doug-miller.net > Doug Miller’s Weblog

Latest Updates RSS

Doug 3:34 am on August 29, 2001 | 0 | # |
Tags: Uncategorized

Let there be no doubt: remote X terminals rock!

Due to a stupid hardware problem with a NIC being in a bad PCI slot, building a remote X terminal for my daughter using software from the Linux Terminal Server Project took a couple of days to complete. Subtracting time spent on trying to diagnose the hardware issue, though, and the complete set up and configuration of both server and terminal took less than an hour. Now, my daughter has a completely functioning terminal on her desk, running with performance equal to my Athlon desktop. Which, of course, is because she is running on my desktop, with X server remotely displaying on the hardware in her room.

This is even more impressive considering I built the terminal at of an ancient Packard Bell 200Mhz Pentium I was using as a doorstop. With the drives disabled (they’re unnecessary on the terminal), the system is whisper quite, as well.

The final touch was a new monitor, since I didn’t have any decent spares sitting around. My daughter’s desk is pretty narrow, so we opted for our first LCD flat-panel monitor. Despite being limited to 1024X768, I’m really impressed with the quality and color of the display. So, we now have an amazingly cheap, high-performance, low-cost to operate, and quiet system for the cost of an LCD monitor.

I fancied up the configuration tonight by customizing the kdm login manager with some pictures of the kids faces for the chooser. All they need to do is click on their face and type in their password to login. I’ve set their desktop environment to KDE, and they can easily launch a web browser or check their e-mail.

I can easily see a time in the not-so-distant future where I furnish the house with a single main system, only slightly better in capability than my current desktop, and then furnish everyone in the family with their own low-cost X terminals. For average home use, I suspect this’ll be more than sufficient, and a damn sight cheaper than giving everyone a fully functioning desktop.
Doug 3:30 am on August 29, 2001 | 0 | # |
Tags: Uncategorized

And also from Salon:

In a closely watched electronic publishing case, a Russian computer programmer and his employer were indicted Tuesday on federal charges of violating digital copyright protections.

Dmitry Sklyarov, 27, and ElComSoft Co. Ltd. of Moscow were charged with five counts of copyright violations for writing a program that lets users of Adobe Systems’ eBook Reader get around copyright protections imposed by electronic-book publishers.

Even more frequently, our government and idiot lawyers repulse me. I’m just too tired to go off on a rant about this, tonight.
Doug 3:27 am on August 29, 2001 | 0 | # |
Tags: Uncategorized

From Salon:

A woman leaped off a 160-foot-high bridge Tuesday after authorities closed a busy interstate because passing motorists were yelling at her to jump.

Sometimes, my fellow human-beings repulse me.
Doug 4:09 pm on August 25, 2001 | 0 | # |
Tags: Uncategorized

The project for this weekend is to set up a remote X terminal for my daughter. I’m using the software from the Linux Terminal Server Project and an old 200Mhz Pentium box I have laying around. It all looks pretty straightforward; we’ll see how it actually goes.

I could set up the old Pentium as a stand-alone box running RedHat 7.1, and while the performance would be better than Windows, it still wouldn’t be that great. As a remote X terminal, though, everything will actually be running off the big 1.2Ghz Athlon system I use as my main workstation, and just displaying on the Pentium. I expect the perfomance will be at least as good as my wife’s 550Mhz K6-2.

The main reason for setting the terminal up is to provide my daughter with her own computer she can use for schoolwork. She’s been put in an “accelerated” program at school, and there’s a lot of homework. Much of which I’m not that thrilled about, because it seems like busy work to me. However, the girl is really very good at math, and given my own “math impairment” and the fact that most girls seem to lose interest in math and science about the time they hit puberty, I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to establish her math habits early. She wants to do this right now, so despite my misgivings, we’re going to support her in it.

She’s also developing some pretty solid computer skills already, and I want to encourage those. Linux is about the best way to do that; she’ll learn a lot more about the computer that way than she would using Windows or the Mac. In a few months I might even start her on some HTML and Python.

Of course, the other reason for doing it is to see if I can. There’s a certain coolness factor here, admittedly. Not to mention that in a few months we have to look for a new house, and when we move I have the stated intention of setting up terminals all over the house. This’ll be a good test run, I think.
Doug 2:23 pm on August 24, 2001 | 0 | # |
Tags: Uncategorized

Sounds like, thanks to Microsoft itself, that every day users are finally getting a chance to discover just how insecure MS software is:

“I haven’t a clue how to run quality assurance and service tests ?- I just want to know whether my computer is secure or not,” Carter said. “This tool seems real friendly and easy to work with on the surface, but it soon drags you down into Microsoft hell, just like all Microsoft programs do.”

Carter said the MPSA tool convinced her of only one thing: “It’s time to buy a Mac.”

Many test users, including Carter, were dismayed at the amount of patches that their computers needed despite their conviction that they had been running secure systems.

“Thirty-two security patches and fixes? And I thought I was keeping up with this stuff. I check Microsoft’s security update site once a month and download and install whatever I am advised to download,” Frank Gerome, a Web designer, said. “So how the hell can I be missing 32 essential patches?”

Ouch…
Doug 11:56 pm on August 22, 2001 | 0 | # |
Tags: Uncategorized

After reading about the fraud scheme involving McDonald’s games while trolling around the web this afternoon, I went looking for some more information on Simon Marketing, the company that employed the security agent behind the scam. Interestingly enough, their web site seems to be off-line.

I did run across this article, however, documenting an on-going court case involving both Simon Marketing and Coca-Cola in allegations of fraud and theft of intellectual property. This is an amazing story, if true. It has it all - fraud, abuse of corporate power, judicial corruption, and constitutional violations galore. Frankly, parts of it strain credibility, if only because I don’t want to believe that things are really this bad. Even is much of the case is bogus, some of the comments by U.S. District Court Judge Easterbrook, which appear to be well-documented and valid, are simply appalling.

Bob Kolody never imagined that he would be embarking on a life-defining journey to expose the corruption that rules the corporate-dominated institutions of our government when he first went after Simon Marketing and Coca-Cola for stealing his property. But, each time Coke and their powerful lawyers tried to dismiss him and insult his desire for justice, he forged on. Despite questions and ridicule from those around him, Kolody endeavored to accumulate enough knowledge about the legal system so that he could be heard as an equal representative in the federal Court.

At every instance, the system failed him. At every turn, the Court used its power to further the interests of its corporate ally instead of protecting those of its plaintiff citizen.

Be prepared to settle down for awhile if you read this. It’s a long, documentary style piece, concerning some fairly technical legal issues. It’s definitely worth the read, though, if you have your suspicions about the fairness of the court system and illegal corporate influence.
Doug 11:52 pm on August 22, 2001 | 0 | # |
Tags: Uncategorized

My quote for the day, delivered as I was discussing Internet usage with our Office Manager:

“If AOL users are the peasants of among ‘net users, then WebTV users are the equivalent of Untouchables.”
Doug 2:31 pm on August 22, 2001 | 0 | # |
Tags: Uncategorized

.comment: Surprised by Poverty

There are, tragically, some exogenous variables at work here, too: Each of the publicly traded Linux companies mentioned above is the target of a class-action shareholder lawsuit, the sole purpose of which is to enrich lawyers who do nothing useful, produce nothing useful, and who in my personal opinion would look mighty nice feeding the crows from the ends of ropes dangling from gallows on courthouse lawns. (Here’s an idea: a class-action lawsuit against the class-action division of the plaintiffs bar; real damages could certainly be proved.) Without serious reform, these hyenas are going to be stripping life and treasure from companies forever, to the detriment of everyone else. But I digress.

Can I help build the scaffold?
Doug 1:24 pm on August 22, 2001 | 0 | # |
Tags: Uncategorized

Downsizing: E-Biz Is Now Just Biz

“E-business sounds a little pretentious these days,” said Deighton, a professor at Harvard Business School who teaches courses on marketing and information technology.

As he prepares his coursework for a new semester, Deighton says he finds it easier just to use the term “business” across the board. That way, it doesn’t matter whether he’s talking about online strategy at a diversified pharmaceutical giant like Merck-Medco or analyzing a prominent dot-com, like DoubleClick, and its history of privacy conflicts.

It’s about time…
Doug 8:06 pm on August 21, 2001 | 0 | # |
Tags: Uncategorized

I am so incredibly tired of having to try and do what I do without any resources. I feel like I’ve been fighting a guerilla war for a decade now, with ever-shrinking supply lines.

I’m not asking for much. Just having an actual budget that I could manage to would be nice. Working with people who understand that infrastructure is the foundation you build the profit-generating functions of the business on would be a dream. I’m really, really tired of being nickled-and-dimed to death.