Does WPA work on 802.11b network ? As far as I know, it doesn't. And there still a lot of 802.11b hardware around. Just because you have all your wifi equipment capable of 802.11g doesn't mean that is true for everybody else.
Actually, I can see Thinkgeek making a lot of money on that idea. Lets face it, even thou the general image of "lonely geek" is just an stereotype, the "porn loving" image isn't. Also, there are enough reader here with too much money (to spend).
Just because he is wise doesn't mean he doesn't have an agenda of his own (he does).
I get fairly pissed at DJB when he says bind is flawed, and parades his djbdns in front of us, without mentioning that djbdns only implements a tiny part of what bind does. Well, guess what ? dnsdns is not an option for 90% of the DNS servers (at least). His solution for complex problems that are prone to have security implications is just not implementing them. Well, doh!
And yes, Paul Vixie is know for providing bugging, security flawed software. I particually remember some serious issues with his crond daemon. I just don't think DJB is a good judge regarding any software he providing an "alternative".
Apparently Shakespeare isn't entertaining (have you counted the number of raunchy jokes in his comedies?)
No. What I said is that most of what he wrote where not books.
Dostoevsky writes 'poor books' (those are fabulously well-constructed, nuanced works, and not usually a terrible slog to read, either)
As in "not entertaining". Those are great literary works.
1984 has no literary value, but Dracula and Frankenstein do.
That is correct. 1984 is great philosophical work, and also very entertaining, but had not artistic component in it. But I'll not step my foot on this one, since I'm not 100% convinced myself I'm right in classifying it with low literary value.
I tend to say that with books, there is candy and there is steak. Tom Robbins? Candy. Harry Potter? Candy. Lord of the Rings is totally candy. Does this mean you shouldn't read them? No. Does this make them less worthy of existence? No. Should your diet consist only of candy? Emphatically no. Sometimes you have to read stuff that's only for fun, especially if you tend to read a lot of dense books, you need a break...but you need some sort of nutrition in your diet too.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH! That is exactly my point. Unless you are studying the evolution of the literature on the 18th and 19th century, or something like that, or even trying to "broaden your horizons", what really matters is that you read a good book. Not taking away the value of broadening your horizons and literary works by themselves, of course.
Now Joan Collins? That's simply crap, and you should probably stay away from that sort of thing.:-)
What ? How dare you say "JOAN COLLINS BEAUTY BOOK" has no literary value.:-) Now excuse me while I go shoot myself.
Also, that would be 'Midsummer Night's Dream,'
English is not my primary language, so I just some rough mental title translation there. Guilty as charged.
and its Shakespeare, so it probably shouldn't be listed separately.
The idea was to emphasize that most of Shakespeare's works were not books, or even literary in nature (per definition).
Let me take the opportunity and thank you for this discussion. I was really hoping for something like this when I made the Harry Potter commentary.
Semantics ? If it is literature, it has literary value. Positive, neutral or negative. Bad literature has literary value, by that reasoning. Monkeys using typewrites are producing something of literary value, also by that reasoning (ok, stretching it "a bit").
Is that simply a function of how complex the grammar is?
No.
Does Lord of the Rings, one of the most horrendously written classics ever created, qualify as having literary value?
Nope. Great book, tho. Read it 7 time already, in 2 languages.
Wizard of Oz? Or heck, how about anything by Charles Dickens, who was immensely popular, but generally regarded as having no literary value in his time?
I have to admit never reading Wizard of Oz (only saw the movie). And I dislike Dickens, so I'm biased there.
As far as I can tell, the difference between literature and non-literature is the date on the book. If it passes the test of time, then it's considered classic literature.
You are correct as far as "classic" goes.
I don't know about anybody else, but there's no doubt in my mind that 100 years from now, HP will still be around as classic literature.
It sure will be a classic. No doubt about that. Heck, some people already consider Mists of Avalon a classic.
Ok, not for the big question:
So how do you define "literary" value?
Literary is a complex classification, so I'll explain my PoV in two parts. First by explanation, then by giving some examples. Please, bear with me.
A literary work first must have intrinsic artistic value. Then, it must have intellectual value. Then, it must be creative. Entertainment value doesn't enter the picture here, as far as I'm concerned (from what I've seen).
For my examples, I'll try to pick, probably without much success, some non controversial names.
Some good books with poor literary value: - Any good technical book - Harry Potter (controversial, but already stated) - Lord of the Rings (boy, you guys are going to kill me) - 1984 - Anything by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Some good literary works, but poor books: - The Lusiads (name 1 person who actually enjoyed the book) - Midnight Summer Dreams (not a book, but a play, so it can't be a good book) - Most of Shakespeare work (for the same reason) - Anything by Dostoevsky
Some good literary works that are also good books: - Brave New World - Dracula - Frankenstein - The Three Musketeers - Mobydick (which I actually didn't enjoy)
Bad literary works and bad books: - Dead Souls (Nikolai Gogol) [Worst book ever, as far as I'm concerned]
Time is only a factor if you consider "surviving the test of time", which is usually the case. Since I don't think it is always the case (many good books and authors end up forgotten, for whatever reasons), I didn't list it before. But it is a valid clue.
I hope this helps to clarify my point of view, even if you don't agree with me (not my intention to convince anyone).
I've read them, read the sites, and even gave the (current) collection for my daughter. They have some intellectual value, and great entertainment properties.
As far as literary value is concerned, they have almost as much as a Spiderman comic book, which I do love, and still think has no literary value.
So you point is what exactly ? That every good book has good literary value ?
Why should I hate it ? I actually read all the books, and got them for my daughter. They have both entertaining and intellectual value. They just don't have literary value.
I think he's trying to take advantage of readers' affection for books. You could see that in the article, where a good number of people "adopted" them for $1 each.
So it might be a brilliant publicity stunt that's worth about $20,000 ($1 x 20,000 books) to him.
I agree it is a publicity stunt. At the same time he is buying worthless (to him) books, he is selling signed copies of Harry Potter (literary garbage, even if it has entertaining values).
Is he worried about literacy ? Let him burn high profile, expensive books that have low literary value, like his "The Da Vinci Code Advance Reading Copy" or his signed "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets".
Actually, if you consider storage space costs money, it is very likely that he is saving money by burning these books.
He also says for people to buy and donate the books to promote literacy (or some crap like that). Well, why is he burning the books instead of donating them ? Well, lets review:
1) Publicity 2) Saving storage space 3) Getting people to "adopt" some of these books
Humm, didn't verisign have something like this in place for a few days, before ICANN made them stop ? I forgot how it was called, thankfully. Is that what you are advocating ?
Humm, "end-user" and "compile-to-install" should not be put together. I agree with that.
About all the rest, there are some nice.sh installers around that don't rely on the package manager. Also, you always have the option to distribute statically linked binaries. Or to provide an intelligent install script that locates libraries, detects the distribution etc. Something like GNUconfigure does for building.
There are plenty of options. The point is that most developers don't know or care about them.
People have been installing flash and skype on Linux for some time now, without much hassle. And those are just 2 simple examples. The way Codeweavers distributes Crossover is also very nice.
Humm, this doesn't seem like a screwup on the linux part, but on the Ruby dev team part. Not only they didn't test for compatibility, but they also states that no one is interested on helping you.
If you were to blame OSS, I could understand. But Linux ?
I'm pretty sure the people at RedHat tested the new libraries not only with the version of ruby they ship, but also with all the "certified" software.
For the same reason people will code stuff with obscure APIs that will require you to install a lib just for one program: cause it is easier (for the coder) that way.
Even on Windows: how many times did you have to install specific libs ? VBRUN anyone ?
And since it is easier, most coders these days don't even bother to learn Xt. Yes, there is no reason to develop a whole system based on Xt alone. But an installer ? C'mon.
You are not just "spinning a few RPMS". You are breaking the whole point of the distro.
You see, the so called enterprise distributions (RHEL and others) are stable because of the whole distribution. Because not only each package was tested, but because they were tested as a whole.
Ok, so there is no big deal to install a new, unrelated package. I'm all for that. You can install mplayer or upgrade Mutt all you want, and you will not be breaking the distribution stability. But when you mess with things like samba, apache, php, python or ruby, you ARE messing up with the distro stability, thus negating the whole point of using an enterprise grade linux distro. And if you are really using RHEL, and not CentOS/Scientific/etc, you are even throwing away your money.
I don't mean to offend you, but by your first comment, you are not someone who understands all the minor details of the distribution (how the library versions are interlinked, the different API/ABI versions in use etc etc). Really, don't get offended. You are in the same boat that 99.99% of the other RHEL/CentOS users, myself included, so you really can't do it safely.
Get my point now ?
Of course, those are your servers, and you can do with them what you like. Just don't complain if they start giving you trouble later. Specially, don't go bothering the developers. I see enough of that (oh, but I changed only one minor package!) nonsense on the CentOS lists as it is.
What you pointed about HTTPS, lets call it "key reusability", is not really an issue. I'm not exactly sure about HTTPS, but many other symmetric/asymmetric situations I've studied you get the a new symmetric key negotiated from time to time. So your time to find out what that key is, and still be able to use it, is pretty short. Lets say 60 seconds, which is a pretty short time to break a 128 key.
So, you are pointing out we have a low speed (or high cost) fixed secure channel and, due to the nature of that channel, we only transmit the session keys that way, using a faster or less expensive channel for the encrypted data. So far, that makes sense to me, except for having 2 points of failure (which can be solved by redundancy).
Lets just make something clear for those reading. We are both using HTTPS as an example only for the asymmetric/symmetric methodology. As such, the 10 years example is also valid.
Ok, so to round things up, this is not a substitute for the symmetric part of the problem, but for the asymmetric (key negotiation) part. Is that it ?
I have a real problem understanding all this. Maybe my knowledge of crypto is flawed (most likely), or I simply did not understand this technique. Crypto, from my point of view, faces 2 main problems:
1) The safe transmission of the key 2) The computational power to encode/decode the message
Asymmetric cryptography solves the first problem, while with symmetric cryptography, the second problem is much smaller.
To "solve" both, we have things like what is used with HTTPS. You first use asymmetric to transmit a symmetric key (session key), which solve #1 but is computationally expensive, then use the session key (since #1 was solved), which is much less expensive. A pretty simple and intelligent way to do things.
Now the next barrier is to improve those algorithms, for both parts of the process (symmetric and asymmetric). As far as I know, there is where quantum crypto enters. Instead of using linear computation, you use quantum.
From what I understand, this technique is trying to replace the whole process, and not what quantum crypto proposes to do. Which is odd, since you will still have the first problem I've pointed out. After all, you still need a safe channel to transmit the key (what resistors do the other side use?). And, if you already have a safe channel, why do you need cryptography ?
Ok, so you have an expensive safe channel, just like you get with asymmetric crypto. Or a darn inconvenient one (someone with a briefcase blah blah). And the whole idea of using resistance/thermal is to have an analog (not digital) cryptographic method, which is naturally (due to its lack of discrete states) much harder to break. Is that the idea ? Isn't quantum crypto also lacking of discrete states in the same way ?
Actually, there are plenty of reasons RHEL4 has support until 2012, but Ruby is not one of them.
Currently, aprox. 95% of my servers are RHEL4, 4% are RHEL5 and 1% are something else. I don't plan on upgrading my RHEL4 servers just for the kick of it. But if I want to run Ruby, I'll do it on a RHEL5 machine. If I want to use PHP5, I'll use RHEL5. I won't try to make it work on RHEL4 (and it does, by the way). If you are running an enterprise Linux distribution, you simply don't fuck with it (pardon my french). If you want to compile all by yourself, you should be using Gentoo, LFS or some other distro like that.
Got the picture here ? It is not about "version churn game". It is about using the correct tool for the correct job. Or fulfilling the requirements. Or whatever you want to call it.
Ask why there is no graphical install for the flash player. The answer probably has something to do with having no modern, standard GUI available in "Linux" to implement such a thing.
Ok, I'll bite. (that "modern" part is a nice bait, ain't it?)
How about using Java for the installer ? Or maybe QT/GTK ? How about newt ? Yeah, I know it is too much to expect anyone to learn to use Xt or Motif. Ok, Motif is not always avaliable, but show me a GUI linux install that doesn't support Xt ? And if all you are doing is writing an installer, using Xt is pretty easy.
When MS released Windows 3 was when it started to become known in Brasil. At the time, there was a TV show called "Confissões de Adolecente" (no need to translate, since the name is not relevant). At the time, there was an episode where the main character was bitching an complaining about having to use a mouse and click on stuff. After all, if he wanted something, all he had to do before was to type the command. Now, he had to search for the icon, click on it, than click on something else etc.
So, to translate your comment into something that really means something (and is actually true), what you mean is:
"Do not force end-users to do something different"
Here is Brazil we have a saying for cases like this, which roughly translates as: "If you change the color of the grass, the mule will starve to death"
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I'm not a doctor, but as far as I see, you are describing obsessive behavior, not addiction.
And there is a HUGE difference between them.
Does WPA work on 802.11b network ? As far as I know, it doesn't. And there still a lot of 802.11b hardware around.
Just because you have all your wifi equipment capable of 802.11g doesn't mean that is true for everybody else.
Actually, I can see Thinkgeek making a lot of money on that idea.
Lets face it, even thou the general image of "lonely geek" is just an stereotype, the "porn loving" image isn't. Also, there are enough reader here with too much money (to spend).
A user space filesystem is not something I would expect performance from.
Actually, I think they want to focus on "service" because they get a higher profit margin there.
Just because he is wise doesn't mean he doesn't have an agenda of his own (he does).
I get fairly pissed at DJB when he says bind is flawed, and parades his djbdns in front of us, without mentioning that djbdns only implements a tiny part of what bind does. Well, guess what ? dnsdns is not an option for 90% of the DNS servers (at least). His solution for complex problems that are prone to have security implications is just not implementing them. Well, doh!
And yes, Paul Vixie is know for providing bugging, security flawed software. I particually remember some serious issues with his crond daemon. I just don't think DJB is a good judge regarding any software he providing an "alternative".
No. What I said is that most of what he wrote where not books.
As in "not entertaining". Those are great literary works.
That is correct. 1984 is great philosophical work, and also very entertaining, but had not artistic component in it. But I'll not step my foot on this one, since I'm not 100% convinced myself I'm right in classifying it with low literary value.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH! That is exactly my point. Unless you are studying the evolution of the literature on the 18th and 19th century, or something like that, or even trying to "broaden your horizons", what really matters is that you read a good book. Not taking away the value of broadening your horizons and literary works by themselves, of course.
What ? How dare you say "JOAN COLLINS BEAUTY BOOK" has no literary value.
English is not my primary language, so I just some rough mental title translation there. Guilty as charged.
The idea was to emphasize that most of Shakespeare's works were not books, or even literary in nature (per definition).
Let me take the opportunity and thank you for this discussion. I was really hoping for something like this when I made the Harry Potter commentary.
Semantics ?
If it is literature, it has literary value. Positive, neutral or negative. Bad literature has literary value, by that reasoning. Monkeys using typewrites are producing something of literary value, also by that reasoning (ok, stretching it "a bit").
No.
Nope. Great book, tho. Read it 7 time already, in 2 languages.
I have to admit never reading Wizard of Oz (only saw the movie). And I dislike Dickens, so I'm biased there.
You are correct as far as "classic" goes.
It sure will be a classic. No doubt about that. Heck, some people already consider Mists of Avalon a classic.
Ok, not for the big question:
Literary is a complex classification, so I'll explain my PoV in two parts. First by explanation, then by giving some examples. Please, bear with me.
A literary work first must have intrinsic artistic value. Then, it must have intellectual value. Then, it must be creative. Entertainment value doesn't enter the picture here, as far as I'm concerned (from what I've seen).
For my examples, I'll try to pick, probably without much success, some non controversial names.
Some good books with poor literary value:
- Any good technical book
- Harry Potter (controversial, but already stated)
- Lord of the Rings (boy, you guys are going to kill me)
- 1984
- Anything by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Some good literary works, but poor books:
- The Lusiads (name 1 person who actually enjoyed the book)
- Midnight Summer Dreams (not a book, but a play, so it can't be a good book)
- Most of Shakespeare work (for the same reason)
- Anything by Dostoevsky
Some good literary works that are also good books:
- Brave New World
- Dracula
- Frankenstein
- The Three Musketeers
- Mobydick (which I actually didn't enjoy)
Bad literary works and bad books:
- Dead Souls (Nikolai Gogol) [Worst book ever, as far as I'm concerned]
Time is only a factor if you consider "surviving the test of time", which is usually the case. Since I don't think it is always the case (many good books and authors end up forgotten, for whatever reasons), I didn't list it before. But it is a valid clue.
I hope this helps to clarify my point of view, even if you don't agree with me (not my intention to convince anyone).
I've read them, read the sites, and even gave the (current) collection for my daughter. They have some intellectual value, and great entertainment properties.
As far as literary value is concerned, they have almost as much as a Spiderman comic book, which I do love, and still think has no literary value.
So you point is what exactly ? That every good book has good literary value ?
Why should I hate it ? I actually read all the books, and got them for my daughter.
They have both entertaining and intellectual value. They just don't have literary value.
I agree it is a publicity stunt. At the same time he is buying worthless (to him) books, he is selling signed copies of Harry Potter (literary garbage, even if it has entertaining values).
Is he worried about literacy ? Let him burn high profile, expensive books that have low literary value, like his "The Da Vinci Code Advance Reading Copy" or his signed "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets".
Actually, if you consider storage space costs money, it is very likely that he is saving money by burning these books.
He also says for people to buy and donate the books to promote literacy (or some crap like that). Well, why is he burning the books instead of donating them ? Well, lets review:
1) Publicity
2) Saving storage space
3) Getting people to "adopt" some of these books
Which translates to:
1) Profit
2) Money saving
3) Profit
Not a bad deal, hum ?
Humm, didn't verisign have something like this in place for a few days, before ICANN made them stop ?
I forgot how it was called, thankfully.
Is that what you are advocating ?
Humm, "end-user" and "compile-to-install" should not be put together. I agree with that.
.sh installers around that don't rely on
About all the rest, there are some nice
the package manager. Also, you always have the option to distribute statically linked binaries. Or to provide an intelligent install script that locates libraries, detects the distribution etc. Something like GNUconfigure does for building.
There are plenty of options. The point is that most developers don't know or care about them.
People have been installing flash and skype on Linux for some time now, without much hassle. And those are just 2 simple examples. The way Codeweavers distributes Crossover is also very nice.
Humm, this doesn't seem like a screwup on the linux part, but on the Ruby dev team part.
Not only they didn't test for compatibility, but they also states that no one is interested on helping you.
If you were to blame OSS, I could understand. But Linux ?
I'm pretty sure the people at RedHat tested the new libraries not only with the version of ruby they ship, but also with all the "certified" software.
For the same reason people will code stuff with obscure APIs that will require you to install a lib just for one program: cause it is easier (for the coder) that way.
Even on Windows: how many times did you have to install specific libs ? VBRUN anyone ?
And since it is easier, most coders these days don't even bother to learn Xt. Yes, there is no reason to develop a whole system based on Xt alone. But an installer ? C'mon.
Ok, lemme try to rephrase it.
You are not just "spinning a few RPMS". You are breaking the whole point of the distro.
You see, the so called enterprise distributions (RHEL and others) are stable because of the whole distribution. Because not only each package was tested, but because they were tested as a whole.
Ok, so there is no big deal to install a new, unrelated package. I'm all for that. You can install mplayer or upgrade Mutt all you want, and you will not be breaking the distribution stability. But when you mess with things like samba, apache, php, python or ruby, you ARE messing up with the distro stability, thus negating the whole point of using an enterprise grade linux distro. And if you are really using RHEL, and not CentOS/Scientific/etc, you are even throwing away your money.
I don't mean to offend you, but by your first comment, you are not someone who understands all the minor details of the distribution (how the library versions are interlinked, the different API/ABI versions in use etc etc). Really, don't get offended. You are in the same boat that 99.99% of the other RHEL/CentOS users, myself included, so you really can't do it safely.
Get my point now ?
Of course, those are your servers, and you can do with them what you like. Just don't complain if they start giving you trouble later. Specially, don't go bothering the developers. I see enough of that (oh, but I changed only one minor package!) nonsense on
the CentOS lists as it is.
Lemme see if I follow you.
What you pointed about HTTPS, lets call it "key reusability", is not really an issue. I'm not exactly sure about HTTPS, but many other symmetric/asymmetric situations I've studied you get the a new symmetric key negotiated from time to time. So your time to find out what that key is, and still be able to use it, is pretty short. Lets say 60 seconds, which is a pretty short time to break a 128 key.
So, you are pointing out we have a low speed (or high cost) fixed secure channel and, due to the nature of that channel, we only transmit the session keys that way, using a faster or less expensive channel for the encrypted data. So far, that makes sense to me, except for having 2 points of failure (which can be solved by redundancy).
Lets just make something clear for those reading. We are both using HTTPS as an example only for the asymmetric/symmetric methodology. As such, the 10 years example is also valid.
Ok, so to round things up, this is not a substitute for the symmetric part of the problem, but for the asymmetric (key negotiation) part. Is that it ?
I have a real problem understanding all this. Maybe my knowledge of crypto is flawed (most likely), or I simply did not understand this technique.
Crypto, from my point of view, faces 2 main problems:
1) The safe transmission of the key
2) The computational power to encode/decode the message
Asymmetric cryptography solves the first problem, while with symmetric cryptography, the second problem is much smaller.
To "solve" both, we have things like what is used with HTTPS. You first use asymmetric to transmit a symmetric key (session key), which solve #1 but is computationally expensive, then use the session key (since #1 was solved), which is much less expensive. A pretty simple and intelligent way to do things.
Now the next barrier is to improve those algorithms, for both parts of the process (symmetric and asymmetric). As far as I know, there is where quantum crypto enters. Instead of using linear computation, you use quantum.
From what I understand, this technique is trying to replace the whole process, and not what quantum crypto proposes to do. Which is odd, since you will still have the first problem I've pointed out. After all, you still need a safe channel to transmit the key (what resistors do the other side use?). And, if you already have a safe channel, why do you need cryptography ?
Ok, so you have an expensive safe channel, just like you get with asymmetric crypto. Or a darn inconvenient one (someone with a briefcase blah blah). And the whole idea of using resistance/thermal is to have an analog (not digital) cryptographic method, which is naturally (due to its lack of discrete states) much harder to break. Is that the idea ?
Isn't quantum crypto also lacking of discrete states in the same way ?
Actually, there are plenty of reasons RHEL4 has support until 2012, but Ruby is not one of them.
Currently, aprox. 95% of my servers are RHEL4, 4% are RHEL5 and 1% are something else. I don't plan on upgrading my RHEL4 servers just for the kick of it. But if I want to run Ruby, I'll do it on a RHEL5 machine. If I want to use PHP5, I'll use RHEL5. I won't try to make it work on RHEL4 (and it does, by the way). If you are running an enterprise Linux distribution, you simply don't fuck with it (pardon my french). If you want to compile all by yourself, you should be using Gentoo, LFS or some other distro like that.
Got the picture here ? It is not about "version churn game". It is about using the correct tool for the correct job. Or fulfilling the requirements. Or whatever you want to call it.
Hey, I'm trying to compile Firefox on a RedHat 3.3, and I'm having problems.
Geez. Try RHEL 5. It has been released, you know ?
Ok, I'll bite. (that "modern" part is a nice bait, ain't it?)
How about using Java for the installer ? Or maybe QT/GTK ? How about newt ?
Yeah, I know it is too much to expect anyone to learn to use Xt or Motif. Ok, Motif is
not always avaliable, but show me a GUI linux install that doesn't support Xt ?
And if all you are doing is writing an installer, using Xt is pretty easy.
Lemme tell you a small story here.
When MS released Windows 3 was when it started to become known in Brasil. At the time, there was a TV show called "Confissões de Adolecente" (no need to translate, since the name is not relevant). At the time, there was an episode where the main character was bitching an complaining about having to use a mouse and click on stuff. After all, if he wanted something, all he had to do before was to type the command. Now, he had to search for the icon, click on it, than click on something else etc.
So, to translate your comment into something that really means something (and is actually true), what you mean is:
"Do not force end-users to do something different"
Here is Brazil we have a saying for cases like this, which roughly translates as: "If you change the color of the grass, the mule will starve to death"
I think 5 years ago, the standard source was everything2, wasn't it ?
I was oh so tempted to mod parent as "insightful" ... :)