A special problem in education computing is the need to add and remove user accounts in batch. If you are setting up a Linux based server and you need to add many hundreds of new user accounts to it, I hope you might find this useful:
It offers a little free utility called "createusers" that I wrote for adding and removing user accounts en-masse. As well as basic login accounts, createusers optionally also sets up corresponding Apache personal webspace in the home directory, Samba account, MySQL or PostgreSQL personal database and per-user disk quota.
Here is a first-hand account of Microsoft's earlier effort in London, UK. Look for the great quote from Debian's Philip Hands at the end of the article.
Firefox has much less of a spyware problem because 1) it is not integrated with the Windows operating system and 2) it is not stupid. The potential problem of web sites that install malicious XPIs is limited by a user-editable whitelist of sites that are allowed to install software. XPI installation may also be turned off completely using the Options screen.
The biggest spyware threat that I can see is not in Firefox itself but in the plugins that Firefox supports. I would definitely not have Java or Windows Media plugins enabled in Firefox if you are worried about future spyware. Real, Quicktime, Acrobat and Flash are all potential risks as well. The potential danger posed by the Flash plugin may be limited by using the Flashblock extension (flashblock.mozdev.org) which gets rid of all Flash content, except that which you "click to play".
Assume for argument's sake that there is an exploitable weakness in Firefox. What matters next is what the operating system will allow. In other words, you don't want to be running Firefox as root (or in Windows XP Home, as a "Computer administrator"). You want to be running Firefox as a normal user (or in a "Limited account"). If so then I believe there is definitely less to worry about, and again, this is nothing to do with Firefox as such.
Example 1: One of my customers relies on a web site hosted by Positive Internet (www.positiveinternet.com). Last weekend, Positive got DDOSed. I had to explain to my customer that the problem is made possible by all the compromised PCs out there - and Microsoft isn't going to do much to fix it until 2007 at the earliest.
Example 2: Another of my customers was using a Debian based PC that I made for them, until they asked me to fit a cheap Vivitar digital camera to it. Which doesn't work, because the camera doesn't properly support USB Mass Storage. Goodbye, Linux. Hello, Windows 98.
Conclusion: I hope that popular open source will help people keep control of their computers. I also hope it will help manufacturers stop producing broken hardware.
Oh, come on, folks. This just means someone playing the classic Starquake game on the other side of the galaxy lost and their Sinclair ZX Spectrum took the plot a bit too literally.
"Starquake from Bubble Bus sees the return of Steve Crow, programmer of the much acclaimed Wizard's Lair. Starquake revolves around a small Bio-Logically operated being named Blob, who's been landed with the menial task of saving the universe from a savage destruction.
An unstable and potentially dangerous planet is emerging from a black hole somewhere among the backwaters of the galaxy. The planet is so unstable that it'll blow into a million fragments if its Planetary Core isn't fixed."
Or USD 83.47 at the current exchange rate. Any parts are charged at the retail price.
Hi, I'm the author of Knowing Knoppix
on
Grokking Knoppix
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Wow, I always wanted to submit a story to Slashdot. Now, here I am *in* a Slashdot story. More than I ever wanted! It certainly had an amazing effect. In two days, an extraordinary 25,327 visitors downloaded, or attempted to download, the PDF. Thank you, all those who took the trouble to post comments. In a few days there will be a new version, dated 2005-something, that will take the comments into account.
> "The only people plugging in a knoppix cd are nerds who #1: already have a considerable working > knowledge of linux & 2: don't read...this."
Yes, I know, that's pretty true. But everyone has to start somewhere. I hope at least some people might find it useful.
> "[if it doesn't work]... you've lied to them saying it was plain and simple... he never says anything > like "and if THIS doesn't happen, THEN do.."
Guilty! I have changed certain sections about reading the hard disk accordingly. I have already made some attempts in the "Quick help" sections to address some of the errors I have encountered and mistakes I have made while using Knoppix myself.
"Kind of amusing that open source documentation should be released in a proprietary format."
Yes. I plead guilty again. But it is at least an open source format that is built into OpenOffice.org, and GNU Ghostscript, both of which are GPL.
>"Using OpenOffice... for a 134 page document? I stay away from office suites for documents > longer than a handful of pages... They never heard of LaTeX [latex-project.org]?"
Indeed. Using OpenOffice.org for a 100+ page document is getting kinda horrible... I tried LaTeX but I never figured out how to get the kind of presentation control that I wanted.:-(
> "I think the book bounces back and forth between good "So You Want To Be A Linux > Consultant" material, like the stuff about hda, fd0, boot process, init, and so on, and > good "Grandpa Computer User" material, like the stuff about KDE ("click on things > to start them", "you can lasso many things at once"). This makes it difficult for either > group to use."
That is an excellent comment. See here the power of peer review. I could never have thought of that myself, yet it seems so obvious now it's been pointed out to me. I have moved the material about "device names" and "user accounts" almost to the back of the book.
> "wasn't necessary to go into detail about the bootup process... as soon as people see "SCSI" or > IDE" or "PCMCIA" they'll go into idiot mode and fail to grok the rest of the paper, and > resort to throwing feces at the monitor"
Good point. I have taken out the detailed description of the startup process. I have replaced it with an one-line explanation and a few examples of how long the auto-detection process takes (between 40 seconds and 2 minutes depending on the speed of the machine).
After installing Linux, brace yourself for... (I've heard all these):
"I can't change the orientation of my document from portrait to landscape." "I bought this new very cheap Lexmark all-in-one printer/scanner/fax..." "I wanted to duplicate a worksheet in the workbook so I dragged and dropped it in the worksheet navigator and it doesn't work." "I saved my document and emailed it to another company but they can't read it." "I can't type a Euro symbol." "How am I supposed to instant message?" "The fonts are all wrong and the document looks funny." "The document is password protected and I can't open it". "This e-banking web site doesn't work." "I clicked on the link on the web site and nothing happened." "The web site says 'unsupported browser'." "I clicked on the 'World Wide Web' icon and it said something about profiles." "OpenOffice takes too long to load." "I want to change my screen resolution."...etc, etc...
> nothing will change until the viruses and spyware hit critical mass...
Critical mass has already been reached, for some people. I recently switched a customer of mine (who is an airline pilot) from Windows 98 to Linux + Crossover Office because he felt "persecuted" by Windows email viruses.
Cowboy Neal, you mean PCs as in more than one PC, no apostrophe. The apostophe only means "belonging to" (eg: Pandora's box) or a dropped "i" (eg: it is raining; it's raining).
IE only hurts their users? No way. Non-IE users get punished for being non-IE users. You'd like a truly spectacular example? Try this anywhere outside of IE:
http://www.odeon.co.uk/Odeon/home.html
But then, luckily, IE users get punished much more severely for being IE users. Non-IE users get inconvenienced sometimes; IE users get whacked with rather large PC repair bills. If that's not justice I don't know what is!
Hey, I'm surprised no-one's mentioned IEView (http://ieview.mozdev.org/). It's a cool little extension to Mozilla Suite / Firefox. Have you found a web site that hates Mozilla? Are you running Windows? No problem. Right-click on the link, click "Open in IE" and it will open in Internet Explorer.
I thought this story might be relevant. One of my customers is a lady aged 86. She asked for a computer for "looking things up". So I gave her:
Hardware:
- Used IBM Pentium I 166 Mhz PC with 32 Mb RAM - Used 15" screen - Kensington trackball mouse - Intel 536EP PCI modem - Epson Stylus C62 printer - Boxful of compatible cartridges from JR Inkjet - Internet pay-as-you-go account with UK Linux Net
Software:
- Debian 3.1 stable base - Custom kernel with the bare essentials - Intel 536EP kernel module - GDM - Wvdial - IceWM - Mozilla - Flash plugin - Flashblock extension to Mozilla - KMail - KWord - LPRng - Gimp-Print Ghostscript driver
Customisations:
- No keyboard repeat - Slow mouse acceleration - Large fonts throughout
Training:
- Several one-to-one lessons
Result? One happy customer. It takes a while to boot, after that, it performs fine. It browses the Web just as fast as anything on a 56K connection. It runs cool and quiet. It doesn't eat power.
I've found it amazing how much it is possible to get away without, given the right sort of customer. After about three months I found it needed a new hard drive. She was worried that meant a new computer, and it was quite hard work explaining. Apart from that, no problems.
1) Visit Add/Remove Programs -> Windows Components. Untick Internet Explorer. This will remove the shortcuts to the blue 'E for Evil' so they won't be tempted.
2) Go to Internet Options -> Security -> Internet zone, and put "Disable" to everything you can find. Yes, disable font download. In the wonderful world of IE, even font download is a security hole.
I charge people up to GBP 135 (about US $250) to clean up Windows XP, cripple Internet Explorer, delete Kazaa, install Mozilla and show them how to use it.
It's more like: I walk up to some woman on the street, offer her a mobile phone gadget that gives cheaper calls, or something... and in very small print explain I may snoop on her phone calls if she uses my gadget... And she does...
How do I get a ticket for the next event? I looked on the page but I can't see how to get one. I want to take a bucket of live fishing worms and throw them at the panel. Real wriggly worms. I'm fed up with clearing software worms off people's PCs. Worms belong on servers, not on end user workstations. Direct action speaks louder than words! So... can anyone tell me how to get a ticket?
> Who in their right mind would open an attached > password-protected.zip file where the > password was given in the email body?
More important is what OS in its right mind would EXECUTE a program file contained in the.zip file without any thought?
> Cure: User education.
Calling for user education in this context is an admission of failure, IMHO. The right cure: Proper OS design, so program files have to be marked as executable before they can be run. Then users can happily click away on their pictures and other attachments, without having to worry about accidentally running unsolicited program files.
Slashdot Mirror
Rule #2: doesn't matter how many times you tell people it's PCs not pc's, some still get it wrong.
A special problem in education computing is the need to add and remove user accounts in batch. If you are setting up a Linux based server and you need to add many hundreds of new user accounts to it, I hope you might find this useful:
http://www.lfsp.org/
It offers a little free utility called "createusers" that I wrote for adding and removing user accounts en-masse. As well as basic login accounts, createusers optionally also sets up corresponding Apache personal webspace in the home directory, Samba account, MySQL or PostgreSQL personal database and per-user disk quota.
Here is a first-hand account of Microsoft's earlier effort in London, UK. Look for the great quote from Debian's Philip Hands at the end of the article.
h e_facts/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/28/ms_mugs_t
Firefox has much less of a spyware problem because 1) it is not integrated with the Windows operating system and 2) it is not stupid. The potential problem of web sites that install malicious XPIs is limited by a user-editable whitelist of sites that are allowed to install software. XPI installation may also be turned off completely using the Options screen.
The biggest spyware threat that I can see is not in Firefox itself but in the plugins that Firefox supports. I would definitely not have Java or Windows Media plugins enabled in Firefox if you are worried about future spyware. Real, Quicktime, Acrobat and Flash are all potential risks as well. The potential danger posed by the Flash plugin may be limited by using the Flashblock extension (flashblock.mozdev.org) which gets rid of all Flash content, except that which you "click to play".
Assume for argument's sake that there is an exploitable weakness in Firefox. What matters next is what the operating system will allow. In other words, you don't want to be running Firefox as root (or in Windows XP Home, as a "Computer administrator"). You want to be running Firefox as a normal user (or in a "Limited account"). If so then I believe there is definitely less to worry about, and again, this is nothing to do with Firefox as such.
Example 1: One of my customers relies on a web site hosted by Positive Internet (www.positiveinternet.com). Last weekend, Positive got DDOSed. I had to explain to my customer that the problem is made possible by all the compromised PCs out there - and Microsoft isn't going to do much to fix it until 2007 at the earliest.
Example 2: Another of my customers was using a Debian based PC that I made for them, until they asked me to fit a cheap Vivitar digital camera to it. Which doesn't work, because the camera doesn't properly support USB Mass Storage. Goodbye, Linux. Hello, Windows 98.
Conclusion: I hope that popular open source will help people keep control of their computers. I also hope it will help manufacturers stop producing broken hardware.
Oh, come on, folks. This just means someone playing the classic Starquake game on the other side of the galaxy lost and their Sinclair ZX Spectrum took the plot a bit too literally.
"Starquake from Bubble Bus sees the return of Steve Crow, programmer of the much acclaimed Wizard's Lair. Starquake revolves around a small Bio-Logically operated being named Blob, who's been landed with the menial task of saving the universe from a savage destruction.
An unstable and potentially dangerous planet is emerging from a black hole somewhere among the backwaters of the galaxy. The planet is so unstable that it'll blow into a million fragments if its Planetary Core isn't fixed."
http://www.crashonline.org.uk/22/starquke.htm
Or USD 83.47 at the current exchange rate. Any parts are charged at the retail price.
Wow, I always wanted to submit a story to Slashdot. Now, here I am *in* a Slashdot story. More than I ever wanted! It certainly had an amazing effect. In two days, an extraordinary 25,327 visitors downloaded, or attempted to download, the PDF. Thank you, all those who took the trouble to post comments. In a few days there will be a new version, dated 2005-something, that will take the comments into account.
:-(
> "The only people plugging in a knoppix cd are nerds who #1: already have a considerable working
> knowledge of linux & 2: don't read...this."
Yes, I know, that's pretty true. But everyone has to start somewhere. I hope at least some people might find it useful.
> "[if it doesn't work]... you've lied to them saying it was plain and simple... he never says anything
> like "and if THIS doesn't happen, THEN do.."
Guilty! I have changed certain sections about reading the hard disk accordingly. I have already made some attempts in the "Quick help" sections to address some of the errors I have encountered and mistakes I have made while using Knoppix myself.
"Kind of amusing that open source documentation should be released in a proprietary format."
Yes. I plead guilty again. But it is at least an open source format that is built into OpenOffice.org, and GNU Ghostscript, both of which are GPL.
>"Using OpenOffice... for a 134 page document? I stay away from office suites for documents
> longer than a handful of pages... They never heard of LaTeX [latex-project.org]?"
Indeed. Using OpenOffice.org for a 100+ page document is getting kinda horrible... I tried LaTeX but I never figured out how to get the kind of presentation control that I wanted.
> "I think the book bounces back and forth between good "So You Want To Be A Linux
> Consultant" material, like the stuff about hda, fd0, boot process, init, and so on, and
> good "Grandpa Computer User" material, like the stuff about KDE ("click on things
> to start them", "you can lasso many things at once"). This makes it difficult for either
> group to use."
That is an excellent comment. See here the power of peer review. I could never have thought of that myself, yet it seems so obvious now it's been pointed out to me. I have moved the material about "device names" and "user accounts" almost to the back of the book.
> "wasn't necessary to go into detail about the bootup process... as soon as people see "SCSI" or
> IDE" or "PCMCIA" they'll go into idiot mode and fail to grok the rest of the paper, and
> resort to throwing feces at the monitor"
Good point. I have taken out the detailed description of the startup process. I have replaced it with an one-line explanation and a few examples of how long the auto-detection process takes (between 40 seconds and 2 minutes depending on the speed of the machine).
After installing Linux, brace yourself for... (I've heard all these):
...etc, etc...
"I can't change the orientation of my document from portrait to landscape."
"I bought this new very cheap Lexmark all-in-one printer/scanner/fax..."
"I wanted to duplicate a worksheet in the workbook so I dragged and dropped it in the worksheet navigator and it doesn't work."
"I saved my document and emailed it to another company but they can't read it."
"I can't type a Euro symbol."
"How am I supposed to instant message?"
"The fonts are all wrong and the document looks funny."
"The document is password protected and I can't open it".
"This e-banking web site doesn't work."
"I clicked on the link on the web site and nothing happened."
"The web site says 'unsupported browser'."
"I clicked on the 'World Wide Web' icon and it said something about profiles."
"OpenOffice takes too long to load."
"I want to change my screen resolution."
From the article: "Some companies use pop-ups that mimic the appearance of Windows dialog boxes..."
:-)
I'm looking forward to the day when some companies use pop-ups that mimic the appearance of KDE 3.4 (fourth story below this one) dialog boxes.
...at the same time as the release of Duke Nukem Forever.
> nothing will change until the viruses and spyware hit critical mass...
Critical mass has already been reached, for some people. I recently switched a customer of mine (who is an airline pilot) from Windows 98 to Linux + Crossover Office because he felt "persecuted" by Windows email viruses.
Well spotted. I spelt "apostrophe" wrong! That will teach me for posting at 2 am.
Cowboy Neal, you mean PCs as in more than one PC, no apostrophe. The apostophe only means "belonging to" (eg: Pandora's box) or a dropped "i" (eg: it is raining; it's raining).
IE only hurts their users? No way. Non-IE users get punished for being non-IE users. You'd like a truly spectacular example? Try this anywhere outside of IE:
http://www.odeon.co.uk/Odeon/home.html
But then, luckily, IE users get punished much more severely for being IE users. Non-IE users get inconvenienced sometimes; IE users get whacked with rather large PC repair bills. If that's not justice I don't know what is!
Hey, I'm surprised no-one's mentioned IEView (http://ieview.mozdev.org/). It's a cool little extension to Mozilla Suite / Firefox. Have you found a web site that hates Mozilla? Are you running Windows? No problem. Right-click on the link, click "Open in IE" and it will open in Internet Explorer.
I thought this story might be relevant. One of my customers is a lady aged 86. She asked for a computer for "looking things up". So I gave her:
Hardware:
- Used IBM Pentium I 166 Mhz PC with 32 Mb RAM
- Used 15" screen
- Kensington trackball mouse
- Intel 536EP PCI modem
- Epson Stylus C62 printer
- Boxful of compatible cartridges from JR Inkjet
- Internet pay-as-you-go account with UK Linux Net
Software:
- Debian 3.1 stable base
- Custom kernel with the bare essentials
- Intel 536EP kernel module
- GDM
- Wvdial
- IceWM
- Mozilla
- Flash plugin
- Flashblock extension to Mozilla
- KMail
- KWord
- LPRng
- Gimp-Print Ghostscript driver
Customisations:
- No keyboard repeat
- Slow mouse acceleration
- Large fonts throughout
Training:
- Several one-to-one lessons
Result? One happy customer. It takes a while to boot, after that, it performs fine. It browses the Web just as fast as anything on a 56K connection. It runs cool and quiet. It doesn't eat power.
I've found it amazing how much it is possible to get away without, given the right sort of customer. After about three months I found it needed a new hard drive. She was worried that meant a new computer, and it was quite hard work explaining. Apart from that, no problems.
LOL, Mysticalfruit. That would be one damned awesome DRM BIOS!
:-)
Insert bootable CD with auth sig = error
Insert bootable CD without auth sig = it works!
Phil
You can do even better than that.
1) Visit Add/Remove Programs -> Windows Components. Untick Internet Explorer. This will remove the shortcuts to the blue 'E for Evil' so they won't be tempted.
2) Go to Internet Options -> Security -> Internet zone, and put "Disable" to everything you can find. Yes, disable font download. In the wonderful world of IE, even font download is a security hole.
I charge people up to GBP 135 (about US $250) to clean up Windows XP, cripple Internet Explorer, delete Kazaa, install Mozilla and show them how to use it.
This is so boring. Soon we'll have Bagle.zzz.
It's more like: I walk up to some woman on the street, offer her a mobile phone gadget that gives cheaper calls, or something... and in very small print explain I may snoop on her phone calls if she uses my gadget... And she does...
How do I get a ticket for the next event? I looked on the page but I can't see how to get one. I want to take a bucket of live fishing worms and throw them at the panel. Real wriggly worms. I'm fed up with clearing software worms off people's PCs. Worms belong on servers, not on end user workstations. Direct action speaks louder than words! So... can anyone tell me how to get a ticket?
Get Steve Gibson's "DCOMBob". Lets you disable DCOM before connecting to the Internet at all. Keeps W32Blaster out. http://www.grc.com/dcom/
> Who in their right mind would open an attached .zip file where the
.zip file without any thought?
> password-protected
> password was given in the email body?
More important is what OS in its right mind would EXECUTE a program file contained in the
> Cure: User education.
Calling for user education in this context is an admission of failure, IMHO. The right cure: Proper OS design, so program files have to be marked as executable before they can be run. Then users can happily click away on their pictures and other attachments, without having to worry about accidentally running unsolicited program files.
Children's toys have to pass rigorous safety tests before they are allowed to be sold. For examples, see:
u bl ications/ChildcareleafletIssue3.pdf
http://www.bsi-global.com/Education/Education+P
Giving your 'toddlers' Microsoft Windows to play with is like giving them lead-painted toys with easily found sharp bits inside.