"Almighty God hath created the mind free."
Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, Jan. 16, 1786
Michael needs to prepare for his last year of graduate school at Colorado State University. As a youngster, he always liked to play with computers, especially to do as many nonMicrosoft things as he could. He was introduced to computers with an old x486 PC that used Windows 3.1 and DOS. He fooled with the PC enough to access the Web and from the Internet Service Provider (ISP), Early Morning Coffee Club, he found out about Linux. The ISP used Slackware Linux.
His introduction to Linux started with Slackware, then to RedHat/Fedora and then to Debian GNU/Linux which he liked the best of all. It is an operating system developed by software developers from around the world. Be it Brazil, Japan, Turkey, Finland, United States, or Germany, if the country was on the map, it has a Debian developer!
It had a framework from which to stay in development: it had to be 'free,' as in freedom. As military personnel can tell you, freedom is not FREE! It has a price. So Debian GNU/Linux may cost money, but it usually does not; it is usually downloadable from the Web. If highspeed broadband is available, it takes a CD to boot from and a web network installation will install the Debian Operating System (OS). The politically correct wording for the software is OpenSource, meaning it can be changed by the user at anytime.
One reason Michael liked Debian was because he could change the look of the graphic user interface (GUI) to be what he wanted. There is a GUI called Gnome that Mike liked best. It could be setup to look like a Macintosh, which Michael used on the side, which did not remind Mike of a PC when used. Other times when Mike wanted a change, he would use the KDE, which is setup more like a Microsoft PC; the screen started in the lower left corner and the programs being used appeared along the bottom of the screen.
Some other reasons that Mike liked Macintosh, is because they left their own OS to use BSD which is OpenSource. Mac tweaked it a little to their liking, but it started as OpenSource. There is a group out of Loveland, Colorado called Yellow Dog that offers an OS that is indeed OpenSource that the user can change at any time.
Michael found out that a lot of the OpenSource type of software dealt with the political/technical diligence and intelligence of the final computer user. If they had a mind to be socially politically incorrect (not use the markets' favorite, Microsoft) and have memories of freedom to change the look and performance of their latest car, before the EPA required all kinds of air pollution additions that changed a highhorse power motor into minor league transportation automobile, they knew they could change a basic scrapeby computer into a major league power machine!
But that was all history now, Michael needed to prepare for school now. He needed to finish his paper on Java, and some more research needed to be done. His interests of nonMicrosoft software and nonPC computers lead Mike to pick Java. It was initially developed by Sun Microsystems to work on ANY computer! You did not need to have software for a Microsoft PC and something specially compiled for a Mac and another for a Solaris workstation. Java works on all different computers.
Besides Java study, Mike will teach an undergraduate class in Java Beginnings. It's a morning class starting at 8 am in room 120 in Computer Science Building on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Mike thinks of the time schedule, he'll be able to be available for student questions for the next two class times, then make his graduate class at eleven o'clock.
Michael was impressed by the CSU Webcam at http://eagle.colostate.edu/~clarkcam/index2.html. Sometimes Michael would work with a pad of paper and a pen to put together a flowsheet for a program while watching the CSU Web cam to see some of his fellow grad students, professors and undergrad students. Some of the the kids were entertaining as they sped by on their boards or blades.
Michael begins his new class. He practiced his opening words: "Students, please state your name, where you are from, and tell why you are taking this Computer Science course." He points to the student in the front left desk.
"My name is Diane Renta, I am from Burns, Oregon, and I am taking this class to gain some knowledge of some computer related subject. I'm two years into a Secondary Teachers Science curriculum," said the first student. The students each state their personal information down two rows, and reach the beginning of the third row. The girl there said "My name is Pamela Ziegler, I am from Portland, Oregon, and I am taking this course because it is an elective CS course possible in my ChE course plans." Mike says, "May I call you Pam?"
"NO! My parents named me Pamela, and in respect for my parents, I use Pamela as my name" said Pamela. A kid in the back of the forth row over smirks and his buddy next to him rolls his eyes to the back of his head. Michael stayed quiet and looked to the girl behind Pamela expecting some information. "My name is Brenda Woods, I am from Seattle, Washington, and I am taking this course to fulfill my business major elective courses."
The students continued to the last of the fifth row. There were 15 students in the class, and some looked eager to learn new things, and others looked anxious to get out of class.
Michael continued his presentation to class. "This classroom tells the personality of your teacher. I put up the small posters around the room and a few pictures. Some teachers and professors tell nothing about themselves in their classes, and others tell much. I want you to know me and to work with me this semester. I have a goal to present this material in a way to teach you and to let you show me that you know the material. The term will have pop quizzes scattered throughout, eight lab projects, a midterm test and a final exam."
A boy in the third seat down the forth row blurted out, "Please tell us about the 'Real Hacker Commandments' on the poster over there."
"Okay, those words are from the originators of the Internet, people from back in the days when computer systems took an air conditioned room the size of a basketball court. They are people that work together as a team with others around the world. They are people that see no reason to write code again, to put their stamp of approval on it, to make a buck. They are the people behind the original UNIX systems around the world," said Michael. Michael continues, "Real hackers do not waste time breaking a password of a securedsystem to prove to the journalists that it can be done. Real hackers call the kids that do that 'crackers.' They are not hackers. Hotwiring a car to steal does not make the criminal an automotive engineer!"
Michael pauses for a moment, "When you are writing code for some problem that just came up, you can say you are writing a 'hack'."
Mike had gone over these ideas so many times before in his head and while talking to his Dad. He went on, "Being a hacker can be thought of as an attitude, not always computer related. Be it an electronics, chemical engineering, or a music problem, if one faces it not as an egotistical triumph, but as a shared team problem, thinking new and different, that is a hacker attitude. In general, thinking up a new and different 'hack,' which may be a new piece of code, or a different inert gas crossflow in a steel rolling heated element, or changing keys on the last stanza of an older church hymn, may be a hacker attitude. A lot of the hacker material in this classroom came from a book titled Linux Server Hacks by Rob Flickenger. About the hacker attitude is a Zen poem that is in a poster on the wall there." Michael pointed to the wall and recited the words:
"To follow the path:
look to the master,
follow the master,
walk with the master,
see through the master,
become the master."
Michael said, "Mr. Flickenger's book summed up the hacker attitude with these five points:
1) The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved. A hacker is thrilled to solve nondestructive problems. A hacker never does cracker kid stuff.
2) No problem should ever have to be solved twice. Time is limited and it is a moral duty to share information and to spend time on new problems
3) Boredom and drudgery are evil. That is, if a repetitive work duty can be automated, let the machine do the work, and spend more time creating a new hack to solve a problem.
4) Freedom is good. That is followed by a distrust of authoritarians. It's kind of a libertarian sort of thinking. Chuck Green, a past Colorado journalist referred to how Benjamin Franklin said in a letter to a friend during the revolutionary war: "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom." That is, a people who depend on their own hard work, not dependent on government handouts, are a people who take it upon themselves to offer funds to those not so well off as they. The wealth/poor ratio now is higher than it was during the 1930s depression. That is, five percent of the population own 80% of the material. You will notice a poster in the back of the room highlighting the Bill of Rights from the Constitution. You will notice during the term, that I don't keep my political being in hiding. I will admit that I used to be a Republican, but I dumped the party when they seemed to forgot what they were supposed to stand for. I am in the American Constitutional Party now. They are similar to the Libertarians, but not exactly the same.
Let me give an example of the proper interpretation of the Second Amendment. Using the years past Virginia Tech shooting, if a lawabiding student had a concealed weapon in the first classroom he was in, he may have only murdered one or two other students! The lawabiding student would have nailed him to the wall, instead of him murdering more students. The lawabiding student should have the freedom to carry a gun. But when the extremely leftleaning court system gets through their interpretation of the Second Amendment, hardly anything is left!
A good example of the way it should be is the shooting that happened in a Salt Lake City mall. The shooter started but there happened to be an offduty policeman there that took care of the criminal as an immediateresponse emergency. But an offduty policeman is not always in the place where some ninny decides to shoot people.
Hopefully, lawabiding citizens out number crooks. It's like the wildwest, a number game; if the goodguys always out number the badguys, the goodguys will win.
No more politics for now, let me continue attitudes of hackers.
Some times a work situation turns into a powerstruggle to see who has the last word. But this attitude is not fighting authority. Children need to be guided and criminals curbed. But you need freedom to solve the problems, and not get stuck on a repetitive duty.
5) Attitude is no substitute for competence. Intelligence, practice, dedication, and hard work is what it takes for a hacker.
These five points and a complete essay by Eric S. Raymond is available on the Web address printed on the poster. (http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/hackerhowto.html.)
A strong force supporting this hacker attitude is O'Reilly publishing. Some of our text books are from them."
At ending the definition of hackers, Michael spent some time on plagiarism. "Now class, be sure you give credit to others that did some coding before you. In this class, you may use up to 20% of your coding from someone else It's the same as writing papers; you cite the title and author of work you refer to in your paper. Be sure to take credit for your work, start all coding with your name, CS 130, the date and the name and how I can access your program to see how it works."
Michael covered what he had planned to present in his first class, check to be sure all students had the required textbook and study guides, and to verify the students expectations of the class subject.
One student had a question: "What about that poster over by your desk, the one about FreeBSD?"
Mike replied, "It is a poster from an email I received when I was a member of the North Colorado Linux Users Group. Every once in a while, I want to refer to the hacker group."
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Alan Silverstein writes:
> Could anyone here please give me a brief education on how FreeBSD relates to Linux?
Back in the late 80's the guys at UC Berkeley decided to start rewriting the AT&T UNIX portions of the V7/V32 kernel known then as 4.3BSD UNIX. They ran into the same clean room legal snags that are in the SCO/IBM litigation, and with some luck (due to trade secret/copyright botches) got away with most of it. In the settlement, they pulled a few files, which were later rewritten from scratch and presto the first almost open source UNIX came to light as the team left school.
It splintered into several releases ... but is still largely the rewritten V7/V32 4.3BSD kernel ported to several architectures. It's a small, lite, fast ... and aging OS architecture. It has some advantages, such that some ISP's have adopted it ... one is that it is not a widely adopted as Linux, so the security flaws when discovered are frequently fixed before widely exploited. It's also small enough, that one of the BSD teams was able to do a complete security code review from end to end.
Linux originally was equally small, lite, and fast ... but has grown in leaps and bounds, often leaving the legacy UNIX interfaces behind so that back porting to FreeBSD can sometimes be painful.
John
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History of Linux
In 1991, Linus Torvalds, was a student of the University of Helsinki in Finland. Through a class he became interested in UNIX, bought a PC, and worked in Minix, a small UNIX operating system. Unsatisfied with Minix, Linus began to develop the kernel (the heart of the operating system) that eventually became the center of the Linux operating system.
Linus published his work under the GNU General Public License (GPL) as maintained by the Free Software Foundation. The GPL defines the license rights for developers, software vendors, hardware OEMs, and endusers, guaranteeing that it remains Open Source.
The history of Linux is closely connected with the history of the Internet. From the beginning, Linus posted his ideas and the progress of his project to newsgroups on the Internet. Other students and software engineers quickly became interested in what he was doing. Excitement grew with the chance to work on the source code of an operating system that was fully Open Source. Linux flourished with the contributions of programmers worldwide and by 1994 had grown into a full multiuser, multitasking operating system. Linus and over 15,000 developers worldwide continue to work on Linux development. Today, Linux is the most commercially successful of several free, opensource operating systems.
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The poster tells of the origination of BSD Unix and Linux. There are some books available in the library here or on the Web too," said Mike.
Michael ended the class with these words, "Okay students, I will cover most of the subjects dealt with in Chapter one the rest of this week. So read the chapter, do the examples and I may have a pop quiz sometime this week. Also, in class I try to keep subject concepts short and simple. On some ideas, I can be long winded, but in general, I try to keep everything as short as possible. I will usually be in room 239 during the ninth and tenth hours, but I will be unavailable for the eleven o'clock class time."
Classes went on reasonably the rest of the week. Two of the students decided to drop the class because it was not exactly what they wanted. Friday was the day Michael decided to give a pop quiz of five questions based on Chapter one. Most students just spent about ten minutes to finish the quiz, but Diane was the last to turn her quiz in. Diane said she is still ironing out a study time schedule with an extra chemistry course she needed to squeeze in for her teacher certification she hoped to earn. Pamela mentioned to Diane that she could offer some help, because chemical engineering is her major. Weeks slipped by in the computer science course for Michael. The students seemed to blend into the people that Michael formed based on his first, very prejudiced, ideas about the students. Prejudice was always a favorite subject for Michael. When the word is dissected, it is to prejudge. A very plain idea that boils down to your first impression of someone. One time, while listening to Rush Limbaugh, and prejudice was the topic of Rush's show that day. A very humorous caller, a black taxi driver from New York City, mentioned that from experience, in order to keep his income, he never went into the black parts of town! Any other ethnic separate part of town was okay. He picked up blacks in other parts of the city, but never in a black neighborhood.
On prejudice, there was an interesting study done by national State Police groups. Most States were barred from pulling over cars based on a prejudice. The make, style, paint job, anything based on a prejudice idea could not be used. One state that did not keep the antiprejudice law was Utah. In as much as Utah has two interstate highways, I80 and I70, dissecting near Salt Lake City, State Police kept their eyes open to see a Mexican lowrider sort of car. They 'always' have a reason the pull the car over, be it a license plate light out, unsafe suspension, or to have the tinted windows checked, they always found a reason to pull the car over. However, they were rather high on their illegal drug transport arrests on the cars they pulled over; eighty percent higher than any other State!
But Michael knew that prejudice was not always 100% accurate. He had met some kids during a summer job years earlier, Jack and Peter. They were black, listened to rap music, had a cell phone stuck to their ears 80% of the time, and so they seemed to fall into the general black prejudiced group, of poor education, low IQ, always on welfare and the rest of the general black prejudices. However, during the work time after a few months on daily work, Michael began to view Peter and Jack as human beings each having their individual personalities. Peter's father was a Physical Education teacher at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Peter had finished a few terms at a University, was very intelligent, and has Psalm 23 tattooed on his tummy! After the summer project, Peter took off for Air Force training, and he could pick where around the world he wanted to be stationed!
Jack was a Catholic, and he made it known that the way to salvation was through the Catholic Church! He also seemed to have a new phone that Macintosh came out with: the iPhone, it was a implant into Jack's ear! He could surf the Web whenever he wanted. And Jack was an excellent eBay buyer. He counseled Michael on making purchases on eBay. The best time to purchase, which needs to be at broadband speeds, is within the last five minutes of the bid session. That way, the competitor does not have enough time to counterbid. Jack was up into the top five percent of purchasers to always won his bid. Jack was pretty sharp, he was very 'streetsmart' too. He didn't fool around in bars or clubs. Jack spent much of his time in the 'cybersphere' of the world. He talked to many people on myspace.com.
Michael suspected that Pamela was home schooled because of her personal traits, and her language style. She did not curse, she gets angry from time to time, but she never curses or says anything with a sexual innuendo. And she respects her parents. She honors them as far as you can imagine; they named her Pamela, and she is always very emphatic on that! If you call her 'Pam,' you know within halfabreath, from her body language and her facial expressions, that you NEVER call her Pam! Her version of violence is never physical, but it's like cooking your food in a microwave oven. You don't see the electromagnetic microwaves traveling to the food, but you sure feel the results after you pick up your food! Her communication is just like that, if you called her 'Pam!'
In Michael’s mind, she was a master of communication! In one class, Michael questioned her, "Pamela, you appear to always have the right word in your mouth all the time! Why?" Pamela replied softly "I was in Toastmasters in Junior High and High School. I enjoyed the challenge of Toastmaster impromptu speaking. In every meeting at least three members were chosen to speak 'onthespot.'" Pamela was getting excited, "In those drills, the meeting conductor said your name, stated a topic, you were to stand, and immediately walk to the front of the room. You had the time that it took you to reach the front of the room to think of how you would cover the subject named by the emcee!"
"The time ranged from three to seven seconds!," Pamela said with a gasp. She continued, with her hands emphasizing major points, "I totally failed at some of those talks, but some of them were fun! The people in our Toastmaster group thought I was good too. I made enough points through a year to go to the State Championship. I won an award at the Oregon Championship!"
Michael went on with his thoughts about Pamela. Her ability to 'readtheaudience' was superb. She thought in paragraphs at a time. She didn't ponder for words; her words were such an 'immediate response' like Micheal’s father was in when he faced 'lifeordeath' calls from environmental clients dealing with oil spills and dangerous accidents. They didn't have time to read the OSHA 40 hour hazwopper training manual. They only had minutes to save lives of other human beings!
So in class, Pamela was the most attentive student Michael had seen in his brief time as a teacher this term. Michael had wanted the classes' students to work with him to achieve the goal of education about Java.
When Wednesday's class was over, Michael gathered his class material, tucked it all into his backpack, and shuffled his way to his office. He dropped the pack besides his desk, and turned his radio on softly. An oldie, Toby Keith with "Beer for the Horses" was on. Michael was not raised as a cowboy, so he was moreorless an urban cowboy, a cosmetic cowboy with some cowboy thinking. He liked countrywestern because most of the time, he could understand the words. An old friend, Matt from High School told him that the reason he liked Grateful Dead, was because the music, the notes were important, not the words!
He had a fairly wide taste of music. He placed countrywestern first, then bluegrass, then jazz and then he enjoys most other music except heavymetal and operas. So as the tune ended, he sat in his chair to look at his latest work on his thesis. Ideas stumbled though his mind, and he took a deep breath. Then he heard a tap at his open door. "Excuse me, I have a few questions on the next lab project," said Pamela.
"Okay, come on in Pamela," said Michael as he finished his exhale.
"Mr. Stay, this next lab is on Java Scripts, that should work on any OS likely to be used on the Web, right?" said Pamela.
"You are correct Pamela," said Michael.
"So I can use my Debian GNU/Linux OS at home to write the script?" said Pamela.
Michael raised his eyebrows a little, and questioned Pamela, "Uhmmm, so you do some Linux at home? How long have you worked with Linux?"
"Practically from the beginning with me. Dad started us that way, the expenses for educational software is less with Debian. The best, really basic educational programs are very good with Debian. The Microsoft software has more bells and whistles, but it's like I found out about presents for young boys . Sometimes the cardboard boxes that the electronic gizmo comes in are better than the expensive electronic gizmo!" said Pamela. "The boys can create what they want, not what the toy designer thought the boys should play with."
"Yep, I hear you there!" said Michael. "Notice I use a Mac here at school, but at home, I use the latest Sid I can download from Debian! And for developers, it is by far the best as far as amount per dollar. For a server, you spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars from Microsoft, and with Debian, if you only download the first CD, 650 Meg, and you can make a server, and compile programs in most popular languages!"
"Yes, I started with Debian back in the days of Woody, Sarge, Etch, Lenny and then decided to be on the edge of what was happening and stay with Sid, the 'StillInDevelopment!" said Pamela.
"Good! And you can write your Java Script at home on a Linux box, and then you can verify that it will work on the Web by using the Microsoft/Unix terminals here on campus," said Michael.
"Thank you very much Mr. Stay. I will be sure to have this next lab done by the due date." said Pamela as she stepped out.
Michael had a tough time in his graduate course today. So, he is ready to go home. An attitude that Michael started as he worked some summer jobs back in high school was flowing in his mind now. Micheal’s thoughts abruptly flash through his mind: "keep work problems at work, start more positive, relaxing thoughts while going home."
Michael walked out of the computer science building, unlocked his mountain style bicycle and started a slow ride home on Mason street. He arrives 10 minutes later, goes into his home, and starts his CD player with an old album from The Pretenders. One of the tunes on this album was the theme song of Rush Limbaugh. One of Mike's favorite tunes started.
He listens to Time, the Avenger, from The Pretenders, and thinks some Christian ideas about the relationship of time and fallen man. When Adam and Eve fell from sin, and all mankind had a new and different thing to deal with: DEATH. See, time may have existed, but it did not have a very negative affect on mankind. When Adam and Eve ate what they were told not to eat, the human metabolism changed. Human beings aged and died.
So, in some cases, time may be the avenger to man. But after Christ is in your heart, time does not seem as important. Nevertheless, Michael may have a limited amount of time to find out more about Pamela Ziegler, the best student he teaches in his undergraduate class.
Also, about time, Michael has had a bit dejavu of Pamela as she visited his office with questions. Dad and Michael had talked about God's knowledge of the future, and how sometimes, we're in a situation, which we calculate that it had NEVER happened before, but we seem to have memories of the situation! They had concluded that it was a gift from God, that our marvelous creator let a little of His Book of Life leak into our minds!