Re: [SLUG] Best API/abstraction?

[Adam Kennedy]

I second Perl's DateTime module.

It is by far the best time API I've ever seen, if only because it
utterly refuses to give you an answer that isn't strictly valid, and
throws exceptions if you blink at it wrong.

This results in a very rapid learning process where by you are forced
to learn how to phrase the question you REALLY want answered instead
of just asking it naively and getting garbage-in garbage-out problems
later.

Once you've adapted to things like always giving it timezones (because
there's lots of things it won't answer with floating timezones) and
understanding that it's going to answer "How long from 2:30am today
until 2:30am tomorrow" with simultaneous answers in days, hours and
seconds (all three of which won't divide into each other necessarily)
you really appreciate it.

I've yet to see anything else that is even close.

Adam K

On 7 April 2010 15:14, Daniel Pittman  wrote:
> Jeff Waugh  writes:
>> 
>>
>>> I for one am glad such pages exist.  I wish the inventors of time_t had
>>> read it.
>>
>> So which language / library has a great abstraction for time and date stuff,
>> helping you deal with the intricacies of this craziness?
>
> None of them.  Even the good languages have nasty side-bits like a "don't be
> broken" switch, and even a perfect language would still have the pain of
> dealing with political, not technical, issues like timezone-associated dates.
>
> Oh, and the fact that date math is *not* simple, since you can't convert
> between various durations; a question such as "how many seconds in a week" can
> only be answered "it varies..."
>
>
> FWIW, the link I posted earlier was about time handling in Common Lisp, which
> gets this less wrong than most platforms ... but that document was written
> because the standard was imperfect.
>
> Perl, meanwhile, has good support in various non-core library modules, but
> many of those have things like a "$Class::Date::DST_ADJUST" value to determine
> which behaviour you want for math involving DST and/or leap-seconds.
>
>
> As an example of a well-documented set of complications and how they are
> handled, the DateTime module does well:
>
> http://search.cpan.org/~drolsky/DateTime-0.55/lib/DateTime.pm#How_Datetime_Math_is_Done
>
> After you read through the 250 lines of warnings, complications, caveats, and
> examples of how you can have two completely correct, valid, sensible results
> that are absolutely in contradiction with each other...
>
> Heh.
>
> Time.  Boy, does it suck. :)
>        Daniel
>
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Re: Time Pedantry (was Re: [SLUG] Which bank doesn't use Linux servers?)

[Adam Kennedy]

Of course, that brings up the issue of WHAT day it is, and the need to
cleanly support non-gregorian calendars. And the next thing you know,
incrementing by a day involves half a CPU second because you need to
run a physical model of the orbit of the moon to work out if you are
at a month boundary.

Adam K

On 1 April 2010 16:11, Peter Hardy  wrote:
> None of this would be a problem if we'd just switch to decimal time in a
> single timezone and call it a day.
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Re: [SLUG] SLUG Membership decline

[Adam Kennedy]

Your problem is that membership at the moment is difficult and has no benefits.

If you convert it to so that it's convenient, that's a good start.

If you then want to create benefits, you're really going to have to
introduce some form of scarcity. But in a way that doesn't lead to
information restriction entirely.

Now that the videos are flowing again, perhaps a delay? Members only
for the first 3-6 months, and then open it up after that perhaps?

Adam K

On 2 April 2010 22:20, James Polley  wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 9:38 AM, Heracles  wrote:
>
>> Also, SLUG should consider producing a magazine for members filled with
>> articles from members including tutorials, reviews of open source
>> software and code snippets, updates on what members are working on and
>> some basics. It could become a benefit of membership. It could be
>> emailed as a pdf to financial members at their slug.org.au email address.
>
> Interesting idea.
>
> I see one major problem and one major ideological issue though.
>
> The problem is the same one we have with talks: you can't have content
> without someone taking the time to produce the content. We have enough
> trouble now just trying to round up two people to give a talk every
> month; I can't imagine getting written content would be any easier.
>
> On the other hand, a short article might be easier to produce than a
> 45-minute talk - and there's no public speaking required, which no
> doubt would make it easier for some people to participate.
>
> If we could get the content I like this idea - except for the "Emailed
> as a PDF" bit. I think there are much better ways we could present
> this: for instance, an area of the SLUG website only accessible by
> financial members; or even a simple private mailing list.
>
> The ideological issue is more serious. SLUG has never (to the best of
> my knowledge) been about withholding information. We run our mailing
> lists in public: anyone is free to read the archives, to join the
> list, to participate, without needing to be a financial member. We
> don't charge attendance fees for meetings, we don't require that
> people coming to meetings become members. The idea of having a private
> member's magazine seems antithetical to everything SLUG has ever done.
>
> There are compromises of course; I believe the SAGE-AU mailing list
> archives used to be members-only for 6 months and then released to the
> public (although now it seems the archives are completely
> members-only). We could perhaps investigate something similar.
>
> My gut feeling though is that, no matter how much we want to provide
> value to members, having private content is not the right way to go.
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Re: [SLUG] Australian government to censor your internets

[Adam Kennedy]

What's more, the report says (and I'm paraphrasing a summary here)

"We can block a list of a few thousand URLs with 100% effectiveness
and no noticable false positives, with no noticable slow down of the
internet. Non-URL based filters were only around 75% effective, which
is better than last time. However, any motivated technical person can
evade the URL list filter. If we try to prevent evasion of the filter,
we will definitely slow down the internet."

Adam K

2009/12/17 Tony Sceats :
> simply put, they can't really do it. All of the proposed solutions are HTTP
> based only and have a variety of workarounds associated with them anyway. It
> could stop a kid I'm sure, but maybe not a determined one.
>
> On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 10:49 PM, Kevin Shackleton
> wrote:
>
>> I'm confused.
>>
>> I thought the whole idea of DARPANet was that it was bomb-proof - there
>> was always another route open.  How exactly are the Thought Police going
>> to sit on every possible route into Oz?  How well does the Chinese
>> government censorship work, in terms of bandwidth filtered?  I bet it's
>> significantly under 100%.
>>
>> It seems to me, like metropolitan area wireless networks instill a
>> little bit of honesty into ISPs, to be up to sites with links to
>> international satellite service providers to resist any control from the
>> government and pass packets not just because they can but because they
>> should.
>>
>> Kevin.
>>
>> On Thu, 2009-12-17 at 17:46 +1100, meryl wrote:
>> > Heracles is right. The Filtering problem is more about stifling freedoms
>> > of speech and censoring the Net than it is about blocking child porn,
>> > and it is bound to be extended into other areas so freedom of speech
>> > will become a thing of the past for us in Australia. Apart from slowing
>> > down our already sluggish Internet speeds, if it is introduced it is
>> > likely to be extended down the track to include all manner of sites;
>> > possibly even political dissenters... if they get away with this and
>> > they'll add more and more sites to the list to the point where we may
>> > one day envy the freedoms that the Chinese have!
>> >
>> > Really the child porn issue is just being used as an emotional ruse to
>> > effect censorship controls because the purveyors of such material for
>> > the most part would most likely use VPNs and other evasive methods to
>> > avoid detection, as such their heinous activities will be totally
>> > unaffected by the filter. How about the government catch these crooks
>> > and lock them up instead of punishing all of us with this net-nanny
>> > filter.
>> >
>> > By and large the Filter will be way more detrimental to the
>> > average honest Internet user and the child pornographers will just sit
>> > back and laugh at the stupidity of Australian government.
>> >
>> > for more info see:
>> > http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25773857-953,00.html
>> >
>> http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/312845/statistics_experts_label_isp_filtering_trials_unscientific?fp=16&fpid=1
>> >
>> http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/careful-big-brother-is-editing-you/story-e6frg7go-1225792964441
>> > http://www.openforum.com.au/content/firewall-lies
>> > http://libertus.net/liberty/
>> > http://www.efa.org.au/censorship/mandatory-isp-blocking/
>> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8AZ21hCkIg
>> > and as always there's a "Downfall" video on the subject!
>> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH35CVig3fQ
>> >
>> > cheers,
>> > Meryl
>>
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Re: [SLUG] Australian government to censor your internets

[Adam Kennedy]

I'm not suggesting this be the ONLY way of dealing with the issue.

If it's possibly to at least remove all the excuses that it's cheap
and easy, and demonstrate an ongoing series of high profile false
positives, and the resulting latency issues, and that the whole thing
is ungodly expensive.

Surely taking the problem we know exist and making those problems
real, immediate, high profile, and tangible, would provide some
benefit to the people doing the more serious political work.

Adam K

2009/12/17 Robert Collins :
> On Thu, 2009-12-17 at 16:08 +1100, Adam Kennedy wrote:
>> Is anyone aware of any groups taking more direct technical action
>> against this proposal?
> ..
>> I'm pondering the idea of automating the web trawling process to find
>> NC content, and then just submit all 100 million NC content URLs to
>> the people that maintain the blocklist...
>
> Political problems need political solutions: the technology needed to do
> fast lookups on a 100 million plus string corpus already exists; all
> you'd do is push the price up (and probably centralise it to one nation
> wide solution). False positives, broken applications & induced latency
> are much more concerning technical aspects than filter size.
>
> The fundamental issue though, is that Australia is already censored: the
> debate about whether the internet should be censored is a bit misguided
> IMO: a better debate is that films are already censored: there isn't a
> strong argument why the internet /shouldn't be/, unless you consider the
> film censoring a problem (I do).
>
> Really, what I think we should be pushing for is:
>  - RC material is abolished as a catch all category
>  - Adults are required to ensure their children are not permitted access
> to adult only material, but the means is left to the parents to achieve.
>  - This would apply to movies, magazines, etc. No more special treatment
> for canberra :)
>
> -Rob
>
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Re: [SLUG] Australian government to censor your internets

[Adam Kennedy]

After a quick scan through the restricted classification database on
the censors site, from which it appears that detailed instructions on
the production of homemade gun silencers is rated RC, I managed to
find a random YouTube video showing such details, and submitted it to
see what the process is like.

As expected, it's a fairly trivially automatable process, with a
single captcha to prevent automated submission. This should be pretty
trivial to wrap in a website, so that we'd just need to build a URL
list in advance, ask random interweb volunteers to look at and solve
catchas, and the rest would be done more or less automatically.

I know some of the filtering systems will use DNS to prefilter HTTP
requests, resolving all sites present in the block list across to the
proxies that do the more detailed filtering. This, by the way, is how
half of the UK appeared to be arriving at Wikipedia from the same IP
address earlier in the year.

Assuming this test complaint gets approved, something similar should
happen to all Australian traffic going to YouTube for any ISP using
that kind of filter system.

We'll see how it goes, and I'm sure we're rapidly getting to the point
where we should move this discussion off the SLUG list...

Adam K

2009/12/17 Daniel Pittman :
> The ACMA process is documented on their website and, yes, does apparently
> involve a human review of the details.  This existing system is used as the
> basis for the updated mandatory component of the system.
>
> ...and you could probably overload that with a few thousand items a day,
> personally, since it is not designed for high volume use; they envision less
> than 20K to 30K items on that particular list.
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Re: [SLUG] Australian government to censor your internets

[Adam Kennedy]

I'm sure it wouldn't be QUITE that simple, but for 100 lines of code
I'm sure you could modify that to search for "beastiality" or "Left 4
Dead 2 US Edition", scrape the front page to validate it a bit, then
submit.

But like I said, doing it properly would mean a bit more co-ordination...

Adam K

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 4:24 PM, David Lloyd  wrote:
>
> Why would we need to bother writing something ourselves?
>
> 1. Go to google
> 2. Type in something likely to get bad content (eg. sex)
> 3. Submit EVERY SINGLE result to the list arbitrators
>
> (Reasoning: well, clearly WE don't know what's classified - if we did, why
> would we need the Government to write great big laws about such things?)
>
> DSL
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Adam Kennedy 
> Reply-to: a...@ali.as
> To: Mike 
> Cc: slug@slug.org.au 
> Subject: Re: [SLUG] Australian government to censor your internets
> Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:08:10 +1100
>
> Is anyone aware of any groups taking more direct technical action
> against this proposal?
>
> I'm more of a builder of things than a talker, and it occurs to me
> that if the scope of potential blocking is as wide as it (naively, to
> me) appears to be (and based on comments such as "80% of the 95
> million porn sites fall under this criteria" from the Sex Party etc)
> then the theoretical maximum size of the block list is something like
> 100 million URLs and contains every online games shop that sells NC
> video games, and so on and so forth.
>
> I'm pondering the idea of automating the web trawling process to find
> NC content, and then just submit all 100 million NC content URLs to
> the people that maintain the blocklist...
>
> This is to some degree idle speculation, and I'm sure that any
> specific attempt to do something like this would need to be more
> thoroughly researched, but if anyone can recommend any technical
> anti-filter forums within the various groups protesting this it would
> be handy...
>
> Adam K
>
> 2009/12/15 Mike :
>> I'm not sure if this belongs here, sorry if it doesn't.
>>
>> Well looks like the government got it's way. Our Internet will be censored
>> next year.
>>
>> http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2009/115
>>
>>
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Re: [SLUG] Australian government to censor your internets

[Adam Kennedy]

Is anyone aware of any groups taking more direct technical action
against this proposal?

I'm more of a builder of things than a talker, and it occurs to me
that if the scope of potential blocking is as wide as it (naively, to
me) appears to be (and based on comments such as "80% of the 95
million porn sites fall under this criteria" from the Sex Party etc)
then the theoretical maximum size of the block list is something like
100 million URLs and contains every online games shop that sells NC
video games, and so on and so forth.

I'm pondering the idea of automating the web trawling process to find
NC content, and then just submit all 100 million NC content URLs to
the people that maintain the blocklist...

This is to some degree idle speculation, and I'm sure that any
specific attempt to do something like this would need to be more
thoroughly researched, but if anyone can recommend any technical
anti-filter forums within the various groups protesting this it would
be handy...

Adam K

2009/12/15 Mike :
> I'm not sure if this belongs here, sorry if it doesn't.
>
> Well looks like the government got it's way. Our Internet will be censored
> next year.
>
> http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2009/115
>
>
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[SLUG] Any suggestions for places to do Personal Sprints in Sydney

[Adam Kennedy]

Hi gang

Lately I've been finding that between IRC, twitter spam, and all the
other communication conveniences of our modern lives, it's really hard
to force yourself to devoting a whole day to learning some new
technology or to hack on that Important Project or what have you.

I'd like to experiment with the idea of a Personal Sprint, where you
pack up a laptop and all the downloaded material and books you need
into a backpack, go somewhere unusual or picturesk or otherwise
undistracting and spend a 5 or 10 or 15 hour day or evening or night
with absolute nothing to distract from the task.

Only problem is, I'm stuck for places to do it.

In the past I've had some success with shorter periods of a few hours,
by just getting on a train to Penrith, or sitting our on the foodcourt
balcony at Bondi Junction shopping centre, and so on.

But where would people recommend as places to go for this kind of thing?

Limitations.

1. Must be reasonably reachable by public transport, some use of taxis
is acceptable.

2. Must have electricity, buying 10 hours of extra battery time is
probably not reasonable, extension cords are allowable.

Thoughts?

Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Dreamweaver clone for Linux ?

[Adam Kennedy]

2009/9/17 Kyle :
> he's 9. I.e. the attention span of a goldfish.

Indeed.

I was quite surprised at some of the answers you got.

Some of the suggestions sounded like the equivalent of teaching about
gravity and acceleration by starting "First, lets learn about
co-efficients of friction and the calculus of air resistance. It's how
we do it in the real world". :)

Adam K
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[SLUG] Nokia one-ups IBM on Linux marketing

[Adam Kennedy]

Hi gang

You may have noticed recently that Nokia has decided to pack a fairly
beefy Linux setup into their new super high end phone.

What I didn't notice till today is that they've also had a shot at
making the shiniest ad for a Linux OS yet :)

http://maemo.nokia.com/

Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] comments in scripts and source code

[Adam Kennedy]

A quick set of three basic guidelines for comments. I find these get
my through most situations.

1. The code says what you are doing, the comments say WHY you are doing it.

2. The code is there to teach people who aren't you (which includes
you-in-12-months) about the code, so in general they should be before
a block of code, and introduce it.

3. Comments are for humans. Don't leave commented out old code around,
they just mess up the comments, and you should be using version
control for that anyway.

Adam K

2009/1/12 Sebastian :
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hi all,
>
> recently I've started getting into Python and Django programming as
> well as shell scripting.
>
> I was wondering is there any rule or guide on good practice on how to
> comment code?
>
> For me and my current knowledge state, very low I would say :-), I do
> a lot of commenting. sometimes more than one line comments on one line
> code.
> Now I was wondering if I should place the comments before the actual
> code line, after or at the end.
>
> I like commenting in line after the code as it makes the code more
> easy to read - for me...
> But I like commenting lines preceding the code line as it keeps the
> lines itself short...
>
> I think that most would say it comes down to personal preference but I
> was wondering at the same time if there are some rules I should get
> used to right from the start.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> seb
>
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32)
> Comment: http://getfiregpg.org
>
> iD8DBQFJaowNMuBzgG5z7F8RAqZoAJ9Pzw3SRaes6LOdlU4bOqCQSZPFVACghmIG
> NhFonZutl3aBKUneNvtlDOE=
> =fJ7n
> -END PGP SIGNATURE-
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Re: [SLUG] Fortress .... err Firewall Australia

[Adam Kennedy]

Theoretically, I believe the IP thing vs domain thing has been solved now.

If we are willing to put aside the evilness of filtering for a second
and limit the issue to the technical implementation, I know there are
some implementations that use a two-phase filter to deal with IP
issues (I think this might include China's)

They take the list of block domains, and resolve a set of IPs for
them. These IPs are then hijacked via some BGP trickery (although
someone more clueful on that aspect would need to describe how) to the
filtering servers.

These filtering servers, although they receive request/response for
all of the hosts that map to the IPs, only do the actual filtering on
the basis of domain or URL subpaths.

In other words..

If you aren't on a red IP, you never go through filtering at all.

If you are a green host on a red IP, your request is slower but still works.

If you are a green host with a red subsection, the request is slower
but still works.

I gather though (since this involves network-fu) that this isn't the
sort of technology you can just drop a linux box into the network to
implement.

But it would seem to at least mitigate some of the computation costs
to implement the filtering.

Of course, this says nothing whatsoever about the accuracy of the
filtering, just that your inaccurate blocking can be implemented with
a lower computational cost.

Adam K

2008/10/25 Robert Barnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> I am really most concerned about all the side effects of filtering that we
> are yet to uncover.
>
> For example:
>
> If I hosted on a dynamic IP, although I have been assured that it is
> unlikely, how would I deal with the event that my IP has been blocked to
> other users? Could the federal government consider not blocking domestic
> addresses and actually enforce Australian law on our own turf? What if I ran
> a VPN on port 80? How do I even know that I'm on the blocked list?
>
> What about lesser known sites such as the Internet WayBack machine? Would
> any objectionable material result in a blanket ban?
>
>
> Robbie
>
>
>
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Re: [SLUG] sa/perl Compress::Zlib problems

[Adam Kennedy]

That looks like something environment-specific, but working out what
it is will probably require some back and forth to work it out.

The good folks at FreeNode #perl are probably your best bet for this issue.

Adam K

2008/10/30 Voytek Eymont <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> I just put some new rules, and, was trying to test it, when I got[1]:
>
> what my best option, apart from ignoring ?
>
>
> [1]# spamassassin --lint
> Subroutine Compress::Zlib::isaFilehandle redefined at
> /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/Exporter.pm line 65.
>  at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.5/IO/Compress/Base/Common.pm line 11
> Subroutine Compress::Zlib::isaFilename redefined at
> /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/Exporter.pm line 65.
>  at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.5/IO/Compress/Base/Common.pm line 11
> Subroutine Compress::Zlib::ParseParameters redefined at
> /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/Exporter.pm line 65.
>  at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.5/IO/Compress/Base/Common.pm line 11
> Prototype mismatch: sub Compress::Zlib::ParseParameters ($@) vs none at
> /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/Exporter.pm line 65.
> ... more...
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Voytek
>
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Re: [SLUG] Fortress .... err Firewall Australia

[Adam Kennedy]

To summarise:

This router disables all transport compression, and man-in-the-middles
or disables all transport encryption, then relies on the police to
send the network operator a list of every single child porn url and
file hash in the entire world...

What could possibly go wrong?

Adam K

2008/10/21 Kyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Has anyone seen this;
>
> http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Sections/NEWS/PDFs/081016_copyrouter.pdf
>
> SMITH GARETH wrote:
>>
>> I know there is no perfect solution.
>>
>>
>
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Re: [SLUG] Debian SSH vulnerability: act now!

[Adam Kennedy]

For people not using debian, the ssh-vulnkey logic has been repackaged 
with dependencies as a CPAN distribution and should be installable 
anywhere that has a Perl installation, including on Windows using 
Strawberry Perl (http://strawberryperl.com).


http://search.cpan.org/dist/Dowse-BadSSH/

The package is going through a couple of releases a day as it gets 
tweaked and cross-platform bugs are excised, so if you have any 
difficulties with it, wait 24 hours or so and try again.


Adam K

Peter Chubb wrote:

Just in case anyone missed it, there's been a major vulnerability for
any SSH keys generated on a debian system over the last two years or
so ... apparently the random number generator wasn't being seeded
right, so only a few distinct keys were actually generated.

The AARNET mirror doesn't have the updated packages as of this
morning, but the Optusnet mirror does ... I suggest that
 -- you install the new openssh-client package (version 1:4.7p1-9 on unstable)
 -- run ssh-vulnkey -a as root to find any vulnerable keys, and get
your users to fix them.


--
Dr Peter Chubb  http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au  peterc AT gelato.unsw.edu.au
http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au   ERTOS within National ICT Australia
  


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Re: [SLUG] SIM cards as cheap data storage?

[Adam Kennedy]

This is for a developing world project...

Some problems I can see.

Paper needs printers, toner, printer paper and more electricity, and 
smudges, and isn't rewritable, and doesn't hold much information, and 
isn't waterproof, and can be bent, spindled or mutilated, or burned.


A smart card has none of these problems, and is probably cheaper if you 
need to do more than about 10 writes (toner is expensive).


Adam K

Matthew Hannigan wrote:

How about storing the data on
normal paper as barcodes.


  


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[SLUG] Some advice on a creating very specific startup behaviour

[Adam Kennedy]

Hi folks

I'm working on an open source virtualized automated testing system (see
http://pitatesting.org/ or http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?PITA for details)
and I need some advice on hacking a simple linux install to create a very
specific behaviour.

Starting with a basic headless server install of debian stable in a qemu
image, at boot time I need the machine to start up, mount a secondary
drive/cd-image containing the testing payload at /mnt/payload, and then
launch a specific script (lets call it /opt/pita/foo). All services such as
networking, any mail servers or databases etc should start as normal before
/opt/pita/foo is run.

Once the script finishes running (something that will typically take between
a minute and an hour) the system should immediately do a full "power off"
shut down.

Typically during testing runs the system will be run in snapshot mode, and
will lose all changes at shut down time.

To complicate things just a little, I also need to be able to boot the
machine normally for modifications and human interaction, so if the testing
payload is not present (the payload device does not exist) I do NOT want the
/opt/pita/foo script to be run, and the machine to boot to a normal console
login.

All the code for the surrounding system that compiles the payload to a disk
image and launches/manages the qemu image has been written and tested
already, so this is the last step left before I can start running live tests
in the system.

As a bonus, if anyone could actually BUILD me an image that does the above
behavior, I'd be happy to throw in a slab or beer or something as a
bounty/reward.

Thanks in advance for your assistance

Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Later Versions of "*grep"

[Adam Kennedy]

Heavy grep users may also be interested in "ack".

http://search.cpan.org/dist/ack/ack

Adam K

Malcolm Johnston wrote:
Most of us know that, way back when, and Ken Thompson still had a black beard, 
that there were three basic version of "grep", with prefixed or flags that 
turned them on a such, but not fully integrated version of this tool that 
would work as quickly as the three versions.  This, I think, went by the 
board, sometime ago, what with faster processors, DFA-type algorithms and the 
like.  Now we seem to have mostly one, copied into it's various destinations 
by the squanders, or symlinked by the thrifty.  What the hell!  It's all 
gotten so much bigger and faster, so why bother: the toolbox approach was 
alright for tradesman, who actually had toolboxes, but for the rest


I discovered this, a decade or so ago, when an out-of-the-box distribution ran 
(very signifcantly more slowly) that equivalent pattern-matchers in "awk" 
and "perl".  The problem was easy enough to fix, it just involved resetting 
the "$LANG" variable in the shell to "C" or "POSIX".  The current "en_US" 
setting produces a much more attenuated problem of the one described above, 
and isn't worth worrying about unless, as I do (I'm a linguist) you 
use "*grep" repetetively, where it surges once more into prominence.  The 
actual culprit is the "as-shipped `fgrep', which has a very curious 
conception of what a word is, unless it is operating in the right locale.  I 
haven't bothered to localize this exactly, but I know from "strace" that many 
processes do a fair bit of locale-checking on their way to execution.  Given 
that English as a mother-tongue is the fourth-most spoken language on the 
planet, and as a second (and, in many case, semi-bilingual setting) is spoken 
by more than 1 billion people, a great many of whom do not speak or write 
American dialects of English, maybe the developers of "*grep" should take 
this into account.


I personally solved the problem by replacing my sym-linked "fgrep" with a 
far-older (yet fully functional) version.  Maybe I should forward this one as 
a "bugs" report, although it's been a bug for years.  Maybe we should all 
talk POSIX (I have certain professional doubts about that).  Search lists, 
the "-f" option, is not, I think, behaving nicely.


Cheers,
Malcolm Johhston

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Re: [SLUG] Windows Subversion client?

[Adam Kennedy]

I absolutely HATE shell-integration, so I avoid TortoiseSVN.

I'm using RapidSVN, which is standalone, native, entirely standalone, 
relatively fast.


It's pretty much the functional equivalent of what WinCVS was for CVS.

One and a half thumbs up. The only problem with it is that it sometimes 
gets a bit agressive reading metadata, so some operations, like listing 
a directory with a lot (160 in my case) of subdirectories is a bit slow.


But for people that don't like shell integration, Rapid seems to be the 
obvious choice.


Adam K

Amos Shapira wrote:

Hello,

I'm trying to convince the windows programmers at my workplace to adopt
SubVersion instead of Source(Un)Safe (which they already hate anyway) but
the best Windows GUI client I found is TortoiseSVN which the programmer
doesn't like because it relays on Windows Exploder which can get stuck for
minutes sometimes.

Another client I'm a bit familiar with is Eclipse, but it's Java and is
going to be heavy on a laptop with VisualStudio already running on it.

Using the command line tools looks very unattractive to them.

Can anyone recommend any other useful clients (preferably Free/OSS)?

Thanks,

--Amos

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Re: [SLUG] OpenMoko.com online

[Adam Kennedy]

Can I add to that... even if they do work, would they be legal?

I know there's certification processes for things like electrical 
devices, does the same exist for mobile phones?


Adam K

Barrie Hall wrote:




For those interested, the OpenMoko.com site went live today.
It's now possible to order the pre-release (still in development) 
version of FIC's Neo 1973, Linux-based smart phone.


Do these work on the Australian phone networks?



They specify that they use a quad band GSM radio, so yes, these should 
work fine here.


Barrie


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Re: [SLUG] Bigpond NextG on Linux (Ubuntu)?

[Adam Kennedy]

We have something of a special relationship with Telstra in that regard, 
since we're going to be buying (or causing others to buy) somewhere 
between 100 and 1000 of those accounts.


In fact, we've gotten amazingly good service from Telstra from day 1. :)

Adam K

Rev Simon Rumble wrote:

This one time, at band camp, Adam Kennedy wrote:

We will be paying somewhere in the vicinity of $200-400 a month for our 
NextG data nodes, for (I believe) unlimited data.


You'll be wanting to check the fine print.  Tel$tra haven't offered 
"unlimited" data on any service for some time.  Yes, I've seen the big 
billboards too, but that doesn't mean you can buy an unlimited plan.



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Re: [SLUG] Blogging system recommendations

[Adam Kennedy]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Quoting Rev Simon Rumble <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:


PHP is just too much of an open invitation to write buggy code.


If PERL or Python had as many novice programmers calling their programs 
PERLxxx or PythonXXX then I'm sure these languages would look just as bad.
Both Perl and Python have various things to discourage bad programming 
by default.


The biggest example is probably SQL placeholders, which pretty much 
remove any chance of SQL injections attack in one fell swoop.


I know for DBI it's very difficult to do any non-trivial work without 
using them.


Wasn't going to reply at all (risking a flamewar) but the "PERL" pushed 
me over the edge :)


Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Bigpond NextG on Linux (Ubuntu)?

[Adam Kennedy]

Best anecdote I have regarding data over NextG comes (second hand) from 
the Campervan and Motorhome Club annual rally earlier this year. 
"Internet on the Road" guru giving talk at rally; explains why he 
switched from CDMA (which used to cost him over $100 per mnth, IIRC) to 
NextG; then advised a thunderstruck audience of Grey Nomads that his 
first monthly bill for his new service was for in excess of $4,000!!!


We will be paying somewhere in the vicinity of $200-400 a month for our 
NextG data nodes, for (I believe) unlimited data.


Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Bigpond NextG on Linux (Ubuntu)?

[Adam Kennedy]

Robert Thorsby wrote:

On 2007.04.18 00:37 Adam Kennedy wrote:

So nothing but good things so far with the network,
at least in areas where you get the "good" towers.
Haven't tried in country areas yet.


Up our way (Mid North Coast) the response has been universal -- NextG is 
crap. Most who were coerced by Telstra into "converting" their mobiles 
are trying to convert back to CDMA.


I should probably add that my comments ONLY apply to the use of NextG 
for data with those USB NextG modems.


If we're talking mobile phones on NextG, I've switched from Vodafone 
(paid by me) to NextG (paid by company) and the Motorola Razr 
whateveritis phones (that I'm told are the best of a bad lot) are horrid.


It has quite possible the worst user interface I've ever seen on a 
mobile device. What the hell were the designers thinking.


Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Bigpond NextG on Linux (Ubuntu)?

[Adam Kennedy]

I'm using the CDMA as well at the moment (2 Windows machines, 1 linux 
machine, 6 mac-based embedded devices), and I agree, slow and 
semi-reliable. At the moment I have to keep a permanent ping running to 
prevent the connection falling off.


So while Quozl's information does seem sufficient, the result (at least 
for me) has not inspired huge trust in a reliable solution.


HOWEVER, we have some NextG cards we're currently using on Windows 
(can't transition the Macs yet since the drivers are still too buggy for 
release) and I can tell you it's a world of difference.


Connects in no time flat, quite responsive, decent data rate. And from 
my testing, better coverage in tight urban spaces.


One of our CDMA modems is deep in an inner city shopping plaza inside a 
building, and only phones home about 6 out of the 24 times it should 
daily. The connection keeps falling off.


In comparison, the NextG modem I tested on the laptop seemed to connect 
quite effortlessly.


So nothing but good things so far with the network, at least in areas 
where you get the "good" towers. Haven't tried in country areas yet.


So assuming you can get the device itself working and stable, by all 
means make the move. But if you can do be absolutely sure you can jump 
through the necessary hoops to get it working before you commit to moving.


I won't be transitioning the linux server to the new network though, 
it's moving to some other weird connection into the Telstra WAN segment 
we're doing our stuff on. 1.5 meg and not before time :)


Adam K

Sonia Hamilton wrote:

I've been using Telstra's Maxon CDMA for internet access while on the
road - slow, semi-reliable. The Telstra phone bunnies are telling me
it's time to upgrade to NextG.

I've had a google around on Whirlpool, pulled up this Quozl's guide at
[1], which seems to indicate it works; I'm interested in ppl's
experiences before I take the plunge and submit myself to the next round
of Telstra pain...

[1] http://quozl.linux.org.au/bp3-usb/


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Re: [SLUG] IBM calculate that 4Gb RAM is optimal for Vista

[Adam Kennedy]

Voytek Eymont wrote:

On Thu, February 22, 2007 12:46 pm, Jeff Waugh wrote:


This leads me to ask about the equivalent for most Linux desktop
setups.

What is the "sweet spot" for RAM in a typical, say, Ubuntu desktop box?


The point at which diminishing returns from improved functionality
intersects with the increase in cost.

128-256MB if you just want to run the desktop (not wildly helpful to
anyone).

512MB if you want to do some stuff as well (say, Firefox or
OpenOffice.org).


1GB if you want to feel fairly pacey while doing some stuff (disk cache).



not unlike XP, I'd guess


Yep, that's pretty much the sweet spot for XP as well.

Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] IBM calculate that 4Gb RAM is optimal for Vista

[Adam Kennedy]

This leads me to ask about the equivalent for most Linux desktop setups.

What is the "sweet spot" for RAM in a typical, say, Ubuntu desktop box?

The point at which diminishing returns from improved functionality 
intersects with the increase in cost.


Adam K

Howard Lowndes wrote:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9011523 




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Re: [SLUG] Spam - use of SPF

[Adam Kennedy]

Amos Shapira wrote:

I'm pretty sure it's not practical to do much with
this info beyond maybe being able to more tightly bind the negative
reputation of a spammer to the domain/id he used to send the spam from.


Correct. And it just so happens that the creator of SPF has a startup 
going called Karma for aggregating massive amounts of reputation data. :)


Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Spam - use of SPF

[Adam Kennedy]

Amos Shapira wrote:

On 10/01/07, Howard Lowndes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


Just out of curiosity, and because I am procrastinating about doing
something else, I ran a quick analysis across my mail log file to see
what the extent of the use of SPF is:

pass29517
neutral 30354
softfail31082
none4783
unkown  31143



I remember seeing a mention of SPF and SenderID(?) a while ago concluding
that actually spammers were the first to rush to get themselves the right
records, virtually to the point that finding an SPF record could increase
the probability that you are dealing with a spammer (not that I'd suggest
anyone to use such a rule by itself, e.g. Gmail/Yahoo mail would fail 
such a

rule, filtering Hotmail is probably a good idea anyway :).


That was entirely not the point of SPF though.

Merely HAVING an SPF record doesn't make you less of a spammer. It does 
however remove mail server spoofing and provide a verified identity for 
the mail servers.


You know the people sending you mail are who they say they are.

And once you know for sure that they are who they say they are, you can 
them use that identity to work out if they are goodies or baddies 
properly based on who they are.


So it provides a platform for identity-based filtering.

The spammers having SPF records merely forced them to come out openly 
about who they were.


Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Spam again

[Adam Kennedy]

Robert Thorsby wrote:

On 2007.01.10 06:19 Howard Lowndes wrote:

I've just noticed that the spam level hitting my mail server
has increased 4 to 4 fold overnight, most of it being dropped
at the CONNECT stage.
http://www.lannet.com.au/traffic/h48/index.html

Has anyone else noticed similar?


Yes, there has been a massive increase in spam in recent days but last 
night it went off the richter scale.


Just a reminder to folks that if anyone would like to help me with the 
development of the new pooled real-time behaviour-based spam system I'd 
love to get an event feed of your spam.


More information at http://ali.as/threatnet/ or #threatnet in freenode.

Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] recommended ip phone for experimenting with Asterisk?

[Adam Kennedy]

Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote:
The problem with many VoIP manufacturers is that they have an electronics and 
not a telephony background. Companies which have proven track records in 
telecommunications are far more likely to produce a product that is reliable 
and better tailored to suit the needs of consumers, particularly in the 
corporate space.


I concur with Sridhar.

During my days at Cisco in 2000 they did the huge "we're all going VOIP 
internally" rollout, to eat their own dogfood.


Even with the entire company relying on it, even with executives 
badgering them, even with all the experience and talent available in 
Cisco's own internal network operations groups, they STILL took 6 months 
to really bring the phone system back to fixed-line levels of stability.


The first month was utter hell.

Telephony is HARD.

So go with experience when you can.

Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] ADSL without paying for a phone line?

[Adam Kennedy]

If it exists in your area, the best you can hope for is cable.

This is pretty fast down, pretty slow up.

But if you aren't running a home webserver or doing a lot of 
bittorrenting, it should be just fine.


At least _I_ think it's just fine... compared to the 
100Mb-ethernet-to-the-bedroom I had at university (the perk of being the 
network sysadmin at the college) all this stuff is "slow" anyway.


Personally I don't find the difference between cable and ADSL very 
large, and the cable is MUCH MUCH MUCH more reliable. As in "I've only 
ever heard of one person that has ever had trouble" reliable.


And I can get 1Mb a second to my server in the US, so that's everything 
I need ok :)


Adam K

Sonia Hamilton wrote:

(slightly OT...)

Is there a way of getting ADSL at home without paying for a landline? I
use my mobile for everything, and don't use the landline but am paying
for it to run ADSL on.

I know there's things like wireless from http://www.unwired.com.au/, but
to get decent downloads the costs would work out the same.


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Re: [SLUG] introducing myself

[Adam Kennedy]

Why would you want it to be pre-installed? Kinda narrows down your 
flavour of Linux. Just buy a cheap PC from a store like MSY and 
install your distro of choice.


Or ask for directions to North Rocks Computer Markets held once a week 
every Sunday
from 9am till 3pm. New and Used computers are sold there. For example, I 
bought
3 x Compaq Used PCs (10Gb Disk, 800MHZ, 256MB mem, with CDROM, no 
screens) in working conditions

at $80 each. Three years later they're still working.


Am I missing something here, or have we answered someone looking to buy 
a new computer with linux on it with instructions on how to buy an old 
computer with Windows on it? :)


While I personally would install it myself, I am most certainly curious 
if anyone even has this as an option?


Surely one of you Ubuntu Partners must have something by now where I can 
drop my credit card on a website and a straight forward home/work box 
turns up on my door in a few days.


Or can anyone confirm he can turn up at the North Rocks Computer 
Markets, buy a new Linux box, and walk away with it?


Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Google for trends

[Adam Kennedy]

Michael Lake wrote:

Luke Kendall wrote:

Did you know you could use Google to look at trends?  E.g.
Ubuntu *apparently* overtook MacOS/X over a year ago:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=ubuntu%2C+osx&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all



And if you type in "linux, dos" you will see that linux is slowly 
falling and dos is rising a tiny bit. From the graph it looks like dos 
will overtake linux about 1/2 way through 2007. The gap is narrowing :-)


I agree, Denial Of Service attacks are a serious threat to Linux :)

Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Google for trends

[Adam Kennedy]

I absolutely agree that my original trends are probably unrepresentative 
to various degrees, though probably more accurate than comparing just 
"osx" and "ubuntu" when you take the general populace into account. 


We could stick with specifics and ignore both "apple" and "mac"...

http://www.google.com/trends?q=ubuntu%2C+osx%2C+%22os+x%22%2C+%22mac+os%22&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all

Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Html to pdf conversion with all the formatting

[Adam Kennedy]

What were you using? There are various ways to convert, and some are 
better than others.


The basic ones just custom-transform the HTML into PDF equivalents. They 
are liable to produce fairly average output in a lot of cases.


I think from a thread earlier this month, the concensus was to use one 
based on Mozilla's Gecko engine to fully render the document, then 
converts to postscript (from which you convert to PDF).


See the list archives for earlier in the month.

Adam K

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Hi

I am able to convert HTML to PDF document, but the colors, images &
styles etc do not appear on pdf document. Does anybody has any idea how
to do this?

Regards,
Param


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[SLUG] Making samba DWIM

[Adam Kennedy]

Hi gang

I've been having some trouble with Samba I can't seem to work out 
myself, and I was hoping someone can help.


The setup I have for web work is a Windows 2000 desktop (for 
Dreamweaver, Ultraedit, Firefox+IE+Opera, and so on) and a debian 
dev/test server with Apache and Perl (just simple CGI in this case, but 
it varies).


To work on the files I mount a Samba share as a Windows drive, and just 
edit everything directly on the Linux box (the apps are all set to use 
Unix newlines etc). I can save/reload to see changes, and I generally 
have half a dozens shell open on the box, and various other 
infrastructure so that the who boxes work more like one hybrid machine 
than two separate ones (in a previous incarnation they were even 
duck-taped together).


This workflow has worked really well for me for a number of years, but I 
always have trouble fiddling the samba setup to the right place.


For some reason, saving from the Windows box seems to reset the 
permissions of the files. And in this particular case, that also means 
644 (and thus not world-readable so nobody can do the CGI).


Now, I assume that Windows is doing something funky and delete/write'ing 
the file instead of overwriting the file.


Could someone with more samba-fu than I explain if there's a way to make 
these file writes behave themselves and maintain whatever permissions 
they currently have?


Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] can ruby run perl/python libraries?

[Adam Kennedy]

Daniel Bush wrote:

Hi Sonia,

On 17/11/06, Sonia Hamilton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I'm thinking of learning Ruby ...

Yay! Another rubyist!
One thing I can say, if you like oop, you will probably like ruby.


- is there an easy way of running Perl and
Python code/libraries from Ruby? I've googled and browsed manuals in
Dymocks Library ^H^H^H Bookshop, can't seem to find an answer.


This cropped up on the ruby talk list with regards perl in late
September - 
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/217173.

Looking at the thread I'm not sure if there was a consensus -
certainly no magical wrapping utility was mentioned when I last
checked.


The only thing I can suggest at the moment is something that goes the 
other direction, one of the Inline:: modules (there was a bit of a fad 
relating to makeing Perl inline-embed anything a while back).


http://search.cpan.org/~neilw/Inline-Ruby-0.02/lib/Inline/Ruby.pod

The Inline::Ruby module would _seem_ to let you embed ruby code directly 
in your Perl.


That _might_ be enough to get you going, but I doubt it, since I suspect 
what you really want is something like


"I want to call CPAN modules natively from Ruby"

That you don't get, although as was mentioned quite a number of the 
better and more venerable CPAN modules are gradually being cloned over 
to gems.


To get something fairly robust I think you will need to wait for the 
Parrot/Perl6 stack, which _will_ allow native cross-language calls 
between Perl5/Perl6/Python/Ruby et al.


But until that is more usable, there's no good answers I'm aware of.

Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] can ruby run perl/python libraries?

[Adam Kennedy]

Taryn East wrote:

Absolutely - and it's a dream to work with for web-app development.
Besides-which, if you're using Rails, you at least know that most fo the
Ruby community is behind Rails. Compare with the current joke that
there are more web-development frameworks than keywords in Python ;)


Heh, and to add to that, while there's a ridiculously large number of 
Perl web development frameworks, it isn't a joke. It's just considered 
normal because CPAN has ridiculously large number of just about _every_ 
type of module :)


Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] howto convert html to pdf?

[Adam Kennedy]

I tried it as well, and it looks to me like it's a cross-language 
dependency problem.


The one downside to the CPAN installer (and language-specific source 
repository installations in general) is that it isn't able to cross 
language boundaries.


It looks like HTML::Tidy needs something called libtidy, and is freaking 
out when it can't find it.


On another note though, I hadn't heard of mozilla2ps before, but I think 
that almost certainly the best approach. Using a full blown rendering 
engine is much more likely to produce good results.


So you add my support to the mozilla2ps -> ps2pdf approach as well, 
despite the slowness.


Adam K

Sonia Hamilton wrote:

* On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 06:04:11PM +1100, Adam Kennedy wrote:

I just realized that my previous response didn't make it to the list.

Something like this should work for you.

http://search.cpan.org/~audreyt/PDF-FromHTML-0.20/script/html2pdf.pl

Should be just a case of...

  [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ cpan -i PDF::FromHTML

  [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ html2pdf.pl source.html > target.pdf


Thanks Adam. xulrunner + mozilla2ps gave me good results, so I used
that. A bit slow, but I scripted it and left it to chug away...

Out of interest, 'cpan -i PDF::FromHTML' failed, due to 'cpan -i
HTML::Tidy' failing, with errors below. Not sure how to fix this - any
ideas? I tried googling on the error messages, installing tidy (in case
it's a missing library). I don't use Perl much, so don't know where to
start with these sort of problems.

Errors:

...
...
cp lib/HTML/Tidy.pm blib/lib/HTML/Tidy.pm
/usr/bin/perl /usr/share/perl/5.8/ExtUtils/xsubpp  -typemap
/usr/share/perl/5.8/ExtUtils/typemap  Tidy.xs > Tidy.xsc && mv Tidy.xsc
Tidy.c
Please specify prototyping behavior for Tidy.xs (see perlxs manual)
cc -c  -I. -I/usr/include/tidy -I/usr/local/include/tidy
-I/sw/include/tidy -D_REENTRANT -D_GNU_SOURCE -DTHREADS_HAVE_PIDS
-DDEBIAN -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -I/usr/local/include
-D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -O2   -DVERSION=\"1.06\"
-DXS_VERSION=\"1.06\" -fPIC "-I/usr/lib/perl/5.8/CORE"   Tidy.c
Tidy.xs:5:18: error: tidy.h: No such file or directory
Tidy.xs:6:20: error: buffio.h: No such file or directory
...
...
  make had returned bad status, install seems impossible

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Re: [SLUG] howto convert html to pdf?

[Adam Kennedy]

I just realized that my previous response didn't make it to the list.

Something like this should work for you.

http://search.cpan.org/~audreyt/PDF-FromHTML-0.20/script/html2pdf.pl

Should be just a case of...

  [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ cpan -i PDF::FromHTML

  [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ html2pdf.pl source.html > target.pdf

Adam K

Sonia Hamilton wrote:

I (well my boss actually) want to convert several hundred html pages to
pdf - what's the easiest way to do this? Any pointers, ideas?

I guess I'm looking for a tool like pdf2html (but going in the reverse
direction).

I've found a php module called html2pdf [1] - just wondering if there's
a stand alone tool callable from the shell.

[1] http://directory.fsf.org/print/misc/html2pdf.html


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Re: [SLUG] Postgrey/FairUCE

[Adam Kennedy]

From reading the first few lines describing what postgrey does (reject

connections and hoping that spammers won't retry) then it sounds like a
doomed tactic since I've just read (on Security Fix? not sure) that 
spammers
got over this silly hurdle and now will retry, causing even more 
traffic for

sites which employ this method.


I can confirm that this happens, esp for the penny stocks spam with 
.GIF, which is why I need to get FuzzyOcr working.  :(


I for one wouldn't bother even bother FuzzyOcr.

It represents only an incremental step in the detection, and on the 
spammers are pretty much able to beat already.


I'm already seeing animated image spam with increased levels of noise, 
varying fonts and other tricks.


It's only a matter of time till the image spam is sophisticated enough 
to existing OCR software, even fuzzy OCR, is going to start getting in 
trouble.


Frankly, I think 90% of the anti-spam techniques I here about are pretty 
horrendous.


They generally rely on the argument "Well the spammer don't $something, 
so we use a method that stops anything that doesn't $something".


These methods all have a limited lifespan, because all that needs to 
happen is that the spammers start doing $something, and the anti-spam is 
defeated.


More people need to realise that spammers can program too, and aren't 
stupid. (Not any more)


Adam K

P.S. That's not a dig at you Howard, more of a rant in general :)
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Re: [SLUG] Re: Linux UI decision

[Adam Kennedy]

A C# compiler for Parrot was due to be written at the Hackathon 
yesterday, but was abandoned after someone discovered there was a valid 
patent hanging over C# compilers in general.


So I don't know about coming after you, but there's more than one. :)

Adam K

James Dumay wrote:

You could use GTK-Sharp - it works on Win32, Linux and Mac OS X.

I wouldn't use WinForms. As far as I am aware, WinForms probably the only
thing that Microsoft could come after with Lawyers in Mono.

James

On 11/13/06, Howard Lowndes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


Have you considered the implications of Mono being owned by Novell and
Novell having entered into an "arrangement" with Microsoft.  Perhaps
Mono is not as unencumbered as you might like to think.

David Peterson wrote:
> Michael Lake wrote:
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>> 2. I have begun development using Qt, as my X/Motif/Tk book is about
>>> a  decade old - there are so many IDE's, does anyone think this
>>> environment has a future in the workplace?
>>
>> As a user I'm finding much of the open source GUI stuff that I 
download

>> and have to compile is written with wxWindows. I suspect that that is
>> because many open source programmers dont have the full, pay for Qt
>> libraries to develop with. wxWindows has bindings for Python, Perl and
>> C++. It's web page http://www.wxwindows.org now seems to redirect to
>> http://www.wxwidgets.org
>> Using wxWindows your one app will work on Linux, MacOSX and Windows.
>
>
> What about Mono? Apparently the latest version (1.2) completely
implements
> the System.Windows.Forms API. This should mean you can write
cross-platform
> apps that run on both Windows and Linux, right? I'm not sure about
MacOSX
> support but if anyone is using this I would love to be enlightened!
>
> Dave

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Re: [SLUG] Linux UI decision

[Adam Kennedy]

Michael Lake wrote:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
2. I have begun development using Qt, as my X/Motif/Tk book is about 
a  decade old - there are so many IDE's, does anyone think this  
environment has a future in the workplace?


As a user I'm finding much of the open source GUI stuff that I download 
and have to compile is written with wxWindows. I suspect that that is 
because many open source programmers dont have the full, pay for Qt 
libraries to develop with. wxWindows has bindings for Python, Perl and 
C++. It's web page http://www.wxwindows.org now seems to redirect to 
http://www.wxwidgets.org

Using wxWindows your one app will work on Linux, MacOSX and Windows.



You can add to that the fact that the bindings for Qt aren't what they 
used to be. The Perl bindings for Qt3 were ok, and then they went and 
replaced it with Qt4 and I think the maintainers of Qt3 bindings 
couldn't be bothered throwing away all their work and starting again.


So on Perl at least, Qt is now not used at all.

In comparison, WxWindows not only works and has good bindings, but 
WxWindows is completely integrated into CPAN. So you don't even need to 
install it seperately.


You can just install the app, like say the sample Wx application...

(which is Windows Notepad reimplemented in Perl/Wx)

> cpan App::GUI::Notepad

And everything should Just Work.

With Qt that would be been a lot harder, or at least require more work 
regarding redistribution (but I'm not sure on that point).


And then there's the fact that you won't be able to use it commercial 
without paying...


All in all it just seems to add up to people being drawn to Wx more, 
unless you are doing something in the mobile space, in which case Qt has 
done a ton of work on Qt for mobile devices.


Adam K
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[SLUG] Sydney.pm Meeting Tonight

[Adam Kennedy]

Hi Gang

Just a short note to let people know that the monthly Sydney Perlmongers 
meeting is on tonight.


We're meeting up at 6:30pm at the Firehouse Hotel (pub) in North Sydney 
for a drink or two.


http://www.firehousehotel.com.au/2.html

Then at about 7pm once everyone is arrived, we'll be transferring over 
to a boardroom at Dan Steele's company at


100 Walker Street
North Sydney

Paul Fenwick is in town from Melbourne and will be giving a talk, which 
I believe will be a preview of his ODSC talk.


If anyone is interested I look forward to seeing you there.

If you get lost and need some assistance, you can reach me on 0416 181 595.

Adam K
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Intellectual property for newbie programmers (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft])

[Adam Kennedy]

Phill O'Flynn wrote:
>
> As a budding software developer, I find this copyright and 
intellectual property
> topic increasingly tragic. Where does it end? Who doesn't copy ideas? 
Didn't

> Microsoft develop Windows 3.1 by borrowing the GUI idea from Apple ( and
> subsequently squashing them). Now they want to protect themselves 
from what they did
> to others. Or perhaps they want to continue to squash any other 
alternative to them

> ( or better put "Resistance is futile"


Let me clarify things a little for those getting started in the 
programming side of things.


There's three different things you need to care about, and they have 
completely different impacts. Since there seems to be a little confusion 
in your comments, let me clarify in simple points. These are 
extraordinarily hand-waving definitions, but hold true for the most part.


1. Copyright.

- Don't cut and paste other people's code without asking them.

- Don't use someone else's module/API unless you agree to their terms.

Plagiarism fits mostly into here, but in the academic and media sense, 
it's altered somewhat to...


- Cut and paste all you like but ALWAYS say where you got it from.

Open Source (in the extreme broadest sense of the term) is a massive 
positive for you here, because it lets YOU make a legally enforcable 
deal where you let other people copy your work, as long as you can copy 
theirs back again if you want to.


Free Software extends this idea further, but in the most general 
share-and-share-alike sense it's similar.


2. Trademark

- Don't steal someone's logo in a similar industry.

- Don't use someone else's name in a similar industry.

- Don't "sort of" do either of the above in a similar industry.

Basically, don't present yourself to the public in a way that the 
average layman might get confused and think you are them. And even more 
strictly, don't ever make money off the similarity.


Trademarks are why the Microsoft Pillow Factory on the Princes Highway 
in Tempe (no really, this actually exists) is completely safe, while a 
notional "Open Source Microsoftware" company or something that used the 
"four colours" windows pattern could be in trouble.


3. Patents

While copyright and trademarks are quite clear and work pretty well, 
patents are another story.


A patent, fundamentally, goes like this.

- You have an awesome idea that isn't obvious to anyone else.

Imagine you are the first person to invent gold plating.

- You can make a huge of money from it, as long as nobody else knows.

Imagine nobody has seen gold cups and forks except for solid gold ones 
owned by kings and great figures, and now YOU can eat like a king for 
only $199.90 per fork!


- So you go to huge lengths to keep it secret.

You never write down the chemical solution formula, and you guard 
carefully the machines in sealed buildings and you make the machines so 
only you can operate them.


- You die, and because of the extreme secrecy, your idea is lost to society.

This, obviously, is very very bad. Forget gold plating, imagine losing 
the ability to make penicilin.


So society does a deal with the devil.

- Society lets you exploit your idea in the open, but do so AS IF you 
had kept it secret.


So society enforces your "secrecy" (exclusivity/monopoly) and lets you 
make even MORE money quickly, because you don't have to go to the 
efforts to keep it secret.


- In exchange, Society forces you to tell it in extreme detail EXACTLY 
what your great idea is. Now when you die (or rather, in 20 years), all 
of society benefits and your idea isn't lost.


In fact, in any patent application the standard of documentation to this 
day remains something similar to,


"Enough detail so anyone else in your industry could copy your idea"

And over the course of history, this deal with the devil has worked 
pretty well. Much of the key technical and applied scientific knowledge 
of mankind is stored in the vast patent office collections, and mankind 
advances on a (relatively short) 20 year delay without losing the ideas.


So patents themselves are not inherently bad, even in it. That's a 
somewhat unpopular idea in this community, but I note that Donald Knuth 
holds the same position.


The problem for us is that the standard of judging what is "obvious" and 
what isn't in IT is dangerously bad, and when you look at the speed of 
the IT industry compared to, say, chemistry or engineering or biology, 
20 years is just a ridiculously long period of time.


In this sense, software patents are completely broken.

---

So what should you do then.

If you are wanting to be a programmer, you should learn how copyright 
law works (to the extent you reasonably can without becoming a lawyer), 
and learn how trademarks work (to the extent you reasonably can without 
becoming a lawyer) and more or less ignore how patents are SUPPOSED to 
work, leave campaigning for change to people like Pia and

Re: [SLUG] Another anti-spam idea

[Adam Kennedy]

Or just accept that your anti-spam setup is going to get x% of the spam,
and beyond that you're better off putting your efforts into something
else - like learning a decent mail client that allows you to quickly get
rid of any spam that got thru... Did someone say mutt?


Any time a spam strategy is predictably imperfect, that is a specific 
type of spam gets through, you've essentially created a scenario in 
which you have a strong evolutionary selection towards that type of spam.


And so the percentages will start to grow as more spammers use that 
successful technique.


Being easily able to delete it is of no real relevance.

Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Perl/SSH Problem

[Adam Kennedy]

1. That's what strong pass-phrases are used for - to limit the access to 
the

private key.
2. You could say "sure - so you replace the password by a pass-phrase" but
you'd still need the private key, which is never transferred over the net.
3. You can allow access for multiple keys into the same account - therefore
you can trace which key was used to login and track it back to the origin
and/or remove it if it was compromised (or do stuff like limit the commands
a key authorizes, or pair keys with originating ssh clients). On the other
hand you can't have multiple, traceable passwords to a UNIX account.

With passwords, at least that isn't a problem (assuming you aren't a

complete idiot and have the same password for everything).



With passwords it's enough to know (or guess) a relatively short string in
order to gain access. With keys protected by a pass-phrase you'll need a
string AND the unencrypted content of a file which should never leave the
local disk.


Which is all fine and dandy, except the entire point of the original key 
argument was that the original poster wouldn't need a pass(word|phrase) 
and so could avoid his problem with the method SSH uses for prompts.


Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Perl/SSH Problem

[Adam Kennedy]

Passwdless login is infinitly better than passwd infact on my system:

PermitRootLogin without-password

with say 1024bit key and say 10^6 tries per second lets see ...
1024 log (2) / 10^6 is say 10^300 years to crack! Much better than any 10 char 
passwd.


The weak link is storing YOUR private key. The rest is secure.
Infact I'll TELL you my root passwd and you still can't get in


I always thought the problem with keys and passwordless login was that 
you end up with cascading exploits.


If I login from box A --> box B with keys, and someone hacks box A, then 
they automatically have access to box B, and C, and D and anything else 
I use keys on.


If I can hack your box, I don't even need your root passwd, I'll just 
login directly to the box and it will let me straight in the front door.


With passwords, at least that isn't a problem (assuming you aren't a 
complete idiot and have the same password for everything).


Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Re: perl, php

[Adam Kennedy]

Lindsay Holmwood wrote:

On Fri, Nov 03, 2006 at 01:33:43PM +1100, Michael Lake wrote:

Alan Harper wrote:

*puts on fireproof suit*
Why bother with perl when you know python? :)

Try installing Python eggs compared to installing Perl modules.
No wonder the Python packages are called eggs - they break easily :-)



Python programmers don't know not to bother with eggs because there's
Debian. :-)


Indeed. In all seriousness though I've heard this a lot of times, from a 
number of senior Python personalities (not Guido though).


I can't help but wonder if it hurts Python in the long wrong, because it 
makes it harder for people to play if they are in strange and unusual 
places (and I don't just mean Win32 here).


Adam K


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Re: [SLUG] Re: perl, php

[Adam Kennedy]

Rev Simon Rumble wrote:

This one time, at band camp, Adam Kennedy wrote:

In retrospect the significant whitespace charge probably isn't fair, 
since on the CPAN there's a module that lets you use Python-style 
significant whitespace with Perl as well :)


Erm, I don't think it was being listed as a positive.

But hey, why not go the whole hog?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_%28programming_language%29


Because the CPAN has had an implementation of that since long before 
that was invented. :)


http://search.cpan.org/~dconway/Acme-Bleach-1.12/lib/Acme/Bleach.pm

Adam K

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Re: [SLUG] Re: perl, php

[Adam Kennedy]

Adam Kennedy wrote:

Alan Harper wrote:

On Thu, 2006-11-02 at 16:16 -0800, hav wrote:

...why would you bother with PHP if you know perl?


*puts on fireproof suit*
Why bother with perl when you know python? :)


CPAN. And significant whitespace. And there's more jobs :)


In retrospect the significant whitespace charge probably isn't fair, 
since on the CPAN there's a module that lets you use Python-style 
significant whitespace with Perl as well :)


http://search.cpan.org/~fxn/Acme-Pythonic-0.45/lib/Acme/Pythonic.pm

Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Re: perl, php

[Adam Kennedy]

Alan Harper wrote:

On Thu, 2006-11-02 at 16:16 -0800, hav wrote:

...why would you bother with PHP if you know perl?


*puts on fireproof suit*
Why bother with perl when you know python? :)


CPAN. And significant whitespace. And there's more jobs :)

Adam K

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Re: [SLUG] Pants off, SLUGsters

[Adam Kennedy]

No, it's where you post a link to the photos stored on some web server 
somewhere... like a normal geek.


Adam K

TongMaster wrote:

On Thu, 2006-10-26 at 15:55 +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:

I mean, who posts images to SLUG anyway? Only fascists, spammers,
 Spanish absurdists and the deranged.


Isn't this where I am supposed to post the photo's of my
fully-extracted, water cooled, purple, silver racing striped Gentoo case
mod with blue flashing LEDs and X-Files logos[1]?

[1] - May not actually exist (I'm sure it does somewhere).



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Re: [SLUG] Pants off, SLUGsters

[Adam Kennedy]

I gather this is the "why don't we just block EVERY post with an image" 
approach... failing... but good idea :)


Adam K

Jeff Waugh wrote:

If you actually get this email, Lindsay and I have screwed up. Well, mostly
me. Never mind.

- Jeff






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Re: [SLUG] New St George HTML based online banking interface

[Adam Kennedy]

I can't remember EVER getting St George ones, although they've warned 
about them before.


Adam K

Matthew Hannigan wrote:

On Tue, Oct 17, 2006 at 09:24:10AM +1000, Adam Kennedy wrote:

Ditto.

I for one loved the Java web banking site. I felt something of a mild 
sense of security in that it was the only site that couldn't be 
trivially screen-scraped. (although I did discover a way later on to 
emulate the client-server protocol).


I consider the move to HTML a step back.


Indeed.

I wonder whether it's a coincidence I've just started getting
St George phishing attempts.  I get between 10 to 100 of phishing
messages per week, and they're usually National, Commonwealth,
occasionally ANZ, and a handful of foreign banks and ebay/paypal.

Only today have I got some St George ones.  
I can't remember the last time I got them for St George.



Matt

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Re: [SLUG] New St George HTML based online banking interface

[Adam Kennedy]

Ditto.

I for one loved the Java web banking site. I felt something of a mild 
sense of security in that it was the only site that couldn't be 
trivially screen-scraped. (although I did discover a way later on to 
emulate the client-server protocol).


I consider the move to HTML a step back.

That said, it will mean that Linux people with Java issues won't have 
problems any more.


Adam K

Menno Schaaf wrote:

Never had any issues with the java based one... The migration is a
gradual one, so not all people may have access to it yet. I've only
just got switched across yesterday...

On 10/16/06, Simon Males <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


When logging in, you'll have the option of going to the Java based
interface or the new (HTML) interface.

Posting this as some time ago Sluggers were having issues with the Java
interface.

http://www.stgeorge.com.au/

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Re: [SLUG] Technical talk volunteers for September's meeting

[Adam Kennedy]

Ingore me, I'm an idiot that forgot to take the 2 minutes needed to 
check the SLUG website. :)


http://slug.org.au/node/19

Adam K

Adam Kennedy wrote:
eep, you're where? Sorry I wasn't paying attention WRT the venue change. 
I can get wherever but details would be handy.


URL for the details?

Adam K

Lindsay Holmwood wrote:

On 9/29/06, James Dumay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Adam - any of these would be great - Im very interested in "Nothing Can
Possibly Go Wrong" myself.

Committee, is this OK?


Yeah, that would be great.

Adam is a really cool guy, and it would be awesome to hear him speak 
at SLUG.


Adam, your Perl talk would fit best into the technical slot, if that's
ok with you.

Also, we're at our new venue at IBM St. Leonards, so you'll want to
allow for extra travelling time.

Cheers,
Lindsay


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Re: [SLUG] Technical talk volunteers for September's meeting

[Adam Kennedy]

eep, you're where? Sorry I wasn't paying attention WRT the venue change. 
I can get wherever but details would be handy.


URL for the details?

Adam K

Lindsay Holmwood wrote:

On 9/29/06, James Dumay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Adam - any of these would be great - Im very interested in "Nothing Can
Possibly Go Wrong" myself.

Committee, is this OK?


Yeah, that would be great.

Adam is a really cool guy, and it would be awesome to hear him speak at 
SLUG.


Adam, your Perl talk would fit best into the technical slot, if that's
ok with you.

Also, we're at our new venue at IBM St. Leonards, so you'll want to
allow for extra travelling time.

Cheers,
Lindsay


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Re: [SLUG] Technical talk volunteers for September's meeting

[Adam Kennedy]

I have a couple of pre-written ones I can pull out for those that 
haven't seen them.


The one I can do with the least preparation (because I must have done it 
5 or 10 times) is:


- Parsing, Analysing and Manipulating Perl (without perl)

The best description I have is a quote. "I've don't think I've ever 
laughed and had my brain hurt so much at the same time before".


I also have:

- PITA: Rediculously Large Scale Testing

... which is about the new mass automated testing architecture I'm 
building to replace the existing CPAN Testers. It has video in it, so it 
need a dark room and a sound system as well as the projector to do it 
properly.


Also I've got:

- Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong

... which is about a whole bunch of different ways that people screw up 
the design of large software systems, and is pretty light on A/V 
demands. I've done it on a laptop before.


Please note that these last two, while I've done them already in the US, 
haven't been shown here yet except for a short version of the second one 
for OSIA, and I'll be doing them at OSDC in Melbourne and (hopefully) at 
LCA next year. So if people are planning to go to either, perhaps the 
Perl one would be the best?


Take your pick...

Adam K

Lindsay Holmwood wrote:

Hi all,
Our technical talk speaker for tomorrow night has had to pull out due
to sickness.

Does anybody have a suitable talk (technical prefered) they can
present on such short notice?

Cheers,
Lindsay


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Re: [SLUG] Contracting stuff: wrap it into a company or PAYE through agency?

[Adam Kennedy]

The remuneration structure of the industry means they work only for
themselves, and the situation is set up for them to abuse both sides and
use every trick they can to do so.


Recruiting Firms do try to keep both parties Happy!!

It is important for us to place people in jobs that :
1 - They are capable of doing!!
2 - That they enjoy doing!!
3 - In a Place they want to work

For the Client we Try to Match
1 - The Skill they ask for
2 - A Reliable Person
3 - At a Remuneration Level they can afford!!


(snip)

(as you may have guessed I do recruiting, not in IT at present but the rules 
are the same no matter what industry)


But that wasn't what I said Scott.

The problem is that, regardless of the intent of any single person or 
company, the way in which the industry is structured economically does 
not provide any across-the-board economic incentive for the industry to 
act in the best interests of either the company or the staff member, 
which leaves the industry open to all manner of shoddy practises.


As I understand it, it makes no difference to your income whether you 
place someone good or bad at the job, or you do it in a day or a month.


So apart from long term reputation, what incentive is there to place the 
best person? Is that going to matter to a single employee in a large 
recruitment firm who themself has no interest in the long term 
reputation of the company?


Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Contracting stuff: wrap it into a company or PAYE through agency?

[Adam Kennedy]

What I would look out for is recruiting firms. I had one that
placed me once, into a job I wasn't particularly suited to.
They took 15% from the employer for that.  Some time after I
was chatting with them and they said "oh, if we'd known you
were a networking person we could have got you a lot more" --
ie, they hadn't even read my CV for their 15% and they were
really working for the employer, not for me.


One of the Perl maintainers did an analysis of this situation a few 
years ago.


His conclusion was that their intrinsic interests don't belong with 
either party.


They don't work for the companies, and they don't work for the people 
they find jobs for.


The remuneration structure of the industry means they work only for 
themselves, and the situation is set up for them to abuse both sides and 
use every trick they can to do so.


Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Contracting stuff: wrap it into a company or PAYE through agency?

[Adam Kennedy]

If you think that you are going to end up hiring subcontractors or staff 
(if you move more into the consulting/development direction that just 
straight labour hire) you probably want a company too, just for the 
accounting cleanliness.


Ook!

That should read "consulting/development direction, rather than just 
straight labour hire".


Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Contracting stuff: wrap it into a company or PAYE through agency?

[Adam Kennedy]

To throw in my situation, I'm a Pty Ltd contractor/consultant.

It costs me $2,000 (although increasing now as I do more things) a year 
to keep the company going, but the cleanliness of the seperation between 
personal and company is something I find refreshing.


As I see it, there's a couple of clear situations.

If you think you will end up with a product of some sort in the process 
of your contracting/consulting and you ever want to sell out, you need a 
company, as early as possible (to keep intellectual property stuff clear).


If you think that you are going to end up hiring subcontractors or staff 
(if you move more into the consulting/development direction that just 
straight labour hire) you probably want a company too, just for the 
accounting cleanliness.


Other than that, if the $2000 a year doesn't matter much, then you can 
go either way. If $2000 a year matters a lot, then don't go for a company.


Either way, you can delay it if you want to and switch later, unless you 
go the product/selling-the-business route.


Adam K

Rev Simon Rumble wrote:

Hi folks.

I'm about to start contracting and it seems it's a lot more efficient to 
have things wrapped into a company.  I've been looking around and seeing 
stuff about the "80/20 rule" and the like, which determines whether you 
can apply company tax instead of personal income tax, and other stuff.


So does anyone out there have any (IANAA) advice on such things?  Any 
recommendations of accountants to get advice from?  Ideally accountants 
who can deal with free-software ledger systems...


Oh and yes, those of you wondering, I'm back in Sydney.


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Re: [SLUG] how to classify image emails in procmail/spamassassin?

[Adam Kennedy]

The author says that he is going to include the recently
released Tesseract OCR with FuzzyOCR in the future.


I'll note here that the release notes for Tesseract specifically say 
that Tesseract isn't very good with colour or grey-scale images.


Last time I checked, most of my image-spam emails had colours and 
weird-fonts.


Adam K
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Re: [SLUG] Re: [activities] Request For Venue: SLUG monthly meeting

[Adam Kennedy]

I note that the list of capabilities in there does not specifically 
mention the ability to use a computer with the project. "Overhead 
Project" in some places can still mean the one you put clear slides on.


Adam K

Sara Falamaki wrote:
It might not be as nice as a lecture theatre, but perhaps something like 
this:




It's not free, but cheaper than $607!

-S

On 8/18/06, Lindsay Holmwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

G'day all,
The SLUG committee were informed this afternoon that UTS will be
charging us for the use of their rooms as of next meeting. They want
$607 per meeting, that's with a non-profit discount.

SLUG cannot afford this, at least beyond the upcoming meeting. The
committee is going to try to arrange a sponsorship deal with the UTS
Faculty of IT or UTS themselves, but we don't think this can be done
in time for next week's meeting.

I've also been in contact with IBM, however they don't think they'll
be able to organise a venue in time for next week.

So we're hoping that someone in the community can help us out. If you
know a venue, or work for a company than can organise a venue fitting
40-100+ people, is close to public transport (trains especially), is
inexpensive (preferably free), and available for next Friday's
meeting, we'd love to hear from you.

At Pia's community panel a few months back there was talk of a
possible venue change to the University of Sydney. This would be
ideal, although it is late in the peice to set in motion.

We don't want this to be the end of our 12 year relationship with UTS,
but unfortunately if we can't work out a deal, it looks like it will
be.

Lindsay

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Re: [SLUG] CPAN update woes

[Adam Kennedy]

That's very unusual behaviour, an I say that as someone that actually 
knows (mostly) how CPAN.pm works.


You should absolutely report that to the rt.cpan.org support queue for 
CPAN.pm.


And if I may, I'd also like to reinforce that point for anyone that has 
problems with CPAN modules. PLEASE report install failures or bugs to 
the rt.cpan.org support queues.


Many authors are highly responsive, and for those that aren't having 
your problem listed means when that module gets taken over by someone 
more responsive, it will be fixed then.


Adam K
CPAN Adminstrator

Voytek Eymont wrote:

as I was installing some new Perl modules, it told me there was a newer
CPAN avaliable, and, suggested to update it with:

-
You might want to try
install Bundle::CPAN
reload cpan


after I did 'reload cpan', nasty things started happening, with all free
memory running out rather rapidly

- any thought what happened ?

- more importantly, what should I've attempted to do, instead of watching
it and saying "I think this will crash real soon now"

- anything I should do now to 'check things' after this mishap ?

on the way down, I managed to collect these:

# top
  7:57am  up 119 days,  9:16,  2 users,  load average: 14.62, 6.65, 2.72
181 processes: 179 sleeping, 2 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 11.4% user,  7.3% system,  0.0% nice, 81.1% idle
Mem:  1023120K av, 1014732K used,8388K free,   0K shrd,   24416K buff
Swap:  522104K av,  522104K used,   0K free  106684K
cached

  PID USER PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
 5312 root  15   0  9828 9828  2252 D 6.7  0.9   0:00 php
 1634 root  15   0  909M 581M  1600 D 4.7 58.2   0:38 perl
5 root  12   0 00 0 DW1.5  0.0   6:03 kswapd

# free
 total   used   free sharedbuffers cached
Mem:   10231201014816   8304  0  24484  96728
-/+ buffers/cache: 893604 129516
Swap:   522104 522056 48


# top
  7:58am  up 119 days,  9:17,  2 users,  load average: 14.32, 7.47, 3.14
182 processes: 179 sleeping, 3 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states:  6.3% user,  9.4% system,  0.0% nice, 84.1% idle
Mem:  1023120K av, 1014036K used,9084K free,   0K shrd,   10980K buff
Swap:  522104K av,  522088K used,  16K free   30860K
cached

  PID USER PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
 1634 root  19   0 1052M 722M  1548 R 6.8 72.2   0:40 perl
5 root  13   0 00 0 DW2.9  0.0   6:04 kswapd
8 root  10   0 00 0 SW0.8  0.0  19:29 kscand/HighMem
10313 apache11   0 18540  15M  4140 D 0.6  1.5   1:13 httpd


# free
 total   used   free sharedbuffers cached
Mem:   10231201014908   8212  0   9328  28840
-/+ buffers/cache: 976740  46380
Swap:   522104 522104  0

# free
 total   used   free sharedbuffers cached
Mem:   10231201014812   8308  0484  10692
-/+ buffers/cache:1003636  19484
Swap:   522104 522104  0




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[SLUG] Mailing list manager that doesn't get in the way.

[Adam Kennedy]

Hi there, I need 
some advice.
 
I need to install a mailing list manager. Now 
pretty much any will do, but I need one that I can install and which won't "get 
in the way". That is, I want point a single address at it and have it look after 
that, not an entire domain or something. I'm not sure what the normal behaviour 
of the list managers is.
 
Can anyone help?
 
Adam

Re: [SLUG] ask perl

[Adam Kennedy]

And having given you two fish, let me suggest at 
this point that it would be well worth your while learning to fish.
 
A great place to start is perldoc.com, which should 
contain just about everything you could need.
 
How you could have found out how to do what you 
wanted.
 
First, typing "split" into the search engine, sends 
you to
 
http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/func/split.html
 
which explains in detail how split works. At a 
stretch, you might realise that you could split on the commas, and spaces. 

 
perlre - http://perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/perlre.html would 
help you find a split pattern to do what you require.
 
Of course, that wouldn't QUITE do what you need. 
You need to "get rid of whitespace".
 
Looking at the index for the Frequently Asked 
Questions, you see that perlfaq4 http://perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/perlfaq4.html covers 
"Data Manipulation".
 
Looking through you see "How do I 
strip blank space from the beginning/end of a string?", clicking on the link 
takes you to.
 
http://perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/perlfaq4.html#How-do-I-strip-blank-space-from-the-beginning-end-of-a-string-
 
of which my favourite version is the 
simple
 
$string =~ s/^\s+//;$string =~ s/\s+$//;
 
So, you would do your split as normal, and then 
remove leading and trailing space.
 
Once you had read a bit of perlre to see how the 
FAQ result worked, you would have more confidence to do something 
like
 
$record =~ s/\s//g; before you do the split, once 
you knew that there wasn't supposed to be any spaces anywhere ( if that was true 
).
 
I hope this example will get you where you want to 
go faster, without having to waste time asking a linux mailing 
list.
 
A great alternative if you are really stuck would 
be to go to what is arguably the "main" perl channel.
 
irc://irc.rhizomatic.net/#perl   ( 
assumes you have mozilla ).
 
Don't ask perl questions here, ask meta-questions. 
"Where could I find docs about xxx". They will usually be more than happy to 
answer THAT sort of questions. Other perl channels will usually suffice as well, 
although poilcies on helping people can vary.
 
Adam
 
- Original Message - 

  From: 
  henry 
  
  To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
  Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 6:58 
PM
  Subject: [SLUG] ask perl
  
  Dear List:
      I use split to parse string 
  as follows:
   
   #!/usr/bin/perl -w
   $record 
  ="Pacific:ocean"
      
   my($a,$b)=split(/:/,$record);
   print "$a\n";
   print "$b\n";
   
      My problem is :
          In practical use , I usually get 
  
              
                  
          $record = 
  " a 
  :    b" ;
   
      How do I  take out those blanks ?
      
  BestRegards
  Henry

Re: [SLUG] ask perl & C

[Adam Kennedy]

Or if the return values are more substantial
#!/usr/bin/perl

# Get the first lot of results
@stdout_from_c_program = `'first-c-program`;
die "Didn't get anything" unless @stdout_from_c_program;

# Some processing ( or not )
@args = munge( @stdout_from_c_program );

# Hand the processed ( or not ) results to the second program ( assuming you
need to pass to the c program ).
system( "second-c-program $arg[0] $arg[1] $arg[2] etc" ); # Assuming you
need to get



Of course, I'm assuming the results will come back in one hit...
If you need to "stream" the results in over time, you would be more
interested in some of the cruftier uses of open().

Adam

- Original Message -
From: "Tony Green" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, March 01, 2002 6:14 PM
Subject: Re: [SLUG] ask perl & C


> * This one time, at band camp, henry said:
> > Dear List:
> >
> >  I need to
> >use perl-script --> call c program --> return values to
perl-script -->call c program
> > A
B C
> >  At stage B , perl will get those return-values from
c-programs for next stage(C).
> > ---that's the problem that I want to consult you,
> >
> > Could someone shed some light on it?
> >  or
> > by what keyword could I search internet?
> >
>
> #!/usr/bin/perl
>
> if (system('first-c-program') # Check if first-c-program returns non zero
> {
> system('second-c-program') # if it does, run second-c-program
> }
> else
> {
> system('third-c-program') # else run third-c-program
> }
>
>
>
> Is that what you're after Henry?
>
> Greeno
>
> (Note: this is untested and its been a long week, use at your own risk)
> --
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> GnuPG Key :  1024D/B5657C8B
> Key fingerprint = 9ED8 59CC C161 B857 462E  51E6 7DFB 465B B565 7C8B
>
> Imagine working in a secure environment and finding the string
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Re: [SLUG] NVidia software DVD Player

[Adam Kennedy]

Or course, it mentions...

NVDVD supports all of the industry standard DVD APIs, including
DirectShowTM, DirectDrawTM, DirectSoundTM, and DirectX® Video Acceleration.
The NVDVD architecture is uniquely scalable and tightly tailored to the DVD
specification and the intricacies of the PC system environment, providing
the most seamless navigation experience available.  NVDVD will be available
for distribution to and by OEMs and system integrators immediately.



So unless Wine has advanced further than I thought... :)

Adam

- Original Message -
From: "Bill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2002 1:35 PM
Subject: [SLUG] NVidia software DVD Player


> Hi Guys,
>
> Saw press release re above today. Only mentions Intel based PCs, not
> specific OS. Should we all write asking re Linux 
>
>
> see http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=IO_20020222_7836
>
> Bill
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
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Re: [SLUG] trashing

[Adam Kennedy]

Hmm... running nicely here. It iterates your PID fairly quickly, but it
doesn't do much else...

Now if you changed them to

#!/bin/sh
./2.sh &
./2.sh &

and

#!/bin/sh
./1.sh &
./1.sh &

it might be a bit nastier.

Adam

- Original Message -
From: "Chris Barnes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'SLUG'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2002 12:46 AM
Subject: RE: [SLUG] trashing


> Yeah I got a trick to test your cpu lol
> Create 2 shell scripts, first one names 1.sh and the other 2.sh
>
> In 1.sh put
> #!/bin/sh
> ./2.sh &
>
> in 2.sh put
> #!/bin/sh
> ./1.sh &
>
> make them both executable and put them in the same directory.. see how
that
> goes =o)
>
> --
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Stuart [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Tuesday, 19 February 2002 6:42 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [SLUG] trashing
>
> Hi y'all,
>
> Anyone know any good software to test stability on a new machine?
>
> ie want to work the CPU, memory and disk for a few days hours to see how
> it she runs.
>
> Tia,
>
> Stuart Guthrie.
>
>
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Re: [SLUG] trashing

[Adam Kennedy]

While your using whatever CPU user upper you choose, don't forget to add a
small perl or shell script that will.

1. Pipe a gig of /dev/random to disk.
2. Delete the file.
3. Repeat.

Oh, and another perl script to allocate and deallocate 10meg random
variables works well too... or there's always

#!/usr/bin/perl
$a = 'crap';
while ( 1 ) {
$a .= $a;
}

... which is always fun for a laugh, thus filling your memory with 'crap'.

Adam

- Original Message -
From: "Stuart" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2002 6:41 PM
Subject: [SLUG] trashing


> Hi y'all,
>
> Anyone know any good software to test stability on a new machine?
>
> ie want to work the CPU, memory and disk for a few days hours to see how
> it she runs.
>
> Tia,
>
> Stuart Guthrie.
>
>
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Re: [SLUG] Domain delegation (slightly OT)

[Adam Kennedy]

I'll add a note to this one.

Robert Elz ( at least when I was dealings with .org.au ) had two tracks.

Fast Track.
Absolutely everything in your request is letter perfect, correct, and valid.
A few weeks turnaround.

Slow Track.
If an request has problems, it goes on the problem pile, to be dealt with a
few times a year ( randomly between 1 - 6 months ).

So it is a very good idea to make sure requests are very correct when
dealing with .org.au.

Of course, it might have changed since then... Brett, how are NR's dealings
with him of late? Wasn't larry going to offer to run .org.au for free at
some point?

Adam

- Original Message -
From: "Brett Fenton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 10:50 PM
Subject: Re: [SLUG] Domain delegation (slightly OT)


> http://aunic.net/dd.html
>
> Then just hope Robert Elz is kind to you.
>
> On Wed, 9 Jan 2002 22:37, you wrote:
> > Hi Brett,
> > Oh dear...
> > it's an org.au
> > any clues?
> > Ben
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[SLUG] WinXP: You must be Admin to play games

[Adam Kennedy]

And you think you've got permissions 
problems!
 

From The Register
WinXP: log on as admin if you want to play games, MP3s?http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/22863.html
 

Re: [SLUG] Go Jeff !!

[Adam Kennedy]

Hmm...

I aw a Jeff Wawugh at one point :)
But in all seriousness, go Jeff! You'd have my vote if I had one... unless
Natasha Stott Depoja was running against you... she looks way better in a
bikini.

Adam


- Original Message -
From: "John Ryland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2001 8:44 PM
Subject: [SLUG] Go Jeff !!


>
> Anyone else see this?
> http://foundation.gnome.org/ballot-summary.html
>
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2001-November/msg00016.ht
ml
>
> ---
> Regards
> John
>
>
> --
> SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
> More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
>


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[SLUG] Binding ftpd to limited interfaces

[Adam Kennedy]

Morning all

I have a debian machine that is used as a sort of services gateway, it runs
6 or 7 public ips, and then I use a userspace port redirector, rinetd, to
redirect arbitrary ports through to the internal machines ( a variety of
Win32, Mac and linux ). I've redirected http, cvs, and a range of other
ports just fine.

However, I'm having a problem with ftp. For some reason, the ftp daemons
insist on using all the interfaces. Does anyone know of a way of
reconfiguring ftpd to only bind to a single port?

Thanks

Adam


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Re: [SLUG] FW: Paul Thurrot - a Windows XP summary copycat OSe hey ?

[Adam Kennedy]

I actually disagree with the security bit...

At least as far as security is concerned, we inherit the benefits of UNIX...
Stability doesn't really fall into the "inovation" catagory...

Inovation as far as linux is concerned has just happenned in a range of
non-central places.

For example, linux has shown a lot of inovation in clusterring. Now any
group, company or uni can roll their own super-computer ( for some
definition of "super" ).

If NSA Secure Linux ever goes into a mainstream distro, that would
definately quality as inovation.

The fully preemptible kernel might also qualify, although it's been done
before.

Hell, some might even consider the timezone selector in Evolution inovative
:)

The linux world ISN'T a desktop inovator in the way Microsoft is. As crap,
unstable and bloaty as their OS is technically ( unstable being now somewhat
fixed from Win2K onwards ) they do know their stuff when it comes to making
lowest common denominator user interfaces. It's not what I need in an OS,
but it's what Joe public does.

The Open Source world will get there eventually, but when a particular way
of doing things isn't your focus, you need to copy to catch up. For example,
Microsoft's use of the BSD network stack...  or Apple's conversion to
TCP/IP. Both Microsoft and Linux can go anywhere near Mac when it comes to
Graphic Designer goodies.

Microsoft, Linux, and Mac all don't scale as well as Solaris...

To sum up, it's not a bad thing at all to have to copy. You have to raise
yourself to other's level first, before you can move ahead.

Adam



- Original Message -
From: "Stuart Guthrie" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "slug" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2001 5:05 PM
Subject: Re: [SLUG] FW: Paul Thurrot - a Windows XP summary copycat OSe hey
?


> IMHO
> If you missed the ximian demo couple of months ago
> ..its waaay ahead in terms of innovation - a real outlook-killer.
>
> I'm signing up when its released, might even have to boot mozilla as my
> mail client. Think they need the dosh too.
>
> Thurrot is a bit of an MS stooge. Note excessive use of ! on his website
> home page. It's not objective reporting.
>
> Linux is to some degree playing catchup on the desktop but that's OK.  I
> use gnome as my primary desktop and office automation (staroffice) and
> don't notice a problem unless someone sends me a publisher document.
> Everything else I can read/write and with (mostly) superior tools.
>
> So I think the answer is that we are playing catchup in some areas -
> particularly in getting the word out - but are way ahead in others.
> Stability, security for example.
>
>
> Booth, Christopher (Aus) - ATP wrote:
>
> >The link to the article is here
> >http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/windowsxp_osx.asp
> >
> >He is less kind to Linux and Linux users than Mac OS
> >Yes Xerox did invent the GUI too.
> >Are we just playing catch-up to Windows ? or truly innovating.
> >
> >Chris
> >
>
>
> --
> SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
> More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
>


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Re: [SLUG] Firewall Hardware

[Adam Kennedy]

Wow, 

That's about a 2 degree increase for every hour of plane flight :)

-30 to +30 should be an interesting transition.

Adam

- Original Message - 
From: "Bob Hubbard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 1:26 PM
Subject: [SLUG] Firewall Hardware


> OK chaps, many thanks for the many responses. I'll sort through them and
> make a hard copy to bring to OZ with me.
> 
> Regards to all. 
> 
> Temp minus 10 Celsius. Should be minus 30 by the time we leave Dec 19.
> 
> Bob
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Bob Hubbard
> St.Albert, Ab
> CANADA
> 
> 
> -- 
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> 


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Re: [SLUG] Domain Name Registration

[Adam Kennedy]

Melbourne IT will get you where you want to go directly.

NetRegistry and the rest provide a layer of friendlyness and advice ( which
your getting from the list ) that you probably don't need.
They also tend to mainly do bundling, they are in it to sell you hosting,
email, e-commerce etc more than the actual domain itself.

Using one of these other companies is like buying a computer from a Name
Brand computer company. Great if you don't know what your doing and need
help, but a waste of money if you have knowlegable friends ( like us ).

Let me just note in their favour, that NetRegistry ( I worked there, don't
know about the others ) are good value if you have a contentious name, or
you think you might get refused the domain. They fight daily battles with
Melbourne IT beurocracy, and thus they know the appeals processes inside
out, so sometimes that can get something approved that would otherwise be
denied. ( They got mthotham.com.au for example, which would normally be
rejected as a place name, by faxing Melbourne IT the 72 page government act
stating the ski company has exclusive commercial control of the entire
mthotham area ).  But it you are registerring a business name specifically
to get the domain name, you should have no such troubles, as you can easily
make sure that you tailor the business name to the domain name.

One last note. Melbourne IT DO WATCH the business name register. After three
years when your business name runs out ( or however long it is now ), they
can and will send you a "please explain" letter asking why you should keep
the domain now that you no longer have the credentials to back it up. I have
personally seen these. Keep your business name up to date.

Adam

- Original Message -
From: "Matt -" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 1:36 PM
Subject: [SLUG] Domain Name Registration


> Hi everyone,
>
> I have recently been interested in registering
> a domain name for myself. I am guessing that
> this SLUG list has a pretty large group of people
> who know the ins and outs of domain registration
> so I was hoping I could get some experienced
> information.
>
> Firstly, I want it to be a .com.au domain name.
> Does this mean I HAVE TO register a business
> name with the words I want in my domain name ?
>
> So if I want to register joespizza.com.au I
> need to own a business name "Joes Pizza Pty Ltd" ?
>
> Is this the only way to do it ?
>
> Secondly, where should I go to do this at the
> best price ? Can you guys please distinguish
> the difference between NetRegistry.com.au,
> MelbourneIT.com.au and inww.com ? Who should
> I go to, are the prices fixed ?
>
> Thirdly, how long does the process take ?
>
> Thanks very much guys, any extra advice will
> appreciated. I'm sure some of you know some
> tricks that will speed up the process and/or
> make it easier.
>
> Thanks again ! :)
>
> _
> Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
>
>
> --
> SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
> More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
>


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Re: [SLUG] Internet Connection

[Adam Kennedy]

Almost as importantly...

What the HELL do you need that much bandwidth for?

Generally, anyone moving 300-400 meg a day is making enough money to justify
paying for the bandwidth...

Adam
- Original Message -
From: "Gnuthad" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2001 2:41 AM
Subject: Re: [SLUG] Internet Connection


> On 18 Oct 2001, at 16:30, DJ! wrote:
>
> > Could it be that we have a population __less than 2%__ that of the USA?
>
> Could that, in fact, be around 5%? Aus pop is around 17mill, USA pop
> is around 350mill.
>
> > Similarly, could it be that Australia's GDP stands at a measly
> > USD440billion, compared to the USA's USD10trillion? After all, we're
> > talking about supporting (read: paying for) a massive infrastructure
> > investment of a size only relatively smaller than in the USA.
>
> We have already paid for it as taxpayers, remember?
>
> Gnuthad
>
>
> PGP Key Block available at:
> http://aussie.mine.nu/aussie/pgp_key.txt
>
> --
> SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
> More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
>


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Re: [SLUG] Compltetly OT -el Presidente, perfect pitch and boids

[Adam Kennedy]

Yes

What you REALLY want to relative pitch, the ability to name any note once
you have been given a starting point.

Not as sexy as perfect, but just as practical. If something is off by a
fraction of a semitone, you'll barely notice :)

Adam

- Original Message -
From: "Laurie Savage" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2001 8:20 AM
Subject: [SLUG] Compltetly OT -el Presidente, perfect pitch and boids


> Conrad,
>
> Never wish for perfect pitch, one day you'll be doing an acoustic gig in
> a pub and the piano will be ALMOST  a complete semitone out!
>
> --
> Laurie Savage
>
> ==
> If Coltrane hadn't have existed it would have been necessary for us to
> invent him.
> ==
>


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[SLUG] Webcams

[Adam Kennedy]

I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for linux compatible
webcams, or rather, webcams that you can actually write applications for.

I've always been somewhat interested in real time video type stuff, and I'd
like to have a go at hacking on a webcam motion tracking / telepresence type
application, but I'll needa webcam that I can get access to in code, to pull
the stream from.

Most uses of webcams seem to just be "grab a snapshot, put it in a
directory" type apps, I'm looking for something more than that.

Thanks

AdamK


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Re: [SLUG] voice transmission using linux

[Adam Kennedy]

There's a Gnome program that implements some VoIP protocol... I think it's
actually a videophone, but without web cameras it will just do normal voice.

The protocol it implements I think is a protocol that Cisco did most of the
heavy standards work on.

Let me check my notes

Linphone:
http://simon.morlat.free.fr/english/linphone.html

Things it uses:
Sound Card Layer: ALSA, OSS
Initiation: SIP ( Session Initiation Protocol )
Transport: RTP
Codecs: G711-alaw, G711-mulaw, GSM, TPC10-1.5

It also says it works with Windows etc VoIP phones, which could be
interesting

Let us know what you think of it if you find it successfull

Adam

- Original Message -
From: "Howard Lowndes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Andre Ribeiro Moutinho" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 4:10 PM
Subject: Re: [SLUG] voice transmission using linux


> There is something called Speak Freely that does what you appear to want.
> It has interfaces for both Linux and Windows, though last time I looked
> the Linux interface was CLI only, no GUI.
>
> You can select the codec you want to use and can also encrypt the traffic
> stream on the fly.
>
> On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, Andre
> Ribeiro Moutinho wrote:
>
> > I have two computers with sound cards and  I wish to implement a simple
> > phone application that collects
> > voice in one computer and sends to another which receives and plays the
> > voice using the sound card.
> > I would like to know if there exists any kind of package or library that
I
> > can use to implement this easly using c++
> > language and gcc compiler. I just want to make them talk each other. I
do
> > not want to connect them to another machine
> > running a different phone application with different voice over IP
protocol.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Andre Moutinho
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Howard.
> LANNet Computing Associates - Your Linux people
> Contact detail at http://www.lannetlinux.com
>
>
> --
> SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
> More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
>


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[SLUG] Debugging Perl CGI file upload scripts

[Adam Kennedy]

Afternoon all

I'm trying to hunt down a usefull way of debugging Perl CGI scripts that
deal with file uploads.

Debugging normal CGIs is a simple as running perl -d cgiscript.pl from a
prompt, and then entering in the script arguments to the CGI.pm console mode
thingy, OR alternatively useing

my $query = new CGI;
$query->save( FILEHANDLE );

to save the CGI query out to a file, and then read it back in...

However, this all seems to fail when you try to use a file upload field...
You can't type anything into console mode, and $query->save doesn't handle
them correctly, it just writes into the output file that the upload field
was empty.

How do people here go about doing debugging on file upload type fields.

BTW, the script isn't crashing. It runs OK, and loads the temp file (
containing the uploaded file ) OK, but it's failing somewhere after that in
some code somewhere, and I'm just looking for a way to debug it properly.

AdamK


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Re: [SLUG] Fw: Side issue about Sydney Linux User Group

[Adam Kennedy]

I can't help but think RMS is shooting himself in the foot with the name
GNU, and GNU/Linux

I mean, has anyone ever tried explain to a normal person what a
self-referential non-descriptive acronym IS? And what it has to do with
software.

Take for example, RNT.RNT's Not Telstra.  That could be the name of a
garbage removal service and still be correct.

The problem with GNU/Linux is not about giving credit where credit is due,
for example Redhat Linux ( ignoring Radhat/GNU/Linux issues for a second ),
but that by having such a difficult name for his organisation, he makes the
adoption of it much more difficult.  People will always use a shorter name
where one can be found.

When people say Linux, or course they are referring to the system
contributed to by GNU people, Linux people, Perl people etc, but when
describing it an a single entity, it is much more useull and efficient to
tag it with a one word description, and the name of the kernel is an obvious
choice, just like I often refer to just Debian, rather than Linux, when it
is convenient to do so.

Personally, I think that the only time we should NEED to use GNU/Linux is
for situations where you refer to it formally, that is, in similar
situations to when you would refer to Redhat as Redhat Linux...

GNU/Linux is longer, harder to type, harder and say, and a nonsensical
acronym anyways, so it's common use should not really be nescesary or
expected. And that's not even starting with the whole GNU/Linux/Perl/Python
etc etc argument.

And I don't see RMS enforcing GNU/debian, or GNU/FreeBSD...  or does he. Why
pick on Linux for any reason other than frustration for not being
recognised?

Adam


- Original Message -
From: "Bevan Broun" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Matthew Davidson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Trevor Gunter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "SLUG" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 1:18 PM
Subject: Re: [SLUG] Fw: Side issue about Sydney Linux User Group


> on Thu, Jun 28, 2001 at 01:26:42PM +1000, Matthew Davidson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > He was responding to the Mundie comments and so forth, giving the usual
> > history of the GNU project, etc.  I found his arguments for calling
> > the system GNU/Linux quite compelling.  On the other hand, SLUG would
> > lose it's snappy acronym and mascot if it were SGLUG.
>
> I agree. Without gcc we are all lost.
>
> > How about a compromise?  Everybody who uses GNU/Linux by definition uses
> > Linux, so SLUG is still a technically correct name.  However I suggest
> > (audaciously, as a non-member) that SLUG adopt a policy of when
> > referring to the kernel the term "Linux" is used, otherwise "GNU/Linux",
> > particularly in public forums, publicity material, etc.
>
> This sounds like a good proposal. Perhaps the website should have some
> changes.
>
> BB
> [who will join slug with $s at tomorrows meeting]
>
> --
> SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
> More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug


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Re: [SLUG] NZ proposes GST on downloaded software.[ Here next ?]

[Adam Kennedy]

$0 + 10/12/15%? = $0

No problem see I


- A different Adam


- Original Message -
From: "Adam F. Bogacki" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Slug@Slug. Org. Au" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 12:53 AM
Subject: [SLUG] NZ proposes GST on downloaded software.[ Here next ?]


>
>  The NZ government Government is proposing to charge GST on software
> downloaded over the internet, possibly threatening the open-source model
of
> software distribution.
>
> Adam Bogacki,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>  http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/PA0106/S00406.htm
>


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[SLUG] Installing jdk1.3.1

[Adam Kennedy]

Afternoon all

I'm trying to install Sun JDK 1.3.1

I've downloaded the .bin,  installed it, and set up the PATH

But it's bitched that

/usr/jdk1.3.1/bin/i386/native_threads/java: error in loading shared
libraries: libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such
file or directory


Now in my /usr/lib directory I've got libstdc++-libc6.1-2.so.3 ->
libstdc++-3-libc6.1-2-2.10.0.so
I've created another link libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 ->
libstdc++-3-libc6.1-2-2.10.0.so

and it seems to be working ok, but I'm I correct in this? I assume the
1-1 -> 1-2 difference is a very minor release number, but what is the
difference between .so.2 and .so.3

Could someone perhaps outline what all the different numbers in a library
filename generally mean?

In addition, I noted that the java version in the debian stable is 1.1...
what does this go up to in newer versions?

Adam


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Re: [SLUG] Just Another ISP Question

[Adam Kennedy]

> According to their latest ads they won't bite the dust anythime soon
because
> they are owned by AGL which has been around forever.  But since you aren't
> on a contract you don't have too much to lose if they die.  Buy yourself a
> domain if you are worried about losing mail whenever your ISP dies.

Just because they are owned by a larger company doesn't mean they will
dissapear. More likely that company/subsection of the company will just get
sold off to a bigger fish, who might be able to do something profitable with
it. You still lose.

And yes, domains rule. Amoungst other things, they let you make yourself
palindromic email addresses. :)

AdamK
[EMAIL PROTECTED]





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Re: [SLUG] Just Another ISP Question

[Adam Kennedy]

> According to their latest ads they won't bite the dust anythime soon
because
> they are owned by AGL which has been around forever.  But since you aren't
> on a contract you don't have too much to lose if they die.  Buy yourself a
> domain if you are worried about losing mail whenever your ISP dies.

Just because they are owned by a larger company doesn't mean they will
dissapear. More likely that company/subsection of the company will just get
sold off to a bigger fish, who might be able to do something profitable with
it. You still lose.

And yes, domains rule. Amoungst other things, they let you make yourself
palindromic email addresses. :)

AdamK
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: [SLUG] Just Another ISP Question

[Adam Kennedy]

> According to their latest ads they won't bite the dust anythime soon
because
> they are owned by AGL which has been around forever.  But since you aren't
> on a contract you don't have too much to lose if they die.  Buy yourself a
> domain if you are worried about losing mail whenever your ISP dies.

Just because they are owned by a larger company doesn't mean they will
dissapear. More likely that company/subsection of the company will just get
sold off to a bigger fish, who might be able to do something profitable with
it. You still lose.

And yes, domains rule. Amoungst other things, they let you make yourself
palindromic email addresses. :)

AdamK
[EMAIL PROTECTED]





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Re: [SLUG] WHOIS..server.

[Adam Kennedy]

Chris

Back when I was working for a DNS company ( who shall remain nameless ) I
had to look into this.
Since there are very few whois servers at all in the world, there is no real
whois server you can get

HOWEVER

While I never wrote a whois server ( we just did the web version, not the
real one ), I did have to write a whois client ( in Perl ) from scratch, and
I can tell you that the whois protocol is EXTREMLY trivial to implement.
Really! My guess at the time was that the number of people who needed a
whois server was so small, and their needs so specialised, that they
probably wrote their own. I implemented the whois client in about 20 lines
of Perl, and I imagine you could do a pretty decent job ( subject to load
requirements ) of implementing the server in a hundred or so.
Of course I still don't recommend Perl for heavily loaded servers, but
unless you work for someone pretty big ( bigger than rams :) ), I doubt you
need it to stand up to a huge load.

Rip the pre-forking server example out of the Perl Cookbook, and whack a
little protocol stuff, and maybe a SQL call in, and Bob's your second
cousin.
Whois server.

Let me know if you need more details

Adam

- Original Message -
From: "Chris Barnes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "SLUG (E-mail)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 5:32 PM
Subject: [SLUG] WHOIS..server.


> Does anyone know where i can get a whois server for linux (if there is
such
> a thing). I've looked on Freshmeat.net but i've had no luck. Any other
> suggestions?
>
> Chris Barnes
> System Operations
> (02)8218 6205
>
> 'One fish two fish red fish blue fish'
> -Dr. Seuss
>
>
> Searching for "A Better Way" to a home loan, call RAMS on 13 7267, or go
to http://www.rams.com.au
>
> The e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential information.  If
you receive it in error you must not use or disclose the information. You
must tell us and delete it. We do not waive any legal privilege by sending
it. RAMS does not promise that the email is free from virus defect or error.
>
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> More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug


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Re: [SLUG] OT: Cheap 19" Rack Cases

[Adam Kennedy]

Indeed I do!

I have one myself

Venue Music in the City, just down the hill from Town Hall station.
Go up to the third floor ( keyboards, mixers, amps ), and ask there.

The smallest is 6RU. Mine is classed as 4RU because it has a top mounting
for a mixing desk, but is the same size.

Adam

- Original Message -
From: "Jon Biddell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Adam Kennedy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 9:59 AM
Subject: Re: [SLUG] OT: Cheap 19" Rack Cases


> > I have a 4RU, but it's in a carpetted flight case, and it's meant for
audio
> > type stuff.
>
> Don't know where I can get some 2 - 4RU PC cases, do you  ? Visions of a
portable server / switch / modem cabinet...:-)
>
> Jon
>


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Re: [SLUG] Apache serving .doc files

[Adam Kennedy]

A note on MIME types and web server to remember. Many of you will know this,
but I thought I should repeat it

Netscape will listen to the headers for the document type.
IE pretty much ignores the document type and tries to work it out on it's
own, which means you should be able to download a .doc file using an IE ( or
related ) browser without having to configure an MIME. The corrolary to this
of course, is that doing funky stuff with CGI is somewhat harder, because IE
tends to make incorrect assumptions sometimes.

Adam
- Original Message -
From: "Artur Hefczyc" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Matt Hyne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "slug" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 6:22 PM
Subject: Re: [SLUG] Apache serving .doc files


> >
> > I am trying to get my Linux based apache web server to serve some .DOC
MS
> Word files.  However I am having the following problems.
> >
> > 1. When I click on the link, the file starts downloading as (garbled)
text
> into the netscape window.
> > 2. If I shift-select the link, I can download the file but then WORD
> cannot read it.
> >
> > I've checked the file in Apache's directory and it is fine - I can ftp
or
> scp it and read it just fine, just not when I try to fetch it from a link
on
> a webpage.
> >
> > I have the following link set up in my webpage:
> >
> > FAX Coversheet (Word)
> >
> > Anyone got any ideas - have a got Apache configured wrongly.
> You should set mime-type for such documents.
>
> Artur
> --
> Artur Hefczyc
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
> --
> SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
> More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug


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[SLUG] An "I love you" worm on linux

[Adam Kennedy]

Morning all

This is so weird I had to send it to the list

I have been having trouble connecting to a CVS server from inside a
masquarade behind a new ADSL connection

Any action seems to hang for a long period of time.

I used sniffit to sniff the connection, and after seeing the client ( very
slowly ) manage to connect, the server proceeded to fire back the following,
one every 30 seconds or so

I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU.

Now, has anyone seen this before?

Adam



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Re: [SLUG] Debian iso

[Adam Kennedy]

I think mirror.aarnet will be fine


ncftp .../debian-cd/2.2_r3/i386 > get binary-i386-1_NONUS.iso
binary-i386-1_NONUS.iso:   ETA:  33:52  196.60/646.63 MB  226.84
kB/s

Note the capital B

HDSL is pretty cool. Not bad for a non-uni connection :)


Of course, unis are better :)

Adam
- Original Message -
From: "Matthew Palmer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Adam Kennedy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Some Linux Users Group" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2001 1:39 PM
Subject: Re: [SLUG] Debian iso


> On Thu, 31 May 2001, Adam Kennedy wrote:
>
> > Can anyone recommend a place to grab the debian iso(s) from?
> >
> > mirror.aarnet seems to just have an apt repository.
> >
> > And before you ask, the box will not be connected to the internet at the
> > time it is installed, so I can't use the online install process
>
> either of the other places suggested, or
>
> http://ieee.uow.edu.au/pub/debian-cd/i386/
>
> which is the UoW IEEE's mirror.  We've also got Sparc binaries.
>
> Whether it's faster than planetmirror or aarnet is debatable - certainly,
> it's less loaded (typically only internal Uni transfers) but I think we
have
> a smaller pipe.
>
>
> --
> ---
> #include 
> Matthew Palmer
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>


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[SLUG] Debian iso

[Adam Kennedy]

Afternoon all

Can anyone recommend a place to grab the debian iso(s) from?

mirror.aarnet seems to just have an apt repository.

And before you ask, the box will not be connected to the internet at the
time it is installed, so I can't use the online install process

Thanks

Adam


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[SLUG] Purchasing stuff at SLUG meetings

[Adam Kennedy]

Does anyone normally bring distro CDs etc to SLUG meetings?

I want to get hold of Debian 2.2r3, and picking one up at SLUG would be the
handiest way.

Thanks

AdamK


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[SLUG] Need someone to install a gateway

[Adam Kennedy]

Hi guys

My company is amalgamating two offices into on on Friday June 1st, and part
of the move is a networking change.

 I need to get hold of someone who can install/set up a gateway box for the
network.
The network is about 30-50 nodes, and it will connect to the net through
both an ADSL line and an ISDN line.
I would normally do it myself, but I'm cramped for time as it is
implementing the rest of the network, I haven't had a chance to do routing /
firewalling on the 2.4 kernel yet, and above all it's a rush move ( we are
swapping offices with another company on the same day ). So if you've done
this before, and can do the set up quickly and reliably ( time is scheduled
for the move, but we may lose productivity for the office if it takes too
long )...

Job will be for a couple of hours on the morning of Friday the 1st. Paid, of
course, rates would be good, and you are not expected to provide support. We
can run and modify the thing once it's up, just need someone to do a rapid
setup. The box will be brand new, and already have the OS ( preferably
debian... ) installed on it. We can have the general stuff installed and
ready.

Please contact me directly for more information if you are interested.

Adam K



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