There are many, many useless posts in fora these days. A lot of it is dis-information; ranging from deliberately unhelpfull to downright dangerous. And many of those posts are answers to questions.
But, a few of those useless posts are the questions, themselves. These seem to fall into two broad categories: 1) I want to implement this complex, fragile and esoteric solution to a simple problem, but can't figure out how to do it, and 2) I want to implement this common solution to a complex problem, but don't really want to read how to do it, or understand the implications.
Usually, the answers I see to these sorts of questions fall into your two groups of "useless answers". The first answer is usually phrased "You are trying to solve the wrong problem", but I guess you could paraphrase it into "Why would you want to do that in the first place?" This answer is usually given by someone who sees that you are taking the wrong approach to solving your bigger issue, and is trying to guide you to the simpler solution.
The second answer is usually phrased "Please read this handy guide that someone took days to write to assist you with this exact problem" (OK, I lie; it is usually phrased "Why don't you Read the Fine Manual?"), but I guess that you, in your frustration at not receiveing an immediate, detailed-yet-simple-to-follow technical answer to your question might see this as "Why don't you look at X poorly written documentation page " . Of course, your problem is complex, and you haven't given all the relevant facts (some, you don't even know that you need to know), but you'd rather that someone else take the (possibly hours) out of their day to read the documentation, research your issue, locate or invent a solution, write out the solution as a set of tailored-to-your-situation simple-to-follow instructions, and post those instructions immediately in reply to your query.
Buy the way, "You're welcome". But, then again, should I have done all that in answer to your question, you wouldn't have thanked me anyway.
Mathematician, Astronomer, Geographer A scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate (c. 780 – c. 850) The source of the western understanding of decimal numbering, algorithms (a word derived from his name, to honour his insight), and algebra.
Even caliphates can encourage enlightened thought, investigation into maths and sciences.
Over my career, I worked on many different mainframe systems (IBM "big iron") and with many different commercial applications. No matter which system or application, we were always involved (either passively or actively) with the associated "user group".
For IBM systems (both hardware and software), it was "Guide" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUIDE_International) and "Share" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHARE_%28computing%29). Other applications and services had their own user groups.
I can't comment on the trend to dispensing with vendor-support in favour of user-group support, but I can assure you that user-group support has (for decades) been a staple in the industry.
The object radiates at "around 225 – 260 Kelvins", or (if I got the math correct) 12.878971111111 micrometers
the object "has a very low mass, too, probably between 3 and 10 times the mass of Jupiter".
Together, these figures are within the range for a type I (or, maybe even a type II) Dyson sphere. And, it is only 7.2 light years away?
Yes, it is very probably the Brown Dwarf that the astronomers think it is. But, imagine. It could be a Dyson sphere; our first evidence of advanced life beyond the earth.
From Chapter 2 ("The File System") of "The Unix Programming Environment" by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike (Prentice-Hall, 1984),
"/etc (et cetera) we have seen before. It contains various administrative
files such as the password file and some system programs such as/etc/getty,
which initializes a terminal connection for/bin/login...."
and, for what it's worth...
"/usr is called the "user file system,", although it may have little to do with
the actual users of the system. On our machine, our login directories are/usr/bwk
and/usr/rob, but on your machine the/usr part might be different, as explained
in Chapter 1."
This idea isn't new. My local electricity company has been pushing this sort of thing for years, at the community/household level. Right now, I "store" electricity in my dishwasher overnight, to be released in the morning. That is to say, I run my dishwasher at night, when demand is low and supply is more accessable, and refrain from running it in the day, when demand is high and supply is scarcer. This way, the electricity I/would have/ used in the day can be used by others.
But, that isn't "storing" electricity. And neither is this windpower to cold-storage idea "storing" electricity. Both activities are just/deferring/ electricity use to off-peak hours.
"Research In Motion Ltd.'s stock shot up 6% yesterday on speculation the BlackBerry maker will announce a licensing deal with Intel Corp. today that will allow the computer chip giant to use technology found in RIM's popular e-mail device.
Intel has apparently agreed to use RIM's battery-saving technology in a new generation of chips based on a nascent wireless tech standard called WiMax and RIM may also start using Intel chips in the BlackBerry, published reports indicated."
No, it was not the Canadian Supreme Court (aka the Supreme Court of Canada) that permitted the injunction.
Instead, it was the Supreme Court of British Colombia that made that ruling. There's a world of difference, just like the difference between the State Supreme Court of California and the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
It would be nice if the submitter of the story (or the editor who summarized it) could RTFA, but I guess that would be too much for Slashdot
"closed source has no real advantage on open source." -->Except for that little thing called "Developers getting paid"...
A sufficient large and complex program, even if open sourced, is something that casual programmers rarely want to touch. Even those of us who are paid to program rarely want to fiddle with complex code, especially when we've only had a casual introduction to it.
I see no danger in the originators of an open source product like MySQL being supplanted with 'free' (as in beer) programming. Have you opened up the code in the latest release of Postgresql and made major changes?
So, the authors of complex programs can still make a living off of their code, even if they open source it. They are the only experts (or at least one of a very few experts) that can make changes without inadvertantly impacting the rest of the application. Would you pay MySQL to add BLOB support, or are you confident enough in your skills in C, relational database server design, and the particulars of MySQL to make that change correctly yourself?
FWIW, I'm of the opinion that this "IDN exploit" that shmoo.com publisized has been overblown. While I agree that the "exploit" is certainly serious, I do not concur that it is isolated to IDN. Instead, the "exploit" is common to all DNSname processing.
With the right (or wrong) font, http://slashdot.org/ and http://s1ashdot.org/ look like the same URL. But they are not. And neither of these two URLs are expressed in IDN.
The key is that the two URLs look alike, and this is an exposure with all URLs.
So, is IDN at fault for the shmoo.com "exposure"? No, since the "exposure" exists without the use of internationalized URLs.
This is getting ridiculous. Yes, you'll tell me to switch to Firefox, but we can't; I work in an artistic company with 1000+ PC and non-tech-savyy users, and tons of internal apps that were developped either with.Net or massive ACtiveX and other MS-only stuff, so we can't switch everything to Firefox, and having 2 browsers isn't a viable option either, since most of our users would simply get confused.
and I say "That's the price of committing your business to propriatary software and interfaces that are someone elses profit centre."
I know that this doesn't help you in your situation, but it does serve as a cautionary note for those who are not yet in that position, but are considering a move to propriatary software.
Cheer up, though. Once the cost of supporting such a fragile situation exceeds the cost of migrating to a saner environment, you can put the case forth to move to a more secure, more open platform.
OK, I've seen the claims of loss-of-functionality posted here, and I've seen both the "Mr. Google" post and the beta itself, and I have to say that, while the beta isn't as good as the current "Google Groups", it's not as bad as has been claimed here.
One claim (here) was that you can't view a thread as a 'tree'. This is false; you just have to select the "View as Tree" link at the top of the thread. This results in the familiar two-paned view of the thread that permits you to see the relationships between posts, and jump to particular posts of interest.
Another claim (here) was that there was no "usenet group" list. Again, false. Just select the "Browse All of USENET" selection at the bottom of the main page, and you get the usenet newsgroup hierarchy selection, just like old "Google News".
Cant link directly to single posts? Nonsense. Here's a single post within a thread from the beta. I agree that getting the link is cumbersome (you find the post you're looking for, click the "show options" link against that post, and then select the "Show Original" link that appears), but it can be done.
The "usr" in "/usr" stands for Unix System Resources
Sorry, but no.
/usr originally was the directory in which user home directories and files were stored. This is what every Unix up to and including Seventh Edition Unix used, and it's heritage is still with us. While/home has taken over some of this functionality,/usr still retains it's purpose in holding those files used by user processes.
/usr is now and always will be the user directory, not the Unix System Resources directory.
"It ain't warp speed, but it's exciting new technology at work!"
Ion propulsion isn't "new" technology at all. It's been around for fourty years or more, in one form or another. The only "new" thing about this ion propulsion is that it is being used as the motive power for a spacecraft.
See this article from the August 1964 edition of "Popular Mechanics".
While you are correct that Lotus Notes provides scheduling, contacts and mail, and acts as a development (and production) platform for forms and workflow, it is also a gigantic 'database'.
My employer uses Notes for everything you mentioned, plus storing and relating project and business documents.
Domino (the server engine behind Lotus Notes) can 'webify' Notes documents, and since Notes documents can be linked one-to-another, the links become hyperlinks viewable in a web browser.
Think of Notes and Domino in the same relationship as IE and Apache. Notes provides the presentation front end, and Domino provides the data and relationship backend. In this case, Notes (Domino) documents become documents in their own right, served up as pages of information to a Notes client or web browser.
The drawback to Notes/Domino is the tight control that this coupling requires. We've found that there are too many unknowns and roadblocks to use Notes/Domino as a method of widely distributing information that needs to be maintained by those other than the authors. An author needs to know that a Domino database exists, then s/he needs to gain permission to access that database, and further permission to add data to the database. A reader needs to know that the database exists, and needs to gain permission to access the database, and further permission to read the database. That's a lot of control that interferes with the flow of information. Frequently, the reader needs to become an editor or author, in order to correct mistakes in the document, or add more information. This means more administrivia to conquer, just to correct an error.
This is where a Wiki has it's advantage. It can be built and configured in such a way as to provide the audit trail that corporations need, and even to impose editor/author restrictions based on authenticated userid, but doesn't carry the administrative or implementation weight of Domino and Notes.
So that's the basis of the comparison. We use Notes as a very restricted Wiki.
IP addresses are physical addresses. They are not resolved by DNS, and do not represent 'virtual' addresses. They provide the same functionality to TCP/IP as MAC addresses provide to Ethernet. IP addresses are evaluated at each point in the network path, in order to determine where to send the data next. This evaluation follows the fixed hierarchy of IP addresses, subnets and networks, and removing an IP address from it's proper place in the network and placing it in an unrelated network place is not an option.
At the current level of technology, moving an IP address with you is exactly the same as moving your house address with you when you move. It is exactly the same as, in 1960, moving your area code and telephone number with you when you move. It cannot be done with current technology without a severe detrimental impact on the structure of the network. IP addresses represent 'hardwired' (via routing) addresses (in the 1960 telephone analogy, think pulse dialing and crossbar switches and banks and banks of wires connecting each phone to each central office to each trunk line).
On the other hand, DNS names are transportable. They represent the 'virtual network' that you are blathering on about.
Pat Volkerding doesn't usually move to the 'latest and greatest' kernel until it has proven that it is stable and usable. Think back to the troubles with the (then newly released) Linux kernels 2.4.1 through 2.4.15 (aka the "kernel of pain")
From what I can see of the Ignalum Linux website, they do not claim to be able to run MSWindows programs under Linux. In fact, the only mention of MSWindows appears to be in conjunction with Samba (explicitly stated), in that they give instructions for use of Samba in Linux to connect to an MSWindows network. They do not state anywhere that I can see that MSWindows programs run in Ignalum Linux.
Perhaps the story contributer could clarify why he thinks Ignalum is claiming MSWindows runtime compatability?
Question 3: Who is the vice chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on back care?
Google search criteria: 'UK +"vice chair" +parliament + "back care"'
Results 1 - 9 of about 10 for UK + "vice chair" +parliament +"back care". (0.24 seconds)
First page presented was http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/ pa/cm/cmparty/memi135.htm which takes you directly to the Back Care Group, where we find that Janet Dean (Labour) is listed as Vice Chair.
The ultra-durable ball reached speeds of 30 kilometers per hour (10 miles per hour) over the Antarctic ice cap
Do you think that someone should tell Astrobiology Magazine that 30 kph is about 18 mph? That's almost double the mph that they give the rover credit for.
You might not have noticed, but Marcel Gagne is a Canadian of French descent (i.e. French Canadian). The brand of franglais that Marcel writes in his articles is both humourous and representative of the sort of English language you might find in English-speaking Quebec, French-speaking New Brunswick, and French-speaking northern Ontario.
I, for one, appreciate Marcel's humour and language. I told him so when I reviewed his first book for Addison-Wesley Longman.
Well, Marcel has his favourite distros, but "KTBSODG" uses a variant of Knoppix. For the most part, the book stays away from distro-specific requirements, and concentrates on a specific GUI (KDE).
Slashdot Mirror
There are many, many useless posts in fora these days. A lot of it is dis-information; ranging from deliberately unhelpfull to downright dangerous. And many of those posts are answers to questions.
But, a few of those useless posts are the questions, themselves. These seem to fall into two broad categories:
1) I want to implement this complex, fragile and esoteric solution to a simple problem, but can't figure out how to do it, and
2) I want to implement this common solution to a complex problem, but don't really want to read how to do it, or understand the implications.
Usually, the answers I see to these sorts of questions fall into your two groups of "useless answers". The first answer is usually phrased "You are trying to solve the wrong problem", but I guess you could paraphrase it into "Why would you want to do that in the first place?" This answer is usually given by someone who sees that you are taking the wrong approach to solving your bigger issue, and is trying to guide you to the simpler solution.
The second answer is usually phrased "Please read this handy guide that someone took days to write to assist you with this exact problem" (OK, I lie; it is usually phrased "Why don't you Read the Fine Manual?"), but I guess that you, in your frustration at not receiveing an immediate, detailed-yet-simple-to-follow technical answer to your question might see this as "Why don't you look at X poorly written documentation page " . Of course, your problem is complex, and you haven't given all the relevant facts (some, you don't even know that you need to know), but you'd rather that someone else take the (possibly hours) out of their day to read the documentation, research your issue, locate or invent a solution, write out the solution as a set of tailored-to-your-situation simple-to-follow instructions, and post those instructions immediately in reply to your query.
Buy the way, "You're welcome". But, then again, should I have done all that in answer to your question, you wouldn't have thanked me anyway.
Mathematician, Astronomer, Geographer
A scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate (c. 780 – c. 850)
The source of the western understanding of decimal numbering, algorithms (a word derived from his name, to honour his insight), and algebra.
Even caliphates can encourage enlightened thought, investigation into maths and sciences.
Over my career, I worked on many different mainframe systems (IBM "big iron") and with many different commercial applications. No matter which system or application, we were always involved (either passively or actively) with the associated "user group".
For IBM systems (both hardware and software), it was "Guide" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUIDE_International) and "Share" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHARE_%28computing%29). Other applications and services had their own user groups.
I can't comment on the trend to dispensing with vendor-support in favour of user-group support, but I can assure you that user-group support has (for decades) been a staple in the industry.
Two elements of TFA caught my eye:
micrometers
Together, these figures are within the range for a type I (or, maybe even a type II) Dyson sphere.
And, it is only 7.2 light years away?
Yes, it is very probably the Brown Dwarf that the astronomers think it is.
But, imagine. It could be a Dyson sphere; our first evidence of advanced life beyond the earth.
From Chapter 2 ("The File System") of "The Unix Programming Environment" by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike (Prentice-Hall, 1984),
/etc/getty, /bin/login. ..."
/usr/bwk /usr/rob, but on your machine the /usr part might be different, as explained
"/etc (et cetera) we have seen before. It contains various administrative
files such as the password file and some system programs such as
which initializes a terminal connection for
and, for what it's worth...
"/usr is called the "user file system,", although it may have little to do with
the actual users of the system. On our machine, our login directories are
and
in Chapter 1."
HTH
This idea isn't new. My local electricity company has been pushing this sort of thing for years, at the community/household level. Right now, I "store" electricity in my dishwasher overnight, to be released in the morning. That is to say, I run my dishwasher at night, when demand is low and supply is more accessable, and refrain from running it in the day, when demand is high and supply is scarcer. This way, the electricity I /would have/ used in the day can be used by others.
/deferring/ electricity use to off-peak hours.
But, that isn't "storing" electricity. And neither is this windpower to cold-storage idea "storing" electricity. Both activities are just
To quote the story:
No, it was not the Canadian Supreme Court (aka the Supreme Court of Canada) that permitted the injunction.
Instead, it was the Supreme Court of British Colombia that made that ruling. There's a world of difference, just like the difference between the State Supreme Court of California and the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
It would be nice if the submitter of the story (or the editor who summarized it) could RTFA, but I guess that would be too much for Slashdot
A sufficient large and complex program, even if open sourced, is something that casual programmers rarely want to touch. Even those of us who are paid to program rarely want to fiddle with complex code, especially when we've only had a casual introduction to it.
I see no danger in the originators of an open source product like MySQL being supplanted with 'free' (as in beer) programming. Have you opened up the code in the latest release of Postgresql and made major changes?
So, the authors of complex programs can still make a living off of their code, even if they open source it. They are the only experts (or at least one of a very few experts) that can make changes without inadvertantly impacting the rest of the application. Would you pay MySQL to add BLOB support, or are you confident enough in your skills in C, relational database server design, and the particulars of MySQL to make that change correctly yourself?
FWIW, I'm of the opinion that this "IDN exploit" that shmoo.com publisized has been overblown. While I agree that the "exploit" is certainly serious, I do not concur that it is isolated to IDN. Instead, the "exploit" is common to all DNSname processing.
With the right (or wrong) font, http://slashdot.org/ and http://s1ashdot.org/ look like the same URL. But they are not. And neither of these two URLs are expressed in IDN.
The key is that the two URLs look alike, and this is an exposure with all URLs.
So, is IDN at fault for the shmoo.com "exposure"? No, since the "exposure" exists without the use of internationalized URLs.
You say
and I say "That's the price of committing your business to propriatary software and interfaces that are someone elses profit centre."I know that this doesn't help you in your situation, but it does serve as a cautionary note for those who are not yet in that position, but are considering a move to propriatary software.
Cheer up, though. Once the cost of supporting such a fragile situation exceeds the cost of migrating to a saner environment, you can put the case forth to move to a more secure, more open platform.
Until then, you have my deepest sympathies.
OK, I've seen the claims of loss-of-functionality posted here, and I've seen both the "Mr. Google" post and the beta itself, and I have to say that, while the beta isn't as good as the current "Google Groups", it's not as bad as has been claimed here.
One claim (here) was that you can't view a thread as a 'tree'. This is false; you just have to select the "View as Tree" link at the top of the thread. This results in the familiar two-paned view of the thread that permits you to see the relationships between posts, and jump to particular posts of interest.
Another claim (here) was that there was no "usenet group" list. Again, false. Just select the "Browse All of USENET" selection at the bottom of the main page, and you get the usenet newsgroup hierarchy selection, just like old "Google News".
Cant link directly to single posts? Nonsense. Here's a single post within a thread from the beta. I agree that getting the link is cumbersome (you find the post you're looking for, click the "show options" link against that post, and then select the "Show Original" link that appears), but it can be done.
But... you can't search by date.
The "usr" in "/usr" stands for Unix System Resources
Sorry, but no.
"It ain't warp speed, but it's exciting new technology at work!"
Ion propulsion isn't "new" technology at all. It's been around for fourty years or more, in one form or another. The only "new" thing about this ion propulsion is that it is being used as the motive power for a spacecraft.
See this article from the August 1964 edition of "Popular Mechanics".
You're wrong. A bit.
While you are correct that Lotus Notes provides scheduling, contacts and mail, and acts as a development (and production) platform for forms and workflow, it is also a gigantic 'database'.
My employer uses Notes for everything you mentioned, plus storing and relating project and business documents.
Domino (the server engine behind Lotus Notes) can 'webify' Notes documents, and since Notes documents can be linked one-to-another, the links become hyperlinks viewable in a web browser.
Think of Notes and Domino in the same relationship as IE and Apache. Notes provides the presentation front end, and Domino provides the data and relationship backend. In this case, Notes (Domino) documents become documents in their own right, served up as pages of information to a Notes client or web browser.
The drawback to Notes/Domino is the tight control that this coupling requires. We've found that there are too many unknowns and roadblocks to use Notes/Domino as a method of widely distributing information that needs to be maintained by those other than the authors. An author needs to know that a Domino database exists, then s/he needs to gain permission to access that database, and further permission to add data to the database. A reader needs to know that the database exists, and needs to gain permission to access the database, and further permission to read the database. That's a lot of control that interferes with the flow of information. Frequently, the reader needs to become an editor or author, in order to correct mistakes in the document, or add more information. This means more administrivia to conquer, just to correct an error.
This is where a Wiki has it's advantage. It can be built and configured in such a way as to provide the audit trail that corporations need, and even to impose editor/author restrictions based on authenticated userid, but doesn't carry the administrative or implementation weight of Domino and Notes.
So that's the basis of the comparison. We use Notes as a very restricted Wiki.
Fool!
IP addresses are physical addresses. They are not resolved by DNS, and do not represent 'virtual' addresses. They provide the same functionality to TCP/IP as MAC addresses provide to Ethernet. IP addresses are evaluated at each point in the network path, in order to determine where to send the data next. This evaluation follows the fixed hierarchy of IP addresses, subnets and networks, and removing an IP address from it's proper place in the network and placing it in an unrelated network place is not an option.
At the current level of technology, moving an IP address with you is exactly the same as moving your house address with you when you move. It is exactly the same as, in 1960, moving your area code and telephone number with you when you move. It cannot be done with current technology without a severe detrimental impact on the structure of the network. IP addresses represent 'hardwired' (via routing) addresses (in the 1960 telephone analogy, think pulse dialing and crossbar switches and banks and banks of wires connecting each phone to each central office to each trunk line).
On the other hand, DNS names are transportable. They represent the 'virtual network' that you are blathering on about.
"Sure, we can fix your satellite for ya, eh, but it'll cost ya two cases and season box seats for hockey."
Your comment is obviously not 'Canadian'. You didn't get the slang right. The correct quote would be:
Sure, we can fix your satellite for you. But, it'll cost you a couple'a twofours and some "blues", eh.
Pat Volkerding doesn't usually move to the 'latest and greatest' kernel until it has proven that it is stable and usable. Think back to the troubles with the (then newly released) Linux kernels 2.4.1 through 2.4.15 (aka the "kernel of pain")
Need I say more?
Perhaps the story contributer could clarify why he thinks Ignalum is claiming MSWindows runtime compatability?
Google search criteria: 'UK +"vice chair" +parliament + "back care"'
Results 1 - 9 of about 10 for UK + "vice chair" +parliament +"back care". (0.24 seconds)
First page presented was http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/ pa/cm/cmparty/memi135.htm which takes you directly to the Back Care Group, where we find that Janet Dean (Labour) is listed as Vice Chair.
Perhaps the testers don't know how to use Google?
Published in "Tales from the White Hart", Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. (LCC Card# 76-95870)
The ultra-durable ball reached speeds of 30 kilometers per hour (10 miles per hour) over the Antarctic ice cap
Do you think that someone should tell Astrobiology Magazine that 30 kph is about 18 mph? That's almost double the mph that they give the rover credit for.
You might not have noticed, but Marcel Gagne is a Canadian of French descent (i.e. French Canadian). The brand of franglais that Marcel writes in his articles is both humourous and representative of the sort of English language you might find in English-speaking Quebec, French-speaking New Brunswick, and French-speaking northern Ontario.
I, for one, appreciate Marcel's humour and language. I told him so when I reviewed his first book for Addison-Wesley Longman.
Well, Marcel has his favourite distros, but "KTBSODG" uses a variant of Knoppix. For the most part, the book stays away from distro-specific requirements, and concentrates on a specific GUI (KDE).
OK, my goof. I misrememberd the name.
Now, how about we advocate that Kevin Baker be invited to join the community? Along with Kevin Bacon.
<grin>