Jihad needs scientists

[Phil Carmody]

kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) writes:

In article <es928h$8ss_001@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
In article <es829g$2hl$2@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
[...]
No, this is all silly. The backup I have been refering to is not cover in
the cases in your list. What I suggested was a complete image of the
drive.

That has the problem of also preserving the bad spots of the disk.
I'm assuming that you do want an image of the disk and not drive.

Preseving the bad spots is a feature not a problem. It is a record of
exactly how things were warts and all that you want to keep.

This would store the times as they were at the time archive was
made and not change anything about any of them

The only times that matter for backup are the time of creation and the
last modification. It doesn't matter when the last access happened.

You are in error. Last access is an important datum.

Please explain exactly how you thing the last access is important. What
do you do with this information? In this context, the only use of that
information will be a mistake.

The only other time I can can see it being important is if you're
usig some kind of HFS, in which case the concepts of backing up
the filesystem kind of become an irrelevance.

Phil
--
"Home taping is killing big business profits. We left this side blank
so you can help." -- Dead Kennedys, written upon the B-side of tapes of
/In God We Trust, Inc./.

 

[MassiveProng]

On Fri, 2 Mar 2007 13:26:33 -0500, krw <krw@att.bizzzz> Gave us:

You might have some 'splainin
to do later, though Dimmie.

No, retard boy. Hand written checks are no longer accepted at your
bank and haven't been for decades.

Hand filled out and endorsed bank printed checks are the only
written bearer instruments you have to work with, so you are wrong
again. Your EFTS session is bullshit too, as such a case would need
NO printed or handwritten article.

 

[MassiveProng]

On Fri, 2 Mar 2007 13:26:33 -0500, krw <krw@att.bizzzz> Gave us:

That's the whole point, dimmie! It doesn't *have* to be a legal
document. That's the whole pint, dimmie!

Yes it *does*, you fucking retard. That is the ONLY point.

 

[nonsense@unsettled.com]

MassiveProng wrote:

On Fri, 2 Mar 2007 13:26:33 -0500, krw <krw@att.bizzzz> Gave us:


That's the whole point, dimmie! It doesn't *have* to be a legal
document. That's the whole pint, dimmie!



Yes it *does*, you fucking retard. That is the ONLY point.

I met a fellow who was able to put his entire resume on
the back side of a business card.

Having met you, virtually, I now know two.

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <87zm6v8gvb.fsf@nonospaz.fatphil.org>,
Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) writes:
In article <es928h$8ss_001@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
In article <es829g$2hl$2@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
[...]
No, this is all silly. The backup I have been refering to is not cover in
the cases in your list. What I suggested was a complete image of the
drive.

That has the problem of also preserving the bad spots of the disk.
I'm assuming that you do want an image of the disk and not drive.

Preseving the bad spots is a feature not a problem. It is a record of
exactly how things were warts and all that you want to keep.

This would store the times as they were at the time archive was
made and not change anything about any of them

The only times that matter for backup are the time of creation and the
last modification. It doesn't matter when the last access happened.

You are in error. Last access is an important datum.

Please explain exactly how you thing the last access is important. What
do you do with this information? In this context, the only use of that
information will be a mistake.

The only other time I can can see it being important is if you're
usig some kind of HFS, in which case the concepts of backing up
the filesystem kind of become an irrelevance.

The backup, however, shouldn't look at such things. You want it to make
an exact copy of how things are. You don't want it to out smart you.

BTW: I have seen backups that turned out to be useless because the
software tried to be smart.


--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <MPG.2052091685c10ec298a03a@news.individual.net>,
krw <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:
[...]

Modern disks don't show their "bad spots" to the system. They're
replaced from a cache of hidden sectors as they fail. This doesn't
mean it isn't possible to lose data when one fails though.

That makes the "logical bad spot" and the "physical bad spot" two
different things but from the user's point of view it is just a disk that
fails less often.

--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

[Phil Carmody]

kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) writes:

You are in error. Last access is an important datum.
....
The backup, however, shouldn't look at such things. You want it to make
an exact copy of how things are. You don't want it to out smart you.

Absolutely agreed.

BTW: I have seen backups that turned out to be useless because the
software tried to be smart.

That would be like most software, then. KISS.

Phil
--
"Home taping is killing big business profits. We left this side blank
so you can help." -- Dead Kennedys, written upon the B-side of tapes of
/In God We Trust, Inc./.

 

In article <es9f0f$q95$6@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:

In article <es98ds$8qk_001@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
[....]
The other stuff I've spoken to elsewhere.

The case that I brought up was database; with databases, the data
is always a moving target that can never be snap-shot with accuracy.

This is not always true. In a multidisk mirroring system, you can do a
commit and unmount one drive. It will be an image of what was there at
the time the commit happened. Disks are fast enough that this option can
be used for most applications. The delay caused by the OS's commit
operation is not very long.

I know this is one strategy. One kind of implementation was called
striping. For a reservation system, this may not be the best
technique because data entry and maintenance is over a wide
geographical area; the speed of light is very slow.

[....]
Normal OS file rules prohibit file "co-edit" sessions.

Nope. It can be done but you really have to know what you're
doing. We implemented a system calls that would help different
programs "share" files.

Note his word "normal" in the above.

I was talking about normal. Windows is not normal.

You can have multiple streams of
data going to a file even on a Windows machine. All that is needed is to
have one task that does the actual write operations. This is usually
combined with "event based" recording where the transactions are recorded
with time stamps so that the correct order is insured.

That's not very effiecient if your app is writing a lot. There
will be a bottleneck at the timekeeper's point in the execution.
Contention also needs handling because two events could have
the same time stamp. Comm has been dealing with this kind of
stuff since I can remember. Error handling is not straight
forward in this case.

/BAH

 

In article <87tzx3ahj9.fsf@nonospaz.fatphil.org>,
Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:
You are in error. Last access is an important datum.

Not universally. I'd be tempted to say very very rarely,

It wasn't rare on our installations nor our customers' installations.

except in a few forensic situations.

Are you familiar with the concept of reading filesystems
read-only?

No. It was almost impossible to make a file system read-only
with our implementation. The monitor needed to be able to
write to BADBLK.SYS whenever hard errors occurred.

Now, if you are talking about read-only files; one of the protection
fields was dedicated to that kind of protection. We also
had execute-only levels of protection, but on a file basis, not
a structure basis.

Are you suggesting that it's important that
no-one ever do so, lest they lose that important datum?

You might try using your hat rack to think.

/BAH

 

In article <es9djf$q95$3@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:

In article <es928h$8ss_001@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
In article <es829g$2hl$2@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
[...]
No, this is all silly. The backup I have been refering to is not cover in
the cases in your list. What I suggested was a complete image of the
drive.

That has the problem of also preserving the bad spots of the disk.
I'm assuming that you do want an image of the disk and not drive.

Preseving the bad spots is a feature not a problem. It is a record of
exactly how things were warts and all that you want to keep.

And when you restore the image, you also restore the errors. Now,
what if it is those errors which are creating the mess that
is causing you to have to rebuild your system? This is the
point I've been trying to make but you don't seem to be able
to read.

This would store the times as they were at the time archive was
made and not change anything about any of them

The only times that matter for backup are the time of creation and the
last modification. It doesn't matter when the last access happened.

You are in error. Last access is an important datum.

Please explain exactly how you thing the last access is important.

I already have. You have a static file which is used all the time,
but never written. "Used all the time" means that it is accessed
often. If you only save files with the date-time stamps of
"last modified", you never get this one on any tapes other than
a full save.

Shit! editing error. Will deal with the piece that just went
out the bit window in another post.

/BAH

 

In article <es9djf$q95$3@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:

In article <es928h$8ss_001@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
In article <es829g$2hl$2@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
[...]
No, this is all silly. The backup I have been refering to is not cover in
the cases in your list. What I suggested was a complete image of the
drive.

That has the problem of also preserving the bad spots of the disk.
I'm assuming that you do want an image of the disk and not drive.

Preseving the bad spots is a feature not a problem. It is a record of
exactly how things were warts and all that you want to keep.

This would store the times as they were at the time archive was
made and not change anything about any of them

The only times that matter for backup are the time of creation and the
last modification. It doesn't matter when the last access happened.

You are in error. Last access is an important datum.

Please explain exactly how you thing the last access is important.

[This is the piece I inadventently deleted]

What
do you do with this information?

I, the BACKUP programmer, will save all files during an incremental
that has an access date after the date-time argument of the /SINCE
switch.

In this context, the only use of that
information will be a mistake.

Are you interested enough to read some code which implements
this stuff correctly?

/BAH

 

In article <MPG.2052091685c10ec298a03a@news.individual.net>,
krw <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:

In article <es928h$8ss_001@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
In article <es829g$2hl$2@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
In article <87fy8paqu8.fsf@nonospaz.fatphil.org>,
Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) writes:
ls -lu

I assume you had a point.

I think his point is that access time is part of the metadata
that accompanies the file.

It is not stored into the data part of the file. The file's sectors are
not rewritten so there is no change to that part. I believe that it is
the time you close the file and not the time you opened it that actually
ends up stored BTW. None of this matters to the backup method I
suggested.



So we have 3 cases:
- If it doesn't change the last-accessed time, then the "last-
accessed time" is in fact a falsity;
- If it changes the last-accessed time and stores the new access,
then the restored file will not be what it was a backup of;
- If it changes the last-accessed time but doesn't store the new
time, then the file in the backup is not identical to the
filesystem that it is a backup of.
All three of these are unsatisfactory. Therefore I contend that
this field is indeed not a useful field when it comes to considering
the behaviour of backups.

No, this is all silly. The backup I have been refering to is not cover in
the cases in your list. What I suggested was a complete image of the
drive.

That has the problem of also preserving the bad spots of the disk.

Modern disks don't show their "bad spots" to the system.

I'm assuming that this housekeeping moved into the smart
controllers.

They're
replaced from a cache of hidden sectors as they fail. This doesn't
mean it isn't possible to lose data when one fails though.

So what does a bit-to-bit copy of the physical mean? Bit-to-bit
implies all bits, including the ones covered by the error handler...
doesn't it? Oh...were they using the term incorrectly again?

/BAH

 

In article <n6pgu2t4icsmaqnfvjq993e0oioq1mgais@4ax.com>,
MassiveProng <MassiveProng@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote:

On Fri, 2 Mar 2007 10:13:24 -0500, krw <krw@att.bizzzz> Gave us:


Modern disks don't show their "bad spots" to the system. They're
replaced from a cache of hidden sectors as they fail. This doesn't
mean it isn't possible to lose data when one fails though.

Exactly. And it is done ON the hard drive electronics 100%
independent of the OS or machine the drive is powered by.

We called it "maps out bad sectors". They get "mapped out" of the
available areas on a drive, and your "cached" area gets a piece
"mapped in". The drive "map" tells the drive hardware where all the
available write areas on the drive are located.

This is nothing new.
<snip>

/BAH

 

In article <0cmgu2dlhs2216kspmk6tqf2ehboc3f171@4ax.com>,
MassiveProng <MassiveProng@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote:

On Fri, 02 Mar 07 11:36:49 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com Gave us:

You are in error. Last access is an important datum.


You are in error. Updating "last access" data in a file's header is
NOT a dangerous or volatile access of the file, and does NOT pose any
danger to it.

You have become confused. We're talking about using last access
as part of the backup strategy.

/BAH

 

In article <MPG.20520a9f9e61c03b98a03c@news.individual.net>,
krw <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:

In article <es92g1$8ss_002@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
In article <MPG.2050cf07addd0e6298a031@news.individual.net>,
krw <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:
In article <0sccu2tencv0vqes1nru8uec7if9e8f4cm@4ax.com>,
MassiveProng@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org says...
On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 15:02:48 -0500, krw <krw@att.bizzzz> Gave us:

In article <97v6u2hhdaf437oki5ujqt4q3gkjghn3dv@4ax.com>,
MassiveProng@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org says...
On Mon, 26 Feb 07 12:36:17 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com Gave us:


The wrinkle to the new process is that the checks have stopped
traveling.


Bullshit. My landlord gets a check, and his bank submits it to my
bank who has it ON FILE RIGHT NOW, I get an image of the check in my
mailed monthly statement, and can look up a full size image of all my
checks online.

Dumber-than-a-dim-bulb, you're wrong.

No. You are. I can even request the return of the check.

Not if it's been cleared via "check 21". The check paper check is
turned into bits and the hard copy destroyed.

This is the bug in the process, IMO. The process depends on the human,
who is scanning the physical paper, to destroy it.

It doesn't matter if the physical check is destroyed or not. The
routing and account numbers are all that matters. The paper check is
only a carrier for those.

What prevents multiple scans?

/BAH

 

In article <bgmgu217r95io2sl21d0cqgjlasvfsureu@4ax.com>,
MassiveProng <MassiveProng@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote:

On Fri, 02 Mar 07 11:43:43 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com Gave us:


Lots of pecker tracks in those two lines. You're going to need
to eat more protein.

You're a fucking retard. That senility has you acting like an
adolescent twit again.

So does mine but they are pressuring people to accept pictures
instead.

Idiot. My statements include picture of checks. IF I want the
check, however, it IS available.

Have you tested that one? I did and I could not get a copy. Later
the credit union started charging for copy requests; the
original contract stated there would be no charges.

The checks I send to my mother no longer come back
because her bank only does this stuff electronically now.
One presumes that her bank destorys the paper but I'm no longer
going to bet my checking account contents on that assumption.

You're an idiot. Of all the places fraud takes root, the least
likely is at the place where such scans occur.

Your senility has you in a sad, recursive loop. You don't use real
computers, you don't get on the web because you are afraid of virii,

I don't do webbing because I don't have a need to do this kind
of computing. The few times I do, I use the systems at my
public library.

you don't bank because you are afraid a bank employee is gonna screw
you.

Not at all. I'm not worried about bank employees.

The fact is all you likely need is a good lay (or two), but I can't
imagine someone not getting nauseous at the thought of the act, or
subsequently at the sight of you.

You must eaten a lot of protein. YOu've left an abundance of
tracks in this post alone.

YOu did manage to write a reasonble post yesterday or did somebody
fake your name?

/BAH

 

In article <es9g7v$q95$8@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:

In article <es92nu$8ss_004@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
In article <es84ft$5ks$1@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
In article <87y7mhb0fx.fsf@nonospaz.fatphil.org>,
Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

[.... swapping ...]
Wrong. If it's not moved onto the swap medium, it's lost.
My kind of computing doesn't like losing data, yours might,
but as we know BAH computing is BAD computing.

This is almost exactly right. The write to the swap volume is only needed
if the page is dirty (ie: has been written to)

This is part of the "complex issues" skipped to keep the list short.

Do you think that a swapper moves pages from the RAM to the
swap file?

If you think otherwise, you don't know what you are talking about. This
is what "swapping" in a VM system implies.

It didn't in any VM system JMF implemented. I'm unaware of
any other OS that used the term in that wasy.

/BAH

 

In article <MPG.20521027fba5490b98a03e@news.individual.net>,
krw <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:

In article <es93kh$8qk_001@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
In article <MPG.2050c846d665a64098a02e@news.individual.net>,
krw <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:
snip

Credit cards are likely the most secure, personally.

She has never had a credit card.

It's time to get her one.

How? You need credit to get credit.

It's not impossible to get first credit, even if she has to start
with a secured card.

She doesn't have enough money for a secured card and she won't
spend money on those kinds of fees.

Just make sure it's paid on time.

That's going to be the next problem as their ailing increases.
I've tried to convince her that paying some bills for the whole
year is the smartest thing to do but Dad is always nixing it
and she listens to him.

There are several options that would let you monitor/help with the
use/payment.

My current strategy is to herd them into changing their styles.
Things have not become dire enough to order them...yet. Also
remember that these are of Dutchmen stock and survived the Depression.
I've been told that the Scots are wor^Wmore frugal than the Dutch
but I have to see that one to believe it .

My next experiment is to investigate debit cards that you buy
outright and have no information embeded that can tie the
transaction back to a personal bank account.

Watch out for the scam where the numbers are copied off the rack
where they're displayed.

I first have to find the rack. This would have been a job for
super-JMF to go hunting for me .

They have (or had at Christmas) them in the grocery stores here.

I'll look. It seems like you have to buy their personal cards
before you can do any monetary exchanges these days.

You might also try your bank for Cisa/MC logoed ones.

But those can be tied to the accounts in the bank. Aren't they?

No, there are pre-paid Visa and MCs. They're sold as gift cards but
are accepted like any other Visa/MC.

Why can't things be the way they used to be? This is getting
too complicated and too expensive. I almost have to beg people
to send me a bill these days.

I'm beginning to think that my approach is going to be the best
way. Dump some cash into the coffers of the biller twice a year.
That's what I'm doing at the moment and it seems to work for
everything but credit cards. Congress passed some law that
edicts any 6-month positive balance has to be sent back to
the credit card user.

Really?

Really. It's a fucking PITA because I have to wait for the bill
to come before I can pay it. The usual turnaround time is less
than 2 weeks which also includes the snail mail time.

I've had a positive balance on my corporate Amex for
years. Can't figure how to get rid of it.

Oh, now that's interesting. There must be a different set of
rules for business than for individuals.

I'm sure there is. Perhaps it's like medical insurance;

Don't get me started on this one--I just did my state's income
tax forms. We are fucked; we are very, very fucked.

the account
is owned by the corporation and AMEX is only the administrator.

Go buy a candy bar and use the card. That will generate all the
right software runs so you can "pay off" the bill.

Oh, and my water bill. Their software
can't handle funcking negative amounts; it drops the negative sign.


I can believe it. They likely think $0.00 is a positive balance
due too (queue story about the check written for $0.00 to pay the
$0.00 balance due, threatened with collections).

[stunned emoticon bursts out in unbelieving-but-believing laughter]
I wonder if the programmers coded on a 1620 with all the flags
removed.

Was their hardware the type that had negative zeroes?

Unclear of the details (but your story sounds plausible) of the
hardware, but the person's bank was *not* happy when they got the
$0.00 check back.

<GRIN> I can imagine. After I posted my response, I started thinking
about the software that was running on hardware that had negative
zeros and then the code was moved to hardware that wasn't so fussy.
Can you imagine all the tweaks that the original hardware needed
and what kinds of mysterious side effects the tweaks could produce
on a different system?

Personally, I thought the story would have been far funnier if it had
gone to collections. "But judge, I paid the nothing!" "They refuse
to acknowledge nothing."

Oh, no. I would never do that. I read that scifi story about
the guy and the library system that declared he had an overdue
book.

I will have to commit a miracle to convince my mother to pay
ahead, though.

I think a payment from an account set up specifically for the
purpose would be good enough.

Not yet. Dad recently allowed automatic deposits to happen.
It is so much easier to herd cats.

Use that account for the gazintas and set up another for the
gazoutas.

It took Dad 20 years to have that kind of checking account
which paid interest. The only reason he has one is because
the bank was bought by an out-of-state bank. I won't go
into how long it took him to deposit his pension checks.

/BAH

 

In article <1vmgu2li8ucufi45u9llpnjef1iv74r1rk@4ax.com>,
MassiveProng <MassiveProng@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote:

On Fri, 02 Mar 07 12:12:19 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com Gave us:

makes check fraud kinda obvious
And the bank offers fraud protection for misuse of the card so I'm
covered that way

Which you have to pay for.


You're full of shit... again... as usual.

The ones I've seen costs $50/year. That buys 10 grapefruit juices
or 13 gallons of milk. They can keep protection scheme.

/BAH

 

In article <26ngu2dr092sm97d4dvtbnvhnql2ffd0mm@4ax.com>,
MassiveProng <MassiveProng@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote:

On Fri, 02 Mar 07 12:25:31 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com Gave us:

In article <9abb5$45e6dbbb$4fe70c3$30531@DIALUPUSA.NET>,
"nonsense@unsettled.com" <nonsense@unsettled.com> wrote:
jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
In article <epccu25dvaomn9ak8i5fmq0lks6prbbtuh@4ax.com>,
MassiveProng <MassiveProng@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote:

Aren't you out of vital bodily fluids yet?

This is what happens when you free the serfs.

Even serfs have been toilet trained and know the best
use of those other fluids.

Your senility is showing again, witch. Don't you have a grave site
or an urn of ashes to talk to?

Yes, I do.

Do you really feel so compelled to try
to talk to us?

It's part of the job.

If you're such a bit god, invent something!

I'm trying to solve a number of problems. A few have
been demonstrated in this thread.

/BAH