Posts by bombastic bob 10819 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015
Who fact checks the fact checkers? How are they funded?
InB4 someone else mentions...
*I* heard they were funded by Soros and WEF and ClimateScammers!
(But of course no ;proof beyond an opinion) (which makes tossing the climate / Soros / WEF hand grenade into the conversation even MORE fun)
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"Or is fossil fuel REALLY that cheap in the US. I doubt it."
Not at the moment, but they will be again. DRILL BABY DRILL!!
'Old Equipment' and the outrageous costs and regulatory environment with respect to boiler/steam generator replacement caused the San Onofre power plant to shut down (just north of San Diego). Details are in the Wikipedia article.
I blame excessive regulation on the overall equipment replacement costs, and ultimately the shutdown and decommissioning of the power plant. SONGS wanted to operate a single plant at reduced power (to avoid further leakage) while re-replacing the defective boilers in the other plant [then switch operating plants and do the other one] but NRC said NO and they had to close. It was that simple. REGULATORS killed it.
Your post smells of popular perception and misinformation,, which is generally DEAD WRONG, and based on *FEEL* (not science) and F.U.D.
And fossil fuels [a misnomer, "carbon-based" is more accurate] are NOT "damaging the Earth". In many cases we avoid "damage" by pumping out liquid hydrocarbons before they leak to the surface and form TAR PITS. The Earth itself forms hydrocarbons and CO2 gas from within the mantle, which contains a LOT of carbon (it is the 4th most abundant element in the universe, behind oxygen, helium, and hydrogen). And man-made CO2 from burning carbon-based fuels is *NOT* causing any kind of 'Climate Change'. A plethora of supporting information on that topic can be found on Tony Heller's web site "realclimatescience.com" if you want to see it.
Since I used to operate nuclear reactors for the US Navy I know quite a bit about the topic. I also know that the biggest stumbling blocks for nuclear energy are political, from wacky environmentalists abusing court systems to keep plants from operating (or being built), to those who want to insert "Governmentium" into EVERYTHING.
The San Onofre power plant just north of San Diego should re-open NEXT. People I knew from the Navy had been working there. My electricity rates were lower when it was operational, instead of relying on UNRELIABLE wind farms, etc.. Instead my power bill has a "decommissioning fee/tax" on it. Yeah. Thanks "Gummy" [a portmanteu of 'Gummint' and 'Mommy']
is any of your kit made in China? Because the Chinese government is now taking an interest in your company.
Which is why the world needs to STOP BUILDING OUR STUFF OVER THERE (until they stop acting like evil communists)
Might take a while for that last part...
[stop teaching a POTENTIAL ENEMY how to make ALL OF OUR TECH!!!]
This is what happens \when a COMMUNIST country is building all of those devices with SLAVE LABOR and have intimate knowledge of their inner workings... and a pattern of EXACTLY this kind of nefarious behavior, from violation of I.P. to outright criminal activity (like THIS).
NEVER trust ANYTHING Nuisance says, does, or claims. See title.
Article: if the AI industry is pushed too hard, it might flee California and take its billions in funding with it.
Businesses are ALREADY fleeing Cali-Fornicate-You. Shoving ANY more regulatory, tax, anti-freedom, and/or tyrannical heavy-handed nonsense onto us "Peasants" is likely to drive nearly everyone (who is NOT an illegal alien on the dole) to Texas, Florida, or even Arizona or New Mexico. Living in hell is still hell, even when it has nice weather.
Politicians have NO CLUE as to what is going on with AI or _ANY_ kind of tech. They just want their grubby little fingers in it so they can extort campaign contributions and say they're "doing something" at election time.
But when you DO point out the obvious, it's usually funny!
From the article speech can be considered incitement to violence, and thus not protected, if it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action," and "likely to produce such action."
Like things said by Nancy 'Skeletor' Pelosi, 'Mad' Maxine Waters, 'Sleepy' Joe Biden, Komrade Kamala Harris, [up]Chuck Schumer.... ah hell, MOST of the Democrats, even comparing Trump to Hitler and insisting he'll be a dictator and end democracy.
Yeah, no "incitement" there...
[just let people say what they want and stop trying to censor and cancel - tolerance is a 2 way street]
to prevent use-after-free bugs, try this:
#define FREE(X) { if(X) { free(X); (X) = NULL; } }
then use 'FREE()' rather than 'free()'
Similarly
#define DELETE(X) { if(X) { delete (X); (X) = NULL; } }
too easy, yeah. Also implied, always pre-assign pointers to NULL or immediately 'malloc()' or 'new' when declared - no unassigned pointers being free'd
[sometimes the easy solutions just stare you right in the face, and do not require new,shiny lingo nor new,shiny lingo spec and can be implemented with 'sed']
"There will be a lot of fairly high spec PC's hitting the USED market at cheapo prices"
I guess I should comb places like E-Bay again for a spare server - it only needs half the processing power as it's merely a firewall amd NAS running mail, subversion, etc. with FBSD. Any 64-bit machine with decent RAM and I merely swap in the hard drive, good to go! the current one has 5G RAM and a 1.8Ghz Intel Core Duo. Works fine with GBit LAN (dual homed). It just needs to be reliable enough, that's all. Runs FBSD with ZFS. Hard drive has been replaced a couple of times, though.
Is also possible to get some CCP piece of crap mini-PC for under $200, multi-homed even. Not sure I'd trust one o' those, however...
"not good for the environment" - well, occupying landfills with still-working tech isn't good for anyone EXCEPT for those whose cash flow depends on obsolescence and replacement of various computer hardware.
The tech is just not improving that fast nowadays. A 10 yo machine is nearly as fast as a "today" machine, maybe with half the RAM, but if the applications were not DELIBERATELY WRITTEN to be PIGS, then that should not be an issue. I'm talking to YOU, Micros~1.
NodeJS-based desktop applications, TIFKAM/UWP, C-pound/.Not, BASS-ACKWARDS 'object-oriented' (which to them means collections, including GARBAGE collections), and all of that OTHER BLOATWARE running within the guts of Winders these days, do NOT an upgrade necessarily require.
I think Micros~1 is just trying to DRIVE HARDWARE SALES AGAIN. And knowing THEM, it will be intended to ENRICH the CCP. And, THEMSELVES.
(the honest business practice is to make people WANT to purchase something by providing what customers want/need, NOT drive them like CATTLE into an ECONOMIC SLAUGHTERHOUSE!!!)
Have you ever
* written a device driver or kernel module
* coded for a microcontroller
* used assembly language for speed
* hand-optimized inner loops for speed/efficiency
If not, THIS is why you do not understand why Linus chose 'C'. It's also true that UNIX and BSD kernels are written in 'C' so the BSD network stack (for example) could be easily ported to Linux.
I like that - a lint-like external tool for 'C' that evaluates code for "code smells". Make it compiler independent, even better. Just add it to Makefile as part of the .c.o rule, perhaps "lint-like-tool cc [args]" as the command line. works for me!
Like a BETTER MOUSETRAP
"The thing that always gets me about computer scientists is when there is a problem, the first thing they do is invent a new language to try and solve it in!"
New/shiny and "It is OUR turn now" are a large part of that.
In theory you could 3D print a mold, make a (or many) wax version(s) of that part, put wax version in plaster or casting sand, cast a metal part, then machine it with a decent mill/lathe/whatever. 3D print would speed up the process, but making a mold of "a something" can NOT be effectively stopped with a law. Not even close.
In my opinion, just LEGALIZE as much as you can, so law abiding citizens can LEGALLY own them, and any black market problem will just GO AWAY.
(and when law abiding citizens carry firearms, criminals run scared),
thinking of ref counting, this works when it's necessary like with data of indeterminate lifetime, especially regarding thread safety. Inside a kernel, unless such a thing is NECESSARY, if you have a proper design you will not need it (and I have one example where I used ref counts to solve memory leak problems in an already designed system, which could not be refactored n a short time to fix it any other way). Having built-in ref counting (or 'smart pointer'ing) there IN THE WAY adds extra unnecessary clock cycles to kernel things that often need to be blisteringly fast and efficient, because, kernel code. This is the beauty of C which is generally VERY close to assembly language in efficiency. You can use it to write efficient ISR's.
It's not "garbage collection" it's programmatically adding the freeing of memory when the compiler FEELS it should, or by using reference counts, or by PFM and religious ceremonies...
Pfft. Whatever. Call it "Automatic trash pickup" then. It STILL will SLOW THINGS DOWN and WASTE MEMORY, 2 things you should NEVER let happen in a kernel.
Check out the Linux network stack, and how it tosses buffers around the stack, and trims and reshapes them, to minimize copying - aka 'zero copy buffering'. It uses a LOT of pointers, too.
Good luck coding something THAT efficient in Rust... (and we'll include pre-allocated memory in linked lists too while we're at it)
reading these kinds of replies makes ElReg more interesting
Agreed on the GC - it is my #1 resistance motivator to having Rust in a kernel. And as I mentioned earlier, if 'smart pointers' are too slow, and you use 'unsafe' ones instead, WHY shoehorn a "new, shiny" programming language into the kernel and NOT just use C???
(No advantages for Rust other than "feel" I bet.)
[and don't EVEN get me started on the LACK OF BRILLIANCE showed by Google when they REWROTE FIRMWARE just so they could use Rust...]
"no downside" ?
* garbage collection memory model
* steep learning curve
* so-called "smart" pointers [pointers are crucial to create certain data structures like linked lists, used EVERYWHERE in the Linux kernel, and adding "smart" with GC just turned a 1 machine cycle operation into MANY machine cycles, unnecessarily, KILLING performance. This is the KERNEL, not a DOCUMENT EDITOR]
(don't get me started on the semantically challenged 'unsafe pointers' vs 'smart pointers' thing, because if you resort to 'unsafe' then why not just DO IT IN 'C'?)
These come to mind right away, and GC along with 'smart' pointers KILL performance. Try contributing kernel code that does ANY data verification. It ALL assumes each part ensures the data is good BEFORE passing it around. Adding param and value checks SLOWS EVERYTHING DOWN and you WILL care if it is the network or disk IO.
And from what I have read, Rust does EXACTLY THAT!!!
/me has contributed a small amount of code to FreeBSD and their standards are VERY high. I assume Linux is the same, based on what I have read about Linus.
only IBM's stupid software was pronounced that way (including the original 'SEQL' apparently, another IBM thing from which SQL was derived), and the first time I heard it called "sequel" (early 90's) I tried to research what the guy was talking about, and there were no programs called "Sequel whatever' in ANY of the literature I checked. It's inherently inaccurate to pronounce it that way.
The LANGUAGE was always S. Q. L. (not to be confused with the predecessor) but the IBM SOFTWARE was "Sequel Server". And I REFUSE to allow IBM marketeers from the 80's/90's to define how I pronounce something!!!
(and anyone at a jobsite I'm at calling it "sequel" is in danger of extreme ridicule from me)
Mate's "pluma" editor does 90% of what I need an IDE to do, and shell+make does almost all of the rest.
VS is overrated. I still use 2010 (the last of the NON-FLATSO aka NON-TIFKAM versions) if I have to do anything on winders. It just works. But 95% of what I do is Linux-based so there ya go.
I think that problems with SQL Server started when they kept calling it "Sequel Server" - WTF is "Sequel" ? [anyone who pronounce SQL as 'sequel' deserves a sharp strike with a rubber chicken, preferably by John Cleese wearing a suit of armor]
It's just been slow to rot on the vine. Too much REAL competition from Oracle, PostreSQL, etc. so the touches have been lighter, and better quality code.
the massive RAM needs are probably because of the use of lingos like C-pound and all of that "Dot Not" crap.
Micros~1 forgot how to write efficient software back in the days of Windows Vista and Server 2003.
[and it has only gotten WORSE]
As computers become faster with more available memory, software will naturally grow to fill the empty void and consume all available resources, and NOT show any real improvement in overall performance and/or perceived quality
(ok I just made that up but sounds "quotable" right?)
as you plan your move to something better than Exchange.
THAT would seem to be the REAL solution.
I like Cyrus for POP & IMAP, and good ol' sendmail.. Other solutions exist, too. Cyrus works ok with a 'droid slab when I'm out an about, secure TLS acess over "teh intarwebs". Setup meant doing a few RTFMs and intarweb searches.
Sometimes these old tried and true (and VERY WELL TESTED) systems "just work".
I haven't looked at Rocky Linux lately but maybe their basic e-mail system setup would do for most people...?
I am classed as 'neurodivergent', having been diagnosed with Asperger's, and I do need special treatment. I need people to be direct, blunt and to disregard tactfulness. I don't get subtlety, and I can also be very blunt and tactless.
That is what I call "common sense and efficiency in communications".
If you have to stop and *FEEL* you're wasting time!!! It's like "just say it directly". Like in the (used to be that way) military. Black Adder would approve...
neuro-di-what-the-FEEL???
If you are referring to the calling of BRILLIANCE and GENIUS a "disorder" of some kind, sure. That is nearly always INAPPROPRIATE, by the (wannabe) shrink to have DONE so. One man's ADHD or Asperger's is another man's GENIUS and BRILLIANCE and of course, "emotional IQ" is for BABIES! So if Tim is really just your average geeky genius who happens to exhibit a few "I do not give a crap about your feelings" behaviors, is THIS what he's being criticized for? It makes me think even more that CoC's might be used by hypersensitive whiner activists who cannot deal with others accidentally "hurting their FEELINGS" without getting all fascist and tyrannical and CONTROLLING to over-compensate for their OWN pathetic isues...
(good luck getting cool stuff invented without geniuses)
I was trying to approach this with an open mind. The question of whether CoC was being implemented by either fascists or whiny little babies who have no sense of humor, balanced against trollish offensive posting of public comments, is likely to have tipped over in favor of the "accused" on this one.
Sad because CoC's should not even have to exist, nor whiny baby activists who seem to want to write them way too much...
these politicians talk out BOTH sides of their mouths.
Gov Le Petomaine: "I didn't get a harumph out of you!"
Gov lacky: "Harumph!"
Gov Le Petomaine: "You watch your ass"
(From 'Blazing Saddles')
Google will continue MANIPULATING RESULTS (and people) with a STRANGLEHOLD on the 'search' market space (like Micros~1 does with software) and
NOT! A! SINGLE! THING! WILL! BE! DONE! ABOUT! IT!!!
Keeping AI development "open" is one way of "controlling the narrative", or at least putting everyone on an even playing field. To participate it becomes more practical to use the open code rather than starting over from scratch.
The moment the source is primarily closed, a monopoly becomes more likely, RIGHT Micros~1??? Google?
THAT and making a BSOD boot optionally jump to a screen that gives you the ability to ROLL BACK THE SYSTEM or "safe boot" instead of showing an UNRECOVERABLE TOMBSTONE SCREEN
You know like "press F1 for recovery options" somewhere on the BSOD screen. XP used to have something like this as I recall, detecting a failed boot the next time you start up. But I only use 10 in a VM...
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