On 2023-12-07, Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

> On Thu, 07 Dec 2023 19:35:01 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> I was usually able to get access to a keypunch, although sometimes it
>> meant waiting until the keypunch staff was off for lunch. In a pinch I
>> did use one of those hand punches; I affixed a tag to it saying
>> "Programmers have priority on this punch!"
>
> We used 12 key punches in the first programming shop I worked in, and yes,
> we hand keyes patches as well as complete programs if our keypunch pool
> was busy (this was a small computer bureau).

I started in a small service bureau as well. Fortunately I was
usually able to get my hands on a keypunch; the keypunch department
used Univac 1710s but we had an IBM 29 for small jobs. I could punch
my own cards as fast as the keypunch girls (they weren't used to
alphanumeric stuff). I avoided coding forms like the plague; I had
all kinds of shorthand that nobody would understand and could improvise
on the fly.

>> Being a denizen of the mainframe world, I didn't get to play with
>> teletypes much - at least in a work environment.
>
> So what were you on - IBM, Burroughs or what?

Univac. My first machine was the 9300, which was their answer to
the IBM 360/20. No console typewriter, just front-panel lights
on which you'd display a pattern which the operator would read
in hexadecimal and look up in a big book. Originally it was a
pure card system with 16K of memory, but later we added a couple
of 8414s (clones of IBM 2314 spindles) and increased the memory
to a whopping 32K. We didn't know what to do with all that space
(although we soon figured that out).

I did some work on 9400s, then was involved in the 90/30 and
its follow-ons, running OS/3, for about 10 years.

>> Ah yes, I remember mainframe terminals and their programming nightmares.
>> I did manage to port Dungeon to that environment, which took some doing.
>
> Indeed, though the ICL trick of locally editing the current page was
> relatively user-friendly, but I never did like the way the OS/400 editor
> (on IBM AS/400 systems) worked.

Univac's serial port protocol was a beast. It was supporting multi-dropped
block-mode synchronous terminals, and the handler program (ICAM, which
stood for Integrated Communications Access Method) was a nightmare to
generate. Even later, when I worked for Univac and was supposedly one
of the gurus, our standard way of building a new installation was to
copy an existing one and tweak it as required. As far as we knew,
there was only one person in all of Canada who really understood it,
and we flew him out from Montreal a couple of times to help us out.
After one such session at a customer site, we were sitting around
shooting the bull, and he was scrambling and unscrambling a Rubik's
Cube while keeping up with the conversation. That's the kind of
mind it took to understand ICAM.
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | The Internet is like a big city:
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | it has plenty of bright lights and
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | excitement, but also dark alleys
/ \ if you read it the right way. | down which the unwary get mugged.

On 12/7/23 3:19 AM, David Taylor wrote:
> On 07/12/2023 06:53, 56g.1173 wrote:
>>     As for "time-keeping" ... normally the Pi looks for
>>     certain internet time servers - and should thus keep
>>     perfect time, likely to the millisecond.
>
> Actually the RPi, all models, can do much better than millisecond, down
> to tens of microseconds when you add a GPS/PPS device.  In the instance
> I reported the only update was an upgrade of the OS (and its components).

GPS *is* more precise, no question. However few NEED that
level of precision. A few seconds accuracy is more than
enough. Time servers do that and a bit better - but
ONLY a bit better.

> Here's a RasPi-400 Wi-Fi synced to in-house stratum-1 NTP servers:
>
>   https://www.satsignal.eu/mrtg/raspi24_ntp-b.html
>
> within about 100 microseconds or better.
>
> The two RasPi-5 are running off the same 5 GHz Wi-Fi as is the RPi-400.
> I'll try changing one of them to the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi but I'm not expecting
> any improvement!

First off ... 5ghz is MUCH worse at penetrating common
structures. Everything I'd been doing still relied on
2.4 ... easy 25%/50% better signal.

And, as said, do you REALLY need micosecond+ accuracy ?

Beyond microsecond you're dealing with speed-of-electricity/
speed-of-light issues and Einie sez you're screwed. Only
dedicated scientific devices do better - and their timing
is RELATIVE, only for THAT device. Consider the LIGO
grav "telescope" as an example. It's not using NTP to
do its work.

On 12/7/23 3:41 AM, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Dec 2023 21:00:41 -0500
> "56g.1173" <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:
>
>> Agreed ... but I don't think anybody is going to put up
>> with an 80x24 screen anymore.
>
> There's three of them open on this desktop now, although for
> serious work I usually use 80x<as much as I can fit> terminals.

Ah ... but writing TEXT ... and "Word-Processing" ... are
entirely different things.

Yep, you can do TEXT with nano or maybe something a tad
better. But to craft an appealing DOCUMENT is far and
above that level. Docs have to LOOK GOOD. Nano ain't
gonna do that. LibreOffice instead these days .......

>> GUI/WYSIWYG is a lot better. There are a number of medium-power
>> word processors that run on Linux and the ubiquitous LibreOffice
>> suite adds even more clout. For dirt simple, use Leafpad and friends.
>
> Yet when I need to write a letter and snail mail it I use vi and
> groff - old habits die hard and 1980s documents still work fine.

Actually, I *remove* Vi and its ilk from every distro I install.
HATEFUL apps. Never EVER wanna see them - as bad as "edlin" from
the early DOS days.

"Mail" is not "word processing" either. Generally it's pure TEXT.
If it's anything important you do it with a REAL word-processor
and then mail a PDF attachment.

Good old ASCII has it's place - but ONLY a place.

On 12/7/23 6:13 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 07/12/2023 10:59, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>> On Thu, 7 Dec 2023 10:27:00 +0000
>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> To be honest, those screens with very limited capability and no
>>> distraction were far far more productive than today's GUIS.
>>
>>     Depends how you use them. When I used terminals I usually had three
>> or four on my desk (and from time to time found myself typing on the
>> wrong
>> keyboard). These days (since around 1990 when I met my first X
>> terminal) I
>> tend to have more terminals but they're all on the one (or two) big
>> screen(s) and use the same keyboard. They're also colour, tabbed and come
>> with big scrollback buffers - way nicer than 1980s terminals even before
>> you throw in the window manager with unlimited virtual desktops for
>> separating threads of activity.
>>
> But you do not spend your days listening to customers and entering their
> details on the same screen over and over. Or writing a series of letters
> over and over. Or checking in today's stock, and booking it out again.
>
> That is the reality of commercial computing, where it actually *aided*
> productivity.
>
>>> In terms of commercial computin, windows were a huge step backward in
>>> productivity.
>>
>>     Nah, you just have to use them right - now IDEs OTOH ...
>>
>
> The last time I peeked at a winders PC in a bank, it was running nothing
> but an IBM terminal emulator with an 80x25 screen hooked up to a
> mainframe somewhere in probably Berkshire.

Heh ! I saw that recently in a US-based bank ! The moment you
depart from the "usual" it's back to mostly terminal-based
apps. They're 25 years behind the curve and I don't think it's
gonna get any better, given modern money constraints.

The "golden age" was the mid 60s/early-70s. The USA was fat
with money back then. Banks/corps/govt could afford to have
serious apps (usually COBOL) custom-writ. GOOD CODE too, by
the white-shirt/narrow-tie guys (few girls then). They STILL
use these apps because they can't AFFORD anything newer now.

IT people who are mostly interested in high/steady income
should learn to rock FORTRAN/COBOL because SO much of the
vital infrastructure STILL runs on that.

But, if you want "word processing" you do NOT use a terminal-
based app. Docs need to LOOK GOOD and even the poorly-trained
need to be able to make docs that LOOK GOOD, quick. That's
LibreOffice and a few friends.

Hmm ... of note ... some big US banks are cutting WAY back
on actual HUMAN assistance. It's mostly the ones who have
over-extended themselves on loans, mostly for inflated
properties, and expect massive defaults like not SO long
ago (people/corps learn NOTHING). "AI", well, it just
does not GET "nuances" and is NO SUBSTITUTE.

In the USA there's something called the "ADA", "Americans
with Disabilities Act". In truth, anyone over 65 DOES have
some disabilities - understanding, even SEEING, those damned
phone apps all the banks want everyone to use for everything.
There are also LOTS of lawyers who specialize in ADA issues.
MAYbe it's time to sue the shit out of those asshole banks ?

I'm over 65.

My "phone" is a FLIP ... tiny tiny screen. You CANNOT fill
out complex forms with it. I am *not* gonna buy anything
bigger/more-complex. "Phones" are for PHONE CALLS in my
view of things. I don't even like "texts". And the SECURITY
for phone apps - APPALLING !

On Fri, 8 Dec 2023 01:17:30 -0500
"56g.1173" <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:

> On 12/7/23 3:41 AM, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> > On Wed, 6 Dec 2023 21:00:41 -0500
> > "56g.1173" <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Agreed ... but I don't think anybody is going to put up
> >> with an 80x24 screen anymore.
> >
> > There's three of them open on this desktop now, although for
> > serious work I usually use 80x<as much as I can fit> terminals.
>
> Ah ... but writing TEXT ... and "Word-Processing" ... are
> entirely different things.

When I see word processor I think what a food processor does.

> Yep, you can do TEXT with nano or maybe something a tad
> better. But to craft an appealing DOCUMENT is far and
> above that level. Docs have to LOOK GOOD. Nano ain't
> gonna do that. LibreOffice instead these days .......

That's what groff is for - I far prefer markup to wysywig.

> > Yet when I need to write a letter and snail mail it I use vi and
> > groff - old habits die hard and 1980s documents still work fine.
>
> Actually, I *remove* Vi and its ilk from every distro I install.
> HATEFUL apps. Never EVER wanna see them - as bad as "edlin" from
> the early DOS days.

I've been using vi for a long time - it's a great text editor.

> "Mail" is not "word processing" either. Generally it's pure TEXT.

Who mentioned email ?

> If it's anything important you do it with a REAL word-processor
> and then mail a PDF attachment.

If it's important I do it with vi and groff to generate a PDF or
print a letter.

> Good old ASCII has it's place - but ONLY a place.

Yep UTF-8 is far more useful.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Host: Beautiful Theory meet Inconvenient Fact
Obit: Beautiful Theory died today of factual inconsistency

On 08/12/2023 06:08, 56g.1173 wrote:
> First off ... 5ghz is MUCH worse at penetrating common
> structures. Everything I'd been doing still relied on
> 2.4 ... easy 25%/50% better signal.
>
> And, as said, do you REALLY need micosecond+ accuracy ?
>
> Beyond microsecond you're dealing with speed-of-electricity/
> speed-of-light issues and Einie sez you're screwed. Only
> dedicated scientific devices do better - and their timing
> is RELATIVE, only for THAT device. Consider the LIGO
> grav "telescope" as an example. It's not using NTP to
> do its work.

Just why I tried comparing 2.4 and 5 GHz, but it made no difference in this
particular case. I didn't expect it to, but it was worth a test.

We've found in the past that "second" level timing is not good enough if, for
example, you are comparing log files between different locations, and there are
dozens of entries per second. Another use if where you are providing sounds
from separate devices, for example voices in a choir, The ear/brain can detect
differences of under 100 ms.

In this case, the question is still unanswered - why did an OS upgrade ruin
what was excellent timekeeping?
--
Cheers,
David
Web: https://www.satsignal.eu

On 6.12.2023 09:54 AM, David Taylor wrote:
> On 05/12/2023 17:30, druck wrote:
>> Check that you still are using ntp and the systemd virus hasn't taken
>> over yet another part of your OS.
>>
>>       systemctl status ntp
>>
>> Should be state it is active.
>>
>>       systemctl status systemd-timesyncd
>>
>> Should report not found.
>>
>> ---druck
>
> Many thanks for that.  TL:DR: it's just ntp.
>
> However, it appears to be NTPsec rather than the older NTP I normally use.
>
> Detailed report:
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> pi@RasPi-29:/var/lib $ systemctl status systemd-timesyncd
> Unit systemd-timesyncd.service could not be found.
>
> pi@RasPi-29:/var/lib $ systemctl status ntp
> * ntpsec.service - Network Time Service
>      Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/ntpsec.service; enabled;
> preset: enabled)
>      Active: active (running) since Sun 2023-12-03 15:04:12 GMT; 2 days
> ago
>        Docs: man:ntpd(8)
>     Process: 846 ExecStart=/usr/libexec/ntpsec/ntp-systemd-wrapper
> (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
>    Main PID: 856 (ntpd)
>       Tasks: 1 (limit: 4915)
>         CPU: 10.267s
>      CGroup: /system.slice/ntpsec.service
>              `-856 /usr/sbin/ntpd -p /run/ntpd.pid -c
> /etc/ntpsec/ntp.conf -g -N -u ntpsec:ntpsec
>
> Dec 05 19:04:12 RasPi-29 ntpd[856]: LOG: frequency file
> /var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift-tmp: No such file or directory
> .
> .
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
> From the "Process:" line it looks like systemd has poked its nose in
> somehow. The last line notes that a directory in /var/lib was missing,
> although I think the drift files only affects fresh starts.
> Nevertheless I created the missing directory in case it makes any
> difference, appreciating that it may need recreating every boot as it's
> in /var.
>
>   systemctl status ntpsec
>
> produces the same output.
>

There is the tool ntpmon included with ntpsec. Try it.

A question: Can you show the MRTG setup to produce the curves
linkled to on the first post?

--

-TV

On 07/12/2023 19:35, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> When I start getting weird about non-computing things, my wife says,
> "Why does everything have to be such a huge project?" But with IDEs,
> everything_does_ have to be a project. Makefiles are so much simpler.

Indeed. Viz my =issues with trying to design some extremely simply PCBS
for my PI projects. Traditionally I did that with colored tapes pasted
on transparent backings.
These days you simply need Gerber files.
Now te way you are expected to make THOSE is to create a huge 'project'
add all youur components to a nassive database of 'components' in eagle
CAD, create a circuit diagram, and then manipulate a massively complex
program to create multilayer boards. with solder masks vias, silk screen
and copper.

Total fucking OVERKILL. I managed to find an online site that would
convert Corel Draw files to Gerber files, and a linux program that can
turn a Gerber drill fill into the format CNC machines use so I designed
my PCBs in Corel draw. In far less time than it would have taken to
learn Eagle CAD.

My point being that I could have been on a training course to learn
e,g,. Eagle CAD and become proficient in the tool, but it would not have
made the product any better in the long run.

In the end there needs to be an element of intelligent design rather
than random monkey evolution for the best results. Darwin does not
ensure the survival of the fittest, merely the elimination of the
totally crap.

And the problem is that if the Darwinian approach to design
predominates, what you get in the end is *almost* complete crap. Good
enough to sell, but not to actually work.

Viz Barclays Bank are still sending me messages and statements from a
share trading account I transferred all the money out of, two years ago,
and asked them to close.

I assume that the software to actually close an account was simply never
written.

There is nothing to be done about all of this. The vast majority of
humanity is barely capable of reproduction. They don't think. They don't
want to think, and if they do think they want to be told by the current
political and moral authority *what* to think.

Only in exceptional cases will they learn *how* to think.
And my teaching people to read, and developing mass media, we have
ensured that everyone now feels they are an expert in everything, and
fully capable of understanding everything and their opinion is as good
as anyone else's when in reality they haven't a fucking clue.

I give you Angela Rayner....

“The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that
the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

- Bertrand Russell

--
"The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll
look exactly the same afterwards."

Billy Connolly

On 08/12/2023 11:17, Tauno Voipio wrote:
> There is the tool ntpmon included with ntpsec. Try it.
>
> A question: Can you show the MRTG setup to produce the curves
> linkled to on the first post?

Thanks, Tauno!

I'll take a look at ntpmon which is a tool I've not used before.

The MRTG setup is described here:

https://www.satsignal.eu/raspberry-pi/monitoring.html#ntp

--
Cheers,
David
Web: https://www.satsignal.eu

On 2023-12-08, 56g.1173 <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:

> On 12/7/23 6:13 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> The last time I peeked at a winders PC in a bank, it was running nothing
>> but an IBM terminal emulator with an 80x25 screen hooked up to a
>> mainframe somewhere in probably Berkshire.
>
> Heh ! I saw that recently in a US-based bank ! The moment you
> depart from the "usual" it's back to mostly terminal-based
> apps. They're 25 years behind the curve and I don't think it's
> gonna get any better, given modern money constraints.

I've also seen that at the local Canadian Tire. But why is that
not better? Better than what? If the information you need can
be nicely presented on a 24x80 green screen, why not do so? It's
FAST - which is only to be expected if you're sending 1920 characters
instead of several megabytes of HTML and JavaScript that needs
to be interpreted. And you don't have to put up with the current
fad of light grey characters on a white background.

https://contrastrebellion.com

> In the USA there's something called the "ADA", "Americans
> with Disabilities Act". In truth, anyone over 65 DOES have
> some disabilities - understanding, even SEEING, those damned
> phone apps all the banks want everyone to use for everything.
> There are also LOTS of lawyers who specialize in ADA issues.
> MAYbe it's time to sue the shit out of those asshole banks ?

Don't forget governments. They're doing it too. It's as if
having a smartphone is becoming mandatory. It's just about
time for a class action suit.

> I'm over 65.
>
> My "phone" is a FLIP ... tiny tiny screen. You CANNOT fill
> out complex forms with it. I am *not* gonna buy anything
> bigger/more-complex. "Phones" are for PHONE CALLS in my
> view of things. I don't even like "texts". And the SECURITY
> for phone apps - APPALLING !

I'm with you. I'll give up my flip phone when they pry it from
my cold dead fingers. I want _buttons_, dammit! And I'm amazed
at how people can be disturbed by the concept of "ankle bracelets"
when a GPS-equipped smartphone is the same thing.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | The Internet is like a big city:
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | it has plenty of bright lights and
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | excitement, but also dark alleys
/ \ if you read it the right way. | down which the unwary get mugged.

On 12/8/23 4:37 AM, David Taylor wrote:
> On 08/12/2023 06:08, 56g.1173 wrote:
>>     First off ... 5ghz is MUCH worse at penetrating common
>>     structures. Everything I'd been doing still relied on
>>     2.4 ... easy 25%/50% better signal.
>>
>>     And, as said, do you REALLY need micosecond+ accuracy ?
>>
>>     Beyond microsecond you're dealing with speed-of-electricity/
>>     speed-of-light issues and Einie sez you're screwed. Only
>>     dedicated scientific devices do better - and their timing
>>     is RELATIVE, only for THAT device. Consider the LIGO
>>     grav "telescope" as an example. It's not using NTP to
>>     do its work.
>
> Just why I tried comparing 2.4 and 5 GHz, but it made no difference in
> this particular case.  I didn't expect it to, but it was worth a test.

Depends ... some structures have more brick and metal
in them and 2.4 is superior. Naught but studs and dry-
wall ... take yer pick. In either case, 5ghz only seems
to offer a real advantage in like a big open office
space - with people rather close to the WAP.

> We've found in the past that "second" level timing is not good enough
> if, for example, you are comparing log files between different
> locations, and there are dozens of entries per second.  Another use if
> where you are providing sounds from separate devices, for example voices
> in a choir,  The ear/brain can detect differences of under 100 ms.

"Second-level" is NOT good enough. However millisecond-level
is under almost every use. Microsecond and finer ... nothing
to be gained unless you're running 'scientific' devices or
maybe extreme cluster-computing.

> In this case, the question is still unanswered - why did an OS upgrade
> ruin what was excellent timekeeping?

Ex-M$ idiots now working for Linux distro shops ???
Apparently the highest concentration at Canonical ...
dropped THEIR crap a few years ago.

Recently re-did a number of boxes/devices to BookWorm.
Now I'm gonna "upgrade" them - back to BullsEye. Some
of the Arch distros look good now ... and even some
of the BSDs are looking decent these days. We'll see
what else is out there ... something "conservative" ....

NTP *can* deliver pretty damned good timing - assuming
the daemons are given enough priority and updates happen
pretty frequently. The two 'fixes' are GPS - as I think
you or someone noted - and/or/with one of those high-
precision timing chips. Look up "ChronoDot" ... they
are used a lot for microcontroller apps because they
are protected against temperature drift and such.

Hmm .. for fun ... find out where the NTP daemon is
controlled. Maybe they DID cut its priority way
back ? Firewalls can also mess with NTP because
there does exist evil-ware that can do sneaky
things with it. I'd suggest filtering that only
allows a few govt NTP servers in. On a Pi I
think you can actually SPECIFY the desired NTP
server ... in 'raspi-config' or the GUI version.

On 09/12/2023 10:10, Stefan Möding wrote:
> But that is only telling you that the daemon is running but not what it is
> doing. Use "ntpq -pn" to query what peers it is using and if the daemon
> can reach them in the first place.

Stefan,

Thanks for your comments.

Here's the ntpq -pn output. RasPi-28 is the problem device, RasPi-24 is an
RPi-400 similarly configured:

C:\Users\win-8>ntpq -pn raspi-28
remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter
==============================================================================
*192.168.0.20 .GPS. 1 u 12 32 377 0.919 -0.151 5.583
+192.168.0.3 .PPS. 1 u 4 32 377 0.992 -0.115 0.159
+192.168.0.71 .PPS. 1 u 11 32 377 1.200 -0.168 0.234
uk.pool.ntp.org .POOL. 16 p - 128 0 0.000 +0.000 0.000
-109.74.206.120 129.69.1.153 2 u 34 64 377 20.828 +1.405 0.668

C:\Users\win-8>ntpq -pn raspi-24
remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter
==============================================================================
*192.168.0.20 .GPS. 1 u 16 32 377 1.265 -0.037 0.100
+192.168.0.3 .PPS. 1 u 4 32 377 1.223 -0.069 0.054
+192.168.0.71 .PPS. 1 u 12 32 377 1.541 -0.037 0.018
uk.pool.ntp.org .POOL. 16 p - 64 0 0.000 +0.000 0.002
nl.pool.ntp.org .POOL. 16 p - 64 0 0.000 +0.000 0.002
-162.159.200.123 10.85.8.67 3 u 48 64 377 16.660 +0.123 0.982
-95.97.2.35 192.168.10.25 2 u 23 64 377 37.744 -1.863 1.254
-162.159.200.1 10.85.8.67 3 u 15 64 377 16.701 +0.192 1.457
-178.79.188.22 125.199.53.76 2 u 9 64 377 20.280 +3.615 0.677
-176.58.109.199 131.188.3.223 2 u 27 64 377 21.648 +6.233 2.305

192.168.0.20 is a GPSDO/NTP server from Leo Bodnar. Two things which surprise
me are (1) the very low count of remote servers which RasPi-28 lists, and (2)
the very high jitter reported by RasPi-28 for the LeoNTP server. Should be
much less.

I wish I could use regular NTP and not NTPsec!

--
Cheers,
David
Web: https://www.satsignal.eu

On 12/8/23 2:57 AM, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Dec 2023 01:17:30 -0500
> "56g.1173" <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:
>
>> On 12/7/23 3:41 AM, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>> On Wed, 6 Dec 2023 21:00:41 -0500
>>> "56g.1173" <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Agreed ... but I don't think anybody is going to put up
>>>> with an 80x24 screen anymore.
>>>
>>> There's three of them open on this desktop now, although for
>>> serious work I usually use 80x<as much as I can fit> terminals.
>>
>> Ah ... but writing TEXT ... and "Word-Processing" ... are
>> entirely different things.
>
> When I see word processor I think what a food processor does.

I'd disagree. "Documents" and "text" really aren't the
same things, for the same purposes.

>> Yep, you can do TEXT with nano or maybe something a tad
>> better. But to craft an appealing DOCUMENT is far and
>> above that level. Docs have to LOOK GOOD. Nano ain't
>> gonna do that. LibreOffice instead these days .......
>
> That's what groff is for - I far prefer markup to wysywig.

Yuk !

>>> Yet when I need to write a letter and snail mail it I use vi and
>>> groff - old habits die hard and 1980s documents still work fine.

WORK fine ... but for PUBLICATION ???

>> Actually, I *remove* Vi and its ilk from every distro I install.
>> HATEFUL apps. Never EVER wanna see them - as bad as "edlin" from
>> the early DOS days.
>
> I've been using vi for a long time - it's a great text editor.

It's crap - just a far less friendly version of nano.

So I always REMOVE it so it can't pop up by accident.

>> "Mail" is not "word processing" either. Generally it's pure TEXT.
>
> Who mentioned email ?

I think it was in the thread somewhere ... or at
least implied by "text". Of course modern e-mail
is mostly HTML these days ....

>> If it's anything important you do it with a REAL word-processor
>> and then mail a PDF attachment.

But you said "word-processors" were EVIL :-)

And, frankly, being able to make nice text and
insert photos into e-mail these days is very
convenient.

> If it's important I do it with vi and groff to generate a PDF or
> print a letter.

I make PDFs with LibreOffice.

>> Good old ASCII has it's place - but ONLY a place.
>
> Yep UTF-8 is far more useful.

Again YUK. ASCII should have remained ASCII and
UTF and friends implemented separately.

DO miss those funky 128+ graphics chars that were
in the old IBM roms. Made it so easy to make
text-based forms and such. They still exist
in UTF, but at very obscure values and with
the added 2-byte complications.

David Taylor <david-taylor@blueyonder.co.uk.invalid> writes:

> Here's the ntpq -pn output. RasPi-28 is the problem device, RasPi-24
> is an RPi-400 similarly configured:

It doesn't look too bad. Both devices use your local stratum-1 servers as
candidates (+ in first column) and have selected 192.168.0.20 as reference
(* is first column). All candidates were reachable for the last 3.7
minutes (you poll about every 32 seconds and 377 indicates the last 10
polls were successful). As you noticed it is really only the jitter that
looks suspicious.

I would check this output from time to time and look for anything strange.
Could the network in between be an issue?

> 192.168.0.20 is a GPSDO/NTP server from Leo Bodnar. Two things which
> surprise me are (1) the very low count of remote servers which
> RasPi-28 lists, and (2) the very high jitter reported by RasPi-28 for
> the LeoNTP server. Should be much less.

On raspi-28 you only have the UK pool while raspi-24 also lists the NL
pool as reference. That is probably the reason for the different numbers
of servers.

> I wish I could use regular NTP and not NTPsec!

You could also try out the chrony NTP client which is mostly used on
Enterprise Linux distros. The package is also available on Debian.

--
Stefan

On Sun, 10 Dec 2023 14:24:35 +0100
Stefan Möding <Dec2023.5.kill-9@spamgourmet.com> wrote:

> minutes (you poll about every 32 seconds and 377 indicates the last 10
> polls were successful).

Nitpick - eight polls. The reach figure is an eight bit shift
register displayed in octal, every poll shifts a 1 (success) or 0 (fail)
onto the low end.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Host: Beautiful Theory meet Inconvenient Fact
Obit: Beautiful Theory died today of factual inconsistency

On 2023-12-10, 56g.1173 <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:

> On 12/8/23 2:57 AM, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>
>> When I see word processor I think what a food processor does.

:-)

> I'd disagree. "Documents" and "text" really aren't the
> same things, for the same purposes.

Use the right tool for the job at hand. One size doesn't
necessarily fit all.

>>> Yep, you can do TEXT with nano or maybe something a tad
>>> better. But to craft an appealing DOCUMENT is far and
>>> above that level. Docs have to LOOK GOOD. Nano ain't
>>> gonna do that. LibreOffice instead these days .......
>>
>> That's what groff is for - I far prefer markup to wysywig.
>
> Yuk !

Different strokes for different folks. I defend the right to choose.
Why worry if the end result is the same?

>>>> Yet when I need to write a letter and snail mail it I use vi and
>>>> groff - old habits die hard and 1980s documents still work fine.
>
> WORK fine ... but for PUBLICATION ???

There are various markup systems that do a good job for publication.
Heck, you can even write HTML with a text editor.

>>> Actually, I *remove* Vi and its ilk from every distro I install.
>>> HATEFUL apps. Never EVER wanna see them - as bad as "edlin" from
>>> the early DOS days.
>>
>> I've been using vi for a long time - it's a great text editor.
>
> It's crap - just a far less friendly version of nano.
>
> So I always REMOVE it so it can't pop up by accident.

If I ever find myself working on a machine you've touched,
I'm going to be muttering a few choice words - after which
I'll restore vi. What harm does it do just sitting there?

>>> Good old ASCII has it's place - but ONLY a place.
>>
>> Yep UTF-8 is far more useful.
>
> Again YUK. ASCII should have remained ASCII and
> UTF and friends implemented separately.
>
> DO miss those funky 128+ graphics chars that were
> in the old IBM roms. Made it so easy to make
> text-based forms and such. They still exist
> in UTF, but at very obscure values and with
> the added 2-byte complications.

UTF-8 has done as good a job as possible with this.
And someday soon all traces of Microsoft's wrong turn
down the UTF-16 blind alley will disappear, BOMs and all.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | The Internet is like a big city:
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | it has plenty of bright lights and
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | excitement, but also dark alleys
/ \ if you read it the right way. | down which the unwary get mugged.

On Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:15:55 -0500
"56g.1173" <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:

> >>> Yet when I need to write a letter and snail mail it I use vi
> >>> and groff - old habits die hard and 1980s documents still work fine.
>
> WORK fine ... but for PUBLICATION ???

Of course, groff descends from a long line of typesetting tools
designed for publication by professionals in the field. In the mid 1980s I
was using sqtroff to typeset reference books out of databases. The
postscript it generated would be proof printed on an inkjet and set on a
linotron at Cambridge University Press.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Host: Beautiful Theory meet Inconvenient Fact
Obit: Beautiful Theory died today of factual inconsistency

On Sun, 10 Dec 2023 19:18:37 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2023-12-10, 56g.1173 <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:
>
>> On 12/8/23 2:57 AM, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>
>>> When I see word processor I think what a food processor does.
>
> :-)
>
>> I'd disagree. "Documents" and "text" really aren't the same things,
>> for the same purposes.
>
> Use the right tool for the job at hand. One size doesn't necessarily
> fit all.
>
>>>> Yep, you can do TEXT with nano or maybe something a tad better.
>>>> But to craft an appealing DOCUMENT is far and above that level.
>>>> Docs have to LOOK GOOD. Nano ain't gonna do that. LibreOffice
>>>> instead these days .......
>>>
>>> That's what groff is for - I far prefer markup to wysywig.
>>
>> Yuk !
>
> Different strokes for different folks. I defend the right to choose.
> Why worry if the end result is the same?
>
My favourite editor for HTML is currently gedit, simply because it does
what I want. This is followed by running 'tidy' to pick out the HTML
errors and omissions, then back to gedit to fix the mistakes, followed by
using Firefox to check its appearance. Lastly, GIMP to tweak any images in
the HTML page to adjust size and/or colour/contrast/brightness...
..
>>>>> Yet when I need to write a letter and snail mail it I use vi and
>>>>> groff - old habits die hard and 1980s documents still work fine.
>>
>> WORK fine ... but for PUBLICATION ???
>
I use Evolution for general email and tracking appointments and Libre
Office Writer for text files and (when I must) Libre Office Calc for
spreadsheets.

I do quite a lot of stuff using very large CSV files because its a
generally known way of structuring data files of all sizes, but,since
experience shows that a spreadsheet is not usually the best way to edit
such file, I wrote my own CVS editor. This written in Java to take
advantage of both its dynamically resizeable array structures and id its
excellent SWING graphics library.

> There are various markup systems that do a good job for publication.
> Heck, you can even write HTML with a text editor.
>
Yes: a text editor and the 'tidy' utility work welll together.

>>> I've been using vi for a long time - it's a great text editor.

IME vi is very good for file/system recovery but currently my favorite for
almost everything else is gedit

>>
>> It's crap - just a far less friendly version of nano.
>>
I really can't get on with nano.My favourite used to be microemacs but I
have the impression that it's no longer maintained.

--

Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

On 10/12/2023 19:18, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> Heck, you can even write HTML with a text editor.
I never write it with anything else, unless you count PHP.

--
There’s a mighty big difference between good, sound reasons and reasons
that sound good.

Burton Hillis (William Vaughn, American columnist)

On 10/12/2023 19:51, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:15:55 -0500
> "56g.1173" <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:
>
>>>>> Yet when I need to write a letter and snail mail it I use vi
>>>>> and groff - old habits die hard and 1980s documents still work fine.
>>
>> WORK fine ... but for PUBLICATION ???
>
> Of course, groff descends from a long line of typesetting tools
> designed for publication by professionals in the field. In the mid 1980s I
> was using sqtroff to typeset reference books out of databases. The
> postscript it generated would be proof printed on an inkjet and set on a
> linotron at Cambridge University Press.
>
IIRC the late David Mackays book, without hot air,m was I think written
in LaTex

Anyone who has used a real typesetting program like Quark knows that
what it needs is plain raw text.

Any layout, fonts and page styles are imposed completely separately.

--
There’s a mighty big difference between good, sound reasons and reasons
that sound good.

Burton Hillis (William Vaughn, American columnist)

On 8.12.2023 20:50 PM, David Taylor wrote:
> On 08/12/2023 11:17, Tauno Voipio wrote:
>> There is the tool ntpmon included with ntpsec. Try it.
>>
>> A question: Can you show the MRTG setup to produce the curves
>> linkled to on the first post?
>
> Thanks, Tauno!
>
> I'll take a look at ntpmon which is a tool I've not used before.
>
> The MRTG setup is described here:
>
>   https://www.satsignal.eu/raspberry-pi/monitoring.html#ntp
>

Thanks a lot - it is much more than i expected.

--

-TV

On Mon, 11 Dec 2023 04:18:02 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 10/12/2023 19:18, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> Heck, you can even write HTML with a text editor.
> I never write it with anything else, unless you count PHP.

Same here:

- 'gedit' to write the page and spell check it
- 'tidy' to check for HTML markup mistakes
- 'firefox' to inspect the page for layout stupidities.

--

Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

On 11/12/2023 13:12, Martin Gregorie wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Dec 2023 04:18:02 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> On 10/12/2023 19:18, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>> Heck, you can even write HTML with a text editor.
>> I never write it with anything else, unless you count PHP.
>
> Same here:
>
> - 'gedit' to write the page and spell check it

Geany here, ususally, as its (HTML) normally cut in with PHP.
> - 'tidy' to check for HTML markup mistakes
Dont bother. Geany 'understands' HTML and php - and javascript - and
highlights the grosser sorts of errors.

> - 'firefox' to inspect the page for layout stupidities.
>
More than that. firefox has a pretty good javascript debugger as well.

Also I use the apache error logs to monitor php syntax errors.

>

--
"In our post-modern world, climate science is not powerful because it is
true: it is true because it is powerful."

Lucas Bergkamp

On Mon, 11 Dec 2023 13:56:53 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

>> - 'firefox' to inspect the page for layout stupidities.
>>
> More than that. firefox has a pretty good javascript debugger as well.
>
I like firefox a lot, though Brave is my usual browser, as much for its
built-in ad-killers and website blockers an anything else.

> Also I use the apache error logs to monitor php syntax errors.
>
I don't use php much: so far its only been when I've needed to grab user-
supplied content from a set of related boxes on one of my web-pages and
add the set to a queue for overnight processing before e-mailing the
result back to the OP.

--

Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

On 11/12/2023 16:48, Martin Gregorie wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Dec 2023 13:56:53 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>>> - 'firefox' to inspect the page for layout stupidities.
>>>
>> More than that. firefox has a pretty good javascript debugger as well.
>>
> I like firefox a lot, though Brave is my usual browser, as much for its
> built-in ad-killers and website blockers an anything else.
>
>> Also I use the apache error logs to monitor php syntax errors.
>>
> I don't use php much: so far its only been when I've needed to grab user-
> supplied content from a set of related boxes on one of my web-pages and
> add the set to a queue for overnight processing before e-mailing the
> result back to the OP.
>
Whether or not you use it depends on how much interfacing you need to do
with the server side OS and other apps. Likewise Javascript, which gives
you an actively responsive interface in the browser itself, and via AJAX
calls, fast access to changes server side without refreshing the whole
screen.

Example: My heating controller main panel accessed via a bowser needs to
reflect in almost real time what the server side is doing. So it
contains several timed javascript loops that interrogate the local
system time, for a clock display, the server side state machine that
controls the heating zones, and the server side record of the room
thermostats. What the AJAX calls summon depends, but its usually a
short PHP script.
The same goes for the configuration screen where times and temperatures
are setup. I need to do AJAX calls to a system to write config files and
read them back to display on screen.

Other applications I have use mysql databases at the back end and its
pretty hard to access those direct from HTML!

But that is because my bent is towards simulating industrial machine
control panels in a browser. PHP, Javascript. HTML, C and mysql are the
tools that provided the shortest route to that objective.

YMMV.

--
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the
very definition of slavery.

Jonathan Swift