That's pretty much the function of ACPs (Ancillary Control Processes) in both RSX-11 and VMS: providing a process context in which to execute code at a different privilege level to that of the user initiating the request.
I think a pretty good analogy would be the VMS network management code: commands received via RPC, privileges checked against a local database and the command executed by the ACP on behalf of the user.
Analogue TiVos didn't last long in the UK market: the advantages of the programme schedule information aren't really apparent with 5 channels.
I don't imagine they'll last long in any other market, since what they're basically selling is programme listings, the hardware is incidental.
STB makers have much bigger volumes and they are natural allies of cable/satellite distribution networks - who have the schedule information. Not much room in there for TiVo in the long run.
And none of this wonderful weird fruit technology will be much use when the distribution networks DRM the content to the extent you can't (legally) ship it around in your home.
Windows 2003 web server is quite reasonably priced, SQL Server Express seems like it's going to be free and ASP.Net is streets ahead of ASP (or indeed PHP).
In response, MySQL is getting fussy about licensing and PHP has tunneled out of the Apache Foundation and run blinking into the Sun.
I tried an early version of DBMail and found sufficient problems to build my own - it's not very hard to hack a postfix delivery agent to store data in a database and not much harder to hack a POP3 or IMAP server to get it out again. I haven't tried a recent version.
Experience, though, is that storing e-mails in PostgreSQL isn't a particularly wonderful idea. There's a high ratio of insert/delete operations to read operations and this causes rapid growth in both database and index sizes. It's a bit of a slow operation to vacuum and reindex the databases regularly. Also, archiving and restoring mail for individual users is a problem unless you write software to do it.
In retrospect, the file system is a better candidate for storing e-mail than a database!
Also, I generally tend towards the opinion that the last thing the world needs is *another* implementation of the IMAP protocol. IMAP is badly designed, badly documented and almost impossible to implement in an interoperable fashion. If you stick to a "mainstream" implementation, it's more likely to have been tested against a variety of clients.
It has been widely reported that in fact Apple does not make money on iTunes, it makes its money on the iPod. iTunes is there to boost iPod sales not the other way around.
Apple doesn't make money on iTunes because it's being overcharged for the material it sells by the rights holders. Because Apple needs to get revenue from somewhere, it has a system to lock users into the hardware from which it makes its chunk of the profit.
That's two lock-ins the consumer has to pay for.
Except there's no "has to" about it. The iPod is just a fashion accessory, so the only people who get burned by this are the people who set themselves up for it. It's hardly suprising that Real wants to get into a market where people are queuing up to pay over the odds for stuff they probably already own.
Let's face it, you don't buy a $1000 computer, a $300 ipod and pay $1 a track if your primary interest is in listening to music.
No they don't. They can be made to traverse NAT by a number of different means, none of which is entirely satisfactory or problem-free.
Protocols which pass around lower-layer addresses are broken by definition. However, they do give lower-layer equipment vendors from the Bay Area a marketing opportunity to sell solutions to their own broken architectures.
It's a City Technology College. Any resemblance to an academic education is purely accidental.
Seriously. They're the creation of a government which believes that the only purpose of an education is to fit people for the job market that existed at the point they entered school. Find a school that still uses blackboards. You may still have a career when you're 25.
Apart from the annoying debasement of the word "scientist", this really does reveal VeriSign's view of the function of the Internet and, unfortunately, it's becoming more common.
If I buy an "Internet" service I have a reasonable expectation of being able to run any service I can encode in IP packets and have that service routed transparently end to end. I *should* be able to run a VPN, remotely mount filesystems, use VoIP or even run a mailserver if I want to. If I can't it isn't an Internet.
Increasingly, ISPs seem to think that providing a link to their web proxy and a POP3 mailbox constitutes an adequate service. It might be for some people, but it's not the Internet, it's CompuServe revisited. It's good for ISPs though, because they can start charging you extra for "services" which simply involve them removing rules from your compulsory firewall.
IPv6 is here: is that "again" or "still" ?
on
IPv6 is Here
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· Score: 1
requirements for the project must be set by the users
I've yet to meet a client commissioning a project who knew well how his own business operated, still less was able to understand how any knowledge he did have might be usefully turned into a specification. One of the reasons some software projects have a short life is that the intended users fundamentally misunderstood how their business worked, or that its way of working was likely to change.
The idea of a PC that sits on your desk and is sometimes used to write letters and sometimes used to view movies and sometimes to work out how broke you are is just residue from the time that computers occupied large rooms and ran the payroll on Thursdays and did structural analysis on Fridays.
If you want a home device for showing movies, build one, but don't stick a QWERTY keyboard on it: it may contain a computer but it doesn't have to be one. If you want a device to get imaginative with, then build a device that facilitates imaginative interaction: don't simulate one on a Windows desktop...
I remember, about 15 years ago, working for a US company in the UK, having to attend "Export Control" courses (and having attendance recorded on my personnel file) so that we didn't fall into the trap of exporting VAXes to the enemy [a VAX 11/780 could do a lot of damage dropped from 50,000 feet].
It's quite amusing that while on the one hand expecting ISPs to keep e-mail logs for several years for "security" purposes, another branch of the same government is ensuring that those logs are so full of spam-related noise that it would be infeasible to analyse them in most practical cases.
Of course, anti-spam legislation is only effective against "legitimate" slimeball businesses. And at present, their contribution is minimal compared to criminal slimeball businesses. The latter cannot only be addressed by technical fixes, after which point legal solutions may have a chance of working.
... and I haven't a clue, quite frankly, it does present an interesting conundrum.
Cisco's software has been one-plussed and customised so many times to meet (perceived) marketing necessities that it is very hard to maintain - because so many distinct variants (often specific to a customer) are live in the field.
On the one hand, this makes for a certain amount of reslience to attack, since there is not quite the monoculture that might at first appear. On the other hand, if there are exploits in code which is common across the many variants, there is no straightforward way of issuing a patch, since so many different special builds would be required.
Although cisco have had some recent success in controlling their proliferating IOS code base, they've had several attempts at a unifying "next gen" architecture and it always so far seems to have eluded them.
This is always the crunch for "entrenched" systems suppliers: how do you keep your existing customers happy and innovate at the same time.
Maybe having the code on sourceforge wouldn't be such a bad idea...
... since back when cisco started building hardware, when SNA and DECnet were at the core of most commercial networks, the only way they got a foot in the door was because they had access to unencumbered technology.
It's also the case that the bright people who've come up with the real innovations - like Radia and Yakov - tend to do so regardless of who their current employer happens to be.
Yet another case of pulling up the rope once you've reached the top of the tree...
I don't think anyone is likely to confuse Lloyd-Webber with Mozart.
Where did this attitude come from -- that is must be 'art' if it involves a stage and performers? I think that probably exaggerates the cultural significance of the live sex show.
There was nothing in my original post that deprecated popular entertainment. I don't think the people who put it together regard it as being high art, though. The highly-skilled, jobbing musicians who perform it night after night certainly don't. What's wrong with being a craftsman, plying your trade for money? Why does everyone have to be an "artist"?
If it's so beneficial and necessary, why is it not more widely deployed more than 10 years on?
According to Connexion by Boeing, the average home contains 250 devices that someday could be connected to the Internet via IPv6
If anyone was mad enough to allow their devices to connect directly to a public network so that their neighbours can use their phone, pop up their toaster and mismanage their digital rights, then IPv6 might be just the tool!
Interestingly, the 3G phone provider in the UK appears presently to be ensuring that its standards-mandated IPv6 network of handsets doesn't connect directly to the internet, possibly so it can control the services (and hence revenues) that are available.
It's a populist piece of scaremongering, but it raises one valuable point: the fact that there are fewer and fewer baskets to contain the vital infrastructure eggs.
If you have separate wires for power, telephone and internet and an entirely separate mobile phone network you have a fair chance that enough of them are going to stay working to allow you to repair the ones that aren't.
If your voice communications are running over IP over your powerline and the phone companies throw out their phone switches and replace them with VoIP routers which are also switching internet traffic and, incidentally, providing virtual private networks which link the utility companies' control and monitoring systems, then the chances of everything going down together are significantly increased.
The only way to stop this tendency is to change the definition of "bottom line" and that can only be done through our old friend regulation.
>IPv6 will help satisfy the demand for IP addresses for a wide variety of consumer electronics
How?
Sure, there are more bits in the address, but consider how the address is composed. There's typically an identifier portion (the x in 192.168.0.x) which differentiates local devices on a local network and a "prefix" which identifies a point of network attachment (the part of the address on which routing operates).
It's not local addreses that are (allegedly) running out, but routable network prefixes. You wouldn't hard code the network prefix into any appliance, or you'd end up with every router in the world having to have a 128-bit flat routing space. So there has to be some network gateway which provides the local prefix information and if it has to be there for that purpose, it's quite capable of providing network address mapping to the IPv4 space for the foreseeable future.
[Oh, and IP isn't particularly well designed for big LANs either (because of its point-to-point heritage): ARP is pretty unpleasant overhead for appliance devices on large networks (all those broadcasts).]
So while it's true that there will be more gadgets and that they will need some sort of ID for autoconfiguration/usability purposes, that doesn't mean they necessarily want an IPv6 network address built into them.
As someone who was around during the IPv6 specification phase I can tell you that the spec that finally emerged from the IETF (following a great deal of ill feeling) had two main goals:
1) Not to be anything like OSI on principle 2) To be conveniently routable on the hardware then typically in use for academic workstations
So frankly, it's no real improvement on IPv4 and failed to consider ways of reducing latency and increasing the robustness of routing in large-scale carrier backbones.
It was too late even back then to consider the great "switch over" because there were just too many autonomous network operators around with no incentive to change unless everyone else did (those of you who knew DECnet Phase IV will remember a magic switch which was supposed to cause your entire network to transition to Phase V: not many customers actually activated it for the same reason).
The future is probably some rather different local area network protocol for all of those home appliances (connecting your PC, iPod, TV, PVR and toaster) and something different again for the long haul.
The decision to pack lots of channels into a single multiplex isn't a technical one: it's because of an economic/political decision to restrict the amount of bandwidth available and at the same time increase the number of stations.
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That's pretty much the function of ACPs (Ancillary Control Processes) in both RSX-11 and VMS: providing a process context in which to execute code at a different privilege level to that of the user initiating the request.
I think a pretty good analogy would be the VMS network management code: commands received via RPC, privileges checked against a local database and the command executed by the ACP on behalf of the user.
Analogue TiVos didn't last long in the UK market: the advantages of the programme schedule information aren't really apparent with 5 channels.
I don't imagine they'll last long in any other market, since what they're basically selling is programme listings, the hardware is incidental.
STB makers have much bigger volumes and they are natural allies of cable/satellite distribution networks - who have the schedule information. Not much room in there for TiVo in the long run.
And none of this wonderful weird fruit technology will be much use when the distribution networks DRM the content to the extent you can't (legally) ship it around in your home.
I notice TiVo didn't pay cash...
Windows 2003 web server is quite reasonably priced, SQL Server Express seems like it's going to be free and ASP.Net is streets ahead of ASP (or indeed PHP).
In response, MySQL is getting fussy about licensing and PHP has tunneled out of the Apache Foundation and run blinking into the Sun.
Did I put my head on backwards this morning?
I tried an early version of DBMail and found sufficient problems to build my own - it's not very hard to hack a postfix delivery agent to store data in a database and not much harder to hack a POP3 or IMAP server to get it out again. I haven't tried a recent version.
Experience, though, is that storing e-mails in PostgreSQL isn't a particularly wonderful idea. There's a high ratio of insert/delete operations to read operations and this causes rapid growth in both database and index sizes. It's a bit of a slow operation to vacuum and reindex the databases regularly. Also, archiving and restoring mail for individual users is a problem unless you write software to do it.
In retrospect, the file system is a better candidate for storing e-mail than a database!
Also, I generally tend towards the opinion that the last thing the world needs is *another* implementation of the IMAP protocol. IMAP is badly designed, badly documented and almost impossible to implement in an interoperable fashion. If you stick to a "mainstream" implementation, it's more likely to have been tested against a variety of clients.
Apple doesn't make money on iTunes because it's being overcharged for the material it sells by the rights holders. Because Apple needs to get revenue from somewhere, it has a system to lock users into the hardware from which it makes its chunk of the profit.
That's two lock-ins the consumer has to pay for.
Except there's no "has to" about it. The iPod is just a fashion accessory, so the only people who get burned by this are the people who set themselves up for it. It's hardly suprising that Real wants to get into a market where people are queuing up to pay over the odds for stuff they probably already own.
Let's face it, you don't buy a $1000 computer, a $300 ipod and pay $1 a track if your primary interest is in listening to music.
No they don't. They can be made to traverse NAT by a number of different means, none of which is entirely satisfactory or problem-free.
Protocols which pass around lower-layer addresses are broken by definition. However, they do give lower-layer equipment vendors from the Bay Area a marketing opportunity to sell solutions to their own broken architectures.
Seriously. They're the creation of a government which believes that the only purpose of an education is to fit people for the job market that existed at the point they entered school. Find a school that still uses blackboards. You may still have a career when you're 25.
Apart from the annoying debasement of the word "scientist", this really does reveal VeriSign's view of the function of the Internet and, unfortunately, it's becoming more common.
If I buy an "Internet" service I have a reasonable expectation of being able to run any service I can encode in IP packets and have that service routed transparently end to end. I *should* be able to run a VPN, remotely mount filesystems, use VoIP or even run a mailserver if I want to. If I can't it isn't an Internet.
Increasingly, ISPs seem to think that providing a link to their web proxy and a POP3 mailbox constitutes an adequate service. It might be for some people, but it's not the Internet, it's CompuServe revisited. It's good for ISPs though, because they can start charging you extra for "services" which simply involve them removing rules from your compulsory firewall.
Can't quite recall which! Roll on 1990.
I've yet to meet a client commissioning a project who knew well how his own business operated, still less was able to understand how any knowledge he did have might be usefully turned into a specification. One of the reasons some software projects have a short life is that the intended users fundamentally misunderstood how their business worked, or that its way of working was likely to change.
... when I can turn a PC on and instantly browse the Internet or write a letter without having to wait for the bloody thing to boot.
The idea of a PC that sits on your desk and is sometimes used to write letters and sometimes used to view movies and sometimes to work out how broke you are is just residue from the time that computers occupied large rooms and ran the payroll on Thursdays and did structural analysis on Fridays.
If you want a home device for showing movies, build one, but don't stick a QWERTY keyboard on it: it may contain a computer but it doesn't have to be one. If you want a device to get imaginative with, then build a device that facilitates imaginative interaction: don't simulate one on a Windows desktop...
I remember, about 15 years ago, working for a US company in the UK, having to attend "Export Control" courses (and having attendance recorded on my personnel file) so that we didn't fall into the trap of exporting VAXes to the enemy [a VAX 11/780 could do a lot of damage dropped from 50,000 feet].
Not to mention encryption restrictions...
Not new. Not sensible. Not surprising.
It's quite amusing that while on the one hand expecting ISPs to keep e-mail logs for several years for "security" purposes, another branch of the same government is ensuring that those logs are so full of spam-related noise that it would be infeasible to analyse them in most practical cases.
Of course, anti-spam legislation is only effective against "legitimate" slimeball businesses. And at present, their contribution is minimal compared to criminal slimeball businesses. The latter cannot only be addressed by technical fixes, after which point legal solutions may have a chance of working.
... and I haven't a clue, quite frankly, it does present an interesting conundrum.
Cisco's software has been one-plussed and customised so many times to meet (perceived) marketing necessities that it is very hard to maintain - because so many distinct variants (often specific to a customer) are live in the field.
On the one hand, this makes for a certain amount of reslience to attack, since there is not quite the monoculture that might at first appear. On the other hand, if there are exploits in code which is common across the many variants, there is no straightforward way of issuing a patch, since so many different special builds would be required.
Although cisco have had some recent success in controlling their proliferating IOS code base, they've had several attempts at a unifying "next gen" architecture and it always so far seems to have eluded them.
This is always the crunch for "entrenched" systems suppliers: how do you keep your existing customers happy and innovate at the same time.
Maybe having the code on sourceforge wouldn't be such a bad idea...
... since back when cisco started building hardware, when SNA and DECnet were at the core of most commercial networks, the only way they got a foot in the door was because they had access to unencumbered technology.
It's also the case that the bright people who've come up with the real innovations - like Radia and Yakov - tend to do so regardless of who their current employer happens to be.
Yet another case of pulling up the rope once you've reached the top of the tree...
You know, it's a shame that you can't pick a new name when you get knighted (like you can when you're ennobled).
Otherwise, TBL could have been "Sir Linkalot"...
I don't think anyone is likely to confuse Lloyd-Webber with Mozart.
Where did this attitude come from -- that is must be 'art' if it involves a stage and performers? I think that probably exaggerates the cultural significance of the live sex show.
There was nothing in my original post that deprecated popular entertainment. I don't think the people who put it together regard it as being high art, though. The highly-skilled, jobbing musicians who perform it night after night certainly don't. What's wrong with being a craftsman, plying your trade for money? Why does everyone have to be an "artist"?
>Art should be a form of expression, not an automated process
The average West End musical is a form of business. The main art involved is that of making a profit.
According to Connexion by Boeing, the average home contains 250 devices that someday could be connected to the Internet via IPv6
If anyone was mad enough to allow their devices to connect directly to a public network so that their neighbours can use their phone, pop up their toaster and mismanage their digital rights, then IPv6 might be just the tool!
Interestingly, the 3G phone provider in the UK appears presently to be ensuring that its standards-mandated IPv6 network of handsets doesn't connect directly to the internet, possibly so it can control the services (and hence revenues) that are available.
It's a populist piece of scaremongering, but it raises one valuable point: the fact that there are fewer and fewer baskets to contain the vital infrastructure eggs.
If you have separate wires for power, telephone and internet and an entirely separate mobile phone network you have a fair chance that enough of them are going to stay working to allow you to repair the ones that aren't.
If your voice communications are running over IP over your powerline and the phone companies throw out their phone switches and replace them with VoIP routers which are also switching internet traffic and, incidentally, providing virtual private networks which link the utility companies' control and monitoring systems, then the chances of everything going down together are significantly increased.
The only way to stop this tendency is to change the definition of "bottom line" and that can only be done through our old friend regulation.
>IPv6 will help satisfy the demand for IP addresses for a wide variety of consumer electronics
How?
Sure, there are more bits in the address, but consider how the address is composed. There's typically an identifier portion (the x in 192.168.0.x) which differentiates local devices on a local network and a "prefix" which identifies a point of network attachment (the part of the address on which routing operates).
It's not local addreses that are (allegedly) running out, but routable network prefixes. You wouldn't hard code the network prefix into any appliance, or you'd end up with every router in the world having to have a 128-bit flat routing space. So there has to be some network gateway which provides the local prefix information and if it has to be there for that purpose, it's quite capable of providing network address mapping to the IPv4 space for the foreseeable future.
[Oh, and IP isn't particularly well designed for big LANs either (because of its point-to-point heritage): ARP is pretty unpleasant overhead for appliance devices on large networks (all those broadcasts).]
So while it's true that there will be more gadgets and that they will need some sort of ID for autoconfiguration/usability purposes, that doesn't mean they necessarily want an IPv6 network address built into them.
As someone who was around during the IPv6 specification phase I can tell you that the spec that finally emerged from the IETF (following a great deal of ill feeling) had two main goals:
1) Not to be anything like OSI on principle
2) To be conveniently routable on the hardware then typically in use for academic workstations
So frankly, it's no real improvement on IPv4 and failed to consider ways of reducing latency and increasing the robustness of routing in large-scale carrier backbones.
It was too late even back then to consider the great "switch over" because there were just too many autonomous network operators around with no incentive to change unless everyone else did (those of you who knew DECnet Phase IV will remember a magic switch which was supposed to cause your entire network to transition to Phase V: not many customers actually activated it for the same reason).
The future is probably some rather different local area network protocol for all of those home appliances (connecting your PC, iPod, TV, PVR and toaster) and something different again for the long haul.
But it will have to be demand-led.
Why does that make it *technically* poorer?
The decision to pack lots of channels into a single multiplex isn't a technical one: it's because of an economic/political decision to restrict the amount of bandwidth available and at the same time increase the number of stations.
Time to break open another crate of lawyers...