Re: Why does this not compile?
Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: Shachar, I don't understand this statement. I suspect that you have a different mental picture of undefined behavior. The official definition of undefined behavior is that *anything* may happen. No. The official definition of undefined behavior is that the behavior is implementation specific. Luckily, the same compiler that defines the specific case is also the one that provides the va_start implementation, and so I really don't think that implementation specific is reason enough to not support it. I killed a list of things that you think are happening when you pass different types to a function. It looks to me that it originates from your mental picture of how you would design the implementation. I am not a competent enough compiler writer to agree or disagree, but maybe that's not the only implementation possible, and maybe different options are taken into account. What happens when you right shift a signed number? What happens when you do -12 mod 5? These are also undefined behavior, and yet you don't get a compiler warning saying that your program will go up in flames when run. The standard does not dictate, for performance reasons, how the implementation will do it. Then again, all implementations are REQUIRED to support these operations, albeit potentially differently. What you do have is a loss of information about the type. You only get that for non explicitly defined type - i.e. - types passed as part of the ellipsis. For that reason you perform automatic promotion, and for that reason you cannot use certain types FOR ACTUAL ... PARAMETERS. Check the man page for va_start on your favorite Linux box - you'll see there are restrictions on the type of the last (before ...) parameter. Unfortunately, it does not mention references, since it is likely C-oriented. It does say that functions and arrays are not allowed. It's a nice practice, but it will never work in theory. In particular, it has nothing to do with the warning I got. Trying to pass either a function pointer or an array pointer works, and does not produce the above warning (which means that gcc was not warning against the illegal use in that respect). It MAY be possible that the man is warning about passing actual arrays and functions, in which case all I have to say is: 1. I totally understand why those would be impossible last arguments for va_start, just like I understand why register is impossible. If you like, I'll explain. 2. Unlike register, I know of no way to actually pass either arrays OR functions (as opposed to array pointers and function pointers) to a function. If someone can send me the function declaration syntax, I can check. In order to further prove that this is a compiler bug: 1. It warns that the actual program will abort. Actual program runs fine, and does exactly what you would expect it to do. 2. Neither g++-3.4 nor Visual Studio see any problem with this construct. g++-3.3 and g++-2.95 complain, and 3.3 even gives doomsday warnings that this will crash and burn, but in reality everything works great. I don't have a copy of the Standard at hand, that is why I resorted to Google. If I am right in my recollection and the Standard does indeed say that failure to satisfy the restrictions on the type of the last argument results in undefined behaviour, See above on why I think you are misreading into the meaning of undefined behavior as stated in standards. then all of the above (dealing with it just fine, issuing doomsday warnings, failing at runtime, etc) is perfectly correct behaviour, and cannot be considered a compiler bug. Issuing a warning that is clearly false (stating that I passed a non-POD through a ... parameter) is a compiler bug, even if the correct behavior is to issue a different warning at that same spot. I think, however, that the gcc parser misunderstood the function declaration, and started attributing the ... to the wrong parameter, which is a compiler bug. Just so things are clear, I totally understand and agree why you cannot pass test on the ellipsis part of the arguments of the function. Proper processing would require you to run the destructor on some of the temporary objects created, and without static typing that would be impossible to do. I am afraid you are trying to surmise what the logical behaviour should be, and blame gcc for not behaving as you expect. Up until this point that worked for me. So far, the evidence before me seems to suggest you are wrong, but if you find the standard, I'll gladly see the error of my ways. I'll just mention that it will not be the first time that the C++ standard dictates things which are counter productive. I have a suggestion. If you post your question to comp.lang.c++.moderated or to an appropriate gcc forum someone there will explain what happens, and probably quote the Standard to you. I'll be happy to learn what the authoritative answer is. It's been ages
Re: Why does this not compile?
On 09 May 2005 08:15:10 +, Oleg Goldshmidt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have a suggestion. If you post your question to comp.lang.c++.moderated or to an appropriate gcc forum someone there will explain what happens, and probably quote the Standard to you. I'll be happy to learn what the authoritative answer is. Me too. --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: chroot(2) by a user.
Alex, Alex Behar wrote: Also, Gilad, a binary will keep its permissions and attributes if copied while root and by using the -a flag to cp, consult the man pages for more details. Of coruse it does! you've missed the entire point of my post - *non-root* users don't get to keep suid bits of binaries they copy to avoid the same scenario I explained with the libraries and giving mortal users the ability to chroot circumvent that. That root can copy binaries and keep their suid bit is obvious - root can give any binary suid bit as he or she pleases, but mortal users cannot. Cheers, Gilad = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: chroot(2) by a user.
Alex Behar wrote: Good morning Amos, LD_DEBUG (as of early glibc 2.3 versions IIRC), LD_LIBRARY_PATH and LD_PRELOAD do not work on SUID binaries, unless you are root. Further more, there are ways to achieve the goal Shaul needs by using capabilities(7). I would recommand a very small hack for chrooting dynamic executables without having to deal with library dependencies: http://chrootsafe.sourceforge.net/ Sounds like a very useful tool! That small utility can be changed and tweaked easily for custom needs (wrappers for example). Also, Gilad, a binary will keep its permissions and attributes if copied while root and by using the -a flag to cp, consult the man pages for more details. If you have root, you can also chroot. The question was what to do when you don't have root, but you want to get one :-). While you cannot copy a binary and have it retain its permissions (and suid in particular), you can hard link it into a different environment. If I had chroot as non-root, I could: mkdir ~/root and ~/root/lib ln /bin/ping ~/root/ping cp /bin/bash ~/root/ put my own, specially crafted, library in ~/root/lib/libc.so.6 chroot to ~/root and run ping. Ping would load my libc.so.6, and I could do whatever I wanted as root (say, chown root /bash and chmod u+s /bash, which means that outside the root shell I have a SUID root bash at ~/root/bash). Presco - I have a root shell. To mitigate this: - Make sure all user writable partitions are separate from / and /usr (cannot hard link across partitions, and soft links are useless inside the chroot jail). - Make sure all user writable partitions are mounted -o nosuid,nodev. You can even do noexec, but it's fairly easy to bypass that one. And, of course, the obvious: - Don't allow non-root to chroot :-) Kind regards, Alex Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[HAIFUX LECTURE]Quick and Dirty Bash by Eli Billauer
This Monday (9/5/2005), 18:30, the Haifa Linux Club will once again meet to hear Eli Billauer talk (again, because it was such a good lecture) about: Quick and Dirty Bash Abstract This lecture is a quick and unformal guide to scripts and sophisticated commands in Bash. The aim is to supply the listener with tools to use the command-line interface as the strong tool that it is, as well as to write real-life scripts. Rather than explaining the syntax formally, it will be demonstrated in many small examples, showing the use and abuse of Bash. The subjects that were chosen for this lecture are those that the lecturer himself needed for his own tasks. Lecture aslides are of course available: http://haifux.org/lectures/100-sil/ We meet in the Technion, Taub 3. See http://www.haifux.org/where.html for arrival details. Attendance is free, and you are all invited! Future lectures include: 125 The Debian DEB QA Process Shachar Shemesh 16/5/2005 126 I.D.S and snort Orr Dunkelman 30/05/2005 127 Haifux and LightningOpen Slots Available!! 20/06/2005 Have a subject you want to talk about? Or a subject you'd like to hear someone else talk about? email us. Orna. -- Orna Agmon http://haifux.org/~ladypine/ ICQ: 348759096 = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why does this not compile?
On 5/9/05, Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: Shachar, I don't understand this statement. I suspect that you have a different mental picture of undefined behavior. The official definition of undefined behavior is that *anything* may happen. No. The official definition of undefined behavior is that the behavior is implementation specific. Luckily, the same compiler that defines the specific case is also the one that provides the va_start implementation, and so I really don't think that implementation specific is reason enough to not support it. Your definition of undefined sounds reasonable, but in practical terms, undefined might also mean things like may produce random results, depending on what happened to be on the stuck when a particular command sequence was executed, and you can't blame the compiler for producing this code (e.g. a bug either in my program or the Visual Studio .NET 2003 C++ I had to fix/work-around just this morning). It MAY be possible that the man is warning about passing actual arrays and functions, in which case all I have to say is: 1. I totally understand why those would be impossible last arguments for va_start, just like I understand why register is impossible. If you like, I'll explain. 2. Unlike register, I know of no way to actually pass either arrays OR functions (as opposed to array pointers and function pointers) to a function. If someone can send me the function declaration syntax, I can check. I don't know about such a syntax either. I can understand that pointers-to-code (i.e. function pointers) might not be always convertable to pointers-to-data on some architectures (e.g. different address-space widths for code and data) and therefore the C++ standard restricts casting between the two in general. I don't have a copy of the Standard at hand, that is why I resorted to Here is what I believe to be the draft which was voted on: http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/open/n2356/ The standard itself costs money but the draft is free on-line and generally considered close enough to the actual standard itself. BTW - a first TR (Technical Recommandation?) is in the oven and making sounds of being ready to serve relativelly soon. Up until this point that worked for me. So far, the evidence before me seems to suggest you are wrong, but if you find the standard, I'll gladly see the error of my ways. I'll just mention that it will not be the first time that the C++ standard dictates things which are counter productive. What's counter-productive in the standard here? Be aware that the committee which sets the standard tries to accomodate for many situations which many people won't think about off the top of their head. I have a suggestion. If you post your question to comp.lang.c++.moderated or to an appropriate gcc forum someone there will explain what happens, and probably quote the Standard to you. I'll be happy to learn what the authoritative answer is. It's been ages since I used nntp, but I'll give it a try. No need to use NNTP (if you'll find a useful NNTP server to use it with at all). Google groups and gmane.org (among others) can give you pretty useful web-interface for these groups. Shachar --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: chroot(2) by a user.
On 5/9/05, Alex Behar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Good morning Amos, LD_DEBUG (as of early glibc 2.3 versions IIRC), LD_LIBRARY_PATH and LD_PRELOAD do not work on SUID binaries, unless you are root. That's what I said. I didn't give a comprehansive list of envariables but otherwise - what's new in your sentence above? Further more, there are ways to achieve the goal Shaul needs by using capabilities(7). As a simple user? I would recommand a very small hack for chrooting dynamic executables without having to deal with library dependencies: http://chrootsafe.sourceforge.net/ I think you missed the beginning of this thread. Read it again. Kind regards, Alex Cheers, --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why does this not compile?
Quoting Oleg Goldshmidt [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Shachar, Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Let's get one thing clear. NOTHING results in undefined behavior. If anything resulted in undefined behavior, it would have been impossible to pass it between caller and callee. I don't understand this statement. I suspect that you have a different mental picture of undefined behavior. The official definition of undefined behavior is that *anything* may happen. I'm barging in at the middle a bit so I don't know the context, but undefined behaviour means that the specs don't define what should happen in such a case and thus the result is compiler dependent. For example IIRC the specs don't define what free((void *)0) should do, so it can either return cleanly doing nothing or cause a segmentation fault depending on the compiler. I killed a list of things that you think are happening when you pass different types to a function. It looks to me that it originates from your mental picture of how you would design the implementation. I am not a competent enough compiler writer to agree or disagree, but maybe that's not the only implementation possible, and maybe different options are taken into account. What you do have is a loss of information about the type. You only get that for non explicitly defined type - i.e. - types passed as part of the ellipsis. For that reason you perform automatic promotion, and for that reason you cannot use certain types FOR ACTUAL ... PARAMETERS. Check the man page for va_start on your favorite Linux box - you'll see there are restrictions on the type of the last (before ...) parameter. Unfortunately, it does not mention references, since it is likely C-oriented. It does say that functions and arrays are not allowed. In order to further prove that this is a compiler bug: 1. It warns that the actual program will abort. Actual program runs fine, and does exactly what you would expect it to do. 2. Neither g++-3.4 nor Visual Studio see any problem with this construct. g++-3.3 and g++-2.95 complain, and 3.3 even gives doomsday warnings that this will crash and burn, but in reality everything works great. The reason the specs require a parameter of a specific type is that the extra arguments go on the stack. You need to know the size of the last parameter before the ... as the ansi defenition for va_start is void va_start( va_list arg_ptr, prev_param ); you look at the pointer for prev_param and then add its size to get a pointer to the start of the arguments. The unix version doesn't use the last parameter (probably because certain implementations pass the first few parameters in registers instead of the stack) and thus va_start is defined as void va_start( va_list arg_ptr ); With this implementation I don't see a problem with the last parameter as long as you know where the first parameter in ... goes on the stack. I don't have a copy of the Standard at hand, that is why I resorted to Google. If I am right in my recollection and the Standard does indeed say that failure to satisfy the restrictions on the type of the last argument results in undefined behaviour, then all of the above (dealing with it just fine, issuing doomsday warnings, failing at runtime, etc) is perfectly correct behaviour, and cannot be considered a compiler bug. I am afraid you are trying to surmise what the logical behaviour should be, and blame gcc for not behaving as you expect. I have a suggestion. If you post your question to comp.lang.c++.moderated or to an appropriate gcc forum someone there will explain what happens, and probably quote the Standard to you. I'll be happy to learn what the authoritative answer is. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.goldshmidt.org = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] +++ This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System at the Tel-Aviv University CC. This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
OT: computer for givaway
I have an old p2 166 mmx for giveaway. anyone knows a name of an amuta for the needy i can give the computer to ? i looked up a thread on the issue but couldn't find any amutot's names. thanks, erez. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving to Linux
On Mon, May 09, 2005, Amos Shapira wrote about Re: Moving to Linux: ... Debian (and other distro's) convenience is that it packages many utilities and add-ons in an easy uniform interface to download/install/config. This should be possible to do also on Windows (there is nothing special about the Linux kernel), only it haven't been done yet. People can probably come up with many reasons (one I can think of is the proprietary and non-free-as-in-speech nature of the licenses of most Windows utilities). Interestingly, when it comes to Unix-like software for Windows, such a tool does exist: cygwin. Not using cygwin (or windows) for a few years, and recently trying it out again, I was surprised to find out that it switched to a model very similar to the Linux distribution model (like apt or yum), where you have a utility that can list the available packages, download one for you, update all the packages that you have installed, all automatically. I see no reason why this mechanism should be specific to Unix-like software - it could be theoretically also be used for classic Windows software. Why hashn't it, though? I can think of several possible reasons. None of them are very strong, so this situation is very likely to change in the future. 1. Much of the available Windows software is not free. Automatically installing such software might not be very useful. 2. Most, or nearly all, of the available Windows software doesn't come with source code. Repackaging it becomes very hard (if at all legal), so the user will need to continue to deal with the packaging idosyncharsies of individual programs (installation menus, directories, dlls, etc.) without the distribution being able to normalize these issues for the user. 3. One of the biggest strengths of Windows over Linux is exactly in the fact that its software distribution isn't centralized like in Linux (where users have grown accustomed to getting all their software from the distribution). When you buy some peripheral for your computer, you get a CD-ROM with a Windows (only) driver. When some new startup creates a software, they usually create (only) a Windows version on their site. A centralized distribution, even if big as Debian, can hardly match this sort of variety. -- Nadav Har'El|Monday, May 9 2005, 30 Nisan 5765 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |The two rules for success are: 1. Never http://nadav.harel.org.il |tell them everything you know. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving to Linux
On 08/05/2005, at 15:40, Dan Kaspi wrote: I tried to convince somebody I know to move to Linux at home and at work. I am myself an advocate user of Linux at work and at home. snip He argued that migrating to Linux will takes time because you need to learn many new things; The security solution of XP (the XP firewall) and the free antispyware sw are enough for him; And he isn't convinced that it is worth to inverst time in migating to Linux. Are there other Linux benefits which I can pose for moving to Linux ? (except the idea of moving to open and free source). Frankly, I prefer the Two step approach- don't attempt to convince users to jump onto linux at once (which takes time, changing habits and coping with a learning curve), but rather get the person to use as much FLOSS applications as possible. That way, a future transition to Linux will be much faster and easier (many applications will be the same, many habits won't need to change), and many times the user himself will ask about moving to Linux after using FLOSS for a while. And if he doesn't? Well, this isn't all or nothing. He will still be using FLOSS software, and spreading freedom. Also, from I have seen, having users move to Linux without them really wanting to is a great way to create anti and Linux is horrible attitudes, which can close the door for Linux for a long time (and you never know where the person's influence will reach). So, to sum up, IMO the most effective Linux evangelism is soft and patient, not a hard sell. --- Shoshannah Forbes http://www.xslf.com = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving to Linux
On 5/9/05, Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But there's always a possibility. In Windows, it's impossible to keep several versions of the same DLL due to the lack of symbolic links. And most packages come in installers, that install all the required DLLs along with the programs. (there is no dependency resolution). But it' possible that it's no longer a problem as before. (possibly because the development of the DLLs has become more stable). I'm not that deep into Windows administration, I just know that, as far as I noticed, I never had to bother with it. Generally, a system should be expected to avoid having to rely on such mechanisms and be secure by default. There can always be a new kind of spyware that the anti-spyware software could not detect in time. As for firewall, generally, the system should be secure even with all the services exposed. I agree that firewalls/NATs/etc. are useful (even for Linux First - I share your feeling that it's silly that Microsoft sell a broken OS and then sort of patch it by giving anti-virus software to try to catch the slime which sleeped through the holes in its basic OS, and half the computer's resources are wasted on constant security checks instead of on doing real work. Second - My point is that this is not the sort of argument that people like my mom would understand or care about. All they know is that in Windows they more-or-less manage to do what they want and in Linux they don't (or at least if they can do just the same things in Linux when why bother to switch). systems). But for example, if you browse the web with a vulnerable browser, that allows malicious sites to execute code on your machine, then all the firewalls in the world won't prevent your machine from getting infected by a trojan. Actually current firewalls/proxies and routing boxes DO scan for viruses and melicious code while you surf as well. Dig the network for specific examples, I can't remember them off the top of my head. Possibly. However, the possibility always remains. And since the source code is available, there's more possibility than someone among the many developers interested in open-source will do that for you in time. With closed-source software you have to rely on the vendor's whims. Again - both of us seem to view these matters just the same but, again - as far as his target audience is concerned, the paragraph above might as well be writen in Kazakh script from the 1st century BC, and sang as a Haiku Liryc. They won't understand even the basic terms used in it (source code, developers, open-source, closed-source), let along the relations between them and what's wrong with it. Get down to earth for these people if you want to win them over. 2. Price - no need to pay for anything including upgrades. All software can be installed from the base system. How is BSA doing these days in Israel? Not a big point for OSS (yet?). Still, if you install a non-legit version of Windows, you cannot use Windows Which most people do at home today. Upgrade (without various tricks). You cannot get support for this version of Windows, and you cannot contact the vendor for help. How much has this prevented people from installing Windows illegally on their home computer and call the next door teenage geek (AKA TNDTG) when they catch a virus? Even more so - since for most people TNDTG is technical support, you might better make sure that enough of these TNDTG know Linux :) And the price is a big issue for medium or large organizations who wish to deploy proprietary software on their systems. Is this the audience of this argument? As far I remember the beginning was about convincing a private person. 3. Community - the Linux and Open Source Community is very fun, supportive. There are many resources available for getting help or for learning more. Again - do this Magimix Mixer has a community of 20,000 active users in Israel sound like a convincing argument from a sales druid in the Shekem? That's more or less the attitude you should address. The point is that you can get very good support from the community, which has a larger amount of knowledge than the equivalent one for proprietary software. (due to the availability of source, and other factors - see ESR's The Cathedral and the Bazaar Series). And I'm not only talking about Israel. You can always subscribe to an international forum dealing with your software of choice, or even to a foreign local forum that happens to speak English. And I'm not only talking about linux-il subscribers. I'm talking about people like my mother, who's still not sure when should she click the right mouse and when the left mouse buttons, and you want her to go out on the net and ask meaningful questions? Get real, c'mon. :^) As for fun - just look at the abuse someone received for sending a little-awkwardly worded job ad over here. I agree that there are always
Re: OT: computer for givaway
On Mon, May 09, 2005, Erez Doron wrote about OT: computer for givaway: I have an old p2 166 mmx for giveaway. anyone knows a name of an amuta for the needy i can give the computer to ? i looked up a thread on the issue but couldn't find any amutot's names. Amutat Hamakor (hamakor.org.il) is now in the process of helping create a free-software based computer class in two locations. Their setup is, I believe, based on such weak computers like you have (or perhaps slightly less weak :)). You can try writing about to the Hamakor board ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) or Yael Vaya Talmor. They're probably reading this list anyway. -- Nadav Har'El|Monday, May 9 2005, 30 Nisan 5765 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Arguing with nyh just doesn't pay off. http://nadav.harel.org.il |-- Muli Ben-Yehuda, Linux-il list = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: computer for givaway
On Mon, 9 May 2005, Erez Doron wrote: I have an old p2 166 mmx for giveaway. anyone knows a name of an amuta for the needy i can give the computer to ? i looked up a thread on the issue but couldn't find any amutot's names. Yes, give it to HaKoach Latet and dedicate it for Hamakor. We use these PCs to open linux-based classrooms for schools. Please e-mail the board at board AT hamakor.org.il if you do so. Alon -- This message was sent by Alon Altman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ICQ:1366540 GPG public key at http://8ln.org/pubkey.txt Key fingerprint = A670 6C81 19D3 3773 3627 DE14 B44A 50A3 FE06 7F24 -- -=[ Random Fortune ]=- All language designers are arrogant. Goes with the territory... (By Larry Wall) = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving to Linux
On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 06:40:55PM +1000, Amos Shapira wrote: systems). But for example, if you browse the web with a vulnerable browser, that allows malicious sites to execute code on your machine, then all the firewalls in the world won't prevent your machine from getting infected by a trojan. Actually current firewalls/proxies and routing boxes DO scan for viruses and melicious code while you surf as well. Dig the network for specific examples, I can't remember them off the top of my head. Not the cheaper ones. Such scans take CPU and memory, and lower-end boxes don't have of those to spare. But my mother won't appreciate command-line at all (and so would I, if I'll have to explain to her what to do with it over the phone). Slightly OT: Actually some commands are quite useful for phone support. The problem is to get exactly the right information with the user having to type as little as possible. Consider the remote user as your interface to the system you're trying to fix. It is a sort of interactive terminal with a very long delay. So you need a set of scripts that already do most of the filtering. Yes, that's expose. And these are not just screen-shots but live, zoomed out application windows. Extremly neat and easy to stay oriented. There is skippy for X11 which tries to simulate it, works so-so. Rant: But for that to work well with Linux you currently need non-free display drivers. Non-free: not part of the common codebase easily customized by distros. -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best ICQ# 16849755 | | friend = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving to Linux
On Monday 09 May 2005 11:29, you wrote: On 08/05/2005, at 15:40, Dan Kaspi wrote: I tried to convince somebody I know to move to Linux at home and at work. I am myself an advocate user of Linux at work and at home. snip He argued that migrating to Linux will takes time because you need to learn many new things; The security solution of XP (the XP firewall) and the free antispyware sw are enough for him; And he isn't convinced that it is worth to inverst time in migating to Linux. Are there other Linux benefits which I can pose for moving to Linux ? (except the idea of moving to open and free source). Frankly, I prefer the Two step approach- don't attempt to convince users to jump onto linux at once (which takes time, changing habits and coping with a learning curve), but rather get the person to use as much FLOSS applications as possible. That way, a future transition to Linux will be much faster and easier (many applications will be the same, many habits won't need to change), and many times the user himself will ask about moving to Linux after using FLOSS for a while. And if he doesn't? Well, this isn't all or nothing. He will still be using FLOSS software, and spreading freedom. I fully agree. My personal experience is getting a job in a web-design house in 1996 when Perl and UNIX were practically the only sane alternative to having a web presence. I recall installing Slackware on my home computer by partitions the hard-drive, getting the hang of the UNIX command line (tcsh - back when I did not notice much difference with bash, which I now prefer by far), writing my shell scripts in Perl, and having a blast of a time. But I'm quite the software and programming savvy. I think using and developing free software on Windows is a very good idea. (despite everything that the latest holyway sparked by this KDE developer sparked). Even the FSF endorses and supports porting free software to MS Windows - many of the GNU packages have ports either in cygwin or even Win32 native ones. If you surf the web using Firefox, are used to manipulating images using the GIMP, use Inkscape for vector graphics, do your office work using OpenOffice.org, etc. on _Windows_ then making the transition to doing all of these on _Linux_ with a Windows-like KDE is not such a big hurdle. Of course, I could not convert my father and my sisters (who are quite tech-savvy) to use Firefox instead of MSIE. I wish all these clueless or careless webmasters who design sites that function in MSIE-only to be burn in Hell for 1000 years for the damage they are doing. But other people are more successful. Right now, our WinXP laptop (a Pentium IV 2.4 GHz computer) is doing some things very slowly, which causes my father and my sister endless frustrations. The desktop computer (also a P4-2.4) is running Mandriva Linux 2005 LE (after several upgrades including net upgrades from earlier Mandrake versions (both Community and Official) since we replaced a computer since the last one caught fire (seriously). It runs like a charm, quite fast in most everything, almost always responsive or could be made so. It could be made much faster if I wasn't using KDE. I hardly reboot it - usually to upgrade kernels, switch to Windows, reboot after a net upgrade, etc. Works like a charm like in the first days. Maybe it's because I'm a better Linux admin than my father and my sisters are WinXP admins. But Linux is more transparent than Windows, and easier to understand and manage. I know of people much less capable than me whose systems run perfectly now. So you need to be a very good Windows expert to keep your Windows system working in perfect order, while a moderately clueful Linux rookie to make sure your Linux with any half-decent modern distribution is working perfectly. How's that for usability? UNIX Rules where Windows Sucks. Regards, Shlomi Fish - Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage:http://www.shlomifish.org/ Hacker sees bug. Hacker fixes bug. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving to Linux
On Sun, 8 May 2005, Dan Kaspi wrote: this can be easiy changed; moreover, he claimed that since Linux is an open source, maybe it is even easier to develop viruses/spyware to it. In this point I did not know what to answer him. I am not a security expert; it could be that he is right in this point. There have been a lot of debates whether open-source is more secured than close-source. I'll give you a short quote from one of the famous articles out there ( http://www.dwheeler.com/secure-programs/Secure-Programs-HOWTO.html chapter 2.4: Is Open Source Good for Security?): Elias Levy (Aleph1) is the former moderator of one of the most popular security discussion groups - Bugtraq. He discusses some of the problems in making open source software secure in his article Is Open Source Really More Secure than Closed?. His summary is: 'So does all this mean Open Source Software is no better than closed source software when it comes to security vulnerabilities? No. Open Source Software certainly does have the potential to be more secure than its closed source counterpart. But make no mistake, simply being open source is no guarantee of security.' Regards, Adir. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Kernel weirdness
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] leonid $ find /usr/src/linux -follow -name *.[ch] | xargs grep -RnH ip_map_lookup /usr/src/linux/net/sunrpc/svcauth_unix.c:152:static struct ip_map *ip_map_lookup(struct ip_map *, int); /usr/src/linux/net/sunrpc/svcauth_unix.c:208: ipmp = ip_map_lookup(ipm, 1); /usr/src/linux/net/sunrpc/svcauth_unix.c:279: ipmp = ip_map_lookup(ip, 1); /usr/src/linux/net/sunrpc/svcauth_unix.c:307: ipm = ip_map_lookup(key, 0); /usr/src/linux/net/sunrpc/svcauth_unix.c:344: ipm = ip_map_lookup(key, 0); As I see, I have here a function that has a prototype, is called four times, but has no implementation! :) However, it assembly code exists in svcauth_unix.o. Any ideas where did it come from? :) - -- - Leonid Podolny | /\ | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign leonidp(at)gmail.com |x Against HTML Mail +972-54-5696948 | / \ - PGP fingerprint: 51B2 F1DB 485E 2C48 2E17 94D1 7EC4 E524 B156 B9F0 PGP key:http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0xB156B9F0 - -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFCf0sFfsTlJLFWufARAt4EAJ45pf/jH+uCM6i/Hv5yjGirYj8gqACeMDSP TiJlF8jbEePaHMOdBD8ggmo= =dgE4 -END PGP SIGNATURE- = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Moving to Linux
I think that something is misunderstood here. If you have a closed source, that does not mean that you cannot find bugs to exploit looking at the binaries. Those that are in the know, knows ( :) ) its not that hard once enough time is invested. OTOH if you have an open source software you can take a list of known code abuses and go thru the code and fix them. The problem is, that not everyone knows how to do that and thus again here open source stands out where anyone can see the code. With closed source you have to rely on the sole source creators - the owners. I definitely believe that open source is more secured, but its more relative then just saying that. I.e. only when the software is exposed enough in the community will it get the appropriate attention to fix its flaws. I.e. I will only compare security between closed and open source software with the same level of exposure. Regards, tzahi. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Adir Abraham Sent: Monday, May 09, 2005 1:21 PM To: Dan Kaspi Cc: linux-il@linux.org.il Subject: Re: Moving to Linux On Sun, 8 May 2005, Dan Kaspi wrote: this can be easiy changed; moreover, he claimed that since Linux is an open source, maybe it is even easier to develop viruses/spyware to it. In this point I did not know what to answer him. I am not a security expert; it could be that he is right in this point. There have been a lot of debates whether open-source is more secured than close-source. I'll give you a short quote from one of the famous articles out there ( http://www.dwheeler.com/secure-programs/Secure-Programs-HOWTO. html chapter 2.4: Is Open Source Good for Security?): Elias Levy (Aleph1) is the former moderator of one of the most popular security discussion groups - Bugtraq. He discusses some of the problems in making open source software secure in his article Is Open Source Really More Secure than Closed?. His summary is: 'So does all this mean Open Source Software is no better than closed source software when it comes to security vulnerabilities? No. Open Source Software certainly does have the potential to be more secure than its closed source counterpart. But make no mistake, simply being open source is no guarantee of security.' Regards, Adir. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Kernel weirdness -- solved
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Leonid Podolny wrote: As I see, I have here a function that has a prototype, is called four times, but has no implementation! :) However, it assembly code exists in svcauth_unix.o. Any ideas where did it come from? :) I think we figured this one out. (It becomes a tradition for me to respond to my own mails.) Later at this file they do: static DefineSimpleCacheLookup(ip_map, 0) This macro expands to another one (at include/linux/sunrpc/cache.h) , which, in turn, expands to yet another one. I'm yet to figure out the whole mechanism, but this is really dirty. :) - -- - Leonid Podolny | /\ | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign leonidp(at)gmail.com |x Against HTML Mail +972-54-5696948 | / \ - PGP fingerprint: 51B2 F1DB 485E 2C48 2E17 94D1 7EC4 E524 B156 B9F0 PGP key:http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0xB156B9F0 - -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFCf1PXfsTlJLFWufARAi2lAJwK2FnKoNFgqdNuU3pJtPopg8XQpwCfbnGO ifLHqcPlXLach0vQ2Rl0+UM= =LInA -END PGP SIGNATURE- = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving to Linux
Amos Shapira wrote: Debian (and other distro's) convenience is that it packages many utilities and add-ons in an easy uniform interface to download/install/config. This should be possible to do also on Windows (there is nothing special about the Linux kernel), only it haven't been done yet. People can probably come up with many reasons (one I can think of is the proprietary and non-free-as-in-speech nature of the licenses of most Windows utilities). There are tucows.com/download.com etc., only there is no central body (that I'm aware of) to help Windows users track changes convenietly, I consider *integration* as the main benefit - not the cerntralized site. Generally, Windows users are just not aware of the possibility to have all your software installable in a consistant and clean way from a single source (and have them all updated with a single command or GUI button). The major benefit of working with a mainstream distro, is that the package maintainers actively work on making all software integrate in a consistant way (and with the big distros, almost every useful new opensource software will be immediately packaged) e.g.: * After you install an app, it will be immediately added to your menus in an appropriate sub-menu (in windows all apps are added into a huge single Applications menu, make themselved the default handler for stuff etc.). * You can't install conflicting software - either conflicts would be automaticly resolved or you'll be asked to choose - and that's even before the download starts. If a package depends on other software, they will be automaticly downloaded and installed too. * No more software overriding each other's settings, grabbing each others file extensions etc. Packages register the software with the distro's central mechanisms for handling alternatives. security patches etc - they have to keep track of each installed utility separatly. (Maybe it's an idea for a startup? :) You can't do that (unless you drop what I consider to be the main benefit). And there's a good reason for that - namely Copyright law vs Open Source. With propriatary software - no single entity can maintain a single repository with integrated packages covering all (well, 99% at least) of the software you'll ever need. They are just *not legally allowed* to do so. If your'e Micorosft, you might create a central distribution source carrying Windows, Office, several games and tools, but what about Photoshop? Doom3? Acrobat Reader? WinZip? You can't legally distribute those without special contract with the authors (well, you can always buy some companies, and put others out of business ;-) ). Of course, you could add some Free Software in your distribution too - but you can't add GPL-licensed stuff (and GPL is the most common OSS license). If you do add GPL stuff, you'll have to make all the other stuff open source too - so the commercial parts are out - you can't supply Office Windows. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Kernel weirdness -- solved
On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 03:13:11PM +0300, Leonid Podolny wrote: This macro expands to another one (at include/linux/sunrpc/cache.h) , which, in turn, expands to yet another one. I'm yet to figure out the whole mechanism, but this is really dirty. :) vomit inducing is a better word. Submit a patch to unroll these suckers, mayeb the maintainers would act sanely and take it (not counting on it though). Cheers, Muli -- Muli Ben-Yehuda http://www.mulix.org | http://mulix.livejournal.com/ = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving to Linux
On Sunday 08 May 2005 15:40, you wrote: Hello, I tried to convince somebody I know to move to Linux at home and at work. I am myself an advocate user of Linux at work and at home. He works with a XP at work (a hightech company; however , he is not a programmer) ,and also XP at home. If he is not a programmer, i guess that he have some DOC files to work with. Did you tried to work with ppl that have Word and you have OpenOffice? It can do some trouble. If he will move to linux and find that his best website don't work. You had it! I don't think that you can move desktop XP ppl to linux, they will eat you alive. When listing the main advantages of Linux , the most important one I had thought of was security ; when you access the internet from a Linux machine, chances that you get a virus or spyware or someone will intrude your machine are smaller ; He answered that , when thinking in the long term (2-3 years) , as more people will use linux as a desktop, this can be easiy changed; moreover, he claimed that since Linux is an open source, maybe it is even easier to develop viruses/spyware to it. In this point I did not know what to answer him. I am not a security expert; it could be that he is right in this point. Ppl that look at me when i work on my laptop, start to lough. They don't understand what i'm writing so much ;) And i just type shell commands. So i use linux for its shell and programing ease. I recently went to my cusins, they are 13. I have opened the start menu, and all the 19'' disply was the start menu with like 100 games. Now tell me, how can i move this babies to linux? What should i give them - TUX racer ;) Linux is now OS for ppl that need its advantages, and for the office and home use, XP takes Linux hands down. Not in security, not in shell, not in bla bla bla. Ppl just know XP, and all the scurity issues... what is security? ;) If i don't know, i don't care. Also, if he has problem, can you help him by phone? Did you try to explein someone to vi a file and edit it? I tried it with my sister, when the network was down, and belive me Other Linux benefits that I thought of is that since Linux is open source, all applications he will probably need are handy for download; in winodws you cannot download office He argued that migrating to Linux will takes time because you need to learn many new things; The security solution of XP (the XP firewall) and the free antispyware sw are enough for him; And he isn't convinced that it is worth to inverst time in migating to Linux. Are there other Linux benefits which I can pose for moving to Linux ? (except the idea of moving to open and free source). Dan Kaspi If Linux wants to be No.1, it should apeel to the games companies, and make them program games just for linux, then children will want linux, and we'll have the next generation. And this is the most important step to the future of linux - the children ;) kfir = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why does this not compile?
Amos Shapira wrote: It's been ages since I used nntp, but I'll give it a try. No need to use NNTP (if you'll find a useful NNTP server to use it with at all). Most ISP's (at least all the ones I've ever used) provide reasonable servers. Generally news.yourprovider.com works fine, plus you can google for public server lists. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: computer for givaway
Erez Doron wrote: I have an old p2 166 mmx for giveaway. Is that really a P2 ? I think usually only pentium classic have the suffix mmx, because starting with Pentium Pro (i686) all CPU's have the mmx instruction set. If hamakor's taking 586mmx, I might have one of these (166Mhz I think) lying around too. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Kernel weirdness -- solved
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote: vomit inducing is a better word. Submit a patch to unroll these suckers, mayeb the maintainers would act sanely and take it (not counting on it though). This macro acts as a sort of C++ template -- it unloops into generic cache lookup code. I don't think there is a better way to handle such sort of generic case. Besides, my guess is person that wrote it, is an actual maintainter of the NFS code (whoever it is). He seems to be very proud of it -- the comments are ample and he actually expains how to use it. Trying to convince him is like trying to convince someone that his child is ugly. :) - -- - Leonid Podolny | /\ | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign leonidp(at)gmail.com |x Against HTML Mail +972-54-5696948 | / \ - PGP fingerprint: 51B2 F1DB 485E 2C48 2E17 94D1 7EC4 E524 B156 B9F0 PGP key:http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0xB156B9F0 - -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFCf2LWfsTlJLFWufARAhsIAJ4vUV7Gy954FHD0Q5YUAt0kfQOqCQCfaT4e qq7rJqIkshJiL/dmGZlxnOY= =jOad -END PGP SIGNATURE- = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: computer for givaway
I'd venture to guess that it's a P1/166MMX. The only other 166Mhz Pentium was the Pentium Pro 166Mhz/512kb, and was rarely used. Gilboa On Mon, 2005-05-09 at 15:51 +0300, Amit Aronovitch wrote: Erez Doron wrote: I have an old p2 166 mmx for giveaway. Is that really a P2 ? I think usually only pentium classic have the suffix mmx, because starting with Pentium Pro (i686) all CPU's have the mmx instruction set. If hamakor's taking 586mmx, I might have one of these (166Mhz I think) lying around too. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why does this not compile?
No need to use NNTP (if you'll find a useful NNTP server to use it with at all). Actually, NNTP is very useful for following floss mailing lists without filling up your inbox (or subscribing just for the time duration of getting some task done, and then unsubbing), using the gmane server, which mirrors such lists and provides a (self moderated) NNTP-to-Mail gateway (so you can even post): http://www.gmane.org/ --- Shoshannah Forbes http://www.xslf.com = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: August Penguin 2005 - Not on Friday ?
On 5/8/05, Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry to nitpick, but: Gilad Ben-Yossef wrote: Lior Kaplan wrote: AP = August Penguin. VI - 4 in the Roman numbering system. Actually, VI is 6 in Roman. 4 is IV. Indeed. Sorry for going all FLA on you. Cheers, Gilad PS. Ok, ok... FLA is Four Letter Acronym. Sorry, I couldn't resist. :-) There is no Four Letter Acronym. What you want is an EQLA, or a Enhanced Quad Letter Acronym. There is also SEFLA, or Super Enhanced Five Letter Acronym. Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] What an enlightening thread. What is nitpicking then? (just kidding). I leave it to you to find out what SNAFU stands for. -- Cheers, Maxim Vexler (hq4ever). Do u GNU ? To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
OT: Payment in equity
I know this is cold by now, but I was unplesantly reminded today that payment for work by a corportation in stock is taxed as WAGES when the stock is sold. So instead of paying Israeli capital gains tax (15% for a public company, 25% for a private one), you pay full income tax, health tax, national insurance etc. If you are paid reasonable wages (Mas Hacnasa decides what is resonable), then the stock is considered a benefit and taxed as a capital gain. As always contact a comptent TAX lawyer before signing any contract. Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel [EMAIL PROTECTED] N3OWJ/4X1GM IL Voice: (077)-424-1667 IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 VoN Skype: mendelsonfamily = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Payment in equity
On Monday 09 May 2005 16:38, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote: I know this is cold by now, but I was unplesantly reminded today that payment for work by a corportation in stock is taxed as WAGES when the stock is sold. That actually depends on the option plan your company uses. Nowadays it is common (by companies that want their employees to benefit) to use option plans that are considered as capital for tax purposes (there's a downside for the company, but I won't get into that ATM). That wasn't common (or maybe it simply didn't exist) a few years ago, but it's very much possible today. - Aviram = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why does this not compile?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: For example IIRC the specs don't define what free((void *)0) should do, so it can either return cleanly doing nothing or cause a segmentation fault depending on the compiler. Or send an email to your manager suggesting that your salary should be revised. It may be done by the same implementation that usually does nothing when you free(0), depending on the value of a trancendental function of the phase of the moon and the PID of your program. In general, I think this thread tends to mix undefined and unspecified behavior, so let's introduce some order into the issue. Undefined behavior is exactly that - *anything* at all can happen. More specifically, an implementation may behave unpredictably. Including sending an email to your boss, though it may not seem as a reasonable implementation of freeing NULL or writing past a buffer boundary or whatever. Note that one possibility is that the statement that is technically undefined will perform reasonably but the rest of the program won't. The program will do nothing when it gets to free(NULL) but will print you are a moron from a totally different function that does not do any IO at all. Unspecified behavior is one that is consistent and documented by a particular implementation. Usually unspecified behavior is allowed for efficiency reasons etc. Examples include the size of an int or a pointer, whether char is signed or unsigned, etc. You should worry about unspecified behavior if you care about portability (ints are guaranteed to be of the same size on your platform). You should worry about undefined behavior even if you don't care about portability (don't free(NULL) ever). For more (authoritative) information see the C FAQ #11.33. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.goldshmidt.org = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
undeterministic zip?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar cf - directory |md5sum 03ad652d93447a92eb944cd6acae0471 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar cf - directory |md5sum 03ad652d93447a92eb944cd6acae0471 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar cf - directory |md5sum 03ad652d93447a92eb944cd6acae0471 - nothing out of the ordinary, right? on the dot like an English train... [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar icf - directory |md5sum 03ad652d93447a92eb944cd6acae0471 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar icf - directory |md5sum 03ad652d93447a92eb944cd6acae0471 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar icf - directory |md5sum 03ad652d93447a92eb944cd6acae0471 - i for bzip2. still no surprise. however: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar zcf - directory |md5sum 484497aa0d7e1bb391a73cc8b42acce2 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar zcf - directory |md5sum 552bbc02b0b2b5b142a425d476f0d5c0 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar zcf - directory |md5sum 792afdaf2be839dfccc1c91dfd4f726b - what the fsck is going on?! is gzip adding some odd time stamp or something?! -- The silver lining Ira Abramov http://ira.abramov.org/email/ = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: undeterministic zip?
Ira Abramov wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar zcf - directory |md5sum 484497aa0d7e1bb391a73cc8b42acce2 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar zcf - directory |md5sum 552bbc02b0b2b5b142a425d476f0d5c0 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar zcf - directory |md5sum 792afdaf2be839dfccc1c91dfd4f726b - what the fsck is going on?! is gzip adding some odd time stamp or something?! Indeed. Seems to be fixed with gzip -n $ tar cf - directory | gzip -n | md5sum 59d0f9e8ae05efbd55039010c3461878 *- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ $ tar cf - directory | gzip -n | md5sum 59d0f9e8ae05efbd55039010c3461878 *- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ $ tar cf - directory | gzip -n | md5sum 59d0f9e8ae05efbd55039010c3461878 *- (sorry for the w2k thingy) = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: undeterministic zip?
Ira Abramov wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar icf - directory |md5sum 03ad652d93447a92eb944cd6acae0471 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar icf - directory |md5sum 03ad652d93447a92eb944cd6acae0471 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar icf - directory |md5sum 03ad652d93447a92eb944cd6acae0471 - i for bzip2. still no surprise. Well, one surpirse. i is not for bzip. If you want bzip, try j. however: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar zcf - directory |md5sum 484497aa0d7e1bb391a73cc8b42acce2 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar zcf - directory |md5sum 552bbc02b0b2b5b142a425d476f0d5c0 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar zcf - directory |md5sum 792afdaf2be839dfccc1c91dfd4f726b - what the fsck is going on?! is gzip adding some odd time stamp or something?! It appears so, yes: ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1952.txt MTIME (Modification TIME) This gives the most recent modification time of the original file being compressed. The time is in Unix format, i.e., seconds since 00:00:00 GMT, Jan. 1, 1970. (Note that this may cause problems for MS-DOS and other systems that use local rather than Universal time.) If the compressed data did not come from a file, MTIME is set to the time at which compression started. MTIME = 0 means no time stamp is available. -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: undeterministic zip?
On Mon, May 09, 2005, Christoph Bugel wrote about Re: undeterministic zip?: what the fsck is going on?! is gzip adding some odd time stamp or something?! Indeed. Seems to be fixed with gzip -n Exactly. Read RFC 1952 (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1952.html) if you want to learn more about gzip's format. Specifically, ... If the compressed data did not come from a file, MTIME is set to the time at which compression started. MTIME = 0 means no time stamp is available. -n indeed assures that the time stamp (and name) isn't saved. -- Nadav Har'El| Monday, May 9 2005, 1 Iyyar 5765 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |The fact that no one understands you http://nadav.harel.org.il |doesn't mean you're an artist. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: undeterministic zip?
On Mon, 9 May 2005, Ira Abramov wrote: however: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar zcf - directory |md5sum 484497aa0d7e1bb391a73cc8b42acce2 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar zcf - directory |md5sum 552bbc02b0b2b5b142a425d476f0d5c0 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ tar zcf - directory |md5sum 792afdaf2be839dfccc1c91dfd4f726b - gzip stores the date time of the uncompressed file, which is made at a different time by tar, for each run. man gzip options -l --verbose. bzip2 does not store such a date anywhere, thus it is not affected. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Job Tracker Fixed and Polished [was Re: Job Tracker Now Has an RSS Feed]
Replying to myself, I should say that I received several messages from people
who subscribed to the feed, and found it lacking. I was aware of some of
these problems myself, but others were new to me. In any case, they are fixed
now:
1. The URL pointed by the script is now at iglu.org.il. The reason that it did
not work before is that I used $ENV{'SCRIPT_URI'} that requires mod_rewrite
to be enabled in Apache. (it's a non-standard extension)
2. The URLs themselves were broken. Now they display a nicely formatted
record.
3. The description of each item was previously mal-formatted. Now it's
HTML-formatted - the same as the one on the page but without CSS. Should be
very readable, anyway, because I tried to use semantic markup.
Please let me know what you think and if you find any other problems.
Happy syndication and aggregation. (And Amos - please get a more decent RSS
reader than Mozilla's Livemarks). The source as always is available on:
http://stalker.iguide.co.il:8080/svn/lm-solve/mini-reporter/trunk/
You need Subversion to check it out. License is MIT X11.
I hope to move it to Berlios.de and to place it on CPAN sometime in the
future.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
On Sunday 08 May 2005 13:50, Shlomi Fish wrote:
The Linux-IL Jobs Tracker (http://www.iglu.org.il/jobs/) now has an RSS
Feed:
http://www.iglu.org.il/jobs/index.rss
I set it up because even I forgot to periodically check the job tracker for
new entries, and I figured most other people would as well.
Now you can subscribe to the feed, and receive notices whenever a new job
was added with information about the job.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
-
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Homepage:http://www.shlomifish.org/
Hacker sees bug. Hacker fixes bug.
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Re: Moving to Linux
On Monday 09 May 2005 15:23, Amit Aronovitch wrote: If your'e Micorosft, you might create a central distribution source carrying Windows, Office, several games and tools, but what about Photoshop? Doom3? Acrobat Reader? WinZip? You can't legally distribute those without special contract with the authors (well, you can always buy some companies, and put others out of business ;-) ). Of course, you could add some Free Software in your distribution too - but you can't add GPL-licensed stuff (and GPL is the most common OSS license). If you do add GPL stuff, you'll have to make all the other stuff open source too - so the commercial parts are out - you can't supply Office Windows. That's bullshit. Microsoft (for example) can distribute updates to GPLed software along with their own proprietary software without any restriction whatsoever. As long as the GPLed components install to different files, there's no restrictions whatsoever on the distribution medium of GPLed software. On my hard disk I have Opera[1] which is proprietary along with gcc which is GPLed. If I make a tarball out of both, would it make Opera GPLed? Or am I breaking the law? Of course not. Do you want to say that Debian is breaking the law by supplying updates to GPLed program from the same medium as Open Source Software (which may not necessarily be Free according to the FSD), under a non-compatible license? Hell no. The only restriction Microsoft have is that they supply the sources to the GPLed program on demand or on their web-site. (or at least point someone to where they can find them IANAL). That and if they make modifications to their sources, they must distribute these modifications or the modified sources. Whether Microsoft indeed want to supply updates to GPLed and other software that is free as in speech from its updates source is a different question. But if they do decide to, it will be fully legal. Regards, Shlomi Fish [1] - Just so everybody relax, it's not one of my default browsers. I just use it to check HTML sites I create so I can be more sure I'm doing things right. - Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage:http://www.shlomifish.org/ Hacker sees bug. Hacker fixes bug. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving to Linux
On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 08:16:40PM +0300, Shlomi Fish wrote: On Monday 09 May 2005 15:23, Amit Aronovitch wrote: If your'e Micorosft, you might create a central distribution source carrying Windows, Office, several games and tools, but what about Photoshop? Doom3? Acrobat Reader? WinZip? You can't legally distribute those without special contract with the authors (well, you can always buy some companies, and put others out of business ;-) ). Of course, you could add some Free Software in your distribution too - but you can't add GPL-licensed stuff (and GPL is the most common OSS license). If you do add GPL stuff, you'll have to make all the other stuff open source too - so the commercial parts are out - you can't supply Office Windows. That's bullshit. Microsoft (for example) can distribute updates to GPLed software along with their own proprietary software without any restriction whatsoever. As long as the GPLed components install to different files, there's no restrictions whatsoever on the distribution medium of GPLed software. On my hard disk I have Opera[1] which is proprietary along with gcc which is GPLed. If I make a tarball out of both, would it make Opera GPLed? Or am I breaking the law? Of course not. Do you want to say that Debian is breaking the law by supplying updates to GPLed program from the same medium as Open Source Software (which may not necessarily be Free according to the FSD), under a non-compatible license? Hell no. The only restriction Microsoft have is that they supply the sources to the GPLed program on demand or on their web-site. (or at least point someone to where they can find them IANAL). That and if they make modifications to their sources, they must distribute these modifications or the modified sources. Whether Microsoft indeed want to supply updates to GPLed and other software that is free as in speech from its updates source is a different question. But if they do decide to, it will be fully legal. Actually, MS did distribute GPLed software. NT Resource kit contained perl. IIRC with sources. I don't know if recent RKits continue this tradition. -- Didi = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving to Linux
On Monday 09 May 2005 15:23, Amit Aronovitch wrote: Of course, you could add some Free Software in your distribution too - but you can't add GPL-licensed stuff (and GPL is the most common OSS license). If you do add GPL stuff, you'll have to make all the other stuff open source too - so the commercial parts are out - you can't supply Office Windows. While I completely agree with you analysis about the benefits of Linux software distribution and package management, your last point is incorrect -- from GPL: In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License. Of course, anybody doing this will still have to comply with the GPL on the relevant software. -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron ICQ UIN: 16527398 There are only 10 types of people in the world- Those who understand binary, and those who do not. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Kernel weirdness -- solved
On Monday 09 May 2005 15:33, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote:
On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 03:13:11PM +0300, Leonid Podolny wrote:
This macro expands to another one (at include/linux/sunrpc/cache.h) ,
which, in turn, expands to yet another one. I'm yet to figure out the
whole mechanism, but this is really dirty. :)
vomit inducing is a better word. Submit a patch to unroll these
suckers, mayeb the maintainers would act sanely and take it (not
counting on it though).
Talking about macros and vomiting, here is a partial (little
modified) snippet:
#define D_(op,d,txt)\
[ FOO_##op ] { \
.opcode = FOO_##op, \
.dir = d, \
.name = #op, \
.desc = txt \
}
static foo_commands_t foo_commands[] = {
D_(RING, LEFT, Start/Stop Ring),
D_(STATUS, RIGHT, Status Detect),
... assume a long list ...
};
#undef D_
Now I'll admit this was written by me (kernel code, not yet
distributed). These sort of ugliness is justified IMO only when
the alternative is uglier. In this case, you'd need to initialize
the array and assure that each opcode (which comes from a separate
enum BTW), falls into its index and contains the correct name --
and remember that repetitions are a big no-no in vomit-land.
BTW: I think it's the same argument about the massive use of
goto's in the kernel -- they are used when the alternative
is uglier.
Cheers,
--
Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron
ICQ UIN: 16527398
Software is like Entropy: it's hard to grasp, weighs nothing and
obeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics, i.e. it always increases
-- Norman Augustine
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Re: Moving to Linux
On Monday 09 May 2005 21:34, Yedidyah Bar-David wrote: Actually, MS did distribute GPLed software. NT Resource kit contained perl. IIRC with sources. I don't know if recent RKits continue this tradition. 1. FALSE: perl license is not GPL (it's under the Artistic License) 2. TRUE: MS does distribute GPL software (the Services For Unix) with the sources as required. Let's all stick to facts please. -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron ICQ UIN: 16527398 Linux: Opening doors and shattering Windows. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving to Linux
On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 11:30:06PM +0300, Oron Peled wrote: On Monday 09 May 2005 21:34, Yedidyah Bar-David wrote: Actually, MS did distribute GPLed software. NT Resource kit contained perl. IIRC with sources. I don't know if recent RKits continue this tradition. 1. FALSE: perl license is not GPL (it's under the Artistic License) It's actually dual-licensed, either GPL or artistic, at your option, as far as I know. I cannot say I fully understand either, but choosing the artistic license would still require providing sources or changing the executable name (which they didn't do), at least as far as I understand. 2. TRUE: MS does distribute GPL software (the Services For Unix) with the sources as required. That's a bit weird - why didn't they take BSD sources? Let's all stick to facts please. Yes, I agree. The point I wanted to make is that this isn't hypothetical. -- Didi = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: undeterministic zip?
Hi all, This isn't more on topic than the original subject, but I allow myself to share this very valuable information. From the NEWS file of GNU tar version 1.15 (which isn't in Debian unstable yet, I do not even remember how come I ran into this): version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'. :-) It's irrelevant for Ira's question, as tar can't guess if you want to compress an archive. But now it knows to decompress it. If it had this option a few years ago, it would sure have saved me a few tens of times re-running tar commands with j and z replaced. But of course I prefferd to suffer than to think a bit and write such a patch myself (or even a wrapper script). -- Didi = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving to Linux
On 5/9/05, Tzafrir Cohen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 06:40:55PM +1000, Amos Shapira wrote: systems). But for example, if you browse the web with a vulnerable browser, that allows malicious sites to execute code on your machine, then all the firewalls in the world won't prevent your machine from getting infected by a trojan. Actually current firewalls/proxies and routing boxes DO scan for viruses and melicious code while you surf as well. Dig the network for specific examples, I can't remember them off the top of my head. Not the cheaper ones. Such scans take CPU and memory, and lower-end boxes don't have of those to spare. I was reffering to dedicated boxes, and the ..all the firewalls in the world won't prevent your machine from getting infected... part in your quote above. But my mother won't appreciate command-line at all (and so would I, if I'll have to explain to her what to do with it over the phone). Slightly OT: Actually some commands are quite useful for phone support. The problem is to get exactly the right information with the user having to type as little as possible. Consider the remote user as your interface to the system you're trying to fix. It is a sort of interactive terminal with a very long delay. So you need a set of scripts that already do most of the filtering. My mome gets stressed and confused from reading financial material in Hebrew, or even deciding what I mean by window title - that blue line? or oh, I closed the Internet now... (apparently after de-minimizing the IE window) ah! here it is, suddenly it's here again! And you expect her to be able to type shell commands (even simple script names) and read me their output? I don't. (my mom is over 70 and practically used a computer in earnest for the last 6 or so months, just to give perspective). Yes, that's expose. And these are not just screen-shots but live, zoomed out application windows. Extremly neat and easy to stay oriented. There is skippy for X11 which tries to simulate it, works so-so. Rant: But for that to work well with Linux you currently need non-free display drivers. Non-free: not part of the common codebase easily customized by distros. It worked ok on my pure-debian Sarge X11 (when I tested it a month ago), and its docs say that with the later Xorg extensions it can also simulate the live part of the zoomed out windows. I admit that I'm not deep into the latest state of X11 technology, but what am I missing? Cheers, --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving to Linux
Shlomi Fish wrote: On Monday 09 May 2005 15:23, Amit Aronovitch wrote: If your'e Micorosft, you might create a central distribution source carrying Windows, Office, several games and tools, but what about Photoshop? Doom3? Acrobat Reader? WinZip? You can't legally distribute those without special contract with the authors (well, you can always buy some companies, and put others out of business ;-) ). Of course, you could add some Free Software in your distribution too - but you can't add GPL-licensed stuff (and GPL is the most common OSS license). If you do add GPL stuff, you'll have to make all the other stuff open source too - so the commercial parts are out - you can't supply Office Windows. That's bullshit. Microsoft (for example) can distribute updates to GPLed software along with their own proprietary software without any restriction whatsoever. As long as the GPLed components install to different files, there's no restrictions whatsoever on the distribution medium of GPLed software. Remember, I did say unless you drop the main benefit. I was not referring to the distribution medium. Read supply above as package a version configured to act as integral part of your system - otherwise your'e no different than the download sites mentioned by Amos (at least not enough to make it a good startup idea). How well can you *integrate* (main benefit - right?) software packages from diverse sources if your'e banned from some ways of 'combining' some packages with certain others? Your'e certainly not allowed to link propriatery main against GPL'ed libs. ( Other way around is a borderline case - probably author of the GPL'ed main must explicitly agree to have his prog use this and that lib). Consider basic services (multimedia format handling, GUI toolkits, central configuration mechanisms etc.) - you must have seperate libraries for your GPL and non-GPL stuff. Would it be easy to keep a consistant look feel? Hmm... Now that I start thinking of details, it seems that it's not such a big deal after all - when you consider this class of basic libs, many of them are LGPL or other non-GPL license anyway. Plus - at least the major propriatary services can pass under the major components of the OS exception. Plus - all three points I listed to demonstrate the benefits of package integration can be easily implemented without any GPL infringement. OK, OK - the last phrase of my previous post was major BS after all. I just didn't think it through - feel free to call me names whenever I do that again :-) . So - erase that last sentence - free software won't be a problem. It's the propriatary licensed stuff that would be the downfall of this hypothetical windows distro startup. Microsoft might be able to pull this off (in fact they ARE doing it - their own way...), but I doubt any smaller entity - let alone a startup - could get close. By the way, if you make your distro stick with free software - your'e out of 'original idea for startup' land again. There's the well-known cygwin, and - since wev'e been mentioning Debian alot - there's even the Debian GNU/W32 project http://debian-cygwin.sourceforge.net/ . (Of course, if you consider the original topic of this thread - I'd say if you consider installing a complete debian userspace on windows - why not go all the way and get a Linux kernel too? Very few windows users would list the *kernel* as the reason for sticking with this platform) On my hard disk I have Opera[1] which is proprietary along with gcc which is GPLed. If I make a tarball out of both, would it make Opera GPLed? Or am I breaking the law? Of course not. Right. That's clearly mere aggregation - it's explicitly allowed. Do you want to say that Debian is breaking the law by supplying updates to GPLed program from the same medium as Open Source Software (which may not necessarily be Free according to the FSD), under a non-compatible license? Hell no. Ditto. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving to Linux
On 5/9/05, Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Monday 09 May 2005 11:40, Amos Shapira wrote: I'm not that deep into Windows administration, I just know that, as far as I noticed, I never had to bother with it. Well recently I heard of someone who told me MS Freecell (!!) does not start for him for some reason. (while almost everything else seems to be in working order) I said I had no idea how to resolve it, but pointed him to free (as-in-beer and possibly as-in-speech) alternatives. And you think this is an example of DLL hell? Do you imply that he installed some program with a DLL which broke his freecell? Like I said in my reply to Shoashannah: Windows requires constant maintenance to keep in working in order. Even if you're a complete rookie. In Linux, if you are a complete rookie which an expert gave you some Linux maintenance 101, then your maintenance problems are over. If you're a Power User and like to tinker with your system, then things may temporarily break. But it shouldn't happen to the Aunt Tillie type people like your Mom. And when it does, a quick web-search/forums usually resolve it. You are probably right that once it's up and running, linux doesn't require more maintenance than Windows (probably less). I think the catch with bringing this argument to the average Windows home user is that they don't bother doing the required windows maintenance (and therefore might catch viruses which will require them to re-install the entire system) and therefore don't precieve the advantage of having a zero maintenance linux on their hardware as an advantage. Yes, I know - the re-installation of a system and its slowness and lots of other stuff are resources wasted by windows user, but there is a problem convincing them that it's indeed the case. At least to the kind of users I tried to talk to (e.g. my brother in law is totally dependend on e-mail for his business and keeps crying about the amount he spends sifting through the spam he gets but also completly refuses to consider switching to Thunderbird on Windows (which I told him time and again that will rid him off most spam automatically)). Go figure...:( A guru like me, can expect a lot of breakage. But for the clueful Aunt Tillie type Linux just works and works and works. Hmm. I'm not sure. Maybe. Let's try to see, what set of computer uses would cover aunt tillie's: 1. Web surfing, of course (IE-Firefox) 2. E-mail (Outlook-Thunderbird) 3. Flash sites (e.g. games) 4. Win32 or maybe ActiveX bridge games? (my mom is an avid Bridge gamer, it's an absolute requirement for her to support this) 5. Audio working out of the box. 6. Skype (works excellently). And above all, all this has to work with a unified interface. KDE might be there (and with a full Hebrew interface on top of it all). You are possibly right. I'd still have to hold her hand at least for a few weeks, and possibly nobody in the family beside me would be able to help her with that, which is a problem. I'll think about it. systems). But for example, if you browse the web with a vulnerable browser, that allows malicious sites to execute code on your machine, then all the firewalls in the world won't prevent your machine from getting infected by a trojan. Actually current firewalls/proxies and routing boxes DO scan for viruses and melicious code while you surf as well. Dig the network for specific examples, I can't remember them off the top of my head. Then let me invoke Turing's Theorem here, and claim that it's impossible to build a computer program that will find all such malicious codes. It can search for well known patterns, but once new patterns emerge, you'll be at risk until an update. Yes, you are right. It's a diversion on my part this time. I heard a rumour that a research claimed an unprotected Windows box (don't know about XP SP2) takes less than 20 minutes of Internet connection to become infected with malware. Some default installations of Linux has seens months without a single intrusion. Yes, I heard about this research too. But as an analogy to security in other area - I've just seen a TV program about flight crash investigations where they explain that there are technologies which will make commercial flights much more secure: 1. better luggage containers which can contain the force of explosions of bombs in suite cases. They are more expensive and slightly heavier than the standard ones. 2. There is a sort of an air filter which lowers the amount of oxigen in fuel tanks and therefore removes the danger of explosion like the one which took down TWA 800 (it wasn't a terrorist act, for those who are out of date on this one) It weights 100-200 kg. Both technologies were rejected by airlines because of weight considerations (El-Al uses the first one, but I suspect that this is helped by finance from the government), but at the same time the same companies added private in-seat displays and
Re: Moving to Linux
On 5/9/05, Amit Aronovitch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Amos Shapira wrote: This should be possible to do also on Windows (there is nothing special about the Linux kernel), only it haven't been done yet. People can probably come up with many reasons (one I can think of is the proprietary and non-free-as-in-speech nature of the licenses of most Windows utilities). .. With propriatary software - no single entity can maintain a single repository with integrated packages covering all (well, 99% at least) of the software you'll ever need. They are just *not legally allowed* to do so. That was the point in my post. --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving to Linux
On Tue, May 10, 2005 at 10:57:40AM +1000, Amos Shapira wrote: On 5/9/05, Tzafrir Cohen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But my mother won't appreciate command-line at all (and so would I, if I'll have to explain to her what to do with it over the phone). Slightly OT: Actually some commands are quite useful for phone support. The problem is to get exactly the right information with the user having to type as little as possible. Consider the remote user as your interface to the system you're trying to fix. It is a sort of interactive terminal with a very long delay. So you need a set of scripts that already do most of the filtering. My mome gets stressed and confused from reading financial material in Hebrew, or even deciding what I mean by window title - that blue line? or oh, I closed the Internet now... (apparently after de-minimizing the IE window) ah! here it is, suddenly it's here again! And you expect her to be able to type shell commands (even simple script names) and read me their output? Yes, because it's very simple. You have to teach her once how to get to the shell (double click on that icon of the square in the toolbar). She can have some extra open and it won't be a problem. Simple interaction on the terminal is very predictable. And thus you can easily guide her through the phone. What I meant is practically to use her as a terminal (albeit a slow one). But for that you have to prepare in advance soe useful diagnostics scripts. I don't. (my mom is over 70 and practically used a computer in earnest for the last 6 or so months, just to give perspective). What I mean is how much information do you need to pass through a phone line? She can type short commands (and make typos. Thus tab completion is important, not just short commands). She can also get confused with a big window full of information from which you ask a very specific piece of text. For instance: how do you get the IP address of the system? (you'll have to know which of theexisting ip addresses the system has that you want, of course). You can write a one-liner shell script to get that from your mom's computer. But when she calls for help that one-liner is still not there. Yes, that's expose. And these are not just screen-shots but live, zoomed out application windows. Extremly neat and easy to stay oriented. There is skippy for X11 which tries to simulate it, works so-so. Rant: But for that to work well with Linux you currently need non-free display drivers. Non-free: not part of the common codebase easily customized by distros. It worked ok on my pure-debian Sarge X11 (when I tested it a month ago), and its docs say that with the later Xorg extensions it can also simulate the live part of the zoomed out windows. I admit that I'm not deep into the latest state of X11 technology, but what am I missing? Works, but generally a CPU hog, unless you have proper 3d acceleration, right? -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best ICQ# 16849755 | | friend = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
