Posts by bombastic bob

Re: Thought about using nuclear?

Nuclear power plants are *scary* to people who are easily whipped up into a frenzy. That is pretty much why we do not have enough of them.

/me operated nuclear reactors for the U.S. Navy, pushing a sub around the world for close to 4 years.

Yes. We need more nuclear power plants, and NO dependency on Vladimir Putin's pipeline.

(if nuclear electricity were charging electric cars, I would consider getting one, but most likely it is coal or oil since they would get charged at night when the rates are lower)

Re: Danger Will Robinson!

I'd actually like to see proof of that...

Re: Speculative execution exploits in the wild?

The other thing to consider is whether or not this is needed at all.

In the cases where "sensitive data" is NOT of a concern, why not disable the mitigation?

In the cases where "sensitive data" IS of a concern, put the mitigation(s) in.

Then disclose to customers which is which. Pricing would be related to what the customer wants.

In MY case, my company web site (shared hosting) has public downloads, customer related downloads (modified linux kernel source in one case) and nothing else that would in any way be a compromise if someone leveraged an exploit. On a shared host this might be an issue but not for me.

So if it is a CHOICE for cloud services, maybe not so bad?

Re: ta ta Liz

whenever the appearance of paper money changes, all of the note validators need to be updated (or you'll be standing there at the vending machine swearing at it).

Re: PNAC

I'm an American and I upvoted you. Be independent or at least have the potential for it.

Re: Storage ? Transport ?

have they solved the issues with storing it ?

First thing I thought of. Recent criticisms of NASA around using H2+O2 fuel for Artemis point out that SpaceX uses a hydrocarbon fuel which makes for smaller (and safer?) rockets.

I would LOVE to use fuel cells to power an electric car. Self-contained (does not need "the grid" to charge) and could theoretically be refueled as fast as a gasoline car.

However, no safe+effective storage available for the H2.

Re: Yes it still helps.

how much discrimination is actually happening out there? I suggest VERY LITTLE.

[like plane crashes, it happens rarely but whenever it does it makes HUGE news]

This may simply be another regulation waiting for a problem to actually address...

(Also the current reporting requirements (that I am aware of) probably overlap this. EOC already collects demographic information on hiring. My corporation is tiny so i am fortunately exempt. But I am aware of it.)

Re: Microsoft SQL Server

perhaps if Micros~1 were to switch to PostgreSQL (and stop calling it "sequel") rather than using SQL Server as its basis. A handful of compatibility add-ons for PG could be easier than maintaining an entirely separate code base...

but of course the add-ons would have Micros~1 licensing so not sure how well THAT would work out.

Re: Gimme a spanner...

You need SPACE TAPE, not duck tape. It's got SPACE in its name.

very similar events took place in the early naughties for a company i did work for. The PCs were stolen (cables cut, smash and grab job) so new ones were purchased and software re-installed. THEN the NEW ones were stolen. I recommended getting steel anti-theft cables with key locks to at least slow them down on the next round of computers.

(and the CEO and I actually suspected it may have been an inside job, a new employee who spent 2 weeks doing nothing but re-configure his computer twice, who was subsequently let go, and no additional thefts. no correlation, but still...)

Re: Why the bleep dunk these things in salt water?

"Probably because sea-levels are rising, and are not subject to the vagaries of drought/climate change."

you SERIOUSLY had to say that...?

*facepalm*

Re: It was just a corporate error

I had the reverse happen to me on a payroll once (typically in the US if you own a corp you still need to put yourself on payroll and pay some kind of reasonable salary). So I FAX the latest rates from Cali-F-U to the payroll company near the end of the year, and a month or 2 later, do the first payroll of the year. Then I read the fine print while entering the bank info and what should have been around $70 "contribution" for this one Cali-F-U payroll tax, was more like $7000 !! (I think they entered the tax amount as 150% instead of 1.5%) Well I couldn't screw around with that one and immediately got back to them. Thing is they probably sent it to a NON-REFUNDABLE fund or something, and took over a week to refund me. (fortunately I had enough in the bank to cover paying myself or rent probably would have been late)

In any case it was resolved, but you know most people will NOT be too quick to say "weren't you supposed to deduct XX" or "Why is this check so big?" if they overpay (or undercharge) YOU.

yeah and Micros~1 marketing picked up Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up" as their theme song.

Seriously though it made more sense than the old Program Manager. I beta tested "Chicago" and they'd already added the Start menu button. I liked it WAY better than program manager.

Re: 70's Tec

I have an old Fender reverb unit (solid state) that was made in the 70's. A few years ago I took it completely apart, cleaned it out really well with contact cleaner [the dust inside stank like cigarettes, bad enough to give me a headache], and re-soldered the solder joints on the circuit board and cleaned up the 1/4" audio jacks and whatnot. Worked a LOT better (had proper gain again) and no more scratchy noise.

The traces on the circuit board looked like they were done by hand using a French Curve. And the parts have a LOT of space between them, not like a pocket radio from the same time period where parts are all crammed together.

(the reverb itself sounds really good when playing surf-style music or Brian Setzer kinda stuff)

Re: 13GW

"Over car parks!"

that is actually done a LOT. The local Walmart has several rows of covered parking with solar panels on top. Not the entire lot, but a significant portion of it. It has to make cost sense though.

Even without the panels, covering the canals with "something" has been discussed for DECADES.

There are many other issues outside of the scope of the article and related discussion, though, that could actually make a MUCH BIGGER difference in water usage and availability... related to the Sacramento river and a certain kind of fish. And maybe better drip irrigation systems for farmers, too.

Re: and you thought fuel prices down here were bad!

cost per kg of fuel to deliver it from Earth to the orbiting fuel station, plus fuel delivery bots that ALSO consume fuel, cost of earth-bound operators and all of the infrastructure, and THEN you have to make a profit to pay back the investors. That kinda justifies it.

Plus when you are the ONLY fuel station for 36,000 km you can charge "whatever the market will bear"

(I suppose getting a "tow" might be an interesting add-on service - to put a satellite back into orbit if it runs out of fuel and cannot do station keeping for some reason).

Still cheaper than a NEW satellite.

Re: Obsolete regulations are best regulations

at the very LEAST, tab delimited, not CSV

(copy/pasta a libre office spreadsheet selection into a plain text editor gets you tab delimited - actual CSV takes way too much effort)

Re: Remind me again?

"It is not a virus. Rather, it is a cancer"

certain kinds of viruses DO cause cancer, that is for sure

(systemd is probably one of them)

Re: Very impressive!

built a couple of ryzen systems recently. 5+Ghz is an AMAZING feat! Glad to see it!

Maybe in a year or so I can afford it... (want want want want)

Re: If it steers boots on the ground to double check

to avoid tax "sticker shock", particularly for those who could LEAST afford it, one great thing that cali-forn-you ACTUALLY did, before it fell off the cliff politically, was called "Proposition 13", back in the mid 70's. Housing prices were skyrocketing (you could turn a 10% profit by buying a house and paying only interest like it was rent, and then selling it after a year). Since gummints LOVED to re-assess the houses that were already paid for, the massive increases in taxation were literally driving grandparents and retirees out of their "bought and paid for" homes. SO, the law was RIGHTFULLY changed, in that once you buy a house, the assessed value can NEVER exceed the purchase price, for tax purposes anyway. That means that when you buy it, the tax is essentially the same until you sell it.

(It was one of the few moments of sanity that came out of Sacramento, nearly 50 years ago - and many of my high school teachers were REALLY MAD about it, because they LOVED their money-pile budgets, and they had to start LIVING WITHING THEM like EVERYONE ELSE!)

Re: FUD

I actually saw Micros~1's new license policy as a clever way to:

* stop lawsuits in their tracks

* actually sell MORE licenses than before

(not like I'm gong to go out and buy a windows server license to run cloudy things because of it)

Re: America without V8's just isn't America

better buy a new gas or diesel powered car or truck NOW, while you can, and keep fixing up the old cars!

(I happen to like the Ford Mustang)

Then, work freelance, get paid in half gasoline, half cash.

(Reminds me a little of "Dimension W")

On a more serious note, until ALL electricity is generated NOT from fossil fuels, which is really NOT possible, especially when you DOUBLE the demand by REQUIRING electric vehicles (unless THE PLAN is to keep the poor and middle class from OWNING VEHICLES, and therefore IN THEIR PLACE in the socio-economic world, like a SMUG WOKE SNOB would do) then without an INCREASE in power production, you'll either see RATIONING or EXCESSIVELY HIGH RATES or BOTH. Quite obviosly, there is NO SUFFICIENT INFRASTRUCTURE (unless you want to pretend to be a 3rd world country) and the cost of NEW electric cars AVERAGE over $60k! (and that's just the sticker price). And just as much exhaust (potentially) goes into the atmosphere from coal, oil, and natural gas power plants as did before from gasoline, except NOW you have power distribution losses to go with it, especially when demand AT NIGHT is likely to .exceed battery and transmission line capacity while MILLIONS of commuter cars simultaneously charge.

WOW, those MANDATES REALLY *DO* something WONDERFUL!!!

[N O T ! ! !]

Cali-Fornicate-You continues to INVENT NEW LEVELS OF STUPID.

(and WHAT percentage of all of that EXTRA COST for an electric vehicle IS FUNNELED DIRECTLY TO CHINA??? As opposed to the USA drilling MORE DOMESTIC OIL???)

honorable mention: Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority". The warning against throwing out an old technology when the "new, shiny" replacement tech is not NEARLY ready for prime time.

But it is MY BOMBASTIC OPINION that WOKE SMUG SNOBS (aka 'the political donor class') are behind this, they are VERY wealthy, they often 'feel' some kind of guilt for being wealthy, and ASSUAGE that guilt by becoming radical leftists and (through politiical donations and lobbying) force THE REST OF US to do *THEIR* *PENNANCE* whlle THEY continue to fly private jets, travel on mega-yachts, and air condition their PALACES while the rest of us ration, pay confiscatory rates, and DO WITHOUT.

Yeah, THAT is FAIR, right?

Re: "SQL coders"

stored procedures have their use but if you cannot change SQL engines BECAUSE of them, you should re-consider your current "locked in" status. This goes QUADRUPLE for MS SQL Server.

(my preference, PostgreSQL, as clean as possible)

But yeah, stored procedures dependent on proprietary features, WORST DECISION In My Bombastic Opinion.

Sometimes the problem is really the table and relationship design, and the initial query that gets your results. And a little bit of sane client side coding to do the things that are grossly inefficient when left up to a stored procedure... been there before. had to make that argument and then PROVE it.

Re: From 'The 10 Commandments for C Programmers'

Thou shalt check the array bounds of all strings (indeed, all arrays), for surely where thou typest ``foo'' someone someday shall type ``supercalifragilisticexpialidocious''.

Or "Raxacoricofallapatorius"

Re: GIT- Aptly named

In at least one case the terminology (especially when directly related to github) seems bass-ackwards to me.

Specifically, "pull request" - usually when you UPload things, or submit things for review. it's more of a PUSH, not a PULL. I think "change request" or "patch request" or "update request" would make more sense.

And so, the "confusing side" of git, which in THIS case, is really a "GitHub-ism".

(otherwise to me it is just another source control revisioning system that happens to be popular)

Re: £sd

maybe it is how you are expected to use the measurement?

In car sales, higher miles/gallon sounds like a better comparison

In figuring out fuel usage, you know that to go 'x' km you need 'y' liters.

For the first one mpg is "better"

for the 2nd one, l/100km is a bit easier to figure out fuel needs (for a given distance) in your head.

I guess it shows that in the USA it's all about the marketing (not the practical use).

sky writing?

Re: It is inevitable and a lot of sci fi movies predicted it well.

nor "The Matrix"

Re: $2/kwh is a lot of money

Here in Cali-Forn-You expect to pay $.50 / kwh during peak hours. Or more, depending...

I shall not get into why, but when we had more nuclear and oil and natural gas plants, it was WAY less than HALF this much. But that was 18 years ago when Ahnold was Governor. Ahnold became governor due to a recall election of "Gray out" Gray Davis, whose policies had kept power plants from being constructed (as I recall). Ahnold reversed these policies and encouraged power plant renovation (etc.) such as the Moss Landing power plant (an oil burner), and new construction also (as I recall). THEN Cali-forn-you had PLENTY of electrictiy. And it was WAY cheaper, adjusted to inflation even. (I should know, I was here)

Cali-Forn-You STILL has some of the most expensive electricity, though. Even back then. Home solar systems with battery systems (like Tesla's power wall) in some ways help distribute the cost around a bit among individuals, but aren't a 100% solution. It is often VERY hot after the sun goes down (in August), and peak hours are from 4PM to 9PM (when electricity costs the most). Batteries only store so much.

Paying individuals $2/kwh for "peak power" is not unreasonable, actually, when the costis already so high, since it is an average of power generated by many sources, and that extra small percentage for brief periods of time will likely prevent the grid from collapsing. It becomes a drop in the bucket for electrical providers, and a cash boon for those willing to put their surplus power on the grid during the peaks.

It really does NOT have to be this way. We have the technology. But I think *SOMEONE* or *SOMETHING* doesn't WANT us to live like we;re in a 1st world country... so here we are,.

Re: Yawn

To keep an atmosphere, Mars needs a magnetic field but also volcanoes. Both imply a molten core+mantle which, I believe, Mars does NOT have (quick research indicates partially molten core, speculative). You could bring the components to Mars, but for long lasting terraforming, the core needs to be melted somehow.

so yeah, a bit beyond 21st century tech, where we still haven't even sent people there.

Re: not going to help the automakers

I was thinking something similar, that we need fabs for resistors, capacitors, SMT inductors, discrete semiconductors, and small scale integration. I somewhat recently ran into supply issues with a small scale integrated circuit where there was NO pin for pin substitute. I managed to find one with inverted logic and fixed it in the firmware.

Still prior to 2020 all of those parts had good inventories at distributors and reasonable lead times,. After China started their sudden and massive lockdowns, it was like a crap shoot as to which components would run out any time soon. these boards are built in USA and Mexico so it would be a GREAT advantage to have fabs in N. America at least.