My new toy

[Roedy Green]

I will have a dedicated server some time this week to host
mindprod.com. This will let me run any software I please since all I
can do is blow myself up.

The next box is an Intel D865DBS A76646-001 motherboard.
I has a 100 Mbit pipe to the Internet
It will run 64 bit NET BSD 50.1 Unix
It has a 4 gig ram
1.5 terabyte SATA hard disk ST31500341AS
PF firewall
Postgres SQL
Tomcat
VPN to let me treat its files as if they were local to my desktop
(fixing my biggest bugbear - failed FTP uploads).

Some of the projects I would like to tackle:

getting hit counts to work properly

serve random quotations and ads from the server rather than by
frequently uploading files.

host an SVN server.

produce and host some video and audio on politics, the environment,
programming etc.

index programming examples.

If you were in my position, what would you want to do?
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

"Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number — there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method."
~ John von Neumann (born: 1903-12-28 died: 1957-02-08 at age: 53)

 

[Andrew Thompson]

On Aug 30, 9:33 am, Roedy Green <[email protected]>
wrote:
.....

getting hit counts to work properly

Hit counters will always be approximate, due to
caching by other servers between you and the end
user. There is no way around that.

serve random quotations and ads from the server rather than by
frequently uploading files.
Servlet.

host an SVN server.

produce and host some video and audio on politics, the environment,
programming etc.

Be prepared for that bandwidth to be filled, if the
videos become even slightly popular.

index programming examples.
Huh?

If you were in my position, what would you want to do?

KISS. And do not forget that the three most
important things on any site are 'Content,
content & content'.

But if you want to get daring, you might try an
online compiler, and a place to host (short) code
samples for 7 days while asking for help on forums.

 

[Roedy Green]

But if you want to get daring, you might try an
online compiler, and a place to host (short) code
samples for 7 days while asking for help on forums.

Hmm. I could even JDisplay them with colour coding.
see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jdisplay.html

All that space makes me wonder what do to fill it up.

My ISP warned me I have to do everything with an eye to somebody
maliciously trying to foul things up. The non-Java parts of the site
have many enemies who like the threatened to kill me or worse. One
radio talk show guy even put out a fatwah of sorts on me.

The choice of BSD Unix was primarily for security.

--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability,"
~ Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (born: 1930-05-11 died: 2002-08-06 at age: 72)

 

[Roedy Green]

Huh?

Just so you could find a coding example that used some method, package
or class.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability,"
~ Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (born: 1930-05-11 died: 2002-08-06 at age: 72)

 

[Knute Johnson]

Roedy Green wrote:
One

radio talk show guy even put out a fatwah of sorts on me.

Roedy:

I'm impressed dude, of all the people I've pissed off in my life, nobody
has ever issued a fatwah on me.

Running a server is an education. You will enjoy it I'm sure.

 

[Andrew Thompson]

....
My ISP warned me I have to do everything with an eye to somebody
maliciously trying to foul things up.

The on-line code examples provides a 'barn door'
of possible security/use problems, unfortunately
(the main reason I removed my own site's online
compiler).

Off the top of my head..
1) Trying to upload source that is 53 Meg
2) Inclusion of tawdry (racist, sexist, ...)
or advertising/spam material in code samples.
3) Particular types of code have been known to
tie up the javac compiler for a *long* time,
resulting to a DOS attack. (Though sometimes,
it might be unintentional on the part of the
user). I don't know if the compiler has been
improved since that time, and have lost the
source that demonstrated the effect.

 

[Andrew Thompson]

....
Just so you could find a coding example that used some method, package
or class.

JavaHelp. It can be provided 'behind the scenes'
on a Java enabled server - that would mean the output
to the user is available as pure HTML - no applets
or other such nonsense required.

BTW - liked your idea of pulling the code formatter
out of an applet and doing it on the server side. I
had been considering doing similar as the potential
'first use' of active scripting on my own site (which
is otherwise pure HTML).

Pure HTML rendered source has some major advantages
1) The pure HTML will be indexed by search engines,
whereas the 'applet wrapped' code will not.
2) Copy/pasting from a web page is more intuitive for
most people.
3) Applet start-up time is (still) irritating to me.
4) Is available on PCs with no Java.

That last one might be seen as 'tongue-in-cheek' but
for my part, there have been times in the last year
where my only internet access was via machines I
could borrow, and many of them lacked Java.

 

[Dave Searles]

KISS. And do not forget that the three most
important things on any site are 'Content,
content & content'.

How about "content, navigation, and Google-juice". The pages should:
* Contain information useful to people;
* Be navigable so people can find them; and
* Be readable and navigable to GoogleBot too.

That last item is frequently overlooked, and every single day I come
across some web sites whose navigation ranges from poor to abysmal,
either slowing me down or outright stopping me from locating the page
I'm looking for. Just today I came across another one -- idiots had a
summary page they'd heavily pimped to Google with ads and a link to the
full text of something, only oops the link just loops back to the
summary page. No apparent path to the full article, which they also
apparently hid from GoogleBot. My guess is they did something "clever"
with Javascript to make direct links to the full article redirect to the
landing page, then forgot to make an exception for when the HTTP Referer
(sic) *was* their damn landing page. Of course, doing this sort of stunt
to try to artificially inflate ad impressions violates KISS too. (The
previous winner was my own ISP's web site. I was having intermittent
connection problems the other day and decided to check their
network-status page to see if they knew what was up. Didn't remember its
address so went to the front page www.isp.com and couldn't bloody find
my way from there to the network status page, or even to the top-level
get-me-some-help-with-my-internet-connection page. They'd redesigned the
front page yet again, into some useless "portal" format full of stuff
completely irrelevant to a) signing up for, b) troubleshooting, c)
paying for, or d) canceling an internet connection. They're an ISP, not
Yahoo, and their home page should bloody reflect that! I hope they're
sniffing my traffic and read this. The connection problems cleared up
on their own shortly afterward though. Next time I won't bother and will
jump straight to a site-scoped Google search; these days savvy users
know how to bypass shoddy site navigation when they have to.)

(No aspersions intended for the current mindprod.com site; the
navigation seems fine as does the Googlability, though the appearance is
a bit dated, somewhat resembling the "early modern Geoshitties" style
that peaked circa 1996 complete with thick beveling on table cell
borders and clashing near-primary colors. The content is very useful
though and the site's worst sins are easily accomodated with a custom
client-side style sheet and a bit of creative privoxy-blocking of some
files at mindprod.com. Roedy, when you move it, please update the
appearance! It will undoubtedly be taken more seriously by some when it
no longer looks like it started out as a high-school project and didn't
get a facelift when it grew beyond that.)

 

[Dave Searles]

Hmm. I could even JDisplay them with colour coding.
see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jdisplay.html

All that space makes me wonder what do to fill it up.

My ISP warned me I have to do everything with an eye to somebody
maliciously trying to foul things up. The non-Java parts of the site
have many enemies who like the threatened to kill me or worse. One
radio talk show guy even put out a fatwah of sorts on me.

What did you do, host a copy of the Satanic Verses? Express an opinion
about global warming? Obama? *Health care*?!

 

[Andrew Thompson]

* Be readable and navigable to GoogleBot too.

..Just today I came across another one -- idiots .. ....
...My guess is they did something "clever"
with Javascript ...

I don't think there is a risk of a JS related
problem on *any* site controlled by Roedy.

 

[Roedy Green]

Running a server is an education. You will enjoy it I'm sure.

My ISP will manage the server. However, I will write some Servlets.

I was reading the NetBSD FAQ. It was completely incomprehensible.
I can see why learning these OSes gives one great job security.

--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability,"
~ Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (born: 1930-05-11 died: 2002-08-06 at age: 72)

 

[Roedy Green]

What did you do, host a copy of the Satanic Verses? Express an opinion
about global warming? Obama? *Health care*?!

The fatwah was the result of writing a letter to a ghost and posting
it in a newsgroup, telling the soldier what an idiot he was to get
himself killed for nothing.

The radio station is back east, so I never heard exactly what he said,
though I gather he accused me of harrassing the soldier's widow and
told his readers to kill me. Anyway the phone never stopped ringing
for days with calls from people saying there were coming to kill me.
It quite rattled my partner. I am pretty immune to it personally after
an average of 3 death threats per day and 300 threatening calls per
day from my gay lib days.

It surprising that someone would go to such drastic, public and
illegal lengths without researching precisely what actually happened
first. I have been told he does this sort of thing quite frequently.

For more detail see http://mindprod.com/politics/lowellgreen.html

Even the 9/11 stuff and my Iraq war pictures spur Americans to some
pretty strong email attacks. See
http://mindprod.com/feedback/peace/peace.html

Even some of the things I say on Java and programming get people hot
under the collar, but so far no death threats.

--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability,"
~ Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (born: 1930-05-11 died: 2002-08-06 at age: 72)

 

[Roedy Green]

BTW - liked your idea of pulling the code formatter
out of an applet and doing it on the server side. I
had been considering doing similar as the potential
'first use' of active scripting on my own site (which
is otherwise pure HTML).

It works three different ways now:

1. render pre-parsed code in an Applet.

2. macro expansion pass just prior to upload to render pre-parsed code
to HTML in an iframe.

3. macror expansion pass just prior to upload to render pre-parsed
code to inline HTML


I choose the method based on the size of the snippet and the amount of
screen real estate I am willing to devote to it. Applets do big ones.
inline for small ones. iframe for intermediate.

I would have to run the parser on the server too. It could be a
service to provide you coloured program listings in HTML without
having to install the rather complicated JDisplay system. You might
upload a ZIP and pick up a zip of HTML later.

--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability,"
~ Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (born: 1930-05-11 died: 2002-08-06 at age: 72)

 

[Roedy Green]

Pure HTML rendered source has some major advantages
1) The pure HTML will be indexed by search engines,
whereas the 'applet wrapped' code will not.
2) Copy/pasting from a web page is more intuitive for
most people.
3) Applet start-up time is (still) irritating to me.
4) Is available on PCs with no Java.

the advantage of the Applet-style rendering is:

1. smaller transmission from the host. It is GZipped binary vs <span
styles on every token.

2. it provides a scrolling window.

3. the rest of the page displays quickly.

4. If you are not interested in the listing, all you see in the top
part of it. You can skip over it quickly. Were it expanded fully
inline it might be 20 pages of HTML.

the parsed token file can be expanded three ways.

the are tokenisers for other types of file besides java source,
e.g. ini files, SQL, bat, csv, properties, raw text.

The tokenisers do not require syntactically correct or complete code.
They always produce something, at worst strangely coloured/fonted.
They work quite differently from traditional tokenisers.

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jdisplay.html
for more detail. The whole system is free and open source.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability,"
~ Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (born: 1930-05-11 died: 2002-08-06 at age: 72)

 

[Roedy Green]

My guess is they did something "clever"
with Javascript to make direct links to the full article redirect to the
landing page, then forgot to make an exception for when the HTTP Referer
(sic) *was* their damn landing page.

It seems to me the whole point of JavaScript is obfuscation to deter
screenscraping.

So often people use JavaScript to be cute for the sake of cute and end
up with it not rendering at all or freezing or squirting out reams of
error messages on some browser. I detest it.

Google Adsense does something clever to analyse even locally served
pages to find a relevant advertisement.

I got a phone call once from some university asking for permission to
use my website to teach website design. Apparently they really liked
my "breadcrumbs" navigation. The idea is slowing taking over the web.
It is one of those things that is completely obvious once you see it.

It was surprisingly difficult to pull off with just CSS and have it
render reasonably in all browsers. There is no JavaScript. You can
cannibalise the CSS classes and the markup for your own site if you
like.


--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability,"
~ Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (born: 1930-05-11 died: 2002-08-06 at age: 72)

 

[Roedy Green]

Roedy, when you move it, please update the
appearance! It will undoubtedly be taken more seriously by some when it
no longer looks like it started out as a high-school project and didn't
get a facelift when it grew beyond that.)

I have deliberately made it look a little clunky, sort of Quaker
oatmeal feel, rather than Sugar Zaps.

I wanted it to look a bit out of the ordinary -- not just another of
those white, multicolumned news sites. I wanted it to look friendly,
not corporate.

However, I too find it klunky, but I did not know what the problem
was.

If you have any specific suggestions to change the mindprod.css or
jdisplay.css style sheets, I would be happy to try them out.

Perhaps I should find out how you can provide alternate style sheets.
Whenever you make a change like that, you always get mail from people
who liked it the old way.



--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability,"
~ Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (born: 1930-05-11 died: 2002-08-06 at age: 72)

 

[Joshua Cranmer]

It surprising that someone would go to such drastic, public and
illegal lengths without researching precisely what actually happened
first. I have been told he does this sort of thing quite frequently.

FWIW, I've been threatened with a lawsuit once before for... I'm not
sure what exactly, but it seems like dismissing someone's rant on an
open source bug forum. Fortunately, that's the only time I've seen on a
bug forum where non-developers have harangued other posters for being
unhelpful.

Sometimes I marvel at the thought processes of people: why on Earth
would someone think that threatening a lawsuit would spur someone to fix
an issue? The only thing it did for me was contemplate resolving RESO
WONTFIX (and un-CCing myself) just to avoid putting up with it.

 

[Lew]

I got a phone call once from some university asking for permission to
use my website to teach website design. Apparently they really liked
my "breadcrumbs" navigation. The idea is slowing taking over the web.
It is one of those things that is completely obvious once you see it.

It's ironic that we call a trail to lead you back home "breadcrumbs", since
the term comes from the story "Hansel and Gretel" in which breadcrumbs were an
utter failure for back-navigation as the woodland creatures ate them all up.
If they hadn't used breadcrumbs, they wouldn't have gotten lost.

IBM's WebSphere Portal is very big on "breadcrumbs", and they call it that.
I'm guessing they didn't get the idea from Roedy, but perhaps they did.

 

[Mike Schilling]

The fatwah was the result of writing a letter to a ghost and posting
it in a newsgroup, telling the soldier what an idiot he was to get
himself killed for nothing.

The radio station is back east, so I never heard exactly what he
said,
though I gather he accused me of harrassing the soldier's widow and
told his readers to kill me. Anyway the phone never stopped ringing
for days with calls from people saying there were coming to kill me.
It quite rattled my partner. I am pretty immune to it personally
after
an average of 3 death threats per day and 300 threatening calls per
day from my gay lib days.

It surprising that someone would go to such drastic, public and
illegal lengths without researching precisely what actually happened
first.

Not if you consider his incentives. Getting people worked up builds
ratings; being accurate does not.

 

[Knute Johnson]

My ISP will manage the server. However, I will write some Servlets.

I was reading the NetBSD FAQ. It was completely incomprehensible.
I can see why learning these OSes gives one great job security.

I ran Fedora with a mail server and Apache for two years and just
switched a few months ago to Ubuntu server. The learning curve is huge.
I know enough to keep it reasonably secure and working but have to
look up or ask about how to do just about anything. That's one of the
reasons I switched to the Ubuntu, the Fedora changed so often that I
couldn't spend enough time keeping up to date with it. I think Fedora
and the Ubuntu especially, are more user friendly than the BSDs. You
still should have fun with it, just find a good newsgroup or email list.