From: ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld.invalid
On Sat, 01 Dec 2012, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in article
, Adam wrote:
>Moe Trin wrote:
>I think the cold is getting better, but a week of warmer weather is
>ahead so I'm not sure.
The forecast here is still snowbird weather (~80F highs) but I had
the air-conditioner guy out for the annual checks (it's cool enough
they can get into the attic without melting to check the air
handlers) - remember these are heat pumps doing heating AND cooling.
Did you see the story (CNN and others) about DaVita Inc.? Apparently,
this complaint (in Georgia) is _much_ larger than the one they settled
for a $55 million fine in Texas earlier this year.
>>> One of my neighbors is using WEP.
>But even if I did crack my neighbor's WEP, what could I do that I
>can't do already? All I can think of is access his files, or use his
>DSL/satellite connection if it was faster than mine or had a bigger
>quota.
If it's not Verizon, it's certainly going to be faster than NetZero
or Juno when Verizon is down ;-)
>> Then there were the "personal firewall" programs that used to raise
>> major flame-wars on several firewall newsgroups.
>Different brands, or the value of them at all?
Mainly the difference in brands and perceived performance, but the
individuals touting one or the other had no real clue about what a
firewall was doing. They were quite concerned that it blocked all
unwanted incoming (never understanding why a port with nothing
listening wasn't exploitable) and happy that it didn't respond with
a RST or ICMP Type 3 Code 3, because that made them invisible. They
really trusted grc.com "Shields Up", even though it only scanned a
limited number of windoze ports (like 13 ports as late as 2003 and
only 26 in 2010), not realizing (I suppose) that there were 131000
other ports, and at least three other protocols they should check.
>Seems to me they keep malware from phoning home if the user's
>conscientious and doesn't automatically click "allow" for everything.
That's the major problem. It's the old tale of the boy crying Wolf!
With a significant number of web pages using content providers like
akamai, there were also a large number of false alarms, and sites
that "didn't load" because the content provider was blocked as
obvious spy-ware or something.
>> I don't think so - SIMTEL itself was "wsmr-simtel20.army.mil" that
>> had the largest archive of MS-DOS material.
>I remember ftp-ing it. The web site now using that name has lots of
>downloads although most seem to be free demos of products you can buy
>through that site.
I remember it as "simtel.arpa" with a 10.0.x.x address before they
got their current range in 1985.
>> They (like uiuc.edu) used to be a significant source. Remember the
>> wu-ftpd server? (341520 Jul 1 2000 wu-ftpd-2.6.1.tar.gz). Even
>> U-Washington dropped their development of 'pine' and 'pico'.
>WU is private Washington University in St. Louis, MO, no connection
>to the state or district also named after George.
Yup - and Washington University (also known as WUSTL) has nothing to
do with 'pine' or 'pico' either.
>> I think every major university had something...
>I remember (sort of) getting Kermit from Columbia, mostly by email in
>either a hex ASCII or "virtual punch" format.
I don't recall how it came - much of the stuff for DOS was regular
.com or .exe files ready to run. There could be a separate text file
for documentation. Sometimes it was an .arc archive, compressed with
"squeeze".
>>> I /almost/ bought a laptop yesterday. I could have gotten a
>>> refurbished Thinkpad T60 from Staples for a little over $100
>>> [...] but it was out of stock.
>> Wacha gonna use it for? ;-)
>So I can bring it to LUG meetings and use it there while ignoring the
>presentation, what else? :-) Also to use while waiting for
>appointments and such. No urgent need, just thought it might be a
>nice toy.
Reasonable - don't forget to buy a carrying case for it. I originally
used a 'courier bag' but replaced it with a purpose designed bag that
also holds extra stuff like the wall-wart and a network cable. It's
cushioned as well while the courier bag wasn't.
>> Which one?
>T60-2008, or if that was unavailable a T60-0020, not the T60-0019,
>although all three were out of stock.
Depending on the keyboard and pointing device, they look reasonable.
>And for the refurbished ones, even the HD size. I figured it would
>be enough for basic Wi-Fi and office apps. "eris" is five years old
>too, and still can handle most tasks adequately as long as they
>don't need too much RAM (everything except graphics and VMs).
Seems to be able to hold 4 GB of DDR2 - I see ads for 4 GB (2x2)
PC6400 for $45, which is close to the price of 16 GB of DDR3, so I'd
suggest upgrading that as soon as you can spare the cash. The hard
disk looks to be standard, so that can also be upgraded if needed.
Does it have a network port, or is it wireless only?
[NetZero/Juno wrapper script]
>> Some shells don't have a built-in 'echo' command, but /bin/echo
>> does honor a -n option.
>I tried "echo -n something" as unprefixed (just "echo -n whatever"),
>"builtin echo", "/bin/echo" and "/usr/bin/echo" with every shell from
>'ash' to 'zsh' that Mandriva and Fedora had in their repositories.
The zsh I have access to is one of them that lacks the built-in.
>"Unprefixed" and "/bin/echo" both handled '-n' as I wanted in all the
>shells (including bash and sh) except yash.
OK
>Fedora has /usr/bin/echo symlinked to /bin/echo.
No idea why - the FHS requires /bin/echo, and if it's there, there is
no need for /usr/bin/echo.
>> "/usr/bin/killall -9q pppd" ??? DO NOT try to kill pppd with
>> anything other than SIGTERM ("-15"
>I remember one instance when "killall pppd" didn't kill it (and
>therefore IIRC didn't hang up the phone)
Were you the same user (or root) who ran that pppd? That's the only
reason it shouldn't work. pppd doesn't block/ignore a SIGTERM.
>Which do you recommend, "killall -wq pppd" (which in theory could
>hang), or "killall -q pppd" with one retry if not successful, or
>putting another "killall -q pppd" at the end of the script "just to
>be sure"?
See the "NOTES" section of the pppd man page. I see no need for the
extra kill. You could check the killall exit status to see if it
worked. BTW, a SIGKILL (-9) causes pppd to die, but (for example)
doesn't remove lock files or running the *-down files it would
normally do.
>> Also, the 'basename' command lacks a full PATH, but the location
>> is distro dependent (/bin/ on some, /usr/bin/ on others).
[continued in next message]
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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