* Posts by bombastic bob

10507 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

Project Reunion: Microsoft's attempt to tear down all those barriers it's built for Windows developers over the years

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: So let me get this straight

"Just stick with Win32 and we'll see who blinks first, the huge mass of Win32 developers or MS trying to bork Win32 in Windows 10."

And make sure the version info (and/or manifest) and DLL resolution lets you run on 7, or even XP!!!

['GetProcAddress()' works for anything 'new' you might need]

it's one reason I still use DevStudio 2010 for any winders-stuff... and do NOT allow any '.NOT' bindings for my C/C++ applications! (And static linking for runtime and class libs)

related, this: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/19/wsl2_gui_linux_apps_windows/

Maybe we should JUST develop Linux applications from now on... ?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Borkzilla looking for a new foot to shoot

Micros~1.UWP (aka 2D FLATTY FLATSO McFLATFACE) is being sustained with an attempted 'breath of life' because of "No, really, we'll get it RIGHT this time!" kinds of thinking.

And, if possible, they'll use an illegitimately-spawned abomination-creation 'umbrella lib' (like Micros~1.net) to try and ENFORCE migration to it until we developers all nod our heads in the 'yes' direction in time with our overlords' instructions.

And "more universal acceptance" of UWP-ness would KILL Windows 7 for good, in their eyes. You KNOW they want to do this.

I guess the history of Silverlight will repeat itself, but with a different name.

Many people have suggested that Micros~1 wants to ELIMINATE the Win32 API. A token attempt at some kind of "overlapping library" doesn't convince me otherwise...

NASA's Human Spaceflight boss hits eject a week before SpaceX crew launch

bombastic bob Silver badge
Holmes

Re: I wonder

with everything else that is going on, I speculate that it could have been the choice to NOT shut down the program during the corona-scare. Personally I see that as the CORRECT choice (i.e. NOT to shut down).

Another possibility might be to move forward with SpaceX before Boeing is ready with their competing system, so "all eggs in one basket" with SpaceX for the moment. But Baikonur is still an option... (and who knows, in the future, maybe India's space program). So better move forward, or be left behind.

(icon for the amateur sleuthing)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Going while the going's good

"sheer payload to LEO in a single shot"

A mere stepping stone to a lunar cargo "space truck" hauling whatever we want [people, stuff, etc.] to and from the moon on a regular schedule. Personally, I think this is the best model to use.

It's that first part of the journey that's the most expensive, getting to LEO. Example, Apollo missions, where the 1st 2 stages lift the 3rd stage and LEM + Command Module into LEO, then 3rd stage pushes the LEM and Command Module into a Lunar trajectory, The vast majority of fuel [and rocket] was spent just getting to LEO.

So it's "UNIX Principle" applied to rocketry: "do one thing, well" - use the LEO tool to get the "space truck" and its fuel+cargo into LEO, then re-use the truck a bunch of times hauling the cargo+people.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Going while the going's good

It's my understanding that the re-usability of 1st stage rockets doesn't DIRECTLY apply to manned missions except that the manned mission booster can be re-used afterwards for an un-manned launch. But yeah THAT level of re-usability makes it cost less overall since the entire booster cost isn't eaten up by that one launch.

It seems to me that the more likely cost reducing factor is the NUMBER of launches, and a level of mass production of the same launch vehicle for all of them. It's sort of like the UNIX principle, i.e. "do one thing, well". So they build that ONE booster, hyperfocus on reliability, give it some nice bells/whistles wit the ability to land on its tail to be re-used, on a moving ship out at sea, and voila!

But the 10 year time frame is actually quite a bit longer than the Mercury project, which (I think this is right) took less than 4 years from planning to an actual manned launch. But we were in a hurry, and Alan Shepherd was a test pilot.

You know this Land of the Free thing, yeah? Well then, why allow the FBI to trawl through America's browsing history without a warrant?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Fourth AND Fifth Amendments

It is the nature of governments to become TYRANNIES if the people allow it.

I definitely have to side with the ACLU this time. Too bad they're not consistent with liberty and the U.S. Constitution on OTHER matters, though...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: And who is shocked?

and biting into those Tide pillows... 15 seconds of fame, 15 days in the hospital

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: land of the free...

that's a LOT of pessimism! Now I'll need to wave a flag for a while to recover...

THAT, and protest the shutdowns in my Guy Fawkes mask!

Beer rating app reveals homes and identities of spies and military bods, warns Bellingcat

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: FB location

And "or log in with Facebook" in their application or on their web site is ANOTHER red flag... [it's one of the big ways that FB uses to track you]. Of course, if you DO have the FB 'previously logged on' cookies and ALSO see the FB icon or the "or log in with Facebook" option, chances are they ALREADY tracked you there and just want you to confirm you actually WANTED them to.

NASA launches guide to Lunar etiquette now that private operators will share the Moon with governments

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Oceanic fishing

good analogy. 'international waters' - space should be about the same.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Has anyone told Donnie?

There's no KNOWN oil on the moon. Oil does not require organic material to be formed; however, pools of dead dinosaurs work pretty well on Earth. But yeah lunar conditions do not match earth conditions for oil formation. This does not mean it is NOT there, and may suggest we wouldn't know how to find it (easily).

(apparently lunar carbon is deposited by solar wind as part of the regolith, but to form oil, would need to be trapped deep below the surface along with hydrogen - making it unlikely but not impossible)

Still I think Trump is just looking for a chance to advance further into space. It's been ~50 years that we've been "held back" from going past earth orbit, and it's time to just DO it. Again. Do something 'cool', or 'awesome', or 'inspiring', or even 'glorious'. Do something worth CELEBRATING! [it's like when your sports team wins the championship]

I'm so tired of all of the PESSIMISM, that having some OPTIMISM keeps me from going COMPLETELY insane.

Rust marks five years since its 1.0 release: The long and winding road actually works

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: On speed

Messaging is less desirable unless you have a hyper-efficient message queue set up. It can be done, but it would be less ideal than using standard synchronization objects. In some cases, setting up a message polling loop (like you do for Windows old-school programming) is a good idea, but I'd guess that for the vast majority of uses, it's excess overhead and would perform poorly by comparison.

I actually set something up like this in my X11 toolkit, to handle X11 events asynchronously from a queue - I re-prioritized Expose events [for painting] and combined them when possible to speed up draw operations. Also set it up for user-type messages to bypass the X server and be posted directly to the queue - but it's pretty big code and too complex for most cases, yeah. It's not something I'd really want to have to do again, either.

(for IPC a generic messaging system makes sense, but not thread-to-thread.)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: On speed

STL threads not the same as what I remember reading about Rust though, having loops that automatically split into threads depending on your specifications (as one example). That's kinda what I meant. i do not recall any feature in C++ that could do that directly.

Having a C++ lingo feature that uses the STL objects for an alternative for() would be interesting. Not sure if any of the newer compiler features might be shoehorned into doing this. But, in short, if the for() loop with threading support automatically used STL threads to spawn a separate thread for each iteration AND manage a thread pool, then that is closer to what I was thinking of.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: On speed

yeah C++11 - I think I remember looking at that, STL support for threads (googled just now, saw it - yep). But I'm not an STL fan for a number of reasons and since I've been doing it "the old way" before threads were 'cool', I just continue to do it the way I always have. And, like I mentioned before, I sometimes run into "some standard library" doing things the WRONG way, and end up using my own code to fix/workaround their bugs/features.

For trivial things, using the pthread lib in Linux or 'CreateThread()' in windows is pretty straightforward. Most simple threading things would just translate the STL thread stuff into that inline and 'no difference' in performance. So if I saw it in someone else's code I'd just leave it as-is. But there are cases, especially when background tasks are being done, etc. or the "thread pool" you mentioned (something I might use in a 'work unit' manager object), when waiting in idle state, Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows all have the same problem, of spinning CPU at 100% if you don't explicitly enter some kind of wait state within the kernel, and that usually involves a synchronization object or an explicit time delay.

And, last I looked, Windows 10's TIFKAM/UWP system is guilty of having this very problem. You can see it during application start when two TIFKAM/UWP applications are trying to exchange info for some reason. Maybe this has been fixed, but last I checked it wasn't... (and so my point about rolling my own solution that uses my own experiences to avoid such problems and avoid arguing about validity of pull requests that would fix it but for some reason do not get approval).

It might be interesting to try and repro this problem with two Rust applications.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: On speed

"if you can get any of your computations done in parallel"

multi-thread parallelism is good in SOME cases, but not all. I took a look at how Rust manages this and I wasn't too keen on it. Since I've done this myself in C and C++ using pthreads and windows threading, I know what's going on under the hood. [I once wrote a cooperative thread library for Windows 3.x the 16-bit OS decades ago, similar to fibers - I've been doing this kind of thing a LOOooong time!]

In short, every time you create a thread you have to initialize it within the OS, which takes a bit of time. In the case of a quick sort, half the process in the initial part of the algorithm [the pivot] must be single threaded, and the followup can be multiple-threaded (in my multi-thread demo, qsort with 4 threads is about 2.5 times faster than single-thread, YMMV).

Typically I would use work units and a mini-scheduler to limit thread count, and since I've written this sort of thing before, adapting an existing one is pretty straightforward. The 2 main features, "spawn a thread" and "wait for all work units on this thingy to finish" need to be built into it like an object, but it's not that hard to do. The pthreads 'join a thread' is very useful for this purpose. With Winders it's just a bit more difficult though [not much just a bit]. No spinning on 'yield()' either, you have to go into true 'wait state' and NOT do rapid polling, or the CPU will read 100% all of the time when it's really NOT. [I've had people try and argue with me over this, too, yet it's easily observed when you do it wrong - but then again, does Rust do it RIGHT?].

When the overhead of creating multiple parallel threads is ABSTRACTED, then it won't be obvious to the coder that his threaded solution becomes LESS EFFICIENT. And it easily CAN.

And anything that's trivially multi-threaded doesn't need "all that overhead" that I'd expect from the internals of Rust. Those could easily be coded in plain-old 'C'. (DFT comes to mind)

Still, having threading built into the lingo is interesting. Perhaps in the next evolution of C++ it'll be there, too.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

From a C++ & Ada perspective

Hmmm... ADA as the pinnacle of safe and reliable programming? [yet hardly anyone uses it]

I wasn't aware that Rust represented a crusade against OOP. I think the OOP-obsessed have done that to THEMSELVES, by making *EVERYTHING* into "an object" and forcing everyone ELSE into "the java way" or something (as is '.Net' throughout). I don't even like seeing this in Python and Perl. It's "bass-ackwards". And THAT is what's wrong with OOP-obsession. But I digress...

True "Object Oriented Programming" seeks to abstract the physical data storage from how it is used, and so "an object" becomes "a data storage unit and the methods that work with that data". Any requirements BEYOND that were added later, somewhat artificially; as an example, polymorphism is more like a derivative of OOP and not OOP itself.

I'm not familiar enough with Rust's syntax to comment much, but it was initially confusing to me when I read through some Rust source. "Steep learning curve" is _NEVER_ a good thing for a new programming lingo.

And I'm also a bit skeptical when "safety" is claimed. From what I understand, you have to turn MOST of that "safety" OFF to work with 3rd party libs and operating systems directly.

As for efficiency, it's a fair bet that "cumbersome" things happen under the hood, and once people figure out where those are, they'll be writing "unsafe" workarounds to BYPASS it. As an example, an STL class that uses vectors or allocators. 'Nuff said yeah.

SO based on things _LIKE_ STL and how it fails to be universally "a good thing" [especially for microcontrollers and tight loops in time-sensitive applications] I also have my doubts as to the internals of Rust [the ones we don't see but do all of that "safety" stuff] are JUST AS BAD because they were created with the SAME _KINDS_ of THINKING behind them.

^^^ let's hope I'm wrong. Honestly I'd rather be wrong on this. But I bet I'm *NOT*. Sadly.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Meh

I prefer if(!x) rather than if(x==0)

though I don't mind doing if((expression)==variable) which 8is an alternative of the '0==x' thing

/me points out that if you write your C or C++ code in such a way as to assume that NOT you, or a FORGETFUL you, will have to MAINTAIN it, a lot of programming problems just "go away" on their own.

India’s contact-tracing app unleashes KaiOS on feature phones

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

"the Android paired bluetooth device has to be completely reset before it can pair with Android again"

Apple uses something called MFi for "legacy" bluetooth (i.e. NOT 'BTLE'). Apparently this is messing with the base processor for some reason...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

making use mandatory is unreasonable

(title quoted from article)

I agree 100% with this statement (from the article). And if it has demonstrable security issues, they should DEFINITELY be published [and then fixed].

(oops that battery JUST keeps falling out! So much for 'mandatory'...)

Vint Cerf suggests GDPR could hurt coronavirus vaccine development

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

"Its time to understand the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law isn't it?"

I have a novel suggestion: ASK the person that owns the data if it can be used, in writing, and THEN ensure proper privacy protection as much as possible.

Then you comply with GDPR [as I understand it], and are STILL able to do whatever research you need with the data.

Yeah, treating the owners of the data as PEOPLE instead of STATISTICS - what a novel concept!

Cyber attack against UK power grid middleman Elexon sparks in-house IT recovery efforts

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Backups

"A sophisticated hacker would infect backups for months before pulling the trigger."

a sophisticated IT manager (read: BOFH) would realize this, and re-load affected operating systems from scratch - THEN restore just the data [and nothing that's executable]. In cases where boot viruses occur in motherboard EEPROM, this may be a bit more difficult, however...

(but a proper phorensic analysis of the scope of infection would tell you this, most likely).

In general, however, crooks are dumb. A simple "restore from backup" probably worked fine.

India opens its space industry to private companies

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Space has been 'militarized' the moment Sputnik launched. But I doubt India does anything more than take pictures of the earth in "strategic" locations, just like everybody else.

Actually if they do a LOT of "space port rental" to companies in India AND from other nations, it could give them an advantage over other nations that aren't so lucky as to be so close to the equator.

Though for polar and other 'non-equatorial' orbits, there's no advantage to such a location. So spy satellites won't be sent from there, most likely.

The earth is roughly 24,000 miles in diameter, so it's moving about 1,000 miles an hour near the equator. That compared to Canaveral, which is about 28 degrees North, making it roughly 880 mph. This difference is significant enough but the latitude of the Baikonur Cosmodrome is ~46 degrees, which is only ~690mph. So launching from India gives you a ~300mph boost over what you'd get at Baikonur.

(the difference between 8 deg N and 5 deg N, to point out, is insignificant - cos(latitude) * 1000mph for the approximate rotational speed at that point on earth).

A real loch mess: Navy larks sunk by a truculent torpedo

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Oops!

I cannot confirm nor deny this [which is the standard response for something that may be classified if confirmed or denied]. But in the movie 'Hunt for Red October' the Alpha captain disabled the safeties on his torpedos so that Capt. Ramius could not go in a semicircle to avoid getting blown to smithereens (and then he was later hoisted by his own petard when they came around and hit HIS sub). If the movie has any accuracy when compared to real life, there ya go.

Huge if true... Trump explodes as he learns open source could erode China tech ban

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Oh dear

Only those "news" agencies that regularly cite "sources say" without doing actual journalism, as a pipe organ for a specific political position (one that would continue to hate Trump even if he were to personally cure cancer and end all poverty) would look upon the title in which the initials for 'SATIRE' are clearly visible, and either ignore it or miss it entirely, and then report this as if it were fact SIMPLY because they'd want to believe it to be so.

Most people, however, seem to have got the joke from the beginning, though it would be BETTER satire if it were grounded in truth, and not just 'pandering to the perception'...

Russia admits, yup, the Americans are right: One of our rocket's tanks just disintegrated in Earth's orbit

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Honest question....

Reminds me of something from the Navy: "Sweepers, man your brooms"

Or in this case, similar styled satellites. We're gonna need them.

/me wonders if you could string a net of some kind between 2 of them, made of some kind of carbon fiber with high tensile strength and low mass

Beer gut-ted: As many as '70 million pints' spoiled during coronavirus pandemic must be destroyed in Britain

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pint

Re: It's probably not actually "bad".

right, if lager isn't chilled it spoils and tastes nasty. Back in the day as a teenager I worked in a drug store that would occasionally put Coors on sale in cases, but they got warm in the warehouse and out on the floor. The beer truck driver said it ruins the beer, and he oughta know because the beer was always delivered in refrigerated trucks. Well, people bought it anyway... even though the taste was no longer "ideal" [this was ~40 years ago to put it into perspective].

but nowadays I usually drink ale since pilsner/lager beers give me a headache...

Mirror mirror on the wall, why will my mouse not work at all?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: obvious

we're dealing with a 12:00 flasher - everything in the house is ALWAYS FLASHING 12:00 !!!

Time to ask "Is there a child in the house?" [3 dead trolls in a baggie, yeah]

If American tech is used to design or make that chip, you better not ship it to Huawei, warns Uncle Sam

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Also Microsoft

"There's not much bias in the article, it neither condones nor encourages."

Agreed. In My Bombastic Opinion most El Reg articles have little or no bias. Some do, and they get appropriate comments (often from me).

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Also Microsoft

"Now if Trump really wants to hurt those Chinese, he really needs to stop them using Windows software!"

Notably MISSING, because it would NOT actually "hur"t them to NOT be able to use Windows...

(yeah we don't need the 'next OS' created by China as a competitor to Windows, now do we?)

Similar with Android and iOS I bet.

(the day of widespread Linux on the desktop might be *hastened* if Windows _were_ denied to them!)

Everything OK with Microsoft? Windows giant admits it was 'on the wrong side of history' with regard to open source

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: My Hope

"My hope would be the Rejects from Redmond would ditch Bloat in favor something that is stabler and generally works."

Maybe, in 15 years' time...

I'd just like to see them "get religion" with respect to the 2D FLATTY FLATSO FLATASS McFLATFACE that was somehow "snuck in" and CANONIZED by Sinofsky [who was allegedly fired over it] and Larson-Greene [who also invented "the ribbon" yet was NOT fired... go fig].

I guess it means that "Micros~1.net" are compelled to HIT ROCK BOTTOM before they get a "moment of clarity".

In the mean time... how about if they make a "Windows Sub System for Linux" ? You know, like Wine, but actually WORKS and lets us RELIABLY run windows applications on Linux... [I would PAY MONEY for that... as long as it supports Win32 API!!!]

Multi-part Android spyware lurked on Google Play Store for 4 years, posing as a bunch of legit-looking apps

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: So...

when I started reading this, I was thinking that you had to load multiple applications, but apparently that loading is coordinated by the original. I did not see whether or not the user still had to confirm and allow permissions, etc. but most people just "click through" all of that blindly.

However, what _IF_ the malware was in parts, and would NOT run unless ALL of the parts were loaded? That is, you might need to install the wallet, the e-mail, AND the music player [for example] and let's say all three of them SELF PROMOTE [and to make the ads stop you can install them]. Then when all three are loaded, the malware does its thing... how well could THAT be detected by current means?

At any rate, what the article made me think [initially] is actually a bit WORSE than a "payload downloader". But it definitely points out that "App Stores" are NOT inherently "safe", no matter how much of a LOCK DOWN [that would be YOU, Apple] is being done to "prevent infections".

Hey. LOCK DOWNS DO NOT WORK. There. I said it.

Micros~1? ClippyZilla? BSOD Bob? There can be only one winner. Or maybe two

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: 8.3

Micros~1.net

Even BETTER!

ALGOL 60 at 60: The greatest computer language you've never used and grandaddy of the programming family tree

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: .. never used .. ?

Back in the (very) late 70's at a university, my PDP-11 assembly language class was taught by a professor that LOVED ALGOL. Brilliantly, he required all assembly language assignments to be accompanied with a "high level language" pseudo-program. Of course, it had to at least LOOK like ALGOL or you'd get a LOT of uncomplimentary comments when he returned it to you. I resisted but it was futile. So I started handing in the ALGOL-like pseudo code along with the homework assignment [which always worked].

But the focus of that class wasn't assembly language per se; rather, it was on structures and lists and other things that languages _like_ ALGOL (and also C) are PERFECT for. I do not recall what kind of structure and/or pointer support you had in ALGOL, but I think there was at least _something_. 'C' of course took this concept, ran with it, and basically INVENTED how it's done from that point forward.

NOTE: I've also had to work with FORTRAN 'EQUIVALENCE' and 'COMMON' blocks which indirectly accomplish the same thing, in a 'hobbled' kind of way. Pure assembly is NEARLY as 'hobbled' though. On the PDP-11, and with good x86 assemblers, you can specify an array index as a register offset and 'sort of' look like an index, and maybe 'struct.member' as an offset as well. But old assemblers had name size limits, and you had to get very creative with names....

You can't have it both ways: Anti-coronavirus masks may thwart our creepy face-recog cameras, London cops admit

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

"i predict it will be a lot longer than a few months that people will be wearing face masks"

MANDATORY mask wearing is a BAD thing [and does little to help with disease control]. However, VOLUNTARY mask wearing, which is common in S.E. Asia, is a GOOD thing if you know you're sick and don't want to give your cold/flu to others. So if it simply becomes "acceptable" it's DEFINITELY a GOOD thing [common sense vs insane panic-fear-based mandates].

That and I don't like being ORDERED to do things that are unnecessary and/or inconvenient.

(so I'll keep wearing the Guy Fawkes mask until the nonsense stops)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: Lookie likey

yeah I'd definitely choose the mask used for the 'anonymous' icon

(I am the one wearing the Guy Fawkes mask in public to comply with "social distancing")

You overstepped and infringed British sovereignty, Court of Appeal tells US in software companies' copyright battle

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: US Law applies worldwide

"in the eyes of Lawyers and Judges in the USA."

Maybe THEM, but not ME. Well I'm not ENRICHED by demanding that a UK (or any non-U.S.) entity comply with a U.S. judge on matters NOT specific to the U.S., and that's probably why.

(we have a hard enough time dealing with frivolous lawsuits and legalized theft)

NHS contact tracing app isn't really anonymous, is riddled with bugs, and is open to abuse. Good thing we're not in the middle of a pandemic, eh?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Why, oh why...

"And who ends up paying the price?"

Middle Class working people as usual.

From the article: "working on an app to make it simpler."

That is like 'working on a lubricant so it doesn't hurt your hole as much while being "involuntarily violated"'

Sorry, that's the image that keeps coming into my head. Their "app", vs our privacy. Same idea.

(it's apparently happening in the USA in a couple of places too).

"Whoops that battery just keeps falling out over and over and over!"

Better late than never... Google Chrome to kill off 'tiny' number of mobile web ads that gobble battery, CPU power

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I'll stick to firefox thanks

and don't forget 'NoScript'

Breaking virus lockdown rules, suing officials, threatening staff, raging on Twitter. Just Elon Musk things

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

how many people died of:

a) traffic accidents

b) drug overdoses

c) suicide

d) old age

e) cancer

f) INFLUENZA

etc.

track these, too, to put things into perspective. And keep in mind that many of the Wuhan virus deaths were in NYC and New York (the state), quite possibly due to a bad policy caused by the governor (Cuomo), who deliberately sent infected patients BACK INTO NURSING HOMES when there were empty beds available in the temporary hospital in NYC and also on the Mercy (hospital ship) waiting for such patients, but left empty, unused... and so the elderly residents at those nursing homes had about 25% die from the Wuhan virus [as I recall]. It was grossly irresponsible.

Compare THAT to how Sweden has done it.

(no more lies, damn lies, and tainted statistics, please)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Einstein vs Newton? Where the hell did that come from?

"In Newton's time there was no known technical reason why lead should not be turned into gold,"

There still is no technical reason why it can't be done. In fact, using a nuclear reactor, it CAN be done. The thing is, the yield is poor and so expensive, it's much cheaper to mine for it like we always have.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: Elon Musk Is An Ass

"Elon Musk is a selfish child and deserves to be smacked with a glove."

Maybe... but like a broken clock that is right twice a day, THIS TIME ELON MUSK IS RIGHT!

These RIDICULOUS SHUTDOWNS are NOTHING MORE than a POWER GRAB OPPORTUNITY for LEFTISTS, COMMUNISTS, SOCIALISTS, and CONTROL FREAK POLITICIANS that are COMPELLED (probably by psychological disorders) to MICRO-MANAGE OUR LIVES. "THEY" get to decide what is "essential" and what is "non-essential", and MAKE PROTESTS ILLEGAL while they're at it!!! So, if *THEY* get their way, and WE DO NOT REBEL AGAINST THEM, the SHUTDOWNS WILL *NEVER* *EVER* *END* !!!

So, we must simply lay down and "take it" and THANK THEM AFTERWARDS? I DON'T THINK SO! *REBELLION* is necessary when ALL OTHER MEANS HAVE BEEN EXHAUSTED.

MUSK is DOING THE RIGHT THING. You can NOT control a people who will NOT LAY DOWN AND TAKE IT.

(I'll be the one wearing a GUY FAWKES mask to practice "social distancing" screwy requirements - V is for Vendetta!!!)

[yeah downvotes expected. thank you in advance, my howling fans]

Third time lucky for Windows 10 2004? Microsoft yet again fiddles with code and adds a go-live SDK licence

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

I read the article and saw a comment about "get to coding" or similar and I have to wonder... are there some kind of new "feature creep" features in this new, shiny version that we're supposed to start using such that our applications will not run on ANY earlier version of windows except THIS one ???

No thanks.

The end really is nigh – for 32-bit Windows 10 on new PCs

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Amazed it took them this long

32-bit works as a test VM, smaller download. Definitely NOT a "daily driver". But Win-10-nic isn't a "daily driver" for me ANYWAY and until MS stops supporting 32-bit applications running on that platform [which they probably will some day, when they DUMP the Win32 API and kill ALL backward compatibility and non-TIFKAM applications FOREVER] I'll continue to use the 32-bit version to test things, as needed...

Not so strangely, you can find 32-bit versions of Linux and FreeBSD if you need a 32-bit OS. Not so amazingly, they run just fine on systems with less than 4G of RAM. And those systems, amazingly enough, ALSO seem to work just fine for a LOT of things, as long as you're not running something *PIGGY*.

Last year, at an "at that time" Win-10-nic-only shop, I was tasked to work on integration of a system that used an RPi to control things [naturally running Linux on the RPi]. As they only had windows machines, I brought in an old (2003-ish) Toshiba laptop that had Linux on it to do the editing, since ssh and "remote X11" worked really well, AMAZINGLY well, on a laptop with ~500M of RAM running about 1Ghz. About the only thing it would NOT do was run Firefox because FF has become such a PIG even on Linux...

(seeing me use a 17 year old laptop to do my work more effectively than with a brand new Win-10-nic box, they soon handed me a Win-10-nic box to be turned into a Linux box - I put Devuan on it). And of course, having Linux was absolutely necessary for creating RPi SD card images.

Nine in ten biz applications harbor out-of-date, unsupported, insecure open-source code, study shows

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: To be fair, many company's services use unsupported and/or un-updated commercial packages?

Question: How much of "lack of updating" is CAUSED by "Feature Creep" and/or dependency nightmares that might RESULT in "Feature Creep" in OTHER things...

update lib -> must now update everything that depends on that lib -> feature creep that you did NOT want

yeah THAT sort of thing... and if it results in an incompatibility of a CLOSED SOURCE application, which then FORCES you to "not use the newer/fixed version" and no replacements are available, THEN what?

Yeah, you stick wtih your existing, "it works", stable system and NOT update. [they're often overrated anyway]. Keep it behind a firewall and practice "safe surfing".

'We're changing shift, and no one can log on!' It was at this moment our hero knew server-lugging chap had screwed up

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Labels people, and read them!

why use ancient windows when you can use Linux or FreeBSD ?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Labels people, and read them!

a sheet of mailing labels and a black permanent ink marker are usually sufficient [I even do this with my own stuff - license keys, MAC addresses, and so on]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Not so much a "Who, me?" as a "Who, you?"

and 'you' in this case is named 'Aaron', who may have proven a principle coined by a man named 'Peter'...

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The wolf enrobed in penguin feathers.

"Bad Wolf" - https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Bad_Wolf_meme

When you read through some of those (including the futuristic 'Bad Wolf Corporation' being run by Daleks) it all makes sense...

[I had the pleasure of re-watching all of the Doctor #9 episodes recently]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I'll give it a go...

1. "The Blob" (absorbing everything in its path and growing bigger and bigger and bigger)

[and along with it, the theme song by Burt Bacharach]

2. "MesS" (ok that's lame)

3. "Redmond Overlords"

4. 'Megashaft' <-- an oldie but still valid

5. ok "Megabucks" but with a slightly altered Starbucks logo

6. Semprini [/me ducks]

7. "Cult of Redmond" <-- I've used this one before

8. "Umbrella Corporation"

9. "Maleficent Overlords/Overseers"

10. "Big Brother's Evil Cousin"

probably enough for now. hopefully spawns derivative names, one of which will be settled on as "the official one"

Ok - one more - 2D FLATTY FLATSO McFLATFACE (that was obligatory, heh)

GitHub Codespaces: VS Code was 'designed from the get-go' for this, says Microsoft architect

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: And so the rush back to dumb terminals with subscription access continues

good summary.

But "going in the wrong direction" is what "Umbrella Corporation" aka Micro-shaft has been doing since the '.Not' initiative in the very early noughties...

(unless... their goal... is CONTROL - in which case, it's working)