Category Archives: random updates

COMDEX/Fall’93 program & exhibits guide-on-disk

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COMDEX/Fall’93 free diskette!

Comdex on a disk!

I saw this floating around on some web site… And I thought I’d take a look!  Well it’s exactly what it sounds like, an ancient MS-DOS text base database from the fine folks at Folio who would later on sell off, merge and become part of LexisNexis.

Folio infobase

And what fine things were there in 1993?

IBM Power Personal Systems

Let’s not forget the false hope and promise of the IBM/Apple/Motorola PowerPC that was going to save us all, and give us the grand unifying microkernel OS of them all, PINK.

The IBM Power Personal Systems Division is introducing and demonstrating technologies featured on its family of personal workstations.  The Personal Workstations marry  the high-performance PowerPC RISC microprocessor with industry-standard PC components.  The PowerPC is featured with new human interfaces, integration of multiple operating systems environments on a single platform, and the latest in operating system, multimedia and collaborative computing technologies.  OEMs, IHVs and ISVs can explore how they can use these technologies.

Yeah, as we all know Windows NT for the PowerPC wasn’t a thing until late 1995, then killed off in 1997, Solaris saw a single release, MacOS stayed hybrid 68000/PowerPC until the acquisition of NeXT, and then was the basis of Rhapsody/OS X 1.0 and then OS X 10.0 .  A/IX easily transitioned from the POWER to the PowerPC, while OS/2 only went as far as a limited beta, and PINK/Taligent just never happened.  Although thanks to hard ware assisted virtualization (VT-x/AMD-V) it really didn’t matter as we can run pretty much whatever OS we wish at pretty close to native speeds.  The line between Type-1 & Type-2 hypervisors has been blurred to the point of really not mattering anymore.

If anyone cares, I extracted the temperamental disk image as F93.ZIP

cisco router spotted in the wild with over 20 years uptime

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On this thread on reddit, bhoskins has just posted screen shots of a cisco 2514 featuring 2 10mbit Ethernet ports, and 2 2Mbit Serial ports, and just over 20 years of uptime.

cisco 3000 router with 20 years of uptime

cisco 2514 router with 20 years of uptime

As bhoskins mentions later on in the thread:

I think i probably agree especially considering that’s monthly generator exercises that include transitions from commercial -> battery -> generator power and back.

However…The config… This routers goal in life is to provide management connectivity to some equally ancient SONET equipment that doesn’t even speak IP; it only knows CLNS. That’s right kiddos, it’s a hold over from a time long ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth and there was a competing protocol to IP.

So it runs CLNS and routes it with ISIS between the core and SONET ring. The level-2 database is close to 500 LSP and there are probably on the order of 800 CLNS routes. Oh yeah and it runs IP too so the router itself can be managed. All that with it’s little 608030 CPU and 16MB of memory. That fact that none of those processes have crapped on themselves in 20 years in a router with such limited resources is impressive to say the least.

Pretty amazing stuff.  And of course there was also that Netware server with 16 and a half years of uptime.  It’s amazing on one hand how this older stuff can keep on going, and how dangerous it is security wise to run such dated stuff.

16 and a half years of uptime

Gravity Rush 2 promo video for Hong Kong/Japan

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Robert Heinlein?

Well probably not. While looking online for something I eventually fell through to youtube, and got this commercial for some new PS4 game. I thought it was kind of interesting. I guess there is something to be said of Asia for cats, tall buildings, and breaking the laws of physics, and bending gravity and all that.

While I do have a PS4 I really haven’t had time to really use it. And the Xbox ONE I do have ends up getting used to play… You Tube videos.

Shout out to Json.NET

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Nothing to do with virtual or legacy, well maybe it is.  I’m targeting .net 2.0 with the new and exciting world of JSON objects.

http://www.newtonsoft.com/json

So this library makes it super easy to pass it a long JSON string, and return a .net DataSet.

At the least it makes it easy to dump data out from one of those ‘hip new trendy’ web services, and stuff it into SQL so us old people can look at it.

Merry Christmas from China!

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Well it is that time of the year again!

I’ve been insanely busy at work, and the few hours I do get home I end up spending sleeping

vivo Christmas

Of all things it was some ‘critical update’ nonsense on my phone that suddenly set the mood. As a personal rant I think it is kind of funny that in China we can say “Merry Christmas” without any impunity, nobody threatens my livelyhood just because of uttering two words. Over in the middle kingdom I don’t have to hide behind “seasons greetings” or any of that other PC tripe. Who would have thought 30 years ago that living in some Communist dictatorship would actually be more free. Oh well, it’s more bizarre as I had that blitz trip to the United States where Christmas is all but outlawed by the PC police, and so many Chinese were hoping to see big public displays that just simply don’t exist, just as where I contract for reminded everyone that Christmas is banned in name.

If this were twitter I would no doubt face harsh criticism for writing such a thing, with actual consequences. The ‘tolerant’ left is anything but.

I can only imagine the manufactured outrage over something like the Commodore Christmas demo for the Commodore 64 in these modern ages.

But here, I rent my own server so I can write whatever I please.  Lest we remember in the dawn of “fake news” it really is more so a war on unacceptable news, as we further burrow into our “truth silos” where any option that challenges our world view must be removed.  Naturally people find government censorship of this level intolerable, but oddly enough find no qualms about having corporations do this for them.  And corporations will gladly defend themselves from the ‘fake news’ while serving endless and misleading native ads, as long as consumers keep buying.  It is an interesting shift driven in the media space, as companies struggle to stay relevant in the crybully and offended Olympic age.

I guess if anything I’m still just amazed how big Christmas is in places where I’d never traditionally find it, as the commercial aspects of it are being absorbed in a cargo cult like fashion, but in retrospect in the west 30 years ago Christmas was pretty much a cargo cult holiday, saying and doing the motions for that precious cargo, aka going through the massive catalogs of the time, and hoping  Santa would buy the right thing, which of course for the most part they did not…

So yes, enough of the old man rant, and Merry Christmas!

Holy crap did I get the most annoying trojan attempt ever!

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Sit down kids, it’s time for an old man rant.

So yeah, I have one of those clients who wants to use ‘one of those’ file sharing sites. UGH.  I swear I’m to the point of just paying for an Office 365 subscription for them so I don’t have to deal with this kind of shit.  So I hit the site on my phone, then it jumps to this genchatu.top site.  Fantastic.

Then I’m alerted that my phone is 28.1% DAMAGED, and somehow my phone’s SIM card will be damaged!  Yes, it’s one of these scam sites!

Wow

Oh no, my phone apparently may be already physically damaged?  I guess this is once someone is tricked by this official Google looking image you’ll want to throw your phone against the wall.  As any user of Android will tell you updates from Google are non existent, and anything that could infect your phone, well is pretty much your problem.  You can beg the vendor, but lol, good luck.

I like to live dangerously, so yeah let’s look at the app.

Ace, alright, more like acehole!

So with this scary and official looking thing it’s trying to railroad you into “Ace Cleaner”  I don’t know how on earth they haven’t either been reported, or knocked out of the app store.  I guess Google is busy teaming up with Facebook trying to figure out how to censor the new appropriately instead of trying to squash actual scam artists.

I honestly haven’t tracked any of these ‘reviews’ to see how many are just idiots, or how many are just ballot stuffers.

Yeah, it’s a scam.

 

No backing away!

And of course you can’t just back away from the page, you get this nice thing along with something in java script that gets your phone to buzz and light up.  Thanks Google!  That’ll never get abused like the blink tag!

You have to be kidding me

Oh no, I’ve been threatened to be blocked.

How bad can this crapware be?

Oh dear.  From the application page, let’s take a look:

Version 1.1.9 can access:
Device & app history
  • retrieve running apps
  • read your Web bookmarks and history

So they know what you are running, and what bookmark’d sites you like.

Identity
  • find accounts on the device

They know WHO you are.

Contacts
  • find accounts on the device

They know WHO you KNOW.

Phone
  • read phone status and identity
Photos/Media/Files
  • access USB storage filesystem
  • read the contents of your USB storage
  • modify or delete the contents of your USB storage

Storage

  • read the contents of your USB storage
  • modify or delete the contents of your USB storage

If you have any USB attached device, (flash drive, hard disk…) they can not only READ, but can MODIFY and DELETE the contents.  NICE!

Camera
  • take pictures and videos

I suppose an album of bewildered users would be amusing from time to time.  Also having the phone send videos of them doing various things.

Wi-Fi connection information
  • view Wi-Fi connections

Naturally they want to know about the Wi-Fi AP’s you use.

Device ID & call information
  • read phone status and identity

I guess knowing your phone charge status, and IEME #’s are good to know too.  But wow check out the next laundry list!

Other
  • bind to an accessibility service
  • update component usage statistics
  • read Home settings and shortcuts
  • write Home settings and shortcuts
  • read Home settings and shortcuts
  • write Home settings and shortcuts
  • view network connections
  • read battery statistics
  • send sticky broadcast
  • change network connectivity
  • connect and disconnect from Wi-Fi
  • delete all app cache data
  • expand/collapse status bar
  • control flashlight
  • measure app storage space
  • full network access
  • close other apps
  • run at startup
  • draw over other apps
  • control vibration
  • prevent device from sleeping
  • modify system settings
  • write web bookmarks and history
  • install shortcuts
  • uninstall shortcuts

Read / Write the home page, guess who you’ll be visiting quite often?  Checking out your network, and say if you are somewhere where they want to upload a video, if they KNOW a WiFi network in the area they can have your phone join it, record you, upload it, and drop.  Yeah great!  I also like the drawing over other apps, that way you may THINK you are running another app, but they are just watching what you are doing.  And maybe they’ll pass control down, maybe not.

I suppose it may be fun too if they have a subscription service, to buzz and turn on the camera flash to warn you that you got infected once your subscription lapsed, so you better pay up!

Absolutely deplorable!

Where to go from here?

Seriously how do companies like this survive?  I guess quite well.  I guess I’m just more amazed by Google’s complacency in all of this.  But at the same time they are an ADVERTISING COMPANY, and I’m the product, Android is just the TV programme to get me to watch their annoying ads.  And considering their track record with illegal pharmacies, I guess it really is no surprise.

The truth is that no doubt that this kind of thing is just too profitable.  And people will just fall time and time again for this trap.

Digital teamlinks demo diskette

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I recently got some old diskettes, and sure enough I was lucky to find this gem a ‘virus free’ disk, the Team Computing demo disk.

Vintage 1992!

Vintage 1992!

So naturally it’s MS-DOS based, as that is all that was left in the early 1990’s.

logo

logo

And it’s chock full of vintage networking pitches, as Digital was trying desperatly to get people to buy their Enterprise software for being that all in one of file/print sharing, email and business process automation.

Digital networking

Digital networking

So 1990’s.

Teamlinks workflow

Teamlinks workflow

And of course it touts over and over again ‘open standards’ although I’m suspecting none of them really are that open, nor surviving.

Teamlinks over the world

Teamlinks over the world

Did it go anywhere?  Did anyone actually use it?

It sounds like a somewhat useful all in one thing that I’m sure cost far far far too much money.  And of course, in 1997 there was Microsoft Exchange 5.5 which basically killed everything.

I’ve only found a copy of Pathworks 7.1a on Ebay many many years ago, which I’ve used to get Windows NT onto Hecnet.  That’s as much ‘Digitial for Windows’ software as I’ve used.

For anyone so inclined, you can download the demo files teamlinks.zip

On the talk of Europe & Tapes…

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I recently discovered this youtube channel by Kim Justice.  She does quite a few video documentaries about retro games, and the like.  I found these two quite interesting:

The history of US Gold was quite interesting, along with her documentary on Ocean

And of course this video about the ZX Spectrum tape wars.

I had a Commodore 64, and although I did have a 1541 disk drive first, I did later manage to get a datacasette, and on rare occasion I would pick up a Zzap64 and did quite enjoy the whole idea of a covertape.  The tradition continues in the UK & EU with cover discs, which I pick up on occasion in Hong Kong.

Hitting it big time: aka content scrapers

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Welcome to the internet…

I don’t do advertising, as I know I don’t get that much in the way of traffic.  If anyone cared it’s just over 1.7 million hits a year (break it down, it’s not much!  Were only talking about slightly more than three hits every minute!).  But I saw that my Apache on Windows NT 3.1 is averaging 100 hits a day, and I saw that I’d been scraped and mirrored on 126kr.com ..Oddly enough they didn’t scrape the Apache site.

content-theftVery odd.

First I was pissed, but you know as they say you can’t keep anything original on the internet, so just embrace it.  Inadvertently they do link back to the NT Apache, which then links back to me.  I guess I only care that there may be other things that readers may find interesting that 126kr hasn’t mirrored yet.

Oh well.