Posts by bombastic bob

The COVID-19 pandemic is still going – and so is the PC buying spree: Shipments up 55% on the Before Times

Re: Where have all the PCs gone?

The whole WFH assessment stuff is going to kick off properly soon as this becomes permanent

I hope so, and that WFH passes "the test". Occasionally "in the office" [I believe] is more productive for a LOT of us. Not everyone, of course, but a LOT of us.

The PC sales statistics now actually coincide with something I'd been saying for a long time, that the market stats are NEW SALES and not "I like what I already own". For those of us happy with our existing hardware, which in my case dates back to 2007-ish, I might be constantly running 4 or 5 'PC' computers simultaneously with various OSs and use cases, but the "PC sales" stats will NEVER reflect it.

But when people finally NEED to replace the old hardware, sales spike up.

It is 60 years since the first cosmonaut reached orbit and 40 years since the Shuttle first left the launchpad

Re: Ah when we took risks to achive great things.

they were test pilots

Fire up that Macintosh II: Retro techhead gives the web a Netscape 1.1 makeover

Re: We could argue all day over...

Sites made entirely of JS can die in a fire.

Yes but THEN what will we do with all of those JS web coders?

Microsoft drops 64-bit OneDrive into the pool: Windows on ARM fans need not apply. As usual

Re: Port to ARM

the problems I've seen on ARM vs x86 vs amd64 are compiler related.

As an example (for gcc anyway), the default character type is signed on x86 and amd64, but UNsigned on ARM.

Occasionally this causes problems with bit-wise operations and comparisons. Your program may no behave *exactly* the same. Similarly for 32-bit vs 64-bit, where in some cases the default size of 'int' actually makes a difference.

To fix the problem, you can try using standardized C types like 'int8_t' instead of 'char', for all variables, so that there are NO unnecessary surprises. Yeah, you might have to edit your code. A bit.

Otherwise, C is C and C++ is C++. But then again, Micros~1 doesn't JUST use C and C++ these days. They (unfortunately) have that "CLR" thing formerly known as ".Not" that (for some reason) they insist on using EVEN FOR C++, and the lingos like VB and C-pound that rely on it.

It is a fair bet that the CLR itself is ALSO a major stumbling block to ARM programs running properly, regardless of the many re-writes it's apparently undergone since TIFKAM was first foisted upon us (and ARM was proposed as a supported platform).

(and don't EVEN get me started on UWP or anything newer coming down the pike...)

Re: Dead on arrival

Micros~1 is apparently still up to their "let background processes spin instead of going into a wait state" tricks again...

I discovered DECADES ago, in the Win 95 beta [aka 'Chicago'], that if you wanted to have a background process NOT eat 100% of the CPU [it was monitoring system resources like memory usage if I remember correctly], you had to enter a bonafide WAIT STATE and not just call "yield()" or some other similar function. Earlier 16-bit windows had cooperative tasking via the message loop, which avoided the problem.

With background threads (without a message loop) I especially had this same issue, as my threads that polled things would eat 100% CPU unless I forced them NOT to. Usually 'wait on a mutex' or 'wait for file I/O' was sufficient to prevent that from happening, with a slight cost in performance. You could specify a timeout on the wait so you could still poll things, too. THAT solved it, more or less.

Some time in the Windows 10 beta this problem creeped into NEARLY ALL of the TIFKAM code, or at least that's how it appeared to me when running it in a VM [in fact the TIFKAM stuff related to the Start Thing was partifularly bad about it, and several such applications appeared to actually fight one another while attempting interprocess communication]. I screamed loud about it, had arguments over why it was happening, and only deaf ears and somewhat condescending attitudes resulted.

Making the fans spin also means that laptop batteries drain unnecessarily, and that CPU clock throttling won't behave correctly. One Drive on your Mac apparently has this same problem. Maybe not all OSs or not all CPUs have this problem. But for the ones that do, it's very very very irritating.

And, from what you said, it appears as if nobody in Redmond has learned anything about such things, either

Re: It really does not need to be 64bit

I'm pretty sure there's a slight performance benefit to working with 64-bit values when you're running in amd64 mode, which is probably offset a bit by the fact that you HAVE to now work with 64-bit addresses. In my experience, the 64-bit executables are slightly larger and require slightly more RAM, but seem to perform [with my code, anyway] at about the same speed.

Maybe there's an algorithm or two that can significantly benefit from either 32-bitness or 64-bitness, but I haven't found it. Still, if you have a system with less than 4G of RAM on it, you're probably better off running a 32-bit OS unless you have some compelling reason not to.

And the beauty of 32-bit code is that the same binary generally runs on both the 32-bit AND 64-bit version of that OS. It makes distribution of the code a little easier.

(but I had to load 64-bit Linux on a ~4G box because things like Android Studio basically demand it nowadays...)

Re: Does it matter?

"They" could just do the data snooping inspections while it's "in the cloud" (i.e. on their serves), so 32-bit vs 64-bit on the client wouldn't matter...

Airline software super-bug: Flight loads miscalculated because women using 'Miss' were treated as children

Re: Who was the developer?

Why use title rather than anything else

I think the obvious elephant in the room has been avoided. And, here comes Captain Obvious [me].

If an entire American football team decided to self-identify as 'Miss' on their next flight, then this whole algorithm would be thrown on its head. Sorta like a team of elephants self-identifying as "mice".

(how come nobody else said anything like this?)

[troll icon, for obvious reasons]

weight sensors under the seats makes a lot more sense. Who knows, they might pay for themselves over time with better takeoff performance and fuel cost reduction.

Re: Not necessarily.

ok, how about weight sensors in the seats then? Even an approximate value would justify adding a few coins to the cost of the seat... [I've been looking at price of pressure sensors lately, and they're not that expensive and often use I2C]. Extra added bonus, you'd know if the seat is empty at any time during the flight.

Imagine your data center backup generator kicks in during power outage ... and catches fire. Well, it happened

Re: This would never have happened at a certain broadcaster I used to work for.

your standard 5 gallon portable fuel can would do it. No offroad vehicle is complete without one. Just fill up a bunch of them, put them on a cart capable of holding the weight and navi-guessing the terrain, transfer to the diesel generator's tank when you arrive, and rinse/repeat until full.

Jeff Bezos supports US tax rise after not paying it for two years – and paying tiny amount in 2019

Re: Ah, tax laws

A turnover tax would ALSO mess up inventory control for manufacturing and most likely DRIVE IT OFF SHORE. You'd see a lot of sub-contract distribution centers in China (for example) directly shipping to customers, thus avoiding any inventory at all within the borders of the taxing authority. And even if it WERE paid (instead of avoided), the cost would be passed on to the consumer. What, people thought that "mega-corps you want punished" would just dip their hands a little deeper into some wellsopring of CASH they have laying about??? No, they'll pass the costs on to consumers, an excuse to jack up prices or scrape revenue from them by some other means...

let alone the additional accounting nightmares for sales and VAT taxes later, because people WOULD complain a LOT about "taxing the tax" otherwise...

increase of tax *RATES* for high income earners does NOT tax people like BEZOS...

It taxes the MIDDLE CLASS WAGE EARNERS who are trying to *BECOME* "the rich", MOSTLY upper management and small business owners.

And if you tax SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS do you think they will be

* hiring more people

* increasing employee wages and benefits

* investing in future business growth

Or, will their otherwise "disposabl income" *NOW* be locked into being RE-DISTRIBUTED by GOVERNMENTS to BUY VOTES with in the form of WEALTH CONFISCATION TAXES???

And "the TRULY rich" like Bezos, who contributed in various ways to DEMO[N,C]RAT candidates, won't pay even an extra DIME in REAL taxes. Do not doubt me, Loopholes are the LEAST of his advantages. There are trusts, income deferment, non-profit "charity" corporations, off-shoring, yotta yotta yotta all working in his favor.

These people must be elitists with NO conscience.

Yep, the 'Who owns Linux?' case is back from the dead

and it's reason for living? "To Blathe"

which is exactly what they seem to be doing. Call their bluff and be done with it.

(regardless of whether teh intarwebs believes that 'blathe' is an actual verb meaning 'bluff')

Re: @FIA - A real cancer

Imposing monthly subscriptions on everything that is not a phone or tablet is a goal that's worth pursuing

Not if you are in business to SATISFY your customers instead of EXPLOITING them...

"Imposing" things that way foments *REBELLION*. How long before software authors that targeted windows lose their market share and stop further windows development? (MS once recognized the importants of Developers, Developers after all) Nobody outside of mega-corporations is going to RENT their software, not when there are SO many alternatives, and "Imposing" would rapidly shift the market to "non-Imposing" alternatives.

And if Linux were to become "a rental" as well, there is STILL FreeBSD!!!

Re: A real cancer

the absolute pig headed refusal that some things can NEVER EVER change fascinates me.

no, unfortunately, some of those things CAN change, and it's nearly always for the WORSE when they do...

So it's more like some things should NEVER EVER change.

If Micros~1 were serious about their 'Linux in Windows' subsystem they'd make an equivalent Wine-like subsystem to seamlessly run Windows GUI applications (both 32-bit and 64-bit) under Linux and FreeBSD, alongside X11 applications, on your Mate, Cinnamon, lxde, or other desktop. I'd pay money for that. Maybe the 'Mint' folks could help...

Re: The question of how much?

SCOs intellectual property, being "re-gifted" like an ugly tie

If they value it high enough, it might even help out with the next bankruptcy settlement...

They said it'd never happen, but here we are in the year of our Lord 2021 and Microsoft has its own OpenJDK flavour

Not feeding enhancements back into the mainstream code - isn't that what got them sued by Sun in the first place? A JVM that had windows-related enhancements for Java??? Or are they being super-careful now to avoid them being enhancements to the lingo itself?

IBM, Red Hat face copyright, antitrust lawsuit from SCO Group successor Xinuos

Re: Ah shit ...

OBVIOUSLY you are not a l[aw]yer

Re: you can't kill UNIX

yeah well the options for POSIX utilities occasionally get distro-specific enhancements, and there are differences between BSD and GNU versions as well. Big whoop.

icon, because, facepalm

both parties copied it from FreeBSD, which is legal

I wish this had gotten more attention.

I'm already farmiliar with FreeBSD

I smell a POSSIBLE BUSINESS VENTURE [converting Linux systems to FreeBSD]

Also NetBSD, OpenBSD, others. The BSD kernel has its own copyrights and whatnot and was sanitized DECADES ago. In fact, maybe SCO et al had copyright violations of BSD CODE !!!

(wouldn't THAT be a nice twist of fate?)

icon, because, FreeBSD

Canonical releases Ubuntu on Windows Preview with early builds, new tools for the brave

bass-ackwards

Should be making it possible to run WINDOWS APPLICATIONS on a Linux desktop, like Wine, only officially blessed by Micros~1, like the OSX subsystem they did for Windows XP applications a while back...

(both 32-bit and 64-bit seamlessly on 64-bit systems, which last I checked, Wine had trouble doing)

If Micros~1 released it as an add-on product for Linux, and it required me paying for it, I think I'd pay for it.

New systemd 248 feature 'extension images' updates immutable file systems without really updating them

Re: Errr but...

but if applications begin to *RELY* *TOO* *HEAVILY* on obscure and ridiculous "features" supplied by systemd, it will only encumber the BSDs and Devuan and other "non-systemd" Linux flavors with having to WORK AROUND IT.

I hope devs will not rely on such features, and will NOT assume systemd is "there". I fear they just might jump into the lemming herd and do exactly THAT...

(it's bad enough when they assume /proc or /sys exist as they do in Linux, or WORSE, Pulse Audio - even as a PORT on FreeBSD, Pulse Audio tends to interfere with OSS whenever the server is running)

X.Org says it's saving a packet with Packet after migrating freedesktop.org off Google Kubernetes Engine

Re: Cloud Costs

I've been looking at another ISP for my company domain again. The accounts are being migrated and I would lose a couple of features I want to keep. Fortunately, a comparable service [to the existing capabilities] exists.

In the mean time I've had to look at a lot of hosting options and pricing.

In short, AWS, Azure, and Google are *NOT* the only game in town. Many lesser expensive alternatives exist. And it may benefit them to combine their cloudy services with a hybrid shared/dedicated hosting platform for admin things. Based on what I saw in the article it may be the "adinistrative" crunching that's doing them in.

(you know how managers are, "what's the average man hour for XXX type of YYY and can I get that in my e-mail every monday morning, summarized and totaled?" - multiply that by a dozen or so, and CLOUD SERVICE STICKER SHOCK ensues)

Sierra Nevada Corporation resurrects plans for crewed Dream Chaser spaceplane

Not quite sure what the point of an inflatable habitat is.

I would guess it's all about cost. Structural supports are heavy and cost money to launch into orbit.

Rocket fuel tanks are pressurized to make them nice and stiff, and probably to improve fuel pump performance at the same time. As an example, take a couple of empty paper towel rolls and try this experiment:

* Stack weights on a paper towel tube that's pure vertical. Most likely you'll squish it after a small amount of weight.

* Now, inflate a balloon inside the tube [make sure it fills the tube] and observe what the balloon air pressure does to the paper towel tube.

(this is why rocket fuel tanks are pressurized)

So: the air pressure in this case is providing the structural strength. you need air pressure anyway inside the people tank, so you might as well work WITH it. Win-Win

I would assume that, like a car tire, there are re-enforcement bands that keep the pressure from over-inflating the container. With a pre-stress OUTwards, you can actually withstand even MORE stress INWARDS, and depending, it might withstand a collision with a space rock (or space junk) better than a solid structure.

"Steel Belted Radial" space enclosures. Works for me.

for an April Fool twist (regardless of whether this article is comedic April 1 material), how about the following:

* subcontracted to a company that makes inflatable auto-pilots [think 'Airplane' the movie]

* has face painted around external airlock (with a very surprised look)

* Commissioned by former U.S. President Bill Clinton

MANY more are possible - we ALL have imaginations. Heh.

Satellites, space debris may have already brightened night skies 10% globally – and it's going to get worse

it's the same arguments regarding street lights. San Diego metro area is near Mt. Palomar Observatory. Over the years the observatory's night sky requirements have influenced the color and placement of street lights in the metro area. It's a compromise between dark and dangerous night time streets vs an unusable observatory.

Orange and yellow lights that direct their light downwards seem to work pretty well. But comments earlier about LED lights, and considering the high level of blue [which is VERY bad for your eyes, I might add] and their effect on light pollution relates to this.

OK we paint the satellites orange. Helps to find them if they "splash down" too I bet... [ok they'd burn up but still, the color of an orange life vest might be filterable by telescopes]

Re: Junk screen

W.T.F... ???

Re: Altitude affects the duration too

Yes they are only an issue for a very small set of astronomers which look for variable objects near sunrise/sunset. This doesn't affect most 'deep-space' astronomy.

Then, if THIS is the case, WHY are their claims of illuminating the night sky by 10% ?

There seems to be a contradiction here...

Re: Can't they paint new satellites black ?

stealth satellites... hmmm...

if they keep solar panels pointed directly at the sun, the back sides could be reflective to dissipate heat. This could minimize the number of reflective surfaces in which the sun would reflect onto the earth. So you'd potentially solve the solar heating problem AND reflectivity.

(no doubt the cost would be higher as well, moving solar panels and the necessary gyros and thrusters and fuel needed to remain stable)

Re: Blankety Blank

right-click "open in new tab" is also good (slightly older Firefox on FreeBSD)

I'm pretty sure the right-click menu for 'open in new tab' is universal in anything but the simplest web browsers

Red Hat pulls Free Software Foundation funding over Richard Stallman's return

Re: Not racists but futurists!

I was thinking "gangs" and "bullying" and "chaos" but your description is adequate for arguing against it.

"Get Woke" - "Go Broke". It'll happen, as people 'wake up' and see "the woke" for who they REALLY are... and even more than RH abandoning FSF, it'll be 'the rest of us' abandoning "the woke".

As for Stallman [back on topic] I would normally consider him to become 'one of the woke' but I assume it's too late for that.

Re: !PC

from the article:

deeply insensitive remarks

hurting feelings. *AWWW* - teh intarwebs were OFFENSIVE again!!! <facepalm>

Seriously I can think of WORSE things that Stallman appears to hold in high regard, some of which seem to have found their way into GPLv3, that would concern ME a WHOLE lot more than "deeply insensitive remarks". The one that concerns me the most is the "non-freedom" restrictions about GPL'ness and compatibility with other licenses, while at the same time calling it "freedom". It bears too close a resemblance to a kind of "double-speak" or "double-think".

And In My Bombastic Opinion, a HIGHLY INTELLIGENT PERSON should NOT care about some snowflake's FEELINGS. There are way too many IMPORTANT things to think and care about.

and firing someone and NOT doing business wiht a company over something like "deeply insensitive remarks" (In My Bombastic Opinion) reflects a POOR set of priorities.

I'm reminded of that Futurama episode where Lur (from Omicron Persei 8) ate the hippy and became stoned...

Re: What were they thinking?

you make a point. once you incorporate [non-profit or for-profit] you release control to the board of directors, who can hire/fire board members according to the established rules.

Founder or otherwise the board members are in charge.

Apple iPad torched this guy's home, lawsuit claims

Re: Laptop fires

there's a chance of it powering up for updates

You would ACTUALLY ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN???

We need a safer battery technology

yeah well the obligatory snarky response of "people in hell need ice water" aside, to get a lightweight high capacity battery, you need a lightweight highly reactive material like Lithium...

Resolving THAT contradiction would probably be like the proverbial "better mouse trap"

No JavaScript, no trackers, no SSL security: Retro computing boffin gives Google News a Netscape 1.1 makeover

has anyone compared load times yet?

Has anyone compared load times between the "vintaged" versions and the *ahem* "modern" web pages?

Captain Obvious says "you already know what the results will be like"

'Agile' F-35 fighter software dev techniques failed to speed up supersonic jet deliveries

From the article:

C2D2, or Continuous Capability Development and Delivery. This has been less than stellar

I guess this is 'similar in principle to Agile'. And apparently, JUST as *FRAGILE*. Yeah it was supposed to rhyme...

I'll just say it: Developing software to a moving target is NEVER going to get things done. Neither is meeting mania nor analysis paralysis nor changing directions so fast you could generate electricity with the circular motion.

Prince Harry, the Count of Montecito, turns Silicon Valley startup exec with first job based in 21st Century

Re: "founded in 2013"

remember the "dot bomb" companies?

They're probably a straw and/or a single card away from collapse...

Sell to the investors! Sell the INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY! Make THAT our Business, and use famous people as employees to help promote it!!!

Without doing any research on this company I'll say that, pretty confidently, believing that I'm right.

(Those VCs should invest in MY company instead. i'll hire people and make stuff. Hopefully, would make a profit, too. I'm envious...)

Free Software Foundation urged to free itself of Richard Stallman by hundreds of developers and techies

Re: Let this be a warning to all decent people

I think your description is the more accurate one, in my bombastic opinion at least. I won't say why exactly, other than "it sounds typical" of the kind of person that i believe Stallman to be, especially politically.

His original vision, I think, was to increase freedom with software, and NOBODY can really argue with that. Where it's gone from there, is ALSO typical, and a LOT less "free" In My Bombastic Opinion. It reminds me a bit of George Orwell's "Animal Farm". Implications obvious.

Re: Oh how the woke wimper

heh. that's pretty funny.

Seriously my only objection to Stallman being on the board is his politics, and the way he seems to want to FORCE GPL-ness instead of "allow more freedom". GPLv2 is fine (especially with LGPL and compiler exceptions), GPL 3 not so fine, and I hate to think what a GPL 4 would be like if Stallman _REALLY_ got his way...

FreeBSD 13.0 to ship without WireGuard support as dev steps in to fix 'grave issues' with initial implementation

Re: Why is Wireguard in the kernel?

It's probably contributed code

You _could_ write a kernel module as a port. I've done it (more than once). Then someone who wants the kernel module can install it from FreeBSD ports, or maybe just copy the port files onto the target machine and build it. All you need is kernel headers and the ports collection to do that.

But inclusion as part of the base system requires that it meet some specific standards, from coding style and naming of variables to reliability and security.

Usually it gets a lot of peer review. At least, that's been my experience in the small number of contributions I've made.

(if you have something good to contribute, it's worth going through the process, spend some IRC time with the core devs, submit it to Phabricator for review, have specific people review it, and so on)

Someone will be along in a moment to blame C for all that, by the way.

predictably so, yeah. And it happened. I'm avoiding that part of the thread.

Richard Stallman says he has returned to the Free Software Foundation board of directors and won't be resigning again

Re: I'm Back...

Actually, that particular statement I agree with. Not so sure about having Stallman back...

(not looking forward to the possibility of something like, let's say, a GPL 4 ...)

Listen to The Sound of Perseverance: Not the death metal album, but NASA's Mars rover on the move

Re: Sounds like ...

after listening to portions of both the raw and filtered, it seems to me that the 'scratches' were, in fact, the sounds of the powdered regolith-like material being pressed into the cracks of the wheels. Some kinds of powdery stuff will 'squeek' when you compress it. That's what it sounds like to me. And filtering it out loses that aspect of it, so the raw version is the better one.

If you listen to it carefully with this in mind, it makes sense. The rover is going over rocks and powdery regolith-like material [as apparent from the photo anyway] and leaving some nice patterns in the dirt, showing how it's being pressed between the cracks of the wheels.

I suppose without that sound-sync video it's only possible to guess. But it also helps to be a musician who does amateur recording and equalization and noise removal and things like that.

Re: speed of sound

sorta like what Helium does to your voice, or Argon gas for that matter.

makes sense, yeah. Density of the sound medium altering the frequency (and other characteristics) of certain kinds of sounds.

Windows 10 Insider build fixes the fix it sent out to fix the fix that broke printing? Afraid not, but here's a new Notepad icon

Re: Paperless

I mentioned this to a similar response for a related article...

RIght now it's "tax season" in the USA. To electronically file them, you usually have to print something, then sign it, then scan it, then attached the scanned document to your electronically filed tax stuff.

Can't do that if the printer is broken. And it's due on or before April 15.

The only OTHER alternative seems to be PRINTING EVERYTHING and mailing it. Printer required, yeah.

Microsoft nudges Windows 10 21H1 toward commercial customers

Re: "users should not expect much whizzbangery"

not to be bothered by an OS that wants the spotlight

_SO_ many thumbs up you deserve for this

(it's like a program that significantly altered your autoexec.bat and config.sys files without your permission, back in the DOS days - the 'arrogance of the developer', as if HIS software is THE most important thing YOU have on YOUR computer...)

Re: Wish list

just doing what the majority of uses want,

Where are these 'straw man' "users" exactly?

It has been my general opinion (and observation) that Micros~1 went off of the customer dis-service "cliff of shame" like so many other techno-lemmings, FORCIBLY adopted the 2D FLATTY look [instead of giving us A CHOICE], removed features THEY didn't want US to have, created NEW features they wanted US to use INSTEAD, and tried to shove a poor attempt at "touch-friendly phone-like interface" down the throats of PC users that were perfectly happy with their keyboard+mouse interfaces (while Windows Phone collapsed under its own bloat, rendering the entire 'One Windows' concept COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS AND IRRELEVANT).

And they basically re-invented the wheel [poorly], rendering ALL previous Micros~1 wheels "obsolete" and executed DELIBERATE pressure (GWX) to PREVENT US FROM USING THE OLD VERSIONS, and _THEN_ (finally) MADE US TAKE IT WHETHER WE WANTED IT OR NOT, "for our own good", by dumping support (and convincing software makers to NOT support 7 any more) as if they were some kind of government bureaucracy in charge of how we MUST use OUR computers. And so on.

And from what I've seen, THIS is MUCH closer to "what the majority of users want" than what you said...

"Stepping back in time" - it would be good for us ALL. Let's step back to Windows 7's interface, and software that you OWN instead of RENT, _NO_ advertisements within the applications _OR_ the OS, and LOCAL logins instead of cloudy-track-you logins. and so forth.

My PC is *NOT* a phone, so why the "phone-like" interface?? And what _I_ do with it is *NOT* Micros~1's (or anyone ELSE's) business!!!

At least with this last update, it seems Micros~1 isn't cramming anything "new, shiny" at us. As someone else has mentioned, I hope they spend the next 2 years FIXING BUGS instead of CREATING NEW ONES within their FORCED UPDATES.