Re:Do not underestimate the power of "Power Cycle"
on
Is Caps Lock Dead?
·
· Score: 1
If there's no power going to the bios chipset, the RAM, and the processor, then that sucker is freakin' off...
But since modern computers have the ability to Wake on LAN, Modem, or Alarm, (as well as waking up when you hit the switch on the front panel or even a certain button on some models of keyboard) there is a part of the motherboard that stays awake. And if the problem is a network glitch, it's obvious that the NIC hasn't really been reset if it's got a trickle of current going to it when it's 'off'.
I've had my own PC fail to even detect that I'd hit the front panel button until I hit the switch on the power supply.
I was called upon to wipe a drive on a machine that was being sold. I did a nested loop dd'ing 00, then aa, 55, ff, 00, aa,...ff for a total of 12 passes, three of each pattern. I believe that at that point, even the folks at Langley would have trouble getting something off it. And they don't care.
There are always going to be things like replies to an original question and subsequent follow up questions going back and forth, so normally hanging onto the latest/final reply would be sufficient (providing it had the previous history - clearly showed the conclusion).
I'm old-school when it comes to email (probably because I've been a BBS sysop who had to worry about bandwidth consumption), but you've touched on one of the two big problems with most corporate email cultures:
Top-posting a reply, while quoting the entire original message, which recursively contains everything back to the start of the thread (I have actually caught crap sometimes for NOT re-quoting the entire message, because people don't know how to use Outlook to follow a thread any other way.)
Gratutious, inefficient use of HTML (e.g. FONT tags everywhere instead of stylesheet-based markup) and graphics ('stationery')
These bloat emails by entire orders of magnitude over plain text with minimal quoting, which is sufficient in virtually all cases, and could be retained forever with no problem. Even with all the fluff, at current disk prices, I'd say that archiving old messages (and compressing them in the process, even if all of them were converted from HTML to plaintext) on a server with backup tapes that could be pulled out in case an investigation were conducted, would be pretty darned cheap.
Do not underestimate the power of "Power Cycle".
on
Is Caps Lock Dead?
·
· Score: 1
I'm pretty sure the #1 Tech Support answer for Everything is "Reboot", which is now called all sorts of high-tech things like "Power Cycle".
I work Tech Support, you insensitive clod!
There is a very important difference between "Reboot' and "Power Cycle", which is implicit in the "Re-" prefix. In fact, there is a hierarchy of reboots, starting with the Soft Reboot, passing through the Hard Reboot, which is hitting the Reset button on the computer, if it even has one, and you can explain to the person on the other end of the phone line, that you can't see, where to find it, on who knows which model:
No, not on your
monitor, on the 'tower'...
You mean my 'hard drive''server''modem'?
Uhhh...yeah.
But a Hard Boot is still a Warm Boot, and the electronics of the computer haven't truly been reinitialized like after a Cold Boot.
But there are two kinds of Cold Boots: pressing the 'power switch' on the front panel of the PC doesn't really turn the entire system off, but keeps just enough power to a few components to be able to 'wake' on various events, such as modem or NIC activity, or a timer set in the BIOS. In keeping with classic Geek Culture, I have designated a front-panel 'power off' as 'Mostly Off'. I usually direct the user to then reach the top rear of the PC, and locate the rocker switch next to the power cable. Failing that, I suggest disconnecting the power cable itself for 5 seconds or so.
I have asked users if they had rebooted their PC before talking to me, and often get a dismissive "Of course I rebooted!", but rarely have they done either kind of cold boot. I've lost count of how many times a warm or even Mostly Off boot (often suggested by a Level 1 tech who doesn't understand the 'high tech' distinction any better than users do) did not resolve the problem, but a true 'Power Cycle' (on...off...on is the cycle) did.
"wiki" is the term i prefer over "blog" which is just a buzz word for a wiki that is focused upon a specific application (logging or journals)
They are fundamentally different. Slashdot fits into the 'blog' category, as evidenced by the fact that I can't get into your comment and edit it. I can do that with a wiki. In fact, I contributed a tidbit of information to a Wikipedia article recently. I found it a singluarly empowering experience.
I remember watching WOPR 'cracking' the launch codes - each time it 'found a match' that character in the launch code would lock, while the others would continue to change in seemingly random fashion. I thought at the tima that it was incredibly stupid to have a system that would disclose which characters were correct - if you're using upper-case alpha and digits, that would require no more than 36 guesses to get any code.
Now I realize that the movie wasn't nearly as stupid as reality.
The 4th 9/11 plane was headed for Washington, quite possibly for the White House, where the terrorists might reasonably have expected the President to be. The passengers on that flight heard via cell phone of what had happened at the WTC and Pentagon, concluded that if they did nothing they were going to die anyway, so why not at least go down fighting, and acted to prevent their plane from crashing into another target.
Blocking cell phones will make it more difficult for the overwhelming majority of honest citizens to act to report suspicious activity while doing nothing to prevent terrorists from using some other frequency to remotely triggering bombs, or simply detonating them manually on site -- the Islamist terrorists don't seem to have any shortage of people who want to die in a jihad and collect their complimentary 72 virgins.
Consider this: say you have a script that makes a temp file name a.img. Now after some transmogrification a file A.img is derived from a.img. This is convenient so temp filenames are short yet self consistently named. Thanks to SNAP A.img overwrites a.img.
Don't use something designed for Windows users, then apply *nix assumptions about filename case. Windows (since 95) has preserved case, but not considered it significant. When you're doing SMB shares, those are the rules to play by. (NFS can use different rules.)
Democracy is useful, but it's not a magic wand that makes authoritarianism disappear.
Of course not. It's quite possible to have democratically elected authoritarian governments. Prohibition was enacted by elected representatives. And, of course, Hitler was elected.
We all make typos. . . . Who double checks posts on slashdot anyway?
What I quoted was not 'a post', but the Fine Article itself!
Is it any wonder that the Elmer FUD contingent is able to get traction with PHBs, when we as a community can't be bothered do submit our articles to any kind of editorial review before we publish? If you can't tell the difference between 'lose' and 'loose', who would anyone pay attention to your ideas on languages.
We all know it was Microsofts fault...Blaster Worm?
If you want to know the truth, ask former White House Cyberterrorism expert Richard Clarke. He'll tell you that he had been warning both the Clinton and Bush administrations about this, and although Clinton's team had approved a plan to deal with the menace (but never actually got around to implementing it), none of Bush's senior aides listened to him, and instead wanted to do a pre-emptive strike on Kazaa to elimnate Weapons of Mass Distribution. It's all in his new book Against all Crackers
I think this is an unauthorized making of a derivative work,
An interesting theory. Suppose I distribute a program which will patch a piece of proprietary software in some way, such as to close a security hole in Internet Explorer. Under copyright law, it would absolutely be illegal for me to patch IE and distribute the patched version (which would be a derivative work) but I don't know that the patch program itself could be illegal because the user must have already (presumably legally) obtained a copy of IE to patch. The end user's use of the patch might violate a EULA, which may or may not have any legal authority, but the patch itself wouldn't violate anything if it were developed in a jurisdiction that doesn't recognize the validity of the EULA.
Personally, I'm interested in taking this technology to the next level. I'd like to see an XML schema that would instruct a DVD player to cut the movie in a certain way, including adding or substituting external video sources, voice or complete sound tracks (Dark Side of the Rainbow? How about roll-your-own MST3K?) or adding subtitles (for languages that won't generate enough profit for the studio to warrant, for a film school professor to comment on techniques being used in the scene, history classes to give some background on an expression used in a period piece....) This should be a perfectly legal way for a director to do a 'remix' of a movie by distributing the XML file to people who would then have to buy the DVD to view the 'derivative work', so everybody gets paid. The buyer would still have the original, and be able to play it any time the way the original director intended, but might also be able to enjoy seeing some new perspectives on the work.
This is exactly the same as the software licenses that require derivative works to be released as patches only.
What vulnerability data? The Linux vendors have an open process. Every one knows what the vulnerabilities are. Can the same be said for Windows bugs? Or are there issues known within MS that simply aren't put on the Bug List until a fix is in the works? Is it a bug if MS doesn't officially admit that it's a bug yet?
Most subscribers will receive an issue that features four cover pages of intensely personalized information
Having to compete with web portals that tailor themselves to the personal preferences of readers is likely to drive print publications this way, as will advertisers. What a lot of magazine subscribers don't realize is that there's already some customization going on. For example, DaimlerChrysler might buy a full-page ad in $MAGAZINE, which serves up different ads based on zip(+4) codes:
High-income areas get the Mercedes ad
Lower-income areas get Chrysler
Rural areas get Dodge Truck
thus maximizing their investment, by showing people ads for things they might actually want to buy (and be willing to afford). With access to the right data, this can be fine-tuned far beyond what census data about your ZIP code discloses.
If you have 20 employees at 10 an hour working 20 hours a week you still get 400 man hours at 4,000 dollars
. ..
What's the down side?
Finding people willing to earn $200/wk. working for you. About all you can find like this is students, moonlighters with full-time jobs (and if there's ever a conflict, you know who comes out on the short end of the stick), or people with very unusual circumstances, to put it mildly.
Although you dismiss the training, it's an additional cost that must be borne. In an earlier life, I had the experience of managing fast food, which has the reputation of requiring little training. I can tell you that training employees is a never-ending process because of the high turnover. The kind of people willing to work a 20-hour week tend not to be the most stable folks in the world.
RH does not lock out other support vendors
on
Red Hat Recap
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
If you have to pay for support to get the software that doesn't really seem very different than paying for the software.
The GPL never guaranteed gratis, only libre. RH is doing the source gratis to anyone who wants it.
It would be different if you could opt out and maybe get support elsewhere.
I fail to see how anyone is forbidden from opting out. You can either compile it yourself, find someone who bought a service contract to give you a copy with the RH trademarks removed, or buy a contract yourself for the minimum 1 year period, then go to someone else for support.
Or don't use RHEL. Use Fedora, SuSE, Debian, Gentoo, or anything else you want. The freedom of RH do do this and still comply with the GPL is a feature, not a bug. It's proof that the whole 'GPL is viral' nonsense is the FUD I keep telling people it is.
License does not forbid sharing.
on
Red Hat Recap
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
although you can technically share the software the reasonable way to do so is prohibited
. ..read the actual license at here
I read the license. It specifically explains how to legally share the software - specifically by deleting RH trademarks and 'anaconda-images'. I don't believe anyone thinks that someone has the right to distribute RH software, with its trademarks and everything present. But I could be wrong. Maybe the FSF should look into it.
WHAT obligation to distribute ISOs?
on
Red Hat Recap
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Where can I download the ISO images of the real RHEL Linux?
I don't recall the provision of the GPL that requires binary distribution to anyone who wants a copy. (Where can I download that paragraph?) In fact, I'm pretty sure that all it requires is that if binaries are distributed, source must also be made available to those same recipients. Red Hat is doing even better than that ( emphasis in A: mine):
Q: You mentioned licensing - what does this mean? I thought Linux was free.
A: Except for a few components provided by third parties (for example, Java) all the code in Red Hat products is open source and licensed under the GPL (or a similar license, such as the LGPL). So you always have free access to the source code.
In fact you can download it from our FTP servers at any time. However, Red Hat does not provide free access to the binaries . . ..
Under the GPL, RH is under no obligation to give source code to random, anonymous third parties -- only to those people to whom RH distributes binaries. Further, (despite assertions elsewhere to the contrary) anyone who has purchased the RHEL package for even one machine cannot by the terms of the GPL be denied the legal right to sell or give copies of all of the GPL software to anyone they wish. Any attempt by RH to assert such restrictions would void their license to redistribute the GPLed contributions of thousands, if not millions, of programmers. RH knows better than that.
Per-Seat pricing is fine.
on
Red Hat Recap
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
How can we accept Red Hat's per-seat pricing and overbearing EULAs that allow them to audit user sites for license compliance?
The article itself says why, although it mocks the reasoning.
But Red Hat claims Enterprise Linux is still free--because customers are being charged for support, not for the software itself (ahem).
For years, we FOSS advocates have said
You can give away the software and make your money on the support.
RH is doing exactly that. Anyone who wants a copy of the software can have it, free as in beer and speech. They can hire anyone they want for support, whether in-house or outsourced, under mutually agreed terms. What they can't do is make a deal for RH to support a 20-user shop, and then pile on 30 more users for free. Letting your customers take advantage of you is not the way to make money.
Maybe my perspective is different on this because I make my living in the Support department of a company that sells support contracts that ultimately pay for me. I tend to be frustrated by our Sales and Implementation departments driving things under The Manufacturing Delusion, more interested in 'making the sale' than creating an environment that offers our customers an ongoing service. Lately I've seen signs to suggest we might be turning that around, though.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had my own PC fail to even detect that I'd hit the front panel button until I hit the switch on the power supply.
- Top-posting a reply, while quoting the entire original message, which recursively contains everything back to the start of the thread (I have actually caught crap sometimes for NOT re-quoting the entire message, because people don't know how to use Outlook to follow a thread any other way.)
- Gratutious, inefficient use of HTML (e.g. FONT tags everywhere instead of stylesheet-based markup) and graphics ('stationery')
These bloat emails by entire orders of magnitude over plain text with minimal quoting, which is sufficient in virtually all cases, and could be retained forever with no problem. Even with all the fluff, at current disk prices, I'd say that archiving old messages (and compressing them in the process, even if all of them were converted from HTML to plaintext) on a server with backup tapes that could be pulled out in case an investigation were conducted, would be pretty darned cheap.There is a very important difference between "Reboot' and "Power Cycle", which is implicit in the "Re-" prefix. In fact, there is a hierarchy of reboots, starting with the Soft Reboot, passing through the Hard Reboot, which is hitting the Reset button on the computer, if it even has one, and you can explain to the person on the other end of the phone line, that you can't see, where to find it, on who knows which model:
But a Hard Boot is still a Warm Boot, and the electronics of the computer haven't truly been reinitialized like after a Cold Boot.But there are two kinds of Cold Boots: pressing the 'power switch' on the front panel of the PC doesn't really turn the entire system off, but keeps just enough power to a few components to be able to 'wake' on various events, such as modem or NIC activity, or a timer set in the BIOS. In keeping with classic Geek Culture, I have designated a front-panel 'power off' as 'Mostly Off'. I usually direct the user to then reach the top rear of the PC, and locate the rocker switch next to the power cable. Failing that, I suggest disconnecting the power cable itself for 5 seconds or so.
I have asked users if they had rebooted their PC before talking to me, and often get a dismissive "Of course I rebooted!", but rarely have they done either kind of cold boot. I've lost count of how many times a warm or even Mostly Off boot (often suggested by a Level 1 tech who doesn't understand the 'high tech' distinction any better than users do) did not resolve the problem, but a true 'Power Cycle' (on...off...on is the cycle) did.
Now I realize that the movie wasn't nearly as stupid as reality.
Blocking cell phones will make it more difficult for the overwhelming majority of honest citizens to act to report suspicious activity while doing nothing to prevent terrorists from using some other frequency to remotely triggering bombs, or simply detonating them manually on site -- the Islamist terrorists don't seem to have any shortage of people who want to die in a jihad and collect their complimentary 72 virgins.
Personally, I'm interested in taking this technology to the next level. I'd like to see an XML schema that would instruct a DVD player to cut the movie in a certain way, including adding or substituting external video sources, voice or complete sound tracks (Dark Side of the Rainbow? How about roll-your-own MST3K?) or adding subtitles (for languages that won't generate enough profit for the studio to warrant, for a film school professor to comment on techniques being used in the scene, history classes to give some background on an expression used in a period piece....) This should be a perfectly legal way for a director to do a 'remix' of a movie by distributing the XML file to people who would then have to buy the DVD to view the 'derivative work', so everybody gets paid. The buyer would still have the original, and be able to play it any time the way the original director intended, but might also be able to enjoy seeing some new perspectives on the work.
This is exactly the same as the software licenses that require derivative works to be released as patches only.
- High-income areas get the Mercedes ad
- Lower-income areas get Chrysler
- Rural areas get Dodge Truck
thus maximizing their investment, by showing people ads for things they might actually want to buy (and be willing to afford). With access to the right data, this can be fine-tuned far beyond what census data about your ZIP code discloses.Although you dismiss the training, it's an additional cost that must be borne. In an earlier life, I had the experience of managing fast food, which has the reputation of requiring little training. I can tell you that training employees is a never-ending process because of the high turnover. The kind of people willing to work a 20-hour week tend not to be the most stable folks in the world.
Or don't use RHEL. Use Fedora, SuSE, Debian, Gentoo, or anything else you want. The freedom of RH do do this and still comply with the GPL is a feature, not a bug. It's proof that the whole 'GPL is viral' nonsense is the FUD I keep telling people it is.
Maybe my perspective is different on this because I make my living in the Support department of a company that sells support contracts that ultimately pay for me. I tend to be frustrated by our Sales and Implementation departments driving things under The Manufacturing Delusion, more interested in 'making the sale' than creating an environment that offers our customers an ongoing service. Lately I've seen signs to suggest we might be turning that around, though.