If you have trouble running your old DOS programs, have a look for APCOMPAT.EXE on the Windows 2000 CD too - it's basically the compatibility mode feature that comes with Windows XP, but an earlier version for Windows 2000.
You can at least use it to get Red Alert running under Win2k, which is definitely a bonus:)
Spam is a big problem, but I think we should be really careful about pushing our lawmakers to pass laws that are that specific to computers. Whenever someone suggests introducing a law that could possibly invade someone's privacy, we're up in arms about it and claim that such problems should be solved a different way - that the lawmakers should stay away from what they don't understand, and that we could solve them by technical means, or by interpreting more general, existing laws to apply to computers.
When we're pushing for anti-spam legislation, we're saying it's suddenly okay to pass laws that specific just because it suits us and we can't see any possible way to lose out. Is this a fair way of doing things? Are we really decided on how far we want laws to extend into computers, and where we draw the line?
I've been considering buying a PDA for 2-3 years, and now have money set aside for one. But I've delayed because I still haven't found the answer (possibly through not looking hard enough) to this question:
If I buy any normal FS/OSS based PDA (such as the Sharp Zaurus, or this one), can I *actually* wipe off everything that's on it, recompile all the software, and reinstall, in the same way as I could on a PC? To put it another way, if I want to add a progress indicator to GNU gzip, or make the error messages in BASH more offensive, or remove that annoying can I still do that on Linux/*BSD based PDA? Or is that Linux kernel somehow "locked on" there in some kind of ROM that can't be changed, or that can't be restored if it somehow gets lost, so that I have to live with the default configuration? More to the point, if a company distributes a GPL'd program locked into hardware in this way (even if what they claim is the source is provided separately, say, on a CD), are they violating the GPL?
After dealing with closed source software on other people's machines day in, day out for the past few years, to me, buying a PDA where I don't have that freedom would be a big step backwards - I wouldn't do it. Also, if a company really did make a PDA where they not only made it possible but also made it easy to recompile/replace any or all of the software on it, and put together a community web site and so on, wouldn't that have some appeal among the techies? I'm sure it'd get a couple of articles on Slashdot - and obviously it would still ship with a default software configuration that's fine for people who don't want to mess with stuff.
It says in the review:...such as OpenBSD's requirement that its root partition must be completely contained within the first 8 gigabytes of the hard drive.
I've just set up OpenBSD 3.3 on a not-very-critical server, and, not knowing about this limitation, I've just created one big root partition of about 58GB. It's ran fine for the past four days though. Am I likely to run into problems, or has something been changed since the book was published?
I know that there are good reasons for splitting your filesystem across multiple partitions, but is there a particular reason why I need to keep that root partition under 8GB in OpenBSD?
From this article: "LONDON (Reuters) -- Microsoft, the world's largest software company, announced today that it will move its headquarters to the world's smallest nation, the Principality of Sealand."... "According to a company spokesman, in order to escape the Justice Department's breakup, the software giant will legally move its headquarters to the tiny offshore jurisdiction, though the actual staff will remain in Redmond, WA, because space is at a premium on the tiny platform a few miles outside of British territorial waters in the English Channel."
Should have said: if they aren't prepared to reveal to me what they're going to do to my computer, then I'm not prepared to run their software, of course.
I realise that this particular software may not actually decompile or disassemble anything, but this presents a very good reason for making reverse engineering of any software legal in any country: if I'm not allowed to make my own private analysis of a piece of proprietary software out there, how am I to know what it's going to do to my computer? How can I know that it isn't going to take liberties and do damage (such as installing backdoors) on my systems?
To be fair, many software packages I see for Windows machines these days do take advantage of this fact, such as by giving users adverts, invading their privacy, and withholding information to them about what their computer is doing. (One example is Freeserve, a UK ISP: some of their dialling software refuses to tell you what numbers your computer is dialling out to. This can be got round, but it's the principle of the thing...). For the past few years, I've refused to run any software on my desktop machine where source code is not made available, for that reason. If they are prepared to reveal to me what they're going to do to my computer, then I'm not prepared to run their software.
Here's another question: if I have a copy of this software on a machine in a country where reverse engineering is allowed, but then I shell in to that machine (via ssh, vnc, or some other means which will allow me to control that machine remotely) from a country where reverse engineering is not allowed, and then carry out the reverse engineering over that link, is that illegal?
For the first time, educators can look up a student's attendance, discipline, immigration status, grades, and test scores at one source
For the first time? Haven't universities, and all educational institutions, been doing this for years? They take your marks in, and do things like decide what level of exam to enter you for, or what set to put you in, and so on! It's why they give you tests throughout the year and take in your scores. Sorry to be negative, but this is completely normal
For example: I was at Durham three years ago. Four months into the nine month term, our Maths lecturer called me into his office one day, showed me the results of the homeworks I'd done for the past four months, and told me that the marks suggested I was going to fail. Sure enough, he was right - I got 2% in his module, and also failed every other module on the course. I got to leave the place permanently (thank god!), which was the outocme I'd been looking for. It went to show that they predicted it though.
Am I right, or is there something really major I'm missing here? Educational institutions have been keeping track of student's marks, attendance, behaviour and so on for years, and have also entered this stuff into computers for years, often using spreadsheets to calculate mean scores and so on, which could in turn be used to predict how well students are going to do at the end of the year. It's common sense.
I don't know about other Slashdot readers, but up until a few days ago when Slashdot brought the word into daily use (and read the article!), I thought that 'subpoena' was stuff that floated in ponds. If anyone else doesn't quite remember 'subpoena' being in their day-to-day vocabulary either, this might help clear things up:
[a@desk,docs] dict subpoena 3 definitions found
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Subpoena \Sub*p[oe]"na\, n. [NL., fr. L. sub under + poena
punishment. See {Pain}.] (Law)
A writ commanding the attendance in court, as a witness, of
the person on whom it is served, under a penalty; the process
by which a defendant in equity is commanded to appear and
answer the plaintiff's bill. [Written also {subpena}.]
{Subp[oe]na ad testificandum}. [NL.] A writ used to procure
the attendance of a witness for the purpose of testifying.
At the moment, only if you use (closed source) codecs imported from the commercial versions of those programs, which are closed source (AFAIK). The status page for the various formats is here. I don't know if this closed source component will therefore still prevent you from getting around the restrictive DRM measures in place.
Possibly - here, they're demonstrating the ability to link your identity with what you buy, and fairly automatically, en masse. Potentially, this could allow the authorities to track practically every "new" object you bought. Imagine if five years down the line, the police raid your house because they suspect you of something, and then they look at the RFID tags of lots of items in your house, and are able to tell exactly who bought what item and when (from their big database that's full of dates, times, photos, places, lists of items, etc). Or they might just simply keep track of all the stuff you're buying over a set period of time and then start drawing conclusions from it.
My understanding at the moment is that you do have to display a sign in the UK if you're filming the public. I doubt you have to do anything extra if you're attempting to link this footage with what's being taken off your shelves too though. It's no doubt being rolled out all over the place already.
I've already quit my job to avoid having a need for one of those identity cards, I've already sent back my driving license and made do with a push bike to stop them tracking me by my number plate, and I got my mobile crushed last week. Looks like I'm going to have to start an allotment now too!
Thanks for that. I've spent the last three years wondering exactly the same thing (WTF is it?) - assuming it was some of the things that you point out it isn't. Very in depth, and now I know, and have half a clue what to say to people when they ask me was.NET is.
Definitely worth reading for anyone as clueless as I was 30 minutes ago!
The so-called Mini-ITX servers, which have possibly already been mentioned on Slashdot, are one way to go if this is what you're looking for.
They're like a regular PC, but in a much smaller box (perhaps the size of two 5.25" CD-ROM drives stacked on top of each other), and are often fanless (no, that doesn't mean they overheat, it means they're designed not to need one...), resulting in much less noise and much less power consumption. Many are cheap, and they make ideal Linux/BSD boxes for all kinds of things - web/mail/dns/anything server, backing up your data (or each other), monitoring security cameras for movement, etc. Here's a few examples for more information:
Obviuosly. Just to clarify, that got us a cheap box with an AMB Duron 800, 512MB ram, 2x80GB hard disk, 3xRTL-8139 network cards, PCI 128 sound card (sound cards are useful in servers, particularly when you don't normally have a monitor attached - for £15 for the card and some speakers you can program the thing to literally speak to you whenever there's a problem - handy and easily done with Linux).
We also had a problem at Moor Park with kids wasting vast amounts of printer paper and ink all over school. I wanted to use LPRng and Samba to make every workstation print to printers via that server, and that way we could use printer accounting to track/limit what individual kids could print out, and/or bollock them or charge them when they print too much. Unfortunately after discussions with the headteacher I still had to spend every break and lunchtime standing in a library telling kids to take their coats off - in addition to taking my own breaks and lunches.
If your network is well isolated from the Internet (i.e. no-one can initiate a TCP/IP connection from outside), and security isn't your main concern, get yourself a copy of TightVNC (I used 1.2.6, which worked fine for me), and install it on a few workstations. By making a few changes, you can then make the TightVNC server run completely silently in the background (provided you disabled Task Manager for kids, and they can't get a process listing any other way). A few extremely rushed notes from my manual on how to do this:
As local administrator:
Find the TightVNC installation folder on the server. Run the installation executable file.
Once installed, right click on start - open all users. Go into programs, find the tightvnc
folder, and click cut.
Right click on start again, click open users, go into programs, and click paste.
- this stops anyone else getting to it easily.
go to start - progs - tightvnc, and launch the server.
go to start - run - regedit
find hklm\software\orl\winvnc3
Create: DWORD EnableURLParams = 1 Makes it possible to pass parameters to the embedded webserver
Create: DWORD DisableTrayIcon = 1 Gets rid of the tray icon.
Go to start... administration - install default registry
go to start... adminiostration - show default settings
set the password, and press ok.
go to start - ad ministrat - install vnc service.
restart the computer, and log in.
Now you can call up the desktop of any workstation in school by running vncviewer and typing in the machine name of the computer you wish to view. By giving computers sensible names corresponding to their location around school (such as librarydesk1, room21row2col3, food, room18, etc), you can suddenly call up any kid's desktop and see what they're up to. Serious privacy and security concerns, but very useful when weighed up against having to run around the place like a headless chicken all the time because someone else doesn't know what the cAPS lOCK does yet!
If you're running Apache, you can then write a CGI script that gives you a map of all the workstations in the school (formatted, for example, as HTML tables). For each computer on your map, make it link to:
http://10.67.24.116:5800/?password=p5a2s78s243w2 d
- and then you have a clickable map which will bring up the display of any workstation in school in any java enabled web browser. But that's almost completely unsecure, so the risk is your own. Make sure you pick an extremely hard password and that said webpage isn't accessible by kids. Make sure also that no-one can see the password in the URL as they look over your shoulder.
Just to reiterate, that's nothing more than a fun but messy unsecure hack. Don't do this unless at least 50% of your kids have learning/behaviour difficulties...
I've just spent the last 21 months as network person at Moor Park High School in Preston, Lancs. I implemented two Linux servers which did internal www which staff could access parts of via their W:\ drive, mail, proxy (with authentication and ability to block kids by a gui), ability to reclone damaged NT/2000 workstations, quota limits for kids, staff and pupil shared areas (accessible via S:\ and T:\ drives), shell access for kids, remote KDE/GNOME desktops in a window for staff (not that they used them!)...
The whole thing cost them £400 in software. Unfortunately two weeks ago they still insisted on me spending 7 hours a week standing in a library doing duties telling kids to take their coats off... and all for less than six pounds fifty an hour (probably 9-10 USD per hour). They're now looking for three people to replace me. I've now gone self employed and am the cheapest IT person I know even at more than twice the rate they paid me.
The biggest difficulty I found with implementing Linux was getting it to understand our existing username/password database. You have several options, some of them being:
- Make everyone set a new password (bad idea - they'll want to know why) - Use pwdump.c (available from Samba mirrors) to create an smbpasswd file from your existing NT or 2000 server. - Use John the Ripper or L0phtcrack to crack your existing account database. This isn't such a great solution, as some passwords could take weeks to crack, and some passwords will get changed after you cracked them. - Use Winbind, which is part of the Samba suite which will talk to your existing NT/2000 setup and make those user accounts appear as ordinary users. This is an absolutely great solution once it works; you can give them access to any service you want (it works through PAM, so it's as good as having them all in/etc/passwd in many ways) - such as ftp, ssh, local or XDMCP access, you can chown and chmod files and directories to them, and it just works. It can be, however, an absolute nightmare to set up, and so I've written a document on the subject and how to get past a number of random error messages here. - Read the comments in smb.conf
Management are always a problem, and it's the usual scenario: if it's Free, it has to be crap. If this is a problem, then instead of telling them how good it is, just show them. It's not difficult to find a spare unused machine in a school, or to boot Knoppix onto something, and you only need something with 16 or 32MB to install Debian or an old version of RH onto it and make it a useful server - machines of that calibre of write offs in UK schools right now with all the money the UK government are pumping into them. (This quarter alone, we had £27,000 to spend on IT - something like $40,000.)
Set something up, and implement a feature that your network lacks - quotas, web, email, cloning (use Partition Image - a much nicer replacement to Norton Ghost), proxy server (use Squid and Webmin so that your boss can easily add users to a list of banned people). Consider writing a cronjob to automatically copy everyone's home directory once a day, and then suddenly you'll be able to restore someones work from backup from any particular day or week (depending on how much hard disk space you have - a couple of cheap maxtor 80GB disks or something similar will do the job) in the space of ninety seconds *every time*. No more messing with backup tapes. (But still do tape backups, because you don't know when a lightning strike/minor earth tremor is going to destroy every hard disk...)
Write a manual. "This is how our Linux boxes were set up. The IP is this, here are the open ports, these packages were compiled from sourc
For the uninformed, "io" is short for "input/output". It's what computers do: they take input, and they supply output. It's why they're useful. A computer with no i/o is about as useful as this C program:
/* main.c */
main() { }
(You can compile this program on most UNIX systems by typing: gcc -o main main.c)
To have no i/o, you can't have a screen, a keyboard, a mouse, sound, external drives, a network interface, or anything - not even a serial port. In all fairness, a deck of cards are more useful and are also likely to have a lower power consumption.
If someone has left this around since 4.0, why haven't all these security audits Microsoft claim to be doing haven't found that out yet? Are we still to believe that they actually spent a whole month in early 2002 just rooting out security holes, when they didn't notice this? Or is someone going to try and say that they/did/ notice it and then deliberately didn't fix it, on the grounds that it's just a bug and maybe not technically a security hole? Come on, really...
This error can occur in (AFAIK) the first version of Microsoft Office 2000, on at least Windows NT (SP6a) and Windows 2000 (original release).
Within the first few seconds of running Office, users are prompted with the one line message:
"Do you wish to register Microsoft Office 2000 Professional?"
Whether the users click Yes or No, Office (whether it be Word|Excel|Access|Publisher|Powerpoint) just simply exits.
It had me confused for a bit, until I realised that you have to log on to the machine as/local administrator/ and then click 'No'. I suspect the reason is that when you submit your answer, Office tries to amend a file or registry key that is writable only by local administrator, and so it fails.
Once this has been done once per machine, Office 2000 has worked fine for us.
Presumably this simple fix no longer applies for Office 2000 SR1a, since it made a Slashdot post.
You said you were in the USA, so this is of no help to you, but could be for others in the UK.
Over here, as just about everybody knows, the official tax-collecting body are the Inland Revenue. As it happens, they have an official web site: http://www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk.
If you go to the site, click on 'Individuals' (left panel), scroll down and click 'Self Assessment' (under features), and then scroll down again and click 'Self Employed'.
A few key points (No warranty - I'm an amateur - check these for yourself rather than relying on a random slashdotter if you're going to use any of this):
- You need to fill in the form which can be accessed at http://www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/startingup/selfemp l.htm within around three months of starting being self employed.
- You'll have to keep records of all your income and expenses, including all receipts of expenses wherever possible.
- Anything you declare as expenses isn't taxable. So if you bring in £20,000 and justify £5,000 on expenses, you'll be taxed on the remaining £15,000.
- You'll probably have to pay two lots of National Insurance: one currently at £2/week, and the other at 7% of everything you earn between around £5,000pa and £29,000pa.
- Tax rates are roughly:
10% of your first £2,000pa. ("Starting Rate") 22% of your next £27,000pa. ("Basic Rate") 40% of anything above that ("Higher Rate")
- You'll have to fill in a self assessment form for every tax year, after the year is complete. Tax years run from April to April. For the tax year ending in April 2003, you can expect to receive your tax return for that year in April 2003, and you'll have until 30th September 2003 or 31st January 2004 to return it, filled in. If you send it in for the first deadline, the IR will calculate your tax for you.
- Once the tax return is processed, you'll be sent a bill for the amount of tax to pay.
- Tax returns can be filled in online at the Inland Revenue site.
Maybe hiding something like this in your attic wouldn't work out if the police turned your house over, but it would almost certainly survive if you got your house burgled - I doubt that many burglars take the time (or even think) to look in the attic.
Yes thankyou, I am. I have used both successfully - download the image and try it. They're there, and they do have very real uses in terms of rescuing machines, which is simply to allow one to transfer files across a network. If I remember rightly, the web server executable is significantly less than 1k in size. And why not have a telnetd if you can fit it into a few kB?
The whole disk has become so useful that it has virtually removed any need for an MS-DOS disk on the network I'm looking after. Running an rm -rf/mnt/c for a multi-gigabyte FAT32 filesystem takes seconds, as opposed to a deltree c:\*.* from a DOS disk, which can take literally hours, for example.
I think there are quite a few. It's seen as a challenge, and does have practical uses. Have a look at Toms Rootboot disk - it includes a web server, a telnet server, a telnet client, an nfs client, wget, gzip, bzip2, vi, a whole load of network drivers, and a tonne of other stuff, all compressed down onto one floppy disk. Only I've never quite been able to find the source code for any of it despite spending a small amount of time looking - possibly someone would be able to put me right on that one.
I look after the IT for a school, and spend most lunchtimes in the library helping the kids with their homework and the computers. The Headteacher isn't mean't to be best pleased with the fact that the kids are always using the computers to play one or two of the fairly mind-numbing puzzle games on there instead of doing "research".
Once I've actually got their network sorted out, I plan on writing a 2D platform game where they earn time in the game by solving Math problems, and where the problems that require more thought are rewarded with more time (so, for example, solving a few simple multiplication/division sums might get them thirty seconds, whereas solving a trig problem might get them five minutes). The whole thing will be completely voluntary, the prospect of shooting bunnies will hopefully be enough to spare them on a little, and they'll be spending their time doing something a little more worthwhile than clicking on pretty pictures (which seems to be the theme of a lot of so called "educational" proprietary software out there right now).
The only problem is that unless they find someone else to do the library shifts every lunchtime then I'll have probably moved on to another job before I've had chance to sort their IT out and write the game. But then my attempts to get this through to management will probably only surface when they're asking why I left...
Sorry if I'm missing something here, but last time I checked, I'd been using Red Hat as my desktop o/s quite successfully for the past few years, with packages such as Mozilla and Nautilus are now included - and so going by the last few releases, one does get an inkling that they've already been making a significant effort to bring Red Hat to the desktop.
The announcement suggests therefore that they've decided to do something different about their approach to the desktop market, but doesn't exactly make it clear what, apart from hinting that they might be mixing in some proprietary software with it (such as Star Office 6). Any ideas?
The site: www.gnusoftware.com, which is nothing officially to do with GNU, is a collection of links to open source Windows projects. I've already used it to compile some pretty useful CDs to give away to people.
Slashdot Mirror
If you have trouble running your old DOS programs, have a look for APCOMPAT.EXE on the Windows 2000 CD too - it's basically the compatibility mode feature that comes with Windows XP, but an earlier version for Windows 2000.
:)
You can at least use it to get Red Alert running under Win2k, which is definitely a bonus
Spam is a big problem, but I think we should be really careful about pushing our lawmakers to pass laws that are that specific to computers. Whenever someone suggests introducing a law that could possibly invade someone's privacy, we're up in arms about it and claim that such problems should be solved a different way - that the lawmakers should stay away from what they don't understand, and that we could solve them by technical means, or by interpreting more general, existing laws to apply to computers.
When we're pushing for anti-spam legislation, we're saying it's suddenly okay to pass laws that specific just because it suits us and we can't see any possible way to lose out. Is this a fair way of doing things? Are we really decided on how far we want laws to extend into computers, and where we draw the line?
I've been considering buying a PDA for 2-3 years, and now have money set aside for one. But I've delayed because I still haven't found the answer (possibly through not looking hard enough) to this question:
If I buy any normal FS/OSS based PDA (such as the Sharp Zaurus, or this one), can I *actually* wipe off everything that's on it, recompile all the software, and reinstall, in the same way as I could on a PC? To put it another way, if I want to add a progress indicator to GNU gzip, or make the error messages in BASH more offensive, or remove that annoying can I still do that on Linux/*BSD based PDA? Or is that Linux kernel somehow "locked on" there in some kind of ROM that can't be changed, or that can't be restored if it somehow gets lost, so that I have to live with the default configuration? More to the point, if a company distributes a GPL'd program locked into hardware in this way (even if what they claim is the source is provided separately, say, on a CD), are they violating the GPL?
After dealing with closed source software on other people's machines day in, day out for the past few years, to me, buying a PDA where I don't have that freedom would be a big step backwards - I wouldn't do it. Also, if a company really did make a PDA where they not only made it possible but also made it easy to recompile/replace any or all of the software on it, and put together a community web site and so on, wouldn't that have some appeal among the techies? I'm sure it'd get a couple of articles on Slashdot - and obviously it would still ship with a default software configuration that's fine for people who don't want to mess with stuff.
It says in the review: ...such as OpenBSD's requirement that its root partition must be completely contained within the first 8 gigabytes of the hard drive.
I've just set up OpenBSD 3.3 on a not-very-critical server, and, not knowing about this limitation, I've just created one big root partition of about 58GB. It's ran fine for the past four days though. Am I likely to run into problems, or has something been changed since the book was published?
I know that there are good reasons for splitting your filesystem across multiple partitions, but is there a particular reason why I need to keep that root partition under 8GB in OpenBSD?
Can't be...
... "According to a company spokesman, in order to escape the Justice Department's breakup, the software giant will legally move its headquarters to the tiny offshore jurisdiction, though the actual staff will remain in Redmond, WA, because space is at a premium on the tiny platform a few miles outside of British territorial waters in the English Channel."
From this article: "LONDON (Reuters) -- Microsoft, the world's largest software company, announced today that it will move its headquarters to the world's smallest nation, the Principality of Sealand."
Should have said: if they aren't prepared to reveal to me what they're going to do to my computer, then I'm not prepared to run their software, of course.
I realise that this particular software may not actually decompile or disassemble anything, but this presents a very good reason for making reverse engineering of any software legal in any country: if I'm not allowed to make my own private analysis of a piece of proprietary software out there, how am I to know what it's going to do to my computer? How can I know that it isn't going to take liberties and do damage (such as installing backdoors) on my systems?
To be fair, many software packages I see for Windows machines these days do take advantage of this fact, such as by giving users adverts, invading their privacy, and withholding information to them about what their computer is doing. (One example is Freeserve, a UK ISP: some of their dialling software refuses to tell you what numbers your computer is dialling out to. This can be got round, but it's the principle of the thing...). For the past few years, I've refused to run any software on my desktop machine where source code is not made available, for that reason. If they are prepared to reveal to me what they're going to do to my computer, then I'm not prepared to run their software.
Here's another question: if I have a copy of this software on a machine in a country where reverse engineering is allowed, but then I shell in to that machine (via ssh, vnc, or some other means which will allow me to control that machine remotely) from a country where reverse engineering is not allowed, and then carry out the reverse engineering over that link, is that illegal?
For the first time, educators can look up a student's attendance, discipline, immigration status, grades, and test scores at one source
For the first time? Haven't universities, and all educational institutions, been doing this for years? They take your marks in, and do things like decide what level of exam to enter you for, or what set to put you in, and so on! It's why they give you tests throughout the year and take in your scores. Sorry to be negative, but this is completely normal
For example: I was at Durham three years ago. Four months into the nine month term, our Maths lecturer called me into his office one day, showed me the results of the homeworks I'd done for the past four months, and told me that the marks suggested I was going to fail. Sure enough, he was right - I got 2% in his module, and also failed every other module on the course. I got to leave the place permanently (thank god!), which was the outocme I'd been looking for. It went to show that they predicted it though.
Am I right, or is there something really major I'm missing here? Educational institutions have been keeping track of student's marks, attendance, behaviour and so on for years, and have also entered this stuff into computers for years, often using spreadsheets to calculate mean scores and so on, which could in turn be used to predict how well students are going to do at the end of the year. It's common sense.
-Andrew
I don't know about other Slashdot readers, but up until a few days ago when Slashdot brought the word into daily use (and read the article!), I thought that 'subpoena' was stuff that floated in ponds. If anyone else doesn't quite remember 'subpoena' being in their day-to-day vocabulary either, this might help clear things up:
[a@desk,docs] dict subpoena
3 definitions found
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Subpoena \Sub*p[oe]"na\, n. [NL., fr. L. sub under + poena
punishment. See {Pain}.] (Law)
A writ commanding the attendance in court, as a witness, of
the person on whom it is served, under a penalty; the process
by which a defendant in equity is commanded to appear and
answer the plaintiff's bill. [Written also {subpena}.]
{Subp[oe]na ad testificandum}. [NL.] A writ used to procure
the attendance of a witness for the purpose of testifying.
(etc)
-Andrew
At the moment, only if you use (closed source) codecs imported from the commercial versions of those programs, which are closed source (AFAIK). The status page for the various formats is here. I don't know if this closed source component will therefore still prevent you from getting around the restrictive DRM measures in place.
Possibly - here, they're demonstrating the ability to link your identity with what you buy, and fairly automatically, en masse. Potentially, this could allow the authorities to track practically every "new" object you bought. Imagine if five years down the line, the police raid your house because they suspect you of something, and then they look at the RFID tags of lots of items in your house, and are able to tell exactly who bought what item and when (from their big database that's full of dates, times, photos, places, lists of items, etc). Or they might just simply keep track of all the stuff you're buying over a set period of time and then start drawing conclusions from it.
My understanding at the moment is that you do have to display a sign in the UK if you're filming the public. I doubt you have to do anything extra if you're attempting to link this footage with what's being taken off your shelves too though. It's no doubt being rolled out all over the place already.
I've already quit my job to avoid having a need for one of those identity cards, I've already sent back my driving license and made do with a push bike to stop them tracking me by my number plate, and I got my mobile crushed last week. Looks like I'm going to have to start an allotment now too!
Thanks for that. I've spent the last three years wondering exactly the same thing (WTF is it?) - assuming it was some of the things that you point out it isn't. Very in depth, and now I know, and have half a clue what to say to people when they ask me was .NET is.
Definitely worth reading for anyone as clueless as I was 30 minutes ago!
Andrew
The so-called Mini-ITX servers, which have possibly already been mentioned on Slashdot, are one way to go if this is what you're looking for.
They're like a regular PC, but in a much smaller box (perhaps the size of two 5.25" CD-ROM drives stacked on top of each other), and are often fanless (no, that doesn't mean they overheat, it means they're designed not to need one...), resulting in much less noise and much less power consumption. Many are cheap, and they make ideal Linux/BSD boxes for all kinds of things - web/mail/dns/anything server, backing up your data (or each other), monitoring security cameras for movement, etc. Here's a few examples for more information:
Here, here, here, here, here.
Some of them do actually officially support Linux/BSD AFAIK, such as the OpenBrick and LinITX.com.
-Andrew
This line:
The whole thing cost them £400 in software.
should have read:
The whole thing cost them £400 in
hardware.Obviuosly. Just to clarify, that got us a cheap box with an AMB Duron 800, 512MB ram, 2x80GB hard disk, 3xRTL-8139 network cards, PCI 128 sound card (sound cards are useful in servers, particularly when you don't normally have a monitor attached - for £15 for the card and some speakers you can program the thing to literally speak to you whenever there's a problem - handy and easily done with Linux).
We also had a problem at Moor Park with kids wasting vast amounts of printer paper and ink all over school. I wanted to use LPRng and Samba to make every workstation print to printers via that server, and that way we could use printer accounting to track/limit what individual kids could print out, and/or bollock them or charge them when they print too much. Unfortunately after discussions with the headteacher I still had to spend every break and lunchtime standing in a library telling kids to take their coats off - in addition to taking my own breaks and lunches.
If your network is well isolated from the Internet (i.e. no-one can initiate a TCP/IP connection from outside), and security isn't your main concern, get yourself a copy of TightVNC (I used 1.2.6, which worked fine for me), and install it on a few workstations. By making a few changes, you can then make the TightVNC server run completely silently in the background (provided you disabled Task Manager for kids, and they can't get a process listing any other way). A few extremely rushed notes from my manual on how to do this:
As local administrator:
Now you can call up the desktop of any workstation in school by running vncviewer and typing in the machine name of the computer you wish to view. By giving computers sensible names corresponding to their location around school (such as librarydesk1, room21row2col3, food, room18, etc), you can suddenly call up any kid's desktop and see what they're up to. Serious privacy and security concerns, but very useful when weighed up against having to run around the place like a headless chicken all the time because someone else doesn't know what the cAPS lOCK does yet!
If you're running Apache, you can then write a CGI script that gives you a map of all the workstations in the school (formatted, for example, as HTML tables). For each computer on your map, make it link to:
http://10.67.24.116:5800/?password=p5a2s78s243w2 d
- and then you have a clickable map which will bring up the display of any workstation in school in any java enabled web browser. But that's almost completely unsecure, so the risk is your own. Make sure you pick an extremely hard password and that said webpage isn't accessible by kids. Make sure also that no-one can see the password in the URL as they look over your shoulder.
Just to reiterate, that's nothing more than a fun but messy unsecure hack. Don't do this unless at least 50% of your kids have learning/behaviour difficulties...
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Andrew
I've just spent the last 21 months as network person at Moor Park High School in Preston, Lancs. I implemented two Linux servers which did internal www which staff could access parts of via their W:\ drive, mail, proxy (with authentication and ability to block kids by a gui), ability to reclone damaged NT/2000 workstations, quota limits for kids, staff and pupil shared areas (accessible via S:\ and T:\ drives), shell access for kids, remote KDE/GNOME desktops in a window for staff (not that they used them!)...
/etc/passwd in many ways) - such as ftp, ssh, local or XDMCP access, you can chown and chmod files and directories to them, and it just works. It can be, however, an absolute nightmare to set up, and so I've written a document on the subject and how to get past a number of random error messages here.
The whole thing cost them £400 in software. Unfortunately two weeks ago they still insisted on me spending 7 hours a week standing in a library doing duties telling kids to take their coats off... and all for less than six pounds fifty an hour (probably 9-10 USD per hour). They're now looking for three people to replace me. I've now gone self employed and am the cheapest IT person I know even at more than twice the rate they paid me.
The biggest difficulty I found with implementing Linux was getting it to understand our existing username/password database. You have several options, some of them being:
- Make everyone set a new password (bad idea - they'll want to know why)
- Use pwdump.c (available from Samba mirrors) to create an smbpasswd file from your existing NT or 2000 server.
- Use John the Ripper or L0phtcrack to crack your existing account database. This isn't such a great solution, as some passwords could take weeks to crack, and some passwords will get changed after you cracked them.
- Use Winbind, which is part of the Samba suite which will talk to your existing NT/2000 setup and make those user accounts appear as ordinary users. This is an absolutely great solution once it works; you can give them access to any service you want (it works through PAM, so it's as good as having them all in
- Read the comments in smb.conf
Management are always a problem, and it's the usual scenario: if it's Free, it has to be crap. If this is a problem, then instead of telling them how good it is, just show them. It's not difficult to find a spare unused machine in a school, or to boot Knoppix onto something, and you only need something with 16 or 32MB to install Debian or an old version of RH onto it and make it a useful server - machines of that calibre of write offs in UK schools right now with all the money the UK government are pumping into them. (This quarter alone, we had £27,000 to spend on IT - something like $40,000.)
Set something up, and implement a feature that your network lacks - quotas, web, email, cloning (use Partition Image - a much nicer replacement to Norton Ghost), proxy server (use Squid and Webmin so that your boss can easily add users to a list of banned people). Consider writing a cronjob to automatically copy everyone's home directory once a day, and then suddenly you'll be able to restore someones work from backup from any particular day or week (depending on how much hard disk space you have - a couple of cheap maxtor 80GB disks or something similar will do the job) in the space of ninety seconds *every time*. No more messing with backup tapes. (But still do tape backups, because you don't know when a lightning strike/minor earth tremor is going to destroy every hard disk...)
Write a manual. "This is how our Linux boxes were set up. The IP is this, here are the open ports, these packages were compiled from sourc
For the uninformed, "io" is short for "input/output". It's what computers do: they take input, and they supply output. It's why they're useful. A computer with no i/o is about as useful as this C program:
main() {
}
(You can compile this program on most UNIX systems by typing: gcc -o main main.c)
To have no i/o, you can't have a screen, a keyboard, a mouse, sound, external drives, a network interface, or anything - not even a serial port. In all fairness, a deck of cards are more useful and are also likely to have a lower power consumption.
If someone has left this around since 4.0, why haven't all these security audits Microsoft claim to be doing haven't found that out yet? Are we still to believe that they actually spent a whole month in early 2002 just rooting out security holes, when they didn't notice this? Or is someone going to try and say that they /did/ notice it and then deliberately didn't fix it, on the grounds that it's just a bug and maybe not technically a security hole? Come on, really...
Andrew
This error can occur in (AFAIK) the first version of Microsoft Office 2000, on at least Windows NT (SP6a) and Windows 2000 (original release).
/local administrator/ and then click 'No'. I suspect the reason is that when you submit your answer, Office tries to amend a file or registry key that is writable only by local administrator, and so it fails.
Within the first few seconds of running Office, users are prompted with the one line message:
"Do you wish to register Microsoft Office 2000 Professional?"
Whether the users click Yes or No, Office (whether it be Word|Excel|Access|Publisher|Powerpoint) just simply exits.
It had me confused for a bit, until I realised that you have to log on to the machine as
Once this has been done once per machine, Office 2000 has worked fine for us.
Presumably this simple fix no longer applies for Office 2000 SR1a, since it made a Slashdot post.
You said you were in the USA, so this is of no help to you, but could be for others in the UK.
p l.htm within around three months of starting being self employed.
Over here, as just about everybody knows, the official tax-collecting body are the Inland Revenue. As it happens, they have an official web site: http://www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk.
If you go to the site, click on 'Individuals' (left panel), scroll down and click 'Self Assessment' (under features), and then scroll down again and click 'Self Employed'.
A few key points (No warranty - I'm an amateur - check these for yourself rather than relying on a random slashdotter if you're going to use any of this):
- You need to fill in the form which can be accessed at http://www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/startingup/selfem
- You'll have to keep records of all your income and expenses, including all receipts of expenses wherever possible.
- Anything you declare as expenses isn't taxable. So if you bring in £20,000 and justify £5,000 on expenses, you'll be taxed on the remaining £15,000.
- You'll probably have to pay two lots of National Insurance: one currently at £2/week, and the other at 7% of everything you earn between around £5,000pa and £29,000pa.
- Tax rates are roughly:
10% of your first £2,000pa. ("Starting Rate")
22% of your next £27,000pa. ("Basic Rate")
40% of anything above that ("Higher Rate")
- You'll have to fill in a self assessment form for every tax year, after the year is complete. Tax years run from April to April. For the tax year ending in April 2003, you can expect to receive your tax return for that year in April 2003, and you'll have until 30th September 2003 or 31st January 2004 to return it, filled in. If you send it in for the first deadline, the IR will calculate your tax for you.
- Once the tax return is processed, you'll be sent a bill for the amount of tax to pay.
- Tax returns can be filled in online at the Inland Revenue site.
Maybe hiding something like this in your attic wouldn't work out if the police turned your house over, but it would almost certainly survive if you got your house burgled - I doubt that many burglars take the time (or even think) to look in the attic.
Yes thankyou, I am. I have used both successfully - download the image and try it. They're there, and they do have very real uses in terms of rescuing machines, which is simply to allow one to transfer files across a network. If I remember rightly, the web server executable is significantly less than 1k in size. And why not have a telnetd if you can fit it into a few kB?
/mnt/c for a multi-gigabyte FAT32 filesystem takes seconds, as opposed to a deltree c:\*.* from a DOS disk, which can take literally hours, for example.
The whole disk has become so useful that it has virtually removed any need for an MS-DOS disk on the network I'm looking after. Running an rm -rf
Andrew
I think there are quite a few. It's seen as a challenge, and does have practical uses. Have a look at Toms Rootboot disk - it includes a web server, a telnet server, a telnet client, an nfs client, wget, gzip, bzip2, vi, a whole load of network drivers, and a tonne of other stuff, all compressed down onto one floppy disk. Only I've never quite been able to find the source code for any of it despite spending a small amount of time looking - possibly someone would be able to put me right on that one.
There are also lots of interesting articles on linuxassembly.org.
Andrew
I look after the IT for a school, and spend most lunchtimes in the library helping the kids with their homework and the computers. The Headteacher isn't mean't to be best pleased with the fact that the kids are always using the computers to play one or two of the fairly mind-numbing puzzle games on there instead of doing "research".
Once I've actually got their network sorted out, I plan on writing a 2D platform game where they earn time in the game by solving Math problems, and where the problems that require more thought are rewarded with more time (so, for example, solving a few simple multiplication/division sums might get them thirty seconds, whereas solving a trig problem might get them five minutes). The whole thing will be completely voluntary, the prospect of shooting bunnies will hopefully be enough to spare them on a little, and they'll be spending their time doing something a little more worthwhile than clicking on pretty pictures (which seems to be the theme of a lot of so called "educational" proprietary software out there right now).
The only problem is that unless they find someone else to do the library shifts every lunchtime then I'll have probably moved on to another job before I've had chance to sort their IT out and write the game. But then my attempts to get this through to management will probably only surface when they're asking why I left...
--
Andrew
Sorry if I'm missing something here, but last time I checked, I'd been using Red Hat as my desktop o/s quite successfully for the past few years, with packages such as Mozilla and Nautilus are now included - and so going by the last few releases, one does get an inkling that they've already been making a significant effort to bring Red Hat to the desktop.
The announcement suggests therefore that they've decided to do something different about their approach to the desktop market, but doesn't exactly make it clear what, apart from hinting that they might be mixing in some proprietary software with it (such as Star Office 6). Any ideas?
The site: www.gnusoftware.com, which is nothing officially to do with GNU, is a collection of links to open source Windows projects. I've already used it to compile some pretty useful CDs to give away to people.