Posts by AJ MacLeod

Adélie Linux 1.0 – small, fast, but not quite grown up

Re: It's one of the *only*

Glad it's not just me... this is perhaps the very most stupid phrase currently doing the rounds and it irritates me like nothing else. Either it's "THE ONLY" or it's "one of the FEW". It's really not that complicated.

Raspberry Pi 500 and monitor arrive in time for Christmas

Re: re: A keyboard and mouse not only work better and faster

Yeah - loads more effort required to hold your hand up in an awkward position to smear your greasy fingerprint onto the screen. If only someone could invent some sort of pointing device that just sits conveniently on the desk, on which your hand could rest...

D-Link tells users to trash old VPN routers over bug too dangerous to identify

Re: Is there no product liability at all?

It's the SNP way... do exactly the same as what Westminster does but at least slightly worse or more inefficiently

Academic papers yanked after authors found to have used unlicensed software

Re: So if they licence the software they can resubmit the paper?

It's CFD, they can't be sure the data it outputs is completely correct anyway...

UK sleep experts say it's time to kill daylight saving for good

Re: I disagree

As someone who lives in what most people would consider the far North of Scotland I completely disagree. By this time of the year it's dark at getting up time anyway, changing the clocks makes virtually no difference. On the other hand, now that the clocks have gone back it's practically dark by the time lunch is over - it's plain stupid. I'm all for going GMT+1 all year round or even +2.

Also, as someone who never wears a watch but can mostly tell what time it is anyway through long practice, the changing of the official clocks mucks up my body clock for days at both ends of the summer.

Western Digital releases firmware fix for SSDs blighted by Windows 11 24H2 BSODs

Re: Western Dataloss

Hard to tell whether Seagate or WD were worse for HDD failures, but to be fair I've used quite a lot of WD's SSDs without any issues so far.

Microsoft veteran ditches Team Tabs, blaming storage trauma of yesteryear

Re: What I don't understand

Come on, think about this for a minute. NOBODY needs to agree on how big a <tab> is - that's the beauty of them! All that matters is that one tab is one level of indentation, two tabs are two levels of indentation. If you like your indents to be the size of one space, that's fine; configure your editor to display that and use tabs. When I have to look at your file it'll look as perfect to me as it does to you, as my editor is set to display tabs the way I like them. Everyone wins. I genuinely don't understand why people find this so hard to grasp...

It's exceedingly trivial to get the desired size of tabs, any usable editor can be configured to display them any size you like. The whole purpose of tabs is to aid with aligning things consistently - spaces should be mere separators between words and if they were sufficient tabs would never have been invented...

That doomsday critical Linux bug: It's CUPS. May lead to remote hijacking of devices

Re: CUPS seems to be turned off on Macs

I don't trust Apple or their judgement...

Lebanon now hit with deadly walkie-talkie blasts as Israel declares ‘new phase’ of war

Re: What I’ve learned about this from the French media

It's the French... they couldn't possibly just call them what everyone else does, could they?

250 million-plus unused IPv4 addresses should be left alone, argues network boffin

Ionos do a basic unlimited bandwidth VPS for £1/month (plus VAT). All you need to do is choose a bare bones Debian image and install Wireguard. There are scripts available if you don't want to do it manually, eg wireguard-install. I did that myself a few weeks ago as I'm (still!) waiting for my new ISP to allocate a static IP address to me and it works fine - the client setup couldn't really be easier, particularly if your device has a camera to scan the QR code...

Openreach pitches its tent as Ofcom preps review of broadband market rules

I can only go on what I was told by the manager on the ground overseeing the altnet's rollout - and given the physical evidence that they've had their equipment in place ready to go for nearly a year I don't see why he would be lying. He also told me that OR were being so obstructive about connecting up the next nearest village that they dug in five miles of their own fibre in order to get that village online in a sane timeframe.

These are not small towns, they're small (some would say tiny) villages - Openreach simply aren't interested. Frankly they should have had all the cities and big towns done years ago, but instead they've just sat on their heels enjoying their privileged position for as long as possible. Of course they have their legal obligations but we all know there are always ways and means of ensuring that they break these whilst maintaining plausible deniability.

If it were up to Openreach, I doubt we'd have FTTP any time in the next decade. Thankfully an altnet got our (small, very rural) village ducted up about year ago and we finally got connected a week or two back. The 3/4 year delay was due to Openreach being obstructive and not permitting the altnet access to the exchange in a timeous manner.)

Now we have over 300Mbs both directions and could pay more for up to 2 gig both ways if we wanted it - no thanks to Openreach!

Zuckerberg admits Biden administration pressured Meta to police COVID posts

Re: Aim that blame thrower

The article specifically states that the government pressure was in 2021 and from the Biden administration - how much clearer would you like it?

Re: the next one

Look at the downvotes... and the total lack of facts to refute your points. It seems from many centuries of evidence that the majority of people are fine with being lied to by the relevant authorities of the day, happy to avoid any kind of critical thinking of their own - and then crowd round and batter down anyone who dares to posit something that conflicts with the official "truth".

The Government was entirely wrong to pressure them - as we now know, the majority of Government "facts" which were ruthlessly pushed were completely false and much of the so-called "misinformation" that was being censored was in fact true.

LibreOffice 24.8: Handy even if you're happy with Microsoft

Re: If only there was a replacement for outlook...

Outlook is also very far from free - probably a fair bit more than whatever the Thunderbird add-on costs. There is also the slight issue that Microsoft have a stated aim of killing off Outlook in the near future (the "replacement" New Outlook, a completely different animal - is already being foisted on people.)

WordStar 7, the last ever DOS version, is re-released for free

Re: Interesting, but ...

WordStar 2000 had a component called PC-Outline which I think did what you are talking about... it also allowed you to display all the control codes in the document in a very usable manner.

Re: high class trolling

Where did anybody suggest that vim and LaTeX would be good for everybody? I just said what I now use, having left WordStar 2000 behind in the 90s...

Re: Interesting, but ...

WordPerfect for DOS had both spelling and grammar correction available - I'm sure WordStar 2000 had at least a spell checker. What more do you need?

I would challenge the assertion that Wordstar 2000 abandoned the keyboard-centric UI - it no doubt had a different UI to previous versions but it was all still keyboard-centric and pretty logical as far as I remember. We still have a big (really big!) box copy - those were the days when you actually got proper documentation for your money. I used it on Dad's by then cast-off PC1512 for all my schoolwork throughout secondary school... by then he'd migrated to WordPerfect which is what I used through university. I have to say I found WordPerfect far superior, and though I did try NewWord briefly I didn't find it as good as WS2K - muscle memory probably as much as anything else.

These days the muscle memory is vi(m) - I dare say permanently embedded now after all these decades! I use LaTeX for the occasional letter I need to write, Zim for most documentation and libreoffice to open abominations deposited on me by others.

Car makers sold people's driving habits, location data for pennies, say US senators

Re: Number 4

While I'm quite sure that a few women can drive better than most men, I'm also quite certain that it's definitely not true of any of the women I know. In general they are far more prone to harsh braking, unnecessary acceleration and reacting too late - very poor at considering the conditions well ahead.

I know a few men that drive like that too, but whilst there are always exceptions there's often a good deal of truth in stereotypes.

Apple Maps escapes orchard into web browser wilds

Re: Very risky move for Apple.

It might be fine for your particular area but it's certainly not even barely adequate here. We had the police at the door one night (technically morning since it was about 2am!) asking for a particular house which they couldn't locate. Apple maps had directed them to us, approximately a quarter of a mile from the actual address which didn't even sound remotely similar and has a totally different postcode.

My own limited experience has been pretty similar...

OpenBSD enthusiast cooks up guide for the technically timid

Re: Thank you Carnat

I won't use it on servers due to the ridiculously short life cycle of each version (6 months IIRC) - I also seem to recall reading that upgrading between versions was discouraged at one time.

Either way, the thought of performing upgrades to a new OS version every six months on a server does not appeal at all. It's a shame really as otherwise I like the OpenBSD ethos - though last time I gave it a go I did find it dog slow in comparison to several different Linux distros I tried on the same machine which surprised me a little.

FBI gains access to Trump rally shooter's phone

Re: Fingerprint ?

Apple devices seem incapable of recognising any of my fingerprints more than about 5% of the time and I'm currently still alive... probably would be the simplest way though I'm not sure how many attempts you get before it demands a PIN instead?

Trump threatens to send Meta's Mark ‘Zuckerbucks’ to prison if reelected president

Re: UnDeadly to Whales or Wales

On the other hand... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7240nex4ljo

Apple's Macintosh 128K on a Pi Pico gets thumbs-up from Upton

I've a massively long VGA cable here - unfortunately the picture goes in sharp at one end and comes out all vague and blurry at the other so it's only ever been used in occasional odd cases of desperation...

FreeDOS and FreeBSD prove old code never dies, just gets nifty updates

Re: Why?

Here's an example from this very morning... customer with a 60ft catamaran workboat, one of its large diesel engines refusing to go to working revs. Diagnostic software for said engines uses serial comms and is only available for DOS... in this case I used DOSBox but the point is, DOS software (and the knowledge to use it) is still very relevant in the real commercial world in 2024. I've come across it in such varied fields as solicitors to chicken farms, not to mention what must be vast quantities of large and very costly engineering machinery...

Microsoft makes it harder to avoid OneDrive during new Windows 11 installs

I'm afraid late last year's experience is already out of date... I had a batch of Lenovo desktops to deal with the other week and none of the tricks I've seen (and previously used) worked. The "launch a shell and run msoobe" method now seems to result in a machine that sits there asking you to wait for ever more (certainly nothing happened even after several hours), forcing you to reboot and leaving you unable to log in. (The temporary user created for the install process has a randomly generated password I believe, and I didn't have ntpasswd on hand.)

The only option left to me was to restore to the factory image, which wasted an awful lot of time I didn't really have to spare.

NASA ought to pay up after space debris punched a hole in my roof, homeowner says

Re: Sounds fair

She lied, sorry. Insurance companies never pay out immediately and in fact very rarely pay out fully, if at all - they are perhaps the most scummy of all legal entities. Certainly easily the most scummy of those I've ever had to deal with...

systemd 256.1: Now slightly less likely to delete /home

Re: WD FileCard

Still got one of those that functions (though sometimes needs the little wheel spun manually to get the heads to start moving.) Fortunately Dad kept the box so I can send it back to WD if it stops working!

Screwdrivers: is there anything they can't do badly? Maybe not

Re: Not screwdrivers but...

Well I AM offering a testimonial - paper comes in to my office, gets scanned, shredded and binned. Only REALLY important things like birth certificates / driving licences go to the safe after being scanned.

Funnily enough it was my experience of dealing with my father's lifetime accumulation of paper documents (of which he retained basically everything) after his death which pushed me into doing things differently. Somewhat ironically, mid way through sorting out his affairs his office went on fire (lithium battery on a charger we weren't aware of due to the mounds of paper on the desks) and most of the actually important paperwork was destroyed - just mounds of illegible rubbish left. His electronic data was fine, despite the blackened exterior of HDDs and SSD...

Re: Not screwdrivers but...

I used that filing method for decades but a couple of years ago I discovered the incredible worth of a decent fast scanner (in my case Brother ADS-2400N) coupled with a simple document management system (Paperless-ng / ngx)

Now almost every bit of potentially useful paper gets dropped through the scanner, automatically OCR'd and tagged (with an amazing degree of sanity) and now and then I have a quick check of the most recent documents on the web interface to make sure it's all going to plan.

Now, when I want that obscure bit of information / invoice / government letter I just switch to the pinned "paperless" tab in my browser, type the first few letters of a relevant word and it's immediately there. Working in IT one gets pretty cynical about the actual benefits of technology vs the claims, but this is one thing that has revolutionised my life...

Fancy climbing the peaks of Alpine Linux? 3.20 is out

My favourite distro for servers, bare metal and VMs. I really appreciate the minimalism - the stuff that's installed and running is basically all essential and there because I've installed it, not layer upon layer of impenetrable automagic sitting there just in case I suddenly want the server to do something completely different one day.

Microsoft confesses April Windows update breaks some VPN connections

Not again

It seems to me that MS break VPNs more than almost anything else with their updates... even with groups of identical laptops set up in exactly the same way at the same time I've been seeing VPN issues develop apparently at random after Windows updates - some machines will be fine and others suddenly refuse to connect. This has been going on for a few years at least.

Re: Slightly off topic...

Nobody mentioned Linux but you...

Windows Format dialog waited decades for UI revamp that never came

What's much worse than the format dialogue box is the fact that "format" is so close to "safely remove" (or eject or whatever is actually on there) on the context menu for drives. If anything deserves to be a little less accessible, it's the option to wipe out all the data on a drive...

Good news: HMRC offers a Linux version of Basic PAYE Tools. Bad news: It broke

I've used BPT since it became available (and the Linux version in particular so long as it has been around) and although it might not be perfect it's about a thousand times better than most other payroll software I've had the misfortune to use or assist with. When they ask for feedback I always make a point of commending them for making the Linux version available, it ought to be mandatory for government issued software.

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

Re: fine, change it

Maybe not the best example - sure, they replaced IE with Edge, which they then replaced with... Edge. But not Edge Edge, Chrome Edge.

Re: New outlook doesn't keep replies in the same folder

I use a sort of hybrid version too, after switching to notmuch as my mail store. I have Neomutt configured to treat "labels" as folders, which has the added bonus that messages which actually equally belong in two different folders can show up in more than one place - I just give the message two labels and it will show up in both.

The quality of search using notmuch was revolutionary for me - I've always hated search for either being slow all the time (indexing stuff in the background) or very slow when I want to search (trawling through stuff in real time.) With notmuch it's instantaneous and I find it better than GMail's search (which has always been pretty decent, even if webmail is an abomination.)

Top five reasons to move from CentOS to RHEL (according to Red Hat)

Re: You did look at Liberty Linux, for those systems that need patches/support/to be compliant?

Interesting, thanks. I actually didn't realise anyone was still offering updates for CentOS 6 too... Generally I use Debian or Alpine for servers but have two still on CentOS 7 which there's no other pressing reason to "upgrade" so it might well be worth a fiver a month for basic security updates for them.

Re: You did look at Liberty Linux, for those systems that need patches/support/to be compliant?

Maybe I've missed something, but I don't see Alma offering any support whatsoever for RHEL/CentOS 7? I haven't looked into RH's pricing but I'm pretty confident extended updates for CentOS 7 from RH will be considerably more expensive than from SuSE/Liberty...

Moving to Windows 11 is so easy! You just need to buy a PC that supports it!

Re: cool beans!

Power off _used_ to do a nice clean up, unfortunately MS have managed to screw up even since Win 8! (You'd have to disable fast boot/startup to get proper shutdown and not glorified hibernation.)

Billions lost to fraud and error during UK's pandemic spending spree

Re: Oops, we stole it

Actually there is data on the effectiveness of face masks and the answer is yes, it was pointless; any benefits are indistinguishable from noise. More than that, face masks are not free from side effects either so quite probably caused more harm than good (including to the emotional development of millions of children worldwide.) Personally I'm fine with you wearing a face nappy if it makes you feel good about yourself; I might quietly judge you to be a bit of an idiot but wouldn't say anything. On the other hand, I massively resent being ordered to do something which I am convinced is at best pointless just to make you feel good about yourself.

PS - re: the vaccines you're fortunate; both my in-laws were not and both are now on long term treatment for vaccine-induced heart issues.

PPS - you almost certainly have had covid. For many people it was barely noticeable or virtually symptomless, just as for some it was fatal... your genes and other health factors are far more likely to have helped you than the vaccines. Again... if vaccines made you feel good about yourself, I'm quite happy with that - I object however to people losing their jobs, being turned into social outcasts etc for not wanting them.

Closure of Windows 10 upgrade path still catching users by surprise

Re: There may be alternatives available

Superb - strangely I had just come up against this in the past day, upgrading a elderly Win 7 laptop for an even more elderly lady who doesn't expect to last very much longer. I had totally forgotten that MS had closed the 7-10 upgrade route until the activation failed... Your post may or may not have resolved this issue, thank you! Not sure how I hadn't come across that before, but this is why I still waste time reading The Register - there's something to be learned in the comments most days.

(In this case having she had a plain black desktop anyway so I'm sure she could have lived quite happily with a watermark warning her to activate, but it was annoying to me nonetheless.)

Windows 3.11 trundles on as job site pleads for 'driver updates' on German trains

Re: Improvement?

The brand new socket LGA1700 MSI motherboard I built into a PC earlier had a header for a parallel port... (Can't say whether it would work or not mind you as thankfully I don't deal with parallel devices very often any more)

In surprise move, Gentoo Linux starts offering binaries

Re: How to compile from source

Not saying I don't recognise that, but one of the beauties of Gentoo is that pretty much all the drudgery is handled automatically and failed builds are very rare indeed (particularly if you stick reasonably closely to the "stable" branch.)

The biggest benefit for me is that my system is always up to date and only contains those packages and services I actually want; the biggest optimisation is not necessarily in terms of CPU flags but rather in cutting out large swathes of stuff I just don't want. Binary distros have to cater to as many as possible so tend to build in the kitchen sink too just in case.

Personally I already use (through Gentoo) binaries for one or two things that are really tedious to compile, such as web browsers; everything else just gets compiled in the background and if it wasn't for the fact I'd started the process I'm pretty sure I wouldn't even notice it was happening...

Chromebooks are problematic for profits and planet, says Lenovo exec

Re: chromebooks suck

Rather a sweeping generalisation, no? You bought one and it was a lemon therefore all Chromebooks suck? FWIW if you're interested in parts availability and repairability you should probably not buy from ASUS (laptops in general are poor but they are particularly bad for this.)

Window Maker Live: When less is more, but more is also ... more?

Re: Enlightenment

In one of my few brief experimental deviations from WindowMaker I switched back to Enlightenment for a little while (post E16). It was as glitzy and swish as ever but I quickly got sick of the binary configuration format which I wouldn't have cared so much about had it not the maddening habit of obliterating my settings every time I upgraded to a new version; also stability wasn't quite good enough for my tastes. On my main desktop I think staid and boring is a good thing...

I can't even remember when I first used WindowMaker but I've certainly been using it as my main work desktop since 2000. Just the perfect balance of ease of configuration, performance, stability and perhaps most important of all - steady maintenance without some moron deciding every year or so to completely change how everything works!