Oct 26, 2010 1:51am GMT
The TK50 was a cartridge tape and tape drive system launched by Digital Equipment Corporation in 1984. It was not the first cartridge tape that came out. 3M had developed a cartridge tape called “QIC” for “Quarter Inch Cartridge” in 1972, and our Unix systems supported that, but Digital also decided to create its own tape cartridge and drive, and of course it was deemed to be “proprietary... more »
The Needs of the ManySep 30, 2010 10:46pm GMT
"The Needs of the Many Must Outweigh the Needs of the Few..or the One." - Spock in “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan” With those words Spock chose to die in order to save the rest of the crew. Philosophically whether you agree to what Spock said or not, an important part of the lesson was that Spock chose to act the way he did...he exercised choice. Sometimes developers in... more »
Storage of clear-text passwords: NOT!Sep 30, 2010 2:49pm GMT
I am the first person to admit that I am not an expert on security (o.k., there are probably several dozens of my friends who will gleefully “admit” that I am not an expert on security before I will), but I do know that storing passwords in clear-text is just not the way to go. Yet recent interactions with several web site management teams has shown me that apparently some people have not... more »
Late Night FrustrationsSep 29, 2010 10:32pm GMT
From time to time I write about Project Cauã, and how it might help the average person by supplying them with a local systems administrator to help them fix problems on their computer system. I use Evolution as my mail/contacts/calendar/task manager. About three days ago my outgoing email stopped working. I could access the incoming email, but all outgoing email simply stayed in the... more »
Mocking fortunesSep 28, 2010 7:29pm GMT
X windows: The ultimate bottleneck. Flawed beyond belief. The only thing you have to fear. Somewhere between chaos and insanity. On autopilot to oblivion. The joke that kills. A disgrace you can be proud of. A mistake carried out to perfection. Belongs more to the problem set than the solution set. To err is X windows. Ignorance is our most important resource. Complex nonsolutions t... more »
Will Code For BeerSep 27, 2010 7:05pm GMT
People ask me why programmers write code and give it away “for free”. There are many reasons, but one I often give is that a programmer might end up at a conference and a grateful user of their code might “buy them a beer, or even a dinner.” It was February or March of 1995, and the port of Linux to the Alpha processor was well underway. In talking with some of the developers over th... more »
Goodbye Ubuntu, hello Fedora!Sep 20, 2010 5:11pm GMT
Many times people come up to me and ask me what distribution I use on my notebook (due to my traveling my notebook is my main "production and testing" system) and why. I tell them I use the distribution that makes sense for me, and often that is dictated by the work that I am doing and the company for which I am doing that work.Over the weekend I switched my notebook distribution of L... more »
