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Living Room / Re: FOI Documents Show TOR Undernet Beyond the Reach of the Federal Investigators
« Last post by 40hz on June 14, 2012, 07:49 AM »Can you spell: Black Flag?
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Looks like the Sad Mac-daddydave (June 11, 2012, 07:24 AM)
Intro to Computer Science (cs101)
Building a Search Engine
with Professor David Evans - University of Virginia
Class Summary
In this course you will learn key concepts in computer science and learn how to write your own computer programs in the context of building a web crawler.
What do I need to know?
There is no prior programming knowledge needed for this course. Beginners welcome!
What will I learn?
At the end of this course you will have a rock solid foundation for programming in Python and built a working web crawler. This course will prepare you to take many of Udacity's more advanced courses.
The responsibility is arguably not "all in good hands".-IainB (June 08, 2012, 09:28 AM)
So what's worse than pure, unmitigated evil?-TaoPhoenix (June 08, 2012, 10:05 AM)
The umount Command
The umount command is used to manually unmount filesystems on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.
A filesystem in this context is a hierarchy of directories that is located on a single partition (logically independent section of a hard disk drive) or other device, such as a CDROM, DVD, floppy disk or USB key drive, and has a single filesystem type (i.e., method for organizing data).
Well, I finally ordered the HP Proliant Microserver 40NL with 8 GB of RAM and 4 x 2 TB drives. I'm kind of leaning towards FreeNAS, but undecided.-Renegade (June 08, 2012, 10:51 AM)
GlusterFS is an open source, distributed file system capable of scaling to several petabytes (actually, 72 brontobytes!) and handling thousands of clients. GlusterFS clusters together storage building blocks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect, aggregating disk and memory resources and managing data in a single global namespace. GlusterFS is based on a stackable user space design and can deliver exceptional performance for diverse workloads.
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Publication Standards Part 1: The Fragmented Present
by Nick Disabato
ebooks are a new frontier, but they look a lot like the old web frontier, with HTML, CSS, and XML underpinning the main ebook standard, ePub. Yet there are key distinctions between ebook publishing’s current problems and what the web standards movement faced. The web was founded without an intent to disrupt any particular industry; it had no precedent, no analogy. E-reading antagonizes a large, powerful industry that’s scared of what this new way of reading brings—and they’re either actively fighting open standards or simply ignoring them. In part one of a two-part series in this issue, Nick Disabato examines the explosion in reading, explores how content is freeing itself from context, and mines the broken ebook landscape in search of business logic and a way out of the present mess.
Publication Standards Part 2: A Standard Future
by Nick Disabato
The internet is disrupting many content-focused industries, and the publishing landscape is beginning its own transformation in response. Tools haven’t yet been developed to properly, semantically export long-form writing. Most books are encumbered by Digital Rights Management (DRM), a piracy-encouraging practice long since abandoned by the music industry. In the second article of a two-part series in this issue, Nick Disabato discusses the ramifications of these practices for various publishers and proposes a way forward, so we can all continue sharing information openly, in a way that benefits publishers, writers, and readers alike.
Libraries: Where It All Went Wrong
by Nathan Torkington
It was my pleasure to address the National and State Librarians of Australasia on the eve of their strategic planning meeting in Auckland at the start of November this year. I have been involved in libraries for a few years now, and am always humbled by the expertise, hard work, and dedication that librarians of all stripes have. Yet it’s no revelation that libraries aren’t the great sources of knowledge and information on the web that they were in the pre-Internet days. I wanted to push on that and challenge the National and State librarians to think better about the Internet.
I prefaced my talk by saying that none of this is original, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise. I merely wanted to bring the different strands together in a way that showed them how to think about the opportunities afforded to libraries for the digital age.
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Bill Gates and Microsoft were caught flat-footed by the take-up of the Internet. They had built an incredibly profitable and strong company which treated computers as disconnected islands: Microsoft software ran on the computers, but didn’t help connect them. Gates and Microsoft soon realized the Internet was here to stay and rushed to fix Windows to deal with it, but they never made up for that initial wrong-footing.
At least part of the reason for this was because they had this fantastic cash cow in Windows, the island software. They were victims of what Clayton Christenson calls the Innovator’s Dilemma: they couldn’t think past their own successes to build the next big thing, the thing that’d eat their lunch. They still haven’t got there: Bing, their rival to Google, has eaten $5.5B since 2009 and it isn’t profitable yet.
I’m telling you this because libraries are like Microsoft.
At one point you had a critical role: you were one of the few places to conduct research. When academics and the public needed to do research into the documentary record, they’d come to you. As you now know, that monopoly has been broken.
The Internet, led by Google, is the start and end of most people’s research. It’s good enough to meet their needs, which is great news for the casual researcher but bad news for you.
Now they don’t think of you at all.
Oh yes, I know all the reasons why the web and Google are no replacement for a healthy research library. I know the critical importance of documentary heritage. But it’s not me you’re talking to at budget time. It’s the public, through the politicians.
They love public libraries, in our country at least. Every time a council tries to institute borrowing fees or close libraries, they get shot down. But someone tries, at least once a year. And England is a cautionary tale that even public libraries aren’t safe.
You need to be useful as well as important. Being useful helps you to be important. You need a story they can understand about why you’re funded.
Oh, I know, you have thought about digital a lot. You’ve got digitisation projects. You’re aggregating metadata. You’re offering AnyQuestions-type services where people can email a librarian.
But these are bolt-ons. You’ve added digital after the fact. You probably have special digital groups, probably (hopefully) made up of younger people than the usual library employee.
Congratulations, you just reproduced Microsoft’s strategy: let’s build a few digital bolt-ons for our existing products. Then let’s have some advance R&D guys working on the future while the rest of us get on with it. But think about that for a second. What are the rest of us working on, if those young kids are working on the future? Ah, it must be the past.
So what you’ve effectively done is double-down on the past.
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Then when someone asks “why do we tip all these millions into this?” or “doesn’t Google do that already?”, your relevance is your answer.
You must do this. Libraries are the homes of critical thought, of long-term cultural preservation, and of democratic access to knowledge. This can’t end with the Internet.
I just want to be on a fast track : going through all those manuals just to get what i want is a tedious work considering i am messaging from a mobile.-hulkbuster (June 04, 2012, 08:42 AM)
your request - and assuming you know all the other things you should understand before you dither with your BOOT.INI 
- this is what the link Ath provided you with has to say about it:Technical details
Booting
FreeDOS can be booted from a hard drive, live CD, USB flash drive or floppy disk. It can also be run using virtualization software like Virtual PC and VirtualBox or emulation software like Bochs and QEMU.
To use the Windows Boot Menu the following line can be added to 2K/XP's C:\BOOT.INI:
C:\FDOSBOOT.BIN="FreeDOS"
To boot using GRUB something similar to the following can be added to menu.lst:
title FreeDOS # Anything you want
root hd(x,y) # x = device and y = partition on which FreeDOS resides
chainloader /kernel.sys # Boots FreeDOS's bootloader
They told you that they wouldn't do any evil, and time and time again, they do it.-Renegade (June 03, 2012, 10:45 AM)
The Scorpion and the Frog
One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.
The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn't see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.
Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.
"Hellooo Mr. Frog!" called the scorpion across the water, "Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?"
"Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?" asked the frog hesitantly.
"Because," the scorpion replied, "If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!"
Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. "What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!"
"This is true," agreed the scorpion, "But then I wouldn't be able to get to the other side of the river!"
"Alright then...how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?" said the frog.
"Ahh...," crooned the scorpion, "Because you see, once you've taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!"
So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog's back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog's soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.
Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog's back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.
"You fool!" croaked the frog, "Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?"
The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog's back.
"I could not help myself. It is my nature."
Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.
There needs to be another antitrust suit against Microsoft. Once again we find them taking technical measures to prevent people from using non-Microsoft software on their computer equipment.-SeraphimLabs (June 02, 2012, 10:28 PM)
A friend told me that my perspective on a lot of things would change once she was born. He's right. Some perspectives are changing.-Renegade (June 03, 2012, 09:55 AM)
When someone asked me for a biographical sketch I was a bit confused and embarrassed so I answered lightly: "Most of my life was spent in trying to figure out how to do a $50.00 project for 50 cents, and the remainder of my time was spent in trying to scrounge up the 50 cents."
No doubt, many of us identify with this statement. Although mildly amusing, it is painfully true. Few of us can produce the ready cash for those projects that may very well mean more to the inner person than does that which we do daily for a living. The result is that we learn to do the impossible by the most improbable and impractical means, but the resulting success is rewarding beyond measure.
That lack of cash that presents itself as an obstacle is really only the medium of exchange for those items of material and equipment we think we need. Actually, a whole list of apparent obstacles holds us back, but the lack of ready cash is the easiest obstacle to recognize and to discuss. As a result there is often too much discussion and too little practical work done. What is really needed is to put the whole matter into perspective so that apparent obstacles can be put aside and we can get on with the business at hand.
You'll note that I said "we think we need" and "apparent obstacles ". It is interesting to note that most of our best ideas meet with opposition in our own minds as quickly as we conceive them. The objections we raise usually seem so reasonable that much of what we might do never gets done. If you don't want to do a project just write down the first dozen or so thoughts that come to your mind and you will have at least a half dozen good excuses. If that doesn't do the trick just toss the idea to the experts and they will usually be happy to kill it for you. If you really want to do it, though, it is most likely that you will find that it does not really cost very much and it is not nearly as technical and dangerous as established experts would have you believe.
Now I don't mean that you should just throw caution to the wind and just light a match or throw a switch and see what happens. There is never a need to proceed foolishly in blind ignorance.
Acquiring knowledge is a relatively straight forward process, and so is the development of manual skill. You can know what others know, and you can do what they do. Your level of performance is determined by a combination of opportunity, energy expended and available resource.
You can provide your own opportunity, and you can decide how diligently you will apply yourself. So, we must deal with the problem of resources which is no small matter if you are the bird with 50 cents who needs $50.00 worth of stuff! Nevertheless, it can be done, so let's get with it while we are yet young and eager. Reduce the Technology
Since the whole problem is really a matter of determining the difference between what we think we need and what we really need, the first step is to reduce the technology. You will remember from your arithmetic lessons that they tried to teach you to reduce a fraction to its lowest common denominator and to reduce an equation to simple terms. This is much like what must be done to the problem at hand, and it is in itself a delightful exercise. I would urge at this point that you refer to a comprehensive dictionary where you will find that the word "reduce" has at least a dozen distinct definitions and uses. Each of them applies in some way to these matters, so you will be sure to gain from a brief study of them.
Ironically, the reduction of a technology requires a rather full knowledge of it, but you must not let that become an obstacle. Your mind is surely as capable as most, and some have done wonders with even less mental ability. Acquiring the knowledge you need is more of a process of sifting through information than it is learning, so you'll have little trouble unless you try to acquire encyclopedia-like knowledge before you do any work. In this case, it is the excess of useless information that is the real obstacle, so confine your initial study to what is truly basic and fundamental.
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Most everything evil on this planet in this century has been implemented under the guise of "security." Keep fighting the bastards, I say.-zridling (June 02, 2012, 04:09 AM)
MATE is a window manager based on gnome 2 source code.Gnome 2 is not a window manager.-mahesh2k (June 02, 2012, 10:32 AM)-Tuxman (June 02, 2012, 10:35 AM)
* wraith808 shrugs-wraith808 (June 01, 2012, 06:07 PM)
UEFI and Windows 8: is this bad news for GNU/Linux?
Mon, 2011-10-31 04:08 -- Gary Richmond
There are times when I think that there is a special, darkened room at Microsoft peopled by a bunch of guys who seem to have nothing better to do than sit and think up some new wheeze to nobble the opposition. The rap sheet is an inditment in itself: trusted computing, internet driving licenses, DRM, bullying hardware vendors and attempting to strong arm sovereign nation states. You wouldn't think the list could get any bigger. It just has; but then, recidivism in incurable. It may not, as has often proved in the past, come to anything but if it does it would be a problematical for GNU/Linux. The irony is that it may not actually be intentional, but then, the universe is littered with the victims of the law of unintended consequences. So, what's the Hydra's latest head? UEFI. That's what.
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Much as it galls me to say it, for once Microsoft's motives may not be intentionally sinister. Essentially, the technology is designed to protect against rootkits, malware and other low-level attacks by preventing executables and drivers from being loaded unless they carry a cryptographic signature courtesy of a dedicated UEFI signing key. This would not constitute a specific attack on GNU/Linux as such. After all, secure booting won't allow even Windows users to load Windows 7 either. So, anyone who doesn't want/like Windows 8 won't have the option, unlike predecessors, to revert to an earlier release as people did with Vista and XP. See the electronic landfill sites fill up. (It would be interesting to know if using WUBI or EasyBCD to get the Windows bootloader to dual boot GNU/Linux distros would work with Windows 8. Askubuntu thinks so).
On that reading, Microsoft is spitting in the eye of their own customer base and it occurs to me that Microsoft's secure boot would also prevent Windows users from using recovery and diagnostic software too (though frankly, I can't muster much sympathy for people who pay for the privilege of being persistently shafted. They're being digitally bitch slapped.)
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To balance up things a bit, it has be argued that this is all an hysterical over reaction; a piece of FUD from the FOSS community. Ed Bott thinks so. He argues that Microsoft has no need to trifle with OSes like GNU/Linux that occupy less than five percent of the market, that it will always be niche and that the inability to boot it under UEFI will generate a deluge of irate calls to hardware vendor's support helplines and thus seriously erode razor-thin profit margins on each PC they sell. I actually think that's a very fair point but it fails to address that fact that if Microsoft insist that vendors will not be able to ship Windows 8 without their logo unless they enable secure boot and lock it down then profit margins really would nosedive. They would evaporate.
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One final thought: it might not be a bad idea to "stockpile" one very high spec laptop/desktop with a traditional BIOS to temporarily stave off the evil day when you have to bite the UEFI bullet. That should at least future proof matters for quite a few years and if things turn out well the UEFI hurdle will be cleared. I had planned to postpone a purchase of a new laptop until November next year. I might just bring that date forward.
In the meantime I agree with the runes of the blogsphere in the last few weeks. UEFI is a clear and present danger, intended or otherwise. We should be worried but it's not yet quite time to hit the panic alarm and start shouting rape. Not just yet. It all comes down to how the OEMS react so I'm keeping my batteries (and my bank account) fully charged. Just in case.
Problem is about bootloader which will require each linux or any UNIX Or BSD distro to sign up to sysdev and get a key. This is where conflict starts. This has nothing to do with hardware vendor.-mahesh2k (June 01, 2012, 04:33 PM)