Posts by hmv

Re: Block lists are only useful...

Block lists are a bad way of solving this problem (and others), but in the absence of anything else, they do a half-decent job. Just time out entries :) (I run one but for naughtier folk than spammers)

> clean-room reverse-engineered it and cloned it. That's why they were called "PC clones".

Well, not quite; they weren't clones because of the clean-room reverse engineering; they were clones because they worked just like IBM PCs. The clean-room reverse engineering after the clone manufacturers discovered that IBM keept a pack of ferocious attack lawyers and would quite happily unleash them in the face of those who just copied the BIOS.

Re: Is that a joke ?

Indeed. The figure was reduced for behaving well _after_ the incident. The figure should only be reduced for behaving well _before_ the incident.

Re: Little Update

That's "great weather" in the interesting sense? But it's a great city.

Re: Fiddling about while Linux burns.

To be fair, Emacs has non-Unix origins.

Re: Sadly... this is the beginning of the end

SunOS4 not SunOS5. Not AIX. A lot of Unix variants acquired BSDisms (such as vi) but claiming they were all based on BSD is a stretch too far.

NeXTStep was based on the Mach micro-kernel as is macOS (or at least /a/ micro-kernel).

Re: The layout on a Mac

In Zsh (which macOS uses these days I believe), ^D deletes the character under the cursor and logs you out if the line is otherwise empty.

Re: Also works for hardware

You should have seen the fights over who got to put "their" CD into the CD towers; University librarians are /vicious/!

Re: That's downright cheap!

"its" not "it's"!! Need more coffee.

I believe that Norfolk (the English county) predates the naming of Norfolk, Virginia by quite a ways.

Re: Rebranding, an explensive way to rearange deck chairs?

As a resident of a seaside city, I believe you are unnecessarily trivialising the importance of getting deck chairs /just/ right. I would say nobody is dumb enough to buy a product just because the company has a snazzy logo but the existence of Trump voters would seem to indicate that I'm wrong.

On the other hand when a /company/ has spare dosh, redesigning a logo will at least keep the Marketing department happy and out of trouble.

Re: So the next logical step is...

Except it's not an all or nothing thing. Cities may very well see some shrinkage, but there are still plenty of reasons for living and working in cities - access to museums, concert venues, theatres, a good selection of restaurants, and a good selection of pubs. And central work-places will still exist - there /are/ jobs that can't be done from home, and other jobs where getting into the workplace occasionally would be beneficial.

And smaller towns may well see a bit of resurgence - people who want cheaper property within walking distance of the country, but want a bit of a taste of the city too.

Whilst face-to-face meetings may be the "gold standard" of interaction, video conferencing is the "silver standard" and is likely to improve as we get more used to it and vendors add more features. Always on video conferences? Why not?

I think it's easy to overlook that now isn't the new normal - it's still pandemic territory not mass working from home territory. Undoubtedly there will be lots of disruption and that one person who will end up with the right predictions will be right by accident.

"necessary"

If it's an emergency, it's necessary. If it's a scheduled meeting for a status update, it's not necessary.

Re: I've used a lot of terminals...

I firmly believe that there is nothing wrong with interacting with a computer in whatever way works for you - gooey for when you like that, and an emulation of an insanely noisy printing terminal from the 1950s when you're so inclined. Or speaking (which when you think about it, is very much like a command-line).

It's unfortunate that the cli is tied to English, but that's a solvable problem. As is the insanely huge collection of commands (some of which are poorly documented). For a tiny example, I have a bletcherous shell function called "show" (which could also be called "sioe") which looks at the file extension before deciding how to display it (by preference) in the terminal.

"initiated into the arcana before you can practice your craft"

Do you really think there is a single profession out there that doesn't have to initiate people into the secrets of the trade before they can practice? A somewhat outdated saying: "Windows allows any idiot to run a computer. Do you really want any idiot running your servers?" (and this is really a knock to the assumption that running a fleet of servers is something anybody can do; not to Windows itself)

Re: Automated Lane Keeping Systems (ALKS)

It's easy to be cynical, and I'm sure these automated driving systems are less safe than all the drivers here.

On the other hand, that numpty who needs help plugging in their laptop to charge? They drive in every morning too. And every place has a whole Marketing department full of 'em.

Re: Now how about OS/X in a VM?

Technically if you owned an Apple (that you don't use) capable of running the version OSX you're running in a Linux VM, you could argue that whilst it was a breach of contract to run that VM, Apple couldn't argue that there was any monetary harm in that breach of contract.

This legal advice is almost certainly worth less than you paid for it.

Have you ever been on a SANS course? I have and they're definitely a bit more intensive than the run of the mill courses you sometimes get. Yes they're expensive which is partially because their trainers are security practitioners who work in the industry, although I dare say there's a bit of market gouging going on.

You don't gain anything by being nasty to those types. Be nice to them.

And rant about them for half an hour in the growlery[0] afterwards if necessary (it should be - it's a vital stress reduction strategy).

0: That's a room for growling in. Every Helldesk on the planet should have one.

Re: Outsourcing

It's the cloud equivalent of 'chmod 777 ...' just to get it working.

"but they can be counted accurately"

Says you. I'm half convinced that if you leave them alone in a dark drawer for long enough, they breed. Just don't leave a trackball in the same drawer - you really don't want to know!

BTW: In Tom and Jerry, the mouse does indeed sometimes chase the cat.

Re: Ah, the days before memory protection seemed necessary...

I believe that IBM 360s had hardware memory protection from their introduction in 1964 and I dare say Univacs also had it.

Of course you had to run an operating system that made use of it, or there may have been bugs in the protection mechanism.

Re: Yet another reason

And send 'em back for a refund explaining why.

Re: Be nice if they could make it secure *and reliable*

Hmm ... it's possible that there's something funky about your machine rather than the update - I've upgraded two Ubuntu machines this morning (although only one was rebooted) without an issue. And I've certainly not seen any recent booting issues after a grub update.

But yes, I'd certainly agree that making booting more bullet-proof would be useful.

One of the most important things I did at the start of this was to make a resolution to "walk to work" in the morning - every day without fail I'd at the very least walk around the block before starting work.

Re: We’ve had plenty of these Molly cover stories

But a Frisbee doesn't cause such a satisfying crashing sound when slamming into a concrete floor.

Re: A lingo that is 'fit for purpose' for actual KERNEL programming

Rust inside the kernel would probably be a bad idea; using Rust to write code to be compiled into the kernel is a whole other question. And one that the kernel /developers/ are not dead set against; and frankly they know more about this than you or I.

"What Apple _should_ do, is design a sliding cover into future models"

Or at the very least carve out enough space on the front edge of the case so that it doesn't cause damage.

Not that I use those covers myself - if you find anything more interesting on my webcams than a fat old geek staring myopically at the laptop screen, please let me know!

Re: Fail

Weren't you ever 18?

And I speak as someone who would have been cleaning up student labs in the 1990s - no we never had a lab full of porn. Perhaps because most of the students around the labs in my neck of the woods were history/sociology students; the look of bemused horror as they came out of their first computational statistics workshop were hilarious.

Re: Reply to Linus Torvalds

Shrug. If certain phrases offends some people it is worth considering changing it.

And in the case of "allow lists" and "deny lists" the 'improved' phrase is more descriptive of how they're usually used.

Having said that, the "black" in blacklists has a longer history of being used to mean "bad" than used to refer to people with built-in suntans. The OED has references in that context going back to the Old English era including some confusion relating to the switch from the word "swart" (meaning black (meaning swart)). Although "black" has been used in reference to people for as long, it was principally descriptive - even used for people with dark hair - and it wasn't until the 1960s that it was popularised as an identity.

Re: Simlar ...

I suppose you could try that with an Expert Mouse but it might be easier to grow a third arm. Plus it's harder picking up the ball and throwing it at annoying people.

Re: Art Deco

The outside isn't so bad although it just isn't big enough to be a "Transport Palace" but the inside is a bit "meh" - a bit cramped (especially during an incident with large numbers of passengers dumped on the platform).