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Welcome to the LinuxFocus September/October 2003 issue

reading Linuxfocus Patents in general are a very bad idea because they promote monopolies and block the scientific and economic progress. In other words they are good for a few individuals but very bad for the society as a whole.

So why do we have patents at all? Well, the answer is easy: governments and patent offices make a lot of money in short run. Of course a lot more money would be made in the long run without the patents but a few dollars directly into your pocket seem always more attractive than millions made over many years.

A good example of how a patent free environment can promote business is the Internet. If TCP/IP was patented then your computer at home would certainly not be network capable and of course the Internet would not exit.

So far the situation in Europe is that "mathematical methods, methods of doing business and programs for computers are non patentable inventions". This may change. Software patents are especially bad because they cover ideas. Ideas can be general and broad. So instead of patenting a specific shape of an air-plane wing you may patent "any means to fly". You can block complete technologies and things that you did not even dream of when you wrote the patent.

We must definitely avoid such a situation. Otherwise you might soon find yourself being prosecuted for publishing texts or software you wrote yourself. To draw more attention to this problem web sites are now being closed down by their owners. Join the protest: http://swpat.ffii.org/group/demo/index.en.html and close your web site!

LinuxFocus.org Articles

Software Development

[translated] The MySQL C API , by Özcan Güngör

In this article you learn how to use the C-API that comes with MySQL.

Graphics

[translated] Going 3D with Blender: A toy train , by Katja Socher

In this second article in our series about modeling with Blender we create a little toy train.

[translated] Photo magic with Gimp , by Katja Socher

In this article we give you some basic ideas how to improve on your digital photos with The Gimp.

Community

[translated] Collaborative Virtual Workspaces and their advantages , by Carlos Andrés Pérez

Some background information about a new virtual learing project at the Universidad Santiago de Cali.

Articles at Linux Gazette

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News Bytes
By Michael Conry
Ecol
By Javier Malonda
From C To Assembly Language
By Hiran Ramankutty
Play Encoded DVDs in Xine
By LeaAnne Kolp
Under /etc (A Simple Guide)
By AmirAli Lalji
Linux based Radio Timeshifting
By Yan-Fa Li
USENET groups, email, and ssh tunnels over dial-up connection
By Nokolay Zhuralev
Python Weather Station
By Phil Hughes
SCO Interview
By Anonymous

Applications

[translated] A short guide to the installation of CVW under Linux , by Juan Manuel Triana and Carlos Andrés Pérez

CVW (Collaborative Virtual Workspaces) is one of the finest open source tools available for the development of virtual education.

[translated] Linux on the desktop: A computer for Mom , by Guido Socher

My Mom belongs to a generation which grew up without computers. She uses now Linux on the desktop and loves it.

UNIX Basics

[translated] Automail for fli4l , by Stefan Blechschmidt

How to fetch e-mail with a dial-on-demand router from www.fli4l.de.

The LinuxFocus Tip

You don't need nessus or other scanners to check all open ports on an ordinary computer without firewall. It is enough to just run "netstat -a". The output will look similar to the one below and you can see imediately in the column "Local Address" which ports are available for connections:

netstat -a
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State 
tcp 0 0 *:login *:* LISTEN 
tcp 0 0 *:shell *:* LISTEN 
tcp 0 0 *:pop2 *:* LISTEN 
tcp 0 0 *:pop3 *:* LISTEN 
tcp 0 0 *:imap2 *:* LISTEN 
tcp 0 0 *:www *:* LISTEN 
tcp 0 0 *:domain *:* LISTEN 
...printout continues here...

You can even go one step further and check which program opens a port with the command socklist (normally part of a package called procinfo):

socklist
type port inode uid pid fd name
tcp 513 1007 0 448 5 xinetd
tcp 514 1006 0 448 4 xinetd
tcp 6000 1133 0 680 0 X
tcp 80 1076 0 643 16 httpd
...printout continues here...

netstat works on any Unix system but socklist is a Linux specific feature.