JDPFu.com 2024

I haven’t been a fan of snaps since the beginning. Why? Because they include all the dependencies in the install packages, AND those package versions are only used by the single snap/flatpak/appimage, the amount of waste is huge.

Snaps also have restrictions for which storage can be accessed. Snaps usually allow access to HOME and stuff under /media/, but nowhere else.
No, you can’t access NFS storage or CIFS storage that is mounted elsewhere.
No, you can’t access /tmp/.
I’ve found no way to override the compiled-in limitations.

How much disk and RAM waste is involved? An example, is the vidcutter tool. Normally, I’d use mkvmerge —split parts: to accomplish simple cutting, but sometimes a GUI is handy. The cuts will be on GOP boundaries anyway, so it isn’t like this is frame-accurate.

This article is just for me to recall how to print envelopes.

Using LibreOffice, use the Insert —> Envelope menu.

• Addressee is the TO field.
• Set the paper to landscape.
• look at the print preview – move the location box as needed.
• Use the front feed for the Samsung printer.
• Insert the envelope with the print-side up with the normal fold opening from the center and down to the left of the printer. You will read the envelope from the right-hand side of the printer looking left.

If this helps someone else, I’d be shocked. OTOH, I don’t use paper envelopes very often, so having this written down somewhere means fewer throw way envelopes due to failed printing attempts.

This morning I saw an email from a business associate. It contained a link to an article on LinkedIn. That article was actually hosted on mashup. The article was about Social Media Overload; he called it The Sharepocalypse. After reading a fairly long article pointing out all the issues with the different human interactions with the main social media providers, I wanted to add a comment. Oddly, I couldn’t unless I used either a twitter or facebook account to login.

FTP, File Transfer Protocol, has been around since the beginning of the internet in the early 1970s. It transfered files when the internet was a safer, more trusting, place. That isn’t the case anymore. Using FTP to host files is probably a bad idea for almost everyone. FTP is like Telnet. No encryption is used for anything. These days, we know that is bad.

In the mid-1990s most organizations stopped using telnet and switched to ssh, secure shell. FTP needs to be replaced for the same reasons. Below I’ll describe why very few people should use plain FTP anymore to remotely access files.

Yesterday, I was told that there was some issue with email here. Messages were bouncing. After a little research, it was determined that the ISP had decided to filter port 25 inbound AND outbound. That began around 1:50am on Wednesday morning. I know this because there are logs. Why did they change this after 12 years? I’ll never know.

Enough said?

Almost everyone likes Facebook and Twitter. We reconnect with our friends, they connect with us. People we don’t even know want to know us – that’s pretty cool, until it isn’t.

This will be old news for some folks. Keep reading … Here’s a story about someone named Wigginbottom who tweeted just a few too many details.

So I was watching the HNN show for this week and near the end they showed a list of companies and the counts for unpatched, yet known vulnerabilities in their software. Below is the list. Not surprising me, but Adobe is at the top … again.

What does this information tell me?

• Stop using Adobe software. I think Adobe needs 3+ more years to create software that includes security by design aspects. Patching their old code-base, which is what they’ve been doing, doesn’t help. The design flaws from a security perspective are too large.
• I’m pretty impressed that Microsoft is so low with their huge number of software products.
• Oracle has never been very good at pushing patches for their products, IME. Their tools tended to be used on internal networks, not on the internet, so being lax wasn’t as big a deal. With the purchase of Sun, Oracle really needs to step up their patch fixes.
• I don’t use any Apple software … but they are involved with CUPS (UNIX printing) in some way.
• The HP issues seem to be mostly connected to backup software that I doubt most people have or use.

Last week (4/12/11), Microsoft pushed out a bunch of patches. I didn’t really notice most of the changes, but one changed the way that the mouse snaps to an open window. Yuck. I alt-tab to change programs all the time – all the time – and even the alt-tab moves the mouse over the center of the screen where the program selection window is temporarily located. Some of my automatic scripts open and close new windows. When those windows are opened, the mouse is moved, but when they close, it doesn’t go back where it came from or set the focus back to the prior window. Not good.

Anyway, just typing “mouse” into the superbar under Windows7 offered Change how your mouse works with a checkbox to Activate by hovering …. Uncheck that choice and the mouse behavior works the way I need again.

Why would a patch need to alter this mouse behavior?
Perhaps some security issue with auto-focus?
I dunno. Perhaps it was just there to frustrate UNIX/Linux people who use focus follows mouse.

Gnome3 was released this week. I usually don’t try new releases, since I prefer to let others find the issues, report them and wait for the fixes. After reading an article over at LifeHacker and seeing all the unknown questions about gnome3, I decided to grab an ISO and give it a try. Below is a very short look.