Softpanorama Switchboard

He who will not reason is a bigot;
he who cannot is a fool;
and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond

The main purpose of the site is to promote "slightly skeptical" approach to IT, to stimulate critical thinking about system administration and software development as professions. To increase resistance to media brainwashing. Skepticism is generally any questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, or opinions/beliefs stated as facts, or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere.

We try to eschew the conventionally favored obfuscations about IT workplace and related propaganda (for example about "cloud computing" or IT outsourcing) and expose the theater of absurd which often both academic and, especially, corporate IT represents (sometimes in the form of humor; it's often the best medicine against conformism, stress, and overload.). It is important to be aware about dangers of the IT workplace such as psychopathic bosses (aka toxic managers). The latter have several varieties with micromanagers, bullies, narcissists and authoritarians as the most common. You also need be aware of a standard under neoliberalism corporate waterboarding procedure called performance reviews ;-). After all you are just a consumable resource.

Due to resources limitation this is a very limited and incomplete effort. Layout of the site Spartan with mostly plain vanilla HTML and design tries to avoid overcomplexity trap even if at some expense of readability. Some pages are long, some very long.

Not all pages are current: the site develops as a living tree and active area migrate with time depending on the current interest of the author. Many links are broken, but using Google one can find new location for probably 80% of them. The rest is gone: electrons have some weaknesses in comparison with paper as for long term storage of information :-).

Softpanorama is a very simple in layout, Spartan site. It does not use any Web 2.0 technologies. It's primary focus is self education and in this area content is the king. So based on limited resources we have, sophisticated layout was sacrificed. The site is one of the few "compiled' web sites where target pages are not generated on request, but are precompiled when a change in content arrives.

In 2012 "open source" is really old overused and abused concept and computer science education that once was flourishing, now is a neglected area in deep crisis. Very few people understand that computer science (CS) education is one important area were open source really shines: the academic value of open source software (OSS) cannot be overestimated ( "free/open for education" is one of the most important meanings of "free software".)

This site promotes exactly this usage of open source and view open source development as a special type of academic research (with the same pitfalls and limitations involved). Open source like love is a very complex subject and we reject romantic ideas inherent in both Stallmanism and Raymondism. For example, I see nothing wrong with using open source development as a career jumpstart, the stage on which talented programmers can demonstrate to themselves and the world the level of their talent before moving on to other, possibly closed source, projects. And vice versa, after such person works in corporate environment for several years, the frustration can reach level when some level of participation in related to work experience open source project might be a good safety valve, the best way to preserve sanity :-).

Old News ;-)

• [Jan 28, 2018] MSM as attack dogs of color revolution
• [Jan 27, 2018] Russiagate -- a color revolution against Trump
• [Jan 26, 2018] Peter Strzok use of Steele dossier role in establishing surveillance on members of Trump Team (Strzok-gate)
• [Jan 25, 2018] Steele dossier
• [Jan 12, 2018] Coordinated set of leaks as a color revolution tool
• [Jan 11, 2018] MSM as attack dogs of color revolution : Wolff revelations and slander
• [Jan 10, 2018] Wolff revelations and slander of Trump administration : Special Prosecutor Mueller and his fishing expedition
• [Jan 08, 2018] Russiagate -- a color revolution against Trump

Bookshelf

Books, Papers and Bulletin

See also Softpanorama unique collection of OSS humor The best medicine against conformism, stress, toxic managers (including micromanagers) and overload. It includes:

BSD logo story : Cuckoo Egg Review : Hired Magazine Interviews Good Software Group Founder : Hoax Quiz : Linux sucks collection : Twenty-five Signs of a Completely Americanized Russian Programmer : Russian programmers : Drug Dealers vs. Software Developers

Recent papers

• [Dec 01, 2012] Architectural approaches for increasing Windows resistance against malware
• [Nov 01, 2012] Less is More: A rich functionality behind Spartan interface of Orthodox File Managers
• [Aug 15, 2012] Softpanorama Laws of Computer Security

Recent papers updates:

[Feb 20, 2012] Solaris vs Linux

[Feb 17, 2012] Skeptical View on Unix Security

[Feb 16, 2012] Softpanorama Laws of Computer Security

[Jul 15, 2011] Softpanorama Malware Defense Strategy (version 2.0)

Softpanorama CS Education Directory

Algorithms

General : Sorting Algorithms : Searching Algorithms : Bit Tricks : Control Structures : Compilers : Decompliers : Graph Algorithms : Pattern Matching

Administration :

General : Certification : Perl Admintools : Perl : Shells : Kernel : Config_management : Tivoli

Access control

General : RBAC : Sudo

Authentication

General : PAM : SecurID : Authentication token manipulation error : Wheel Group

Password synchronization

Password Checkers/Crackers : pam_cracklib

Installation of SecurID Client on Suse

Copyright

Social aspects of the BSD vs. GPL debate : BSD vs. GPL : Professor Samuelson

Certification

General issues : Softpanorama Exam Strategy : Solaris Certification : Red Hat Certification : Security Certifications

Commercial Linuxes

General issues : RHEL : Suse

Commercial Unixes

General issues : AIX : HP-UX : Solaris

Databases

General: Mysql : SQL

DNS

General: DNS Ports Usage : MX Records Checking for for Users of Web Hosting : DNS Security

Solaris DNS Server Installation and Administration : DNS Tools : DNS Troubleshooting : DNS Tutorials : History of DNS : DNS Tips :

Tools

Classic DNS Tools : dig : nslookup : hostname : DNS Zone Generators : Online DNS Tools : DNS Audit Scripts :

Tutorials

Solaris DNS Tutorial, part 1/3 : Solaris DNS Tutorial, part 2/3 : Solaris DNS Tutorial, part 3/3

Education

General : SAT

Editors

General : Eastern Orthodox (THE/Kedit) : Western Orthodox(vi.vim) : TCL-based : Win32-super-lightweight : Alt Office

Hardware

General : Dell : HP : Sun : Programmable Keyboards : Mice

Components

Low Cost PC Components : Intel CPUs Price/Performance Ratio : CPU Instruction Set Architecture : Memory

...

Tablets

Tablets with digitizers : Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 with S-pen : Galaxy 10.1 S-pen

Dell

Dell E6330/E6430 : Dell E-Port

History

The History of Computer Science

Unix Scripting History

OS History

HPC

Grid engine : Installation of Grid Engine Master Host : Installation of the Grid Engine Execution Host :

History of Grid Engine Development : SGE implementations : Son of Grid Engine

InfiniBand : Installing Mellanox InfiniBand Driver on RHEL 6.5

Links

General : Humor : Organizations : Discounted bookstores : Computer Books Publishers : Magazines : Russian Links :

Cars : Mitsubishi Outlander 2006 : How to replace low beam light in Mitsubishi Outlander 2006

Russian Music Oldies : Russian Romances

Anna Netrebko : Russian Musical Humor : Russian Songs of the Wartime : Tatyana Navka: Valentina Tolkunova : Anna German : Dmitri Hvorostovsky : Tamara Sinyavskaya : Sofia Rotaru : Alexander Vertinski : Lyudmila Gurchenko

Classic Russian Songs : Those Were the Days : Dark Eyes : Odnozuchno gremit kolokolcik : My Star : Ya vas lubil : Only Once (once in a lifetime) : Evening Bells

Russian Basso Profondo : Boris Shtokolov

Songs from Famous Russian Cartoons

Russian Choirs : Red Army Choir : Bolshoy Children Choir : Kuban Cossack Choir : Choir of Sretensky monastery : Valaam monastery choir : Peresvet

Russian Orthodox Choirs, Sacred Russian singing Chesnokov's Gabriel Appeared Eternal Counsel : The night is light... with Levitan's paintings : Vladimir Pasjukov - Do not reject me in my old age (Remastered)

Figure skating : Tatyana Navka : Navka - Basharov : Oksana DOMNINA - Maxim SHABALIN

Selected Reviews : Softpanorama archive

Languages

Assembler : C : C++ : Java : Pascal : Algorithms : Compilers : Debugging

Logs

General : Log Analyzers : Log Management : Log Rotation in Solaris : Perl Log Management Tools : Solaris Syslog Configuration : Remote Syslog in Solaris : Syslog-ng for Solaris

Ethernet Protocol

Mail

General : Mta : Mua : UUCP : SMTP : Spam : Procmail filtering : eMail Security : MTA Log Analysers :

Sendmail

Sendmail : Minitutotial : Sendmail on RHEL : Configuring Solaris sendmail : Sendmail performance tuning : Sendmail Security : Sendmail Log Formats : Sendmail file permissions : Dual-instance sendmail

Postfix

Postfix : Postfix Troubleshooting : Postfix Connection Refused Problem

Spamfiltering

Spam : Email Etiquette : Email Overload

Malware

General : Spyware : Spyware Removal Using Spybot S&D : Non-Scanner AntiSpyware Tools : Spyware Scanners : Malware_ Defense_Secrets

Micromanagement in IT

General : Understanding Micromanagers :

Surviving Micromanagers : Rules of Communication with Micromanagers : Coping with the micromanagement induced stress : Anger trap

Muiltimedia

General : VOIP : Working with computer sound

Networking

General : TCP Protocol Layers : OSI Protocol Layers :Network Sniffers : Tools : Troubleshooting : Firewalls and Firewall Rules Auditing

Application Layer :

SSH : NFS : DNS : FTP : Telnet : Samba : Telnet Protocol : VNC : SMTP
Transport Layer
NAT : Subnetting and VLSM : TCP : TCP handshake : UDP

Internet Layer :
ARP : ICMP : Routing : IPv6

Linux Networking Configuration : Linux Routing

Redhat Network Configuration : Suse network configuration

Office

General : MS Word : Excel

FrontPage : Frontpage The server "" timed out error : Frontpage Tips : Frontpage history : Frontpage Macro Programming : Frontpage Keyboard Shortcuts : Using FrontPage reports to better manage your site

Self-publishing : Notes on Kindle publishing : ePUB Format : calibre : ePub readers and Tools

Visio : Alternatives

Orthodox File Managers

OFM page : OFM book

Open Source Software Problems

Index : Copyright : BSD vs GPL : Open Source Chronicle : ERS_Quotes : Raymondism FAQ : Webliography : OSS humor

OS design

OS history : Internals : Filesystems : System_calls
Solaris : Linux : FreeBSD : Hardware : Linux MiniDistributions

Performance tuning

General : Performance Monitoring :Unix System Monitoring : Linux Performance Tuning : Solaris Performance Tuning : AIX performance tuning : NFS performance tuning : Oracle Performance Tuning : Database Performance Tuning : Tivoli Performance Tuning :

Scripting -- faster access from softpanorama.info

General : Javascript : Perl : Shells : True Python : Tcl : TCL-based editors : PHP : Regex : Pipes : Perl Admintools

Shells

String Operations in Shell : Arithmetic Expressions in BASH

Bash : BASH Debugging : Command completion : bash Tips and Tricks : Bash history and bang commands : Input and Output Redirection : Customizing Shell Dot Files: .profile, RC-file, and history : IFS variable and Field splitting in the Korn shell and Bash : Command completion

 

bash Control Structures

if statements in shell : Case statement in shell : Loops in Bash : Usage of pipes with loops in shell : Bash select statement : Double square bracket conditionals

 

Security

General : Papers : Integrity_checkers : Intrusion detection : DNS Security : Perl scripts : Audit tools : Classic security tools : Port Scanners : Port Scan Detectors : Log_analysers : Antivirus : Malware Defense_Secrets

Software Engineering

Literate Programming : Architecture : Testing : Program understanding : Reverse engineering : Anti-OO

Skepticism

PseudoScience : Groupthink : Lysenkoism : CS_skeptic : Obscurantism in Information Technology : Research Materials on Nicholas Carr's IT Does not Matter Fallacy : Harvard Mafia, Andrei Shleifer and the economic rape of Russia

Financial skeptic

Corruption of Regulators

Neoclassical Pseudo Theories and Crooked and Bought Economists as Fifth Column of Financial Oligarchy

Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks: The efficient markets hypothesis : Invisible Hand Hypothesys The Theory of Self-regulation of the Markets : Supply Side or Trickle down economics : Rational expectations scam

Twelve apostles of deregulation

Lawrence Summers : Robert Rubin, the man who helped to convert the USA into banana republic

Insufficient Retirement Funds Problem

Casino Capitalism : Financial Sector Induced Systemic Instability of Economy : Neoliberalism as a Cause of Structural Unemployment in the USA : Lawrence Summers : CDS -- weapons of mass financial destruction : Slightly Skeptical Look at Oil Price Slump : In Goldman Sachs we trust: classic example of regulatory capture by financial system hackers

Unemployment

Neoliberalism as a Cause of Structural Unemployment in the USA : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010

Financial Skeptic Humor

Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008

Peak Cheap Energy and Oil Price Slump

Energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) : Russian Ukrainian Gas Wars

Neoliberalism and rising inequality

Inequality Bulletin, 2009 :

Casino Capitalism

Casino Capitalism : Corruption of Regulators : Supply Side or Trickle down economics : Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks : The efficient markets hypothesis : Financial Sector Induced Systemic Instability of Economy : In Goldman Sachs we trust classic example of regulatory capture by financial system hackers : : Greenspan as the Chairman of Financial Politburo : Helicopter Ben: Arsonist Turned into Firefighter : :

Political skeptic:

Who Rules America : Media-Military-Industrial Complex : Two Party System as Polyarchy : National Security State / Surveillance State: Review of Literature : Total Surveillance and Snowden Prism Revelations Saga : Neo-theocratic Movements : Corporatism : American Exceptionalism : New American Militarism

Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism as a New Form of Corporatism: Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Audacioues Oligarchy and Loss of Trust Corporatist Corruption: Systemic Fraud under Clinton-Bush-Obama Regime : Libertarian Philosophy : Politically Incorrect Humor : Elite [Dominance] Theory And the Revolt of the Elite : America’s Financial Oligarchy : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Neocolonialism as Financial Imperialism : Fifth column : Jokes about Russian Fifth Column : Predator state : Tea Party and right wing rage :

Propaganda

Corporate Media: Journalism In the Service of the Powerful Few : The Guardian Slips Beyond the Reach of Embarrassment Neo-fashism : Neoconservatism as a stage of development of Neoliberalism : Ayn Rand and her Objectivism Cult : Mayberry Machiavellians : : Media as a weapon of mass deception :

Fifth column of neoliberal globalization

Color revolutions Fighting Russophobia : Compradors : Diplomacy by deception

Social aspects fo working in IT environment

General :

Business Communication

Diplomatic Communication :Corporate bullshit as a communication method : Negative Politeness :

Socratic Questions : Rules of Verbal Self Defense against Corporate Psychopaths : Insubordination Threat : Six ways to say No and mean it : Talleyrand quotes : Dictionary of corporate bullshit : Minimize office gossip

Toxic managers

Micromanagers : The psychopath in the corner office : Narcissistic Managers : Borderline Psychopaths : Female Sociopaths : The Techniques of a Female Sociopaths : Empty Suits (Aggressive Incompetent Managers) : Authoritarians

Fighting Corporate Psychopaths : Observing and Documenting Behavior of Corporate Psychopaths : Communication with Corporate Psychopaths

Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Office Stockholm Syndrom : The Fiefdom Syndrome : Learned helplessness : Signs that you might be dismissed soon

Quotes about Psychopaths

Bureaucracies

Bureaucratic ritualism : Bureaucratic alienation : Bureaucratic Inertia

Bureaucracy as a Political Coalition : Meetings mania

Absurdity of bureaucracies : Bureaucratic avoidance of responsibility : Bureaucratic Collectivism

Military Bureaucracy : Military Incompetence

Overload

Toxic stress: Burnout

Information Overload : Drinking from a firehose -- informing ourselves to death :

Mental Overload : Sleep Deprivation : Office Slaves: the rise of bullshit jobs :

Workagolism as escape path from social problems

Solaris

General : Open Source : Whitepapers : Certification : Internals : Installation : Solaris Zones : Solaris Packages : Controlling System Processes : Process Scheduling : Virtual Memory :
Disk and Filesystems : RAID : Solaris UFS : Solaris TMPFS : ZFS : Swap Space

Solaris Books : Solaris Security : CD burining : Solaris Patching : Documentation map :BluePrints : Man Pages : Humor : Solaris history : Stanistlav Lem Solaris : Tips

Tivoli

General : .TEC : TFM : ITM : Tivoli Redbooks :

TEC Rules : Testing TEC rules

Tools

General : Shells : Awk : AWK Regular Expressions : Sed : Diff : Pipes : Grep : vi

exec command : sort command : dd : tr command : cut command : xargs  : tail command : split command : uniq command : tar : Recovery of lost files using DD : paste command : tee

Find  : Using -exec option with find : Selecting files using their age : Finding Files based on size: largest, empty and within certain range : Finding files using file name or path : Finding World Writable, Abandoned and other Abnormal Files

Unixification

General : Cygwin : Xming : Microsoft Services For Unix : Hummingbird Connectivity Suite :

Windows 2000 Resource Kit : Cygwin/X : Dual Boot : Working with dd Images

Utilities

General alias : at : beautifiers :cp : cron :curl : diff. : diff_tools : eval : expect : expr : ln : ps : rpm : screen : screenrc_examples :script : Teraterm : Teraterm_macros :top. : touch :vmstat : YUM : zip

Unixification of Windows

General : SFU : Reskits : Process viewers : Dual Boot : Windows Scripting Host Monad Shell

Virtualization

General : Light-weight virtualization : VMware : Xen on Suse 10 : Notes on five different types of virtualization

Windows

General : Registry Tools : Edit_win32 : Process viewers : Norton Ghost : Filesystems Recovery : Alternatives to Norton Utilities : Windows XP Slow Startup and Shutdown : VBA : Windows Security

WWW

General : Content management : Maintenance Scripts : Logs : CGI : CGI Security : Authoring : SSI : Mirroring : HTTP Protocol : Apache on Solaris : Web Server Security : Perl Blogs : Perl Wiki :
HTML Pretty Printing and Beatifying : Cheap Web hosting with SSH access

Xwindows

General : VNC : VNC on Linux : VNC on Solaris

Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

Copyright © 1996-2018 by Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) in the author free time and without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.

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Last modified: July 28, 2019