[thelist] [OT] Stolen laptop + Rails tip
Ian Anderson
ian at zstudio.co.uk
Thu Feb 16 06:58:59 CST 2006
Hi all,
sorry for the OT, but would really value some input from the list on this:
My Dell laptop was stolen last night from my house, while we were
upstairs getting the kids off to bed. The laptop has Windows 2000
Professional, and the thing requires a password to login to Windows when
it starts up. The hard disk is not encrypted.
a. Has anyone seen it? (only kidding)
b. Is it likely that the person that gets it will be able to boot it up
and access the hard disk as a mounted volume from a different PC?
c. Booting from a floppy or CD, do they get to see files on the hard disk?
d. Can they reinstall Windows while preserving all the files and settings?
I am somewhat concerned about personal information and things like user
logins. Dreamweaver and my FTP program are set up for one-click access
to a bunch of client sites, and my email archive has a lot of passwords
in it.
How much risk is there of this information being explored by the
recipient? I am hoping that the thing will be wiped sooner rather than
later - I understand from the cops that this is usual practice because
the software is personalised and therefore traceable to the original
owner, but I'm still a bit worried.
Thanks for any advice
<tip type="Getting into Ruby on Rails" author="Ian Anderson">
Rails is a rapid web development framework based on the object-oriented
scripting language, Ruby. It offers incredible ease of development of
Web 2.0 apps [0], but there's a catch... installing it is not for the
faint hearted. It's also a whole new way of looking at a web application
for many self-taught coders, as it adheres very strictly to the
Model/View/Controller paradigm that other languages aspire to.
Mac users are advised to compile and install it themselves [1], which
for some is like telling them to build their own car. Luckily, further
down the page they do link to some prepackaged installers [2], [3].
These won't likely have the latest versions of the relevant software,
but should be reasonable starting points.
For UK-based developers, one concern is where to host production apps,
as at present there seem to be no UK ISPs offering Rails. The
Netherlands and Scandinavia seem to be a bit more switched on to it, but
most good hosting options will probably be stateside.
One disorienting thing is the almost complete agnosticism for web
server, database or platform - you can run Ruby and Rails with just
about any combination you can imagine. The assumed configuration seems
to be Lighttpd with FastCGI and SQLite database, though obviously Apache
and MySQL is another common configuration. However, it's a far cry from
the comforting simplicity of IIS/ASP/SQL Server, and makes the whole
thing even more of a leap from the familiar PHP/ASP way of building web
apps. Developers familiar with J2EE or ASP.NET will probably have more
familiarity with MVC concepts.
The tutorials here [4],[5] look good, though they cover the Windows
experience specifically.
[0] Movies to inspire envy:
http://www.rubyonrails.org/screencasts
[1] Main download for Ruby on Rails
http://www.rubyonrails.org/down
[2] Locomotive - packaged installer for Mac OS X (including 10.2 and
10.3 specific options)
http://locomotive.sourceforge.net/
[3] Instant rails - packaged installer for windows
http://instantrails.rubyforge.org/
[4] Rolling with Ruby on Rails - tutorial
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rails.html
[5] Rolling with Ruby on Instant Rails
(version of [4] adapted for Instant Rails)
http://instantrails.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Rolling_With_Ruby_On_Instant_Rails_Tutorial
[6] Lesscode.org - tons of links
http://lesscode.org/archives/
</tip>
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