No no no, the renewals are 180 days if you have Volume Licensed copies, Like Enterprise and Windows 10 LTSB. Then you have to check in with your local KMS (Key Management Server) within that time frame or you get the scary "Not Genuine" and "You might be a victim of software counterfeiting" messages.
Right now, for Retail and OEM Windows installs, the license for Windows lasts as long as your computer HWID stays the same. However, changing enough of your hardware generates a new HWID and you have to call up MS and beg for a new license. Which right now they do, but I'm sure that'll stop at some point.

So what you are saying is, "Now is not the time to get into app development", right?

Don't forgot, their new Java licensing scheme: Per physical core on the server side, and also by named user on the client side. $10 each. Yes, even if all the users use the workstation in shifts, they want to be paid 3 times or more. Combine that with the rapid deprecation of features (JavaFX, Java Web Start), and the Chrome catching version numbering scheme, and you have a recipe for disaster if you choose Java for any projects today. In fact, if you've done any development in Java, now might be the time to investigate alternative cross-platform technologies, like .NET.

I cannot believe I just recommended .NET over Java. What's the world coming to? So, for clarification, is there any possibility that MS could pull an Oracle with .NET?

I really didn't know that PS+ was half the price of Gold, and I forgot that the Gold games are 4/mo not 2/mo. Thank you for correcting me. Keep up the good work!

Nah, there's a dedicated server that Epic controls. The kids that are playing are clients of those servers. Normally MS & Sony (and now N) charge for the privilege of playing on their servers. From what I gather, Epic is paying those costs to keep kids playing.

If they ever stop making money, whatever update they are about to release would then require Nintendo Online to play.

• Fortnite (Switch) online free. Sources:
• Gamespot
• Polygon
• Express UK

I'm willing to bet Epic makes more money off skins than they would if they received a portion of the Nintendo Online subscription proceeds.

I have heard that Fortnite is free (I'm guessing that Epic is paying the N for the servers so that kids don't have to).

While I am mostly against fees for Online play in general, I do understand that the infrastructure (servers, what-not) has to be maintained somehow. MS charges $120/year for Gold and the PS4 Online charges are similar. The N is charging 1/3 that for up to 8 accounts ($35/yr). Gold gives[1] you (theoretically) 1 AAA game for the One and 1 AAA[2] for the 360. The N gives you 20 NES games (that re-authorize monthly) and online save storage.

[1] The XB1 games are only licensed. Once you drop your gold, they will no longer play - "This title is no longer licensed for your system" - or some such. The 360 games are yours to keep, but as with the XB1 titles, none of the online features will work.

[2] Xbox AAA includes ports of titles from other consoles, like Sega's "Wonder Boy in Monster Land" (Sega Master System, 1988) port for this month. A 30 year old game.

"Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker" was recently (2-3 months ago) released on Switch and 3DS.
It's a 3D puzzle based game. IIRC, the Switch version has some Mario Odyssey inspired levels.

I know I had an AMD 386DX/40. Intel was pretty expensive back then, and I couldn't have purchased the processor for what I paid for the whole full tower unit. Okay, so it was the Am386. You likely recall the K5 release name because they renamed the 586 the Pentium and the 686 the Pentium Pro, and they sued AMD and Cyrix for using the numbers 486 and 586. Ultimately Intel lost. However, to shield itself from lawsuits, AMD had no choice but to name their processor the K5. Also, Cyrix (now Via) named their processors the 5x86 and the 6x86.

That's cool. I must admit I'm now curious about that episode.

That's really quite disturbing. What's more disturbing is that they didn't have to doctor the standard Smurf footage all that much to do it. As for the live-action Smurfs - yeah - that's one of those things you either don't watch, or just watch once and say, "That was absolutely terrible. *poof* I wish they'd make a live-action Smurf movie. And while I'm wishing, a sequel to the Matrix would be nice, too."

Great, thanks!

I've seen those. Those Super Mario episodes (The Super Mario Bros Super Show) must have been extremely low budget. Usually, there would be a pretty bad live action segment followed by a terrible cartoon. To be fair, most Saturday morning cartoons were terrible - maybe as an incentive to get kids outside? Anyway, the to give TSMBSS mass-market appeal, the cartoon segment has a rap intro. When the credits rolled, it featured the live-action Mario (a sort-of-Italian white guy) rapping and 'dancing' while the credits rolled. You just have to see it

As for the Zelda cartoon - no rap intro, just narration. It is obvious one of the writers was a huge fan of Steve Martin, and tried to transfer some of Steve's stage persona to Link. Link doesn't pull it off - at all. He comes off as a whiny entitled punk seeking a kiss from Zelda. The entitled part might be why is isn't getting any. Maybe they should've gone with the Rodney Dangerfield "I get no respect" line instead?

• OT: Good Saturday morning cartoons

Mighty Orbots - Saturday morning sentai-type Japanese animation (small team, combining robots, etc). Single 1/2 season, 13 episodes (includes ending). Only aired for about six months. Production halted by a lawsuit from Tonka (GoBots). Not widely available.

Gummi Bears (Disney's Adventures of the) - Since this is from the 80s, it's likely locked in Disney's vault

Thundarr the Barbarian - futuristic fantasy. Like Conan, but set in the future. A princess/sorcerer and a Mok (a Wookie) are his companions.

The Littles - may as well call it the MacGuyvers. They could build anything out of cardboard, rubber bands and buttons. Including aircraft.

Muppet Babies - every episode was different, but the better ones were movie themed versions where the muppets would act out various roles. Idea for it came from the movie "The Muppets Take Manhattan"

Smurfs - little blue dudes from a magical forest. I preferred the original narration intro over the shortened doom & gloom intro.

Fat Albert - This taught kids the dangers of urban life, and is still somewhat relevant today. Some of the stereotypes are not-so-nice, and we've recently discovered that the main star was into helpless women, and therefore you'll likely never see this show anywhere.

em0? Do you mean en0? IIRC, it stands for Ethernet Network #0. IRIX uses (used) the same network naming scheme as well.

Pedantry aside, I sort of understand why the do the funky name scheme. The idea is that the name is based on the location of the slot, so PCI/PCIx slot #0, so that's where the p0 comes from. The s19 is a unique identifier based on some properties your card has. This way your cards don't bounce around the network names. However, some problems arise due to wireless cards identifying themselves on bus -209, so you get wireless names like wlx32559s18 and so on.

ArchLinux has come up with a way to deal with this, so long as you stay away from the standard eth0 (I use en numbers myself). It should work in the other Linux versions, also, but I've not tried it. Here's the link. That said, even back in the ifconfig days, I used something on a CentOS server these lines to give a specific eth-number affinity for a specific Ethernet port by mac address.

I understand why you've switched to BSD (FreeBSD?), I've used it in the past, back in the late 90s. My suggestion is to track stable, and dedicate some time to the mailing list to understanding what they are doing what they are doing. But don't upgrade stable (build world) without reading the release notes. There was a big deal when one of the stable bumps (like 3.8 to 3.11) broke world if you didn't stop off at 3.9 first. Also, build your own kernel. The kernel config for BSD, IIRC, is a giant text file. You flip the bits that you want, recompile, reboot and you are good to go.

Here now, I believe you've forgotten about the 0th octet?
chmod 777
is really
chmod 0777

The first three bits are:

SUID bit (4xxx) - Set UID on file. Runs with permission level of owner, use on executable files, beware, however, for if they are owned as root, they run as root. If you see a S, it means the SUID bit is set, but you cannot use it - the file's not executable. In Linux/Unix, does nothing for directories.

SGID bit (2xxx) - Set GID on file. Runs the executable with group ownership of the assigned group. Same with dirs.

Sticky Bit (1xxx) - Set sticky on a directory (see /tmp), prevents other users from truncating your temp files. On my Linux servers, the /tmp directory permissions are always 1777.

Nope, from what I gather the Mac drives were [zoned] CAV (constant angular velocity), and the PC drives were CLV (constant linear velocity).

I remember some CD ROM burners back in the day with these properties as well (Plextor comes to mind). That was important because it could more accurately write the main data channel, plus some p & q channels that SecuROM or SafeDisc used as copy projection measures (look up CloneCD / ClonyXXL, Alcohol 120%, DiscJuggler, and 1:1 copy).