The best thing you can do is to complain to the developers at X.org, GNOME, and KDE (and whatever other desktop systems you know of). They need to hear this stuff, from many quarters, before they'll actually do anything about it. I think that X.org is probably the best place to start, given that development-oriented nature of the fork.
As a slight correction, the copy-paste problem you describe isn't a Linux issue; it's an X Window System issue.
If staff had any real clue how powerful (and cost-effective) the IT people are, they wouldn't be firing them this way. But, they'd rather fire someone to save cash now, than keep them on to save the downtime and related expenses later.
I have one to beat that. Someone once sent my grandfather a letter addressed "Bob Vickers, Ohio River". He worked on the river most of his life. And he did get the letter. Apparently, anyone who had worked on the river for any length of time, knew who he was.
My best friend was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the early 80's. In his case, it was clearly genetic: his mother and all his siblings are all either genius or sub-genius, chain smokers, and borderline. In his particular case, though, his full-blown schizophrenia was let loose by a cocaine mickey that a vengeful co-worker slipped him at a company party. For the next week, he was prone to dangerous mood swings, saying things that had nothing to do with reality or the situation at hand, and just general flipped-out-ness. When he finally checked in to the hospital, his diagnosis was easy; unfortunately, learning to live with it was the toughest thing he ever went through.
His symptoms all came down to one core problem: the inability to distinguish reality from the bubblings of his subconcious mind. At its worst, a demonic vision could paralyze him with fear. Along with the schizophrenia came the occasional paranoia, not necessarily unfounded: when you're dangerous, they really are out to get you, before you hurt someone.
He learned to control it through meditative breathing exercises and martial arts training, specifically jujitsu. If he could feel an attack approaching, and could get away soon enough to do his breathing exercises, he could actually stop it before it got out of control. On the other hand, if he had a bad day, and an attack hit him as he drove home, he could only focus his mind so that he could tell the difference between the real cars and the imaginary ones. When that happened, he was down for a week.
Last year, he took his own life during a schizophrenic rage. I don't know everything that happened. But the evidence that he smashed his computer beforehand is enough for me to know his mental state when he did it.
My advice to Jagercola and the other family members: Be very permissive. She will probably say some very hurtful things along the way. She may even believe what she says, at least while she's saying it. For your own sake, and for hers, remember that she doesn't know what she's talking about when she says it. There will be good times, and tough times. The more unshakeable you are, the better chance she has of living as normal a life as possible.
If you live in the United States, DO NOT accept this wager. It is a violation of Securities and Exchange Commission rules to gamble on the price of stocks, except by investing in them.
It's one thing to be concerned about uptime and clogging the network. It's another to go into hysterics. I got the clear impression from the article that a security scan would reveal things like Kazaa and BitTorrent, that people were running without authorization.
It's a security scan, not a total attack. The scan is to look for holes and analyze them. That in itself doesn't take very much network traffic per machine. If that is going to clog the network, they need to re-organize it anyway.
Why are the ops guys so nervous? Could it be that a security scan would show how careless they've been with their systems?
On the other hand, when software manufacturers try to give our computers some 'personality', we tend to vehemently react against it--witness Microsoft's attempts with the much-loathed Bob and Clippy.
It wasn't just personality. It was the kind of personality that left you wondering what it had been smoking. After a while, you realized just how disconnected from reality it was, and how pointless rationality was in its realm.
The whole point of the ancient ziggurat, was to put the person who climbed it closer to heaven. I suggest you do a Google search and read about the history of the ziggurat.
And in the future, read the comments before reading their responses. It may make the responses more understandable.
NetStumbler is not open source. Indeed it contains a lot of code that was developed under Non-Disclosure Agreements, and the source cannot be released to the general public - if I do so then several teams of lawyers will show up on my doorstep.
What about the RIAA and FBI agents showing up on our doorsteps, just for using it?
Everything grinds to a halt, buried in bureaucratic largesse and seventeen pounds of paperwork just to buy a car.
The global warming doomsday crowd has pretty well demonstrated that they will never be satisfied. Why do we even bother paying attention to them? It only encourages them.
What's the poorest example (preferably current) you've seen of human-machine interaction? What can we learn from it? I'm thinking specifically of GUI's, but I know there are probably zillions of bad HMI's out there.
I had an old Dodge Charger that was very poorly designed inside. Some gauges were blocked from view by the steering wheel, the heater controls were nearly out of reach, the radio was even farther away... It made me appreciate my Honda Civic CRX that much more when I got it.
If you believe your Unix computer has been affected by these intrusions, please contact the Information Security Services office (650-723-2911 or security@stanford.edu). Please include the name or IP address of the affected machine, as well as any compromised userIDs.
Never mind the compromised machines. Let's try social engineering instead. I know! We'll make a security alert, get it on Slashdot, and the poor trusting souls will beat a path to our POP3 account!
Seriously, you might as well just hand them your hard drive and credit card number.
You'd end up shifting your hand from time to time since it's uncomfortable, in the long run it's more comforatble.
*bzzzzt* Wrong! That discomfort is a warning that you're doing damage to your body. By the time you get around to doing something about the pain, the damage is done.
I was working graveyard shift at the time, so I was asleep when it hit. My UPS started squawking at me when the power failed. My cable modem showed no signal, and I decided not to bother. Power down on both (ext3 is nice!) and just went back to bed. When I woke up to start my day (night), everything was back.
I still would have had to go to work that night. The factory where I was working, had been deemed "critical" by the US gov't when it was built, so it has its very own power plant, which is always warmed up and ready. And they found out that day that it was still in working order.
Yes, GEM is nearly forgotten, but it was not the first (so suggests the linked page in the article). The honor of being first belongs to the Alto, from Xerox PARC.
So you're saying that, even though you never gave permission to MCI to look at your phone bill, it's OK, because you did give permission for AT&T to collect that information?
Slashdot Mirror
So a Mac user can only paste?
The best thing you can do is to complain to the developers at X.org, GNOME, and KDE (and whatever other desktop systems you know of). They need to hear this stuff, from many quarters, before they'll actually do anything about it. I think that X.org is probably the best place to start, given that development-oriented nature of the fork.
As a slight correction, the copy-paste problem you describe isn't a Linux issue; it's an X Window System issue.
If staff had any real clue how powerful (and cost-effective) the IT people are, they wouldn't be firing them this way. But, they'd rather fire someone to save cash now, than keep them on to save the downtime and related expenses later.
I have one to beat that. Someone once sent my grandfather a letter addressed "Bob Vickers, Ohio River". He worked on the river most of his life. And he did get the letter. Apparently, anyone who had worked on the river for any length of time, knew who he was.
And my friend's son-in-law installed it while I fixed his computer. Everyone thought they got the better end of the deal.
My best friend was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the early 80's. In his case, it was clearly genetic: his mother and all his siblings are all either genius or sub-genius, chain smokers, and borderline. In his particular case, though, his full-blown schizophrenia was let loose by a cocaine mickey that a vengeful co-worker slipped him at a company party. For the next week, he was prone to dangerous mood swings, saying things that had nothing to do with reality or the situation at hand, and just general flipped-out-ness. When he finally checked in to the hospital, his diagnosis was easy; unfortunately, learning to live with it was the toughest thing he ever went through.
His symptoms all came down to one core problem: the inability to distinguish reality from the bubblings of his subconcious mind. At its worst, a demonic vision could paralyze him with fear. Along with the schizophrenia came the occasional paranoia, not necessarily unfounded: when you're dangerous, they really are out to get you, before you hurt someone.
He learned to control it through meditative breathing exercises and martial arts training, specifically jujitsu. If he could feel an attack approaching, and could get away soon enough to do his breathing exercises, he could actually stop it before it got out of control. On the other hand, if he had a bad day, and an attack hit him as he drove home, he could only focus his mind so that he could tell the difference between the real cars and the imaginary ones. When that happened, he was down for a week.
Last year, he took his own life during a schizophrenic rage. I don't know everything that happened. But the evidence that he smashed his computer beforehand is enough for me to know his mental state when he did it.
My advice to Jagercola and the other family members: Be very permissive. She will probably say some very hurtful things along the way. She may even believe what she says, at least while she's saying it. For your own sake, and for hers, remember that she doesn't know what she's talking about when she says it. There will be good times, and tough times. The more unshakeable you are, the better chance she has of living as normal a life as possible.
Multiple personality disorder is a distinct illness.
If you live in the United States, DO NOT accept this wager. It is a violation of Securities and Exchange Commission rules to gamble on the price of stocks, except by investing in them.
#1 rule of gun safety: Always assume the gun is loaded. No gun safety instructor will ever tell you otherwise.
What next? Crosswalks that take a picture of you when you jaywalk--even if it's midnight and there's no traffic?
Heh. I get it.
It's one thing to be concerned about uptime and clogging the network. It's another to go into hysterics. I got the clear impression from the article that a security scan would reveal things like Kazaa and BitTorrent, that people were running without authorization.
It's a security scan, not a total attack. The scan is to look for holes and analyze them. That in itself doesn't take very much network traffic per machine. If that is going to clog the network, they need to re-organize it anyway.
Why are the ops guys so nervous? Could it be that a security scan would show how careless they've been with their systems?
On the other hand, when software manufacturers try to give our computers some 'personality', we tend to vehemently react against it--witness Microsoft's attempts with the much-loathed Bob and Clippy.
It wasn't just personality. It was the kind of personality that left you wondering what it had been smoking. After a while, you realized just how disconnected from reality it was, and how pointless rationality was in its realm.
Things have changed a bit since then!
Yeah, the Slashdot effect hadn't been invented yet.
What flamebait.
The whole point of the ancient ziggurat, was to put the person who climbed it closer to heaven. I suggest you do a Google search and read about the history of the ziggurat.
And in the future, read the comments before reading their responses. It may make the responses more understandable.
Surely, if they created a tower that reaches to heaven, there ought to be some rocks lying around.
There are rocks lying around. Ever heard of a ziggurat?
From his weblog:
NetStumbler is not open source. Indeed it contains a lot of code that was developed under Non-Disclosure Agreements, and the source cannot be released to the general public - if I do so then several teams of lawyers will show up on my doorstep.
What about the RIAA and FBI agents showing up on our doorsteps, just for using it?
Everything grinds to a halt, buried in bureaucratic largesse and seventeen pounds of paperwork just to buy a car.
The global warming doomsday crowd has pretty well demonstrated that they will never be satisfied. Why do we even bother paying attention to them? It only encourages them.
What's the poorest example (preferably current) you've seen of human-machine interaction? What can we learn from it? I'm thinking specifically of GUI's, but I know there are probably zillions of bad HMI's out there.
I had an old Dodge Charger that was very poorly designed inside. Some gauges were blocked from view by the steering wheel, the heater controls were nearly out of reach, the radio was even farther away... It made me appreciate my Honda Civic CRX that much more when I got it.
If you believe your Unix computer has been affected by these intrusions, please contact the Information Security Services office (650-723-2911 or security@stanford.edu). Please include the name or IP address of the affected machine, as well as any compromised userIDs.
Never mind the compromised machines. Let's try social engineering instead. I know! We'll make a security alert, get it on Slashdot, and the poor trusting souls will beat a path to our POP3 account!
Seriously, you might as well just hand them your hard drive and credit card number.
You'd end up shifting your hand from time to time since it's uncomfortable, in the long run it's more comforatble.
*bzzzzt* Wrong! That discomfort is a warning that you're doing damage to your body. By the time you get around to doing something about the pain, the damage is done.
I was working graveyard shift at the time, so I was asleep when it hit. My UPS started squawking at me when the power failed. My cable modem showed no signal, and I decided not to bother. Power down on both (ext3 is nice!) and just went back to bed. When I woke up to start my day (night), everything was back.
I still would have had to go to work that night. The factory where I was working, had been deemed "critical" by the US gov't when it was built, so it has its very own power plant, which is always warmed up and ready. And they found out that day that it was still in working order.
Then she can find out how truly nice and insightful the Mongol-Tartar... uh, Slashdot community can be. (Once the trolls are filtered out, that is.)
Yes, GEM is nearly forgotten, but it was not the first (so suggests the linked page in the article). The honor of being first belongs to the Alto, from Xerox PARC.
So you're saying that, even though you never gave permission to MCI to look at your phone bill, it's OK, because you did give permission for AT&T to collect that information?