Posts by Wensleydale Cheese 1381 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jan 2011
DougS wrote: " every time I install an updated Fedora and install VMware I have to scan the vmware forums to find a patch some guy has cooked up because Linux's driver ABI changes with every point release."
I had the same problem with VirtualBox when I was using Fedora. It was nice using the bleeding edge stuff that Fedora had but it was simply taking too much of my time so I moved to something more stable.
VirtualBox itself has got much better in dealing with this and even tells you the command to run to do the necessary rebuild (you do need to have installed the kernel development stuff and headers yourself though).
I remember using those but they weren't quite as large. My possibly faulty memory says just over 200MB usable space once formatted and with a file system in place
"At the 1975 NCC, CDC announced 150 and 300 MByte Storage Module Drives The increase in capacity was achieved by increasing the number of disks (and heads) without any technology change. The 300 MByte 9766 SMD drive was for many years the largest capacity removable disk drive on the market."
They had a remarkably long run compared with today. I last saw 9766 drives installed as brand new as late as 1985.
"Mine was the green and red version from the 60s."
I started out with the red and green version. One day my parents came and asked me if I sucked the parts. Sensing their apprehension I answered "No", but in fact I did suck them..
The red and green paints had lead in them apparently. Obviously not in lethal quantities or I wouldn't be writing this. My younger brother's Meccano came in yellow and silver, which made it easy to tell which bits belonged to whose set.
Possibly more than you want to know about Wombats:
Australian Wombat - Facts, Habits and Personality
and of course, The Famous Datatrieve Wombat
"EVERYTHING is shut on a Sunday,"
That was true until a three or four years ago where I am but a limited number of shops are now open from 11 to 5 on Sundays.
The major difference came over a decade ago with later opening during the week. Extending opening hours to 7pm on weekdays made a huge difference, and Saturday shopping no longer involved huge queues. That's now 8pm for the major supermarkets so it's really quite relaxed. There are also places open until 11pm but they don't stock stuff at budget prices.
Out of frustration I went looking for some means of contacting the admins but found no means of doing so.
All I found were some extremely heavy Terms and Conditions, which I preferred not to accept.
Ultimately their loss, not mine, I suppose.
'I get a lot of calls and have to keep saying "Does a Google search work? Yes? Then it's the website.".'
Advise them to try the following website. It might save you some calls:
For owners of more than one Mac, VMware Fusion currently beats Parallels on pricing because one licence covers multiple systems (for personal use anyway).
Parallels not only spams you to death while you are doing an evaluation but pops up a "Buy now" window every time you fire up a VM, which quickly gets tiresome.
""If you expect me to buy something where all I can sense is carelessness, actually I think that is personally offensive," he continued. "It's offensive culturally, because it shows a disregard for our fellow human."
Dear Jony.
Please give me a help system that doesn't flake out 90% of the time with the advice to "try later".
Once is unfortunate. Nine times out of ten is carelessness.
"They're quite right, it's a laptop without a screen or peripherals."
I can't remember where I read this but "think MacBook Air without the laptop bits".
For the base model, the mini processor specs look awfully like the MacBook Air processor specs.
P.S. for lurking pedants: If you look carefully, Apple refer to it as the "Mac mini" rather than "Mac Mini".
"128GB won't affect everybody running ESXi, but it will hit those running very large clouds and virtual instances."
As I discovered recently, installing Docker allocates 100GB in one fell swoop for its container file.
This "buggette" could be affecting quite modest installations.
In fact once I realised I needed to expand my VM by so much I installed Docker on a real machine instead of a virtual one, so it's a case of "I could have been bitten by this".
This week's winner for video tutorials can be seen at the Raspberry Pi Quick Start page
The cartoon character points out where the obvious things like USB, video and ethernet ports are but completely forgets to tell us one vital bit.
WHERE THE FUCK DOES THE SD CARD GO?
It's the same in the written instructions by the way. They tell you how to build the thing using Windows, Mac or Linux and then jump straight onto the thing booting up.
Spoiler: On the model B+ it goes underneath the board, at the opposite end to the USB ports.
And oh yes, the video requires Flash, so I had to fire up the only system permitted to run that bug ridden fest (company policy and one I agree with).
"Microsoft wants to safeguard the data they are using, and so is adding containerisation technology for each file, ensuring it is sandboxed and encrypted."
Add cloud and your data isn't altogether yours any more.
Back in the days when our data was locked up on a mainframe at least we could get our management to do a bit of screaming on our behalf.
"IE11 for Windows 8.1 is the most relevant result for 'weather' on a Mac? Apple must really hate Google."
No, that's Parallels in action. My brief test trial of Parallels showed that it sets things up to prefer Windows apps over native OS X ones.
Think about that one carefully and you might conclude that they really want you to remain dependent on Windows rather then transitioning to OS X so that you carry on using Parallels (not to mention seemingly without end future upgrades).
" Either that or he just can't be bothered to sit through an interminable 6GB download for the sake of a teeny-tiny change to his phone."
It's a little over a gig if and only if you can free up the required amount of space on the iPhone or iPad for an in situ upgrade.
If freeing up that space is too much of a pain you are faced with the whopping download to go the iTunes route.
When will Apple, Microsoft et al realise that not all of us have super fast uncapped broadband?
It's the pain of the downloads, and for those with low bandwidth caps cost too.
"a stultefying meaningless EULA."
When OS X Mavericks was released shortly after Windows 8.1 I got the chance to compare their presentation of the EULAs.
Apple won by a mile by allowing me to save them to disk for later perusal, and they weren't peppered with forgettable URLs which you had to write down to stand a chance of remembering.
"Oh, wait a minute, someone I've never heard of has just sent me a link to a new porn site. Must be genuine!"
Various ladies from the Ukraine want to fall in love with me.
Apparently.
They claim they are good looking too.
What could possibly go wrong?
A beer because it's that time of day,
"I'm trying to run this on Ubuntu 14.04 64 bit, so that's VB 4.3.10."
VBox 4.3.16 is current.
4-5 years ago when I started using VBox useful new features were arriving with each release so I stopped using the versions provided by the software distribution streams from Ubuntu / RedHat / openSUSE and went with the downloads straight from the VBox site.
Yes there were difficulties recompiling bits of kernel with some releases at first but I haven't had to do that for ages.
"Simply imagine that you suffer from "electro-smog" phobia, rip the stuff from the ceiling/walls and claim it was self-defence, as it assaulted you."
Nah, that's the wimp's approach.
Locating the offending piece of equipment and smashing it to pieces with a sledgehammer sounds like much more fun.
As any fan of Yes Minister / Yes Prime Minister will know, he will have his work cut out dealing with the Civil Services mandarins, and the politicians on top of that.
Cold War era trenchcoat seems appropriate ----------------------------------------------->
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
