An Ordinary User’s Adventures In Linux
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
I helped an elderly friend set up his new PC yesterday. His
previous machine, over a decade old, was running Windows XP. I had set
up an Ubuntu dual-boot a few years back, and he liked playing the games.
But then the Linux boot stopped working--there was a message to the
effect “hd0 out of disk”, which sounded like a GRUB problem (“hd0”
being a GRUB disk name, not a Linux disk name). I booted up
SystemRescueCD, and found that disk space was ample. I did an fsck on
the Linux volume, and found no filesystem problems. I ran a badblocks
scan, and it reported several bad sectors, though oddly they only seemed
to be in the Windows partition (if I interpreted the numbers
correctly).
Naturally I searched online, but the hits I found for that error
message didn’t seem very helpful. Reinstalling GRUB didn’t help, so I
concluded there were likely other hardware problems, so time for a new
machine.
He got an entry-level dual-core AMD box from PBTech--their own house
build, in a CoolerMaster case--for well under a grand. Nothing fancy,
but good enough for his needs--mainly Web browsing, e-mail, a little
bit of word processing, and those games.
The PBTech box came without an OS. He could have got Windows 10 for it,
but considering he would be facing a learning curve coming from XP
regardless, I suggested going 100% Linux for all his daily needs, to
see if that would work. He could always spend the $160-odd extra on
Windows later if need be.
So I set it up with Linux Mint, since that seems to be everybody’s
favourite :). He was already using Firefox on Windows, so moving all his
Web bookmarks across was easy. The Mint install put an icon for
Thunderbird on the desktop by default, so I decided to try that for
e-mail. Getting his address book across from Outlook Express was
fairly straightforward, once I figured out how to map the exported CSV
field names correctly. The mail messages were slightly more fiddly, but
I found this extension
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/>
which directly loads Microsoft’s .dbx files, and that seemed to work OK.
Then he wanted to play CDs. When we put in an audio CD, it came up with
options to run Banshee (media player) or Brasero (disc burner). The
Banshee media player wouldn’t play the CD directly, it insisted on
ripping it to the hard drive first. This was not really what he wanted.
I had a look round, and found KsCD, which will indeed play audio CDs
without trying to rip them to audio files first. As far as I know, this
is the only GUI Linux app that can do so.
So, day 1 ended on a reasonably successful note. He was already
noticing how much faster the new machine was. So we’ll see how it goes
from here...
2 years, 8 months
US Supreme Court Victory for the Right to Tinker in Printer Cartridge Case
by Ian Stewart
"The [US] Supreme Court struck a blow today for your right to own the things you buy, reversing a lower court decision that had given patent owners the power to sue customers who paid in full for a patented item but then used it in a way the patent owner didn't care for.
Together with Public Knowledge and R Street, EFF filed an amicus brief at the Supreme Court. We explained that the ability of patent owners to sell products into the stream of commerce while also writing a wishlist of anti-competitive restrictions, would be a disastrous expansion of patent law, hindering competition, innovation, and your freedom to tinker with and repair your own stuff.
The Supreme Court agreed, explaining that when a patent owner "chooses to sell an item, that product is no longer within the limits of the monopoly and instead becomes the private individual property of the purchaser, with the rights and benefits that come along with ownership." The Court emphasized that, by default, people have every right to make, sell, and use things. The limited monopoly that the government bestows upon a patent owner is a deviation from the norm of free market competition and ownership of personal property, and is subject to important limits in order to protect the public interest.
The Court explained that people who buy things are allowed to use and resell them without being sued under patent and copyright law, and explained that this freedom is necessary for commerce to function. The next logical step will be for courts to recognize that people who buy digital goods are owners of those goods, not mere licensees, and can resell and tinker with their digital goods to the same extent as purchasers of tangible property."
See the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) article for more details...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/supreme-court-victory-right-tinker-...
[https://www.eff.org/files/issues/patents-2.png]<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/supreme-court-victory-right-tinker-...>
Supreme Court Victory for the Right to Tinker in Printer Cartridge Case<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/supreme-court-victory-right-tinker-...>
www.eff.org
The Supreme Court struck a blow today [PDF] for yo
Maybe the 11 remaining TPP countries will ensure that their agreement endorses this ruling ?
cheers,
Ian
3 years
Car Emissions Cheating: How It’s Done
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Researchers have been digging through car firmware from Volkswagen and
Audi to get to the bottom of the emissions-testing scandal that broke a
couple of years ago. Turns out the code was written by Bosch, and
important information in the form of “function sheets” (documentation
for what the firmware does) was not (officially) forthcoming from that
company. But unofficial sources can be found on online forums
frequented by vehicle-modding enthusiasts.
<https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/05/volkswagen-bosch-fiat-diesel-emissio...>
3 years
Creative Commons Staff Members Release New Free eBook
by Peter Reutemann
'Creative Commons staff-members Sarah Hinchliff Pearson and Paul
Stacey have now published Made With Creative Commons, the awaited book
they successfully funded on Kickstarter in 2015. "Made With Creative
Commons is a book about sharing," explains the book's description. "It
is about sharing textbooks, music, data, art, and more. People,
organizations, and businesses all over the world are sharing their
work using Creative Commons licenses because they want to encourage
the public to reuse their works, to copy them, to modify them... But
if they are giving their work away to the public for free, how do they
make money?
"This is the question this book sets out to answer. There are 24
in-depth examples of different ways to sustain what you do when you
share your work. And there are lessons, about how to make money but
also about what sharing really looks like -- why we do it and what it
can bring to the economy and the world. Full of practical advice and
inspiring stories, Made with Creative Commons is a book that will show
you what it really means to share."
There's free versions in PDF, ePub, and MOBI formats for downloading
from the Creative Commons site, and there's also an edit-able version
on Google Docs. A small Danish non-profit publisher named
Ctrl+Alt+Delete Books is also publishing print copies of the book
under a Creative Commons license "to ensure easy sharing," and is
making the book available on Amazon or through the publisher's own web
site.'
-- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/05/28/0130259
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/
http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
3 years
Timers In systemd
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Was referred to this page <https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Systemd> about
enabling systemd as the init system in Gentoo. The section on “Timer
services” I found particularly useful, as applicable to other distros
running systemd: instead of a conventional crontab, you create .timer
entries, and corresponding .service descriptions for them to invoke, in
your ~/.local/share/systemd/user area.
One advantage of this I can see is one less set of user files kept
in /var. In fact, do this in conjunction with maildir format for user
mail, and you no longer need to have any user files in /var.
(That I can think of, anyway...)
3 years
Popularity Contests
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
In the middle of another Phoronix flame war, someone posted links to a
couple of interesting pages.
What’s your favourite desktop environment? According to this
<https://opensource.com/life/15/7/poll-preferred-desktop-environment>,
GNOME is number one, with KDE not far behind. One-third of respondents
use something else.
Arch Linux offers some stats
<https://www.archlinux.de/?page=FunStatistics> on popularity of desktop
environments and other software among its users. Here GNOME and KDE add
up to only about 50%.
By the way, it’s clear from the numbers for browsers and text editors in
the latter that lots of people use more than one.
3 years
A wormable code-execution bug has lurked in Samba for 7 years. Patch now!
by Peter Reutemann
'Maintainers of the Samba networking utility just patched a critical
code-execution vulnerability that could pose a severe threat to users
until the fix is widely installed.
The seven-year-old flaw, indexed as CVE-2017-7494, can be reliably
exploited with just one line of code to execute malicious code, as
long as a few conditions are met. Those requirements include
vulnerable computers that (a) make file- and printer-sharing port 445
reachable on the Internet, (b) configure shared files to have write
privileges, and (c) use known or guessable server paths for those
files. When those conditions are satisfied, remote attackers can
upload any code of their choosing and cause the server to execute it,
possibly with unfettered root privileges depending on the vulnerable
platform.
"All versions of Samba from 3.5.0 onwards are vulnerable to a remote
code execution vulnerability, allowing a malicious client to upload a
shared library to a writable share, and then cause the server to load
and execute it," Samba maintainers wrote in an advisory published
Wednesday. They urged anyone using a vulnerable version to install a
patch as soon as possible.'
-- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/05/a-wormable-code-execution-bug-ha...
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/
http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
3 years
Malicious Subtitles Threaten VLC, Kodi and Popcorn Time Users, Researchers Warn
by Peter Reutemann
'Millions of people risk having their devices and systems compromised
by malicious subtitles, according to a new research published by
security firm Check Point. The threat comes from a previously
undocumented vulnerability which affects users of popular streaming
software, including Kodi, Popcorn-Time, and VLC. Developers of the
applications have already applied fixes and in some cases, working on
it. From a report:
While most subtitle makers do no harm, it appears that those with
malicious intent can exploit these popular streaming applications to
penetrate the devices and systems of these users. Researchers from
Check Point, who uncovered the problem, describe the subtitle 'attack
vector' as the most widespread, easily accessed and zero-resistance
vulnerability that has been reported in recent years. "By conducting
attacks through subtitles, hackers can take complete control over any
device running them. From this point on, the attacker can do whatever
he wants with the victim's machine, whether it is a PC, a smart TV, or
a mobile device," they write.'
-- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/05/24/1329211
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/
http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
3 years
