I use this script to dial up to work with a SecurID card; it prompts for the number at the appropriate point. I guess I could hook in a little dialog box, but I'm cool with typing into an XTerm. Probably horribly mangled by/., but hey maybe it'll give you some ideas.
#!/usr/bin/expect -f set modem/dev/modem set countermax 10 set speed 115200
## help text for user; numbers elided, and a big wodge of other PoPs removed send_user "\n" send_user "PoP DIAL-IN NUMBERS:\n" send_user "\n" send_user "Toll-free: UK only: 0800 xxx xxxx/xxxx USA only: 800 xxx xxx\n" send_user "Pay: UK: +44 (0)20 7 xxxxxxx/xxxxxxx New York: +1 212 xxx xxxx/xxxx\n" send_user "\n" send_user " +----------+\n" send_user " SHORT-CUTS: | 1 | -- UK toll-free numbers\n" send_user " +----------+\n" send_user " | 2 3 | -- UK pay\n" send_user " +----------+\n" send_user "\n" send_user "Enter a shortcut or a number to dial:\n> "
set timeout -1 expect_user { -re "^0?\n" { # UK toll-free set dialup 0800-xxx-xxxx } -re "^1\n" { # UK toll-fre set dialup 0800-xxx-xxxx } -re "^2\n" { # UK pay set dialup 020-7-xxxxxxx } -re "^3\n" { # UK pay set dialup 020-7-xxxxxxx } -re "(.*)\n" { set dialup $expect_out(buffer) } }
set timeout 60 send_user "Using PoP dial-in: $dialup\n" send_user "Dialling: "
#system "setserial -av $modem autoconfig" system "stty $speed -echoe -echo raw $modem" spawn -noecho -open [open $modem "r+"]
[...]
Linux blows Sun out of the water in terms of price/performance (which is obvious since Linux is free), [...]
Don't forget to factor in the time required to set up a Linux erver compared to a Solaris server. To some extent it depends on your experience which is faster, but I'd wager that it's easier to get a really solid HA Solaris box up and serving pages than a Linux box. Support for RAID hardware, failover and so on is in the early stages, and requires a good deal of tinkering to get working right.
As JWZ says, Linux is only free if your time has no value. Well, I wouldn't gop that far, but I do see where he's coming from.
As far as I am aware, reverse engineering cannot be prohibited in Europe (please correct me if I'm wrong: I found that reference just this minute & haven't checked it out thoroughly). This may explain the clause in the agreement:
You may not remove any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary notices from the Software or the media. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software,
except to the extent Compaq cannot prohibit such acts by law. (my emphasis)
That said, however, the Digital guys, and latterly Compaq, have been very supportive of Linux on Alpha, and I don't think they're trying to pull a fast one here. Weaseling out of this agreement would be a breach of faith, and they as a company have a lot to offer the Linux community. Don't piss through your own letterboxes, people. -- W.A.S.T.E.
I've used ODB2, the predecessor of Jasmine, and I wouldn't touch anything related to that product line with a 10-foot stick. ODB2 had very small market penetration in the UK, and everyone has dropped it (some quicker, some slower, but everyone's dropped it). This is not coincidence. Data corruption was a regular event, support involved posting DAT tapes to Japan, the ICL programmers working on the application layer were, shall we say, challenged. This is not to say that other people's experiences might not be different, and Jasmine might be juuuust great, but I'd run screaming from the room if someone tried to make me use anything derived from ODB2 again. It'd be a resigning issue, it was that poor. Send me email if you want more details. -- W.A.S.T.E.
A distribution should never touch/usr/local. That's the whole point of/usr/local -- it's somewhere for the local admin to put things that where they won't get touched. If Red Hat ever put anything in/usr/local... well, I just don't want to think about it.
You should read the FHS some time instead of shooting off at the mouth randomly. Here's what is says about /usr/local.
emacspeak is rather well-regarded (and particularly handy for people that already use the One True Editor...). It's more targeted towards people that can't see, although I'm sure it would be useful for people that can't speak as well. There's another stand-alone project, festival, if you don't dig that M-x stuff (what, you don't have pedals on your terminal?).
If you have access to a good newsagent or a University library (or any reasonably sized metropolitan library I suppose) track down their New Scientist collection. There is an article in the 10th of April issue covering RSI from a slightly different angle than normal. There's an interesting theory that RSI is not caused by physical damage to the wrists/hands, but rather caused by blurring of the brain's distinctions between the fine motor control areas for the hands.
The strain is in the brain
Too much typing can leave you in agony. But rather than damaged muscles or tendons being to blame for RSI, says Bob Holmes, things might be going wrong in the brain
It seems that when you spend a lot of time moving your fingers in very precise, accurate ways your brain can blur them together: you lose fine control over time. This effect has been shown to take place in monkeys made to earn food by `typing' (aside: presumably they put them on Usenet...), and there seems to be some evidence of it occuring in humans. Particularly susceptible, as you might expect, are keyboard operators and musicians.
There is a tiny tidbit from some while ago on the New Scientist web site -- unfortunately they don't appear to have put up the article I'm talking about. If anyone's sufficiently interested I daresay I could type in a couple of short extracts for review.
Here are a couple of links which you might find interesting (tracked down from the broken NS links...):
Repetitive motion injuries have presented clinicians with a significant challenge over the past two and a half decades. Acceptable treatment of inflammatory disorders is well established, but compressive neuropathies and nonspecific complaints of numbness, tingling, and discomfort in the upper extremity present vexing dilemmas. Current research and experience point to multilevel problems, including posturally induced muscular imbalance. Although surgical solutions to these problems are sometimes indicated, conservative approaches successfully treat many individuals and have narrowed the scope and indications for surgical intervention. These approaches include ergonomic changes at the workstation, postural changes, and muscle stretching and strengthening to correct imbalance.
Stretching and Flexibility -- Everything you never wanted to know. Apparently this is a frequently recommended treatment.
The Lancet also has a couple of hits for `RSI' and `repetitive strain': the usal username/password will get you the `free' version of the site.
-- W.A.S.T.E.
why is the linux one so much larger?
on
Mozilla M4 is Out
·
· Score: 1
[...]
"The Ray & Maria Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences" [...]
Or, for short, `The RMS Center for Computer, Information and Intelligence Sciences'....
-- W.A.S.T.E.
man try out any of the mozilla builds
on
Gecko under Review
·
· Score: 1
Um, it's not -1 any more: someone appears to have moderated it up again. If you have a problem with how an article's been moderated, wait to see if someone sorts it out. If it doesn't get sorted, complain. This came up ages ago when moderation first started: dig out the old discussions some time.... -- W.A.S.T.E.
For the Ignorant, what _is_ doczilla? -msg
on
Gecko under Review
·
· Score: 1
doczilla is at (where else?) www.doczilla.org. Did you even look? Google's `I feel lucky' button is perfect for things like this....
If you want an IDE with syntax higlighting I recommend that you try XEmacs (or GNU Emacs). Hairy syntax highlighting, automatic configurable code layout, RCS/CVS revision control, diff/merge interface, tags searching, compiler interface, debugger interface, it's all there. When you cone to write documentation it's the best tool there is (even Neal Stephenson says so, so this must be true). It's got a vi emulation mode if your fingers are wired to the hjkl keys. M-x 1000 praise-emacs! Flames to alt.religion.emacs.
apt is the Debian package management tool. It understands dependencies and downloads:
apt-get install foobar
will upgrade your system to the latest version of package foobar, including any libraries, etc it needs. Run from cron, and never worry about security updates again. More info at Debian.
As to why it's generating a buzz -- I don't really know. I switched from Red Hat to Debian, and it just seems to hang together nicer. Remember the libjeg debacle on Red Hat (5.0?)? That sort of thing doesn't seem to happen with Debian. Other things are nice too: when an X program is installed it installs a menu file. Each window manager comes with a program that takes all the menu files and builds a menu tree: switch window managers and keep your menu items without having to learn Yet Another Window Manager Configuration Format. There are a hell of a lot of packages as well, clearly separated into free and non-free, which is a bonus. No way I'm going back.
A logo consisting of what is essentially an enormous bug (an ant?) doesn't seem like a great idea to me -- might as well have a big, steaming... well, it's just not a very good idea. -- W.A.S.T.E.
I assume that the remaining specs will be along shortly, together with the 3D acceleration API..? The ATI FAQ says not, but I'd definitely like to see it. I mean, someone offers to write them drivers and therefore sell lots more of their cards, and they say no...? Boneheads.
edit/etc/inetd.conf and remove anything you don't use
lock down access to the remaining stuff that you do need (probably just ssh, maybe NTP and other bits and bobs too) using hosts.allow and hosts.deny
note: ssh. Don't let your passwords float around over the net in plain text.
install tripwire or similar
arrange for your syslog output to go to a secure host (or perhaps a printer -- old skool, but an FX80 is dirt cheap & gives a pretty much hack-proof record of the system log)
run SATAN or similar to check for vulnerabilities
make plans for emergency restore -- you do have backups, right?
get & configure a firewall if you haven't already got one
change your passwords often, but not regularly, and use cracklibs to make sure they're not trivially guessable. Change passwords whenever an employee leaves.
last but definitely not least, go and buy `practical Unix security', or similar, and read that too. There's probably a FAQ out there about this sort of thing as well: post the URL here when you find it....
[...]
Even the mailbox format in Outlook is non-standard! [...]
I seem to remember that Outlook stores its mailboxes in JET format: ie using the Access database engine. This explains what it does to your email: beautiful, swan-like RFC 822 compliant documents go in, and a mass of bloody guts and feathers emerges, possibly crashing your machine. More seriously, if this `mailbox' gets corrupted, it's a binary file, and you can't recover the data in it. Email should be robust, and a binary database file accessible by only one firm's products just doesn't cut it.
Um, I don't think Internet2 is quite what you think it is. See the FAQs for more information -- it seems to be centred more around `gigaPOPs' and faster backbones rather than a better distributed naming service/directory infrastructure.
Now Usenet II, on the other hand... time for October indeed.
Get the patches (preferably in bzip2 format) -- they're smaller, and therefore save bandwidth on wherever you're downloading it from. Even if you don't care, saving bandwidth where possible is acknowledged to be A Good Thing. Once you've applied the patch you will have the same code as if you'd downloaded the full tarball, so compilations will be exactly as fast (or slow) as they normally are.
You can't use Windows video drivers on Linux systems. Check the XFree86 FAQ to see which server you need, preferably before you buy a video card. Then download the server (where to get this depends upon which Linux distribution you're using). Email me if you get stuck.
Slashdot Mirror
I use this script to dial up to work with a SecurID card; it prompts for the number at the appropriate point. I guess I could hook in a little dialog box, but I'm cool with typing into an XTerm. Probably horribly mangled by /., but hey maybe it'll give you some ideas.
/dev/modem
/dev/null -1 $spawn_id -2 $spawn_id /usr/sbin/pppd $modem $speed \
#!/usr/bin/expect -f
set modem
set countermax 10
set speed 115200
## help text for user; numbers elided, and a big wodge of other PoPs removed
send_user "\n"
send_user "PoP DIAL-IN NUMBERS:\n"
send_user "\n"
send_user "Toll-free: UK only: 0800 xxx xxxx/xxxx
USA only: 800 xxx xxx\n"
send_user "Pay: UK: +44 (0)20 7 xxxxxxx/xxxxxxx New York: +1 212 xxx xxxx/xxxx\n"
send_user "\n"
send_user " +----------+\n"
send_user " SHORT-CUTS: | 1 | -- UK toll-free numbers\n"
send_user " +----------+\n"
send_user " | 2 3 | -- UK pay\n"
send_user " +----------+\n"
send_user "\n"
send_user "Enter a shortcut or a number to dial:\n> "
set timeout -1
expect_user {
-re "^0?\n" { # UK toll-free
set dialup 0800-xxx-xxxx
}
-re "^1\n" { # UK toll-fre
set dialup 0800-xxx-xxxx
}
-re "^2\n" { # UK pay
set dialup 020-7-xxxxxxx
}
-re "^3\n" { # UK pay
set dialup 020-7-xxxxxxx
}
-re "(.*)\n" {
set dialup $expect_out(buffer)
}
}
set timeout 60
send_user "Using PoP dial-in: $dialup\n"
send_user "Dialling: "
#system "setserial -av $modem autoconfig"
system "stty $speed -echoe -echo raw $modem"
spawn -noecho -open [open $modem "r+"]
send "AT\r"
expect "OK"
#send "ATS10=255&F&C1&D2&K3W1\r"
#expect "OK"
#send "ATM1L3S7=60S11=55S0=0\r"
#expect "OK"
send "ATDT $dialup\r"
set timeout 30
set counter 0
set still_connecting 1
expect {
-re ".*CONNECT.*(\r|\n)" {
set timeout 2
set still_connecting 0
sleep 1
send "\r"
exp_continue
}
-re "BUSY" {
send_user " BUSY: try again later, or try a different number.\n"
exit
}
-re "VOICE" {
send_user " VOICE: aborting.\n"
exit
}
-re ".*NO.*CARRIER" {
send_user " NO CARRIER: aborting.\n"
exit
}
-re ".*NO.*DIAL.*TONE" {
send_user " no dialtone: aborting.\n"
exit
}
-re "Login name:" {
set timeout -1
expect_user -re "(.*)\n"
send "$expect_out(1,string)\r"
set timeout 5
exp_continue
}
-re "Passcode:" {
set timeout -1
expect_user -re "(.*)\n"
send "$expect_out(1,string)\r"
set timeout 30
exp_continue
}
-re "Entering PPP Mode\." {
sleep 3
}
timeout {
if { $still_connecting > 0 } {
send_user "Still trying to connect...\n"
exp_continue
}
incr counter
send_user "Timeout number $counter of $countermax.\n"
send "\r"
if { $counter > $countermax } {
send_user "Giving up.\n"
exit
} else {
send_user "... "
exp_continue
}
}
}
send_user "Running pppd...\n"
overlay -0
call db
--
W.A.S.T.E.
I didn't think Palms had radio... Are you thinking of infrared, by any chance?
--
W.A.S.T.E.
Don't forget to factor in the time required to set up a Linux erver compared to a Solaris server. To some extent it depends on your experience which is faster, but I'd wager that it's easier to get a really solid HA Solaris box up and serving pages than a Linux box. Support for RAID hardware, failover and so on is in the early stages, and requires a good deal of tinkering to get working right.
As JWZ says, Linux is only free if your time has no value. Well, I wouldn't gop that far, but I do see where he's coming from.
--
W.A.S.T.E.
--
W.A.S.T.E.
- Pass 1: Source Reading and Include File Expansion (ipp)
- Pass 2: Meta HTML Macro Construct Expansion (mhc)
- Pass 3: Perl 5 Programming Construct Expansion (eperl)
- Pass 4: M4 Macro Construct Expansion (gm4)
- Pass 5: Diversion Filter (divert)
- Pass 6: Character and String Substitution (asubst)
- Pass 7: HTML Fixup (htmlfix)
- Pass 8: Line Stripping and Output Fixup (htmlstrip)
- Pass 9: Output Splitting and Final Writing (slice)
might be what you're looking for -- specifically the gfont program that comes with the distrib.--
W.A.S.T.E.
I've used ODB2, the predecessor of Jasmine, and I wouldn't touch anything related to that product line with a 10-foot stick. ODB2 had very small market penetration in the UK, and everyone has dropped it (some quicker, some slower, but everyone's dropped it). This is not coincidence. Data corruption was a regular event, support involved posting DAT tapes to Japan, the ICL programmers working on the application layer were, shall we say, challenged. This is not to say that other people's experiences might not be different, and Jasmine might be juuuust great, but I'd run screaming from the room if someone tried to make me use anything derived from ODB2 again. It'd be a resigning issue, it was that poor. Send me email if you want more details.
--
W.A.S.T.E.
A distribution should never touch /usr/local. That's the whole point of /usr/local -- it's somewhere for the local admin to put things that where they won't get touched. If Red Hat ever put anything in /usr/local... well, I just don't want to think about it.
You should read the FHS some time instead of shooting off at the mouth randomly. Here's what is says about /usr/local .
--
W.A.S.T.E.
Gnus. The king of newsreaders.
--
W.A.S.T.E.
emacspeak is rather well-regarded (and particularly handy for people that already use the One True Editor...). It's more targeted towards people that can't see, although I'm sure it would be useful for people that can't speak as well. There's another stand-alone project, festival, if you don't dig that M-x stuff (what, you don't have pedals on your terminal?).
--
W.A.S.T.E.
If you have access to a good newsagent or a University library (or any reasonably sized metropolitan library I suppose) track down their New Scientist collection. There is an article in the 10th of April issue covering RSI from a slightly different angle than normal. There's an interesting theory that RSI is not caused by physical damage to the wrists/hands, but rather caused by blurring of the brain's distinctions between the fine motor control areas for the hands.
It seems that when you spend a lot of time moving your fingers in very precise, accurate ways your brain can blur them together: you lose fine control over time. This effect has been shown to take place in monkeys made to earn food by `typing' (aside: presumably they put them on Usenet...), and there seems to be some evidence of it occuring in humans. Particularly susceptible, as you might expect, are keyboard operators and musicians.
There is a tiny tidbit from some while ago on the New Scientist web site -- unfortunately they don't appear to have put up the article I'm talking about. If anyone's sufficiently interested I daresay I could type in a couple of short extracts for review.
Here are a couple of links which you might find interesting (tracked down from the broken NS links...):
--
W.A.S.T.E.
find . -type f | xargs file | grep 'not stripped' | awk -F: '{print $1'} | xargs strip
--
W.A.S.T.E.
Or, for short, `The RMS Center for Computer, Information and Intelligence Sciences'....
--
W.A.S.T.E.
Um, it's not -1 any more: someone appears to have moderated it up again. If you have a problem with how an article's been moderated, wait to see if someone sorts it out. If it doesn't get sorted, complain. This came up ages ago when moderation first started: dig out the old discussions some time....
--
W.A.S.T.E.
doczilla is at (where else?) www.doczilla.org. Did you even look? Google's `I feel lucky' button is perfect for things like this....
--
W.A.S.T.E.
Look into xringd. This can recognise complex sequences of rings.
--
W.A.S.T.E.
If you want an IDE with syntax higlighting I recommend that you try XEmacs (or GNU Emacs). Hairy syntax highlighting, automatic configurable code layout, RCS/CVS revision control, diff/merge interface, tags searching, compiler interface, debugger interface, it's all there. When you cone to write documentation it's the best tool there is (even Neal Stephenson says so, so this must be true). It's got a vi emulation mode if your fingers are wired to the hjkl keys. M-x 1000 praise-emacs! Flames to alt.religion.emacs.
--
W.A.S.T.E.
apt is the Debian package management tool. It understands dependencies and downloads:
apt-get install foobar
will upgrade your system to the latest version of package foobar, including any libraries, etc it needs. Run from cron, and never worry about security updates again. More info at Debian.
As to why it's generating a buzz -- I don't really know. I switched from Red Hat to Debian, and it just seems to hang together nicer. Remember the libjeg debacle on Red Hat (5.0?)? That sort of thing doesn't seem to happen with Debian. Other things are nice too: when an X program is installed it installs a menu file. Each window manager comes with a program that takes all the menu files and builds a menu tree: switch window managers and keep your menu items without having to learn Yet Another Window Manager Configuration Format. There are a hell of a lot of packages as well, clearly separated into free and non-free, which is a bonus. No way I'm going back.
--
W.A.S.T.E.
A logo consisting of what is essentially an enormous bug (an ant?) doesn't seem like a great idea to me -- might as well have a big, steaming ... well, it's just not a very good idea.
--
W.A.S.T.E.
I assume that the remaining specs will be along shortly, together with the 3D acceleration API..? The ATI FAQ says not, but I'd definitely like to see it. I mean, someone offers to write them drivers and therefore sell lots more of their cards, and they say no...? Boneheads.
--
W.A.S.T.E.
Here are a few things you could do for starters:
--
W.A.S.T.E.
I seem to remember that Outlook stores its mailboxes in JET format: ie using the Access database engine. This explains what it does to your email: beautiful, swan-like RFC 822 compliant documents go in, and a mass of bloody guts and feathers emerges, possibly crashing your machine. More seriously, if this `mailbox' gets corrupted, it's a binary file, and you can't recover the data in it. Email should be robust, and a binary database file accessible by only one firm's products just doesn't cut it.
--
W.A.S.T.E.
Would you care to elaborate? Google didn't turn up anything likely-looking....
--
W.A.S.T.E.
Um, I don't think Internet2 is quite what you think it is. See the FAQs for more information -- it seems to be centred more around `gigaPOPs' and faster backbones rather than a better distributed naming service/directory infrastructure.
Now Usenet II, on the other hand... time for October indeed.
--
W.A.S.T.E.
Get the patches (preferably in bzip2 format) -- they're smaller, and therefore save bandwidth on wherever you're downloading it from. Even if you don't care, saving bandwidth where possible is acknowledged to be A Good Thing. Once you've applied the patch you will have the same code as if you'd downloaded the full tarball, so compilations will be exactly as fast (or slow) as they normally are.
--
W.A.S.T.E.
You can't use Windows video drivers on Linux systems. Check the XFree86 FAQ to see which server you need, preferably before you buy a video card. Then download the server (where to get this depends upon which Linux distribution you're using). Email me if you get stuck.
HIBT...?
--
W.A.S.T.E.