With the exception of that compatibility with third party stuff that is likely not usable by alz patients, I would think a javascript dev could come up with a simple browser application that leverages HTML5's streaming audio and video capabilities to implement a simple video conf tool using touch screen computers. Perhaps a simple opening split screen that has thumbnail pictures of people the user knows in a sidebar, and a main screen that shows the realtime video.
Push on a face, and it 'dials' that person or whatever, it 'rings' the other end showing the caller's thumbnail pic large, they click the pic to 'answer'. And can do the same with other thumbnails at the same time to bring several people together. A small hangup button at the bottom left of each active video.
I had to make an MP3 player and 'internet radio' app for a technophobic senior, and went this route. Took some time to make the web app full screen properly for the browser + hardware used (a lenovo tablet running Android), but it worked.. all javascript + html5. No other libs or ui toolkits needed.
I didn't hear all the dialog at first, so I thought this was showing Bill's "new job" working at a shoe store, vis a vis Al in Married With Children.
I thought this was hilarious, since I'd been wondering what Bill's new daily job would be.
But then I could hear the dialog, and it was kinda down hill from there.
Arrest photo was a nice touch though. Maybe the cash register should have been a Microsoft POS system, and he'd have to ask the store manager how to work it and get a BSOD. "It always does that, just reboot..". When he goes out to his car, he should have hopped into a parked bulldozer instead, and continuing to talk to Jerry while hot-wiring it..
I personally have always got a kick out of this particular clause from the iTunes EULA:
You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.
That text is in most of the Apple stuff; ADC, xtools, iphone 2.0.2, Macromedia Flash MX, Norton Antivirus 2005, and even the Windows 2000 resource kit.
I've been keeping copies of all the eula's I click through for years, and every once in a while compare them to see "what's new", or grep them for key words.
The Win2K Resource Kit bit reads:
6. EXPORT RESTRICTIONS. You agree that you will not export or re-export the SOFTWARE (...) (ii) to any person or entity who you know or have reason to know will utilize the SOFTWARE (or portion thereof) in the production of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons (...)
..and the Apple iphone 2.0.2 reads:
10. Export Control. You may not use or otherwise export or reexport the iPhone Software except as authorized by United States law and the laws of the jurisdiction(s) in which the iPhone Software was obtained. (...) You also agree that you will not use the iPhone Software for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
As for clean C++, it's harder to appreciate I think because C++ has a bit of overhead to it that makes the code appear more sprawling.. harder to appreciate I think. That said I feel that out of the many C++ apps I've written, large and small, there are a few I think are 'clean' and even, dare I say, almost 'elegant'. But it takes a lot of effort; one can spend a lot of time cleaning things up, and making comments 'just so'. I put the most effort into code that I know will be seen publicly, or might need to be handed off to others.. open source and team oriented work for hire especially.
I like to configure email to deliver automated failure reports of equipment, backups, cron scripts that grep system logs so that I have a log of what screwed up when. Filtered and sent to an appropriate folder. Usually email has errors from people who came in early or left late since my last email check, so that's usually the first place to start with the 'immediate critical problems of the day'.
Poll my script-managed web page graphs and logs showing 'at a glance' network and server responsiveness graphs, and duplicate logs of the above mail errors, so I can see if there were any outages over the previous evening/weekend, to see if there's a trend of equipment failure. Essentially, make sure servers I'm responsible for are up, networks are moving packets, critical machines ping, etc.
Calendar to check if any periodic hardware checks need to be made (equipment cleaning, scheduled maintenance, vendor meetings)
Check the 'todo' list for stuff that was in progress from the previous work day.
If all that looks good, and there's no voice mail.. then maybe a cup of coffee, and check in with my manager to see if there's anything new.
I come from a similar background having used windows/linux/mac/sgi, but as a programmer, I prefer linux as my workstation far over OSX and Windows.
I've been using linux as my main workstation since 1999 because there's simply a great development and user environment. Downloading and installing OSS packages is easy (for me anyway).. the techniques of extracting tar files and doing './configure; make' has been the same since the early 90's, and I feel I have control over the entire machine; I can prevent bloat silliness, and can manage security well without third party products. To non-techies, the hill to linux is a big one.. I'm not saying it's a good thing for everyone. But devs love it. An investment in time learning something in linux leads to knowledge that is useful for decades. Similar investments of time in Windows techniques (such as registry tweaks or learning flash-in-the-pan MS toolkits) usually only lasts a few years, then you have to unlearn it all in favor of some 'new way'. Linux comes with everything I need; word processors, paint programs and graphics manipulation (gimp/imagemagick), compilers, browsers/email, text editors, excellent scriting languages (perl, python, rub), professional documentation mangement (LaTeX, postscript, star office) and the base OS supports all my old shell scripts I've built up over the years; reminder programs, phone lists, accounting and tax management scripts, web based letter/fax/invoicing software. only have to bring over a few apps with each OS upgrade; xdiff, xv, vnc, acrobat, flash plugins, and the latest revs of Thunderbird and Firefox. What's a pain is getting drivers for new hardware, and/or accidentally buying hardware that I "thought" would be linux compatible but isn't. Like a Netgear gigabit ethernet card that worked crappily, so I had to dump it in favor of a Dlink which worked fine. Also, a bit of time is usually spent removing unneeded daemons, and de-bloating the window manager, and figuring out how the window manager menus and GUIs have been restructured. In the last few years I've settled on FLWM, a small and simple window manager I've hot rodded. Now I can always find everything, and have little or no culture shock when upgrading the OS of my workstation.
Windows scares the hell outta me. I feel I can catch a virus too easily, based on what I've seen happen to most all my friends with Windows machines who constantly struggle with viruses and antivirus software, either the viruses or the antivirus software slows them down. The native windows dev environment, when purchased, is "fine", but you have to keep chasing their support and upgrades with $$$. There are freeware dev environments, but as a purist, I like to stick with native compilers. As far as the OS is concerned, DOS is a joke.. cmd.exe still has no screen positioning via ANSI since Windows NT, preventing command line apps from presenting formatted/colored data. DOS batch language has been slowly improving, but is still far from usable for most purposes beyond very simple scripting. Much of the improvements are hacked on. And to this day, 'cd \\some\unc\path' fails with "UNC paths unsupported" which is ridiculous. The WIN32 API is so wide, and the API so complex and inane with structures in structures in structures, and function calls with so many arguments its impossible to remember them all, even for commonly used functions like CreateFile(). The API was obviously designed by comittee'. Thing is, when a developer writes code, he does not have a committee handy to look up all that crap for him.. which slows development. There are major incosistencies in design throughout the OS, I find it endlessly frustrating, though in the end, "serviceable". But it is definitely the most irritating OS I've had to deal with.
OSX, I like it and prefer it on portables, since it can easily attach to networks, and in general makes remote computing 'easy'. Linux is t
I'd make a requisition for some locked cabinets, and keep all sensitive data organized in books (passwords, etc) and keep them in there. Put all secure items in there and lockdown at night.
For sensitive data, keep that off your now vulnerable workstations, and on a secure server in a locked machine room. Or put the workstations in the machine room, and either make some long cables, or if the runs are really long, some extenders that can run the keyboard/mouse/vga digitally through either catV or fiber.
If transitioning from a previously secure office arrangement, seems the main issue is a matter of changing old habits, so as not to leave secure stuff on your desk. Mentally flag all secure items you deal with on a daily basis, and make a secure environment for them. Passwords on Post-its? Put the passwords instead in a book, and secure it in the locked case or machine room. Backup tapes, software CDs and dongles? Same thing. If storage space is at a minimum, often the locked down machine room is overlooked for such purposes.
I've found that in many situations with old machines and noisey over spec'ed fans, a simple reverse biased zener in series with the fan can drop the voltage to the fan to slow it down a tad, in many cases vastly reducing the overall noise of the machine. Made my life much better with the reduced noise levels, as I have several old linux machines that run 24/7 (servers) in my office.
With the advice of a friend in EE, we determined an 1N4732A seemed to do the job for my fans. Depends on the fan and voltage you're working with. Most fans run off the supply's 12VDC.
If you know what you're doing, this zener in series can be a cheap way to greatly reduce noise, without having to replace the fan(s).
Use a hefty enough zener (so that it doesn't get too hot; mine barely gets warm), and make sure it is indeed reverse biased, and doesn't slow the fan too much; you want the fan to be spinning at a maximum speed that still moves the air, without making too much noise. Empirical observations with a varaible voltage power supply running the fan seems to be the best way to determine the optimal value of the diode/fan combo.
Obviously, avoid such a mod on fans that are already speed controlled by the mother board, as you're only going to defeat the machines ability to adjust the fan's top speed.
But this is useful for lots of old dumb motherboard/fan combos where the fan is way over-speced for the purpose, and has no speed control.
Obviously, be very careful when messing around with fan speeds, as you want to make sure the speed you slow it down to still keeps stuff cool, even on the hottest room temps.
> By the way, what's up with gcc.gnu.org? > It's been unreachable for days!
They're back as of today; from their current page:
"February 06, 2005
gcc.gnu.org suffered hardware failure and had to be restored from backups. We do not believe any data was lost in the CVS repository. We did lose any pending messages in the mail queue as that does not get backed up. At this time, everything should be functional except for htdig. The mailing list archives on the web site are also out of date and will be updated soon. New mail will update the archives correctly, however. If you find any other problems, please email overseers@gcc.gnu.org.."
> Oh, and by the way, a dialog saying, "This action > cannot be undone. OK Cancel," is not a suitable > substitute for a Revert facility for anything at > any time.
You're right; we're sorry.
We've removed the extraneous "Cancel" option.
*** CASE CLOSED 11/30/2004 11:01a bpfh@support.yoyodyne.com *** Customer was satisfied with answer. Case is closed.
Opera does have one feature I really like; you can completely reprogram the keyboard functions; they give you access to just about every operation in the interface (above and beyond the menus), so that you can attach a keyboard function key or shortcut to ANY operation of the browser and email.
This is handy for making a 'grandma's web/email' computer, vis a vis webtv, for old folks who are computer shy, and can't deal with a mouse or multiple windows.
It's nice, for instance, that I can reprogram Opera so that function keys can invoke single operations like 'Mail', 'Web' 'Compose', 'Back', 'Favorites' etc, which is something my folks liked about their old webtv (which died recently, and they loved it, but hated all the new advertising that was jammed into every unused space of the webtv interface, so were reluctant to go back to it)
With opera's very complete customization abilities, I can turn off the menus, and run it completely 'mouseless'. Having complete control over the hotkeys also lets me turn off everything they DONT need, preventing the possibility of 'hitting a wrong key'.
So now they can just hit the 'Mail' function key, and the mail window will open and maximize, closing any other windows.
To do this properly, I've also installed a simple window manager (flwm) so that I can reprogram it to disable all the titlebar decorations, and hard wire in all the above function keys, so that hitting 'Mail' will open the mail browser if it's not already, 'Compose' does the same, invoking the composition window.
Regarding Opera, I haven't found this kind of 'complete' reprogrammability easily in Mozilla/Netscape (though I use that exclusively for all my work related browsing/email for years). It also seems Opera is designed for special uses in mind (eg. "kiosk" mode). It's so nice, that I'm willing to spend the ~$40 for the license.
>> Sun violates this patent when Java byte code >> uses the Java engine to run the code.
> [..]prior art before 1987 is most relevant in this case. > Try to find examples from 1986 or earlier.
I didn't read the patents, but with respect to the above, the Microsoft "Basic" burned into the ROMs on Apple ][+ computers (Circa 1979) used bytecodes to represent and run the program.
The ascii code you typed in a line at a time was immediately 'compiled' ascii -> binary whenever you entered a new line of source. This 'byte coded binary' that existed in memory at 0x0800 IIRC was then 'list'ed or 'run' via the ROM basic interpreter.
Not sure if there's a fundamental difference between this, and what goes on in the java run time environment, but it sounds similar.
Well, regardless of the hype, I think I'm going to enable the IR firewall on my old Nokia 6190. *afixes black tape strip over top of phone*. Damn, I feel much better now.
Hmm, it's only fair to mention you folks at . used Rush in a way it
wasn't designed to be used, by throwing all the jobs at one Windows
machine, instead of letting Rush distribute the job serving to multiple
machines, which is its designed behavior.
It's a distinguishing
feature of rush that it does not use a centralized design.
Yes, Rush will fall over if one goes out of their way to submit all the jobs to a single box,
the same way one manager will fall over if they have to micromanage
500 employees. That is not how the system was designed to be used, and
I warned that the system won't scale if all load is thrown at one box.
The designed behavior is the user s workstation becomes the manager
for that user's jobs. That way when multiple users submit jobs, load
is automatically distributed to their workstations, avoiding a single
point of failure, and a single point of load. Granted, when you
were in production, the job checkpointing feature didn't exist yet
(the feature in 102.41, released 03/03/2004, that lets one reboot a machine acting as a job
server, and the jobs pick up where they left off after the reboot).
IIRC, the folks at . wanted to implement a custom centralized priority
mechanism based on a complex model that factored in license counting
(a centralized task) instead of using Rush's own priority mechanism. And
to implement that, submitted all the jobs at a single Windows machine,
instead of distributing to a pool of multiple servers. True, distributing
load would have created race conditions for license counting, but a
few recoverable license errors due to races with license counting while
polling the multiple servers would have been better than the negative
effects of centralizing load. I believe that was my recommended position.
Indeed,
Rush is not designed to be centralized. If you retrofit a centralized
problem on a distributed design, you won't get good results.
It's
only fair to mention other customers are using Rush effectively on networks as large
as yours, using the default distributed model.
FILE SERVER For a large farm, the most important thing is a strong file server that can handle the load you're going to throw at it.
Netapp is a great choice; many production companies, small and large have switched to netapp when all other PC solutions failed (W2K servers, OSX servers, Linux servers), and their problems went away. Netapp is pricey, but you can find used equipment, or rental solutions.
IMHO, linux/windows is great for the nodes, but not as file servers. Linux especially has had its NFS services beaten into submission when you get a 30 host (60 cpu) farm beating on the one linux server over NFS. Whereas an SGI Origin rack mount or Netapp server can handle that and more (100 - 200 hosts).
A problem with Windows servers is that they license connections. If you try to run a Windows XP or 2K system as a file server, you'll quickly find the OS won't let you share the drive to more than 10 machines. You have to run 2K or 2003 Server to server more than that, and you have to make sure you have enough client licenses to serve the network as you grow it. Linux servers (and most other servers, including SGI) have no such connection limit on NFS.
LOAD BALANCING When you start getting above 100 hosts, consider using a switch that can handle load balancing, so that when the farm is rendering hard, the workstations still get high priority bandwidth to the disk server, otherwise loading a tiny text file from a workstation can take minutes when the farm is being heavily utilized.
With Cisco switches, the terminology is QOS (Quality Of Service), made popular by VoIP services which deal with high volumes of network traffic, which happens to be a similar problem to file system traffic on a render farms.
There are usually two bottle necks; the network at the file server, and the file server itself. Rarely are the workstations/nodes a bottle neck.
SUBNETTING Sometimes it pays to have multiple network segments all hanging off the same file server, where the server has separate network cards for each segment. This way you distribute the network traffic, rather than concentrating it all at one point (the server's network card).
One way is to put all the workstations on one network, the farm on another. Or split a large farm into separate subnets. You may be able to then use the server's own config to balance the network packets so it gives higher precedence to the workstations, and lower to the farm, so users can access files quickly, no matter how busy the farm is.
AIR CONDITIONING Especially in hot regions like Los Angeles, it's very important to have a suitable A/C system to keep the machine room cool. Often people have to scramble to upgrade their A/C system when their farm starts heating up, and find out there's no physical way to upgrade their A/C due to the limitations of their machine room, or adequate exposure to the outside for ventilation.
You sysadmins probably want to have a pager system that alerts you when the machine room starts heating up, or a script that shuts down the farm if the temperature exceeds some maximum.
Watching the temp of the cpus is a good way to detect dead or dying CPU fans, the major cause of outages on nodes.
USE AN EXPANDABLE SWITCHBOX Many of the Belkin switch boxes are chainable, so that you can have literally hundreds of machines accessable from one monitor/keyboard combo.
Get a good expandable switch box so that you can see the physical console of each node, in case the machine(s) blue screen, panic, etc. so you can see what the problem is with a box, so that you can solve it, rather than just rebooting the box regularly. Often problems are obviously advertised on the console, but a cheap farm setup where there's no easy way to see the console of each box (ie. "lets just use remote desktops!") looses the ability to see what's wrong with a machine when it dies. Get to know how to read a BSOD, so you can determine if it's a ram problem, or a driver problem.
Hmm, using dialup here in Los Angeles just doesn't seem to make sense no matter how one looks at it.
Folks I know still using dialup are "trying to keep costs down". But when you figure it out, the price is about the same:
Dialup:
$19/mo for the ISP,
$25/mo for the extra phone line
Total: $44
Cable Modem:
$40 flat
Most people I know have evolved to a second phone line, because they hate missing phone calls because they forgot to hang up the modem or while reading email, esp. if they have kids.
Cable modems (and DSL) seem to be about the same price, if not cheaper; you get a higher speed connection, 24 hour access, no tying up the phone, and in the case of cable modems, you get basic cable thrown in as an extra.
Seems to me it might actually be/cheaper/, and you get a better setup.
Granted, I did have to invest in a $40 firewall to prevent crackerz, but I feel safer with that, than with a software firewall on a dialup.
Also, when there are kids in the house, their computers can all hang off the same NAT'ing firewall, so everyone can read email, surf the internet, etc. at the same time.
I'm not sure what the prices are in the countryside locations or outside the US, but here in the US big cities, it seems like dialup is about the same price, or more expensive, depending on the route you go.
It's of course cheaper if you don't mind double timing your one phone line for reading email.. but people use the net so much now, it can tie up the phone for hours a day, so they get that second line..
>> But Grandma might hear of software X and want >> it. How will the be done [..] > > Not the target audience grandma.
So in other words, don't be afraid to tell grandma "No. You don't want to go there."
It will make a big headache for her and you, and I think she'll realize she doesn't want to go there if you show her on your computer what is involved.
Even if it's some new flower and gardening program.. buy it for her and show her how it works, and if she likes it, get her a separate computer for that, or make the box dual boot; keep the email/web machine simple so she can always fall back to that when frustrated (ie. make it the default boot)
And if she's capable of handling it, then sure, let her play on the Windows box or OSX or Linux with OpenOffice or whatever.
Just be sure not to answer the phone when she calls.;)
Linux is just an OS; someone just has to put some attention to creating a package that makes a nice simple interface to mail and web. Has nothing to do with the OS, or even X. It's all in the Window Manager that sits on top of X, and the apps.
And I think the apps are there, and simple window managers are there, it's just a matter of someone configuring them to be accessable to technophobes, which means getting rid of all the hotkeys, and simplifying the interface so only the truly essentail stuff is visible (Reply, Forward, etc), and get rid of the non-essentials (File, Edit, Preferences, etc)
I think Linux is actually easier to customize for the purpose of simplifying the interface down to the bare essentials for a technophobe; there are very simple tiny featureless window managers (flwm) that are easy to customize, and there are highly customizable apps like Opera that can be stripped down to the bare metal, and hot keys made so that the program can be used without a mouse, vis-a-vis web tv.
WebTV (the OLD pre-microsoft w/out all the stupid banner ads and advertising crap) has gotten the closest, I think, to making a usable system with the simplest interface; no mouse, no obscuring windows, no file menus, no drag and drop, no control panels or scary hotkeys like Shift-5times (windows sticky key mode) Alt-Spacebar, Alt-Tab, etc.
> But Grandma might hear of software X and want > it. How will the be done, aka, I heard I can > do my taxes on the computer with turboTax
Not the target audience grandma.
Any grandma who wants to/actually/ run turbotax would already have an understanding of 'running programs', 'navigating', 'using the mouse', etc.
I/think/ we're talking about grannys who just want email to see pictures from their kids, or stay in touch via little email letters, or follow an occasional emailed link from the kids to websites like Amazon or the NYTimes, and maybe receive an occasional Flash funny like the Dancing Hampsters or whatever.
I think that linux totally 'ready', and has been ready since it was capable of running a web browser and mail client.
Someone just needs to offer packaged winmanager/apps that remove the extraneous stuff from the web/mail clients, so that they can be navigated entirely from a keyboard, and can be 'windowless' (only one running at a time), and automate all other aspects (internet access, etc), then it's golden.
Honestly, I'm surprised there isn't a package out there now (I haven't checked in the last 6 months), or if there is, these folks are still beta testing on their grandmas.
I was thinking of going with opera (where you can totally customize the keyboard to do all the navigation for you, and strip out all the other dangerous hotkeys) and flwm, a very tiny window manager that only has the/bare/ essentials, that I can/completely/ customize, so that I can disable or enable any hotkeys I want with minimal surprises for grandma if she types incorrectly.
Hope this isn't a RTFAC (C=Carefully), but I don't see in this article if they specify the tests were done with a 64 bit version of the OS and 64 bit binaries for the apps, or just a 32 bit versions.
Maybe I'm missing it, but in the "OS" category, they only say "Windows XP Profession SP1", no reference that I can see if it's a 64 bit version of the OS or not. Ditto for the apps.
My understanding is (with the current state of affairs, 03/18/2004) if you run to the store and buy an AMD 64 machine, you'll get a 32 bit version of Windows and apps.
But you only get the benefits of eg. >2^32 ram access IF you run a 64 bit OS and 64 bit apps.
Being able to access >2^32 of ram in an app is really useful for 3D rendering of very large projects (a business I happen to associated with), so if the tests are done with 32 bit OS/Apps, the benchmarks would seem to be not so useful for that purpose.
Considering this is a 64 bit processor being evaluated, it would seem lacking not to mention this.
Most folks in 3D evaling AMD 64's are sticking 64 bit os's on there right away (Suse, Gentoo, Fedora/Yarrow, etc), and doing tests with that.
Am I missing the part where they talk about 32 vs. 64 bit OS in these tests? I would/think/ it would make a big difference benchmark-wise.. correct me if I am wrong.
ps. With all those blinking flashing (*!&@# banner adds, it's often hard to RTFAC. I wonder, do schools now give reading comprehension tests in rooms with flashing lights and spinning graphics to simulate 'real world' scenarios? >;)
Has anyone figured out how to burn text on the/data/ side? That'd be sweet.
Often my CD's have a lot of unused tracks in the outer rings that seem ripe for use.
Surely someone out there has made a patch for cdrecord(1) to burn short ascii text messages to the data side, or if it supports multiple lines, and there's enough free space, one could go nuts with banner(6) or figlet(6) %^D
The reason OSX (workstations) are so secure is all services are turned off by default. Definitely a good security strategy. And it's hard to turn the stuff on (no prominent shiny, candy-like buttons to enable them)
But even if those potentially dangerous services are enabled (DNS, sendmail), they're less likely to be cracked because most cracks use buffer overruns that are intel specific code injections.
Intel has been around for 20 years, which means 20 years of people learning assembly, and mature, asswiping documentation on every detail of the processor. And also, long evolved cracking documents/tools.
Where as OSX has only been around a few years. And at the time it came out, many tools (DNS, sendmail) had already become security aware. Viruses had already been running rampant, so Apple was able to start at a point where security issues could be worked into the design. Also, when OSX came out, few people cared about assembly anymore. In the 80's it was necessary, but now, it is less so.
At this particular point in time, if an OSX box and linux box are each running the same buggy version of DNS (the one that had the buffer overrun loophole), surely only the linux box will get rooted, because the rootkits are mostly intel specific. The initial rooting of a machine usually involves an assembly level attack with a buffer overrun.
So it's not even an open source issue; DNS is open source. It's the same code on both platforms. But because Mac's OSX platform hasn't been around for long, is one reason there aren't popular rootkits for it. But if there is one, then it's just a matter of time and desire on the part of crackers.
One thing Mac also has going for it is OSX (workstation) the day it was released, by default had all services disabled. So it's a pretty tough box to crack from day one; even if grandma turns on her new OSX box for the first time, it will likely be more secure than a linux box configured by a seasoned admin setting up linux for the first time. (weeks later: "What, sendmail and portmapper are running? I didn't turn those on!")
So there is less desire to even try to crack a platform that has no services to crack to begin with.
However, with OSX *server* being a bit more recent, eventually cracks may become more desirable because that will have attackable services. But someone will have to learn assembly for the Mac to implement the buffer overrun attacks. And it may take a few years before that becomes as popular as linux rootkits.
It would be good if the Linux distros made it harder for first time users setting up webservers to accidentally leave on useless services like NFS, portmapper, and all those daemons internet servers don't need (lpd, yp, linuxconf, auto-updaters).
Hmm, I wonder what services were enabled on the article's test machines. I guess it wouldn't matter, because an intel buffer overrun injection on a Mac just won't fly.
> but the fact remains that there has yet to be a > successful American full-length animated feature > which wasn't considered a "family" movie in the US. > Ever.
Fritz The Cat: $700k to make, grossed $90 million. Definite profit for the film company. BIG hit in 1970. Not sure if Bakshi is bending the numbers there, but that's straight from the horses' mouth; (p.45, "Tenacity of the Cockroach", interview with R.Bakshi, ISBN 0-609--80991-1)
I was floored when I saw it as a kid. It was like bugs bunny on PCP, armed and naked.
I dug Bakshi's other feature animated films too; American Pop, Hey Good Lookin, Coonskin. None of those are "family entertainment" (probably not considered 'hits' either, but still great) And some liked 'Wizards' and 'Lord of the Rings'. Not sure the numbers on those. All features, all animated, all american.
> The closest you could possibly get is "Heavy Metal"
Hoo, there are a few good sequences, but so much of the animation was Filmation quality-wise (read: bad)
*digress* At least WDP's Hercules had some good character design vis-a-vis Gerald Scarfe. But I have to see past the Disney characters to enjoy it for that. I still have the excerpted animated sequences from "The Wall" (Scarfe un-Disneified); those are absolute classic sequences of animation. Those two flowers having sex was intense.. must've taken them forever to animate. And the eagle and marching hammers kicked ass. Too bad there wasn't more of that animation, and less of that kid running around in trenches.
What if his house was robbed, and it's the burglars who distributed the video?
Or maybe the butler's kid decided to grab it.
Yet the guy gets his name slammed in the papers.. kinda a raw deal if he's not the actual perp. How hard do they have to protect the tape in their own home, a safe big enough for all the tapes they receive each year?
More than likely the old guy isn't sitting up all night "vripping" to hard disk, then going out and warchalk hunting for carrier, then wifi'ing it up to the net from his car. Some minion or crook probably nabbed it.
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With the exception of that compatibility with third party stuff that is likely not usable by alz patients, I would think a javascript dev could come up with a simple browser application that leverages HTML5's streaming audio and video capabilities to implement a simple video conf tool using touch screen computers. Perhaps a simple opening split screen that has thumbnail pictures of people the user knows in a sidebar, and a main screen that shows the realtime video.
Push on a face, and it 'dials' that person or whatever, it 'rings' the other end showing the caller's thumbnail pic large, they click the pic to 'answer'. And can do the same with other thumbnails at the same time to bring several people together. A small hangup button at the bottom left of each active video.
I had to make an MP3 player and 'internet radio' app for a technophobic senior, and went this route. Took some time to make the web app full screen properly for the browser + hardware used (a lenovo tablet running Android), but it worked.. all javascript + html5. No other libs or ui toolkits needed.
> You can't "forget to copyright" something
> because copyright is not a verb.
Wrong. Websters.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/copyright%5B2%5D
(1) noun, (2) verb, (3) adjective.
Cite your source.
I didn't hear all the dialog at first, so I thought this was showing Bill's "new job" working at a shoe store, vis a vis Al in Married With Children.
I thought this was hilarious, since I'd been wondering what Bill's new daily job would be.
But then I could hear the dialog, and it was kinda down hill from there.
Arrest photo was a nice touch though. Maybe the cash register should have been a Microsoft POS system, and he'd have to ask the store manager how to work it and get a BSOD. "It always does that, just reboot..". When he goes out to his car, he should have hopped into a parked bulldozer instead, and continuing to talk to Jerry while hot-wiring it..
I personally have always got a kick out of this particular clause from the iTunes EULA:
You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.
That text is in most of the Apple stuff; ADC, xtools, iphone 2.0.2, Macromedia Flash MX, Norton Antivirus 2005, and even the Windows 2000 resource kit.
I've been keeping copies of all the eula's I click through for years, and every once in a while compare them to see "what's new", or grep them for key words.
The Win2K Resource Kit bit reads:
6. EXPORT RESTRICTIONS. You agree that you will not export or re-export the SOFTWARE (...) (ii) to any person or entity who you know or have reason to know will utilize the SOFTWARE (or portion thereof) in the production of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons (...)
..and the Apple iphone 2.0.2 reads:
10. Export Control. You may not use or otherwise export or reexport the iPhone Software except as authorized by United States law and the laws of the jurisdiction(s) in which the iPhone Software was obtained. (...) You also agree that you will not use the iPhone Software for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
> a big juicy way to tax the Federal government (and itself) to suck
> some money into their own pockets.
IANAL, but I don't think states can tax the US government.
I suppose it depends on the specifics of the situation.
The following page is a Washington state page, but it seems to refer to
federal law that may apply to all states, not sure:
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/wac/default.aspx?cite=458-20-190
"(1) Introduction. Federal law prohibits Washington from directly imposing taxes
upon the United States."
"(3) Prohibition against taxing the United States. The state of Washington is prohibited
from imposing taxes directly upon the United States."
I don't know about 'pretty', but the Lions' on 6th Ed. Unix is a great example of /clean/ code. I think of it as 'pretty clean'.
d p/1573980137/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-4816217-2120035?i e=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184460207&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Lions-Commentary-Unix-John/
As for clean C++, it's harder to appreciate I think because C++ has a bit of overhead to it that makes the code appear more sprawling.. harder to appreciate I think. That said I feel that out of the many C++ apps I've written, large and small, there are a few I think are 'clean' and even, dare I say, almost 'elegant'. But it takes a lot of effort; one can spend a lot of time cleaning things up, and making comments 'just so'. I put the most effort into code that I know will be seen publicly, or might need to be handed off to others.. open source and team oriented work for hire especially.
I like to configure email to deliver automated failure reports of equipment, backups, cron scripts that grep system logs so that I have a log of what screwed up when. Filtered and sent to an appropriate folder. Usually email has errors from people who came in early or left late since my last email check, so that's usually the first place to start with the 'immediate critical problems of the day'.
Poll my script-managed web page graphs and logs showing 'at a glance' network and server responsiveness graphs, and duplicate logs of the above mail errors, so I can see if there were any outages over the previous evening/weekend, to see if there's a trend of equipment failure. Essentially, make sure servers I'm responsible for are up, networks are moving packets, critical machines ping, etc.
Calendar to check if any periodic hardware checks need to be made (equipment cleaning, scheduled maintenance, vendor meetings)
Check the 'todo' list for stuff that was in progress from the previous work day.
If all that looks good, and there's no voice mail.. then maybe a cup of coffee, and check in with my manager to see if there's anything new.
I come from a similar background having used windows/linux/mac/sgi, but as a programmer,
I prefer linux as my workstation far over OSX and Windows.
I've been using linux as my main workstation since 1999 because there's simply a great
development and user environment. Downloading and installing OSS packages is easy (for me
anyway).. the techniques of extracting tar files and doing './configure; make' has been
the same since the early 90's, and I feel I have control over the entire machine;
I can prevent bloat silliness, and can manage security well without third party products.
To non-techies, the hill to linux is a big one.. I'm not saying it's a good thing for
everyone. But devs love it. An investment in time learning something in linux leads to
knowledge that is useful for decades. Similar investments of time in Windows techniques
(such as registry tweaks or learning flash-in-the-pan MS toolkits) usually only lasts a
few years, then you have to unlearn it all in favor of some 'new way'.
Linux comes with everything I need; word processors, paint programs and graphics
manipulation (gimp/imagemagick), compilers, browsers/email, text editors, excellent
scriting languages (perl, python, rub), professional documentation mangement
(LaTeX, postscript, star office) and the base OS supports all my old shell scripts
I've built up over the years; reminder programs, phone lists, accounting
and tax management scripts, web based letter/fax/invoicing software.
only have to bring over a few apps with each OS upgrade; xdiff, xv, vnc,
acrobat, flash plugins, and the latest revs of Thunderbird and Firefox.
What's a pain is getting drivers for new hardware, and/or accidentally buying
hardware that I "thought" would be linux compatible but isn't. Like a Netgear
gigabit ethernet card that worked crappily, so I had to dump it in favor of a Dlink
which worked fine. Also, a bit of time is usually spent removing unneeded daemons,
and de-bloating the window manager, and figuring out how the window manager menus
and GUIs have been restructured. In the last few years I've settled on FLWM,
a small and simple window manager I've hot rodded. Now I can always find everything,
and have little or no culture shock when upgrading the OS of my workstation.
Windows scares the hell outta me. I feel I can catch a virus too easily, based on
what I've seen happen to most all my friends with Windows machines who constantly
struggle with viruses and antivirus software, either the viruses or the antivirus
software slows them down. The native windows dev environment, when purchased, is "fine",
but you have to keep chasing their support and upgrades with $$$. There are freeware
dev environments, but as a purist, I like to stick with native compilers. As far as the
OS is concerned, DOS is a joke.. cmd.exe still has no screen positioning via ANSI
since Windows NT, preventing command line apps from presenting formatted/colored data.
DOS batch language has been slowly improving, but is still far from usable for most
purposes beyond very simple scripting. Much of the improvements are hacked on. And
to this day, 'cd \\some\unc\path' fails with "UNC paths unsupported" which is ridiculous.
The WIN32 API is so wide, and the API so complex and inane with structures in structures
in structures, and function calls with so many arguments its impossible to remember them all,
even for commonly used functions like CreateFile(). The API was obviously designed by comittee'.
Thing is, when a developer writes code, he does not have a committee handy to look up all that
crap for him.. which slows development. There are major incosistencies in design throughout
the OS, I find it endlessly frustrating, though in the end, "serviceable". But it is definitely
the most irritating OS I've had to deal with.
OSX, I like it and prefer it on portables, since it can easily attach to networks,
and in general makes remote computing 'easy'. Linux is t
If transitioning from a previously secure office arrangement, seems the main issue is a matter of changing old habits, so as not to leave secure stuff on your desk. Mentally flag all secure items you deal with on a daily basis, and make a secure environment for them. Passwords on Post-its? Put the passwords instead in a book, and secure it in the locked case or machine room. Backup tapes, software CDs and dongles? Same thing. If storage space is at a minimum, often the locked down machine room is overlooked for such purposes.
I've found that in many situations with old machines and noisey over spec'ed fans, a simple reverse biased zener in series with the fan can drop the voltage to the fan to slow it down a tad, in many cases vastly reducing the overall noise of the machine. Made my life much better with the reduced noise levels, as I have several old linux machines that run 24/7 (servers) in my office.
With the advice of a friend in EE, we determined an 1N4732A seemed to do the job for my fans. Depends on the fan and voltage you're working with. Most fans run off the supply's 12VDC.
If you know what you're doing, this zener in series can be a cheap way to greatly reduce noise, without having to replace the fan(s).
Use a hefty enough zener (so that it doesn't get too hot; mine barely gets warm), and make sure it is indeed reverse biased, and doesn't slow the fan too much; you want the fan to be spinning at a maximum speed that still moves the air, without making too much noise. Empirical observations with a varaible voltage power supply running the fan seems to be the best way to determine the optimal value of the diode/fan combo.
Obviously, avoid such a mod on fans that are already speed controlled by the mother board, as you're only going to defeat the machines ability to adjust the fan's top speed.
But this is useful for lots of old dumb motherboard/fan combos where the fan is way over-speced for the purpose, and has no speed control.
Obviously, be very careful when messing around with fan speeds, as you want to make sure the speed you slow it down to still keeps stuff cool, even on the hottest room temps.
> By the way, what's up with gcc.gnu.org?
> It's been unreachable for days!
They're back as of today; from their current page:
"February 06, 2005
gcc.gnu.org suffered hardware failure and had to be restored from backups. We do not believe any data was lost in the CVS repository. We did lose any pending messages in the mail queue as that does not get backed up. At this time, everything should be functional except for htdig. The mailing list archives on the web site are also out of date and will be updated soon. New mail will update the archives correctly, however. If you find any other problems, please email overseers@gcc.gnu.org.."
> Oh, and by the way, a dialog saying, "This action
> cannot be undone. OK Cancel," is not a suitable
> substitute for a Revert facility for anything at > any time.
You're right; we're sorry.
We've removed the extraneous "Cancel" option.
*** CASE CLOSED 11/30/2004 11:01a bpfh@support.yoyodyne.com
*** Customer was satisfied with answer. Case is closed.
Opera does have one feature I really like; you can completely reprogram the keyboard functions; they give you access to just about every operation in the interface (above and beyond the menus), so that you can attach a keyboard function key or shortcut to ANY operation of the browser and email.
This is handy for making a 'grandma's web/email' computer, vis a vis webtv, for old folks who are computer shy, and can't deal with a mouse or multiple windows.
It's nice, for instance, that I can reprogram Opera so that function keys can invoke single operations like 'Mail', 'Web' 'Compose', 'Back', 'Favorites' etc, which is something my folks liked about their old webtv (which died recently, and they loved it, but hated all the new advertising that was jammed into every unused space of the webtv interface, so were reluctant to go back to it)
With opera's very complete customization abilities, I can turn off the menus, and run it completely 'mouseless'. Having complete control over the hotkeys also lets me turn off everything they DONT need, preventing the possibility of 'hitting a wrong key'.
So now they can just hit the 'Mail' function key, and the mail window will open and maximize, closing any other windows.
To do this properly, I've also installed a simple window manager (flwm) so that I can reprogram it to disable all the titlebar decorations, and hard wire in all the above function keys, so that hitting 'Mail' will open the mail browser if it's not already, 'Compose' does the same, invoking the composition window.
Regarding Opera, I haven't found this kind of 'complete' reprogrammability easily in Mozilla/Netscape (though I use that exclusively for all my work related browsing/email for years). It also seems Opera is designed for special uses in mind (eg. "kiosk" mode). It's so nice, that I'm willing to spend the ~$40 for the license.
>> Sun violates this patent when Java byte code
>> uses the Java engine to run the code.
> [..]prior art before 1987 is most relevant in this case.
> Try to find examples from 1986 or earlier.
I didn't read the patents, but with respect to the above, the Microsoft "Basic" burned into the ROMs on Apple ][+ computers (Circa 1979) used bytecodes to represent and run the program.
The ascii code you typed in a line at a time was immediately 'compiled' ascii -> binary whenever you entered a new line of source. This 'byte coded binary' that existed in memory at 0x0800 IIRC was then 'list'ed or 'run' via the ROM basic interpreter.
Not sure if there's a fundamental difference between this, and what goes on in the java run time environment, but it sounds similar.
Well, regardless of the hype, I think I'm going to enable the IR firewall on my old Nokia 6190. *afixes black tape strip over top of phone*. Damn, I feel much better now.
It's a distinguishing feature of rush that it does not use a centralized design.
Yes, Rush will fall over if one goes out of their way to submit all the jobs to a single box, the same way one manager will fall over if they have to micromanage 500 employees. That is not how the system was designed to be used, and I warned that the system won't scale if all load is thrown at one box.
The designed behavior is the user s workstation becomes the manager for that user's jobs. That way when multiple users submit jobs, load is automatically distributed to their workstations, avoiding a single point of failure, and a single point of load. Granted, when you were in production, the job checkpointing feature didn't exist yet (the feature in 102.41, released 03/03/2004, that lets one reboot a machine acting as a job server, and the jobs pick up where they left off after the reboot).
IIRC, the folks at . wanted to implement a custom centralized priority mechanism based on a complex model that factored in license counting (a centralized task) instead of using Rush's own priority mechanism. And to implement that, submitted all the jobs at a single Windows machine, instead of distributing to a pool of multiple servers. True, distributing load would have created race conditions for license counting, but a few recoverable license errors due to races with license counting while polling the multiple servers would have been better than the negative effects of centralizing load. I believe that was my recommended position.
Indeed, Rush is not designed to be centralized. If you retrofit a centralized problem on a distributed design, you won't get good results.
It's only fair to mention other customers are using Rush effectively on networks as large as yours, using the default distributed model.
---
full disclosure: I'm the designer of Rush
FILE SERVER
For a large farm, the most important thing is a strong file server that can handle the load you're going to throw at it.
Netapp is a great choice; many production companies, small and large have switched to netapp when all other PC solutions failed (W2K servers, OSX servers, Linux servers), and their problems went away. Netapp is pricey, but you can find used equipment, or rental solutions.
IMHO, linux/windows is great for the nodes, but not as file servers. Linux especially has had its NFS services beaten into submission when you get a 30 host (60 cpu) farm beating on the one linux server over NFS. Whereas an SGI Origin rack mount or Netapp server can handle that and more (100 - 200 hosts).
A problem with Windows servers is that they license connections. If you try to run a Windows XP or 2K system as a file server, you'll quickly find the OS won't let you share the drive to more than 10 machines. You have to run 2K or 2003 Server to server more than that, and you have to make sure you have enough client licenses to serve the network as you grow it. Linux servers (and most other servers, including SGI) have no such connection limit on NFS.
LOAD BALANCING
When you start getting above 100 hosts, consider using a switch that can handle load balancing, so that when the farm is rendering hard, the workstations still get high priority bandwidth to the disk server, otherwise loading a tiny text file from a workstation can take minutes when the farm is being heavily utilized.
With Cisco switches, the terminology is QOS (Quality Of Service), made popular by VoIP services which deal with high volumes of network traffic, which happens to be a similar problem to file system traffic on a render farms.
There are usually two bottle necks; the network at the file server, and the file server itself. Rarely are the workstations/nodes a bottle neck.
SUBNETTING
Sometimes it pays to have multiple network segments all hanging off the same file server, where the server has separate network cards for each segment. This way you distribute the network traffic, rather than concentrating it all at one point (the server's network card).
One way is to put all the workstations on one network, the farm on another. Or split a large farm into separate subnets. You may be able to then use the server's own config to balance the network packets so it gives higher precedence to the workstations, and lower to the farm, so users can access files quickly, no matter how busy the farm is.
AIR CONDITIONING
Especially in hot regions like Los Angeles, it's very important to have a suitable A/C system to keep the machine room cool. Often people have to scramble to upgrade their A/C system when their farm starts heating up, and find out there's no physical way to upgrade their A/C due to the limitations of their machine room, or adequate exposure to the outside for ventilation.
You sysadmins probably want to have a pager system that alerts you when the machine room starts heating up, or a script that shuts down the farm if the temperature exceeds some maximum.
Watching the temp of the cpus is a good way to detect dead or dying CPU fans, the major cause of outages on nodes.
USE AN EXPANDABLE SWITCHBOX
Many of the Belkin switch boxes are chainable, so that you can have literally hundreds of machines accessable from one monitor/keyboard combo.
Get a good expandable switch box so that you can see the physical console of each node, in case the machine(s) blue screen, panic, etc. so you can see what the problem is with a box, so that you can solve it, rather than just rebooting the box regularly. Often problems are obviously advertised on the console, but a cheap farm setup where there's no easy way to see the console of each box (ie. "lets just use remote desktops!") looses the ability to see what's wrong with a machine when it dies. Get to know how to read a BSOD, so you can determine if it's a ram problem, or a driver problem.
COPPER
Hmm, using dialup here in Los Angeles just doesn't seem to make sense no matter how one looks at it.
/cheaper/, and you get a better setup.
Folks I know still using dialup are "trying to keep costs down". But when you figure it out, the price is about the same:
Dialup:
$19/mo for the ISP,
$25/mo for the extra phone line
Total: $44
Cable Modem:
$40 flat
Most people I know have evolved to a second phone line, because they hate missing phone calls because they forgot to hang up the modem or while reading email, esp. if they have kids.
Cable modems (and DSL) seem to be about the same price, if not cheaper; you get a higher speed connection, 24 hour access, no tying up the phone, and in the case of cable modems, you get basic cable thrown in as an extra.
Seems to me it might actually be
Granted, I did have to invest in a $40 firewall to prevent crackerz, but I feel safer with that, than with a software firewall on a dialup.
Also, when there are kids in the house, their computers can all hang off the same NAT'ing firewall, so everyone can read email, surf the internet, etc. at the same time.
I'm not sure what the prices are in the countryside locations or outside the US, but here in the US big cities, it seems like dialup is about the same price, or more expensive, depending on the route you go.
It's of course cheaper if you don't mind double timing your one phone line for reading email.. but people use the net so much now, it can tie up the phone for hours a day, so they get that second line..
>> But Grandma might hear of software X and want
;)
>> it. How will the be done [..]
>
> Not the target audience grandma.
So in other words, don't be afraid to tell grandma "No. You don't want to go there."
It will make a big headache for her and you, and I think she'll realize she doesn't want to go there if you show her on your computer what is involved.
Even if it's some new flower and gardening program.. buy it for her and show her how it works, and if she likes it, get her a separate computer for that, or make the box dual boot; keep the email/web machine simple so she can always fall back to that when frustrated (ie. make it the default boot)
And if she's capable of handling it, then sure, let her play on the Windows box or OSX or Linux with OpenOffice or whatever.
Just be sure not to answer the phone when she calls.
> Do we think Linux is ready for this.
/actually/ run turbotax would already have an understanding of 'running programs', 'navigating', 'using the mouse', etc.
/think/ we're talking about grannys who just want email to see pictures from their kids, or stay in touch via little email letters, or follow an occasional emailed link from the kids to websites like Amazon or the NYTimes, and maybe receive an occasional Flash funny like the Dancing Hampsters or whatever.
/bare/ essentials, that I can /completely/ customize, so that I can disable or enable any hotkeys I want with minimal surprises for grandma if she types incorrectly.
Linux is just an OS; someone just has to put some attention to creating a package that makes a nice simple interface to mail and web. Has nothing to do with the OS, or even X. It's all in the Window Manager that sits on top of X, and the apps.
And I think the apps are there, and simple window managers are there, it's just a matter of someone configuring them to be accessable to technophobes, which means getting rid of all the hotkeys, and simplifying the interface so only the truly essentail stuff is visible (Reply, Forward, etc),
and get rid of the non-essentials (File, Edit, Preferences, etc)
I think Linux is actually easier to customize for the purpose of simplifying the interface down to the bare essentials for a technophobe; there are very simple tiny featureless window managers (flwm) that are easy to customize, and there are highly customizable apps like Opera that can be stripped down to the bare metal, and hot keys made so that the program can be used without a mouse, vis-a-vis web tv.
WebTV (the OLD pre-microsoft w/out all the stupid banner ads and advertising crap) has gotten the closest, I think, to making a usable system with the simplest interface; no mouse, no obscuring windows, no file menus, no drag and drop, no control panels or scary hotkeys like Shift-5times (windows sticky key mode) Alt-Spacebar, Alt-Tab, etc.
> But Grandma might hear of software X and want
> it. How will the be done, aka, I heard I can
> do my taxes on the computer with turboTax
Not the target audience grandma.
Any grandma who wants to
I
I think that linux totally 'ready', and has been ready since it was capable of running a web browser and mail client.
Someone just needs to offer packaged winmanager/apps that remove the extraneous stuff from the web/mail clients, so that they can be navigated entirely from a keyboard, and can be 'windowless' (only one running at a time), and automate all other aspects (internet access, etc), then it's golden.
Honestly, I'm surprised there isn't a package out there now (I haven't checked in the last 6 months), or if there is, these folks are still beta testing on their grandmas.
I was thinking of going with opera (where you can totally customize the keyboard to do all the navigation for you, and strip out all the other dangerous hotkeys) and flwm, a very tiny window manager that only has the
Hope this isn't a RTFAC (C=Carefully), but I don't see in this article if they specify the tests were done with a 64 bit version of the OS and 64 bit binaries for the apps, or just a 32 bit versions.
/think/ it would make a big difference benchmark-wise.. correct me if I am wrong.
Maybe I'm missing it, but in the "OS" category, they only say "Windows XP Profession SP1", no reference that I can see if it's a 64 bit version of the OS or not. Ditto for the apps.
My understanding is (with the current state of affairs, 03/18/2004) if you run to the store and buy an AMD 64 machine, you'll get a 32 bit version of Windows and apps.
But you only get the benefits of eg. >2^32 ram access IF you run a 64 bit OS and 64 bit apps.
Being able to access >2^32 of ram in an app is really useful for 3D rendering of very large projects (a business I happen to associated with), so if the tests are done with 32 bit OS/Apps, the benchmarks would seem to be not so useful for that purpose.
Considering this is a 64 bit processor being evaluated, it would seem lacking not to mention this.
Most folks in 3D evaling AMD 64's are sticking 64 bit os's on there right away (Suse, Gentoo, Fedora/Yarrow, etc), and doing tests with that.
Am I missing the part where they talk about 32 vs. 64 bit OS in these tests? I would
ps. With all those blinking flashing (*!&@# banner adds, it's often hard to RTFAC. I wonder, do schools now give reading comprehension tests in rooms with flashing lights and spinning graphics to simulate 'real world' scenarios? >;)
Has anyone figured out how to burn text on the /data/ side? That'd be sweet.
Often my CD's have a lot of unused tracks in the outer rings that seem ripe for use.
Surely someone out there has made a patch for cdrecord(1) to burn short ascii text messages to the data side, or if it supports multiple lines, and there's enough free space, one could go nuts with banner(6) or figlet(6) %^D
The reason OSX (workstations) are so secure is all services are turned off by default. Definitely a good security strategy. And it's hard to turn the stuff on (no prominent shiny, candy-like buttons to enable them)
But even if those potentially dangerous services are enabled (DNS, sendmail), they're less likely to be cracked because most cracks use buffer overruns that are intel specific code injections.
Intel has been around for 20 years, which means 20 years of people learning assembly, and mature, asswiping documentation on every detail of the processor. And also, long evolved cracking documents/tools.
Where as OSX has only been around a few years. And at the time it came out, many tools (DNS, sendmail) had already become security aware. Viruses had already been running rampant, so Apple was able to start at a point where security issues could be worked into the design. Also, when OSX came out, few people cared about assembly anymore. In the 80's it was necessary, but now, it is less so.
At this particular point in time, if an OSX box and linux box are each running the same buggy version of DNS (the one that had the buffer overrun loophole), surely only the linux box will get rooted, because the rootkits are mostly intel specific. The initial rooting of a machine usually involves an assembly level attack with a buffer overrun.
So it's not even an open source issue; DNS is open source. It's the same code on both platforms. But because Mac's OSX platform hasn't been around for long, is one reason there aren't popular rootkits for it. But if there is one, then it's just a matter of time and desire on the part of crackers.
One thing Mac also has going for it is OSX (workstation) the day it was released, by default had all services disabled. So it's a pretty tough box to crack from day one; even if grandma turns on her new OSX box for the first time, it will likely be more secure than a linux box configured by a seasoned admin setting up linux for the first time. (weeks later: "What, sendmail and portmapper are running? I didn't turn those on!")
So there is less desire to even try to crack a platform that has no services to crack to begin with.
However, with OSX *server* being a bit more recent, eventually cracks may become more desirable because that will have attackable services. But someone will have to learn assembly for the Mac to implement the buffer overrun attacks. And it may take a few years before that becomes as popular as linux rootkits.
It would be good if the Linux distros made it harder for first time users setting up webservers to accidentally leave on useless services like NFS, portmapper, and all those daemons internet servers don't need (lpd, yp, linuxconf, auto-updaters).
Hmm, I wonder what services were enabled on the article's test machines. I guess it wouldn't matter, because an intel buffer overrun injection on a Mac just won't fly.
> but the fact remains that there has yet to be a
> successful American full-length animated feature
> which wasn't considered a "family" movie in the US.
> Ever.
Fritz The Cat: $700k to make, grossed $90 million. Definite profit for the film company. BIG hit in 1970.
Not sure if Bakshi is bending the numbers there, but that's straight from the horses' mouth; (p.45, "Tenacity of the Cockroach", interview with R.Bakshi, ISBN 0-609--80991-1)
I was floored when I saw it as a kid. It was like bugs bunny on PCP, armed and naked.
I dug Bakshi's other feature animated films too; American Pop, Hey Good Lookin, Coonskin. None of those are "family entertainment" (probably not considered 'hits' either, but still great) And some liked 'Wizards' and 'Lord of the Rings'. Not sure the numbers on those. All features, all animated, all american.
> The closest you could possibly get is "Heavy Metal"
Hoo, there are a few good sequences, but so much of the animation was Filmation quality-wise (read: bad)
*digress*
At least WDP's Hercules had some good character design vis-a-vis Gerald Scarfe. But I have to see past the Disney characters to enjoy it for that. I still have the excerpted animated sequences from "The Wall" (Scarfe un-Disneified); those are absolute classic sequences of animation. Those two flowers having sex was intense.. must've taken them forever to animate. And the eagle and marching hammers kicked ass. Too bad there wasn't more of that animation, and less of that kid running around in trenches.
Or maybe the butler's kid decided to grab it.
Yet the guy gets his name slammed in the papers.. kinda a raw deal if he's not the actual perp. How hard do they have to protect the tape in their own home, a safe big enough for all the tapes they receive each year?
More than likely the old guy isn't sitting up all night "vripping" to hard disk, then going out and warchalk hunting for carrier, then wifi'ing it up to the net from his car. Some minion or crook probably nabbed it.