* Posts by bombastic bob

10515 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

Microsoft goes to bat for Dreamers: Windows giant sues Uncle Sam to block staff deportations

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: declaring "the Dreamers are part of our nation's fabric. They belong here."

"Microsoft is suing the US government to prevent the deportation of immigrants"

Should instead be...

"Microsoft is suing the US government to prevent the deportation of ***_I_L_L_E_G_A_L_*** immigrants"

There, I! FIXED! IT! FOR! YOU!!! <-- shouted so that you can hear it from the 'cheap seats'

What! *FORNICATING*! Part! Of! ***ILLEGAL***! Do! They! NOT! Understand!!!???

US judge orders Sci-Hub be excised from the internet

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Having a free access to Science and Education?

"Right to Education? Only if you can pay for it!"

just don't make ME pay for anything beyond high school.

Gummint schools are highly overrated anyway. It's why "the rich" (and many not-so-rich) still send their kids to a "pay for it" school. And _STILL_ get taxed to pay for the gummint one.

[don't get me wrong, public school done right is a GOOD thing. I'm just sick of the kind of 'education' they're doing these days. details off topic, and you'll just down vote me regardless]

icon, because, facepalm

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: As usual: the US wants extra terrestrial power, but no-one else's applies to them

"the US wants extra terrestrial power"

just a few judges and politicans want those things (and act like hypcrites, as correctly observed). the rest of us just don't care, and will scoff at such "laws"

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: court says Google can safely ignore Canadian search ban

does China or Russia have a search engine that accepts english-language queries?

just wonderin'

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I am wondering just how much it costs to publish a scientific journal

there are a lot of free web services where you can publish things...

worst case, just post it to a USENET newsgroup. Or create a 'pastebin' with the text in it. Or put it on a github.io web site. See, i fixed it!

all it would cost you is your time

Google, Twitter gleefully spew Texas shooter fake news into netizens' eyes

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The S*n do it all the time

some people read those supermarket tabloids for the laughs.

/me reminded of the original M.I.B. movie - "check the hotsheets" - something like 'best investigative reporting on the planet' - "Alien ate my husband"

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Optional

"So should everyone else."

Agreed. but probably not for the same reasons you were thinking of.

[there have been a large number of them that have been 'later proven right' after being blasted by the lame-stream media. Had THEY done some 'fact checking' they wouldn't have been able to drag out the fake news over what they simply disagreed with]

Of course, the occasional 'covfefe' tweet makes for a nice laugh. Best not to 'nod off' while typing and accidentally hit 'send'. When you consider how tiny the edit text is for 'El Reg', 1/2 the size of the rest of the text on the web page, I make typing mistakes a LOT, and have to post-edit everything.

So yeah, I can identify with the 'covfefe' thing. It's kinda funy, too.

(spelling error deliberate to make a point)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

"The solution is more guns."

As demonstrated by the man from across the street, who grabbed his ASSAULT RIFLE and put it to good use, no doubt saving lives in the process. I only wish that some 'cowboy' had been attending church that day, with pistols on his hips. Maybe then even MORE people would've been spared.

also heard today that the mass murderer had escaped from a mental institution for criminally insane people in 2012, after beating his wife (radio report). The list of "wrong things" with this "worm feeder" just goes on and on. But I'd rather he had lived and been arrested. Going through court (and then prison) would be more difficult to deal with than offing himself (the coward's way out). And being in Texas, they probably would've executed him, after a nice long trial (and some time on death row) in which he gets to reflect on how he ended up there..

Oh Brother: Hackers can crash your unpatched printers – researchers

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Tip of the iceburg...perhaps.

"3) Send it files of 3D penises to print out?"

many decades ago, at a university, they had a teleray graphics terminal (vector graphics) with a printer connected to it. It was possible to a) open the TTY device if nobody was logged into it, and b) remotely draw something and send a control character to print the screen afterwards.

Occasionally I would do so. It was a particular mathematical function [that I can't remember the details of at the moment] that printed something that looked like a "thigh gap"

so I'd rather send 3D "thigh gap" images for it to print out. heh.

Tesla share crash amid Republican bid to kill off electric car tax break

bombastic bob Silver badge

Re: "Musk has been living on government welfare all along?"

" The people are looking to overturn the top echelon without resorting to violence"

more like...

"The people are looking to overturn the RULING ELITE without resorting to violence"

Fixed it for ya! [it's supposed to be a government OF THE PEOPLE, and not a bunch of elitist politicians sticking it TO the people]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: The US has an inverted system

"The wealthy conservatives are probably running coal powered generators on their remote properties"

If I could do it, I would. I'd have a scrubber on the exhaust and sell the byproducts as raw materials for other things [it tends to offset the cost considerably when you do that].

But to do that I need: a) wealth [higher tax rates on higher incomes "keeps me from getting ahead" aka "keeps me in my place"], b) land [can't afford it, too expensive], the necessary gummint approval, permits, etc. to build the thing and hook it up to the grid [good luck doing that in Cali-fornicate-you with Demo-rats controlling EVERYTHING these days...]

but yeah, power on the grid is a GOOD thing.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: and only electric CARS

about electric motorcycles...

Motorcycles still don't have catalytic converters on them, as far as I know This means they pollute way more than cars do [and I do ***NOT*** consider CO2 to be "pollution"], by producing the kinds of gasses and particulates that a typical catalyst system would burn up before going out the tail pipe.

Given THAT factoid, electric motorcycles make WAY more sense than all of that money thrown at electric CARS.

If the issue is cutting down on traffic jams and also saving on fuel usage [to help keep fuel cost down, let's say], then electric motorcycles make more sense.

But gummint is *NEVER* about sensible solutions. It's about MANIPULATION and CONTROL of "the masses", power retention, getting re-elected, and "skimming off the top".

So they do what they've always done: give tax breaks for cars that MOST people cannot afford to buy, that ONLY apply to people who pay a lot of taxes already, but make it SOUND like "they care" and "they feel" and "they want to help". But it's just another lie. They ONLY want their power, control, and money.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: RE: 4bn divided by 7500 gives me a bit over 530k.

"It's a government run program. There will be $1bn in credits and $3bn in administration."

Fixed: It's a government run program. There will be an indeterminate "few $million" in claimed credits, $3bn in administration, and the rest "just disappears" into the 'establishment black hole' in the forms of kickbacks, money laundering, and various illegal and/or unconstitutional activity.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: You gotta be kidding...

well, a lot of it is the venting of frustration against the constant drip, drip, drip of socialism, religious environmentalism, and media bias. Better to do a targeted attack with a smart bomb than to attempt a cluster-bombing from 40,000 feet.

As for me, I don't want to be taxed in order to pay for some rich guy's Tesla. If someone wants a Tesla car, let him buy it with his own money, and NONE of mine. I'll stick to a dino-burner, thanks. So let the loopholes get shut down, EVERY! ONE! of them. "They" need to stop using the tax code to manipulate people and/or pick 'winners' and 'losers' anyway.

bombastic bob Silver badge
FAIL

"The US can afford to spend the money on incentivizing EV sales."

but why would we WANT to? Gummint subisidizing of any tech just results in the rich getting richer, and the poor paying for all of it through higher taxes and/or more national debt.

Better to get rid of ALL of the targeted tax breaks. ALL of them. Wealth re-distribution via the tax code is probably the fastest way to a 2-class society, "haves" and "have-nots".

Besides, gasoline is cheap liquid energy. let's keep using it. With fracking, we don't need Middle East oil any more. FYI the wars over there are against TERRORISTS. Like ISIS. It has nothing to do with "the flow of oil". The USA doesn't need Middle East oil any more. Not since 'fracking'.

Take off, ya hosers! Silicon Valley court says Google can safely ignore Canadian search ban

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Disturbingly...

Disturbingly, Google is actually *CAPABLE* of removing/blocking specific search results for Canadian citizens.

(they said they would comply with the request, in Canada, after all)

OK - doesn't this demonstrate that Google is capable of giving "unfair" result, too? I just wanted to point that out.

Donald, YOU'RE FIRED: Rogue Twitter worker quits, deletes President Trump's account

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

"we begin bombing in 20 minutes"

What's funny was the SOVIET reaction to it. It scared them. It probably sped up some of the nuclear proliferation treaties and maybe some of their own internal reforms... what was that called, 'perestroika' or something like that?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Last day...

was it actually a RAGE QUIT?

just wondering...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Chirp

"Isn't that Her Majesty?"

The PM might have something to say about that...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Fake news

"PR is more normally handled by services like a news agency or press conference where a multitude of outlets get to know what you tell them."

and filter it, and spin it poorly, and spend weeks harping on a single word or tricky phrase (including omissions of same) and that's why Trump _BYPASSES_ them. "He said XXX" or "He didn't say XXX" becoming "news" for a month. Yeah, that'll help.

If Trump didn't use twitter, he'd have a blog. The thing is, it's working. Look how many people are *IRRITATED* by it! Then look at *WHO* is irritated, and you can see what Trump's doing. It's like "Am I getting to you? Am I getting to you? Am I getting to you?"

bombastic bob Silver badge
Flame

Re: Fake news

"What about a Twitter employee that deletes your account because he doesn't like your position on Star Trek vs. Star Wars?"

that would be a trivial example. a more realistic one involves politics and religious beliefs [which is why Trump's account was deleted by that "rogue employee", no doubt].

ARROGANT activist asshats need to just let people say/do what they want. But they're CONTROL FREAKS and FASCISTS. They should just wear brown shirts and swastika arm bands so they'll be easier to identify.

SCO vs. IBM case over who owns Linux comes back to life. Again

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coat

Re: Groundhog day

movie references, yeah. how about these:

"They're BA-AAACK!" (ok a quote not a title)

"Shark-C-O III - Oh, Hell No!"

"SCO Wars - revenge of the ASS-HATS"

"Source Code II" <-- has a kind of groundhog-day-like theme in it,name appropriate

"Ghost in the Shell (corporation)" <-- what SCO has really become

"Appalled XIII"

"Pirates of Santa Cruz County"

grabbing coat now...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: One definition of insanity ...

"TSG - the rest of the world hates them like a burning rash"

I think a burning rash is preferable, even a burning rash *IN* *HELL*.

TSG ranks below explosive diarrhea, going through an aggressively contested divorce [in Cali-fornicate-you], getting fired for doing the right thing, and being audited for the last 7 years' worth of taxes. All at the same time.

/me reminded of 'Little Nicky' opening scenes

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

"Zombie SCO need to die."

too late, it's already "undead". Not even "destroying the brain" would be enough...

Patent Trolling, la, la-la, la-la

We do not care if it is fair,

We just want YOU to pay!

We're just pirates, sailing the lawsuit waves

Forever we continue forth,

until the end of days!

pirate icon, because that's really what SCO is

Official: Perl the most hated programming language, say devs

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: It has served me well

"Coding stye guidelines exist for a reason: some other poor sod is going to have to maintain that code that you dashed off a few years ago."

that 'poor sod' often turns out to be ME, even if I'm the one who wrote it in the first place. Yeah try and remember what I was thinking yesterday, let alone 6 months or 5 years ago, by the use of "clever" tactics and no comments to say why.

so I normally try to make code SO readable and self-documenting [and add lots of comments] so that _I_ can maintain it without difficulty. Or anyone else, for that matter.

bombastic bob Silver badge
WTF?

Re: common::sense

"Wide character in print at -e line 1."

that is a little _ODD_ because the whole point of UTF-8 is to have 'wide characters' embedded in the otherwise-ASCII byte stream, while still working just fine with string functions that expect ASCII. On the GUI, functions have to be UTF8-aware to get the text extents right, but everything else works as it does with pure ASCII. You'd expect Perl to have that kind of "common::sense" automatically, right?

I'd actually never heard of 'common::sense' before. I don't do that much in Perl, though. Just enough when I need to. I nearly always turn really useful things into C programs anyway.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

"I'm not sure how pretty C# would look doing all those regex's either, the end result would likely be quite a lot longer."

you actually compared C-pound with Perl? I'd rather fix unreadable Perl code than have *ANYTHING* to do with C-pound, especially because of ".Not".

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: common::sense .... what???

"And every time I hear that song, my ear hurts."

an earworm is like a babelfish, except that it plays the damn song in your head and feeds off of your insanity [as opposed to doing what the babelfish does, which is like symbiosis]

which makes for a nice distraction-level side topic: an excellent exercise in mental discipline is to teach yourself how to shut off an earworm on demand. many positive benefits.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: common::sense .... what???

"Developers are still fighting about TABS vs SPACES"

Everyone knows that hard tabs are *EVIL* because what you see in the editor vs what you see with 'less' should look the same, on ANY platform, or your indents become redonkulous.

Unfortunately hard-tabs still needed for 'Makefile'.

also fun going with the "everyone knows" fallacy, just because, trolling [see icon]

Manafort, Stone, Trump, Papadopoulos, Kushner, Mueller, Russia: All the tech angles in one place

bombastic bob Silver badge
WTF?

Re: Ship, meet Tip

you'll be bored. It'd be more interesting to tune in Fox News and watch Hannity's coverage of Mrs. Clinton's massive lawbreaking scandal, and watch THAT 'Titanic' go down in flames [as well as the iceberg damage]

Seriously, if you get an aggerssive prosecutor spending millions of dollars "investigating" and with NOTHING to show for it, he's gotta do SOMETHING, so he'll go after extremely petty "didn't fill out the paperwork" or "did not dot all of your 'I's and cross all of your 'T's" kinds of stuff. Like now.

Never mind the hypocrisy of Mrs. Clinton putting national security at risk, with her Windows 2003 unpatched mail server [as I recall], running OUTLOOK, with 30,000 e-mails "magically deleted" _AFTER_ they were subpoenaed, particularly because it was ILLEGAL for her to have even USED it, but we know why, it was to hide the REAL money laundering, slush funding, and kickbacks for favors while she was Secretary of State, and for her assumed presidency.

THAT scandal will REALLY be worth the popcorn!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Dates Dates Dates

"I'm sure they've got enough to nail him"

for what, jaywalking? speeding? those are 'crimes' too. This whole thing is nothing more than "gotcha" sensationalism from "the left". Watch, it'll fizzle out right after it's lit, like a low quality firework.

icon, because, facepalm.

The problem here is that there appears to be TWO layers of "justice", or maybe even 3. One is the normal justice, for "the rest of us". One is the "special justice" for Washington D.C. insiders like the Clintons, Obaka, and the Demo-Rats. And quite possibly one is the "Super Special" justice for enemies of the Washington insiders, like what Mueller is up to these days, focused on doing a colonoscopy on everything in Trump's life, campaign, the lives of his campaign volunteers AND employees, and everyone down to his trash collector and newspaper deliverer.

Isn't that obvious to EVERYONE?

(aparently not)

facepalm icon again

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

Re: So, er,

sometimes I have work to do.

glad to see I have a fan club

bombastic bob Silver badge
FAIL

Re: I smell unbelievable bullshit, artfully applied

not even ARTFULLy applied. This whole thing is a ginormous *YAWN*

consider the timing, as all last week the uncovering of the "log vs mote" comparison between Mrs. Clinton, the DNC, and the Obaka administration with regards to "Uranium One" and the fake "dossier" that suggested that Trump hired prostitutes to pee on a bed that Obaka had allegedly slept in, and the highway-sized money trail surrounding the entire mess [this would be the "log sized" part], and compared to ONE GUY who pleads guilty (of 'lying' aka 'getting a detail wrong'), another guy who's brought up on charges involving (basically) ADMINISTRATIVE "crimes", and failing to file his paperwork regarding being a foreign agent, yotta yotta bullshit [that would be "the mote"].

Those who do not understand the reference, research "mote" and "log". It's in the bible someplace. basically, it's about hypocrisy. One person with a log jammed in his eye tries to get the spec of dust "aka 'mote'" out of another person's eye. but that obvious log just keeps getting in the way, aside from the fact that the 'mote' appears to ALSO be some form of SAWDUST, meaning that it's a teeny little problem of the same nature as that GINORMOUS problem that the "log in the eye" person has.

And so it is with the Demo-rats, who are WAY guilty of the *kinds* of things that they accuse Republicans (and particularly Trump) of doing.

What a BUNCH of HYPOCRITES! And now Mueller comes along with a DIVERSION, expecting everyone to go "ooh, shiny" and look the other way.

Sad.

Licensing rejig and standard price rises set for Windows Server 2016

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

"WTF is going on in Redmond"

for starters, they legalized Marijuana (and in Cali-fornicate-you too).

Yeah, we all asked "what the hell are they smoking..."

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

"I think Microsoft are seeing their license revenue decline and are trying to jack the prices up to fill the void"

you mean, acting like a government?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Alternatively

PG is pretty good. heh. that wasn't a joke, but the initials work.

Seriously, though, why is *ANYONE* even considering putting up with this Micro-shaft licensing bullcrap?

If you want service and support, get a commercial Linux and some kind of support contract for everything else. Ernie Ball (the company) saved huge bucks doing that back when it wasn't popular, after being audited by Micro-shaft [in another example of treating their customers like mooks and minions] with a "surprise software audit" and fines to go along with it.

Story here: https://www.cnet.com/news/rockin-on-without-microsoft/

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Who could have seen this coming?

Some have proposed that Microshaft is basically pissing EVERYONE off, and after the fallout, their "loyal" mooks and minions will be ready for a subscription model, and will ensure a revenue stream in perpetuity, while the rest of us move elsewhere [whatever platform that may be].

The shakeout continues...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: This was inevitable

"Fail Icon as there is no Footgun one."

laughing so hard, now, can't... hardly... type...

Chinese whispers: China shows off magnetic propulsion engine for ultra-silent subs, ships

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Swedes

"Harder is getting silent high power engines to drive them. The MHD drives used so much power you need a nuke, which is far from silent."

RIght, for higher power levels, nuclear reactors make quite a bit of noise. Higher power means you need more coolant flow. At low power you can get away with slower/fewer pumps [or in the case of SOME submarines, no pumps at all]. Given that the magnetic drive needs a SHIPload [ha ha ha] of power, you'd run lots of or faster speed pumps, meaning noisy power plant.

So yeah. This is probably why U.S. subs use "a different kind" of propulsion.

/me recalls a rumor from back in the 1980's, that the Trident missile boats were SO quiet, you could only find them if you were lucky enough to find "a sound hole in the water' the size of a Trident submarine.

[and I expect that technology has improved considerably since then]

Is the FCC purposefully screwing up US school broadband projects?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Timeline? What timeline...?

I figured it was just "governmentium" and the usual bureaucratic nightmare. I doubt Pai is doing it on purpose, other than enforcing the rules that were put into place before he took charge [that would be like him, to do that]. If the skids were greased beforehand (outside of the rules, especially for those who are 'favored'), THAT would be like Obaka.

So the problem is "stupid rules" I'd imagine. And I think Con-grab has to act to fix THOSE kinds of things.

In other words, "governmentium" and the usual bureaucratic nightmare.

This is why it's always best to get things done WITHOUT involving THEM.

UK.gov joins Microsoft in fingering North Korea for WannaCry

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: North Korea to blame for NHS hack?

"it was albino shape shifting reptiles from a planet in the Draco constellation"

it would be MORE FUN to invade NorK and shoot Fatboy in the head, though. Albino shape shifting reptiles just aren't good for target practice.

trolling, trolling, la-lala-lala [icon]

Interstellar space rock screams through Solar System

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Rendevous with Rama

just thought I'd mention it

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

(stupid clipboard)

it'd make a cool movie, though I'm not sure anyone would want to do it nowadays... not enough "what hollyweird wants" in it.

Boffins trapped antiprotons for days, still can't say why they survived the Big Bang

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: anti-particles "moving backwards in time" ?

"I think this was one of Feynman's notions"

Feynman sells books when he says things like that. I just get downvotes from the 'Howler Monkeys'.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: anti-particles "moving backwards in time" ?

or from the perspective of the antiparticle that was ejected from a nucleus (or a neutron, etc.), it arrives to create that very nucleus/particle that it was allegedly being 'ejected' from...

then again, anti-time really just has velocity going "the other way" along the time axis. We experience time in motion, so anti-time [I suppose] would be moving 'the other way'.

If time were created in the Big Bang then it would have been created ALL ALONG THE AXIS like everything else. So all time events were created simultaneously, but "not at the same time". OK is that too esoteric?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: anti-particles "moving backwards in time" ?

"So the Big Bang spawned two universe one with positive and one with negative time."

I like that. makes more sense, yeah. It also "balances" like most atomic things [the reason why the question of 'why is there no anti-matter']

US voting server in election security probe is mysteriously wiped

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: In the immortal words of John Boehner:

Article: "technicians at the election center deleted the server's data on July 7 – just days after the lawsuit was filed."

"What I want to know is, who's going to jail?

it was OK when Mrs. Clinton did it, right? So nobody.

If you say it loud enough, Uber will sound atrocious: Super Cali juristic discrimination process

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: "people of color"

WHITE people have color, too. So I'll just interpret that as "everyone".

/me starts new TV channel, WET . ok that could be anything from a pr0n channel to channel dedicated to fishing and water sports. But if I'm being too vague, it's a play on "BET" which has nothing to do with gambling (as far as I know). And I'll encourage high school students to start a "White Student Union" and "Caucasion Club", similar to other such organizations within the school that you find with "other races" in their names [except there's none for 'white people' - I am _so_ excluded!!!]

trolling, trolling, hence the icon.

AI bot rips off human eyes, easily cracks web CAPTCHA codes. Ouch

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Oh no not again

"Voight-Kampff?"

I found this:

http://www.allthetests.com/quiz30/quiz/1386100782/Voight-Kampff-test-questions

bombastic bob Silver badge
Joke

Re: What about...

math puzzle...

well, if you want to confuse the AI, list dog breeds and one cat breed, like

"Mark has a dachsund, Jean has two border collies, Bill has a rottweiler, Ron has a German shepherd named Killer, and Velma has a tabby. How many dogs are present?"

The answer will be "zero, they all ran after the cat".

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: Good

"I hate those stupid damn Captcha boxes"

so do _I_ . The #1 reason: they all require FORNICATING SCRIPTING to be enabled