You screwed up. My laptop can mount ext2, reiserfs, and vfat (dos + win95 long file naming) with no problem. I also have the international crypto patch and can mount encrypted loopback filesystems. A pretty exotic mix, but it all works beautifully, at least on a stable 2.2 kernel.
There seems to be a lot of politics surrounding ReiserFS's exclusion from the mainstream kernel.
So I'm not the only one getting that impression. It seems to me, too, that he's getting the runaround. "Oh, I'm sorry Hans, but we can't possibly put your filesystem into the kernel until we get this fancy new VM layer finished." Never mind that reiserfs has been working beautifully in the 2.2 kernel for a long time, and probably works as well in 2.4 (I haven't tried it).
Hans appears to be trying to play by the rules, but the system seems to be rigged against him. But if Hans dares to express some frustration with the situation, he gets flamed hairless by the kernel insiders. I'm sure the apologists for the current process can drum up many valid technical reasons for the delay in integrating reiserfs into the mainstream, but to this outsider it looks like Hans Reiser is getting abused by the system.
What's really sad is that it's the many casual linux users -- people who would use reiserfs if it were in the kernel, but are afraid of kernel patches, or don't have the time to figure them out -- who are paying the price.
But seriously: that AC was right. ReiserFS is more than just a journaling filesystem, and it's rock solid. I started using it on my laptop as a patch applied to my 2.2 kernel. I had also been using Suse's USB backport patch, but it was crashing my laptop (some kind of interaction with APM), and I got tired of waiting for 8GB of ext2fs partitions to fsck.
Under normal operation, the ReiserFS is fast and reliable. In fact, most of the time I forget that there's anything special about the filesystem. In recovering from a crash, though, the reisers really shine -- they recover nearly instantly. Only once have I ever lost data: my battery ran down, and a file I had been editing was empty after I restarted the laptop. But even this may not have been the fault of the filesystem; the laptop may have powered down at just the wrong time during the file-save cycle, just after ftruncate, but before any data had been written.
Anyway, journaling filesystems are not magic -- they can lose data. Read that again: they can lose data, just like any filesystem. They just recover much faster because they guarantee the integrity of the metadata.
Bottom line: ReiserFS gets two thumbs up. Highly recommended if you're not afraid of patching your kernel.
.dot is there -- it's under the section proposed by JVTeam, LLC. So if.dot becomes a TLD, how do you register slashdot? Is it slashdot.dot or slash.dot? I prefer the former, then you can register dot.slashdot.dot and slash.slashdot.dot. Too bad no one's proposed a.slash TLD; then you could have slashdot.slash and dot.slashdot.slash.
BTW, I notice that Joe Baptista's.god domain hasn't made it into the proposed lists. Anybody know what gives there?
"Kinda knocks BT's patent for hyperlinking out of the water"
1962, huh? Take a look at the Vannevar Bush essay "As We May Think", which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in July 1945. The technology Bush talks about includes photography and typewriters -- nothing so modern as a "mouse". But those are mere implementation details; the ideas contained in his essay very much resemble the kinds of things we are now doing on the WWW. In fact, in Bush's discussion of users appending an annotating encyclopedia articles, we can see glimpses of Slashdot itself! (Though Bush says nothing about moderation or Anonymous Cowards.) Fascinating reading, and highly recommended.
Plastic cases, clear or otherwise, may seem nice and tight when you first get them, but they'll eventually weaken -- especially if you carry your palm everywhere with you. I carried my Palm Personal for a couple of years until eventually its case was so loose I thought it was going to fall apart on me. I also blame the loose case with my Palm's flaky behavior in its last year -- a digitizer that wouldn't stay calibrated, and some display artifacts that sometimes showed up on the screen and wouldn't go away until I gave the case a twist just so.
Get a Palm V if you can afford it. If you can't afford it, save money until you can. It'll last longer, so you'll be better off in the long run. I just love my V; its rugged aluminum case has taken a beating without any ill effects. I've carried it for over a year now and it's as tight as the day it was new.
If you are absolutely hell-bent on replacing your original plastic case with something cooler, get one of those nuclear-hardened titanium jobs. Wicked, very wicked.
Actually, working for a company where we dupe a -lot- of CD's (not CD-R's), I've found that adding serialization to the content is -very- easy, retailing at pennies per copy.
Are you talking about a single serial number tagged onto the end of the mastered data, or are you talking about actually changing data that has been stamped by the master?
To add serialization data that's intertwined with the audio content (no -- not intertwined -- actually contained within) would mean having to tweak lots of data distributed all across the audio content of the CD. Could your technique do this?
You buy a CD at your local recordstore or via the Web and pay with your creditcard. The CD itself has a unique serialnumber which is also watermarked into every track on the CD itself.
This would mean that every CD is unique -- not just in some data track that can be tacked onto the end of the CD postmaster, but across the entire audio content of the CD. In other words you couldn't stamp every CD from the same master, you'd have to uniquely burn each copy. Doesn't sound economically feasible (thank goodness).
The fingerprinting aspect of this doesn't seem as interesting as the following, taken from the tuneprint website:
...you can use it to embed lyrics, links to your homepage, and stupid banner ads in mp3's.
Fascinating. Now you can embed stupid banner ads directly into the audio content of an mp3. This is both cool and scary.
The only problem with this embedded content is that it would have to be enabled in every different mp3 player in existence. Do I want my XMMS enabled with tuneprint so I can read lyrics? What if the cost of those lyrics is that I have to look at advertising text interspersed between the song lyrics ("Don't Fear The Reaper / Coke is It! / Come on now").
No thanks, I think I'll take my music without ads, and just hum along.
The Taco writes: I've been using Mozilla more then Navigator these days..
I don't see how. I've been trying to use the latest (what are we up to now -- M17?), but it's not nearly up to snuff yet. Its worst problem is that it dumps core on a regular basis. It also has other nagging problems, but I could probably live with them if the app didn't die every ten minutes.
On the other hand, I can say that Mozilla is clearly improving steadily; I've seen a marked increase in useability over each of the past three or four milestone releases. I like Mozilla and can't wait to try my hand at skinning it. But it's just not quite dogfood quality yet.
--Jim
(clank!) Bring out your dead! (clank!)
on
Voteauction.com
·
· Score: 3
You're wrong about Daley. Unless this guy's plan calls for hiring necromancers and ISPs to raise the dead and hook them up with Internet accounts, he can't hold a candle to the creative voting that (is said to have) supported the good Mayor's election bids. The Graveyard vote was supposedly Daley's strongest demographic. Mere buying of votes is expensive and inefficient in comparison: it requires that you actually find the people willing to sell their votes and that you actually pay them money. The Dead, however, can be recruited quickly by a visit to the local County Records office, and rarely ask for so much as a thin dime in return for their votes. So to compare this student to the great Richard Daley of Chicago is really an excercise in futility.
Cool, post the instructions on how to make it please! yes I have way too much time on my hands
Sorry, but the instructions will only be for people with too much time on their hands. People with way too much time on their hands should be able to figure out the folding for themselves.
Given that filtering proxy web servers already exist to suppress banner ads, how hard could it be to extend one to filter out deja's embedded adlinks. The link has that little icon preceding, which other deja embedded links don't have (if I remember correctly -- it's been a few weeks since I did a deja search). The icon can be used as an in-context cue as to which links are adverts and which aren't.
Should these kinds of steps be necessary? Has Deja committed some kind of great sin here? The new links are an ugly form of noise, but that's largely a matter of taste. Some newbies might confuse the adlinks for meaningful content, but they will learn. Will the new adlinks interfere with the utility of Deja searches for the clueful user? Maybe, but I rather doubt it.
On the other hand, Deja has every right to make money from their web site, and to massacre it however they see fit in order to bring in the dollars. Go too far, though, and they'll drive users away.
To summarize: they've got the right, the links aren't that bad to begin with, and if you're really offended by them, then there's something you can do about it. In other words: *shrug* It seems like a tempest in a teapot to me.
Here are just a few of my favorite episodes of the Engines of our Ingenuity:
No. 833: FERMAT'S LAST STAND, in which Dr. Lienhard examines the solution to Fermat's Last Stand... and concludes we may have lost something in its proof
No. 157: THOMAS CRAPPER, in which Dr. Lienhard debunks the myth that Thomas Crapper invented the flush toilet.
No. 984: FAILED CONSERVATION?, in which Dr. Lienhard points out the counterintuitive relationship between efficiency and consumption.
Those of us who live near the University of Houston, where Engines is produced, are lucky to have been able to hear this radio program for many years. May it continue many more.
A Macintosh user has the audacity to lecture the linux faithful on its fanaticism. Jeff Lewis may not be a zealot himself, but the Mac tribe he belongs to is legendary for its loyalty and its fanaticism. Having been a member of both the linux and Mac tribes, I can understand both forms of fanaticism, and in fact they have a lot in common. Sure, the technical details are different, but it's never really been the details that make a fanatic. It's the big picture, and in the big picture both Mac users and linux users are still on the outside looking in. I know it's oversimplifying somewhat, but in my experience it's being on the outside, on the fringe, on the margin, part of the minority that tends to drive both kinds of fanatics. The technical details may be different, but I don't see all that much difference between the fanatics of both tribes. (The merely loyal, though may be very different.)
No, I don't think anyone ever claimed the crackers had access to biomed info. But if they're able to break in far enough to affect those systems, then they're probably too close anyway.
Is that the biomed systems are considered sensitive and confidential. The only ones who are supposed to have access to that information are the flight surgeon and designated family members. In other words, the biomed systems are supposed to be more secure than the "ordinary" telemetry data, which are also supposed to be secure.
I still have trouble believing that someone could hack into NASA's MCC (mission control center) systems. Perhaps these biomed systems are not within the primary protection ring at the MCC. I'm not sure which idea bothers me more -- that someone could hack into the MCC, or that biomed data isn't as protected as it should be.
Yes, it is. All the data systems within Mission Control are isolated within a LAN that has only a couple of connection points to the outside world. These connection points are guarded by firewall hardware. The firewalls allow only outgoing connections, and only then on a couple of ports. The machines connected to the outside of the firewalls only have a couple of services enabled, and only allow connections out to a limited set of IP addresses.
Furthermore, all connections to the outside world -- both voice and data -- can be physically disconnected at the throw of a switch.
A couple of years ago, a group I work with wanted to enable a new "tap" into the MCC telemetry systems. We wanted to allow outcoming data only, and proposed the same kind of firewall protection used by existing connection points. It still took nearly an act of Congress to get our tap installed.
I've talked with NASA's information-security people, and they're nothing if not overcautious. They're not all technical geniouses, but they do employ some. For example, I know that they employ "white-hat" crackers to perform penetration tests of their systems.
So, are NASA's security arrangements foolproof? Certainly not, but I have a hard time taking that article at face value. The suggestion that a cracker from somewhere out on the net penetrated NASA's systems doesn't seem as likely as other explanations: That the reporter got the story wrong -- that the problem wasn't actually within MCC. Or that there was a problem, but NASA's technical people, unable to come up with the real explanation, invented a cracker to blame. Or even that the cracker existed, but came from within the MCC.
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't mount dos partitions anymore...
You screwed up. My laptop can mount ext2, reiserfs, and vfat (dos + win95 long file naming) with no problem. I also have the international crypto patch and can mount encrypted loopback filesystems. A pretty exotic mix, but it all works beautifully, at least on a stable 2.2 kernel.
--Jim
There seems to be a lot of politics surrounding ReiserFS's exclusion from the mainstream kernel.
So I'm not the only one getting that impression. It seems to me, too, that he's getting the runaround. "Oh, I'm sorry Hans, but we can't possibly put your filesystem into the kernel until we get this fancy new VM layer finished." Never mind that reiserfs has been working beautifully in the 2.2 kernel for a long time, and probably works as well in 2.4 (I haven't tried it).
Hans appears to be trying to play by the rules, but the system seems to be rigged against him. But if Hans dares to express some frustration with the situation, he gets flamed hairless by the kernel insiders. I'm sure the apologists for the current process can drum up many valid technical reasons for the delay in integrating reiserfs into the mainstream, but to this outsider it looks like Hans Reiser is getting abused by the system.
What's really sad is that it's the many casual linux users -- people who would use reiserfs if it were in the kernel, but are afraid of kernel patches, or don't have the time to figure them out -- who are paying the price.
Comments? Flames?
--Jim
Thanks, Hans.
<Grin>.
But seriously: that AC was right. ReiserFS is more than just a journaling filesystem, and it's rock solid. I started using it on my laptop as a patch applied to my 2.2 kernel. I had also been using Suse's USB backport patch, but it was crashing my laptop (some kind of interaction with APM), and I got tired of waiting for 8GB of ext2fs partitions to fsck.
Under normal operation, the ReiserFS is fast and reliable. In fact, most of the time I forget that there's anything special about the filesystem. In recovering from a crash, though, the reisers really shine -- they recover nearly instantly. Only once have I ever lost data: my battery ran down, and a file I had been editing was empty after I restarted the laptop. But even this may not have been the fault of the filesystem; the laptop may have powered down at just the wrong time during the file-save cycle, just after ftruncate, but before any data had been written.
Anyway, journaling filesystems are not magic -- they can lose data. Read that again: they can lose data, just like any filesystem. They just recover much faster because they guarantee the integrity of the metadata.
Bottom line: ReiserFS gets two thumbs up. Highly recommended if you're not afraid of patching your kernel.
--Jim
I've said it before, but Rob wants: http://slashdot.dot/ (H-T-T-P-COLON-SLASH-SLASH-SLASH-DOT-DOT-DOT)
Oh, well, that's the Italian form; the Elizibethan goes H-T-T-P-COLON-SLASH-COLON-SLASH-DOT-DOT.
--Jim
.dot is there -- it's under the section proposed by JVTeam, LLC. So if .dot becomes a TLD, how do you register slashdot? Is it slashdot.dot or slash.dot? I prefer the former, then you can register dot.slashdot.dot and slash.slashdot.dot. Too bad no one's proposed a .slash TLD; then you could have slashdot.slash and dot.slashdot.slash.
.god domain hasn't made it into the proposed lists. Anybody know what gives there?
BTW, I notice that Joe Baptista's
--Jim
"Kinda knocks BT's patent for hyperlinking out of the water"
1962, huh? Take a look at the Vannevar Bush essay "As We May Think", which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in July 1945. The technology Bush talks about includes photography and typewriters -- nothing so modern as a "mouse". But those are mere implementation details; the ideas contained in his essay very much resemble the kinds of things we are now doing on the WWW. In fact, in Bush's discussion of users appending an annotating encyclopedia articles, we can see glimpses of Slashdot itself! (Though Bush says nothing about moderation or Anonymous Cowards.) Fascinating reading, and highly recommended.
--Jim
But British, Canadian, or otherwise, what it boils down to is:
1. Foodstuff
2. Peoplestuff
3. Officestuff
4. Otherstuff
--Jim
Those little bits of fingernail that you trim away are called "parings" not "pairings". Parings as in to "pare" or trim your nails.
Sorry to get pedantic on you, but somebody had to.
--Jim
Plastic cases, clear or otherwise, may seem nice and tight when you first get them, but they'll eventually weaken -- especially if you carry your palm everywhere with you. I carried my Palm Personal for a couple of years until eventually its case was so loose I thought it was going to fall apart on me. I also blame the loose case with my Palm's flaky behavior in its last year -- a digitizer that wouldn't stay calibrated, and some display artifacts that sometimes showed up on the screen and wouldn't go away until I gave the case a twist just so.
Get a Palm V if you can afford it. If you can't afford it, save money until you can. It'll last longer, so you'll be better off in the long run. I just love my V; its rugged aluminum case has taken a beating without any ill effects. I've carried it for over a year now and it's as tight as the day it was new.
If you are absolutely hell-bent on replacing your original plastic case with something cooler, get one of those nuclear-hardened titanium jobs. Wicked, very wicked.
--Jim
Actually, working for a company where we dupe a -lot- of CD's (not CD-R's), I've found that adding serialization to the content is -very- easy, retailing at pennies per copy.
Are you talking about a single serial number tagged onto the end of the mastered data, or are you talking about actually changing data that has been stamped by the master?
To add serialization data that's intertwined with the audio content (no -- not intertwined -- actually contained within) would mean having to tweak lots of data distributed all across the audio content of the CD. Could your technique do this?
--Jim
Sure it's possible, it just hasn't been done yet.
I didn't say it was impossible, just impractical.
--Jim
You buy a CD at your local recordstore or via the Web and pay with your creditcard. The CD itself has a unique serialnumber which is also watermarked into every track on the CD itself.
This would mean that every CD is unique -- not just in some data track that can be tacked onto the end of the CD postmaster, but across the entire audio content of the CD. In other words you couldn't stamp every CD from the same master, you'd have to uniquely burn each copy. Doesn't sound economically feasible (thank goodness).
--Jim
The fingerprinting aspect of this doesn't seem as interesting as the following, taken from the tuneprint website:
...you can use it to embed lyrics, links to your homepage, and stupid banner ads in mp3's.
Fascinating. Now you can embed stupid banner ads directly into the audio content of an mp3. This is both cool and scary.
The only problem with this embedded content is that it would have to be enabled in every different mp3 player in existence. Do I want my XMMS enabled with tuneprint so I can read lyrics? What if the cost of those lyrics is that I have to look at advertising text interspersed between the song lyrics ("Don't Fear The Reaper / Coke is It! / Come on now").
No thanks, I think I'll take my music without ads, and just hum along.
--Jim
The Taco writes: I've been using Mozilla more then Navigator these days..
I don't see how. I've been trying to use the latest (what are we up to now -- M17?), but it's not nearly up to snuff yet. Its worst problem is that it dumps core on a regular basis. It also has other nagging problems, but I could probably live with them if the app didn't die every ten minutes.
On the other hand, I can say that Mozilla is clearly improving steadily; I've seen a marked increase in useability over each of the past three or four milestone releases. I like Mozilla and can't wait to try my hand at skinning it. But it's just not quite dogfood quality yet.
--Jim
You're wrong about Daley. Unless this guy's plan calls for hiring necromancers and ISPs to raise the dead and hook them up with Internet accounts, he can't hold a candle to the creative voting that (is said to have) supported the good Mayor's election bids. The Graveyard vote was supposedly Daley's strongest demographic. Mere buying of votes is expensive and inefficient in comparison: it requires that you actually find the people willing to sell their votes and that you actually pay them money. The Dead, however, can be recruited quickly by a visit to the local County Records office, and rarely ask for so much as a thin dime in return for their votes. So to compare this student to the great Richard Daley of Chicago is really an excercise in futility.
--Jim
Cool, post the instructions on how to make it please! yes I have way too much time on my hands
Sorry, but the instructions will only be for people with too much time on their hands. People with way too much time on their hands should be able to figure out the folding for themselves.
;-)
--Jim
Here's a simpler paper penguin, origami-style:
http://jimthompson.org/w-p0001954.jpg
I'll write up and post instructions if anyone's interested in learning how to make them.
--Jim
Given that filtering proxy web servers already exist to suppress banner ads, how hard could it be to extend one to filter out deja's embedded adlinks. The link has that little icon preceding, which other deja embedded links don't have (if I remember correctly -- it's been a few weeks since I did a deja search). The icon can be used as an in-context cue as to which links are adverts and which aren't.
Should these kinds of steps be necessary? Has Deja committed some kind of great sin here? The new links are an ugly form of noise, but that's largely a matter of taste. Some newbies might confuse the adlinks for meaningful content, but they will learn. Will the new adlinks interfere with the utility of Deja searches for the clueful user? Maybe, but I rather doubt it.
On the other hand, Deja has every right to make money from their web site, and to massacre it however they see fit in order to bring in the dollars. Go too far, though, and they'll drive users away.
To summarize: they've got the right, the links aren't that bad to begin with, and if you're really offended by them, then there's something you can do about it. In other words: *shrug* It seems like a tempest in a teapot to me.
--Jim
So maybe ICANN should chang its name... to ICANN'T
--Jim
Here are just a few of my favorite episodes of the Engines of our Ingenuity:
- No. 833: FERMAT'S LAST STAND, in which Dr. Lienhard examines the solution to Fermat's Last Stand... and concludes we may have lost something in its proof
- No. 157: THOMAS CRAPPER, in which Dr. Lienhard debunks the myth that Thomas Crapper invented the flush toilet.
- No. 984: FAILED CONSERVATION?, in which Dr. Lienhard points out the counterintuitive relationship between efficiency and consumption.
Those of us who live near the University of Houston, where Engines is produced, are lucky to have been able to hear this radio program for many years. May it continue many more.--Jim
A Macintosh user has the audacity to lecture the linux faithful on its fanaticism. Jeff Lewis may not be a zealot himself, but the Mac tribe he belongs to is legendary for its loyalty and its fanaticism. Having been a member of both the linux and Mac tribes, I can understand both forms of fanaticism, and in fact they have a lot in common. Sure, the technical details are different, but it's never really been the details that make a fanatic. It's the big picture, and in the big picture both Mac users and linux users are still on the outside looking in. I know it's oversimplifying somewhat, but in my experience it's being on the outside, on the fringe, on the margin, part of the minority that tends to drive both kinds of fanatics. The technical details may be different, but I don't see all that much difference between the fanatics of both tribes. (The merely loyal, though may be very different.)
--Jim
No, I don't think anyone ever claimed the crackers had access to biomed info. But if they're able to break in far enough to affect those systems, then they're probably too close anyway.
--Jim
Take a look at the satellite track. Pamela (the yellow track) has aparently gotten lost.
Read the text above the satellite track! Pamela spent a day feeding before turning for home. She's not lost; she's just late.
--Jim
Is that the biomed systems are considered sensitive and confidential. The only ones who are supposed to have access to that information are the flight surgeon and designated family members. In other words, the biomed systems are supposed to be more secure than the "ordinary" telemetry data, which are also supposed to be secure.
I still have trouble believing that someone could hack into NASA's MCC (mission control center) systems. Perhaps these biomed systems are not within the primary protection ring at the MCC. I'm not sure which idea bothers me more -- that someone could hack into the MCC, or that biomed data isn't as protected as it should be.
--Jim
Yes, it is. All the data systems within Mission Control are isolated within a LAN that has only a couple of connection points to the outside world. These connection points are guarded by firewall hardware. The firewalls allow only outgoing connections, and only then on a couple of ports. The machines connected to the outside of the firewalls only have a couple of services enabled, and only allow connections out to a limited set of IP addresses.
Furthermore, all connections to the outside world -- both voice and data -- can be physically disconnected at the throw of a switch.
A couple of years ago, a group I work with wanted to enable a new "tap" into the MCC telemetry systems. We wanted to allow outcoming data only, and proposed the same kind of firewall protection used by existing connection points. It still took nearly an act of Congress to get our tap installed.
I've talked with NASA's information-security people, and they're nothing if not overcautious. They're not all technical geniouses, but they do employ some. For example, I know that they employ "white-hat" crackers to perform penetration tests of their systems.
So, are NASA's security arrangements foolproof? Certainly not, but I have a hard time taking that article at face value. The suggestion that a cracker from somewhere out on the net penetrated NASA's systems doesn't seem as likely as other explanations: That the reporter got the story wrong -- that the problem wasn't actually within MCC. Or that there was a problem, but NASA's technical people, unable to come up with the real explanation, invented a cracker to blame. Or even that the cracker existed, but came from within the MCC.
--Jim