I was hitting the big lower case g (google) and found this. Thanks to Tsukasa I finally found a ‘sudo’ for powershell.

I just had to figure out a why to get it to work. Probably there are others looking for the same I thought I might just summarise the steps it took to make it work.

Since I don’t know what editor is available on your system we’re going to use notepad.exe. Personally I’m using ‘e’, there is a free trial but it’s pretty much worth the money. So you might think about buying it.

let’s start with…

step 0.5 , creating a script: mount.

It’s no really necessary but might save you some time, so if you don’t care just skip to step 1.

First we’re going to create a directory to put all your scripts in

New-Item -ItemType directory $HOME\Documents\Scripts

After that we need to mount that directory so it’s easily accessible from everywhere within PS using the New-PSDrive cmdlet. The one draw back of that cmdlet is that all mounted directories only last as long as you current PS session. We need it to stay mounted, or at least get mounted at the beginning of every new session and there is a simple way to solve the problem. Put the mount command in your ps-profile. if you never bothered with it there probably isn’t a profile file yet, but Microsoft thought ahead and created a variable for it.

notepad.exe $PROFILE

and put this in it:

New-PSDrive -name script -PSProvider FileSystem -Root $HOME\Documents\Scripts

save, exit.

restart your powershell session by typing powershell into powershell. You should see the directory getting mounted, we’re good to go now.

cd script:

will take you to the script directory.

step 1, getting the script

Go to your script directory or any other directory where you want to put your script and type

notepad.exe sudo.ps1

Notepad will appear and you’ll need to put the following into it

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$file, [string]$arguments = $args;
if([System.IO.File]::Exists("$(get-location)\$file"))
{
$file = "$(Get-Location)\$file";
}
$psi = new-object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo $file;
$psi.Arguments = $arguments;
$psi.Verb = "runas";
[System.Diagnostics.Process]::Start($psi);

save, exit

The script is already working, and you can run it from everywhere by typing the whole path and since that’s a major PITA we’re going to assign an alias.

step 2, assigning an alias

Open your PS profile

notepad.exe $PROFILE

adding the following line

New-Alias -Name sudo 'script:\sudo.ps1'

(or the respective directory)

save, exit

restart the session.

Now you’re able to start any application with elevated rights. e.g.

sudo notepad.exe

or

sudo powershell

to get a elevated shell but I’ve yet to find a way to make the elevated shell being opened in the working dir where the command was executed.

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What I really liked is the fact that they took a lot of familiar u/*nix shell commands, using them as aliases to their own commands. So, there are different commands you can use to achieve the same task. Pretty simple example everyone should be familiar with is listing files in a directory.Doing a ‘Get-ChildItem’ will get you to your list just as ‘ls’ or ‘dir’ does.

‘Get-Process’ and ‘ps’ is just another example and the only strange thing about it, is that the aliases always seem to be be the better choice, since they’re much shorter and therefore quicker to type.

Why would you type ‘Get-Help New-PSDrive’ if you can do the same typing ‘man mount’ ?

That’s it for now. Next time I’ll tell you how to get a little sudo-like command for Powershell.

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Sometimes you don’t feel like blogging at all, because you’re not sure if there is anything to write about.

Sometimes however you do feel like writing a blog post because it could be the revelation you’re looking for.

I haven’t been actively doing anything with my blogs or websites for quite some time now and I think it’s the right time to change that. While I was being bored I managed to do some things that I’m going to write about in the days and weeks to come.

Among those things are a guide on how to set up your own Ubuntu server in Virtual Box on Windows to use to get some ssh and web action going. Another thing I plan writing about is setting up IIS7 on Vista and getting some applications and modules up and running.

So, that’s it for now. Hope to see you next time.

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#1 Wait for the release before praising it

It seems there is some kind of mass hypnosis going on, every single tech site seems to be exited about what Redmond will bring to live a few months from now, forgotten is the Vista disaster, forgotten all broken promises of the Past. The OS isn’t released, it’s not done and has never been used in productive Environments by the average user. You don’t know yet how users will react, if adaption will increase compared to Vista and if users forgot about all the bad publicity it brought with it.

#2 Independence

Companies choose Linux because they want to be independent of one supplier, no longer be forced to change the way the work depending on how their OS wants them to but to make your OS work the way you want. While home users probably never touch the source code of any application they use on their PC, this is something larger companies can effectively use to create their own slick application and operating system for their own needs. Windows 7 will bring some modularity, but you will still have to use Microsoft’s choice of components not your own. More and more public institutions, especially outside of the United States don’t want to depend on foreign controlled infrastructure any longer and are slowly but steadily making progress adapting Linux systems. The German foreign ministry and the French Gendarmerie are good, prominent examples of this.

#3 cost of transition

One of the killer arguments against the use of Linux has always been the cost of transition to Linux powered solutions from the ones from Redmond. You had to train your employees, buy new service contracts with Linux companies, maybe get some new hardware and so on. Nonetheless a lot of companies and even home users made the switch, got used to the new environment and build upon in. The cost of transition works both ways, reverting back to solutions from Redmond will cost a lot of money in form of licenses, re-development of your own applications, training employees etc and of course your loss of independence as mentioned in #2 which will lead to even more cost.

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It depends on your point of view, if you’re the industry this stuff is like magical pixie dust, it makes you greediest dreams come true. And If you’re the customer? Well, then you should be angry because you get screwed, not that this would be something never happened before but this time they got away with it and news about DRM-free music isn’t something too many people will be happy about, or at least shouldn’t be.

DRM usually works like this. Let’s say you just bought a piece of music, online. This information is getting stored in your account data, and on the general DRM server. The DRM server keeps track of what you do and what you’re allowed to do with your music, like burning it on CD three times, putting it on five of your PCs and carry it around on one two of your portable music players. OK, fine you can live with that. At least that’s what they make you believe. Your music, isn’t actually your music, you just bought a license that allows you to play the music. This license has to be renewed every now and then so you can still listen to the music, if the license is revoked or gets invalid for whatever reason, you can’t play ‘your’ songs any more.

On of the reasons licenses may get invalid is because the company where you bought your music might decide to shut down their DRM server. Maybe because they switched to DRM free music, maybe because they went out of business or maybe because of the Thermonuclear Holocaust. Just imagine, you’re standing where the Trafalgar Square used to be, talking with you zombie friends and suddenly you music stops playing because Apple decided that survivors, zombies and mutants don’t need to listen to their music.

The only thing you can do to remain in control of your music is to not buy DRM-infected music in the first place, if you already bought some, they’ll become useless at some point when you’re LPs and CDs are still working. My conclusion, don’t buy DRM, period.

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Sure, Gimp currently lacks some features you need for professional printing like CMYK, but that doesn’t disqualify for the use in non- or semi-professional environments, at home. You can even use Photoshop brushes in Gimp, so you won’t miss those. Good resources for Photoshop brushes are Qbrushes and DeviantArt.

Working with the Gimp might be a little different, many complain about the interface but it’s not as bad a people say once, you got used to it and start using hot-keys. Try using <TAB> in one of the newer releases, and you won’t have to complain about multiple windows anymore. In most of Linux’ window managers you can set any window to stay in front, all the time which is another method to get those windows not to float around behind the main window when you need it. If you’re using windows, just get DM2 to get the same functionality. It’s a little app, that doesn’t even need installation.

To get started you should take a look at those numerous tutorials for Gimp available on the Internet. You can ask google for some, but those I found most helpful were gimp-tutorials.net and gimp-tutorials.com.

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It is of utmost importance to rise people’s awareness of these issues, in the end it’s their choice but without knowledge, there is no choice. Richard Stallman might often seem radical in his ideas, compared to other ideological leaders of the Free Software movement but he has a point and he’s being consistent. The Movement needs vocal people like him to point in a direction and to rise awareness of ongoing issues in a non free world. However leading us there is the job of pragmatics, like Torvalds, Shuttleworth or De Icaza.

Stallman might not be someone doing great in front of Cameras, looking like the cliche of a geek living in his mother’s basement, but people do listen to what he says and people respond loudly to controversial statements he makes, proving his importance to the movement.  Arguing about whether or not software, or wisdom should be free is almost impossible without mentioning his name or what he believes in.

A Free Software world may be out of reach at this point and in a time when cost reduction has become the driving force behind spreading Free Software instead of ideology in one man stands up to point at the right direction, so the movement doesn’t forget about its goals and its responsibilitto the people.

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original picture by Elke Wetzig, CC-SA-BY 2.0 Germany

As it turns out Stallman doesn’t like web applications, he doesn’t like them at all and says that using GMail and its kind is “worse than stupidity” and just as bad as proprietary software.

One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control … It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.

The FSF itself created a license for web applications called AGPL which is used by projects like identi.ca, so this little rant really surprised me. Why do you create a license for some kind of software if it is evil anyway?

I could agree with Stallman on many issues but clearly not on this one. While it is true that we don’t have control over our data, applications aren’t available on every PC, obviously not everyone is able to set up his own server and/or build personal web applications. I run a couple of applications namely irssi, mutt, ejabberd and my webdev environment on my personal server right next to me and Ubuntu does a great job helping you to set all of those things up, but you simply can not expect all people to learn how to set up servers, bother with ports and ips and dynamic dns. This isn’t Sparta but it still is madness.

What’s next? Should I produce my own electricity, drill for water and get some cows living in my flat? I really don’t think so.

Anyway, if now you’re concerned about your data and think about hosting your own services and apps you may take a look at Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Jeos

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Notepad++

Although slim and minimalistic in its appearance Notepad++ is one feature filled editor. Tabs, syntax highlighting for a variety of languages, a FTP-client, Hex-editor, a customisable interface and split screen you name it. It’s not Emacs, there are no mp3 player nor are there any doing-you-laundry-while-you’re-sleeping features, the only thing it does is to help you view and edit code and it does so very well.

There are autocompletion, regexp and plugin functionality for the lazy/effective ones of you.

Putty

Using Windows won’t make your server or your Linux machine at home home go away, and what do you need to access them? SSH! And if you’re looking for a SSH client, look no further this is all you need. Putty itself can be configured to be somewhat portable (check the docs) and is tiny in size. It’s just a simple executable.

There are however several other executables to enhance your Putty experience, take a look at Pageant and PuttyGen.

Filezilla

Filezilla actually managed to become a very popular, free FTP client in the Windows world and offers all the features you’d expect from it. In addition it integrates with Putty’s Pageant, using its assigned public SSH keys and serves as a SFTP client.

There isn’t much more you can say about it. It’s a FTP client, not Emacs!

Keepass

Everyone needs to remember passwords, everyone needs to remember account names. Keepass remembers them for you and not only that. Keypass helps you creating secure, random and customisable passwords for all your accounts. You can easily manage all of your countless accounts, adding comments and URLs to the specific entries. There is a plugin helping you to import all accounts saved in your Firefox profile to Keepass to help you getting started. The Databases are encrypted and can only be opened by a Password, a Keyfile or both of them.

Pidgin

Tired of installing various IM/Chat clients to keep in touch with your friends and business relations and don’t want to trust closed source applications like Digsby or Trillian? Then Pidgin is what you’re looking for.

Formerly known as Gaim, Pidgin is able to use a variety of protocols (MSN, OSCAR, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, MySpace, Facebook, Novell GroupWise, Silc, Yahoo, Lotus Sametime, QQ, SIP, Bonjour) by default and others like Twitter can be added via third party plugins. Talking of which, Pidgin comes with a bunch preinstalled and even more are ready for download or being linked on the website.

Theming, via GTK is possible.

Gimp

Photoshop may be the leader in this field, but if you don’t want to spent or have a lot of money, or just prefer free software GIMP is basically all you need to draw some pictures, tweak your photos and create a graphics for you website. There are countless plugins, scripts and tutorials for GIMP on the web and it is compatible to Photoshop brushes and after you set up Ghostscript able to handle Adobe’s Postscript files as well. Layers, masks, filers if offers all you need for your semi-professional, image manipulating experience

InfraRecorder

I already wrote about InfraRecorder in an earlier post. It’s a free software CD/DVD burning solution built upon cdrecord. Its interface is similar to Nero’s classic interface which in turn looks like some kind of FTP client — you get the idea. In addition it offers the InfraExpress interface which does the same as the NeroExpress interface: Showing only those options and functions you’re likely going to use, opening the classic view only if needed. Today’s burning suits have become emacs like monsters and if you’re only looking for some easy and straightforward way to burn files on a disc you found your solution.

DM2

Working with Gimp on Windows and on Linux environments made me miss one thing. Window’s window manager doesn’t offer “stay on top” functionality, you can’t roll up your windows. DM2 offers this without installation, just download it, start it and set it to autostart if you like and set windows to stay on top.

But it doesn’t stop there also makes it possible to changing Windows transparency, setting their priority and minimising them into the systray or giving them a floating icon. There is some basic, multiple workspace functionality as well but lacking a pager I really couldn’t be bothered using it.

You can stop counting. I made 3 Emacs references!

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Until now users had to use self made scripts and batch files. For Windows users exists/existed the possibilty to auto-assign Firefox to use Gmail via the Google Talk Chat client.

Now, the steps to follow to get it all set up are quite easy:

Open the options/preferences dialog, go to the applications tab, look for mailto and change action to use gmail

source:Mozilla Links

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