Posts by bombastic bob 10283 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015
and rating 'Web Devs' as earning MORE than desktop application developers? W.T.F. ??
that goes DOUBLE when you look at the quality of web development these days. Or are they assuming that all desktop applications are UWP/C-pound/dot-NOT (which is a pretty worthless skill set in my opinion)
I do embedded and kernel-level stuff (and all that other stuff when I have to) so, meh.
it IS kind of interesting how they got their material, by essentially manipulating random rebellious teen girls and encouraging them to do something a little crazy in front of a webcam, etc..
It's the old 'confidence' game, basically. Only instead of 3 card monty, it's "full monty".
parents should educate their children about the ways of the world, and stop 'helicoptering' them. explaining how con games work might help them to avoid such situations. "If he says he's a teenage boy, or even a teenage girl, it's probably a middle-aged pervert". stuff like that. "don't be a victim". street smarts.
[you can't watch over them 7/24, so give them to tools to watch themselves, instead]
"It's a Btrieve based database with resilience features like transaction logging, rollback and snapshots and with fully integrated auditing and ACLs. So way faster, more resilient and more secure than say text files..."
HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...
*cough*
Oh, were you serious?
I haven't seen any reference that says the registry uses Btrieve internally or not. I remember seeing it and NOT liking Btrieve a long time ago. I remember Novell really liked it for some reason [so much they bought the company]. I think microshaft could NOT have made much worse of a decision to base the registry's internal structure on, if it's really using Btrieve. They SHOULD have used a well-known file system like UFS (at that time, I don't think EXT existed) and set up a "file system in a file" for it, with journaling and locking thrown in as needed, CACHED! AT! THE! SYSTEM! LEVEL! for performance. That would have made a LOT more sense...
"imagine on Linux, systemd loading all configuration files in /etc into memory"
except this 'loading all configuration files' process would happen for EVERY! SINGLE! APPLICATION! that requests even the most TRIVIAL of information from such an eldritch abomination, if you want to duplicate what "the Registry" appears to do. In other words, it won't be cached. it will be (in a paranoid manner) READ FROM DISK (not from a cache) and then WRITTEN TO DISK when it changes (not write-through cache, but physical writes) and the individual processes will WAIT for this to complete and block in the API EVERY! SINGLE! TIME! to duplicate what appears to happen in "the Registry".
Because, if you're Micro-shaft, the disk contents _might_ have CHANGED "not through the OS" (even if it can't) and so DAMMIT, we *MUST* *MAKE* *SURE* by RE-READING it, and PHYSICALLY WRITING it, EVERY! SINGLE! TIME!!!
(or so that's the way it seems, when I've measured performance)
"The Registry" was originally supposed to replace all of the INI files with something more efficient, but then everything "OLE" began to pollute it. And for some odd reason, Micro-shaft's code appears to act as if it's "paranoid", based on what I've seen in performance measurements. It's like "the Registry" _MUST_ flush and re-read its cache physically from disk, every time something burps. It can't intelligently use a system-wide write-through cache. No, that would make TOO! MUCH! SENSE! and perform TOO! WELL! for Micro-shaft. Instead, it appears that EVERY application that accesses the registry must FLUSH TO DISK and READ FROM DISK, EVERY! SINGLE! TIME!!
(if anyone has proof of the contrary, please let me know; but all of my performance measurements suggests that this is the case and it explains SO many hideous performance problems in Windows, and every version since XP seems to do this, and probably the ones before that as well)
"And the real issue is often that *nix really lacks a system API - you really need the command tools to manage many subsystems because in the old times the concept of a system API - maybe language-neutral, was still to come... let's keep our heads well stuck in the 1970s"
BOO! [downvote icon, because, THIS]
the 'unix principle', i.e. "do one thing and do it well" and its plethora of utility functions simply means that you can wrap this kind of stuff in a SHELL SCRIPT [you don't need a bloated WEB-BASED ADMIN SCREEN, ok?]
"stuck in the 1970s" <-- computers are still using electricity to run them, must be 'stuck in the 70s'
And it seems to me, you haven't seen [the CLUSTER-FEEL known as] systemd, NOR have you read Arthur C. Clarke's Superiority.
I think an examination of both of these might act like a cluebat...
"although 30 days is quite a short period"
still WAY too long in my view. maybe asking users if they want to KEEP the thing could clue people in to just how pervasive this practice REALLY is.
perhaps the answer is to be able to explicitly run one or more windows (or even tabs) of a browser in "stealth mode", i.e. don't actually save cookies [keep them in memory only], and dump related browsing history when you close it. And let the users CHOOSE how long to keep those unnecessary cookies, maybe even on a cookie-by-cookie basis. And how about a 'regex' match for cookies to NEVER keep, like ANY domain with "ad" or "click" in it...
and so on
"What he argues is (a) that sexism still exists, (b) women are equally capable as a group as men in technical fields and (c) that women have a tendency to prefer other fields"
Google could have used this help in their defense. But they shot themselves in the foot, instead, by firing the guy. Now it's time to pay for their mistakes, I guess.
(you live by the political correctness, you die by it too)
Oh, and a big thumbs up to h4rm0ny for stating the facts
"as a Windows user, you are used to using a Toy OS..."
this goes double for Win-10-nic [the Playskool version, dumbed down to the level of pre-school children]
thanks, Micro-shaft, for adding spyware and then "giving" us incremental ways to "block" it, like you're doing us a favor now... [but ONLY for 'Enterprise']
' "we took a peek inside your luggage" cards in my bags'
might also be fun to include a small number of really _odd_ items, like a ginormous bra, a male stripper's g-string, a laminated photo of "whatever" (livestock for example) with lipstick prints on it, some hard-corn porn [the funnier the better], and a strange-looking device that vibrates when the switch is turned on, all clearly visible when the baggage is opened. Heh.
waiting for "we took a peek inside your luggage, and were horrified at the nightmare fuel, and now need brain bleach, so thanks for THAT image that won't get out of our brains" cards to be placed inside...
dogs can tell people of different races easily, because we smell different to them. White people who invite their black friends over (and have a dog that's not used to black people) can verify that one. Dogs freak out sometimes, go into barking fits for no reason, etc.. The inverse is also true.
so yeah you might get a prejudiced dog that barks at the black man's luggage... [what do THEY know of SJW's and various civil rights laws - they're DOGS]
(oh, and the premise that people of different races are unfairly profiled - I don't believe it really happens in any significant amount)
keep in mind what the moon program did for tech, and there's no harm in buying something that needs to be small, fast, and multi-core.
But the problem with Moore's Law isn't the width of the bus, the number of cores, or even the Ghz clock speed. It's the general LACK of decent software that takes advantage of multi-core SMP design.
And Micro-shaft's move towards a "phone-like" "App" instead of multiple applications sharing multiple desktops and simultaneously doing things YOU want done [not slurping nor advertising nor sharing your personal data over 'teh intarwebs' "in the background"], definitely is NOT moving in the right direction.
True multi-thread SMP solutions would make the UI run a lot faster, or at least be PERCEIVED as faster. The obvious things like MPEG decoding (and encoding) are already being addressed, as well as high performance gaming. But as long as Micro-shaft (and others) continue to excrete BLOATWARE instead of software (and ".Not" and UWP are a big part of THAT problem) you're not going to see that technological push that makes people believe that "the new computer" is actually BETTER than what they already own...
"Chee? I had no idea it was pronounced like this. I'm still going to call it Queue-Aye, ryming with fanboi-in-chief Stephen Fry..."
As I understand it, 'Qi' is how you spell the Chinese word for 'energy', 'chi' [pronounced 'chee'] because that's what the 'Q' is apparently, a 'ch'.
Not to be confused with the girl android from Chobits...
Qi chargers and micro-USB charge clients (like those nice thin/flat semi-flexible ones you can stick to the bottom of your phone) are relatively cheap and effective.
I've done a lot with Qi at the hardware level, and so I'm kinda happy with this.
As long as Apple sticks with "the standard" it should be a bit easier to go someplace and find a few courtesy charger pads laying about that will work with YOUR device (Apple, 'droid, or whatever).
now... will they try an 'Embrace, Extend, Extinguish'? Let's hope not...
yes, it was really cheap a few years ago when I got an inexpensive 'pre-N' wifi router. It's got some quirks, for sure, but didn't think it could be THAT insecure.
fortunately, not one of its ports touch the intarweb. Not only is it behind a proper firewall, its IPv6 addresses are statically assigned and all incoming IPv6 traffic is BLOCKED from it's IP ranges.
I've been considering getting a new one, though, and running something I can configure myself, turn off IPv6 routing on the LAN side, etc. [because I manage that with OTHER things]. I actually have to plug the WAN port into the LAN port and monkey with it a bit to keep it from trying to take over all IPv6 routing on the network. Fortunately THAT workaround "works" but yeah. flaky. However, in its current state, I don't need to buy another one (yet) and wifi works throughout the house [router on one side, client on opposite side of the house >50 feet away and through several walls].
So as far as wifi operations go, it's not bad.
I also disable things like UPnP, wifi admin, and other security CRATERS that are typically "left on" by average users. But having a possible LAN back door and some pre-defined admin keys is potentially really bad...
"It is based around the concept of 'significant market power'. Do you have the power to distort the market or not."
Well, I don't think it should be ILLEGAL to "have the power". Wielding it unfairly, however, SHOULD be punished as hard as possible.
"Would be nice if we could get a citation for that number..."
you're absolutely right for two separate reasons:
a) you want to get your facts right, when you're being challenged
b) you don't want to ruin credibility by spreading 'fake news'
"Readability and understandability of code is not just an issue of code formatting: is it?"
actually, it is. high level management, "dive in without seeing it before" contractors, and people who don't want to read piles of docs before getting something done, prefer "readable code".
The most readable style of all is Allman Style. It has a lot of white space in it, which means that you can clearly see where the boundaries are. It works best if you enforce curly braces around things like this:
if(something)
{
....do_this();
}
(using dots instead of white space - the editor doesn't represent them properly)
even though a lot of people might be tempted to:
if(something) do_this();
The first example is MORE READABLE. A coder might not like it because it "takes up too much space on the screen" but too bad. For someone skimming code [not reading every! single! line! and! detail!] it's a LOT easier to see things this way. It's *EFFICIENT* in other words, for reasons not obvious to the K&R fascists nor to the hard-tab nazis. Oh yeah, no hard tabs either. Then your tab settings won't affect what it looks like...
/me wants to be able to view it with 'less' and have everything line up EXACTLY! THE! SAME! as it does in an IDE, or a simple editor like 'nano', or a GUI editor like 'pluma', or something like vi, or whatever.
graphic being 'style nazi' alert this time
"it would be so much better if they'd just use some { }"
yeah but if THAT happened, then a bunch of K&R extremists would put '{' on the same line as the control statement, and use syntax like "} else {" and it would drive ME (even more) insane, requiring me to re-format the code just so that I could read it... and YES, I do that. A *LOT* [even with JAVA code, take THAT you K&R extremists!]
I deliberately re-do the IDE settings in the Android IDE to look like Allman style. Then I set it as the project default. Then I reformat things as I go over stuff, or if I'm particularly frustrated, auto-reformat everything [once the right settings are in place]. I also get rid of the hard tabs, too, spaces only.
Anyway, those who aren't familiar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indent_style#Allman_style
And, in many ways, Python kinda reminds me of Allman Style. So yeah, let's leave it as-is.
[lousy coding practices and ABuse of "objects" and "signals" and member functions 3 miles deep and everything promiscuously playing with every other object's stuff are bad enough, but at least the pure language syntax is readable from a scoping perspective - the CRAP code itself can be dealt with in the usual manner. And I shouldn't need to reformat it in order to read it]
"Python is growing fast mainly because it is heavily used in a lot of fast growing fields, including web applications, high performance computing, analysing big data sets, machine learning, system management, etc., etc "
not sure I like where this is going. And not because Python is a BAD language [it is, in fact, a GOOD language]. Python is just NOT SUITED for anything "high performance".
When you use some of those libraries, they're coded VERY inefficiently. There was one specific example I ran into, either in matplotlib or numpy. It was GROSSLY inefficient the way it was implemented. I basically re-wrote code to avoid using it as much as possible, and made a significant speedup just from that. I can't remember what it was (sorry) but I remember doing this. I shaved 15 or 20 seconds off of a file upload operation JUST doing that. Then I shaved OVER A MINUTE off by using the external C program. What WAS taking 2 minutes (or more) is now taking around 10 seconds [because I didn't want to re-write ALL of the python code in C, but if I had, it would probably take less than 2 seconds].
Now, for generating charts, other than matplotlib's hideous API, it's "convenient". Sort of. OK maybe not, and I might have to go to using something else like Cairo but still...
In any case, watch your CPU utilization. If you write Python code and are charged by cloud services for CPU utilization, you'll save a LOT of cash by going wiht a C language utility instead, at least for the parts that do the number crunching, "high performance", etc..
"as far as I'm concerned the new cool way of doing things by cobbling an app together using 15 different libraries from all across the Internet isn't the superior way of doing things."
I made a similar *kind* of point back in the 90's, regarding Visual Basic, and "cobbling together" an application by using VB with a bunch of plugins, modules, 3rd party components/libraries, etc..
And at the same time, rather than mangling my perfectly good C++ code to work with some 3rd party graphics library, I wrote some simple Windows GDI-based algorithms to create 3D looking bars and "did it right" so my bars looked better than their bars in a side by side comparison. And it took less time. yeah, so much for 3rd party library "make it fit" and having to pay a license fee...
[and I'd thumb-up your post except you said favorable things about ".Not" - ".Not" was one of the biggest reasons I shifted away from windows coding]
"A lot of elitist dinosaurs evident in these comments"
get off my lawn, you young whippersnapper! [heh]
Seriously, don't use an interpretive programming language for ANYTHING that requires performance, especially one that has built-in garbage collection and "duck typing", regardless of whether it does 'just in time compiling to pseudo-code' or not.
And more often than not, "object oriented" is _HIGHLY_ overrated [especially when it comes to system performance]. This goes TRIPLE for VMs and shared hosting... "oh but it doesn't matter because CPUs are so fast these days, and memory so cheap" until you try and run a bunch o' stuff simultaneously in multiple VMs or shared hosts, and then you find out what kind of impact inefficient code has. Yeah.
I wouldn't write a massive system in Python. I'm having to FIX one, at the moment (uses Django) and it's seriously in need of a MASSIVE re-write. Fortunately, I quickly figured out how to invoke an external program [written in C], and that solved MOST of the performance issues.
Yeah, I _do_ keep saying that about Python invoking a C program. It _is_ 30 times faster this way, with that one specific example. And it makes a very valid point that I want to express to as many people as possible: Do NOT attempt to force Python into a 'C' shaped hole. You'll go bat-guano insane trying. Use a language that's more suited to the task, and Python as the glue if you want to [for which it works very, very well, in my opinion].
but writing a massive system in Python? I'm old enough to remember how *CRAPPY* RSTS/E was, and it was written in COMPILED BASIC. So, "NO" to 'massive system in Python'. That is, if you want PERFORMANCE out of it.
'children' icon because, youngins these days...
"I would read this as an indication that the language is simply being used for purposes it is not a good fit, and by people who think they can wield it without learning it first."
that's a distinct possibility. I only hit 'Stack Overflow' when I'm trying to get past a particular problem without spending WAY too much time "learning" - I'd rather be SOLVING, thanks. And that's the point. To me Python is "yet another lingo" that I have to deal with because "customer decided" so there you go.
And given my experience with fixing existing python code, which looks like it was written by undergraduate students that learned to code in JAVA first, or worse, C-pound... given my experience with having to fix THAT code, I end up just writing an external C program to do the REAL work, then hit the search engines looking for "how do I run an external program from within python and return the result code and/or stdout back". And then I find out the magic code lines, and "make it so".
And _EVERYTHING_ _RUNS_ _BETTER_ _AFTERWARDS_! [amazing, right?]
But yeah, hacking out a working solution, especially without "paying the dues" with all of that UNNNECESSARY reading of documentation (from beginning to end) first, is what us hacker problem solvers do best.
yeah, the world really IS "results driven"
But as for using Python, it has its uses most certainly, but is _FAR_ from being a "panacea language" especially because it is SO inefficient for SO many things... [30 times faster when done in C in one specific case].
I just can't believe the hysteria that some people will go through, because, FUD.
"The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!"
"Eemeargencie. Eemeargencie. Everybody get from striiit."
[ok I can't remember the details THAT well, did anyone NOT get that reference? Maybe I missed something...]
next thing, maybe quote Bill Murray from the Ghostbusters movie. "Cats and dogs, living together" etc.
"It's worth flagging up that US S.S. numbers are not the analogue of UK National Insurance numbers"
their TRUE usage is as "taxpayer identification numbers". There are similar numbers for corporations. You can't legally work without one, because your income is reported to the IRS using "that number".
aside from the fact that "Social Security" is in itself a misnomer, oxymoron, etc. - there is NO security, and it's not "social" at all - it's a tax collection number.
"They claim they utilise non-linearity in the microphone/electronics. I suppose it is possible for a loud modulated ultrasonic sound to be demodulated by the non-linearity making the phone 'hear' and audio signal that isn't really there."
that would be the 'heterodyne' effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterodyne
and also there's this, for digital sampling:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem
The Nyquist frequency is the maximum frequency above which (in an analog to digital converter) you get an "artifact" of some kind instead of a usable signal. Knowing the Nyquist frequency of the phone would give you the ability to generate targeted artifacts and thereby an actual signal, because of the digital sampling itself. Normally an A:D will have a low pass filter to prevent this, however, unless it was designed by a complete idiot or someone who was trying to make it "as cheap as possible".
Note that "nonlinearity" is one of the requirements for heterodyning to work...
also should mention this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodulation
"Only extremely high-end amplifiers have good slew rate symmetry between the positive half and negative half of the waveform"
a simple fix might simply be to use a low pass filter on the microphone...
but it wouldn't stop a signal that's based on heterodyne effect between two ultrasonic signals. In fact, using a phased array, you could shoot the signal that way for quite some distance...
/me points out that ANY nonlinearity will create the 'beat' frequency, sometimes known as "intermodulation distortion". So send two ultrasonic signals for which the difference in frequency is "the desired signal". Or get REALLY creative (and highly directional) and use a multi-emitter phased array.
"The bad is that they seem to have aimed to create a febrile atmosphere in the US and that effort appears to have succeeded"
a better way to put that, is "creating chaos". But it was like that ALREADY. The Demo-Rats and OBAKA saw to THAT... [and 'Establishment' Republo-Crats as well with their all-too-empty promises].
OK Russian counterintelligence has been accused of using destabilizing tactics before, and maybe they DID do some of that, but it was just tossing a few extra logs on an already ROARING fire.
Everyone knows the U.S. electorate is really pissed off at the moment. But only the leftist ideologues (including the lame-stream media) blame Trump or Russia for it. We put Trump in the White House to FIX IT and the *ANGER* was already there, LONG before he announced his candidacy. The reasons for the electorate being pissed off go back to the Tea Party and things like OBAKA"care" and being called a RACIST for just disagreeing, getting socialism jammed up our as... down our throats, along with an artificially stagnant economy, high unemployment [that was statistically reclassified so it didn't look bad], high 'social service' dependency, and a general sense of frustration that NOTHING was being done about it [except to make it WORSE]. AND we were being told to "get used to the NEW NORMAL".
In other words, it was a "slow boil" ready to erupt into a raging VOLCANO. I can't imagine what would've happened, had Mrs. Clinton won, but it would have been *UGLY*.
(and now the howler monkeys will call their friends to downvote me en masse, the intarweb equivalent of throwing poo. *kisses* to my fan club!)
"I do not see Fartbook claiming to be innocent, but they clearly regret being naive."
I bet what they regret the MOST is they THEY didn't think this technique up FIRST...
(or maybe they did, and this is an attempt at obfuscating everything, blame it all on Russia, etc.)
I think it's a 'Silly Valley Syndrome' of some kind.
Silly Valley companies are becoming too arrogant, too big for their britches, and have (in the past) engaged in immoral practices that were DELIBERATELY keeping wages lower [anti-compete contracts for each other's employees], FIRED PEOPLE over political views (Mozilla, Google, ...), engage in government WAY too much through PACs and contributions, yotta yotta yotta, and now THIS bit with a kind of 'moving target' contract and their sales employees to deny them what was promised because they're being CHEAP.
I used to live in the Silly Valley area, decades ago. I'm glad I left.
Now it seems they've formed a kind of "social bubble", filled with people "just like them", within which they've lost touch with the rest of the world (like Washington D.C., Brussels, ...) and *FEEL* as if it's "just ok" to engage in what everybody ELSE sees as heinous, disreputable conduct, just because they CAN [or so they think*FEEL*].
"No-one pronounces 'Oracle' as 'OR acle' or 'whore' as 'horr' so it doesn't work."
huh? my brain just froze for a minute... illogical... illogical... obligatory Star Trek reference in progress... illogical... illogical...
'whOracle' works for me. yeah, whatever.
(I still can't figure out how NOT to prounounce them 'OR acle' and 'horr')
"So even in the (probably unlikely) event that Oracle goes titsup (which I definitely see happening some time in the future) then the good stuff (Java, ZFS, Solaris) wouldn't have to go to total waste."
No, they'll be sold off as independent 'business groups' to others, like Google, Micro-shaft, and IBM. Precedents have already been set, for a very, very, long time.
"There's always a bigger fish" (fun Star Wars quote from Episode I)
In any case, "Big Data" is highly overrated. It's a fair bet that IBM's 'Watson' division wants Oracle's data business.
Icon, because, FreeBSD
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
