No compiler will work if the file system doesn't mount. Corrupt your [v]fstab and see how ell you can compile. Or scp files onto the machine. You better know vi (or sometime ed, if it's old enough.)
I have to say, I hate PICO as much as you seem to hate vi. Adding automatic line breaks? God! Every day at my old job some user would corrupt his config file by editing with pico and adding a number of unintended (but harmful) newlines.
Fair enough. You are right that most programs with which I deal are targeted single-function programs. Were my environment different there may be changes in my approach. However, I do have to disagree with your comment concerning tomcat et. al. Even with a running application server, I have noticed a remarkable lag in response time. At low loads it is not that significant, but under a heavy load I have noticed the overhead of interpreted languages such as java (or perl) can significantly reduce performance.
I have trouble understanding your contradictory stances. The difference in performance between C and, say, Java is unimportant, but the time to parse XML is a deal breaker? I would rather parse 10 pages of xml on startup than wait for the JVM to fire up. Of course, if you are arguing for C++ or some other compiled OO language, there is still more of a performance hit compared to a lower level language than there is in parsing a few extra lines of text. (Just to clarify my own position, I favor low level non-OO languages and despise XML...)
Yes, I am scared. Direct, absolute democracy is a frightening prospect. Without any restraints what is to prevent 51% from saying "we don't like the other 49%, let's confiscate their goods and enslave and/or kill them"? If you buy into the "majority will is law" without any sort of limitations, this is one possible outcome. (Fortunately, you mis-state the situation in the US. There are constitutional limits upon the democratic absolutism you seem to favor...)
Actually the "return to starting point" argument does not work for all curves. If space is irregularly curved it is quite possible you could continue infinitely without returning to your starting point as the uneven curvature could deflect you from your path. (Eg. the curvature of light caused by gravity. Or, analogously, the helical path water takes from the top of a siphon to the base.) If the universe is a 4-sphere (or 5-sphere, or n-sphere), yes, you are correct. If it is "lumpy" and irregular, then the path may not return to the starting point.
Wait, you can leave a map of the earth. Numerous astronauts have done just that. Of course, I suppose you could extend each point on earth out infinitely (as you suggested in your reply to the flight question), and claim standing on the moon is just a change in altitude from standing in downtown Omaha, but I would argue instead that a map of earth is not quite as all inclusive as suggested.
I have yet to receive a spam that has both:
1) Non-forged mail headers and
2) A source that wasn't a compromised mailer on some web site.
True, the compromised web site MIGHT have the spammer's IP. If he isn't using a public machine (cafe, library, etc). And if he isn't using some anonymizer service and he isn't using a spoofed IP...
I don't think your reliance on IPs would work very well.
As far as transactions go, you are right if they are in the US. But, think of how many fraudulent mail order businesses break US law every year with impunity. Do you think spammers will fare any worse?
I just had a thought. Since spammers tend to use exploitable mailer scripts and forge return addresses, what is there to prevent someone from using the Act to harass another website. Send out a slew of porn spams including a rival's url. Bingo! Your rival is paying endless fines.
That should read "formmail". I got distracted. (Can't believe I made that mistake. After 2 years of cursing Matt's Archive for making spamming so easy... )
A standard label wouldn't be enforcable. Some spammer exploiting another site's sendmail script to advertise an off-shore porn site doesn't have too much to fear from US law.
The blank ones are usually the result of test attempts to exploit some site's formmail. When I was a sysadmin for a web hosting company, I could spot spammers trying to exploit formmail by the large number of malformed requests.
The gibberish emails are attempts to circumvent Baylesian spam filter (spelling? no sure). As to why they contain no other content, I am not sure. Maybe the spammer just doesn't get the concept. You need non-spam text AND your spam message...
Actually, to get a law overturned the usual process IS to break that law. That is how "test cases" come about. If no one breaks the law how can courts ever review it?
From the articles cited above, a true network would require "quantum repeaters". Once you introduce such repeaters, wouldn't you open up this "unbreakabl;e" technology to good old fashioned man-in-the-middle attacks? After all, a man-in-the-middle is just a particularly malicious form of repeater/transponder.
And the idea that any eavesdropper would "change" the signal is not valid here, as the repater would have to read, and hence change the signal as well.
Wait a moment... rival distributions and lawsuits are a sign of failure. Guess linux is dying too. (SCO, 1 Million and 1 distros...)
OK... I know, don't feed the trolls... But this one was amusingly bad.
However, the only reason we have less costly petorchemical energy is because of the time and money placed into optimizing it, primarily because it is our first choice of energey. Nuclear plants are notoriously inefficient because (in the United States, at least) they are based on older military designs stressing high torque (good for driving ships) rather than efficient transfer of energy. We have not put up enough nuclear facilities in recent decade to inspire much research into a more efficient design, so we are stuck with a less efficient delivery system.
If you looked at early pretrochemical systems, similar inefficiencies would be found.
I love the following quote:
A transgenic mouse, for example, costs researchers about $170, ten times the price of a normal mouse
$17 mice? I know they breed for specific strain, etc, but a $17 mouse?
A computer mouse costs less now than a flesh and blood mouse?
Sorry for the long OT rant, just puzzled by the exorbitant price of lab mice.
Actually, you are right and wrong. The price of US oil was regulated until 1981, but only for domestically produced crude oil. This is part of the reason for the growth of OPEC and the US oil crises of 1974 & 1978-9. At the moment there is no explicit attempt to manipulate oil prices, though the numerous business subsidies and incentives that government enacts around every field of business doubtless distort the market forces here as well.
And I agree that there is no guarantee the next resource crisis will be resolved. It could be the final straw. But the past has proven every other "utlimate" shortage has been overcome. I can't be certain, but I feel relatively comfortable that market forces, driven by the strength of human acquistiveness (or greed if you prefer), will work to overcome obstacles.
Even with a low yield, the net energy is still quite a bit higher from nuclear fission. Nuclear reactions are (if I recall correctly) 10^4 times chemical reactions.04*10^4 is a lot greater than 1*0.10.
And, as far as supply of fuel is concerned, our current reserves and known deposits are limited by the economic realities. Witha limited market for fissionable material relative to petrochemicals, there has been less invested in seeking out uranium and other possible fuel sources. If the market forces change, there will be an increase in resources devoted to finding and exploiting fissionable materials and the amounts will increase.
It is possible I am wrong as well. It has been a number of years since I took a chem course, and I rarely get to use those skills, working in IT.
Actually, as I was driving home this evening, I started to wonder if I had spoken too hastily. NaH seemed wrong, especially as NaOH is such a common compound, but both had the right number of S shell electrons. Some of the O compounds seemed a little odd, but my boss kept wandering around my office, so I didn't have the time to look too closely.
In short (if possible after such a lengthy digression) I apologize if I spoke too hastily.
I have to disagree. This sort of Malthusian argument sounds plausible, but always ends up being proven wrong. (Read "Famine 1975" if you doubt me, or Malthus himself.) Nuclear fission, for example, provides far more concentrated energy than fossil fuels. At the moment the infrastructure is expensive relative to fossil fuels, and excessive regulation makes it unappealing to businesses, but there is no technical reason that fission could not provide as much energy, or even more, than we currently receive from fossil fuels. Simply looking at the physics should be convincing, atomic reactions are orders of magnitude more powerful than chemical reactions, and the supply of fissionable materials is not inconsiderable. Upon what grounds can one argue that fission would not provide enough energy? On current capacity? Well, in 1900 the petroleum capacity was far from adequate. That said nothing about the future. Neither does our current capacity to produce energy via fission.
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Everyone is forgetting the best reason to learn the hjkl move keys... They're the direction jeys for nethack! Yet another reason to develop vi skills!
Agreed! I had a Sun with a corrupt vfstab, and the only thing that worked was ed.
No compiler will work if the file system doesn't mount. Corrupt your [v]fstab and see how ell you can compile. Or scp files onto the machine. You better know vi (or sometime ed, if it's old enough.)
I have to say, I hate PICO as much as you seem to hate vi. Adding automatic line breaks? God! Every day at my old job some user would corrupt his config file by editing with pico and adding a number of unintended (but harmful) newlines.
Fair enough. You are right that most programs with which I deal are targeted single-function programs. Were my environment different there may be changes in my approach. However, I do have to disagree with your comment concerning tomcat et. al. Even with a running application server, I have noticed a remarkable lag in response time. At low loads it is not that significant, but under a heavy load I have noticed the overhead of interpreted languages such as java (or perl) can significantly reduce performance.
I have trouble understanding your contradictory stances. The difference in performance between C and, say, Java is unimportant, but the time to parse XML is a deal breaker? I would rather parse 10 pages of xml on startup than wait for the JVM to fire up. Of course, if you are arguing for C++ or some other compiled OO language, there is still more of a performance hit compared to a lower level language than there is in parsing a few extra lines of text. (Just to clarify my own position, I favor low level non-OO languages and despise XML...)
or /GNU®Linux ? (If ® is an operator)
Yes, I am scared. Direct, absolute democracy is a frightening prospect. Without any restraints what is to prevent 51% from saying "we don't like the other 49%, let's confiscate their goods and enslave and/or kill them"? If you buy into the "majority will is law" without any sort of limitations, this is one possible outcome. (Fortunately, you mis-state the situation in the US. There are constitutional limits upon the democratic absolutism you seem to favor...)
Majorities say what's right? A bit of a scary proposition. I think I will draw my ideas of morality from source besides poll results.
Actually the "return to starting point" argument does not work for all curves. If space is irregularly curved it is quite possible you could continue infinitely without returning to your starting point as the uneven curvature could deflect you from your path. (Eg. the curvature of light caused by gravity. Or, analogously, the helical path water takes from the top of a siphon to the base.) If the universe is a 4-sphere (or 5-sphere, or n-sphere), yes, you are correct. If it is "lumpy" and irregular, then the path may not return to the starting point.
Wait, you can leave a map of the earth. Numerous astronauts have done just that. Of course, I suppose you could extend each point on earth out infinitely (as you suggested in your reply to the flight question), and claim standing on the moon is just a change in altitude from standing in downtown Omaha, but I would argue instead that a map of earth is not quite as all inclusive as suggested.
I have yet to receive a spam that has both:
1) Non-forged mail headers and
2) A source that wasn't a compromised mailer on some web site.
True, the compromised web site MIGHT have the spammer's IP. If he isn't using a public machine (cafe, library, etc). And if he isn't using some anonymizer service and he isn't using a spoofed IP...
I don't think your reliance on IPs would work very well.
As far as transactions go, you are right if they are in the US. But, think of how many fraudulent mail order businesses break US law every year with impunity. Do you think spammers will fare any worse?
I just had a thought. Since spammers tend to use exploitable mailer scripts and forge return addresses, what is there to prevent someone from using the Act to harass another website. Send out a slew of porn spams including a rival's url. Bingo! Your rival is paying endless fines.
That should read "formmail". I got distracted. (Can't believe I made that mistake. After 2 years of cursing Matt's Archive for making spamming so easy... )
A standard label wouldn't be enforcable. Some spammer exploiting another site's sendmail script to advertise an off-shore porn site doesn't have too much to fear from US law.
The blank ones are usually the result of test attempts to exploit some site's formmail. When I was a sysadmin for a web hosting company, I could spot spammers trying to exploit formmail by the large number of malformed requests. The gibberish emails are attempts to circumvent Baylesian spam filter (spelling? no sure). As to why they contain no other content, I am not sure. Maybe the spammer just doesn't get the concept. You need non-spam text AND your spam message...
Actually, to get a law overturned the usual process IS to break that law. That is how "test cases" come about. If no one breaks the law how can courts ever review it?
From the articles cited above, a true network would require "quantum repeaters". Once you introduce such repeaters, wouldn't you open up this "unbreakabl;e" technology to good old fashioned man-in-the-middle attacks? After all, a man-in-the-middle is just a particularly malicious form of repeater/transponder. And the idea that any eavesdropper would "change" the signal is not valid here, as the repater would have to read, and hence change the signal as well.
Wait a moment... rival distributions and lawsuits are a sign of failure. Guess linux is dying too. (SCO, 1 Million and 1 distros...) OK... I know, don't feed the trolls... But this one was amusingly bad.
However, the only reason we have less costly petorchemical energy is because of the time and money placed into optimizing it, primarily because it is our first choice of energey. Nuclear plants are notoriously inefficient because (in the United States, at least) they are based on older military designs stressing high torque (good for driving ships) rather than efficient transfer of energy. We have not put up enough nuclear facilities in recent decade to inspire much research into a more efficient design, so we are stuck with a less efficient delivery system. If you looked at early pretrochemical systems, similar inefficiencies would be found.
I love the following quote:
A transgenic mouse, for example, costs researchers about $170, ten times the price of a normal mouse
$17 mice? I know they breed for specific strain, etc, but a $17 mouse? A computer mouse costs less now than a flesh and blood mouse?
Sorry for the long OT rant, just puzzled by the exorbitant price of lab mice.
Actually, you are right and wrong. The price of US oil was regulated until 1981, but only for domestically produced crude oil. This is part of the reason for the growth of OPEC and the US oil crises of 1974 & 1978-9. At the moment there is no explicit attempt to manipulate oil prices, though the numerous business subsidies and incentives that government enacts around every field of business doubtless distort the market forces here as well. And I agree that there is no guarantee the next resource crisis will be resolved. It could be the final straw. But the past has proven every other "utlimate" shortage has been overcome. I can't be certain, but I feel relatively comfortable that market forces, driven by the strength of human acquistiveness (or greed if you prefer), will work to overcome obstacles.
Even with a low yield, the net energy is still quite a bit higher from nuclear fission. Nuclear reactions are (if I recall correctly) 10^4 times chemical reactions .04*10^4 is a lot greater than 1*0.10.
And, as far as supply of fuel is concerned, our current reserves and known deposits are limited by the economic realities. Witha limited market for fissionable material relative to petrochemicals, there has been less invested in seeking out uranium and other possible fuel sources. If the market forces change, there will be an increase in resources devoted to finding and exploiting fissionable materials and the amounts will increase.
It is possible I am wrong as well. It has been a number of years since I took a chem course, and I rarely get to use those skills, working in IT. Actually, as I was driving home this evening, I started to wonder if I had spoken too hastily. NaH seemed wrong, especially as NaOH is such a common compound, but both had the right number of S shell electrons. Some of the O compounds seemed a little odd, but my boss kept wandering around my office, so I didn't have the time to look too closely. In short (if possible after such a lengthy digression) I apologize if I spoke too hastily.
I have to disagree. This sort of Malthusian argument sounds plausible, but always ends up being proven wrong. (Read "Famine 1975" if you doubt me, or Malthus himself.) Nuclear fission, for example, provides far more concentrated energy than fossil fuels. At the moment the infrastructure is expensive relative to fossil fuels, and excessive regulation makes it unappealing to businesses, but there is no technical reason that fission could not provide as much energy, or even more, than we currently receive from fossil fuels. Simply looking at the physics should be convincing, atomic reactions are orders of magnitude more powerful than chemical reactions, and the supply of fissionable materials is not inconsiderable. Upon what grounds can one argue that fission would not provide enough energy? On current capacity? Well, in 1900 the petroleum capacity was far from adequate. That said nothing about the future. Neither does our current capacity to produce energy via fission.