Except that the sender's source domain is almost always forged in spam. So, as an owner of several domains, I get hundreds of bounce messages per day in response to spams sent with my one of domains as the source domain.
The "Undeliverable Mail" messages I receive have become, for me, almost worse than the spam.
For a program who's core functionality is name -> number why is the configuration guide heavier than my tombstone? If the future of every Internet standard is to become as complicated as DNS after 35 years then I sincerely believe that the Internet is doomed. 114 RFCs (not counting 20 or so additional obsolete RFCs), WTF? DNS RFCs
By the way, SMTP and IMAP folks, you're way ahead of the game. Your stuff is already reached the point of sublime unusability past which no fully compliant implementation is possible. Well done!
As someone who originally played Adventure on a DECWriter printer terminal I have found the puzzles in games to be increasingly less satisfying in modern games.
A big part of the problem is that in too many case in order to solve the puzzle you generally end up spending a lot of time fighting the game mechanics and game engine rather than actually solving the puzzle. If the gameplay works against my trying solutions or being creative then I'm not interested.
Worst yet is the "puzzles" that require me to follow a script that even an NPC would find degrading and the entire puzzle is figuring out and enacting the lame script the some 4th rate "autuer" has contrived.
Personally, once OpenSolaris goes GPLv3 I'm switching.
Why wait? It's entirely possible that OpenSolaris may never adopt the GPL. Most of the current community members are very happy with CDDL license and some even making "over my dead body" comments regarding adopting the GPL.
OpenSolaris is a nice friendly OS with a nice friendly community and a nice friendly open source license. So unless you're RMS and insist on waiting for GPLv3 to get on board the best time to start with OpenSolaris is probably now!
They pushed thin client because it explained a need that they had: How to sell large iron in a increasingly PC + Internet world.
This is really narrow minded analysis. There are many industries for which thin clients are the perfect solution, call centers being the easiest example. Sun never said that the future would be only thin clients. There are lots of situations where I use a "computer" where I either don't care if it's a full PC or hope that it isn't. The automated registration kiosks at airports are a great example. I once approached a bank of these kiosks only to find that every single one had an "The application has unexpectedly quit" Windows 98 dialog on the screen. I knew that by the next time I visited the airport those kiosks would be gone. Sure enough, they were. Knowing when to apply thin client and knowing when to use a real PC requires good judgement and the correct solution isn't always going to be chosen. At least Sun is offering real thin client technology so that it can be correctly applied in the situations where it's appropriate.
Easiest way to Defeat Captchas
on
Defeating Captcha
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Put up a "free" pr0n site.
Require visitors to the pr0n site to process a captcha before viewing the pr0n. In reality they are proxy processing a captcha for another site (paypal, hotmail, yahoo, etc.) which they never see.
Profit!
Captchas are next to useless and for the visually impaired very frustrating. One more of a example of a technology which annoys everyone and yet doesn't really stop the determined miscreant.
<cough>airport shoe inspections</cough>
While installing Win2k Server a couple of years ago I managed to get infected before the install process even completed. By comparing the creation time of the pagefile and infected DLLs I found that my infection time was slightly more than 6 minutes.
Since that time I always install new operating systems (Windows and otherwise) behind a NAT box until I have all the latest security patches installed.
For visually impaired and blind pedestrians silent vehicles can represent a distinct threat. Part of the problem is the already deafening background noise in urban areas which blocks out important sounds anyway. The industrial world is just too noisy a place.
The throaty rumble of a Harley may jiggle the gonads of the rider in exciting ways, but for everyone else in a half km radius it's just annoying. Harley's don't make the world a better place to live in.
The Segway is also a problem for the blind due to their quiet operation, but of greater concern the Segway promoters want to enable riders to drive primarily on the sidewalks. Sidewalks are currently reserved for pedestrians (including wheelchair and scooter users) and skaters. This should stay as it is. When the issue comes up in your town (as it surely will) please express your opinion opposing allowing Segways on sidewalks.
I have to take exception to your definition of the teams. On what basis are you saying that Sun is on the "Microsoft team"?
The Microsoft payout was for civil damages and a settlement in the long ongoing Java suit which it seems they were likely to lose in the long run. They lost, Sun won. Sun gets the money. It was not Microsoft "buying Sun loyalty" or a payoff for Sun to do their dirty work. To characterise it as otherwise would need a lot of evidence--beyond the conjectural crap which seems to dominate these discussions.
The substance of the agreement was that Sun and Microsoft would no longer act like mortal enemies. It was not a pact of eternal friendship and devotion. It did nothing more than normalize relations. Prior to the agreement they wouldn't even agree that an agreement was possible. Going forward Sun will work with Microsoft on some iniatives and oppose them on others. Just like Sun does with Oracle, IBM, RedHat, HP, Novell, etc.
Cmon, do you really think anyone would be stupid enough to repeat SGI's mistake and plan to succeed by being the best Microsoft lickspittle?
Oh, and poor HP. Maybe the reason they are lost in the middle is because they can't decide what direction they're going. Support Itanium? Yep! Support Opteron? Yep! Support PA-RISC? Forever! Support HPUX? Yep! Support Linux? yep! Support Windows? Of course! Hurray for everything! (The same can be said of IBM, but they hide it better).
1. Company releases a significant work under a BSD-like license.
2. GPL-fan produces a useful non-trivial addition to the work, releases the whole result under GPL license.
3. Company has to either replicate the addition to maintain BSD-license and their own rights or accept that their work is now under GPL even if it's still largely their work.
Sun and many others (Apache, X.org, *BSD, me, etc.) don't believe in the GPL.
It's easy to understand that they don't wish their contributions to be co-opted into the GPL realm. As Sun, and many others see it, that would reduce their rights. Avoiding a GPL lockup is undoubtably part of Sun's strategy.
Even RMS is very clear that copyleft is intended to achieve the much same effects as the patent system, though with a very different goal. see Wikipedia on GPL Ideology.
I personally think most technology patents have been a significant deterrent to industry adoption. I believe the GPL has the same effect. There's a huge disincentive for commercial businesses to make significant contributions to GPL projects. Unless their real goal is not to "make the world a better place", but instead to cripple the revenue stream of their competitors a la Microsoft's favourite tactics. I'm generally very cynical about any commerical donation of GPL code. If it's a real donation then it should be under a BSD-like "copycenter" license.
My access point's SSID is "819 Peralta" which, not coincidentally, is my house's street address. I leave my access point wide open to anyone who wants to use it. I've only had one person admit to using my access point though my MACID log has shown that 65 or so people have connected.
The only downside to having an open access point is that I have to be a little more cautious what network services I have exposed.
In early 2002 I started a Win2K Server installation. The installation is a 2 step process. The first step formats the partitions and copies a minimal setup onto the machine which then reboots and completes the "real" installation.
Unwisely I had the machine directly attached to my then DSL w/ DHCP connection. As soon as the installation was completed I started running System Update to install security patches. Nearly the first patch detected that I was already infected by the virus de jour. I took a quick look and found that the virus had installed it 6 minutes after the pagefile was created in the very first boot of the machine.
Moral of the story: Always install new machines behind a NAT box and run all security updates before attaching them to the public network. I continue to use this policy even for linux boxes.
In these modern days an installation isn't done when the DVD-ROM pops out of the drive and the machine reboots. I believe that OSes of all flavours should temporarily disable all network facing services upon install or upgrade until the user has had a chance to install post-release security updates (or at least click a "I'm an idiot, run network services now" button). This would be much safer, regardless of the OS.
Product as Personal Identity
on
The Cult of Mac
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
Not specifically a slam against those who have chosen to devote themselves to the cult of Macintosh, but it's pretty tragic when anyone choses to define their life in terms of a product or company. Fanbois of any stripe are pathetic losers.
If there ever was an article which deserved a "troll/flamebait" moderation it's this one. What's the motivation for continually dumping on Sun?
Especially for a non-news topic like this one. Gotta keep the hate furnaces stoked by dredging up crap on which the ignornant fanbois can proclaim their faith eh?
If the only purpose of an article is to re-hash the same old flames then don't press that post button!
My wife has been terribly excited by electronic voting because it promises to be accessible. She takes great offense that because she is blind she has to get assistance to vote under the current system.
It's taken a while, but I've finally convinced her that being able to "vote" is pointless if the "vote" is not counted or they system itself is fundamentally flawed.
It's interesting that the local newspaper, the Berkeley Daily Planet took the position that being opposed to electronic voting was a scheme to disenfranchise the disabled. It took a while, but following many insightful letters, they finally admitted that electronic voting as currently proposed in Alameda had the more serious potential to disenfranchise everyone!
As technical professionals it's important we become informed as possible on the subject. That way when your dad or neighbour ask about electronic voting you can explain the dangers and current issues. The more the general public learns about electronic voting, the better off we all will be. (and these survey numbers will be more favourable)
Which was an XT clone with an 8Mhz bus and an NEC V20 processor.
I was so excited to get home and "upgrade" from my C64 that I took a corner too fast and due to melting snow lost traction and went into oncoming traffic. Another car swerved to avoid me and wrecked the magnesium rims on his wheels going over a curb.
I couldn't afford to pay for the rims and was afraid of what making a claim would to my insurance so I had to take the computer back to pay for the damage.
It was 5 months before I could afford to buy a new computer. Luckily in those 5 months the priced had dropped enough that I got a 35MB HD rather than a 20MB (RLL instead of MFM) and a printer (Epson FX-85) too.
Java and linux is a very popular combination and for good reason. Java remains the most effective way to write business process solutions and linux is often teh best way to deploy them.
I write only Java. I use only Linux.
I'm very tired of the knee-jerk "open source java" arguments. I'm Even more tired of the "Mono is morally superior to Java" argument. The JCP.org process is more than good enough for me..NET and C# on the other hand scare me. Regardless of that "ECMA Standard" bullshit the truth is that only one company matters in the C# game and that's Microsoft. The same can't be said about Sun and Java.
Do you really believe that Microsoft would promote any technology it didn't control unless it didn't have a choice.
Far too many Windows applications require that the user be logged in as Administrator. So many apps unreasonably require admin privledges that many users opt to be permanently logged in as Administrator. This in itself is a huge security hole.
Microsoft needs to close this hole and improve the application install/uninstall process. Many of the other fixes in XP sp2 are just window dressing without these necessary loopholes being closed.
Current reports indicate that the odds of a CD and DVD recordable media lasting 20 years are less than 50-50. There's a great market opportunity for media which has a shelf long life. On the other hand, I have no interest in media with a short life and since renting DVDs is obsolete anyway (do people really still do that?) they really need consider their current business.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that the sender's source domain is almost always forged in spam. So, as an owner of several domains, I get hundreds of bounce messages per day in response to spams sent with my one of domains as the source domain. The "Undeliverable Mail" messages I receive have become, for me, almost worse than the spam.
By the way, SMTP and IMAP folks, you're way ahead of the game. Your stuff is already reached the point of sublime unusability past which no fully compliant implementation is possible. Well done!
As someone who originally played Adventure on a DECWriter printer terminal I have found the puzzles in games to be increasingly less satisfying in modern games.
A big part of the problem is that in too many case in order to solve the puzzle you generally end up spending a lot of time fighting the game mechanics and game engine rather than actually solving the puzzle. If the gameplay works against my trying solutions or being creative then I'm not interested.
Worst yet is the "puzzles" that require me to follow a script that even an NPC would find degrading and the entire puzzle is figuring out and enacting the lame script the some 4th rate "autuer" has contrived.
Why wait? It's entirely possible that OpenSolaris may never adopt the GPL. Most of the current community members are very happy with CDDL license and some even making "over my dead body" comments regarding adopting the GPL.
OpenSolaris is a nice friendly OS with a nice friendly community and a nice friendly open source license. So unless you're RMS and insist on waiting for GPLv3 to get on board the best time to start with OpenSolaris is probably now!
And I for one welcome our new cartilaginous overlords....
Captchas are next to useless and for the visually impaired very frustrating. One more of a example of a technology which annoys everyone and yet doesn't really stop the determined miscreant. <cough>airport shoe inspections</cough>
Since that time I always install new operating systems (Windows and otherwise) behind a NAT box until I have all the latest security patches installed.
If it's sad when it happens to Sun it's many orders of magnitude sadder when it's happening to the whole industry. (which IMHO has happened).
and about as interesting as the return of bell bottom pants. (though not as interesting as the return of the mini-skirt).
Paul Graham seems to be greatly concerned with fashion, viz his previous "all my hacker friends hate Java and love Python".
It's great to see that people can be as vacuous about technology as they can be about clothing.
For visually impaired and blind pedestrians silent vehicles can represent a distinct threat. Part of the problem is the already deafening background noise in urban areas which blocks out important sounds anyway. The industrial world is just too noisy a place.
The throaty rumble of a Harley may jiggle the gonads of the rider in exciting ways, but for everyone else in a half km radius it's just annoying. Harley's don't make the world a better place to live in.
The Segway is also a problem for the blind due to their quiet operation, but of greater concern the Segway promoters want to enable riders to drive primarily on the sidewalks. Sidewalks are currently reserved for pedestrians (including wheelchair and scooter users) and skaters. This should stay as it is. When the issue comes up in your town (as it surely will) please express your opinion opposing allowing Segways on sidewalks.
I have to take exception to your definition of the teams. On what basis are you saying that Sun is on the "Microsoft team"?
The Microsoft payout was for civil damages and a settlement in the long ongoing Java suit which it seems they were likely to lose in the long run. They lost, Sun won. Sun gets the money. It was not Microsoft "buying Sun loyalty" or a payoff for Sun to do their dirty work. To characterise it as otherwise would need a lot of evidence--beyond the conjectural crap which seems to dominate these discussions.
The substance of the agreement was that Sun and Microsoft would no longer act like mortal enemies. It was not a pact of eternal friendship and devotion. It did nothing more than normalize relations. Prior to the agreement they wouldn't even agree that an agreement was possible. Going forward Sun will work with Microsoft on some iniatives and oppose them on others. Just like Sun does with Oracle, IBM, RedHat, HP, Novell, etc.
Cmon, do you really think anyone would be stupid enough to repeat SGI's mistake and plan to succeed by being the best Microsoft lickspittle?
Oh, and poor HP. Maybe the reason they are lost in the middle is because they can't decide what direction they're going. Support Itanium? Yep! Support Opteron? Yep! Support PA-RISC? Forever! Support HPUX? Yep! Support Linux? yep! Support Windows? Of course! Hurray for everything! (The same can be said of IBM, but they hide it better).
It works like this:
1. Company releases a significant work under a BSD-like license.
2. GPL-fan produces a useful non-trivial addition to the work, releases the whole result under GPL license.
3. Company has to either replicate the addition to maintain BSD-license and their own rights or accept that their work is now under GPL even if it's still largely their work.
And yes, it's happened more than a few times.
It's easy to understand that they don't wish their contributions to be co-opted into the GPL realm. As Sun, and many others see it, that would reduce their rights. Avoiding a GPL lockup is undoubtably part of Sun's strategy.
Even RMS is very clear that copyleft is intended to achieve the much same effects as the patent system, though with a very different goal. see Wikipedia on GPL Ideology.
I personally think most technology patents have been a significant deterrent to industry adoption. I believe the GPL has the same effect. There's a huge disincentive for commercial businesses to make significant contributions to GPL projects. Unless their real goal is not to "make the world a better place", but instead to cripple the revenue stream of their competitors a la Microsoft's favourite tactics. I'm generally very cynical about any commerical donation of GPL code. If it's a real donation then it should be under a BSD-like "copycenter" license.
My access point's SSID is "819 Peralta" which, not coincidentally, is my house's street address. I leave my access point wide open to anyone who wants to use it. I've only had one person admit to using my access point though my MACID log has shown that 65 or so people have connected.
The only downside to having an open access point is that I have to be a little more cautious what network services I have exposed.
In early 2002 I started a Win2K Server installation. The installation is a 2 step process. The first step formats the partitions and copies a minimal setup onto the machine which then reboots and completes the "real" installation.
Unwisely I had the machine directly attached to my then DSL w/ DHCP connection. As soon as the installation was completed I started running System Update to install security patches. Nearly the first patch detected that I was already infected by the virus de jour. I took a quick look and found that the virus had installed it 6 minutes after the pagefile was created in the very first boot of the machine.
Moral of the story: Always install new machines behind a NAT box and run all security updates before attaching them to the public network. I continue to use this policy even for linux boxes.
In these modern days an installation isn't done when the DVD-ROM pops out of the drive and the machine reboots. I believe that OSes of all flavours should temporarily disable all network facing services upon install or upgrade until the user has had a chance to install post-release security updates (or at least click a "I'm an idiot, run network services now" button). This would be much safer, regardless of the OS.
Not specifically a slam against those who have chosen to devote themselves to the cult of Macintosh, but it's pretty tragic when anyone choses to define their life in terms of a product or company. Fanbois of any stripe are pathetic losers.
If there ever was an article which deserved a "troll/flamebait" moderation it's this one. What's the motivation for continually dumping on Sun?
Especially for a non-news topic like this one. Gotta keep the hate furnaces stoked by dredging up crap on which the ignornant fanbois can proclaim their faith eh?
If the only purpose of an article is to re-hash the same old flames then don't press that post button!
Once again during the Olympics CBC Radio service on the internet will be entirely pre-empted due to these restrictions. [cry]
My wife has been terribly excited by electronic voting because it promises to be accessible. She takes great offense that because she is blind she has to get assistance to vote under the current system.
It's taken a while, but I've finally convinced her that being able to "vote" is pointless if the "vote" is not counted or they system itself is fundamentally flawed.
It's interesting that the local newspaper, the Berkeley Daily Planet took the position that being opposed to electronic voting was a scheme to disenfranchise the disabled. It took a while, but following many insightful letters, they finally admitted that electronic voting as currently proposed in Alameda had the more serious potential to disenfranchise everyone!
As technical professionals it's important we become informed as possible on the subject. That way when your dad or neighbour ask about electronic voting you can explain the dangers and current issues. The more the general public learns about electronic voting, the better off we all will be. (and these survey numbers will be more favourable)
Which was an XT clone with an 8Mhz bus and an NEC V20 processor.
I was so excited to get home and "upgrade" from my C64 that I took a corner too fast and due to melting snow lost traction and went into oncoming traffic. Another car swerved to avoid me and wrecked the magnesium rims on his wheels going over a curb.
I couldn't afford to pay for the rims and was afraid of what making a claim would to my insurance so I had to take the computer back to pay for the damage.
It was 5 months before I could afford to buy a new computer. Luckily in those 5 months the priced had dropped enough that I got a 35MB HD rather than a 20MB (RLL instead of MFM) and a printer (Epson FX-85) too.
Java and linux is a very popular combination and for good reason. Java remains the most effective way to write business process solutions and linux is often teh best way to deploy them.
.NET and C# on the other hand scare me. Regardless of that "ECMA Standard" bullshit the truth is that only one company matters in the C# game and that's Microsoft. The same can't be said about Sun and Java.
I write only Java. I use only Linux.
I'm very tired of the knee-jerk "open source java" arguments. I'm Even more tired of the "Mono is morally superior to Java" argument. The JCP.org process is more than good enough for me.
Do you really believe that Microsoft would promote any technology it didn't control unless it didn't have a choice.
See MOST : Canada's First Space Telescope
Far too many Windows applications require that the user be logged in as Administrator. So many apps unreasonably require admin privledges that many users opt to be permanently logged in as Administrator. This in itself is a huge security hole.
Microsoft needs to close this hole and improve the application install/uninstall process. Many of the other fixes in XP sp2 are just window dressing without these necessary loopholes being closed.
Current reports indicate that the odds of a CD and DVD recordable media lasting 20 years are less than 50-50. There's a great market opportunity for media which has a shelf long life. On the other hand, I have no interest in media with a short life and since renting DVDs is obsolete anyway (do people really still do that?) they really need consider their current business.