Posts by Wensleydale Cheese 1381 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jan 2011
"I was surprised when testing Mint (and Unbuntu) out on some old XP PCs at how much hardware just wasn't supported."
Indeed. Until I got newer hardware in 2012 I was unable to run either the Cinnamon or Mate desktops as provided by Mint on any of my existing 4 systems.
By the time that new hardware arrived, I had learned about the folly of running non-LTS versions of Ubuntu or Mint, so had moved on to other distros.
'Because even our relatively non-techie workers had "heard that Win8 was a lemon"'
It's the same story down the pub and with a couple of pensioners* I help out every now and again.
* that generation knows that when you fix their computer, a good meal, a few beers and occasionally some hard cash is the way to show their appreciation for your time and effort.
"Honestly, Drupal is an absolute slug and not for the feint hearted."
I am curious. Which version of Drupal is that?
I still have a low volume Drupal 6 site. When I looked at upgrading to 7 my trusty but old laptop couldn't cope with the bloat/Ajax/whatever else that lobbed to the client so I abandoned the idea.
The article says: "assuming it took the three admins four hours of work at $40 an hour, multiplied by the 2500 affected servers in question"
I make that 12 man hours.
But yes, it's a flawed calculation.
Three people for four hours apiece for the first server maybe, but each additional server managed by that team should only take a fraction of that time.
What? Three admins per server? I doubt that.
And that $40 per hour looks dodgy. The rule of thumb is that it costs the company about double the hourly pay rate when you include admin, office space, infrastructure etc., so are we saying that the typical admin only gets $20 per hour?
Bad memories of SIS onboard graphics from many years ago. I resolved it by buying a fairly cheap but current graphics card.
FWIW Mint in any incarnation since 10 wasn't happy with the onboard graphics on my 2010 Win7 box. Scientific Linux, Fedora and openSUSE both worked fine on it when I tried those.
wrt the Tabs on Top business. has anyone mentioned Fitts' Law yet?
Fitts's law (often cited as Fitts' law) is a model of human movement primarily used in human–computer interaction and ergonomics that predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target.
@ unitron
LOL!
In the same vein:
I got my first taste of lower case instead of UPPERCASE ONLY back in the late 70s
I got my first taste of affordable colour terminals in about 1987
Fast forward to last year and Visual Studio brings back block capitals and near-as-dammit monochrome
Exactly.
On my Mac I have the standard OS X menu bar, then
>Address and search boxes, complete with back/forward arrows
>Bookmarks toolbar
>Web Developer Toolbar
>Tab bar
>Web page
I don't want to search the heavens for the tab bar.
Now implemented via Classic Theme Restorer. Thanks to all who recommended that.
"Outside UK it's been impossible to see full UK or N.I. news any more. bbc.co.uk automatically loads bbc.com"
Try it with Javascript switched off. I can see bbc.co.uk fine here in Europe.
WTF they demand Flash for listening to the radio is a complete mystery. NO I am not going to buy an Internet aware radio just for that, as they suggest.
"PPTP with user authentication by MS-CHAPV2 Password "
The mention of CHAP took me back to the nineties (I think, a long time ago anyhoo).
First hit for CHAPV2:
Divide and Conquer: Cracking MS-CHAPv2 with a 100% success rate
"And millions/billions of Wordpress users will have been exposing their usernames/passwords in plain text since Z80 Assembler ruled the world - mostly without incident. Its security with a hole that's really dangerous at attracting the hacking flies."
I imagine that the number of folks with access to the network traffic containing those clear text usernames and passwords is quite limited. In contrast the OpenSSL bug lets world plus dog have a go.
"About half the number of system administrators would be out of a job if there wouldn't be lots of compromised WinXP machines around."
High time they got a taste of what it's been like for the rest of us who've had to retrain into new technologies to stay employable then.
No sympathy what-so-bleedin-ever for them.
"The reported "safe" version of OpenSSL is 1.0.1g released on 7 Apr. I'd take another look."
That's not the whole story. because the patch has been backported to previous versions.
My Red Hat derivatives and Debian are running 1.0.1e and the patches for that arrived pretty promptly.
Of course, anyone not running the latest will still be subject to other vulnerabilities which have been addressed in subsequent releases.
"The mega-vulnerability was patched earlier this week, and software should be updated to use the new version, 1.0.1g."
Pray do tell what folks are going to tell the PHBs who take that statement at face value?
1. The patch has been back-ported to previous versions
2. Any sysadmin with the right skills can simply recompile their version of openssl with the heartbeat module disabled.
"You can't use an OEM license legally in any VM."
I went into this with the OEM version of Windows 7 Ultimate and I was happy (IANAL of course) that the license did allow me to run it in a VM.
I did that on the box it was originally installed in though - I changed it from running Win7 as the main OS to running Linux as the main OS, with Windows 7 inside VirtualBox. I did a fresh install from DVD and it activated without problems.
"So that'll be an automatically renewing leasing model then."
Like the ISPs and telcos who carry on billing after you've cancelled your contract then?
And have the cheek to use debt collectors or court orders to pursue non-payment of services not actually delivered.
"Windows 8.1 is priced £86 versus £171 for Windows 8.1 Pro. You can downgrade to Windows 7 Pro and Windows Vista Business."
Ah, but not to Windows 7 Ultimate, which is the only one of the Windows 7 range (apart from Enterprise) to support multiple interface languages.
I'd love to know what it is that Microsoft hates about multi-lingual setups.
Hint: supporting more than one user interface language on a single system is what the competition have been doing for years now.
"Firstly, it is a very bad user shell. It has almost zero discoverability"
That zero discoverability was my main problem with Win8.
The earlier versions of Windows (Win98?) had excellent tutorials on using both the keyboard and mouse.
The whole Windows 8 experience would have been less frustrating if they had done the same.
"And almost everyone in that number chose to install Linux, either on a clean machine or dual-boot. "
Not any more. I've got lots of Linux installations here but all apart from one of them are in virtual machines.
Just imagine, no more hassles with GRUB or Windows overwriting your boot block :-)
"Is anyone missing the simpler times?"
Aye, we had Rickets, Diptheria, Hitler, and
By we did look well going to school with no backsides in us trousers n
All us little heads painted Purple cause we had Ringworm
You don't need to wait if you subscribe to Apple's Product Security mailing list.
Details at lists.apple.com
These notifications often arrive in my inbox before the App Store lists the update as being available (though an App Store Refresh - Command-R sometimes does the trick).
"Bear in mind also that Dell will have to support PCs that have chosen this setup option and Mozilla issue automatic updates every other week."
That is a very good point.
Dealing with Firefox related support calls every time a new version decides that existing plugins aren't compatible could cost Dell real money.
Yet... If Dell could get Firefox's spell checker to stop reverting from UK to US English every time I turn my back I might be happy to part with 16 quid or so.
This one goes back to the recession in the early 90s.
PC margins were apparently so tight that unless they sold you a mains cable for 20 quid they didn't make any profit.
Yes, that was the same cable you could buy in your local electrical outlet for about 2-3 quid.
"most sensible people don't trade in their old TV just because there in a newer one with better features - as long as the features their current TV has are all they require."
I've been quite happy with my analogue Sony* Trinitron, but at the moment it is under threat from an "upgrade" to a digital-only signal. I really don't watch TV often enough to warrant lashing out on a fancy new TV.
* bought before before Sony did their silly trick with rootkits on CDs, in case you wonder
'But the idea that a washing machine would think, "It's 1st January 1900, I haven't been invented yet, I'd better explode and set the place on fire" was pretty stupid though.'
Maybe, but my 2 year old video recorder refused to record anything by the timer once we got past 31st December 1999. Thereafter if I wanted to record something I had to be there and hit the "record now" button.
It wasn't a cheap model either.
Tax row turns to Microsoft over £1.7bn of online revenues
"The row over the amount of tax multinationals are paying has taken another turn after it emerged that Microsoft pays no UK tax on £1.7bn of online revenues."
"Since the Nest thermostat only works in USA and Canada residents of the Rest of the World can sleep easy."
Oops.
"Use of the thermostat outside the United States and Canada is complicated by the software setting time and other functions based on the ZIP code."
When and if they eventually fix that, you will have to enter dates and times in US format,
And probably decide the interface language by your IP address.
What could possibly go wrong?
and more recently OS X Server told me it couldn't offer any help because "You are not connected to the internet".
Quite apart from the fact that not everyone has a 100% reliable internet connection, how the hell are all those non-Geeks who just want to set up a home network going to cope when they mess up their networking / OS X Server throws a wobbly itself*?
* delete as applicable.
"I'm also passworded out especially, the extra security password that some banks are tacking on to Debit and Credit card transactions...."
Then there's the dreaded Dual Authentication
Look it's simple.
The mobile phone signal near my computer can be a bit hit and miss so sometimes I have to go outside to get the SMS containing this vital piece of login information.
Please don't throw a "session expired" message at me when I've had to do that.
"It isn't difficult to strip out spaces!!"
It certainly isn't.
And it's really not at all difficult to insert spaces so that a phone number looks like it does in the phone book or printed on letterheads. Ditto for credit card numbers.
My latest online form filling adventure rejected my phone number because i simply copied and pasted it from elsewhere.
Duh!
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