Re: Various Topics

[Jeff Licquia <jeff@licquia.org>]

On Sun, 2002-03-24 at 15:16, Brandon Adams wrote:
> At Ursuline Academy (my h.s.), I am known to spend a
> good portion of my time on computers. I don't make it
> a secret that I despise Windows systems and since we
> have recently instituted a laptop program for the
> freshman and anyone who wants to buy one (for $1950
> the machine they give you is a rip-off and even for
> windows it's outdated (win98)).

Hmm.  Especially bad, considering what you can buy these days.  Even
Apple laptops can be had for under $1400 (and they're extremely good,
too; several people at the office here have them).

> They have had several
> security violations mostly due to their sloppy netware
> setup and lax security with their "firewall". I have
> been blamed for no fewer than 4 attacks on the school
> network by our "computer" teacher (in reality she
> plays tech support and is a typing instructor) and
> I've been labled a "security threat" and "hacker"
> (their terms, not mine although from informed people
> I'd be flattered at being called a hacker). 

Did you actually do anything to their network?  For example, did you
probe their firewall in an attempt to be helpful, or circumvent it to do
something innocuous (like ssh home, or something)?

It's an unfortunate fact that too many people in education punish,
rather than reward, their more inquisitive students.  Still, you have to
see it from their point of view.  You most likely intimidate them, and
they feel a need to protect themselves with the only tool they have:
administrative power.

The best solution here is to be less intimidating.  Find out, exactly,
what "offenses" they think you've committed.  If any of them are real,
apologize immediately and offer to fix any damage.  Also apologize for
the other ones; it's up to you how to handle it, but be contrite that
they interpreted your actions as hostile, and offer to be more
communicative with them.  The important thing is to make an attempt to
bridge that hostility gap and be the network admin's friend, not the
person they dread logging on.

Of course, it's possible that some people in power have already "given
up" on you.  This is unfortunate.  Welcome to the world of power
politics.  Your parents might be able to help; other than that, you
might just be out of luck.

One other thing to think about: Advocacy is a hard thing.  Zealotry will
often provide the opposite results to what you're likely looking for. 
You may have better luck being a little more subtle about your distaste
for Windows or your liking for some other system.  After all, a little
experience with Microsoft products seems to generally give people a bad
taste in their mouth without any advocacy.

> I've talked with the principal about my ban from the
> computer network and his answer is to just leave
> people be and tell them that I cannot help them. It's
> almost painful to do this as the computer teacher's
> way of fixing any problem is wipe the hard-disk and
> have the Computer Group reinstall everything from
> cd-rom which costs the student $60. I can't figure out
> what to do because most of the problems are simple
> things like the MBR being deleted that I can fix in no
> fewer than 4 seconds after booting into a rescue
> floppy.

This is a little confusing to me.  These are the aforementioned
laptops?  The students own these?  Does "unauthorized help" somehow void
their warranty?

If the students own the laptops and can take them home, then the simple
answer would be to fix them off school grounds.  When you can help,
you've saved the student $60; if you can't help, then nothing you'd do
would cause any problem that the "standard solution" (reinstall)
wouldn't fix.  

Alternatively, you could do the "standard solution" yourself in hard
cases.  Make sure that the students bring their own install media; you
don't want to get yourself in trouble by installing the same copy of
Windows on all the laptops and have Microsoft come knocking.  Also,
don't install anything on the laptops yourself; give your "clients" a
list of software for them to install if they want.

Be careful, though.  Don't antagonize anyone if you can avoid it.  If
you've been ordered directly not to help any students with their laptops
(network or no network), then you should consider following that.  Civil
disobedience isn't something to be done lightly.

> Just a couple questions here. Do I need to run a
> simple DNS server (bind) on a machine so the LAN will
> work?

No, though it depends on what you want to do.

If you just want a LAN, you can get away with writing an /etc/hosts file
and distributing it to all hosts.  If the Internet is involved in any
way, though, it gets a lot harder.  For mail and web access only, you
can set up a proxy server to route all that.

The nice thing is that bind isn't that hard to get working.

> Is the Cisco Aironet 350 wireless-NIC for
> laptops supported under any *nix (at this point I'd
> take a working hurd implentation)?

Linux includes drivers for the Aironet in either pcmcia-cs 3.1.27 (or
later) or kernel 2.4.7 (or later).  (Those are just the earliest
versions I could confirm; earlier ones may work.)  You need the
pcmcia-cs drivers for 2.2.x kernels.

> 3) Do any of you know of computer-related (perhaps
> even Linux or unix-related) jobs that would be
> available to a 15/16 year old person with some
> scripting skills (python, shell(sh and csh), perl,
> php, and a little tcl and elisp), basic understanding
> of C/C++ (I can read but my writting is poor), decent
> network adminitstration (with some docs I can setup
> pretty much any server in a unix enviroment), and an
> aptitude for accomplishing pretty much anything
> (although generally in an unconvential manner). I
> don't really need the money (it's just a nice bonus)
> but I really need the experience.

You might see if anyone in the area might be interested in an intern for
their IS department.  Normally, I'd advise you to talk to your school
counselor, but given your history with the school, I have no idea if
they'd help you.  Failing that, talk to a headhunter with an IT focus.

> Anyone have a recommendation or two for a new video
> card? I have about $200 to spend on one but I'd really
> like it to be supported by X so I can have fun with my
> shiny new copy of Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

I'm happy with my ATI Radeon, but I'm not an intense gamer or anything
like that.

If you care about Linux compatibility and performance, I'd avoid
anything by NVidia.  3D support is only available through binary-only
drivers, and their drivers don't interact with the X server like other
drivers do.  They end up being a pain to manage, even if their
performance is better than ATI (as I've heard).


-
To unsubscribe, send email to majordomo@luci.org with
"unsubscribe luci-discuss" in the body.