Posts by bombastic bob

Pentagon launches nuke-spotting satellites amid Russian space bomb rumors

Re: So, this is new?

Why is this just now important (rhetorical) ?

Election year, and Demo[n,c][R,r]ats are running out of things to manipulate voters with.

Re: Optics

I've worked with a few Russian citizens back in the day, and I do not think it is this way.

Putin is a BAD ACTOR on the world stage, and YES he views appeasement as weakness, but it is STILL possible to make agreements with him that benefit both Russia and the west. You need strong and honest leadership for this, NOT 'WEF puppets' doing their masters' bidding.

The Tucker Carlson interview with Putin is an interesting view, though over 2 hrs in length.

your perception of US politics is bass-ackwards

In truth, it is the LEFT who want to control everything, along with the right-wing "Uni-party" members of the GOP, aka "RINOS".

MAGA is exact opposite, seeks LESS government control, MORE freedom [particularly to individual states[, LOWER taxes, LESS regulation, UNBIASED law enforcement, TRUE justice reform (not woke-ism, race-based "equity" nonsense, etc.] and seeks to DO AWAY with those things that MOST people understand are COMPLETELY unfair [like DEI, tic-the-box quotas, 2 tier justice system, abuse of political power including the DOJ and IRS, and monolithic one-size-fits-all top-down control from DC]. MAGA means you aren't punished or canceled for having wrong thoughts or wrong speech. It means you can be tolerant without having to EMBRACE every possible bizarre lifestyle, because everyone ELSE wants freedom, too, INCLUDING the freedom to DISAGREE or DISLIKE something. MAGA is like conservative libertarianism, which is NOT activism, but the recognition that everyone wants to do their own thing and should be able to, as long as it's not disturbing, hurting, or seriously bothering anybody else.

I do not know how or where the opposite perception came from, but it is about as wrong as calling communism "freedom".

NOTE: MY definition of MAGA and Tea Party are what I just described. If that turns out to be NOT what Trump and other MAGA Republicans actually stand for, I'd abandon them faster than an illegal alien anchor baby at an orphanage on the OTHER side or the U.S. border. But I believe my perception is the correct one.

As for "Nukes in Space" the article made my point: "it would put Russia at odds with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which states that signatories 'shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit.'"

Conveniently the trial balloon scaring people about Russia (again) is being floated in an election year.

Cutting kids off from the dark web – the solution can only ever be social

Re: The law is not everything

Who needs ridiculously invasive laws when PARENTS are the ones ultimately responsible for what their kids are doing.

Parents, it seems, need to take control of kids' phones and internet access. Start with the following:

"If you want to use TIk Tok, you need to buy your own phone and service plan. Until then, this is MY phone and I am allowing you to USE it, at MY discretion,"

Forgetting the history of Unix is coding us into a corner

Re: One thing that has/should change is...

"the user experience"

That phrase and "UX" vs "UI" always makes me *cringe*

It also reminds me of a joke: How many people in Silicon Valley does it take to change a light bulb? Three. One to physically change the bulb, and 2 to "share in the experience".

(that is assuming that anyone in Silly Valley even KNOWS what a light bulb IS...)

Re: Not *everything* is a file

just a minor correction...

with respect to network layer, the basic I/O works exactly as it does for a serial device, from the standpoint of reading, writing, FCNTL, ioctl, polling, etc..

A program that accesses a serial port can just as easily work with a socket rather than a file identifier so long as you do not expect to change the baud rate, etc..

Other than that the socket API functions (like send, recv) are supersets of read/write (etc.), and you have connections for TCP. Yet the basic I/O looks the same from inside as well as outside.

So "everything is a file" still applies to sockets and networking.

In X11 the basic communication is client/server through sockets. I am not sure how Wayland does it, but there is NO "DISPLAY" environment variable to indicate which socket to communicate on, such as X11 would use for multiple displays and remote execution.

and EXCLUDES anything Wayland...

UK Cabinet Office hits pause on £9M Microsoft deal

you are making too much sense

Capgemini could migrate them to LibreOffice for much less!

Too much sense being made. You must stop this immediately. Gummint needs inefficiency, and this simply will NOT do...

Save the Mars Sample Return mission, plead Congresscritters

Re: Beserk

The whole MSR mission is one big black hole which sucks up all dollars that come within its gravitational pull into oblivion. No one knows the exact figure MSR will cost but I estimate it to be well in excess of $10 billion, maybe even touching $20 billion.

There are 2 kinds of "discretionary" gummint spending. One kind causes an improvement in scientific knowledge, spurs the development of new and cutting edge technology, and makes people proud of great accomplishments. NASA stuff is like THAT.

Then there is another kind, which costs $TRILLIONS, runs the U.S. deeper into debt, increases crime and misery, and makes it difficult for average people to afford daily necessities. ONE of those is deliberately allowing MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL ALIENS to cross the U.S. southern border, and THEN *STAY* inside the USA, where they suckle like little piggies at the public trough, an estimate of more than 8 million ILLEGAL ALIENS waiting "asylum" since 2021 (read: they lied and then just disappear, never appearing in court) that are costing the American public at LEAST $500BILLION per year. And when they get their free meals in NYC, staying for free at 4 star hotels, they THROW THE FOOD AWAY and COMPLAIN. Some even engage in CRIME and BEAT UP POLICE, and give the FINGER to the rest of us. Literally.

So when NASA wants $20 BILLION for a science project, I have a GREAT idea on how to pay for it: Get RID of the ILLEGAL ALIENS.

Then the $20 BILLION spent on NASA makes more sense. I mean, look what we are BUYING with that money!!!

Venus has a quasi-moon and it's just been named 'Zoozve' for a sweet reason

Re: "poses no danger to Earth"

and to fix it we'll all have to start wearing expensive hats, magical underwear, and surrender our freedom to the AI underlords. And drive miniature cars.

Microsoft might have just pulled support for very old PCs in Windows 11 24H2

Re: Linux's moment

If the target were not constantly moving, Linux would ALREADY have a REAL working Wine implementation that was 100% compatible, and SAMBA networking that had all of the Windows features, and an ENTIRE userbase of former Windows users giving the finger to Micros~1.

Unfortunately NOT the case. Instead, Micros~1 gives the FINGER to the CUSTOMERS, tells us we MUST COMPLY, and SETS ALL OF THE RULES.

Re: POPCNT

Shirley screams from the back row "A *SEXIST* would say!!!" [sorta like Greg Gutfeld after making a similar joke]

Windows 10 users report app gremlins after Microsoft update

And... THIS is why

THIS is why the MS choice to:

* Update shared runtime without notice or proper testing

* Force you to update/upgrade without choice

* Use the customer base as their "Testing" department

IS THE WORST POSSIBLE CUSTOMER SUPPORT POLICY EVAR!

Win-10-nic and Windows II : "COMPLIANCE IS MANDATORY. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!!!"

(customers are cattle to them)

Microsoft embraces its inner penguin as sudo sneaks into Windows 11

Re: Just sudo?

I have often considered that the BEST kind of windows would be an MS desktop running on Linux or one of the BSD's, much like Apple with OSX

WIthin this you would only need a native X11 server (one that supports 'DISPLAY' and remote clients, of course) in addition to the Win32 API as a layer to the kernel AND for regular Win32 programs.

In effect, an MS-blessed version of WINE.

Re: Sudo

DID YOU ACTUALLY SAY 'WAYLAND'?

No. Just No.

Mitchell Baker logs off for good as CEO of Firefox maker Mozilla

Re: Not just the big Corps

Mozilla has really messed up Thunderbird and Firefox desktop appearance compatibility, plug-ins, usability by chasing Chrome features and appearance.

MY BIGGEST COMPLAINT!!! But you can still at least get rid of the ADWAITA default, or could... I just hope it has not been 'feature dumped'

Here's what I do, and it helps a LOT

export QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SET_FACTOR=0

export QT_SCALE_FACTOR=1

export QT_FONT_DPI=120

export GDK_SCALE=1

export GDK_DPI_SCALE=1

from command line

* gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme 'TraditionalOk'

and in about:config

* widget.content.gtk-theme.override = TraditionalOk

* widget.non-native.theme.enabled = false

(turn off URL bar search so mis-spellings do not go through google)

* keyword.enabled = false

* browser.urlbar.oneOffSearches = false

I only hope this continues to work. *I* *HATE* *2D* *FLATASS* ADWAITA !!!

Think tank funded by Big Tech argues AI’s climate impact is nothing to worry about

Re: Sure Jan

Fossil fuel companiesRadical so-called "climate scientists" underOVERestimated their impact of CO2 on climate change by 6000a HUGE %.

Fixed it for ya.

The idea that CO2 from carbon-based fuels is controlling climate is UNSCIENTIFIC, as it IGNORES well known equilibrium reactions and the relationship of equilibrium levels and ocean temperature, PLUS the limited IR bands affected by CO2, PLUS the fact that CO2's affected bands are SATURATED by a much LOWER concentration of CO2, and ALSO that CO2 is GOOD for PLANTS.

When will this doom/gloom climate apocalypse INSANITY *FINALLY* stop??? [Probably when we're all PEASANTS again, under the boot of some socialist world order...]

In the mean time, I'm all for lower electric bills, so KUDOS to anyone making things more efficient.

Microsoft seeks Rust developers to rewrite core C# code

well, at least...

at least they are not porting their kernel and services to JAVASCRIPT... Office 362, jokingly aside, would be bloated/inefficient enough already.

[This trend towards garbage-collected memory management things has no Moore's Law to compensate for the inefficiency any more]

But shifting C-pound to Rust is probably an improvement

WINE 9.0 improves ability to run 32-bit Windows apps on 64-bit-only xNix

Re: What windows version does it report as

Thanks. Unfortunately, the tax software (particularly the business version, which I have been told is written in Java) only installs on whatever version of Windows that Intuit "blesses". SO yeah.

Best I can manage is to buy the el-cheapo Win1.1 box and connect it to the KVM (once that is my only choice).

What windows version does it report as

I am curous what windows version it reports itself as, and whether there are specific applications I might have to jump through hoops to have work properly on Wine in Linux. I'd set it up in a VM, probably.

Typical would be TAX SOFTWARE, which irritatingly requires newer and newer versions of windows to work. So far 10 is required but eventually I might actually need to go buy an El Cheapo CPU box with winders 11 on it JUST to do taxes (including corporate taxes, so there ya go). I guess I can try it, see what happens. But with latest/greatest MS shared components (read: CRAP) needed to run the latest version [probably] who KNOWS what incompatibilities lie in wait...

The rise and fall of the standard user interface

Re: First time I have heard of the CUA for decades

I still have the book. It came with the Windows 3.0 SDK.

Article mentions how nobody liked Windows 1 and 2.x as they were considered 'ugly', and of course 3.0's OS/2-like (CUA) appearance became VERY popular.

So, then, WHY did Micros~1 *ABANDON* something NICE for a FLATSO 1.0-like appearance,,,??? (i.e. TIFKAM/Ape/Win-10-nic/1.1)

Micros~1 should have STUCK WITH THE CUA. You know, like Mate and Cinnamon (etc.)

US cities are going to struggle to green up their act by 2050

We need to "reframe the issue..." I didn't realize how much of an idiocracy we live in...until now.

Here's the one word whose absence here is nothing short of deafening--and unconscionable:

nuclear.

If I assume that CO2-based climate change is real (which it is not), and I were asked to solve the problem, allow for all cars to become electric, all heating and cooking to be electric, and so on, there is only ONE solution to that problem: BUILD MORE NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS.

And yet; like you pointed out, this is NEVER discussed, unlike BANS, MANDATES, RATIONING, and "this is the NEW NORMAL".

Apparently the goal *IS* to lower our standard of living and limit our ability to travel, while (of course) THE ELITE can continue to fly LUXURIOUS PRIVATE JETS to Davos, so they can figure out what to tell us PEASANTS to do, and then FORCE OUR COMPLIANCE, in the name of "ending Climate Change" (which it never will). Meanwhile those "more equal than others" remain in power, and grow wealthier, while the PEASANTS get less and less.

NEO-Feudalism is what I call it. Time for a MAGNA CHARTA, a Declaration of Independence, and maybe a FRENCH REVOLUTION, I say, if this keeps up.

Re: Meanwhile in California...

Green Lysenkoism

you made me look up what that means.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism#Lysenko's_claims

In the one case, in spite of 2 types of wheat having different and incompatible chromosomes, he believed that growing spring wheat in the fall wouid turn it into the autumn wheat species.

Even funnier is Stalin's apparent embracing of this kind of nonsense.

Out here in Cali-Fornicate-You there is a lot of effort to expose and un-do these "renewables" mandates (groups like Reform California). Meanwhile those expensive windmill blades made of brittle materials need to be periodically changed out, and old ones buried in landfills (cannot recycle), along with those worn out solar panels filled with 'toxic' metals [while CCP enjoys the profits from selling replacements].

All of this, based on the LIE that man-made CO2 (3% of all CO2 produced on earth) is ACCUMULATING (which it isn't, the equilibrium level of CO2 in the atmosphere is controlled by water temperature) and the cumulative sum of man-made CO2 is causing a GH effect (which it is not, as CO2's IR absorption band is saturated already) so that the CCP (who cornered the market on all of the stuff needed to make "renewable" power and batteries) can become the world's new economic leader and FOIST COMMUNISM UPON US ALL. I mean, why ELSE must the solution to this alleged climate change be MORE SOCIALISM and LESS FREEDOM...?

I bet SOMEBODY knows the truth about this in Davos.

University chops students' Microsoft 365 storage to 20GB

Re: The actually important information is in the article!

the animated spinny circle is hypnotic, part of their mind control... sorta like the Hypno Toad.

(heh)

actually would be fun to replace that with fingers tapping, a pencil between nose and upper lip, or thumbs twiddling

Re: Unleash the BOFH

if the BOFH were involved, a system crash would accidentally delete all student OneDrive data, and would involve a Halon dump and some unusual spark patterns on the inside of the cabinet. The manufacturer and contractor that installed it would be blamed, and no evidence refuting the BOFH's claims would exist, giving them no reason NOT to believe it.

Then to save space and prevent further incidents, a backup would be loaded, but only the newest and/or most recently accessed 20GB of data for each student account. Fortunately, that backup was made minutes before the crash...

Re: OneDriving Me Up The Wall

Most schools now let former students keep their accounts for life. There's no reason not to.

How about cost of storage and backups? Seems to me there should be a monthly fee associated with keeping an account...

"20GB is more than adequate for .most students "

and a university can require a basic computing course and/or competency test [and allow challenging the course] to ensure that students have adequate skills and knowledge to make their own backups and limit the amount of unnecessary cloud data.

Although, In My Bombastic Opinion, trying to GUILT students (instead of appealing to intellect) by saying things like "carbon footprint" instead of "minimize costs so that your tuition and fees aren't increased" is at least a *bit* nauseating... I mean, COME ON what DO they teach in these schools? "Touchty Feely 101" and "Feelings over Thinking Seminar"?

at some point a dedicated external hard drive (and maybe at least 1 extra for backup) and/or a filing cabinet drawer of burnable dieks makes more sense

Perfect timing... US Navy throws Boeing $103M to update its sub recon jets

Re: Blinken’s Plane

Summarized by Mel Brooks in "History of the World, part 1" - "It's GOOD to be the King!" [oh, piss boy!!!]

Re: P-8 sub hunters

Does this mean the subs are winning ?

not all of them. The total dive-to-surface ratio is still greater than one...

" they took the decision to get down safe rather worry about the plane."

Standard pilot training, really. Priorities. Insurance will buy another plane [well, most of it].

Related, a lot of noise about "Boing" doing a lot of DEI activity in the last few years.

And we ALL KNOW that the HIGHEST QUALITY people tick ALL of the DEI boxes!!!

Trump-era rules reversed on treating gig workers as contractors

Re: Good

apparently you do not understand the free market very much.

Stability would make you FAIL. To stay in business you need to adapt QUICKLY to rapidly changing conditions, especially true for tech and R&D stuff. If you get a contract from a customer, you hire TEMPORARY people (contractors) to make it happen or someone ELSE will do that FOR you and make the money you WOULD have made.

And then when the contract is complete, most of those employees go their own way, willingly.

It's not like the gummint is your only customer and has a steady demand. New products come and go all of the time, based on market demand. And if it does not sell the people who make it lose their jobs. It's just the reality of the world, and *NO* "pie in the sky" idealistic *FEELINGS* are gonna change that.

Before gummint got involved EVERYONE was (for the most part) an "independent contractor". Then gummint, like union bosses, realized their greedy ambitions through manipulation and power grabs, just like this LAST one by the Bidas administration, another RAW DEAL coming from the WORST president the USA has ever had (even worse than WOODROW WILSON) *JUST* to UN-do something GOOD that one of the BETTER presidents got RIGHT.

Re: It’s all about the Greed

I've been doing mostly gig work for DECADES. Being "an employee" is HIGHLY overrated.

That being said I'll take a higher pay rate and intermittent work over "benefits" and layoffs ANY day

Gummint does NOT need to make my decisions FOR me, "For my own good".

And all *THEY* want to do is use regulations to FORCE you to buy what you do not want by having your employer buy it FOR you and then reduce your pay accordingly.

It's all a giant power grab and method of control, a way to transfer money out of OUR hands and into THEIRS.

Way around: create a corporation like S or LLC, bill customers and do your own pay-related stuff, manage expenses, etc.. Then of course you'll see just how deep into your pockets the GUMMINT hand goes...

[yet another Trump era "good thing" being RUINED by "KING BIDAS" (Biden) by using the 'Bidas Touch', i.e. everything he touches turning to CRAP]

WTF? Potty-mouthed intern's obscene error message mostly amused manager

Re: Errors that *should* never occur

decades ago PDP-11s running RSTS/E (this was at a college) had error messages stored in a disk file. One of the errors was "Program lost, sorry" and might happen if you tried to run a BASIC program without saving it first. This was generally VERY rare. As a prank "someone" (evil grin) changed 'sorry' to something in all caps with a colorful metaphor. WEEKS went by, and then the system operator asked ME to help him fix it. I wonder how he might have known that I could... (and I did, naturally - "Heh. That's pretty funny. Oh, you need help fixing it... You know the error messages are stored in this one file, right?")

Re: Did the error message contain the word "Belgium"?

no but it might have mentioned 'Semprini'

Drivers: We'll take that plain dumb car over a flashy data-spilling internet one, thanks

Re: "I hate that I don't own Microsoft Office or Photoshop. "

"At home there are very few things other than games that *require* WIndows."

tax and accounting software, the occasional windows-related development (customer needs), and certain media creation (Cakewalk) for me. Otherwise, winders box just idles.

FreeBSD and Linux for everything else. And a lot of the above can be done in a VM.

Some windows games also work while running in a VM, especially older games.

Re: Perhaps it's time for vehicle makers to take note.

"Vehicle makers will take note when it starts to affect the bottom line."

like EV mandates being threatened in the USA - even the UNIONS know it could result in the companies going titsup and them being out of a job.

I had already considered doing what I can to keep my 24 year old car going indefinitely. Add the tracking crap and I'll end up cruising the junkyards for ' fixers ' before I buy a NEW one...

Google's TPUs could end up costing it a billion-plus, thanks to this patent challenge

Re: Simultaneous Development

if 2 people independently invent a thingy, and one of them gets a patent application in first, the 2nd can be challenged even though these people never met nor viewed one another's research.

IANAL but that's kinda how it all works

prior art is prior art

RCA chose to purchase a patent for a 3-gun color TV picture tube to a man named Geer who constructed a prototype color picture tube that looked like a 3 legged octopus, though if I remember correctly his first conceptual prototype (showing the 'pyramids') was constructed with sugar cubes and mayonnaise. There was enough similarity that the RCA patent could have been challenged and they wanted to hedge their bets by buying the competing design.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geer_tube <-- a true hacker

Re: Trolling

your wheel would have to have some unique quality, maybe built-in traction improvements, or unique run-flat capability, and if GM violated that part of your patent you'd probably have a case, though IANAL

Re: Trolling

patent trolls typically patent something that's not necessarily real tech, but looks good on paper and in a courtroom. get in first with your "design".

if you built one you were actually "inventing" or at least that's the story they're telling

IANAL - however this is what patents are supposed to cover, an actual invention you might have had along the way in your development work

First patent I was involved in was used for demos and was worked on for a year or so. never sold, though, but it definitely worked. Tech changed around it and it was just not enough to make its own niche in the market. (it was related to wifi and has my name on it). At this time there were a LOT of things getting quickly obsoleted and/or replaced with newer/better

Re: Trolling

apparently (according to the article) he made a prototype, A bit more inventing than your average patent troll at least.

'Only 700 new IT jobs' were created in US last year

Re: Loss' of US IT jobs. Why ?

economics drives hiring and layoffs. When there are layoffs, often these people hire contractors, so doing gig work may be the best opportunity.

If 'jobs created' are ONLY "permanent" positions (we know how 'permanent' that really is), what about 3-6 month contracts?

Economics does not determine whether or not the work NEEDS to be done, just the company's ability to hire people to do it (and then find things for them to do after)

AI cannot do everything. Once they figure this out, they'll hire more people to do things.

US Navy sailor swaps sea for cell after accepting bribes from Chinese snoops

there is no yardarm HIGH enough

there is no yardarm HIGH enough to HANG this traitor from!!!

And he EARNED more than the fine in BRIBES. They should have fined him DOUBLE that amount.

Road to Removal: A blueprint for yanking billions of tons of CO2 out of our atmosphere

Re: Natural CO2

nice!

Re: Rik, you're just trolling us now

" plant life requires an abundant CO2 content, in fact higher than we presently have.."

Not exactly but you are close on this point.

At CO2 levels bnelow about 2%, plant life flourishes. At levels below about 0.02%, plant life dies. As far as I can tell, CO2 GHG effect SATURATES below about 0.02% but it is difficult to read from a chart. Increase CO2 to about 0.2% (10 times as much) reaches the peak for "diminishing returns" for plant growth, with little (if any) effect on climate. So at 0.04%, the current equilibrium level based on ocean temperature etc., plants do ok, but they would do better at 0.08% . And the climate would NOT CHANGE.

Re: Rik, you're just trolling us now

The whole idea of man made climate change from CO2 is a COMPLETE HOAX, from the assumption that 0.04% of the atmosphere being allegedly increased by 3% per year by human activity (when it is at chemical and biological equilibrium between the oceans and plant growth, meaning that if you add more CO2 it will be depleted quicky back to the equilibrium level) to the assumption that its greenhouse effect is anything significant (95% from water, and about 2% from CO2, which has already saturated, meaning that if you were to increase the level of CO2, even doubling or tripling, the additional effect is NEGLIGIBLE) and anyone who casually observes the REAL science would REALIZE this and not fall into the TRAP of DOOM-SCROLLING and being MANIPULATED through FEAR to give up your freedom, vote for EVERYONE ELSE to give up THEIRS, and irritate everyone else's life through "just stop oil" protests and various OTHER forms of virtue signalling while so-called "important" climate activists FLY IN PRIVATE JETS.

And when you add more CO2 to the atmosphere, you get more PLANTS.

(someone had to say it)

Microsoft pulls the plug on WordPad, the world's least favorite text editor

Re: the application will be removed on upgrade

WHAT! GIVES! *THEM*! THE! RIGHT! TIO! DO! THIS!???

(ESPECIALLY when "up"grades are *FORCED*)

Dear Micros~1: ASK PERMISSION FIRST, at the VERY LEAST. Other kinds of things done WITHOUT PERMISSION like that can land a NORMAL PERSON in JAIL.

But YOU *FEEL* as if you are GOD don't you...?

What if Microsoft had given us Windows XP 2024?

Micros~1 needs to hire that guy...

I just skimmed through the video. got the gist, but the gist looked REALLY good.

Well played! THIS should be the design of "Next WIndows" - i.e. what the CUSTOMERS want, not what THEY want to shove ihto our orifices

And OPTING OUT of the cloudy .login and tracking and ads, while we're at it.