Posts by that one in the corner

Dark mode might be burning more juice than you think

Re: Nowhere in the blog...

> it seems like they've wanted to play up the importance of the work more than to educate people.

Also an issue with the difference between a "blog post" and a formal "news item" - well, more the point that it isn't (necessarily) clear to the reader that there can be any difference in editorial control over one versus the other, they are all just seen as "something that the BBC posted".

Or even the differences that you'll find between the same person blogging versus the content of their formal paper.

Re: Love the aesthetic, but don't use it...

> I love the aesthetic of dark mode

To each their own, as it should be.

> transreflexive screens, which use environmental light, are still so common

Very common in small things, but still sadly uncommon in "our devices" - I'd've loved to have been able to get hold of a reasonable (for me) spec Android tablet with a transreflective colour display for Christmas, but I'm currently Graphic Novels[1] reading in bed with a full glowy thing :-(

(BTW transreflective not transreflexive gets you betterer search results)

[1] no, they are *not* "comics", they are "graphic novels". Harumph.

Time to make C the COBOL of this century

Re: C is the new COBOL

I like to fling *some* C++ into my embedded development, mostly using it as "a better C"[1]

Congrats on the anniversary.

[1] if the compiler support is there, of course. But considering that some platforms barely even handle C decently...[2]

[2] e.g. a Zilog ZNEO dev kit where the C compiler was so - grrr - that I set the Makefiles to use GCC's pre-processor before the ZNEO compiler, otherwise it could not handle macros to readably build it the bitfields for various GPIO config registers :-(

Re: C is the new COBOL

> Now, we’d dearly like to get rid of SMP to help solve problems like Spectre and Meltdown

What?

Spectre and Meltdown are both problems concerned with speculative execution, e.g. when used to try to cope with a failed branch prediction.

This is an issue with the microarchitecture within a single CPU core - and it need not be a "hyperthreading" core either.

These problems have absolutely not connection to SMP.

> most multithreading is derived from C’s way of doing things and C’s expectation of running in a Symmetric Multi Processor

Care to elaborate on that? C the language grew up without any concept of SMP - it has no concept of either "thread" or "process" within the language.

If you so desire, you can use libraries to provide multiprocessing: e.g. use the Posix fork() function[1] to create a new process (which you can leave running the same code or use exec() if you so desire) OR if you want to use threads for a lighter-weight approach you can use the Posix() PThreads library calls.

If you find that those libraries do not give you the control you are after (which, in your case, is presumably some level of control upon which type of CPU in your assymetric machine each thread/process is bound to) then go and look for a different library (or write it yourself, of course). Either way, C is happy to do whatever you want.

[1] if you are lucky enough to be on a Unix, otherwise go and read up on the Windows calls.

Re: It's the ABI, stupid

> everything ends up with a C ABI at the edges

Or a Pascal ABI (waves at Windows sulking in its chair)

Re: Shouldn't be a problem

> When you stop and think about it there really aren't that many places in a computer where you can overflow buffers. It invariably requires some form of user input, I'd guess mostly over a network

* Load a directory path into a buffer - works great, until you find out that MAX_PATH isn't a thing anymore (or it is, but only with respect to certain functions/libraries, which may well be (older, deprecated - but your code was compiled a while back...) OS API calls. Better yet, those calls may prevent you creating a deep directory hierarchy (so you're safe sticking with them) - until you cd into your "deepest" tree and create another level down using relative paths, then another...

* Format a date using names for months and for weekdays. It works fine for every combo in *your* language...

* Format the total number of bytes of drive space or RAM available: *nobody* can have more than 4 gig of RAM, the CPU can't address it, and there is a limit how big an LBA is, so multiply that by 512 to get the max possible size of a drive.

* You can only have a max IP address length of 255.255.255.255 so reading the IP assigned to a NIC will always fit into this buffer. Oops, forget to check if it is IPv4 or...

If you can assume it, you can forget to validate it and one day - poof!

It is the failure to validate that gets you, every time. Doesn't matter which your approach to a validation failure is (dynamic buffers or Just Saying No[1]).

[1] although, take care with how you say no - and document it!

Re: IOCCC

Careful there.

If you tell them about the IOCCC they're only going to use it as a rod to beat us[1]!

Quick - we must start up the IORCC to demonstrate the joys of Rust!

[1] Yes, *we* know it is all done in humour, but, well, look at the problems that occur because the cosmologists decided to keep the name "Big Bang" as a joke on Fred Hoyle.

> But I hate weakly typed variables

Preach, Brother.

Re: A non-IT pleb can read COBOL

> COBOL was one of the many languages supposed to be used my non-programmers

I'd qualify that simply by pointing out that, at the time, "programmers" were far and few between, heads deep in assembler. The "non-programmers" were - anyone else who wanted to make the computer do their bidding but not get involved in the icky bits.

From that perspective, FORTRAN was for "non-programmers" (i.e. people whose main job title was "scientist", "engineer", a few "mathematicians" etc) who happened to want to make the machine do all their Mathematical Formulas for them.

> their productivity was considered more important than program execution speed

And we see that in every programming language since: yes, even C[1] gives you[2] more productivity than assembler, at the cost of speed (and size).

> and will probably still be with us in another couple of centuries

Yes. We'll keep on trying to make the optimising compilers make the code smaller and faster, but that is basically the entire point of all of the programming languares.

[1] hopefully

[2] well, for most of us mortals who don't have the x86-64 registers floating before our eyes

Re: C is the new COBOL

> COBOL is that it wasn’t designed by academic computer scientists

Grace Hopper was a computer scientist.

At the risk of quoting Wikipedia "Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and used this theory to develop the FLOW-MATIC programming language and COBOL".

> focused on business applications, something the academics weren’t interested in

Pick a subject, any subject, and you can find an academic interested in it (if not, that is just because there aren't enough academics around and they're all busy on something else). Even an area like "A study in the use of social media influencers as an insult in tech-oriented fora" could get somebody a couple of papers and a quick thesis.

> given the social environment of the day, I would not be surprised if part of it was sexism given the leading role women played in its initial development

Sorry, what? What was caused by sexism? The fact that COBOL *was* taken up by its intended audience? Or do you think that its adoption was artificially slowed by all those manly FORTRAN programmers barging their way into banks and ripping up the COBOL manuals? Or was Hopper trying to get girly lowercase keywords intot the language? Nope, sorry, you're going to have to expand on that one before I have any idea what it was referring to.[1]

> COBOL is derided today, because the bias has been institutionalised by those who only pay attention to social media influencers.

Cor. So that means when I was being taught (and - briefly, thank the FSM - using) COBOL back in the 1980s we were *really* ahead of the curve in deriding it, especially its more - interesting - features!

[1] Not saying that there wasn't sexism in 1959, just - what effect are you referring to?

Re: Ironically...

Although you can do some real damage with an ALTER statement!

Well, I suppose it is always good to have rant, although I do think you might want to tighten up your focus.

> You got into programming knowing that it was a moving target, that change would come to you constantly and that one of the requirements of the industry was constant study and updating of skills

True. Although I'd represent it as something that has constant additions (and, yes, this does mean that I look upon a "change" - where we've lost the previous rather than just had a new option addded - with suspicion, because I've tried to make things have a decent long service life and be capable of holding up for, say, a 25 year life as a part of a large and expensive piece of machinery).

> people intrinsically involved in one of the the cutting edge of social endeavours

Whoooah there, Nelly. I never got into this to be part of any "social endeavours"; I'm not trying to "overturn the world" or "create a new paradigm" and I don't personally know anyone who was! It was a fun job to do, always lots of new stuff to learn, problems to solve and you got the pleasure of building things that Users, well, use. Ok, some of the Users were...

> I am constantly amazed at how change resistant individuals have become.

> are personally resistant to change when said change means they must change.

But then you mix up changes that are clearly just marketing and have removed functionality (Windows buttons - and the taskbar, grr), changes that were done against expressed wishes of users (GNOME were told beforehand), changes that have genuine technical concerns being expressed (replacing init - ok, there is also a lot of politicing going on there).

And you even mix up complaints from the techies, the ones that actually have to deal with the ugly bits, with reviewer playing marketing wank (the cell 'phones bit).

> (long comment about C which anyone who uses C already knows - it came from the 1970s, lots of much bigger machines exist now - hey, bigger machines existed in the 1970s than the ones that C targeted)

And totally ignoring that many, many (have I said "many"?) systems are written NOT in C - the vast majority, in fact. Web site creators - do they write in C? Building a new database - are you using SQL or trying to do it in C? Text processing systems (mailing lists, documentation aggregation) - are you using C or are you using, oh, LaTeX or a Markdown processor or Word?

> So, use the best modern tools you have available

Yup. I and those I've worked with have done just that. As do all the people doing the jobs I referenced above.

Trouble is, many (frankly, probably all) of the things that you hear being shouted about are not necessarily the best tools - they may be the best *marketed* tools instead! But we (in my Corner) have to be sure they are going to pass the test of time - and that they are clearly designed with the intent of longevity![1] Or we'll be piling up even more problems for ourselves.

Oh, and strangely enough (!) there are still situations where C (and we'll lump "old fashioned" C++ in here as well) still is the best, stable, modern solution: all those boring little embedded systems that you probably don't even notice. Hopefully "more safe" options will occur (the MCUs are big enough now to run Python - but you can save on the BOM by using a smaller device...) but we need that to have stabilty and longevity.

> when said change means they must change.

(Back to this again): for an awful lot of people, who is *paying* for them to change? Is *anyone* paying for the change?

[1] Are you supposed, on day 1, to rely on the presence of a server "somewhere on the 'Net", in order to pull in modules just to make "Hello World" work? Or is the default install totally self-contained, can be put into Escrow for 10, 20 years and still work?[2]

[2] Sorry, sorry, don't get into my own rant, or I'll be going on about throwaway code and the problems/waste that causes.

Re: C is the new COBOL

If I had a farthing for every time I hear of something like that, by now I'd have nearly a crown in assorted specie.

HP Inc to build future products atop grave of flopped 'AI pin'

They licensed off the name to use with calculators, otherwise that could be humourous; AI plus RPN:

"I see you are trying to - no, wait, you're trying to - um, nope, come on, gimme a clue"

LJ phone home

Re: "laser ink”

Actually, that bit I quite like[1]. With caveats.

Having a display that can appear/disappear without pulling out a phone, like an AR display but without the clunky AR glasses - good[2].

Shining the laser down to about where you hold a book (away from anyone's eyes) - great.

Only displaying onto your hand - huh? Damn my sunburn/red gloves/covering of blood[3].

The gesture UI described/shown in the reviews - gordon bennet!

Not shaped like Star Trek communicator[4] - well, that is just ridiculous

[1] no accounting for taste, eh.

[2] unlike AR other people can see this appearing, which is less private - sort of like having your phone out - but OTOH people can see you are interacting with *something*, not just waving your hands for no reason (you wavin' at me bird, pal?)

[3] yeah, but now his bird is going out with me, so deal with it

[4] for a $699 device they could have licensed it!

Re: Why would a printer need AI?

Your printer can (will!) correct your spelling[1], grammar[2] and political viewpoint[3]; it will also generate a dismissive reply from your manager's printer's AI, stapled to the front, and save you the trouble of popping the document into internal post for his signature.

Share And Enjoy.

[1] Non-US packs for English, Spanish, Portuguese etc available for a small subscription fee

[2] see [1]; hope you like the word 'of'

[3] you can fill this one in yourself, I'm not touching it!

Bought in 2024, bricked in 2025

With an upfront cost of $699 (plus p&p?) and a $24 per month subscription, that was, what, $82 or more per month until it went silent.

Well, I'm sure that every purchaser feels that they had good value for their money and is happy with the outcome.

( /s of course. OTOH, come on, bad enough paying subscriptions for a cloudy service that can vanish on a whim, your data and all, but paying that much upfront as well? How could that ever lead to a happy outcome?)

Microsoft declutters Windows 11 File Explorer in the name of Euro privacy

Re: Now let me put the taskbar where I want it

One downvote (so far):

Somebody Hates Your (desire for) Freedom.

(You get an upvote from me, btw)

Why did the Windows 95 setup use Windows 3.1?

> Have you seen the Windows 2000 code?

NO. OF COURSE NOT.

Nobody has, I don't know what you are talking about!

Re: Why ?

> That, and it often makes for good craik.

If you want the English spelling, what originated from N.E. England (around South Shields)[1] then it is "crack", as in "The Crack" magazine found in all good venues[2] in the N.E.[3][4]

If you want the Irish neologism, when they borrowed the word in the mid/late 20th Century and gave it a (cod-)gaelic spelling (mostly to write it onto the outside of Irish-themed pubs well outside of the Emerald Isle, though it has since slithered its way to Eire, in exactly the way that the snakes didn't) then it is "craic".

Should we assume that "craik" is the Yankee Oirish spelling? And is is pronounced like "crack" or more like the bird, "crake"?

[1] Apparently, it was recorded in Scots earlier than from the Shields, but I'll just put that down the Scots having too much free time on their hands and doing dull things like "writing" instead of getting out and enoying the crack.

[2] And in a whole load of dives!

[3] Or the online version if you insist on not having anything around to help mop up your spills

[4] Not to be confused with "Crack" magazine, an upstart from Bristol, which means that it probably sounds like the noise you'd expect the Crake to make - Craawwk[5]

[5] Right, that's it, now I'll have to move from the N.E. and won't be welcome back in Brizzle; guess I'm off to the Black Country.

Re: Marketing

>> Then how come I coud use things like MS-DOS NDIS drivers with cards that did not have native Win95 drivers inside Win95

The Amazing Raymond Chen and his Dancing Windows have the answer: What was the role of MS-DOS in Windows 95?:

> MS-DOS served two purposes in Windows 95.

> * It served as the boot loader.

> * It acted as the 16-bit legacy device driver layer.

> Once in protected mode, the virtual device drivers did their magic. Among other things those drivers did was “suck the brains out of MS-DOS,” transfer all that state to the 32-bit file system manager, and then shut off MS-DOS

(followed by spine-chilling details about INT numbers, and finally the bit we are really interested in)

> In other words, MS-DOS was just an extremely elaborate decoy. Any 16-bit drivers and programs would patch or hook what they thought was the real MS-DOS, but which was in reality just a decoy. If the 32-bit file system manager detected that somebody bought the decoy, it told the decoy to quack.

So you are *both* right (isn't that nice?). MS-DOS wasn't running once 95 had booted, but your 16-bit NDIS driver's code had been sucked into the maw of 95.

Re: Marketing

> It wasn't just the processor (and it's not the number of bits that matter)

Microsoft only did pre-emptive scheduling once your 386 CPU was in protected-mode, one of whose major features (which *every* programmer was able to take immediate advantage of[1]) was to switch to the flat-memory model and 32-bit addresses. Hence it was referred to as "32-bit mode" or just "32-bit": less clumsy than saying "protected mode" and it made immediate sense. Of course, you also got all the other goodies, including the MMU/Page Tables, v86 mode for your DOS command window...

> it was memory to allow processes to run in isolation.

Win'95 provided virtual memory, just as did Win 3; the base level 4 MiB requirement was tight (they *always* make the minimums tight) if you were running Word and Excel and... all at once, but it handle that by paging to VM - slow, of so very slow, but it carried on.

> which is why application crashes frequently brought everything down

Nah, it was because the programs were not 100% isolated from each other and you could mess with another process's resources. Isolation is a Good Thing, expecially if you are running a multi-user OS, but it is expensive - MS just didn't complete that job in 95 (or 98).

> networking and printer drivers were allowed back into the kernel

The Big Change for the NT kernel was when graphics drivers were run in kernel mode - NT 4.0 - because *every* program uses those, compared to printing or networking. But that is getting away from the joys of 95.

[1] death to "memory models" and continually converting segment:offset addresses into a canonical form (e.g. make sure the segment is the lowest value it can be - no, that isn't a linear address!) before trying to compare them

Re: Marketing

Indeed. You can do pre-emptive scheduling on, say, a simple 6502.[1]

More up to date, FreeRTOS defaults to pre-emptive on all sorts of processors of varying sizes.

[1] have to carefully sculpt your code...

Re: Marketing

> The kernel was still cooperative...: 32-bit pre-emptive wasn't possible on most of the hardware that was being sold at the time.

The minimum spec for '95 was a 386DX and 4MiB of RAM: if you had '05, it was running 32-bit, pre-emptive. The 386 had been available since 1985 and overtaken the 286 by appoximately 1991; a lot of machines were already using it for Win32s under the current Win 3.11. The 486 had been available (ok, "available") since 1989. By the release of Win'95, both 386 and 486 were available from multiple suppliers: Intel (!), AMD, Cyrix, Texas.

Older 286 boxes were still in use, but the machines that were sold at the time were able to run 32-bit.

> and crashes were frequent

Well, yes; it was 1995, computers crashed. Not helped by the number of software authors who hadn't even been using Win32s to get ahead of the game creating 32-bit exes :-(

> It wasn't until NT was "slimmed down" and made less pre-emptive and rebadged as NT

Um, I presume you meant "rebadged as XP" in which case, yes, you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who didn't find XP more robust than '95 and '98. Although nothing (well, money) was stopping anyone from running NT 3.1 as soon as that was available.

But, "made less pre-emptive"? No idea what that is supposed to mean.

Re: Marketing

> : Windows 95 was mainly a graphical refresh of Windows 3.11 and, as such, not much of an OS,

Well, apart from being a 32-bit pre-emptively scheduled kernel, instead of 16-bit co-operative.

But aside from the graphical refresh, the extra 16 bits for consistent flat memory addressing and the pre-emptive scheduler, what did '95 ever do for us?

Grok 3 wades into the AI wars with 'beta' rollout

Re: The demonstrations were noteworthy, if not groundbreaking

TFA > It does, however, try to make up for this with a selection of benchmarks that put Musk's AI platform ahead of the competition.

TFA> It goes without saying that a hefty pinch of salt is required when looking at any benchmarks produced in the tech industry – not just the AI ones.

Get the feeling that El Reg is not taken in?

The Truth Is Out There

Because it is unlikely to be found *inside* Grok 3.

FreSSH bugs undiscovered for years threaten OpenSSH security

> Memory based bug or not?

The explanation referenced by TFA shows that the answer to your question is:

NOT!

(Well, assuming by "Memory based bug" you meant buffer overflow or the like, as is all the rage at the moment; the problem is in the logic of setting variables that are used as success/failure return values, and as those variables are, indeed, in memory (in fact, on the stack!) then you could push the definition to breaking point and say "the error occurs in setting a value in memory"!)

Why users still couldn't care less about Windows 11

Re: Left on the left, right on the right

> There is one not appalling tool from MS : PowerToys

And SysInternals[1], if you need to dig deeper.

[1] well, only "from MS" after they bought it...

UK court says Chinese operation must sell Scottish chip biz stake without delay

Re: Anti-counterfeit?

> I'd object to the notion 'counterfeit chip', BTW

When FTDI's driver overwrote the id bytes in the counterfeits, a lot of end users found they'd been sold devices which were advertised as containing FTDI parts - but clearly didn't. Despite the markings, which also caught out (some of) the sellers and manufactures.

So, yes, counterfeit.

FTDI's action, giving your cable a Glasgow Kiss instead of just refusing to work, was - not a good idea.

But we did find out why a few cables didn't actually work properly - some of the fakes didn't properly implement all the control lines, so they'll do the basic serial transfer but won't trigger your board to go into program update mode.

Re: Anti-counterfeit?

> Microsoft's driver looked for FTDI's device-id ...

> loaded the totally generic USB-serial driver...

> Then Microsoft did the patch...

The driver wasn't Microsoft's, it was written by FTDI for the FTDI devices, so, yes, it looks for their device ids: worth it, as the FTDI devices have reliable implementation of all the extra signals in RS232/etc as well as I2C and GPIO (depending upon the chip used).

FTDI was solely responsible for the brick-a-fake (and they were fakes - reporting back as FTDI and sold as containing FTDI). Their driver arrives via Microsoft's servers, as do other manufacturers, because they went through the process to get them there. Unlike the purveyors of CH340 etc.

The "bricking" was a stupid thing to do and was rolled back soon after.

I'd be angrier about it if it wasn't so easy, as the end user, to bring your fakes back to life: all that happened was that the id had been set to all zeroes, using AFAIK the same process by which they had been set to the FTDI ids.

As for dumping FTDI devices - not anywhere where I was. Their chips are better than the alternatives - which is why we want to keep them in Scotland. Just so long as they don't try to give out any more Glasgow Kisses to our cables!

Twin Google flaws allowed researcher to get from YouTube ID to Gmail address in a few easy steps

Re: doge.com - saving you from X many evils

Btw, that was meant to be "commie paper straws", in case it wasn't obvious.

doge.com - saving you from X many evils

As the linked-to article points out, doge.com is (currently) just a mirror of their Twitter posts.

But at least that means we can see those tweets without going anywhere near, let alone actually logging onto, The Website That Must Not Be Named[1].[2]

Though you just gotta love a dot-com that has to stick at the top "An official website of the United States government" without any kind of recognisable logo, let alone a dot-gov address. Yeah, I'm convinced. Ooh, look, this other website says that is is "The official website of Prince Burt of Nigeria" and he would like me to do him a favour.

[1] come on, "x" isn't a name, it is the canonical placeholder for the thing you don't know the name of.

[2] and having read the first page or so: now we see the very definition of "picayune"! That lot is a triumph against waste and will lead to saving two trillion dollars? Meanwhile, let's kill off more US Soft Power influence... And damn those come paper straws!

This open text-to-speech model needs just seconds of audio to clone your voice

Re: Great

"'Ere, ooo stuck dat needle in my nut?"

The data was acquired from the web

and not purchased from a data broker. Or anyone else, like the rights holders?

Nah, it must be ok, because as we all know there is no copyright material on the web and if it just happened to be scraping every podcast, every bit of online radio playable in the browser, one or two million YouTube videos...

After clash over Rust in Linux, now Asahi lead quits distro, slams Linus' kernel leadership

Re: Yet another "rewrite from scratch"

>> better to rewrite from scratch and start again ... I guess one person's functional code is always gonna be another's technical debt.

> Yes indeed. That is exactly how linux got started.

Is that the case? Exactly?

Torvalds has described how he started process switching code not because Minix wasn't good enough but because the discs were taking several months to arrive! What else was he going to spend the time doing?[1]. When Minix did arrive, he wasn't terribly pleased with it so from that point you could say he decided it needed to be rewritten - but then again, Minix was only open-sourced in 2000 - before then, even though you could buy a copy of the source to read and compile, plus a book to explain it all to you, it was still proprietary code: not that easy to fix it up and distribute the changes.

Perhaps if Torvalds's University course had used XINU and *its* book, instead of Minix, he might have directly patched that rather than "start again" (XINU was open source from the beginning, around 1984).

[1] ok, he admits he spent time playing video games as well!

> the GNU/FSF intended |_inux to be a stopgap for Hurd (which is likely correct)

Likely correct? Really? Sorry, going to need a citation for that...

I'm afraid that I can find no place where GNU/FSF ever even suggest such a thing. They do talk about running HURD within Qemu under GNU/Linux but don't seem unduly angsty about doing that. When talking about Linux and the GNU System, Stallman has said "Fortunately, we didn't have to wait for the Hurd, because of Linux. Once Torvalds freed Linux in 1992, it fit into the last major gap in the GNU system." and "The GNU Project supports GNU/Linux systems as well as the GNU system"; no doubt that he would like to see HURD get wide use one day, but the FSF generally seems chuffed that all their other projects (piffling little things, like GCC :-) ) are gainfully employed.

> Your link is broken

Blast, you are right, copied and pasted from the wrong bit of the browser; here is the link going via the Wayback Machine.

Having said that, it isn't "my" link, it is the link from the Wikipedia page for the lines that *you* quoted (their [5]) so I'd've hoped that you would have recognised that - and been able to comment that I'd just missed putting on the Wayback prefix.

Open source maintainers are really feeling the squeeze

Re: Let me quote from the MIT license....

Support from Microsoft? It is to laugh, ha ha.

Not even basic stuff, like a paid-for upgrade working, certainly no bloody chance to get your money back when it clearly doesn't!

I had a legit copy of Visio. Then Ms bought them out. Next release, you can get as an upgrade for less than full whack. Jolly good, here is my dosh. Installer demands that I enter my serial number, showing a very MS-format entry box.

But Visio Corp never issued me a serial number, it just came in a nice box with useful manuals, no serial number in sight. A more elegant program for a more trusting time.

Can I get my money back? Of course not, I'd opened the box and run the installer, what more did I want?!

Seethe.

> The itch was scratched, life went on, other things to do.

If only all itches could be scratched with nothing more than a public statement of intent. What bliss.

Re: "Many of the people doing the HARD work are hobbyists or doing it out of a love of technology"

> Than there are many others that are simply exploited by brainwashing them that FOSS should be the only way to develop and distribute software and two legs, oops, commercial software, is bad and evil. So the above company can just pay far less developers than they would need if they had to pay the full development/test/etc

Sorry, are you trying to say that those companies are somehow brainwashing people they have no connection with, all over the world?

Open Source has been around for a long time (by computing standards), are we to believe that Microsoft was engaging in X-Files style mind control at the time of the Halloween Memo?

The Truth Us Out There.

Re: Expecting coders to work for free...

> People 'adopt' Tigers and guide dogs, supporting them

Ooh, I like that idea.

Do we get to have plush dolls[1] made of us and a monthly newsletter, with pictures of the free-range devs gamboling in a meadow whilst the build is running?

Although, hmm, guide dogs: you support those from puppyhood, paying for their training. But if we put a student through a programming course, do we get a guarantee that he'll work on the codebase we're interested in?

[1] icon - what the world probably thinks we look like (or, cough, could we have a hacker-inna-hoodie icon?)

There do seem to be a fair old number of GitHub entries[1] that are abandoned after little more than an initial commit with an ambitious statement of intent.

But I'm never sure how serious those were, whether they tried and then ran into a brick wall of unpreparedness or just never actually did anything at all beyond that commit (because the world and their dog never came around, excited by their idea and ready to hand over support?[2])

[1] no, can not give any URLs, never thought I'd want to go back to them! Sigh, "take notes on everything" they said, but I didn't listen.

[2] cynical old gititude coming out to the fore again.

Re: Especially galling are large corporates ...

> management thought it was cheaper to maintain a patch set

Different cost centre you see; you were in the "non-recurring engineering costs" bucket and patch sets come of "regular maintenance costs", which is not your boss's responsibility.

Re: Obligation to maintain?

That clause does not say anything at all about obligating an author to actually make any future changes whatsoever. All it says is that, if you (and if you bother to distribute them - it doesn't even force you to do that) then you don't get to change the rules on anyone else.

Far from forcing everyone else to give the corporates a free ride, that clause can - and does - mean the same corporates make their own changes and then hand them over - purely in their own self-interest, because if they kept the mods to themselves they'd have to pay to re-integrate into all the later releases. So now every one gets to benefit.[1]

That is why even Microsoft makes submissions into Linux (and some commentards in the last few days have been complaining that Linux is now in the thrall of Big Corporations).

[1] yes, plenty of corporates don't do that - but they wouldn't anyway, no matter if the clause you highlit existed or not.

The Doom-in-a-PDF dev is back – this time with Linux

Some people like to create PDF files that are complicated forms with lots of validation - but a strange ability to clear all the already filled in fields when it decides your answer to question 37 is out of range.

That requires JavaScript and all the programming skills that are usually applied to - create website forms with the strange ability to...

Why do younger coders struggle to break through the FOSS graybeard barrier?

> Floppy disk image emulators? as opposed to a USB key?

You do know that you can't plug a USB key into a port that expects a floppy disk? Unless you have an emulator to make it look like (s pile of) floppy disk images?

> USB mouse? as opposed to a *decent* one that you can buy for cheap?

No, that is another adapter that lets you plug your "*decent*" mouse into a system that otherwise won't accept it.

> These are at best solutions in search of a problem.

So, you aren't a member of the retro-computing community, the ones that are working hard to keep old systems alive and working (as best they can, given the lack of new floppy disk stocks or serial/other mice in the shops).

> Even as a hobby, "Do it and learn," this doesn't interest me.

Well, as you really didn't understand that post, it isn't a surprise it doesn't interest you. And as you never tried to learn what was being talked about before replying..