Re: [Sheflug] I hate Windoze, Samba and RAID.

["Alex Hudson" <nospam [at] york.ac.uk>]

>     Al> Of course [using file extension] is autodetection.
> To me, detection implies looking at the file contents.  _Users_ have
> access to the directory via mv among other things.

Detection is merely an process whereby you attempt to ascertain the nature
of something, surely? Yes, I know it's fallible, but it is still a method of
detection...

>     >> It would be rather easy and very efficient to autodetect the
>     >> kind of corruption you're talking about: just XOR the high bit
>     >> and puke on TRUE.  I don't know why servers don't do that.
>     Al> They don't do it 'cos it's time-consuming, I guess.
> Less CPU-consuming than packing 8 7-bit bytes into 7 8-bit bytes.  Or
> check-summing the TCP packet headers.

No. But, 'consumes more time', therefore 'time consuming'. Programmers are
lazy ;)

> Or re-transmitting the broken file in full, with correct settings this
> time.  And it would have no impact at all on transmission time on any
> link slower than the PCI bus.

You then have to have some method of communication between server and client
in the middle of transfer - again, extra complexity, especially since you
are already using the entire range of possible bitstreams. Depends how big
your packets are, I suppose it may not make that much difference.

>     Al> And they don't want the possibility of the user spending
>     Al> minutes ftping something only to be told "work done thus far
>     Al> is useless, change to binary please".
>
> Isn't that what just happened to Barrie?  Not to mention that not only
> was the work useless, it is now irreproducible.  The only thing is
> that the server lied (by omission) about the work being done and
> useful.  :-(  Furthermore, if the client and server both support
> restart, all the work done to that point, save the last packet-ful, is
> still valid and can be appended to!

Mmm.


>     Al> What does the spec. say?
>
> There's no spec I know of for clients.  But "safety first" is a
> sufficiently obvious motto.  Maybe I'm just gullible, but I tend to
> give the community credit for doing it that way for the right reason.

Maybe the Windows community went for 'safety first' when they realised that
a lot of ftp users generally use it for downloading documents, and ASCII
documents on UNIX servers have different characteristics (CRLF/LF)  - I
would imagine the ftp program may do some replacing like that. Depends how
many users you think you're going to annoy...

>     >> With the exception of things like LILO, which is NOT part of
>     >> Unix anyway (it's a BIOS app),
> Al> Which bit of it? After updating lilo.conf, I run 'lilo'. These
> Al> seems to me to be a Unix app.... ?
> It runs under Unix, sure.  That doesn't make it "part of Unix" any
> more than isapnp or executable MP3s[1] are.  If it were "part of
> Unix," it would run on Sparcs and Alphas and PPCs, but it doesn't.

Strange definition ;) I don't see anything under /usr/src/linux/arch/i386
being 'apart' from Linux just because it doesn't run on multiple platforms.
Anything which integrates with a unix system would be judged to be part of a
unix system imho ;)

>  Al> Which kind of puts it at the door of the designers - some
>  Al> software designers, particularly under Unix than other OSes,
>  Al> have no interest in stopping the user making obvious misakes,
>  Al> which is quite sad.
> You mean like typing a term paper into Emacs's *scratch* buffer and
> hitting C-x C-c, thinking they'd get asked to save?

No, more like ftp'ing archives and thinking they'd be in tact, without
hitting b-i-n-a-r-y ;)

> I can't think of any examples at all.  Except for all software vendors
> (read the NO WARRANTY section of the GNU GPL recently?).

'Warranty' is nothing to do with something being the user's fault - it just
means it isn't your ;) That's more of a legal thing, anyway :)

> I do know people who say "RTFM" in response to a sad tale of data
> loss.  I do that myself (eg, in response to the term paper story).

Except when it comes to a windows ftp client, of course ;)

> You know how to make a building 100% safe against loss of life in a
> major earthquake?  Fill in the hole.  You know, the big one between
> the four walls.  There is always a tension between safety and
> functionality, if only in terms of designer and coder time.

That's still a rubbish excuse, though ;)

Cheers,

Alex.

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