Posts by bombastic bob

Re: critical race theory, sex education, and inclusive gender language

pronoun... pain. Seriously ???

I'm just gonna stop now before I rant for 14 paragraphs.

Re: Ban Harry Potter!

I agree, the attempts to ban Harry Potter were pretty lame. And I would consider myself to be a christian, though I do not go to churches [sometimes God's fan club can be irritating and even toxic].

That being said, I do hope that in the case of these "Girls Who Code" books that the arguments from that Mom's group are not equally as petty. They could be. Or maybe not. More information is needed.

icon, because, it's possibly ironic

Re: One day they will look at their daughters killed by the Moral Police...

I have not seen prohibitively expensive feminine hygiene products, nor sports bras that are more expensive than boys' T shirts. So I do not "get" what you are saying. I actually go to a store on occasion and have purchased such things for a female relative so I have a pretty good idea of the costs involved. Maybe the only place you can find them is at an expensive department store, but places like WalMart and Target (here in the USA) have these things pretty cheap.

I do not think any of what you said makes ANY sense at all. And how is the price of women's clothing and hygiene products in any way MYSOGYNISTIC? (REAL mysogyny may exist in places like Iran and Afghanistan, but not in westernized countries, not any more)

Re: The last sentence of the article has it.

That;s MISTER SCUM to you.

Re: The last sentence of the article has it.

No. just no.

Re: Mission creep

In My Bombastic Opinion there is not enough information in the article to make any comment, especially without any specifics.being mentioned. I can speculate on possible topics not suitable for kids of all ages but I do not even want to REMOTELY go there without some specific examples.

There are just too many political hot-topic bezerk-button things these days that occasionally find their way into kids' books and set off atomic rage in one or more groups of people whose bezerk buttons get pressed by "fill in the blank."

On the surface this Mom's group sounds like concerned parents whom I might agree with on a lot of issues. But they could also be religious fanatics or something, and so more information is needed to understand what is really happening here. They should explain to El Reg and give some examples.

Anyway, need more information. How else can I put it?

Re: The strive to be a desktop on mobile has killed both KDE and Gnome

I forget which KDE was used by Linspire but it looked and worked ok for me. Then again I quickly replaced Linspire with Debian (this was long before systemd) so I could have an inexpensive Linux box with an OS that I believed gave me more choice and a better way of maintaining it.

(and my desktop of choice at that time was Gnome 2, back when gnome was pretty good)

I disagree. The point of open source is NOT to create your own "fifedom" unless you like a small audience or are just doing it for fun.

The point of open source is to collaborate, either by just giving what you do out to the public sphere (with a license if you want), or to assist others by fixing/improving their stuff. Or testing. Or feedback.

my sentiments exactly! (unfortunately there is a small subset of very vocal, unfortunately influential users who influence these projects and possibly inject money into them... maybe Micros~1?)

Gnome devs became like arrogant Micros~1 "developers" when Gnome 3 was released. Linus had a nice rant about it. It was mostly capitalization and use of the F word if I remember correctly. Deservedly so.

"We will, we will, FORCE YOU"

(to be all 2D FLATTY FLATSO FLATASS McFLATFACE with! Adwaita!)

this "force you" mentality DOES! NOT! BELONG! IN! OPEN! SOURCE!!!

I thought Mate, Cinnamon, and Devuan spoke LOUD AND CLEAR on this.... (but some apparently need stronger affirmation, like maybe a clue-by-four)

Loath, because limited to Adwaita (which i SPECIFICALLY loathe) and 2D FLATTY FLATSO McFLATFAC, unless I misswed something along the line.

Any major software package that uses gnome at ALL needs to consider GTK2 and GTK3 support rather than GTK4 so that Mate and Cinnamon users aren't left out...

How to turn off the 'Adwaita' look in firefox:

a) use mate and install "mate-themes" or similar, basically to get "TraditionalOk" (other desktops YMMV)

b) from command line select TraditionalOk for GTK3

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme 'TraditionalOk'

c) in about:config

widget.content.gtk-theme.override = TraditionalOk

widget.non-native.theme.enabled = false

reload browser (or maybe just the page) and that *HIDEOUS* *ADWAITA* *SCROLLBAR* will *GO* *THE* *@#$%* *AWAY* and be replaced with a REAL one. of your choice.

Re: "what staff can and can't do in break rooms and other non-work areas"

that's the perception, yeah.

That goes with the perception that their employees are being treated like disposable NPCs in a video game (which is why they are unionizing).

Re: In todays headlines..

On average, unionised workers earn up to 15% more than non union workers do. They have better benefits and working conditions.

This is why unions exist (says Captain Obvious)

Corollary: If Amazon had fixed this (wage scale, benefits) without the unions being involved, there would be no discussion regarding unionization.

Amazon should be doing whatever they can NOW to get a favorable union contract and THEN just let them unionize.

Re: Wait until we get te cheap Chinese knocks-off

I expect that if you were to pound a railroad spike into the battery pack of an electric vehicle, a fire would result.

Similarly, several 30 caliber rounds from a single shot bolt action rifle (using 1906 cartridge design) might also do the trick.

Rapid discharge, over-discharge, both do damage to the Li Ion batteries and can cause swelling, fires, and so on. A cell reversal could be disastrous (so hopefully this is being monitored continuously). The tech works fine if you do not short out or otherwise physically damage the cells, so long as you stop discharging them completely (not even a trickle) when ANY cell voltage drops below about 2.5V.

It's sort of like carrying a butane lighter, which if mistreated has enough fuel inside to do some serious damage, but works safely when used as designed.

Re: Look to Dinorwig

ask yourself this: how many cars would it take to respond to a 10% increase in electrical demand, something that might happen when everyone arrives home and starts turning lights/heat/AC/stoves on...

capacity of one electric car - about 50KWH (being as generous as possible)

Total electric demand on average in USA - 450 million KW (if I calculated right, 3.9 trillion KWH per year / 8760 hours per year)

number of fully charged plugged-in cars it would take to sustain that for one hour - 9 million (being generous). That is average, not peak (when "help" would be needed, so at least DOUBLE that demand value for a more realistic estimate).

And do not forget that for every KWH coming out of a car, most likely 1.1KWH (or more) would have to go back IN.

A 10% jump would need 9 million cars to take up the slack for one hour - and with an unrealistic generous estimate of around 1 million cars plugged in at any one time, they'd be completely drained in about 7 minutes... unless my math is off. No driving for YOU until it re-charges in several HOURS.

Realistically this kind of battery drainage would damage the cars, so you can probably assume the demand peak would have to be more like 1% which is NOT very practical, assuming that people are willing to have their car batteries COMPLETELY drained like that. I doubt it.

using plug-in electric car batteries for peaker storage is an impractical pipe dream.

Solution: BUILD MORE POWER PLANTS TO HANDLE DEMAND THE OLD SCHOOL WAY (nuke plants preferred for oh SO many reasons!)

Re: Look to Dinorwig

U.S. Navy subs always used Pb-acid batteries, like a car battery. Typical lifetime, like a car battery, around 5 years. Maintain them the traditional way, and you'd have a building full of batteries that could store many MW hours of elecltricity. Sure it uses lead. Sure, it uses acid. But if you keep it well ventilated, and do not allow H2 gas to build up nor ICV to deviate too much from one another, the battery is relatively safe as proved by decades of use on U.S. Navy subs and in cars.

Sometimes OLD SCHOOL is the BEST

Again citing Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority"

(of course the energy needed to mine and refine the components of Li Ion batteries probably uses MORE DIESEL FUEL and COAL than a power plant would, at least In My Bombastic Opinion - and of course ENRICHES COMMUNIST CHINA since THEY typically make the LiIon batteries and solar panels and so on)

Re: Look to Dinorwig

well rotational momentum is what it is. It works both ways, too, extra energy needed to get it up to speed again.

Re: Look to Dinorwig

getting a damn built in Cali-Fornicate-You would take DECADES due to environmental activists, corrupt politicians, and the worst red tape factory on the planet...

But pumped water storage would have turbine losses based on pressure differentials. It's a physics thing. Not against it, just saying there are losses associated with pumping water (friction) and using it to make electricity (turbine efficiency). One resource suggests 70-80% overall. So 1000MWH in gets you 700-800MWH out.

not a panacea by any stretch of the imagination

My preference would be gas turbine and natural gas diesel plants located in critical zones that could be started and stopped at a moment's notice.

Re: Explanation ... and commentary from the trenches.

PG&E has an oil burning plant in Moss Landing - a BIG one. Maybe it is time to EXPAND AND IMPROVE THAT ONE...

(instead of sending money to CHINA for batteries that halt and catch fire)

Re: Would I like someone with at best 12 years of RUST experience

I wonder if some HR mook will post a job that requires 20+ years of Rust experience...

Re: Came here for a bunch of fossils who can't admit their fave language is shit

I'm tempted to say something like "OK, Junior"

heh heh heh

The world is fllled with examples on what happens when "the next generation" decides "it is OUR turn now" and they immediately re-invent everything to be THEIR way, and then work through the same kinds of previously solved problems that the old way solved just fine, ones caused by doing it "Their Way".

Yet another gratuitous mention of Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority"

(if you have never had to create the equivalent of a C structure in either assembly language or FORTRAN, then you may not be capable of appreciating the beauty of programming lingos like C and C++)

heh - Y2K as it should have been

Re: Replacement versus successor

Oh no - I just had a nauseating though... Rust-pound (Rust#)

It make me think they should make an extended version of a programming lingo called "Sand" so we can call the new one "Sand-pound"

Re: Hold your horses!

null pointers, double frees, buffer overruns, data races etc.

I rarely see that kind of bug. Usually I see infinite loops and bad logic. Easily found and fixed. Rust would be "about the same" I'd think.

Those pointer-related issues can also be resolved in C++ by use of abstract objects with reference counts.

/me once solved 'asynchronous allocated memory lifetime' bugs by using ref counts on each allocated buffer instead of trying to manage things with state variables. The end result is that the code became faster as well, which most definitely sold the idea to everyone. It seemed to me to be the obvious solution.

Re: Hold your horses!

That belief is what is driving the enthusiasm for Rust despite being completely untrue.

I think the one selling feature to NOT adopt Rust is interoperability. That, and a learning curve for your existing experts in C and/or C++ (that last one bothers ME a LOT, wasting weeks or months getting back what I already have with the existing tools and programming lingos).

So, do we really need to re-write a large number of existing libraries code bases in Rust so we can use them again? This may or may not be justified (I really do not know) but it IS a concern, at least for me.

Re: Hold your horses!

a troll will ultimately make pejorative comments, not attempt to make a point.

maybe some people just come for a good argument? (instead they accidentally walk in on Graham Chapman instead of John Cleese)

Re: Thanks but no thanks.

I'll stick to C when unavoidable, C++ where needed and scripting languages everywhere else.

from a practical standpoint, that makes the most sense, especially if you are in IT and need to solve problems as they appear and keep things running the rest of the time.

re-learning "New Shiny" everytime Micros~1 announces something is a colossal waste of time anyway. I'm thinking Silverlight, and that "Metro" thing. BOTH ARE BIG FLOPS.

And I stuck with C++ for any windows progs I wrote, which was not many, and they run fine on 7 too.

Still they ARROGANTLY chose to "Deprecate" C and C++. Who died and made THEM *GOD* ???

Re: Gas giant

if ya want even MORE gas, a pipeline to Uranus...

apparently Jupiter is close to its apogee, and to some extent, Earth to its perigee, which would make us even closer than for most oppositions.

According to one source, Jupiter's apogee (closest to the sun) is in January next year.

Earth is furthest from the sun (perigee) in July of every year.

Do the maths a bit and it puts us at a pretty ideal closeness to Jupiter.

Re: I can see for miles

all comedy aside, the planets exert tidal forces on the sun. The sun is a nuclear reactor and density is a factor in fusion rate. Even a minute alteration of density could change reactivity enough that the fusion rate is altered in a noticeable way, related directly to the positions of the planets relative to the earth, especially large ones like Jupiter. (this would affect the sun's output that is heading towards earth according to the relative planetary positions, rate of motion, and a few other physics things). Throw in the gravity well of the galactic baricenter and that of the universe, and it might explain a lot...

Thinking about that, maybe there is at least a *teensy* bit of truth in the whole astrology thing, minus the wackier mythology.

Re: Wow!

with Jupiter in direct opposition, looks like "around midnight" would be the best (on average) viewing time. or 1AM with daylight savings time applied. I have a terrible view towards the east, though, but very clear looking west, so maybe 4 AM for me looking west (so it would be lower in the sky, and I won't fall over trying to look up with binoculars).

For those with a nice clear view of sunrise, I would imagine 10 PM would work well.

Re: Odd choice

biggest problems with C++ in the kernel has to do with object construction and destruction, and unwinding following an exception. If you compile with no static object constructors or destructors and eliminate everything related to exception handling, you could use the remaining C++ features pretty well.

That being said, I think similar changes to Rust are required. Some things just do NOT (and CAN not) belong in a kernel!

Re: It's not an insult

use of C-pound (aka C#), as opposed to assembly language, gets you a downvote from me.

Although your point about memory safety is valid, it can be overcome in both C and assembly language through proper code review, diligence, and standardization. And Linus acting like "Linus 1.0" on occasion (heh)

And you STILL have to ask how much performance cost would result from using Rust for "memory safety" to protect from lazy/incompetent coders?

Re: It seems evident that

The more likely thing is that "science" will notice that temperatures are going back DOWN (it's what the long cycles do) and predict an ICE AGE and blame human activity and find some OTHER way to separate the 'haves' from the 'have-nots' through some economic and tyrannical means... to "solve" it. And make themselves even MORE powerful. Human nature.

Yet, worthy of mention:

the water vapour cycle has a very strong negative feedback effect on global temperatures

Yes! People forget too easily about how important WATER is, as the ACTUAL GH GAS that controls world temperatures. CO2 is a *blip*. The hydro cycle keeps earth temperatures reasonably stable.

Keep in mind that people are living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today. At some point Chernobyl will become habitable. And not too far in the future, Fukushima. I think that "irradiated ground" is far less of a concern than shivering to death.

Re: Thought about using nuclear?

If I were to invent a safe and successful fusion power system tomorrow, there would be an ENDLESS PARADE of anti-science WACKOS trying to STOP me from building a power plant, with a constantly growing list of B.S. "concerns" to justify it. It's how the "grievance industry" does things.

I honestly believe that the goals of the protesters and lawsuers and obstructionists with respect to nuclear power have NOTHING to do with the environment, safety concernes, or waste disposal. It has to do with POWER, and not the electrical kind.