Posts by bombastic bob

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

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)

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)

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

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)

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

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

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]

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]

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...

The shelves may be empty, but the disk is full: Not even Linux can resist the bork at times

Re: Interpretation

this is actually distro-dependent but is reminiscent of a typical SysV init. I normally disabled the session managers and booted to console by altering the S01gdm to be a K01gdm in the most common run level (2 I think, on debian-based systems) and using startx. I like startx and console logins. They give the USER more control.

if you do 'man init' on your older SysV system, you'll get a breakdown of how it was set up by the distro-maker.

Re: Interpretation

even on very old systems, logs tend to rotate. you keep the last 10 or something...

Now, if there's some application that keeps creating temp files that are never deleted, someone forgot to enable "clear out /tmp and /var/tmp on boot" which is a simple fix, but I suspect it's not that.

Most likely just an old system with failing hardware. SD cards and hard drives don't last forever. Let's say 10 years of continuous use... that'd be about right I think, to kill off an early solid state drive... or just your average hard drive.

Re: This can't be Linux

yeah I wish that were true, but probably - since it's using LILO - it's a very very very old distro with a pile of uptime, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if the SD card storage [assuming it uses that] or maybe hard disk [if it uses that] has enough bad sectors by now to create problems like this...

meanwhile the occasional fsck may have corrected things up until now, until drive-cancer is larger than free space, and, well, there she blows!!!

/me replaced hard drives recently on 2 different FreeBSD systems because ZFS warned me of their impending doom... and so got new brain-storage, a few months apart, the same 2TB drive that was going for for around $70

AND, I might add, I'd much rather re-build a Linux or FreeBSD system from scratch onto a new hard drive (or restore via a file-by-file tarball backup) than to replace an ailing hard drive from a Windows box... [hello MS? I need an activation code. No, I'm NOT running Windows 10. I have XP. Oh, you can't give me a code any more? What the HELL??? It's an OLD system and it came WITH XP on it... but you don't care? Thanks a LOT, Slurp!]

Taiwan collars coronavirus quarantine scofflaws with smartphone geo-fences. So, which nation will be next?

Re: Which is more important, Privacy or Death?

*PRIVACY* and *FREEDOM* are *THE* *MOST* *IMPORTANT*!

Why do you even ASK that?

I'd rather *DIE* *FREE* than *LIVE* *AS* *A* *PRISONER*!

using personal devices to DOG COLLAR people - THAT! IS! INSANE!!!

(at least those ankle bracelets that home-confined prisoners wear are *DESERVED* and an *ALTERNATIVE* to a *REAL* *LOCKUP* - "locking up" people who are sick is *JUST* *PLAIN* *WRONG* and is what *COMMUNISTS* and *EVIL* *DICTATORS* do!!!))

Freed from the office, home workers roam sunlit uplands of IPv6... 2 metres apart

Re: Colour me disappointed...

it must be their ISP. Though for some odd reason, in the past, I've had problems with IPv6 connectivity via their cloud content provider, something about not honoring MTUs during https/SSL key exchange (or something like that). Well, maybe that's fixed now, haven't seen that pop up its ugly head in a while (ALSO not El Reg's fault).

It might actually explain the entire problem, depending on how you look at things.

It's 2020 and hackers are still hijacking Windows PCs by exploiting font parser security holes. No patch, either

Re: Aaaaaah, yes. Another security hole in Windows.

"Microsoft says it's C++'s fault."

Blame the COMPILER and LIBRARY author!!! No, wait...

So what fix will we do in "older windows"? My guess: don't view documents with MS office products... ESPECIALLY not documents with embedded fonts!!!

(I'll want to know what effect it has with Libre Office)

Forget about those pesky closures, Windows 10 has an important message for you

Re: Windows is not for anyone

" They would be better to use Linux for such a task."

YES!

Re: "not giving Windows 10 enough headroom"

"If you don't want to wait, you can always run disk-cleanup manually"

how is this going to work well on a system that's in a kiosk?

*crickets*

and THAT is my point!!!

"maintaining windows" is *NOT* my number one priority if I sell furniture...

Re: Not really their fault

I easily fit a Linux image in 16Gb on a micro SD card with more than enough room to spare, with chromium, a web server, custom daemons, and short instructional videos, yotta yotta yotta, operating in 'kiosk mode' on a Raspberry Pi. Set it up properly [and config the browser to only check for updates after 1000 years have passed] and you're all set! Well, you DO have to code it properly...

[and if you're worried about the GPL, you can try FreeBSD instead]

Re: "not giving Windows 10 enough headroom"

"Just how much is enough ?"

'all of it' plus 10% ?

early on I noticed that Win-10-nic does NOT clean up after itself when it "up"dates/grades. And so you can expect it to grow like *THE BLOB*

"Beware of The Blob it creeps, and leaps, and glides, and slides across the floor..." [Burt Bacharach, 1959 I think - theme song for the movie of the same name - "The Blob"]

Re: The long, dark teatime of the next few months

"There wasn't even any tea in the supermarket the other day. Or milk."

I'm sure there were plenty of HOARDERS there to prevent anyone ELSE from having any before THEY get to it... (with nothing better to do than create shortages for EVERYONE ELSE).

as for Win-10-nic on a kiosk - it's like a self-inflicted wound.

got, Linux?

Linus Torvalds ponders: Is Linux 5.6 going well because it's bug-free, or thanks to that other bug?

shift Linux 5.6 out the door.

I nearly mis-read that. Had to look again. It's 4:47 AM here...

Tech won't save you from lockdown disaster: How to manage family and free time while working from home

Re: Add to the singing ban

"when I designed a JarJarBinks meets Yoda costume celebrating the glory of Rule 34."

OW - you broke my brain with that image. Well, it was already broken...

Re: Add to the singing ban

bagpipes are much preferred to 70's disco "music",... ESPECIALLY the Bee Gees.

(I wish I could brain bleach the disco crap from the 70's out of my memory - ~shudder~)

[I am suddenly reminded of a "banjo mute" - the best ones look like LARGE HAMMERS]

Re: Add to the singing ban

I find that leaving a radio on [when you don't have to be on a phone, etc.] helps me get work done. Usually it's conservative talk radio in the AM and music in the afternoon. I have an icecast server that randomly plays songs I've ripped on to my hard drive or I can set up a playlist easily enough, and an "internet radio" that can "tune into" my private icecast server, or any of a number of streaming radio stations for that matter.

Seriously it's a cool thing, doing the work-from-home with the radio on.

But... advice from someone who has done this a LONG time - do NOT TURN ON THE TELEVISION! TV is an attention whore and will RUIN your productivity.

It's time to track people's smartphones to ensure they self-isolate during this global pandemic, says WHO boffin

solution: PRIVATIZE MEDICINE!!!

(no I'm not trolling, I'm serious)

I've worked on site a few times with people who'd recently been to China last December. One guy came back with a bad cold. who knows, it could have been Corona, but I don't know of anyone who's tested positive for the virus. I'm fine, he's fine, they're all fine, it was weeks ago, and for all I know we all caught it, and got over it. Or not. Can't say, because symptoms are often so mild you don't know you have it, or think it's just the passing flu crap (as usual), which I've had off and on for several weeks like every year. (hot showers, staying warm, spicy food, mentholatum up my nose, and liquor all seem to help).

And I might add, DON"T PANIC. No need or tracking people. That's just WRONG.

accuracy could be improved, disease state measured better, etc. - that is true, but also there is a general lack of accuracy on the INFECTION rate, which can only be confirmed via accurate testing. Since "accurate testing" is expensive, it only makes sense to test people who are at risk and who have related symptoms. Asymptomatic people really don't need to be tested, as long as they are aware that they could spread disease, so they should behave "courteously" and do reasonable precautions, not sneeze on people, and so on.

It's up to indiv9duals, and NOT "Big Nanny". Treat people as if they are intelligent, and it's a fair bet they'll act like they're intelligent. We don't need a "Big Nanny" to think and control FOR us.

Re: But I don't have a so-called "smart" phone.

it can only be tracked when it is ON. There's this thing called 'voice mail'. It generally works well when you do things like drive, etc. and leave the phone OFF (which you should do while driving, regardless). Then the phone is STILL good for use in emergencies, and you can listen to incoming messages when you get back home {or arrive at your destination, as needed).

besides, it's NOBODY'S BUSINESS where you are, except YOURS. "Big Nanny" can KISS my HAIRY FREEDOM LOVING ASS!

Re: But I don't have a so-called "smart" phone.

"It's time to track people's smartphones"

that's a reason NOT to have a so-called "smart" phone. And I leave my dumb-phone OFF unless I need to call someone [for an emergency, most likely, the only reason to have one on me as I see it].

If I want to know where I am, I'll read a map, thanks... (and I can print directions to wherever before I leave).

I need a *finger* icon with the caption "TRACK THIS!"

Surge in home working highlights Microsoft licensing issue: If you are not on subscription, working remotely is a premium feature

Re: Home PC accessing the corporate network? Hell no!

open listening ports for RDP or VNC are a _BAD_ idea, encrypted or otherwise.

best to use an end-end enrypted VPN, and all access to the corporate network (including remote desktops) is through THAT alone. With some creative firewalling, you could prevent normal network access via the VPN, and only allow the remote desktop-ing.

Re: Appropriate it's about virii...

here, have another

Re: Working from home guide

tightVNC lacks proper support, last I checked.

Tiger VNC was forked from it. [that's what I've been using]

Re: Open source never looked better

My customers who are on 95% open source setups [snip] are in a very much better situation today than those who have stuck with a 100% MS setup

awesome!

Re: The most simple way is not mentioned here?

RDP is interesting, if it's supported [it's likely a smaller business has HOME versions of windows, which don't allow remote-in].

There is a VERY SIMPLE solution, however:

a) VPN login to corporate network

b) VNC server running on the desktop [you'll need to log in first and leave it logged in, turn off those annoying lock screens, etc.]

BUT... if you run Linux or another POSIX operating system chances are you have OTHER things available, too, like ssh, "remote desktop" via the DISPLAY environment variable, and so on.

VNC is probably the easiest (so long as you don't lose the login on the desktop)

and when it comes to outright performance, remote X11 desktops are probably as good as (or maybe even better) than RDP...

[I do not know if there's an open source RDP server out there for windows, but there MIGHT be one for POSIX systems...)

It's also possible, on a POSIX system, to use something like 'Tiger VNC' to operate on its very own desktop. I do this a LOT to test X11 applicaitons. Run vncviewer on the main desktop, run the test applications on the tigervnc's X server with a different desktop (usually loalhost:1). There's really no reason you cannot have that secondary desktop running on a network-visible IP address, and then you just need to be able to VPN into the corporate network to access it.

Finally – news that something is guaranteed to be healthy and well looked-after for the next six months. That something is Windows 10 1709

Re: Death of WaaS

Bloat-as-a-(dis)Service

good name for it!

Re: GRRRRRRR

Remove all profiles you dont need

does that SPECIFICALLY include profiles that do NOT have a "microsoft logon" - would THAT be the trigger, by any chance?

Having extra profiles is something I always do. I typically have at least 2 profiles on ANY system, even a VM. And more as required by the circumstances, ones that are never used except for that specific purpose requiring them (like maybe one WITH a cloudy login on a Win-10-nic test VM, for only those things needing it, to test things maybe).

So yeah at least 2 users, ALWAYS, one admin, one deliberately NOT admin. And then a bunch of others, as needed.

And MS updates had trouble with systems set up like THIS, right?? I'm sure I'm not the ONLY one being this cautious about personal privacy and data/system protection, ya know...

I know MS has gone nutzie coo-coo with the admin-level thing again, for "the Store" and the 'Microsoft Cloudy Logon' in general. Those who fell for their scam, you have at least a fraction of my pity.

Re: GRRRRRRR

Good luck Bill finding a cure for malaria

I heard there already WAS at least a treatment for it... something that ALSO appears to work on Corona virus. Some MD in France found it as I recall. Being tested in several places now, with lots of optimism. That happened without Bill's involvement [I think that particular medicine was invented in the 1940's].

Just think - if Bill G. had actually CURED malaria, we might not have discovered this particular drug that treats malaria... because [if i have my info correct] the people being treated with this medication (maybe as a prophylactic?) were apparently NOT getting corona virus, and that's (apparently) what tipped off the researchers!

something to consider...

Libre Office works for me... (and reads/writes docs compatible with O-365)

haven't seen any OS restrictions with it, either. [guess which OS _I_ run it on??]

If they're forcing you into "the latest Win-10-nic" to use O-365, it _SHOULD_ be a "deal breaker" and you THEN switch to some OTHER office... (and then, 'welcome aboard' frustrated customer!)

we have better things to do with our lives than upgrade Windows

not just RIGHT NOW, but *THE* *REST* *OF* *THE* *TIME* *TOO* !!!

(why does nobody at Micro-shaft seem to CARE???)

Data centres are warm and designed to move air very efficiently. Are they safe to visit during the pandemic?

Re: 70% iso + 30% water? that's 49% alcohol, too low

the drinking alcohol is NOT for your hands... you're supposed to DRINK it, so that the alcohol in your LUNGS is an "uncomfortable environment" for the bugs to grow in!!!

Re: Warmer the better

yeah that's what I'e heard, too - warm and moist.

server rooms, when air conditioned, tend to be cool and dry...

Re: All the biometrics are annoying though

I prefer the RFID badges since you can put it in a pocket inside your briefcase, never touch the badge, never touch the reader, just hold your briefcase up to it with the badge-pocket nearest to the reader

(when I have to work on site at a company that uses badges like that, anyway)

yeah biometric entry systems become a vector for disease spread. who'd a thunk it?

Re: "viruses don’t like the low humidity"

also if there are electrostatic precipitator air filters or just plain ionizers it should help a LOT. High voltage electricity, etc.

Seriously ANY place with this kind of filtration system should be good.

(my home air filters are old and wearing/worn out - I should get some new ones)

I was hearing earlier that warmer weather helps to kill of the viruses, and that LOW humidity is easier for them to live in. Conflicting information then...

Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, surely has no frozen water, right? Guess again: Solar winds form ice

Re: So there is ice and fog in Mercury?

I would expect there to be a lot of heavier elements on Mercury, too - rare earths and gold and platinum and uranium and other such things, in higher concentrations than Earth. Proximity to the sun - outer planets are less rocky, inner planets more rocky. I expect the "rockiest" one to be Mercury.

The nights are long - you could land on the dark side and conduct mining operations during the night, when it's cold instead of roasting [easier to heat people and things than to cool them]. And apparently there'd be water there as well [like on the moon I guess].

I think the planet mercury in Japanese is 'Suisei' - 'liquid star', best understanding. So the Sailor Mercury reference to water, etc..

Re: When hell

"You've frozen EVERYTHING! Do you have any idea how long it takes to get the pilot lit?"

(from an Animaniacs cartoon - they went to hell, yeah - and froze it over)

"Making Water"

couldn't help myself...

/me gives thumbs-up for interesting article on the way out - coat, please

Looming ventilator shortage amid pandemic sparks rise of open-source DIY medical kit. Good thinking – but safe?

Re: It's not just the mechanicals that are needed

a positive pressure air system ventilator that's kitbashed together, and works acceptably, can help a less serious case and can be the difference between recovering at home and ending up in hospital.

I like your thinking. It's also LESS STRESSFUL TO THE PATIENT if you don't have to paralyze parts of his body to keep him alive, ya know??? And if I am paying for it myself [which I would be], I'd want the less expensive, less biologically stressful, 'does not require a hospital bed' version, thankyouverymuch [assuming it would be sufficient]. After all, who needs a BMW when a Ford will do [and the Ford is afFORDable - ha ha bad PUNishment].

There used to be these things called "iron lungs". They worked.

Re: Apollo 13 anyone?

not so much a joke really. It's amazing what a hackish mind and some "odd stuff laying around" can make happen.

Do not let perfect be the enemy of good.

Re: When you have nothing...

"stop anyone suing the health service should they feel"

Corona virus as a motivator for TORT REFORM? Sounds good to me!

(yeah that whole "*FEEL*" thing causes SO many problems...)