KCLUG August 2008

kclug@kclug.org

41 participants
48 discussions

idea: a managed linux distribution, for weak users
by Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO 20 Aug '08

20 Aug '08

They pay me to take control of the machines of stupid people all day long. It's called the helpdesk. What a concept. Some people can't be bothered to remember how to do anything on their computer. I also have relative strangers that are referred to me by acquaintances, that ask me to fix their computer. I frequently take said strangers PC or HDD to my home for sometimes several weeks until I get time to work on it. During this time, those people know I have complete access to it, but are so happy when I return it fixed that they pay me. Brian Kelsay -----Original Message----- From: Christofer C. Bell Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 3:20 PM On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 2:59 PM, Nathan Cerny <ncerny(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Actually, there's companies that do similar today. You're just calling it > stupid because you are smart enough to control your own computer. I'm calling it stupid because it is stupid. > You would have to price it appropriately, but I think there's a market for > remote administration. We do it for other companies - you're just talking > about expanding it into the private sector. You would have to figure out > how to handle hardware problems and SLAs though...as well as internet access > requirements. And making it simple enough for the average lay user to > understand. There is no "making it simple enough for the average lay user to understand." You are saying, "give me money to take control of your computer away from you." RIAA and Microsoft are already feeling backlash for something *far less sinister* (DRM music) than handing over your entire computer to someone else -- and *paying* for the privilege. This idea is unworkable, this idea is not well thought out, this idea does not take this cool thing called "real people" into account. It's a bad idea. -- Chris

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A sincere request- for sanity.
by Oren Beck 19 Aug '08

19 Aug '08

This list has some history. And if it continues on the present course it will be a history with no future. We all have some very valuable to a Linux list questions and answers. On Linux related matters. This is my quite on topic as it goes to operations of the list polite statement.' IF you agree- keep posting your valuable to Linux matters best. If you do not agree. go into your bathroom- close the door- and scream defiance at the mirror.Where you will see a person. a person who seems to think the concept Linux USER'S Group means forum for other things -- Oren Beck 816.729.3645

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Re: Reply from Congressman Emanuel Cleaver concerning OrphanWorksActof 2008
by Jon Pruente 19 Aug '08

19 Aug '08

On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 8:45 AM, lowell <lowell(a)kc.rr.com> wrote: > Could we see some of these facts and their sources, instead of saying "I > know the facts and you don't!" without proving it? Ten myths of the Bush tax cuts - http://www.heritage.org/research/taxes/bg2001.cfm Summary of 2006 tax data - http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html When I go back to look, my numbers may be a bit off, but my points still stand. > administration genuflected to their holy-of-holies (free market laissez > faire no matter what the current reality may be) and dramatically cut the > tax *rates* of the upper bracket incomes (the ONLY ones who pay taxes, if I > understand you correctly) knowing this would drastically reduce tax > *revenue*. The motive driving this on-the-face-of-it foolish action had Nope, I never said the tax cuts were for the rich only. The lower brackets accounted for quite a lot of the tax relief from the Bush tax cuts, even if the Democrats want to play like it isn't true. > voters agree with this, we'll rig it this way: eliminate its sources of > revenue (EVERYONE will vote to cut his own taxes, no matter what), keep > spending like there's no tomorrow (EVERYONE likes it when congressman Billie > Bob brings in the big bucks to his district), and force it to collapse under > its own beyond-payable debt. Thus far they appear to be doing a pretty good > job of following this strategy. Cutting taxes that are too high will encourage people to engage in those even more once the tax burden is lowered. There is a point of diminishing returns for cutting taxes, but there is also a point on the side of increasing taxes. Increasing taxes works in the short term until people move their investments away from those taxed situations and into less burdensome ones. You agree with me and Jeremy that massive spending is a problem. That's good. I'd also like to point out that I liked reading the clear and reasoned posts by Matthew Coppel. I don't agree with all he had to say, but he said it well, and clearly, and didn't attack anyone in doing so. Jon. P.S. I'm still waiting on Jeffery to send up some data or links for his position. If he doesn't, he gets written off as a Kool-Aide toe-er of the line in my book. That's not particularly bad, though. It gives me a point of reference, like it has for Luke, who (no offense) has made it clear that he's an avowed Catholic. I know to think about that when I read his replies on certain issues.

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Portable desktop/applications for Linux. We have some wintools but with issues
by Oren Beck 19 Aug '08

19 Aug '08

Many people I know are constant users of the portableapps suite. As it makes life easier in several ways. http://portableapps.com/ Is the tool in question. Has anyone on list ever used the portableapps suite at all-and if so did you get it to work in a Linux environment? Or do you know of a Linux tool of similar functionality? I had thought of using a USB HD resident distro in QEMU mode, began research on "how-to's" and found issues mitigating the full urility.Such as - QEMU mode distros to my research depend on unfree code in a windows environment at present. Is my understanding correct? And public kiosk mode sites like the Kc Library might not let me load QEMU at all. So it went back to portableapps. As It just works on most windows boxes . And does so tracelessly upon unmount. *NOT* for bad things like abuses,, but for good ones such as not risking data leaks. The initial searching I did found : http://www.linuxfortravelers.com/running-portable-apps-on-linux Which is a very nice Yes, it can be done. The looking further to get a "how-to" found me another angle on the concept/s: http://openlina.com/ If any KCLUG folks as want to- test these and comment. Even if it's only a roll call of if we tried and thought it was.... reports. THAT would be all of us using and commenting on real Linux uses. And attempting to draw in related projects from the not fully free world so thy might become more free and open. I have a thought on interlacing some of this that depends on cross platform coding. I am unsure of the best choices to make it simple. Check out the sites I listed- they might be of interest. -- Oren Beck 816.729.3645

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Re: Portable desktop/applications for Linux. We have some wintools but with issues
by Luke Dashjr 18 Aug '08

18 Aug '08

On Monday 18 August 2008 11:42:59 Oren Beck wrote: > On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Luke Dashjr <luke(a)dashjr.org> wrote: > > On Monday 18 August 2008 09:20:34 Oren Beck wrote: > >> I had thought of using a USB HD resident distro in QEMU mode, began > >> research on "how-to's" and found issues mitigating the full urility.Such > >> as - QEMU mode distros to my research depend on unfree code in a windows > >> environment at present. Is my understanding correct? > > > > No. Qemu is GPL and cannot be linked with unfree code at all. > > Phrased as "Cannot be linked legally or ethically perhaps- yet there > are claims it has been so linked and still is for some situations The only possibility is that kqemu *might* be closed on Windows, but that is/would be legal because the author holds the copyright to qemu. However, in any case, kqemu is not required for qemu, and qemu will run just fine without it, albeit a little slower. > >> And public kiosk mode sites like the Kc Library might not let me load > >> QEMU at all. > > > > Kiosks generally won't let you load foreign binaries at all. Not just > > qemu, but also Thunderbird or anything else. If they allow executing > > arbitrary binaries, then qemu should work just fine out of the box. > > Yeah- that security hole Vs usability bug factor seems to doom Qemu on > kosks The point is that if a computer will let you run Thunderbird, it should run qemu just fine too.

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Of interest as it covers neutrality issues potentially impacting Linux
by Oren Beck 18 Aug '08

18 Aug '08

Is M$ B0rking again? The linked article's focus seems not totally improbable given my experiences of similar. The summary flap seems another case of browser and server interactions blocking files. Remember the Opera B0rking fiasco? http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2008/6/14/24746/7652 To my take stripped of rants,FUD,and the usual other chuft - There is ample past history to support non-neutrality as being at work. Read the article and responses. Can we independently sanity check this both from our Linux boxes and any Ms ones we have to use? -- Oren Beck 816.729.3645

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gPXE: The latest in net-booting
by Billy Crook 17 Aug '08

17 Aug '08

This came through on a Google Tech Talks feed, and I thought it was a good watch. If you've ever booted GNU\Linux over a network, you probably used PXELINUX (cousin to SYSLINUX, the fat32 floppy boot loader, and ISOLINUX used on most if not all bootable install cds) or Etherboot. Those two projects now work closely together, and they're adding capability to load kernels and initrds over *arbitrary http URLS* instead of just local tftp servers. I've been using pxelinux for some time to install GNU\Linux or to boot 'live' network distros without any physical media. It's handy. Pxelinux' use of TFTP is OK, but they explain in their talk why it's not ideal, and specifically how the addition of the TCP stack's flow control, and HTTP's script-ability make things more interesting. Imagine your bootloader's config file being dynamically generated on the server at boot time.... You can watch the video on youtube here: http://youtube.com/?v=GofOqhO6VVM Or download the .flv file, which VLC can play fullscreen, without ads, from: http://bcrook.com/gPXE.flv If I figure out how to convert it to Ogg Theora I'll post it to: http://bcrook.com/gPXE.ogg You can subscribe to all Google Tech Talks at: http://www.youtube.com/rss/user/googletechtalks/videos.rss

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Re: [OT] A sincere request- for sanity.
by Christopher A. Bier 17 Aug '08

17 Aug '08

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 > On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 11:18, Matthew Copple <mcopple(a)kcopensource.org> > wrote: >> We went through this just a few months ago, when we reenacted the 30 >> Years War through the list. The consensus was that the list works as it >> is. <snip /> > Chris Bier had a neat idea of making a copy of every incoming message > to the current list, and sending it to a second list's moderation > queue. Combining that with a request that off topic stuff contain > [OT] in the subject. I believe that to be the best solution, and am > willing to throw my time into moderating. I will also pursue starting > an entirely separate mailing list, if for no other reason, then to > learn mailman. If I complete that before Chris' split-list idea is in > place, there will be fragmentation, and two sets of archives. That > would be rather in-elegant, but the best I can do. There are two mailman capabilities that could deal with this. 1. People use an OT in the subject line for anything not KCLUG or Linux related gets put into a topic which people can subscribe to or related to that, everything not including KCLUG or Linux in the subject line gets filtered into an OT list. 2. A kclug-moderated list gets created getting a duplicate of all posts. It would be a moderated list, and only on-topic posts would be sent to list subscribers. Mailman Topic Detail: topics_enabled (topics): Should the topic filter be enabled or disabled? The topic filter categorizes each incoming email message according to regular expression filters you specify below. If the message's Subject: or Keywords: header contains a match against a topic filter, the message is logically placed into a topic bucket. Each user can then choose to only receive messages from the mailing list for a particular topic bucket (or buckets). Any message not categorized in a topic bucket registered with the user is not delivered to the list. Note that this feature only works with regular delivery, not digest delivery. The body of the message can also be optionally scanned for Subject: and Keywords: headers, as specified by the topics_bodylines_limit configuration variable. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFIp4pmE5xXU3JS1mQRAg//AKCyqCCulVJ9P18K/cNBEKv22pEfZgCgsxua SNozw0v6pHPDMFl9CSWoyVg= =j2vb -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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OT: 21 inch Harley tire needed ASAP. Since it's my money-I'd like to spend it with a list member or their recommendeds.
by Oren Beck 16 Aug '08

16 Aug '08

Call me if you have such a tire or can recommend a dealer. -- Oren Beck 816.729.3645

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IT Temp agencies - a start
by James R. Sissel 15 Aug '08

15 Aug '08

Nothing guaranteed to be what you are looking for or good companies. I believe most of these aren't what you'd consider a "Temp" agency but you can ask. Robert Half http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/ TEK Systems http://www.teksystems.com/ MegaForce, LLC http://www.megaforceusa.com Spherion http://www.spherion.com/ Power IT http://www.poweritcorp.com Midwest Consulting Group http://www.mcginfo.com

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KCLUG August 2008