September 2008 - KCLUG

DRM and the PRO-IP Act - Limited time opportunity? Shameless self-promotion?
by Sean Crago 26 Oct '08

26 Oct '08

When I left KC to serve in Kathmandu I lost my address near Gladstone. As such, I reverted to the congressional district where I grew up in Illinois. You guys probably cover four or five districts in MO and KS, though, so I figured I'd drop you a link to the open letter I just hammered out to mine. If Yahoo, MSN, WalMart, et al are going to pull the plug on their DRM servers right before the passage of the (still far from perfect) PRO-IP act, why not use the opportunity to get ammendments passed that allow consumers to bypass the DRM? If it's getting railroaded through anyway, let's turn it to good: The DMCA trust should go both ways, if it's to be retained at all: Consumers shouldn't get their shit turned off if they respect the DMCA's provision preventing them from unlocking their files. http://mrzaius.com/blog/?p=108 Sean Crago Kathmandu

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Reiser FS or ext3?
by gary hildebrand 02 Oct '08

02 Oct '08

I have a couple older distros of SuSE -- 6.4 & 7.2 and was wondering if there is an easy way to do it with a journaling FS? Whenever I'd get a hit/crash in ext2, it would sorta eat itself up, and then over a period of time, become unuseable. 6.4 has a wide variety of packages no longer available on the new distros, and I'd like to have a drive set up so I can boot it when wanted. Gary HIldebrand St. Joseph, MO

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WRT54GL
by Gene Dascher 01 Oct '08

01 Oct '08

I am getting a Linksys WRT54GL today as my old WRK54G seems to be giving up the ghost. Has anyone on the list had any experience with running any of the non-Linksys firmware on this Router (DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Tomato, etc.) that they would care to share? Thanks, Gene

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Shredder?
by Sean Crago 01 Oct '08

01 Oct '08

>I can't figure out why the government just doesn't remove the hard drives >and send them to a shredder. Even a private individual can achieve roughly >the same level of security with a drill and a 1/2" drill bit. With the price >of drives being what they are now it can't impact very much the resale value >of the computer to sell it without a drive installed. Shredders don't like metal, but there are things that'll make quick work of a drive: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/062706-guard-dog.html The Air Force seemed to think a 1-2 punch was in order, according to Cryptome: "2.5. Destruction. It is a good practice to sanitize media before submitting it for destruction. Media may generally be destroyed by one of the following methods (see Table 2.1). (*NOTE*: Although approved methods, options d and e use acid, which is dangerous and excessive, to remove recording surfaces. Options a, b, and c are recommended over d and e.) " http://cryptome.quintessenz.at/mirror/afssi5020.htm -Sean

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SecondLife: OSS MMOW company, now with a Linux port of its "viewer" software.
by Leo Mauler 30 Sep '08

30 Sep '08

I have a creative friend who isn't that good at technology but is very good at art and project management, who has been approached by a local nonprofit to help manage their development of their presence on "Second Life", a Virtual 3D world "created by its residents". Second Life, online since 2003, is a Massively Multiplayer Online World, where you can set up a home, build a business, and buy real stuff (i.e., stuff which could be shipped to your physical address) using "Lindens", the unit of currency inside Second Life (currency exchanges for real U.S. Dollars to Lindens available in many locations inside Second Life). There are online amusement parks, casinos, museums, and other attractions. http://secondlife.com/ Anyway, while I was helping her figure out how to upgrade her computer to the recommended specifications for Second Life (minimum specs PIII-800Mhz with 512MB RAM; recommended P4-1.5Ghz and 1GB RAM for Windows XP, P4-2Ghz and 2GB RAM for Vista), I ran across their software download section, and they have developed a Linux version (beta) of their Second Life software (specs for Linux: PIII-800Mhz, 512MB RAM; recommended P4-1.5Ghz, 1GB RAM). It was originally released in January 2007 so it has undergone considerable development since then. What is even cooler is that their Second Life Viewer (the client-side software) is open sourced under the GPL. http://secondlifegrid.net/programs/open_source My ITEC DemoPC just happens to be a PIII-1Ghz with 512MB RAM and an e-Geforce FX 5200 series video card (compatible with Second Life; in fact back in 2003 they offered a $25 discount on this very card to Second Life members, http://secondlife.com/newsletter/2003_10_22_archive.php) Makes me wonder if ITEC has wireless Internet on the Exhibitor floor...

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starting new flamefest NOW
by David Nicol 30 Sep '08

30 Sep '08

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/nra_targets_obama.html That the NRA is a tool of "The Establishment" is not news, right? Is it a correct assertion?

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Re: WRT54GL
by Sean Crago 30 Sep '08

30 Sep '08

>On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 10:35 AM, Gene Dascher <gedascher(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> I am getting a Linksys WRT54GL today as my old WRK54G seems to be giving up >> the ghost. Has anyone on the list had any experience with running any of >> the non-Linksys firmware on this Router (DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Tomato, etc.) that >> they would care to share? >I installed Tomato on one, worked great. Tomato has an RSS feed for >firmware updates. It is technically non-free software, as the AJAX >webpages are not permitted for use with other firmwares. Make sure >you don't upload the wrong firmware, as the model numbers are all >similar! > > Justin Dugger I'll second the Tomato recommendation. The QoS is remarkably easy to use and the reporting mechanisms are rather handy. It gives really sparse error messages when things go awry, though, ala PPPoE, so you may have to SSH into it on occasion. Unresponsive devs, partially due to the problem described above. Still, the easiest to use and most full featured web interface for any class of router I've ever seen. -Sean

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CCCKC Fundraiser Tomorrow (Monday) Night!
by jur1st 29 Sep '08

29 Sep '08

For those who came to some of our early meetings and drifted away...and for those who have heard the rumors...we would love to see you all at our first fundraiser tomorrow night. We're taking nominal donations at the door and will be showing two movies (Hackers are People Too and GRL Season 1) and will have the famed LASER graffiti machine for attendees to see and play with. Everything starts off at 8:00 at Harry's Country Club in the River Market. The movies are both relatively short. For those who don't know how far we've come... we are now incorporated as a Missouri Not-For Profit corporation and elected leadership a couple weeks ago. Our space is currently in the early build-out phase and we expect to be hosting user group meetings, projects and the occasional party some time around the first of the year. Let me know if you have any questions... John Benson Cowtown Computer Congress President

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Re: DRM and the PRO-IP Act - Limited time opportunity? Shameless self-promotion?
by Sean Crago 29 Sep '08

29 Sep '08

>> I think we need a bailout for the disenfranchised >> music people. The government should buy new >> DRM-filled music for them with taxpayer's money. >> After all, isn't that the moral thing to do? >Seems the "right and proper" thing to do, after watching > the U.S. Government agree to pay off Wall Street's > "American Excess Card" payments, would be for > the U.S. government to buy all of the DRM-ed music > from the consumers, without much more than a > "slap on the wrist" penalty to the consumers, > and let them continue to make DRM mistakes > with their new money. Flawed analogy. My proposal was to find a way to chip away at the criminal portions of the DMCA (saving the government money and not costing them a dime) to allow customers to directly pop into the DRM-free camp without any financial hit. Probably a net benefit to the producers as well, discouraging people from getting disenfranchised to the point where they revert to piracy. That said, it'll probably never happen anyway - I imagine it'd be difficult to tack anything on when just working on synchronizing previously passed House and Senate resolutions for a final bill. There was talk about getting the FAIR USE act tacked in as an ammendment, but it didn't include the exemption mentioned above. Given the timing, if it is possible to squeeze anything in, it might be the perfect thing to generate enough outrage to prompt its support. Sean Crago Kathmandu

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Netbook
by Sean Crago 27 Sep '08

27 Sep '08

I'm looking at replacing my (potentially insecure and rarely updated) Xandros-powered Eee with Gigabyte's M912 (the tablet netbook) when they release the SSD & Linux based version, rather than switch distros on the Eee to something without the boot-time optimization. Anyone have considerable experience running Linux on a tablet, and thoughts on what's worth checking out when you get one? I've always been a bit of a fan of dasher and might play with it a little bit in the Gimp, but what else is out there? Any decent handwriting recognition software for note-taking et al? Thanks, Sean Crago

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