* Posts by bombastic bob

10515 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

In the red corner, Big Red, and in the blue corner... the rest of the tech industry

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Protocols. not APIs

And, apparently, Oracle has L[aw]YERS

SLS goes vertical at Stennis while NASA practises SRB stacking

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

you anti-Trumpers just gotta get yer 'digs' in.... even with POSITIVE topics like launching more rockets to the moon, because HUMAN space exploration IS cool, and don't forget why NASA is actually DOING this (Trump, that's why).

Using 'spare parts' like that is actually not a new concept from a sitting U.S. President. Reagan had the DOJ bring a few WW2 battleships out of mothballs, with modern weaponry and electronics, at a major overall cost savings, Same idea.

icon, because, facepalm

If you never thought you'd hear a Microsoftie tell you to stop using Internet Explorer, lap it up: 'I beg you, let it retire to great bitbucket in the sky'

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Needed for SharePoint

I suspect that KDE's Konqueror, Gnome's Nautilus, or Mate's Caja could view a Samba share with an "explorer view" that would do the same thing that IE users want to do with SharePoint.

I've already seen references to using Konqueror with 'WebDAV://" URLs and also something called 'davfs2' to mount SharePoint shares onto the Linux file system. So it seems that there are actual SOLUTIONS to these problems already for Linux.

(might as well just run Linux, then!)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

The fact that anything depends upon it in 2020 is appalling

from article: "The fact that anything depends upon it in 2020 is appalling"

More like: The fact that anything depended upon it in 2003 is appalling

(I don't even want to get started as to why)

Judge snubs IT outsourcers' plea to Alt-F4 tougher H-1B visa rules: Bosses told to fill out the extra paperwork

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: s/specific skills that are in limited supply/willing to work for peanuts/g

This is one very valid side of the argument. The other side suggests that there aren't enough U.S. Citizens to do the job.

I think the truth is somewhere down the middle, but much closer towards the 'Silicon Valley Wage Suppression' side...

maybe they should move their headquarters to a place where the cost of living is REASONABLE?

Alan Turing’s OBE medal, PhD cert, other missing items found in super-fan’s Colorado home by agents, says US govt

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: 256 items, you say?

after discovering she had more than 256 items, I suppose the thief sent the remainder of the items back in order to make the number 256 happen.

Well I hope they get a proper museum exhibit, at any rate, if not just for the fact they're Turing's items, for the fact that someone stole them.

And I think this woman sounds too much like some kind of stalker... taking trophies... did she talk to his ghost [in her mind or otherwise] ? At some point will 'crazy' become a defense for her?

Microsoft boffin inadvertently highlights .NET image woes by running C# on Windows 3.11

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pint

Re: 32 bit processors were common from 1985

"We should really take a step back and ask us why we need what used to be called a supercomputer to display web pages or run routine applications "

SO right on SO many levels!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coat

Re: Every language is sacred (and "special") in it's own context

the monty python references help. thanks for that.

didn't know Terry Jones had died. I guess his feet were nailed to the perch

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Every language is sacred (and "special") in it's own context

I "feel" kinda nauseated at the touchy-emotional-nature of all of that...

/me runs to the shrine of the porcelain god...

you owe me a new lunch for that post!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: In its current form .NET is for 40-year-old white men. That's the visual.

that statement (which was quoted from the article) is RACIST, I say!

g'head someone argue it's not. g'head!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: BTW if you need a cross-platform GUI development solution

"what actually is the native look and feel of Windows these days?"

2D FLATASS "The Metro" "Start Thing" Australis/Chrome clone.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: BTW if you need a cross-platform GUI development solution

wxWidgets and GTK and Qt

they just work

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: I *HATE* .NET

I'm almost 60 years old, I *HATE* C-pound and ".Not", but used to like Visual Studio before the 2000's when they went all "VB propery sheet" and became HARD! TO! USE! for typists - all that moving my right hand off of home row to mousie-clickie where a HOT KEY used to do the job!!!

MS's IDE has sucked too much following Visual Studio '98 where it actually made sense - well, for C/C++ devs at any rate. And that's what I do. And that's what I want. And yet I'm still forking over the $800/year for MSDN, because I need it on occasion for customers. It's a net gain, but not much gain.

The latest crop of "feelies" making BAD decisions ("feeling", not THINKING) "on behalf of us developers" first resulted in ".Not", then C-pound, and *ULTIMATELY* "The Metro" and UWP and the 2D FLATASS look.

And they want to prove WHAT now by putting their ".Not" lipstick on Windows 3.11 ???

Hey Microsoft, make sure you apply it to the end that goes OINK!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: "Visual Studio is a paid-for product"

don't forget THIS gem: "C# remains popular, ranked sixth after JavaScript, Java, Python, PHP and C++"... forgetting the fact that ".Not" and/or "C-pound" are less than 10% of the total amount of development going on, and THE MOST POPULAR lingo (Java) just happens to be cross-platform...

though the current group of free IDEs really disappoint me (IntelliJ, Eclipse, etc.) there are some people who like SlickEdit [I've seen but not used it, long ago] and I just use Pluma and the command line tools.

Recently a friend of mine, who was a ".Not" developer some 10+ years ago, sent e-mails around about finding work. My suggestion: learn cloud and Kubernetes, something with an actual FUTURE.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

and apparently London-based developer David Whitney said this:

.NET is for 40-year-old white men

I don't know how he gets away with being RACIST like that...

(substitute ANY other race for 'white' and watch the SJWs *HOWL*)

As for cross-platform, "Got Java" ??

Windows 7 back in black as holdouts report wallpaper-stripping shenanigans

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: XP compatablity

looks like something disabled the older "lan manager" share method, the SMB protocol version 1 I think it was. It was insecure, but not *THAT* insecure. If you're only doing local shares, between XP VMs and 7, shouldn't be a problem I'd think, to re-enable it. Might have to hack the registry though. Some "UP"date probably turned it off.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: yes, yes...

"Deploying Win-10-nic LINUX as we speak..."

heh, fixed it for ya! Linux, a *TRUE* UP-grade!!!

'I am done with open source': Developer of Rust Actix web framework quits, appoints new maintainer

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Whats the problem with unsafe code in Rust?

I think you overgeneralize too much negativity about the C language [which I use ALL of the time]

And YES, I've done GUI programs in C.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Whats the problem with unsafe code in Rust?

"whereas with C/C++ any old pointer could be wild."

Not when you write the code properly. An experienced kernel programmer would know this.

(if you're talking new college grads first time trying their hand at coding, that's completely different, but when you've been coding longer than those people have been ALIVE... *NO* need to limit things or over-generalize the 'paranoid case' just because SOME people just aren't competent enough)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Whats the problem with unsafe code in Rust?

there are many reasons I do not use the Rust language, low-level code efficiency being one of the big ones.

I don't much like their model for threading either. I'd must rather hand-tweek my own algorithms based on the understanding of the system they run on, Then you can decide whether the overhead of a job queue is worth the performance benefits of spawning multiple threads, from the total number of simultaneous jobs you can run [based on the total # of CPU cores available], to the nature of the threads themselves (do they have I/O wait states or in any way lock global objects or cause priority inversion) and so forth.

And when you've been coding long enough, you can use pointers SAFELY. It becomes SAFE CODE because you WROTE IT to BE SAFE.

There's really no substitute for proper design and techniques, ESPECIALLY _NOT_ some "new, shiny" language that pretends there IS...

my language of preference: C, or C++ when the need arises. It usually doesn't. And good C++ code looks very much like good C code.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: He's not wrong

yeah this "community" thing usually gets conceived as something *really* *nauseating*, all "touchy feely" and "we all just get along", which is the EXACT opposite of STARK REALITY.

A "community" (read: small group) of contributors who submit patches and occasional features is fine, but SOMEONE has to have the gonads to say YES or NO to all of that. Because, we do NOT all "just get along". There are agendas and personal vendettas and crusades and "i want this feature dammit" and so on... and *WAY* too much *FEEL*.

maybe this is why what the CUSTOMERS (i.e. end-users) want has become such a LOW priority these days... you know, like with major ball-busting changes like Australis, Gnome 3's UI, 2D FLATSO, removal of user customization, EVERYTHING looks like Chrome and CHROME LOOKS LIKE CRAP (all bright blue on blinding white), et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: He's not wrong

"Large swaths of the open source community have become intolerable"

This is why you need a project manager with a heavy hand that isn't afraid to say "no", or even "NO!" or "*HELL NO*!!!", as well as enforcing coding style consistency, and putting certain kinds of pull requests permanently on the shelf.

Someone like Linus, let's say. .. WITH the profanity and unafraid to insult people. [I particularly like his comments regarding 'compiler masturbation' by which he meant using "new, shiny" features simply because they were there, not because they were better or easier to maintain - which in the cases he pointed out, were NOT]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: "...and that its community gets a better handle on how to proceed constructively."

"Inconceivable!"

(good reference by the way)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Not just open source

"People publish Open Source software because they're hobbyists who think others might find their work useful."

Although I am certain that there are many people who fall into this particular category, you are being QUITE arrogant if you make the assumption that ONLY "hobbyists" publish open source.

I had someone say "hobby" with respect to a serious hardware project I had designed for my own company. I considered that to be BOTH condescending AND arrogant. Well, *THAT* guy's contract ended early, for a number of reasons, in a major project we were both involved in. He was one of those "UX" designers who "worked" by slapping canned packages together, writing sloppy code that barely worked, and calling it "a user interface". Oh, wait, that's "User eXperience". *facepalm* (he couldn't meet design deadilnes, even acted out and deliberately interfered with getting things done - last I heard, he applied to work for the EPA, suits him perfectly I guess)

yeah, _I_ took over his duties, and actually made the thing work, cursing his name and choices for MONTHS... [customers happy with it though]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Not just open source

"If your project is successful and popular you will attract the slugs, the uses who want it to do everything for them but aren't prepared to contribute."

well said!

Also a corollary of that: don't try to make your project do TOO much or it will bloat into an uncontrollable mass of feature creep. If the 85/15 rule applies, let's say 15% of the effort going into 85% of the functionality, and the rest of the functionality (15%) taking up 85% of the time and/or amount of code to support it.

Contrast this to the UNIX principle of "do one thing, well".

So at some point, all of that extra functionality should become add-ons and not built-ins. Then when the slugs complain about "no feature" you can say "write a plugin, contribute it, and then it will do what you want". So simple!

then again, if you do like Firefox and CHANGE THE API such that the old plugins break...

South American nations open fire on ICANN for 'illegal and unjust' sale of .amazon to zillionaire Jeff Bezos

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Surely the South American countries have a prior claim

and the trees were chopped down to make the books sold on amazon, heh

bombastic bob Silver badge
WTF?

Big corporates shouldn't be allowed to get there own TLDs.

why not? I don't think anyone else could afford to cover the cost of one...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: TLDs - I am confused

I've got a domain for '.name' and another for '.com'. They're still pretty cheap, though having gotten into the game early means I had a better shot at something I wanted.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Why do Amazon even care

I think the idea of '.amazon' is to register a seller's web site using that as a TLD

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Who's going to bet..m

let's not break teh intarwebs, k-thx

(I'm sorta surprised there's not a group of female warriors in scantily clad armor angry over it)

Big Falcon explosion as SpaceX successfully demos Crew Dragon abort systems

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

go back 100,000 years and we're all from Africa!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: NASA are paying Boeing more per-astronaut than they're paying SpaceX f

I would also expect that later down the road, as more companies get involved into space, that NASA will make it possible for OTHERS to qualify, using the standards set with Boeing and SpaceX.

There's [apparently] a government expense, though, in qualifying the candidates, so for now, there are two... and then once we have suppliers, others get into the game.

I suppose Virgin's hybrid attempt might be a possibility at some point.

Imagine 100 years ago when airlines were first forming. I expect it's a bit like that. Only thing is that the cost for entering the new private sector space race is considerably higher than "just get yourself a big biplane and learn to fly it".

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: "given that the rocket is lost during the test anyway?"

when you buy things with tax money, it goes into the pockets of the corporate investors and employees.

Why is _THIS_ a problem? Better to buy "something" (in this case, rockets) than just HAND IT OUT TO PEOPLE WHO WILL DEMAND MORE AND MORE AND MORE...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Yes it very much DOES matter

exactly, I would prefer a _REAL_ test even if it is expensive. SpaceX saved money by using a rocket that already had a few launches under its belt [read: 'old reliable'] which is their model for cost efficiency, and therefore a REALLY GOOD test.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Causality

I expect this was done with a modification so that the normal systems would catch the "unexpected" event, thus demonstrating the ability to function in a REAL emergency.

Or at least, that's how _I_ would set it up... [you need to simulate the actual abort trigger condition after all]

When I was in the Navy we simulated trigger signals like this all of the time, for the reactor safety shutdown systems, to make sure they were working [but of course it did not have to have a real catastrophic failure to do it - it was just routine maintenance, with the simulation stuff built in].

To catch a thief, go to Google with a geofence warrant – and it will give you all the details

bombastic bob Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: And this is why...

mine's a dumb phone. pre-paid cell that I rarely use. It's nearly always OFF. I have a droid slab for development work and e-mail when I'm at a remote site. And no GPS or other tracking in my 20+ year old car.

and I also put aluminum foil in my wallet so that the chips in the cards can't be read. The newer ones apparently have actual electrical contacts so it's less likely they'll be a problem but I think my driver's license is as insecure as any of them evar were...

but seriously, I would hope that none of this information would be given out without a proper warrant FIRST. We don't need any aggressive investigators investigating individuals, looking for a crime [rather than investigating a crime, looking for perpetrators].

You're not Boeing to believe this: Yet another show-stopping software bug found in ill-fated 737 Max airplanes

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

99 little bugs on the wall

99 little bugs on the wall

99 little bugs

you take one down, patch it around

104 little bugs on the wall

or, as an associate put it: Kill one bug, grow six more

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Profits

Except that the assertion is wholly untrue. Their highest priority is to maximize profits.

this is to be expected. keep mind that airlines don't purchase unsafe planes... [which affects profitability]

In order to maximize profits, they will attend to quality and safety issues if and when the publicity arising from those threatens profits.

No. See what I said above. it's *impractical* (and unprofitable) to be so heartless. Dead customers aren't repeat customers, after all... (nor are they satisfied).

WebAssembly: Key to a high-performance web, or ideal for malware? Reg speaks to co-designer Andreas Rossberg

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coat

W'asm - makes me spasm [when trying to say it]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: You can import stuff from your host environment

remember ActiveX? "Oh the control has been marked 'safe' so THAT means it is OK!"

What about downloadable windows font files? Not web fonts, WINDOWS fonts [which are actually DLLs]

The tech itself is not dangerous. No, no no. It's what people CAN DO with it. It's almost like why the local 7/24 convenience store doesn't sell dynamite...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: WaSm to you too

I am looking for the option in firefox to just DISABLE it. A less-than-quick search online shows "javascript.options.wasm" in about:config might do it... but of course, IT IS NOT IN THE NORMAL PREFERENCE OPTIONS.

(the article has done nothing to convince me I should actually ALLOW it)

Microsoft picks a side, aims to make the business 'carbon-negative' by 2030

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

" CO2 was at 330ppm when I was at school and is now, what, 410?"

is the water warmer also? You have to consider several physics and chemistry factors when making your claim, otherwise the conclusions you present are "less than accurate" (read: complete B.S.)

a) warmer water cannot hold as much gas in it, and so the gas is released from water. Result: like a soda going flat when it is warm, CO2 is released from warm water. Additionally, carbonates are dissolved and converted to CO2. This causes increased measured atmospheric CO2 levels, which are due to the equilibrium state. [study chemistry, you'll understand]

b) Additionally, underwater volcanoes are a major factor in water-borne CO2 release. if you measure atmospheric CO2 near an underwater volcano over time, you'll see "elevated levels". This happened a decade or two ago, skewed atmospheric CO2 levels at a particular measurement spot off of the coast of California, due to a nearby underwater volcano, and it was somewhat quietly covered up once the truth got out... even though the people presenting this were CLAIMING it as "evidence" for man-made CO2 climate-apocalypse-doom-gloom-disaster-whatever. (and your freedom and money MUST be given away, FOR DUH PLANUTZ)

I know that the enviro-wackos behind the CO2 nonsense won't publish the truth about it. There have been at least 2 major scandals with respect to "cooking the data" to get a RESULT, rather than STUDYING the data and formulating scientific conclusions. Yeah, they were in the news, even. So I call B.S. on your claim. Not because it wasn't measured "that way", but that you're leaving out important information that does not present the ENTIRE truth.

There are those who understand chemistry, and those who don't. Those who DO understand it realize (I love saying it that way, using the left's leading question techniques against them) REALIZE that temperature alters the equilibrium constant. In 1970, the temperatures were at the bottom of a COLD cycle in the Northern Hemisphere. Not sure about Southern, they have different cycles. in any case, if the 300 ppm measurement was from, let's say, 1970, and the 410 was from, let's say, 2010-ish, you'd be measuring it at two peaks of a 70 year temperature cycle. You can expect the equilibrium levels to be different because the water temperature is different.

Those who UNDERSTAND basic chemistry REALIZE this.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Easy

Wake On LAN - a way for evil hackers (aka 'crackers') to take control of your computer while it's still plugged into the network (but otherwise 'off'). No thanks.

How about just make Windows not so INTRUSIVE with respect to "updates", get the code right the FIRST time by PROPERLY TESTING IT [instead of having end-users be the QA department], and allow PARTIAL updates rather than "We take over your machine for 4 hours so UPDATING becomes its primary function, too bad YOU wanted to do WORK or PLAY A GAME, MUAHAHAHAHAHA!"

WOL does NOT fix the inherent problems with Win-10-nic, and its constant NEED for "updates".

[I fixed that recently by upgrading an old Vista laptop to DEVUAN with MATE - and the owner is VERY happy with it!]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: I call marketing bullshit

you can have CO2 concentrations as high as 2% without serious side effects. FYI.

(above that you start getting headaches, etc. and it becomes bad for animals)

I know because, when in the Navy, the sub constantly monitored air quality. The scrubbers would keep CO2 below 2%, but you needed consumable canisters to get it below 1%. Hovering between 1% and 2% was fine. And since CO2 doesn't really absorb or reflect IR energies for black body radiation [for temperatures actually found on earth] then it won't have an effect on temperature, either.

But it might rain more. And plants would grow WAY faster! And they'd deplete it all, and we'd be back to where we are now at < 0.04%. Equilibrium.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

"Given that Windows 10 Linux will run on the same spec PC as windows 7, why would you chuck it out?"

fixed it for ya!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

"busy telling everyone that they need to buy a new Windows 10 compatible computer ... with more memory and disk space than the old Windows 7 box."

And put LINUX on it! I suggest Devuan with Mate desktop.

I recently did this for a "content consumer" relative, who LOVES the Linux. $30 for 500Gb hard drive, built it in a VM, swapped it in, a few UI and settings tweeks, and all good! Computer owner took a few minutes to get used to it, and lots of "thank you" replies. It solves MANY problems, actually. [it's a Vaio from 2008-ish that came with Vista on it].

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

of COURSE it is a marketing ploy.

a) humans are NOT causing climate change. But a lot of people *FEEL* and so MS is doing a MARKETING PLOY.

b) CO2 is NOT even a greenhouse gas! A greenhouse gas is supposed to trap heat that would otherwise radiate into space (black body radiation). CO2 really _sucks_ at doing that. Look at the IR absorption spectrum, compared to temperatures actually FOUND ON THE EARTH. G'head I _DARE_ you!

c) CO2 is less than 0.04% of the atmosphere. Compare that to water vapor, a *REAL* greenhouse gas, which can be as high as 8%. Yes that's 200 times as much as CO2. And is ANYONE trying to control WATER VAPOR? Of course not! The planet is FLOODED. That'd be even MORE laughable.

d) CO2 is at biological and chemical EQUILIBRIUM. You could double, or even TRIPLE, or even MORE increase in the production rate of CO2, and the reactions and biological factors would shift to match the depletion rate at a slightly (very slightly) higher concentration.

e) CO2 is used in greenhouses to MAKE PLANTS GROW. Increasing atmospheric CO2 would do that, too. And they'd deplete it faster.

In short, this is NOTHING MORE than "pure politics" MARKETING MANIPULATION of people's FEELINGS. And it's _NAUSEATING_.

I'd be MORE impressed if they invested $1Billion in FUSION RESEARCH, something that WOULD make a difference!!!

The Curse of macOS Catalina strikes again as AccountEdge stays 32-bit

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Mixed messages

"porting code from 32bit to 64bit should be straightforward"

assuming the APIs haven't changed. But this was MacOS 32-bit vs OS/X 64-bit, most likely. That wouldn't be trivial (not the way I understand it, anyway)

It has to do with the way the old MacOS windowing and menus and other OS APIs work. I looked into it once. I understand that OS/X was a MAJOR change to how this worked, hence the compatibility layer.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Mixed messages

again, I don't think it's the "bit-ness" in this case. I would expect that this 30 year old code was written for the MacOS APIs and is effectively incompatible with OS/X APIs. As such, the "32-bit" code (which would be for older MacOS APIs) would have to be re-done to use the OS/X APis instead.

I'm not familiar enough with OS/X coding to really know for a fact, but I suspect it's NOT a trivial thing. That being said, a re-write is apparently in order. And like I mentioned before, if you're going to have to re-write, use GTK or maybe even Java, so that it becomes cross-platform, so that the market goes beyond "just OS/X" and covers every OTHER operating system, too.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

MacOS vs OS/X

If I read the article correctly, the program was originally written for MacOS and *NOT* OS/X.

There seems to be a significant difference between the two from the software side. So I expect that it has _LESS_ to do with 32-bit vs 64-bit, and MORE to do with a lack of a backwards compatibility later for MacOS API calls... (or did I miss the point here?)

Something like this would require a MAJOR re-write. Basically it would be a "start from scratch using the old code as a guide" effort. This might explain things better...

My opinion: If you're going to do THAT, re-write it using GTK and make it available for ALL platforms, from Apple to Linux and even Windows.

And THAT would be a GOOD thing! [Just don't make it 2D FLATSO like Firefox with Australis and Chrome - too much of THAT crap out there already]