Okay, in order to pose this question I have to come clean here and admit my
age:
Right around 1960 or '61 (I was five or six years old at the time) I was
given a toy computer. I suppose it was meant to represent a mainframe
(what else could it have been, given the era?) and there was a rectangular
(4 x 8? 5 X 7?) array of blinkenlights on the front of it. There was also
a tray in the front which accepted a small punched card. A set of these
cards came with the toy. Each card had a multiple-choice question printed
on it, as well as four answers to choose from, numbered A through D.
Additional card sets could be purchased separately.
When a card was placed into the tray and the tray was then closed, the
blinkenlights would display a "random" pattern for a couple of seconds
(always the same pattern) and then the array would display the correct
answer to the printed question, A B C or D. It didn't take long for me to
be able to read the holes in the cards, and I even "modified" a couple of
them so that the toy displayed an incorrect answer.
Does *anyone* remember this thing? It must have cost a few bucks back
then. What was it called?
Glen
0/0
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marvin Johnston [mailto:marvin@rain.org]
> Douglas Quebbeman wrote:
> > Seriously, Outlook isn't the source of the stated problems;
> half-assed,
> > self-taught, sycophantic sysadmins who can't secure their
> systems are!
> Is that true, or has network management gotten to the point that it
> takes the equivilent of a PhD to be able to manage the thing?
Actually, no, but it's a combination of some things:
The software that's mandated for use in most companies (by people
who have too much authority in the company and no idea what they're
doing...) is terrible, and hard to manage.
The people being hired to run networks these days only know how to
"use" this terrible software, leaving anything that isn't garbage
to be either neglected or outsourced. (usually the former...)
People don't expect decent performance from their systems, because
of the aforementioned terrible software, and so points one and two
continue.
Well, that's what _I_ think it is...
Chris
Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL
/usr/bin/perl -e '
print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Woyciesjes [mailto:DAW@yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu]
> You want to know why this message subject immediately
> jumped out and
> grabbed my attention?
> My Wife is the Grainger/National Accounts Coordinator
> for Hubbell
> wiring devices. She's one of the people who tell dumb-***
> electricians that
> you can't use a 15 amp plug in a 30 amp circuit...
Well, um, I suppose you _could_ do it, if you didn't mind toasting the connector, and possibly some other stuff in the process :)
Chris
Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL
/usr/bin/perl -e '
print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'
> ----------
> From: Eric Dittman
>
> > So, to see if I understand you correctly...
> >
> > - The SBB is the tray for the HDD...
>
> The SBB is "Storage Building Block", with the storage element inside.
>
Okay, a simple "yes" would've worked... ;-)
> > - The SBBs for use in the 350, have a 50 pin connector, none have the
> SCA...
>
> Yes. The BA350 and BA356 have the same backplane connector, but the
> wide SBBs can not be seen when installed in a BA350. However, narrow
> SBBs can be used in a BA356.
>
Not surprised...
> > -- If so, I wonder if there is room inside the tray to fit a SCA
> 80-50pin
> > adapter?
>
> Usually not. There isn't much room in the 3.5" SBBs. Maybe, if the
> SCA converter was real small, it may fit.
>
Hmmm, bummer...
<<<<<clip>>>>>
> > -If I want to use narrow SCA-80 drives in a Digital Storage Shelf, I
> should
> > look for the 356 and SBBs for that?
>
> It would be easier. With a BA356 you can use a BA35X-MG narrow
> personality module if you want to connect to a narrow SCSI bus
> or use a wide-narrow external SCSI cable. The only drawback
> (which may not be an issue for you) is the HSxY0 raid controllers
> don't work well with a wide-narrow external cable.
> --
>
Alright, thanks for the info, Eric. Well, I do have a (so far)
winning bid of $6.00 on a BA-350. I wonder if that's what it really is...
I'll see what I can find for SBBs for it ( has only 2 power supplies). If I
can't use it, no big loss.
Alternatively, I've been thinking about just converting a PC case to
a drive tower, and just have a pile o' disks. And if I want some RAID, use
software RAID. Yes, this is personal use. I'd never suggest software RAID in
a business...
It'd be a shame to see 7 good 1GB HDDs go to waste...
--- David A Woyciesjes
--- C & IS Support Specialist
--- Yale University Press
--- mailto:david.woyciesjes@yale.edu
--- (203) 432-0953
--- ICQ # - 90581
Mac OS X 10.1.2 - Darwin Kernel Version 5.2: Fri Dec 7 21:39:35 PST 2001
Running since 01/22/2002 without a crash
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doc [mailto:doc@mdrconsult.com]
> FWIW, I got curious. Everyone has been mentioning FidoNet
> in the past
> tense, and I just did work 2 years ago for a guy who was
> trying hard to
> get me into it. I just looked, and there are 8 active Fido dialups in
> Austin.
Yep, it's probably still going. :)
Chris
Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL
/usr/bin/perl -e '
print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'
I think A/UX 3.0 is only 7 years old, so its not really on topic, but it
_is_ dead, so that has to account for something!
I recently downloaded the CD image of the A/UX 3.0.1 installation CD & a
boot disk from http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/syslist.html
I got the boot disk extracted (it was a diskcopy_image) and the CD image
itself was gzipped. I gunzipped it on my linux box and burned it onto a
CD with:
cdrecord -speed 8 -dev 0,6,0 -eject -v AUX_3.0.1_Install.toast_image
When I try to boot up on a IIci, the floppy works ok, and it starts to
search for the CD in the CD drive. The cd drive is a toshiba 5401B, I
pulled from an alpha. It never finds a valid disk. So, to try to
figure out what was wrong, I used BasiliskII (a mac-on-unix emulation)
and tried to mount the CD image as a disk under system 7.6...and it
wanted to format it. Should the CD be mountable?
With this bit of experimentation, it looks like the CD image isn't
right.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
Brian Wheeler
bdwheele(a)indiana.edu
Hallo to all members in SoCal. I plan to drop out of the
Californian sky this weekend (just stoped by at the travel
agency and found out that a flight Munich to LA is way
cheaper than Munich New York - in fact even chaeper than
a trip to Paderborn and back :). If the crater at LAX isn't
too big (and our on board terrrorist doesn't have other
plans) I would like to know if there is anything special
in the LA area for the WE.
Gruss
H.
BTW: Newsfactor has a nice cartoon about yahoo auctions today
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/images/cartoon/king010302.jpg
--
VCF Europa 3.0 am 27./28. April 2002 in Muenchen
http://www.vcfe.org/
> ----------
> From: Eric Dittman
>
> > Well, I think I may have found that guy. I need to find out if a
> > Digital BA 350-SA Storage Shelf is what I'm looking for...
>
> The BA350 storage shelves are narrow-only. You can't use the
> wide SBBs in them. A BA356 would probably be a better choice.
> A lot of the newer wide SBBs use SCA drives.
>
> The BA35x use a proprietary backplane, not an SCA backplane.
> Fortunately, you can find the SBBs cheap.
> --
>
Yeah, probably the same backplane that's in the older AlphaServers here...
So, to see if I understand you correctly...
- The SBB is the tray for the HDD...
- The SBBs for use in the 350, have a 50 pin connector, none have the SCA...
-- If so, I wonder if there is room inside the tray to fit a SCA 80-50pin
adapter?
-If I want to use narrow SCA-80 drives in a Digital Storage Shelf, I should
look for the 356 and SBBs for that?
--- David A Woyciesjes
--- C & IS Support Specialist
--- Yale University Press
--- mailto:david.woyciesjes@yale.edu
--- (203) 432-0953
--- ICQ # - 90581
Mac OS X 10.1.2 - Darwin Kernel Version 5.2: Fri Dec 7 21:39:35 PST 2001
Running since 01/22/2002 without a crash
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Julius Sridhar [mailto:vance@ikickass.org]
On Mon, 11 Feb 2002, Tothwolf wrote:
> > SCSI itself is confusing...basically the bus will operate at the fastest
> > rate of the slowest device on the bus.
> This is simply not the case.
This took me a while to get... it would have been better if
you'd said "this is not always the case."
If I understand properly, you are saying that, for instance,
you can plug a fast/wide disk into an ultra bus, and the bus
(of course), wouldn't run the fast/wide disk at its highest
potential bandwidth. Conversely, a narrow disk in a wide
bus would not slow the bus down.
On the other hand, I understood Toth to be talking about bus
clock only. In that case, his previous statement is as true
as yours, which, oddly enough, was made in argument to it. ;)
Chris
Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL
/usr/bin/perl -e '
print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'
Begin forwarded message:
<original poster's info snipped>
Yet another Microsoft Outlook exploit is on the loose... and this time the
arrogance of the recommended solution is breathtaking. The problem is the
built-in support for UUENCODED text within the body of a message. Prudent
programmers will use a starting pattern such as
"\n\nbegin ([[:octal:]]+) ([^\n]+)\n"
and subsequently verify that each line has the expected format. Even
checking only the first few lines (e.g., verifying that the first
character correctly encodes the length of the rest of the line)
essentially eliminates any chance of a false hit.
Sadly, it will surprise few people that Microsoft cuts straight to the
heart of the matter. If your line starts with "begin " (possibly with two
spaces), Outlook/Outlook Express WILL interpret the rest of the message as
a UUENCODED attachment. It doesn't need a preceding blank line, nor a
following octal number. It doesn't need subsequent lines that actually
look like UUENCODED data.
There are some reports on slashdot that later versions of O/OE have
discarded the "view source" command, with the effect that the rest of the
message is permanently lost to the user. The use of this bug as a DOS
attack on mailing lists that use a 'digest' approach is left as an
exercise for the reader.
Naturally, it hasn't taken long for the malware writers to jump on the
bandwagon. All you need to do to get around the "strip executable
attachment" killjoys is to put the malware right in the body of the
message! Just start a line with "begin 666 www.myparty.yahoo.com" and
you're off and running!
Microsoft's official position, at
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q265230 , is
stunning in it's <s>feeble-mindedness</s> simplicity. We, and by "we"
I mean every person on the planet who may ever send a message to an
O/OE <s>victim</s> user, or have a message forwarded to such users,
are advised (with editorial comments) to:
* not start messages with the word "begin"
(actually, it's *any* line starting with the word "begin". And
that's effectively a ban on the word "begin" for anyone using a
mail agent with transparent line wrapping, e.g., the web mail
portals that some ISPs are pushing.)
* capitalize the word "begin," even when used within a sentence. E.g.,
"We will Begin the new project when Bob returns from his vacation.
* Use a different word such as "start" or "commence." E.g., all
training materials for new Visual Basic programmers shall henceforce
refer to "start/end" loops instead of "begin/end" loops.
Microsoft's justification for suggesting a significant change to the
English language instead of fixing their bug is given as:
"In a SMTP e-mail message, a file attachment that is encoded in
UUencode format is defined when the word "begin" is followed by
two spaces and then some data,..."
Needless to say there is no citation given for this "fact." That's
probably related to the fact that UUENCODE was defined by UUCP, not SMTP,
and that every encoder/decoder I have seen requires a leading blank line
and a octal file permissions code.
But the damage is done - since malware is exploiting this bug we now get
to put into place filters that don't just strip executable attachments or
properly formatted UUENCODED blocks, we also have to strip *improperly*
formatted UUENCODED blocks!
Bear Giles
For archives see:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
--
Until later: Geoffrey esoteric(a)3times25.net
"...the system (Microsoft passport) carries significant risks to users
that are not made adequately clear in the technical documentation
available."- David P. Kormann and Aviel D. Rubin, AT&T Labs - Research
- http://www.avirubin.com/passport.html
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