The point is, however, that to PERL the two are equal, even though it knows an "undef" from an empty string. It's a feature.
Actually that ability to compare undef and a value should never have been put into the language. It is just bad programming practice. That's why practically every perl program out there runs with -w and use strict nowadays. I bet perl6 won't even allow that type of stuff, at least not by default.
In this case, str will point to the memory address 0, which is invalid. If you dereference that, your process will terminate. There is a difference between a null string and an empty string, even in C.
Not really. C doesn't have a string type like the languages we're comparing it to. In this example you just have one single variable of type 'char *' with a value of 0. *str isn't a different variable, it is just the same variable with an operator (*) applied. That still isn't the same thing as a null/undefined in perl/python/etc where any given single variable can be 0, some other value, or in the totally separate state of being undefined.
While PERL will (usually) be happy to tell you that a variable that contains an empty string and an uninitialized variable are equal
Not without warning you about your sloppy programming first:
$ perl -w use strict; my $uninit; if( '' eq $uninit ) {
print "equal\n"; } ^D Use of uninitialized value in string eq at - line 5. equal
under C that will create an agregious, and sometimes elusive, bug.
C has no concept of NULL in the same sense that perl and SQL do. In the later, NULL is a distinct entity from 0 or ''. In C, the "NULL" constant is the same thing as 0. That's why it shows up as a wierd bug, because there is no such thing as an uninitialized/undefined/null value in C in that sense. A variable always has a value, just not what you expect.
Part of the definition of NULL is that it is not equal to anything, not even itself. Try this on a compliant database sometime (like postgres): 'select 1 where null=null'. You should get nothing back. This is what the 'is' operator is for, testing to see if something is null. 'select 1 where null is null' will give you a row.
Empty strings on the other hand are equivalent to other empty strings. They also have a type and a length, NULL doesn't.
4,1 has excellent relational support, it is damn near impossible to corrupt if db design is correct, and innodb is great. IIRC./ has been running on mysql + innodb for years. It also support clustering "out of the box".
Excellent relational support? Please. Does 5.0 fix the issue where an insert of an invlalid date into a date field will instead insert '00-00-0000' into the field instead of aborting, like real databases do? And what the fuck is the 00-00-0000 default anyway? That isn't even a valid date unless mysql is running on a 13 month calendar! How about SQL standard comments? How about when you have a NOT NULL column and insert default values, does 5.0 abort or just totally ignore the constraint and insert a 0 or NULL?
Enterprise ready... excellent relational support... sure. They don't even have the relational database 101 stuff working yet.
You bought a *license* to the software, not a copy of the software.
That is what commercial software companies say in the EULA. That does not mean it is true.
If you do not agree to the EULA, return it.
ALL EULA ALWAYS talk about licensing you the software. Especially the first few lines that state the software is licensed, not sold. EULA - End User License Agreement.
What the EULA says does not matter or have any affect on my rights over that copy because I had already gained ownership of the copy before the EULA was ever presented. The act of you purchasing a copy of the software and the vendor presenting you with the EULA are to completely different and unrelated events. Me paying for that copy of the work is what gives me property rights to THAT copy. The EULA is just some optional agreement the vendor presents long after that transaction which usually doesn't grant me any more rights than I had already gained by paying for the copy.
I don't understand why people are so braindead when it comes to software licenses. Geez. If software companies sold you the software, like a 2x4, then you could do anything you want with it including making a private copy and selling the original
I don't understand why people are so braindead about plain old copyright law. Owning a copy of a copyrighted work does not grant you copy rights. It only grants you rights over the one copy you own (and perhaps a few others as defined by fair use, or whatever is left of fair use today).
You don't own anything, but a license that the copyright holder can revoke at any time.
No they can't. If I enter into a contract which grants you rights over some of my property (say, an apartment lease), I cannot revoke the rights I granted you in the agreement at any time unless such a right is specified in our agreement. In the sale of software no such agreement is entered into at the time of purchase, so the copyright holder cannot "revoke" copies they sold unless such a right is given to them by copyright law in that particular country...
You should know better than that. You did not buy anything but a box with shiny discs in them. The software is 0wned by Blizzard and not you.
Bullshit. He bought exactly what Blizzard stated they were selling on the front of the box - a copy of the copyrighted work (WoW). That copy is his private property to do with as he pleases within the bounds of copyright law. The statements in the EULA are irrelevant. You do not need to agree to them to legally acquire a copy of the game.
People are free to "modify or add components to" their personal property whenever they damn well please.
What happened to all the libertarians that used to congregate here?
They're still here. The problem is that unlike you, they may be real libertarians. That means they believe both aspects of libertarianism: freedom and personal responsibility.
These libertarian have a problem with SUVs because the SUV drivers are not held responsible for the extra damage they do to the roads, the extra pollution they put into the air and the additional safety hazard the pose to other drivers. In some states, their burden of responsibility is actually reduced because the SUVs are so heavy they qualify as commercial trucks.
I wouldn't have a single problem with SUV drivers if they would take responsibility for their actions.
We'll see who's fucking themselves when gas costs $5/gallon, family members start getting drafted into the army or killed due to increased terrorist attacks on american soil.
Should I even care since I run UN*X rather than Windows?
Yes. Windows users and non-windows users alike need to care because unfortunatley, we're all connected to the same network. Non-windows users just need to be ready for the bugus requests to their servers for attempted infection, increase of worm emails or spam, maybe a DOS here or there... all a result of these new zombified windows machines being on the internet.
You are allowed to change your house in accordance with their rules as it is zoned. Their zoning is like the EULA. You cannot tear down your home and build a 10 story tower to rent out. So whether you agree to it or not you are participating and bound to these kind of rules all the time. The only reason you are vocal about it now is because someone said Microsoft.
Nonsense. Zoning is a law, an EULA is not. Governments can impose arbitrary regulations on citizens. Private corporations cannot. An unsigned document written by microsoft is no more binding on you than a document I would write that says you must pay me one thousand dollars as a fee for reading this message.
I don't know. What's morally wrong about wantonly shooting people with a gun I paid for and own?
Of course, this is an extreme example. The point of which is, your right to do whatever you want ends when it infringes on other people's rights.
Modifying your own xbox does not infringe upon anyone's rights. Your XBox is your property, not Microsoft's. They do not have any rights over your property that you could possibly infringe upon, except possibly the copyrights on the firmware code & whatnot. However copyright does not prevent you from modifying copies that you own.
Do you have a lot of vanilla x86 boxes laying around that can support 36 10/100 ports,
What Nokia box supports 36 ports? Even the 530s I believe only have two CPCI slots and ~4 on board ports. I know there is one higher up series Nokia makes, maybe that one will do it. But for that kind of money (a lot less actually), yes, I can find an vanilla X86 box that will do that.
includes network processor technology?
Network Processor Technology? Do you work in Nokia's marketing department? Not that that's a bad thing. Anyone who can sell a stripped down 300Mhz cyrix-based PC for $1200 is a fucking genious, marketing-wise.
How about flash-based systems that let you have a redundant configuration that only takes up a total of 1RU of space?
Yeah, how about that? Nokias have plain ATA hard disks, not flash.
How about hot-swappable, front mounted interface cards (hint: rack-mounted network friendly)?
Nokia's CPCI cards are not hot-swappable. Some of them even say so right on the front of the system. I suppose the PCMCIA is hot swap, is that how you're going to get 36 ethernet ports?
How about rock-solid HA (VRRP) or Clustering built into the OS at $0 additional cost
Rock-solid VRRP? ROFLOL... first time I've ever heard anyone use those two words in the same sentence.
You know why IT managers get convinced to buy it? Single source. You buy the platform and have Check Point questions, who do you call? Nokia.
Who in turn passes the buck to Checkpoint if the problem looks like a checkpoint problem or is too complicated for them. One of the first things nokia has you do when you have a problem is fw unloadlocal or cpstop to try and figure out where the blame lies.
If you want a single source with no blamepassing, you find a CSP who supports Checkpoint on Nokia... most of them do since Checkpoint on IPSO is so common.
Since you see the boxes as just PeeCees, I suppose you'd prefer to run CP's SecurePlatform on Dell/HP/IBM units, right?
Yes. Then you really have one source for all software support: Checkpoint.
Ok, here's how your support call goes, "Hi, Dell, I'm running SecurePlatform on my PowerEdge 1850, and it's not working... No, it's not Windows Server, it's not RedHat Enterprise, it's SecurePlatform....
No. You suspect a hardware problem? Ok, swap out the commodity component with a known good one. Tell Dell/HP/IBM you replaced the component with another and now the system works. They give you an RMA number. Done.
Actually, they are not "vanilla X86 boxes", as you say. They have a special chipset to increase throughput between network adapters. The CPU is almost irrelevant for what these machines do, while fat pipes between NICs and the CPU does count.
Where are these special chipsets you speakof?
Here's a snippet from the dmesg output of a 130:
mediagx0 <Cyrix GXLV CPU with PCI/Memory Controller> rev 0 on pci0:0:0 mediagx1 <Cyrix CS5530 PCI to ISA bridge> rev 48 on pci0:18:0 mediagx2 <Cyrix CS5530 SMI> rev 0 on pci0:18:1 mediagx3 <Cyrix CS5530 IDE> rev 0 on pci0:18:2 cyrix 5530
And this from a 380:
pcircc0 <ServerWorks CNB30LC/LE Northbridge> rev 6 on pci0:0:0 pcircc1 <ServerWorks Southbridge> rev 80 on pci0:15:0
We've got a 330 laying around here that I could peek too, but I'm sure I'll find just another X86 chipset... I know that model had a K6-2 under the hood.
And anyway, bandwidth between NICs doesn't matter much for what these things are most commonly used for... running Checkpoint. The packets have to make it into main memory first.
(b) network infrastructure with a security highlight such as dedicated (BSD) firewall boxes and VPN systems.
I have much experience with those pieces of shit.
Its a nice little scheme. These "network infrastructure systems" are basically vanilla X86 boxes with IDE drives and 5-10 year old components (AMD K6-2, Cyrix 233mhz processors) running what is more or less FreeBSD 2.2.6.
And they successfully convince high-level IT management at large companies who don't know any better to pay several thousand dollars per box for these things. And that doesn't even cover a Checkpoint license (which is all anyone does with these things). This side of nokia has got to be rolling in the cash.
Surely this means that the local "Baby Bell" will be able to prevent other companies from using the infrastructure, either directly or by pricing them out of the market?
Well, we could always prevent THEM from using OUR infrastructure if they don't want to play by our rules. They seem to have a lot of trouble remembering that their existance depends upon governments and private property owners granting them permission to place their equipment all over our property.
Maybe as additional wireless frequences are opened up and range is improved that might actually start to become practical. And communities could just run their own wired infrastructure.
However this AP's signal was labeled. "Label" isn't an entirely accurate term when talking about this stuff... the AP wasn't just labeled, it was actively shouting "free".
However if the AP owner didn't mean for it to be doing that, that's perfectly understandable... but this guy shouldn't have been prosecuted for using it. If a store employee accidentally put some non-free food on the table labled "free samples" and you ate it, you wouldn't exect the cops to bust you for theft, would you?
The owner made a mistake, they miscommunicated their intentions. That isn't the user's fault.
Ok, so if you were to walk into the store, grab something and eat it, and walk out without paying for it you'd expect the cops to pick you up for theft, right
Uhh..yea, thats pretty much what I said....
Ok. Now... what if that stuff you ate was sitting on a table labeled "free samples"? Same scenario, just add the "free samples" sign.
If you check further up this thread - he knows who the owners are. He just decided not to ask. He assumes it's not ok with them.
He assumes its not OK with them, or that it is? Their AP was telling him that it was OK to connect.
Ever heard of a cell phone tower which the owners don't want you to connect to?
Sure. All of... Cingular's towers. Mainly because I'm not their customer and my provider has no roaming agreement with them. But more importantly (for this discussion), their towers probably won't allow me to connect at a technical level. My phone has to identify me to the towers so they know who that I'm a customer and who to bill the call to. I could steal someone else's phone's identity and that would be wrong. But this wifi "hacker" didn't do that.
No, I don't own the grocery store. I also don't go in and steal,
Ok, so if you were to walk into the store, grab something and eat it, and walk out without paying for it you'd expect the cops to pick you up for theft, right?
nor do I sit outside and try and rob anyone with groceries who come my way. I go in and PAY for what I want, otherwise I'm stealing. By your example, since I'm outside minding my own business, I should be able to rob anyone of their groceries because they are walking by me.
No, that isn't my example at all. I don't know who these unrelated people are that you're talking about. There are only two people in the analogy: The "hacker" and the AP owner.
RTFA. This was not a public access point in a shop - this was someone's private AP in their house. Likening it to a shop with an "open" sign on it is ridiculous - the AP was private. My unlocked house analogy was much more accurate. 99% of people would realise that it's not their own and therefore realise that it's not theirs to connect to.
First of all, you can't tell for sure that the signal is coming from a residence. You don't know where the AP is physically located. Second, it isn't an impossible scenario that someone would intentionally run an open AP out of their house - I do.
-5, Wrong. Nowhere does it say "OPEN" in the protocol stream or anywhere else..... It simply isn't secured - just like your house doesn't say "OPEN" on it if you forget to lock it. Houses have lots of ways of being locked. Not locking them is not equivalent in ANY WAY WHATSOEVER that any normal non looter would think to having a sign outside saying "OPEN". Why do you think that people selling their houses have to stick a big fucking sign on the lawn saying "OPEN DAY"? Answer: Because no normal people would come in if they didn't!
That analogy doesn't work, but correct - by simply leaving your house door unlocked are not actively offering entry to complete strangers. However this AP wasn't passively just sitting there open, it was actively broadcasting an offer for service onto public/other people's property on public frequencies to complete strangers. If the owner of this AP had so much as configure the AP to SSID broadcasts and send probe responses only to certain MACs I might say you have a point. The way this AP was configured was more like posting signs in the yard and on every piece of public property within 1000 feet saying "open house today".
I meant "Courtesy Knock" as in "letting the person who is paying for the service *know* that you're using the service". The "Courtesy Knock" that you're talking about is network protocols, which can happen from either talking to an AP or plugging directly into a switch. There *is* a difference.
This "courtesy knock" is no more necessary connecting to an open AP than it is walking into a store with an "open" sign on the front. If the store keeper left the store and forgot to set the sign to "closed" and someone walks in after observing the sign, are they guilty of burglary?
You totally miss the point. Your store owner makes a conscious action by putting up the sign. A user who leaves their AP unsecured because it's the default does not. They don't even know that they're indicating openness.
I'm talking about if the store owner leaves the open sign up by accident and leaves the store, intending for it to be closed.
It doesn't matter what you're intentions are if you aren't properly communicating them. At the very least, the person violating them isn't guilty of any wrongdoing if they violate your intentions after you've totally miscommunicated them.
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Actually that ability to compare undef and a value should never have been put into the language. It is just bad programming practice. That's why practically every perl program out there runs with -w and use strict nowadays. I bet perl6 won't even allow that type of stuff, at least not by default.
Not really. C doesn't have a string type like the languages we're comparing it to. In this example you just have one single variable of type 'char *' with a value of 0. *str isn't a different variable, it is just the same variable with an operator (*) applied. That still isn't the same thing as a null/undefined in perl/python/etc where any given single variable can be 0, some other value, or in the totally separate state of being undefined.
Not without warning you about your sloppy programming first:
$ perl -w
use strict;
my $uninit;
if( '' eq $uninit ) {
print "equal\n";
}
^D
Use of uninitialized value in string eq at - line 5.
equal
C has no concept of NULL in the same sense that perl and SQL do. In the later, NULL is a distinct entity from 0 or ''. In C, the "NULL" constant is the same thing as 0. That's why it shows up as a wierd bug, because there is no such thing as an uninitialized/undefined/null value in C in that sense. A variable always has a value, just not what you expect.
This concept is known as ternary logic.
Part of the definition of NULL is that it is not equal to anything, not even itself. Try this on a compliant database sometime (like postgres): 'select 1 where null=null'. You should get nothing back. This is what the 'is' operator is for, testing to see if something is null. 'select 1 where null is null' will give you a row.
Empty strings on the other hand are equivalent to other empty strings. They also have a type and a length, NULL doesn't.
Excellent relational support? Please. Does 5.0 fix the issue where an insert of an invlalid date into a date field will instead insert '00-00-0000' into the field instead of aborting, like real databases do? And what the fuck is the 00-00-0000 default anyway? That isn't even a valid date unless mysql is running on a 13 month calendar! How about SQL standard comments? How about when you have a NOT NULL column and insert default values, does 5.0 abort or just totally ignore the constraint and insert a 0 or NULL?
Enterprise ready... excellent relational support... sure. They don't even have the relational database 101 stuff working yet.
That is what commercial software companies say in the EULA. That does not mean it is true.
What the EULA says does not matter or have any affect on my rights over that copy because I had already gained ownership of the copy before the EULA was ever presented. The act of you purchasing a copy of the software and the vendor presenting you with the EULA are to completely different and unrelated events. Me paying for that copy of the work is what gives me property rights to THAT copy. The EULA is just some optional agreement the vendor presents long after that transaction which usually doesn't grant me any more rights than I had already gained by paying for the copy.
I don't understand why people are so braindead about plain old copyright law. Owning a copy of a copyrighted work does not grant you copy rights. It only grants you rights over the one copy you own (and perhaps a few others as defined by fair use, or whatever is left of fair use today).
No they can't. If I enter into a contract which grants you rights over some of my property (say, an apartment lease), I cannot revoke the rights I granted you in the agreement at any time unless such a right is specified in our agreement. In the sale of software no such agreement is entered into at the time of purchase, so the copyright holder cannot "revoke" copies they sold unless such a right is given to them by copyright law in that particular country...
Bullshit. He bought exactly what Blizzard stated they were selling on the front of the box - a copy of the copyrighted work (WoW). That copy is his private property to do with as he pleases within the bounds of copyright law. The statements in the EULA are irrelevant. You do not need to agree to them to legally acquire a copy of the game.
People are free to "modify or add components to" their personal property whenever they damn well please.
I don't understand. Can you give that to me in football fields, or number of times around the world?
They're still here. The problem is that unlike you, they may be real libertarians. That means they believe both aspects of libertarianism: freedom and personal responsibility.
These libertarian have a problem with SUVs because the SUV drivers are not held responsible for the extra damage they do to the roads, the extra pollution they put into the air and the additional safety hazard the pose to other drivers. In some states, their burden of responsibility is actually reduced because the SUVs are so heavy they qualify as commercial trucks.
I wouldn't have a single problem with SUV drivers if they would take responsibility for their actions.
We'll see who's fucking themselves when gas costs $5/gallon, family members start getting drafted into the army or killed due to increased terrorist attacks on american soil.
Yes. Windows users and non-windows users alike need to care because unfortunatley, we're all connected to the same network. Non-windows users just need to be ready for the bugus requests to their servers for attempted infection, increase of worm emails or spam, maybe a DOS here or there... all a result of these new zombified windows machines being on the internet.
Nonsense. Zoning is a law, an EULA is not. Governments can impose arbitrary regulations on citizens. Private corporations cannot. An unsigned document written by microsoft is no more binding on you than a document I would write that says you must pay me one thousand dollars as a fee for reading this message.
Modifying your own xbox does not infringe upon anyone's rights. Your XBox is your property, not Microsoft's. They do not have any rights over your property that you could possibly infringe upon, except possibly the copyrights on the firmware code & whatnot. However copyright does not prevent you from modifying copies that you own.
What Nokia box supports 36 ports? Even the 530s I believe only have two CPCI slots and ~4 on board ports. I know there is one higher up series Nokia makes, maybe that one will do it. But for that kind of money (a lot less actually), yes, I can find an vanilla X86 box that will do that.
Network Processor Technology? Do you work in Nokia's marketing department? Not that that's a bad thing. Anyone who can sell a stripped down 300Mhz cyrix-based PC for $1200 is a fucking genious, marketing-wise.
Yeah, how about that? Nokias have plain ATA hard disks, not flash.
Nokia's CPCI cards are not hot-swappable. Some of them even say so right on the front of the system. I suppose the PCMCIA is hot swap, is that how you're going to get 36 ethernet ports?
Rock-solid VRRP? ROFLOL... first time I've ever heard anyone use those two words in the same sentence.
Who in turn passes the buck to Checkpoint if the problem looks like a checkpoint problem or is too complicated for them. One of the first things nokia has you do when you have a problem is fw unloadlocal or cpstop to try and figure out where the blame lies.
If you want a single source with no blamepassing, you find a CSP who supports Checkpoint on Nokia... most of them do since Checkpoint on IPSO is so common.
Yes. Then you really have one source for all software support: Checkpoint.
No. You suspect a hardware problem? Ok, swap out the commodity component with a known good one. Tell Dell/HP/IBM you replaced the component with another and now the system works. They give you an RMA number. Done.
Where are these special chipsets you speakof?
Here's a snippet from the dmesg output of a 130:And this from a 380:We've got a 330 laying around here that I could peek too, but I'm sure I'll find just another X86 chipset... I know that model had a K6-2 under the hood.
And anyway, bandwidth between NICs doesn't matter much for what these things are most commonly used for... running Checkpoint. The packets have to make it into main memory first.
I have much experience with those pieces of shit.
Its a nice little scheme. These "network infrastructure systems" are basically vanilla X86 boxes with IDE drives and 5-10 year old components (AMD K6-2, Cyrix 233mhz processors) running what is more or less FreeBSD 2.2.6.
And they successfully convince high-level IT management at large companies who don't know any better to pay several thousand dollars per box for these things. And that doesn't even cover a Checkpoint license (which is all anyone does with these things). This side of nokia has got to be rolling in the cash.
Well, we could always prevent THEM from using OUR infrastructure if they don't want to play by our rules. They seem to have a lot of trouble remembering that their existance depends upon governments and private property owners granting them permission to place their equipment all over our property.
Maybe as additional wireless frequences are opened up and range is improved that might actually start to become practical. And communities could just run their own wired infrastructure.
However this AP's signal was labeled. "Label" isn't an entirely accurate term when talking about this stuff... the AP wasn't just labeled, it was actively shouting "free".
However if the AP owner didn't mean for it to be doing that, that's perfectly understandable... but this guy shouldn't have been prosecuted for using it. If a store employee accidentally put some non-free food on the table labled "free samples" and you ate it, you wouldn't exect the cops to bust you for theft, would you?
The owner made a mistake, they miscommunicated their intentions. That isn't the user's fault.
Ok. Now... what if that stuff you ate was sitting on a table labeled "free samples"? Same scenario, just add the "free samples" sign.
He assumes its not OK with them, or that it is? Their AP was telling him that it was OK to connect.
Sure. All of... Cingular's towers. Mainly because I'm not their customer and my provider has no roaming agreement with them. But more importantly (for this discussion), their towers probably won't allow me to connect at a technical level. My phone has to identify me to the towers so they know who that I'm a customer and who to bill the call to. I could steal someone else's phone's identity and that would be wrong. But this wifi "hacker" didn't do that.
Ok, so if you were to walk into the store, grab something and eat it, and walk out without paying for it you'd expect the cops to pick you up for theft, right?
No, that isn't my example at all. I don't know who these unrelated people are that you're talking about. There are only two people in the analogy: The "hacker" and the AP owner.
Is the grocery store you buy your food at yours?
First of all, you can't tell for sure that the signal is coming from a residence. You don't know where the AP is physically located. Second, it isn't an impossible scenario that someone would intentionally run an open AP out of their house - I do.
That analogy doesn't work, but correct - by simply leaving your house door unlocked are not actively offering entry to complete strangers. However this AP wasn't passively just sitting there open, it was actively broadcasting an offer for service onto public/other people's property on public frequencies to complete strangers. If the owner of this AP had so much as configure the AP to SSID broadcasts and send probe responses only to certain MACs I might say you have a point. The way this AP was configured was more like posting signs in the yard and on every piece of public property within 1000 feet saying "open house today".
This "courtesy knock" is no more necessary connecting to an open AP than it is walking into a store with an "open" sign on the front. If the store keeper left the store and forgot to set the sign to "closed" and someone walks in after observing the sign, are they guilty of burglary?
I'm talking about if the store owner leaves the open sign up by accident and leaves the store, intending for it to be closed.
It doesn't matter what you're intentions are if you aren't properly communicating them. At the very least, the person violating them isn't guilty of any wrongdoing if they violate your intentions after you've totally miscommunicated them.