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  1. NIST defined prefixes for binary multiples on Breaking the ATA Addressing Barrier · · Score: 2

    Realizing that G=(10^3)^3=1,000,000,000 bytes, the NIST (a governmental body that sets standards) decided to formalize binary multiple prefixes, which of course are based on powers of 2 rather than powers of ten. They defined Gi (gibi) to be (2^10)^3=1,073,741,824, which is quite different from 1,000,000,000. In this article the reader confuses gibi with giga. Please use GiB for multiples of 1,073,741,824 bytes, and GB for multiples of 1,000,000,000 - this will help avoid confusion, as well as keep drive manufactures honest.

  2. If anyones curious about what ZK means.. on Zero-Knowledge Ceases Linux Support · · Score: 2

    ..be sure to read Blum, De Santis, Micali, and Persiano's Non-Interactive Zero Knowledge research index.

  3. Re:more than m$ word on How Is Wine Doing These Days? · · Score: 1

    Word View Ware made Wordview, a MS Word 8 conversion tool for Unix.

  4. Re:SICK M$ Office on How Is Wine Doing These Days? · · Score: 1

    For compatibility, mostly. New pre-Windows users are used to Office, having Office on Linux makes it easier for them. Certain legal companies and publishers require documents to be in Office format. There are MS Word converters for Unix, but having the full application can still be nice.

  5. Re:Diablo2? on How Is Wine Doing These Days? · · Score: 1
    I prefer the GRUB bootloader. GRUB is compliant with the multiboot specification, can boot nearly all operating systems, and has advanced features for experts. From the the GRUB home page:
    • Support multiple executable formats.
    • Support non-Multiboot OS's.
    • Load multiple modules.
    • Support a human-readable configuration file.
    • Menu interface.
    • Flexible command-line interface.
    • Support multiple filesystem types.
    • Support automatic decompression.
    • Access data on any installed device.
    • Geometry translation independent.
    • Detect all installed RAM.
    • Support Logical Block Address (LBA) mode.
    • Download OS images from a network.
    • Support diskless systems.
  6. But does it have zero keys? on One-Finger Keyboarding? · · Score: 1

    Hmm, I removed the casing of my keyboard, leaving only the thin membrane which has the key connecting wires. Typing is easy on this keyboard since you don't have to press a key -- just touch it. Besides, keyless keyboards never ware out because there is no moving parts.

  7. Another log of script kiddies who fell for Honey.. on Understanding Script Kiddies · · Score: 2
    Inept crackers strung by intended 'victim'.
    The transcripts of these sessions are a priceless document of the way semi-skilled crackers feel their way clumsily towards their goals. Honeynet re-named the two main crackers "D1ck" and "J4n3", and their crew "K1dd13", to express their contempt for the group's skills.
    Some excerpts from the logs:
    Note: We have removed intervening comments in the dialogues for clarity.

    :D1ck: i am making a elite archieve of sploits just for k1dd13 members
    :D1ck: can u make pass protection on sites?
    :J4n3: yeah i can make it password protected
    :D1ck: make sure it's leet i dont want any other person other then u me m4ry
    mi||er and glitchX to have access :D1ck: hehe
    :D1ck: all leet stuff
    :J4n3: y0 hooo
    :J4n3: ha ha
    :J4n3: d0n worry boss
    :D1ck: hehehe


    Later, crew-member "b0b" expresses considerable interest in learning to code in C. This, he reckons, will make the crew even leeter than it already is.
    :b0b :what's vor-ticks-3?
    :D1ck :A TROJAN
    :D1ck :on receiving a string
    :D1ck :on port 80
    :D1ck :it opens a bind shell
    :D1ck :like on a string 'asad'
    :D1ck :it opens port 234323,
    :D1ck :or some thing
    :D1ck :hehehe
    :D1ck :LOL
    :b0b :btw, i'm going to be learning C soon too inshallah
    :b0b :the[n] we'll have C fights
    :b0b :yipeeee
    :b0b :i'll insult you in code
    :b0b :and once we develop m4d C skillz.. we'll develop D
  8. XML-Based GUIs on GUI Research - Is it Still Being Done? · · Score: 1

    User Interface Markup Language is a device independent way of creating interfaces. For instance, UIML intefaces would display as well on a Palm as a desktop. XUL (Extendable User-interface Language) for Mozilla is another effort. Orbeon is working on a project called Albatross which is to be a GUI for all browsers. Thanks to the folks at ShouldExis t for these links.

  9. Re:A modest proposal on Will BXXP Replace HTTP? · · Score: 1
    What we really need is a protocol that can, upon receipt of a single authenticated request, determine the speed that the remote end is running at, and then rapidly chunk out an entire page in a single request - instead of a few images here, a few javascript files there, and don't forget the stylesheet in the LINK tag!
    TCP already provides flow control using a 16-bit window size field:
    TCP provides a means for the receiver to govern the amount of data sent by the sender. This is achieved by returning a "window" with every ACK indicating a range of acceptable sequence numbers beyond the last segment successfully received. The window indicates an allowed number of octets that the sender may transmit before receiving further permission.

    Window size is limited to 64K, but the TCP option Window Scale can be used to indicate the window size should be shifted by a certain number of bits, allowing a maximum window size of 2GB.

    Therefore, it's obvious this protocol needs to be UDP.

    UDP does not support virtual circuits -- data has to be sent in packets less than or equal to the size of the Maximum Tranmission Unit. UDP is also unreliable, has no flow control, and UDP datagrams can arrive out of order.

    and then rapidly chunk out an entire page in a single request

    HTTP 1.1 supports persistant connections for this purpose:

    Prior to persistent connections, a separate TCP connection was established to fetch each URL, increasing the load on HTTP servers and causing congestion on the Internet. The use of inline images and other associated data often require a client to make multiple requests of the same server in a short amount of time. Analysis of these performance problems and results from a prototype implementation are available [26] [30]. Implementation experience and measurements of actual HTTP/1.1 (RFC 2068) implementations show good results [39]. Alternatives have also been explored, for example, T/TCP [27].
    Security is also a concern

    With IPv6, strong encryption can be used.

    BXXP doesn't do that, unfortunately.. and if we're going to define a new protocol, let's plan ahead?

    Fixing HTTP would be a better option.

  10. Re:What's the advantage of channels on Will BXXP Replace HTTP? · · Score: 1
    With HTTP I'll see another connection being made HTTP 1.1 supports persistant connections. Persistant connections allow multiple files to be retreived and sent in one TCP connection. Since TCP connections are expensive to set up, persistant connections can improve efficiency and speed.
  11. Re:ALERT! danger! on IBM Promises More Memory In The Same Space · · Score: 1
    Stepping back for a second, though, is this REALLY a problem for most systems? I'd be willing to bet that 99.999% of the time, multi-user systems run memory images that are at least moderately compressable.

    The real problem is every time a character is written to memory, the entire memory block has to be recompressed.

  12. Re:ALERT! danger! on IBM Promises More Memory In The Same Space · · Score: 3
    Compression CANNOT guarantee anything better than 1:1 ratio - it is ENTIRELY dependent on the data.

    This is true with random data, but most data is not random. A quote from the comp.compression FAQ:

    - The US patent office no longer grants patents on perpetual motion machines,
    but has recently granted a patent on a mathematically impossible process
    (compression of truly random data): 5,533,051 "Method for Data Compression".
    See item 9.5 of this FAQ for details.

    As can be seen from the above list, some of the most popular compression
    programs (compress, pkzip, zoo, lha, arj) are now covered by patents.
    (This says nothing about the validity of these patents.)

    Here are some references on data compression patents. Some of them are
    taken from the list ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/lpf/patent-list.

    ....
    9.2 The counting argument

    [This section should probably be called "The counting theorem" because some
    people think that "argument" implies that it is only an hypothesis, not a
    proven mathematical fact. The "counting argument" is actually the proof of the
    theorem.]

    The WEB compressor (see details in section 9.3 below) was claimed to compress
    without loss *all* files of greater than 64KB in size to about 1/16th their
    original length. A very simple counting argument shows that this is impossible,
    regardless of the compression method. It is even impossible to guarantee
    lossless compression of all files by at least one bit. (Many other proofs have
    been posted on comp.compression, please do not post yet another one.)

    Theorem:
    No program can compress without loss *all* files of size >= N bits, for
    any given integer N >= 0.

    Proof:
    Assume that the program can compress without loss all files of size >= N
    bits. Compress with this program all the 2^N files which have exactly N
    bits. All compressed files have at most N-1 bits, so there are at most
    (2^N)-1 different compressed files [2^(N-1) files of size N-1, 2^(N-2) of
    size N-2, and so on, down to 1 file of size 0]. So at least two different
    input files must compress to the same output file. Hence the compression
    program cannot be lossless.



    For data compression in memory to succeed, you MUST have an option to cache the "extra" memory to a swapfile incase the prediction logic fails and you run out of physical ram. If you do not, you will tank your system, bigtime.

    This is not true. Auxilary memory will most likely be stored on the chip itself. Data compression does not predict logic. A stream is compressed by examining it's redundancy and storing pointers back to the original match (as LZSS does), or encoding each symbol in a less number of bits (as in Huffman).


    Sorry, but I'm very leery of any "memory compression" - it requires OS support to function. Period. You aren't going to just plug in a miracle DIMM and make it work. I hope IBM is opening the spec (it looks like they are) and that OS development people quickly embrace this, or their hardware will take a nosedive in the market.

    This is not true. There are a number of hardware data compressors. MPEG is decoded in hardware by the N64 hardware, for instance. "Miracle DIMMs" are known as hardware compression units.

  13. Literal programming can automatically document on Best Automatic Code Documenting Package? · · Score: 3

    Literate programming was invented around 1983 by the very famous Donald Knuth, author of the TeX typesetting system and the multi-volume series The Art of Computer Programming. It is based on two important ideas.

    The first idea is that good program documentation shouldn't be squeezed into little `comments'. It should be structured more like a technical article for a journal, and it should have all the support that a journal article usually gets, including good typesetting. The programmer should have the opportunity to annotate each section of the code with as much explanation as is necessary and appropriate.

    Literate programming is so interesting because the documented parts of the program do not have to be in the same order as the program itself. Code can be written in whatever order is best for people to understand, and re-ordered automatically when the compiler needs to run the program.

    Documentation can be typeset automatically using tools to extract the literate comments from the code. For more information on this, see:

  14. Re:URIs don't change: people change them on Linkguard To Cure Broken Links? · · Score: 1
    How about a brand new protocol for locating documents on httpds? If a page has a link to http://foo.bar.org/baz.html then the client checks loc://foo.bar.org for the actual location of baz.html!
    Uniform Resource Locators are actually quite flexible. URLs exist in an abstact namespace which does not necessarly have to map exactly to filesystemspace. mod_rewrite, a powerful URI-to-filename mapping system using regular expressions can be used instead of your protocol described above. Want to rewrite URLs in the form /Language/~Realname/.../File to /u/Username/.../File.Language?

    RewriteLog /anywhere/rewrite.log
    RewriteMap real-to-user txt:/anywhere/map.real-to-host
    RewriteRule ^/([^/]+)/~([^/]+)/(.*)$ /u/${real-to-user:$2|nobody}/$3.$1

    Also, the HTTP URI or Refresh header can be used to easily redirect an existing location to another. There is no need for a document location protocol.

    And if it's been removed for good, then:
    103 KILLED
    I somewhat disagree with this. After all, a URL could be bookmarked, linked, or be refered to in another way. Once a URI is created, it should exist forever. Freenet is an interesting distributed Internet-like network where documents can be uploaded, and since the files do not reside on a central server, exist as long as their is a demand for the file.

    Searching should, in my opinion, be higher level and not in the protocol. CGI can easily be used instead.

    And a directory list, too... Client says: LIST /

    This really shouldn't be necessary. Links should be able to get to all the public documents on the web server. HTTP is not FTP.

    If you feel a new feature should be added to HTTP, suggest it on the ietf-http-wg working group mailing list and it might be accepted in HTTP 1.2.

  15. URIs don't change: people change them on Linkguard To Cure Broken Links? · · Score: 4
    There are no reasons at all in theory for people to change URIs (or stop maintaining documents), but millions of reasons in practice.
    Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, wrote about this in a page titled Cool URIs don't Change. Many web authors don't realize file name extensions can be removed from the URI space. Pages Must Live Forever (Alertbox Nov. 1998) is another document about the same issue.

    The Network Working Group is working on a replacement for URLs -- Uniform Resource Names. URNs are intended to serve as persistant, location-independent, resource identifiers and are designed to make it easy to map other namespaces (which share the properties of URNs) into URN-space.

  16. MS Word File Format is here on Why Can't We Reverse Engineer .DOC? · · Score: 3

    At Wotsit. Microsoft Word 6.0, 8.0, Word 97, and Palm Pilot doc files where all reverse engineered.

  17. Re:So -- where's the list of ports ? on OpenBSD 2.7 Released · · Score: 1

    There is Freshports, it's similar to Freshmeat.

  18. Re:OpenIM on AOL To Open AIM Protocol? · · Score: 1
    Why not marshall all the protocols together on the client end? MSN, Yahoo!, AIM... whatever.

    The problem with this is when a new protocol is added, the client has to be updated. Clients are also more bloated. Jabber solves this problem by making the clients talk XML to protocol transports, which understand IM protocols. Clients are upgraded less and leave a smaller footprint beacause of this. This issue was discussed on the jabber mailing list a while back, check the archives for more information.

  19. Re:GAIM, etc. on AOL To Open AIM Protocol? · · Score: 4
  20. Re:How about a server-to-server protocol? on AOL To Open AIM Protocol? · · Score: 2

    The Jabber universal instant messaging client has an IRC Transport.

  21. Re:Spyware Removal on Mattel Spyware · · Score: 4

    Currently the freeware version of Optout only can detect and remove Aureate/Radiate/Binary Bliss (advert.dll) spyware. However, this type of spyware is embedded in hundreds of freeware products.

    If you're looking for a utility to detect all Spyware, you will have to do it yourself using a program such as tcpdump or windump.

  22. Spyware Removal on Mattel Spyware · · Score: 4

    Gibson Research's opt out utility can remove unwelcome spyware. GRC also maintains a list of suspected spyware and other useful privacy resources including a FAQ.

  23. OpenBIOS is the new name of GNU BIOS on Linux BIOS · · Score: 1

    From the Linux-Kernel Archive:

    OpenBIOS Mailing List (was: GNU-BIOS mailing list)

    Dave Cinege (dcinege@psychosis.com)
    Tue, 17 Feb 1998 02:37:59 -0500

    I changed the name simply because I like this better (and GNU doesn't really fit in the context of a BIOS, don't ya think??)

    SOOOOO if you are one of the late comers trying to get on the GNU-BIOS list, and it is bouncing, this is why. To subscribe send mail to: openbios-request@linkscape.net
    -
    To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu

  24. IBM Research Scientist's Comments on ClearType on Cleartype In Depth · · Score: 5

    Former research IBM scientist Ron Feigenblatt has some interesting comments about Microsoft ClearType. Feigenblatt explains subpixel addressing, dynamic pixels, and color convergence problems on LCDs.

  25. Re:Ok.. on Latest Eazel Screenshots · · Score: 5
    Nautilus is an open-source file manager and graphical shell being developed by Eazel, Inc. and others. It is part of the GNOME project, and its source code can be found in the GNOME CVS repository. Nautilus is still in the early stages of development. It will become an integral part of the GNOME desktop environment when it is finished.

    Nautilus has many neat features, including: