One time, I was on a mailing list. The mailing list was using a Windows Listserv clone. Most people on the mailing list simply used a web interface to get on the mailing list; I, however, talked directly to the mailing list server to join the list.
Soon after getting on the list, someone on the list asked how many people were on the list. I told them.
At this point, all hell broke loose. They thought I broke in to the system. Fortunatly, the list administrator went to my mother's church; I don't want to think about what could have happened if she did not.
* * *
When the "I Love You" worm was spreading like wildfire, I was working for a dot-com security company called Pilot Networks (which is no more). Someone came up to me and asked me permission to forward me an email. I sais "Sure, why not?"
"Well, it's a dangerous virus"
"You know I use Linux and don't have to worry about such things"
"I know; it's just that everyone in the office is really afraid of this thing and do not even want to have it on their computer"
It seemed really strange to me that a computer security company did not have one person in their office willing to have a simple Visual Basic script on their computer.
Considering that the ibook you mentioned weights almost as much as the Thinkpad I am typing this on (cite), this is not a fair comparison. The rule of thumb is this: if you want ultimate portability on a system which can run Linux, you have to pay through the nose for it. Until now, that is.
When I look for a laptop, I choose a laptop based on three factors:
Cost (check)
Size and weight (check)
Full-size keyboard (I want one of these things in front of me to make sure the keyboard is almost as good the one on the Thinkpad I am writing this on)
Battery life (check)
Linux compatibility (check)
Note that performance is not listed here; I am typing this on a PIII 450 and am more than happy with its performance. I want a laptop which does not need charging and does not need a forklift to carry around. If I wanted performance or the latest gee-whiz 3d chipset, I would get a desktop.
If the economy was better and I was working again instead of being a student, this is something I would very seriously consider buying. As it stands, this is my dream laptop.
We recently had a thread about this in comp.os.linux.misc. Basically, at this point, it is just about impossible to buy a notebook without the "Windows tax". Also, Linux has a harder time with some of the ultra-small notebooks; they use weird proprietary drivers which Linux does not support a lot of the time.
Information wants to be free! Let Castle Technology do what they want to with the kernel code. The GPL, after all, is juat another form of copyright. Copyrights only exist to create artifical monopolys that do not exist!
Obviously, the above argument is absurd, but points out that Slashdot has a double standard. On one hand, it is ok when a 14-year-old violates the copyright of a RIAA or MPAA-owned company. On the other hand, it is not OK when a company releases GPL under terms not compatible with the GPL.
So, what is it going to be? Do we respect both the RIAA's copyright and the copyright which GPL programs have, or do we respect neither?
If you want the GPL to be respected, respect other people's copyrights.
Doesn't Plan 9 have a Usenet newsreader? I am sure that one of the rn derivitives would work fine for Dennis; since he probably used one of those back in the day. In the meantime, the headers to his postings make the Linux community red in the face, e.g:
From: "Dennis Ritchie" ...
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2919.6600 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600
Oh, the heresy of it all! Actually, over in comp.unix.admin, a number of old-school Unix people have similiar headers in their messages; Dennis once said (1995 or 1996 issue of Byte magazine) that "Unix will never be a desktop operating system"; all of the MacOS X users have proven him wrong.
Why do I get the feeling this product will end up in the doghouse section of Bruce's next Crypto Gram newslatter?
The people who designed this hard disk are confused about how DES works. First of all, DES has a 56-bit, not a 64-bit key. Second of all, the days of being forced to use 40-bit encryption are, thankfully, over.
If one is going to all of the effort to encrypt a hard disk, why will they encrypt it using only Single DES? It is possible to build a single-DES cracker for under $10,000 US; the 56-bit key which single DES has to offer is just not long enough.
They would have been much better off encrypting this unit with AES, which uses Rijndael to encrypt files. Rijndael has a key size between 128 and 256 bits long, which can not be brute forced with current technology. Rijndael is also more efficient than DES when implemented in software.
Also, security is only as strong as its weakest link. If the hard disk is always readable when the key card is attached, then great care must be taken to detatch and hide the key card. Far better security can be obtained by a system which asks for a passphrase. Ideally, have a system which needs both the key card and the passphrase.
While I think this is a good idea, I think one is better off with the kernel patches which allow one to encryptfilesystems in Linux.
(For windows and Mac users, sorry, I use neither so can not help you)
I think we need to make it a requirement for Americans to learn at least one foreign language.
Any one will do. In California, where I live, the most common foreign language is Spanish, so I have been working very hard on learning this language.
It is very easy to make some nasty errors in Spanish. For example, a common dialog (in both English and Spanish) can go like this:
"How are you at programming"
"I am good."
Now, if someone says "I am good" in Spanish wrong, it sounds like "I am good at having sex". Another error, which can be nasty, is that the following dialog in Puerto Rican Spanish:
"Where is the teacher?"
"She just left. You may catch her if you hurry."
Sounds like this in Mexican Spanish:
"Where is the teacher?"
"She just left. You may fuck her if you hurry."
Just the other night, I was talking to a bilingual girl born in the US, and she made this particular error (in Spanish):
"So, are you going to cum home soon?"
these errors even get past proofreading. The label on the Memorex CD-R blanks says this in Spanish:
"Guarentee of goods and services for one anus"
The point being, that learning a foreign language is, to put it mildly, very very difficult, and you can and will make extremely humourous errors learning it. Native speakers will find you most amusing at times. You will find yourself talking and suddenly having to stop because you do not have a word for the concept you wish to express.
Learning a foreign language is, all in all, great fun, especially when you find people who will tolerate your errors in their language, and who can intuitively speak the languag ein a form you can understand. Great way to meet girls too, because females are more likely to enjoy talking to people struggling with a language.
I have a three year old 600X. The battery lasts maybe five minutes; both of my 600X battery went very quickly from lasting an hour or so to lasting five minutes.
This is the output of APM on this 600X:
vela 16:47:10 $ apm
AC off-line, battery status high: 94% (0:03)
How often is your laptop plugged in to the mains, and how often do you use it "in the field"?
Another poster suggested running a 600X battery all the way down once every two weeks; I didn't get these problems until my system was continously plugged in for long periods of time. Before, I would use it in places without a convenient plug, or have it unplugged when it was sleeping. Once I kept in plugged in all of the time, even when suspended (sleeping), the batteries (both of them) quickly went poof.
I have a 600X which had two batteries. They both died (only hold a charge for 5 minutes) around the same time; 3-4 months ago. I had the laptop (secondhand model) for over a year and used it plugged in most of the time. As recently as six months ago, the batteries would each hold their charge for an hour; they both died around the same time.
I thought it was kind of strange that both batteries died around the same time. Since I am almost never in a place where I have to use the laptop on the road, I don't need to get a new $150 battery for the system. The battery lasts long enough that I can move the laptop from one room to another. The main annoyance is that the "battery is low" light is flashing all of the time, even when the system is plugged in.
ThinkPad 600X (the predessor to the T series), running RedHat Linux 7.2. Has NeoMagic chipset which causes the system to crash hard when running certain X applications.
I've reverse engineered decompression algorithms far more difficult than SVQ3's decoder.
Talk is cheap. Show us the code.
The devil is in the details. In other words, it is easy to say something is easy until you have done it.
If you have reversed-engineered a significant audio or video codec, I will retract my position and be suitably impressed.
And, yes, I do see you code at http://www.kyz.uklinux.net/packers.php3, but there isn't an audio nor video codec to be seen. It all looks like LZW variants; lossy compression (DCTs, wavelets, and what not) is a completely different kettle of fish.
The patent patents a static link to dynamic content. The filing date is May 17, 1996. Finding Usenet postings with links to given Altavista queries which predate this is trivial, for example:
Britney doesn't hit that note? Touch it up with several thousand dollars worth of software
I have a Mexican pop album, which will remain nameless (except to say said album became platinum in Mexico), which has some very noticable processing of this nature. I am extremely familiar with the piece of gear they used and its sound (which is unmistakable on this album); it costs considerably less than $1000. I also have a another similiar device which costs twice as much, but is noticably more transparent.
Fixing singers that can't hit notes is actually one of the cheaper parts of a recording. It is the microphones and the room which cost the most when making a good recording.
OK, I used to have a crush on Madonna, so I know that "Holiday" was from her first 1983 album, along with "Breaking up". "Like A Virgin" was the title and most popular song from her second 1984 album, which also had "Material Girl", "Lucky Star", and, as I recall "Borderline".
After that, her next hit was the song "Crazy for You" from the otherwise forgettable movie Vision Quest (actually, Journey had an even better song made for that movie).
After that, there was "Live to tell". I stopped paying attention after that.
Anyhow, I was quite glad to get this message, and I certainly hope I'll see this feature in future versions of MaraDNS.
Done, 1.1.11 has this. Not a production-ready DNS server; I need to add some other features people want and such before this is ready for the world.
One of my user doesn't like this features; as it turns out, this can cause some havoc for people on dyndns connections without reliable internet access. I am of the school that one should not run a domain on a machine whose IP changes daily; such usage on ones dial-up connection is almost invariably an abuse of their ISP; if the ISP wanted you to stay online all of the time, they would give you a dedicated line with its own IP. That said, I do listen to my users concerns, even when I disagree with them.
First of all, my qualifications: I am an implementer of a freely downloadable functioning recursive DNS server; one of the five that exist (The other ones: 1, 23 [this one is in Python, which I consider a bit of a cheat], and, of course, 4).
That behind me, my thonghts on DNSSEC. The main problem with DNSSEC is that DNS itself has no concept of security; any attempt to add signatures has the issue of having to graft on signatures to a system not designed to have signatures. For example:
A DNS packet can only be 512 bytes long; that really is not enough room to fit a signature.
How do you sign the statement "this host name does not exist"? All of the solutions have a problem. We either have to put a private key on an internet connected computer, or we have to reveal all of the host names that exist in our network.
Digital signatures add a good deal of workload to already overloaded recursive DNS servers.
The real solution is to replace DNS by something better. As I said before, and will say again, this something better needs real authentication, the ability to more have more finely tuned hostname delegation, no CNAME referrals, have NS and PTR referrals be done by IP instead of name, and so on. This next-generation protocol needs to be well-thought out; the original DNS is well known to be poorly designed because things like were not thought out and even a "this host name does not exist" reply is a hack with DNS.
US is the same way; we have the cheap (30 a pop for non-coaster name brand) data CDRs, and the more expensive music CDRs which have a tax which goes to the music companies.
On the other hand, eating off someone's plate in public is traditionally a way of signalling that one is in a somewhat intimate relationship.
Depends on the culture. I have shared food with Mexican girls who have boyfriends; I think, since hunger is more visible in their culture, they do not consider sharing food as intimate as they do over here.
Or maybe I was just more popular with the girls there than I thought.
The parent post was a joke; he was not making fun of FreeBSD. He was making fun of idiot journalists who don't have a clue how things really work, and expect idiot things like support for NTFS.
Of course, your proably have to deal with enough idiot users who demand that kind of BS that it actually looks serious to you.
There are plenty of ways to find music that you like (All Music, Ptichfork, mp3.com, etc.)
Very true. The main problem with looking for stuff over at mp3.com and what not is that one needs a broadband connection and some patience. Patience because Sturgeon's Law is definitely in force with those kinds of sites; I usually have to download five or six songs from different bands to get one that is listenable (ObShamelessPlug). Broadband, because downloading and sifting through that many mp3s is downright painful on a dialup. I've done it; never again.
The other problem is that, there is a pretty strong herd mentality with music. Many people don't just want to listen to a band; they want the feeling that they are part of a community of people who listen to the same band.
Because of a combination of these factors, I bought a CD by an RIAA supported band today. I know these guys' music; I know that even their weaker songs will be listenable. I am part of an online group of fans; I know I can share my experiences of listening to this album with them. I didn't have to wait for a download, and I don't have to worry about mp3 compression artifacts.
As I understand it, for the various types of media that could be used to pirate music, there are two types of media. One can be used by consumer audio recorders, and gives a certain percent of the cost of the media to the RIAA. Another can not be used by consumer audio recorders, and, as I recall, does not have the HRRA tax.
This is why, when you go to Fry's, there are both the cheap computer CDRs and the more expensive "Digital audio" CDRs. As a result, I get to pay the RIAA for the privledge of copything my music to CDR, since my CD burner is one that only accepts HRRA media. 1
The RIAA needs to realize that we are no longer in the early 1990s. They can not get congress to pass something like this without the general public knowing what they are doing and suitably protesting.
- Sam
Well, OK, I don't, since there is a firmware bug that allows me to use normal CDRs.
Slashdot Mirror
- Sam
Two stories:
One time, I was on a mailing list. The mailing list was using a Windows Listserv clone. Most people on the mailing list simply used a web interface to get on the mailing list; I, however, talked directly to the mailing list server to join the list.
Soon after getting on the list, someone on the list asked how many people were on the list. I told them.
At this point, all hell broke loose. They thought I broke in to the system. Fortunatly, the list administrator went to my mother's church; I don't want to think about what could have happened if she did not.
* * *
When the "I Love You" worm was spreading like wildfire, I was working for a dot-com security company called Pilot Networks (which is no more). Someone came up to me and asked me permission to forward me an email. I sais "Sure, why not?"
"Well, it's a dangerous virus"
"You know I use Linux and don't have to worry about such things"
"I know; it's just that everyone in the office is really afraid of this thing and do not even want to have it on their computer"
It seemed really strange to me that a computer security company did not have one person in their office willing to have a simple Visual Basic script on their computer.
* * *
- Sam
- Sam
- Cost (check)
- Size and weight (check)
- Full-size keyboard (I want one of these things in front of me to make sure the keyboard is almost as good the one on the Thinkpad I am writing this on)
- Battery life (check)
- Linux compatibility (check)
Note that performance is not listed here; I am typing this on a PIII 450 and am more than happy with its performance. I want a laptop which does not need charging and does not need a forklift to carry around. If I wanted performance or the latest gee-whiz 3d chipset, I would get a desktop.If the economy was better and I was working again instead of being a student, this is something I would very seriously consider buying. As it stands, this is my dream laptop.
- Sam
Talking to myself: The exact quote is "As a product, [UNIX has] certainly lost any chance to take over the mass market."
- Sam
For more information about Linux on laptops, go to the web page about Linux on laptops; help can be found in the Usenet newsgroups comp.os.linux.misc or comp.os.linux.hardware
- Sam
Obviously, the above argument is absurd, but points out that Slashdot has a double standard. On one hand, it is ok when a 14-year-old violates the copyright of a RIAA or MPAA-owned company. On the other hand, it is not OK when a company releases GPL under terms not compatible with the GPL.
So, what is it going to be? Do we respect both the RIAA's copyright and the copyright which GPL programs have, or do we respect neither?
If you want the GPL to be respected, respect other people's copyrights.
- Sam
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600
Oh, the heresy of it all! Actually, over in comp.unix.admin, a number of old-school Unix people have similiar headers in their messages; Dennis once said (1995 or 1996 issue of Byte magazine) that "Unix will never be a desktop operating system"; all of the MacOS X users have proven him wrong.
- Sam
The people who designed this hard disk are confused about how DES works. First of all, DES has a 56-bit, not a 64-bit key. Second of all, the days of being forced to use 40-bit encryption are, thankfully, over.
If one is going to all of the effort to encrypt a hard disk, why will they encrypt it using only Single DES? It is possible to build a single-DES cracker for under $10,000 US; the 56-bit key which single DES has to offer is just not long enough.
They would have been much better off encrypting this unit with AES, which uses Rijndael to encrypt files. Rijndael has a key size between 128 and 256 bits long, which can not be brute forced with current technology. Rijndael is also more efficient than DES when implemented in software.
Also, security is only as strong as its weakest link. If the hard disk is always readable when the key card is attached, then great care must be taken to detatch and hide the key card. Far better security can be obtained by a system which asks for a passphrase. Ideally, have a system which needs both the key card and the passphrase.
While I think this is a good idea, I think one is better off with the kernel patches which allow one to encrypt filesystems in Linux.
(For windows and Mac users, sorry, I use neither so can not help you)
- Sam
Any one will do. In California, where I live, the most common foreign language is Spanish, so I have been working very hard on learning this language.
It is very easy to make some nasty errors in Spanish. For example, a common dialog (in both English and Spanish) can go like this:
"How are you at programming"
"I am good."
Now, if someone says "I am good" in Spanish wrong, it sounds like "I am good at having sex". Another error, which can be nasty, is that the following dialog in Puerto Rican Spanish:
"Where is the teacher?"
"She just left. You may catch her if you hurry."
Sounds like this in Mexican Spanish:
"Where is the teacher?"
"She just left. You may fuck her if you hurry."
Just the other night, I was talking to a bilingual girl born in the US, and she made this particular error (in Spanish):
"So, are you going to cum home soon?"
these errors even get past proofreading. The label on the Memorex CD-R blanks says this in Spanish:
"Guarentee of goods and services for one anus"
The point being, that learning a foreign language is, to put it mildly, very very difficult, and you can and will make extremely humourous errors learning it. Native speakers will find you most amusing at times. You will find yourself talking and suddenly having to stop because you do not have a word for the concept you wish to express.
Learning a foreign language is, all in all, great fun, especially when you find people who will tolerate your errors in their language, and who can intuitively speak the languag ein a form you can understand. Great way to meet girls too, because females are more likely to enjoy talking to people struggling with a language.
- Sam
Nice bit of flamebait there.
I have a three year old 600X. The battery lasts maybe five minutes; both of my 600X battery went very quickly from lasting an hour or so to lasting five minutes.
This is the output of APM on this 600X:
vela 16:47:10 $ apm
AC off-line, battery status high: 94% (0:03)
How often is your laptop plugged in to the mains, and how often do you use it "in the field"?
Another poster suggested running a 600X battery all the way down once every two weeks; I didn't get these problems until my system was continously plugged in for long periods of time. Before, I would use it in places without a convenient plug, or have it unplugged when it was sleeping. Once I kept in plugged in all of the time, even when suspended (sleeping), the batteries (both of them) quickly went poof.
- Sam
I thought it was kind of strange that both batteries died around the same time. Since I am almost never in a place where I have to use the laptop on the road, I don't need to get a new $150 battery for the system. The battery lasts long enough that I can move the laptop from one room to another. The main annoyance is that the "battery is low" light is flashing all of the time, even when the system is plugged in.
ThinkPad 600X (the predessor to the T series), running RedHat Linux 7.2. Has NeoMagic chipset which causes the system to crash hard when running certain X applications.
- Sam
Talk is cheap. Show us the code.
The devil is in the details. In other words, it is easy to say something is easy until you have done it.
If you have reversed-engineered a significant audio or video codec, I will retract my position and be suitably impressed.
And, yes, I do see you code at http://www.kyz.uklinux.net/packers.php3, but there isn't an audio nor video codec to be seen. It all looks like LZW variants; lossy compression (DCTs, wavelets, and what not) is a completely different kettle of fish.
- Sam
Here is the real link:
- SamIs this good enough to invalidate the patent?
- Sam
I have a Mexican pop album, which will remain nameless (except to say said album became platinum in Mexico), which has some very noticable processing of this nature. I am extremely familiar with the piece of gear they used and its sound (which is unmistakable on this album); it costs considerably less than $1000. I also have a another similiar device which costs twice as much, but is noticably more transparent.
Fixing singers that can't hit notes is actually one of the cheaper parts of a recording. It is the microphones and the room which cost the most when making a good recording.
- Sam
"Like A Virgin" thing ("Holiday" was later, IIRC)
OK, I used to have a crush on Madonna, so I know that "Holiday" was from her first 1983 album, along with "Breaking up". "Like A Virgin" was the title and most popular song from her second 1984 album, which also had "Material Girl", "Lucky Star", and, as I recall "Borderline".
After that, her next hit was the song "Crazy for You" from the otherwise forgettable movie Vision Quest (actually, Journey had an even better song made for that movie).
After that, there was "Live to tell". I stopped paying attention after that.
- Sam
Done, 1.1.11 has this. Not a production-ready DNS server; I need to add some other features people want and such before this is ready for the world.
One of my user doesn't like this features; as it turns out, this can cause some havoc for people on dyndns connections without reliable internet access. I am of the school that one should not run a domain on a machine whose IP changes daily; such usage on ones dial-up connection is almost invariably an abuse of their ISP; if the ISP wanted you to stay online all of the time, they would give you a dedicated line with its own IP. That said, I do listen to my users concerns, even when I disagree with them.
- Sam
That behind me, my thonghts on DNSSEC. The main problem with DNSSEC is that DNS itself has no concept of security; any attempt to add signatures has the issue of having to graft on signatures to a system not designed to have signatures. For example:
-
A DNS packet can only be 512 bytes long; that really is not enough room to fit a signature.
-
How do you sign the statement "this host name does not exist"? All of the solutions have a problem. We either have to put a private key on an internet connected computer, or we have to reveal all of the host names that exist in our network.
-
Digital signatures add a good deal of workload to already overloaded recursive DNS servers.
The real solution is to replace DNS by something better. As I said before, and will say again, this something better needs real authentication, the ability to more have more finely tuned hostname delegation, no CNAME referrals, have NS and PTR referrals be done by IP instead of name, and so on. This next-generation protocol needs to be well-thought out; the original DNS is well known to be poorly designed because things like were not thought out and even a "this host name does not exist" reply is a hack with DNS.- Sam
- Sam
Depends on the culture. I have shared food with Mexican girls who have boyfriends; I think, since hunger is more visible in their culture, they do not consider sharing food as intimate as they do over here.
Or maybe I was just more popular with the girls there than I thought.
- Sam
Of course, your proably have to deal with enough idiot users who demand that kind of BS that it actually looks serious to you.
- Sam
There are a number of pathetic anonymous cowards who get a rise out of flaming people in reply to posts they make. Best ignored.
- Sam
Very true. The main problem with looking for stuff over at mp3.com and what not is that one needs a broadband connection and some patience. Patience because Sturgeon's Law is definitely in force with those kinds of sites; I usually have to download five or six songs from different bands to get one that is listenable (ObShamelessPlug). Broadband, because downloading and sifting through that many mp3s is downright painful on a dialup. I've done it; never again.
The other problem is that, there is a pretty strong herd mentality with music. Many people don't just want to listen to a band; they want the feeling that they are part of a community of people who listen to the same band.
Because of a combination of these factors, I bought a CD by an RIAA supported band today. I know these guys' music; I know that even their weaker songs will be listenable. I am part of an online group of fans; I know I can share my experiences of listening to this album with them. I didn't have to wait for a download, and I don't have to worry about mp3 compression artifacts.
- Sam
This is why, when you go to Fry's, there are both the cheap computer CDRs and the more expensive "Digital audio" CDRs. As a result, I get to pay the RIAA for the privledge of copything my music to CDR, since my CD burner is one that only accepts HRRA media. 1
The RIAA needs to realize that we are no longer in the early 1990s. They can not get congress to pass something like this without the general public knowing what they are doing and suitably protesting.
- Sam
Well, OK, I don't, since there is a firmware bug that allows me to use normal CDRs.