No You Are

Posted on June 22, 2008 by Paul — 2 Comments ↓

Gordon Brown is planning to tell the Saudis that they need to spend some of their oil profits helping us not to need their oil so much. As stupid as that sounds, there’s a key line that makes it even worse:

The prime minister wants oil producers to invest some of their profits in long-term energy projects in Britain, such as wind farms and nuclear power.

We are an oil producing country, though not to the scale of Saudi Arabia of course, and we’ve shown only half-hearted interest in spending on renewables. I can’t imagine why the Saudis would want to do better for us than we have for ourselves.

Solaris, NWAM and Static IPs

Posted on June 19, 2008 by Paul — No Comments ↓

A new feature in OpenSolaris is NWAM, the NetWork Auto Magic, um, thingy. It’s a handy tool that automatically configures your network connection. Unfortunately it unhandily has no GUI at the moment, though one is in the works, so if it doesn’t work right first time you can quickly get lost in text files and Google searches. In my case I wanted it to do its normal magic, but to use a static IP address at all times. Here’s how I did it:

svcs svc:/network/physical This should show that ‘nwam’ is online and ‘default’ is disabled. If it doesn’t, off to Google with you!

Edit the file /etc/nwam/llp so that it says something like yukonx0 static 192.168.1.50/24 – yukonx0 is the name of your network adapter (mine is for a Mac Mini ethernet port), 192.168.1.50 is the IP you want to assign, and /24 shows that your subnet mask is 255.255.255.0. Your values will vary.

Edit the file /etc/nsswitch.conf and add dns to the hosts line, to give hosts: files dns.

Now delete the default route entry (this may well not exist, but it’s safest to remove and recreate): route delete default 192.168.1.1 (your default route may be different). Then add the entry back in permanently: route -p add default 192.168.1.1.

Finally restart nwam with svcadm restart svc:/network/physical:nwam and wait for a moment. It should tell you that it’s connected with IP 192.168.1.50 (or whatever you selected). Once that’s done you should be able to connect to the Internet, and more importantly be able to reboot and have it still work. Though it shouldn’t be necessary, if it’s not working immediately try rebooting.

VP Pick

Posted on June 18, 2008 by Paul — 5 Comments ↓

Some group I’ve never heard of is asking that the next Vice President be a ‘True Christian’, given that neither Presidential candidate counts, apparently. It brings up the old whine about marriage again, unsurprisingly:

The group isn’t suggesting names but is citing criteria for a perfect candidate, including that it be someone who is against abortion and for defining marriage as “a union between one man and one woman.” It plans to send the petition to the presidential candidates.

I don’t like that definition particularly, but part of my dislike is because it’s so wishy-washy. Historically marriage hasn’t been like that in many places and times, so what these loons are using isn’t historical precedent but their religious teaching. That’s fine, I guess, but if you’re going to commit to these things then you should commit:

It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:

But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.
Matthew 5:31-32

So marriage is between one man and one woman for life. And don’t think that you can get away with adultery:

And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
Leviticus 20:9-11*

Worryingly even not getting divorced doesn’t seem to be much protection there:

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
Matthew 5:27-28

That’s a pretty tall standard to live up to there. Or to quote a less Biblical scholar, Tony Hancock, “Stone me!”

*Yes I know, Christ’s arrival allowed us to put away some of the excesses of Old Testament behaviour, so we can just revile adulterers rather than actually killing them.

OpenSolaris on Mac Mini

Posted on June 13, 2008 by Paul — 2 Comments ↓

First of all, don’t. Just don’t. But if you must, here’s the driver to get the ethernet port to work on a Mac Mini under OpenSolaris. You’re welcome.

Vice-President Clinton

Posted on June 6, 2008 by Paul — 5 Comments ↓

Obama is having kinda-secret talks with Clinton about ‘bringing the party together’. There’s some speculation that she might be the VP. I’m hoping that this is just Obama being polite so as not to offend her supporters, because having her on the ticket is a potential disaster – Obama’s big thing is a change from the past, and as good as things were in some areas under the last Clinton, she’s too firmly anchored in people’s perceptions as being part of the bad old days.