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Cory Doctorow—Linux Guru?

Issue 175

From Issue #175
November 2008

Nov 01, 2008  By Dan Sawyer
 in
Cory Doctorow has “open sourced” every one of his books, so to us, he seems like the perfect candidate to use Linux. He agrees, and tells us about it.
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It's just a matter of time - really?

marv-e56s's picture
Submitted by marv-e56s (not verified) on Thu, 02/26/2009 - 13:40.

I've been using various flavors of Linux on all of my home desktops since about 1995, using Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment, and/or XFCE desktop environments. The only problems I've really had has been accessing webpages specifically designed to Windows standards.

My daughter uses Mac OSX (on her laptop) and I don't see any difference in functionality.

That's a recognized myth: "I

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 02/27/2009 - 15:41.

That's a recognized myth: "I don't see any difference in functionality". The truth is that both Windows and Mac OS X are very good when we talk about a OS suitable for desktop.

Linux is just for servers, it is designed for servers, that's why Linux isn't used massively around the world. (although we'll always see people saying that that is because MS is doing illegal things under the hood...)

It is just a matter of time

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 02/24/2009 - 13:37.

It is just a matter of time before Cory Doctorow is using Mac OS X again. Why, you may ask, and obviously I have the answer: Linux is not designed to be suitable for desktops.

Of course, you can still dream about the Linux domination and all that lies, I don't have a problem with that.

Awesome Article

Paul McRae's picture
Submitted by Paul McRae on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 16:01.

I dream of a day when we will live in a world without DRM.

Signing email automatically

Kperkins's picture
Submitted by Kperkins (not verified) on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 10:36.

Hey Cory. In thunderbird go to account settings, click on Opengpg security, and check the boxes marked "Sign...by default".
I think it's only if you have enigmail installed, but I don't think you can even use gpg without it. (Don't know had it installed for forever.)

Deja Vu

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 02/22/2009 - 20:54.

This is from Nov 1, 2008. First comment from Oct 8, 2008. What's the deal? LJ is now recycling articles. Wow.

From the Print edition

Webmistress's picture
Submitted by Webmistress on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 02:47.

This article is from The November 2008 print edition of Linux Journal. We occasionally highlight print articles on the web after they have been made available to all readers. In this case, I feel like this is a particularly interesting interview, and well worth bringing to the attention of our web readers.

I particularly enjoy reading the discussion of Apple and DRM in light of last month's move by Apple to DRM-free music on iTunes.

Katherine Druckman is webmistress at LinuxJournal.com. You might find her on Twitter or at the Southwest Drupal Summit

The sciprt explained

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 02/22/2009 - 19:09.

Tor is used to anonymously surf the internet, you connect to a tor server and it has exit nodes in different countries so your ip looks as if its coming from say Germany.
ssh -- secure connection method between server and client.
So ssh over tor would make it have a secure anonymous connection. SMTP over ssh over tor would make sending mail over a secure anonymous connection.

Now the command
alias tortunnel='ssh -o ProxyCommand="/usr/bin/connect
↪-S localhost:9050 %h %p" -f -N -C -l username
↪-L5002:255.255.255.255:25 -L5003:255.255.255.255:110
↪-L5555:localhost:5555 255.255.255.255'

-o is option switch for ssh client this command is telling it to call connect using the command /usr/bin/connect (I am guessing this is an example script hence replace /usr/bin/connect with your own connect command)
this connect command takes the -S option to have connection sharing on port localhost:9050, since its localhost you can connect to port 9050 on your machine using only the loopback socket. %h %p are replaced by hostname and portname.
-f (force backgrounding)
-N (do not open shell just forward ports)
-C (compress data when sending)
-l username logs in with the username you provide
-L5002:broadcast-address:25 replace the broadcast address with correct address, this command will port forward local port 5002 to smtp port 25. Similarly -L5003:xxx:110 will port forward local port 5003 to pop-port 110 for incoming mail. Finally, 5555:localhost:5555 will open port on local machine "5555" to remote machine you are connecting to on port "5555" last address (255.255.255.255) should be the ssh-server address.

Cheers,

connect is real

RichS's picture
Submitted by RichS (not verified) on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 15:39.

Get connect.c from http://www.taiyo.co.jp/~gotoh/ssh/connect.c

Unfortunately, Goto san's html page is down, but mirrored here: http://bent.latency.net/bent/darcs/goto-san-connect-1.85/src/connect.html

The usage instructions are in the source.

great interview

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 02/21/2009 - 11:47.

Thanks, this is excellent. I wish more people paid attention to these issues, because they strike at our basic freedoms.

smtp over ssh over tor script??

yoav's picture
Submitted by yoav on Wed, 10/08/2008 - 15:03.

Great interview. It's important to raise awareness to and voice the issues with DRM, Privacy, Surveillance Society, Freedom of speech, consumer choice and everything that relates to it.

I'm a little confused about this little script provided though. Could somebody explain what's going on exactly for the benefit of the less technically familiar with ssh tunneling / tor proxying etc?? I'm vaguely familiar with both, but still a little baffled with marrying those two together.

I'm particularly unclear about those 255.255.255.255 addresses. Were they supposed to be replaced by localhost or the remote SSH host?? Where does the SMTP server address / username+password fit in all this?

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