* Posts by bombastic bob

10507 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

Buffer overflow in Unix mailer Exim imperils 400,000 email servers

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: That has been fixed in Debian quite a while back

I first thought of Debian since they switched to Exim as the default mailer a while back.

Glad to know it's already patched. Still worth an article, even "late to the party"

Suspected drug dealer who refused to poo for 46 DAYS released... on bail

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Liquid laxative in his food and drink

chocolate Ex-Lax would do it - for "desert" with his meals

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Lamarr, Lucky to be alive

"The bags or condoms have not ruptured"

It's my understanding that opiates cause constipation. A 'slow leak' would assist him in his "protest".

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

Re: So...

"after that long it's probably turned into coprolite"

oh, so you're suggesting that maybe he held it for SO long that now it's IMPOSSIBLE for him to crap it out?

Well, then, that's a *bit* different! [in saving his life, they'll collect the evidence - w00t!]

He _still_ deserves a Darwin award, in my bombastic opinion.

bombastic bob Silver badge
FAIL

Ah, CRAP!

The jailers should've let him explode. Instead, he gets to (allegedly) BURDEN SOCIETY for the rest of his [much longer] life.

I have no compassion for criminals, as THEY have NO COMPASSION for ME (or anyone but themselves). Innocent until proven guilty, and you get your day in court and your standard "rights". Beyond that, too bad.

And the jailers aren't responsible for self-inflicted punishments. If the ACCUSED wants to inflict punishment upon himself, such that he can't be forced into compliance, that's not the jailers' fault. They've "washed their hands" of it.

at least when you let a toddler hold his breath until you buy him "that toy", the toddler knows to give up after a couple of minutes. THAT guy ought to have received a DARWIN AWARD for his BLATANT STUPIDITY.

ESA builds air-breathing engine that works in space

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Accelerating the wrong way ?

"the engine is slowing it down"

OK - I do a mini-simulation in my head, and I see air going into some kind of 'scoop' device, like what you might see on a ramjet [only a "space" version], and I consider a few things that aerodynamics might cause some trouble with:

a) when the air enters the scoop, how does it get collected exactly? [you need some kind of compressor pump I'd think]

b) while air is collecting for a compressor pump intake cycle, wouldn't it build up enough pressure to exert an impulse on the satellite, causing it to slow down just a bit more?

c) is the electrostatic acceleration going to be ENOUGH more than the (effective) drag caused by the intake scoop going to be enough to overcome the additional drag of the satellite itself against the atmosphere? [this includes the solar panels, too, which just might not be all that streamlined]

I imagine the rocket scientists have thought all this out. Hopefully I didn't just poop their party.

Sacked saleswoman told to pay Intel £45k after losing discrim case

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Money here

"if you’re going to criticise, be explicitly clear about the core facts and be as balanced as possible"

Yeah, THAT will happen... *NOT*

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Legal Costs

"the prospect of having to pay legal costs is enough intimidation for the other party to drop the case?"

Exactly. Think of it as a "burden of proof" hurdle that you have to overcome in order to have a successful lawsuit. This as opposed to "always side with the [insert 'identity' here]". That way, only the REAL cases will win [and no more 'just settle and make it go away'].

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

There's a penalty for playing the 'sexist' card

Let's face it: every time you hire a [insert 'identity' here] you run the risk that this employee, if ever fired, will turn it around and sue you, costing you time and legal fees at the very least.

I applaud Intel for NOT "just caving" and "just paying her off".

So, *FINALLY* it looks like there's a penalty for playing the 'identity' card like that, in this case the 'sexist' card, "*FEELING*" as if everyone else out there is a bleeding-heart SJW just waiting to PUNISH "the man" [in this case, literally so] for all of those past grievances that SOooo many others [read: straw men] *SUFFERED* due to discrimination in one form or another, and therefore concluding YOUR case now has "merit" because, emotional manipulation, excessive jury damage awards, yotta yotta.

I hope this has a 'chilling effect' against frivolous discrimination lawsuits.

the only 'winners' in these kinds of things are the l[aw]yers.

Facebook regrets asking whether it's OK to let adult men ask underage girls for smut pix

bombastic bob Silver badge
Alert

Re: how would "the real internet" handle the following

"14 year old girl: [trollface]"

because, as we all know, when someone online claims to be a 14 year old girl, it's really a 45 year old male living in his mom's basement.

Asking for underage pr0n: creepy

Sending the underage pr0n (of herself): criminal

who's really taking the risk, here?

Open source community crams itself into big tent

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

should've camped out at Haight/Ashbury

with the hippy overtones, they should've just camped out at Haigh/Ashbury (assuming there's a vacant lot there 50 years after the infamous 'love-ins' of the 60's).

I wonder why _I_ was not invited to this love-fest? I've got open source stuff, on github... so what's the big deal here? I contribute patches and testing for open source projects. So why was _I_ not invited?

I guess it's only for the 'hippy' side of open source.

Article didn't mention if Linus was there. I bet he wasn't. Linus was probably busy working on Linux, as usual.

April Fool: FCC finally bothers with Puerto Rico as chairman visits

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Unbelievable

it's quite possible that this is a case of government getting in its own way.

Hackers create 'ghost' traffic jam to confound smart traffic systems

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

All I want...

All I want is the ability to make the lights go green when I'm approaching the intersection.

Brit semiconductor tech ended up in Chinese naval railgun – report

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: The *real* tough part is not nS (or even pS, with the right design) switching, it's the

"Actually if you want to do this is also the old school "Saturatable reactor" tech."

yeah, about mag-amps... they're notoriously inefficient, so they'll heat up really fast. Additionally, you COULD make a mag-amp rectifier, but regardless you still need to feed them with AC, and not DC, which means that charging a bank of super-capacitors and then RAPIDLY discharging them into the railgun system to fire it would be out...

nice try, though. Sorry to pee on your parade, to wet your blanket, to hose you down in your moment of passion, to poop your party, to ...

compare to much smaller (and lower dissipated power) IGBTs and/or MOSFETS. Hell, with optoisolators you could get away with using standard bipolar, or even (if you're really tricky) use SCRs. A few decades back I saw some static inverters that actually used a bank of SCRs in the output stage, big bolty-looking things, several inches in diameter. I think these inverters were designed in the 1970's, long before IGBTs and vertical MOSFETS came around. And they had massive cooling fans, too.

Anyway, there are LOTS of ways to skin cats, remove one's clothing, etc..

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: China

"They own most of the US National Debt."

Maybe not MOST of it, but certainly a whole lot of it, and the previous U.S. president made SURE of that [having doubled the national debt in his 8 years in office]. [ok Congrab didn't help either, being all too willing to pass 'continuing resolutions' indefinitely, but still]

so yeah, now a foreign entity owns a big chunk of our national debt. But that COULD be weaponized: "We go bankrupt".

Not sure WHAT would happen, then...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

agreed, IGBT's aren't that new. however the process and specs of VERY high current IGBT's may be the kind of intellectual property they have acquired...

just like integrated circuits have been around since the late 1950's or very early 1960's, but the ability to make the latest/greatest Intel CPU is the 'secret sauce' that only their chip foundries have. Similar for the RAM and SSD storage, yotta yotta yotta.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

"IGBTs are used to power every modern electric train, from any number of different countries."

I doubt it's the concept of an IGBT that's of concern here. It would be the various processes and physical dimensions involved in making the wafers and getting a decent yield. That kind of 'secret sauce' means that this particular manufacturer can mass produce the necessary "stuff". It's also theoretically possible that China _COULD_ deny "that stuff" to everyone but themselves, now.

Keep in mind who the Chinese government people REALLY are...

a) they employ millions of people in what can only be described as "sweat shops" but with more modern tech.

b) they pollute the CRAP out of their own cities, because other nations basically pay THEM to do the "polluty" things.

c) a small number of people have the vast majority of the wealth. Most people earn only a fraction of a typical 'minimum wage' in any 1st world country. It is likely that most of the people making iPhone could not afford to buy one, EVAR.

d) they are WELL KNOWN to do "internal use only" knock-offs of western tech, because they have the schematics, board layouts, components, and willing 'minions' to make it happen. "4th shift" it's sometimes called, "off the books" manufacturing of copyright and patent violating stuff.

Given this, and a pile of cash they're _NOT_ sharing with "the people", what do you expect? It's like the royal coffers of the "communist" nation are full to the brim now, and they want to flex their muscles and ensure it *STAYS* that way, indefinitely.

Understanding them means understanding human nature. That government has too much wealth power in too few hands. _ONLY_ corruption can result from this.

And we, in the west, have ENABLED them.

Microsoft, IBM settle case over disputed diversity boss

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Strategy vs "chief diversity officer"

I'd say that 'strategy' does not mean what they must think it means, if "strategy" means you hire a CHIEF! _DIVERSITY_! OFFICER! to mange your hiring policies and recruiting efforts.

Now, if they'd hired a "Chief Best Qualified Candidate Officer" or a "Chief Hire The Genius Officer" it would make a LOT more sense.

But that's _NOT_ what they did, now is it?

The purpopse of a corporation is to earn profit for its investors. "Diversity" is counterproductive to profit, because it focuses on "identity', and _NOT_ something that is "the best employee" nor "maximum value to the company". This means _LOWER_ profits, which is counterproductive and not in the company's best interest.

But hey, if a pair of BULLSHIT artists want to duke it out over BULLSHIT like "Chief Diversity Officer", let them. The rest of us can sit back and LAUGH! AT! THEIR! FOLLY!!!

World's biggest DDoS attack record broken after just five days

bombastic bob Silver badge
Stop

ISPs could mitigate this

ISPs could mitigate this, if they filtered all UDP traffic originating at their address space by filtering out anything that does not match the actual IP address of the source computer at the gateway

A simple filter rule on the gateway. There's nothing in the RFCs (that I'm aware of) where you need to allow the originating IP address of a UDP packet to differ from the computer that originated it. It's just that it CAN, that's all.

Miner vs miner: Attack script seeks out and destroys competing currency crafters

bombastic bob Silver badge
Joke

In the movie 'Hackers'

there was this one scene where 'Zero Cool' was having a turf war on a TV network control computer against "some other hacker". It turned out to be his future girlfriend. How cute, they met while duking it out on someone else's "puter". Heh.

The future realm of online dating - two potential lovers, trying to take over some innocent victim's computer for bitcoin mining. Awwww... [and they were all filled with 'awe'],

News lobsters demand to be let back into the Facebook boiling pot

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I like the lobster motif.

when you cook lobster, you first boil it alive until it turns a nice red color [as I understand it, anyway]. Not sure if you gut it first, though. But as it boils, I'm told it makes a squeeky whistling noise, sorta like a scream...

Gits club GitHub code tub with record-breaking 1.35Tbps DDoS drub

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: If you were a chef...

they're people who don't understand firewalls and private/public address spaces

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: Grey hat response...

creating a self-perpetuating loop would be even worse...

Mobile World Congress: 5 buzzwords, an homage to Windows XP and a smartphone snorefest

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Yesterdays world?

but yesterday's world was better - for desktop users, anyway.

I'd welcome an XP-like environment for Android, especially if it's 3D Skeuomorphic and *NOT* 2D FLATSO. so much of 'droid is already 2D FLATSO, but it doesn't HAVE to be... starting with non-flat icon design [which I see a lot of] but would need customized controls in lieu of 'flat-looking boxes' that pretend to be buttons [and so on]. but a reasonably clever programmer can make a 3D looking one, using a bitmap (as one example; other methods exist).

now, if native 'droid would just support that better...

Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired for opposing hiring caps on white, Asian male nerds

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The art of discrimination

"discriminated on merit. Whatever 'merit' is and how it is 'calculated' or judged"

usually by looking at your resume, in the sections covering experience and/or education.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: More PC BS

"Is HR allowed to select on personality type?"

Well, ENTPs probably make better engineers. I think they SHOULD! Pick a set of myers-briggs types that are ideal for the position, and use a standardized myers-briggs as part of the job application.

THIS would get INTERESTING, Muahahahahaha! And yes, _I_ am an ENTP! But you knew that already, right?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

"I want the option to describe my race as “human”."

I do that. mark 'other'. write in 'human' where it asks you. or leave it blank.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

"Start of the downward slide. Google and YouTube are poster identities for that sentiment."

You're forgetting MICRO-SHAFT - I bet they've got the proudest "diversity" claims of them all (and the crappy products to show for it)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Reverse discrimination is now political correctness.

"I am genuinely concerned we now live in a society where having a minority opinion will lead to punishment."

thing is, HATING reverse discrimination and political correctness is NOT a 'minority opinion', in spite of what the lefties and howler monkeys want everyone to think.

But yeah, having an opinion shouldn't get you fired, "not hired", nor in ANY way discriminated against. And hiring people based on things that are not directly related to the job makes BAD ECONOMIC SENSE.

Only a mega-corp like Google [with apparent cash to burn] could even AFFORD to hire mediocre people based entirely on race/sex/whatever. Everyone else has to hire competent employees that earn the company more money than the wages+benefits cost.

OK, who is shooting at Apple staff buses in California? Knock it off

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

"The whole inhabitted world needs a system to track exactly where the idiots with guns are all the time."

and firecrackers. and cars that backfire really loud (like Uncle Buck's car in that movie from the 90's). And really loud farts.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Use the Trump solution

" what a pellet gun's appeal is..."

target shooting is probably #1

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Use the Trump solution

The buses were being shot at by a *pellet gun*.

thanks for clarification. those are typically NOT considered "firearms".

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Use the Trump solution

"have someone ride shotgun"

a cop?

With IoT you too can turn your home into a giant flashing 'HORSE BIRTH NOW' klaxon

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: As a horse breeder ...

"before I quit owing to a divorce which made horse keeping unaffordable."

"I passed on attending my daughter's birth, the thought made me queasy"

somehow I think these two may be connected, at least in the X's mind... [if you could BE THERE for the horse, how come you can't BE THERE for me???]

Not like you really would be doing anything. That 'lamaze class' stuff is HIGHLY overrated (I think it's more important for a husband to go to his JOB to earn money to pay for all that schtuff). That 'lamaze coach' garbage is just a way for women to "get their hubbies involved" when it's really just women's work [heh heh heh heh heh]. "call me when it's done"

As for me, I'd just stand there averting boredom by mental-calculating the total force of a birthing contraction, based on the fetal pressure meter and the estimated surface area of a 9 month pregnant uterus, and announce the results to the room when my mental-math was complete, something like "guess what, it looks like each contraction is the equivalent of bench pressing 500lb" and, of course, offering to stand in the right spot with a (baseball) catcher's mitt during the final phase of the birthing process...

[oh, wait, I *did* that!]

Hypersonic nukes! Nuclear-powered drone subs! Putin unwraps his new (propaganda) toys

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Little reactors?

"an uncrewed unshielded cruise missile is technologically possible, if marginally feasible."

keep in mind that it's supposed to be able to run 'indefinitely' which means it's an air-breather. If it carried propellant, it would run out, eventually. The only way to make a 'long time' sustainable nuclear engine is for it to breathe air [or water if it's submerged, which might be a bit more practical]. That also doesn't consider the overall size requirement for the power plant and supporting systems. An air-breathing engine needs a heat exchanger that's large enough to transfer it to the propellant [in this case, air], and not melt in the process [so it can sustain propulsion].

Project Pluto - that's an interesting one (maybe Putin read the wikipedia page, said "we can do this, too" etc. nevermind the 1960's date on when the project was canceled).

Back in the 1950's and 60's there were a LOT of those kinds of things being tested out, not the least of which were the nuclear artillery round [which works, but who'd want to shoot an artillery round that causes fallout to drop on your own head?] and the SL-1 reactor [a small reactor that was SO dangerous it exploded from an accident during routine maintenance].

There are often a lot more reasons why a project is abandoned other than the ones stated. Some of these reasons are actually classified, or were at one time (SL-1 may be an example, I won't say why - if it's publically disclosed I'll comment on it, but that's about it).

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Little reactors?

"Good to hear that you know more than all those Russian military scientists and engineers"

you haven't even SEEN my CV. And yes, I quite possibly DO know more than at least most of those Russian military scientists and engineers, particularly if they're proposing things that are impractical to implement.

I may ALSO know "things" about (most likely still classified) systems such *AS* the old nuclear aircraft design. What's publicly available on Wikipedia is probably enough, though. I wouldn't divulge anything else.

/me used to operate a nuclear reactor on a submarine. yes, I know how they work, quite well in fact. So I think I'm a pretty good judge of how a 'tiny' nuclear reactor might be designed and what a lot of the problems are in trying to get it to fly... or power a torpedo or unmanned submersible vehicle, for that matter.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Possible scenario

fortunately, modern warfare isn't "a numbers game" any more. But the way that all of the aircraft of WW2 were supplied was basically a government 'takeover' of existing industry that was focused on producing things like cars. There were no new cars for a few years during WW2. They were building aircraft and tanks and jeeps instead.

Seriously, though, if you want mass production, don't you want a "common airframe" instead? That should make it cost less and have more interchangeable parts.

And - somewhat related to other comments - an advantage of an M16's small round COULD be the fact that you can carry more of them [because they'd weigh less]. Though I admit I never had the chance to actually fire one when I was in the military. But I know people who have.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: No real commonality in the F35

I think you may need to look at the kinds of stuff that typically gets repaired/replaced to understand what I mean here. But yeah there are 3 versions that I know about, and of course they have differences. The question is whether the things that are maintained all of the time are also "that different" between them, things like avionics, hydraulic systems, the engine, yotta yotta. Just sayin' that's the thinking behind the basic design. And the supply system has to stock spares for all of that...

bombastic bob Silver badge
WTF?

Re: Mutually Assured Destruction - MAD

"we have an unstable lunatic with his finger on the button"

I nearly gave you an upvote until I read THAT part. Seriously? You actually BELIEVE that?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

"Muhuhahahaha."

And demand - 100 BEEELION DOLLARS

Muhuhahahaha. Muhuhahahaha. Muhuhahahaha! [pinky on cheek]

"I call this plan, preparation H"

"I call it - the Alan Parsons Project"

and so on

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: Re. MAD

"why don't countries simply put the money wasted on nuclear weapons into actual things that might benefit this planet such as asteroid detection and defence?"

sadly there is still evil in the world. You can't reason with evil. You can't make deals with it, either. Non-aggression pacts will be violated, agreements will be broken, and like Hitler during WW2, evil will secretly develop its aggressive ability until it's too late to stop. Unless there's a significant deterrent for any one rogue country to do what the German government did leading up to WW2, we're doomed to repeat that scenario.

Does that answer your question?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Little reactors?

"There could be quite a good market for those."

Assuming they work. Tiny reactors would be more difficult to control, possibly using fast fission rather than thermal. Additionally, they'd be highly inefficient because you wouldn't have enough mass to properly utilize the thermal energy. The main reason that nuclear jet engines were abandoned is that they're just TOO HEAVY to be practical.

A tiny reactor must be created with extermely enriched fuel, 'weapons grade' or better, and it requires a pretty significant mass of external things to transfer the heat. To be controllable, you need even bigger mass/geometry and it very rapidly becomes impossible to put it into a missile. A "Big Fornicating Rocket" might be able to manage a nuclear engine (and that's been proposed) but they still need some kind of fuel/propellant to eject out the tail end and so the mass of the engine must be weight against the need for separate fuel/oxidizer and the limitations of chemical reactions.

Anyway, putting a nuclear engine on a missile that's capable of running for "unlimited" time is extremely impractical. The physics and thermodynamics just don't work very well, ya know?

[not saying IMPOSSIBLE just IMPRACTICAL]

Fancy owning a two-seat Second World War Messerschmitt fighter?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: question

uh, just to point out, even joking about murdering a politician is probably a BAD idea these days...

As much as I disliked Obaka, I didn't want him killed. Just sayin'.

Twitter cries for help to solve existential crisis of whether it's Good

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

"Why not... hire random normies instead?"

They're an endangered species in San Francisco and Silly Valley, as hard to find as "biological females in the Chocolate Factory"...

bombastic bob Silver badge
WTF?

Re: Are SJW do-gooders Good?

"banning of non-'right on' opinions."

I think _I_ am one example of why that's NOT happening...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

"Seriously some of the abuse you see dished out online people would never dare to say face to face."

welcome to "teh intarwebs" - you see it EVERYWHERE. It's because there's no peripheral device capable of transmitting a proper punch in the nose...

(post-edit - I see someone else said something similar)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Narcissistic cesspit

"I use it so I don't become a social pariah"

'social pariah' is HIGHLY underrated (especially when it's defined by NOT using tw[a,i]tter).

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Seeing as twitter "solves" a non-existant problem ...

Considering USENET, it's still around, and there are NO moderators. So-called "moderated" groups are easy to post to "irregardless" (heh) of the 'moderation', using a very very simple hack. In fact, the alt.hackers newsgroup is deliberately moderated for this reason, because you have to perform 'a hack' in order to post to it, though it's not very popular any more, unfortunately [blame successful tw[a,i]tter marketing].

Microsoft lobs Skylake Spectre microcode fixes out through its Windows

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Good work by MSFT

"I don't think you know what "shareware" means."

yeah, that post had more ignorance than a religious cult's congregation. And if I could upvote yours more than once, I'd do it.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: What a frigging mess !

maybe a better strategy would be to harden the defenses within browsers, like having NOSCRIPT-like capabilities ENABLED BY DEFAULT?

that way a rogue script can't run unless you give it explicit permission...

(so what if it breaks poorly designed web pages that are script-heavy - joke 'em if they can't take a FEEL)