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[shadyserver: ~] shady% apropos netinfo

netinfo(3) - library routines for NetInfo calls
netinfod(8) - NetInfo daemon
nibindd(8) - NetInfo binder
nicl(1) - NetInfo command line utility
nidomain(8) - NetInfo domain utility
nidump(8) - extract text or flat-file-format data from NetInfo
nifind(1) - find a directory in the NetInfo hierarchy
nigrep(1) - search for a regular expression in the NetInfo hierarchy
niload(8) - load text or flat-file-format data into NetInfo
nireport(1) - print tables from the NetInfo hierarchy
niutil(1) - NetInfo utility

NetInfo is not really analogous to the windows registry. if you want to compare it to something in the windows world, a better comparison would be active directory.

NetInfo is basically a directory services manager, and is used for managing users, groups, machines, etc etc. It had read/write ability with LDAP v3, and read only ability for LDAP v2. It can also read its configuration from the standard bsd flat files, using the niload utility. You can even dump your netinfo configuration for printers, users, hosts and such to a standard bsd flat file using the nidump util.

But the best part of NetInfo is that it can integrate almsot seamlessly with an active directory domain, and get all its users and policy from your windows active directory server. once you get beyond the "its proprietary/i-dont-understand-it/im-scared-of-chan ge" line of thought, NetInfo is a very powerful tool.
For more refence, the great book "Mac OS X for Unix Geeks" has a whole chapter devoted to netinfo, what it is, and how it works. The Mac Dev center also recently published two articles on netinfo, and integrating it with Active Directory. Part 1 and Part 2

[shadyserver: ~] shady% apropos netinfo

netinfo(3) - library routines for NetInfo calls
netinfod(8) - NetInfo daemon
nibindd(8) - NetInfo binder
nicl(1) - NetInfo command line utility
nidomain(8) - NetInfo domain utility
nidump(8) - extract text or flat-file-format data from NetInfo
nifind(1) - find a directory in the NetInfo hierarchy
nigrep(1) - search for a regular expression in the NetInfo hierarchy
niload(8) - load text or flat-file-format data into NetInfo
nireport(1) - print tables from the NetInfo hierarchy
niutil(1) - NetInfo utility

NetInfo is not really analogous to the windows registry. if you want to compare it to something in the windows world, a better comparison would be active directory.

NetInfo is basically a directory services manager, and is used for managing users, groups, machines, etc etc. It had read/write ability with LDAP v3, and read only ability for LDAP v2. It can also read its configuration from the standard bsd flat files, using the niload utility. You can even dump your netinfo configuration for printers, users, hosts and such to a standard bsd flat file using the nidump util.

But the best part of NetInfo is that it can integrate almsot seamlessly with an active directory domain, and get all its users and policy from your windows active directory server. once you get beyond the "its proprietary/i-dont-understand-it/im-scared-of-chan ge" line of thought, NetInfo is a very powerful tool.
For more refence, the great book "Mac OS X for Unix Geeks" has a whole chapter devoted to netinfo, what it is, and how it works. The Mac Dev center also recently published two articles on netinfo, and integrating it with Active Directory. Part 1 and Part 2

Yes but Unix code in general has been used as examples in operating system programming. One of the big problems SCO has is Unix has been around so long that core features of it have been used in many other places than Unix.

So here are some links with some history and the battle SCO has is to prove that the code they see in Linux didn't come from these sources instead of IBM because if it came from these sources there is nothing SCO gets.

Public Money, Private Code

Quote from above: In 1992, Berkeley released its version of Unix and TCP/IP to the public as open-source code, and the combination quickly became the backbone of a network so vast that people started to call it, simply, "the Internet"

Why Caldera Decided to Release Unix

From that article note that Caldera did release Unix source code on some version and again SCO has to defend against the chance that code came from this source. And though it appears in protected System V it was also present in the release V7 and V32.

Introducing the Caldera OpenLinux Workstation

From thie quote on the above:OpenLinux is Caldera's self-hosted source code Linux distribution that conforms to commercial software release procedures. OpenLinux is based on the most current stable open source technologies, but subjected to rigorous testing procedures similar to those used for proprietary operating systems. How can SCO clain they did not see infected code go into Linux if they had standards that if up to proprietary operating systems would include a check as such.

Berkley Lab Notes
My question here is if you follow the links on this page and understand the history of Unix and how it became freely released can anyone tell me what if anything was left propietary in Unix?????
And maybe that is a question SCO should be answering.

And really this needs to be explored in detail because what does System V have that BSD does not and how does the BSDi vs USL case affect the Unix propietary code.

I know this is redundant it has all been said before but the Q&A is right. Without SCO showing the code in question and that code be compared to so much of the Unix system that legally leaked into the world they have no case.

This could be very enlightening, as the listed annoyances could be checked again a year after the book comes out. I would dearly love to see a comparison with other O'Reilly Annoyances books, which are ALL about M$ products, to see what percentage of the problems listed actually got dealt with after one year, two years...etc, and at what cost.

NO! Down, Sig! Bad Sig! Down! Get off the screen...!

from man:

hdparm provides a command line interface to various hard disk ioctls supported by the stock Linux ATA/IDE device driver subsystem. Some options may work correctly only with the latest kernels. For best results, compile hdparm with the include files from the latest kernel source code.

OPTIONS
When no flags are given, -acdgkmnru is assumed.

from version:
$ /sbin/hdparm -V
hdparm v5.2

tutorial @ http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2000/06/29 /hdparm.html

I fear this thread is about to die, but you might be interested in a Lamba the Ultimate thread about macros in Java. Designing a language well means finding a balance between power and flexibility. I'm personally very much against taking out features that might confuse new programmers or that can be misused, but I do believe in managing complexity well.

Very few languages that completely prevent beginners from doing stupid things allow experienced users to do very clever things. I hate that.

So everyone who is just getting their feet wet will have No Idea what the Power Coders are thinking, right?

That's true of any programming language. The question is where you put the simplicity and where you put the complexity. (I've written about this before -- though see Schuyler's take for a better explanation).

Unless you have a really, really simple language that has no libraries and no chance to grow, odds are you'll have to adapt to something that's different in someone else's code, if you ever read code from someone else. Larry's really good about hiding complexity and allowing people to be productive while knowing a small fraction of what's available in Perl. I believe Perl 6 will make it easier to encapsulate this complexity where you don't have to see it unless you really really need to see it.

What you describe sounds like a standard maintenance program. I don't write Perl code that anyone off of the street can read without knowing Perl. I write code that competent developers can maintain. A big part of that is self-discipline, which no language worth using can enforce.

It seems like constant change in a language would be a bad thing, right?

It certainly can be. I'm willing to go on record that the problems in Bugzilla were more lack of discipline on the part of its developers than any systemic problem. Consider how often any open source project is rewritten and redesigned (not refactored). This is a problem that afflicts every language.

So everyone who is just getting their feet wet will have No Idea what the Power Coders are thinking, right?

That's true of any programming language. The question is where you put the simplicity and where you put the complexity. (I've written about this before -- though see Schuyler's take for a better explanation).

Unless you have a really, really simple language that has no libraries and no chance to grow, odds are you'll have to adapt to something that's different in someone else's code, if you ever read code from someone else. Larry's really good about hiding complexity and allowing people to be productive while knowing a small fraction of what's available in Perl. I believe Perl 6 will make it easier to encapsulate this complexity where you don't have to see it unless you really really need to see it.

What you describe sounds like a standard maintenance program. I don't write Perl code that anyone off of the street can read without knowing Perl. I write code that competent developers can maintain. A big part of that is self-discipline, which no language worth using can enforce.

It seems like constant change in a language would be a bad thing, right?

It certainly can be. I'm willing to go on record that the problems in Bugzilla were more lack of discipline on the part of its developers than any systemic problem. Consider how often any open source project is rewritten and redesigned (not refactored). This is a problem that afflicts every language.

And so on. Interesting opinion. Unfortunately, it's incorrect.

Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun back, Dowling v. the United States: 'It follows that interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright: "Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner," that is, anyone who trespasses into his exclusive domain by using or authorizing the use of the copyrighted work in one of the five ways set forth in the statute, "is an infringer of the copyright."'

I know that this is playing to the gallery, but if we're simply going to redefine terms to suit ourselves, how about try a bit of it ourselves. For example:

1. Copyright infringement becomes theft
2. Citizens - sorry, consumers - becomes suspected thieves

Then we get a go:

1. Cookies become spy-bugs
2. Closed source becomes untrustable
3. capitalism becomes plutocracy
4. republic becomes oligarchy
5. Congress person and RIAA/MPAA become whore, moron and/or mobster.

Not perhaps technically accurate, but hey, they started it.

H-1B workers create jobs for Americans by enabling the creation of new products and spurring innovation. High-tech industry executives estimate that a new H-1B engineer will typically create demand for an additional 3 to 5 American workers.

Think about it- 802.11b doesn't have that kind of range

Ranges of a few miles can be had with Pringles(tm) can antennas.

GabrielBenveniste and BethanyHanson from Pixar Animation Studios are going to talk about Deploying and Maintaining Mac OS X in the Enteprise in the upcoming O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference.

Pixar president Dr Ed Catmull has said on record that the dual 2 GHz G5 Power Mac is the fastest desktop computer for RenderMan to be released for Mac OS X very soon.

Here's my Adobe eBook Reader, right. Some of you have seen this before, I'm sure. Here's Middle March; this is a work in the public domain. Here are the "permissions" (a lawyer had something to do with this) that you can do with this work in the public domain: You are allowed to copy ten selections into the clipboard every ten days--like, who got these numbers, I don't know--but you can print ten pages of this 4 million page book every ten days, and you are allowed to feel free to use the read-aloud button to listen to this book, right?

Now, Aristotle's Politics, another book in the public domain [that was] never really protected by copyright, but with this book, you can't copy any text into the selection, you can't print any pages, but feel free to listen to this book aloud. And to my great embarrassment, here's my latest book, right? No copying, no printing, and don't you dare use the technology to read my book aloud.

Further reproduction of any of the Gutenberg Bible images without the written consent of the Ransom Center is prohibited.

Please, I would HARDLY consider STEVEN JOHNSON to be an BIASED MSN employe, let alone, an MSN employe!

• Half of chapter 9 on Testing & Monitoring
• Examples of simple, intermediate, and somewhat more advanced recipes.

• Half of chapter 9 on Testing & Monitoring
• Examples of simple, intermediate, and somewhat more advanced recipes.

• Half of chapter 9 on Testing & Monitoring
• Examples of simple, intermediate, and somewhat more advanced recipes.

But remember the "Freedom Zero" debate. Tim O'Reilly commented that the first freedom of free software, and he called it Freedom Zero, is the freedom to choose which license you use to release it. RMS rejected this concept, calling it "Powerplay Zero", saying in effect that only the GPL is acceptable.

ESR then challenged RMS publicly: if you had the power to require all software to be GPL software, would you do it? RMS did not answer. A "yes" answer would be consistent with his other public statements, however.

So I don't know if we can prove that one of RMS's goals is the eradication of commercial software, but his public statements are consistent with that position. A relevant quote from the "Powerplay Zero" essay:

Proprietary software is an exercise of power -- it harms the users by denying their freedom.

By the way, RMS has never been opposed to people charging money for software; he just insists that the software must be under the GPL (and thus come with source code, be subject to forks, etc.). This, in the real world, means that there is a (fairly small) upper bound on how much one can charge for the software.

steveha

actually Someone patented the wheel in OZ.

It's a freaking diary, keep it under your bed. What makes you thing the rest of the world gives a damn.

See, there's lots of reasons for blogging. As for the term, the beauty of it or the need for a new term: it's discussible, naturally, but I believe weblogs differ from journals enough to deserve a new term. They're more like open letters than diaries.

There's a similar Open Source award (although no fat sacks of cash included). Just a few days ago the ActiveState Active Awards were handed out at OSCON. These awards are given to those actively contributing in the Open Source world.

Reading around it even looks like there are those at Microsoft who've considered getting a powerbook too

With a wireless network, RemoteDesktop/VNC you can access any other PC resources you need.

Now you only have to convince your boss. Good Luck!

Bingo.

Don't think that O'Reilly doesn't know this either. Check out how many books, articles, and so forth they have published since OS X came out. I had the privilege a few months ago to have a sit down with the current editor of the Apple books, and from the way he talked it seems that O'Reilly is nothing short of ecstatic about the OS.

O'Reilly, IMHO, publishes by far the best books on the market. This is because they have excellent editors and scouts (for lack of a better word) to find very intelligent, very insightful people to write their books. I suggest people check out there dev sites more often; they are treasure troves of info

The O'Reilly Network

MacDevCenter.com

OnDotNet.com

OnJava.com

OnLamp.com

openp2p.com

osdir.com

Perl.com

XML.com

Looks like O'Reilly has to charge VAT on Safari for the Europeans. Sucks to be...

Google search for google is god
some of the winners:
Google is God, Don't Piss Her Off
All Things Spiritual - Home of Google God! Pictures of Angels
Cold Fury: Good God Google
and last but not least: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Panopticon

Now the killer question, is this cool tool a good replacement for Windows based products such as CoolEdit or Cakewalk's Sonar? I've been a long time user of the later since the DOS days, but have become increasingly annoyed by latency issues as a result of the operating system.

I'm not only encouraged to make the switch by tools such as Ardour, but the increasing support for MIDI & Sound cards AND if need be, tweak my Linux Kernel for real-time music, MIDI & sound performance.

Now I just need to find an equivalent to Dave Phillips' "Sound & Midi Software for Linux" page for Video editing & DVD production.

Which isn't a big deal, I guess.

Mastering Regular Expressions is now in its second edition. Mr. Friedl has posted a nice writeup about what's different in the second edition.

You can read about the differences by clicking here, which is an article by the author outlining the differences.

There are several settings in the system preferences that allows one to change how anti-aliasing is used on your system.

I'd also be willing to bet that panther is doing some sort of update to the anti-aliasing hence the jagged looking fonts while the bugs are being worked out.

As for you comment about mac people being more artistic I suggest you point your browser to sites such as The O'Reilly Network and The developer mailing list archives to see just how big of an audience the mac really has. Sure there are plenty of artsy folk using the mac, but there is also a slew of terminal junkies as well.

More lawyers getting richer - I suppose you know it is all a big con.

I have identified the solution to the conflict of domain names with registered trademarks.

Honest expert lawyers have agreed it would uniquely identify all registered trademarked words on the Internet.

Not one lawyer has ever given logical reasoned argument against this. Indeed most are too cowardly to answer.

You may be interested in the solution and my informed opinion:

I make no egotistical claim that I was the first to see the solution. The authorities must have always known - it is indisputable that the answer was self-evident.

This is really very strange - because the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO.org) said they were stumped. Having contacted them, UN WIPO does not refute or admit the solution - such is their contempt for the law.

I have even communicated with the United States Department of Commerce about it - they are most evasive. As are our own cowardly and dishonourable UK Patent Office.

As you will have guessed - it is mainly about the abuse of power by big business and money. On that - do you know where UN WIPO gets most their money?

From the facts (and this silence) it can be assumed that UN WIPO, US DoC and ICANN (with their lawyers Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue) are all a bunch of crooks. They aid and abet the violation of Trademark and Antitrust Law. They also abridge the choice of words that people may use - violating the US First Amendment.

Even Karl talks about the abuse of power.

Quote: "Worse, Auerbach said in a telephone interview with O'Reilly Network, ICANN uses its domain name dispute resolution process to expand the rights of trademark holders, routinely taking away domains from people with legitimate rights to them, only to reward them to multinational corporations with similar names."

Some simple facts - which even the layman can see is true:

1. You can legally use any word, words or initials to start a new business without registering a trademark - providing you are not passing off, of course. Take for example the word 'apple'. It is legally used by thousands of businesses - large and small all over the world. Indeed, it is impossible that they all register themselves as trademarks - they are bound to conflict with many others, being confusingly similar. In my local phone book alone, there are at least five using this word - two garages (seems not connected), a car centre, fruit growers and a decorating firm. It is AGAINST THE LAW to prevent them from using their legal name - as the authorities do with UNLAWFUL fatally flawed Sunrise period and UDRP.

2. It is possible for many different firms to register the same word as trademark in the same country - but only with different type of goods or products, e.g. the word 'apple' is used by computer and tobacco companies in the US.

3. With the vast ocean of domains, most are not owned by registered trademarks, so some sort of label is required to identify them - or else they claim 'trademark conflict' or 'consumer confusion' - even 'passing off'. The registered trademark symbol ® (called 'R' in a circle or RTM) identifies them in physical world - it is really very very most exceedingly obvious that something is required in cyberspace to perform same function. For example - a protected Top Level Domain of .reg - like duh, simple or what.

4. Using format of name.class.country.reg would identify ALL registered trademarks - e.g. apple.tobacco.us.reg and apple.computer.us.reg

This is then used as certificate of authentication or as a directory (dual functionality). There is NO RESTRICTIONS any business, it can still use current/new domain, just directed to dot REG e.g. apple.com is directed to apple.computer.us.reg

If somebody could ask the Secretary for US DoC this easy question (as he ignores me) - "Mr Eva

Yes, MS settled out of court. For what this BBC article* describes as "hundreds of millions of dollars". While Caldera's purchase of the DR properties (DR-DOS, etc) cost around $400,000. This O'Reilly article quotes the Wall Street Journal as putting the number at $275 mil. So, in the strict legal sense, MS didn't "lose". But by every definition that matters, Caldera won and won big.

I, for one, hope that SCO loses for real on this one.

* This article also contains the single worst picture of Bill Gates I've ever seen. Worth clicking-through just for that.

It should be the running theme with Linux:

Linux Network Administrators Guide 2nd ed

O'Reilly Linux Command Reference

This is not to say that proprietary software is banned in the government. The policy will shift to allow companies that use free software solutions partipate in public concurrences. And every software used by the government, regardless of its platform, should be interoperable. No government website may carry a tag "best viewed with browser x or Y". The software developed by the brazilian IRS, that today is avaliable only for Windows, will have a Linux port. Sergio Amadeu told me this policy can be summarized in one sentence: "the brazilian government will not force anyone to use proprietary or free software". That is 100% on the spirit of free software and open source.

Nowadays the use of Windows is predominant in the brazilian government, but that will change. Many governments are considering this direction, and Brazil is just another case. The government is not anti-Microsoft, is just considering a better option for the country.

As a coincidence, I am a brasilian journalist and I have wrote a story about it. On monday you can check it out in www.jb.com.br/internet (those that don't speak portuguese will have to use Babel Fish).

Here it is.

Cringely got something like 10Km with a Pringles can

Then again, Cringely never bothered to disclose exactly how he accomplished this 'fantastic' feat.

There probably using some form of Differential GPS and taking data over a long baseline. I recall that given a few days worth of data its possible to fix a position to within 2-3cm

Apple keyboards are unsuitable for UNIX users!

(That's just my little joke for those of you who remember that crank from about a year back!)

It worked for me a couple years ago with cheap USB cameras. I haven't used it recently, so I want to know if there are better choices now. I've got a new robot platform with a lot more CPU power and USB bandwidth, so I'm going to try working on the vision thing again.

Back then, I started with the instructions at Program Your Computer to See. Note how the URLs inside the article are mostly out of date.

And yes, yes I know, "code to standards", which is the way it *should* be...

I think Microsoft should be given a good dose of their own medicine. Code to XPFE. Write remotely distributed web applications using XUL and friends. Link to your application from a plain vanilla web site that contains an "only works w/ Mozilla" icon that points to the Mozilla site.

Of course there's a big difference between coding Mozilla specific applications and coding MS/IE only applications. Mozilla is an open-source project built on open standards. MS could, if they so choose, implement any of Mozilla's features they like. The converse is not true.

If enough people get Mozilla on their desktop, and enough people start writing good XFPE applications, this could put a serious dent in MS's plans for world domination. Among other things, Mozilla doesn't require Windows. If you write a Mozilla application, you're doing cross-platform development. If the Oracles, IBM's, SAP's, ERP vendors and the like don't see the value of this, they are missing a golden opportunity.

Take the on-line banking example people seem to be so fond of today. You could build an extraordinarily rich on-line banking application on top of Mozilla today, than virtually anyone using any operating system could access. They would have to download Mozilla, which is free. Contrast that w/ writing to IE. Perhaps MS will someday offer an intriguing feature, but if you want your clients to enjoy the experience they will need to run the latest version of MS Windows. Unless they have a recent PC, it will cost them money to use your site. That's assuming they have a PC, and have reserved room on their hard drive to install an MS OS.

And then there's AOL. After years of investing in Mozilla, at a time when their labors are bearing fruition, they ink an ignominious deal with their biggest enemy. The board of directors should take the people responsible for this to the woodshed, spank them soundly, and send them packing. How could management be so ignorant of the value of their own assets? They could do things on AOL using XPFE that would make the MSN droids drool. What dopes. On top of that, how much further development do you think a billion dollar settlement would have funded?

There's an extra space being inserted after '28'. It's not in my code, but the link in my preview works...

It'll be /.'ed now, for sure.

It isn't. The actual link is:

Oreilly link

certain hardware manufacturers utterly refuse to support anything other than Windows

Since you mentioned you did some coding, you may want to check out Linux Device Drivers plus some of their other kernel tweaking/modding books.

Since browsing technology has likely reached it's apex, all that's left are the small things.

Microsoft didn't give AOL a billion dollars (well, they didn't actually give them jack shit if AOL is so stupid as to assign value to the "right" to use MS's browser, but that's another topic) for nothing.

People want to deploy distrubuted multi-user applications. How? This is the big money bag. MS will lose a lot more than their shirt if people start deploying applications to XPFE.

This is not an original thought. MS want to squish this bug badly.

1. Use a dedicated firewall - I don't believe a fire wall on the machine you are trying to protect is sufficient, especially windows. Get either a router with a built in firewall, or use linux with iptable masquerade firewall. The latter option is more $$ and more trouble than the former, but I think it's untilmately more robust. You should also use a firewall on your PC, just in case.

2. Secure your browser and mail reader - these are the primary "back doors" into your computer. No firewall will protect you if you download and execute a virus attached to an email message. Sorry, no links here, but ask around, and becareful what you download.

3. Read up - Building Internet Firewalls is excellent for the novice. I have their simplest system at home - one dual homed PC that acts as NAT, firewall, and router. Not as secure, but good enough for me. Then just start reading more books as you have time. The O'Rilley series on Ethernet and the various TCP/IP protocols is good, and so are the relavent RFCs. But also consider more academic books like Comer.

I wanted to point out a nifty piece of software- VoodooPad ( http://flyingmeat.com/voodoopad.html ) which will export it's wiki contents to the iPod notes folder (in the latest version, 1.1 alpha).

It turns your ipod into a Wiki on the go... Here's a great writeup of the software from
Oreilly entitled "Wiki meet iPod"- http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3164

Disclaimer- I wrote the software.

-gus

Bogofilter kicks ass with sylpheed-claws for individual users too. Here's a how-to on oreilly.net.

This is the kind of thing the PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) is meant to solve. I'm not sure how you would tie it in to your system yet, but some of these Java-centric links might help:

http://java.sun.com/products/jaas/
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.1/docs/guide/security /jgss/tutorials/
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.1/docs/guide/security /jaas/tutorials/
http://www.pramati.com/docstore/1270002/index.htm
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/d/861

I bet she's not half as good looking as Heidi Wall.

I'm sure following O'Reilly's CSS-Anarchists guide, you'll find a fluid way of providing new iamges in the CSS as well. Or just removing them :)