Posts by bombastic bob

Want a Windows 10 update? Don't go to Microsoft ... please

Re: There IS an upside to this!

Once this goes live, college IT will no longer be able to justify blocking p2p traffic because "Illegal Torrentz"

you may be right, if Micro-shaft SUCCESSFULLY SUES THEM ALL using 'net neutrality' as their SUE-HAMMER.

Re: How is this a new feature

"This was in the first version of windows 10, and I make sure it's turned off as it kills my network connection at home and work."

So, with the same KINDS of thinking that justified *OBAKACARE* in the USA [i.e. making "healthy people" pay for the "infirm" through strong-arming the young and healthy into BUYING INCREASINGLY EXPENSIVE INSURANCE that they may not actually *WANT*, in order that those with pre-existing conditions (a definite MONEY LOSS for insurers) can be "covered"],

(pause for breath)

*NOW* Micro-Shaft wants to FORCE YOU into PROVIDING THEM BANDWIDTH for the frequent (massive) *FORCED* updates that Win-10-nic is so INFAMOUSLY known for! They are STEALING BANDWIDTH from YOU and from your ISP.

But, THIS way they can SHOVE EVEN MORE "new, shiny" FEATURES UP YOUR A$$ ONTO YOUR COMPUTER, without your consent, without you WANTING them, and so on WITHOUT having to upgrade their OWN infrastructure to deal with the BANDWIDTH.

Yeah, JUST LIKE Micro-Shaft to THINK LIKE A SOCIALIST in its company policies. Or would that be *FEEL* [the 'F' word] ???

oh yeah, I turned that "feature" (the 'get updates from the intarwebs' and 'let people on the intarwebs update from your computer' settings) *OFF* as well.

"The second thing was to set all network connnections to 'metered'."

seeing as there's no official way to do that with an ETHERNET connection (or a connection within a VM), it's still "a hack" to make it work, and not a simple one from what I've read...

and eventually M-shaft could BREAK THAT ONE as well. It would be JUST LIKE THEM to do that.

Re: What about the ISP's who throttle BitTorrents?

well, I bet Micro-shaft will scream "NET NEUTRALITY" the first time some net admin wants to put a stop to excessive traffic by throttling the M-shaft P2P. case in point, a college campus.

Let's say the college campus has a fat pipe, but it's all being USED UP because of M-shaft P2P traffic. It's no so much the several hundred students who were given new laptops (with Win-10-nic on them) after graduating high school, who are just trying to do their homework, but the ZILLIONS of people around the world whose computers "discover" that the several hundred students on this campus have ALREADY completed THEIR downloads, and NOW it's "serving up content" around the world!

Uplink bandwidth usage can easily impact downloads, because ACK packets won't necessarily get through, and HTTP requests or photo uploads will become SLUGGISH. So a smart admin would THROTTLE the amount of P2P traffic that goes out through the big pipe onto the intarwebs...

And THEN, along comes Micro-Shaft, wielding their "bandwidth theft" NET NEUTRALITY hammer, whining to the various gummint regulators, yotta yotta yotta.

A likely scenario, yes.

(regardless of how you look at it, Micro-shaft is STEALING BANDWIDTH to do this)

Microsoft's beta language service gets C# dev kit

They're trying desperately to justify using C-pound, again

why oh why MUST they only provide an API in C-pound???

it's like, couldn't they do something simple, like a C language API? [it's how they USED to do things, back when Win32 API was the way to go]

unfortunately, this is a trend that many of us have seen coming: the beginning of the end of the Win32 API, where ONLY "the METRO" or Universal [CR]apps can be written for Win-10-nic, almost like for WinRT boxen. They want this. they don't want Win32 API. It hurts them to see us STILL using it for SERIOUS applications. They want everyone using C-pound so they can CONTROL us and hook us into "their way" of doing things, like an evil company selling addictive substances.

yeah, well, tinfoil hat nonetheless, and black helicopters, too.

[don't say I didn't warn you]

L0phtCrack's back! Crack hack app whacks Windows 10 trash hashes

Re: Microsoft says...

would the obligatory reference to 'correct horse battery staple' be of any help?

Windows 10 Anniversary on a Raspberry Pi: Another look at IoT Core

Re: So you want .NET on a Pi?

"Whenever you give Mono a second chance, Harambe dies again."

mono. ugh. I (and apparently many others) screamed BLOODY MURDER when 'tomboy' [added to gnome desktop] hauled all of that cruft (100Mb or so) into Debian's release, and jumped for joy when the requirement was SUBSEQUENTLY REMOVED from the gnome desktop install...

and then a supervisor at the time decided we would use a MONO application on Linux, written by HIM in 'C-pound', and the first time we tried it, it wouldn't work because mono didn't support all of the "new, shiny" in that particular devstudio version (it was around 2007 or 2008 as I recall). I snickered a bit, played along. The application NEVER went ANYWHERE, either.

I can only imagine how *PIGGY* your average C-pound application using ".Not" would be on an RPi. You know, like seconds' worth of response time to mouse clicks...

Re: RE esp8266 seem a more suitable

and USB devices like that (the el-cheapo WiFi and bluetooth USB doohickies) typically work 'out of the box' with Linux, no messing with drivers or install CD's [especially since RPi has no CD drive!!!]

Re: Well Intel would have a chance

"The problem is that Intel doesn't understand what would be needed. They bring out x86 SoCs with 16 kilobytes of RAM."

I may have a *bit* more insight, as I've actually communicated "certain requirements" to some of the people at Intel, with respect to "what it would take to use XX processor on YY". I describe (basically) what the existing processor choice does and there are features on that CPU that are integrated with other hardware, and hard to duplicate without actually "being that". For example, a differential A:D device capable of having a gain adjustment and internally selectable reference voltage. If you want to scale it to read millivolts DIFFERENTIAL for example, you could with the existing CPU, and with 11 bits of precision. THESE are the kinds of things that IOT devices need.

what's interesting is that ATMel's 'xmega' and ARM 'SAM' series CPUs can do these things. they have the hardware support with "that kind of thing" in it. they are also VERY low power devices, with super-special power saving modes and wakeup timers built-in. If Intel wants IOT market share, it's going to have to address THAT.

Re: We should use neither

"There are many Linux distros that can (or could) boot up from a single 1.44MB diskette and run on a 80386 with 16MB of RAM"

a typical WiFi Access Point might have a Linux plus bootloader image of around 4M (in NVRAM), and run on 512M or perhaps even less. Sure, they have 'busybox' instead of a full-blown userland, but it's still Linux, and there are zillions of them out there...

Re: So, can it run VS.Net?

"BTW, I thought the ".Net" terminology was dropped/killed?"

I'd like to see the entire TECHNOLOGY (of ".Not") dropped off of a tall building, THEN killed. Then torched with a flamethrower. Then sealed in a block of concrete. Then dropped into the Marianas trench. in that order.

I suppose you COULD run MShaft's latest IDE on it, though I can't imagine it would be able to do much [being that it's a monolithic pig for screen space and resources. like every OTHER ".Not" thing, it would seem]. I would have to wonder whether or not it's USABLE, though. I have trouble with "ATMel Studio" (which is based on DevStudio) having any kind of usable performance on an old laptop, and it's running at 1.6Ghz and has more RAM on it. [running W7 though] I just needed something to run it so I could flash updated firmware onto the ISP/PDI programmer, and also view/use the sample code, and verify proper PDI/ISP communications, things like that, but for every day use? Ugh... and with THAT experience under my belt, I can't imagine how *BAD* it would be, running a "newer" (piggier) version of DevStudio on an RPi.

Re: Bah!

"All the potential vulnerabilities of embedded Linux IoT devices"

vulnerabilities? [only if poorly configured]

yes, change your user/pass from 'pi:pi' and re-config sudo, and make sure you can't be ssh'd into as root. then you're fine.

some things just require user intelligence.

Re: Indeed both pointless.

"Windows RT ran on ARM, and ran very well too. I have a Surface 2 and it's an excellent device."

Fortunately, El Reg published an article a while back, about the hack that you can use to get Linux on it... assuming Micro-shaft hasn't already (deliberately) broken the REST of those 'jailbreak' methods.

Otherwise, nice paperweight.

Re: We should use neither

"Frankly, the Pi when you start pushing it beyond prototyping proves to be too unreliable, especially if used for more than one application."

I find the RPi to be EXTREMELY useful (and highly reliable) for device control types of applications. Where do you get off saying it's unreliable? Maybe you're just not using it for the right purpose.

RPi is NOT a desktop computer. OK the newer ones run about as fast as a laptop purchased before 2005, but they were pretty useful BACK THEN, weren't they? I don't expect an RPi to be doing disk-intensive applications (SD card - duh) or use it to power USB devices that draw a lot of amperage. Personally, I think you're trying to extract 3Ghz x64 desktop capabilities out of a ~1Ghz ARM processor and it disappoints. Well, 'duh' again.

what RPi _IS_ though, would be a USB-capable computer that can run an OS like Linux, talk to your networks, do WiFi, do bluetooth, and [the REAL important part] has a boatload of GPIO PINS that you can do "whatever" with.

Here's a nice example of an industrial device I designed for a customer, using an RPi:

Bed of Nails Device

THIS is what the RPi is good at doing: controlling things and sensing stuff and doing input/output with custom hardware that's tailored to the environment the device is intended to work under.

and, if it goes bad, you can replace it (for cheap), and if the SD card goes bad, you can just re-image it from a backup. Personally, I think THAT makes it VERY reliable!

(FYI it's running Raspbian)

Re: Windows or Linux?

And don't forget FreeBSD. I'm doing some (volunteer) work on FBSD 11 RC1 for the RPi at the moment, trying to address an issue I discovered with the GPIO pins (not as an official commit guy, but as someone who reported a bug, got into a discussion over it, and am now attempting to implement a kernel driver that someone recommended as a solution).

The fact is, there are SEVERAL operating system choices for the RPi. And Windows 10 "light" won't do ANYTHING for you other than "do windows things".

Last I checked, "the Store" was FULL OF [CR]APPS. Nothing worth using.

Now, ANDROID on an RPi might actually make SENSE. But _NOT_ Win-10-nic.

And the author's general opinion of 'not being ready for prime time' (essentially) is just ONE of those things that SHOULD make your anus pucker up if some clueless manager at your company says "Hey, there's a version of WINDOWS that runs on a Raspberry Pi!" and wants YOU to implement it...

Microsoft Outlook.com redecoration delay rumors: THE TRUTH

Re: Why have they broken Hotmail?

"Things have to match..."

_AND_ be dumbed-down to the lowest common denominator, like Win-10-nic.

Microsoft redfaced after Bing translation cockup enrages Saudis

living/dying by political correctness

it's funny to see a company like Microsoft shooting their own foot, because they're always being SO 'politically correct', practically demanding it in their forums [banning those who don't follow the Win-10-nic mantra, for example] and let us NOT forget their OWN NEWS NETWORK, [P]MSNBC, the home of 'Triangle-Head' (aka Rachel Maddow) and 'Dough Boy' (Chris Matthews). Or some of the wording in MShaft's latest EULA's for the 'microsoft logon' or any of their online services...

As for me, I would've immediately changed the translation of 'Saudi Arabia' to "Bite Me", trolled all of social media to make sure everyone saw it, then "apologize" and change it back.

Replacing humans with robots in your factories? Hold on just a sec

replaced by a computer (now you program them)

"There is a risk, for example, that increased automation will lead to mass unemployment and raise a multitude of social and economic issues that policy makers will have to grapple with"

well, in the 1950's, people who added numbers all day for a bank DEFINITELY had THEIR jobs replaced, and they went out and found other things to do, like maybe PROGRAM the computers?

I'd rather have computers and robots take away all of the menial boring tasks so people can focus on creative tasks LIKE computer programming, or bot maintenance, or "some other task" that is a direct result of a 'robot revolution', and much more interesting than putting tab A into slot B all day...

Robot babies fail in role as teenage sex deterrents

Re: I am reminded of

"I humbly suggest that they try a robot baby experiment on the boys instead"

or, more realistically, they PAY FOR the robot babies in monthly installments... according to how much they earn or how much allowance they get.

[well, strapping robo-baby to a guy in a front pack that he has to carry everywhere, and find a BABY SITTER FOR when he's engaging in sports or other activities, might help do the trick...]

"Have they tried just giving out free condoms instead?"

yes, but that obviously doesn't work well enough. A free ASPIRIN [placed between the knees] might, however...

I think expecting teens to breed like rabbits works like the pygmalian effect: you get what you expect. If instead we treated them like the RESPONSIBLE ADULTS we want them to BECOME, and then ensuring they have COMPLETE AND CORRECT INFORMATION by which to make INFORMED AND RESPONSIBLE CHOICES, chances are they WILL. That as opposed to "here are your free condoms and IUDs and birth control pills and abortion services. Now, screw like bunnies, it's OK!"

Pygmalian effect indeed.

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

Re: You can't fight hormones with logic

"all one has to do is pop a couple of sprogs and you get somewhere to live and something to live on in perpetuity."

ah, yes, the 'meal-ticket mommy'. Sad, but true. It makes people like me wanna get all "hardcore" and deny ALL 'social safety net' programs. And yet, one or two HONEST people may actually be in NEED of such things, so the other 99,999,999 get freebies in order to help the one or two...

Re: Lowest rates of teen pregnancies

I'm not inclined to believe that teenagers are simply undisciplined rodents engaging in irresponsible sexual behavior because they can't help it. Actual PARENTING (including knowing who your kid's friends are, chaperoning dates, and FREQUENTLY reminding them that NO birth control method is 100% effective) and NOT trying to be your kid's "best friend" might actually WORK, ya know?

It's really about teaching responsibility and self-discipline.

"helicoptering" won't work, either. If you're like me you've known enough preacher's kids who've gone all "sin is WIN!" once they get to college or go into the military. That 'sheltered life' through teenage years didn't help [probably made things worse]. But of course, neither does NOT educating teens about sex, so there's DEFINITELY an aspect of being open and honest, while simultaneously discouraging irresponsibility, that would be effective.

If it's done right, you should be able to trust your kid NOT to do "those things" when you're not there to watch out FOR them. They should be able to make responsible informed choices and know it when they're being irresponsible, that it IS irresponsible. That applies to everything, really.

I've said for years now....

Stop telling kids "you might get pregnant"

Start telling kids "you might have a baby"

Add to the list: and spend the next 18 years of your life taking care of the kid. For boys, just alter 'taking care of' to 'paying for'. or like Amy Wong in Futurama: change your calendar filled with fun things to 'motherhood mode' for the next 18 years.

then again, the principles of 'Idiocracy' suggest that the 'below 100 IQ' half of society will go on breeding like rabbits, while the 'above 100 IQ' will avoid having children because they're being "responsible".

Mozilla breathes petition-of-fire at EU copyright laws

fair use = common sense

at any rate, the concept of 'fair use', as in "I can have a pic of me standing in front of the Mona Lisa" = fair use, but "a high-res pic of the Mona Lisa intended to be used for T shirts, post cards, and wall posters" may NOT be, depending...

Or similarly for the Eiffel Tower light show, for which a copyright just SOUNDS stupid...

Copyrights were intended to stop outright PLAGIARISM, and not become revenue sources for aggressive trolls. Long ago the USA decided that photocopying parts of a book were 'fair use', as is recording a radio or television broadcast (for personal use). Other grey areas, like parody, emerged.

So I can take a Fox News photo of Mrs. Clinton, for example, and under 'fair use' put a Hitler moustache and half-bangs haircut on her, "improve" her wrinkles, give her eye redness and 'snake-eyes', make her look like she has 'rosacia' cheeks, and draw a snake tongue from between her (now) pointy devil teeth, with the caption "Mrs. Clinton speaks with forked tongue" or similar [yes, I _did_ do this], and of course that PARODY is now covered by 'fair use' and makes for a nice new meme or de-motivational poster (whatever).

yeah, the internet IS a nicer place, when we have fair use exceptions for things LIKE that..

Re: Errr...

'Umbridge' - wasn't she a prof at Hogwarts?

Kindle Paperwhites turn Windows 10 PCs into paperweights: Plugging one in 'triggers a BSOD'

Re: is there a comprehensive list of cockups?

"every heard of the Windows insider program."

yes. I was there. the fanbois, shills, and sycophants all kept touting how great the flatso 2D flugly was on the 'answers.microsoft' forum that was dedicated to the insider program, about how the start thing couldn't be any better, how the adware and spyware was NOT intrusive, how the tracking didn't violate our privacy, how much BETTER the 'apps' were, how much BETTER the 2D flatso was, yotta yotta, and there were ALSO those who objected and started threads that got MORE activity than ANY OTHER KIND with boatloads of NEGATIVE POSTS having titles like "there are no redeeming qualities in windows 10" and "why I hate windows 10" and things of that nature [/me catches breath] and they received the BANS and threats from moderators that they did NOT deserve.

And, yours truly was SPECIFICALLY threatened by the forum owner, after a YEAR of having been careful to stay WITHIN the rules so as to NOT get banned, and ALSO after an apparent astroturf campaign involving 3 or more well-known sycophantic posters, that there was SOMETHING wrong with my "tone" (and 'everybody' was saying so now), with the use of capitalizations and punctuation for EMPHASIS!, much like certain 'El Reg' articles even, and that if I didn't "stop that" I would be banned based on my WRITING STYLE.

[I left instead, and so have many others]

And many other dissenters from MIcro-shaft's direction were UNFAIRLY banned (during the insider program) for *slightly* violating "the rules", particularly when you stretch the definition to include 'making the mod angry' or 'the moderators *FELT* as if'. These members (particularly, one, an author of windows books) were always pointing out (often OBVIOUS) problems, retorting the ridiculous arguments from the fanbois and shills, and often using FACTS with actual data to back it up [such as quoting MANY survey results that indicate the popularity of 3D skeuomorphic vs 2D "flatso" was 2:1 in favor of the 3D style], and they were ULTIMATELY rewarded with somewhat frequent "sit in the corner" bans, sometimes for a month or more. Yet, the shills, sycophants, and fanbois would REGULARLY engage in overt ad-hominem attacks and accusations, and never ONCE got a ban.

So yeah, Micro-shaft "listened" during the insider program. They listened to people who SAID! WHATEVER! THEY! WANTED! TO! HEAR!!! And ignored the rest of us.

is there a comprehensive list of cockups?

is there a comprehensive list of cockups for the Win-10-nic "happy anniversary" edition?

So far I've seen quite a few... (published by El Reg that is, in the last few days) from BSODs to PowerSmell bugs.

I guess this is what happens when you lay off all of your Q.A. staff, refuse to listen to customers, and ship beta code en masse.

Windows Update borks PowerShell – Microsoft won't fix it for a week

Re: It's fun, if a bit morbid...

"To watch Microsoft implode in slow motion."

while playing 'graduation march' in time with the 'sploding.

(yeah reminds me a bit of that one sequence in 'Kingsmen')

Re: MS Board Meeting

Ready...

FIRE!

Aim...

[did they bork wget and curl too? no, wait...]

US Treasury to launch pre-emptive strike on EU's Ireland tax probe

Re: Yanks beating the world up again

it's actually a small numberr of elitist politicians who've been manipulating voters for *DECADES*. Let's hope the next election Roto-Rooters a number of them out of our system. We could use a good drain cleaning.

U.S. gummint has its priorities wrong

the U.S. gummint (I'm a 'merkin' FYI) has its priorities wrong. Hopefully a complete regime change (i.e. Pres Trump) next January will rectify this. He wants to bring businesses back by LOWERING tax rates, sort of what Ireland did to ATTRACT multi-national companies there to avoid confiscatory taxes. Should we blame them? I think we ALL would do things personally for our OWN benefit, like that, if we could. but when "only the big boys" can play THAT game, it's perceived as 'unfair'.

(but that's corrupted politics for ya, typical of the Demo-rats and socialists in general, to keep the rich and poor as separated as possible, and make sure 'the rich' get to keep their exclusionary status, while SIMULTANEOUSLY making it LOOK as if they're "soaking the rich" for the benefit of the poor)

anyway, if USA "becomes Ireland" (i.e. low or NO corporate tax) we won't need to step on Ireland's turf. and gummint revenues from OTHER things would INCREASE as a result. It makes you wonder why the higher taxes are there in the FIRST place...

Microsoft, Lenovo cross-licensing love-in: Android mobes knocked up with... Office apps

Re: more unwanted crud

"Sadly once Microsoft is done with it, it likely will be vital to the phone actually functioning."

and 'always on' in the background, serving up advertisements and tracking you (like Win-10-nic).

Indian techies told to prepare for tax sprint

What will this do to outsourced tech support?

I'm no fan of tech support outsourced to India. my experiences have ALL been negative. This is primarily because I _HATE_ boilerplate phone support and JUST want them to fix THEIR problem [and 99.9999% of the time, it _IS_ _THEIR_ problem]. But of course their rules say "do not deviate from boilerplate or you're fired" most likely.

NOW... when this new tax goes into being, will these phone tech support companies have to pass this cost along to all of the companies that outsource to them? Will this result in me talking to people in CHINA instead?

I still haven't gotten used to the thick accents over the phones, even though I'm pretty good at deciphering accents, and I've worked with many people from India in the past without difficulty understanding them. Ah, well, I guess I'll just have to re-train...

Systemd adds filesystem mount tool

Re: re: 1970 thinking.

"These multi core things used to be called CPU Modules, just you kiddies forget the modules bit."

eh? I don't think you're talking about the same thing I'm talking about... [but whatever]

if you want to split hairs, then yes, a single CPU CORE will do 'one thing at a time' based on a single thread of execution being 'one thing'. [must I _really_ go this far to avoid ambiguity?]

I consider a multi-core CPU to, in and of itself, be "one CPU" (being as all the other hardware and memory bus is pretty much shared). So from _THAT_ perspective, the CPU can do mutliple 'things' at one time, i.e. multiple threads of execution simultaneously executing on the multiple cores.

semantics - what a pain

Re: And thus..

"It does one thing: manages a dynamic, ever-changing system."

I've never seen one of those. Do they even exist?

sledge hammer not required. System V for me.

Re: And thus..

" If you say a log can be reliably kept with nothing but ASCII, explain how you can say a coin landed edge when all you have to work with is a single bit: 1 or 0?"

uh, WHAT? [what does that have to do with a daemon logging a message into a system log]

it's like a 'straw man' argument. you invented some weird exception and then expect that to disprove the opposing position. I don't think your logic is working very well here.

ASCII text is about as free form as you can possibly want. you can be verbose or terse, use numbers or words or an entire freaking paragraph. whatever you want. I think I'll stick with that, as it's easy to use 'less /var/log/whatever'

Re: I've forgotten...

I've never had a problem using the old System V method which was decades-stable. Debian had a really nice way of ensuring that startup and shutdown scripts execute in the right order. I've also never seen network adaptors 'reverse' (and I run multi-home machines, so there). And FreeBSD still uses good ol' System V stuff [only simpler and with /etc/rc.conf to help you].

No, systemd was done because THEY COULD. Someone must've got a wild hair stuck up his anus and *felt* that the whole sysinit process needed to be re-designed from scratch. It became "his baby" with all of the "feel good about yourself" that goes with it.

Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority" talks about this kind of thinking, too.

(WHY was it again that they LOST the war? heh)

Re: it's already bad enough with dbus...

"Well then, you're not the typical user. The typical user expects to be able to access the card from the moment they stick it in. "

WHY! SHOULD! POWER! USERS! BE! TREATED! LIKE! IDIOTS! BECAUSE! SOME! LUSERS! ARE! IDIOTS!???

ok done shouting now.

you do *NOT* fix things by LAMING the operating system. Micro-shaft did this with Win-10-nic. let's *NOT* do this with Linux.

what do you mean 'dynamic hardware' ? Plugging USB stuff in?

on FBSD I can configure the system to take specific actions when a USB device of a particular type is plugged in. I think you can do the same on a basic Linux system as well, particularly one without systemd on it. I haven't looked at this capability in a while, though.

There's no advantage to running systemd. It's merely "this generation" doing things THEIR way, because it's THEIR TURN. It makes them *feel* important.

[this is also how we ended up with 3 phone OSs, written and force-fed onto customers' desktop computers, being recently excreted out of Redmond - this generation saying "it's OUR turn to do it OUR way now!"]

Re: Solving problems that do not exist anymore

"I love the BSDs but sadly for many it won't be a suitable replacement yet "

I've used FreeBSD for a long time. There are often "linuxy" things written into applications by people who believe that ALL open source operating systems are linux, and have things like systemd running (etc.). So the 'ports' maintainers have to write patches and workarounds for things to compensate. Dbus was one of those patched things, and has had issues with file mounting because of it. gnome wants to mount that file system because you plugged it in, dammit, regardless of what YOU want, and oh you configured it NOT to, so it's not on the desktop... yet you still have to use 'umount -f' to unmount because, DBus.

so yeah, linuxy things being assume/done in the design, ports maintainers have to patch it, does not always work perfectly afterwards.

and this goes back to adding a mount utiltiy to systemd...

WHAT is going to happen on SYSTEMS THAT DO NOT USE SYSTEMD??? Are the desktop people just going to ASSUME that systemd is tehre, and invoke it's version of the mount utility on your behalf?

I hope not.

(smiling daemon logo 'cause I'm on FreeBSD at the moment)

it's already bad enough with dbus...

it's already bad enough with dbus, trying to auto-mount things when I don't want it to, or causing me to have to use "umount -f" because it partially locks something somewhere internally without telling me about it...

Making systemd have even WORSE behavior, trying to automount things you don't EVER want mounted, like an SD card you're about to do a "dd if=image.img of=/dev/sdcard" or similar to, is JUST another thing that would get in the way and potentially cause system cluster-blank screwups down the road...

and I don't care WHAT file system was on that SD card 10 seconds ago... and the LAST thing I want is some "smart" systemd doohickey AUTO-MOUNTING it, or [worse] FORCING ME TO USE THEIR UTILITY TO UN-AUTO-MOUNT before I can do what I *REALLY* want...

[and if I had to *KILL* an 'fsck' process on that drive, because systemd "FELT" it needed it, when I wanted to _OVERWRITE_ _THE_ _FILE_ _SYSTEM_ I think I'd throw the CPU box through a window and scream until my ears bled)

Re: re: 1970 thinking.

"The fact that you think computers can do more than one thing at a time, rather than spend a tiny amount of time doing one thing then swtiching to another one, shows a staggering lack of understanding."

er, you forgot about 'multi-core' dude. Sorry, but I mostly agree with your rant against the "1970 thinking" statement, except that one little detail...

so my quad core CPU can do 4 things at once [and when I write a multi-threaded algorithm, it really does!]. But yeah time-slice thread scheduling on a single core DOES give "the illusion" of doing multiple things at once, while really doing 'what you said'.

"1970 thinking." (by an anon, naturally)

I was 10 years old in 1970. I learned programming on punch cards and these pencil mark 'mark sense' cards that used the same hollerith code. I don't know exactly what you're implying by all of that "1970 thinking" comment, but whenever I hear "remain stuck in the past" I think of an arrogant millenial calling us "gramps" or "old fart" and assuming we're stone-age neanderthals for recognizing 'what works' vs 'new, shiny'.

Show some RESPECT, you young whipper-snapper! And read Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority".

"Do one thing and do it well". It's an excellent philosophy when it comes to making small utilities that have many many uses. Like a knife. Not a "super-doohickey-2D-flugly-GUI-the-metro" knife, but a general purpose 'works for many things' knife, which can often be repurposed in ways its inventor never DREAMED of, because "do one thing and do it well".

Your wget is broken and should DIE, dev tells Microsoft

Re: Nothing new

"People still used FTP?"

well windows didn't have an ssh implementation for using scp until very recently. And I have to wonder whether or not any of the "standard ssh features" are BROKE-DICK in the *new* PowerSmell

except, of course, cygwin. scp works fine there. so does rsync. yeah.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update completely borks USB webcams. Yay.

Re: The beginning of the end

(regarding micro-shaft office)

"I hate that &^%#$ ribbon (and it appears I'm not the only one)."

it's the most hated feature, I'd venture to guess. And in addition, I *hate* 2D flugly and hamburger menus, 2 more "new, shiny" things that have attempted to dominate our desktops. Yucchhhhh!

Password strength meters promote piss-poor paswords

"Work insists on a change every two months."

a really good password can be kept for DECADES, so long as it's hard to guess and easy to remember. Changing it more often than your socks can only create confusion and resentment and HORRIBLY insecure passwords like "passwordAugust"

"solutions" that hyperfocus on pathetically insignificant details just irritate me, like the people who think them up AND the people who insist on implementing them. They probably 'feel' everything instead of 'think', too. How predictable, yeah.

correct horse battery staple

perhaps the obvious isn't good enough.

back in the day, CompuServe generated a password for you, consisting of two unrelated words and something from the 'shift number' row on your keyboard. Same basic idea.

besides, abc123-fart would be just fine. It doesn't take much to destroy a dictionary attack. they're not that sophisticated. most of them are probably done by non-native English speakers or script kiddies anyway...

(but don't use 'fart' as it's probably going to go into a dictionary now)

so go ahead and use your easily remembered password, then add something else that's unrelated with a shift-number figure in between.

Windows Phone dives into irrelevant-like-BlackBerry territory

Re: Not surprized at all

I've only got a cheap "dumb" Nokia that has whatever non-smart OS came with it. it's a PHONE. works for me.

Re: A war with China will put an end to these bourgeois concerns!

"The female presidential candidate will put some starch into your collars, peons!"

Yes, after Micro-shaft donates a bozillian dollars to the 'Clinstone Foundation' she'll be compelled to make sure that gummint contracts for "Micro-shaft Phone" devices be universally made throughout the entire federal system, by MANDATE of course, as a political payback for the corrupt contributions to her "foundation"... thus saving Micro-shaft's bacon.

Predictable, yeah. Let's not feed "that pig" (well, either ONE for that matter).

GO TRUMP! (/me ducks)

Re: Microsoft

"What's wrong with the UI from the 90s? "

EXACTLY! These "new, shiny" addicts need to take a look at more important things FIRST, like whether they're more productive or not as a result of the "new, shiny", or whether "new, shiny" is actually CUMBERSOME and BUTT-UGLY, but they're telling the rest of us we're stone-age neanderthals for liking "the old way".

If I'm going to have to change, it will be to something running Mate or Cinnamon. Or Android. Or iOS. etc.