And when you change your DNS, how soon would the search engines be updated? There's a whole lot of knobs and dials in DNS to allow you to configure how long results are cached. For instance, if you know you're planning to renumber, you turn the TTLs down in advance, so that your entries expire more quickly. You do this incrementally, so that when it comes time to switch, you're hopefully down to around a 5 minute mark. That means you've got a very short window of overlap.
Other problems with your idea:
- The net != the web. How would search engines know about email systems, MX records, LDAP servers, RADIUS servers, or the host of other systems that are critical to the net. (Hell, email's far more important (imho) than the web).
- If the DNS is down, how the heck do you get to the search engine? Do you store google's address in your/etc/hosts file??
There's a bunch of ways to help make DNS more robust; for example use a forwarder run by your ISP. You'll get faster responses, and save on traffic and load on the remote NSs. Or start bitching at anyone you know that runs both their NSs on the same damn piece of ethernet. Sheesh! How bloody often is this seen? How basic and stupid an error is this?
I'm not sure that having the roots run by "the ad-hoc volunteer network of the 1980s" is the problem you think it is. Diversity is strength.
Far far more dangerous would be if the roots were all run by the same organisation, using a common set of procedures and processes. Let's face it - if a root server's going to get compromised, it's much more likely that it's going to be a human failure that causes it rather than a software failure. Don't believe me? Go read the back issues of RISKS Digest - count how many of the failures are human, rather than computer.
As far as "drinking straws" for net connections - I don't think so. The roots are all on pretty chunky connections.
"DNS does not provide authentication" - well, no. But that's what DNSSEC is for.
"ICANN should be... telling the IETF the characteristics of the security protocol it really needs" - oh please. What on _earth_ makes you think ICANN has the faintest idea about protocols and security?
Given the fights between ICANN and the ccTLDs about funding, isn't there a conflict of interest in ICANN being able to review the appointment of ccTLD managers?
Yet more crap about Elz and.org.au. kre's had a fairly clearly defined policy about.org.au for a long time now, but it's still a common sight to see someone whining because "I need to get eleetdudes.org.au for me and my mates and kre won't let me. Waaah".
Or the folks who don't follow the instructions and expect someone to clean up after them.
No doubt we'll now see org.au turn into the same sewer as.org,.net and the like.
Plugins: I ended up turning off (removing) the flash plugin, because the only thing I saw it used for was bloody banner ads.
The final straw was a banner ad that played music. Beyond anything I could stand.
Now if only there was the round tuits to look into blocking IFRAMEs as well as IMG, I could be banner-ad-free. (And yes, that kills off an entire poorly thought-out business model. Boo hoo.)
What the hell is going on with Mozilla? I made fun of them more than a year ago because three years had passed and the damn thing was still not out the door.
Hey, if they're only at 4 years, they've still got
6 years to go. Maybe by then the textarea won't suck:)
(having said that, I've been using mozilla for
over a year now.)
"his son has taken over the voice pretty well" - well, if you're talking about the Muppet voices, this isn't correct. Steve Whitmire now does Kermit's voice, Jerry Nelson is doing Statler, and I don't think Rolf's had an outing since then...
Personally, I really dislike Whitmire's version of Kermit's voice - it's lacking a certain singsong sortof charm to it.
At least for the Compaq and (ex-)Digital servers, the hardware for serial port management is only in the ridiculously expensive servers. In the case of the Digital servers, they also required a windows-only client program to talk to the serial port.
The Compaq server with the card that we looked at was really not a well-designed piece of hardware. The serial card was rather flaky, and the system in general was not worth the extraordinary amount of money that they demanded for it.
The realweasel product looks awesome. Can't wait to get my hands on a few.
A couple of other things that I haven't seen mentioned in the discussions of Zope:
Undo. The object database has a wonderful wonderful (well, it's saved me from my own mistakes a couple of times, so I think it's wonderful) undo system.
The access control system. It's amazingly featureful. Users can be given rights (you can even give them the rights to re-delegate some of their rights to other users that they create).
The core of the system. The guys who've built this have done some amazing work using acquisition to make extending Zope with new objects a total breeze.
As far as the question about moving back issues into zope - you can use either the contributed fsimport module, or the optional built-in ftp server.
Slashdot Mirror
And when you change your DNS, how soon would the search engines be updated? There's a whole lot of knobs and dials in DNS to allow you to configure how long results are cached. For instance, if you know you're planning to renumber, you turn the TTLs down in advance, so that your entries expire more quickly. You do this incrementally, so that when it comes time to switch, you're hopefully down to around a 5 minute mark. That means you've got a very short window of overlap.
/etc/hosts file??
Other problems with your idea:
- The net != the web. How would search engines know about email systems, MX records, LDAP servers, RADIUS servers, or the host of other systems that are critical to the net. (Hell, email's far more important (imho) than the web).
- If the DNS is down, how the heck do you get to the search engine? Do you store google's address in your
There's a bunch of ways to help make DNS more robust; for example use a forwarder run by your ISP. You'll get faster responses, and save on traffic and load on the remote NSs. Or start bitching at anyone you know that runs both their NSs on the same damn piece of ethernet. Sheesh! How bloody often is this seen? How basic and stupid an error is this?
I'm not sure that having the roots run by "the ad-hoc volunteer network of the 1980s" is the problem you think it is. Diversity is strength.
Far far more dangerous would be if the roots were all run by the same organisation, using a common set of procedures and processes. Let's face it - if a root server's going to get compromised, it's much more likely that it's going to be a human failure that causes it rather than a software failure. Don't believe me? Go read the back issues of RISKS Digest - count how many of the failures are human, rather than computer.
As far as "drinking straws" for net connections - I don't think so. The roots are all on pretty chunky connections.
"DNS does not provide authentication" - well, no. But that's what DNSSEC is for.
"ICANN should be... telling the IETF the characteristics of the security protocol it really needs" - oh please. What on _earth_ makes you think ICANN has the faintest idea about protocols and security?
Given the fights between ICANN and the ccTLDs about funding, isn't there a conflict of interest in ICANN being able to review the appointment of ccTLD managers?
*sigh*
.org.au. kre's had a fairly clearly defined policy about .org.au for a long time now, but it's still a common sight to see someone whining because "I need to get eleetdudes.org.au for me and my mates and kre won't let me. Waaah".
.org, .net and the like.
Yet more crap about Elz and
Or the folks who don't follow the instructions and expect someone to clean up after them.
No doubt we'll now see org.au turn into the same sewer as
w.r.t. spellchecker, I'm pretty sure you used to be able to just slot the NS6 xpi component into Mozilla without too much drama.
Plugins: I ended up turning off (removing) the flash plugin, because the only thing I saw it used for was bloody banner ads.
The final straw was a banner ad that played music. Beyond anything I could stand.
Now if only there was the round tuits to look into blocking IFRAMEs as well as IMG, I could be banner-ad-free. (And yes, that kills off an entire poorly thought-out business model. Boo hoo.)
Hey, if they're only at 4 years, they've still got 6 years to go. Maybe by then the textarea won't suck :)
(having said that, I've been using mozilla for over a year now.)
"his son has taken over the voice pretty well" - well, if you're talking about the Muppet voices, this isn't correct. Steve Whitmire now does Kermit's voice, Jerry Nelson is doing Statler, and I don't think Rolf's had an outing since then...
Personally, I really dislike Whitmire's version of Kermit's voice - it's lacking a certain singsong sortof charm to it.
Don't forget Zope from your list of application servers.
It has a couple of advantages over the others listed:
At least for the Compaq and (ex-)Digital servers, the hardware for serial port management is only in the ridiculously expensive servers. In the case of the Digital servers, they also required a windows-only client program to talk to the serial port.
The Compaq server with the card that we looked at was really not a well-designed piece of hardware. The serial card was rather flaky, and the system in general was not worth the extraordinary amount of money that they demanded for it.
The realweasel product looks awesome. Can't wait to get my hands on a few.
A couple of other things that I haven't seen
mentioned in the discussions of Zope:
Undo. The object database has a wonderful
wonderful (well, it's saved me from my own
mistakes a couple of times, so I think it's
wonderful) undo system.
The access control system. It's amazingly
featureful. Users can be given rights (you can
even give them the rights to re-delegate some
of their rights to other users that they create).
The core of the system. The guys who've built
this have done some amazing work using acquisition
to make extending Zope with new objects a total
breeze.
As far as the question about moving back issues
into zope - you can use either the contributed
fsimport module, or the optional built-in ftp
server.
Anthony