Posts by Christian Berger

Of course you missed _the_ computer magazine

"Computer programmiert zur Unterhaltung" (Computers programmed for entertainment)

http://eleph.antville.org/stories/1994014/

Two people from the early 1980 in bed with their C-64!

Actual IMAP?

Or does it still require a BES?

Freifunk Franken and Oldenburg

In Germany there's another approach. Essentially everything in that open wireless network is being VPNed to Slovenia. That way there's next to no chance of prosecution. Of course since bandwidth is limited, you are likely to be kicked out in case an automatic script thinks you are using to much P2P software.

The _really_ nice thing about it is that there is a pre-made set of images for commonly used routers. You simply flash those, and the switch will split up into different ports. The "WAN" port will be the one you connect towards the Internet. The next 2 ports are for the meshed routing/switching algorithm "B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced" and allow you to connect multiple nodes directly, and the last 2 ports are for local devices you want to connect to the meshed network but which don't support B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced.

The device will also set up 2 wireless networks, one ad-hoc to connect to other routers, one managed for wireless clients. The image even allows you to remote-manage the router via a web-based interface.

http://mastersword.de/~reddog/images/

https://mastersword.de:444/networkstatistic.php

This is a cheap and simple way to provide public network access, which is, in my opinion, a basic human right.

Just to make it clear, there is are primitive remedies

a) Have a monolithic kernel without module support. This is easily done on virtual servers since all the hardware is precisely the same.

b) Run your operating system from a read-only disk. This can also be done for mass hosters easily. It is a bit more tricky for smaller installations. But this keeps the problem from surviving a reboot.

Sure both require effort and may not be doable, but they work and can be implemented by mass-hosters fairly easily. I would be surprised of some of those wouldn't already do it for years.

Getting more done at lower cost

Well yes, that was an idea behind IT. Way back when people still cared about it and people like you knew their systems in every detail.

Back then the flows of data were documented. They had to be, since you had to put the stacks of punch cards from machine to machine. You could probably still do most business work with punch card machines, probably even more efficiently. What you'll miss is real-time.

Today sysadmins happily install things they don't understand. They are used to computer being magical things. If you want them to do more you buy software and put it into it. Some of them cannot even program.

They have never learned that a 5 line program can save you hours of work. They have never learned that programming can be easy. How can they when they grew up in a Windows world where every little job requires extensive use of obscure API-calls.

For example ejecting a CD-Rom drive is simply a matter of issuing the "eject" command. This can be done from a shell script. It's trivial to build a little CGI-script which runs on a webserver, so you can press a button on a webpage, the drive opens and does some mechanical task. (like pressing a button)

Just like the people back in the punch-card days used a few quite simple machines, you could now be using a few simple programs, connected together by pipes. However you have chosen to not go that way, you (as a profession) have chosen to go the Windows route where you have large semi-multi purpose software packages, which may do some things right, and lots of them wrong. I'm sorry, but then you need to face the consequences.

Wait! You are trying to use logic here.

Experience has taught us that when dealing with a Windows related issue, logic is a very uncommon approach. That's why IT companies will typically just re-install a broken Windows installation, or just do random things until the problem is solved. Only a tiny minority of people actually solve problems logically. Windows is not designed for this. Case in point: How do you change file permissions on a Windows XP Professional system? It should be simple and straight forward, shouldn't it? (Spoiler: it's not, it involves changing a setting in the dialogue which is responsible for the look of file listings)

So I'm not sure if logic is a good tool to talk about what happens inside of Microsoft. Things just _happen_ there, just like Windows development just happens.

Common problem of App-Stores

If they don't select, you'll have malware. If they do select, it's usually seen as unfair and/or censorship.

The problem is that the selection is done by an outside central organization you have to trust.

Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Debian do it differently. They select packages for you, and you can get involved in that, if you want. If you don't trust a certain distribution or repository, you can simply go to another one, or even use multiple repositories at the same time.

Awww, it's lead free

Now where am I supposed to get my recommended dose of lead from?

(Seriously there is barely any factory around where you can _still_ produce with lead)

Some Nokia phones...

...used to be _bricked_ by cell broadcasts. This was found out when some company operated their own GSM cell at a trade show and foolishly used the cell broadcast feature.

Actually that might be where the "telecinophobia" of the BBC came from

The BBC tended to avoid telecine, or filmed material on TV, a lot more than other stations. For example in Germany we still had a few TV shows shot on film until the turn of the century. StarTrek TNG was an US example of a show shot on film, even though it was edited on video. The BBC on the other hand went through great expenses to go completely video.

That's why they were keen to get portable broadcast quality VTRs when they came out

http://www.mancini99.freeserve.co.uk/The_BBC_VPR5s.html

I always wondered if that was because those early problems with bad recordings.

Another article from the Windows "Bubble"

Somehow Windows "professionals" seem to be inside a strange world where e-mail servers are somehow complex pieces of software, and .net is portable.

Seriously, if you still believe such things, go to your local library and get a book called "The Art of Unix Programming" from Eric S. Raymond and read it. If you understand that book, you might slowly understand why the rest of the world stayed with Unix or moved towards it. You might even understand why those "advanced features" of Powershell are essentially useless. You might even be able to find which pieces of software are crap and which are properly designed.