When considering the government granted monopoly that is Copyright, it is important to keep in mind that the original reasoning and justification used for
legislating Copyright in these United States, was to create a modern
Library of Alexandria.
One of the more interesting aspects of this particular discussion is that I wasn't the one to bring up Trinity-DE. Usually, it's me who points out that the wondrous fantasticness that was KDE3 has not left the world, that Trinity-DE is alive and well.
So it's time for a screenshot tutorial on installing Trinity-DE. For my base, I chose Debian Wheezy, using the Xfce-AMD64 install CD. You can choose any of the Debian Netinstall, CD#1, or DVD#1 disks and simply install whichever default desktop it comes with.
If you do choose to install KDE4 by default, then put Trinity-DE on with it, let me know how that goes. It's the one thing I haven't tried yet, since I do not prefer KDE4.
You know that Linux kernel thing, that has thousands of developers from all over the world, some of which do it professionally, most of which do it for the love of solving problems (or something)? I look at it as a great chance for learning.
It's been 12 years since Mark Knopper first created Knoppix, ushering in an amazing way to try running Linux: directly from a CD.
No installation hassles, no worries about losing data during an upgrade. No getting stuck in the middle of an install and not having a machine to use to track down documentation.
Just a running machine. Easily, quickly, and best of all temporarily.
Skype has been purchased by Microsoft, for $8.5 Billion.
I have used Skype for years on Linux, even though Skype treated their Linux client as something like a red-headed step-child. Features like video chat were always included in the Linux client long after they were in the Windows version, bug fixes were slow, stuff like that.
On Sunday, March 20th, I submitted a patch to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, to fix a compile problem that began when the "binutils" package, that handles programs written in assembly, was updated such that something that was never a problem before became a problem.
The file linux-2.6.38/arch/x86/kernel/entry_32.S had two places where the "END(foo)" did not match the "foo" in its "ENTRY(foo)". The file dates back to 1992, so this problem has been there the whole time and no one noticed because it didn't cause an error until now.
I have no idea if the patch will be accepted, or even noticed, but I've done it and now anyone who gets the compile error...
arch/x86/kernel/entry_32.S: Assembler messages: arch/x86/kernel/entry_32.S:1422: Error: .size expression does not evaluate to a constant make[3]: *** [arch/x86/kernel/entry_32.o] Error 1
...will know what it is about and how to fix it if my patch doesn't make it into the kernel.
Recently I read an article where the author went through great pains to launch an application on a remote system and display it locally, over an encrypted session.
Doing this is actually far, far easier to do than ggarron makes it out to be. It's no more difficult than a single option in SSH. But first, what is SSH to you?
Right off the bat, please, don't fear the command line. If you're new to UNIX style systems, like Linux, the command line can seem daunting. It just sits there waiting for you to type something. Don't let it bother you, as long as you're not root you can't do much harm.
The logo of OpenSSH
Secure Shell is a command line application that allows you to replace telnet, ftp and xhost with a secure link to a remote system with serious protection of the data you transfer.
SSH uses passwords, or can be configured to use Public Key encryption, like GunPG or PGP do. Passwords can work into a system the first time, Public Key authentication has to be set up ahead of time.
For a good SSH primer, if you don't have a "Unix Power Utilities" volume sitting around, this article on WikiHow.com seems quite straight forward. There are lots of results if you use Google to look for "ssh howto", and I've noticed that the Ubuntu forums tend to cater well to "first time users". The OpenSSH.com Frequently Asked Questions list gets rather technical.
"A SPAM, by any other aspic, would smell as sweet?"
But anyway, what I find most interesting about this article is how it brings the raging copying and building upon other's work of Elizabethan England into equation, or at least comparison, with the Open Source software ecosystem the literati often refer to simply as "Linux."
I have often compared the Open Source software environment to music. My favorite example being "Variations on a Theme by Paganini" by Johannes Brahms. A beautiful work of music which in no way detracts from the original, but does inspire someone who loves it to look up the original guitar work, like I did. It is also very much in doubt if such a work could have been produced under the present regime, considering what happened to George Harrison with My Sweet Lord.
Would Shakespeare's works have reached the audience they do today? Who can say. What I can say is that what happens outside of copyright and patent is very different than what happens under Intellectual Property: Imitation becomes not a crime, but the sincerest form of flattery.
If music be the food of love, play on. Play on, McDuff!
One particular paragraph in this article anyone interested in computer security really ought to read sprang out at me, on page 5:
"This is ideal because it’s trivial to remotely seed C&C messages into any networked Windows host," noted Hoglund, "even if the host in question has full Windows firewalling enabled."
This comment really isn't a "why is Linux security so much better", but just one example of that principle. The entire article deserves reading if for nothing else than to realize just how confident these people are that they can write such cracking software at will.
Have you ever wondered why Linux systems seem to get hacked so much less than Windows? Here is an excellent example:
Imagine for a moment someone at a Windows conference going on for an hour, with source code and subsystem examples, all the ways he could imagine hacking into Windows via the USB system.
Well, no, can't do that because Microsoft does not allow anyone who has access to the source code and subsystems in Windows to do such presentations. Any such exploits can only be hypothetical, and really smart people who do not work for Microsoft cannot make changes to that source code and submit them to Microsoft.
All that is not just possible in the UNIX, Linux and BSD environments, it's encouraged!
That said, complacency is the greatest danger to computer security. Just because you run Linux does not mean you can run every binary and script someone sends to you. ...and get away with it forever!
