At first, I was pretty happy with Natty. But I am starting to have problems and, search as I may, I am not finding solutions for them. I am on the verge of either reinstalling Maverick or trying another distro, entirely. Or maybe even BSD.
... on a Commodore 64 and an early Mac. At the time, it was the only "PC" language I was truly productive with.
I remember writing an application I could use to program sheet music to be played by the 64's sound chip. I simply specified a voice, a note value, and a note duration (e.g., quarter note, half note, etc.) for each note in succession. I demonstrated it to my local Commodore users group and it got ooh's and ah's.
I also have a copy of the mentioned book by Leo Brodie.
Sorry, but as a full-time Oracle DBA running two different Oracle DBMS's (relational and OLAP), I have enough Oracle stuff to worry about without trying to become a security expert, too. I *have* to rely on Oracle to spoon feed me on the low level security issues.
I don't know the answer to whether "SSL in itself" is insecure, but as an Oracle DBA, I just received a security warning from Oracle that states "There are remotely exploitable buffer overflow vulnerabilities in OpenSSL versions prior to 0.9.6e". This sounds to me like it is SSL itself that has the problem (if, indeed, this is the same problem).
Here are Oracle's reference links: http://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_2002073 0.txt http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2002-23.h tml
I currently own a 4 1/2 year old Micron. I am seriously in the market for a replacement.
Saturday, I went to a local "white box" store. They weren't interested in building anything more that a 1 gHz AMD with 128 MB RAM. I'm interested in something a bit "bigger". Admittedly, this was only one store. I'm sure there are many others.
Then, I looked at several of the lower-tier systems providers on the internet (Atlas, Sys, etc). Their systems also included lots of on-board components (network, sound, etc). When I would substitue the components I want, I would drive the prices back up to the $1600-2000 level.
I am in the BellSouth area and DSL service can be provided over all-copper lines (via a modem) or all-fiber optic lines (service is called IFITL and comes to your NIC, directly). But, if your phone line is part copper and part fiber, you cannot get DSL service.
About 10 yrs ago, I canceled my cable TV and have never had any desire to resubscribe.
When they announced their annual price hike that year, they made the mistake of touting huge improvements, including much better picture quality and the addition of digital stereo sound. I certainly had not noticed ANY picture improvement and I didn't think I was getting digital stereo.
So, I called them and asked about it. "What is your address?", she asked. When I told her, she replied, "Oh, that won't be available in your area for another two to three years". "Well, I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for it, now. Just cancel my service".
A year or two ago, I made the mistake of buying a genealogy application called Family Tree Maker. After I got most of my known info entered into it, the software strongly urged me to upload it to their central systems, so the info could be used to help others with their research.
It sounded like a decent idea, but I read their policies carefully. Any info on my family that I uploaded to them would be copyrighted by them and become their property!
Needless to say, I declined to upload it. Boy, was I burned up.
I was a Smalltalk (VW 2) programmer in '94-96 and I totally agree. The portability was absolutely amazing. You could program an application from the ground up on Windows and move the *binary* to HP-UX and it would run, perfectly.
I loved the language, too. Because of the extensive class library, you could code major functionality in a method of, say, ten lines of source (often less).
As our project matured, we were forced by upper/middle mgmt to develop in c++ on HP-UX. It was a pain until the company licensed a toolset called tool++.h, which was in a way very funny - what it did was provide a Smalltalk-style class library to our UNIX c++. We were able to do useful things, again! But, still, we always wished we were still doing it in Smalltalk.
Well, there is more to XP than just the idea "write good code". XP is a methodology to give you a way to write better code than you would produce by just trying to do your best.
Even on a smaller scale, I have noticed how many (even, most) people seem to try very hard to maintain a poor lifestyle.
An example is house painters. They make a LOT of money. They often insist on payment in (untraceable, untaxable) cash. But, what do they do when they are paid? They go buy a ton of cigarettes and half a truckload of beer, which comprise the main necessities of their lifestyle. Meanwhile, their children are hungry and dressed in rags and they have to drive a 22-yr old pickup truck that can barely move.
There are certainly exceptions to this, but it is nonetheless very common.
I read an article a few weeks ago which said that the problem has occurred not just in high-tech, but also in industries as mundane as trucking. When the economy was exploding, all the truck lines saw all the potential revenue streams and over-invested in new (and very expensive) equipment to go after it. The trouble was, all of them were aiming for the same customer base. In the end, it blew up in their faces because there wasn't enough actual business to support all of the aggregated investments. Hence, lots of layoffs and bankruptcies.
Trucking was just an example widespread practices across many types of businesses. The overheated economy is now spiraling in the other direction. It will be just as difficult to slow down the probably imminent recession as it was to try to rein in the overinvestment that caused the bubble to burst.
It is just like everything else in the mass markets. Basically, MOST people prefer quantity over quality.
My favorite (and, long standing) example is how VHS video wiped out the Beta format in the '80s, almost entirely due to the fact that the tapes were up to 6 hours versus a 4.5 hour maximum for Beta. Very few people really cared that Beta had MUCH better video quality, all they cared was that they could tape two football games or three movies without running out of tape.
It is the same at restaurants, where they have to serve huge portions or "all you can eat" to keep the customers coming in numbers sufficient to remain profitable.
Quality takes a back seat and most customers couldn't care less.
I didn't say it wasn't dumb. I just said it was a powerful enforcement of compatibility standards.
Part of the reason it made such an impression on me was that I realized that it prevented both correction and innovation, so strong was the commitment to absolute compatibility.
I remember my second professional foray into using UNIX, about 9 years ago. My group was given a book on UNIX System V to help us familiarize ourselves with the system. The book had a lot of general background/historical info on UNIX.
One thing that I vividly remember was that, for any UNIX distribution to claim that it was compatible with (something or other), it had to faithfully reproduce 99.9% (or some similar proportion, I know it was > 99%) of all the BUGS in some particular Bell Labs release from quite a few years earlier.
Thanks for the link to the story. I read it and enjoyed it very much.
It is strange to me that the trailer for the film gives away the end of the story. To me, the ending was a moderate surprise. It is ruined for the filmgoer before he even has a chance to be sucked in like by the story.
If this is what a feature article on Wired looks like, I'd hate to see one of their quick takes. I was expecting in depth coverage of Jobs' talk with the businessmen, but it was just a couple of quick paragraphs.
Slashdot Mirror
At first, I was pretty happy with Natty. But I am starting to have problems and, search as I may, I am not finding solutions for them. I am on the verge of either reinstalling Maverick or trying another distro, entirely. Or maybe even BSD.
Tim
>> I just can't buy that you need to have a religious experience in order to understand why a language has benefits.
So, you've probably never tried Smalltalk, either?
Mach 2 - that is what I used on my Fat Mac. Yes, it was cool.
Tim
... on a Commodore 64 and an early Mac. At the time, it was the only "PC" language I was truly productive with.
I remember writing an application I could use to program sheet music to be played by the 64's sound chip. I simply specified a voice, a note value, and a note duration (e.g., quarter note, half note, etc.) for each note in succession. I demonstrated it to my local Commodore users group and it got ooh's and ah's.
I also have a copy of the mentioned book by Leo Brodie.
Tim
Sorry, but as a full-time Oracle DBA running two different Oracle DBMS's (relational and OLAP), I have enough Oracle stuff to worry about without trying to become a security expert, too. I *have* to rely on Oracle to spoon feed me on the low level security issues.
Tim
Okay, that is cool with me.
I don't know the answer to whether "SSL in itself" is insecure, but as an Oracle DBA, I just received a security warning from Oracle that states "There are remotely exploitable buffer overflow vulnerabilities in OpenSSL versions prior to 0.9.6e". This sounds to me like it is SSL itself that has the problem (if, indeed, this is the same problem).
3 0.txth tml
Here are Oracle's reference links:
http://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_200207
http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2002-23.
Tim
I currently own a 4 1/2 year old Micron. I am seriously in the market for a replacement.
Saturday, I went to a local "white box" store. They weren't interested in building anything more that a 1 gHz AMD with 128 MB RAM. I'm interested in something a bit "bigger". Admittedly, this was only one store. I'm sure there are many others.
Then, I looked at several of the lower-tier systems providers on the internet (Atlas, Sys, etc). Their systems also included lots of on-board components (network, sound, etc). When I would substitue the components I want, I would drive the prices back up to the $1600-2000 level.
Now, I'm not sure what I want to do.
But, they have it in Japan, now:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/14578
The US companies seem to be struggling to provide us with something that is already obsolete in Tokyo.
Hell, almost everything is all about economics.
I am in the BellSouth area and DSL service can be provided over all-copper lines (via a modem) or all-fiber optic lines (service is called IFITL and comes to your NIC, directly). But, if your phone line is part copper and part fiber, you cannot get DSL service.
About 10 yrs ago, I canceled my cable TV and have never had any desire to resubscribe.
When they announced their annual price hike that year, they made the mistake of touting huge improvements, including much better picture quality and the addition of digital stereo sound. I certainly had not noticed ANY picture improvement and I didn't think I was getting digital stereo.
So, I called them and asked about it. "What is your address?", she asked. When I told her, she replied, "Oh, that won't be available in your area for another two to three years". "Well, I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for it, now. Just cancel my service".
I have never looked back.
Excuse me, but the Playboy you saw doesn't even begin to compare with the garbage available on the net, today.
What about the current "solid state arrays" that are currently used on mid-range systems (such as Sun Enterprise UNIX machines)?
A year or two ago, I made the mistake of buying a genealogy application called Family Tree Maker. After I got most of my known info entered into it, the software strongly urged me to upload it to their central systems, so the info could be used to help others with their research.
It sounded like a decent idea, but I read their policies carefully. Any info on my family that I uploaded to them would be copyrighted by them and become their property!
Needless to say, I declined to upload it. Boy, was I burned up.
I was a Smalltalk (VW 2) programmer in '94-96 and I totally agree. The portability was absolutely amazing. You could program an application from the ground up on Windows and move the *binary* to HP-UX and it would run, perfectly.
I loved the language, too. Because of the extensive class library, you could code major functionality in a method of, say, ten lines of source (often less).
As our project matured, we were forced by upper/middle mgmt to develop in c++ on HP-UX. It was a pain until the company licensed a toolset called tool++.h, which was in a way very funny - what it did was provide a Smalltalk-style class library to our UNIX c++. We were able to do useful things, again! But, still, we always wished we were still doing it in Smalltalk.
Reminds me of the old program/design motto:
Fast (development), Cheap, Good: Pick ant two
Well, there is more to XP than just the idea "write good code". XP is a methodology to give you a way to write better code than you would produce by just trying to do your best.
Even on a smaller scale, I have noticed how many (even, most) people seem to try very hard to maintain a poor lifestyle.
An example is house painters. They make a LOT of money. They often insist on payment in (untraceable, untaxable) cash. But, what do they do when they are paid? They go buy a ton of cigarettes and half a truckload of beer, which comprise the main necessities of their lifestyle. Meanwhile, their children are hungry and dressed in rags and they have to drive a 22-yr old pickup truck that can barely move.
There are certainly exceptions to this, but it is nonetheless very common.
I believe you hit the nail on the head.
I read an article a few weeks ago which said that the problem has occurred not just in high-tech, but also in industries as mundane as trucking. When the economy was exploding, all the truck lines saw all the potential revenue streams and over-invested in new (and very expensive) equipment to go after it. The trouble was, all of them were aiming for the same customer base. In the end, it blew up in their faces because there wasn't enough actual business to support all of the aggregated investments. Hence, lots of layoffs and bankruptcies.
Trucking was just an example widespread practices across many types of businesses. The overheated economy is now spiraling in the other direction. It will be just as difficult to slow down the probably imminent recession as it was to try to rein in the overinvestment that caused the bubble to burst.
It is just like everything else in the mass markets. Basically, MOST people prefer quantity over quality.
My favorite (and, long standing) example is how VHS video wiped out the Beta format in the '80s, almost entirely due to the fact that the tapes were up to 6 hours versus a 4.5 hour maximum for Beta. Very few people really cared that Beta had MUCH better video quality, all they cared was that they could tape two football games or three movies without running out of tape.
It is the same at restaurants, where they have to serve huge portions or "all you can eat" to keep the customers coming in numbers sufficient to remain profitable.
Quality takes a back seat and most customers couldn't care less.
I didn't say it wasn't dumb. I just said it was a powerful enforcement of compatibility standards.
Part of the reason it made such an impression on me was that I realized that it prevented both correction and innovation, so strong was the commitment to absolute compatibility.
I remember my second professional foray into using UNIX, about 9 years ago. My group was given a book on UNIX System V to help us familiarize ourselves with the system. The book had a lot of general background/historical info on UNIX.
One thing that I vividly remember was that, for any UNIX distribution to claim that it was compatible with (something or other), it had to faithfully reproduce 99.9% (or some similar proportion, I know it was > 99%) of all the BUGS in some particular Bell Labs release from quite a few years earlier.
Now, ** THAT ** is compatibility.
Thanks for the link to the story. I read it and enjoyed it very much.
It is strange to me that the trailer for the film gives away the end of the story. To me, the ending was a moderate surprise. It is ruined for the filmgoer before he even has a chance to be sucked in like by the story.
If this is what a feature article on Wired looks like, I'd hate to see one of their quick takes. I was expecting in depth coverage of Jobs' talk with the businessmen, but it was just a couple of quick paragraphs.