Posts by bombastic bob

Satya Nadella decides Microsoft needs an engineering quality czar

Re: In 2026? Five years late...

some nameless beancounter counting beans wot got rid of their QA staff. It was the same time they all *FELT* (not thinking at all) that using the customer base to do their QA was a "good idea", just like TIFKAM, 2D FLATTY FLATSO, the 8.0 "start menu" tiles, the ads, the strongarming, the mandatory updates, yotta yotta, CUSTOMERS BE DAMNED!@!!

Yeah how'd THAT work out, Micros~1???

[oh wait they have a NEAR MONOPOLY - I forgot, been using FBSD and Linux for too long]

Stash or splash? Lawmakers ask NASA to find alternatives for International Space Station

everything eventually ends up in a landfill (or burns up in a de-orbit maneuver)

It's an ongoing issue with the things that humans make. I'm sure archaeologists will one day root through our trash and find a space shuttle or two.

Microsoft's Sinofsky saw Surface fail coming – then hit up Epstein for advice on exit

Re: Indicted

What about the negative impact of TIFKAM, Windows 'Ape' (8). Win-10-nic, the ads, the strongarming, the 2D FLATSO, yotta yotta - all Sinofsky's baby...

Sat Nad declares Windows 11 has a billion users – just don't bother asking for details

Re: Tired

Libre Office does everything I want. You do not need Office ~360

Re: The real reasons?

I got lucky. I set up an 11 box around 2 weeks ago. It was not able to "phone home" properly during the "set up user" part so I went on grok and it told me to do the following:

Press "Shift+F10" to open a command window while it shows the gripe screen

start ms-cxh:localonly

this utility bypasses the striongarming of an MS login and lets you create a user WITHOUT one.

[I think my firewall may have been blocking Micros~1's spyware from connecting back to me or similar, and this proved itself to be an ideal fix]

Re: The real reasons?

The ONLY reason I finally bought the "El Cheapo piece of crap Win 11 box" recently is because Intuit Turbo Tax (personal; business still supports 10 'cause businesses do not always timely upgrade) is not going to support 10 for tax software this year. BUT, I got a super-good year end deal on an El Cheapo for $129 and I just needed a simple HDMI to VGA adapter dongle and I'm good. Yes it actually runs and has enough HD space to install things.

I abandoned MSDN/VS subscription 2 or 3 years ago because it was expensive, I could not install 11 in a VM easily, and I figured the smart choice was to get an "El Cheapo" if I actually needed an 11 box.

Micros~1 lost a previously (prior to 8) dedicated development customer. I now only do windows if I have to, which is not that common, on a 7 box or in a 7 VM, using DevStudio 2010 for C or C++ with MFC, and targeting 7 [but adding the 10 compatibility crap to the manifest].

People are VERY disappointed with 11, seeing a lot of noise on X about that, and the 1 billion users are ONLY using 11 because there is NO CLEAR ALTERNATIVE for most people.

I blame software vendors for ONLY targeting Windows and abandoning other OS's, like OS/X and Linux. They could at LEAST validate Wine compatibility, target 7 (or even XP), and AVOID using any of Micros~1's stupid shared libs, especially ".Not".

Tesla revenue falls for first time as Musk bets big on robots and autonomy

Re: Oh dear

actually for the moon and mars, we DO need these robots to build things for whem humans arrive.

Re: Needs money

Tesla's sales would disappear overnight if Chinese EVs were allowed to be sold in the US.

Made by slave-wage overworked victims of the CCP. I don't think so!

The practice of DUMPING by CCP China is why their cars will either be tariffed or banned.

If other countries do not do the same (means YOU, Canada) then watch your domestic auto (and other) industries disappear! THEN we ALL end up working for SLAVE WAGES under the CCP BOOT.

Remember what they did to us during the virus scare, WITHHOLDING shipments of medicine masks, ventilators, and other things that were deemed necessary at ghe time, causing SHORTAGES???

I doubt they've changed much.

AI datacenter boom triples US gas power builds, filling the air with more CO2

Re: So this article was sponsored by China, yes?

CO2 is *NOT* pollution. YOU are EXHALING it right now.

It is PLANT FOOD!

Re: Did you not get the memo?

exactly. CO2 is NOT in any significant way affecting world climate, local climate, weather, etc. It is plant food, something that hillsides NOT covered with solar panels would GLADLY consume...

Systemd daddy quits Microsoft to prove Linux can be trusted

Re: the systemd ecosystem

Shhhh - don't mention AI in the same sentence with "the init system that must not be named"...

Debian goes retro with a spatial desktop that time forgot

except Mate lets you use 3D-looking decorations and title bar buttons [or not, your choice], whereas Windows is NOW all 2D FLATTY...

Re: BIOS Boot process

recently had trouble with a few-years-old HP box with a 2016 BIOS that could not directly boot FBSD on an 8TB drive (2TB worked fine). 8TB uses gpart since traditional DOS-like partitioning won't work. I had to leave an "ultimate boot" CD in the drive so I could reliably boot it. Just pointing that out... and it has a 3.2Ghz Intel CPU and came with Win-10-nic so is not THAT old. VirtualBox booted with no problem when I was building the new drive. [worthy of mention on BIOS bootup and older hardware]

Re: Not bad

I particularly like the 3D Skeuomorphic appearance in the screenshots. I had to zoom in, but it seems to be there.

Now, if we can somehow force the re-appearance of classic menus AND eliminate the [swear, spit] HAMBURGER menu for all [compliant] GTK-based applications, I'd be STOKED!

As for the oval [Adwaita] scrollbars [especially self-hiding ones] you mentioned, I have NOTHING but CONTEMPT. Adwaita should be killed to death by burning with FLAMES of FIRE.

Gmail preparing to drop POP3 mail fetching

Re: Thunderbird for the win

this just might help solve my cyrus upgrade issues... thanks for that, I'll have a look

Everybody has a theory about why Nvidia dropped $20B on Groq - they're mostly wrong

Grok vs Groq

Other than trademark laws, to "grok" something means to understand it [in 'hackish']

And it's a fair bet Grok uses a LOT of NVidia chips...

And I happen to *LIKE* Grok.

Mozilla Corporation installs Firefox driver in CEO reboot

Re: Return of Bob

/me shuddering from nightmares of CLIPPY in a web browser...

Re: easy steps to disabling it

Alternately we should have a choice of AI providers, including "None". That would pretty much fix EVERYTHING, In My Bombastic Opinion!

So, Google, Amazon, Grok, Notion, Somebody Else, His Uncle, and NONE! Just like search engines.

AND... a SPECIFIC setting to disable AI *AND* search in the URL Address bar!!! [I hate typos or LAN addresses re-directing me to god knows what]

{oh, and 3D Skeuomorphic, color buttons, contrast enhancement, restore compatibility with TraditionalOK [Adwaita SUCKS], and ability to SHUT OFF THE HAMBURGER hwhen you enable the menu bar... those have been on my wish list for a LONG time!}

China, Iran are having a field day with React2Shell, Google warns

Re: Meanwhile

yeah nobody in the US gummint ever [ab]uses gummint power to "do whatever" right?

[over here we trust our barbers with knives near out throats but the 9 most frightening words in ther US'ian language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."]

Re: Meanwhile

We're the good guys over here in the USA - so when WE do it, spying and backdoors are ok.

Starlink claims Chinese launch came within 200 meters of broadband satellite

One by one... watch them fall... like domi-dominoes - domi-dominoes!

If 2 satellites collide like billiard balls you're gonna get one nasty domino effect...

I doubt either one of them would be easily controllable after smacking at potentially 18kMPH or more depending on the vectors

And now that Noonoori song is in my head. Thanks, El Reg!

China’s first reusable rocket explodes, but its onboard Ethernet network flew

Re: Agreed

It took most of Elon's net worth to get it working for SpaceX. And SpaceX rocket men are a HELL of a lot smarter than CCP's rocket men, given CCP's rocket men are STILL IN CHINA (an oppressive creativity-hostile COMMUNIST regime) and HAVE NOT YET LEFT!!! It's not like nobody would hire them elsewhere in the world...

Re: Ethernet on rockets

I once saw a demonstration at a university (Cal Poly) where a student had set up a flame with a couple of probes connected to a modulated high voltage source. He'd put some kind of dry chemical on the probes occasionally to make it work. But when it ran you could hear guitar playing coming out of the flame. And so we scale this up to a rocket's flame being modulated for communications. What a world of [MAD] science! Next time they launch, perhaps something by David Bowie...

Latest Windows 11 updates may break the OS's most basic bits

Re: win2k snappy ?

Now, it's:

*NEW* *SHINY* Windows II, with MODERN applications (that only fail occasionally), and MORE CRAP!

Re: Modern apps

Why are these considered modern?

Market-speak. kinda like double-speak, to keep the mookscustomers satisfied that windows 1.0 and windows II are actual "improvements" over what we had in XP and 7... regardless of what we see with our own eyes.

Aisuru botnet turns Q3 into a terabit-scale stress test for the entire internet

'Aisuru' - meaning in Japanese

I translate it as an equivalent to "I love you" like the old-school worm from May 2000

Re: Stupid question

there's always the script-kiddie motive, "for the lulz" so he can brag about being "31337 H4x0rz"

Microsoft quietly shuts down Windows shortcut flaw after years of espionage abuse

Re: WT...

often [hidden] file extensions for "attached things" make them executable from within an e-mail or after a download by double-clicking, and when extensions are hidden (by default) you could see "a note for you.txt" but it's actually an exe or lnk or com or vbs or any of a number of OTHER extensions that by default, open up and run as an application.

Re: I call bullshit

adding to the conspiracy theory, all of the exports found searching through system DLL's for exported function names back in the Win 9x days, and SOME that had "NSA" in their names... (or was that XP? I forget). Built-in back door for the NSA, for the "Win[dows]"!

China using AI as ‘precision instrument’ of censorship and repression, at home and abroad

none of this surprises me

CCP stands for Chinese COMMUNIST Party.

Censorship is what they do. It's part of the whole Big Brother CONTROL thing.

Windows 11 needs an XP SP2 moment, says ex-Microsoft engineer

Re: There's no slowing down this fecal train

I'd suggest downloading Linux Mint and sticking it on a USB drive and then you can boot from that USB drive

I made one of those recently for a couple of reasons, a Devuan live system that so far works on whatever I plug it into (assuming amd64 instruction set). Used it last week to change hard drives in a windows 7 system. dd is just too easy, ya know? if=old_drive, of=new_drive, wait an hour or 2, drive swap, then boot up. Had to ignore errors in dd (conv=noerror) and on boot, told windows to fix itself [old HD was not booting past that point]. A couple of minor issues, and expand NTFS partition to fit the new drive, and voila, running better than evar!

A 512Gb USB drive is VERY affordable, easily holds a full desktop system using Linux, and Linux drive tools help you fix systems like what I just got done doing. [a USB 3 to SATA thingy helps a LOT for copying to the new drive, though]

Re: The tragedy is...

Summarty: as with Gnome, Poettering's follies, Open Desktop [with their Wayland/Gnome fetish], and several other projects that have gone the wrong direction (including WINDOWS)...

When the Ents retire, the noobs are NOW running the show. They rapidly rub their palms together and, with a sinister grin, claim "It is **OUR** turn NOW!"

And like in Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority" they start re-inventing everything according to their own image of what it SHOULD be, ignoring what users/customers want, because it is THEIR TURN now!

And THEN, Windows 7.1 becomes Windows 8 with TIFKAM!!! And it all flows downhill from there, right into the nearest cesspit of FAIL.

Re: Windows 11 is pretty bad

it's more fun to gripe about it and compete with other horror stories on who's had the worst experience with "Windows II"

The single worst thing about it is that next year's tax software will require Windows II to install. I'm considering setting up a special wine build and trying an install on that, see how well it works. Sadly I have no clue on what the '.Not' crap will do if i attempt a Wine install... 10 never worked with my HP printer/scanner combo and I'm sure 11 won't, either, so I've had to print to PDF, copy to BSD or Linux, then print to the printer if I need hard copy. Similar for scanning [SANE works perfectly as well as CUPS, go fig for Micros~1...]

Makers slam Qualcomm for tightening the clamps on Arduino

Re: Just to clarify

NEVER VSCODE!!!

Old IDE should work JUST FINE with legacy designs. All we have to do is FORK it. There is NO need to use Micros~1 CRAPWARE for ANY of this.

Re: The corporate answer to CC and GPL

well, forking everything on the software side NOW can help to preserver the OSS stuff.

I have an XMega library I use a lot for custom hardware projects and use an older version of Arduino's IDE to build it. Pretty easy to use, really. I wrote it by adapting it from Arduino years ago and it's GPL'd etc.. The XMega is an ATMega processor with better peripherals and twice clock speed, works without a crystal or resonator, and runs at 3.3v but is otherwise compatible. NVRAM for programs up to 256K and most have 2 or more serial ports, making it useful for a LOT more things... anyway making your own compatible board with this other processor is possible but you need to pay attention to 3.3v vs 5V levels.

NOW - will QUALCOMM "ALLOW" experimenters to do this...???

Microsoft blanks out BSODs on public displays with new ‘Digital Signage mode’

Re: Well there it is

simply not using systemd might fix that

Re: Desperation

can't powerpoint convert it's output to a video? Just curious... If so, make it an mp4 video (or whatever) then have el cheapo RPi-based signage play the video full screen on bootup and be done with it

Re: They're tired of the memes

simple - instead of BSOD run a random output from the Linux screensaver of the same name and rotate them, and everyone will say "oh it's just a screensaver"

US pumps $1B into Three Mile Island nuclear plant reboot to keep AI datacenters fed

a good start [pun intended]

Seeing TMI being brought back "out of mothball storage" is a good start.

I'd also like to see San Onofre's power plant come back (located about halfway between San Diego and Los Angeles). I had several friends that worked there at the time it was shut down [the recently replaced boiler of a particular flawed design developed premature leaks years before expected end of life]. That plant was summarily shut down because regulators would not allow it to be operated below rated power (to prevent leaks in one plant) while replacing the boiler in the other. As a result Southern Cal Edison shut it down and stores spent fuel there but that's it, and everyone in California has to pay a "nuclear decommissioning" surcharge on their electric bills...

So yeah, past STUPID policies are FINALLY being addressed OUTSIDE of Cali-F-You, so I'm hoping that common sense will at least increase a little here, and get San Onofre (SONGS) back online.

Mozilla's Firefox 145 is heeeeeere: Buffs up privacy, bloats AI

Re: AI

If you ask me, there ought to be a choice, grok vs OpenAI etc. or NONE.

MS Task Manager turns 30: Creator reveals how a 'very Unixy impulse' endured in Windows

Re: Blow main tanks

remember, it's 2 blasts on the klaxon then "Dive, Dive", and 3 blasts then "Surface, surface, surface". Sometimes people get those backwards [even in old movies you see it].

fixing UI elements in Linux

depending on your desktop the fix for auto-hide and width is a setting and probably documented someplace that takes searching to find. I suggest grok,com, ask how to make the scrollbar wider and turn off autohide and give it the desktop and version and it'll tell you pretty explicitly

Microsoft's lack of quality control is out of control

Re: Microsoft gave up all pretext of caring about QA/QC ...

A joking rumor says Elon's starting up a company called MegaHard to rewrite all of windows using AI.

I think that'd be a GREAT idea for Wine, actually... make it 100% compatible with Windows 11 applications by re-writing the entire Wine system [for XOrg, naturally, NOT Wayland] so we can FINALLY ditch Micros~1 COMPLETELY

Re: Microsoft gave up all pretext of caring about QA/QC ...

a lot of the bloat on startup is Windows Defender and various .Net things that for some reason MUST EAT RESOURCES for the first 10 minutes or so...

Re: Microsoft gave up all pretext of caring about QA/QC ...

to add to your mention, Micros~1's QA layoffs [and general bad attitude about what CUSTOMERS actually WANTED] coincided with the release of W10.

I participated in the W10 insider program with the hopes of getting Micros~1 to change their Sinofsky-inpired ways. They FAILED.

As for terms describing their QA and customer service performance, I propose "Under-whelming Quality Concern, delivered 'as-is'."

SpaceX and Musk called on to rescue China's Shenzhou-20 crew

A bit opposite from "The Martian"

As I recall in "The Martian" the U.S. kept messing up on the supply rocket (etc.) and China (in the story line) bailed us out. [that part seemed 'forced to fit' In My Bombastic Opinion]

This time around being a bit more realistic - I say "glad to help!" "Falcons are GO!" This would be even more interesting in "Supermarionation" [I loved that show when I was a kid, watched them all when they were new. Thunderbird 3 hardly ever got to fly on a mission, though.]

I'm curious what the turnaround on a man-rated Dragon + Falcon would be from "now" to launch... guess we'll see!

Help desk boss fell for ‘Internet Cleaning Day’ prank - then swore he got the joke

Re: Prankers

Almost a prank, where software devs, all necessarily having Linux (or FreeBSD) desktop and laptop boxen and inevitably most ran the BSOD screensaver. One day CEO goes past the cubes (these were the idiotic low wall height variety, practically an open bay office with mini-walls) and sees BSOD panic screens and immediately thinks something is wrong, and gets ahold of the (one) I.T. guy who really did not know Linux that well [but he was a good net an hardware guy, and Windows server admin].

something "less than comedy" ensued that I would have laughed about until th department head got angry at us... "never run that screen saver again!" etc.

'Windows sucks,' former Microsoft engineer says, explains how to fix it

Re: Who has a choice anyway

opposite for me. I usually bring my own device running FBSD or Linux because it is IMPOSSIBLE to get things done on a windows machine.

Examole: doing embedded development on a linux OS board (like RPi for example), and I need to build, edit, and debug software on that board to develop efficiently, SO I use a Linux or FreeBSD laptop running an XOrg-based desktop (like Mate), use "xhost" to allow connecting to the laptop, and "export DISPLAY=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:0.0" on the embedded board (via ssh or serial port, whichever) then run editors like pluma with the display and input on my laptop (generally much bigger than an embedded device's display, if it even has one). And so on.

Often BOSS sees it as SO efficient he finds an older desktop for me to install Linux on, and I bring in a CD or USB drive with the latest net installer on it, and nuke windows off of the box, set it up for embedded Linux development, and leave it on 7/24 to be accessed remotely by me using an ssh tunnel back to my home office.... and so on.

Re: I watched the video. He's basically describing Linux.

True. Although there IS documentation, a lot of it is hard to find (and probably INCOMPLETE). MSDN docs used to be like reading an actual a book, where the info you needed was RIGHT THERE, but NOW it is like a circle-jerking click bait website that charges per visited link...

Re: I watched the video. He's basically describing Linux.

If it wasn't free, nobody would be using it.

Android phones are based on Linux, and iOS and OS/X both use a Mach (UNIX) kernel similar to BSD. Apple also forked the FreeBSD 5 user applications for use in OS/X, and the gnu versions in Linux are very similar.

Last I checked nobody is using Windows on phones or slabs. Only OS's REALLY being used are Android (Linux) and iOS except for a few cheapie flip phones (like mine) that are just phones.

So what were you saying about nobody using Linux...?