Posts by bombastic bob

Google says its latest chatbot is the most human-like ever – trained on our species' best works: 341GB of social media

I have to wonder if that kind of joke is now "formulaic" enough for an AI to appreciate... [but the rest of us just facepalm]

I'd laugh more if it were something like this:

Q: how many robots does it take to change a light bulb?

A: One, but it has to be a "light bulb changing robot"

or maybe this:

A man, a woman, and a robot went to a bar. The man ordered scotch on the rocks. The woman ordered a strawberry daiquiri. The robot didn't order anything. Why?

Because it's a ROBOT, that's why!

(In Final Fantasy XIII-2 there's a bad jokester that you have to interact with as one of the in-game quests. You basically need to throw bad jokes back at him until he reveals something to you - "This medical book is worthless - it has no appendix!". Reading the back/forth between Human and Meena kinda reminded me of that, at the end...)

There are already Chinese components in your pocket – so why fret about 5G gear?

you could try convincing Qualcomm or Motorola to open a U.K. subsidiary...

I disagree when you say "heavily subsidised" - I would be more inclined to saying there ARE government contracts with these companies for the Department of Defense and whatever the DoD equivalent is for Germany and France [this is NOT the same as "subsidised"].

But this brings up something else: WHERE is the actual INVENTING happening? I don't see a communist country (China) having a whole lot of really innovative ideas. Sure, you'll find a few, and I'm sure China's engineers are as smart as any other around the world. BUT... the "overshadowing communism" environment is directly opposed to freedom and creative thought. It's like that proverb "The nail that sticks up gets the hammer." In an OPPRESSIVE society (and COMMUNISM *IS* OPPRESSIVE) creativity and innovation is *STIFLED*. Not in every detail, but as an overall effect.

Meanwhile, it seems that various engineers in the UK have been focusing on things NOT in the telecom industry, like ARM cores [as one example]. Engineering companies put effort where it makes economic sense, after all, and if there's just TOO MUCH competition in the internal workings of 5G, then "smart money" is likely to invest its time/effort elsewhere...

In case you wanna launch your boss into the Sun, good news: Earth's largest solar telescope just checked and, yeah, it's still pretty fiery

Re: Oh really ?

"slight chance of rain" either equals 'no rain at all' or 'streets are kinda flooded' in my neck of the world.

"Coastal Desert" - when it rains, it floods! Well, not always, but still...

Re: Reg units

half an Alaska then? Or would that be a quarter Alaska?

We need these new measurements STANDARDIZED, dammit!

Until then, I guess we can measure it in Wales' (we're still using inches and feet over here, might as well use Wales')

looks a bit like oatmeal

looks a bit like oatmeal. I assume it's "boiling" ?

Brave, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla gather together to talk web privacy... and why we all shouldn't get too much of it

Re: Temporary Containers

recently I did an online search for a super-simple webkit browser written in C++. I found one on github. After building it [with a bit of tweeking for FreeBSD] I discovered that it was functional enough to use for HTML help files, at the very least.

it is fairly small, but not well commented. It seems to be self-documenting enough that it would be possible, for example, to write a cookie filter that would NOT put cookies into the same place, but rather allow you to whitelist some, and store others, and ignore ones from a blacklist [let's say]. Then of course there's other offline storage you could intercept. All of these appear to be controllable by the application itself, and not necessarily using webkit features.

So the potential exists to fork this web browser in such a way that I can get features I want from it without plugins. The code is not very long, 6 '.cpp' files and headers. it uses webkit and GTK, so should be (potentially) cross-platform. In any case, it's called 'web_browser' (the string 'DBT Browser' appears in the application's title bar) and it compiles into a binary called 'main' - so obviously it would need some tweeking to make it into an actual open source project for general distribution.

But I really just wanted sample code on how to do this (webkit-based browser) with my OWN application, really, to browse doxygen-generated help files associated with a completely different project... and for that it seems to be a pretty cool little application, worthy of mention, *ESPECIALLY* if the regular browser makers can't get their @#$% together and LET THE CUSTOMERS HAVE THEIR WAY with respect to ads, tracking, cookies, script, interfaces, etc. etc. etc..

try as I might I can't seem to locate any copyright information, so I guess this means it's public domain.

EU outlines 5G rules: You don't have to keep 'risky' vendors completely Huawei

Re: It is all trade war.

"end to end encrypted so what ever network it goes over it is “secure”."

yes, and no. If you can manage to intercept (for example) a DH key exchange it is possible to work out the entire conversation. Similarly there are 'replay attacks' that a "true man in the middle" could perform. Given that surveillance of MANY conversations to a well known server (let's say an email provider's logon servers) might give you enough information to more readily crack the server keys, and so the potential here might be to track people via their e-mail logons. From there, you can hoover up all *kinds* of otherwise encrypted information, from location to what you've most recently posted to social media.

yeah THAT kind of information, that faecebook, google, and others are (quite literally) hoovering up as much as possible on EVERYONE, has already been demonstrated to be valuable. If the phone providers themselves are DOING THE SAME THING, but sending it to a government, then no information shared via a phone conversation would be "private" any more. Too may really bad implications are there.

And so far, I don't believe Huawei is trustworthy enough to just believe them at face value.

Petition asking Microsoft to open-source Windows 7 sails past 7,777-signature goal

Re: I really want to destroy my business too

"100's of millions of users didn't sign the petition"

hundreds of millions of users DID NOT KNOW ABOUT the petition...

Re: Why not set an easier goal?

I think MOST of the windows 7 holdouts [like me] aren't "up"grading to newer versions of the software we run on it, either. If what you ALREADY BOUGHT STILL WORKS, why "up"grade?

[especially wnen those $$$ "up"grades are JUST to support Win-10-nic "features"]

A few years ago, while I still could, I got a box with Win 7 pre-loaded. It runs accounting software (in my case Quickbooks 2007) and music production software (an older version of Cakewalk, specifically), and "other things" not related to an MSDN subscription. I don't plan on buying newer versions of any of that

My dev-only boxen get MSDN licenses, and I target windows 7 for executables DELIBERATELY. [sometimes I target XP even].

Not so amazingly, targeting win 7 compatibility covers a ~90% use case for windows users, as opposed to JUST targeting Win-10-nic. So I bet I'm *NOT* the only one!

Re: This is about as deluded..

Vegans eat _WAY_ too much soy, including those "fake meat" burgers and soy milk. (ok this is a bit OT but maybe related to the word 'deluded')

Soy contains phyto-estrogens. Excess estrogen in women can cause real serious problems, and in men, well, "chemical castration" and "gynecomastia" come to mind. And you can't be a Vegan without taking special vitamin supplements unless you want deficiencies that cause serious health complications.

The REAL delusion is FOISTING this upon THE REST OF US. [if they want to do that to themselves, vegans are welcome to abstain from meat and animal products. just don't foist that on ME].

(Just thought I'd point all that out)

Re: Not holding my breath

as I understand it, MS's JVM was NOT part of the OS, but an add-on.

MS has _also_ shipped versions of windows 7 that exclude multimedia stuff, because of certain EU-related restrictions (as I understand it).

NOT a problem, really. Just don't include the JVM. It wasn't needed for anything but IE anyway, and ONLY if you ran a Java "applet" with it.

Re: Not holding my breath

"When do you think NT4 would be open sourced? That would actually be quite useful for the Wine project and ReactOS."

Re: And in other news

FYI - it's been MY observation that *MOST* hackers are of the white hat variety, and are either doing IT and security, or some kind of engineering. The thing your company invents and sells to make money was PROBABLY invented by *HACKERS*.

So 6,666 hackers is a *GOOD* thing.

The term 'hacker' probably originated from the description of someone who builds furniture with an axe, or basically "someone who regularly uses unconventional solutions to problems". See 'Jargon File'.

Re: Uh!

"None of that would be in place for a Win 7 source dump"

I _WHOLEHEARTEDLY_ disagree with you on this. I, for one, would _GLADLY_ fork it, make fixes, and issue pull requests. It is likely that MANY would be willing to take charge over the project, or at least a fork of it, FOR GRATIS, *just* to get support in something "NOT Win-10-nic" that runs EXISTING software.

I've contributed to several open source projects, usually when I have a need (or I find a serious bug or deficiency and submit a fix along with the bug report). I'm not an official developer for any of them, but this is typical of "peer support":, where "some user out there" fixes a problem and submits it and it becomes part of the project.

Re: Uh!

the argument that "open source leads to hacking" has been COMPLETELY disproved by history with Linux and the BSDs.

For every evil hacker who would bother doing such a thing, there are MANY white-hat security expert hackers willing to FIX those problems BEFORE they become 0-day exploits. THAT is what you see in the open source world, WAY more often than not.

"Closed Source" is _NOT_ more secure. The "serious bug" rates of Linux, the BSDs, and open source software in general, as compared to, say, WINDOWS 10 ALONE, is STAGGERINGLY DIFFERENT, and *EASILY* demonstrates how open source is MORE secure, because it *IS* peer reviewed!

"If Microsoft made Windows 7 open source, many people would use it instead of the abomination known as Windows 10"

this was more or less what I wanted to say, so thanks for saying it.

Since _ONLY_ _STRONGARM_ _TACTICS_ caused MOST people to "up"grade from 7 to Win-10-nic [in my opinion], with a *SMALL* number of exceptions, I'm sure Micro-shaft will *BURY* all versions prior to 10 whenever they get the chance to do so.

The chance of open-source licensing Windows XP is probably even WORSE... for that very reason! (so ReactOS may be our only remaining hope...)

But I think FSF didn't market their petition very well. I didn't know it existed. I would have considered signing as long as it didn't get my e-mail address *EXPLOITED* in the process...

'Trust no one' is good enough for the X Files but not for software devs: How do you use third-party libs and stay secure, experts mull on stage

Re: It's actually not that hard

I really don't like JSON for a number of reasons. Mostly it's just CUMBERSOME. What people have done with it in Python (as one example) and Java Script is (in many cases) facepalm-worthy. XML isn't much better, and can be JUST as hideous. When I ask what I'd RATHER WRITE A PARSER for [_NOT_ using someone's canned inefficient license-encumbered crap-library I could re-write myself in a few hours] I prefer XML, but only just barely.

And if MY code relies on something that can be updated by someone OUTSIDE OF MY CONTROL, then it NEEDS A RE-WRITE to AVOID that. _I_ do not want the "midnight panic phone call" from a customer that was caused by SOMEONE ELSE "being an idiot" [or installing some game or crappy utility that overwrote a shared lib, etc.].

But this whole thing about shared libs and BLINDLY RELYING ON OTHERS (particularly on teh intarwebs) has gotten a bit out of control...

Back in the 90's, Microsoft *ENCOURAGED* us all to use shared libs for C runtime and MFC and whatnot. These libs were even included with the OS. I fell for it. THEN, an application I was working on for a customer would not run in Win '95 OSR2. Turns out *THEY* *POOCH* *SCREWED* the MFC libs' ODBC implementation by CHANGING THE ABI [and didn't bother to tell anyone]. So Win '95 MFC libs and Win32s MFC libs worked fine. Win '95 OSR2, followed by WIn 98 [and others] did _NOT_. [and 'just upgrading the libs' with 'newer versions' wasn't an option - remember DLL HELL ??? Win32s was involved, here. You couldn't "just do that", end-users were running Win 3.11 or '95 and the application needed to support that]

My solution: re-compile MFC from source as "differently named" shared libs and dynamically link to those instead [since the solution I was going wtih *REQUIRED* the shared MFC]. For every (windows) project SINCE then, I statically link *EVERYTHING*. *PERIOD*. (For open source, I just ship source and use the OS default when it's built)

YMMV of course, if you have cloud-based code and just want to use someone's "simple thing" implementation, but you should at LEAST consider HOSTING IT YOURSELF to avoid "THIRD PARTY UPDATE HELL". Or do you *LIKE* getting "the midnight panic call" from customers?

Re: It's actually not that hard

I wouldn't call JSON "lighter weight" ...

how about just using a format that YOU like? I like tab-delimited files for simple columnar data. arbitrary white space delimited works for utilities like 'awk', and so a tab-delimited file can often be passed through awk. It also works when pasting into a spreadsheet, and (mostly) deals with text data that has embedded spaces in it.

Or if you don't like that, use something else. The only real point here is "a file format" that is standard enough for data interchange, so think about how it's gonna be used, and pick a format.

make sure the license *SPECIFICALLY* relieves the author from ANY liability

"AS IS" etc.

Boris celebrates taking back control of Brexit Britain's immigration – with unlimited immigration program

Re: Good, good.

seems that EU citizens already employed inside UK _IS_ the reason for the policy. This would help prevent chaos, for sure.

I wish U.S. policies on immigration would JUST stick to allowing those who have skills that benefit the nation (like scientists and engineers and doctors and NOT unskilled laborers and people looking for handouts). It's really hard to stop a gravy train though... (right Donald?) so best NOT to start one!

Virtual reality is a bonkers fad that no one takes seriously but anyway, here's someone to tell us to worry about hackers

Re: The horror, the horror...

"What, like an open-plan office?"

Actually, if everyone in the office was using VR... [that might be an interesting solution, virtual offices]

The horror would be seeing yourself in your underwear and everyone else laughing...

Remember the Clipper chip? NSA's botched backdoor-for-Feds from 1993 still influences today's encryption debates

Re: here we go again

25 years ago there were FTP sites in Finland that had source code and various white papers [in English] on encryption methods.

Dur, dur-dur-dur. Dur-dur. Dur-dur (can't touch this)

I propose something very very similar, "in the cloud" or just EVERYWHERE in EVERY open source OS distro that exists, as a free GPL'd application with no back doors or tracking, etc.. kinda like libdvdcss [which for some reason is no longer easily available for windows... but certainly there for Linux and FreeBSD!!!]

Re: here we go again

the same idiots whine about GUN CONTROL too, same logic.

Only now, in SOME places, it's even *KNIFE CONTROL*. Go fig.

Nothing like a "solution" in search of a "problem" to EMPOWER POLITICIANS and CONTROL OUR LIVES EVEN MORE...

Just keep the source files for *STRONG* public key encryption available to EVERYONE AROUND THE WORLD, and make it SO easy to use with FREE open source applications, specifically ones that do not track nor advertise, that the genie can NEVER be put back into the bottle, and ANYONE can have strong, un-crackable encryption IN SPITE OF *THEM*.

posting to USENET, open source OS projects, and the various www archive servers is a good start...

[at one time the BEST encryption resources were FTP sites in FINLAND - back in the 90's]

it would be somewhat trivial to write an Android application to provide strong encryption for use in a mounted file system using existing algorithms, let's say PGP and IDEA for starters. All it would need to do is look like an external storage device plugged in via USB. Not that hard to do with Linux. I think there are already file-baed mountable file system drivers already for Linux. Just adapt one of those... run it in userland (like Fuse FS) and voila!

dunno if you'd have to jail-break a phone to do that... but it would certainly be possible if you did.

/me has experimented with native libs on Android already. The next step is a userland file system like Fuse FS and the ability to mount them. Then *ANY* application could store files in an encrypted file system with strong un-crackable non-back-doored protection, a HUGE hash-based key, and maybe even biometrics and/or bibliograhical pass phrases - your favorite book chapter X and paragraph N, as an example!

Re: Same old, same old...

good luck with that - politicians *ALWAYS* exempt themselves [and their pet agencies] from the restrictions they place on "the rest of us"

Re: Old news is good news

A BIG THUMBS UP for the mention of RFC 1984

Microsoft: 14 January patch was the last for Windows 7. Also Microsoft: Actually...

Re: Windows 10 just seems to get worse

"Everything else has been smooth as butter."

and also, 'flat as a pancake'... am I right?

Re: it's all curable, and worth it

"MS is transitioning to Linux"

I wish they were, but it's more like "Embrace Extend Extinguish'. They are on step 1.

Although _I_ would actually PAY FOR a Wine-like layer that MS blesses and supports... where I can run Win32 applications, and ALSO do Linux stuff, and ALSO pick a 3D Skeuomorphic desktop (like 'Mate' with the a classic theme) rather than the Win-10-nic 2D FLATTY FLATASS McFLATSO FLUGLY that a bunch of clueless just-out-of-college "developers" *CRAMMED* down all of the customers' throats, courtesy of Ms. Larson-Greene [inventor of the ribbon] and Sinofsky, starting with Windows "Ape" (8).

And this is ALSO why none of us were surprised at that "accidental/bug" wallpaper problem as the very last "screw you" (read: update similar to GWX) from Micro-shaft.

/me points out I haven't updated my dedicated accounting and music production Windows 7 box, which NEVER goes online with a web browser, for over 3 years! And it STILL WORKS! All those "up"dates, _SO_ overrated! For safe web surfing, uh, practice "safe surfing".

Clunk, whirr, buzz, whine. Shared office space can be a riot and sounds like one too

Re: Sometimes

so many possible references to the same *kind* of appliance...

Clue-by-four

Clue-bat

Clue-hammer

but my favorite is STILL the Cat-5-o-nine-tails

I once made one using 4 cat 5 ethernet cables that came with wifi access points, being too primitive for modern networking (so they were in a boneyard bin), and I used a modified noose-not which gave me a nice handle and 9 perfect "tails" with plastic ethernet thingies on the ends - ouch! Took a photo even, hanging on a cube wall.

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

Re: This was an eye-opener for me

ack. Back in the day, Benz had a patent on "the automobile" and wouldn't let Ford make cars, at ALL, because they simply refused to license the patent to Ford. So Ford literally CHALLENGED THEIR PATENT and its validity, and WON. Since then, pretty much EVERYONE owns cars, and NOT just "the very rich".

Similarly with APIs and protocols. Using a copyright to STIFLE COMPETITION or determine who can play in the sandbox - this is what it's about.

Re: Protocols. not APIs

And, apparently, Oracle has L[aw]YERS

SLS goes vertical at Stennis while NASA practises SRB stacking

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'

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!)

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

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

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

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!

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

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!

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!

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.

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

wxWidgets and GTK and Qt

they just work

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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)

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.