The problem is that only the most intelligent and wealthy of people (the two are directly related. The
Bell Curve) will be able to afford genetic screening and so will inevitably become genetically perfect,
like a master race, while the poor remain like old fashioned Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
Do we want to see Homo Superior Plutocri overrun us all? I don't, so we must be careful what we do here.
I don't mind -- I'm working hard on making
sure myself and my ancestors are among those "intelligent and wealthy", you seem to be afraid of.
Please, consider restricting your efforts at
helping the poor and stupid, and be sure not to obstruct the wealthy and intelligent.
There are good moms and pops and there are
bad ones. Yes, it was personal and the domain's
techcontact was the admin himself.
Years ago, when the Usenet was fun, some mad
man from Colorado (elected Kook of the Month, BTW), objected to some of my postings. He called his police department (somewhere in Colorado), and the police
department in Needham, MA -- the town were my then-ISP (GIS.net,
a.k.a. TheCIA.net)
was located. He told them, I'm using the ISP to
connect to my University account, which is somehow illegal. He made such a ruckus evidently, that
the police called the ISP. I've never heard the
actual accusations -- so I can only speculate
from what the ISP told me.
Did the ISP call me to ask what's up? No, they
left me a histerical message, how they received
calls from police and how they are going to terminate my account. When I returned home and
called them back, the deed was done. They even
removed my home directory on their server. As
Bob Carp -- the pop in "moms and pops" -- later
told me in numerous e-mails:
"for $10/month we don't want calls from police".
I don't think one of this "evil corporations"
would've done such a thing without investigation
of their own... The beauty of the "personal touch"
comes with the clumsiness of it. A handmade item
may be a masterpiece or a poor quality piece of
junk...
So many have offered their filtering techniques, I'll describe mine. It may help
you filter and it may help you sue.:)
When a site (say lavalamps.biz) asks me for my e-mail address (which, for example, is <mi@dufus.organ>), I give <mi+lavalamps@dufus.organ>.
Thanks to the sendmail (other MTAs?) feature,
all such e-mail automaticly gets delivered to
my mailbox. But I can always examine the headers
to find which address a message was sent to.
I used to create a special alias for each web-site (I admin my home box, which receives
its mail) and spam keeps coming to my <preferences.com@dufus.organ>, but it is much simpler to use the +
technique.
If you have your own domain (say, bonkers.porn), where all e-mail to <any>@bonkers.porn gets delivered to you,
you can give lavalamps.biz the <lavalamps@bonkers.porn> address. This avoids
the problem with some web-sites, where the
form-verifiers were written by dirty-handed
punks, who did not know a plus is a legitimate
character for an e-mail address. Hotjobs comes
to mind.
My next plan is to implement auto-expiring
email-addresses as in <mi+lavalamps+982281449@dufus.organ>.
After a week from now, my automatic filter
will start rejecting e-mails to this address
with a polite message, that this address was
given to "lavalamps" and that it expired after
982281449 seconds since epoch (of course, the
date will be converted to the text form).
Having such filter, I can control the validity
of the e-mail addresses when I give them out. I can just estimate, when the ordered lavalamp will
arrive and add a few days. If credit card companies can issue single use numbers, I can
issue single use e-mail addresses.
After a second thought, I should probably try to
patent this method and retire early:)
Although colonizing Mars sounds a lot cooler,
perhaps, humans should start with Antarctida?
There is an entire continent with, what, a few
dozen people living on it. I suspect, the living
conditions are a LOT better there than on Mars (it is cool, but not nearly as cool as Mars),
and it is SO much closer and easier to get to...
Not every type of data warrants a military-strength encryption algorithm to
protect it.
But unlike most other instances of things
being of "military-strength", choosing a stronger
encryption does not increase any costs (financial
and otherwise) of the software development, or
of the software use. So why not use a better
alorithm?
If you use zlib's replacements for fread, fseek,
etc. things will be VERY slow. I tried this aproach with WordNet databases and it sucked. Well, WordNet does
a lot of seeks, but still.
Teaching the Berkeley DB functions to use
libz will be extremely painful too. I'd say,
your best bet would be to try the new Linux's
filesystem extension, mentioned already by someone
else. But I'm not sure how efficient it is with
respect to reading/uncompressing/compressing back
things, which are read and/or mmaped. In any
case, you will not be modifying any code -- just
the file's attribute.
I'm afraid, you'll defeat most of the DB's
tricks, that know about the sector size and other
file-system details.
You could also just uncompress the file into
memory and then give it to the database functions,
but then you loose the automatic syncronization
with the file on the filesystem, which for many
is the main reason of using Berkley DB (or gdbm)
in the first place.
While I aprove of the MAPS's actions so far, and have a lot of respect for Mr. Vixie, one
question begins to trouble me:
Will refusal to block RBL-ed IPs from accessing your services ever become by itself sufficient to be RBL-ed?
In other words, will MAPS ever claim, that to
be considered a responsible ISP, you must use their services? Even if their services remain free (as in beer), I'm not sure I'll be comfortable...
Exchange servers and outlook are excellent choices for business organizations for their internal mail needs
Could you, perhaps, tell me then, how to make
sure Outlook NEVER attaches the stupid ms-tnef attachment to every message?
I've been receving those from some of my correspondents, and they all say "I don't know
how to disable it" -- especially annoying, when
it comes through a mailing list -- the stupid
thing is a couple of Kb, times the number of
subscribers...
How many times have you been passed by police speeding (without having their lights or siren on)?
I once brought this up on ne.transportation news-group and one
fellow, an ex-cop, according to himself, insisted,
they have the right to do so. He could not come
up with the law allowing that, but I could not
quote anything either.
Although, it is not clear, whose the burden of
proof should be in this case, I'd appreciate a
pointer to a law (of any state, but MA is most
prefered) to support either point of view.
Besides just being a nice OS, it had just made itself even better suited as an Internet server
(for most services). The recent (end of July -- part of the 4.1.1 release) addition of the socket filtering,
coupled with the dataready and httpready
sample filters should help ANY web-server --
they ensure, the server is not bothered (from
accept(2)) until the data-packet has arrived
(for dataready) or until http-headers have arrived (more specialized
httpready).
The next Apache release will have the FreeBSD
code to use this filters (already committed in
CVS-tree, AFAIK) or you can patch any other server to use them -- including an earlier release of Apache. Here is an example -- a patch for Apache (and Apache's documentation).
install NeoWebScript, which is an Apache with TCL and tons of TCL extensions
use AOLServer --
don't let the name scare you, it is a highly-optimized multi-threaded web server. Its main features include database connection-pooling
and a powerful Tcl API for application development
install tclhttpd -- a web-server written entirely in
TCL (with SSL support available), which works quite well for me
Your database may be MySQL or PostgreSQL
(my preference).
PostgreSQL can be built with TCL
support (a client library loadable into a TCL
interpreter) and a server-side extension allowing
you to write server-side procedures in TCL (not anemic at all, IMHO). Postgres can be built to support SSL connections and comes with pgaccess -- a fairly powerfull database browsing and management GUI-tool (written in TCL/TK).
For MySQL there are also at least two TCL-extensions that provide for TCL access to
its client API:
For distributed objects, etc. you could use
TCL-DP. Don't let the word beta scare you -- it does wonders. The remote ends can even talk
over e-mail!
And there is nothing to beat TCL/TK for a cross-platform front-end application! That's a given...
-mi
P.S. It sucks that paragraph-tags can not have
attributes in/. comments. IMHO <p align="justify"> is perfectly valid and quite desirable for a paragraph with over 120 characters...
It is ridiculously easy
to confiscate someone's property even in this country. All the campus police had was a search warrant. Are we to trust police to
be able to distinguish between, say, anti-government songs and stolen copyrighted music?
Is it civil disobedience when I drive 75 miles per hour on the highway?
Yes, usually, it is, in my opinion. The speed-limits are ridiculously low
and the law does not distinguish decent cars from
junk, and mature, able-organ drivers from youngsters or from those whose illness(es) or
age reduced their reaction time, sight, hearing.
In other words, you may be a
martyr without knowing it...
"Jump through hoops"? By asking you to provide some cursory information?
Those are the hoops I meant,
you are right.
Tell me how this violates the GPL?
Why can't I be anonymous? There is nothing in GPL about
having to have an e-mail address to be able to
obtain the source, either. But most importantly, one
has to agree to a very long chunk of legalese, in addition
to the GPL, that's presented at the beginning.
The GPL is indeed mentioned in every file. I
tend to think, Compaq is violating the license
by requiring you to jump through the hoops to
get the source. On the other hand, Compaq is also the copyright holder of this
software... I'll leave this to experts.
Other platforms? First, the software's include/allocblock.h causes
a syntax error -- apparently, whoever was
inserting the comment-block with the
explanation of GPL (among other things) forgot to remove ``*/'' (or add another ``/*''). Easy to fix...
After changing the silly ``#ifdef __linux__'' to
the smarter ``#ifndef __WIN32__'' in a couple of places, I got the thing to compile on FreeBSD.
Now I just need the PJB unit and for someone to
port the usbdrv/ part to FreeBSD:)
Oh, no, everybody is entitled to an opinion. But I'm not obligated to hear it. While arresting for no reason is VERY BAD, blocking the traffic to
force your opinion down the drivers' and the passengers' throats is pretty BAD too.
Remember how annoyed the Blues Brothers were
when a demonstration blocked their way? And that
was a legitimate demonstration -- the organizers
had a permit...
Slashdot Mirror
I don't mind -- I'm working hard on making sure myself and my ancestors are among those "intelligent and wealthy", you seem to be afraid of.
Please, consider restricting your efforts at helping the poor and stupid, and be sure not to obstruct the wealthy and intelligent.
There are good moms and pops and there are bad ones. Yes, it was personal and the domain's techcontact was the admin himself.
Years ago, when the Usenet was fun, some mad man from Colorado (elected Kook of the Month, BTW), objected to some of my postings. He called his police department (somewhere in Colorado), and the police department in Needham, MA -- the town were my then-ISP (GIS.net, a.k.a. TheCIA.net) was located. He told them, I'm using the ISP to connect to my University account, which is somehow illegal. He made such a ruckus evidently, that the police called the ISP. I've never heard the actual accusations -- so I can only speculate from what the ISP told me.
Did the ISP call me to ask what's up? No, they left me a histerical message, how they received calls from police and how they are going to terminate my account. When I returned home and called them back, the deed was done. They even removed my home directory on their server. As Bob Carp -- the pop in "moms and pops" -- later told me in numerous e-mails:
I don't think one of this "evil corporations" would've done such a thing without investigation of their own... The beauty of the "personal touch" comes with the clumsiness of it. A handmade item may be a masterpiece or a poor quality piece of junk...
So many have offered their filtering techniques, I'll describe mine. It may help you filter and it may help you sue. :)
When a site (say lavalamps.biz) asks me for my e-mail address (which, for example, is <mi@dufus.organ>), I give <mi+lavalamps@dufus.organ>.
Thanks to the sendmail (other MTAs?) feature, all such e-mail automaticly gets delivered to my mailbox. But I can always examine the headers to find which address a message was sent to.
I used to create a special alias for each web-site (I admin my home box, which receives its mail) and spam keeps coming to my <preferences.com@dufus.organ>, but it is much simpler to use the + technique.
If you have your own domain (say, bonkers.porn), where all e-mail to <any>@bonkers.porn gets delivered to you, you can give lavalamps.biz the <lavalamps@bonkers.porn> address. This avoids the problem with some web-sites, where the form-verifiers were written by dirty-handed punks, who did not know a plus is a legitimate character for an e-mail address. Hotjobs comes to mind.
My next plan is to implement auto-expiring email-addresses as in <mi+lavalamps+982281449@dufus.organ>. After a week from now, my automatic filter will start rejecting e-mails to this address with a polite message, that this address was given to "lavalamps" and that it expired after 982281449 seconds since epoch (of course, the date will be converted to the text form).
Having such filter, I can control the validity of the e-mail addresses when I give them out. I can just estimate, when the ordered lavalamp will arrive and add a few days. If credit card companies can issue single use numbers, I can issue single use e-mail addresses.
After a second thought, I should probably try to patent this method and retire early :)
Although colonizing Mars sounds a lot cooler, perhaps, humans should start with Antarctida?
There is an entire continent with, what, a few dozen people living on it. I suspect, the living conditions are a LOT better there than on Mars (it is cool, but not nearly as cool as Mars), and it is SO much closer and easier to get to...
But unlike most other instances of things being of "military-strength", choosing a stronger encryption does not increase any costs (financial and otherwise) of the software development, or of the software use. So why not use a better alorithm?
If you use zlib's replacements for fread, fseek, etc. things will be VERY slow. I tried this aproach with WordNet databases and it sucked. Well, WordNet does a lot of seeks, but still.
Teaching the Berkeley DB functions to use libz will be extremely painful too. I'd say, your best bet would be to try the new Linux's filesystem extension, mentioned already by someone else. But I'm not sure how efficient it is with respect to reading/uncompressing/compressing back things, which are read and/or mmaped. In any case, you will not be modifying any code -- just the file's attribute.
I'm afraid, you'll defeat most of the DB's tricks, that know about the sector size and other file-system details.
You could also just uncompress the file into memory and then give it to the database functions, but then you loose the automatic syncronization with the file on the filesystem, which for many is the main reason of using Berkley DB (or gdbm) in the first place.
While I aprove of the MAPS's actions so far, and have a lot of respect for Mr. Vixie, one question begins to trouble me:
In other words, will MAPS ever claim, that to be considered a responsible ISP, you must use their services? Even if their services remain free (as in beer), I'm not sure I'll be comfortable...
Have the government financially support one pure research web...
What? The government? So, you suggest every taxpayer has to help you pay for this enterprise?
Exchange servers and outlook are excellent choices for business organizations for their internal mail needs
Could you, perhaps, tell me then, how to make sure Outlook NEVER attaches the stupid ms-tnef attachment to every message? I've been receving those from some of my correspondents, and they all say "I don't know how to disable it" -- especially annoying, when it comes through a mailing list -- the stupid thing is a couple of Kb, times the number of subscribers...
How many times have you been passed by police speeding (without having their lights or siren on)?
I once brought this up on ne.transportation news-group and one fellow, an ex-cop, according to himself, insisted, they have the right to do so. He could not come up with the law allowing that, but I could not quote anything either.
Although, it is not clear, whose the burden of proof should be in this case, I'd appreciate a pointer to a law (of any state, but MA is most prefered) to support either point of view.
Besides just being a nice OS, it had just made itself even better suited as an Internet server (for most services). The recent (end of July -- part of the 4.1.1 release) addition of the socket filtering, coupled with the dataready and httpready sample filters should help ANY web-server -- they ensure, the server is not bothered (from accept(2)) until the data-packet has arrived (for dataready) or until http-headers have arrived (more specialized httpready).
The next Apache release will have the FreeBSD code to use this filters (already committed in CVS-tree, AFAIK) or you can patch any other server to use them -- including an earlier release of Apache. Here is an example -- a patch for Apache (and Apache's documentation).
Look for the SO_ACCEPTFILTER option in setsockopt(2) and the accept_filter(9) ).
According to my source, using this on busy sites (where keep-alives are already disabled) may bring down the number of Apaches needed 5-10 fold...
-mi
It's not just for GUI, you know :)
For a web-server you can have either:
Your database may be MySQL or PostgreSQL (my preference).
PostgreSQL can be built with TCL support (a client library loadable into a TCL interpreter) and a server-side extension allowing you to write server-side procedures in TCL (not anemic at all, IMHO). Postgres can be built to support SSL connections and comes with pgaccess -- a fairly powerfull database browsing and management GUI-tool (written in TCL/TK).
For MySQL there are also at least two TCL-extensions that provide for TCL access to its client API:
For distributed objects, etc. you could use TCL-DP. Don't let the word beta scare you -- it does wonders. The remote ends can even talk over e-mail!
And there is nothing to beat TCL/TK for a cross-platform front-end application! That's a given...
-mi
P.S. It sucks that paragraph-tags can not have attributes in /. comments. IMHO <p align="justify"> is perfectly valid and quite desirable for a paragraph with over 120 characters...
It is ridiculously easy to confiscate someone's property even in this country. All the campus police had was a search warrant. Are we to trust police to be able to distinguish between, say, anti-government songs and stolen copyrighted music?
Is it civil disobedience when I drive 75 miles per hour on the highway? Yes, usually, it is, in my opinion. The speed-limits are ridiculously low and the law does not distinguish decent cars from junk, and mature, able-organ drivers from youngsters or from those whose illness(es) or age reduced their reaction time, sight, hearing. In other words, you may be a martyr without knowing it...
"Jump through hoops"? By asking you to provide some cursory information? Those are the hoops I meant, you are right. Tell me how this violates the GPL? Why can't I be anonymous? There is nothing in GPL about having to have an e-mail address to be able to obtain the source, either. But most importantly, one has to agree to a very long chunk of legalese, in addition to the GPL, that's presented at the beginning.
Oh, no, everybody is entitled to an opinion. But I'm not obligated to hear it. While arresting for no reason is VERY BAD, blocking the traffic to force your opinion down the drivers' and the passengers' throats is pretty BAD too. Remember how annoyed the Blues Brothers were when a demonstration blocked their way? And that was a legitimate demonstration -- the organizers had a permit...