Posts by bombastic bob

NASA dusts off FORTRAN manual, revives 20-year-old data on Ganymede

Re: The problem probably wasn't the software...

it might be time to back all of that stuff up onto more modern media, as well as a RAID someplace with images that can be loaded (and run) by something *like* simvh

I've got a few simvh-compatible images for PDPs and I know the VAX images exist as well... so we can avoid the problems of ancient hardware [though it's still fun to play with it] and potential data loss.

NASA may be a little weak on the I.T. front...

post-edit (after reading a few more replies in this topic)

simvh would solve nearly all of the language and hardware format compatibility problems identified, from the FORTRASH lingo itself, to the non-IEEE floating point format

Windows 10 April 2018 Update lands today... ish

Re: "Peer-to-peer patch distribution over the LAN"

I might want to say "it's about time" while simultaneously snarking about its very existence...

That is something that pretty much everybody wanted at least 2 decades ago. Only thing NOW is that it's being CRAMMED UP OUR AS DOWN OUR THROATS. It's like adding lube to the unpleasant experience involving Micro-shaft's customers bending over, etc. to make it "easier".

To me this was an OBVIOUS thing, i.e. "how to share updates". but when "update" typically means "take away things I did for customization" through "give me a UI from HELL that I never asked for", why bother?

Except when it's FORCED upon us...

Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie, oi oi oi! Tech zillionaire Ray's backdoor crypto for the Feds is Clipper chip v2

Re: "the next step will be to make non-possession of phones a crime..."

"No phone, no credit."

*ahem*

How **DARE** they **FORCE** you to **PURCHASE** **A** **PRODUCT** **BY** **LAW** like that!

I'm glad THAT would NEVAR happen here in the good ol' U.S. of A ... no, wait...

Re: Making Non-compliant Encryption Illegal

this is looking even more and more like the war against law abiding citizens owning/carrying guns. Or knives. Because, if such things are illegal, ONLY! THE! CRIMINALS! WILL! HAVE! THEM!!! (and unless "they" will have a qualified officer of the law following me everywhere, online or offline, ready to POUNCE and protect me at a moment's notice, I think it would be better if I did that for myself, ya know? And that includes the use of STRONG encryption that can't easily be cracked)

In short: it's a war by "the elite" to make sure that everyone NOT in their "special people" club may NOT defend themselves, whether it be encryption, or any form of weapon.

What are "they" going to ban NEXT, *MARTIAL* *ARTS* ??? KEYS TO YOUR HOUSE?

At some point the people need to say *ENOUGH*. That point is *NOW*.

icon: because 'big brother' _IS_ watching you [and he needs your 'keys']

Double double, soil and trouble, fire burn and heat shield bubble: NASA cracks rover, has dirty talk with ESA

Re: time to revisit miniature pumpe propulsion?

I did a quickie search on this and only found a summary of an article by Whitehead.

However from the summary I think I know what they're talking about: something smaller than one of those massive turbopumps they use on liquid fueled rockets nowadays. The article even suggests something piston powered.

I suggest a 'swashplate' design:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_piston_pump

On one side, you have a swashplate engine, the other side a fuel pump. The engine would use a 2-part fuel, possibly ignited like a diesel engine [you could time fuel injection to prevent excessive knocking]. If a mechanical injector pump were used for the fuel injection [directly tied to the engine shaft] then all you would need to do is start it spinning [this would require a 'start gas' of some kind, maybe pressurized tanks of N2 or He or whatever]. Air starting of diesel engines isn't a new concept [it's done on submarines for example]. Then the fuel pump inlet valve would open and fuel would start-a-pumping. And so, you could apply start air to the fuel pump inlet (and make it work like a motor for the startup sequence), then the air shuts off when the engine fires up, then at the proper RPM the inlet valves open, and then the rocket fires up, etc.. Of course the lubricants and components need to work at cryo temps but this is more or less 'a given" being rocket fuel, etc..

As for the rocket engine itself as long as you can produce enough fuel volume for the engine to produce reasonable thrust, it oughta be a complete "no brainer".

Worthy of mention, an effective use of a swashplate engine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_48_torpedo#Propulsion

NOTE: for a cooling system, you have some very cold fuel that could circulate around the engine before being pumped and/or burned by the fuel pump itself. This is already done with a typical rocket engine in which the fuel is circulated through the engine jacket prior to going into the combustion chamber. Additionally, the rocket bell could be cooled by forming a laminar layer of fuel along the inside surface, such that temperatures could actually exceed the melting point of the engine. At the expense of a small amount of fuel that forms the layer, you'd get to use a much higher burn temperature. [I don't know if this laminar layer trick is being used already, but most likely it is, as it's too obvious not to have it in a modern rocket's design].

get those rocks back to our home world.

all joking aside, the lack of a proper hitchhiking ring might prove to be a problem...

So maybe it's time to ship a few landers? And a robot mothership?

Here's the thing: Let's say a robotic lander has some kind of secondary booster, like the Apollo's LEM. It can be an SRB type, just to make it physically smaller. The booster would be designed to get the payload into Mars orbit, with some kind of guidance capability so you can at least get something predictable to happen. After getting into Mars orbit, "the robot mothership" would rendezvous with it, along with the "plethora of others", and then [eventually] put itself on a return course back to earth.

Getting samples into the landers shouldn't be too hard, given you have a) rovers, b) robotic arms, and c) the possibility of moving small buckets to/from the surface and into the landers. Buckets would be weighed when 'in place' (and covers locked down), and the relevant information would then be used to help calculate orbital 'whatever' because you'd need precise weight information to do that.

This probably means some of SpaceX's experience in remotely landing a rocket on its tail might prove to be useful. In fact, if the lander stage was also the guidance stage on launch, they could re-use some stuff and maybe cut back on the total weight. Still you're shipping a rocket to Mars that's designed to take off again, something we haven't done before. It should be interesting.

A few test runs to the moon might be worth doing, to work the bugs out.

Boss sent overpaid IT know-nothings home – until an ON switch proved elusive

Re: try working in schools

for an extra fee you should offer to relocate the printer to resolve future problems.

Oh, wait...

Re: “...hated us for being over-paid and under-skilled.”

"If you hold the cd tray eject button while powering a machine on it'll usually open the tray before attempting to boot from what's in it."

and sometimes it tries to re-close while you're attempting to remove the CD/DVD...

/me notes that on a refurb XBox 360 it came with a game disk still in the drive. It was not one I wanted, though... [I also had to erase all of the old user info and installed games, kinda painful but the price was right]

Re: Way Back...

RE: light switch on a power outlet...

On a related note, the old 'National Technical Schools' TV repair correspondence course included some basic notes on house calls. In that chapter they pretty much pointed out that (more often than not) the TV will get unplugged so that someone can plug in a vacuum cleaner, and then be 'left that way' followed by a house call of "my TV is broken". This apparently happened so often that TV repair people basically needed to impose a 'minimum charge' just to show up or they'd invariably be giving time away for 'yet another pointless house call'.

Additionally, the U.S. Navy Electronics Technician school has you always begin your troubleshooting by making sure the equipment is correctly powered up by examining the input fuses [which light up when the fuse blows] and making sure that the "O.N./O.F.F." switch is in the "O.N." position (and the equipment is plugged in and the outlet energized, if that is part of the equation). Because "power supply" is one of the most common reasons for failure. [they also had you basically 'play with the equipment' and put it into 'test mode' and observe what happens before opening up and doing measurements, etc. because in a lot of cases, doing 'test mode' like that narrows the cause of the problem pretty fast].

Leave it to Beaver: Unity is long gone and you're on your GNOME

Re: Does Wifi Work?

You could try something 'external' for your laptop. Yeah it sort of defeats te purpose but sometimes USUALLY the laptop makers don't give a rat's ass about "linux compatibility" and you end up with something that ONLY works in Winders.

Re: MATE fix

/me checks - looks like FreeBSD's ports system snapshot has 1.20 on it (thanks for mentioning that). The 2018Q2 snapshot has 1.18 though...

Re: More evidence that the Gnome crowd have the Win10 problem:

"I've honestly never really understood the appeal of Gnome (or Unity) at all"

In the 'gnome 2' days it was a pretty good desktop, a bit lighter weight than KDE (or that was my impression of it), with plenty of compatibility if you wanted to run KDE applications. It tried to do things that irritate me [I don't need auto-mount, it gets in my way, and I don't need a network manager or power manager] but I could always shut those things off. And the panel design (back then) was pretty nice, VERY flexible, configurable the way you want it. "Mac-like" menu at the top, or "windows-like" menu at the bottom. Whatever you wanted. And in gnome 2 you can position icons wherever you want on the panel.

Gnome 3 broke a LOT of what was good in gnome 2, particularly with icon spacing on the panel. In gnome 2 (and now, mate), I can cram 30 or 40 shortcut icons onto the panel for the things I typical.ly use. In gnome 3 you're lucky if you can do HALF of those, and you have to use triple-bucky keystrokes to alter them (instead of a simple right-click).

So when you say 'gnome' I assume you mean what it's de-evolved into, rather than what it was when it gained its popularity.

Well, at least you're not FORCED into 2D FLATSO with Gnome 3, at any rate...

Re: On the face of it

"they all look the same!"

Apparently, that's what Canonical wants to see. And using 'Gnome shell' rather than 'Unity' probably cuts back on the level of effort they need to expend to get it.

As long as Ubu continues to support Mate I'll be able to use it. Then again, I'm installing Devuan into a VM at the moment...

If you're looking for bad news about Microsoft, top tip: look away now

rewards for 'bad behavior'

seem counterproductive to proper vendor/customer relations. I have to wonder how treating customers like minions or cash cows is in any way getting them EVEN MORE money than before.

It boggles the mind.

That's no moon... er, that's an asteroid. And it'll be your next and final home, spacefarer

I don't believe this is the case.

The ability to warp space simply requires sufficient energy, at least according to some scientists who worked it out. They believe it's "star level" energy, but I suspect it's much easier than this. Consider the advantages in earthbound flight that have happened in the last 100 years, and then consider that space flight has only been for about half of that.

The only reason we haven't colonized the moon and mars yet is because GUMMINTS were running the space programs. Once private industry gets its proper foothold, advances will happen again. It's just that the gummints have been HOLDING US BACK, DELIBERATELY. "For our own good" I'm sure they *FEEL* (not think). I've been disappointed with this kind of thing since the 70's when they scrapped the moon program.

I suspect it might be possible to create gravity waves/particles [which exist, there are space craft that measure them] using a spinning mass, and with sufficient field strength and density, could form the classic 'warp bubble'. The idea would be to make something that, when it spins, doesn't fly apart, then let it get to relativistic speeds so that the effective mass vs actual mass is different, which should [in theory] release the difference in relativistic vs actual mass as gravitons aka gravity waves. Perhaps it's possible with charged particles in a resonant cavity with an extremely high magnetic field, like a magnetron filled with Xe gas. So yeah people laughed at the ion drive, at one point [but there are space craft using it, heh].

Many technologies we currently use were things once described in sci fi. I'd just like to consider the possibilities that existing tech COULD be used to create a 'warp ship' of some kind, as long as someone knows what pieces to cram together in order to do it...

Re: Life Aboard A Colony

"Food, water and air etc is more or less a solved problem"

Maybe, maybe not, if you consider that as you leave our solar system, you'll need some kind of long-term reliable energy supply for photosynthesis [and to keep temperatures in the "livable" range]. That energy supply needs to have enough fuel to last for the 'hundreds of years' trip.

Maybe a huge supply of water with heavy hydrogen might help? Of course, that would cause a bit of "weight gain" if people drank it for a long time... (and now I thought of a really funny impractical joke to pull on someone who's always dieting)

You say Halo and I say goodbye: Microsoft has a word with unauthorised mod devs

Re: Finally

"Microsoft have something that people seem to like and they try to shut it down..."

pushing the legality of DMCA [which is aparently a legit claim in this case] and flexing their legal muscles to set an example of these guys, as opposed to working WITH them and just suing for some back-royalties [then selling what's theirs in order to license it for people who want the mod, for a reasonable fee, making money in the process] shows Micro-shafts motives VERY clearly. It's not about earning money. It's about THE CONTROL. But we knew that, because we read the Win-10-nic EULA.

"Try open sourcing Windows and see how much better it will be with 3rd party mods."

I bet it would work. First to be replaced with customer desires: the slurp-ware, track-ware, ad-ware, forced updates, and 2D FLATSO. And then let people license it with Micro-Shaft, so they can continue to earn money for it. WIN-WIN!

But Micro-shaft does not *WANT* 'Win-Win'. They want WINDOWS-10 UBER ALLES!!!

Re: Evil MSFT

they could've licensed things and let people play the open source stuff with the licensed software, but NOOooo... can't give customers what they WANT, gotta shove what THEY want up our as... down our throats INSTEAD. You know like XBox One... Win-10-nic... Edge... Microsoft Logon... slurping and tracking and ads - Oh My! [and forced updates] [and 2D FLATSO] [the list is longer but I'll stop now]

Re: Release the game on Russian servers

Putin can use it to help train the Russian Army. Yeah, that'll fix things!

Danish submariner sent down for life for murder of journalist Kim Wall

Re: Never mind that animal

well, being a crime scene... scrapping may end up happening [especially if a judge orders it]

I'd rather see it sold, crowdfunding investors get paid back a portion of it, and maybe the proceeds go to the victim's family [or at least pay off the legal expenses and debts and whatnot this (alleged) psychopath left behind].

" he should be allowed one last trip in in his sub"

it's not really 'his' as I understand it. It was 'crowdfunded'.

But his assets in that sub should be sold off to pay for the legal expenses (and other debts). Then he gets to see photos of someone else piloting it.

Re: I know Justice demands that everyone get a proper defence...

without a proper defense, you can never be certain you're jailing the right person.

So I hope every criminal is convicted by a jury of peers, without bias, based on the evidence, which cannot be refuted, and punished to the maximum extent the law allows. And, he has a REALLY GOOD attorney to ensure that it's all accurate and above board.

"feel" the consequences of your actions

"Yes also technically it is not life as he is eligible for parole at age 112"

Commit the crime, do the time. This should deter others from doing the same. As for me, I hope he enjoys his permanent stay in the iron bar hotel.

If he truly reforms, he could hope for a pardon. But I doubt he'd get it.

so what crimes did this alleged scumbag commit again???

"committing 18 crimes — including robbery — on a single day when he was 16"

I wonder if he was thinking "I'm going to get away with this because I'm 'underage' "

"robbed a group of volunteers who were delivering Christmas presents in December 1995"

"Bostic and 18-year-old Donald Hutson fired two shots, one of which grazed a person"

"carjacked a woman who Hutson robbed and fondled before releasing her"

(from http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/missouri-defends-teen-241-year-sentence-article-1.3879037 minus the touchy-feely-liberal-lefty-poor-widdle-snowflakes-babble)

So we can say: armed robbery, attempted murder II (not premeditated), carjacking [apparently armed], accessory to sexual battery, accessory to armed robbery, and 13 or so other crimes.

Yes. Add up those sentences. The guy he was committing the crimes with apparently plead guilty and only got 30 years in a plea bargain. ONLY got 30 years. It was _THAT_ bad. Don't let the whiny-socialist-leftist-bleaters and their oh-my-heart-it-bleeds-for-you rendition of 'Hearts and Flowers' on the world's smallest violin manipulate you into thinking otherwise. Those to DEFINITELY deserve their sentences.

And the younger one DARED to claim he was INNOCENT! And that explains the 240 or so years' worth of jail time he got. Isn't that the point of plea bargain, to AVOID that? And without actually HANDING OUT that kind of sentence to those ARROGANT enough to claim "innocence" like that, and being made an EXAMPLE out of, then NOBODY will EVAR go for the plea bargain AGAIN!

And his lawyer should be ashamed of himself for NOT convincing his client to plead GUILTY...

Future potential victims can rejoice at his incarceration, too. I doubt that the lady who's car was jacked while she gets robbed and sexually assaulted would want EITHER of them out of prison!

jail is a deterrent (as well as a punishment)

"rehabilitated" or not, a TRUE life sentence is a deterrent for ANYBODY ELSE to try this kind of thing...

(and it keeps these kinds of psychopaths out of the general public)

A criminal typically commits MANY crimes before finally being caught. Once caught and convicted, they should be locked up for as LONG as possible (with respect to the crime(s) committed of course)!

[then again I would be happy to see life sentences for 419 and "your computer has a virus" scammers, and mandatory jail terms for violators of the 'do not cal' list]

PC recycler gets 15 months in the clink for whipping up 28,000 bootleg Windows 7, XP recovery discs

Re: Heavy handed indeed

" he should have phone Microsoft for a special deal on upgrade discs"

He probably couldn't. Because, win-10-nic.

a) why buy an old PC with win-10-nic as your only option? If it were me, Windows 7 would be the ONLY reason to get the machine!

b) Micro-shaft won't sell what people want. This was a marketing opportunity to give the public something they want instead of what MICRO-SHAFT wants them to have

c) old hardware might not work with Win-10-nic, regardless of the claims

My opinion: he should've shipped them with Linux, and let people figure out what they want to do afterwards.

Audiophiles have really taken to the warm digital tone of streaming music

Re: Reel to Reel

"You must mean live UNAMPLIFIED music, with no possibility of live Autotune.... folk or classical?"

How about JAZZ?

/me "takes 5"

'Real Musicians' play jazz and/or classical; wannabe's use autotune. Many musicians are obviously talented enough to play jazz or classical, but would rather make money...

A lot of 80's music is like jazz/rock crossover. JPOP too. no wonder I like it! [but that 70's disco+soul crap can be flushed into the sewer as far as I'm concerned]

Re: Reel to Reel

most mastering is done digitally these days. So in theory the CD will have the "true fidelity" to what the master has on it.

analog mastering is highly overrated. It has to do with the way tape DISTORTS the audio. Just the tape itself, putting it on magnetic media, changes the audio. Some people prefer "that sound" for a number of reasons, as the effects might actually be similar to what happens when you mp3 something. There's a natural volume compression, for one, that affects different frequencies in different ways. Analog recording techniques did their best to limit the changes to the audio, but it's definitely there. Try listening to 'tape monitor' while recording, as a good example of the changes. The tape's output is always close, sometimes REALLY close, but is never an exact copy. it's just the nature of analog recording.

Re: High definition vinyl...

I was wondering about 100Mhz on vinyl... that'd be some interesting engineering

'warm digital tone' of compressed audio

ack on the lossy compression. sometimes it makes it sound "better" but just as often, not.

This also relates to the perceived "loudness war" i.e. max out the digital signal values on EVERYTHING, keeping it on "max loud" all of the time [cutting off transients, and adding some harmonic distortion in the process]. Strangely, mp3'ing or ogg'ing that tends to mellow out some of the artifacts caused by the clipping...

So the REAL problem might be "the loudness war" - and of course the streaming audio could sound just a _bit_ better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Re: Streaming is killing musicians

well, music marketing is definitely different. But I think that streaming should give independent musicians a better deal. Downside: you'll have to market your own stuff.

In the past, RIAA would get a contract with musicians and then do all of the marketing, etc.. They literally OWNED your career. They'd use one very successful musician/group to finance several others.

Now it may be the mediocre groups/artists [who seem to be VERY plentiful these days] not doing so well, whereas a few REALLY GOOD ones actually _DO_ do well.

Or something like that. I'm quite dissatisified with a lot of the CRAP I hear. Occasionally you'll get another album from Muse or a new group popping out of the woodwork that's worth buying a CD for. Other than that, it's mostly CRAP on the radio these days, and I am not willing to pay money to search for music I might like. Streaming radio stations are helpful, though, and a lot of 'niche' stuff on I-Heart-Radio and similar.

Lately I find myself listening to a 'classic rock' station, the local 'metal' station, the local JAZZ station, and streaming radio (JPOP primarily; where ELSE can you find it?). None of it costs anything, and as long as they don't play anything by 'Red Hot Chili Peppers' [holding nose while "singing" about birds sharing some kind of lonely view] I'm satisfied.

In general, "modern music" kinda sucks. But there are gems to be found. They're just too few and far between. It's a reflection of RIAA's antiquated "marketing", propping up stinky bands [and leveraging radio stations to play their songs "until we like them"], and funding a handful of stinkers for every one that's worth paying for.

Re: Streaming? Nah!

ack on physical media. but if I can DL in a simple format like mp3 [i.e. no DRM] them I'm fine. I don't use a "DRM encumbered" operating system anyway.

I might want to point out that if artists produced music WORTH BUYING, then more people would BUY IT.

I have to wonder how much streaming/downloading THIS year is for things NOT produced within the last 3 years...

[and a better marketing channel for JPOP would be nice]

Critical infrastructure needs more 21qs6Q#S$, less P@ssw0rd, UK.gov security committee told

Correct Horse Battery Staple

obligatory

https://www.xkcd.com/936/

Astroboffins discover the stink of eggy farts wafting from Uranus

Re: Naming Uranus @John Mangan

"I'll just get my coat and clear the room."

If it were one of _mine_ it would clear the building...

Re: H2S isn't just a nasty smell

sulfur is chemically similar to oxygen. An alcohol formed with sulfur in place of the oxygen is a 'thiol', for example. H2S is a bit like H2O except that it's not a liquid, probably because the hydrogen bonds don't work the same way. but sulfur compounds are important in organic things and so you get them a LOT, particularly when you eat a lot of eggs and beans.

But yeah the most pungent odors are of the sulfur variety. H2S, methane thiol [which is what is often added to natural gas lines so they stink], and of course, SO2, all stink like rotting eggs because that's kind of what rotting eggs produce from the bacteria and anaerobic digestion.

I think skunk musk is also a sulfur-based compound...

mind the smell, mine the diamonds

pointing this out as well (from almost a year ago)

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/21/how_diamonds_got_in_uranus/

Re: No obvious reference?

let's change it's name to "U-rectum" to avoid the "yer anus" jokes...

Even Microsoft's lost interest in Windows Phone: Skype and Yammer apps killed

Re: MS should have done

All snark aside, did you think UWP would protect it? No, it actually becomes _worse_

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/21/security_roundup/

With particular attention to the "Windows 10 S bypass" part.

The Win32 API is what Microsoft should *STICK* *WITH*. All of that other 'S' should NEVER have been TRIED in the FIRST place!

That means: ".Net", Silverlight, UWP, 'The Metro', "The Store", 8.0's TILE SCREEN, "the Settings", that ridiculous attempt at a hybrid start screen + start menu on Win-10-nic, the slurping, the tracking, the "Microsoft Logon", the FORCED UPDATES, the ALWAYS ALPHABETIZED "apps" list, and (of course) the 2D FLATSO!!!

These should have NEVER been tried, let alone IMPLEMENTED.

Microsoft: Ruining Windows since 2003.

Re: Back to the 80's

it would be funnier if Pee Wee screamed it while in a biker bar [followed by a dance presentation of 'Tequila']

'Effect' vs 'Affect'

'effect' is a noun. You _could_ verb it, I suppose, but that's what 'affect' does (the verb).

You had an effect, by affecting things. So the users were 'affected'.

[but I understood it without the grammar fascism, heh]

Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

"Or maybe it's just called vendor lock in?"

That may be what it really IS. But I'll tell you what it is NOT: It is NOT "their customers actually WANT their products". It's more like an addiction, or a near-monopoly.

Any current earnings 'boon' due to data slurping and spying is short-lived, almost like a 'dead cat bounce'.

In not terrifying news at all, Google just keeps on growing: Revenue, profit, headcount up

Brawndo's good for plants

What happens when HALF of the world's population works for Google?

(see title)

Petty PETA rapped by judges over monkey selfie copyright stunt

People Eating Tasty Animals

is what PETA _should_ be.

Mmmm... BEEF!

Penn & Teller once exposed how PETA owned a HUGE walk-in freezer. Its purpose? "Euthanizing" animals! OK one site suggests it's just for storage, rather than for freezing animals to death:

http://911animalabuse.org/Peta-News.php

PETA: where hypocrisy goes to an EXTRA level!

US sanctions on Turkey for Russia purchases could ground Brit F-35s

"The real Russian stealth killer is Buk from 2M series onwards. It is quite visible how it is operates for real in battle conditions on amateur footage from Damascus last cruise missile attack"

considering how every missile/bomb reached its target in the last attack on Syrian chemical weapons storage and manufacturing, I'd say it's not very effective.

Maybe this entire thing is JUST politics. Russia trying to make it look like they're an actual threat. U.S.'ians having to save face and be consistent in foreign policies, so we have to threaten sanctions against Turkey, who probably got a 'sweet deal' from Putin, just to rub our noses in it. And, Putin laughing all the way.

'Your computer has a virus' cold call con artists on the rise – Microsoft

Re: Number Witheld.

"I've learned that calling them Pakistani drives them through the roof."

I wonder what subtly insulting their ACCENT does...

"I'm sorry, what was that?"

"I can't understand, can you repeat that?"

"Can you say it again, slowly?"

"Can you spell it out for me?"

"What was that one letter again, I didn't quite understand it?"

"It sounded like [insert ethnic slur here] to me, is that right?"

And of course, LOUDLY wind it up [right before they hang up in anger] with something like:

"If you're going to SCAM someone in an ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRY, then LEARN TO SPEAK [profanity]-ING ENGLISH, you [profanity] [profanity] PAKISTANI!!!"

or something like that. Then you get to troll them AND vent your spleen!

" often as many of 3 generations being active at the same time."

you sure there's not a manual switchboard someplace, with Lilly Tomlin as "your operator" ?

Re: Re "putting the phone down is almost always the right thing to do."

"Leading them down a long alley for 20 minutes while pretending to be a dimwit is the right thing"

and, gloriously entertaining!

sorta like the "419 eaters"

/me notes that in the article, along the side, it notes that the U.S. treatment of these worthless scumbags is overly tolerant, whereas the U.K. response is much more appropriate. I think that EVERYONE is being too kind to these sociopathic PARASITES, as they STILL LIVE.

Amazon, LG Electronics turned my vape into an exploding bomb, says burned bloke in lawsuit

Re: Health Hazard?

@Steven Raith

"I dunno, you're annoying me with your [whatever]"

You're probably a SMOKER, right? Tit for tat. And assuming you're a smoker, enjoy your cancer/COPD.

And don't smoke in the presence of others. You can do whatever you want to YOURSELF.

Or take up vaping, which isn't such an irritant to everyone around you [or just QUIT the toxic exhausting into EVERYBODY ELSE'S AIR]. Vape 'vapors' smell kinda like air freshener, if anything at all, and [from the studies I've read, and my own personal observation] doesn't cause people to have adverse reactions [at least to the best of my knowledge].

Public smoking is a PUBLIC NUISANCE and should be banned and heavily fined for violations. But if you want to vape, have at it. The actual dangers (and irritation) of doing so, ESPECIALLY to everyone else around you, is practically non-existent.

Qual-gone: 1,200+ axed from Snapdragon, Centriq giant Qualcomm

Re: Qualcomm deserve to lose out

yeah, and I suppose "all corporations are evil" [even the ones that are not].

A corporation is there to make money. And when they can't continue funding a particular project, what are they supposed to do, LOSE money? Of course, they 'cut costs'. A job is NOT an entitlement. It's an exchange of WORK for MONEY. And when there's no work, there's no money. That's just the way it is.

In other words: The BUSINESS WORLD is _NOT_ a FORNICATING WELFARE PROGRAM! And, I'm quite HAPPY with THAT fact!!!

Well I guess this means trying to apply for a contract position at Qualcomm will be out of the question for a while, and my friend that works there may be looking for work again.

This could also mean "business opportunity" with a bunch of competent engineers that will be looking for employment in the very near future. Keep in mind that Qualcomm's efforts are most likely in the world of ARM+Linux and having 1000 or so experienced engineers in THIS realm may lead to something VERY interesting.

[now, where can I find a VC willing to go with this...]

Government demands for people's personal info from Microsoft reach all-time low

Re: Government requests for people's data from Microsoft fell

no longer any need for it to be "requested"

My first reaction to this was "'Obaka D.O.J.' vs 'Trump D.O.J.'" and "draining the swamp".

And if the requests become "we really need this" kinds of info, and it's WELL justified [instead of, let's say, a FISHING EXPEDITION], then data providers (like Micro-shaft) might be more WILLING to cooperate...

But yeah - I hope Micro-shaft and OTHER data providers hold out FOREVER in any cases where it's pretty obvious that the D.O.J. is simply on a FISHING EXPEDITION. Any judge signing an order like THAT _deserves_ to be 'objected to' and such a case where a motion to compel discovery might lead to an actual TRIAL over it, I think Micro-shaft [and others] would WIN, and it would be a really GOOD fight for them to engage in, in the name of data security at least. Good P.R.. But of course, IANAL and my legal opinions might not work as well as I'd like.

As for providing information when it's LEGITIMATE to do so, I tend to favor the cops on this one. And fewer requests, I think, would increase the percentage of cases in which it _IS_ legitimate.

Twenty years ago today: Windows 98 crashed live on stage with Bill Gates. Let's watch it again...

Re: Bill Gates

"by that logic, we could only say good things about Adolf Hitler."

no, because THAT would be LYING.