Posts by Soruk

Oracle Java license teams set to begin targeting Oracle users who don't think they use Oracle

Re: Not just Java

Free for personal use, download it from a domestic broadband connection.

Right, I am going to suggest to my team that we block oracle.com, java com and sun.com at the corporate DNS servers.

Oracle Java police start knocking on Fortune 200's doors for first time

Re: In a word "Adoptium"

Exactly, so are Alma and Rocky.

Re: In a word "Adoptium"

After their Java hijinks at a previous job, I won't even put Oracle Linux (supposedly free) in a corporate setting. One application supplier is migrating from CentOS 7 to Oracle Linux. I am refusing to install that as if Oracle decide to retroactively change the licence like they did with Java, it's on my neck the upshot of doing that to my employer. So they will have to lump it being installed on Alma or Rocky.

Spam blocklist SORBS closed by its owner, Proofpoint

I've heard this one called the Scunthorpe problem. And it would also prevent you from seeking a specialist to assist you.

Dell to color-code staff based on how hybrid they really are in RTO push

Re: "I'd say the company really cheaped out by not installing hardwired networking."

Totally agree.

But at that office, there were no LAN connections to the desks. They provided monitors that connected by USB-C which also could power the laptop, but they didn't carry networking. (Whether those Dell monitors could even carry networking over their USB-C is another matter.)

At my previous job the office WiFi was often so slow as to be unusable, so I just tethered my staff SIM (unlimited data) and used the VPN. I had, however, booked a spot in the car park, and they used ANPR so it only let in those who booked.

BASICally still alive: Classic language celebrates 60 years with new code and old quirks

Re: BBC Basic

I started on a Spectrum when my mum brought one home, but my biggest influence was my school getting a room of 10 BBC Master machines, then my folks getting an Archimedes and later a RISC PC (still a daily driver for them).

Aside from working in IT, it also culminated in me starting a project 6 years ago which looking back on just how much work was involved, I likely would never have started - picking up the abandoned Brandy BASIC code and creating the Matrix Brandy fork. It remains in active development to this day. (And yes, it also neatly shows off that I can't design web pages to save my life)

250 million-plus reserved IPv4 addresses could be released – but the internet isn’t built to use them

Re: 10.*.*.*

That's what 100.64/10 was for - CGNAT deployments, and being a separate block it's deliberately not going to clash with customer use of RFC1918 space. See RFC6598.

Researchers confirm what we already knew: Google results really are getting worse

Titanic's swimming pool

For an example of Google spewing nonsense, just ask it "Is the swimming pool of the Titanic still full of water".

Eben Upton on Sinclair, Acorn, and the Raspberry Pi

BBC, Tube and RasPi

You managed to mention the BBC Micro and the Tube in a Raspberry Pi article, but somehow, despite pointing out the Pi being used as expansions to several other retro platforms, you managed to forget about PiTubeDirect, a Pi interface and software that gets your Pi able to be virtually any of the various Second Processors ever created for the Beeb, and even some new ones that don't yet exist in physical forn (e.g. RISC-V).

Another Pi project (very well suited for the Pi 0) is Pi1MHz, that emulates some other peripherals, including 4 ADFS hard discs giving a massive 2GB (total) disc space across 4 drives (all simultaneously accessible), and fully supported by the built-in ADFS in the Master; an 8MB RAM disc add-on, and Music 5000.

Arm wrestles assembly language guru's domains away citing trademark issues

Re: Simple fix...

Good one, from Acorn RISC Machine, to: Acorn RISC Silicon Engineering.

Red Hat strikes a crushing blow against RHEL downstreams

Re: recipients of their binaries

Have something that automatically sucks down all CentOS Stream source packages, and with a developer account grab the RHEL sources, but instead of building them, use them to compare patches with Stream ones. Hopefully if an RPM build version tag matches between Stream and RHEL the patch set is identical so use those version tags to choose which Stream source packages to pick up.

Experts warn of steep increase in Java costs under changes to Oracle license regime

Re: Right, but do all those businesses...

Wasn't my call, I'm a sysadmin, not senior mangement.

Re: Right, but do all those businesses...

Given their predatory practices I would not touch their Linux with a bargepole, especially at work.

I did experiment with their OEL 8 release on an old Atom box. It ran okay (slow, but it was an Atom), so I tried their Unbreakable kernel. This fell over regularly with illegal instructions, and utterly hosed the RPM database.

Nuked the installation, and installed AlmaLinux 8, and haven't looked back.

At my new employer, we have standardised on AlmaLinux 9.

Re: Right, but do all those businesses...

At my previous employer, Oracle were attempting to shake us down for Java licensing. We screenshotted their slide which showed the cut-off versions of Java, newer versions were chargeable, older ones weren't. Our Linux estate was already OpenJDK as switching to that resolved an issue with the Oracle versions, and Windows was running older versions being compliant with not needing a subscription (and the slide showed us how far we could update to without needing to subscribe). When they then decided to audit us, they were unhappy, as every single Java instance was outside their licensing scheme and they had to admit that we were fine to carry on as we were.

In praise of MIDI, tech's hidden gift to humanity

Re: Foresight is a wonderful thing

Gamers are the computer equipment equivalent of audiophiles. Surprised nobody has marketed a keyboard or mouse with gold-plated contacts and keyswitches.

openSUSE makes baseline CPU requirements a little friendlier than feared

This might help - https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/631217/how-do-i-check-if-my-cpu-supports-x86-64-v2

One of the answers includes an awk script, so just pointing you there rather than risking a copy & paste glitch.

Loathsome eighties ladder-climber levelled by a custom DOS prompt

Re: point of order

The late-1990s Red Hat Linux 5.0 (the first release with glibc) had a bug where /etc/hosts actually was case sensitive. I can't recall if it was fixed by an update or whether I had to wait until 5.1 was released.

In a time before calculators, going the extra mile at work sometimes didn't add up

Re: £sd

Next you'll be telling me that "Ebeneezer Goode" is all about a bloke who likes to liven up parties.

Re: Bank Accounts

With per-minute billing it's possible to use up several minutes in one minute with short calls.

Businesses should dump Windows for the Linux desktop

Teams is available for Linux, indeed I have actually found it more stable than under Win10 (I was using AlmaLinux 8). Other solutions exist for Linux, notably Zoom.

Re: Genuine Question

If you're paying for, for example, Red Hat support with RHEL, if the tool you are using is part of their repos (e.g. freeipa) then you will get support from them in line with your SLA. This may be faster than a StackExchange response.

The many derivatives of the CP/M operating system

Re: Origins

How did that even work? Didn't remap the RAM into the bottom 48K of the machine? Normally on the Spectrum the first 16K is the ROM, and most CP/M (Z80) programs assumed a start address if 0x0100. Unless CP/M programs intended for the Spectrum had to be rebuilt for the odd memory layout.

That emoji may not mean what you think it means

Re: Too old and eyesight is too bad

Similarly, Microsoft Teams vs MAC addresses. Halfway through your server MAC address you've got a sunglasses emoji [#include <emoji/facepalm.h>]

Re: Eggplant

For some reason I'm reminded of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"

Systemd supremo Lennart Poettering leaves Red Hat for Microsoft

Re: one step forward

Huawei EulerOS is a commercial Linux distro.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EulerOS

Pentester says he broke into datacenter via hidden route running behind toilets

Security defeated by a wee bit of lateral thinking/crawling.

Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? Consult our cynic's guide to desktop Linux

Re: Control Your Own Upgrades

Fedora has supported in-place upgrades for some time now, no need to nuke and reinstall from scratch.

It can get a little hairy if you have 3rd party repos installed, but last time I tried it, RPMFusion was nicely upgraded as well.

Oracle?

Oracle more trustworthy than $OTHER_VENDOR?

Joke icon because you must be.

ZX Spectrum, the 8-bit home computer that turned Europe on to PCs, is 40

Re: Yeah

Perhaps a bit of a stretch calling RISC OS "retro" as it is still being developed.

(Microsoft Windows can trace it's lineage back to the mid 80s too, and most wouldn't say that is retro.)

UK internet pioneer Cliff Stanford has died

667 - the devil's ISDN number.

Re: Sad news.

Wintermute also operated the Cyberia cyber cafe next door to their machine room. This closed when Wintermute got borged by IFB (Internet for Business, formerly Roaring Silence Company).

Ceefax replica goes TITSUP* as folk pine for simpler times

Another way of accessing Teletext services

There is a client (open source, cross-platform) available from the Matrix Brandy developers, which can access some online Viewdata/Videotex and a Teletext service based on Teefax but with additional content not part of the main Teefax service. They also supply standalone builds of the client for Windows and RISC OS, Linux users are expected to build it themselves (or build Brandy and run it from the examples directory!)

2033 is doomsday for 2G and 3G in the UK

It almost makes sense to keep a single 2G network alive with a small slice of bandwidth for GPRS and SMS (no voice) which any existing networks' 2G IOT SIMs can roam on to.

Alma and Rocky Linux release 8.5 builds, Rocky catches up with secure boot

Re: Long term success ?

It may be useful to know that AlmaLinux's migration script can migrate from Rocky in addition to CentOS and the other RHEL clones, and similarly Rocky's migration script can migrate from Alma in addition to the others.

I don't see that as squabbling over each other's user base but instead a very sensible insurance policy for the users should one or the other go to the wall.

The Ministry of Silly Printing: But I don't want my golf club correspondence to say 'UNCLASSIFIED' at the bottom

Re: Amateur Opera Society Newsletter

All is well and good until the boss asks you to play his Magic Flute.

Re: Nowadays of course the boot is on the other foot

I forward my work phone into a VoIP-in number on my own voip box. On there I have rules that permit calls when on call and during office hours. Out of hours calls route to a dedicated voicemail box with a suitable outgoing message. The big exception is when I am on leave, the calls go to a message telling the caller I'm on leave and to contact my manager if it's important, before dropping the call (no voicemail).

Nobody cares about DAB radio – so let's force it onto smart speakers, suggests UK govt review

Re: Don't touch FM!!!!

There's a cause for Greta Thunderbird to get behind, all the extra greenhouse gases produced by DAB reveivers compared to FM radios!

WTF? Microsoft makes fixing deadly OMIGOD flaws on Azure your job

Re: The uneasy feeling about all the MS provided (spy) stuff on their Linux Azure VM's

That's a bit mad, they managed to create a yum repo for their Teams on Linux stuff, you'd have thought they could do the same for this, and drop the entry in /etc/yum.repos.d so it would be kept up to date when you patch your OS.

But no, they didn't.

After quietly switching to slower NAND in an NVMe SSD, Western Digital promises to be a bit louder next time

Re: Already gave up on WD

I had this on my CMR WD Red drives in a Linux mdraid setup. While hdparm has scary warnings on the option to change this setting, it worked for me and I haven't had any trouble since.

So the data centre's 'getting a little hot' – at 57°C, that's quite the understatement

Re: I once had to do something similar in a Skoda...

Almost complete circle, it is broken by a short length of the A282.

Following Torvalds' nudge, Paragon's NTFS driver for Linux is on track for kernel

I evaluated the Paragon driver for my then employer, and back then I wasn't entirely impressed. Sure, it was faster than NTFS-3G but it's error checking left a lot to be desired. Point it at a non-NTFS partition? Kernel panic. Hit a bad sector on your hard disc? Kernel panic. We ended up running with NTFS-3G as running slower was preferable to collapsing in a heap at the slightest hint of trouble.

Audacity users stick the knife – and fork – in to strip audio editor of unwanted features

Re: !Audacity

That would be the RISC OS port.

Re: Hindenburg

They even attempt to justify the name...

https://hindenburg.com/about#/why-hindenburg

Re: How about "Audible City"?

Sadly, Amazon might have a thing or two to say about that.

Playmobil crosses the final frontier with enormous, metre-long Enterprise playset

Re: Shuttle?

Amazon Prime Directive?

UK's competition watchdog gives £31bn Virgin Media and O2 merger the seal of approval

Re: Too confusing

I must have missed the NTL ownership. I may well be wrong but I thought Hutchison sold Orange to Mannesmann. Vodafone did s hostile takeover of Mannesmann and were thus forced to sell Orange quickly, the buyer being France Telecom.

Re: Ownership of MBNL

MBNL was originally Three and T-Mobile. EE inherited T-Mobile's share. O2 and Vodafone were never involved (they have their own, Cornerstone).

The swift in-person response is part of the service (and nothing to do with the thing I broke while trying to help you)

Been there, I typoed the default gateway when remote configuring a new physical server. No ILO or iDrac either. Oops... (Though it wasn't yet live, thank $DEITY).

I was preparing myself to have to take that long journey to the data centre to fix it at the console, when it dawned on me that I had access to another box on the same subnet. Thankfully this worked and I was able to SSH in and sort it from my desk, but that was a really close shave. Almost too close.