Computerphool confessions

[wgscott]

1. I just put a small piece of electrical tape over my Macbook Air's built-in camera, Snowden-style.

 

2. I use zsh instead of bash or tcsh.

 

3. I use vim.

 

Now it is your turn ...

[accwai]

1. I block the built-in camera on my dedicated TAILS laptop, which supposedly has the camera disabled at BIOS level.

 

2. I run shell loop from bash command line level all the time.

 

3. I do batch editing with massive regular expression in vi all the time.

 

Note: The above are totally made up

[Norton]

I thought computer audio might match vinyl for SQ.

 

[Ralf11]

EasyFind vs. Finder since High Sierra broke the search

 

Historically:

FORTRAN vs. microcode - so I can things done...

[Dr Tone]

1) Sometimes I actually miss vi.

2) When legally possible I code naked in-front of my camera.  That will teach "those bastards" a lesson about spying.

[mansr]

1 hour ago, accwai said:

2. I run shell loop from bash command line level all the time.

I actually do that, often nested three levels.

[Benji]

1. Install Linux to stick it to Satya Nadella, then never learn the Sudo commands and boot into windows when you do anything other than surf the internet. 

2. Switch to SSDs then complain about not having enough hard drive space.

3. Buy a top of the line air cooler for your CPU when you don't even overclock it. 

 

[vmartell22]

10 hours ago, accwai said:

1. I block the built-in camera on my dedicated TAILS laptop, which supposedly has the camera disabled at BIOS level.

 

2. I run shell loop from bash command line level all the time.

 

3. I do batch editing with massive regular expression in vi all the time.

 

Note: The above are totally made up

 

1.- I fight fire with fire - I am always naked in front of my laptop camera - if you access it, it's your vision and your dinner to lose !

 

2.- I use emacs for everything... and I mean EVERYTHING!!!!!! (cue gary oldman)

 

3.- I haven't touched mac or windows since 2013.

 

All true

 

v

 

[Rexp]

I used to sell high end CD Players for a living.

[mansr]

7 hours ago, vmartell22 said:

I use emacs for everything

I use Emacs for everything except running vi.

[accwai]

18 hours ago, mansr said:

I actually do that, often nested three levels.

 

Even more hardcore than me. Good guy!

 

2 hours ago, mansr said:

I use Emacs for everything except running vi.

 

Doesn't emacs have a vi mode?

 

Back when I was working as part-time sysadmin at the computing department of my old university, I used emacs extensively as well. But in Unix single user mode, you can never be sure you have all the filesystems needed by emacs mounted . So you have to be well versed in vi. In fact, sometimes you can't even rely on having full screen editing available. So you need to know how to work with ed as well.

[mansr]

31 minutes ago, accwai said:

Back when I was working as part-time sysadmin at the computing department of my old university, I used emacs extensively as well. But in Unix single user mode, you can never be sure you have all the filesystems needed by emacs mounted . So you have to be well versed in vi. In fact, sometimes you can't even rely on having full screen editing available. So you need to know how to work with ed as well.

Been there on a DEC Tru64 system. Had to use ed to fix some config file I'd messed up.

[Samuel T Cogley]

1 minute ago, mansr said:

Been there on a DEC Tru64 system. Had to use ed to fix some config file I'd messed up.

 

Back in the days of hard copy terminals, there were no curses based editors.  You haven't lived until you added new users to a UNIX system using only "ed" and "mkdir", and "chown". 

[Samuel T Cogley]

22 hours ago, wgscott said:

2. I use zsh instead of bash or tcsh.

 

I remember when tcsh was nothing more than a context diff patch for the BSD csh.  This is the mid-late 80s.  You needed first an AT&T UNIX source code license, then the BSD source (which included csh, vi, and many other goodies).

 

When Linux arrived, things changed pretty radically.  Just ask SCO. 

 

The whole "up arrow" command line history thing came from VMS (I think).  With UNIX before "up arrow" history, you needed to be pretty proficient with history regex and pushd/popd.

[wgscott]

13 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

Back in the days of hard copy terminals, there were no curses based editors.  You haven't lived until you added new users to a UNIX system using only "ed" and "mkdir", and "chown". 

 

I wrote a shell script (in zsh) that does exactly that to make a new user account, so I could do it remotely (except for the ed part.  I have my limits.)

[Samuel T Cogley]

Just now, wgscott said:

 

I wrote a shell script (in zsh) that does exactly that to make a new user account, so I could do it remotely (except for the ed part.  I have my limits.)

 

Now there's "useradd" or "adduser", so it's way easier.

[wgscott]

1 minute ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

The whole "up arrow" command line history thing came from VMS (I think). 

 

I have it, combined with command-line completion, so if I want to re-use a command that starts with m, I can then hit the m key (or the whole word) and the up arrow repeatedly until I get to the command of choice

[wgscott]

3 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

Now there's "useradd" or "adduser", so it's way easier.

 

In OS X?

[Samuel T Cogley]

1 minute ago, wgscott said:

 

In OS X?

 

There you probably want to use the GUI for user administration.  If you have a central directory server (LDAP, AD), you can automate some aspects of user administration.

 

CLI availability is the #1 feature of OS X IMHO.  No doubt others will disagree.

[wgscott]

It is the only reason I use it.  Before OS X came along, I had a big ugly SGI sitting on my desk to do work, and a feeble little mac (OS 9 or earlier) for writing papers and grants.

[vmartell22]

2 hours ago, wgscott said:

It is the only reason I use it.  Before OS X came along, I had a big ugly SGI sitting on my desk to do work, and a feeble little mac (OS 9 or earlier) for writing papers and grants.

 

That is true - few people quite realizes this, but OS X made the dream of a viable unix desktop WORKSTATION come true (and intel's progress helped too) - too bad the company went evil - that sent me back to Linux -  Dell Precision 7710 quad Xeon - runs rings around most computers around here and no evil software in it.

 

v

[mansr]

I've used Solaris, Tru64, and (currently) Linux as workstation OS. In their prime, the former two did everything you'd expect of them, but of course only Linux has stayed current. A lot of design choices in Linux are actually modelled after Solaris which for a long time was the pioneer in advanced OS features. OS X, on the other hand, is an utter horror. Although the GUI is pretty at first glance, doing anything productive (in my line of work) is infuriating. I want a system where every last detail can be customised to my liking. The computer is a tool and should do my bidding, not the other way around.

[Ralf11]

Despite trying, I am unable to forget certain CDC Cyber OS commands....

[wgscott]

10 minutes ago, mansr said:

I've used Solaris, Tru64, and (currently) Linux as workstation OS. In their prime, the former two did everything you'd expect of them, but of course only Linux has stayed current. A lot of design choices in Linux are actually modelled after Solaris which for a long time was the pioneer in advanced OS features. OS X, on the other hand, is an utter horror. Although the GUI is pretty at first glance, doing anything productive (in my line of work) is infuriating. I want a system where every last detail can be customised to my liking. The computer is a tool and should do my bidding, not the other way around.

 

You should be able to do any unixy thing on OS X with little to no drama, with the exception of some kernel-specific tasks.  Installing fink or macports can help a lot, and X11 is a must in my line of work as well.  The biggest PITA is Apple's fictional belief that FORTRAN is legacy.

[vmartell22]

10 minutes ago, mansr said:

I've used Solaris, Tru64, and (currently) Linux as workstation OS. In their prime, the former two did everything you'd expect of them, but of course only Linux has stayed current. A lot of design choices in Linux are actually modelled after Solaris which for a long time was the pioneer in advanced OS features. OS X, on the other hand, is an utter horror. Although the GUI is pretty at first glance, doing anything productive (in my line of work) is infuriating. I want a system where every last detail can be customised to my liking. The computer is a tool and should do my bidding, not the other way around.

 

 

I assume you do embedded systems  (sorry if I am wrong) yeah - NOTHING works on OSX - flashing tools, profilers, etc - in the past was forced to use windows - then we moved our stuff to Linux - pretty happy about it (bye bye QNX) - could not do anything that I do on the mac, unfortunately.... and also Apple went evil...

 

v