This is a pretty insecure authentication mechanism, because it necessarily has to be simple -- so you'll want to use some obscurity as well.
Make sure that if the incorrect answer is given, the user is redirected to a 'login success' page that has minimal and outdated content. They will quickly lose interest and leave.
If you redirect to a 'login error' page, then they may try harder to get in.
Another approach would be to distribute (multiple or a single) SSL client keys to all your neighbors. Then its a simple matter to redirect users based on the key -- if they have it, they get the content; if they don't, they get the dummy page.
You'd be surprised by the ridiculous amount of pointless bills that are submitted in the House in the Senate.
I only just looked into it recently, and I was shocked! I'd love to see some real statistics, but probably a large percentage of all bills are things like:
"recognize So-and-So for their great contributions to This-and-That,"
"recognize Sponsor's-Home-Sports-Team for their great season,"
"rename building XYZ to So-and-So Memorial XYZ"
So I ask: WHY? What the hell are we paying for? Don't we have more SERIOUS problems now?
If legislation related to essential issues (e.g. financial crisis, energy crisis, education almost-crisis, etc) isn't being agreed upon, then they better keep talking about it until they figure it out! And until that point, I don't want to see any more pointless, frivolous bills.
Check it out: go to the Library of Congress site and search for bills sponsored (not necessarily co-sponsored, though) by a senator or congressman* http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d110query.html
* the 'man' in 'congressman' refers to 'human' -- its definitely not 'congressperson'
Very often I see comments dismissing any reasons for not freely giving out any and all seemingly-trivial personal information...
Well, this is the perfect situation for justifying the desire for what is now often considered excessive privacy. While some information alone may not seem sensitive, the conclusions others' might draw about you from it, combined with other info (like your profile data), may indeed be worth protecting.
Of course, if no one gave out any information, the internet would be very blank... So clearly a balance between giving out personal info and linking that personal info together is necessary. For example, the only way I'd submit my playlists to Last.FM is if it were done in an anonymous fashion, such that my user account doesn't link back to me, my IP, or any other personally-identifying info. Otherwise, I'd be happy to include some profile info, but don't count on getting my playlist too!
This is exactly why I use linux... [On a Q6600 with 4GB RAM] I have 10 virtual desktops, and on them I _concurrently_ run:
Firefox with >150 tabs (using Tree Style Tabs for nesting);
10+ instances of acrobat reader;
VMWare running Windows XP;
as well as instant messengers, IRC, audio player, multiple VLC video players, etc
Not to mention that in that VMWare (Windows XP guest), I run a HUGE electronics design software suite... and it actually loads and runs faster in VMWare than running in native Windows XP!
Windows could never even attempt to run all these programs concurrently, smoothly, without crashes, and without delays in-between using any given app.
2 processes should be fine... after all, 640K of memory should be enough for anybody;)
Just like Comcast... I'm getting sick of this crap
If you get 250GB/month, then you're actually allowed a constant usage of 0.78mbps, regardless of whether you can burst up to 15mbps (or whatever).
Comcast internet service runs $50 to $70 on average, depending on the burst speed you get. However, the limit is always 250GB/month. So doing the math, you're paying $65 to $90 per megabit/sec!
At any given datacenter, you can buy (100mbit-burstable) bandwidth at $5 per megabit/sec (price includes renting a server, rack space, power, and cooling).
Someone will of course respond "then don't use their service." Well, thats great, I'd love to. Unfortunately my government subsidy to Comcast gave Comcast a monopoly on the lines... and for some reason there are areas of the city that are "designated RCN" areas, while others are "designated Comcast" areas. What is this bullshit??
Many states have 'in loco parentis' laws, which state that a school must take up some responsibilities of a parent.
According to wikipedia, it allows institutions such as colleges and schools to act in the best interests of the students as they see fit, although not allowing what would be considered violations of the students' civil liberties.
In my opinion, searching an electronic device, just like searching through a diary or similar, IS a violation of the students' civil liberties...
Some may argue that you have to search through their personal items in order to find out about other punishable things, in order to protect the child. However, that argument is easily applied to government, and it ends up with very bad, totalitarian results. Generally speaking, extremes are not a good choice.
Even worse are cases where the school punishes students for things they do off-campus. That is way out of line; its supposed to be the parents' job!
If the parents aren't being negligent, and the child is at the age where they can weigh consequences and make decent decisions by themselves, then theres no reason for the school to violate civil rights for the child's "own protection." Of course, with children its hard to be so cut-and-dry, since some are more mature than others at the same age, etc...
The obvious solution is to use public/private key authentication and disallow password logins.
This is much safer anyways, since your private key and your passphrase stays on your local machine always, so even if the server is compromised and the SSHd is bugged, no one will have immediate access to your login token.
Do government bail outs happen all the time, and its only recently that the term "bail out" has become popular? Or are all industries everywhere simultaneously going broke just now?
I don't follow the financial world much, so all of a sudden I see * industry bailouts over and over again... From an outsider's perspective, it kinda seems like a bandwagon
Where do I sign up to get bailed out of my personal company's (i.e. me) financial problems by the government?
Anyways, isn't bankruptcy supposed to be the "bail out," but with accountability instead of just writing large checks and calling it a successful bail out?
If anyone gets any government money, they ought to be held accountable for its use and for making sure that this situation never happens again.
I wish politicians, CEOs, and just the general public would start looking at the long term costs and benefits rather than focusing on immediate reward. Think of all the current worldwide problems we wouldn't have to worry about! Then again, thats much easier said than done...
You must not have looked into NX very thoroughly... Particularly, these options:
EnableSessionShadowing: Each user can require to attach to an already running session. EnableDesktopSharing: User can require to attach to the native display of the nodes.
I use NX to share my desktop session over my VPN, so that I can login with my laptop while I'm away from home.
Not only is NX very fast, but it also does not require a running program in the background (like x11vnc), since the SSH server doubles as an NX server if you login with user 'nx'.
My only complaint is that I can't then use public key auth to login to my own user from the 'nx' user (a limitation of the NX setup -- though frankly I don't see any reason why this shouldn't work... its probably just disabled for "security reasons")
My favorite is Oxiracetam. It behaves very much like a stimulant, but rather than increasing your heartrate, it seems like it instead increases your "mental motivation," if that makes any sense. When I take it, it almost is uncomfortable to be bored or not have anything to do.
For instance, the first time I took it, I noticed I was able to play complex drum exercises _MUCH_ faster than I normally can. However, while I was doing this, my heartrate was almost at resting rate.
Piracetam has a very subtle effect, but it is there if you really look. However, the effect from Oxiracetam is very noticable.
Aniracetam (just took some a few hours ago, actually) doesn't have nearly as much of an effect on me, although some people report it works very well. It also seems much shorter-acting than Oxiracetam (somewhere in the area of 3 hours). That seems to be how it is with Racetams -- everyones' experience is slightly different, and some people get nothing out of it.
For choline, I tried Alpha-GPC, but did not get any more after my first purchase, because it seems a bit too new and expensive. Instead, you can get a good daily dose of choline by eating 2-4 eggs, which are cheap and good for you. I've got some lecithin (extracted from egg yolks -- the part that has choline in it) on the way, and it is very inexpensive and very time-tested.
I believe Pramiracetam has so great an effect (relative to other Racetams anyway) that it is banned from the Olympic games. The hardest part for these less-common Racetams is finding a cheap, reliable, and _safe_ source for them. Any suggestions?
I recommend Piracetam: the first Nootropic ("smart drug").
It is extremely safe, and is widely used in Europe to help reverse the effects of aging and to help against the deterioration of memory, among other things (note: I am not a doctor).
There are numerous forums and communities on nootropics, both for anti-aging and productivity-boosting needs. However, make sure you take the advice from those places with the appropriately-sized grain of salt, and always double-check everything with a proper medical resource (i.e. peer-reviewed studies).
I won't get into the details here, because I already did that in an older post (related to stimulants, but it is nonetheless relevant here too). Yes, I guess this qualifies as karma whoring;)
The reason Ubuntu is so popular is because they took a standardized, stable, flexible, but up-to-date base (Debian) and took care of the desktop-oriented customization that a Debian user would normally have to do manually. Then they started filling in the holes in the UI, which trickled back to Debian of course.
The reason Red Hat is no longer popular (and I don't know why it ever was, since Debian has almost always been this good) is, in my opinion, because the packaging system is way too open and not nearly standardized enough. Although they have been fixing this in the recent years, when you run a Red Hat based system (Fedora, Centos, etc), you seem to end up installing packages from random places.
From Debian, if you stick with the official repositories (which is possible since they are very thorough and extensive), you are pretty much guaranteed that all your packages have passed through a standardized system where they are checked for problems, inter-dependencies, and are all compiled with the same methodology.
Additionally, Debian's seemingly-overbearing policies on legal issues are actually a good thing, as long as they have enough developers (and they do): as long as you have your "gold standard" distribution where every package meets very strict rules, you can always branch out from there by adding other trusted repositories or doing what Ubuntu has done. However, if you start from a "messy" packaging system / distribution where anything goes, its much harder to select the "standardized" subset of those packages.
Finally, Debian's developer base is very large, diverse, and relatively unified in their efforts, and their organization is *very* democratic and user-driven. There is no one central authority that has total and permanent control over the distribution. While this has the possibility for failure, they've done it in a way that seems to have worked out very well. In contrast, Red Hat is a corporation that has a vested interest in getting customers to pay for support contracts, while the Red Hat based distributions are more numerous and don't have nearly as much manpower (note: purely based on speculation). I don't know how much penetration Debian has in the enterprise, but if someone stepped up to provide paid Debian support, I think they could make a lot of money...
Anyways thats just been my view. I honestly don't mean to offend anyone who really likes Red Hat -- I just feel that Debian's packaging system is much more powerful, standardized, up-to-date, and trustworthy (the key being meeting all of these points, and not sacrificing one for another -- say more up-to-date for less standardization, etc).
Please feel free to correct me -- I am interested to hear a Red Hat admin's point-of-view on the issue.
I say this is a good thing, but we shouldn't stop there. I'd say everyone's car should have [hidden] video cameras...
Anything that happens on public ground, especially involving public servants (i.e. police), should be considered to be recorded by the public. Privacy in public is an outdated concept, and has never truly existed anyways (so give it up). Someone will be watching -- the question is, is everyone watching, or is it a one-sided situation (like the CCTV system in the UK)?
Events taking place on public ground should never come down to "his word vs. mine." In cases where this involves police, then the police officers' word is always given more credit than the citizens'. Now while this is probably a reasonable bias to have, it neglects the fact that police officers are just humans too, and are themselves just as influenced by biases as anyone else. Video recordings have no bias...
This is essentially becoming a reality, especially considering that most everyone's phone has a camera. Let's see what happens the next time there is an instance of abuse of authority, say during a traffic stop or what-have-you...
As Marge Simpson said...
You know, the courts may not be working any more, but as long as everyone is videotaping everyone else, justice will be done.
This may be a little off-topic, but I'd like to recommend mpd.
mpd (music player daemon) is a minimalistic audio-playing server that can be accessed using a variety of clients, including those with command-line, web, and GUI interfaces.
Separating the GUI from the core of the audio player increases stability and decreases the chance for problems. I've never once had the mpd core crash, even though the GUI clients do sometimes crash. When my X server dies for whatever reason, my music continues playing while I fix things!
Additionally, you can do some very cool things, like copying or moving the mpd player state between networked computers. For instance, with the command 'mpmv desktop tvserver', I can move the currently playing song, the current position in the song, and the current playlist. With some occupancy sensors, your music can literally follow you around the house
My favorite GUI client is QMPDClient. It has a very powerful music library interface, including a: playlist; a queue within the playlist (to jump around the playlist); library, directory, and playlist views, with artist/album/track views. This is excellent, because I keep my music directories well organized, so the "Directory" view lets me take advantage of this easily (a feature that I've not found in other music library clients).
"working on a system that will allow cowboys to herd their cattle remotely via radio by singing commands and whispering into their ears and tracking movements by satellite and computer"
Looks like they're finally re-adapting that technology once reserved only for our most esteemed government leaders;)
The animal trials usually come before the human trials -- but I don't know if I'd consider any of our current heads of state still "human"...
Well its about time this issue becomes more widely recognized in government...
If you don't like whats on TV, DON'T WATCH IT.
If you don't want your child watching it, DON'T RELY ON TV AS A BABYSITTER.
"The text of the bill notes that the average child watches four hours of television a day" Uhhh, doesn't this seem a little much?? Subtracting school & sleep, that leaves 5 hours a day for other things (not even counting things like homework, meals, etc). Parents should be pushing their kids to spend this time doing *constructive* activities, such as those that inspire aspirations of becoming engineers, scientists, artists, etc... NOT activities that make 'stupid spoiled whore' seem like a desirable occupation
"With over 500 channels and video streaming, parents could use a little help monitoring what their kids watch when they are not in the room," The amount of content will only grow, and it is too difficult to categorize and rate every piece of video & audio, especially highly-paid-for items like advertisements. They are taking the blacklist approach, and as we all know, that will only work if you have the resources to maintain the list against all new and possible content. Rather, they (parents -- NOT GOVERNMENT) should be taking the whitelist approach, which, given an infinite content set, is far more realistic to successfully maintain.
Yeah, that means taking time out of your day to ensure that your kids are only watching content that you deem appropriate for them (and this obviously should change with their age and maturity). That means not sitting your kid in front of the TV while you go persue your own hobbies or work (imagine that: sacrificing for the sake of your family). Most families are not in situations where the parents must work round-the-clock to provide *basic* supplies for their kids -- if the parents' excuse is they must work instead of parenting, then perhaps they need to cut down on their spending for the sake of their childrens' upbringing: a kid needs a good parent more than the latest clothing, a big TV, or yearly vacations.
This is probably not news to most people here, but far too many Americans are quick to call for government censorship of TV/radio/internet/videogames/etc, rather than simply investing their OWN TIME into raising their kids.
Now, of course, we should, as always, still remain vigilant and make sure that this newfangled "parent-empowered" censorship isn't simply a masquerade for actual forced censorship (read: government censorship)...
Before committing to Subversion:) you may want to check out Mercurial (think of it as git-done-properly)
Mercurial does "merge tracking," though its not listed as that, it is just inherently part of the system. You can use something like the graphlog plugin (hg glog) to see a commit history with graphed merges.
I also like using the GUI log viewer (hg view) to view commits, branches, merges, and the details of each commit (it runs a program called 'hgk', which is similar to or related to 'gitk')
I've only scratched the surface of what can be done with Mercurial. I'd love to hear from some more advanced users on useful repository management methodology, and useful plugins/extensions for Mercurial.
I'll find an appropriate solution for you, but in exchange do I get your job? How about just 1 days worth of pay?
Seriously, I've seen more and more posts on slashdot recently with people asking for solutions to their problems at work... Isn't that what they pay *you* for?
I'm all for helping people out, but where is the line between problems whose solutions could help everyone, and those where it is clearly doing someone's work for them?
"The Republicans" didn't do a damn thing that I'd call special or a new trick--they simply used an existing tool (and no, its not diff or any other command-line tool):
Versionista monitors Web sites that you specify for edits. Our Web-based service records every change, clearly highlighting added or deleted words and sentences.
The Friday, July 11 version of the page says: "at great cost our troops have helped reduce violence in some areas of Iraq, but even those reductions do not get us below the unsustainable levels of violence of mid-2006."
The Monday, July 14 version spidered by Versionista says: "Our troops have heroically helped reduce civilian casualties in Iraq to early 2006 levels. This is a testament to our military's hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics, and enormous sacrifice by our troops and military families."
Satellite dishes make excellent directional 802.11 antennas. Just remove the existing LNB from the dish and replace it with a homemade antenna, like a biquad, tuned for your band-of-interest (i.e. 2.4GHz ISM for wi-fi). Make sure you get a powerful (high RX sensitivity & high TX power) wireless card with an external antenna jack
Alternatively, keep the LNB, get a DVB capture card (PCI models go for $20-$80+ new), and use the dish to get FTA (free to air) satellite TV. There are many communities for this kind of thing exactly, just search google for: FTA forum
I'd also take apart that digital receiver and reverse engineer the hardware as much as I could, just for kicks. When you've gotten your hour of fun out of it, gut it for parts and move on to the next interesting project.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a pretty insecure authentication mechanism, because it necessarily has to be simple -- so you'll want to use some obscurity as well.
Make sure that if the incorrect answer is given, the user is redirected to a 'login success' page that has minimal and outdated content.
They will quickly lose interest and leave.
If you redirect to a 'login error' page, then they may try harder to get in.
Another approach would be to distribute (multiple or a single) SSL client keys to all your neighbors.
Then its a simple matter to redirect users based on the key -- if they have it, they get the content; if they don't, they get the dummy page.
You'd be surprised by the ridiculous amount of pointless bills that are submitted in the House in the Senate.
I only just looked into it recently, and I was shocked! I'd love to see some real statistics, but probably a large percentage of all bills are things like:
"recognize So-and-So for their great contributions to This-and-That,"
"recognize Sponsor's-Home-Sports-Team for their great season,"
"rename building XYZ to So-and-So Memorial XYZ"
So I ask: WHY?
What the hell are we paying for?
Don't we have more SERIOUS problems now?
If legislation related to essential issues (e.g. financial crisis, energy crisis, education almost-crisis, etc) isn't being agreed upon, then they better keep talking about it until they figure it out! And until that point, I don't want to see any more pointless, frivolous bills.
Check it out: go to the Library of Congress site and search for bills sponsored (not necessarily co-sponsored, though) by a senator or congressman*
http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d110query.html
* the 'man' in 'congressman' refers to 'human' -- its definitely not 'congressperson'
Very often I see comments dismissing any reasons for not freely giving out any and all seemingly-trivial personal information...
Well, this is the perfect situation for justifying the desire for what is now often considered excessive privacy. While some information alone may not seem sensitive, the conclusions others' might draw about you from it, combined with other info (like your profile data), may indeed be worth protecting.
Of course, if no one gave out any information, the internet would be very blank... So clearly a balance between giving out personal info and linking that personal info together is necessary. For example, the only way I'd submit my playlists to Last.FM is if it were done in an anonymous fashion, such that my user account doesn't link back to me, my IP, or any other personally-identifying info. Otherwise, I'd be happy to include some profile info, but don't count on getting my playlist too!
This is exactly why I use linux...
[On a Q6600 with 4GB RAM] I have 10 virtual desktops, and on them I _concurrently_ run:
Firefox with >150 tabs (using Tree Style Tabs for nesting);
10+ instances of acrobat reader;
VMWare running Windows XP;
as well as instant messengers, IRC, audio player, multiple VLC video players, etc
Not to mention that in that VMWare (Windows XP guest), I run a HUGE electronics design software suite... and it actually loads and runs faster in VMWare than running in native Windows XP!
Windows could never even attempt to run all these programs concurrently, smoothly, without crashes, and without delays in-between using any given app.
2 processes should be fine... after all, 640K of memory should be enough for anybody ;)
Just like Comcast... I'm getting sick of this crap
If you get 250GB/month, then you're actually allowed a constant usage of 0.78mbps, regardless of whether you can burst up to 15mbps (or whatever).
Comcast internet service runs $50 to $70 on average, depending on the burst speed you get.
However, the limit is always 250GB/month. So doing the math, you're paying $65 to $90 per megabit/sec!
At any given datacenter, you can buy (100mbit-burstable) bandwidth at $5 per megabit/sec (price includes renting a server, rack space, power, and cooling).
Someone will of course respond "then don't use their service." Well, thats great, I'd love to. Unfortunately my government subsidy to Comcast gave Comcast a monopoly on the lines... and for some reason there are areas of the city that are "designated RCN" areas, while others are "designated Comcast" areas. What is this bullshit??
I'm angry at telecommunications companies.
Many states have 'in loco parentis' laws, which state that a school must take up some responsibilities of a parent.
According to wikipedia, it allows institutions such as colleges and schools to act in the best interests of the students as they see fit, although not allowing what would be considered violations of the students' civil liberties.
In my opinion, searching an electronic device, just like searching through a diary or similar, IS a violation of the students' civil liberties...
Some may argue that you have to search through their personal items in order to find out about other punishable things, in order to protect the child. However, that argument is easily applied to government, and it ends up with very bad, totalitarian results. Generally speaking, extremes are not a good choice.
Even worse are cases where the school punishes students for things they do off-campus. That is way out of line; its supposed to be the parents' job!
If the parents aren't being negligent, and the child is at the age where they can weigh consequences and make decent decisions by themselves, then theres no reason for the school to violate civil rights for the child's "own protection." Of course, with children its hard to be so cut-and-dry, since some are more mature than others at the same age, etc...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_loco_parentis
The obvious solution is to use public/private key authentication and disallow password logins.
This is much safer anyways, since your private key and your passphrase stays on your local machine always, so even if the server is compromised and the SSHd is bugged, no one will have immediate access to your login token.
Do government bail outs happen all the time, and its only recently that the term "bail out" has become popular? Or are all industries everywhere simultaneously going broke just now?
I don't follow the financial world much, so all of a sudden I see * industry bailouts over and over again... From an outsider's perspective, it kinda seems like a bandwagon
Where do I sign up to get bailed out of my personal company's (i.e. me) financial problems by the government?
Anyways, isn't bankruptcy supposed to be the "bail out," but with accountability instead of just writing large checks and calling it a successful bail out?
If anyone gets any government money, they ought to be held accountable for its use and for making sure that this situation never happens again.
I wish politicians, CEOs, and just the general public would start looking at the long term costs and benefits rather than focusing on immediate reward. Think of all the current worldwide problems we wouldn't have to worry about! Then again, thats much easier said than done...
Blackmail is such an ugly word...
I prefer "extortion." The "X" makes it sound cool
You must not have looked into NX very thoroughly... Particularly, these options:
EnableSessionShadowing: Each user can require to attach to an already running session.
EnableDesktopSharing: User can require to attach to the native display of the nodes.
I use NX to share my desktop session over my VPN, so that I can login with my laptop while I'm away from home.
Not only is NX very fast, but it also does not require a running program in the background (like x11vnc), since the SSH server doubles as an NX server if you login with user 'nx'.
My only complaint is that I can't then use public key auth to login to my own user from the 'nx' user (a limitation of the NX setup -- though frankly I don't see any reason why this shouldn't work... its probably just disabled for "security reasons")
My favorite is Oxiracetam. It behaves very much like a stimulant, but rather than increasing your heartrate, it seems like it instead increases your "mental motivation," if that makes any sense. When I take it, it almost is uncomfortable to be bored or not have anything to do.
For instance, the first time I took it, I noticed I was able to play complex drum exercises _MUCH_ faster than I normally can. However, while I was doing this, my heartrate was almost at resting rate.
Piracetam has a very subtle effect, but it is there if you really look. However, the effect from Oxiracetam is very noticable.
Aniracetam (just took some a few hours ago, actually) doesn't have nearly as much of an effect on me, although some people report it works very well. It also seems much shorter-acting than Oxiracetam (somewhere in the area of 3 hours). That seems to be how it is with Racetams -- everyones' experience is slightly different, and some people get nothing out of it.
For choline, I tried Alpha-GPC, but did not get any more after my first purchase, because it seems a bit too new and expensive. Instead, you can get a good daily dose of choline by eating 2-4 eggs, which are cheap and good for you. I've got some lecithin (extracted from egg yolks -- the part that has choline in it) on the way, and it is very inexpensive and very time-tested.
I believe Pramiracetam has so great an effect (relative to other Racetams anyway) that it is banned from the Olympic games. The hardest part for these less-common Racetams is finding a cheap, reliable, and _safe_ source for them. Any suggestions?
I recommend Piracetam: the first Nootropic ("smart drug").
It is extremely safe, and is widely used in Europe to help reverse the effects of aging and to help against the deterioration of memory, among other things (note: I am not a doctor).
There are numerous forums and communities on nootropics, both for anti-aging and productivity-boosting needs. However, make sure you take the advice from those places with the appropriately-sized grain of salt, and always double-check everything with a proper medical resource (i.e. peer-reviewed studies).
I won't get into the details here, because I already did that in an older post (related to stimulants, but it is nonetheless relevant here too). Yes, I guess this qualifies as karma whoring ;)
My previous post on Piracetam: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=562684&cid=23523554
Wikipedia on Piracetam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracetam
Erowid on Nootropics: http://www.erowid.org/smarts/
The reason Ubuntu is so popular is because they took a standardized, stable, flexible, but up-to-date base (Debian) and took care of the desktop-oriented customization that a Debian user would normally have to do manually. Then they started filling in the holes in the UI, which trickled back to Debian of course.
The reason Red Hat is no longer popular (and I don't know why it ever was, since Debian has almost always been this good) is, in my opinion, because the packaging system is way too open and not nearly standardized enough. Although they have been fixing this in the recent years, when you run a Red Hat based system (Fedora, Centos, etc), you seem to end up installing packages from random places.
From Debian, if you stick with the official repositories (which is possible since they are very thorough and extensive), you are pretty much guaranteed that all your packages have passed through a standardized system where they are checked for problems, inter-dependencies, and are all compiled with the same methodology.
Additionally, Debian's seemingly-overbearing policies on legal issues are actually a good thing, as long as they have enough developers (and they do): as long as you have your "gold standard" distribution where every package meets very strict rules, you can always branch out from there by adding other trusted repositories or doing what Ubuntu has done. However, if you start from a "messy" packaging system / distribution where anything goes, its much harder to select the "standardized" subset of those packages.
Finally, Debian's developer base is very large, diverse, and relatively unified in their efforts, and their organization is *very* democratic and user-driven. There is no one central authority that has total and permanent control over the distribution. While this has the possibility for failure, they've done it in a way that seems to have worked out very well. In contrast, Red Hat is a corporation that has a vested interest in getting customers to pay for support contracts, while the Red Hat based distributions are more numerous and don't have nearly as much manpower (note: purely based on speculation). I don't know how much penetration Debian has in the enterprise, but if someone stepped up to provide paid Debian support, I think they could make a lot of money...
Anyways thats just been my view. I honestly don't mean to offend anyone who really likes Red Hat -- I just feel that Debian's packaging system is much more powerful, standardized, up-to-date, and trustworthy (the key being meeting all of these points, and not sacrificing one for another -- say more up-to-date for less standardization, etc).
Please feel free to correct me -- I am interested to hear a Red Hat admin's point-of-view on the issue.
I say this is a good thing, but we shouldn't stop there. I'd say everyone's car should have [hidden] video cameras...
Anything that happens on public ground, especially involving public servants (i.e. police), should be considered to be recorded by the public. Privacy in public is an outdated concept, and has never truly existed anyways (so give it up). Someone will be watching -- the question is, is everyone watching, or is it a one-sided situation (like the CCTV system in the UK)?
Events taking place on public ground should never come down to "his word vs. mine." In cases where this involves police, then the police officers' word is always given more credit than the citizens'. Now while this is probably a reasonable bias to have, it neglects the fact that police officers are just humans too, and are themselves just as influenced by biases as anyone else. Video recordings have no bias...
This is essentially becoming a reality, especially considering that most everyone's phone has a camera. Let's see what happens the next time there is an instance of abuse of authority, say during a traffic stop or what-have-you...
As Marge Simpson said...
You know, the courts may not be working any more, but as long as everyone is videotaping everyone else, justice will be done.
This may be a little off-topic, but I'd like to recommend mpd.
mpd (music player daemon) is a minimalistic audio-playing server that can be accessed using a variety of clients, including those with command-line, web, and GUI interfaces.
Separating the GUI from the core of the audio player increases stability and decreases the chance for problems. I've never once had the mpd core crash, even though the GUI clients do sometimes crash. When my X server dies for whatever reason, my music continues playing while I fix things!
Additionally, you can do some very cool things, like copying or moving the mpd player state between networked computers. For instance, with the command 'mpmv desktop tvserver', I can move the currently playing song, the current position in the song, and the current playlist. With some occupancy sensors, your music can literally follow you around the house
My favorite GUI client is QMPDClient. It has a very powerful music library interface, including a: playlist; a queue within the playlist (to jump around the playlist); library, directory, and playlist views, with artist/album/track views. This is excellent, because I keep my music directories well organized, so the "Directory" view lets me take advantage of this easily (a feature that I've not found in other music library clients).
And yes, mpd does work on MacOS :)
MPD: http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Wiki
QMPDClient: http://havtknut.tihlde.org/qmpdclient/
Found a video describing the planetarium tech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJewbEIzesE
"working on a system that will allow cowboys to herd their cattle remotely via radio by singing commands and whispering into their ears and tracking movements by satellite and computer"
Looks like they're finally re-adapting that technology once reserved only for our most esteemed government leaders ;)
The animal trials usually come before the human trials -- but I don't know if I'd consider any of our current heads of state still "human" ...
Well its about time this issue becomes more widely recognized in government...
If you don't like whats on TV, DON'T WATCH IT.
If you don't want your child watching it, DON'T RELY ON TV AS A BABYSITTER.
"The text of the bill notes that the average child watches four hours of television a day"
Uhhh, doesn't this seem a little much?? Subtracting school & sleep, that leaves 5 hours a day for other things (not even counting things like homework, meals, etc).
Parents should be pushing their kids to spend this time doing *constructive* activities, such as those that inspire aspirations of becoming engineers, scientists, artists, etc... NOT activities that make 'stupid spoiled whore' seem like a desirable occupation
"With over 500 channels and video streaming, parents could use a little help monitoring what their kids watch when they are not in the room,"
The amount of content will only grow, and it is too difficult to categorize and rate every piece of video & audio, especially highly-paid-for items like advertisements.
They are taking the blacklist approach, and as we all know, that will only work if you have the resources to maintain the list against all new and possible content.
Rather, they (parents -- NOT GOVERNMENT) should be taking the whitelist approach, which, given an infinite content set, is far more realistic to successfully maintain.
Yeah, that means taking time out of your day to ensure that your kids are only watching content that you deem appropriate for them (and this obviously should change with their age and maturity). That means not sitting your kid in front of the TV while you go persue your own hobbies or work (imagine that: sacrificing for the sake of your family). Most families are not in situations where the parents must work round-the-clock to provide *basic* supplies for their kids -- if the parents' excuse is they must work instead of parenting, then perhaps they need to cut down on their spending for the sake of their childrens' upbringing: a kid needs a good parent more than the latest clothing, a big TV, or yearly vacations.
This is probably not news to most people here, but far too many Americans are quick to call for government censorship of TV/radio/internet/videogames/etc, rather than simply investing their OWN TIME into raising their kids.
Now, of course, we should, as always, still remain vigilant and make sure that this newfangled "parent-empowered" censorship isn't simply a masquerade for actual forced censorship (read: government censorship)...
Ooh, repositories... holy war turf!
Before committing to Subversion :) you may want to check out Mercurial (think of it as git-done-properly)
Mercurial does "merge tracking," though its not listed as that, it is just inherently part of the system.
You can use something like the graphlog plugin (hg glog) to see a commit history with graphed merges.
I also like using the GUI log viewer (hg view) to view commits, branches, merges, and the details of each commit
(it runs a program called 'hgk', which is similar to or related to 'gitk')
I've only scratched the surface of what can be done with Mercurial. I'd love to hear from some more advanced users on useful repository management methodology, and useful plugins/extensions for Mercurial.
Mercurial:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercurial_(software)
http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/
Comparison of Subversion, CVS, Bazaar, and Mercurial:
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-09-2007/jw-09-versioncontrol.html?page=1
Graphlog for Mercurial:
http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/index.cgi/GraphlogExtension
I'll find an appropriate solution for you, but in exchange do I get your job? How about just 1 days worth of pay?
Seriously, I've seen more and more posts on slashdot recently with people asking for solutions to their problems at work...
Isn't that what they pay *you* for?
I'm all for helping people out, but where is the line between problems whose solutions could help everyone, and those where it is clearly doing someone's work for them?
In unrelated news, RIAA sues Europe
"But your honor, its not a bittorrent client, its just my nano data center..."
"The Republicans" didn't do a damn thing that I'd call special or a new trick--they simply used an existing tool (and no, its not diff or any other command-line tool):
Versionista monitors Web sites that you specify for edits. Our Web-based service records every change, clearly highlighting added or deleted words and sentences.
I personally favor the Fingerlicans...
...although, the Tastycrats do make a good point about that titanium tax...
Here are the goods from TFA:
The Friday, July 11 version of the page says:
"at great cost our troops have helped reduce violence in some areas of Iraq, but even those reductions do not get us below the unsustainable levels of violence of mid-2006."
The Monday, July 14 version spidered by Versionista says:
"Our troops have heroically helped reduce civilian casualties in Iraq to early 2006 levels. This is a testament to our military's hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics, and enormous sacrifice by our troops and military families."
Satellite dishes make excellent directional 802.11 antennas.
Just remove the existing LNB from the dish and replace it with a homemade antenna, like a biquad, tuned for your band-of-interest (i.e. 2.4GHz ISM for wi-fi). Make sure you get a powerful (high RX sensitivity & high TX power) wireless card with an external antenna jack
Here is one project write-up, though I'm sure there are many others:
http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/15/how-to-build-a-wifi-biquad-dish-antenna/
Alternatively, keep the LNB, get a DVB capture card (PCI models go for $20-$80+ new), and use the dish to get FTA (free to air) satellite TV.
There are many communities for this kind of thing exactly, just search google for: FTA forum
I'd also take apart that digital receiver and reverse engineer the hardware as much as I could, just for kicks.
When you've gotten your hour of fun out of it, gut it for parts and move on to the next interesting project.