Pangloss

Again, I don't really see a problem here, even if Moz doesn't support ActiveX (which it does). ActiveX is "the old way" -- the post-COM early days of building web applications, back when ASP was in its early stages. It's been more or less replaced in terms of web functionality by .NET. Moz/FF is fully compatible with .NET, and that organization shows every sign of continuing to be compatible with .NET (showing quite a lot of "we stand behind our words" guts, if you ask me -- it means that developers have a real, solid choice between .NET and PHP, which means more competitive goodness, which means WE WIN).

I don't know why you guys are debating ActiveX support. What difference does it make? Aren't we just talking about obscure GDI tricks? Why would it matter? Just curious.

I've been thinking about checking this out, maybe in a couple of weeks when my current term ends. Do you have any tips or suggestions for setup? I just need to download an ISO, burn it, and boot off it, right? I've done setups in Red Hat and Mandrake, but it's been over a year since I worked with Linux so I just thought I'd check and see if it still works that way.

Whoa, you don't need to degrade Oliver to limited access, and I don't think that can address your problem at all. I'm not sure where you're getting that idea from, but it seems totally out in left field to me. If I understand what you're telling me, your problem can only be solved by using appropriate credentials while trying to control Oliver. You've already established that the Administrator account has the authority to do what you want it to do, right? The only problem is establishing that you are the Administrator when you connect remotely. Oliver doesn't think that you are an administrator. You need to convince him that you are. There's really only one answer here -- you have to give him your credentials, one way or another. I think you may have stopped reading my messages at the point where I said that it would prompt you for credentials, not realizing that I was talking about shares at that point, not batch/script files. Batch/scripts won't stop and prompt you -- I agree. You have to provide that information in the script, or via a calling script/procedure/app that first establishes credentials and then calls your script. I've given you some suggestions above as to how you might approach that problem, but you're going to have to look it up for the syntax of how to login via script. (I think it might be /username:password, but again, you need to look it up.) I'm not sure if you're visualizing the credentials metaphor correctly, so let me flesh it out a little. Forgive me if you already know this. First, a minor correction: When you first load XP it drops the first account that you create into the "Administrators" (note the "S") group. This is not the same thing as making it the Administrator. There is, also, an "Administrator" account, and you gave it a password when you installed Windows XP. You can see it in Computer Management => Users and Groups (and I believe you can change its password there, if you can't remember it, or if you want to match it to the Administrator password on Oliver -- just right-click on it and select "Set Password"). Bear in mind that just because you have an account in the administrator's group on the local system doesn't mean that it's in the administrator's group on Oliver. Administrator privileges on one system do not grant administrator privileges on another system (unless you're in a domain and we're talking about domain administrators, but that's a whole other ballgame). Just to try to spell that out a little more clearly: All Local Computer Accounts Pangloss Administrator All Oliver Accts Jonathan Administrator In this configuration, if I log in to the local computer as "Pangloss", I cannot shut down Oliver, because Pangloss is not an administrator for Oliver. He is only an administrator for the local system. There is no "admin to admin" conflict, mind you -- I simply am not an admin on Oliver at all. On the other hand, if I log into the local system as "Administrator", I should have the authority to shut down Oliver IFF (IF AND ONLY IF) the password for the Administrator account on Oliver is exactly the same password used for the Administrator account on the local system. If they are not the same, then I cannot shut down Oliver (unless, of course, I somehow present the correct credentials along with my shutdown script). Alternatively, you can create a "Pangloss" account on Oliver, drop it into the Administrator's group, and that may allow you to shut down Oliver without having to present credentials at all. I'm not certain that will work, however -- you may still need to present credentials in the batch file. But it's worth a shot. I hope this is some help to you.

ROFL! Well editing HTML isn't a problem for me -- I've been working in it since '95 and it's a pretty familiar environment. I just use the tools because they make things go faster. The sad thing is, I switched to Dreamweaver from an earlier WYSIWYG product (NetObjects) because it produced much better, less-mangled HTML. But even so I'm constantly having to pop off the visual layer and edit the HTML directly (so what's the point, right?). Oh well. I don't do a lot of web sites these days anyway, being mainly focused on school at the moment. But I appreciate the suggestions.

I appreciate the feedback, Sayo. (chuckle) Yup, I agree. That's one of the reasons I support standards. Interesting. Well no, it doesn't make me feel like an idiot, it makes me look like one. (grin) I'm being a pragmatist here. (BTW, what does "pants code" mean?) But just to be even more of a pragmatist for a moment, I have realized for some time now that if I'm going to do any more web work I'm going to have to either find a better tool than Dreamweaver, or work out why it wasn't fully compatible with Moz/FF. I love Moz too much to let that problem continue to slide, and since I've recommended Moz (and now FF) to customers, it's just a bad idea not to address the issue. So I've found this thread to be quite helpful, even though at the moment I'm mainly focused on school work rather than web design. Yeah I've heard a couple of people say that. I've just been really hesitating to leap from Moz to FF. I tried an EARLY FF beta and did not like it, and I really love Moz, so I've been loathe to switch. But I'll make the change eventually.

Well put.

Gee. I find myself wondering if you have access to any automatic weapons. Are you sure you might not be better off seeking professional help, rather than using message boards for your therapy, Thomas? This is just... sad. Sad that you have been so abused that you live in fear of finding bullies everywhere you go, sad that you think that people who defeat you in logical debate are bullies, sad that you think society is screwed up when it's obviously the other way around, and sad that you don't know that the phrase is actually "cock of the walk". At any rate, I believe I understand you now. I'm finished here. You can say whatever you like in conclusion, if you wish, and I appreciate the discussion. You have a nice evening.

Again, you make my case for me. You see, your mistake, Thomas, is that you don't seem to realize that nobody here sees me as a right-wing extremist, or as somebody who has supported the war. Only you. You didn't pick on a Rush Limbaugh type, Mr. Franken. The guy you're painting with as a racist right-winger is actually a moderate, centrist, open-minded, fair, objective, libertarian with a very slight tendency to the right (which I have no qualms about admitting). The fact that you see that as far right defines you, and everybody here knows it. You've defined yourself, Thomas, not me. In other words, in your view, anybody who dismisses Michael Moore cannot be fair and balanced. Interesting. Another quote that says a lot about you. Didn't you just accuse me of not knowing if Cindy Sheehan lied or not? But in fact I've actually proven that she lied, with documented evidence. But when people show evidence that Michael Moore's "truth" is not, in fact, the truth at all, you declare the opposition to be liars. You're looking in the mirror, guy. But in fact, aren't you actually talking about yourself? I listen to both sides of an argument and then discuss issues and facts on a level playing field. You listen to one side of an argument and automatically reject the other side, regardless of their evidence. You're talking about yourself, Thomas, not me. Prove it. Let's see your evidence for where I said that. Post it, right here, right now. Or are you able to stand behind your words? Another fine quote that says more about you than it does about the people you're talking about. Although I will say that you have one thing 100% right about me. I do indeed have a very poor opinion of people who talk during movies. (grin)

You made that up!

So just because I don't agree with your position, that makes me pro-war, pro-Iraq-war, a racist against Moslem people, a person who doesn't respect human life, and a bully? You think that I am all of those things, I'm just a bit more "refined" about it? I see. Who exactly is doing the labelling here? Is it really me, or is it, in fact... you? I was opposed to the war, but you're accusing me of being in favor of it. I certainly never accused you of racism, but that's exactly what you just accused me of. I certainly have never said anything in any thread on any board in this forum to justify that kind of remark, but you've painted me with that brush, just the same. I guess it's simply inconceivable to you that anybody could disagree with you without being a racist. And you say you are the one who feels humiliated? I see. Is that why you're trying to label me, then? And you actually believe that by labelling me in that manner, you're saying more about me than you are about yourself? Hey man, all I can say is -- keep talking. Because you're making my argument for me, every time you click that button. This quote says it all, really: And you think I'm the racist? Wow.

That certainly seems to be the case here.

Was this directed at me? Your quoting of my post seems to indicate that it was. Do you feel that I've done that to you here, Thomas? Is that your contention? Or are you speaking hypothetically? Choose your next words very carefully, son. If you think you can put a word like "nigger" in my mouth and get away with it, then you and I are about to have a very different kind of conversation, and it's not one that you're going to enjoy.

Fear is such a remarkably powerful motivator.

I disagree. Standards are a very good idea. I may be cynical about how how real people in the real world decide to impose standards, and about how people come to the decision that it's time for standards, but in the end, the creation of standards is a very good thing.

Shouldn't it be strange to see a ship on its side in an ostensibly overhead view?

Well I think this it's pretty obvious what I meant, but if you like you can replace the world "people" with the word "civilians".

I guess that's why I have so many problems with Dreamweaver (I have MX, not MX 2004) when I output pages. They always look great when I view them in IE, but I have a lot of problems with overlapping or underlapping areas with Moz/FF. Macromedia must have set it up specifically so that it matches IE's compatibility "bugs". Sucks, but I guess I can understand why thy did that. If I did more web work, I'd probably take the time to make my pages more compatible. It really irks me when I see my own web sites format incorrectly in Moz. Bleh.

Put another way, walk over to the "remote" system and get the password for the "Administrator" account. I just checked, and my memory is bad -- you can't run-as a .bat file, alas. I guess that's only for .exe. So you're stuck with the command line. If you type "runas" on the command line, it'll show you the syntax, but it's basically like this: runas /user:Pangloss myscript.bat It'll prompt you for the password for "Pangloss". I'm pretty sure you can include the password in a batch file somehow, but I don't recall at the moment. You'll have to look that up.

Can you find "Oliver" through Windows Explorer, or by other means? For example, if you open the Run command and type \\Oliver, what happens? If it says that it can't find Oliver, then you have an infrastructure problem -- fix your network. But it sounded like you were able to access the computer remotely by other means earlier in this thread. Whenever you do anything in Windows, you do it "as" someone. That someone is your login username. There is no way around this. When a system loads "straight to the desktop", it's not actually bypassing login, it's remembering your username and password from before. The easiest way to see whom you are logged in as is by clicking on the start menu. Whatever name you see listed there is your username. If you attempt to do something across the network, you're carrying your "credentials" (username and password) with you. Either they'll work, or they'll fail and the system will prompt you for appropriate credentials for that system. (This happens, for example, if you try to access a share. It's not immediately obvious, but the reason why it's asking you for credentials is because your current ones, for your local system, have failed to authenticate you.) So if your username does not exist on the remote system (the one you're trying to shut down), then it needs to be given appropriate credentials. In a script it can't prompt you for anything, because, well, it's a script. You have to build that funtionality into your script, or set parameters outside the script (the run-as settings on the Properties sheet for the script file) in order to make that happen.

Sounds like you're on the right track. Whether or not you're an admin is determined by your login credentials. If you aren't logging in during the execution of the script, then your credentials are carried over from when you logged into the local machine. That would presumably not be an admin on the remote computer (the one you're trying to shut down). You can either create an account on the remote computer that's identical to the local computer, or you can manually log in to the remote computer. You should be able to do a run-as in that script, and have it always execute as Administrator. I.E. something like "runas <login parameters> shutdown.exe" etc. Been a while since I did a script like that, so you may need to run some searches for the exact syntax. If that doesn't work, you can probably right-click on the script in Windows Explorer, get properties, and set the run-as parameters there.

This is just a WAG, but have you looked at security policy issues? I believe there may have been a change in policy in a recent patch which specifically prohibited remote shutdown/reboot by default. Google on "remote shutdown" and "remote reboot" and the drill down (sub-search) with the keyword "policy", and focus on recent results.

I agree with Aeternus's post above.

The problem appears to be that your computer was getting its IP address from the DHCP server on the router. If you manually configure an IP address to something like 192.168.2.x (where X is some number OTHER than 1 but still between 0 and 256, noninclusive) then you should be able to see it again.

You say that as if Linux wasn't "emulating" something itself. All operating systems are copies or extensions of earlier ideas anyway, if you want to be cynical about it. That doesn't make them bad or worthless. You know, I'm reminded of an old joke from the early days: Q: "What do you get when you use UNIX?" A: "You get eunochs!" (Okay, it works better verbally. But it's still a pretty good joke!)