IBM bought AFS from Transarc and later released the code (GPL IIRC); thus the mailing lists, foruns, etc, are now part of OpenAFS, since OpenAFS is the successor of Transarc's AFS; the code base is the same and the documentation at the openAFS site is verbatim the IBM one (and it's quite complete). In a way you lost the contratual backing of IBM, but what was gained was the development of a community dedicated to improve AFS.
I had more or less the same basic requirements and I opted for AFS.
My needs were a little more demanding (had to be implemented in GNU/Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and as an extra Windows 2000) and grocking AFS can be difficult at first but it was the best choice by far. Stable across all the Unices, very secure (this was another requirement) and integrates perfectly with our Kerberos Domain and LDAP accounting info. It provides a unique namespace that can span multiple servers transparently, does replication, automatic backups and read-only copies, client-side cache with callbacks, has a backup (to tape) system that can be used stand-alone or integrated with existing backup structures (Amanda, Legato, TSM) AND was the basis for the DCE filesystem, DFS (as a side note I find it interesting - and sad - that most things people try to emulate this days are present in DCE , and Windows 2000 got many of the "new features" from a technology initially made for Unix:DFS, DCOM, Directory Services, SSO, DCE-RPC, etc.)
AFS is amazing and much more robust than any distributed filesystem I know of; it has shortcomings when servers time out, but apart from that it's really an excellent solution; an example I generally use to give an idea of some of the good features of AFS is a relocation of a home directory to another server. The user doesn't even notice that his home directory was moved to another server *even if he was using it and was writing stuff to disk*; at most all writing calls to his home dir have a small delay (a couple of seconds) even if his/her home dir was 5 Gb worth.
Kerberos integration is an added bonus, if you can you can use this as an excuse to kerberize your systems and form a Kerberos Domain. If you don't want to just stick with the standard AFS KA server.
In my setup I have Windows users accessing their home dirs in AFS using the Kerberos tickets they have from the Windows login and the fact that a cross-realm trust was made between the Unix DOmain and the AD; the can edit all the files they are entitled to with that ticket, and the system is so secure that Transarc used to put the source code in it's public AFS share and added the customers that bought the source to the ACL of the directory that contained it.
With all this features it would be hard not to vivedly recommend OpenAFS as the best solution for a unified, distributed filesystem. Bandwidth utilization is, in my experience, at least half of what NFS uses, which is an added bonus.
As another post mentions European 2-pin plugs can have different qualities and sizes; the lowest denominator is probably a thin plastic enclosure with a screw in the middle and just the 2 pins, this are old and are very flimsy, after a while they fall by themselves of the wall with a mild breeze. All the recent manufactured plugs are very solid and plug to the wall very firmly (so much so that another problem appears: when yanking the plug off the wall the wall-mounted plug doesn't resist and falls to the groung leaving the wires exposed - this is however dependent of the quality of construction). The ground cable in this plugs generally gives a very strong attachment, the problem with flimsy plugs is when they don't have the ground connection, and surprisingly many still don't have.
It can make for a fisheye view on some shows, but it's not too bad on most shows. Since most shows have all of the action in the center of the screen, that's the least-distorted part of the picture.
Interesting, I just bought my first widescreen TV (acutally I'm buying my first everything since I just bought my own house). I'm in Portugal so it's has a 16:9 ratio. Widescreen TV's now occupy the best spots in the stores and I think everybody is buyng 16:9 now (actually it's a trend that began about 6 or 7 years). One of the things I was worried about was the stretching effect that I've saw in so many widescreen TV's when displaying 4:3 transmissions, and my gf had serious doubts on the advantage of buyng a 16:9 TV when more than half of the transmissions are in 4:3; I took the whole "home cinema" route to convince here and bought the damn thing, a 82 cm flatscreen. One of my surprises was that I haven't saw any stretching; if I set the zoom to "Auto" 4:3 transmissions appear fullscreen but without any stretching, and without visible cuts. If I set it to "Full" then it streches, It comes with 7 different zooms (Auto, Regular, 16:9, 16:9 Subtitles, 14:9, etc), but the Auto seems to make the magic occur with 4:3 transmissions. Now that you've mention the "fishnet" gimick I'll be watching closely to see if I can detect it.
Anyway, I'm quite happy with it; not only are 4:3 broadcasts perfectly viewable (indeed more viewable than in a non-wide TV) the 16:9 transmissions really shine, and the DVD's are a real joy. Since most people have cable it's really a non-issue since most quality shows and films are tansmited in 16:9 format.
br>b
cheers,
Hey, you seem a reasonable dude, so let me just give my input (I'm a marxist-leninist)
Yeah, but the problem is that Marxism as a theory does not explain AT ALL how it should be put into practice. And the ONLY way it has been put into practice is, well, what you saw in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, etc.
True... it's sometimes so vague that it's hard to define what each person means bu Communism, and even more to explain what road should be taken to achieve it. Is all the countries you said I know I don't want to send people to labour forces BUT I would like a State-costed universal access to Higher Education. I don't support killing people with different opinions, but I would like a Health Care system that tended to all the citizens independently of money. I can't agree with censoring books or films, but I really do think that the capitalist system IS based in exploitation and would like to live in one in which Men were given equal rights and equeal access to further themselves.
I know this is all way to generic, whih kinda proves your point, but it's the best I can no at this stage:)
If people were walking around with German SPD t-shirts (supporting socialist economics) - hey, that's cool with me. But communism has only existed as horrible dictatorial regimes. It has no existence other than as horrible dictatorial regimes.
Well, the end result proved to have, er, "shortcommings" in several countries where it was introdiced. Still, most of the really terrible things that happened have nothing to do with Communism, but it is true that the implementations so far proved to be very prone to develop several authoritarian and dictatorial traits. This is what concerns me more, namely how to avoid it.
This is not the fault of the "sheepish west" confusing some pure theory with the practice. This is the intelligent west understanding that the theory only exists in someone's mind as a utopia that cannot be put into practice, and what actually can be put into practice is horrible. That's not sheepish. That's perceptive.
I find that conclusion a bit on the simplistic side... I find that the ideals hold for themselves and it is for those ideals that I fight, even today.
no, valve owes all sales AFTER the initial 5 months to the CS team. Lotsa people bought HL for HL, and then CS was a kick ass bonus. Of course, lotsa people like you never yeard of HL till after CS became THE game. So, the prolonged success is due to CS, the game can stand on its own merits though.
True, but the fact is that Half-Life is still in *high demand* today, years after it's release. Most friends of mine just got tired of waiting for the el cheapo edition that immediatly sells out in stores here in Lisbon (Portugal) and just bought the Super Duper Deluxe Edition that contains HL,CS,BS and OF. The reason for this isn't HL proper, but Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat and the rest of the multiplayer mods that are available for HL. The CD-Key is the only reason people buy this rather old game, since it's necessary to connect to the WON servers. So basicaly HL still sells very well today because of CS, DoD and the rest of the mods. The fact that HL runs very well in just about any hardware it a strong plus. The gameplay is very nice and the requirements low.
Ever been frustrated because, in windows, if someone sets permissions on a directory they own, and says administrator can't access it... when administrator tries to access it, he gets denied?
In unix, of course, root just ignores said permissions.. or changes them.
To be more precise that depends on the filesystem; one of the strong points of AFS is that not only root cant access the files but it can't also change the permissions of the shared AFS namespace. Since it uses Kerberos only users with the proper ACL can change things (of course you could give root the ability to change everything but that's a very bad idea in a distributed filesystes).
Also, from what I red, RSBAC does exactly what you mentioned and more.
Well, we Portuguese had *no* breakfast at all except some home-made alcohol. You see, soldiers need to have a good short-term objective, and in our case was "go build an Empire, if you do you all will start having breakfast".
Of course has soon as we started having breakfast everything colapsed in a few centuries. No real incentive to fight I suppose:)
Interestingly enough in European Portuguese "Fresco" means someone naughty, that does naughty or unusual things.
The origianl meaning of the word is. of course, the same: 'ar fresco' == 'cool air', 'peixe fresco' == 'fresh fish', etc.
The term 'fresco' is, by these reasons, the term used to describe paintures made directly into a wall or ceiling while the cover is still fresh, and it is an internation term IIRC.
Many reasons; nowadays the simple fact that one avoids being mistaken for what Linux users apparently became (and that is a bunch of whiners that don't care about anything but using CrossOver and pissing in the ppl that made it all possible in the first place) is a bonus.
And no, I'm not kidding. I guess I shouldn't take/. as an indicator of what a typical Linux user thinks (if not only because 80% of ppl use IE on Windows to view the site), but if it _is_ an indicator, oh boy, what a sad view.It's only natural that some people are going to help develop an OS that stands for something, that makes a point on being Free Software (like it or not)
Apart from that, the goals are interesting, one can learn something in OS design and I'm convinced that in the near future the GNU OS will be a viable and attractive plataform for every possible use.
What's even more interesting is how many people have left Debian for Gentoo. Debian users are some of the most loyal I know, and yet many of them have simply moved on. I'm guessing Debian blew it with the long delay's between releases.
Don't think so; you see, I do believe that Gentoo is probably very nice, but most ppl I know that use it (disclaimer: most != all) and used to run Debian were either ppl that never really settled in any distibution because they wipped they're systems clean when they heard that a *new* version of LinuxSomething was released or ppl that used Debian because it was perceived as more hardcore. It's almost the same reason why many of them after 3 months of Gentoo wipe their systems to install FreeBSD and became FreeBSD zealots, only to install OpenBSD on it later because it's da bomb, except that latter on NetBSD catches their attention because in some weird movie they saw a über elite hacker used it.
In the end they either begin to run Plan9 or simply go back to Windows, in which they will fondly remenber they're wild days while reading mail in Outlook.
Debian release cycles are indeed an issue, and an issue that it's trying to be fixed, but interestingly enough the uses that are drawn to Gentto are the ones that knew and used the unstable Debian branch, so the release delay was not really an issue. Some people just prefer to move to other things that for one reason or another they prefer... taking from other comments in this discussion one would gather that from some ppl Debian stable is the reason they don't change their OS, since stability is what works for them. For others a BSD-like ports systems is crucial, thus Gentto, Sorcerer, etc.
Latin is not dead. It simply became Italian, with forks turning into Romanian, Spanish, and French, and then Portuguese, Sardinian, and several other languages forking in turn from those.
Actually that's not quite right; all the neo-latin languages are directly descendant from Latin (minus perhaps local variations that are that: variations).
Romanian, Spanish French, Portuguese, Sardinian, etc, were all derivations from latin (i.e. all first descendants). TO add more fuel to the fire 'Spanish' is actually a gross generalization; it should be properly called Castillian, since it was the language of the Kingdom of Castille and appeared at the same time as Portuguese, Leonese and Catalan (Occitan).
cheers,
fsmunoz
Also something similar here in Portugal
on
Hong Kong's Octopus
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
For years now highway fares are being paid with a smartcard that's put on the interior of the car; the subway is payed with a smartcard. The fuel can also be paid with a smartcard.
What's interesting is that some years ago they deployed hundreds of small terminals that could read a smartcard (called in a loose translation 'electronic wallet') nation-wide anywhere where payments were to be made; transportations, stores, malls, even taxis carried the small terminal. One would transfer money from the main account to that card and that was it, the card had no apparent identification mechanism (to the point were loosing the smartcard was the same as loosing a wallet). It was pretty neat, but never really caught up. Inertia, people's confusion about the device and the fact that ppl are so used to having money or paying everything with a card...
Which brings me to a question: just about everything is payed with a bank card (VISA Electron, put in, confirm value, insert PIN, done). Every example above can also be payed with this card (except taxis) and the terminals are prepared in many cases to be self operated e.g. gas stations, public transportations, etc). Doesn't that count as 'moneyless society
In a way we are more and more dependent on plastic ; I suppose that the thing that's interesting about this Octopus thing is that it putis it all together, the 'scanning' capability used in highways, the portability of a 'electronic wallet' and the availabilty of VISA Electron.
he quality of Unix sysadmins has declined so much over the past decade that what passes for a sysadmin right now is what I used to call "an operator".
Ehe, I'm a rather new (3 years) Unix sysadmin, and the requirements to do my work where I am employed are in accordance with I would expect (we also have operators). However in several job interviews I went the requirements were pretty low: boot up, install, configure NIC, install some especialized software, done. I think that to many companies the Unix servers are there to provide a 'install once, never touch again' kind of service, as running e.g. OpenView or something; as long as the system is up it's good enough.
I have met very good, young Unix sysadmins. It's just that the demands are not as high as they probably were on most places they apply.
We have 5 unix sysadmins (major transportation company). Not one of them could write a shell script if their life depended on it.
Also true... whenever I do a simple script (and I must confees I'm only mediocre at it) it's seen as voodoo magic.
They insist on doing everything by hand and then complain there are no automated tools to them. Their definition of an automated tool really means "graphical front end to those grubby text commands".
Most Unices are going that way however, you can perform just about any common task using 'sam' in HP-UX, 'smit' in AIX, 'webmin' and 'linuxconf' in GNU/Linux, admintool and metatool in Solaris, etc. However a true Unix sysadmin will know how to to everything by hand and will probably feel confortable doing it (that's not to say that the GUI/TUI tools should not be used).
They have no appreciation for the modularity of unix, and they look longingly at Windows servers.
Then, quite honestly, they are not really Unix sysadmins; to me a Unix sysadmin must have that little elitist view on his system backed by the fact that he knows that Unix is just plain better. He should look at Windows servers as an aberration because to him 'Windows' and 'server' are not words that go together at all. I'm not saying that this is like things really are... just that he should make a point on showing that he thinks that they are:)
Where I work the Unix admins use GNU/Linux in their Desktops, and are the only ones that probably can be exempt from system-wide normalization on Windows. This is not because they offered but because it was requested as a primary concern.
Meanwhile, they're all getting paid twice what they're worth because apparently as dumb as the Unix sysadmins are, the NT ones are apparently on a different evolutionary scale where "rock" is considered the most intelligent life form.
Well, nothing to add here:)
So my point is that getting these sysadmins to switch won't happen. They'll piss, bitch and moan about the opportunity to learn something to enhance their skills, then complain the application is screwing up "their" servers.
It must be horrible to be that kind of Unix sysadmin... whenever I am presented with the chance to learn something I grab it. This is a reflection of a previous point: having Unix sysadmins that don't love Unix. It must be horrible.
If only ASPs would take off, my life would be much better, because sysadmin skills suck so bad, black holes pale in comparision to the event horizon of these so-called admins.
LOL.
Nice post, all I have said is just a personal rant trigered by your comments; to me being a Unix sysadmin is a joy, mainly because that was the goal I tried to achieve, and I never felt that I had make a wrong choice. Unix sysadmins should know programming, protocols, CS history and technology better that their Windows conterparts. Why? Well, because they are Unix sysadmins. Please see this as a 'competition is good for eveyone' kind of thing:)
Given that DJB already has implementations of DNS and SMTP around that are heavily focused on security, it wouldn't suprise me if he went into looking at securing NFS (the file system)
Not specifically about DJB, but since you refer NFS and security... I had to responsability in desigining a (small) Unix network, including authentification and shared filesystems. NFS main strenght is that it's bloody simple to use (in Solaris the 'share' command is all that it takes, and the other Unices have more or less similar mechanisms), but security-wise it's a no-no.
I then discovered AFS; it was exactly what I needed. Kerberos authentication builtin, support for every OS, very solid and comes with several interesting concepts of it's own. All in all AFS has proven to be a secure alternative to NFS (AFS can also scale incredibly well).
you want obscure bible references?
type
about:mozilla
in the url bar.
Thanks! Now I am almost sure that something very deep is going on.... I think that Mozilla is an organization invented by the Unknown Superiors to gather the initiates... some time son we will read that the first Moz hacker was Jacque de Molays, Grand-Master of the Templars;)
I was intriged that Mozilla posts generally contain a high ammount of Biblical or at least christian references; so far in this thread I have collected the followin:
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
I claim this post for Jesus.
Rev 13:16-17 is the Biblical prediction of Bill G and Passport
"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die" -Dietrich Bonhoeffe
I guess that to comment about Mozilla one has to have a fair ammount of faith:)
I'm just scared that the Moz parties may turn out to be around a campfire singing gospels and praising the Lord; not that there's anything wrong with it... if that's what you are:)
Anyway, kudos for the Mozilla team, been my browser for more than a year by now.
What's wrong with you people? If we wanted a Windows clone we would be using Windows, wouldn't we?
Where have the good old days of free Linux, freedom of expression and powerfull shells gone? Nowadays all we hear about is KDE/GNOME, Redhat/Caldera, etc. and their right to charge for Linux.
Those days are gone. Nowadays the Linux croud are mainly totally unisterested in subjects like freedom. Windows? Well, most of them uses it anyway, they only have a GNU/Linux partition to be oh-so-l33t.
Let's face it, it the future of free software was to lay in the hands of the ppl that have posted all the moronic, ignorant and utterly misinformed posts in 1 year we would be searching for Linux activation codes in warez sites. Ahhh, but at least they could do 'emerge crack', how fucking cool!!!
Maybe if the hurd didn't suck people wouldn't say shit about it.
Actually the Hurd is only referenced slightly in the parent post, and has a intro to a larger discussion. And I pretty much doubt you can say that it 'sucks' because most likely you don't even know what the Hurd is. But 'saying shit about it' seems to come in line with the trend.
Maybe the real problem with the "newly converted" crowd is there are no sacred cows including rms and his pet projects.
If only it was so simple... the problem in not personal likeess or lack of it for RMS or anybody else; it's more the total lack of values in what free software is regarded.
Sorry not everyone can be a blind follwing suck up such as yourself.
Apologies accepted, dont worry about it.
Read some CS journals and learn something instead of just gobbling up FSF propoganda, mmmkay.
Duly noted.
BTW, you forgot the 'I want MS Office' part to fully comply with my prevision of what the answers would be, but since you included the 'FSF propaganda' bit you get extra points in the 'I'm-so-3l331-that-I-also-say-shit-about-the-FSF' community.
Fear not my friend; for what it's worth you're not alone in the Moron Guild! I don't have a clue on half the studd that guy talks about, and I am under the impression that if I fiddle with that gizmo I'll be the greatest badass DYI apprentice in the whole cemitery.
Congrats, your post was to the point and especially very heartfelt.
Not much I can say except that you will probably receive as answer more crapy noise about RMS,the FSF 'agenda', I'll call it just Linux' and 'free as in beer is free enough'. All this appears to be trendy amongst the newly converted, and thus almost always completely ignorant of any issue that truely matters. I don't know why things have come to this, but years ago when someone said they were GNU/Linux users I knew that we had at least some shared values... nowadays I always expect ppl complaining about MS Office not being available and generally pissing on the ppl that made the system available in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
IBM bought AFS from Transarc and later released the code (GPL IIRC); thus the mailing lists, foruns, etc, are now part of OpenAFS, since OpenAFS is the successor of Transarc's AFS; the code base is the same and the documentation at the openAFS site is verbatim the IBM one (and it's quite complete). In a way you lost the contratual backing of IBM, but what was gained was the development of a community dedicated to improve AFS.
Try Heimdal . It uses it's own lib to convert kerberos v5 tickets to AFS tockens. In my setup with a simgle kinit I get v5 tickets and v4 tickets.
Anyway, AFS *can* use Kerberos v5. The initial configuration can be a bloody nightmare though...
I had more or less the same basic requirements and I opted for AFS.
:DFS, DCOM, Directory Services, SSO, DCE-RPC, etc.)
My needs were a little more demanding (had to be implemented in GNU/Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and as an extra Windows 2000) and grocking AFS can be difficult at first but it was the best choice by far. Stable across all the Unices, very secure (this was another requirement) and integrates perfectly with our Kerberos Domain and LDAP accounting info. It provides a unique namespace that can span multiple servers transparently, does replication, automatic backups and read-only copies, client-side cache with callbacks, has a backup (to tape) system that can be used stand-alone or integrated with existing backup structures (Amanda, Legato, TSM) AND was the basis for the DCE filesystem, DFS (as a side note I find it interesting - and sad - that most things people try to emulate this days are present in DCE , and Windows 2000 got many of the "new features" from a technology initially made for Unix
AFS is amazing and much more robust than any distributed filesystem I know of; it has shortcomings when servers time out, but apart from that it's really an excellent solution; an example I generally use to give an idea of some of the good features of AFS is a relocation of a home directory to another server. The user doesn't even notice that his home directory was moved to another server *even if he was using it and was writing stuff to disk*; at most all writing calls to his home dir have a small delay (a couple of seconds) even if his/her home dir was 5 Gb worth.
Kerberos integration is an added bonus, if you can you can use this as an excuse to kerberize your systems and form a Kerberos Domain. If you don't want to just stick with the standard AFS KA server.
In my setup I have Windows users accessing their home dirs in AFS using the Kerberos tickets they have from the Windows login and the fact that a cross-realm trust was made between the Unix DOmain and the AD; the can edit all the files they are entitled to with that ticket, and the system is so secure that Transarc used to put the source code in it's public AFS share and added the customers that bought the source to the ACL of the directory that contained it.
With all this features it would be hard not to vivedly recommend OpenAFS as the best solution for a unified, distributed filesystem. Bandwidth utilization is, in my experience, at least half of what NFS uses, which is an added bonus.
cheers,
fsmunoz
As another post mentions European 2-pin plugs can have different qualities and sizes; the lowest denominator is probably a thin plastic enclosure with a screw in the middle and just the 2 pins, this are old and are very flimsy, after a while they fall by themselves of the wall with a mild breeze. All the recent manufactured plugs are very solid and plug to the wall very firmly (so much so that another problem appears: when yanking the plug off the wall the wall-mounted plug doesn't resist and falls to the groung leaving the wires exposed - this is however dependent of the quality of construction). The ground cable in this plugs generally gives a very strong attachment, the problem with flimsy plugs is when they don't have the ground connection, and surprisingly many still don't have.
cheers,
fsmunoz
If by philosophy you mean the sort of thoughts you have when you get stoned and are fascinated by the Winamp visualization plugins, then I'll agree.
For this alone I would mod you up!!! I've added it to my repertoire of "spontaneous answers to stupid questions".
It can make for a fisheye view on some shows, but it's not too bad on most shows. Since most shows have all of the action in the center of the screen, that's the least-distorted part of the picture.
Interesting, I just bought my first widescreen TV (acutally I'm buying my first everything since I just bought my own house). I'm in Portugal so it's has a 16:9 ratio. Widescreen TV's now occupy the best spots in the stores and I think everybody is buyng 16:9 now (actually it's a trend that began about 6 or 7 years). One of the things I was worried about was the stretching effect that I've saw in so many widescreen TV's when displaying 4:3 transmissions, and my gf had serious doubts on the advantage of buyng a 16:9 TV when more than half of the transmissions are in 4:3; I took the whole "home cinema" route to convince here and bought the damn thing, a 82 cm flatscreen. One of my surprises was that I haven't saw any stretching; if I set the zoom to "Auto" 4:3 transmissions appear fullscreen but without any stretching, and without visible cuts. If I set it to "Full" then it streches, It comes with 7 different zooms (Auto, Regular, 16:9, 16:9 Subtitles, 14:9, etc), but the Auto seems to make the magic occur with 4:3 transmissions. Now that you've mention the "fishnet" gimick I'll be watching closely to see if I can detect it.
Anyway, I'm quite happy with it; not only are 4:3 broadcasts perfectly viewable (indeed more viewable than in a non-wide TV) the 16:9 transmissions really shine, and the DVD's are a real joy. Since most people have cable it's really a non-issue since most quality shows and films are tansmited in 16:9 format.
br>b cheers,
fsmunoz
Hey, you seem a reasonable dude, so let me just give my input (I'm a marxist-leninist)
:)
Yeah, but the problem is that Marxism as a theory does not explain AT ALL how it should be put into practice. And the ONLY way it has been put into practice is, well, what you saw in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, etc.
True... it's sometimes so vague that it's hard to define what each person means bu Communism, and even more to explain what road should be taken to achieve it. Is all the countries you said I know I don't want to send people to labour forces BUT I would like a State-costed universal access to Higher Education. I don't support killing people with different opinions, but I would like a Health Care system that tended to all the citizens independently of money. I can't agree with censoring books or films, but I really do think that the capitalist system IS based in exploitation and would like to live in one in which Men were given equal rights and equeal access to further themselves.
I know this is all way to generic, whih kinda proves your point, but it's the best I can no at this stage
If people were walking around with German SPD t-shirts (supporting socialist economics) - hey, that's cool with me. But communism has only existed as horrible dictatorial regimes. It has no existence other than as horrible dictatorial regimes.
Well, the end result proved to have, er, "shortcommings" in several countries where it was introdiced. Still, most of the really terrible things that happened have nothing to do with Communism, but it is true that the implementations so far proved to be very prone to develop several authoritarian and dictatorial traits. This is what concerns me more, namely how to avoid it.
This is not the fault of the "sheepish west" confusing some pure theory with the practice. This is the intelligent west understanding that the theory only exists in someone's mind as a utopia that cannot be put into practice, and what actually can be put into practice is horrible. That's not sheepish. That's perceptive.
I find that conclusion a bit on the simplistic side... I find that the ideals hold for themselves and it is for those ideals that I fight, even today.
cheers,
fsmunoz
no, valve owes all sales AFTER the initial 5 months to the CS team. Lotsa people bought HL for HL, and then CS was a kick ass bonus. Of course, lotsa people like you never yeard of HL till after CS became THE game. So, the prolonged success is due to CS, the game can stand on its own merits though.
True, but the fact is that Half-Life is still in *high demand* today, years after it's release. Most friends of mine just got tired of waiting for the el cheapo edition that immediatly sells out in stores here in Lisbon (Portugal) and just bought the Super Duper Deluxe Edition that contains HL,CS,BS and OF. The reason for this isn't HL proper, but Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat and the rest of the multiplayer mods that are available for HL. The CD-Key is the only reason people buy this rather old game, since it's necessary to connect to the WON servers. So basicaly HL still sells very well today because of CS, DoD and the rest of the mods. The fact that HL runs very well in just about any hardware it a strong plus. The gameplay is very nice and the requirements low.
cheers,
fsmunoz
Ever been frustrated because, in windows, if someone sets permissions on a directory they own, and says administrator can't access it... when administrator tries to access it, he gets denied? In unix, of course, root just ignores said permissions.. or changes them.
To be more precise that depends on the filesystem; one of the strong points of AFS is that not only root cant access the files but it can't also change the permissions of the shared AFS namespace. Since it uses Kerberos only users with the proper ACL can change things (of course you could give root the ability to change everything but that's a very bad idea in a distributed filesystes).
Also, from what I red, RSBAC does exactly what you mentioned and more.
cheers,
fsmunoz
until John Doe can bring a copy home, install it with a few curses and reboots,
;)
Well, then consider it done! Debian has always provided a nice (n)curses interface to installation!
Well, we Portuguese had *no* breakfast at all except some home-made alcohol. You see, soldiers need to have a good short-term objective, and in our case was "go build an Empire, if you do you all will start having breakfast".
:)
Of course has soon as we started having breakfast everything colapsed in a few centuries. No real incentive to fight I suppose
Interestingly enough in European Portuguese "Fresco" means someone naughty, that does naughty or unusual things.
The origianl meaning of the word is. of course, the same: 'ar fresco' == 'cool air', 'peixe fresco' == 'fresh fish', etc.
The term 'fresco' is, by these reasons, the term used to describe paintures made directly into a wall or ceiling while the cover is still fresh, and it is an internation term IIRC.
egards,
fsmunoz
Many reasons; nowadays the simple fact that one avoids being mistaken for what Linux users apparently became (and that is a bunch of whiners that don't care about anything but using CrossOver and pissing in the ppl that made it all possible in the first place) is a bonus.
/. as an indicator of what a typical Linux user thinks (if not only because 80% of ppl use IE on Windows to view the site), but if it _is_ an indicator, oh boy, what a sad view.It's only natural that some people are going to help develop an OS that stands for something, that makes a point on being Free Software (like it or not)
And no, I'm not kidding. I guess I shouldn't take
Apart from that, the goals are interesting, one can learn something in OS design and I'm convinced that in the near future the GNU OS will be a viable and attractive plataform for every possible use.
fsmunoz
What's even more interesting is how many people have left Debian for Gentoo. Debian users are some of the most loyal I know, and yet many of them have simply moved on. I'm guessing Debian blew it with the long delay's between releases.
Don't think so; you see, I do believe that Gentoo is probably very nice, but most ppl I know that use it (disclaimer: most != all) and used to run Debian were either ppl that never really settled in any distibution because they wipped they're systems clean when they heard that a *new* version of LinuxSomething was released or ppl that used Debian because it was perceived as more hardcore. It's almost the same reason why many of them after 3 months of Gentoo wipe their systems to install FreeBSD and became FreeBSD zealots, only to install OpenBSD on it later because it's da bomb, except that latter on NetBSD catches their attention because in some weird movie they saw a über elite hacker used it. In the end they either begin to run Plan9 or simply go back to Windows, in which they will fondly remenber they're wild days while reading mail in Outlook.
Debian release cycles are indeed an issue, and an issue that it's trying to be fixed, but interestingly enough the uses that are drawn to Gentto are the ones that knew and used the unstable Debian branch, so the release delay was not really an issue. Some people just prefer to move to other things that for one reason or another they prefer... taking from other comments in this discussion one would gather that from some ppl Debian stable is the reason they don't change their OS, since stability is what works for them. For others a BSD-like ports systems is crucial, thus Gentto, Sorcerer, etc.
cheers,
fsmunoz
Latin is not dead. It simply became Italian, with forks turning into Romanian, Spanish, and French, and then Portuguese, Sardinian, and several other languages forking in turn from those.
Actually that's not quite right; all the neo-latin languages are directly descendant from Latin (minus perhaps local variations that are that: variations). Romanian, Spanish French, Portuguese, Sardinian, etc, were all derivations from latin (i.e. all first descendants). TO add more fuel to the fire 'Spanish' is actually a gross generalization; it should be properly called Castillian, since it was the language of the Kingdom of Castille and appeared at the same time as Portuguese, Leonese and Catalan (Occitan).
cheers,
fsmunoz
For years now highway fares are being paid with a smartcard that's put on the interior of the car; the subway is payed with a smartcard. The fuel can also be paid with a smartcard.
What's interesting is that some years ago they deployed hundreds of small terminals that could read a smartcard (called in a loose translation 'electronic wallet') nation-wide anywhere where payments were to be made; transportations, stores, malls, even taxis carried the small terminal. One would transfer money from the main account to that card and that was it, the card had no apparent identification mechanism (to the point were loosing the smartcard was the same as loosing a wallet). It was pretty neat, but never really caught up. Inertia, people's confusion about the device and the fact that ppl are so used to having money or paying everything with a card...
Which brings me to a question: just about everything is payed with a bank card (VISA Electron, put in, confirm value, insert PIN, done). Every example above can also be payed with this card (except taxis) and the terminals are prepared in many cases to be self operated e.g. gas stations, public transportations, etc). Doesn't that count as 'moneyless society
In a way we are more and more dependent on plastic ; I suppose that the thing that's interesting about this Octopus thing is that it putis it all together, the 'scanning' capability used in highways, the portability of a 'electronic wallet' and the availabilty of VISA Electron.
Just my 2 euro cents,
fsmunoz
Of course, don't run killall on HP. :)
;)
Nor Solaris; it will give you an error first, but if you are persistent enough you will end up getting the syntax right
fsmunoz
he quality of Unix sysadmins has declined so much over the past decade that what passes for a sysadmin right now is what I used to call "an operator".
:)
:)
:)
Ehe, I'm a rather new (3 years) Unix sysadmin, and the requirements to do my work where I am employed are in accordance with I would expect (we also have operators). However in several job interviews I went the requirements were pretty low: boot up, install, configure NIC, install some especialized software, done. I think that to many companies the Unix servers are there to provide a 'install once, never touch again' kind of service, as running e.g. OpenView or something; as long as the system is up it's good enough.
I have met very good, young Unix sysadmins. It's just that the demands are not as high as they probably were on most places they apply.
We have 5 unix sysadmins (major transportation company). Not one of them could write a shell script if their life depended on it.
Also true... whenever I do a simple script (and I must confees I'm only mediocre at it) it's seen as voodoo magic.
They insist on doing everything by hand and then complain there are no automated tools to them. Their definition of an automated tool really means "graphical front end to those grubby text commands".
Most Unices are going that way however, you can perform just about any common task using 'sam' in HP-UX, 'smit' in AIX, 'webmin' and 'linuxconf' in GNU/Linux, admintool and metatool in Solaris, etc. However a true Unix sysadmin will know how to to everything by hand and will probably feel confortable doing it (that's not to say that the GUI/TUI tools should not be used).
They have no appreciation for the modularity of unix, and they look longingly at Windows servers.
Then, quite honestly, they are not really Unix sysadmins; to me a Unix sysadmin must have that little elitist view on his system backed by the fact that he knows that Unix is just plain better. He should look at Windows servers as an aberration because to him 'Windows' and 'server' are not words that go together at all. I'm not saying that this is like things really are... just that he should make a point on showing that he thinks that they are
Where I work the Unix admins use GNU/Linux in their Desktops, and are the only ones that probably can be exempt from system-wide normalization on Windows. This is not because they offered but because it was requested as a primary concern.
Meanwhile, they're all getting paid twice what they're worth because apparently as dumb as the Unix sysadmins are, the NT ones are apparently on a different evolutionary scale where "rock" is considered the most intelligent life form.
Well, nothing to add here
So my point is that getting these sysadmins to switch won't happen. They'll piss, bitch and moan about the opportunity to learn something to enhance their skills, then complain the application is screwing up "their" servers.
It must be horrible to be that kind of Unix sysadmin... whenever I am presented with the chance to learn something I grab it. This is a reflection of a previous point: having Unix sysadmins that don't love Unix. It must be horrible.
If only ASPs would take off, my life would be much better, because sysadmin skills suck so bad, black holes pale in comparision to the event horizon of these so-called admins. LOL.
Nice post, all I have said is just a personal rant trigered by your comments; to me being a Unix sysadmin is a joy, mainly because that was the goal I tried to achieve, and I never felt that I had make a wrong choice. Unix sysadmins should know programming, protocols, CS history and technology better that their Windows conterparts. Why? Well, because they are Unix sysadmins. Please see this as a 'competition is good for eveyone' kind of thing
Best Regards,
fsmunoz
Given that DJB already has implementations of DNS and SMTP around that are heavily focused on security, it wouldn't suprise me if he went into looking at securing NFS (the file system)
Not specifically about DJB, but since you refer NFS and security... I had to responsability in desigining a (small) Unix network, including authentification and shared filesystems. NFS main strenght is that it's bloody simple to use (in Solaris the 'share' command is all that it takes, and the other Unices have more or less similar mechanisms), but security-wise it's a no-no.
I then discovered AFS; it was exactly what I needed. Kerberos authentication builtin, support for every OS, very solid and comes with several interesting concepts of it's own. All in all AFS has proven to be a secure alternative to NFS (AFS can also scale incredibly well).
Just my 2 euro cents,
fsmunoz
you want obscure bible references? type about:mozilla in the url bar. Thanks! Now I am almost sure that something very deep is going on.... I think that Mozilla is an organization invented by the Unknown Superiors to gather the initiates... some time son we will read that the first Moz hacker was Jacque de Molays, Grand-Master of the Templars ;)
I was intriged that Mozilla posts generally contain a high ammount of Biblical or at least christian references; so far in this thread I have collected the followin:
:)
:)
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World" 1 John 4:14
I claim this post for Jesus.
Rev 13:16-17 is the Biblical prediction of Bill G and Passport
"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die" -Dietrich Bonhoeffe
I guess that to comment about Mozilla one has to have a fair ammount of faith
I'm just scared that the Moz parties may turn out to be around a campfire singing gospels and praising the Lord; not that there's anything wrong with it... if that's what you are
Anyway, kudos for the Mozilla team, been my browser for more than a year by now.
fsmunoz
What's wrong with you people? If we wanted a Windows clone we would be using Windows, wouldn't we? Where have the good old days of free Linux, freedom of expression and powerfull shells gone? Nowadays all we hear about is KDE/GNOME, Redhat/Caldera, etc. and their right to charge for Linux.
Those days are gone. Nowadays the Linux croud are mainly totally unisterested in subjects like freedom. Windows? Well, most of them uses it anyway, they only have a GNU/Linux partition to be oh-so-l33t.
Let's face it, it the future of free software was to lay in the hands of the ppl that have posted all the moronic, ignorant and utterly misinformed posts in 1 year we would be searching for Linux activation codes in warez sites. Ahhh, but at least they could do 'emerge crack', how fucking cool!!!
fsmunoz
Hi Coward,
Maybe if the hurd didn't suck people wouldn't say shit about it.
Actually the Hurd is only referenced slightly in the parent post, and has a intro to a larger discussion. And I pretty much doubt you can say that it 'sucks' because most likely you don't even know what the Hurd is. But 'saying shit about it' seems to come in line with the trend.
Maybe the real problem with the "newly converted" crowd is there are no sacred cows including rms and his pet projects.
If only it was so simple... the problem in not personal likeess or lack of it for RMS or anybody else; it's more the total lack of values in what free software is regarded.
Sorry not everyone can be a blind follwing suck up such as yourself.
Apologies accepted, dont worry about it.
Read some CS journals and learn something instead of just gobbling up FSF propoganda, mmmkay.
Duly noted.
BTW, you forgot the 'I want MS Office' part to fully comply with my prevision of what the answers would be, but since you included the 'FSF propaganda' bit you get extra points in the 'I'm-so-3l331-that-I-also-say-shit-about-the-FSF' community.
Regards,
fsmunoz
Fear not my friend; for what it's worth you're not alone in the Moron Guild! I don't have a clue on half the studd that guy talks about, and I am under the impression that if I fiddle with that gizmo I'll be the greatest badass DYI apprentice in the whole cemitery.
Congrats, your post was to the point and especially very heartfelt.
Not much I can say except that you will probably receive as answer more crapy noise about RMS,the FSF 'agenda', I'll call it just Linux' and 'free as in beer is free enough'. All this appears to be trendy amongst the newly converted, and thus almost always completely ignorant of any issue that truely matters. I don't know why things have come to this, but years ago when someone said they were GNU/Linux users I knew that we had at least some shared values... nowadays I always expect ppl complaining about MS Office not being available and generally pissing on the ppl that made the system available in the first place.
How fucking sad.
Way to go, fsmunoz