Slashback: Zip, Language, Opportunism

Slashback tonight brings you updates and corrections from recent and ongoing stories, including (this time around) non-silver silver paste, the return of the Orkut, Mike Rowe and his not-so-epic battle with Microsoft (one last time, I hope), the future of Zip for Microsoft Windows, and more. Read on below for the details.

Funny name, well-executed idea. YourMother writes "After almost 4 days of being offline, the social network Orkut is back online. The Orkut development team has been working nonstop since bringing it down on Sunday afternoon and quite a few new security features have been implemented to protect users information. Within the first 48 hours it was up, it gained almost 100,000 users, growing many times faster than other social networks like Friendster or Tribe. Did Google hit the social network bulls-eye?"

glinden points to a story with some more information about those security holes. "From the article, 'Sources close to Google suggest widespread XSS (cross-site scripting) hacks forced the closure of the service. It isn't clear how much personal data or communication was disclosed.'"

Playmate. Playmate, playmate playmate. An anonymous reader writes "A week after an appeals court ruling revived a Playboy Enterprises Inc. trademark infringement lawsuit against Netscape Communications Inc., the companies have reached a settlement in the case (See a ZDNet report) The terms of the settlement have not been disclosed. This puts an end to a closely watched case in the search engine advertising field. Several other lawsuits over misuse of trademarks in search engine ads are still in place. Google e.g. is embroiled in a lawsuit with Luis Vuitton regarding keyword-based ads in France and asked for a California court's ruling to back its trademark policy for AdWords after facing the threat of a lawsuit from American Blind & Wallpaper Factory Inc."

You have to admire such brave nomenclature. Michiel Frackers writes "Thanks for the link to my site, I got 3 gigabyte of traffic in a few hours! If I would have known, I would have written something in English. I have added an update about the Strangeberry product and its relation to Tivo at the URL you linked to.

I also included a link to my private blog (as www.frackers.com is more about my work in media & technology). Hopefully this clarifies some things for your readers, I did not intend to make this some kind of quest or game at all: it's just that I promised Arthur and his colleagues not to disclose what they are exactly doing, as you will understand."

And Anonymous joe writes with this link to an intriguing bit of Strangeberry speculation at the Register.

Nokia to port Python to Mobiles, not Perl An anonymous reader writes "Nokia was mistaken. In fact, El Reg reports that Python, not Perl, is the preferred language for scripting on its smartphone platforms. The availability of a Python implementation for mobile phones is part of a broader plan, including a JVM-based BASIC interpreter."

However, the Register article linked says that Perl is being considered, it's just that Python is being looked at as the primary language.

I wouldn't trust their pearls, either. Blade Leader writes "OCZ has issued a recall of OCZ Ultra 2 thermal paste after the Overclockers.com article on their lack of silver content. They blame the lack on their supplier, and claim they will be pursuing legal action."

A piece of history (or at least a piece of somethin' ...) Artemis writes "Searching along E-Bay and MikeRoweSoft.com I noticed that Mike Rowe has decided to sell the Microsoft Cease-and-Desist Letters and WIPO book he received on E-Bay. He is selling the WIPO book with the 25-page letter received from Microsoft's lawyers on January 14/2004.This inch-thick book contains copies of web pages, registrations, trade marks, other WIPO cases, emails between me and Microsoft's lawyers and much more. There are 27 annexes filled with information. This package also comes with the 25-page complaint transmittal coversheet that was sent with the inch-thick book."

What's wrong with gunzip, tar? whitefox writes "CNet News is reporting that PKWare & WinZip have settled their differences and will maintain Zip file compatibility for the foreseeable future with each supporting the other's security extensions. In addition, PKWare will include its SecureZip in the code it licenses to other software makers. This is good news in deed for users and developers alike!"

Comments

Orkut

[Anonymous Coward]

So are any of you guys members yet?

No-one I know has joined yet and I've not heard much on the net so are there really any members or is it just another conspiracy theory - ie you think it's good therefore you want to join?!?

Re:Orkut

[Rick the Red]

You remind me of the Groucho Marx line (paraphrasing): "I'd never join a group that wanted me as a member."

Re:Orkut

[bluewee]

I know there is one or two SlashDot Members on the inside, so SHARE THE WEALTH, common there has to be lots of girls there right?

Re:Orkut

[Anonymous Coward]

So are any of you guys members yet?

No, I have real friends.

Re:Orkut

[rjelks]

The first rule of Orkut: You do not talk about Orkut.

-

Re:Orkut

[generic-man]

Orkut is actually just a scam designed to fleece unsuspecting Internet users out of money. The record so far is $11.00.

Re:Orkut

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you mean they didn't ask you? Ummm, we're all members already.

Re:Orkut

[abigor]

I became a member via a guy I work with who's connected with some Silicon Valley people. I haven't actually filled anything in yet, and I don't really know what it's all about, because I've never done this social networking on the Internet thing before. Actually, I seriously doubt I'll make much use of it other than when I feel like changing jobs...I think it's probably a great job-networking tool.

Looking over his shoulder, I noticed that many people on the service seem to be in their 30s. That seems older than the normal "let's meet on the Internet" crowd, or am I mistaken?

Re:Orkut

[Elwood P Dowd]

I'm there and it sucks. Email me at dojothemouse@mac.com and I'll invite you. I'll need your name and email address. If I get lazy and too many people ask, I'll stop doing it.

Re:Orkut

[Elwood P Dowd]

Amen. I don't want to admit to any of my real friends that I'm on it just because it's so fucking lame.

Re:Orkut

[Condor7]

Orkut describes itself as "an online community that connects people through a network of trusted friends".

I don't want to socialize with that guy, or with any of his friends.

Re: Orkut

[lysium]

No-one I know has joined yet and I've not heard much on the net so are there really any members or is it just another conspiracy theory--"

Well Slashdot has certainly been giving it coverage. Are you sure the conspiracy you are talking about isn't betwix the editors here and Orkut? Or is all the attention just over the Google connection? Hmmm. A plot is surely afoot!

==============

Re:Orkut

[Lord_Dweomer]

Orkut is not a scam, people are just using the exclusivity of it to make money. That's like saying that the "model clubs" are scams just because you'd have to tip the bouncer to get in.

Re:Orkut

[Bigman]

Hmm.. I'm 40 and I 'meet on the internet'. Or maybe it just that I'm wierd... Oh yeah, thats it. Sorry to bother you all....

Re:Orkut

[fufighter]

I would have said the samething... but I'm too passive...

Please?!

[bluewee]

Will someone invite me...?

Re:Please?!

[Anonymous Coward]

and me? Who do you have to screw in Google to get invited?

Re:Please?!

[Raven15]

What's the URL to join?

No Stranegberry content in Anonymous Joe's link

[winkydink]

Nice write-up on Netflix, but nothing really earth-shattering there either.

Re:No Stranegberry content in Anonymous Joe's link

[Indomitus]

If you actually read the whole article you'll see the stuff about Tivo at the end. Seeing as Strangeberry was about 'broadband content delivery' it's not too much of a stretch to see Tivo team up with Netflix to allow Tivo users to download movies using Strangeberry tech. They didn't mention Strangeberry specifically in the article but the Tivo-Netflix connection is there and Strangeberry could be the tools to make it happen.

What about infozip?

[phr1]

Will the new "secure" zip format be published so other implementations can use it? There's the old pkzip "password" feature that infozip implments, that's deliberately weak because of the old export controls, but that doesn't count.

Re:What about infozip?

[mark_space2001]

If it isn't, we should come up with one.

De-facto standards and proprietary standards get started becuase no one has an alternative. If an open standard is created, I'm sure users and the market will prefer that one.

The best time to make such an open standard is before any proprietary one has a chance to get a strong foot hold.

Re:What about infozip?

[DeadMeat (TM)]

There's actually 2 encrypted .ZIP formats: the announcement is just that PKZIP will read WinZip's format, and vice-versa.

WinZip's AES encryption is documented here. PKWare's format is apparently proprietary.

Re:What about infozip?

[phr1]

Thanks. The winzip format is reasonably well done, though the authentication format is unspecified (the doc says "look at the implementation tips" and the implementation tips say "look at the doc") but is done by Brian Gladman's published AES library, so can be deduced from that. I see one minor problem, that for AES-128 the key is computed by crunching the password with a 64-bit salt. Because of the birthday paradox there starts to be significant chance of re-using a key after encrypting a billion or so files, which isn't implausible in some types of automated systems. Since the encryption mode is AES-CTR, re-using a key is a serious security failure. The solution is use AES-256 which is also provided and which uses a 128 bit salt. I don't understand why they used separate salt sizes for the two key sizes.

Re:What about infozip?

[Wolfrider]

--What I'm worried about is the Zip that is used on Linux (and possibly other) boxes. I sent an email to the developers almost A YEAR AGO cmoplaining about the still-extant 2GB filesize problem, and AOTW they still have done NOTHING about it!

Re:What about infozip?

[kwalker]

De-facto standards and proprietary standards get started becuase no one has an alternative. If an open standard is created, I'm sure users and the market will prefer that one.

You mean like Ogg/Vorbis?

So who seeds Orkut

[Space cowboy]

There is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation about a meeting-place where membership is by invitation (can't you tell I'm not one of the exalted :-)

It would be interesting to see what the demographic of the initial seed population was - and to see whether that influenced the community over time... As any fule know, the initial conditions can have a profound impact on any time-dependent phenomena :-)

Simon

Re:So who seeds Orkut

[MatthewB79]

They probably select a demographic that would cling to the novelty of it. If your not a clique-type socialite who values an online tool to "create a closer and more intimate network of friends" then I guess Orkut isn't interested in you. Alternately, you probably aren't interested in it.

Re:So who seeds Orkut

[iminplaya]

I know...I should read the article...or maybe other posts about this, but isn't this kind of like the "white lists" I have in my IM's?

Re:So who seeds Orkut

[back_pages]

It's an interesting question. I'd put my dollah on the hypothesis that the clique gravitates toward a more mainstream population as time goes on. I mean, everytime someone invites somebody that isn't 100% part of the clique, he probably starts a pyramid scheme of inviting people who are more general public and less elite.

But hey, I could be wrong. That's where my money is, though. Anyway, somebody invite me. I want to share my bad ass music interests and engage in enlightened conversations with.. uh.. internet people. *smacks irc* DOWN BOY!

Re:So who seeds Orkut

[dracvl]

Well, I'm a member (big deal, right ;), and the definite majority is computer and tech people, but most of them seem to have good social connections too. So no surprise there.

Re:So who seeds Orkut

[mugnyte]

Do we not already have enough ways to communicate with people via the internet?

I mean, if Google is netting millions in their shiney new method, kudos. The FOAF-factor going on here is interesting, but I'm guessing this is going to be a wash-out into simple oblivion any day now, because FOAFs are interesting "Oh, you know monkeyspanker as well!?" but it doesn't carry that far.

If people are open to meeting online, then personals, chat, IRC, blogs, BBS's, Listservs, meetups, clans, MMPORGs, user groups, and the myriads of marketing based events (conventions, openings, book signings, political events) are already a enough? NO! We must also jump into this! well, there's plenty of chatheads to partition into little camps, so away it goes...

Holy cow, so now can I connect my Friendster people to my Orkut people? OH no! Bleed over! Suddenly, we've mapped a lot of spurious relationships. A buddy told me to sign into Friendster, so I did. I wrote a pithy opinion and never went back. At a certain point, it's akin to organizing your photos over and over.

Re:So who seeds Orkut

[kfg]

... As any fule know, the initial conditions can have a profound impact on any time-dependent phenomena :-)

I was once solicited, directly from the salesfloor of my then employer ( my customer was a sales manager who I impressed), to work in sales for a major international insurance agency.

Upon the formal application I was turned down for employment (thank God).

Why? Because I'm not a joiner. I didn't belong to fraternity, Elks Lodge, Country Club, The Rotary, what have you.

Thus I didn't have, in their eyes, a ready pool of people the "invite' to purchase insurance. My abilites and professionalism as a salesman were completely irellevant to them.

Does that shed any light on your curiosity?

KFG

Re:So who seeds Orkut

[XO]

I invited about 30 people to my initial friendster account. Five days later, I had 15,000+ people in my connections. Somewhere about 11 people away from me, and all the way across the continent, I found a girl that I had dated in high school, who knew someone who was a very close friend of mine (that i didn't meet until 5 years after high school, on the other side of the state). She's planning on coming by and hanging out for a few days in March. Should be interesting. :)

That's the only thing I've actually done with Friendster. Oh, one person found me from high school with it, but I didn't particularly want to be found by them. lol.

Re:So who seeds Orkut

[Elwood P Dowd]

Orkut sucks. Well. I'm there, and I have 1 friend. When I joined friendster, I had 25 friends waiting for me.

Want an invite? Email me at dojothemouse@mac.com

Re:So who seeds Orkut

[Junta]

In most any circumstance, anyone with an association in good standing with an employer has an almost infinite advantage over anyone else, even if on paper they are much much much less apparently qualified. I know, this just agrees with your point, and I too have been pissed off by this phenomenon, but I have to admit, there is sound reasoning behind it.

The major problem with hiring people is that it is typically a long term investment with a good deal of commitment on the part of the employer. For obvious reasons, there is an extreme benefit in determining the qualifications of a candidate before hiring. Despite all best efforts in interviews and resumes, it really isn't possible to gauge a candidate very accurately except to weed out the most incompetent. Even if someone isn't up to par, they can fake it in an interview long enough to look better than another candidate that just can't deliver a good sales pitch at interview time. Social networking provides the applicant credibility, and provides the employer better accountability ('Jim recommended him, so Jim has ultimate responsibility').

Of course, further benefits include lower startup time for a new employee and, over time, increased morale and teamwork, the foundation of which was already partially built off of company time before even the first day. Someone coming into work with a few familiar faces will tend to hit the ground running better, being less timid about getting starting advice and knowing a comfortable person to ask about things as they start running. Even without asking questions, the closer contact allows the existing employ to detect problems long before they would have been seen with a stranger.

So yes, to those without the networks, it is really unfair, and it is unfair when you build a really nice social network only to have it shattered by a site shutdown (both have been my situation), but it does increase candidate review reliability overall and increase net productivity.

All that said, I think this should go out the window in the sales/marketing world. The best evaluation is the pitch they throw for themselves in a short term. If a guy can sell you on taking him for a job over other candidates, I can't imagine a better qualification for that line of work...

Re:So who seeds Orkut

[kfg]

What intrigued me in particular, since I was already in the field and came to their attention because of that ( I wasn't simply a resume sitting on a desk, I was asked to apply because the sales manager had already been on the receiving end of my pitch in a real world situation), was that nobody ever bothered to ask me how thick my prospect book was.

I filled out a form detailing my private social contacts (from their point of view none) and told to go home. Period.

The Orkut seed group was surely chosen in like manner. Not to keep the place exclusive, but because they were known joiners who would invite a lot of people, and those people would also likely be the sort begging to be let in.

KFG

Re:So who seeds Orkut

[XO]

I want to be invited too :(

Am I the only one...

[cliffy2000]

...who associates the name "Orkut" with the Hanna-Barbera Smurfs ripoff, "The Snorks"? ...I loved that show.

Re:Am I the only one...

[msmikkol]

I've never heard of "The Snorks", but I find the name "Orkut" quite funny. It is the plural of "orgasm" in Finnish.

Is a "copy" the same as a "duplicate original"?

[Nakito]

I read the description of Mike Rowe's auction on Ebay. He says that he is auctioning "the WIPO book with the 25-page letter I received from Microsoft's lawyers on January 14/2004," but then says, "I have two copies of these and I will be keeping one for my own personal memoirs." So -- is the subject of the auction a true original? Did Microsoft serve a duplicate set of originals on the same guy? Or is he just selling a copy that he made? If I bought that letter, I would want to see blue ink on the signature line.

Re:Is a "copy" the same as a "duplicate original"?

[Ianoo]

Well it's currently on $3751, so I hope he's not selling a copy! Otherwise there's gonna be one pissed off eBayer sending Mike Rowe some legal documents of his own!

Re:Is a "copy" the same as a "duplicate original"?

[AndroidCat]

I wouldn't count on a signature. That's the original Jan 14th agreement MS sent him--one copy for him, one for them perhaps? He didn't sign it, and then MS offered to throw in an Xbox, the trip, MSCE course, etc. (I wonder if the text of the agreement he did sign has or will be made public?)

If the bidding doubles a couple times, he'll be making more than the $10,000 he wanted in the first place. Hmm, maybe in 30 years, he'll buy them?

Re:Is a "copy" the same as a "duplicate original"?

[Nakito]

one copy for him, one for them perhaps?

That's a good thought and it had not occured to me. It could be an interesting insight into Microsoft's approach to perceived violations: maybe they always send two sets of proposed settlement papers right off the bat, and if you cave in, then you just sign one set and send it right back, and keep the other set for yourself. Since he ultimately reached another agreement, he would indeed have two duplicate original sets if that is the case.

Re:Is a "copy" the same as a "duplicate original"?

[KhanAFur]

It is over $10,000 right now and the first thing I thought is "Wow he got the $10,000 he wanted"

-Mary

Re:Is a "copy" the same as a "duplicate original"?

[Planx_Constant]

If you want a C&D letter from Microsoft, you can get one for the cost of a domain registration, if you want. www.myghkrosopht.com

Re:Is a "copy" the same as a "duplicate original"?

[AndroidCat]

I wouldn't have thought of putting the offered contract on eBay. He managed the 4. Profit! part without taking Microsoft's bloodmoney, risking court or looking like a chump. Perhaps the eBay money was luck, perhaps not, but I don't think we've heard the last of this Mike Rowe. :^)

Re:Selling legal documents?

[Kilka]

Had you read the post you would have noticed that he's got two copies, one of which he is keeping for himself.

-Kilka

High ebay bid

[digital bath]

Wow. The highest bid on the cease and desist letter is currently $3,751.00. Not bad.

Re:High ebay bid

[bluewee]

1. Post ebay auction on SlashDot
2. ....
3. PROFIT!!!!

Re:High ebay bid

[toogreen]

For that price It must be Microsoft bidding on it as they don't want it to fall into anyone's hands :P

Re:Zip

[Anonymous Coward]

right click, send to -> 3 1/2 floppy A:

not that hard. no really - its quite easy!

thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with gunzip, tar?

Have you ever tried to extract a single file from a gzip'ed tar archive? It's not possible without unpacking everything and throwing away the bits that you don't want.

Nokia to port Python to Mobiles, not Perl

Yay! This makes *much* more sense. Python rocks and is perfectly suited for portable devices on small devices, hence the successful PalmOS port.

Orkut - Funny name, well-executed idea.

Urm.. it's been a very badly executed idea if they've had to shut it down already because of hacking. Then there are the disgruntled reports from users that think it's completely pointless. It's only popular because Google is - they could have sneezed and everybody would have noticed.

Re:thoughts

[Anonymous Crowhead]

have you ever tried to extract a single file from a gzip'ed tar archive? It's not possible without unpacking everything and throwing away the bits that you don't want.

tar -xzf tarfile.tgz path/to/thefileyouwant

Re:thoughts

[random_static]

tar -xzf tarfile.tgz path/to/thefileyouwant

that does unpack everything only to throw away all but the file you wanted, though. try unpacking only the middle-most file in the kernel source tarball, see how long it takes.

of course, zip has to put up with (very marginally) worse compression because each file is compressed individually to solve this problem. also, tarballs can be treated as streams since all the metadata is interleaved in with the files - a zip has all the directory data in dedicated portions of the file, which means you might have to seek backwards in certain situations. that, of course, is not always possible in some of the situations where a tarball will still work for ya.

Re:thoughts

[DunbarTheInept]

that does unpack everything only to throw away all but the file you wanted,

Well, actually it only unpacks the stuff that comes before the file in the archive. If the file in question is near the top, most of the archive is not unpacked.

Re:thoughts

[captain_craptacular]

Yay! This makes *much* more sense. Python rocks and is perfectly suited for portable devices on small devices, hence the successful PalmOS port.

Why exactly is python "perfectly suited" for portable devices? I recently stopped running gDesklets on my desktop because the python interpreter consumed somewhere between 22-26MB of ram and a constant 15% of CPU cycles just for the one app... Granted the CPU number is a bit misleading b/c it's a pII 400, but you aren't going to get a whole lot more horsepower than that on a portable device.

So long story short, if thats typical of python apps I'd say they're terribly suited for small devices.

Re:thoughts

[Kris_J]

Have you ever tried to extract a single file from a gzip'ed tar archive? It's not possible without unpacking everything and throwing away the bits that you don't want.

Sorry, but that's true of almost every compressor that gets a better ratio than zip. I used to use RAR, now I use 7z. They both create "solid" archives by sorting the files into an order most likely to place similar sections together then compress the whole thing as a single stream of data. Makes a huge difference to compression.

Re:thoughts

[lewiscr]

Actually, no. tar (Tape ARchiver) would still have to process all the crap in front to find the gzipped file.

tar made the assumption that it was sending/receiving it's data from a sequential access device, not a random access one. This assumption heavily influenced the file format. So even on a random access device, it still has to slog through the preceeding data to get what it wants. But it has some nice advantages for data recovery. If you lose half the tape, you can still get the files back on the part you have. It doesn't matter if you only have the first half, the last half, or the middle half. As long as the complete file exist on a piece of tape you have, you can get that file back.

Because of this, tar won't even exit early if you only want one file and it's at the beginning of the archive.

Watch:
crlewis@localhost % time tar tvf test1.tar
-rw-r--r-- clewis/users 439 2004-01-13 13:41:20 win2000Serv.cfg.bz2
-rw-r--r-- clewis/users 14735 2004-01-13 13:41:20 win2000Serv.log.bz2
-rw-r--r-- clewis/users 1006 2004-01-13 13:41:20 win2000Serv.nvram.bz2
-rw-r--r-- clewis/users 342346881 2004-01-13 14:09:11 win2000Serv.vmdk.bz2
0.080u 2.280s 0:13.95 16.9% 0+0k 0+0io 191pf+0w

crlewis@localhost % time tar tvf test2.tar
-rw-r--r-- clewis/users 342346881 2004-01-13 14:09:11 win2000Serv.vmdk.bz2
-rw-r--r-- clewis/users 439 2004-01-13 13:41:20 win2000Serv.cfg.bz2
-rw-r--r-- clewis/users 14735 2004-01-13 13:41:20 win2000Serv.log.bz2
-rw-r--r-- clewis/users 1006 2004-01-13 13:41:20 win2000Serv.nvram.bz2
0.170u 2.070s 0:13.59 16.4% 0+0k 0+0io 191pf+0w

clewis@localhost % time tar xvf test1.tar win2000Serv.cfg.bz2
win2000Serv.cfg.bz2
0.170u 1.940s 0:14.54 14.5% 0+0k 0+0io 250pf+0w

clewis@localhost % time tar xvf test2.tar win2000Serv.cfg.bz2
win2000Serv.cfg.bz2
0.160u 1.970s 0:12.31 17.3% 0+0k 0+0io 250pf+0w

It takes just as long to extract a single file from the beginning or end of the archive, and they both take the same amount of time as processing the whole archive. Now, extracting the whole archive is much slower, because that big file takes a lot of bidirectional Disk I/O, but it's the same time whether it's at the begin or the end.

Now watch this, we'll "Lose" the first 15KBytes, and everything after 30KBytes.

clewis@localhost % dd if=./test1.tar bs=1k skip=15 of=test1.1.tar
clewis@localhost % ls -la test1.1.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 clewis users 15360 Jan 29 17:53 test1.1.tar
clewis@localhost % time tar tvf ./test1.1.tar
tar: This does not look like a tar archive
tar: Skipping to next header
-rw-r--r-- clewis/users 1006 2004-01-13 13:41:20 win2000Serv.nvram.bz2
-rw-r--r-- clewis/users 342346881 2004-01-13 14:09:11 win2000Serv.vmdk.bz2
tar: Unexpected EOF in archive
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
0.010u 0.000s 0:00.03 33.3% 0+0k 0+0io 195pf+0w

I still got back the data that existed in the part that was saved. win2000Serv.vmdk.bz2 is corrupt, but win2000Serv.nvram.bz2 is fine.

Re:thoughts

[Brainchild]

What's wrong with gunzip, tar?

Have you ever tried to extract a single file from a gzip'ed tar archive? It's not possible without unpacking everything and throwing away the bits that you don't want.

First, use your computer's multitasking capability to uncompress and extract a tarball archive member at the same time:

gzip -dc blah.tar.gz |pax -r blah/haha.txt

Or, for those without the POSIX utility:

gzip -dc blah.tar.gz |tar xf - blah/haha.txt

Second, if you don't want to have to uncompress the entire archive, use gzip and tar in the reverse order (though admittedly without the pipe):

gzip -9 blah/*
pax -w blah.tar blah

You extract and uncompress in the reverse order. You also fail to compress header data (much like with zipfiles), fail to take advantage of redundant data between archive members (same as with zipfiles) and can still extract uncorrupted members from an archive where a compressed member has been corrupted (much like with zipfiles).

There's bzip2 as well. POSIX pax and Jrg Schilling's star follow well-defined standards, and both are able to handle large (>2GB) files, as is bzip2. Last i knew, Info-Zip's zip and unzip showed their age and had troubles with files larger than 2GB on ILP32 platforms....

Re:thoughts

[Daengbo]

Yeah, but, wow, you're tarring bzipped files, not bzipping a tarred file. The latter is the standard and what is built into tar, and (I undrstand) will render an archive unreadable pretty easily.

Re:thoughts

[dodell]

Have you ever tried using the -x switch with an argument in tar? Read the manpage, you can extract single files (or file paths) very easily.

Re:thoughts

[ingenuus]

Your right... it's a size (7z) vs. flexibility / speed (zip) issue. e.g. For larger archives where you don't expect to always extract all of the contents, zip may be more useful at the expense of size. Along a similar vein, I've often wished that Windows supported a standard transparently un/compressed filesystem usable with CDs. I know Linux supports this ro, but I think only proprietary / non-standard systems exist for Windows.

Your comment also made me wonder if it would be advantageous to have a hybrid archive format which maintains individually compressed files using an extensible archive-global dictionary... i.e. is most of the compression improvement of "solid" archives due to the runlength crossing of file boundaries or is the bulk of compression improvement due to the ability to share a dictionary across files? ... I'm not proficient in any archive format, so please forgive my naivety if dictionaries are already shared.

Re:thoughts

[LauraW]

It's only popular because Google is - they could have sneezed and everybody would have noticed.

Step 1: Sneeze
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!

Sorry, but I couldn't resist.

Re:thoughts

[kwalker]

Uh, if by "unpacking everything and throwing away the bits you don't want" you mean "parsing the entire file" then yes, it does do that. However I have never had a problem extracting a single file, directory of files or pattern of names from a tarball. Even compressed tarballs (remember -j or -z). You just have to feed it the right path or wildcard(s) in quotes. Only the files I want come out of the tarball.

Re:thoughts

[Kris_J]

To the best of my understanding a "window" travels along the length of the concatinated file set as a solid archive is created. This window is the modern version of a dictionary, so therefore I believe it would be considered shared across multiple files.

Compression can be improved for large amounts of data simply by increasing the size of this window. Some of the latest versions of 7zip allow for this window to be 32MB in size ("Ultra" compression). While this only causes 32MB of RAM to be consumed when decompressing, it causes nearly 300MB of ram to be required when compressing. My laptop with 384MB of RAM grinds to a halt trying to compress more than 32MB of files using the "Ultra" mode (though my home PC with 512MB of RAM makes short work of it).

Re:thoughts

[fredrikj]

I just tried "Hello world", the interpreter used about 3MB RAM.

Re:thoughts

[DunbarTheInept]

Damn. Tar is really showing it's age now. I can't think of any reason not to just make a new archive when you want to change one of the files in it, as opposed to appending the newer copy of it to the end of the archive. That seems to be a throwback to the days when the "t" in "tar" actually meant what it said and you were using it on tape drives.

Re:thoughts

[lewiscr]

That's true. I was replying to the AC, which did recommend tarring a bunch of gzipped files (for different reasons), and I kinda got distracted during testing. I have a strange habit of using dd way more than any sane person should.

I haven't verified this (I don't really want to cut up tape for an experiment), but I think hardware compression on the tape drive follows a similiar vewipoint. But it wouldn't surprise me if newer tape drives have forgotten about this. Most people don't consider Exacto and Scotch Tape to be restoration tools, and modern tape drives are getting much better about tape scrubbing.

Personally, I don't really use tar much anymore.The tape backup software has it's own format and the tape heads have hardware compression. When I need to save disk, I just gzip the files (they're nearly always large enough that tarring them first won't save much). And rsync -z is much better for remote file copies than tarring, copying, and untarring.

Re:thoughts

[kirkjobsluder]

To reiterate what was said earlier, the main advantage to zip is compression + random access. My own tests comparing the two found that tar|gz took nearly three times as long to find and unpack a single file within the archive as zip, even for moderately small files. A second advantage to zip is that it is relatively smart about what not to compress. This comes in handy with OpenOffice files which can include Zip files within Zip files.

So there is a real tradeoff that should be considered in comparing the two methods. Zip minimizes access times at the expense of compression. tar|gz maximizes compression at the expense of access times.

two copies

[SHEENmaster]

He received them in duplicate, and he's only auctioning one copy. That said, I'd auction 'em both; the price is at $3,751.00 with more than seven days remaining!

Did Google hit the social network bulls-eye?

[Anonymous Coward]

They haven't let me in, so I suspect the answer is yes.

Re:Did Google hit the social network bulls-eye?

[El]

Groucho Marx's "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member" seems to apply here...

Re:Did Google hit the social network bulls-eye?

[Valar]

because the the same quote has come up in just about every thread about orkut...

Re:Did Google hit the social network bulls-eye?

[Anonymous Coward]

woody allen says "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member"

Re:Slow week then.

[iminplaya]

H2G2?

Re:Zip is old school

[NineNine]

Hey kid. "Old school" is good. It means "it works." Generally, it's not a good idea to fix what's not broken.

Bytecode my interpreter!

[stephenisu]

OK, So we are deciding that running interpreted languages on a byte-code interpreting virtual machine is a good use of a phone right?
I need to go write a JVM in BASIC now (if it hasn't been done already) so that when I have kids, they can see what games under 6000fps look like.

Re:Bytecode my interpreter!

[uberchicken]

Luddite. You're at the wrong site.

Re:Bytecode my interpreter!

[DroidBiker]

I had the same reaction. Actually it looks like the development tools were done in Java (yay, they'll run poorly everywhere!). There's no mention of how the actual Mobile Basic environment works on the phone. I doubt if it's a BASIC VM on top of a JVM. That just doesn't make sense!.

Re:Zip

[DumbWhiteGuy777]

XP's zipping isn't good. Download 7-zip instead. Totally free, no fancy crap, and works great for all kinds of archives. You'll thank me later.

Re:Zip is old school

[gkuz]

ZIP is free. RAR isn't. Big difference.

Damn that silver... or lack of it

[Supp0rtLinux]

I ran out and bought a full box of silver-less paste at CompUSA (and yes, I got the CompUSA) label on it. My attorney is filing a "false advertisement" suit against them on Monday. I figure if everyone else can get "sue happy" then so can I. Maybe I'll get to retire early.

Re:Damn that silver... or lack of it

[gooman]

Of course, if you can't be part of the solution, be part of the problem.

Python

[wiredlogic]

I don't see how Python figures into this. Surely they aren't going to layer a BASIC interpreter on top of Jython on top of the JVM. That seems like a horrendously poor use of resources for an embedded system with limited power and hardware volume.

Re:Slow week then.

[nexex]

Yea how about that

Re:Hum...

[linc_s]

A slashback is where they go back over previous articles and post updates, errata etc.

Re:Hum...

[stephenisu]

While I am burning my karma .....
Slashback is a general summary of the last few days/weeks top stories that have a followup. Kinda like the update tag on FARK.com, but compressed into one stories heading.

Re:Zip is old school

[Lehk228]

but RAR is Free*

Re:Hum...

[momerath2003]

You don't even have to read the article to pick this up:

"Slashback tonight brings you updates and corrections from recent and ongoing stories..."

That's all it is.

Re:Zip is old school

[redhat421]

Well I would definitely agree that ZIP works, I would also say that gzip, and bzip are used all the time and also work. On top of that rar, gzip, and bzip achieve better compression ratios.

But what I really find interesting is where the line is on bundling software. I use OSS on my desktop, but I see that Microsoft is going to start bundling a compression program. This seems like a utility that belongs in the base system. But a media player, which also seems to make sense, should not be bundled.

Oh well.

Re:Zip is old school

[DraconPern]

You forgot LHA.

Stupid Guy Asks...

[ewhac]

What is XSS (Cross-Site Scripting), and what about it can be used to compromise site security?

Schwab

Re:Stupid Guy Asks...

[MooseGuy529]

Cross-site scripting is when you create a form on your web page which targets a page on another site. An example of cross-site scripting used appropriately is when you insert a Google search box on your page. The search form sends the query to Google, not your site, so it's cross-site.

The problem comes when people create deceptive forms that get the user to do bad things, or create forms that blatently allow the user to do something they shouldn't.

Someone can easily post links and more information and make some karma off of this post...

Re:Stupid Guy Asks...

[Anonymous Coward]

An XSS attack would have the "malicious user" (hacker) inserting Javascript into a page on the site.

Problems arise when a user hits the page the "malicious user" has tampered with. What can happen is:

- User's cookies (username/password) stolen (this is the most typical attack)
- User's browser window closes
- User is pushed to nasty pictures
- Basically anything the user can do the "malicious user" can do.

The main problem is cookie theft. Cookies are designed only to give their data if the site requesting them is the site that gave them. (Eg. Slashdot can't read your Hotmail cookies). But since the "malicious user" can execute code on the site that did give out the cookies, it can send that information to the "malicious user" in some way.

Re:Stupid Guy Asks...

[key45]

I'll bite:
What is Cross Site Scripting"

Re:Stupid Guy Asks...

[np_bernstein]

You used brackets in quotation wrong:

instead of:
it's [iTunes] the least fair use-hostile." --DVD Jon.

it should be:

[iTunes is] the least fair use-hostile. " --DVD....


Just and FYI.

Re:Stupid Guy Asks...

[cubal]

There's a bit more to it than that, but basically it involves inserting your own content into someone elses webpage, whether by sql injection (messing with their database code, usually through a form) or by managing to run arbitrary code.

I got bitten by an attack like this - I had a site which would include a page (serverside - php) referenced by a variable in the url , like index.php?page=views/page.html. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten to check the input of the variable.

So what this guy did was build a php file with all the code he wanted to run on my server, then just 'include' it with ?page=http://hissite/script.php. Luckily all he did was delete the index page - he could have done a lot more damage. But anyhow, that's what cross site scripting is.

Re:Stupid Guy Asks...

[MooseGuy529]

Thanks, now I can fit in the last letter of "ass", as well as an exclamation point!

Re:Zip

[pla]

Download 7-zip instead. Totally free, no fancy crap, and works great for all kinds of archives.

I'll second this. Since I started using it, 7z has become my archival tool of choice. Even for creating plain old .zip files, it gets around 10% better compression than anything else out there. And for it own .7z format, you can easily get 33% better, and I've seen more than 10 times better (7z includes solid archive support, one of the features people rave about in RARs (ick!), which for packing a collection of similar files in the same archive, means all of them after the first compress to almost nothing).


And, 7z exists as open source! Can't go wrong with that (unless you work for SCO).


One complaint, though, its GUI really sucks (or at least the last time I reinstalled it did, I haven't checked for a new one in a while). They need to make it behave more like the standard Windows Explorer view (not that I think the world of Windows Explorer, but on a 'doze system, for the most part you can count on "things having to do with files" behaving like it, by default)... Just the standard drag-n-drop behavior would make it 10x easier. But, I use it mostly from the command line anyway (Try doing that with WinZip), so the GUI doesn't bother me all that much.

Google and cross-site scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

As amazing as it sounds, Google don't really pay that much attention to web technologies. They may have some pretty impressive clustering, database and analysis technologies, but the way they apply web technologies such as HTML and HTTP is lacking.

For a start-off, their website isn't even valid HTML. If they moved some of the presentation details to CSS, they could lop a massive chunk of bandwidth off their bill and take some of the load off their servers and speed up access to their site. I don't know what they are paying at the moment, but it's bound to be significant.

Their spidering technologies only half implement HTTP. For instance, they ignore the content-type header, favouring the file extension instead. The only other software that I have heard of being that broken in terms of HTTP is Internet Explorer.

Their ranking algorithms pay a little attention to the HTML structure (e.g. they rank keywords in <h1> elements highly), but then they comlpetely ignore other significant markup, or screw it up, like definition lists.

So they didn't understand the rules for escaping special characters in HTML. It doesn't come as a surprise, cross-site scripting attacks bite many people who haven't paid attention to the HTML specifications.

It's a shame, because so many people bend over backwards to get ranked highly in Google, that if Google actually tried to use HTML and HTTP properly, it would cause loads of people to write higher-quality HTML overnight.

Re:Google and cross-site scripting

[angio]

I think you're pretty off-base with respect to Google's awareness of the byte costs of various approaches. First of all, Google is trying to optimize the user's perception of speed - and downloading a separate CSS doc would require a second TCP connection, etc., etc., which could negatively impact both the user experience and the load on Google's servers. I wager that their common case is one search per user.

Second, have you actually _looked_ at the returned HTML from a Google search? It does use CSS within the returned page (see the style section), and it's very compact CSS and HTML.

The rest of their site has some "potential inefficiences" that could be corrected, but keep in mind that probably more than 99% of Google's traffic is search traffic. Amdahl's law - optimize the part that slows you down the most, not the little corner cases. Google's search results pages are very efficient.

Oh, and re the orkut thread, it was seeded with Orkut's friends and coworkers at Google, pretty much. The social network is pretty obvious in the way it grows out from there - stanford, google, bay area, computer science, geek schools, other schools, general population.

Re:Google and cross-site scripting

[DunbarTheInept]

they ignore the content-type header, favouring the file extension instead.

Now, wait a minute. Do they actually IGNORE the header, or do they merely have it take less precedence than the extension? Those aren't the same thing. (In other words, in cases where the file extension isn't helpful, do they drop back to the content-type?) If so, that's not google's fault. They're tring to archive the web as it is actually used in practice, by people who are on average, ignorant of the standards. There are a lot of files out there where the content-type is going to be some generic term that only tells you, "yup, it's a binary file alright", or worse, are actually downright wrong. Given that these mistakes are everywhere out there, it might be that google decided they would get a more accurate database if they let the file extensions take precedent, as wrong as that may be from a conceptual standpoint (and very unfair, too - if my file ends in .doc that doesn't have to mean it's a Word document, and google shouldn't archive it that way.)

But anyway, the choice to let extension take precedence might be their only option. If most of the internet sites out there are doing it the wrong way, google has to aquiese and go along with that in order to have a more accurate database.

Re:Google and cross-site scripting

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

The social network is pretty obvious in the way it grows out from there - stanford, google, bay area, computer science, geek schools, other schools, general population.

Wake me up when the girls arrive.

-- YLFI

Re:Google and cross-site scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they actually IGNORE the header, or do they merely have it take less precedence than the extension?

All I know is that with two identical pages, with identical inbound links, if one of them uses a wacky extension like .page, it doesn't get indexed whilst the other one does.

If most of the internet sites out there are doing it the wrong way, google has to aquiese and go along with that in order to have a more accurate database.

I'd agree with you if your premise was true. The fact is that I can probably count the number of pages that I have come across with the wrong content-type on one hand. Apart from anything else, it effectively makes a site Internet Explorer only.

Re:Google and cross-site scripting

[Stormie]

Second, have you actually _looked_ at the returned HTML from a Google search? It does use CSS within the returned page (see the style section), and it's very compact CSS and HTML.

There are a few oddities in there, though - a lot of <span class=f><font size=-1>blah</font></span> type stuff, where they could have just put the font size into the CSS styling of the span class. My verdict: good, but could do better.

Re:Google and cross-site scripting

[FreakWent]

on pppoe you need an mtu of 1492 (or 1454) instead of 1500.

If it's all screwed, many web sites will not work, they never time out, they just hang.

Google works, google searches work.

So I'm happy about that when I get myself stuck and hovet o dl an mtu patch...

Re:Google and cross-site scripting

[Angst Badger]

First of all, Google is trying to optimize the user's perception of speed - and downloading a separate CSS doc would require a second TCP connection, etc., etc., which could negatively impact both the user experience and the load on Google's servers

Except that a separate stylesheet would be downloaded once by the client browser and then cached, resulting in savings on each successive page load. Having spent a lot of time separating out CSS and Javascript on my own site, which gets nowhere near the traffic Google does, I can say this can result in substantial reductions in traffic. It also enables you to use a fast, simple, single-threaded server like thttpd to serve up the static content and leave the dynamic content to Apache.

I wager that their common case is one search per user.

One search per user ever? I'd wager that the bulk of Google users conduct a second search before a separate CSS file would expire from their caches.

Re:Google and cross-site scripting

[DunbarTheInept]

count number of pages that I have come across with the wrong content-type on one hand.

I know of *LOTS* and *LOTS* that don't have an incorrect content-type, but do have an insufficiently precise content-type. ("Yeah, so this link is for a file of binary data. Thanks, that was really useful, Mr. web site maker. Oh, hey, the file ends in .doc - I wonder if it's a Ms Word document - well, that's a guess but it's a better guess than just "some kind of binary file", which, while true, isn't particularly useful.)

Re:Google and cross-site scripting

[angio]

A google returned search page for the word "search" is 20803 bytes of HTML, plus 311 bytes of header data. That's about 15 packets, so throwing in TCP+IP header overhead, it's about 21714 bytes. Without the CSS at the top, but with a few characters left for referencing the external style sheet, it's 21008 bytes. You've saved 706 bytes - or half a packet.

You've fetched an external CSS document. Google has sent a TCP SYN ACK (40 bytes), a TCP/IP header (40 bytes), an HTTP header (311 bytes), the CSS document (706 bytes), and two ACKs (80 bytes). Total = 1177. You've also processed an extra connection to the server, whose cost is difficult to quantify.

If your typical search model is that users grab the first page of results and go, external CSS is a big lose. You've wasted bandwidth, doubled the incoming bandwidth usage and number of server connections, slowed the user's experience, and increased the number of packets by about 20%. If users grab 3 or 4 pages, then it's a win. I bet google knows their usage patterns better than we do...

Now, of course, this argument is actually completely wrong -- because Google is very good about using content-encoding gzip. So what's the cost of that extra header when the results page is gzipped? 4905 bytes vs. 5204 bytes. They both fit in 4 packets. That 300 bytes, effectively tagged on to the end of a packet that had to be sent anyway, amounts to pretty much squat. It's smaller than the (uncompressable, except by link compression) HTTP header required to fetch the CSS document. Note that Google doesn't compress for some browsers; if you're having problems replicating this in Opera, set your browser to ID itself as Mozilla 4.78 and it'll work properly.

I also don't buy the "ISP's cache" argument. There are tons and tons of users who don't get proxy cached. Also, if that cache is on the other end of a modem, then you're still not saving the user the expensive bit.

It's easy to replicate this. Fire up Ethereal, capture "tcp and port 80" while you do a google search. Follow the stream, and you'll see the relative sizes of things. The search I just did took 5536 bytes downstream - a bit more than the thought experiment version, but still 4 packets.

Re:Zip

[stephenisu]

Just a public sevice announcement,
by going to http://www.winzip.com/wzcline.htm you can add command line support to WINZip.

Not trying to to be a jerk, just wanting to inform people who need to use it (Corporate policies... ewww)

Strange irony

[techstar25]

In a strange twist of irony, he states that he will not accept bids from zero feedback bidders, yet he himself has zero feedback. Sorry bud, but I don't buy from zero feedback sellers, although serious sellers may email me with their intentions...

why?

[Anonymous Coward]

i can't believe you'd deal with a lawyer just to get money.

Re:Zip is old school

[molafson]

I am sorry but zip is one of those things that has been around too long. Ace, rar, bzip2...

Argh, ACE was the worst! Simply because there was no need for it. RAR already existed to distribute multipart binaries (i.e. warez). But for a while it was the case that any warez you would download would consist of ZIP files inside RAR files inside ACE files. WTF?

These days I prefer Apple's DMG.

Re:The Zip Rip

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh look, how cute. A bitter old SEA employee.

And now for the truth: the .zip format wasn't "perversely incompatable." It was intentionally different from .arc because SEA didn't like PKWare making interoperable software. So PK made .zip and released the specs and declared that it's ok if anyone wants to be compatable.

Re:Zip

[allaryin]

Sigh... 7z... I seem to recall having spent no less than two hours trying to decompress one of those on a unix box.

Apparently it works through wine, but nobody's thought enough of the format to actually port it, despite the windows code being open.

Re:Invitation

[dirgotronix]

one wonders exactly how many invitations you're going to recieve as a result of this post.

anyway, here's one from me. you're welcome!

Business plan

[Ungrounded Lightning]

1) Annoy Microsoft (or other high-profile company).
2) Get sent a cease-and-desist letter.
3) Sell it on E-bay.
4) PROFIT!

Re:Slow week then.

[tarquin_fim_bim]

OK, sorry. Thanks for pointing that out.

The clique click

[Anonymous Coward]

Upon clicking the link, you're taken to a page where you're told to get a friend to invite you.

And with no way to search to see if one of your friends is a member, just so you won't know to be offended if someone you thought was a friend was on the inside and hasn't invited you.

That's wrong, and makes me not even INTERESTED in becoming a member of Urkut!

That is, of course, until one of your friends invites you to click into the clique. That's when the test of your character will take place.

Re:Zip

[westlake]

I use it mostly from the command line anyway (Try doing that with WinZip)

WinZip Command Line Support

Catch-22?

[tepples]

I am unfamiliar with eBay. If a significant chunk of eBay users won't do business with users with zero feedback, how does a bidder or seller become no longer zero feedback?

Re:Catch-22?

[stephenisu]

A 3rd party escrow service is a popular method, especially on very expensive items. Regardless of feedback level, I would recommend one for larger purchases.

Re:Zip

[pla]

Not trying to to be a jerk, just wanting to inform people who need to use it

Not at all! Thank you for that link.

Although I personally have switched to 7z for almost everything, having more tools available for scripting never hurts. And as you mention, in case of a corporate policy restricting people to WZ, those command-line tools may seem like a blessing (I know I would have loved them at my previous job).

Orkut has no focus

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about Orkut, it somewhat feels clinched together and I miss a true focus on what TO DO there - just like friendster. I like "business social networks" such as Ryze and openBC much better because they try to concentrate on a specific audience and cater to their specific needs.

Ryze seems to be lost in a tide of MLM scamsters, though. You cannot escape those loons there, MLM everywhere even if the Ryze AUP says otherwise. At least on openBC, they actually kick spammers and MLM recruiters from the system. I also like that openBC is a European site. It somehow feels like they really thought on how to make it attractive for non-American users, as well. Ryze is very poorly designed compared to that.

I miss such features in Orkut. Their growth is impressive, but what for if there is no actual use for it?

Re:Orkut has no focus

[virid]

I want to be disappointed in Orkut, too!!!! Send me an invite!!

Re:Orkut has no focus

[Elwood P Dowd]

Sure thing. Email me at dojothemouse@mac.com

Re:Orkut has no focus

[orthogonal]

[For an Orkut invitation] Sure thing. Email me at dojothemouse@mac.com

Oh, you're not fooling us, Mr. Ashcroft!

dojothemouse@mac.com

And neither are you, Michael Eisner!!

Re:Zip is old school

[WuphonsReach]

I used LHArc for at least a few years straight during the BBS days, back prior to Info-Zip's Zip/UnZip programs.

I imagine that someone still has a working version of it, although I've long since convered everything to ZIP for doing archives. (Might switch to BZip2, might not...)

Frankly, the "secure archive" in PkZip/WinZip is usless to me because I'd rather use an open-source tool like GPG to encrypt.

Re:Invitation

[Aliencow]

Woohoo ! What do I win?

Netflix, DRM, and Paranoia

[IntelliTubbie]

As the Register article suggests, preventing piracy with DRM would be one of the concerns if Netflix were to launch an online video-on-demand service. But let's think about this for a minute. People can already rent the physical DVDs and rip them to a digital format. Is making the files available for direct download any more dangerous?

In fact, it's less dangerous, if anything. If you rip a generic DVD and share it on Kazaa, etc., it's completely untraceable back to you -- anyone could have ripped that DVD. However, an online video-on-demand service could embed some sort of unique watermark in the file to identify the customer, so that they could be held responsible for any illegal copying (as with the recent Oscar screener fiasco).

In their fear of online piracy, the MPAA/RIAA/etc. have forgotten that

1. Real-world piracy is just as much of a problem, probably more so.
2. Customers are willing to pay for the increased convenience and instant gratification (see iTunes Music Store), which more than offsets the increased risk.
3. Most customers don't want to be criminals, so giving them a legal option (see again iTMS) is both a good idea and profitable.

Cheers,
IT

Re:Zip is old school

[value_added]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe M$ has supported anything natively but its own .CAB format.

There was, however, the ZIP support that was added to XP, but that support seemed (at least to me) limited.

Re:Invitation

[tolldog]

*raises hand*

Ooo me too?

-Tim

The text of my Orkut invite

[PCM2]

So are any of you guys members yet?

No-one I know has joined yet and I've not heard much on the net so are there really any members or is it just another conspiracy theory - ie you think it's good therefore you want to join?!?

Who knows? It's not like they've given anybody any impression of what to expect when they sign up. The Web site says next to nothing, and neither does the actual invite when you get one. Here's the text of the one I received:

[person] <name@address> invites you to join her network of personal friends at orkut.com.

orkut is a community of friends and trusted acquaintances that connects individuals through a social network that grows person by person.

With orkut, you can catch up with old friends, make new acquaintances through people you trust, and maybe even find that certain someone you've been looking for everywhere.

orkut helps you organize and attend events, join communities that share your interests, and find partners to participate in the activities you most enjoy.

To find out why [person] thought you'd enjoy orkut and to discover who else you know is already a member, click on the link below:

[link]

* * *

If you're already an orkut member, make sure that the email address at which you received this note is entered into your orkut profile. That way, you'll automatically be connected to all of your friends.

This invitation was sent to [me] <my@address> on behalf of [person] <name@address>. If you do not wish to receive invitations from orkut, click on the link below:

[link]

And that's about it! Now you tell me -- do I really want to join this thing? What does it get me? Since it's Google, I guess we're all assuming it won't land us on anybody's spam lists, but how can we be sure? Is there any way to back our information out of the system if we decide it's all a pointless waste of time (or worse -- a scam)?

And, to get philosophical -- is it really possible to meet people online? Can you really have "met" somebody ... whom you've never met before???! I just don't get the point of these "friend networks," at all.

Re:The text of my Orkut invite

[Sancho]

You can check their privacy policy. Basically, they say that they won't give out your information unless compelled to legally, or to member sites (like Google) who will have to abide by the same policy.

Re:The text of my Orkut invite

[DoraLives]

do I really want to join this thing?

Nope.

What does it get me?

Precious little, in truth.

Since it's Google, I guess we're all assuming it won't land us on anybody's spam lists,

Speak for yourself, pal, whilst I go about my usual business of assuming the worst, spam being so far down on my list of Bad Things, that I can hardly see it. The Government must surely be licking its chops in anticipation of getting its hands on some of this stuff one fine day when it decides it really needs it. Neither shall we discount the inevitable eventual screw ups that allow this data to be hacked, stolen, or just blundered away on the hard drives of machines that got scrapped.

but how can we be sure?

We can't.

Is there any way to back our information out of the system if we decide it's all a pointless waste of time

Nope.

(or worse -- a scam)?

Or worse, something worse. Much much worse.

Re:The text of my Orkut invite

[Ironica]

And, to get philosophical -- is it really possible to meet people online? Can you really have "met" somebody ... whom you've never met before???!

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer: I've never really formed a "friendship" with someone online except in the context of games. First it was when I used to hang out on the Zone (now the MSN Gaming Zone... I was young, and didn't know Microsoft was evil) and I became friends with someone my age and gender in Finland. We finally met up in Denmark when I was on that side of the world, and had a great time hanging out together. She's come to visit a couple times (including for my wedding) though I have yet to go visit her. But I felt like we "knew" each other to a certain extent before we met up, and we did share a hotel room and stuff.

Since then, I've met lots of folks in MMOGs, and there were three of those at my wedding too ;-) one of whom was there from England (though he didn't make the trip across the pond just for that... they all just made the road trip down from the Bay Area).

I just don't get the point of these "friend networks," at all.

I didn't either. A friend invited me to Friendster because he was feeling inadequate having so few contacts. But then poking around, the "interests" link found me a random person who was also interested in transportation. On impulse I sent him a message, and we wrote back and forth a few times. I now have a broader idea of who out there is interested in transit, the sorts of things they do, and a semi-useful contact in Boston if I'm ever looking for interface designers who understand transit (and hey, given that I'm going into transportation planning, it could definitely happen).

It's a bit less anonymous than randomly searching the web, because you know someone who knows someone who knows them. It seems to work nicely.

Re:The text of my Orkut invite

[ImpTech]

Haha, thats the email?! If bogofilter didn't pick that up, I'd mark it spam before I'd finished reading the first line! Maybe I'm just jaded, but I think they should rework that some if they actually want members.

Re:The text of my Orkut invite

[Mr. Slippery]

And, to get philosophical -- is it really possible to meet people online?

Sure. I've met people though mailing lists, then later met them in person. One karate mailing list I was on had a few get-togethers where we met and trained; someone I knew from another list, a fellow from South Africa who was touring the States, stayed at my house for a few days and visited our dojo and threw me around.

Now, I don't at all see how this ties into "friend networks"...but if twenty years ago you told me that someone from another continent who I only knew through computers would sleep on my couch for a few days, I'm sure I would have given you a quizical look.

A Fair Deal...

[Fnkmaster]

Alright, you invite to join Orkut, and I will invite women. Lots of women. Some of them even like geeky guys (assuming you know how to shower and brush your teeth). I will bring these women into _your_ social network and introduce you to them. That's right, you could actually meet real women. Invite me and you MIGHT even get laid.

Think about it - can you afford not to invite the Fnkmaster into your Orkut family? I didn't think so... don't be afraid... push that invite button...

Re:A Fair Deal...

[tka]

So what's the situation now: any invites yet?

Re:Hum...

[The boojum]

I'd always figured it was a pun on the word "flashback". Just a collection of followups and flashbacks to previous stories.

Re:Translation

[bluedream]

Did you even bother to click the link above and reread his blog? Guess not

Re:Zip is old school

[tepples]

Under what license?

Re:Hum...

[whacked]

Er, slashback ~= flashback, revisiting past stories.

Re:Zip

[AvengerXP]

Try "copy file.zip a:" in a CMD box works very well

think of it this way

[martin-boundary]

Maybe he made a copy himself. So what? Suppose he copied it five or ten times. That's a limited edition set of five or ten prints, mint condition. And it's not like these are pictures of, say, Campbell's soup or anything.

What's the point?

[kramer2718]

Could someone please try to explain the point of web based "social networks" (I know the point of real world social networks)?

Re:Zip

[mark_space2001]

My favorite is Freezip. It does very little actually, but it will completely decompress archives with only a double click (in Windows). That's very nice because 99% of the time that's what I want, and I don't have to touch any silly GUI interface.

I'll check out your link though, because I do need extra features occasionally. Thanks

Slashdot on mobiles

[Tjp($)pjT]

http://wap.slashdot.org/

Re:Slashdot on mobiles

[ChiralSoftware]

Setting up the domain name is a good start, but wap.slashdot.org still serves html, not wml. I would definitely like to read /. on my mobile, if they would get it set up. Chiral Software would be happy to help.

Re:Zip

[BiggyP]

the Graphical front end is, but isn't the console version fairly portable, just need someone to bother with the port, most of the time i don't use 7z unless i know i'm sharing files with people working on a win32 platform, i normally just stick with tar and bzip2.

Solid vs. segmented archives

[L. J. Beauregard]

I suppose by gzip and bzip2 you mean these two programs combined with tar. By themselves they compress only single files. In fact, on a single file, gzip achieves only slightly better compression than zip -- it uses the same compression method, and any improvement is solely due to its simpler structure. Bzip2 still gets somewhat better compression.

The .tar.gz and .tar.bz2 formats are "solid" archives: they enchain the files into a single archive, the .tar file, and then compress that as a whole. This allows them to achieve better compression because they can compress redundancies between files as well as within them. Zip, OTOH, is what I call a "segmented" archive: the files are individually compressed and the compressed images are enchained.

Solid archives can be smaller than segmented, but are more difficult to manipulate after the fact:

• To extract a single file from a solid archive, you have to read everything in the archive, at least up to the file you're extracting. A zip file has a directory at the end that quickly locates the desired file.
• To add, delete, or replace files in a preexisting archive, you have to decompress the whole thing, manipulate the files, and then compress the whole thing again. It can be done, but it's slow and can take up lots of disk space. Zip can do these things directly, leaving unaffected files unchanged.
• Finally, solid archives are more fragile than segmented ones. If a solid archive is damaged, everything from the point of the damage onward is lost. With zip, however, only the files at the damaged portion are lost, and subsequent files are still recoverable.

IIRC RAR can generate either a solid or a segmented archive.

Zip, furthermore, has a feature that can preserve arbitrary file metadata such as NTFS file permissions. Tar, OTOH, is meant for Unix, and can only preserve metadata relating to Unix.

There's no technical reason that you couldn't create a .zip.gz or .zip.bz2 file, getting a solid archive that preserves all the metadata, but alas, you'd probably confuse most people doing that :-(

Re:Solid vs. segmented archives

[ingenuus]

I agree with your comments. I often prefer the flexibility offered by zip over higher compression ratios offered by other formats. I recoil a bit when I read of people archiving their entire filesystem to a single tar.gz/bz2 file... great compression at the expense of future flexibility in extracting that data.

I didn't know that zip (WinZip? PkZip? which?) could save arbitrary file metadata... in my mind, it is huge that the zip format supports this. Do you (or anyone) know if there is a Linux zip program that integrally saves per-file metadata (as opposed to having to save it separately)? ... or, perhaps ideally, a loadable kernel vfs which can mount zips read/write (plus metadata)?

Re:Solid vs. segmented archives

[XO]

Yeah, I did that when I went to move an entire hard drive's data to another hard drive.. the tar file got damaged somehow on the way to the other drive, and i lost a few gigs worth of data. :(

i use zip for just about everything now that doesn't require being communicated with the rest of the Unix world.

So much for the exclusivity of Orkut...

[psykocrime]

Dozens of invitations are already up for sale on
E-Bay and can be had quite inexpensively, it would appear.

What does the invite look like?

[HPNpilot]

I think I blew one away thinking it was spam

Re:Zip is old school

[Lehk228]

it's free as in warez

Re:Invitation

[dirgotronix]

well, check your email for the invitation, obviously. that makes you ... a winner! (insert seizure inducing banner here)

Re:Translation

[bluewee]

Read the Artical... FUCK NO!

$10,000+ for the cease and desist!?!

[agwis]

Unbelievable! I can't fathom spending $100 on something like this, especially when the kid caved in for a friggin xbox and a MCSE certificate (or whatever it was).

I'm not sure what will become worthless first...the WIPO book or SCO stock but either way this just has to be the biggest waste of money I've ever seen!

I didn't read the article to see if a link was there but here it is again

-Pat

Re:$10,000+ for the cease and desist!?!

[Scrameustache]

Unbelievable! I can't fathom spending $100 on something like this, especially when the kid caved in for a friggin xbox and a MCSE certificate (or whatever it was).
I'm not sure what will become worthless first...the WIPO book or SCO stock but either way this just has to be the biggest waste of money I've ever seen!

I guess YANAL then. Bloodsuckers are the kind that has disposable income and interest in that sort of stuff.

Or well funded pranksters...It'd be kind of fun to send that to your domain-owing friend and watch him freak : )

A Simple Plan

[7Ghent]

1. Supposedly violate Microsoft's Trademark
2. Sell cease and desist on Ebay
3. ???
4. Profit!

Re:A Simple Plan

[Anonymous Coward]

> 1. Supposedly violate Microsoft's Trademark
> 2. Sell cease and desist on Ebay
> 3. ???
> 4. Profit!

Is it just me, or is the third step kinda unnececasry.

Re:Zip

[cscx]

I still don't know how to copy a zip file created by WinXP to a floppy disk. Any ideas? Trust Microsoft to screw it up

Yes, take your computer, unplug it, place it back into the box it was delivered in, and ship it back to the factory.

Re:Selling legal documents?

[misspelled]

Now at $10,000 USD. No, sorry; $10,100. Who's bidding, anyway? Bill Gates? Looks like Mike Rowe's going to get his 10 G's after all.

I'll PayPal You $1 If You Invite Me...

[MS_leases_my_soul]

Dude, if you join and invite me, I will paypal you $1. Then, when I go to work tomorrow, I will be all like, "Yeah, I'm on Orkut" and all the geeks at work will be like, "Dude, you are the alpha geek. Let us in!" and I will be all like "No way! You guys are lame!" and they will be all like, "Dude, you totally suck, now let us in" and I will be like ... well, you, like, get the point. 'Cause cliques are like, totally.

It will make my Friday. I'd buy that for a dollar! ;=)

Re:I'll PayPal You $1 If You Invite Me...

[Another AC]

Dude, I'll totally let you in for $1!

In fact, anybody who wants in, paypal me $1.

Except.. orkut is down again now (BAD REQUEST (INVALID URL)). Nice job google. Maybe next time spend less time on booble and more time on google.

But seriously, anybody who wants in, reply to this post. Or is it just totally open now anyway?

Re:I'll PayPal You $1 If You Invite Me...

[JM Apocalypse]

Let me in! Me me me!

[replace with long alpha-geek quote above]

Re:I'll PayPal You $1 If You Invite Me...

[Fillup]

I'm very curious. $1 it is.

Re:I'll PayPal You $1 If You Invite Me...

[byolinux]

$1 ready and waiting..

Re:I'll PayPal You $1 If You Invite Me...

[ArmenTanzarian]

painful to say that I'm curious, let me know

Re:I'll PayPal You $1 If You Invite Me...

[JeffM2001]

Oh, me too. Got my dollar just sitten there. JeffM2001@aol.NOSPAM.com

Re:I'll PayPal You $1 If You Invite Me...

[James_Duncan8181]

I'm up for that...you seem to have enough offers to start a worthwhile business... ;) james_duncan8181@ntlworld.com

Re:I'll PayPal You $1 If You Invite Me...

[DansnBear]

Hey, I got 2 dollars for you, if you add me first.

Re:I'll PayPal You $1 If You Invite Me...

[Lacutis]

I'll bite lacutis@NOSPAMchromotasm.com.

$1 ready and waiting.

Re:I'll PayPal You $1 If You Invite Me...

[seanismdotcom]

I'll pay $1 on paypal for it. Show me where to sign! whats your paypal account I'll send you the cash.

Re:I'll PayPal You $1 If You Invite Me...

[dspyder]

And then I'll paypal you $2 to invite me!

--D

Re:I'll PayPal You $1 If You Invite Me...

[Speare]

This posting reminds me of a haiku I came across recently. Apparently, it was just some conversation overheard by Billy Collins at a conference on haiku, which happened to fit perfectly into the classic form:

When he found out, he
was like, `Oh my God,' and I
was like, `Oh my God.'

Re:I'll PayPal You $1 If You Invite Me...

[Another AC]

okay for all you guys who want in but didn't give me any way to figure out your email address.. paypal me at:

josh at newdream dot net

anybody I get a $1 paypal from in the next day or so, I'll assume want to be invited!

Re:Zip is old school

[Lord Kano]

I think that zip was handled by ME as well via compressed folders.

LK

Re:Zip is old school

[Daengbo]

I had never heard of LHA until recently, when my GF started writing "dollz." Gnome KISS is a KISS doll viewer, and they are all the rage in Asia (or were last year, anyway). KISS is like paper dolls that you dress up. You can see some of my GFs work at the bottom of this page. There are actually some fairly sexy ones, but I can't find any on a quick google. Anyway, these dollz sets use LHA compression, and finding a copy that would even compile on my machine took days, and sometimes things still don't work correctly. LHA is a PITA for me. P.S. A javascript version of a doll is here.

Re:Invitation

[Aliencow]

Seems my spam filter ate it ;)

Re:Zip is old school

[HughsOnFirst]

That was one of the worst surprises I had when I got an XP machine. XP treats a zip archive like a directory. Even over a network !! Really nasty if you are like me and have say lots of old web sites or source trees in zip files as sort of semi dead storage. Why anyone would want this feature is lost on me. Sort of like having someone clean your apartment by emptying your closets and drawers on the floor in a heap so that it is "Easier to find!"

For what it's worth, this will kill that "feature" in XP.

1. Select Run from the Start menu and enter
regsvr32 /u %windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll
2. Click OK.
3. Restart the computer.

To un-kill XP's zip support:

1. Select Run from the Start menu and enter
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll
2. Click OK.
3. Restart the computer.

This originated with someone named "Larry" and forwarded to me, I don't know who "Larry" is.

Snorks, not Smurfs.

[ezraekman]

Hanna-Barbara had another show called The Snorks. That's probably what you're thinking of.

Re:Snorks, not Smurfs.

[sik0fewl]

You're right, he is thinking of The Snorks.. which is probably why he mentioned it in the post you just replied to.

Re:Zip is old school

[Doomdark]

Interesting. Too bad there didn't seem to be much info about compression itself. Is that proprietary, or perhaps documented somewhere (white paper)? And comparisons didn't seem to include bzip2 results which would have been interesting (since that's an open standard, although not with that many implementations).

i'll invite whomever wants in

[shelleymonster]

yes, i'm in. shoot me an email and you can be too.

Re:i'll invite whomever wants in

[XO]

hmm. I can't email from work, but please invite me :) email is in profile.

Friendster fights back

[shelleymonster]

A couple of days ago, the following message showed up on Friendster:

We're working on it!

We wanted to let you know what we're working on here at Friendster. As many of you have pointed out, site performance for Friendster isn't exactly where any of us would like for it to be. Rest assured. Site performance is our number one priority.

The team here is also working on making changes to the system to meet the needs of our growing community, including new and improved features. We're not ready to show and tell yet. But we'll let you know as soon as we are.

In the meantime, you can help us by sending your suggestions for how to make things better at feedback@friendster.com.

Re:Friendster fights back

[iamsure]

Yeah, friendster is a pile of crap.

I had a completely legit profile (my only one!), with 19 friends (all real people!), and a completed profile.

After two months of using it, one day I log in, and its gone. My profile still exists, but only the most basic information. All 19 friends were gone, all my profile information, all my personal messages, EVERYTHING - gone.

So I emailed for support, and a form letter response indicated that "It wasnt a virus, nor could Friendster" infect my computer. WTH?

I replied to it, but never heard back.

Two months later, several friends report no problems with it, but my account has yet to be restored. It's very odd. I even wrote to feedback, but no response yet.

Not a great way to build 'trust' on a social network.

Re:Friendster fights back

[tka]

So that just tries to match real life: you get screwed :/

Re:Zip is old school

[Nef]

LHA wasn't the only out there compression standard I picked up, and still have, in my BBS days.

Here's a quick dir *.exe on E:\compression :

11/11/1998 12:47 PM 203,781 ace2.exe
11/22/1998 08:44 PM 185,344 ACE32.EXE
03/13/1989 10:30 AM 65,339 ARC.EXE
10/03/1999 08:38 AM 138,538 arc602.exe
07/20/1993 03:48 PM 115,808 ARJ.EXE
07/22/1993 12:08 AM 223,856 arj241a.exe
10/03/1999 08:38 AM 351,938 arj260x.exe
08/19/1993 09:53 AM 39,910 GZIP.EXE
08/19/1993 09:52 AM 121,868 GZIP386.EXE
09/26/2002 12:20 PM 1,112,356 Jzip - setup.exe
11/24/1992 02:55 AM 35,924 LHA.EXE
11/24/1992 05:55 AM 70,656 lha255b.exe
11/24/1992 02:55 AM 35,762 LHA_E.EXE
03/06/1989 01:14 PM 18,831 MKSARC.EXE
02/01/1993 02:04 AM 29,378 PKUNZIP.EXE
02/01/1993 02:04 AM 42,166 PKZIP.EXE
02/01/1993 02:04 AM 7,687 PKZIPFIX.EXE
05/08/1996 01:21 AM 102,989 RAR.EXE
10/03/1999 08:38 AM 267,248 rar200.exe
04/21/1996 03:07 PM 18,574 RCVT.EXE
07/20/1993 03:48 PM 36,214 REARJ.EXE
07/20/1993 03:48 PM 9,998 REGISTER.EXE
04/20/1996 12:53 PM 31,906 UnRAR.exe
08/19/2002 05:41 AM 1,803,848 winzip81.exe
02/01/1993 02:04 AM 27,319 ZIP2EXE.EXE
10/03/1999 08:38 AM 55,721 zoo210.exe
26 File(s) 5,152,959 bytes
0 Dir(s) 80,748,052,480 bytes free

I'm pretty sure that somewhere I have an old copy of ICE Unpacker from my Doom .wad hacking which had it's own proprietary .ice format as well.

Re:Zip is old school

[orthogonal]

LHA wasn't the only out there compression standard I picked up, and still have, in my BBS days.

Here's a quick dir *.exe on E:\compression :
[snip: 26 decompression programs]

You're my hero!

Even back in the slow-downloading BBS days, you were ready to uncompress any porno that came your way!

Forget Al Gore! It's visionaries like you who created teh IntarWeb!

Re:Zip is old school

[orthogonal]

For instance, you can browse, and you can double-click on files, but you can't for example install a .PRC from a ZIP file onto your Palm handheld device this way. It looks like a regular file, smells like a regular file, and tastes like a regular file, except you can't use it just like a regular file. Although, if you explore a ZIP file this way and then drag the .PRC out of the ZIP file onto your desktop, then you can install it. Intuitive, huh?

PowerDesk can do exactly what you want: zip files (to arbitrary recursion depths) are treated as directories with drag and drag and so forth implemented as unseen temporary files.

If I recall correctly, however, it does have some of the performance problems you mention.

Still, it works pretty well, but I no longer use it because it looks ugly and I find PowerDesk's splash screen too annoying.

Extracting from .tar.gz

[Rob Riggs]

Have you ever tried to extract a single file from a gzip'ed tar archive? It's not possible without unpacking everything and throwing away the bits that you don't want.

What's wrong with:

zcat foo.tar.gz | tar Oxf - path/to/bar > filename

to extract a file, or

zcat foo.tar.gz | tar Oxf - path/to/bar | less

if you want to view it?

I haven't seen one dev comment on zip yet

[t0qer]

Ok IANAPG (I am not a programming god) So maybe I don't know wtf i'm talking about...

Anyways..

alt.binaries.sounds.karaoke..

SYSNOPSIS

I've been getting into karaoke on the PC for the last year or so. I'm going to explain it for the benifit of the folks that don't know what im talking about.

Karaoke has a special format called CDG. It's some weird kind of subcode in the audio data that can be read by compatible CD drives. The CDG data is used to display the lyrics on screen, sort of like a 320x240 BMP slide show, but with 64 pallete cyclable colors.

They subcoded it so you could put a CD in a normal player and still get sound (without the lyrics/pictures)

Well fast forward to 10 years past CDG creation. Some clever people figured out how to not just rip the audio data, but the CDG data as well. In order to play MP3+G karaoke you need 2 things, a .mp3 file and a .cdg file.

Unfortunatly the CDG files are very large. Mostly it's just redundant data, so zipping it results in very nice compression. To make it easier on your fat table, you put the .mp3 and .cdg into 1 .zip file.

So basically, there's all these karaoke zip files being created with 2 or 3 different versions of zip, all incompatible with one another.

I wrote a crappy, lame, yes lame, really fucking lame VB bastardization for unzipping these files to a temp directory, and cue'ing the .mp3 file into winamp. I used the infozip static DLL and hacked away at the VB source project. I made something ugly that works well.

Until I run into those zip compatibilty errors. My winamp ends up with "Pkzip 2.1 file, PKzip 2.0 support only" showing up in it's playlist instead of the karaoke song I was hoping for.

Anyways, I just wanted to make a on topic post, and the only thing I can say about it other than explaining my situation is to say "THIS IS ANNOYING AS HELL!" Why can't the 2 zip giants get along?

Re:When last I checked...

[pla]

It didn't support spanning. Also the recovery record option in winRAR is handy for those who fancy themselves unlucky.

Both fair points, although for a lossy transmission medium, you can use PAR entirely separate from RAR. They do integrate well, but actually don't need to go together. You can PAR a set of ZIPs or 7Zs just as well as a set of RARs.

it is much slower

[ingenuus]

As the poster implied, extracting, adding, and removing individual files from a .tar.gz/bz2 archive is significantly slower than with a .zip archive (particularly as the archive becomes larger).

Theoretically, with the right vfs interface, you could mount a .zip file read/write, providing dynamic compression... I'd actually like to see that in linux (as a pluggable kernel filesystem, accessible from the command line)... I know mc provides something like this with its own pluggable vfs, but its use is thus limited to mc.

The main thing .tar.gz/bz2 has going for it is that it is a *nix standard and has higher compression.

Basically, the trade-off is size (tar.gz/bz2) vs. flexibility/speed (zip).

Re:it is much slower

[PhilHibbs]

you could mount a .zip file read/write, providing dynamic compression

That's an awful idea! One of the main advantages of a zip file is that there is a hurdle to jump in order to delete or update the contents. You put a file in a zip, and it's safe from accidental overwriting. You can't just open the zipped file in an application and accidentally save over it. I really hate XP's seamless zip file access for this reason, but fortunately I don't use XP myself all that often.

Re:it is much slower

[ingenuus]

One of the main advantages of a zip file is that there is a hurdle to jump in order to delete or update the contents.

What's the hurdle? You can already delete and update with (as far as I know) all common zip programs. Rewriting the zip program as a vfs simply standardizes the interface, thereby improving the support and usability of those features.

Granted, the biggest use in my eyes would be the transparent per-file decompression (ro... like zisofs) and the transparent compression may best be left to allow for incremental creation of the archive, but I suspect there may be other uses for such a system... perhaps in the embedded market?

Actually, Java (jar) and OpenOffice xml formats (being zip files) already use transparent add / update / delete... particularly OpenOffice where the document is often modified.

Also note that, with a vfs, you could still mount a zip file ro, protecting your data from any accidental modification.

I haven't used XP's "seamless" zip file access either because (I think) it is solely an implementation of the explorer file manager, which I don't particularly care for (I grew up with NC)... I feel similarly about the linux "clones" of explorer, though they may have more luring features.

However, I have used Total Commander to dynamically extract / update / add / remove files from zip archives, which I found quite useful.

In conclusion :), I'm not quite convinced that it is an "awful idea"... vfs seems to be the appropriate standard interface for the functionality offered by zips.

Re:it is much slower

[PhilHibbs]

What's the hurdle? You can already delete and update with (as far as I know) all common zip programs

You have to open the zip file in WinZip or whatever program you choose, and pull the file out to look at it. You can't just select a file from a "recently opened files" list in an application and make changes, while not realising that you are changing a zipped backup that you thought was safe.

I just think that if you want a compressed file system, then get a compressed file system. I use zip to keep my files safe from accidental amendment, so this 'feature' would be worse than useless to me. It would be ok if you had to explicitly mount a zip file, though.

Kinda shady

[Lord_Dweomer]

Anybody else a little annoyed with the story of this kid selling his legal documents on ebay? I mean......if it happened, great, but A. we don't really need to know, and B. this reads like an advertisement. This doesn't really belong on Slashdot.

Mike is 17, correct?

[Powercntrl]

Somewhere buried in the bowels of eBay's user agreement, it says you have to be 18 to sign up for an account. I personally think this kid is a sleazeball, he'd fit in perfect at the RIAA. He has no problem with taking what someone else created and claiming it's his own, then cashing out when the cards are in his favor.

What was it that Wil Wheaton said about kids that let fame go to their heads? I forget, but I'm sure it will happen to this brat - the real world has ways of deflating a bloated ego.

Ebay Hipocracy

[ocie]

From the ebay listing:

Sorry, I will not be accepting bidders with 0 feedback. If you have 0 feedback and are serious, please contact me via the contact seller link at the top of this auction so that I may verify your intentions.

P.S. Mike Rowe has zero feedback on Ebay and created his account on 26 January.

Re: Joining

[some guy I know]

You remind me of the Groucho Marx line (paraphrasing): "I'd never join a group that wanted me as a member."

I have the same problem with women.

Thanks. Yuck. Pending patents.

[phr1]

Looks like there's pending patents for the PKWARE format even though it's completely straightforward. It includes both password-based symmetric encryption, and public-key encryption using x509 certificates. There's a no-royalty license that I didn't bother to read but it looks like for the public-key format, you're only allowed to decrypt encrypted files under the license, not encrypt new ones. If they're going to use x509 certificates I don't understand why they didn't stick with s/mime format.

Re:Zip

[dolmen.fr]

I still don't know how to copy a zip file created by WinXP to a floppy disk. Any ideas?

Take your brain, unplug it, place it back into the box it was delivered in, and ship it back to the factory.

Re: "Email me!"

[some guy I know]

You know, I just thought of a neat new way to harvest email addresses ...

I'll invite anyone to Orkut

[Snosty]

All I ask in return is that you set me up with your sister. She should be between the ages of 18 and 28 and living in London, England.

Seriously, why pay for an invite when all you have to do is pimp out your sibling. Think about it, people. You know how to contact me.

Re:Zip

[WWWWolf]

Never mind about 7z format. 7-zip supports RAR. Decompresses, at least, not sure about compressing but I guess it does that too. And since I didn't see any odd clauses about foreign DLLs there, I'm assuming it's 100% GPLed homegrown code. I didn't check the source code to verify though. But the point is, there's an open-source RAR implementation sitting around here, and it won't run on *NIXes! Imagine the silliness of GNOME File Roller requiring shareware to compress or decompress RARs (it won't work with just the freeware unrar(1), it also needs shareware rar(1))...

Just took a little glance at the 7-zip source code. I'm not a Windows guru, but it smells like MFC??? Errrgh.... Visual Studio stuff. For once I wish they'd port this stuff to C#, at least it'd have a chance to work in Mono =)

Re:Zip

[Nefarious Wheel]

I would be glad to help! For a low fee of US$1.00 per file, you may e-mail me the file and I will send you a zip file with your file in it! Aren't I nice?

Send your file to not@clue.com

Re:The Zip Rip

[AwesomeJT]

Up yours! SEA sued the hell out of PK because he made a superiour ARC program that actually worked. The folks at SEA didn't like that because they were losing customers. Not much competitions when you compare pricey crap to cheap stuff that works. Of course, PK had to settle b/c he was a small fry at that time and didn't have any money for legal fees. He was banned from making software that was compatible with ARC. SEA also won the source code that PK had developed -- gosh I wonder why? So, after a little bit, PK came out with the now famous PKZIP. He released it. Since he was banned from writting ARC compatible software, someone else wrote a nice utility to convert ARC to ZIP. For some reason, almost overnight, entire BBSes (pre-Internet days) were converted to ZIP. Nowadays, SEA and ARC are only footnotes in the annuals of computing history. Long forgotten and relatively unknown by today's Internet generation. The story almost feels like our SCO vs Linux issue of today. Historical Deja Vu.

Well I use Power Archiver

[knigitz]

Encryption of files and archives using 5 different methods: Blowfish (128-bit), DES (64-bit), Triple DES (128-bit), AES 128-bit, and AES 256-bit.

That, plus all this here would be why I use Power Archiver.

Re: "Email me!"

[Elwood P Dowd]

Dude, with the XSS bugs in Orkut, joining Orkut is the equivalent of getting your email addresses harvested.

I would join

[ZINGYWINGY]

I would join Orkut if the text in the jpg on their home page had the grammatically correct sentence "Whom do you know?"

But alas.

MOD PARENT AS *REDUNDANT*

[ClioCJS]

Yoda

Re:MARK PARENT AS TROLL

[captain_craptacular]

mark parent as idiot. Run a python script and check top. What do you see as the name of the process smartass? I'll give you a hint, it's Python. My point was mainly that interpreted languages such as python tend to take more resources than non-interpreted languages. And since resources are at a premium on small devices, using interpreted languages on said devices MAY not be the best idea...

Re: Joining

[Principal Skinner]

Dammit, me too! If a woman seems interested in me, I start thinking, "OK, what's wrong with her?" Doesn't happen that often, though.

Best Pyramid Scheme Evar!

[xmedar]

1. Set up social-networking site
2. Let no one in
3. Once everyone is talking about it ask for $1 per invite via PayPal
4. Profit!

wow! it's up to $28,100.00 now!

[0biJon]

and there's still six days to go!
who the hell would pay that much for this shit?
it's probably not that hard to get your own C&D from microsoft.

Re: Joining

[some guy I know]

Really?
I thought that you and Edna Crabapple had something going on.

Orkut? Why?

[MXi]

Hmm... what is the advantage of the orkut system over say chatting to your mates in a private chan on IRC, or on MSN, or posting on a forum?

Re:WinRAR

[XO]

Well, those of us that use Unix, can actually compress files while we continue to use our computer. Windows, even XP, still has horrible latencies when programs that want a lot of CPU go CPU bound. Unix has very little of that.

Re:The Zip Rip

[XO]

Phil Katz was a complete and total ASSHAT too, and I think he deserved his massively drunken depressed death last year or the year before..

And you are entirely wrong about the lawsuit. From this link, you can find out lots of great information. Basically, SEA had released the source code, but required their permission to use it for any purpose beyond study. Phil took their source code, modified it, and then re-sold it for $1.50 less than what SEA did. SEA offered Phil an unlimited use license of SEA's code, if Phil would withdraw from offering to the BUSINESS market. (SEA and Phil Katz used to command fees of thousands of dollars per copy of the software.. I think I have copies of the ads at home from the early 80's)

Your views are totally distorted by what you heard in your 133t bbs days.

Re:WinRAR

[XO]

I was attempting to be funny. :P

Re:The Zip Rip

[AwesomeJT]

I personally won't go around saying that Phil deserved to die -- regardless of his actions with SEA. Even if he was fully at fault (which I don't believe was the case). After all, he is the creator of the most popular compression format in use (ZIP). So what if he was legally forced to make a format different and completely incompatible with ARC? Zip is so much better, and available for free. I'm not sure Phil copied the code becaue his stuff *actually worked*. Actually what happened, is SEA took (by legal force) Phil's code and evetually released it as their own. You can find a lot of good, valid, non-conspiracy-theory-like, information on the web to backup this point. One or two websites that contradict the masses of other websites don't add up to much in my book. Just because it is on the web doesn't mean it is right. I can find websites claiming that Hilter or Stalin were the good guys -- don't mean it was so. I'm sure this issue isn't as black and white as we make it sound. I'm sure that Phil did *something* wrong -- I just don't believe the BS hype that SEA said about Phil. Of course, this is one thing I like about the Internet (and BBSes of early days), you can tell your side of the story.

Re:The Zip Rip

[XO]

Right, I didn't mean that. But being the drug and alcohol addicted asshat that he was...

The popular view of what happened is skewed by the BBS community having considered Phil some kind of Hero, making the better software. But, he DID use their code, that was NOT public domain to use. At least, that's what the case determined, and I'm not going to argue with a judicial decision.

Re:The Zip Rip

[AwesomeJT]

Well, I would agree that doing drugs was an extremely poor decision. Not surprised it eventually claimed his life -- since many drugs ultimately do this.

As far the legal issues, Phil had to settle out of court so we won't ever really know that the courts would have ruled in the end. It could have been a landmark case -- like so many software-patent related cases. Unfortunately, a lot of time in the American justice system, it isn't if you are right or wrong -- it's how well funded your lawyers are. I do tend to question the judicial system for that reason. For example: if you were a minority accused of a crime about 50 years ago in just about any State in the Southeastern USA (or most states in the US) -- I doubt you got a fair trial. Even if you were at fault, I doubt you got a fair sentence. Software patents/copywrites are also very subjective and easily swayed by money. I can name several such cases currently going on -- especially with the DMCA in force.

I'm sure if you went back in history, you would be appauled what was considered the "right" decision of the courts in many cases. Since Phil never really had much ability to defend himself, there's not much we can do but speculate either way.

It seems like it's courtroom victors that end up (re)writing the history books.

Can't help it...

[mynameis (mother ...]

I really wouldn't worry about it, you could always sue him...