Posts by bombastic bob

Re: Pot? Kettle?

The Pot called the Kettle "Aluminum"

Icon, because, snark

Re: No!

paperclips are also useful for opening desk locks when the keys are inside the drawer

Re: 25 years and still a pain to use

Hard to use and the developers are more interested in adding new features than improving usability.

I'm curious, would you expect a "modern" (*cough* *cough* *cough*) interface to be migrated to instead of adding NEW features [and NOT breaking the old ones nor re-inventing the UI in the process] ???

Isn't the entire point of software DEVELOPMENT to a) improve existing features by making them work more efficiently or enhancing their abilities and b) do so without breaking what people are already doing with it?

And I say this with the full snark that's due for ALL of those projects whose managers *FEEL* as if they have to completely (and capriciously) re-invent the user interface to comply with whatever "So and So" is doing to THEIRS... or maybe just whatever's trending at the moment on some social media platform.

So, my love of gimp INCLUDES its having kept that very stable familiar user interface every time I update it, which is still pretty much the same thing I've grown used to over the years, quirks and all. I suppose there are similar graphic editors out there that could be considered "even more complex", like Blender...

but that's the point - they found something that worked, and aren't "scampering about" trying to re-invent something that works, instead they are focusing their LIMITED available development time on things that ACTUALLY IMPROVE it.

Re: Can you really get a version that says "Bringing on........

there is a real need out there that is being served.

Not only that, but there have not been any *RADICAL* *RE-DEFINITIONS* of the existing interface, either!!! (and if there were, I'd consider FORKING it to resist any "change for the sake of change" like we see in OTHER things... mutter mutter mutter)

Once you learn how it works, gimp is an 'easy to hack with' way of editing graphical things. I've created lots of useful work-related and fun-related graphics with it. Photo editing is easy, and the 'rope select' lets you chop off sections and move them, etc. even things like pasting a head from one photo onto a different body for laughs, easily re-adjusting for size and so on.

Worthy of mention, the stretch/perspective tools are pretty intuitive, so you can do the head-pasting trick, or take a blank wall or computer screen or white board that's at an angle in the photo, and then paste text and/or graphics on it, like with a funny 'meme' thing, and do so easily and with good quality results (as in 'it looks believable' if you do it right).

There are a few things that Windows does more easily, and I'd used the old MS Office photo editor before. The older MS Paint from before the "ribbon" appeared has a few features like making circles and rectangles and filling them with a color, for example, as well as bezier curves, and stuff like that. However, I usually don't do "those things" and maybe there's a "Script Fu" thing written out there that WOULD do them... [I've found a few hacks for the circles and rectangles already]

All in all, 'gimp' is a VERY useful application! I don't know of anything better in the OSS world.

Re: PrestoChangoSelector...

Then wonder how a company with coders like this came up with IE, Teams and ShitePoint.

I've wondered how a company that came up with the 3D Skeuomorphic look for Windows 3.x _AND_ OS/2 PM 1.2 (or was it 1.3?) could *SUDDENLY* *ABANDON* *IT* *ALL* and *GO* *BACK* to a 2D FLATTY FLATSO look that Windows 1.x and 2.x had... _ESPECIALLY_ since the reason Windows 3.x _WAS_ _SO_ _SUCCESSFUL_ is _EASILY_ explained by that very same 3D Skeuomorphic look that they *ABANDONED* in Windows 8 through 10 !!!

So yeah, same *kind* of frustration, more or less.

Re: What comes next is most interesting

Hopefully RIAA will sod off for a bit

unlikely. they seem to act as if every web site is Napster, and every content consumer is ripping them off or something.

I have one suggestion to RIAA: stop force-marketing CRAP at inflated prices, and if it's good, affordable, AND available for purchase, people WILL pay for it. Suing everyone for revenue is a BAD model, kinda like patent trolling...

Re: Youtube

maybe it was the content of the speeches, and the music was simply "an excuse"... ?

Re: Youtube

and whenever you want video quality that exceeds your bandwidth, or want to play it more than once, the download method makes more sense.

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

but.. but... but... KDE is NOW all 2D FLATTY FLATSO, at least from what I have seen.

At least Mate (based on GTK 2 last I checked) CAN have *Nice* 3D Skeuomorphic and colors, rather than the 2D FLATTY of Chromium, Australis, and Win-10-nic. Similarly, Cinnamon (which, as I understand, uses GTK 3).

Whatever Gnome is doing nowadays, Pfftt.

Re: Sin tax

I use the '?:' syntax frequently enough. If you put them into the arguments passed to 'printf()' you can adjust output based on a value, like:

printf("You answered %s\n", (const char *)(bYesNo != 0 ? "Yes" : "No"));

(but you kinda need to force some parens and type casting in there so certain compilers won't gripe nor get it wrong)

when working with a microcontroller, having ONLY A SINGLE FORMAT STRING for multiple possible outputs saves NVRAM. But of course, YMMV and you probably want to test all possible refactor possibilities before settling for the one with the smallest footprint.

Re: "Why not? K&R is ~250 pages long"

The biggest source of bugs in today's bug ridden software is total reliance on the high level of abstraction imposed by most currently used languages.

'Sauce' on that? Not disagreeing, just curious...

I wouldn't necessarily use 'source of bugs' but rather "source of inefficiencies and bad coding practices".

After having to clean up a DJango web service, by having it invoke some C language utilities to do the REAL work (and getting 10:1 performance benefits as a result, saving MINUTES of 'wait for it to finish' data transfer time for end-users), I can surely sympathize.

Re: Sin tax

Python is magnitudes faster to build clean code that works.

depends on what you're doing. Although I've written sample code in python for things _LIKE_ serial comms demo programs that control a device via USB serial, mostly from the likelihood that doing so would be understandable by the intended audience, I wouldn't use that language to develop anything BEYOND a simple demo, MOSTLY because the handling of binary structures and binary data in general is PATHETIC in Python.

Additionally, the handling of arrays (in general) is ALSO PATHETIC in Python. I suppose the need for binary structure packing as well as array'd data (in general) is kinda the same basic problem...

"Clean code that works" - if your "clean code" is "slap these pre-written 3rd party objects together with 'glue' to become 'an app'", then maybe. As for me I'd rather have COMPLETE CONTROL over EVERY aspect of the code, particularly for high reliability things. No 'midnight phone call' or 'angry customer' for anything _I_ write. (it's also why I like to statically link the installed binaries, even for Linux)

Re: Sounds plausible

13.000 year old tree rings...

fossils maybe? [it could happen...]

This topic also implies the use of various dating methods that include carbon 14 dating. And using tree rings to catalog the variations in C14 for a given year just might help calibrate this dating method in ways that greatly improves its accuracy by (essentially) data modeling the "chaotic" component and creating 'fingerprints' (of sorts) for a particular group of years.

Also reminds me of that Dr. Who episode where the earth was covered in forest for a day or so...

Re: String 'em up!

more than likely they'll move OUT of San Francisco within the year.

I hear other staes like Florida and Texas have corporate friendliness, and MUCH lower cost of living.

Think about it: if you're NOT being taxed at that 'progressive' (read: punitive) rate and your cost of living is HALF of what it was, you could literally AFFORD to be paid 1/3 or even 1/4 of what you WERE being paid, and still live JUST as well as you did before (possibly BETTER). Just convert somve of that wage pay to stock options or 401k or something ELSE that's not immediately taxable, and move to one of THOSE places, and I bet you'll see corporate bottom lines improve AND the CEOs be just as "wealthy" in their lifestyle.

Or you can pay all of your wages in tax, demand a compensating raise, and watch employees get laid off, just for the "privilege" of a San Francisco corporate address...

What they've come up with already sounds exactly like a list of SCI codewords.

or Ubuntu releases

the Google monster is having trouble tracking me with my choice of VPN, browser and add-ons.

It's been my observation that when I do the following:

* use chromium

* erase ALL history in an anal retentive way before I go someplace that uses CAPTCHA

The CAPTCHA puzzles are SIMPLER, and more frequently I just get a checkbox.

Thought I might mention that...

In most cases, I only have to click a checkbox marked I am not a robot;

My experience has demonstrated that CAPTCHA does NOT like you to use non-chromium browsers.

* Nearly every time I use firefox, I have trouble with as many as half of the captchas

* Specifically, the captchas that involve a slow fade-out and slow-fade in of a picture you might need to click because of an object on it *ALWAYS* *FAIL* whenever I use Firefox. This has been going on (sometimes worse, sometimes just bad) for ABOUT A YEAR now.

* There does NOT seem to be any kind of reasonable feedback or customer service contact on this [I have tried, in one case an e-mail address]

* Using FreeBSD and/or Firefox should _NOT_ make you "suspect" nor cause you to get "nothing but the hard ones that require a screen magnifier to solve and involve more than 2 'next/verify' buttons"

* NOT having "the most bleeding edge browser" should _NOT_ make you "suspect" [and it should STILL WORK PROPERLY]

* rejecting 3rd party cookies or setting 'private browsing mode' should NOT make you "suspect"

I have seen government services for the state of California actually USE CAPTCHA which is EXTREMELY ANNOYING because of this sort of thing.

I have also been waiting for a chance to RANT about this where someone else might actually CONFIRM it independently. I do frequent a particular web site that uses captcha to control user posts to (try to) prevent abuse. So I'm basically FORCED to USE CHROMIUM for this.

(but I have great hacks in place to prevent everything I do from being tracked by "that one browser" that doesn't have noscript or cookie blocking or private browsing or any OTHER mitigating 'thing' and I use a script to DUMP ALL HISTORY which is comprehensive and seems to work just fine...)

Re: Why is such a tool needed?

Shirley wget or curl already does a more than adequate job?

youtube-dl de-obfuscates the actual video URLs, downloads higher resolution video than your connection might be capable of live-streaming, AND creates a convenient '.mkv' out of it all [in most cases]. It ALSO does NOT require a java player to view the videos, so for SECURITY, it is MORE than ideal.

The problem is that youtube and the other video sites are busy TRYING TO OUTWIT IT, by changing things frequently, like a moving target. Last week thd tool worked. Next week it MAY NOT. and GOOD LUCK finding out what URL the video is REALLY on without excess MANUAL EFFORT.

This is why the script is SO BRILLIANT and SO POPULAR.

Youtube should just have a "download" button anyway.

Re: Well, no problem, I'm going to rip off GitHub code for my own use....

all we need is ANOTHER LOCATION for the youtube-dl code, maybe somewhere in Finland... or put the tarball on USENET

(why these cloudy repo sites would be so "essential" is beyond me)

And what's to stop OTHER web sites around the world from hosting a mirror? All youtube-dl makers (I use this script myself, so I don't have to watch skippy video) need to do is post a set of links and a set of hashes (along with file size) to verify the thing, and voila! It's not that large anyway (~1.7Mb uncompressed) and consists of a SINGLE python program.

So a paste to USENET might be the easiest way to do it. Now I'll need to subscribe to some of the 'binary' groups

Re: I sure hope X.Org doesn't die off yet

No need for full-quote of your post. BIG thumbs up!

XWayland stacked on Wayland

How to actually make something like this WORK... (but will the alleged CHILDREN working on the Wayland project ever consider such a reasonable proposal from an OLD FART like me?)

* XServer uses X.org implementation "as-is" running like a subsystem layer [my read-up on XWayland just now suggests it is not really like this at all]

* XServer runs independently, NOT invoked by Wayland (so you can have it listen on a TCP socket, just like always, NOT like XWayland currently is, if I read it correctly)

* X11 Video driver and glx and shared memory extensions do the actual work, implemented by X.org as a video driver, and not necessarily a part of Wayland [but with X11 hooks in Wayland as needed]

* OpenGL lib similar to what NVidia does, that does more direct video things at a low level, so you get equal [and possibly better] performance with X11.

* XVideo hooks via the X11 video driver.

This would essentially be 'wayland as a soft video driver'. It would support remote X11, and existing X11 applications without modification. It would essentially use the SAME X.org server code.

But here's what it would NOT do: It would NOT force EVERYONE ELSE to CHANGE, thereby giving up tried/true for the NEW SHINY, sorta like as described in [mentioned again] Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority".

Re: The power of open-source

Get rid of the ancient cruft and add new features, optimising as you go.

I'm not sure there's a LOT of "ancient cruft" there. Some of that still has use, especially for running a GUI application on an embedded system (let's say something in the 100's of Mhz clock frequency ballpark) across a network (let's say a WiFi G network with lots of interference) and still get reasonable UI performance in which the application is still "usable". not like you're playing videos or anything...

I like to think of that "ancient cruft" as "well tested bug-free code".

X11 has a LOT of legacy stuff in it, which I expect is NOT used all that often (except x sample applications like xclock etc.). And better docs for the more recent extensions would be nice, like glx, shared memory extensions, and so on...

Freetype and related stuff are actually add-on libraries.

THAT being said, it is NO excuse to go and ABANDON a working system for "something that more resembles the way Micros~1 does it" like WAYLAND, *ESPECIALLY* when you *LOSE* *CAPABILITIES* that are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!! You know, like the 'DISPLAY' environment variable and REMOTE X server support.

/me uses pluma on an RPi to edit files NEARLY on a daily basis for a major client of mine, using 'DISPLAY' to edit source files on a Linux workstation across the network, often WIRELESSLY. It's a touch screen system, like so many others out there i bet. NO WAY could I do editing on that touch screen, either, and it needs to have the application RUNNING ON THE TOUCH SCREEN to test the code I'm working on. I can't imagine the HORRIBLE INCONVENIENCE AND SLOWDOWN that a LACK of remote X11 capability would cause...

(yeah NOBODY's doing that remote X server thing... right? What, HALF the people who read El Reg do that at least OCCASIONALLY? That sounds about right)

Re: Nobody likes X11

X11 side - (for the clipboard)

Not that hard, and a bit more flexible than it is in the windows world. In theory, within the X11 world, you can store multiple data types on the clipboard (each with its own owner), and not "just one thing" (they don't even have to be for the same object or application, etc.). Additionally it's really not all that hard to make use of in the X11 world. Many clipboard APIs and libraries exist for just about every toolkit I'm aware of. It's more or less a "solved problem" with a lot of sample code available.

I use a background thread and some sync objects (in my own toolkit) to make it appear to work synchronously from the main thread. Copy/Pasta performance is pretty good. The UI is basically seamless, no stuttering or weirdness. code is simple (synchronous call similar to Win32 API in that regard) with the toolkit doing the async stuff in its own thread as needed.

There is a nice command line example 'xclip' that's not all that hard to follow, which lets you access the clipboard from the command line. So if you need clip functionality and are NOT using a toolkit (or are writing your own), this is likely to be very useful to you (it was for me, a long time ago):

https://github.com/astrand/xclip

Question: why abandon something that works and is in long term maintenance mode?

2nd Question: who here has NOT read Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority" ?

Re: Then there's running an X session remotely.....

I'm still not clear how this is supposed to be accomplished in the new spiffy Wayland-only world.

It's not. Wayland becomes a way of FORCING LINUX USERS INTO A MS WINDOWS MODEL, just like systemd and "other Poettering things"

And, according to the article, X.org is *HARDLY* ABANDONWARE. Last commit a few hours ago, right?

If they need more people to keep X.org alive, I'll volunteer MYSELF.

But... I will *NOT* be *FORCED* into *WAYLAND* and *LOSE* the *ONE* *BEST* *FEATURE* of X11 protocol, the use of the DISPLAY environment variable to run on a REMOTE desktop [or the same one, with a different user context].

that word - "modern". Hey RED HAT, I do NOT think that word means what YOU think it means!