Posts by Soruk

DR-DOS rises again – rebuilt from scratch, not open source

Re: Amstrad?

The BBC Master 512 also used DOS Plus, and someone wrote an add-on dubbed the PC Compatibility Enhancer, which allowed many additional items of software to run on it.

Openreach turns up the heat to force laggards off legacy copper lines

Re: Apples and oranges?

The physical networks:

VodafoneThree

VMO2

EE

What's the 4th one?

Major AWS outage across US-East region breaks half the internet

Just somebody else's computer.

"The Cloud" is just somebody else's computer / network. If you are making your business rely on the cloud then you should have contingencies when the services go down. Unlike having your own kit you manage you are beholden to the cloud provider as to when they feel like bringing your services back - you're just one of thousands, your business is not a priority.

US Navy: I can't quit you, Azure

And knowing this, how long before Microsoft pull a Broadcom with their pricing?

Firewall upgrade linked to three deaths after Australian telco cut off emergency calls

The son of a good friend of mine was involved in an incident that Thursday morning. While investigations are ongoing, Optus was his service provider.

Suffice to say, he didn't make it.

I believe as reports emerge that the death toll due to Optus's catastrophic failure will only increase.

No more 'Sanity Checks.' Inclusive language guide bans problematic tech terms

It's not just crypto

With the UK going VoIP for it's telephone system, it's worth noting that SIP authentication makes heavy use of nonces.

Sudden spike in demand causes issues in Azure East US region

Cloudburst

When you rely on someone else's computer and storage to prop up your business, you just have to accept that sometimes their computers will fail, just have to put your business on hold until they feel like fixing it (and don't lose your data in the process). Or have some kind of resilience plan.

The International Obfuscated C Code Contest is back for 2024

El Reg added quirk

The salmon source has an additional oddity that wasn't there upstream - a spurious "</stdio.h>" at the bottom!

Microsoft admits it 'cannot guarantee' data sovereignty

Here's the data. For security reasons this is not available over the Internet in any capacity. Please connect an ITU V.21 or Bell 103 compliant modem to 011 883 135 246 357 468 and request data block 1c3875a728b5403fbb5644203c5e418a8c1aa032

Re: Tell us something new

It's also any cloud provider worldwide with a US presence, so would also include the likes of OVH and Ionos.

"Here's the requested data. For ease of searching, here are all the 0x00 bytes, here are all the 0x01 bytes, .... and here are all the 0xFF bytes".

Nearly 3 out of 4 Oracle Java users say they've been audited in the past 3 years

Re: Free Libre Open Source Java

At $EMPLOYER[-2] I migrated an application from Oracle Java to OpenJDK as it resolved an issue we were having with the application. When sites like El Reg started reporting on Oracle sniffing around Java users we made the decision to migrate everything else using Java on Linux to OpenJDK, a migration that went flawlessly.

When they came knocking at our door, they tried to paint out solution as unsupported (wrong - paid-up RHEL subscriptions) and were really annoyed at having to tell us we were fine to carry on as we were.

British IT worker sentenced to seven months after trashing company network

Re: And this is why...

When a former colleague was pretty much dragged to HR by our manager, I disabled his access even before said manager asked me to - reversibly in case I had misinterpreted the situation. As it happens, I had not misinterpreted so sessions were then terminated as well once the situation was clear.

Re: And this is why...

This. There's a reason accounts can be locked reversibly, so once suspension is lifted access can be granted without having to reconstruct everything.

VodafoneThree's a crowd – now comes the hard bit

Re: Quality of service

Thought that was Barnard....

Re: Quality of service

And another cathedral city. Winchester, is pretty poor on Three and O2, especially around said cathedral!

Ex-NSA bad-guy hunter listened to Scattered Spider's fake help-desk calls: 'Those guys are good'

If it's the credit card company, I ask for a few random digits from the account and sort code that the direct debit comes from - details not typically included on a credit card statement.

The one interview question that will protect you from North Korean fake workers

Re: Hiring candidates who can't pronounce their own name?

Extending this, if you already have a Polish speaker on the team, have them ask some innocuous questions, relevant to the job, in Polish.

HP ditches 15-minute wait time policy due to 'feedback'

They missed a trick...

Play the recorded message, then just dump the call to a never-ending ringing tone.

Brits must prove their age on adult sites by July, says watchdog

Re: Age verification

Small deposit? TMI.

Re: Age verification

This is exactly what Giffgaff do.

Christmas 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers

Re: Glory Days

The ARM wasn't intended to BE a BBC Micro co-processor, but this is how the original chips were tested, and the ARM Evaluation System was shipped in that form for early users to use it and start writing software for the processor. Its intended target was the Archimedes.

Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Midnight!

This is what happens if you feed a Kremlin after midnight.

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

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.