Posts by eulampios

Re: @h4rmony

I actually don't see anywhere that you said you weren't talking about security.

Let's see here, did you see me actually talking about security in that post? I also was not talking about many other things. But a comment earlier above I did. I also had to correct you and others on what ISO PDF standard doesn't have.

..but you're just using it as an opportunity to attack people

Attacking people is not my hobby, ignorance is what I like to attack.

And a viewer that doesn't implement common parts of real world PDFs might be more purist and safer, but is going to be frustrating for most users...

So these are "common parts" and "the real world" already? Viruses and trojans are also a common part of the real world as well as virus scanners and antivirus software. There is a simple way to remove these common parts and from everyone's real world: use free, non proprietary software and file formats, period.

PDFs should not be on any preferred list is all that I'm arguing.

I am arguing the opposite, at least, it is good that you are not making my preferred list.

@h4rmony

I said it multiple times, "attacked by the ignorance" meant not necessarily security. It's ignorance of existence of free software often of superior quality for specific tasks. Just the phrase I quoted caught me there... Most of the time a text file, djvu or pdf file would be a better choice, attaching an Excel or a Word doc (or not being able to read say djvu) would be an ignorance in my mind.

the overwhelming majority of users wouldn't know what version of PDF standard a file attachment comes in.

For overwhelming majority internet and PC are a very dangerous place to be in already. I was simply arguing that if you use atril document viewer (like me) you're safer and more comfortable. The proprietary extension part of this file would not run, because it's not supported.

...because some versions of the standard are safer is wrong.

Once again, I meant the ISO open standard (versions <=1.7) Your allusion that it's a part of the ISO standard is wrong. A user is safer to use a free PDF viewer recognizing this standard and ignoring non-standard proprietary bits. I think I made it clear.

Re: receiving a document in a proprietary format

So fucking why did I get 2 downvotes here, or was it the same ignorance in action I was talking about when mentioning the djvu format?

Re: receiving a document in a proprietary format

PDFs have contained malware in the past

Every piece of Windows software might have contained malware in the past. No, I am not referring to proprietary Adobe Distiller specification. To be on a safer side, to create PDF documents, use La(TeX), postscript and pdf tools, conversion by means of a PostScript driver would also help (there is also a generic PS/PDF printer available with CUPS distribution). I also use ImageMagick, fpsed pdf/ps annotator and pdftk suite for various purposes.

Also, OOXML is an open standard, btw.

I hope you weren't born yesterday and know about all the controversies of this standardization, in case, you haven't heard there is an article on it.

Re: js and pdf proprietary extension, @big_D

I don't think any recipient of an email attachment is going to know whether RandomFile.pdf is some sub-set of the general PDF files that isn't a risk or if it's not

He or she might not know, that is why I warned against the use of acrobat reader, use a better PDF viewer and tool and don't use MS Windows, since it's complicated to get a decent default PDF reader, at least it's harder than on GNU/Linux or *BSD.

That's the scenario that you gave when you put it on a list with text files, et al. that you were happier to receive as email attachments.

I am not sure which scenario you're alluding to. The list I provided were standard document formats. I haven't heard about some proprietary extensions to djvu, postscript, dvi or text files, but even if those exist viewers that handle those are better off ignoring them.

It's the same as in MS Office.

I did not say it was not the same. Although it was primarily MSO Macro Viruses, I am not sure how LO is susceptible to those. I also mentioned that my reason to ignore MS office formats was not only the security concern.

"Windows ad"...?

That is a Windows admin. FYI, the two-dot (or three-dot) sign is called an ellipsis, (ἔλλειψις -- omission). No, I would not recommend that comment as a Windows ad :)

js and pdf proprietary extension, @big_D

And ODF has a macro language as well...

Yes it does, it is defaulted to not being active, moreover, a user is warned multiple times, and I was referring to not only this...

as does PDF (you can embed JavaScript in it)

I see that you confuse the standard of PDF 1.0--1.7 with some proprietary inclusions for Adobe Acobrat. No, JavaScript is not a part of generally accepted PDF ISO standard!

And Adobe has more than enought problems with security in PDF documents.

Yes, and Adobe reader sucks the most of all pdf viewers, I remember that when you recompile with pdf(La)TeX and the pdf output is still open, Adobe reader would crash. Evince, kpdf/ocular atril, xpdf or even ghost viewer and X Emacs embedded pdf viewer are much better ways to go, not this piece of lame bloat from Adobe! There are quite a few nice ones for Android as well. And did I mention a non-MSWindows GNU/Linux, Android or *BSD environment?

Please don't take me for a clueless Windows ad.. I mean user.

Your choice has nothing to do with safety.

My choice has nothing to do with your assumptions,I take it.

Re: receiving a document in a proprietary format

Shunning proprietary formats is fine until you make money from dealing with them and lose money as all your employees convert to/from them to deal with the rest of the world.

Good Lord, I don't make money by dealing with them... directly :) On another note, with all ridiculous ubiquity of MSO formats, some truly wonderful free formats are sadly unknown to so many. Say, djvu is the best for scanned documents. I get them rejected very often when trying to send scans.

mixing what doesn't mix

Putting aside the brainless habit, hopefully in the past, of MS to usually allow a lot of dangerous features to be activated by default including Macros, AutoRun, RDP login, ActveX etc, the main problem with Macros (VBA) in MSO, as was suggested in the previous comment, is mixing executable code and document (formatting) in the same file, while allowing there some potentially dangerous code there. Most other document creation suites are more do distinguish these two different things.

Compare it with Emacs Lisp .el files or the same .tex files, the former might contain some potentially dangerous stuff, like shell-command-to-string function, however, an .el file is NOT a document! While the latter .tex file would not contain anything potentially bad, other than \write operator in TeX. A few precautionary measures are in place though. In case of LaTeX, all the Macro stuff is provided by the .cls and .sty files. Those are not documents though.

Re: What is wrong with getting software from someone else?

...that the people responsible for purchasing have some sort of relationship with MS?

And it seems that these people are pretty competent in representing Microsoft, or is it that they are pretty incompetent in representing both the NHS and British taxpayers?

Praesumptio innocentiae

Then I found out the google has become the leading lobbyist among high tech companies. In other words, the google is now helping to write the crooked laws. If you know of any evidence to the contrary, let me know

Doesn't that work the other way around, you are supposed to present the evidence of evilness of the defendant?

IMHO, I am trying to say that with Microsoft, Apple and Oracle it's not that hard to be much LESS evil and Google is still one. Who knows if the table turns when/if the "(un)Holy Trinity" is gone ( can the Almighty be that merciful to us?) and Google might take their place.

Re: who are those companies?

Not downvoting for you, sorry (unlike you perhaps downvoting my post)

pointing out that Microsoft and/or Apple are not being "evil"

Why were you quoting the word "evil"? I am guessing because you put the relative meaning of it there, didn't you?

Apple and Microsoft are both in the "for" camp.

Is this "for" also supposed to be quoted? If everyone was for, why did this all end up broken? I hope you are not learning it from me, but a more disruptive and destructive efficiency of some idea or cause is achieved when one joins it. So this pretentious "for" does make a perfect sense.

Since, the real facts are:

Microsoft: racketeering most Android manufacturers or/and spreading FUD about their infringed patents never publicly disclosing what these patents are.

Apple: attacking Samsung and others for some ridiculous shape patents with a lunatic idea that "they invented everything"

Rockstar: it's not enough for both of them what they achieve individually, so they combine their trolling forces and greed to attack more successful competitors. Plus it's better and more secure to use proxies instead of engaging in more face-to-face, straightforward and open-field attacks. Maybe, so they could join the party for the reforms to better ensure its destruction.

@Uffe Seerup, about my point

Please do not take this the wrong way, but that seems pretty ad-hominem to me.

I hope, I won't, I don't see how you can contribute this in this way though. I felt offended by the tone of h4rmony's. It wasn't the first time it happened to our discussions. 'ad hominem' is what I would describe this ( I wasn't the first to use this Latin term though). It's not a kind of pedantism where "things are pointed out for you ", it's rather when "they are pointed out at you" . Bash, PS or even MS don't have to do with that.

Yes I do not know PS, yet I seem to know a little about the GNU utils, enough to find and point at a few issues others have. Here is a fact, I didn't feel your "pedantic tone" to be insulting the same way, in contrast.

Most of us are anonymous here. I didn't bear insults and swearing at my mom as the user dogged did once to me. I told him, that this is cowardly and if that would be in person, he would be dealt with in manly manner with a physical involvement of both of us. So some of us would end up kicking the the other one's arse.

At least, I am thankful to h4rmony for being formally polite and never swearing at me.

@Uffe, on find

That's 2 things already...It is called "find" because it should find files. The UNIX principle would be to leave the "printing" to another tool.

When another tool is known like formatting cmdlet in PS, it might be a good idea. Otherwise, sorry, but find has to print out the information somehow, it can't just dump whatever is possible to a printing utility. In case of PS, cmdlets work together, utilities don't. In fact PS is one program divided into modules. You're alluding to PS cdmlets as independent programs, is that correct? Can I take a dir cmdlet and install in a GNU Linux or a *BSD and use it instead of find or ls? If not, then they are not fully independent.

But even if you want us to ignore it, printf *also* starts and executes new processes. Cookbooks frequently use that capability.

Never heard of this feature of -printf 'to execute' anything. Are we talking about the same find's? Which cookbook are you reffering to? Mine is:

find (GNU findutils) 4.4.2

It has been pointed out to you, that PowerShell has been able to take a responsibility such as finding/locating items and separate it from responsibilities such as managing processes,

Okay, kindly let me know if cmdlets are independent programs. In particular, whether dir (or ls) and Format-Table, date-time are as independent as find, awk, date and Bash? In particular, can I install any of theses cmdlets on my system to work with Bash or Dash? If not, then they are not independent programs and contradict the UNIX principle more than find does.

@h4rmony

I am sorry mam, but your pedantic tone is not bearable to me. Most of your post is dedicated to teaching me and telling me how I was wrong and you're right all the way. (I am a teacher myself and this is not my pedagogical method.) This is how our discussions usually end. Unlike Uffe's posts, yours are felt pretty "ad hominem" to me.

I beg your pardon, but I cannot continue in that manner.

All the best.

@h4rmony

with all due respect, I would suggest that the manner in which you try to argue would be a little different than this:

"you're proving to me that 5+5=7, while I am trying to showing you that 3+3=6"

Diminishing your opponent doesn't empower your argument, it's does the opposite dialectical job, for an independent onlooker.

every answer given to you has been attacked and I think it is ...

So, I am attacking it? And other just gently and friendly showing tha I was wrong? Again, please look at the difference of tones, you're using.

TheVogon was again using some cryptic language, I was making remarks on that. If he/she suggested how I could protect the signature from being compromised after I offered to install as a system utility, I simply said that you would be done with the whole system. Is it an attack. Or when it was pointed out how portable and universal S, it can be used for no less than 2 systems! I pointed out it was a joke on potability. Again it was an attack....

You're forgetting that the final was

find . -printf "%u\n" | sort -u

I also offered AWK because you seemed fixated on AWK in the original post I was responding to and used redundant grep filtering. So you were using 2 redundant pipes plus a redundant command ls instead of just reading man of find.

You are confusing Bash with GNU Utils. find is not "built into Bash",

No I don't, I never said that, I only likened PS cmd-lets to Bash built-ins, get it now?

it's a program and the reason Uffe called it a monster is because it violates seven ways to Sunday the UNIX principle of do one thing well.

How so? It only specializes in finding files and printing information on that. While PS is a jack of all trades, right? Say find is independent of the shell, you can use with pretty much any POSIX shell, while you cannot use dir cmdlet with GNU Bash, on the other hand...

It contains its own print formatting language for example.

It's printf, come-on, it's not "its own" language, escape literals are the same as everywhere, other formatting literals can be looked up via man or info.

@Uffe: your output format

ft {$f.FullName},{$f.Length},AccessToString

So why is this formatting identical to mine, or it is not? I wanted to delimit the fields with the tab "\t", what if had something different, than that? What about the records, in my case it's "\n"? I also had the Length in kilobytes, what if I required it to be in bytes?

Re: @h4rmony

Windows has true first-class ACLs. (ACLs were added later on *nix, and is still not fully integrated - e.g. there is no "octal" representation).

First, MS Windows didn't have file permissions at all, remember that time, thus fat32 and earlier filesystems still don't have proper file permissions. The *nix systems had it from day one. Second, what's first-class citizen, what is third-class? Please clarify.

@Uffe

Good job!

(I still don't know the secret behind formatting code in these forums :

I don't think its too good. You can use the code tag though.

Although you might have omitted symbolic links, your command does pretty much what my find command was doing. However, there were a few things I would like point out:

0) it's 2 pipes, if I am not mistaken, my example had no pipes at all (no -exec option was used as well), and hence it might be less efficient and slower, since you list all files, then get what you want etc

1) as one can see, there is no -maxdepth option, so you would have a little harder time if I had -maxdepth 33

2) syntax is not as nice as in h4rmony's and your own example, it is longer than mine

3) printf is pretty much universal in IT, your format might be a little different from mine, since i put in KB and with dimension "kb" How would you get it print out using a different than "\n" delimiter, say ","?

4) when and how many times does this (get-date) evaluated? if it takes several secs, mins or hours would the result be different for files found right away and later on?

Once you need to filter on anything "find" has not been coded for, you are out of luck.

What do you mean by that? h4rmony alluded to many things and used '-exec ls' instead of a better suited -printf formatting. Please show me it with example, since his example was not very convincing.

PowerShell can draw on anything that can be evaluated as an expression.

What can it draw on , while find or other suitable utilities can't.

5) we of course don't know which would be faster more efficient, except the two pipes might slow execution of it down .

find

Corrections:

1) I put -atime (access time) but really wanted -ctime for "change time"

2) in the size range I also wanted it to be [1,2]M

Re: @Uffe, on find

Interesting. So how would you write the example using xargs?

Sure, if you know that your output does not exceed a certain limit of the pipe length (thre is a shell variable for this) use simple pipe, otherwise xargs

In this example I need to find a cddb file with a certain contents as a pattern, I run it with grep (it might possible to do it through grep itself, however there is tones of small text files there)

I mean, that essentially an alias for a pipe, since find calls an external program on a file with an argument as this file.

@h4rmony

Actually, I would like you to. I very much want to hear what find can do that can't be done in Powershell.

Here's my challenge for anyone who could try to replicate PS dir for this command

find -L . -maxdepth 3 -regextype posix-egrep \

-printf "%f\t%kkb\t%m\n"

#Explanation

-L follow symlinks

-maxdepth - traverse no deeper than that many dirs

-iregex -- is case insensitive pretty much POSIX, which I hope one can read Okay

-atime -10 - files that have been changed within last 9 days

size +1M -size -2M -- with size in the [2,2]M range

-user john123 --- belonging to user john123

-printf "%f\t%kkb\t%m\n" -- in the format full filename\tsize( in kb)kb\tfile (permissions in octal form)\n

Is any of that possible with PS and dir command?

@Uffe, on find

So if you call 'find' "monstrous", how do you find PS that has some of its properties as well as sort and more? (sorry for unintended punt)

has multiple options to control output format (why?)

because you might different tasks and goals as well as search criteria. And that pretty much one option 'printf" a pretty well familiar operator from C. I don't like the -exec function myself and prefer xargs (-exec is just that alias of that pipe you were mentioning when talking about PS options) .

find has an entire expression language which is different from expressions used in the shell itself

It's not entirely true according to me, like I said it's printf with pretty familiar formatting syntax. It, btw, took me a few seconds to search "%u" in man, and "\n" is a new line es everywhere else.

What you;re saying about PS is that all features that are not complete (compared to the utilities ) and all of them in one bottle? With utilities I could however switch to a different shell, if I don't like bash, say, zsh or kcsh or anything else. (Moreover, they work as calls within GNU Emacs and get really handy there, like there is grep-mode. ) I got more freedom with shel+utils, you see.

Moreover, cmdlets are modules that are not completely independent of themselves. You cannot isolate them away from PS, right? So the principle of modularity is not observed fully.