One thing that I would add though, based on my experience of working as a DJ briefly for university goth/metal clubs is that lighting is very important.
I've worked in many clubs & university setups where the cd-decks were old, the turntables were nasty, but they had ultra-modern lighting rigs setup for the times when bands would perform.
I hate being in a club where the DJ is doing a good job with the music, people are dancing/drinking and the lights are setup on an automated spotlight pattern.
As far as I'm concerned lighting is part of the job, and if you can read a few manuals for the setup you're working with you can do some pretty amazing things with minimal effort. If you know the songs you can do timed things manually - eg. blackout during a pause in the music, strobing at appropriate points (but don't overuse strobes!)
For the bigger locations you might find that you can't do both, but if you can you certainly should. Your job as DJ is to provide both atmosphere and music. Doing clever things with lighting is a way of doing that.
It is not that different, except maybe that Debian does not change as quickly as Gentoo.
I follow Debian's unstable brance, sid, so I download multiple new/updated packages every night!
But thanks for telling me about the feature-removal, that does make the USE flags more useful than I'd imagined. I guess you do learn something new every day on/.!
Hey if it works for you I've no interest in converting you.. but I have to comment.
1.) Maintainability: I don't have to fiddle with 30+ binary dependencies when I upgrade a package, nor do I worry about having multiple library versions within the same major release
Two seperate comments. Why do you care how many binary dependencies there are? I'd imagine that you have only changed the problem from multiple binary dependencies to multiple source rebuilds.
Imagine what happens when libpng4 comes out - every program using libpng must be rebuilt to get the new features, so you've only sidestepped the problem.
Having multiple versions of libraries installed isn't a big deal either, unless you're tight on space. And if you're tight on space the idea of compiling large applications probably isn't something you'd appreciate anyway!
The lack of binary packages you mention seems to be more a deficit in Slakware than a Gentoo-specific gain I'd suggest too. Similarly Debian has a huge archive of software, and so do the "bigger" distributions such as RedHat and SuSE.
The story, and comment, is almost certain to generate a flamefest. So I'll get in early.
I'm a Debian user, and there are three things I know about gentoo:
The distro is based around compiling from source, which many suggest gives a huge speedup.
They have some neat tools for working with file merging conflicts in/etc, which sometimes happen when upgrading.
They make use of "USE" flags which can disable parts of programs you don't want/need.
As for the first I think that compiling from source may well give you a speedup. But when my computer is setting with me at the desktop/ssh session very few processes are running and the network latency / my thinking time are most likely to be the biggest source of delays.
True for heavily loaded servers the compilation might give you a boost but I'd be suprised if it was significant.
Next we have USE flags. These do strike me as an insanely useful thing. But I have one niggling little doubt: I suspect they only work for code that supports it. e.g. project foo has optional support for libbar. If the upstream/original code doesn't have a feature marked as optional I don't imagine the Gentoo people would rework it to strip it out.
So the ability to remove things from the source must be neutered, right?
Finally the merging of configuration files in/etc seems useful. But I wonder if this is the correct approach. My distribution of choice, Debian, already does its utmost to preserve all configuration file changes automagically. I find it hard to understand what Gentoo does differently which makes it better.
Ultimately I guess there are pros and cons to source based distributions depending on your needs. But one thing is true: If you're building from source and making use of modified USE flags and compiler flags then changes are you're the only person in the planet with a particular setup - that means bug reports are hard to manage.
Theres a great deal to be said from having a thousand machines running identical binaries when it comes to tracking down bugs. (Sure diversity is good, especially for security, but there comes a point where maybe people take it a little bit too far).
ObDisclaimer: I'm happy to be educated about Gentoo, but be gentle with me, k?
I could be signed off sick for six weeks solid before the wheels are set in motion to assess my future position with the company.
I'd guess that you'd be OK if you were really "signed off" - since that means that you've been to a doctor and they have attested to you being unfit for work, right?
I don't know about you, but over here in the UK there are some good rules in place for permanent staff (ie. not contractors).
Last year I was ill to the extent that I was signed off work for seven months by my doctor, and during that time I was initially concerned I might lose my job. It turns out there are some good rules in place where its practically impossible for you to be fired if you have a doctors opinion that you're genuinely unfit for work.
Sure things get harder and you start to lose money. (I think I went down to 75% of my annual/usual salary after three months and if I'd been off much longer I would have gone down more). But if you're genuinely ill and have a signoff from the doctor to cofirm/corroborate/agree with that you're pretty much OK.
My plan when I went looking for the place I eventually bought was to make sure the bedroom was empty. Have a rectangular room a big wooden four-pster bed in it and nothing else.
Real life interfered a lot, so I have to have clothes, books, and even a computer desk in there at the moment - but one day I will own a house which has a room which is literally just a bed-room.
Perfect for reading/cuddling/relaxing in. With nothing to distract or tidy.
The way you read the question seems to make more sense than the way I did.
I'm not sure really how to handle this situation then.
If the OP doesn't have permission to script the copying of some files to/etc/bash_completion.d/, or similar, I guess the question comes down to scripting the addition of the macros on all the client machines via a login script, or some other Windows-magic
That might work out nicely if the users are all in a single Windows domain.
I find the idea, though, of macros for SSH access being applied on the client side a bit disturbing. What if you typed "ls" and the macro changed it into "rm" ?
I'm guessing from the mention of Windows that you're thinking of things like:
alias del='rm'
alias dir='ls'
Hard to say with such a vague question though, especially with the idea that the client must support the aliases. The clients I've used terraterm and PuTTY are the most commonly used, and putty at least doesn't support aliases. (Can't recall terraterm using them either, but I admit I didn't use it often).
Personally I think that having DOS-style aliases is a mistake. Even though they might seem helpful to users of DOS/Windows it can cause problems when people realise the commands, even aliased, don't work in the way that they'd expect.
Unless you could offer a 100% compatible environment it would be best to let people realise that Unix is different and work with it as it should be.
It might be a good book but I was disappointed to learn that the hack you mentioned wasn't even SSH-specific, just involving creating shell scripts / aliases to avoid typing.
If you want to really "turbo-charge" your SSH logins you might want to look at one of the newer features of OpenSSH v4 reusing existing connections.
Yeah I do remember lurking upon the lua-users mailing list and seeing the start of the standardisation for the 5.1 module loading API.
That is definitely a good thing, and makes it a lot easier to distribute non-core extensions. (although my extensions for Lua 5.0 were simple enough to write).
Neat to hear that there is an SDL binding though, thanks!
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the US govt has had a back-door inserted into Vista.
Frankly I think it sounds insane.
Think of the number of people who work at Microsoft, even if you limit yourself to the people working upon the OS and not Office, etc, you're talking about literally hundreds of people who can view the source.
Then there are the people who gain access to the source code under educational licenses, NDAs, etc.
The idea that all of them could miss something that was a backdoor is a little hard to swallow. If there were something in the code that was meant to be used then I'm sure it would have been spotted.
(I guess you could say that the recent WMF vulnerability was in the code for years and nobody spotted it - but that is a relatively simple mistake and small piece of code.)
And even if there were a backdoor in the code, what does that even mean?
Would it cause the machine to reformat? Disable the firewall? (Thatd be useless behind a NATing device) Make outgoing connections to Microsoft? (That'd fail for non-connected hosts, and be caught by many people with hardware firewalls / etc).
Really this just sounds like a conspiracy theory..
Lua is an interesting language, and it is already well known for its use in games.
Personally I've written a couple of simple games using a framework of SDL + C, all the logic goes inside loadable Lua code.
It is very simple to write, say, an SDL + C program to display a board for othello, and handle clicks, etc. Then you can write the AI in lua, and handle the toggling of the pieces, and scoring easily.
Writing the game soley in Lua I think would be trickier. Although I've been out of the Lua world for a while I don't recal seeing a Lua + SDL binding. If there is though, great!
(I still get a little annoyed with Lua at times because the default installation doesn't have code for doing simple things like reading the files in directories; handy for loading plugins, etc. Thankfully writing a simple filesystem extension is trivial. I even wrote a simple networking library for lua too:)
I loved the old manual to the 48K ZX Spectrum which was my first computer, and used the reference table at the back to learn machine code.
POKEing the code into memory, and working out the offsets for the jumps on graph paper - because I couldn't afford an assembler!
I can still remember a lot of z80 machine code. And I still have a couple of printed magazines when I got game-hacks printed. (Infinite lives for a couple of games - still without any assembler/decompiler!)
When it comes down to it, my grandmother has never had problems getting a VHS tape to play.
Whilst what you say is generally true I know that there were times when videos weren't so simple, that is when they were rented.
With my parents old video player there were commonly problems with "tracking" on rented tapes. Whether that was due to their player, or the oldish tapes which had been viewed a lot I'm not sure.. but there were times when a rented tape was returned unwatched because it simply wouldn't work.
By contrast I've never had a DVD that didn't work even after physical abuse. Non-skippable introductions and the mandatory "press play" aside DVDs are a lot easier and more reliable.
Interestingly I'm just about ready to start doing this kind of work.
In the past I've had several clients who've heard of me and asked me to spec/setup a new server for them. Usually that is all it is, but sometimes I get asked to do security scans, or apply updates.
Whilst I do work fulltime I'm beginning to think that I could do a good job if I were to allocate one day a week to dealing with clients (applying patches, general preventative work, etc) and looking for new clients.
I don't expect to be able to earn a living at it, but I'm definitely wanting to try a more pro-active approach to doing these jobs. The variety is interesting, and getting recommendations shouldn't be too hard from previous people.
As already mentioned I suspect the hardest part will be the rare on-site work.
The same thing happened to the Apache section. Maybe they were removed because they were used very infrequantly?
(Definitely the case for the Apache section, although I know there have been a couple of BSD pieces quite recently. They both still get less traffic than the other topics.)
Being on dial-up might even be worse for your security, since most people who have only dial-up will ignore security updates. (Predictably enough, downloading large patches is more troublesome when you have a slow and infrequent network connection)
I install a few servers for local people every now and again and frequently get mails asking me to come visit small companies to tighten up their networks.
I could "sell" maybe a third of them on the idea of a caching-proxy server (squid) setup and managed for 400 UK pounds. Up the price to 700 and the uptake was higher.
I felt bad for charging so much for free software, but if that is what it takes..
I've not seen any svelte malware since the late 90s.
Nowadays we see worm programs with their own SMTP engines, mailing copies of their code to all and sundry - with a typical size of 200k. Not svelte, slim, or small in any way.
When I did assembly-coding my viruses were in the order of 300bytes-2k tops.
I'm a Debian developer and system administrator and I love using Debian in production environments. It is definitely an enterprise-ready distribution (whatever that really means.)
Having said that there are times when I can't use it, much as it pains me. For example today I'm installing SuSE enterprise server on a new box for a client - they demand this so they can get Oracle support. (Even though in practise this will never be needed.)
There are a lot of Debian System Administrators who are happy with Debian in large environments.
Slashdot Mirror
Notice the comment at the top of the sudoers file?
"# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root."If you read and follow that advice you'll find you get a warning if you create a bogus file, and you wouldn't get into problems...
Good points, and agreed on all counts.
One thing that I would add though, based on my experience of working as a DJ briefly for university goth/metal clubs is that lighting is very important.
I've worked in many clubs & university setups where the cd-decks were old, the turntables were nasty, but they had ultra-modern lighting rigs setup for the times when bands would perform.
I hate being in a club where the DJ is doing a good job with the music, people are dancing/drinking and the lights are setup on an automated spotlight pattern.
As far as I'm concerned lighting is part of the job, and if you can read a few manuals for the setup you're working with you can do some pretty amazing things with minimal effort. If you know the songs you can do timed things manually - eg. blackout during a pause in the music, strobing at appropriate points (but don't overuse strobes!)
For the bigger locations you might find that you can't do both, but if you can you certainly should. Your job as DJ is to provide both atmosphere and music. Doing clever things with lighting is a way of doing that.
I follow Debian's unstable brance, sid, so I download multiple new/updated packages every night!
But thanks for telling me about the feature-removal, that does make the USE flags more useful than I'd imagined. I guess you do learn something new every day on /.!
Hey if it works for you I've no interest in converting you .. but I have to comment.
1.) Maintainability: I don't have to fiddle with 30+ binary dependencies when I upgrade a package, nor do I worry about having multiple library versions within the same major releaseTwo seperate comments. Why do you care how many binary dependencies there are? I'd imagine that you have only changed the problem from multiple binary dependencies to multiple source rebuilds.
Imagine what happens when libpng4 comes out - every program using libpng must be rebuilt to get the new features, so you've only sidestepped the problem.
Having multiple versions of libraries installed isn't a big deal either, unless you're tight on space. And if you're tight on space the idea of compiling large applications probably isn't something you'd appreciate anyway!
The lack of binary packages you mention seems to be more a deficit in Slakware than a Gentoo-specific gain I'd suggest too. Similarly Debian has a huge archive of software, and so do the "bigger" distributions such as RedHat and SuSE.
The story, and comment, is almost certain to generate a flamefest. So I'll get in early.
I'm a Debian user, and there are three things I know about gentoo:
As for the first I think that compiling from source may well give you a speedup. But when my computer is setting with me at the desktop/ssh session very few processes are running and the network latency / my thinking time are most likely to be the biggest source of delays.
True for heavily loaded servers the compilation might give you a boost but I'd be suprised if it was significant.
Next we have USE flags. These do strike me as an insanely useful thing. But I have one niggling little doubt: I suspect they only work for code that supports it. e.g. project foo has optional support for libbar. If the upstream/original code doesn't have a feature marked as optional I don't imagine the Gentoo people would rework it to strip it out.
So the ability to remove things from the source must be neutered, right?
Finally the merging of configuration files in /etc seems useful. But I wonder if this is the correct approach. My distribution of choice, Debian, already does its utmost to preserve all configuration file changes automagically. I find it hard to understand what Gentoo does differently which makes it better.
Ultimately I guess there are pros and cons to source based distributions depending on your needs. But one thing is true: If you're building from source and making use of modified USE flags and compiler flags then changes are you're the only person in the planet with a particular setup - that means bug reports are hard to manage.
Theres a great deal to be said from having a thousand machines running identical binaries when it comes to tracking down bugs. (Sure diversity is good, especially for security, but there comes a point where maybe people take it a little bit too far).
ObDisclaimer: I'm happy to be educated about Gentoo, but be gentle with me, k?
I'd guess that you'd be OK if you were really "signed off" - since that means that you've been to a doctor and they have attested to you being unfit for work, right?
I don't know about you, but over here in the UK there are some good rules in place for permanent staff (ie. not contractors).
Last year I was ill to the extent that I was signed off work for seven months by my doctor, and during that time I was initially concerned I might lose my job. It turns out there are some good rules in place where its practically impossible for you to be fired if you have a doctors opinion that you're genuinely unfit for work.
Sure things get harder and you start to lose money. (I think I went down to 75% of my annual/usual salary after three months and if I'd been off much longer I would have gone down more). But if you're genuinely ill and have a signoff from the doctor to cofirm/corroborate/agree with that you're pretty much OK.
Scary place to be, but not the end of the world.
Lights can be ceiling spotlights. And alarm clocks aren't necessary if you tend to get up early anyway!
My plan when I went looking for the place I eventually bought was to make sure the bedroom was empty. Have a rectangular room a big wooden four-pster bed in it and nothing else.
Real life interfered a lot, so I have to have clothes, books, and even a computer desk in there at the moment - but one day I will own a house which has a room which is literally just a bed-room.
Perfect for reading/cuddling/relaxing in. With nothing to distract or tidy.
The way you read the question seems to make more sense than the way I did.
I'm not sure really how to handle this situation then.
If the OP doesn't have permission to script the copying of some files to /etc/bash_completion.d/, or similar, I guess the question comes down to scripting the addition of the macros on all the client machines via a login script, or some other Windows-magic
That might work out nicely if the users are all in a single Windows domain.
I find the idea, though, of macros for SSH access being applied on the client side a bit disturbing. What if you typed "ls" and the macro changed it into "rm" ?
I'm guessing from the mention of Windows that you're thinking of things like:
alias del='rm'alias dir='ls'
Hard to say with such a vague question though, especially with the idea that the client must support the aliases. The clients I've used terraterm and PuTTY are the most commonly used, and putty at least doesn't support aliases. (Can't recall terraterm using them either, but I admit I didn't use it often).
Personally I think that having DOS-style aliases is a mistake. Even though they might seem helpful to users of DOS/Windows it can cause problems when people realise the commands, even aliased, don't work in the way that they'd expect.
Unless you could offer a 100% compatible environment it would be best to let people realise that Unix is different and work with it as it should be.
Apparently he claimed to have degree(s) he didn't really posess.
It might be a good book but I was disappointed to learn that the hack you mentioned wasn't even SSH-specific, just involving creating shell scripts / aliases to avoid typing.
If you want to really "turbo-charge" your SSH logins you might want to look at one of the newer features of OpenSSH v4 reusing existing connections.
Yeah I do remember lurking upon the lua-users mailing list and seeing the start of the standardisation for the 5.1 module loading API.
That is definitely a good thing, and makes it a lot easier to distribute non-core extensions. (although my extensions for Lua 5.0 were simple enough to write).
Neat to hear that there is an SDL binding though, thanks!
Frankly I think it sounds insane.
Think of the number of people who work at Microsoft, even if you limit yourself to the people working upon the OS and not Office, etc, you're talking about literally hundreds of people who can view the source.
Then there are the people who gain access to the source code under educational licenses, NDAs, etc.
The idea that all of them could miss something that was a backdoor is a little hard to swallow. If there were something in the code that was meant to be used then I'm sure it would have been spotted.
(I guess you could say that the recent WMF vulnerability was in the code for years and nobody spotted it - but that is a relatively simple mistake and small piece of code.)
And even if there were a backdoor in the code, what does that even mean?
Would it cause the machine to reformat? Disable the firewall? (Thatd be useless behind a NATing device) Make outgoing connections to Microsoft? (That'd fail for non-connected hosts, and be caught by many people with hardware firewalls / etc).
Really this just sounds like a conspiracy theory ..
Lua is an interesting language, and it is already well known for its use in games.
Personally I've written a couple of simple games using a framework of SDL + C, all the logic goes inside loadable Lua code.
It is very simple to write, say, an SDL + C program to display a board for othello, and handle clicks, etc. Then you can write the AI in lua, and handle the toggling of the pieces, and scoring easily.
Writing the game soley in Lua I think would be trickier. Although I've been out of the Lua world for a while I don't recal seeing a Lua + SDL binding. If there is though, great!
(I still get a little annoyed with Lua at times because the default installation doesn't have code for doing simple things like reading the files in directories; handy for loading plugins, etc. Thankfully writing a simple filesystem extension is trivial. I even wrote a simple networking library for lua too :)
I loved the old manual to the 48K ZX Spectrum which was my first computer, and used the reference table at the back to learn machine code.
POKEing the code into memory, and working out the offsets for the jumps on graph paper - because I couldn't afford an assembler!
I can still remember a lot of z80 machine code. And I still have a couple of printed magazines when I got game-hacks printed. (Infinite lives for a couple of games - still without any assembler/decompiler!)
When it comes down to it, my grandmother has never had problems getting a VHS tape to play.
Whilst what you say is generally true I know that there were times when videos weren't so simple, that is when they were rented.
With my parents old video player there were commonly problems with "tracking" on rented tapes. Whether that was due to their player, or the oldish tapes which had been viewed a lot I'm not sure.. but there were times when a rented tape was returned unwatched because it simply wouldn't work.
By contrast I've never had a DVD that didn't work even after physical abuse. Non-skippable introductions and the mandatory "press play" aside DVDs are a lot easier and more reliable.
Sadly many projects which have never appeared have also taken pre-orderes.
So this "justification" doesn't amount to very much. I'd love to have a look at the prices, but sadly the site is down so I can't.
Interestingly I'm just about ready to start doing this kind of work.
In the past I've had several clients who've heard of me and asked me to spec/setup a new server for them. Usually that is all it is, but sometimes I get asked to do security scans, or apply updates.
Whilst I do work fulltime I'm beginning to think that I could do a good job if I were to allocate one day a week to dealing with clients (applying patches, general preventative work, etc) and looking for new clients.
I don't expect to be able to earn a living at it, but I'm definitely wanting to try a more pro-active approach to doing these jobs. The variety is interesting, and getting recommendations shouldn't be too hard from previous people.
As already mentioned I suspect the hardest part will be the rare on-site work.
The same thing happened to the Apache section. Maybe they were removed because they were used very infrequantly?
(Definitely the case for the Apache section, although I know there have been a couple of BSD pieces quite recently. They both still get less traffic than the other topics.)
I'm sure they do.
Right now it is not uncommon for driver installations to "pretend" they are signed - by clicking "I agree", etc, during their installation process.
Being on dial-up might even be worse for your security, since most people who have only dial-up will ignore security updates. (Predictably enough, downloading large patches is more troublesome when you have a slow and infrequent network connection)
Definitely true.
I install a few servers for local people every now and again and frequently get mails asking me to come visit small companies to tighten up their networks.
I could "sell" maybe a third of them on the idea of a caching-proxy server (squid) setup and managed for 400 UK pounds. Up the price to 700 and the uptake was higher.
I felt bad for charging so much for free software, but if that is what it takes ..
I've not seen any svelte malware since the late 90s.
Nowadays we see worm programs with their own SMTP engines, mailing copies of their code to all and sundry - with a typical size of 200k. Not svelte, slim, or small in any way.
When I did assembly-coding my viruses were in the order of 300bytes-2k tops.
I'm a Debian developer and system administrator and I love using Debian in production environments. It is definitely an enterprise-ready distribution (whatever that really means.)
Having said that there are times when I can't use it, much as it pains me. For example today I'm installing SuSE enterprise server on a new box for a client - they demand this so they can get Oracle support. (Even though in practise this will never be needed.)
There are a lot of Debian System Administrators who are happy with Debian in large environments.
Of course I'm biased since I look after a sysadminish Debian site..