* Posts by bombastic bob

10507 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

Thousands of hornets swarm over innocent fire service drone

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: Where's the AI angle?

"Isn't someone developing an algorithm to steer "search and destroy" drones that can rid the planet of hornets and wasps"

genetically engineered diseases would probably work better [so long as they don't jump across species]

And then I'd like to add a few more bugs to that 'genocide' list, from cockroaches to biting flies. Nature WOULD fill up the gaps, with species that are less irritating [or resistant mutations, which we'd have to go after on a case by case basis].

bombastic bob Silver badge
Alert

Re: "Scumbags" is understating matters

some Asian hornets get REALLY big, close to 2" long

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

you do NOT want things like this in Europe.

Why is it that geeks' favourite enemies are... other geeks?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: It's ubiquitous to human nature.

The NIH thing isn't so much of a problem, when you realize how lame+trivial all of those 3rd party libraries often are. Inventing a new one "here" is probably faster, and more reliable, in all too many cases.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Let's kick this off then...

"never having tried Visual Basic or its little brother VBScript"

aw, that didn't deserve 2 downvotes! [I appreciate the snark/sarcasm... it WAS sarcasm, right?]

Big Tech slams Trump on plan to deport kids

bombastic bob Silver badge

Re: Don't hate . . .

take a look, they describe different logic fallacies, which I see here ALL of the time.

bombastic bob Silver badge
FAIL

Re: OBAKA

'Obaka" is japanese for "royal idiot" or "honorable idiot". I specifically use it as a slang term for the previous occupant of the white house, the WORST president this country has ever had, who almost singlehandedly doubled the national debt, stifled the economy, created the WORST replacement for a previously working industry (medical industry and insurance) and along with his willing minions, calls EVERYONE a RACIST who simply disagreed with him...

his damage MUST be undone, and the sooner the better.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Down

Re: Don't hate . . .

"The whole point of brexit is hate in one form or another."

that's right, throw ANOTHER "emotion bomb" at it, and do the ad hominem invalidation tango

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/20/Appeal-to-Anger

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/29/Appeal-to-Emotion

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/1/Ad-Hominem-Abusive

and possibly this

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/9/Ad-Hominem-Circumstantial

and this

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/10/Ad-Hominem-Guilt-by-Association

because you are asserting that those who are FOR Brexit support it because of HATE

and this is obviously NOT true. (although you may find a few people that actually fall into this kind of hate-based reasoning, it would assume 'guilt by association' that EVERYONE agrees with those motivated by hate)

so thanks for the emotion bombs... [NOT]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

"I have never understood America's xenophobia and attitude towards immigrants and foreigners, when you consider the entire country consists of immigrants and foreigners."

then I shall explain the TRUTH about what is happening...

1. it's NOT 'xenophobia'. That 'phobia' thing is wielded like a weapon by the left. It's total BULLSHIT every time 'phobia' applies to ANYTHING these days...

2. Illegal immigrants illegally entered the country with their children, in violation of the law, and THEN used PUBLIC FUNDS AND SERVICES to educate them and pay for their doctor bills, etc., and NOW they expect THE REST OF THE COUNTRY to "just accept them" simply because they tagged along with their parents while their parents were BREAKING THE LAW. What part of _THAT_ makes sense?

3. OBAKA signed "an executive order" to give these people green cards, all of which apparently expire within the next 2 years. Trump isn't going to invalidate them (which would force a mass deportation), but he won't RENEW them, either. If they want to stay, they'll have to get in line and APPLY like everyone else.

4. CONGRESS establishes the laws. Going around CONGRESS by "executive order" is something OBAKA was INFAMOUS for doing.

5. Existing law says you have to jump through certain hoops and meet certain requirements to LEGALLY work inside the USA. Those who do NOT do it "the right way" are IN! VIOLATION! OF! THE! LAW! and of course are subject to DEPORTATION, INCARCERATION, etc..

6. Feeling sorry for people is NOT a reason to "just let them in", especially when they'll end up USING PUBLIC SERVICES at the expense of tax PAYERS like me. *FEEL* is an 'F' word. It makes POOR decisions.

7. The United States of America is _NOT_ the "welfare teet" for the world. PERIOD.

8. Every nation on the planet has the _RIGHTS_ to defend and secure its own borders, and regulate who can come in and who must leave. Is the USA now _EXEMPT_ from this right, because, *FEEL* ???

Once again I expect a boatload of downvotes by stating the truth.

Tesla hit with official complaint over factory conditions

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

unions could be beneficial

unions could be beneficial if they simply acted like contracting agents, while simultaneously getting good wages+working conditions for the employees, as well as good benefits, etc.. everybody wins, right?

but that would make too much sense [and doesn't have enough corruption in it]

Asterisk bugs make a right mess of RTP

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

are these being exploited

are these vulnerabilities being exploited? perhaps by some of the illegal robocallers? Just wondering...

I considered setting up Asterisk on my home phone system at one time. It'd be kinda cool, and would help do messaging and keep the cold callers at bay - "press 1 if you are human" and let people get ahold of me that way. Aside from NOT wanting to spend money on a voice modem that's compatible with Asterisk [and a dedicated computer to run it on] I haven't done it, but it would be pretty cool, I bet.

Well, that's gonna have to wait a bit longer, until after it's patched.

[I messed with Asterisk a decade or so ago, when the company I was working for was trying to use IP phones over a wifi system with a steering antenna like the Siemens SE568 has - we wanted to see how it affected voice quality with wifi phones, with QoS and other stuff enabled - but nothing since then]

Robocall scumbags already target Hurricane Harvey victims

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

a special place in hell

A special place in hell is reserved for scammers of those who are already victims of a disaster...

Deputy AG Rosenstein calls for law to require encryption backdoors

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

" It underlies decisions like Rowe vs. Wade that tend to piss a lot of people off when they discover the government can't compel behaviors they don't like."

unless it's the OBAKA-CARE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE (according to the Supreme Court, anyway)

/me still waiting for THAT @#$%-ing thing to GO THE @#$% AWAY and I will _CONTINUE_ to _VIOLATE_ that "law" until it does... because it's a "hardship"

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Flogging a Dead Horse?

if you flog it enough, it becomes *UNDEAD*

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UndeadHorseTrope

Anyway, Rosenstein's "audience" is more like "the D.C. Establishment" as he's one of THEM...

Don't these numbskulls understand that if you FORCE A BACK DOOR like that, you render the encryption WORTHLESS©®¶™? And then EVERYBODY will download some foreign entity's encryption, and/or use PGP, and/or use an algorithm OF THEIR OWN DESIGN [me], which would render this worthless argument into complete irrelevance.

Or, like 'gun control', if it's not "hitting the target by aiming properly" it's making sure that law abiding citizens cannot DEFEND THEMSELVES [because ONLY the criminals will have them].

So if we ONLY want terrorists and criminals to be the ones with proper encryption, then going THAT DIRECTION will ENSURE IT.

US government: We can jail you indefinitely for not decrypting your data

bombastic bob Silver badge
Stop

Re: The USA:

"But is looking at sexually explicit photographs of children child abuse?"

it is, not because of the content of the photograph (which coincides with your other arguments, actually), but because a child had to have been ABUSED to take the photograph.

I have known kids (friends of mine, when I was a kid) who were subjected to that kind of photographic abuse.

When I was a kid, I lived in a 'trailor trash' neighborhood for a while. One guy, a single guy who had lots of bicycle repair parts and a really cool boat, was a friend to all of the kids. He would ask the PARENTS if he could take them on weekend outings to a lake, etc.. My mother was rightfully suspicious, and the guy WAS a little creepy. One day she saw him at the local bar where she was moonlighting as a cocktail waitress. She saw him with naked photos of some of my friends, as I understand it (he was letting people look at them, trying to sell them apparently), and so she got the cops involved. The guy soon disappeared, and we never saw him again. His boat was towed away some time after that, and his mobile home also. I think he was arrested and caught with the photos in his possession. The bank probably repo'd the rest.

So yeah, the exploiting neighbor down the street, taking kids on weekend outings so he can photograph them, allegedly in compromising nude positions (because I never saw them so I can't say for sure), and then sell them to people in a local bar.

And that's why it's illegal just to HAVE these kinds of things, because an actual child was exploited to make that photo.

It would be a lot different if you're photographing disasters, wars, assassinations, etc..

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

"How can they know the hash value of a file unless they have access to it's decrypted content?"

they're probably looking for files WITH that hash value, which is probably known because the file downloads were being monitored [or something like that]. They have to prove THAT GUY has THAT FILE and then they have that part of their case evidence nailed up. The judge has apparently determined that the cops have cause for a warrant, and ordered the defendant to provide the information according to the discovery request, and he refused, and the judge probably issued a SPECIFIC order regarding the decryption of the data, and he didn't and now is sitting in jail.

My guess based on what I read in the article. It's probably close to what happened.

Ice-cold Kaspersky shows the industry how to handle patent trolls

bombastic bob Silver badge
WTF?

Re: What are lawmakers doing?

"Any legitimate patent holder will have actually made a product that they want to protect."

unfortunately, this cannot be held up as a requirement for a patent. the inventor can sell his invention (via the patent) to anyone, and doesn't require a working device in order to patent it. I think the presumption is that if it doesn't work, the patent is worthless anyway.

A requirement to publish patents and/or properly describe them might be helpful to stop predatory lawsuits from happening. Or not, considering l[aw]yers are involved.

Prejudiced humans = prejudiced algorithms, and it's not an easy fix

bombastic bob Silver badge
WTF?

Re: Software is now giving sentence recommendations in the USA.

"llegedly it tends to give too little weight to an individual's actual offenses and instead focuses heavily on the neighborhood they are from and their education"

if this is actually TRUE, then the appeals lawyers would have a FIELD DAY with it. So I suspect it is not. Unless the people who approved it are dumber than dirt. which is possible...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: People don't fully understand how discrimination happens, which makes it hard to fix

nice try, but I'm not buying.

people NATURALLY discriminate. You don't want the street person that begs for change in front of your favorite shopping center as your best friend, right? That's an extreme case, but it makes my point.

Men typically won't date women who are unattractive, unless they're feeling particularly undersexed and desperate. And we're willing to tolerate quite a bit for someone who's an 11 on a scale of 1-10. Yeah.

Women typically won't date men who don't earn enough money. Admit it. There are exceptions, of course, but I'm referring the general case here. You ladies just don't want THAT GUY burdening you, being a "hanger on" or "clingy" or crashing on your couch for 5 years.

Fat and unattractive people are regularly NOT hired in comparison to thin, nice looking people. It's a fact. This is why you always "dress for success" when interviewing for a job. (It also proves you have a good attitude, to dress for success, so that's a factor as well).

People who smoke are discriminated against, too. I mean, the ONE SMOKER in the office, who stinks like cigarettes all of the time, is constantly taking "a smoke break", yotta yotta. It's just FREAKING IRRITATING and so THAT guy typically won't get hired, and may be paid LOWER because "all of those smoke breaks" aren't getting work done. Yes, they're less productive, therefore not worth the higher wage that a typical non-smoker would earn.

Anyway, it's just human nature to discriminate. Not justifying outright racial or religious or sex-based discrimination, of course. Just pointing out that maybe it's not such a bad thing, to discriminate within a reasonable tolerance.

I was once asked to interview people for a job as an embedded developer. I asked one simple question: after identifying a problem I'd seen, with no obvious solution, I asked candidates how they'd approach it. The guy that was hired just said "I'd connect a JTAG or other debugger..." and that was the answer I was looking for. But one person applying, who happened to be a woman, seemed to talk a good game but couldn't come up with an answer like THAT one. I suspect if she'd been hired, regardless of her impressive pedegree, she'd have wheel-spun over otherwise solvable problems for MONTHS, making up excuses for not getting things done, etc. etc. and trying to fire her just might have invited the SJW brigade to claim "it's because she's a woman".

So yeah it wasn't because she was a woman that I wanted the other guy instead, it's because she probably wasn't someone who actually gets things DONE. Amazing how fast you can reveal that, too, if you ask the right questions [and my pedigree, compared to hers, is pathetic, so I guess pedigrees aren't worth the paper they're written on in the world of embedded systems engineering].

No doubt she probably continues to work for a large company where she can continue being 'somewhat mediocre' and yet fulfill the HR requirements of having more female employees (and thus stave off the blood-sucking lawyers and SJW activists).

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

" It clearly discriminates against short and average height people"

cue Randy Newman singing "Short People"

Western Digital has cloudified the NAS and shoved it in a trendy box

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

the average US household has 4l.5TB of data spread across 14 digital devices

or so says the article, quoting WD

I think this is another "steaming pile".

data does not equal "all of those downloads" for system updates and the OS itself. Data is things like cat videos, photos, e-mails, and so on.

in fact, their largest is only 20TB from the article.

I really doubt the 41.5TB claim. that's like they're trying to sell you WAY more than you actually need.

(And of course 99% of that would be CRAP anyway)

with all of the crap I've got stored, including an IMAP server [with regular backups], SVN repository [with regular backups], company history [like documents and YEARS of accounting system backups], cakewalk bundle files and the resulting music I created, downloaded videos, a few DVDs I imaged locally, a bunch of MSDN DVD/CD images that I use occasionally, and a WHOLE BUNCH of VirtualBox VMs of various operating systems and configurations, I _STILL_ haven't filled up a couple of 2TB drives [on 2 different machines, that cross-backup one another, and replicate MOST of that in one form or another between the two machines] that BOTH use ZFS [and in some cases, with replication enabled].

So how in the HELL do people accumulate 41.5TB of "data"? More like 1-2TB of "data" and 39.5TB of *CRAP*. I just don't get it, really. It makes NO sense.

It's just another example of "ass-pull statistics", aka "rectal extrapolation". They should at least spray it with Fabreze before announcing it like it's 'fact'.

SanDisk's little microSD card sucks up 400GB

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

it'd work well on an RPi I bet

makers might take note on this, for an RPi-based device

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: 400 Gb on your little fingernail....

"most of it doesn't seem to be English..."

I dunno, in my head I heard a thick Scottish accent. It sounded like Fat Bastard or Shrek

Microsoft's fix for web graphics going AWOL? Disable your antivirus

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Untrusted Font?

"a malicious font can cause a privilege escalation..."

if the font is a windows 'OpenType' or 'TrueType' or 'Raster' font file (not sure if that's possible any more with web sites), then it's EXECUTABLE and I'm not sure what user context it would run in. Probably the kernel, yeah. DLLs have startup code that runs when you load them. This could easily be turned into a virus/trojan and attached to a downloadable font file.

If it's a web font, there was a vulnerability back in 2006 that allowed remote code execution in IE. Who's to say they fixed ALL of the vulnerabilities [or didn't introduce NEW ones with the apparent re-re-writing for Edge].

I wouldn't trust Win-10-nic to protect you, either.

'Open and accessible' spambot server leaks 711 million records

bombastic bob Silver badge
Terminator

I hope law enforcement was informed...

article didn't say [or else my scanning missed it] whether or not the details of the server were turned over to law enforcement, since [if it has passwords, etc.] there's likely ABUSE going on, relay-raping, joe-jobbing, and other spammer nastiness, much of which could be either sued over OR prosecuted criminally.

And if the owner of the server is simply clueless to the use for spamming, then whoever did it is doing so illegally and needs to be prosecuted for THAT, too...

NYPD head of IT doubles down on Windows smartphone idiocy

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Hold on, if I read this right

"using them as a prototype and developing version 2 sounds like a very viable plan."

what I've often said about Micro-shaft's tendency to move the target: If you're gonna have to re-learn, re-develop, or re-ANYTHING for that matter, you might as well switch to something with an actual future to it.

I said that about ".Not" back in the early noughties, learned Linux/BSD instead. Now I do most of my development in either Linux or BSD. Seems to have worked out pretty well. Meanwhile, Micro-shaft has moved the target 2 or 3 additional times (3 if you count 'Silverlight'), the most recent one being UWP.

From the mid-to-late 1990's - using C++ with MFC worked pretty well. And then:

change #1: ".Not" initiative and C-pound

change #2: Silverlight [which failed]

change #3: Windows 8 CRapps using their 'RT' nonsense

change #4: UWP

I'm glad I jumped ship early on.

So yeah - if you MUST re-learn, re-learn something with an actual FUTURE, something that isn't going to change every other year and require you to re-re-re-learn. Then you can focus on getting actual WORK done, actual PROJECTS COMPLETED, and maintain them without re-re-writing.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Hold on, if I read this right

No doubt it's not the cost of the phones themselves, but rather the cost of the infrastructure that surrounds them, and the long-term support and maintenance costs for "beyond 2 years from now".

Micro-shaft obviously wanted to lock them into a windows-based solution, so that (in perpetuity) they'd be Micro-shaft's biggest phone customer, locked in to "that solution" so that the cost becomes prohibitive to switch out of it, later on down the road. You know, like using Active Directory... or Office 365. Or any OTHER Micro-shaft product.

Switching to Apple _now_ would probably save money long term. Switching to Android, similar. They chose Apple.

Besides, there's no such thing as a FREE LUNCH. There's always a cost. You just need to recognize it. And if someone's GIVING AWAY a "solution", you _know_ that strings will be attached at some point, if not already there.

Tech soap-opera latest: Alexa marries Cortana, will share custody of customers

bombastic bob Silver badge
Big Brother

if they were local instead of being cloud-based...

if these things were local instead of being cloud-based, maybe it would be a good thing?

But as long as that "open mic" audio continues to flow into the cloud, it's a major privacy violation.

And you _KNOW_ that "they" are trying to make use of it! [it's just too tempting, after all]

Criticize Google, get fired: Spotlight spins on ad giant's use of soft money

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

drain the swamp

just sayin'

Best Korea fingered for hacks against Bitcoin exchanges in South

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Kim Jon 'Fat-ass' 'Cartman' Un is being a pest

"this exaggerated moral outrage at other countries' affairs coming from over the pond really gets my goat"

That statement actually made me think of Neville Chamberlain...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Kim Jon 'Fat-ass' 'Cartman' Un is being a pest

actually I live near some of the most important military bases on the west coast. A 'first strike' is most likely to come here.

And of course, I fart in Kim Jong 'Fat-ass' Un's general direction. heh.

Seriously, though, that guy is JUST! LIKE! CARTMAN! from South Park.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

Kim Jon 'Fat-ass' 'Cartman' Un is being a pest

Well, looks like it's not enough just to lob missiles at everyone around him, and threaten the universe with global thermonuclear war. Now he's gone and done the same *KIND* of thing, more or less, in the cyber universe as well.

That raving "Fat Boy Kim" needs a freaking cluebat at the earliest opportunity. Or a good spanking.

I mean, look at what he does to his own people. He stuffs his face and gets fat while everyone ELSE in N. Korea has to deal with starvation. He buys equipment for missile and nuclear bomb testing with their dwindling national funds, when he COULD be buying food for everyone [besides himself]. Not much of a "people's" republic if all they're doing over there is enabling this insane tin-horn man-child dictator to stuff his pig-face and scream the equivalent of "RESPECT MY AUTHORITAH" to the world, with all of that saber rattling and war threatening he's become so infamous for.

I suppose it was inevitable that some psychopathic lunatic like Kim Jong 'Fat-ass' Un would eventually engage in cyber warfare and steal bitcoins from around the world. No blaming the sanctions for it, either. It's just fat-ass Kim being greedy, and an asshat to the world, as usual.

[I understand that Baby Kimmy _REALLY_ hates it when people make fun of him, ESPECIALLY if it's about his weight. I hope he reads this and throws a gigantic TANTRUM. Come on, Kimmy-Boy, give US an excuse to deal with you _PROPERLY_]

Icon for obvious reasons

New periodic table names

bombastic bob Silver badge
Alien

Re: Tennessine

Element 115 (Moscovium) is the one the UFO people believe that powers the UFOs.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: always good for educational value

"today I learned that Nihon is the semi-official word for what we call Japan"

thanks for the link as well. I had no idea that 'Yamato' was an ancient name for Japan.

the kanji for 'Nihon' literally mans 'sun source' from what I understand. The 'hon' kanji can also mean 'book' and is part of the word 'hontou' meaning 'true' and so on. Lots of words seem to have the 'hon' kanji in them.

I'm not an expert, though, I just have an interest in it.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

more like 'Tu' for 'Tauntalum'

Japanese sat tech sinks Sea Shepherd anti-whaling activists' hopes

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

a matter of pride?

perhaps it's just a matter of pride, NOT being told what to do by a bunch of eco-terrorists. Essentially.

I've seen the 'whale wars' show, and although it was interesting at first [with the presumption that the whaling was being done against international treaties or something] I think that it's in such small quantity now, and not EVEN close to endangering the species, that most people should just ignore it... and maybe that's their point?

If the whale species really DO become endangered, as bluefin tuna is close to becoming, they'll need to modify their quotas again. Otherwise, why not let them do what they want?

pirate icon because a pirate lives by his OWN rules

Boffins prove oil and water CAN mix – if you do it in a gas giant

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

water has a 'dissolved gas' capacity

just to mention, water has a 'dissolved gas' capacity that varies by temperature and pressure. Otherwise fish couldn't breathe, though I suppose algae could still grow since CO2 has a high affinity for water.

The minimum level of dissolved gas in water occurs in the range of about 165F (as I recall). When you boil water, you'll see a point where you get bubbles along the walls of the pot. but temperature is too low for boiling. This is the dissolved gas coming out of solution. Stir it and the bubbles go away as the gas is liberated from the water, and the bubbles don't re-form again. The water has lost the excess dissolved gas.

At the low temperature end, maximum gas capacity is at around 34F.

sorry for using the old Fahrenheit scale. I should've used something more "El Reg", like maybe expressing the temperature in Hiltons, but then I would've become confused or something.

In any case, as you raise pressure, dissolved gas capacity increases.

So yeah, gaseous hydrocarbons will dissolve in water, given a high enough pressure and proper temperature. It may just be that.

/me points out that this is why warm soda/beer goes flat, but cold soda/beer retains its fizz.

For once, Uber takes it up the tailpipe: Robo-ride gets rear-ended

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

accidents a 'fact of life' in Cali-fornicate-you

traffic accidents are a 'fact of life' in Cali-fornicate-you. You stop in the right turn lane and wait for pedestrians, someone looking left for oncoming traffic slams into you from behind. I suspect that's what happened.

And then there's the T bone incident. When the light is yellow, of COURSE I hit the gas to make it through. And if some idiot making a left turn tries to turn into oncoming traffic, well you just have to dodge them trying. The fact is you can wait until the light is RED to make your left turn, and since you're already in the intersection, just complete it when nobody's coming.

Those are rules easily programmed into computers, but POORLY programmed into driver's heads, especially when distracted by daily events, music, "new, shiny", children, and not even considering cell phones nor texting.

SO... maybe you just have to ASSUME that there will be accidents, and take a look at the causes, remedies, and what a human might do to avoid them, as well as the overall accident RATE.

But one accident shutting down the program? In Cali-fornicate-you CITY TRAFFIC? I doubt you could find a human capable of meeting a 'no accident' standard in those conditions. So why expect it from bots?

Another thing they might consider - paint the self-driving cars with highly visible colors [day/dusk/night] just in case the "silver car" wasn't seen at around sunset or something... (not knowing what color it was, just guessing possibilities).

Crowdfunding scheme hopes to pay legal fees for Marcus Hutchins

bombastic bob Silver badge
WTF?

"A decent lawyer costs around $800 to $1500 per hour"

not necessarily. keep in mind that a lawyer probably has a 'legal team' and will hand off many tasks to team members, whose hourly rates will be significantly lower [please don't ask why I know this, k-thx]. Court appearances may be 'fixed fee' and you probably won't speak directly to the attorney except for the initial interviews and in the court room. Paperwork will be prepared by paralegals along with a lot of the research.

So it's not THAT BAD, but still pretty expensive.

[and pro bono attorneys are probably more likely to have you plead 'guilty' or 'no contest' to do a plea bargain, even if you're NOT guilty, which may end up being cheaper overall... if you can avoid jail anyway]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: No travel insurance?

"would be a typical insurer trying to wriggle out of a payout."

in a way, can you blame them? [not saying it's ethical]

Well, debugger me. Microsoft's BSOD fixer is getting a makeover

bombastic bob Silver badge
Joke

"Yep, something happened all right. Sorry. :("

back in the day, as a prank, I once changed one of the error messages of a PDP-11 computer running RSTS/E . It was an obscure error message, caused by NOT saving the source before running a program [then having certain errors happen].

The error message was "?Program lost. Sorry."

I changed it to "?Program lost. TOUGH SHIT"

A week went by. Then the system operator did a 'nudge nudge wink wink' figuring it was me and asked me how he might fix it. I helped out saying things like "Well... I think the error messages are all stored in this one file..." and ended up hovering over him while he typed [logged in as an operator of course].

In any case, an appropriate change to the BSOD might be good for a laugh or two.

bombastic bob Silver badge
FAIL

Re: Know your market

We can probably blame the inventor of the damned ribbon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Larson-Green

New York Police scrap 36,000 Windows smartphones

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Why does she still have that job??

perhaps for the same reason THIS person still has HER job:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Larson-Green

inventor of "The Metro" "The Ribbon" and "one windows, everywhere"

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: And here's how this entry will look on her resume

it's a corollary of the 'Peter Principle'

US Navy develops underwater wireless battery-charging tech

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

I'd think Qi would work ok

minus some losses due to eddy currents in the salt water, Qi should be able to manage it

Intel ME controller chip has secret kill switch

bombastic bob Silver badge
Big Brother

I guess I know what architectures to avoid...

self-explanatory

Facebook will deny ads to repeat promoters of fake news

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Belief Politics and the freedom to be wrong.

And don't forget "the onion". good for a laugh.

Facebook - World Police!

ZUCKERBERG - F Yeah!

making the world safer, for HIS AD SPAM!

(or something)

Google routing blunder sent Japan's Internet dark on Friday

bombastic bob Silver badge
FAIL

All Eggs, One Basket, big fat thumb go *squish*

Yeah, kinda what the title says.

NOT good. Someone needs a CLUE BAT for letting things get to that point.

VW engineer sent to the clink for three years for emissions-busting code

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: clean air laws are a joke

"Troll or arsehole, either way you should be ignored."

I thought it was satire, gave it an upvote.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

man-made climate change *IS* fake news. but climate changes all the time. Consider that ~70 year cycle in the northern hemisphere, you know, like 1900 cold, 1935 warm, 1970 cold, 2005 warm, 2040 cold...

And the question here isn't about the emissions themselves [which are really based on air quality, and not "gobal fornicating warming" CO2 nonsense]. It's about every OTHER car maker complying, and VW _NOT_ complying, by cheating on the bi-annual smog checks [and other emissions testing].

Ultimately that's what it comes down to, yeah.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

"How is an engineer supposed to know the law anyway"

it's probably down to the "any reasonable person" argument, and a jury that convicts based on that.