Please disregard previous post and moderate it into oblivion. I was obviously on crack and lacking sleep. That's what you get by being a developper. Sorry for the waste of disk space.
Back to the point, what you want to do is:
1) have a process listen on privileged port 21 2) upon connection, accept() it then pass the socket to an fork()ed unprivileged FTP daemon 3) watch the daemon scream and die when trying to open its data transfer connection on a privileged port.
You may be able to tell ftpd to create its data connection on an unprivileged port, or inetd/xinetd may be able to handle this.
--If everyone hates the DMCA so much, why not actually try this?
Short answer : because noone will want to be the first.
That's a nice little thing with human beings. Group actions are always welcome and overhyped and you always find everybody is ready to do it... until someone _has_ to do it, of course, and then the first one to actually act suddenly finds himself all alone while the others are watching "so ? did it work ? is he in jail ?".
Cringely is clearly aware of that, just like he knows the first reaction of many ppl is to flamemail him instead of getting something done about the problem at hand. Maybe he's trying to give us some kind of electroshock...
I may seem overpessimistic, but in that kind of action people are usually just all talk. Of course, I we had a leader things would be different, but clearly as a community we would never agree on a leader (flamewars, yes, leadership, no;)
Graphics-wise, you're pretty much right. Xenogears's engine was limited to 2D sprites on a richer background, and 3D models on a coarser background. Crono Cross is full 3D, that's why I consider it as an improvement over the Xenogears engine, kinda "Xeno engine 2.0"
Consider the controls and the gameplay... Don't you think they're quite the same ? you have 3 attacks, light/medium/hard, you have (roughly) the same combo system and the same way to "charge" techniques/elementals. The gameplay is not ATB-based : in both games, when it's the player's turn to play the game just waits forever for your command.
Given that and the file layout, the Crono Cross engine is definitely "Xeno engine 2.0" IMHO. Of course, I may be plain wrong on this one, anyone knows better ?
--Chrono Cross was released to make the rendering engine for Final Fantasy IX.
Really ? Seems strange, the Chrono Cross engine has the same look and feel as the previously released Xenogears engine (and even roughly the same file layout). I don't think it bears much resemblance with the FFIX engine though...
I find ironic your quoting of a commercial to describe your point. The message therein has been designed and massaged to interest you in order to sell you something. That means the advertisers at least are aware of the lack of freedom in the US...
Maybe you have a point here (would it be so easy ??)
However, "We have 100 percent coverage of peer-to-peer file sharing," Ishikawa claims. "If you are illegally sharing copyrighted materials, we know who you are." is the most stupid thing I read in years. Maybe they really think we're fools.
I realize that those people keep trying new idea after new idea in order to have their business model survive, but their choice of a "target" is wrong IMHO.
Right now an ad "target" is roughly defined as an (age, sex, income) tuple. Makes the job of ad creators easier, and may even help product targetting, I wouldn't know... But what I think is that people are bored of watching commercials that, even if specifically 'targetted' to suit them, also match a good part of the remaining population. To sum up, i'll say their targetting is "just too loose".
Consider this alternative. A few days ago a new TV program popped up here, and *gosh* they advertise books and movies to make some money. What's new (new here, YMMV) is that it's a comic show, and you can't tell the ads from the show... Once in a while they'll just make a joke about a book or a movie, instead of politics or GWB.
And that works ! I really despise commercials and you won't find me in front of the screen as soon as one begins, but I found out that I like to be entertained with nice humor, being it about an advertised book or not. In short, for the first time I have the feeling that I have been "properly" targetted:)
If only companies would investigate alternate ways of targetting audience, both their business model and our existences would get better.... I think.
The Spanish Inquisition (breaking my door): Hand up, you profit-leeching scum ! We have evidence you're one of the nodes that have downloaded LOTR !
Me: I was drunk at that time. I plead temporary irresponsability.
They: Enough ! Let us access to your hard drive, so we can find Proof and Evidence of your Guilt ! (emphasis mine)
Me: Well, maybe I burnt it on a CD, I don't remember... the CD pile behind you is several feet high, but I bet it's somewhere in there...
They: Ha ha ha ! We fond it ! You have TTT-LOTR-prefect-quality.avi on your hard drive ! Let's see ! What ??... "Anal Retentive Goatse Butts - Perfect Quality" appears on the screen...
Me: Well, I stumbled on this last night, but it was a hoax...
They: Never mind, Sir.
Me: Hey don't get away ? will you pay for my door ?
You have a point, and this is getting interesting.
I've been using a gnutella servent on both win32 and linux platforms for a few months and there's an interesting phenomenon with the popular clients:
90% of the peers you see are "near" you (on the same continent).
In the case of gnutella (I don't know about edonkey et al. and I don't want to start a flamewar), the "web" design of the protocol has the client preferably store the most responsive (closest) hosts it encounters, so usually you don't find a japanese machine in your peer when you connect from europe (YMMV, tel me, I'm curious).
My point is, when you search for LOTR in your gnutella client from the US, you won't find my friend Marcel who just downloaded it in France. Maybe after a 8-day search, maybe not. Maybe he has already deleted/burnt it on CD anyway, so the only proof remaining is a few erroneous search hits to a dynamic IP that will be hard to trace/repress.
One it's here on the net, it's lost to them. Sorry Hollywood. Lower your prices. There are still guys like me that love going to the movies, but we grow tired. Oh, and ban cellphones too;)
There are evidences that prove there were signals coming from the towers to guide the planes. There are evidences that prove there were additionnal explosives that were blown up to ensure the towers would not stand. There are evidences that the American government was aware of all this, and maybe was even behind it.
Screwed again. Americans will probably know the truth at the same time they can access details about JFK's murder, say, in a few thousand years...
I feel deeply sorry for you, America. Look at what you have become.
As a professionnal developper and trainer, I can only say two things : 'geeks should train geeks' is the way to go, sure, but properly training other geeks is hard. Sometimes harder than to train an unexperienced non-geek customer.
That said, the feedback from properly trained people (especially other geeks) is amazingly positive. Though YMMV, I guess...
Didn't that technology take several hours to compress a standard res (say 800x600) image ? IIRC the fractal algorithm was lightning fast when uncompressing, but painfully slow when compressing...
That's why alternatives are showing up, like octrees with mini-BSP-trees as leafs, in order to have both good occlusion culling and fast front-to-back/back-to-front traversal.
So the BSP tree is not dead yet:) It's only its use that changes.
Consider that far more than half the world population is 1) unable to afford the internet connection or even understand it and 2) not ready to switch the good ole TV set/VCR pair for an all-digital medium that they'll have to get used to.
What does that mean ? That means internet-based live feed will be used by very few people (us) for many years to come (my rough estimate: 6 to 10), and so won't be as relevant to Hollyw00d as the immediate near-global threat of digital broadcasting.
That also means, IMHO, that 'common people' are not ready for digital either. There will be many years before everyone can afford/accept a digital equipment. If they really stop manufacturing analog devices in 2006, then people will keep their old stuff. My TV is 10 years old,and with the proper cable it accepts PS2 NTSC input like a charm. I trust it to last at least 10 more years:]
So what's the point ? The point is : Hollywood has the media power, we have the internet power. If internet streaming becomes common, and your grandma starts using it, we win. If Hollywood-emasculated devices become common, and your grandma starts using them, we lose.
Your point is correct, the flamewar side-effect is not always a bad thing. I would even say it's a good thing for roughly the first 3 months of its life, during which, as you say, "they force people to think twice about what they intend to do". After 3 months, it tends to become, as I say, "a little boring";)
Your opinion about the disadvantages of getting two products is debatable though, but we may slip on the off-topic cliff of "Application Choice Versus System Uniformity"...
I am biased about all this, anyway. I always liked having two ways of doing things, sometimes just for a change and sometimes because when one of them breaks, well, you still have to work;) It's the reason why I peeked into Linux at the first place (what ? you can choose between several getty login daemons ? great !:)
This, and the fact that, as a developper, I can quickly reduce "why should I tolerate the very existence of app XX, since app YY does the same thing, and I like app YY better" to "why bother with Linux, since Windows does the same thing anyway". There are people who think like that where I work, and I positively don't want to be one of them:]
All this to come to my point, which is a looooong story : let's say we have two email client products, and let's take a real-life example (happens to me once a week). Say you're under Windows (I _have_ to eat, you know...;) and you sell an app that sends mail to the users when, say, terrorists attack the building.
Well, the app uses MAPI, so it should be okay. But the app was developped on a recent platform, and on those platforms MAPI targets Outlook and not much else.
But, well, half our users hate MS and use Lotus Notes. Pain. Suffering. Despair. Daily beer consumption grows tenfold.
That's why I want to stress that, in order to properly support "Application Choice", it is highly desirable to have an uniform object model.
Of course my example is moot in the Linux world. We can run our app painlessly since we talk directly to sendmail (sendmail is the uniform object model;) but consider document exchange/embedding, uniform (and secure, we're not MS) application scripting...
Someone willing to develop a professionnal product for the Linux platform (which will be the case if Linux makes its way to corporate desktops) may want to have a way to code only one app... and let the users choose between KDE and Gnome, as it was meant to be:]
Flamewars like the Gnome/KDE one have always been a side-effect on free projects that have the same final purpose (and on free projects in general;), but it's true that the rivality between developpers of such important components has to disappear. The idea is good, and given its originator it may have a considerable impact on future GUI development aims.
But I'm not quite sure if a compatible theme engine is the way to go... Many people still consider themed desktops as a waste of time and space, and sometimes you can find really awful things on themes.org;)
Another direction may be the component object model itself. There has been, IIRC, at least one attempt to start an uniform interface between ORBIT and the KDE object model, and others may be under way.
IMHO, this would be a much better challenge for Gnome/KDE integrators, and provide a broader signal to the GUI community.
Microsoft has made COM first, then made XP skinnable. Of course, the Linux themes.org effect was not present then (IIRC), and maybe it was sheer luck. It worked for them anyway.
But I'll sure fancy some skinnable icons while drag/dropping objects between Gnome and KDE apps:]
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Please disregard previous post and moderate it into oblivion. I was obviously on crack and lacking sleep. That's what you get by being a developper. Sorry for the waste of disk space.
:
Back to the point, what you want to do is
1) have a process listen on privileged port 21
2) upon connection, accept() it then pass the socket to an fork()ed unprivileged FTP daemon
3) watch the daemon scream and die when trying to open its data transfer connection on a privileged port.
You may be able to tell ftpd to create its data connection on an unprivileged port, or inetd/xinetd may be able to handle this.
--Does Linux offer a way you can declare certain ports as non privlidged?
:
:)
All ports are "privileged" by default on *NIX systems. You have to call ioperm() with root privileges in order to make ports "unprivileged".
According to `man 2 ioperm`
Permissions are not inherited on fork, but on exec they are. This is useful for giving port access permissions to non-privileged tasks.
So it can be done by having your FTP daemon exec()ed by a process run as root, having that process previously call ioperm() on the requested ports.
I don't know if inetd/xinetd can do this. Neither do I know of any other project. Roll up your own
What they say is that :
- some following code may be a CALL EDX, and
- EDX and EDI may have been used by previous code to store function adresses that will be called later.
In both cases their code will get executed.
Your sig is awesome. Welcome to my friend list.
--If everyone hates the DMCA so much, why not actually try this?
;)
Short answer : because noone will want to be the first.
That's a nice little thing with human beings. Group actions are always welcome and overhyped and you always find everybody is ready to do it... until someone _has_ to do it, of course, and then the first one to actually act suddenly finds himself all alone while the others are watching "so ? did it work ? is he in jail ?".
Cringely is clearly aware of that, just like he knows the first reaction of many ppl is to flamemail him instead of getting something done about the problem at hand. Maybe he's trying to give us some kind of electroshock...
I may seem overpessimistic, but in that kind of action people are usually just all talk. Of course, I we had a leader things would be different, but clearly as a community we would never agree on a leader (flamewars, yes, leadership, no
Graphics-wise, you're pretty much right. Xenogears's engine was limited to 2D sprites on a richer background, and 3D models on a coarser background. Crono Cross is full 3D, that's why I consider it as an improvement over the Xenogears engine, kinda "Xeno engine 2.0"
Consider the controls and the gameplay... Don't you think they're quite the same ? you have 3 attacks, light/medium/hard, you have (roughly) the same combo system and the same way to "charge" techniques/elementals. The gameplay is not ATB-based : in both games, when it's the player's turn to play the game just waits forever for your command.
Given that and the file layout, the Crono Cross engine is definitely "Xeno engine 2.0" IMHO. Of course, I may be plain wrong on this one, anyone knows better ?
--Chrono Cross was released to make the rendering engine for Final Fantasy IX.
Really ? Seems strange, the Chrono Cross engine has the same look and feel as the previously released Xenogears engine (and even roughly the same file layout). I don't think it bears much resemblance with the FFIX engine though...
I find ironic your quoting of a commercial to describe your point. The message therein has been designed and massaged to interest you in order to sell you something. That means the advertisers at least are aware of the lack of freedom in the US...
;)
What was the commercial about, a 2-by-4 ?
Ouch. You're absolutely right. Seems like it's time for me to bury myself and get some sleep I'm lacking....
Green Lantern is not a Marvel Comics character, as Spiderman and the Hulk. He's a DC Comics character, as Superman and Batman.
Just my two cents.
Maybe you have a point here (would it be so easy ??)
However,
"We have 100 percent coverage of peer-to-peer file sharing," Ishikawa claims. "If you are illegally sharing copyrighted materials, we know who you are."
is the most stupid thing I read in years. Maybe they really think we're fools.
-- In the U.S., I generally agree with you.
Last time I checked, the countries you consider as suffering from "evil rulings" (China, Taiwan, Tibet et al.) didn't have the DMCA.
-- FATAL ERROR: x86 Architecture Found.
Any serious operating system should spit that error when run on such of platform.
I realize that those people keep trying new idea after new idea in order to have their business model survive, but their choice of a "target" is wrong IMHO.
:)
Right now an ad "target" is roughly defined as an (age, sex, income) tuple. Makes the job of ad creators easier, and may even help product targetting, I wouldn't know... But what I think is that people are bored of watching commercials that, even if specifically 'targetted' to suit them, also match a good part of the remaining population. To sum up, i'll say their targetting is "just too loose".
Consider this alternative. A few days ago a new TV program popped up here, and *gosh* they advertise books and movies to make some money. What's new (new here, YMMV) is that it's a comic show, and you can't tell the ads from the show... Once in a while they'll just make a joke about a book or a movie, instead of politics or GWB.
And that works ! I really despise commercials and you won't find me in front of the screen as soon as one begins, but I found out that I like to be entertained with nice humor, being it about an advertised book or not. In short, for the first time I have the feeling that I have been "properly" targetted
If only companies would investigate alternate ways of targetting audience, both their business model and our existences would get better.... I think.
Sue a few ?
... "Anal Retentive Goatse Butts - Perfect Quality" appears on the screen ...
The Spanish Inquisition (breaking my door): Hand up, you profit-leeching scum ! We have evidence you're one of the nodes that have downloaded LOTR !
Me: I was drunk at that time. I plead temporary irresponsability.
They: Enough ! Let us access to your hard drive, so we can find Proof and Evidence of your Guilt ! (emphasis mine)
Me: Well, maybe I burnt it on a CD, I don't remember... the CD pile behind you is several feet high, but I bet it's somewhere in there...
They: Ha ha ha ! We fond it ! You have TTT-LOTR-prefect-quality.avi on your hard drive ! Let's see ! What ??
Me: Well, I stumbled on this last night, but it was a hoax...
They: Never mind, Sir.
Me: Hey don't get away ? will you pay for my door ?
You have a point, and this is getting interesting.
:
;)
I've been using a gnutella servent on both win32 and linux platforms for a few months and there's an interesting phenomenon with the popular clients
90% of the peers you see are "near" you (on the same continent).
In the case of gnutella (I don't know about edonkey et al. and I don't want to start a flamewar), the "web" design of the protocol has the client preferably store the most responsive (closest) hosts it encounters, so usually you don't find a japanese machine in your peer when you connect from europe (YMMV, tel me, I'm curious).
My point is, when you search for LOTR in your gnutella client from the US, you won't find my friend Marcel who just downloaded it in France. Maybe after a 8-day search, maybe not. Maybe he has already deleted/burnt it on CD anyway, so the only proof remaining is a few erroneous search hits to a dynamic IP that will be hard to trace/repress.
One it's here on the net, it's lost to them. Sorry Hollywood. Lower your prices. There are still guys like me that love going to the movies, but we grow tired. Oh, and ban cellphones too
We already know such declarations are not to be taken seriously. What will they do ? Sue 4,500,500 gnutella nodes ?
He did not perform the feat alone.
There are evidences that prove there were signals coming from the towers to guide the planes. There are evidences that prove there were additionnal explosives that were blown up to ensure the towers would not stand. There are evidences that the American government was aware of all this, and maybe was even behind it.
Screwed again. Americans will probably know the truth at the same time they can access details about JFK's murder, say, in a few thousand years...
I feel deeply sorry for you, America. Look at what you have become.
As a professionnal developper and trainer, I can only say two things : 'geeks should train geeks' is the way to go, sure, but properly training other geeks is hard. Sometimes harder than to train an unexperienced non-geek customer.
That said, the feedback from properly trained people (especially other geeks) is amazingly positive. Though YMMV, I guess...
Try Gentoo linux, you won't regret it : http://www.gentoo.org/
Didn't that technology take several hours to compress a standard res (say 800x600) image ? IIRC the fractal algorithm was lightning fast when uncompressing, but painfully slow when compressing...
That's why alternatives are showing up, like octrees with mini-BSP-trees as leafs, in order to have both good occlusion culling and fast front-to-back/back-to-front traversal.
:) It's only its use that changes.
So the BSP tree is not dead yet
You're right... on the long term.
:]
Consider that far more than half the world population is 1) unable to afford the internet connection or even understand it and 2) not ready to switch the good ole TV set/VCR pair for an all-digital medium that they'll have to get used to.
What does that mean ? That means internet-based live feed will be used by very few people (us) for many years to come (my rough estimate: 6 to 10), and so won't be as relevant to Hollyw00d as the immediate near-global threat of digital broadcasting.
That also means, IMHO, that 'common people' are not ready for digital either. There will be many years before everyone can afford/accept a digital equipment. If they really stop manufacturing analog devices in 2006, then people will keep their old stuff. My TV is 10 years old,and with the proper cable it accepts PS2 NTSC input like a charm. I trust it to last at least 10 more years
So what's the point ? The point is : Hollywood has the media power, we have the internet power. If internet streaming becomes common, and your grandma starts using it, we win. If Hollywood-emasculated devices become common, and your grandma starts using them, we lose.
At least we know the rules.
Your point is correct, the flamewar side-effect is not always a bad thing. I would even say it's a good thing for roughly the first 3 months of its life, during which, as you say, "they force people to think twice about what they intend to do". After 3 months, it tends to become, as I say, "a little boring" ;)
;) It's the reason why I peeked into Linux at the first place (what ? you can choose between several getty login daemons ? great ! :)
:]
;) and you sell an app that sends mail to the users when, say, terrorists attack the building.
;) but consider document exchange/embedding, uniform (and secure, we're not MS) application scripting...
:]
Your opinion about the disadvantages of getting two products is debatable though, but we may slip on the off-topic cliff of "Application Choice Versus System Uniformity"...
I am biased about all this, anyway. I always liked having two ways of doing things, sometimes just for a change and sometimes because when one of them breaks, well, you still have to work
This, and the fact that, as a developper, I can quickly reduce "why should I tolerate the very existence of app XX, since app YY does the same thing, and I like app YY better" to "why bother with Linux, since Windows does the same thing anyway". There are people who think like that where I work, and I positively don't want to be one of them
All this to come to my point, which is a looooong story : let's say we have two email client products, and let's take a real-life example (happens to me once a week). Say you're under Windows (I _have_ to eat, you know...
Well, the app uses MAPI, so it should be okay. But the app was developped on a recent platform, and on those platforms MAPI targets Outlook and not much else.
But, well, half our users hate MS and use Lotus Notes. Pain. Suffering. Despair. Daily beer consumption grows tenfold.
That's why I want to stress that, in order to properly support "Application Choice", it is highly desirable to have an uniform object model.
Of course my example is moot in the Linux world. We can run our app painlessly since we talk directly to sendmail (sendmail is the uniform object model
Someone willing to develop a professionnal product for the Linux platform (which will be the case if Linux makes its way to corporate desktops) may want to have a way to code only one app... and let the users choose between KDE and Gnome, as it was meant to be
Flamewars like the Gnome/KDE one have always been a side-effect on free projects that have the same final purpose (and on free projects in general ;), but it's true that the rivality between developpers of such important components has to disappear. The idea is good, and given its originator it may have a considerable impact on future GUI development aims.
;)
:]
But I'm not quite sure if a compatible theme engine is the way to go... Many people still consider themed desktops as a waste of time and space, and sometimes you can find really awful things on themes.org
Another direction may be the component object model itself. There has been, IIRC, at least one attempt to start an uniform interface between ORBIT and the KDE object model, and others may be under way.
IMHO, this would be a much better challenge for Gnome/KDE integrators, and provide a broader signal to the GUI community.
Microsoft has made COM first, then made XP skinnable. Of course, the Linux themes.org effect was not present then (IIRC), and maybe it was sheer luck. It worked for them anyway.
But I'll sure fancy some skinnable icons while drag/dropping objects between Gnome and KDE apps