Posts by Joe Dietz

Sure is wild that Apple, Google app store monopolies are way worse than what Windows got up to, sniffs Microsoft prez

Re: Damage the hard drive?

Complete and utter bullshit that doesn't even pass a brief sniff test.

1) no need to uninstall IE, you just installed netscape and clicked on its icon instead. If you wanted to use netscape as your default, you just needed to change the MIME type association to make it the invoked application.

2) if you really insisted on removing IE you needed to be careful to not delete some dlls that dealt with HTTP networking protocols that other bits of the operating system also used. It wasn't so much that they where part of IE, just that they where mis-packaged in the directory hierarchy along side IE because the IE team happened to be responsible for their development and it never occurred to anybody that it was apparently going to be illegal in the view of the courts to provide a web browser as part of the operating system simply because netscape wanted to charge for one separately.

3) IE was not a great product but it certainly wasn't the cause of hard drive damage - that would be the general state of storage in the mid-90s.

And fun historical bit for all of you IE haters out there, until IExplorer 2.0 and later, it was actually just a derivative of Mosaic. Hate Active X if you like, but its success is hard to argue against since it enabled a lot of things that just didn't exist in the standards of the day.

We're in a timeline where Dettol maker has to beg folks not to inject cleaning fluid into their veins. Thanks, Trump

Ahem, _we_ didn't vote him in. He _lost_ the election by 3.5 millionish votes. The Electoral College voted him in.

Whoa, whoa... Tesla slams brakes on allegations of 'unintended acceleration' bug: 'Completely false and was brought by a short-seller'

First thing I thought when I first saw the headline about 'unintended acceleration' was 'market manipulation'.

Boeing, Boeing, gone! CEO Muilenburg quits 'effective immediately'

The problem is one of culture. The CFO taking over even temporarily speaks volumes that the Boeing board has zero clue how they found themselves in this mess. The CEO as the buck-stops-there sort of figure should have been dismissed months ago, but its a step. The actual change has to come from Boeing deciding they are going to design and build airplanes again instead of being supply chain and financial managers.

HP printer small print says kit phones home data on whatever you print – and then some

If you take your tin-foil hats off for a bit, this is all standard fare for any sort of tech support call. Its pretty routine for any software vendor to gather such data in order to figure out if you need to fix something if such-and-such an OS/bios patch appears that breaks your software without having to resort to polling incoming tech support calls from you lot (read your EULAs). Obviously they do want to sell you ink, but on the other hand, they might also want to make sure the printers are actually working in a large scale sense.

Blockchain is a lot like teen sex: Everybody talks about it, no one has a clue how to do it

The real problem is that the value of transaction fraud has to _significantly_ exceed the transaction cost of blockchain technology to combat that fraud. We have lots of systems to combat transaction fraud that are working just fine - credit card transactions, title insurance etc. Otherwise at best its just another marginally better way of doing something we already have. If a measurable percentage of global electricity consumption becomes part of the solution - you clearly aren't considering things rationally.

Microsoft buffs its rings, emits Code and goes global with Kaizala

A conversation I had somewhat recently regarding some release timing and a windows feature led me to believe that there are possibly plans to start tick-tocking releases between public consumption and azure infrastructure. So 19H2 may be happening, it just may not be happening for external customers. Given that the core OS team now seems to report to the Azure business unit and all...

College student with 'visions of writing super-cool scripts' almost wipes out faculty's entire system

There was the time after a bit of drinking (well a lot actually) I might have wandered over to my university job as a part-time student solaris admin for a small research college and 'upgraded' the YP system to NIS+. The next morning (a sunday) I had this hazy notion of doing something disgraceful the night before... Weirdest thing though - it might have been the one and only time that the YP->NIS+ migration scripts 'just worked'. But yeah... you probably shouldn't let 19 year--olds do stuff on things you care about.

Tens to be disappointed as Windows 10 Mobile death date set: Doomed phone OS won't see 2020

Killing off winphone just because it _only_ had 3% of the market has to be one of the dumbest things I've seen msft do... and I do include win8 in that statement.

<FirstWorldPropblems>I was forced to move to an android last year. I really hate the stupid thing, sure I could get a better bit of hardware, but its still going to run android and thus be stupid. ... and for some reason I just can't get past the gag reflex of passing the door of an apple store... What to do. </FirstWordProblems>

Goodnight Kepler! NASA scientists lay the exoplanet expert to rest as it runs out of fuel

Well done

Python joins movement to dump 'offensive' master, slave terms

Starting to be a bit like the overweight uncle at the family reunion in here going on about guns or something. Simply being mindful of other peoples feelings and not being a jerk isn't infringing on your freedom, its just not being a jerk.

Yakety-yak app HipChat whacked in Slack chat chaps' tech snatch pact

Surely I'm not the only one to have noticed just how really terrible slack is? For all the hype I did expect something a bit more than IRC wrapped in web-wobble. I'm not sure I'll mourn hip-chat either, since it seems to have been just as unimaginative.

Intel's security light bulb moment: Chips to recruit GPUs to scan memory for software nasties

Really looking forward to the papers about how the GPU side-channel can be used to blow past whatever meltdown/spetcre microcode fixes they just put in.

The YouTube crackdown on fake news: Promoting bonkers Florida school shooting conspiracies

It doesn't really take that much effort

Years ago some co-workers and I decided to learn a bit about the google and poke a (friendly) stick at a co-worker friend that liked to share the weird search terms that led people to his blog by creating an association between his blog (about 3-D printing) and the movie meme "A dingo ate my baby". Not only did it work, it _still_ works... years later and it some extent its even spread to bing. All in all I think 3 of us pulled this off across a few weeks of 'training' the search engine.

Oregon will let engineer refer to himself as an 'engineer'

Re: Oregon is a nanny state

Really? Having lived here for my entire life I somehow must have missed the 'big university' in our midst. Beaverton could only hope to be guilty of such a elite status.

And yes, in Oregon one of our prerogatives is to never pump our own gas. Yes we really do like it that way.

Lauri Love's US extradition appeal judges reserve decision

Re: Just send him over there and good riddance.

"He committed a crime (Let's be honest here and not use any 'allegedly'), and broke into a hornet's nest in terms of targets, the US Government.

Really? If that is the case then why are the US Government looking to try him? Surely he has already been found guilty and convicted?"

The U.S. government is looking to try him because it is the right thing for them to do. If you place yourself outside of the reach of the justice system, that is where the predator drones come into play. If you mess with the U.S. government, you should expect a response and in fact you should be happy that they simply want to try you for a crime.

Love isn't a minority and he isn't anybody important enough to have political enemies in the U.S. so the usual reasons that you might distrust a prosecutor just don't apply here. As such it would seem fairly arbitrary and in fact unlikely if the U.S. investigation singled him out of all of the people in the world to pin this particular crime on without a fairly good idea that he in fact did it. But that is for the government to yet prove, but its not unreasonable to give them the chance.

Unfit to plead before a US court? You may face 'indefinite detention'

So do I get this right? The whole case for not extraditing is that the defendant might feel depressed about being prosecuted? I'm pretty sure it _is_ a bummer to get arrested and have felony charges brought against you... but it probably still beats the alternative - mob justice.

Microsoft says it won't fix kernel flaw: It's not a security issue. Suuuure

To anybody that actually writes AV scanner code for a living, this isn't news and really isn't a problem and even if it was fixed wouldn't actually save anybody any work since released bugs/features still have to be worked around on back-rev platforms since folks aren't terribly bought into 'windows as a service' quite yet.

Bezos' bonkers bank of bucks beats big Bill's brilliant billionaire bundle

Re: Stop picking on that poor kid.

That's the point though - who among us is unaware that trump is a thin skinned brat? Are you actually surprised? Can we just agree that is a basic fact now? Lets talk about something more interesting - like what is Bezos going to do with all that dosh? Apparently not solving world hunger/poverty/disease...

Intel axes 140 IoTers in California, Ireland

Solution-problematizing.

I've lived around Intel my entire life, which more or less co-insides with Intel's corporate life. Intel layoffs are almost part of the seasons around here. Long before ARM became a break-out best seller, Intel has been trying to diversify. In fact the first Intel fab in Aloha Oregon was to make memory (conceded the market to Japanese makers). Over the years they made forays with +/- success into motherboards, broadband, networking, toys, security, TV etc. IoT is just the latest in a long line of projects. Intel is good (and very good) at exactly one thing - building and running Intel factories. They really do employ large numbers of very bright and talented people, but the simple truth is they as a culture just don't get that finding cool solutions in search of a problem rarely results in a viable business.

Microsoft for all of the criticism of its business in the 90s had it far more correct - embrace and _then_ extend. Balmer sort of lost the memo on that apparently.

'Do not tell Elon': Ex-SpaceX man claims firm cut corners on NASA part tests

There's always somebody on every engineering team that is a complainer - typically about process being wrong/inefficient etc, and won't just shut up about it and get on with the business of shipping product. I always try and at least listen to the concerns since sometimes they see something nobody else can, but.... a lot of it ends up being based upon a mis-understanding of what quality means.

Quality doesn't mean 100% of <whatever> are never going to fail, its more of a question - "is the failure rate predictable, acceptable and yields a profitable product?" That's a really pragmatic and nuanced thing - it just doesn't fit with a lot of the black/white, right/wrong world view that some have which causes distress and complaining.

The words 'acceptable' when dealing with NASA/Mil Spec however is probably a lot closer to the 100% will never fail end of the spectrum, but that's also why said orgs are never going to fly to Mars....

Microsoft, IBM, Intel refuse to hand over family jewels to China

Russia pretty much has the same rules already, but they at least will send the "inspectors" to your office to 'inspect' your code.