.rpm is file-oriented: a package lists its dependencies as files it requires. It's not necessarily important where the file came from - rpm supposes the file does what it is supposed to and is installed correctly.
From the article:Long past are the days where one could leave a Windows 98 machine (or Windows 2000, or XP, take your pick) connected to the Internet for days at a time, unpatched.
It's not really the same situation for a Mac, tho. I don't disagree that network applications are pretty cool, and have gotten substantially cooler recently (see Google Suggest). In an absolute sense, Microsoft products are hard to manage, especially so for a home user. But what would you rather have: a fast connection and a full-use computer; or just a fast connection? This is the same calculation that made X Terminals a bad idea.
Are you going to take him at face value and continue using the system as is, after patching the security hole that let him in?
Am I a competent sysadmin in this scenario? If "yes," then I guess I'm probably running a tripwire of some sort. So I boot from CD, take a look at what's been changed, and fix it. If I'm really on the ball, I'm using something like radmind, in which case I still boot from CD, but I let radmind reverse any damage that had been done.
Weighing the balance, I'm in favor of guns (and own several). I can see how others can disagree, but the argument that an armed populace is unable to overthrow a bad government does not carry any weight whatsoever.
Just to be clear, you also seem to have a reasonable perspective on the issues involved. My post that you're replying to, quoting the ACLU position on the interpretation of the second amendment, is just a different well thought-out view. Both are perfectly respectable.
Of course, I have my own beef with the ACLU, namely that they are very selective about which civil rights they will and will not defend.
These a good links, providing a nuanced view of the question. For instance, ACLU says:
If indeed the Second Amendment provides an absolute, constitutional protection for the right to bear arms in order to preserve the power of the people to resist government tyranny, then it must allow individuals to possess bazookas, torpedoes, SCUD missiles and even nuclear warheads, for they, like handguns, rifles and M-16s, are arms. Moreover, it is hard to imagine any serious resistance to the military without such arms. Yet few, if any, would argue that the Second Amendment gives individuals the unlimited right to own any weapons they please. But as soon as we allow governmental regulation of any weapons, we have broken the dam of Constitutional protection. Once that dam is broken, we are not talking about whether the government can constitutionally restrict arms, but rather what constitutes a reasonable restriction.
This seems like a reasonable perspective on the interpretation of the second amendment.
The open source revolution is just getting started..... That community communication is the central strength. Without using it, we're just wallowing in an academic sense of freedom that will be crushed by proprietary organizations that are better organized and more competitive.
Right on. Vendor "certification" is a red herring, meant to shift power away from the community, back to support organizations like IBM. And ironically, only a novice would install a "certified" package and expect to be done. Acceptance testing and change-control (self-certification?) are the bread & butter of what expert sysadmins do. Vendor "certification" is about fiduciary risk, liability, and blame not availability and stability.
"(14:20) Rackspace has issued a "no comment" response concerning the FBI's actions."
Given that Rackspace seemed reasonably communicative about the Swiss Secret Service issue, I wonder if the "no comment" implies some invocation of the Patriot Act.
Kerry is demonstrating that he will respond when attacked, not sit there and take it as previous victims of Bush smear campaigns have done - Dukakis & Gore.
Let's not forget McCain. Wasn't it cool the way Bush & Rove won the South Carolina primary?:w
Code conventions are for the benefit of the tens and possibly hundreds of people who are going to be reading the code well after you've moved on to another position.
And it's even more important if you'd like your code to become the basis of a successful open source project. By "successful," I mean "with code contributed by more than just you." While I think formatting beyond 80 columns reduces readability, there's a lot more to it than that. Everyone in my office adheres to the Indian Hills C Style Guide. And during code review, it's fair game to say "this code is impossible to understand, please write it more clearly or add extensive comments."
cfengine is the best automation tool for unix and unix-like environments. Hands down. It's a little hard to configure sometimes, but worth the effort.
cfengine is a reasonable framework for writing scripts, not so powerful as say perl. It's like saying "Unix is the best automation tool for Unix." A true statement, but not really adding much to the conversation.
The Trouble with Tripwire is that you can't tell whether the reports reflect work done by sysadmins or hackers. Radmind is the cure for this issue. Not only does it differentiate between patches & hackers, but you can use it to actually deploy the patches (or other software).
On the one hand, I agree with the sentiment. The Linux we run is built from source, with only what we want installed. You might call this a "hardened Linux," tho I laugh when I hear about hardened Linux distributions. "Hardened distribution" is oxymoron: you can't really have both hardened (trimmed to the bone to do a specialized task) and a distribution (useful to large numbers of users).
On the other hand, I think LSB really misses the target. Early versions required X11 to be installed! LSB 2.0 specifies RPM as the packaging system. I think it's pretty clear that this specification is tracking Debian/Progeny/Componentized Linux, and is hence no standard.
Rather than challenge distribution makers to come up with business models that better match open source processes, I would instead challenge sysadmins to quit drinking from the commercial distribution teat. Take a dip into Linux From Scratch, learn what little work there is in building a stable core yourself, and enjoy the freedom of knowing what you're doing.
What do you suggest the government do instead or in addition to this?
Do about what? Do you seriously think that someone could successfully pull off another 9/11 style attack? The world changed a few minutes after it became common knowledge that hijacked planes could be used as missiles. Witness the UA flight 93, crashed by the hijackers when passengers learned about the WTC and Pentagon planes. Or how about this crazy?
So given how hard it's become hijack planes, what exactly is the point of this tracking system?
In real world deploys of statistical filters, something like DSPAM's "global user" feature is necessary. The ability to begin with a relatively mature dictionary is critical to the user experience. Personally, DSPAM is filtering around 200 SPAMs per day for me, allowing one through every few days. It's 99.985% effective for me.
Having the President of the National Institute of Information Technology trashing you is one thing. Being painted in the popular press as a bully is icing on the cake. The trick is to make any court case a referendum on MS business practices. Has someone started a legal defense fund?
Buying PeopleSoft is just the first step in a long and arduous path. Perhaps you've heard that only 25% of software is commercial? The other 75% is written to manage in-house processes, e.g., finance, HR, whatever the business is. This ratio is not substantively changed by purchasing PeopleSoft: as with most vendors, step one is "buy software," step two is "spend way more time and/or money making it work."
Someone mentioned the PHB problem. No doubt. PHBs don't understand the "make it work" step. I bought something, I'm done, right?
If the operators at TMI had known about the Davis-Besse incident they might have recognized the situation and let the plant take care of itself.
Which Davis-Besse incident are you referring to? The stuck valve incident? The corrosion incident? Or the Slammer incident? Is there a lemon law for nuclear reactors? How about for energy companies?
Slashdot Mirror
.rpm is file-oriented: a package lists its dependencies as files it requires. It's not necessarily important where the file came from - rpm supposes the file does what it is supposed to and is installed correctly.
:w
This assumption is exactly where RPM runs into trouble. See An Analysis of RPM Validation Drift.
From the article:Long past are the days where one could leave a Windows 98 machine (or Windows 2000, or XP, take your pick) connected to the Internet for days at a time, unpatched.
:w
It's not really the same situation for a Mac, tho. I don't disagree that network applications are pretty cool, and have gotten substantially cooler recently (see Google Suggest). In an absolute sense, Microsoft products are hard to manage, especially so for a home user. But what would you rather have: a fast connection and a full-use computer; or just a fast connection? This is the same calculation that made X Terminals a bad idea.
Are you going to take him at face value and continue using the system as is, after patching the security hole that let him in?
:w
Am I a competent sysadmin in this scenario? If "yes," then I guess I'm probably running a tripwire of some sort. So I boot from CD, take a look at what's been changed, and fix it. If I'm really on the ball, I'm using something like radmind, in which case I still boot from CD, but I let radmind reverse any damage that had been done.
Weighing the balance, I'm in favor of guns (and own several). I can see how others can disagree, but the argument that an armed populace is unable to overthrow a bad government does not carry any weight whatsoever.
:w
Just to be clear, you also seem to have a reasonable perspective on the issues involved. My post that you're replying to, quoting the ACLU position on the interpretation of the second amendment, is just a different well thought-out view. Both are perfectly respectable.
Really? I thought the obvious argument was that you're a (pick one or more):
- gun nut
- religious nut
- right wing shill
- ditto head
- dumb ass
Seriously, while the current director may well be a chump, the ACLU is all about defending everyone's Bill or Rights. Do a little research.These a good links, providing a nuanced view of the question. For instance, ACLU says:
This seems like a reasonable perspective on the interpretation of the second amendment.
The open source revolution is just getting started. .... That community communication is the central strength. Without using it, we're just wallowing in an academic sense of freedom that will be crushed by proprietary organizations that are better organized and more competitive.
:w
Right on. Vendor "certification" is a red herring, meant to shift power away from the community, back to support organizations like IBM. And ironically, only a novice would install a "certified" package and expect to be done. Acceptance testing and change-control (self-certification?) are the bread & butter of what expert sysadmins do. Vendor "certification" is about fiduciary risk, liability, and blame not availability and stability.
This effort assumes that "dependency hell" is the problem. Here's an article that says otherwise:
:w
An Analysis of RPM Validation Drift
- Notice of any changes or modifications to the Original Work, including the date the changes were made.
- Any modifications of the Original Work must be distributed in such a manner as to avoid any confusion with the Original Work of the copyright holders.
- Title to copyright in the Original Work and any associated documentation will at all times remain with the copyright holders.
The last one might be a "duh", but the first two are probably unreasonable in an "open source" project.Then why do the other search engines still carry it? It seems like Google has something confused and not the government.
:w
If past performance is any indication, I'd suggest "incompetence."
Given that Rackspace seemed reasonably communicative about the Swiss Secret Service issue, I wonder if the "no comment" implies some invocation of the Patriot Act.
Kerry is demonstrating that he will respond when attacked, not sit there and take it as previous victims of Bush smear campaigns have done - Dukakis & Gore.
:w
Let's not forget McCain. Wasn't it cool the way Bush & Rove won the South Carolina primary?
You might be interested in the Unix commands "expand" and "unexpand".
:w
Code conventions are for the benefit of the tens and possibly hundreds of people who are going to be reading the code well after you've moved on to another position.
:w
And it's even more important if you'd like your code to become the basis of a successful open source project. By "successful," I mean "with code contributed by more than just you." While I think formatting beyond 80 columns reduces readability, there's a lot more to it than that. Everyone in my office adheres to the Indian Hills C Style Guide. And during code review, it's fair game to say "this code is impossible to understand, please write it more clearly or add extensive comments."
You mean the computers all update themselves automatically from a central server, or is it something else?
:w
Check out radmind. It's sort of an imaging and tripwire tool all rolled into one. Runs on Linux, Solaris, *BSD, and Mac OS X.
cfengine is the best automation tool for unix and unix-like environments. Hands down. It's a little hard to configure sometimes, but worth the effort.
:w
cfengine is a reasonable framework for writing scripts, not so powerful as say perl. It's like saying "Unix is the best automation tool for Unix." A true statement, but not really adding much to the conversation.
The Trouble with Tripwire is that you can't tell whether the reports reflect work done by sysadmins or hackers. Radmind is the cure for this issue. Not only does it differentiate between patches & hackers, but you can use it to actually deploy the patches (or other software).
:w
On the other hand, I think LSB really misses the target. Early versions required X11 to be installed! LSB 2.0 specifies RPM as the packaging system. I think it's pretty clear that this specification is tracking Debian/Progeny/Componentized Linux, and is hence no standard.
Rather than challenge distribution makers to come up with business models that better match open source processes, I would instead challenge sysadmins to quit drinking from the commercial distribution teat. Take a dip into Linux From Scratch, learn what little work there is in building a stable core yourself, and enjoy the freedom of knowing what you're doing.
:w
What do you suggest the government do instead or in addition to this?
:w
Do about what? Do you seriously think that someone could successfully pull off another 9/11 style attack? The world changed a few minutes after it became common knowledge that hijacked planes could be used as missiles. Witness the UA flight 93, crashed by the hijackers when passengers learned about the WTC and Pentagon planes. Or how about this crazy?
So given how hard it's become hijack planes, what exactly is the point of this tracking system?
Here's a response from the DSPAM author.
:w
In real world deploys of statistical filters, something like DSPAM's "global user" feature is necessary. The ability to begin with a relatively mature dictionary is critical to the user experience. Personally, DSPAM is filtering around 200 SPAMs per day for me, allowing one through every few days. It's 99.985% effective for me.
:w
Having the President of the National Institute of Information Technology trashing you is one thing. Being painted in the popular press as a bully is icing on the cake. The trick is to make any court case a referendum on MS business practices. Has someone started a legal defense fund?
:w
Someone mentioned the PHB problem. No doubt. PHBs don't understand the "make it work" step. I bought something, I'm done, right?
Newfound time? This is the time that is now available because there are no more worms or viruses and/or Windows has become impervious to them. Check.
If the operators at TMI had known about the Davis-Besse incident they might have recognized the situation and let the plant take care of itself.
:w
Which Davis-Besse incident are you referring to? The stuck valve incident? The corrosion incident? Or the Slammer incident? Is there a lemon law for nuclear reactors? How about for energy companies?