Troll? I don't think so. I use it every day. What person in there right mind would use vi or emacs? Both as asininely complicated for even the simplest of tasks. Now I will say that I'm going to pay more attention to nano more. It sounds like a nice hack on pico. I believe in the KISS theory.
Yes. Fix your term type. AIX has some very well known issues with otherwise standard term types. I'm sure there are docs out there that explain this in better detail that I could but I can't think of any off the top of my head. That's essentially the problem in a nutshell though. Fortunately I no longer have to have anything to do with AIX (and never will again!). I do use bash everywhere though.
I've been wanting to learn cfengine for some time but haven't had the will to get through its steep learning curve. Mind sharing the non-sensitive parts of your config?
Quite possibly. Still though they usually post the more damning Linux vulnerabilities too. Wasn't there a root sploit in the kernel a while back that made the front page? I don't know why they didn't bother reporting this one. Sucks though. Good thing I let Freshmeat mail me when PHP (a project I subscribed to) gets updated. Joining the PHP mailing lists is utterly useless. They are over run with spam and either not administrated at all or are administrated by incompotent boobs. The announcement list can (and is!) posted to by anyone including spammers. Genius in action I tell you. They also ignore complaints to postmaster. *sigh*
Nice book, BTW. I've been thinking about writing a few books myself. Were you a proficient writer before you started or did you find that your abilities grew as the process wore on?
I've been meaning to learn cfengine for many years now. The examples in your book have been helpful. If you write another book that talks more about cfengine you might consider adding examples for just about anything and everything you can think of. I've found that the best way to learn a tool like cfengine is by examples, lots and lots of examples. That's how I learned Procmail.:-) Nice book.
Seriously, that's the number one configuration tool you could possibly own. It always baffles me how many "Technology Coordinators" or other official IT guys know jack (or less!) about systems administration. These are the type of people you'd never consider giving root to on a server you administer. These are the type of people that don't understand why a server that's a month old would need to have patches and other updates done on any of the hundreds of packages that run on it. (I ran into this comment again just the other day by an "admin") Hands down the best tool available on the market today for Linux system configuration is a half-assed decent administrator. That's one area where you can't afford to be a cheapskate.
I'm running with the default settings on Slashdot. That means that no authors, topics or sections are excluded from from the homepage. I also have default Slashdot Slashboxes. That doesn't really matter though because this critical security hole should have made the main page on the default settings. I don't see a check box in the prefs for "Show me critical security vulnerabilities that everyone should know about."
Precisely. Your plants should never be a part of the composte pile.:-) Pull back a couple inches of composte and feel how hot it is. Ouch. I've seen too many composte files burst into flames in my time. They are a nice thing to have though.
I'm extremely disappointed with the Slashdot editors not putting this article on the main page. This is a critical security hole in a very common tool, even increasing common on Windows machines. Why was this not on the main page, Slashdot Editors?
A word to the wise, DO NOT use any old saw dust/chips as mulch. In fact almost all will cause damage to trees and buildings. "Why",you ask? "Wood chips are wood chips, right?" Wrong! The vast majority of wood chips attract termites, among other things. Mulching the flower beds around your home with maple or pine chips is like lathering your ass in honey and jumping into the grizzly bear pit at your local zoo. Not a good thing to do. Using the wrong wood chips around trees will also lead to termite infestation in your living tree. Sawdust can cause nitrogen depletion in the soil as well as fungal contamination in some plant. That's not a good thing either. You want to use very specific types of wood chips. You should use Cedar, Cypress, Eucalyptus wood chips as these will deter most bugs. Also note that bark chunks are not the same as wood chips. They have different bug deterring properties, not to mention visual appearance and most importantly price. A quick Google search will give you lots of information including this Lowes page. I was a landscaper in a former life.
I might be willing to part with some too. I should have done it a long time ago. I'm trying to remember what OS 8 required. IIRC correctly it require a PPC or 040, a real 040 rather than the LC, and 12MB RAM. I might have a few things that'd interest you.
I did can some of that stuff but not much. I junked the 2 TI laser printers I had--one worked if you hand fed each sheet and I was going to use the other (blown CPU) to fix it. I also junked a 19" Panasonic monitor that cost me a buck and lasted less than a day. I figured I could fix it but never bothered trying. I canned my old Apple 1710 display that worked intermitently. I also canned my really nice Apple ColorVision 17 (working revision of the 1710) that shot craps on me a day or so out of warranty. I tossed a couple DeskJets I got somewhere. I tossed (literally!) a couple old 486s I had laying around. One had a case that was about 4 feet tall and weighed close to 60lbs. I chucked it out off my 3rd-floor apt complex balcony to the concrete below. The concrete gave more than the old metal case did! Yeah, I've canned a number of things. I still have tons and tons of crap though. When I was in college I spent a summer working at a Mac service center in Wichita. They had an entire room filled with misc Apple products, mostly in a state of brokeness. There were some working items though. That's where the TI printers came from. We called that room the graveyard. They wanted to clean it out and open it up for more retail space. They were just going to toss most of it in the dumpster before myself and another tech said we'd like to go through it first. I must have brought home 4 or 5 dozen broken LaserWriter II's, a couple dozen Classics, 512k, and other ancient all-in-one machines, scanners, monitors, blah blah blah. Most if it was broken somehow. I was in school for a computer engineering degree and I figured I could use the old control motors anc whatnot in my projects. All that junk is still back home above my father's garage. I wonder if he needs the space back... It would make fine ditch filler.:-) It's scary how much stuff I have.
I can think of one person that is worse. There'sa pawn shop in Arkansas City, KS called Sheldon's. That place is an old garage and 2-3 other attached building combined. When you walk in the front door your initial instinct involves fear. That shop contains every gadget, tool, and gizmo known to man. You can not see the walls through all the stuff hanging on them and from the ceiling. Then there's all the stuff stacked on the floor and leaning on the walls. There's a tiny path about 4" wide through the maze of junk to the counter. You'll see guns, tools, chains, saddles, TVs, Al Pacino, and more in there. There isn't anything he doesn't have. The best part is that guy knows where everything is. I swear that place is awesome. You can spend 12 hours a day in there everyday for a month and still find something new as soon as you walk in the door. That's the only person I know that can top me and my amount of stuff.
I hear you. When I moved out of my college apt for my first real job I owned (and I shit you not) 26 computers. 26! I had well over a dozens Macs, over half a dozen Sparcs, and a handful of PCs. Top that off with 3 laser printers and 3 or 4 ink jets. I had... let me think... 7 monitors, a scanner; 3-4 external DDS-2 drives; flatbed scanner; 4 or 5 external CD drives/changers/burners; just over half a dozen networking hubs, switches and routers; and more freaking computer cables, adapters and misc stuff than you can shake a stick at. That doesn't count any of the stuff I had in storage. I have a 4-foot Calcomp plotter I bought for $5! I still have almost all of that stuff PLUS I've added more than 2 dozen nice managed switches, just under a dozen routers (Cabletron and Cisco), 7 unmanaged switches, more hubs than I care to count, 2 full-height racks, and more cables and adapters modules and GBICs and misc networking stuff (that job was networking-related, can you tell?). I haven't even touched on the books I own. I've spent on average over the past 5 years $2500/yr on books. I spent a little under $5000 in 2002 though (excluded from the average because it skews the average too much along with the lowest expenditure). I swear you would not believe how much tech stuff I have. Don't believe I have that much crap? I have pictures on a CD of all of it (insurance purposes). Let me try to find it. People hate helping me move. I can't imagine why....:-) I don't even want to think how much stuff I'll own when I'm 30.
I've said it before but this is a perfect opportunity to say it again. Support your local PBS channel. I for one enjoy much of the broadcasts on PBS. I enjoy much more of it than I do what I see on other channels. Membership is as little as $35/yr. I'd encourage everyone to support PBS.
I for one am mighty impressed with Richard Dreyfus's words on this censortship. Kudos to him for that.
The purchasing department should never EVER have any say whatsoever in the choice of a brand name. NEVER! CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? NEVER! Purchasing people should not have the power to override the request from the only person that is actually knowledgable on the item being bought. Do you think your purchasing dept should be able to take your order for 20 Dell 2650 servers and change that to ones made by Compaq? After all they are both server and the only real difference is cost and brand name, right? Ha! I was once involved in a little project to research and buy UPSs for all the wiring closets on campus. Myself and a few other technical people researched a few brands and went in depth on a number of models that seemed to fit our needs. We settled on APC. I had a number of phone calls with the folks with specs on our hardware to make sure that their product would fit our needs. The boss approved the expenditure and told us to make it happen. We sent the order to our dept's purchasing (our own in-house purchasing person that worked for us, not campus purchasing). The order was detailed with brand name and specific models numbers. A month later when the boxes and boxes of UPSs we were expecting hadn't shown up we asked her to call whoever she bought them from and get an update on the order with tracking details. That's when she told us she hadn't placed the order. When she called her "sources" to find the best product for us (excuse me, we already foudn the products we want!) she was told about a special on Minuteman UPSs that would get us free frieght to our door. She guessed she must have forgot to tell us. She told us to look at their products and pick from what they offered. Oh, and do it by the end of the week so she could get free freight and save the dept big $$. ARGH!!! She was part of the damned project that picked APC UPS. I about came unfucked at that point. When that business and I parted ways a year later they still hadn't bought any UPSs for the wiring closets. See what happens when you give purchasing the power to decide brand names? See what happens when you give purchasing the power to make any decision whatsoever on a purchase? Everyone has to feel like they rule their domain.
The obvious solution to this is for the privacy.net guys to reject all mail to me@privacy.net with an error that says the user wants their privacy from spammers. That way they aren't contributing to DSN spam. Trivially simple solution really.
I usually use postmaster or abuse @ the domain of the site asking for my address.
On sites that have a legit need for my email address like Amazon, ebay, Newegg and others I buy stuff from I use Sendmail's plus notation (also known as the user+detail format) OR an alias on one of my personal domains. I use aliases quite a bit. That way I can remove the alias and shut off the potential (or actual) flow of spam to that address. It's easier to remove an alias than it is to have Procmail filter out mail to a given plus notation address. It always amazes me who gets my alias or plus notation email address over time. For example I may notice that I'm getting penis enlargment or mortgage spam from "networkcomputing@mydomain.com." Hmm... I wonder who sold the spammer that address... Hmm....
When filling in First name Last name fields I always use Marion Morrison. Before you Google for that name try to guess who's it is (ok, a hint, was).
Ihave to support both because no other group seems to be able to do what they do. The ACLU does in fact support the 2A but only in a limited fashion. I tend to agree that the wording in the 2A is a little too vague. It could imply that any old Joe should be allowed to carry a bazooka in his trunk or nuke on his back. However you have to read the 2A in the context of the time period it was written in. There weren't any weapons that an individual shouldn't have been able to personally own, including cannons. Granted a normal invidual wouldn't have much use for a cannon. Still the potential damage caused by one wasn't too severe. Nowadays though technology has advanced well beyond the imagination of the time the 2A was written. Should individuals be able to own SCUDs, functioning bazookas, or tanks? I don't think many reasonable people think the 2A should be taken in its literal form. However you don't dare start that discussion. Zealots on both sides will clash in the middle, one wanting no restrictions whatsoever and the other demanding that all guns be destroyed. People today are neither practical nor reasonable. We don't dare open that dialogue if we aren't prepated for the opposite extremists' views.
Lets say for example that you are a staunch Republican. You regard yourself as extremely patriotic. You believe no one should question the government because they are always right. You are also a very devote Christian. Now lets say you happen to find out that a candidate for office in your district read all of Michael Moore's books and saw all his videos. You know, all the ones that cut the Republicans and the Bush family to their pearly-white bones (or are they green like $$?). You also find out that this candidate has also read books about Islam, Atheism, Jehovah Witnesses, evolution and other things that don't agree with your religious beliefs. Get all that? Good, lets move on.
Most citizens do not, can not make a distinction between someone who reads a book about Islam and being one themself. Most people a) don't have the time, b) don't have the will, and/or c) simply don't give a damn about finding out the truth regarding something of that nature. They simply rely on someone to tell them what to think, be it their family, the government, or the media. The unfortunate truth is that too many people in our nation are sheep and don't think for themselves. Perhaps they realize they don't have the time to adequately research a matter to form a valid assessment of it. In doing so they place their trust (perhaps too liberally) with some other entity like the media.
Perhaps you or I will run for office someday. Our comments made on the Internet in email to individuals, mailing lists, or usenet posts will be recognized and made public (readily accessible to the public at least). Perhaps our comments on Slashdot will be under public scrutiny. You or I may become a Senator or even President. I hate to think of how many different ways an opponent could spin this very message. "See! He's not for the people. He thinks they're sheep!" I can see it now. I have a list of books I've read and recommend on my website. That includes Michael Moore's book "Dude Where's My Country?". I'm certainly not a Republican. I can just see how they'd take that book recommendation and run with it.
Fodder for thought. The next time you see a late-night advertisement for a Girls Gone Wild video or some other similar flick think to yourself that there's a bunch of people that will never succede in public office.
I'm a card-carrying member of both the ACLU and NRA. I don't agree with either all of the time but at least both seem to do something every so often to protect my interests.
Slashdot Mirror
Troll? I don't think so. I use it every day. What person in there right mind would use vi or emacs? Both as asininely complicated for even the simplest of tasks. Now I will say that I'm going to pay more attention to nano more. It sounds like a nice hack on pico. I believe in the KISS theory.
Yes. Fix your term type. AIX has some very well known issues with otherwise standard term types. I'm sure there are docs out there that explain this in better detail that I could but I can't think of any off the top of my head. That's essentially the problem in a nutshell though. Fortunately I no longer have to have anything to do with AIX (and never will again!). I do use bash everywhere though.
Well, not all the time. Almost though! Apple's Terminal.app is extremely unforgiving.
I've been wanting to learn cfengine for some time but haven't had the will to get through its steep learning curve. Mind sharing the non-sensitive parts of your config?
Quite possibly. Still though they usually post the more damning Linux vulnerabilities too. Wasn't there a root sploit in the kernel a while back that made the front page? I don't know why they didn't bother reporting this one. Sucks though. Good thing I let Freshmeat mail me when PHP (a project I subscribed to) gets updated. Joining the PHP mailing lists is utterly useless. They are over run with spam and either not administrated at all or are administrated by incompotent boobs. The announcement list can (and is!) posted to by anyone including spammers. Genius in action I tell you. They also ignore complaints to postmaster. *sigh*
I've been meaning to learn cfengine for many years now. The examples in your book have been helpful. If you write another book that talks more about cfengine you might consider adding examples for just about anything and everything you can think of. I've found that the best way to learn a tool like cfengine is by examples, lots and lots of examples. That's how I learned Procmail. :-) Nice book.
Seriously, that's the number one configuration tool you could possibly own. It always baffles me how many "Technology Coordinators" or other official IT guys know jack (or less!) about systems administration. These are the type of people you'd never consider giving root to on a server you administer. These are the type of people that don't understand why a server that's a month old would need to have patches and other updates done on any of the hundreds of packages that run on it. (I ran into this comment again just the other day by an "admin") Hands down the best tool available on the market today for Linux system configuration is a half-assed decent administrator. That's one area where you can't afford to be a cheapskate.
I'm running with the default settings on Slashdot. That means that no authors, topics or sections are excluded from from the homepage. I also have default Slashdot Slashboxes. That doesn't really matter though because this critical security hole should have made the main page on the default settings. I don't see a check box in the prefs for "Show me critical security vulnerabilities that everyone should know about."
Precisely. Your plants should never be a part of the composte pile. :-) Pull back a couple inches of composte and feel how hot it is. Ouch. I've seen too many composte files burst into flames in my time. They are a nice thing to have though.
I'm extremely disappointed with the Slashdot editors not putting this article on the main page. This is a critical security hole in a very common tool, even increasing common on Windows machines. Why was this not on the main page, Slashdot Editors?
I'm curious. If Uncle Sam finally wised up and created a state health plan would your opinion of this research be different?
A word to the wise, DO NOT use any old saw dust/chips as mulch. In fact almost all will cause damage to trees and buildings. "Why" ,you ask? "Wood chips are wood chips, right?" Wrong! The vast majority of wood chips attract termites, among other things. Mulching the flower beds around your home with maple or pine chips is like lathering your ass in honey and jumping into the grizzly bear pit at your local zoo. Not a good thing to do. Using the wrong wood chips around trees will also lead to termite infestation in your living tree. Sawdust can cause nitrogen depletion in the soil as well as fungal contamination in some plant. That's not a good thing either. You want to use very specific types of wood chips. You should use Cedar, Cypress, Eucalyptus wood chips as these will deter most bugs. Also note that bark chunks are not the same as wood chips. They have different bug deterring properties, not to mention visual appearance and most importantly price. A quick Google search will give you lots of information including this Lowes page. I was a landscaper in a former life.
I might be willing to part with some too. I should have done it a long time ago. I'm trying to remember what OS 8 required. IIRC correctly it require a PPC or 040, a real 040 rather than the LC, and 12MB RAM. I might have a few things that'd interest you.
I have some old all-in-one models but I think most are broken. I was going to make aquariums out of them someday.
I can think of one person that is worse. There'sa pawn shop in Arkansas City, KS called Sheldon's. That place is an old garage and 2-3 other attached building combined. When you walk in the front door your initial instinct involves fear. That shop contains every gadget, tool, and gizmo known to man. You can not see the walls through all the stuff hanging on them and from the ceiling. Then there's all the stuff stacked on the floor and leaning on the walls. There's a tiny path about 4" wide through the maze of junk to the counter. You'll see guns, tools, chains, saddles, TVs, Al Pacino, and more in there. There isn't anything he doesn't have. The best part is that guy knows where everything is. I swear that place is awesome. You can spend 12 hours a day in there everyday for a month and still find something new as soon as you walk in the door. That's the only person I know that can top me and my amount of stuff.
I hear you. When I moved out of my college apt for my first real job I owned (and I shit you not) 26 computers. 26! I had well over a dozens Macs, over half a dozen Sparcs, and a handful of PCs. Top that off with 3 laser printers and 3 or 4 ink jets. I had... let me think... 7 monitors, a scanner; 3-4 external DDS-2 drives; flatbed scanner; 4 or 5 external CD drives/changers/burners; just over half a dozen networking hubs, switches and routers; and more freaking computer cables, adapters and misc stuff than you can shake a stick at. That doesn't count any of the stuff I had in storage. I have a 4-foot Calcomp plotter I bought for $5! I still have almost all of that stuff PLUS I've added more than 2 dozen nice managed switches, just under a dozen routers (Cabletron and Cisco), 7 unmanaged switches, more hubs than I care to count, 2 full-height racks, and more cables and adapters modules and GBICs and misc networking stuff (that job was networking-related, can you tell?). I haven't even touched on the books I own. I've spent on average over the past 5 years $2500/yr on books. I spent a little under $5000 in 2002 though (excluded from the average because it skews the average too much along with the lowest expenditure). I swear you would not believe how much tech stuff I have. Don't believe I have that much crap? I have pictures on a CD of all of it (insurance purposes). Let me try to find it. People hate helping me move. I can't imagine why.... :-) I don't even want to think how much stuff I'll own when I'm 30.
I for one am mighty impressed with Richard Dreyfus's words on this censortship. Kudos to him for that.
The purchasing department should never EVER have any say whatsoever in the choice of a brand name. NEVER! CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? NEVER! Purchasing people should not have the power to override the request from the only person that is actually knowledgable on the item being bought. Do you think your purchasing dept should be able to take your order for 20 Dell 2650 servers and change that to ones made by Compaq? After all they are both server and the only real difference is cost and brand name, right? Ha! I was once involved in a little project to research and buy UPSs for all the wiring closets on campus. Myself and a few other technical people researched a few brands and went in depth on a number of models that seemed to fit our needs. We settled on APC. I had a number of phone calls with the folks with specs on our hardware to make sure that their product would fit our needs. The boss approved the expenditure and told us to make it happen. We sent the order to our dept's purchasing (our own in-house purchasing person that worked for us, not campus purchasing). The order was detailed with brand name and specific models numbers. A month later when the boxes and boxes of UPSs we were expecting hadn't shown up we asked her to call whoever she bought them from and get an update on the order with tracking details. That's when she told us she hadn't placed the order. When she called her "sources" to find the best product for us (excuse me, we already foudn the products we want!) she was told about a special on Minuteman UPSs that would get us free frieght to our door. She guessed she must have forgot to tell us. She told us to look at their products and pick from what they offered. Oh, and do it by the end of the week so she could get free freight and save the dept big $$. ARGH!!! She was part of the damned project that picked APC UPS. I about came unfucked at that point. When that business and I parted ways a year later they still hadn't bought any UPSs for the wiring closets. See what happens when you give purchasing the power to decide brand names? See what happens when you give purchasing the power to make any decision whatsoever on a purchase? Everyone has to feel like they rule their domain.
The obvious solution to this is for the privacy.net guys to reject all mail to me@privacy.net with an error that says the user wants their privacy from spammers. That way they aren't contributing to DSN spam. Trivially simple solution really.
On sites that have a legit need for my email address like Amazon, ebay, Newegg and others I buy stuff from I use Sendmail's plus notation (also known as the user+detail format) OR an alias on one of my personal domains. I use aliases quite a bit. That way I can remove the alias and shut off the potential (or actual) flow of spam to that address. It's easier to remove an alias than it is to have Procmail filter out mail to a given plus notation address. It always amazes me who gets my alias or plus notation email address over time. For example I may notice that I'm getting penis enlargment or mortgage spam from "networkcomputing@mydomain.com." Hmm... I wonder who sold the spammer that address... Hmm....
When filling in First name Last name fields I always use Marion Morrison. Before you Google for that name try to guess who's it is (ok, a hint, was).
I also understand that it's very common to use pres@whitehouse.gov, or so I hear. Another favorite is darl@sco.com
Ihave to support both because no other group seems to be able to do what they do. The ACLU does in fact support the 2A but only in a limited fashion. I tend to agree that the wording in the 2A is a little too vague. It could imply that any old Joe should be allowed to carry a bazooka in his trunk or nuke on his back. However you have to read the 2A in the context of the time period it was written in. There weren't any weapons that an individual shouldn't have been able to personally own, including cannons. Granted a normal invidual wouldn't have much use for a cannon. Still the potential damage caused by one wasn't too severe. Nowadays though technology has advanced well beyond the imagination of the time the 2A was written. Should individuals be able to own SCUDs, functioning bazookas, or tanks? I don't think many reasonable people think the 2A should be taken in its literal form. However you don't dare start that discussion. Zealots on both sides will clash in the middle, one wanting no restrictions whatsoever and the other demanding that all guns be destroyed. People today are neither practical nor reasonable. We don't dare open that dialogue if we aren't prepated for the opposite extremists' views.
Nice citations. Believe it or not but I hadn't heard about a few of those. Thanks for the links!
Most citizens do not, can not make a distinction between someone who reads a book about Islam and being one themself. Most people a) don't have the time, b) don't have the will, and/or c) simply don't give a damn about finding out the truth regarding something of that nature. They simply rely on someone to tell them what to think, be it their family, the government, or the media. The unfortunate truth is that too many people in our nation are sheep and don't think for themselves. Perhaps they realize they don't have the time to adequately research a matter to form a valid assessment of it. In doing so they place their trust (perhaps too liberally) with some other entity like the media.
Perhaps you or I will run for office someday. Our comments made on the Internet in email to individuals, mailing lists, or usenet posts will be recognized and made public (readily accessible to the public at least). Perhaps our comments on Slashdot will be under public scrutiny. You or I may become a Senator or even President. I hate to think of how many different ways an opponent could spin this very message. "See! He's not for the people. He thinks they're sheep!" I can see it now. I have a list of books I've read and recommend on my website. That includes Michael Moore's book "Dude Where's My Country?". I'm certainly not a Republican. I can just see how they'd take that book recommendation and run with it.
Fodder for thought. The next time you see a late-night advertisement for a Girls Gone Wild video or some other similar flick think to yourself that there's a bunch of people that will never succede in public office.
Good summation. Right on target. A quote regarding learning from history now comes to mind.
I'm a card-carrying member of both the ACLU and NRA. I don't agree with either all of the time but at least both seem to do something every so often to protect my interests.