Posts by bombastic bob

Facebook, Instagram finally end days of uptime by returning to some downtime

Re: Can't create adverts? They've started sending them out again, even when asked not to.

google "fixed" it so that half the devices/browsers I use [and those of a couple of others I know] cannot access any kind of google service without getting a 403 error (or similar) in the process. IMBO, it is TOTALLY google's fault. Happens with Chrome, too... but not Firefox (go fig), same machine and/or IP address. And an Android device does it, too. And an iPad. Weird huh?

Just as well, I do not like their policies. And i recently learned how to tell Chrome to use a different search engine.

Re: Again?

thank you!

(see it is all in fun)

Re: Again?

I should make 'Nih' my pronoun. Also 'Ecky Ecky Pakang ZOOM Boing'

As for FaeceBan, WHEN will they EVAR learn to TEST things before deploying them?

And, FB should ALSO take this opportunity to LEARN why it is that SOME of us RESIST CHANGE... (you know, reliability, well tested, system stability, "it works", things like that)

i.e. they need to STOP "FIXING" THINGS that are NOT broken!! (assuming FB is not simply broken out of the box)

It's not like they deserve having things like this happen to them or anything...

[since I do not use it I can just sit back and laugh and eat popcorn]

US nuke sub plans leaked on SD card hidden in peanut butter sandwich, claims FBI

Re: Restricted?

when I was in the Navy it was like this:

For Official Use Only (just don't go and disclose it, seriously nobody needs to know this)

Confidential (power plant info and engineering specs were usually Confidential)

Secret (may be a few of these on a sub, like current position may be Secret, depending)

Top Secret (cannot confirm nor deny - that's what they tell you to say)

and whatever else they need, "eyes only" and whatnot. You had to have a need to know, and a clearance.

'Restricted' is like 'Confidential' I guess...

Windows what? PC makers have bigger things on their minds

Re: Hardly a good time to push out a new version that interests no-one

time will teach Borkzilla

assuming that the marketeers and overlords at Micros~1 can actually LEARN something...

and if you sat a running Windows 7 machine next to a running Windows 10 machine on a store shelf, all other things being equal, GUESS WHICH ONE WOULD SELL FASTER???

(this is why you generally cannot buy the older version of windows, even when people want it)

A car engine is usually massively overpowered for the work it does. And yet that extra horsepower comes in handy whenever you want it to. [similar with PCs for people who occasionally compile programs from source, or crunch numbers]

US nuclear submarine bumps into unidentified underwater object in South China Sea

Re: You would think by now...

Magnetic anomaly arrays stuck out of the front and back

When you ARE a magnetic anomaly, its hard to detect other ones that are nearby...

[having them on aircraft with non-magnetic construction seems to make the most sense].

An object that emits no sound (and is not shadowing others) is simply difficult to "see" under water.

But if I were to guess, it was something similar to a 'Crazy Ivan' maneuver (re 'Hunt for Red October').

I _may_ have once seen a damaged submarine nose cone that looked as if it had been chopped by a propeller... or it could have been a really fat whale wut broke it. I do not believe it made the news, either. Fortunately its a bit like a car bumper to replace one. (they need to be nice and streamlined though to allow for higher speed without flow noises, so even minor damage and you need a new one).

Re: Hitting a container?

My understanding is that shipping containers sometimes 'float' semi-submerged, depending on their contents

that's interesting but I would not expect it to remain that way very long. As sea pressure increases, the container would compress; if/when ocean got inside the container, the stuff within the container would soak it up and/or compress. This would tend to make the whole thing less buoyant.

now if it were in the PROCESS of sinking, then yeah, by random chance a sub could hit it at high speed and cause serious damage, and injury to the people inside.

Subs generally do not go fast near the surface (fast enough to cause damage/injury as I perceive it would be in a collision). They DO go fast while deep sometimes, if the crew needs to get someplace. And as a sinking container gets deeper, it would actually get heavier and sink better. But there would be a time window when a collision is possible...

Re: Hitting a container?

subs haven't been double hulled for a VERY long time. Some of the earlier ones were, but the idea was quickly abandoned. Basically a sub hull is a long metal tube made of high tensile strength steel (or perhaps titanium in the case of Russian boats) with frames but no strakes, all welded together (no plates or rivets). Nothing like old WW2 sub movies anyway. A bit like 'Hunt for Red October' and 'Crimson Tide' though.

Re: Hitting a container?

Do subs hover so close to the sea buttom?

Not generally but if an operation required it they're usually capable of doing so without crashing into things.

It's a fair bet they knew exactly where they were when it happened, and what the proper depth should be, etc..

Or possibly they were just looking for something, unusually close to the sea bottom. "Found it!"

NOT having a large submerged object on an existing chart (so that they avoid it) either means it's something mobile (like another sub) or "was put there" for some reason. A shipping container that had fallen from a surface ship is unlikely to be large enough to be a navigation hazard like that.

And if it's large enough that people were actually injured when they crashed, it was a seriously HUGE object, WAY bigger than a container.

[on my first underway, the sub struck another one during sea trials and had to go back to the shipyard to have its rudder repaired. I did not even feel it (I was asleep though)].

As for fixing the sub, I bet they'll be able to fix it properly in the shipyard. The newest ones actually use modular construction (from what I've read anyway).

Nearly 140 nations – from US and UK to EU, China and India – back 15% minimum corporate tax rate

Tax applied based on REVENUE, and NOT PROFIT? As in, EVEN if the company LOSES money they have to pay the tax ANYWAY?

Watch 10,000+ people lose jobs just to pay the tax at some point... and it won't be EXECUTIVES.

Re: And who pays those corporate taxes?

how about if gummint JUST STOPS SPENDING AND RE-DISTRIBUTING SO MUCH MONEY?

Re: And who pays those corporate taxes?

and investors as well - higher corporate taxes mean lower dividends, lower stock value.

corporations do not actually pay tax. Only people pay it. And if you have a retirement fund, chances are the yield will go DOWN as corporate taxes go UP. After all, retirement mutual funds often have stocks as part of their portfolio.

bullet meet foot. How's that "soak the rich" thing working for ya???

icon because facepalm

Motivated by commerce, not conscience, Google bans ads for climate change consensus contradictors

Not just the comparison of 'greenwash' purchase being like the indulgences themselves. Let's not forget the religious nature of the so-called "consensus" regarding anthropogenic "climate change". Then, the comparison becomes even MORE 'spot on', all things considered.

Consensus != Science

(hypothesis, experimentation, verification, repeatability, review - THAT would be science)

The so-called "consensus" fails MOST of the true definition of science.

Galileo's observations eventually won the argument against the religious interpretation of the day, which in MY bombastic opinion, is very MUCH like "consensus" vs actual science.

(and cancelling those you disagree with, simply because YOU are more powerful at the moment, isn't welcome in a free society, RIGHT Galileo?)

Reason 3,995 to hold off on that Windows 11 upgrade: Iffy performance on AMD silicon

Re: Windows 11

yeah an artificial "NEED" to 'UP'grade your hardware and ARTFICIALLY create a "new computer" market. Where have we seen this before ... ?

C-C-C-Catch the wave! New WINDOWS (vista) !!!

(obligatory 'New Coke' Max Headroom reference mostly because Micros~1 is repeating their mistakes AGAIN, the same kinds of mistakes Coca Cola made with 'New Coke')

Re: Good to see

in the REAL world, security does NOT mean a performance reduction. If there IS one, and it is NOTICEABLE, you need to re-think your architecture.

Just because Micros~1's "solutions" (like Defender re-scanning your newly built executable and DLL files EVERY! TIME! YOU! BUILD! YOUR! PROGRAM! as one irritating example) most DEFINITELY get in the way of performance, does not mean it MUST be this way.

It's LAZY to sacrifice performance in the name of "security".

Windows 11 in detail: Incremental upgrade spoilt by onerous system requirements and usability mis-steps

Re: No right-click copy? No sweat if keyboard shortcuts still exist

and I thought that if you swipe something you could go to jail...

Re: Windows 11 brings more into the modern UI but it remains a hybrid.

Does anyone know if Classic Start Menu runs on this abberation ABOMINATION

Fixed. you're welcome. And, I would expect classic start menu replacements to work, at least for now, because (apparently) Win-10-nic compatibility was part of the "Windows II" spec. Until "they" break it on purpose (so you do not bypass the ads)

(so is the '11' actually 1.1 or the roman numeral 2 ? Or BOTH?)

Re: "design paradigms from those devices could successfully carry over into a new Start"

young whippersnappers continually glued to their mobile phones

Otherwise known as "4 inchers" i.e. they see EVERYTHING through a 4 inch phone screen.

* always viewing in that horribly stretched portrait mode that looks like viewing through a keyhole

* sit in public texting other people that are sitting within CONVERSATION distance

* nearly always fondling and caressing the screen - could NOT go 24 hours without the cell phone.

* permanent crick in neck

* need to have phone ON (and active conversations) while driving

* anything happens, the phone camera comes out (in portrait mode of course) and it gets uploaded to some bandwidth-wasting social media crap pile

etc. - and they APPARENTLY ignore the last 40+ years of computing history (since punch cards, and Xerox PARC) in which the keyboard+mouse input and 3D skeuomorphic overlapping window display was shown to be superior. "It must CHANGE, because OUR TURN NOW!"

yeah pretty nauseating.

Re: Windows versions

a security monitoring company here in the USA has TV ads with a spokesman (an obvious thief) named "Robbert Larson". We could call it THAT (or similar to avoid trademark theft)

Re: Flat UI fans

We all consider Vista to be a big footgun moment for MS. But... will W11 be an even bigger one?

This comparison was running in my head the entire time I was reading that article.

Facebook far too consumed by greed to make itself less harmful to society, whistleblower tells Congress

Re: Watch out Zuck$

unlikely. In My Bombastic Opinion, Ted Cruz lacks enough guts to play hardball with these guys (and force it through ConGrab) and [Up]Chuck Schumer isn't likely to do ANYTHING that isn't motivated by high dollar contributions in one form or another. He'll talk the talk and get outraged like that crooked senator in "Manchurian Candidate" but I would expect nothing but the same old (IMBO corrupt) business as usual from Schumer and other Demo[n,c]rats.

After all, FaeceBan has been contributing LOTS of moolah to politicians for quite a while now... and (apparently, allegedly) have been soft-promoting the same politicians on their own network as well.

So what makes ANYONE think that Schumer and Cruz would be able to accomplish ANYTHING to stop FaeceBan? Sad, yeah.

(not that it would not be a GOOD thing for REAL legislation, I still think the best would be to take away any protection they might have against being SUED and let the COURTS sort it out]

Re: Evil, destructive, racist, harmful, sexist, traitorous, dangerous, etc

no, that would be EVIL WORLD DOMINATION corporate "success", the kind that exploits, cheats, manipulates and tries to take over the world. FaeceBan might very well qualify as one of those.

The best corporations provide goods and/or services to happy customers. That is TRUE success.

Re: Pause

I have a simpler solution: just remove ANY legal protection from them against lawsuits, since they (apparently) censor content and mark it in various ways and even (allegedly) steer people towards specific content, making them more like PUBLISHERS and less like "public forum".

THEN, let people SUE them for the usual harm-causing, discrimination, and maltreatment of any kind.

I would rather the court system battle it out with l[aw]yers than to see CON-GRAB enable the FOXES to guard the henhouse... (because THIS is why FaeceBan WANTS regulation, you see? The best regulation that political contributions can buy!!!)

D-Wave claims it can build a gate-model quantum computer

Re: Really?

I too have been frustrated with the VACUUM of the kinds of information that would make all of this quantum computing (and how to use it) make sense to EXISTING programmers.

i read about qubits and how to make them last longer, and it is interesting.

I read this article about something called "gate model" and ask "what the hell is that?" (probably more digging and frustration of not finding, getting past market-speak, etc.)

found THIS but HOW do you PROGRAM with it? *crickets* (even something like an FPGA would be awesome, but WHEN?)

I suppose I could dive through patents attached to the concept of quantum computing, but those read like hieroglyphics (and no Rosetta stone) sometimes.

So yeah. WHEN do we get a '101' book with examples?

Re: How's factoring coming along?

They tend to be 3) or 4).

No surprise.

And saying "stock digital optimizers" reminded me of something...

I remember "Black Monday" a few years back that was apparently driven (and sustained) by a number of high volume marginal trade algorithms automatically reacting to 'panic sell' by investors...

We don't need quantum computing to make this kind of thing happen EVEN FASTER.

(that being said solving differential equations for science sounds like a GREAT application because you can solve them multiple times like repeating a science experiment, to help ensure accuracy)

Want to check out Windows 11 but don't want to buy a new PC? Here's how to bypass the hardware requirements

Re: And coming up next: a bypass for the ludicrous CPU requirements?

Or are we going to see millions more devices chucked into landfill?

the better ones end up on E-bay and get Linux or FreeBSD on them. Or maybe even 7 or XP...

and with the supply glut, the price will be low. time for a new server box???

clean install and/or test VM

and if I want to build a test VM from scratch, i.e. a "clean install", using VIRTUALBOX, will this registry hack still work? Is it even POSSIBLE?

Oracle is apparently working on a new version of VirtualBox that will emulate TPM 2.0 but I am concerned that the Linux and FreeBSD versions may lag too slowly behind.

Additionally, a virtualbox "driver" to pass through TPM requests would be IRRITATING, since it APPEARS that the new CPU I got for the spare workstation I had to rebuild (Ryzen 3 1200 quad core, price and availability being the main factors) is NOT compatible with "Windows II". However, it is EXTREMELY compatible with Linux and FreeBSD and any *SANE* operating system.

But if it looks like VirtualBox can RELIABLY support TPM emulation on Linux or FreeBSD some time within the next few months, I may choke back the bile, and take a chance on renewing MSDN (which is now called Visual Studio Subscription or similar but is basically the same thing) one more time.

I may try buiiding a virgin Win-10-nic and then "upgrading" using the registry hack, assuming my crappy bandwidth can download it before the subscription expires.

Microsoft's problem child, Windows 11, is here. Will you run it? Can you run it? Do you even WANT to run it?

Re: Ah, the joy of Microsoft's auto-evaluation

I've seen some 'droid slablets with detachable keyboards. maybe you could put Linux on one... (or just use the 'droid OS)

Re: "Windows 10, which has evolved into a pretty good platform over the years"

(see icon)

Re: Surely, this year ...

sadly the frog in the hot water has not noticed that he is close to being cooked...

(whereas it is obvious to the rest of us)

Re: Settings/Control Panel

I agree, 'Settings' should be NUKED FROM HIGH ORBIT (see icon) and have its ashes shot into the sun. Then there will be only ONE.

A classic (in a Windows XP/7 kinda way) Control Panel (especially with 3D Skeuomorphic controls) is preferred to that ELDRITCH ABOMINATION 'Settings' Crapp.

(who me? complain?)

Re: I defenestrated myself a while back

when a close relative's laptop (old Sony Vaio, still good IMBO) was having serious performance problems and probably needed a new hard drive, I put Devuan on a new hard drive on it, copying as many of the files and settings that I could. It WAS running Vista, and now, Devuan. Performance boost was IMMEDIATELY noticeable.

Since then NO major problems nor complaints. The learning curve was short, under an hour. I dare Win-10-nic or "Windows II" to be as easy.

Re: Want to run it?

I may decide to NOT renew my MSDN subscription (in about 3 weeks it expires) over this. I am VERY angry about their incompatibility with virtualbox, and I will *NOT* purchase new hardware JUST to run it. I had to replace my 14 year old "spare workstation" recently and it cost me over $300 in new parts to do it. Granted it's twice as fast with twice the RAM but still... SOME of us can't just toss money into a hole any time Micros~1 WHIMS it. And remember "Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers" at the 1993 PDC in Anaheim when Ballmer did the ape-walk around the stage??? He must have been LYING.

Developers NEED TO RUN THIS IN A VM and *NOT* *BUY* *NEW* *SPECIAL* *HARDWARE* *JUST* *BECAUSE* *YOU* *CAPRICIOUSLY* ***WHIMMED*** *IT*, Micros~1 !!!

I rarely do windows development anyway. I'm seriously considering fetching as many license keys and images as I'm allowed (and have bandwidth for) and be done with it, if you're gonna be THIS way about it.

NOTE: my old spare workstation had FreeBSD on it. I put a new motherboard, RAM, and CPU (Ryzen) into a smaller, lighter case, with new power supply, same hard drive, same DVD ROM drive, same NVidia video card, and it booted up without issue. Was an old Intel Core Quad CPU. Yeah, you can actually put the drive into a new box and boot it. UNLIKE WINDOWS WHICH WILL MOST LIKELY HARASS YOU AND MAKE YOU GET ANOTHER ACTIVATION OR SOMETHING.

*ahem* - I think I'm done ranting over this, now...

Microsoft's .NET Foundation under fire as resigning board member questions its role

the better OSS model is to offer paid support for those who want it. That seems to be THE most (long term) successful model for things that businesses rely on. For wide release, it varies.

However, projects that turn the users into "the commodity" are likely to (eventually) collapse upon themselves, and the charitable/non-profit ones are in danger of hostile takeovers by wealthy donors with an agenda (nudge nudge wink wink, maybe like the ".Net Foundation" ???) ...

(Disclaimer: everything I say in this post is simply my opinion, and I have no proof of any of it)

I avoided ".Not" from the beginning. I thought MFC did whatever I needed for Windosws (and still think so), though I might consider re-writing my own TINY version of their framework for any future things.

From the article: I watched Microsoft kill an Open Source Project

I do not believe they are *KILLING* it, per se. Holding onto the reigns tightly might be more like it. They are quite used to having dominance over the ".Not" stuff and do not easily relinquish power nor control. They *FEAR* (the reason control freaks control) that their tech will proceed in a direction that they do not like, and therfore MUST wield a heavy hand. Frequently. At least, that's how *I* see it.

From their perspective, it's justifiable.

I think we can look more closely at WHY they made it open source in the first place: because of LINUX. And yet I do not see ".Not" on Linux being "a thing" (in any significant amount) any time soon.

How long has MONO been around? Yes, THAT long (15+ years). And the complaints were DEAFENING when Mono was suddenly part of gnome for Debian's package system, because of ONE application (that nobody used) called "Tomboy". Later it was (thankfully) REMOVED from the top-level package. I do not believe that there are ANY open source projects requiring Mono or ".Not core" (or whatever they're calling now) that are either ESSENTIAL or do NOT have native language equivalents (for example I use KeePassXC).

So, with the general 'need' to somehow "Embrace Extend Extinguish" Linux Desktops (and make them all like "WIndows II", as in the roman numeral 2, a hint to the retro flattiness and overly large controls, as Windows 2.x was), they need to steer the project in a direction that meets their "needs". Otherwise, they do not care if it fails. At least, that is how *I* see it.

We have some sad news about Facebook. It has returned to the internet after six-hour mega outage

Re: Seems familiar ...

Santa Clara and Mountain View...

as I recall they're next to one another (checked, Sunnyvale between them)

Aim for Palo Alto and Santa Clara might be spared...

Re: Clouldflare has a decent write-up on the BGP incident

if only the DNS servers are affected by the routing SNAFU, then cached DNS records will still work

Re: OMZ?

OMZ = "Oh My Zuck"??

ESA and JAXA release Mercury eyecandy, courtesy of spacecraft BepiColumbo

Another reason why Mercury may be interesting to Earthlings

I have long suspected that Mercury may contain higher concentrations of heavier materials in its crust. Note I said MAY because there are a lot of geological factors that might be put into play here.

First, Mercury being closer to the sun is likely to have its lighter materials blown away during planet formation. As such, inner planets are rocky, outer planets are gaseous. Not always, but that's an observable pattern, right?

Second, Mercury may have remained volcanic for a longer period of time. This is both good and bad. Kimberlite pipes contain diamonds but were once (as I understand it) magma tubes from the mantle to the surface. Other 'heavy' things can also end up in (or near) magma/volcanic pipes as I understand it, including gold [though the mechanism for it getting there is a bit different]. If Mercury remained volcanic for longer, there may be a LOT more of these with accessible minerals in them (more than on earth). And if that is the case, the volcanic structures could be indicators of where to start digging...

Alternately, with a molten surface that lasts longer than on Earth, all of the heavy elements could have sunk to the center of the core, giving you LESS of it at the surface where we might actually reach it.

Still, I would bet that at the poles you'd have many areas that never see sun, others that only see a fraction of sunlight, and everywhere else, 100+ effective mining days available for robots to locate and extract things and launch them back to Earth. It may become the geological find of the millenium.

Re: Amazing achievement

I'm guessing that imaging the sunlit side of Mercury requires some serious optical filtering to deal with the albedo compared with imaging the unlit side

2 words: pinhole camera. That should improve focus AND limit the amount of light on the sensor, to avoid some of the bad effects of super-bright light. As for the dark side, I guess you need variable arpeture or similar.

But you would also get shadowing on the sunny side. So you'd need both light and dark side images, and with its slow rotation (sidereal day is ~58 earth days long withy an ~88 earth day orbit) that';s not quite synchronized with its orbit, it would take a really long time (~170 earth days) to get both light-side and dark-side images. [apparently Venus' day is even longer and effectively the sun goes BACKWARDS with respect to the direction the stars go, as seen from the surface of the planet].

Pretend starship captain to take trip in real space capsule

Re: Down here

depending upon the type of light, the right kind of pulse width modulated signal COULD make it 'beep',...

I once saw an interesting demonstration of 2 electric probes with a certain type of salt poured on them within a gas flame. The flame created ions, which were then exposed to high voltage PWM (apparently) and you could hear sounds coming out of the flame...

you wanna "Fire Phaser's!" at a certain Mar-a-Largo SAN FRANCISCO complex?

fixed it for ya. heh.

you can find lots of clips for that music on places like youtube (search "star trek classic fight scene music" or similar)

Re: exciting!

Can't wait for the inevitable live video feed of Kirk is an horrendously drawn out fight sequence

gotta play "that music" in the background...

Re: Witty old fart!

back in the 70's Shatner did a recruiting video for the U.S. Navy comparing submarines to space ships, in that they made their own air+water and that they traveled in a hostile environment in 3 dimensions, much like a space ship would. I saw it when the recruiters were trying to convince me to volunteer for sub duty. The extra pay had me convinced.

What if Chrome broke features of the web and Google forgot to tell anyone? Oh wait, that's exactly what happened

Re: If

the best they could do is what others have done, that is allowing the display of a standards-compliance logo of some kind. Example, USB. If you comply with the spec you can put the logo on your thngy. This lets people know that your product is standards compliant. Similarly, browsers and web sites could contain a logo, with some kind of 'lint' application and web site test suite to qualify them, and (of course) a method by which non-compliance (re: bugs and incorrect features) can be reported to the W3C in the case of gross 'violation'.

THAT might work. OK l[aw]yers would be involved but that's unfortunately the way things work in a society ruled by law. Not like you could send some thugs to their place of residence to send a message (and break a few arms).

Re: The choice of available browsers is lame

my web provider (shared hosting) auto-generates certs using LetsEncrypt (and so do many others). They basically have to do it every 2 months but it's automated. Problem solved.

Re: The choice of available browsers is lame

I've been wanting to write a PROPER browser for a while, using WebKit. Downside I'd have to use WebKit. and GTK. but it would not be 2D FLATSO either.. There's nothing "cool" about using an HTML+JavaScript engine for the ENTIRE UI for the browser, nor to have a zillion shared libs and/or dependencies...

but without a well tested engine like WebKit, the effort of re-writing my own would be STAGGERING

(and I do not believe I would trust anything ELSE to provide a reasonably secure back-end for it)