Posts by bombastic bob

Windows 10's defences are pretty robust these days, so of course folk are trying to break them

Re: Double edged sword

keepass works for me, the non-".Not" open source version (KeePassXC) at any rate. Runs great on FreeBSD. I think there's a winders version also.

Re: "Win10 supposed to bring higher-level security"

Well, if Windows IS getting better (security-wise), I suggest that Micro-shaft COULD have solved this OVER A DECADE AGO if they'd focused their efforts on SECURITY instead of RE-INVENTING THE GUI 4 TIMES (1)! And "the slurp". And "the ads". And "the Metro". And UWP. And "the Start Thing". And the 2D FLATSO. And the FORCED UPDATES to make sure we *ALL* suffer equally with the "new, shiny", DAMMIT!

(1) 4 times: that would be Vista, 7, "Ape", and Win-10-nic. 7 was acceptable. The other 3 are *NOT*.

I think we'd ALL be a LOT happier if we were still using XP (with bug and security fixes).

Who fancies a six-core, 32GB RAM, 4TB NVME ... convertible tablet?

Re: " effectively run Windows 10 "

win-10-nic does not "run effectively". The only possible "system requirements" list consists of magical items and unicorns.

Re: Oh how the mighty are fallen

"HP aren't even in Cupertino any longer"

yeah probably to HP's advantage.

The REAL question: for $3k can I at least get Devuan Linux with a mate desktop pre-loaded? I wouldn't want to pay the "Win-10-nic" tax. [and Win-10-nic will, no doubt, cause their sales to be MUCH lower than what is possible with a high end platform that runs a REASONABLE operating system!!!]

Apple is based on BSD (Mach, FBSD userland) and so has THAT advantage already. 'Win-10-nic' as "competition" against that is LAUGHABLE at best.

United States, you have 2 months to sort Privacy Shield ... or data deal is for the bin – Eurocrats

Re: Newsflash!

"The US government has been completely dysfunctional for decades."

heh, not arguing THAT point! [I think Trump is trying to fix that, part of why he was elected].

Re: Privacy Shield

keep in mind, U.S. law does not have to bow down to EU law. GDPR is a good idea in theory, but Con-Grab is going to have to legislate it. And NOBODY over here cares about "disobeying an EU law".

If you want something from U.S. Law, give something in return... then let Con-grab legislate it. That's how things work.

Here's a thought: what's the penalty for NON-compliance? whack our pee-pees ? take away our birthdays? Point fingers and make fun of us? Call Donald Trump 'Herr Drumpf" ??

Yeah, do better, make a deal, see results.

Foot lose: Idiot perv's shoe-mounted upskirt vid camera explodes

Re: Is it too early to ask....

I'd consider paying for a full amputation at the neck... [juuust kidding]

seriously, though, this kind of blatant stupidity should NEVER be paid for by "everybody else". Know-what-I-mean?

Not only that, but pretty much everybody knows that shorting out a LiPo battery can make it burst into flames. His tech skills are obviously not worth much. I dunno why he'd use a LiPo anyway, considering that throwaway batteries would last longer. Ah, well, pervs aren't very smart to begin with.

Sysadmin shut down server, it went ‘Clunk!’ but the app kept running

type 'reboot' in the local console instead of the remote one

Did that a few weeks ago, while working on important kernel updates for a popular ARM platform. whoops. And I had over 100 days of uptime on the box that got rebooted, too.

it was too late when I realized it. I had to watch the shutdown complete and the system restart. It turned out ok, as it eventually motivated me to update the kernel+world and some necessary kernel modules. All good now.

[working versions of the kernel updates are going into the target OS, too. all good]

icon because it's what I did when I saw it.

Google weeps as its home state of California passes its own GDPR

Re: 49 to go

ballot initiatives are an unfortunate necessity because THE LEGISLATURE is so @#$%'ing corrupt!

Recently they did an 'end around' of one of the first ballot initiatives in this state that requires a 2/3 majority in the legislature to INCREASE taxes. A tax increase on gasoline and large increases in car registration fees was recently passed. A local radio guy, Carl DeMaio, along with a few others, has gotten it on the November ballot, to repeal it. But like a LOT of good measures, "the left" will be spending ZILLIONS to defeat it, like the 'bag ban' initiative a while back [yeah banning single use plastic bags at grocery stores, and REQUIRING customers to PAY FOR RE-USABLE BAGS - needless to say, OVER HALF of the shoppers say "no bags" and won't pay for ANY bag, nor bring in re-usables - all items loose in the cart!!!]

So ballot initiatives CAN backfire, unfortunately. People are too easily swayed by EMOTION and MIS-INFORMATION (read: fake news). People *NEED* to stop *FEELING* and start *THINKING*, but good luck making THAT happen in a self-centered hedonistic society, where arrogant/smug/hubristic wealthy people exempt themselves from the negative consequences, but then use their wealth and influence to force OTHERS (who really can't fight back) to give up THEIR wealth and freedom, for some pet 'charitable' cause that makes smug wealthy person "feel good about himself", like the environment, ending orca shows at Sea World, and "free" [insert thing here] for "all" (which becomes mediocre "thing for MOST" since demand will go up and quality down to satisfy the new 'need', and 'the rich' will ALWAYS have the best ANYWAY) and so on.

maybe if we had no ballot initiatives, we'd get rid of the ASSHATS in Sacramento instead of RE-ELECTING THEM!!!

Re: Legitimate business interests

yeah, 'legitimate business needs' - when the l[aw]yers get ahold of THAT one, watch your wallet. And your privacy.

Re: Easy Enough

some level of common sense data retention, such as the fact you did business with a company, or bought items and had a receipt for those items, is reasonable to retain (such things are really needed for proper bookkeeping standards and income reporting to government agencies, sales tax collection, and so on). But then, GDPR and related laws SHOULD take over to prevent that data from being used for 'other than that' purposes, such as tallying up what you purchase for advertising purposes.

So the 'right to forget' might mean including "your identification number" into a list o' IDs to exclude from statistical analysis and reporting to 3rd parties. The data would be effectively 'forgotten'. But things needed for accounting purposes and legal requirements would not be.

At some point you can't assume the data was actually "deleted". it might be illegal to actually delete it. It might also break most accounting systems.

it might be possible, however, to change your customer ID to "anonymous customer" and aggregate all anonymous customers into one. I'm not sure if that would violate legal requirements on accounting practices, though.

as for slurping and targeting ads based on your clicking and browsing and e-mail history - DELETE is the way to do it.

Re: Big Deception

well, a broken clock is right twice a day. slow-clap for the Cali-fornicate-you legislature. clap. clap. clap.

I'm glad they did it, but this from the article is probably correct (and a bit frightening):

"with the chance to change it later through normal legislative procedures"

They'll emasculate it as soon as they can with loopholes, "but if" exceptions, and other weakened features that are bought and paid for by the Silly Valley liberals that PWN them. For the Cali-fornicate-you legislature is one of *THE* most corrupt organizations ON THE PLANET.

if enough states do the same, the feds will act and federal law will take precedence over state laws. That would help prevent them from being weakened in the future.

NOW - will Micro-shaft have to UPDATE their EULA policies with respect to the Micro-shaft Login, "the slurp", "the ads", etc. in Win-10-nic? And, their plans for GITHUB...

icon, because it's what "they" *REALLY* want.

Creep travels half the world to harass online teen gamer… and gets shot by her mom – cops

Re: Isn't he supposed to be ...

"should it be said that justice was served fresh and hot out of the gun's barrel?"

Yes, and by an angry "mama bear" who knew how to properly use a firearm! But we still have to jail the guy for (allegedly) having the chutzpah to fly halfway around the world to stalk a young teenage girl with apparent intent to kidnap (or worse). [where was Ted Hanson?]

I'd _MUCH_ rather see that (alleged) idiot's face on a mugshot, than the girl's face on a milk carton. So, KUDOS to mama bear for SHOOTING him! And, KUDOS to law enforcement for NOT prosecuting her for doing it!

[yes, there IS still hope for the world/country/etc.]

And I think the (alleged) perpetrator (allegedly) deserves a *DARWIN* *AWARD*! At _least_ get him out of the gene pool by keeping him in PRISON!!!

Re: "Flew halfway around the world" = "Auckland to Sydney"?

"perhaps you would prefer twitter where looking like a twit leads to getting elected president."

Oh, you obsessed anti-Trump'ers never stop, do you? [in case you hadn't noticed, the USA is in the middle of a 'socialism vs constitution' revolution here, and CONSTITUTION is winning, thanks in large part to Trump].

Besides I'd rather see someone who might look like a twit online, but doesn't act like a twit when actually in office (like OBAKA did, and Mrs. Clinton WOULD have). And I suspect Trump would have read the entire article before commenting (so the first part of your argument is irrelevant to the 2nd part).

icon, because, facepalm at that last part. You were right on until that point. then it went *splat*.

Re: @AC ... The cat is pretty well out of the bag already

"non-law abiding citizens in the US are even more likely to" [own guns]

pandering to the perception again, I see.

maybe THIS will help...

icon, because, facepalm at the lamenes and sameness of the anti-self-defense mantra. you probably want EVERYONE (except YOU) to be mild-mannered SHEEPLE, easily controlled, easily herded, etc.. no thanks, not THIS *RAM*. A few of us still have our genitalia intact.

Git365. Git for Teams. Quatermass and the Git Pit. GitHub simply won't do now Microsoft has it

Re: MSGit

Q3 2018 - here's the new EULA for your git login. Enjoy the slurp/track. It's now a 'Microsoft Logon', just like the one you use for MS *EVERYTHING* *ELSE* . (good luck using it with traditional non-updated git tools)

Time to dump dual-stack networks and get on the IPv6 train – with LW4o6

Re: "Where does the 4 to 6 interchange take place?"

An IPv6 tunnel is another "temporary" solution for IPv6. But it seems to work well for me.

And as long as your IPv4 machines can [at least temporarily] map to an IPv6 address through the router [or wherever] it should work just fine. And I don't see IPv4 devices disappearing any time soon, especially when a lot of 'el cheapo' and legacy devices [and experimenter boards, etc.] only support IPv4. "A method by which these devices can connect" is a good thing.

One IPv6-related problem I'm seeing RIGHT NOW is the lack of _PROPER_ IPv6 glue support, even from MAJOR registrars. I have a particularly suffixed domain name that's not '.com' '.org' etc. and it's registered (inexpensively I might add) from "the biggest registrar" [no need to mention names but it starts with 'Go']. A few years ago I wanted to set up IPv6 glue for it (i.e. an IPv6 address that points to the name server, not just IPv4), if for no other reason than to get 'guru' level on he.net's certification along with a nice T shirt. Well, it wasn't supported back then, and _STILL_ is not supported, as of last week! I can only point the domain name to an IPv4 address, which means IPv6-only won't be able to access it. They _CLAIM_ to have "glue" support but when I try to get support, it's like "we do not support IPv6 addresses for DNS servers that we don't host" - in other words, PAY THEM EXTRA to get the IPv6 glue support.

THAT isn't how you promote IPv6. It also *BREAKS* any scheme of an IPv6-only connection to 'teh intarwebs'. This is the fault of the LAZY/CHEAP REGISTRARS, from either "being too cheap" or trying to STRONGARM PEOPLE into paying EXTRA so *THEY* host your DNS server (instead of YOU).

Unfortunately I had just paid them to renew the name, shortly before this discovery. Some time within the next 2 years I'll be looking for a competing registrar that WILL give me what I want. If they FIX it, I'll stick with them. If they do NOT I'll get another registrar. They need a series of clue-by-fours [most likely] before figuring out how WRONG it is to leave things as they are.

Ready, get Sets... no? App-grouping whizzery for Windows 10 killed

Re: Netelligence - an option for people wanting Sets!

maybe not a bad idea to announce early, so MS can 'Embrace Extend Extinguish' your company. Don't worry, you'll be well paid for it.

MS - 'majoring' in the 'minors'

"What is it about KDE's 'Desktops' feature" "MS are finding so difficult to implement"

I really like the multi-desktop feature in open source desktops, which showed up OVER 10 YEARS AGO in various desktop managers (like KDE, gnome, vtwm, fluxbox, ...). MS had a 'hackish" multi-desktop attempt-thing for XP back then, that I tried, but it stank.

virtual desktops is the ONLY feature of Win-10-nic that I would say something nice about. That should be *THE* way to organize applications together. Just open the windows up in the same desktop. What's so hard about that?

Anyway, I'm not surprised that Micro-$#!+ is busy "majoring in the minors" again. The article mentions 'fluid design' [and when I remind myself what that means, it's exactly the WRONG DIRECTION - make applications look/*feel* the SAME on ALL platforms? Like dumbing the desktop down to be a PHONE interface, because phones will *FEEL* bad about having OTHER platforms run BETTER than them?]. The 'fluid design' concept is 'Deja Vu' of the *INSANE* design "feature" of Win-10-nic in the FIRST place, that "one application, everywhere" concept that can NOT work unless applications are "dumbed down" (in the UI, in the functionality) to work on teeny-processor teeny-screen PHONES.

It's why UWP is *JUST* *PLAIN* *FAIL* !!!

So I ask this: **WHY** can't Micro-$#!+ deliver what the CUSTOMERS want (3D skeuomorphic as an OPTION, no SLURP, no ADS, no strong-armed MS LOGIN, no FORCED UPDATES, ...) instead of *CRAMMING* what *THEY* want up our as down our throats?

Instead, they bit-fiddle, tweak, use market-speak to re-brand what they've tried several times (and failed at) aka 'fluent design' and 'UWP', yotta yotta yotta I'm sick and FEELING tired of it.

(I wish there were a 'vomit' icon but this one will do)

still using classic shell.

@LenG

see icon

Facebook, Google, Microsoft scolded for tricking people into spilling their private info

The default should be no slurp whatsoever

ack, but the evil genie is out of the bottle now.

Microsoft releases new containerised cut of Windows Server

marketing double-speak

is all this sounds like.

icon, because, facepalm

Microsoft has another crack at fixing Chrome problems in Windows 10

Re: Downdate not Update

'Downdate' not 'Update' - ever since GWX

USB-C for Surface owners arrives in form of a massive dongle

Re: Eh?

most laptop "mice" (i.e. fondle-pad) SUCK (especially when you're trying to type and your thumb causes 'tap-click' to activate all of the time) and so an external mouse and "shut that damn thing off" on the mouse pad is THE option when you wanna get work done. And I need a USB port for the mouse. And speakers/headphones need a proper WIRED jack, especially if you're sitting in an airport etc..

people who design the Surface should be DAMNED into HAVING TO USE the thing, ALL OF THE TIME. And no special treatment, either.

It's like the fastest way to streamline your manual system: assign a programmer to "operate" it. Out of pure frustration he'll streamline the process so that it starts running at 0-dark-thirty on monday, such that by the time he arrives at 10AM or so, it's "all done" for teh week, and he can do fun stuff for the additional 4.9 days. [back in the late 80's, that was ME, and I actually DID that].

Similarly, MAKE the engineers that design the surface ACTUALLY USE IT.

GDPR forgive us, it's been one month since you were enforced…

Re: Don't fret. It is all part of Trumps grand plan

*ahem* - CO2 is **NOT** a pollutant! [if you think it IS then please stop exhaling, you're polluting the environment] [what, you're STILL breathing? hypocrite!]

Re: Don't fret. It is all part of Trumps grand plan

let's all just burn as much fuel as we want to, and erect windmills to chop migrating birds in half for the lulz.

Re: Good luck with that

I think I'd accept customers from EVERYWHERE, and not bother tracking people with scripty ads or cookies that can be used by 3rd parties through some ad network. Customer is king after all (NOT a commodity).

Out of curiosity, though, if you perform a financial transaction (which kinda has to be tracked in an accounting system, for audit purposes if for no other reason) then is that affected by 'right to be forgotten' ? You buy something from Amazon. Amazon knows they sold it to you. If GDPR were to force them to (effectively) erase the transaction info, it'd mess up their accounting. However I think it would be perfectly reasonable to require them NOT use the data to recommend products for you, if you want to be forgotten. "Forgotten" for advertising purposes at least (the actual transactions will have to be kept,).

Re: How difficult is it to disable slurp?

"most people who would opt out would also wipe their cookies at the end of every session."

Already being done in my browser, via a nice plugin "cookie whitelist with buttons" and I can enable session-only cookies for most things so they'll at least WORK (but autodumps them if I turn it off and back on again, muahahahaha!). Also running NoScript. that blocks a LOT of it.

From the article: "How fast the internet could be without all the junk"

Yes, this was observed when the first TRUE adblockers were being used on phones, how much FASTER it got!

I was, at first, going to snark a lot about EU being effectively "blocked" by these sites as the side effect of gummint regulation. Then I read the article and realized it was happening from the SAME (kinds of) sites that have kept me from viewing them while I had NoScript running. Thing is, I just avoid them anyway and I think I'm better off because of it. But I blame the web providers, not the people for whom the web site is dedicated. For those web providers, I have a nice cat-5-o-nine tails and a clue-bat I'd like to test out... and maybe a 2nd floor window that tends to flip open when you lean on it.

So now everyone in EU gets to see the internet in about the same way I've been seeing it for YEARS... except, unfortunately, for those 'once in a while' times where I need to access such sites for truly important reasons, for which I will run the "jailed" browser that runs from a truly non-privileged login and deletes _ALL_ history when it closes. That would be YOU, [well known electronic parts supplier]. Your order forms are unnecessarily NoScript unfriendly. It's from bad web design, as far as I can tell, not sinister around-the-net tracking. Sad.

GDPR in the USA might be a good thing, too. Imagine the SCREAMS from "Big Intarweb" !!!

Qualcomm still serious about Windows 10 on Arm: Engineers work on '12W' Snapdragon 1000

Re: Fire the Marketing Department?

I once bought a Travan backup tape drive from HP that had the model "T-1000" - kinda like the liquid metal guy from 'The Terminator'.

(now we just need something that has 'snapdragon' in it for them to capitalize on)

"a lot of modern x86 software is very under-optimised because they expect people to have cycles to spare on their Intel/AMD cpus."

the influence of ".Not" and UWP no doubt. I remember seeing Windows 2k3 server running on the same (older, underpowered, test) platform as Windows 2000 server, and it was SO piggy I couldn't even use it. Long stutter times in the GUI. It was TRULY pathetic.

Ultimately I blamed the presence of ".Not" and the kinds of LAZY thinking that is described in that quote, something like "we have cycles to spare, so don't bother making the code efficient".

Yeah, lots of THAT in "modern" windows, too, or so it would seem, like all of that "the Metro" garbage. I tried playing games like Solitaire and Mahjong in the Win-10-nic pre-release, and it was LAUGHABLE, especially when you consider how SNAPPY and FAST solitaire was in, *cough*, WINDOWS 3.0 !!!

PATHETIC performance with those "modern" 'The Metro' and/or UWP "The Store" versions. Thanks, Micro-shaft!!! And the ads, too. Oh, joy!!!

icon, because, facepalm. [yeah I was a windows fan until ".Not" and then Vista and then "Ape" and then Win-10-nic]

Re: Microsoft! Please get modern!

the way fans of "The Metro" throw around the term 'modern' like a pejorative, particularly with respect to the 2D FLATSO, 'borderless' windows, low-contrast display layouts, and fat-finger-friendly 'hamburger' button menus (aka anything NOT that isn't 'modern' and you're a LUDDITE for NOT loving it), I think it' GREAT that SOMEONE finally "pushed back" and THREW IT IN THEIR FACES!

Well done! beer, sir!

Re: If ARM is so good

"ARM on Windows failed a few years ago for the same reasons it'll fail now"

ARM isn't restricted to the performance specs of the Raspberry Pi model 1...

I think the 'fail' of the ARM stuff in the past (running windows I might add) was simply a combination of things, like a bad recipe. The hardware being under-powered for what people wanted to do was a big problem. There's also the complete INCOMPATIBILITY with "legacy applications" compiled for x86. And vendors weren't in a hurry to compile native ARM versions of their stuff.

The bigger part of that was the overall UN-appeal of Windows "Ape" and Win-10-nic, when compared to the highly successful Windows 7 and XP. 'The Shaft' stopped selling a SUCCESSFUL product in favor of INFERIOR ones, and did it DELIBERATELY. This happened when ARM was seriously under-powered compared to x86 architecture, which effectively killed ARM+Windows.

Now, when companies like Qualcomm are trying to produce ARM cores that are 64-bit and (apparently) equivalent performance to x86/amd64 architecture, they have a choice: do they hitch their success to an operating system like Win-10-nic, or do they do something _BOLD_ like target Linux?

When most of the software that people use is ALSO available on Linux, the concept of 're-learn' or 're-train' is no longer relevant. The learning curve is extremely short. Mint makes that transition pretty easy.

I mean, how much difficulty was there learning to use a SMART PHONE? There ya go.

Qualcomm should do their own marketing for ARM+Linux, maybe get some popular software vendors to ensure that there are ARM64+Linux versions of their software available, for things that people complain "aren't available on that platform". And it would be MUCH better than the nauseating 'Surface' TV ads, I would imagine.

Re: Targeting Win-10-nic is a mistake

"And with a Secure-Boot-based UEFI locked down beyond hope"

_*ONLY*_ because of Micro-shaft STRONG-ARMING vendors. THAT should be ruled anti-competition and monopolistic by a competent court.

"What does the -nic in Win-10-nic mean/stand for"

It's a reference to the Titanic, you know, icebergs ahead, but "all ahead full" anyway, "this ship is UNsinkable". That's Micro-shaft's attitude about customers *HATING* what they did to windows in Win-10-nic. And "Ape", too (that would be '8'). "All ahead full" towards those icebergs, who cares if we hit them, we're UNSINKABLE!!!

Targeting Win-10-nic is a mistake

as has been proved for YEARS.

Better to target Linux, then make Linux ARM laptops not only affordable but DESIRABLE, and leave Win-10-nic in the dust where it belongs.

Amazon staffers protest giant's 'support of the surveillance state'

Re: Pavlovian In-Betweener Message

That whole in-article snide comment about "Trump backing down" is a complete *FARCE* - Trump had instructed law enforcement to FOLLOW THE LETTER OF THE LAW which was signed by Bill Clinton and also enforced by Obaka, and insisted upon by the 9th Circus Appeals "court", the most liberal left-leaning of them all. When pictures of children being allegedly "caged" (taken in 2014 as I recall, not 2018 - WHO was president then?) and the complete BAT-GUANO-INSANE "reaction" by "the media" caused Trump to do something absolutely *BRILLIANT*: he GAVE THEM WHAT THEY 'WANTED'.

Now the kids aren't being separated. Wait for courts to catch up and try to put a stop to THAT, too, and the media going hysterical AGAIN only THIS time because the kids are IN JAIL with their PARENTS, who DESERVE to be there for BREAKING THE LAW. So what were we SUPPOSED to do, just LET THE PERPETRATORS GO FREE? I doubt that even happens in the UK.

So anyway, stop PANDERING TO THE PERCEPTION about Trump, please. Get the facts RIGHT, and if you want to be snide and snarky about it, at least be snide and snarky with TRUTH and not fake-news-fiction. [then I'd probably laugh at it]

Have YOU had your breakfast pint? Boffins confirm cheeky daily tipple is good for you

Re: What measure of 'drink' did these Americans use?

"What is a drink? Why can't they use units like every other sane study?"

According to a blood alcohol chart that I found online, "one drink" is "1.25 oz. of 80 proof liquor, 12 oz. of beer, or 5 oz. of table wine." So not quite 1 shot (1.5oz) of distilled liquor, a bit less than a pint of ale.

YMMV based on lots of things. These are units made up by the bunch that created blood alcohol charts for DUI arrests and DMV regs and things like that.

Re: Interesting.

looks like the magic number is around 4. Good to know. Anything between 1 and 4 is a "net win". less than 1, it's a little 'iffy'. Better have at least one a day.

Great news, cask beer fans: UK shortage of CO2 menaces fizzy crap taking up tap space

that's because SHE needs to drink...

Re: Vegan CO2

CO2, CO2, CO2, spam, CO2, CO2, ...

(yeah that's not got much spam in it)

Re: "Pick up that can!"

"Why haven't the American people risen up against the current regime, then"

We _DID_, and that's why Mrs. Clinton did NOT get elected!

Trump _IS_ the revolution!

India tells its banks to get Windows XP off ATMs – in 2019!

Have a cup of WINE

I have to wonder if WINE would run their banking software as well as (or better than) XP, and then have a nicely maintainable OS afterwards, without having to "UP"grade EVERYTHING.

It would make a nice solution wouldn't it? NO NEED FOR WIN-10-NIC!!!

Ubuntu reports 67% of users opt in to on-by-default PC specs slurp

Installing in a VM

is what this sounds like, for "the most poular" configturation.

Think: "only one CPU" is suspicious. Systems under 10 years old usually have at least 2 cores, and older ones significantly LESS than 1G of RAM. However, a VM install is likely to have one CPU and 4 or 8 Gb of RAM devoted to it, unless you have some compelling reason to multi-core the VM. I've done it, but the benefits are unclear. One core seems to work just as well.

it's what _I_ do, anyway. Ubu in a VM, for a customer who insists on it (with Mate it's not bad). Devuan or maybe Mint anyplace else. Backup the VM periodically and hand a backup copy to the customer for safe keeping. works for me.

The strife of Brian: Why doomed Intel boss's ex86 may not be the real reason for his hasty exit

Re: "So if Intel wants to sell CPUs, they should invest in Linux and the BSD's. "

"their CPU + chipset + firmware stacks are trivial to crack remotely and locally so they are not fit for use for multiuser applications"

not so 'trivial' in real life. POSSIBLE, yes, but I always assume that all of the time. Besides, what ELSE are you going to do your (potentially insecure) web surfing with? A PDP-11?

(practice 'safe surfing' - NoScript, non-windows host, non-MS browser, non-privileged login)

Re: Bring in someone more Linux friendly?

"phones are more apt to be bought on a shorter time frame that PCs."

very true, so that's why Qualcomm and Broadcom and other ARM-makers are building those. So is Intel, actually, but I don't know how much Intel silicon is going into phones these days.

Slabs were a bubble market but new phones come out all of the time. I still use a "dumb" one but it's got a low-power ARM in it, probably.

The whole slab/phone vs PC thing though is completely misreading the market. Slabs and phones are their own thing and have their own lifecycle. People really aren't buying phones INSTEAD of PCs. But without some compelling reason to get a new phone, don't people hang onto their old ones? Same idea I think.

I'd consider a new laptop if they all didn't have Win-10-nic on them... [I just wish it were easier to fix my OLD one, which has a bad motherboard - capacitors, probably]

Re: They could have used the "He said Jehova" excuse instead

"what on Earth is an N-word in this context? A noun?"

It's a pejorative term beginning with 'N' that generally refers to black slaves back in the 1800's when slavery was still legal. Often found in Mark Twain books like "Huckleberry Finn" where it was commonly used to refer to black slaves (note that the theme of that particular book was FREEING a slave named Jim, so Mark Twain really wasn't a racist after all). If I quoted the actual word here I'd probably get a ban.

Bring in someone more Linux friendly?

Maybe it's time that chip-zilla starts acknowledging the CAUSE of sales slumps in the x86 world: MICROSOFT.

Windows "Ape" and Win-10-nic, along with the lack of "the appearance of" Moore's Law improvements (today's computer is no longer 50% faster than last year's model), have basically motivated people to hang onto their existing gear, and just make the kinds of improvements that include more RAM and larger hard drives. No longer does that "new, shiny" machine, laptop, or whatever, give you reason ENOUGH to abandon what you already have for the "new, shiny".

That's because Micro-shaft has RUINED the 'new PC' market by RUINING WINDOWS.

More than enough El Reg articles pointed this out. Sales slumped for "Ape" while 7 boxen still ran off of the shelves, until you could no longer buy them.

It wasn't slabs, smartphones, or overpriced "Surface" laptops that people wanted. People wanted a computer that they did NOT perceive as running SLOWER or giving them LESS freedom to do what they wanted with it. And that includes the SLURP, the ADS, the FORCED UPDATES, and the 2D FLUGLY.

So if Intel wants to sell CPUs, they should invest in Linux and the BSD's. They should make sure that Linux and the BSD's support their newest stuff, make sure that the most popular software is properly ported to RUN on these computers, that open source equivalents have ALL of the features that business want, and maybe do a LITTLE promotion of the same.

If they do, they'll succeed where MICRO-SHAFT has FAILED.

Micro-shaft is in "shoot own foot" mode with the way they're flopping and twitching around and spinning in-place instead of heading in a direction that leads towards more success. If Intel continues to hitch THEIR wagon to Micro-shaft's "star", they'll be in for the SAME kinds of FAIL.

Or, is Micro-shaft just letting them devalue enough to BUY them?

COME ON, Intel, time to step up to the plate, PROMOTE LINUX, and hit a HOME RUN! Or, as appropriate, kick the game-winning goal!

In huge privacy win, US Supreme Court rules warrant needed to slurp folks' location data

Re: Orin Kerr is posting on the subject.

"I find it almost ironic that Trump's appointee has been pretty solid on civil liberties."

I don't, not at all. You can't believe the fake-media perceptions and pre-conceptions if you want to understand this. An "originalist" with respect to constitutional law would ALWAYS side with freedom and protection of individual rights, i.e. "non-statism". 4th ammendment.

(that's who Trump and Gorsuch REALLY are, by the way - don't believe the nonsense)

Re: Victory! for now

siding, even slightly, on the side of privacy, is a good trend.

"Get a warrant". works for me.

Now Microsoft ports Windows 10, Linux to homegrown CPU design

Re: Computer says "No"

"Microcode was the way of getting the benefits of RISC on the horrific X86 instruction set."

Actually, microcode has been around since CPUs existed. it's how they work internally. From what I was told (in a college class) the IBM 360 had microcode on plastic cards with holes in them, which were read by changes in capacitance for sense wires running along the top and bottom (rows and columns). that way you could re-program the IBM 360's microcode by using a stack of cards.

The concept of RISC (as I recall) was to get closer to the microcode to streamline the instruction pipeline and reduce the size (etc.) of the core, though it's not the same thing as BEING microcode.

I don't recall MIPS or ARM _EVER_ being faster than the high-end x86's. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. I don't remember hearing that. I'm pretty sure it was the other way around.

From here on, Red Hat's new GPLv2 software projects will have GPLv3 cure for license violators

I have a better remedy...

I have a better remedy. Make it all BSD 3 or 4 clause and be done with it. No 'remediation' needed.

If you TRULY want to contribute, that's what you'll do. Otherwise, you're trying to control too much on how people use it.

I don't like [L]GPLv3 for many reasons, starting with the lengthy lawyerspeak and WAY too many implied and explicit restrictions, particularly for commercial use, with terms like "aggregate" being applied to GPLv3 licensing where one GPL component may or may not force "the entire work" to be GPLv3, basically MAKING ROOM for L[aw]YERS to sue/settle and get paid at YOUR expense. [L]GPLV2 is much cleaner, simpler, common sense, etc. and I tend to 'dual license' everything I put online anyway, such that either BSD or [L]GPLv2 license applies at the discretion of the person using it.

It's not like I won't get credit for writing those things anyway, with a non-GPL license. I just prefer freedom over "copy-left" and Stallman's anti-capitalist attitude as reflected in the licenses. If you restrict what people do with it, it's not "freedom" any more. "You're free to play with my toys, but you have to make a bzzzzz sound when making the airplane 'fly'" <-- like that

(understandably, Linux is GPLv2 but you can run proprietary binary-only stuff on it if you want to. RH could simply ship it separately as an add-on if they wanted to)