Posts by bombastic bob

CompSci Prof raises ballot hacking fears over strange pro-Trump voting patterns

"Good luck with your complete-outsider, anti-establishment, old-white-billionaire."

Thanks. Wait a year, then see why we're "right". Results will speak for themselves.

As for the allegations that hacking the votes caused Trump to win, it's only because the usual hacking by Demo-rats [from voter manipulation, october surprises, media bias, and unauthorized voting practices when nobody's paying enough attention] did *NOT* work. It suggests that the percentage of people actually FOR Trump was probably a LOT higher than reported, even at the polls...

Re: Vote Fraud? Are you CRAAAZY?

"You need ID to buy alcohol?"

It happens, occasionally. At age ~40 I was once carded by a teenage checkout clerk. I got a nice chuckle.

Drops the mic... Hang on, hackers could be listening through my headphones?

Re: Odd

"each audio channel is actually 'general purpose' in its design with output and input amplifiers."

no good deed (totally programmable audio channels) goes unpunished [being used for exploits]

BOM cost just went up by a dollar, to add a couple of power amps between audio chip and speakers/headphones, to stop this.

USS Zumwalt gets Panama tug job after yet another breakdown

"UK electric drive warships have had their share of problems, and the same is true of just about anything cutting edge and clever, civil or military."

this has been tried before:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tullibee_%28SSN-597%29

My nuclear prototype was the S1C in Connecticut, _the_ prototype for the power plant on the U.S.S. Tullibee. So I'm kinda familiar with problems associated with this design, and how it compared to, let's say, an L.A. class sub in the 80's. But the thing was built, and might as well get used for SOMETHING. Note that it suffered a broken shaft at least once, and had to be towed. Oops.

Electric *CAN* be quieter. It also limits your propulsion speed (among other things). Apparently, in THIS case, it can't tolerate shaft seal leakage very well (that's mostly me speculating).

OK has NOBODY designing this thing ever heard of BATTLE DAMAGE??? You get a torpedo shoved up your backside (hint: acoustic homing torpedos going for the noise) and the shaft seals will more than just LEAK or seize up. If you don't simply get a catastrophic hull breach, the back end of your propulsion system is likely to be FLOODED and maybe one shaft still works, but it's better than 'dead in the water'.

A good steam turbine design (with reduction gears) will STILL WORK in flooding conditions, at least for a while, possibly long enough to abandon ship or NOT get hit AGAIN by another missile or torpedo... [or launch a counterstrike, or whatever].

Also reminds me of M-16's that didn't ship with a cleaning kit, because "they did not need it". Then in battle conditions, they misfired and had other problems. Issue cleaning kits, MOST problems solved. And so on.

Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority"

nice shout-out at the end of the article!

SQL Server on Linux: Runs well in spite of internal quirks. Why?

Re: no conspiracy needs to be assumed

"So MS needs SQL Server to run on Linux since that is what the majority of Oracle users are using today. The people who are today happily running Postgres/MySQL/MariaDB are probably not the target audience. Neither are existing SQL Server users on Windows."

sounds good to me, except perhaps for the last part, where those considering Linux have to weigh against converting their database to PG or MySQL or Maria, and having SQL Server on Linux would solve that problem "for now".

Now, how can your post be moved closer to the top so that more people will see it?

Re: Benefit

" I wonder what are the advantages of this over postgresql

SQL Server has generally better performance, far more features, a way better security record, far better tools, and consistent worldwide enterprise class support for a start?"

Uh, are we talking about the *SAME* SQL Server and PostgreSQL here?

/me wonders if that A.C. also pronounces it 'sequel'... (ew) regardless of early IBM market-speak and their inherently confusing nomenclature (i.e. why can't I find 'sequel server' in their list of available products...)

Re: Sybase ASE

"What is objectionable, apart from the fact that I might just know what I am writing about?"

probably nothing. I get downvoted all the time, usually by howler-monkey types trying to make it *look* like what you say is unpopular or wrong or whatever. I call it "badge of honor" and "being recognized" [and not ignored].

it could be just the usual shills...

Re: Installing on CentOs 7 / RedHat 7

"It is recommended to allocate enough space in /opt and in /var/opt prior to installation and database initialization."

What, can't you install it to something *OTHER* than '/opt' depending on the correct hierarchy of the Linux distro you're on? Usually 3rd party stuff (that I use) ends up in '/usr/local' and not '/opt'

'man hier'

then again, I mostly use FreeBSD, and on FreeBSD, '/usr/local' is where just about ALL non-core packages end up being installed.

But then again, a well-written installer SHOULD allow you to at LEAST specify the prefix for the installation path, and follow the rules from that point...

[then again, micro-shaft doesn't even follow their OWN rules, having installed ACTUAL DATABASES into the 'Program Files' tree for SQL Server]

Re: stored procedures are not enabled,

" its the CLR stored procedures that are not. They only arrived in SQL Server 2005."

ugh. ".Not" schtuff doesn't work under Linux. yeah, more reasons *NOT* to use ".Not".

having the rest of stored procedures working would be a benefit for people with legacy database stuff, to port to SQL Server on a Linux hosting server [yeah I guess I already mentioned this, but mentioning again, here, anyway]

Re: Exchange?

sendmail + cyrus works for me. old, tried, reliable, isn't a constantly moving target, and works just fine with T-bird as a mail client. if you need MORE than that, maybe evolution...

I've never figured out why *ANYONE* would *WANT* Exchange, considering how many viruses I've seen passed by it (in the past, homonym-pun deliberate) along with bloatiness and occasional _INCOMPATIBILITY_ with normal IMAP clients (like T-bird).

A 'used to' company I did work for on site had Exchange on a W2k3 server for corporate mail. Yukk. I did all of my work in either FreeBSD or Linux, and refused to use Virus Outbreak [aka MS Outlook] as a mail client. I also wanted to clone my IMAP directories on the Linux and BSD boxen. 'Tedious' was an understatement, until people stopped sending me exchange links [knowing I'd never see the files anyway]. Dual-booting was NOT an option. It required having multiple physical computers, the ones I did work on, and "that windows box" that had the e-mail (and other nonsense) on it.

I forget all of the problems it created for me. Most of them were solved by using ONLY POP MAIL and not receiving any 'exchange links' or calendar nonsense or anything ELSE that required their hideous API to make use of.

anyway, if you don't need a license for a windows server, you'll save money. If some legacy "thing" was written using something SQL-server-proprietary [like stored procedures], which I've blatantly opposed every time I was in the loop on the decision, then you could still save money by running SQL Server on the Linux server, which could (for free) run your DNS, web services, repository, e-mail, document tracker, SAN, etc. and, oh by the way, the database, too.

And the really FUN thing about Linux: if you do a backup using a tarball, restoration onto a DIFFERENT HARD DRIVE is pretty much straightforward. Try that with a windows serer and a non-identical hard drive [so ghost backups aren't a possibility, let's say]. There are just SO many things that are GREATLY simplified when *NOT* using micro-shaft operating systems as the host.

Re: Interesting

"A question asked invariably by Linux bigots who hate that the concept of choice goes beyond that of which Linux distribution to use."

'Linux bigots'? SERIOUSLY???

Re: Interesting

"This is probably more to do with 1/3 of instances running on Azure being Linux based instances."

I was going to mention something _LIKE_ this but you beat me to it. Glad I read the responses first.

(this little factoid has been discussed in El Reg articles concerning SQL Server on Linux, as I recall)

Visa cries foul over Euro regulator's stronger authentication demands

Re: Ridiculous

"Under the current arrangements the bank will bear the costs of any fraud"

shouldn't THAT be ENOUGH motivation to force the banks to secure THEMSELVES?

Oh, noze - we must make this a *CRISIS* so GUMMINT can take more control!

Brexit, anyone? [let's hope UK stores aren't negatively impacted from losing potential EU shoppers]

Pre-Trump FCC – get a grip on mobe data caps, racist Stingray spying, urge Dem senators

Re: Janus

"these Congresscritters see a problem, are trying to address it, and firmly believe that the Trump administration will strongly oppose their efforts"

translated: These Congresscritters see a potential power-grab opportunity, fear that their party/position is being DE-THRONED permanently, and firmly believe that the Trump administration WILL follow through on the campaign promises, so they better "get" while the "getting" is still good...

Re: Common Carrier not a stretch

"the company that pipes your internet undoubtedly also sells mobile or landline phones, so would be allowed to block any competing product on their connection"

I would expect that 'internet services' would be defined (by the FCC) as NOT having this level of content blocking applied. And think about it: would YOU want YOUR company, or the company YOU invest in, to engage in THESE kinds of anti-competitive practices? Keep in mind that existing laws on the books in the USA regarding anti-trust, etc. would probably make this sort of thing illegal. As an example, you can't own the oil fields, refineries, pipelines, *AND* gasoline stations and THEN use them to control the market by inflating the wholesale prices to competing stations. Existing regulations already prevent THAT kind of abuse, something that apparently happened a LOT before Teddy Roosevelt was elected. And that's the point.

So have a little trust in the system for some common sense. Don't believe the ridiculous made-up paranoid rantings of anti-Trump'ers. De-regulation is a GOOD thing, when common sense is applied.

Re: Common Carrier not a stretch

"Letting companies charge or throttle data based on it's source is just bad for all consumers"

This is true ONLY when you have no choice of providers, like a telco with hard wires. If the telco is required to 'rent its wires' [such as it is NOW in the USA], to allow competing services to provide an alternative, OR when there are 'competing wires' available, then it's no longer the same thing.

CELL PHONES already have 'overage' policies, which include things *like* throttling and charging for additional bandwidth. Yet they COULD say "this bandwidth is always free" if they wanted to.

So here's a thought: what if it's not "charge for bandwidth" to the receiver, but to the SENDER ? AND, only when your plan includes something to justify it, such as PRIORITIZATION? With 'neutrality' we all *MUST* stay in the *SAME* bandwidth ghetto, like good little communists [except for the elite, who always seem to be able to escape such limitations].

Re: The cheek!

I don't know about that being a blatant lie, or even an attempt to grossly represent facts, but I'd have to wonder what 'most of the original motivations' means.

I understand that the FCC is there primarily to regulate frequency bands and public communications services (like telephones), and not the CONTENT on those frequency bands. Hopefully he didn't mean THAT. More 'modern' usages included the (now defunct) "fairness doctrine" which was a form of CENSORSHIP. The explosion of talk radio (and saving of AM stations with news/talk formats), once it was appropriately REMOVED from the list of FCC regulations, is proof of that. The censorship of the 'fairness doctrine' was IMPEDING commerce.

Similarly we have another 'fairness doctrine' at issue with the FCC with respect to the intarwebs. Only THIS time it's mislabeled 'net neutrality'. Its objective is SIMILAR to 'fairness doctrine', to provide a mechanism through which unelected gummint regulators can CONTROL.

The intarwebs best serves the world by remaining an ANARCHY. The only thing that should be regulated is the communication protocol, so that actually WORKS. Beyond that, there's no need for ANY regulation. (although I wouldn't *mind* a regulation that *requires* U.S. IPv6 support by 'some reasonable date', the way it was for HDTV - we're all better off from THAT)

Let it be the 'wild west' web, not the 'world whipped' web.

So what DID Jamison mean by 'original motivations' anyway?

New state of matter discovered by superconductivity gurus

Re: Who?

my understanding of the 'time reversal' theory is the "now you see it now you don't" observations that sometimes occur with things *like* electron clouds. Or so I've read/heard. It's part of the theory that 'hyperdimensionality' is causing these, i.e. motion/oscillation within dimensions we can't perceive. M-theory suggests 11 dimensions last I checked. THAT is what I'm thinking of at the moment.

Tardis reference appreciated, though.

Adding latent heat of fusion (to melt ice) probably adds entropy to the system, and the entropy would be responsible for breaking the crystalline barriers as the solid melts. The converse would also be true (when freezing).

I wonder what effect 'removal of entropy' has on solid structures, and whether THAT is responsible for superconductivity?

Re: "would different materials show a slightly different pseudogap in structure and not just temp? "

" tweaking the proportions gives you lots of variations. Lots of possible results here."

yes. different alloys exhibit different properties when solidifying, for example. The ideal ratio for leaded-solder is about 63:37 lead:tin, which has almost NO plastic region during the cooling phase, giving you a nice shiny solder joint. This is unlike typical lead-free solder, which is typically grayish and dull in appearance [like a 'cold joint' done with leaded solder].

The proportion of lead and tin determine the cooling phase behavior. This is easily observed and well documented. It stands to reason that alloy make-up could have SIMILAR effects on OTHER 'cooling region' type things, such AS this 'pseudogap' state.

I suspect that the pseudogap behavior, as well as superconducting behavior, is either hyperdemensional, or related to quantum states *like* quantum entanglement.

The 'hyperdimensional' idea is that electrons in clouds "behave that way" because they're moving (and possibly oscillating) in dimensions we cannot see or perceive, and so they appear to be randomized probabilistic "now you see it, now you don't" clouds rather than some kind of recognizable "orbit" pattern that can easily be observed and measured. [In My Bombastic Opinion] the quantum world seems to be expressed in probabilities, rather than fixed positions [until you collapse to wave functions by measuring/observing].

So I'm just proposing that this, if tied in with quantum mechanics, might make a whole LOT of sense. Then 'an explanation appears' [from a theoretical physics perspective] and maybe they're one step closer to room-temp superconducting power storage devices...

Microsoft promises 'equal access' to LinkedIn to get EC green light for acquisition

Re: Wow

"You need to found your own business, mate"

yeah, well, THEN you have to deal with customers and ridiculous requirements, sudden changes in plans (broken promises) that cost YOU money, yotta yotta yotta.

it never changes. "who's the boss" is your customer now. And in many ways it's worse. But _I_ prefer it. So yeah, better to own the business, sign the FRONT of the checks, and know a HELL of a lot more about what's REALLY going on. And, unfortunately, earn LESS money...

I have a LinkedIn profile from YEARS ago. I rarely update it. When I access my profile, I have to use a browser that dumps all cookies/history after I close it, because of the aggressive tracking they do NOW [but didn't do when I signed up 'forever ago']. I carefully AVOID having any linked-in data stored locally. Like face-b****, it _CAN_ track you via invisible graphics and scripting and those little icons at the top of certain web pages...

yeah maybe time to dump MY profile. I'm considering it.

Emulating x86: Microsoft builds granny flat into Windows 10

win-10-nic phone isn't being adopted [so who cares]

you know, there's such a PATHETIC number of people actually USING Win-10-nic phones, that it's really just a WASTE! OF! TIME! even TARGETING this kind of thing.

Micro-shaft is busy walking over gold bars to pick up PENNIES. They've completely screwed the pooch and dropped the ball for existing desktop users, and also alienated their "developers developers developers developers" by INSISTING on this path towards self-destruction for everyone ELSE, too. I guess FAIL likes to take others with them so that they don't "feel so bad" about being FAILURES.

UWP isn't selling Win-10-nic. Developers aren't buying it. Adding x86 emulation for a PHONE is just a waste of time. Has anyone else out there tried using qemu in emulation mode? Performance STINKS when you emulate! Unless that x86 application was written for MS-DOS back in the early 1980's, it's not going to perform very well on a PHONE, and you probably won't even be able to USE it properly.

SO many levels of FAIL here.

Re: FTFY

yes, and UWP also shoves their 2D FLUGLY crippled "universally dumbed down" user interface up everyone's backside, to make us accept inferior computer performance and all of the adware and spyware and tracking and micro-shaft logins and yotta yotta yotta aka "normalize it" and only runs on Win-10-nic... not a good selling point. I'm not buying.

Re: Legacy %

"How many people need to run "legacy" apps?"

*A* *LOT*!!!

a) an application I purchased in the early noughties should STILL work on a new computer.

b) purchased games that are still entertaining, 15 years later. And they might even perform a bit better on 'modern' hardware.

c) I don't want to shell out $$$ for a VERSION UPGRADE for my favorite software package every time Microshaft excretes another OS/change-for-the-sake-of-change.

I doubt I'm alone on this.

Re: Lots of small companies stuck on X86

"Only .net adds some level of CPU independence."

and does it POORLY at the expense of application performance, and hauling around that monolithic dead-man-on-the-back known as the ".Not" runtime...

no thanks.

And cross-compilers aren't THAT hard to use...

Outlook outage outrage

msn mail still working via thunderbird

hmmm... my msn mail address is still working via thunderbird.

maybe it's the mail clients? Or maybe it's the UK servers and it's not affecting the USA?

Microsoft's cmd.exe deposed by PowerShell in Windows 10 preview

Re: ksh or nothing, thank heavens for cygwin

"The list of of things PowerShell can do sounds to me a list of things ‘Why the hell a *shell* should do that?’"

ACK

Power-hell was developed [read: excreted] by Micro-shaft to promote their ".Not"tiness embedded in every OS after XP. But the server OS's were the worst. Win2k server ran on a PI with 32Mb of RAM. All versions since then have gotten piggier and piggier, thanks to ".Not".

Micro-shaft TOTALLY screwed the pooch with the ".Not" excrement. And their Power-hell is yet another attempt at cramming it up our collective backsides, more painfully than 19 feet of curari-tipped wrought-iron fence [and without the KY to assist with the jammin'].

".Not" was the beginning of what went horribly, horribly wrong at Micro-shaft. "PowerHell" is their "Rosemary's baby", their bastard stepchild satan-spawn of a command line interface, slow to load and too over-complicated for its own good. I don't have enough adjectives available to describe its horror, other than to call it "PowerHell" in hopes that everyone will intuitively understand...

I once wrote a shell for 3.x that worked pretty well. It extended the 'command.com' capabilities somewhat, offering some windows-specific things like spawning a windows program asynchronously, listing all of the running tasks, yotta yotta and some command/control features that let you send keystrokes to a window and control an application. It was shareware and never really went anywhere. When '95 released, I just stuck with CMD and that was the end of it. But 'PowerHell' - that's like "the dark side" of the force, and NOT in a good way.

Re: Yet another Windows 10 annoyance

"I LIKE CMD.EXE"

"Removing it would be dangerous."

more reasons to stick with 7 and NOT go to "Ape" nor Win-10-nic.

OR... if you're forced to RE-LEARN, then RE-LEARN LINUX! Or, FreeBSD!

Re: Yet another Windows 10 annoyance

"there were simply enough people fed up with having 'cool stuff' shoved down their throats that they neither wanted nor needed.'"

someone else besides me obviously "gets it". Well done!

I mean, how much 'cool stuff'©®™ do we REALLY need? ['cool' as defined by millenials and "snowflakes" and Micro-shaft, at any rate]

and you have the downvotes to go with the brilliance!

Re: MICROSOFT IS OUT OF CONTROL

"I do hope somebody in MS with a detectable pulse reads this."

doubtful. they're all over on answers.microsoft stroking one another's egos and shilling about how great Microshaft and their products are, banning anyone who dissents (or ganging up against them, like bunch of howler monkeys ). Their rose-colored glasses wouldn't allow them to be able to see anything on El Reg anyway.

And I doubt they'd care. They're Micro-shaft. They're *POWERFUL*. They can DICTATE THE TERMS, and FORCE COMPLIANCE. Why SHOULD they care?

Re: Yet another Windows 10 annoyance

"cmd.exe is not good, but at least it is fairly simple, and has "worked" for all versions of Windows."

it does what _I_ want. And I could type in 'cmd' and rapidly create a desktop icon for it, or run it from the start (what used to be) menu EASILY. So what do you type in for 'power-hell' now?

It's just like MICROSHAFT to JAM A CHANGE FOR THE SAKE OF CHANGE into our orifices, just because they *FEEL*.

The reason they're jamming POWER-HELL up our collective backsides is because it SUPPORTS ALL OF THAT '.NUT' CRAP. They've got ".NUT" on the brain, and it's made them ".NUTTY".

D-Link joins hands with Microsoft to give 'Super Wi-Fi' a push

Re: D-Link joins hands with Microsoft

"What exactly does Microsoft bring to the party?"

a) money

b) political influence [though less than they USED to have]

c) the apparent willingness to promote the tech for Win-10-nic [they'd need SOMETHING to make sales increase, as it can't sell very well on its own]

From D-Link's perspective, it's probably a plus.

Re: 54MHz?

keep in mind that there's a limit to the data rate based on the frequency the higher the frequency the higher the potential data rate. 54mhz would have 1/10 the theoretical data rate cap as 540Mhz, which would have ~1/5 the max data rate of 2.4Ghz (and so on).

Now, for "last mile" intarweb access, this might not be so bad, as we're dealing with 10's of mbits, and not 100's of mbits. But the antenna SIZE argument still stands: you don't want something the size of an old-style TV antenna receving that...

Google gently leads Intel into its cloud: This is for your own good

that's a big surprise...

Google may have been trying for a better deal by hinting it would 'look elsewhere'.

In any case, no surprise that Intel + Google wants to power "the cloud".

NOW: all they need is RELEVANCE ["the cloud" is HIGHLY overrated!]

AI, AI, captain: Royal Navy warships to set sail with computer officers

Re: And so it begins

more likely it will think like a robot and just blast out orders "from the manual" for any given situation, including those that are a close approximate match according to the AI. [comedy ensues if life preservers are distributed during a fire, for example].

unlike humans, for which (above the rank of Lt JG) we would expect at least SOME intelligent decision-making to happen before orders are given...

Experts to Congress: You must act on IoT security. Congress: Encourage industry to develop best practices, you say?

Re: Be Careful What You Wish For...

a gummint "solution" is likely to breed PROBLEMS that require MORE "solutions" from gummint, yotta yotta. It's like an INFECTION with cyclic mutations.

Instead, do this: pass laws that put the BLAME for 'lack of security' on the producers of insecure hardware and software, making them responsible for ANY liabilities caused by NEGLIGENCE when it comes to security. This would include DDoS attacks, mass infection/intrusion on IoT devices [requiring expensive 'fixes' on the part of end-users], and so on. Then, let the class action lawsuits fix it. I know, it's like calling down a napalm strike on your own head. Just make sure you duck for cover.

And simple fixes by IoT vendors might include simple things like holding a button while changing settings or flashing new firmware.

Searching for 'Fatty Kim the Third' banned on Chinese social media

"now Trump wants to be buddies with him"

first I heard of THAT. Source, please, [or I'll just assume it's B.S.]. And no, "the Onion" isn't a source.

Re: Not "Fat Elvis II"?

"Thankyouvewwymuch."

You'll see that in 'Team America II'. Along with more puppet nastiness.

Re: Gugle Trainslate

"Fatty Kim the Third"

I can think up a bunch MORE nice names for Mr. Kim III, which include anything said to describe Cartman in S. Park. Oh, and 'Cartman' too. "RESPECT! MY! AUTHORITAH!" [Imagine 'Dough Boy' saying THAT on camera!]

And when China bans THOSE search terms, we'll just have to make up NEW ones.

Here's how the missile-free Royal Navy can sink enemy ships after 2018

Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority"

"German anti-aircraft gunners aboard the battleship Tirpitz were reportedly unable to hit attacking Swordfish because they flew so slowly the gunners, used to fast modern aircraft, kept missing in front of them."

Like it was taken RIGHT OUT of Arthur C. Clarke's 'Superiority'.

And the converse is also true: all of this "bleeding edge" tech and no effective way to sink an enemy ship.

Besides, as I understand it, those old wooden biplanes can turn on a dime, and take a zillion hits before they actually crash. Just wear a flack jacket when you fly them...

NO school like the OLD school, eh?

Microsoft ❤️ Linux? Microsoft ❤️ running its Windows' SQL Server software on Linux

"they've done a proprietary alternative to Wine in order to run SQL Server under Linux."

that sounds about right. And, they should offer that alternative to 3rd party windows application developers, too. In My Bombastic Opinion.

Re: SQL Server 7 was a re-write

"All DBMS bypass the filesystem cache for fast non-blocking asynchronous IO."

you sure about ALL? that's a very 'broad' categorization.

" The Linux asi_write and writev glib functions either do async or scatter/gather, but not both"

'asi_write' doesn't exist in FreeBSD [I just checked], at least not the version I'm running. So using it is not truly portable for POSIX systems (a big 'minus' if it's required for performance). Anyway, if _I_ needed that kind of I/O specialization, I'd write a kernel module to do it. And if you use threads in a very clever way, async I/O isn't all that hard... [been there, done that]. But I'd rather let the OS handle all that for me, then use 'flush()' to make sure it writes. In a thread. So it doesn't block anything else. It just blocks "that transaction" waiting on the I/O to complete.

And then, maybe, you FIX the operating system so it's faster? As long as the patches are not written using a crap-code style, heh. - what was the term Linus used, 'compiler masturbation'?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/01/linus_torvalds_fires_off_angry_compilermasturbation_rant/

So yeah, I've been there with the async I/O stuff, and though 'gathered' writes do have their appeal, I'd have to wonder what kind of performance boost you really get from that, over [let's say] a memory mapped file, or multiple threads making separate but parallel I/O requests. You definitely get the kernel layer speed benefit from making a single I/O request, though, using 'writev' to get them all done at once. I just haven't measured the differences in actual practice to see how much of a boost you'd get.

in any case, translating "all that" across a layer between Micro-shaft way and POSIX way might cause a performance bottleneck on its own...

Re: SQL Server 7 was a re-write

"A picokernel of some sort would be needed because Linus wouldn’t allow these kernel extension in Linux."

Or, leverage the Linux ability to do all of that write-collection FOR you via cacheing and 'lazy flush' instead of "paranoid writes" which is what Winders seems to be doing...

and then, it's FASTER!

so you do a bunch of 'teeny writes', then hit 'flush()' for your completed transactions. So simple.

Re: "Can it run Crysis?"

"user friendly but insecure and bloaty Windows; versus slick secure Linux that has poor app support and in my experiencce requires you to learn an archane annd unintuitive commmand line language to make it work"

uh, not exactly. mac OSX has users for whom you show a command shell and they're like "WTF?" and blank stares, etc. most recently I was trying to explain how to use command tools to ssh into an embedded device that has an RPi controlling it, to a mac guy. he's got a mac. that means he has ssh. Well, he gave up and said "I'll just bring it by so YOU can do it..."

Re: Drawbridge

"So let's find a fancy new name so we can pretend to innovate!"

Hooooooold on, thar! [vague Quick Draw McGraw reference]

Let's step back about 2 meters and see what this REALLY means...

THIS means that MICROSOFT has a 'Wine-like' CONTAINER that could be used by *ANY* windows application maker to, *ahem*,

*QUICKLY*! *PORT*! *THEIR*! *WINDOWS*! *APPLICATION*! *FOR*! *LINUX*!!!

Which implies... that a LINUX PC could (theoretically) run *ANY*! *WINDOWS*! *APPLICATION*! if Micro-shaft would *BOTHER* *TO* *RELEASE* *THIS* the way they had a nice XP subsystem for Mac OSX a decade or so ago... remember?

LinkedIn officially KickedOut of Russia

Re: Owned

pwned by Micro-shaft - the main reason for the inquiry.

Microsoft's development platform today: What you need to know

"many flavors of XAML"

This is where things went HORRIBLY, HORRIBLY, WRONG.

A couple of quotes from the article:

"Developers who have followed the twists and turns of Microsoft's developer story over the years will know that there are many flavors of XAML"

"There are WPF XAML, Silverlight XAML, and UWP XAML, all different"

sort of like "you are in a twisty little maze of passages, all different" (from a version of RJR Cave that had the batteries in a vending machine within the 'all different' maze).

Did Micro-shaft *MISS* *THE* *BOAT* on this? If we wanted an XML-based UI description, then there's already a simple way of doing it: HTML FORMS. Like web pages, only internal to the application. I'm pretty sure that Webkit has a means for doing this...

There's a somewhat-nice implementation of this for Android. I made use of it once to display a web server's screens as *IF* they were an application running on a slab to control a device. [it was a nice rapid hybrid prototype solution to the problem of getting a GUI on a 'droid slab to control stuff on an Arduino over a serial cable, while displaying live video capture and controlling tests in real time]. The wrapper Android application was pretty simple. All of the work was done on a custom-written Linux web server. [it went into clinical trials that way, being a device associated with certain kinds of eye exams].

So with Java sitting pretty at the top of the TIOBE index for the last SEVERAL YEARS, why is Micro-shaft *BOTHERING* with their C-pound ".Nut" "solution" for cross-platform, with XAM-IT-UP-YOUR-BACKSIDE for GUI screens?

Simple: they want to CONTROL THE DIRECTION for software development. More like DRIVE it, like cattle across the plains, heading for the slaughterhouse. THEN, their PATENT ENCUMBERANCE will keep OTHERS from competing, in THEIR playground, by THEIR rules.

No thanks.

Re: Visual C++ for Linux Development

"Seems like you can avoid the expense of 1) and 2) by just using Linux in the first place."

ACK, and for commercial GUI-related tools, I understand Qt is pretty good. or you can use (*cough*) Eclipse and gtk. Or just use 'pluma' (gedit's gnome3-ness is irritating for coding) which is what *I* do, and run gdb on an application that displays it's GUI within a VNC X server [so you don't lock the system up debugging a GUI from within X11 - yes, it does do that, but the workaround is sufficient]. There are also GUI wrappers for gdb (at least one really good one). Dunno about Eclipse, though. I find it slow and irritating when I need to do something.

Micro-shaft's IDE *does* make life easier, however, in many (but not ALL ways). It's just that I find porting "their stuff" to Linux to be more work than suffering with "what I just mentioned", line endings and unicode forcing being one of those things. [aka WHY can't Micro-shaft just use UTF-8 like everyone else?]

And yet... even with MSDN subscription and more than one windows 7 computer/VM to code within, I find myself writing just about EVERYTHING either on Linux or FreeBSD, using pluma or an older gedit [that was from gnome 2], command line tools, 'autotools' with configure scripts, yotta yotta. It's so much *cleaner*. Or, the Arduino IDE (for microcontroller stuff).

After Microsoft joins Linux, Google Cloud joins .NET Foundation

Google and '.NUT' - if it ends up in 'droid we're SCREWED

If ".NUT" ends up in 'droid, we're SCREWED.

And you all thought the JAVA interface for 'droid was cumbersome and irritating...