There have been some good responses to this post, but I'd like to add to them.
The chances of your children accidentally stumbling across things that would offend you are small, but if they do it won't cause them any long term harm.
If your children are seeking out things that offend you using censor-ware is worse then useless. I say worse than useless because instead of having open communication with your child you are dictating to them. You use your financial superiority as the only one in the parent-child relationship who can afford to purchase a computer to impose your will on them. This creates an adversarial relationship where you try to block what they can see while they try to evade your blocks. Eventually they will grow up and you will no longer be able to impose your views on them by force. You'll probably lose them completely.
EULAs apply to software. I don't think there is any legal grounds for a company to sell you a product and then dictate what you do with it. If they are only renting the device to you like Free PC was then they can impose conditions. If you actually buy it out right it's yours.
I thought that the password had to be hard coded into the chat script that you use to call pppd. How do you manage to get it to prompt for input?
Of course this assumes that he wants to use linux as his home dialup machine. Since the question reffered to using SecureID on Sun 450s and mentions PAM I doubt this is the case. He's probably asking how to get Linux to require SecureID logins. In this case Linux _is_ the server and it does need to be able to validate SecureID passwords.
Stating that, avoid any of the other Dune books. Like most sci-fi novels, one book is planned, but the author is pressured to write more, and this definitely shows in the latter books. The style is less harse, and is actually an easier read-- which IMO is a failing (compare Neuromancer to Mona Lisa Overdrive, as another example).
I'd have to disagree with that. Herbert had a skill for turning things around and inside out. He also utilized different styles in the different books. It's not as simple as seeing Paul Atreides as a hero and Baron Harkonnen as a villian. There are many more layers than that and the layers change from book to book.
Does Kppp setup PPP correctly? I only tried it once, when I first installed Mandrake 6.0. It didn't setup the ifup and ifdown scripts properly so I immediately went back to netcfg which is simple and reliable. It seemed like you had to launch Kppp and click the connect button to get connected. It also seemed like you had to configure Kppp separately for each user.
With netcfg you set it up once for the machine and the commands 'ifup ppp0' and 'ifdown ppp0' connect and disconnect. Just add them to the root menu of your favorite window manager. Much cleaner than the Windows approach which Kppp seems to mimic.
I also have a csoft.net account and I've been satisfied with it. I haven't deployed anything significant. I just use it as a testbed for trying things out, but it seems to work well. They have ssh access, unlimited email forwarding addresses in addition to one or more POP mailboxes.
I especially like that they use suExec for Apache so that all your scripts run under your own userid. This means that you can set the permissions on your scripts to 700 and you don't have to use lax directory permissions if you want your scripts to have write access.
They also provide mySQL and a free domain with the name userid.csoft.net if you don't want to register your own domain.
They also allow reselling, but I can't comment on that since I haven't used it.
In my experience, ext2 is rather fragile if not cleanly unmounted. I don't recall my Linux desktop machine ever crashing, but it has lost power on occasion. Every time it has suffered a power outage I had files corrupted and data lost.
My NT laptop crashes on a semi-regular basis (probably heat related, it gets very hot), but I've never had any file corruption or data loss.
If you do switch to Linux make very sure that no one can trip over the plug. And make sure the cleaning people don't unplug your server to plug in a vacuum cleaner. (or is that an urban legend?)
I don't come here because of the interface, I come here for the discussion in spite of the UI. There are real changes that could be made that would make it easier to read and feel the flow of discussion.
I come here because of the UI. There are other sites on the web with technical content and other news sites that allow customization of what news you see. There's also Usenet which provides plenty of discussion. Many newsreaders (i.e. not Netscape or Outlook Express) have terrific interfaces that let you read hundreds of posts using nothing more than the spacebar and an occasional letter key. Almost all web fora suck. Slashdot's nested mode is the only web forum that I've found that lets me read hundreds of posts quickly and efficiently without a lot of mouse manipulation and frequent pauses.
Usenet is your best bet. Check out comp.home.automation and don't forget to look at the DejaNews archives of the group. The group is pretty active and does discuss home automation using Linux as well as Windows.
The Mac is much closer to being an "appliance" than anything x86 based. Part of the reason Macs are so easy to use is because they have a much smaller hardware base. Mac software doesn't have to worry about half a billion different motherboards, video cards, and sound cards. Mac server software also tend to take a more focussed approach. With Linux the approach is software that can be configured to do just about anything you please on just about any hardware you can imagine (with the exception of some hardware that doesn't have specifications available).
That's not to say that the Linux approach is better or worse than the Mac. It's just that the Mac reaches its solutions by narrowing the problem space.
If you're willing to spend the money, companies like VA Linux will simplify the problem for you. They worry about all the variables (just like Apple does) and offer you a machine that just works. If you can do without complex software like sendmail and Apache, you can get simpler, less configurable software that performs the same basic tasks (just like on a Mac).
(In a truly perfect society, the children would not have a desire to search for porn.)
That's an interesting statement that you apparently consider to be self-evident. Since sexual urges are essential to reproduction the human race would die out if people did not feel sexual urges.
Children young enough to be at the stage where boys find girls repulsive and vice versa do not have the urge view pornography. I can only conclude that you are refering to "children" who are approaching adulthood and experiencing the beginings of the sexual urges that lead to the propogation of the species.
Are you asserting that in a truly perfect society children who are approaching adulthood would not have a desire to search for porn? Is that because you consider a truly perfect society to be one where noone has any sex drive? Or is it because you consider a truly perfect society to be one where everyone is able to to get as much real sex as they desire and therefore has no need for "artificial" sex such as porn? If you believe the former then I submit that your "perfect society" would not remain perfect nor even a society for more than one generation.
> Unlike Mandrake, all they did was re-label a buggy version of a Red Hat distribution and call it something new.
AFAIK, that is almost how Mandrake started out. They simply did a RedHat distro with KDE instead of GNOME.
There are two points to remember about how Mandrake started. First, the KDE/Gnome wars have reduced to a simmer now. When Mandrake started they were at a full boil and the ability to get a Red Hat distribution with a KDE desktop was significant since Red Hat was objecting to KDE on principle. Second, Mandrake's first action was to produce a Linux distribution and make it available. Then they offered to sell it if people wanted to buy it (which they did).
LinuxOne is a pure IPO scam. Their first action was to prepare for an IPO. As an afterthough they copied Red Hat's distribution, didn't add anything useful to it, and didn't really make any effort to let people have access to it. Those people who did manage to get access to it have reported that it isn't even a good or fully functional copy of Red Hat.
Business Plan for LinuxOne
File for IPO
Hope that Linux hype will drive IPO sky high
Cash out
Let the company die
Take a vaction with all the money from suckers who bought into a Linux IPO without realizing that this was the company's business plan.
I'm at work now so I'm behind a firewall. I don't have a Linux box here either. Is it possible to listen to this on NT from behine a firewall? I have Winamp and I specified my http proxy under the streaming preferences. When I enter the streaming URL in the open location dialog I just get a series of dialog boxes that say "Error: not a valid MPEG file"
Unless their subscribers are either very well regulated or very well distributed around the world I doubt that your calculation is correct. Simply saying 1,000,000 hits per day is not enough information to do the queuing calculations, but I think it's safe to assume that hits will not be evenly distributed throughout the day and night.
At a rough guess, I'd say that a sight receiving 1,000,000 hits per day needs to support at least 5000 hits per minute if they don't want to be unavailable at peak times.
My modem appears to have died and since I'm too far from a CO for DSL and the only cable modem available is one way (i.e. it requires a phone line and regular modem for the uplink) I'm shopping for a new modem. There are some expensive modems out there, but I was planning to buy a $25 Archtek modem from www.aberdeeninc.com. The description doesn't contain anything to indicate that it might be a winmodem. Is there really any reason to spend more money on a modem?
Why the H was this moderated dowm? Because I put "first" in the title?
You post as an Anonymous Coward with a subject line of "First" and you're surprised that it gets moderated down? What were you expecting? If you have something worth saying don't associate yourself with the "first posters", use a meaningful subject line. And it wouldn't hurt to log in. You could get a email address from one of the free web mail services if you don't want to log in with your own address.
I agree that it would be nice to have a fully functional web browser rather than a partially functional web browser and a partially functional news and mail program (which I'll never use because there are already available mail and news programs that are far superior to anything that will ever be in Mozilla), but it's too late to gripe about it now. The Mozilla team has inherited the Netscape philosophy that news and mail are somehow part of a web browser and nobody's going to convince them they're wrong.
Anybody who thinks that a password (or cookie) passed over http is secure is deluding themselves. I doubt having your/. password stolen is all that much of a concern. You aren't using the same password for/. that you use for important systems are you?
If/. privledges were important I'd expect the password to go over SSL, but it's really not worth the overhead when the servers are already overloaded.
Can you substantiate this claim that first class mail subsidizes bulk mail? I've been told by several different people at different times that it's exactly the opposite. Bulk mail arrives at the post office pre-sorted and even at low rates the total payment for a bulk mailing is significant. First class mail is intermittent and usually has hand written addresses rather than bar codes which makes it more expensive to process.
Prior to junk mail, I used to only receive mail once or twice a week. Now I get something every day. Economies of scale are important in any business. I don't think the post office could maintain its infrastructure based only on first class mail.
I thought that Apache::Registry was the "good" way to use mod_perl and Apache::Perlrun was the "bad" way to run "dirty" CGI scripts. What am I missing? What do you use instead of Apache::Registry?
If they can make use of the multiple angles and soundtracks to allow the movie to be shown with Jar-Jar turned off I'll buy it. Episode One was ok, but it had enough annoying bits that I wouldn't want to watch it over and over. There's no point in buying the DVD, but I might rent it once.
The uptime message isn't all that useful because slashdot.org is made up of more than one machine. I don't know which machine the uptime message is taken from, but it's possible that the machine with a 60 day uptime went down and its responsibilities were moved to the machine with the 18 day uptime.
Slashdot Mirror
That doesn't sound like a very smart thing to do. Not to mention that it's not something the average Win98 user will think to do.
There have been some good responses to this post, but I'd like to add to them.
The chances of your children accidentally stumbling across things that would offend you are small, but if they do it won't cause them any long term harm.
If your children are seeking out things that offend you using censor-ware is worse then useless. I say worse than useless because instead of having open communication with your child you are dictating to them. You use your financial superiority as the only one in the parent-child relationship who can afford to purchase a computer to impose your will on them. This creates an adversarial relationship where you try to block what they can see while they try to evade your blocks. Eventually they will grow up and you will no longer be able to impose your views on them by force. You'll probably lose them completely.
EULAs apply to software. I don't think there is any legal grounds for a company to sell you a product and then dictate what you do with it. If they are only renting the device to you like Free PC was then they can impose conditions. If you actually buy it out right it's yours.
I thought that the password had to be hard coded into the chat script that you use to call pppd. How do you manage to get it to prompt for input?
Of course this assumes that he wants to use linux as his home dialup machine. Since the question reffered to using SecureID on Sun 450s and mentions PAM I doubt this is the case. He's probably asking how to get Linux to require SecureID logins. In this case Linux _is_ the server and it does need to be able to validate SecureID passwords.
I'd have to disagree with that. Herbert had a skill for turning things around and inside out. He also utilized different styles in the different books. It's not as simple as seeing Paul Atreides as a hero and Baron Harkonnen as a villian. There are many more layers than that and the layers change from book to book.
Does Kppp setup PPP correctly? I only tried it once, when I first installed Mandrake 6.0. It didn't setup the ifup and ifdown scripts properly so I immediately went back to netcfg which is simple and reliable. It seemed like you had to launch Kppp and click the connect button to get connected. It also seemed like you had to configure Kppp separately for each user.
With netcfg you set it up once for the machine and the commands 'ifup ppp0' and 'ifdown ppp0' connect and disconnect. Just add them to the root menu of your favorite window manager. Much cleaner than the Windows approach which Kppp seems to mimic.
I also have a csoft.net account and I've been satisfied with it. I haven't deployed anything significant. I just use it as a testbed for trying things out, but it seems to work well. They have ssh access, unlimited email forwarding addresses in addition to one or more POP mailboxes.
I especially like that they use suExec for Apache so that all your scripts run under your own userid. This means that you can set the permissions on your scripts to 700 and you don't have to use lax directory permissions if you want your scripts to have write access.
They also provide mySQL and a free domain with the name userid.csoft.net if you don't want to register your own domain.
They also allow reselling, but I can't comment on that since I haven't used it.
In my experience, ext2 is rather fragile if not cleanly unmounted. I don't recall my Linux desktop machine ever crashing, but it has lost power on occasion. Every time it has suffered a power outage I had files corrupted and data lost.
My NT laptop crashes on a semi-regular basis (probably heat related, it gets very hot), but I've never had any file corruption or data loss.
If you do switch to Linux make very sure that no one can trip over the plug. And make sure the cleaning people don't unplug your server to plug in a vacuum cleaner. (or is that an urban legend?)
I come here because of the UI. There are other sites on the web with technical content and other news sites that allow customization of what news you see. There's also Usenet which provides plenty of discussion. Many newsreaders (i.e. not Netscape or Outlook Express) have terrific interfaces that let you read hundreds of posts using nothing more than the spacebar and an occasional letter key. Almost all web fora suck. Slashdot's nested mode is the only web forum that I've found that lets me read hundreds of posts quickly and efficiently without a lot of mouse manipulation and frequent pauses.
Usenet is your best bet. Check out comp.home.automation and don't forget to look at the DejaNews archives of the group. The group is pretty active and does discuss home automation using Linux as well as Windows.
The Mac is much closer to being an "appliance" than anything x86 based. Part of the reason Macs are so easy to use is because they have a much smaller hardware base. Mac software doesn't have to worry about half a billion different motherboards, video cards, and sound cards. Mac server software also tend to take a more focussed approach. With Linux the approach is software that can be configured to do just about anything you please on just about any hardware you can imagine (with the exception of some hardware that doesn't have specifications available).
That's not to say that the Linux approach is better or worse than the Mac. It's just that the Mac reaches its solutions by narrowing the problem space.
If you're willing to spend the money, companies like VA Linux will simplify the problem for you. They worry about all the variables (just like Apple does) and offer you a machine that just works. If you can do without complex software like sendmail and Apache, you can get simpler, less configurable software that performs the same basic tasks (just like on a Mac).
That's an interesting statement that you apparently consider to be self-evident. Since sexual urges are essential to reproduction the human race would die out if people did not feel sexual urges.
Children young enough to be at the stage where boys find girls repulsive and vice versa do not have the urge view pornography. I can only conclude that you are refering to "children" who are approaching adulthood and experiencing the beginings of the sexual urges that lead to the propogation of the species.
Are you asserting that in a truly perfect society children who are approaching adulthood would not have a desire to search for porn? Is that because you consider a truly perfect society to be one where noone has any sex drive? Or is it because you consider a truly perfect society to be one where everyone is able to to get as much real sex as they desire and therefore has no need for "artificial" sex such as porn? If you believe the former then I submit that your "perfect society" would not remain perfect nor even a society for more than one generation.
am quite aware of moderated newsgroups, and how they work.
No you aren't, as illustrated by the rest of your post.
AFAIK, that is almost how Mandrake started out. They simply did a RedHat distro with KDE instead of GNOME.
There are two points to remember about how Mandrake started. First, the KDE/Gnome wars have reduced to a simmer now. When Mandrake started they were at a full boil and the ability to get a Red Hat distribution with a KDE desktop was significant since Red Hat was objecting to KDE on principle. Second, Mandrake's first action was to produce a Linux distribution and make it available. Then they offered to sell it if people wanted to buy it (which they did).
LinuxOne is a pure IPO scam. Their first action was to prepare for an IPO. As an afterthough they copied Red Hat's distribution, didn't add anything useful to it, and didn't really make any effort to let people have access to it. Those people who did manage to get access to it have reported that it isn't even a good or fully functional copy of Red Hat.
Business Plan for LinuxOne
I'm at work now so I'm behind a firewall. I don't have a Linux box here either. Is it possible to listen to this on NT from behine a firewall? I have Winamp and I specified my http proxy under the streaming preferences. When I enter the streaming URL in the open location dialog I just get a series of dialog boxes that say "Error: not a valid MPEG file"
Unless their subscribers are either very well regulated or very well distributed around the world I doubt that your calculation is correct. Simply saying 1,000,000 hits per day is not enough information to do the queuing calculations, but I think it's safe to assume that hits will not be evenly distributed throughout the day and night.
At a rough guess, I'd say that a sight receiving 1,000,000 hits per day needs to support at least 5000 hits per minute if they don't want to be unavailable at peak times.
My modem appears to have died and since I'm too far from a CO for DSL and the only cable modem available is one way (i.e. it requires a phone line and regular modem for the uplink) I'm shopping for a new modem. There are some expensive modems out there, but I was planning to buy a $25 Archtek modem from www.aberdeeninc.com. The description doesn't contain anything to indicate that it might be a winmodem. Is there really any reason to spend more money on a modem?
Why the H was this moderated dowm? Because I put "first" in the title?
You post as an Anonymous Coward with a subject line of "First" and you're surprised that it gets moderated down? What were you expecting? If you have something worth saying don't associate yourself with the "first posters", use a meaningful subject line. And it wouldn't hurt to log in. You could get a email address from one of the free web mail services if you don't want to log in with your own address.
I agree that it would be nice to have a fully functional web browser rather than a partially functional web browser and a partially functional news and mail program (which I'll never use because there are already available mail and news programs that are far superior to anything that will ever be in Mozilla), but it's too late to gripe about it now. The Mozilla team has inherited the Netscape philosophy that news and mail are somehow part of a web browser and nobody's going to convince them they're wrong.
If you'd log in you'd get to be a moderator. If you'd meta-moderate you'd get to counteract poor moderation. You have only your own apathy to blame.
Anybody who thinks that a password (or cookie) passed over http is secure is deluding themselves. I doubt having your /. password stolen is all that much of a concern. You aren't using the same password for /. that you use for important systems are you?
/. privledges were important I'd expect the password to go over SSL, but it's really not worth the overhead when the servers are already overloaded.
If
Can you substantiate this claim that first class mail subsidizes bulk mail? I've been told by several different people at different times that it's exactly the opposite. Bulk mail arrives at the post office pre-sorted and even at low rates the total payment for a bulk mailing is significant. First class mail is intermittent and usually has hand written addresses rather than bar codes which makes it more expensive to process.
Prior to junk mail, I used to only receive mail once or twice a week. Now I get something every day. Economies of scale are important in any business. I don't think the post office could maintain its infrastructure based only on first class mail.
I thought that Apache::Registry was the "good" way to use mod_perl and Apache::Perlrun was the "bad" way to run "dirty" CGI scripts. What am I missing? What do you use instead of Apache::Registry?
If they can make use of the multiple angles and soundtracks to allow the movie to be shown with Jar-Jar turned off I'll buy it. Episode One was ok, but it had enough annoying bits that I wouldn't want to watch it over and over. There's no point in buying the DVD, but I might rent it once.
The uptime message isn't all that useful because slashdot.org is made up of more than one machine. I don't know which machine the uptime message is taken from, but it's possible that the machine with a 60 day uptime went down and its responsibilities were moved to the machine with the 18 day uptime.