Who started the first SunSITE (as a vast FTP archive, comparable to wustl)? Paul Jones.
This was the original home of the LDP, and hosts hundreds of Web and FTP collections. It's a super-mirror of Linux distributions and much more. At 175G of FTP (including nearly 60G of Linux) and another 35G HTML, this is still a public collection of awesome proportion.
I wish someone could get us more detail. Here's what I know. Note that CIHost claims they service 48,000 domains! Whew!
Even though I can get through to my virtual server (because I know the IP address), I cannot login, FTP etc.
The data on the server have reverted, and a my whole recently-created virtual domain has DISAPPEARED. This is strong evidence that they recovered from an OLD backup tape, and recent changes may have been permanently lost.
Mail to my addresses doesn't bounce, but it's also not correctly forwarded (out) like it's supposed to be. It's possible that mail is being lost. I'm worried.
Read the press release dated 12/30 posted on hostindex.com. What it says:
Problems started 2:00 pm EST 12/29
They're rebuilding their nameserver(s)
Contrast this to the FACT that it's been at least 48 hours, and as the above indicates their problems are a lot bigger than the name servers.
My problems started several WEEKS ago when they began this ill-fated "upgrade." Lost mail, hours on the phone, inaccessible services, "losing" my account info and suddenly giving a quota 100s of MB less than I have....
There's not much doubt about where my little footsteps will be headed as soon as I can get my data: FAR AWAY FROM CIHOST!
In shopping for a new Web hoster yesterday at hostindex.com, I realized they no longer give you access to find ratings for anyone but their "top" services. (They used to)
Their top hosting meanwhile (including CIHost) are extremely heavy advertisers!
So, I put in my "poor" vote for CIHost, and won't trust hostindex.com any further than I can ping them.
Consider setting up a mirror! I emailed 'humpin@humpin.org' to tell them of mine. One advantage for me is I included the DVD code & mirror in my online class materials at UNC - hopefully this will be a more defensible position, if the poop hits the fan.
Seems like the hacker community needs to identify some good Web hosting services (for most of us that can't affort our own 24x7 dedicated connections). Especially non-US services.
Get a domain registered with a (real) corporation, host outside the US, and make sure the Web hosting service has the balls to not cave in to pressure from the man.
The mirror list for the code is heavily US-based, and you'll notice that many of the "defendents" in the letter are US-based. Presumably, making it harder (and more expensive) for the lawyers to find and bully us will help. How the heck will this have any impact on non-US residents, anyway? Can someone explain this?
Any ideas or suggestions for setting this up? Personally, I'd like to be able to just throw stuff in a public mirror whenever something like this happens, but somehow adding it to my.edu doesn't seem like it's making me any harder for the lawyers to attack (I'm working on my.edu mirror anyway...).
I've been using variants on the split ergonomic keyboard for years - at least since Apple came out with that funky keyboard with the hinge in the middle. It took me about 5 minutes to get used to.
Currently I'm using a Microsoft Natural Pro keyboard (not to be confused with the Natural Elite, which is way inferior). It has all these stupid Internet keys, but they're in the "penalty zone." The control key is in the wrong place, and it has a CAPS LOCK. Not ideal, and MS is still the evil empire, but it has the best feel & response of all the ergo keyboards I've tried.
With a table at correct typing height, a chair in the proper position with armrests, and good wrist support, life is bliss.
I'm all for trying more expensive solutions, but my $120 chair from Office Max and $60 keyboard are about all I need.
ALSO: for good ergonomics, avoid using the mouse when you can. Although mice are more comfortable than they used to be, the simple fact that they're usually a stretch away (or stretching your fingers for those teflon mouse surfaces in keyboards, or variants) means they're more strain than just keeping your hands on the keyboard.
Yes, this doo-dad could be useful for replacing a keyboard that you could otherwise sit in front of.
But the real appeal is for when you're not sitting in front of anything, or can't see it - like when you're wearing a head-mounted display....the "keyboard" could be something displayed to your eyes...but in the real world, maybe it's just a piece of foam rubber (or some other ergonomic surface).
And, if the sensors are there, then who says they'd only be good for typing on a simulated keyboard? What about virtual sculpture, fingerpainting, graphical control, etc.
This is like the Nintendo PowerGlove (fairly lame video game input device), but way higher resolution and all 10 fingers.
In NC, like (I think) all other places that collect sales tax (or use tax, or whatever you want to call it):
The merchant gets to keep a portion, as compensation for the work in collecting and sending in the tax. In NC, this is 1%.
So, merchants actually come out ahead by collecting tax. This could be quite an incentive for an Internet-based business if all businesses work this way - it's a "free" 1% on all goods sold. But, if people are deciding where to shop based on whether they will need to pay tax (as online shoppers are wont to do), any sort of tax collected by the seller could be a deterrent to business.
I'll make this quick - I didn't see this type of suggestion in other postings, so hope I didn't miss it.
Consider: The process now is searching for PAGES.
Consider: The process for the future will probably need to be searching for COLLECTIONS first, then pages within the collection.
Possible scenario: Apache httpd gets a couple of add-ons that speak Z39.50 (protocol for distributed searching). The search engines build a database of what these Web servers say is on their site (could be multiple collections; could be dynamic content....).
An information seeker would use a search engine to determine which Web servers (aka, "collections") might be appropriate for the query. Then, the query could be delivered to the best servers (for searching on their own sites).... The main benefits are:
Scaling: search millions of servers, instead of billions of pages
Customized search methods for each collection. Some might assign particular key words, have methods for searching images or multimedia, etc. - gone is the "generic" keyword search
Currency: instead of searching on a centralized database that's never current, you'd be searching at the Web server level, which could be as current as that site's maintainer wants it.
Drawbacks: slow speed of the net & slow remote servers; porn and other misrepresented content; need to integrate and rank results from multiple Web servers...
We already have the protocol for this type of searching (Z39.50 - remember WAIS?); the next logical phase is to integrate it into our most common tools, especially Apache.
Need a free search engine? Try ht://dig. It's been around awhile, and is stable and highly configurable. It includes a spider, but is more suitable for medium sized collections, not the whole Web.
Examination of their ftp distribution site reveals this is an early work in progress...most docs are "under construction," and even their helpers.txt (supposedly giving credit to others) is basically empty.
I'll post more if/when their src tarball ever finishes downloading (54M - whew!...and the site is getting/.'ed right now). My guess is they drew heavily from ht://dig, WAIS, SMART and other public-source search engines and spiders.
For those who can't get through to the site: they hope to sell subscriptions to their database, so that you can run their search engine internally. It's not clear whether they intend to license the spider/crawler or just the database.
Meanwhile, to those who have complained that easy searches turn up with nil results: read the page, dudes! It says clearly that you're searching a minimal test collection, but can search the whole thing (on your local system, seems like) for a subscription fee.
Credibility break: I'm an information science professor and design/evaluate alternate information retrieval systems.
The analogy is to a protest march. One person marching on, say, Washington DC is not a big deal. Thousands and thousands of people are a big deal.
One person running the Electrohippy javascript is not creating a DoS. Thousands together are, in a new electronic form of protest.
People, the transferrence of activist activities to the electronic sphere is something we should be happy about. After sending email to president@whitehouse.gov and feeling like it didn't really matter, it's good to see some opportunities for collective action.
Microsoft Natural Pro: not bad at all
on
Interface Zen
·
· Score: 1
It only took me a few minutes to get used to an ergonomic (split) keyboard. I've owned several, and currently my favorite is the Microsoft Natural Pro keyboard (not the Elite - it makes many more of the mistakes this article talks about).
Yes, MS is the Evil Empire. But the keyboard does some things right:
Escape key is small, but there's plenty of space around it: hard to miss
CNTL and ALT keys are consistently placed and big
Enter and shift keys are good sized
Arrow keys are properly configured, so are PgUP/PgDOWN
Very healthy spacebar
Medium tactile feel: fairly quiet, but with good travel and firmness
Ergo "wave" that keeps your wrists properly positioned
But there are problems, too:
Stupid useless Internet keys (but they're way in the penalty zone)
"6" on left side, not right
CapsLock is where CNTL should be. But really, aren't we all used to this stupidity by now?
Yes, of course it has a stupid Windoze key, and another "Applications" key that (so far) I've never hit
I can, and do, type for hours and hours on this thing. It's the most comfortable keyboard I've used - and I've used pretty well all the keyboards mentioned in this thread extensively (Sun, PC, Mac, different ergo keyboards....).
Visit Best Buy or another store and try the display model. You might like it. The current version comes with a USB interface as well as PS/2 (PS/2 works with Linux; I'm not sure about USB).
I'm the FTP site maintainer for Project Gutenberg, so wanted to add my $0.02. PG texts are pretty close to "open source." The standard PG license was developed at about the same time as the GPL, but independently. It basically says that you can remove the license and do what you want with the text, or keep the license and abide by it.
Anyone who wants to submit a book - even if it's copyrighted (some of the PG books are, like Bruce Sterling's
Hacker Crackdown
) should contact PG's top dude, Michael Hart (hart@pobox.com). He's touchy about stuff that's likely to be censored (no
Kama Sutra
yet...) but generally PG is quite eclectic, with a strong bias towards stuff out of copyright (older literature).
Slashdot Mirror
Hear, hear! You beat me to this nomination.
Without Microsoft to compare to, where would Open Source be? IBM and Sun aren't nearly evil enough.
Who started the first SunSITE (as a vast FTP archive, comparable to wustl)? Paul Jones.
This was the original home of the LDP, and hosts hundreds of Web and FTP collections. It's a super-mirror of Linux distributions and much more. At 175G of FTP (including nearly 60G of Linux) and another 35G HTML, this is still a public collection of awesome proportion.
metalab.unc.edu (formerly SunSITE).
Disclaimer: Paul's office is about 10 yards from mine.
Contrast this to the FACT that it's been at least 48 hours, and as the above indicates their problems are a lot bigger than the name servers.
There's not much doubt about where my little footsteps will be headed as soon as I can get my data: FAR AWAY FROM CIHOST!
In shopping for a new Web hoster yesterday at hostindex.com, I realized they no longer give you access to find ratings for anyone but their "top" services. (They used to)
Their top hosting meanwhile (including CIHost) are extremely heavy advertisers!
So, I put in my "poor" vote for CIHost, and won't trust hostindex.com any further than I can ping them.
The mirror list at http://www.humpin.org/decss/ is about twice the size of when this legal fiasco started.
Consider setting up a mirror! I emailed 'humpin@humpin.org' to tell them of mine. One advantage for me is I included the DVD code & mirror in my online class materials at UNC - hopefully this will be a more defensible position, if the poop hits the fan.
Just what I wanted to ask, actually. Like most /.'ers, I didn't need a big technical document to see that Alpha's kick butt.
See Motorola's microprocessor info at http://mot-sps.com/
At 450Mhz, their top-of-the-line MPC7400 (aka G4) produces 825MIPS. This is comparable to my AMD K7 @ 700Mhz or a PIII/800.
PowerPCs are at the heart of (all?) IBM RS/6000s and SP (super^H^H^H^H^Hbig computers).
Unlike Intel, I don't think microprocessors are a do-or-die prospect for Motorola's business (at least for consumer markets).
So, where do they fit?
Seems like the hacker community needs to identify some good Web hosting services (for most of us that can't affort our own 24x7 dedicated connections). Especially non-US services.
.edu doesn't seem like it's making me any harder for the lawyers to attack (I'm working on my .edu mirror anyway...).
Get a domain registered with a (real) corporation, host outside the US, and make sure the Web hosting service has the balls to not cave in to pressure from the man.
The mirror list for the code is heavily US-based, and you'll notice that many of the "defendents" in the letter are US-based. Presumably, making it harder (and more expensive) for the lawyers to find and bully us will help. How the heck will this have any impact on non-US residents, anyway? Can someone explain this?
Any ideas or suggestions for setting this up? Personally, I'd like to be able to just throw stuff in a public mirror whenever something like this happens, but somehow adding it to my
I've been using variants on the split ergonomic keyboard for years - at least since Apple came out with that funky keyboard with the hinge in the middle. It took me about 5 minutes to get used to.
Currently I'm using a Microsoft Natural Pro keyboard (not to be confused with the Natural Elite, which is way inferior). It has all these stupid Internet keys, but they're in the "penalty zone." The control key is in the wrong place, and it has a CAPS LOCK. Not ideal, and MS is still the evil empire, but it has the best feel & response of all the ergo keyboards I've tried.
With a table at correct typing height, a chair in the proper position with armrests, and good wrist support, life is bliss.
I'm all for trying more expensive solutions, but my $120 chair from Office Max and $60 keyboard are about all I need.
ALSO: for good ergonomics, avoid using the mouse when you can. Although mice are more comfortable than they used to be, the simple fact that they're usually a stretch away (or stretching your fingers for those teflon mouse surfaces in keyboards, or variants) means they're more strain than just keeping your hands on the keyboard.
Long live the command line!
Yes, this doo-dad could be useful for replacing a keyboard that you could otherwise sit in front of.
But the real appeal is for when you're not sitting in front of anything, or can't see it - like when you're wearing a head-mounted display....the "keyboard" could be something displayed to your eyes...but in the real world, maybe it's just a piece of foam rubber (or some other ergonomic surface).
And, if the sensors are there, then who says they'd only be good for typing on a simulated keyboard? What about virtual sculpture, fingerpainting, graphical control, etc.
This is like the Nintendo PowerGlove (fairly lame video game input device), but way higher resolution and all 10 fingers.
Didn't you see the Salon article in /. the other day?
RMS says that after the next revision, Emacs will incorporate a full Linux distribution, written entirely in LISP.
Just kidding.
In NC, like (I think) all other places that collect sales tax (or use tax, or whatever you want to call it):
The merchant gets to keep a portion, as compensation for the work in collecting and sending in the tax. In NC, this is 1%.
So, merchants actually come out ahead by collecting tax. This could be quite an incentive for an Internet-based business if all businesses work this way - it's a "free" 1% on all goods sold. But, if people are deciding where to shop based on whether they will need to pay tax (as online shoppers are wont to do), any sort of tax collected by the seller could be a deterrent to business.
Possible scenario: Apache httpd gets a couple of add-ons that speak Z39.50 (protocol for distributed searching). The search engines build a database of what these Web servers say is on their site (could be multiple collections; could be dynamic content....).
An information seeker would use a search engine to determine which Web servers (aka, "collections") might be appropriate for the query. Then, the query could be delivered to the best servers (for searching on their own sites).... The main benefits are:
Drawbacks: slow speed of the net & slow remote servers; porn and other misrepresented content; need to integrate and rank results from multiple Web servers...
We already have the protocol for this type of searching (Z39.50 - remember WAIS?); the next logical phase is to integrate it into our most common tools, especially Apache.
Examination of their ftp distribution site reveals this is an early work in progress...most docs are "under construction," and even their helpers.txt (supposedly giving credit to others) is basically empty.
I'll post more if/when their src tarball ever finishes downloading (54M - whew!...and the site is getting /.'ed right now). My guess is they drew heavily from ht://dig, WAIS, SMART and other public-source search engines and spiders.
For those who can't get through to the site: they hope to sell subscriptions to their database, so that you can run their search engine internally. It's not clear whether they intend to license the spider/crawler or just the database.
Meanwhile, to those who have complained that easy searches turn up with nil results: read the page, dudes! It says clearly that you're searching a minimal test collection, but can search the whole thing (on your local system, seems like) for a subscription fee.
Credibility break: I'm an information science professor and design/evaluate alternate information retrieval systems.
I agree with the criticism for basing ratings on things like the prettiness of the installation process.
What would be really useful is a simple (long!) list of packages and version numbers included with each distro.
Also, a comparison of what you get by buying the "official" (boxed, manual...) distribution, versus the download version for $1.95 at Linuxcentral
One person running the Electrohippy javascript is not creating a DoS. Thousands together are, in a new electronic form of protest.
People, the transferrence of activist activities to the electronic sphere is something we should be happy about. After sending email to president@whitehouse.gov and feeling like it didn't really matter, it's good to see some opportunities for collective action.
Yes, MS is the Evil Empire. But the keyboard does some things right:
But there are problems, too:
I can, and do, type for hours and hours on this thing. It's the most comfortable keyboard I've used - and I've used pretty well all the keyboards mentioned in this thread extensively (Sun, PC, Mac, different ergo keyboards....).
Visit Best Buy or another store and try the display model. You might like it. The current version comes with a USB interface as well as PS/2 (PS/2 works with Linux; I'm not sure about USB).
I can't believe I used ul instead of u for underline.
Anyway: check out RMS's "Right to Read" as 'published' by PG at Metalab
Anyone who wants to submit a book - even if it's copyrighted (some of the PG books are, like Bruce Sterling's
- Hacker Crackdown
) should contact PG's top dude, Michael Hart (hart@pobox.com). He's touchy about stuff that's likely to be censored (no- Kama Sutra
yet...) but generally PG is quite eclectic, with a strong bias towards stuff out of copyright (older literature).