July 2008 - KCLUG - kclug.org

Looking for "Time Bar"-style workgroup scheduler
by Leo Mauler 13 Aug '08

13 Aug '08

I'm trying to organize a rehearsal schedule for a local play (Alcott Arts Center, www.alcottartscenter.org; "Taming of the Shrew" (a play about love, anger management, and identity theft), August 22nd and 23rd) in which many of the actors have time limitations on when they are available for rehearsal. Today I was made aware of a system of employee scheduling called "Time Bar", which is represented in this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timebar_scheduling I think that this kind of software would be ideal for the complexity of trying to figure out which scenes can be rehearsed on which days, based on the availability of the actors on each day. However, the Wikipedia article does not mention the software application used, and I can't seem to find any application which does "Time Bar" scheduling, Windows or Linux. I was hoping that someone on the list had already begun to use a Linux-based application (or maybe even a Windows application that runs fine in Wine) which does "Time Bar" scheduling.

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Usenet NEWS vs. Bittorrent
by Jonathan Hutchins 10 Aug '08

10 Aug '08

One of the problems with collecting files (say, video) via bittorrent is that it requires that other people be interested in the same file you want at the same time that you want it. If you missed last week's episode, and just got back to civilization, everybody's gonna be sharing this week's episode, and you'll be lucky to get 29 bits per second from someone who has 1/5 of the file. Yes, bittorrent's technology for binary file distribution is way better than NNTP, but Usenet News has, as has been amply explained, a lot of reasons it's still good technology. Yes, you should complain to Time Warner that they took away a service you used and didn't charge you any less. Yes, it would probably be smart to find another server, and preferably make a donation to help keep them running. Everest, btw, still has news servers, and I believe it costs less for the same bandwidth.

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Re: win95/98/ME and printers. An ethics issue comparable to DRM servers or not?
by Oren Beck 07 Aug '08

07 Aug '08

There seems to me an ethics issue developing . One possibly directed at establishing the "pattern of crime" RE: EOL software/hardware support. I can see a company ethically having legit EOL policy protecting them from liability. Example in my past was devices having consumable safety parts with "expiry risk" factors. If a seal fails causing ammonia leakage it's potentially deadly. That was on Micrographics gear arguably a "Printing" support device. SO the software running on a pc/xt simply disabled the hardware- absent codes from the company. Precedent thus set for EOL "disablement" in safety interlock software. That shows what a valid EOL disablement scenario is and was all about. The effective disablement of printers attached to unsupported software is NOT the comparable situation at all. Yes, allegedly if you kept your own software archives, it would be a non issue. The looming crash comes with XP style "activation" of nonfree software and DRM locked information. Here the will they ? Vs what "Already has" discussion begins. I see the golden window for Free and Open Source software to declare an ethical high road.

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Linux-compatible Laptop add-on sound cards?
by Leo Mauler 04 Aug '08

04 Aug '08

For the last few years I've been seeing these add-on sound cards for laptops which promise better sound than the standard laptop sound chipsets. And on the same lines as my recent thread on printers, I know of at least one person who still uses Windows98 on his ancient laptop (PII) because Linux doesn't have drivers for the sound hardware on his laptop. I've popped out his hard drive, dropped in another one, and installed Ubuntu 8.04, and while he's impressed, the "no sound" problem is an upgrade-killer. Does anyone know if there is an add-on sound system for laptops, for which there are Linux drivers? While a laptop upgrade may sound better, even the used laptops with PIII CPUs are over $400, while the add-on sound cards generally are under $50, making the Linux switch "with sound" much more attractive with just the add-on sound to an existing perfectly functional laptop. Even the folks who have Linux-supported sound on their laptops would benefit from these cards (if Linux drivers exist for them), which generally have features on them not found on most laptops, such as surround-sound features.

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Re: win95/98/ME and printers. An ethics issue comparable to DRM servers or not?
by David Nicol 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 3:43 PM, Luke -Jr <luke(a)dashjr.org> wrote: > On Thursday 31 July 2008, David Nicol wrote: >> configured as networked printer driver > > Windows 98 (and newer AFAIK) requires printer-specific drivers even to print > to a network printer. Good luck with that idea. Right, but you can configure the clients for the network printer to print to "generic postscript printer" which is a driver that comes with it. -- Drilling is a cheap gimmick that won't lower gas prices but will make the oil companies even richer.

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gmail fetching comcast
by bewkard 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

does anyone have any experience with using gmail to fetch email from comcast's POP servers? I'm getting ready to do this for a friend, and he doesn't have access to the comcast account until next week. I wondered if anyone has done this and if there are any peculiarities that I should know about Thanks Tim

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Re: Simple VPN?
by Sean Crago 29 Jul '08

29 Jul '08

Actually, I really don't care that much evading detection. Is there a simple way with DropBear's minimal SSH implementation to just establish an SSH tunnel from my router in Kathmandu to a box in KC and route only :80 and :443 over it? -Sean

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Re: Simple VPN?
by Billy Crook 28 Jul '08

28 Jul '08

Openvpn is actually detectable apart from regular ssl web servers because while SSL is always authenticated, the very beginning of the session is not encrypted, and handshake parameters will reveal the certificate issuer, and use and such. If a bad guy tried go mangle any of it, it would be detected because it's all signed, but it's clear, and that's how deep packet inspection IDS systems can tell https apart from ssh on port 443 and openvpn on port 443. IPSEC for one purpose though would look identical to IPSEC for any other purpose. It also encapsulates layer 4 stuff, so a bad guy can't manipulate window sizes and send RST packets to DoS your connection. In this sense, IPSEC would have prevented comcast from attacking their p2p using customers. Even sneakier VPN systems include ones that tunnel the data through ICMP echo and echo reply packets, and ones that tunnel using DNS queries and responses. While I've never set either of those up, I imagine they are quite slow. I know the former requires some invasive kernel patch as well. On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 14:08, Bradley Hook <bhook(a)kssb.net> wrote: > IPSec is very difficult to setup and extremely easy to break. It's easy to > end up locking yourself out of remote systems too. > > The nice thing about OpenVPN is that you can configure it to do all sorts of > sneaky stuff. You could always configure your OpenVPN to run TCP over port > 443 (HTTPS), which your ISP would have an awful time trying to block. IPSec > wont give you that kind of flexibility, and when your ISP starts seeing > those kind of weird packets they are likely to start filtering them. > > IPSec is awesome when you have control over all or most of a network, and > want the traffic to be extremely secure. When you start routing it over the > public Internet, you can expect problems. > > ~Bradley > > Billy Crook wrote: >> >> Nor am I. But I know that it is valiable as a module in ddwrt and >> openwrt, so it is likely also avaliable on tomato, and for the common >> "router" architectures. >> >> I probably shouldn't have overlooked IPSEC. While significantly more >> difficult to set up, it works at a lower layer of the stack, and is >> thus harder to make sense of. Assuming the ISP's tampering works in a >> default-allow, tamper-by-list setup, IPSEC may work as well as >> anything else. >> >> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 13:42, Bradley Hook <bhook(a)kssb.net> wrote: >>> >>> OpenVPN seems fairly flexible and is cross platform. Not sure about which >>> CPU architectures it has been ported to though. >>> >>> ~Bradley >>> >>> >>> >>> Sean Crago wrote: >>>> >>>> My DSL provider with the DNS masquerading and Squid transparent proxy >>>> is feeding me all sorts of bad DNS information. I think I need to move >>>> to the VPN option temporarily. Anyone have any advice on a basic, easy >>>> to configure VPN solution? Support by Tomato firmware (a DD-WRT like >>>> replacement) to allow my wife's Windows box access and to allow access >>>> from my Internet Tablet is deeply desired. >>>> >>>> Thanks, >>>> Sean Crago >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Kclug mailing list >>>> Kclug(a)kclug.org >>>> http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Kclug mailing list >>> Kclug(a)kclug.org >>> http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug >>> > >

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Semi-OT: Windows98 now truly obsolete thanks to Printers (helps encourage Linux)
by Leo Mauler 28 Jul '08

28 Jul '08

I was going to donate a HP printer to the arts center I'm volunteering for, but the computer they have right now is a PII-233Mhz machine running Windows98. This turns out to be a sticking point which prevents the printer from being useful to them, as I don't have the original Windows driver CD. I found out that HP (and I expect most other printer manufacturers) have discontinued support for Windows98 (since July 2007), going so far as to remove all Windows98 printer drivers from their website, not even making them available on an "as-is, no official support" manner. Folks with older computers running Windows98 (that can't run any newer version of Windows) cannot use new printers, even those manufactured prior to July 2007. Linux, of course, still receives printer driver support from HP and a few other places (and auto-installs HP USB printers without any prompting), so it appears that to donate the HP printer I'm probably going to have to donate Linux as well, either on the existing system or donate a newer computer as well. (sits back and waits for the inevitable "standards printers are a better choice than driver-based printers" comment from someone... ;-) )

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Simple VPN?
by Sean Crago 28 Jul '08

28 Jul '08

My DSL provider with the DNS masquerading and Squid transparent proxy is feeding me all sorts of bad DNS information. I think I need to move to the VPN option temporarily. Anyone have any advice on a basic, easy to configure VPN solution? Support by Tomato firmware (a DD-WRT like replacement) to allow my wife's Windows box access and to allow access from my Internet Tablet is deeply desired. Thanks, Sean Crago

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