Yeah. I think I saw it a while back on slashdot, actually, but I guess you get more points if you post your Trolls on the right story. Then it gets moderated up, and then the luser moderators notice it when they're browsing at 1 or whatever...
Thanks for the link... I'm just full of useless pop-culture references.:)
Rivest, um... Shamir? and... yeah, I'd have to look it up too.:)
Anyhow, they're big names in the field, and it's impressive stuff. I took enough number theory, and learned the basics of public key cryptography. At least, enough to know that I'd rather be coding than doing math proofs.
I say, let them use the system. I don't like it, and I don't think it should be legal, because if the math is published and you can use it, then the code should be equivalent. But the USA doesn't agree with me, so let them have their patent if they want it. Once speech == math == code, (like so) then it'll be all good, baby, and you can contest patents like that on legal grounds.
That's APL. It looks like line noise, with lots of functions implemented with letters that aren't on your keyboard. Sounds greek to you? It could be APL.
PL/1 worked really hard to try to get you to make a valid program. Apparently some variants would try to autocorrect your code to a valid program, usually failing or generating weird code in the process of doing so. --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Yeah. I had to take a break, but that was just a day or two... Hey, maybe that's why they don't give us mod points. We'd moderate down the trolls we've already seen, not allowing the rest of the slashdot crowd to see them and think they're "Funny".;)
Hey, we're following the thread, *and* all the moderators are gone... Heh heh heh.
I'm actually posting this in IE 3.0 for Win 3.1 under Wine. Why? 'cause netscape crashed too much in the last 5 minutes when I was trying to look at Slashdot...
Oh well. Time to check out Mozilla again... --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Good one, Wah! Spending too much time on slashdot like the rest of us, I see.
The last news I heard about Episode ][ was...
"...even though he's nine and she's 14, and he's prob'ly gonna marry her some day-e-a-eay-ee..."
(for those who don't know, that's Weird Al's parody of Miss American Pie, from his album Running With Scissors... ("My, my, this here Anakin guy, maybe Vader someday later right now he's a small fry...") It's good stuff, almost as good as "It's All About the Pentiums, Baby"...) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I want to get a new system by July or so, since I'll be working over the summer. I try to get a system that's twice as nice as my old system every two years or so.
I hope to get: ~600Mhz (or greater) Athlon, 128MB RAM, >20GB HD, a 3D-card, and hopefully a DVD-ROM drive that I can use under Linux. (and all the usual stuff, sound card, decent video card, etc., I'll keep my 17" monitor for now.)
The reasons I'm waiting are:
1) for the money.:) 2) my goal is to pay $1,100 or less. It should be doable, maybe I'll get a nicer computer out of the deal if I'm lucky!
(I could buy a 40GB HD for $250, much cooler than my then-huge 40MB HD on my old 386...:)
I'm still really curious about what Transmeta will have done by then. If another chip comes out that's superior to the Athlon at least in Price/Performance and Coolness, I might end up getting that. But I bet it won't be from Intel...
What do you mean, "It was funny once"? The same poster has posted that same image all of yesterday! (has anyone *else* on slashdot with mod points noticed this, or am I just special since I don't get them?)
I even got pissed off somewhere in there and posted a Penguin in response. I guess my only question is, who told the moderators there were posts below threshold +1? --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I was wondering about moderation for a while, but now I understand: trolling with ASCII art is good for your karma, yeah! Forget intelligent or controversial posting, that just gets moderated down lately.
Just that everything isn't slow, but only the links right before the actual servers. Just more information, to combat rampant speculation.
They all look pretty suspicious though, not just like the net is "slow", like it looked earlier, and not like a DoS attack, which should be far more focused. --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
You need to set your filter to -1 to see the funny stuff and the non-Slashdot party-line opinions. Moderation does suck.
(rather, I set my filter to +1 sometimes, but if I see..."nn replies below your current threshold", I check it out. And if I have time, or I'm in a fast browser, I'll browse at -1...) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
First it was the new story posters, and the content started suffering, and then it was the nasty colors, and now we have all the Trolls, and the new cheesy icons...
When do we get bought by ZD-Net?;) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I would have to agree, the quality of Slashdot has declined over time, as the average user of Slashdot has changed....and we're probably just "old fogies" too. (in my day, we didn't have stories about "JonKatz" and "World Domination" and "Social Issues"...:)
And wasn't it TCWWW? (The Cursed WWW...)
Oh well. I still miss Meept. Some of the trolls today are funny, but there's nothing that's both as silly, insightful, funny and controversial anymore.
(petrified pancake ninjas with hot grits down Natalie Portman's Open-Source pants get old after a while, believe it or not, d00Dz...)
Also, is it me, or has there been a lot more "down" moderating and less "up" moderating? I'd try to change this, but I don't get mod points, since I'm not a "typical Slashdot user". Heaven forfend, I guess I *have* been here too long! --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
We're running NT with all kinds of fun third-party add-ons. The NT people are somewhat competent, much better than most of the students.:)
I'm sure Vanilla NT is pretty stable if you don't do much to it. Next time, make sure you also install NT versions of AFS and Kerberos, get it on the realm, use NDS to get all your applications, attempt to replicate people's NT profiles onto the local machine from a (minimum) 400k registry file in AFS, and have fun debugging the custom login application that was written to do it... I'm probably simplifying things a bit.
What we have leaks memory constantly. Some machines bluescreen, some machines have mice that don't click. And depending on where you're autosaving, either you'll have a lot of lag when writing the file to AFS, or you'll have no lag writing it to some scratch space that won't be there when your computer dies.
I'm glad *your* NT configuration doesn't crash. I hope you realize that it wouldn't work for us. *Our* needs are different. These machines are still more stable than your average '95 box, but far *less* stable than the Solaris boxes they attempted to replace. And that's a problem. --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I do tend to think about what I'm saying. Maybe I didn't provide enough information, so I'll give you some background.
The machines I'm talking about *are* CS/Engineering machines. We have a lot of Solaris boxes, we've pretty much gotten rid of the old HP boxes. EOS is the computing system for Engineers here.
Some of the regular NT machines might end up dual-booting NT and Linux. There are also lots of NT machines for business majors, etc.
The original reason for the NT machines in the first place *was* so we could have popular applications like Office. Unfortunately, they don't have many apps that people really need, including the standard ones we've been using forever here (WordPerfect, gcc, Zephyrs...), and they aren't reliable. (who cares if I have Office? When the machine dies on me / reboots, the temp dirs are cleared, and I can't get my paper back!)
So now we also have a Citrix server (four clustered machines, together with 1GB RAM, 2GB Swap, runs Office over the network, but it's *FAST*!) that works just fine if for some reason you want to use Office in Linux, and WordPerfect / StarOffice / Pico / whatever just isn't enough for you.:)
Also, they might have been considering a VMware solution for the NT machines as well--I hope not. A lot of this is just rumor. And I'm perfectly happy with Linux/Citrix/Napster/Everybuddy... I'm not saying everybody should do that, it's just nice to have a choice. --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Hmm. Maybe the config files and custom hacks would be somewhat different, but it sounds like CMU, UMich, MIT, NCSU, and anyone else using "Andrew Linux" or any "Athena Project" offshoots and basing a Linux distribution off of RedHat Linux would have the same basic packages for a given RedHat version.
The "University Distribution" idea might not be that far off after all. ...except when we have to patch the source.
But maybe the other Universities do the same with some of the packages, and maybe we could get some generic interfaces for that, or not add those into the "base packages"...
At least, I'm pretty sure the basic Kerberos, AFS, Zephyr stuff isn't that different... depending on what version you're using...
(I'm pretty sure we're using Krb4 and Krb5 (using Krb4 emulation mode?) in different places, in an attempt not to murder compatibility, I guess)
Yeah, one of my friends is involved in this project, he just had a four-hour meeting about it today. (poor guy!)
I don't know how much they want me to say, or even how much they told me, but...
- Our network uses Kerberos, zephyrs, AFS, etc., pretty much taken from MIT's Athena Project. They're making RPM's of that stuff. I think they'll end up using ARLA instead of AFS under Linux, we'll see. Universities tend to have a lot of specific stuff too, though, maybe one university distribution is unlikely.
- MIT has RPM's up for Project Athena too, it's still a good base for a "university distribution".:)
- Hopefully the next release will be based on RH 6.2, I'm running somewhere between 6.0 and 6.1, and 6.2 beta should be up now.
- I sure hope it doesn't end up getting called "EOS/Linux", 'cause that makes about as much sense as "GNU/Linux".;)
The same thing is starting to happen at here at NCSU, and hopefully we'll see Linux replace those darn NT machines yet. The LUG here is great about providing packages for Red Hat + NCSU-specific stuff. (well, we're sort of nearby, and whatnot.;)
If that isn't an option at your school, at least convince them to get some interoperability. Linux plays well with others. NT can be forced to do better if you buy the right packages. So far I'm pretty happy with what they have bought, but NT is still not that reliable (it leaks memory here, the mouse dies, etc. Solaris boxes are much better).
However, at least X-Win32 and Tera Term Secure Shell are making life easier on NT. Still not as easy as it is on my Linux box, though.:)
Yay, DeCSS! Boo, MPAA! Salon mentions slashdot, so we'd better post this! Free Mitnick... oh wait.
But yes, our basic freedoms are important, and it's perhaps more important to see that they get enforced on our computers and over the internet, since that's becoming more important every day.
As the outrage over what was probably a simple router problem illustrates, people are getting as sensitive about the internet as they do over their phone service. I hope the internet does not go the way of the phone company.
Have any of you entertained the possibility that this might *not* be a Denial of Service attack?
Think about it. A DoS attack generally takes down a site, not a segment of the internet. The "it's a backbone problem" idea posted on the Yahoo story sounded much more reasonable.
If you don't believe me, look at the Internet Traffic Report, and say to yourself: does this look more like a DoS attack, or something more like what, say, a backhoe could do instead?;)
Anyhow, all of this stupid mass-conspiracy bullshit is getting old, and all of the posts that claim to list "all" of the possibilities forget to question the basic assumptions. Why believe the media when they can't give you any details? Why not just assume they can't give you details because they don't know what's going on?
Who should know what's going on on the internet, the media, or the people who run the internet? Check your facts for yourself, people.
There's definitely some funky stuff going on. But check it out before you start screaming "DAMN SCRIPT KIDDIES!", okay? I don't think script kiddies are this good. They're less organized than a bunch of slashdot posters.:)
Example: Here's some current internet topology, from NCSU. The internet traffic report is much better.
traceroute to av.com (204.152.190.62), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets [...] 10 sjo-core-02.inet.qwest.net (205.171.5.147) 69.289 ms 68.743 ms 69.749 ms 11 sjo-core-03.inet.qwest.net (205.171.22.6) 68.943 ms 69.323 ms 69.328 ms 12 sjo-edge-05.inet.qwest.net (205.171.22.50) 69.216 ms 70.223 ms 69.426 ms 13 205.171.22.114 (205.171.22.114) 70.555 ms 69.931 ms 70.480 ms 14 * * * 15 pla1b.head5.pla.mibh.net (204.152.184.215) 77.901 ms 77.757 ms 77.883 ms 16 head3.sv3.mibh.net (128.177.255.24) 78.868 ms 79.166 ms 79.172 ms 17 www.altavista.com (204.152.190.62) 79.960 ms 79.532 ms 79.970 ms
traceroute to www.excite.com (199.172.146.99), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets [...] 10 sjo-core-02.inet.qwest.net (205.171.5.147) 69.459 ms 69.261 ms 69.065 ms 11 sjo-core-03.inet.qwest.net (205.171.22.6) 68.877 ms 69.290 ms 69.095 ms 12 sjo-edge-05.inet.qwest.net (205.171.22.50) 69.143 ms 68.974 ms 69.093 ms 13 205.171.48.166 (205.171.48.166) 80.047 ms 80.501 ms 79.168 ms 14 192.168.1.106 (192.168.1.106) 78.975 ms 79.416 ms 78.899 ms 15 192.168.251.202 (192.168.251.202) 80.144 ms 79.893 ms 80.310 ms 16 199.172.146.50 (199.172.146.50) 80.167 ms !H 79.776 ms !H 80.235 ms !H
traceroute to www.adobe.com (192.150.12.103), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets [...] 10 294.ATM10-0-0.GW2.SCL1.ALTER.NET (152.63.48.169) 88.579 ms 88.479 ms 88.481 ms 11 192.150.13.1 (192.150.13.1) 88.696 ms 88.874 ms 89.055 ms 12 * www3.adobe.com (192.150.12.103) 89.099 ms *
traceroute to yahoo.com (204.71.200.243), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets [...] 10 pos2-1-155M.cr2.WDC1.gblx.net (206.132.113.137) 19.207 ms 18.574 ms 18.555 ms 11 pos6-0-622M.cr2.SNV.gblx.net (206.132.151.14) 97.879 ms 98.952 ms 98.487 ms 12 pos1-0-2488M.hr8.SNV.gblx.net (206.132.254.41) 97.636 ms 97.963 ms 98.090 ms 13 208.178.22.58 (208.178.22.58) 98.406 ms 98.156 ms 98.439 ms 14 img3.yahoo.com (204.71.200.243) 97.649 ms 98.487 ms 98.591 ms
traceroute to microsoft.com (207.46.131.30), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets [...] 10 205.171.23.46 (205.171.23.46) 31.347 ms 31.690 ms 31.454 ms 11 a3-0-6.crtntx1-ba2.bbnplanet.net (4.24.147.21) 42.531 ms 42.394 ms 42.312 ms 12 p1-0.crtntx1-ba1.bbnplanet.net (4.24.4.241) 43.972 ms 42.399 ms 43.194 ms 13 p1-0.lsanca1-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.6.138) 92.677 ms 92.489 ms 92.437 ms 14 p4-0.evrtwa1-ba1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.6.38) 118.103 ms 119.676 ms 118.746 m s 15 p1-0.evrtwa1-cr1.bbnplanet.net (4.24.5.102) 118.770 ms 118.355 ms 117.894 ms 16 p2-0.mscanyonpark.bbnplanet.net (4.24.125.66) 89.012 ms 89.812 ms 88.745 ms 17 icpmscomc7501-a1-00-1.cp.msft.net (207.46.129.131) 89.483 ms 88.641 ms 89 .417 ms 18 icpmscomc7501-a1-00-1.cp.msft.net (207.46.129.131) 88.670 ms 89.818 ms 90 .195 ms [looks like Microsoft doesn't handle pings right. Big surprise.]
traceroute to www.hotmail.com (216.32.243.7), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets [...] 10 core1-core2-oc3-1.iad.above.net (209.249.0.21) 18.983 ms 19.101 ms 18.463 ms 11 pao-iad-oc3.pao.above.net (207.126.96.145) 88.196 ms 88.122 ms 87.902 ms 12 hotmail-above-oc12.pao.above.net (216.200.0.154) 93.290 ms 93.283 ms 95.424 ms 13 10.1.6.1 (10.1.6.1) 93.207 ms 99.115 ms 93.810 ms 14 law5-rsp-d.hotmail.com (216.32.183.15) 248.894 ms 96.250 ms 94.903 ms 15 lc4.law5.hotmail.com (216.32.243.7) 94.157 ms 94.379 ms 94.217 ms
The net has been pretty slow for me, and these "attacks" are either very widespread and very undetectable, or they aren't attacks at all.
Remembering The Hacker Crackdown once again, what started the whole nasty thing were widespread phone service outages that were blamed on hackers. The problem was eventually traced to a cascading phone switch bug, but the damage was done even then, and many hackers and crackers had their equipment (unlawfully?) seized by the government. After the DeCSS fiasco and now this, I don't want to see a world-wide repeat of this travesty.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. I think I saw it a while back on slashdot, actually, but I guess you get more points if you post your Trolls on the right story. Then it gets moderated up, and then the luser moderators notice it when they're browsing at 1 or whatever...
Thanks for the link... I'm just full of useless pop-culture references.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Rivest, um... Shamir? and... yeah, I'd have to look it up too.
Anyhow, they're big names in the field, and it's impressive stuff. I took enough number theory, and learned the basics of public key cryptography. At least, enough to know that I'd rather be coding than doing math proofs.
I say, let them use the system. I don't like it, and I don't think it should be legal, because if the math is published and you can use it, then the code should be equivalent. But the USA doesn't agree with me, so let them have their patent if they want it. Once speech == math == code, (like so) then it'll be all good, baby, and you can contest patents like that on legal grounds.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
That's APL. It looks like line noise, with lots of functions implemented with letters that aren't on your keyboard. Sounds greek to you? It could be APL.
PL/1 worked really hard to try to get you to make a valid program. Apparently some variants would try to autocorrect your code to a valid program, usually failing or generating weird code in the process of doing so.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
You know, it's somewhat ironic that IE 3.0 crashed right after I posted that. But I'm not laughing.
Now I'm posting with mozilla. Which renders webpages in a pretty similar fashion, but with different quirks...
Here's the dump, guys. It was mildly amusing.
Backtrace:
=>0 0x0828f2b4 (USER32.DLL.CallWindowProcW+0x6394) (ebp=bfffefd8)
1 0x0467:0x95ed (MSHTML16.IWENGRELOADHOTLIST+0x23c3) (bp=f194)
2 0x047f:0xd553 (MSHTML16.GDOC_WNDPROC+0x1d3f) (bp=f1ee, far call assumed)
3 0x0467:0xd907 (MSHTML16.IWENGRELOADHOTLIST+0x66dd) (bp=f318, far call assume
d)
4 0x047f:0x44a4 (MSHTML16.WEP+0x1c72) (bp=f358, far call assumed)
5 0x047f:0x44f7 (MSHTML16.WEP+0x1cc5) (bp=f390)
6 0x047f:0xba5d (MSHTML16.GDOC_WNDPROC+0x249) (bp=f3a2)
7 0x013f:0x0000 (bp=f3dc, far call assumed)
8 0x082855a7 (USER32.DLL.GetTaskmanWindow+0x2eb) (ebp=4093fd74)
9 0x08288d96 (USER32.DLL.GetTaskmanWindow+0x3ada) (ebp=4093fda0)
10 0x0826dfa6 (USER32.DLL.TranslateMessage+0xda) (ebp=4093fde0)
11 0x081d006d (OLE32.DLL.CoFileTimeToDosDateTime+0x3b76d) (ebp=4093fdec)
12 0x081d37ff (OLE32.DLL.CoFileTimeToDosDateTime+0x3eeff) (ebp=4093fe1c)
13 0x026f:0x1574 (IEXPLORE.GWC_SUBCLASS_EDIT_WNDPROC+0x656) (bp=f3fa)
14 0x026f:0x21fb (IEXPLORE.GWC_SUBCLASS_EDIT_WNDPROC+0x12dd) (bp=f534)
15 0x027f:0x9261 (IEXPLORE.SIZABLEWNDPROC+0x847) (bp=f546, far call assumed)
16 0x027f:0x922e (IEXPLORE.SIZABLEWNDPROC+0x814) (bp=0000)
0x0828f2b4 (USER32.DLL.CallWindowProcW+0x6394): movzbl 0x0(%esi),%eax
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Yeah. I had to take a break, but that was just a day or two... Hey, maybe that's why they don't give us mod points. We'd moderate down the trolls we've already seen, not allowing the rest of the slashdot crowd to see them and think they're "Funny". ;)
Hey, we're following the thread, *and* all the moderators are gone... Heh heh heh.
I'm actually posting this in IE 3.0 for Win 3.1 under Wine. Why? 'cause netscape crashed too much in the last 5 minutes when I was trying to look at Slashdot...
Oh well. Time to check out Mozilla again...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Good one, Wah! Spending too much time on slashdot like the rest of us, I see.
The last news I heard about Episode ][ was...
"...even though he's nine and she's 14, and he's prob'ly gonna marry her some day-e-a-eay-ee..."
(for those who don't know, that's Weird Al's parody of Miss American Pie, from his album Running With Scissors... ("My, my, this here Anakin guy, maybe Vader someday later right now he's a small fry...") It's good stuff, almost as good as "It's All About the Pentiums, Baby"...)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
No, *this* is the article in a nutshell:
"Help, help, I'm in a nutshell!" -- Jar Jar Binks?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Hey, no hard feelings.
It's a completely different world here in the University. It's bad enough setting this stuff up for Unix, but it's *really* not meant for NT.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Cool, thanks for the info!
:)
:)
I want to get a new system by July or so, since I'll be working over the summer. I try to get a system that's twice as nice as my old system every two years or so.
I hope to get: ~600Mhz (or greater) Athlon, 128MB RAM, >20GB HD, a 3D-card, and hopefully a DVD-ROM drive that I can use under Linux. (and all the usual stuff, sound card, decent video card, etc., I'll keep my 17" monitor for now.)
The reasons I'm waiting are:
1) for the money.
2) my goal is to pay $1,100 or less. It should be doable, maybe I'll get a nicer computer out of the deal if I'm lucky!
(I could buy a 40GB HD for $250, much cooler than my then-huge 40MB HD on my old 386...
I'm still really curious about what Transmeta will have done by then. If another chip comes out that's superior to the Athlon at least in Price/Performance and Coolness, I might end up getting that. But I bet it won't be from Intel...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
What do you mean, "It was funny once"? The same poster has posted that same image all of yesterday! (has anyone *else* on slashdot with mod points noticed this, or am I just special since I don't get them?)
I even got pissed off somewhere in there and posted a Penguin in response. I guess my only question is, who told the moderators there were posts below threshold +1?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Who moderated *this* up?
I was wondering about moderation for a while, but now I understand: trolling with ASCII art is good for your karma, yeah! Forget intelligent or controversial posting, that just gets moderated down lately.
Go AMD, I want an Athlon, yay!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.H!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
..MH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
..M!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
...M!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!X!
...MMMMMHHHHHX!!!!!M!
...."?????????!!!!!?!
...:.....~!!!!!!!
..:M.....!!!!!!!
..:!M:.....!!!!!!!
.:!!M~.....!!!!!!!
.:!!MM~.....!!!!!!!
:!!!MM~.....!!!!!!!
:!!!!MM~.....!!!!!!!
!!!!!!M~.....!!!!!!!
!!!!!!M~.....!!!!!H!
!!!!!!M!.........!!!!!M!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!X..!!!!M!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!M!~..H!!M!
!!!!!!!!!!!!M?~...M!M!
!!!!!!!!!!!M?~....MM!
!!!!!!!!!HM?~.....M!
HMMMMMMMMM?~......!
.~~~~~~~~~.......
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Just that everything isn't slow, but only the links right before the actual servers. Just more information, to combat rampant speculation.
They all look pretty suspicious though, not just like the net is "slow", like it looked earlier, and not like a DoS attack, which should be far more focused.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Can I answer one post with another?
..."nn replies below your current threshold", I check it out. And if I have time, or I'm in a fast browser, I'll browse at -1...)
You need to set your filter to -1 to see the funny stuff and the non-Slashdot party-line opinions. Moderation does suck.
(rather, I set my filter to +1 sometimes, but if I see
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
First it was the new story posters,
;)
and the content started suffering,
and then it was the nasty colors,
and now we have all the Trolls,
and the new cheesy icons...
When do we get bought by ZD-Net?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I would have to agree, the quality of Slashdot has declined over time, as the average user of Slashdot has changed. ...and we're probably just "old fogies" too. (in my day, we didn't have stories about "JonKatz" and "World Domination" and "Social Issues"... :)
And wasn't it TCWWW? (The Cursed WWW...)
Oh well. I still miss Meept. Some of the trolls today are funny, but there's nothing that's both as silly, insightful, funny and controversial anymore.
(petrified pancake ninjas with hot grits down Natalie Portman's Open-Source pants get old after a while, believe it or not, d00Dz...)
Also, is it me, or has there been a lot more "down" moderating and less "up" moderating? I'd try to change this, but I don't get mod points, since I'm not a "typical Slashdot user". Heaven forfend, I guess I *have* been here too long!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
We're running NT with all kinds of fun third-party add-ons. The NT people are somewhat competent, much better than most of the students. :)
I'm sure Vanilla NT is pretty stable if you don't do much to it. Next time, make sure you also install NT versions of AFS and Kerberos, get it on the realm, use NDS to get all your applications, attempt to replicate people's NT profiles onto the local machine from a (minimum) 400k registry file in AFS, and have fun debugging the custom login application that was written to do it... I'm probably simplifying things a bit.
What we have leaks memory constantly. Some machines bluescreen, some machines have mice that don't click. And depending on where you're autosaving, either you'll have a lot of lag when writing the file to AFS, or you'll have no lag writing it to some scratch space that won't be there when your computer dies.
I'm glad *your* NT configuration doesn't crash. I hope you realize that it wouldn't work for us. *Our* needs are different. These machines are still more stable than your average '95 box, but far *less* stable than the Solaris boxes they attempted to replace. And that's a problem.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I do tend to think about what I'm saying. Maybe I didn't provide enough information, so I'll give you some background.
:)
The machines I'm talking about *are* CS/Engineering machines. We have a lot of Solaris boxes, we've pretty much gotten rid of the old HP boxes. EOS is the computing system for Engineers here.
Some of the regular NT machines might end up dual-booting NT and Linux. There are also lots of NT machines for business majors, etc.
The original reason for the NT machines in the first place *was* so we could have popular applications like Office. Unfortunately, they don't have many apps that people really need, including the standard ones we've been using forever here (WordPerfect, gcc, Zephyrs...), and they aren't reliable. (who cares if I have Office? When the machine dies on me / reboots, the temp dirs are cleared, and I can't get my paper back!)
So now we also have a Citrix server (four clustered machines, together with 1GB RAM, 2GB Swap, runs Office over the network, but it's *FAST*!) that works just fine if for some reason you want to use Office in Linux, and WordPerfect / StarOffice / Pico / whatever just isn't enough for you.
Also, they might have been considering a VMware solution for the NT machines as well--I hope not. A lot of this is just rumor. And I'm perfectly happy with Linux/Citrix/Napster/Everybuddy... I'm not saying everybody should do that, it's just nice to have a choice.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Hmm. Maybe the config files and custom hacks would be somewhat different, but it sounds like CMU, UMich, MIT, NCSU, and anyone else using "Andrew Linux" or any "Athena Project" offshoots and basing a Linux distribution off of RedHat Linux would have the same basic packages for a given RedHat version.
The "University Distribution" idea might not be that far off after all.
...except when we have to patch the source.
But maybe the other Universities do the same with some of the packages, and maybe we could get some generic interfaces for that, or not add those into the "base packages"...
At least, I'm pretty sure the basic Kerberos, AFS, Zephyr stuff isn't that different... depending on what version you're using...
(I'm pretty sure we're using Krb4 and Krb5 (using Krb4 emulation mode?) in different places, in an attempt not to murder compatibility, I guess)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Yeah, one of my friends is involved in this project, he just had a four-hour meeting about it today. (poor guy!)
I don't know how much they want me to say, or even how much they told me, but...
- Our network uses Kerberos, zephyrs, AFS, etc., pretty much taken from MIT's Athena Project. They're making RPM's of that stuff. I think they'll end up using ARLA instead of AFS under Linux, we'll see. Universities tend to have a lot of specific stuff too, though, maybe one university distribution is unlikely.
- MIT has RPM's up for Project Athena too, it's still a good base for a "university distribution".
- Hopefully the next release will be based on RH 6.2, I'm running somewhere between 6.0 and 6.1, and 6.2 beta should be up now.
- I sure hope it doesn't end up getting called "EOS/Linux", 'cause that makes about as much sense as "GNU/Linux".
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
The same thing is starting to happen at here at NCSU, and hopefully we'll see Linux replace those darn NT machines yet. The LUG here is great about providing packages for Red Hat + NCSU-specific stuff. (well, we're sort of nearby, and whatnot.
If that isn't an option at your school, at least convince them to get some interoperability. Linux plays well with others. NT can be forced to do better if you buy the right packages. So far I'm pretty happy with what they have bought, but NT is still not that reliable (it leaks memory here, the mouse dies, etc. Solaris boxes are much better).
However, at least X-Win32 and Tera Term Secure Shell are making life easier on NT. Still not as easy as it is on my Linux box, though.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Yay, DeCSS! Boo, MPAA! Salon mentions slashdot, so we'd better post this! Free Mitnick... oh wait.
But yes, our basic freedoms are important, and it's perhaps more important to see that they get enforced on our computers and over the internet, since that's becoming more important every day.
As the outrage over what was probably a simple router problem illustrates, people are getting as sensitive about the internet as they do over their phone service. I hope the internet does not go the way of the phone company.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Have any of you entertained the possibility that this might *not* be a Denial of Service attack?
Think about it. A DoS attack generally takes down a site, not a segment of the internet. The "it's a backbone problem" idea posted on the Yahoo story sounded much more reasonable.
If you don't believe me, look at the Internet Traffic Report, and say to yourself: does this look more like a DoS attack, or something more like what, say, a backhoe could do instead?
Anyhow, all of this stupid mass-conspiracy bullshit is getting old, and all of the posts that claim to list "all" of the possibilities forget to question the basic assumptions. Why believe the media when they can't give you any details? Why not just assume they can't give you details because they don't know what's going on?
Who should know what's going on on the internet, the media, or the people who run the internet? Check your facts for yourself, people.
There's definitely some funky stuff going on. But check it out before you start screaming "DAMN SCRIPT KIDDIES!", okay? I don't think script kiddies are this good. They're less organized than a bunch of slashdot posters.
Example: Here's some current internet topology, from NCSU. The internet traffic report is much better.
traceroute to av.com (204.152.190.62), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
[...]
10 sjo-core-02.inet.qwest.net (205.171.5.147) 69.289 ms 68.743 ms 69.749 ms
11 sjo-core-03.inet.qwest.net (205.171.22.6) 68.943 ms 69.323 ms 69.328 ms
12 sjo-edge-05.inet.qwest.net (205.171.22.50) 69.216 ms 70.223 ms 69.426 ms
13 205.171.22.114 (205.171.22.114) 70.555 ms 69.931 ms 70.480 ms
14 * * *
15 pla1b.head5.pla.mibh.net (204.152.184.215) 77.901 ms 77.757 ms 77.883 ms
16 head3.sv3.mibh.net (128.177.255.24) 78.868 ms 79.166 ms 79.172 ms
17 www.altavista.com (204.152.190.62) 79.960 ms 79.532 ms 79.970 ms
traceroute to www.excite.com (199.172.146.99), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
[...]
10 sjo-core-02.inet.qwest.net (205.171.5.147) 69.459 ms 69.261 ms 69.065 ms
11 sjo-core-03.inet.qwest.net (205.171.22.6) 68.877 ms 69.290 ms 69.095 ms
12 sjo-edge-05.inet.qwest.net (205.171.22.50) 69.143 ms 68.974 ms 69.093 ms
13 205.171.48.166 (205.171.48.166) 80.047 ms 80.501 ms 79.168 ms
14 192.168.1.106 (192.168.1.106) 78.975 ms 79.416 ms 78.899 ms
15 192.168.251.202 (192.168.251.202) 80.144 ms 79.893 ms 80.310 ms
16 199.172.146.50 (199.172.146.50) 80.167 ms !H 79.776 ms !H 80.235 ms !H
traceroute to www.adobe.com (192.150.12.103), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
[...]
10 294.ATM10-0-0.GW2.SCL1.ALTER.NET (152.63.48.169) 88.579 ms 88.479 ms 88.481 ms
11 192.150.13.1 (192.150.13.1) 88.696 ms 88.874 ms 89.055 ms
12 * www3.adobe.com (192.150.12.103) 89.099 ms *
traceroute to yahoo.com (204.71.200.243), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
[...]
10 pos2-1-155M.cr2.WDC1.gblx.net (206.132.113.137) 19.207 ms 18.574 ms 18.555 ms
11 pos6-0-622M.cr2.SNV.gblx.net (206.132.151.14) 97.879 ms 98.952 ms 98.487 ms
12 pos1-0-2488M.hr8.SNV.gblx.net (206.132.254.41) 97.636 ms 97.963 ms 98.090 ms
13 208.178.22.58 (208.178.22.58) 98.406 ms 98.156 ms 98.439 ms
14 img3.yahoo.com (204.71.200.243) 97.649 ms 98.487 ms 98.591 ms
traceroute to microsoft.com (207.46.131.30), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
[...]
10 205.171.23.46 (205.171.23.46) 31.347 ms 31.690 ms 31.454 ms
11 a3-0-6.crtntx1-ba2.bbnplanet.net (4.24.147.21) 42.531 ms 42.394 ms 42.312
ms
12 p1-0.crtntx1-ba1.bbnplanet.net (4.24.4.241) 43.972 ms 42.399 ms 43.194 ms
13 p1-0.lsanca1-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.6.138) 92.677 ms 92.489 ms 92.437 ms
14 p4-0.evrtwa1-ba1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.6.38) 118.103 ms 119.676 ms 118.746 m
s
15 p1-0.evrtwa1-cr1.bbnplanet.net (4.24.5.102) 118.770 ms 118.355 ms 117.894
ms
16 p2-0.mscanyonpark.bbnplanet.net (4.24.125.66) 89.012 ms 89.812 ms 88.745
ms
17 icpmscomc7501-a1-00-1.cp.msft.net (207.46.129.131) 89.483 ms 88.641 ms 89
.417 ms
18 icpmscomc7501-a1-00-1.cp.msft.net (207.46.129.131) 88.670 ms 89.818 ms 90
.195 ms
[looks like Microsoft doesn't handle pings right. Big surprise.]
traceroute to www.hotmail.com (216.32.243.7), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
[...]
10 core1-core2-oc3-1.iad.above.net (209.249.0.21) 18.983 ms 19.101 ms 18.463 ms
11 pao-iad-oc3.pao.above.net (207.126.96.145) 88.196 ms 88.122 ms 87.902 ms
12 hotmail-above-oc12.pao.above.net (216.200.0.154) 93.290 ms 93.283 ms 95.424 ms
13 10.1.6.1 (10.1.6.1) 93.207 ms 99.115 ms 93.810 ms
14 law5-rsp-d.hotmail.com (216.32.183.15) 248.894 ms 96.250 ms 94.903 ms
15 lc4.law5.hotmail.com (216.32.243.7) 94.157 ms 94.379 ms 94.217 ms
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
The net has been pretty slow for me, and these "attacks" are either very widespread and very undetectable, or they aren't attacks at all.
Remembering The Hacker Crackdown once again, what started the whole nasty thing were widespread phone service outages that were blamed on hackers. The problem was eventually traced to a cascading phone switch bug, but the damage was done even then, and many hackers and crackers had their equipment (unlawfully?) seized by the government. After the DeCSS fiasco and now this, I don't want to see a world-wide repeat of this travesty.
So what can we do to check this out, guys?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Hi, Spot!
Wow, we have an Electronics Bo... We have a mall? Wow, I *do* need to get out more!
Oh man, after I get my new computer next summer, maybe I'll worry about real cool hardcore linux gaming. But not yet...
later,
Peter
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Yes, I've heard good things about Electronics Boutique, although I haven't been to one in a while.
CompUSA has gotten better though, and I've even started to see Linux in some Babbage's/Software Etc.'s...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.