Building a secure setup is extremely hard. There's an old saying that's basically "build an idiot-proof system and the world will build a better idiot." That works two ways. If you build a hacker-proof system then you'll
find better hackers. Loosely defined use of the term hacker of course.

So, how does one make a secure web server. The easiest would be to use something like Nginx and server only static content with hundreds of layers of strong security to get to altering those files with only one fully

It's time for another post. Recently I've had issues with dropping network connections or wanting to connect and keep working on the same thing from other systems. Most of you probably already know the answer. You screen.

Sounds easy enough. My issue is that I'm incredibly lazy. I don't want to SSH into the system AND start screen AND detach AND reattach. That's just asking way too much of someone like me.

Here's the very simple solution. In my ~/.bashrc file I appended this section of code.

ssh() {
  command ssh "$1" -Xt screen -aAdr -RR work bash
}

What is Et cetera?...

Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: et·cet·era
Pronunciation: \et-ˈse-tə-rə, -ˈse-trə also it-, ÷ek-, ÷ik-\
Function: noun
Date: 1597

1 : a number of unspecified additional persons or things
2 plural : unspecified additional items : odds and ends

Let's think about that. /etc/ is full of random junk. It's pretty much the configuration for your whole system. Where do you configure defaults for the xxxx app? Did you check in /etc/? It's probably there.

I've been asked why I use Ubuntu a few times. When asked I ask why not. The answers to that are usually different but always follow the lines of, "Well, I was just curious because you know everything about Linux." That answer makes me laugh a little. My follow up is, I use Ubuntu because it works and does what I want it to. Thats not the only reason though. It's not that I haven't tried other distributions. It's not even that I haven't liked certain things in others more. The real reason is much deeper than that.

Compiled vs. Binary:

I like some of my classes at my university. I get into fun little arguments with the instructors sometimes. It's how they handle these that I either gain or lose a lot of respect for them.

If they just look at the ground, shake their head, say "no, no, no that's wrong" and never offer an explanation of why Linux sucks beyond "You get what you pay for." then I'm going to lose a lot of respect for them. If I had any left for Jim McKeown to start with..... If anyone has any respect for him.... I paid a lot for that class and I sure as heck didn't get crap for what I paid for.

== Begin Opening ==

I ventured onto the gnu.org website wanting to read what their licenses actually were. In the process I decided that I should figure out what GNU actually is. Aside from discovering that the FSF seems to be just a source of income for GNU, I was quite disturbed.

I want to make very clear that I went into this with no bias in one way or the other. It is only after all my research that I developed a very strong opinion. I also want to say that a majority of my research was done by reading pro-GNU information. I also asked about this in the #gnu channel on Freenode. Below I'm giving my opinion on two specific documents that bothered me in particular. Their text is cited verbatim as well as links to the original.

# Documents are below the conclusion.

== Begin Conclusion ==

Instead of placing my conclusion at the very bottom it's going here.

If you don't want to read the whole thing, it boils down to GNU feeling they thought of it first so their the originators of the Linux project and all work belongs to them. However, I encourage you to actually read it for yourself. Just follow the links, you don't need my opinions for this.

After everything below I have no doubt that what we call "Linux" should be "Linux" and NOT "GNU/Linux." I'm actually very certain that GNU doesn't belong in the name of any operating system at this point. If they can ever finish their own OS, then perhaps they can call that system "GNU." Until then, they should realize their failures as developers and as free software idealists. They should realize that they can make a "GNU Linux" system that is stripped of anything they don't like and realize that this is what theire "GNU system" is.

They claim we can't exist without them but that's wrong. Linux distributions exist without any GNU software in them. They really need to remove themselves from their communist beliefs and take a jump into the real world.

00:00 GNU: No! I use "Linux" and I will never use "GNU/Linux." FOSS belongs to everyone. Stop trying to claim the work of so many others as your own.

I've been rambling about a PlanetPlanet module that can mimic http://planet.ubuntu.com for a while now. Although it isn't polished up yet, it's time for everyone else to start helping us.

What we did is create the module. What we need now are bug reports for what you feel we need to fix or improve.

You can see the latest development code running for yourself at my staging site.
http://staging.profarius.com/planet

Many of us know of and have met MootBot. The authors describe MootBot as:

Mootbot is an eggdrop script that is used by the Ubuntu Scribes team to log meetings. It logs messages that begin with certain keywords in an attempt to make it easier to summarise the meeting and introduce a defined structure.

If you've been in #ubuntu-meeting then you've definitely seen it work. It's a very efficient tool for managing Meetings.

I think Linux users can safely agree that Flash and Java make web usage into a battle ground. Many of us choose to blame the issue on the distribution we use. When we favor our distribution too much we'll point fingers at Sun or Adobe. If we use the FOSS versions we'll point fingers at the respective maintainers.

The sad truth is that I'm writing this not really knowing where the blame lies. However, I'm not sure that it even matters. I don't care whose fault it is, I just want it to work.

By now we've all heard about the Bazaar (bzr) version control system. If you're a coder then you're well aware of what a version control system is and why it's helpful. If you code on Launchpad you're equally aware how incredibly awesome this system is.

Rather than discuss how incredible bazaar is, I'd like to explain how to set up a production level deployment for a bzr server. If you're curious what makes bazaar great, just try it out. You can use https://staging.launchpad.net/ to create branches for playing around.