Posts by bombastic bob

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

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)

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?

"continuous development"

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

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.

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

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

Re: Bcc FTW!

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

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.

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!]

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

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...

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!

"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.

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)

"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

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)

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)

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)

Re: Cisco Kit

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

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

"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.

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.

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?

Re: Hmmm

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

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.

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?

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.)

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!

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"]

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]