Additionally, all of the worms that depend on the user launching them on windows could do an equal amount of 'damage' in the unix world. No special permissions are required for them to do their thing.
That's where SELinux, good security policy, and well written mail clients would come in. Suchb a setup could potentially block most such worms. You would have to manage to convince the user to run the worm in a role that has access to address books and outgoing ports. I suspect even the most foolish of users would struggle with that one:
You run the executable you got in the mail and a dialog pops up saying "Sorry, this process tried to illegally access file/home/user/mail/addressbook.xml, and outgoing ports [blah blah blah] please execute this program in a role which has access to these". Sure, you'll still find a few people who will willfully run it anyway, but a lot of the casual attachment clickers would have the odd alarm bell go off at that point.
So how the hell do you do that? How do you say "1" equals one, "2" equals two and "+" is to add. How does that work?
Ah, one of the hard questions then. Rather than try and answer that, I'll instead direct you to pick up a copy of Principia Mathematica by Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead. Of course, as the previous poster points out, it takes many many pages to manage to get up to the point where you can define 1.
If you're not keen on that much detail (and only a few people are) you ought to head to Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, which deals with this sort of thing in a fairly light approachable way. It doesn't have the unending rigour of Principia, but it does get across the concepts of exactly how you go about defining a number.
Mail, DNS, and web servers need to be broken up in this way. Now that Red Hat is going with SE Linux, it's time to do this. Get busy.
Indeed. All the hooks are there, they just need to be used. NSA has kindly provided an SSH implementation that uses SELinux properly. Hopefully it won't be too long before we can see mainstream software (finally) start using this now that SELinux is going mainstream.
This is security done right people! Nothing is perfect, but this is lightyears ahead of security now. We need to take advantage of it.
I played with it for a while, but was having too much trouble getting X to run due to the default policies (which are designed for servers, reasonably enough), and had to give it away for what was, at the time, my workstation. The console can do a lot, especially with emacs at the ready, but eventually you start to need X again, and policy hacking was a little beyond what I had time for.
As for how it was to use generally? Pretty transparent for the user. A few basic tools had SELinux equivalents, but they weren't required - things like a new ls that listed the fine grain access controls on files etc. The rest was very straightforward - the only serious to normal Linux difference was having to log in with a role.
As to the security policies - I did play a little, but that was rather more complicated, and while I learned the basics, I didn't really have the time or the inclination to get into the messy details required to (for instance) make X work.
I see now, however, that there are GUI tools (http://www.tresys.com/selinux/selinux_policy_tool s.html) to set up your policy. Also, presumably most of the work of getting this into Fedora (given the SElinux is pretty much integrated into 2.6 via the LSM framework) is setting up good default security policies.
I had been tempted to go back and try and get a good working policy for, especially with the previously mentioned policy writing tools, but with the prospect of Fedora starting out with a good fairly user oriented policy to work from - I may just wait till Fedora Core 2 comes out of beta and use that.
I'm all for SELinux. Having played with it a little, and come to understand some of the basics of what it is doing, and how well it works, the sooner it is the default in _all_ distributions the better off we will be.
You should already be running your mail client under windows without admin privs, which achieves the same thing. However:
I suppose non-root users can't send e-mail? Afterall, that is a major component of what the mydoom virus does.
And I suppose non-root users can't listen on a port for incomming instructions to execute? Or run a proxy server on a non-privleged port?
Uh, yeah, that's pretty much how it would work under SELinux with an appropriate policy. Presuming it is set up properly (and the default NSA configs are pretty good) you can get a buffer overflow and be root on an SELinux box, and still not actually be able to do anything. It is a remarkably powerful system. Actually read the docs at http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/doc/policy2/t1.html and be impressed with how robust this system is.
Having SELinux security policies the default security set up is a positively excellent idea. I was hoping some distros would do this (hopefully eventually all), but Fedora is a good start.
SELinux really does make huge strides in securing a system, providing the policy is set up well (for which there are some tools, but a good default from distros will help immensely). Sure, no system is unbreakable, but SELinux is vastly ahead of anything else out there right now. The more boxes out there secured like this there are, the stronger Linux's claims of truly superior security. Windows really does have absolutely nothing even remotely comparable to SELinux right now.
I appreciate the difficulties of adapting a book like LoTR to screen
Codewords for "It sucked, but I am too much of a geek for my brain to be able to comprehend the fact."
Not really. What I was trying to say was that while the Lord of the Rings script was easier in the sense that it wasn't original material (and it was the originality and creativity of Spirited Away that made it stand out), it had its own difficulties in managing to adapt such a well loved book to screen - generally you'll either offend purists, or ordinary move goers, or both. I felt the script writers did an excellent job of treading that very difficult line, and it was an exceptional achievement.
In the end, on raw papaer, Spirited Away, with its near endless imagination, wins out though.
In general I agree. I appreciate the difficulties of adapting a book like LoTR to screen, but in general, as a raw script, I feel Spirited Away was probably superior. On screen, LoTR was just more grand and breathtaking.
But what are you doing giving sensible reasoned replies? This is still Slashdot isn't it?
Ah, I have only read The Davinci Code, but was thinking about reading Digital Fortress for amusement. I agree entirely with your summary of characters and plot twists (one of which was stupidly contrived by deliberately forcing you to confuse 2 characters). I picked up a copy of The DaVinci Code from the book store because they were running a "A great read, or your many back" special on it. I am a math geek int cryptology, so I thought it looked interesting. The minmal amounts of crypto were poorly researched bunk. It called into question all the other "research". Needless to say I marched back to the store and demanded my money back (which I prompty got!)
I've been contemplating reading Digital Fortress for amusement value. Given the small amounts of "crypto" that Dan Brown put into The DaVinci Code, and how abysmally bad it was, I can only assume that Digital Fortress will be a laugh riot.
I agree that it is in some senses minor, in that few people would want to use it (over local LANs it might be useful), and it doesn't break the RFC, but it is still dropping functionality rather than actually providing a fix - that is, Opera, Mozilla, etc. all handle such URLs fine, with warnings, or correctly displayed URLs or both. Surely Microsoft could have managed as much?
I was under the impression that their fix was simply make http(s)://user:password@www.address.net invalid. If so, that's not so much a fix, as just deciding to break some functionality. Can someone confirm that this is what the "fix" actually is?
The best way for MS to really do well at searching by leveraging would be something along these lines:
Include a "search agent" with Windows, IIS, whatever - the agent runs locally and does the job of indexing everything on offer on the local network. The agents then work via a P2P style system to communicate. A search request can then be sent to the nearest agent, which can propograte it through the agent network to farm back the results.
This would be a very effective way for doing very powerful searches - but only works if you can somehow get your agent distributed and running on a huge number of systems. Of course, that's not so hard for MS.
Then again, seeing as most of the serious web serving is done on non MS platforms (be it Sun, BSD, or Linux) I doubt they'd have quite as much coverage as they would need.
Still, an interesting idea.
Jedidiah
Re:Linux will be mainstream competition in a year.
on
Linux Going Mainstream
·
· Score: 1
I'm dating a sexy intelligent blonde finnish model who is learning perl - does that count?
You can come to the United States without a long term visa, THEN find work, THEN get your visa status changed. That's pretty NON-anally retentive. Do that in Australia and not only will you find yourself back home, you can never return.
Yes, that's all very nice, but that doesn'd address the key point of how easy it is to actually obtain the work visa. It can be painfully difficult to get one for the US. Comparatively it is pretty easy for a sponsored employee to get one to Australia. That means you need to have a job offer from a reputable company that's going to vouch for you, but that's all it takes. If you are a skilled tech worker from the US, it's quite possible.
I am not claiming that any of this is EASY I am simply trying to point out that it is entirely possible, and worth investigating if you really are that hard pressed finding IT work in the US.
And to all the Australians paniced by this possibility: Set up your outsourcing companies now, and steal the cream of the outsourcing contracts from India. Well, that's the theory. I can't help you with the problem of having all those bloody Americans around.
I didn't say it was easy - I said it was possible. I think you somewhat overrate the difficulty of emigrating to NZ or Australia - no, it is not trivial, but it is far from impossible, especially if you are skilled and have some cash reserves. It is FAR easier than emigrating to the US from NZ or Australia.
The fact is, most countries are practically impossible to emmigrate to--especially commonwealth countries from anywhere but another commonwealth country and especially Australia when your departure country is the United States because too many of us have tried to change visa status while in Australia (read: illegal employment). If you're already out of work, the financial restrictions make it a complete fantasy. If you're not out of work, it's such an enormous gamble, why would you try unless you truly wanted to permanently move to the country in question for reasons other than immediate employment?
Let's be honest, the US is generally regarded to be the most anally retentive country in the world when it comes to immigration. Consider all those people stuck in green card lotteries. Comparatively Commonwealth countries are reasonably easy going. They expect you to have work lined up, or a high liklehood of finding work, but that's not at all unreasonable. The plan is not to just try and move there - Start looking for work there, apply for every programming job going in your target country(ies), and once you have a job offer your odds of getting visas etc. skyrocket.
I know several people who have successfully emigrated to NZ or Australia, it is nowhere near as difficult as you seem to imply (that is, you imply that it is effectively impossible - which it most definitely is NOT).
Good to see that particular myth busted. The reality seems to be that India is simply embracing software development, and given the lower cost of living over there, are making huge gains in that sector - in the end software is just bits, and it's very easy to ship them anywhere in the world.
If you don't fancy working in India, just pick somewhere else with a lower cost of living than the US, and set up shop there. You could try New Zealand or Australia - both fairly western countries with a notably lower cost of living (depending on where you go) than the US. Still not as low as India, but then it would provide less of a language barrier (depending on exactly how uninterpretable you consider the austrialian accent), which many here claim is a significant problem with Indian outsourcing.
I haven't noticed *any* differences on the desktop. ALSA is nice, kernel config is easier, but other than that...nothing noteworthy over 2.4.19 (my last kernel). Am I missing something?
Well, it's not exactly something you notice on the desktop, but having LSM built into the kernel now is definitely a good thing. This is basically SELinux folded into the mainstream kernel - and the improved security available from that is impressive. It is the sort of thing you really OUGHT to be using, even on a desktop machine. Think of it as kind of a like firewall that screens kernel operations instead of packets: you can set up fine grained policies that prevent processes doing anything they shouldn't. That means that, for instance, with a well configured system, a buffer overflow DOES NOT provide root on the box - it just crashes the process that was overflowed.
So, everyone out there running 2.6 kernels, go and get some configuration tools and set up your LSM security. The sooner everyone is running LSM security, the sooner we can say that Linux really does have provable significant security benefits over Windows.
Yes, a 400lb lineman up against 380lb prop forward. I can see that would be a walk over. Or possibly not.
Jedidiah.
Re:Don't forget the ad CBS is refusing to air.
on
Superbowling
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It is amazing how many people do not understand what censorship actually means.
Yes, apparently even you. I was under the impression that censoring simply meant to screen and edit out any material found to be objectionable.
This ad, was, apparently, objectionable as far as CBS was concerned in terms of their goals: To keep and maintain as many viewers as possible to maximise their advertising revenue.
A book publisher not publishing a book that he finds objectionable is censorship too.
Of course, most people these days presume that censorship is only evil government dictates, but that is not at all true. If a parent decides they don't want their child to watch a TV program, they are censoring the child's TV watching habits. For some reason people seem to think censorship==evil, which is just not true (certainly not by the definition of the word). By all means, be wary of state mandated censorship, but don't go misusing a perfectly good word.
Oh and besides, what was the gtk-replacement for kile again?
I must admit to going hunting for one after I got very annoyed by the auto-line breaking in KatePart constantly completely fucking up my formatting. That and having to rejig all the keybindings away from windows style defaults.
In the end I discovered CVS Emacs compiles with GTK+ these days (and looks very nice when it does so!). Voila, excellent autolinebreaking, on the fly spell checking, superior syntax highlighting, and (unsurprisingly) emacs keybindings!
I do miss some aspects of kile - I think it is a fabulous program, and don't mean to knock it at all really - as I say, primarily my issue was with KatePart, and its bafflingly stupid line breaking behaviour.
It seems to be working well for one of the books I've encountered. I'm doing a graduate math course, the details of which are irrelevant, but suffice to say the subject matter is reasonably obscure, and won't exactly have books flying off the shelves. The textbook assigned for the course is available online - I thought this sounded great when I was told this: often I end up borrowing books from the library where possible, or just skipping using the textbook altogether. Occasionally I am forced to buy texts, and this is often annoying to me.
What I have come to discover, however, is that this text provides a beautiful explanations of very difficult material. It's the sort of book I would be gald to have around in my personal library. I was able to find this out by using the downloadable version of the text. Now, of course, I am planning to buy the text, and will gladly reccomend it to anyone else who happens upon the subject area. Sure, I could just print the downloaded PDF, but I may as well have a nice bound copy - and at this point I feel like supporting a good author. There is just something nicer about having the actual book, as opposed to a bunch of printed PDF pages.
I suspect other books could benefit equally from such a system. Of course, if your book sucks, and the material is poorly presented... well, maybe that won't work so well... but maybe you shouldn't be looking to foist your crap onto unsuspecting students who are forced to buy the text?
Slashdot Mirror
Additionally, all of the worms that depend on the user launching them on windows could do an equal amount of 'damage' in the unix world. No special permissions are required for them to do their thing.
/home/user/mail/addressbook.xml, and outgoing ports [blah blah blah] please execute this program in a role which has access to these". Sure, you'll still find a few people who will willfully run it anyway, but a lot of the casual attachment clickers would have the odd alarm bell go off at that point.
That's where SELinux, good security policy, and well written mail clients would come in. Suchb a setup could potentially block most such worms. You would have to manage to convince the user to run the worm in a role that has access to address books and outgoing ports. I suspect even the most foolish of users would struggle with that one:
You run the executable you got in the mail and a dialog pops up saying "Sorry, this process tried to illegally access file
Jedidiah.
So how the hell do you do that? How do you say "1" equals one, "2" equals two and "+" is to add. How does that work?
Ah, one of the hard questions then. Rather than try and answer that, I'll instead direct you to pick up a copy of Principia Mathematica by Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead. Of course, as the previous poster points out, it takes many many pages to manage to get up to the point where you can define 1.
If you're not keen on that much detail (and only a few people are) you ought to head to Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, which deals with this sort of thing in a fairly light approachable way. It doesn't have the unending rigour of Principia, but it does get across the concepts of exactly how you go about defining a number.
Jedidiah.
Mail, DNS, and web servers need to be broken up in this way. Now that Red Hat is going with SE Linux, it's time to do this. Get busy.
Indeed. All the hooks are there, they just need to be used. NSA has kindly provided an SSH implementation that uses SELinux properly. Hopefully it won't be too long before we can see mainstream software (finally) start using this now that SELinux is going mainstream.
This is security done right people! Nothing is perfect, but this is lightyears ahead of security now. We need to take advantage of it.
Jedidiah.
I played with it for a while, but was having too much trouble getting X to run due to the default policies (which are designed for servers, reasonably enough), and had to give it away for what was, at the time, my workstation. The console can do a lot, especially with emacs at the ready, but eventually you start to need X again, and policy hacking was a little beyond what I had time for.
l s.html) to set up your policy. Also, presumably most of the work of getting this into Fedora (given the SElinux is pretty much integrated into 2.6 via the LSM framework) is setting up good default security policies.
As for how it was to use generally? Pretty transparent for the user. A few basic tools had SELinux equivalents, but they weren't required - things like a new ls that listed the fine grain access controls on files etc. The rest was very straightforward - the only serious to normal Linux difference was having to log in with a role.
As to the security policies - I did play a little, but that was rather more complicated, and while I learned the basics, I didn't really have the time or the inclination to get into the messy details required to (for instance) make X work.
I see now, however, that there are GUI tools (http://www.tresys.com/selinux/selinux_policy_too
I had been tempted to go back and try and get a good working policy for, especially with the previously mentioned policy writing tools, but with the prospect of Fedora starting out with a good fairly user oriented policy to work from - I may just wait till Fedora Core 2 comes out of beta and use that.
I'm all for SELinux. Having played with it a little, and come to understand some of the basics of what it is doing, and how well it works, the sooner it is the default in _all_ distributions the better off we will be.
Jedidiah.
You should already be running your mail client under windows without admin privs, which achieves the same thing. However:
I suppose non-root users can't send e-mail? Afterall, that is a major component of what the mydoom virus does.
And I suppose non-root users can't listen on a port for incomming instructions to execute? Or run a proxy server on a non-privleged port?
Uh, yeah, that's pretty much how it would work under SELinux with an appropriate policy. Presuming it is set up properly (and the default NSA configs are pretty good) you can get a buffer overflow and be root on an SELinux box, and still not actually be able to do anything. It is a remarkably powerful system. Actually read the docs at http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/doc/policy2/t1.html and be impressed with how robust this system is.
Jedidiah.
Having SELinux security policies the default security set up is a positively excellent idea. I was hoping some distros would do this (hopefully eventually all), but Fedora is a good start.
SELinux really does make huge strides in securing a system, providing the policy is set up well (for which there are some tools, but a good default from distros will help immensely). Sure, no system is unbreakable, but SELinux is vastly ahead of anything else out there right now. The more boxes out there secured like this there are, the stronger Linux's claims of truly superior security. Windows really does have absolutely nothing even remotely comparable to SELinux right now.
Jedidiah.
Not really. What I was trying to say was that while the Lord of the Rings script was easier in the sense that it wasn't original material (and it was the originality and creativity of Spirited Away that made it stand out), it had its own difficulties in managing to adapt such a well loved book to screen - generally you'll either offend purists, or ordinary move goers, or both. I felt the script writers did an excellent job of treading that very difficult line, and it was an exceptional achievement.
In the end, on raw papaer, Spirited Away, with its near endless imagination, wins out though.
Jedidiah.
In general I agree. I appreciate the difficulties of adapting a book like LoTR to screen, but in general, as a raw script, I feel Spirited Away was probably superior. On screen, LoTR was just more grand and breathtaking.
But what are you doing giving sensible reasoned replies? This is still Slashdot isn't it?
Jedidiah.
I thought the "Scripts" section at the end was rather interesting. Nominees included:
:-)
- Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
- Spirited Away
So, the question is - which of those is the most worthy?
Hmm, I wonder if we can have an anime fans vs. Tolkien fans flamewar? That might be fun
Jedidiah
Ah, I have only read The Davinci Code, but was thinking about reading Digital Fortress for amusement. I agree entirely with your summary of characters and plot twists (one of which was stupidly contrived by deliberately forcing you to confuse 2 characters). I picked up a copy of The DaVinci Code from the book store because they were running a "A great read, or your many back" special on it. I am a math geek int cryptology, so I thought it looked interesting. The minmal amounts of crypto were poorly researched bunk. It called into question all the other "research". Needless to say I marched back to the store and demanded my money back (which I prompty got!)
Jedidiah.
I've been contemplating reading Digital Fortress for amusement value. Given the small amounts of "crypto" that Dan Brown put into The DaVinci Code, and how abysmally bad it was, I can only assume that Digital Fortress will be a laugh riot.
Jedidiah
I agree that it is in some senses minor, in that few people would want to use it (over local LANs it might be useful), and it doesn't break the RFC, but it is still dropping functionality rather than actually providing a fix - that is, Opera, Mozilla, etc. all handle such URLs fine, with warnings, or correctly displayed URLs or both. Surely Microsoft could have managed as much?
Jedidiah.
I was under the impression that their fix was simply make http(s)://user:password@www.address.net invalid. If so, that's not so much a fix, as just deciding to break some functionality. Can someone confirm that this is what the "fix" actually is?
Jedidiah
The best way for MS to really do well at searching by leveraging would be something along these lines:
Include a "search agent" with Windows, IIS, whatever - the agent runs locally and does the job of indexing everything on offer on the local network. The agents then work via a P2P style system to communicate. A search request can then be sent to the nearest agent, which can propograte it through the agent network to farm back the results.
This would be a very effective way for doing very powerful searches - but only works if you can somehow get your agent distributed and running on a huge number of systems. Of course, that's not so hard for MS.
Then again, seeing as most of the serious web serving is done on non MS platforms (be it Sun, BSD, or Linux) I doubt they'd have quite as much coverage as they would need.
Still, an interesting idea.
Jedidiah
I'm dating a sexy intelligent blonde finnish model who is learning perl - does that count?
Jedidiah.
Yes, quite correct, thanks.
I guess I meant that having the root account doesn't amount to having what one traditionally consider "root" on the box.
You can come to the United States without a long term visa, THEN find work, THEN get your visa status changed. That's pretty NON-anally retentive. Do that in Australia and not only will you find yourself back home, you can never return.
Yes, that's all very nice, but that doesn'd address the key point of how easy it is to actually obtain the work visa. It can be painfully difficult to get one for the US. Comparatively it is pretty easy for a sponsored employee to get one to Australia. That means you need to have a job offer from a reputable company that's going to vouch for you, but that's all it takes. If you are a skilled tech worker from the US, it's quite possible.
I am not claiming that any of this is EASY I am simply trying to point out that it is entirely possible, and worth investigating if you really are that hard pressed finding IT work in the US.
And to all the Australians paniced by this possibility: Set up your outsourcing companies now, and steal the cream of the outsourcing contracts from India. Well, that's the theory. I can't help you with the problem of having all those bloody Americans around.
Jedidiah.
Oh, IT'S SOOOO BLOODY EASY. Right.
I didn't say it was easy - I said it was possible. I think you somewhat overrate the difficulty of emigrating to NZ or Australia - no, it is not trivial, but it is far from impossible, especially if you are skilled and have some cash reserves. It is FAR easier than emigrating to the US from NZ or Australia.
The fact is, most countries are practically impossible to emmigrate to--especially commonwealth countries from anywhere but another commonwealth country and especially Australia when your departure country is the United States because too many of us have tried to change visa status while in Australia (read: illegal employment). If you're already out of work, the financial restrictions make it a complete fantasy. If you're not out of work, it's such an enormous gamble, why would you try unless you truly wanted to permanently move to the country in question for reasons other than immediate employment?
Let's be honest, the US is generally regarded to be the most anally retentive country in the world when it comes to immigration. Consider all those people stuck in green card lotteries. Comparatively Commonwealth countries are reasonably easy going. They expect you to have work lined up, or a high liklehood of finding work, but that's not at all unreasonable. The plan is not to just try and move there - Start looking for work there, apply for every programming job going in your target country(ies), and once you have a job offer your odds of getting visas etc. skyrocket.
I know several people who have successfully emigrated to NZ or Australia, it is nowhere near as difficult as you seem to imply (that is, you imply that it is effectively impossible - which it most definitely is NOT).
Jedidiah.
Good to see that particular myth busted. The reality seems to be that India is simply embracing software development, and given the lower cost of living over there, are making huge gains in that sector - in the end software is just bits, and it's very easy to ship them anywhere in the world.
If you don't fancy working in India, just pick somewhere else with a lower cost of living than the US, and set up shop there. You could try New Zealand or Australia - both fairly western countries with a notably lower cost of living (depending on where you go) than the US. Still not as low as India, but then it would provide less of a language barrier (depending on exactly how uninterpretable you consider the austrialian accent), which many here claim is a significant problem with Indian outsourcing.
So, why not set up your own outsourcing company?
Jedidiah
Well, it's not exactly something you notice on the desktop, but having LSM built into the kernel now is definitely a good thing. This is basically SELinux folded into the mainstream kernel - and the improved security available from that is impressive. It is the sort of thing you really OUGHT to be using, even on a desktop machine. Think of it as kind of a like firewall that screens kernel operations instead of packets: you can set up fine grained policies that prevent processes doing anything they shouldn't. That means that, for instance, with a well configured system, a buffer overflow DOES NOT provide root on the box - it just crashes the process that was overflowed.
So, everyone out there running 2.6 kernels, go and get some configuration tools and set up your LSM security. The sooner everyone is running LSM security, the sooner we can say that Linux really does have provable significant security benefits over Windows.
Jedidiah.
Yes, a 400lb lineman up against 380lb prop forward. I can see that would be a walk over. Or possibly not.
Jedidiah.
Yes, apparently even you. I was under the impression that censoring simply meant to screen and edit out any material found to be objectionable.
This ad, was, apparently, objectionable as far as CBS was concerned in terms of their goals: To keep and maintain as many viewers as possible to maximise their advertising revenue.
A book publisher not publishing a book that he finds objectionable is censorship too.
Of course, most people these days presume that censorship is only evil government dictates, but that is not at all true. If a parent decides they don't want their child to watch a TV program, they are censoring the child's TV watching habits. For some reason people seem to think censorship==evil, which is just not true (certainly not by the definition of the word). By all means, be wary of state mandated censorship, but don't go misusing a perfectly good word.
Jedidiah
Oh and besides, what was the gtk-replacement for kile again?
I must admit to going hunting for one after I got very annoyed by the auto-line breaking in KatePart constantly completely fucking up my formatting. That and having to rejig all the keybindings away from windows style defaults.
In the end I discovered CVS Emacs compiles with GTK+ these days (and looks very nice when it does so!). Voila, excellent autolinebreaking, on the fly spell checking, superior syntax highlighting, and (unsurprisingly) emacs keybindings!
I do miss some aspects of kile - I think it is a fabulous program, and don't mean to knock it at all really - as I say, primarily my issue was with KatePart, and its bafflingly stupid line breaking behaviour.
Jedidiah.
Some good texts for:
Algebraic Topology
Algebraic Geometry
Jedidiah
It seems to be working well for one of the books I've encountered. I'm doing a graduate math course, the details of which are irrelevant, but suffice to say the subject matter is reasonably obscure, and won't exactly have books flying off the shelves. The textbook assigned for the course is available online - I thought this sounded great when I was told this: often I end up borrowing books from the library where possible, or just skipping using the textbook altogether. Occasionally I am forced to buy texts, and this is often annoying to me.
What I have come to discover, however, is that this text provides a beautiful explanations of very difficult material. It's the sort of book I would be gald to have around in my personal library. I was able to find this out by using the downloadable version of the text. Now, of course, I am planning to buy the text, and will gladly reccomend it to anyone else who happens upon the subject area. Sure, I could just print the downloaded PDF, but I may as well have a nice bound copy - and at this point I feel like supporting a good author. There is just something nicer about having the actual book, as opposed to a bunch of printed PDF pages.
I suspect other books could benefit equally from such a system. Of course, if your book sucks, and the material is poorly presented... well, maybe that won't work so well... but maybe you shouldn't be looking to foist your crap onto unsuspecting students who are forced to buy the text?
Jedidiah.