BSD – Page 82 – DragonFly BSD Digest

2011/11/272011/11/25

Lazy Reading for 2011/11/27

Happy (post) Turkey Day for the U.S. readers! A light link week this week.

Facebook is bad for the Internet. ‘Gaslighting’ is a new term to me. As that article points out, I can’t even put my posts to the Digest onto Facebook in any sort of automated way. Facebook suggests that of course I’d love to retype them all by hand. That’s not realistic. Facebook doesn’t want any sort of useful external link to be visible to their customers. Customers isn’t actually the right word; the customers are the advertisers. What would be a better word for the users? Crop?
“the internet is above and beyond all else a resentment machine.” It’s a very long essay that points out people are confusing brand identity with personal identity. (via)
You know what would be good? More conversations about games on BSD, cause it could use some attention. Oh hey there you go.
A Dragonfly lamp (via Julian Gehtdichgarnichtsan)

Your unrelated link of the week: Animals Talking In All Caps. It is what it says it is.

2011/11/252011/11/24

Even more Postgres results

Francois Tigeot has updated his PDF of Postgres benchmarks with some OpenIndiana results. They’re crazy high, though he reported some freezes too, as with Linux.

2011/11/24

BSDTalk 208: Teaching BSD

BSDTalk 208 is out, where Will Backman talks for 15 minutes about how he uses BSD in his University of Maine UNIX class.

2011/11/202011/11/18

Lazy Reading for 2011/11/20

Hey, the date’s sorta palindromic! Sorta.

“Bundled, Buried and Behind Closed Doors” – a video description of the physical parts of the Internet. Remember when MAE-East or MAE-West would have a bad day and half the Internet felt it? Really, half. I don’t think I’m exaggerating. (via)
Google has a verbatim search mode now, for those of you who regret the loss of ‘+’ as a required search term designator. (via and also sort of via) There’s always alternatives.
“The expr program is a real piece of crap.” Laser-focused complaining about a small program that’s had 4 decades to improve, and hasn’t.
“Mechanics for Pure Aesthetics” The videos are interesting, and I’m linking to this because so much of what I post here and deal with is focused computer work. Everything is a tool, with a purpose, and a result that you expect. This idea of machinery or even software having a purpose other than result generation is underexplored. There’s lots of tools to create art, but there’s little that is art itself. Even with that general lack, we still get excited when the edge of some sort of aesthetic appeal nudges its way into the materials we use. You could argue that Apple’s success (for instance) comes from being the one company that consistently thinks about what a product is, instead of what it does.
If you use fastcgi, you may need the patch that this blog post talks about. Also, apache-mpm-prefork is the better choice for Apache on DragonFly.
“DragonFly mug shot“

Your random comic link of the day: Calamity of Challenge. Also here. And here. If this artist’s way of drawing grabs you like it grabs me, he has pages and commissions for sale.

2011/11/192011/11/17

Linux results for that Postgres benchmarking

Remember the Postgres benchmark I described here a few days ago? Francois Tigeot has updated it with numbers from Scientific Linux running the same pgbench procedure. (see page 2) If you’re too lazy to look at the PDF, his summary is this: Linux is fastest of all, and also crashes the most.

2011/11/09

BSD Magazine for November

The November issue of BSD Magazine is out. No DragonFly content again, in part because I wasn’t even sure when the deadline was. (The editor changed.)

2011/11/062011/11/06

Lazy Reading for 2011/11/06

A bumper crop of articles to read this week.

Ruby went to a BSD license. That’s nice to see. Commence licensing argument in 3… 2…
DragonFly BSD on Ohloh hasn’t been updated in months – it should be noticing new commits automatically. Don’t know why. Any more vigorous users of Ohloh that know why?
“Which OSS clustered file system should I use?” The commenters point out something that many people mix up: RAID redundancy is not backups.
I always enjoy accounts of completely ineffective break-in attempts.
In praise of “crap” technology. I must admit, I love just looking at stuff like what Brando sells, or various surplus sites. It’s never high-end fancy, but that is part of the appeal, as the linked article notes.
Think of this speech the next time someone asks you for help online, no matter how accessible the answer.
20 years of Vim. Vim started on the Amiga, of all places. That would make vi itself about eleventy kajillion years old. Does it predate the release of 1BSD? I don’t know. Looking at a BSD family tree to see what I could learn, I also found that QNX was originally QUNIX. I didn’t know that either. Everything leads back to UNIX, really. I look forward to Jeremy C. Reed’s book about this early history…
This electronic music site entertains me, for it is also available in amber. (You have to have seen monochrome monitors circa 1982 or so to understand…)
Speaking of 1982, you may enjoy Nintendo Legend, CRPG Addict, and Blogging Ultima. (via trevorjk on #dragonflybsd IRC)

Random unrelated link for the week: “War Photographer“. This animation makes me so happy.

2011/10/302011/10/30

Lazy Reading for 2011/10/30

It’s snowing in the northeast U.S., which makes me happy! Keep going, sky!

Richard Stallman’s requirements when giving talks/lectures. (via) I read this not unreasonable but long list and thought about it. Every requirement on there probably has an experience/story behind it… (“If you can find a host for me that has a friendly parrot, I will be very very glad.” – so this)
Continuing the famous computer people trend of dying, John McCarthy died. He invented LISP (((insert parentheses joke here))) among other things, and wrote this story. (also via)
I mentioned issues over the time zone database previously, but there’s a new home, and we’re still getting updates in DragonFly.
And, it’s Dennis Ritchie Day. (via) That linked article does a good job of describing just how universal his influence has been.
64-bit ARM chips. (design PDF) This is just the announcement, but I bet these will be a good porting target in the next year or two if these designs wander out into the general market. (via many places)
I’ve linked to similar deals before, but this one’s quite cheap: the Power Squid power strip sold as surplus. I find the design and name both great.
Speaking of names, “I think Dragonfly is the coolest, cuz of the name.“
I like this article on web advertising just because it has blocked-out screenshots that show exactly how much space gets used up by ads.

Unrelated link of the week: Manly Guys Doing Manly Things. Most of the jokes revolve around games you may or may not know, with the occasional realistic experience that I’ve had myself.

2011/10/27

BSD Magazine for October

It’s out, titled “The Inevitability of IPv6”, and featuring an article by yours truly on the upcoming DragonFly release. (I thought it was already published? I’m not sure.)

2011/10/24

BSDDay 2011 in Slovakia

Did you know that there’s a BSDDay 2011 in Bratislava, Slovakia, on November 5th? Well, I do thanks to a random Google search and now you do too. You and I both need to keep watching BSD Events.

2011/10/182011/10/17

BSD Router Project: 1.0

I didn’t know this existed, but there it is: the BSD Router Project is a software router, which just reached version 1.0. (via)

2011/10/15

BSDday Argentina 2011 and how to find out more

Go, look at the BSDday Argentina 2011 site. Follow the appropriate link for the languages you understand – it’s a console simulation! (via)

2011/10/102011/10/07

GEM/KMS warning

Some newer laptops have Intel integrated video chipsets that require GEM/KMS to work well; they are supported by the vesa driver in X, but performance isn’t great. Johannes Hofmann found this out the hard way. GEM/KMS support is on the way for various BSDs, but it’s not here yet. Just be aware of this if shopping for a new laptop in the next little while…

2011/10/05

Another Steve Jobs thing

You’ll see Steve Jobs memorials all over the place for the next few days, but here’s something that won’t get mentioned much: He probably is responsible for putting UNIX – real, BSD-based UNIX – in the hands of more people than anyone else, ever.

2011/09/182011/09/17

Lazy Reading for 2011/09/18

I might have a job open at my workplace soon, for a junior admin/support/network role. (Department is too small for narrowly defined roles…) I’ll post about it here if it happens.

libguestfs, ‘tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images’. (via) I can think of a lot of places that could be useful.
I did not know this, but FreshBSD tracks DragonFly commits, along with the commit logs of most (all?) other BSDs.
Bruce Perens set up a “Covenant” license for the HPCC database (powers Lexis/Nexis) that is actually pretty good at allowing something to be both open source and commerical; the ‘release notes‘ talk about it.
I agree with these sentiments on hiring exactly. If you really like what you do, you don’t just do it at work. (The author’s followup.) Putting it in a more positive light, showing work on open source, outside of your workplace, is a great thing to add to your resume. Never trust the graphic designer with sloppy handwriting.
The majority of the 10 most stable web providers out there are running a BSD. FreeBSD, in this case. (via, via) (why does Twitter make it so hard to link to things? Cause they don’t want you reading the web – just them.)
Usenet, as of 1981, with posts arriving in actual time (-30 years). (via) You can even use a NNTP reader to connect. Similar to but not as colossal as telehack, mentioned here before.
DragonFly deployment.
I am so proud of myself for coming up with this joke.

Your unrelated comics link of the week: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It used to mostly be violent and nonsensical, but recent strips are excellent, like this one or this.

2011/09/112011/09/11

Lazy Reading for 2011/09/11

Happy birthday to my younger daughter, Claire, who is 9 today. That’s a much better anniversary to celebrate today.

A musing about the waveform and how it’s the most iconic representation of music. It’s also a holdover from analog days, if you think about it. (via)
There seems to be a new kinda-improper activity from GoDaddy found every 6 months or so. Find yourself a new registrar, if you haven’t already.
Here’s how you know DragonFly is actually getting somewhere: exploits show up.
Not directly BSD related, but it’s from Colin Percival, writing as “FreeBSD Security Officer”. With the recent Diginotar news, he points out what’s the best secure certificate to forge.
Introduction to Arduino, a comic guide. (via)
“A jpeg is worth 1000kb“, talking about ZORK and other text adventures. Look for the twisty column of familiar phrases, all alike. The Interactive Fiction genre of game is still going surprisingly strong, so many years later.
That article about ZORK links to this excellent, excellent exploration of the original Colossal Cave game, which led to Adventure and so many other games. Oh yeah, the author was building ARPANet at the time, too.

Your unrelated comic link of the week: Chainsawsuit.

2011/09/07

BSD Magazine for September

BSD Magazine’s September issue is out. This time, I have an article in it about data recovery with Hammer:

We’ve all experienced instant regret. That’s the feeling that comes within a second of executing a command like “rm -rf * .txt” (note the space) or of cutting the wrong cluster of wires at the end of a long conduit. Not that I am quoting from experience, or anything like that, no…

2011/09/042011/09/01

Lazy Reading for 2011/09/04

It’s almost the end of summer here, or at least the traditional end of summer in North America. About time, too! I don’t like the heat. Anyway, as people trickle back to school, some more interesting doodads should show up for these weekly Lazy Reading posts…

Yet another git cheatsheet, this time for KDE. (Via TGEN on EFNet #dragonflybsd)
What’s wrong with sort and how to fix it. I will enthusiastically link to any article that mentions letters like þ. (There’s others that this stupid blogging software just eats when I write out the HTML entities.)
Did you wake up this morning and say, “I wonder if I could run some really old software. Like 4.1c BSD?” Well, today’s your lucky day.
Creating new Linux base and infrastructure ports on FreeBSD. Interesting to see just how complex it can be.
Distributed computing at Google. (PDF, via) I like the description of the error/failure rates and how they escalate as an architecture scales up.

Your unrelated comic link of the week: Jack Kirby art on what would have been his 94th birthday. I have trouble communicating how dramatic and influential his art has been.

2011/08/282011/08/27

Lazy Reading for 2011/08/28

This week has taught me one thing for sure: Always make sure your backup generator is working. And over-plan battery capacity. That’s actually two things, but what the heck. I’m tired, for reasons that can probably be inferred! I’m not the only one suffering these problems, it seems.

There is a certain subset of readers here that will find this fascinating: a video of a game postmortem. Specifically, Elite. (via) Needs Flash.
This is as good an article as any I’ve seen describing where the tablet computer market is going, at The Economist.
Remember RetroBSD, mentioned here previously? Here’s some discussion of it.
EuroBSDCon’s 2011 conference is open for registration, but the early bird discount only lasts until the end of August, so jump on it soon if you’re thinking of going. It’s the 10th anniversary of the event!
PHP 5.3 is coming to pkgsrc as default, soon? The PHP 5.2 -> 5.3 transition seems to mess up a lot of code because of some changes in the way things are handled, or at least that’s my experience, so watch out.
Make sure you aren’t running mod_deflate on your Apache 2.x server.
Kristaps Dzonsons, the fellow behind mdocml (which is in DragonFly now and mentioned here before) is working on a mdoc manual. It’s an actual book, with examples. It’s titled “Practical UNIX Manuals: mdoc”, which sounds like part of a series, though I don’t know if there’s anything else. I’d sure like it if there was. (via Undeadly.) Look very closely at the mdoc web page and you will see the markup, too. Neat!
Breakout treated as a musical instrument, in 1983. That’s too glib a summary of this explanation of an old book studying the game Breakout and playing it. Really, read the article, and remember that the book described would just be lost in a sea of ~~blog posts~~ noise today. (via)

Your unrelated comic link of the week: Wonderella. This is the comic that ruined Batman for me. I can’t unthink it.

2011/08/212011/08/20

Lazy Reading for 08/21/2011

Ah, August. The month where everybody goes on vacation. I’ve been gone off and on for the last few weeks, so my link collection has been slower, but I’ve been able to keep up something.

Friday was whyday. (via) I can certainly agree with the sentiment.
Panic panic panic panic panic panic panic
Not BSD or even software, but good to see: a kid, math, and solar power. (via Tomas Bodzar)
More BSD videos, this time from BSDCan2011 and Google Tech Talks.
The future’s gone meta: there are now game modifications which emulate real computer hardware in that virtual world. (via) It’s not turtles all the way down; it’s emulators.

Your unrelated comic link of the week: Nedroid. “Beartato” is one of the best names ever.

Yeah, unrelated links seem to always be comics. They offer the most reading.