Eclectic

Language, computing, and other topics

Archive for the ‘computing’ Category

Unsubscribing from Zoom Release Notes E-Mails

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Button labeled "Following" with drop-down menu open

For a long time now Zoom has been sending release notes to the e-mail account I used to register. I didn’t want this and so I scrolled to the bottom looking for a way to unsubscribe, but found nothing. I also searched the web where I found information on unsubscribing from meeting notifications, but nothing about the release note e-mails. Today I finally figured out how to unsubscribe.

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Written by David Chappell

February 11th, 2023 at 12:02 pm

Posted in computing

Why All Capitals?

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A news report in all upper case on the platen of a Model 15 Teletype

A Teletype Model 15 teleprinter
Attribution: John Nagle at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Q: Why do some users complete forms all in capital letters?

This is because early teleprinters and computer systems had no provision for lower case. Mixed case teleprinters came on the market in the 1930’s, but the standard US military teleprinter of World War II was the Teletype Model 15 (produced from 1928 to 1963) which only printed in upper case. This exposed an entire generation to official communications and reports typed in all upper case. This ‘official’ style was then duplicated by users of typewriters by engaging the Caps Lock toggle key.

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Written by David Chappell

October 17th, 2021 at 8:37 am

Posted in computing

Updating Webmin’s Self-Signed Certificate

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When SSL is enable in Webmin it creates a self-signed certificate which is stored in the file /etc/webmin/miniserv.pem. I recently upgraded a server from Debian 7 to Debian 9 and discovered that Webmin would no longer start.

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Written by David Chappell

August 28th, 2019 at 10:50 am

Waiting to Bite: BIND and Invalid Zone Files

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It looks like Webmin lets you create DNS entries which BIND 9 does not like. When it sees one it refuses to load the whole zone and keeps what it has in RAM. This may go unnoticed for months until the server is rebooted. BIND then restarts with that zone completely empty!
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Written by David Chappell

January 14th, 2016 at 9:34 pm

Is open source telephony a serious option?

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I was recently asked whether anyone would every really consider replacing a tired old PBX with an open source system and whether we had any experience with Asterisk. Here is the answer I wrote, based on our experience here at Trinity College.
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Written by David Chappell

June 10th, 2008 at 3:56 pm