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Slashback: Safety, Transmissions, Breakage

Slashback has updates tonight on nuclear-safe hosting facilities, the temporary return of Metricom's Ricochet service, and a possible problem with Apple's newest upgrade for anyone using Xfree86 under Mac OS X.

A soft spot on the Apple?MacXGuy writes: "I recently obtained by free 10.1 upgrade from the Apple Store in the Mall of America. After installing it on my Titanium PB-G4 XFree4.1 (http://www.mrcla.com/XonX/) no longer works. (I'm definitely not installing it on my Dual 800 G4 until a workaround is found.)"

Since most of the stuff I've heard about the 10.1 upgrade has been positive to the point of suspicion, I wonder if anyone else has experienced similar upgrade quibbles with it.

Another good reason for a complex infrastructure. PhantomHarlock writes "New York City officials requested and got what's left of Metricom to re-activate the wireless network in the area surrounding the World Trade Center. Rescue and cleanup crews are using the network to coordinate and access death certificates filed online. Only one rooftop transmitter had been destroyed, the other four are still intact."

Even when you're right, you're wrong -- as the fine print clearly shows. An anonymous reader points to column in InfoWorld about interpreting the overlapping, contradictory and sometimes funny EULAs that accompany Microsoft products. Microsoft certainly isn't alone in that regard either -- ever read a EULA you thought was totally fair, unambiguous, and satisfying? Mr. Anonymous writes: "This was amply illustrated last week after I mentioned here that the EULA (end-user license agreement) for FrontPage 2002 contains a term prohibiting use of the software in connection with a site that disparages Microsoft or its online services. I love it."

The only place to hunker is a well-connected bunker. severn2j writes: "It seems that AL Digital's nuclear bunker (posted on /. a few weeks ago), has paid off for them in light of the attacks on the U.S. So much so that they've got another one."

And for all your fair-use needs ... An Anonymous Coward writes "Maybe lyrics.ch is going down now, but most of its content and even more is available from LyricsDot which is not going to close."

Good to hear. Amateur song transcription really isn't such a bad thing, except when you consider most of the songs.

28 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. 10.1 breaks things by cmoney · · Score: 5, Informative

    No conspiracy theory here, 10.1 does in fact break things. There were hacked up drivers for the Lucent WaveLan wireless ethernet card that worked with 10.0.4 but broke under 10.1. Various other programs like BBEdit had smaller problems also. Alot of programs have been re-released within the past few days to address 10.1 issues that have cropped up. If you haven't seen them publicized, it's because you're not looking on Mac boards, but they're there.

    1. Re:10.1 breaks things by kerincosford · · Score: 4, Informative

      Oh, anybody having troubles with 10.1 breaking things - this has a whole bunch of handy pointers.

    2. Re:10.1 breaks things by timdaman · · Score: 3, Informative

      It broke X so I reinstalled it. Blow away your /usr/X11R6 and /etc/X11 and reinstall. Also get the really nice new XonX Xdarwin client so you can run X in rootless mode (i.e. show X and Aqua on the same display at the same time). Total time of recovery, about 15 min. Also if I may put my 2cents in, **10.1 ROCKS**!!!!! I was almost ready to give up my Mac habit of many years. I had Linux running on my G4 fulltime with occasionaly trips to MacOS 9/X to do stuff. Now I think I may be moveing in the other direction. I still am keeping linux on my router and server tho so I am not toally abandoning it. :)

      --
      Do worry about life, you will never get out alive.
    3. Re:10.1 breaks things by hysterion · · Score: 3, Interesting
      anybody having troubles with 10.1 breaking things - this [stepwise.com] has a whole bunch of handy pointers
      Found this part interesting:
      Apple has removed [wget] in 10.1 as yet another GPL'd tool that can be replaced with a non-GPL alternative.
      This seems to be the reason they also avoided bash. Is the plan to ultimately remove everything GNU? Grepping 10.0.x manpages reveals a few that seem potentially there:
      diff
      dpkg
      emacs
      enscript
      etags
      gawk
      gnutar
      grep
      groff
      gunzip
      gzip
      less
      patch
      sort
      (Just asking! Please correct rather than flame the inevitable errors/omissions.)
  2. bunker by geekoid · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm going into the bunker selling business, just like the 50s.

    I can use terrorism fear, point to the governments overreaction for validation, I'll make a fortune! If they don't buy from me I'll report them annonymously as terrorist via the web!

    if only Mcarthy had the web

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  3. Redundancy in the net/points of failure by NotSurprised · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The article about nuclear bunker hosting got me thinking. We all know that back in the early days of the Net, when it was run by the US military/govt, it WAS designed to survive a nuclear attack, especially in terms of topology/redundancy.

    But since the commercialization of the Internet, has this objective been swept aside for the pursuit of mere growth? How vulrenable as single points of failure are places like MAE-East, MAE-West, etc where the major backbones peer together?

    Now, since the Net is mission-critical for a lot of businesses, might we need to ensure that it is survivable against such attacks, such as from terrorism?

    Could anyone really say the Internet is still robust to the failure of a few nodes? Any real study been done the graph-structure of the net?

    1. Re:Redundancy in the net/points of failure by SimplyCosmic · · Score: 3, Funny

      Meh. The modern Internet has trouble surviving an attack by a backhoe, let alone nuclear weapons.

  4. Uhh by alexburke · · Score: 4, Interesting

    LyricsDot which is not going to close

    If there's one thing the Slashdot crowd has figured out, it's to not count one's chickens before they've hatched.

    As soon as the Harry Fox Agency gets wind of this, I'm sure they'll go after this new variant with just as much zeal.

    However, since it appears as though the site truly IS hosted in Russia (rather than having a North American-based site with a .RU address), it just might stick around for a while after all!

    [ 8 ]

    RIPE whois query for www.lyricsdot.ru (195.34.224.76):

    inetnum: 195.34.224.0 - 195.34.224.255
    netname: AOR2-1-NET
    descr: Lipetsk regional network
    country: RU
    admin-c: AOR2-RIPE
    tech-c: AOR2-RIPE
    rev-srv: ns1.lipetsk.ru
    rev-srv: ns2.lipetsk.ru
    rev-srv: ns.vrn.ru
    status: ASSIGNED PA
    mnt-by: AOR2-MNT-RIPE
    changed: aor@takthq.lietsk.su 19980321
    source: RIPE

    route: 195.34.224.0/19
    descr: Lipetsk Regional Public Network
    origin: AS8570
    mnt-by: AOR2-MNT-RIPE
    changed: aor@takthq.lipetsk.su 19971207
    source: RIPE

    person: Alexander I Ostankov
    address: JSC "Lipetskelectrosvyaz"
    address: Lipetsk regional NIC
    address: 5, Plekhanova str.
    address: SU-398000 Lipetsk, Russia
    phone: +7 0742 470909
    phone: +7 0742 470916
    fax-no: +7 0742 744823
    e-mail: aor@lipetsk.ru
    nic-hdl: AOR2-RIPE
    mnt-by: AOR2-MNT-RIPE
    changed: aor@takthq.lipetsk.su 19981223
    source: RIPE

    1. Re:Uhh by aozilla · · Score: 3, Funny

      However, since it appears as though the site truly IS hosted in Russia (rather than having a North American-based site with a .RU address), it just might stick around for a while after all!

      Unless the maintainers decide to come visit the U.S. to participate in a Def Con convention.

      --
      ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
  5. What do you expect? by megaduck · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm not really suprised by 10.1 breaking X. In order to get the speed increases that I've been hearing about, they probably had to retouch darn near everything all the way down to the kernel level. That includes the BSD layer, so I wouldn't be surprised if anything written at that level has problems. Even Apple's own dev tools that came with 10.0 are broken.

    While losing X is irritating, I have a hard time getting angry at Apple. OS X was a real dog, and they absolutely needed to get performance up to snuff. Besides which, I'm sure that this glitch will be corrected shortly. Until then, you can get by with Aqua. It's not that bad. :)

    --
    This .sig for rent.
  6. *Ahem* by 11thangel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ok, its a change in the minor version of the OS. Think win98->winme, or anything->winxp. Or even linux2.2->2.4. Xfree 3.x->4.x. SOMETHING breaks. Whether it be 3d support, drivers for anything (or everything), or if its hardly recognizable as the same program, when the minor version number (or the major version number for that matter) goes UP, support for something must come DOWN. Either that or UP and DOWN or just two keys on my keyboard, I can't see straight enough to tell.

    --

    I am !amused.
  7. Complex infrastructures aren't always that good by gburgyan · · Score: 5, Interesting
    That's one of the inefficiencies of a complex, competitive environment. If everyone wants to set up their own wireless network, for instance, there's going to be a lot of overlap in the low-level stuff. This is not anti-capitalistic, it's just that some bit of standardization is a good thing - take a look at the IBM PC ISA and TCP/IP. While certain amounts are good (a Windows worm hasn't yet also struck Linux for instance) but too much really is a waste.

    The same could have been done with the wireless freenets that was mentioned a few articles ago.

    Redudancy is good. Too much redundancy is bad.

  8. Uhhh... by bIOHZRd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Go ahead and score this as insightful O' modera-tors....

    The Bunker offers the ultimate in protection from a myriad of attacks including; crackers, terrorist attack, electro-magnetic pulse, HERF weapons, electronic eavesdropping and solar flares.

    That seems kind of confusing to me that it offers protection against electronic eavesdropping, as doesn't the building need to connect to the "outside world" somehow? As long as a single line filled with data is coming out of the building, it isn't protected fully. Now if they could secure the lines all the way to uhh, the end user's house...THEN it would be superior.

  9. XFree 4.1 needs to be post 1.0a2 by descubes · · Score: 5, Informative
    I had a similar problem. After upgrading to 1.0a3, the latest build, it worked fine. The web page at http://www.mrcla.com/XonX indicates that 1.0a2 is the first build that starts on 10.1.

    I still have trouble if I lose a connection to a remote X machine, or if I kill XDarwin. In that case, I seem to have trouble starting a new X session, it complains that it cannot connect to a socket and that another XDarwin might be running.

    --
    -- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
  10. Re:About the Bunker by hackerhue · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think they really meant hackers i.e. people trying to chop up your computer with an axe.

    --

    To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three persons, two of them absent.

  11. EULA Issues by os2fan · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer

    If MS is inserting into its licenses, conditions of approved content, then they may well be stepping on the jurisdiction of the judge.

    There is a certian right to protect the IP rights of a work, which is limited to the use of the work and derived copies. This means that MS can restrict the production and distribution of copies of their work.

    There is also the certian right of association of "good name". This means, that if I write on some subject, then I can have you disassociate your work against mine. This was done, for example with Karl Marx and the "survival of the fittest". In the present context, it means the use of MS logos on sites that disparage MS.

    But one can not prevent one from using a companies works, legally acquired, to fight against a company, as long as the product is not identified.

    The licence as provided is not aimed at the protection of abuse of the intellectual property it covers, but to cover other IP not implied in the license. That is, the licence implies that you should protect IP that you are not being given special access to. It might be interesting to test this role of restraint in court, especially since the annual license thing has been deemed rental in Germany, with the implied restriction of owner (ie MS) fixes.

    The other thing is that judges might not take kindly to other people dishing out punishment for crimes that they decide punishment for. For example, if I were to create a hate site, and such a site were legal, than MS could still punish me. If the judge decides it were illegal, than the judge punishes me, and this is all I should pay, not an additional punishment from MS.

    What the EULA also grants, by undefined terms "hate, porn", is that they can control content. And for this control of content, they might also be leaving themselves open to the legal content of sites [... by acting as an editor, you become responsible for content ...]

    --
    OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
    1. Re:EULA Issues by os2fan · · Score: 3, Informative
      Having read the EULA in question, it DOES place exactly the sort of restrictions as I have indicated. The way that the EULA that I have for it reads, it does not specifically state web components. Is HTML a web component? The term "web component" is undefined. And having seen what MS does with undefined terms, I would be afraid of this.

      That MS has overstepped the steps necessary to protect the unauthorised reproduction of its licenced IP, and the misuse of its trademarks, should be regarded as a threat to the freedom of speech.

      Next, they will be saying you can't use their compiler to compile a competing wordprocessor, or any product that competes, replaces or interferes with their extant or potential products. Well.

      --
      OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
  12. XF86 10.1 problem is easy... by ehintz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Make sure /usr/X11R6/bin and /usr/local/X11/bin are in your path.

    --
    ehintz
  13. Much of that redundancy went out the window... by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The article about nuclear bunker hosting got me thinking. We all know that back in the early days of the Net, when it was run by the US military/govt, it WAS designed to survive a nuclear attack, especially in terms of topology/redundancy.

    But since the commercialization of the Internet, has this objective been swept aside for the pursuit of mere growth? How vulrenable as single points of failure are places like MAE-East, MAE-West, etc where the major backbones peer together?


    Much of that redundancy went out the window due to two factors:

    The move from a generalized net (most sites talk to a random minimum of two others, the routers figure out the shortest route) to a backbone-plus-ISPs with lots of fixed routing and most sites as singly-connected leaves.

    If you lose (all) your connection(s) to your ISP, or your ISP loses any single-point-of-failure or all N of a set of n-points-of-failure between you and the backbone, you're cut off. Running an ethernet cable to a neighbor's LAN that's still connected via another ISP will not get you the packets that were trying to reach your IP address.

    Your ISP's connection with the rest of the backbone might have some nice self-healing characteristics. So the net-of-ISPs might still have that kind of survivability. But your packets are at the mercy of your ISP's survival and internals. (And if you're paying home rather than business rates I bet your ISP didn't spend many bux to make things redundant on their way to you.)

    With the explosion of hosts the full routing tables are now WAY too big to be held in every router on the net. So we can't go back to the old style even if we wanted to - or at least not without a LOT of engineering.

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  14. ...and solar flares. by xFoz · · Score: 3, Funny

    BOFH excuse generator proof? I gotta check into this!

  15. Re:About the Bunker by suraklin · · Score: 4, Funny

    How does a bunker protect you from crackers?

    Simple. If you are under ground you do not have to fear pasty white people trying to throw Ritz, Saltines, Townhouse or other flat crunchy breadlike foodstuffs at you.

  16. This is a job for Super Geek! by darkonc · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Uhm, isn't getting an 802.11b free-network up around ground zero the kind of thing that us slashdot types could do to help with the rescue effort? (note that 'freenet' is apparently trademarked).

    I note that the ricochet network is only guaranteed to the end of October. It shouldn't be that difficult to get a free network up and running to cover the site by then (even if it has to be powered by car batteries!).

    --
    Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
  17. An EULA that I thought was fair. by AdrianG · · Score: 5, Interesting
    In the mid 80's, I remeber using Turbo-C/Borland-C, and the licence agreement (called a "No Nonsense Licence Agreement") said something about using the software "like a book". You could make all the copies you wanted, loan it to friends, install it on as many different systems as you wanted, as long as you made sure that only one copy was in use at a time.

    Does any one else remember that?? I don't have a copy of it any more.

    Adrian

    1. Re:An EULA that I thought was fair. by dwlemon · · Score: 5, Interesting
      "This software is protected by copyright law and international copyright treaty. Therefore, you must treat this software just like a book, except that you may copy it onto a computer to be used and you may make archive copies of teh software for the sole purpose of backing up our software and protecting your investment from loss.

      By saying "just like a book," Borland means, for example, that this software may be used by any number of people, and may be freely moved from one computer or location to another, so long as there is no possibility of it being used by more than one person at a time. Just as a book can't be read by two different people in two different places at the same time, neither can the software be available for use by two different people in two different places at the same time without Borland's permission (unless, of course, Borland's copyright has been violated)."

      emphasis in original text, typos added by me

  18. Re:MacXGuy is lying by wrhix · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hang in there, it can work.

    I'm running XDarwin 1.0a3 successfully with Mac OS X.I. (Dual headed on a PowerBook G3 no less!) I had a little bit of problem, but it was easily fixed. OS X replaces the BSD subsystem, so I had to go back into the system tcsh login and add /usr/X11R6/bin back into the path.

    A friend with an iBook had to reinstall XDarwin 1.0a3 to get it to work again.

    Good Hunting!
    Raph

  19. PC Gamer / Computer Gaming World by |<amikaze · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I dont recall which one it was, but a few years ago, I was glancing at the CD, and I noticed the following comment on the package: "By inserting this disc into your CD-Rom drive, you agree to the terms of the license agreement. To view this agreement, please see the file LICENSE.TXT on the CD-Rom"

    Heh, catch 22.

  20. XFree4.1 does work on OS X 10.1... by GreenDot09 · · Score: 4, Informative

    You just need to go download the 1.0a2 rootless test patch (from the xonx sourceforge sight: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xonx ). I have it installed and X works fine on my pismo running 10.1

  21. Really Great EULAs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    For a really great EULA read the one that comes with the windows game "Heroes of Might and Magic 3" (HOMM3)

    Its quoted as saying "you will reccomend this game to all your friends and say it is the best game ever made" and many more suspicious terms...