Posts by bombastic bob

Crowdfunding refund judgment doesn't quite open the floodgates

"requires a working prototype to be demonstrated"

Right, and if I'm correct, the promise of a payout in the form of a product is usually "only if the project gets funded". I don't know if they have a mediation thingy set up for people who fail to get even THAT far, but like any investment, you COULD lose it ALL.

And that's the point.

Any shady deals are the responsibility of whomever it was that got the money. THEY are the ones who should be sued/prosecuted/etc.

But sometimes you don't get that chance because dum-dum LLC has no value, and so cannot pay out for any lawsuits [nor even defend against them properly].

I've considered kickstarter etc. before, so I looked into it seriously. It's no guarantee of funds. You have to convince thousands of people to give you a little bit of money. How easy is *THAT* ???

If IndieGogo does NOT require a prototype, then potential investors should consider that before handing over any cash.

[incidentally I _do_ have working prototypes for a few things, and not-quite-working prototypes for other things, but it's the "convince thousands of people" part I get stuck on...]

Who can save us? It's 2018 and some email is still sent as cleartext

Re: Port 465

I had the same thought [as in 'why is my sendmail NOT listening on 465 right now'].

found THIS

I'll torpedo Tor weirdos, US AG storms: Feds have 'already infiltrated' darknet drug souks

Re: Permissiveness has gone too far

"let's just abuse each other for using tea, coffee, alcohol, chocolate, yerba"

/me notices tobacco wasn't in the list. then again, it's funnier your way.

there's a lot to be said about freedom. and a small amount of regulation. but a conservative libertarian position would be to allow EVERYTHING with a prescription, and as many things as is reasonable without one.

Some opiates are addictive with only a single dose. NOT requiring a prescription for those, assuming they save lives and/or prevent debilitating pain, would be irresponsible. And if there's no actual PENALTY, what's to stop people from ignoring the prescription requirement?

"WHY Americans in general WANT to medicate themselves into a general stupor"

Uh, no. 'Americans in general' do not WANT to medicate themselves into a general stupor. That's just ridiculous.

A _SMALL_ _NUMBER_ of people do that. if they can't get their fix through a prescription [which maybe is how they got addicted in the first place], then they get it illegally.

I'm all for making every kind of drug legal via prescriptions, and giving doctors the responsibility and discretion for monitoring their patients. But I don't think it's a good idea for things _LIKE_ opiates to be generally available without a prescription, just like abusing antibiotics [the ABuse of which causes resistant strains of bacteria to develop] should be prevented by putting a doctor in charge of how the medicine is put to use.

But you can't just legalize everything because you perceive that the majority of Americans are drugging themselves into a stupor already, and buying their fixes through the dark net.

And if a prescription is required, and the drugs are sold without them, that's a violation of the law, and should be investigated by the FBI or other law enforcement, and people arrested, convicted, jailed for doing so.

Re: Single provider health care

NO. NO gummint run 'health care'. NO. just NO.

It would enforce "mediocrity for all", except for the super-elite, who will always "get theirs".

The problem with high costs isn't evil corporations sucking money away from sick people. THAT is an emotion-bomb generated by those who want to manipulate people into accepting gummint-run "health care".

the single biggest problem with high medical costs are HIGH TORT SETTLEMENTS for various sueballs that are regularly thrown at the medical industry, INCLUDING TV advertisements for class-actions against companies that (through no obvious negligence) had FDA approval for things that were later found to be a problem [thus, sueballs]. CAPPING tort settlements to significantly SMALLER values would address this, lowering malpractice insurance costs, and thereby lowering hospital and treatment costs, as well as preventing hospitals and doctors from doing "cover my ass" tests and procedures that otherwise would NEVER be done [with costs benig passed on to the patient and health insurance companies].

Saying "gummint will pay for it all" is ABSOLUTELY! FORNICATING! CLUELESS!!! Instead, a TRUE free market, with cross-state (and even international) competition, serious tort reform, serious insurance reform [including the abolishing of state-based monopolies on insurance providers], and "merit based" health insurance rates, are the only way to go.

[reducing costs is the BEST way to lower prices, and if you want to reduce COSTS, keep GUMMINT out of it, LIMIT tort settlements, increase 'burden of proof' for tort claims, yotta yotta and make sure COMPETITION has a free and clear path and a level playing field]

California Senate OKs net neutrality law, gives FCC cold hard long stare

Re: If It's So Flipping Bad?

"why did they all vote for it"

because, Demo-Rats, who _AL:WAYS_ vote in favor of more gummint control, more regulation, more "we know better how YOU must conduct YOUR life", etc. etc. etc..

This same bunch of clowns ALSO want to ban plastic straws, fining any restaurant that gives you a straw upon request. And don't forget single-use plastic bags in grocery stores [I always say 'no bags' because the only alternative is to pay 10 cents per bag and the money goes to the grocery store unions, if I remember correctly - I miss single-use plastic bags in grocery stores!!!].

And, don't forget the "sanctuary state" laws that PREVENT state and local law enforcement from COOPERATING with federal law enforcement with respect to the immigration status of anyone suspected of committing a crime. That's right, if an illegal alien who'd been deported before RETURNS to the country and commits a crime, state law enforcement can NOT tell ICE about it...

The Cali-Fornicate-You legislature _IS_ _THE_ _MOST_ _CORRUPT_ entity on the planet! Lobbyists typically occupy the floor, and are consulted on EVERY vote. And the party of Mrs. Clinton is somehow 'magically elected' into a super-majority power, giving them the >2/3 majority needed to RAISE TAXES whenever they want to. And they _WANT_ to. Because, 'all of that legislation' that gives free money and services to the protected classes (say illegal aliens and 'the lazy') and cushy retirement and creates "you cannot be fired" policies for gummint employees that don't do _ANY_ work [aka show up when they want, do nothing, and collect a salary... AND! I! KID! YOU! NOT! a friend of mine's wife is a SUPERVISOR for her department in Sacramento, working for the state, in a department that's in an oversight position required by law, and she has employees that do EXACTLY THAT [show up late most days, take way too long for lunch, get barely anything done] and they can NOT be fired

So you see what the problems are now, perhaps? A corrupt legislature, ALWAYS begging for more money, NEVER cuts back on the spending and makes it IMPOSSIBLE to fire incompetent employees, negotiates SWEET DEALS with the public service unions for retirement and benefits, pays above-average salaries, gives out money and services to illegal aliens, CODDLES criminals and "the lazy" on the public dole, and then won't fix the damn roads or build more jails to hold convicted criminals [instead releasing criminals because the jails are 'overcrowded']. And _THEN_ they just RAISE! TAXES! to get even MORE money, because ***FLAMING*** ***IDIOT*** ***VOTERS*** [many of whom are 'dead people' and illegal aliens aka 'voter fraud'] keep ELECTING THEM.

We need a Trump-like governor and an enema in Sacramento. 'Make California Great Again'.

Are you taking the peacock? United Airlines deny flight to 'emotional support' bird

"Dam airline cigar tubes are turning into an animal menageirie."

well, a certain segment of globalists want 1st world countries to be reduced to the same level of mediocrity as 3rd world countries, so let's just put a few chicken crates and free-running pigs in the people compartment on every flight...

Re: Marketing opportunity?

now you made me think of the tail end of Muse's "Uprising" video...

"if it is a service animal required because of a disability"

exactly. I doubt ANY reasonable person objects to trained service animals for people with _REAL_ disabilities.

"due to people going into true panics without their comfort pets"

To such people I say:

a) your psychological issues are not MY fault, nor MY business. If you can't sit in your seat for xx hours without going into a panic, charter your own damn plane or STAY OFF of the ones I fly on.

b) My compassion was seared and burned away LONG ago by all of the bleeding heart and SJW types. I just dno't give a CRAP any more. You want to fly, LEARN NOT TO PANIC.

c) Celebrating and coddling the lowest rungs of society ONLY ENCOURAGES THEM to be EVEN WORSE, instead of DEMANDING that they IMPROVE.

yeah it's frustrating to be 'a regular person'.

"Sadly the fallout from this will hurt the people who actually need animals for support"

sorry, my compassion has been seared away by too many SJW types making B.S. claims (like emotional support peacocks). I say "put the animal in a kennel/crate as checked baggage" and be done with it. Or leave your animal at home. Or in a kennel/zoo/whatever or a friend that you've taken advantage of. whatever. NOT on the damn plane, please! NO exceptions.

/me points out that _CELEBRATING_ the lowest rung of society is bass-ackwards. We should be celebrating SUCCESS, not denegrating it. And we should be BERATING those at the bottom end who insist on inconveniencing the rest of us because "they have issues". JOKE 'em if they can't take a @#$%!!

Re: Emotional Support Peacock

at least he wasn't cutting the cheese

Re: Poor choice

I used to work near Scripps Ranch in San Diego, where there were a large number of peacocks. You could hear them sometimes in the parking lot, "Ar,AH!, Ar,AH!". I only live a few miles from there, and one day I saw a pea-hen on top of someone's car. The owners were trying to get it to come down. I guess it flew the ~10 miles from there (or maybe it was from the zoo, which is a little closer) and just landed on that car for no good reason, and just sat there. Those birds are HUGE.

"They aren't in the same category of extensively trained service animals."

ack - but try telling THAT to an S.J.W. that *FEELS* that all corporations (especially airlines) are evil entities that deserve to be punished... by THEM... at EVERY opportunity, no matter WHO gets inconvenienced.

Maybe take an emotional support Skunk with you on the plane

you deserve a beer!

I can think of other 'emotional support' animals that would be equally disruptive...

a) rattlesnake

b) albatross

c) tazmanian devil

d) marlin

FBI slams secret Nunes memo alleging Feds spied on Team Trump for political reasons

Re: Hypocrisy about FISA

no argument here about hypocrisy and FISA. I'd be happy if it all went away. Based on appearances, it may NOT be possible to protect civil rights _AND_ have a "FISA court" that rubber stamps surveilence on a rival political candidate based on fake evidence paid for by a political candidate+party.

Last time a sitting president authorized illegal spying on a rival political candidate, 'Watergate' happened...

Re: Trump Administration (I use the term ironically)

"They're administering a conspiracy scam to deflect attention from the Mueller investigation"

I can't give this enough downvotes.

The Mueller "investigation" is merely part of the swamp trying to undermine an elected president. A grand jury can indict a sandwich if it wants to. A special prosecutor can waste millions of dollars investigating something that never happened, too, particularly if the goal is really to "find ANYTHING that can be used against Trump".

'Drain the swamp'. Sounds like a good idea. I hope Trump succeeds! And, if he DOES, then WHO is it that is REALLY being threatened???

Re: Why I quit reading your article

I'd just like to point out that, without the _ACTUAL_ _MEMO_, everything is pure speculation.

That, and nobody else (prior to this point) mentioned anything about items 1-3 in A.C.'s post.

What I'm hoping to see: an uncovering of serious corruption at the highest levels in gummint, followed by a corrective action that jails a few perps and puts a stop to most of that crap, along with a great deal of transparency and a really good explanation of those FISA warrants... (or an outright cancellation of them, if they're just being used to spy on certain U.S. Citizens, rival politicians, and people "they" don't like).

What I'm currently seeing: political posturing. It's pretty meaningless without the _ACTUAL_ _MEMO_.

Re: Yeah, but..

"investigation into H.R. Clinton"

that would be 'H.R.H. Clinton'. Fixed it for ya!

PC not dead, Apple single-handedly propping up mobe market, says Gartner

Re: Not rocket science

"Keyboard, mouse, monitor - still the best way to get things done, at least for me."

Ack. and the 10+ year old desktops/notebooks work JUST FINE, and don't have Win-10-nic on them...

[actually, most of mine have either FreeBSD or Linux on them]

The biggest problem with performance on old boxen i really "the software". I've been working on an X11 toolkit for several YEARS now, but I'm getting close to making something that could be a REAL product that uses it. When I get it working well enough, I think I'll wrap a UI around webkit and make a competing web browser. In any case, I originally added the splash screen because startup is "too fast" and i was originally like "what? oh, it's running!". Opening >50 files (several thousand lines each, for at least half of them) and displaying a scrolling-tabbed window with all 50 documents, took about 1 second. Yes, that's 1 second. I even did a video.

And I have to wonder, WHY do "all of those other applications" have to take FOR-EV-AR to load up?

OK in between gigs I have time to work on it, and maybe I can finish enough to make it 'alpha' instead of 'pre-alpha'. Just did font anti-aliasing, and it looks a lot better, now. Yeah in X11 you have to do it the hard way.

So, my point: If it weren't or CRAPware (instead of SOFTware) taking 10's of seconds JUST to load the bozillian shared components and dynamic libraries and runtime-bullcrap, we wouldn't NEED 3+Ghz machines for most of what we do.

And GTK-applications (particularly those that use cairo and bonobo) are NO exceptions to this. It's NOT just Windows, UWP, and/or C-pound and '.Not' doing this...

And all that being said, IF our existing machines are "good enough", we don't upgrade them, so they don't show up as "new machine sales", and so a bunch of CLUELESS CRYSTAL BALL GAZERS just ASSUME that it means "the end of 'The Desktop'" which we ALL know is completely WRONG. Right?

In America, tech support conmen get a mild slap. In Blighty, scammers get the book thrown at them

Re: Too mild in both cases

perhaps we need to add "special place in hell" and "one way ticket to hell" as potential punishments...

'Repeal hate crime laws for free speech' petition passes 14k signatures

Re: The justice system really has money to waste?

"anti-hate-crime laws don't need repealing, they just need to be applied with something which seems to be missing... Common sense."

That sounds like "unequal application of the law" to me. If a law is to be enforced, it's enforcement needs to be equal, blind to circumstance, and consistent.

Otherwise, it's "banana republic" time - you pissed off "dear leader" and so he'll actually ENFORCE THE LAW on YOU.

Wait a minute... this sounds familiar... something about 'executive orders'... recent history...

Russia claims it repelled home-grown drone swarm in Syria

A guidance system could be an RPi with a 9-axis IMU and GPS module attached... and open source software to power it. Convenient for hobbyists, but that's what terrorists are doing, apparently, by repurposing hobby equipment as weapons of terror. I could cobble one together myself [and probably write the guidance control software for it]. I'm very familiar with IMUs and GPS because of a customer project I've been working on for a while, and it wouldn't take a "schmott guy" very long to figure out how to build something evil with the same tech. (yeah, 'Nize hat').

And the bombs were probably stolen or purchased via the black market.

FBI says it can't unlock 8,000 encrypted devices, demands backdoors for America's 'public safety'

Re: Talking to the Hand

"Using innocent, sensible phrases that mean something else entirely"

That's OLD SCHOOL! Key words and tricky phrases spoken over radio in the clear is one way that the French Underground communicated with the UK back in WW2 during the occupation.

Or, from the movie 'Hackers' - "It's where I put that thing that one time" (or something like that). Like anyone but an informed insider would know what it means.

Re: Face Palm

"Would someone please tell me why we keep putting Directors in the FBI that don't understand the most simple concept of encryption"

A _LOT_ of people over at the FBI, CIA, etc. are OBAKA HOLDOVERS. I think THAT guy is, too.

Now, if Jeff Sessions were making a big push for encryption back doors, I'd be a LOT more concerned. According to the EFF, from a 1 year old article, Jeff Sessions supports them. And the EFF alleges Trump does to, but I don't think that's the case - Trump doesn't speak in black/white ideas, he often voices his inner monologue and people over-react to it.

However, we have not heard ANYTHING since then, to my knowledge, until this one FBI deputy director made some noise, prompting the article.

Keep in mind that Trump is pro-gun and the arguments for strong encryption [protecting your bank accounts and private information] and gun ownership [protecting lives and property] are very much the SAME. Logic concludes that BOTH legal gun ownership AND legal strong encryption [without back doors] are necessary for individuals to be able to protect themselves from crime, AND from potentially oppressive governments. This is the intent of the 2nd ammendment, regardless of how anybody FEELS about it - it's about self defense against oppressive government as well as criminals.

That being said, I don't think Sessions is going to call for encryption back doors. I think he understands the political SUICIDE of doing so. And, I doubt Trump would EVER sign such legislation, for the same reasons. We the people will, of course, keep our eyes on things, because gummints really can NOT be trusted.

Oh, and thanks in advance for the expected downvotes, the usual penalty for stating the truth without the "pretty please with sugar on top" i.e. "no lubrication required"

Re: Money Talks...

"if enough campaign contributors want a backdoor the US politicians will give the FBI a backdoor."

Then open source developers from outside the USA [and perhaps a bunch from WITHIN, using anonymizing networks] would write their own encryption stuff that prevents back-dooring, and now you have "dark net" encryption being used WITHOUT a back door, but only by those with the tech savvy to do so.

In addition, the banking industry and privacy advocates would form an unholy alliance to put a stop to it via a continuous stream of lawsuits.

Consider the history of the DeCSS library for DVD players. That's a good, recent example of what would happen with encryption technology. There will be PLENTY of script-kiddie-friendly utilities available on the dark web. And NONE for the rest of us.

I know politicians are complete idiots but even THEY could realize the obvious in this situation. Just compare it to Marijuana and half of them would "get it".

"The holy trinity of excuses to take peoples privacy"

it's always like that. see icon. (you're welcome, AC, you couldn't assign the proper icon)

Re: get stuffed FBI

"And when criminals also figure out the back door"

that's always the only SANE conclusion anyone can come up with.

Not only that, but THE CRIMINALS will ALWAYS have their:

a) illegal encryption

b) illegal servers

c) illegal weapons

d) illegal whatever

because they, by definition, do NOT obey the laws that regular people are forced to live under.

Back door effect on fightingcrime: ***Z E R O ***

Back door effect on personal security: *** H U G E ***

say buh-bye to intarweb commerce if a back door evar becomes mandatory. That's like a universal skeleton key to every lock.

Devs see red after not seeing Big Red on Stack Overflow database poll

Re: This will go off-topic, sorry...

To whom it may concern.

I am most certainly fed up with the people being fed up with others being fed up with being fed up, and I am seriously concerned about this line of commentary.

Signed: B F Problems, Major (U.S. Army, retired)

[need 'Python' icon]

Re: Well there are also missing dBase and Paradox

and Clipper. can't forget Clipper!

and I once saw this pile of garbage called "nutshell" back in the diskette+IBM XT days - it was SO slow, I think a C64 attempting to run Oracle in a VM would be faster...

" Pretty much everyone uses MS SQL in enterprise greenfield sites these days"

*choke* - what? my keyboard! (dammit, grab paper towel and start wiping)

You didn't read in the article where MySQL was #1, did you? (or the linked-to page with "last year's results")

I would normally expect PGSQL to do better than Micro-shaft SQL Server [which I refuse to call "sequel" because it's not a sequel to anything] in that survey from last year, but there seemed to be a dis-representative number of "C-pound" and Java SCRIPT "programmers" that took the survey (see the 'languages' part). And having a dis-representative sample gives you skewed results.

Compare this to the TIOBE index, where C-pound reportedly gets ~2/3 of what C++ gets (3.75% vs 5.60% in the latest) and C leads Java SCRIPT by 11.3% to 3.5%, you can see that they have an INaccurate representation of programmers in general on their survey.

Being that I'd expect SQL Server users to use C-pound and Java SCRIPT more than C, C++, and "regular Java", I think SQL Server's "favorable" position compared to PG and SQLite (and maybe even Oracle) is suspect at best, grossly inaccurate at worst.

Still it's a nice survey of "people willing to take a survey that also read slashdot"

And it _IS_ significant that they left 'Oracle' off of the list on this year's survey.

Hold on to your aaSes: Yup, Windows 10 'as a service' is incoming

'completely do away with the old-style Control Panel'

how about "completely do away with the 'the Metro' settings" instead?

Re: Timeline...

too late to edit, I just realized I didn't express myself very well...

They're obviously tracking what you do ON YOUR COMPUTER with an ONLINE DATABASE, otherwise it wouldn't be "across devices". In other words, it's integrated spyware, with YOUR ACTIVITY HISTORY being stored someplace that YOU do not have control over, so that "who knows" can go rifling through it looking for 'whatever' that might hurt you or be used against you at some point, even if it's merely for ADVERTISING to you (I don't care, might as well be Mueller fishing for whatever he can find).

That's what I meant to say. yeah, black helicopters for the spying, and also big brother for the new icon choice.

"I have a crafty way for Microsoft to increase W10's market share by at least 10% in under a month - Include the option of a classic Start menu"

actually, if they ALSO included the option for a 3D skeuomorphic interface, turning off the forced updates, and turning off the ads and tracking, *THAT* would *WORK*!!!

no joke!

"And also because the market is shrinking as people move of desktop for good"

NO. WRONG. NO, NO, NO! People are *NOT* "moving off of the desktop". People are simply *NOT* *UPGRADING* *THEIR* *DESKTOP* *AND* *NOTEBOOK* *COMPUTERS* in significant enough volume as compared to 10 years ago. This is due to SO many factors, with an end to 'Moore's Law" driving 30% improvements every year. In other words, your 10 year old machine running Windows 7 or Vista is "Good enough" so with a new hard drive or some extra RAM, you're doing just fine with the old box, and EVEN BETTER in many ways because it is _NOT_ Win-10-nic!!!

Market measurements ONLY look at NEW SALES. They don't look at EXISTING INSTALLS.

When people buy slabs and phones, they do NOT replace their DESKTOP machines with them. This was the BIGGEST MARKETING BLUNDER that Micro-shaft made when they went with Windows "Ape" and that major cluster-blank "the Metro" interface, and THEN went with their "one windows" strategy and Win-10-nic [even worse than before].

Micro-shaft is WRONG about the market. Plain and simple. And that's why Win-10-nic is FAILING. When Win "Ape" and WIndows 7 machines were next to one another on the display shelf, guess which one was selling? You got it, Windows 7. Micro-shaft doesn't LIKE us rejecting their "shove it up our rectum" operating system, and so they SHUT DOWN ALL OTHER ALTERNATIVES. Now it's "take Win-10-nic or we shove it up your ass" for a new computer. Nobody likes having computers and operating systems shoved up their ass. A lot of people just tolerate it, or don't care enough. Maybe they like it who knows. Whatever tips their trigger.

At any rate, if Win-10-nic were so popular, then WHY! MUST! MICRO-SHAFT! ADVERTISE! IT! ???

"The main reason that it is gaining ground is that you can't buy a new consumer computer without the win10 crap on it."

and the 2nd reason is that it's getting difficult to locate a version of Win 7 that is legal to use...

/me wonders if a Meltdown/Spectre fix for Win 7 will _EVER_ be released... thus forcing everyone into Win-10-nic

Re: It's an OS not an Ecosystem

if it's an "ecosystem", then my privacy has become an ENDANGERED SPECIES

Re: "sending activity history to Microsoft's servers"

42th upvote. you're welcome

Re: Fluff

"Stop trying failing so hard, Microsoft."

fixed it for ya. you're welcome.

Re: Timeline...

obviously they're tracking what you do ONLINE, otherwise it wouldn't be "across devices"

Re: Who didn't see this coming?

"For only $99/year we can keep your PC uptodate."

Linspire tried that, and it failed. but it was nice, for a while, being able to purchase inexpensive PCs with Linspire pre-loaded. [then I would put Debian on them]

Re: Who didn't see this coming?

"I wonder how long it'll be before there's a monthly subscription charge"

'Not Soon Enough' as far as Micro-shaft is concerned

Memo man Damore is back – with lawyers: Now Google sued for 'punishing' white men

Re: and not based on their individual merits?

You'd think he'd be able to find a job based on his "merits"

well, not having seen the guy's resume, who knows. I'd suggest that he leave silly valley and go to Texas. Silly Valley has probably labeled him "troublemaker", and there's no casting couch big/wide enough for him to get his 'favor' back. OK that last part was kinda, bad. coat, please.

Re: I am confused

well, NO discrimination is the best idea, but if you do THAT, and the hiring environment is basically what Damore said it is [mostly white men applying], then you're gonna get sued, regardless, because, lawyers and insane people who can't simply ACCEPT that they don't discriminate [until they HAVE to discriminate, because,REVERSE discrimination, which is PROBABLY true in this case, out of self preservation].

That being said...

If employees could be discriminated against for their POLITICS, they should just shut the hell up about it when at work. After all, business is business, and politics is politics. Happy customers/employers keep you employed and are more likely to give you raises.

And then as long as "the workplace" doesn't use what you say on line ON YOUR OWN TIME [assuming it disagrees with them\ and you're not violating any laws or revealing trade secrets, if they were to discriminate against you BECAUSE of your 'after work' politics, they'd be "sue-able" I'm pretty certain. And the lawsuit would be completely justified.

Anyway, my $.10 . It's not so bad being a techno-whore. If the guy with the money that hires me is a total lefty, I'll just say "yes, sir" and shut the hell up if he says something "left-ish". He's paying the bills, after all.

So - did Damore possibly INVITE the discrimination from past behavior? Just curious...

Who's that at Ring's door? Why, it's Skybell with a begging cup, er, patent rip-off lawsuit

Re: They have a case?

'This is sort of like the dotcom era patents that were basically "X, but on the web" and more recently "X, but on a phone".'

Next might be "X but IN! SPACE!!!"

getting coat, now...

WD My Cloud NAS devices have hard-wired backdoor

Re: WD firmware version

'Goodbye "cloud" I'm done with you.'

Sadly that may be the only alternative...

Still, it would seem to me that *maybe* an 'Open NAS' or equivalent might work on those drives...

(has anyone tried to load it?)

If another OS _can_ be loaded on those devices, maybe THAT is the fix?

Elon Musk lowers his mighty erection for test firing: Falcon Heavy preps for maiden voyage

putting a fueling station into orbit

something that a "super-heavy" might be really good for...

if travelling to Mars or the moon becomes more common, it's a fair bet that ships (yes ships) would want to refuel in low earth orbit, and how do you get the fuel "up there"? With super-heavy boosters!

Also components for building a REAL space station, like the one we see in the 2001 movie, would requier "super heavy" boosters.

Note I'm suggesting a Falcon Super-Heavy here because 70 tons is kinda small when it comes to things like fuel and water+supplies for space hotels and interplanetary travel.

Q: how many additional boosters can you strap onto a Falcon Heavy before it can't handle the load?

A: let's find out! [but first, get the Heavy off of the ground, and launch something more useful than a car]

Supremes asked to mull legality of Silicon Valley privacy 'slush funds'

EFF appearance of impropriety

Considering what the article said about the EFF, I have to wonder if the appearance of impropriety, i.e. taking money from Google (and maybe Facebook), and then declaring that there are no privacy violations with either of these [both known to hoover up our information and track us], even though it's always "opt out" and never "opt in". And in some cases I suspect there _IS_ no 'opt out'. Youtube is apparently NOT complying with privacy settings when you select "do not track", as one example, so when I look at embedded youtube on a web page, I often see a 'privacy settings' warning [I didn't want autoplay videos anyway, so it's just as well].

The message I typically see looks like this (in lieu of the embedded video):

"This embedded content is from a site (www.youtube.com, flickr.com, etc) that does not comply with the Do Not Track (DNT) setting now enabled on your browser." And there is a button to view the embedded content.

(this was on a site that apparently serves up that particular warning if it detects you selected "do not track" options in the browser)

OK, so _HOW_ can Google (owner of youtube) get any kind of FAVORABLE acclaim from EFF regarding privacy, when they (allegedly) do NOT comply with the 'do not track' policy you select in the browser???

Or, the site that serves up that particular warning ought to stop misleading people... assuming they're NOT correct (and I suspect they _ARE_ correct).

Methinks there is a foul smell in the air, and it's not a good one for privacy for the individual.

I like a lot of what the EFF does and stands for. Some of it irritates me. If sending them money could sway their position on a few things, then I might consider it, if I _HAD_ that kind of money, at any rate...

You GNOME it: Windows and Apple devs get a compelling reason to turn to Linux

Re: "They also tend to swallow Micro-shaft's coolaid, i.e. ".Not" "C-pound" and "UWP"."

"Actually, they don't - some small shop do, but big ones don't - and that's always been a thorn in MS side."

I would *REALLY* *LIKE* to see more evidence of that (what YOU said), because it's what I _WANT_ to hear, but I have been hearing nothing but the MS coolaid mantra for so long that maybe my perception of this situation is off... because the perception Micro-shaft wants people to have is that it "everyone" is doing it Micro-shaft's way [whatever that might be this month] and as such, if you're not on the SAME bandwagon, you're an old, stick-in-the-mud, obstructionist dinosaur that should have gone extinct already.

Re: lack of good tools for GUI development

"The Visual Studio debugger is light years ahead of GDB in every way possible. And has been for decades."

not really. gdb was intended to have a wrapper around it, as I understand. It's a lot like the old codeview application, but simpler. Also similar to the way kernel debugging works, for those of us who've done that.

DevStudio's debugging interface isn't any better than 'ddd' as far as I am concerned. In fact, I think it's HARDER to use DevStudio nowadays (compared to '98 which was probably the BEST version for people who like to type and not mousie-clickie every damn thing), with the way the hotkeys and toolbars and displayed source files have been screwed all to hell (as far as I can tell, anyway). It was MUCH easier (and saner) in "the old days".

If you've ever used 'ddd' (a GUI wrapper around gdb) you'll see an example of GUI integration around gdb, which is as good as anything else as far as I'm concerned.

Where 'ddd' falls apart is when you set a breakpoint during event handling from X11 from within the SAME desktop as the process being debugged. Basically there's a lock on the X server so everything freezes up due to the 'deadlock'.

So, there are 2 basic solutions to that: a) use a separate desktop (which I already do) for the debugging session, and b) fix the interface (i.e. re-write your own gdb wrapper) so that it unlocks the X server across debug breakpoints. Managing the 2nd option may require some clever hacking. But I intend to give it a good try anyway.

The X11 library has a locking mechanism for multiple threads accessing the X server, mainly XLockDisplay() and XUnlockDisplay() (if you initialize it for threaded behavior; I keep the events in the main thread to avoid problems). Additionally, you can lock/unlock the server itself via XLockServer and XUnlockServer (you sometimes need to do this with certain operations, like mouse-dragging). These may be implicit with certain kinds of X11 library calls and event handling itself. So if I spend some time digging through the X11 library I bet I'll find something _like_ this being used during event processing, locking the X server (or the library) for concurrency reasons. I would then intercept that when I hit a breakpoint, shut it off while in the debugger GUI, and re-do the state prior to returning to the program.

So yeah once that's solved, everything's good again, you can debug in X11 and Micro-shaft can keep their bloatware developer studio and any incarnations they attempt to make runnable on Linux.

[and I doubt Wayland would "fix" anything, either - it would probably make things WORSE]