That will work only if your boss is an idiot and doesn't realize that you cost money.
Not really. I've built up a track record for making fun projects into useful systems. When I played around with Jabber, we ended up with a secure intra-office IM system. I took some time to write an article on spam blocking and we ended up moving a big chunk of our email service onto a Postfix+Cyrus system, plus spam/virus filtering for the Exchange server. When I tell him I want to check out $SHINYTOY, I usually get to.
So you've never needed to troubleshoot a network problem. Good for you.
No, it's that (like others have mentioned) hosts file always work. Failing that, cat/etc/resolv.conf gives me the address of the nameservers if they're broken (not that they've ever all died simultaneously) and I need to connect in. Finally, remember that all the addresses in your company will have a static prefix that will be an even multiple of 16 bits in length, like AAAA:BBBB:CCCC. Memorize that. Your own machine's host portion will look like 21f:d0ff:fe22:b8a8. Honestly, I have passwords longer than that. I'm not a super-genius, but this is within my abilities. It's not like Jane Secretary's going to have to learn this stuff.
Anyway, it sounds like your need to memorize a whole slew of addresses is due to the incompetence of your network administrators. I'd say that is the fundamental problem that needs to be addressed. No pun intended.
But regardless of all else, we're running out of IPv4 addresses. You will have to learn longer addresses at some point, so you might as well get used to it.
That's a great idea, as long as you can find another 96 address bits in the IPv4 header. Oh, and update every router in the world to handle IPv6-style routing (which is not the same as IPv4 routing because we've learned a few things along the way). And figure out a way to require IPSec support. And multicast.
Do you really think that IPv4+6 would be any easier to support than IPv6 itself?
No you don't. A stateless NAT is almost worthless as a firewall, even if many people think it is. For example, take these three pseudocode rules:
allow from $lan to $internet port 53 allow from $internet port 53 to $lan block all
That's all well and good until someone sending you spoofed packets from ns1.google.com:53 to 192.168.0.2 (or whatever your desktop's address is). After all, your firewall allows in all packets with a report port 53.
If you want a firewall, get a firewall. If you want NAT, get NAT. Do not believe for a second that they're the same.
If someone cares about how easy it is to work with an IP address, they're probably a techy who needs to do so for troubleshooting purposes,
Correction: they're a tech on a tiny network where they're used to memorizing the DNS zones. At this very moment, I'm not sure I can tell you the IP of the webserver I work on most often - not because I never access it, but because I've been accessing it via DNS for the last five years and have never once in that time needed to connect via IP.
so giving a smart-ass "use DNS" response doesn't help them.
Neither does giving a dumbass "cant remember numb3rz lol" response.
Most businesses only need a couple of external addresses, and many end-users don't need one at all.
That's right! As long as you originate 100% of your traffic, don't host VPNs, and never need to use an end-to-end connection, you'll be just fine behind an Internet-breaking NAT. Just pray that you never need to SSH to your home server which is also behind one.
Moving to IPv6 means that I can't use NAT anymore for my home network.
You technically can, but there are few sane reasons for wanting to.
That means I need a block of IP addresses assigned to me. So does my telco/cable company have this set up and will it cost me a huge amount to get a block of IPs?
Correct, yes (they will), and no (it won't). I have a free/48 allocation from Hurricane Electric, giving me a home netblock of 2^80 addresses. If your ISP tries to rake you over the coals, I could probably peel off 2^64 or so of those to lend you.
"Boss, I can get an IPv6 tunnel for free so that we can start experimenting and testing. We work with the Department of Defense, and they say that this stuff is important, so with your permission I'd like to spend $0 to start playing with it."
Not really. They suck at accepting corrections. For example, there's an article on whether Marilyn Monroe had six toes. Now, I have no reason to believe that they reached the wrong conclusion, but I know for a fact that at least one of their reasons is fundamentally wrong:
There is no record of Marilyn's having had an operation at that point in her life, and no contemporary references to anyone's noticing her walking with a bandaged foot or a limp for a period of time. (One doesn't simply get up and start trotting around after having a toe removed -- the missing digit affects one's balance, and it takes some time to adjust to the change and "relearn" how to walk.)
My wife is a podiatrist, and I asked her if that was correct. She said that no, it's an urban legend of its own, and that it takes little adjustment after a toe amputation once the surgical wound is healed. Even removal of the big toe is a relatively minor deal (try walking with it lifted off the ground sometime and see if it makes a difference), let alone a vestigial extra pinky toe hanging off the side.
I wrote to Snopes with that information from an expert source, and they wrote back that I was a dumbass for believing that Marilyn had six toes. I don't! I just didn't think they should be using invalid facts to "prove" their case, even if I agree with their conclusion.
Snopes is fine for entertainment value, but wholly worthless as an authoritative information source.
I know you had problems with Emacs, but my point was that you might be better off fixing them than trying to find something else with similar functionality.
Emacs with python.el. Seriously, I'd never be without it. Not only does it have indentation and syntax highlighting perfectly nailed, but it gives you lots of niceties like an interface to pylint and etags for smart completion, but all the "standard" Emacs stuff like the ability to edit files that are only reachable by obscure methods SSHing to the firewall, sudoing to another user, SSHing to the final destination, and sudoing to root.
But even with multicore CPUs, I can guarantee that if modems were still the primary way people got online, there would definitely be a thriving market for "performance" modems that offloaded at LEAST the signal-processing functions to a real DSP
My wife didn't understand why I wouldn't let her parents have my SupraExpress 56k serial modem. Granted, I may very well never use it again, but if I needed it and didn't have it, I would be very grouchy.
They spewed noxious exhaust enough to make coal power plants look clean. And they accelerated like Mack trucks propelled by hamsters.
I delivered pizza in an '85 Oldsmobile 88 diesel for a while. It wasn't the quickest thing off the line by any means, but the 60-70mph times were almost identical to the 0-10mph times. No matter how fast or slow you were going, you'd get the same acceleration. That was kinda cool.
I do. Our Sienna minivan was built right here in Kentucky. We try to avoid import vehicles, like those Mexican F-150s that were so popular before the gas prices skyrocketed.
When burnt, diesel typically releases about 38.6 MJ/l (138,700 BTU per US gallon), whereas gasoline releases 34.9 MJ/l (125,000 BTU per US gallon), 10% lear[2] by energy density, but 45.41 MJ/kg and 48.47 MJ/kg, 6.7% more by specific energy.
Handy to know if we ever start buying fuel by the kilogram.
Unfortunately too many uneducated Americans don't do the math, they just see one price. Most of my fellow Americans also think that paying $250/month for 72 months is better than paying $350/month for 48 months for the same car.
I know what you mean, but you picked a really bad example. With those numbers, the longer loan costs 7.1% more than the shorter loan, and over the extra two years works out to about 3.5% per year. I'd much rather use someone else's money at 3.5% and invest my own in other stuff, and in this case get the added benefit of $100 per month extra cashflow.
In reality, those longer loans also tend to have higher interest rates, making you doubly screwed.
Well, I wasn't going to spell it out, but yeah. I always "hear" those in a nasally voice, usually followed by "we should stop clowning around and get back to work. Please?"
If it had been Obama or Biden had a teenage daughter who had gotten knocked up and chose to keep the baby, the religious right would have lambasted them for letting their daughter have sex, blasted her for being a slut, and then railed on all of them for referring to keeping the baby as a "choice."
You mean, non-hypothetically, like the left has been doing to Palin?
Slashdot Mirror
That will work only if your boss is an idiot and doesn't realize that you cost money.
Not really. I've built up a track record for making fun projects into useful systems. When I played around with Jabber, we ended up with a secure intra-office IM system. I took some time to write an article on spam blocking and we ended up moving a big chunk of our email service onto a Postfix+Cyrus system, plus spam/virus filtering for the Exchange server. When I tell him I want to check out $SHINYTOY, I usually get to.
At that point, you have a stateful firewall, not just a NAT.
So you've never needed to troubleshoot a network problem. Good for you.
No, it's that (like others have mentioned) hosts file always work. Failing that, cat /etc/resolv.conf gives me the address of the nameservers if they're broken (not that they've ever all died simultaneously) and I need to connect in. Finally, remember that all the addresses in your company will have a static prefix that will be an even multiple of 16 bits in length, like AAAA:BBBB:CCCC. Memorize that. Your own machine's host portion will look like 21f:d0ff:fe22:b8a8. Honestly, I have passwords longer than that. I'm not a super-genius, but this is within my abilities. It's not like Jane Secretary's going to have to learn this stuff.
Anyway, it sounds like your need to memorize a whole slew of addresses is due to the incompetence of your network administrators. I'd say that is the fundamental problem that needs to be addressed. No pun intended.
But regardless of all else, we're running out of IPv4 addresses. You will have to learn longer addresses at some point, so you might as well get used to it.
That's a great idea, as long as you can find another 96 address bits in the IPv4 header. Oh, and update every router in the world to handle IPv6-style routing (which is not the same as IPv4 routing because we've learned a few things along the way). And figure out a way to require IPSec support. And multicast.
Do you really think that IPv4+6 would be any easier to support than IPv6 itself?
I use NAT for security (as a firewall)
No you don't. A stateless NAT is almost worthless as a firewall, even if many people think it is. For example, take these three pseudocode rules:
That's all well and good until someone sending you spoofed packets from ns1.google.com:53 to 192.168.0.2 (or whatever your desktop's address is). After all, your firewall allows in all packets with a report port 53.
If you want a firewall, get a firewall. If you want NAT, get NAT. Do not believe for a second that they're the same.
If someone cares about how easy it is to work with an IP address, they're probably a techy who needs to do so for troubleshooting purposes,
Correction: they're a tech on a tiny network where they're used to memorizing the DNS zones. At this very moment, I'm not sure I can tell you the IP of the webserver I work on most often - not because I never access it, but because I've been accessing it via DNS for the last five years and have never once in that time needed to connect via IP.
so giving a smart-ass "use DNS" response doesn't help them.
Neither does giving a dumbass "cant remember numb3rz lol" response.
It sounds like you work for an awful boss. Have you considered taking night classes to help land a job that rewards intelligence?
Most businesses only need a couple of external addresses, and many end-users don't need one at all.
That's right! As long as you originate 100% of your traffic, don't host VPNs, and never need to use an end-to-end connection, you'll be just fine behind an Internet-breaking NAT. Just pray that you never need to SSH to your home server which is also behind one.
Moving to IPv6 means that I can't use NAT anymore for my home network.
You technically can, but there are few sane reasons for wanting to.
That means I need a block of IP addresses assigned to me. So does my telco/cable company have this set up and will it cost me a huge amount to get a block of IPs?
Correct, yes (they will), and no (it won't). I have a free /48 allocation from Hurricane Electric, giving me a home netblock of 2^80 addresses. If your ISP tries to rake you over the coals, I could probably peel off 2^64 or so of those to lend you.
192.168.1.87 -vs- fe80::e1c0:5620:bc95:3c71%9
I see your unwieldly addressing and raise you a DNS.
Besides, if you want to talk Rube Goldberg, check out IPv4's variable-length headers and the processing required to sort them out at line speed.
"Boss, I can get an IPv6 tunnel for free so that we can start experimenting and testing. We work with the Department of Defense, and they say that this stuff is important, so with your permission I'd like to spend $0 to start playing with it."
And that's how we came to be on IPv6.
Snopes is good at debunking (urban) myths.
Not really. They suck at accepting corrections. For example, there's an article on whether Marilyn Monroe had six toes. Now, I have no reason to believe that they reached the wrong conclusion, but I know for a fact that at least one of their reasons is fundamentally wrong:
My wife is a podiatrist, and I asked her if that was correct. She said that no, it's an urban legend of its own, and that it takes little adjustment after a toe amputation once the surgical wound is healed. Even removal of the big toe is a relatively minor deal (try walking with it lifted off the ground sometime and see if it makes a difference), let alone a vestigial extra pinky toe hanging off the side.
I wrote to Snopes with that information from an expert source, and they wrote back that I was a dumbass for believing that Marilyn had six toes. I don't! I just didn't think they should be using invalid facts to "prove" their case, even if I agree with their conclusion.
Snopes is fine for entertainment value, but wholly worthless as an authoritative information source.
I had an Amiga with a 68060 at 50MHz and a PowerPC 604e at 200MHz. They ran in parallel, with the PPC often used for CPU-intensive parts of programs.
Don't all Makefiles have a "tags" target? :-)
I left out an important bit here:
I know you had problems with Emacs, but my point was that you might be better off fixing them than trying to find something else with similar functionality.
Emacs with python.el. Seriously, I'd never be without it. Not only does it have indentation and syntax highlighting perfectly nailed, but it gives you lots of niceties like an interface to pylint and etags for smart completion, but all the "standard" Emacs stuff like the ability to edit files that are only reachable by obscure methods SSHing to the firewall, sudoing to another user, SSHing to the final destination, and sudoing to root.
Rally, there's no substitute.
But even with multicore CPUs, I can guarantee that if modems were still the primary way people got online, there would definitely be a thriving market for "performance" modems that offloaded at LEAST the signal-processing functions to a real DSP
My wife didn't understand why I wouldn't let her parents have my SupraExpress 56k serial modem. Granted, I may very well never use it again, but if I needed it and didn't have it, I would be very grouchy.
They spewed noxious exhaust enough to make coal power plants look clean. And they accelerated like Mack trucks propelled by hamsters.
I delivered pizza in an '85 Oldsmobile 88 diesel for a while. It wasn't the quickest thing off the line by any means, but the 60-70mph times were almost identical to the 0-10mph times. No matter how fast or slow you were going, you'd get the same acceleration. That was kinda cool.
Who still buys American vehicles these days
I do. Our Sienna minivan was built right here in Kentucky. We try to avoid import vehicles, like those Mexican F-150s that were so popular before the gas prices skyrocketed.
When burnt, diesel typically releases about 38.6 MJ/l (138,700 BTU per US gallon), whereas gasoline releases 34.9 MJ/l (125,000 BTU per US gallon), 10% lear[2] by energy density, but 45.41 MJ/kg and 48.47 MJ/kg, 6.7% more by specific energy.
Handy to know if we ever start buying fuel by the kilogram.
Unfortunately too many uneducated Americans don't do the math, they just see one price. Most of my fellow Americans also think that paying $250/month for 72 months is better than paying $350/month for 48 months for the same car.
I know what you mean, but you picked a really bad example. With those numbers, the longer loan costs 7.1% more than the shorter loan, and over the extra two years works out to about 3.5% per year. I'd much rather use someone else's money at 3.5% and invest my own in other stuff, and in this case get the added benefit of $100 per month extra cashflow.
In reality, those longer loans also tend to have higher interest rates, making you doubly screwed.
Well, I wasn't going to spell it out, but yeah. I always "hear" those in a nasally voice, usually followed by "we should stop clowning around and get back to work. Please?"
Yeah, you're right. In the grand tradition of Slashdot, I was too lazy to post a followup correction.
No, you're from the part of the world where people will say anything to spin stupid nonsense peddled by Republicans.
That would make a lot more sense if I had any intention of voting Republican.
If it had been Obama or Biden had a teenage daughter who had gotten knocked up and chose to keep the baby, the religious right would have lambasted them for letting their daughter have sex, blasted her for being a slut, and then railed on all of them for referring to keeping the baby as a "choice."
You mean, non-hypothetically, like the left has been doing to Palin?