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User: SL+Baur

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  1. Re:They already did! on SCO Puts Unix Assets On the Block · · Score: 1

    Pretty sure /bin/clear (or was it something else...?) on Solaris is a shell script taken direct from Xenix.

    #! /bin/sh

    tput clear

  2. Re:Can they do that? on SCO Puts Unix Assets On the Block · · Score: 1

    In fact, I don't know anyone in the industry that's actually using real UNIX V code in production anymore.

    Be careful with the terminology. Unix V was the first VM implementation of Unix and I don't think anyone uses it any more. It ran on ancient DEC equipment (early Vaxen IIRC). In terms of standard naming, think of Unix V == Version 5 or 5th Edition.

    The only significant (mis)feature of System V was Streams, and nobody sane uses that any more. The SVID mostly codified existing practice.

    Solaris is like the spiritual descendant of System V. How much of the original System V from around the time of the AT & T break up remains, I don't know. I've never had a source license to anything other than System V/386 (which was R3).

  3. Re:Can they do that? on SCO Puts Unix Assets On the Block · · Score: 1

    Our death has been somewhat exaggerated.

  4. Peak Oil is a myth on German Military Braces For Peak Oil · · Score: 1, Interesting

    When I took geology in college (~1987) they were predicting that oil was going to run out by early 2000. I guess fifteen years in the future is farther ahead than they expect most people will remember.

    Peak oil is a myth and there is very strong evidence of abiotic oil. See http://www.viewzone.com/abioticoilx.html for example.

  5. Re:So that's why the UW mail system went down on New Email Worm Squirming Through Windows Users' Inboxes · · Score: 1

    How easy would it be to prepend ~/bin to $PATH and stick it in there?

    Irrelevant. /home should be mounted noexec unless you're a software developer and even then it's probably better to set up a special area that you don't normally touch to do program development.

    But, you could set the system login scripts to forbid ~/bin, ., etc. being in the $PATH. And you can set $PATH to READONLY before allowing user .profile/.bash_profile/.zlogin etc. to execute. This can be defeated, but not without command line magic and it won't have any effect on the window manager.

  6. Re:The hard way is more fun on Programming Things I Wish I Knew Earlier · · Score: 1

    Do you have any idea of what the system administrators will do with your log?

    Oh yes, I do. They won't touch it. Their job is only to keep the server(s) running. If it's an application problem, the hammer comes down on me.

    The admins only keep the machines running. Application support isn't in their job description.

    Of course, we don't leave our logs in system directories. We have our disk where we keep those.

    We're talking "Enterprise computing". It's a very different environment.

  7. Re:The wonders of science... on Supernova Shrapnel Found In Meteorite · · Score: 1

    Meh. Think of it another way. Every element other than Hydrogen and Helium was created in the bowels of a star. So, another supernova projectile vomited just in time for one of its chunks to reach our solar system as it was being formed.

    Hmmm. Kind of cool coincidence actually.

  8. Re:Lesson #8 on Programming Things I Wish I Knew Earlier · · Score: 1

    Ya know, I actually DID walk to classes, barefoot, in the snow. Yes, I was weird. (I growed up as a hillbilly. My mamma never could learn me to wear shoes much.)

    The paper tape and punch cards part I wrote was real.

    Seeing how you have similar experience I don't whether to invite you inside to talk about the old days, order you off my lawn, or quietly step off of your lawn.

  9. Re:Yea.. on Glibc Is Finally Free Software · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I remember -- RMS *did* bitch about the copyright assignment thing.

    Correct. It wasn't enough that we were GPL (v2), but we had to get copyright assignments to the FSF from an organization that didn't exist and people who were unwilling to do that.

    My only personal contact with Stallman was a phone call just a bit after I took over from Chuck and he promised to "go to war against me" (his words) if I didn't get all the copyright assignments. I couldn't and he did.

    In an interesting twist, my successor has managed to get the code base to GPL v3. Sigh.

  10. Re:Yea.. on Glibc Is Finally Free Software · · Score: 1

    No. I haven't lived in the LA area in a decade and a half.

  11. Tao of Programming on Programming Things I Wish I Knew Earlier · · Score: 1

    That was a truly a forgettable book. I had a copy and even tried to read it through several times. I cannot recall anything about it other than the title.

    That makes me sad in a way, because I usually can read something end to end.

    Regarding the quote: It's not that COBOL was such a bad language for its time. It wasn't. Of the three languages COBOL, FORTRAN and Lisp, only Lisp survives (in new code) in anything resembling its ancestor. COBOL survives in legacy code that will probably never be retired. FORTRAN has mutated into something unrecognizable and arguably didn't last.

    We can be grateful for FORTRAN because it buried the notion that compilers could never beat hand coded assembly.

    We can be grateful for Lisp because it later spawned The One True Editor.

    We can be grateful for COBOL because it made so mistakes that were so glaringly obvious, no one ever made them again.

  12. Re:Lesson #8 on Programming Things I Wish I Knew Earlier · · Score: 2, Funny

    There's no substitute for a few solid courses in theory and design.

    You must be new here. When I started programming, there were only a handful of colleges that had computer programming departments.

    You came along late enough that you might have had decent instructors.

    And I walked to and from college both ways, uphill, in the snow, barefooted, my first programming class used paper tape, my second programming class used punch cards, yadda yadda yadda.

    Now, get off my lawn!

  13. Re:The hard way is more fun on Programming Things I Wish I Knew Earlier · · Score: 1

    I recently replaced a SMTP protocol implementation with a pipe to /usr/sbin/sendmail. Guess what? It worked much better.

    It depends. Did you get all the quoting correct when starting sendmail? How did you handle error returns?

    For any kind of enterprise code, I'd lean towards an SMTP implementation exactly because when something fails (and pagers are going off everywhere at 3am) you can make a log of exactly what went wrong.

  14. Re:Comment your code on Programming Things I Wish I Knew Earlier · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Put enough comments in your code so that five years from now you (and others) can remember what you indented the code to do.

    /* This is hairy. We need to compute where the XEmacs binary was invoked
              from because temacs initialization requires it to find the lisp
              directories. The code that recomputes the path is guarded by the
              restarted flag. There are three possible paths I've found so far
              through this:

              temacs -- When running temacs for basic build stuff, the first main_1
                will be the only one invoked. It must compute the path else there
                will be a very ugly bomb in startup.el (can't find obvious location
                for doc-directory data-directory, etc.).

              temacs w/ run-temacs on the command line -- This is run to bytecompile
                all the out of date dumped lisp. It will execute both of the main_1
                calls and the second one must not touch the first computation because
                argc/argv are hosed the second time through.

              xemacs -- Only the second main_1 is executed. The invocation path must
                computed but this only matters when running in place or when running
                as a login shell.

              As a bonus for straightening this out, XEmacs can now be run in place
              as a login shell. This never used to work.

              As another bonus, we can now guarantee that
              (concat invocation-directory invocation-name) contains the filename
              of the XEmacs binary we are running. This can now be used in a
              definite test for out of date dumped files. -slb */

    OK. So now everyone knows how Lisp programs written with a core in C initialize themselves, right?

    And as much as people may joke about it, XEmacs was tested to ensure that it worked as a login shell prior to release.

  15. Has ImageMagick improved? on Programming Things I Wish I Knew Earlier · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Don't do image processing work with PIL unless you have proven that command-line ImageMagick won't do the job.

    I think the worst mistake I made as Mr. XEmacs was attempting to unify our graphics support to call ImageMagick libraries instead of the custom stuff we were using (and later restored when ImageMagick was backed out).

    Does it work any better now? The last time I looked at display(1) a couple of years ago, it still wasn't close to long lost and patent challenged xv(1) that got shut down by the GIF patent war.

  16. Re:Delusions of Grandeur on The Many Iterations of William Shatner · · Score: 1

    While not related to TOS you reminded me of the first and last Star Trek Convention I went to, which had Frakes and that chick who played Dax at it

    Terry Farrell.

    The only Star Trek cast member I've ever met was James Doohan at a book signing.

    But about the old series, the only criteria that women on the cast had to meet was to sleep with Roddenberry (he was married to Nurse Chapel. Uhura, Janice Rand, etc. were mistresses). How did the men get casted?

  17. It's not dead yet, it's getting better on Researchers Cripple Pushdo Botnet · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Look at their graph: from a high of 1,400 on 3 Aug to 0 on 26 Aug. -- that ranks as both a "seriously crippled" and "success" in my book.

    So while you chose to belittle their achievements, I for one chose to say a silent "Thank you! Well done!" for their years of persistence in fighting this war.

    I did. Color me unimpressed. This isn't the first time that this botnet's servers have had their numbers reduced.

    I didn't see any analysis of what is going on server side and that is where all the interesting code is.

    Their client/server protocol is self-repairing in that servers can propagate new IP lists of servers to clients. According to the various articles, (some of) the servers have been taken down before.

    Apparently nothing is known about what is going on server side.

    This botnet puts a high priority on not being detected (according to TFAs).

    All that is happening now is a reconfiguration. Lay low, infect new servers, then it's business as usual.

    Oh and my threat estimate of this botnet is very high. It's MS Windows only at the moment, of course, but the analysis seems to indicate that with not much additional work, could function in a heterogeneous network.

  18. Re:Is this really a big deal on Researchers Cripple Pushdo Botnet · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't adding new C&C servers be as simple as pushing an update to the bots? If there are still remaining C&C servers to update with (let alone still a third), that should be pretty routine for them.

    Not in this case. This botnet apparently can spread other client side malware, but doesn't attempt to infect new servers.

    That's a very hard problem and I guess that's good.

    New servers can be added manually though. Part of their protocol involves the client receiving updated lists of servers. That's why even though this was first detected in 2007, had the servers attacked repeatedly over the years as in this article, the botnet is still around.

    The associated articles only discuss how the client side works. All the fascinating code is on the server side and apparently has not been broken.

    If you need to get all 30 at once, all that has been achieved is that they're back to square one.

    True. The loss of 2/3 is a minor setback and one that's happened before. This isn't the Black Knight. Servers can be added to this botnet, while limbs cannot be regrown.

    In case it isn't obvious by now, this botnet was done by someone who has some experience in (Soviet) military network programming (C3I). What will happen when (laid off, down on their luck, etc. etc.) US C3I experts turn to the dark side?

  19. Re:Yea.. on Glibc Is Finally Free Software · · Score: 2

    Grats, but why did that hypocritical Stallman allow Glibc to keep the G in identical circumstances to the XEmacs situation and demonized us?

  20. Re:well on Blizzard To Require Real First and Last Names For Official Forums · · Score: 1

    If the WOW players were smart they'd flock to some other non-blizzard controlled forum

    They already have. Only a tiny fraction of the player base posts on the forums.

  21. Re:Internet Anonymity is good! on Blizzard To Require Real First and Last Names For Official Forums · · Score: 1

    He gets upset and from the personal information he has gathered over their time "together" he is able to locate her using her _real_ name that Blizzard forces you to use (not a fictional "eName" you make up to give out on the intertubes to remain anonymous). Fill in the rest with your imagination.

    Something like this has already happened, though the genders were reversed. Two people had their characters get "married" in game and ended up sharing account info. After they broke up, she got her revenge by logging into his account and deleting all his stuff and characters, or something like that.

    I suppose the moral of the story (besides never sharing account info with anyone) is that even virtual divorce is ugly.

    (Edit: That may not have been WoW. I think it may have been a different Japanese-only game)

  22. Re:Loss of noise AND loss of signal. on Blizzard To Require Real First and Last Names For Official Forums · · Score: 1

    while forum trolls are likely to be driven away, removing some of the noise from actual discussions, actual contributing posters are going to be shying away from the new forum system as well

    One green poster has already pointed out that many of the trolls are posting openly in favor of the new system as they don't pay by credit card and don't have a true real name attached to their account any way.

    There's a reason why I've never put an armory link to one of my 80s in my /. profile - I want my WoW life completely separate from real life. It's non-negotiable.

  23. Re:Only idiots post with real name on Blizzard To Require Real First and Last Names For Official Forums · · Score: 1

    I'll only discriminate if they don't have Kingslayer. Or if they talk about how awesome subtlety spec is...

    Don't have a 6k GS? Don't bother applying. And about those gems and enchants you have ...

  24. Re:Only idiots post with real name on Blizzard To Require Real First and Last Names For Official Forums · · Score: 1

    Anything on Blizzard forums goes on Google, and comes up in search results.

    Anything on Blizzard forums goes on Google and comes up at the top in search results.

    Fixed that for you based on googling my own character's names.

  25. Re:I actually like this trend... on Blizzard To Require Real First and Last Names For Official Forums · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty young(23)...

    Yes, you're new to the internet.

    I've been on the internet since before you were born.

    Now, get off my lawn.