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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 20 - 25 MAY, 2024
Hello and Welcome,
Meeting TODAY
2024/05/18 — 14:00-16:00 — May, Sat — Web Design
Hi,
This is just a reminder that due to track work, I can't make it to the SMSA, so we are online only.
I have found an article on the history of HTML development using frameworks.
It's intriguing how we went from simple HTML to effectively running apps as a web page.
I hope to see you all online.
Zoom Meeting:
[ NOTE DIFFERENT ZOOM ID AND PASSCODE: — Ed. ]
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86141133224.
Meeting ID: 861 4113 3224
Passcode: WebDesign
— Steve South
Meeting This Week
2024/05/21 — 10:00-12:00 — May, Tue — Tuesday Group
Meetings Next Week
NO MEETINGS
Schedule of Current & Upcoming Meetings
First Tuesday 18:00-20:00 — Main Meeting
First Saturday 13:00-14:00 — Penrith Group
Second Tuesday 18:00-20:00 — Programming
Third Tuesday 10:00-12:00 — Tuesday Group
Third Saturday 14:00-16:00 — Web Design
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Go to the official Sydney PC Calendar for this month's meeting details.
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Penrith meetings are held every 2nd month on the 1st Saturday from 1-2 pm.
The next scheduled meetings are in July, September and November 2024.
ASCCA News:Tech News:
Apple fans get their knickers in a knot over iPad ad
See the iTWire article by Sam Varghese | Sunday, 12 May 2024 08:27 am.
iPad 11 and 13-inch
Apple lovers and users — the computer company, not the fruit — are prone to occasional emotional outbursts about the hardware and software that emerge from the company's portals in Cupertino. It never fails to amuse me when grown adults get their knickers in a knot over any digital device. One would think that there are far more essential things in life over which one should get agitated.
Mac users are snobs. I'm not the first to make this observation; one of the first technology journalists, Robert X. Cringely, was the first by a country mile. In a 1996 reprint of his 1992 masterpiece Accidental Empires, the only book that claims to be a history of the PC industry, Cringely wrote: "Several hundred users of Apple Macintosh computers gathered one night in 1988 in an auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to watch a sneak preview demonstration of a new word processing application.
"This was consumerism in its purest form: it drew potential buyers together to see a demonstration of a product they could all use but wouldn't be allowed to buy. [emphasis by Cringely] There were no boxes for sale in the back of the room, no 'send no money, we'll bill you later'. This product wasn't for sale and wouldn't be for another five months.
"Why demonstrate it at all? The idea was to keep all these folks and the thousands of people they would talk to in the coming weeks from buying some competitor's program before this Microsoft Word 3.0 product was ready for the market.
"Macintosh users are the snobs of the personal computer business," wrote the man who was Apple's second employee but not good enough to hold his job.
"'Don't buy MacWrite II, WordPerfect for Macintosh or WriteNow', they'd urge their friends and co-workers. 'You've got to wait for Microsoft Word 3.0. It's radical'." This despite the fact that this much-praised program didn't even work at that stage.
The reaction to an ad that accompanied the launch of Apple's latest iPads on Tuesday is the latest indication of this brand of snobbishness.
The ad tries to drive home the message that with the new iPads being made available, there is no need for any other device to be creative. In a little more than a minute, the ad, as Australian Financial Review technology editor Paul Smith writes, shows "a hydraulic press slowly descending and crushing a series of items, such as a trumpet, an arcade game machine, and a sculpted bust, while paint bleeds over a piano. When the crushing is done, all that is left is the iPad".
One would think that this is a pretty simple and effective, if vain, message. But then, I'm not an Apple fanboi; in fact, when it comes to technology, I use what gets the job done as cheaply as possible — no frills, no flourishes.
Smith's reaction to this was, to put it mildly, silly. He wrote, in part: "If you read the comments on tech-minded websites and Reddit threads, you will find plenty of people defending Apple's ad, but it was horrible. It is horrible because it pulls together and confirms the existential fears held by everyone who thinks deeply about and wants to work in areas related to human creativity. It also highlights all the joys we have lost due to its US$2.8 trillion (A$4.2 trillion) successes."
You, a gentle reader, can see all the fuss by watching the YouTube video of the ad.
But Smith wasn't done with his emotional hyperbole. He went on: "While racking my brain for gift ideas for a teenager last Christmas, it became obvious that all the cool and fun things my generation coveted have simply become apps and features on a device already glued to their hand. Stereo? Camera? Video games? Board games? Walkman? 'No thanks, Dad.' You can't wrap an app and put it under the Christmas tree.
"But that is the lesser of the evils highlighted by Apple's ad. It was perhaps the most honest summation of what the latest wave of tech capability — AI — is doing to art and creativity. Apple is not entirely responsible for the rising capability of generative AI to spoof the creative process in various fields, but its devices will enable it better than anyone.
"Hollywood writers and performers spent good chunks of last year on strike because they are terrified that studios will use AI to diminish their roles and ultimately replace them. This translates to other industries, where the interpretation and explanation of data could feasibly be handled by bots in the not-too-distant future.
"Apple didn't intend to drag all that up with its ad, but the fact it went through the layers and layers of approval required at the company, without anyone pulling the pin, shows the leaders inside big tech companies can be oblivious to the collateral damage of their 'progress'."
I read this bit of purple prose four times before I realised that this man, who should be a hardened cynic by having been a journalist for at least two decades, was pulling anyone's leg. No, he was dead serious. Brother, it is just another over-powered tablet.
Smith also cited the reaction of British actor Hugh Grant, who had said of the ad: "The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley."
Really? This is just an ad. Why are people getting so worked up about a minute and eight seconds during which the new iPad is claimed to be all that one needs to be creative? It's just an advertising claim, better known as BS.
Smith (and, no doubt, Grant) appears to be emotionally attached to Apple and its products. That's a dangerous thing to happen and can screw with one's reasoning.
Surprisingly, the most down-to-earth reaction came from the well-known YouTube reviewer Marques Brownlee, MKHBD, with this 12m50s YouTube video. "I don't know who was asking for a thinner iPad, but we got it," he said in a video titled M4 iPad Pro Impressions: Well This is Awkward. ".. the last thing we need after all this time [between the last iPad release and the latest one] is just another spec-bumped iPad right."
I don't often agree with Brownlee's views, but this time he is spot-on.
FCC Revives Net Neutrality
See the InfoPackets article by John Lister on May 10, 2024, at 12:05 pm EDT.
Net Neutrality
The FCC has restored net neutrality rules, making it harder for broadband providers to favour traffic speed on some sites or services over others. However, introducing 5G technology could be a glitch in the plan.
Net neutrality is a longstanding topic of debate for the FCC, with policies largely following partisan politics. Rules were last introduced in 2015 and then repealed in 2017. (Source: theverge.com)
The general principle of net neutrality states that carriers should treat all Internet traffic (except for inherently illegal content) equally. That means, for example, that a carrier shouldn't be able to charge extra for customers to visit a site (such as Netflix) or slow down their connection when they use a particular technology.
Broadband Reclassified
In administrative terms, how the FCC applies the Communications Act of 1934 matters. Since 2017, broadband has been classed as merely an information service with limited scope for FCC regulation.
The FCC has now reclassified it as a communications service under Title II of the Communications Act. That means it's treated the same way as phone services, allowing for net neutrality rules.
The debate has largely followed similar lines: Critics say regulation stifles competition and innovation, while supporters say net neutrality creates a fair playing field for the best sites and services to prevail. There's also a wider political element to the debate, with some arguing that states should set their own rules (or choose not to have them).
Mobile May Differ
One potential limitation to the latest implementation of net neutrality is if and how the rules apply to 5G mobile broadband. Some carriers offer faster speeds for particular services, such as telemedicine. They say such services must work well, but they breach net neutrality in principle. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
Another headache is carriers who offer data plans with a monthly usage limit but have deals to exclude particular streaming services. They promote those as a benefit to consumers, but critics argue that effectively means accessing rival services costs more in data charges.
What's Your Opinion?
Do you welcome the return of net neutrality rules? Do they need to be rewritten for the tech landscape of 2024? Should this be a state issue instead?
Comments — No such thing — Submitted by Chief on Fri, 10/05/2024 — 14:53.
Nothing is neutral, especially when the government puts its hand on the scale.
Australian MPs are advised to carry burner phones when visiting India
See the iTWire article by Sam Varghese | Friday, 10 May 2024 at 08:43 am.
Burner Phone
Seven's The Nightly website reports that members of Australia's parliament have been advised to carry burner phones when they visit India.
The advice from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade comes in the wake of reports that "a nest of Indian spies" was expelled from Australia in 2020.
Burner phones are cheap devices used by people who do not want to be tracked. They are used by drug dealers, among others, and are often thrown away after being used just once.
Australia has long considered India a friendly nation, but in recent months, the subcontinental giant has shown that it has plans well beyond its own borders.
India was accused last year by Canada of assassinating Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh activist, a charge it denied. But then, a few days back, Canada arrested three Indian residents in the country on suspicion of carrying out this very killing.
India is highly sensitive about Sikh activism, and that is why New Delhi sent an ABC reporter, Avani Dias, packing from the country after she filed a detailed examination of the activists who are agitating for a separate state for Sikhs within India. Dias was about to start reporting on the Indian elections when she was thrown out.
Dias' program on the Sikhs included interviews with Kanwar Pal Singh, a Sikh separatist leader in Punjab who heads an organisation known as Dal Khalsa; during the filming of the program, Dias was monitored by Indian intelligence and, at one stage, blocked from filming close to the border with Pakistan. Permission to film was initially granted on this site.
India forced YouTube to take down this program from its site and also remove an earlier program in March that reported on Australian spy agency ASIO making contact with Sikhs in Australia associated with the separatism movement, a campaign for an ethno-religious state known as Khalistan.
The Khalistan movement goes back to the 1930s but has been largely quiet after the Indian Army entered the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest Sikh shrine, in June 1984 and flushed out activists who had taken refuge there. The leader of the movement at the time, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, was among those killed.
The separatists retaliated on 31 October the same year when two Sikh guards of the late Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi shot her dead in cold blood. The act led to a great deal of bloodletting, and India's capital was shut down for days, with trains full of bodies killed periodically arriving there.
Last June, Khalistan activists held a referendum in Sydney's western suburbs on creating their separatist state, with similar votes being held in Melbourne and Brisbane. Two activists were taken into custody as they had knives. Modi has made no secret of his anger over this, and India made it known in a statement it issued after bilateral talks with Australia during the last G20 summit.
On the day when the report about the expulsion of the spies was published, the Washington Post reported that an officer in India's Research and Analysis Wing, the country's premier intelligence service, had been hatching a plot to assassinate a top critic of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the US in June last year.
The plot was being organised while Modi was on a state visit to the US, the Post said, adding that the officer in question, one Vikram Yadav, had termed the planned killing of Sikh activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun as a "priority now". The newspaper cited current and former Indian and US security officials as its sources.
Yadav had sent the would-be assassins Pannun's New York residential address, the report said, adding that they had been told the killing could be carried out as soon as they confirmed that Pannun was at home.
Modi is now bidding to be re-elected for a third term as prime minister, with elections underway and three of seven days of voting completed.
The Nightly report said while it was common practice for Australian MPs to leave their phones behind unless they were visiting a Five Eyes country — New Zealand, Canada, the UK and the US, with Australia being the fifth in that grouping — the advice for India had been tightened.
It cited the case of one unnamed "prominent figure" who makes regular trips to India, who said that he had recently been advised to take a burner phone on his next trip to India in case his regular device was compromised.
Thus far, this kind of advice has only been given to Australian officials visiting China or Ukraine for fear that their phones would be compromised, in the latter case, by Russians.
The Nightly quoted Ian Hall, a professor of International Relations at Griffith University and an India expert, saying he hoped the change would lead to a more realistic foreign policy.
"This revised advice reflects unhappiness about India's recent actions and New Delhi's responses to Canadian and US requests for explanations and accountability," he said.
"I hope it also moves us away from some of the overexuberant language we've seen in recent years and toward a more calibrated, interests-driven India policy."
In March last year, the Financial Times reported that Indian defence and intelligence officials were scouting for spyware that was more low-profile than Pegasus, which is sold by an Israeli company and blocked by the Americans.
The report said India had up to US$120 million (A$181 million) to spend on spyware and that a dozen spyware makers were preparing to join the bidding process to sell alternative spyware to India.
Fun Facts:
X Marks the What? How Linux Got Its Name
See the How-To Geek article by DAVE MCKAY | PUBLISHED May 11 2024.
If you replace the S in Linus with X, you get Linux. But why an X, and who did that?
TUX Holding the Letter X
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. Many operating systems have X in their name to pay homage to Unix.
2. Unix was originally named Unics as a joke at Multics' expense. No one involved can remember when it became Unix.
3. Linus Torvalds originally wanted Linux to be called Freax because he thought it was "too egotistical."
Everyone knows Linus Torvalds developed Linux, and it's plain to see that Linux is Linus with the S replaced with an X. But why an X, and who chose that name?
Before the X, There Was CS
There's a very long list of operating systems that have X in their name, especially in the large set of operating systems classed as being Unix-like.
Operating systems such as IRIX, Xenix, AIX, and HP-UX spring to mind, but there are many more. Most commercial Unix-like operating systems have been certified against the Open Group's Single UNIX Specification and can call themselves a certified UNIX, written in uppercase.
Whether in uppercase or lowercase, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Unix should feel very flattered indeed. Not only do the operating systems want to have an operational and functional Unix-ness about them, but they shoehorn an X into their name so that we know their lineage.
That begs the question, why did Unix use an X in the first place?
In the late 1960s, a team of developers from Bell Labs was involved in a multi-company project to produce a new time-sharing operating system. Along with MIT and General Electric, they were looking for ways to allow a mainframe computer to handle multiple active users at the same time.
The system was called Multics, standing for Multiplexed Information and Computer Service. Multiplexing is computer-speak for doing several things at once.
Bell's management grew disillusioned with the Multics project and pulled out. Despite misgivings about some of the design decisions for Multics, one of the Bell team members, Ken Thompson, decided to write an operating system that would run on much more modest hardware and keep the best ideas from Multics. Dennis Ritchie assisted him.
Because it was initially intended to support a single user at a time, another member of the Bell team, Brian Kernighan, jokingly suggested calling it Unics for Uniplexed Information and Computer Service. Noone recalls how and when it morphed into Unix, with the CS becoming X.
Meanwhile, the Multics project laboured until 1969, when it produced a working operating system for the General Electrics GE 645 computer. Today, a collection of enthusiasts keeps it alive, and you can download and run it on your computer on simulated hardware.
Unix, of course, went on to change the world.
MINIX, the Unix Mini-Me
Before Unix eventually found commercial success, it was a significant hit in academia. Because Unix was a new breed of operating system, university courses were devoted to its design and implementation, and universities used Unix on their mainframes.
Professor Andrew Tanenbaum, now retired, was the Professor Emeritus at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. In 1987, he developed a minimalist mini-Unix for educational purposes that his students could examine, dissect, and tinker with. He called his operating system MINIX.
He co-authored Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, which describes his operating system and contains the printed source code.
In 1990, Linus Torvalds, a Finnish student at the University of Helsinki, encountered MINIX via Tanenbaum's book, a required text for a Unix course he was taking.
He liked MINIX but thought there could be improvements, such as better handling of interrupts. He also didn't like the MINIX license, which restricted its use to educational purposes only. Torvalds had a 386 PC running MINIX, which gave him access to a Unix-like operating system and a compiler, which was all he needed to start working on his own Unix-like operating system.
This led to his famous email to a MINIX newsgroup on August 25, 1991, asking what people would like to see in a new MINIX lookalike. This email does not mention a name for the new operating system.
Professor Tanenbaum retired in 2014. MINIX version 3 is still available, although it no longer seems to be maintained.
Linus Torvalds and Freax
In another announcement to the same newsgroup on October 5, 1991, Torvalds says that source files for version 0.02 of "this pet project of mine" are available in a directory on the ftp.funet.fi FTP server. The name of the directory was "/pub/OS/Linux." But where did the name Linux come from?
Torvalds says this in his book Just For Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary.
Privately, I called it Linux. Honest: I never wanted to release it under the name Linux because it was too egotistical. What was the name I reserved for any eventual release? Freax. (Get it? Freaks with the requisite X.) Some of the early make files — the files that describe how to compile the sources — included the word 'Freax' for about half a year. But it didn't matter. I didn't need a name for it at that point because I wasn't releasing it to anybody.
So, in his head, he called it Linux, and in the make scripts, he called it Freax. He also acknowledges that the X is a requisite. He's clear on that but needs to decide what to call his operating system.
Someone else made the choice for him, forcing him to abandon the duality of his naming scheme.
Your System Administrator Knows Best
Torvalds' original email to the MINIX newsgroup piqued the interest of Ari Lemmke, a teaching assistant at the Helsinki University of Technology. They were something of kindred spirits and struck up an email-based friendship.
Lemmke was a volunteer admin on an FTP server and offered to create a directory for Torvalds to store the source code and a few binaries of his operating system's version 0.01. We don't know if Ari Lemmke liked the name Linux, but we do know he hated the name Freax. So, he named the directory "/pub/OS/Linux."
And that was that. It was a done deal.
Linus uploaded version 0.01 of Linux on September 17, 1991, and directly emailed a few interested parties. On October 5, 1991, he emailed the MINIX newsgroup and publicly announced that a bare-bones, but working version of Linux was available to those who wanted to experiment with it.
Within months, others were contributing to the code. Like small pebbles that build into an avalanche, the world's largest open-source project was underway.
We can't talk about naming Linux without mentioning GNU. Linus Torvalds' entire effort was to develop the kernel of an operating system. To flesh it out into a truly functional operating system, the Linux kernel was paired with the GNU utilities.
GNU had the opposite problem. They had all the core Unix-like utilities but no kernel. GNU advocates say we should call Linux GNU/Linux to acknowledge GNU's massive contribution to Linux. They do have a point, but that ship's sailed.
What's in a Name?
If it wasn't for Ari Lemmke, we'd be living in a world of Freax, with Arch Freax, Debian Freax, and all the other Freax distributions, and we'd think nothing of it.
As Shakespeare had Juliet say, "That which we call a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet."
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