Posts by Woza

Re: Not ISDN...

*raises hand*

About five years ago, I spun up an AWS "free" instance to host some short-lived thing for my cricket club - damned if I can remember what now. Anyway, forgot the thing was running and ended up with a nasty shock at the end of the month when the bill arrived.

Re: Proper paper orientation

I do both - main monitor is landscape, with a second monitor next to it in portrait orientation. The latter is good for reading documents or long chunks of code.

Re: "The idea of the SBOM is relatively new."

Exactly. We were maintaining an SBOM for our product since it began development circa 2010 (</whippersnapper>) and this was a required artefact when we delivered evaluation units to $US_DEFENCE_PRIME a few years later. In that case the focus was mostly on understanding licencing of the various components, but still - knowing what you're using is not a new concept.

Re: "School"

While I normally enjoy a bandwagon about US English, saying "school is for children" isn't valid.

Evidence from the UK:

-London School of Economics

-London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

- Oxford School of Global and Area Studies

etc

Re: Call me old fashioned

http://discworld.starturtle.net/lpc/

Discworld-themed text-based adventure. I used to write code for them 20-odd years ago, still seems to be chugging along.

Several months ago, I had to blow away and reinstall my laptop, and decided to give Slackware a go, based largely on your posts here. (As context, I consider myself reasonably au fait with Linux, having run Gentoo, Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux From Scratch and OpenSUSE in one form or another since before 2006, and fully agree with your characterisation of systemd.)

I felt at home in Slackware, it was great! But I couldn't find how to update packages. Key internet-facing packages and libraries relied on OpenSSL versions (1.0.2) that were EOL at the time, and it seemed like the way to know if something was patched was via email list. I dug myself into a waist-deep morass of dependencies trying to update and recompile packages manually to get the latest security fixes, and in the end retreated to Kubuntu where I can just run apt-get and get the updates I need.

As an experienced Slackware user, what did I miss? How do you keep things patched?

Re: Been there, done that, tipped the swear jar

Best one I saw in our code base was:

#define GO_HOME_WINDOWS_YOU_ARE_DRUNK

in code that was working around quirks of MSVC.

A different part of our code base has a function that cleans up child processes, called grim_squeaker - long ago tribute to PTerry and Death of Rats, from my younger self.

Re: Stuck a finger...

Why assume there was only one problem?

Re: Totally American

My standard testing names (small volume):

Major Bloodnok

Ned Seagoon

Mad Dan Eccles

Bluebottle

Henry Crun

Minnie Bannister

etc

(Auto-correct hates me now)

Re: We asked Boeing to comment.

Missed a couplen on the bingo card:

3. We have made changes and this can never happen again

4. Safety is our highest priority

Re: Push me

A friend I used to work with pushed the Big Red Button by accident twice within a couple of months. We bought him one of these as a leaving gift.

(His leaving was unconnected to these incidents)

I used to play cricket with a guy whose kit had red marks from shining the ball for the whole season. At the end of the season, one of the player's wives gave this guy a box of washing powder. It wasn't until later that we wondered what could happen if he was pulled over by the cops with an unmarked plastic box of white powder...

Re: Thinking outside the box

The Goon show called it 65 years ago:

Seagoon:

Tell me, how do we raise the pier?

Moriarty:

Oh, don't raise the pier!

Seagoon:

What then?

Moriarty:

Lower the river!

Seagoon:

Gad! Genius! Absolute genius! But, but can you do it?

Moriarty:

Sapristi yacka-backakas of course I can. My partner, the Honourable Grytpype-Thynne is the greatest water remover in the world! Follow me!

Re: "create more transparent rules for political campaigning online"

They should sew sponsors logos on their suits, like athletes. Or take a leaf out of stadium naming - like you have Etihad Stadium or the Kia Oval, could we see The Rio Tinto Prime Minister or The Boeing Defence Secretary?

Idea courtesy Robin Williams.