What's going to stop someone from just putting "exit" into the commands run, thereby hosing your system?
They're not keyboard macros, they're aliases. They don't matter outside of the current shell context... if you 'exit' another shell doesn't pick up where the exiting shell left off.
Simple demonstration: try this
bash
alias blah="exit; echo hi; exit"
blah
You should notice that the echo and second exit don't actually ever get executed... it's like putting something straight after a return in a C program.
# (bash syntax, alter appropriately. BTW, not intended for *your*.profile:)
export PS1="\nYou are in a room with many doors, all alike\n# "
alias cd="echo That door is locked"
alias pwd="echo You are lost"
alias ls="echo It is too dark to see anything"
alias cat="echo It is too dark to see anything"
alias vi="echo You\\'re not strong enough to perform that action"
alias startx="echo I don\\'t understand"
alias exit="echo You don\\'t know the way out"
# And in case they try to remove their.profile...
alias rm="echo I\\'m sorry Dave, I\\'m afraid I can\\'t do that"
At school, for example, valid passwords can not contain any symbols and passwords must be sent over telnet (no ssh). Therefore, I can't use my primary password since I have to keep that secure for online banking, work and such. So I am forced to come up with some new, throwaway password that won't compromise the rest of my stuff if it gets out.
I don't use a password at uni that I use anywhere else, because I don't trust the uni admins.
There are plenty of domains under.id.au willing to offer you a subdomain... most, to boot, for absolutely nothing.
Sure, you might think that zilch.net.au is cooler, but we're talking a globally accessible namespace here.. cluttering it with vanity names seems kinda silly...
Anyways, go to www.id.au and check out your options.
It's not a model for the Internet, with its textual names, trademark claims, etc.
Heh, I can see it now. Watch out whoever has the numbers that translate to 1800-MACCAS; the McDonalds lawyers are coming, and they're carrying hot coffee.
I think that a VNC client would be a good first step. It's a simple protocol that's easy to implement on the client side (although I concede I've never actually attempted to do so:). You can also actually run a VNC X-server and a VNC client on the same machine, effectively giving you an X server, so if vncserver could be coaxed into compiling (basically XFree86 with the display driver being the server side of the VNC networking stuff) you'd be coming along nicely...
> Dennis Tito was nothing but a crass opportunist using his money to buy something he could never earn
Umm, yeah, that's how capitalism works. You work at the things you're good at, get paid, and use that money to buy the things you can't produce yourself because you lack the skills or capital investment to do so.
Am I a crass opportunist for purchasing socks made in a factory with my money? I don't think so. I'd say that by earning the money to spend on the purchase of something, I've become perfectly entitled to it.
> Perhaps the AARP should look into leveraging its future power to purchase a small island or the like (possibly Australia due to Senior-friendly climate)
Oh god, please no. Our population is aging, we already have more geriatic droolers than we can handle:/
Would anyone be so gracious as to recommend a tool that will artificially limit the speed of a TCP connection? It could act like a port bouncer, or even do proxying functions (HTTP proxy or SOCKS) if it was fancy.
I'm looking for such a tool because I'd like to be able to assess the speeds of doing certain things over a modem link (such as browsing a web site I've designed, or running a particular X application) usinga LAN, as opposed to the bother of actually using a modem. I've considered hacking rinetd around to do it, but no sense reinventing the wheel...
Yeah- this is one of those "Why didn't I think of that?" things- but I have yet to hear of a web cache or proxy that uses md5sums instead of last-modified headers- are there any out there? And if so, wouldn't that count as the all-important prior art?
I know of a website which kept an index of lists to people's weblogs (it's a semi-private thing on a cable modem, so sorry but no link). It polls the websites every 15 minutes to see whether they're changed, and orders the list of links as such... so you can visit the page an see at a glance who's updated their weblog.
This was all accomplished using a homegrown Perl script. Originally, it stored a checksum of the pages it retrieved for later comparison, to determine when a page was last updated. This was later replaced with a simple byte count of the page's size - using a checksum or the whole page generates "false alarms" when people are using hit counters on their page, wheras the size of the page tends to be more stable, yet it unlikely to remain the same between updates.
When reading email, I also tend to skimread first and then dig deeper for any relevant details. And I'm somewhat used to automatically filtering out anything irrelevant, like re-re-re-quoted material. What does slow me down when reading email is that it's often plagued by errors in spelling, grammar and even basic punctuation.
I'm also not terribly long-winded when I myself send out email. I make sure my spelling is correct - again, I'm fortunate in this regard as far as natural skills are concerned. I think that overall, each second extra spent when composing an email saves at least two seconds at the recipient's end.
Plenty of jobs require you to have good communications skills, and "telephone skills" are often cited as necessary when a job is advertised. I wonder when "email skills" (you could even say "written word skills"!) will receive as high a priority?
"You're criticising people doing CANCER RESEARCH?"
on
Philanthropy Redefined
·
· Score: 2
(well, that seems to be a common theme amongst the critical replies...)
Sure, Michael shouldn't allow his "moral grandstanding" to get in the way of the cure for cancer! Heck, next he'll be targeting censorware companies for trying to SAVE THE CHILDREN...
Lets also assume cdparanoia (for an example of a beautiful piece of software) releases a patch to defeat the copy protection. Aren't they violating the DCMA, as referenced in the interview with Rep Boucher? What recourse does that leave?
Well, you'll probably get cdparanoia-like functionality legally with Windows XP on a Microsoft SecurePC (tm), kinda like you can get a licensed DVD player; of course, Windows won't let any program get at the data except for the internal MediaPlayerXP (tm), which in turn won't be able to send it anywhere but to your Microsoft SecurePCSpeaker (tm) in an encrypted format. Of course, you could probably break *that* encryption and intercept the audio in transit, but that puts you back at square one in terms of DMCA-compliance.
The seeds of this gaming revolution were already beginning to sprout before the formation of id Software, when John Carmack, Adrian Carmack and John Romero were producing games for Softdisk Publishing at the start of the 1990s. Titles like Commander Keen - Invasion of the Vorticons and Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion both had similar themes: one man against hostile forces armed with a gun. Not the most original subject matter, granted, but it was their subsequent idea of a homage to one of their favourite games which made them quit Softdisk Publishing to create their own company. And so id Software was founded. Its first product was Wolfenstein 3D.
Bullshit. A bunch of guys from Softdisk formed id Software to publish the Keen series; they later progressed to Wolf3D. Softdisk had nothing to do with the Keen stuff's publishing. Do I seem a little worked up? Maybe. I just looked at a banner ad to 'pay' for this so-called 'journalism.'
I think everyone who's ever read a "history of gaming" article would be familiar with the story, and somehow whoever wrote this article has it all mixed up?
Pure tripe. I wonder how much else in the article is just plain wrong?
Of course, I'm still an undergraduate (in the second year of my CompSci degree), so by the sounds of things you wouldn't want me.
However, if you're really struggling to meet demand, why not go with some undergrads on a temporary/casual/parttime basis? If the scientists themselves are doing a lot of the overall design and heavy math that provides the foundations, you might find some undergrads are able to pick up the ball and run with it; one fulltimer and a few casuals might do as well as a few fulltimers.
For grunt coding, that may be all you need - a lot of the later stuff in a CS degree tends to be more oriented towards the systems analysis and heavy design issues. With a lot of the coding stuff happening earlier on, and a lot of the coding skills being self taught (probably even before they started their degree), some enthusiastic undergrads at your local college might do the trick.
And after all, if they're just temps/casuals, make sure you make that clear, and there's no problems with scrapping the idea in a couple of months if it isn't working out.
Sort-of example: I'm doing some systems admin work in the Electronics Engineering department of a local university, on a casual basis. Basically, they needed some labour in a hurry so hired some casuals quick and intend to replace us with fulltimers as they arrive (add time for interview process, people giving notice at existing workplaces etc) Now, I certainly don't have what it takes to run the system, however I have a pretty well-defined area of knowledge, and the stuff that falls into it is delegated my way. It takes the load off the full time staff that are there at the moment, and everybody wins.
Re:/. presses about to fall over (too slanted!)
on
New Linux Worm
·
· Score: 2
Linux? I wasn't aware that this was a kernel exploit.
Linux is *not* an operating system, it's a kernel.
I prefer a standalone DVD player to a PC. I prefer to use a Palm for storing addresses. PCs, even notebooks, don't carry around very well. I'd prefer to carry a mini MP3 player around than to carry a PC around. I prefer a PlayStation for many games over a PC.
And you can walk into a store and buy all of these separate applicances. So how can engineers complain that the CS people aren't making them?
There's a problem with this discussion that started with the source article dumbing itself down beyond recognition.
Apparantly, something is illegal to do. And now we're embarking on a load of speculation as to legitimate uses, loopholes, the exact interpretation of the law etc.
And despite this, nowhere do I see the actual text of the Act which is coming into effect. And I see no indication that anyone else has either.
Personally, I don't have the time right now to trawl through the entire act. But you'd think the AustralianIT article, at least, could have mentioned the specific section of the Act that prohibited this. Even if they found the nearest chipper down the road and interviewed them, Sony probably mentioned it in their threatening letter.
We could have had cold hard facts, but all we have is spoonfed propaganda and hyperbole. It's sloppy "journalism."
It was also instrumental in spawning Open Source, Free Software and the related individualistic, decentralized media that may well have saved the Net from the corporatized fate of much of the rest of the non-virtual information culture.
Really? I could have sworn that Unix source was floating around before Micro Soft was even incorporated...
Since the HTTP/1.1 specification explicitly discusses caching, and servers can explicitly state that content is not to be cached, then could a web server that serves a page over HTTP/1.1 and doesn't state that no caching is allowed by construed to be giving permission to cache?
It seems a bit murky, because in the context of the protocol this makes sense, but iirc under Australian law all content is copyright the author even if there's no copyright notice, unless there's an explicit notice attached to the content stating that it's in the public domain. Anyone more knowledgable care to step up and answer?
Slashdot Mirror
They're not keyboard macros, they're aliases. They don't matter outside of the current shell context... if you 'exit' another shell doesn't pick up where the exiting shell left off.
Simple demonstration: try this
bash
alias blah="exit; echo hi; exit"
blah
You should notice that the echo and second exit don't actually ever get executed... it's like putting something straight after a return in a C program.
# (bash syntax, alter appropriately. BTW, not intended for *your* .profile :)
.profile...
export PS1="\nYou are in a room with many doors, all alike\n# "
alias cd="echo That door is locked"
alias pwd="echo You are lost"
alias ls="echo It is too dark to see anything"
alias cat="echo It is too dark to see anything"
alias vi="echo You\\'re not strong enough to perform that action"
alias startx="echo I don\\'t understand"
alias exit="echo You don\\'t know the way out"
# And in case they try to remove their
alias rm="echo I\\'m sorry Dave, I\\'m afraid I can\\'t do that"
I don't use a password at uni that I use anywhere else, because I don't trust the uni admins.
sexism goes both ways, assuming someone isn't incompetent due to their gender is just as stupid as assuming they are
That's not how "feminism" or "sexual equality" work. Especially in Australia.
Sure, you might think that zilch.net.au is cooler, but we're talking a globally accessible namespace here.. cluttering it with vanity names seems kinda silly...
Anyways, go to www.id.au and check out your options.
At least, that's what 75% of the kids in Austrlia seemed to be simultaneously obsessed with a year ago or so.
Actually, it is "open source." It is not, however, "free."
Heh, I can see it now. Watch out whoever has the numbers that translate to 1800-MACCAS; the McDonalds lawyers are coming, and they're carrying hot coffee.
I have a couple of favourite kinds of socks (they're sooo comfy! :) and IIRC they're Made in Australia.
I think that a VNC client would be a good first step. It's a simple protocol that's easy to implement on the client side (although I concede I've never actually attempted to do so :). You can also actually run a VNC X-server and a VNC client on the same machine, effectively giving you an X server, so if vncserver could be coaxed into compiling (basically XFree86 with the display driver being the server side of the VNC networking stuff) you'd be coming along nicely...
Umm, yeah, that's how capitalism works. You work at the things you're good at, get paid, and use that money to buy the things you can't produce yourself because you lack the skills or capital investment to do so.
Am I a crass opportunist for purchasing socks made in a factory with my money? I don't think so. I'd say that by earning the money to spend on the purchase of something, I've become perfectly entitled to it.
Oh god, please no. Our population is aging, we already have more geriatic droolers than we can handle :/
I'm looking for such a tool because I'd like to be able to assess the speeds of doing certain things over a modem link (such as browsing a web site I've designed, or running a particular X application) usinga LAN, as opposed to the bother of actually using a modem. I've considered hacking rinetd around to do it, but no sense reinventing the wheel...
I know of a website which kept an index of lists to people's weblogs (it's a semi-private thing on a cable modem, so sorry but no link). It polls the websites every 15 minutes to see whether they're changed, and orders the list of links as such ... so you can visit the page an see at a glance who's updated their weblog.
This was all accomplished using a homegrown Perl script. Originally, it stored a checksum of the pages it retrieved for later comparison, to determine when a page was last updated. This was later replaced with a simple byte count of the page's size - using a checksum or the whole page generates "false alarms" when people are using hit counters on their page, wheras the size of the page tends to be more stable, yet it unlikely to remain the same between updates.
When reading email, I also tend to skimread first and then dig deeper for any relevant details. And I'm somewhat used to automatically filtering out anything irrelevant, like re-re-re-quoted material. What does slow me down when reading email is that it's often plagued by errors in spelling, grammar and even basic punctuation.
I'm also not terribly long-winded when I myself send out email. I make sure my spelling is correct - again, I'm fortunate in this regard as far as natural skills are concerned. I think that overall, each second extra spent when composing an email saves at least two seconds at the recipient's end.
Plenty of jobs require you to have good communications skills, and "telephone skills" are often cited as necessary when a job is advertised. I wonder when "email skills" (you could even say "written word skills"!) will receive as high a priority?
Sure, Michael shouldn't allow his "moral grandstanding" to get in the way of the cure for cancer! Heck, next he'll be targeting censorware companies for trying to SAVE THE CHILDREN...
Ummm... can you provide an example? Then I'll give you a reason :)
Well, you'll probably get cdparanoia-like functionality legally with Windows XP on a Microsoft SecurePC (tm), kinda like you can get a licensed DVD player; of course, Windows won't let any program get at the data except for the internal MediaPlayerXP (tm), which in turn won't be able to send it anywhere but to your Microsoft SecurePCSpeaker (tm) in an encrypted format. Of course, you could probably break *that* encryption and intercept the audio in transit, but that puts you back at square one in terms of DMCA-compliance.
Bullshit. A bunch of guys from Softdisk formed id Software to publish the Keen series; they later progressed to Wolf3D. Softdisk had nothing to do with the Keen stuff's publishing. Do I seem a little worked up? Maybe. I just looked at a banner ad to 'pay' for this so-called 'journalism.'
I think everyone who's ever read a "history of gaming" article would be familiar with the story, and somehow whoever wrote this article has it all mixed up?
Pure tripe. I wonder how much else in the article is just plain wrong?
However, if you're really struggling to meet demand, why not go with some undergrads on a temporary/casual/parttime basis? If the scientists themselves are doing a lot of the overall design and heavy math that provides the foundations, you might find some undergrads are able to pick up the ball and run with it; one fulltimer and a few casuals might do as well as a few fulltimers.
For grunt coding, that may be all you need - a lot of the later stuff in a CS degree tends to be more oriented towards the systems analysis and heavy design issues. With a lot of the coding stuff happening earlier on, and a lot of the coding skills being self taught (probably even before they started their degree), some enthusiastic undergrads at your local college might do the trick.
And after all, if they're just temps/casuals, make sure you make that clear, and there's no problems with scrapping the idea in a couple of months if it isn't working out.
Sort-of example: I'm doing some systems admin work in the Electronics Engineering department of a local university, on a casual basis. Basically, they needed some labour in a hurry so hired some casuals quick and intend to replace us with fulltimers as they arrive (add time for interview process, people giving notice at existing workplaces etc) Now, I certainly don't have what it takes to run the system, however I have a pretty well-defined area of knowledge, and the stuff that falls into it is delegated my way. It takes the load off the full time staff that are there at the moment, and everybody wins.
Linux is *not* an operating system, it's a kernel.
Apparantly, something is illegal to do. And now we're embarking on a load of speculation as to legitimate uses, loopholes, the exact interpretation of the law etc. And despite this, nowhere do I see the actual text of the Act which is coming into effect. And I see no indication that anyone else has either.
Personally, I don't have the time right now to trawl through the entire act. But you'd think the AustralianIT article, at least, could have mentioned the specific section of the Act that prohibited this. Even if they found the nearest chipper down the road and interviewed them, Sony probably mentioned it in their threatening letter.
We could have had cold hard facts, but all we have is spoonfed propaganda and hyperbole. It's sloppy "journalism."
It seems a bit murky, because in the context of the protocol this makes sense, but iirc under Australian law all content is copyright the author even if there's no copyright notice, unless there's an explicit notice attached to the content stating that it's in the public domain. Anyone more knowledgable care to step up and answer?