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Comments · 2,078
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Another triumph of the open standards processYou sound like you need to read RFC 2550 - Y10K and Beyond.
As always the open standards process has come up with a complete and well thought out document.
An excerpt:
This specification provides a solution to the "Y10K" problem which
has also been called the "YAK" problem (hex) and the "YXK" problem
(Roman numerals).
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Re:Overreactions -- Business as usual
I find it funny that no one challenged Tom's claim that Unisys invested resources to invent LZW.
LZW was invented by two guys in Israel, Lempel and Ziv. Unisys (and Welch) patented their work, and doesn't give them a dime. It's completely legal, yet stupid. This case has always been the poster child of the "Patents are Lame" movement.
Whenever you see Unisys whining about all the money they spent to develop LZW, remember the facts.
See: http://www.faqs.org/f aqs/compression-faq/part1/section-7.html. -
rfc 1178
It's probably too late in this thread to be of use, but RFC 1178 has a good discussion of this exact problem. It often helps in this discussion as an appeal-to-authority argument, which works better on PHBs than technical folks.
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.org != non-profit
"ORG" was NEVER meant to be restricted to non-commercial entities, despite the widesspread misconception. Check out RFC 1591:
ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. Some non-government organizations may fit here.
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Re:Bite the Wax Tadpole
wasn't there another one where "Coke Adds Life" came out "Coke brings back your dead relatives" or something to that affect?
This was Pepsi, and is believed to be true, see the alt.folklore.urban FAQ:
- F.*The old Chevy Nova was a failure in Spanish speaking countries because it translates to "No go." [Esp. since "Nova" means "star."]
- Tb.Pepsi had a similar episode where "Come Alive with Pepsi!" is rendered as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead!"
(although I would have thought that 'the choice for a new generation' is more likely to translate as 'reincarnation'.)
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Solution already in progress: ECML
Soon MicroSoft will be joined by real competition here. See: RFC2706 (ECML v1: Field Names for E-Commerce)
Customers are frequently required to enter substantial amounts of information at an Internet merchant site in order to complete a purchase or other transaction, especially the first time they go there. A standard set of information fields is defined as the first version of an Electronic Commerce Modeling Language (ECML) so that this task can be more easily automated, for example by wallet software that could fill in fields. Even for the manual data entry case, customers will be less confused by varying merchant sites if a substantial number adopt these standard fields.
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jam echelon day
These "hacktivists" seem to think that peppering their email with naughty words is a new idea. It isn't: "spook fodder" is at least ten years old (take a look at Tim May's 1992 Cypherno micon). The idea that they can "jam" Echelon is incredibly naive; if they're really concerned, they'd do better to encourage people to understand these surveillance systems and to use PGP - spreading misinformation about surveillance and encouraging one-day actions is counterproductive. Some of the hacktivist organizers have been told again and again (for example, by the foounders of Hack-Tic/xs4all) that their methods are misguided and useless, but they never listen. Hacking is about, among other things, understanding technical systems: if you promote misunderstanding, you've got no business calling yourself a "hack"-anything.
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No outrage? Because the people aren't uninformed!Yet another example of an article full of posts by people that have NO CLUE WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
The IPv6 spec SUGGESTS that the MAC address be used as an interface/link identifier (which must be unique). It's quite possible that this address would be reconfigured to something else in very short order. By setting the IPv6 address immediately with a known unique value, you have an instant (even if temporary) address with which to request a proper one.
OBVIOUSLY not every network interface has a MAC address (such as serial links and tunnels). For those types of situations, some other pseudorandom number should be just as effective, so long as it doesn't conflict with somebody else on the LOCAL subnet (the interface ID only makes up *part* of the address, remember). In the case of dialup links, the address class we're talking about here probably won't even be needed to be figured in advance -- it could be negotiated as part of the PPP process.
There is no privacy issue here. There are no evil NIC manufacturers in cahoots with the vendors to build a global database of all MAC addresses and your identity and buying habits.
Quite frankly, I am rather EMBARRASSED by the number of Slashdot posters who regularly post crap like this on threads. They make NO effort whatsoever to independently verify anything they start violently complaining about. They just assume that the BIASED take they just read was ABSOLUTE, 100% accurate and researched TRUTH.
THIS IS NEVER THE CASE.
Did you ever stop to think that maybe there's no outrage over IPv6's MAC recommendation because THERE WAS NO REASON TO BE OUTRAGED?
A bit of light reading for those that want to talk in an intelligent manner (in other words, no idiotic paranoid conspiracy theories):
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE THINK AND RESEARCH BEFORE YOU POST. -
No outrage? Because the people aren't uninformed!Yet another example of an article full of posts by people that have NO CLUE WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
The IPv6 spec SUGGESTS that the MAC address be used as an interface/link identifier (which must be unique). It's quite possible that this address would be reconfigured to something else in very short order. By setting the IPv6 address immediately with a known unique value, you have an instant (even if temporary) address with which to request a proper one.
OBVIOUSLY not every network interface has a MAC address (such as serial links and tunnels). For those types of situations, some other pseudorandom number should be just as effective, so long as it doesn't conflict with somebody else on the LOCAL subnet (the interface ID only makes up *part* of the address, remember). In the case of dialup links, the address class we're talking about here probably won't even be needed to be figured in advance -- it could be negotiated as part of the PPP process.
There is no privacy issue here. There are no evil NIC manufacturers in cahoots with the vendors to build a global database of all MAC addresses and your identity and buying habits.
Quite frankly, I am rather EMBARRASSED by the number of Slashdot posters who regularly post crap like this on threads. They make NO effort whatsoever to independently verify anything they start violently complaining about. They just assume that the BIASED take they just read was ABSOLUTE, 100% accurate and researched TRUTH.
THIS IS NEVER THE CASE.
Did you ever stop to think that maybe there's no outrage over IPv6's MAC recommendation because THERE WAS NO REASON TO BE OUTRAGED?
A bit of light reading for those that want to talk in an intelligent manner (in other words, no idiotic paranoid conspiracy theories):
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE THINK AND RESEARCH BEFORE YOU POST. -
No outrage? Because the people aren't uninformed!Yet another example of an article full of posts by people that have NO CLUE WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
The IPv6 spec SUGGESTS that the MAC address be used as an interface/link identifier (which must be unique). It's quite possible that this address would be reconfigured to something else in very short order. By setting the IPv6 address immediately with a known unique value, you have an instant (even if temporary) address with which to request a proper one.
OBVIOUSLY not every network interface has a MAC address (such as serial links and tunnels). For those types of situations, some other pseudorandom number should be just as effective, so long as it doesn't conflict with somebody else on the LOCAL subnet (the interface ID only makes up *part* of the address, remember). In the case of dialup links, the address class we're talking about here probably won't even be needed to be figured in advance -- it could be negotiated as part of the PPP process.
There is no privacy issue here. There are no evil NIC manufacturers in cahoots with the vendors to build a global database of all MAC addresses and your identity and buying habits.
Quite frankly, I am rather EMBARRASSED by the number of Slashdot posters who regularly post crap like this on threads. They make NO effort whatsoever to independently verify anything they start violently complaining about. They just assume that the BIASED take they just read was ABSOLUTE, 100% accurate and researched TRUTH.
THIS IS NEVER THE CASE.
Did you ever stop to think that maybe there's no outrage over IPv6's MAC recommendation because THERE WAS NO REASON TO BE OUTRAGED?
A bit of light reading for those that want to talk in an intelligent manner (in other words, no idiotic paranoid conspiracy theories):
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE THINK AND RESEARCH BEFORE YOU POST. -
C style hairiness
I went through it quickly, until I hit the part (on the second page, I think) where they prettify some Win32 code from a book. I was delighted by their choice of brace style, and joyed by their slamming of the (IMO) awful Hungarian style, but then it hit me: they use parenthesis on their return statements! I never did understand why some people think return should have function calling-like syntax. Er, not until I looked it up in the C FAQ, question 20.19, that is. Hint: historical reasons. But anyway, yuck!
OnOntopic: It did seem like a very good read, with lots of interesting ideas. It's nice to see ESR doesn't have a monopoly on this kind of material. -
Re:Just another example...
In fact, if we do it right, the next date problem will be Y10K.
Not true; the Y10K Problem has already been solved -
Re:Time Zones
If it was that far ahead might it have not been hit by the dreaded Y10K bug? Since noone has bothered to put a 5th year digit in their dat fields it would have overflowed and thought it heading to where mars was in 9999BCE or so.
What Y10K bug? See RFC 2550 for a fix. -
Re:Legalities
I actually heard one time if an ISP doesn't/refuses to stop illegal activity coming from their ISP, there are 'higher-ups' who you can contact (More then likely their provider of the line) who can give them an ultimadum(sp) to either take action or loose their lines. I think this can also be done through a gov office of one type or another. Sorry I don't have any names, but it's another thing to think about.
That was pretty uninformative.
If complaints get no answers or have no action taken on them, you complain the the upstream provider. When you run out of upstream providers to complain to, you still have a few options:
MMF or anything spam-scam which involves someone else making money off you: report him to the IRS. (spammers are almost all USAn)
Stock market scams: the fcc.
For addresses, chase up some antispam pages: look for "cancel moose" or "anti spam".
Also, check out the net.admin.net.abuse.* newsgroup FAQs at http://www.faqs.org
dave
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No need to reinvent the wheel
There is already a very good programming language which is very well suited for learning computer science, much more so than Python.
There are excellent books for learning this language. E.g. "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs"
Yes I mean Scheme.
See:
http://www.schemers.org
The TeachScheme! Project
comp.lang.scheme FAQ -
Licenses vs CopyrightsThere seems to be a bit of confusion about the ability to license BSD code as GPL.
A software license defines restrictions you wish to place on the use of your software/code. It is a legally binding agreement between the copyright holder and the user. These restrictions can not be overridden by sublicensing the code unless permission is explicitly given.
A copyright notice defines ownership of the code. You do not need to place a copyright notice in your work to hold the copyright. The second you write it (in the US), it is protected under copyright law unless you explicitly release it to the public domain.
Code which is in the "public domain" has no copyright. You used to see people who would release code to the public domain with restrictions, however in the US "public domain" means public domain, so the restrictions won't hold up.
Unless explicitly forbidden by a license, you can sublicense code under whatever terms you wish. The terms of the new license can not conflict with the old license (sublicense, not relicense).
This allowed people such as Microsoft to take BSD code and place it under MS EULA. The EULA does not place any restrictions to make it incompatible with the original BSD license.
That said, it is completely legal to sublicense BSD source code as GPL as long as the GPL does not conflict with the BSD license, which, by the looks of it, it doesn't.
Here are some URLs for people who are interested:The Copyright Website
Copyright Terms
Software License Primer
The USENET Copyright FAQ
[disclaimer: this is all information I gathered from law usenet groups and various legal web sites so it may not be completely accurate. if there are any copyright lawyers who want to correct me, please do.]
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Re:Dumb QuestionI'm sure you could probably find a better answer by searching somewhere, but in essence IPv5 DID exist, it was just a test thing they played with.
Actually, I just did because I was curious
The ST bit is "Internet Stream Protocol".. It's RFC1946 if you're still interested, I didn't read the whole thing
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Where is the REAL answer to Mindcraft?
I am surprised that somebody in the Open Source community hasn't come out with a standard for benchmarking servers. This sounds like a job for a new RFC. Who is going to step up to the plate? Can you see it? The RFC's test suite would start fairly low-level: a file-system test, a memory test, a raw TCP/UDP throughput test; and would eventually get more high-level: a web-server test, a file-server test, etc. Otherwise, you can all participate in something rather benign, " The Linux Image Montage Project (LIMP)." -AP
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Mirrors
On Yahoo, I found a mirror locator in addition to mirrors at Ohio State, Switzerland, Internet FAQ Consortium, Japan, California, and the United Kingdom. Also noted in the discussion is a Slashdot reader mirror which could get Slashdotted.
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my FAVORITE: 2324
2324 is the absolute BEST rfc ever written IMO.... Here is a link.
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Mirror (clickable URLs)
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Mirror (clickable URLs)
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Mirror (clickable URLs)
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http://www.faqs.org have all RFC
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RFC 1149 !!
RFC 1149 is truely the best choice amoung all the rfc's out there. My Fav Choice Too.
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Best RFCs by far -- 1097 & 1149
That'd be
Where would we be today had these not been invented?
TELNET SUBLIMINAL-MESSAGE Option
A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers
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Best RFCs by far -- 1097 & 1149
That'd be
Where would we be today had these not been invented?
TELNET SUBLIMINAL-MESSAGE Option
A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers
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Vote for RFC 2324
I encourage everyone with a sense of humor to go vote for RFC 2324. If you don't know why, go read it.