As a freelance programmer and sysadmin, I admin about 20 boxen for various customers. Virtually all Red Hat systems under various support contracts.
Many of these servers are using hardware or software RAID, but one of the terms in most every contract I've ever signed includes the term "regular, off-site backups".
In my case, I discovered rsync and wrote a nice, easy-to-use backup system based on rsync I've called Backup Buddy. This allows me to not only backup data, but with a minimum of additional storage usage, view my backups as a set going back through time to any point in the last (typically) 45 days, seamlessly.
With this tool, I manage about 2 TB of data on 4 different backup servers, all remotely.
My own backup server for my own stuff is a recycled AMD K6 system with an PCI IDE card and two HDD, 120 & 160 GB put together using Logical Volume Manager. I've fallen back on these backups innumerable times - and I can't say how nice it is when a restore can be done in 2 minutes flat from any nearby workstation.
I also have two primary servers at different locations (hint: they are 200+ miles apart) on separate networks in case of catastrophe - they're also mirrored via rsync nightly, and a switch from one to the other takes about 3 hours.
Uptime is important, and I think this is proof that even for small (1 employee) businesses can have a reliable, effective backup solution!
With how everyone has been treating them, versioning is pretty much worthless, beyond identifying what you have..
None is consistent, there is no 'standard' and its ( as is apparent by the story, and many in the past ) all arbitrary...
Uhm, well, DUH!?!?!
What about a "version number" is anything but arbitrary?
I write some code. I give it a name. Version is sorta secondary, based on what I figure it should do, and what I want the perception of the codebase to be.
Now, I release version 1.0 of the software product. Bug reports come in, and I fix them. At what point does the product become 1.1?
I'm running into this with a company I work with. We have like version 4.0.51 since there's been (I'm not exaggerating) 51 releases of the software to the public in one year.
Release early, release often, remember? I've built a distribution and update mechanism into the software so it's painless for both me and the end users....
So, we've been adding features and fixing bugs, over and over. It's not the same product by any stretch as it was when it was 4.0.0... at what point does it become 4.1?
It's all arbitrary, and there's nothing else. Get used to it, dude!
In the OSS circles, I've seen *alot* more emphasis on making sure that a product is stable and feature complete before it gets to 1.0. In commercial circles, this is considered nutty behavior, and products typically hit version 3.x before they really are both stable and feature complete.
Back in my first year or two of programming full-time, I deleted some LIVE data belonging to a customer, because I forgot the "where" clause. For those not familiar with SQL
Yeah, I've done that one a few times - though I'd always had backups 24 hours old. I've gotten into the habit if typing "begin transaction;" first!
EG:
Begin transaction; DELETE FROM table WHERE condition;
Then hit enter, see how many records were nuked (basic sanity check, if I see 217,000 records deleted I can be pretty sure the next statement would be "rollback;"
If all's well, THEN I type "commit;";
Can't do this on MySQL 3, however, but that's rare since I develop primarily on PostgreSQL.
Another good habit, if you're doing much work, is to write a cron script that dumps all your database stuff to your own home directory, if you have the room.
Now, in case you dismiss me as a troll or worse, a "Grammar Nazi", let me point out that your post is informative and useful, while the great-grandparent presented a negative net worth.
I never claimed that you couldn't spend $10,000 to get a Windows system to do what you needed - for that matter, it's easy to spend that much or more on a Linux system! (custom software == EXPENSIVE)
My point is that the great-grandparent post was not being truthful. Lies, even if they could be true, are almost never a help. Thus, I call BS, and thus this thread is created.
Yes, I was reloading (again) one of my computers, used primarily for kid's games, running XP Pro. Yes, I noticed how much I was downloading *after* I got the system up and running.
But, truthfully, when you factor in the post-install configuration time for a Linux system, it's really comparable. Consider time spent: Setting up ide-scsi for CD-RW; Setting up the DECSS libraries so that you can watch DVDs; Finding a compatable printer driver for your XYZ printer, and then getting it to print properly....
Also, consider that many of these free alternatives (EG: Gimp, Open Office, Blender) are available for Windows - so it's not as though you're forced to spend $600 on a copy of MS-Office!
If Linux wins the marketplace (which I believe to be an inevitability) it will do so on it's own merits, not because of lies and deceipt.
As "Coldplay" once said: "Give me real, don't give me fake".
The Internet is designed for enabling communication - it's not designed to ensure that everybody *WANTS* that communication!
If an area is unpoliced, crime rates will rise. People who wish to conduct legitimate business will leave those unpoliced areas.
Just because it's "the IntarWEB" doesn't mean the above rule changes any. If Macedonia/Mongolia/Outer Slobovia wants to be dealt with "fairly", they should police their own areas so that crime stops paying, like the other, more trusted areas.
Would it be any different with any other communications medium than the Internet?
How many people actualy watch over the air programming? Most over the air programming has deterioated to the least common denominator and saturated with advertising to the point little value is left.
Which is a funny side effect of the increasing greed of the television industry.
Rather than provide quality programming, the formula has been to provide something that would appeal to the broadest number of people (read, lowest common denominator) as cheaply as possible, and then force you to watch it on their terms.
Television for me represents a tremendous shame on humanity since something that can be used to disseminate so much valuable information is used instead to propogate cheap, artificial shows.
So, the end result is... nobody watches it, anymore, defeating the purpose of all the lock-ins that greedy executives worked so hard at. (rather than working at quality shows)
I tried useing windows XP for a short period fo time but it seemed like I was going to the store trying to find what applications I wanted but would have had to pay well over $10,000 to get all the applications I would have needed. I tried pirateing some software that I wanted to use but that just didn't feel right. I switched back to Linux and don't know if I will ever even try that MS stuff again.
Bzzzzt! I call Bullsh*t
You made your best attempt, but it doesn't pass the "sniff test". Let's see, we have:
"I tried useing windows XP..."
Ooops! In the first 4 WORDS we have two spelling errors, but we'll let that slide...
"...like I was going to the store trying to find what applications I wanted..."
Ok, but you don't name any? Word? Excel? Lotus Notes? Anything? But here's the telling part...
"...but would have had to pay well over $10,000 to get all the applications I would have needed."
Perhaps you should get familiar with ispell. I'm sorry, but I can't see $10,000 in application expenses that you'd ever need.
Perhaps I should rephrase that? "I can't see $10,000 in application expenses that you'd ever need."
Even MS Office is just about $200, IIS comes for free, and many software alternatives exist on Windows for free. EG: MySQL, Apache, etc.
What's very telling is how nonspecific you are about this $10,000.
Hmmm... lemme guess -
1) You're between the ages of 13-16.
2) You're in your parent's house, using a Windows XP or ME computer...
About 10-15 years ago, I lived for a summer in San Fransisco. I bought a "muni-pass" which gave me unlimited BART and SF/Metro for ~ $20/month anywhere in SF.(I was a minor at the time - 17 Y.O.)
This was for the buses trolleys, and BART trains.
I remember the adult version costing somewhere around $80-$100, and provided unlimited BART in the greater Bay Area.
On a trip to Southern California, I kept track of the mileage. I consistently got ~ 32-33 MPG, cruising at > 75 MPH with 87 octane gasoline. The EPA rating is 31, so I'm happy.
Seriously, though. If it's not broken, why fix it? Sure, it might be fun to port all those old applications to a modern OS, but who's going to pay for it? If you have a standalone machine already doing *exactly* what you need it to do, reliably, I see no need to start messing with it.
I use FreeDOS to run quicken via SSH in an xterm on Linux. It works well, too!
The problem with this approach is that the PHP programmer still has to ensure that "SafeQuery()" is correct. (I've seen some really braindead input checking from PHP guys)
The point of this function is that no input validation is needed whatsoever to prevent an sql-injection error.
I'm not trying to say that you don't need to do input validation - there are still plenty of logic errors and the like that are not prevented from using this tool.
But given the severity of sql-injection vulnerabilities, wouldn't it be smart to stop them dead in their tracks?
As an aside, that is waaaaay overkill. See PEAR::DB and DB::quote for all user data passed into an SQL query.
Hint: in MySQL you can quote every single data type passed to it via SQL (including integers and floats) and it automatically converts them to the correct type, so calling DB::quote blindly for all user data is hunky dory.
It makes more sense to use GRANT/REVOKE than templating SQL queries, usually. Privilege separation and access control lists can do a lot more for you to save your code than templating, usually (e.g.: using a quick effective database 'sudo' request in a sandbox to update a customer's shopping cart with the proper prices & totals from a website).
I don't think you understood what was said, at all.
We're not talking about typing - how is MySQL's dynamic typing going to catch a non-escaped quote in the statement?
Also, why would you assume I'm talking about MySQL? (I use PostgreSQL, which also has dynamic typing, but still...)
Even with GRANT/REVOKE, all you're doing is limiting the damage from an sql-injection error, not preventing it from happening in the first place.
Remember, a properly called, malicious sql-injection error does not result in errors that can be rolled back with a transaction!
ACLs and Priv Sep are just another layer of security that yet again underscore my primary point:
I repeat: Bugs should not result in security issues!
A properly designed application will have multiple layers of error detection and security checking. As you write your software, abstract things like security checks and database access into an API, and then do insane amounts of input validation behind that API!
In my home turf language, PHP, one of the biggest common problems in applications is the dreaded SQL-Insertion bug.
The pat, standard answer is to validate-validate-validate!
But, I'm human. I *WILL* make mistakes. It's only a question of when, not if.
Ask yourself: How can I structure my application so that mistakes in this regard do not result in an immediate, full compromise?
I bury database access behind an API that forces me to identify the data being passed to the database, and then trap errors from the database so it doesn't show anything to the web client.
Example:
<? $sql="INSERT INTO logindata (login, password) VALUES ('[login]', '[password]')";
if (!$DB->SafeQuery($sql, $todb))
Error($DB->Error());
?>
What happened here? The SQL statement does not contain any data - instead I'm passing a template for the query, and the data array to parse into the query. The function SafeQuery() does a pattern match to get the names of the fields (in the square brackets) and then does the requisite addslashes(), as well as checking the number of fields to ensure that everything matches up, before actually dumping this statement over to the database.
Errors get trapped within the object, and are accessed through function Error(). This prevents any sensitive information being sent to the browser, and the global Error() function simply displays an "Sorry but an error occured" webpage while logging the text of the error message, and quits.
Now, none of this negates the need to do input validation - but this makes a very bad threat for PHP application all but disappear!
As you develop your applications, structure them as much as possible such that bugs and errors do not result in security breaches.
Use constraints and triggers in your databases to kick out data that can't be demonstrated as good. Use APIs and functions to interface with areas (such as the shell/CGI interface) so that common security mistakes (such as not escaping a shell argument) simply can't happen.
Repeat after me: Bugs should not result in security issues!
Broadly speaking, we have a society that is divided into those who 'own' and those who don't. For the majority of society, that is not the owners, life is structured around working to survive.
When something is done in a new and more efficient way then in a sense, society benefits. However, those who really benefit are 'owning' segment of the population, not the 'workers.'
But that's just plain wrong. Notice that $0.32 can of soda in your hand? You think that you could have that if it wasn't for severe mechanization of the factory line? What about that car in your driveway which gives you hundreds of miles of phyiscal reach, that annually costs you a mere 15% of your average wages?
Technology has historically favored the little guy. It was the printing press that brought down the inquisition - when people could cheaply read books written by their knowledgable peers, the old establishment fell.
That anybody can now publish a website viewable by all for a cost in the dozens of dollars/month is a feat no less remarkable than Gutenberg's retypable printing press.
Cars enabled the average joe to move vast distances with little cost.
Telephones allow the average joe to talk to anybody, anywhere. Add cellular technology to that and the entire population becomes a sort of "hive mind" where anybody can contact just about anybody else, at nearly anytime, in real time.
Many confuse the current increasing disparity between the rich and the middle class as signs that technology is "replacing" the middle class. Instead, what's happening is that work is less and less tied to the value presented by the average joe. Instead, economic power (class) is determined more and more by those who understand leverage of time.
Read "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" to understand leverage. Production is now a given. Now what?
I see us rapidly moving away from the economy of scarcity towards an economy of plenty - something where the standard economic rules are in severe need of update.
From what I've seen, the middle class isn't disappearing - it's splitting into two classes, the "middle class" as classically defined, and a new "upper middle class" that did not really previously exist.
This new "upper middle class" consists primarily of highly paid knowledge workers - Brain surgeous, IT staff who play their cards well, etc. From what I've seen, this is the fastest growing sector of the US economy, and is largely responsible for the skews towards the rich.
A final, very interesting statistic: Everybody has their own views on what constitutes the "rich". I'd suggest that the "rich" are those at the 95% mark or better. In otherwords, 95% or more of households are not earning as much as you.
Know what that mark is? In San Diego County, CA that's just over $165,000 per year.
Are you rich? Do a bit of googling - you might be surprised at the results!
Please note that "twitter" is a known fanatical psycophant whose obnoxious offtopic rants are legend here on Slashdot. It doesn't matter what the topic is, he'll find a way to scrape in some pointless Microsoft bashing. While nobody expects us to love Microsoft in any way, his particularly tepid style of calling anyone he replies to "troll" or "liar" or "fanboy" because he happens to disagree with whatever they're saying is well documented and should not be rewarded. If anything, twitter is the type of person that should not be part of the open source/free software community. He is an anathema to all that is good about free software.
Wow. You must have some TIME on your hands to put together such blather. Since it's obviously important to you, I'll take a few myself.
1) Your very first sentence is self contradictory, assuming that you meant "sycophant"... How can somebody be a sycophant and obnoxious/off-topic? Or did you not notice the word "flattery" in the definition?
2) This is slashdot. Here is where people spend leisure time and blather. Such as, for instance, your post. Get over it. Think of slashdot as the online equivalent of a bar. Some people talk too much. Some people really should shower more often. Some people wear clothes that were fashionable in the 80's. Get over it.
3) It's OK to not like Microsoft software. Probably 80% of my experience of cyberspace is done via Linux. I hate the worms, viruses, spyware, and general crap as much as the next guy. I love the clean, easy way Linux lets met at the guts of the system to result in a stable, secure platform.
4) Even if twitter is some lonely, desperate, delusional, megalomaniac karma whore, how is posting stuff on slashdot being "part of the open source/free software community."? Contributing software is "being part of the OSS community" - posting on slashdot is being part of the slashdot community!
Get off your high horse, dude. People are entitled to be a bit nuts - you'll probably figure that out (as most people do) when you get to be around 30.
Oftentimes, the nuttiest people are the most brilliant.
I remember a gentleman named "Gary". I won't give his last name. He was one of the strangest people I'd ever met. Remember "Revenge of the Nerds"? Well, the cast of that movie tried in vain to capture the spirit of Gary.
The kind of guy who really DID drive a mustard-brown, 20-year old station wagon at 35 MPH down the Interstate - stuffed to the gills with books, bird cages, a pet lizard, folding chairs, boxes of clothing obtained at a thrift store, and consumed Jolt cola bottles.
He attended community (There's that word, in this case, it was people in the area in which I lived meeting together) meetings that I often attended as well, meetings congressed to discuss legal and political issues.
Having talked briefly with Gary before, and figuring him for being partially mentally handicapped, it was a great shock when, during a speech on the history of the US Constitution, Gary raises his hand, and then spends several minutes giving a detailed, ornate, and incredible rendition of the history of an important event. (I could be wrong, but if I remember correctly it was the ending of the civil war)
I was shocked, and I wasn't the only one. Everyone I knew looked at each other in surprise and bewilderment. This? Coming from GARY!?
So, before you go knocking on twitter for having a good time mentally masturbating on slashdot, remember this old saying:
"There's enough good in the worst of us, and enough bad in the best of us, that it ill behooves any of us to thing the worst of any of us".
Any Microsoftie will tell you that it's very important for you to run Winblows Updater, which does much the same thing your campus service will. What do you expect of people who consider stuff on your hard drive "their" operating system and your desk as a billboard to be sold to the highest bidder?
Running Red Hat Fedora, I routinely use yum to update packages... not much different than Windows Update.
Just because I use Linux doesn't mean I don't feel the need to stay up to date!
When you are dealing with something as major as a space elevator, you don't just rush out as soon as you could possibly build it, and then build it!
This scientist is clearly ignoring the political aspects of building something like this and focusing just on the technology.
Cell phones have been essentially possible since the 1960's. It took some 30 years to work out the kinks, and to get people's heads around the idea, develop the necessary infrastructure, etc.
You have to test it! Get people to see it in the real world so that they see and trust this new technology before we go do something outlandish like build a space elevator!
Do something a little more down to earth, to give us the chance to find the inevitable flaws.
Suspension bridges - I can't think of a better real-world test scenario! Would the cable even be big enough to see from the shore?
One going across the straights of Gibralter would be nice...
You certainly bring up a good point, though - there's a fine balance before working on a product until it's completely flawless (by which time it will be obsolete), or rushing a product that solves today's problems to market before it's completely bug-free.
I've found that the "release early, release often" philosophy works very nicely, if you make it painless to update.
When I wrote my most recent, decent-sized project, I wrote it in mind with built-in updates so that with almost no effort whatsoever, I can issue updates and patches and the program will notice, when online, that these new patches exist and offer to download them!
Time to issue a new release of the software (for me) now is about 15 minutes, including time to upload the files to the server, and configure the server to publish the updates to the client software packages.
I pay *alot* of attention to backwards compatability - a new update will not break data files or expected functionality from older versions, and there's a fairly elaborate document format version management and error detection system in place to ensure that the rules aren't broken.
It's not atypical for me to discuss a bug with a user at 12:00 in the afternoon, and have the bug fixed, patch file published, and the user using it by 3:00 PM.
Along with the patch distribution, we also back up the user's data files (in an encrypted form) so that if their computer crashes, gets stolen, whatever, we have backups of all their valuable data. They press a button and have all the data downloaded back onto their computer in minutes.
The users LOVE IT!
We're no Microsoft, but we have around 500 end-users using our niche-market software.
Why everyone automatically assumed that memory can't be cleared upon reboot?! WTF???!! What you were smoking today? It's fucking RAM guys! BIOS could clean it for you during reboot. Or operating system could do it before loading itself.
Sooo... where's the advantage of NVRAM?
So, we spend years and millions of dollars developing something that we then disable anytime it behaves differently than something widely available?
With a minimum of profanity, PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY YOU'D WANT NON-VOLATILE RAM if it's going to be erased on boot anyway?
Wouldn't non-volatile RAM actually make programmers more attentive?
One of the most common programming errors is a memory-leak. Can you imagine what would happen if you couln't reboot the Windows machine to clear the memory for another few days?
Non-volatile RAM may be the best excuse yet to switch to something more, ah... tightly coded!
That said, I think that the current memory/disk model of computing is antiquated. Why distinguish memory from disk? Why not treat it all the same?
A HDD is the base storage medium. RAM is a cache of that. L2 cache is a cache of RAM. L1 cache caches L2 cache.
Why the distinction from HDD to memory? Instead of allocating RAM directly, why not follow the *nix philosophy of "everything is a file" and if you want a storage space for some temp values, open a file and write them in.
The memory allocated for a particular process would then appear as a file (perhaps buried somewhere in/proc ?) like any other file. Then, determining which program was leaking ram could be done with a simple `ls -la`.
Instead of flushing to special swap partitions, the memory files would simply be committed to disk when you run out of RAM. (moved down the cache chain from RAM to disk)
Switching to a fundamentally different type of memory may be the right time to reconsider system architectures and challenge our conventional assumptions of computing, especially since memory leaks can be so severe, even in commercial software!
Yes I know that in the few cases that it mattered it was fixed, but Y2K was blown way out of proportion by everyone, including some very smart people, it just wasn't that big of a deal.
I'm sorry, but that's just not true. Y2K went smoothly very much because everybody made sure it did. Many, many very real issues were discovered and addressed. I've seen plenty of the dry runs done, and the results were quite depressing, to say the least.
After checking everything over, I had my networks and clientelle upgraded where necessary, and only one relatively unimportant system went down. (and it came up fine the next morning)
Don't think that just because nothing major happened, that nothing major WOULD HAVE happened... lots of good people made sure it went OK.
Slashdot Mirror
KFG meant to say "You can have fast, good, or cheap. Pick two."
It's an old software design maxim that applies suprisingly well to this subject.
...and to many things, particularly if you replace "fast" with "convenient". Just for kicks, think about it.
Food? Check. Clothing? Check. Beer? Check. Housing construction? Check.
Pretty much anything that involves the exchange of money for goods and services follows this maxim.
As a freelance programmer and sysadmin, I admin about 20 boxen for various customers. Virtually all Red Hat systems under various support contracts.
Many of these servers are using hardware or software RAID, but one of the terms in most every contract I've ever signed includes the term "regular, off-site backups".
In my case, I discovered rsync and wrote a nice, easy-to-use backup system based on rsync I've called Backup Buddy. This allows me to not only backup data, but with a minimum of additional storage usage, view my backups as a set going back through time to any point in the last (typically) 45 days, seamlessly.
With this tool, I manage about 2 TB of data on 4 different backup servers, all remotely.
My own backup server for my own stuff is a recycled AMD K6 system with an PCI IDE card and two HDD, 120 & 160 GB put together using Logical Volume Manager. I've fallen back on these backups innumerable times - and I can't say how nice it is when a restore can be done in 2 minutes flat from any nearby workstation.
I also have two primary servers at different locations (hint: they are 200+ miles apart) on separate networks in case of catastrophe - they're also mirrored via rsync nightly, and a switch from one to the other takes about 3 hours.
Uptime is important, and I think this is proof that even for small (1 employee) businesses can have a reliable, effective backup solution!
With how everyone has been treating them, versioning is pretty much worthless, beyond identifying what you have..
None is consistent, there is no 'standard' and its ( as is apparent by the story, and many in the past ) all arbitrary...
Uhm, well, DUH!?!?!
What about a "version number" is anything but arbitrary?
I write some code. I give it a name. Version is sorta secondary, based on what I figure it should do, and what I want the perception of the codebase to be.
Now, I release version 1.0 of the software product. Bug reports come in, and I fix them. At what point does the product become 1.1?
I'm running into this with a company I work with. We have like version 4.0.51 since there's been (I'm not exaggerating) 51 releases of the software to the public in one year.
Release early, release often, remember? I've built a distribution and update mechanism into the software so it's painless for both me and the end users....
So, we've been adding features and fixing bugs, over and over. It's not the same product by any stretch as it was when it was 4.0.0... at what point does it become 4.1?
It's all arbitrary, and there's nothing else. Get used to it, dude!
In the OSS circles, I've seen *alot* more emphasis on making sure that a product is stable and feature complete before it gets to 1.0. In commercial circles, this is considered nutty behavior, and products typically hit version 3.x before they really are both stable and feature complete.
Back in my first year or two of programming full-time, I deleted some LIVE data belonging to a customer, because I forgot the "where" clause. For those not familiar with SQL
Yeah, I've done that one a few times - though I'd always had backups 24 hours old. I've gotten into the habit if typing "begin transaction;" first!
EG:
Begin transaction; DELETE FROM table WHERE condition;
Then hit enter, see how many records were nuked (basic sanity check, if I see 217,000 records deleted I can be pretty sure the next statement would be "rollback;"
If all's well, THEN I type "commit;";
Can't do this on MySQL 3, however, but that's rare since I develop primarily on PostgreSQL.
Another good habit, if you're doing much work, is to write a cron script that dumps all your database stuff to your own home directory, if you have the room.
Now, in case you dismiss me as a troll or worse, a "Grammar Nazi", let me point out that your post is informative and useful, while the great-grandparent presented a negative net worth.
I never claimed that you couldn't spend $10,000 to get a Windows system to do what you needed - for that matter, it's easy to spend that much or more on a Linux system! (custom software == EXPENSIVE)
My point is that the great-grandparent post was not being truthful. Lies, even if they could be true, are almost never a help. Thus, I call BS, and thus this thread is created.
Yes, I was reloading (again) one of my computers, used primarily for kid's games, running XP Pro. Yes, I noticed how much I was downloading *after* I got the system up and running.
But, truthfully, when you factor in the post-install configuration time for a Linux system, it's really comparable. Consider time spent: Setting up ide-scsi for CD-RW; Setting up the DECSS libraries so that you can watch DVDs; Finding a compatable printer driver for your XYZ printer, and then getting it to print properly....
Also, consider that many of these free alternatives (EG: Gimp, Open Office, Blender) are available for Windows - so it's not as though you're forced to spend $600 on a copy of MS-Office!
If Linux wins the marketplace (which I believe to be an inevitability) it will do so on it's own merits, not because of lies and deceipt.
As "Coldplay" once said: "Give me real, don't give me fake".
How is this any different than reality?
The Internet is designed for enabling communication - it's not designed to ensure that everybody *WANTS* that communication!
If an area is unpoliced, crime rates will rise. People who wish to conduct legitimate business will leave those unpoliced areas.
Just because it's "the IntarWEB" doesn't mean the above rule changes any. If Macedonia/Mongolia/Outer Slobovia wants to be dealt with "fairly", they should police their own areas so that crime stops paying, like the other, more trusted areas.
Would it be any different with any other communications medium than the Internet?
How many people actualy watch over the air programming? Most over the air programming has deterioated to the least common denominator and saturated with advertising to the point little value is left.
Which is a funny side effect of the increasing greed of the television industry.
Rather than provide quality programming, the formula has been to provide something that would appeal to the broadest number of people (read, lowest common denominator) as cheaply as possible, and then force you to watch it on their terms.
Television for me represents a tremendous shame on humanity since something that can be used to disseminate so much valuable information is used instead to propogate cheap, artificial shows.
So, the end result is... nobody watches it, anymore, defeating the purpose of all the lock-ins that greedy executives worked so hard at. (rather than working at quality shows)
I tried useing windows XP for a short period fo time but it seemed like I was going to the store trying to find what applications I wanted but would have had to pay well over $10,000 to get all the applications I would have needed. I tried pirateing some software that I wanted to use but that just didn't feel right. I switched back to Linux and don't know if I will ever even try that MS stuff again.
Bzzzzt! I call Bullsh*t
You made your best attempt, but it doesn't pass the "sniff test". Let's see, we have:
"I tried useing windows XP..."
Ooops! In the first 4 WORDS we have two spelling errors, but we'll let that slide...
"...like I was going to the store trying to find what applications I wanted..."
Ok, but you don't name any? Word? Excel? Lotus Notes? Anything? But here's the telling part...
"...but would have had to pay well over $10,000 to get all the applications I would have needed."
Perhaps you should get familiar with ispell. I'm sorry, but I can't see $10,000 in application expenses that you'd ever need.
Perhaps I should rephrase that? "I can't see $10,000 in application expenses that you'd ever need."
Even MS Office is just about $200, IIS comes for free, and many software alternatives exist on Windows for free. EG: MySQL, Apache, etc.
What's very telling is how nonspecific you are about this $10,000.
Hmmm... lemme guess -
1) You're between the ages of 13-16.
2) You're in your parent's house, using a Windows XP or ME computer...
3) and you're karma whoring.
Did I get all three right?
I can download and install a Windows utility more quickly than I can build and install a Linux package.
Really? Most times, I open an xterm, and type "yum -y install <PACKAGENAME>"
I press enter, wait a few minutes, and I'm done.
Then, to keep these packages up to date, I type "yum -y update". I do this every month or so, whenever I feel like it.
It's really easier than that on Windows?
Even if you had thought of it years before, not everyone did. And they still had a right to patent it since you didn't, and you didn't implement it.
Perhaps you should take a look at what is supposed to be patentable before you warm up your fingers.
Two aspects of patent - it must be NOVEL, and it must be NON-OBVIOUS.
You figure this as both "NOVEL" and "NON-OBVIOUS"?
Neither do I, and that's why the complaining.
About 10-15 years ago, I lived for a summer in San Fransisco. I bought a "muni-pass" which gave me unlimited BART and SF/Metro for ~ $20/month anywhere in SF.(I was a minor at the time - 17 Y.O.)
This was for the buses trolleys, and BART trains.
I remember the adult version costing somewhere around $80-$100, and provided unlimited BART in the greater Bay Area.
Aren't these still available?
I drive a 1998 Saturn SL2.
On a trip to Southern California, I kept track of the mileage. I consistently got ~ 32-33 MPG, cruising at > 75 MPH with 87 octane gasoline. The EPA rating is 31, so I'm happy.
I don't know about around the town.
Seriously, though. If it's not broken, why fix it? Sure, it might be fun to port all those old applications to a modern OS, but who's going to pay for it? If you have a standalone machine already doing *exactly* what you need it to do, reliably, I see no need to start messing with it.
I use FreeDOS to run quicken via SSH in an xterm on Linux. It works well, too!
The problem with this approach is that the PHP programmer still has to ensure that "SafeQuery()" is correct. (I've seen some really braindead input checking from PHP guys)
The point of this function is that no input validation is needed whatsoever to prevent an sql-injection error.
I'm not trying to say that you don't need to do input validation - there are still plenty of logic errors and the like that are not prevented from using this tool.
But given the severity of sql-injection vulnerabilities, wouldn't it be smart to stop them dead in their tracks?
As an aside, that is waaaaay overkill. See PEAR::DB and DB::quote for all user data passed into an SQL query.
Hint: in MySQL you can quote every single data type passed to it via SQL (including integers and floats) and it automatically converts them to the correct type, so calling DB::quote blindly for all user data is hunky dory.
It makes more sense to use GRANT/REVOKE than templating SQL queries, usually. Privilege separation and access control lists can do a lot more for you to save your code than templating, usually (e.g.: using a quick effective database 'sudo' request in a sandbox to update a customer's shopping cart with the proper prices & totals from a website).
I don't think you understood what was said, at all.
We're not talking about typing - how is MySQL's dynamic typing going to catch a non-escaped quote in the statement?
Also, why would you assume I'm talking about MySQL? (I use PostgreSQL, which also has dynamic typing, but still...)
Even with GRANT/REVOKE, all you're doing is limiting the damage from an sql-injection error, not preventing it from happening in the first place.
Remember, a properly called, malicious sql-injection error does not result in errors that can be rolled back with a transaction!
ACLs and Priv Sep are just another layer of security that yet again underscore my primary point:
Bugs should not result in security issues!
Bugs should not result in security issues.
I repeat: Bugs should not result in security issues!
A properly designed application will have multiple layers of error detection and security checking. As you write your software, abstract things like security checks and database access into an API, and then do insane amounts of input validation behind that API!
In my home turf language, PHP, one of the biggest common problems in applications is the dreaded SQL-Insertion bug.
The pat, standard answer is to validate-validate-validate!
But, I'm human. I *WILL* make mistakes. It's only a question of when, not if.
Ask yourself: How can I structure my application so that mistakes in this regard do not result in an immediate, full compromise?
I bury database access behind an API that forces me to identify the data being passed to the database, and then trap errors from the database so it doesn't show anything to the web client.
Example:
<?
$sql="INSERT INTO logindata (login, password) VALUES ('[login]', '[password]')";
$todb=array('login'=>$login, 'password'=>$password);
if (!$DB->SafeQuery($sql, $todb))
Error($DB->Error());
?>
What happened here? The SQL statement does not contain any data - instead I'm passing a template for the query, and the data array to parse into the query. The function SafeQuery() does a pattern match to get the names of the fields (in the square brackets) and then does the requisite addslashes(), as well as checking the number of fields to ensure that everything matches up, before actually dumping this statement over to the database.
Errors get trapped within the object, and are accessed through function Error(). This prevents any sensitive information being sent to the browser, and the global Error() function simply displays an "Sorry but an error occured" webpage while logging the text of the error message, and quits.
Now, none of this negates the need to do input validation - but this makes a very bad threat for PHP application all but disappear!
As you develop your applications, structure them as much as possible such that bugs and errors do not result in security breaches.
Use constraints and triggers in your databases to kick out data that can't be demonstrated as good. Use APIs and functions to interface with areas (such as the shell/CGI interface) so that common security mistakes (such as not escaping a shell argument) simply can't happen.
Repeat after me: Bugs should not result in security issues!
Technology has historically favored the little guy. It was the printing press that brought down the inquisition - when people could cheaply read books written by their knowledgable peers, the old establishment fell.
That anybody can now publish a website viewable by all for a cost in the dozens of dollars/month is a feat no less remarkable than Gutenberg's retypable printing press.
Cars enabled the average joe to move vast distances with little cost.
Telephones allow the average joe to talk to anybody, anywhere. Add cellular technology to that and the entire population becomes a sort of "hive mind" where anybody can contact just about anybody else, at nearly anytime, in real time.
Many confuse the current increasing disparity between the rich and the middle class as signs that technology is "replacing" the middle class. Instead, what's happening is that work is less and less tied to the value presented by the average joe. Instead, economic power (class) is determined more and more by those who understand leverage of time.
Read "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" to understand leverage. Production is now a given. Now what?
I see us rapidly moving away from the economy of scarcity towards an economy of plenty - something where the standard economic rules are in severe need of update.
From what I've seen, the middle class isn't disappearing - it's splitting into two classes, the "middle class" as classically defined, and a new "upper middle class" that did not really previously exist.
This new "upper middle class" consists primarily of highly paid knowledge workers - Brain surgeous, IT staff who play their cards well, etc. From what I've seen, this is the fastest growing sector of the US economy, and is largely responsible for the skews towards the rich.
A final, very interesting statistic: Everybody has their own views on what constitutes the "rich". I'd suggest that the "rich" are those at the 95% mark or better. In otherwords, 95% or more of households are not earning as much as you.
Know what that mark is? In San Diego County, CA that's just over $165,000 per year.
Are you rich? Do a bit of googling - you might be surprised at the results!
CNN or San Diego Union
Please note that "twitter" is a known fanatical psycophant whose obnoxious offtopic rants are legend here on Slashdot. It doesn't matter what the topic is, he'll find a way to scrape in some pointless Microsoft bashing. While nobody expects us to love Microsoft in any way, his particularly tepid style of calling anyone he replies to "troll" or "liar" or "fanboy" because he happens to disagree with whatever they're saying is well documented and should not be rewarded. If anything, twitter is the type of person that should not be part of the open source/free software community. He is an anathema to all that is good about free software.
Wow. You must have some TIME on your hands to put together such blather. Since it's obviously important to you, I'll take a few myself.
1) Your very first sentence is self contradictory, assuming that you meant "sycophant"... How can somebody be a sycophant and obnoxious/off-topic? Or did you not notice the word "flattery" in the definition?
2) This is slashdot. Here is where people spend leisure time and blather. Such as, for instance, your post. Get over it. Think of slashdot as the online equivalent of a bar. Some people talk too much. Some people really should shower more often. Some people wear clothes that were fashionable in the 80's. Get over it.
3) It's OK to not like Microsoft software. Probably 80% of my experience of cyberspace is done via Linux. I hate the worms, viruses, spyware, and general crap as much as the next guy. I love the clean, easy way Linux lets met at the guts of the system to result in a stable, secure platform.
4) Even if twitter is some lonely, desperate, delusional, megalomaniac karma whore, how is posting stuff on slashdot being "part of the open source/free software community."? Contributing software is "being part of the OSS community" - posting on slashdot is being part of the slashdot community!
Get off your high horse, dude. People are entitled to be a bit nuts - you'll probably figure that out (as most people do) when you get to be around 30.
Oftentimes, the nuttiest people are the most brilliant.
I remember a gentleman named "Gary". I won't give his last name. He was one of the strangest people I'd ever met. Remember "Revenge of the Nerds"? Well, the cast of that movie tried in vain to capture the spirit of Gary.
The kind of guy who really DID drive a mustard-brown, 20-year old station wagon at 35 MPH down the Interstate - stuffed to the gills with books, bird cages, a pet lizard, folding chairs, boxes of clothing obtained at a thrift store, and consumed Jolt cola bottles.
He attended community (There's that word, in this case, it was people in the area in which I lived meeting together) meetings that I often attended as well, meetings congressed to discuss legal and political issues.
Having talked briefly with Gary before, and figuring him for being partially mentally handicapped, it was a great shock when, during a speech on the history of the US Constitution, Gary raises his hand, and then spends several minutes giving a detailed, ornate, and incredible rendition of the history of an important event. (I could be wrong, but if I remember correctly it was the ending of the civil war)
I was shocked, and I wasn't the only one. Everyone I knew looked at each other in surprise and bewilderment. This? Coming from GARY!?
So, before you go knocking on twitter for having a good time mentally masturbating on slashdot, remember this old saying:
"There's enough good in the worst of us, and enough bad in the best of us, that it ill behooves any of us to thing the worst of any of us".
Any Microsoftie will tell you that it's very important for you to run Winblows Updater, which does much the same thing your campus service will. What do you expect of people who consider stuff on your hard drive "their" operating system and your desk as a billboard to be sold to the highest bidder?
Running Red Hat Fedora, I routinely use yum to update packages... not much different than Windows Update.
Just because I use Linux doesn't mean I don't feel the need to stay up to date!
When you are dealing with something as major as a space elevator, you don't just rush out as soon as you could possibly build it, and then build it!
This scientist is clearly ignoring the political aspects of building something like this and focusing just on the technology.
Cell phones have been essentially possible since the 1960's. It took some 30 years to work out the kinks, and to get people's heads around the idea, develop the necessary infrastructure, etc.
You have to test it! Get people to see it in the real world so that they see and trust this new technology before we go do something outlandish like build a space elevator!
Do something a little more down to earth, to give us the chance to find the inevitable flaws.
Suspension bridges - I can't think of a better real-world test scenario! Would the cable even be big enough to see from the shore?
One going across the straights of Gibralter would be nice...
You certainly bring up a good point, though - there's a fine balance before working on a product until it's completely flawless (by which time it will be obsolete), or rushing a product that solves today's problems to market before it's completely bug-free.
I've found that the "release early, release often" philosophy works very nicely, if you make it painless to update.
When I wrote my most recent, decent-sized project, I wrote it in mind with built-in updates so that with almost no effort whatsoever, I can issue updates and patches and the program will notice, when online, that these new patches exist and offer to download them!
Time to issue a new release of the software (for me) now is about 15 minutes, including time to upload the files to the server, and configure the server to publish the updates to the client software packages.
I pay *alot* of attention to backwards compatability - a new update will not break data files or expected functionality from older versions, and there's a fairly elaborate document format version management and error detection system in place to ensure that the rules aren't broken.
It's not atypical for me to discuss a bug with a user at 12:00 in the afternoon, and have the bug fixed, patch file published, and the user using it by 3:00 PM.
Along with the patch distribution, we also back up the user's data files (in an encrypted form) so that if their computer crashes, gets stolen, whatever, we have backups of all their valuable data. They press a button and have all the data downloaded back onto their computer in minutes.
The users LOVE IT!
We're no Microsoft, but we have around 500 end-users using our niche-market software.
Why everyone automatically assumed that memory can't be cleared upon reboot?! WTF???!! What you were smoking today? It's fucking RAM guys! BIOS could clean it for you during reboot. Or operating system could do it before loading itself.
Sooo... where's the advantage of NVRAM?
So, we spend years and millions of dollars developing something that we then disable anytime it behaves differently than something widely available?
With a minimum of profanity, PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY YOU'D WANT NON-VOLATILE RAM if it's going to be erased on boot anyway?
Wouldn't non-volatile RAM actually make programmers more attentive?
/proc ?) like any other file. Then, determining which program was leaking ram could be done with a simple `ls -la`.
One of the most common programming errors is a memory-leak. Can you imagine what would happen if you couln't reboot the Windows machine to clear the memory for another few days?
Non-volatile RAM may be the best excuse yet to switch to something more, ah... tightly coded!
That said, I think that the current memory/disk model of computing is antiquated. Why distinguish memory from disk? Why not treat it all the same?
A HDD is the base storage medium. RAM is a cache of that. L2 cache is a cache of RAM. L1 cache caches L2 cache.
Why the distinction from HDD to memory? Instead of allocating RAM directly, why not follow the *nix philosophy of "everything is a file" and if you want a storage space for some temp values, open a file and write them in.
The memory allocated for a particular process would then appear as a file (perhaps buried somewhere in
Instead of flushing to special swap partitions, the memory files would simply be committed to disk when you run out of RAM. (moved down the cache chain from RAM to disk)
Switching to a fundamentally different type of memory may be the right time to reconsider system architectures and challenge our conventional assumptions of computing, especially since memory leaks can be so severe, even in commercial software!
Yes I know that in the few cases that it mattered it was fixed, but Y2K was blown way out of proportion by everyone, including some very smart people, it just wasn't that big of a deal.
I'm sorry, but that's just not true. Y2K went smoothly very much because everybody made sure it did. Many, many very real issues were discovered and addressed. I've seen plenty of the dry runs done, and the results were quite depressing, to say the least.
After checking everything over, I had my networks and clientelle upgraded where necessary, and only one relatively unimportant system went down. (and it came up fine the next morning)
Don't think that just because nothing major happened, that nothing major WOULD HAVE happened... lots of good people made sure it went OK.
not the ubiquitous MySQL 3 that I was trying to learn.
There are hosting companies that still host PHP3? PHP4 has been out for like FOUR YEARS now...
I admin my own systems, so I'll be moving to PHP5 as soon after its official release as I can do some regression testing.
The built-in SQLite is very much reason enough to begin using it with my PHP-GTK based applications!