Posts by bombastic bob

After Monday's landing, SpaceX wants to do it in triplicate

Re: Titusville is a s***hole

"These are the same people that complain about a lack of high-paying space jobs now that the Shuttle is gone, yet they complain about sonic booms from SpaceX."

clueless, yeah

"So I got to see a rocket launch, and 10 minutes later, I also got to see a rocket landing. Great!"

sci fi authors of the past should be clawing their way out of their graves to watch something like that in real life. So many old sci fi books written where rockets landed on their tail. And it took SpaceX to actually make it happen - on a regular basis, anyway.

"I doubt there will be any serious challenge to this"

never. underestimate. the UNMITIGATED GALL. of a BUNCH of FLAMING ACTIVISTS. to *RUIN* a GOOD thing like SpaceX, through the COURTS, with RIDICULOUS claims, particularly environmental ones, which ultimately ENRICH THE LAWYERS.

One such L[AW]YER in the San Diego area is INfamous for having abused the legal system to turn a man-made oceanic swimming area known as "the children's pool" into a CESSpool for breeding sea lions (that decided to just 'take over' because NOBODY stopped them), that comes complete with the foul stench that can't even be cleaned up because, environmentalism.

So I'm sure SOMEONE will find some "endangered" flea or brine shrimp, or make some ridiculous touchy-feely claim regarding dolphins or sea turtles that SOMEHOW impedes SpaceX from having a landing platform. SOOooooo predictable.

Microsoft tweaks TCP stack in Windows Server and Windows 10

Re: Of course...

"The Linux IP stack has had all these and more since 1976"

Looks like nobody got the humor. and you got more downvotes than me. NOW I'm envious...

(/me points out Linux was invented in 1990's, but the UNIX stack would've existed back then...)

At one time NT had an implementation of the BSD stack, with appropriate copyright statements in their documentation. They should've stuck with that, and tracked the BSDs.

Re: Took their time

Being less agressive during periods of high latency was specifically mentioned

(from article)

"LEDBAT will stop Windows competing aggressively for bandwidth during times of high latency"

yes. it's ABOUT TIME on THAT one... not like I hadn't specifically complained directly to them about that OVER A YEAR AGO (and others as well).

it's probably the WORST thing that Micro-shaft does with their forced updates: DOMINATE your intarweb connection with WHATEVER SCHTUFF *THEY* want to use it for, at a time of *THEIR* choosing, even if you're watching streamed media content. OOPS - interruption - because, Micro-shaft.

An anniversary to remember: The world's only air-to-air nuke was fired on 19 July, 1957

Re: ICBMs was the end of air to air nukes etc

"Once ICBMs become common, it was excepted that shooting them down was not an option, so "air to air nukes" etc stop being made."

In the world of anti-submarine warfare, something called 'SUBROC' was invented in about the same general time frame, to take out a ballistic missile submarine that was about to shoot its missiles. The principle was the same: large blast area, large kill zone. you just had to be 'close'. Sadly, shooting one was almost a guaranteed suicide mission...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUM-44_SUBROC

however, like you pointed out, ICBMs made bombing planes obsolete, so air-air nukes were unnecessary (and impractical). And things *like* SUBROC were eventually abandoned.

/me thinks: "Nuke 'em 'till they glow, then shoot 'em in the dark."

If managing PCs is still hard, good luck patching 100,000 internet things

Re: The way round this is

" ... the "things" should simply have a secure transport layer config ... "

And that's where it all falls down again...

yeah, theyd probably use MODBUS over TCP or something similar at the local site, for all of the sensors and control devices, then a process on the MODBUS control thingy to either transfer data to the cloud, or allow a cloud-based process to query the data from the 'central' thing.

If the 'central' thing were properly designed, and the TCP to device connections properly isolated, you wouldn't have a problem. Good luck with THAT happening, though...

unless you can IPSEC the MODBUS stuff [probably not], then it's just 'in the clear' and anyone/thing can access the devices, once you have access to the private LAN with all of them.

Re: Oil Rigs

"They are still thinking in basic 2-tier client/sensor-central server/processing terms. When 'cloud' needs to be more of an n-tiered 'cached' processing architecture."

when I see the 'tier' word I keep thinking a bunch of hype from the noughties, when the "3 tier solution" was seen as somehow 'inferior' to a 4-tier or 5-tier, like "more tiers" made it better...

Windows 10 a failure by Microsoft's own metric – it won't hit one billion devices by mid-2018

analysis of the CEO and management style

"MS as a corporation are too large and don't listen. What is the point in having a 'feedback' program if you are going to ignore the most asked for features ?"

(then comments about bullying-style management at Micro-shaft)

(then a reply)

"Your analysis of the CEO and management style is spot-on."

I tend to agree. Micro-shaft forgot 'Business 101' "The CUSTOMER is always right." I tried to remind them back in the 'insider' days, but they threatened to ban me over my writing style. Go figure. Maybe they just don't like 'El Reg' over there, and my comments reminded them of it (heh).

Ballmer left a year or so ago, isn't that right? He's been followed by Keven Turner, their former COO.

In an El Reg thread I suggested that Turner's presence seemts to correspond to MANY of the EPIC FAILS at Micro-shaft. Some were pointed out in the article as well. There's Vista, "Ape" (8.x) where firing Sinofsky was merely symbolic. They *KEPT* the *2D* *FLUGLY* and "tilish" stupidity (the things that made 'Ape' so ugly and unusuable, in my opinion). *WHO* over at Micro-shaft *FELT* (not thought) that *THAT* was a *GOOD* thing? Well, I bet it was KEVIN TURNER! And WHO does anyone guess MIGHT have been behind GWX? Well, I bet it was KEVIN TURNER! Finally the proverbial dung hit the proverbial fan and spewed all over the walls and everyone/thing in between, and "the board" no doubt said "we gotta get RID of this guy" so they 're-organized' to avoid having a "shake-up" in the company cause a STOCK PRICE FREEFALL. And it worked.

But we still have 2D FLUGLY Win-10-nic with its adware, spyware, and [apparently soon to come as a few have accurately predicted] SUBSCRIPTION-ONLY RENTAL FEES!

This of course has gone WAY BEYOND what anyone could have imagined in 2005 when Kevin began to do his self-destructive changes at Micro-shaft. And Ballmer is to be blamed for GOING ALONG WITH IT.

Kevin is apparently an ASSHAT to work for (employees reviewing one another? to determine BONUSES? Can you say RIVALRY and BACKSTABBING?), and according to the 'El Reg' articles, VERY aggressive. I might even agree with "bullying" as a management style, as pointed out by the original poster of this topic [that I named].

Blame where blame belongs: the captain of the ship, and his first mate, and his engineering officer, all SCREWED THE POOCH on this one. The engineer (Sinofsky) was fired first. Then, the captain (ballmer) resigned, leaving the 1st mate (Kevin Turner) securely at his post, which was the key to the continued failure. No doubt he's really good at sweet-talking his boss (Nadella) into the SAME! KINDS! OF! STUPIDITY! and maybe even GREATER stupidity than before. And so Nadella goes along with it, and wrecks the ship. AGAIN.

"How did this happen?" Well, DUH...

(sorry if TLDR)

Re: I'd add

"Easier still. Have /home on its own partition & don't reformat it. Same with /opt & maybe /usr/local."

also true. thanks for pointing it out. (see how easy a system restore or version upgrade is with a POSIX system? AND you get to keep your SETTINGS!)

Re: Sure pal.

"Please, enlighten us, I could do with a laugh today."

to be honest, the measurements I've seen (and some that I've done) show that loading an application is (generally) slightly faster with Win-10-nic than with 8.x - but at a cost, of course. Win-10-nic has a lot of 'background cruft' that spawns whenever it wants to. [I've seen this kind of behavior in 7, but only within the first few minutes after bootup]. Also, Win-10-nic has a *NASTY* habit of "pegging" the CPU meter for no good reason, typically when one "the METRO" app(sic) is waiting on another "the METRO" app(sic) and I doubt THAT problem has been addressed since I measured it over a year ago. (it appears to do with 'spinning' in a loop within the 'Universal' or 'RT' libraries while one app waits for a response to whatever command or communication it sent - the 'spinning' consumes CPU cycles, forces the OS to constantly switch to a "non-idle" mode, and heats up the CPU unnecessarily, wasting electricity and wearing out fan motor bearings).

'Faster' claims are rediculous anyway. "less inefficient" might hold water...

(and that piggy 'paranoid cached' registry is JUST! AS! BAD! AS! EVAR! in Win-10-nic, if not *WORSE* - 'paranoid cacheing' is when you re-re-read something ANYWAY, even though your hard drive data is 'in the cache', because it *might* have changed. Outside of the cache? unlikely. But watch hard drive activity when you load applications. They're too STUPID to allow the registry to be properly cached. It must be physically read/written and slow everything down. Even with SSD it's a time waste, but I don't have one of those, so it becomes OBVIOUS, and that goes DOUBLE for when it's in a VM)

the pathetic nature of win-10-nics inefficient internals, and 8.x's slightly MORE inefficient internals, makes me wanna cry - but I'll laugh at it ANYWAY.

Re: Perhaps ....

"They might not have been able to compete on free-as-in-beer but if they'd cut prices to be affordable they could have competed on quality."

What's Red Hat and Suse's model? they seem to be doing fine. SCO could have done *THAT*. Then they'd be on par with RH, Suse, and any other commercial Linux distro. RH even competes AGAINST ITSELF by offering Fedora for free. Yet, there they are, still in business.

I'm a Debian fan, myself. I think the package system is better than RPM but that's just me, and use both Ubu (semi-commercial) and Mint when the occasion requires it. But my main desktop is FreeBSD. Designing everything for "build from source" (even it if would take 4 days to re-build everything from source) makes it a DEVELOPER'S platform. And that just makes the point that it's individual CHOICE on the POSIX side, with lots of available "flavors" to suit your needs.

Re: I'd add

"In place upgrades are the La Brea tar pit for operating systems."

the beauty of Linux is that clean-installing the new, if you back things up properly, is a pretty easy thing to do, and you can keep all of your personal settings by tarballing /home and just re-installing the latest versions of whatever you had installed before.

been there, done that a few times. also works when cloning onto a new box.

yeah try doing THAT with all of the registry cruft. good luck, heh.

(for servers you can manually merge /etc and so on, but I'm referring to user workstation type installs)

Re: The sad thing is that Windows 10 is great and adoption would have (snip too long)

"Windows 10 is much better than Windows 8 and 8.1, and is much faster than Windows 7 on multi-core machines."

*FACEPALM*

"Ape" is demonstrably slower than 7, and Win-10-nic is barely "as fast" as 7 and slower for MANY things. And it's 2D FLUGLY. And it has adware+spyware. And it doesn't have a proper start menu (it has a 'start thing' instead). And all that "the METRO" cruft. yuchhh.

And the Microsoft Logon with it's anti-privacy EULA, which is practically ARM-TWISTED onto your desktop, is probably the WORST part. It's how they can track you EVERYWHERE.

but I think the 2D FLUGLY is the worst part. It's so distracting (in a bad way), it harms my productivity. Good 'feng shui' of the workplace *EXCLUDES* Win-10-nic.

Re: Bet they assumed Windows Phone contributing a few hundred million

"Microsoft continued to putting out the same tired stuff that looked and acted like it was designed in 2001"

and _THEN_ they release Windows "Ape", and it looks like it was designed in 1985...

http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/win101

Re: The penguin struggles to reach 4% market share with a free product

"The penguin struggles to reach 4% market share with a free product."

because of very little *MARKETING* effort. Win-10-nic, on the other hand, is nothing BUT market-hype and "you must accept this upgrade" shoving it up our as...down our throats.

Imagine what it would BE like if some SERIOUS MARKETING were done with Linux, from computer makers PROMINENTLY advertising their Linux-equipped computers, to software makers GLADLY announcing their new LINUX version! (sorta like when they announced their WINDOWS version back in the early 90's). Yeah, THOSE were they days, right?

MARKETING is all Linux needs to win the desktop platform. It's already WAY better than Win-10-nic or "Ape". Maybe even better than 7...

Re: Bet they assumed Windows Phone contributing a few hundred million

"The only thing that will let them EVER get to a billion devices is quitting selling Windows 7 and stopping updates for it in early 2020. Until that end date for Windows 7 forces enterprises to get serious about upgrading to Windows 10 in 2019, they won't reach a billion."

Shhhhhhhh... don't give them ANY ideas, K? someone with windows 10 might read it, and the spyware could tip off someone in the Halls of Redmond. I know they don't listen to GOOD ideas, but BAD ones seem to make it through... I once joked about "what's next, ads in the Start Menu?" on a Microsoft forum. Next thing you know... [sorry sorry sorry]

Re: Perhaps ....

"They did not want to re-learn."

not a BAD thing... re-learn takes time, time = money which costs more to the business, PLUS productivity is lost, and you don't make a profit, and don't get raises/bonuses. yeah.

NOW, if Micro-shaft could make the case [which they can NOT] that productivity IMPROVES, and ease of use IMPROVES [which it does NOT] with Win-10-nic, they'd have NO PROBLEM [in fact, I would probably want it if such things were true, aside from the 2D FLUGLY which I hate].

Re: Amazing

"It's like they've managed to shove their heads up into their asses so deeply that they've created the worlds first human-shaped mobius strip."

or an inverse ouroboros (you know instead of a snake swallowing its own tail, it's a man's 'tail' 'swallowing' his head... oh, whatever)

One in five consumers upgraded to Win10 for free instead of buying a PC

Re: child requested a Linux installation

"Which Linux? Distro fragmentation doesn't help OEMs"

if you can install ONE kind of Linux, you can install ANY. not hard to download an ISO and re-do the install, assuming that the drivers aren't proprietary in any way. I purchased 2 'netbooks' for a customer project and installed debian on both of them (one being a backup of the other). It came with some crippled console-only Linux, but at least I knew that they would work WITH Linux. I booted up the debian installer, and everything worked as expected, from wifi to bluetooth. [and for the customer project, it needed BOTH of these].

(had they not come WITH Linux, they may not have been 'linux capable' without a lot of extra effort)

Re: child requested a Linux installation

"Indeed. It's time for OEMs and retailers to sit up and take notice, and start selling PCs with a Linux installation instead of Windows."

this needs 'Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers' to get on board, too. But the way Micro-shaft has been _TREATING_ Developers these days, erecting tollbooths (i.e. certification requirements), changing the rules (".Not", Silverlight, WinRT, 'Universal'), and basically RUINING the platform, SMART developers will read the writing on the wall and start creating TRULY 'universal' appLICATIONS, which can run on Linux as well. Gtk, Qt, wxWidgets - these all help you do this sort of thing. But developers need to be CONVINCED, or else they'll just look at "bottom line, now" and continue to code for 'windows only' using Micro-shaft's "windows only" stuff, INCLUDING the use of 'shared stuff' (like ".Not") that is SPECIFICALLY 'not licensed for other than a microsoft operating system'. [so first to go, any ".Not" dependencies, or depending on ANY microsoft technology, for THAT matter]

It'll take some marketing effort to make this work. But it *CAN* work.

Re: Once again. We have passed peak PC.

"The PC as a piece of hardware in peoples homes is - for the large part - obsolete and irrelevant."

Uh, no. NOT obsolete. People generally don't use PCs for the same things they use "devices" for. I think most people would struggle with playing a high resolution PC game or doing anything but "simplified" tax forms on anything OTHER than a PC or notebook.

But machines from 10 years ago often do "those things" as well as NEW ones. THAT is the point. SALES are being measured, then interpreted as "market penetration". This is a complete FALLACY. The number of existing (in use) PCs is HUGE.

According to THIS:

https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

The total number of Android and iOS based systems is around 41% (I added them up). The rest are either PC or Mac. So maybe ~60% of "devices" that run web browsers are PCs or Macs? It's something to consider. (a small number are probably game consoles, but it was small enough not to be broken out).

regardless of SALES, there's still a HUGE user base of the PC. It's not "going away".

Re: Why would they have bought a new PC?

"Only a masochist would have stuck with Windows 8."

or down"up"graded a 7 machine to Win-10-nic.

It's *REALLY* about perception, as the original poster of this topic (sort of) pointed out when he said "Would it have broken if MS hadn't decided to offer a free upgrade?"

that's the point. the EXISTING computer is PERCEIVED to be as good as a new one. So why buy a new one? THAT is where the market reality is, at the moment.

a) no more Moore's Law causing next year's machine to be 50% faster than this year's

b) Windows "Ape" (8.x) and Win-10-nic are generally NOT perceived as "improvements" over 7 and earlier (except by the MASOCHISTS)

c) getting a better hard drive or more RAM is CHEAPER, especially important during a slumpy economy

And all of this adds up to "no clear reason to get a NEW computer". A decent re-conditioned one can be pretty nice, too. I recently got a reconditioned 7 Pro box for $120 on e-bay, and it works really really really well as a 'windows workstation' for doing accounting and things like that. Many other similarly priced computers were available. I specifically wanted 7 Pro, of course, so it was a major selling feature that YOU! MAY! NOT! GET! WITH! A! NEW! COMPUTER!

Ban ISPs from 'speeding up' the internet: Ex-Obama tech guru

why can't I pay for "better service" ?

Here's a thought that NOBODY ever mentions: why CAN'T I pay for "better service" if I can AFFORD it ? Where's the advantage of working hard and accumulating LOTS of money?

Actually, if I had a super-fat fiber line run from the nearest internet hub directly to my house, I COULD have that. but then my neighbors would NOT have that. And some dumbass would scream "Thats not fair" and FORCE ME to "share it". At least, that's how it seems...

(and I wish I _did_ have "that kind of money" - instead I have crappy DSL that barely gets 500kbits these days, even after the phone company re-built my phone line to deal with noise and frequent dropouts)

It's not our fault we don't hire black people, says Facebook

Re: Hiring laws

unfortunately, demographics are used as EVIDENCE in discrimination lawsuits. So unless there was a lack of applications filed for a particular job by people of a particular race, it COULD hurt FaceBarph to have a lack of employees that are more a representative sampling of "normal demographics".

then again, there are more black people and hispanic people and S.E. asian-descendent people in specific areas of the USA than in others. You know, 'neighborhoods'. Areas surrounding Face-barph's office should be 'demographically analyzed' before any accusations are made... as well as an examination of the applications that were submitted.

"People only hire people that remind themselves of... themselves. "

I disagree. the purpose of a business is PROFIT. Therefore, you hire the person who will MAKE THE MOST MONEY FOR THE COMPANY. Unless the employee is a flaming ASSHAT, is VERY likely to sue you for some B.S. reason [i.e. an 'issues' person and it's obvious], has a poor attitude towards others, or smells like a sewer in the interview, chances are NONE of the characteristics that are so often touted in 'diversity' arguments will even be looked at for a SECOND.

Not if the company wants to MAKE MONEY, anyway. And yeah, "Mr. Issues" probably won't get hired because he's already advertising the desire to SUE YOU at the drop of a hat. And so on.

I guess walking into an interview with an attitude OTHER than "how can I help you potential customer" isn't going to help you later.

(then again I have been a contractor for EVAR and have an actual interview with a potential 'customer' soon...)

"How many poor people from working class areas do they hire?"

hopefully, NO MORE than are the 'best qualified' for the positions they apply for. And when I say 'best qualified' it _EXCLUDES_ race, sex, or any other "has nothing to do with the job" characteristic.

Re: So what you're saying is...

"hire more people based entirely on the colour of their skin?"

it's what the 'affirmative action' weenies on "the left" would say, yeah, but Faceb[itch,ook] isn't practicing the kind of thing it probably (read: no doubt) preaches. Instead, they appear to be hiring on the basis of JOB SKILLS, which is what ANY responsible company would do (normally).

Perhaps Charles Barkley's take on "things of this nature" is the CORRECT explanation:

http://www.inquisitr.com/1563826/charles-barkley-unintelligent-black-community-holds-back-successful-minorities/

And if he's right, the relative lack of 'minority employees' at FB is mostly "self-inflicted", i.e. "not whitey's fault" nor outright racial discrimination in hiring.

just sayin'

Microsoft silently kills dev backdoor that boots Linux on locked-down Windows RT slabs

not long before RT slab-tops are completely worthless

The RT slab-tops had at LEAST a chance at being useful, if they could run Linux... but now they have NO worth at ALL.

I pity anyone that was suckered into buying one of those...

I remember the 'secure boot' fiasco, and how Micro-shaft ASSURED us that for x86, you would be able to DISABLE the 'secure boot' and load "a legacy OS" onto a windows-logo certified box. But, NOT SO with the ARM-based boxen. We have to wonder *why* this was... and I think we're seeing some of that coming back like a turd that won't flush.

Facebook deleted my post and made me confirm pics of my kids weren't sexually explicit

Re: Topic

exactly. who needs it? USENET is FREE. Or, if you were creative enough, you could set up your own web site on github and do 'whatever' with it. Or rent a space and NOT have to deal with `echo "FaceBook" | sed 's/ook/itch/'` policies.

Linux cloudy tie ups: SUSE and Microsoft, Canonical and Pivotal

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

I don't think this plan has EVER changed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend_and_extinguish

IoT puts assembly language back on the charts

Re: Stop, just stop

"Java is not 3 times more in demand than C#"

*sniff* *sniff* - smells like a Microsoft Shill

I mentioned C-pound already, and that ".Not" _thing_ that goes with it. It deserves it's "under 5%" ranking on TIOBE.

whereas, the ENTIRE point was that IoT and other micro-controller-based projects *DEMAND* the kinds of low-level coding that assembly language lets you do. And if you're mixing inline assembler with your C code, it's the same *kinds* of coding as pure assembler [except you now get to deal with some of the quirky syntax things that 'inline' forces you to deal with].

explained HERE for AVR processors:

http://www.nongnu.org/avr-libc/user-manual/inline_asm.html

it takes the *right* kind of coder to deal with this kind of thing, yeah

Re: Assembly Language?

"I can't see its relevance to run-anywhere processor/platform independence."

yeah, I guess you'll just have to continue coding C-pound for ".Not". Which was STILL under 5% on the TIOBE index, from what I can tell.

On a related note, really good C code is a close second to tiny assembler code for microcontrollers. but sometimes you have to at LEAST do inline assembly, especially to take advantage of some special instructions (like in a bootloader, flashing NVRAM - did this for a project that ended up on github, XMega port for Arduino IDE).

Re: Assembly is OK, but...

"but only if you've got at least five years of hands-on experience with Agile DevOps. As a service. In a Docker container. "

'What Color is your Parachute?' indeed... gotta find a way to get your resume to the HIRING MANAGER, an individual that understands enough about software and engineering to recognize talent, even when the resume doesn't have the "buzz words" that H.R. weenies live to screen by, or a 4 year degree (even in something irrelevant). "Wow, that guy has a basket-weaving degree! I bet he makes a GREAT programmer!"

smaller companies who don't have H.R. departments are your best bet, anyway, especially for contractors.

Linus Torvalds in sweary rant about punctuation in kernel comments

Re: RSI ?

"Typing // means less typing fatigue than /* */ . The slash is directly accessible on US keyboards, the asterisk requires shift. That alone should decide the issue."

that, and people wearing wrist-braces from carpal tunnel syndrome.

"If 'blah blah' happens to be a block of code you commented out, you want a fast method to uncomment: just remove 2 lines."

how about this:

#if 0

commented = out * code;

fprintf(stderr, "line %d in %s\n", __LINE__, __FUNCTION__);

#endif // 0

works nice for test or debug code.

Using the '#if 0' block makes it so that if your code contains /* */ comments, you can STILL 'comment it out' with only 2 lines, but then you only need to change the '0' to a '1' to re-enable it afterwards...

or you could get really good at 'tapping out' the keystrokes for putting // at the beginning of a bunch of consecutive lines of code (being a drummer helps), using a rapidly repeated sequence of '//' left, left, down with left hand on '/', right hand on cursor keys [or else use a keystroke recorder to make a macro of it, playable with a hotkey]

Re: Reflection on the author...

"Bad, or incorrect comments are worse than no comments at all. Documentation is something that needs to be done."

With doxygen, you can kinda get BOTH at the same time (but you have to format the comments properly, and that goes back to Linus' rant)

Re: Tabs vs Spaces

"May I humbly suggest a decent code editor with colour highlighting of reserved words etc,"

pluma or gedit (prior to gnome 3) will do until I get my own IDE editor finished.

sorting functions alphabetically, though... *shudder* [unless you name them deliberately by functionality].

"I'm sure Linus would find other reasons to hate me, if not that."

no doubt. A record of Linus' quirky antics would make a funny book.

And I saw that Nathan Hale quote written like this once:

"I only regret that I have but one * for my country"

took me a while to figure out what the hell the '*' meant... and then the 'fridge moment' when the light came on.

(As I recall, the '*' quote was on a 'Wretched Mess' calendar, which I don't think still exists in live print, but I google'd and saw a blog that mentioned it, and a books page for the author "Milford Stanley Poltroon" that had a few books about fishing with Monty-Python-worthy titles like 'The Happy Fish Hooker')

Re: Well there is a point to this

"Code primarily is read by humans, and in fact comments are more commonly read than the actual code. So it makes sense to improve their readability."

Coding style guidelines are (generally) a good idea. it makes things consistent and easier to visually scan. I suppose 'comment style' could just be part of that.

If you use Doxygen, following Linus' comment block style recommendations 'just works'.

When it comes to formatting the actual CODE, however, I have little respect for people who _INSIST_ on K&R style bracing, and believe that 'Allman Style' yields the MOST readable code. (/me ducks to avoid flying objects). Then there's the practice of using hard-tabs for indenting, which ALSO needs to "just go away" (/me ducks again). That way you can use 'cat' and 'less' to view source files in a Linux console, and they'll appear CONSISTENT with what you see in an editor.

(I also do banners with 'figlet' and a shell script that puts a nice 'right-hand edge' on them, centering the text, sticking a copyright statement underneath the banner, yotta yotta - let the script do the right-hand edge and you don't have to fiddle with it)

Bomb-disposal robot violently disposes of Dallas cop-killer gunman

Re: Hows the Robot?

we'll give Mr. Bomb-bot a post-scrapous medal.

/me wonders, if the robot loses an arm, can it be replaced with a biological one?

Re: slight correction

assault rifle vs assault weapon.

maybe true, but (sarcasm mode ON) we ALL know that those 'assault' thingies SHOOT PEOPLE ON THEIR OWN which is why politicians have to ban them, which we all know keeps them out of the hands of CRIMINALS, too...

Re: Gunman murdered by the police?

if the cops use DEADLY FORCE on a POTENTIAL THREAT to civilian lives, safety, and also the lives and safety of police officers, it's not "murder".

It's a PUBLIC SERVICE.

(expected down-votes from unnecessarily squeamish 'feelers' who feel instead of think)

self-defense is, and always WILL be, a HUMAN RIGHT. Defense of OTHERS is HEROIC. The COPS were HEROES.

Re: @YetAnotherLocksmith ... It makes sense, but...

"They wanted a race war and here it is."

unfortunate, but most likely true. Obaka's roots are in "agitation" of unhappy citizens. The 'civil rights coalition' becomes EMPOWERED when there is racial strife.

If people stopped caring or making a big deal about race, pointing it out whenever possible, making it an excuse or reason or motivation for 'whatever', there would be no racism. But then "they" wouldn't be powerful, important, or perceived as "needed" any more...

so there you have it.

(expecting lots of thumb-downs, just like the other two).

Oh, and gotta LOVE the geek factor of hacking the bomb DISPOSAL robot's usage to dispose of a cop-killing perp!

Farewell to Microsoft's Sun Tzu: Thanks for all the cheese, Kevin Turner

Re: 2007 was the turning point

"When in their sordid history did they ever listen to customers?"

beta programs prior to 1995 worked out pretty well. They were trying VERY hard to support legacy hardware as well as current. They really _did_ do a good job of it back then.

Re: And, what has happened at MS since 2005?

"The reason why UAC broke many programs is because quite often lazy programmers did not follow best practices."

In part you're right. UAC has its benefits, as well as its irritations. When 7 'mellowed it out' it became palatable. It's a good point to make.

However: the REAL fix would have been to re-do the security model to be friendly to the idea that running as ADMINISTRATOR is to be DISCOURAGED, and ALL steps should be taken to make applications run NOT as administrator without any real difficulty. This last part is problematic, even with major applications. You'd think they could put their files into a place where you don't need to be an administrator to access and/or modify them... (or prompt for admin privs to update them, as needed).

Anyway, I've vented my spleen on how Micro-shaft is "doing it wrong" countless times already. Or more like "The right way" "The wrong way" and "The Micro-shaft way".

And, what has happened at MS since 2005?

From the article I'd guess that 11 years means he was hired in 2005?

And what has happened SINCE then? How much of this guy's influence has gone into product development?

Marketing OFTEN dictates what THEY believe (or more likely, 'feel') is the direction the market is going, and development WILL comply with that.

And it seems obvious to me that this guy, if he was driving development, could NOT have been more wrong...

With the exception of Windows 7's "backpedaling" to give people a MORE XP-like and less "buy new expensive hardware" experience (without actually BEING XP 2.0), we have Vista, "Ape", "Ape point 1", and Win-10-nic. NONE of these was a marketing success.

And there's this (from the article):

"It took years for people to adjust to the new Office 2007 UI, hurting sales. Windows Vista? That was Windows 8, before Windows 8 was Windows 8."

Whereas previous (prior to THIS guy) versions of Office had a MORE FAMILIAR interface, something people wouldn't SCREAM about after upgrading or buying a new computer with the new software on it.

THIS guy may be the source of "force the market to change so we can dominate it" kinds of thinking that *I* believe are behind Micro-shafts STUPID moves in product development.

Vista tried to force us AWAY from really cheap (yet functional) PCs. Fail. UAC and signed driver requirements just made it all WORSE.

The 'new' office paradigm (which I haven't used, but have heard complaints about) REALLY angered people into "not upgrading". Or, they went with Open Office or Libre Office. I did (even on Winders).

The 'new' look of Windows "Ape" (8) was even MORE appalling (to MOST people). It helped to KILL new computer sales (along with Moore's law no longer compensating for Micro-shaft OS inefficiencies, so "keep what you have" instead of "downgrade to a 'new' model").

And *NOW* we have Win-10-nic. And Satella is kicking this guy out the door, but making it look like a "re-organization". I think the board of directors may have played their hand in this one.

But here's another question: Was THIS guy responsible for GWX? If I understand the description of him, he may very well BE "the guy" who THOUGHT IT UP!!!

Win 10 Anniversary: 'We're beginning to check in final code' says Microsoft

Re: 'Free' update to end.

"Penguin, because well, you still can - anytime (no hoops to jump through)."

honestly, I don't disagree by much (and want very much for Linux to succeed as a regularly used desktop OS for non-geeks). And now the "big but": BUT, you have a lot of windows-only software out there that won't run with Wine. For those software packages, you (unfortunately) need a winders box.

It's a note to software devs to "get hot" on Linux versions, to help CREATE the migration. Because, WHEN it happens, YOUR package will be the one people will migrate TO [edge on competition].

But yeah, Micro-shaft's "underwhelming" Win-10-nic is just plastic flowers on the grave. Or lipstick on the boar. Whatever.

Wannabe Prime Minister Andrea Leadsom thinks all websites should be rated – just like movies

Sounds like yet another politician trying to regulate something they have zero understanding of

@Oliver Mayes

deserves its own topic

oh, 'well said' by the way.

and remember THIS?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/27/paint_drying_classification/

(that was a crowning moment of awesome!)

Microsoft's cringey 'Hey bae <3' recruiter email translated by El Reg

Re: Makes you wonder

"Since MSFT is committed to diversity and finding talent from wherever"

"diversity" is *HIGHLY* overrated. If it's not skills-related, it should _NOT_ be JOB-related, for hiring or any other reason. But it would figure that Micro-shaft would focus on non-job-related "things" as a hiring basis, such as being a "hip" youngun' who understand the lingo of that letter... (we need more 'insert non-job-qualification-characteristic here' in our employ).

yeah, diversity may be thought of like a well established alloy (in someone's dreams) but REALITY is more like a POORLY DONE alloy, something that shatters under stress, or bends well before the design load is reached. Making 'diversity' a primary hiring factor just WEAKENS the outcome, overall, because you're not focusing on hiring people who can DO! THE! JOB! - you're playing "social goody-goody" instead. Typical stupidity of the left, yeah.

"Wow, I think my alloy needs more LEAD in it. There's no LEAD representation here. Better get some LEAD in it, otherwise the LEAD representatives will SUE ME for NOT ADDING ENOUGH LEAD because it's POORLY REPRESENTED based on the available metals and their percentages in nature..."

Re: Every time I see "<3"...

"Looks as if someone tried to depict BAE letting off gas."

or an unusual (and apparently partial) depiction of male anatomy