While it is an Orwellian scenario if we reach that point I'd rather be held in contempt of court than in violation of the presumably more severe crime of encrypting.:-)
I wish I could remember the name of the "multiple-password" encryption system I read about (you encrypt multiple plaintexts with multiple passwords into one ciphertext - each password unlocks a different plaintext; under duress you choose which password(s) to give away... coupled with steganography this is very powerful).
I believe that if it actually comes down to "we can get your keys" that we should institute a network where we transmit encrypted data and random data regularly to random members of the network. When you wish to send a real encrypted message, make sure the person is on the network (have them join) and send it, otherwise you're sending random data to people on the network. They want the data? Make them figure out what's real and what's garbage (with the majority likely garbage), and make them do the work of decrypting (coupled with a system like the multiple-password system like above and you've got a real dilemma for Mr. Orwellian Protector & Server). Essentially there is always a good volume of traffic with high entropy going between people on the network. It could be adjusted so that the odds of finding an encrypted message are made arbitrarily low.
This diminishes greatly the possibility of snooping traffic (even if you can decrypt pretty quickly there's too much to decrypt even a fraction of it), and if you use a multiple-password system, etc, they don't know whether or not to keep looking or not. If they know everyone on the network is likely doing this then it is depressingly hard to know whether they've got someone's data or not.
[...thinking.... steaming...uh-oh...] Know what? I'm personally sick of this shit. The government has NO RIGHT to our keys, to inhibit crypto, to sacrifice our freedoms and privacy under the guise of protecting us ("we're just doing this for your own good"). It is unfathomable to me that a government full of bureaucrats who must be trained for hours to attempt to discuss a bill/motion/case/law/amendment remotely regarding technical issues has the nerve to try to legislate and control inherently technical matters such as cryptography.
Call me a Libertarian, but I don't need this government to handle terrorist threats by threatening to subpoena my crypto keys, restricting what I can post on my website (this is what the Bernstein case boils down to) -- *especially* when it is freely available on the Internet (which makes no difference as they have no right even if it were not available elsewhere), or trying to legislate what kind of algorithms I can use.
If this were 1776, I and 200 of my closest friends would be crouched with muskets taking pot shots at someone in a red coat over nonsense like this. This discussion should not even have to take place -- the government does not have the right or the power to do this. We are the State (Locke, Rousseau, even Tolstoy understood this) and have allowed the nominal Powers to do this by convincing ourselves that they are powerful enough to be unstoppable. In actuality, Congress, the Judiciary, and the Executive are only the motive end of the Will of the People. We have let them interpret and create a false representation of the People's Will which they have abused at the People's expense (which is, by the way, treason). They have so publicly twisted the common perception of how Government works that we actually believe that We are subject to Their will, and not the reverse (as is actually the case). They have taken advantage of our docility and can do what they will -- but only so long as we let them.
Forgive me for not being overly familiar with the technology of printer filtering, but, unless common sense isn't worth anything anymore:
given n file formats that one wishes to "go between" aren't only 2*n filters necessary (format k to common-format, common-format to format k) in "two layers" to go betweem any two formats?
I'd like to know what the rush is to make everyone use Linux. I wasn't online before it became so simple, but I can tell you, since then we've had to deal with a host of new problems. For example, people who post nothing but flamebait, morons, script kiddies, and spam. From what I understand, these things were not nearly so commonplace before it became this easy.
flames existed as did flamebait. morons existed. script kiddies didn't exist, but hackers and the occasional cracker did exist. And spam was essentially unheard of.
Is the net a better place since the floodgates opened? In my opinion, a guarded "yes". The web's exponential growth has allowed the technophile to more efficiently access information. The small percentage of useful people coming through the gates includes some good programmers who have helped build better systems. The presence of moronic script kiddies has given me an excuse to build a solid firewall and learn about defects in routing protocols and TCP/IP stacks. The presence of spam has given me reason to learn the internals and configuration of sendmail to do my own filtering and forge my own emails to get around idiotic spam filters like Mindspring's (so I can send mail from *me* without having to use Netscape's broken editor to relay off an SMTP server). So this influx has helped me more than it has hurt me.
However, I completely concur with your point about Linux being an elitist system. If someone doesn't want to learn how to run the system, screw 'em.
Regardless, there will always be a distro out there made by hackers for hackers (and I don't mean crackers) -- if that means I have to put it together myself.
Re:Uncoordinated driver having hard time learning
on
CNN Installs Linux
·
· Score: 1
I really enjoyed that - hilarious!
Something that this makes apparent, which few people want to address, is a sort of technological Darwinism. It happened with the automobile, it happened with electricity, it happened with telephones.
There is a technological change which is going to fundamentally affect society and our everyday lives. It will create opportunities and eliminate opportunities (how many buggy-whip magnates are there today? how many kerosene lamp companies? how many Pony Express riders?).
In the future the technically illiterate will be at great risk of being unemployable, not to mention non-functional. While I believe that we (on the bleeding end of the cutting edge) have a responsibility to mainstream technology as much as possible -- including making technology easy to use where it interfaces with the general populace -- those who are completely unwilling to understand the basics of technology are going to be bypassed by the multitudes who will.
Fair? Hardly. Cruel? Maybe. Reality? Definitely.
I spend a majority of my time staying abreast of new and mainstream technologies (as do a good portion of the readers of/.) and my kids will have a good technical education, regardless of what walk in life they pursue, because that is one of the most valuable socializing gifts that I can give them.
Someone who calls himself a technical journalist and doesn't know what a video card is has ridden the wave of nepotism or mismanagement far too long and his job will be taken by someone more technically astute in the near future (I have already mentioned his job to a journalist acquaintance...). This is pure Darwinism.
While I am glad to know how an idiot feels about Linux, who can't find that opinion from Aunt Betty sitting in front of one of your boxen for half an hour trying to send an email?
This guy should go write about the Spice Girls(tm) or JFKJr(tm), and leave the Linux articles to someone with less FUD and more clue.
If you really want to do this sort of thing right, the writer should be truly technically competent, and the installers should be technically illiterate -- in this way the actual difficulties can be assessed accurately.
As regards DoS attacks, there may be a potential good argument -- excusing them on the grounds of poor implementation and worse public notification.
As far as spam name collection goes, their flimsy "agreement" gives them legal grounds to sue spammers, if that is really the intent of the legislation. Just seed the database with some "land mine" email addresses -- if you mail to them you must have pulled the name out of the database and therefore broken the agreement. If they are not going to stand behind the agreement then take it down (as it has already enraged a good % of the net literate).
The real problem is that this database is public. They hold an arguable monopoly on access to this public information and are arbitrarily restricting access to the resource -- and without even announcing the fact.
One might argue that "there's no reason to script access to the database". Well, conversely, if they had allowed me to peruse the database fully I would have likely found an untaken domain name that I would have paid $$$ for, thereby contributing monetary resources to the maintainers of the database, ideally making it more usable to the rest of the public.
But instead I found myself angered, posting to/., and jaded with their implementation of this system. I am now researching other means of acquiring a useful domain name which does not contribute to their coffers or power.
Something tangential to this which ticked me off. I started looking through the whois database for n****** and other slurs to see who had them, and then began thinking "oh yeah I need a domain for that other thing. hm.", so I started poking around to see what paltry selection was left in the namespace and found it very depressing (again). So I decided to see what really was left:
(I figured going through backwards might be more entertaining for some reason). I got:
No match for "YOUTHFULNESS.COM". No match for "WITHSTOOD.COM". No match for "WITHSTANDING.COM". No match for "WISTFULLY.COM". No match for "WHISPERINGS.COM". No match for "WHISKING.COM". No match for "WHINED.COM". No match for "WHIMSICALLY.COM". No match for "WHEREUPON.COM". No match for "WHEELINGS.COM". No match for "WHEELED.COM". No match for "WASHES.COM". No match for "VICTORIOUSLY.COM".
and then no more matches. My snoop showed that I was still querying, but I was getting no hits. I tried a "whois unimplemented.com" to see just who had that name locked up and got:
[rs.internic.net] * * Welcome to the InterNIC Registration Services Whois Server. * * Your query limit has been exceeded. *
My question is, what gives them the right to cut me off from the public database due to query patterns -- regardless of how fast or how automated the search is?
If I "misuse" their data against the terms of their (legally flimsy) agreement notice, then that's my contractual violation. Time for them to get a piece of my mind (not that I can spare one...)!
I feel like you've hit the nail on the head. If M$ wanted true *nix/Posix compliance they could have made or bought it years ago (I may be a Linux Zealot, but I recognize the skills that M$ has at its disposal) -- ergo they don't want it. Their inability to compete with the Santa Cruz Operation makes apparent that they are not going to become a Unix vendor, and would sidestep any possibility of being confused with one.
They are smarter than to promote a *nix<->NT layer capable of allowing the WordPerfect's of the world to move easily to Linux, or the StarOffice's of the world to move easily to NT.
Buying this company stifles its freedom to develop a useful layer for M$'s competition, and allows Redmond to kill the company, grab some good in-house *nix consultants, and even take a write-off while doing so.
Flexibility in the way you code is a good thing (the more tools in your toolbox the better you handle cramped situations). This sort of thing also comes up in computability theory...
About a year ago when Sun pledged its support for Java on Linux I was working to form a new business partnership for a software company to provide educational content. I am a professional programmer and had some experience with Java applications development (and had close associates who did/do Java applications for a living).
Our needs included:
portability - the application must be able to run on Windows, Mac, and Linux (if we get other *nixes as a bonus then that's even better)
consistency - the interface must be as consistent as possible across platforms
gui flexibility - the interface must be as customizable as possible
html/XML support - the language or its libraries/runtime must support HTML content, and at least be pledging future support for XML.
After doing our research, and delving into Sun's commitment to Linux, as well as its seeming support for Open Source we decided that Java was likely our best choice. The Swing components seemed to provide the desired customizability and consistency, Java supported HTML and was on its way to XML support, and the Linux support promised would guarantee us a presence on what we deemed the important platforms.
So now it's a year later. The product is designed, mostly written, and really beginning to take shape. We are trying to put together our package to show to potential underwriters but have been plagued by a serious Java issue:
The Windows and Solaris JDK/JRE packages, while still a bit slow and memory-intensive, provide most of the features we need to produce a stable and slick application which can usefully present our content. What bugs there are appear to be hot items ready for fixing in the next release. However, the Linux JDK/JRE packages are not stable, not well-supported, and not even at the same release level as the Windows and Solaris versions.
Month after month we have watched the progress of JDK development (as supposedly supported by Sun) for Linux crawl forward. We have been programming steadily, working around bugs, redesigning interface features to not rely upon features which are not yet present in Linux. Generally acting as if Java2 for Linux is not coming any time soon.
As we watch we have gotten the feeling that, despite press releases to the contrary, Sun could care less whether the Linux JDK ever gets finished, and doesn't appear to be devoting its resources at all towards the platform. Indeed, it seems as if they would prefer people forgot about Linux and its Java port altogether. Here's an example. java.sun.com is Sun's main website devoted to the Java language. Trying to actually find the Linux port from this page takes the patience of Job. Want some help? I'll locate you a few pages down in the right direction. See if you can find it from here. It doesn't help matters that Sun "reorganizes" their Java site periodically, essentially scrambling the links on the page -- reminiscent of the supermarket technique of seemingly random placement of necessities to make one wander through the store, hopefully buying non-necessities (or, similarly, the legendary placement of keys on the QWERTY keyboard to slow down the typist).
"Bad site design" aside, after looking in more desperation for help we noticed other symptoms of "Sun support gone wrong.":
Cryptic messages on Sun's message board about the availabili ty of Linux Java tools
Rumblings on the Blackdown Java port mailing list about lack of progress, with occasional hints that Blackdown is fixing bugs in Sun's code which are getting folded in for later release. While that's great (they should report bugs and the bugs should be fixed in later releases), this forces us to ask the question, "What form is the press-released 'Sun support' taking?" Evidently it's not in the form of programming resources or even $ to support developers.
Additionally, Blackdown appears to be in the lead as far as releases of the JDK go, with IBM purportedly not close to a Java2 JDK, and the other viable options being "for profit" and likely Closed Source. So, this is the net effect of Sun's much publicised "support for Java on Linux"?
This interview, to me, gives me additional reason to doubt Sun's corporate motives. While there are (even discussed on the Linux/Java developers lists) difficulties in porting Solaris thread code to Linux, and difficulties testing graphical components under the numerous X environments available to the Linux end user, if Sun were truly "supporting" the port of Java to Linux this would not really be an issue. Sun could at least provide a more portable reference implementation if nothing else. Gosling is as aware of this as anyone, but uses this as his "out" ("Sun FUD" if you will).
Similarly he straddles the fence by parroting the Sun party line -- why not truly Open Source Java (e.g., GPL it or release it under one of the BSD licenses?)? Well, it really is Open Source, but we have our own proprietary license because we want to maintain platform independence. But, ironically, the fact that Java is not truly Open Source is one of the reasons (determined from hours of sifting through user and developer mailing lists) why it isn't being ported more quickly to Linux. So, the Sun license is guaranteeing (at least for the moment) that Java is NOT platform independent.
Take this together with some reconsideration of the recent StarOffice purchase, and one begins to wonder whether Linux support is, in Sun's eyes, great PR but bad business.
If a patch is *needed* or *wanted* someone will do it. If noone needs or wants the patch then it won't get done (and noone will care because noone needs or wants the patch). This is how (and why) Open Source works. Get it?
You are parroting one of the most common myths used in attempts to debunk OSS ("There is no corporate entity supporting it therefore you will eventually be left unsupported."). Methinks you've started believing the FUD.
That's a very enlightened viewpoint you have there.
This legislation affects not only video games but television, visual arts (drawing, painting, sculpture), performance arts, literature (i.e, books, magazines, pamphlets), and certainly others I am forgetting.
Not only is labelling being made mandatory, but if you mislabel you are fined, as I read it. But... there are no clear guidelines on how to label (what is "violent" and how violent is a given rating?). So it's at the whim of review boards or the courts to decide if you screwed up and have to pay.
Guess what, that "chills" expression -- it makes the author less willing to publish due to fear of repercussions. This might also be viewed as "prior restraint". Go look that one up.
Yes, minors have, in reality, a different set of rights than adults. But, purchasing a Batman comic book is in no way like buying a fifth of Jack Daniels. And, if the legislation causes producers of content that I use to reconsider what they publish because of labelling (and its effects on sales if nothing else) then it DIRECTLY affects me.
Government's job, btw, is not to determine for me what may or may not be harmful to me. I'm sorry you live in a one-party psychological hell, but I don't buy your dogma.
Your implication that they can take away the rights of people, so long as they don't take away yours, is what's going to ensure that your back is the first to the wall when the revolution comes, shithead.
At that size and cost (yeah I know there's no way they'd only charge $50 for 2.3TB *if* they're for real (they've already got a cadre of VC sharks ready for IPO)), you could quadruple mirror on the drive. Surface scan? who cares. If it's bad go get another copy and throw this one away.
Being one of the "CS-people" as you put it, I completely agree with you (and hope that other CS-people have the sense to realize what is happening around them (doubtful for most, knowing a good number of them personally)). I am in a business venture which is producing a product (application) which delivers content through a more complex interface than a typical browser can provide, but must be (to a degree at least) platform independent.
We decided to go with Java/Swing and it is coming along well, but knew then and now that we would be better served by having more implementation options. Specifying the content and interactions/dependencies of a GUI by XML and having a user use a powerful "browser" (application rendering tool) would have answered our prayers.
It will come. Probably soon. Then we'll write perl scripts to help convert to it:-)
I personally have not had a problem using NFS from, on, or between 2.2.* (2.2.1, 2.2.5, 2.2.10, 2.2.11) boxen. However, you might be right and there might be a bug.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
Do us a favor and submit a bug report to the kernel developers (if it appears to be a kernel bug), or to the NFS developers if it is strictly a user-space problem.
It won't get fixed if they don't know about it, and they might not read your post here. One of the great things about open source is peer review -- but implied in peer review is the reporting of the bugs found.
Bus error in shm access. Want an explanation that probably does you no practical good? Here goes:
Create a shared memory segment which is connected to a memory mapped file. Let the file be n bytes long. Declare the shared memory segment to be n+k bytes long (you are allowed to do so). If you access the shared memory at an offset less than or equal to n all is well. If you access the shared memory segment at an offset greater than n, but within the last (partial) page to which the file was mapped you are still o.k. (depending upon whether your syscall implementation was done according to spec(s)). If you access beyond the declared length of the memory mapping (> n+k) you will get a segmentation fault (SIGSEGV). BUT, if you access the shared memory segment at an offset greater than the last file-mapped page and less than the declared end of the shared memory segment (n+k) you will get a bus error.
Best you can do? Clean up shared memory and hopefully you do rollbacks correctly and can start back up properly.
Paper's a shame, but if you want true high bandwidth (like NASA needs sometimes for instance) you go with FedEx.
Came up in a job interview once -- interviewer asked me how I would transfer terabytes of info from their NY office to their SF office as quickly as possible (this was a good real problem they were dealing with at the moment). They had a few T1's which were nearly saturated, but a pretty good internal backup system (you've got to if your throwing around that much data). I told them to put the data on tape (clearly as dense as they have available for best results) and overnight FedEx them. Cheap, fast, and hopefully reliable. (They made me a good offer but I went elsewhere --don't know if they FedEx-ed their data after all or not).
Ironically enough I spent a couple of years doing programming for a financial company and didn't have much time to do net surfing. I left and went out on my own and am now way across the doctor's 4-hour line of demarcation. However, I have almost doubled the number of "profitable skills" I have at my disposal -- every time I see some useful software technique/tool I spend as much time as necessary (usually using the web) learning it. And it's paying off (at least in a $ sense). So, I guess that's crazy.
Provided moderation is doing its job, useless off-topic threads will be down-moderated. Experienced (and tired)/.-ers will set their thresholds higher, and the noise will decrease in their eyes. Newbies are left with a free-for-all high-noise forum until they learn to raise thresholds and order by score -- thus a true newbie won't find much useful here until he learns (& desires) to filter out the junk.
The only problem I see, though, is that with increased volume more moderator points have to be spent filtering off-topic posts and trolls, meaning that fewer are left to award to the good posts. Every time I've moderated I have always felt more like rewarding the good than filtering the bad (due to the limit of 5 points) and so a "0" or "1" point crap post stays that way.
I have a feeling the moderators need more points (or there need to be more moderators) -- perhaps based upon the comment volume / day.
I have found I have better results with putting my papers under Win32 boxes, as this reduces the likelihood of the machine catching fire to the papers (which happens if they are left on top of the machine).
Recently a friend reported that the Win32 boxes are also really useful when placed in front of a door that you want to keep open. I can't wait to try this second use for Win32!
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I could remember the name of the "multiple-password" encryption system I read about (you encrypt multiple plaintexts with multiple passwords into one ciphertext - each password unlocks a different plaintext; under duress you choose which password(s) to give away... coupled with steganography this is very powerful).
I believe that if it actually comes down to "we can get your keys" that we should institute a network where we transmit encrypted data and random data regularly to random members of the network. When you wish to send a real encrypted message, make sure the person is on the network (have them join) and send it, otherwise you're sending random data to people on the network. They want the data? Make them figure out what's real and what's garbage (with the majority likely garbage), and make them do the work of decrypting (coupled with a system like the multiple-password system like above and you've got a real dilemma for Mr. Orwellian Protector & Server). Essentially there is always a good volume of traffic with high entropy going between people on the network. It could be adjusted so that the odds of finding an encrypted message are made arbitrarily low.
This diminishes greatly the possibility of snooping traffic (even if you can decrypt pretty quickly there's too much to decrypt even a fraction of it), and if you use a multiple-password system, etc, they don't know whether or not to keep looking or not. If they know everyone on the network is likely doing this then it is depressingly hard to know whether they've got someone's data or not.
[...thinking.... steaming...uh-oh...] Know what? I'm personally sick of this shit. The government has NO RIGHT to our keys, to inhibit crypto, to sacrifice our freedoms and privacy under the guise of protecting us ("we're just doing this for your own good"). It is unfathomable to me that a government full of bureaucrats who must be trained for hours to attempt to discuss a bill/motion/case/law/amendment remotely regarding technical issues has the nerve to try to legislate and control inherently technical matters such as cryptography.
Call me a Libertarian, but I don't need this government to handle terrorist threats by threatening to subpoena my crypto keys, restricting what I can post on my website (this is what the Bernstein case boils down to) -- *especially* when it is freely available on the Internet (which makes no difference as they have no right even if it were not available elsewhere), or trying to legislate what kind of algorithms I can use.
If this were 1776, I and 200 of my closest friends would be crouched with muskets taking pot shots at someone in a red coat over nonsense like this. This discussion should not even have to take place -- the government does not have the right or the power to do this. We are the State (Locke, Rousseau, even Tolstoy understood this) and have allowed the nominal Powers to do this by convincing ourselves that they are powerful enough to be unstoppable. In actuality, Congress, the Judiciary, and the Executive are only the motive end of the Will of the People. We have let them interpret and create a false representation of the People's Will which they have abused at the People's expense (which is, by the way, treason). They have so publicly twisted the common perception of how Government works that we actually believe that We are subject to Their will, and not the reverse (as is actually the case). They have taken advantage of our docility and can do what they will -- but only so long as we let them.
Forgive me for not being overly familiar with
the technology of printer filtering, but, unless
common sense isn't worth anything anymore:
given n file formats that one wishes to "go
between" aren't only 2*n filters necessary
(format k to common-format, common-format to
format k) in "two layers" to go betweem any
two formats?
flames existed as did flamebait. morons existed. script kiddies didn't exist, but hackers and the occasional cracker did exist. And spam was essentially unheard of.
Is the net a better place since the floodgates opened? In my opinion, a guarded "yes". The web's exponential growth has allowed the technophile to more efficiently access information. The small percentage of useful people coming through the gates includes some good programmers who have helped build better systems. The presence of moronic script kiddies has given me an excuse to build a solid firewall and learn about defects in routing protocols and TCP/IP stacks. The presence of spam has given me reason to learn the internals and configuration of sendmail to do my own filtering and forge my own emails to get around idiotic spam filters like Mindspring's (so I can send mail from *me* without having to use Netscape's broken editor to relay off an SMTP server). So this influx has helped me more than it has hurt me.
However, I completely concur with your point about Linux being an elitist system. If someone doesn't want to learn how to run the system, screw 'em.
Regardless, there will always be a distro out there made by hackers for hackers (and I don't mean crackers) -- if that means I have to put it together myself.
I really enjoyed that - hilarious!
/.) and my kids
Something that this makes apparent, which few
people want to address, is a sort of technological
Darwinism. It happened with the automobile, it
happened with electricity, it happened with
telephones.
There is a technological change which is going to
fundamentally affect society and our everyday
lives. It will create opportunities and
eliminate opportunities (how many buggy-whip
magnates are there today? how many kerosene lamp
companies? how many Pony Express riders?).
In the future the technically illiterate will
be at great risk of being unemployable, not
to mention non-functional. While I believe that
we (on the bleeding end of the cutting edge)
have a responsibility to mainstream technology
as much as possible -- including making
technology easy to use where it interfaces with
the general populace -- those who are completely
unwilling to understand the basics of technology
are going to be bypassed by the multitudes who
will.
Fair? Hardly.
Cruel? Maybe.
Reality? Definitely.
I spend a majority of my time staying abreast
of new and mainstream technologies (as do a
good portion of the readers of
will have a good technical education, regardless
of what walk in life they pursue, because that
is one of the most valuable socializing gifts
that I can give them.
Someone who calls himself a technical journalist
and doesn't know what a video card is has ridden
the wave of nepotism or mismanagement far too
long and his job will be taken by someone more
technically astute in the near future (I have
already mentioned his job to a journalist
acquaintance...). This is pure Darwinism.
While I am glad to know how an idiot feels about
Linux, who can't find that opinion from Aunt
Betty sitting in front of one of your boxen
for half an hour trying to send an email?
This guy should go write about the Spice Girls(tm)
or JFKJr(tm), and leave the Linux articles to
someone with less FUD and more clue.
If you really want to do this sort of thing right,
the writer should be truly technically competent,
and the installers should be technically
illiterate -- in this way the actual difficulties
can be assessed accurately.
As regards DoS attacks, there may be a potential
/.,
good argument -- excusing them on the grounds of
poor implementation and worse public notification.
As far as spam name collection goes, their flimsy
"agreement" gives them legal grounds to sue
spammers, if that is really the intent of the
legislation. Just seed the database with some
"land mine" email addresses -- if you mail to
them you must have pulled the name out of the
database and therefore broken the agreement.
If they are not going to stand behind the
agreement then take it down (as it has already
enraged a good % of the net literate).
The real problem is that this database is public.
They hold an arguable monopoly on access to this
public information and are arbitrarily restricting
access to the resource -- and without even
announcing the fact.
One might argue that "there's no reason to script
access to the database". Well, conversely, if
they had allowed me to peruse the database fully
I would have likely found an untaken domain name
that I would have paid $$$ for, thereby
contributing monetary resources to the maintainers
of the database, ideally making it more usable
to the rest of the public.
But instead I found myself angered, posting to
and jaded with their implementation of this system. I am now researching other means of
acquiring a useful domain name which does not
contribute to their coffers or power.
Something tangential to this which ticked
/usr/dict/words | sort -r | xargs -i{} whois {}.com | grep "No match"
me off. I started looking through the whois
database for n****** and other slurs to see who
had them, and then began thinking "oh yeah I
need a domain for that other thing. hm.", so
I started poking around to see what paltry
selection was left in the namespace and found
it very depressing (again). So I decided to
see what really was left:
% cat
(I figured going through backwards might be more
entertaining for some reason). I got:
No match for "YOUTHFULNESS.COM".
No match for "WITHSTOOD.COM".
No match for "WITHSTANDING.COM".
No match for "WISTFULLY.COM".
No match for "WHISPERINGS.COM".
No match for "WHISKING.COM".
No match for "WHINED.COM".
No match for "WHIMSICALLY.COM".
No match for "WHEREUPON.COM".
No match for "WHEELINGS.COM".
No match for "WHEELED.COM".
No match for "WASHES.COM".
No match for "VICTORIOUSLY.COM".
and then no more matches. My snoop showed that
I was still querying, but I was getting no hits.
I tried a "whois unimplemented.com" to see just
who had that name locked up and got:
[rs.internic.net]
*
* Welcome to the InterNIC Registration Services Whois Server.
*
* Your query limit has been exceeded.
*
My question is, what gives them the right to
cut me off from the public database due to
query patterns -- regardless of how fast or
how automated the search is?
If I "misuse" their data against the terms of
their (legally flimsy) agreement notice, then
that's my contractual violation. Time for them
to get a piece of my mind (not that I can spare
one...)!
I feel like you've hit the nail on the head.
If M$ wanted true *nix/Posix compliance they
could have made or bought it years ago (I may
be a Linux Zealot, but I recognize the skills
that M$ has at its disposal) -- ergo they don't
want it. Their inability to compete with the
Santa Cruz Operation makes apparent that they
are not going to become a Unix vendor, and would
sidestep any possibility of being confused with
one.
They are smarter than to promote a *nix<->NT
layer capable of allowing the WordPerfect's of
the world to move easily to Linux, or the
StarOffice's of the world to move easily to
NT.
Buying this company stifles its freedom to
develop a useful layer for M$'s competition,
and allows Redmond to kill the company, grab
some good in-house *nix consultants, and even
take a write-off while doing so.
Flexibility in the way you code is a good thing (the more tools in your toolbox the better you handle cramped situations). This sort of thing also comes up in computability theory...
Our needs included:
portability - the application must be able to run on Windows, Mac, and Linux (if we get other *nixes as a bonus then that's even better)
consistency - the interface must be as consistent as possible across platforms
gui flexibility - the interface must be as customizable as possible
html/XML support - the language or its libraries/runtime must support HTML content, and at least be pledging future support for XML.
After doing our research, and delving into Sun's commitment to Linux, as well as its seeming support for Open Source we decided that Java was likely our best choice. The Swing components seemed to provide the desired customizability and consistency, Java supported HTML and was on its way to XML support, and the Linux support promised would guarantee us a presence on what we deemed the important platforms.
So now it's a year later. The product is designed, mostly written, and really beginning to take shape. We are trying to put together our package to show to potential underwriters but have been plagued by a serious Java issue:
The Windows and Solaris JDK/JRE packages, while still a bit slow and memory-intensive, provide most of the features we need to produce a stable and slick application which can usefully present our content. What bugs there are appear to be hot items ready for fixing in the next release. However, the Linux JDK/JRE packages are not stable, not well-supported, and not even at the same release level as the Windows and Solaris versions.
Month after month we have watched the progress of JDK development (as supposedly supported by Sun) for Linux crawl forward. We have been programming steadily, working around bugs, redesigning interface features to not rely upon features which are not yet present in Linux. Generally acting as if Java2 for Linux is not coming any time soon.
As we watch we have gotten the feeling that, despite press releases to the contrary, Sun could care less whether the Linux JDK ever gets finished, and doesn't appear to be devoting its resources at all towards the platform. Indeed, it seems as if they would prefer people forgot about Linux and its Java port altogether. Here's an example. java.sun.com is Sun's main website devoted to the Java language. Trying to actually find the Linux port from this page takes the patience of Job. Want some help? I'll locate you a few pages down in the right direction. See if you can find it from here. It doesn't help matters that Sun "reorganizes" their Java site periodically, essentially scrambling the links on the page -- reminiscent of the supermarket technique of seemingly random placement of necessities to make one wander through the store, hopefully buying non-necessities (or, similarly, the legendary placement of keys on the QWERTY keyboard to slow down the typist).
"Bad site design" aside, after looking in more desperation for help we noticed other symptoms of "Sun support gone wrong.":
Cryptic messages on Sun's message board about the availabili ty of Linux Java tools
Rumblings on the Blackdown Java port mailing list about lack of progress, with occasional hints that Blackdown is fixing bugs in Sun's code which are getting folded in for later release. While that's great (they should report bugs and the bugs should be fixed in later releases), this forces us to ask the question, "What form is the press-released 'Sun support' taking?" Evidently it's not in the form of programming resources or even $ to support developers.
Additionally, Blackdown appears to be in the lead as far as releases of the JDK go, with IBM purportedly not close to a Java2 JDK, and the other viable options being "for profit" and likely Closed Source. So, this is the net effect of Sun's much publicised "support for Java on Linux"?
This interview, to me, gives me additional reason to doubt Sun's corporate motives. While there are (even discussed on the Linux/Java developers lists) difficulties in porting Solaris thread code to Linux, and difficulties testing graphical components under the numerous X environments available to the Linux end user, if Sun were truly "supporting" the port of Java to Linux this would not really be an issue. Sun could at least provide a more portable reference implementation if nothing else. Gosling is as aware of this as anyone, but uses this as his "out" ("Sun FUD" if you will).
Similarly he straddles the fence by parroting the Sun party line -- why not truly Open Source Java (e.g., GPL it or release it under one of the BSD licenses?)? Well, it really is Open Source, but we have our own proprietary license because we want to maintain platform independence. But, ironically, the fact that Java is not truly Open Source is one of the reasons (determined from hours of sifting through user and developer mailing lists) why it isn't being ported more quickly to Linux. So, the Sun license is guaranteeing (at least for the moment) that Java is NOT platform independent.
Take this together with some reconsideration of the recent StarOffice purchase, and one begins to wonder whether Linux support is, in Sun's eyes, great PR but bad business.
If a patch is *needed* or *wanted* someone will do
it. If noone needs or wants the patch then it
won't get done (and noone will care because noone
needs or wants the patch). This is how (and why)
Open Source works. Get it?
You are parroting one of the most common myths
used in attempts to debunk OSS ("There is no
corporate entity supporting it therefore
you will eventually be left unsupported.").
Methinks you've started believing the FUD.
This legislation affects not only video games but television, visual arts (drawing, painting, sculpture), performance arts, literature (i.e, books, magazines, pamphlets), and certainly others I am forgetting.
Not only is labelling being made mandatory, but if you mislabel you are fined, as I read it. But... there are no clear guidelines on how to label (what is "violent" and how violent is a given rating?). So it's at the whim of review boards or the courts to decide if you screwed up and have to pay.
Guess what, that "chills" expression -- it makes the author less willing to publish due to fear of repercussions. This might also be viewed as "prior restraint". Go look that one up.
Yes, minors have, in reality, a different set of rights than adults. But, purchasing a Batman comic book is in no way like buying a fifth of Jack Daniels. And, if the legislation causes producers of content that I use to reconsider what they publish because of labelling (and its effects on sales if nothing else) then it DIRECTLY affects me.
Government's job, btw, is not to determine for me what may or may not be harmful to me. I'm sorry you live in a one-party psychological hell, but I don't buy your dogma.
Your implication that they can take away the rights of people, so long as they don't take away yours, is what's going to ensure that your back is the first to the wall when the revolution comes, shithead.
Yeah, and like can you run Beowulf on it?
MAN THAT WOULD ROCK!!!
sorry. had to. I'm just starting to work days
for the 1st time in a year and it's got me goofy.
At that size and cost (yeah I know there's
no way they'd only charge $50 for 2.3TB *if*
they're for real (they've already got a cadre
of VC sharks ready for IPO)), you could quadruple
mirror on the drive. Surface scan? who cares.
If it's bad go get another copy and throw this
one away.
:-)
We decided to go with Java/Swing and it is coming along well, but knew then and now that we would be better served by having more implementation options. Specifying the content and interactions/dependencies of a GUI by XML and having a user use a powerful "browser" (application rendering tool) would have answered our prayers.
It will come. Probably soon. Then we'll write perl scripts to help convert to it :-)
I personally have not had a problem using NFS
from, on, or between 2.2.* (2.2.1, 2.2.5, 2.2.10,
2.2.11) boxen. However, you might be right and
there might be a bug.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
Do us a favor and submit a bug report to the
kernel developers (if it appears to be a kernel
bug), or to the NFS developers if it is strictly
a user-space problem.
It won't get fixed if they don't know about it,
and they might not read your post here. One of
the great things about open source is peer
review -- but implied in peer review is the
reporting of the bugs found.
TIA
Shame we can't get him to munch on a grenade.
Create a shared memory segment which is connected to a memory mapped file. Let the file be n bytes long. Declare the shared memory segment to be n+k bytes long (you are allowed to do so). If you access the shared memory at an offset less than or equal to n all is well. If you access the shared memory segment at an offset greater than n, but within the last (partial) page to which the file was mapped you are still o.k. (depending upon whether your syscall implementation was done according to spec(s)). If you access beyond the declared length of the memory mapping (> n+k) you will get a segmentation fault (SIGSEGV). BUT, if you access the shared memory segment at an offset greater than the last file-mapped page and less than the declared end of the shared memory segment (n+k) you will get a bus error.
Best you can do? Clean up shared memory and hopefully you do rollbacks correctly and can start back up properly.
Doesn't help much does it?
Paper's a shame, but if you want true high
bandwidth (like NASA needs sometimes for instance)
you go with FedEx.
Came up in a job interview once -- interviewer
asked me how I would transfer terabytes of info
from their NY office to their SF office as
quickly as possible (this was a good real
problem they were dealing with at the moment).
They had a few T1's which were nearly saturated,
but a pretty good internal backup system (you've
got to if your throwing around that much data).
I told them to put the data on tape (clearly as
dense as they have available for best results)
and overnight FedEx them. Cheap, fast, and
hopefully reliable.
(They made me a good offer but I went elsewhere
--don't know if they FedEx-ed their data after
all or not).
Ironically enough I spent a couple of years doing
programming for a financial company and didn't
have much time to do net surfing. I left and
went out on my own and am now way across the
doctor's 4-hour line of demarcation. However,
I have almost doubled the number of "profitable
skills" I have at my disposal -- every time I
see some useful software technique/tool I spend
as much time as necessary (usually using the web)
learning it. And it's paying off (at least in
a $ sense). So, I guess that's crazy.
There is no DELL laptop in existence worth $4000.
No. Not even.
You couldn't get the Altair to conceive of 256k
bytes of memory.
Came with 256 bytes.
btw, the Altair was not even close to being the first personal computer.
Digital Electronics/Luser Laboratories
Dumbass Engineering for Lazy Losers
Distributors of Expensive Laminated Lead
Disguised Embezzlers and Landfill Loaders
Devastating Empire of Lawsuits and Larceny
Provided moderation is doing its job, useless /.-ers will set their
off-topic threads will be down-moderated.
Experienced (and tired)
thresholds higher, and the noise will decrease
in their eyes. Newbies are left with a free-for-all
high-noise forum until they learn to raise
thresholds and order by score -- thus a true
newbie won't find much useful here until he
learns (& desires) to filter out the junk.
The only problem I see, though, is that with
increased volume more moderator points have to
be spent filtering off-topic posts and trolls,
meaning that fewer are left to award to the
good posts. Every time I've moderated I have
always felt more like rewarding the good than
filtering the bad (due to the limit of 5 points)
and so a "0" or "1" point crap post stays that
way.
I have a feeling the moderators need more points
(or there need to be more moderators) --
perhaps based upon the comment volume / day.
CmdrTaco - are you listening?
I have found I have better results with putting
my papers under Win32 boxes, as this reduces
the likelihood of the machine catching fire
to the papers (which happens if they are left on
top of the machine).
Recently a friend reported that the Win32 boxes
are also really useful when placed in front of a
door that you want to keep open. I can't wait
to try this second use for Win32!