* Posts by bombastic bob

10275 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

Windows 11 growth at a standstill amid stringent hardware requirements

bombastic bob Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: Gaslighting

Gaslighting: shining a "fake light" on something in order to make it seem like something else, as if your own past experiences are no longer valid. It differs from distraction (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain) in that you're being told or shown things that try to make you "question reality", such as the reality of burning buildings in the background when the news reporter says it is a "peaceful protest" - the reporter is 'gaslighting'. Or, saying that a feature is "not an advertisement" when it most clearly *IS* one., would also be gaslighting. Your own eyes and ears tell you the truth, but "the gaslighter" is trying to convince you otherwise, by making you question your own concept of reality.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Why move to Windows 11 ?

with the exception of ME, I pretty much liked windows 3.x (and NT) through XP. After that, not so much...

The only post XP version that is any decent is 7. The rast *ALL* *STINK* (starting with server 2k3)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Why move to Windows 11 ?

The hardware that does not support Linux or FreeBSD does not get purchased by me. And for an employer or client to purchase it, when I am the one that needs it for doing work, same thing.

So if it is ONLY supported by 11, chances are it would have to be heavily discounted before any normal person would actually want it...

With 90% COVID-19 vax rate, Intel to step up return-to-office

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: It's about conversation

Telephones work, last I tried. Pretty useful, tnose things. Had a conference call for a court hearing recently. Being that it was 3000 miles away, and I had to participate, having that capability was extremely convenient.

Yes, businesses thrive on communication. But it does not have to be in person. And it does not have to be on a computer, either. That old-style land line comes in handy! (of course you could get a message on IRC or slack saying "hey we wanna do a conference call at 1PM today" and there ya have it.)

So yeah, communication still possible, as it always was, by phone.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Down

Re: Heads in the sand

news flash: the shutdowns, the lockdowns, the masks, the distancing, and event he vaccines have not stopped THE VIRUS. It's a VIRUS. It's what they do. In fact I would argue that "all of that" has SLOWED the normal immune reactions creating herd immunity. and possibly even CREATED NEW VARIANTS outside of the normal natural progression of such things (which would have greatly suppressed those variants), ALL because of gummints and media driving fear and panic and do not doubt me, follow the money, SOMEONE is profiting off of "all that" in some way.

So if you're gonna DOOM and GLOOM over it, you get a big THUMBS DOWN from ME. Enjoy your masking and distancing. *I* refuse to participate.

What this article seems to be about is the one thing that has come out of this COMPLETE AND UTTER BOVINE SEWAGE, and that would be the VERY welcome trend of "Work from Home", and the likeliness that it's here to stay.

bombastic bob Silver badge
WTF?

Re: Delusional thinking

interactions have suffered and businesses are feeling the pain

Interactions "suffered" ? And I have not seen business 'feel any pain' EXCEPT for that created by gummints trying to "solve this" (all of which resulted in quite a BIT of pain, for EVERYONE, because THAT is what gummints DO, cause PAIN, usually in our backsides and/or our wallets).

The biggest pain has been the completely unnecessary disruption of the supply chain. And I think we can blame China (and those companies unwise enough to have placed all eggs in THAT basket) for most of it. But as for working from home? It has most likely been an overall BENEFIT.

And as I mentioned before, a hybrid work environment, where you do work from home AND show up in an office whenever it makes sense to do so, is probably the best solution ever.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: WFH is here to stay

I think you'll find that being in the office and the rate of getting sick from being around others at work is not going to be a whole lot different than in the past, and for those who live their lives in fear over it, they'll only be doing themselves a disfavor. It's time: Time to get back to the REAL normal, except with more time working from home whenever possible because we CAN. And, employers have been taught (by now) that it IS possible (and probably better in the long run).

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: WFH is here to stay

their idea of management was being able to see the back of your head.

heh. yeah we've all seen THAT kind of 'management' before.

(or you could just install a slow scan low resolution webcam behind your desk, and just 'loop it' with recorded video when you're drinking adult beverages or viewing online content)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: WFH is here to stay

They idea of the 'hybrid' work environment might simply be 9one that works well for me, where you do most of the REAL work in your home office, but show up when there's meetings or office equipment or things to bring back/forth during hours where high traffic is not a problem. So you basically go in when it makes sense (and usually it won't, heh), and/or for only part of the day, and work from home the rest of the time. WIn-win.

With the exception of on-site-only kinds of positions where "being there" is a requirement (we can all think of THOSE kinds of things, from hospitals to warehouses to retail) a hybrid work environment might be the best thing ever.

Russian devs plan alternative Android app store after Google Play bans paid apps

bombastic bob Silver badge
Stop

Re: The proletariat

your use of the communist manifesto term 'proletariat' is disturbing...

FTC sues Intuit for false advertising, says 'free' TurboTax isn't always free

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: I pay for Turbo Tax

agreed, with the K1 forms and other stuff associated with having income come through a corporation, it's usually the cheaper option just to use their software and pay the e-file fees. An accountant costs more and you're essentially buying the amount of time you would be spending,. and costs of mailing stuff the old way.

(it's how they stayed in business by providing such a service at low cost)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: So true

Maybe what we REALLY need to blame is an OVERLY COMPLEX TAX SYSTEM.

I like what Reagan managed to get done around 1986 - the one page form. And if it were ME designing the system, I'd have it down to a 3x5 card. Flat rate, no deductions (except for individals in your households), and if you report business income on your personal tax filing there would be a separate (but simple) form for all of that. But then you would not need to have an army of IRS agents, nor a cottage industry of tax software and accounting firms...

(and politicians would lose MUCH of the control and power and influence that they wield)

The first step to data privacy is admitting you have a problem, Google

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: How often do we get to hear "Sorry"......

"Sorry we got caught doing something egregious"

Happens often enough to wonder what they did NOT get caught doing...

Linux kernel patch from Google speeds up server shutdowns

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: I've figured out even quicker shutdowns

at least he didn't plug the vacuum cleaner into the UPS...

GNOME 42's inconsistent themes are causing drama

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Wheels to Reinvent

Modern UIs feel like they've gone backwards in the last 20 years

(even though you did use the 'F' word, 'feel' - heh)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Childcatcher

The problem (in their minds, as I see it) is that if users make CHOICES, it may not be the "right" choice (according to their 'feelz').

So "they" must TAKE CHOICE AWAY, "for our own good".

(I posted the 'One look to rule them all' parody earlier so I'll just make reference to it instead)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Joke

Re: I've loathed "themes" and "skins"

instead of interfacing with the user, you give them an experience

Reminds me of a light bulb joke

Q: "How many people from Silicon Valley does it take to change a light bulb?"

A: "Three, One to change the bulb, and 2 to 'share in the experience'."

(even though in California, selling traditional light bulbs is now ILLEGAL. Go fig... maybe that helps to EXPLAIN THE INSANITY)

/me humming song by Jimmy Hendrix now... ":Have you been experienced?"

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Waiter! There's an ad in my gnome!

MOZILLA FIREFOX I'm STILL lookin' at YOU!!!

here's how I eliminate their Adwaita takeover. You need to specify a theme, though, and my preference is TraditionalOk

From the command line:

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

From about:config

widget.content.gtk-theme.override = TraditionalOk

widget.non-native.theme.enabled = false

(that should fix it, YMMV on using a different theme name)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: I've loathed "themes" and "skins"

And FFS stop changing things just for the sake of change. We learned that lesson a long time ago...

Once a project has been maintained long enough for original developers to retire (or move on to other projects), such that the inexperienced CHILDREN take over, because "It is OUR turn now", the end result is likely to be a series of UNWANTED and UNNECESSARY changes, which [for something like Gnome] has been nothing but DISAPPOINTMENT for a LOT of us.

2D FLATSO interfaces, in general, fall directly into this pattern. It is a BAD trend, and has been since Gnome 3 as far as i can tell (when it seems to have begun).

(I could easily use CSS to make buttons and stuff look 3D skeuomorphic, or at least have a nice shadow effect, if they INSIST that everything be like a web page based on CSS... but CSS requires a bloatware browser engine to render it. i rest my case on that one)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pint

Re: Arrogance reminiscent of Microsoft (i.e. just suck it up).......that would be the GNOME folk!

A *BRILLIANT* collection of links. Thanks!

From the 2nd one (Linus): "I want my sane interfaces back. I have yet to meet anybody who likes the unholy mess that is gnome-3."

From the 3rd one: GTK 4 is a major new version of GTK that breaks both API and ABI compared to GTK 3.x (Yes - they REALLY! SAID! THAT!!!)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: I hate "modern" UIs.

From the article, regarding libadwaita: "The purpose of this is to help developers conform to the new GNOME Human Interface guidelines"

One look to rule them all

One look to find them

One look to bring them all

And in the FLATNESS, *BIND* *THEM*

Muahahahahaha!

(or that's how I imagine their arrogantly top-down 2D FLATSO UI design tyranny to have become this way)

GTK4 - you can take your Adwaita and SHOVE IT UP YOUR UI!!!

(NOBODY *COMPELS* ME - I *REBEL* INSTEAD!)

I'm sure Mate and Cinnamon will continue to get the REAL support, while these ARROGANT LOONS jump off the 2D FLATTY "modern" CLIFF. Enjoy your 'customer base' of fanatics. The rest of us that want to get REAL work done will install something ELSE.

(Worthy of mention, Devuan to eliminate systemd for Linux, and the BSDs as well)

The wild world of non-C operating systems

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: extensions to VMS

DEC operating systems at that time were not the most secure. RSTS/E had a program called 'init' that would often be publically runnable and (necessarily) with the privilege bit set. As a college student I experimented with it and discovered that you could send it commands like "LOGIN KBxx" and it would log KBxx in with whatever account you specified, and NO password required. Ooops. Ginormous security crater built right in. (this program runs the RSTS/E startup sequence - another simh exercise and you'll see it in action - somewhere there is an RSTS/E image you can DL and run under simh, i found one)

A lot of RSTS/E was written in BASIC and compiled into a kind of P-code. But I am pretty sure the kernel was done in the MACRO assembly language.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: RISC OS

As I recall, RT-11 (Dec PDP-11) is also written entirely in assembler. It's quasi-open-source in that you can compile in your own device drivers along with the standard ones. As a runtime OS it was designed to control equipment and so i understand that the 'Unibus' and 'Q Bus' architectures were designed with custom peripheral boards in mind. RT-11 had foreground and backround capability and with memory management hardware, could swap blocks of memory in and out of visibility. Anyway, experiment with simh if you are so inclined (I have). Built the kernel a couple of times from source even, making fixes here and there for various things. But some of the userland programs may have been written in FORTRAN or some other lingo. Still kinda fun to toy with. And then when you see PDP-11 op codes doing post-increment and pre-decrement you can easily see how that ended up in the C language.

1,000-plus AI-generated LinkedIn faces uncovered

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

back when I was in high school...

(somewhat of a joke alert as well)

Back when I was in High School some students made up a fake student to mess with the substitute teacher's head. They turned in homework, and did other things to make the student seem real. I had my picture taken as this student and it ended up in the yearbook. (another guy did something similar, when he saw me doing it, someone who had a real chance at a sports career in baseball, though i never actually saw his name on any team)

So, why not just create fake profiles for fun? (not like nobody ever did this with a fake name on some platform someplace...)

(Still leveraging them for profit is an odd twist, but not an unexpected one)

C: Everyone's favourite programming language isn't a programming language

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Annnnd...you completely missed the point of the article

a very good distinction. This is correct, you cannot jump into the middle of a 'scope' or it will throw an error if you try to do or access anything that is "out of scope". It's also why I tend to avoid using goto except for error handling.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Annnnd...you completely missed the point of the article

Parallelism, hardware threading, systolic arrays, NUMA, immutibility of records, transactional memory, mailboxes, caching, segmented memory architectures...

Ah, I haven't written that kind of stuff in quite a while, though my past experience in the 90's comes in handy working with microcontrollers.

I wrote a nice sort demo tool (first wth MFC, then later adapted to wxWidgets, but for all practical purposes C code with some C++ thingies in there for the GUI) that has a multi-threaded quick sort that uses a bit of what you mentioned. Multi-thread quick sort, DFT, and even a 'value of Pi' program, all somewhat trivial multi-threaded algorithms. Not hard, 'CreateThread' for Win32 or 'pthread_create' in POSIX and you can do it, too. And do not forget background IO processes, semaphores, queues, and all of the other stuff that goes with it.

All in 'C'. Not a problem.

(I even wrote a cooperative threading library for 16-bit windows, to help solve performance issues, and it worked VERY well - and I solved the segmented memory issue by use of USE32 code but of course by then 8086/88 and 80286 processors were no longer in use)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: C int

don't forget that on ARM the char type is unsigned, but signed nearly everyplace else.

For this reason I have been using the various sys/stdint.h definitions like 'int32_t' etc. for a while now, to avoid the kinds of ambiguity that can arise from various CPU architectures and implementations.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Umm

At least C did away with the execrable 'GOTO <line number>'

Now it is 'goto code_label;'

this construct is highly useful for error handling where 'error_exit' is the label after the main 'return' path, and you clean up resources and display error messages or whatever. VERY useful when doing systems programming, and you'll see it used that way in kernel code

Example on FreeBSD: grep -r goto /usr/src/sys

(over 30,000 lines were generated by this)

I used to be an anti-goto purist. Made a few convoluted code constructs to avoid using 'goto' even. Then I saw it used a lot in kernel code, realized the error of my thinking, and started making things tight and efficient instead.

(did come up with a cheat, to use 'do {' and '} while 0' as macros, where I could use 'break;' to escape it - effectively a 'goto' to the line following the end of that section of code)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Other languages....

I think you could justifiably categorize programming lingos (that aren't assembler) into a few basic categories:

Procedural: This would be things like FORTRAN and COBOL and old-style BASIC

Algol-like: C, Pascal, and all of the derivatives from C++ (and maybe Delphi) to Java and (possibly) Rust

Scripted: shell/Bash, Perl, PHP, and probably Python (though some of this may be debatable)

and maybe another category for object-oriented, but that's debatable, too.

And so the difference between C/C++ and Rust might simply be semantics, unless you are a fan of garbage collection memory management (which should be drawn and quartered and embedded on pikes at the edges of the realm as a warning to those who might DARE to try that AGAIN...)

the real horror began with trying to make scripting lingos "object oriented" though I admit a Perl module can often solve problems that are otherwise VERY difficult, simply because someone else did a LOT of work to make it possible...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

Re: Some incorrect assumptions

I looked at the link in your post under 'decent set of rules' and gave it a quick glance. Not only did it advocate the use of Allman style indents and braces, it also said "The tab character (ASCII 0x09) shall never appear within any source code file.".

It has my approval!

(that way the editor or merge tool or viewing tool you use does not affect the appearance of the code)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Annnnd...you completely missed the point of the article

C programmers are so entrenched in their belief of superiority that they dismiss the inherent problems in the design and (current) implementation of the language on modern computers, computers that are logarithmically more complex than the computers the language was originally designed to run on

Computers made of 'straw'? OK that was a different kind of 'logic'. [Bad PUNishment. yeah]

I noticed you also used the word 'modern'. I am reminded of how THAT has been misused to describe "fad of the week", usually another FLATSO user interface or some "new, shiny" something that's trying to become relevant.

Seriously I have not seen any CPU or system designs, with the exception of quantum computing, where a programming lingo like C would NOT be useful. (for quantum computing I'm still waiting for a programming model that actually works)

(If it can run Linux, it can be programmed in C)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Nothing new, kinda pathetic really

Language purity is for academic papers, not doing work in the real world

see icon

Beijing to build Communist training college in a metaverse

bombastic bob Silver badge
Big Brother

Virtual Reality Communism indoctrination theme park?

This gives "Social Credit Score" an entirely new meaning (and level of intrusive Big Brother-dom)

I imagine seeing Stepford smilers and dystopian imagery, everywhere.

Do not forget the subliminal brainwashing and use of music and flashy lights to condition "good comrade" behavior.

[this goes WAY beyond slapping lipstick on a boar, oinky end or not]

(the fine print in the VR thingy says: this session may be monitored for future reference)

Debugging source is even harder when you can't stop laughing at it

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I missed a lot of fun.

Regarding only n-characters of variable name uniqueness...

I think they fixed that in FORTRAN 77 but in earlier FORTRAN 66 that was probably true for most compilers. 77 added other more structured syntaxes, like if/else and so forth [if i remember correctly]. i haven't worked with FORTRAN since the 90's but even then you had cases of older 66 code being used alongside 77 code simply because earlier machines only had 66 compilers... (and so the original code had been "maintained" for long enough it still had 66 syntax in a lot of places)

[the code in question ran on VAX and HP3000 systems)

I forget if Pascal and early MS C compilers did the same thing, but with more than 5 or 6 characters...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

I can't stop laughing after reading your post...

Kaspersky, China Telecom, China Mobile named 'threats to US national security'

bombastic bob Silver badge
Stop

Re: Dummies’R’Us ....... Sign Up Here, Please

Did YOU just compare Trump to Putin?

Sealed, confidential IBM files in age-discrimination case now public to all

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Experience

We'll be in caves again in the next few hundred years if we allow them.....

Maybe, but they'd be Caves™ and "new, shiny!" ones, at that

Samba 4.16 release strips away more SMB 1

bombastic bob Silver badge
Stop

Re: Symlinks are the underlying problem.

symlinks have ruined the POSIX filesystem API

I completely disagree. There is NO other way to alias a directory except with a symlink for "reasons".

/me uses symlinks a LOT and it's integral with programs like busybox (common for embedded) that have to use the program name you invoked it with in order to determine what functionality to implement.

Symlinks have been around since before UNIX anyway. Data General used them, for example.

(or did you mean something different?)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

well if a machine config'd to use SMB1 were compromised, it's theoretically possible to crack the rest of your network, depending.

This is why I would not allow any Samba SERVER to support SMB1, but would stlll want at least a version of smbclient to support it to access legacy windows computers that have no SMB2 support.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

I cannot remember if Cygwin supports NFS but the old Interix/SFU/SUA does. Is that even available any more? I think the last version ran on XP and maybe 2k3 but that was it.

perhaps a legacy client-only version of SMB1 could continue (so you can use smbclient to access shares on legacy versions of windows that do not have SMB2) but as far as operating as a server, I do not want it configured to use SMB1 for any of my Samba daemons...

From the article: Though SMB 1 is disabled by default in today's Samba, there's an ongoing effort to allow the project to be built without it entirely.

Yes. A configure option would be PERFECT.

(And maybe also an option to build an SMB1-friendly version of smbclient for those who might want it, maybe call it smb1client)

Complaints mount after GitHub launches new algorithmic feed

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

and THEN putting lipstick onto the non-oinky end of the boar

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

No. Just No. NO "FEEDS". No.

Programmers just want to program

That SOCIAL SHIT just gets in the way

How legacy IPv6 addresses can spoil your network privacy

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I don't care what the experts say....

Maybe to prevent anyone on the Internet to initiate a connection with devices on your internal network

true but a decent firewall (rather than some form of NAT) would do the same job, and probably with lighter resource requirements...

Those firewall settings could be generic enough, basically block the usual things such as SMB, RPC, telnet, ftp, X protocol, VNC ports (unless you REALLY want that and I strongly discourage it), etc. as well as anything that shows up when you use 'netstat -an' on a windows box...

[so yeah your average El Reg reader's firewall].

A typical NAT router _could_ (and IMBO *should*) implement this out of the box.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I don't care what the experts say....

there are free IPv4 to IPv6 tunnels out there. I've been using he.net for a long time.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I don't care what the experts say....

no NAT for IPv6

well there IS a spec but I have not heard great things about it nor widespread use (other than NAT-PT which is IPv6<->IPv4 and not what you were looking for, probably)

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc6296/

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Underwhelming

All IPv6 addresses (with a few exceptons) are public.

For privacy, it looks like we should use VPNs or SOCKS proxies.

An ISP could provide this service or you could just use the Tor network so long as it has IPv6 exit points (I do not know, probably does, my guess).

Seriously though if you have a fixed IP(v6) address (like a home office or a business) you just assume you're being tracked, and an IPv6 /64 will be trackable based on the prefix anyway. So yeah, for true privacy, Tor or a proxy or a VPN..

And tracking is the LEAST of the problems. A windows box with an IPv6 address that is NOT firewalled by a non-windows "something" is like being promiscuous in a series of adulterous activities. NOT a matter of IF you get a virus (or whatever), but WHEN.

(I remember WinNuke, and I still see ALL of those open ports on any windows box connected to my network, and Micros~1 firewall does not, In My Bombastic Opinion, inspire ANY sense of confidence and/or security for stopping malware or outright attacks)

Oracle's compliance cops now include Java in license audits

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Hope this kills Java quickly enough...

replacements like Kotlin suck even worse.

Kotlin... *urp* whew that was close! (where's that pink liquid at...)

I've been using OpenJDK and OpenJRE for quite a while now, on FreeBSD. Builds from source, bo problems noted.

How not to attract a WSL (or any) engineer

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: The motivation?

or WORSE, demands a LARGER HR DEPARTMENT managed by the same people who think up questionaires like this. After all, if they're not finding enough applicants, they just need MORE PEOPLE in HR to read and filter MORE RESPONSES!

Wow a train wreck! Let's fix it, by sending MORE TRAINS!! (saw that in a Futurama episode when every human except for one got really stupid when the giant brains invaded)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: This process is widespread at Canonical

I have to ask who is wasting time reading the responses to those questions... and what silly questions were THOSE PEOPLE asked in order to be hired to read people's answers to even SILLIER questions... and it goes on and on and on and on in my mind, like a bad bureaucratic nightmare from HELL...

(how can a company like this make money?)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: This process is widespread at Canonical

The blatant use of "singular 'they'" (i.e. BAD GRAMMAR in the name of political correctness) would have put me off immediately.