In addition to the unannounced starting time and the bandwidth issues they're having they also don't seem to have their servers in order. I posted earlier about being finally able to get to the download page only to find a bunch of v2.0.0.14 builds and rc3.
After a lot of persistence, I was able to get to v3 for Linux but when I go to the download page now to get the Windows version, I get back to v2.
This is turning into a big fiasco. I have no more patience and am giving up.
I managed to finally get to their page but it only lists a bunch of localized builds of Firefox 2.0.0.14 and a couple of builds of 3.0rc3 that are listed as beta.
This is at
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-rc.html
which is where I automatically get redirected when I go to mozilla.com.
So where are we supposed to get FF3 from?
Re:I run a high volume mailserver, this is a bad i
on
Fight Spam With Nolisting
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I run a fairly low-key server, which I only use for my family, so I am not sure how relevant my data is.
I remember at one point last year checking on the usage my backup MX gets and was surprised to see a lot of mail coming through it. Surprised because my primary server is (almost) always available. Upon a closer inspection I was astounded by what I found: all the email that came through the backup MX was spam for the past year was spam. No exceptions!
Certainly, mine is an extreme case, but I think the trend is very clear.
I was appalled to read in the first article that the author thinks scientists still don't know whether the theory of evolution is right. Luckily, the second article sounded as the kind of coverage this idiocy deserves to get.
For those lazy to check what this is about, both mozilla and firefox have problems saving dynamic content. They end up requesting the file from the server again, which in many cases means posting a transaction twice.
This may also lead to monetary damage to you. The most common example is when you make a purchase over the web and try to save the receipt. If the shopping site has a poorly implemented system, you end up making the purchase twice when you save the receipt.
This bug has been marked critical and has been around for 3 years now. I've been bitten by it quite a few times and so have many others judging by the comments. And I can assure you that it is still there.
One way a hash collision could be useful, for instance, would be against some signature schemes where the secret key is revealed if you ever sign an identical message more than once.
Hmm, it looks like this is worse than the initial impression I got from reading the FAQ. I felt that the FAQ was a fairly good explanation of the consequences of the recent development, but I obviously don't know enough about cryptography to make a sound judgement on that.
Since you did such a good job of pointing out this problem, could you give us more info on which signature schemes have this "property" (of revealing info of the secret key when used to sign the same message twice) and what signature schemes are ones that appear safer to use these days?
Frankly, I am not much worried about that, because I am sure the distros will take care of packaging it nicely to avoid these kinds of problems.
What worries me though is that very old and critical bugs like Bug 115174 are not considered important enough as to be release blockers. For the lazy to look this up, this bug manifests in realoading a dynamically generated page in certain cases, which may result in double-charging your credit card when you have just made a purchase and simply want to save your receipt. This bug is present in both Mozilla and Firefox and has been an issue since 2002!
I have been using Mozilla and Firefox exclusively for the past couple of years and have to say that this is a PITA. I got used to it and know which sites I regularly visit are problematic and how to get around it (save as text or print to file). But a lot of users might get hit by this bug if Firefox becomes more widespread and they would rightfully be pissed.
Another problem I have is that since about version 1.3 (or earlier?), Mozilla, and later Firefox, have been unstable and crashing a lot (e.g. once or twice a week under heavy load). I don't know is this is a Linux-only issue (I only use Red Hat 9 and Fedora core 2), but they seem to have a memory leak and that's not good if it creeps into the 1.0 release. I would gladly submit a bug report for this if I only knew how to reproduce it...
Seriously, though, I think that Fedora 3 stands a chance of being reasonably good for the "average Linux user." By that, I mostly mean going back to the pre-Fedora levels of troubleshooting while improving on the user-friendliness.
I just had a painful weekend trying to upgrade my machines at home. I managed to install FC2 on my desktop without a glitch but the first thing I did (and anyone else would do) after booting up --- trying to update the system --- failed because of two bugs (one of which is in rpm and is supposedly fixed but a new package is not released yet).
My server refused to take any of the newer stuff from Red Hat. It is an VIA mini-ITX box running RH9. I was hoping to update to FC2 but due to a bug in the 2.6.6 and earlier kernels which affects the C3 CPU, the installer can not even start. (Heh! I just found out that there is decent workaround posted for this one. Who says that posting to Slashdot does not pay out?)
I also tried to install RHEL Academic Edition (which looked like closely derived from RH9) only to discover that it does not support this particular machine (too bad --- I was going to gladly pay the $50 for updates).
From the news in the past couple of months, it looks like most of the latest offerings (not only by Redhat) have had too many issues to be considered decent.
It looks like the reason for that is that most problems are bugs in the kernel (firewire, VIA C3 support) or are related to the kernel (Windows dual-boot issue).
With the exception of firewire support, however (which I don't know if it has been fixed in 2.6.7), the issues that concern me have been resolved. Also the publicity around some of the issues gives me hope that the Fedora folks will be a little more careful with the next release. This makes me think that Fedora 3 may finally live up to the expectations.
These are great. My home server is running on a
fanless EPIA 5000 and I have never been happier about my choice. The whole machine cost me $300
(case, mobo, 256MB RAM, 120GB, extra NIC) over a
year ago and has been sitting quietly under the table in my living room ever since.
It is extremely quiet (only audible humming comes from two small fans on the case) which is important to me. It is also very low on energy consumption. I got an APC Back-UPS ES-350 (just a couple of days before the big black-out here, in North-East USA --- could not have been wiser:) The UPS is rated at 8 minutes under 100W load and 2 minutes under 200W but it lasts over 40 minutes powering my server and my DSL modem.
Another thing I am really happy about is the fact that VIA seems to be doing a good job supporting Linux. Personally, I have never had trouble running Red Hat on mine (although, I hear FC2 had issues with it that were only recently fixed --- but that was FC2's problem).
Overall, I feel that this has been a really great product and would wholeheartedly recommend it. I am also very happy to see that VIA has been constantly improving them. I am looking forward to seeing the upcoming nano-ITX boards.
Like many others, I am running RH9 and am too faced with the question of whether to update to Fedora Core (most likely 2, when it comes out) or ditch Red Hat entirely and go to some other distro.
One thing I don't quite understand and worries me is that a lot of people keep talking about installing stuff with apt-get or yum, instead of up2date. Even the Fedora Legacy Project home page talks only about these.
I don't quite understand the urge to move to apt-get and yum --- perhaps they are better.
But what really worries me is the package formats.
I am fairly anal about what I put on my machine and would be extremely pissed if I install, say,
FC2, use a random combination of apt-get, yum and what not to install stuff, and then 2 months later my RPM database gets incomplete or inconsistent because of that.
So my question to those in the know: Can you
force these package managers to only use RPMs and is there any guarantee at all that using that many package managers won't eventually messup your package database. Can anyone with experience shed some light here?
It seems that one of the most critical moments for
the success of a Mars probe is the time between its entering the atmosphere and the establishment
of first communication contact. It also seems
that most of the probe designs these days have a
weakness in that during this time there is a
total communication blackout.
IANARS (rocket scientist) but speaking from pure
computer scientist's perspective (or any kind of
scientist's perspective, as a matter of fact),
it is essential to have as much feedback as
possible exactly at critical times like that when
things break. It may not prevent the failure of
the system the first time, but will give us the
necessary info to tell what went wrong and design
around it the next time.
So, wouldn't it be wise to design a descent phase
with no communication blackout?
The only reason I can fathom why this is not done
yet, is that it is really hard and/or expensive.
Transmitting info to Earth may be difficult,
because it must drain too much power and (in my
understanding) the initial phase of the descent
actually happens on the back side of Mars (as
viewed from Earth).
However, now that we have an orbitting satellite
around Mars, would it be so hard to time the
probe's landing so that its transmissions of its
status are picked up by the Mars Odissey which can
then safely retransmit them back to Earth at
its leisure? Does any one know if this is
feasible at all?
Actually, this is how the old range scanners used to work. The ones these days either measure the time of flight of the laser beam or its phase shift (more accurate).
Before installation, batteries and inverter, that's $23,030 to save $100 per month.
Hey, this is not so bad! Given that the life time of these is 20yrs, your total savings over that period would be in the range of $24,000 so theoretically you might end up saving a buck or a thousand. That's assuming no major expenses in maintaining the solar installation and no major price drops of conventional electricity.
Based on financial savings only, going solar is hardly worth the hassle. But the point is that it is not so bad either.
In any case, I agree that he would be better off just getting more efficient laptops.
It's a little late in this thread and I don't think many people will see this but I am posting it anyway since I found it quite amusing:
telnet sadkfjsakasfhasd.com 25 Trying 64.94.110.11... Connected to sadkfjsakasfhasd.com. Escape character is '^]'. 220 snubby2-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 ready BLA 250 OK BLA 250 OK BLA 550 User domain does not exist. BLA 250 OK BLA 221 snubby2-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 closing transmission channelConnection closed by foreign host.
It also made the front page of America's finest news source with a nice photograph, though it seems that they have taken it off their web site or at least google was unable to find it. But, don't panic! Those of you who are really interested can still order a back issue. What you need is volume 39, issue 14, dated April 16-22, 2003 (weird: the hardcopy says April 17-23! Do I sense a conspiracy here?).
Mozilla 1.3 on Red Hat 9 here. All of the top 3 ads work when I click on them, even with window popups, moving and resizing disabled. The browser crashes after I close the popup (I guess it is the flash plugin). They stopped working only after I completely disabled JavaScript.
Is is strange because there is nothing tricky about the JavaScript call to open up the new window (which is called by an onclick):
function open_fs(ad) { switch (ad) { case "msn": case "slimfast": case "snuggle": window.open("../formats/fullscreen/" + ad + ".asp","full_screen","width=" + get_width() + ",height=" + get_height() + ",left=0,top=0,screenx=0,screeny=0"); break;
default: break; } }
Perhaps you have something in your user preferences config file that blocks the popups?
Well, the point here is that what we call "human intuition" could be viewed as a sophisticated computer that performs the calculations. The input is what your sensors give you; the output is the way you react. How you arrive at these reactions is irrelevant -- if you have a machine that would do the same as you do under every circumstance (combination of sensory inputs), then for all practical purpose, this machine will be functionally equivalent to you.
I assure you that computers haven't studied mathematics either.
Sounds like a coll idea but does anyone know where you can buy a new video card to upgrade with?
I browsed through Dell's notebook and support web pages but was unable to tell if they sell separate laptop components beyond the standard RAM and HDD options...
Slashdot Mirror
I feel the same way.
In addition to the unannounced starting time and the bandwidth issues they're having they also don't seem to have their servers in order. I posted earlier about being finally able to get to the download page only to find a bunch of v2.0.0.14 builds and rc3.
After a lot of persistence, I was able to get to v3 for Linux but when I go to the download page now to get the Windows version, I get back to v2.
This is turning into a big fiasco. I have no more patience and am giving up.
I managed to finally get to their page but it only lists a bunch of localized builds of Firefox 2.0.0.14 and a couple of builds of 3.0rc3 that are listed as beta. This is at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-rc.html which is where I automatically get redirected when I go to mozilla.com.
So where are we supposed to get FF3 from?
I run a fairly low-key server, which I only use for my family, so I am not sure how relevant my data is.
I remember at one point last year checking on the usage my backup MX gets and was surprised to see a lot of mail coming through it. Surprised because my primary server is (almost) always available. Upon a closer inspection I was astounded by what I found: all the email that came through the backup MX was spam for the past year was spam. No exceptions!
Certainly, mine is an extreme case, but I think the trend is very clear.
I was appalled to read in the first article that the author thinks scientists still don't know whether the theory of evolution is right. Luckily, the second article sounded as the kind of coverage this idiocy deserves to get.
How did you make the calendar week start on Monday? I've been trying to find out how to do this for quite a while now without success...
For those lazy to check what this is about, both mozilla and firefox have problems saving dynamic content. They end up requesting the file from the server again, which in many cases means posting a transaction twice.
This may also lead to monetary damage to you. The most common example is when you make a purchase over the web and try to save the receipt. If the shopping site has a poorly implemented system, you end up making the purchase twice when you save the receipt.
This bug has been marked critical and has been around for 3 years now. I've been bitten by it quite a few times and so have many others judging by the comments. And I can assure you that it is still there.
Hmm, it looks like this is worse than the initial impression I got from reading the FAQ. I felt that the FAQ was a fairly good explanation of the consequences of the recent development, but I obviously don't know enough about cryptography to make a sound judgement on that.
Since you did such a good job of pointing out this problem, could you give us more info on which signature schemes have this "property" (of revealing info of the secret key when used to sign the same message twice) and what signature schemes are ones that appear safer to use these days?
What worries me though is that very old and critical bugs like Bug 115174 are not considered important enough as to be release blockers. For the lazy to look this up, this bug manifests in realoading a dynamically generated page in certain cases, which may result in double-charging your credit card when you have just made a purchase and simply want to save your receipt. This bug is present in both Mozilla and Firefox and has been an issue since 2002!
I have been using Mozilla and Firefox exclusively for the past couple of years and have to say that this is a PITA. I got used to it and know which sites I regularly visit are problematic and how to get around it (save as text or print to file). But a lot of users might get hit by this bug if Firefox becomes more widespread and they would rightfully be pissed.
Another problem I have is that since about version 1.3 (or earlier?), Mozilla, and later Firefox, have been unstable and crashing a lot (e.g. once or twice a week under heavy load). I don't know is this is a Linux-only issue (I only use Red Hat 9 and Fedora core 2), but they seem to have a memory leak and that's not good if it creeps into the 1.0 release. I would gladly submit a bug report for this if I only knew how to reproduce it...
Seriously, though, I think that Fedora 3 stands a chance of being reasonably good for the "average Linux user." By that, I mostly mean going back to the pre-Fedora levels of troubleshooting while improving on the user-friendliness.
I just had a painful weekend trying to upgrade my machines at home. I managed to install FC2 on my desktop without a glitch but the first thing I did (and anyone else would do) after booting up --- trying to update the system --- failed because of two bugs (one of which is in rpm and is supposedly fixed but a new package is not released yet).
My server refused to take any of the newer stuff from Red Hat. It is an VIA mini-ITX box running RH9. I was hoping to update to FC2 but due to a bug in the 2.6.6 and earlier kernels which affects the C3 CPU, the installer can not even start. (Heh! I just found out that there is decent workaround posted for this one. Who says that posting to Slashdot does not pay out?)
I also tried to install RHEL Academic Edition (which looked like closely derived from RH9) only to discover that it does not support this particular machine (too bad --- I was going to gladly pay the $50 for updates).
From the news in the past couple of months, it looks like most of the latest offerings (not only by Redhat) have had too many issues to be considered decent. It looks like the reason for that is that most problems are bugs in the kernel (firewire, VIA C3 support) or are related to the kernel (Windows dual-boot issue).
With the exception of firewire support, however (which I don't know if it has been fixed in 2.6.7), the issues that concern me have been resolved. Also the publicity around some of the issues gives me hope that the Fedora folks will be a little more careful with the next release. This makes me think that Fedora 3 may finally live up to the expectations.
It is extremely quiet (only audible humming comes from two small fans on the case) which is important to me. It is also very low on energy consumption. I got an APC Back-UPS ES-350 (just a couple of days before the big black-out here, in North-East USA --- could not have been wiser :) The UPS is rated at 8 minutes under 100W load and 2 minutes under 200W but it lasts over 40 minutes powering my server and my DSL modem.
Another thing I am really happy about is the fact that VIA seems to be doing a good job supporting Linux. Personally, I have never had trouble running Red Hat on mine (although, I hear FC2 had issues with it that were only recently fixed --- but that was FC2's problem).
Overall, I feel that this has been a really great product and would wholeheartedly recommend it. I am also very happy to see that VIA has been constantly improving them. I am looking forward to seeing the upcoming nano-ITX boards.
One thing I don't quite understand and worries me is that a lot of people keep talking about installing stuff with apt-get or yum, instead of up2date. Even the Fedora Legacy Project home page talks only about these.
I don't quite understand the urge to move to apt-get and yum --- perhaps they are better. But what really worries me is the package formats. I am fairly anal about what I put on my machine and would be extremely pissed if I install, say, FC2, use a random combination of apt-get, yum and what not to install stuff, and then 2 months later my RPM database gets incomplete or inconsistent because of that.
So my question to those in the know: Can you force these package managers to only use RPMs and is there any guarantee at all that using that many package managers won't eventually messup your package database. Can anyone with experience shed some light here?
No, they were practicing for Ocean's 12.
IANARS (rocket scientist) but speaking from pure computer scientist's perspective (or any kind of scientist's perspective, as a matter of fact), it is essential to have as much feedback as possible exactly at critical times like that when things break. It may not prevent the failure of the system the first time, but will give us the necessary info to tell what went wrong and design around it the next time.
So, wouldn't it be wise to design a descent phase with no communication blackout?
The only reason I can fathom why this is not done yet, is that it is really hard and/or expensive. Transmitting info to Earth may be difficult, because it must drain too much power and (in my understanding) the initial phase of the descent actually happens on the back side of Mars (as viewed from Earth).
However, now that we have an orbitting satellite around Mars, would it be so hard to time the probe's landing so that its transmissions of its status are picked up by the Mars Odissey which can then safely retransmit them back to Earth at its leisure? Does any one know if this is feasible at all?
Actually, this is how the old range scanners used to work. The ones these days either measure the time of flight of the laser beam or its phase shift (more accurate).
Check those out. They are kind of slow (~10min per scan), but very accurate (+/- 3mm error; range is up to 100m).
The AVENUE Project at Columbia University had an earlier implementation for modeling urban sites.
Also check out The MIT City Scanning Project.
Based on financial savings only, going solar is hardly worth the hassle. But the point is that it is not so bad either.
In any case, I agree that he would be better off just getting more efficient laptops.
It also made the front page of America's finest news source with a nice photograph, though it seems that they have taken it off their web site or at least google was unable to find it. But, don't panic! Those of you who are really interested can still order a back issue. What you need is volume 39, issue 14, dated April 16-22, 2003 (weird: the hardcopy says April 17-23! Do I sense a conspiracy here?).
Mozilla 1.3 on Red Hat 9 here. All of the top 3 ads work when I click on them, even with window popups, moving and resizing disabled. The browser crashes after I close the popup (I guess it is the flash plugin). They stopped working only after I completely disabled JavaScript.
Is is strange because there is nothing tricky about the JavaScript call to open up the new window (which is called by an onclick):
Perhaps you have something in your user preferences config file that blocks the popups?
I assure you that computers haven't studied mathematics either.
Both funny and educational. Too bad I don't teach logic...
It seems that Red Hat have indeed gone through a great deal of effort to conceal the differences between KDE and GNOME.
I am curious in particular about Red Hat's distro. I am sure that 8.0 will be LSB compliant but does anyone know about 7.3?
I browsed through Dell's notebook and support web pages but was unable to tell if they sell separate laptop components beyond the standard RAM and HDD options...