Lets start with a quote from the original article:
"Adobe's Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system."
Lets make some quick changes to this...
"~~Adobe's Flash~~ Apple products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from ~~Adobe~~ Apple, and ~~Adobe~~ Apple has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While ~~Adobe’s Flash~~ Apple's products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by ~~Adobe~~ Apple and available only from ~~Adobe~~ Apple. By almost any definition, ~~Flash~~ _any Apple software _is a closed system."
Don't even get me started on the App Store. Hey, Jobs, talk when you can put your app store where your mouth is. Just sayin'.
Just a cool tip I found to hide the user list on the logon screen. I have a great number of users, and the list was getting pretty ridiculous... This command will restart your xserver. Save your work beforehand.
**sudo gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory --type Boolean --set /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/disableuserlist True
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart**
And that will give you a nice clean username/password box.
About Server-Bits:
If you've ever wanted to get started building a server, right in your own backyard, kitchen, closet, mother's closet, mother's basement, then this is the read for you. Aimed at the not-so-technical-but-willing-to-learn, this will give you everything you need to build... that monster-server you've dreamed of. My goal: To give you a working, rocking server, for free, that you can use daily.
In this world of turmoil, uncertainty, and Wireshark, web browsing in a public place is like putting on an 80's hair metal concert, completely unsafe and everyone can see what's going on. Unsecured wifi access points (And even those secured, but using older protection) will show a great deal of your traffic in plain text to anyone who loads up a program and 'sniffs' the air. Too embarrassed about still using Friendster? Then set your server up as a VPN proxy and route all of your traffic through encrypted SSH. Completely secured internet, on all of those untrusted networks. What are you waiting for? Get to it!
That should be all the server-side work you have to do. With SSH already set and configured, your newly created VPN user is ready to go! But.... That's the easy part... Next, we have to work on deploying and setting up VPN for your new users.
Possibly the easiest way to accomplish this goal is to make a nice zip file of the things we will be building, and give people a foolproof way to set up their programs to take advantage of the secured connection.
putty.exe -N -D 8888 CLIENTUSERNAMEHERE@pastanet.homelinux.com
As you can see, its easy to understand, easy to distribute, and in a format that most anyone can open (PDF).
Again: Sorry this took so long to publish, its been a great deal of work getting all of the documentation kinks worked out. Its a bit difficult to make things perfectly easy and usable for standard users, and while running your own server, you'll figure that out as well. Next up: Remote torrent administration with Transmission.
About Server-Bits:
If you've ever wanted to get started building a server, right in your own backyard, kitchen, closet, mother's closet, mother's basement, then this is the read for you. Aimed at the not-so-technical-but-willing-to-learn, this will give you everything you need to build... that monster-server you've dreamed of. My goal: To give you a working, rocking server, for free, that you can use daily.
I really have been working on the next set of posts, really... For two weeks. The next post will include something equally different, but just as important as sheer technical skill: The ability to work with users. Deployment, documentation, dumbing-things-down. If you always count on the super-nerdy to use what you build, you won't go very far, things need to be documented and easy to use. Stay tuned, there is a lot to go through.
Sockso!! Sockso is a music streaming server program. It will take into account any folders you have on your computer, index the music from them, then create an online-accessible database which you can stream from. Your entire music collection: Working anywhere the internet and flash will. Lets get started:
One of the cooler parts about running a linux box is the ability to add things to what's called your .bashrc _file. This file can do anything from setting environment variables, to running a startup command when you log in, to setting program aliases. We we be doing the latter with Sockso. The command to run Sockso securely is long, arduous, and complicated, by adding a single line to the .bashrc file, we'll turn this command into a single word. **[NOTE: You will have to restart your bash session for the changes to take effect. This means either logging out of ssh and logging back in, or closing the terminal and opening a new one.]_**
To add a line to your .bashrc file, use the following command: echo "*cd /var/sockso-1.2.1 && java -jar /var/sockso-1.2.1/sockso.jar "$@" --ssl --nogui" >> ~/.bashrc
*
Ok, let me explain this one.. The echo command just throws text on the screen, but it can also be used with a redirect to throw text in a file as well. Right now, you are throwing that big long command in quotes into the file ~/.bashrc. "~" or "Tilde" is a very short way to say "My Home Directory" and the .bashrc is the text file located in your home directory. Now, the part in the middle of these two, ">>", this is output redirection. Instead of echo throwing text into the terminal, it will instead append that text into the file of your choice (in this case, your .bashrc file). Doubles (>>) will add the output to the end of the file, while a single redirect (>) will completely replace the file. You should probably be careful with this one. You can redirect output for just about any program in a bash shell, it comes in hand for many many things. For further reading on Bash Redirection head over here, a wonderful noobie-friendly post.
And that's it for Sockso. In the future, we'll be covering remote BitTorrent administration, URL-rewriting, and Wiki's!
About Server-Bits:
If you've ever wanted to get started building a server, right in your own backyard, kitchen, closet, mother's closet, mother's basement, then this is the read for you. Aimed at the not-so-technical-but-willing-to-learn, this will give you everything you need to build... that monster-server you've dreamed of. My goal: To give you a working, rocking server, for free, that you can use daily.