Posts by bombastic bob

Stallman's final interview as FSF president: Last week we quizzed him over Microsoft visit. Now he quits top roles amid rape remarks outcry

Re: He should have stuck to what he knows

"Not much love for people with Asperger's, I see"

You mean 'Geniuses', right?

Stallman should be criticized MORE for his *politics*, primarily his desire to (literally) *CRAM* his version of "free software" down EVERYONE ELSE's throat... a sort of 'digital commune' the way he has presented it.

Whereas, 'Open Source' _is_ a much friendlier term than Stallman's version of 'free', which isn't freedom at all. TRUE freedom would be an MIT or BSD type license, or a 'creatie commons' license, where you CAN ship binaries if you want to, or link it into your proprietary code, and if the license requires it, acknowledge the original authors with due credit.

MIT boffins turn black up to 11 with carbon nanotubes that absorb 99.995% of light

Re: Black - pffft

let's see if someone spoils it (I won't)

Re: Black - pffft

I still want a T shirt that aborbs 99.x% of light...

I'm currently wearing one that says "I'm only wearing black until they make something darker"

yeah awesome coincidence, too. It was simply the next one in my T shirt rotation.

Gold writing on whatever black this one will be called (MIT black?). that'd be AWESOME for sure!

The results are in… and California’s GDPR-ish digital privacy law has survived onslaught by Google and friends

Re: admit defeat?

"if you try to tell them that nothing has really changed - they won't take it well."

ESPECIALLY when it turns out to be TRUE...

Re: Thank goodness

I expect it's "fake good news". This will serve to sate the majority of people that want some level of control over data about them, who will THEN forget about it for a while as it moves to the back page of the news, until it's silently eaten by the bureaucracy to the point that there's nothing left of it but the name and an appearance of good intentions.

Never underestimate the ability of a corrupt government [Kali-fornicate-you's] to speak out both sides of its mouth, and engage in deep corruption anyway, while *APPEARING* to "do the right thing" [for once].

[don't get me wrong I think the principal is WONDERFUL - I just expect the political class to completely RUIN it before it truly takes effect, while simultaneously announcing how FOR it they are...]

Linux 5.3 kernel bundles new, cuddlier, swear-free Torvalds with AMD Radeon Navi graphics support

I always figured that Linus has a TRUE PASSION for *QUALITY*, and NO tolerance for [expletive deleted]

(it could only get better if it were a Marine D.I. dressing down an incompetent recruit - and when you consider what it is the D.I. is attempting to do, it makes a LOT of sense to do it 'that way')

People relying on the previous behavior?

and now I'm wondering _exactly_ what that was...

I know there are some issues that cause 'priority inversion', such as when creating the locate database. So I have to wonder if it's something like that, where a 'nice'd process still causes everything ELSE to respond poorly (stuttering, delays, swapping, etc.) while it's running, even though it's basically going at the highest (aka lowest scheduling priority) possible 'renice' level...

and I'd have to wonder WHAT kind of thing actually RELIES on such a bug.... if it's that, anyway.

maybe a kernel option to 'fix' it?

I have no mouth and I must scream: You can add audio to wobbles in latest Windows 10 patch

Got, Linux?

heh I just had to do it!

(audio working fine on my Linux and FreeBSD and Windows 7 boxen, for that matter)

Just what we all needed, lactose-free 'beer' from northern hipsters – it's the Vegan Sorbet Sour

Re: Vegan Beer

"back when I dated a vegan"

Ha ha ha ha... oh you were SERIOUS? Let me laugh even HARDER!!

(yeah I saw that on a demotivational)

Re: Vegan Custard

ew, I'm tasting bile now, just from the thought of it.

Right-click opens up terrifying vistas of reality and Windows 95 user's frightful position therein

Re: Walk like an...

and bend arms and wrists at 90 degree angles. But don't form a swastika...

Re: A stupid idea

naw, we get nearly everything out of the ground, including the 1's and 0's [silicon], so let's just put it back into the ground where we FOUND it !!! (but in a landfill). At least we're not like *animals* who dump their flop 'wherever' and leave trails.

(so what if it's a little altered after we're done with it, shouldn't matter)

Re: "Can you help me?"

you reminded me of 'Intenet Help Tesk' by the 3 trolls in a baggie

well, the fact that you can change the name might have something to do with NOT being sued, but that's really just the kind of non-critical "thing" these people sue one another over, so, meh...

I'm using Mate on FreeBSD at the moment, and installed it all a couple of months ago, so maybe the default Linux theme calls it something else?

it's also possible I renamed it to 'Trash' and forgot... on the other box it's 'Trash' and I copied the 'home' dir when I built the new machine... so now I'm wondering what it was when I first installed it.

Microshaft is too invested in things like political correctness. If there were a MORE politically correct term than 'reycle bin' they would have used it. But hey, I wrote the 'toilet' trashcan for 3.x and I typically use the icons and name on later windows desktops. One of my requests during the '95 beta program was to be able to change the icons and name and MS actually DID things like that for the beta tests back then...

In Mate the default name is 'Trash'. Same things apply [icons, change name] except you might have to create a theme for the icons...

(my windows 7 box uses the toilet icons and a profane term for a toilet as the name)

Re: Taking the Trash

I was one of several software authors who wrote a 'trash can' desktop application for windows 3.x . Mine looked like a toilet. Made a flushing sound when you emptied it. Simple, really, and the '95 trashcan basically worked like mine did minus the flushing sound [naturally I often changed the icons to match mine in the '9x versions].

(the 'full' icon has green water)

As I recall, you right-clicked the icon for the menu to empty it or restore a file, like all of the others.

Tut – you wait a lifetime for an interstellar object then two come at once

Re: However, on a serious note

"what if this is a precursor to some sort of galactic alignment"

I suggest stellar explosion zillions of years ago threw these too our way, and so some of the post-explosion bits condensed and had similar size, velocity, and trajectory (eventually heading our way).

sparing the physic calculations (momentum and energy conservation, for example) rocks of similar size and density might have similar trajectories and encounter the same stellar objects, which would slingshot them into similar OTHER trajectories. And so on. Now they're here, curving off to some other destination.

Re: Rendezvous...

3 Gentry Lee ones, one original. That'd be 4.

(yeah I didn't know about them either until I looked)

Re: Rendezvous...

apparently the 'Gentry Lee' sequels DID come in threes (never read them, some people apparently consider them to NOT be a true 'sequel' to the original), but there was only one of the original.

I had nearly forgotten about the 3-ness of the Ramans. Did a 3rd Raman ship ever show up in any of the 'Rama II' series? Otherwise, just two.

Re: A comet is what they want us to think.

I was thinking "A sequel to 'Rendezvous with Rama'" (as the previous one was kinda 'Rama' shaped).

I read that book in the 70's when I was a kid, when reading books didn't put me to sleep...

Wake me up before you Gogo ... so I can jump out: Kenyan MP takes on aeroplane flatulence

Re: Farts?

just let it all out while in line for TSA. Then you're ready for your 'gas free' flight. Simethicone might help.

I think to kill germs you'd need to ionize the air, like what a home air purifier might do. Still good idea.

hard to tell, some farts stink WORSE. Too bad the only cure for IBS-related gas is "better out than in"

Re: The west African country's transport committee...

I figure it was just a BRAIN FART

and gassy foods consumed HOURS before the flight may be responsible.

Of course there are MORE NOXIOUS things that happen in cabins. Fortunately *SMOKING* is almost entirely banned. But that's a voluntary activity. You can't ban (reasonably) a natural function that's sometimes PAINFUL to try to control. But bathing beforehand, wearing clothes that don't let B.O. out so easily, NOT eating a meal that gives you *DRAGON BREATH*, and so on - these CAN be controlled. Yeah nobody's had to deal with THAT, right?

But then again, there are SOME people (YOU, Gogo) that just HAVE to complain about everyone ELSE in the world, and THEN try to CONTROL them according to YOUR *FEEL* (these kinds of elitists usually end up in gummint, hint hint).

I suppose an MP over there doesn't earn enough ILLEGAL INCOME (read: insider trading and political kickbacks) to afford a PRIVATE JET. So yeah the elitists (read: politicians) are thereby FORCED to use PUBLIC transportation methods...

/me points out that a good flatulist with sufficient 'gassy food' consumed within 12 hours of the flight could trouser-burp "shave and a haircut" loud enough to be heard 10 rows away... and the *smell* is *just* part of *the experience*.

So now the stewardess says: "Coffee, Tea, Milk, Simethicone?"

(I prefer "Coffee, Tea, Monster..." ok who else gets that one?)

yeah there ALSO seem to be too many out there who are secretly trying to make air travel NOT FUN ANY MORE, from the way TSA must give you the E.M.I. equivalent of a RECTAL EXAM [and the excessive waits and belt+shoe removal and barefoot waddling that goes with it] to the cramming together of seats to keep the prices low enough to attract people who'd just drive instead, because of the TSA-related nonsense, and banning of this/that/whatever, and other things... in other words, it used to be FUN to just go to the airport, buy a ticket, get on plane, and ARRIVE SOMEWHERE on a whim. Not so much any more.

Time for another cuppa then? Tea-drinkers have better brains, say boffins with even better brains

Re: PEBKAC

"fruity people"

People from Silicon Valley? [many probably work for Apple]

Re: PEBKAC

I'm not sure how those 2 statements are in any way 'contrary'. can you explain what you mean?

/me going for more caffeine now, helping my brain to work better. Mmmm... iced tea! I make it with Twining's English Breakfast tea and consume it by the GALLON!

Re: Bubble Busted, soz Mate...

@chuckufarley

uh, telling people to STFU just because you don't agree might be popular among the "silence the opposition" crowd, but it makes for poor discussions. Obviously you missed debate class.

/me holds up a mirror. 'why' do you ask? well, that's the problem, now isn't it?

Re: Nah, that can't be right...

"Sit and meditate over a cup of tea and the answer will appear."

More like "increase caffeine levels, taking shorty breaks to make more when the cup goes empty" and the answer will appear, because your BRAIN is operating on all cylinders now...

Re: Smarts drink tea or Drink tea makes smarts

"Truckers didn't just "drink tea"; they 'downed it by the pint'."

Not surprising. Those with non-linear minds tend to crave stimulants like caffeine, and also go for careers that are either creative (engineering), high risk (fire, police, military), or require fast thinking for rapidly changing 'never the same' situations (like truck driving).

I get a lot of this from the 'Hunter/Farmer' theory, the idea that linear minded farmers have brains that work much differently from non-linear minded hunter/gatherers, as far as human evolution goes. Hunting is less efficient than farming, and so most people are linear minded 'farmer' types who work well according to schedules, times, seasons, and regular patterns. Non-linear minded people, however, don't. In fact, they (or 'we') usually HATE such things. There are varied degrees of linearity and non-linearity, though but one thing is common among non-linear minded people: heavy use of stimulants LIKE CAFFEINE.

One nice thing about the computer revolution: The geeks (aka the non-linear minded, in a lot of ways) WILL inherit the earth, at least for now, for natural selection in a modern world actually DOES favor the non-linear minded over the linear minded, for the highest dollar careers, and for excelling in your field...

And keep that coffee, and especially the BLACK TEA, coming.

Re: Smarts drink tea or Drink tea makes smarts

well, I started drinking a lot of iced tea in the mid 80's, and black teas like Earl Grey in the very early 90's [easier on my stomach than coffee]. Keep them caffeine levels maxed out!

But, in general, those who have non-linear creative minds also crave caffeine. it stimulates the slower parts of the brain so everything is working at maximum speed. Gotta have MAXIMUM BRAIN SPEED.

So it is a bit like 'brain fuel'. (I saw that as a T shirt for the 'Girl Genius' comic, something like "You call it coffee, I call it BRAIN FUEL" - except in my case, it's black tea).

Those fake spying cell towers in Washington DC? Ex-intel staffers claim they're Israeli

Re: Relax

more like "just more fake news"

WHo broke this story? Were the former intel people FIRED because their ANTI-TRUMP POLITICAL MISBEHAVIOR got them fired? And as such, they'd have an axe to grind, and FAKE NEWS to spread, to create even MORE chaos while Israel has elections...

Cloud, internet biz will take a Yellowhammer to the head in 'worst case' no-deal Brexit

Re: Brexit, the never-ending story

slow-walking coupled with FUD and outright gummint OBSTRUCTIONISM.

What, is everyone involved in the process a PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE ESTABLISHMENT POLITICAL HACK putting POLITICS BEFORE PUBLIC POLICY???

Business as usual among politicians and bureaucrats, no doubt.

As some might say, SHIT or GET OFF THE POT

All three of the Insiders on Arm64 can now muck about with Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

they used to be called 'beta testers', to test the latest/greates [potentially broken] code.

NOW they're just "testers", one step above the general public's testing of rolled out fixes (read: buggy crapware spit+bandade+chewing gum+bailing wire "fixes")

That's right - MS Fired their QA staff shortly before Win-10-nic rolled out, intending to USE THE CUSTOMERS to test things, and anyone desperate enough to become "an Insider" after the rollout.

Re: So who's really interested?

yeah this all makes me wonder WHY Micro-shaft is *WASTING* *DEVELOPMENT* *TIME* on something WORTHLESS like this, when they COULD be...

a) scouring their code for potential security problems and bugs;

b) doing *ACTUAL* *TESTING*

c) back-porting to Windows 7 so they can sell it again, with it's EXCELLENT 3D SKEUOMORPHIC INTERFACE, as compared to the 2D FLATTY McFLATFACE FLATSO FLATASS interface in Win-10-nic

and so on

Re: Cortana

in the UK you should get a Cortana with a British accent, preferably from someplace in the high rent district of London...

/me imagines Cockney Cortana

RPi 3 (and later 2's) _DO_ have a 64-bit capable CPU, yes.

Putting any version of Windows on one of these, however, is heresy.

/me points out that FreeBSD has a 64-bit native OS for the RPi 3, whereas Raspbian is still 32-bit. however, 32-bit works JUST fine, so it's no big deal. besides, with <4G or RAM, why do you NEED 64-bits? It actually makes the code just a *bit* slower due to more RAM needed to store pointers, etc..

CEOs beg for America-wide privacy law... to protect their businesses from state privacy laws

Re: Outsider's Point of View

"It would be madness to end up with a hotch-potch of different laws across the USA"

This should remain AS A THREAT to the "data slurp" industry, making them willing to allow something with enough teeth to do any good... but these days, in THIS election environment, I suspect they've already gone TOO FAR with the politicians they're buying. So the people to convince about GDPR-like laws are Republicans that support Trump. Most of THEM don't like Federal overreach, and so whatever laws DO exist have to be like the Anti-trust laws from a century ago [which were, incidentally, accomplished by a Republican president, Teddy Roosevelt].

The 'hotch-potch' as you call it [not sure what the correct spelling is, maybe yours?] would make compliance difficult if they CONTINUE TO SLURP AND TRACK. So in a way it drives them to STOP IT with the evil data slurp/leverage even FASTER, due to the cost of continuing it.

Re: US lawmakers must understand

Elitists ONLY think of themselves, specifically their power, and maintaining that power. And they *KNOW* they can exempt themselves, later, with a nudge nudge wink wink know-what-I-mean

Politicians *NEVER* suffer under the legislation they write. Only THE PEOPLE are subject to that legislation. Politicians have rigged it that way for DECADES. Obaka-"Care" was one of the PRIMARY examples, how the HR and Senate had "their plan" and everybody ELSE gets SHAFTED with Obaka-"Care". So typical.

Or the 'do not call list' - political robo-calls are EXEMPTED.

Re: If only...

yeah DEMO[N,c]RATS just have DIFFERENT corruption than DC Establishment-type RHINO Republo-crats. Having either group in charge (i.e. non-TeaParty politicians) is bad, but the DEMO[N,c]RATS are particularly heinous. Yet when I read between the lines of the original post, it seems he _really_ meant "anybody but TRUMP" [which of course I disagree with - I want MORE Trump and people like him].

In this regard, Trump's not too happy about what Facebook and Google are up to these days... with their biased filtering and banning algorithms as one example. He's likely to SIGN anything that restricts their influence and power over individuals (even if the DEMO[N,c]RATS write it), as well as stand up for individual rights with respect to data slurping tracking, etc.. The ACLU's been WAY too quiet...

But try and convince LIBERAL and D.C. ESTABLISHMENT politicians, who get ZILLIONS of dollars from these *evil* entities, to do anything that in ANY way puts a leash or a muzzle on whatever they're up to, and, well, you get the idea.

This is ALSO why Cali-Fornicate-You rules are more likely to be Google-friendly. [how DO they determine 'household' anyway? by SLURPING your data and THEN using an AI to decide?]

GDPR seemed to be on the right track, a real stroke of "doing the right thing" by the EU, giving INDIVIDUALS (not groups nor anything 'fuzzy') control of their data, with some transparency.

(too bad they still can't enforce it properly, as it seems there are constant violations going on from the same people BUYING liberal politicians in the USA)

Required: Massive email fraud bust. Tired: Cops who did the paperwork. Expired: 281 suspected con men's freedom

a good start

what it says in the title. 281 is a good start.

It's 2019, and Windows PCs can be pwned via a shortcut file, a webpage, an evil RDP server...

"exploits in the wild"

back to my existing policy: PRACTICE SAFE SURFING

1. do NOT access 'teh intarwebs' from a windows machine using a micro-shaft browser

2. do NOT read (or preview) e-mail in HTML format on a windows machine

3. do NOT allow script to run in your non-microsoft browser, except for SPECIFIC sites, and particularly *NOT* ad servers! This basically means running Firefox or similar with a 'NoScript' or similar plugin.

4. do NOT "open content" when prompted. Always save to disk FIRST, then open it with the program that's supposed to open when you double-click the file in a file manager type browser. NEVER trust the 'open with" default unless you have 100% control over what will happen.

5. avoid using a windows computer for ANYTHING involving the internet, from web surfing to e-mail. If it can be sent to you from a malicious source, just previewing an e-mail or opening a link you saw in a search engine MIGHT be enough to infect you!

etc. - in short, no Edge, no IE, no Outlook, no click-open, and no SCRIPTING in anything web-related.

[even sandboxing in a VM might not be enough, especially with spectre]

Re: Grim

if you can still read from your hard drive, you could use a

*AHEM*

LINUX box to recover the OS and all of your files from the hard drive. I've done this with FreeBSD before, in short by creating an 'external' VDD that I can actually BOOT UP with virtualbox.

Once you manage that, you can essentially (using LInux, anyway) image the hard drive into an image file, which you can then use to create a file system. Once you have your stuff booting in a VM (hosted on Linux, not a Micro-shat OS) you should still be able to run any applications that aren't timing-critical [like games, media editing, etc.] which is most likely EVERYTHING you use, for most people anyway.

This way you can avoid the Win-10-nic tarpit.

I recommend using the 'dd' command to back up your old hard drive as an image file, before trying to boot it into a VM. Most likely you won't have trouble. But occasionally you might. Should be ok though.

Mozilla Firefox to begin slow rollout of DNS-over-HTTPS by default at the end of the month

Re: Hosts file

"fallback to the OS configured DNS if the DoH resolution fails"

And *HOW* much of an *IRRITATING* *UNNECESSARY* *DELAY* will *THAT* cause... ??? EVERY! STINKING! TIME! no doubt!!!

Re: Please explain?

"Dnssec on the other hand is a better well supported protocol"

from what I've read about it, yes. Still imperfect and NOT being supported by the root servers (last I heard/checked) but who knows, put AS MUCH EFFORT into getting DNSSEC to work properly, and UNIVERSAL SUPPORT at the client end, and now you have a reliable system that's not easily hijacked and still has decent performance... [from what I recall, reading about these things].

I should look at DNSSEC again, with my own server. The lack of wide support kept me from messing with it before. Maybe now it'll b better?

Re: Please explain?

"although in that narrow context it is an improvement"

I'm having a REALLY hard time seeing a central bloatware cloud bank, one that uses TCP+HTTPS+TLS, as an _IMPROVEMENT_ , over even hitting the root servers to look up the domain server and then sub-domains [as needed], as compared to the somewhat simple mechanism of CACHING DNS SERVERS (with UDP requests) which have been used since the very early 90's as I recall...

So please explain, HOW this improves things?

Re: Please explain?

"they could cook it all up as a SOAP transaction to get some real bloat going"

Awesome snark, well played!

Re: It's there for security

you can always set up your own DNS that does queries directly from the root servers...

DNS is what the internet is framed around. Without it, the internet BREAKS. Mozilla is attempting to do a hijacking of the internet's basic functionality. What makes them (and Cloudflare) *FEEL* so powerful? This change wasn't agreed upon, it wasn't proposed, it wasn't voted on etc.. There may have been documents submitted at one time but if MICROSOFT or GOOGLE were to do this, what would the reaction be?

How about "from now on all windows operating systems will do DNS 'like what WE want' and invoke Microsoft's DNS servers". Would *THAT* go over well? I doubt it.

WORST! FEATURE! CREEP! EVAR! [even worse than 2D FLATTY]

Re: Cloudflare?

DNS is the backbone of the internet.

Trying to change the rules like that isn't helping.

Re: Dubious

For MY network, MY DNS specifies domains differently for "inside the net" vs "outside the net".

Is their "DoH" gonna be able to FIGURE THAT ONE OUT correctly? or will CLOUDFLARE attempt to RESOLVE MY INTERNAL ADDRESSES ???

http://badmachine/ -> link hijack page

http://my-internal.lan --> link hijack page

uh, huh.

icon because, 'DoH' !!!