* Posts by bombastic bob

10515 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

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)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Dumping the cloud

The Cloud centralises computing and allows greater use of greener energy

so why arent we all just using big-iron timeshare systems, then? THAT centralises EVERYTHING, right?

I think you will find that this level of centralisation actually CREATES inefficiencies (such as a SHIT PILE of JAVASCRIPT on the clients to avoid clogging the cloud servers since they bill by the CPU usage) and we're actually experiencing WORSE overall efficiency as a direct result.

Where a non-cloudy "your server" solution may have simpler PHP and minimal scripting and (typically) smaller bandwidth requirements, a CLOUDY one will (no doubt) waste bandwidth with monolithic CDN-fed javascript libraries [that are unfortunately 'common' {in a computing sense} and typically cached on user's browsers, even after you hit F5 on chrome] so that you can minimize CPU instances and related costs.

yeah, it HAS spawned THE MESS, to be "too cloudy" and "too central". 'More of the same' will NOT fix it.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

FORTRAN and COBOL (capitalized because that's what you do, it's their names) can be easily learned from a book in a few days. Yes, that's how I learned them. C takes a bit longer, mostly because of pointers and arrays and the various nuances of type casting. Once you "get" that, no problem.

The difference between procedural and structured languages (in general) is why C basically took over as the common denominator for so many OTHER languages, though you COULD say it was really ALGOL wut dun it...

So now you have this "more complicated to learn" structured lingo (Rust) with its promoters trying to take over as the NEW favored lingo, where an easier to learn and slightly more efficient decades-established universal programming language (C) has been learned by pretty much everyone, and it seems we're all expected to JUST CHANGE and "accept it" now...

(I have to wonder if those who promoted Ada "felt" the same way...)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: That learning curve

Inigo Montoya might have somehing to say about that...

That term does not mean what you think it means...

Smart things are so dumb because they take after their makers. Let's fix that

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I have a semi-serious proposal

when i deconstructed his sentence it seemed that some of it could have applied to his grandmother, and not Grace Hopper. It seemed a bit ambiguous to me.

I once saluted Capt. Grace Hopper when she was the RTC commander in Orlando, Fl. I was near her office for some reason (3rd class petty officer at the time), she came out, so I gave her a salute thinking "wow a lady captain - she must be the RTC commander". found out later who she was.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

"You had a problem" - the OS equivalent of a "check engine" light.

It helps keep back yard mechanics and knowledgeable users from fixing their own schtuff.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: "Consumer IoT IT, in short, is the worst IT in the world"

well if you use a tiny processor to control the thing, with an external (but on board) wifi or ethernet to talk between CPU and world, the cost of something that can support more sophisticated access (including security) may simply be too high.

(less sinister, more practical, without denying the possibility of "sinister anyway")

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: What are error messages for?

Obviously. The whole point is to 1. force users to pay monthly subscriptions, and 2. to collect valuable user data you can sell for profit. The initial product, the light bulb, is just a loss leader.

Sadly I can NOT think of ANY other reasonable excuse for making a "light blub" require a cloud server to operate.

Here is what it COULD do instead, if limited to IPv4 and a small amount of NVRAM (like an AVR processor) to communicate: You just need to listen on the LAN with IPv4 [assuming it is behind a firewall] and assign it a name via mDNS so you can query for and/or activate the right "blub".

for access from outside, you could still do cloudiness, if you really want to.

(this is NOT rocket surgery)

And if your always on PC had an application running with motion sensors and "blub" control, for an automatic house, there's NO need for cloudy-BS to be a "man in the middle"

Sweden asks EU to ban Bitcoin mining because while hydroelectric power is cheap, they need it for other stuff

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: I second that request.

I don't actually do any crypto mning, but the fact remains that if you're going to JUST make heat with electricity, you might as well get some work out of it in the process. Actually, locating the crypto mining gear in a place where you have to run it MOST of the time (even in summer) to make things comfortable would make a lot of sense.

But if you wanted REAL efficiency you'd have a Cogen setup, with an absorption chiller for summer. Still 300% for a heat pump system is pretty good. But that depends a LOT on what the temperatures are. Higher delta-T means lower efficiency. And mining bitcoin typically creates MONEY. So it's a question of whether the bitcoin mining pays for itself (and you get the 'free' heat out of it), in my view. You know, like COST efficiency.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Stop

Re: Quite

and yet converting electricity to heat is GROSSLY inefficient compared to OTHER sources of heat (natural gas and propane probably being the two best, and heating oil the next best, as far as any kind of "pollution" claim goes).

If you must waste electricity producing heat, make it produce something else (then let the waste heat of THAT process heat the rooms). You know, like BITCOIN MINING.

As I mentioned earlier, CO-GENERATION. Make heat and electricity at the same time, efficiently.

(or are we still stuck on that pseudo-science CO2-based man-made climate change nonsense, even though CO2 does not act like a greenhouse gas for black body radiation emitted by temperatures actually FOUND ON EARTH except maybe volcanoes and Antarctica).

bombastic bob Silver badge
Stop

Re: I second that request.

the heat generated by crypto-mining vs the heat generated by coiled resistance wire or heat pumping systems... which one is actually DOING WORK that might return VALUE?

Just thought I'd point that out.

(using a fully loaded multi-core CPU+GPU crypto mining setup to provide electric heat in places where electric heat makes sense... go fig)

You know what makes sense to ME? Co-generation, that's what. An engine making electricity, then capture the waste heat from the engine and heat buildings with it.

And maybe the extra 'trons from the generator can mine some bitcoin.... and heat some additional rooms.

BOFH: What if International Bad Actors designed the vaccine to make us watch more Steven Seagal movies?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coat

Re: 5G for mind control?

you do not need 5G or nanobots for mind control. You just need certain "news networks" repeating random tweets and blog posts and "sources say" as if they were "news"...

(oops I forgot my coat, it's the one with the 5G dumb phone in the zipper pocket)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Stop

Re: Disappointing

Simon had the right approach: just ask questions.

(anything else simply sounds arrogant, condescending, smug, and/or elitist, and depending upon the subject matter, might actually be JUST THAT and even DEAD WRONG in the process)

"Mr. Gallilleo, EVERYONE KNOWS that the sun moves across the sky and that the Earth is in the center of the universe. THE most educated people agree, and here YOU are insisting that the SUN is the center of a "solar system" of planets, one of which is the earth, that revolve around it. DID NOT THE BIBLE SAY that the SUN WAS HELD STILL IN THE SKY for Joshua when he asked God to do it?" Now where have we heard THIS sort of thing before... [this is why science has experimentation and peer review, and a good scientist is JUST as excited when he was wrong as when he was right, discovering the truth in the process]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: It's not just the doctors ...

that filling you just got has a chip inside...

(and the crown has an entire microcontroller in it, beaming signals into your brain - nevermind what they're doing with dental implants and full dentures these days)

bombastic bob Silver badge
WTF?

Re: Unfortunately...

40% of UK medical students are creationists

Staunch creationists tend to believe it because they believe their religion teaches creation and so it becomes a religious thing. And if they have a high standard of morality as well (due to their religion) I think I can overlook any scientific disagreement with respect to 'origins', which generally have NOTHING to do with being able to provide medical treatment... right?

Besides, "intelligent design" (while going off into the weeds, I guess) could actually be a form of whole-species evolution, given the stress and threat of extinction if you do not adapt.

In other words I do not buy into ANY currently accepted model of evolution without repeatable scientific experiments showing something conclusive. Everything else is speculation (though personally I favor a model that includes evolution via epigenetics, and catastrophic "jumps" rather than gradual ones, and if a god is responsible I have no problem with that)

and honest religious doctors probably will not consciously inject you with nanobots

bombastic bob Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: I can disprove that

didn't they add DHCP to the vaccine to fix that problem?

anyway who needs nanobots when emotional manipulation and mob mentality still work, even after thousands of years of evidence that people should NEVER fall for any of it... but still do.

Mine's the hat with Titanium instead of Aluminum foil

Nuclear fusion firm Pulsar fires up a UK-built hybrid rocket engine

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Fusion rocket engines - the gist

Right, the basic idea is that you need to accelerate the mass you have at as high a velocity as you can get, meaning that the "burn" temperature will probably need to exceed the melting point of the engines for it to become efficient. The F1 (as I recall) burns kerosene+O2 which is heavier/denser than the H2+O2 used by the other stages. Granted the kerosene produces heavier exhaust and lower burn temp, but it's still hot enough to melt the engine. And so "a way" to keep from melting the nozzles needs to be there.

My assumption, in essence, is to blast water into a layer at the sides of the engine, then light off the fusion reaction in the middle near the focal point of a parabola (also surrounded by cooling liquid so that it does not melt either). The resulting temperature of the liquid would give you the 'v' part of the 'mv' impulse, and the overall energy of the reaction would increase the K.E. of the liquid to get you as high a 'v' as you can possibly get (thereby minimizing the mass of liquid needed to get thrust).

There were several fission based rocket engines tested in the 1950's and 1960's that were test-fired but never flew. It used nuclear fuel to heat liquid H2, but I think using water would have been a better design.

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

In short it's a way to get a bit more velocity by applying heat more efficiently to the "impulse fluid", and at much higher temperatures than you could get with a chemical burn. I expect fusion to be similar.

yeah no doubt better engines exist now than the F1 used in Apollo, but the design principles of fusion or fission exclude combustion kinds of things. Heating needs to be done differently, and gamma capture by the "impulse fluid" would be extremely effective (and not melt engine parts so easily)

years ago I figured out that a dense fluid that was heated and accelerated directly by fusion gamma and neutron radiation would give you the best fuel utilization efficiency, being as a heavy fluid does not need such a large tank to store it in...

[to double thrust you must either double exhaust velocity or double the mass flow rate. doubling mass flow rate takes twice the energy. doubling velocity takes 4 times the energy. doing the math, yeah)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Fusion rocket engines - the gist

Starting with hybrid engines, later evolving into fusion ones. Interesting.

Although it is PLAINLY obvious that a proper fusion-powered rocket engine would maximize efficiency, it will still need "a something" to fling out of the tailpipe at high velocity, as does the ion engine.

I suppose there are many ways of "flinging" but the only way I can think up looks a LOT like a standard engine, but 90% of the gamma+neutrons from the reaction would be absorbed by some hydrogenous liquid, like water, methane, or ammonia [which happen to be pretty abundant in our solar system] and then be expelled out the back end like regular rocket exhaust. "Impulse engine"

Current rocket tech runs at a temperature close to melting the engines for max efficiency and single-use. Obviously we want the re-usable kind. So efficiency MIGHT have to suffer a bit. Unless... you use the propulsion fluid itself to MAKE A LAMINAR BOUNDARY LAYER on the insides of the engine! It's something related to what is already being done, i.e. use fuel to cool the rocket nozzle. In any case some clever spark will hopefully come up with a design that captures as much energy from the fusion reaction as possible, and THEN flings it out the back in a way that maximizes utilization of kinetic energy (proportional to v-squared, how much energy is needed) and momentum (mass times velocity, and how you get thrust) along with fuel weight/mass and the overall weight/mass of the rocket itself.

(An ideal ratio of fuel use vs thrust vs reactor capacity just has to exist)

Anyway, just thought I'd mention that. Looking forward to something that ACTUALLY WORKS. 2025 - was that for the FUSION engine?

NOTE: a distance of about 30cm in liquid water is sufficient to absorb about 90% of gamma, and about 1 meter for 90% of neutrons. SO you would need an engine large enough to have the equivalent of liquid "that thick" to absorb most of the radiation and generate propulsion. The logistics of the placement of the fusion reaction itself might be the hardest part, but if you can just get most of that radiation into a hydrogenous liquid with a cooling layer protecting the metal parts, you SHOULD be able to get some very efficient thrust out of a reasonably sized engine.

Seaberry carrier board turns a Raspberry Pi into a desktop PC with 11 PCIe slots

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Not a surprise

well if I wanted a NAS solution I could use a USB 3 external drive, right?

FreeNAS is based on FreeBSD which (last I checked) supports RPi pretty well. (I actually contributed some code for that and tested on a 3B+for 12, and I think 13 has support for RPi 4).

So a simpler and cheaper NAS: just use a USB drive, run the OS from the SD card and use ZFS on the USB drive with FreeNAS or FreeBSD itself. No problem!! Low cost, too. And if you add a couple of USB 3 "thumb drives" with large storage capacity, even better.

Still having a bunch of PCIe interfaces available for an RPi is an interesting toy. Beyond that [for a real solution] not so much. The USB 3 ports on the RPi 4 should provide all of that and more.

Kremlin names the internet giants it will kidnap the Russian staff of if they don't play ball in future

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: a state run by mafia

If they were SERIOUS they would not make TROPISH BAD GUY SPEECHES.

They'd JUST F-ING DO IT.

What's the deal with ANNOUNCING YOUR PLANS like that... *INTIMIDATION* ???

("Bad Guy" monologues - like a poorly written B movie super-villain)

*FACEPALM*

This reminds me of that one scene from the old "Stargate SG-1" Sci FI TV series...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjlCVW_ouL8

NASA boffins seem to think we're worth saving from fiery asteroid death so they're shooting a spaceship at one

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Surely it would be better to bounce off than crash?

inelastic collisions will have a bigger effectl than a glancing elastic collision. If you are lucky enough to hit it straight on (so that all momentum transfers) like a billiard ball, then sure, why not. But the more likely scenario is a glancing blow that sends both objects off in predictable directions. So an inelastic collision (i.e. buries itself a few feet into the dirt on impact) would guarantee momentum is entirely transferred to the asteroid's moon.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: thinking we can "just" blow stuff like this up.

the REAL test is actually HITTING the moving asteroid moon in the right spot.

(that's one HELL of a shot, right? Any sniper would envy THAT one!)

SSL keys, sFTP passwords and more exposed after someone broke into GoDaddy Managed WordPress using 'compromised password'

bombastic bob Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: Always be in doubt when asked your details

and don't read those "confirm your identity" phishing e-mails in HTML format - they'll have deceptive links in them, most likely

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

I host my company web+mail using a simple ssh-shell shared hosting service. E-mail setup is very easy. It has PostgreSQL available too. But at this point I'm only using simple php and mail.

Point is there are MANY hosting options. Godaddy bought the service I was using, and this one was set up using former operators of the old service. You can probably guess who they are now. Godaddy basically moved the hosting and stopped supporting PostgreSQL and LetsEncrypt, so I went elsewhere. Something like that. (but i would probably have stayed with them if they had kept the features I wanted)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Why are they even holding "passwords"?

shouldn't these things go though a gibberishificator

well the way Linux and BSD do/have done it with a one-way hash+salt usually does the job. Just store the hash+salt, send credentials via SSL only. The hash can be publicly readable, too, won't matter if it's using a decent hash algorithm. I would expect MOST systems to do it this way, or very similar. No reversible password decryption ability, EVAR.

(anything LESS than that is completely insecure and unacceptable)

Rust dust-up as entire moderation team resigns. Why? They won't really say

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coat

the name 'Rust' is so CORROSIVE anyway, why not just fork it and call it... Belgium? Semprini? Throat-wobbler Mangrove?

no wonder the CoC team left....

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

It signifies that we are allowing the variable to take on the value it feels comfortable with.

good one!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: No one really knows publicly

We also asked on Twitter and no one seemed to know.

irony. heh heh heh heh

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Rust Alternatives and Roots

I think Java succeeded over C++ because it's portable

THAT would be a VERY good guess, In My Bombastic Opinion.

(it certainly makes sense to ME)

This particularly for GUI applications, and on platforms like Android that have traditionally used it almost exclusively for a very long time.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

Re: Sounds like the team

"WD" stands for "Water Displacer". Good for de-moisturizing electrical panels that were accidentally exposed to sea water.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: If it's important enough to resign

set themselves on fire in protest?

THAT would be popcorn worthy!

(seriously I just want to see them write quality code without running the project off into the weeds)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Linux a disaster with just one controlling voice which explains why it's had no real take up.

I thought the snark was pretty obvious, actually (or was I wrong?)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: A shame...

seems to be run by a top heavy bunch of managers

The bureaucracy-speak quoted within the article was making my brain fog and my eyes glaze over.

(Yeah I THOUGHT I smelled 'bureaucracy')

All of this anal retentivity over CoC and violations and bans and @#$% makes me wanna puke my guts out (wanting very much to continue on with something along the lines of "vacuous toffee-nosed malodorous pervert" like a famous Monty Python sketch... but would THAT violate their CoC? Oh the tangled webs we weave!!!)

Yeehaw, y'all! Texas done got itself a honkin' new Samsung semiconductor plant

bombastic bob Silver badge
Joke

Re: 5 Million Sq Meters?

"Everything's big in Texas"

reminds me of a joke where someone gets drunk and falls in a swimming pool at a Texas hotel and screams out "Don't flush, don't flush!!!" (up to that point he'd been given a 1lb hamburger and a 32oz beer because "Everything's big in Texas")

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Texans are proud of their "BBQ Tradition". When I was in Dallas a decade or so ago on a business trip (solve problem with customer integration of software) , the locals insisted on going to a food court for lunch one day where they served up traditional Texas style BBQ (slow cook, not grillin') and It was pretty good, so there ya go. Corn fed beef, too,.

PHP Foundation formed to fund core developers, vows to pay 'market salaries'

bombastic bob Silver badge
WTF?

Re: PHP - a language without any theoretical basis, accretiating over the years

I do not seem to have any trouble understanding how PHP is intended to work.

It is actually a LOT like the early IIS design (but that was in C as I recall). In short, a Perl-like interpretive language that has flexible named indexes for arrays and acts mostly like an HTML filtering language.

combine it with 'shell_exec' external utilities (written in whatever) and clever use of URLs and parameters, it's VERY powerful (and flexible).

But it's not really a "general programming" lingo.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Shut it down when the money runs out?

I wonder if it's even possible to write nice PHP

maybe it's because code like the kind _I_ write is never seen by most people...

either that or your semantics of what "nice PHP" is might be the defining factor. If you think of it as a programming language, rather than a web page filtering language, you might be greatly disappointed...

(I would much rather do server-side PHP-based things in lieu of browser-based javascript ANY time, and do as a matter of fact, whenever possible).

The kinds of things I like the best are when I get pages to post back to themselves (but with a GET or POST variable assigned to something) to a) show a "loading" or "waiting" screen, then b) refresh to the actual screen once the server-side code finishes generating the output. For device control where there are expected delays, this works VERY well. Simliarly you could do this for database results or anything that takes more than 1 second to load.

(in PHP it is easy, though I have some helper functions i typiccally put in an include file)

essentially:

$thingy = !empty($_GET) ? $_GET["thingy"] : "";

...

if($thingy == "")

{

? >

some web page with this in the head

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0.1;url=/thingy.php?thingy=Y">

< ?php

exit;

}

etc.

(spaces after less-than and before greater-than added to avoid errors posting)

Genetically modified E coli bacteria produce ink for 3D printing programmable objects

bombastic bob Silver badge
Alert

nano bioroids

essentially like nanobots to fix things in a human body, but biological ones. OK so far...

But what happens if the human immune system sees them as an infection when they are used as a treatment? I assume injecting them as part of a treatment, like little cancer eaters or something. Or maybe they just STAY in the lab and make designer drugs?

E-coli from other organisms (than yourself) can play havoc on your health. best not let this get out (like OTHER "things": that have been demonstrated to escape from a lab and cause WORLDWIDE HAVOC)

Server errors plague app used by Tesla drivers to unlock their MuskMobiles

bombastic bob Silver badge
Stop

Re: Internet dependency

You can "bluetooth key" multiple phones to the car and multiple cars to the phone

can I just TURN ALL THAT *OFF* ? And I use my dumb-phone if there's an emergency...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: Internet dependency

I'm keeping my 20 year old dino-oil burner.

The Rust Foundation gets ready to Rumbul (we're sure new CEO has never, ever heard that joke before)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Someone have to say it

why re-invent basic syntax just tko provide additional functionality?

Python's indent-based syntax is often criticized and hated, for example.

One version of BASIC that I worked with used ':' to separate commands on the same line. I think the ';' actually dates back to Algol, then Pascal and C both adopted it because it makes sense.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Garbage Collection

I am certainly NO fan of garbage collection. I think it is a CANCER that needs to be removed as an option. The best way to manage object lifetimes (outside of a single function) is with thread-safe reference counting, coupled with a little discipline like allocating and freeing an object ONLY via a constructor utility and a destructor (as an example) which would both employ reference counting so that the object can be shared and will live its life long enough to prevent GPF/PageFault and other nastiness.

As long as you can preserve the life of an object WITHOUT garbage collection, your programs will be faster, AT LEAST as reliable, and without the bloat/overhead that garbage collection would otherwise require. Bumping a ref count using atomic operators is often only a few CPU instructions.

(handle de-reference using sufficiently randomized handle values, along with an efficient hash, is one way to manage this - yes I do this myself, actually)

Web trust dies in darkness: Hidden Certificate Authorities undermine public crypto infrastructure

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: self-signed CA

on Linux and FreeBSD it appears that the cert list is protected.

OpenSSL has a utility 'certctl' for things like that.. 'certctl list' to see them.

on FreeBSD the files are in /usr/share/certs and it's writable only by root.

(I scanned the files and they all all read-only owned by root)

I would surmise that there is the ability to load local versions of these certs to extend the list. Firefox lets you add additional certs, for example (and it may have its own separate list)