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Re:signal source code does not matter by Striek · 2016-06-23 01:22 · Score: 1 · on Battle of the Secure Messaging Apps: Signal Triumphs Over WhatsApp, Allo (theintercept.com)

You can also compile it from source yourself and verify the checksums. While you can't prove that nothing was changed from the given source code, you can prove that that same source code can produce an identical binary, and induce that nothing has been altered.

It's still good enough to eliminate the possibility of tampering, assuming someone is watching.

This was done, for example, with TrueCrypt.

Re:Translation by snemarch · 2014-06-19 06:48 · Score: 1 · on TrueCrypt Author Claims That Forking Is Impossible

First of all, there's a source code audit taking place. The source code audit has shown the binaries match the source, eliminating the possibility that the binaries were built with different source.

No, the audit didn't show that - the matching build was done by somebody else. A later goal of the audit project is to produce "repeatable, deterministic build", though.

Second, it's open-source. If a backdoor is put in the code, it would be in the commits.

The backdoors you have to worry about in Real Life isn't of the "if (nsa_are_connecting) { ... }" type - it's very subtle things that look like late-night coding errors, buffer overflows that allow remote code execution, or really obscure mathy stuff in crypto algorithms (like the wonky Dual_EC_DRBG stuff - that required hard math analysis, and wouldn't have been exposed during a code audit). In other words: you wouldn't discover backdoors from commit logs unless you were a world-class programmer and cryptographer, and you did hardcore analysis of all core-crypto related commits.

IMHO, any buffer-overflow or other "ability to run code on target machine" flaws aren't indicative of backdoors, merely human errors, and it's not critical to the security of TrueCrypt (or any other encryption software) - what we need 100% security against is cold attacks on encrypted volumes. Of course other flaws should be fixed, crypt-key material should be burned as soon as not needed, et cetera - but as long as you have an encrypted volume mounted, you are going to have the encryption key loaded in memory, and if anybody is able to execute code with root/admin/ring0/CallItWhatYouWill, they will be able to snatch your encrypion keys, and you're game over.

Re:What whas the problem in the first place? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-19 06:09 · Score: 5, Informative · on TrueCrypt Author Claims That Forking Is Impossible

Code review did not find it to be a clean product. They simply found that the Windows binary that was distributed could be produced from the source code. IE there were no extras in that bin. Whether the code itself has crap in it is still at question and is being audited.

Binary Reproducibility wasn't a goal (or even attempted) by the audit project - that was done by somebody else.

The audit project didn't go through the entire TC codebase, but covered a lot of important areas. They found some issues here and there, but nothing they highlighted was especially serious - i.e., no cold-attack vectors, which is the important thing to guard against (anybody with physical access to your machine would be able to dump keys from memory, Game Over).

Re:7.1a for x64 linux by WaywardGeek · 2014-06-10 12:00 · Score: 4, Informative · on Auditors Release Verified Repositories of TrueCrypt

I believe I read about this guy on slashdot a year-ish ago. He verified the Windows binary comes from the official source. I replicated most of his steps, until I became a believer. It is the actual source used to compile the 7.1a binary.

Now, if you're afraid of back-doors, be afraid of what is already in the official source, all 110K+ lines of it.

Re:Fishy by Kiwikwi · 2014-05-30 02:42 · Score: 1 · on TrueCrypt Website Says To Switch To BitLocker

AFAIK, the TrueCrypt audit project has done no such thing. (Citations welcome.)

But this guy did: https://madiba.encs.concordia....

Polanyi's counter movement by ferespo · 2011-10-16 11:03 · Score: 1 · on Occupy Wall Street Protests Go Global

http://artsandscience.concordia.ca/polanyi/conf/pdf/Palacios.pdf

“For a century the dynamics of modern society was governed by a double movement: the market expanded continuously but this movement was met by a countermovement
checking the expansion in definite directions. Vital though such a countermovement was for the protection of society, in the last analysis it was incompatible with the selfregulation of the market, and thus with the market system itself.
“That system developed in leaps and bounds; it engulfed space and time, and by creating bank money it produced a dynamic hitherto unknown. By the time it reached its maximum extent, around 1914, every part of the globe, all its inhabitants and yet unborn generations, physical persons as well as huge fictitious bodies called corporations, were comprised in it. A new way of life spread over the planet with a claim to universality unparalleled since the age when Christianity started out on its career, only this time the movement was on a purely material level.
“Yet simultaneously a countermovement was on foot. This was more than the usual defensive behaviour of society faced with change; it was a reaction against a dislocation which attacked the fabric of society, and which would have destroyed the very organization of production that the market had called into being” (Polanyi, 1957: 130).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_(book)

The market, once it considers land, labor and money as "fictitious commodities" (fictitious because each possesses qualities that are not expressed in the formal rationality of the market) “subordinate[s] the substance of society itself to the laws of the market.”[1] This, he argues, results in massive social dislocation, and spontaneous moves by society to protect itself. In effect, Polanyi argues that once the free market attempts to separate itself from the fabric of society, social protectionism is society’s natural response; this he calls the ‘counter movement’. Polanyi did not see economics as a subject closed off from other fields of enquiry, indeed he saw economic and social problems as inherently linked. He ended his work with a prediction of a socialist society, noting, "after a century of blind 'improvement', man is restoring his 'habitation.'"

cli != scripting by agent59517795 · 2011-04-06 05:05 · Score: 1 · on The Case Against GUIs, Revisited

cli vs. gui

"The Matrix[gui] is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth[console]. That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind."

gui was/is a marketing trick played on dummies; it was invented for those intellectually lazy people who are always scared of [new] things they don't understand. and if you don't understand something you shouldn't confuse/scare yourself by pretending to be an expert in it. when a "sysadmin" claims that gui is better than cli (ROFL), you can almost see his carrier path in becoming a "sysadmin"; an old staff member with, in best case scenario, help-desk level of knowledge, which happened to be around when the decision was made to use computerz in a way that needed a server around. they couldn't (didn't bother to) hire a real sysadmin to do the job so they promoted him to $some-mouthful-it-title. to be fair, these people _are_ experts in one thing and that's office politics...

"most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."

more to the subject, that command line used as an interface is different that scripting a task.

"I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it."

"You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland":

switch to runlevel $console-mode
chsh to zsh

put this in your .zshrc (among other goodies you find out there):

function zle-line-init zle-keymap-select { RPS1="${${KEYMAP/vicmd/-- CMD --}/(main|viins)/-- INSERT --}" RPS2=$RPS1 zle reset-prompt } autoload -Uz compinit promptinit compinit zle -N zle-keymap-select zle-line-init(){ zle history-incremental-search-backward } setopt APPEND_HISTORY setopt SHARE_HISTORY setopt INC_APPEND_HISTORY zstyle ':completion:*' verbose yes zstyle ':completion::complete:*' use-cache on zstyle ':completion:*:match:*' original only zstyle ':completion:*:*:kill:*' menu yes select zstyle ':completion:*:kill:*' force-list always zstyle ':completion:*' matcher-list 'm:{a-z}={A-Z}' zstyle ':completion::complete:*' cache-path ~/.zsh/cache zstyle ':completion:*:approximate:*' max-errors 1 numeric zstyle ':completion:*' menu select=1 _complete _ignored _match _approximate zle_highlight=(region:standout special:standout suffix:bold isearch:bold) bindkey -M isearch "^I" vi-repeat-search bindkey -M vicmd '^[[Z' reverse-menu-complete bindkey -M vicmd "^I" history-incremental-search-backward

"and i show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes".

Re:I can't restore any files by Kalvos · 2010-12-27 02:27 · Score: 1 · on What's the Oldest File You Can Restore?

I didn't delete files. Some materials are converted, some aren't, some are in original media, some are recovered from those media and restored when needed.

My response was to your comment about 10-year-old backups: "Do you even have any idea what is in those 10 year old backup tapes? If it's not on the computer, your company's not making efficient use of the stored info ". Whether archives and backups are different is really not relevant -- the OP was about opening old files, which is a combination hardware/software issue. That extends to backups as well as opening original media, including pre-digital ... Read Michael Gerzon's essay "Don't Destroy The Archives" for more on these issues.

What it comes down to is this: There's a simple limit to the time available to up-convert ... this afflicts artists, especially composers. The sheer quantity is hard to deal with. I have composed 1000+ pieces (about 1/4 electroacoustic since the 1960s), written nearly 1000 articles, written books, done graphics, and recorded thousands of hours of performances in formats encompassing mono open reel, those old Beta F1 digital tapes, dbx I open reel, 4-track 3.75 cassette, DAT, flashcard... and, of course, photographs on thousands of 35mm negative strips through digital formats (including proprietary raw formats.

These are formidable archives and backups and original media. Didn't mean to get into semantic differences ... just that the issue of preserving useful (and even significant) materials can be overwhelming.

Dennis
http://bathory.org/

Pics of Canadian scientist by cffrost · 2009-03-31 22:10 · Score: 1 · on Volunteers Simulate Mission To Mars

Here are the best (photo-quality/looks-quality) pics I could find of Dr. Judith Lapierre:

Best quality, JL center
Little more flattering (no dirt/sunburn), JL right
Artistic impression of "the incident"

Is any kind of design art? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-09-09 09:15 · Score: 1, Interesting · on Are Videogames Art?

There is a very fuzzy line between design and art. What qualifies as art is mostly in the mind of the creator. Usually, design is done for a practical purpose and art is done to express something within the artist. Of course, it is possible to do both at the same time. Consider the 'found art' phenom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_art Even stuff that wasn't intended to be art can be if it is presented right.

Concordia University in Montreal has a Computation Arts program. It's about making art on the computer. The graduates find jobs in the video game industry. http://design.concordia.ca/

So the answer to the question is: sometimes.

Re:WTF? by orthogonal · 2005-12-17 11:03 · Score: 5, Insightful · on Little Red Book Draws Government Attention

I cant accept things have gotten to that point, yet.

Most German Jews showed themselves incapable of understanding their new situation. They believed it to be a transitory matter, a mere misunderstanding....

-- Leon Poliakov, Harvest of Hate, quoted in Kornberg, "Kristallnacht and the Politics of Anti-semitism Nazi Germany"

On November 9, 1938, I was still a German patriot. I was born into an old established family, the son of one of the most honoured German jurists and defender of rights. I myself was recognized for my twenty years of professional [legal] work, ...and, as an officer in the World War, had been awarded the Iron Cross first degree. I had borne every kind of injustice since 1933 in the hope that, at least for my children who were half-Aryan, there would be a dignified life in my homeland, when, in a few years time, this reign of terror would have spent itself. Education, experience and emotion had made a truly patriotic German out of me,.... In the face of the mounting distress outside, we maintained, within our four walls, an ever more profound and confident spiritual serenity which we inculcated in our children. We believed that we possessed the spiritual and physical strength to survive the Third Reich within Germany. Unprecedented events would have to occur to cause us to abandon this foundation upon which we had built our lives. Such events did occur in the following days.

-- Albert Fuchs, My Experiences From November 9th to 16th, 1938 (Written on November 19, 1938 on the way from Strasbourg to Paris)

Now I'm not saying the situation in contemporary America is anywhere as bad as the situation in Nazi Germany. What I am trying to point out is that beliefs like yours, that, it "can't be that bad", have consistently been disproven.

Will things become as bad here as they got in Nazi Germany? Like you, I doubt it. But it can happen here. Just ask any Japanese American who sat out WWII in an American internment camp. Hell, ask any black person over age 40 who grew up in the American South, or anyone caught up in the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s.

Was Soviet Communism a real threat in the 1950s? Definitely, just as terrorism is a real threat now. But just as in the 1950s, it's also an excuse for government excess and the curtailment of personal liberties in the name of "security".

You can't belive governemtn agents are tracking people who check out books? This has all happened before, rght here in America.

I've seen this before... by totoanihilation · 2005-07-08 04:44 · Score: 1 · on Guitarists, your Days are Numbered

I've seen a VERY similar contraption at school... A couple of engineering students did this as their final-year project. Prior art anyone? :)
RoboKeith
More details here

I've seen this before... by totoanihilation · 2005-07-08 04:44 · Score: 1 · on Guitarists, your Days are Numbered

I've seen a VERY similar contraption at school... A couple of engineering students did this as their final-year project. Prior art anyone? :)
RoboKeith
More details here

Concordia University by Anonymous Coward · 2005-07-07 17:24 · Score: 0 · on Guitarists, your Days are Numbered

Ha! Old news. Concordia students made same thing way before Georgia Tech. http://ctr.concordia.ca/2004-05/apr_07/06/

Re:(yawn) It's been done by rogue555 · 2005-07-07 15:46 · Score: 1 · on Guitarists, your Days are Numbered

Maybe you should check out when the two projects were done.

The URL of the concordia website is: http://encs.concordia.ca/Quarterly/winter2005/Text /robokeith.htm
Winter2005

The GaTech website URL is: http://www.me.gatech.edu/mechatronics_lab/Projects /Fall00/group3/contents.htm
Fall00

Now, I don't know for sure when the Concordia project was made, but I do know the GaTech one was made in 2000.

(yawn) It's been done by Anonymous Coward · 2005-07-07 15:39 · Score: 0 · on Guitarists, your Days are Numbered

I like how the big name universities often duplicate (if unknowingly) existing work, with little or no additional innovation, but are heaped under large piles of praise. No I don't go to Concordia.

Re:$PS1 by fm6 · 2005-04-28 07:02 · Score: 2, Interesting · on What UNIX Shell Config Settings Work for Newbies?

We can argue about what that entails...

Can and will.

A lot of the stuff that traditionally goes in shell prompts is outdated or inappropriate for newbies. If you're using using the shell in a terminal window (as almost everybody does these days, especially newbies), you don't need email notification, time, CPU load, and a lot of other crap you can have in a GUI window. The name of the machine you're on is helpful is you're access a lot of different machines -- but most newbies won't do that. (Let's all sing the Telnet Song!) I like to have the command history number in my prompt, since that makes it easier to repeat a command that hasn't scrolled off the top of the screen yet. Then again, that's obsolete too, since any decent shell has lets you uparrow back to previous commands.

I used to have something to indicate my shell depth, so I wouldn't forget that I'd shelled out of another program. But I stopped shelling out when job control was invented -- not to mention Xterm windows.

I guess there's not a lot worth putting in the prompt any more. And what you do put should mostly be embedded in an escape string that puts it in the Xterm window. No, wait a minute, that's obsolete too -- most shells now let you define a hook -- an alias or a script -- that's run before each prompt. Makes more sense to put complicated commands there.

So probably you should just set the prompt to "% " and forget about it.

Re:Little by little by gstoddart · 2005-04-15 05:52 · Score: 5, Insightful · on Google Search By Number

It's sort of like how the definition of sci-fi has been twisted to exclude Star Wars.

Ummmm .... the definition wasn't 'twisted' to exclude Star Wars. That was a literary definition which pre-dated Star Wars -- you know, by people like Asimov and his pre-cursors who were writing sci-fi back in the day. (eg, this or here)

Star Wars does not attempt to fulfill the role of exploring how technology affects man.

It is pure and simple Space Opera. Even Lucas will concede that point, as he never tried to make anything else.

If you took the story of the Alamo, placed it on a moon, and made the technology involved in getting to the moon and fighting the war just simply background, that would not be sci-fi. A literal re-telling of a Shakespeare play in a loosely space-based setting, is not sci-fi.

The fact that you don't like a definition which is both older than you and doesn't apply to Star Wars is something for you to reconcile.

Cheers

Re:linux in canadian universities... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-04-08 07:09 · Score: 0 · on Linux in Canada

I've been an undergrad at Concordia , and am now a grad student at McGill , and having been turned onto Linux in the former, I've noticed the following (qualitative!) trends at both Montreal institutions:

Sysadmins :

All sysadmins I've encountered at either Univ. are definite LInux LOverS, running clusters at home and upgrading daily, and spending most of their day time patrolling univ. machines as root. They also seem to enjoy dealing with Linux-related problems, despite taking much longer to solve them.

Professors:

My supervisors at Concordia and McGill have both equated Microsoft with Beelzebub, and make rude remarks about Redmond in their lectures.

Students:

The general undergraduate population are Microsoft peons, but the proportion of Linux users increases as you move to higher percentiles grade-wise. Also, I've been told that most undergraduates drink heavily.

Research Labs:

All research group machines I've used run Linux (save for an IRIX machine at McGill), but the grads/postdocs tend to prefer Windows.

General-purpose Labs:

At Concordia I dare say Linux was run on ~90% of the general lab machines (granted, most were double-booted). At McGill, only ~20% of lab machines run Linux. Both schools have "Linux-only" rooms, which are equivalent to either "VIP lounges" or "Smoking Section", depending on the last digit of the square root of 2.

Hector Savage

Museums and Interactivity by rueger · 2004-03-31 03:55 · Score: 1 · on Building an Unattended Computer Presentation?

Most museums and galleries have been doing this sort of thing for years. I'd suggest contacting whatever similar groups exist in your city.

In particular there are probably any number of multimedia artists that have been doing this sort of thing with varying levels of interactivity.

One of our friends, Andra McCartney, just finished a gallery installation using a Mac, midi, and controller to handle video and audio for an interactive and unattended installation about the Lachine Canal outside Montreal.

She also installed speakers and a subwoofer inside of a hairdryer to good effect.

Museums and Interactivity by rueger · 2004-03-31 03:55 · Score: 1 · on Building an Unattended Computer Presentation?

Most museums and galleries have been doing this sort of thing for years. I'd suggest contacting whatever similar groups exist in your city.

In particular there are probably any number of multimedia artists that have been doing this sort of thing with varying levels of interactivity.

One of our friends, Andra McCartney, just finished a gallery installation using a Mac, midi, and controller to handle video and audio for an interactive and unattended installation about the Lachine Canal outside Montreal.

She also installed speakers and a subwoofer inside of a hairdryer to good effect.

Museums and Interactivity by rueger · 2004-03-31 03:55 · Score: 1 · on Building an Unattended Computer Presentation?

Most museums and galleries have been doing this sort of thing for years. I'd suggest contacting whatever similar groups exist in your city.

In particular there are probably any number of multimedia artists that have been doing this sort of thing with varying levels of interactivity.

One of our friends, Andra McCartney, just finished a gallery installation using a Mac, midi, and controller to handle video and audio for an interactive and unattended installation about the Lachine Canal outside Montreal.

She also installed speakers and a subwoofer inside of a hairdryer to good effect.

Re:Oh, the french... by sewagemaster · 2004-02-19 12:21 · Score: 1 · on Imminent Mandrake Name Change?

well conan o'brien seems to like the french... canadians ;)

clip's just bloody hilarious!

http://www.ece.concordia.ca/~l_lee/triumph_in_queb ec.avi

They're just too damn expensive for what you get by drskrud · 2004-01-30 13:40 · Score: 1 · on Ripoff 101: Gouging Students for Textbooks

Textbooks are just far too expensive and most of the time you're not really getting your money's worth out of them, at least that's how I feel. It appears as though my particular University has some deals with some publishers, such as Addison-Wesley, and get all their programming textbooks from them. As a result, Java Software Solutions is the standard book. Personally I found this particular book to be extremely useless... While other books like O'Reilly's Learning Java, and Head First Java books offered much more content, and were both CHEAPER in price. I've since opted to avoid buying the school's textbooks whenever possible.

The money spent on these textbooks could be used for much more worthwhile things.

I actually bought bootlegged photocopied textbooks this semester. Knowing full well that the content of these books (in terms of learning potential) is quite small, but needing to rely on them anyway for the sake of excersizes and problems that need to be done for assignments. Net savings: $165. Where did this money go? I attended an Undergraduate Software Engineering Conference where I learned lots of interesting things from such speakers as Joel Spolsky. The rest of the money when towards paying off my credit card for... you guessed it, more textbooks... and tuition.

Re:In other related news... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-12 00:28 · Score: 0 · on Linus Sighted At LCA2004

Like this on a bad day, and sometimes like this.

Red Hat "X"..? by Dasigner · 2003-11-10 07:49 · Score: 1 · on Mastering Red Hat Linux 9

There's a book, Red Hat Linux X: The Complete Reference DVD Edition (no refid ;-), listed on amazon.com supposedly to be released December 3. Despite the cover, one of the authors' homepages (Haddad) just has "Red Hat Linux" and a November 2003 release, so I guess they're fixing or have fixed it.

Re:Whats next? by Mattcelt · 2003-09-17 05:30 · Score: 1 · on New BTX Form Factor Announced At IDF

I think the Betoota, Queensland, Australia airport will have something to say about it right now!
--
The last time we removed religion from politics, Communism began.

Download Trailer here: by zaqattack911 · 2003-08-22 02:55 · Score: 1 · on Ultima X - Odyssey Officially Unveiled

Download .bittorent of Trailer

Have a nice day!

What is Software Engineering by Cyclone66 · 2003-01-31 17:40 · Score: 1 · on Define -- "Software Engineering"

From an accredited university What is Software Engineering

Various Tuning Related Sites by techwolf · 2002-06-28 03:05 · Score: 2, Informative · on Customizing Apache for maximum performance

Yeah, I know it's just a big list of links...

Apache and FW Performance Tips
Apache.org Performance Tuning
Apache Tuning Tips
Apache Tuning Directives
Tuning Your Apache Server
TUNING.txt
PHP-DEV: Database Connection Problems
PHP Everywhere: Tuning Apache and PHP for Speed
Tuning Apache Web Servers for Speed

and last, but not least, my favorite:

Web Server Tuning

I'd also recommend reading up on tuning the linux kernel.

-techwolf

99/1 rule on spammers by chongo · 2002-02-18 21:03 · Score: 5, Informative · on Fighting The Spammers Down Under

Over the past 2 years we have noticed that more than 99% of the repeat spam comes from less than 1% of the sites.

In addition to the usual anti-spam methods:

dorkslayers
procmail
Project SETS
well configured MTA
etc.

one can block IP addresses that attempt to spam on a regular basis. Tools such

can be configured to block frequent spammer IP addresses from your SMTP ports.

The following is a list of IP addresses that we have observed spamming on a regular basis. Blocking these sites won't solve your spam problem. On the other hand blocking common spam locations as part of an overall anti-spam system will help.

12.30.205.0/24 24.2.10.0/24 24.88.20.0/24 61.13.0.0/16 61.30.0.0/16 61.129.0.0/16 61.177.0.0/16 63.100.231.32/28 63.184.200.0/24 64.14.218.128/28 64.65.0.0/18 64.80.216.0/22 64.80.220.0/23 64.208.134.0/15 64.239.0.0/18 66.33.0.0/17 66.72.98.10/32 128.18.0.0/16 128.121.126.220/32 142.154.0.0/16 161.58.0.0/16 192.147.174.0/24 194.91.230.0/24 195.53.155.0/24 195.153.207.128/27 202.9.128.0/19 202.181.196.120/29 205.141.192.0/19 205.141.224.0/21 206.173.16.0/21 206.173.24.0/22 208.50.155.0/24 208.165.228.0/22 208.187.17.192/27 209.38.216.0/22 209.69.0.0/16 209.239.0.0/19 209.239.192.0/19 209.249.0.0/16 210.52.0.0/24 210.85.0.0/16 210.201.0.0/18 210.226.0.0/15 210.228.0.0/14 210.241.0.0/17 211.20.180.0/22 211.21.0.0/16 211.32.0.0/13 211.51.63.171/32 211.226.126.0/24 212.49.192.0/24 212.174.0.0/15 212.216.0.0/16 216.41.0.0/16 216.42.0.0/16 216.53.128.0/17 216.79.0.0/16 216.87.64.0/19 216.122.0.0/16 216.143.68.0/22 216.143.72.0/22 216.143.76.0/24 216.167.0.0/17 216.174.192.0/18 216.183.206.64/28

Sorry if your IP address is in the above list. If you are not a spammer then it could be that you happen to be using an ISP that tolerates spammers (or is unable/unwilling to block them), or you work for a company that spam, or you are near a poorly configured and poorly maintained site that is abused as an open relay.

Re:Stupid troll by hpa · 2001-10-09 16:18 · Score: 4, Informative · on Kernel 2.4.11 Released

Unfortunately that picture is not at all of Andrea Archangeli, who is most definitely male. Sorry.

Re:Canada! by broody · 2001-01-03 01:24 · Score: 1 · on Is The U.S. No Longer The Choice For Freedom?

Sure if you don't want to be able to read books on vegetarianism, homosexuality, erotica, beat literature, or BDSM. Not a good place for comics either.

Not that there is any perfect place but I would lose a lot of my books & Comics going through customs.

Information, maybe even usefull. by BoLean · 2000-07-24 03:32 · Score: 1 · on What Can I Do w/ an SGI Challenge XL and No Money?

First off, you may want to see if there is a FreeBSD or Debian port available for the Challenge XL (MIPS). There is some downloads for IRIX on the SGI website HERE

Here is a link on how to install KDE on IRIX, it may be worth a try to put a new face on IRIX.

Here is a blurb about what the Challenge XL was intednded to be used for: (copied from this website you may find helpful)

ChallengeXL The CHALLENGE XL network resource server is a compute and throughput powerhouse for deskside and data center applications in the database, digital media, integer compute real-time and high-performance file serving markets. The CHALLENGE XL can handle extraordinary data management tasks, shifting yesterday's compute paradigm from high-cost mainframes to the industry-leading performance of today's cost-effective symmetric multi-processors. The powerful, flexible CHALLENGE XL system architecture is based on a 1.2GB/second sustained bus, which minimizes time-wasting contention between I/O, memory and compute subsystems. The system supports from two to thirty-six MIPS® R10000 TM CPUs, multiple gigabytes of CPU memory, and up to six 320MB/second POWER Channel-2TM I/O subsystems. The CHALLENGE server's flexible hardware and software configurability allows performance optimization, as well as tangible growth paths to meet future computing demands. The server comes standard with one 320MB/second POWER Channel-2 subsystem. Each POWER Channel-2 subsystem contains an EthernetTM controller, two 20MB/second Fast/Wide 16-bit SCSI-II controllers (configurable as single-ended or differential) a 50MB/second VME controller, two 19.2KB RS232 serial ports, a 38.4KB RS422 serial port, a parallel port, and supports up to two optional daughter boards (HIO modules). External storage is provided via the CHALLENGE Vault XL. With this product, the CHALLENGE servers can support up to 5.6TB of on-line, non-RAID storage and 17.4TB of RAID-5 and RAID-3 storage. The CHALLENGE XL server is ideal for cutting edge data warehousing applications. With CPU and I/O expandability to meet the needs of interactive terabyte databases, this system can be grown to manage the data extraction and data hygiene needs of each customer. HIO-based SCSI expansion provides higher database performance by reducing I/O interrupt overhead. Large secondary cache also increase overall database performance. In addition CHALLENGE uses the IRIX symmetric multi-processing operating system in conjunction with the XFSTM, a native log-based filesystem. This provides a high level of data integrity, quick data recovery, and a robust environment suitable for the parallelism and throughput requirements of data warehousing. The CHALLENGE XL serves the realm of extreme data as a deployable machine unmatched in CPU and I/O throughput capabilities. Complementing these hardware strengths are software advances, which create industry-leading file server performance for the enterprise. For the most creative graphics workstation users manipulating a range of digital media data, IRIX offers deterministic I/O, large file and partition sizes, and intuitive data management through the IRIXPro suite of flexible GUI-based administration tools. Performance-hungry supercomputer sites requiring powerful front-end servers with direct and buffered I/O capabilities also enjoy efficient utilization of high-performance networks (HiPPI, FDDI) and sparse file support.

Finally... a story where this is *not* offtopic... by Anonymous Coward · 2000-05-19 20:38 · Score: 5 · on Oxford Yanks Student Page Over Spoof DeCSS

and I'm asleep at the keyboard. Doh!

Oh well... here it is.
Add your own, and spread this far and wide:

This announcement brought to you by the DeCSS Polar Bear.

Time for Slashdot to take a stand... by Anonymous Coward · 2000-04-05 03:12 · Score: 4 · on MPAA Files Another Injunction Against 2600

The following is a list of all the mirrors from the 2600 site.

Re:Answer: both and more. (and not much) by Detritus · 1999-12-30 13:51 · Score: 2 · on When Does Y2K Begin?

Why would programmers worry about 1900 and 2100, and forget about 2000?

Because programmers are interested in details/trivia and they are human.

I wish I had a dollar for every incorrect description of the leap year rules that has been posted on the Internet.

Leap year bugs are distressingly common in computer software.

DEC wrote an amusing SPR response on the subject.

Procmail details by oneiros27 · 1999-07-25 21:56 · Score: 1 · on How can you block SPAM?

But he also didn't say which Procmail scripts he was using.

You might try taking a look at the following:

Coder seems the most obvious, doesn't it? by ryand · 1999-06-05 03:53 · Score: 1 · on Ask Slashdot: Another Word for "Hacker"?

I would think that being known as a Coder would be the most obvious choice.
Heck, we even founded a club based on the name at our university ( http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ccc ).

Calling yourself a :
Programmer is a too uptight and restricting,
Software Engineer now leaves you open to legal action,
Hacker - not everyone gets it,
cracker - just plain wrong.

Unless you venture into the 2-word descriptions which in my opinion don't cut it.
Who wants to be known as a computer scientist?

I call myself a software developer, because it looks much better on a resume than "coder" or "hacker" which mean pretty much the same to me with the exception that hackers still have have that negative connotation of being 'disorganized non-structured people inappropiate for professional application development'.

Re:let's not be hypocrites... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 13:08 · Score: 0 · on Microsoft Embraces and Extends Perl

Limiting perl to that which is completely portable hacks large chunks of usefulness out of it. Without the VMS::* modules, there'd be considerably less use for perl there, and similarly for MacPerl. Especially for MacPerl. I urge anyone that thinks that perl is identical in all its ports to sit themselves down in front of a Mac, or to tell me how to build a droplet in unix perl :-) For that matter, if you want to maintain pure portability, then you end up with a lowest-common-denominator language -- and you wouldn't even have fork().

*If* Microsoft changes core Perl, then there'll be some compatibility problems. But there's nothing stopping you from going to CPAN and getting the "real" module, or from coming up with a whole new port. I'm not that familiar with Java politics and implementations, but I suspect that it'd be considerably more difficult to branch that than perl, for instance.

Besides, this was the big issue with ActivePerl, when they became the 'main' win32 perl port. "No, they're going to branch perl! It'll be all windowslike and incompatible with the rest!" But the sky didn't fall, and I'm not sure what more Perl FUD is accomplishing for *anyone* involved.

I realize that most slashdotters think that "everything should be the same" means that "everything should work like unix", but that's just not the case in all situations. Using the unix paradigms in MacPerl, for instance, would just frustrate both unix people using it (whose paradigms have been wrapped around an OS that really doesn't want to think that way) and Mac people (whose programming concepts aren't unixlike).

Perl isn't Java, controlled tightly by Sun; it's not IE, a particular program. It's considerably more difficult to derail. (Microsoft offers C in Windows, but that hasn't derailed the language there, either.)

-Rich rich@vax2.concordia.ca

Slashdot Mirror

Domain: concordia.ca

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