No one ever seems to mention this, but for me I use su with the coworkers who have root access. Reason? Pure and simple, I get to set the root password, and I set it hard. For various reasons having to do with parts of the computing environment I don't control, I can't have the same confidence about non-root passwords.
Using su instead of sudo puts one more barrier in the way. If you cracked a regular user account with liberal sudo access but a weak password, the same weak password gets you to root. That isn't true with su.
I don't know about everyone else, but one of the things I do when I expose people to the idea ofr free software is encourage them to read a copy of GPL version 2. It is a very readable and understandable license. It makes a very good learning tool.
The GPL 3 draft is clearly inferior in this respect. There's no way I would push that forward as an example to a free software newbie.
The university I look at sees a lot more hard drives than any individual. I've personally crashed 2 or 3 Maxtors, and the IT folks tell me that Maxtors give easily the highest percentage of crashes among the brands we have on campus.
They suggest Seagate or WD. I personally prefer the Seagates because they are quieter.
I don't really know what to think about Maxtor now. What does it mean when a preferred brand buys a non-preferred brand?
When a freak accident occurs, and you face being in pain and incapacitated for life, that doesn't make you worthless.
Correct. It also means that you have to accept that there are some things that you can no longer do. That's what "incapacitated" means.
My wife had a stroke about 2 years ago and became disabled. What you quote is true, but in my (limited 2-year) experience I've found that notion to be an excuse for insensitivity.
Perhaps this is not true of the parent poster, but I'd suggest caution in general to anyone having similar feelings.
I don't think they should count the "pipeline bug."
That was a trojan. It was a deliberate attack on their system by an enemy. It didn't even arrive via the now classical "worm" or "virus" route, which would have implied that a "bug let it in the door." No, this one was deliberately planted carefully at the root. It's not a bug, it was an attack.
What amazes me is how people are so proud of that attack. If any country sabatoged materials used in a pipeline in the States, it would be all terrorism and the horrors of ecological damage caused my those evil foreigners.
> Unless Oracle puts together a better administration interface than the current bunch of tools people might actually learn to stay away from it.
Boy that's no kidding. I've used their real database, and there's no way I would voluntarily choose it for any project of my own. Free wouldn't make a bit of difference to me.
A guardian ad litem isn't a guardian in that sense. You're not going to move in with a guardian ad litem. They are an attorney with the job of defending kids. Most of their work has to do with cases of custody or foster care. Their job is to represent the best interests of the kid in court.
My experience getting into the kernel was usually motivated by trying to write user space programs. I finally learned what people meant when they say Linux isn't well documented.
I could care less whether there's a spec, but if I'm going to use an API, I have to know what it does. The ALSA (advanced Linux sound architecture) is absolutely the worst. The documentation is full of entries that have the form:
SetFooOn()
This function sets foo on.
Now the thing I don't understand is this. If you went out to write a really big and important piece of software, wouldn't you want people to use it? What's the point of an undocumented API? It makes no sense whatsoever. You either want someone to use it, and you tell them how, or you make the methods private (i.e. not part of the API)?
I totally don't game, so I have never researched video cards with that in mind. However, I have been interested in fanless video cards (with good Linux drivers). In my browsing, I looked a lot at the Jaton 3DForce Fx-5200LE (http://db.jaton.com/VGAProductDetail.aspx?P_ID=84 228L-T128MAO).
What would I be giving up? Efficient playing of video? Just 3D gaming? Just curious.
I expect a client like gaim to do OTR messaging (off-the-record) just fine through Google Talk, as long as the other side had support too (i.e. not the official client).
> And how many of their products work well with Adsense? While I occasionally find the ads coming off of search results useful, I've never seen anything in gmail that was remotely helpful.
I don't know about others, but I added AdSense to a site I update regularly just to see how it would go. I found immediately that there were a lot of Ads I was interested in.
Unfortunately the Adsense agreement forbids me from clicking on them!
> I use passwdgen and make 3-5 passwords and write them on sticky notes and stick to my monitor. Kinda funny when people ask, "Arent you the security guy?"
That is so funny, I'm definitely going to do that when I get to the office on Monday.
I was recently in a smallish car accident. Some things I remember quite vividly. I know that I was stopped when the accident occurred because I was standing on the clutch and brake pedals, waiting for the collision. When we looked at the skid marks, the cars didn't line up the way I expected.
I couldn't say whether I pulled ahead slightly after the accident and shut off the car, or if the other car just bumped me out of the way. I was later able to infer the latter by the way my tire was damaged. When the cop took my statement, I just had to say I wasn't sure which action happen right after the collision.
> Those are valid knocks against MS, and I'm no big fan of Gates and Friends. However, it is a historical reality that without MS windows, desktop computing would still be a idiosyncratic little community typing out cryptic strings to a command line OS to do computing. Windows brought computing to the masses. Command line OSes were just too abstract for casual, low-tech users and MACs were (and are) prohibitively expensive.
Actually, I remember when Windows came out, and there was at least one competitor with an absolutely fantastic GUI. All of the magazine reviews (and my own personal experience using both programs) marked it as leaps above MS Windows.
The competitor went by the way side because they didn't have the exclusive licensing agreement that MS had. It didn't come pre-installed on every computer. That was the power of the monopoly working there.
It's funny now that years later I can't even remember the name of the competor.
>....and pharmaseutical companies are telling us every commercial break that things like heartburn, insomnia, and arthritis are threats to our very lives.
I won't completely disagree here, but after a long bout of heartburn (bothering me off and on for 6 weeks) I mentioned it to my doctor. She suggested trying one of the take-every-day medications.
Skeptical, I resisted the idea at first, but you get tired of feeling bad after a while. I was surprised to feel so much better. If I had TV, I might have felt better sooner.
Slashdot Mirror
No one ever seems to mention this, but for me I use su with the coworkers who have root access. Reason? Pure and simple, I get to set the root password, and I set it hard. For various reasons having to do with parts of the computing environment I don't control, I can't have the same confidence about non-root passwords.
Using su instead of sudo puts one more barrier in the way. If you cracked a regular user account with liberal sudo access but a weak password, the same weak password gets you to root. That isn't true with su.
So, with no access from the outside, which is preferred?
1. default locked when the batteries die
2. default unlocked when the batteries die
Neither alternative seems very good.
I don't know about everyone else, but one of the things I do when I expose people to the idea ofr free software is encourage them to read a copy of GPL version 2. It is a very readable and understandable license. It makes a very good learning tool.
The GPL 3 draft is clearly inferior in this respect. There's no way I would push that forward as an example to a free software newbie.
I'm really disappointed.
> What's a good alternative to this? Barbie.
My daughter loves the Barbie movies. The Princess and the Pauper is particularly good.
If that's the game, then I suggest the The FSCK FreeCD or download the iso.
The university I look at sees a lot more hard drives than any individual. I've personally crashed 2 or 3 Maxtors, and the IT folks tell me that Maxtors give easily the highest percentage of crashes among the brands we have on campus.
They suggest Seagate or WD. I personally prefer the Seagates because they are quieter.
I don't really know what to think about Maxtor now. What does it mean when a preferred brand buys a non-preferred brand?
Tape every telephone call that has to do with money, especially when dealing with insurance companies and similar forms of fraud.
Alas, I speak from real experience.
What amazes me is how people are so proud of that attack. If any country sabatoged materials used in a pipeline in the States, it would be all terrorism and the horrors of ecological damage caused my those evil foreigners.
For some reason when we do it, it is cool.
> Unless Oracle puts together a better administration interface than the current bunch of tools people might actually learn to stay away from it.
Boy that's no kidding. I've used their real database, and there's no way I would voluntarily choose it for any project of my own. Free wouldn't make a bit of difference to me.
Maybe not to everyone, but Knoppix _is_ more familiar to me than Windows.
A guardian ad litem isn't a guardian in that sense. You're not going to move in with a guardian ad litem. They are an attorney with the job of defending kids. Most of their work has to do with cases of custody or foster care. Their job is to represent the best interests of the kid in court.
> Can anybody recommend a vendor?
I personally like http://monarchcomputer.com/ for that.
My experience getting into the kernel was usually motivated by trying to write user space programs. I finally learned what people meant when they say Linux isn't well documented.
I could care less whether there's a spec, but if I'm going to use an API, I have to know what it does. The ALSA (advanced Linux sound architecture) is absolutely the worst. The documentation is full of entries that have the form:
Now the thing I don't understand is this. If you went out to write a really big and important piece of software, wouldn't you want people to use it? What's the point of an undocumented API? It makes no sense whatsoever. You either want someone to use it, and you tell them how, or you make the methods private (i.e. not part of the API)?
Rant over.
I totally don't game, so I have never researched video cards with that in mind. However, I have been interested in fanless video cards (with good Linux drivers). In my browsing, I looked a lot at the Jaton 3DForce Fx-5200LE (http://db.jaton.com/VGAProductDetail.aspx?P_ID=84 228L-T128MAO).
What would I be giving up? Efficient playing of video? Just 3D gaming? Just curious.
How does anyone keep all of this stuff straight?
> > Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now have virtually no reason not to.
> Except those who want free as in speech.
They weren't on the verge of switching. I know I wasn't.
I knew a fellow talked about a weapon like this. He noted that its yield was greater than its range.
On the Ghostbusters DVD you have to watch the copyright warning in 7 languages, 6 of which I don't know. Talk about lame.
At least there were no ads. I found that choosing chapter 1 from the scene selection took me straight into the movie, so that is what I do now.
I expect a client like gaim to do OTR messaging (off-the-record) just fine through Google Talk, as long as the other side had support too (i.e. not the official client).
> And how many of their products work well with Adsense? While I occasionally find the ads coming off of search results useful, I've never seen anything in gmail that was remotely helpful.
I don't know about others, but I added AdSense to a site I update regularly just to see how it would go. I found immediately that there were a lot of Ads I was interested in.
Unfortunately the Adsense agreement forbids me from clicking on them!
> I use passwdgen and make 3-5 passwords and write them on sticky notes and stick to my monitor. Kinda funny when people ask, "Arent you the security guy?"
That is so funny, I'm definitely going to do that when I get to the office on Monday.
> ... I'd encourage other geeks to compile their own Open Software CDs,
Like
http://limestone.truman.edu/pub/fsck/freecd/doc/
I was recently in a smallish car accident. Some things I remember quite vividly. I know that I was stopped when the accident occurred because I was standing on the clutch and brake pedals, waiting for the collision. When we looked at the skid marks, the cars didn't line up the way I expected.
I couldn't say whether I pulled ahead slightly after the accident and shut off the car, or if the other car just bumped me out of the way. I was later able to infer the latter by the way my tire was damaged. When the cop took my statement, I just had to say I wasn't sure which action happen right after the collision.
> Those are valid knocks against MS, and I'm no big fan of Gates and Friends. However, it is a historical reality that without MS windows, desktop computing would still be a idiosyncratic little community typing out cryptic strings to a command line OS to do computing. Windows brought computing to the masses. Command line OSes were just too abstract for casual, low-tech users and MACs were (and are) prohibitively expensive.
Actually, I remember when Windows came out, and there was at least one competitor with an absolutely fantastic GUI. All of the magazine reviews (and my own personal experience using both programs) marked it as leaps above MS Windows.
The competitor went by the way side because they didn't have the exclusive licensing agreement that MS had. It didn't come pre-installed on every computer. That was the power of the monopoly working there.
It's funny now that years later I can't even remember the name of the competor.
> ....and pharmaseutical companies are telling us every commercial break that things like heartburn, insomnia, and arthritis are threats to our very lives.
I won't completely disagree here, but after a long bout of heartburn (bothering me off and on for 6 weeks) I mentioned it to my doctor. She suggested trying one of the take-every-day medications.
Skeptical, I resisted the idea at first, but you get tired of feeling bad after a while. I was surprised to feel so much better. If I had TV, I might have felt better sooner.