* Posts by bombastic bob

10507 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

Will I inhale coronavirus at this restaurant? There’s an app for that

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: “Killer App”

Ph33r 2.0 - NOW with more ANGST!!!

(we're all SO in for an awakening about this nonsense)

icon because FACEPALM

Web3: The next generation of the web is here… apparently

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

I was thinking web 3.141592...

"Pi are not square, Pi are ROUND!"

Google Chrome's upcoming crackdown on ad-blockers and other extensions still really sucks, EFF laments

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Will they then pay me?

in the case of web sites it is their choice to provide the content.

In the case of users with their phones, the bandwidth theft is STEALTHY

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Fork it and wave goodbye

what if they support the OLD API in parallel? Is there some technical reason why they can NOT ???

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: People don't care

re: EFF being a "Google chearleading group"

don't be so sure... this may be the proverbial straw we all need to convince them of the error of their ways, FINALLY breaking the camel's back while those of us in the REAL world say "see I told you so".

President Biden orders transformation of 'Federal Customer Experience'

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Interactions

be careful what you wish for... google analytics and CAPTCHA are TWO bad things I can think of at the moment (Cali-Forn-You already has CAPTCHA on their web pages)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

a unicorn - you DO have a point!

Sadly...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Down

Re: Customer survey email

"pandering to the perception" is NOT comedy. Neither is injecting race.

Intel's mystery Linux muckabout is a dangerous ploy at a dangerous time

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: What security nightmare?

in order to insert a kernel module you need to be root

in order to modify an existing module you need to be root

doesn't that kind of defeat the possibility of an exploit?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: "Open source is there to be subverted"

if subscription models start to take hold for hardware activation, an alternative WILL present itself, or market forces will drive sales to the floor. It would be like paying rent for your car engine. NOBODY would EVAR do that.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

I also like NVidia. I have no problem with BLOBS because sometimes they are necessary, for regulatory reasons (WiFi drivers) as well as graphics stuff. So long as the driver has the right hooks that enable kernel reconfig and recompile, that is good enough for me. No need to force everyone to unzip their secret compartments for everyone (and their competition) to go fishing in.

At least they ARE supporting Linux, and in NVidia's case, also FreeBSD

(my 2 FreeBSD workstations have NVidia cards and I am happy with them)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: What security nightmare?

Compiled into the kernel? (other than embedded, who does this any more?)

I would expect that this kind of support would be in a dynamically loaded kernel module, loaded as needed.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

It's the new kinder gentler less profane and angry Linus, now. Extreme prejudice, maybe, but no unkind words about the submitter's mother.

Some dry wit and well targeted adjectives might be in order, though...

Intel has to consider the perception of "unlock keys" for their hardware. I think it will cause them to lose sales. I bet AMD is paying very close attention. (they could easily implement this as part of the final assembly and test process and not reveal it exists outside the company, then just sell it with a different model number)

Also worth mentioning, RPi has a feature unlock key for a hardware MPEG decoder last I checked.

CentOS Stream 9: Understanding the new Red Hat OS release for non-Red-Hat-type people

bombastic bob Silver badge
Stop

anti-business sentiment may get you upvotes, but people do not work for free. Money has to come from somewhere and pay for the development. Though I think Poettering should not be paid for what HE did to Linux (systemd, pulseaudio, etc.) the reality is that people who work on Linux often need paychecks.

So there you go. And the more talented you are, the more pay you should get (based on the value of your work, of course).

That being said, IBM is traditionally good at marketing, and that may be a great benefit to RH. Down side, they are going to want to be paid somehow. So IBM hardware with RHEL is a likely solution they would offer, bundled because it all makes sense.

And I still think that if RH needs more money, they just need to add enough value to their offerings that people are willing to pay for them.

Or else, Rocky Linux is starting to look pretty good.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Stop

Re: No thanks.

when you have options, if there is value added to paying for support, go for it. The salary of your own Linux guru vs paying RH for their expertise is one of those choices the bean counters make.

So if you do not need support, use CentOS or Rocky or one of the others. RHEL if you need support.

And maybe RH should start making it more valuable to buy the support... (not by taking away competing distros but by offering more and more services)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: No thanks.

I recently installed the latest Rocky Linux and it "worked out of the box", though I ran into a problem caused by one of the pre=installed packages (it was using a hard-coded IP address for something and it happened to match the IP of my intarwebs gateway - fixing that was a bit of a pain but a recursive grep for the IP address in /etc found the files responsible and I changed them, all good). Mostly I need to stay current and informed which is why I installed it in a VM for testing/eval.

Unfortunately no Mate support, though. There are some instructions in various places (that I did not try) to install Mate but it's not officially part of Rocky, which tries to track RHEL as faithfully as they can like CentOS used to. And on the official IRC channel it's a friendly bunch of people.

A third of you slackers out there still aren't using HTTPS by default

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: exactly

self-hosted web pages (I like setting up my own frequently used link pages this way) and embedded systems (that only access 'localhost' let's say for a web-based UI) ABSOLUTELY DO NOT NEED HTTPS or SSL (in general).

For this reason as well, "legacy" (not encrypted) http access MUST remain available.

And can you imagine implementing SSL on an ARDUINO? You _CAN_ implement a config web page (I have done it) using a wifi or ethernet shield... using "legacy" http.

Google advises Android users to be careful of Microsoft Teams if they want to call 911

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: What else is Teams doing?

Is it monitoring every call on your phone, or absolutely everything thing you are doing.

yeah, like in WHAT THE HELL, MICROS~1 ???

(see icon - this is ACTUALLY VERY VERY VERY BAD)

The Omicron dilemma: Google goes first on delaying office work

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: QALY

Thank you for the doom and gloom.

As for me, if I had not already established natural immunity by having recovered from the virus in early January of 2020 (2 weeks after a co-worker returned from China and had to go home sick half way through the day) I might consider DELIBERATELY "catching" the Omicron variant because it has been heavily reported that along with its much more infectious nature, it has ALSO evolved into a less deadly version of itself. And as such, it is likely that recovery from THIS version would at least partially inoculate you for the OTHER variants... just like a vaccine based on the first version of the Wuhan Flu (upon which the existing vaccines were based) should at least PARTIALLY protect you from serious infection from the variants.

Remember "Cow Pox"? It is probably the first documented vaccine, which protected people from getting smallpox. A brilliant British physician discoverd this in the late 1700's and by the early 1800's it was being used to eliminate smallpox. Something to consider. The practice of weakening "the cause of the disease" and exposing people to it (there's a name I cannot recall) had already been established but was not widely practiced. This was done with Cow Pox, and then "test" patients exposed to weakened smallpox (and did not catch it), similar to modern day clinical trials and double-blind tests. It really was cutting edge stuff at the time. And it saved lives, DELIBERATELY giving people a weaker version of a disease that caused the immune system to recognize the deadlier one.

But yeah, doom and gloom scares people into letting go of their freedoms and voting for people that manipulate them. Can't have any TRUTH or REAL cures, now can we?

Meg Whitman – former HP and eBay CEO – nominated as US ambassador to Kenya

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

I think I wanna hurl...

see icon

Aircraft can't land safely due to interference with upcoming 5G C-band broadband service

bombastic bob Silver badge
FAIL

Re: WTAF?

Are you sure it was the FAA and _NOT_ the FCC behind this?

Regardless, crashing airplanes hurts EVERYBODY (not just those on the plane)

Flash? Nu-uh. Windows 11 users complain of slow NVMe SSD performance

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

I'm still going to stick with 10 7 until I absolutely can't, though.

fixed it for ya!

Intel updates mysterious 'software-defined silicon' code in the Linux kernel

bombastic bob Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: Trust free zone

From the article: allows users to activate dormant features in silicon

Malware authors aren't "users". And they (probably) already thought of at least 9 of those ways you mentioned...

AWS wobbles in US East region causing widespread outages

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: I’d love to comment but…

I've been seeing load performance issues with things relying on googleapis all week, and youtube videos that just sit there not playing for several minutes within the last hour.

More may be broken than people are willing to admit...

(then again this is my anecdotal experience out here on the left coast of the USA, so YMMV)

Microsoft gives Notepad a minimalist makeover to match Windows 11 style

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Lipstick, pig, Windows

non-oinky end. I'd like to add THAT.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: FFS. How slapdash can Microsoft get? It's Notepad one of the simplest Apps ever written.

Pluma still runs rings around it. It's built around cairo and GTK 3 so it's probably possible to port it to windows...

So many cool features, too. I like the auto-indent and syntax highlighting, since I use it 99% of the time when editing code. And it's got TABS.

And on my Mate desktop, with "ClassicalOK" theme, it's NOT all 2D FLATTY FLATSO MCFLATFACE!!! And it has REAL scrollbars, not those "chrome-like" Adwaita scrollbars [like the ones I see in Notepad in the screenshots]. And I believe it has an undo buffer that's VERY deep... which, of course, is VERY nice to have at certain times.

Yeah, I just needed to make that point. Why can't Micros~1 just "GET IT" for once???

MySQL a 'pretty poor database' says departing Oracle engineer

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Captain Obvious

Micros~1 has another analysis product that's part of 'Office 364' (the name of which I cannot recall) so why do they need 'Excess' any more, right?

I have seen (and played with) Libre's "Base" and it seems kind of primitive but does a lot of what I used to do wtih Excess a couple of decades or so ago...

But as for MySQL and its quirks (example: for embedding a single quote in a text column, MySQL breaks the rules established by the SQL standard) I had a HELL of a time setting it up. And like it has been mentioned in the article, setting up PostgreSQL is pretty simple. In fact i did it last week to create a test database for adding new tables, etc. and a web-based UI to query things. Needed a test database so I did not disturb the production one. And the production one is actually on a USB drive plugged into an RPi 3b+. (it analyzes final testing phase of a piece of equipment that goes through a rigorous test, with various things tracked like serial numbers, any repairs that were done, test results, and so on and a cron-activate script sends a ZIP file of psql output every weeknight to someone to be imported into that Micros~1 thing I could not remember the name of).

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: There is no reason not to choose Postgres

dBase - the first and the WORST!

Clipper, at least, was compilable into something that could interface with C. So for some stuff it almost made sense... except it did not do SQL and STILL stored numbers in the tables as FREAKING TEXT.

I'm glad it all just faded away...

China's Yutu rover spots 'mysterious hut' on far side of the Moon

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Get the popcorn ready....

First thing I thought of was a chunk of something we sent there...

How about the bottom half of the LEM that was tested by Apollo X ??? Or the top half of a LEM that was launched into orbit to return astronauts to the Apollo command module? Those things were dropped back onto the moon, so maybe just "space junk". That's what I'm thinking.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

Re: What if it's full of Rabbits?

maybe they'll offer us some mochi...

Netgear router flaws exploitable with authentication ... like the default creds on Netgear's website

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Linksys?

my very old DLink wifi router (which is ONLY on the LAN) has a checkbox to allow remote admin from outside the LAN, i.e. via the WAN port. Of course it is OFF. I think there's also another one that allows someone on the wifi network to configure it, and I believe THAT one is OFF as well.

(unfortunately they were ON by default, as I recall - it has been many years since i set it up)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Bombe

and, if I remember correctly, we can indirectly thank the way the Nazis often (robotically) included certain phrases at the beginnings and endings of the messages, apparently longer and more consistent phrases than the usual "Dear sir"

Also if I remember correctly, there were 2 codes used. Code #1 was in the book, and the 2nd code was encoded using the 1st one. but lazy operators might re-use the same code for the 2nd one. And so there you have it... procedural insecurity, ripe for being cracked by brilliant code breakers. (Bletchley Park is such a cool study on ciphers and cracking them)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The world needs to be reformatted.

I recently upgraded to a new ISP (now AT&T) and the modem it uses has a default "alphabet soup" password that is restored on factory reset. It appears to be uniquely assigned, and as it's printed on a sticker on the modem itself, and can ALSO be changed (until the next factory reset), I would think that this might satisfy a reasonable security requirement for NOT using identical default passwords and still provide for recoverability (etc.).

At least, as far as I know, none of the (uniquely) pre-assigned passwords are "admin" "love" "sex" "money" "password" or "god"

(so yeah it is one way to do it)

Prisons transcribe private phone calls with inmates using speech-to-text AI

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Difference?

and the irony that there seem to be activists for "Prisoner Privacy", like this is "UPSIDE DOWN CLOWN WORLD" or something...

What will life in orbit look like after the ISS? NASA hands out new space station contracts

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The best technology of the '70's. Again.

I wonder if Musk would actually build an Arthur C. Clarke style "spinning wheel" space station on his own... (naw he'd probably ask for gummint money anyway, it's what he does, heh)

But chances are, a SpaceX space station would outperform at a lower cost. My $0.20 worth (was $0.10, formerly $0.02, but inflation again)

Maybe a tire company can build inflatable sections?

US trade watchdog opposes Nvidia's Arm buy, mostly over fears about datacentre innovation

bombastic bob Silver badge
Holmes

ok - you can start an investment firm to buy it maybe? And it will need R&D funds to invest in future product development or you'll end up doing harm to ARM [bad poetry] in the long term.

(large companies like NVidia have deeper pockets, especially when it comes to R&D budgets for new product development)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: This is Silly... There is plenty of competition in the CPU space

"65K" - you meant "68K" right?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

what would the advantage be for NVidia to do this deal?

S.O.C. bundling of NVidia tech comes to mind. Broadcom does this for the CPUs used by RPi (with videocore), by the way, along with other 'integrated things'. I wonder if it would be more competitive to have an NVidia ARM CPU like this, and more efficiently made when ARM designers are integrated into the process ?

With a lawsuit, perhaps a compromise would prevent future abuse? Or, more likely, it would just enrich the L[aw]YERS as a TOLLBOOTH on the road to success.

NixOS and the changing face of Linux operating systems

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

one freedom that open source software brings to the enterprise world includes the ability to FIX THINGS YOURSELF.

So any package wrapper that includes all versions of all libraries that are natively compiled and guaranteed to work together needs a SOURCE PACKAGE to build them all together, as well as run them all together. I am not familiar enough with these systems to know whether or not they already do this, but it would be akin to using the 'ports' system on FreeBSD to do 'build from source' on EVERYTHING.

Now if an executable ships as binary with a container, the GPL'd lib sources and binaries would need to be there too, so you can fix things. Making a "source package" for the entire container should actually make GPL compliance easier (and more portable).

Google sued for firing staff who claim they tried to follow 'Don't be evil' motto

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Politics, not Good

regardless of how anyone "feels" (the F word, "Feel") unless laws are being broken, being insubordinate and/or protesting your employer CAN get you fired. And, generally, SHOULD.

Still, lefties running Google vs lefties formerly working AT google, arguing about the meaning of "do no evil" - like a rake fight between technologically challenged religious people, or sumo mud wrestling , or even an old fashioned demolition derby, it's probably going to be "popcorn worthy".

Microsoft's Teams Essential tier seems designed to coax people on to Business Basic

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Global warning

I've noticed a tendency for Micros~1 applications to "spin" - i.e. 100% CPU utilization while waiting for stuff to happen, since the Win-10-nic beta. It seems to be most prominent when run in a VM. I think this has never been properly fixed. Worth noting, Win NT 4 in a VM spins at 100% continuously, and I think 2k does also, but XP and later do not.

Aside from those observations, if the CPU utiliztion is pegged at 100% expect:

a) no clock throttling to lower CPU power requirement

b) lousy 'idle mode' processing

c) background things not being scheduled often enough

d) fan stays on or cycles on/off way too much

conclusion; not good for battery capacity

If I am right, some coder needs to fix his code to do more intelligent thread handling and NOT spin/poll on any shared object without inserting a time delay that guarantees the CPU will briefly enter an 'idle' state.

'Teams' apparently falls in the same trap, if I read the tea leaves correctly.

(good luck getting them to fix it)

Could we use an LLVM-based cross-compiler to build apps for quantum computers? This alliance says yes

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: H(qb1);

a 'hello world' example might have been more helpful

That, and NOT using single char function names.

Think that spreadsheet in your company's accounts dept is old? 70 years ago, LEO ran the first business app

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

Re: Can someone explain

accounting, M.R.P., inventory control, and orders+deliveries.

The heart of business computing. They were pioneers.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

interesting - SImH might be capable. anyone have the manuals and wanna write it?

There's a github repo HERE if anyone wants to contribute...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Not forgetting Turing

it must be a good eay for computing.

If you follow the link to the B&W original pic of the LEO and zoom it in to 300% or so you can see the vacuum tubes in the right-most uncovered panel. The ones on top look like octal types (maybe rectifiers) and most of them look like 7 or 9 pin miniature types.

Tubes/valves eventually got smaller (micro-miniatures) until transistors were reliable and fast enough to replace them.

The only real limiter on speed would have been wire length and the mercury delay line RAM. Tubes could operate at hundreds of megahertz and gigahertz long before transistors. But the size and wire length would limit them. 1 meter of wire and you can no longer exceed 150Mhz, for example (assuming half a wavelength to be your limiter, round-trip logic pulse time basically)

Leaked footage shows British F-35B falling off HMS Queen Elizabeth and pilot's death-defying ejection

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Would suspect the

and here I was thinking 500 Server Error

Microsoft adds Buy Now, Pay Later financing option to Edge – and everyone hates it

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Worst! browser! bundling! since! "Pocket"!!!

someone had to say it. Punctuated "Bangs!" added for emphasis (and humor)

You, me and debris: NASA cans ISS spacewalk because it's getting too risky outside

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: In space

This is getting more and more like "Gravity" every day.

yet another call for some kind of solution, like maybe "space dredges" trawling some kind of net, electromagnetic and/or electrostatic means of collecting the debris, and so on. A focused beam of electrons [if you could sustain it] might put enough charge on tiny nearby objects to drive them towards a collection net, for example. But you'd have to have a way to maintain a huge charge difference between the negatively charged electron beam and a positively charged net dragging behind you, and not have the electrons just turn right around and short circuit the whole mess.

Can Rust save the planet? Why, and why not

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The language is not that important

There have been a few FORTRAN to C translator efforts. Some of them are pretty good. But yeah writing FORTRAN-like C code is actually pretty straightforward, turning FORMAT statements into equivalent C format strings and using printf.

The only thing to keep in mind is that FORTRAN functions and subroutines pass parameters by reference, so you'd use a pointer rather than a value to make it 100% equivalent. Reminds me of a bug some IDIOT that preceded me created by altering the value within the subroutine without realizing that it altered it in the calling function too, which caused a serious problem. THEN he didn't save his fixed source code and the only source was the broken version. Months later I had to make a change and used his broken code as there was no other source. Then I had to find out what he did and fix it... and that person's name will remain on my S list indefinitely.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Yes. I wondered something like that as well. Reliance on exceptions and other "object unwinding" kinds of inefficiencies may be a big part of their (unfair?) test.

Good C++ code looks a LOT like good C code. (I say this a LOT)