Topics

1

General Discussion / ArcaOS on The Register

« on: January 20, 2023, 07:25:15 am »

Arca Noae is modernizing OS/2 Warp for 21st century PCs
Lewis Rosenthal talks about why some companies still need to run OS/2 today – including on UEFI and GPT hardware

https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/19/retro_tech_week_arca_os/?td=rt-3a

2

General Discussion / Survey - technology and the Internet

« on: November 02, 2017, 04:26:00 pm »

The following is a link https://qeasttrial.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6hVHWh8VetkWpP7 to an
online voluntary survey being conducted as part of a research project. We are trying to obtain as many responses as possible and I am asking for your help in accomplishing this. If you are interested in responding to this survey, and you are aged 50 or older, click on the link below. It will take you approximately 15-20 minutes. Your participation is completely voluntary and all of your answers will be kept confidential. I appreciate your time.

Technology & Aging

Next, I would like you to consider helping us disseminate the survey through your social networks. If you could do the following, we would
appreciate it:
 Post this on your Facebook wall
 Forward it to members of your social networks via email
 Post to listservs to which you belong
 Tweet it if you use Twitter.

Thanks so much for your help on our research project! If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please contact me (Shelia Cotten) at cotten at msu dot edu.   (Michigan State University)

Thank you in advance for your help with this study!

I now have no interest in the results of this survey )
This would have to rank as the worse worded survey I have see or participated in. It really needs at least an option for Not Relevant or to follow the likert scale  with responses scored along a range.

I have left the survey link here in case anyone is interested in it, though the quality of the survey is something I would expect from a first year university student, that thinks only their age group use and understand technology.

3

Hardware / Need a PC to run OS/2 v1 or v2 on?

« on: June 06, 2017, 04:40:02 pm »

I'm stunned,
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/RETRO-Dell-Windows-95-98-DOS-GAMING-PC-486DX4-100MHZ-16MB-RAM-1-44MB-3-5in-Win98/302010992056
that two have been sold!

4

General Discussion / registering to upload to hobbes

« on: January 29, 2017, 06:37:50 am »

Hi Everyone,

Hobbes provides a great, and free service for the OS/2 community but over the years it has begun to take up more time for the maintainer(s) to remove all those strange files that appear in incoming. They have also ended up with an ever growing list of banned IP address's in the process which is likely to impact on the access of other people as IP address's are moved around a lot more than they have been in the past due to limited allocations for IPv4.

The idea has been floated (just thought about at present by the maintainers) to have people register (still free) before they're allowed to upload to Hobbes. The registration would have to include an email address for password reset. This would remove the addition effort for the maintainers that is currently required to keep Hobbes incoming in a clean state.

It might even be possible if this were to happen, for up-loaders to have better control of removing their own content in incoming due to bloopers or updated files before incoming is cleared.

Any other ideas or comments would be welcomed.

Added - Uploads to Hobbes only, there would be no changes for anyone wanting to download from Hobbes.

5

General Discussion / Forum Posts - Keeping it helpful.

« on: January 17, 2017, 06:49:31 am »

This is a general message not particularly aimed at anyone but at everyone generally.

Play nice in the playground. This means be polite, and do not throw sticks and stones otherwise something might boomerang back.
This also means if you cant say anything positive, do not post.
If anyone is a troll, they will hang themselves so there is no need to push the process along.
This forum is here to help people, not to be a means to create conflict.
Also be mindful, and aware of cultural differences.

Practice SMILING before you post

Thanks

6

General Discussion / Windows 10 and Your Harddisk is Locked messages

« on: July 09, 2016, 07:44:33 am »

Doing the father thing and looking at my daughters laptop which acts like a brick since it was auto updated to Windows10.
Though this might help others in the same situation as I've come across this twice now, the first time I came across it I
ended up booting a Windows7 disk and zeroing the HD boot sectors before I could reinstall Win7 to replace Win10. The
data wasn't important and the person concerned wanted Windows7 back so they could use their scanner and printer
again.

Searching both the Microsoft and HP websites on locked harddisk messages when attempting to boot Windows 10 gets me no end of rubbish that is just plain wrong.

I tried this authoritative fix from the HP forums. Similar answers are to be found on other forums including MS's website.

Insert your Windows10 DVD into your DVD drive.
Reboot and select "press any key on the keyboard to boot the computer with the bootable media.
On the first window, select your preferred language, time and currency format, and keyboard layout and click Next.
On the next window, click Repair your computer from the lower-left corner.

This can take up to 3 hours before you are presented with your Options menu.

From the Choose an option window, click Troubleshoot.
Click Advanced options from the Troubleshoot window.
When the Advanced options window opens, click Command Prompt.

This can take another hour before you have your Command Prompt window.

At the command prompt window, type

"Bootrec /fixMBR"  <== give this about 10 minutes
then
"bootrec /fixBoot"  <== give this about 15 minutes
then
"bootrec /rebuildBCD"  <==  Give this about 2-3 hours..

Then allow Windows to enter AutoRepair on reboot and go to bed.

The next morning you see the message that the Autorepair has fixed your problems but it also states..

  "0 Partitions found"

Reboot and get the same "Disk is Locked" message.
Seems to be a problem with Microsoft's weird container ideas they use for system images.

Give up and boot a linux DVD, see that the Windows partitions are actually there and readable.
Run a Linux based antivirus program and remove the boot infection from "frostwire-setup.exe".

Reboot and it now all works.

Booting from Windows10, running recommended fixes,  about 16 hours.
Booting from Linux, antivirus scan and repair, about 30 minutes.

Checking the Linux forums it turns out that simply booting from a Linux CD or DVD and reading the mounted Windows drives fixes the problem. So I could have fixed the issue in about 5 minutes but left the infected file behind.

I've had a few run in's with Windows 10 this year, none of them have been simple fixes, all re enforce my opinion that Windows 10 is a glorified buggy datalogger.

(edited to fix spelling)

7

General Discussion / Anyone from Western Australia

« on: April 08, 2016, 07:54:49 pm »

Soooo, anyone from or living in Western Australia apart from me ?

8

Article Discussions / The Register and Arca Noae/Blue Lion

« on: November 05, 2015, 06:46:48 pm »

Is the world ready for a bare-metal OS/2 rebirth?
IBM and Arca Noae to free 1990s operating system from its virtualized cage

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/03/os2_returns_arca_noae/

9

General Discussion / The Frumps pre warp

« on: May 11, 2015, 10:32:54 am »

http://www.thefrumps.com/comic/2015/01/02/evil-inside

10

Off Topic discussions / Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek dead at 83

« on: February 27, 2015, 07:17:09 pm »

Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek dead at 83

Will always be remembered for those almost immortal words.

11

General Discussion / os2bbs.com / os2.com has been assimilated.

« on: November 13, 2014, 02:31:27 pm »

With much thanks to Pete Norloff

  http://www.os2site.com/mirrors/os2bbs.com/

As always, I am happy to provide copies of content from os2site.com on a harddisk.
It will cost you the cost of the harddisk, and postage, there are a couple of copies out there already.

Smaller parts of the website can be provided on DVD/CD by request, once more at the cost of the media and postage.

Note that HD's sent to USA from Australia normally take 3-4 weeks.
HD's sent to Europe normally take 2-3 months, don't ask me why because I have no idea.

12

Events / hobbes.nmsu.edu

« on: November 03, 2014, 08:02:27 pm »

Hi All,

hobbes.nmsu.edu is offline while the server is checked, due to some errant PHP scripts being found in incoming (with jpg and log file extentions) that actually worked to allow remote access.

It''s back when it's back.

13

Programming / Remote Exploit Vulnerability Found In Bash

« on: September 25, 2014, 09:28:05 am »

http://www.csoonline.com/article/2687265/application-security/remote-exploit-in-bash-cve-2014-6271.html

A remotely exploitable vulnerability has been discovered by Stephane Chazelas in bash on Linux and it is unpleasant. The vulnerability has the CVE identifier CVE-2014-6271 and has been given the name Shellshock by some. This affects Debian as well as other Linux distributions. You will need to patch ASAP.

Bash supports exporting shell variables as well as shell functions to other bash instances. This is accomplished through the process environment to a child process.

The major attack vectors that have been identified in this case are HTTP requests and CGI scripts.

14

Programming / Heinz Zemanek Passes At 94

« on: July 18, 2014, 11:58:13 am »

In 1976, Zemanek became an IBM Fellow and stayed at IBM until his retirement in 1985. He was crucial in the creation of the formal definition of the programming language PL/I. The definition language used was VDL (Vienna Definition Language), a direct predecessor of VDM Specification Language (VDM-SL). He remained a professor in Vienna and held regular lectures until 2006.

http://derstandard.at/2000003215833/Oesterreichischer-Computerpionier-HeinzZemanek94-jaehrig-verstorben

15

Networking / Heartbleed Bug Exploited Over Extensible Authentication Protocol

« on: June 02, 2014, 07:15:23 pm »

Heartbleed Bug Exploited Over Extensible Authentication Protocol

from /. http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/06/02/1337246/heartbleed-bug-exploited-over-extensible-authentication-protocol

Keywords:- wpa_supplicant, OpenSSL, EAP, TLS (Wireless networking), Keeping WiFi integration up to date.

"While most organizations have patched the Heartbleed bug in their OpenSSL installations, a security expert has uncovered new vectors for exploiting the vulnerability, which can impact enterprise wireless networks, Android devices, and other connected devices. Dubbed 'Cupid,' the new attack method was recently presented by Portuguese security researcher Luis Grangeia, who debunked theories that Heartbleed could only be exploited over TCP connections, and after the TLS handshake. Unlike the initial Heartbleed attack, which took place on TLS connections over TCP, the Cupid attack happens on TLS connections over the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP), an authentication framework typically used in wireless networks and peer-to-peer connections.

The researcher has confirmed that default installations of wpa_supplicant, hostapd, and freeradius (RADIUS server implementation) can be exploited on Ubuntu if a vulnerable version of OpenSSL is utilized. Mobile devices running Android 4.1.0 and 4.1.1 also use wpa_supplicant to connect to wireless networks, so they're also affected. Everything that uses OpenSSL for EAP TLS is susceptible to Cupid attacks. While he hasn't been able to confirm it, the expert believes iPhones, iPads, OS X, other RADIUS servers besides freeradius, VoIP phones, printers, and various commercial managed wireless solutions could be affected."

Did you know how much you can find out about me by googling "I am the computer, it is me"  with the quotes..