>[When] the crook goes online [with your laptop]...
Er, not likely. The crook nicked your laptop to raise cash. Probably for buying drugs. The laptop will go to a front man for cash. The only 'perp' likely to get caught is the unwitting buyer. The buyer would simply get a surprise call from the police, with the news that the laptop they bought isn't theirs any more.
Still, you might get your laptop back... Unless the front man, or buyer, runs NoTrackerz (or something like that) on it before it is connected to the net. Or installs nice friendly Mandrake on it.
Dear News Corp. I am an eccentric billionaire. I am going to find and give away magic codes for your pay channels so everyone can watch them free! How do you like it?
Vivendi are suing for illegal unfair competition, I believe. The complaint is Murdoch has helped to make pirate cards for Vivendi's channels dead easy to get. I dare say pirate Sky TV cards would be two a penny if someone spent five million quid on cracking them and leaking the results.
Here in the UK, I don't like Vivendi's ITV Digital but now I dislike Sky even more.
I got fired for crossing my manager. He wisely chose to run Apache on Windows NT. I vigorously recommended Apache on Linux. Within a few days, I was called into an insidious sounding meeting, whereupon I was told I was dismissed because "my skills were not...".
I didn't stick around to listen. I walked out, yelling "I've been f***ing sacked!" I told my manager that the sales staff wanted to hit him, because of frustration with their lousy laptop computers. At the door he said "Goodbye" in a superior way, I put my finger up at him and said, "F*** you."
This is a non-trivial problem, and one I have some experience of (failing to deal) with.
My program is called "createusers". I wrote it because I wanted to make the following for 100s of new users in one go: user login, Apache home page, Samba account, PostgreSQL database, and MySQL database. I also did my best to make it extensible.
You can find my program here:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/createusers/
and here:
http://www.lfsp.org/
The fundamental problem I faced when writing createusers is there is no standard programmatically-accessible way of:
1) finding out what can be configured in each application
2) applying and undoing the changes.
Furthermore, I would like to make createusers programmatically-accessible. Unfortunately at present I cannot, because there is no standard way for me to let other programs know what facilities my program has, and no standard way for me to make them easily turn-off-and-on-able by other programs.
I received some add-on contributions to my program from other people. I noticed that their programs said "Have you enabled X in createusers.conf?", "Have you enabled Y in createusers.conf?", etc.
If I had standards-based turn-on-and-off-ability for my program, then my contributors' programs would have been able to do it for themselves. They would be able to easily check what things my program is set up to do; AND they would be equally able to change it.
This is a problem for people Much Smarter Than Me. If it is solved, then I promise to put the necessary bits in to my program so its setup can be easily, securely queried and changed by other programs.
I set up a Linux box for a school's Intranet. The children are all under 13. They like email, and love chat. A Linux box accepting telnet connections and running Sendmail and talk provides hours of amusement. Not to mention an introduction to the GNU Unix-like environment and a proper multiuser OS.
A quick way to set up login accounts en masse is the 'createusers' utility from http://www.lfsp.org/. I wrote it.
The goods are no longer fit for purpose. It is not of merchantable quality any more. The machine does not function as described at the time of purchase. Tivo has damaged it, without the owner's permission. The optional extras (the 'service') are irrelevant.
Under UK law, the customer's contract of purchase is with the supplier, not the manufacturer. The goods go back to the shop and the customer is entitled to a refund.
I don't know if there are equivalent rules in the USA but I think the guy should take the unit back to the shop. If they won't take it and give a refund, he should sue the shop.
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>[When] the crook goes online [with your laptop]...
Er, not likely. The crook nicked your laptop to raise cash. Probably for buying drugs. The laptop will go to a front man for cash. The only 'perp' likely to get caught is the unwitting buyer. The buyer would simply get a surprise call from the police, with the news that the laptop they bought isn't theirs any more.
Still, you might get your laptop back... Unless the front man, or buyer, runs NoTrackerz (or something like that) on it before it is connected to the net. Or installs nice friendly Mandrake on it.
Dear News Corp. I am an eccentric billionaire. I am going to find and give away magic codes for your pay channels so everyone can watch them free! How do you like it?
Vivendi are suing for illegal unfair competition, I believe. The complaint is Murdoch has helped to make pirate cards for Vivendi's channels dead easy to get. I dare say pirate Sky TV cards would be two a penny if someone spent five million quid on cracking them and leaking the results.
Here in the UK, I don't like Vivendi's ITV Digital but now I dislike Sky even more.
I got fired for crossing my manager. He wisely chose to run Apache on Windows NT. I vigorously recommended Apache on Linux. Within a few days, I was called into an insidious sounding meeting, whereupon I was told I was dismissed because "my skills were not...".
I didn't stick around to listen. I walked out, yelling "I've been f***ing sacked!" I told my manager that the sales staff wanted to hit him, because of frustration with their lousy laptop computers. At the door he said "Goodbye" in a superior way, I put my finger up at him and said, "F*** you."
This is a non-trivial problem, and one I have some experience of (failing to deal) with.
My program is called "createusers". I wrote it because I wanted to make the following for 100s of new users in one go: user login, Apache home page, Samba account, PostgreSQL database, and MySQL database. I also did my best to make it extensible.
You can find my program here:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/createusers/
and here:
http://www.lfsp.org/
The fundamental problem I faced when writing createusers is there is no standard programmatically-accessible way of:
1) finding out what can be configured in each application
2) applying and undoing the changes.
Furthermore, I would like to make createusers programmatically-accessible. Unfortunately at present I cannot, because there is no standard way for me to let other programs know what facilities my program has, and no standard way for me to make them easily turn-off-and-on-able by other programs.
I received some add-on contributions to my program from other people. I noticed that their programs said "Have you enabled X in createusers.conf?", "Have you enabled Y in createusers.conf?", etc.
If I had standards-based turn-on-and-off-ability for my program, then my contributors' programs would have been able to do it for themselves. They would be able to easily check what things my program is set up to do; AND they would be equally able to change it.
This is a problem for people Much Smarter Than Me. If it is solved, then I promise to put the necessary bits in to my program so its setup can be easily, securely queried and changed by other programs.
I set up a Linux box for a school's Intranet. The children are all under 13. They like email, and love chat. A Linux box accepting telnet connections and running Sendmail and talk provides hours of amusement. Not to mention an introduction to the GNU Unix-like environment and a proper multiuser OS. A quick way to set up login accounts en masse is the 'createusers' utility from http://www.lfsp.org/. I wrote it.
Under UK law, the customer's contract of purchase is with the supplier, not the manufacturer. The goods go back to the shop and the customer is entitled to a refund.
I don't know if there are equivalent rules in the USA but I think the guy should take the unit back to the shop. If they won't take it and give a refund, he should sue the shop.
Here is is then: Borg penguin logo