Posts by bombastic bob 10841 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015
the problem is Microshatf's design. The idea that a networked box would expose services on the intarwebs is in and of itself a MAJOR problem.
In other words, they should have designed it to ONLY listen on RFC1918 IP addresses, and ONLY listen if you enable networking.
But NOOooo... they have to bind to 0.0.0.0 (i.e. everything) and THAT is the problem!
And they do that with other "well known" or "easily discoverable" TCP stuff. Just do a "netstat -an" some time on you Winders box, and see what's listening...
And if it shows up as the SAME port on everybody ELSE's box, and there's a vulnerability on it, and you connect directly to the intarwebs on a publically visible IP address [including _ANY_ IPv6 address!] then you're exposing your winders box's soft underbelly to the intarwebs.
"Only an idiot" would have DESIGNED! IT! THIS! WAY!! Right, Micro-shaft??
[the need to bind to publically visible IP addresses could be a kind of "opt in" setting, and THEN it would be the customer's fault for doing it...]
"Require all electronic voting machines to produce a paper trail that the voter can see to verify the vote was properly recorded."
paper trail for auditing purposes, period. it would be needed for doing a recount. I think the machines already have that capability but it might not be mandatory. Collecting the printouts once per hour might help, like they way old-style ballot boxes are typically collected [multiple times throughout the day].
Seriously, though I think the electronic voting thingies are just "new, shiny". Old school paper ballots, with optical counting machines, work really well. My ballot had circles on it that you darkened with a blank felt pen. It's obviously read/counted by computer, and the overall design is hard to screw up.
if Zuck really DID care about "the poor", he would start businesses that they could be EMPLOYED at. And, if they're not sufficiently educated, build SCHOOLS. etc.
Zuck: Do something that will help SOLVE the problem, and STOP rewarding people for their unlucky circumstance in life. There is NO virtue in poverty. So DO NOT REWARD IT! And if you want to SOLVE it, CREATE JOBS!
(and if you do it right, you'll at least break even on the costs, giving you even MORE money to do the same thing with!!! This is better than just giving it away, which as I see it, buys poverty, and you get what you pay for)
My RPis either run with FreeBSD or I'd shut off "auto update" (it doesn't appear to be enabled in the Raspbian that's based on Debian Wheezy). If I want to update, there's the apt package utilities and a command line. And ONLY if _I_ want it, at a time chosen by _ME_.
So, just don't use a Raspbian version with either systemd or auto update running, and you'll be fine. the one based on Debian Wheezy still works, and it's only a couple of years old... [and apparently still being maintained/updated]
https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/images/raspbian-2015-05-07/
apparently THIS guy has a version that he ran the updates on, and he says it boots ok on an RPi 3
https://sourceforge.net/projects/raspbian-wheezy-pi/
You're welcome
"What we need is a competent rival to Windows that runs win32 apps flawlessly. It could be ReactOS, it could be something else."
As much as I'd love to make THAT happen, using Linux (or FreeBSD) and WINE (if possible), the #1 disadvantage it would have is NOT the quality of the OS, the compatibility of the win32 API, nor people's willingness to "re-learn LESS and Go Linux" to switch to it [over what happened with "Ape" and Win-10-nic].
The problem is *MARKETING*. This is THE MOST EXPENSIVE PART, and Micro-shitshaft has (unfortunately) NAILED THIS for 3 DECADES since the inception of Windows 1.01 in 1985.
For this, I'd need a BEELION dollars. At least. And no hope for return on investment for at LEAST a decade. But, it would be FUN, wouldn't it?
Now, if we could convince Intel and AMD and Dell and HP and Lenovo and others that THEIR SALES REVENUE could be greatly IMPROVED by this, I think they'd be on board. So THAT might get the necessary BEELION dollars going. But yeah. That's what it would take.
[and I'd *LOVE* to do it!]
/me waves the Jolly Roger, being the 'privateer' type
"Are Microsoft psychologically preparing people to pay for Windows with a subscription in the future ?"
Reading THOSE tea leaves has been OBVIOUS for a VERY long time...
The answer is: YES. They want a TOLLBOOTH. And on the low end, it will be PAID FOR with ADS. f they must boil us slowly like the proverbial "frog soup" then THAT is what they will do. It's how they see US, not as CUSTOMERS, but as MINIONS.
/me recalls the movie Idiocracy, where "the Lawyer's" giant screen TV screen is 3/4 covered with ads, and only the middle 25% has the actual content you want in it. And he's watching the #1 rated show, "Ow, My Balls!"
"As no one seems to schedule the updates to run at a quiet time I guess they've decided to make it effectively a background task. It's not like speed of updates is a concern for your average user"
It is for _THIS_ user. I watched, as multiple parallel downloads effectively nuked my bandwidth during their all-important update download, and ate my bandwidth for HOURS. And I was only TESTING Win-10-nic. But, I refuse to use it, _ALSO_ because of CRAP like THAT.
(the short explanation is that a single TCP stream will share bandwidth with other TCP streams. but if you create 20 TCP streams simultaneously, and max out bandwidth on all 20 of them, when #21 comes along (i.e. you're watching a video or listening to streaming radio), it's effectively DOS'd by that all-important goddammit you MUST get this done IMMEDIATELY (because, Microshaft) update download! And on my necessarily pathetic connection, it takes *HOURS*)
a) someone at Micro-shitaft must own stock in a telcom or something that gets a percentage of the revenue whenever ginormous amounts of traffic go across "teh intarwebs" from those updates...
b) Micro-shaft doesn't give a rat's backside about what their "bandwidth theft" does to customers, from not being able to stream live radio/video to effectively being DDoS'd (and that includes ISPs with the torrent-like "sharing" of bandwidth that exempts MICRO-SHAFT from having to serve it up, basically burdening EVERYONE ELSE with it)
c) Even though they say " Windows and Office for desktop and notebook PCs will get roughly two updates a year that add features and fix bugs" it's really "TAKE AWAY features that you want, cram a bunch of 'new, shiny' up your ass down your throat, and trade in 1 old bug for 3 NEW ONES"
And to think the chaos that one 'windows update' cycle can cause! And has done. On several occasions.
I hear they shoot whole chickens (after being plucked and butchered, no live chickens were harmed in this kind of testing, dammit, because I wanted to watch the fun) at airplane windshields in order to test them. And of course, an urban legend says someone tried this with FROZEN chickens and blew a hole through an aircraft doing it. (and maybe the mythbusters tested it, because they did have a chicken gun handy for some reason...)
Anyway, keep the drones below 1000 feet, and the planes above that, and we'll be fine. That's what the fAA regs already say. And keep drones out of the controlled airspace around airports. Then we'll all "get along".
"It's called English Breakfast Tea actually. It's literally designed and named for this purpose."
I can get that over here across the pond (Twinings) at any grocery store, along with Bigelow's 'English Teatime' (very similar, strong black tea). Makes for good iced tea, too. 4 bags per 5 quarts, on the stove for 10 minutes, cool down (inside the pot) in a sink of water, then into a 5 quart pitcher in the fridge (with 2.5 cups of fake sugar). Keeps me going for a day.
I had an "English Breakfast" when I was in Hong Kong in the 80's. It seemed to be the only thing on the breakfast menu that was close to something I am used to. The only thing unusual (to me) is that they cut the bread crust off of the toast. Other than that, same kind of thing they serve every morning in diners across the USA (like Denney's, IHOP, etc.).
"behind something with Florida plates blocking the carpool lane"
Florida drivers, WORST in America. I lived in Florida for a while... [it's like they think everyone has enough time to waste, just like they do, and they don't need to get out of the way nor stay in the slow lane]
So yeah there's this thing called an ACCELERATOR that needs to be pressed to the floor if there's a large gap between you and the vehicle directly in front of you, or the light just turned green and you're driving the front car, etc.. i.e. "STEP ON IT or GET OUT OF THE DAMNED WAY!"
it's a pet peeve of mine. slowpokes and those who stop excessively long to "wave the other guy to take THEIR turn", i.e. self-righteous PRICKS, who don't give a rat's ass that they're an OBSTACLE to the rest of the world [they're too busy feeling SMUG about their "courtesy" to the people in FRONT of them], where 'taking your turn' and 'keeping up' would be the MOST courteous things to do, in reality...
(fortunately I've been able to work from a home office, most of the time. commuting drives what little sanity I have left COMPLETELY OUT OF MY HEAD)
"The animation, of course, is done in... **cue moaning ghosts, rattling bones...** Flash!"
use ffmpeg or mencoder to convert it to something else?
either that or have a necromancer summon the Flash Player for ya, just for Halloween night. Muahahahahahaha!
(icon for the 2nd part, and because the original poster had it too)
well, the population of employees would theoretically be higher for "over 40' than "under 40" due to the birth rate reduction over the last few decades as compared to what it was before... yeah, society is becoming "older" but everyone already knew this.
So targeting a lot of 'older' employees is probably happening. The question is whether this 'targeting' is due to the age, wage, or population age distribution. Wage is probably the most likely.
As for the assumption that a "predominantly Caucasian" group of employees, who allegedly make the layoff decisions, would in any way FAVOR the retention of Caucasians over anyone else, is extermely PREPOSTEROUS in my view. I don't personally know anyone who'd say "let's lay off all of the black employees because we're Caucasians". I doubt very many exist in the 21st century, in spite of SJW whining.
Anyway, this suit may have no merit, but as an "old guy" in my 50's, I can see a bit of age discrimination happening here and there. But it may also be WAGE discrimination, as in "do we want the guy with 30 years experience who knows he can earn twice as much, or will we take our chances on the 'just graduated' guy who doesn't know what he's worth, then pay him HALF AS MUCH".
It may just be WAGE, and not age. Yeah.
[but if they want the job done in HALF the time, even though I charge twice as much, they'll hire ME instead]
"This misses out the heat exchanger commonly found in fission reactor plants"
actually, the differential temperature across the tubes in a typical nuke plant boiler isn't all that much, maybe 40 deg F or so. The main limitation is the steam pressure. The Molier diagram for water more or less outlines the physical properties, and if you operate around 1000psi or so, you get maximum benefit. Most nuke plants will use oil-fired steam superheaters also, from what I understand, most likely to prevent condensation on the way to the turbines. Condensation is bad for turbines. It tends to damage the blades.
Anyway, all of this has been taken into account, more or less, which is why pressurized light water reactors are more common. Other designs exist, but these are generally the safest [unless something stupid happens, like no emergency cooling for several days (Fukushima), or the relief valve sticks open on the pressurizer and nobody notices because the indicator light is off and they're paying attention to pressurizer level, which is going up because of the pressure drop, so they DUMP COOLANT to lower it [this happened at 3 mile island].
Additionally the physics of water as a moderator is actually very good, much better than helium or heavy water would be. Still you can moderate with liquid sodium, and other materials, as long as the reactor design allows for it. Yet most reactors still use pressurized water. Must be something 'right' about it.
anyway... I used to operate a nuke plant for the U.S. Navy on a submarine a couple of decades ago. So I have some experience with it, though it's been "that long".
steam tech is pretty good for large amounts of power. all heat engines reject heat, and solar panels are no exception. I think their efficiency is in the 20-25% range nowadays, which is about like a 1000psi steam plant, i.e. your basic power plant. It's all 2nd law of thermodynamics and so on.
Some people like the idea of using air turbines instead, but it's harder to get the air flow to work that way. Steam naturally goes from liquid to gas and run down the pipes, then you condense it [in a vacuum of course] and pump back into the boiler. If you can find a liquid that works BETTER than water for that, well maybe you can improve the process a bit, but it's a tried+true tech and works exceedingly well.
The only other things I know of that convert heat or radiation directly into electricity are Peltier devices, and they'd probably reject even MORE heat than a steam plant [and be less efficient].
But yeah a linear reactor design - that's what I'd suggest, and I'm glad MIT is looking into it. It's something that's more likely to get you a sustained reaction and enough power to power itself.
and of course, some kind of "impulse drive". to which you'd have to add water. because momentum is mv, and you double mass flow rate to double thrust (which is twice the energy), or you quadruple energy to double velocity to double thrust. So you'd have to add mass for an impulse engine to work. So you'd still need fuel, but it could be something really heavy instead. [I figure best fusion rocket design would squirt water on the inside surface of the engine and into the center of it, to boil off and prevent engine melting, and provide the extra thrust from the mass - the fusion would provide the energy for velocity and therefore delta momentum = thrust]
but yeah, screwing around with Tokomak isn't getting anybody anyplace, but consumes a LOT of research money.
To the research scientists trying to understand fusion (instead of building reactors that make electricity).
Here's some free ideas. You're welcome.
1. start acting like this is a problem that needs to be SOLVED, instead of UNDERSTOOD
2. 1 word: RESONANCE [if you're a nuke scientist you know what this means]
3. Study how a 'travelling wave tube' works when it's creating or amplifying microwave frequencies, particularly with respect to "electron bunching" (and RESONANCE). Applications obvious.
4. Consider magnetic lenses and magnetic compression, not a toroid
5. There's an existing design that seeks to eliminate the effects of a torus causing the inside track to be slower than the outside track, something that was once pursued by the U.S. Navy, but somewhat recently abandoned [probably for something a whole lot better that's classified]
6. You're going to have to get energy out of the reaction at some point. Have you figured out how to do this? I suggest making the reaction happen inside a cavity within a large tank of water [aka 'boiler']. Steam systems would then attach to it. the rest is kind of obvious.
7. superconducting magnets lose their magnetism and/or superconducting properties under high doses of gamma radiation. don't use them. Pulsing electromagnets would have other benefits as well. Try those.
8. electrostatic focusing has been used for DECADES with various kinds of vacuum tubes/valves. Resurrect that tech, except using it for protons/deuterons/tritions etc.
9. deuterium and tritium are NOT the only fusion fuels. How about firing high energy protons at a solid lithium target? Or maybe lithium at lithium? Whatever, just try things. Inertial confinement seems to work kinda well with a solid fuel pellet, though it takes too much energy to burn the fuel. How about if that pellet crashes into "other fuel" ?
anyway, just thought I'd mention things like this in a different venue. who knows, it might work.
"But the truth is, the original XP received the same kind of hatred that Win10 does now."
among a very small number of people, maybe. The Win-10-nic hate is MUCH bigger. Even 'Vista Hate" pales by comparison. Perhaps 'windows 8 hate' is on the same level, though...
[at least, from what I've seen - YMMV]
"Some day tools for getting the space taken up by files will be updated to support multiple directory entries referencing the same file"
yes, I too have built embedded Linux systems that use BUSYBOX...
(Micro-shaft is, once again, late to the party)
warning: technical content
busybox uses a single executable to offer most of the standard command line utilities like cat, ls, etc. as well as the shell itself (if I remember correctly). Symbolic links are used for all of the relevant commands, all of which point to the busybox executable.
Whenever Linux loads an application, the first argument in the list in 'argv' will be the application name. Busybox then checks to see if it was invoked using 'ls' or 'cat' or one of the other things its implementing, and jumps to the appropriate place in the program. This way it can exist in a much smaller form without shared libs and other things that actually slow things down considerably. You'll find busybox (or things like it) on wifi routers dating from the mid "noughties" (or is it 'nowties' ?), made by companies like Linksys and DLink. It may also be part of OpenWRT and other similar open source implementations, where it must smash down into a very tiny FLASH image that's extracted into a memory file system at boot time. So "being very tiny" is extremely important.
"Moving it to the App Store and even making it free was really the wrong decision."
I had ALREADY predicted they'd make it a UWP "app" (read: CRAPP).
So this comes as NO surprise, really. Predictable, certainly. And I bet it'll have ADS (at some point in the near future). Just wait.
"I agree with most of your points, but I think rolling updates are pretty much a requirement these days."
NO. They are *NOT*.
We could do VERY well without 'feature creep' 'feature removal' "new, shiny [why aren't you liking it?]' and other consequences of "rolling updates".
Isn't what I've been using for 5 years GOOD ENOUGH? How about patches and bug fixes for THAT? I'll keep my old UI thanks, and if it needs some HTML5 support, that's fine, but just FIX THE CODE BASE, and don't go off adding BOATLOADS of CRAP nor changing the appearance of the UI nor REMOVING FEATURES.
That's what Micro-shitaft has done with Win-10-nic after all, and we *ALL* *KNOW* *THAT* *THIS* *IS* *WRONG*!!!
"push the awful Australis makeover"
So, the 2D FLUGLY with HAMBURGER MENU has a name? And it's 'Australis'?
Thanks for that. I'm glad OTHER people agree with me on how PATHETIC this UI style is. It's "all over" Chrome, too, and the FF "Classic UI" plugins to "go back" to the NORMAL UI are a REASON to use Firefox!
yeah, HERE IT IS in all of its HORROR...
and at least in Firefox I can get the "classic" appearance back.
1. I *FORNICATING* *HATE* hamburger menus
2. I like 3D COLOR buttons, not FLATSO GREY ones
3. buttons should have a 3D border, and 'press' when you click them
4. tabs should have a somewhat 3D appearance, too
I can get ALL of that with FF addons that (thankfully) make it look like FF looked 3 years ago. The 2D FLATSO makes me want to *VOMIT* and I can't work while CHOKING BACK ALL OF THE PUKE!
Chrome *COMPLETELY* gets it *WRONG* with the 2D FLATSO look. I *HATE* it.
And I miss the OTHER really cool plugins, like NoScript, Cookie whitelist (with buttons), and Video Download Helper, which make Firefox way more secure (and let me download and save youtube videos instead of watching them skip while downloading at lousy connection speeds).
The FreeBSD "ports" Makefile shows a TON of library dependencies for Chrome, MANY more than Firefox. Firefox's source file is a bit more than 200Mb (as a .txz). Chrome has 2 files (the 2nd of which is 'test data' apparently) totalling ~612Mb. The test data is a little over 100mb.
I think the source file sizes and lib dependencies really tell the story about how much *BLOAT* that Chrome has, compared to Firefox.
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]
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.
"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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
"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??
"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.
"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]
systemd'oh! DNS lib underscore bug bites everyone's favorite init tool, blanks Netflix
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