Posts by bombastic bob

San Franciscans unite to smite alt-right with minefield of doggy shite

Re: Hmmmm....

yeah they "promise" to get together and clean it up afterwards, but you know how it is with lefties... whenever you see photos of 'the aftermath' when they leave, trash all over etc. because most of them have the mentality that "someone else" will do it [usually gummint]. It's how they think. Gummint does EVERYTHING according to leftists, so cleaning up their mess would make sense, to THEM.

here's an example: http://www.king5.com/tech/science/environment/ton-of-trash-left-behind-after-environmental-protest/197524056

and don't forget trash arranged in the form of a peace sign, at woodstock... [yeah why couldnt' they haul it away instead?] OK not a protest, but it was hippies "back in the day", a foreshadowing of the future behavior of left-leaning protests, I'd guess.

This as opposed to Tea Party rallies in which the level of trash afterwards was apparently VERY SMALL (and piled near trash cans when they overflow).

http://goodsensepolitics.blogspot.com/2009/09/compare-garbage-after-tea-party-vs.html

So yeah, who IS going to clean that up? THEY say THEY will. I wouldn't hold my breath... well, I guess I'd hold my breath anyway, because the stench of the DOG CRAP will be pretty foul.

Yeah, they CLAIM they'll clean it up, but they're "fulla crap". had to say that.

PC sales to fall and fall and fall and fall and fall for the next five years

Re: Useless

"I use it maybe once a month to fill out my overtime sheet in Word."

obviously you're one of those "content consumer" 4-inch types. enjoy your mediocre computing experience.

Re: "Developing world - if you were to only have *one* computing device"

"So what's going on up there in Silicon Valley? Its like the PC makers are too busy reading MSM / Gartner / IDC reports, instead of asking people on the ground what they really want!"

In Silly Valley they're isolated in their bubble community of wacky-weed addicts without a clue as to what the rest of the world is like. Their politics, attitudes, and marketing proves it.

Win-10-nic is the #1 reason why PC sales slump. #2 is the lack of "new computer performs better than old computer". Why replace something that works with something that works about the same (but has Win-10-nic on it) ???

Predictable. Predictable. Predictable. It's so damn obvious I don't know what else I can say without a cluebat and a cat5-o-nine-tails to emphasize the point by BEATING IT into those clueless douchebags that seem to be "in charge".

Nasty firmware update butchers Samsung smart TVs so bad, they have to be repaired

Re: Bricked TVs

were the updates MANDATORY?

El Reg gets schooled on why SSDs will NOT kill off the trusty hard drive

Re: Remeber folks HDD is a great archive medium, much better than any old tape....

well, sounds like backups and archiving ought to be a multi-plan thing then.

a) store on multiple machines/hard drives/SAN/etc.

b) periodic tape/dvd/SD card/whatever archival

c) cloudy backup for when it's appropriate

that's kinda what I do...

Re: This was my grandfather's HDD.

"Kalok, right? Both the name of the brand, and the sound they would make when it broke..."

I bought a Kalok drive in the 90's. When I loaded a beta version of Win '95 it started swapping to disk a LOT, which caused the drive to eat itself. Sounded a lot like breaking glass.

(fortunately, I did regular backups, and only lost time and the cost of a new hard drive)

Prior to that, I had left a Seagate drive on top of the case, with extended length IDE+power cables going into the back of the computer (a secondary hard drive). I stored "work files" on it, mostly (whatever I was working on at the time, source code etc.) and did regular backups. But whenever the drive had been off for a while, after being on for a while, it wouldn't spin up. But the spindle stuck out through the circuit board, just a little. So I'd grab it with pliers and manually spin it until it free'd up, then power up the drive. It worked for about a year like this until I finally replaced it.

So what's in the new Windows Insider build? Bug fixes, an AR goof-around, and a font

If you're gonna do "something 3D"...

Micro-shaft: If you're gonna do "something 3D", why not 3D SKEUOMORPHIC UI APPEARANCE????

You know, instead of that 2D FLATSO FLUGLINESS that began with Windows "Ape".

(and while you're at it, get rid of the SLURPING and AD-NAGGING, too)

Micro-shaft: majoring in the 'minors' with another worthless "new, shiny".

The only new emoji that would matter is "REALLY PISSED OFF AT MICRO-SHAFT" which would look a LOT like a hand with a firmly extended middle finger...

Mozilla ponders making telemetry opt-out, 'cos hardly anyone opted in

Re: This user has visited one or more of these sites today

yes, having that information means they can sell it to whatever 3rd party wants it.

^^^ the REAL motivation behind telemetry

"Silly Valley" has gone INSANE

"Why on every front are they trying to copy the worst ideas of the competitors"

(from topic 'idea of opt-out telemetry')

'Silly Valley' has gone INSANE. It's turning into an ISOLATED MICRO-CULTURE, in which they all suck one anoth... scratch one another's backs and tell each other how great their ideas are, while the REST OF THE PLANET is angry. Redmond is also a similar micro-culture and maybe they do occasional culture exchanges between Silly Valley and Redmond or something...

Point being, these guys are SO isolated from what end-users (read: customers) want, that they're falling for the SAME traps that Microshaft and Google and Facebook, and "all of the others" have fallen for.

What Mozilla has done to reduce their market share:

a) become WAY TOO MUCH like Chrome (2D FLATSO, hamburger menu, etc.)

b) stop supporting the plugin interface needed for 'Classic UI' plugins

c) favoring "new shiny" _WAY_ over "make it better"

What they should do instead: LISTEN TO THE CUSTOMERS! Not pollsters, not shouty activist users, etc.. And stop relying on bots and slurping and other 'impersonal' tactics that effectively turn people into MINIONS to be exploited.

Re: I think that's a good idea

"This is basically what Windows 10 does"

and that is PRECISELY why we do NOT want this telemetry stuff to be OPT OUT

NEWS FLASH: _MOST_ people do NOT run Win-10-nic.

If Mozilla becomes "slurpy" like Micro-shaft and Google, they'll lose their entire market share, and someone else will fork their code so that we'll have a reasonable browser alternative, other than the data slurpers.

Microsoft, Red Hat in cross-platform container and .Net cuddle

Re: No thanks

"Basically, .NET scores better than average in every category except that it was made by Microsoft."

Sorry. but no. ".NOT" and C-Pound score LOWER than WHALE CRAP on every scale I can think of.

NOTE: if you code for wxWidgets, you get a cross-platform toolkit that is a lot like MFC. I suggest using THAT. And forget C-pound and ".NOT". Make your applications run WITHOUT that monolithic dead-man strapped to your back. And static link while you're at it. your customers and support techs will thank you.

it means .NET developers can now target Red Hat Linux

target FOR DESTRUCTION you mean...

".NOT" in Linux is like the proverbial lipstick on the non-oinky end of the proverbial BOAR.

Redmond: NO. Just NO.

Headless body found near topless beach: Missing private sub journalist identified

Re: This story is still nowhere near as strange as...

Shhhhh... don't tell anyone it was me

Re: Making light of tragedy

"There is absolutely nothing funny about this story."

I dunno, I laugh at "dead baby" jokes and "man with no arms/legs" jokes...

What do you call a man with no arms/legs floating in the water?

BOB! [had to do that one]

(coat, please)

Accused! Yahoo! hacker! pleads! not! guilty! in! US! court!

it was the one armed man!

that's who done it!

Germans force Microsoft to scrap future pushy Windows 10 upgrades

Too late...

Don't touch the hair... don't touch the hair... don't touch the hair... TOO LATE!!!

If you've seen the movie, and understand the reference, it's kinda like what happened to Brad, after it was "too late", to suddenly find yourself with Win-10-nic instead of 7 (or even "Ape") and now, you can NEVER go back to the way it was before...

So even when Micro-shaft [heh - perfect considering the earlier reference] promises to "never do it again" it doesn't matter, not one bit. You've lost your virginity and that's that. And not in a GOOD way, either.

US Navy suffers third ship collision this year

Re: Well if the US ships want the Chinese to keep out of the way

"they may have learnt how to do handbrake turns with a destroyer to scam Lloyd's List."

back full port, ahead full starboard. similar idea to a handbrake turn.

If the ship has multiple screws, even if the rudder is immobilized due to a mechanical problem, you can still attempt to steer it with the engines [though the effect isn't quite as good].

Methinks they need to run more drills on operation casualties *like* loss of steeering, work out the bugs, and get some kinds of procedures in place to avoid situations like that one.

Normally a collision is due to a mistake on the part of the officer of the deck. But with "that much information" in play in a busy channel, maybe it's just not humanly possible for one person to keep track of it all...

(holy @#$% it's a big fat tanker, how the hell did we NOT see that coming?)

Can North Korean nukes hit US mainland? Maybe. But EMP blast threat is 'highly credible'

Re: Never understood the obsession with ICBMs

Just bang Kim Jong "Fatass" Un's into a wall someplace. It's obvious who the aggressor is.

Didn't anyone learn how to STAND UP to a bully, especially when he's basically "all talk"?

Trump is doing the right thing, up to and including having CHINA involved in this, in an actual good way. The USA isn't going to pre-emptively "glass" N. Korea, so having China threaten us just let's them 'save face' on the issue. The REAL issue is China "going neutral" if N. Korea launches missiles at the USA (including Guam, I might add) or an ally (like Japan or S. Korea). THAT should have Kim Jong "Cartman" Un relieving himself without the benefit of a toilet bowl. And THAT is what we want. Because _SANE_ negotiations don't work with people who are INSANE. Like Kim Jong "fat boy" Un.

We (the world) have been collectively appeasing and paying this ass-hat (and his ass-hat father, Kim Jong "So Wonewy" Il) off with various deals, favors, etc. expecting proper response, i.e. NOT developing their nuke program. Of course, we kept OUR end of the bargain. The Kim family doesn't keep THEIR end of ANY bargain. So it's time to play HARDBALL with these idiots. And China _IS_ with us (even if they won't admit it).

Energy firm slapped with £50k fine for making 1.5 million nuisance calls

adding 3 or 4 more zeros onto the end would be more appropriate of a fine. but I like my "punch in the nose" idea a whole lot better. More personally satisfying.

Re: You have to question their intelligence...

ack, it's purely a numbers game. they'll irritate 999,999 people to get that ONE sale.

Re: Spawn of Satan

""I wanted to know what company to avoid giving any business to.""

I would prefer "I wanted to know who to report to the FCC over violating the 'do not call' list" then inform them to NEVER CALL YOU BACK AGAIN.

/me really HATES telemarketers, especially the ones who ignore the 'do not call' list and use robo-dialers and won't pick up on their end, so I can't swear at them properly. I want to quote that line from 'Demolition Man' where Stallone's character needs toilet paper... "You @#$-brained @#$-faced duck-@#$%^ @#$%-busting" etc.. Actually I want to find out where they live... [edit: not to break any laws, of course. no way! Send them a nice postcard at Christmas time or something]

Re: Different planet

"Can we get some real regulators that make punitive fines please."

how about authorizing EVERYONE who received such a nuisance call to give one punch in the nose, each, to anyone held responsible. 1.5 million punches in the nose oughta be a nice DIS-incentive for this kind of irritating self-serving nuisance...

UK.gov to treat online abuse as seriously as IRL hate crime

Re: Safe space

" If Twitter could verify users' real names and addresses before letting them post, everyone would play (reaosonably) nice."

no they wouldn't. But I have a solution: thicken your skin, and have fun with it instead.

"Have nice day" <-- make it sound like 'Gru' said it.

"So someone who politely criticises your viewpoint in an online forum isn't going to qualify how ever much you're offended."

unless he's got the wrong "political position" in which case the appropriate level of censorship and "chilling effect" applies. It doesn't matter HOW polite you are, when this level of potential censorship is taken to its logical extreme.

Re: Slippery slope?

you need John Cleese to read that as if it were part of the 'Prejudice' sketch... and we'll continue to just call them 'Belgians'.

Re: Slippery slope?

it's never a hate crime when the target is a white guy. didn't you know that?

Microsoft rolls its own hyperconverged appliance program

I think they're just hedging their bets

I think they're just hedging their bets, trying to cover all possible angles with a "Microsoft solution" or something similar, even if it doesn't really sell very well [or earns less than Azure].

It's what you do when you're trying to take over the world. You want your fingers in EVERYTHING.

Google's Android 8.0 Oreo has been served

Re: Next Gen

I can think of other words beginning with 'P'...

Peanut Butter!

I'm waiting for them to put some 3D skeuomorphic renderings into the base system. At least some shadows around the buttons, for crying out loud!

until then... meh [and don't force me to download/upgrade unless I _WANT_ to dammit!]

Boffins blast beats to bury secret sonar in your 'smart' home

yet another reason...

yet another reason to NOT have a device with an "open mic" on all of the time in your house.

(there should at least be a physical switch to disconnect it. same with cameras. and not a 'soft disconnect' either - a HARD disconnect)

Private sub captain changes story, now says reporter died, was 'buried at sea' – torso found

Re: Just sub armless fun

torso was used as an emergency flotation device?

The sky is blue, water is wet and UK PC shipments are down

Re: Will M$ be forced to do a u-turn?

I wish they would, but their ARROGANCE that began with the insider program for Win-10-nic suggests that they are INCORRIGIBLE and will simply go down in flames wondering "why" ...

maybe they can turn it around by *FIRING* this person, the one responsible for 'the ribbon' and 'the metro' (Sinofsky was merely a high profile scapegoat):

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

She's obviously taken the company in the WRONG direction with "one windows, everywhere". It's time to re-organize a bit. But they won't do it, for a number of reasons [some being 'political correctness' reasons, and fear].

Re: C'mon, at least make it rhyme...

"The sky is blue, water is wet..."

you forgot to mention 'Satan Clause' (sequence near the end of 'The Last Boy Scout'). He's out there...

Re: re: the sky is blue etc

Once you get past the HDD to SSD upgrade what is there to be gained from swapping out the old with the new?

a crappy user interface, that comes with embedded spyware and adware, called "Windows 10" (aka Win-10-nic). WOW, something to "look forward" to! (NOT)

(from the article)

Brexit and the general election were highlighted by Gartner as being among the reasons why the good folk of Britain purchased far fewer PCs in Q2.

Gartner: you're doing it wrong. blame Win-10-nic. And Windows "Ape" before that.

SUMMARY: if my existing computer is "good enough", and I can add RAM and/or purchase an SSD and just re-install Windows 7 (or XP for that matter), then *WHY* should I buy a NEW computer with Win-10-nic on it? It would be a _COMPLETE_ waste of money, and I'd end up with an INFERIOR computer (because, Win-10-nic).

And... THAT is why PC sales have slumped. K?

Voyager antenna operator: 'I was the first human to see images from Neptune'

"I pity the first human to see images from Uranus..."

encircled by the S.S. Hemorrhoid, the S.S. Dingleball, and the fingers from the 'Goat' constellation

leaving now...

Re: Wow - that's fast!

I think -168dbm is about the same as a "gnat fart", though -168db would be roughly 1/10^17 [I said 'roughly'] as 'db' is a ratio, but 'dbm' is the log10 of a signal's strength (in milliiwats).

So I guess if someone can quantify "gnat fart" in milliwatts, then we'll be able to translate -168dbm into "gnat farts".

I think a gnat's ass is around 0.1 mm [that is mostly a guess, gnats are hard to measure with calipers].

also, when the noise floor level is hundreds or thousands of times the signal strength, which is actually somewhat common with cell phones, you need some tricky techniques to demodulate it accurately (edit: at the tower, not the phone itself). but yeah, we do that kind of thing pretty well, now.

one thing worth mentioning - how come nobody said "V'ger" yet?

Foxit PDF Reader is well and truly foxed up, but vendor won't patch

Re: Suggestions for replacement?

mentioned 'atril' already. It's the 'Mate' fork of evince, which means it won't have gnome 3 developer arrogance built in.

atril.com I think...

Re: Foxit on the run

"Sweet!"

you get a magic cookie for that one! And a 'Wink'.

on a related note, I used to be a fan of evince until it STARTED! LOOKING! 2D FLATSO! and the gnome devs arrogantly told me to pack sand when I complained about it.

So *NOW* I'm a fan of the Mate fork, 'Atril'. Aside from a minor bug, it's pretty good.

Who needs 'Foxit' when you have SO MANY other PDF readers. FREE ones, without spyware, ads, or other irritations like NAGGING! YOU! TO! LOG! IN! like stupid Adobe crap-reader does now.

and WITHOUT! ".NOT"! IN! THEM! I might add...

Microsoft president exits US govt's digital advisory board as tech leaders quit over Trump

Re: Wot . 2 pages in and no word from Bombastic Bob

fame is overrated

Re: Genetics

"Trumps father was also a racist"

My mother was a big-time feminist during the 60's and 70's. So does that make ME a feminist?

And don't forget that JFK's father was an alleged CRIME BOSS.

Re: the United States has an exceptional degree of respect for absolute freedom of speech

"an internal civil war with firearms in the hands of psychotics."

WRONG.

If firearms are in the hands of psychotics, then let's just arm REGULAR LAW ABIDING CITIZENS and be done with it. Deputize EVERYBODY if that's what it takes. You'll see gun crimes reduced to near-zero.

In every city with a gun control law of some kind, you ALWAYS see a rise in violent crime that is (most likely) a direct result of the removal of handguns (particularly concealed handguns) in the possession of law abiding citizens.

And anyway, ABSOLUTE freedom of speech is a GREAT thing. With the exception of outright libel, slander, and disruption of the peace [like the classic exampe of yelling 'FIRE' in a crowded theater], as long as you're peaceful about it, get permits when required for a public demonstration, and so forth, there is NO restriction as to what you can say, EVAR, and that goes TRIPLE for political things. Even if everyone else HATES it, you can say it. And the police will protect your right to do that.

Meanwhile, it's probably smart to avoid the racist rally if you don't want to hear or watch that kind of thing.

Imagine what would happen if a bunch of religious fanatics "crashed" a gay pride parade? Or what about HAVING a gay pride parade in the FIRST place, in a town that's controlled by religious people that don't lke homosexuality? Of course THOSE lawsuits "happened" so long ago that people forget.

When the rubber band is on the OTHER claw (so to speak), or the shoe on the other foot, etc. then everybody on the left *WHINES* like a bunch of BABIES because SOMEONE out there DISAGREES with them. Well, TOO BAD. Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Speech. That means, as long as you're not inciting riots, or engaging in a crime of some kind (libel, slander, etc.) you're welcome to say what you want, within a reasonable context, and be protected while doing it.

So ANTIFA is (as far as I can tell) a bunch of HYPOCRITES who are simply looking for an EXCUSE to RIOT. Most likely they're bought and paid for by George Soros [or some similar rich liberal].

(and as for those white-supremacy racist bastards, and we know them by the words they spew, as well as the actions they take, so let them say that schtuff in public so that we will always be able to recognize them, and peacefully protest if you must - no rioting)

Re: Lets put things in to perspective.

"Trump condemned both sides for their part in the violence."

etc.

A big fat thumbs-up for daring to tell the truth like that. I had 89 down votes (and counting) last time _I_ did that. But hey, the howler monkeys come out of the woodwork to sling poo every time the Trumpster is mentioned in an article, so there ya go.

It's not like Trump hasn't been asked COUNTLESS times by the LAME-stream media, "do you condemn XXX" where 'XXX' is some hate group (usually racial, usually of the KKK or neo-nazi variety) or leader of some such group.

The other day, Hannity and Limbaugh both played montages of Trump basically saying that he denounced all those guys, back in the campaign, repeatedly. One clip had trump saying that he'd been asked the same question over 30 times and gave the same answer, every time.

Has ANY other president EVAR been subjected to this kind of HARASSING questioning? The answer, of course, is NO. It's like someone coming up to you and saying "Are you a racist" and you say "No" and they say, "but, are you a RACIST?" and you say "No" and this just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on until you just can't STAND it any more, and then you're stuck in a media frenzy repeating the same question over, and over, and over, and over, and over again like they expect you to react unfavorably to yourself in response to the HARASSMENT. which it is.

President Trump to his council of industry CEO buddies: You're fired!

Re: The right don't smash things up? Eh? Political Correctness "key words" and "tricky phrases"

"What about Kristallnacht? Or, for that matter, the Night of the Long Knives?"

Nazis are actually MILITANT LEFTISTS, since they are 'National Socialists'. Fascism for some reason is considered right of center, though it's closer to communism. it's almost like it went around the circle and met the other extreme on the opposite side.

These neo-nazi asshats should be allowed to speak. engaging in violent riots and other lawlessness should never be condoned. BOTH sides were wrong. that doesn't change. Quiet protest without violence is sufficient. There aren't very many of them, and if you consider ME to be trolling, consider what THEY do...

(and you fell right into their trap, didn't you?)

The future of Python: Concurrency devoured, Node.js next on menu

Re: I'll stick with C#

"Does Python have an equivalent of C#'s await keyword that allows you to program asynchronously the same you do synchronously?"

probably not. but just because it's in C-pound does NOT make it great.

C-pound is a java-like wrapper around Micro-shaft's *HIDEOUS* ".Not" architecture. Period. They couldn't embrace, extend, and extinguish Java, so they made their own. good for them. It's hard to see it *EVAR* get above 6 percent on the TIOBE index, even after all these years of Micro-shaft shoving it at developers like it's a panacea language.

Python, on the other hand, is TRULY platform independent. Use Python with GTK and you can make platform independent GUI applications. And don't bother with the "mono" and ".Not WHORE" nonsense. those are just LAME.

/me screamed when gnome added Tomboy and forced the 'mono' crap into gnome desktop as a huge monolithic pile of dependencies. Fortunately it went away.

Python makes an excellent wrapper around programs (and, granted, python extension modules) written in a proper compiled language like C or C++. Whereas, C-pound is just another Micro-shaft hack, for people who've drunk their coolaid and become addicted to it.

no thanks to C-pound.

Re: Python and Threading Explained

"if you have a problem which would be solved by re-writing it in C, have a look for open source libraries"

it's been my experience that, given all of the 3rd party libraries I've either been asked to search for, or been handed with the request to use it, that in the amount of time needed to twist things to fit, and learn their often ridiculous (and inadequate) API, that I'm better off just pounding out the code myself, because I'm just "that good" and have been doing this for so long it's just faster, better, and less likely to have problems.

Once I was handed a 3rd party graphics lib, because it generated 3D charts. I struggled with their ridiculous API. Then I got fed up and said "look I've wasted too much time already. I could write something better/faster in C++ and it would look better and NOT have a license fee attached. I think I spent less than a week on it, and the 3D charts looked like real 3D, and the side-by-side was almost embarassing for the 3rd party lib.

Anyway, that's just one example. I see plot libraries, math libraries, supposedly difficult calculations that are really trivial examples of algebra and loops, spatial stuff, and none of it is all that complicated. And if I spend 10 hours looking for a proper library, and another 10 to 20 hours evaluating it, by then I'd have written the proper solution already.

And then there was this one time that "they" wanted to use opencv to display a camera in real-time while doing analysis on it. well, opencv just had to have 1 second of buffering, and that was inadequate for real-time. So I used gstreamer to grab the camera data live, then converted it to a bitmap and did the analysis on it directly, proving the concept and avoiding the monolithic library. Not only that, but I was able to use "red only" (this was required for infrared actually) and generate a monochrome image from it, do the analysis on the image, and track an object based on its shape, frame by frame. without opencv.

Anyway, I can think of more examples *like* that but that's what I've experienced with "3rd party libs". The people who write them aren't smarter than me, but they might have more time. And they're not panacea solutions, and for most things, I'll just write it myself. [but for an entire OS I think I'll use a 3rd party OS like Linux or FreeBSD, heh]

Re: Python and Threading Explained

a bit long, but I think you missed an important point: Python is not a lingo for which to implement the KINDS of things that typically require multiple threads, for efficiency and concurrency, etc.

Already mentioned, but I'll mention it again: I used a C language utility to replace inefficient python code for a Django web server, and increased the speed of that task by a factor of 30. That's THIRTY. Yeah. I invoked it from python using the 'subprocess' object, returning the stdout as a string. That output was then passed along to other things. It made it possible to do an upload + data conversion in a few seconds, rather than OVER 2 MINUTES [which was timing out the apache proxies, and irritating people]. So the web page display (showing the data results) comes back in a reasonable amount of time, now.

It makes the point that Python is NOT well suited to a lot of things, from numerical calculations, to parsing a binary file and generating CSV and XML data. Because that is what the C language utility does.

So if you have to deal with a 'GIL' aka "giant lock" (another term for the same kind of thing) that blocks EVERYTHING like that, it completely misses the boat on performance.

Python has its uses, but forcing it to act like C or C++ isn't it. If you want performance, use C or C++. If you want convenience, or need a wrapper around your C/C++ utilities, Python will do nicely.

Re: TWO PAGES ?!

I thought it was to double-up the potential advertising you're exposed to

Re: There's a reason Unix has this idea of "one program per job" and "pipes" to link them.

works for me. python wrapper calls C language utilities, passing and returning stuff via stdio.

import subprocess

rval = subprocess.check_output([some_program, arg1, arg2])

let 'some_program' do all of the work, and just use python to sequence and control things. couple that with a nice UI (GTK?) and you have a rapidly generated application that's actually efficient. Other options exist, of course, like spawning oncurrent things, but I bet a single C application could manage THAT part, and return back success/fail info via stdout when everything's done.

unfortunately you may need to put a 'try' block around that - I F'ing *HATE* that. Some "C-pound type" probably FELT that an application returning a non-zero *HAD* to be a FATAL DAMNED CATASTROPHE and "throw an exception" like that. Exception throwing is just IRRITATING as far as I'm concerned. But I'm a C coder, so there you go. And that's my point, to do the REAL work, code it in C (or C++ without the use of exceptions because they're lame).

FYI: Web ad fraud looks really bad. Like, really, really bad. Bigly bad

Re: Pants

I haven't seen any bra ads lately. dammit. [and I bought pants from Amazon - twice]

/me points out that an ad blocker probably won't block an ad that has these charateristics:

a) it's just a click-on-image-link to something

b) it's not scripted

c) it's not animated

d) it's not part of a frame, it just appears someplace on the page.

old-style banner ads, in other words. no need to go nuts with the stupid-script and the in-your-face animations. we've learned to tune it out and block it with software.