:: Intrepid Spaniel ::

UNIX ownership and permissions provide for privacy and participation

One of the biggest things I’ve seen that new Linux users are uncomfortable with is leaning how the UNIX permission system works, and why it is important. How to you securely share files with other users, while protecting your system with the resilience that *NIX is know for?

Read this link to find out.

Speaking UNIX: UNIX ownership and permissions provide for privacy and participation

So you want to learn Linux? The best way, the only really good way, is to get a distribution, load it on a computer and give it a try. Any of the ones mentioned recently at DesktopLinux.com in “What’s the best Linux for beginners?” will do fine. However, you may need or want to read some materials about Linux to get up to speed, if so the list here is for you.

The Linux 101 Required Reading List

Rare political post from me…

Sick of the the political parties selling the middle class short and pandering to corporations and lobbyists? What can you do about it? Lou Dobbs at CNN offers the following suggestion.

“There’s something all of us could do that would have an immediate impact and send a powerful message to both corporation-dominated political parties and to our elected officials in Washington. Our so-called representatives in both parties have been working against the interests of the middle class for so long that they take our votes for granted, or they take advantage of the fact that a sizable number of us don’t vote at all.

So what if a majority of us decided once and for all to walk into our town and city halls all over the country and change our party affiliation from Republican or Democrat to independent? What if that sizable number of us who don’t vote at all decided to register as independents? For the first time in decades, working middle-class Americans might just get the attention of our elected officials in Washington.”

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/10/Dobbs.Oct11/index.html

Free resources to learn guitar on the net..

A lot of free lessons

Further reading:
1. About.com has lessons for beginners.
http://guitar.about.com/library/blguitarlessonarchive.htm
2. video lessons
http://www.dolphinstreet.com/guitar_video_lessons
3. adsense optimized site
http://guitar-lesson-online.net/

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A trip through history in rememberance of the day against DRM, Oct. 3rd. Learn more at http://www.defectivebydesign.org

A friend asked what to do when MS Word keeps asking for the Product key. I usually don’t care to write about trivial (to me) things like this, but since I already typed it up, I figured I might as well share it with you in case anyone else has the same problem. Here is what I told her. ..

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From Ron at Rondam Ramblings: For the geek turned entrepreneur, this list seems pretty right on. I think Ron does a great job describing the pitfalls of owning a geek business.

Some key points I took away from this article..

“It’s the customer, stupid” and never “It’s the stupid customer” You don’t make any friends by calling people names. If people can’t immediately grok what your product will do for them, you are fighting an uphill battle. Case in point, by using the word grok I’ve lost half of my audience of this blog post. Clickety, clickety, on your merry way. For example my interests probably only appeal to a pretty small niche, so I need to think about what my customer will be concerned with, and not how cool this would be to build. Not everyone wants to maintain a webserver in their house. It is ultimately about what the customer wants and it doesn’t matter how good your idea is.

If you don’t think that your business is worth giving up your nights and weekends for, how are you going to convince an investor that it is worthwhile. I think that this is true, there are no shortcuts, as much as I hate to admit it. There have been people a lot smarter than me (Brin and Page of Google, maybe?) and even they didn’t just have a great idea and then sit back and watch the money come rolling in. It hardly ever works like that, you’ve got to work for it.

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