Posts by jake

Re: Linux is more than just distros

"How would you even know if Sudo was included?"

I asked perl to check for me.

"We have no central management"

Well, there's your problem ... I can fix that for you. If you have to ask "how much", you probably can't afford me.

Re: "has been hiding in plain sight for nearly 10 years"

I seriously doubt it.

Re: How is this possible?

"I suspect this bug is in a piece of code that looks safe"

Read it for yourself:https://blog.qualys.com/vulnerabilities-research/2021/01/26/cve-2021-3156-heap-based-buffer-overflow-in-sudo-baron-samedit

The above link includes an explanation.

Easy test to see if you are vulnerable, from that page: Run the command sudoedit -s / .... if you are vulnerable, it'll return an error that starts with sudoedit:, if have been patched it'll return an error that starts with usage:.

Versions prior to 1.8.2 are not vulnerable.

Re: How is this possible?

The same way a flaw was missed in a main steel support beam in a bridge that you have driven over daily for years.

Humans are in the loop, they will always be in the loop, and they make mistakes. sudo has been patched, we've updated our systems, and we've moved on. Unlike the beam, which probably won't even be noticed until it fails.

All complex systems have bugs. Some are worse than others.

::shrugs::

Re: The stupidity of the NFL player's union ...

Don't be silly. The officials in any given sport have a much stronger union that mere athletes.

Re: NFL Union since 1956

I didn't say that was the only reason, I said it was a major part of the reason. There were a couple other major parts. I started getting irritated at the rich, whining idiots during the '87 season. It got progressively worse over time, but I tried to ignore it because I enjoy the sport. I finally gave up and sold my season tickets before the playoffs at the end of the 1995 season[0]. I miss the game, but I don't miss the constant bickering and whining.

Me? Watch faux news? Hardly.

Most of the people voting at Amazon probably have no clue what they are voting for. It's a lack of proper education thing, and it's not confined to union issues, it's ALL voting, pretty much world-wide. How's politics in your neck of the woods?

[0] The team I had supported my entire life won the Super Bowl that year. I cared so little that I didn't even watch the game on TV. Instead, I went fishing that afternoon.

_{One wonders how many of my downvotes are from people ass-u-me ing that your wild-ass guesses were somewhat close to accurate ... and THEY probably vote in General Elections! Scary, no?}

"A boat can even have a sail for propulsion."

What sail material would you propose at that temperature? Sails undergo all kids of stresses that you don't see on a pretty news broadcast of San Francisco Bay or Sydney Harbour[0].

[0] Yes, I typed "Harbour", not "harbo(u)r" ... it's a proper noun, they can name it what they like.

And screen doors to keep out the bugs, no doubt.

"The energy of the laser is likely to ignite the vapour if not set the entire sea alight."

Where is the oxidizer in that fire of yours?

Re: The one that got away...

What would you propose for bait before you know what you will catch?

Flashers/spoons might work, but my money's on multi-colo(u)red LEDs strobing. Just make certain that the lights don't display some kind of insult in the local lingo.

Re: Developers develop for developers first

Whatever. Me DearOldMum and GreatAunt are happy Slackware users. Seems that the most important thing for any OS, after stability and security, is the wetware doing the installation.

Re: Identity crisis?

Slackware ships with XFCE, you're not stuck with KDE,

If anyone cares, Slackware-current is going to do a rebuild against glibc-2.33 as soon as it is released, so if you're not interested in upgrading pretty much everything in a week or so, you might want to wait until then. Also note that it is rumo(u)red that Slackware 15.0 will be in beta AnyDayNow[tm]. See PV's comment dated Jan 18 in the change log.

Re: Not for noobs

Ubuntu: Ancient African word meaning "Slackware is hard."

That might be true for Unice, but it's far from true for *nix.

In the 37 years since SysV init was released, I think I can count on on both hands the number of times I've had to actually code something that it couldn't handle. All of those cases were extreme edge cases. And note that in none of those cases would the systemd-cancer have been any help. In over half of those cases, BSDinit worked where SysVinit didn't.

That's not to say that a replacement is not overdue, but the systemd-cancer is not that replacement.

Re: @AC - Sorry, but no

There is a reason I call it the systemd-cancer ... Consider: systemd takes root in its host, eats massive quantities of resources as it grows, spreads unchecked into areas unrelated to the initial infection, and refuses to die unless physically removed from the system, all the while doing absolutely nothing of benefit to the host.

Re: Professionals built the titanic...

Except there was no ark. Tall tale to frighten the children.

"It is the one chore in the house I detest"

You've obviously never had kids.

Re: Really a robotic chef?

Exactly. The happy new owner has to purchase, wash, peel, chop/slice and portion all food to be cooked, and then put it all in the exactly correct position for the "chef". Which then proceeds to heat and stir them for you. IF it has the proper procedure for your selected meal stored in it's databank, AND you've put the ingredients in the proper location for it.

WOW! What a HUGE help in the kitchen.

Re: Unitools

When I run out of home-grown carrots & apples, I get mine from a local small farm aggregator. 50 pound bags for under $10 (less than half the wholesale price). They are mostly "blems", but the horses don't care. Nor do I ... twinned carrots and cosmetically ugly apples might not be sellable to millennials, hipsters & yuppies, but they are just as tasty as their "perfect" cousins.

Re: Unitools

I'd say the correct tool for extracting juice from apples is teeth.

Re: Technical term

The term is "unitasker".

Waffle irons don't qualify. They are great for making falafel. And sliders. And boot soles.

Re: Oh dear!

"he had to google where to find the towing eye and how to fit it"

Peer under car, find eye, attach tow hook after possibly popping out the obvious vanity cover. This needs a manual?

Re: Uppercase/Lowercase

"It annoys me when salesdroids ring me up and ask for "Lain". I say "No-one here of that name", and, so I hang up on them."

FTFY

Re: Don't get it

"Is he trying also to use his phone with his feet?"

Don't be silly, the holes are far too small to easily dial with your toes.

More seriously, the phone evolved over several generations. In the early days, you had to physically take the ear-piece "off hook" to place it to your ear, and then speak into the wall-mounted microphone. That left your other hand to jiggle the hook to get the operator's attention. By the time dial telephones came out, people naturally gravitated to using their spare hand to dial.

Other people have addressed the foot pedal thing.

"Yeah, in those days there weren't any of the functions we have available now, such as the ability to swap buttons or redefine them in any way."

Actually, in the old days you had to manually define all that, from scratch, if you wanted to use the dratted thing. If anything, they were more easily customizable, because the interface was documented.

Logitech was founded in 1981, and was shipping two button mice in the early '80s. Mouse Systems, the builder of early Sun 3-button mice, had many-button "programmable" mice in the mid '80s. There were others, most were used for CAD systems.

Re: Hmm ...

"We use touchpads now."

Who is "we", Kemosabe?

I hate touch screens. I've spent half a century keeping the greasy mitts of the luser-base off my nice clean monitor ... and then the bean counters just HAD to bring out fondle-thingies, didn't they? I hates 'em. Hates 'em, I does.

Re: Hmm ...

Masculine? Excuse me? Have you never heard of a "Dear John" letter?

Toxic? Since when was finding a new person to date considered "toxic"? Are you going to honestly tell me that you have never, when dating someone, run across somebody that suits your needs/wants more precisely?

The only toxicity here is you assuming that everybody else on the planet must obey your moral understanding of the world. Who died and placed you in charge of our morals?

Re: Left-handed rodents

I've been ambimousetrous since the early days, when there was no standardization on placement.

Re: My first Unix machine came from Computerland

"at a time when having a Unix box at home was truly exotic"

It wasn't really "exotic", it was just a matter of need. Most computer professionals and students who were working on that kind of thing had access to one form of *nix or another at home starting in the early 1980s.

Coherent came out in '80.

Xenix (which was NOT written by Microsoft, it was actually Version 7 Unix) was ported to the 8088/8086 by SCO in 1983. Prior to that, there were also ports done by other companies for TRS-68000, Zilog Z8001, and Altos 8086. SCO also did a port of Xenix for the Apple Lisa, which almost makes my Lisa into a usable machine!

And of course, if you lived in a university town, you could often get a dial-up UNIX shell account for free in the early '80s ... if you knew who to ask. Free for the account, that is. Local telephone calls cost money. UUCP and scripting sure came in handy :-)

Re: USB foot pedal ...

"bound to any key"

Sounds useful. As in Kick any key to continue. ... Would certainly bring a little catharsis to folks who are saddled with Windows.

"Mouse Balls" was written as a joke field service memo by a FSE at IBM Boca in roughly 1988, soon after the release of the IBM PS/2. Seems manglement were going on and on about the importance of the mouse with OS/2, and he was in the mood to poke fun at them.

The memo looked official, the original had the actual part number of the FRU mouse balls. It also had the tie-line number of the FSE who wrote the memo. It was never supposed to go outside his immediate office. He is probably embarrassed about it to this day.

The last time I checked (15 years ago (??)), P/N 33F8462 - Domestic Mouse Balls and P/N 33F8461 - Foreign Mouse Balls were still valid part numbers at IBM, with inventory on hand.

Re: Foot pedal

Most people who did support back when the mouse was new have a version (or three) of this story. It actually happened occasionally, I saw it myself.

Re: To be fair

It wasn't a mouse, but I fiddled about with a foot pedal input device back then. Was a Moog Taurus originally[0], but I modified it so various chords became control, alt & shift keys, Fx keys, Sun's "L" keys, and a couple other key bindings depending on the computer it was plugged into. It was an attempt to bring sanity to EMACS, among other things.

Even when working well, it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth, so I never pursued it. A friend of mine took my breadboard rig & used the basic idea for an alternative input device for disabled folks while getting his Masters at Stanford.

[0] Don't swear at me, I didn't wreck it! Somebody had cannibalized most of the electronics, I found the carcass in a pile of trash outside SAIL's DC Power building when we were moving out in 1980. The idea of making it an input device flashed into my mind as soon as I set eyes on it.

Re: A bit off topic

And yet, all through the '80s I was in the US and selling personal computers, to all 50 states and Canada, without MS-DOS or anything else from Microsoft on any of them. Seeing as I never had a contract with Microsoft, they couldn't do anything about it ... if, in fact, they even noticed I existed.

There were many other people you could purchase a personal computer from sans MS code, some smaller than I was, and some much larger.

I hate Redmond as much as the next nerd, and for very good reasons, but I refuse to help perpetuate the vilification mythology. It doesn't do anyone any good to re-invent history to paint others in a bad light.

Re: The whole activation scheme for a lot of stuff drives me nuts.

Yes. Yoof. Relatively speaking.

The OF&H episode was released in '96.

Open All Hours did the same joke in '81. Why don't you use "Arkwright's broom"?

My family has my great-grandfather's kindling hatchet sitting next to the wood stove. It's on its sixth head[0] and 13th handle[1]. My dad started calling it Theseus's axe before I was born.

The Ship of Theseus concept existed at least 2400 years earlier than any of the above.

[0] The original, out of the Sears catalogue in 1897, followed by hand-forged replacements made by Great Grandfather, Grampa, Dad, me, and my daughter. The grand daughter (age 10) is starting to learn how to make coat hooks, hinges & the like, so I'm sure she'll continue the tradition.

[1] Near daily farm journals are a family tradition.