evought

I would like to activate the shell support on my site. When I try SSH/SCP, I get "Shell Access is not enabled on your account!" but I know it is a listed feature of the hosting package. I could swear I have activated shell support for an account (different site) in CPanel before, but cannot remember how to do it or find an appropriate option.Anyway, I am on a dial up line and desperately trying to speed things up by using the TTY instead of the oh so gooey GUI. Any help appreciated.

IDS (Intrusion Detection Software) can be very effective and is in fact the only thing that can stop some rooting attacks. However, they are most effective when the test can be run in a safe environment like a clean boot CD. Otherwise it is possible for some attacks to bypass and modify your protection software. With a CD, you know that your IDS program itself is totally safe. When I was maintaining UNIX servers, we would always run from a protected copy of the IDS program. Two other things that can make your system much safer: 1) Run behind a non-Windows firewall that has been tightened down to allow only what you need and to log hack attempts. This can be a dedicated firewall like a SonicWall, a router/firewall like ye-old LinkSys routers, or another computer such as a Mac or Linux box. Older computers running Linux often make dandy firewalls. I especially like using old notebooks for this because they are power-efficient and take up little room. Now an attacker has to get through two layers to get you. 2) Do your web browsing and anything else dangerous inside a virtual machine like VMWare or Virtual PC or whatever. When done with a session, just reset the VM and any malicious code just goes away. This seems excessive, but after my last W2K machine was owned despite all of its protection, it may be worth it if you have to use Windows. I have never had one of my personal Mac or Linux macines owned despite numerous attempts in the logs. That being said, I have seen other people's machines get hacked when they did not pay attention to security. My problem with W2K/XP at the moment is that they get hacked even if I do take major steps to protect them. Anyway, my two cents. I am paranoid, but have had reason to be.

I would think that Firefox is generally better for web developers just because of the various development-related Firefox plugins. Firefox is also much better for developers who do not use Windows (I use Mac and Linux myself) and therefore could not develop with IE if they wanted to. Of course, it is always good to have IE around for testing. I have used Virtual PC/Windows/IE in the past just for testing purposes. I have found that even when developing on Windows with IE, it is better to test in a virtual machine just to avoid crashing your desktop and development environment if you (or IE) do something stupid. Use the real IE on your desktop for help viewing and the virtual one for testing. If IE crashes, your help is still available.

Review of viJournal Lite by SkoobySoft viJournal Lite is a diary and journalling application for the Mac. It has a Universal Binary and supports the latest versions of OS X. It is a free version of ScoobySoft's viJournal. Overall, viJournal Lite is simple and elegant. It supports everything I was looking for in a lightweight journalling application with no clutter and no unnecessary features. There are a small number of minor interface inconveniences, but the GUI is otherwise straightforward. As an advertisement for their commercial product, I have to say I am considering buying. Major Features: viJournal Lite, unsurprisingly, allows you to make journal entries. You can make two types of entries: you can make dated entries with a subject or you can just enter text into the day's notes field. Both are easy to do. Making an entry with a subject requires clicking on a plus sign at the top of the viewing window or hitting Apple-N. You are allowed to edit the date of the entry, which is useful when transcribing handwritten notes. You can add to the day's notes field by simply clicking in a text box. basic formatting is supported along with images, so this application can double as a lightweight scrapbook. A tree of individual entries appears at the left of the window. A button at the bottom left brings out a calendar view with day having entries highlighted. Clicking on a day shows you the appropriate entries. A slight inconvenience is that you cannot double-click on a day to make a new entry for that date. Instead, you must use the calendar control in the new entry dialog. You can create multiple named journals and switch through them by clicking on tabs at the top of the window. Other Features and Notes This constitutes 99% of the features I use. The remaining features are tucked away in menus or the preferences. Encryption and password protection are supported to protect your journal. The interface can appear with or without the brushed metal appearance. You can control where to save the journal(s). There is a mode for transcribing written journals which automatically advances the date for each entry. The preferences are well organized, thorough, but not excessive. There is an occasional glitch where switching away from the preferences pane and back makes the tabs at the top of the pane go away. Another annoyance is that after closing the window, clicking on the vJournal Dock icon does ot bring it back. Instead, you must go through the Window menu. Commercial Version The commercial version, viJournal, supports easy HTML/PDF export, syncing journals between computers, more multimedia support, support for blogging, clipping, email integration, and so forth. At $19.95, it looks like a good buy.

Good summary, and great normalization example. I don't know how many times I've had students make exactly that mistake and not test enough to catch it. A book I used to have on learning Oracle started with some guys 19th century ledger and built a database from it. It was an excellent, interesting, yet simple set of examples that showed many of the common pitfalls and gradually went from a table or two to a non-trival database with triggers and views. Someone walked off with the book after a class at some point, so I no longer have it, but real world examples like this I think are the best teachers and finding the right one is an art form.

I am really hoping for a lot of basic improvements and polishing in the next version. A quick example that I ran into today is adding notes to iCal. I often use iCal to track events and to-dos. I would love to be able to add a simple journal entry to a calendar day like "Called landlord and left message about aliens." which makes it real easy to do a Spotlight search later and put together a whole picture of something being worked on. It is an obvious thing which can be done easily in a real calender but was left out of iCal. I may delve into AppleScript (or maybe even Java) later and see if I can write a simple journal that will tie entries to iCal. Who knows? Actually, it looks like (from xboxrulez' link) that Mail will have support for notes and todo's (shared with iCal), so maybe it will actually have what I want. Hmmm... now I just have to wait.

A good way to diagnose this is to use a cacheless fetch program like wget to grab the raw page. If the wget-fetched page is out of date, you know it isn't the local cache that's the problem. wget does not cahce, does not interpret, and generally doesn't screw anything up. I find that wget is a generally invaluable tool for web development. It can be difficult to fetch a particular dynamic page with wget, but you can send parameters and I have written fairly sophisticated unit tests with it. Simple Perl scripts work too.

Similarly, Firefox works on Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, etc. MS has not updated their Mac version of IE in a very long time and never more than toyed with IE for UNIX. Aside from the fact that I own a Mac, I sometimes have to use Linux or Windows; it is much nicer to have a browser that works the same on all three platforms, including my settings. Firefox, in its micro version, will even run off of a thumb drive so you can have your browser and settings wherever you go. The only real downside is that Firefix won't let me store my encrypted passwords on a thumbdrive (that I know of) without having all of your settings there. I would like to sync my passwords with the Linux box but still have some different settings if I want to. Oh well, IE does not let you do any of it.

It very well could be that this site will be driven by ad revenue as well, at least enough to make it a zero-sum for Google. It may also be a way to buy substantial community goodwill. There are actually several project sites like Sourceforge, some of them quite large. Sourceforge is what everyone knows, though, so the other sites have done it no harm. I doubt Google's offering will hurt it either. Now, what would be really nice is if Google indexed all of the project sites in one search. Then again, FreshMeat does not do a bad job of this.

Why I Love My Old Mac - or - How To Build a Frankenputer I have a G4 Powerbook 800 Mhz I bought in 2000 or so. It has been used and abused, including being backed over by a car, but it still runs (mostly) great and, in fact, I am typing on it right now. Between the hardware and the flexibility of OS X, I have made this system useful long past its normal life. The greatest advantage of this laptop is its large number of built-in ports and communication options: Firewire, USB, ethernet, modem, Airport, S-video, audio in and out, etc. This has allowed me to slowly enhance the system and replace components from the outside as they have failed on the inside. The brackets holding the screen failed about a year ago. This is a common failing with this model and one I am upset about, but, honestly, going over it with car probably didn't help. Repairing it would cost about $900. On the other hand, using the ADC-to-VGA adapter, I connected an external monitor (free) and turned it into a desktop. Contrary to a lot of opinions, the PowerMac will run just fine closed as long as it is closed before the display is initialized. A USB Mac keyboard (also free) and a graphics pad (not free) turns it into a decent art studio. The keyboard contains a USB hub, so I have no cable mess and have an convenient port on the keyboard tray for my digital camera or, at night, my USB LED light. It is still a laptop, though, and is stingy on power. The battery makes a great UPS: as long as the power comes up in an hour or two, I'm fine. I wanted more hard drive space and a convenient backup, so I attached an external Firewire drive. The drive is bootable with OS X Tiger (10.4) which I have gradually upgraded to from the 10.2 which came with the laptop. It runs 10.4 fine and will probably run 10.5 as well. How many people can go from ME to Vista with the same computer? The bootable external drive is great for repairs if I have any problems with onboard disk. Since the MAC will boot in target mode (acts like a Firewire HD), I use that to make fast transfers to a Linux box (yes, Linux can read HFS volumes) that would take too long over Airport. Now the CD-RW/CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive is finally starting to get flaky, so I am looking at a Firewire DVD-RW to add to the Firewire chain. I use the video out to pipe movies to my TV. I can either use the S-video out port or the included S-video to RCA converter.With VLC, a free video player, I can send the video fullscreen to any attached device and can even display on the monitor and TV at the same time so can see it from the kitchen. Audio, of course, is piped to my Sony receiver so I can use iTunes with my stereo. With a little (actually quite a bit of) playing, I can also share my iTunes library with the Linux box over the wireless connection. At the moment (just moved) I have dial-up, which I can share to the Linux box over Airport, Firewire, Ethernet, or USB. The wonderful thing about all of these upgrades is they are all external and can be moved right to my next computer (possibly a Mac Mini) when this one finally dies or I get tired of it. Even as an 800 Mhz G4 (768 MB RAM), though, it still does all of the jobs I need it to do (except the latest FPSes). None of the Intel laptops I have ever had have gone this long and still been this functional.

No, of course the idea is not new, certainly the Sadducees fit the bill fairly neatly. It is, however, maybe something that goes up and down over the generations, both in practice and in its overt acceptance by society. It has been noted that there is a tendency for complacency and rebellion to alternate generations. My personal, non-quantifiable, oppinion is that the matter is worse now than when I was younger, both from my subjective experience and from reading news an literature from the last several decades. Of course, my experience is filtered through the lens of different ages; I was a different observer when I was younger than I am now. I think, though, all-in-all, that things have changed some measure. The gilding on much of society has worn a bit thinner and the cult of personality has gotten that much stronger. We have a right to judge because we are given eyes that see and brains which think. Only God can judge with finality ("Krinos"), but we can all perceive and make a call ("Agon"). Making judgements is important to deciding where to go next and is fundamental to what we are. It is important to recognize that *our* judgement is limited and imperfect, but that does not absolve us from trying. My judgement about the state of society and religion gives me a place to start thinking about why and what next. No, we need not all be nosy intellectuals like me. But I do think that everyone must struggle at some time at some level just to be said to have made a choice. I have met "simple" people who are in many ways smarter than I, but I know they still struggle and wonder when they see a wrong they cannot right, a child in pain, or good people who suffer. The world is not fair and that rankles some part of our nature. Faith has to cope with that incongruity in our lives. Certainly not the only, but it was the subject we started with :-). Self-described Christians (liberal or conservative) are also the dominant power in the US at the moment. I do not think most protestants remember very well when they were an oppressed minority or why we have the freedoms we do in this country. Anyway, wife needs the computer ...

I use "religious" to mean "structured worship". I use "spiritual" to mean internal belief and worship. Spirituality affects the character of a person ("grace" - "an outward sign of inward faith"). People can be one or the other or both in degrees. I can religiously go to church without having spirituality enter into anywhere (I do not have any real faith, belief, or effect on my character). On the other hand, I have known people who I believe are faithful and solid christians who seldom go to church. They do not go through the standard motions, but their sprituality affects their lives and behavior. In at least the Lutheran faith, it is believed that only faith is required for salvation, not good deeds. Good deeds come as a result of the changes (grace) that faith brings to your life. The trend I see is to heavily downplay the spiritual. People do not want to be "touchy feely" with religion. It is somewhat like fast food; drive through, pay, go away. The focus seems to be on worldy actions and worldly results. You can see this especially with televangelists, but I have also noticed it in, for instance, Missouri Synod Lutheran churches (apologies if this offends you). Missouri Synod churches seem more like country clubs than a center of worship. Their function appears much more social than spiritual. Another thing that has struck me is the Christian "Hip-Hop" rap. Much of the lyrics, when you stop to listen, are very worldly oriented: "If you want to marry money, honey, give Christ a chance." Religion is not meant to make you rich, but to make you better. How many people do you think read the bible, other spiritual texts, or pray in private? How many people give religion no real thought outside of Sunday service? They drive gas guzzling cars and look down on the less fortunate. The "religion of wealth" has been with us in the US since the late 1800's: the idea that it is your responsibility to acquire as much money as possible in order to control the good which can be done with it. This inherently sets up a hierarchy of social and economic status which dwarfs spirtuality as a component of religion. On the other side are people who study the bible and struggle with its requirements, help others to understand it, and try to live in a way which exemplifies Christianity. The bible is something which is often confusing and even frightening (think about the Beatitudes and what it really means to turn the other cheek). Other religious texts are the same. If religion is not (ever) a struggle, than it may not be deeply spiritual. When worship is not spiritual, we essentially abdicate responsibility to the minister or priest. We let them decide what we need to do and where we need to be to belong to the club. This is not 100% true; we can also switch churches if we become uncomfortable with what they want us to do or believe. ---- I mean more the right to dictate morality rather than rigid authoritarianism. Many of the folks that wish to dictate morality are just as paranoid about someone gaining power over them. As an aside, there used to be a group of religions called Mystery Cults. The Elysian cult was a popular one in Greece. The idea was that you went through a particular ritual to join the cult, and after that you were saved. That's it. The rituals were often involved and secretive, but no maintenance, prayer, good deeds, or anything necessary afterwards. Compare this to many (not all) modern evangelists where you are saved and born again by going through a ceremony and paying money and then (essentially), you are done. I have always thought there was more than that to religion.

Good essay.At the same time there has been an "anti-religious" movement (Reformation). Today, there is a matching "anti-spritual" movement which lends itself to reforming hierarchical structure. This can be readily seen in the legions of people who go to church "religiously" but who do not practice their faith in their daily lives. Even more are the Easter and Christmas Christians who only go to church on holidays. I see this also rampant in the Jewish faith.The anti-spritualists are only interested in appeasing God, or perhaps just their neighbors by going to church and performing the window dressing of being Christian without having to strain or challenge themselves overmuch by figuring out what their faith is actually supposed to mean or require.The push for hierarchy is visible in the interest of the Christian right in ordering everyone else's lives (particularly in the bedroom) while their own faith is vacant. The idea that everyone else should live as you are supposed to is one I have never quite understood.The other difficulty this brings up is that of discipleship in this world. How do you convert people to Christianity when they already *think* they are Christian? Discipleship is, in some ways, more difficult in this day and age than it was when Christians were being thrown to the lions. Then, the lines were clear and you knew exactly what you were up against. Your sacrifice counted and made a measurable difference. Now, people are more interested in personality, in trappings, than in character and integrity.

Is anyone using this product? I had a copy of it some time ago but decided to use Circus and Ponies' Notebook instead. I am wondering if the newer versions are good enough to conider switching back. Among the things I did not like in the older version is that it was rather difficult to get information *out* of Sticky Brain into other application. Notebook exports to PDF, HTML, and other formats rather easily. Also Notebook, organized as a collection of individual volumes, seemed neater and more organized. On the plus side, I liked the simplicity of storing web pages and web receipts in a permanent form. At the moment, there are three big organizer products for Mac OS X, including Omni Outliner. Choosing between them can be difficult. I probably spend over half of my computing time with a organizer application and want it to be the best experience it can be.

The prroposed ban on flag burning are controversial just on the basis of Free Speech Rights and the constitutional underpinnings of the US, but there are pragmatic reasons to oppose it as well. One such reason is that there is no clear limit to such a ban and it can lead to ridiculous measures.Many people oppose the proposed ban just on the basis of Free Speech ("I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."). As a soldier stated in a recent Time Magazine article, some of those opponents literally put their lives on the line in the name of freedom every day. My father, grandfather, uncle, etc., risked their lives in foreign wars and I myself have served as a civilian with the Air Force. Burning a flag (as a protest) may be crass and juvenile, but it is still speech, still free, and still a part of our political process. You cannot get the Good without the Bad.Even if this argument is not enough, what does a ban mean and where does it stop? For example, can I burn an envelope which has a stamp on it which contains an image of the flag? How about a T-shirt? Trash from a 4th of July parade? What defines a "flag" and makes it different from an image of the Stars and Stripes?Jewish folks have a habit of spelling God as G-d. Why do they do this? Because they have a religious injunction against defacing the name of God. If "God" is written out, and that paper is later defaced or destroyed, they have broken that injunction. Therefore, outside of sacred texts, they only write some adaptation of the name of God which is close but not exact. "G-d" is one of the popular forms of this.Are we headed in the same direction with the image of the flag? Will we have to print an altered form of the flag on all of our stationary and T-shirts just in case they will be burned? before you say "No one will prosecute someone for burning a stamp," consider that we have a history of using inane laws to prosecute people who cannot otherwise be punished, either because their crimes cannot be proven or because what they are doing is not really a crime (think Al Capone and MLK, again cannot have Good without Bad).Can I burn a damaged flag? I was raised that it is right and proper to burn a flag which has become damaged or soiled. What is the alternative? Letting it moulder in the trash? Is that better?The only way to resolve even some of these issues is to specifically outlaw flag-burning as a *protest*. This, of course flies directly against free speech and sets a president (oops, I mean "precedent") for outlawing other types of lawful protest. And there lies madness. Besides it still does deal with some border cases: can I burn a letter from the IRS as a form of protest which happens to have a flag printed on it? You can bet the IRS will claim I cannot.The whole issue of the ban opens up a smelly can of worms at a time when the country should be concentrating on more important issues: the economy, soldiers dieing in Iraq (and Afghanistan), North Korea, Iran, domestic spying programs, etc. What are we telling our people, our soldiers, and the world about our priorities?

This is an improvement, but there is still a long way to go with translation systems. Most text simply cannot be accurately translated word-for-word. Worse, as translational systems get better, they will *look* like they are accurate but not be. Most language is not made of words but of rules, idioms and phrases. If you know the rules, idioms and phrases of a particular language, you can understand the text even if the actual words are encoded (look at cypher-solving problem like Treasure Island, etc.). Conversely, if you can translate the words 99% accurately but do not know the rules, idioms, and phrases, you cannot understand the text. As a simple example, Spanish allows double negatives: "No, no nunca voy" (I don't go ever, (I think)). Translating it word for word gives a worng or at least ambiguous meaning in English, and that is a simple example. Without translating more than one word at a time, you cannot do it right. In translating a web page or a news article, this may not be important. In academic papers (which is where I have needed it most), the ambiguity can be lethal (did that mean to mix in the HCL first always or never?). There were many times in college where you can not even get the sense of an article from its "translation". One good test of a translation system is to translate to a language and then back. You get some really funny translations, which is of course the source of the "invisible idiot" ("out of sight, out of mind") puzzles.

The reason most stores do not sell Macs is the difficulty of getting into the Apple retail chain. Apple puts a lot of requirements on a store if they are going to sell Apple products: displays, prices, bundling, sales, amount of space dedicated, service, etc. All of the rules have to be met to sell Macs. This limits the number of places which sell Macs, but it guarantees that all of them will meet a level of quality and portray a particular image. They do not want to just be stuck on a shelf as just "another computer". I also think some of it has to do with throttling their growth rate a bit. Apple does not want to go from 7% to 14% market penetration overnight. There are a lot of growing pains associated with making that jump and many companies have died while doing it. Rather, they want to make steady inroads at a growth rate they can handle at the same time preserving their image and distinctive niche.

Circus and Ponies Notebook and Omni Outliner are two. I use C&P Notebook for everything and it only runs on Mac. iCal is another one. iTunes used to be a major selling point but it runs on WIndows now as well.

One difference between Flash RAM and HDD players is writeability. are you going to keep essentially the same music on it all the time or reload your music a lot? Flash RAM is only good for a certain number of writes while HDDs can be rewritten many times. HDDs are relatively fragile and Flash RAM is robust. Myself, I like to reload the player often, mostly listening to books on tape rather than a collection of songs. I go through Flash based players very quickly. I do not move around much when listening, so an HDD player is fine. So, think about how you will use the player befor emaking your decision.

Well, whatever it is went away his morning. Go figure.

Hmmm... nope, possibly some sort of network error. At least if other people can see my site, it's not as bad. Something interesting: if I load http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ , the redirect to index.php does not happen. I think that rules out a PHP problem. Hopefully it will just go away.

Site is still (or again) dead for me. I have not touched anything (at all) on the site for over two weeks since I have been too busy, so it should not be configuration. I just looked through configuration.php as well and it looks fine. I have an offline message that should show up if the site was down.

I am having some odd problems with my hosted site. They started sometime yesterday. I have not made any changes for about two weeks.In Firefox, the index page (index.php) for Joomla comes up blank. I can access my Control Panel and can check that the files are there and look correct. No favorites icon is displayed either and the page source is empty. In Safari, I get the favorites icon but then get a network error and a blank page ("Safari can’t open the page “http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/. The error was: “lost network connection” (NSURLErrorDomain:-1005) Please choose Report Bug to Apple from the Safari menu, note the error number, and describe what you did before you saw this message.")Can someone verify that my site works/does not work from your location? It might be something upstream from me causing the problem, but, obviously, Xisto itself loads fine.

I am currently disabled, I have good days and bad days, but I use Tai Chi as a physical therapy. I have done several unusual martial arts over time and still do when I can.I now teach archery to a couple folks at a time as a combat form, not just target shooting. There is a large difference in how you shoot if hunting or defending yourself. I do combat archery in the Society for Creative Anachronisms and study period archery, including Japanese styles.I have done pre-16th century fencing (early "cut and thrust" fencing), not to be confused with the modern sport. Old-style fencing started as a defensive form ("De-fense"=>"fencing). We fight "in the round", not on a strip and mix various styles in a single bout. Period fencing makes heavy use of off-hand parry, either bare-handed or with a weapon or other implement (e.g. sheath, tankard, rubber chicken, etc.) in the off hand. Fencers were taught to always have an off-hand weapon and improvise if necessary. There is a tale of an old fencing master ambushed in an alley who picked up a cat and used it as an (highly effective) off-hand parry.Since my disability developed I had someone teach me a number of fencing techniques for low mobility, including "vaultos" (little dodges) and stop-thrusts (getting your opponent to throw themselves on your blade).I have also studied SCA armored fighting (hand-and-a-half sword and sword and shield) to some degree and worked in fencing technique to create a lighter, more mobile style. Most opponents are bigger than I am, so I had to adapt what I was taught to keep from being thumped. After you have been "spanked" with a long sword, you have a great incentive for improvement.I was originally taught sword fighting by a guy on my campus using "boffer" weapons (PVC piping coated with foam). He had the teaching style of clobbering you continually until you got better. I took a group out onto Lower Pond and black ice at one point to teach good balance and get people to keep their blocks tight and close. Over-extending lands you on your but pretty quickly.My wife and I are currently teaching some new folks the basics of sword-fighting using SCA heavy weapons (rattan) and sparring with bamboo lathes. (Need to find somewhere that sells them...) Even if I cannot fight, I can often correct someone else's style and give them pointers. Even SCA fighting has some elements of sport where a real-life fighting style does things very differently.I took Kung Fu a good bit ago and still practice some of the grappling techniques. I had to stop the kick boxing because of health. I rather enjoyed the form, though, and would have kept it up if I could.I had a few sessions as an intro to Ninjitsu at one point, mostly adding to my grappling and learning good falls. *That* is a fascinating art form. From just a few demos, I can readily see how Ninjas were considered nearly mystical and invincible. The falls have helped me a good deal later on; my knees or hips sometimes give out and being able to hit the ground safely is a great thing.

I use gmail mostly through POP as a personal address just so I have something else I can use if my web site goes down. It is reliable, convenient, and the right price. It is also nice to be able to check my email when away, but, as I am seldom away, I seldom use it. My wife uses gmail as her primary email application, although she has just started to use it via POP through GNOME's email application (on Linux). She has been very happy with the service.