* Posts by bombastic bob

10507 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

New lawsuit: Why do Android phones mysteriously exchange 260MB a month with Google via cellular data when they're not even in use?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: someone's getting ripped off

This is theft of your bandwidth.

and the only TRUE remedy includes the ability to TURN THIS *CRAP* OFF!!!

When sci-fact beats sci-fi: Echoes of exploding stars' final cries may be trapped in the rings of trees on Earth

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Sounds plausible

realistically, all dating methods include assumptions. Using tree ring C14 variations to help calibrate the others is only going to make it more accurate, when results from various methods converge in a repeatable manner [once calibrated correctly].

Currently the 'isotopic decay' methods are all subject to various errors, centering around "what is the amount of material at the beginning of the decay chain". Until we have a way of projecting that backwards that is accurately determined based on converging "date determination" results, we'll just have to assume it's all "just a guess".

There is a layer in the rocks, however, at the end of the cretaceous period if I remember correctly (verified, K-T boundary), that is said to mark the period where the meteor that allegedly killed the dinosaurs allegedly formed the gulf of Mexico and caused a multi-year darkening of the skies... so that event is probably in trees as well, fossilized ones at any rate. Apparently there are materials, isotopes, and structures in that layer that coroborate something _LIKE_ a meteor strike happening and causing a world-wide catastrophe.

In any case, corroborating tree ring info in fossil trees might be a cool thing to find. OK 60-something million year old tree fossils, but still... who knows what we might find if we look for it?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Sounds plausible

13.000 year old tree rings...

fossils maybe? [it could happen...]

This topic also implies the use of various dating methods that include carbon 14 dating. And using tree rings to catalog the variations in C14 for a given year just might help calibrate this dating method in ways that greatly improves its accuracy by (essentially) data modeling the "chaotic" component and creating 'fingerprints' (of sorts) for a particular group of years.

Also reminds me of that Dr. Who episode where the earth was covered in forest for a day or so...

123 Bork? Six-day DNS record-edit outage at domain name flinger 123 Reg enrages users

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

From the article: Outbound domain transfers do seem to be working

a feature that is, no doubt, being used quite a bit...

I don't have either of the registrars that I use managing anything but the registered domain. The actual DNS is either done by the ISP providing the web site stuff, or by me. Bind is NOT hard.

rndc freeze

delete the transaction file for the zone

edit the zone file using your favorite text editor (pluma, ee, nano, whatever)

rndc thaw

no problem

(also need to set up the DHCP hooks for on-demand naming by DHCP clients, but that's not hard either, using isc's DHCP server)

as for the registered domain name, no problems with either verisign or godaddy. Ok maybe I pay more, but sometimes you get what you pay for.

San Francisco approves 'CEO tax', hopes to extract up to $140m a year from corps with wide exec-staff salary gap

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

The tax is for the greater good POLITICIANS to BUY VOTES with

Fixed it for ya

(ok not in the same context but I could not resist)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: String 'em up!

more than likely they'll move OUT of San Francisco within the year.

I hear other staes like Florida and Texas have corporate friendliness, and MUCH lower cost of living.

Think about it: if you're NOT being taxed at that 'progressive' (read: punitive) rate and your cost of living is HALF of what it was, you could literally AFFORD to be paid 1/3 or even 1/4 of what you WERE being paid, and still live JUST as well as you did before (possibly BETTER). Just convert somve of that wage pay to stock options or 401k or something ELSE that's not immediately taxable, and move to one of THOSE places, and I bet you'll see corporate bottom lines improve AND the CEOs be just as "wealthy" in their lifestyle.

Or you can pay all of your wages in tax, demand a compensating raise, and watch employees get laid off, just for the "privilege" of a San Francisco corporate address...

CERT/CC: 'Sensational' bug names spark fear, hype – so we'll give flaws our own labels... like Suggestive Bunny

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coat

how about "naughty bits" ?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

What they've come up with already sounds exactly like a list of SCI codewords.

or Ubuntu releases

Google reCAPTCHA service under the microscope: Questions raised over privacy promises, cookie use

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: Clear cookies -- daily

WARNING: do not execute these commands until you understand what they do...

rm -rf ~/.cache/chromium/Default/*

rm -rf ~/.config/chromium/*

This also deletes preferences. you may still find it useful. If you want to KEEP your preferences, then you should do this first, then reopen chrome, set your preferences, and check the date/times on the files to see which ones you should keep

Just deleting the cache is not enough. SOME things, like those cookies you mention, reside "ELSEWHERE". You need to figure out which files/dirs CAN be removed, and remove them. I use a script with 30+ lines in it. Rather than post here, you can probably figure out which files need keeping, and delete the rest. No harm to chrome, it just returns to default if you delete a config file.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

the Google monster is having trouble tracking me with my choice of VPN, browser and add-ons.

It's been my observation that when I do the following:

* use chromium

* erase ALL history in an anal retentive way before I go someplace that uses CAPTCHA

The CAPTCHA puzzles are SIMPLER, and more frequently I just get a checkbox.

Thought I might mention that...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

In most cases, I only have to click a checkbox marked I am not a robot;

My experience has demonstrated that CAPTCHA does NOT like you to use non-chromium browsers.

* Nearly every time I use firefox, I have trouble with as many as half of the captchas

* Specifically, the captchas that involve a slow fade-out and slow-fade in of a picture you might need to click because of an object on it *ALWAYS* *FAIL* whenever I use Firefox. This has been going on (sometimes worse, sometimes just bad) for ABOUT A YEAR now.

* There does NOT seem to be any kind of reasonable feedback or customer service contact on this [I have tried, in one case an e-mail address]

* Using FreeBSD and/or Firefox should _NOT_ make you "suspect" nor cause you to get "nothing but the hard ones that require a screen magnifier to solve and involve more than 2 'next/verify' buttons"

* NOT having "the most bleeding edge browser" should _NOT_ make you "suspect" [and it should STILL WORK PROPERLY]

* rejecting 3rd party cookies or setting 'private browsing mode' should NOT make you "suspect"

I have seen government services for the state of California actually USE CAPTCHA which is EXTREMELY ANNOYING because of this sort of thing.

I have also been waiting for a chance to RANT about this where someone else might actually CONFIRM it independently. I do frequent a particular web site that uses captcha to control user posts to (try to) prevent abuse. So I'm basically FORCED to USE CHROMIUM for this.

(but I have great hacks in place to prevent everything I do from being tracked by "that one browser" that doesn't have noscript or cookie blocking or private browsing or any OTHER mitigating 'thing' and I use a script to DUMP ALL HISTORY which is comprehensive and seems to work just fine...)

GitHub warns devs face ban if they fork DMCA'd YouTube download tool... while hinting how to beat the RIAA

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Quick way round

what if you only want to see a 720p version and do NOT want to live-stream with stutterage and skippage because your win-10-nic machines are UPGRADING at the moment and stealing ALL of the bandwidth???

yeah, "embed" player is PART! OF! THE! PROBLEM!!!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: Why is such a tool needed?

Shirley wget or curl already does a more than adequate job?

youtube-dl de-obfuscates the actual video URLs, downloads higher resolution video than your connection might be capable of live-streaming, AND creates a convenient '.mkv' out of it all [in most cases]. It ALSO does NOT require a java player to view the videos, so for SECURITY, it is MORE than ideal.

The problem is that youtube and the other video sites are busy TRYING TO OUTWIT IT, by changing things frequently, like a moving target. Last week thd tool worked. Next week it MAY NOT. and GOOD LUCK finding out what URL the video is REALLY on without excess MANUAL EFFORT.

This is why the script is SO BRILLIANT and SO POPULAR.

Youtube should just have a "download" button anyway.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Well, no problem, I'm going to rip off GitHub code for my own use....

all we need is ANOTHER LOCATION for the youtube-dl code, maybe somewhere in Finland... or put the tarball on USENET

(why these cloudy repo sites would be so "essential" is beyond me)

And what's to stop OTHER web sites around the world from hosting a mirror? All youtube-dl makers (I use this script myself, so I don't have to watch skippy video) need to do is post a set of links and a set of hashes (along with file size) to verify the thing, and voila! It's not that large anyway (~1.7Mb uncompressed) and consists of a SINGLE python program.

So a paste to USENET might be the easiest way to do it. Now I'll need to subscribe to some of the 'binary' groups

Windows kernel vulnerability disclosed by Google's Project Zero after bug exploited in the wild by hackers

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Really?

what does use cryptography by default

probably anything involving crypto API, from web browsers and e-mail to domain logins and file sharing. But that's just a guess on my part.

Fair bet I won't get a patch for Windows 7 either. I'd like something I could manually install, please, rather than getting mandatory updates enabled via "windows update".

X.Org is now pretty much an ex-org: Maintainer declares the open-source windowing system largely abandoned

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: obXKCD

I still edit it occasionally. Sometimes, for some reason, the NVidia card gets assigned a different bus ID.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: I sure hope X.Org doesn't die off yet

No need for full-quote of your post. BIG thumbs up!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

XWayland stacked on Wayland

How to actually make something like this WORK... (but will the alleged CHILDREN working on the Wayland project ever consider such a reasonable proposal from an OLD FART like me?)

* XServer uses X.org implementation "as-is" running like a subsystem layer [my read-up on XWayland just now suggests it is not really like this at all]

* XServer runs independently, NOT invoked by Wayland (so you can have it listen on a TCP socket, just like always, NOT like XWayland currently is, if I read it correctly)

* X11 Video driver and glx and shared memory extensions do the actual work, implemented by X.org as a video driver, and not necessarily a part of Wayland [but with X11 hooks in Wayland as needed]

* OpenGL lib similar to what NVidia does, that does more direct video things at a low level, so you get equal [and possibly better] performance with X11.

* XVideo hooks via the X11 video driver.

This would essentially be 'wayland as a soft video driver'. It would support remote X11, and existing X11 applications without modification. It would essentially use the SAME X.org server code.

But here's what it would NOT do: It would NOT force EVERYONE ELSE to CHANGE, thereby giving up tried/true for the NEW SHINY, sorta like as described in [mentioned again] Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority".

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The power of open-source

Get rid of the ancient cruft and add new features, optimising as you go.

I'm not sure there's a LOT of "ancient cruft" there. Some of that still has use, especially for running a GUI application on an embedded system (let's say something in the 100's of Mhz clock frequency ballpark) across a network (let's say a WiFi G network with lots of interference) and still get reasonable UI performance in which the application is still "usable". not like you're playing videos or anything...

I like to think of that "ancient cruft" as "well tested bug-free code".

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

X11 has a LOT of legacy stuff in it, which I expect is NOT used all that often (except x sample applications like xclock etc.). And better docs for the more recent extensions would be nice, like glx, shared memory extensions, and so on...

Freetype and related stuff are actually add-on libraries.

THAT being said, it is NO excuse to go and ABANDON a working system for "something that more resembles the way Micros~1 does it" like WAYLAND, *ESPECIALLY* when you *LOSE* *CAPABILITIES* that are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!! You know, like the 'DISPLAY' environment variable and REMOTE X server support.

/me uses pluma on an RPi to edit files NEARLY on a daily basis for a major client of mine, using 'DISPLAY' to edit source files on a Linux workstation across the network, often WIRELESSLY. It's a touch screen system, like so many others out there i bet. NO WAY could I do editing on that touch screen, either, and it needs to have the application RUNNING ON THE TOUCH SCREEN to test the code I'm working on. I can't imagine the HORRIBLE INCONVENIENCE AND SLOWDOWN that a LACK of remote X11 capability would cause...

(yeah NOBODY's doing that remote X server thing... right? What, HALF the people who read El Reg do that at least OCCASIONALLY? That sounds about right)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Nobody likes X11

X11 side - (for the clipboard)

Not that hard, and a bit more flexible than it is in the windows world. In theory, within the X11 world, you can store multiple data types on the clipboard (each with its own owner), and not "just one thing" (they don't even have to be for the same object or application, etc.). Additionally it's really not all that hard to make use of in the X11 world. Many clipboard APIs and libraries exist for just about every toolkit I'm aware of. It's more or less a "solved problem" with a lot of sample code available.

I use a background thread and some sync objects (in my own toolkit) to make it appear to work synchronously from the main thread. Copy/Pasta performance is pretty good. The UI is basically seamless, no stuttering or weirdness. code is simple (synchronous call similar to Win32 API in that regard) with the toolkit doing the async stuff in its own thread as needed.

There is a nice command line example 'xclip' that's not all that hard to follow, which lets you access the clipboard from the command line. So if you need clip functionality and are NOT using a toolkit (or are writing your own), this is likely to be very useful to you (it was for me, a long time ago):

https://github.com/astrand/xclip

Question: why abandon something that works and is in long term maintenance mode?

2nd Question: who here has NOT read Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority" ?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: Then there's running an X session remotely.....

I'm still not clear how this is supposed to be accomplished in the new spiffy Wayland-only world.

It's not. Wayland becomes a way of FORCING LINUX USERS INTO A MS WINDOWS MODEL, just like systemd and "other Poettering things"

And, according to the article, X.org is *HARDLY* ABANDONWARE. Last commit a few hours ago, right?

If they need more people to keep X.org alive, I'll volunteer MYSELF.

But... I will *NOT* be *FORCED* into *WAYLAND* and *LOSE* the *ONE* *BEST* *FEATURE* of X11 protocol, the use of the DISPLAY environment variable to run on a REMOTE desktop [or the same one, with a different user context].

that word - "modern". Hey RED HAT, I do NOT think that word means what YOU think it means!

Node.js 15: What's new, what's coming, and keeping pace with Deno. 'We're not going to reinvent' module ecosystem

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

an application that has been stable for years might now fall over

When I read "an application that has been stable for years might now fall over" it just reminds me of the *KINDS* of unintended consequences these "developers" (with real-world blinders firmly in place) "feature creep" into things that have a large user base, only to "not give a crap" when things ULTIMATELY DO FALL OVER.

This is why I will *NEVER* do an application that depends on "the latest bleeding edge version" of something *LIKE* Node.js

We have seen this sort of thing from dependent libs at least a FEW times, particularly when developers capriciously "decide" to withdraw their content, out of spite or malicious intent, doesn't matter, same result.

The C language was originally set up to fail gracefully, which is a major reason why it's ideal for kernel development. In a typical kernel "thing" you already test for error conditions BEFORE you work with something. You force unused pointers and structures to a default state (typically 0 or NULL), and check for it at specific points where it matters. Errors become something you TEST for, and NOT something that CRASHES things.

Back in the day, the FRUSTRATION of a single line of code ending your run in "?Something error at line 500" is what (most likely) drove this feature in C. Also consider the "Unhandled Application Exception" box in Windows versions before 3.1 . That infamous UAE caused SO much frustration, it HAD to be dealt with.

Now Node.js has its OWN version of "Unhandled Application Exception" simply because what was once a warning that COULD BE IGNORED, is *NOW* a FATAL END OF THE UNIVERSE *ERROR*.

Thanks for that, Node.js "developers".

NSA: We've learned our lesson after foreign spies used one of our crypto backdoors – but we can't say how exactly

bombastic bob Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: How do you avoid US spy gear, it is everywhere.

it's why back doors themselves should NEVER be used. Classic example here, in which OTHERS have discovered the keys, and the existence of the back doors has been revealed, defeating their very purpose and compromising EVERYTHING gummints were attempting to use them for.

They need to do REAL investigating. You know, like the OLD days.

Open source may provide a perfect solution to this. How about hardened linux router software that's 100% open source that you can subsequently load onto Cisco's hardware and thereby ELIMINATE the problem? Peer review would find any back doors. Maybe Linus could make it happen?

SNAFU: Clairvoyant train brings warning of what was coming down the line for 2020

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: My Money is on

this is why I search for profanities in debug and warning messages before it gets shipped to a customer

Hackers rummaged about in Finnish psychotherapy clinic – now patients extorted with public data dump threats

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: encryption

I think there should be a law that says ALL personal information has to be stored encrypted and the encryption keys stored seperately.

Usually this is accomplished through high profile lawsuits for when people fail to do it voluntarily...

(so I have my doubts whether a law would make a difference)

A general "data protection" regulation (assuming it does not already exist) MIGHT help, but I expect that one (or more) already exists by now.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Wonderful...

amazingly enough, criminals think like criminals, and are often arrogant and brazenly open in their defiance of the law.

this is who we're dealing with: criminals. laws discourage more honest people from misbehaving.

criminals need to be INCARCERATED.

Pakistan calls on Facebook to extend holocaust denial ban into Islamophobia crackdown

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

behaving like religious zealots by engaging in murder, terrorism, etc. is NOT justified, explained, nor even lessened in severity by mentioning the bad behavior of bad acting people from hundreds of years ago.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

What a sour start to a Monday.

not so much any more. Thanks for the sanity.

'This was bigger than GNOME and bigger than just this case.' GNOME Foundation exec director talks patent trolls and much, much more

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

you sure some of them aren't running one of the BSDs or a commercial UNIX or Solaris variant?

Still they are all POSIX OSs though, and that's really the point I think.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Stop

Move to Wayland?

Migrating to Wayland - why are they doing this again? I bet it's the same justification as it was for the "new" interface of Gnome 3 [which broke the panels in my opinion, on several levels] and so on? And the major changes to the gedit user interface (making it harder to work with)? Just because it is *NEW* ?

Here are some GOOD reasons to make SURE they do NOT abandon X11.

* Remote execution of programs, via DISPLAY environment variable, where the UI is presented on a remote desktop across a network.

* The ability to run an application locally, using a similar method, with a different logged-in user context (works playing video, too). I can do this to REALLY sandbox a web browser, including cache, settings, script/cookie enabling, and so on.

* X11 is by its very nature client/server, and therefore leverages multi-core (to some extent) already.

* glx and driver-specific OpenGL already exist for enhanced performance

* change for the sake of change - ALWAYS a bad idea - Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority" comes to mind

Having "Wayland Too" is fine, as compatibility is a GOOD thing. They just need to make sure that X11 is _NOT_ abandoned!

Otherwise, GTK3-based programs, which seem to run 'ok' on my Mate desktop systems, will NOT be able to run outside of a Wayland-based system.

(and having GTK3 more compatible with Mate settings, like getting rid of some of the scrollbar weirdness, would be a nice feature, too)

(and make those STUPID phone-friendly-menus and icons OPTIONAL rather than MANDATORY)

Down the Swanny: '2020 has been the most challenging year in my career' says Intel CEO as profit plunges 30%

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: We live in interesting times

customers are slightly miffed about the little tiny CPU security vulnerabilities thing that we all had to work around at our cost to patch and the reduction in performance

Since AMD processors were "mostly unaffected" by the more egregious vulnerabilities, I'd put this at the TOP of the list of "why our profits were lower than expected" [including the efforts to mitigate it].

bombastic bob Silver badge
WTF?

RE: spending $1 billion on 'diversity'

They have set their priorities straight...

you were KIDDING, right? [in my view, that would be lawsuit defense at the expense of profitability]

a poisoned tree bears poisonous fruit.

Intel might need to 'clean house' a bit, though. Mega-corporations tend to become top-heavy, lots of bureucratic "scampering" without actually getting anything done (makes me think 'Agile'). They could most likely re-arrange their middle and upper management to become more efficient, maybe incentive for early retirement bonuses and things of that nature. (You can do it without layoffs, in other words)

But usually when companies like Intel restructure, they sharpen their axes instead... and upper management seems to stay about the same, doesn't it?

and a remaining question, does "diversity" include AGE?

Is it Iran or Russia's hackers we need to worry about? The Russians, definitely the Russians, says US intelligence

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: I think you're forgetting something

that's the password on my luggage!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I think you're forgetting something

Maybe the Russians think we look like them.

And believe we hack into Russia..

Most likely, yeah. But I don't think that Russian hackers are out there trying to destroy the USA from within. It's most likely your average cloak+dagger spying, which has been going on since WW2.

(what nobody ever watched a James Bond movie from the 60's, 70s, and 80's?)

Here's a thought: why didn't anyone mention CHINA and N. Korea?

Developer survey: C# losing ground to JavaScript, PHP and Java for cloud apps, still big in gaming

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

This data seems to be missing out on a lot of complexity.

The TIOBE index has always (in my opinion) been a more accurate indicator of language popularity, and it has consistently shown a predominance of Java and C (with occasional jockeying for 1st place) followed by various other languages (including C++). C-pound is generally much lower, currently at around 4.1 percent.

Currently Python is bumping up, challenging Java, which has dropped significantly. I suspect this is only temporary, though. There was a temporary downward bump for C in mid 2017 for some reason, possibly due to introduction of new languages in certain highly visible public projects (I'm thinking Rust but I can't tell from the chart).

And for October 2020, closely following C-pound at 4.1%, is VB at 4%, and JavaScript is at a pathetic 2.1%. This is a _bit_ different from the values in the article, which put JavaScript and C-pound at significantly higher percentages.

Programming language surveys can easily be corrupted by improper sampling, and the way the questions have been worded. I think TIOBE's statistics, which have been collected and tracked for DECADES, are a much better representation of where things are REALLY going.

Kick Google all you like, Mozilla tells US government, so long as we keep getting our Google-bucks

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

I have to wonder what would happen if someone(s) who are NOT bent on forcing the world into 2D FLATTY McFLATSO web interfaces (i.e. Mozilla since "Australis") were to supply the 90% of revenue Mozilla appears to 'need'... when all they REALLY needed to do in the FIRST place was maintain a working browser that, uh, worked. And NOT "feature creep". Like "Australis". And it drives another question, would they make Mozilla look like it did BEFORE Australis if the hand that feeds them (or teet that nourishes them) WANTS it?

I can't think of a good analogy for this, other than feeding pigeons. What happens when the bird lover stops coming?

Windows 10 October 2020 Update arrives: Nothing that will drop your jaw, but we've had enough of 2020's fun surprises anyway

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Update blocking info

When I get home, I'm going to a try a re-install

Last year I built a Ryzen system with FreeBSD on it. no problems related to CPU nor motherboard.

But, since you're re-installing anyway... got Linux? (or BSD)

Everybody's going to the Moon (and Mars): The Reg chats to ESA about 10-year plans and sending Tim back to space

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: "After all, big dreams are all well and good, but somebody has to foot the bill."

I think that the benefits of NASA-related spending greatly outweigh the cost. Think miniaturized electronics and lightweight aircraft materials, for starters.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

because it is there

why does a man climb a mountain? Or go to the South Pole?

Or why go to the moon? Or Mars? Or the bottom of the sea?

Same reason, yeah. Exploration is a good thing.

Back in the 60's, astronauts were HEROES. Then space became mundane, even boring. A couple of accidents and suddenly we have no space shuttles any more. And no HEROES. Not REAL ones, anyway.

It might be a REALLY GOOD thing to get back to that. And of course, NASA, ESA, UK, Russia's space agency, Japan, Israel, and anyone else who wants to come along. Should be fun.

Microsoft unleashes production-ready Edge Runtime. WebView2: This time it's Chromium

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

I've never liked any 'web view' implementation Micros~1 has done

Although on the surface it seems as if a 'web view' component or C++ class would be convenient for generating a user interface, it would seem to me that they're missing the boat on this COMPLETELY.

I saw something like this creep into MFC a decade or so ago, tried it, and didn't like how it was tied in so heavily to Internet Explorer. And of course, how it is NOT portable to Linux or FreeBSD.

I've toyed with things _like_ WebKit, and the dependency hell it can cause. It's disappointing.

On an Android you can create a "web app" pretty easily, and it's all built-in. not like I really think THAT is a better solution, it's convenient for things that already exist as internet web pages [so that the "web app" basically embeds the browser page]. For a few kinds of solutions, this actually makes sense because you can literally open a specific hard-coded web page with an "app" icon that way (and sometimes that's easiest for installation).

But the general NON-PORTABILITY of this kind of web page container/class/whatever is pretty disappointing.

If there were a LIGHTWEIGHT LIBRARY for web support, I'd be interested. So far, though, I'm DISAPPOINTED.

And having to invoke "the latest bleeding 'Edge'" to make it work... no. Just no.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Arrgh

thanks for the warning on that. I don't use Micros~1 "Defender" and will leave updates :PERMANENTLY OFF on all existing 7 boxen [and any new ones I might create as VMs or whatever]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Arrgh

My next computer will definitely be a Linux machine

Welcome Aboard!

Let’s check in with that 30,000-job $10bn Trump-Foxconn Wisconsin plant. Wow, way worse than we'd imagined

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Too funny.

I blame Foxconn for not following through.

Years after we detected two neutron stars crashing into each other, we're still picking up X-rays. We don't know why

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: So here's a thought:

there are various absurd things (negative energy, causality violation, singularities) which everyone kind of knows are implausible but we can't yet say why

yeah good stuff, but keep in mind that for every particle there is an anti-particle, except maybe for gamma [which you could call 'energy' I suppose]. gamma is the result of the annihilation of a particle and an anti-particle. However, if anti-particles are actually particles moving backwards through time [maybe disproved, maybe not] the need for anti-energy wouldn't be there - only anti-time.

And... consider the multi-verse interpretation, where causaility is not a fixed thing. A paradox is resolved through time travel the moment the time traveller "arrives", because a new universe gets created in the quantum event of his arrival. Or something like that.

I've actually considered a sci fi plot surrounding that. Man invents FTL drive, and after testing it, arrives in an alternate universe where history is messed up, like the Nazis won WW2 or it's still Rome in modern day, or everyone's a communist because the USSR won the cold war. Many 'Sliders' plots were like this. Anyway, the protagonist must now use his knowledge of history, discover how to move backwards in time, and find the point at which his arrival screwed things up, and then "fix it" so he can get back to his own time line. Not a new concept, really, but a new twist on an old trope. Could become an entire series... [and I can think of many that had history as a plot device, from Dr. Who and Time Tunnel to Sliders and Highlander]

(but I guess this article is kinda old now, and maybe nobody will see this...)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

Re: So here's a thought:

"So, since they've seen emissions for longer than they expected, one possibility is that the central object is indeed a neutron star and not a black hole, and this would be interesting because it would tell us things about neutron stars I think."

More like 'fusion' then - and being inelastic, kinetic energy has to go someplace... and so it spins so fast that it must slow down somehow, so emits gamma [and maybe absorbs a good deal of that, too, like you suggested]. But when the neutron star absorbs it, what does it cause to happen? I was assuming that it's behaving like an excited atom, which must either emit gamma or fission to remain stable. On a macro scale.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Lead astroboffin

I hate to spoil your joke, but in reality, a "tenth thickness" of a shielding material is the approximate thickness (along the path of the gamma) needed to reduce radiation levels to 1/10 of what it was. So in theory SOME X-rays will get through lead, but depending on its thickness, most probably won't.

/me ducks rotting veggies and half-cups of liquid

Will there be no end to govt attempts to break encryption? Hand over your data or the kiddies get it, threaten Five Eyes spies

bombastic bob Silver badge
Big Brother

politicians asking for a magic unicorn to solve all their problems

You assume they MEAN WELL.

I suggest they are playing "think of the children" to MANIPULATE people into letting them take more freedom and put us ALL under surveilance. This is the kind of thing that gummints do, in a POWER GRAB.

I love the "real police work" example by French police with the use of warrants to crack the phones of people they wanted to spy on. WELL! DONE! FRENCH! COPS!!!

The rest of the world (including USA) needs to get a CLUE, and stop being LAZY. _REAL_ police work, please, and NOT blanket surveilance. [that violates the 4th amendment anyway]. GET a WARRANT.

(followed by the usual 'genii out of the bottle' 'open source encryption examples' 'de-CSS example for DVD playback' 'PGP and IDEA' 'when encryption is illegal, only criminals will have it' and so on)

If you're feeling down, know that we've just buried a heat sensor in an alien planet. If NASA can get through Mars soil, we can get through 2020

bombastic bob Silver badge
IT Angle

Re: But imagine

as long as the remote connectivity works, any competent IT pro can put up with crappy baud rates, limited UIs, and unnecessarily slow response times, and STILL get the job done faster than actually BEING there... while in his underwear, sipping adult beverages and/or caffeine sources.

icon, because [answered my own question, heh]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Space - it's the realm of TRUE hackers, steely-eyed missile-men, the sparkiest of sparks, and the maddest of mad scientists.

studying Mars this way should reveal a lot, including the presence of water in the soil, deeper down where it's not sublimating so much.

Mars' atmosphere is 95% CO2 but extremely thin. Temperatures (below -60F) are such that CO2 is probably as effective as it can be at absorbing IR being radiated out into space, but being so thin, is unlikely to do a whole lot of good. The partial pressure of CO2 is around 600 pascals, if I deduce it correctly (from various sources), as compared to less than 50 pascals for earth (0.04%). Obviously there's more going on than just the partial pressure of CO2, which affects how well it can react with IR radiation escaping into space. 1 Atmosphere on earth is around 101,325 pascals (for those who didn't know already, _I_ had to look it up, I'm used to psi, tor, and bars). The rest is just maths.

So as a result you have a case where the atmosphere probably is NOT going to have a great effect on temperature of the soil. And so the probe can measure deeper down and figure out what's happening at the "permafrost" layer, if there is one [or would be one] and get a really good picture of what's going on planet-wide. And I think they may find that there's water or ice 'down there' making a HUGE difference in temperatures. [probably what they're looking for, I say]. and of course, instruments top side to relay the data and take its OWN measurements.

Should be fun.