiny hosting company, and I would definately rather have a white hat let me in on specific exploits my system is vulnerable to rather than leave it alone and let the script kiddies do their thing, if I have screwed up.
Unfortunately for Mr. Lamo a law is a law, and with the overzealous (at least on high profile cases) FBI on the case, they'll probably try to make him into another Mitnick.
It is a sad world, everywhere we go policies, principles, and even laws try to dissuade people from working together and co-operating. Capitalism, democracy are great in principle, and can be in practice, but even the best ideals can be bastardized by people in power.
Free software is said to be communism by its critics, sharing code in a CS course is bound to get you expelled, make a backup copy of a CD and face the rather of the RIAA, the world will probably end if the same DVD Can be played in europe, japan and the USA.
This is in my opinion another example of moral decay. We have all these rules and laws that do not promote morals, but rather promote some arbitrary standard of "rightness".
It is the principles of openess, and co-operation that have drawn me to Linux, and free speech software. I'm trying to raise my children right, to teach them to help others for the sake of helping. When something needs to be done, if you can do it, do it. I try to instill them with team values, that together they can accomplish more than they can by themselves.
Its just ashame that the way things are going I'll likely end up looking like a bad parent...
You forgot the link to the earth factoid page ;)
They have just redone Greenfield village and are calling the entire attraction "the Henry Ford". We were memebers last summer for the kids, and it is great, there is a museum and IMAX theatre for rainy days, and the village for summer days. I love the rounds house and seeing old steam engines in various states of repair and restoreation.
Truely worth the trip.
If you do happen to make it to michigan I suggest hitting Traverse City (about 5 hours drive north), the sand dunes and Lake Michigan. Northern Michigan is great. That time of year the fall colors on the trees should be peaking, it is quite beautiful.
MS2k
3D graphics, like nearly every other complex software package in the computing industry evolves, and with it so does the interface.
I suggest at this stage learning the concepts, techniques and "general" skills, with whatever you can reasonably afford. When the time comes for you to be on the job market in a few years, the software will have changed a lot, but you'll be prepared because you'll know how to craft a 3D model. As opposed to simply knowing which menu selections to use to apply a texture, or add a special effect.
I've had several people ask me the same question about Photoshop vs. The Gimp. Obviously the cost issue is not nearly so huge, but nevertheless the answer should be the same.
When you get closer to the time when you actually start to interview, you can begin the process of translationing your skills to another package. Until then save your cash so you can by the latest version a few years down the road when you'll need it.
I learned this lesson the hard way, spending cash on software that by the time I needed to use it professionally it was way obsolete. (This was back when DOS was ceding its claim to Windows, and applications ALL had proprietary interfaces.)
Good Luck,
MS2k
Actually this sounds a lot liek the old Intellivision controls circa early 80's....
What is the exchange rate? Isn't $100 Candanian less than $81 US. At any rate they should be close...So why not just get the static DSL from the DSL provider in Canada?
There must be hundreds of prior art examples of multiple submissions of a query to various search engines. It seems like people have been doing that since the first search engines started competing.
I seem to remember one of my first web/cgi books using a multi-search engine results application as an example script. Unfortunately I don't recall which book at the moment, I am sure someone out there has that info.
Regardless at face value it seems like another example of amazon & company trying to patent blantantly obvious techniques.
-MS2k
MacGyver didn't use guns.
unison is a great cross platform tool, I do web development and Iuse it in lieu of sftp/ftp to keep my sites updated on my work station, development and production boxes. For the few customers that do their own updates I have them use the windows version, and it works great! It is very quick, and intuitive. The only drawback I have seen is that it does not preserve the file ownerships when uploading remotely, when using the ssh tunnel. The files will be ownedby the remote user, not the localuser, this is normally nota big deal forpersonal development files and such, but it does mean that it isnot good forbacking up system files/directories. Rsync is better in that case. There may be ways around that limitation, I just am reporting here on the features I use... -MS2k
The trouble with this question is you're asking small business owners/employees, who've probably only been involved in one state. It is hard to be objective with such limited experience.
I suggest looking first at where you want to live in terms of climate, urban / rural, proximity to family,(it ay not be important now, but might be in a few years when you have kids). I'msure you probably have someother "intangibles", preferences as to where you live that are subjective (I personally swore I would never live in Ohio).
Anyway, once you narrow the list, then start investigating the business climate. I have to believe that for small businesses the tax advantages of one state over another are mimimal. since there are so many other factors involved in starting a business, since the tax laws will depend on the organization structure of the business (LLC, SubChapter S, Sole proprietor, partnership, etc)
That said,I like Michigan, I have operated a home based Internet businesses for 5 years, and spent time in Kalamazoo, Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Traverse City and Clinton twp.
My family's primary concern was staying close to extended family. Pretty much everywhere we've been has had broadband.
I have a client who moved his on-line sales operation to Michigan's Upper Pennisula, and he seems to like it.
My advise is: this is a big decision, and involves a lot of variables, you need to look at everything, and make the choice based on the variables that are most important to your long term happiness.
-ms2k
The million dollar question is not whether the average user prefers ".name", but is willing to pay for ".name".
.md names loved the concept, but few really saw the value.
.name, as they are targeted at end users, but was an issue when we were trying to sell doctors on .md. e attempted to sell to whole practices/offices/hospitals. Many simply prefered to have the office affiliatation. Other who wanted just a personal email were usually happier with their med school alumni addresses. f.last@med.havard.edu or fist.last@johns-hopskins.edu where prefered for the vanity value in my experience.
h n@jacksonworks.com
Almost all the doctors we approached with the
Personally I like the idea of personalized domains. I realize that overlap can be dealt with in a variety of ways using nicknames, pet names, intials, we even reversed surnames and first names smith@john.md on occasion.
Part of the problem with these strategies though is they dilute the market message, and are unacceptable to a lot of people.
The ignorance was more of a problem for us because we were offering more than just webmail. (we tried to sell offices on the group features of IMAP), for a couple of reasons. First, was that web mail did not meet all the needs at the time, considering contrary to popular belief the doctors were almost all on slow dialup connections, if they had internet at the office at all. Also webmail didn't work as well for us because we tried to encourage them to simply forward their new email to an existing account (to make setup easier).
SPAM was an concern (not really an issue since we never achieved the kind of penetration we expected) because it was targeted. It is pretty easy to get a list of doctors names in a state or area, so it would be very easy to do targeted SPAMing (as opposed to the normal SPAM that just carpet bombs everything).
We marketed the www. in front of the domain name, because we found at the time most people still expected to see the www, especially when there was a third level. Remember we were doing this over three years ago now.
I realize the Internet community is more savvy now, but in order to tap users who see the words AOL and Internet / Web as synonomous, the message and service need to be crystal clear. Part of the problem with ignorance that I didn't make clear earlier was not just with our customers directly but was with other people who our customers shared the email with.
For example I had a first@last.md email for a couple of years, and at the time most people would question my email address, some flat out didn;t believe me when I told them. I got a lot of "testing 123" email to the address just to see if it was real and they could send to it. I also had minor problems with poorly written web scripts that didn't like ccTLD addresses. These issues when looked at by themselves were small, but all required time and education in the market to address.
The business card issue was two fold one being aethestics, the other being length. Obvisously it is very subjective. Something like this looks fine (albeit a bit repetitive)
John Jackson
Jackson Works, LLC
john@jackson.name
This starts getting awkward:
George Wojonowseski
Jackson Works, LLC
george@wojonowseski.name
Then the issue of duplication comes up:
John Jackson
Jackson Works, LLC
johnmichael@jackson.name
The three "examples" illustrate three "real-world" problems I see (again these are subjective, but they are issues that our customers brought up.)
In the first case there was too much repition, people kind of thought it looked silly. I never agreed personally with that assessment, but I think part of it had to do witht he general unfamiliarity and novelty of the personalized domain. I suspect this is nolonger an issue.
the second case, the personalized email is longer than most emails, and as such awkward for most people to remember and use. "George" himself probably wouldn't mind because its his name, but the people he shares his address with probably would prefer a shorter and easier to type address.
The other issue Using it on a business card, the email does not reflect the company. Again, this is probably not an issue for
The third "real world" issue is the problem overlap causes, especially if you are promoting the first@last.name in your marketign media. The Fact that the email address is not the same as the guys name defeats the whole purpose. If the John Jackson own Jackson Works LLC, what email will have more value to him?
john@jackson.name
johnmichael@jackson.name
jo
jjackson@jwllc.com
The first one MIGHT have the most value, but the "overlap" email address almost certainly will have less value. So again it boils down to your marketing and reaching the people your after.
Anyway, you've obviously done better than we did in our attempt, simply because your company still exists. The question is whether you can ultimately convince enough "AOL" users that having a personal email is valuable enough to keep paying for after the novelty wears off. In other words is it sustainable?
-MS2k
I worked for a startup that was selling "third-level" domains to doctors under the .md domain. The company purchased severalthousand .md domains that represented "surnames". So we owned "smith.md", "wilson.md", etc.
/per year for a single second level .md domain).
.name, but the other issues we had problems with would:
.name folks are making some of the same mistakes, and not addressesing the inherent problems needed to overcome the issues. .md plan and .name share,
We provided web hosting (http://www.john.smith.md), email (john@smith.md), easy to use templates, for non tech savvy doctors.
Several issues worked against us. First the company controlling the second level domains (i.e. the "surnames") that we had to purchase, charged too much for the business model (upwards of $300
The other issue was we couldnever have all the names. so we could not do large "instatutional sales" effectively.
these first two issues shouldnot effect
1. Name Overlap -names are not unique, we never achieved a large enough user base for this to be much of an issue, but it did come up occasionally.
2. SPAM- the addresses are pretty easy to guess, since first@last is pretty easy to guess. the other SPAM issue was that more and more ISPs require the outgoing mail address to be on their network, and sothe users needed to configure the IMAP/POP accounts to use our sevrers, rather than their local ones.
3. User ignorance, the way the email was/is built of the second level domain (john@smith.md) and the website is off the third level - john.smith.md confused the users, the sales people, and management. We never effectively explained the subtle difference to non savvy users.
4. Long names. http://www.john.smith.md is an ok sized domain name,but if you had a long orhyphenated name, the email address and domain name become excessively long, and awkward to work with in "real world" applications,likeputting on business cards and letterhead.
In short it sees the
In retrospect there are several more trouble issues that both our
but no sense in beating a dead horse, they definately need some help, some luck, and cash if they expect to succeed.
I wish 'emluck cause I think they will need it...
-MS2k
First background: I have been using linux since the mid 90's, but would not call myself an expert. I have found the bibles to be a good "manual" akin to the good old days when every software package came with 3 ring bound 1000+ page manuals.
The "bible" does a good job introducing new features of RH distro, (like the alternates system) that are not "standard" or in wide use yet. They also have a nice charty of all the applications and where the config files live. While a lot of them are obvisous, it helps when setting up something for the first time, or trying to tracking down security settings etc in unfamiliar apps.
They have helped me immensely while getting started with current information. The one area where a book has an advantage over the Internet for me is the specific target. It is frustrating to wade through newsgroups, and websites, when there is so many variations and versions of software in use. I like the book as a starting point because it is a references how to complete a task w/ RH and you can use that to start, then if you do need to advance beyond what the book offers, you have a lot better background to refine your google search to save a lot of time.
While the review says its too big and simultaneously too small, I disagree. If you take the book more as a manual, it is a good size (considering the monstrocity that RH is growing into). It touches on virtually everything that RH includes in the distro, and explains what it does. This makes it a lot easier to tune and trim your RH system.
Overall, for $50 bucks, these books have saved me a lot of time, and are worth the price to me even if they only serve as a starting point for further investigation. The book is like any other tool, it is only as useful as the person using it makes it.
-MS2k
I have been wondering if a CD/DVD Burner Carosel is available, like the kind you can get fro your stereo that hold 200+ discs. It would be great to load one up with about a Terabyte worth of optical storage. The software that controls it could track the dics, and the space left, and you just keep feeding it new discs. Incremental backups this solutions would probably be pretty good, if it ever exists. I envision something in a 4U rackmount case. It could have a seperate "restore" head, so that it can read and restore data, while performing a backup. Anyone know if anything like this exists? I tried a quick google search, but all I found were audio units, and tape carousels. -ms2k