rawdisk's comments

One of the very, very few "Show HN's" I would give an A+ for the idea. Even better would be a focus on FTP, e.g., datasets available as bulk data without silly "API's". In the early days of the internet posting about such datasets was quite common. Meanwhile I have to continually write flex scanners to transform MySQL and JSON into something useable with kdb (someday maybe I can do all the munging in q). Not to mention all the "scraping". But I am so used to cutting through Javscript and other cruft it does not bother me anymore.

Dataset discovery. A+ for idea.

This is the only way I use Linux.

I will use the Linux kernel (although it is not my favorite kernel).

But I am interested very little in GNU userlands and all the idiosyncracies, complexity and politics that comes with them.

"... due to sharing some design elements..."

But someone downthread said the .co.uk version was not blocked (before you unblocked the .com). Are you implying the .co.uk version did not have the same "design elements"?

As to your proposed argument, I think selectively blocking well-reasoned analysis by law professors and letting memes go unblocked makes the most sense for your company.

To be truthful I was not referring to Bash. ;)

Bash is much larger and more complex than the shell I use.

Beautiful.

When something better comes along I'll switch away from using the UNIX shell.

But I am not sure I'll live long enough to see that day.

Meanwhile I am too busy using the shell to engage in that battle with hypertext. It could just be my perception, but after years of practice, I think I am winning.

2014. Has this been posted before?

Anyway, I strongly agree. And I think it takes balls to state this opinion because you will be opposed by so many.

I also think the Bourne shell, which accepts good ole text as input (as someone downthread points out), is my most powerful application. Among other things because it is everywhere, it's relatively small, fast, and seems to have an infinite lifetime; it appears forever protected from obsolescence. It's reliable.

Stating this opinion never fails to draw protest. It's just an opinion. Relax.

One time I stated it to what I thought was a sophisticated audience that I was sure could handle it. Somebody still went bananas, claiming that "make" could do everything the shell can do. I must be wrong but at the time I thought "Doesn't make just run the shell?"

There will always be people who are hell bent on arguing against plain text. And the Bourne shell. Why is anyone's guess.

Yet no matter how much internet commentators might complain, I doubt these two things are ever going to disappear. They might get buried beneath 20 layers of abstraction, but they will still be there.

Year after year, they just work. And for that I'm thankful.

kill -15 $pid || kill -2 $pid || kill -1 $pid || kill -9 $pid

I could be wrong but I think beginners learn about -9 because beginners are more likely to start processes that they change their mind about and then cannot stop. Nothing wrong with this in the spirit of experimentation.

For more advanced users more familiar with the processes they start, I would guess -15 should be sufficient most of the time.

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

This is a URL shortener that just redirects to the full URL that has same number. Easier to type but otherwise acomplishes nothing. Server with the content still needs full URL. All this shorter URL gets you is the full URL.

Are "buffer overflows" possible in systems without without virtual memory?

I know how I would answer this question but I am curious how others would answer it.

EDIT: s/possible/known to occur

Gotos in spitbol can be conditional or unconditional.

I thought this was quite amusing when I read it back in the late 90's. At one point their proposed shell was called "Monad". I wondered "Why do they want to do this?"

I have gone to a number of conferences with MS employees over the years, especially MS lawyers, and with respect to software, they often seem like they have been indoctrinated into a cult. As if the existence of software outside of MS Windows does not exist and as if MS holds the key to solving all problems. But MS does not offer solutions. They create problems (e.g., for anyone who has to deal with their licensing) and then offer "solutions" to the problems they created. It is like someone who proposes to "simplify" something by introducing more complexity.

The idea of MS embracing a proper shell seemed laughable to me. Windows users expect pointing and clicking (and today they want to be able to touch the screen).

Now fast forward to 2015 and it seems like PowerShell has a significant number of users. I am sure it is helping Windows users greatly. Good for them.

But I still think it is laughable. The name still makes me laugh.

I'd rather use something like Back Orifice (which has a simple UNIX client) to control Windows from a proper shell on a computer running UNIX. Or SSH via Cygwin. Or even SUA which has ksh and tcsh. Alas no simple Bourne shell (better for writing portable scripts).

"... tech industry itself want to own such lousy patents to use against each other."

I recall a story where Steve Jobs called Eric Schmidt from Burning Man and threatened Schmidt with "nuclear war" over Android. What did he threaten him with? Legitimate competition? Guess again.

Junk patents are a perfect vehicle for vexatious litigation.

This is just my biased opinion but the IT industry appears to have no shortage of child-like executives.

World's largest patent troll co-founded by former Microsoft CTO and a licensing lawyer from Intel who coined the term "patent troll". Two individuals who had certainly seen their share of trolling by smaller entities against MSFT and INTC. I believe the lawyer blogged about the problem of "patent trolls" anonymously for while at Intel in the late 90's, but was later "outed".

The industry was aware of this problem very early on.

One more: https://cesanta.com/smartjs.shtml

Opinion: Lua is a better choice for IoT but alas the programming "market" has (again) chosen the worse alternative.

"... or even just violating your terms of use, CFAA is merely the statute that enables that."

Are you sure? The Court in the 4/29/13 Order says violating terms of use would not be enough to sustain a CFAA claim. See page 6.

It is interesting how the Plaintiff changed the TOU after the "unauthorized access" and how the copyright claims were dismissed early.

The Defendents made a mistake by ignoring the C&D letter - that opened up the potential for CFAA liability. But I'm not sure they made a mistake in believing they could copy and serve the same classifieds. It appears they could if they obtained them through a third party.

"... purpose in granting access."

"... for improper purpose, ..."

But in the 4/29/13 Order the Court says it would follow Nosal and that purpose is not enough to sustain "unauthorized access".

Instead it says Defendants' failure to cease and desist after receiving notification from the Plaintiff is the reason why it is not dismissing the CFAA claim.

If Defendants had simply "scraped" from a third party who was "authorized" to access Plaitiff's website (Google?), then perhaps the outcome here might have been different?