Sure, wget has a command line option for my http proxy. But why isn't there a system-wide default that it uses?
Wait there is! But is it $HTTP-PROXY? Or $HTTPPROXY? Or $PROXY?
Actually it's $HTTP_PROXY. Its called reading the documentation, which is why its there.
As for things like.bash_history,.bashrc,.ssh,.signature, etc
its called multi-user enviroment. Keeping individual settings, information and the like in $HOME is actually pretty elegant. How do you propose keeping seperate users settings intact? If its one system-wide configuration, obviously everyone is stuck with root's preferences, a bad idea I am sure everyone can agree.
Yet, there are people who can't or won't learn every nuance of every system file.
Then they should not be in charge of administering a box. "Can't" implies an inherent lack of ability. Good enough reason not to be an admin. "Won't" implies an inherent lack of motivation. Good enough reason not to be an admin. Both are reasonable assurances that a machine placed under their control will suffer.
There are other groups, call them managers, who want to know that when you get hit by a bus they are capable of finding someone who can figure out what the hell you were doing just before you got your Greyhound tatoo.
They can, it's called hiring someone who knows what they are doing, as opposed to hiring someone who knows how to install webmin. By your logic, it sounds like you are advocating that they should be able to hire someone who doesn't know what they are doing. Doesn't work in the real world and places that do that inevidably fail.
If Webmin causes you security problems, be that person who can check for those problems before deployment.
Right, fix the known problems, ie, make more work for yourself cleaning up after a known insecure app that is supposed to reduce your workload and make your job easier. Without even touching the problems of new hereinto, unknown security issues that you have introduced in the name of ease of use, you just added an additional layer of complexity in an effort to make things less complex. See the flaw in logic?
...If we want a chance of getting Unix to the unwashed masses -- to enlighten them a bit, maybe to get them to do the right thing.
You think you can bring enlightenment by encouraging ignorance? By not encouraging learning and the proper methodalogy to not have to rely on yet another tool to get the same job done? That you can get anyone to do the "right" thing by encouraging them to not read and learn, just to find the "easy" way out?
I wasn't going to get into this, but webmin is and always has been a security nightmare. Go search bugtraq for webmin bugs. Everything from insecure files in/tmp to session hijacking. Not to mention that you often find yourself in a simular trap found in package management, once you use it, you better keep on using it as webmin mangles any pre-existing conf files.
Also, ease of use often equals lack of knowledge. I am sure somebody is gonna mod me down for being a troll or flamebait, whatever. I learn the apache conf syntax, I only have to learn it once. That knowledge is portable across any systems I would be installing apache on. I would bet someone who can do it by hand can do a better job then someone who can only do it if they have webmin installed.
I also hope no one is implying that a generic gui based configurator can handle anything but the most basic and common configurations. If I (using the apache example) install and implement a little known module, mod_witch or mod_log_multicast, are you saying that webmin can handle that? Well, go in and configure it by hand you say? Well, I can't because webmin has mangled the config and if it hasn't, it still is not going to be aware of the changes.
Rant on: what is wrong with vi? Seriously? Or pico or whatever editor you want to use? What is wrong with taking 5 minutes out of your day and actually reading the sample.conf that comes with almost all software? Not only can you then go in and actually have the power to do what you want, with confidence and not having to rely on another piece of software or hope that a module exists for you to do what you want, you actually will have increased the amount of knowledge that you have and make yourself that much more valuable.
I would love to meet an administrator who could configure everything and get it working...oh sorry, cavent, said admin can only do it with webmin or something simular. Right, I can see that being a showstopper in a job interview.
Just because we can do something doesn't mean that we should...or that we shouldn't carefully consider how we use said knowldge. That's the difference between knowledge and wisdom.
>If they are forced to defend this sort of behavior they can portray it as simply an extension of logging all email traffic, which most ISP's have been doing for a pretty long time now.
Sorry but what ISP do you know of that logs email? I don't personally know of any and I worked at 4 or 5 ISPs, 2 national ones. I am just curious because its usually far too much trouble, both in terms of hardware/software and manhours required to do anything useful with said backups let alone restoration.
Couldn't you just run it through a spell-checker and correct the slight
imperfections? That way, they don't have an exact copy to compare against and
you could even put in your own inperfections (extra comma, extra space, etc)
and really screw them up. Something to remember if I ever have the
oppertunity/need to leak a document.
Regarding the visability of the GBA, there is a project to modify it with a
clear screen that serves the purpose of a backlight. You can visit the page
and view screenshots here.
Basically, people are just waiting for the guy to finish negotiations with the
suppliers. He expects the cost to be about the price of a game, all said and
done.
Dunno where you live but in the United States cops are emphatically NOT
allowed to just start whupping somebody's ass.
Of course not, but I do happen to live in the United States, born and raised in
Washington DC and I can tell you quite assuredly that even tho cops are
NOT allowed to whup someone's ass, they can and often times
do. In my hometown of Washington DC, there have been several cases of police
brutality. I have witnessed with my own eyes, a person being assaulted by 2
police officers, and after about 15 minutes of being beaten, (not resisting,
mind you, the guy was basically huddled down in a doorway covering his head) he
started to fight back, more in an attempt to get away then to cause harm. This
resulted in about 15 cops arriving on the scene, standing shoulder to shoulder
obscuring the view, while 3 more cops proceeded to "whup his ass". When I made
my previous statement, I was referring to an incident where a couple of police
officers were assaulting a motorist. What made the incident memorable was that
one of the police officers had forgotten to turn off his dash camera (which
recorded part of the incident) and went back to turn it off. I can dig up the
incident if anyone wishes, I believe it happened in Florida. Check http://www.hrw.org/reports98/police/
for more reports of this nature. Sorry to have made such a lengthy post,
but it needed to be said.
Also see here [http://www.copcrimes.com/] for more info.
Gargoyles were what they were called. Even with cameras, cops have been known
to either turn them off or cover them up right before they started whupping
somebody's ass.
Isn't that kind of the point tho? If we should consent to being video taped
and monitored, surely the govt. or whomever is doing the monitoring should have
no problem with the people responding in kind. I remember when the greatest
thing about America was that we the people were the ones who held the power.
Even if its too late to participate, its a good thing to be aware of and
certainly its food for thought. Perhaps next year, or they could arrange for
this to happen on every holiday or event that carries a high survellience
profile.
I observed this before but that is the result of a one-on-one confrontation.
Lions are like wolves, they are pack hunters. That kangaroo would have a
problem with more than one, also that sounds more like a fight, not a hunt.
Lions typically hunt by having the male roar, making the prey run towards where
the females are laying in wait, hidden. That kangaroo and indeed, pretty much
any animal would have a problem with 4 lions jumping out at him out of nowhere.
Yea, I want to see a kangaroo take out 4 or 5 female lions. Anybody who has
watched the Discovery channel knows lions aren't exactly adverse to ganging up
on their prey. On the other hand, while I don't think this is a good idea, it
would be interesting to see how both Austrialian and African fauna change their
tactics to adjust for different predator/prey relationships.
What about a car alarm that paged you on your mobile device?
They actually have one, my ex-girlfriend has an alarm that pages her with a
warning if someone gets too close or starts messing with the car. I can't
count the number of times she used to run out to see people parking or people
unloading stuff close to her car. All in all, a great idea, no noise and no
warning. (She was a geek and had computers hooked up to her audio system, and
her car had been broken into several times before.)
The thing that trips me out is that I paid @home in advance through the end of
January. I hope Cox doesn't go down but I am definately going to be asking for
service interruption remebursments.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, wget has a command line option for my http proxy. But why isn't there a system-wide default that it uses?
Wait there is! But is it $HTTP-PROXY? Or $HTTPPROXY? Or $PROXY?
Actually it's $HTTP_PROXY. Its called reading the documentation, which is why its there.
As for things like
its called multi-user enviroment. Keeping individual settings, information and the like in $HOME is actually pretty elegant. How do you propose keeping seperate users settings intact? If its one system-wide configuration, obviously everyone is stuck with root's preferences, a bad idea I am sure everyone can agree.
SealBeater
I am going to address some other points to this.
Yet, there are people who can't or won't learn every nuance of every system file.
Then they should not be in charge of administering a box. "Can't" implies an inherent lack of ability. Good enough reason not to be an admin. "Won't" implies an inherent lack of motivation. Good enough reason not to be an admin. Both are reasonable assurances that a machine placed under their control will suffer.
There are other groups, call them managers, who want to know that when you get hit by a bus they are capable of finding someone who can figure out what the hell you were doing just before you got your Greyhound tatoo.
They can, it's called hiring someone who knows what they are doing, as opposed to hiring someone who knows how to install webmin. By your logic, it sounds like you are advocating that they should be able to hire someone who doesn't know what they are doing. Doesn't work in the real world and places that do that inevidably fail.
If Webmin causes you security problems, be that person who can check for those problems before deployment.
Right, fix the known problems, ie, make more work for yourself cleaning up after a known insecure app that is supposed to reduce your workload and make your job easier. Without even touching the problems of new hereinto, unknown security issues that you have introduced in the name of ease of use, you just added an additional layer of complexity in an effort to make things less complex. See the flaw in logic?
SealBeater
...If we want a chance of getting Unix to the unwashed masses -- to enlighten them a bit, maybe to get them to do the right thing.
You think you can bring enlightenment by encouraging ignorance? By not encouraging learning and the proper methodalogy to not have to rely on yet another tool to get the same job done? That you can get anyone to do the "right" thing by encouraging them to not read and learn, just to find the "easy" way out?
I wasn't going to get into this, but webmin is and always has been a security nightmare. Go search bugtraq for webmin bugs. Everything from insecure files in /tmp to session hijacking. Not to mention that you often find yourself in a simular trap found in package management, once you use it, you better keep on using it as webmin mangles any pre-existing conf files.
Also, ease of use often equals lack of knowledge. I am sure somebody is gonna mod me down for being a troll or flamebait, whatever. I learn the apache conf syntax, I only have to learn it once. That knowledge is portable across any systems I would be installing apache on. I would bet someone who can do it by hand can do a better job then someone who can only do it if they have webmin installed.
I also hope no one is implying that a generic gui based configurator can handle anything but the most basic and common configurations. If I (using the apache example) install and implement a little known module, mod_witch or mod_log_multicast, are you saying that webmin can handle that? Well, go in and configure it by hand you say? Well, I can't because webmin has mangled the config and if it hasn't, it still is not going to be aware of the changes.
Rant on: what is wrong with vi? Seriously? Or pico or whatever editor you want to use? What is wrong with taking 5 minutes out of your day and actually reading the sample.conf that comes with almost all software? Not only can you then go in and actually have the power to do what you want, with confidence and not having to rely on another piece of software or hope that a module exists for you to do what you want, you actually will have increased the amount of knowledge that you have and make yourself that much more valuable.
I would love to meet an administrator who could configure everything and get it working...oh sorry, cavent, said admin can only do it with webmin or something simular. Right, I can see that being a showstopper in a job interview.
SealBeater
>Don't be afraid of knowledge, embrace it.
Just because we can do something doesn't mean that we should...or that we shouldn't carefully consider how we use said knowldge. That's the difference between knowledge and wisdom.
SealBeater
>If they are forced to defend this sort of behavior they can portray it as simply an extension of logging all email traffic, which most ISP's have been doing for a pretty long time now.
Sorry but what ISP do you know of that logs email? I don't personally know of any and I worked at 4 or 5 ISPs, 2 national ones. I am just curious because its usually far too much trouble, both in terms of hardware/software and manhours required to do anything useful with said backups let alone restoration.
SealBeater
"These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men"
That's the best. Thanks, I have commited that to memory. I know a few born again Christains that I am just waiting to try me to use that one on.
SealBeater
I thank you both, I stand corrected.
SealBeater
If I recall correctly, Total Recall is a Piers Anthony book, not Philip K.
Dick.
SealBeater
Just a friendly FYI, I have never, I mean NEVER had a data cd
not work in any standalone, portable, car, etc cd player.
SealBeater
Couldn't you just run it through a spell-checker and correct the slight
imperfections? That way, they don't have an exact copy to compare against and
you could even put in your own inperfections (extra comma, extra space, etc)
and really screw them up. Something to remember if I ever have the
oppertunity/need to leak a document.
SealBeater
Regarding the visability of the GBA, there is a project to modify it with a
clear screen that serves the purpose of a backlight. You can visit the page
and view screenshots here.
Basically, people are just waiting for the guy to finish negotiations with the
suppliers. He expects the cost to be about the price of a game, all said and
done.
SealBeater
Damn, messed up the last url, even with preview. Here it is.
[http://www.copcrimes.com/]
SealBeater
Dunno where you live but in the United States cops are emphatically NOT
allowed to just start whupping somebody's ass.
Of course not, but I do happen to live in the United States, born and raised in
Washington DC and I can tell you quite assuredly that even tho cops are
NOT allowed to whup someone's ass, they can and often times
do. In my hometown of Washington DC, there have been several cases of police
brutality. I have witnessed with my own eyes, a person being assaulted by 2
police officers, and after about 15 minutes of being beaten, (not resisting,
mind you, the guy was basically huddled down in a doorway covering his head) he
started to fight back, more in an attempt to get away then to cause harm. This
resulted in about 15 cops arriving on the scene, standing shoulder to shoulder
obscuring the view, while 3 more cops proceeded to "whup his ass". When I made
my previous statement, I was referring to an incident where a couple of police
officers were assaulting a motorist. What made the incident memorable was that
one of the police officers had forgotten to turn off his dash camera (which
recorded part of the incident) and went back to turn it off. I can dig up the
incident if anyone wishes, I believe it happened in Florida. Check http://www.hrw.org/reports98/police/
for more reports of this nature. Sorry to have made such a lengthy post,
but it needed to be said.
Also see here
[http://www.copcrimes.com/] for more info.
SealBeater
Gargoyles were what they were called. Even with cameras, cops have been known
to either turn them off or cover them up right before they started whupping
somebody's ass.
SealBeater
Isn't that kind of the point tho? If we should consent to being video taped
and monitored, surely the govt. or whomever is doing the monitoring should have
no problem with the people responding in kind. I remember when the greatest
thing about America was that we the people were the ones who held the power.
SealBeater
Even if its too late to participate, its a good thing to be aware of and
certainly its food for thought. Perhaps next year, or they could arrange for
this to happen on every holiday or event that carries a high survellience
profile.
SealBeater
I honestly couldn't say much more then the title of this comment. Excellent
movie.
SealBeater
This sounds interesting, link to more info?
SealBeater
I observed this before but that is the result of a one-on-one confrontation.
Lions are like wolves, they are pack hunters. That kangaroo would have a
problem with more than one, also that sounds more like a fight, not a hunt.
Lions typically hunt by having the male roar, making the prey run towards where
the females are laying in wait, hidden. That kangaroo and indeed, pretty much
any animal would have a problem with 4 lions jumping out at him out of nowhere.
SealBeater
Yea, I want to see a kangaroo take out 4 or 5 female lions. Anybody who has
watched the Discovery channel knows lions aren't exactly adverse to ganging up
on their prey. On the other hand, while I don't think this is a good idea, it
would be interesting to see how both Austrialian and African fauna change their
tactics to adjust for different predator/prey relationships.
SealBeater
What about a car alarm that paged you on your mobile device?
They actually have one, my ex-girlfriend has an alarm that pages her with a
warning if someone gets too close or starts messing with the car. I can't
count the number of times she used to run out to see people parking or people
unloading stuff close to her car. All in all, a great idea, no noise and no
warning. (She was a geek and had computers hooked up to her audio system, and
her car had been broken into several times before.)
SealBeater
Whoops, I didn't even think of that. You're right, it is pretty funny. 8*)
SealBeater
Not to be off-topic, but personally, I think just about every animal on this planet is a lot closer to
"GOD" than we are.
SealBeater
The thing that trips me out is that I paid @home in advance through the end of
January. I hope Cox doesn't go down but I am definately going to be asking for
service interruption remebursments.
SealBeater