* Posts by bombastic bob

10507 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

Elon Musk set to buy Twitter in $44b deal, promises stuff

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Popcorn time

I actually signed up. you can guess what name I used. Posted a bunch of stuff that is civil and informative, but would otherwise get "flagged" just for being "not woke". Let's see what happens! And some Fox News people got un-banned today. YES!!!

Debian faces firmware furore from FOSS freedom fighters

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: What do you mean nobody reads the source?

reading every single bit of source code is more like an AUDIT.

A quick scan looking for things you know to be problematic, or focusing on changed sections: This is extremely helpful and does not make your brain (as) sleepy.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Devuan

If Devuan and Debian were to merge, and then you get a choice of init during setup (and not after), wouldn;t THAT be AWESOME? But that might require double-sets of certain packages, one with systemd, one without, as too many key packages depend on systemd being there, or its features being implemented some other way (and the two may not be compatible).

Similarly Gnome and Mate, though I believe that by now it is FAR less likely with the latest GTK forcing ADWAITA. Just NO on that.

I'd say this is why forks exist.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Stop

Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.

that thing you say about inventing a new wheel... car makers do that EVERY year.

it is not necessarily a BAD thing. may the BEST wheel WIN!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place

Do we really need a license discussion, now?

US Space Force unit to monitor region beyond Earth's geosynchronous orbit

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Trump for 2024 with De Santis as VP. Truly a dream ticket.

yes

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: For those wondering "Why?"

Right, Royal Marines were apparently a standard part of the crew of a British Naval vessel back in the exploration days. i once toured a modern replica of Captain Cook's ship that went to Australia and new Zealand during an exploration in the late 1700's. It had a deck set up specifically for Royal Marines.

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are based on the Royal Navy and Marines.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: For those wondering "Why?"

Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine missions (with aircraft) are completely different.

Air Force - air to air engagements, long distance bombing runs, and related support to the other services from land based aircraft.

Navy Aviators: Aircraft carriers, remote island air bases, and "First Strike" long distance air to air and air to ground combat missions, as well as at-sea operations (including at-sea rescue).

Marine Corps: Ground support, air to air combat, "first strike" and beach landing support (as well as general support of Naval operations)

Army: Mostly helicopters for air to ground and recon in support of major land engagements.

So each has aircraft, but they are different because the missions are different. I do not think Air Force needs carrier-capable aircraft nor to practice carrier landings. Similarly short range bombers launched from carriers should not be expected to fly long distances nor carry huge payloads like a B-52. Different missions.

When I was on a sub back in the day we would occasionally have Marines on board. Their mission was to guard and defend. I generally stayed out of the radio room and other places they were involved in so did not see them much. But sometimes 4 or 5 marines would be on the ship for a given mission, whatever it might be. Jokingly we patrolled "the sewers of Moscow" back during the cold war. And so my job was to help push the mobile surveillance and weapons platform through the water. The marines probably had to guard things that probably had much higher classification than I was allowed to know anything about, and to defend that equipment and/or secret and see to its destruction in the event of capture (and possibly shoot anyone with intimate knowledge of it including themselves). So there you have it, different mission, so different service, and they ride on ships when needed to perform that mission.

[That's kinda how it works in the U.S. military]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: For those wondering "Why?"

I sort of mentioned the funding angle. It's easier for lawmakers to apportion money this way, and have a general idea of what it's going to be spent on, rather than "one big pile" to be fought over and apportioned according to bureaucratic whims of the moment.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: For those

Having a separate service that can focus on space IS a good idea. It helps to avoid the "monolithic bureaucracy" issues and the tendency to re-apportion funds if everyone must share from a great big pile. The pile will most likely be allocated according to the current whims of the bureaucracy...

Space Force, I imagine, could turn into something a lot more science-fictiony at some point. But will they use Naval ranks or the traditional Army-based ones? That is, will a Captain be an O6 or an O3 when there are actual SPACE SHIPS? Or will their be Privates and Sergeants, or Spacemen and Petty Officers?

Then again, 'Stellar Navy' could end up being its own service, too... to combat those "space pirates".

Harrrr!

Insteon's vanishing act explained: Smart home biz insolvent, sells off assets

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I do think....

you defined some actual good product ideas.

Now, instead of making them contact an outside server, run something on a PC or your phone to contact the device. Make it open source so you sell the hardware, and the software supports it as long as there are people willing to maintain it (including customers). This becomes a selling feature.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Appropriate Legislation

Perhaps a better take on that: the requirement to publish the specification so that competing services can support those devices (including non-profits and home-grown).

So if 'example' company goes titsup and the 'example.com' web service is no longer available, hackers should be able to produce an equivalent service, upload to "git repo someplace", maybe ask donations like with phone apps and firefox extensions, and then you do a config change on your device to point to "example.org" instead (or whatever, maybe even an IP address on your LAN) and then you get the functionality back (or a good portion of it, depending). And ISPs could even help by making it possible to tunnel and get a listening port for things _LIKE_ this.

That's how I see it, anyway. And the requirement to publish, and make firmware updates available (or source so that they can be MODIFIED) could be an "escrow" requirement before being allowed to sell the product, so that it only kicks in if the online service being provided is in any way discontinued. Then, customers have the opportunity for 'relief', which is better than having to throw "that useless brick" away, now that the company that manufactured and/or sold it dies.

Buying a cloud product has AN IMPLIED CONTRACT. It should be ENFORCED that way. At least, in "common sense" world...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: D-Link does it better

Still, "The Cloud"™ is _HIGHLY_ overrated...

A few years ago I was given one of those intarweb radios as a present for christmas or something like that. Cool idea, used it for years, then find out, no longer really works right any more, always dropping the connection and getting network errors [I can watch them with wireshark].all because Broadcom (who apparently had a closed source firmware thing going on all of these radios for a while, several different brands even) dropped ALL support a couple of years ago, and will NOT even allow the radio makers to SUPPORT IT THEMSELVES by UPDATING THE FIRMWARE on these devices and thereby keep the service going on their own... and therefore the radio effectively *DIED* because, hardcoded URLS (which I can observe in wireshark) and things like that. yeah, there are some hacks availoable to "make it work" but I do not want to do that. Making an RPi do its job instead.

So, if "Cloud" tech is SO FRAGILE and only lasts a HANDFUL of years before it effectively goes titstup, then UNLESS there is an OPEN STANDARD or OPEN SOURCE way of FIXING it ourselves, I'd say:

DO! NOT! BUY! CLOUD! TECH!!!

And THIS hurts their entire business model, not just because of me, but the bad taste that MANY OTHERS get in their mouths over the UNRELIABILITY of future support for something that SHOULD last for DECADES.

Plans for Dutch datacenter to warm thousands of homes

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I cannot resist...

Unagi. YUM! (it's my favorite Japanese food)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

you can use hot water to produce chilled water using an Absorption Chiller. However the temperature you would need is probably a LOT higher than that from the hot side of a cooling system for electronics. Still, there may be a way to recover the heat from cooling the electronics within the process.

Similarly, recovered heat from a data center cooling system could (in theory) at least reduce the electrical load needed to create chilled water in the summer by pre-heating or otherwise injecting recovered energy into the system.

Alternately, it may also be possible to use Peltier devices to generate chilled water from hot water, though I am not sure if there are any existing devices that have that kind of scale. Does NOT mean they cannot INVENT one!

So "solutions exist" but may require some cleverness and/or "scaling up".

The cogeneration system I worked with back in the 80's used engine jacket water and exhaust gas heat recovery to power an absorption chiller, pre-heat hot water (for a hotel), while generating electricity using a diesel generator running on natural gas. Excess electricity went on the grid, and it ran at full power all of the time.

Apple geniuses in Atlanta beat New York to the punch, file petition to unionize

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Down

Can't believe the US is so backwards on worker's rights.

See icon

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: It is interesting to see the moves to unionise

I hope they are not as stuck in the past as the ones here frequently are.

It depends on the union. Many are actually beneficial to both management AND employee, but this comes from many years of partnership, stock ownership plans, and a realization that pricing yourself out of a job is bad for EVERYONE.

The idea is to bring a "win" to both sides of a labor dispute if you want to be a SUCCESSFUL union. In the far past, when unions were needed to right social wrongs, it was "robber barons" vs "the exploited". Nowadays, not so much.

I hope a union does better than non-union for Apple Store employees; otherwise, they will become victims of exploitation on BOTH sides of the union (i.e. both management AND employee).

Some years ago the Baker's union here in Southern Cali-Fornicate-You priced the Hostess bakers out of a job. Hostess went belly-up and sold all of their intellectual property to "Little Debbie", who did NOT re-open the union bakery in Cali-fornicate-you, but instead took up new production under the Hostess brand and used their newly acquired recipes to re-establish the brand. Successfully.

Lesson learned: If you price yourselves out of a job, you might kill the company in the process.

OK less likely with Apple, but still...

Microsoft plans to drop SMB1 binaries from Windows 11

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

I was thinking that SMB v2 support was available earlier than that...

and then i found release notes for SMB 3.6 which confirms 2011

https://www.samba.org/samba/history/samba-3.6.0.html

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: That NAS under the stairs

Samba has supported SMB versions greater than one for quite a while now. If the NAS was designed before 2008 then maybe it would have SMB 1 only on it. But as hard drive sizes have improved so much since back then, I wonder why anyone would be using the old ones still... (my hard drives that are as old as that have all gone titsup long ago)

Vista was the version that introduced SMB v2 (along with server 2008). So XP and earlier have V1. I would guess that if you use '9x for old games or XP for any reason, you _might_ have trouble if SMBv1 stops being supported at all...

/me has an old XP-based book-sized Lenovo that does 3D printing occasionally

Departing Space Force chief architect likens Pentagon's tech acquisition to a BSoD

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: He's not very involved with his work.

an overheated CPU would do it - BSoD may be the least of the outcomes. Seen it, dust in the cooler and you're doing a long build or something.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: COTS

back in 2010-ish i worked on a system that used drones and wifi and mesh networks for ground-air-ground battlefield communications. It was part of a proposal to the DoD. It did not get the contract, though. Point is, like many such DoD contracts, you have competing businesses offering their solutions, and as long as the specification is clear and the solutions meet the requirements, they pick the one to go with, etc. (usually the lowest bidder, but not always).

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: COTS - Crap Off The Shelf

eh, your list is less than satisfactory since OSs like Linux, being open source, can be forked and maintained domestically.

However, _I_ would focus on the HARDWARE. Think of this: how MUCH of a typical computer is MADE FROM OVERSEAS MANUFACTURED COMPONENTS?

And THAT is the crux of the problem, as I see it. In a war, your "friend" could become your ENEMY, and with the CCP [consider their current posturing] and the Russia/Ukraine war, this is even MORE evident.

FreeBSD (and the other BSDs) were at least FORKED from things invented in the USA. I thought I might just mention that. And, again, open source makes it possible for DoD to maintain it themselves.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Alert

keep in mind that the Pentagon needs to consider a few things:

* Foreign made equipment is not under their control

* Foreign made equipment can have design features NOT conducive to national security (back doors, kill switches, things the CIA has ALREADY [allegedly] done to others I might add)

* If a war breaks out and they need MORE of this stuff, an embargo would SERIOUSLY screw things up [a single EMP might make that a necessity]

and stuff like that. "Not Invented Here" is a BAD thing for national defense.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: reinventing the wheel

as Henry Ford said, "you can have any color you want, as long as it is black" (with reference to the model T).

Or he said something very similar to that. It made sense when he was trying to significantly lower the average cost of ownership, which was his primary goal at the time.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: reinventing the wheel

car makers "re-invent the wheel" all of the time.

It is NOT necessarily "a bad thing".

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: It can't...

I think China is already ahead on the manufacturing side...

(the Pentagon could, in fact, expedite domestic factories to REPLACE them, a kind of 'DARPA' project that would ultimately help I think, especially with the constant supply disruptions)

Ryzen Pro CPUs are better for work than Intel's, claims AMD

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Could do with the power saving..

similarly, in my home-based office, summer heat is only contributed to by inefficient hot-running CPUs. It's gotten better for me when the old Intel quad core (from 2007-ish) was replaced with a more efficient Ryzen 3.

(the number of CPU fans making noise is also a lot less)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

Re: Microsoft's Pluton security processor

"Gobble". heh.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Microsoft's Pluton security processor

if there is an open source driver for it in the Linux kernel, it will be possible to DISABLE it.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Well...

I bought a 6 core Ryzen to build a second workstation about 3 years ago, then had to re-do the other workistation last year when the quad core Intel (>15 years old) went titstup. I could not get the same processor as before, so I settled for one that was a "true quad core" and not a hyperthreaded 6 core.

Still happy with the results. But of course this older quad core Ryzen 3 won't do Windows 11 in a VirtualBox VM (it runs FreeBSD, naturally, with which I get _WORK_ done). But who need Win II anyway right?

Maybe the CPU shortage problem is artificial... plenty of slightly older ones, but with artificially high demand on bleeding edge (caused in part by Win II) we have shortages. Happened with RAM, too, back in the mid 90's.

Shanghai lockdown: Chinese tech execs warn of supply-chain chaos

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Down

Re: Blame the CCP and Winne the Pooh

see icon

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Down

Re: Get out

"Effective Lockdown" - BULL! SHIT!

Can I do 1,000 thumbs down?

(in reality it is the human immune system that is the winner here)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Get out

locking up 25 million people for 1000 TIMES THAT MANY 'COVID deaths' would STILL BE INSANE.

More people die of CANCER, HEART ATTACKS, CAR ACCIDENTS and DRUG OVERDOSES per capita in the USA, If I Remember Correctly.

Life *IS* risk. Only a COMMUNIST would treat people like this.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Blame the CCP and Winne the Pooh

Communism. It is *STILL* evil, even in 2022.

(any questions? Just LOOK at how they treat their OWN PEOPLE!!! Would YOU want to live like that? Well if you do, move to COMMUNIST CHINA, and leave the REST of us OUT of that EVIL SYSTEM)

Twitter faces existential threat from world's richest techbro

bombastic bob Silver badge
WTF?

see icon

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Twitter - the pinnacle of soundbite crap

Brevity can be 'the soul of wit'. I actually remove a LOT from my own posts and try to keep this in mind. So I'll edit out the examples I COULD have said and keep it short. As an example.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Most of us don't give a toss.

Explain to me, please, why was banning Trump a GOOD thing for Tw[a,i]tter?

And, why is ENDING (apparently) POLITICALLY MOTIVATED BANS *BAD* for them?

Without opposing ideas, there really is NO discussion. If Tw[a,i]tter wants a platform that has actual DISCUSSION on it, instead of being an echo chamber for "the left" and "the woke" (which really IS boring), they will HAVE to end their (alleged) "high school clique group" and "this is OUR country club" EXCLUSIONARY and DISCRIMINATORY policies.

Signed: "The Kind of Riff Raff" they do not want on their golf course

(this is another way of saying that they just might be SNOBS, in case that was not obvious, heh heh heh)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Twitter's job is to be Twitter – not to make people rich

If censoring [read: banning, silencing] everyone who disagrees with "the woke" is "altruistic" or a "noble idea" over which a tech company were founded, then that company DESERVES to "go broke" and SHOULD abandon such "noble ideas" or "altruism" in favor of WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT.

Then again, if the original altruism were "do no evil", they'd be like GOOGLE...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Twitter's job is to be Twitter – not to make people rich

Accepting a financial loss over the altruism of being "woke" is what Big Tech is often about, these days... or like what many have said, "Get Woke, Go BROKE!"

I prefer the TRULY open platform WITHOUT the woke-style "moderation" [read: censorship], that we all probably assume Musk wants for it, minus the "woke hysteria" about Nazis and hate speech (which is how 'the left' tries to MANIPULATE people into FEELING, not thinking, that Musk wants Tw[a,i]tter to become 'that').

icon, because, facepalm. the purpose of a company is to MAKE MONEY.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

a sarcasm icon

will this do?

Windows 11 usage stats within touching distance of... XP

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

RE: This situation will likely continue [until] businesses are given compelling reason to upgrade

But... But... NEW! SHINY! New *AND* Shiny! And... and... and... ELEVEN! Yeah we turned windows up to 11 this time! Yeah, it's a HIGHER NUMBER than Ten, which means BETTER!

So, we MUST upgrade, even if it reduces efficiency or adds to the daily cost of operation.

</snark>

bombastic bob Silver badge
FAIL

They want us to "up"grade for the sake of "up"grading, when there is NO! CLEAR! ADVANTAGE! to doing so (and very very likely, an (un?)intended cost goes along WITH it).

Once again, Micros~1 appears to have NO clue about what customers want or need.

[I guess their sales and marketing droids cannot sell ice cubes in Siberia any longer]

ESA: Fly me to the Moon, just not on a Russian rocket

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Crew flights delay

better to have delays than dead astronauts...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Lockheed needs to drop their bureaucracy and get off their backsides and step up to the plate.

(yeah easy to say from my arm chair,huh!)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: If the Ruskies want it...

lets not forget they still have stuff.

And they have some really good engineers, too, a few of whom I worked with directly a decade or so ago.

Too bad their GOVERNMENT SUCKS...

(If Vlad the Putinator just STOPS attacking Ukraine and pulls out, and all troops go back to Russia, and they just lick their wounds for a bit instead of pursuing this STUPID war, they'd soon have PLENTY of money to improve their space program... but since Pootie is BAT GUANO INSANE, I doubt he will. He thinks like he's Stalin)

Microsoft-led move takes down ZLoader botnet domains

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: Whack-a-Mole

In the 'pest control' business, they call it 'pest control' and not 'pest elimination'.

The fact that you can not eliminate them all does not stop you from trying.

As I was told by a pest control guy once (when it was my job to lead the pest controllers around the hotel to service the baits and spray stuff), you do not eliminate them, but if you do not see them, they are "controlled". It's when you start to see the pests that they are no longer "in control" and you need to take additional action.

Similarly, botnets and online criminals, in general. Eliminating them (or at least, TRYING to) is "pest control".

icon, kinda like skull and cross-bones on pest spray.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pint

Congrats where it is due

Although Mictros~1 most definitely has a stake in this (chances are that botnets consist of WINDOWS machines), I have to congratulate them on a job well done, taking out another botnet.

Beers, sirs!

Intel’s neurochips could one day end up in PCs or a cloud service

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

I am intrigued by the possibilities

Looking forward to having voice command and general speech recognition that does NOT transmit what I say (or room background noise) to "the cloud" but instead keeps it on some device that I own and have control over.

I'd also like to see this as a USB HID device with hotkey support and things like that. Or it could even be a new class of HID device (not a keyboard or mouse or touch screen) with the kinds of capabilities that allow you to input hot-key combinations or "run this application" kinds of commands.

All good, I think! And, NO "out to the cloud" with what I'm saying or what background noises are in the room at the moment...

COVID-19 contact tracing apps were suggested as saviors. They sometimes delivered

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

how much of that mortality was attributable to "the virus" and how much was from:

* untreated medical conditions OTHER than "the virus"

* drug abuse

* psychological (including suicide)

* stress-induced (like heart attacks and some strokes)

* outright dangerous behavior driven by anger over the lockdowns, etc.

There are many SECONDARY causes of death not directly attributable to "the virus" that have SIGNIFICANTLY increased since January of 2020 and I have only listed a FEW of them. But they COULD be attributed to THE POLICIES FORCED UPON US BY GOVERNMENTS....

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: Apart from not wanting, nor needing a Smartphone

I flat-out *REFUSED* to get a stupid corona virus test for several reasons:

* I had the damned virus before anyone (outside of China) had heard of it and got it from someone who'd been there over a week and had symptoms the day he came back to the office [and I was there for a meeting that day]. It lasted a day and returned in a milder form a week later, the first exactly 2 weeks after i was exposed.

* I probably had a mild version of every variant and was not all cowering in fear about ANY of it. Slight fever and head cold symptoms that go away within a day. Whoopee twiddle. I did not care WHAT it was since it never really affected me. And...

* The LAST thing *I* needed was to be QUARANTINED over a *FEVER* or a *COLD* with MILD SYMPTOMS.

* The panic and hysteria were NAUSEATING and I pressed the "F-it" button.

And if I am evar *MANDATED* to carry a smart phone with some stupid TRACKING [CR]APP on it, it would be with the battery REMOVED. [oops I forgot to put it in]. Last stupid mandate I completely IGNORED and nobody cared.

And a big DOWN vote for the ENTIRE ARTICLE, and EVERY DAMNED ONE of those stupid TRACKING [CR]APPS, along with the HYSTERIA-BASED RESPONSES from gummints.

(and I am not EVEN starting on a PROPER rant, when you look at JUST WHAT HAS HAPPENED in places like Shanghai where PEOPLE ARE LOCKED IN THEIR HOMES and SCREAMING OUT OF WINDOWS over it, or some of the more HEINOUS policies that have been implemented in AUSTRALIA of all places)

So YEAH, the LAST thing *I* will ever be is TRACKED for ANY reason by carrying a phone with me.