I'd like to see a persistent scripting language which is a first-class peer of the server process. Yes, I know you can do this with Apache if you load enough modules, but I view that as cruft. Has anyone started over again to create a threaded server which can hold a database connection open without the complexity of, say, Zope, or mod_perl? -russ
Well sure, particularly since the one Stimpson suggests will just force US spammers out of business, creating a business opportunity for foreign spammers. As if I don't get enough unreadable (because it's in big4, or turkish, or korean) spam already. -russ
Actually, I asked Larry Fast (of Synergy fame) if I could send him money for download his MP3's. He told me that if I did, he'd have to refuse it, because he signed that right over to his record company. One of the downsides of being a signed artist. -russ
Yeah, it's off-topic, but anything that's funny is on-topic, eh? -russ p.s. anybody can be held without being charged with a crime for 48 hours. Even after that, the judge has to either set or deny bail, and if the latter, it has to be for a good reason. If stupidity and ignorance was a crime, you'd be in jail too. Then again, if flameage was, I'd be in too.
First of all, you only need to worry about email from someone you've never heard from before. How much *real* unsolicited email have you gotten today? How much unsolicited email did you send?
But really, there's no point in arguing with you, I should just go implement a paid email system, and become wealthy.:) -russ
If email cost more to send to someone you've never sent mail to before, even just a few pennies (whether of money or computing power), spam would not be a problem.
Consider, if nothing else, the multi-jurisdictional nature of the Internet. -russ
The context of this Slashdot posting is security faults introduced on purpose. Of course programmers make errors, but I'm not addressing that topic. -russ
Depends on what you call a trojan. Eric Allman inserted the DEBG command into sendmail because he needed shell access on one of the machines running sendmail at Berkeley, and the sysadmins wouldn't give him an account. I'd call that a trojan (looks like one thing, but has a secret inner surprise you'd refuse if you knew it was there). -russ
flossing and catching up on email
on
Faster
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· Score: 2
flossing and catching up on email
That strikes too close to home. Of course, the reason I do it is because reading my email in the morning is a habit, and I can remember to floss only if I combine flossing and reading email. I don't do it to save time, I do it to actually remember to floss! -russ
Nobody accepts that liability now. Read the fine print. Everyone disclaims any liability for anything their program does. The only thing you get with your Microsoft program is a guarantee that you have an exact and reliable copy of their copy of the bits. -russ
Right. You're saying that open source can fail. Sure. But in practice it doesn't. There's never been a trojan in Apache, or the Linux kernel, or Perl, or qmail, or even the open source versions of sendmail. But remember the closed-source versions which still had Eric's DEBG botch? -russ
Obviously, if you have a computer, and you don't wish to develop the expertise to administer it yourself, you have to find someone you trust. My lawyer thought he had someone to trust with his Microsoft box. Guess what? That person installed a back door. Who found it? The Linux expert at my lawyer's ISP. -russ
There won't be any bad schools. That's the whole point. The bad schools will go out of business, because everyone wants their child to get a good education. -russ
No one is proposing to take children away from parents before the age of three (except those who grossly mistreat them), and yet that is the period during which the child learns to walk and talk, and during which the child's basic personality is set.
What teacher could possibly know a child better than the person who taught the child to talk? -russ
I didn't mean that school, as currently constituted, was a hard problem to solve. I mean that it is an impossible problem to solve. The very problem itself is stated in a manner that is impossible to solve.
Yes, people need to be educated. That is obvious. What is also obvious (at this point, to anyone who's paying attention) is that the method of education we have chosen does not succeed in its stated goals.
Just look at the fact that rank amateurs (homeschooling parents *always* do better than teachers no matter their level of education) can produce better results than trained professionals. Isn't this a very strong result showing that our method of education is broken?
You can't build people skills if you spend all your day shut up in a classroom. Home schoolers aren't shut up at home. They go out into the community. They volunteer at the animal shelter. They visit with the elderly. They do community service. They deal with adults instead of hundreds of other children all the same age as them.
Socialization is important, yes, but it should be done by society, not a group of your peers who don't know any more about how to act politely than you do. -russ
The Ken Thompson cc story is just a story. And guess what? Real software needs to be rewritten from scratch every five years, because the assumptions you make about trade-offs become invalidated. Both sendmail and bind are *long* overdue for a rewrite. -russ
If I didn't already agree with Eric, I wouldn't bother being the VP of OSI. Isn't that obvious *enough*? -russ
Re:You misunderstand. This is CmdrTaco's sandbox
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Tech Stocks Tumble
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· Score: 2
Because, CmdrTaco is basically a nerd, and he has to stay that way. No getting married, no having kids, no dryer, no washing machine. Basically he has to give up having a life, and must continue to play with computers, legos, video games, watching Star Wars, etc.:)
That's why it's news for nerds, and not just news. -russ
Sorry, but your opinion shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how markets work. Ultimately, we, the slashdot readers, have to be kept happy, otherwise we won't read the adverts that pay the money that the stockholders expect to get in return for withholding their consumption of the capital they loaned to Mr. Taco.
So yeah, it's still Mr. Taco's sandbox, and if he wants to succeed, he has to keep having interesting opinions.:) -russ
Slashdot Mirror
I'm only interested in dynamic content, by the way. For static content, we have Dan Bernstein's publicfile server. Small, fast, secure.
I'd like to see a persistent scripting language which is a first-class peer of the server process. Yes, I know you can do this with Apache if you load enough modules, but I view that as cruft. Has anyone started over again to create a threaded server which can hold a database connection open without the complexity of, say, Zope, or mod_perl?
-russ
Well sure, particularly since the one Stimpson suggests will just force US spammers out of business, creating a business opportunity for foreign spammers. As if I don't get enough unreadable (because it's in big4, or turkish, or korean) spam already.
-russ
Actually, I asked Larry Fast (of Synergy fame) if I could send him money for download his MP3's. He told me that if I did, he'd have to refuse it, because he signed that right over to his record company. One of the downsides of being a signed artist.
-russ
Any comment which mentions Beowoof where the article isn't about flustering gets automagically down-graded. Oops, there goes my karma.
-russ
Yeah, it's off-topic, but anything that's funny is on-topic, eh?
-russ
p.s. anybody can be held without being charged with a crime for 48 hours. Even after that, the judge has to either set or deny bail, and if the latter, it has to be for a good reason. If stupidity and ignorance was a crime, you'd be in jail too. Then again, if flameage was, I'd be in too.
First of all, you only need to worry about email from someone you've never heard from before. How much *real* unsolicited email have you gotten today? How much unsolicited email did you send?
:)
But really, there's no point in arguing with you, I should just go implement a paid email system, and become wealthy.
-russ
If email cost more to send to someone you've never sent mail to before, even just a few pennies (whether of money or computing power), spam would not be a problem.
Consider, if nothing else, the multi-jurisdictional nature of the Internet.
-russ
The context of this Slashdot posting is security faults introduced on purpose. Of course programmers make errors, but I'm not addressing that topic.
-russ
Depends on what you call a trojan. Eric Allman inserted the DEBG command into sendmail because he needed shell access on one of the machines running sendmail at Berkeley, and the sysadmins wouldn't give him an account. I'd call that a trojan (looks like one thing, but has a secret inner surprise you'd refuse if you knew it was there).
-russ
That strikes too close to home. Of course, the reason I do it is because reading my email in the morning is a habit, and I can remember to floss only if I combine flossing and reading email. I don't do it to save time, I do it to actually remember to floss!
-russ
Remember how the closed source sendmail's had Eric's DEBG botch for years after the open source version has diked it out?
-russ
Nobody accepts that liability now. Read the fine print. Everyone disclaims any liability for anything their program does. The only thing you get with your Microsoft program is a guarantee that you have an exact and reliable copy of their copy of the bits.
-russ
Right. You're saying that open source can fail. Sure. But in practice it doesn't. There's never been a trojan in Apache, or the Linux kernel, or Perl, or qmail, or even the open source versions of sendmail. But remember the closed-source versions which still had Eric's DEBG botch?
-russ
Obviously, if you have a computer, and you don't wish to develop the expertise to administer it yourself, you have to find someone you trust. My lawyer thought he had someone to trust with his Microsoft box. Guess what? That person installed a back door. Who found it? The Linux expert at my lawyer's ISP.
-russ
You're never going to get equal education, because you're never going to have equal children. Isn't that obvious enough?
-russ
There won't be any bad schools. That's the whole point. The bad schools will go out of business, because everyone wants their child to get a good education.
-russ
No one is proposing to take children away from parents before the age of three (except those who grossly mistreat them), and yet that is the period during which the child learns to walk and talk, and during which the child's basic personality is set.
What teacher could possibly know a child better than the person who taught the child to talk?
-russ
I didn't mean that school, as currently constituted, was a hard problem to solve. I mean that it is an impossible problem to solve. The very problem itself is stated in a manner that is impossible to solve.
Yes, people need to be educated. That is obvious. What is also obvious (at this point, to anyone who's paying attention) is that the method of education we have chosen does not succeed in its stated goals.
Just look at the fact that rank amateurs (homeschooling parents *always* do better than teachers no matter their level of education) can produce better results than trained professionals. Isn't this a very strong result showing that our method of education is broken?
This is primarily due to the non-market provision of schooling. If you want socialism, you're going to get inefficiency and waste.
-russ
You can't build people skills if you spend all your day shut up in a classroom. Home schoolers aren't shut up at home. They go out into the community. They volunteer at the animal shelter. They visit with the elderly. They do community service. They deal with adults instead of hundreds of other children all the same age as them.
Socialization is important, yes, but it should be done by society, not a group of your peers who don't know any more about how to act politely than you do.
-russ
The Ken Thompson cc story is just a story. And guess what? Real software needs to be rewritten from scratch every five years, because the assumptions you make about trade-offs become invalidated. Both sendmail and bind are *long* overdue for a rewrite.
-russ
If I didn't already agree with Eric, I wouldn't bother being the VP of OSI. Isn't that obvious *enough*?
-russ
Because, CmdrTaco is basically a nerd, and he has to stay that way. No getting married, no having kids, no dryer, no washing machine. Basically he has to give up having a life, and must continue to play with computers, legos, video games, watching Star Wars, etc. :)
That's why it's news for nerds, and not just news.
-russ
Sorry, but your opinion shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how markets work. Ultimately, we, the slashdot readers, have to be kept happy, otherwise we won't read the adverts that pay the money that the stockholders expect to get in return for withholding their consumption of the capital they loaned to Mr. Taco.
:)
So yeah, it's still Mr. Taco's sandbox, and if he wants to succeed, he has to keep having interesting opinions.
-russ