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We all know what buffer overruns are, but why do they seem to be so common? It would seem like this is something that could be easily prevented in the compiler or at most with very basic programming procedures. As many of us are programmers, any advice how to prevent these in our code? Is it possible to accidently allow buffer overruns in other languages besides C(Java, C#, etc.)?

Actually, the FCC doesn't limit raw power, it limits power per solid angle steradian (actually, it's usually max power/square area at a certain distance -- effectively the same, but no confusion over near-field effects of the antenna). Just like using a magnifying glass to concentrate sunlight, it can be just as dangerous to concentrate RF power - and the FCC knows this.

Still, the increased bandwidth due to multiple beams will be very helpful in overcrowded environments.

The biggest problem with libraries paying any sort of use fee is that you aren't certain you'll be able to afford it (or even allowed to do so) next week, next year, or next generation. Once a library invests in a physical book, the library has a pretty solid investment. Assuming readers are careful, it will be around in twenty years. (And if readers aren't careful, said readers will get to purchase the replacement.)

An electronic copy with any sort of Digital Restrictions Management is much less certain. Problem one: This year it's ten cents for a library to loan out a book and libraries all jump on. Five years from now, the company in question is having financial problems and jumps the price up to five dollars per loan and suddenly a library can't afford it. This can theoretically be solved by legislating required rates. Of course, publishers won't be happy about such laws and will fight tooth and nail against them. Assuming we get them passed, we run into our next problem, what happens when the publisher goes out of business? As we've seen with technologies like DIVX (the DVD competitor, not the video codec. I curse the stupid video codec people for knowingly conflicting with an existing name, making it extremely difficult to research the DVD competitor...), that this can happen, and your investment in something you don't control can be destroyed. Perhaps it's possible to technically work around the issue, but it would remain illegal (after all, you agreed to always pay for every loan when you purchased the book originally). Can this be solved? Sure, you simply have to require that it's possible to use the files if the company is unable or unwilling to unlock them. This means that the files either need to be DRM-free, or that libraries need to have a backdoor to open them. Again, the content industry will fight tooth and nail. And rightly so, any such backdoor will be eventually leveraged open to widespread illegal copies. Libraries can't afford to pay to have background checks done on librarians to see if they can be trusted with any backdoor? Even if you do the background checks, people slip through the cracks. Just ask the the government about Robert Hanssen. Eventually the secret will leak.

Any effective DRM based system is too problematic to be useful for libraries. That leaves ineffective systems, and most publishers will fight to their dying breath before trying it.

I don't quite understand where this Inexpensive crap came from. RAID was around long before IDE RAID controllers started showing up and of course SCSI RAID arrays almost always use very expesive disks. It's Redunant Array of Independent Disks, always has always will be.

It probably comes from the original reseach paper... A case for redundant arrays of inexpensive disks in the Proceedings of SIGMOD International Conference on Data Management, 1988. (Pages 109-116.) SCSI drives were an inexpensive option compared to other storage technologies that offered high performance and fail over safety.

Over time the acronym expansion was changed to become "redundant array of independent disks" as RAID become more popular (and affordable) for smaller systems.

Some references: here, here and here

StreamCast, which redistributes the Gnucleus peer-to-peer software, with a number of added features.

No, one AMU is defined as 1/12th the mass of a Carbon 12 atom...

See Here

heuristic scanning is very ineffective.

Yes. By definition, heuristics can only find some evil programs, not all of them. (If they could, they'd be algorithims). Holes will always exist.

And since virus-scanner software must be widely distributed to all the users it's supposed to protect, the virus author can always test his code against the heuristic until he finds a way to slip past it.

This suggests an altered business model for anti-virus vendors: start treating their heuristics like a trade secret, and don't let them out of the building. Run virus scanning on an ASP model.

Of course, the privacy, network-capacity, and liability problems with that approach are enormous.

That's what iSCSI is for.

There is a way to protect it from radiation though

Actualy, all solid state memory experiences errors due to cosmic ray particles, against which you CAN'T shield- eventually, some of these high-energy suckers will get through- and the problem gets worse the higher you go.
The chance for a given memory to fail due to this reason is called MTBF- Mean Time between Failures (actually, there's a broader definition, but I'm using the one related specifically to memory).
In addition, the more memory you have, the more errors you will have for the same MTBF- for example, if the MTBF is 1000 years for a single MB of your ultra-shielded memory. For 1000 MB, that means almost certain failure once a year! and you are talking about MUCH larger memory sizes!!
To conclude- in space, no one can hear you scream... ;-)
To Probe further:
Cosmic Rays
An article called "Can Hardware Be Trusted"

Despite everything I said above, there has been research on fault-tolerance in space, which might help you. You can look at the homepage of the Stanford REE project for more details
You might also be interested in these slides (PDF document) of a research project called Fault-Tolerant Computing for Radiation Environments.

Hope this helps :-)
Astromage

It is an acronym for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. For more about this, and other geek jargon, check out this link.

i have OptOnline; a couple of weeks ago i was downloading the mozilla source, at a sustained 789K/sec - 6.384Mbits. now, whatis says the top speed of a docsis modem is 27Mbit, so it's not *impossible*, but it's sort of...inconceivable? granted, i own the modem, and i've never actually reg'd it with OptOnline, so i don't know if it didn't have a config file loaded or what, but it looks like it's pretty much uncapped already.
and despite what they say about running servers and the like, they don't seem to enforce things very much - i'm summarily banned from a load of IRC nets for "repeated abuse (sorry innocents)", and they really don't seem to care that i have a router, four computers, and a hacked webserver (listening on port 3000, gets around the incoming-blcok on 80). all in all, a good deal for $40 a month.

Here's the Heliopod blurb *cough*shameless plug*cough* from Oct 4:

"Having had its productization deferred back in January, Solaris 9 x86 will now be receiving full support from Sun. It is believed that this decision was based, in part, on highly vocal fans of the x86 edition. However, unlike its Sparc edition counterpart, Sun will be charging for Solaris 9 x86. Initial prices are $99 for single-processor desktop systems and some as-yet undetermined price for multiprocessor systems. Optional service is also available starting at $75 per month for desktop systems and $1,275 a year for lower-end servers."

DVD originally stood for Digital Versatile Disc.

Actually, DVD's do stand for Digital Versatile Disc. They were previously known as Digital Video Disc. Someone apparently later realised that they can be used for lots of other things as well.

The subject matter of this book is slightly different, since it has an emphasis on real-time. If you're just interested in crunching a large problem as fast as possible, then latency is not an issue.

BTW, if anyone wants to take a gander at Numerical Recipes in C/Fortran they are available here.

The classic OTP was a pad of sheets with keys for character by character substititutions. Once a sheet is used for one message it is destroyed. See a more complete definition of OTP for more details. Since a given key is only used once, known-plaintext attacks can't compromise multiple messages.

For even more info see Why Are One-Time Pads Perfectly Secure? where it says that OTP is "perfectly secure, as long as the key is random and is not compromised".

So is poster claiming to have found a flaw in OTP?

Those who don't learn from the past are condemed to repeat it. So learn to appreciate it, or your next job is going to be coding in Fortran 2000.

10 if (you .ne. learnfrompast) then 10

Common misconception. They are modems. They modulate and demodulate. They fit the definition, too.

I guess it's not as bad as antidisintermediation. I can actually picture my high-school Latin teacher cringing.

wow, I now have full access!

The BBC and News.com reports. News.com in depth multi page thang.

This looks like it was compiled after extensive consultations with commercial inter^w^w leading experts. The
recommendations appear to boil down to "1. Use Symantec[tm] and Network Associates[tm] Products;
2. Encourage commercial software more secure, then sell it to *everyone*;
3. Train more experts". Am I too cynical, or are they missing
"4. Profit!" ? (Symantec and NAI are apparently doing product
releases to cash in?!) Where does Free software figure in these expert
recommendations? Oh, and privacy concerns have been quietly shelved.

Although... perhaps the news that BGP (the Internet's backbone routing
protocol) has vulnerabilities is news outside NANOG-l?

Wait, isn't a "honeypot" a dummy system used to trap malicious crackers? Whatis.com seems to think so too.

Does the word "honeypot" now also mean a "free wireless access point?" Nobody tells me these things...

I thought I'd ask slashdot what wysiwyg meant, but I decided to ask Google instead and found this whatis? definition.

Is HSM a solution? We rarely access very old data but we still like it to be easily available. With HSM we can move data to tape or some other cheaper storage while it still appears to be on the local filesystem. Applications don't know the difference other than they have to wait about 45 seconds as the data is fetched to local storage. In the end it depends on how you access your data. http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0, ,sid5_gci214001,00.html

The first +5 post on this topic is a troll advocating removal of the thermal grease from a cpu. 4 clueless knuckleheads have voted him up as informative.

If it's a coordinated Troll effort, bravo. Even if it's just stupidity, these people need their mod privs. revoked. More than likely anyone trying this is going to have a burnt-out Athlon.

Thermal Grease

You are confusing nanotechnology with positional assembly

Assembling things one atom at a time is one way to accomplish nanotechnology, but it would be incorrect to assume it is the only way.

You are confusing nanotechnology with positional assembly

Assembling things one atom at a time is one way to accomplish nanotechnology, but it would be incorrect to assume it is the only way.

I wonder whether this obscurity through polarisation will assist in defending onself against Van Eck Phreaking?

Myth of eletronic terrorism (trollish site, but still interesting)
Definition of electric terrorism.
Tips on preventing electronic terrorism.
Opinion article by a MIT student about overreacting to terrorism.
First article I can find mentioning electronic terrorism

One does not simply turn on or turn off DSL access for one customer. If you are non-DSL Enabled, then Verizon themselves cannot sell you DSL and the people who resell Verizon DSL ALSO cannot sell you DSL.

I thought I was clear about it...
Sometimes it's the greater regional equipment that prevents DSL, but often it's just the individual line from your house to the switching station or even to the telephone pole at the top of your driveway.

Learn here
And here

Yes, I am tired of proprietary systems, ones that change at the vendors whim without regard for what the customers are clearly requesting, and ones where I've had software written for - for the vendor to only make yet another undocumented change that breaks it. Or for the vendor to lock the system details up, so that I, as the owner of the data, cannot get to it without jumping though inefficient hoops that only give me a porthole to drag the mountain through. In-fact, I feel these types of issues are a core catalyst behind the upsurge in the open source movement.

I've worked with quite a few companies where more than just email worked for them, in-fact the calendaring is pretty useful in may cases. My concerns are with designs that lock my data up into proprietary systems, inaccessible to other systems without expensive third party tools, extensively written custom software or expensive and ad-hock consulting services - when open and well published standards exist that better facilitate interopability. I'm tired of systems that don't allow you to interoperate with others outside your organization, without jumping though yet more hoops, making the whole process inefficient and cumbersome.

Nature has told us, time and time again, that the simplest system is the one most likely to succeed (ala: Ockham's razor)... Which may just help to explain UNIX's still strong success after its incarnation 30+ years ago, where nearly every process/program/library still serves a specific purpose, KISS...

Training does help, but it does not resolve the issues completely. Systems must be easy to use, or over the long term, they will not be used. It really is just that simple, as humans are pretty lazy when it comes right down to it. There is that group that wants to learn, but then there is that much larger group that wants to stay they way they where.

In regards to the referred to paper, yes it does accurately reflect where we are now, but it was written 8 years ago, and based on papers mostly dating into the mid to late 80's. If you really think we can get past that, or that we are headed past that, why arent we clearly past it, or moving past it now... The fact is, existing groupware systems are far too complex for the average user to grasp. Anyone who expects the average user to grasp these proprietary concepts and methods is living a pipe dream, especially when these systems change so frequently...

Novell has done a good job these last few years communicating to the end-users with tools like CoolSolutions. In-fact I've been on the CoolSolutions mailing lists since they first started, but the fact is - not everybody shares the same passion into computers as most of us on Slashdot do. Most "...normal..." people (if you can call them that :-) feel they have better things to do with their time. Yes, I do have those users who are the local experts, and those that express a desire to learn more about the systems, but in reality, these valuable people are far and few between.

Why do I knock down GroupWise? It is a collective system that historically has not worked well for the environments I've seen and heard of it in. It's a system full of half-baked implementations, and broken and inefficient features, that Novell has acknowledged, and for years has promised to fix, but still has not followed through. Novell has allowed the development to stagnate over the last few years, and the excuses I'm hearing are that the development team feels that they don't need to listen to the customers. Now, from what I understand this developer issue may be changing, but many of Novell's other products are in the same situation, so I have to question how much if this is just another line of excuses.... Other than vendor supplied case studies, I know of nobody that has implemented an all-encompassing proprietary groupware system, in an normal business environment, where interopability with different systems was maintained, and was cost-effective to setup and deploy.

Yes, I am tired of proprietary systems, ones that change at the vendors whim without regard for what the customers are clearly requesting, and ones where I've had software written for - for the vendor to only make yet another undocumented change that breaks it. Or for the vendor to lock the system details up, so that I, as the owner of the data, cannot get to it without jumping though inefficient hoops that only give me a porthole to drag the mountain through. In-fact, I feel these types of issues are a core catalyst behind the upsurge in the open source movement.

I've worked with quite a few companies where more than just email worked for them, in-fact the calendaring is pretty useful in may cases. My concerns are with designs that lock my data up into proprietary systems, inaccessible to other systems without expensive third party tools, extensively written custom software or expensive and ad-hock consulting services - when open and well published standards exist that better facilitate interopability. I'm tired of systems that don't allow you to interoperate with others outside your organization, without jumping though yet more hoops, making the whole process inefficient and cumbersome.

Nature has told us, time and time again, that the simplest system is the one most likely to succeed (ala: Ockham's razor)... Which may just help to explain UNIX's still strong success after its incarnation 30+ years ago, where nearly every process/program/library still serves a specific purpose, KISS...

Training does help, but it does not resolve the issues completely. Systems must be easy to use, or over the long term, they will not be used. It really is just that simple, as humans are pretty lazy when it comes right down to it. There is that group that wants to learn, but then there is that much larger group that wants to stay they way they where.

In regards to the referred to paper, yes it does accurately reflect where we are now, but it was written 8 years ago, and based on papers mostly dating into the mid to late 80's. If you really think we can get past that, or that we are headed past that, why arent we clearly past it, or moving past it now... The fact is, existing groupware systems are far too complex for the average user to grasp. Anyone who expects the average user to grasp these proprietary concepts and methods is living a pipe dream, especially when these systems change so frequently...

Novell has done a good job these last few years communicating to the end-users with tools like CoolSolutions. In-fact I've been on the CoolSolutions mailing lists since they first started, but the fact is - not everybody shares the same passion into computers as most of us on Slashdot do. Most "...normal..." people (if you can call them that :-) feel they have better things to do with their time. Yes, I do have those users who are the local experts, and those that express a desire to learn more about the systems, but in reality, these valuable people are far and few between.

Why do I knock down GroupWise? It is a collective system that historically has not worked well for the environments I've seen and heard of it in. It's a system full of half-baked implementations, and broken and inefficient features, that Novell has acknowledged, and for years has promised to fix, but still has not followed through. Novell has allowed the development to stagnate over the last few years, and the excuses I'm hearing are that the development team feels that they don't need to listen to the customers. Now, from what I understand this developer issue may be changing, but many of Novell's other products are in the same situation, so I have to question how much if this is just another line of excuses.... Other than vendor supplied case studies, I know of nobody that has implemented an all-encompassing proprietary groupware system, in an normal business environment, where interopability with different systems was maintained, and was cost-effective to setup and deploy.

There's one reason why I've always wanted VoIP: traceroute.

At my old home, I had a dialup connection to my ISP. About once or twice a month when I would dial in for the evening, I would hear *static* on the phoneline. I'm talking like a noisy AM radio type of static. I would hang up the modem, dial in again, and the static would be gone.

My best guess is that there was a faulty wire *somewhere* in the telco's network that was causing the static, and I was unfortunate enough for my call to end up on that wire. (Remember, POTS is a circuit switched network, the same set of wires is used for the duration of the connection) Of course, when I called Verizon, there was absolutely no way for me to reproduce the problem reliably, so they couldn't do much to help. Had I some equivilent of a way to do a traceroute, I could simply say, 'the link between switch-5.verizon.net and switch-32.verizon.net is dropping packets, please put that in the trouble ticket so the techs can fix it'.

So yeah, I'm a little giddy about VoIP. Almost makes me wanna get a T1 to my current residence and drop the POTS line I have now... Well, I can dream, I suppose.

I'll stop babbling now...

There is a lot of different ways to snoop around a computer, a lot of the stuff that goes through your hardware can be picked up via things like Van Eck Phreaking. You can protect yourself from attacks like this with software alone.

Having said that, do you ever get the feeling these R&D guys are just making these words up?

Researcher #1: Well, this is the shortest pulse yet!
Researcher #2: Less than a picosecond?
#1: Yeah. .001 picoseconds.
#2: Shit man, you know the suits hate decimals!
#1: Oh.. Uhhh... *strokes long grey bushy beard* I have a cunning plan!
#2: *sighs* Let's hear it, then.
#1: We'll call it a femtosecond!
#2: You're a genius!

But they're not, thankfully. Here's a little guide.

Ali

The phrase, "lost in the translation," is made to fit the global marketplace. In today's multicultural IT workplace, water cooler conversations may take place simultaneously in several different languages. IT professionals and their software, however, need to speak a common tongue. The subject of this "true IT blooper" learned that lesson the hard way.

Every story in our bloopers series comes to us directly from a SearchWindowsManageability user. For obvious reasons, some contributors -- including this tale's author -- choose to remain anonymous. So, we'll call him Kim Chung.

When Chung was a rookie security engineer, he was asked to handle his company's annual security audit. Anxious to make a positive impression on co-workers in his new department, Chung offered to stay late and run a few seemingly simple and routine system checks.

One of Chung's chores was setting up a new security policy on 14 different Windows servers. As Chung set about changing this configuration, he was prompted by the system regarding its Remote Procedure Call service, "I didn't know much about RPC," He admits now. "All that I knew was there are tons of vulnerabilities concerning RPC services."

After careful consideration of how to handle these settings, Chung said he came to this conclusion: "RPC? You evil!" So, he stopped all RPC-related services until two the next morning.

As he continued to check additional RPC settings, Chung's system asked him to select a startup type. Well, he'd shut down RPC-related services. Also, he didn't have a high opinion of RPC. So, he chose 'never in use.'

Looking back, Chung realizes that he didn't know what the heck "never in use" meant. Before taking the job in question, he'd only used Windows in Korean, and never the English edition. Even so, he thought he understood the command in the English version and carried on. He'd stayed late to do this job, by golly. He wasn't going to let that evil RPC stop him!

Unaware that he had fouled up the configuration, Chung then restarted all of the systems. Around 2 a.m., he turned out the lights, locked the server room door for the night, and headed for home. "I was so sleepy!" he recalled.

Before reviewing the rest of the evidence against Chung, a few words in his defense. Numerous studies show that sleep loss impairs the ability to perform tasks involving logical reasoning. () So, it's logical that Chung left without making sure that the restarted systems were operating properly.

Sleep deprivation also affects memory. So, Chung didn't remember failing to check the systems. Indeed, he returned to work early the next morning with a spring in his step. His co-workers would thank him, he thought, for staying late so that they could go home. His boss would pat him on the back for getting up to speed on the predominately English network so quickly.

What awaited him was complete disaster.

"I had re-installed all the systems," Chung said. Selecting the 'never in use' option for the server's RPC services had caused the carefully constructed new configurations to be overwritten to their default settings upon his reboot.

Was he embarrassed? Red in the face? Perhaps a little concerned about keeping his job? "It seemed that the earth was rocking and thunder was roaring to me," he said. That could be construed as a deep concern for one's job, don't you think?

With the earth rocking beneath him and thunder roaring in his hears, our hero knocked on his administrator's door and turned the knob. Luckily, his boss chalked Chung's blooper up to lack of experience. So, Chung got off with little more than an `A' for effort and a stern warning: Watch your language!

-Brent

How has 'building|making' been/is confused/missused/associated with 'destroying|demolishing' things?

Case :

I think before publishing material publicly, one should do some research and confirm sources/results with other relevant people on that subject.
(eg. confirm "hack[er|ing]/crack[er|ing]" with (a) guru[s] in computers, like ESR).

This goes aswell to the slashdot editors for their (subject)postings; and all other form of publishing (you know who you are).

Reference :
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/hacker.htm l
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/hacker-eth ic.html
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/cracker.ht ml
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/cracking.h tml
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=hacker
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=dark-side %20hacker
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=cracker
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hacker.html
http://home.planet.nl/~faase009/Ha_hacker.html
http://www.plethora.net/~seebs/faqs/hacker.html
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0 ,,sid14_gci212220,00.html
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0 ,,sid14_gci211852,00.html
....and many more are out there, on the World Wide Web.

How has 'building|making' been/is confused/missused/associated with 'destroying|demolishing' things?

Case :

I think before publishing material publicly, one should do some research and confirm sources/results with other relevant people on that subject.
(eg. confirm "hack[er|ing]/crack[er|ing]" with (a) guru[s] in computers, like ESR).

This goes aswell to the slashdot editors for their (subject)postings; and all other form of publishing (you know who you are).

Reference :
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/hacker.htm l
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/hacker-eth ic.html
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/cracker.ht ml
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/cracking.h tml
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=hacker
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=dark-side %20hacker
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=cracker
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hacker.html
http://home.planet.nl/~faase009/Ha_hacker.html
http://www.plethora.net/~seebs/faqs/hacker.html
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0 ,,sid14_gci212220,00.html
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0 ,,sid14_gci211852,00.html
....and many more are out there, on the World Wide Web.

I wish people would clue into these things sooner, 384 kbit/sec = 48KB/sec, 3Mbit/sec ~ 375KB/sec. Living up here in Canada I pay about $60 CDN for the line (roughly 40 bux USD) and get 40KB/sec Upstream and I can DL at around 800KB/sec (peak). I don't see the great deal here for you guys, unless they're just aren't very many great ISP's out in the states. Move up here to Vancouver BC ;)

Secondly people who setup home networks with a router doing NAT should be allowed since it will help reduce the traffic to an ISP. Hubs/switches linking a few home computesr won't do since traffic between two pc's on the same network will use the ISP's bandwidth still. Unfortunatly the home user doesn't know this, so maybe the ISP's should educate the users and let them know the benefits of having a router, let them know why a HUB isn't a good solution to home networking. Instead of just restricting users because they do something stupid, a basic explanation of why something is restricted and how they can fix it would be in their best interest.

Anyways just my two cents.

I wish people would clue into these things sooner, 384 kbit/sec = 48KB/sec, 3Mbit/sec ~ 375KB/sec. Living up here in Canada I pay about $60 CDN for the line (roughly 40 bux USD) and get 40KB/sec Upstream and I can DL at around 800KB/sec (peak). I don't see the great deal here for you guys, unless they're just aren't very many great ISP's out in the states. Move up here to Vancouver BC ;)

Secondly people who setup home networks with a router doing NAT should be allowed since it will help reduce the traffic to an ISP. Hubs/switches linking a few home computesr won't do since traffic between two pc's on the same network will use the ISP's bandwidth still. Unfortunatly the home user doesn't know this, so maybe the ISP's should educate the users and let them know the benefits of having a router, let them know why a HUB isn't a good solution to home networking. Instead of just restricting users because they do something stupid, a basic explanation of why something is restricted and how they can fix it would be in their best interest.

Anyways just my two cents.

But your original question was why Apple didn't use *nix as the basis of it's modern OS way back in the 1990s. Do you remember "Taligent" and "Pink", the joint venture between IBM & Apple to create a viable OS standard based to compete with the Wintel cartel?

Pink was the OS that was supposed to be designed ground-up to be completely based on OO principles and technology. Apple put all it's eggs int that basket, and had to go shopping for an OS after years of missed delivery deadlines. Remember the play that Apple made for BeOS, before Jean-Louis Gasse and friends put a ridiculous price tag on what was still an unfinished OS? The net result was that Apple (and IBM) never finished fully OO-based Pink so it bought Job's NeXT. This allowed Apple to layer the MacOS on top of the OO-layer that NeXT had layered on top of BSD-Unix. And this also brought Apple's prodigal son back home.

...anactofgod...

> You'd be surprised how far a low-ping quality
> IDSL can go for as many people as are on it.
> Its definitely far and away better than ISDN or
> dial-up

No, it isn't. IDSL is ISDN. The only difference is that it's routed through the DSLAM cap router, which typically has you in a locked position on your ATM cloud, so you don't have to wait for a handshake. Oh, and because it's got a different name, they can charge you double.

See WhatIs.

Linus Torvalds has written a program called BogoMips to calculate a "MIPS" rating for your computer. He goes on to suggest that performance measurements between two computers can be misleading because not all contributing factors are stated or even understood.

Is this about encoding the message into an image, then using the original image to "subtract" and see the message?

That's not stego at all. Here's an article to explain it.

It didn't have transactions, and the only way to get them now is to use InnoDB (this is NOT used by default), which isn't completely integrated. InnoDB and BDB are taken from other projects, and would be better on their own.

MySQL developers have made claims that transactions and rollbacks are a bad thing! I kid you not.

They claimed one could have atomicity without rollback. Okay, so what do you do if a SQL statement which is part of a (user emulated) "transaction" fails. You are stuck halfway through, or else you might have to do a SQL statement that undoes what you did (good luck). And if that SQL statement fails, you are hosed.

MySQL does not (by default) support Atomicity, Consistancy, Isolation and Durability (ACID).

Their developers appear to not know the meaning of these terms.

MySQL isn't truly open source.

MySQL isn't a real database, it is a SQL interface to a file system. MySQL isn't much better than using flat files, and due to the complexity, is often worse.

PostgreSQL has none of these problems. And the performance is much better than the old versions.

Only use MySQL if you don't care about your data. Yeah, it might be fine for a web counter where if it gets hosed, big deal.

If you care about your data and need a REAL database which is actually Open Source, use PostgreSQL.

See this article:

Why Not MySQL.

Back in 1978, when I studied PL/1 at SSU in Minnesota, I went nuts trying to figure out why my program, the first assignment of the class, wasn't working. I re-read every punch card (yes, punch cards!) and I still couldn't find the bug. Between each run of the program, I had to wait 30 minutes for my "job" to get it's turn (good ol' batch processing).

I focused all of my energies on card 47, column ten - the debugger was sure that there lay the problem. It was just what I expected, though, a period! Finally, a classmate came into the lab, and I asked if I could see his card #47. I held the two cards up to the light, and sure enough, there was a difference. My card and his had a different punch pattern for column 10! Turns out that I had a comma and not a period, but the print head on the card punch machine was broken, and wouldn't print any descenders, so what looked like a period was actually a comma!!

I dropped the class the next day, and never took another programming course. I have been programming ever since, but never again in PL/1.

If you have this big archive you need to keep online, "Should I use DVD-R?" is the wrong question. DVD-R is just a kind of media, and there are many choices here. The basic issue is "What kind of application is this, and what is there to support it?"

The answer to that is that is that this is a Hierarchical Storage Management application. I won't pretend to be an expert on HSM, but there's a lot of different HSM technology. The choice of media here (and there are lots of alternatives to DVD-R and CD-R) is probably less important than jukeboxes or other robot hardware you have to buy to manage them, and the software you have to buy to manage to hardware.

You are correct it appears. That is the last time I trust a web site that "looks credible"

Perhaps you'd like to check your definition of DOS.
Even strictly defined, ie. looking only at the accronym. DOS stands for, as I'm sure you're aware, Denial Of Service. Well, if my X server crashes becuase Rob and crew decide they was 166666 point fonts, then I most certainly have service being denied.
And it is most certainly being launched as the placement of that font tag is actively placed in the html or css code.

a better definition can be found here (I'm there are others, but this was the first one I came across from google).

On the Internet, a denial of service (DoS) attack is an incident in which a user or organization is deprived of the services of a resource they would normally expect to have.

Again, I'm being deprived of resources that I would otherwise expect to have access to.
any questions?

By the way what exactly is a beowulf cluster?

Read this.

I usually find that mozilla doesn't render sites like that poperly because they are in fact not web sites at all.

Ooh, semantics. Oh great Internet dictionary, what is a web site?

A Web site (we prefer the two words rather than Website) is a collection of Web files on a particular subject that includes a beginning file called a home page. -- from TechTarget

A set of interconnected webpages, usually including a homepage, generally located on the same server, and prepared and maintained as a collection of information by a person, group, or organization. -- from the American Heritage Dictionary

I'm sorry, I don't see any preaching about what is and what isn't a "Web file." You say that only "The W3C does" specify what is and isn't an HTML file. That's true: they have a validator which can tell you whether a web page is valid HTML. You and I both know that most of the highly-trafficked sites on the web aren't valid HTML. CNN.com isn't valid HTML. Yahoo! isn't valid HTML 4.01 Transitional. Of course, even Slashdot isn't valid HTML. Should these not be considered web sites? Well, they all render just fine in Mozilla, so by your definition they're fine and dandy.

Mozilla doesn't render all of the web's documents correctly. Neither does IE. However, IE is the de facto standard now, so most usability testing focuses on IE accessibility. Slashdot users such as yourself love to spout sour grapes about how such-and-such site doesn't render with Mozilla, but so what? No amount of whining will change that. If I told my professors that I couldn't research a site because it wouldn't work in Mozilla, they'd tell me, "That's nice. You fail."

The web would be a nicer place if everyone wrote standards-compliant HTML, but everyone doesn't. You can't whine about it. Just deal with it.