* Posts by bombastic bob

10507 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

Delivery drones: Where are they when we really need them?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: "Futurist predict"

"small towns do not have the money to bury all wires and get rid of them in one go"

San Diego has had a budget for "undergrounding" the wires since the 90's. In fact, back when the 'Tank Guy' went on a rampage with a stolen tank, knocking over power poles and running over cars and fire hydrants, I called into a radio station and mentioned that if the power poles had been 'undergrounded' in front of the National Guard Depot he stole the tank from (I lived very close to there at the time) then my power would not have gone out for several hours. Needless to say (I suppose but I'll say it anyway) the wires STILL have not been "undergrounded", because, politics. Problems with my phone line (on a telphone pole, naturally) over the last decade just underscore that fact even more.

The problem: gummint and political correctness. The city (or a lawsuit, or SOMETHING) apparently "requires" that a POOR NEIGHBORHOOD be 'undergrounded' for every alleged RICH NEIGHBORHOOD. This means that utilities can't just coordinate doing large chunks of the city efficiently. Oh, NO, you have to work in WHO lives there and political correctness... and so NOTHING! GETS! DONE!!!

That means wires wires wires and drones beware.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Er ...

yeah I wonder what would happen if a 5lb box of 'stuff' were to fall 200 feet onto a car... sorta like a boss's nephew or unwanted consultant falling out of a 3rd floor window?

(a new definition for "air mail")

What's the difference between Windows 7 and a bin lorry? One is full of garbage, and the other… oh dear

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: More to the point.

"Why do you need a bloody great digital signage on the side of a bin lorry?"

because people will be [insert tragedy here] if they don't find out about unpopular city services, and/or the trash collection services needs the ad revenue. so they can [profiteer, retire early on a fat pension, pay people way too much money to pick up trash ...]

yeah ti'll get justified somehow. Actually I wouldn't mind seeing that around here, as long as ad rates were cheap and I could make use of 'em - perhaps a pic of my naked posterior?

If you've ever wished Visual Studio Code could be more open source, the Eclipse Foundation would like a word

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

UI performance issues

just because we are using desktop machines that are 100 or more times as powerful as NASAs computers back in the 60's when we went to the moon does NOT justify writing hyper-inefficient Node.JS "code" for a user interface...

Eclipse's Java code was always a little klunky from my point of view, but after 20 years of hardware improvements it became usable. Similarly, the Intelli-J interface (used by Android) is also a bit klunky, but usable. These were written in JAVA, and _NOT_ JAVA SCRIPT. A clear distinction should be made.

in any case if the Eclipse tool discussed in the article is NOT "scripty" but instead uses actual Java code, I might be impressed. It's worth a look at least. I should devote some time to looking at it. Yep. Need to do that.

Seriously, though, JUST BECAUSE COMPUTERS ARE FAST does _NOT_ mean you can use a SCRIPT LANGUAGE for a UI!!! And I'm talking to _YOU_ Microsoft...

Are you extracting the urine, ESA? Why, yes it is, from Moon dwellers to build homes out of lunar regolith. Possibly

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: nasa needs my help

since it's filling up the inside of a tunnel it reminds me of another product, often made of latex...

But yeah, portable inflatable houses are probably the first to be put there. They don't shield against radiation very well, though. However, dirt and concrete are pretty good, requiring about 1 foot per tenth thickness (where lead and steel are 1 and 2 inches, respectively). Basic idea, for every foot of regolith-crete, you'd reduce radiation by a factor of 10. You'd need about 2 feet of it to lower to 1% of what it is outside the enclosure, which would most likely be acceptable for normal humans and long-term stay.

One source suggests that radiation levels of 38REM/year (380mSv for people who were roped into using the 'new, shiny' units) are typical, and it can get as high as 100REM if there are coronal mass ejections and things of that nature. Yes, bad. 100 REM is considered a fatal dose if you get it in a short period of time. Spread over a year, you'd survive, but probably get cancer or something equally bad, and you'd probably feel sick a lot.

So 1 percent of THAT would be 380mrem/year, which is acceptable. That's about 4 times normal exposure on earth when you consider air travel, medical X rays, and other things. Radiation workers in the USA can receive up to 5 REM per year (50mSv) as occupational exposure, or at least that's what the limits were years ago when I learned about such things. Funny thing, when I was on a NUCLEAR sub back in the day, the shielding was good enough that I got LESS radiation than I normally would, and i was within 150 feet of an operating nuclear reactor most of the time...

anyway, enough science. Back to the snark and potty humor.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pint

Re: Why ever?

I'm sure there are other nitrate-based chemicals that an be imported for that occasional need of ammonia or nitrate-based fertilizer, in larger quantities than human kidneys can produce.

This does beg the question, HOW MANY people and HOW MUCH BEER would be involved in such a construction project on the moon? I know construction workers would appreciate the beer, and no doubt give willingly of the precious pee in order to move the project forward.

Establishing a brewery on the moon, though, might make it all worth while.

Moon Brew! Regolith Ale! Luna-brau! OK I'll stop now...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coat

Re: we have seen that a waste product...could also be used

marking our territory like dogs with fire hydrants...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: What goes around comes around

I'd think a portable air-filled tent would do it (to shield against vacuum while concrete cures).

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: What goes around comes around

I've heard "make it out of glass" - since regolith is basically SiO2 and Al2O3 (and apparently other things like Titanium) it should be possible. i don't know what effect the Al compounds would have on the glass making though. It'd be a worthwhile experiment to try making moon-glass, see if it's worthy as a construction material. If properly heat treated and thick enough, it'd make an interesting dome, wouldn't it? If nothing else, THERE's your bricks for the piss-n-regolith concrete.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: ESA have been working on urine recyc for years on the ISS

"smells like an uncleaned nightclub toilet "

I was thinking "gasoline station" but yeah...

Might also help to spike that mixture with some CAO (aka lime) which would let them make regular old concrete. But I guess the idea was to use "lunar-only materials" so unless there's a limestone quarry on the moon, they're stuck with regolith and piss.

Remember that clinical trial, promoted by President Trump, of a possible COVID-19 cure? So, so, so many questions...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Down

Re: Donald Jenius Trump

I bet your opinion would be OPPOSITE if someone like OBAKA had said it was a cure...

this certainly would NOT pass the "shoe on the other foot" test.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

I don't anyone doubts the need for proper trials. however, you also have to consider how many physicians are now trying this out on their own, and some (in New York City, specifically) have been indicating that they have promising results of having done so. Anecdotal evidence is NOT a clinical trial , but it IS evidence, and should be considered when making the choice between getting that particular medicine, or dying (so yeah only the sickets patients would be given something that is 'experimental').

For most people, of course, they won't need it.

Keep in mind that clinical trials can take YEARS and as such, won't be very helpful *RIGHT* *NOW*.

California emits latest layoff statistics. March's numbers are ugly. It's 19,000 total, including many in tech

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

Cali-fornicate-you governor "Nuisance" is an IDIOT

"Nuiscance" is an IDIOT. And Cuomo of NY is only *slightly* better.

You could deal with all of this *WITHOUT* (effectively) shutting EVERY COMPANY DOWN STATE WIDE. if this shutdown goes on for as long as is indicated (through end of April) then the already-strained-by-liberalism Cali-Fornicate-You economy will become *COMPLETELY* *FSCK*'d.

Not every business (particularly engineering) can be done 'work from home' style. I can do about 75% of my work that way for my current client. The OTHER PEOPLE I need to work with, however, can't do that. It's severely impacting that company, and I _KNOW_ there are others like it.

The fact remains, that COVID-19 _is_ worse than flu, but it is *NOT* black plague nor EBOLA. The response to it is being TAKEN WAY TOO FAR!!! [and the lame-stream media is FEEDING THE FEAR AND PANIC]

It's LUDICROUS to shut down ALL companies across a state [or a country for that matter]. _NO_ amount of gummint "help" can mitigate this. The only REAL choice is to rely on people being smart, and to make sure that there is enough "stuff" available for when people DO get sick. That's just the way diseases are, and HERD IMMUNITY (from people who have caught the disease and recovered) will eventually fill the gap whenever a vaccine does not exist. And practicing common-sense techniques like the 'social distancing' thing is probably the MOST effective.

(for those who are most susceptible, it makes more sense to partially quarantine THEM as well as guaranteeing there is sufficient medical treatment, rather than SHUTTING DOWN EVERYONE ELSE in a PANIC "do something" OVER-REACTION).

I really am SICK of the FEAR AND PANIC part of this. The virus itself [I may have already HAD the thing - co-worker at customer site came back from China in December, got sick, probably gave it to me, and I had a mild fever a couple of times afterwards...] causes flu-like symptoms, MILD ones at that, in MOST people. A few people get a nasty pneumonia which is no doubt complicated by bacteria infections which is probably what kills you [this is how flu kills]. Bacterial pneumonia is serious and often requires hospitalization. So this is where the concern is, that there's a higher death rate than influenza. But it is _NOT_ EBOLA. It does NOT kill EVERYONE. And if you get treatment, it is highly likely you will survive it. THAT much is being helped out by gummints, getting the supplies and hospital beds ready. ONCE THAT HAS BEEN DONE, then EVERYONE SHOULD GO BACK TO WORK!!! We will at THAT point be *PREPARED*. There is a promising treatment AND supplies of ventilators and masks are being produced by many companies to meet the demand. IT IS TIME TO END THE SHUTDOWNS, RIGHT FORNICATING NOW!!!

This whole SCARE has gone WAY too far already. Common sense and "deal with it like the flu". The death rates are already being revised at SIGNIFICANTLY below the fear-mongered 3 percent level. And flu season is ALMOST OVER. There is NO NEED to screw the world's economy (unless you LOVE chaos because you're a COMMUNIST and want to TAKE OVER) over this.

Just make sure we have enough equipment and medications for hospitals to treat patients. A 'short pause' probably already bought enough time for THAT, so we should JUST! MOVE! FORWARD! with COMMON! SENSE! approaches now. NO! MORE! PANIC!!! NO! MORE! SHUTDOWNS!!!

(yeah I'm working at home at the moment, not impacted in the short term, but OTHER PEOPLE I KNOW ARE IMPACTED, and it SUCKS)

What happens when the maintainer of a JS library downloaded 26m times a week goes to prison for killing someone with a motorbike? Core-js just found out

bombastic bob Silver badge
Stop

Re: JS lib house of cards - you ARE the weakest link!

fortunately, the number of 'heartbleed like' cases in the world of software support has ALREADY gone BELOW the number of NodeJS issues *caused* by this "cloudy fragile opposite model" of deploying libraries...

Some DLL Hell issues back in the day were actually CAUSED by Microsoft! One case, ODBC using the MFC DLLs _BROKE_ with Win '95 OSR2 and NT 4, and would have also been broken in Win '98 when it released. The cause: they change the ABI so that it was INCOMPATIBLE with earlier versions of their C++ compiler, when they'd been RECOMMENDING to people to "use the shared libraries" (and you STILL find that as the DEFAULT when you create a new project - you have to EXPLICITLY GET RID OF IT - that and ".Not" bindings, which are _WORSE_)

I fixed the problem by creating my OWN versions of their DLLs [which were required due to me mistakenly following ANOTHER one of their recommendations, too late to change it] with different names, defeating the whole purppse of having shared libs in the FIRST place, and ALSO teaching me a VALUABLE LESSON about their SERIOUS disadvantages!

(at the 1997 PDC I bent the ear of more than one engineer over the details of this specific issue, even one very senior guy that looked a lot like Nadella from what I can remember... not sure if he even worked for MS in 1997 but who knows, could've been him)

The point, in any case, is that I'd MUCH rather deploy a fix to my application for those RARE cases where something like 'hearbleed' has been found, than to take a chance that SOME FRAGILE COMPONENT was "updated" and CAUSED something WORSE.

So far the "something worse" has more than proven that static linking is better from a customer support perspective. But it DOES mean you have to be able to rapidly respond.

And the alternative would be to make it open source so that end-users COULD recompile on their end with the new libs. (the package maintainers on Linux distros and things like FreeBSD typically do that on our behalf).

(I guess it's worth mentioning that applications shipped as BINARIES would be statically linked - those shipped as source, or compiled by package maintainers for various OS distros, could still dynamically link if that makes sense - but another advantage of static link is IMPROVED LOAD TIMES, and so I'm inclined to do that by default even when built from source)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Shirley!

"a bunch of people all making their own subtly different forks."

Why is that a BAD thing... if they each maintain their own fork?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

"continuous development"

A sign that INEPT "DEVELOPERS" can't get it right the FIRST time...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: It Open Source so no worries

"I would imagine insurance companies may start asking what libraries are in place and what support agreements there for code maintenance."

I'd say "Nunya Business" and shop elsewhere...

Also, if a software shop is PRUDENT, they will HOST LIBS THEMSELVES and merge FULLY TESTED changes when necessary... and ONLY when necessary!

Too many cases where this JS "cloud sourced" "forced update" library HOUSE OF CARDS has bitten people in the ASS.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

JS lib house of cards - you ARE the weakest link!

You ARE the weakest link - G'BYE!

This "constant update" JS library model was the *WEAKEST* it could have possibly been, from authors "pulling their schtuff" out of anger [causing disruptions in service EVERYWHERE] to "unmaintainable" source trees due to death, illness, incapacitation, or prison...

"Back in the day" I chose to ALWAYS static link libraries to PREVENT the "DLL Hell" in Windows. And in POSIX systems, if I don't build from source [or have a package available in the distro], I'll want to do the SAME THING for _MY_ stuff. Reason: A midnight phone call due to "some third party dweeb" screwing up or NOT being able to make swift updates [in the cases of a 'cloud update' model which I won't do anyway] won't happen to ME because some *IDIOT* "developer" was... THE WEAKEST LINK.

At least with other OSS projects, particularly those that have been abandoned or become unmaintainable (particularly on github, sourceforge, etc.) it is possible to fork it under a different name (or maybe the same name, with a different dev controlling the source tree). In some cases (like TigerVNC) it was done because the author of the source project (tightvnc in this case) chose to no longer support X11 properly. So over a short period of time, you could still use the old libs, but if you wanted updates, you had to switch to the newer package [no real problem except getting the word out].

But this "forced update" model used by JS libs is JUST! PLAIN! WRONG!. Weakest link indeed...

That awful moment when what you thought was a number 1 turned out to be a number 2

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

my first experience with Lotus 123

I took over a friend's entry level position in the late 80's. One of the things he'd done was create a Lotus 123 spreadsheet to track "buy cards".

The thing is, spreadsheets back then had a macro language that was somewhat primitive, and he'd never gone past the keystroke method.

Me, being an efficient typist, would often "type ahead" so that I wouldn't have to wait for things.

I did a "type ahead" one time in that spreadsheet, and the macro went NUTS and overwrote a whole BUNCH of data, including the MACRO ITSELF!

The first time that happened, my friend was still there to fix it. Unfortunately "auto save" was part of that macro, as I recall, so "fixing ti" could be rather "involved".

Needless to say after he left I accieentally killed it AGAIN, but having been so fragile I actually bothered to learn about protected cells, advanced spreadsheet formulas, and proper macro programming and fixed it properly. Then its need disappeared... so it was all just a waste of time after all!

(later I used that position as a stepping stone to an IT career, by producing a weekly report that used to take an entire WEEK, in about 3 hours, automatically starting 2 hours before I arrived monday AM, so I could monitor the printout in case it jammed - after 2 hours of copying and distributing it, I had an additional 37 hours to do "whatever" which became actual programming and data analysis - all good!).

Microsoft staff giggle beneath the weight of a 52,000-person Reply-All email storm

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Bcc FTW!

depending on the mail reader, you can probably disable that button on that particular computer as part of an "upgrade"

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Advice

10Mb of:

a) rule 34

b) embarrassing photos of the CEO and/or spouse

c) your favorite online comics

d) cat video

e) rule 34 cat video

etc.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

I actually disabled the 'reply all' button in Thunderbird, but I'm pretty sure I can make it happen anyway with a right-click [/me verifies - yep, it's there!]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

carbon footprint - what Santa Claus leaves in snow [after being in so many chimneys].

If I were to hit 'reply all' I might attach something from a shock site...

Campaigners cry foul play as Oracle funds conservative lobby group supporting its court case against Google

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Who expects honesty and decency from Oracle ?

'conservative' - I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Conservative != 'right wing' [see my other posts in this area]

'right wing' does a lot of what you seem to accuse conservatives of doing, and 'right wingers' are probably the 'technically ignorant and uninformed' ones you mentioned...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

I didn't think anyone here would question the validity of a copyright of a COMPLETED work, such as an entire software library. What is at issue here is the patenting and/or copyright of an API, which is much like the patenting or copyright of a "general idea".

Patents are supposed to be VERY specific and apply to a specific invention. Copyrights are for written works, etc. and "fair use" allows a portion of that work to be used by others without paying royalties.

So the real debate is, can you patent an API? (I believe it is too much "a general case" and not specific enough to a specific invention for a patent to be granted). And can you copyright an API? (if the API were for a specific copyrighted work, such as a software library, and the library itself is copyrighted, then the API, a portion of that library, is subject to "fair use").

Any restrictive deviation beyond what I just mentioned would simply be a FEEDING TROUGH for BOTTOM-FEEDING L[aw[YERS. And you know the L[aw]YERS are the ONLY ones who WIN this kind of CRAP!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

"You can't have business without government interference."

Calling reasonable regulation 'interference' implies that all businesses are inherently DISHONEST, and require 'interference' (through regulation) to protect us poor saps from those *EVIL* *CORPORATIONS*.

I don't buy that kind of viewpoint at ALL.

'Regulation' does not equal 'Interference'. 'Regulation' creates order out of what might become chaos, such as requiring all businesses to register in the form of a 'business license' [to verify zoning laws, etc.] or limiting the occupancy of a building for fire safety reasons. That's really not "interference" when it's done properly.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: Conservative?

'conservative' is what you'd call the opposite of 'activist'. By 'conserving' it implies sticking to the way things are being done already, or holding onto traditional values, or making changes slowly and with overall approval (rather than doing so rapidly, radically, and "in your face" if you don't like it).

What IAP is calling "conservative" is most likely "right-wing". "Right wing" is as bad as "left wing", just different details. Same ulimate outcome, though: less freedom for all, more power and control by government.

(bullhorn icon because it's kinda like a political stump speech)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

"Government interference in business doesn't seem to me to be a particularly conservative position."

Most definitely, it is NOT conservative.

What we have here, perhaps, is a "Conservative in Name Only" organization. I read their main page, and from what it says, they SOUND like a decent bunch of people interested in OUR privacy and not letting "big tech" get away with manipulating elections, etc..

Yet shilling for Oracle's lawsuit against Google over the Java API is *NOT* "conservative"!

If IAP claims to be CONSERVATIVE and PRO-PRIVACY and even PRO-FREEDOM (I did not see that specifically, but 'conservative' would imply that), then they can NOT uphold the concept of an API patent or copyright, without being HYPOCRITES.

Hey, China. Maybe you should have held your hackers off for a bit while COVID-19 ravaged the planet. Just a suggestion

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Fight Fair?

That book suggests that war is expensive and should be avoided, FYI, and that peace (through strength, implied) is better than war.

(it's somewhere near the beginning, actually)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Fight Fair?

They are waging a campaign to win global dominance from the West, and are getting it done.

Only if we LET them do it... (fact is you canNOT trust Communists!! Apparently world leaders had forgotten that pre-Trump)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

am I allowed to say

NO, you are NOT allowed to say that... and I'm still laughing at your joke

(reminds me of an old 'book titles and authors' joke, something about a population explosion and 3 names commonly found in S.E. Asia, all strung together to make a funny phrase - a very very NAUGHTY funny phrase - rhyming with See Chuck's Tongue)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Cisco Kit

where are those routers made, exactly.... ?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: APT41 just doing their international good service

yes, uncovering their flaws will really SCREW your future "social credit" score.

Report them, and you'll end up in a burnt pile of bodies alongside former Wuhan district residents...

Conspiracy theory says it was all part of their plan, which has YET to completely backfire.

World's smallest violin to be played for opportunistic sellers banned from eBay and Amazon for price gouging

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

"What ever the market will bear. If the asking price is too high, don't buy it."

Normally, yes. however, declared emergencies are NOT normal. Different rules apply.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Price Gouging: the free market libertarian perspective

that's not a very 'libertarian' argument. It's more like an ANARCHIST argument.

Libertarians aren't against regulating [they are against BANNING, which is a different thing entirely]. Without regulation you have chaos, and Libertarians don't want chaos [only anarchists and revolutionaries want chaos].

The basic idea is that I should have as much freedom as possible as long as it's not negatively impacting anyone else, and whenever it could (or is), that's where regulations happen.

Simplest example: smoking. While banning all smoking would stop me from having to breathe someone else's tobacco exhaust, if that person smokes where I am _NOT_ I am not impacted. Therefore, regulation to prevent me from being FORCED to breathe tobacco exhaust is reasonable [and of course I can deliberately NOT go to those places where people smoke]. A "smoking area" with its own ventilation system is one example, so that the smoke never leaves that zone, in business establishments where they choose to allow such things. But, it's the nature of gummints to want to CONTROL MORE, and so they ALWAYS do "the ban" or something chaotic (which then leads to THEM 'providing a "solution" to the problem THEY caused').

Whoever that was that claimed this was a Libertarian argument (justifying price gouging during a declared emergency) does NOT understand Libertarianism.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The best way to fsck these scum

try reporting them to law enforcement, and not the hosting web site. maybe you'll have more success?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Down

Re: Hmmm

no, the problem is _NOT_ capitalism. The problem is a VIRUS.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Down

Re: Shirley

"This is the epitome of democratic, free market capitalism?"

NO. It _may_ be what happens when you don't regulate anything i.e. anarchy or chaos. that is COMPLETELY different than suggesting ANY form of socialism would "fix" this. It is, however, human nature, for SOME people to engage in deliberate sociopathic behavior, which includes profiteering and "price gouging".

'capitalism' or 'free market' has been REGULATED since forever, in one form or another. Normally it is self-regulating through supply and demand. When monopolies, unfair trade practices (including price gouging) and exploitation occur, the existing laws are generally enough to put a stop to it.

Just like there have always been thieves [even though it is illegal to steal], there are also PROFITEERS (even though it is illegal to do this) during declared emergencies.

THAT is simply human nature, for a small percentage of people to do such things, and has nothing to do with free markets. If it were SOCIALISM or COMMUNISM, it would be "black markets". Same idea.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Obvious gouging is obvious

"As in any global, or even national, scare, gouging was inevitable and obvious. What else are all the twats with garages full of bog roll going to do with it?"

maybe their lawyers will accept it in lieu of money?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: How about supermarkets...

yeah that's a bit much... even if it's super-special-organic chicken

(I like legs and thighs better anyway - especially the dark meat)

(Surely there are NO double entendres in what I just said.)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Leave them alone?

"And he feels he's the victim!"

yeah 'feel' the F word. heh.

This article was dated the next day (3/15), said that he donated over 17,000 bottles "after Tennessee officials announced they would investigate him for price gouging".

So yeah, the ban-hammer went a bit further than E-bay. Serves him right!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

it's STILL wrong to profiteer off of items in short supply during a declared emergency. AND, as I mentioned earlier, ILLEGAL within the USA, punishable by up to 2 years in JAIL (as far as I am aware)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Alert

Re: Online marketplaces descend into wretched hives of scum and villainy

in the USA, during periods of declared emergencies, it's a violation of the law to (in any way) profiteer or "price gouge" or scalp or in any way charge grossly inflated prices for things that are in short supply.

So if these sellers are inside the USA, they cold be doing 2 years' JAIL TIME for such things.

I say TURN THEM IN! Then their stash will be confiscated and appropriately distributed to places that need these things that are part of the government, at the very least. [this would offset demand on the private sector and indirectly improve the situation]

Microsoft goes into Windows lockdown for builds from May, citing 'public health situation' (yes, the coronavirus spread)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Devistating

and those 6 hour long "your system is updating" interruptions to cat videos, blogging, commenting on El Reg, and generally surfing the web...

reminds me of the time I saw a client's computer shut down for about that long because windows just HAD to update when he logged on at ~7:30 AM only to NOT be able to use his computer at ALL until ~2PM! And then it was really sluggish because of all of those "background" tasks... [so not really 'usable' for another half hour or so]

Collabora working on making any DirectX 12 driver able to support open graphics and parallel programming APIs

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

keep in mind that Android is ALSO linux-based, and has both x86 and ARM processors used by Android phones (as far as I'm aware, anyway). And, there is a bit of a technology race to provide those android phones with high resolution screens and whatnot. They'll most likely need OpenGL drivers for that. Good ones, too.

no worries. I think this may be ONE reason why MS is SUDDENLY INTERESTED in _FINALLY_ SUPPORTING OpenGL properly (see my earlier post)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

back in the 90's when DirectX first became "a thing"

Back in the 90's when DirectX first became "a thing" I was at a windows-related conference and I asked their engineers about things _like_ OpenGL, and they're like "no no, don't use THAT... use DirectX because it will be OPTIMIZED!"

I didn't really make use of DX so much either. It was interesting but didn't do what I wanted, and I didn't need the blistering performance, and it looked like making use of it was WAY too bit fiddly for what I needed to do [business presentation graphics for analyzed data, basically].

HOWEVER - the whole idea of "Don't use THAT, use OUR PROPRIETARY SYSTEM" seems to have been VERY prevalent among MS's engineers, and that's how we got where we are today.

FINALLY some "love" (or desperation?) for OpenGL and OpenCL!!! I shall be more "open" to the idea of writing applications that dedicate their UI to this.

In FACT, is there a toolkit out there that targets OpenGL for a GUI? I've heard of such things being done, for proprietary systems, and I think "something out there" (maybe Qt or GTK) has an OPTION for this. But it would stand to reason that if OpenGL is to become universally supported with PROPER optimi9zation, that it could IN FACT be THE CROSS PLATFORM GUI API STANDARD we've been looking for???

PC owners borg into the most powerful computer the world has ever known – all in the search for coronavirus cure

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: When you say spare cycles...

how much higher was your electric bill? I estimated $50-$100/month running things like that... screaming fans, CPU maxed out, etc.. There were a couple o' projects from the mid noughties I tried, Seti@Home being one of them. But modern CPUs have lightweight power usage during idle states, so no screaming fans, no high electric bills from leaving them on all the time... unless you run stuff like this.

and the other thing: It's a fair bet (in my mind) that these work units weren't coded using the MOST EFFICIENT TECHNIQUES. for all I know, they're doing the research scientists' equivalent of a BUBBLE SORT. So before they ask for my computer time to be donated, I'd like to see some peer review on their algorithms...

besides - the BEST research is being done by physicians in hospitals with various experimental (but promising) treatments on real patients right now. "Feel Good"-ism might warm up your house in the vicinity of your computer, but how much good is it REALLY doing?

/me proposes that ONE good programmer and data analyst is worth a MILLION 'screaming fan' machines... given a reasonable amount of time, coming up with efficient algorithms and simulations, rather than throwing data against a wall of computing resources, which is [in my opinion] VERY likely to be the case.

We're not cracking ENIGMA, which sometrimes involved a lot of repeated-trial-and-error until they found the one that worked. But then again, THEY made THEIR process efficient, back then, and were reading Hitler's mail in real time! And so we should do that NOW, make the virus research algorithms as efficient as possible, BEFORE recruiting a bunch of donated CPU resources.

Hypochondriacs – are your eyes all blurry? It's just YouTube trying to cut video-stream quality worldwide amid the coronavirus pandemic

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: YouTube is often un-watchable anyway on my TV

I've been using things like youtube-dl for a long time (rarely though, youtube is a time eating monster). When I download first, I get the best resolution possible and just wait for it to finish downloading before watching. [and I can keep it locally if I like it]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Virtue signalling.

reducing the bandwidth on an 110GB game FORCED WINDOWS UPDATE downloads will help

Now that I think about it, 110GB game images and kid/pet/selfy videos probably NOT the cause of any REAL bandwidth shortages... [and that could make what youtube as done a reaction to a problem NOT caused by them]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

possibly avoiding network congestion issues

the problems may be in the middle, not at the ends...

but yeah in a "this is what would happen if EVERYBODY did" moment, just like missing products on otherwise crammed-full-o-stuff store shelves, when you count on a certain level of utilization, and it SUDDENLY increases beyond expectations, THIS is what you get. (fortunately, with capitalism, bread lines up for people, so it's just a matter of time for production to ramp up to meet demand).

At least it's not sociopathic to stream a lot of videos, like hoarding toilet paper would be...