Thursday, September 23, 2004

For those of you about to Cygwin, we salute you

and also encourage you to try something else instead. Seriously, scrounge around for a cheap, used PIII 300-based box and install OpenBSD on it instead; get Services For Unix now that it's free, and can mount NFS shares where Cygwin can only serve them; download VMware. Don't get me wrong, Cygwin is an amazingly detailed and clever set of sophisticated hacks. The development crew is a cool bunch. But a hack is a hack.

Anyway, in interest of giving something back to the community: if you find people can't see mounted directories when connecting to a Cygwin server, check the registry keys.

In Cygwin, the mount command will only take a folder, like "/usr/bin", and point it to a Windows drive, like "D:\cygwin\bin". Cygwin can't open a device directly, it depends on Windows for the filesystem and device drivers. What's more, the mappings are stored in the registry, not in /etc, like all us UNIX weenies would expect. I was running ProFTPD and was setting default directories to folder that, via a mount, redirected to the D: drive. After I upgraded my version of Cygwin, users FTPing would find themselves in the directory and could list the files, but the permissions showed up wrong and they couldn't send or recieve any files. Turns out the upgrade reset registry key permissions so that the user that the ProFTPD server was running under (BUILTIN\SYSTEM) could read them but normal users couldn't. Since this was a Windows 2000 box, I ran regedt32.exe, went to "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Cygnus Solutions\Cygwin\", clicked on "mounts v2" branch, went to the menus under Security -> Permissions... and added the group Users and gave them read permissions. Permission inheritance propagated the change down to the sub-branches and the problem was fixed. Yay.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Concert going.

So now that I think of it, while I might like listening to Death Cab for Cutie, do I really want to pay to see them in concert?

There's a fairly representative collection of DCFC mp3s here. But I'm more up about ...and you will know us by the trail of dead, Flogging Molly, and PJ Harvey. Now I'm fairly sure Double-D has a Flogging Molly CD if not two, and you can't tell me you haven't at least one of PJ Harvey's songs.

I'm trying to be good w/budget. But if I'm going to see Morrissey, too, Polly Jean might just have priced herself out of my price range. But she's so cool. It's not fair.

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

To sport or not to sport

aye, there's the rub

Erica and I have been going back and forth about the Olympics and what counts as a sport. Her suggestion is for a more objective scoring method for figure skating. My argument is that it doesn't matter: I like figure skating as it is, but it's not a sport.


> [...] Is windsurfing a

> sport just because you can measure who crosses the finish line first?
> I will acknowledge that there is a degree of finesse involved because
> you need to read the wind, but are they the same kind of athlete? I
> couldn't do what any beginning gymnast or figure skater does, and I am
> in awe of the top athletes, Paul Hamm, et al.

Exactly. Because you can measure who crosses the line first. I'm not sure if I like racing as a sport, either. To me, that straddles the line but is easily closer to sport than figure skating.

I'm thinking by writing here, so forgive me if this isn't fully clear. My definition of sport: Sport is a direct physical competition between people that gives the competitors an opportunity to demonstrate good sportsmanship. And by good sportsmanship, I mean primarily fair play.

  • Direct physical: take soccer as an example. As a team sport, there is an important mental aspect needed to win a soccer match, but if you can't stay active on the field for an hour, you aren't going to make it to the Olympics. While there is the intermediary of the ball, the physical actions you take directly and clearly affect the actions your opponents then choose (this has to happen if you want to play
    competitively, anyway).
  • Between people: the measurable part of the struggle is between you (or you as part of a team) and another person or other people.
  • Sportsmanship and fair play: Try hard to win, and always follow the rules; compete on equal terms. So there needs to be clear rules for you to follow, and clear, objective terms for the winning conditions. The measurement of whether the winner won a match should only be important because it is compared, on the same terms, to the measurement for other competitors in that match.

Sunday, September 05, 2004

Look, about last night

Thanks for helping me find my car, considering it took an hour. And yes, I noticed there was parking on both sides of the street.