* Posts by bombastic bob

10507 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

Intel loves the maker community so much it just axed its Arduino, Curie hardware. Ouch

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: They don't get loyalty

and the corollary of that, any engineer seeing how Intel is dropping the ball on microcontroller things would realize that the future of their components may be in jeopardy, too, and won't sink any development time into using their stuff [unless it's 100% portable to someone else's chips, like Microchip or ATmel]

China crams spyware on phones in Muslim-majority province

bombastic bob Silver badge
Big Brother

the Chinese government has repurposed it to act as a mass surveillance tool

why is anyone surprised by this?

and under the threat of JAIL for NOT installing it! Even MORE "not a surprise" !!!

Democrats (still a thing, apparently) are super unhappy about AT&T's Time-Warner merger

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

it would be funny if...

it would be funny if, after some AT&T + Time Warner merger, that stations like CNN and MSNBC went away in the basic cable lineup...

[because, lousy ratings]

but most likely they'd just add another $20 to my monthly bill within a year or two, for some made-up B.S. excuse of a reason.

FUKE NEWS: Robot snaps inside drowned Fukushima nuke plant

bombastic bob Silver badge
Flame

Re: Go nuclear

"What 'modern facilities'? In the US our "newest" reactor was designed in 1973 and finally opened for production last year"

ACK - the "no nukes" wanna-clue enviro-fascists have, unfortunately, been WAY too successful. you know, like THESE IDIOTS.

I wonder if Trump will try to reverse that? I think he might...

A power plant out on the west coast (San Onofre) was shut down because the N.R.C. refused to approve running it at reduced power while they solved problems with a "new design" boiler. They had 2 running reactors with this new boiler, but it rattled to much internally and one of them started to leak (the other was shut down for maintenance). So they shut down and investigated. It was looking like a design flaw, and they wanted to reduce power to keep one of them doing SOMETHING while they did a refit on the other unit, etc. (radiation that was being released was WAY below the legal limit). BUT... N.R.C. wouldn't let them. Because, ENVIRO WACKOS!

So what did S.C.E. do? They CLOSED! THE! PLANT! ENTIRELY! laying off 100's of staff and leaving everything in-place as an ad hoc "radioactive storage site".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_Station#Initial_shutdown

This happened during the OBAKA administration, in case anyone wondered, 2012-ish.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Industrial strength endoscope?

actually, using a really long "snakeable" fiber optic cable with a lens on it might be the best solution...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Grainy images?

the tenth-thickness for pure lead is about 1 inch. for leaded glass, several inches. 'Tenth thickness' refers to the amount of material it needs to cut radiation levels down to 1/10 of what they were without the shielding.

"do the math" and I think you'll see that shielding could be effective, but not perfect.

Microsoft hits new low: Threatens to axe classic Paint from Windows 10

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: Now just notepad, and we can write off builtin apps completely.

" It seems to have a randomly activating caps lock or shift key."

CAPITALIZATION and *PUNCTUATION* for! emphasis! [el reg does this a lot]

NOT a keyboard error.

^^ emphasize "not" when reading

and I _REFUSE_ to change.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: Now just notepad, and we can write off builtin apps completely.

the fact that there are SOME hardware makers shipping with Linux isn't really the point. It's the monpolistic "deals" that Micro-shaft makes in order to strong-arm the largest PC vendors into doing what they want, i.e. NOT selling anything without a Micro-shaft Win-10-nic license.

The few hardware vendors who don't do that don't sell ANY machines pre-loaded with Windows. It would be too expensive if they did. It's sorta like going into a grocery store, and seeing the price as DOUBLE what the 'discount' price is, if yo have a store card. which is free, of course, but it tracks what you do. What do most people do? Get the card and use it. And so Micro-shaft does a "discount deal" but ONLY if they sell a copy of windows with EVERY! SINGLE! MACHINE! they sell. The windows computers are cheaper, of course, but the Linux ones end up being more expensive because of that. And so on.

Time for some TRUST BUSTING and anti-MONOPOLY actions. You can't just have SOME vendors not playing Micro-shaft's game. It has to become ILLEGAL for them to do it at ALL.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: The end

"I suspect 6MB is static linking to relatively recent MFC, while retaining all the symbols required to make the ribbon work."

I've noticed that MFC for DevStudio 2010 is WAY PIGGY compared to what it was for DevStudio '98 and I have yet to figure out why, or what benefits you actually get. That's with all of the ".Not" crap NOT linked up, and all of that. I think Micro-shaft intentionally polluted it with worthless GARBAGE and as such, it's becoming excess poundage to lug around.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Outlook Express?

OE wasn't bad, if you made sure to mark everything as being 'high risk' security-wise. I forget what the 'zone' was called. had to disable scripting AND messenger [it had really bad security holes], and not view as HTML. I still do that with T-bird, which is in many ways similar to OE.

So yeah, use T-bird if you liked OE.

But M-shaft shouldn't have abandoned it, either.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: Now just notepad, and we can write off builtin apps completely.

"I don’t think that Windows can be described as a monopoly any more, or Microsoft’s practices as monopolistic."

that's assuming they're not still SQUEEZING THE HARDWARE VENDORS to FORCE them to sell everything with a windows license, regardless, then force it to be WIn-10-nic, etc. etc. etc.

Yeah, NOT monopolistic practices. On WHAT PLANET??

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: The end

"On Win XP it's under 400Kb"

AND it WORKS BETTER because there's no GOSH DARNED FORNICATING FECAL-FACED DUCK-COITUS PILE OF EXCREMENT RIBBON BAR on it!!!

I was _VERY_ disappointed with Paint in Win 7. I stopped using it.

Watch Micro-shaft make it a UWP "the Store" "CRapp" and include ADS in it.

But how does our ransomware make you feel?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Ransomware & victim's feelings?

Forget "feelings" (another 'F' word as far as I'm concerned).

Besides, revenge is a dish that is best served COLD...

I've got a verbal govt contract for Hyperloop, claims His Muskiness

bombastic bob Silver badge
Flame

Re: @Snorlax ... Please complete this sentence Elon:

"Maybe he was talking to Gov. Brown of California. Now that's a contract you can use as a spring board to bounce off of."

Yeah, when you consider the current "crazy train" nonsense that "2nd time around Brown' is wasting cali-fornicate-you tax dollars on, AND all of the "tax tax tax" legislation being crammed through sacramento at this VERY MOMENT, for no other reason than to make Demo-rats more powerful, and pay off their cronies, etc. etc. and MUSK must be one of those cronies...

Elon - stop using GUMMINT for a REVENUE SOURCE. It _WILL_ come back to BITE YOU IN THE ASS!!!

[when illegal alien (and other) voter fraud STOPS in calii-fornicate-you, I think the Demo-rats may lose their "majority" - I can't understand HOW things got the way they are [really really bad] without THAT as an explanation]

Al Capone was done for taxes. Now Microsoft's killing domain-squatters with trademark law

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: Next up

they could change it to MICROSHAFT SUCKS and it would have the same effect.

/me considers registering THAT one

systemd'oh! DNS lib underscore bug bites everyone's favorite init tool, blanks Netflix

bombastic bob Silver badge
Black Helicopters

and when systemd DOES send e-mail, it will do it via ".Net" core... [adding yet another bitch-dependency to an already topheavy monolithic example of how NOT to do things]

Because I bet Poettering gets a kickback from Micro-shaft every time he helps them embrace, extend, and extinguish Linux

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: underscore illegal dns character

"Hopefully you never change software unless it's for bug fixes, because, if it ain't broke."

that's actually a BETTER philosophy, in my view. I prefer stability to a moving target on the bleeding edge.

Devuan DOES sound very very good to me.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Alternate

OK if you don't want to use the google DNS servers then use your ISP's DNS servers. Whatever.

at least google doesn't hijack unresolved names...

/me facepalms at the anal retentivity

Q. What's today's top language? A. Python... no, wait, Java... no, C

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

"Any language where whitespace dictates what is inside a conditional and what isn't (eg Python) needs to die a slow and painful death IMHO."

I just think of it as 'Allman Style' without the curly braces

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indent_style#Allman_style

And if you put the ':' right after the control statement, it doesn't look a THING like K&R style (which I HATE)

(and I also dislike hard-tabs, so multiple spaces are fine, and pluma does auto-indent, and highlights things in a readable manner)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: OT. Way to get a C dev to fall in love with another language.

'std' class template-based implementations are HIGHLY overrated. They try to be too much, are sometimes collection (instead of array) based, have some cryptic built-in requirements for memory manager objects and other irritating things, and can be best re-implemented in only a few lines of code by someone who knows what he is doing (like me).

But the C++ language doesn't require 'std' usage so it's all good. I think that the 'std' class templates were written by "Academic Arrogance" types that haven't coded in production EVAR in their entire lives, nor had to MAINTAIN someone else's crap-code. So they're clueless about the real world. And it's reflected in the design.

pirate icon, just because I'm a rebel

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Note that there were "popular" shitty languages in the past

and there are a few in the present - like "C-pound" which relies on ".Not". Both equally shitty.

I think Python has its uses, but is ripe for ABuse and I see this in poorly written DJango code (and imported objects) INCLUDING the DJango implementation itself.

And too many people say "Write that in Python" or "I can write that in Python" when it SHOULD be done as a C utility, at least for efficiency. [converting binary data in python is the *WORST* possible implementation I have *EVAR* seen, because Python is afraid of pointers and C-style structures, apparently, and YES, I'm currently tasked with maintaining code that actually *DOES* this, because python 'expert' did a rage-quit].

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The way Basic worked in the old days

OK line numbers don't auto-re-order on any BASIC I've ever seen...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: "crash-landings[1] we had when I was a programmer was writing self-modifying code."

PDP-11 in effect needed you to be able to write to where the code was running in order to efficiently pass parameters.

JSR PC, MYFUNC

ARG1 .WORD

ARG2 .WORD

etc.

and MYFUNC would use the old 'PC' value as a frame pointer (from the stack), and do a kind of 'PC cleanup' on the program counter so that you returned to the correct address. Or you could call with 'JSR Rx, MYFUNC' and put the old PC into 'Rx' and use it as a frame pointer. I forget the details, but that's kinda how it worked.

And so, you needed to write the arguments to ARG1 and ARG2 (etc) before doing the function call. they might even be general use memory variables if you're really clever with the design. You could even implement the subroutine call by referencing the actual address you call (the last word in the instruction, I think) as 'ARG1 - 2' and poke that before doing the call (making it a dynamic function call of some sort).

Anyway, this was common in the PDP-11 world. I think DEC was kinda proud you COULD do this. But single-thread only, no recursion...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: compare strings directly in C# instead of having to use .equals().

"strcmp(pointer1, pointer2)" ... what's so hard about that?

object-oriented is *HIGHLY* overrated (and often inefficient - not always, just often, especially when done for the sake of doing it)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Learn all of them, but NOT Java

"Learning Java will automatically turn you into an accessor function writing shitter, unable even to define a constant integer without creating 20 classes."

you, sir, get my upvote!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: "It's all well and good saying that you have 10 years experience in Java. "

"Here's your login details, the machine, the language manuals and your programs function description. We'll be back in two hours. If it runs you get the job."

I had a similar 'interview' with the last on-site gig I did. It was a phone interview followed by an e-mail, with a request to take a particular data format and do something with it. "Any language" and it was timed.

I did it in about an hour or two, with a nice robust C++ application. But one guy did it in 5 minutes (using Perl). If I'd known BSD/Linux as well as I do now, I'd have done it in about that much time using 'awk'.

(after that it was 'meet everyone' so they could figure out if they could get along with me, get a tour of the place, and so on - small startup company)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I suspect there are quite a few Java devs out there

Java programmers should learn C first, THEN C++, and THEN Java.

That would help build some proper coding discipline, so they don't start out every function/process using "ginormous collection object", and instead use some "non-insider" readable code that looks a bit more like C or C++.

THAT, and the discipline of explicitly cleaning up your objects when they're no longer needed...

The lady (or man) vanishes: The thorny issue of GDPR coding

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

"backup copies" maybe? that doesn't count in my book.

An internal policy of NOT restoring things that were requested to be deleted would have to be done. Yeah, not too difficult I say.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

Re: What of micro-businesses, clubs & societies

maybe it's a good business practice to have a privacy policy that already includes the ability to delete any collected data, and to reveal who it was disclosed to (upon request).

it wouldn't be hard to add this kind of transaction info into a database or a written record someplace...

"delete from collected_data where customer=12345" <-- or similar

and

"select third_party from disclosed_data where customer=12345"

etc.

(make it the back-end of a web page that uses the tracking info in your browser to "log in")

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Never happen in the US

it COULD happen in the US if it's seen to be WORKING in EU, and perceived to be "better human rights" than the USA has. Embarass Con-grab into doing it! [and use the FTC, that's what it's there for, already done for banking transaction/information AFAIK]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: re:'Personally identfiable information'

"However, I may know that a person who came from ip address X came back several times over the course of a month. That means I can see that a single person may have browsed, but that in itself is not allowing me to tie it to a specific person unless that person registered with me from that address"

theoretically, yes. However, browser fingerprinting, and hidden graphics with cookies (among other 'tricks'), get around that limitation. They know it's you, even if your dynamically assigned IP address changes. Unless you have cookie blockers and script blockers [which I do]. But my browser fingerprint (being FreeBSD) isn't all that unique...

(and yet I could change it to say 'Windows 10' if I wanted to, but that would make statcounter give an unnecesary/inaccurate 'bump' to Win-10-nic's "popularity")

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: "A single source of truth"

"HP 3000 boxes (stack architecture, integrated proprietary DB)"

those are still being used? They were invented at the same time as the VAX [and VAX had a proprietary VMS database system last I looked]. I haven't used either one of those (VAX or HP3000) since the 90's. [I worked with ASK/MANMAN etc. in case you wondered].

I don't think HP uses MPE or MPEXL any more, anyway. I think they went to HP/UX (which is a form of UNIX, so would be a "*nix").

bombastic bob Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: How many decades ?

"How long before 50% (let alone 100%) of companies comply with the regulations ?"

also consider jurisdiction. If EU passes a law, then it's the EU that's affected. If your data "accidentally" ends up on a server in, let's say, SINGAPORE, or the USA even, how is THAT going to be enforced?

HOWEVER... there is a silver lining. If the EU is perceived as having "better human rights" than the USA in this regard, then U.S. lawmakers *might* have to do something similar...

In any case, when "your data" is collected, you'll really need to know several things:

a) what's being collected [and a viewer to see it]

b) "delete all data" if you don't like it

c) a list of "3rd parties" that have seen your data [and if you delete, they too MUST delete!]

having a central 'cloudy' repository for this might not be so bad, so that nobody really copies it [by law anyway] and accesses the cloud database instead for ad slinging etc..

I think Amazon keeps a lot of data on me. They keep offering me things related to what I've purchased from them. Occasionally I fall for it and buy "that thing" they ad-slung at me. But I don't mind. I chose to do business with them.

(I also 'opt out' with google data collection and personalized ads. And I avoid the 'Microsoft Logon' whenever I can)

Judge uses 1st Amendment on Pokemon Go park ban. It's super effective!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

Re: THE POOL IS CLOSED DUE TO AIDS AND STINGRAYS (who also have aids) desu desu desu

/me kinda smiles at the 4-chan influence in this thread

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

"educate kids about why it's important to respect the environment. (albeit that's a bit difficult with Trumps position on climate change ...)"

You had me agreeing with you, up until the 'climate change' part.

WHAT! PART! OF! NOT! THROWING! TRASH! ON! THE! GROUND! IS! IN! ANY! WAY! RELATED! TO! "climate change"???

I prefer "responsible environmentalism". That means you keep your cars tuned up, don't waste water, sweep the gutters once in a while to keep the crap out of the storm drains, dispose of yard waste properly, pick up trash when you see it laying the ground (especially in front of your house), etc. and ESPECIALLY, dispose of your OWN trash in proper receptacles when you're at a public park [including the recycle one for recyclables, if there is one available]. And if some kid misses the trash can and runs off, go ahead and put it in for him if you're close by (or notify his parents).

And how about THIS little factoid: Go to *ANY* left-wing gathering or demonstration, and look at the level of public littering it generates. Then, go to a Tea Party or Trump rally, and see how much THAT generates by comparison. i think you will find that CONSERVATIVES are more likely to pick up their trash and properly dispose of it than your typical LEFT WING or "Environmentalist" type.

The reason is simple: lefties *FEEL* as if it's "someone else's job" to throw the damn trash away! Conservatives, on the other hand, see it as a PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY (something lefties have trouble with, apparently).

Evidence "all over the place". I've seen MANY comparison photo montages pointing this out. Rush's web site might be a good start. The leftovers from 'occupy wall street' and the 'pussy hat protest' and the 'million man march' are good examples of what it looks like from "the left".

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Amend this!

the story of the ammendments...

Back when the U.S. Constitution was created, Jefferson and a few others realized that it limited and defined the scope of government, but it didn't specify what rights the people had that couldn't someday be violated. So they used the 'ammendment' process that they just invented to craft the 'Bill of Rights' which the states then ratified. They knew that gummint would eventually find a way to curb people's basic rights (despite the new Constitution), and wanted to protect them. Otherwise you'd end up with a Vlad Putin type president, and a willing congress, who'd want to go back to 'the way things were' (USSR in his case), and legislate censorship, blanket "fishing expedition" search warrants, and things like that. Obviously they didn't want THAT to happen to the new nation, so ammendment #1 was about freedom of speech, press, and religion. And the 2nd was about self-defense and a citizen militia [seeing the possibility they might have to defend the rest of them at a citizen level]. And at least 2 others were about legal rights for the accused. And so on.

</history>

OK not 'scientific content' just educational

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

back in the 60's the Ventures used to sit out on a beach [one with somewhat limited access, but still publically accessible] and practice with acoustic instruments (including bongo drums). I was 5 or 6 years old at the time, and we'd sit somewhat nearby on the beach. Then one day they had an actual concert out there, but I expect the concert required a permit.

I doubt they had permits for practicing (with acoustic instruments) on the beach. So maybe the scale of the activity is what is in question. I suspect that random pokemon-go-ers aren't quite the same as a concert or a flash mob.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Using a public park for recreation...

beats staying home and vegging out all day in front of a TV screen

(and I just say, take your trash with you when you leave, k-thx - give a hoot, don't pollute, etc. and we'll all be fine)

Alphabay shutdown: Bad boys, bad boys, what you gonna do? Not use your Hotmail...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Tricks of the mind

the only disorder he may have had was being a sociopath, and not viewing anything he did as "wrong".

Other than that, he was a typical "dumb crook". He was criminally smart enough to put the web site together and get paid, but stupid enough to leave a nice fat trail for the cops to follow.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Smell Test

most people realize "all of that" up front, which keeps them from STARTING an illegal enterprise...

I mean, if you KNOW that some day the cops will come looking for you if you "do that", and you know that new ways of collecting evidence are being invented all of the time, and maybe some day evidence you didn't even know COULD be collected will end up convicting you, then why would you bother starting such a business in the FIRST place?

OK I'm not a sociopath, nor do I have a criminal mindset, and so I don't "understand" it at all. But apparently THAT guy did/was. And he actually operated like that long enough to earn "that much".

/me facepalming

'Coke dealer' called us after his stash was stolen – cops

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Florida Man

"the IQ of the population hasn't been rising recently. Since the 50-60s, it's been steadily decreasing"

I blame public indoctrination education. When they teach fear-mongering environmentalism instead of science, racist poetry instead of English, drug the creative kids with Ritalin because they won't sit still in the chair, and allow Johnny to answer 1+1=3 because he'll *FEEL* bad for getting it WRONG, well, the results are exactly what's so easily predictable...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Florida Man

"still stupid."

drugs fried his brain?

This is why old Windows Phones won't run PC apps

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: How many would believe the below headline?

'Opps' you mis-spelled 'Oops'. heh

/me grabs my 'Microsoft Pistol' to defend myself against an intruder in my house... sees 2D flatso windows logo on it... waiting... advertisement displayed... waiting... LOGIN screen! *BANG* [too late, I've been shot with an old-school saturday night special]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: It would appear...

"But taking an existing 32-bit Win32 application and porting it to 64 bit usually just involves recompiling it"

ACK. Good explanation.

And, of course, Micro-shaft will REGRETTABLY support Win32 API appLICATIONS for as long as they have to. But you know... you KNOW that they want to GET RID OF IT ENTIRELY and force *everyone* to use ".Not" Core, UWP, and whatever OTHER "new, shiny" they excrete from their bowels inside the halls of Redmond...

Why can't you install Windows 10 Creators Update on your old Atom netbook? Because Intel stopped loving you

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: WTAF...

CPU driver:

Many CPUs have different instruction sets and capabilities. The driver abstracts that so the OS can use the features if they're there, emulate (or work around) if not.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: CPU drivers?

maybe not the CPU but the north/south bridge stuff, APICs and things like that. M-shaft probably doesn't want to bother with anything older than 2010, even if they have windows 7 code that could be ported...

(not saying that's GOOD but if they won't sell Win 7 then they're just being ELITIST ASSHATS about it)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Good luck getting reliable support runing Linux on those obsolete silicons

"Better than the somewhat creaky Win 7 that was on it before."

you should sell the Win 7 license key to someone who's desperate to avoid Win-10-nic (but must have windows because software won't run anyplace else, let's say, like on my 'accounting' machine with QuickBooks on it)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: A reboot only takes 2 minutes

"If your OS needs rebooting there's something wrong with it."

not if hibernate eats your battery life

power off (when not in use) for laptops. desktops stay on 7/24

SQL Server 2017's first rc lands and – yes! – it runs on Linux

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Good first step.

yeah.. about that with Samba 4 and A/D master (etc.)

I looked into it for my own network, didn't like what I saw. Not really ready for prime time. NT4-based user-level security is enough for my network anyway. And turn off the v1 stuff. check.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Good first step.

"Now please port Active Directory to Linux "

even if it's a seat-based licensed application, I think IT departments would welcome abandoning the REST of the nightmare associated with maintaining/patching/disinfecting windows servers.

"Oh, CRAP, the junior accountant got another e-mail with a spreadsheet in it!"

"Scan the network for viruses"

[every windows server is infected, some demanding ransoms]

"CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP!"