logcheck will mail you about unusual stuff that appears in log files.
monit will monitor running damons and can restart them if they crash, use too much CPU/RAM, etc, mailing about anything interesting.
tripwire or lire are nice for monitoring filesystem integrity, but these tools aren't easy to use. The database they use must not be located in a safe place, which can make them impractical.
I think the best thing would be doing all logging to a safe computer that only runs the logging daemon, so that you can be sure you're not missing anything.
There are other functions to filter the files to add, and it can also include other files. If running as root it will switch to the user that owns the included file, and not allow including any files not owned by the file's owner. I use this to let people with an account on my system configure how their stuff gets backed up.
This simply generates a file list that's piped to afio. I generate many small afio files, one per home folder for example. Then another Perl script takes those files and figures out how to distribute them so that the CDs are as full as possible (currently takes 2).
Finally, a bash script that runs from cron calls xmessage to make windows pop up requesting me to insert CD-RWs. It marks CDs, so that if I insert the wrong CD-RW I get a warning. Once this is set, it all happens automatically, I only need to insert the CD when it asks for it.
It doesn't do incremental backups, but I don't need them for now. If anybody is interested in this stuff I could try to make a few changes to make it more customizable and upload it somewhere.
Indeed. I remember that when I lived in Russia about 10 years ago most things there like irons, washing machines, samovars, etc. were built very solidly and would easily last for 10 years. I also remember seeing the schematics of an electric razor in a magazine and being able to buy all the pieces it was made of in a shop.
Now I live in Spain, and modern stuff looks cooler but breaks in a year or two.
Well, to begin with, a web browser having something to do with servers doesn't make any sense. In Linux there are very few programs that can't coexist together in the same system. One I can think of is mail servers, but that happens because they all offer one unique interface (/usr/sbin/sendmail), and it makes little sense to run two different mail servers on the same machine anyway. It's not that it's completley impossible either, with some effort it can be done. BTW, I'm not so sure MS got it right. I'm pretty sure that at some point they'll tell you that now they don't support IE 5 either, please upgrade to IE 6. Is there any tool to upgrade IE on 100 computers at once?
Heh, now that's fun. You're waiting for the corporate version. Maybe try to switch to Unix. This kind of functionality has existed practically since it was invented.
The 300KB extra aren't a problem on your hard disk. They become a problem when you try to store many small packages on CDs, or when you try to download them from the internet.
Your IE 4 problem is exactly why windows installers are crap. With Debian I can have a program say "I want Foo 1.0" and another program say "I want Foo 2.2", and if both can't coexist on the same system, the installation will simply fail. If Foo is not installed, then it will be installed automatically.
Of course there's some logic. As simple as "apt-get install mozilla". Just type that, and mozilla will be downloaded, uncompressed in the appropiate place, configured, and registered in the package database. And it's all open, if you're interested you can see exactly what config files are being changed.
Maintaining 100 servers? Easy. for server in `cat server.list` ; do ssh -l root $server apt-get install apache ; done
No one understands how the hippocampus encodes information. So the team simply copied its behaviour. Slices of rat hippocampus were stimulated with electrical signals, millions of times over, until they could be sure which electrical input produces a corresponding output. Putting the information from various slices together gave the team a mathematical model of the entire hippocampus.
They then programmed the model onto a chip, which in a human patient would sit on the skull rather than inside the brain. It communicates with the brain through two arrays of electrodes, placed on either side of the damaged area. One records the electrical activity coming in from the rest of the brain, while the other sends appropriate electrical instructions back out to the brain.
Basically, it seems they sent an input to it, got the output, and repeated that enough times to make a chip that produces the right response for each input. I see some problems with this:
First, isn't the brain a dynamic thing? This doesn't sound like something that can adapt.
Second, does this method work at all? If I say, sent bytes to a router, analyzed the output, and made a chip that produced that output with the input I sent, would it work? It just sounds way too simplistic.
Oh, I have nothing against opinions. It's just that comparing CorelDraw and Photoshop is like comparing a hammer and a screwdriver. In fact, I don't even know how can somebody confuse CorelDraw with a photo editing program, the last time I tried it all the examples it came with were vectorial, and all the tools in the toolbar did vectorial related stuff as well.
Maybe you just said CorelDraw instead of PhotoPaint, but that's just weird if you worked with it. I've tried both, and really can't imagine how would CorelDraw be used to do any kind of photo manipulation.
What's wrong with throwing files around directories?
Installation in Windows is a mess. It requires using a specialized program, that will increase your package in at least 300K in size, that will copy files to the appropiate place, register DLLs and update the registry. Manual install/uninstall is very messy.
Besides that, you have multiple installers, each with its own bugs. Often they will leave unused files around after uninstalling, or will replace DLLs creating DLL hell.
The new Windows Installer doesn't even make normal shortcuts. If you check one it doesn't point to a file on the disk. If you switch to another user you'll have to install it again, just like with Office because it wants some stuff written to the registry.
Simple packages, and one unique installer already present on the system, like RPM or dpkg are the right way. IMO, InstallShield in itself shows a design weakness. You should be able to install programs by simply unzipping the program in the place you want.
CorelDraw is a vector drawing program. They do have a Photoshop-like program, PhotoPaint, I think. But CorelDraw and Photoshop don't have anything in common. They're used for quite different things.
It's ugly indeed. But internals are rarely pretty. Just take a look at files in/usr/include, stdlib.h, for example. I wanted to paste here an example, but darn slashcode asks me to "Please use fewer 'junk' characters".
I think I have been trolled, but I'll reply anyway.
Once I was bored and wrote one line of C code that iterated over an array, and printed its elements separating then with commas, and printed an "and" instead of a comma for the last element. The code consisted of a for, a printf, and ?:'s in it.
Now, don't try to tell me it was readable. Every language can be used to write horrible code.
Besides, that doesn't even look as Perl. "?$where" makes no syntactical sense, variables have names like $where and that's it, "Str + $label" makes no sense either, unless Str is a constant, and "Int +$skip = 0" makes about as much sense as in C, because supposing it's comparing an addition with 0 it should be using ==.
Oh the horror! Imagine what would happen if terrorist organizations got their hands on communication devices that allowed them to plan attacks while being even in different countries! (also known as cell phones). Or what could happen if terrorists could obtain information about how to make explosives (chemistry books come to mind).
Come on people, this argument makes no sense at all. By that logic, we should ban all technology, since even a big wheel can be used to kill somebody! Heck, I could use the cup of tea I have here and use it as a weapon by breaking it against somebody's head.
When will people understand that there's no way of turning the world into a padded cell? Even if all technology was suddenly taken away we'd be still be able to kill people with our bare hands. What then, forbid exercise?
Any company can put anything it wants it the usage agreement, but that doesn't make it law. Some things are unenforceable, and I'm pretty much those disclaimers are. Just try to imagine an electric company with an agreement that says that they're not responsible if they don't install the wires correctly in your house and it catches fire.
This has already been explained many times. Yes, 45 fps is playable, but it depends on *where*.
If you get 45 fps in an empty place, well, sure, it'll be smooth. Now, if suddenly lots of people appear in it, and start shooting at each other like mad performance could drop to 22 fps, which is definely don't enough for games with fast action. When that 100 fps card drops to 50 fps in the same place, the game is still going to be playable.
Yeah, a cash reward in Diablo. I can imagine how that'd be:
The same group of 10-20 people would get the prize. Why? Because it'd be the ones with plenty free time to play, who are addicted and have no social life. There'd be some competition between them of course. If you limited it to one win per person all that would result is the same person getting another account to get yet another price. And the average player would have about the same chances of winning something as of getting struck by lightning.
No, it shouldn't be like that. I've got a Hitachi CM715 (19") that's often on for longer than 11 hours without interruption, and it only gets a bit warm. My cat loves sleeping on it, and that hasn't caused any problems yet. I will have to open it to see how much hair got into it, though.
After I almost broke a SIMM slot, and later short-circuited the motherboard on my old P166.
The first thing happened because I tried to install RAM myself and didn't know very well how (this was a long time ago). I ended bending a few pins in it, making some of them contact the nearby ones. This just made the motherboard beep when it was turned on. I spent about 2 hours with a thin screwdriver unbending them, and managed to fix it. The computer now has some problems with RAM in that slot, though, and sometimes I need to push on the RAM to get a good contact. Currently it's not used for anything critical, so it doesn't matter.
The second problem on the same motherboard happened when a screw remained in the case and connected two pins on some chip. This made the computer turn off instantly, and it wasn't actually able to do that! It has no ATX supply/motherboard or anything of that kind. I looked in the case, removed the screw, turned it on, and it worked.
My newer computer (Duron 850) also had some problems with a hard drive having a bad power connection and turning itself off and on when I moved the machine. It took me a while to figure it out, so it happened about 4 or 5 times. Linux didn't like that at all, and froze after the drive turned off. I also had to do a reiserfsck --rebuild-tree to fix a partition, but it doesn't seem to have caused any permanent damage or even serious data loss.
Why not? You get something in return for the resources you have to give up: a network.
It sounds like Freenet to me. In order for the network to work well people need to run nodes. Yes, they will transfer stuff for other people, something that doesn't benefit your directly. But it also keeps the network ticking, which is what you want.
I suppose it will work this way: If you want the advantages of the network then you have to contribute with your battery.
I suppose I'd also say something about studying more, but it'd have little effect, since I have known that for a long time, without doing much about it. So I think that instead of giving me some "useful" advice I'd try with this:
"Learn programming properly in C and stay away from BASIC." I started with computers a bit late, and some of my skills are getting somewhat useless. Sure writing code in qbasic was fun, and I even got a few games done in it, but learning C would have been far more valuable.
That reminds me something I always wanted to ask, what is the point of a 8MB cache? I thought that having a good amount of RAM for the cache would have been more effective.
Maybe because there are so many.com's that it's hard to come up with anything meaningful because pretty much everything obvious has been registered already?
Slashdot Mirror
logcheck will mail you about unusual stuff that appears in log files.
monit will monitor running damons and can restart them if they crash, use too much CPU/RAM, etc, mailing about anything interesting.
tripwire or lire are nice for monitoring filesystem integrity, but these tools aren't easy to use. The database they use must not be located in a safe place, which can make them impractical.
I think the best thing would be doing all logging to a safe computer that only runs the logging daemon, so that you can be sure you're not missing anything.
This simply generates a file list that's piped to afio. I generate many small afio files, one per home folder for example. Then another Perl script takes those files and figures out how to distribute them so that the CDs are as full as possible (currently takes 2).
Finally, a bash script that runs from cron calls xmessage to make windows pop up requesting me to insert CD-RWs. It marks CDs, so that if I insert the wrong CD-RW I get a warning. Once this is set, it all happens automatically, I only need to insert the CD when it asks for it.
It doesn't do incremental backups, but I don't need them for now. If anybody is interested in this stuff I could try to make a few changes to make it more customizable and upload it somewhere.
Umm... the conclusion doesn't follow.
Yes, the head floats on an air cushion. But why can't the drive be hermetic?
Indeed. I remember that when I lived in Russia about 10 years ago most things there like irons, washing machines, samovars, etc. were built very solidly and would easily last for 10 years. I also remember seeing the schematics of an electric razor in a magazine and being able to buy all the pieces it was made of in a shop.
Now I live in Spain, and modern stuff looks cooler but breaks in a year or two.
Well, to begin with, a web browser having something to do with servers doesn't make any sense. In Linux there are very few programs that can't coexist together in the same system. One I can think of is mail servers, but that happens because they all offer one unique interface (/usr/sbin/sendmail), and it makes little sense to run two different mail servers on the same machine anyway. It's not that it's completley impossible either, with some effort it can be done. BTW, I'm not so sure MS got it right. I'm pretty sure that at some point they'll tell you that now they don't support IE 5 either, please upgrade to IE 6. Is there any tool to upgrade IE on 100 computers at once?
Heh, now that's fun. You're waiting for the corporate version. Maybe try to switch to Unix. This kind of functionality has existed practically since it was invented.
The 300KB extra aren't a problem on your hard disk. They become a problem when you try to store many small packages on CDs, or when you try to download them from the internet.
Your IE 4 problem is exactly why windows installers are crap. With Debian I can have a program say "I want Foo 1.0" and another program say "I want Foo 2.2", and if both can't coexist on the same system, the installation will simply fail. If Foo is not installed, then it will be installed automatically.
Of course there's some logic. As simple as "apt-get install mozilla". Just type that, and mozilla will be downloaded, uncompressed in the appropiate place, configured, and registered in the package database. And it's all open, if you're interested you can see exactly what config files are being changed.
Maintaining 100 servers? Easy.
for server in `cat server.list` ; do ssh -l root $server apt-get install apache ; done
Basically, it seems they sent an input to it, got the output, and repeated that enough times to make a chip that produces the right response for each input. I see some problems with this:
First, isn't the brain a dynamic thing? This doesn't sound like something that can adapt.
Second, does this method work at all? If I say, sent bytes to a router, analyzed the output, and made a chip that produced that output with the input I sent, would it work? It just sounds way too simplistic.
Maybe somebody has better info on this?
Oh, I have nothing against opinions. It's just that comparing CorelDraw and Photoshop is like comparing a hammer and a screwdriver. In fact, I don't even know how can somebody confuse CorelDraw with a photo editing program, the last time I tried it all the examples it came with were vectorial, and all the tools in the toolbar did vectorial related stuff as well.
Here, compare: CorelDraw and PhotoPaint
Maybe you just said CorelDraw instead of PhotoPaint, but that's just weird if you worked with it. I've tried both, and really can't imagine how would CorelDraw be used to do any kind of photo manipulation.
What's wrong with throwing files around directories?
Installation in Windows is a mess. It requires using a specialized program, that will increase your package in at least 300K in size, that will copy files to the appropiate place, register DLLs and update the registry. Manual install/uninstall is very messy.
Besides that, you have multiple installers, each with its own bugs. Often they will leave unused files around after uninstalling, or will replace DLLs creating DLL hell.
The new Windows Installer doesn't even make normal shortcuts. If you check one it doesn't point to a file on the disk. If you switch to another user you'll have to install it again, just like with Office because it wants some stuff written to the registry.
Simple packages, and one unique installer already present on the system, like RPM or dpkg are the right way. IMO, InstallShield in itself shows a design weakness. You should be able to install programs by simply unzipping the program in the place you want.
Are you trolling?
CorelDraw is a vector drawing program. They do have a Photoshop-like program, PhotoPaint, I think. But CorelDraw and Photoshop don't have anything in common. They're used for quite different things.
It's ugly indeed. But internals are rarely pretty. Just take a look at files in /usr/include, stdlib.h, for example. I wanted to paste here an example, but darn slashcode asks me to "Please use fewer 'junk' characters".
I think I have been trolled, but I'll reply anyway.
:'s in it.
Once I was bored and wrote one line of C code that iterated over an array, and printed its elements separating then with commas, and printed an "and" instead of a comma for the last element. The code consisted of a for, a printf, and ?
Now, don't try to tell me it was readable. Every language can be used to write horrible code.
Besides, that doesn't even look as Perl. "?$where" makes no syntactical sense, variables have names like $where and that's it, "Str + $label" makes no sense either, unless Str is a constant, and "Int +$skip = 0" makes about as much sense as in C, because supposing it's comparing an addition with 0 it should be using ==.
Doesn't sound very impressive. If the change progressed much faster and the day got say, 1 minute longer in 10 years, would we notice anything?
Yay, again this argument.
Oh the horror! Imagine what would happen if terrorist organizations got their hands on communication devices that allowed them to plan attacks while being even in different countries! (also known as cell phones). Or what could happen if terrorists could obtain information about how to make explosives (chemistry books come to mind).
Come on people, this argument makes no sense at all. By that logic, we should ban all technology, since even a big wheel can be used to kill somebody! Heck, I could use the cup of tea I have here and use it as a weapon by breaking it against somebody's head.
When will people understand that there's no way of turning the world into a padded cell? Even if all technology was suddenly taken away we'd be still be able to kill people with our bare hands. What then, forbid exercise?
Not true.
Any company can put anything it wants it the usage agreement, but that doesn't make it law. Some things are unenforceable, and I'm pretty much those disclaimers are. Just try to imagine an electric company with an agreement that says that they're not responsible if they don't install the wires correctly in your house and it catches fire.
This has already been explained many times. Yes, 45 fps is playable, but it depends on *where*.
If you get 45 fps in an empty place, well, sure, it'll be smooth. Now, if suddenly lots of people appear in it, and start shooting at each other like mad performance could drop to 22 fps, which is definely don't enough for games with fast action. When that 100 fps card drops to 50 fps in the same place, the game is still going to be playable.
Yeah, a cash reward in Diablo. I can imagine how that'd be:
The same group of 10-20 people would get the prize. Why? Because it'd be the ones with plenty free time to play, who are addicted and have no social life. There'd be some competition between them of course. If you limited it to one win per person all that would result is the same person getting another account to get yet another price. And the average player would have about the same chances of winning something as of getting struck by lightning.
No, it shouldn't be like that. I've got a Hitachi CM715 (19") that's often on for longer than 11 hours without interruption, and it only gets a bit warm. My cat loves sleeping on it, and that hasn't caused any problems yet. I will have to open it to see how much hair got into it, though.
I don't see why he can't be a developer.
I mean, it's not like the ability to write code somehow grants you any other skills, like social intelligence.
After I almost broke a SIMM slot, and later short-circuited the motherboard on my old P166.
The first thing happened because I tried to install RAM myself and didn't know very well how (this was a long time ago). I ended bending a few pins in it, making some of them contact the nearby ones. This just made the motherboard beep when it was turned on. I spent about 2 hours with a thin screwdriver unbending them, and managed to fix it. The computer now has some problems with RAM in that slot, though, and sometimes I need to push on the RAM to get a good contact. Currently it's not used for anything critical, so it doesn't matter.
The second problem on the same motherboard happened when a screw remained in the case and connected two pins on some chip. This made the computer turn off instantly, and it wasn't actually able to do that! It has no ATX supply/motherboard or anything of that kind. I looked in the case, removed the screw, turned it on, and it worked.
My newer computer (Duron 850) also had some problems with a hard drive having a bad power connection and turning itself off and on when I moved the machine. It took me a while to figure it out, so it happened about 4 or 5 times. Linux didn't like that at all, and froze after the drive turned off. I also had to do a reiserfsck --rebuild-tree to fix a partition, but it doesn't seem to have caused any permanent damage or even serious data loss.
monit, running from init.
monit can restart daemons, check the md5 sums of files so that it doesn't start a changed daemon and do a few other nice things.
Why not? You get something in return for the resources you have to give up: a network.
It sounds like Freenet to me. In order for the network to work well people need to run nodes. Yes, they will transfer stuff for other people, something that doesn't benefit your directly. But it also keeps the network ticking, which is what you want.
I suppose it will work this way: If you want the advantages of the network then you have to contribute with your battery.
I suppose I'd also say something about studying more, but it'd have little effect, since I have known that for a long time, without doing much about it. So I think that instead of giving me some "useful" advice I'd try with this:
"Learn programming properly in C and stay away from BASIC." I started with computers a bit late, and some of my skills are getting somewhat useless. Sure writing code in qbasic was fun, and I even got a few games done in it, but learning C would have been far more valuable.
That reminds me something I always wanted to ask, what is the point of a 8MB cache? I thought that having a good amount of RAM for the cache would have been more effective.
Maybe because there are so many .com's that it's hard to come up with anything meaningful because pretty much everything obvious has been registered already?