Posts by bombastic bob 10816 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015
a while back someone did an online mini-series of videos called "Salmon Days". it had its funny moments, especially when the BOFH wrestled with the paperclip because it was repeating "It looks like you're writing a letter", and there was a lady that sounded like a modem or a FAX, and 'Microshaft' customer support froze up in mid phone-answer with the floating paper overhead... but unfortuately a lot of it just wasn't that funny, and it disappeared into the ether.
just worth pointing out... vaccination _is_ a way of establishing herd immunity...
(either that or do what parents did in the 60's for mumps, measles, chicken pox, etc. - expose your kids when they're young and get over it faster, whenever there's a breakout)
I prefer vaccines, myself. Only reason I haven't gotten one (yet) is I probably had the virus in early Jan of 2020 when a co-worker came back from china and then had to leave work due to fever etc. and then a couple of weeks later I had the symptoms, which went away in a day or so, and came back just once a week later (but milder). And a relative that lives with me got similar symptoms in that time frame. And things with sugar in them taste funny, now (instead of sweet). And early on, I thought "I'll let others get it first" since I'd most likely had the virus, when it was in ultra-high demand. But eventually, when it's convenient, I'll probably get the jab(s) just to make sure I'm immune.
So yeah I'm not even remotely close to being an anti-vaxxer, but i still don't like seeing people turn into extremists on the either side of this, especially when the arguments deviate from actual science.
the problem with saying "the truth" is that both sides of an issue often make claim to exclusive ownership of it, often with no proof other than "feelz" and "wantz" and "afraidz". On BOTH sides.
science demands peer review and repeatability and modified theories when the results do not come up as expected (and there were no lab mistakes that might have caused it). Over time, something close to "the truth" becomes possible. I would expect this to be true with a LOT of things. Over time, the truth will eventually be known. June 15th comes to mind on this one... (see icon)
But of course mRNA had nothing to do with kernels and so Linus was 100% right.
hmmm - that actually makes a LOT of sense depending on how the date/time math was being done.
more reason to ALWAYS store and work with date+time info as time_t (as GMT), or something very similar, to avoid [most] date+time math issues (then just tolerate any others).
I've done a LOT of date+time kinds of calculations with databases, etc. over the years, for decades even (from business analysis tools to capturing electric power waveform data to millisecond motion data capture) and the idea that a date+time calculation that crosses 0:00 might be responsible for a system-wide outage sounds VERY plausible.
I think AWS (and others), had a similar problem once (or maybe MORE than once) due to a leap second and its effect on the world-wide synchronization of data...
sorta mentioned in the article, BTC apparently dropped quite a bit in value... and if it is THAT easy for the FBI to play 'follow the money' to find crooks, BTC has significantly less value at hiding them from Johnny Law.
(yet another reason why I don't invest in it)
in theory, if you create a COM object that has proper thread support, it could still be for a remote process, or an internal process. It should not matter from the perspective of how the owning application uses it.
But performance demands might make it piggy if not designed carefully with "how is it being used" as the number one concern. So maybe THAT is it? Yeah all of that IPC and marshalling can slow it WAY down.
I am curious what it might be that would cause legacy MS Office COM handling to break if there are external processes supporting the COM objects [instead of them being in-process only].
you made me look at gRPC, and specifically the "Protocol Buffers" IDL, which I had not heard of until now and at first look my fingers formed the shape of a cross, and I ran away frantically looking for some garlic...
(It definitely reminds me of some of the bad things in the Android API, and I was never a fan of the OLE Automation IDL either)
It was my understanding that COM-like IPC capabilities were being implemented in Linux and BSD by use of D-Bus, where CORBA is primarily for things across networks.
For the COM model itself, at least in concept (use of ref counts and querying the capabilities of an object) the basic concepts are good, though I would prefer to call 'QueryInerface' differently (have it return IUnknown pointer and get error detail elsewhere, if you actually care about it).
Use of ref counting also results in smaller/faster code from my experience.
Java has its own way of doing things, though, and the "garbage collection" vs "ref count" war might explain why "other object models" apparently aren't welcome.
(that might explain the low demand for that feature)
I've toyed with the idea of a simple compatibility layer for COM in Linux/BSD but have not actually written it... yet. But if I did it would probably use DBus as-is, and be small and statically linked open source without license encumberance - and be compatible with things like Libre Office.
The fact that one man COULD manipulate crypto coins via opinion tweets suggests that investments in such things is, at the very least, UNSTABLE.
(which is why I do not do crypto currencies)
Also if someone(s) claims to speak FOR 'Anonymous', and does something lame like this, chances are it's NOT 'Anonymous' but someone(s) that is a pretender, an attention-seeker, or basement-dweller.
something like DDoS'ing the Church of Scientology [with all of the evidence about them] or going after rapists is the kind of 'vigilante justice' that would gain approval of a loosely associated bunch of individuals. Going after Musk or his companies because of a few tweets? No. That's lame.
knee-jerk legislation, painting too broad of a brush, out of cluelessness, to the point of unconstitutional "umbrella" laws that empower DA's to abuse them for malicious or even vexatious prosecutions...
That sounds like "Con-Grab" CONGRESS members alright...
(What's REALLY fun is that the 3 most recent Supreme Court members sided with the Liberals on this one, and Barrett wrote the majority opinion)
The real problem was saying he "still despised" homosexuality in 2007
there IS a difference between disliking a behavior, a sub-culture, or similar, AND YET ensuring that someone is never discriminated for it. If he can guarantee that homosexuals are not discriminated against in hiring, firing, promotions, and so on [including his behavior towards people], what's the problem? "Thought police" goes WAY too far...
Now, if he's a card carrying member of the Westboro Baptist Church, or has made a LOT of online noise that suggest a pattern of pejorative or defamatory things against homosexuals, then yeah, THAT would be a problem...
I happen to REALLY dislike smoking. It doesn't mean I can't work with smokers, nor respect their basic rights [even if being near them after they've been smoking gives me a HORRIBLE sinus headache]. I see it as the same kind of thing, i.e. "I dislike what you do and it causes me distress but I'll respect you anyway". Policing my thoughts over this matter, because I do not embrace it and avoid smoke whenever I'm near it, would be a violation of MY rights.
your description of 'cancel culture' needs to include: "no forgiveness, and no opportunity for redemption" for these 'cancel culture' people are NOT interested in improving human behavior, they are interested in executing the kinds of shunning power they had when they were in high school (i.e. "the jocks" and "the queen B's court" will NOT allow YOU to be POPULAR, and so on).
however you would normally expect that someone with the term "diversity" in the job description wouldn't have ever expressed any anti-[fill in the group] attitudes. As such, the discovery of ANY kinds of prejudicial attitudes raises questions about the integrity in bringing about any kind of 'fairness' from that job position.
unfortunately, to the intellectual lazy people who all too often prefer wikipedia and search engines to libraries and dead-tree manuals, "disappearing" something on Teh Intarwebs is an effective censorship and revisionist history trick.
But if we're lucky, there will still be a proper card catalog at a nearby library where we can actually look things up "the old fashioned way".
(I suspect that most of us these days use the library more as a "last resort" though...)
From the article: filmed in portrait - the real crime
And, TRULY, a "dick move" - to film a, uh, moving dick, in PORTRAIT aspect
(these "4 inchers" who see everything through a 4 inch screen in portrait mode need to rotate their cameras 90 degrees so they can view the world properly, with BOTH EYES, instead of looking like they're peeking through a door gap or a keyhole...)
its something we have to do in a fast changing landscape and at our own expense usually.
Q: What were you doing during the time gap between assignments?
A: improving my skills and re-familiarizing myself with the cutting edge of technology in my field
(Turning the possible disadvantage into an advantage - and better than saying "video games, IRC, and social media")
From the article: Delete the word “feel”
this can NOT be overstated nor overemphasized!!!
Recruiters who are "feelies" should probably be bypassed or avoided entirely.
Seriously, "What Color is your Parachute" [a book about job hunting], as I recall, talks about ways of getting your CV/resume past the eyes of HR and recruiters, and onto the desk of the hiring manager, things like addressing the envelope "attn: hiring manager", and finding out the manager's actual name.
But using CV authoring tricks to get HR droids and recruiters to "not circular file" your CV/resume is also extremely useful (so thanks for the article). The initial prioritizing of bullet points (and then picking different ones for each application) is DEFINITELY a good idea.
(pirate, er PRIVATEER icon, for the contractor in me)
maybe they need to use an encryption algorithm that isn't susceptible to (virtually) identical math errors during encryption and decryption. Then you could self-check by decrypting the encrypted output and comparing to the original. So long as the errors produce un-decryptable results, you should be fine.
I dunno about half speed... but certainly limit the operating temperature.
more than likely it's caused by running at higher than average temperatures (that are still below the limit) which cause an increase in hole/electron migration within the gates [from entropy] and they become weakened and occasionally malfunction...
(at higher temperatures, entropy is higher, and therefore migration as well)
I'm guessing that these malfunctioning devices had been run at very high temperatures, almost continuously, for a long period of time [years even]. Even though the chip spec allows temperatures to be WAY hotter than they usually run at, it's probably not a good idea to LET this happen in order to save money on cooling systems (or for any other reason related to this).
On several occasions I've seen overheated devices malfunction [requiring replacement]. In some cases it was due to bad manufacturing practices (an entire run of bad boards with dead CPUs). I would expect that repeated exposure to maximum temperatures over a long period of time would eventually have the same effect.
without revealing [classified information] the concept of "2 out of 3" needed to initiate something, such as [classified information], might even use an analog means of doing so, and pre-dates the space shuttle [and Evangelion] by more than just a few years.
Definitely a good idea for critical calculations, though.
CPU redundancy may be easier than people may want to admit...
If your CPU has multiple (actual) cores, for "critical" operations you could run two parallel threads. If your threads can be assigned "CPU affinity" such that they don't hop from CPU to CPU as tasks switch around then you can compare the results to make sure they match. If you're REALLY paranoid, you can use more than 2 threads.
If it's a VM then the hypervisor (or emulator, or whatever) would need to be able to ensure that core to thread affinity is supported.
most likely it will cause an increase in automated processes. China often does labor intensive things because they pay slave wages. Moving foundries away from China requires less labor in the process to be profitable. There are a lot of foundries already in places _NOT_ China. But yeah, this kind of move won't happen overnight. "All eggs in one basket" no more.
I'm not convinced that a GPLv3 license was the right way to go with GCC.
Perhaps a GCC project (that gets all of the 'ownership' from FSF) could revert to GPLv2 and add the necessary license exceptions to manage any other license compatibility issues.
That would probably fix it.
Least likely, that it would allow for proprietary closed-source versions. But, if it could allow linking with and/or running with closed source components, that should be the choice of the end-user. My $.10 worth.
(not that I would LIKE it... having a closed-source component for developing on a particular platform... I most likely would NOT)
then again there's also llvm
hard disk drives require a working fluid (air) to elevate the heads above the spinning disk surface. Head crashes occur when there's not enough air or drive speed to float the heads.
Old style clean rooms were needed to work on them, to prevent hair and dust from getting on the drive, which would be thicker than the air layer between the disk and the head.
I'd prefer a RETRO-redesign - like "before Australis" UI.
(I wish *I* could get paid to do *THAT* - because if I were, it'd be done RIGHT!)
"simpler" UI is not necessarily the best unless there's an "Advanced" setting to get the full monty.
I'll probably still use it, though.
Dear Mozilla: try putting the lipstick on the OTHER end, not the end that goes "oink"
the laws of the open sea used to include salvage rights for derelict ships, no matter what flag they once flew. In space, it can be the same...
THEN, if salvage bots cruised around looking for "dangerous" objects, and either collected them (for salvage) or simply de-orbited them (for safety), it'd eventually clean a lot of it up.
Insurance companies and underwriters would definitely be interested in this.
unless we wake up sooner and change our ways.
to what, exactly... living in poverty on $2 a day? I don't THINK so...
(personally I make very little non-recyclable trash and nearly everything goes into the blue recycle can. what little is left over goes into a land fill along with everything else, and then houses are built on top of it when it gets full enough)
Nuke it from orbit, right?
No just a handful of "happy accidents" when objects too small to be detected (and leave a mark suspiciously looking like a bullet hole) "accidentally" strike the objects of interest and "accidentally" drive them into a safe LEO trajectory that decays into a safe splashdown someplace where no further accidents can happen...
(because knocking things into a higher orbit at escape velocity would be too difficult, and blowing them up makes even MORE dangerous space debris)
"Hey derelict space junk, come check out this view, right next to this open 3rd floor window."
Cancel Culture is when the people in charge of social networks force people out
not entirely but you're at least 'warm'.
It's more like the clique groups in high school [the ones run by "the jocks" or "the queen B" specifically], or an "exclusive" country club that doesn't want to let the "riff raff" in...
very ironic, and even HYPOCRITICAL, in a world that is supposed to be "more inclusive".
and Microsoft had 'Comic Chat', which worked well as a regular IRC client when you turned the comic stuff off [leaving it on polluted the channel with various comic-related noise, though there WERE some IRC channels devoted to it for a long time]
In some ways I miss 'Comic Chat'. You could do funny things with the panels. But yeah for serious tech-related things, text-only works way better...
/me done migrating IRC settings to use Libera as official channels like #freebsd have moved there
also another elephant in the room:
Nearly all eggs in ONE basket (China)
I just wanted to point that out.
If your 2nd source is basically the same as your first source, and you cannot purchase capacity because demand is too high for both of your sources, then you didn't do your material planning correctly.
Just in Time deliveries only work when you can get the capacity from the suppliers along with the necessary on-time deliveries. It's putting a LOT of risk on the ability of your suppliers to follow through on their end of the bargain. And, apparently, they're not willing to hire temporary people and work extra shifts to manage the varying capacity. There was apparently no room in their plans that included the ability to ramp things up. The end result, what we see now.
I used to work in 'Material Controls' a while back, so I know how it all works. "Line Stops" due to missing components are BAD. VERY VERY BAD. It doesn't help when the supply chain is disrupted on a global scale like this.
Considering they have over 100k employees
that's where the arguments for/against it being systemic come in. With that many employees, you would think the law of averages would compensate for, let's say, a lack of women in the sales force who aren't on "the sales ladder" track [or whatever they called it] but throughout the REST of the company it's "ok" [let's say].
Having ONLY MEN on the "sales force" track is compelling enough, at least for that part of the business, but if they made up for it (or explained it well enough, like 'too few applicants' etc.), then Google might have a defense against "this one case" with the promise to "handle it internally" and avoid the class action penalties, i.e. "The rest of the business is 'ok'" or "move along nothing to see here." That's the best outcome for Google I'd think.
However, past performance suggests that they DO have systemic promotion-related (and other) discrimination problems, as indicated by some of the other claims mentioned in the article, as well as past lawsuits, etc..
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