* Posts by bombastic bob

10507 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

Made in China? Not for much longer, reckons Foxconn boss

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: This is probably for the best...

most people who live in democracies don't like underwriting human rights abuses

This is ABSOLUTELY true. Too many "sweatshop" examples, among other things.

From the article: "Rising wages in China made the nation less attractive to outside investors"

I think better working conditions for the people doing the work might BENEFIT China (and the image they project to the world) rather than what they've ACTUALLY done - that is, they should have been improving the wages AND freedom for their huge swath of cheap labor employees, instead of ramping up the (alleged) human rights abuses, implementing some kind of social scoring system, generally cracking down on freedom [in Hong Kong for example], and shipping people off to re-education camps (like certain religious people, in particular certain Islam believers), as well as potentially _threatening_ the world by (allegedly?) withholding critical supplies for (allegedly?) political reasons during a pandemic... yeah, maybe *THOSE* things too. And don't forget "The Great Firewall" and possibly even worse spying than NSA could ever think up, when world-wide communications networks are routed through servers owned by Chinese companies. Yeah, THOSE things, too.

I believe that THIS is what is driving corporate decision-makers away from manufacturing in China, In My Bombastic Opinion. They're just "too communist" and didn't soften up like we expected them to.

Still, I would expect that Mexico and Central America are (in many ways) the future for labor-intensive processes, at least for the next decade or two. Similarly, African nations as well as Vietnam, the Phillipines, and so forth.

Steve Wozniak at 70: Here's to the bloke behind Apple who wasn't a complete... turtleneck

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Woz not Jobs

and back in the 1970's, he ran "Dial a Joke" with an answering machine. The last time I called it, 1973-ish, he picked up, and I said something like "Is this Dial-A-Joke" and he laughed and said "yes, let me hook up the machine, just call back" (or something like that). I guess he had considered not supporting it any more, being too busy with whatever it was in 1973...

Usually went something like this (in a strange fake-accent voice)

"'Ah 'Ah, Thenk you for dialing Dial-A-Joke! Todayz Joke eez: [insert silly joke]"

Wi-Fi 6 isn't signed off yet, but boffins are already teasing us with specs for venerable wireless tech's next gen

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

limited bandwidth - yeah, seen that

it is true that you (generally) won't find any "green field" situations any more. When I scan wifi at my house I typically see 10 or more SSIDs (including mine). I suppose apartment buildings are worse. And then at a customer's office [where I'm doing hardware/software development that includes wifi capability] a typical scan might have 20 or more entries, many of which are duplicates of the same SSID on different channels and frequency bands. So yeah, wifi is pretty "full" at the moment, and you can't deny that your neighbor might just want to use his 320Mhz bandwidth and, in doing so, partially stomp on yours...

Good news is that FCC is apparently opening up more frequencies for wifi in the 6Ghz range. Hopefully U.K. and E.U. regulators will do similar things.

Now.. what about that whole "last mile wireless" idea...

Can't decide which OS to run today? Why not Linux inside Windows inside macOS?

bombastic bob Silver badge

Re: Why not go one step further?

Virtualbox should be able to do nested virtualization now...

(I should try this for Android stuff)

How is Trump's anti-Chinese rhetoric playing out? 70% of smartphones sold in the US are – surprise – made in China

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

They're largely being dumped below cost price and helped by an artificially lowered currency.

I'm not completely convinced of that. But worth pointing out: there is a bit of a difference between Huawei as a phone network provider, and Huawei, Foxconn, etc. as manufacturers that build phones for the U.S. market. The biggest concern with Huawei's 5G network is similar to concerns regarding things like Tik Tok - having data and conversations for U.S. citizens routed through servers owned by Chinese companies that are OBLIGATED to cough up data for the Chinese Communist Party upon demand.

If the U.S. government did this for U.S. companies with U.K. data, you'd be mad. [they tried demanding data from Microsoft, but Microsoft actually stood up for customers, and so has Apple in its own way]. OK so the U.S. government has occasionally TRIED this sort of thing themselves, and that's the point. Our laws and courts kept them from being able to get away with it. Under COMMUNISM, that ain't gonna work.

I'd still like to see the phones made in the USA though. Not too far into the future, it may even happen with "lights out" factories. The only reason it doesn't happen now, is that the component and raw material supply lines have all (effectively) been "cornered" by... you guessed it... China.

The future of signage is here, and it wants an update

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Best example yet

Best example yet of a windows blue screen (or update) SNAFU in signage. Well done!

(In My Bombastic Opinion, at any rate)

Firefox maker Mozilla axes a quarter of its workforce, blames coronavirus, vows to 'develop new revenue streams'

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Hard to believe...

Haven't you seen what they did to firefox?

Reminds me of a meme - "What has been seen, cannot be UNseen"

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: This is actually a good thing

then they can't remove as many features as usual.

nor "creep" new ones in...

Whoops, our bad, we may have 'accidentally' let Google Home devices record your every word, sound – oops

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Really?

From the article: "and it has now been switched off"

What they really meant: Seriously, cross our fingers hearts, we REALLY did!!!

What happens when holes perfect for spyware are found in the engine room of millions of Qualcomm-based phones? Let's find out

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: and make appropriate mitigations available to OEMs

"And exactly how much of that is going to end up on actual people's actual devices?"

it would depend on a LOT of "if's I think.

a) IF your phone maker is good at servicing and updating EXISTING customers with otherwise "legacy" devices,

b) IF your phone service provider provided the phone as well, and put their OWN stuff on it [and preclude the manufacturer updates from accidentally messing with it], THEY also have software updates available for "legacy" devices.

c) IF the phone's effective 'end of life' has not been reached [regardless of whether or not it still works]

and so on. 'IF'fy for sure.

I have this older (cheap) slab I use for 'droid development and portable e-mail access, things like that. I don't think it has a snapdragon processor on it, though. But I haven't seen any updates for that one for YEARS. Still works for what I want.

Intel NDA blueprints – 20GB of source code, schematics, specs, docs – spill onto web from partners-only vault

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

Re: IME

using the publicly exposed info to uncover everything that M.E. does would be the saving grace of it all.

ESPECIALLY if there's a newly discovered way to turn it OFF

Trump administration labels WeChat, TikTok ‘threats’ to national security, bans transactions with both

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Trump is a moron

it sure did not take very long for the comment threads to devolve into a series of "Trump Hate" posts...

Personally I think the data slurping itself should be GDPR'd out of existence for EVERYONE, _INCLUDING_ Fa[e]cebook and Tw[a,i]tter, but within the USA it would require Con-Grab [aka Congress] to enact such a law. Good luck with THAT happening with the current bunch.

Whereas, foreign policy stuff is part of the Executive branch (aka Trump). My guess is that the current policy is a result of having asked nicely for China to STOP doing that, and they won't.

But if I said that Trump was in favor of just STOPPING the data slurp, and is doing what he can do about it right now, would anyone BELIEVE that?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Waiting for the Trump Executive Order Against Windows 10

Separation of powers would require Congress to act. You can't just make capricious executive orders on U.S. citizens. For foreign policy it is different. That is the jurisdiction of the Executive branch.

You think the UK coronavirus outbreak was bad? Just wait till winter: Study shows test-and-trace system is failing

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Really?

If we assume the real mortality rate is 1%

You have a reliable source for that? One that includes RECENT data?

the only way to truly know what the death rate is would be to know just how many ASYMPTOMATIC cases there are. The Stanford study was a step in the right direction. Use a representative sample of the population from various areas, do thorough antibody testing (including antibodies NOT specific to COVID-19 that still react with it - up to 60% of antibody reactions may be this type, as I recall, from a recent study - like the way 'cow pox' protects you from smallpox). Once you have an idea of what the antibody reactions look like in a representative sample, you'll have an idea of the percentage of people already having had the disease and RECOVERED from it, with OR without symptoms. Then you calculate the total number of deaths so far, to get a much better idea of what the death rate REALLY is.

And I doubt very seriously it's 1%. A recent article (June) said the CDC claimed 0.26%, but even that may still be way too high. You can't use "case rates" for people who got tested to accurately determine this. You need to know what percent of the population has antibodies. There are just WAY too many asymptomatic cases for anything else to be valid.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Really?

a big thumbs up, and thanks for saying it.

University of Cambridge to decommission its homegrown email service Hermes in favour of Microsoft Exchange Online

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Emd of Cambridge SMTP development

The modern IT environment

is HIGHLY overrated

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: less than ideal

it seems reasonable to me that ANY decent service provider that can handle email for a domain would do. I recently switched to a Linux-based shared hosting provider (with ssh access), and it's UBER CHEAP, and mail config is super simple, and it handles POP, IMAP, forwarding, and web-mail, with or without any automated spam filtering. And a ZILLION other providers have similar services, for similar prices. [OK maybe a major university will need a 'Rolls Royce' plan and dedicated hosting, but even still, it's CHEAPER and EASIER than in-house, and in MY Bombastic Opinion, better than what they picked...]

So, WHY are they going with Micros~1.Exchange again?

From the article: "the knowledge and expertise needed to keep it running are in very short supply."

So, what *ARE* they teaching these kids in school, today? [apparently NOT the right things]

Leaky AWS S3 buckets are so common, they're being found by the thousands now – with lots of buried secrets

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: But is this legal?

never underestimate the ability of a 'gummint' to legislate common sense security and penetration analyses into "illegality" while simultaneously claiming it "protects" you.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Outsourcing

When you outsource all your expertise to Amazon, what do you expect?

Me not being an expert on AWS cloud, I'd think you'd get "best practices".

But maybe the inherent problem is a LACK of (or knowledge of, or proper documentation of, etc.) a list of properly defined "best practices" to begin with?

And now I think I have a better understanding as to (maybe) why the US DoD isn't using AWS clouds...

[I assume that it IS possible to configure things properly, so why aren't people doing it?]

A tale of mainframes and students being too clever by far

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Ah, the days before memory protection seemed necessary...

I believe that IBM 360s had hardware memory protection

I think they did. They used a 'base register' of sorts for relocatable code, such that the OS would assign one of the GP registers as a 'base register' for data, jumps, yotta yotta. Then your code could be loaded wherever the OS wanted it and timeshare nicely with everyone else. Included with that (apparently) was a memory protection setup so that you wouldn't read/write outside of your own memory space. I forget exactly how it worked, though... (had to study it for this one computer architecture class, which used IBM 360's as an example, and that was about it).

Voyager 1 cracks yet another barrier: Now 150 Astronomical Units from Sol

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Light years

Most modern washing machines are designed to last 100 cycles

You sure about that? Mine is >20 years old, even has the original hoses, and back at the time of Voyager's launch, I recall similar appliance lifetimes. I suppose it's how you define "modern" then...

Lizards for lunch? Crazy tech? Aliens?! Dana Dash: First Girl on the Moon is perfect for the little boffin-to-be in your life

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

Re: An interesting review

"Have Space Suit -- Will Travel" - I read that when I was 13. Awesome!

Makes me wish I were 10 years old again, to read 'Dana Dash'. I wonder if she'll have a series like 'Danny Dunn' (which I read when I was a kid).

Microsoft confirms pursuit of TikTok after Satya Nadella chats to Donald Trump

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Tik Tok, Tik Tok ...

Tik, TIk, Tik, TIk, *BOOM* (like that song)

Venerable text editor GNU Nano reaches version 5.0 and adds the modern frippery that is scrollbars

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Sort of nano fan

actually I would think that MOST people that drive on a POSIX system daily would do the same thing.

for remote editing on RPi I make use of DiSPLAY=something:0.0 a _LOT_ and edit code locally on the RPi using 'pluma'.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Tilde

worst editor...

ever heard of 'TECO' or PDP-11's EDIT ? (I think they inspired edlin)

Maybe TECO was better. You could creatively write programs using TECO. It looks a bit like BF and Forth had a baby, and it was UGLY.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Tilde

Actually I thought the QBasic editor was pretty good, too. Almost too late the party, though. By the time MS-DOS had a decent editor, Windows 3.0 released.

Many of those old MS-DOS edit things (especially for programmers, like Turbo C's editor, PWB, and QBasic) seem to be EMACS-like in a lot of ways.

Though I hve to admit I prefer 'ee' to 'nano'. As I recall, 'ee' used libcurses, and I wonder if that has something to do with why the debian-based distros don't seem to have it any more... (everything else seems to use libncurses now, and FreeBSD's base has a 'new_curses.c' that implements curses for 'ee' in the contributed source tree - and the BSD license possibly keeps it out of certain Linux distros).

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

flaws in nano

the only complaint I have about nano is if the Linux distro (say, Raspbian) set up HIDEOUS colorization and I'm trying to edit a file and it's dark grey on black and I can't freaking READ it...

That's editable, fortunately, once you've found out where it is. But I'd like a switch or ~/.something setting to turn it OFF, like I do when I 'unalias ls' and things like that. Colorized text on black background NEVER looks right. It should be easy to turn it ALL off without mucking with 'term' settings in .profile or .bashrc or elsewhere.

color choices aren't just for "I like" vs "I hate". My ~60 year old eyes need less strain, and so I minimize that with off-white backgrounds in the GUI, and white-on-black consoles. Turning off hidesouly dim colors on black background (favoring NO colors) would be a nice start, especially if it's just a single line in a config file, or something I can 'alias'... or 'unalias' as the case may be.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Cult?

"learning curves" are overrated. I just wanna get those 1 minute tasks over with, not spend an hour learning how to do a "1 minutes' worth" of work, and unnecessary additional time looking up how to do otherwise-simple things in documentation EVERY! STINKING! TIME! because "I never use that hideous thing unless there is no other choice" etc..

This is why nano, and its possible predecessor 'ee', exist. Not for n00bs, per se, but for people like me who don't want to "look it up" all of the time, wasting effort that could be spent doing things that are more fun, more interesting, or maybe even just more important.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Cult?

seems all of the Debian-based distros have nano - they used to include 'ee' but for some reason it's not now (abandoned?). FreeBSD still has 'ee' though.

I'm not a fan of 'vi' but I know the handful of commands that let me use it. Or more more importantly, exit without a reboot (or 'killall' from another console/session). Never type 'edit' in a console unless you're prepared for it. Did that the first time I booted a POSIX system (FreeBSD 4.7 in this case). Frustration ensued, followed by the boot button. i was still figuring it all out.

Nano seems to be most useful on an RPi when you have to ssh in a lot and edit things. I'm glad it's there. That probably makes those who use it members of a pretty big 'Cult'.

US drugstore chain installed anti-shoplifter facial-recognition cameras in 200 locations – for eight years

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Walgreens

reasons for "aggressive carding"...

It may be ridiculous new laws/regulations driving it, or too many underage alcohol buyers from that store, that has caused them to over-react. But yeah, in some states, it is ILLEGAL to hand your ID to a 3rd party for ANY reason, unless it is a cop or DMV employee [someone truly authorized to handle YOUR ID]. Yet, sometimes store policies (or unnecessarily aggressive clerks) don't bother understanding this and demand you do things with your ID that you shouldn't have to do.

I don't shop at stores that are too aggressive with IDs either. It's a little irritating, especially when you're obviously "old enough" (grey beard, etc.), and if they DEMAND I remove my ID from my wallet, I'll just say "forget it, no sale". Demanding I hand it to them gets a lecture on what the law says.

Amazon gets green-light to blow $10bn on 3,000+ internet satellites. All so Americans can shop more on Amazon

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Do any other countries get a say in this?

as a satellite orbits across your nation's airspace, YES, you should. not sure if it'll happen though.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Kessler effect

In the animated series 'Cowboy Bebop' an accident in space resulted in chunks of the moon clogging earth orbit to the point where it's hazardous to navigate (in space) and large orbital rocks are frequently (and somewhat randomly) falling onto the earth, causing craters, damage, etc..

A worst case sci-fi scenario, yeah, but something to avoid. Let's not have to dodge existing satellites when firing rockets into space, especially as more countries around the world get their own space programs going.

(or will booster rockets have to use particle beams or other space-weaponry to blast obstacles out of their way in order to avoid collisions during launch?)

Another, this time literary, reference to a book I read as a small kid: "If Everybody Did" [lampoons what would happen if everybody were to do certain things, taken to extremes in a funny-when-you-are-six kind of way]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Use of personal data ?

worse, as a "Main In the Middle" they have the capability to inject HTML ads into the traffic, including your e-mails, and ALSO edit out any ads (or content, for that matter) that they do NOT want on their network (or do NOT want YOU to see...). Like with a firewall appliance, they could enforce the use of THEIR SSLcertificates via THEIR trusted authority, and so on.

Using 'https' won't mean doodly squat if they manage to pull THAT off. Not saying they WILL, only that they COULD...

(so to avoid FUD-ishness, I suggest that appropriate regulations may be needed to PREVENT that possibility)

"big tech" --> "not a monopoly". Right...

One of the things done with fuel providers here in the USA is the "divorcement" between oil wells, pipelines, refineries, and fueling stations. You can't own the entire thing from end to end, or else price fixing would/could be used to drive competitors out of the market. So what is it called if Amazon owns the "last mile" in addition to (many) other parts of the internet?

fortunately, with server-generated keys [and plenty of warnings if they ever change], ssh isn't likely to be so easy to "Man in the Middle" successfully. So "a mitigation" exists, at least for some of this. For in theory you could use a server with sshd running "not on their network" as an ad-hoc VPN - kinda. But the vast majority of people relying on an Amazon network like this probably wouldn't have that option available. Commercial VPNs, and even TOR, could be just as "pwned" as SSL in the scenario I described.

I wonder if, like cell towers, you could privately invest in your own satellite fleet, and just rely on 'roaming charges' to fund it. You could be a member of multiple competing networks, even. Then it's decentralized as far as ownership goes, (potentially) making it less possible to do 'tricky things' like the "Man in the Middle" HTML injection/snooping scenario. Well, it's a thought, anyway...

Or, maybe the temptation to be your OWN "Man in the Middle" content injection/filtering ISP is too great... and others would follow THAT path.

Once considered lost, ESA and NASA's SOHO came back from the brink of death to work even better than it did before

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: If it ain't broke

the team were using an update[d] command sequence ...

updates. highly overrated! [even for meat-space procedures]

Burn baby burn, plastic inferno! Infosec researchers turn 3D printers into self-immolating suicide machines

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: For want of a nail (thermal cutout actually)

Relying on a software controlled thermostat alone seems fragile

In a device that has SO little hardware because the CPU is doing the job of discrete electronic components, this isn't surprising. It's cheaper just to assume nothing will go wrong, etc.

Perhaps for regulations like CE and underwriter labs like UL, and for other such "safety rating" lists, an IOT or "internet download upgradeable" device should demonstrate that it has sufficient safety features in the design to prevent a firmware image from causing things _like_ "halt and catch fire"

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: the real life physical dangers inherent in attaching all these home appliances to the internet

It seems obvious that malicious firmware could cause all sorts of very spectacular problems

maybe to El Reg readers, but apparently not to the makers of this particular 3D printer...

(I doubt they did this negligently, most likely they just didn't know what could happen if the firmware were maliciously crafted)

First rule of Ransomware Club is do not pay the ransom, but it looks like Carlson Wagonlit Travel didn't get the memo

bombastic bob Silver badge
Stop

Just make paying a ransom a criminal offence

you know, that makes sense until you see a drop in reported ransomware crimes...

"unintended consequences".

It's been five years since Windows 10 hit: So... how's that working out for you all?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: How bad is it?

"it's the only game in town"

THERE's your problem. Monopolies, go fig...

icon, because THAT is the REAL reason... for Win-10-nic !

Microsoft runs a data centre on hydrogen for 48 whole hours, reckons it could kick hydrocarbon habit by 2030

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Hydrogen is not the answer

your argument about brine is not very significant. In short, desalination plants (we have them in California) for producing fresh water do the SAME thing. It is my understanding that there are already a lot of eyes looking at this, and they're not really finding amything significant [or we would have heard about it by now], and at one time I was somewhat connected to a group of people who were into monitoring this kind of thing... so yeah I'm pretty well informed. In short, it's pretty much a "nothing burger" but as for oceanography, no harms in monitoring sea water salinity in these areas.

And I hear that brine shrimp thrive in the effluent... which would feed more fish, etc.

In an ironic similarity, treated water from sewage plants has LESS salinity in it. Maybe we could just mix them...

And let us not forget that one of the CHEAPESTS way to make Hydrogen in large quantity involves COAL... and electrolytic methods PROBABLY use fossil fuel generated electricity!

All that being said, CO2 isn't a problem anyway. Something about NOT absorbing black body radiated infrared energies that correspond to ACTUAL TEMPERATURES FOUND ON EARTH...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Hydrogen is not the answer

burning diesel in pure O2 results in NO NOx and over 90% efficiency

Although the 90% efficienty claim breaks the 2nd law of thermodynamics (you would need a temperature of more than 2700 C to obtain a Carnot efficiency of 90%, let alone a real world efficiency of 90%, and last I checked most metals would fail to hold integrity at that temperature...) but it's not likely for a number of OTHER reasons as well.

Still the idea of using pure O2 and fossil fuels is not a new one. Rockets. And at very high altitudes, inject O2 into a regular jet turbine engine. The only problem is getting pure O2 in sufficient volume to make this happen. So if you could solve THAT problem [currently cryogenic methods are the most efficient method I know of to get pure O2, and it takes a LOT of electricity to do that] then O2 bottles for your diesel engine might be a good idea. If for no other reason, spike up the O2 to increase efficiency.

Still, I think it'd melt...

NOTE: Rockets avoid the melting problem by using incoming fuel to cool the nozzles, and also spraying a layer of fuel onto the inside of the engine. it's a bit less efficient, but the evaporating fuel would (to some extent) protect the metal of the engine from being melted. Burning with pure O2 tends to make welding-temperature flames and as such the metal just metls.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: RFC Electric Greenhouses 1GW = 20 SQMLs

concentrated mirrors, shining on dark boiler piping, can produce steam for electricity. Ufnortunately you need a LOT of unpopulated area for one of these. Solar energy density is generally too low to be practical on a VERY large scale without taking up a LOT of space. A solar panel farm is probably the most space-efficient way to do it, yeah, with current technology.

When a parking area has covered sections that have solar panels on them, it's a creative way to make the parking lot better, AND use some of the space to create solar electricity. Another win-win. Seen this at a Walmart in San Diego, where it's sunny enough most of the time to be a practical location for solar electricity.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Hydrogen is a solution and its own worst enemy

using biofuel production to consume agricultural waste IS a good idea on its own. It is possible to convert bio waste into oil. The process that I read about is actually EXOTHERMIC. You could then use this bio-synthetic oil to add to existing oil production, thus "offsetting" either a) trash production wasted as landfill, or b) whatever environmentalists decide is "helping". Either way it's a win-win so unless there's cost prohibition making it completely impractical, I say "go for it".

Note that SOME of this agricultural waste goes into composting and may still be useful as animal feed. So whatever does best for farmers, probably should do THAT first.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

Re: Hydrogen is not the answer

If the hydrogen plant gets its water from a river, there would be no brine to discharge.

an undeniable point. Common sense, WHAT a concept!

What evil lurks within the data centre, and why is it DDoS-ing the ever-loving pants off us?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pint

Re: Update (mis)-scheduling

beer-o-clock time (for updates), assuming you left your computer on during the liquid lunch and came back sober enough to shut it down after the updates had already installed...

Or, you were too intoxicated to come back, and just left it on over the weekend.

For that reason, I'd suggest noon UK time. It'd give you a chance to get out of the office earlier, because "ooh, my computer needs to update. I'll just start that now..." followed by "Hey Phil, you want to go to 'lunch' a bit early today? yeah, the computers need to update.... better invite the rest of the company, too, it could take an hour or three!" "Oh, it's on YOU? Thanks, Boss!"

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Makes sense both ways

checking for updates every 4 hours, though - that's ALREADY ridiculous (nevermind the DDoS'ing 4 minute setting)

How about every 4 weeks? 4 months? 4 YEARS? or, my favorite: when _I_ want to check.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I haven't chuckled so loud in ages

Yeah El Reg as "required reading" for I.T. (and related) staff...

just 'On Call' and BOFH and the occasional IT security-related article would be enough for "basic require dreading", but I'm sure (like any other IT-related person) they'd be spending a significant period of time during the day looking at the rest of the site...

Fresh astro-underwear, anyone? Orbital shenanigans as Progress freighter has last-minute ISS docking wobble

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: More Bondo, Number One!

CnC (Coffee and Cats) warning... (see icon)

perhaps the program needs a "chicken factor" (or 'pucker factor') built in - you know, when it would otherwise look like the automated spacecraft is "playing chicken" to an average sane observer, it does an early enough course correction to prevent navels (and anuses) from puckering up...

Bill Gates debunks 'coronavirus vaccine is my 5G mind control microchip implant' conspiracy theory

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Gates' problem

"To me the cause of these conspiracy theories is obvious: A bunch of people intentionally creating mischief, supported by a much bigger bunch of freaking idiots."

in some cases, actual mental disorders might be involved...

There are actual conspiracies. Unfortunately. But when you 'follow the money' on the Wuhan Virus, it doesn't point to vaccine makers... [something to think about]. And those who control others more effectively do it through fear and misinformation. FUD, basically.

When the Wuhan Flu vaccine is approved, I'll probably get one, even though I most likely had this virus back in late December or early January, when a co-worker returned from China, went home sick that day after exhibiting symptoms, and a week later I had the classic "mild symptoms", followed about a week later by an even milder version, lasted one day each time. If not COVID-19, it was probably "something from China" and that just happens when you and/or your co-workers need to travel around the world, ya know? "Life _IS_ Risk".

But I'm definitely taking the vaccine, when it comes out. Regardless.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

or how about just pointing out the silliness of the anti-vaxer conspiracy theories in general?

I happen to like vaccines very much, I was a pincushion for them when I was in the Navy, and occasionally go for the inexpensive flu shots when available.

So yeah SOME real dangers from vaccines, but you just have to have the smarts to watch for them. Flu shots CAN give you the flu, or a rash, or other allergic reaction. But they usually don't. So you either get a doctor to monitor it, or show some common sense and read the warnings on the label...

(/me not a doctor, so YMMV)

Raytheon techie who took home radar secrets gets 18 months in the clink in surprise time fraud probe twist

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coat

Re: Approximately ten

maybe the same way that prisoners hide things...