I for one am sick of finding files from install packages all over the place. Everyone and their mother is sick of this. Apps should install into ONE directory only. They can symlink everything they want everywhere else (/etc and/log come to mind) but at least that lets us get an idea of where the mess all came from, and when we delete the directory we can also delete all dangling symlinks and truly get rid of stuff.
Please read the Linux FHS 2.2 doc and subscribe to the FHS mailing list. To summarize for our impatient friend:
Distro packages go into/usr.
Anything other than distro packages is a "local issue"; i.e. explicitly left out of the spec.
Most distributions are constantly changing what is part of the distro by including popular packages. Thus, the drive by RedHat and others to install everything in some subdirectory of/usr, with the idea that "it's OK to install there now, since the package may become standard in the future, and we need to be forward-compatible".
That having been said, after-market packages should go into/opt, with the understanding that there is no central namespace authority for directories under/opt. One (of many) current (non-normative) proposals is to have/opt/package/rev/{bin|lib|...}.
The main point of contention seems to be, where do you put packages which may be part of one distro and not another? The answer seems to be, if it's part of the distro, it goes under/usr, but if it isn't, the very same package goes under/opt. Deal with it, or send your ideas to the mailing list.
RedHat's package manager doesn't follow the standard. The only fully-compliant package manager I personally have seen uses relative-path tarballs.
Most distros install everything into/usr/bin instead of/opt/package/bin as they should because it leads to fewer $PATH headaches. It has been suggested on the mailing list that there should be an/opt/bin which contains symlinks into all of the/opt/package/bin directories, but this is not official spec.
There are several problems with installing everything in one place:
Some distros support more than one hardware platform. In particular, some distros support both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. So where do you put your glibc and interpreters? Some have suggested/lib and/lib64, or/lib32 and/lib as the case may be. What about/etc in this case?
Some distros consider sh to be fundamental, and bash as an add-on. Most sane people put sh in/bin, some duplicate it in/sbin, but where should bash go? If you have system startup scripts written for bash but not sh, then you need/bin/bash. Some distros don't care, and have/usr/bin/bash. Who's right? They both are.
I could mention about 15 other incompatibilities, but I suggest you go read the mailing list archives. The upshot is, this is a work in progress, and if you feel you have anything to contribute, send us mail.
If the Hollings bill passes, one day your computer will break, you'll look around, and there won't be any more to buy. You'll pay for this or live without computers (or toasters, if it passes in the form i read it). That's the evil - that you won't be able to get a general purpose computer or media player even if you don't want the compelling content.
You mean to say, "... buy in the US". I'd love to give money to our friends in Canada or Mexico, unless they try to stop computer/IT imports. Picture Sen Hollings on the Mexico border, trying to stop people from smuggling in illegal sticks of RAM. Too bad he has to chase after them on foot, because his (now illegal) car had a built-in MP3 player.
There is a clear difference between addiction and habit. Addiction is generally defined as a chemical dependency, where the brain's chemical balances and hormones get thrown out of whack. Addiction isn't something from which one can just "walk away". Returning an addict's brain chemistry to normal is usually just as traumatic as becoming addicted, because the brain has already accepted the imbalanced chemistry as "normal". Hence, chemical withdrawl. People who walk away from bad habits may suffer psychological withdrawl, but that usually clears up quickly with no physiological side effects.
As some previous posters have pointed out, you can walk away from surfing the web, or gaming, and within a week or two you feel recovered. That's because you're not screwing up your brain with drugs, altering the chemistry. Psychological addiction can also occur, but the general use of "addiction" to describe unwanted habits is slang, not technical.
You could check any 10 digit number (and expdate with a lune check if available) but with all the different formatting done on CC numbers (XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, etc) the algorithm could get ugly to maintain.
In my ideal world, and what I attempt to practice on a daily basis (when not confronted by next-day deadlines) is the following, simple method for coding: don't write a single line of code until all the (function-level) comments are written. Period. If your design is so weak that you can't do this, re-design. Once comments are written for each function, implementation is automatic. Each function has a well-explained interface, all variables are accounted for, etc. And for the naysayers out there, the total time involved is actually less than seat-of-your-pants coding. Yes, more time is spent up front, but much, much less is spent in implementation and bug-checking.
Wearing my programming hat, I have to use the right tool for the job. If I don't need lots of nifty DB features, I'll use my native filesystem structure to store data, or even a flat file. Remember those? If I need bells & whistles, I'll choose a DB that has just what I need, and no more. Why waste cycles (or licensing fees) on worthless features? If I need transactions (for example), and I don't want to spend $$ on proprietary DB licenses or on man-hours trying to figure out a complicated open-source DB (remember TCO?), I'll code it myself with something simple like MySQL on the back end. If I do need scalability/lots more features/whatever, I'll pony up the time/money for the big boys.
Is anyone else creeped out by Andrea Thompson (aka Talia Winters) giving CNN updates? I mean, I always knew the PsyCorps would eventually take over our news media, but it seems they've stepped up their timetable...
She even asked a terrorism expert whether we would be giving up personal liberties for security. Creeeeeeepy.
I'm sure he'll be really happy when, five minutes after he (and the rest of the world) learns all of the "anti-democratic" secrets, he's bombed out of existence by a foriegn power. Or domestic power, does everyone think all of us are so high-and-mighty?
And I don't buy the, "well, they were going to be gotten rid of anyway" argument. Just because someone else was going to kill your neighbor down the street if you didn't doesn't mean it's ok for you to go ahead and do it.
<troll>
I will go on record to say that a person's worth is determined by what he or she has done with their life. Your neighbor down the street has done a lot more (good or ill) with their life than some frozen clump of cells; hence, is worth more. Thus, your comparison is apple and oranges.
The clump of cells could have been a Nobel winner or it could have been a new Hitler. But I'll also say I don't have much use for people who are full of "could have"s. Those people are generally all words and no action anyway.
Flame away. </troll>
Ob-bio: I think it's a shame that Jim is being such a hypocrite. I agree completely that he's being childish. He could be riding the crest of the next bio-warfare wave, the Man with a Twinkle in his Eye and a Finger on the Button. But no, he's too conservative. It's men like him who've made this great Country the backwards nation that it is today.
I just got back from Europe. I was flabbergasted with how advanced some of the telecommunications technology is. The USA is in the goddamn stone ages as far as cell, PDA, and television is concerned.
Same in Japan. Chalk this up to capitalism. Yes, that's right, your beloved capitalism. Free markets aren't always the best way to get innovation and wide-spread technological adoption. When you have a monolithic entity, enforcing de facto standards, well, pretty soon everyone has hardware/software that's compliant.
Jeezus, I sound like I'm pro-Microsoft. Shoot me now...
The question: Why couldn't At Home do the exact same thing?
Um, because the two companies have different business models? @Home provides the access, they don't care what kind of hardware you use to connect to them. Comcast provides the services, so it's generally their equipment you're using.
To make an analogy: if I signed up for an ice cream-and-donuts offer and I went to the ice cream guy asking for donuts, he'd laugh at me, and send me up to Nth-level tech support. That's what happened to you.
(yes I'm being a KW for once, and a troll to boot)
This is a/bad/ thing. Do you think that they'll stop at binaries? Do you really?
Next it'll be "sorry, we're turning off NNTP altogether, 'cuz we heard someone was bad-mouthing the RIAA." Or whatever. Don't think it won't happen.
To all of you who say the S/N ratio on Usenet is low: guess what, you're right. Duh. We all know it. AOLusers go home, etc etc etc. We've all heard it before. So go write some filtering software based on the NNTP size headers, or something. Don't just complain.
The issue isn't about the S/N ratio. It's about some company who doesn't give a damn about Usenet and how cool it was/is, it's about them pulling a massive CYA maneuver on all of us because of big-business lobbying and crap laws. Well, screw them. They deserve to be called on it. I hope they go out of business, the rat bastards.
Re:Department of Defense getting in on the fun?
on
Sklyarov Indicted
·
· Score: 1
Disclaimer: I work for Inktomi.
Um, is it possible that they're not really doing anything malicious? One of Inktomi's main products is, after all, a search engine. Would you be suprised if Yahoo started indexing your site? The fact that the gubment has decided to buy our products and (heaven-forbid) actually deploy them on the Internet isn't necessarily any more suspicious than if they bought yours and did the same.
If I download 2 movies at a time, it's going to seem like garbage (a raw stream that is). And HOW do they know that it's pirated? How can they distinguish a pirated movie from a non pirated one?
Answer to the first question: layer 4 packet filtering. Answer to the second question: if you're downloading a movie, by definition it's pirated unless you have permission from the copyright holder to make the copy, which I'm assuming you don't.
1. Pretty much all of those spam mails you receive every day are illegal, but you all know better than to reply to the "remove" address. (UK residents may now snipe at our Euro-MP who voted for an "opt-out" policy.)
This isn't a problem with anonymity, it's a problem that we don't have a secure MTA system in place. Denying incoming traffic from all relays that don't check headers, forcing headers to include accurate sender and relay information, and forcing headers to be authenticated at each hop via encryption or checksumming, would stop this cold.
2. How many websites, newsgroup postings, e-mails and bulletin board postings can untruthfully badmouth people, groups or products without fear of reprisal, in spite of the fact that the lies concerned would clearly constitute slander or libel if claimed by other means?
Problem here isn't anonymity either, problem is that people believe everything they read. My personal opinion is that people should judge for themselves what to believe, not be mindless sheep. I personally don't ascribe any weight to anything posted anonymously, anywhere.
3. Thousands of people get away with copying music, games and so on without paying for it, thus increasing the cost to the rest of us. There are ways to deal with being ripped off, but breaking the law (and doing so at the expense of other people, not just the target companies) isn't one of them.
These people should be arrested. Failing that, they should revolt against the oppressive and downright illegal laws in the US. But I'll save that troll for another day:)
4. Websites can get away with downright damaging advice. Financial tips sites and sites offering medical advice are notorious for this, but no-one can stop them if they can't identify who's behind it.
Huh? If a website gives fraudulent advice, the company that places content on the site seems to be the obvious point of contact. I don't see how they can claim anonymity. If it's an anonymous posting site, then as I said before, I don't take their advice. Neither should you.
5. Finally, of course, there are websites used for blatantly dangerous activities -- check out the vigilantism in the UK when a list of suspected paedophiles was put up on a web site during the big anti-paedophile frenzy a few months back. People really are stupid enough to believe this stuff. One paediatrician was done over because someone didn't even understand the words after reading this stuff, and several people who were totally innocent but unfortunate enough to look like suspects were assaulted.
See #2, you even said it yourself, people will believe anything. Any website actively promoting illegal actions (not words, which are generally protected by the First Amendment) should be closed down by the authorities, and the owners tried in court. My personal opinion: if you won't take responsibility for what other (anonymous) people say, don't run a site that has anonymous posting.
None of the problems above have anonymity as the direct cause, with the possible exception of #1, for which there is a (conceptually) simple solution.
Um, hello? Eminent domain applies to public use, not private use. No one is suggesting that businesses be allowed to wield eminent domain like a club, willy-nilly.
The issue at hand here is that copyright is, by its very nature, a compromise between the good of the artist/creator and the good of the public. Hence, as the good of the public at large is involved, the eminent domain comparison is not utterly illogical.
Just because the NYT isn't the government doesn't mean they can't request that specific items be handed over for the public good. That was one of the points of the article - that compulsory licenses can be used instead of injunctive relief. Now, their intent with the articles can be brought into question. Perhaps if they be restricted so that they may not make a profit from their license, then the compromise can be maintained.
4.Pi is infinite and non-repeating, and therefore contains every possible combination of every integer in the infinite set (some mathbrained guru can feel free to slap me down on this)
Here cometh the guru smackdown (tm):)
Consider the infinite, non-repeating binary number 0.1101001000100001000001...... At nowhere in the sequence does the pattern 10101 occur, nor 111, nor 101101, nor...
Yes, good engineering is expensive. But that premise doesn't lead to "American culture is probably incapable of supporting a serious and useful space program". Most privately funded endeavours don't live up to NASA's engineering specs. Hell, they don't come close most of the time. But that doesn't mean we can't learn from them and do serious aeronautical and astronomical research from private funding. We won't get there as fast, perhaps. On the other hand, perhaps we will...
Ob-silly: 'we' wanna see the advances in technology. 'We' want them now, dammit. If people have to die, then that's OK with 'us'. Scientific advances and gruesome, voyeuristic entertainment, all in one package! Who doesn't want to see that?
I have two points. The first is relatively trivial. At some point during the acquisition process of TLG -> Best -> Hiway -> Verio, someone (Gilmore) should have noticed that the AUPs regarding open relays between the acquiror and the acquiree were contradictory. In particular, that his (admirable) open use policy was not amenable to Verio's policies. I suggest, if I may, that someone in the process forgot (or omitted) an acquisition clause requiring that the AUP of the acquiree be honored by the acquiror. If ntentional, this was a business decision that I ssume was out of his control. If he felt so trongly about his AUP, he should resign and found nother ISP. He did it before.
Second, in regard to open relays per se, I point out that freedom must always be considered in context. The First Amendment is not a carte blanche rule that says anyone can go out and say anything they like. There are restrictions to speech, such as it being illegal to shout Fire!" in a crowded movie theatre. The crux of the matter between Gilmore and Verio is whether or not some or all of the content which passes through his open mail relay should be restricted.
I do not claim to know the right answer. All I can offer is my opinion, which you are, of course, free to disregard. After all, our country believes in free speech.:)
I believe that freedom should be restricted only when there is a provable, substantially negative impact on another individual or group. Of course, this is a completely vague and gratuitous statement. I believe it is up to political activism to define "substantial", and up to the legislature to capture that in laws for the courts to regulate. My personal opinion is that some levels of economic burden fall under "substantial negative impact", and that 'spam' can sometimes cause substantial burden. As I do not believe a resource should be outlawed on the possibility of doing harm, the obvious solution would be for those ISPs that considered themselves substantially harmed by Gilmore's open relay to deny forwarding for his relay only. That is, of course, their decision. If Verio considers itself harmed, by bad press or what have you, for being responsible for this open relay, and if, of course, it goes against their AUP, then I believe they have every right to close the relay. As I said before, there is nothing preventing Mr Gilmore from starting a new ISP.
Your right to free speech does not obligate me to provide you a forum in which to exercise that right.
Your right to "view a movie you purchased, with DeCSS" does not obligate "the movie industry" to provide you "hardware" on which to exercise that right.
Be careful about using that argument. Taking away rights works both ways, you know. Whether they're your rights or the rights of society at large makes no difference.
Are there any uses for DAE, besides ripping music? It's seems to me that's pretty much it's sole purpose... used to be, in the days of 8x (and lesser) cd-rom drives, a lot of drives didn't even support DAE and they worked fine for everything but ripping.
Playing games. The game industry will insist on digital audio for their games, and games will always have an option not to copy audio to the disk for people with low disk space.
Slashdot Mirror
- Distro packages go into
/usr.
- Anything other than distro packages is a "local issue"; i.e. explicitly left out of the spec.
- Most distributions are constantly changing what is part of the distro by including popular packages. Thus, the drive by RedHat and others to install everything in some subdirectory of
/usr, with the idea that "it's OK to install there now, since the package may become standard in the future, and we need to be forward-compatible".
- That having been said, after-market packages should go into
/opt, with the understanding that there is no central namespace authority for directories under /opt. One (of many) current (non-normative) proposals is to have /opt/package/rev/{bin|lib|...}.
- The main point of contention seems to be, where do you put packages which may be part of one distro and not another? The answer seems to be, if it's part of the distro, it goes under
/usr, but if it isn't, the very same package goes under /opt. Deal with it, or send your ideas to the mailing list.
- RedHat's package manager doesn't follow the standard. The only fully-compliant package manager I personally have seen uses relative-path tarballs.
Most distros install everything intoThere are several problems with installing everything in one place:
- Some distros support more than one hardware platform. In particular, some distros support both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. So where do you put your glibc and interpreters? Some have suggested
/lib and /lib64, or /lib32 and /lib as the case may be. What about /etc in this case?
- Some distros consider sh to be fundamental, and bash as an add-on. Most sane people put sh in
/bin, some duplicate it in /sbin, but where should bash go? If you have system startup scripts written for bash but not sh, then you need /bin/bash. Some distros don't care, and have /usr/bin/bash. Who's right? They both are.
I could mention about 15 other incompatibilities, but I suggest you go read the mailing list archives. The upshot is, this is a work in progress, and if you feel you have anything to contribute, send us mail.You mean to say, "... buy in the US". I'd love to give money to our friends in Canada or Mexico, unless they try to stop computer/IT imports. Picture Sen Hollings on the Mexico border, trying to stop people from smuggling in illegal sticks of RAM. Too bad he has to chase after them on foot, because his (now illegal) car had a built-in MP3 player.
There is a clear difference between addiction and habit. Addiction is generally defined as a chemical dependency, where the brain's chemical balances and hormones get thrown out of whack. Addiction isn't something from which one can just "walk away". Returning an addict's brain chemistry to normal is usually just as traumatic as becoming addicted, because the brain has already accepted the imbalanced chemistry as "normal". Hence, chemical withdrawl. People who walk away from bad habits may suffer psychological withdrawl, but that usually clears up quickly with no physiological side effects.
As some previous posters have pointed out, you can walk away from surfing the web, or gaming, and within a week or two you feel recovered. That's because you're not screwing up your brain with drugs, altering the chemistry. Psychological addiction can also occur, but the general use of "addiction" to describe unwanted habits is slang, not technical.
bash$ cat creditcards.txt | perl -pe's/[^0-9]//g'
Get the very latest on Ep 2 from the source.
In my ideal world, and what I attempt to practice on a daily basis (when not confronted by next-day deadlines) is the following, simple method for coding: don't write a single line of code until all the (function-level) comments are written. Period. If your design is so weak that you can't do this, re-design. Once comments are written for each function, implementation is automatic. Each function has a well-explained interface, all variables are accounted for, etc. And for the naysayers out there, the total time involved is actually less than seat-of-your-pants coding. Yes, more time is spent up front, but much, much less is spent in implementation and bug-checking.
Wearing my programming hat, I have to use the right tool for the job. If I don't need lots of nifty DB features, I'll use my native filesystem structure to store data, or even a flat file. Remember those? If I need bells & whistles, I'll choose a DB that has just what I need, and no more. Why waste cycles (or licensing fees) on worthless features? If I need transactions (for example), and I don't want to spend $$ on proprietary DB licenses or on man-hours trying to figure out a complicated open-source DB (remember TCO?), I'll code it myself with something simple like MySQL on the back end. If I do need scalability/lots more features/whatever, I'll pony up the time/money for the big boys.
Right tool, right job.
Is anyone else creeped out by Andrea Thompson (aka Talia Winters) giving CNN updates? I mean, I always knew the PsyCorps would eventually take over our news media, but it seems they've stepped up their timetable...
She even asked a terrorism expert whether we would be giving up personal liberties for security. Creeeeeeepy.
The answer to your question is here.
Don't be trolled by this guy.
I'm sure he'll be really happy when, five minutes after he (and the rest of the world) learns all of the "anti-democratic" secrets, he's bombed out of existence by a foriegn power. Or domestic power, does everyone think all of us are so high-and-mighty?
I will go on record to say that a person's worth is determined by what he or she has done with their life. Your neighbor down the street has done a lot more (good or ill) with their life than some frozen clump of cells; hence, is worth more. Thus, your comparison is apple and oranges.
The clump of cells could have been a Nobel winner or it could have been a new Hitler. But I'll also say I don't have much use for people who are full of "could have"s. Those people are generally all words and no action anyway.
Flame away.
</troll>
Ob-bio: I think it's a shame that Jim is being such a hypocrite. I agree completely that he's being childish. He could be riding the crest of the next bio-warfare wave, the Man with a Twinkle in his Eye and a Finger on the Button. But no, he's too conservative. It's men like him who've made this great Country the backwards nation that it is today.
Jeezus, I sound like I'm pro-Microsoft. Shoot me now...
To make an analogy: if I signed up for an ice cream-and-donuts offer and I went to the ice cream guy asking for donuts, he'd laugh at me, and send me up to Nth-level tech support. That's what happened to you.
(yes I'm being a KW for once, and a troll to boot)
/bad/ thing. Do you think that they'll stop at binaries? Do you really?
This is a
Next it'll be "sorry, we're turning off NNTP altogether, 'cuz we heard someone was bad-mouthing the RIAA." Or whatever. Don't think it won't happen.
To all of you who say the S/N ratio on Usenet is low: guess what, you're right. Duh. We all know it. AOLusers go home, etc etc etc. We've all heard it before. So go write some filtering software based on the NNTP size headers, or something. Don't just complain.
The issue isn't about the S/N ratio. It's about some company who doesn't give a damn about Usenet and how cool it was/is, it's about them pulling a massive CYA maneuver on all of us because of big-business lobbying and crap laws. Well, screw them. They deserve to be called on it. I hope they go out of business, the rat bastards.
Disclaimer: I work for Inktomi.
Um, is it possible that they're not really doing anything malicious? One of Inktomi's main products is, after all, a search engine. Would you be suprised if Yahoo started indexing your site? The fact that the gubment has decided to buy our products and (heaven-forbid) actually deploy them on the Internet isn't necessarily any more suspicious than if they bought yours and did the same.
Owning a computer is not a God-given right. Your argument only works if you have to own a computer to be "free".
None of the problems above have anonymity as the direct cause, with the possible exception of #1, for which there is a (conceptually) simple solution.
Who ever said web servers had to run on port 80? Just run SSL, or something. Or use port 81. Or 3496. Jeez.
The issue at hand here is that copyright is, by its very nature, a compromise between the good of the artist/creator and the good of the public. Hence, as the good of the public at large is involved, the eminent domain comparison is not utterly illogical.
Just because the NYT isn't the government doesn't mean they can't request that specific items be handed over for the public good. That was one of the points of the article - that compulsory licenses can be used instead of injunctive relief. Now, their intent with the articles can be brought into question. Perhaps if they be restricted so that they may not make a profit from their license, then the compromise can be maintained.
Consider the infinite, non-repeating binary number 0.1101001000100001000001...... At nowhere in the sequence does the pattern 10101 occur, nor 111, nor 101101, nor...
Yes, good engineering is expensive. But that premise doesn't lead to "American culture is probably incapable of supporting a serious and useful space program". Most privately funded endeavours don't live up to NASA's engineering specs. Hell, they don't come close most of the time. But that doesn't mean we can't learn from them and do serious aeronautical and astronomical research from private funding. We won't get there as fast, perhaps. On the other hand, perhaps we will...
Ob-silly: 'we' wanna see the advances in technology. 'We' want them now, dammit. If people have to die, then that's OK with 'us'. Scientific advances and gruesome, voyeuristic entertainment, all in one package! Who doesn't want to see that?
I have two points. The first is relatively trivial. At some point during the acquisition process of TLG -> Best -> Hiway -> Verio, someone (Gilmore) should have noticed that the AUPs regarding open relays between the acquiror and the acquiree were contradictory. In particular, that his (admirable) open use policy was not amenable to Verio's policies. I suggest, if I may, that someone in the process forgot (or omitted) an acquisition clause requiring that the AUP of the acquiree be honored by the acquiror. If ntentional, this was a business decision that I ssume was out of his control. If he felt so trongly about his AUP, he should resign and found nother ISP. He did it before.
:)
Second, in regard to open relays per se, I point out that freedom must always be considered in context. The First Amendment is not a carte blanche rule that says anyone can go out and say anything they like. There are restrictions to speech, such as it being illegal to shout Fire!" in a crowded movie theatre. The crux of the matter between Gilmore and Verio is whether or not some or all of the content which passes through his open mail relay should be restricted.
I do not claim to know the right answer. All I can offer is my opinion, which you are, of course, free to disregard. After all, our country believes in free speech.
I believe that freedom should be restricted only when there is a provable, substantially negative impact on another individual or group. Of course, this is a completely vague and gratuitous statement. I believe it is up to political activism to define "substantial", and up to the legislature to capture that in laws for the courts to regulate. My personal opinion is that some levels of economic burden fall under "substantial negative impact", and that 'spam' can sometimes cause substantial burden. As I do not believe a resource should be outlawed on the possibility of doing harm, the obvious solution would be for those ISPs that considered themselves substantially harmed by Gilmore's open relay to deny forwarding for his relay only. That is, of course, their decision. If Verio considers itself harmed, by bad press or what have you, for being responsible for this open relay, and if, of course, it goes against their AUP, then I believe they have every right to close the relay. As I said before, there is nothing preventing Mr Gilmore from starting a new ISP.
Be careful about using that argument. Taking away rights works both ways, you know. Whether they're your rights or the rights of society at large makes no difference.