Posts by bombastic bob 10841 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015
"Windows has been in the habit of taking action on a file -- typically executing it -- based on the name and/or extension"
This is mostly a two-sided problem. On the one side, file extensions are used to identify files of a particular type by applications that trust the content to match the extensions. *THEN* they CLUELESSLY pass the thing on to 'ShellExecuteEx()' or similar functions that actually scan the header to determine what to do with it. So an executable file renamed "harmless.zip" gets passed to 'ShellExecuteEx()' as-is with default parameters and it RUNS AS AN EXECUTABLE (rather than opening the program that is supposed to view ZIP files) and *VOILA* your computer is spamming others, logging your keystrokes, and cranking out blockchains!!!
Well, you get the idea.
if "Mixed Content" is the driving force behind this, it makes sense. Sort of.
If this continues such that it affects *EMBEDDED* systems [which might be serving up http content to a chrome browser running in 'kiosk' mode and NOT be using https] then it's "game over" for using chromium in such systems.
but it's just like "developers" [around which I can NOT put enough quote marks to convey my snark] to be CLUELESS to the impacts their *FEELY* decisions have... from 2D FLATTY to this latest thing.
"Surely nobody leaves their Bluetooth open like that?"
I think you have to explicitly enable it to discover something via bluetooth. And don't call me Shirley.
That being said, if you have BT headphones connected, and you pause, and then resume again (oh I'm on the train I want to make a phone call now), it probably re-connects your bluetooth stuff too on power up [which would make you vulnerable for that brief period of time].
Surprise!
"All your base" belong to MICROSHAFT!
It's the #1 reason why I _HATE_ the 'search' "feature" on Win-10-nic - and why I don't really use it in 7, either.
For a better search : Install Cygwin, learn to use 'find' 'grep' and similar command line tools
[I have ALSO been disabling "index service" since XP, as a matter of course, because I do NOT want it eating up CPU and/or disk space to index things that I will *NEVER* search among]
hitting "the cloud" before the local system on searches is *SO* *WRONG* on *SO* many levels!
"There's no need for FTP when there's SFTP."
_WRONG_. SFTP doesn't work anonymously. The SFTP login allows shell access (more or less) as well as access to the ENTIRE file system, not just a pre-defined tree. It would be MUCH MORE difficult to secure and lock down SFTP than it would to simply allow "no uploads" anonymous FTP to access a specific tree and NOT the entire file system!
If you upload, yes: sftp gives a LOT of control and security to the person uploading. It also gives him access to the ENTIRE machine's file system. That's not a very good thing, really....
For uploads I like handling them as 'POST' transactions. There are a few scripts out there (Perl CGI or php, your choice) that let you set up a server to accept file posts. Then a human would have to review the files and do something with them, unless you WANT scammers to upload their crap to your anonymous FTP and then reference it via an alias within an ad or spammed e-mail - not to mention MALWARE and worse things.
So - ftp is FINE for anonymous download ONLY. For anything else, take the time to set up sftp or use some OTHER method (like file POST via http).
"an ARROGANT developer under the age of 40"
fixed it for ya!
<rant>
There are PLENTY of the arrogant developers under 40 out there. They do things like changing the UI into something THEY *FEEL* (not think, not customer want) is "better", THEN cram it down everyone's throat and call it "modern". And don't forget the constant 'feature creep' in otherwise useful applications until they becomes unmanageable bloatware, etc.. And, like with FTP in Chrome, they REMOVE features they don't use (or understand) because they *FEEL* they should. Nevermind what CUSTOMERS (i.e. end-users) want! Or, NEED...
</rant>
yeah, the NAT stuff was worked out like 2 decades ago via netfilter, and similarly in other OSs. it's not that hard, really, to alter TCP frames and their related ACK packets. Check out the ftp protocol NAT handler for netfilter some time. Really NOT that complicated, ya know? [unless some DWEEB rips the utility functions out of netfilter, because it's "old fashioned", which would probably send Linus into an explosive meltdown]
And, as we all know, a YUGE number of NAT routers are running Linux, and NAT'ting with netfilter.
correct - an anonymous FTP site that ONLY allows downloads is reasonably secure. SFTP, on the other hand, gives you access to the shell, and if you don't set it up properly you can basically expose a shell to anyone who uses it... might as well include ';ssh' 'scp' and 'rsync' with your server offerings, and if you can manage to lock THOSE down in a reliable and trustworthy manner, thumbs-up to you.
But for an archival data site - anonymous read-only ftp works JUST fine!
["they" got rid of gopher in a similar manner - "they" forget that not ALL of us are windows-using content consumers]
I'm not really a fan of "diversity" nonsense anyway. It's a "something" but in and of itself, only meaningful if she becomes one of the BEST COACHES. Otherwise, are they IMPLYING that being FEMALE is some kind of HANDICAP? (I *HOPE* NOT!!!)
There are only a few rewards that REALLY matter, and fame should be low on the list. (money, authority, and being able to do what you want are MUCH better ones, as one example). And fame should be based SOLELY on what you've accomplished, and NOT what you were BORN as [and we should NEVER have to use politically correct lingo to refer to HER as a FEMALE, either - being born with 'girl parts' is *ASSUMED*]. But the "social whatever" types just LOVE their "diversity" nonsense, don't "they"?
I say *DOING* is *MUCH* more important than *JUST* *BEING*.
(it does prove ONE thing: the NFL isn't sexist)
I thought the superbowl game itself was one of the better ones.
Mostly I ignored the ads. the only one worth watching was the 'Groundhog Day' one featuring an aged Bill Murray reprising his role in the uber-funny movie, driving a particular brand of car (which as I recall was ALSO in the original movie, at least at some point)
Some people watch for the ads. Some ads are funny, including a running joke about a guy with a stain on his shirt that showed up (with a basket of laundry and a particular detergent) as a cameo role within several OTHER commercials like a Monty Python running gag. There was also another one where a company with many products had their product icons doing things related to the products they represent in a humorous way, all at the same time, many being products that have actually been around since the 1960's (so the images representing those products were all very well known).
But yeah the tech ads - they seemed WAY too agenda-driven for my taste. I hope the return on those ads is SO PATHETIC that "they" NEVER try that kind of crap AGAIN...
just remember to include 'soft' and 'nointr' in your mount options in fstab [or elsewhere]. Otherwise a b0rked network connect via NFS would probably create problems you don't EVEN want to consider...
Interestingly I understand ZFS has some built-in NFS-related features... [have not tried yet though]
Take a look at a typical port for a major application written "for Linux" such that it runs on FreeBSD, and this becomes VERY clear.
Linux-isms are often all over the place, from the assumptions about /proc or /sys to the presence of D-bus or hald or (worse) PULSE AUDIO or (even worse) SYSTEMD.
They should build/test on FreeBSD and Devuan and maybe even Slackware first, before releasing.
"To this day, I still do not know what possessed the Debian Project to go with systemD as the init system"
This might help: http://blog.jorgenschaefer.de/2014/07/why-systemd.html
His summary: the insight from this blog post should be that SysV init is simply outdated and The race for the standard to replace SysV init was won, for better or worse, by systemd.
Translation: he "felt". I use the 'F' word 'feel' in a pejorative sense. If the individual processes were to use the 'daemon' utility, and/or manage themselves, this would NOT be "needed". Fixing the init scripts to comply with a standard, would have been better. and in fact, they did. 'service blahblah command' would do the trick. But I digress...
My initial impressions with this blog were POOR, noting the "light grey on blinding white" color scheme, for starters. That's pretty clueless and irritating to ANYONE over 50 (and quite possibly younger) because, dammit, even THICK GLASSES aren't enough to see THAT kind of irritating color scheme!!! It's actually WORSE than the light blue on blinding white that GOOGLE and APPLE use! And so you can assume that THESE guys (who make their allegedly-cool-looking web pages UNREADABLE by half the people on the planet) are arrogant, just based on the color choices, with NO clue as to the reality outside of their tiny little circle.
"as it is optional..."
For NOW... for now...
The mentality of these "Feature Creepers" is to *EVENTUALLY* *CRAM* *IT* UP OUR DOWN OUR THROATS because they *FEEL* we *MUST* do it *THEIR* way. or else. Because "they" are SMARTER or something, and know better for what WE should have.
A very very very old business principle says: The CUSTOMER is always right. Give the CUSTOMER what he wants, and if he does NOT want something you know he needs, SELL IT with a good convincing sales pitch so that he's ultimately HAPPIER about what you have to offer.
Cramming "new unwanted" creeping features into our body orifices isn't "that".
"Now it's completely over-run with other programs' crap."
They're supposed to conform to the Open Desktop standard, put things into ~/.config or ~/.local or ~/.programname and so on. If they're NOT doing that, you should complain VERY loud to the developers and tell them to comply with open standards, maybe do a pull request with a patch to do exactly that...
In any case, all of those ~/.programname directories are a bit irritating. I prefer it when they use ~/.config/programname instead. It makes the home dir root a LOT cleaner.
ASCII is the latest release, I think. I suggest a clean install with mate desktop using a netinstall image.
THEN, tarball your /home from the existing box, untar onto new box, re-creaet the users and groups with matching IDs, and VOILA!
yeah I've done this a few times, replicating my settings in VMs and on various hardware
Better idea: put that kind of thing in a cloud storage or cloud-bsed repo of some kind...
got git[hub|lab] ??
also with the way things are right now I have no trouble making a tarball of my /home tree for backup. if I need something more exotic than an SD card or USB drive to move files around, I can consider the cloud storage method of syncing things up.
seriously do we REALLY need to "sync up devices" to that extent, especially when tarball backups have been sufficient since FOREVER...
I would NOT be surprised if Poettering's latest brainfart causes my existing "tarball backup of /home directories method" to IRREVOCABLY BREAK and require much effort on my part to deal with whatever he's done...
I now DISlike systemd even MORE than I did before.
Well, at the very least, Lucy won't let Charlie Brown kick the football, evar. So when Micro-shaft acts like Lucy and holds the ball for us developers to kick, we need to remember the past with its uncertainty and potential horror, and say "no thanks".
So long as they don't try to restrict access to or remove Win32, targeting the old-school Win32 API should be "acceptable".
But if THAT goes away, I wonder if Wine development would SUDDENLY increase enough to make it a VIABLE replacement for Windows? Micro-shaft CAN shoot themselves in the foot enough times to get something *like* that to happen. Question is, at what point would that be?
" but Win32 will always be there."
Don't be so sure. MS has done everything ELSE in a way to try and KILL OFF the Win32 API usage, to get developers to jump on a bandwagon of "Microsoft-Only New/Shiny" when it comes to development.
It's fortunate that the real trend in windows development has remained on Win32. You can still target applications to Windows 7 or even XP with it. So from a DEVELOPER'S perspective, it's not going away. But Micro-shaft... well, I'm sure they WANT it to!!!
"president brown "
you just reminded me of the streets of San Francisco (again)... and you'd trust CALI-FORNICATE-YOU politicians for ANYTHING???
Just because ICANN is incorporated in Cali-Fornicate-You does NOT mean that the Cali-Fornicate-You AG can do the job of the FTC or the SEC or anything that would NORMALLY oversee purchases of a portion of a business (whether non-profit or not). And 'harassment' lawsuits from an AG are _NEVER_ a good thing. If "the AG *FEELS*" is criteria to DELAY or even STIFLE a BUSINESS TRANSACTION, maybe it's time for ALL businesses to leave the state...
ICANN is already subject to review and oversight, isn't it? Why must the Cali-fornicate-you AG get involved? Because, of the politicians' "uber alles" goal, that's why!
Cali-fornicate-you's AG has _NO_ jurisdiction here. He's just a "full of himself" liberal, like so many OTHER Cali-fornicate-you politicians.
(hopefully this is as bad as it gets with these idiots. There's another election this year, time to get rid of as many of them as we can! Unfortunately, and sadly, it most likely won't happen...)
I think the AG has more important fish to fry, anyway, like maybe prosecuting people who commit "quality of life" crimes, the way Giuliani did in NYC [made it a safe place to live again]. So all of this is just a bunch of POSTURING and a distraction from NOT doing anything about the REAL problems in Cali-fornicate-you [ like human poo on the streets of San Francisco ].
how is this sexist? Both of those CEOs (Meg, Carly) didn't do a very good job. Both also became politicians, and didn't do THAT very well, either.
However, I *might* consider that they were hired to make the "diversity" crowd happy... so when you 'cater to the left', you reap the 'rewards'! For good or ill. In these cases (apparently), 'ill'.
Actually IBM bungled OS/2 and PS/2, by tying them too closely together.
Nobody wanted to shell out $3k for a computer just to run OS/2, no matter HOW good it was. The PS/2's hardware was proprietary, on top of that. 386 and then 486 clones destroyed the PS/2 by dominating its market, and the OS/2 connection along with it. And Windows 3 (which was ALSO 3D Skeuomorphic like OS/2 1.2, unlike previous versions of both) rapidly outsold OS/2 and made GUI desktops "the norm", NOT requring a PS/2.
THAT is where IBM blew it. They've never really recovered...
Well, the RH guy might have a different take on cloud and kubernetes and OTHER such things, using Red Hat solutions [let's say] for PRIVATE cloudiness.
My personal opinion: public clouds are subject to many problems, like widespread outages. A private cloud with a public fallback seems a LOT more reasonable to me, and would likely be more cost-effective as well. hard drives are cheap, hardWARE is cheap [for that matter[, and running Linux gives them ALL of the advantages.
THAT is the kind of cloud solution that IBM could focus on, and I bet it would work. Outsource to Azure? Not so much, really.
Can't SGI workstations use OpenVMS or one of the BSD's? Just a thought...
when I look at THIS page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIX
I think "that looks a LOT nicer than Windows 10 !!!"
(from the above link)
"Much of IRIX's core technology has been open sourced and ported by SGI to Linux, including XFS."
so maybe Linux, then?
reminds me of the PDP-11 clock+date thing. For Y2K there were patches made. For grins I worked on patching an older version for RT-11 that I had source for. The published mechanism works at the OS level, but the software itself can't handle it very well. And I only had source for the kernel... [other people have done re-writes of the user software, though, which DO fix the problem there as well]. yeah ancient computer emulation using 'simh' for fun and nostalgia. [studying the old code, though, can be educating]
has anyone offered to write a Linux-based OS solution for that old hardware? I have to wonder whether there are less expensive solutions that could be less than 1/10 of that [something like "me working on it for a couple of months"]. In theory, you could port C/C++ applications that were written for Windows using existing libraries and toolkits. I have proved the concept by turning MFC applications into POSIX applications using wxWidgets. It's not 1:1 but there is a correlation that, with a reasonable level of effort, can be ported in a month or two [per application] when _I_ do the work. I'm sure there are others who could even do better than me with this sort of thing. Or it could become a pure GTK or Qt application, by carefully re-writing just the UI and dealing with any other windows-isms using some kind of compatibility lib [home-grown or already written, whichever].
In any case, 250k (USD or GBP) is a bit steep. that's like an overpaid team of "paid by the line" coders working for a top-heavy consulting firm. An indie can probably do it for less than 1/4 that... and if you could patch Wine or even CentOS to do the job, you're getting closer to the "1/10 of that" mark I initially suggested.
"It's proprietary apps on Linux that used to be compiled 32-bit only, and now sometimes are compiled 64-bit only."
in a few cases, old versions that were shipped binary-only (let's say you bought a license for an old version of "something" and you don't want to pay for a NEW one) might not work, but you can always run Linux in a VM with an older kernel just for THAT...
The 'Eagle CAD' version I'm using is like that. I had a license before it was bought by AutoCAD that lets me use the 'free' version for commercial purposes. So I still use that version because I don't want subscription licensing. But if I had to I'd use a VM with an older LInux, and it would still work just fine.
[actually I run it on FreeBSD, too, with it's Linux compatibility stuff, and if I design more circuit boards for clients I'll probably have to convince the companies I do the work for to get the subscription version - I've done 2 boards so far with a recent client, using my purchased license, as an independent contractor, with the older version, which I'd like to keep using...].
Of course, if AutoCAD did a similar one-time license that was more sensible for small-time contract people that only OCCASIONALLY do board designs, I'd be interested... (this reminds me to surf around their web site to see if such an offer already exists)
* admittedly I had to 'hack' a symlink or two for shared libs that had a minor version change, and FreeBSD doesn't have "that version". The symlink to the slightly newer library works fine. No problems noted.
ack on usable old laptops, even ones that can't do 64-bit. I have 2 of those [one has win 7 on it out of necessity].
The older of the 2 laptops I have has Linux on it. When I started a new contract last year, I needed Linux to do RPi-related development. They didn't have any Linux machines so I brought in a 2003-ish Toshiba laptop with Linux on it. With that old thing I was able to get work done [good luck doing work under Win-10-nic, it was SO in the way it was pathetic]. I quickly set up the RPi to run X11 applications remotely on the laptop (using the 'export DISPLAY' trick) and I was quickly getting things done using pluma to edit files directly on the RPi from the keyboard+mouse+display on the laptop. After a couple of weeks of that they found an old computer nobody was using and I put Linux on it. [quite obviously they were "sold" on the idea and maybe a *bit* embarassed that I was using a 17 year old laptop in lieu of a "modern" computer running Windows 10, and getting MORE done that way]
In any case, 32-bit devices _definitely_ have a use. Why throw them away if they still help you get things done???
32-bit linux is more suited to embedded systems like your wifi router
And I think there are more devices than desktops running Linux, unless you count Android as a 'desktop', but even THEN, I wouldn't be surprised if more than half of the Android stuff is 32-bit (especially on ARM). So in reality, there are a LOT of systems using 32-bit Linux.
32-bit makes sense up to 4Gb, because it's slightly faster and slightly smaller (code footprint and RAM usage) depending upon how it's written.
Personally I've been making noise about 64-bit time_t for a while now. I'm glad they're doing it. I want to see the BSDs follow suit on this [and no doubt they will, since it makes so much sense].
More than likely it won't affect anything for end-users. Users who upgrade their kernels will almost universally be updating userland packages as well. And package maintainers will just need to make sure everything is recompiled for the new kernel with a kernel version dependency (I've seen that kernel version dependency before, with Debian, years ago, but I forget why it was needed).
All good!
if you use cogeneration, and/or being that it's currently winter [so the extra heat generated by the cores _could_ be used to keep the rooms warm] then you're not wasting any of that energy...
[even though I wholeheartedly DIS-agree with the last (OT) sentence in your post]
I never have to heat my home office, when there are 3 computers doing it for me. It's 1-2 degrees F warmer than the rest of the house... [especially the bedroom which has 2 walls facing the elements - I have to use an electric heater so I don't freeze at night and wake up sick every morning]
Co-generation is such a good idea, I'm surprised more people aren't doing it. A perfect example is when you use natural gas to make eletricity, and THEN use the heat from the engine to heat water [which you would be doing anyway with the same amount of natural gas]. Extra electricity goes onto the grid. Also, hot water from the engine jacket can be used to run an 'absorption chiller' for the summer when you need chilled water. If this were done by municipalities, who could then sell the hot/chilled water and/or steam along with the electricity, it would make a really good efficient solution, one that consumes very little additional fuel over JUST making the hot water.
Similarly, a data center with co-generation COULD [in many ways] do the same kind of thing. It would make the technology cost less, and probabably make the climate change crowd happier because it's not using as much fossil fuel any more. Or if it were (in part) solar, using solar heated water and solar electricity for the building, same basic idea. Ah, hell, just combine the technologies to handle peak demands in summer/winter as well as bad weather days... so yeah not really a problem to use "all that power" when you make good use of the waste heat.
/me re-considers moving the server into the bedroom, at least during the winter.
yeah you have to wonder how many bot-calls you'll be getting that attempt to use an AI to lure you into pressing 5 to continue...
Even when the law cracks down on them, I've been getting more, recently. Most of them are hangups. A couple of them are the usual "you have problems with your Micro Soft computer" or "your Micro Soft license has expired" in one of the old windows text-to-speech voices. But the worst ones of all have a natural sounding male voice saying "Is XXX there?" [personalized to YOUR name, of course!] which is then followed by lengthy silence...
You have most likely identified the ONLY use for conversational robots within the next 20 years, until they start walking around and going to the grocery store to buy our food for us. Or, deliver our pizza.
I used to watch Monty Python a lot when I was a teenager, when the local PBS station played them [back in the 70's where they were still mostly 'new']. I got used to British-style humor, even looked forward to it. But I know what you mean when a couple of the Python troop were on Saturday Night Live, and they did the Parrot sketch, and nobody laughed... [I'm like WHAT?]
then again the Saturday Night Live audience is often hostile to REAL humor [but they overtly laugh at 'pandering to the perception' "humor" so go fig]. Real humor is like John Cleese doing silly walks, or Terry Jones as Mr. Gumby, or accidentally walking in on Graham Chapman, looking for an argument, but getting 'abuse' instead...
I generally don't watch US'ian sitcoms. I just don't think they're funny... except the Roseanne show. THAT is funny! [kid #1 rants about unfairness, storms out. Kid #2 does the same. Kid #3 does something similar. Then the parents high five each other]
But if I need an injection of humor I've always got the box set of python shows on DVD...
/me walks off chanting "spam spam spam spam"
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