From dave at horsfall.org Fri Jan 1 06:54:26 2021 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2021 07:54:26 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] In Memoriam: Grace Hopper Message-ID: We lost Rear Admiral "Amazing" Grace Hopper on this day in 1992; amongst other things she gave us COBOL and ADA, and was allegedly responsible for the term "debugging" when she removed a moth from a relay on the Harvard Mk I and taped it to the log. -- Dave From grog at lemis.com Fri Jan 8 11:39:35 2021 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2021 12:39:35 +1100 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The 2038 bug... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20210108013935.GE91075@eureka.lemis.com> Redirecting to COFF. COBOL has really nothing to do with Unix. On Thursday, 7 January 2021 at 20:25:56 -0500, Nemo Nusquam wrote: > On 01/07/21 17:56, Stuart Remphrey wrote (in part): >>> Dave, who's kept his COBOL knowledge a secret in every job >> >> Indeed! [...]; but especially COBOL: apart from everything else, too >> much like writing a novel to get anything done. > > As long as we are bashing COBOL, I recall that someone -- name forgotten > -- wrote a parody that contained statements such as "Verily, let the > noble variable N be assigned the value known as one". Heh. In 1973 I was once required to abandon assembler, the language of Real Programmers, and write a program in COBOL (in fact, a database front end to COBOL). I took revenge in the label names. From http://www.lemis.com/grog/src/GOPU INVOKE SCHEMA KVDMS COPYING COMMON ALL RECORD COMMON DELIVERY-AREA IS PUFFER OVERLAY PUFFER WITH ALL ERROR RECOVERY IS HELL ROLLBACK IS IMPOSSIBLE. ... MAKE-GOPU. IF ERROR-STATUS IS NOT EQUAL TO '000307', GO TO HELL. Admire that manifest constant. And yes, this program went into production. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dave at horsfall.org Sun Jan 17 11:07:14 2021 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2021 12:07:14 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The 2038 bug... In-Reply-To: <20210108013935.GE91075@eureka.lemis.com> References: <20210108013935.GE91075@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 8 Jan 2021, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > Heh. In 1973 I was once required to abandon assembler, the language of > Real Programmers, and write a program in COBOL (in fact, a database > front end to COBOL). I took revenge in the label names. From > http://www.lemis.com/grog/src/GOPU My favourite COBOL statement is "ADD A TO B GIVING C COMPUTATIONAL ROUNDED". -- Dave From lm at mcvoy.com Sun Jan 17 11:09:43 2021 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2021 17:09:43 -0800 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The 2038 bug... In-Reply-To: References: <20210108013935.GE91075@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: <20210117010943.GC27899@mcvoy.com> On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 12:07:14PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Fri, 8 Jan 2021, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > > >Heh. In 1973 I was once required to abandon assembler, the language of > >Real Programmers, and write a program in COBOL (in fact, a database front > >end to COBOL). I took revenge in the label names. From > >http://www.lemis.com/grog/src/GOPU > > My favourite COBOL statement is "ADD A TO B GIVING C COMPUTATIONAL ROUNDED". I am _so_ glad I never had to learn COBOL. I appreciate terseness, COBOL is not that. From imp at bsdimp.com Sun Jan 17 11:11:25 2021 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2021 18:11:25 -0700 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The 2038 bug... In-Reply-To: <20210117010943.GC27899@mcvoy.com> References: <20210108013935.GE91075@eureka.lemis.com> <20210117010943.GC27899@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 6:09 PM Larry McVoy wrote: > On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 12:07:14PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: > > On Fri, 8 Jan 2021, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > > > > >Heh. In 1973 I was once required to abandon assembler, the language of > > >Real Programmers, and write a program in COBOL (in fact, a database > front > > >end to COBOL). I took revenge in the label names. From > > >http://www.lemis.com/grog/src/GOPU > > > > My favourite COBOL statement is "ADD A TO B GIVING C COMPUTATIONAL > ROUNDED". > > I am _so_ glad I never had to learn COBOL. I appreciate terseness, COBOL > is not that. > Object oriented COBOL never took off because "ADD 1 TO COBOL GIVING COBOL." didn't roll off the tongue. Warner _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Mon Jan 18 06:58:18 2021 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2021 21:58:18 +0100 Subject: [COFF] termination and untermination of bugtraq mailing list Message-ID: <20210117205818.GA12967@tau1.ceti.pl> Howdy, Perhaps this is off topic for this list, if so, apologies in advance. Or perhaps this will be of interest to some who do not trace yet another mailing list out there :-). Two days ago I received a notice that bugtraq would be terminated, and archive shut down on 31st this month. Only then I realized (looking at the archive also helped a bit in this) that last post to bugtraq happened in the last days of Feb 2020. After that, eleven months of nothing, and shutdown notice. It certainly was not because of list being shunned, because I have seen posters on other lists cc-ing to bt, yet their posts never went that route (apparently) and I suppose they were not postponed either. If they were, I would now get an eleven months worth of it. But no. Too bad. I liked bt, even if I had not followed every post. Today, a notice that they would not terminate bt (after second thought, as they wrote). And a fresh post from yesterday. But what could possibly explain an almost year long gap? Their computers changed owners last year, and maybe someone switched the flip, were fired, nobody switched it on again? Or something else? Just wondering. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From clemc at ccc.com Tue Jan 19 06:16:22 2021 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2021 15:16:22 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Bearded Fellows (was TUHS) Message-ID: > > When I met my future wife I was 21, and she wanted me to grow a beard, so > I did. Since then I have occasionally asked coworkers who have complained > about shaving why *they* don't grow beards: the most common answer is "My > wife doesn't want me to." > Moved to COFF ... while bearded UNIX folks do seem to be a common thread, I think we are stretching Warren's patience a tad. So ... I have sort of a different story. I had shaved in off and on during college and in the first few years I was working but had grown it back before grad school. I still was not sure I liked having it, and as I got close to finishing, I mentioned to my officemates at UCB that I'd shave it when Newton (our advisor) signed my thesis as a signal to everyone I was done. So the day I came into the office clean-shaven, Peter Moore looks up and remarked, 'now I know why you wore one.' So, I showed up at Masscomp without it and was quickly ostracized as so many of the SW team had some sort of facial hair, I quickly grew it back. Roll forward 20ish years and my wife egged me into shaving it off one summer weekend. Our then 5-year-old daughter cried -- she wanted her Daddy back. I've had it ever since. That said, 20 years later she and her mother both claim I would look younger if I shaved it. But at this point, I kinda like not having to shave my neck and lower chin every day if I don't want to; so I have ignored them. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From crossd at gmail.com Tue Jan 19 07:13:20 2021 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2021 16:13:20 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Bearded Fellows (was TUHS) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 3:17 PM Clem Cole wrote: > When I met my future wife I was 21, and she wanted me to grow a beard, so >> I did. Since then I have occasionally asked coworkers who have complained >> about shaving why *they* don't grow beards: the most common answer is "My >> wife doesn't want me to." >> > Moved to COFF ... while bearded UNIX folks do seem to be a common thread, > I think we are stretching Warren's patience a tad. So ... I have sort > of a different story. > > I had shaved in off and on during college and in the first few years I was > working but had grown it back before grad school. I still was not sure I > liked having it, and as I got close to finishing, I mentioned to my > officemates at UCB that I'd shave it when Newton (our advisor) signed my > thesis as a signal to everyone I was done. > > So the day I came into the office clean-shaven, Peter Moore looks up and > remarked, 'now I know why you wore one.' > > So, I showed up at Masscomp without it and was quickly ostracized as so > many of the SW team had some sort of facial hair, I quickly grew it back. > > Roll forward 20ish years and my wife egged me into shaving it off one > summer weekend. Our then 5-year-old daughter cried -- she wanted her > Daddy back. I've had it ever since. > When I was in the Marine Corps I shaved nearly every day (the exceptions were extended leaves back home or occasional extra-long missions in Afghanistan when we were outside the wire). I once tried the permitted-but-frowned-upon "low regulation" haircut and didn't like it. I usually opted for the Navy standard "high regulation" haircut instead of the super-motivated USMC "high and tight", which I always thought looked goofy, and is the haircut they give you right before you graduate from boot camp. When I got out, I luxuriated in not shaving for weeks at a time because I could and, frankly, no one would yell at me. When my kids were born, it became a nuisance I would attend to as time permitted. When my youngest was born, I was in the habit of shaving biweekly, if that. One time I let it grow for a couple of months and then abruptly shaved at night; I remember being nervous that she would not recognize me in the morning, but she saw that I was clean shaven and actually gave me a big smile and seemed rather delighted. I was secretly relieved. That said, 20 years later she and her mother both claim I would look > younger if I shaved it. But at this point, I kinda like not having to > shave my neck and lower chin every day if I don't want to; so I have > ignored them. > I still alternate between clean-shaven and not; mostly I prefer clean-shaven because otherwise I tend to get bumps and generally find it uncomfortable. At one point when I was young I had hair down to my shoulders but honestly, I just can't pull off long hair anymore: I keep a relatively short haircut. I haven't seen the inside of a barber shop since the start of the pandemic, but I've shaved my head multiple times as I'm reasonably certain I can do that without completely messing it up, and I have clippers that will go down to the scalp. It grows back pretty quickly, so I only look like a conehead for a couple of days; as we used to say in the Corps, the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is a week. - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grog at lemis.com Tue Jan 19 10:54:02 2021 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2021 11:54:02 +1100 Subject: [COFF] Beards (was: Bearded Fellow, Ken Thompson) In-Reply-To: References: <1610922832.12835.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Message-ID: <20210119005402.GM95151@eureka.lemis.com> [moved to COFF] On Monday, 18 January 2021 at 15:47:48 -0500, Steve Nickolas wrote: > On Mon, 18 Jan 2021, John Cowan wrote: > >> (When I met my future wife I was 21, and she wanted me to grow a beard, so >> I did. Since then I have occasionally asked cow orkers who have complained >> about shaving why *they* don't grow beards: the most common answer is "My >> wife doesn't want me to." *My* wife doesn't believe this story.) > > I actually had to shave for a while specifically because of my > then-girlfriend, so... ;p I can see that. Early on I made a decision that no woman could make me shave my beard, and I stuck to it. Not that the beard was more important, but if she wanted it gone, she was looking at the wrong things. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From grog at lemis.com Tue Jan 19 11:32:21 2021 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2021 12:32:21 +1100 Subject: [COFF] Bearded Fellows (was TUHS) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20210119013221.GN95151@eureka.lemis.com> On Monday, 18 January 2021 at 15:16:22 -0500, Clem Cole wrote: > > That said, 20 years later she and her mother both claim I would look > younger if I shaved it. Don't believe them. At linux.conf.au in Dunedin in 2006, Rusty Russell started a fundraiser for the John Lions chair of computer science at UNSW. By way of encouragement, he stated that if there were enough contributions, he would shave off his moustache. A number of us joined in (David Miller, Jeff Waugh and myself, but explicitly not Jon Hall), and he ended up raising $10,000. So the next day we were shaved. I was horrified: suddenly I looked like the old man that I was. The beard had greyed over the years, but it had hidden the change in my face. I let the beard grow again, and haven't seen my chin since. More at http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-jan2006.php#27 Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cym224 at gmail.com Tue Jan 19 12:03:40 2021 From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo Nusquam) Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2021 21:03:40 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Bearded Fellows (was TUHS) In-Reply-To: <20210119013221.GN95151@eureka.lemis.com> References: <20210119013221.GN95151@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: On 01/18/21 20:32, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote (in part): > On Monday, 18 January 2021 at 15:16:22 -0500, Clem Cole wrote: >> That said, 20 years later she and her mother both claim I would look >> younger if I shaved it. > Don't believe them. A colleague of mine has a baby-face. As a grad student, he wore a beard to make himself look older. Years afterwards, he shaved it off to make himself look younger. N. From robert at timetraveller.org Tue Jan 19 12:35:54 2021 From: robert at timetraveller.org (Robert Brockway) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2021 12:35:54 +1000 (AEST) Subject: [COFF] Bearded Fellows (was TUHS) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 18 Jan 2021, Clem Cole wrote: > Roll forward 20ish years and my wife egged me into shaving it off one > summer weekend. Our then 5-year-old daughter cried -- she wanted her > Daddy back. I've had it ever since. When my daughter was about 2 and a half I shaved off a beard I'd had for a while. She made it clear she was displeased and asked me what happened. I told her I'd shaved my beard off. She immediately exclaimed "Shave it back on again!" Rob From tytso at mit.edu Tue Jan 19 13:57:23 2021 From: tytso at mit.edu (Theodore Ts'o) Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2021 22:57:23 -0500 Subject: [COFF] termination and untermination of bugtraq mailing list In-Reply-To: <20210117205818.GA12967@tau1.ceti.pl> References: <20210117205818.GA12967@tau1.ceti.pl> Message-ID: On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 09:58:18PM +0100, Tomasz Rola wrote: > Howdy, > > Perhaps this is off topic for this list, if so, apologies in advance. > > Or perhaps this will be of interest to some who do not trace yet > another mailing list out there :-). > > Two days ago I received a notice that bugtraq would be terminated... > > But what could possibly explain an almost year long gap? Their > computers changed owners last year, and maybe someone switched the > flip, were fired, nobody switched it on again? Or something else? The explanation can be found here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/iconic-bugtraq-security-mailing-list-shuts-down-after-27-years/ "... BugTraq itself also exchanged hands several times, from Chasin to Brown University, then to SecurityFocus, which was acquired by Symantec. The portal's demise started in 2019 when Broadcom acquired Symantec. Three months later, in February 2020, the site stopped adding new content, remaining mostly an empty shell. Today, the site's last maintainers confirmed the portal's current state of affairs and formalized BugTraq's passing into infosec lore." An update: https://seclists.org/bugtraq/2021/Jan/1 "Bugtraq has been a valuable institution within the Cyber Security community for almost 30 years. Many of our own people entered the industry by subscribing to it and learning from it. So, based on the feedback weâve received both from the community-at-large and internally, weâve decided to keep the Bugtraq list running. Weâll be working in the coming weeks to ensure that it can remain a valuable asset to the community for years to come. - Accenture Security" - Ted From dave at horsfall.org Wed Jan 20 11:17:56 2021 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2021 12:17:56 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] Beards (was: Bearded Fellow, Ken Thompson) In-Reply-To: <20210119005402.GM95151@eureka.lemis.com> References: <1610922832.12835.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20210119005402.GM95151@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 19 Jan 2021, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > Early on I made a decision that no woman could make me shave my beard, > and I stuck to it. Not that the beard was more important, but if she > wanted it gone, she was looking at the wrong things. Indeed. I used to have sideburns (remember those?) in the 70s, and my mother commented that they grew longer and longer until they joined :-) I had a beard when I met my now-ex (nothing to do with the beard, and we're still friends) and she never complained. I trim it every now and then, but it will be a cold day in hell before I lose it; my father had a full beard (and trimmed hair) until he passed away, so I can do nothing less. My hair though is a different matter; apart from when I was in Senior Toastmasters (and had to look respectable) I just let it grow, and it's currently past my shoulders (although I do trim it above the eyes, as otherwise I get conjunctivitis). I tried a ponytail, but it didn't suit me as it made me look like a wanky hipster. -- Dave, the old-age hippie From rtomek at ceti.pl Sun Jan 24 03:12:19 2021 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2021 18:12:19 +0100 Subject: [COFF] termination and untermination of bugtraq mailing list In-Reply-To: References: <20210117205818.GA12967@tau1.ceti.pl> Message-ID: <20210123171219.GA29674@tau1.ceti.pl> On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 10:57:23PM -0500, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 09:58:18PM +0100, Tomasz Rola wrote: > > Howdy, > > > > Perhaps this is off topic for this list, if so, apologies in advance. > > [...] > > The explanation can be found here: > > https://www.zdnet.com/article/iconic-bugtraq-security-mailing-list-shuts-down-after-27-years/ > [...] > > An update: https://seclists.org/bugtraq/2021/Jan/1 > [...] Ah. Interesting. Thanks. Deeply in my heart I always count on and look for something more sensationnal. The links above were ok, but, well, no aliens, no robots from the future. Not even robots from the past... -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From dave at horsfall.org Sat Jan 30 06:46:53 2021 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2021 07:46:53 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, Douglas Engelbart! Message-ID: Born on this day in 1925, he was a pioneer in human/computer interaction, and invented the mouse; it wasn't exactly ergonomic, being just a square box with a button. -- Dave From cym224 at gmail.com Sun Jan 31 12:47:26 2021 From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo Nusquam) Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2021 21:47:26 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Joys of ASN.1 [Was: Re: tangential unix question: whatever happened to NeWS?] In-Reply-To: References: <20210124183653.GD21030@mcvoy.com> <202101242045.10OKjDvA964774@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <20210124211100.GI21030@mcvoy.com> <202101242114.10OLEYGk966708@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <20210124212525.GJ21030@mcvoy.com> <202101242333.10ONXjcI974038@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <202101250021.10P0L3Z2976588@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <6557f782-ecb1-6476-1eda-e23f30f9bbea@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <60161A3E.9040702@gmail.com> Migration to COFF, methinks On 30/01/2021 18:20, John Cowan wrote: > Those were just examples. The hard part is parsing schemas, > especially if you're writing in C and don't know about yacc and lex. > That code tends to be horribly buggy. True but tools such as the commercial ASN.1 -> C translators are fairly good and even asn1c has come a long way in the past few decades. N. > > But unless you need to support PER (which outright requires the > schema) or unless you are trying to map ASN.1 compound objects to C > structs or the equivalent, you can just process the whole thing in the > same way you would JSON, except that it's binary and there are more > types. Easy-peasy, especially in a dynamically typed language. > > Once there was a person on the xml-dev mailing list who kept repeating > himself, insisting on the superiority of ASN.1 to XML. Finally I told > him privately that his emails could be encoded in PER by using 0x01 to > represent him (as the value of the author field) and allowing the > recipients to reconstruct the message from that! He took it in good part. > > > > John Cowan http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan > cowan at ccil.org > Don't be so humble. You're not that great. > --Golda Meir > > > On Fri, Jan 29, 2021 at 10:52 PM Richard Salz > wrote: > > PER is not the reason for the hatred of ASN.1, it's more that the > specs were created by a pay-to-play organization that fought > against TCP/IP, the specs were not freely available for long > years, BER was too flexible, and the DER rules were almost too > hard to get right. Just a terse summary because this is probably > off-topic for TUHS. >