Re: Postgres 8.4 - Table size inflates
On 18/12/2012, at 13:59, david harel wrote: > Greetings, > > Using Postgres v-8.4 for 3 years already, I now face a situation where one > single table inflates enormously. > Before vacuum the size was 1.5 GB for the table and 0.5 GB for the indexes. > > I tried to run CHECKPOINT in plsql (that's all I understood from reading: > http://www.depesz.com/2011/07/14/write-ahead-log-understanding-postgresql-co > nf-checkpoint_segments-checkpoint_timeout-checkpoint_warning/) > > After full vacuum and reindex the table reduces it's size to 23MB and > indexes reduce to 44MB. > > Typical usage of the table is insert. > We never delete anything off that table and rarely we update it. > Also we get key violations due to bad input also on rare occasions. > Also we recently upgraded the hardware (OS (ubuntu 10.4 server eddition) > runs on a virtual machine, copy to new hardware was using virtual machines > snapshot). > I don't know where to begin the investigation on the topic. OK, first, table size has nothing to do with checkpoint segments and all that. If you are getting warning about "too many checkpoints are occuring" in your PostgreSQL log, it's a separate issue which requires proper memory management. PostgreSQL works in a way that allows full, serializable transactions, and to do that, "dead tuples" are created. Typically, this would happen when you update or delete records. Another situation which may take up table size with dead records is using COPY to insert data, where the copy fails. The records that were inserted up to that point are marked "dead" because the whole COPY is considered one transaction so it's all-or-nothing. Failed triggers and constraint violations etc., cause the same thing. Basically, those dead tuples are marked "unusable" but still take up space. Then a VACUUM reclaims them for re-use. There are, however, two types of VACUUM. The normal version of VACUUM, which is also used by the auto-vacuum daemon, simply marks the tuples as re-usable. This prevents the need to lock the table and allows other operations to continue normally. However, this means the space is not reclaimed to the operating system and the size of the table does not decrease. New inserted tuples, however, will not take up new space from the operating system but use the reclaimed space. The other type of VACUUM is VACUUM FULL, which locks the table and reclaims the space back into the operating system. Versions of PostgreSQL before 9.x have an issue of table bloat. This happens when the auto vacuum - or even manual vacuum - cannot reclaim the space, because it can't map all the tuples properly into a hash map, which is part of the process. You'll typically get a warning saying "relation "public.foos" contains more than "max_fsm_pages" pages with useful free space. HINT: Consider using VACUUM FULL on this relation or increasing the configuration parameter "max_fsm_pages"." VACUUM then gives up, and the tuples are never reclaimed, and as more tuples are inserted and updated, more and more unused tuples are created - which in turn deteriorates system functionality. There are ways to prevent this, by increasing the max_fsm_pages parameter, or by doing an occasional cleanup on tables that frequently bloat. Starting in version 9, PostgreSQL uses a different method and this type of bloat is less likely to happen. By the way, a VACUUM FULL is not recommended. It's a very slow process, which leaves the table locked for a long while and consumes lots of resources. If you need to give your table a good diet, there are other ways - such as recreating the table from scratch. If you have enough disk space to keep two of the table, it's better to do it this way, and I found that the easiest way is to do an ALTER TABLE CLUSTER ON index_name, where index_name is the table's most frequently used index. This command is actually used to optimize the table for ORDER BY queries with that index. But what it actually does is re-order all the in-use tuples of the table in a new space, and then throw out the old tuples, which amount to the same thing as VACUUM FULL in a lot less time (but more space used while the operation takes place). A similar issue can happen with the indices, and you can run a REINDEX to recreate them. HTH, Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Email To SMS
https://www.soprano.co.il/ Disclaimer: I work for this company. :-) The basic service is via web, but SMTP is one of the common options. Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: MediaWiki sorting the Hebrew Alphabet
Quoting Ira Abramov : On several sites I manage I have this problem - Category pages display articles and subcategories sorted absolutely wrong. As far as I can tell this is only a Hebrew issue. Anyone got a clue? Someone told me it may be a question of DB collation or something, but I don't want to touch anything irreversibly without knowing exactly what would happen. Which database are you using? As far as I know, both PostgreSQL and MySQL are dependent on the usual libraries for their sorting algorithms, and therefore on the variable LC_COLLATE. I'm not sure, though, whether it's something you can change in runtime. Last time that I tried, PostgreSQL took the value of the environment variable at the time of creation of a database cluster, which meant that changing it would require backing up, re-creating the cluster, and reloading the database. I'm less familiar with mySQL and how it relates to said environment variable. Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: MediaWiki sorting the Hebrew Alphabet
Quoting Ira Abramov : Quoting Herouth Maoz, from the post of Mon, 04 Apr: Which database are you using? As far as I know, both PostgreSQL and MySQL are dependent on the usual libraries for their sorting algorithms, and therefore on the variable LC_COLLATE. using MySQL and the collation is settable after the fact, but I'm not sure which table/column to change and to what. As far as I can gather, you can sort with a specific collation, but this would mean going through the entire application and changing the SQL statements to use the COLLATE operator. I wouldn't go that way. I believe in order to solve the problem you have to set up your database with the proper collation to begin with - dump the database to text, re-create it with proper character set and collation, and then reload it. I think utf8 and utf8_general_ci are supposed to work properly for Hebrew. You can always test it by creating a little database somewhere with the settings you expect to work, create a table, insert a few words in Hebrew, and select it with order by. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Android phones
Quoting David Suna : 3. If I were to purchase one of these (unlocked) phones online and have it brought to Israel how easy is it to add Hebrew support? One thing I learned yesterday as I was searching for a way to install Japanese fonts on my Motorola Milestone is that it's notoriously difficult to change/add fonts to Android phones. Basically you need to root them first, as the fonts directory permissions factory settings are read-only. So if you buy a phone abroad, I'd strongly suggest you test it right there, using WiFi, just surfing to google.co.il or some such and seeing whether you get Hebrew fonts at all. If not, then you need to consider whether you want to root the phone and lose your warranty. Once you have rooted the phone, it's just your normal Linux operation. Download the font file to the phone by mounting it or whatever, use a terminal and su to change the permissions of the fonts directory, and replace the fallback font with your font by renaming it properly. Full instructions can be found on various Android forums around the globe. Soft keyboards are much easier to install. I don't have any information regarding support of BiDi and whether it comes built in or requires root. If anybody is aware of a better way to install fonts on Android, I'd be thrilled to hear about it, as my phone is company property and under warranty, so rooting is not an option for me. Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Can I use 32bit shared libraries on a 64bit machine?
On 16/09/2010, at 22:56, ik wrote: > You can use 32 bit libraries in 64 bit machines. I use several VPNs in Linux > that are only 32 bit based, while my own machine is 64 bit. Thanks! I installed the 32 bit libpam from the mandriva repository and now SNX works perfectly. Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Can I use 32bit shared libraries on a 64bit machine?
Sorry about the newbie question. Our sysadmin is going abroad for the holidays, and I have to cover for him. Sort of. Well, I need to be able to connect to our office using Checkpoint SNX. But the version I was given is looking for libpam.so.0, I assume the 32 bit version, and doesn't find the /lib64/libpam.so.0 I have. Should I install the 32 bit version of pam? Or is that going to have ill effects on my system? Or maybe I should just add /lib64 to LD_LIBRARY_PATH or something? (My machine is Mandriva 2010.0) Thanks, Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: USB speakers
It's possible. The optional speakers on my old HP monitor used to work like that - USB for power, 3.5mm for sound. I don't think it has anything to do with the operating system. Herouth Quoting Shlomo Solomon : I don't really know if this is a Linux problem, so I apologize if this turns out to be OT. I bought a pair of cheap USB speakers - "Muller M128 USB multimedia speakers". There are 2 wires - 1 with a USB connection and 1 with a "regular" 3.5mm plug. When I plug in the USB connector, the speakers get power, but I see nothing in the logs (tail -f /var/log/messages) and get no sound. When I also connect the 3.5mm to my sound card, the speakers work. Is it possible that the USB plug is only for power, or do I have a Linux problem (missing driver or something)? -- Shlomo Solomon http://the-solomons.net Sent by KMail 1.13.3 (KDE 4.4.3) on LINUX Mandriva 2010.1 ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: linux beivrit
Quoting Raz : Hey Nadav When i started i tried to work with open office in Hebrew, but i simply spent too much time trying to fix things, indentation, merging pictures and so on. also, how can ask for people to send me their comments ? I did not see track changes. As a matter of fact, there is a "track changes" feature: Edit->changes->record. Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Preserving Blanks in Parameters to Shell Script
Quoting Noam Meltzer : use $@ instead of $* But put it in quotes: "$@". Otherwise the effect is lost. Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: ntpdate and Israel local time
On 27/05/2010, at 21:50, shimi wrote: Of course you could simply sync your synchronization server with an accurate time which makes the most sense: an Internet NTP server, or in the lack of Internet access, something independent (i.e. a GPS receiver...) In fact, that's what he was doing. His issue is that ntp synchs the machine's clock with UTC. So in fact his internal clock is already correct. All he needs to do is set the proper time zone, as you said yourself. Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Kosher for Passover software
On 01/04/2010, at 07:40, Nadav Har'El wrote: How can software possibly contain chometz? And who eats software anyway? :-) As it turns out, it's not just that you're not allowed to eat chometz on Passover - you're not allowed even to "benefit" from it. Observant jews already make sure that during Passover, their dogs eat kosher-for- passover dogfood, their toilet paper is free of chometz, and the milk they drink comes from cows that hadn't eaten chometz. The new decision is that using software which benefited from chometz during Passover is disallowed. And how can software possibly benefit from chometz? Easy - Napoleon once said that "the army marches on its stomache". Likewise, programmers eat, and without food, there can be no software. If programmers ate chometz on Passover, and you use this software, you're benefiting from chometz on Passover, which is not allowed. Your rabbi must have drank the full four cups of wine of the Seder and added some VAT over that, before he made that decree, because, obviously, gentiles *are* allowed to eat as much chometz as they wish. That's why the local rabbinates sell all of the chometz within their jurisdiction to a friendly Muslim before Passover. Here in the Israeli software industry we're in a unique position to produce kosher-for-passover software, because most of our programmers eat only kosher-for-passover food during passover. If we only make sure not to accidentally mix-in pieces of chometz software into our kosher software. In fact, since Israel has an overwhelming majority of Jews, out of which many are - oy vey - secular, Israeli software is highly likely to be non-kosher according to your inebriated rabbi. We should especially avoid free software - because much of it was written by gentiles who eat bread during Passover! It's much more likely that software written by complete gentiles will be entirely kosher. However, we should carefully trace the authors of every piece of code, SCO-style, and find out whether they are Jews, and if they are, whether they ate any chometz during passover. If they are gentile, all the better. So, the question whether free or non-free software is better for Passover is in fact a serious Halachaic problem. On the one hand, this is the feast of freedom, and enslaved software should be avoided. Then again, commercial software is comparable to a cathedral while free software to a bazaar. And since when is a cathedral kosher? Also, free software's code is a lot easier to trace to individual authors. On the other hand, it's easier to make commercial software kosher, by selling it to a gentile for the duration of Passover. Bill Gates, for example, can claim that all the food eaten at MSFT headquarters belongs to him anyway, and therefore, because he is a gentile, his operation is totally kosher. Apple is a little less lucky, because rumour has it that Steve Jobs is partly Jewish. Oy. But you can't sell free software to anybody. So if there were any Jewish programmers who ate chometz and worked on it, the code should be removed, and patched over either by observant Jews or by full blooded gentiles. Herouth___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Sending & receiving SMS in linux
On 18/03/2010, at 21:54, Elazar Leibovich wrote: Oh boy! That's what just I feared would happen. I thought we would know better than that now. Not sure who "we" are exactly. Anyway, standardisation sometimes suppresses innovation. For example, if you standardise on a document format for spreadsheets, e.g. ods, you basically hurt software that represent data in an innovative way (for example, I used to use a spreadsheet program in which the data was in small grids, and these grids were connected by formulas - rather than the giant grid that contains formulas and data which we are used to). But I suppose this is a political discussion so I'd better not pursue it. One more question please. Is what you said relevant to receiving SMS? Is this usually done also through HTTP POST? (And thanks alot! that's just the answer I sought.) Receiving SMS is a hairy business. But basically, like receiving delivery notifications, you usually need to set up a web service for the provider to access and give you the messages. Some providers (my company included) also allow usage of e-mail rather than HTTP. Just don't expect messages longer than 70 character to come in intact. :) Anyway, the bottom line is that you can do it on Linux quite well, but you can't standardise any of it. At best, you can offer an SMPP plugin as your default (there used to be other standards like UCP, but they are even more obsolete than SMPP nowadays). Even then, not all providers implement the standard in full so you need to be careful about the assumptions you make. Herouth___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Sending & receiving SMS in linux
There is a standard protocol called SMPP. However, fewer and fewer major vendors support it, as it doesn't support billing very well, and is GSM-biased. Most SMS providers - whether they are actual cellular providers or VARs - support some sort of HTTP based protocol - using standard POST with name-value pairs, XML or SOAP. However, the actual protocol (variable names, contents, authentication, XML format, return values, capabilities) differ from supplier to supplier. So it is going to be very hard to standardise. I suppose the best approach would be to create protocol plugins for various vendors. You'll also have to facilitate reception of delivery notifications. (Proper disclosure: I work in a company that offers such services). Herouth On 18/03/2010, at 21:27, Elazar Leibovich wrote: Is there a standard way to send SMS from a computer in Israel? I'm writing a program, and I want it to be able to send and recieve SMS in Israel. Shallow searching for the topic reveals sites such as this one http://www.goldman.co.il/SMS2USite/ which gives many, seemingly nonstandard, way to send SMS via the company. Many of those ways are not compatible with Linux. Is there a standard protocol to send and receive SMS via a computer program? Standard means for instance, that it will be supported by many vendors, or that it'll be supported in many countries. I'd rather keep my code as portable and standard as possible (so no thanks, windows only COM components are not the way to go). Clarification, I'm not interested with a script that uses some free service (such as ICQ) to send sms. But in paid service that is able to send many SMS for a list of subscribers. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Ben Gurion - arrivals in Firefox
This advice is from the Mac community, and can probably be applied to Linux, though I didn't try it myself on either: Install GreaseMonkey and then add the relevant script: http://yehudab.com/blog/2008/11/new-scrpt-iaa/ Quoting Gabor Szabo : Does anyone know if there is any web site where one can find out details of arrivals on Ben Gurion airport even with Firefox? http://www.iaa.gov.il/Rashat/he-IL/Airports/BenGurion/informationForTravelers/OnlineFlights.aspx?flightsType=arr has some javascript that immediately hides the details so I need to view source and then search for the text. Trying to search tells me it only works with IE 5.5 and newer! Gabor -- Gabor Szabo http://szabgab.com/ ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: So why didn't you attend the last TelFOSS Meeting? (Take 2)
If you ask me, then two main reasons: 1. Inconvenient time. 18:00 is not suitable to anybody with a standard job. 2. My interests have shifted somewhat, Linux/free software is no longer news to me, so although I actually thought that the subject was interesting, I didn't see it as "worth bother". You see this as a community thing, a chance to meet IRL. Maybe I can offer some advice, FWIW. A chance to meet IRL is good when you have a pretty active online community, with a sense of familiarity. When you have that, you naturally want to meet the people IRL, and then if there is a well organized lecture about a subject that is somewhat relevant, people might make the effort. The TA Open source club is not connected to any community in particular. In the past few times that I went, a year or two ago, then other than Eddy and yourself I didn't know anybody there. I jump on every opportunity to meet with the members of the Macintosh forum I participate in. I organize monthly meetings for the Japanese forum in Tapuz. By the way, for monthly meetings, I consider 10 people a good turnout. But of course the Open Source community is supposed to be bigger than the Japanese-studying community, so one might expect higher turnouts - provided that there was an active, cohesive community in the first place. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: maccabi health new webpage woes
Here is a workaround I found for the issue and posted in the Mac-it forum: http://forum.mac-it.co.il/single_view.php?id=234949&gid=234768 I am surprised that it works in IE, because the Javascript that fails calls getElementById on a non-existent ID. I sent a message to Maccabi online about it, and haven't got an answer yes. The Javascript there has been written by a brain-damaged monkey. Quoting mbrace7for...@aim.com: Good morning,I noticed that either in Firefox or Epiphany or Opera after entering the Username and Password I could not continue. The new site appears to only support I.E. I tried with Wine I.E. but the site asks for Adobe Flash plugin that won't install either through Wine or Play on Linux or Crossover Office. Perhaps the forum can send Maccabi messages that Linux users do exist and their web page should support our use. I have done so and await their reply.Moshe ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: A simple question about hebrew in terminal
Quoting Dan Shimshoni : and if you show it in a BiDi aware application (say, konqueror >or whatever file explorer you use), it will show properly. It is true that if I try to browse the contents of this directory with mozilla for example, it shows indeed : File:קובץ.a However, when I try to look at the contents of that directory using midnight commander, it shows garbage. something like: ץ???ק.a And it is important for me to view the contents of directories with hebrew file names properly with midnight commander as it is my daily file management app. seems that midnight commander has an encoding rather than BiDi issue. You should look for a way to set up its encoding, to be aware of UTF-8 file names. Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: A simple question about hebrew in terminal
Quoting Dan Shimshoni : Hello, I have support in hebrew on my Linux desktop (Fedora 10). I can switch to hebrew with the keyboard indicator and it works. Say I want to perform a simple operation in terminal: rename a file named a.txt to קובץ.txt I type: "mv a.txt" and then, when I type: ק and then ו and then "ב" and then "ץ" it shows: ץבוק I can of course write the letters in reverse order, but this is not comfortable to do it for each rename operation. Is there a way to solve this ? If I am not wrong I heard about some BIDI support, but it seems to me that this BIDI support is for some specific word processing/editors. I an talking about the gnome-terminal. First, I wouldn't worry about it. The name of the file is OK - the letters are entered into the directory in the correct order, and if you show it in a BiDi aware application (say, konqueror or whatever file explorer you use), it will show properly. There are terminal applications that support BiDi. This is usually not a very good idea because it tends to confuse issues with the cursor and mess up curses-based applications. Personally, I actually prefer to work in non BiDi aware apps to enter data (e.g. Write HTML or localization files or whatnot). It's easier to tell which character is the 10th from the quote etc. even in a mixed string. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: cifs replacing smbfs - how to set up?
Quoting Oleg Goldshmidt : FWIW, I see similar effects when the server is Windows. I have a different setup, I run VMware VMs on my work laptop, and I mount a share on the host (WinXP 64 bit) in Linux VM (CentOS 5.3). After initial hiccups I worked my way through the various "security" tabs in the share's "Properties" window, and disabled the host's firewall (after a nod from the company's sysadmin). After that what I need to do works just fine, but when I read your posting I tried to touch a couple of files and copy one over the other (had not had a need to do it before) - and I saw effects similar to what you describe ("can't modify owner", "can't modify time", etc.). Interesting, because my mount to the office file server (windows) actually works well, no problems copying or touching or anything. Could be a different version of windows. I suspect the culprit maybe CIFS ACLs (I had added the user who mounts the share to the list and had given him "full access") and/or their mapping to POSIX ACLs. I played a bit with getfacl/setfacl but got nowhere. Maybe some googling for CIFS ACLs will help. I'll try that, thanks. Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: cifs replacing smbfs - how to set up?
Quoting guy keren : in the samba server file you have a 'workgroup' name - give this as the 'domain' to the cifs mount options. also, you can run the samba server on the linux machine in debug mode, re-connect the client, perform the operation and start reading the log... it's not trivial, but it's do-able. Thanks. I added the domain but it didn't help. The servers are not under my responsibility, unfortunately, so I can't dictate to the sysadmin to allocate time to look into this. I'll need to keep researching this until I can come up with specific parameters that should fix the problems. Do you have anything particular set as far as permissions or ACLs are concerned, on the server side? Might give me a clue. Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: cifs replacing smbfs - how to set up?
On 15/06/2009, at 23:31, guy keren wrote: when i switched from smbfs to cifs - i added the 'domain=' parameter, and used the name defined on the samba server - and had no similar problems. did you try this? also, i didn't use the file_mode, dir_mode or setuids optoins, that you are using. i would try to remove them and see if there's any change. finally - what distribution+version is your client? the same for the linux server? this might be relevant information. My client distro is Mandriva 2009.0 - kernel 2.6.27.21-desktop-1mnb The server on that particular machine is Debian - kernel 2.6.18-6-686. All of our servers are debians, though not all are the same version. As for the "domain" argument - what should I set it to? I removed the file_mode and dir_mode parameters, but no help there - I still can't copy a file to an existing file. Removing them just makes the file permissions I get in ls be funny: Running ls -l on the client machine gives: total 8 -rwxrwSrwx 1 herouth herouth 121 2009-03-11 18:06 create_dev_pgsql.sql* -rwxrwSrwx 1 herouth herouth 125 2009-03-11 18:06 create_prod_pgsql.sql* drwxrwxrwx 1 herouth herouth 0 2009-03-17 15:51 CVS/ Running it on the server machine (connecting with ssh) gives: total 12 drwxr-xr-x 2 herouth herouth 4096 Mar 17 15:51 CVS -rw-r--r-- 1 herouth herouth 121 Mar 11 18:06 create_dev_pgsql.sql -rw-r--r-- 1 herouth herouth 125 Mar 11 18:06 create_prod_pgsql.sql Of course the permissions displayed on the client machine are ridiculous. Adding the file_mode and dir_mode parameters gives me "normal" permissions, which are similar most of the time to the real permissions. Further help would be appreciated. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
cifs replacing smbfs - how to set up?
Up until recently I used to have smbfs mounts to all the development and some of the production servers in my company. I used to mount as a particular user in the host machine, and then every write, mode change, time set etc. was done as that user on the server side, and everything was pretty transparent to me. Recently, because I upgraded my machine, I was forced to stop using smbfs and change to cifs. It works well enough with windows machines, but when the host server is linux, I get nothing but grief. All I need is for it to behave as it used to - allow me to access all the files as a particular user on the server side. Instead, I get all sorts of strange errors. For example, when I use "cvs update" in a project mounted with cifs, I get the following: P sql/9_insert 16_lookup.sql cvs update: cannot change mode of sql/9_insert/16_lookup.sql: Permission denied On other times I get errors such as "cannot set time". Or when I try to copy a file over an existing file on the mount: cp foo.bar 16_lookup.sql I get the result: cp: cannot create regular file `16_lookup.sql': No such file or directory The only way to copy over a file is to rm it and then do the cp. Can anybody guide me on how I should change the server side, or the mount command on my fstab, to be able to work smoothly? I tried setting /proc/fs/cifs/LinuxExtensionsEnabled (on the client side) to 0, but it makes no difference. There is no domain controller - each of the servers is set up with its own set of users, and the user I use for mounting is not necessarily the same as my local one, though on some occasions it is. Here is an example line from my fstab if it helps: //lindev5/herouth /home/herouth/lindev5 cifs rw,user,noauto,username=herouth,password=REMOVED,ip=192.168.34.246,uid=herouth,gid=herouth,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0644,dir_mode=0755,setuids TIA, Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: php cli is trying to resolve
On 13/06/2009, at 15:17, ik wrote: Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 3:10 PM, Herouth Maoz wrote: First off, run php -i | grep prepend ...to see if it is trying to run any prepend file which is set up in php.ini # php -i | grep prepend auto_prepend_file => no value => no value error_prepend_string => no value => no value So it means that it does not set any path to execute before things should run ? It means that it doesn't run any automatic php script before every one of your scripts. I suspected that it did - but it doesn't, which means that access to the network comes from one of the modules installed. I suppose you could check which one it is through a process of elimination. Herouth___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: php cli is trying to resolve
First off, run php -i | grep prepend ...to see if it is trying to run any prepend file which is set up in php.ini Herouth On 12/06/2009, at 22:29, ik wrote: Hello list, I have encountered today a weird problem with a CentOS 4.7 Final server. A cli based PHP script took a long time until it executed. Even code such as : Took few minutes to execute. After doing some strace on php, I found out that it attempt to do resolving for several addresses prior to executing the code. I can not reproduce it on any other Linux that I have tried to (Ubuntu, debian and Arch Linux). Have anyone encountered such issue, and knows how to stop php from trying to resolve things ? Thanks, Ido http://ik.homelinux.org/ ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: lyx Hebrew keyboard layout variant issue
On 21/05/2009, at 19:57, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 12:28:03PM +0300, Herouth Maoz wrote: Hi everybody, I recently upgraded the Linux version on my work machine, and I noticed something odd about the Hebrew kxkb layout, which I use in the lyx variant. There was no "=" key, and there were two "]" keys. The default Hebrew layout had no such artifact. After comparing my KDE-based Mandriva setup with my sysadmin's Ubuntu (Gnome), it turned out that we had the same layout, and the thing about it is that it's not completely defined. The number keys and symbol keys which are supposedly "common" to the Hebrew and US layouts are not defined. The default variant defines all the keys. This is by design. The lyx layout only touches the second group. Someone may want to use the British pound sign for shift-3, for instance. Only when they use the Engish layout, I'd assume. When you use a Hebrew layout, you expect shift-3 to give you "#". I touch-type in both languages, and some of the punctuation marks are mapped to different keys (the comma, for example). In the context of Hebrew, I look for the comma on the bottom right row. In the context of English, I automatically type it where it belongs in the English keyboard. It's part of the training of the brain. Thus, it makes no sense to have shift-3 mapped to anything other than what it is on common Hebrew keyboards in a common layout. The bottom line is that there shouldn't be a situation in which I don't have a "=" sign in Hebrew, just because I chose an alternative layout as my English layout! And of curse, the What layout do you use, exactly? What's you current XKB configuration? xprop -root | grep _XKB _XKB_RULES_NAMES(STRING) = "xorg", "pc104", "us,il", "dvorak,lyx", "compose:rwin" Note that when I change my Hebrew keyboard to "no variant" (that is, instead of "dvorak,lyx" I get "dvorak,"), the missing "=" key appears where it is expected in Hebrew. Thanks, Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
lyx Hebrew keyboard layout variant issue
Hi everybody, I recently upgraded the Linux version on my work machine, and I noticed something odd about the Hebrew kxkb layout, which I use in the lyx variant. There was no "=" key, and there were two "]" keys. The default Hebrew layout had no such artifact. After comparing my KDE-based Mandriva setup with my sysadmin's Ubuntu (Gnome), it turned out that we had the same layout, and the thing about it is that it's not completely defined. The number keys and symbol keys which are supposedly "common" to the Hebrew and US layouts are not defined. The default variant defines all the keys. Where is the problem? In English, I don't use the US layout, but rather the Dvorak layout, which places the "]" where "=" is supposed to be. So, does anybody know where I can get a fully-defined Hebrew layout for kxkb, in the lyx variant? If so, a hint on where to install it will also be appreciated. And finally, how does one convince all the distros to include a full layout? It's strange that both Ubuntu and Mandriva have the same faulty layout. As far as I remember, the layout did not give me trouble in Mandriva 2007.1 from which I upgraded. So there used to be a good layout out there. Thanks, Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: DNS is driving me crazy
On 10/03/2009, at 21:33, Oren Held wrote: On Tuesday, 10 March 2009 17:50:18 Herouth Maoz wrote: Quoting Gabor Szabo : www 3600IN CNAME s5.hostlocal.com szabgab.com 3600IN CNAME s5.hostlocal.com @ 3600IN MX 10 s6.hostlocal.com. Is that how it should be? With the trailing . on the MS record ? dig @ns44.domaincontrol.com szabgab.com MX does not seem to show me any MX record Well, I'm not exactly an expert, but your MX record certainly isn't propagated - I think the above definition must be wrong. Why does it say "@" where it's supposed to say mail.szabgab.com? Wrong, instead of the "@" should be szabgab.com and not mail.szabgab.com - because he wants u...@szabgab.com mail addresses. Ah, right, I guess. The following confused me: I'd like to have www.szabgab.com and szabgab.com to resolve to s5.hostlocal.com while mail.szabgab.com to resolve to s6.hostlocal.com and that all mail sent to @szabgab.com should be processed by s6.hostlocal.com So actually there is no need to define mail.szabgab.com at all - unless he wants to make it a cname for some protocol other than SMTP. Herouth___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: DNS is driving me crazy
Quoting Gabor Szabo : www 3600IN CNAME s5.hostlocal.com szabgab.com 3600IN CNAME s5.hostlocal.com @ 3600IN MX 10 s6.hostlocal.com. Is that how it should be? With the trailing . on the MS record ? dig @ns44.domaincontrol.com szabgab.com MX does not seem to show me any MX record Well, I'm not exactly an expert, but your MX record certainly isn't propagated - I think the above definition must be wrong. Why does it say "@" where it's supposed to say mail.szabgab.com? Yes, the trailing dot is supposed to be there - in every record that is not resolved to an IP number but a hostname. Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Convert pdf files to .doc or formats that Open Office opens
Quoting Moshe Brace using Yahoo : http://blogs.howtogeek.com/mysticgeek/2009/03/05/convert-pdf-files-to-word-documents-and-other-formats/ How to Geek has a Ubunto advice also on their web pages. As far as I know, Hebrew doesn't work well with such solutions. It's kept in Visual order inside the PDF, because PDF is considered an end-product. So reconstructing it requires knowing where the lines end and converting each line from visual to logical. I think none of the existing solutions is written with an awareness of this, so Hebrew would be botched. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Identifying linux-il messages
That's not a message from linux-il. That's a message to which linux-il was CCed. The powers in charge of this mailing list encourage people to use "Reply-to-all" when answering messages to the list. As a result, you get a direct message from the person who is writing (if you are in the recipient/sender list of the original message). When the list software sees that it has been CCed to a message that was sent directly to you, it refrains from sending you its own copy, so you get only one copy (although this can be changed). Messages that were not addressed to you but come directly from the list have many additional headers. Personally, I rely on the List-Id header to filter the list. However, this strategy means that you cannot filter all messages that relate to the list. Only the ones that were not addressed to you. Discussions in which you have involved yourself will end up in your inbox. For some reason, the list owners consider this to be a GOOD thing. I consider it to be very annoying, but I have no say in the matter... Herouth Quoting Moshe Gorohovsky : Hi All, How do I identify linux-il messages? In full message source, I see only one header that mentions linux-il: CC: linux-il No other header mentions linux-il. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Hebrew spam: what to do about it?
Quoting Dotan Cohen : It needs to be commercial to be illegal. Really? If I have a website that I don't make money off of, like gibberish.co.il then can I send spam? I'll do it too, not in order to promote the site but in order to get the law changed. There is no chance that the law will be changed. First, politicians are the ones who are supposed to change it - and they have a vested interest in allowing political spam. Second, disallowing non-commercial spam may be regarded as an act against freedom of speech, and such an act may not pass Bagatz. The way the current law defines spam is as a message that induces you to spend money. So spam calling for donations is also illegal. Promoting causes, such as asking for signatures for Gilad Shalit, or banning silicon from dairy products, is legal. Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: The new linux-il - a few tips to get you (re)started
Quoting Shachar Shemesh : Linux-IL is a list with no added "reply-to list" header. You are kindly requested to hit "reply to all" when replying to postings arriving from the list. Don't worry about people getting two copies. When mailman notices that your email is in the "To" or "CC" list, it will refrain from sending you the mailing list's copy of the email (it will assume that you already received a copy), which means that you will NOT receive two copies of emails that belong to discussions you participate in. Now that the list supports the standard headers, there are, in fact, mail clients which support a separate "reply to list" button which sends to the list based on the appropriate header, which is how I am sending this reply. I prefer it over using "reply to all" because I can then easily scan my outbox and detect which messages I sent to the list. By the way, regarding the "[linux-il]" tag - is there a way to set up a poll about this, rather than conducting a lengthy argument? Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: [Linux-il] testing
Quoting Shachar Shemesh : Ely Levy wrote: Moved to mailman, please report problems :-) And update your filters.. Problem: the list prepends [Linux-il] to the subject line. One man's problem is another (wo)man's blessing. I prefer all my mailing lists to have such a short label on the subject line. It allows me to identify them easily in the mailbox on the web where mails are still unsorted by my local filters. And more importantly, identify them easily in the spam mailbox so I can salvage them. Herouth ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: [OFFTOPIC] Daily Maily Spam
I think that the law goes into effect on January 12. At least, that's what all the spam messages say. Don't trust spammers. The law went into effect on Decemeber 1st. Any spammer sending any unsolicited mail to you now is violating the law. http://law.co.il/articles/spam/2008/11/12/israeli-anti-spam-law/ (Hebrew) = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: postil.com not working in FF or Konqueror
Quoting Dotan Cohen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: 2008/8/14 Noam Rathaus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: Hi, The Israeli Post web site used to work with FF and Konqueror, but now it doesn't anyone knows how you can reach them and complain? No fire broke out when I went to the postil.com website and began navigating. It works fine for me in Firefox 3 on Kubuntu 8.04. From what I remember, the problematic features are: 1. Trying to find out how much it costs to send a letter abroad using their price calculator (it never gets to the "abroad" part). 2. Problems in the branch locator (finding out opening hours of branches) 3. Feedback form. And I did manage to find a browser where the feedback form works (I got the automated reply) but they never actually got around to fixing the problems I mentioned (which are not just compatibility issues. They have content issues as well). Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please vote for this KDE bidi bug, even if you are not a KDE user
Quoting Shachar Shemesh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: Herouth Maoz wrote: Or am I missing something here? How will you supply round trip preservation of directionality (running program -> disk -> running program) if the application is unaware of the directionality? That's not the purpose here, and indeed, the bug description says that explicitly. What is asked here is a way for you to be able to fill a field, and while you type, to view it in the proper direction. An example that comes to mind is a forum, where the user uses plain HTML text fields for input, but knows that the eventual output will be displayed properly (either because it's the default or because there is a control for it in the form), so he wants to be able to see what he types properly. This is just a convenience for the user, and not until you have used it do you realize how very convenient this is. It's supported in the Macintosh since at least the early '90s, and no, the applications themselves do not support this internally nor save the directionality. Herouth To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please vote for this KDE bidi bug, even if you are not a KDE user
Quoting Shachar Shemesh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: What bothers me even more is that this is just KDE working as it should. The bug is in kate and the rest of the programs that decided not to have bidi support. There is NO way to provide a generic solution to this problem at the toolkit level. Why? A toolkit is supposed to control the behavior of the various fields and items that it offers as "black boxes" to the user. Of course, the reference here is only to generic text fields. Of course, word processors usually take control and either use their own text engines, or the toolkit offers plain and complex text engines, and they choose the complex. for plain text fields, including labels & static text, the directionality is, indeed, under the responsibility of the toolkit. Or am I missing something here? Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please vote for this KDE bidi bug, even if you are not a KDE user
Quoting Dotan Cohen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: Please vote for this KDE bidi bug, even if you are not a KDE user: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165406 What bothers me about this bug description is that you use the word "alignment", and that really has nothing to do with the problem at hand, which is directionality. You wish the various pieces of the text to be correctly ordered from right to left. If they just justify it to the right, it would be a great waste of votes, and that's what the word "alignment" implies. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RTL in plaintext mails
On 26/02/2008, at 19:40, Dotan Cohen wrote: Where is the lyx keyboard? Pressing SHIFT-minus for me gives me underscore. Pressing SHIFT-numpadMinus gives me minus. I looked in Kcontrol for lyx keyboard but do not see it. In the control panel, under "keyboard layout" which is under the accessibility (at least in my Mandriva it is), you can select "Israel" as a keyboard layout. When you do so, you have a selection of variant in a drop down menu below the "active layouts" list. You select "lyx" from it. It also gives you Nikud in a very easy-to- remember layout (most Nikud is accessible as shift + its first letter - like shin for shwa and het for hirik). Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RTL in plaintext mails
Quoting Dotan Cohen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: On 26/02/2008, Herouth Maoz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Quoting Dotan Cohen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On 25/02/2008, Oron Peled <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> - בעקבות אזכור של מישהו (איני זוכר מי) גיליתי שהתו מקף עליון '־' מוגדר >> ביוניקוד כתו עם ישור ימין-שמאל. זה פותר המון בעיות של צירופים קשים >> כגון "ה־9 לחודש" (נסו לכתוב זאת עם מקף רגיל). >> הבעיה -- התן הזה חסר בגופנים נפוצים ב־Windows (כמו Arial וכו'), >> לכן צמצמתי קצת את השימוש בו. האם במערכות שלכם רואים אותו? >> > > איך מקלידים את המקף העליון? אני משתמש בKDE, אם זה חשוב. Using the lyx keyboard that comes in KDE, click shift-minus. I use it all the time in any application that supports unicode. Herouth No way with the keyboard? I have a hard time using the mouse. Broken thumb] Maybe my use of the word "click" misled you. Should have said "press". Herouth To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RTL in plaintext mails
Quoting Dotan Cohen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: On 25/02/2008, Oron Peled <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: - בעקבות אזכור של מישהו (איני זוכר מי) גיליתי שהתו מקף עליון '־' מוגדר ביוניקוד כתו עם ישור ימין-שמאל. זה פותר המון בעיות של צירופים קשים כגון "ה־9 לחודש" (נסו לכתוב זאת עם מקף רגיל). הבעיה -- התן הזה חסר בגופנים נפוצים ב־Windows (כמו Arial וכו'), לכן צמצמתי קצת את השימוש בו. האם במערכות שלכם רואים אותו? איך מקלידים את המקף העליון? אני משתמש בKDE, אם זה חשוב. Using the lyx keyboard that comes in KDE, click shift-minus. I use it all the time in any application that supports unicode. Herouth To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RTL in plaintext mails
Quoting Oren Held <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: On Monday 25 February 2008 06:36, Avraham Rosenberg wrote: > I feel dumb.. Am I missing something, or is it just impossible to send > Right-To-Left mails in plaintext? > Must I use HTML mails when I write in Hebrew? I use plain text for my E-mail in Hebrew (Mailer mutt, editor vi). My only real problems are with the choice of encoding (utf-8 or ISO) and, when writing to people who use windows, I have to remember that their mail clients automatically reverse direction. So that I have to use a terminal in which the Hebrew text appears reversed in my system. As there is a variety of mailers in windows, and they do not treat Hebrew exactly the same way, I receive from time to time complains about some problems. Actually, I am not sure that these problems are related to their mailer. The problem may be just the size of their window/vs the length of my lines. Keeping lines short is a safe bet. First, kudos for using vim for mails. (Real men use 'ed' =) ) Maybe I was unclear: I wasn't talking about using Logical Hebrew - this I take for granted.. I was talking about 'align to the right' and putting the text in 'RTL mode', so that mixed Hebrew lines with few English words inside would be rendered correctly. I find it funny if it's just not possible in plaintext.. I like plaintext :) What you are referring to is text directionality. It's the parameter that guides the bilingual display algorithm. If the general text directionality is right-to-left, for example, the algorithm will place punctuation on the left side of a sentence and order parts in different directionalities properly from right to left. Anyway, it's possible to do so in plain text if you use unicode, and embed unicode directionality characters at the beginning (and possibly the end - depending on your choince of directionality characters) of the paragraph. However, though this method should work, some MUAs break long paragraphs into separate lines (which, from the unicode definition perspective, means that each line is a separate paragraph). That would cause only the first line in the paragraph will have proper directionality (it will be the only one that starts with a directionality character) and the rest will break. The bottom line is that it is virtually impossible to properly display Hebrew if you use plaintext in e-mail. Herouth To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[JOB OFFER] PHP programmer
(Anything you see in parenthesis is my own remark) Unicell is looking for a PHP programmer. The company provides value-added services in the cellular market. For more information, go to http://www.unicell.co.il/. Job description: * Developer in the tech department at Unicell * Answers to team leader * Intended for candidates with at least 2 year experience in web development. * Development of web applications * Work with various technologies on advanced platforms. (I just know that one of the regular Job-offer bashers will get me for that...) Job requirements: * Proved experience of at least two years in PHP 4/5 in web. * Experience in OOP * Familiarity with PHPLib - advantage. * Experience working with CVS - advantage. * Familiarity with Apache web server. * Experience working with database (Sybase an advantage) * Excellent command of HTML, Javascript, CSS, DHTML * Familiarity with AJAX (I'd add - some knowledge of Linux, not being afraid of command line or cron). Character requirements: (The usual, but I'l repeat it anyway) * Initiative and, well, "rosh gadol". * Self-teaching abilities. * readiness for strenuous work * Excellent people skills (service minded) (Our standard office hours are 9-18, so don't take "readiness for strenuous work" to mean "ready to work 14 hours every day"). Interested parties, please apply to Moshik Chen, Unicell's Vice CEO of Technology, at the e-mail moshik AT tippcom DOT co DOT il. (I realize that this offer may be too low-level for most residents of this list, so feel free to pass it on to those of your acquaintance who are not kernel programmers...) Herouth To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Nostalgia is not what it used to be (was: Petition to ask MainConcept)
--Apple-Mail-2-489977373 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed On 03/10/2007, at 08:55, Nadav Har'El wrote: > There's a famous paper on the design of the Unix "spell" program, > which > ran (if I remember correctly) on some PDP 10 with 65 KB of memory. > Much > of the work involved in fitting all the words in less than that > memory. > When I started working on Hspell, it was obvious that nobody really > cared > about how much memory it would take. When it ended up taking 100 KB > of disk > space and 4 MB of memory, everyone thought it was perfectly > acceptable (and > even small if you compare it, for example, to aspell). And with good reason, too. The art of programming changed focus not because we are lazier these days than the heroes of the ancient world (although this may be true as well). Because resource limitations have changed, and hardware prices changed, it's rather obvious that the focus of what is considered "good programming" has changed. In the days of yore, in order to fit the data into a decent file for the compiler to chew, you'd do nasty things like cut down on comments and indentation, and of course variable names. In fact, IIRC, FORTRAN, prior to the 77 version, didn't even allow indentation. Doing these things today may cost you your reputation. The focus has moved from saving on source code length to saving on maintenance time, because nowadays, programmer time is the bottleneck. And this goes further than just the length of code, because of course, there is some trade-off between efficiency and maintainability. I find myself many times writing code which I know would not be very efficient (e.g. make several database accesses which could be reduced if effort was put into it). Why? For two reasons, mainly. (A) Spending my time and effort to make the program more efficient would be more costly than those additional database calls. My time is limited, I'm one of the most expensive resources in my company, so they wouldn't want me to spend it thinking of tricks to make something efficient, which basically would not affect the company's income. If the program is inefficient in a way that can't be solved by buying an inexpensive disk and inexpensive memory, and its inefficiency is noticeable by the users, only then would it be worthwhile for me to spend the extra hour on efficiency. And (B) in order for my program to be readable, easily maintainable, modular, so that I (or some other programmer) can later read it, and swiftly understand what's going on and easily add or change features, you lose efficiency. Code becomes more bloated, but you have nice easy to understand loops inside instead of a complicated set of statics and globals where you depend on previous state and the programmer needs to start writing state charts to understand what is going on. Of course, the best of us can write pretty efficient code which is both elegant and maintainable, and doesn't require too much planning time. They find the optimum point easily. My guess is that the more you approach that ideal as a programmer, the more your time costs your employers. Herouth --Apple-Mail-2-489977373 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 On 03/10/2007, at = 08:55, Nadav Har'El wrote:There's a famous paper on the design of the = Unix "spell" program, which ran (if I remember correctly) on some PDP 10 with 65 KB of = memory. Much of = the work involved in fitting all the words in less than that = memory. When I started = working on Hspell, it was obvious that nobody really cared about how much memory it would take. When = it ended up taking 100 KB of disk space and 4 MB of memory, everyone thought it was perfectly = acceptable (and even = small if you compare it, for example, to aspell). = And with good reason, too. The art of = programming changed focus not because we are lazier these days than the = heroes of the ancient world (although this may be true as well). Because = resource limitations have changed, and hardware prices changed, it's = rather obvious that the focus of what is considered "good programming" = has changed.In= the days of yore, in order to fit the data into a decent file for the = compiler to chew, you'd do nasty things like cut down on comments and = indentation, and of course variable names. In fact, IIRC, FORTRAN, prior = to the 77 version, didn't even allow indentation. Doing these things = today may cost you your reputation. The focus has moved from saving on = source code length to saving on maintenance time, because nowadays, = programmer time is the bottleneck. And this goes further than just the = length of code, because of course, there is some trade-off between = efficiency and maintainability. I find myself many times writing code = which I know would not be
Re: Career advice needed
On 04/09/2007, at 10:20, Kfir Lavi wrote: Consider going back to school and find the field you want to research. This will give you the intellectual stimuli you need. I thought about it. But then, I never could get a handle on the way academic research works. It was always beyond me. Collecting papers for background is as far as I got in my M.Sc. thesis. I'm afraid I'm a development, not research person. At least not formal research. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Career advice needed
On 04/09/2007, at 09:29, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote: Map applications are an excellent example for this topic. First, they may not have existed in the '80, but they certainly did exist in the early '90s. Only then you couldn't do them without a serious client, way over the capabilities of the PCs of the day. You needed a unix workstation in order to present a photographic backdrop, and have good capabilities for zoom and pan. Even screen resolution is PCs and macintoshes of the day weren't good enough. I think you are far off on that one. While most of it was developed in the late 1970's, NASA was mapping things in the mid 1960's. Computerized weather maps were around since the 1950's. What I meant was that in the early '90s you could get all these algorithms in shrink-wrapped on-the-shelf software packages. Of course, like Oracle, not every Joe could afford the software, nor the hardware it required. The trick, IMHO is not to do something new, but to come up with a new way of doing old things. My point wasn't that if something existed in the old days, it's not worth doing any more. My point was that the technology is nothing new, and has really nothing to do with web development. Web development is used merely to present the technology. Even so, the web is not a good enough platform for this kind of application, and it's no wonder google creates an old-fashioned front end for it. What I was trying to get across is that although I find writing yet- another-SQL-query mind-numbingly boring, it doesn't mean that RDBMS technology is boring. If I worked in the development of the database itself, implementing a novel algorithm for indexing or fail-proofing or whatever, it would be much more interesting. In the same vein - writing in Javascript is boring, but implementing Javascript in a browser is interesting. Of course that's my personal taste. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Career advice needed
--Apple-Mail-1-123579580 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed On 04/09/2007, at 05:18, Stanislav Malyshev wrote: > Yes and no. Yes because it's not that there's new computer science > being born or something :), no - because things are being done that > weren't done before, because now it's easier for people to do them. > As an example, let's look at one of the tons of google maps mashups > - which *are* very useful if google maps covers the area you are > interested in - too bad Israel isn't covered :( - and see how > something like that was done in 80s. The answer is - it wasn't > done. Such applications just didn't exist. Map applications are an excellent example for this topic. First, they may not have existed in the '80, but they certainly did exist in the early '90s. Only then you couldn't do them without a serious client, way over the capabilities of the PCs of the day. You needed a unix workstation in order to present a photographic backdrop, and have good capabilities for zoom and pan. Even screen resolution is PCs and macintoshes of the day weren't good enough. I know that, you see, because I did GIS (Geographical Information Systems) in the military. All the tricks you can do with maps - mash them with photos, overlay them with gas stations and hotels, find all the gas stations that are within 1 km of a particular road, find geographic location by address, do the travelling salesman problem (not optimally, of course), get travel directions and so on - have been solved problems by 1992 or so. It was just a matter of being able to work the interface in a user's environment (when the user didn't have $10,000 to spend on a workstation), and improve storage capabilities of clients, and speed of communications with the client (which is necessary for GPS devices, because the data in them is dynamic). To the point of our discussion, though, there are basically three elements in an application such as ynet maps (the best browser map system currently in Israel, I believe, given that it actually works on Firefox). You have a server side which contains all the air photos, the roads, the addresses, and all the fine algorithms for finding things. You have a client side which allows for zoom, pan, view switches, etc. - a flash or java application - and you have the web envelope around all of them - fields on the side where you enter the address, and a button which then transfers it to the server. And maybe on the web server side - a web application that interacts with the GIS engine and returns results using HTTP. Neither the server nor the flash client are done by web programmers. They are left only with the integration - maybe have some HTML buttons that interact with the flash. Maybe an Ajax that talks to the server. All of the interesting stuff is done in the server. Some semi- interesting things are done in the flash client (things HTML is incapable of - zoom, pan, vector graphics, texts drawn in angles or following a path...) Herouth --Apple-Mail-1-123579580 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/html; charset=US-ASCII On 04/09/2007, at = 05:18, Stanislav Malyshev wrote:Yes and no. Yes because it's not that = there's new computer science being born or something :), no - because = things are being done that weren't done before, because now it's easier = for people to do them. As an example, let's look at one of the tons of = google maps mashups - which *are* very useful if google maps covers the = area you are interested in - too bad Israel isn't covered :( - and see = how something like that was done in 80s. The answer is - it wasn't done. = Such applications just didn't exist. = Map applications are an excellent example = for this topic. First, they may not have existed in the '80, but they = certainly did exist in the early '90s. Only then you couldn't do them = without a serious client, way over the capabilities of the PCs of the = day. You needed a unix workstation in order to present a photographic = backdrop, and have good capabilities for zoom and pan. Even screen = resolution is PCs and macintoshes of the day weren't good = enough.I = know that, you see, because I did GIS (Geographical Information Systems) = in the military.All the tricks you can do = with maps - mash them with photos, overlay them with gas stations and = hotels, find all the gas stations that are within 1 km of a particular = road, find geographic location by address, do the travelling salesman = problem (not optimally, of course), get travel directions and so on - = have been solved problems by 1992 or so. It was just a matter of being = able to work the interface in a user's environment (when the user didn't = have $10,000 to spend on a workstation), and improve storage = capabilities of clients, and speed of communication
Re: Career advice needed
On 03/09/2007, at 22:57, Lior Kesos wrote: Hi Herouth, What I don't understand is the whole LAMP grudge your carrying around... From my experience (as someone that lives off LAMP related training,projects, products) there is a big difference in the development experience between wielding zope, doing home grown cgi- perl development, custom php development, python coding etc... I have focused on drupal a magnificant LAMP based cms and development framework and although I hate php - I totally adore the framework I develop in (drupal) and I can realize my cutstomers vision which is quite satisfying. It's all a matter of taste, of course. I'm sick-sick-sick and tired of writing yet-another-page that displays data from a database. It really doesn't matter if the language is PHP, Perl or Python (they are just alternatives for the "P" in LAMP). I have no particular preference for a language. It's the sort of applications that you can build using the HTTP protocol that I'm sick of - web services, forms, buttons, integrity checks. Oh, and Javascript is, in fact, my least favourite platform. I find it unreliable, with compatibility problems between platforms, and it's generally being used in order to force HTML to do things it is not supposed to do. Eventually you may have nice interfaces, but they are interfaces into nothing. If there is anything interesting to be done on the backend, it's usually done by a different class of programmers, and they provide the web programmers with an easy API into their system, and so, all you have to do on the server side is access the API, and do something with the resulting data. The truth is that all web applications are just sugar coated information systems, and nowadays, with Ajax, they are really no different than the client-server applications people used to write back in the late '80s and early '90s. All this is boring me to tears. I'm not at all sure airline pilots have it harder. :-S Basically, I think anything one has done for 11 years straight tends to become boring, but really, there is no challenge in LAMP other than trying to overcome the limitations of the browsers and the HTTP protocol. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Career advice needed
On 02/09/2007, at 20:13, Stanislav Malyshev wrote: I want to do something new. That's why I asked what the current market demands are. I have an opportunity to change. The choice what to change to depends on what's available, and out of what's available I'm hoping to select what will seem the most interesting to me, given the time and money constraints. If you want to stay in web arena, but not deal much with LAMP anymore, you may try to go client-side - rich applications, AJAX, etc. These days I think it is becoming a real programming market. Not sure if there's easy to find such job without it being combined with design (which are two entirely different jobs, but not everybody understands it). It doesn't have to do much with Linux, though :) Thanks. I sort of regard Ajax as part of the territory these days. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Career advice - summary
First of all, my thanks to all those who took the time to give me pointers, advice and ideas. I appreciate all of it, even if I point problems in some of the approaches. Some of you answered me off the list and some on it, and I summarize it all here. Summary: With respect to my original idea, that I will look into subjects that are currently sought after in the market, and make use of my free 6 months to specialize in one of them, there was a general agreement that kernel drivers are a hot topic suitable for such a plan. Additional areas were listed as well. Others have suggested that I should approach the problem from the other end - specialize on something I like, and then use that speciality to find an appropriate niche in the market. My foremost objection to this approach is that there are lots of interesting areas in computing, only a few of which have a chance of landing me jobs. It's a matter of forward chaining vs. backward chaining - and I think it would be more efficient to look for the most interesting out of a small list of popular subjects, than for the most popular out of a huge list of interesting areas. And I strongly disagree with the assertion that any interesting subject I pick is bound to find me a job. That sounds like a high-risk gamble at best, a mystical belief at worst. Another suggestion made was to find a company which covers both my current area of expertise (PHP and related subjects) and some other area that might catch my fancy, and that I should start at the PHP side, and work my way towards the other expertise while being employed. This is a very practical approach, though it has failed for me in the past. It's actually the best approach if I didn't have any free time at all (e.g. if I the circumstances of my quitting my job meant I had no compensation to expect). Others have suggested that I work as a freelancer, start my own business, or switch to a managerial position by taking up an MBA or similar. I bound all these approaches in one sentence because they all have the same flaw for me - I have no management talent, and find managerial jobs too stressful and never successful. Of course, this summary is for other people who may find themselves in the same situation. Thus, switching to management may be a wonderful solution for those who have the inclination. And if any of you potential company-owners wants me as his/her technical consultant, give me a call. :) Another suggestion was to look at what's available overseas. It's a reasonable suggestion, although I consider myself a Zionist. A job is not a lifetime and spending a couple of years learning a new skill abroad is not emigration. I may look into that option, but I'd like to look closer to home at first. After all, without family or friends around you to lend a hand, nor even the scant connections that I have, every risk doubles. Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who sent links to various relevant resources. Oh, and I think I'll forego becoming an airline pilot at the moment. I don't even have a car driving license, you see. :-) Thanks again, and further ideas and thoughts are still welcome Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Career advice needed
One thing's for sure, Gilad. If I needed to hire an excellent motivational speaker who gives irresistible sales pitches, I'd go for Steve Jobs. But failing that, I'll certainly ask for you. :) On 02/09/2007, at 00:29, Gilad Ben-Yossef wrote: Security guards are cogs. Excellence simply doesn't matter and so it wont help you. CxO on the other hand are very rare. Excellence is everything - you wont need go looking for a job, the head hunter will come looking for you. You failed to mention a crucial thing that get CxOs jobs - connections. People know about them. They have a nice black book of contacts from their previous jobs and military service which they maintain. They have people who owe them favors. That's how you get jobs in high positions, at least in this country. There is another logical fallacy here - is rarity the result of being part of an elite group of people, or a result of extinction? I must tell you that I can't find many FORTRAN77 jobs in the newspapers, either... When I finished the military I could write applications on MacOS. That was a rare skill. There was absolutely no demand for it. There still isn't. At least not in Israel. Israel is not the place to be exotic. BUT, if you play your cards just right and take advantage of being able to be an expert in Django before it's huge and everyone know about it (and it will be) right from the beginning by being involved in building both the frame work and the first commercial users of it, you will have attained the position of not ever needing to look for a job again - you'll simply have to choose from the opportunities presented to you. This is speculation. If I manage to hit the right seam of gold, I'd find myself in a great position. However, if the seam I happen to strike is a dry one, and turns out not to be in demand, what do you suggest I do? Fall back on LAMP? Move back in with my mother and live on her pension? The biggest gamble I've ever taken was 50 NIS for a lottery ticket. Losing 50 NIS won't hurt me. Losing six months worth of money and landing back in the LAMP dump is. The market for interchangeable web site programmers is indeed controlled by ASP.Net drones. If you plan to be an interchangeable cog that should certainly be the technology to follow. No, I have no intention of doing that, unless my rent is really at risk. If, however, you want be in a position to get the jobs that *aren't* listed in any paper or web site, to be bogged down by head hunters calling very politely every six month on the clock just to check in if you happen to fancy hearing about a new job opening and being able to pick and choose jobs because you are a rare and irreplaceable source of knowledge about a useful technology that is used by only the few biggest corporations and most sophisticated and cutting edge start-ups , then by all means do consider Django and Python. Um, you do remember that I said "I want to work normal hours". That means both start-ups and huge companies are not exactly a tempter. Anyway, I must say your message left me more depressed than motivated. :( Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Career advice needed
On 01/09/2007, at 22:17, Maxim Veksler wrote: Well, from my short swim in the industry I can tell you the following market trends: 1. Advertising is hot, everything from analytical people to graphical designers goes. 2. System Analysts are being hired quickly today, you must have a firm background in your field. 3. DBA, not "system" but those that responsible for scalability and optimization of the scheme. 4. Good networking people are always in demand. 5. JAVA, as in serverlets and jsp's can be a good direction for you. 6. Security experts, you can merge into a security firm as web application security consultant. 7. Well, QA is also an option if your looking for a relaxed position. Thanks, that adds a few more options to my list. On a personal note, I never agreed with the claim "Current market demand". My answer to this is simple - If you want to make a difference, start thinking differently. In translation to the software industry, I you want to make a `fine` salary and work in a good company - find something your interested in and pursue, be good at what you do and work will just pop up for you. That's what I'm trying to do, basically. Only I don't believe in "The Secret" and its ilk. If I decided that I'm interested in CGI, or artificial intelligence, or quantum computing, or Macintosh application programming, do you really think that a job would "pop up"? Should I spend my 6 months on a pipe dream? I'll have to fall back on LAMP then, and if so, I'd rather take a vacation in Japan instead, at least I'll have fine memories. ;) Anyway thanks, I appreciate the above list and the advice. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Career advice needed
On 01/09/2007, at 16:19, guy keren wrote: Herouth Maoz wrote: On 01/09/2007, at 03:22, Amos Shapira wrote: , you might want to consider expanding your existing skills towards related ones - SQL database design and programming should be useful in many places. Oh, SQL, table structure design, stored procedures, transactions - it all comes with the territory when doing PHP programming, I thought I didn't need to mention that... Nevertheless, I really want to get away from the LAMP business, at least not have it as my main occupation. well, what is it that you _do_ want to do? no one can help you without you telling something on the positive side. I want to do something new. That's why I asked what the current market demands are. I have an opportunity to change. The choice what to change to depends on what's available, and out of what's available I'm hoping to select what will seem the most interesting to me, given the time and money constraints. So far I'm told that kernel drivers are in demand. I've noted that to myself (as well as the other general advices given), and it's an option. Basically, any suggestion will be welcome - I'm trying to get a feel of the market, not to make an instant decision. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Career advice needed
--Apple-Mail-7--112883372 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed On 01/09/2007, at 03:22, Amos Shapira wrote: > > Short of doing a whole switch to kernel programming (or switch to > becoming an airline pilot, which is what a friend of mine did and I > wish I could :) I have a hunch that would take a lot more than 6 months and all the money I have on Earth... > , you might want to consider expanding your existing skills towards > related ones - SQL database design and programming should be useful > in many places. Oh, SQL, table structure design, stored procedures, transactions - it all comes with the territory when doing PHP programming, I thought I didn't need to mention that... Nevertheless, I really want to get away from the LAMP business, at least not have it as my main occupation. Herouth --Apple-Mail-7--112883372 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 On 01/09/2007, at = 03:22, Amos Shapira wrote: Short of doing a whole switch to kernel programming (or switch to = becoming an airline pilot, which is what a friend of mine did and I wish = I could :)I have a hunch that would take a = lot more than 6 months and all the money I have on = Earth..., you might want to consider expanding your existing = skills towards related ones - SQL database design and programming should = be useful in many places.=A0Oh, = SQL, table structure design, stored procedures, transactions - it all = comes with the territory when doing PHP programming, I thought I didn't = need to mention that...=A0Nevertheless, I really want = to get away from the LAMP business, at least not have it as my main = occupation.Herouth= --Apple-Mail-7--112883372-- = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Career advice needed
--Apple-Mail-6--116742648 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed On 01/09/2007, at 09:42, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: > It is not about PHP, Python, or kernel programming. I do believe it > begins and ends with people. This may sound less practical than > developing specific skills to some, but - IMHO - that's only when you > think short term. I think it's a bit more complex than you represent. The two reasons I haven't left my company long ago, despite the relatively low salary, are the work hours (I leave at 6 - except when there's a production problem or a very rare thing like database upgrade or other night job), and my skills (problem solving, integration) are appreciated enough to have relegated the mundane build-yet-another-page tasks to other programmers. Nevertheless, when we hire new people, we look for some basic skills. We usually concern ourselves less with operator precedence (who cares?) and more with awareness of security issues (Do they check user input for single quotes? HTML?), error checking, concurrency issues (reading, then modifying data), and instruction reading (people sometimes fail to read the exact directions in the test). But we do prefer people who already know PHP to people who don't know and will have to spend several weeks learning the language (or go to a course). Experience is important, it cannot be ignored. Of course, when we had candidates that sounded smart and resourceful in the interview, we were more lenient. A business needs to continue its day-to-day work, and there is enough to learn about the particular expertise of the company, without adding additional weeks which may require disrupting someone else's busy schedule to explain things to him, check his progress, and so on. It's especially true when you don't know whether he'll turn out to be a good programmer in the end, or a bad one who somehow writes programs that work, but there is no code re-use, error checking, comments, and consideration for end cases. When he turns out to be bad, you have lost your investment. A business needs to think both short and long term. In addition to all that, there is the issue of getting your foot in the door. If you're a smart, methodical programmer who can see the "greater picture", and haven't written a line of C code since university, and if you're the same, but wrote a patch to the kernel that got accepted, which one will be called for an interview, based on their CV? HR people and even technical people tend to get a lot of CVs which are irrelevant, and people just send "because it wouldn't hurt". The first sifting is done by removing all the ones that are not even close, and I've yet to find a person who'd see my "Good problem solving skills" in my CV and say "hey, that's one worth keeping". These skills help you when you get hired by word of mouth. I have at least one job offer based on someone knowing me personally, who is willing to let me learn at the expense of his company - because I basically taught him how to program and he knows my worth. (Unfortunately, he happens to be my best friend, and mixing business with friendship is a recipe for disaster, especially in our case - we are both short tempered. Otherwise I'd have accepted that job offer long ago). Herouth --Apple-Mail-6--116742648 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/html; charset=US-ASCII On 01/09/2007, at = 09:42, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote:It is not about PHP, Python, or kernel = programming. I do believe it begins and ends with people. This may sound less practical = than developing = specific skills to some, but - IMHO - that's only when you think short term. = I think it's a bit more complex than you = represent. The two reasons I haven't left my company long ago, despite = the relatively low salary, are the work hours (I leave at 6 - except = when there's a production problem or a very rare thing like database = upgrade or other night job), and my skills (problem solving, = integration) are appreciated enough to have relegated the mundane = build-yet-another-page tasks to other programmers.Nevertheless, when we hire = new people, we look for some basic skills. We usually concern ourselves = less with operator precedence (who cares?) and more with awareness of = security issues (Do they check user input for single quotes? HTML?), = error checking, concurrency issues (reading, then modifying data), and = instruction reading (people sometimes fail to read the exact directions = in the test). But we do prefer people who already know PHP to people who = don't know and will have to spend several weeks learning the language = (or go to a course). Experience is important, it cannot be ignored. Of = course, when we had candidates that sounded smart and resourceful in the = interview, we were more lenient.A bus
Re: Career advice needed
On 31/08/2007, at 23:37, Maxim Veksler wrote: It seems that there were not even one decent company in Israel that would fall under these conditions. This was ~2 years ago. So they turned to .Net. We had a similar problem in our company. When we had a project that was too large for our number of developers and needed to outsource it, we simply couldn't find any LAMP-based company that could do it. I don't mean to be all too rude but: What about starting your own company? You definitely have the necessary experience, skill, motivation and with proper guidance/managements you could fill in a blank that is clearly missing here in the local market. I could even suggest this organization would be a hybrid of Django (which is getting hotter by the minute!) and php ajax software house. Do it in the open source way (i.e. keep using fresh FOSS technology, contribute back) and there's surly a bright future ahead. I'm afraid that would only be an option if I could get a partner that would take care of all the non-technical matters. I am qualified for neither management of people (I always turn down team leader positions) nor marketing and sales. But thanks for the additional angle. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Career advice needed
On 31/08/2007, at 23:28, Shachar Shemesh wrote: Herouth Maoz wrote: Do you think that 6-7 months from now, I'll be able to open the career supplement of a newspaper, or Job-net, or apply to one of the assignment agencies, and find jobs where the skill set required says "Django"? It greatly depends on an aspect you did not specify - employee or free lance? Employee, definitely. I don't have the iron nerves it takes to be independent. I can tell you about PHP that I'm sure it's extremely difficult to find work as a PHP programmer employee, but not at all difficult to do so as a free lance. I have a feeling that this is a self-feeding problem. I mean, our company has advertised in the past for PHP programmers, and we had very little luck finding any, even as far as sending us a CV. Because there are no workers, there are no places that work in PHP, and because there are no places, there are no workers. Anyway, I don't want to work in PHP anymore, that's why I'm looking for this change. The best you can get, in that respect, is work for a (small?) consulting company. The nerves are someone else's, and you have (at least the illusion) of stability (none of Lingnu's employees are reading this thread, right?), while maintaining the flexibility of consulting work. :-) I'll keep that in mind, though I have a feeling one can only get into one of those through connections, not through advertising. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Career advice needed
On 31/08/2007, at 04:02, Ravid Baruch Naali wrote: Herouth Maoz wrote: Sorry Maoz, but I don't have a good advice, but I can give you some pointers where to start your own research. http://www.job4me.net/ - a google lookalike web site which searches every Hi-tech company for their job offers. http://free-electrons.com/ - excellent web site which offers free training material mainly for embedded system. http://free-electrons.com/community/kernel/ - a good resource to learn about linux kernel/drivers development. http://janitor.kernelnewbies.org/ - A good place for kernel newbies. Also some PHP open source projects: http://gallery.menalto.com/ http://www.freepbx.org/ and of course a lot more I hope it will give you a better view of your options. Thank you, I'll keep these on hand. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Career advice needed
On 31/08/2007, at 16:44, Shachar Shemesh wrote: First of all, (good) web programmers have a high demand. What they do not have, unfortunately, is a high salary. The amount of not-so- good web programmers around means that it's very hard to differentiate yourself. The clients, usually, do not have the understanding to evaluate the quality of product they get, and the result is that good web programmers and not-so-good web programmers get paid, more or less, the same. Very true. Not just about the salaries, but also about the clients' inability to tell good work from bad. Not being enslaved is, more or less, only a matter of self control. If you refuse to be enslaved (but still deliver the goods), you will likely get along in all but huge companies and start-ups that are managed by control freaks. One cannot stuff 60 man-hours into a 45 hour week. If your bosses are willing to accept your time estimates and accept projects to suit your speed, it's great. But if they set up deadlines according to pressure from customers, and these deadlines mean one has to do 60 hours of work in one week, then insisting you can't means that you can't "deliver the goods", and then, it's either the golden cage or the unemployment agency. THE hottest skill today is Linux kernel programming (usually, but not always, drivers). If you know your stuff, there is no reason you won't be able to get enough skill within a couple of months to be able to get a job (which means you skill set improves while you're getting paid). This will also leave you with enough safety margin to change direction should you see that this one isn't working out. Whatever you do, be sure to select an area that interests you. You can get a decent paying job if you are skilled enough in just about any Linux related task, so if that particular area is not interesting to you, it is better to find a lower paying job elsewhere than to hate your job. That sounds like good advice, and I'll keep it in mind. Thanks, Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Career advice needed
On 31/08/2007, at 17:02, Gilad Ben-Yossef wrote: Since Django is racing towards the 1.0 release (currently in 0.97- pre), you'll be getting in to in on this project at the best of time: a killer framework that dwarfs any thing else around in the field (save maybe to Ruby on Rails), which is already productive but still the best kept secret of the geeks. Sort of Linux in 2.2 days :-) If I'd have to bet my career on something in the web area or even general application development right now, Django would be it. Do you think that 6-7 months from now, I'll be able to open the career supplement of a newspaper, or Job-net, or apply to one of the assignment agencies, and find jobs where the skill set required says "Django"? I seriously doubt that. Currently, the web market in Israel is almost exclusively controlled by ASP.Net, even finding a PHP job (where PHP is at version 5 and has been in the commercial market for well over seven years) is difficult. I don't think that the marketplace will be demanding workers in any technology which is currently pre-release for at least 2 years, and the Israeli market - who knows. Do you have compelling arguments to the contrary? Anyway, if I have to go looking for a new job, it's really time for a change for me, and I don't want to miss this opportunity. If it's shifting bits around that lands me in a safe and interesting job, I am not afraid of it. I've been shifting bits when I was 14 years old and had a 99-byte emulator on a game console to play around with... ;) Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Career advice needed
Hello, fellow Linuxers. I'd like your advice regarding a job change. My company has been acquired. There is a chance that my boss won't stay around, and if so, I'm not going to stay around, either - because the chances are that the business will become yet-another- dotnet-based-web-portal. I'm basically a PHP programmer, though in the past two years I've been doing more integration work and problem solving than any web development (being the only one except our sysadmin who is not afraid of shell scripts). Now, this merger gives me a unique opportunity - I've been in my current company for 6 years, so I'm due a lot of compensation should I quit (quitting after an acquisition is considered being laid off), meaning I can basically keep my standard of living for at least 6 months without actually working. I can use these 6 months to develop my skills in some other area of programming, and maybe even get some experience by participating in an open source project of some kind. What I'd like your advice on is - what directions are popular, have high demand, and can accommodate a programmer with lots of general experience, but not particular (other than the web)? Preferably ones that don't enslave people (no golden cages for the chance of becoming a millionaire). Needless to say, I'm talking about Linux-oriented (or at least Unix) jobs here, I'm not looking to change to .Net, I don't even have a Windows box available at home. My CV in a nutshell: B.Sc. from 1989, military service doing application programming in environments that no longer exist, until 1994, then some tech support until 1996-7, and since then I've done web programming, at first in Java, then in PHP, though I did a refresher course in Java recently (but never got around to writing anything in it). Any advice will be appreciated. Sneers and jeers will not. :) Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: State of the Israeli banks websites
Quoting Kfir Lavi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: Hi, I'm looking to open bank account for investing. I currently using Bank Hapoalim website and it works fine, but I don't have experience investing with this bank. From your experience, which bank will have the best Linux support in investment of stocks and mutual funds. Can't say about stocks and mutual funds, but the Benleumi (FIBI) bank website works well with Firefox for everything else I've tried (deposits, paying bills, transfers to family & other accounts, ordering checkbooks, viewing checks, reading notices from the bank etc.). Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [SUMMARY] Current status of Israeli ISPs
Quoting Oded Arbel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > To sum, the tech support still operates behind Actcom's toll free number > (which AFAIK is the only toll free internet support line in Israel), and > still seems clueful about Linux. I don't know about the commercial side > (my current contract expires on August, after which I'll be able to > comment on the issue), but from the support side I have no complaints, > and if the sales department don't mess up my contract renewal I will > remain a customer of Actcom/Bezeq Beinleumi. I got a message from Bezeq Intl. when I sent a message here at linux-il about this issue. In that message (which for some reason came from the Abuse team) they said that they have Linux support, although it may not be online. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [SUMMARY] Current status of Israeli ISPs
Quoting Ori Idan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > I guess that what bothers is the Linux support from the ISP. > It would be easier to take the guides we have today, update them and > redistribute it. > Or a better way, to establish a group of people that will get paid for > supporting people for connecting their computers to any ISP with Linux. > That's no solution, as it cannot replace a person who sits at the ISP and can actually see whether packets arrive from the computer, whether there is a DHCP lease for a particular address, whether user is logged on or not. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Job Offer: PHP programmer
--Apple-Mail-1--909967596 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed My company is looking for PHP programmers, preferably ones who can find their way in a Linux shell and use vi without weeping. Skills: * Web development skills: PHP, Javascript, HTML, CSS, SQL, the territory. * Know the meaning of SQL injection, cross site scripting, etc. and the way to program to avoid them. * Knows about web standards and will never use document.all unless threatened. * Linux shell basics an advantage (as in - being able to use various utilities to write a report, or wrap a PHP CLI script, etc.) * Neat work, planning, documentation, independence, ability to learn skills on your own. * Previous knowledge in the cellular industry an advantage though don't let the lack of it stop you from contacting us. The company: We are called "TippCom". We provide cellular services: WAP, ring tones, IVR, SMS, MMS, etc. We are a relatively small company (I'd say about 40 people) but we are not a startup. We are located in Tel- Aviv, not far from the Azrieli center. http://www.tippcom.co.il/ Whom to contact: Send your CV, or if you have any questions about the job (pay, extent, terms), please write to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - he is the CTO. Please mention where you encountered this job offer. If you want to ask me something (tech questions would be appropriate), the best would be my work e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Herouth --Apple-Mail-1--909967596 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/html; charset=US-ASCII My company is looking for PHP = programmers, preferably ones who can find their way in a Linux shell and = use vi without weeping.Skills:* Web development skills: = PHP, Javascript, HTML, CSS, SQL, the territory.* Know the = meaning of SQL injection, cross site scripting, etc. and the way to = program to avoid them.* Knows about web standards and will = never use document.all unless threatened.* Linux shell basics = an advantage (as in - being able to use various utilities to write a = report, or wrap a PHP CLI script, etc.)* Neat work, planning, = documentation, independence, ability to learn skills on your = own.* Previous knowledge in the cellular industry an = advantage though don't let the lack of it stop you from contacting = us.The = company:We = are called "TippCom". We provide cellular services: WAP, ring tones, = IVR, SMS, MMS, etc. We are a relatively small company (I'd say about 40 = people) but we are not a startup. We are located in Tel-Aviv, not far = from the Azrieli center.http://www.tippcom.co.il";>http://www.tippcom.co.il/Whom to = contact:Send your CV, or if you = have any questions about the job (pay, extent, terms), please write to: = mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]">[EMAIL PROTECTED] - he is = the CTO. Please mention where you encountered this job offer. If you = want to ask me something (tech questions would be appropriate), the best = would be my work e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]">[EMAIL PROTECTED].Herouth= --Apple-Mail-1--909967596-- = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Israeli Linux Logo
Quoting Man Gregory <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > This is her first attempt, to draw something on computer... > What came out, you can find here:http://www.savefile.com/files/8597183 > > I am interesting in yours opinion. > What are you think, do we have to continue this work (make banners, draw > another pictures)? The idea of designing a sleek logo that looks nice and not like a pinguin someone drew a flag on, is a good idea. However, I have two problems with this picture. (a) It's not a logo, it's more "artwork", something you'd put in a flyer. (b) I don't want to be identified in any way shape or form with the image of a Haredi, Orthodox Jewish family. It contradicts my deepest values. I'm sure there are certain pictures that would draw the same reaction from religious members of the community. My point, anyway, is that Israeli and Jewish are not the same, and if you want to represent the idea of "Israeli Linux" you should stick to symbols that are Israeli, not Jewish. Yes, the star of David is shared by both, but if you want it to be Israeli, you really should have the complete flag. Or a Tembel hat. Or a falafel. They are anachronistic symbols, but they still say "Israeli". Head covers and peot certainly do not. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Bash loop weirdness
Quoting "Levy, Chen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > It's output is: > > -- > init: 5 > 14553 6 : 14553 7 : 14553 8 : 14553 9 : 14553 10 : 14553 11 : 14553 12 : > 14553 > 13 : 14553 14 : 14553 15 : > after while: 5 > 14553 6 : 14553 7 : 14553 8 : 14553 9 : 14553 10 : 14553 11 : 14553 12 : > 14553 > 13 : 14553 14 : 14553 15 : > after for: 15 > 14553 > -- > > The question is: "Way?" No way! (Sorry, couldn't resist) I think the reason is that the while runs in a sub-process, because it is behind a pipe. It's strange, however, that it does have an initial value for n, I'd have thought that n should be exported for that to happen. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Automatic Keyboard switching languages in Fedora 4
On 26/06/2005, at 18:17, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: This is totally irrelevant: this part means that the window manager uses the layout switching method. However kxkb's switching method takes more actions and is thus less appropriate for per-window mappings and such. Then how come the keyboard switch icon changes in the system tray when I change window? As I said, it all works perfectly well. I set F12 as the keyboard switching key, and I can either use it, click on the keyboard switch icon in the system tray, or expect an automatic switch when I go to the window of an application that was last set in another keyboard layout. I'm still trying to understand what you think is wrong with this picture. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Automatic Keyboard switching languages in Fedora 4
Quoting Oded Arbel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > OTOH, if you switch to Hebrew, and then use the X's group switching > shortcut to change to English, the kxkb tray indicator stays in Hebrew > mode saying you are using the Hebrew layout which means diddly squat to > what language you are actually typing. > I personally find this annoying. I really like the kxkb behavior. I don't switch to English using the arcane X method. I mapped the keyboard switching to an easily-accessible function key (why people prefer pressing two keys together is beyond me), and I use it to switch layouts, and have visual feedback at the bottom. And you can get the variant of your choice for Nikud (I use LyX), using simple shift. Also, I use Dvorak as my main (English) layout, but I still have the US keyboard layout in the menu, in case I want someone to use my computer. In short, if you just get used to switching layouts, it works perfectly, and you can have variants in the layout you switch to. And I've been using application-based keyboard switching myself. Window-based is too fine for me - I want the next chat in Kopete to still have the Hebrew keyboard on even if I closed the chat window. I have a majority of Hebrew-speakers on my ICQ/MSN list. But when I switch to Konsole it's English again. Too bad there is no way for Firefox to understand how to switch the keyboard by context... = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: kopete icq and hebrew
Quoting Kfir Lavi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Hi, > every person that write to me in hebrew, i see the writing in squers. > The properties of the person show that the code is automaticly determind. > Well this does not work. > Does someone here solve this problem? > Using MSN with kopete works fine in hebrew. I haven't succeeded in making kopete handle ICQ in Hebrew in windows-1255, which is what the windows users are using. In fact, it complains about an XML error in the case I tried. They have to work in utf-8 on their side, or you have to switch back to licq. Yuck. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: vim q - indenting a c block at once
Quoting Erez Doron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > hi > > > the only way i'm fimiliar of indenting in vim is when i t indents line > by line when i type it. > i'm looking for a way to select a block in a c file and indent it all at > once > > anyone ? If you just mean indenting it one position to the right, you should mark it (with the mouse) then hit ">". If you want to indent one position to the left, use "<". If you wish it to perform a full pretty-printing, that is, to indent each line in the block as it should be indented - if there are loops in the block indent them more etc. - then use "=" instead. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Network problem
Today, after I had to shut down my computer (my landlord was doing electric work), I brought it back up and lost my Internet connection. No DHCP to cable company. After talking to their support, it seemed my modem receives pings and so the problem is on my side. After a while I think I got it down to defective hardware. Either the cable between the modem and the computer was defective, or the actual ethernet device is. After replacing the cable and shaking it a bit, I got a Link Beat and was able to get DHCP from the cable company and to get my connection to Actcom. But the connection is awfully slow. Pinging to actcom's web server, I get 23% packet loss. Looking at the messages log, I keep getting log messages from"decaps_gre:pptp_gre.c:404" saying "buffering packet X (expecting Y, lost or reordered). Now, I know this should happen from time to time, but not several times per second... In addition, I occasionally get "Oversized Ethernet Frame" messages in the log, from eth1. Now, the question is: should I kiss my onboard ethernet goodbuy and buy another PCI ethernet card? Could the problem be in the modem, or something that I could fix with a screwdriver and some courage? Or maybe it's not at this low level at all, but something temporary at the cable company level or Actcom? Is there a diagnostic tool for the ethernet device I could use? I'm far from being anything remotely like a network guru, so bear with me. My configuration: Mandrake 10.1 OE, kernel 2.6.81-12mdk. Two Ethernet interfaces: eth0 is connected to the LAN, it's a PCI card detected as DEC|DECchip 21142/43. The problematic interface is eth1, connected to the cable modem. It's detected as VIA Technologies|VT6102 [Rhine II 10/100]. The cable modem itself is Terayon. The cable connection is through a dialer, but with a fixed IP if that's at all relevant. The PPtP connection is established using the Kinneret wizard. Any help appreciated, Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Electronic elections
Quoting Gilad Ben-Yossef <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Evgeny Pinchuk wrote: > > Even an eye?! What are you gonna do, poke someone's eye out? :P I'm just wondering if I'm missing something obvious here: why should the identification process be part of the voting process? In the manual voting, the two are separate - first you are identified and checked for uniqueness by the ballot committee, then you go behind the curtain and vote. If what stands behind the curtain is a voting machine, rather than a box with bits of paper, then it's electronic voting. The identification issue is different. Of course, there are still issues: you record the votes in random order so they cannot be identified with the order of visitors in the ballot. You have to make sure that each visitor only gets one chance to press the button. The source has to be made available to the public in order to ensure public trust, etc. But the identification issue has to be separate. Otherwise it violates the secrecy of voting. At most, you can replace the ballot committee with a biometrics machine, but it has to be a separate machine. And its separateness has to be transparent to the voter. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: spam (was: Looking for a Good Web-Forum Implementation)
Quoting Nadav Har'El <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > I got the same spam, and believe me, I also never registered to this > "software.co.il" mailing list. I never even heard of this company before > (and now that I heard of it through spam, I'll make sure never to use it...). > > Moreover, this spam got filtered by Vipul's Razor. This usually means that > many people got the same email, and reported it as being spam (though, I > have to admit, lately Vipul's Razor has been acting up for me, and reporting > some innocent email as being spam). I reported it to spamcop, and I will do so for every copy of that newsletter that I receive until Mr. Lieberman opts me out manually the same way he "opted me in". When I got it, the fact that I did not subscribe for it, and the fact that you have to opt out already marked it as a spam. Lieberman's name being familiar to me, I decided to cut him some slack and try the "unsubscribe" button at the bottom. This led me to the home page of software.co.il, with no obvious link to unsubscription. That clinched it. It is spam-spam-spam-spam. The fact that it was also relayed through a an unfamiliar relay (i.e. not through any Israeli ISP) also marked it as spam. I am a soft hearted person so I won't send copies of the linux kernel source, uncompressed, to Mr. Lieberman's known e-mail addresses. But he certainly deserves it. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: messages disappearing from hamakor linux-il archives
Quoting Tzafrir Cohen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 08:10:20PM +0200, Herouth Maoz wrote: .. > > There are many reasons why people would not want to archive their > > messages. For example, if the message contains information which is > > transient - relevant now, but will become misleading tomorrow. Or when > > the message is off-topic and they see no value in it being retained. > > Basically none of those applies on a mailing list. Mails that should not > be archived are probably either: > > 1. malicious/spam > 2. duplicates > 3. messages that were not meant to be sent to the list. > > (1) is not relevant to this discussion. (2) is not the typpe of thing > that is known in advance, and (3) is actually usually worth archiving > :-( Wrong. What I wrote, I meant in the context of a mailing list. An example of messages which are relevant today but will not be tomorrow: job offers. They are allowed on the list, but there is no reason for archiving them and they may even mislead people. And people do send off-topic messages from time to time. Why archive them? Things like "In yesterday's lecture during Welcome To Linux I accidentally left a T-shirt in room 004, has anybody seen it?" will probably be considered legitimate as this may be the crowd that has a chance of having seen the lost item. But why should this message be kept for posterity? Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: messages disappearing from hamakor linux-il archives
On Wednesday, Nov 3, 2004, at 19:30 Asia/Jerusalem, Nadav Har'El wrote: I wonder why it should "respect" this sort of header. Using a mailing list is a bargain you make. You gain publicity to what you write, and for it you lose privacy. That's right: you can't have publicity *and* privacy at the same time, and usually the balance of privacy and publicity is determined by the mailing list and its subscribers, not by you. This would be the same as saying "Publishing pages on a web site means you want to make them public so I shouldn't respect your robots.txt file". There are many reasons why people would not want to archive their messages. For example, if the message contains information which is transient - relevant now, but will become misleading tomorrow. Or when the message is off-topic and they see no value in it being retained. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A television show about FOSS
Quoting Shlomi Fish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >"If you treat your > users like they were your co-developers they will respond by becoming your > co-developers.". Actually, if you treat your users like they were your co-developers they will respond by becoming very frustrated and angry, and ask you what this command line stuff is, and why they should edit such complicated configuration files, and why they should know what a database is. Not everybody in the world should be a software developer, and I don't like programs which are written for programmers or sysadmins only. "How do I make this punctuation character appear to the left of the English word and not to its right?" "Insert an LRM character where you would have put an English character that would fix this". "Oh, yeah, and your mother smells of elderberries. I spit in your general direction!" All this is to say that I wouldn't try to push this idea on TV. Stick to the eyeballs. Just try not to raise Indiana Jones images in people's heads. :-P = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OO and problems parentheses in mixed hebrew/english text
On Saturday, Oct 30, 2004, at 19:13 Asia/Jerusalem, Amit Aronovitch wrote: 2) Applications don't always handle them right. For example, OpenOffice handles them correctly, but makes them visible - depending on the font, you usually see an annoying blank square in their place (they should be invisible - at least if you call yourself WYSIWIG). Actually, OpenOffice behaves better than you said. When you enter the characters you may get a square, but as soon as you put some text next to them, the squares disappear. At least that's what happens in my environment. By the way, the lyx keyboard variant only contains the marking characters, not the embedding characters. I had a discussion about this in Whatsup this week. I see embedding as more natural, as you don't have to think "Hmm, BiDi problem. If I put an English character somewhere, it should solve it, now what is the proper way to put the extra character?". You just embed the whole English phrase. I just wonder, if I find how to incorporate the LRE, RLE and PDF characters into the lyx variant, how I'm going to push it to the world. The lyx and SI variants are distributed with every Linux, or at least with every Linux that has KDE. By the way, I think this is not the ultimate solution to this problem. Because the characters are invisible, it makes editing them very hard. I prefer the word processor itself to handle this - as Word does in Windows and Mellel does on MacOS X. In Word you mark spans of text as English or Hebrew and it attaches directionality to that span. I had a serious problem when I exported my resumé from OpenOffice to Word: it was exported entirely as English, and thus all the punctuation had the wrong directionality, and I had to mark it as Hebrew one by one where it actually was. If OpenOffice had a span directionality feature, and used it when exporting to Word, the problem would be solved. In Mellel you can embed directionality using a style. This is another spin on span directionality... Herouth To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Banks, Mozilla and life on a stick.
Quoting ik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > But think about it seriously for a second... we as customers have allot more > power then we think we have... > You yourself wants to move to a "better" bank... Thats a consumer decision > for the same reason I written, but less sarcastic.. :) While you're on the barricades, add the Macintosh people to your red brigades... Another thousand people who are frustrated by the banks - and yet can afford an 18,000 NIS computer. I belong to both communities, and I keep shouting at people to cooperate. There is a common interest here. Hello, anybody? By the way, I'm a happy FIBI customer. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: running java application on Linux.
Quoting David Harel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Looking at the batch script (bat file) I see the line: > java -jar TL53.jar > > This makes sens but when I try this line on the Linux machine I get: > Exception in thread "main" java.util.zip.ZipException: No such file or > directory > at java.util.zip.ZipFile.open(Native Method) > at java.util.zip.ZipFile.(ZipFile.java:112) > at java.util.jar.JarFile.(JarFile.java:117) > at java.util.jar.JarFile.(JarFile.java:55) Does the TL53.jar file exist in the current directory or in the java path? Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Martian messages
On Friday, Oct 22, 2004, at 02:57 Asia/Jerusalem, Ilya Konstantinov wrote: Then again, you should have a route to whatever address thru the cable company's default gateway. Do you have a default route configured for the Ethernet interface (should be configured as part of the DHCP discovery)? Or did you create a static route to your ISP's PPTP > server? Well, the initial routing is done in the NIC's initialization, and then Actcom's dialer script adds 192.117.122.13 (actcom's router) through the gateway it extracts from the DHCP lease, deletes the default route and lets pptp add a default route. I think the upshot of all this is that there is a route to the addresses that I get in the log, but that route is through ppp0, not eth1, and the kernel complains because they send their broadcasts directly through eth1. What you are saying is basically that I should just ignore these messages. This is annoying, though, because if someone attempts to spoof an address (which is what the martian messages are meant to reveal), I'll never be able to see the attempt through all the background noise. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: automatic credit charging on open e-shops
Quoting Lior Kesos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Has anybody implemented an oscommerce/zencart + automatic charging scenario. Yes. In our little country, it usually requires a middle man. That is - a company that connects to Shva (which does clearance for all credit cards in Israel) and gives you a protocol with which you connect to it, as well as an interface that allows you to follow the transactions and find problems. I'll give you the name of such a company in private, if you want. But I'm sure there is more than one. The interface in our case was https based - you pass it some parameters (your user ID, credit card number, sum, type of currency), and it returns success or an error code. I implemented this using CURL from PHP. So the credit card numbers are not kept in your database and do not become a privacy liability. We did keep the last four digits of the credit cards for follow-up, though. Of course you have to set up an account with the clearance company, and if I'm not mistaken the service is limited to a specific IP, which means that you may have to negotiate with your ISP to not use transparent proxy on your machine. There is also a possibility of working directly with Shva, but if my memory serves right, they do not supply IP-based services, only a telephony interface. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Martian messages
Quoting Oleg Goldshmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff is 255.255.255.255 - the broadcast address > > 00:0f:34:7b:c8:a0 is the MAC of the offending host > > 08:06 is the protocol - ARP, if memory serves. > .. >Is the MAC above on your LAN? Not to my knowledge. There are only two machines on the lan, which means three NICS+Modem, none of whose MAC addresses is the one above. > What is the default gateway for the other hosts on the LAN? What > addresses are they assigned? The other machine connected to the switch is 192.168.1.2, and its default gateway is the linux machine, which is 192.168.1.1. But all this is through eth0. Thanks, Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Martian messages
I asked this question on Whatsup and there was no help, I hope someone here can clue me in, given that I'm not exactly an expert network manager... I've switched from ADSL to cable yesterday, and although the network seems to work, I constantly get martian messages in the kernel log, which probably means that something is misconfigured. I want to know if it's my setup, something at the cable company, something at actcom, and whether it's solvable. My network contains two computers. The Linux is connected through eth1 to the Internet via cable modem and a dialer to actcom. Its eth0 is connected to the local network, that is to the switch to which the other machine is also connected. The addresses on that subnet are 192.168.1.*. Firewall and masquerading are done by shorewall running on the Linux (which is a Mandrake 10 OE). eth1 is configured with DHCP. eth0 is configured statically. Here is a sample of the martian messages: Oct 18 20:12:01 Motti kernel: martian source 172.27.107.135 from 172.27.96.1, on dev eth1 Oct 18 20:12:01 Motti kernel: ll header: ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:00:0f:34:7b:c8:a0:08:06 Oct 18 20:12:06 Motti kernel: printk: 217 messages suppressed. Oct 18 20:12:06 Motti kernel: martian source 82.81.237.78 from 82.81.237.1, on dev eth1 Oct 18 20:12:06 Motti kernel: ll header: ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:00:0f:34:7b:c8:a0:08:06 Oct 18 20:12:11 Motti kernel: printk: 217 messages suppressed. Oct 18 20:12:11 Motti kernel: martian source 172.16.102.140 from 172.16.100.1, on dev eth1 Oct 18 20:12:11 Motti kernel: ll header: ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:00:0f:34:7b:c8:a0:08:06 Oct 18 20:12:16 Motti kernel: printk: 222 messages suppressed. Oct 18 20:12:16 Motti kernel: martian source 213.8.242.50 from 213.8.242.1, on dev eth1 Oct 18 20:12:16 Motti kernel: ll header: ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:00:0f:34:7b:c8:a0:08:06 And here is the output of route: Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric RefUse Iface rtr7.c.actcom.n 172.22.96.1 255.255.255.255 UGH 0 00 eth1 rtr7.c.actcom.n * 255.255.255.255 UH0 00 ppp0 192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 00 eth0 172.22.96.0 * 255.255.224.0 U 0 00 eth1 127.0.0.0 * 255.0.0.0 U 0 00 lo default rtr7.c.actcom.n 0.0.0.0 UG0 00 ppp0 If there is any additional data I can supply, please tell me. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: getting vim to type hebrew in vim
Quoting Aaron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Well I am using fluxbox, would I be better off with gnome or kde for > this? > > I really like fluxbox but if it is the cause I will sadly return to kde > or gnome. > > > so far I have no hebrew, but I will go into kde and see if I have any > luck there. I work with gvim, and everything works fine for me. I don't think it is KDE, though. First you have to make sure that your vim has been compiled with Hebrew support. Personally I don't use the Hebrew input method built in gvim but the keyboard layout in X. And the entire environment has to be UTF-8. No, xterm is not a VT. VT means Virtual Terminal which is one of the terminals you get when you press alt-control-F1 to F6. In X it's a whole other kettle of fish. Do you have a utf-8 encoded Hebrew file? Just cat it, and see if you can see the Hebrew in your xterm. If not, then no playing with vim will help. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: kde switch lenguage
Quoting Kfir Lavi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > my xfree settings are good and working, but when kde is in control, i can't > use shift shift to switch keyboards, just ctrl alt k. > I did configure kde to control keyboard switching, but i can't activate the > keys. I simply use the KDE layout - I find it easy to configure and use. I just changed its keyboard shortcut to what I wanted (in my case, I just used F12). Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hebrew filenames from a Windows(XP) zip file.
Quoting Amir Hardon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Just for testing the encoding I listed the file names into a text file > ('unzip > -l > file.txt'), and tried it to convert to different encodings using iconv. > But iconv always failed(No matter which encoding I'm trying to use), > with the following message: > iconv: illegal input sequence at position 112 > The first byte that supposed to be Hebrew is at position 112, > it's value is 0xEA which is "Kaf sofit" in iso-8859-8. Doing an appropriate od on the resulting file may shade more light on the problem (e.g. od -t x1). My first guess would be that the names themselves are in ucs-2, but since the output from zip mixes them with ascii, you get an encoding error, because ucs-2, unlike utf-8, cannot mix with 1-byte characters. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Meta] Smart People "Leaving" Linux-IL
Quoting Shlomi Fish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > One option is to split this mailing list. One possibility would be: > > 1. linux-il - mailing list for Q&A and newbie questions.[1] Also > announcements > of events. (snip) First, the list was not supposed to be a newbie list in any case, so this first one doesn't make sense. I'm sure people don't want to downgrade this list into a newbie list, and that's why there is a different mailing list call gnubies. Second, the "forum" method in which you move threads into a different forums when they become irrelevant for the discussion is not applicable to mailing list. There is no sane person who will subscibe to a linux-il-wars list. Most of us subscribe to lists for sane reasons, and start a flame war incidentally, wishing in general that there are less flame wars and more info. Also, how exactly do you move a discussion? And how do you cause a person who is subscribed to one mailing list to be aware that there is a discussion going on in another list to which he is not subscribed? In a forum system, there are various ways to do that. First, they are all available to everybody, and you can look in from time to time, and second, there are usually things like "last messages posted" areas in the main page which tell you something. You can also keep track of your thread even if it moved, if you have asked for email updates on it, because even when it moves, you still get the e-mail reminders. All of which doesn't happen in mailing lists and would be too convoluted to try to implement by social engineering. In my many years of mailing list and forum experience, I came to one sad conclusion: in order for a mailing list to be productive, with low noise and high content, it has to have strict rules, and ruthless and very active moderators, who are not ashamed to kick people out when they break the rules after they have been warned. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: spam on this list - the culprit
Quoting "Weinstein, Alon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Here's a way to avoid it -- goto http://www.nezeq.co.il/ , and see that by > you (theoratically) can call 04-8741144 and demand to be removed from their > list :) No, a better way is to see all the relays and providers which are used by this system, and call their helpdesk, saying "Good day, we are speaking from the Hebrew University, we wish to avoid blocking everything coming from your network, so how's about not allowing this slimeball to work through you?" Of course, you may say "I am from IGLU" or "I am from Hamakor", but it's less impressive... Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Free PHP IDE
On Monday, May 24, 2004, at 18:53 Asia/Jerusalem, Amir Hardon wrote: Someone know another IDE? or maybe someone have successfully configured phpeclipse? Have you tried Quanta Plus? It's supposed to have debugging support. I like its editor, I'm not a debugger person. Whatever you use will probably require debugging support on the server side. Have you done anything about that? Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Will someone unsubscribe the job advertiser, please?
Quoting Muli Ben-Yehuda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On Mon, May 24, 2004 at 07:47:17AM +0300, Herouth Maoz wrote: > > Perhaps everybody's junk filters are filtering this, but it's really > > annoying to get two job-offer junk mails a week, which I can't do > > Which job offers are you talking about? if it's Linux / FOSS related, > it's allowed. I'm speaking of the automated job4all message that's being sent in two copies every Sunday. I mean - someone from a company that's looking for Linuxers is alright, of course. An automated spam containing jobs which may or may not be relevant - it's an HTML message, and I don't display those in HTML if possible. Anybody who is interested in an automated mailing of jobs can subscribe to those messages directly. When they arrive in this way, I think they definitely fall under the heading of "Spam" - and this is exactly how Spamcop tags them, by the way. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Will someone unsubscribe the job advertiser, please?
Perhaps everybody's junk filters are filtering this, but it's really annoying to get two job-offer junk mails a week, which I can't do anything about since they come through a mailing list (I usually report all my junk through spamcop, but only the list owner is allowed to report junk that came through a list). Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: are MDK 9.2 update mirrors up to date?
Quoting Diego Iastrubni <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Just for your information, the release cycle (+updates) of mdk92 is over. > this > means no more updates for you mister :) Excuse me? MDK 9.2 reached end-of-life? I don't think so. There are still updates for 9.1. Security updates still come in until the end-of-life. And in MandrakeSecure, they have not announced any end-of-life since 8.2. And by the way, I asked the same question about the Mandrake update mirrors a couple of weeks ago, no reply. I switched to an official Mandrake mirror (in Europe) and I no longer trust the IGLU mirror. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Who is in charge of the IGLU mirrors again?
Whoever is in charge of the IGLU site, can you put a contact to whoever is in charge of the mirror, so that complaints can be forwarded directly to the person in charge? Anyway, the Mandrake updates mirrors for version 9.1 is out of synch again. The latest file at ftp://ftp.iglu.org.il/pub/distributions/Mandrake/updates/9.1/RPMS is from 9/1/2004, whereas in the official mirrors, there are files from 12/2/2004. For example: ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Mandrake/Mandrake/updates/9.1/RPMS/XFree86-Xvfb-4.3-8.7.91mdk.i586.rpm Thanks for your attention, Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: cp: omitting directory
Quoting David Howard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Hi all. > > I'm having problems setting up a cron job to back up Thunderbird mail. > This is Thunderbird 0.4. When testing the command syntax I get: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ cp > /home/david/.mozilla-thunderbird/default/ejlqdp1x.slt/Mail /mnt/archive/Mail > cp: omitting directory > `/home/david/.mozilla-thunderbird/default/ejlqdp1x.slt/Mail' > > (sorry about the line wrap). > > Googling for "cp: omitting directory" produced unanswered questions > similar to mine, plus instances of "cannot stat ", or > "no such file/directory". cp cannot handle directories as the source, unless you use the "-r" parameter. man cp. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [JOB OFFER] Adwise Seeking - PHP Professional
On Sunday, Jan 18, 2004, at 20:13 Asia/Jerusalem, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: This does not mean much. All the above links are from a few years ago, and the company that was closed had dealt with advertising for ISPs or some such, while this offer is for a company, possibly resurrected, that is interested in "real-time Messaging Management Solutions for ISPs and Backbones". Oh, and the difference is ahem... They offered spamming tools in pop-up windows in the past. Now they offer "real time messaging management tools". If it is pink, is packed in a tin can, and used to make "oink oink" sounds, it's spam. A more serious problem is that I get a server error for www.adwise.net - the URL that is in the OP's signature. Looks like the server has port 80 closed. You should be able to send your resume to adwise.net, but you'll have to do it "blindly", without as much as checking out the company's website. That's what Google Cache is for: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:bet3Sw9Faz8J:www.adwise.net/ You can get at the other web pages there using the cache, if you want to. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Unique identification of a computer
On Sunday, Jan 18, 2004, at 11:00 Asia/Jerusalem, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote: A better question would be why do you need it. If it's for copy protection, forget about it - it's trivial to defeat, not to mention highly obnoxious I've heard of systems which use it for additional security. Like some banks, who want user A to only be able to access their system from machine foo, not machine bar or any other machine. I think this is in order to make sure that even if the thief somehow got hold of A's passphrase or private key or whatever, they still need to actually use the original person's station. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Nvidia Conclusion
On Saturday, Jan 3, 2004, at 10:09 Asia/Jerusalem, Shlomi Fish wrote: 1. I need to explictly download and build it whenever I upgrade the kernel (and possibly X as well). Mandrake does not ship it with their distro so they won't taint their distribution with a proprietary binary-only driver. Join Mandrake Club. It helps support Mandrake (and ensures you have that distro around for a while yet), and you get lots of benefits. One of them is commercial packages available only to club members. Nvidia drivers included. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Ynet: MoF considers using Linux (probably Mandrake) for desktops
Quoting Shachar Shemesh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > My guess (pure > guesswork) is that IBM is the one offering the actual migration. Isn't IBM's preferred distro SuSE? The article at least talks about Mandrake. Herouth = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]