[thelist] [OT] Stolen laptop + Rails tip

[Ian Anderson]

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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