Posts by bombastic bob 10819 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015
the biggest cost is in the SWITCHING. Some time ago didn't a German government institution switch BACK TO MICROSHAFT _FROM_ Linux??
now it's BACK AGAIN. AGAIN.
And THAT is where the "uncontrollable costs" will be - re-re-training, re-re-procurement, hiring new consultants, kicking upstairs or laying off old ones, yotta yotta.
I hope they stick with a good commercial LInux solution, maybe a GERMAN company?
I'm thinking Suse Linux.
"Why does every company who makes stuff think that it is just perfectly fine to snoop on us 24/7?"
ARROGANCE, mostly. And CLUELESSNESS.
years ago "they" used to do whatever they *FELT* to autoexec.bat, config.sys, windows.ini, etc. and a LOT of people complained. HARD. Did not stop "them". Eventually when windows '9x released it became possible to do that stuff with the registry and it sorta stopped.
NOW everyone is on the "big data" bandwagon, because everyone ELSE appears to be on it. Predictable results, anger, and frustration.
" just leave the default gateway blank or set to 127.0.0.1..."
this might work if you only route on the same subnet as the printer, but in some cases [read: large network with multiple subnets and/or VPNs] you still need a gateway to route 'other than the subnet' packets to.
But then my suggestion was to use a gateway and subnet that are "special" to the printer, in effect isolating it from the rest of the network, and firewalling everything through the gateway you gave it
If you know the printer's IP address, and you can control your subnets, you can set up a firewalled gateway for the printer that prevents it from routing to ANY destination address outside of the subnet.
Example: your network is 192.168.0.0/24 with a gateway of 192.168.0.1
The gateway also knows how to route to 192.168.129.0/24 where the printers are
The printers all get a gateway of 192.168.129.1 which is an alias for 192.168.1
You THEN add a firewall rule for 192.168.129.1 that rejects ANY packet that's not being sent to 192.168.0.0/24. You ALSO block all multi-cast traffic attempting to leave the LAN.
(All of the other multicast traffic should remain within the LAN anyway, but just in case, put a rule in there)
This should LOCK DOWN any printer hardware attempting to phone home. As for the printer drivers themselves, you COULD host them as shares on a Linux machine and print via HTTP to the Linux box...
(that way windows and phone users could still print, would NOT need a "special app", and would NOT be phoning things home on behalf of the printer)
If PPD "gets removed" then I will PERSONALLY drive a FORK into it...
ALL of my printers have required PPD files. And I *REFUSE* to use *ANYTHING* resembling UPnP including that apple 'IPP' thing on FreeBSD or Linux.
Fortunately, open source can be FORKED, even if I have to do it MYSELF.
If the WINDOWS and PHONE software+drivers is where the slurpage is happening, then I think those of us using CUPS and the HPLIP drivers are in the clear... for now.
HOWEVER...
I suppose I'll eventually need to put the printer on a firewalled subnet then. I would set its primary gateway to something that can't route to anything outside of the LAN.
And if THAT doesn't work, I'll be looking for something that's equally well support for Linux and FreeBSD as HP has been, because IF I HAVE TO WRITE THE PRINTER DRIVERS MYSELF AND PUBLISH THEM, then I'll do JUST THAT, and they can TAKE THEIR SLURP and CRAM IT UP THEIR INKWELLS.
The HP printer I have is an older 'all in one' which never really worked properly out of the box, but I can "get it to work" by talking nice to it and offering it flowers on occasion. Their quality had obviously gone downhill and not just a little downhill. The top paper feeder for the scanner/fax stopped working shortly after I bought it, but as I didn't do multi-page FAXs I ignored it. However it fails to feed paper a LOT, unless I "bend it a certain way" and things of that nature. If the paper stack is too tall, or too small, feed errors are common...
Couple that with DATA SLURPAGE and "brand loyalty" just circled the drain and wend *slurp* - back at ya!
"this is a step too far "
* W H Y * ???
Because he's NOT supporting SANDERS, or Elizabeth 'Pocahontas' Warren, or Joe 'BITE-ME' Biden?
<snark>I guess there must be something *WRONG* with him!!!</snark>
I should start a movement to DEMAND PSYCHOLOGICAL EXAMINATIONS for *ANYONE* who votes Demo[n,c]rat... and you know, there's EVIDENCE [the lies, the manipulation, the mob behavior, the "shaming", the intolerance, the racism in the form of demographics, ...] to SUPPORT that this kind of behavior is SOCIOPATHIC... a TRUE psychological disorder, and NOT the made-up "-phobia" emotion bombs so often coined by the left [and thrown about like hand grenades, everywhere].
icon, because, facepalm
"Trump is hatred, ego, fear, lies, reckless waste, and pride in stupidity."
It's like you just had a wardrobe malfunction. Your IGNORANCE is showing!
Pandering to the perception and echoing the *FEELIES* and *FAKE* *NEWS*. *yawn*. And a big THUMBS DOWN for the lack of intelligence.
(read: there is no evidence for any of what you just said. It's just a bunch of *FEEL*).
OK, lemme git this straight: You just said that McNealy needs to be *SINGLED* *OUT* because "He's hosting a secret fund raising event for Trump.".
What if Republicans *SINGLED* *OUT* people who did a Biden fundraiser, or a Mrs. Clinton fundraiser, or an OBAMA FUNDRAISER [back in the day] ???
Do you REALIZE what it is you are SUGGESTING? That a MOB RULE *LOUD* *CROWD* gets to BULLY and "SHAME" *ANYONE* *THEY* *DISAGREE* *WITH* __SIMPLY__ FOR *DISAGREEING*?
(you're making me run out of punctuation on this one)
That's a form of THOUGHT POLICE, you know. Except the "police" are an *UNELECTED* *MOB*!!! (That implies 'mob rule', hint hint hint)
"He seems typical of his class. They get there billions and workers who built their business get stuffed"
'Class Envy' much?
Those who are CREATIVE and/or WORK HARD and/or TAKE THE RISKS necessary to MAKE IT BIG **DESERVE** to keep their wealth! Because, THEY! EARNED! IT!!!
Socialists and their "justice" and the "warriors" who want to FORCE THE REST OF US into their COMMUNISM need to GET A CLUE. Socialism DEPRESSES economies, DISCOURAGES hard work [because it will NOT pay off, everyone ELSE gets "the benefits", not YOU], and ENCOURAGES MEDIOCRITY.
Because, if there's NO REMAINING PATH to success except "brown nose someone in power", then there will be NO SUCCESS ANY MORE. And society will GREY OUT into MEDIOCRITY. Right, Venezuela?
"But a market cannot exist without regulation"
* W R O N G * !!!
Markets can EASILY exist without regulation. The only reason regulations exist is that SOME participants might be engaging in unfair and/or predatory practices (read: China) and so the regulations are there to simply STOP the abuse. But when there is NO abuse, you need no regulations.
Except when Liberals run things, in which case the regulations are there so that *THEY* can pick "the winners" and CONTROL EVERYONE. it's what "they" do, yeah.
"in California, common sense has left along with Elvis."
Good one.
From the article: "Trump is unpopular in California"
Trump is unpopular with the *LOUD* *CROWD* who attempt to look like "everyone" by being as *LOUD* as possible. [I can't even accomplish that by going 'all caps', ha ha ha]. In fact, the *LOUD* *CROWD* is busy trying to "OUT" people who SHOW UP at the Trump rallies and/or give money to his campaign.
Remember that guy who was CEO of Mozilla? He was "outed" for donating to a campaign for a proposition in California that was POPULAR AMONG VOTERS (it passed), but was "politically incorrect" so it was NUKED in the courts. And HE LOST HIS JOB.
What kind of world does *LOUD* *CROWD* *SHAMING* to get their way? A society of BULLIES?
Trump's VERY popuilar among MANY in California. You may not see it on the news, or read about it anywhere, but SOME outlets (like Fox News, talk radio) will reveal this little *secret* to the world... and if your media isn't being FILTERED, you'll hear about it.
And 'Silly Valley' needs an enema. Drain it right into the bay. Alviso used to be a swamp. Not sure what it is these days. That'd be a great place to build the 'enema drain' for Silly Valley... and then we just WASH ALL THAT LIBERAL CRAP AWAY!
"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.
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!
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...]
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')
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?
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)
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)
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.
"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.
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.
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.
@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?
"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.
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).
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
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.
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
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