I spent most of my 'Labor Day' holiday trying to figure out why an CGI script won't go. Oh, 'Labor Day' in the Chinese sense (May 1). Some told me that 10 day holiday is the norm in China. Here in Hong Kong, it is only this day is a holiday. Anyway, as operating systems are getting prepared to be more secure - or I should say, there are now more options for you to secure a computer via operating system implementation.

I am using Fedora 3 and Apache 2.0.53 and I am ready to port my Perl scripts over from a faithful RedFlag system. I created a directory /opt/www/cgi as the default cgi-bin and appropriately modified httpd.conf for Apache to know where cgi-bin is. I insert a very simple show time CGI program (Perl script), and it won't work. That puts me in defensive mode. I should know how and I had done this many times and why the http log file shows me the (13)Permission denied... message? Why? Why? Why? Well, retracing my steps and I did not know why.

Yes, I searched the web. This problem was there as early as a 2002 post!! A solution was provided by Mr. P. Howarth (at this page), and warned by another poster to read the SELinux Policy page. There are security types and the unified concept. I did not read into the details. Now, I am a bit more comfortable in doing the chcon command to 'grant permission' for httpd to execute the CGI scripts (Is this right? Setting the policy type to 'httpd_sys_script_exec_t' is effectively telling httpd to 'go ahead, make me run.' And it did.

I thought I understood what the 'SuexecUserGroup' would do, so I insert that in httpd.conf and restart the server. No go. The 'Permission denied' is now gone, but I have the 'Premature end of script headers...' message and the script does not go. I am at a loss, not fully understand what is going on (of course, duh, you did not read the documentation well!).

This incident puts me in perspective of what we have to deal with on 'security' across partners in a supply chain. Each partner is simply cannot manipulate the security policy within four walls and expect the policy will serve the needs of information sharing in a supply chain that is facilitated by RFID technology. The concept of policy preference from the owner perspective does show promise as a viable solution. We will see.

I am still struggling with technology for AOLA. All I want is to allow any participant in the AOLA platform to key in a mathematics symbol (yes, let us start with just a symbol) and visually seeing the symbol right away (real-time) in the activity that he or she is creating using some Web-based tool. HTML form fields (such as 'input' or 'textarea') are out of the question since they are not mathematics-aware (or maths-aware). So, I chose Java to create a maths-aware Web client (an applet) as if the participant is typing in text with embedded TeX-like formulae (e.g., $\sqrt..$). As the closing balanced '$' is typed, the enclosed maths expression will be converted to a graphical image of the intended formula. All I need is an 'graphical mathematics equation generator' built into the applet. I don't have that 'generator' so I purchased an educational license of a software to be the generator at the server side, NOT with the applet client. That seems to be working ok for a proof of concept demo.

Anyhow, I adapt this development to the processing of ActivityML. Briefly, a teacher wants to create an activity (a mathematics lesson, say, for K-12) via the activityEditor currently under development. Once an activity is created, it can now be shared. Anyone can 'use' the activty via the activityViewer (not a good label, but will do for now). Anyone including teachers that can adopt the activity to his or her own course environment, and students that are to take the activity as an lesson, an exercise, an assignment or as a test.

The activityViewer presents the activity ok (see Fig. 1). Basically, the inforamtion is organized into "tabs" of a workPad. Each tab contains either information, or a unit of activity (or activityUnit). A unit can be, at this time, an exercise, an assignment or an assessment (test or exam). In each activityUnit, a mathematics expression can be static, or dynamic. The expression can be further explored or discussed, depending on the teacher who creates the activity. From the participants' point of view, that is to say that each mathematics expression has its own 'usage attributes' as a right-click menu. Specifically, two key actions in the right-click menu are 'explore' and 'evaluate'.

My work for the next couple months is simple Mathematical Web Services deployment to do both the 'explore' and 'evaluate', or maybe I should start with the simple adoption of existing maths applets for 'explore.' Will see. Oh, I also need to find out how to do a enumerable list as the value of the attribute of an XML element. That is, how to specify in XSD this:

<activity right-click="explore, help, discuss" />

Figure 1. eActivity WorkPad.