Posts by ldo

Tiny11 Builder trims Windows 11 fat with PowerShell script

This Is Why They Say ...

... Windows is a great OS — if your time is worth nothing.

Microsoft foresees a new type of AI PC: A Surface designed with help from machines

Most Of Azure Is Linux

That means you can no longer even design a Windows machine without Linux.

Google fires 28 staff after sit-in protest against Israeli cloud deal ends in arrests

Re: South Africa today is a country

that can take criticism from others without reacting like it’s been picked on. It doesn’t respond with hostility to reports from human-rights organizations. It doesn’t hate the UN and try to sabotage its operations. It abides by international law, and accepts legally-binding directives from bodies like the Security Council and World Court.

In short, it’s a regular part of the world community, like most nations.

Re: What's life like for the Jewish populations

It’s funny, isn’t it: Israel prides itself on not being like the others: it’s the only “democracy” etc. Yet when you point out things it is doing wrong, that instantly triggers the “what about the others” reactions. It’s basically an admission that, deep down, it is not so different from those others, after all.

Re: Whatever happened to "Don't be evil".

South Africans with first-hand experience of what apartheid was like, look at Israel and what it does to Palestinians and say yes, that’s the sort of thing we went through.

Qt Ubuntu 24.04 betas show that there's room to innovate

Re: bloated piss poor attempts to make linux behave somewhat like plan 9

In that case, why can’t you perform container-style isolation, running multiple alternate userlands, on Plan 9? That’s the kind of thing that is easily done on Linux.

Think of it the other way round: Plan 9 “namespaces” are equivalent to just “filesystem namespaces” on Linux. Linux puts all its other userland-accessible kernel facilities into their own namespaces as well: processes, user IDs, network interfaces, even the host name and system time. In addition, it has “cgroups” for managing groupings of processes and controlling their resource usage. “Containers” are not a primitive provided by the Linux kernel, but are woven out of all these lower-level bits. This is why you have a range of container styles, from basic things like systemd-nspawn and LXC all the way up to Docker and beyond.

In short, Linux has no need to suffer from namespace-envy: Plan 9 is the one suffering from container-envy.

Re: Once there's a Plan 9 that can run a modern web browser, I'll give it a go.

Modern web browser, just like on the “dead end” platforms?

Re: Plan9 is the poster child for a solution looking for a problem.

As you might have noticed from some of my other postings, I’m not a fan of technology for its own sake. It exists to serve us, we are not here to serve it.

How’s That Plan 9 Switch Going?

“Linux is a dead end too. Unix in general is. We should have gone with Plan 9, and we still should.”

— Liam Proven, back on 12th April.

Zilog to end standalone sales of the legendary Z80 CPU

Re: I really enjoyed writing code for ... the 6809

Not the 68000 family? Or was that after your time? Now there was a nice instruction set, clearly inspired by the DEC PDP-11. Very popular among the Unix workstation crowd, until RISC came along and wiped the floor with everything else.

8-Bit Wars Redux

Back in the day, some were fans of the Z80, while others swore by the 6502. The latter pointed to how their favourite chip could do so many things in a single clock cycle, that the Z80 took several cycles to match.

What they neglected to mention was that the 6502 was doing these single-cycle operations on strictly 8-bit quantities, where the Z80 was trying to support full 16-bit arithmetic in all its addressing. For example, the 6502 was limited to a 256-byte stack that had to reside in page 1, while the Z80 had a full 16-bit stack pointer, the same size as all its other address registers.

Rarest, strangest, form of Windows saved techie from moment of security madness

What A Waste Of A DEC Alpha ...

... to run Windows NT on it.

By about the mid 1990s, there were four main OSes available for the Alpha: DEC’s own OpenVMS and “OSF/1” (later to be renamed “Tru64”) Unix, Mirosoft’s Windows NT, and this newfangled “Linux” thing.

Remember, the Alpha was a full 64-bit architecture, back when that was still a novelty. Both Unix and Linux were full 64-bit. VMS on Alpha was a hybrid 32/64-bit OS. While Windows NT ran strictly in 32-bit “TASO” mode (“Truncated Address Space Option”), pretending that the top 32 bits of each address simply didn’t exist.

See what I mean about a waste?

Researchers claim Windows Defender can be fooled into deleting databases

Auto-Immune Diseases

Ever since the first computer “viruses” and “worms”, the parallels with actual biological phenomena, initially seen by many as just spurious analogies, have only grown more eerily accurate. Now we see that equipping computers with immune systems can be just as much a double-edged sword as our own bodies’ defences against pathogens: liable to attack that which they are supposed to be protecting.

Biological evolution is blind, undirected and unplanned, but human intelligence need not be. Instead of merely recapping existing biological processes, we should be able to go beyond them.

A knotty problem: Boffins working on fuel-efficient trajectories for space travel

Re: TANSTAAFL

Two answers.

1) These complicated trajectories tend to take a long time to get where you want to go, at the speed you want to be going at. For example, look at those comet rendezvous missions involving sling-shotting off the inner planets multiple times, taking several years in the process.

2) Tell that to the quantum computing folks. If an O(n) increase in processing elements is supposed to give you an O(e**n) increase in processing power, and that’s not some kind of “something for nothing”, then I don’t know what it is.

Wing Commander III changed how the copy hotkey works in Windows 95

Re: Lost in translation

I don’t understand that bit either. All I can conclude is, none of these old Microsoft Windows war stories really make any sense. Trying work around that 640K limit addled their brains, or something. Or maybe it’s the 26 drive letters.

Re: could be possible to work on the Microsoft AD team

The reality is, on-prem Windows Server is no longer where the big bucks are for Microsoft. Yup, their emphasis is very much on the cloud.

Want Windows-Server-type functionality under your own control? Use the same open-source pieces Microsoft itself copied, namely Kerberos and LDAP, combined with Samba, running on a Linux box. And there you have something that no Microsoft or any other BigCorp™ can ever take away from you.

Re: What happened, Microsoft?

Windows got too complex and too expensive to continue developing any more. And nobody wants to pay good money for an OS any more.

Torvalds intentionally complicates his use of indentation in Linux Kconfig

Re: That's always been the case.

Actually, no. Notice in the description of the indentation rule, in Python 3.1 you have the statement “Indentation is rejected as inconsistent if a source file mixes tabs and spaces in a way that makes the meaning dependent on the worth of a tab in spaces; a TabError is raised in that case.” This rule is not present in Python 3.0.

So it was introduced in Python 3.1.

Re: All good editors today format code

My way:

(defun set_tab_expansion (expand)

␣␣␣␣"changes tab expansion setting for current buffer."

␣␣␣␣(interactive)

␣␣␣␣(cond

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣(expand

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣(setq indent-tabs-mode nil)

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣(message "tabs will be expanded to spaces")

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣)

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣(t

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣(setq indent-tabs-mode t)

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣(message "tabs will not be expanded to spaces")

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣)

␣␣␣␣) ; cond

) ; set_tab_expansion

Re: Messing with defaults is simply a recipe for causing confusion

Tab stops were always like that. They were always meant to represent configurable positions on the typewriter, printer or display screen. Computer printers even had vertical tab stop settings. (And that’s why ASCII has both “HT” and “VT” control characters.)

You see why it’s a good idea to avoid tabs for formatting?

Re: All good editors today format code

Assuming you can control the rules they use, rather than have them impose their own rules on you.

For another example of my style:

LIBNAME = \

␣␣␣␣{

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣"linux" :

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣{

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣"cairo" : "libcairo.so.2",

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣"freetype" : "libfreetype.so.6",

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣"fontconfig" : "libfontconfig.so.1",

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣},

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣"openbsd6" :

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣{

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣"cairo" : "libcairo.so.12",

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣"freetype" : "libfreetype.so.28",

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣"fontconfig" : "libfontconfig.so.11",

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣},

␣␣␣␣}[sys.platform]

Re: trying to find bugs in c or BASIC or Fortran or Pascal trying to find mismatched

Surely all the good editors provide standard commands to match up bracket symbols nowadays?

Re: It implemented fixed 8 space tabs.

No. All members of the VT100 family had a customizable tab ruler. Tabs every 8 columns was just the default setting.

Re: that really didn't like spaces instead of tabs

The classic example where tabs are needed in certain places but not others is Makefiles.

Re: If your chosen editor cannot convert tabs to spaces automatically

I used to use tabs, back in the day, but with the meaning that tab stops were positioned every four columns, not eight. Eight never made any sense to me (some old typewriter convention or something), and still doesn’t.

But I gave up and switched to spaces maybe a couple decades ago. But for compatibility, I still have my editor configured to take a quick sniff of every file I open: if it spots a tab, then it configures the tab key to emit literal tabs. Otherwise, pressing tab inserts some suitable number of spaces.

Re: the python interpreter was convinced that a tab is a different interpretation

Newer versions of Python (from 3.0 if I recall rightly) are stricter: successive lines which are supposed to have the same indentation now have to begin with exactly the same sequence of whitespace. You can’t put a tab on one line and a space in its place on another. This avoids a lot of common mistakes.

Re: accidental stray indent or outdent

I decided early on in my Python code to add “#end” comments to mark the ends of compound statements. I also have custom editor commands defined to jump between lines with matching indentation. This makes it easier to ensure that things are properly nested.

A (small) example:

def set_wakeup_main_function(self, wakeup_main, data, free_data = None) :

␣␣␣␣"sets the callback to use for libdbus to notify you that something has" \

␣␣␣␣" happened requiring processing on the Connection."

␣

␣␣␣␣def wrap_wakeup_main(_data) :

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣wakeup_main(data)

␣␣␣␣#end wrap_wakeup_main

␣

␣␣␣␣def wrap_free_data(_data) :

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣free_data(data)

␣␣␣␣#end wrap_free_data

␣

#begin set_wakeup_main_function

␣␣␣␣if wakeup_main != None :

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣self._wakeup_main = DBUS.WakeupMainFunction(wrap_wakeup_main)

␣␣␣␣else :

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣self._wakeup_main = None

␣␣␣␣#end if

␣␣␣␣if free_data != None :

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣self._free_wakeup_main_data = DBUS.FreeFunction(wrap_free_data)

␣␣␣␣else :

␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣self._free_wakeup_main_data = None

␣␣␣␣#end if

␣␣␣␣dbus.dbus_connection_set_wakeup_main_function(self._dbobj, self._wakeup_main, None, self._free_wakeup_main_data)

#end set_wakeup_main_function

October 2025 will be a support massacre for a bunch of Microsoft products

BigBlueButton For Video Conferencing

Anybody else looked at BigBlueButton? Our local Linux and Python user groups used it to hold online meetings during lockdown, and I recently set up an installation for a client. Seems to have quite a comprehensive feature set.

NetBSD 10 proves old tech can still kick apps and take names three decades later

Re: Variety Versus Fragmentation

There’s the simple fact that you can dual-boot multiple Linux distros, and have them share the same /home area. So you can easily “distro-hop” without having to keep copying all your user files from one installation to another.

There’s the fact that you can run the userland for one distro as a container with another as host.

And yes, Linux distros can be as different as chalk and cheese. Compare, say, Gentoo or Arch with Android, or something as completely off-the-wall as GoboLinux. Look at this idea of “immutable” distros. Look at “toolkit” distros like Kali or SystemRescue. The BSDs have nothing like that.

And what makes them all “Linux” is they share the same kernel.

Variety Versus Fragmentation

There are maybe half a dozen current BSD variants still in some stage of active development, versus maybe 50× that number of Linux distros. Yet it is easier to move among Linux distros than it is to move among BSD variants.

Linux offers a greater degree of variety with less fragmentation, while the BSDs seem to be more about greater fragmentation and less actual variety.

NetBSD Versus Linux Portability

NetBSD seems to count every single variation of a processor platform (e.g. Amiga PowerPC versus Mac PowerPC) as a separate “architecture”, whereas Linux counts them all as one.

So this idea that “there's no other OS in the world that runs on so many different architectures and platforms” seems a bit suspect to me: just name one platform where NetBSD runs, but Linux doesn’t.

Microsoft to use Windows 11 Start menu as a billboard with app ads for Insiders

Greetings, Boiled Frogs

Of course you’ll get used to it. Just like all the other indignities enrichments of the user experience that Microsoft has inflicted innovated on you. After all, you’re still using Windows, aren’t you? And admit it: for all your grumbling, that isn’t really going to change, is it?

Microsoft to tackle spam by restricting Exchange Online bulk email

Re: just slapped leg irons on everyone's tenants

No, just on their own—namely, “the huge number of corporates addicted to exchange”. Those with a legitimate (?) need to send out bulk emails will either move away from Exchange, or learn to live within its limits.

Either way, the problem solves itself.

Senator Warren slams Intuit's 'junk fees' as America's Tax Day rolls around again

Re: pay for a health service through taxes

That’s cheaper, too. Taxpayers in countries with state-funded healthcare pay about half per capita what health insurance costs in the USA.

As I am fond of saying to USians: Socialist healthcare is the only kind of healthcare that works!

Open sourcerers say suspected xz-style attacks continue to target maintainers

Re: Three of your choices are poisoning the world

This is why Open Source is all about choice.

YouTube now sabotages ad-blocking apps that stream its vids

Re: they just delete it without warning

After I noticed this starting to happen, I developed the habit of waiting 30-60 seconds, then opening the link to my comment in a private-browsing window. If I could still see it, then that meant it hadn’t been deleted.

If my comment was deleted, then I might try to narrow down the cause of the deletion: split the comment in half, and see if the first half gets through. Sometimes it’s a particular trigger word, which I could get around by splitting the offending word in half.

Sometimes the simple act of splitting the comment up was enough to bypass the filter.

After delay due to xz, Ubuntu 24.04 'Noble Numbat' belatedly hits beta

Re: Just wondering why not Debian

Debian Stable is boring and reliable and rock-solid. Just what you want for servers, not so much fun on the desktop.

If you want a desktop version, try Debian Testing or Unstable. Now there’s one way to keep your wits about you. ;)

Open source versus Microsoft: The new rebellion begins

“[Microsoft] has infinite resources for lobbying, legal action, and whatever other actions ...”

Somehow, I don’t think this is true any more. Office 365 may still be a major cash cow, but it’s clear that Windows itself is no longer quite as profitable as it once was. You see this in the declining level of investment put back into the OS, as evidenced by the deteriorating quality of software releases, and even of patches to fix the problems in those releases.

If Microsoft were a rational business, out to exploit business opportunities wherever they may be found, it would offer 365 online services for LibreOffice.

Re: even approaching an alternative to 365 in functionality

Well, it doesn’t have the “Ribbon”, if that’s what you mean.

Remember, the Office 365 Ribbon was created in the days before modern widescreen monitors became popular. But most text documents that people create are still in portrait format. So some large GUI megawidget chewing up a substantial portion of the height of your screen reduces the amount of your document you can see at once, while wasting space on the sides.

That’s why LibreOffice has the Sidebar instead. So you have more of the height of your screen available to show more of your document.

Virtually and actually, LXC 6 and Incus 6 are here – both LTS versions

Re: point missed error

Remember, it was your phrase: “no init: one binary, close on quit”.

Microsoft gives Hyper-V ceilings a Herculean hike

Not Enough Drive Letters

No way this cloud version of Hyper-V is Windows-based. It must be Linux-based.

96% of US hospital websites share visitor info with Meta, Google, data brokers

Fahrenheit Percent?

That means that, measured another way, as Celsius percent, it’s really only 37%.

Microsoft breach allowed Russian spies to steal emails from US government

With Friends Like These ...

... who needs enemies?

What can be done to protect open source devs from next xz backdoor drama?

Re: there is an init_task of type struct task

It may not look like it, but that’s the task_struct for pid 1. You will notice there is no fork call anywhere in there. The execution of the specified command for the init process happens in init/main.c, where it is done via run_init_process, which in turn uses kernel_execve, which is just the in-kernel entry point for the execve system call.

Since there is no creation of a new process, that means it must be running in the already-created process context, which is that init_task.

So you see, there is no such process as “pid 0”.

Re: necessary to hand assemble a proc structure

That process is PID 1, not PID 0. And it doesn’t fork, it does an exec of the specified init command. This can be any valid executable: you can override the default by adding “init=command” in the boot parameters.

GCC 15 dropping IA64 support is final nail in the coffin for Itanium architecture

Re: IBM tried vainly to switch the market

IBM POWER is still with us, powering some of the most powerful computers in the world. Look near the top of the top500 list, and you’ll see a POWER machine or two.

Guess Whom The “Howls Of Dismay” Were Coming From ...

You see the type in the comments sections on this very site, don’t you? Those who love to pontificate about how Open Source doesn’t quite suit their needs. When it is pointed out that the code doesn’t write itself, that it all happens because somebody cared sufficiently to get off their bum and actually do something about it, the response is either bluster or silence.

Torvalds was right to call their bluff.

OpenBSD 7.5 locks down with improved disk encryption support and syscall limitations

Re: The amount of shite (mostly systemd)

You realize it’s your choice to run a Linux distro with (or without) systemd, right?

VMS Software prunes OpenVMS hobbyist program

Re: VMSclusters

VMS clusters were far more limited than you seem to think. You don’t have to take my word for it: go read the docs for yourself, at Bitsavers and elsewhere.

DEC created its original VAXcluster concept back when other vendors were offering proper file servers. Instead of doing the same, it created a shared disk controller, with the same filesystem mounted in parallel across multiple nodes. To avoid stepping on each others’ toes, the nodes communicated via a protocol called SCS, which implemented distributed locking. What made things simpler was there was no data caching going on at the time.

Note that none of the other usual VMS IPC mechanisms—mailboxes, shared memory, common event flags—worked clusterwide. In no sense did a cluster look like one big machine. Looking at processes and terminals and other devices on one machine did not show you those on other machines. They were still very much separate machines. Even doing remote admin between them required a separate DECnet connection!

About ten years later, the next big innovation was the addition of clusterwide logical name tables.

And that was it. That was the sum total of what VMS clusters did for you. And, like I said, it never scaled beyond the maximum number of nodes you could attach to the same shared disk controller.

It was Linux that offered the choice of tight or loose clustering, not VMS.

And yes, UNIX became popular on its own merits. There was no big corporation pushing it: remember, it came from AT&T, which didn’t even have a presence in the computer market. It was the customers who forced the vendors into adopting it.

“We should have gone with Plan 9” ... nothing’s stopping you from joining that “we”. Go on, try making it your daily driver for a few months, and let us know how you go.

Rust rustles up fix for 10/10 critical command injection bug on Windows in std lib

Re: only if running a batch file

See, on Linux, there is no difference in the handling of the execution of the specified command, whether it is a “batch file” (aka “shell script”), or actual machine code, or something else entirely. The same argument-passing mechanism applies.