Posts by bombastic bob

Trump: Huawei ban will be lifted!
US Commerce Dept.: Yeah, about that…

I'd buy stuff that said "made in Canada".

Someone that I know works at the Canadian/U.S. Border (Customs agent). Apparently a LOT of lumber crosses the border there.

/me sings the Monty Python 'Lumberjack' song since I'm thinking of it now

actually there's this one Canadian company that makes circuit boards, and they're one of the fastest I've seen at doing prototypes for designs. FedEx results back in 5 working days from when I submit the designs. I've submitted them electronically on a Sunday (evening) and received boards on Thursday. It's pretty cool.

Re: By now, everybody knows not to rely on US technology

if you can manage to make a 'droid compatible phone OS and ship it out of Finland or some other country that has a lot of competent software engineers that understand cell phones, go for it.

I'd love to see competition there.

ReactOS 'a ripoff of the Windows Research Kernel', claims Microsoft kernel engineer

"Switching to W10 is often not an option"

so many ways to fix that for ya. I'd go for removing 'often'. 2nd, s/often/usually/

but worth saying nonetheless

I've used most of those things and I WHOLEHEARTEDLY DISAGREE WITH YOU.

Not "anyone". Maybe SOME people (you included). but not "anyone".

and what does OS/360 have to do with NETWORKING? it didn't exist back then.

Re: Copyright law has an xception for interinoperability

wouldn't that be 'interoperability' or is that just the US'ian way of saying it?

Re: Why now?

"What have ReactOS done recently to upset them?"

yes, I'd like to know that as well. my first instinct was a lot like that quote

Re: It's an opinion.

systemd is why I use Devuan and become *ANGRY* whenever I have to deal wtih its BRAIN DAMAGED nonsense, such as in Raspbian (on an RPi, to be used to control DEVICES, NOT a GUI), where it NEVER BELONGED IN THE FIRST PLACE, and my serial device connected via USB is WHAT THE FORNICATE being SCREWED UP ON BOOT by ModemManager causing 20 seconds of ERRORS during the boot process? WHAT the FEEL??? That was a non-obvious non-trivial BORK-UP by systemd!! Poettering deserves my eternal HATE. And it took WAY too long to TRACK THAT DOWN, too...

"ReactOS and WINE co-operate in development"

they DO but there are so many 'missing things' in BOTH ReactOS and Wine that I have to wonder where the effort is being focused at the moment... whether it's effective use of time, or "this is interesting to me right now" prioritization.

I had a short brush with how one group selects paid developers. I would say that their process, in and of itself, excludes the best and the brightest in exchange for ACADEMICS, because the people running the show _ARE_ academic, and (more than/? a bit arrogant about it. Apparently they've inherited some money, which means "they can have it THEIR way" whether it's effective or NOT. Their "standards" favor schoolbook responses to problems in lieu of seeing how well someone [with proper tools and experience] can crank out quality work at high speed and get things DONE.

So a big part of the ReactOS and Wine teams is their ACADEMIC ARROGANCE. If they want SUCCESS, they have to think like A BUSINESS, and *NOT* like a bunch of COLLEGE PROFESSORS, who couldn't manage their way out of a PAPER BAG given a MAP, and electric "opening" finder!

(though they might be able to find their ASSES with both hands and a map)

'lagging behind' is a good thing

just think of the things ReactOS is "lagging behind" Micro-shaft with...

a) 2D FLATTY FLATSO McFLATFACE - not in ReactOS

b) "The Slurp" - not in ReactOS (nor are the ADS that Slurp selectively FEEDS us)

c) "The Metro" tiles and "Start Thing" and "Properties" pages - not in ReactOS

d) "The Store" - also NOT in ReactOS

e) The Arrogance - how MS treats customers these days - not in ReactOS

pretty much *EVERYTHING* *I* *HATE* that Micro-shaft EXCRETED post-7 is NOT IN ReactOS.

And that's a *GOOD* thing!

Re: Shades of SCO saga

I'm all for this: Just get end-users to install FUSEFS drivers on their win-boxen in order to read the SD cards, which would include ext2/3/4 and other common file systems. I know MS would really HATE that, but the development effort (and WOW factor) would be TOTALLY worth it - saving money on VFAT licensing while they're at it.

it would also provide a universal FUSEFS implementation that everyone could use. Google could do this and it would make TOTAL sense. If done right, it would TOTALLY circumvent Micro-shaft's HORRENDOUS policy of FORCING ALL DRIVERS TO BE SIGNED BY _THEM_ for example.

Mmm, instant Java: Visual Studio Code 1.36 brings tasty updates – unless you run 32-bit Linux

Want to connect to Raspberry Pi via SSH and edit files in [a GUI editor]

why do we need VS Code for that when it can be ALREADY DONE using standard Xorg capabilities?

It's all very simple. For example, if you have any X11 system running (FreeBSD, Linux, 32-bit or 64-bit, does not matter) and you started Xorg with the appropriate parameter (usually -listen tcp or -listen_tcp or similar, see the .xserverrc file or the 'slim' startup file [the one that invokes the X server] or whatever OTHER desktop manager you're running's startup file for that) then you can use a remote TCP/IP connection on port 6000H for that.

It's *kinda* built into X11 already. No need to re-invent it "the Microshaft Way".

THEN of course you ssh in, do an "export DISPLAY=othermachine:0.0" in the session, and every X11 application you run will display and interact with THE REMOTE DESKTOP. I run 'pluma' like this ALL of the time. I suppose Slickedit, IntelliJ, Eclipse, and other 'big tools" wil work, though I've noticed that these *kinds* of tools [which are usually piggy java applications] don't perform quite as well as a native X11 application would [I'v tried it with IntelliJ for Android stuff, with Linux in a VM on FreeBSD].

And of course if you have NATIVE TOOLS available, why do you need some HACK in a JAVASCRIPT APPLICATION (aka VS Code written in, of all things, NodeJS] to do what is _ALREADY_ _POSSIBLE_ _AND_ _CONVENIENT_ ???

Microshaft, here's a thought: Why don't you re-write VS Code using C++ and either GTK or Qt, and *THEN* make it TRULY cross platform!!! Then have it run NATIVELY [not using NodeJS or some OTHER stupid javascript pile of excrement] and make sure it works correctly using the method I just described..

wouldn't THAT be worth something?

and of course I've been using editors like pluma on RPi to develop stuff for quite a while, on headless systems that display the GUI on my FreeBSD Desktop...

this stuff is NOT ROCKET SURGERY, but if you ARE a rocket surgeon you've probably been doing this already.

DeepNude deep-nuked: AI photo app stripped clothes from women to render them naked. Now, it's stripped from web

I smell too much moral outrage

in the article and the comments, in general.

Yeah we all know that 90's TV preachers had LOTS of moral outrage, until a couple of them got caught with their pants down...

just sayin' that being all 'high and mighty' and morally outraged and using terms like 'misogynistic' to describe something that simply fakes naked pictures of people seems to be a little bit TOO much like (to quote Shakespeare) "the lady doth protest too much methinks".

Re: "chiefly women, it doesn't work properly on men"

or worse, BOTH

Re: Benny Hill

"The article tells us that the software is misogynistic"

yeah, the 'm' word. about that... whenever I see it I scream "*BIAS*!!!"

Re: Time passes...

'The same people, now: "SHAME ON EVERYONE!"'

yeah, no hypocrisy to see here, move along...

It's amazing how much "moral outrage" you see from the P.C. crowd. It's worse than a TV preacher...

Re: "chiefly women, it doesn't work properly on men"

I have to wonder what would happen if I used a picture of an animal in their software...

"cat porn" - heh heh heh

Re: release it for the world's weirdos to use

"It's because the world is run by men. A superwoman beating males to a pulp is just something you only see on a screen whereas you don't have to look far to see men beating women in real life."

you forgot to say "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" or some other such feminist propaganda nonsense.

"Hope that helps!!"

not in the least.

(and is ANYONE surprised that the BIRTH RATE IS DROPPING? For when men can't be men, women can't be women, and normal male/female relationship behavior is DISCOURAGED at every turn, people withdraw into their cell phones and online life and don't marry nor have kids because they have been CONDITIONED - So as far as _I_ am concerned, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS can KISS MY HAIRY NAKED ASS)

Re: has been torn offline by its makers

maybe still in the internet archive...?

Re: Admit it

well seeing Mrs. Clinton naked [even if faked] *WOULD* be a crime against humanity!

this reminds me of a Beavis and Butthead parody done by Imus...

"Beavis: Which would you rather do - slide down a razor blade bannister into tub of alcohol, or kiss [insert unattractive and/or ball-busting female politician and/or activist name here] on the mouth, with tongue?"

"Butthead: How long is the bannister?"

(best of my recollection anyway)

"This software was almost certainly written by people who have never had a FEMINIST girlfriend"

Fixed it for ya!!! Though I suppose 'westernized' or 'feminized' might have worked as well...

when I saw the 'm' word (misogynist) in the article, I knew it had been written from the wrong perspective.

COME ON, people, THIS IS FUNNY STUFF! Fake 'nude' photos of ANYBODY? What, nobody's seen heads glued onto existing porn before? Only NOW it's even FUNNIER!!!

And yeah a few people out there might get their jollies with it but who cares. People do what they do, and being PRUDISH and UNNECESSARILY JUDGING about it just makes you out to being some kind of NINNY NANNY that wants to CONTROL people or something.

And you wonder why the birth rate is dropping...

Re: You Can't Buy That

this reminds me of a line from a TV show that was part of a movie...

"I'll buy THAT for a dollar!"

(from the original Robocop if nobody remembered - and the context is spot on)

Re: Benny Hill

if there are ANY MEN who are PROTESTING this, then you DESERVE to have your MAN CARD REVOKED!!! (what nobody ELSE had the GONADS to say this?)

Benny Hill indeed!

/me plays 'Yackity Sax' in his honor while reading porno mags

Just to make a point - being a GENETIC HYPER MALE [as evidenced by my ring finger being longer than my 1st finger] I'd just like to point out that *MY* *LIFESTYLE* *MUST* *BE* *EMBRACED* because I have a GENETIC PRE-DISPOSITION to wanting to SEE NAKED WOMEN [particularly younger than 25] and I just can NOT help myself, for _I_ have a GENETICALLY PRE-DISPOSED CONDITION.

And because I was BORN THAT WAY, *THE* *WORLD* *MUST* *ACCEPT* *MY* *BEHAVIOR*!

[after all _I_ must accept/embrace OTHER people's behavior when it's pre-disposed and 'born that way', right???]

heh heh heh

2001: Linux is cancer, says Microsoft. 2019: Hey friends, ah, can we join the official linux-distros mailing list, plz?

Re: From within....

MS is probably getting on board the same kind of train they always have, only this time they're 20 years late.

So now they want on board with a 1st class seating arrangement, when all of the 1st class tickets have been sold and there's nothing available seating, but they want in anyway.

But given time and the influx of unlimited money, MS *could* buy themselves an entirely NEW TRAIN, and have probably already planned on this...

Fortunately there's *STILL* FreeBSD

Re: The public good

"in terms of the greater good."

While those who think of themselves as 'Nobles' may *FEEL* (not think) in these kinds of terms, those of us who recognize the GREAT NUMBER OF EVILS that have been done with this particular phrase [or an equivalent] justifying it, *IMMEDIATELY* pucker up our anuses in anticipation of the SCREWING that will soon follow...

"greater good" huh? That's sorta like "the ends justify the means" without it being as obvious...

Re: They are now the Voyager Borg

"They are more likely to get assimilated by Linux than the other way around at this point."

Never underestimate the power of the SWARTZ! er, Borg. er, Microshaft...

Re: I am getting worried

yeah, do you have ANY idea how long it takes to get the pilot light lit???

(from an 'Animaniacs' episode where they literally caused hell to freeze over)

Sneaky fingerprinting script in Microsoft ad slips onto StackOverflow, against site policy

1. it justifies the existence of web "developers"

2. it allows them to do nefarious things to track you

3. it offloads THEIR processing onto YOUR computer

this is just the beginning of a nefarious plot to STEAL from you, your privacy, your CPU cycles, your bandwidth, yotta yotta yotta.

Re: Noscript to the rescue

'si:' on xhost means 'server interpreted' according to the man page

it's apparently for a network interpreted name, and the final ':firefox' is a specific user name

it's not a syntax i was familiar with, so i was curious and looked it up

Re: Noscript to the rescue

true - and if you need NoScript _OFF_ for some reason, like testing your OWN web pages [don't get me started on web devs and glass houses] you can do what _I_ do, at least on Linux or FreeBSD with Xorg [not Wayland]:

a) enable the '-listen_tcp' option (or similar, whichever one)

b) enter 'xhost +localhost' in a console with X running

c) 'su - guestuser' [or whatever] in an X bash session console

d) export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0 in the 'guestuser' session

e) run your browser

this will sandbox the browser with 'guestuser'. just configure the browser (firefox) to DESTROY ALL HISTORY AND CACHES on the way out. No cookies, no fingerprints, no nothing.

then if you need a scripty-site loaded, you can have this nice sandbox to play with it in. And you exit the browser, and it flushes EVERYTHING, and you have a nice clean loo... er, BROWSER the next time you load up some CRAPPY script-ridden web site.

Please stop regulating the dumb tubes, says Internet Society boss

Re: DNS isn't needed if you already have the IP address

hell we can just get '.onion' addresses and be done with it

Re: Public blacklist...

non-commercial entities

I spend 5 minutes listening to N.P.R. or any 'public broadcast' news and suddenly realize why I do not want NON-PROFIT CORPORATIONS determining what kind of intarweb access I have...

(ok if I have to explain it, these guys are SO LEFT OF CENTER in their politics and their TRANSPARENTLY OBVIOUS news filtering that it's pathetic, worse than CNN, worse than [P]MSNBS <-- not a typo - 'BS' - and the LAST thing I want is some left-wing-activist-driven "non profit" filtering my DNS instead...)

*ahem* - the browsers are OPEN SOURCE. Edit the source if you must. Or fork it.

I want to write a web browser that intercepts all DNS requests and RDNSs all IP address equivalents, using a regex filter and a blacklist, re-directing them to 'localhost' that serves up a 1 pixel GIF file in response to all requests

that'll teach 'em!

re: VPNs - "If they could, they'd ban that as well."

good point, and then we'd need a different workaround

like gun control - ban normal law abiding citizens from owning guns, and ONLY criminals will have them.

Bill G on Microsoft's biggest blunder... Was it Bing, Internet Explorer, Vista, the antitrust row?

Re: Eh?

DEC - yeah, reminds me of this:

HAL is to IBM as VMS is to WNT

Re: Eh?

XP and 7 were decent enough, though there are some aspects of 7 I dislike [I think they BROKE the task launcher in 7 compared to XP's more sane way of doing it] and I really liked the stability of XP after it had been there for a few years.

They should've stuck with that. But I guess some arrogant 4-incher millenial types *FELT* that "it was their turn now" so everything HAD to be re-invented except it was retro back to Windows 1.0 (2D FLATSO FLATTY McFLATFACE "the Metro" CRAPPY look, bright blue on blinding white, destroying the macula of everyone who looks at it for any length of time and being UNREADABLE and EYE PAINFUL to pretty much everyone over 40) and they took away customization and added in SPYWARE and ADWARE. Booooooooooo.

more than a bit revisionist.

to be honest, my first exposure to the internet was through MSN, during the beta test. Compuserve and AOL and others didn't have internet gateways. MSN had it right. And early on IE2 was pretty good. It didn't go bad until ActiveX was added along with VBScript [which only IE supported]

Re: Yet another....

I'd rather have Windows ME than Win-10-nic!!! [I could always code m own device drivers for ME if I wanted to... no special super-secret signing algorithm to distribute them either]

Micro-shaft's *BIGGEST* mistake took place when they abandoned the

P U R E _ S U C C E S S

of XP and 7, and

S C R E W E D _ T H E _ P O O C H

with 'windows Ape' (8.x) and the Sinofsky/Larson-Greene *ABORTION* known as "The Metro". And then, they DOUBLED DOWN ON POOCH SCREW with Win-10-nic.

However, what comes in 2nd place wiould be the ".Net Initiative" from the early 'noughties', which was the BEGINNING of Micro-shafts downfall... the '.Net' framework, C-pound, yotta yotta.

(they focused SO MUCH EFFORT into THE WRONG THINGS, and NONE OF IT into THE RIGHT THINGS, whcih would've included phones and slabs, but mostly would have IMPROVED WINDOWS 7 instead of RE-INVENTING A PILE OF EXCREMENT to REPLACE IT)

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up!

Wouldn't it have been BETTER to *NOT* screw over new computer sales, by continuing to support XP with service pack 10, as well as 7, instead of ABANDONING 7 THIS YEAR... NEW PRODUCT SALES with Windows 7 would be like a TOTAL REBOUND, but NNOOooo... they have to CONTROL THE CUSTOMER CHOICES INSTEAD.

That's right, the attitude that THEY must 'control the customers'... I would say *THAT* *ATTITUDE*, that "take over the world" mentality, to control the markets and CRUSH the competition while simultaneously releasing INFERIOR products because they essentially become a monopoly... THAT is what will ultimately bring them down!

It's official. You can get FUCT, US Supremes tell scandalized bureaucrats in rude trademark spat

Re: Who will buy this clothing?

havingt a T shirt that says 'FUCT' on it would get enough laughs, so sure (I might buy it). If it's not too expensive...

oh, and well done to the Supreme Court "getting it right". More of same, please.

The Windows Terminal turns up in the Microsoft Store

Re: The Store - really?

"Much better than letting users try and install apps from websites... Or spending the time doing it for them"

you have *GOT* to be *KIDDING*...

thumbs down for the bad attempt at humor, or maybe you weren't joking...

[I cannot believe that SOME people actually THINK THIS WAY, or perhaps it's actually *FEEL* because no LOGIC could EVAR justify this kind of patronizing arrogance... so it MUST be emotions or evil motives or something worse]

Re: The Store - really?

The reason they're using "The Store" is to LOCK! EVERYONE! IN! to the following:

a) Win-10-nic *ONLY*

b) UWP

c) "Microshaft Logon" (with it's tracking and HORRIBLE EULA privacy violations built-in)

and of course, "The Store" in general, which _HAS_ been a pretty DISMAL FAILURE as I understand it...

[so one or two 'sorta ok things' make "The Store" a worth-while place to look for schtuff? yeah, right...]

It's all in the wrist: Your fitness tracker could be as much about data warfare as your welfare

Re: Never trust software of which you cannot see the source

"Never trust software"

even when you can read the source. [for the truly paranoid]

From the article;

"this website uses cookies, please click ACCEPT"

one of my favorite FF plugins is "cookie white list with buttons" which lets you whitelist certain cookies as being persistent (or mark them 'session only') and [best of all] optionally store the rest of the cookies IN MEMORY ONLY so you can dump them ALL whenever you want to, especially when closing the browser.

[I'm considering my own webkit browser, and this feature SHOULD be a built-in]

Shameless Facebook treats its poor human moderators like absolute dirt. But y'know what it does treat right? Robots

meatbags don't get no respect (from FB)

what it says in the title

Must watch: GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece... of modern techno-insanity

Re: Just as smart as their nuclear reactors

I call B.S. on this, having worked in the nuclear industry...

"a Chernoble's worth of radiation" - no. just no.

fake news, FUD, and hysteria, all rolled into one. No.

strobe light

just sayin'

Kids can be so crurl: Lead dev unchuffed with Google's plan to remake curl in its own image

shhh... don't give them ideas.

Re: Black Choppers overhead.

maybe they're afraid someone will use curl as a back-end for a simple web browser... yeah it could be done.

Re: Black Choppers overhead.

ack on the ad tracker. or more like:

"Implementing libcurl using Cronet would allow developers to take advantage of the utility of the Chrome Network Stack" WHICH WOULD THEN TRACK EVERYTHING YOU WERE DOING OUTSIDE OF THE BROWSER'S CONTEXT

OK I added that last part, but still...

should I include AD INJECTION too? well, hard to do if it's just 'surfing' indirectly from an application running on Android, maybe FILTERING THE ADS OUT and presenting the CONTENT WITHOUT THE ADS...

Why are fervid Googlers making ad-blocker-breaking changes to Chrome? Because they created a monster – and are fighting to secure it

Re: Ok, so it's useful and dangerous at the same time

"Wouldn't this solve the problem?"

kinda like noscript, but managing script blocking on a per-site basis when too many ABusers of the web (known as "developers") *FEEL* as if it's ok for a web page to LOAD CANNED 'CONTENT' AND MASSIVE SCRIPTS FROM EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE UNIVERSE just to "view content" on that ONE site, such that it's hard to find the right magic to block them when 'temporarily allow' must be hit SEVERAL TIMES to get it to work [because each script brings THAT MUCH MORE CRAP in with it, requiring EVEN MORE 'allows', yotta yotta yotta].

it's why I've resorted to using a sanitized browser environment for those "special" sites [meant pejoratively] that for some reason I must use, such as ordering electronic parts for business reasons, or looking at someone's cat video link pasted into an IRC channel so I can flame them for posting stupid crap that required ENABLING JAVASCRIPT to view...

grump grump grump javascript grump grump - I can go on all day on this

and what's WORSE, is that, for a contract, I had to UN-JAVASCRIPT a couple of important pages because "web developer" (who should be shown the window by the BOFH) *FELT* (again with the FEEL 4-letter F word) that client-side scripting was needed, except it took over a second to total up a bunch of numbers and display the results, even noticeably flashing the occasional 'NAN' in the total (much to the irritation of boss and supervisor), even after FIRST rendering the entire page with zero values, making the system look SLOW and CLUNKY and UNPROFESSIONAL. My re-factor (now that 'web developer' is out of the way) used PHP to do all of that server-side, by embedding things like <?php print $var; ?> where he had '0' stuck in there (and then dynamically changed that by assigning DHTML with JQUERY of all things) and amazingly, it is so blisteringly fast [compared to that javascript abortion on the client] that you don't notice ANY delay at all, on an embedded device even. [and I had written all of the back-end, mostly in C, and hand-held him with super-simple php 'glue' pages to cough up the data values in his desired format, go fig, while he took 4 times longer than he should have to create the things, though we all admit they have a nice overall 'pretty' appearance...]

Anyway, javascript is *SO* overrated. Its inventor needs a session with me, a cluebat, and a cat-5-o-nine-tails. Or the BOFH, accompanied by "It's over here, by the window..."

Re: The title is no longer required.

"If you don't like it, don't use it. Simple."

"So says someone who has no idea to what extent Google extracts information."

or no concept as to what effect a MONOPOLY has on the free market. In short, "go elsewhere" is no longer an option, and the existence of the monopoly PREVENTS competition from providing alternatives.

If it were gasoline, he'd be screaming a lot louder. "Don't use it" he says? Or maybe buy something OTHER than gasoline or diesel fuel or whatever your car runs on? Good luck doing THAT... Or what about FOOD? If it were FOOD and we were told "if you don't like it don't eat it"... yeah right.

And now we come to 'Teh Intarwebs' which pretty much everyone needs to be on these days, for many reasons from employment to paying taxes. NOT being on the internet is like NOT having a telephone.

"Go elsewhere" and "don't use it" just don't apply.