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Comment Tabs (Score 1) 807

I do.

Gmail, calendar, and Google docs are at least three tabs off the top.

I admin systems for my company, so that adds Nagios, New Relic, AWS, and RightScale tabs.

Might be interested in a few different views of both.

I'm hitting docs on various issues I'm investigating. So that's a search tab and multiple sub-tabs of results or vendor docs.

There's our internal Wiki and task management systems. Multiple other online tools.

Add in a few news/info sites and sub-tabs, and we're talking not 20 tabs but easily upwards of 50-100. Yes, seriously.

The box is also running a ton of terminal windows (local and remote systems), and possible a VirtualBox session or two. Jconsole. Other fun stuff.

8 GB suddenly doesn't seem like a lot of RAM any more.

As far as tabs go, the best thing about them is that they contextually manage my browsing. I use tree-mode tabs which helps a lot. The real issue is that history sucks so badly -- what I really need is a state-management tool. Tabs are a horrible way to go about it, but there's little else that's better.

Gripes about Firefox/Iceweasel updates? Mostly that upgrades tend to break plug-in compatibility. I use different tree-mode tab plug-ins for 3.6.x and 8.x. And Chrome doesn't have tree-mode tabs at all (there are some very weak approximations).

One of the things that computers manage poorly in general is saving user state in a useful, meaningful way. There are lots of tools which have tried to address this, but it's still an unsatisfactory area, especially where multi-tasking is a key use mode.

Comment Strength training and exercise (Score 1) 235

The best you can do with a good ergonomic set-up is to minimize the negative effects of spending hours in front of a computer.

So sure: get a decent chair, make sure your monitor is set to the proper height. Experiment with sitting/standing configurations. Use a laptop or tablet (or book) periodically which lets you get away from your desk. Get up and walk around every hour or so. That will all help.

But what fixes your musculature and skeletal is actually stressing it. Yeah, weight training. 2x weekly minimum, 3x is a good standard, 4x if you decide to go gung-ho. 30-90 minutes per session. Focus on your backside ("posterior chain"): calves, hamstrings, glutes, spinal erectors, lats, traps. Movements like squats, deadlifts, rows/chins, and kettlebell swings. You're going to want to do a full-body program ultimately for balance, but the lifts above are going to be key.

Simply supporting your body in a comfortable state will disengage musculature, as will rests, splints, and other crutches. What builds and strengthens muscle is progressive overload.

For more on this, a great starting reference is The New Rules of Lifting by Schuler & Cosgrove. Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength or Stronglifts 5x5 are good beginning strength programs.

Toss in 3-4 sessions of cardio, including some HIIT interval work 1-2x weekly, and you'll be in far better shape. Particularly as you get older. Which I hear happens in time.

Comment Soda (Score 1) 235

Please, at the very least, make that sugar-free. Water, green tea, black tea, or coffee are all far better for you (in rough order) than soda. Let's re-phrase that. The first two or three are actually beneficial, the fourth 1-2x day is OK. Soda is nothing but bad.

Comment New common passwords (Score 1) 140

That's possible.

Any dictionary of "common passwords" is going to have to be adaptive.

But the thing is, if you look at lists of common passwords, and of how many accounts can be compromised by them, the really common ones are really common.

Hotmail have taken a long-overdue step here. I'd love to see all major online service providers follow suit, though if we could just get major email providers (Google, Hotmail, Apple, Yahoo, AOL), and Facebook (used for single sign-on), we'd be ahead of the game.

There are still myriad problems with password recovery features (especially in a world of "free" online services which aren't tied to payments, a payment/credit card account, or billing address).

And there's the fundamental problem that most user-based networks are far more interested in increasing the number of users, not in boosting security. Security provisions slow sign-ups, and are fundamentally at odds with increasing userbase.

Comment Metabolically / endocrinologically similar (Score 1) 1017

It's the metabolic and endocrine impacts which Lustig and Taubes are concerned with. You're dumping a load of sucrose (triggering an insulin response) and fructose (triggering a triglyceride release from the liver) with either. If you're eating excesses of either sugar or HFCS, you're going to trigger the same effects. The effect on your taste buds is not significant to the article.

Comment FVWM (Score 1) 193

Y'know, I'm tempted back into the fold, I really am.

fvwm's config file format is powerful, but also somewhat opaque. Might still just grab that bull.

As for old school, one of the most tricked-out desktops I've ever seen is Steve Hand's twm configuration (he's one of the core Xen developers). Multiple desktops, all hot-keyed, flying back and forth between windows and desktops while coding up a storm, building sources, and running VMs. Just goes to show you don't need to ran teh new hawt an shinay for a productive desktop.

Comment The "two features" thread starts here ... (Score 2) 193

There are two, hopefully simple, things XFCE4 could provide which would make it a tenable desktop for me. Otherwise, I'll stick with WindowMaker:

Pinnable window lists. In WindowMaker, the feature provided by hitting the middle mouse button, or F11 key. A window menu with a list of all available windows. Allows you to scroll through these, click on likely subjects, etc., trying to find that 24th rxvt instance or the 7th Iceweasel window that you'd lost track of somewhere. Without this, managing the mess of windows my typical desktop devolves to after a day or so (and sessions typically run weeks to months) becomes an utter nightmare.

Circulate-and-raise alt-tab navigation. Similar rationale to above, and also implemented in WindowMaker (or Mac OS X or the Windows desktop). Under XFCE4, an outline of the window raises. Utterly .... useless.

Really, of all the alternative desktops (and I regularly revisit GNOME, KDE, XFCE4, OpenBox, ionwm, and others) XFCE4 comes the closest to a replacement for WindowMaker. But 12 years after having first tried that old standard, it still provides a light, fast, stable, configurable (from a keybindings and behavior standpoint), extremely workable desktop.

My one concern is that WindowMaker's seen no development since 2008, though it is very nearly feature complete, and is certainly very highly usable. I recommend it particularly for newbies.

Otherwise, congrats to the XFCE4 team for their milestone. Anyone else missing features (if I dare ask)?

Software

Graphic Map of Linux-2.6.36 25

conan.sh writes "The Interactive map of Linux Kernel was expanded and updated to the recent kernel linux-2.6.36. Now the map contains more than four hundred important source items (functions and structures) with links to source code and documentation."
Image

Informative Shuttle Ascent Video 69

minterbartolo points out this video, produced by Matt Melis at the Glenn Research Center, excerpting from its description: "Photographic documentation of a Space Shuttle launch plays a critical role in the engineering analysis and evaluation process that takes place during each and every mission. Motion and Still images enable Shuttle engineers to visually identify off-nominal events and conditions requiring corrective action to ensure mission safety and success. This imagery also provides highly inspirational and educational insight to those outside the NASA family. This compilation of film and video presents the best of the best ground-based Shuttle motion imagery from STS-114, STS-117, and STS-124 missions. Rendered in the highest definition possible, this production is a tribute to the dozens of men and women of the Shuttle imaging team and the 30yrs of achievement of the Space Shuttle Program."
Censorship

WikiLeaks Starts Mass Mirroring Effort 586

A beautiful mind writes "WikiLeaks is asking for hosting space on Unix-based servers. The replication is implemented by a rsync+ssh based push that copies static files to a known path, authenticated via the private half of this public key. The complete website is a few GB in size, making it feasible to replicate on a large scale. The mirror list will be published when the number of independent mirrors reaches 50." Note: wikileaks.ch seems to be down for the moment, but eventually the above links may require that instead of 213.251.145.96. See also this WikiLeaks address finder. And for even more news, try this Twitter search.

Submission + - WikiLeaks Starts Mass Mirroring Site (wikileaks.ch)

A beautiful mind writes: WikiLeaks is asking for hosting space on unix-based servers. The replication is implemented by a rsync+ssh based push that copies static files to a known path, authenticated via the private half of this public key. The complete website is a few GB in size, making it feasible to replicate on a large scale. The mirror list will be published when the number of independent mirrors reaches 50.

Comment Leveraging information (Score 1) 215

XKCD puts it well: http://xkcd.com/792/

How often do you reuse passwords?

What financial or other control information transits your email account?

What blackmail or other information could be gained via your email account(s)?

I've utilized this myself in legal cases for fun and profit (lawful access to data, natch).

Comment Security is a game of percentages (Score 2, Informative) 215

Going through a proxy (crowded, busy, high traffic, concentrated) makes hack attacks that much more difficult. From the defense standpoint, proxies may be known (lists of know proxies are widely available), detectable (reverse operations), or identifiable via patterns (large volumes of traffic or attack from a single or narrow IP band not otherwise known).

You do highlight the point, however, that patterns of behavior are what are critical. You want to see who's coming in, from what IP ranges, whether or not they're suddendly having a great deal of trouble with their passwords, etc.

I've had more than a little success identifying sources of abuse via CIDR block or ASN using the Routeviews reverse IP-to-BGP Router Data lookup (the txt record is the CIDR block and ASN of an IP). Not just in spam, as indicated in the linked paper, but for apache logs, aggregating ranges of IPs to a single identifiable source.

Sure, someone using a widely distributed botnet across multiple ASNs isn't going to turn up in that analysis (or rather, it will be more weakly distributed), but in that case, you're going to want to find other patterns of behavior to track.

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