In this article by David Mercer, we will look at an entirely different aspect of running a Drupal website. Once we have added the functionality to the site, we now have to give some thoughts about how this functionality is to be accessed, or by whom. As the site grows, you will most likely feel the need to delegate certain responsibilities to various people. Alternatively, you might organize a team of people to work on specific aspects of the site. Whatever is required, at some stage you will have to make decisions about who can do what, and Drupal makes sure that it is possible to do precisely this.

Having Drupal simplify the implementation of your access control policies does not mean that the task is a trivial one. There is still much thought that needs to go on behind the scenes in order to create a sophisticated, and above all, effective policy for controlling access to the site. Because of this, we will spend a bit of time exploring the ramifications of the various choices available, instead of simply listing them. Taking a holistic approach to implementing an access control policy will ensure you don't end up with any nasty surprises down the line.

Specifically, this article will look at Planning an access policy, Roles, Users, and Access rules.

Before we continue, it is worth pointing out that at the moment of adding the basic functionality you are more than likely using the administrative user (user number 1) for all the site's development needs. That is absolutely fine, but once the major changes to the site are completed, you should begin using a normal administrative user that has only the permissions required to complete your day-to-day tasks. The next section will highlight the general philosophy behind user access, which should make the reason for this clear.

Planning an Access Policy

When you think about how your site should work, focus in on what will be required of yourself, other community members, or even anonymous users. For instance:

Article by Laura Milligan

Open source software benefits professionals in all industries: government, Internet, business, education, and even health care. Expensive software and subscriptions for anti virus systems, supporting electronic medical records and even phone or e-mail communications can put on a strain on small clinics as well as larger hospitals. Open source tools are free, highly customizable, and secure enough to handle the sensitive data that medical professionals often work with. Read below for our list of the top 100 open source software tools that benefit health care professionals.

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Medical Billing and Electronic Medical Records

These open software tools will help you manage your medical practice, from organizing EMRs to billing.

FreeMED
The FreeMED project is a “system for medical providers that runs in any web browser in multiple languages.” FreeMED will keep your EMRs safe and organized.

Despite being free, open source software maintains the same integrity of its commerical counter-parts.

OpenEMR
Take paperless billing to the next level by transitioning to an open source format. OpenEMR features appointment scheduling, patient registration, payment tracking and more.

OpenEMR Current
OpenEMR Current is another electronic medical records software system.

OpenEMR Virtual Appliance
This version of OpenEMR open source software runs with the FreeVMware Player and features the FreeB billing application.

FreeB
This GPL medical billing program can be used with any EHR system and “tracks basic demographics, procedure codes and diagnosis codes.”

SmartCare
This software develops EMR programs that can be used in disadvantaged countries, particularly Zambia.

XChart
XChart is a project by the Open Healthcare Group that promotes EMR, based in XML.

OpenMRS
This medical record system is a Web-based open source program that is designed for medical professionals working in developing countries.

To start using Personas, you'll need to get the basic plugin. It installs as easily as any other plugin or extension, and requires a browser restart. Personas places a tiny icon in the lower left corner of your Firefox window that you can click to change the browser's look whenever the mood strikes.

There are about 50 Personas to choose from, and more are being regularly added. Skins are grouped into four categories -- Most Popular, Recent, New, and All -- and the last category contains subgroups like Nature, Scenery, Sports, and Holidays.

Click on the skin of your choice and it appears instantly in the header and footer of your browser window, no restart necessary. The entire top section of the browser will be skinned, including the area behind the tabs, so if you use the Colorful Tabs or ColorTabs add-ons, some tabs may be difficult to see depending on what color Persona you choose.

Even more problematic is that Firefox's Forward and Back buttons tend to disappear with many of the skins. Since Personas don't replace your existing Firefox theme, the only workaround to this problem seems to be to find through trial and error a skin and theme combination that work well together.

Both the source code and documentation on how to create your own Persona are available online. While it's not possible to upload your custom-made Persona yet (something Mozilla says is coming "very soon"), community members regularly show off .JPGs of their designs on a specially created thread on Mozilla Lab's message boards.

To create a Persona for your browser, start by creating header and footer images -- 3000x200 and 3000x100 pixels respectively -- and save them to your hard drive. Next, navigate to the Persona settings via about:config. Scroll down to extensions.persona.editor and change the setting from disabled to manual, then close the Firefox editor.

Click on the Persona icon at the bottom of your Firefox browser window and select "Custom Persona Editor" from the menu. Navigate to the images you saved earlier, and watch your new Persona appear at the top of your browser window.

There's not much practical use for Firefox Personas at this point beyond adding a bit more eye candy to an otherwise drab browser window. But Personas does show that Mozilla is continuing to take steps toward a completely customizable browsing experience.

Every Monday we highlight a different extension, plugin, or add-on. Write an article of less than 1,000 words telling us about one that you use and how it makes your work easier, along with tips for getting the most out of it. If we publish it, we'll pay you $100. (Send us a query first to be sure we haven't already published a story on your chosen topic recently or have one in hand.)

Original link: http://www.linux.com/feature/131...

You will all no doubt be aware that a few months back I reviewed the original gOS, and I was enthusiastic about it. In my opinion, the original gOS was a great Linux distribution for the average computer user - someone who used it to write up a few documents, send a few emails, and surf the Internet a bit. With its emphasis on web apps, it was not only an ideal operating system for casual users, but was an indication of where desktop computing appears to be headed, with the real work being done "in the cloud", with the desktop just the front end for that.

Subsequently, gOS Rocket was released, but I never got round to reviewing this, mainly due to hardware issues (I couldn't get it working with my wireless connection). I tried it, and there was very little improvement over the original - a slight difference to the iBar, and a few extra applications.

But now, gOS Space is here, and it's a radical departure from the original. So, once again I downloaded a copy and gave it a try.

One thing I noticed straight off is the size. gOS Space is around 768MB, too big to fit on a CD-ROM, so you'll need to burn it to a DVD-R instead. Like it's predecessors, gOS Space is based on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, so you know right from the start that it's going to be easy to use.

The biggest change to gOS is the desktop: they've dumped Enlightenment (although apparently code from Enlightenment is still being used), switching instead to Gnome (as used in Ubuntu). I was a bit sceptical about this, not being a great fan of Gnome, but having seen it, they've done a fantastic job with it. Check out the awesome desktop:

It happens sometimes you need to access your files on Linux partitions from Windows, and you realize it isn’t possible easily. Not really, with these tools in hand - it’s very easy for you to access files on your Linux partitions from Windows

Explore2fs

Explore2fs is a GUI explorer tool for accessing ext2 and ext3 filesystems. It runs under all versions of Windows and can read almost any ext2 and ext3 filesystem.

Project Home Page :- http://www.chrysocome.net/explore2fs

Latest Version :- 1.07

Sample Screenshot

DiskInternals Linux Reader

DiskInternals Linux Reader is a new easy way to do this. This program plays the role of a bridge between your Windows and Ext2/Ext3 Linux file systems. This easy-to-use tool runs under Windows and allows you to browse Ext2/Ext3 Linux file systems and extract files from there.

Project Home Page :- http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/

Latest Version :- 1.0

Sample Screenshot

Avocado is a multi-file, multi-format audio-video converter that aims to deliver features and speed. It supports a wide range of video input and output options as well as batch-file encoding and two-pass encoding. Avocado runs natively on Debian-based Linux distros (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, UserOS ULTRA) , which means it doesn't need WINE nor is it just a Python script.

It also supports user-created profiles so that as soon as you create the ideal encoding settings, you can save them and use them again. You can also use profiles in batch-encoding mode to give different files different settings. You don't just have to have the same settings for each file in the batch. There is no limit to the number of files you can encode in a single batch.

Input file support: AVI, MPG, DVR-MS, FLV, M2TS, WMV, VOB (unencrypted), MKV, MOV

Output file support: AVI (MPEG4 ISO or XviD), MP4 (XviD or H.264), MPG (MPEG1 or 2), WMV

Avocado is at an early beta stage but we think it's already stable enough to use. Some advanced features are still to be implemented as well as some codec options but they will appear in coming weeks.

This is the official site for Avocado. We recommend you only download Avocado from this site as you will always get the latest version here. Versions available at other sites may have been tampered with or may be an older outdated version.

Application: Techlogg.com Avocado - Windows Edition - Version 0.1 Build 14
Download file: techlogg.com-avocado-0.1b14-i386-win32.exe (April 14, 2008)
File Size: 4.2MB
System requirements: Windows 2000, XP or Vista (32-bit or 64-bit)

Application: Techlogg.com Avocado - Linux Edition - Version 0.1 Build 12
Download file: techlogg.com-avocado-0.1b12-i386-linux.deb (April 13, 2008)
File Size: 3.1MB
System requirements: Debian-based Linux (Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, UserOS ULTRA)

Avocado GUI is � Copyright 2008, Darren Yates & Techlogg.com.

The Avocado user interface is free for personal use. While the software has been tested, neither Darren Yates or Techlogg.com provide any warranty for this software, given or implied - use at your own risk. Your downloading of this software indicates that you agree to abide by this agreement.

FFMPEG license

FFMPEG, the encoding engine used by Avocado, is licensed under the GPL (General Public License). Under the terms of the GPL, we are required to make the source code available and that can be downloaded from http://techlogg1.com/source/ffmpeg.rev12665.7z. You are free to do with the FFMPEG encoding engine as you wish within the terms of the GPL. You can read the GPL at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0-standalone.html

Original link: http://techlogg1.com/content/vie...

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme
Last edited 04/12/2008

This tutorial is Copyright (c) 2008 by Falko Timme. It is derived from a tutorial from Christoph Haas which you can find at http://workaround.org. You are free to use this tutorial under the Creative Commons license 2.5 or any later version.

This document describes how to install a Postfix mail server that is based on virtual users and domains, i.e. users and domains that are in a MySQL database. I'll also demonstrate the installation and configuration of Courier (Courier-POP3, Courier-IMAP), so that Courier can authenticate against the same MySQL database Postfix uses.

The resulting Postfix server is capable of SMTP-AUTH and TLS and quota (quota is not built into Postfix by default, I'll show how to patch your Postfix appropriately). Passwords are stored in encrypted form in the database (most documents I found were dealing with plain text passwords which is a security risk). In addition to that, this tutorial covers the installation of Amavisd, SpamAssassin and ClamAV so that emails will be scanned for spam and viruses. I will also show how to install SquirrelMail as a webmail interface so that users can read and send emails and change their passwords.

The advantage of such a "virtual" setup (virtual users and domains in a MySQL database) is that it is far more performant than a setup that is based on "real" system users. With this virtual setup your mail server can handle thousands of domains and users. Besides, it is easier to administrate because you only have to deal with the MySQL database when you add new users/domains or edit existing ones. No more postmap commands to create db files, no more reloading of Postfix, etc. For the administration of the MySQL database you can use web based tools like phpMyAdmin which will also be installed in this howto. The third advantage is that users have an email address as user name (instead of a user name an email address) which is easier to understand and keep in mind.