Posts by bombastic bob 10282 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015
Because people are generally resistant to change.
particularly when:
* the change is NOT an improvement
* the change requires a learning curve
* the change breaks something I like
* the change was IMPOSED and was not an option nor a new feature that I had to "buy a new one" to get because I wanted it
You have to look at the nature of UI changes since the mid 2000's, beginning with Vista, "The Ribbon", Gnome 3, Australis, "The Chrome Look", Windows 8, Windows 10, yotta yotta.
It's NOT for the better... [when 7 and 8 machines were next to each other on the shelves, the 7 machines sold out while the 8.x machines collected dust, all other things pretty much equal. I don't recall which 'El Reg' article pointed it out, but I definitely remember it, and it was so long ago it's become hard to find, and I looked recently even with no success...]
And *YES*, I *DO* resist change, when it is WRONG TO CHANGE!!!
Changes in Windows that I liked:
* Win 3.0 3D Skeuomorphic look
* Visual C++ vs earlier (MS C/C++ with CodeView in text mode with dual monitors)
* Windows '95 [hybrid 32-bit and multi-thread]
* Windows NT 4.0 [even better]
* Win 2k and XP [which could revert to the 2k style start menu]
after that, not so much. 7 was welcome because it was "Not Vista" but I *STILL* like 2k and XP better!!!
Can't ANYONE JUST ADMIT that THE CHANGES AFTER 7 (and for Vista) SIMPLY *SUCKED* FOR THE CONSUMER???
I have spent hours working to retrain myself to use the search function.
search would be more useful if it DID! NOT! HIT! THE! INTERNET! first, or second even.
(has this been fixed yet? no need to track me via a search engine, after all... I've simply been NOT using it, Cortana or otherwise, even back in 7 or XP when it was more sane and did not hit teh intarwebz)
As for the 'new thingy' feature, I use it for directories ('Folders' for you young-uns) and (as mentioned) that all too useful "text documnt" for which I can provide a file extension [last I tried it]. Not very often, though, just sometimes when it's convenient. And I think you can do it inside of a ZIP archive.
'new shortcut' on the desktop, also very useful.
back in the day, one guy I knew would create nearly everything on the desktop like this, then move it where he wanted it afterwards.
I think I get what your real point is... "Perceived bullying" when it may actually NOT be happening.
Some people _DO_ seem to go about their lives waiting to be offended. At least, that's my perception and I suppose *I* could admit waiting for someone who seems to go about etc. etc. you all get the point right?
So it might be interesting to know what "experienced bullying" (in the survey) actually means, and not some vague description that's likely to cause emotional overreaction [i.e. polling to deliberately create an outcome to advance an agenda - yeah THAT never happens].
Think of it this way: was the SLOWPOKE who kept you from being ale to pass him on the highway this morning a BULLY and DOING IT ON PURPOSE? Or was it just some discourteous smug ass hat going about his self-centered existence? Or was it just someone who was clueless?
"Bullying" by many definitions exists throughout society, from subtle to overt. To fix it, let's start by ELIMINATING CANCEL CULTURE (number one on my pareto chart).
(and THEN be aware that accusations of bullying may actually be misunderstanding and need no further attention)
Still, if the hiring and recommendations DO have prejudice and discrimination inherent within them, THAT needs fixing as well. Sex, race, personal preferences, after-work behaviors, religion, politics, age, general appearance, and other "non-work-performance" issues shouldn't matter. EVAR..
> But let's not replace Linux on our desktops, oh no.
too late (by about 17 years or so)
(even if my 'Linux' is actually FreeBSD)
I actually think it might be time for Micros~1 to start open sourcing a lot of its stuff, to be peer reviewed and rapidly patched by the community at large.
(and maybe we'd get security fixes for XP and 7 to go with it, via pull request)
HR departments are one of the reasons I'm a contractor rather than an employee.
I agree with your assessment. also a contractor
H.R. doesn't have to make a profit within their department. Their motivations are COMPLETELY "Bass Ackwards". Even I.T. has to JUSTIFY it's expenses and head counts... and show how it is at least SAVING MONEY for the company in order to exist at all. But _NOT_ H.R.. They are like BUREAUCRATS working for a government agency in that regard...
(and I would expect more 'woke' and 'cancel culture' from within their ranks)
bypassing H.R. in hiring and job seeking is a good idea whenever possible.
As for whether it was Google's HR department that flagged this guy for termination, I wouldn't think his manager did it, nor his manager's manager. I bet they're too busy trying to keep their jobs, being faced with "bottom lines" and "deadlines" and "performance" and other more important "company profitability" things.
(I guess if he is a VP then it's the CEO, President and Board of Directors. Similarly them)
2D FLATSO is about as "artsy" as something drawn on an ETCH-A-SKETCH
These modern day "Picasso wannabe" types trying to be "artsy"... ~shudder~
/me imagines a Cartman popup, similar to Clippie, all 2D FLATASS like the rest of the interface, saying "Screw you guys I'm going home".
no shit THIS really happened...
A few decades ago I worked in the corporate materials department of a company that was setting up offshore operations in Singapore. As part of that, inventories of "free stock" (basically stuff you did NOT inventory for a very good reason) was shipped to them.
They sent a reported 1 million washers to the Singapore facility. After a short time, the Singapore manager(s) sent a fax or e-mail or something that basically said "we are short 42,381 washers" (or some similar number with 5 significant digits like it was THE actual number) and that they had RE-COUNTED to make sure!
The response from my department was something like "it is acceptable to count large quantities of small, low cost parts by WEIGHT, and the count of washers we sent you is within the tolerance of the parts weighing equipment"
Needless to say, the mental image of a room full of people counting washers one at a time...
the old network cables get turned into cat5-o-nine-tails. You need 5 of them to make it work right, fold 'em in half, half of one of the cables wraps around the bend to form a handle. Useful for correcting certain problems like nosy accountants and incompetent contractors...
Mice, keyboards, headphones, cables - all consumables.
printers, inexpensive laptops, small UPS devices, phones, and slabs, too.
Only a BEAN COUNTER would want to bother with DEPRECIATION SCHEDULES for anything valued less than $5k, unless it's an integral part to a system with a high enough value to justify it. I have _NEVER_ seen an advantage to doing depreciation for otherwise expensable equipment. It's like they're just making up work for themselves.
Now a rack of servers, UPSs, multi-port ethernet, and routers might be justifiable, but NOT EVERY! STINKING! CPU! BOX! AND! MONITOR!!! The purchase value isn't worth the cost of tracking them and the equipment rapidly loses its actual value over time like a new car off the lot.
Better (and easier, and probably cheaper) just to keep receipts and expense them all in the year they were purchased. You'd do the same for pens, toner, and any office supply thing purchased in bulk. And. any auditor can walk around the office and see that people are using the stuff and it would be an insurmountable task (and maybe even impossible) to verify every serial number against the visible number of company issued phones, slabs, laptops, CPU boxes, monitors, etc. in addition to the keyboards, mice, cables, headphones, and occasional entertainment devices.
Another thing: the phones and slabs are also likely to have SIMM cards in them issued by the company, which probably COST MORE IN A YEAR than the stupid phone or slab did. It would be POINTLESS to track the actual device they're inserted in. Many people would want a new i-device every year anyway. So you might as well just 'expense' them.
Seriously, I bet if you FIRED THE BEAN COUNTERS who are compelled to track things and justify their DEPRECIATION SCHEDULES through labor-expensive inventory audits, you could purchase NEW GEAR for EVERYONE every 3 years and not even WORRY about what happened to the OLD stuff, and STILL come out ahead financially.
[I think I'm starting to sound like Simon the BOFH]
although your initial point was good, I have to disagree with the quoted part. I personally believe that a "peace through strength" strategy works, not only for personal defense, but for nations as well. Not debating it, just saying. In short: a criminal sees ME, very unlikely to attack. And two female relatives of mine carry pepper spray in their purses (which I initlally gave them). (Another female relative is a cop, she carries a pistol).
But if you want proof, try going to a big city in "certain areas" and act like you're a tourist, vs acting like you at least have some "street smarts". Criminals look for the easy targets and avoid the ones who look like they're capable of defending themselves (and are more than willing to do so).
(so a half an upvote because I liked the first part)
unless more than one person is involved, lone psycho is probably right.
It wouldn't be the first (alleged) lone psycho that posted regularly to the 4chan board to go off the rails and hurt/kill people. I recall some idiot in either AU or NZ that went on a killing spree a couple of years ago, was called "an accelerationist" and had regularly posted a bunch of wacko stuff on 4chan, even had a manifesto, etc.. 1 out of millions of regular people who just want to vent or discuss their favorite anime, THAT guy was apparently a TRUE psychopath. His Darwin award was 'Death by Cop' as I recall, or maybe he did himself...
(And what we do not want is for IRL harassment to accelerate into something far worse, and criminals usually leave evidence, and so I hope the cops in DE catch the perp(s))
black helicopter icon for the fun
And a sign that reads: No warning shots will be fired, AMMO is not cheap!
I hadn't seen that one.
As for applicable warning signs, I just thought another one up:
"WARNING: i am extremely talented and can easily build a proper flamethrower in a very short time with available household materials. Do NOT tempt me!"
or something like that. Kinda like that FPS Russia video with the flamethrowers. "For home defense"
(apparently legal to own in most of the USA, but probably not Germany)
part of what you said is true: These are anonymous posters on 4chan.
Other than that... no.
It would be very very easy to set up clandestine communication channels via various means on a board like 4chan, anonymous or otherwise. Threads are often deleted so that there is no history (to the best of my knowledge) and are not archived. And, a thread that dox's or points to a video that dox's or calls for harassment would probably be deleted (I suspect they don't keep good logs, deliberately). So any posted IRC channels or messaging info or even a graphic with steganography embedded within it might easily have disappeared without a trace.
When anyone can post anything anonymously, this potential for using the platform to do something illegal or abusive is always there.
a new shuttle design, with a more efficient (and re-usable) way of getting into orbit, could be the next phase. Perhaps a 2 or 3 stage rocket with "return to earth" capability from low orbit for the boosters, and a shuttle-like re-entry vehicle. That big fuel tank might have been needed to be in the design 40 years ago, but if you strip most of the engines off of the re-entry vehicle, give it internal fuel tanks only along with maneuvering jets, you could make the 1st (and maybe 2nd and/or 3rd stage if there is one) both re-usable like the Falcon rockets.
the space shuttle's expense included those re-usable liquid fuel rockets on its tail end, which provided something like 30% of the thrust until the SRBs separated, then 100% to orbit. So they needed that massive fuel tank. But if the booster itself detaches and lands separately, you don't need the massive burn-up-in-atmosphere fuel tank, nor the massive engines on the tail end of the shuttle. Just small ones would do.
so - a "component system" rather than a more monolithic one, yet avoiding the "throw away" mentaity so often seen in modern consumer stuff.
worthy of note: SpaceX is avoiding making a booster that de-orbits, which would be considerably more expensive than one that never quite makes it out of the atmosphere (it is moving slower and doesn't have to do a re-entry so much, can use something like a parachute early in the process). Getting a 2nd and even a 3rd stage through re-entry to land like the 1st stage could involve shuttle-like tech, with minimal jettisoned stuff.
enjoy your non-satellite media and brick-sized cell phones, which (without space exploration driving the technology forward in the early days) would be about 20 years behind where we actually are, In My Bombastic Opinion, were it not for the U.S. SPACE PROGRAM and NASA (in general).
Also don't forget space telescopes and planetary exploration bots. All of those close-up photos of the outer planets. That kind of thing.
Imagine instead that the USSR had "won" the space race. Or China. Probably worth more than just a passing thought.
I was thinking about this a while ago, when CentOS Stream and Rocky first became "A Thing", that NOW we have a 'preview' release of the bleeding edge code, before it becomes a stable release. But to have RHEL also cut from the same preview distro (more or less) as Rocky means that Rocky should be at roughly the same point as RHEL as far as package versions and software updates and stability are concerned.
So yeah, it's a good thing. RH may have done us a favor after all. (But they should've been more up front about it)
I had a similar thought with Tux the penguin and a glass of Wine, but it was more like the caption reading "I can't believe I'm actually 30 now" [or similar]. Yeah Tux is officially "old" heh heh heh. I suppose it was a similar shock when members of The Who reached their "age of getting old" after "Talking 'bout my generation".
sadly, "overLord of the Flies" is a more likely outcome (when 11 year olds get too much power) regardless of how smart they are.
Book smarts is one thing. Academic achievement another. But experience is the one thing that an expedient educational achiever can NOT master. And with experience, wisdom.
(I say give the kid something useful to do, but don't put him in charge)
then again, in the movie "Lord of the Flies', wasn't the smart kid the first one to get killed?
I always try to make the code maintainable. After all, *I* might be the one who has to maintain it [years from now when I, too, ask similar questions about the author's intelligence and ability to code - whoops, it was me!]
Seriously, though, if I can't maintain my own code years later, something's wrong with the author.
as for a popup dialog asking me to trust the author of the code, pluma and a bash or csh shell are looking MUCH BETTER these days in lieu of any kind of "helpful" IDE...
I have to wonder how quantum 'anything' can reliably be implemented without some form of entanglement, especially entanglement that can be established at a distance. Entanglement would solve a LOT of problems, but it may ALSO be the most secure comms method of all.
I'm always hoping that someone actually did this, and then I see a lot of tap-dancing on the explanation of the hardware, and am once again disappointed.
Some time ago I studied how to make q-bits and things like that. Using the quantum bits as photons in a fiber optic line is interesting, but from what I see, implementing that idea seems as if it would be riddled with bit errors and missed bits. I have to wonder how sophisticated the error correction algorithm would have to be...
yeah, the science is STILL too young to be practical, in my bombastic opinion. I want to see it work, but so far, not very practical, it seems.
I mentioned this already, but I'll mention it again.
Programmers need to PAY ATTENTION to compiler warnings. This goes TRIPLE with kernel code.
(it's amazing how many bugs are caught when you read and heed the warnings, even if it is a pain in the backside to do so - and clang seems to be even more helpful than gcc, last I checked)
All C heap memory suffers from use after free, double frees and unitialized pointers.
Then WHY aren't these things simply being looked for and proactively prevented?
(what DO they teach in these schools?)
perhaps a debug malloc/free in the standard C library could specificaly look for double-free, and programmers could use EXISTING COMPILER WARNINGS to find potential unitialized pointers to solve these 2 problems. 'Use after free' can often be avoided by forcing pointer assignment to NULL by convention, after calling 'free'. Then in testing (which you SHOULD be doing) it's very likely you'll get a page fault crash or kernel panic instead of a vulnerability.
It has been my observation that use after free is generally caused by one of 3 "code smells":
a) a junior programmer maintains old code and did not see the 'free()' operation above
b) a pointer variable is re-used when it is already assigned (and the old value is free'd by accident or some other complete cluster-blank happens and now you're re-using a free'd pointer)
c) object reference counts have not been used or were not implemented properly, and the object or block of memory is being shared with varying lifetime requirements.
So, you ALSO look for these specific cases in code reviews before a change or new thing is committed.
In short, a reasonable set of practical solutions has just been presented. No need to CHANGE PROGRAMMING LINGOS (other than Google "feels" we should).
in a STABLE and WELL TESTED language like 'C', senior people generally know what to look for in code reviews, and SHOULD ALWAYS LOOK FOR THESE POTENTIAL PROBLEMS, especially WITHIN THE KERNEL (and when being submitted by junior/inexperienced programmers).
The problem is NOT the language. The problem is lack of PROPER review (all of those CVEs dealing with memory management) and/or NOT using well established coding practices, whenever a memory-related issue causes a CVE to show up.
the kind of thinking that suggests abandoning the C language because of mistakes is the KIND of thinking that might say "Let's replace steering wheels in cars with GAME CONTROLLERS, since EVERY CAR that has EVER had an accident HAD A STEERING WHEEL."
When I see a quote from Google like this (from the article):
"we feel that Rust is now ready to join C as a practical language for implementing the kernel"
my thinking is something like "Are we basing this potentially dangerous exercise on what SOME people *FEEL* ???"
It makes NO sense to change the programming language of the Linux kernel. It makes a *LOT* of sense to keep it consistent throughout, in order to avoid the potential INEFFICIENCIES and/or INSTABILITIES of any necessary 'translation layers' (read: shoehorns) for calling conventions/ABIs/standards/etc. between lingos, _AND_ to make it possible for legacy code to be MAINTAINED. And WHAT is the benefit gained by doing so? The risk, in my bombastic opinion, as well as DEVELOPER TIME, *GREATLY* outweighs any possible benefit to doing this.
What is SO hard about LEARNING TO CODE 'C' PROPERLY???
(if Linus 1.0 called use of newer C compiler features "compiler masturbation", what is he REALLY thinking about THIS??? Linus 2.0 may lack the chutzpah to say what needs to be said, BEFORE something goes "boom")
Many "change for the sake of change"s have been done in the last decade or so. Australis. FLATTY user interfaces in general (apparently driven by Google). An OS that spies on you and slings ads at you, and even strongarms you to use a cloudy login. Subscription versions of desktop software.
NONE! OF! THESE! CHANGES! ARE! GOOD! THINGS!!!
And I have to wonder, HOW many of them were DRIVEN! BY! GOOGLE!??? Micros~1 may just b along for the ride on this one. or not.
AND... if you have to "gerrymander" a programming language to NOT do what it is originally designed to do (crash and burn on memory allocation failure) JUST so that you can use it in the kernel [read: "shoehorn" it in there anyway] then something is seriously wrong with he plan. Or, the lack thereof.
Obligatory Dr. Who reference in naming: "Sonic Shades" [and it's not being used at the moment as far as I can tell]
I had to look up a LOT of Aud- Sonic- Sound- Mus- and similar obvious names to find something that was not already in use for audio software, as far as I can tell anyway. ('Sonic Sunglasses' is even being used by a store, so I went with 'shades')
well, when the bean counters at the "umbrella" companies FINALLY get the clue-bat properly applied to the alignment point by a qualified technician, they might try to monetize the thing in a way that makes the end-users happy [I gave some examples in an earlier post], and makes themselves profitable.
But treating us like CATTLE to be USED for MONEY is NOT the way SUCCESSFUL business is done... unless it is a monopoly. In that case, if it's what they're trying to accomplish, a FORK becomes a LART.
telemetry should only be of the 'anonymized' variety, and OPT IN, and ONLY directly relevant to the software you are running (i.e. does not report about my OS other than the version, does not scan for other running software nor keep any kind of history about my behavior, etc.). Sometimes I opt in to telemetry for debug-only purposes. But lately I seem to always say NO. My trust level is very low.
I might agree with you for test/beta releases, but not for general distribution. And doesn't GDPR and similar things require you to make that info visible and delete-able to the user, if it's not truly anonymized? A user who navi-guesses through the web-ocracy to find the actual data may not be too happy about what he finds, i.e. the things that were actually collected.
well you *do* need a way to monetize it. Just not one that's *EVIL*.
In My Bombastic Opinion, there are some traditional ways to do this without violating user privacy.
* sell add-ons
* shareware model (people DO license things) even if it takes the form of a 'donate' button on the web site.
* 'support' model. This works for database and CAD and Linux distros and similar things.
* 'freemium' model. Free for the Open Source version, but you pay license to get latest features or some other premium content or feature (and it may be shipped as closed source). Qt (as I recall) has done something like this. in some ways, VirtualBox does this (or used to) with the extension pack.
* other things that people already do that make it worth forking over a small amount of money to get something worth the price.
What you do NOT want to do is the Google/Micros~1/FaeceB*/Tw*tter/etc. model and MARKET PEOPLE'S PRIVATE INFO and TRACK US. But it appears they're doing JUST THAT...
as GPL software, a fork will _ALWAYS_ be possible.
However, if Audacity switched licenses [and the owners can do this if contributors have given up any ownership claims or GPL claims to their contributions] then future features [say that 10 times fast - that that that ... oh nevermind] future features for the new non-GPLd version wouldn't be GPLd and would therefore have to be re-written from scratch, probably, to be included under the GPL'd fork.
Personally I'm quite happy with the version of Audacity I'm using right now, a 2 year old FreeBSD port. Why do I need an update? The only thing *I* can think of that would force a need to update would be a change to a required library [which is probably why things like vlc sometimes include their OWN forks for dependency libs to prevent their code from BREAKING when you try to build it].
and it makes another point, "bleeding edge" is OVERRATED.
So maybe just a "maintained" version of "what's there under the GPL right now" (minus any anti-privacy or irritating 'features') is a GOOD thing anyway? That is, along with a snapshot of major dependency libs [that might change on a whim at any moment], of course, so we can build it 5 years from now without any problems (just in case).
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