Lost In Cyberia

I use the command line irc client, irssi, and I frequent an Amateur radio irc, the TwiT.tv irc, and the nouveau irc. all three very lively

What the hell?? So...how is this even possible? The network in my house, is reading -63 dDm... So according to the wiki, that's about 1 nanoWatt. I'm not an electrician obviously, but how on earth can my wifi router only put out 1 nanoWatt?? That sounds microscopically small? Doesn't the radiating antenna need lots of power to pump out that wifi frequency throughout my house? It sounds really bizarre that the power from the wifi router is only operating with such a small weak signal. Infact looking up on the chart on the wiki, it shows that WiFI bands b/g/n use about 200 miliWatts. and cell phone transmitters put out 500 miliwatts. That's a pretty significant jump over the reading of 1 nanowatt that I'm reading from my router Why such a huge difference?... Just a bit confused as how the range can be so wide.

So I noticed that all wifi analyzers, and readers, display the signal strength of wireless hotspots, and wireless connections in decibels, but in miliwatts. Furthermore, no matter what signal I look at it's always a negative number. I've seen ranges all the way from -23 down to -78 dBm. At first this confused me as I never saw any positive numbers, I assumed that the negative was bad no matter what... But thinking about it.. One the receiving end of an analyzer..the signal strength must ALWAYS be negative right? If I put it like this, you can't hear something louder than it was originally sent. So if the wifi router is sending a signal out at 0dBm, and my analyzer picks it up at 0dBm, then it received a 100% signal, but more likely it'll be reduced, hence the negative numbers.. So my main question is if the wifi transmitter was sending out a signal at like 6dBm, and my analyzer picks it up reasonally well, would it still have a positive like maybe 3 dBM? How would the receiver know that the transmitter was sending it at 6dBm in the first place? It doesn't know the transmitters starting power so it would assume that anything that the transmitter is sending would be 0dBm right? Does this sound about right?

Wow, Digip, fantastic and hopefully not time consuming for you, explanation! I wasn't the one who requested it, but this is a benefit to us all...

Cipher downgrade during negotiation?

Honestly, this guy hamzaabdullahmoh should be banned...

Furthermore...do any of these firmware support UEFI? And more specifically, secureboot?

Lol, I dub it the "smoke 'em out" method

Hey everyone, while taking my morning and going through the GRUB manual: Grub Install I came across two questions that are picking at me. This is in regards to an MBR partitioned disk. There are apparently two "main" methods to installing GRUB to an MBR style disk. We can insert GRUB after the leading chunk of MBR on the disk, and before the first partition. Or we can install GRUB to a specified partition itself. (Usually the first). Do i have this right? So my questions are thus: 1. If the first option is chosen, to insert the bootloader after the MBR, would we still have a /boot/grub directory? Or would this directory, along with the core GRUB img, (/boot/grub/i386-pc/core.img) be installed then in the area after the MBR? 2. Does this imply that having a /boot/grub directory and general grub files, mean that GRUB is installed on your partition? 3. I then read from other sources that GRUB is installed IN the MBR? Is this just a difference in syntax? It sounds like it's different than doing it after the MBR and before the 1st partition. 4. If you put /boot onto a separate partition. Does this work the same way as it being installed on say /dev/sda1 or /dev/sda2? Thanks everyone, hope these make sense...

polkit blocking you?

Most likely network-manager? Not 100% sure on your system. Run : sudo systemctl status networking.service and then run: sudo systemctl status systemd-networkd.service One of those should be active and the other should be dead. Whichever is actice is most likely handling your interfaces

Lol, Cooper, why am I not suprised :P I'm currently using openbox as a DE so it's fairly minimal as well, but the OS I use comes with Terminator, which in turn uses xterm by default. To supplement what you said Cooper, I present this: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/93376/which-terminal-type-am-i-using

Hmm I see... So, most "terminal emulators" (guake, terminator, termite etc..) will always use some other predefined "terminal type" (xterm, vt100, ) I'm assuming that xterm though was at once point a terminal emulator as well though, because it's listed here as an application: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Category:Terminal_emulators I'm also assuming that the terminal emulator applications can support multiple and different terminal types? So in general, we people fuss over what terminal emulator they like best.. does this mean that they're actually arguing about the terminal type that the terminal application is using? Does it also mean that, besides graphically, that in general terminal emulators are pretty much the same? If two terminal emulators are both using xterm...doesn't that mean that both terminal emulators are providing the same functionality? What do you use Cooper? Just curious...

Hey everyone, So I'm a bit confused about the settings of linux terminals. I have two terminals installed on my system. I can open either. I have Guake and I have terminator. But when I do echo $TERM, on both terminals it displays that the terminal is xterm. It was my understanding that xterm is a much older console, so why are both terminals displaying that they're xterm? Are they both using the xterm source or something? I don't have the experience, but do other terminals like rxvt, wterm, konsole etc... do they all use xterm as well? Why does xterm seem like the "base" for other terminals? Are these other terminals, more like wrappers over the original xterm code? Thanks for the responses ahead of time

Cooper, your devotion to providing quality, well thoughtout answers to our questions is remarkable...You really should start like a blog or compedium of all of the information you provide to the curious minded noobies like us lol. Seriously though I'd hate to think all of this information you take the time to write and think about, going to waste... Anyway thanks for the answer, that cleared up a lot! You say: Team A is potentially legally fucked - the maker of the original device can sue them claiming Team A somehow had access to confidential documents so they must disappear Wow... seriously? This is a lot of shit to go through and do, to make a driver...? It actually is surprising that anyone would go through this and potentially screw up their lives to create a driver. The whole process seems like a very "Don't ask, Don't tell" mentality. Has there been large scale crackdowns by the venders against this?

Cooper, I should have know you'd respond to this behemoth of a post.. First of all, as always, thank you for your time. This was a huge request. But your answers have satiated my curiosity 10 times over! The only question i'm still a bit confused on is the idea of free open source engineering of proprietary hardware. An example is the FOSS project Nouveau. It's based on reverse engineering of the Nvidia linux drivers that were licensed out. I'm sure nvidia knows that they're doing this, how is it legal? "The project's goal is to create an open source driver by reverse engineering Nvidia's proprietary Linux drivers." from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_%28software%29 Thanks again Cooper! Funny, related article: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2911459/why-nvidia-graphics-cards-are-the-worst-for-open-source-but-the-best-for-linux-gaming.html

Hey everyone. So there's something that's been bugging for a while. I've been thinking about the creation of writing of drivers. (who doesn't think about this in their spare time). I have a ton of questions, and I hope this doesn't cause you guys to skip over answering any of them! Don't feel like you have to answer all 8! I appreciate any feedback. Anyway, what's troubling me is this.. So let's say our company Wintel is about to release a brand new graphics card. 1. What determines if this new card, the Ultron 9000, would work in an OS that has drivers for the earlier Ultron 8000? 2. Let's assume that Wintel's Ultron 9000 is a complete redesign, does Wintel employ it's own software team to write drivers for the new card, to operate with the major Operating Systems like Windows and Apple? Or does Wintel assume that Windows and Apple will have write the drivers for the WIntel card? 3. This seems to be mutually beneficial... Both the hardware vender, Wintel and the OS venders, Windows and Apple both benefit from this. Wintel gets their new hardware on board with the two biggest suppliers of Operating systems. And WIndows and Apple can market their OS to be capable of handling a huge variety of devices out of the box. Anyway the question is, why is it, that some drivers can work on multiple devices? but some drivers can only work on one specific device, but useless for any other device? For example, one of my old HP printers, used a certain device driver. I couldn't get that exact driver, but I got one with a very similar model number and it work well enough. Why/how does this work? Are devices that are made like printers, created on the same "core" hardware and all of the extra 'selling points' and bonus features added on, but don't cause any need for an entirely different driver? 4. For a device to operate on any given computer, is the host OS all it needs to be catered to? What I mean is, do devices rely on any other devices, or is it just the OS that needs to be able to talk one on one to device? I guess what I'm asking is, I should be able to plug my Ultron 9000 card into any computer, and as long as the OS has the driver software for the Ultron 9000, it should in theory be able to interface with it correct? 5. So let's move up a level, to the PC manufacturers themselves. How do they fit into this equation? Most PC manufacturers, like Dell, Acer, HP, etc... they want the license to be able to package Windows and Apple on their hardware... So do they write drivers catered for Windows / Apple / Linux (yea right..) ? 6. Taking that even further, An HP or Acer laptop doesn't create 100% of the of the hardware in their PC, For example, my HP PC comes with an Nvidia Graphics card. And further more... On another computer my MSI graphics card uses Nvidia drivers! (my head hurts) So what's the deal with this? So does MSI buy the drivers from Nividia? I honestly don't know the relationship between how companies create hardware, but have other companies writing the drivers. The same is true for companies like Gigabyte and Evega. They create the card, but have Nvidia supply the drivers? I know between MSI and Nvidia, you can find drivers from each for the same piece of hardware. Does that mean that if MSI creates a new piece of hardware, they give it (or sell?) to Nvidia to write drivers for it. What does Nvidia get from adding their drivers to an MSI card? 7. The same line of questioning goes for not so elaborate pieces of hardware. If a there's something "trivial" like a usb operated mouse. Created by Logitalk. Let's say Logitalk really wants their new usb mouse to work on every system, cause they know that'll be more sales. So do they get programmers to write the drivers for each OS, or is it the big OS' like Microsoft and Apple, who want compatiblity of all devices, so they ask Logitalk for the rights to make a driver for the hardware? 8. Last One!! Okay so to expand on the question above... Let's say that Logitalk does indeed want their device to be used on as many platforms as possible. BUT! Only to those companies who pay them. So how do developers who write drivers for linux operating systems, get the rights to do it? If Logitalk says that their stuff is proprietary, how come we have so many drivers for Intel, Nvidia, AMD chips? Do the companies give out like "Pity" chips that are crappy for linux dev's? Are their legal issues for developers in the linux community to make drivers for software that is held by proprietary companies? I know this is a massive list of questions...and I don't expect a full response back at once. But if you have any time out there, I'd really appreciate it if you can go over and see what you guys can come up with. These probably aren't really that hard of questions, but it's just been something that's been causing me to scratch my head at.

The EC-Council guys are a bunch of goons...I used to work for the Data Center that houses their servers, so we had to deal with them. They know absolutely nothing, and are PURELY in it for the money. Please don't subscribe to their BS. You're just feeding their ego and profits.

Hey everyone, I know this isn't a PC support forum..but who knows maybe one of you guys have run into a similar issue.. I built my PC and and supplied it with a 600w Powersupply. I have a mid range MSI graphics card attached, and a bunch of USB devices plugged in (keyboard, mouse, dvd burner), and two SATA hard drives plugged in. The motherboard I have is MSI http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127782 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130692 So the problem is that whenever I put my computer into sleep mode, and then go to restart it from sleep, it does this really weird "triple" wakeup up attempt. What I mean is I heard the fans, and hard drive rev up for a second. then it shuts back down. Then there's a 2 second pause of nothing. Then it attempts to power on again, fans spin, then shuts down....Finally ALWAYS on the third attempt, the computer boots fine, fans comes on, hard drives spin up, and all is merry. This isn't really a horrible issue, but it's just odd...and a bit concerning... Considering I hear the hard drives spin up, then shut down abrubtly, I just hope no long term damage to the drive is being done....I sleep my computer quiet often... And that's the other thing, when I shut it down completely, and cold boot, it boots fine! Never had an issue.. Any thoughts on this?

Hey everyone I have a question (*sets up the Cooper beacon*) In regards to linux/unix, let's say you have some crap video card.. from some unknown company.. They have some backwards driver that's not written to work with x11... and x11 has no idea about it.. what will it do? Will it load a generic driver for you and hope for the best? Will x11 just not start, and you're presented with a console? Also... How does x11 search for the graphics card driver that you need. So let's say again, you have a lesser known graphics card. Is there a stored library of drivers installed on linux that has a list of all drivers? OR, does the card present the driver to x11 in software upon install? It seems like storing a massive list of drivers on linux is a huge waste of space since you'll probably only need to use one or two of them...

Welp, to be fair, the maintainers of the original Truecrypt *did* say to move away from it, despite the audit...

Unfortunately, spying and surveilence aren't going to bring the country out of it's debt-centric lifestyle. Money has to come from somewhere. We have our hands in too many pots as it is. On one hand I agree that lobbying is abused and should be looked upon as bribery... but on the other I don't want our government operating as a black box either. People having the ability to get their idea's into government is pretty important. That being said, it's usually restricted and only effective when it's large organziations that do it which is pretty dysmil...

Cooper, I agree with you 100%.... The respect, legitimacy and dignity of the Presidency has been undermined and made into farce for celebrities and charlatons

I pick up an issue every so often. I had a subscription for one year, but a lot of the articles didn't really do anything for me. My problem with the mag is that so many articles come off as very elitist and repeat the same tired, boring mantra over and over again.. Yes being a hacker isn't a bad thing... Yes being a hacker means exploring, and trying different things. There's an column in 2600 called the Hacker Perspective, that repeats literally the same tired rant every issue. The magazine to me comes off more of an advertisement to how cool and elite hackers are. It annoys me to no end... And the letters column, which was a favorite of mine, is not filled with letters that the editor picks that seems to cater more towards humor. They've gotten into the habit of printing all of the nonsensical letters in an attempt to show off the random ones they get... It's not needed.. That being said there are some really really good articles here. Last issues Cell Phone 4g article was great... but I don't think I'd subscribe again..

Hmm sorry Cooper, still not following really... when I do a : file /sbin/init I get : /sbin/init: symbolic link to /lib/systemd/systemd So this tells me that the old init process/script is now a new file, called systemd. The systemd file i'm assuming is not the same as the old init script... Anyway that's not really my question.. my question is more so, does the systemd architecture make use of the same system calls like fork(), exec() etc.. the same as a systemv architecture? It seems like to me that Systemd's area of 'influence' is above anything regarding system calls. Also is there an OSI type model, when it comes to the linux OS? You know how we have the OSI model for networking, that describes the different levels of the networking stack? Is there a model like this for the unix/linux OS?