Re: [Discuss] printer issues
On Wed, 13 Dec 2017 16:00:30 -0500, dan moylan wrote: > > derek atkins writes: >> Are you sure you have the correct HP Printer Drivers installed? >> hplip? It SOUNDS like that's what's going on here. > > i go around in circles, try so many things, and it's hard to > know what's what. to be more clear, the printer has worked > fine on this computer for months, and then suddenly didn't. > it had been set up with an network address (which i can > still ping) and then suddenly couldn't be found. i finally > resorted to a usb connection, and am finally able to print > but only from the stupid gui. neither lpr nor lp seem able > to find it, though hplip and cups both see it as the default > printer. it is really frustrating. Sorry, I missed the original: what printer is being referred to? -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Fidelity voice-recognition security?
On Thu, 30 Nov 2017 14:53:44 -0500, Marco Milano wrote: > On 11/22/2017 01:15 PM, Joe Polcari wrote: >> As already mentioned - my voice can be recorded. Not secure at all. > > If they are also requiring that you call from your "registered phone", > maybe it is not as bad as it looks. (Although fake CID is getting very common > these days.) There's a different system, automatic number identification, that is used to allow toll-free lines to identify the calling line for billing purposes. It's completely separate from caller ID. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Fidelity voice-recognition security?
On Thu, 23 Nov 2017 09:38:06 -0500, Richard Pieri wrote: > On 11/23/2017 7:36 AM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> Bit of a difference there, you agree? > > Yup. Although the "we have no idea" bit is hyperbole because the reality > is we do know how unique fingerprints are. Francis Galton did > substantial scientific research on fingerprints back in the late 1800s. Which is irrelevant, since this is about voice recognition, not fingerprints. >> Meanwhile, as voice synthesis improves in fidelity... > > That's only part of it. Even if (when) you can accurately reproduce any > arbitrary person's voice there is still the playback mechanisms. Voice > coils are mechanically incapable of exactly reproducing sounds. Even the > best speakers can be identified as speakers if your hearing is sensitive > enough and you know what to listen for. The same applies to microphones. They aren't perfect and they vary too. And there are a lot more variables with voices/microphones and fingerprints: position of the mic wrt the mouth, ambient noise, airflow, upper respiratory infections, allergies, exertion, and so forth. > On the flip side of that, if you inject the synthesized data stream > directly into system, bypassing speaker and microphone, it can still be > detected as a fake because it will lack the analog distortion expected > from the handset mic. ...except that the synthesized voice can incorporate said analog distortion. Decades ago Carver managed to do a pretty good job of reproducing a much more expensive Mark Levinson amplifier, using purely analog components; that kind of thing can be done a lot more easily now. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Fidelity voice-recognition security?
On Wed, 22 Nov 2017 23:37:10 -0500, Richard Pieri wrote: > On 11/22/2017 10:42 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> With that much leeway, there's more chance for collision, right? > > It depends on a lot of factors. Leeway -- the degrees of deviations > allowed for a match -- is just one of the more easily quantifiable factors. > > https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/human-voices-are-unique-but-were-not-that-good-at-recognizing-them/ Whoa. The link in the sentence "Each human being has a voice that is distinct and different from everyone else’s" is to https://theconversation.com/is-every-human-voice-and-fingerprint-really-unique-63739?sr=1 which is actually titled "Is every human voice and fingerprint really unique?" *That* piece leads with "Barclays, the UK bank, is to replace the password system on its phone banking service with personal voice recognition. 'Unlike a password, each person’s voice is as unique as a fingerprint,' said Steven Cooper, Barclays’ head of personal banking. Yet the reality is we have no idea whether either fingerprints or voices are unique at all." and closes with "Dangers and misunderstandings occur when too much is claimed for such techniques. They are of limited usefulness. They should not be relied upon totally – as overriding evidence or for security systems on their own. They must be relied upon only as part of a wider case or system of checks." Bit of a difference there, you agree? > Any biometric system can be spoofed. This is as much a tautology as "any > password can be cracked". The difference, ideally, is that a specific > password can be cracked by anyone with sufficient power but spoofing a > specific voice requires a willing twin sibling with similar enough > habits (eating, drinking, smoking, exposure to atmospheric pollution, > injuries or lack thereof, etc) to force a match. I don't see (hear?) > voice spoofing to be a credible threat except in rare circumstances. Or > financial executives cutting corners on security in order to maximize > their personal wealth. Meanwhile, as voice synthesis improves in fidelity... -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Fidelity voice-recognition security?
On Wed, 22 Nov 2017 17:55:32 -0500, Richard Pieri wrote: > On 11/22/2017 1:44 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> And voices do change, both short and long term. What happens with >> voice ID when you have a respiratory infection, blocked sinuses, what >> have you? > > Which is why any voice authentication system needs some leeway in > matching attempts with the baseline. And of course it needs to adapt to > individuals' vocal changes over time. With that much leeway, there's more chance for collision, right? > Voices can be recorded but this isn't necessarily good enough. Then > again, POTS is restricted to 300Hz to 3kHz, and any system intended to > operate in this range is going to have problems. But this isn't a > problem intrinsic to voice authentication in principle; it's a flaw in > these specific instances. Then again, again, the number of potential > users limited by POTS restrictions is dwindling. Do you use any kind of > voice over digital network like LTE or digital cable or FTTP or WiFi > calling? Do you use standalone VoIP or chat applications? If so then > you're getting 50Hz to 7kHz or better which is more than enough to > capture low and high frequency harmonics needed for accurate voice > authentication. Sometimes LTE. VOIP systems have too many dropouts to be very useful. But I'd really like to see evidence (in the form of, say, suitable peer reviewed papers) that individual voices are that unique and identifiable. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Fidelity voice-recognition security?
On Wed, 22 Nov 2017 13:15:33 -0500, Joe Polcari wrote: > As already mentioned - my voice can be recorded. Not secure at all. Not to mention that I don't know that I'd really want to trust that voices are that unique, especially with so much of the high frequency cut off. And voices do change, both short and long term. What happens with voice ID when you have a respiratory infection, blocked sinuses, what have you? > On 11/22/17, 12:17 PM, "Discuss on behalf of Richard Pieri" > <discuss-bounces+joe=polcari@blu.org on behalf of > richard.pi...@gmail.com> wrote: > >>On 11/21/2017 11:27 AM, Daniel Barrett wrote: >>> I declined the feature. Fingerprinting a voice uniquely over a >>> low-quality telephone line? I can't imagine that's more secure than a >>> non-obvious password. What does the security crowd here think? >> >>Passwords suck. Voices are unique. In principle, voice identification >>can be a good authentication system. In practice, it depends on how many >>retries and how much deviation from a given user's baseline the system >>permits. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Future-proofing a house for networking -- what to run?
On Thu, 14 Sep 2017 09:11:36 -0400, grg wrote: > On Wed, Sep 13, 2017 at 10:36:40PM -0400, Richard Pieri wrote: >> On 9/13/2017 10:13 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> > This is 1000Base-T, with standard cat 5e cable. scp isn't much slower. >> >> You're using full-duplex with Cat 5e? You're off spec. And now I'm >> wondering if the data corruption problems you were having a few weeks >> ago were a consequence of it. No, I'm quite certain they aren't. These problems exist with only one machine (including using the same cable and NIC port as on another machine that works fine), and I've seen them with loopback operation also. The nature of the failures -- aligned relative to a 64-byte boundary -- are also not what I would expect to see in the case of bad ethernet operation. I would also expect TCP checksumming to catch errors of this type. > Which spec are you referring to? Please cite your source. > > FWIW (some, but never the definitive answer) Wikipedia disagrees with you: > "Each 1000BASE-T network segment can be a maximum length of 100 meters (330 > feet), and must use Category 5 cable or better (including Cat 5e and Cat 6)." > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet#1000BASE-T > So with 5e he's actually a grade above the minimum cat5. > (Note the top of that article says that full duplex is used exclusively, so > they're not talking about half duplex operation over cat5 or 5e or cat6.) -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Future-proofing a house for networking -- what to run?
On Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:39:02 -0400, Richard Pieri wrote: > On 9/13/2017 3:23 PM, Dan Ritter wrote: >> I have a family of four, plus occasional guests. If I had every >> device that could be connected to ethernet connected to wifi, >> I would spend all my time debugging wifi problems. > > Either you exaggerate or you've been doing very very wrong things > because for example my brother has WiFi for his family plus guests and > nobody there ever spends time debugging WiFi problems. While I don't > have the numbers of users that they or you have I spend essentially zero > time debugging WiFi problems and I've been almost completely wireless > for 3, maybe 4 years now. The singular exception was when I was futzing > around with my Raspberry Pi and discovering how awful the Linux WiFi > tools are. > >> So, no, you don't need jumbo packets to get 900+Mb/s >> out of your 1000Mb/s ethernet connection. That's through >> a very boring Netgear $50 switch. > > Information is missing. > > 1000Base-T is 500Mbps each way (theoretical maximum), but it works with > Cat 5e. You cannot get 900Mbps throughput with 1000Base-T. It's > physically impossible. Real world throughput with file data is around > the 300Mbps I previously cited. You're wrong: ftp> get Musopen-DVD.zip local: Musopen-DVD.zip remote: Musopen-DVD.zip 229 Extended Passive mode OK (|||30016|) 150-Accepted data connection 150 2357995.9 kbytes to download 100% |***| 2302 MiB 96.71 MiB/s00:00 ETA 226-File successfully transferred 226 24.191 seconds (measured here), 95.19 Mbytes per second This is 1000Base-T, with standard cat 5e cable. scp isn't much slower. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Future-proofing a house for networking -- what to run?
On Wed, 13 Sep 2017 14:36:51 -0400, Richard Pieri wrote: > On 9/13/2017 11:44 AM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> On Wed, 13 Sep 2017 11:38:36 -0400, Richard Pieri wrote: >>> 1080p video streams (MPEG-4) need about 5-8 Mbps burst bandwidth. >>> Gigabit Ethernet has practical throughput about 300Mbps. >> >> ??? I routinely get over 100 MB/sec (>800 Mbps) transferring files -- >> even with scp -- between systems with fast enough disks. > > If I'm not mistaken that's with jumbo frames enabled. Consumer NICs > typically do not support jumbo frames. Regardless, if you're getting > ~2.5 times my throughput estimate then your MythTV usage is consuming > about 2% of your available bandwidth instead of my 5% estimate, so > instead of wasting 95% of the network bandwidth by not using it you're > wasting 98% of it. This is a laptop (Dell Precision M6500) talking to the on-board NIC on a consumer-grade motherboard. According to ifconfig, it's using an MTU of 1500 bytes. This is not using MythTV; it's simply using scp or rsync to copy files around. Obviously I'm not doing that continuously, but when I'm moving a lot of data (20-30 GB isn't uncommon), I want it to be fast. WiFi is simply not efficient for that. > If you were doing video editing then that would be a different story. > This is large(ish) scale bulk data transfers where high sustained > throughput is necessary. But then, you would do this kind of wiring in a > studio environment, not the entire residence. > > So, yeah, whole-home wiring just doesn't make sense. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Future-proofing a house for networking -- what to run?
On Wed, 13 Sep 2017 11:38:36 -0400, Richard Pieri wrote: > 1080p video streams (MPEG-4) need about 5-8 Mbps burst bandwidth. > Gigabit Ethernet has practical throughput about 300Mbps. ??? I routinely get over 100 MB/sec (>800 Mbps) transferring files -- even with scp -- between systems with fast enough disks. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Linux on Lenovo P70 -- data corruption
On Mon, 4 Sep 2017 19:58:14 -0400, Kent Borg wrote: > On 09/04/2017 05:55 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> > Congratulations! Sounds like a hardware problem. (Unless it is a >> problem in scp!) >> Not likely, since I've seen it with ftp and socat. This has all the >> earmarks of a hardware problem. > > Indeed. ftp is pretty different from scp. > > Get the refund/replacement. I wasn't able to reproduce it with ftp or socat in Windows, but that shouldn't matter -- the pattern of corruption was the same in each case. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Linux on Lenovo P70 -- data corruption
On Mon, 4 Sep 2017 16:45:43 -0400, Kent Borg wrote: > On 09/04/2017 04:08 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> On Mon, 4 Sep 2017 15:56:06 -0400, Kent Borg wrote: >>> On 09/04/2017 02:10 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >>>> On Mon, 4 Sep 2017 13:59:48 -0400, Frank DiPrete wrote: >>>>> What us the NIC in the laptop ? >>>>> I've had this problem before using the open source driver for a network >>>>> adapter. >>>>> (trying to remember which one) >>>> But this appears to also happen over the loopback interface. >>> If you can reliably get it to mess up, see what reliably never messes up, >>> squeeze between the two. >> I reproduced the problem under Windows, with exactly the same >> symptoms. But it was considerably harder, perhaps because ssh/scp >> under Cygwin is a lot slower than it is on Linux, and it did appear >> that the rate of data transfer affected how frequently it failed. >> >> I did it by copying a ~36 GB file repeatedly from a known good Linux >> host to the laptop, while running a load in the background (on Linux, >> multiple copies of glxgears with the option to turn off sync, on >> Windows, by running prime95 along with an OpenGL demo in the >> background). It took me about 5 tries on Windows to finally get a >> failure, but I did, with exactly the same pattern as under Linux. > > Congratulations! Sounds like a hardware problem. (Unless it is a problem in > scp!) Not likely, since I've seen it with ftp and socat. This has all the earmarks of a hardware problem. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Linux on Lenovo P70 -- data corruption
On Mon, 4 Sep 2017 15:56:06 -0400, Kent Borg wrote: > On 09/04/2017 02:10 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> On Mon, 4 Sep 2017 13:59:48 -0400, Frank DiPrete wrote: >>> What us the NIC in the laptop ? >>> I've had this problem before using the open source driver for a network >>> adapter. >>> (trying to remember which one) >> But this appears to also happen over the loopback interface. > > If you can reliably get it to mess up, see what reliably never messes up, > squeeze between the two. I reproduced the problem under Windows, with exactly the same symptoms. But it was considerably harder, perhaps because ssh/scp under Cygwin is a lot slower than it is on Linux, and it did appear that the rate of data transfer affected how frequently it failed. I did it by copying a ~36 GB file repeatedly from a known good Linux host to the laptop, while running a load in the background (on Linux, multiple copies of glxgears with the option to turn off sync, on Windows, by running prime95 along with an OpenGL demo in the background). It took me about 5 tries on Windows to finally get a failure, but I did, with exactly the same pattern as under Linux. I had basically tried the suggestions you made here. > Two hunches: > > #1 This has nothing to do with networking, it is a local problem that kernel > caching hides when doing local operations; with network operations the kernel > can't make the same assumptions. > > #2 This is a driver bug. What unique-ish hardware does this machine have? Can > you run tests that exclude that hardware? > > I would try more experiments along these lines: > > - Remove RAM, so the kernel can't do as much caching. > > - Turn off swap. > > - Create some files on a different (working) machine that have known > contents: bigger-than-your-RAM patterned data, and bigger-than-your-RAM data > files from urandom (SHA-256 is a way to check random data files)... > > - Transfer them into this machine in different ways: wired network, > wireless, builtin interfaces, USB network interfaces, USB flash drive, USB > spinning disk drive, USB 3.0, USB <3.0... > > - Transfer them to different places: RAM disk, each SSD, USB flash drive, > USB spinning drive, loopback volume, different kinds of formatted filesystems > on these, right back out the network without ever storing locally, into a RAM > buffer of a trivial C program you write for the purpose. > > - Try an obsolete kernel, in a graphical UI, in a text console... > > - Try repeated SHA hashes of stored files (stored in different places) see > whether they are consistent. > > Keep careful notes, look for patterns, hope it becomes clear before you give > up. > > Report back! > > -kb, the Kent whose old Lenovo liked to freeze up when doing lots of video > blitting near the edge of the display, until a new version of Debian fixed it. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Linux on Lenovo P70 -- data corruption
On Mon, 4 Sep 2017 13:59:48 -0400, Frank DiPrete wrote: > What us the NIC in the laptop ? > I've had this problem before using the open source driver for a network > adapter. > (trying to remember which one) But this appears to also happen over the loopback interface. > -Original Message- > From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces+fdiprete=comcast@blu.org] On > Behalf Of Robert Krawitz > Sent: Monday, September 04, 2017 1:12 PM > To: discuss@blu.org > Subject: [Discuss] Linux on Lenovo P70 -- data corruption > > I'm about at my wit's end here. > > I bought a Lenovo P70 on eBay to run Linux on. But I'm finding some data > corruption on network data transfers (e. g. scp, ftp, socat). > The oddity is that in the received files the bytes that are bad always have > 01 in the low 6 bits of their address. There's some clustering, but not > tight clustering and not at regular intervals. > > rsync sometimes reports protocol failures (in either direction -- from this > machine to something else or from another system to this). The other system > is good. scp/ssh don't report any such problems. > > It appears that this is more severe under heavy traffic, and perhaps under > heavy load too. > > Unfortunately, I'm not able (yet) to reproduce this under Windows using > either ftp or scp, with various background loads. The addresses in suggest > that something's going wrong with writing the data out to disk (particularly > with scp, I'd expect errors to propagate with encryption or to get outright > protocol failures), but the protocol failures with rsync suggest that it's > somewhere else. > > I get no problems with either memtest86 or Lenovo diags, and prime95 also > isn't reporting any issues. This happens under both Knoppix > 7.7.1 and openSUSE 42.3, the latter with any of the stock kernel, the > 4.12.9+SUSE kernel, or the 4.12.9 vanilla kernel. > > If I can reproduce the problem under Windows, the seller will refund me in > full and send it back to Lenovo. If I can't, at best I'll have to pay a 15% > restocking fee on a not-inexpensive system. If I try to send it to Lenovo > under warranty, I expect I'll get an NPF and just waste a lot of time and > yet another shipping fee. > > The system has a Xeon E3-1505Mv5, nVidia M4000M (doesn't matter if X is > running or not), 32 GB RAM (yes, I've tried each of the two DIMMs > separately, in different slots), 4K display, two separate eSATA M.2 SSD's. > The BIOS is up to date with the hyperthreading fix, and in any event it > happens even if I turn hyperthreading off. Right now it's an expensive > white elephant. > > Any thoughts? -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Linux on Lenovo P70 -- data corruption
On Mon, 4 Sep 2017 13:59:48 -0400, Frank DiPrete wrote: > What us the NIC in the laptop ? > I've had this problem before using the open source driver for a network > adapter. > (trying to remember which one) Intel I219-LM > -Original Message- > From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces+fdiprete=comcast@blu.org] On > Behalf Of Robert Krawitz > Sent: Monday, September 04, 2017 1:12 PM > To: discuss@blu.org > Subject: [Discuss] Linux on Lenovo P70 -- data corruption > > I'm about at my wit's end here. > > I bought a Lenovo P70 on eBay to run Linux on. But I'm finding some data > corruption on network data transfers (e. g. scp, ftp, socat). > The oddity is that in the received files the bytes that are bad always have > 01 in the low 6 bits of their address. There's some clustering, but not > tight clustering and not at regular intervals. > > rsync sometimes reports protocol failures (in either direction -- from this > machine to something else or from another system to this). The other system > is good. scp/ssh don't report any such problems. > > It appears that this is more severe under heavy traffic, and perhaps under > heavy load too. > > Unfortunately, I'm not able (yet) to reproduce this under Windows using > either ftp or scp, with various background loads. The addresses in suggest > that something's going wrong with writing the data out to disk (particularly > with scp, I'd expect errors to propagate with encryption or to get outright > protocol failures), but the protocol failures with rsync suggest that it's > somewhere else. > > I get no problems with either memtest86 or Lenovo diags, and prime95 also > isn't reporting any issues. This happens under both Knoppix > 7.7.1 and openSUSE 42.3, the latter with any of the stock kernel, the > 4.12.9+SUSE kernel, or the 4.12.9 vanilla kernel. > > If I can reproduce the problem under Windows, the seller will refund me in > full and send it back to Lenovo. If I can't, at best I'll have to pay a 15% > restocking fee on a not-inexpensive system. If I try to send it to Lenovo > under warranty, I expect I'll get an NPF and just waste a lot of time and > yet another shipping fee. > > The system has a Xeon E3-1505Mv5, nVidia M4000M (doesn't matter if X is > running or not), 32 GB RAM (yes, I've tried each of the two DIMMs > separately, in different slots), 4K display, two separate eSATA M.2 SSD's. > The BIOS is up to date with the hyperthreading fix, and in any event it > happens even if I turn hyperthreading off. Right now it's an expensive > white elephant. > > Any thoughts? -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[Discuss] Linux on Lenovo P70 -- data corruption
I'm about at my wit's end here. I bought a Lenovo P70 on eBay to run Linux on. But I'm finding some data corruption on network data transfers (e. g. scp, ftp, socat). The oddity is that in the received files the bytes that are bad always have 01 in the low 6 bits of their address. There's some clustering, but not tight clustering and not at regular intervals. rsync sometimes reports protocol failures (in either direction -- from this machine to something else or from another system to this). The other system is good. scp/ssh don't report any such problems. It appears that this is more severe under heavy traffic, and perhaps under heavy load too. Unfortunately, I'm not able (yet) to reproduce this under Windows using either ftp or scp, with various background loads. The addresses in suggest that something's going wrong with writing the data out to disk (particularly with scp, I'd expect errors to propagate with encryption or to get outright protocol failures), but the protocol failures with rsync suggest that it's somewhere else. I get no problems with either memtest86 or Lenovo diags, and prime95 also isn't reporting any issues. This happens under both Knoppix 7.7.1 and openSUSE 42.3, the latter with any of the stock kernel, the 4.12.9+SUSE kernel, or the 4.12.9 vanilla kernel. If I can reproduce the problem under Windows, the seller will refund me in full and send it back to Lenovo. If I can't, at best I'll have to pay a 15% restocking fee on a not-inexpensive system. If I try to send it to Lenovo under warranty, I expect I'll get an NPF and just waste a lot of time and yet another shipping fee. The system has a Xeon E3-1505Mv5, nVidia M4000M (doesn't matter if X is running or not), 32 GB RAM (yes, I've tried each of the two DIMMs separately, in different slots), 4K display, two separate eSATA M.2 SSD's. The BIOS is up to date with the hyperthreading fix, and in any event it happens even if I turn hyperthreading off. Right now it's an expensive white elephant. Any thoughts? -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Eclipses Re: Great talks last night, however...
On Sun, 23 Jul 2017 16:59:08 -0400, Richard Pieri wrote: > On 7/23/2017 3:42 PM, grg wrote: >> Nor do those characteristics describe millions of homes and buildings. How >> many buildings do you think are destroyed in Kansas by tornados each year? >> Hundreds, for a survival rate of 99.99%. So no, it's not because cows are >> running away from approaching tornados or because they're sharing Farmer >> John's storm cellar, it's actually because 99.99% of the spots in Kansas >> don't have a tornado land on them. > > The size of a home or even a large barn in rural Kansas is a tiny > faction of the size of a 150km^2 (say) power station. Rural homes in > Kansas are spread out dozens to hundreds of kilometers apart. So when a > tornado touches down the chances of hitting a given home is small and > the chances of it hitting several is practically nil. > > Unless it hits Topeka. > > That 150km^2 power station? That's the size of Topeka which got > clobbered by a sequence of tornadoes in 1966. If a tornado takes out one part of a solar power station, the rest is still usable. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Eclipses Re: Great talks last night, however...
On Sun, 23 Jul 2017 00:46:22 -0400, Richard Pieri wrote: >> OK, so here you're saying that instead of a <10% charge/discharge >> efficiency, batteries actually have a 75%-80% charge/discharge efficiency? > > No. I'm saying that chemical batteries have *at best* a charge > efficiency of around 75-80% in the real world. There's a long way from 10% to 75-80%, and you're the one who cited 10%. >> Agreed! And Utah, and Arizona, and New Mexico, and large parts of >> Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington by your map. And don't >> forget Great Plains states like Texas, Montana, North Dakota, South >> Dakota... hey, I think we're over 0.15%! > > There are three problems that I would consider breakers for these regions: > > First, you just described the heart of Tornado Alley. I'm more worried about big hail than tornadoes to be honest, but really big hail (and tornadoes) are actually extremely rare at any given point (I believe I've read that the return period for tornadoes at any given point is 2000 years; I don't know what the return period for, say, 3" hail is). > Second, you can't charge Li-ion batteries when they are below freezing > (0C) which makes much of these areas useless for Musk's storage systems > for significant portions of the year. Are you saying Tesla cars are useless (can't be recharged) when the temperature's below freezing? I see plenty of Teslas here in Massachusetts all winter, so I guess they find a way. Use some of that charge to keep the battery warm, of course. > And third, high temperatures (above about 25C) reduces efficiency, and > it causes batteries to wear out faster than their published ratings > which means you'll be replacing them that much more frequently if you > set up your stations in the non-freezing areas. That's harder to solve, of course, but again, there are Tesla owners in hot climates who don't keep their cars in air conditioned garages. So I guess it does actually work Well Enough. >> FWIW, on that last non-technical bit, I and I wager many others on this >> mailing list see very many places in all the named locales which have good >> potential for solar. And that's one of the great things about solar power: > > Maybe good on small scales like homes and offices. Not so good for large > scale like replacing global dependence on fossil fuels. Actually, it scales both up and down pretty nicely. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Eclipses Re: Great talks last night, however...
On Sun, 23 Jul 2017 00:23:26 -0400, Richard Pieri wrote: > On 7/22/2017 8:56 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> But it's considerably more than 10% in practice, right? > > It depends. It's as much an ideal as Musk's asserted 90% efficiency for > Tesla and Powerwall when in reality Tesla and other EV owners see as low > as 50% with new cells. And as noted previously, that figure drops as > batteries wear. "As low as" 50% is a whole lot more than 10%. >> You still need storage for those blackouts (albeit less), right? > > Yes, but with blackout windows of ~70 minutes you can effectively use > supercapacitors which in principle should be superior to chemical > batteries for short term storage. Supercaps have their own problems...not very dense compared to batteries, for example. And a lot more expensive for the same storage. >> The author is quite clear that he simply doesn't see this as being >> plausible any time soon. And no doubt batteries will improve along >> the way. > > I do doubt it. Li-ion appears to be it, the pinnacle of commercial > battery technology. Li-air has potential but it needs a breakthrough to > make it commercially viable and you can't count on breakthroughs. > Likewise Li-sulfur which has wear and volatility (read: safety) issues. > And, of course, batteries aren't renewable. The pinnacle at present, maybe. While it's true we can't count on particular breakthroughs, it's pretty clear we can count on breakthroughs of some kind happening. There may be improvements in Li-ion that improve lifetime, charge density, etc. Hopefully we'll find something based on non-lithium chemistry, since lithium's scarce. And not renewable? Since when? Extract the lithium and use it to fabricate new batteries. Interesting that we can't count on breakthroughs in battery technology but we can in space... -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Eclipses Re: Great talks last night, however...
On Fri, 21 Jul 2017 11:50:27 -0400, Richard Pieri wrote: > On 7/21/2017 9:25 AM, Bill Bogstad wrote: >> From an economic perspective, it is beginning to look like >> residential solar + batteries might be preferable in the near future >> to current fossil fuel based grid power. Or at least that is the >> argument that many people are starting to make. Are they wrong? If >> they aren't wrong, is there some reason other than economics why >> switching from fossil fuels to solar + batteries would be a bad >> idea. > > I do maintain that they are wrong. Ground-based solar power can't > provide nearly enough power to run the world. There isn't enough surface > area with sufficient solar exposure. Adding a dependence on chemical > batteries would require on the order of 10 times that power generation > to offset charging waste. GBSP + battery makes sense on the small scale, > like homes and office buildings and the like, to reduce dependence on > fossil fuel power generation but it doesn't, and can't, scale up as a > global replacement for fossil fuels. I question your claim that there isn't enough surface area with sufficient solar exposure to power the world. Your calculations, please? >> I suspect you have some other energy solution in mind then the ones >> that have been mentioned so far on this thread. Care to share? > > Space-based solar power. SBSP has its own share of problems but power > generation capacity isn't one of them. So you still have the problem of getting it through the atmosphere, and you still have conversion loss. How do you propose to get it through the atmosphere without the same kinds of losses (if not more) than ground-based solar power? Since land area is a concern you express, any beam will have to be of much greater power per unit area than sunlight. It had *better* fail safe -- *very* safe -- if you're not going to inadvertently scorch surrounding land. And you still have the problem of needing a lot of surface area to catch the sunlight. Where are you going to put that receiver, and in what kind of orbit? If you're talking geostationary orbit with superconducting cables or some such, let's just say that there are a whole bunch more problems. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Eclipses Re: Great talks last night, however...
On Thu, 20 Jul 2017 20:14:15 -0400, Richard Pieri wrote:
> On 7/20/2017 7:36 PM, A. Richard Miller wrote:
>> How else might we store solar energy? As an environmentalist, I rather
>> like the Northfield Mountain pumped-storage project
>> <http://www.h2opower.ca/firstlight-power>. It's been rather benign
>> environmentally for 45 years now. The mountain habitat is well-managed
>
> Except for the initial habitat destruction incurred by the creation of
> the reservoir in the first place.
>
> Mechanical storage isn't any better than chemical storage. It's
> different with different problems like friction and mechanical wear.
>
> The problem isn't how we store electricity. It's that we store
> electricity. Regardless of how we end up generating electricity,
> converting it for storage and then converting it back for use will
> always be less efficient than using electricity directly.
If you're using the same generation method ("all other things being
equal"), yes.
Thermodynamic efficiency isn't always the overriding concern, though.
Solar energy is plentiful, and clean after the initial fixed cost
(solar panels basically don't wear out). So as long as the storage
method isn't dirty, that we're wasting more of the energy by storing
it is less of a problem than the cost of burning fossil fuel.
Which itself, when you get right down to it, is simply
chemically-stored solar energy.
--
Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu>
*** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com ***
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org
Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net
"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton
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Re: [Discuss] SD Cards, cheap and here for a while?
On Tue, 23 Aug 2016 23:10:40 -0400, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 8/23/2016 8:27 PM, Eric Chadbourne wrote: >> So my music collection is larger than the drive on my laptop. >> There's a USB 3 1TB drive connected but it feels cumbersome. >> >> Poking around online I noticed sd cards are large and inexpensive. >> This plus it's omnipresence seems compelling. Slide one into the >> side of my laptop and local storage triples. > > No, your storage doesn't triple. The capacity may be big, relative to > tiny notebook SSDs, but the performance is generally crap. UHS vendors > say "up to 104MB/s" but in practice you're capped at 20MB/s by the > reader unless you have a newer, premium Skylake notebook with a reader > that supports UHS, and UHS cards aren't cheap. And even then you're > going to hit a practical limit of around 80MB/s with a fast card. But if > you're just looking for some extra storage to carry around low > performance media like music and movies then SD cards are perfectly fine > for it. This is, in fact, precisely what the entire storage category was > originally designed to do. I've also found SD cards to be unreliable (sometimes but not always DOA) compared to SSD. I bought a new micro SD for my phone; I tested it prior to entering it into service, and it locked up hard after about 4 GB of testing, after which it went permanently catatonic. The card it replaced developed silent write errors after about 2 years. And I had had another such that was *ahem* mismarked. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Notebook Recommendations?
On Mon, 2 May 2016 20:12:20 -0400, Kent Borg wrote: > I took a tentative plunge and bought a Dell XPS 13 at Microcenter. I got a > lesser model: slower CPU, 128GB SSD, only 4GB RAM, and then knocked off $200 > by going for an open-box unit. I am installing Debian on it as-we-speak. If > that works, if I can make it use the internal wifi (currently using a wifi > usb I had sitting around), sleep, etc., then I'll get a 500GB SSD (not mSATA > anymore, I discover) and reinstall the OS, at that point I should then know > what I am doing, and I can do it the way I want. I wouldn't worry about the CPU. I'm using a Dell Precision M6500 with a first generation i7, and the CPU's plenty fast. 4 GB RAM is quite another matter, though, particularly if you're looking to play with VM's. It won't be as bad as paging to rustware, but it's still not something you really want to do. I wouldn't go with anything less than 8 GB these days, and 16 would be better. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Notebook Recommendations?
On Sun, 01 May 2016 21:03:18 -0400, Kent Borg wrote: > On May 1, 2016 6:06:15 PM EDT, Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> wrote: >>Are you willing to consider used? > > Maybe. Notebooks are a bit like sports cars, best bought new: who > knows what they have been through? But not always. > > Have something on offer? Old and reassembling my Lenovo x230, but > not mortally wounded? And cheaper than new (albeit, at the starting > gate lower-end new)? My spare laptop (that I haven't personally used in many years, although we did use it at work last fall when someone traveling needed one temporarily) is a 17" Dell 9400, which isn't what you want. I'm a lot more interested in capability than portability, and I've always bought used high-end laptops which I've upgraded to suit. Even with buying extra memory and disks and replacing the keyboard every now and then (which would only be delayed with a new one) I come out well ahead. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Notebook Recommendations?
On Sun, 01 May 2016 17:46:34 -0400, Kent Borg wrote: > I was attacked by a Murphy bed this last weekend. (Some strong springs > involved…) It did not manage to kill me, the left side of my head, my left > hand, and my left thigh shared the blow, so I will be fine. However, my old > Lenovo notebook that I was reaching for didn't do so well, seems to still > work, but the case is getting pretty fragmented. Time for a new computer. > > Suggestions? > > I think I swallow hard and get a new thin one, which means SSD, but one with > mSATA, so I can choose my own SSD, replace it later, start with the one in my > mortally wounded Lenovo, etc. > > So I think my wish-list is: > > - works with Linux > - mSATA > - Intel graphics (they work better with Linux, right?) > - nice machine, doesn't have to be crazy fast > - portable, no 17" display > - inexpensive > > I think the mSATA bit is the hard part. Are you willing to consider used? -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] licensing: who freakin cares?
On Sun, 10 Apr 2016 18:27:11 -0400, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 4/10/2016 5:04 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> What particular clause of the GPL forbids a distributor from doing QA >> on what s/he distributes? > > Freedom 3 in general. GPLv3 Section 5 and 7 in particular but the entire > license applies. You can impose restrictions upon yourself because you > do not receive software from yourself. You cannot impose restrictions > upon recipients of your software other than those that are provided by > the GPL itself. Right, but what does that have to do with a distributor performing QA prior to distributing it? > Section 0 states that "recipients" may be individuals or > organizations. A programmer performing kernel work for hire for Red > Hat probably qualifies as "Red Hat" as the recipient so Red Hat's > SQA requirements are self-imposed. The same programmer working on > the kernel on his or her own time would not be part of the Red Hat > organization so being required to follow Red Hat's SQA policies > would be a GPL violation. The programmer could choose to follow > those policies but nobody can require it. We're not talking about second or third party requirements. We're talking about first party requirements. No, said Red Hat developer working on his own time can't be required to follow Red Hat's QA procedures for distributing GPL work, but that's neither here nor there. >> Licensing something under the GPL does not require *you*, the package >> maintainer, to accept contributions. > > Correct. Nothing in the GPL requires anyone to receive free (as in FSF) > software. Still, rejecting contributions because they do not meet your > standards is no different from requiring contributions to meet your > standards before you will accept them which is just another way of > saying SQA. Either way is a technical violation of the GPL and abuse of > your authority as maintainer. By that yardstick, Linus Torvalds is very > abusive, indeed. For example: Nonsense. You're never required to accept contributions, and accepting them or not does not restrict your recipients from performing any distribution they please. Nothing in the GPL requires you to *accept* anyone else's distribution. You can't require them to adhere to your QA rules, but that's not the same thing as saying that *you* are not *allowed* to perform QA. > https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 > >> It does mean that you can't impose quality controls on what someone >> else downstream does, but package maintainers -- and downstream >> distributors -- have every right to impose quality controls on what >> they _themselves_ distribute. > > All GCC users and developers are downstream from RMS since he wrote > the original. Unlike Red Hat, the group of volunteers who contribute > code to GCC are not an organization. They are a group of > volunteers. None among them can impose SQA practices on each other, > nor can RMS impose such "restrictions" upon them -- which is RMS's > own stance on the matter. If that's really what they do -- and I have a very hard time believing that -- it's just plain foolish. Whoever's running gcc.gnu.org has every right to say "we're only going to distribute this particular snapshot of gcc; if you want to distribute your own, find somewhere else to distribute it from". And no, *RMS* can't impose restrictions on gcc, but RMS isn't even working on it any more so far as I know. > Thus I think my assertion stands: the governance problems with GCC > derive from the license. Perhaps "devolve" is a better word than > "derive" but regardless, the license is the root cause of GCC's > dysfunctional management. Again: the Linux kernel is a big GPL project that does not have governance issues of this kind. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] licensing: who freakin cares?
On Sun, 10 Apr 2016 16:09:37 -0400, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 4/10/2016 2:55 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> That's a project management/governance issue independent of choice of >> license model. > > Imposing quality controls on contributions to a GPL-protected work adds > restrictions to how recipients distribute modifications to that work. > This is expressly prohibited by the GPL. Absurd as it sounds, the GPL's > terms really do prevent RMS from imposing discipline on his volunteer > coders because they themselves are recipients of free (as in FSF) > software. So yes, the GCC governance issues actually do derive from the > license. What particular clause of the GPL forbids a distributor from doing QA on what s/he distributes? Licensing something under the GPL does not require *you*, the package maintainer, to accept contributions. It does mean that you can't impose quality controls on what someone else downstream does, but package maintainers -- and downstream distributors -- have every right to impose quality controls on what they _themselves_ distribute. >> But the Linux kernel is also GPL-licensed, and it doesn't suffer from >> those problems. > > That's because Linus Torvalds rejects RMS's philosophy. He imposes > discipline and quality controls on contributions to the kernel despite > this being a technical violation of the GPL's terms. Again, I'd like to know exactly what caluse of the GPL forbids you from imposing discipline and quality control on your own process? -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] licensing: who freakin cares?
On Sun, 10 Apr 2016 14:08:01 -0400, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 4/10/2016 5:19 PM, j...@trillian.mit.edu wrote: >> The open-source work I've been involved in has rarely acted this way. >> Part of the reason is that if the leaders try it, people just quietly >> drop off the team and start working on something else. Or they fork >> the project and do the needed work themselves (leading to the usual >> hassles if they try to merge it back into the main package). > > This is the promise of free and open source software. When it works it > works really well, but when it fails it fails worse than any by the > dollars MBA. The GCC cadre is my go-to example of such failure. Lack of > innovation (GCC falling behind commercial and open source compilers' > performance), failure to keep up with standards (GCC's C and C++ > compilers are way behind current standards for these languages), > rejection of contributions from outside sources (the rejection of Clang > integration), and low general code quality (everything Linus Torvalds > ranted about GCC 4.9). That's a project management/governance issue independent of choice of license model. GCC has had (more than) its share of NIH, if you recall; there was a project named egcs that forked gcc, precisely because gcc wasn't being maintained. Eventually by mutual agreement egcs became the new gcc mainline. Sad to see that that issue has come up again. But this kind of thing is hardly specific to the FOSS world, much less the GPL world. It's not uncommon for products to be orphaned; at least in the FOSS world, it's possible to do something about it. Look at Revolv for an example of what can happen with a closed product. But the Linux kernel is also GPL-licensed, and it doesn't suffer from those problems. > And as a second example, one that I was briefly involved with: Claws > Mail. One of their core developers stated that losing mail is an > acceptable tradeoff for performance and the others did not dissent. To > say that I was horrified by this is an understatement. Losing mail is > unacceptable. Period. Agreed, but it's hardly the only consumer-grade product that has gone out with flaws of that nature. > You generally don't see this kind of management behavior in aerospace > and heavy industry. The stakes are far too high. After all, you can't > fix it in production when your product is in an Airbus A350 cruising at > Mach 0.85 at 40,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean. No, but that's also not what most consumer products (of any license, proprietary or open) are qualified for. > And "we'll fix it in production" turned out not to work for Facebook, > either. Their old "move fast, break things" philosophy did not sit will > with their customers. Paying advertisers and developers didn't like it > when their ads and games weren't being served to users because chunks of > the infrastructure were broken. So, when push came to shove, Facebook > changed their philosophy. It's now "move fast, stable infra" because > they don't get paid when production breaks. Which again, is entirely independent of license model. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Govt Source Code Policy
On Sat, 9 Apr 2016 12:18:37 -0400, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 4/9/2016 10:24 AM, IngeGNUe wrote: > I'm still not sure that you can actually take a fully copyleft work and > make it fully proprietary, though. Copyleft entails the copyright holder > forfeiting some rights to control the work and it is not clear to me if > those rights, once forfeited, can be reclaimed. If you have issued your own work under a copyleft license, and not accepted any changes, you can reissue it under any license you please. You just can't stop anyone using/modifying/distributing existing copies of the work. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] systemd explanations
On Fri, 19 Feb 2016 15:12:06 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 2/19/2016 2:27 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> True for RMS; not so true for Linus (he delegates a lot but still >> retains final control). But if they really are that irrelevant, why >> does it matter what they say? > > Because what they say is cruel and uncalled-for. But if they're that irrelevant, what difference does it make? > Back at you: how does forking the code get them to stop being cruel? Again: if they're rendered completely irrelevant, why does it matter if their words are cruel and uncalled-for? -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] systemd explanations
On Fri, 19 Feb 2016 14:18:52 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 2/19/2016 1:22 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >>> How does this solve the problem of RMS and Linus being dicks to everyone >>> who isn't on board with their goals? >> >> By rendering them irrelevant. > > RMS and Linus already are irrelevant to their respective projects' code > bases. Have been for years. Both long since delegated the bulk of their > coding and maintenance responsibilities to others. True for RMS; not so true for Linus (he delegates a lot but still retains final control). But if they really are that irrelevant, why does it matter what they say? -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] systemd explanations
On Fri, 19 Feb 2016 12:12:35 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 2/19/2016 12:04 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> Fine. Go fork the Linux kernel and GNU userland and do a better job >> than Linus and RMS. Problem solved. > > How does this solve the problem of RMS and Linus being dicks to everyone > who isn't on board with their goals? By rendering them irrelevant. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] systemd explanations
On Fri, 19 Feb 2016 10:59:22 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 2/19/2016 12:46 AM, Steve Litt wrote: >> Go on any Linux **USER GROUP** mailing list, and *BSD is seen as a close >> cousin. > > This is likely true. > >> Yeah, RMS and Linus can be dicks, but I don't think the entire >> GNU/Linux community should be judged on their actions. > > You are technically correct: we should not be judged by their actions. > > We should be judged by our actions. Or inaction. By allowing or > encouraging RMS and Linus to continue being dicks in their roles as > leaders and speakers for the GNU and Linux communities, we grant them > tacit approval for their behavior. Fine. Go fork the Linux kernel and GNU userland and do a better job than Linus and RMS. Problem solved. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] 4K (or 5K) resolution for Linux desktop
On Wed, 6 Jan 2016 11:56:27 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 1/6/2016 10:05 AM, Mike Small wrote: >> Eh? I thought point meant point and that this only happened when >> you make the mistake of specifying your font size in pixels, e.g. >> pixelsize instead of size in fontconfig language. Though that > > What point means is how large a typeface is in print. Points and picas > are absolute measurements like inches. An inch is an inch. A point is a > point. > > When translated to computer screens the pixel size and density (ppi) > does matter because 100 pixels on one screen is not the same absolute > dimensions as 100 pixels on a different screen. Most contemporary > desktop environments have mechanisms for scaling so that a 1 inch line > is 1 inch regardless of the display's ppi -- but most also default to > 96ppi which means you get the behavior I described. > > Which brings me back to the point I made about screen size: you have to > upscale everything on a UHD screen in order to make everything appear to > be the same size as it would appear on a 1080p screen with the same > dimensions. Which is to say, the 4 times greater resolution of UHD is > wasted if you need to make everything 4 times larger in order to achieve > consistency. But (at least for me) it doesn't need to be the same size if the resolution is higher. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] 4K (or 5K) resolution for Linux desktop
On Wed, 6 Jan 2016 13:13:11 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 1/6/2016 12:53 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> But (at least for me) it doesn't need to be the same size if the >> resolution is higher. > > Perhaps not the same size but close enough. I doubt that you can go from > 10 point to 5 point just because the underlying pixel density is four > times greater. You might be able to go from 10 point to 8 point without > straining but you're still upscaling which means you're wasting much of > that alleged "improved definition". Marketing buzzwords like > "revolutionary" and "retina display" don't change basic geometry. I use a 6x10 (pixel) font in emacs and xterm. Using a 9x15 font at twice the linear resolution would let me get quite a lot more on the screen. I'm currently using a 10 point font for general purpose on my laptop; I set my display to lie and claim 72 dpi. 8 (in particular) and 9 point fonts are harder to read not so much because they're smaller as because the screen doesn't have enough pixels to render them as cleanly as the 10 point font. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] 4K (or 5K) resolution for Linux desktop
On Wed, 6 Jan 2016 13:52:55 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 1/6/2016 1:24 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> I use a 6x10 (pixel) font in emacs and xterm. Using a 9x15 font at >> twice the linear resolution would let me get quite a lot more on the >> screen. > > 50% more. Which is more but the other 50% is wasted by the upscaling. > You would need a physically larger display to offset that waste. Yes, but 50% linear increase is not negligible. >> I'm currently using a 10 point font for general purpose on my laptop; >> I set my display to lie and claim 72 dpi. 8 (in particular) and 9 >> point fonts are harder to read not so much because they're smaller as >> because the screen doesn't have enough pixels to render them as >> cleanly as the 10 point font. > > I suggest that this has more to do with your choice of fonts. The X > bitmap fonts in particular are absolutely horrible. Try Cousine, > currently my preferred monospaced font. I was actually referring to my generic KDE fonts (Noto). I tried Cousine with emacs; it's both bigger (or at least more leading) and harder (for me) to read than the 6x10 bitmap font. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] 4K (or 5K) resolution for Linux desktop
On Wed, 6 Jan 2016 19:12:11 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: >> Don't have it (I'm running openSUSE, not Ubuntu). > > As Mark said, it's an open source font. You can install it yourself. Not really that impressed (displaying it at 16 point scaled 67% -- 10.67 points on http://font.ubuntu.com/). It's always a matter of taste. I guess I'm one of those odd ducks who actually likes the X bitmap fonts. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] 4K (or 5K) resolution for Linux desktop
On Wed, 6 Jan 2016 15:43:39 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 1/6/2016 2:02 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> Yes, but 50% linear increase is not negligible. > > Neither is wasting the other 50%. It's not important other than the fact that my display might be a bit slower. But I'm not a g4m3rz, and any card will be more than fast enough to display my editor and such. Even I don't want a 25" laptop screen, but I wouldn't mind getting more content on my existing 17" (1920x1200). >> I was actually referring to my generic KDE fonts (Noto). I tried >> Cousine with emacs; it's both bigger (or at least more leading) and >> harder (for me) to read than the 6x10 bitmap font. > > Cousine is wider. It's intended to be a drop-in replacement for Courier New. Wider is not a feature for me. > Have you tried Ubuntu Mono? It's narrower with more traditional terminal > shapes than Cousine. Don't have it (I'm running openSUSE, not Ubuntu). -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] 4K (or 5K) resolution for Linux desktop
On Tue, 5 Jan 2016 14:09:11 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > If the display is physically large enough to make use of that > resolution. UHD at less than about 35" at 16:9 and everything will be > too small to comfortably see without magnifying to compensate. At which > point the UHD screen is a waste of money. I don't agree. Even if you can't easily resolve the individual pixels, the higher density improves the definition and may allow you to e. g. use a smaller font or smaller icons and be able to read them as easily. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] ConsoleKit / OpenSUSE 42.1
On Mon, 4 Jan 2016 20:33:29 -0500, Robert Krawitz wrote: > I've upgraded to openSUSE 42.1 and am having a problem with what > appears to be ConsoleKit. Specifically, it is showing my session as > not active and not is-local (the is my user ID): So a few updates, it looks like my problem's resolved. 1) Switching from sddm to lxdm appears to resolve this. 2) The problem with not automounting may be confined to a particular partition on an internal drive that KDE has somehow decided should be automounted, and I can't remove it from the list. I'll probably have to find where it is by hand and clear it out. > Session6: > unix-user = '' > realname = 'Robert Krawitz' > seat = 'Seat6' > session-type = '' > active = FALSE > x11-display = ':0' > x11-display-device = '/dev/tty7' > display-device = '' > remote-host-name = '' > is-local = FALSE > on-since = '2016-01-05T00:05:57.375588Z' > login-session-id = '43' > > This results in a number of problems; media don't automount for me (I > have to provide a password), and ctrl-alt-delete to X results in an > immediate reboot, not a logout prompt. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[Discuss] ConsoleKit / OpenSUSE 42.1
I've upgraded to openSUSE 42.1 and am having a problem with what appears to be ConsoleKit. Specifically, it is showing my session as not active and not is-local (the is my user ID): Session6: unix-user = '' realname = 'Robert Krawitz' seat = 'Seat6' session-type = '' active = FALSE x11-display = ':0' x11-display-device = '/dev/tty7' display-device = '' remote-host-name = '' is-local = FALSE on-since = '2016-01-05T00:05:57.375588Z' login-session-id = '43' This results in a number of problems; media don't automount for me (I have to provide a password), and ctrl-alt-delete to X results in an immediate reboot, not a logout prompt. I'm using sddm (same problem with kdm) and KDE5, in case it matters. rpm -V shows the following files in /etc "off" in one way or another, in case it helps anyone point me at what I should look at. Nothing very obvious is wrong with my pam stuff,, but I don't understand it well enough to know exactly what to look for. ...T. c /etc/login.defs ...T. c /etc/pulse/client.conf ...T. c /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf ...T. c /etc/sssd/sssd.conf ...T. c /etc/pam.d/login L c /etc/pam.d/common-account L c /etc/pam.d/common-auth ..5T. c /etc/lxdm/lxdm.conf .M.T. c /etc/festival.scm S.5T./etc/cron.daily/suse.de-backup-rc.config S.5T. c /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf S.5T. c /etc/X11/qtrc S.5T. c /etc/apache2/listen.conf S.5T. c /etc/cups/cupsd.conf S.5T. c /etc/default/grub S.5T. c /etc/dhclient.conf S.5T. c /etc/filesystems S.5T. c /etc/fonts/conf.d/10-rendering-options.conf S.5T. c /etc/fonts/conf.d/58-family-prefer-local.conf S.5T. c /etc/ifplugd/ifplugd.conf S.5T. c /etc/isdn/isdn.conf S.5T. c /etc/logrotate.d/quagga S.5T. c /etc/mail/service.switch S.5T. c /etc/mime.types S.5T. c /etc/motd S.5T. c /etc/mtools.conf S.5T. c /etc/pam.d/cups S.5T. c /etc/prelink.conf S.5T. c /etc/pure-ftpd/pure-ftpd.conf S.5T. c /etc/sane.d/dll.conf S.5T. c /etc/sddm.conf S.5T. c /etc/security/access.conf S.5T. c /etc/splashy/config.xml S.5T. c /etc/ssh/sshd_config S.5T. c /etc/storage-fixup.conf S.5T. c /etc/sudoers S.5T. c /etc/sysconfig/SuSEfirewall2 S.5T. c /etc/systemd/journald.conf S.5T. c /etc/systemd/logind.conf S.5T. c /etc/ups/upsd.users S.5T. c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf S.5T. c /etc/zypp/zypp.conf SM5T. c /etc/fonts/conf.d/30-metric-aliases.conf SM5T. c /etc/ntp.conf -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Stallman stubborn
On Sun, 15 Nov 2015 12:26:54 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 11/15/2015 11:55 AM, Shirley Márquez Dúlcey wrote: >> Those earlier compilers were free in the sense that you didn't have to >> pay for them, but most were not freely distributable in the way that >> GCC is. For starters, they were offered only for operating systems > > GCC is /not/ freely distributable. The GPL places a number of > requirements on how software is distributed. Only a problem if you modify it. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Linux on laptops
On Thu, 12 Nov 2015 14:11:19 +, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) wrote: > So far, all the good responses seem to say, basically, pay more money. The > system76 and zareason (and base model Dell and Lenovo) laptops start around > $700 minimum. > > What I really want is exactly this: > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=1TS-000X-000J1 > > With a different OS. > > A few years ago, they sold laptops like these in Toys-R-Us, as laptops for > kids, that you didn't have to worry about viruses. (Which is slightly > misleading, but not entirely). > > So far, what I'm inclined to do, is go to a local store such as Microcenter > or BestBuy, ask them what their return policy is, create a "dd" image of the > internal hard drive before first power-on, and then simply blow it away with > a linux installer. See what happens. > > If I return one because I don't like it, I won't be in any trouble. If I > return two, they might be suspicious. If I return three, they might give me a > hard time. > > Depending on the store, sometimes you can say, "Can I buy 3 laptops, and then > return 2 after I decide which one I like best?" Another option is to buy a used laptop on eBay. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Profiting from GPL software
On Wed, 11 Nov 2015 11:28:12 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 11/11/2015 10:59 AM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) wrote: >> GPLv3 was created in order to combat Digital Restrictions. Again, >> contributors to GPL'd software do so to retain, and protect their liberty, >> not to lock it down and restrict it technically. > > At the expense of my freedom to protect my rights. At the expense of your freedom to deny others the same rights you have, to be exact. >> This is a liberating and freedom defending aspect of the GPL. It makes >> software about solutions rather than lawyers. It makes contributions into >> gifts rather than sneaky backdoor extortion schemes. > > It's denying me some of my legal rights to my patents (if I had any). Again: it denies you any right to deny other people the same rights you have. That's the whole point of it. (Oh, and by the way, the issue you had with assigning your copyright to the FSF has nothing to do with the GPL per se. FSF != GNU != GPL. My understanding is that the copyright assignment does allow you to continue to use your stuff under any license you choose.) -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Profiting from GPL software
On Wed, 11 Nov 2015 21:16:57 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 11/11/2015 8:09 PM, John Abreau wrote: >> Then, on closer examination, you found that the GPL was cleverly designed >> to prevent people like you from taking unfair advantage of their work like >> that, and now you're carrying around a chip on your shoulder full of sour >> grapes. > > Oh, yes. It's so fair that GPL software takes from BSD and BSD gets nothing > in return because the BSD licenses don't carry the distribution requirements > that the GPL mandates. BSD-license users have already decided that they're OK with others being able to use their software without contributing back. The same thing happens if people put BSD-licensed software into their proprietary software: the licensor never gets anything back. So why is it any worse if someone takes BSD code and puts it into GPL software than if they put it into proprietary software? If you're unhappy with this situation, then you shouldn't be using the BSD license at all; you should be using a license that imposes a reciprocal obligation. If you're happy with it, there's not a problem. If you're happy with your code being put into proprietary software without any kind of compensation, but not with it put into GPL (or copyleft in general), then I have to wonder just what your priorities really are. > I'm pretty sure I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that if BSD just > relicensed under the GPL then this wouldn't be a problem. No, there simply isn't a problem at all unless somebody decides to make it one. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Profiting from GPL software
On Wed, 11 Nov 2015 21:53:46 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 11/11/2015 9:12 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> At the expense of your freedom to deny others the same rights you >> have, to be exact. > > Others have no rights to my works other than those that I explicitly > assign and those that are provided under fair use. These are spelled > out in the Constitution of the United States and the Copyright Act > of 1976. Uh huh. So that means that *you* have no rights to GPL'ed works except for those that the authors assign under the GPL. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The goal of the GPL is precisely to ensure the same rights to everyone. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Profiting from GPL software
On Mon, 9 Nov 2015 21:58:46 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 11/9/2015 8:27 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> But if you count support contracts bundled with the software, it's a >> very different picture. And since the support contract wouldn't exist >> without the underlying software, I think it's nitpicking to not count >> that. > > It's not a nit-pick. It's the very point of the argument. If you > can't make a profit from GPL software without tying it to some form > of added value service then it proves my point: you can't make a > profit from selling GPL software. The profit comes from the added > value services. But in this case, the service is very tightly coupled with the software. I just don't see why the distinction matters. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Profiting from GPL software
On Mon, 9 Nov 2015 22:41:13 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 11/9/2015 10:02 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> But in this case, the service is very tightly coupled with the >> software. I just don't see why the distinction matters. > > It matters because consumers as a rule don't buy annual support > contracts on commodity home routers. No, but they buy commodity home routers, so loading them with GPL software is another way to "sell" the software. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Fwd: Hey FCC, Don't Lock Down Our Wi-Fi Routers | WIRED
On Mon, 9 Nov 2015 12:29:36 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 11/9/2015 11:56 AM, Jack Coats wrote: >> Selling solutions using OSS software is not easy. It can be done but >> it seems to take extra effort. > > All true, but I didn't say you can't try sell GPL software or try to > sell services built on GPL software. I said you can't make a profit > from trying to sell GPL software. So I ask again: what is dishonest > about this statement? Red Hat, for example, sold boxed CD's/DVD's for quite a while, presumably at at least a small profit. If you want to argue that the real value was in the support, whatever, but the fact remains that you could go into a store and buy Red Hat boxed distributions. Nothing in the GPL restricts what you can charge for selling the software in the first place. It's only the accompanying source code that you have to provide for no more than the actual cost of the distribution. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Profiting from GPL software (was: Hey FCC, Don't Lock Down Our Wi-Fi Routers | WIRED)
On Mon, 9 Nov 2015 14:40:52 -0500, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 11/9/2015 1:07 PM, Robert Krawitz wrote: >> Nothing in the GPL restricts what you can charge for selling the >> software in the first place. It's only the accompanying source code >> that you have to provide for no more than the actual cost of the >> distribution. > > I did not say you can't try to charge money for it. I said that you > can't make a profit from trying to sell it. Again I ask: what is > dishonest about this statement? I think it depends upon what you define as "profit from trying to sell it". If you insist that it only counts direct sales with no support, I agree that it's likely to be difficult to make a profit (although the FSF used to make a small amount of money selling tapes of some of their software, but these days with the net it's going to be a lot harder). But if you count support contracts bundled with the software, it's a very different picture. And since the support contract wouldn't exist without the underlying software, I think it's nitpicking to not count that. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Fwd: Hey FCC, Don't Lock Down Our Wi-Fi Routers | WIRED
On Thu, 1 Oct 2015 15:58:08 -0400, Rich Pieri wrote: > On 10/1/2015 2:08 PM, Matthew Gillen wrote: >> They would open themselves up to legal action from the FSF if they >> violate the GPL, and FCC regulations are not an excuse for violating >> other licenses. (although it would be amusing to see them try) > > You have it backwards. These vendors are already potentially facing $500 per > day per device fines for violating FCC regulations. The GPL won't protect > them and I don't foresee the FSF doing anything more than publishing a screed > from RMS demanding that the vendors and FCC commissioners respect "freedom". > > What the FCC commissioners care about is that 5GHz access points operating in > the US operate within their authorized power and frequency ranges. What > they're requiring is mechanisms that prevent these access points from > operating illegally so that your neighbor's access point doesn't unduly > interfere with yours and vice-versa. Or your uncle's pacemaker or insulin > pump. They aren't out to lock down your router. Quite the contrary. They > don't care what you do with it as long as it operates as authorized. > > What the various vendors do is something else. Some will take the easy path > and lock out third-party software like they've been doing for years. Others > will implement physical limits that prevent the RF systems from operating > outside of specs regardless of what software is running. > > When I wrote that the FCC could rule that the GPL is unenforceable in this > context I did not mean to suggest that they would do so or even that it is at > all likely. It's not. I wrote an absurd response to the absurd idea that some > vendors might try to use the fuck TiVo clause in the GPLv3 to circumvent FCC > regulations. That's essentially claiming that the FCC could rule copyright _in general_ unenforceable in this situation -- the GPLvAnything is simply a copyright license. IANAL, but I don't believe the FCC has that power. The answer would simply be what Matthew said -- if the FCC goes ahead with this, router vendors will either have to establish alternative security means that would not be touchable through the firmware load or eliminate all use of GPL software from their routers. -- Robert Krawitz <r...@alum.mit.edu> *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] memory management
On Mon, 22 Jun 2015 15:13:13 -0400, Matthew Gillen wrote: I'll chime in on this one more time just to be clear about what my beef with linux is here. Several people have said, in effect, Have more RAM or Have enough RAM for what you need. Which is obviously true, but missing the point. For my day-to-day, I do have enough RAM. What sometimes happens is that the cesspool of problems that is javascript engines, or eclipse, go completely off the rails, and start gobbling up memory. Seeing the forest for the trees, what I'm getting at here is that this will always be an issue, and vastly over-provisioning RAM might mask the problem for a while, eventually your day-to-day is going to start including multiple VMs and you're back to square one. Operating systems have concerned themselves for a long time with not letting unprivileged processes destroy a system. If a process tries to touch memory that doesn't belong to it, BAM! The OS says bad process! and hits it with a seg-fault. The signal can kill the offending process, or the process can catch it and try to recover, but either way, the integrity of the rest of the system is preserved at the expense of not letting the naughty process do what it was trying to do. What strikes me as odd and wrong is that the OS doesn't seem to protect itself from thrashing. The system is perfectly happy to render itself inoperative in the service of some lone process sucking up memory. If you're concerned about that, ulimit is your friend. Look at the bash man page, not the man page for ulimit itself. -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] memory management
On Sun, 21 Jun 2015 17:58:12 -0400, Dan Ritter wrote: On Sun, Jun 21, 2015 at 03:39:46PM -0400, Richard Pieri wrote: When a process tries to allocate more pages than the total of clean and unallocated pages in the page cache, well, that's an overload. Overloaded system is overloaded. Game over. Install more RAM or don't overload the system. If neither option is viable then put your page file or partition on a fast SSD. That won't solve the problem but it will make it seem less severe. Remember that a lot of our expectations around VM and swapping come from a time when a multiuser system might have 16 MB of RAM. Hard disks transferred 25MB/s. That would have been early-mid 1990's -- disk throughput at that time for IDE drives was maybe 2 MB/sec. SCSI drives might have been a bit faster, and with command queuing, could optimize head seeks. But throughput wasn't the problem; latency (and I/O rate) was the real issue. Suppose you had a 16MB system and allocated 16MB of disk for swap. A request to evict a 4MB process and pull in another one would take about 350ms -- not too bad. And as you note below, swapping is only an emergency mechanism. Swapping is a lot more efficient than paging, since it has some hope of using close to the full bandwidth of the disk, but at 2 MB/sec, the overhead is significant. The problem with swapping is that it greatly reduces responsiveness; the process is completely evicted from memory and has to be brought back in, and something else removed by paging or swapping, so you're going to have a lot of latency (possibly many seconds). Now let's say you have a 16GB system with 16GB of swap on disk, and you want to evict a 4GB browser process and pull in another one. Disk speeds went up to 100MB/s, so it only takes 80 seconds or so! With a consumer SSD that gets lucky, you have a 500MB/s transfer rate and can do it in 16 seconds, practically no time at all. It's certainly less severe, but it isn't much fun. I've certainly seen my laptop thrash (at least before I added an SSD and put the swap partition on it), but I think it's paging rather than swapping that usually did me in. With swapping, processes will stall entirely for extended periods of time, but with paging, they'll keep running, pulling in pages as needed. From an SSD, even a cheap consumer-grade mSATA, that isn't too painful; 50K IO/sec of even 4K pages isn't too bad unless access patterns are really awful (the process will take under 100 usec to pull a page in). If your process can keep running without needing another page for 1 msec, the impact won't be bad at all. With a spinning drive that might top out around 200 IO/sec, it's another story; it will take more like 5 msec. Then you're really taking a hit. System startup (particularly window system startup after boot) behaves very much like a system in thrash; a lot of processes are kicking off, competing against each other for the bandwidth and IOPS needed to pull in enough program text to get to the point where they're executing out of RAM rather than constantly pulling stuff off disk a page or few at a time. (I know about the recommendation not to put swap on an SSD because you'll shorten its lifetime. Personally, I think that's bollocks. Consumer-grade SSD's have a lifetime around 500 TB of writes; unless you're chronically severely memory-starved it will take ages for you to get there. SSD's are great for small random accesses; demand paging of anonymous pages is done with small random accesses. Pretty good match.) Conclusion: swap is a last-ditch mechanism to save your system from having to kill processes. The other two uses -- Linux trades out pages that are likely to never be called again, or uses the swap space as a sleep-time mechanism to store memory -- are still viable. It would probably be best for a desktop machine that *is* going to be put to sleep overnight to have a minimal amount of swap, and mount a larger, pre-prepared swapspace for the purpose of sleeping. Unmount it when awake. What it really boils down to is that you need enough memory for your worst case working set, or you're going to get unhappy awfully fast. -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] My HP Pavilion's HD bit the dust and it is 13 years old, so instead of replacing the disk again, I would like a new laptop. But I would like to pay $300. I do not expect the best or the
On Sun, 31 May 2015 17:12:19 -0400, Bill Ricker wrote: Is it my imagination, or are 8 year old laptops much more physically robust than their modern counterparts? My ThinkPad T43 (IBM-logo'd, but references it was manufactured by Lenovo on the bottom) is still going. Its BIOS is from 2005 and is happily running Fedora today. Yeah. T61 here. Just bought a second cheap (no battery, honestly missing). Can't speak for other brands, but I've owned a succession of Dell Inspiron (8000, 8200, 9400) and Precision (M6500) laptops, all of which feel solidly built. The M6500 probably feels the sturdiest (it's certainly the heaviest). Other than replacing the keyboard a few times, most likely because of my rather abusive habits of letting food crumbs too close to it, and the latch breaking (a known weak spot), I've had no trouble with it over the (almost) 4 years I've owned it (I bought it used). The lid has been fine, which wasn't the case with the 8000 and 8200 (had to replace various parts multiple times). Historically I've kept laptops an average of 3-4 years; I spent more on the M6500 with the intent of keeping it longer, and so far so good. I'm not sure what I'd replace it with, since the newer ones have HD screens rather than WUXGA, but hopefully that won't come up for a while. I haven't heard such good things about lower end Dells, but I've never owned one. -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] OSX Mavericks root exploit, and Safari
On Fri, 17 Apr 2015 18:39:56 -0400, =?UTF-8?B?U2hpcmxleSBNw6FycXVleiBEw7psY2V5?= wrote: The only consolation is that Apple doesn't appear to have obsoleted any hardware in any version of Mac OS X since Lion. So it should be possible to upgrade any system running Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks to Yosemite, aside from the possibility of running out of disk space. The upgrade may break some applications, however. Lion does not support systems with a Core Solo or Core Duo processor. Those systems can't be upgraded past Snow Leopard. I believe that some Core 2 Duo Macs can be upgraded (mid-2007 and beyond, aka MacBookPro3,1 and higher). -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] OSX Mavericks root exploit, and Safari
On Fri, 17 Apr 2015 21:31:06 -0400, =?UTF-8?B?U2hpcmxleSBNw6FycXVleiBEw7psY2V5?= wrote: The Core Duo is not the same processor as the Core 2 Duo. Core 2 Duo systems can be upgraded to Yosemite. Core Duo systems cannot be upgraded to anything later than Snow Leopard. Not all Core 2 Duo systems can be upgraded. My wife had one of those unfortunate ones. -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] OT: Do CS grads need calculus?
I've never used calculus professionally. I've wound up in mostly low level systems work, but 30+ years ago I wouldn't have known what I was going to do. My opinion is that calculus is an important branch of mathematics, and it's important for what I might call a liberal scientific education. There are more situations than one might think in real life where understanding the fundamentals of calculus -- the derivative and the integral -- is helpful. One very obvious example is the deficit and the debt -- the debt is the integral from time0 to now of the deficit; the deficit is the first derivative of the debt. Actually, there's one software case in which I've used the basic concept of the derivative: in Gutenprint, I've selected algorithms to try to avoid discontinuities in the first and second derivatives of the ink curves. -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu *** MIT Engineers A Proud Tradition http://mitathletics.com *** Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Turbotax
On Mon, 12 Jan 2015 22:11:34 -0500, ma...@mohawksoft.com wrote: If you are like me, your taxes can get kind of complicated, especially if you do any consulting on the side. I have used turbotax for a very long time, but I hate corporate sleeze. If you have a complicated tax situation, your handy turbotax deluxe may no longer work for you. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/10/your-money/taxes/users-say-turbotax-deluxe-is-not-as-deluxe-as-previous-versions.html I posted the following review on Amazon (which is has almost 90% 1-star reviews): May the seeds of greed bear bitter fruit. Like numerous other _former_ Turbo Tax users, I find Intuit's greed here to be disturbing. The company's responses are a mix of disingenuousness (the old product lineup was confusing), belittling (only 2-4% of users are affected), greasing the squeaky wheel (we'll give you an upgrade if you call and complain loudly enough), non-answers (you can still use schedules C, D, and E -- but then it won't error check your return, and you'll have to paper file), and general irrelevance (you can call one of our customer service reps who will be happy to recommend what version you should get). Had the immediate response been yes, we see that we messed up really badly; we will give everyone who bought a copy of Deluxe an upgrade, no questions asked, we'll sell the top of the line product for the Deluxe price, and we've learned our lesson and will do right by our customers in the future, this might have blown over. Now? No way. I have posted a link to this review page to Facebook, where I have quite a few friends and followers whom I don't want to see be shabbily treated. That will probably cost Intuit more sales, not just people who will now realize that the old mainstay Deluxe is not the right product, but also people who might not have been directly affected but whose sense of honor and propriety is outraged by such sharp practice. I can't say for certain, but if the company is correct that only 2-4% of its customers are affected, I expect that the loss of sales will greatly outweigh the incremental revenue from higher prices. I certainly hope that that is the case. And by the way, [Intuit VP] Mr. [Bob] Meighan, if you were concerned about inconsistencies in your product line, you could have chosen to upgrade the functionality of your online and mobile products to match those of the desktop rather than the other way around. And if the bottom line really was the bottom line (as you have implied with your comment about duty to shareholders), you could have raised the prices by 5-10% across the board with at most mild grumbling. -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu *** MIT Engineers Football -- Historic 10-1 2014 NEFC Champions *** MIT VI-3 1987 - Congrats MIT Engineers 6 straight men's hoops tourney Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] SysVinit vs. systemd
On Fri, 12 Sep 2014 12:07:29 -0400, Mike Small wrote: Some of the points in the latter seem only to apply when comparing with upstart. Comparing to rc or sysvinit scripts, the points that seem relevant are these: systemd handles a lot of annoying infrastructure for you; for example, you do not have to arrange to daemonize programs you run. I don't understand this at all. Aren't daemons written as daemons (giving up controlling terminal and whatever else within their own code). You might have a program that can be run both interactively and as a daemon (I have a transparent proxy that can be used in this way). And that daemonization code can be buggy in each daemon. systemd starts and restarts services in a consistent and isolated environment, not in whatever your current environment is when you run the start and restart commands. Sounds like a plausible problem. runit also advertises this as important. I'd need to experience a gotcha to appreciate it. The current environment when daemons start on my machine is predictable. It's the environment that the rc scripts run in, that was brought about by init/getty/login. If it's messed up, the scripts have a bug that need fixing. When I'm doing something weird and adhoc, probably I'm using sudo or su -l to root. In both cases the environment is slim and controlled, particularly with sudo. Maybe and maybe not. It depends upon how root's .bashrc (or whatever) is set up. But this does contain quite a bit of user-level stuff: $ sudo env root's password: TERM=xterm LC_COLLATE=POSIX LANG=en_US.UTF-8 DISPLAY=:0 XAUTHORITY=/home/rlk/.Xauthority COLORTERM=1 SHELL=/bin/bash MAIL=/var/mail/root LOGNAME=root USER=root USERNAME=root HOME=/root PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin SUDO_COMMAND=/usr/bin/env SUDO_USER=rlk SUDO_UID=nnn SUDO_GID=mmm systemd keeps track of what processes belong to a particular service, so it can both list all the processes that are part of a service and tell you what service a particular process is part of. This is a boon to manageability. I can imagine this being a problem for someone doing something serious. For little old me, the set of daemons is on the order of 10 and completely recognizable by name in the cases where related processes have different process groups. But this is thinking more in terms of automated management maybe. More below. My laptop has a few dozen daemons running on it; some of them aren't that obvious to me. -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu MIT VI-3 1987 - Congrats MIT Engineers 6 straight men's hoops tourney Tall Clubs International -- http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2 Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] kinda shot myself in the foot with UHD monitors
On Sat, 06 Sep 2014 11:34:25 -0400, jbk wrote: On 09/06/2014 11:19 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) wrote: From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org [mailto:discuss- bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Adler So I've run into a rather unexpected problem, I have a monitor with too much resolution. I'd be more than happy to take on that problem :-) In the past I remember there were two different font families you could select, one a 96pt and the other 72pt. This is a vague memory from back in the windows days. I do remember that selecting one or the other would change the default size of all the window and app text sizes larger or smaller uniformly. You can also change the DPI setting on the X command line. -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu MIT VI-3 1987 - Congrats MIT Engineers 6 straight men's hoops tourney Tall Clubs International -- http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2 Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] DMARC issue, Yahoo and beyond
On Wed, 21 May 2014 14:06:33 -0500, Derek Martin wrote: On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 02:30:43PM -0400, Robert Krawitz wrote: Lists setting or rewriting Reply-To headers punishes users of good, open source mail programs and rewards users of broken, proprietary mail programs like Outlook. On this, Richard and I agree. OK. So if the list has a policy that all replies should be directed to the list rather than the author, what should the list do to encourage members to honor that policy? (Don't simply say that it's a bad policy... But it IS a bad policy. It is not the place of the list or the list manager to decide that my tangential response to a poster I know, on an off-topic subject, and content which is not fit for polite company belongs on the list. And it should not make it hard for me to provide such responses, or make it easy for such responses to accidentally end up posted to the list contrary to my expectations. Here's the use case: a support mailing list for a FOSS project where users post questions and issues. All too often one of the developers replies (copying the list) and the user simply replies to sender, either because s/he prefers the discussion to be with one point person or because the default reply is just to sender...but we want the replies to all go to the list in addition to the sender, so that others may chime in. -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu MIT VI-3 1987 - Congrats MIT Engineers 6 straight men's hoops tourney Tall Clubs International -- http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2 Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] DMARC issue, Yahoo and beyond
On Wed, 21 May 2014 14:10:48 -0400, Richard Pieri wrote: Derek Martin wrote: If a mailing list--which is already a special case of e-mail usage--*ADDS* a reply-to header to an e-mail which matches the from header of the message, when none previously existed, the net effect is nil: respondants will (assuming they even honor reply-to, which is not It most certainly is problematic. The net effect is that it causes good mail programs to behave inconsistently. When set to the list it breaks reply to author functions in good mail programs (Elm, Pine and their derivatives; Thunderbird and Seamonkey, and even the venerable Berkeley Mail to name a few). When set to the original author it breaks reply to list and reply to all functions in those same programs. Lists setting or rewriting Reply-To headers punishes users of good, open source mail programs and rewards users of broken, proprietary mail programs like Outlook. Thoughtless? Hardly. I've thought about this off and on for far too long. OK. So if the list has a policy that all replies should be directed to the list rather than the author, what should the list do to encourage members to honor that policy? (Don't simply say that it's a bad policy. It may be that the list owners want to encourage public rather than private discussion, for example.) -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu MIT VI-3 1987 - Congrats MIT Engineers 6 straight men's hoops tourney Tall Clubs International -- http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2 Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] SSD drives vs. Mechanical drives
On Tue, 06 May 2014 09:07:36 -0400, Kent Borg wrote: Yes, I understand that, though individual flash cells that have low cycle count lives, they can be extended by clever firmware. Clever proprietary firmware, that might have bugs. Until SSDs can overcome their early reputation of having bugs and failing without warning, I am going to stay cautious. Disks themselves have clever proprietary firmware... -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu MIT VI-3 1987 - Congrats MIT Engineers 6 straight men's hoops tourney Tall Clubs International -- http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2 Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Why use Linux?
On Tue, 11 Feb 2014 19:38:39 -0500, Richard Pieri wrote: John Abreau wrote: Developers are themselves users. Saying that freedom is only for users is the same as saying freedom is restricted only to everybody. The The issue isn't the use of the word only. It's the use of the words free and freedom. Like I wrote before, the FSF's definitions of free and freedom are weighted towards end users (as in users like me who are not themselves developers) and against developers (as in users like Tivo and Google who are primarily developers). The GPL has always favored end users over developers. The onus of supporting software freedom according the FSF's definition has always rested on developers with end users getting a free ride should they choose to take it. Actually, I'd say that if anything the GPL is weighted toward users-as-developers -- ensuring that users can be developers themselves. I disagree that the GPL is weighted against developers. It's weighted against *proprietary* developers, sure. But proprietary development is only one development model -- and not the only possible way to make money doing it, either. -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu MIT VI-3 1987 - Congrats MIT Engineers 5 straight men's hoops tourney Tall Clubs International -- http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2 Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] 4K monitors
On Sat, 11 Jan 2014 15:59:18 -0500, MBR wrote: Actually, they did the transition from 1600x1200 to 1920x1080 in two steps. I went from a 1600x1200 (UXGA) screen to a 1920x1200 (WUXGA) screen on 15 laptops, and I agree that the increase in width wasn't a really big deal for me. Then they dropped from 1920x1200 (WUXGA) to 1920x1080 (FHD), and I held off for years on buying a new laptop because I really wanted the ability to see more lines of code vertically without having to scroll. Everyone I talked to about my desire to have more screen real estate available for seeing more code at once treated me like a weird eccentric. Salespeople were the absolute worst. Of course, their job is to sell what they have available, so if what you want isn't available, they'll go out of their way to try to convince you you don't need it. Then, when it later becomes available, they'll take the arguments they heard from you and use them to convince other customers that they really can't live without the newly available feature. What really gets me is when they treat 1920x1080 as a feature (because you won't have letterboxing while watching a movie). Wide screens aren't very good for photography, either. -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu MIT VI-3 1987 - Congrats MIT Engineers 5 straight men's hoops tourney Tall Clubs International -- http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2 Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] UEFI
On Tue, 29 Oct 2013 10:48:13 -0400, Richard Pieri wrote: Matthew Gillen wrote: For the sake of bringing up another topic, I want to thank people for the info on UEFI last week. I decided that being long in the tooth isn't the same as 'broken', and I should put it off a bit longer. If it works, don't break it. What I really want is high-end fanless video cards, and the best options Isn't that an oxymoron? :) in that very limited market right now seem to be on the ATI side. I haven't had a non-nvidia card for so long that I'm not sure what the state of ATI linux support is these days. nVidia's binary blob drivers for Linux are much, much better than ATI's binary blob drivers for Linux. Open source drivers are hit or miss right now. nVidia is finally opening things up which puts the whole thing in flux. I expect to see big improvements on that front what with Valve expecting to ship nVidia-equpped Steam Machines and maybe ATI-equipped Steam Machines next year. I've run the radeon FOSS driver for quite some time on several adapters without problems. -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu MIT VI-3 1987 - Congrats MIT Engineers 5 straight men's hoops tourney Tall Clubs International -- http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2 Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] Fwd: Relevance of PGP?
On Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:14:09 -0400, Richard Pieri wrote: On Aug 18, 2011, at 7:59 PM, John Abreau wrote: I could instead have made an analogy to locksmiths: when we want to change the locks on our doors, a techie might buy a new lock at Home Depot and install it himself, whereas a nontechie would hire a locksmith to take care of it. Actually, the techie hires a locksmith to rekey the existing locks because it's cheaper than replacing. Unless the locks are garbage to begin with (ie, aluminum instead of brass). But that's a different kind of nit to pick :). The *real* techie rekeys the lock himself. In a real pinch, if he doesn't have a key for the lock in question, but has other spare locks and keys around, he extracts pins from the spare locks and finds ones that match the available keys. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] firefox 4 is a memory hog
On Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:54:04 -0400, Matthew Gillen wrote: On 06/01/2011 07:28 PM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote: From: discuss-boun...@blu.org [mailto:discuss-boun...@blu.org] On Behalf Of Matthew Gillen I've noticed lately that when I unlock my gnome3 session after being gone for a while (several hours), it takes forever to get me back to a useable desktop. I initially was blaming gnome-shell, but it appears the problem is actually firefox forcing the whole system into swap. Firefox was using 60% of memory. Killing it and reloading the same set of tabs makes it use 6.3% of memory (as reported by 'top'). I don't think it's a particular web page that is going screwy, because it happens at work and at home, and my set of tabs are completely different (okay, fine, I use google.com in both environments...) Is anyone else seeing this kind of runaway memory usage? 60% of what? 1G? 4G? 8G? FF is a memory hog. So is everything else. Upgrade memory. 4G if all you do is web browsing and email. 8G or more if you run a myriad office applications and a VM inside it too. 4G for email and browsing seems frankly absurd. It doesn't really matter how much memory I have (4G) , my point is that the memory usage was a factor of *10* higher than it should have been, and that the bloat happened while I wasn't even interacting with it. Adding more memory to deal with a process that just eats all available memory (which is what appears to be happening; my large swap partition was fully in use before I kill FF) doesn't solve anything. With the 3.x series I used to leave a firefox session up for a month at a time. Now it appears I have to restart it every day. I'm uncomfortable with the slide towards Window-95-style oh, just reboot every day... Interesting. I have the same problem with 3.6, as I did with at least 3.5 previously (I don't remember 3.0). This is with only 20-30 tabs open. I find I have to restart FF at least daily; once it grows to 2 GB, it gets very slow. My laptop (Inspiron 9400) only has 3.3 GB of usable memory, but I'd be hard pressed to find one now with a WUXGA display and an ATI/AMD chipset (last time I tried, the open source nVidia drivers weren't very good even for ordinary 2D stuff and I flatly refuse to run the proprietary ones). 1920x1080 is not a substitute for 1920x1200, although I'd prefer even higher resolution if I could find it. I figure it could be one or more of my extensions, but root causing it by binary chop will be painfully tedious. -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu Tall Clubs International -- http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2 Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://pegasus.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: Linux-ish Laptop Question
On Fri, 08 Apr 2011 07:48:30 -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote: On 04/08/2011 12:19 AM, David Kramer wrote: Adding my experience, a lot has to do with which Dell line you get. Like many companies, there's a big difference between their light-and-cheap line, their multimedia-gaming line, and their business line. I always buy from the business line, and have been very happy with the construction (and full linux compatibility). For instance, the business line has a metal chassis instead of a plastic one, and are more powerful. I have a Latitude D820 and my wife has a D830. I agree, except my experience is more with HP. My HP laptop has got to be 7 years old, and I only use it at the installfests to burn DVDs, but I used to bring it to work and BLU meetings. It is an early 64-bit AMD Turion processor. It was also certified for LInux by HP. At the installfests it seems we always had some issues with Dells, but the lower end laptops are very cost reduced for any brand. I'm not sure if this is still true, but you could get 2 identical Dell desktops, and look inside and they might have different chips and boards. Again, I'm not sure if this is still true. WRT Installfests, I still tend to favor Lenovo Thinkpads. But my Acer Aspire One netbook booted up with Ubuntu nearly perfectly the first time. After the initial installation, I had to install b43-fwcutter, but in Ubuntu, the installation of b43-fwcutter also gives you an option to download and install the firmware where other distributions do not. (Mint Linux, for instance I had to install b43-fwcutter from the Ubuntu repositories). In other distros you download the appropriate Windows Broadcom driver and use fwcutter to isolate and install the firmware. I've always had excellent luck with Dells. I've had an Inspiron 8000, 8200 (actually, a couple of them -- I always buy used and the first one had some problems I could never fix), and my current 9400/E1705, and I've never had problems running Linux on them. The only things I don't like about the 9400 is that it has a limit of 3.3 GB of RAM and will not enable AHCI on its SATA controller. Otherwise, it's great. Finding a WUXGA screen (as opposed to 1920x1080) is getting a bit difficult these days. -- Robert Krawitz r...@alum.mit.edu Tall Clubs International -- http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2 Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- http://ProgFree.org Project lead for Gutenprint --http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works. --Eric Crampton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
