Posts by bombastic bob

'AI is not the cause, it’s an accelerant. The pace of change is challenging' Experts give Congress deepfakes straight dope

Re: Missing the point

"even before the 90s we learned at school how to find and trust primary sources before jumping to 'OMG THEY SAID THIS'."

Fixed it for ya. I think that pretty much explains it. 4-inchers (people who view everything through a 4-inch screen) under the age of 40 may be driving all of this... and the "lack of education" system set them up.

All their base are belong to fake news. They have been set up the bomb. etc.

/me has a nice faked-up photo that I did with Obama's face as 'Cats' and the 'All your base are belong to us' as a demotivational... [it was fun]. It wasn't purely my idea, but I ran with it and made it better.

plastic pollution in the oceans? ugh, I hate environmentalist wackos using these kinds of premises as "examples" because we can EASILY forget to QUESTION THE @#$%-DAMNED PREMISE IN THE FIRST PLACE!

oh, and thanks for the subtle 'fake news' embedded in there. Nice. Job.

this could easily become like YOU BEATING YOUR WIFE because that is JUST AS FAKE as you asserting the 'plastic pollution in the oceans' thing.... [yes it's a reference to that classic leading question of 'how long have you been beating your wife' to which there is NO possible answer that comes WITHOUT the un-due criticism].

Such tactics are transparent. Your 'tricks' are for CHILDREN. <-- that was a reference to a breakfast cereal commercial

Re: Fakes versus bias

"So we all take our news with a grain of salt, which is probably a good thing."

The BEST thing that can come out of a ship-load of convincing 'fake news' is that people actually DO this, start thinking instead of feeling/reacting, and recognize that there is way too much B.S. out there to leave your skeptic hat on the hat rack while viewing it.

Hell, let's just call B.S. and 'fake news' on EVERYTHING, and wait for the dust to settle.

Re: OpenAI?

"OpenAI is a deep, well thought out and prepared deception, provocation and diversion."

without actually researching whether or not I'm right [and I most likely am, instinctively] I would venture to guess that Open AI covers a broader spectrum of what A.I. _could_ be, sort of like what the STL libraries have tried to do with all of their implementations for various collections of things, in a GENERIC sense, which tends to be inefficient [but covers a wide spectrum of possibilities].

So yeah there's an example or two of "that" out there, which also suggests that using OpenAI [like using STL] is not necessarily a bad choice except (possibly) for certain exceptions.

And if I bothered to research this, which I probably won't, I'd probably just confirm what my instincts and experience are telling me.

Re: News and my patented blockchain AI technology

I'm too lazy to do a patent search, but if you were to give us the patent number we could all look at it ourselves to see what it's all about... and THEN snark all over it!

heh heh heh heh

/me recognizes a few patents out there for things like perpetual motion devices, microwave based star drive systems, and other crackpot ideas. If you want to shell out the $ and file the thing, you too can have one o' those!!!! might be fun at parties

my own name is on a provisional patent (among many other names, department boss, supervisor, a couple of other engineers) having to do with a wireless network reliability method for wifi streaming audio/video content, as I'm the guy that did the prototype for it. never went anyplace as a product though. the latter part is what REALLY matters.

Re: a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

what about all of those photos etc. of drunken Mrs. Clinton?

(One in particular made a funny demotivational)

Re: Expert

"Trump sure is trying to make it so."

Saying things like that is _USUALLY_ called "pandering to the perception" (at least by me) and is a PERFECT example of trolling for up/down votes, etc. [like was mentioned in the article, or at least that was my interpretation of the quote I made a few posts up]

I'd ask for proof of your B.S. assertion if it was not so obviously 'fake news'

Re: Expert

lessee - the solution to RAMPANT FREEDOM GOING UNCHECKED is... A DATABASE?

HA HA HA HA HA HA! (oh you were serious?)

Re: Blockchain technology and AI

you're forgetting about a couple of things...

a) freedom of speech

b) artistic expression

And, from the article:

"Users can be easily manipulated to like, comment, and share posts without thinking about the potential harm they can cause."

happens in HERE _ALL_ of the time!!!

"Potential harm" - to WHAT exactly? If I could produce a ship-load of videos that use extreme audio/video editing to make fun of lib-tard politicians and their *RIDICULOUS* ideas, and how they continue to TRY AND RESTRICT MY FREEDOM [while simultaneously INCREASING THEIR OWN POWER CONTROL AND WEALTH], I'm gonna DO it. Consider it a Guerrilla tactic for FIGHTING AGAINST THEM.

keep on snarkin' !!!!

The joy of six: Microsoft emits latest preview of .NET Core 3 with plenty of pipes, perfs, loads...

stop, you're making too much sense!

There's the right way (compile efficient code to native binary)

There's the wrong way (scripty scripty scripty)

And there's the MICRO-SHAFT WAY! ".Not".

Take a look at the 'hello world' example for a C-pound appliation, compare to simple hello world application in C. Even a windows version just calls an API function to create a dialog box. Yeah. How to OVER-complicate the otherwise simple.

(and if it's open source, native compiling for any platform should be relatively straightforward)

just thinking, maybe the point here is that MS tried to make "one windows to rule them all" and ended up NOT being on "devices" after all. And so you have x86 and ARM. So why do we need a P-code translation taht can be re-compiled into something more efficient in the FIRST place? JUST! MAKE! NATIVE! BINARIES! clang and gcc have LOTS of cross-compiler support. shouldn't be too hard using THOSE...

Halleluja! The Second Coming of Windows Subsystem For Linux blesses Insider faithful

OS/2 failed for different reasons. microsoft wrote the presentation manager, and OS/2 1.2 (releasing about a year before Windows 3.0) set THE standard for GUI environments.

Microsoft has broken that of course since Windows "Ape" and Win-10-nic and UWP and 2D FLATTY FLATSO McFLATFACE, but I digress...

The point is that OS/2 was actually SUPERIOR in every way, like a 16-bit NT in a lot of ways, a better API, and so on. But IBM marketed it for the PS/2 computer, no love for clones. THAT basically KILLED it, whereas Windows went for the clones AND the PS/2, and the rest became history.

Too bad MS isn't studying their past successes, though. THEN they would see that they're following IBM's ineffective tactics on this one.

Re: "Windows Subsystem for Linux"

"throwing out the Windows kernel and leaving the API."

Re: But why?

"future versions of Windows would be able to simply run Linux software out of the box."

It's more easily done the OTHER way: a Microsoft-blessed version of WINE, running on a Linux kernel, with a WINE-like subsystem that implements all of Win32 at the API level, making native X11 and Win32 calls.

The rest of their ".Not" crap could then make Win32 API calls through the layer... and I bet it would STILL be faster than it is in Win-10-nic!!!

That's just too obvious, though. Remember MS did this with Windows 1.x, 2.x, 3.x running on top of MS-DOS. So now it would be Win-11 running on Linux! heh heh heh

considerably snappier file performance inside Linux

from being IN WINDOWS? Snappier than WHAT, MS-DOS 1.0 on a FLOPPY?

EVERY test I've EVER run that compares Windows to Linux or FreeBSD has demonstrated that Linux and FreeBSD file system performance is a *LOT* better than windows, by at least 10%. I haven't run those tests in a while, but a lot of numbers that came out at around the release of Win-10-nic showed that 7 was a tad faster than 10, and significantly faster than 8, and about the same as XP [which is what I ran the tests on, using equivalent hardware].

The biggest single problem with the windows file system SEEMS to be what I like to call "paranoid cacheing". Linux and FreeBSD will use ALL of the available RAM as a read/write cache if necessary, to limit the amount of actual I/O until it gets efficiently flushed to the disk, thus making the I/O faster overall. When you have to wait for a write to complete, it just slows EVERYTHING down.

And you see this a LOT with Windows. It's not hard to reproduce, not hard at all. I am not 100% sure that the problem _IS_ "paranoid cacheing" but everything I see tells me that Windows waits for physical write completes, and may even assume it CHANGED ON DISK and then would re-read it back again [instead of leaving it in a cache and relying on it NOT changing], whereas Linux and BSD do asynchronous write cache and generous read cacheing, 'lazily' flushing the cache to disk and journaling the file system to ensure file system integrity if the power goes out or something.

As a result, _I_ _CALL_ _B.S._ ON THAT CLAIM, Microsoft. Maybe WSL is "snappier" than CYGWIN, or Linux in a VM hosted on a windows box, but _NO_ _WAY_ is it "snappier" than LINUX ITSELF!!!

In fact, I think windows should run in a VM on Linux so it can get a FILE SYSTEM PERFORMANCE BOOST from the Ext file system. Similar with FreeBSD, hosting windows and NOT the other way around. UFS+J, ZFS file systems, WAY better than anything Micro-shaft can offer.

/me thought of YSL ties when I saw WSL. Dunno why.

Large Redmond Collider: CERN reveals plan to shift from Microsoft to open-source code after tenfold license fee hike

Re: Document formats

"Libre Office is compatible enough with MS Office."

As far as I can tell it is. I was handed a spreadsheet that needed to be modified, running _THE_ _ONLY_ Linux workstation at that site [I needed Linux to use remote X11 with embedded devices so I could edit code on them and do other things like 'meld' to manage source control and changes and whatnot - embedded device has a tiny screen, NO good for development, so it's a must-have and a reason NOT to use Windows _OR_ Wayland, but I digress..] and no problems reading it, modifying the hell out of it, and submitting the modified version. it was created on a Win-10-nic machine using a somewhat recent version of MS Office, since that's what everyone else seems to be using.

the only problem I've had is trying to print on a Lexmark "all in one" type color laser printer. Ate a box o' paper doing a test page. Maybe Lexmark has a driver for it but I haven't needed to print so I left it uninstalled after that. Kinda funny in a way...

I think the Altium bunch is near enough to me that maybe I can go over there some day with a ginormous penguin-shaped cluebat and get them to create a Linux version.

no looking back if they finally "get it", I bet. I think CAD started with X terminals, now didn't it?

Re: Its the updates

" you don't know how it feels to a new user."

Heh - a FEELER, huh? FEEL the 4 letter 'F' word. You should try THINKING instead.

Re: Its the updates

"The pre-requisites for this lib and that was nothing but a real pain."

Me-thinks you do NOT know of what you speak.

" I've never found Linux all that usable, and I'm about as technically minded as they come."

You need to install something OTHER than Ubuntu with Unity. And don't bother trying to find 'Internet Explorer' either. You'll probably need a few different software packages that are equivalents to and/or better than the windows version, things like Libre office, VLC Firefox and/or Chrome, and so on.

/me has been using FreeBSD GUI almost exclusively for EVERYTHING, since 2005-ish. Linux is a tad bit more friendly for windows users with some of the built-ins, auto-mounting USB drives when you plug them in, GUI bluetooth and wifi config, things like that. It's all there for you, last I looked, in every decent distro.

I suggest either the Mate desktop, or Cinnamon. That should get you something familiar enough, easier of a transition than 7 to 8 or 7 to 10 would be.

Re: Rock, hard place etc.

still in XP? That would be a GOOD thing!

XP works just fine for my 3D printer software, though I admit I had to massage it and talk nice to it while getting the drivers and stuff installed...

The computer doing teh 3D pinting came with XP. It's one o' those low-end Lenovo "book sized" deals with a 1.something Ghz atom processor. Again, works fine for 3D printing. And if I were to "up" grade it, maybe not so much...

nothing wrong wiht XP. Micro-shaft should've stuck with it.

Oblivious 'influencers' work on 3.6-roentgen tans in Chernobyl after realising TV show based on real nuclear TITSUP

Re: On the bright side

/me considers a wolf temporarily moving its prey closer to the radiation source because it's a bit "underdone" and properly cooked carrion goes well with a nice chianti...

Re: Small point

I thought ignorance was bliss?

silly me...

'Cynical and bullying' TalkTalk hackerhacker getsgets 4 yearsyears behindbehind barsbars

Re: I've been caught ...... I must have Asperger's.

"Expect to be downvoted"

why?

was said to have cost TalkTalk £77m to clean up

I call B.S. on that £77 million - I bet the company inflated it for insurance and tax purposes

[doesn't mean the perps aren't guilty - throw the book at 'em]

Re: I've been caught ...... I must have Asperger's.

yeah about "ass-burgers" - it's one of those ENVIOUS nicnames for "genius personality" - like AD[H][D

better drug it out of existence, because CREATIVE and INNOVATIVE people aren't so easy to control...

Microsoft throws lifeline to .NET orphans in the brave new Core world

As long as I can *PREVENT* linkage to ".NOT" (or whatever they call it)

As long as my C and C++ projects do NOT have link up with ".NOT" or CORE or whatever they wanna call it, I'll just not care what new/shiny bandwagon MS excretes now and in the foreseeable future...

I still like the idea of being able to let people download a single EXE file, copy it to 'wherever', and just run the application as-is without installing a boatload of "other stuff" and polluting the registry, etc. and requiring elaborate install and/or uninstall processes.

dynamic linking and shared frameworks are SO highly overrated

But of course the US and China's trade war is making those godDRAM oversupply issues worse

Re: Forthcoming Event

All that needs to happen is for MICROSHAFT to introduce a new windows update that's a TOTAL RAM HOG, and the recommended FIX is a RAM UPGRADE.

It wouldn't be much different than normal Win-10-nic feature creep anyway... maybe put the bloat feature into ".Not Core" or similar. Yeah, THAT would fix it! [*not*]

That, and Firefox+Chrome browsers, "improving" their memory model or script speed but REQUIRING the extra RAM to make it work.

Then it'd be like what happened with Vista, and when '9x first came out and we needed to upgrade our 386SX computers [that ran 3.x just fine] to 486DX2's and Pentiums with >16M because less than that ran POORLY with '9x...

Zorin OS 15 nods at Ubuntu and welcomes Windows escapees

Re: (three finger pinch will, for example, show a list of running apps and workspaces)

triple bucky. just don't do the WRONG triple-bucky or your computer will reboot from the climax

Re: Back in time

did you try links or lynx? text-mode browsers. heh.

Re: The 39 Steps

Yeah, but the problem with trying drivers is sometimes, if the printer is in another room (or building), the wrong driver will dump a box of paper with 4 characters on each page, creating a billion print jobs that have to be individually canceled before you can shut it off... [I had that happen a few weeks ago with a Lexmark printer at a remote site - no more attempting to print from Linux until I have a working solution]

Ideally Lexmark will have a CUPS driver I can find with a simple google search... but if they don't, I'm stuck, since that's "the office printer" and every other computer (that's not an RPi to be used in an embedded system, which is temporarily on the network so I can use ssh as well as pluma via remote X11 desktop to do development work on it) is running *cough* Win-10-nic... so they don't have problems, because Lexmark HAS to sacrifice to the Micro-shaft god to stay in business...

Re: The 39 Steps

regarding asking for Linux help in an online forum, or IRL for that matter, and generally getting a helpful response to your problems...

"Even if that were true (which in my experience it isn't),"

it isn't? Of course, it depends on how you ask.

wrong way:

"This @#$%-ing Linux thing SUCKS. Rant rant rant gripe gripe gripe complain blah blah blah. If it can't [insert minor nitty problem] I'll tell EVERYONE I know how much LINUX SUX"

wrong way:

"I'm a n00b at Linux. How do I XXX? I expect you to walk me through the process while I argue with you and tell you how wrong you are"

wrong way:

"Someone told me to install Linux and I did, and now my computer doesn't work"

right way:

"I have a problem with XXX. I've tried YYY after taking the time to google and research the problem, but it didn't work. Am I doing something wrong?"

[if it is not clear, now, then you are beyond any help anyway]

Re: The 39 Steps

"asking for help fixing an issue tends to get a friendly response."

even on IRC. or USENET. surprise!

Re: The 39 Steps

the problem with printers is a lack of SERIOUS CUPS SUPPORT by some vendors.

this was a thing back in the windows 3.x and '9x days, too... lack of drivers. lack of non-buggy drivers, at any rate. I choose printers that support CUPS and make it easy to update with their PPD files. Vendors should remain aware of this.

The FCC has finally, finally approved a half-decent plan to destroy the robocall scourge... but there's a catch

Re: Only if they run me to ground

I only have a pre-paid "dumb phone" for when I need a cell phone. 99.9% of the time it is OFF> I never give out the number.

On the land line I record a message, first sounding like I picked up the phone, then thanking friends/family for calling, leave a message, etc. followed by a lecture for everyone else. ~30 seconds. I don't get a LOT of calls but if I'm there everyone who knows me knows I can hear if they say 'pick up the phone' and I don't have the ringer on, so ONLY the answering machine speaker lets me know I have a call.

Been that way for a couple o' years now. At first I only turned off the ringer because of political robo calls. then teh spammers got to the several per day level, and I just left it that way after one election cycle.

After all, I'm not a slave to a phone. The ringer is NOT an emergency. I have e-mail. It works better. The phone is nice for REAL emergencies, but I'm really considering not even HAVING one...

[the only problem is NOT having "a number" to use for things that seem to REQUIRE one... so I continue to pay money to AT&T every month for a pair of landline phones that I generally can't use - yeah a FAX line too]

Re: Only if they run me to ground

Seriously if we're talking "old school" then we should just collectively hire hit men to go find the robo-callers and leave a horse-head in their beds [or similar], and accelerate the response if they don't get the hint...

and, collectively, it would cost a LOT less I bet!!!

[organized crime has no national borders, which addresses the 'overseas' problem right there]

/me mentions something about the dark web... OK FBI it's a *JOKE*. now quit getting FISA warrants and tapping my lines already!

Like using the latest version of Microsoft Office? Love Offline Files? Not for long!

Re: isn't a good look for Microsoft

"Microsoft Sorry" - it's their new product line?

Chrome never "caught on". Everything ELSE simply started becoming INDISTINGUISHABLE from the chromium CRAPPINESS and so people settle for what they already have installed on their 'droid phones... hence it's "popular" because no true alternative exists. Google publishes their "standards" which differ from the IBM ones of the 90's [the ones that made Windows actually popular because people went out and BOUGHT IT to add to existing computers, not simply accept because it "came with the machine"], because the new SMUG kids on the block [aka millenials] have to do it THEIR way. And FORCE everyone ELSE to COMPLY with it. Because, they're superior. And it's THEIR turn.

I'm reminded that I need to write my own web browser, by porting webkit to use MY toolkit [once I finish it] and ENFORCING the non-2D-FLATTY 'classic menus and tabs' look on EVERY operating system [including Win-10-nic]. no more hamburger menus, etc. Something like MIdori, except it won't swallow the fornicating 2D FLATTY HAMBURGER MENU coolaid.

Re: Clouds rule OK!

at least with Libre Office I can work with Micro-Shaft format documents _AND_ do so on Linux or FreeBSD without having to be online. And it's not all 2D FLATSO, has *NO* ribbon or other irritating UI elements, and I've *NEVER* heard of a MACRO VIRUS that affects Libre Office (so you can open up documents that random people that you don't know might send you with pretty good security and reliability).

Re: Clouds rule OK!

"Their cloud is the mainframe of old"

yeah I saw that one coming during the dot-bomb days of the early noughties.

We'd just gotten to the point where computing power was distributed among all of those PCs on everyone's desktop. THEN, "the powers that be", to control and monetize things back in their own favor, "decided" to change everyone back to the old way of doing things, by going light-client-heavy-server instead of heavy-client-light-server. Except they'd use JAVASCRIPT to force all of those "light client" applications into becoming HEAVY CLIENT applications, which is why every web browser nowadays is a FORNICATING PIG when it comes to CPU and memory and other resources...

that way our ">10 times faster than they were in 1999" computers on our desktops run like CRAP with all of that "required" BLOATWARE, plus the latency of "cloud", and the reliability of a single basket filled with all of our thinly shelled eggs.

Re: Sounds like

Hotel Clouid-i-fornicate-you

(except Redmond is in Washington, but the techno-smug is DEFINITELY in Cali-Fornicate-You)

yeah I'll stop explaining now. coat please.

from the article: "and an error is vomited onto the screen."

(worthy of a mention)

The best and worst of GitHub: Repos wiped without notice, quickly restored – but why?

Re: Github=/=Microsoft

irony acknowledged. heh.

So, the *FIRST* major change to github is a bot that FAILS to "get it right" with respect to spam filtering, punishing the honest/innocent via brain-damaged AI algorithms, while GROSSLY MISSING the 'bulk' of the problem at the exact same time.

Sounds like hotmail or anything ELSE that MS "took over". I'll still use it, I suppose. yay.

(this is probably comment #43 - oh well, so much for having 42 of them. I ruined it.)

HPE's Spaceborne supercomputer returns to terra firma after 615 days on the ISS

because pulling a plug on a Linux server is the worst thing you can do

actually, the WORST thing you can do is install Windows on top of the Linux [thinking it would be 'better']

But I expect that without massive database accessing going on at the time of the plug-pulling (or equivalent) incident, the EXT4 file system did its job and no data was corrupted. maybe a transaction or two was lost, but that's the point. File/System integrity was preserved!

And that assumes it wasn't using ZFS, which should be even better at such things.

Got, Linux?

Finally, people who actually understand global trade to probe Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods

Re: Hmm

(in my opinion, and that of others) Mrs. Clinton is only good at scamming people and shredding evidence, beginning with the White Water and Rose Law Firm stuff... and the breaking of phones with hammers and "losing" 30,000 subpoenae'd e-mails that most likely demonstrate the connection between the Clinton Foundation and foreign governments getting favors by contributing to it (which is why she had that private e-mail server, to conduct that sort of 'business' outside of government record keeping laws). At least, that's the theory.

So her "foreign policy" would be the kind that enriches her and her family, not necessarily the kind that "Makes America Great Again". And that's the point.

"will the WTO survive Trump's wrath at all? "

Not at all. They'll soon decay into irrelevance. After all WHAT can they really DO about it? Nothing. They haven't stopped China's abuses. Their presence is like a bunch of sheep telling wolves to "don't, stop..." and so NOW that their ineffectiveness is obvious to the most casual observer, the rams and shepherds and sheep dogs are going to put a stop to it the old fashioned way.

Or something like that. WTO can just BLANK the FEEL off!

Re: Looking through the wrong end of the telescope

The feckless WTO _IS_ the problem. I'm sure that the USA will simply IGNORE them, tell them to go pee up a rope or perhaps a nice classic New York expression, like "Bite Me"...

You're forgetting the reason for the tariffs: China is VIOLATING OUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. And they REFUSE to stop it. Cutting them out of the loop by raising the cost of having them IN the loop is one way to resolve this.

And the WTO was a _STUPID_ idea in the first place. And that's the point. The USA is a sovereign nation with a CONSTITUTION, and not some 3-member bureaucracy deciding policy. And that's the point.

Barbie Girl was wrong? Life is plastic, it's not fantastic: We each ingest '121,000 pieces' of microplastics a year

Re: I have a question

"alcohol. How do microplastics get in there"

I'm guessing it's part of the brewing and filtration process for beer, and distillation process for distilled liquor. It makes perfect sense to use plastic, particularly nylon if there are moving parts, along with stainless steel, in any food, brewing, or distillation process.

But hey, I'd rather have plastic than GERMS, ya know?

Re: (Sighs)

Stop making SO much SENSE. It's breaking the intelligence vacuum!

"creating a paper litter problem wasn't a good way t deal with a plastic litter problem."

Environmentalist wackos using DEAD TREES like this, to "warn" us about plastic. Is there a hypocrisy there, maybe???

that only happens when the fish are getting plastic breast implants...

Re: And we are all still alive.......

"So what's the problem again?"

Ask Henny Penny. Her son, Chicken Little, thought the sky was falling when an acorn hit him on the head, and now she's running around (like a chicken with its head cut off, flopping and twitching and trying to run in a random uncontrolled manner) screaming how "THE SKY IS FALLING!" and a bunch of alarmist idiots are buying into it as if they have a PSYCHOLOGICAL NEED for "the doom and gloom".

Same story, different names, same plot line over and over and over [and the "solution" will be the same too, RESTRICT EVERYONE ELSE'S FREEDOM except for those who are 'more equal than others', using public tax money to pay for it all].