Introduction to Free Stuff

 

Everyone loves free stuff. I’ve developed an interest in getting free material on the Internet, in particular audio recordings (music and speech) and the text contents of books.

Of course everyone’s first reaction is “Isn’t the Internet full of free stuff?”, sometimes countered with “Isn’t all that free stuff illegal?” The answer is not as simple as it may look.

Most of the stuff you find on the World Wide Web is protected by copyright. The author/creator/owner gets to decide what can be done with it. So, yes, all those web pages out there are free for you to read, because the authors have published it for you to read. (Although you can’t plagiarize it or claim it for your own.) And, yes, all of those MP3 songs from current popular artists you might download from Kazaa are illegal copies, because the owners of the music have said you have to buy the CD if you want a copy of the song. Regardless of how overpriced it is, it’s their right to do so.

What can you copy freely?

Copying stuff (protected by copyright) without the permission of the owner is essentially illegal. So what can you copy freely?

  • Stuff where the copyright holder gives you permission. Stuff like shareware/”freeware” and GPL-protected open-source software are often given away free-of-charge with the explicit allowance for you to copy them. They often have additional restrictions on what you can or cannot do to them, such as modifying them.
  • Stuff with no copyright, or public domain. Public domain is a specific legal status that means there is no copyright or the copyright has expired. By and large, nearly everything on the Internet is not public domain. You have to search to find it. Most public domain material comes from copyright expiration, which means in general it is at least 50 years old or more.

What’s the difference? It mostly comes down to what you want to do with it. If you just want to have a copy of the original, either status is good enough. If you want to change it, sell it, or use it in something else, you probably want public domain material.

So what does “free” mean anyways?

There are two senses of the word “free”. One refers to freedom, as rights or liberty to do something. The other refers to money, as in free-of-charge. Open-source software people refer to this as “free speech versus free beer”. I’m using both senses here also.

 

 

Submitted by amillar on Sun, 2004-05-02 21:36

Limiting web browsing on LTSP terminals

Running Linux
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With LTSP, all applications run on the server. This is great for the low maintenance involved: install an application program once, and it is available immediately on all terminals.

However, some times you may want to discriminate between different terminals. For example, you may want to restrict web browsing at one terminal or another.

Because the browsers run on the server, all outgoing HTTP connections come from the same machine. This means you cannot just restrict by IP address. You need a finer grain of control, by X display.

There is no easy perfect solution for this problem. The best solution would be to have two different terminal servers, and have the two classes of terminals connect to the appropriate server.

I’ll describe my hack attempt to solve this problem. My approach was to set browser proxy settings based on the X display.

First, you must decide how you want to limit the browser. In my case, I created two browser proxy configure scripts, which are usable by Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, and Internet Explorer browsers.

Script for allowing internet access: “proxy.pac”

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) { if (isPlainHostName(host)

Printing from Open Office through KPrinter


RedHat Linux 9 Bible
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To print from Open Office through KPrinter, set up a printer in Open Office for it.

Run spadmin as root. On RedHat 8.0 it is at

/usr/lib/openoffice/spadmin

Add a new printer of type “Generic Printer”. This means simple Postscript output. For the command line specify

kprinter –stdin

Name your printer entry “KPrinter” or something recognizable to you.

Now when you print from Open Office, you can select this printer and be able to make use of KDE features such as the prefilters.

Submitted by amillar on Sat, 2004-02-07 13:35

Printing Greeting Cards in Linux


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Many people are familiar with the “print your own greeting card” idea. You print four small page images on a single sheet of paper and fold it in half twice. You get a little greeting card with a custom cover and interior, all from one single-sided piece of paper.

I wanted to do this from a Linux application, without needing Windows or MacOS. Preferably, I could use any application to produce 4 pages, and have some magic transform it into the single page with all parts reduced and oriented properly for folding.

After a little googling, I was able to find this list archive message by Ronan Heffernan describing exactly what I wanted. His “make_card” script takes a postscript file and does the appropriate transformation:

#!/bin/shcat $1 | pstops -pletter -b “4:3U@.5(1w,1h)+0U@.5(.5w,1h)+1@.5(0,0)+2@.5(.5w,0)” > $2

This works well, but I wanted something that my family could use from
Linux apps without the command line.

My favorite print spool tool in Linux is KPrinter from KDE 3.0. It can be used with any X Window application, not just KDE apps. It is perfect for the generic X apps like
Mozilla and Acrobat Reader. Instead of sending print output to the command lpr, send it to the command kprinter (or kprinter –stdin if it pipes it).

The method I found is to create a “prefilter” for KPrinter. This
allows you to select greeting card formatting for any print job to
any printer.

Create the following files:

/usr/share/apps/kdeprint/filters/Greeting-card-4-up.desktop

[KDE Print Filter Entry]Comment=Greeting card- 4 pages on double-folded US letterMimeTypeIn=application/postscriptMimeTypeOut=application/postscriptRequire=exec:/ps2ps

/usr/share/apps/kdeprint/filters/Greeting-card-4-up.xml

<!DOCTYPE kprintfilter><kprintfilter name=”Greeting-card-4-up” ><filtercommand data=”pstops -pletter -b ‘4:3U@.5(1w,1h)+0U@.5(.5w,1h)+1@.5(0,0)+2@.5(.5w,0)’ %filterinput %filteroutput” /> <filterinput><filterarg format=”%in” name=”file” /> <filterarg format=”” name=”pipe” /> </filterinput> <filteroutput><filterarg format=”> %out” name=”file” /> <filterarg format=”” name=”pipe” /></filteroutput></kprintfilter>

I found that the KDE prefilters were not terribly well documented, but I
was able to muddle through it. To create one, run KPrinter and select
“System Options”. In the print configuration dialog box, select “Commands”.
This will allow you to create a new filter. You simply need to compare the
entries to other existing print filters.

When your new filter is created, it will be in your personal directory, such as

$HOME/.kde/share/apps/kdeprint/filters/

Move it to your system-wide print filter directory, which might be

/usr/share/apps/kdeprint/filters/

or something similar.

I could not get the paper size to work automatically using the poorly-documented
paper size substitution variable, so I had to hard-code the US Letter paper
size. If anyone knows how to fix this, let me know.

Submitted by amillar on Sat, 2004-02-07 13:35

Latina Pro Populo


Latina Pro Populo
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Latina Pro Populo, also titled Latin For People, is a good introduction to the Latin language.

It covers basic Latin grammar and vocabulary. While Latin is known (deservedly so) as a complex language, this book does a good job of providing the basics, allowing the reader to actually read and comprehend simple Latin sentences in just a short amount of time.

Anyone who is simply curious about Latin, without the desire to spend years of study just to read a sentence or two, would find this book to be a great starting place.

Submitted by amillar on Mon, 2004-02-02 11:39