Posts by bombastic bob 10841 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015
simple check here: https://www.whatismybrowser.com/detect/what-is-my-user-agent
I'll check back and maybe add something snarky to an existing web page, for grins, based on the user-agent
I'd also be interested in whether or not the 'micro-shaft logon' is in any way transmitted in the request headers. Spitting this information back as web page content might have interesting results
the big problem here comes from the text surrounding this quote from the article:
"if you're using a Microsoft account"
Guaranteed that everything you do will, in some way, be tracked for marketing purposes. Because they CAN.
I already assumed "the 2D FLATTY FLATSO McFLATFACE" because, Chrome _AND_ Micro-shaft, but I was mostly curious about the initial reception.
So what does "New Edge" do for you that Chrome does NOT ? Other than, NOT be Firefox, that is... (because Chrome vs Firefox post-Australis is no real choice at all)
Mozilla SHOULD DISTINGUISH ITSELF from this by actually BEING DIFFERENT, that is, being NOT a 2D FLATTY McFLATFACE 'Australis' version...
"Classic Firefox" UI anyone? EVERYONE?!!!!
Actually, in Cali-Fornicate-You right now, gasoline is approaching $4/gallon again. Reason: new taxes, special formulation requirements, and the usual refinery problems [all caused by state government regulations, many of which are based on false science like 'oxygenate' in gasoline and special formulas that have no effect on computer-controlled engines].
It's an unfortunate part of living in the state where gasoline prices are 25% or more higher than everywhere else in the USA, and consumption is probably highest due to the average length of daily commutes. If it takes you one hour each way by CAR, think TWICE that on public transit...
Then again, in UK I guess fuel prices are even higher than here... [similar problems too I bet]
[crude oil prices are not the main driving factor of Cali-Fornicate-You fuel prices - if they were, then fuel would be cheaper than ever here]
As I recall, baseball infields (the runner areas between bases) are usually coated with that clay-like material that looks a bit like cat litter. Probably similar to that 'quick dry' compound someone already mentioned.
The center around the pitcher's mound, and the outfield, would all likely be grass-covered though. but most of the running takes place on a clay like material.
surprisingly effective I'm sure. gasoline doesn't have tetra-ethyl-lead in it any more, so should burn away completely, though it's possible that any MTBE additive might affect ground water at some point.
But you know, the solution to pollution is "dilution", right?
[given that it is regular practice with some industries to have an effluent tank for potentially hazardous waste, which is then tested and diluted to 'safe' levels before discharging it into the sewer systems, this is actually more reality than just a joke - being that the solution to pollution is *LITERALLY* 'dilution']
out here in Cali-Fornicate-You, the gummint back in the 90's had voters approve the use of MTBE as an "oxygenate" in fuel to a) increase its price, b) cause a tiny percentage of engines to run cleaner, and c) require a ton of special fuel formulas that change between winter and summer so that gasoline prices would be as 'volatile' (pun intended) and dependent on specific refineries as possible. Yes, it's a scam, since nearly all cars have computers now, so MTBE really doesn't do ANYTHING except the side effect of POLLUTING GROUND WATER if it leaks out of tanks at gasoline stations... which happens often enough that for a long time you'd see a lot of gas stations suddenly fenced off so they could dig up and replace the underground tanks, which were leaking, and get rid of the contaminated soil, etc. making fuel prices EVEN HIGHER. Yeah, gummint... and the fault of MTBE, "voted in" in the 90's and NEVER repealed...
but without the MTBE (or possibly worse additives), gasoline would burn off and any remaining vapors would just dissipate.
Consumer fireworks are legal in most places in the USA, just not in 'tinder box' areas like most counties in the state of Cali-fornicate-you. In short, too many field fires result from home fireworks usage. But I think I can tolerate not having sparklers vs not having neighborhoods go up in flames from a canyon brush fire...
Last time I drove through South Carolina, there were major fireworks outlets everywhere. And a lot of counties in northern Cali-fornicate-you still allow consumer fireworks to be sold around July 4, last I checked. You can't make your own legally, though. Darwin awards, etc. [that's why] though I'm sure that anyone with a large box of matches (and time to waste) could theoretically make *something* capable of burning the hair off of your face.
[when I was young I used to like to make hydrogen balloons and light them - they make a nice 'boom' like a cannon - using household chemicals like drain cleaner, etc. - once singed the hair off of my wrist with a rather big one though, 2 feet or so in diameter, even using fireplace matches to light them]
So the article suggests using a leaf blower to fan the flames... however if you combine leaf blower with a heat source, you now have something *resembling* a hair dryer, usable on grass Clothes dryers are often gas-fired and so the concept is good so long as you can keep the burner's exhaust temperature low enough to avoid actually catching things on fire. (In the movie 'Spaceballs' Princess Vespa had a comedically ginormous hair dryer...)
Or maybe the kids will just have to learn how to play "wet".
[I would expect a 'field dryer' to take the form of an attachment for one of those riding mowers, at any rate]
how about we just make the names and identities/addresses/phone-numbers of these <insert extreme pejorative here> *PUBLIC*.
I have received at least 10 of these "your google listing" B.S. calls over the last several days... fortunately, I shut off the ringer on my phone years ago. Unfortunately, I still hear it over the speaker when the answering machine picks up.
(rendering our phones useless for their intended purposes - THANKS ASSHATS!)
well, nowadays I'd have to agree with ignoring the "get it done" part, considering 1809 among other things...
The industry, unfortunately, is apparently in the process of becoming dominated by arrogant, elitist, "academic" types. 'Academic arrogance' is a thing now. Specifically, it is those who *FEEL* as if a degree is required in order to engineer software, which is really more of an ART than a science. Seriously, once you're beyond the basic programming and structure and math classes, it's a matter of having talent or lacking it.
conducting "programming tests" that focus on 'academics' rather than 'ability to program' is a part of this.
Unless, of course, you're "one of them". if you wonder why the WINE project is in the state it is in, it is [in my view] because of _THIS_ sort of thing. And I am not convinced that the STEAM people being behind a new WINE port would in any way help it. It's more of a management-style problem.
I can't say it's bad to see more windows games playable on Linux. I just fear that WINE (or a fork of it) will continue being MIS-managed in the same *kinds* of ways, which [in my opinion] boil down to a) academic arrogance, b) focusing on the wrong things, and c) not actually getting things done in a timely manner.
The past predicting piss poor performance. And the Windows 7 'end of life' window is NEXT YEAR...
On a related note...
recently I had a bit of insight into the people who are (currently) pushing the hardest for the development of the Wine project, which most definitely has the potential of providing an alternative to Win-10-nic.
However, it's WORSE than 1809, in my opinion. My experience attempting to install DevStudio 2010, even following the instructions for the various hacks, and using 3 different versions (including 4.4's bleeding edge development version) was _WORSE_ than a dismal failure. and uninstalling didn't even work [I had to delete the tree and manually remove desktop menu items under 'Wine'].
But, without going into details, the people running the show appear to be clueless as to the _kinds_ of people that could get Wine up to speed, specifically PAID developers. Apparently they have no shortage of a budget, but their selection process is (quite literally) PICKING THE WRONG PEOPLE. They need a "get it done" attitude, and NOT a "cool beans" + "academia" attitude...
This is where Micro-shaft has significant advantage over open source projects. Being a for-profit company, they focus on "get it done" and profitability, though their shortcomings of NOT paying for testers is blatantly showing its ugly head these days... [I blame their management for NOT focusing on quality, above all else]
I think the only way the Wine project could POSSIBLY compete with windows is if *I* were running it... but I need money to live on in order for THAT to happen, otherwise no time to devote to it.
"Do they take their work home or vice versa?"
Not sure what you mean about the 'vice versa' unless they're living in the office...
from the article: "employees encouraged to put the code on their own personal devices. We'd have to admit to a certain amount of surprise that this wasn't the norm."
Taking their work home would, in fact, be a VERY good idea!
Those who produce the OS _ABSOLUTELY_ should be USING the thing!!! on a DAILY basis!!!
This reminds me of something that happened with me, long ago...
While the company was downsizing and re-organizing, the material control department (for which I was doing custom IT kinds of things) consolidated into the corporate materials department, and moved to a different part of the building. The building next door, slightly downhill on a terraced landscape, was where the minicomputer (with ginormous laser printer) was. Departments had been consolidated, and there was a massive pile of computer output generated every week. And it suddenly became MY duty to go get it all from the other building. Well, after bringing SEVERAL dollies' worth of boxes of paper back on a Monday, uphill even, guess what happened? I did an in-depth review of who needed what report. I canceled half of them (at least one was using up a box of paper on its own, every week), modified several more (to generate less paper), and significantly reduced the computer work load in the process. The IT manager _LOVED_ me after that, and even had one of her guys bring the reports for us, which was now only half-a-dolly's worth (and not so bad, now). I think the reason I had to do it was because it was a big PITA for the operations staff to deliver them all... and I still wonder if that was all done on purpose? [yeah just tell XXXX to do it, see how long things go before he fixes things - 2 days]
NOW - apply that same kind of logic to Win-10-nic - *MAKE* the Micro-shaft employees that are responsible for that piece-o-something to DAILY USE IT, and see just how long those irritations last...
well, I can *ONLY* hope I guess!
no, $50/hr is what a junior programmer, IT, or tech should be earning (in Silly Valley), actually. If you're lucky you won't have 1.5 hour [each way] commute and NOT have a room-mate.
Unless you're a "homeless" person, in which case you can pitch a tent and defecate on the street... and the cops won't arrest you.
Is it any wonder that FB appears CLUELESS about crime via their services? If that company's execs have the *KIND* of mentality that accepts the public defecation and illegal activity, yet PUNISHES certain kinds of political speech, we can expect "more of same" indefinitely.
'Silly Valley' indeed
Fa[e]ceb[itch,ook] can go around SHADOW BANNING politicals it doesn't agree with, but doesn't do SQUAT about all of the illegal activity regularly conducted via their network... Even when swatted at with a CLUE BAT? and getting their NOSES rubbed in it?
Say it AIN'T SO!!! [heh I'm totally not surprised]
whack-a-mole indeed, with many of the moles surviving multiple solid whacks, it seems
although there IS men's makeup out there, most men don't need to cover up the lines, wrinkles, and scars, nor enhance their lips or eyes, to make women want them. [I could go on and talk about having hundred dollar bills hanging out of your pockets, being the big spender, dressing in expensive clothes, driving a BMW or a Mercedes or a Rolls or a Jaguar, and so on, but I won't. I don't need to go there. Heh]
'cosmetics' in stores _includes_ specialized face/body wash though, as I recall. I haven't worked in a store for decades, but that one had a YUGE cosmetics department... yeah it's a major moneymaker! And you always seem to find 'that sort of thing' in or near the cosmetics department.
There seems to be a small market for men's makeup for politicians and actors and rich people who want to look 'camera worthy' all of the time. Lots of presidents have used makeup for this purpose, including Reagan, Clinton, and probably Trump. I suppose you could consider it to be more like 'stage makeup' but who knows. So I guess there's a market for it. Just not a big one.
although I agree that certain products (like cosmetics) probably are affected by sex and race, the assertion here is that racial or sex stereotypes are driving the ad placement... and possibly denying certain opportunities to women or members of minority races. The example I'm thinking of is the advertisement for janitorial jobs primarily to black people. That's a *little* degrading at the least, don' you think?
I think the solution may be simple: don't declare your sex nor race online. Always answer "I do not identify myself" or "other" or "not specified". Then the discrimination will STOP.
aka if you want a color-blind society, we have to STOP focusing on 'color'. Best way to do that: don't give them the info in the FIRST place.
(recently I had the opportunity, on a google or apple related thing, to specify my 'gender' as something OTHER than male or female. I chose 'other' and wrote in 'hyper male', using 'he' as a pronoun. heh)
Over here across the pond, we have our 'royals' too. It's just that membership in THAT club has less to do with lineage and more to do with "being in the club". Names withheld to avoid political arguments in this thread.
At least there's an opportunity to work your way up, get lucky, and sort of 'join them', but who'd want to? Yeah, THEM.
worth pointing out, life itself IS violence. The constant competition and struggle for dominance within our own sphere, mastering our own destinies, getting hired INSTEAD of some other applicant, buying the sale items BEFORE the store is out of stock, jumping in line BEFORE it gets too long, passing people on the highway who don't *FEEL* that your time is worth them moving out of the way, and so on.
It's a rat race. And the rats are winning.
And WHAT do we want to teach our young'unz? That ASSERTING yourself is WRONG? That STANDING UP to bullying is WRONG? That FIGHTING for what is RIGHT is WRONG? That the world is nothing more than 'safe spaces' and 'participation trophies' and '1+1=3 is ok as long as you FEEL GOOD about it' ??? There are NO winners anymore because it means there ALSO has to be LOSERS?
* W R O N G *
The world is a violent place. Just look at nature and what animals do to one another. Civilized society limits that violence, but cannot eliminat it. The "daily struggle" for survival is STILL there, and the ones who are MOST aggressive, MOST competitive, and MOST assertive, are the ones who WILL SUCCEED. And NOT being able to cope in a VIOLENT world puts the next generation at a SERIOUS disadvantage...
at least he didn't toss gunpowder into a BBQ and light it (repeatedly) until, the final time, a heated coal remained and sparked the powder while dumping it into the BBQ, blowing up into the face of one of the 2 men, and severely burning the other. Yeah, this really happened, from what I've read. And considering that one of them was (quite possibly) a competent engineer at a well known software company (or perhaps both of them), it doesn't take Arkansas or Hillbillies to win a Darwin award...
(And I don't know if alcohol was involved, but it probably was)
it's generally possible to use firewall+nat rules to re-direct port 80 to 8080 [and vice versa for the return traffic] for communications that appear to be on port 80 to the outside world...
might also be useful for running in some kind of jailed or VM process, where you actually listen on localhost but re-direct incoming ports accordingly. And yeah you could run it NOT as root.
(since it's an obvious thing, probably already being done in many places)
icon, because, obvious thing is obvious
pretty much what _I_ was thinking. I think the default for the 'ports' version on FreeBSD runs apache as 'www' and not root. It uses the 'httpd.conf' file to specify.
it looks, though, that the main process that calls all of the worker bees still runs as 'root' by default.
I expect you could still run the main process NOT as root... not sure what you'd win/lose by doing that.
"a properly trained pilot at the controls"
THIS is the problem. The MAX was sold with the promise that existing 737 simulators could be used to qualify pilots for the new airframe. Given that special training is actually NECESSARY for the MCAS feature, the correct fix will probably include fixing the simulators, too...
Aggressive marketing campaign drives development into a direction it probably should NOT have gone. "Agile" perhaps?
the smelly stuff added to natural gas has more than just H2S in it but is a cocktail designed to be easily smelt, uniquely enough that people immediately think of natural gas leaks when it's smelled.
But yeah, smelly stuff added to CH4 to make it detectable by smell.
I think Methane Thiol [a 'poo stench'] is also in there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanethiol
But yeah pretty much any gaseous material containing sulphur is gonna stink.
I have an idea:
a) fed-ex all "real" devices to/from your destination endpoints
b) carry only what you need to have on a 'burn device'.
It's not hard (in most cases) to create a gmail (or other) mail address, then forward everything to it while you're away, and fix it back when you return.
And other than listening to music or watching movies on a plane [SD cards good for this], a smart phone isn't all that necessary.
Avoid the problem entirely by making yourself a VERY small "digital target".
Or you can have FUN with them by doing something like this:
1. use FreeBSD on your laptop
2. create a jail that TSA can log into. Make sure the passwords are pejorative towards them.
3. Make it log into a console, not a GUI, and pressing any ALT+F-key gets you a virtual console into the jail [I know how, I have done this, and it's not that difficult]. You can still SSH into the host from the jail...
4. When TSA has you power it up, he sees a classic login prompt on a text console. When he asks for user+password, give him the one that's pejorative to TSA. "What, that's my password!"
5. If they want 'root' password too, give them THAT one. A FreeBSD jail has a different security context, so root's password is not the same as the host's. Make THAT one pejorative towards them as well, or a profane term, or something similar.
Anyway, you give them what they want, just like they ask, and they shouldn't complain, but you're also protesting and pissing them off. Smile the entire time.
"The truth is that something caused this guy to get flagged."
this has NOT been established, by the way. Additional journalism might uncover any facts that prove 'getting flagged' but I don't think that evidence exists. Most likely won't be uncovered without a lawsuit of some kind.
I expect to see that lawsuit fairly soon.
yeah I think the Mueller probe and the current followup insanity is a good example of why "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" does NOT apply when aggressive federal agents attempt to force you into something _like_ a 'perjury trap'...
Maybe Trump will become more of an advocate of civil rights as a result? he's currently busy fixing other problems (illegal immigrant caravans and securing the southern border, etc.), but "taming" the TSA and (allegedly) aggressive airport customs inspections might be the next thing to tackle.
personally, I don't much like taking my belt off to walk through a metal detector at an airport, having to hold up my pants and waddle, and then lose them when I spread my arms to get scanned. You're welcome everyone, I am "the streak". It has gotten _SILLY_.
AC - you need to wean yourself off of 'fake news'.
Most likely this was a case of over-aggressive law enforcement. It happens sometimes. The fact that officers wouldn't let the guy contact his attorney says it all, I think. They had his passport, they knew he was a citizen, and (allegedly) making threats to intimidate is completely inappropriate. ACLU will have a field day with it, as they should.
<joke>Maybe he should've said "asylum"</joke>
"the trouble is MANY religious people aren't rational."
fixed it for ya. I agree with that. you can say the same thing when it comes to a 'secular religion' known as 'politica correctness'. Many similarities exist in the behavior of 'the followers' to religious fanatics of one kind or another.
So maybe the statement SHOULD read: "The trouble is religious fanatics aren't rational" - and that goes with the SJWs, PC-fascists, and militant lefties, too.
"Get it now?"
No. I don't 'get' anti-logic and manipulation. The Heritage Foundation is NOT guilty of "no ethics and multiple human rights breaches". I think you may be guilty of promoting 'fake news'.
But, your comment is well worth reading. It provides a window into what was probably motivating those thousand or so petition-signers at Google.
(so no desire to silence, just expressing my disagreement).
"Where I draw the line though is getting people sacked or beaten up, or deplatformed because they won't toe the line on the currently sanctioned group think."
ACK. These are tactics of FASCISTS. Not the other way around. Think 'brown shirts'. Who wants to live in an environment like THAT? The people making the accusations, it seems, are even guiltier of the SAME THING.
Getting closer to easter, there's this bible passage I know about. Apparently Jesus said it, something about removing the log from your own eye before removing the speck of sawdust from the other guy's eye. This is SO typical of hypocrites, to be guilty of doing something (say intolerance), then IMMEDIATELY spot "intolerance" in others they disagree with, and be all righteously indignant about it, getting on their soapbox and using every '-phobe' and '-ist' term they can recite, call for firings, picket people's houses, harass people in public, etc. - all while simultaneously being GUILTY of the SAME DAMN THING.
It's worth pointing out how a log and a spec of sawdust are made of the SAME MATERIAL.
And that ends my sermon - you're welcome!
Or, as Shakespeare might put it: The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
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