Posts by bombastic bob 10282 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015
FYI - it's been MY observation that *MOST* hackers are of the white hat variety, and are either doing IT and security, or some kind of engineering. The thing your company invents and sells to make money was PROBABLY invented by *HACKERS*.
So 6,666 hackers is a *GOOD* thing.
The term 'hacker' probably originated from the description of someone who builds furniture with an axe, or basically "someone who regularly uses unconventional solutions to problems". See 'Jargon File'.
"None of that would be in place for a Win 7 source dump"
I _WHOLEHEARTEDLY_ disagree with you on this. I, for one, would _GLADLY_ fork it, make fixes, and issue pull requests. It is likely that MANY would be willing to take charge over the project, or at least a fork of it, FOR GRATIS, *just* to get support in something "NOT Win-10-nic" that runs EXISTING software.
I've contributed to several open source projects, usually when I have a need (or I find a serious bug or deficiency and submit a fix along with the bug report). I'm not an official developer for any of them, but this is typical of "peer support":, where "some user out there" fixes a problem and submits it and it becomes part of the project.
the argument that "open source leads to hacking" has been COMPLETELY disproved by history with Linux and the BSDs.
For every evil hacker who would bother doing such a thing, there are MANY white-hat security expert hackers willing to FIX those problems BEFORE they become 0-day exploits. THAT is what you see in the open source world, WAY more often than not.
"Closed Source" is _NOT_ more secure. The "serious bug" rates of Linux, the BSDs, and open source software in general, as compared to, say, WINDOWS 10 ALONE, is STAGGERINGLY DIFFERENT, and *EASILY* demonstrates how open source is MORE secure, because it *IS* peer reviewed!
"If Microsoft made Windows 7 open source, many people would use it instead of the abomination known as Windows 10"
this was more or less what I wanted to say, so thanks for saying it.
Since _ONLY_ _STRONGARM_ _TACTICS_ caused MOST people to "up"grade from 7 to Win-10-nic [in my opinion], with a *SMALL* number of exceptions, I'm sure Micro-shaft will *BURY* all versions prior to 10 whenever they get the chance to do so.
The chance of open-source licensing Windows XP is probably even WORSE... for that very reason! (so ReactOS may be our only remaining hope...)
But I think FSF didn't market their petition very well. I didn't know it existed. I would have considered signing as long as it didn't get my e-mail address *EXPLOITED* in the process...
I really don't like JSON for a number of reasons. Mostly it's just CUMBERSOME. What people have done with it in Python (as one example) and Java Script is (in many cases) facepalm-worthy. XML isn't much better, and can be JUST as hideous. When I ask what I'd RATHER WRITE A PARSER for [_NOT_ using someone's canned inefficient license-encumbered crap-library I could re-write myself in a few hours] I prefer XML, but only just barely.
And if MY code relies on something that can be updated by someone OUTSIDE OF MY CONTROL, then it NEEDS A RE-WRITE to AVOID that. _I_ do not want the "midnight panic phone call" from a customer that was caused by SOMEONE ELSE "being an idiot" [or installing some game or crappy utility that overwrote a shared lib, etc.].
But this whole thing about shared libs and BLINDLY RELYING ON OTHERS (particularly on teh intarwebs) has gotten a bit out of control...
Back in the 90's, Microsoft *ENCOURAGED* us all to use shared libs for C runtime and MFC and whatnot. These libs were even included with the OS. I fell for it. THEN, an application I was working on for a customer would not run in Win '95 OSR2. Turns out *THEY* *POOCH* *SCREWED* the MFC libs' ODBC implementation by CHANGING THE ABI [and didn't bother to tell anyone]. So Win '95 MFC libs and Win32s MFC libs worked fine. Win '95 OSR2, followed by WIn 98 [and others] did _NOT_. [and 'just upgrading the libs' with 'newer versions' wasn't an option - remember DLL HELL ??? Win32s was involved, here. You couldn't "just do that", end-users were running Win 3.11 or '95 and the application needed to support that]
My solution: re-compile MFC from source as "differently named" shared libs and dynamically link to those instead [since the solution I was going wtih *REQUIRED* the shared MFC]. For every (windows) project SINCE then, I statically link *EVERYTHING*. *PERIOD*. (For open source, I just ship source and use the OS default when it's built)
YMMV of course, if you have cloud-based code and just want to use someone's "simple thing" implementation, but you should at LEAST consider HOSTING IT YOURSELF to avoid "THIRD PARTY UPDATE HELL". Or do you *LIKE* getting "the midnight panic call" from customers?
I wouldn't call JSON "lighter weight" ...
how about just using a format that YOU like? I like tab-delimited files for simple columnar data. arbitrary white space delimited works for utilities like 'awk', and so a tab-delimited file can often be passed through awk. It also works when pasting into a spreadsheet, and (mostly) deals with text data that has embedded spaces in it.
Or if you don't like that, use something else. The only real point here is "a file format" that is standard enough for data interchange, so think about how it's gonna be used, and pick a format.
seems that EU citizens already employed inside UK _IS_ the reason for the policy. This would help prevent chaos, for sure.
I wish U.S. policies on immigration would JUST stick to allowing those who have skills that benefit the nation (like scientists and engineers and doctors and NOT unskilled laborers and people looking for handouts). It's really hard to stop a gravy train though... (right Donald?) so best NOT to start one!
25 years ago there were FTP sites in Finland that had source code and various white papers [in English] on encryption methods.
Dur, dur-dur-dur. Dur-dur. Dur-dur (can't touch this)
I propose something very very similar, "in the cloud" or just EVERYWHERE in EVERY open source OS distro that exists, as a free GPL'd application with no back doors or tracking, etc.. kinda like libdvdcss [which for some reason is no longer easily available for windows... but certainly there for Linux and FreeBSD!!!]
the same idiots whine about GUN CONTROL too, same logic.
Only now, in SOME places, it's even *KNIFE CONTROL*. Go fig.
Nothing like a "solution" in search of a "problem" to EMPOWER POLITICIANS and CONTROL OUR LIVES EVEN MORE...
Just keep the source files for *STRONG* public key encryption available to EVERYONE AROUND THE WORLD, and make it SO easy to use with FREE open source applications, specifically ones that do not track nor advertise, that the genie can NEVER be put back into the bottle, and ANYONE can have strong, un-crackable encryption IN SPITE OF *THEM*.
posting to USENET, open source OS projects, and the various www archive servers is a good start...
[at one time the BEST encryption resources were FTP sites in FINLAND - back in the 90's]
it would be somewhat trivial to write an Android application to provide strong encryption for use in a mounted file system using existing algorithms, let's say PGP and IDEA for starters. All it would need to do is look like an external storage device plugged in via USB. Not that hard to do with Linux. I think there are already file-baed mountable file system drivers already for Linux. Just adapt one of those... run it in userland (like Fuse FS) and voila!
dunno if you'd have to jail-break a phone to do that... but it would certainly be possible if you did.
/me has experimented with native libs on Android already. The next step is a userland file system like Fuse FS and the ability to mount them. Then *ANY* application could store files in an encrypted file system with strong un-crackable non-back-doored protection, a HUGE hash-based key, and maybe even biometrics and/or bibliograhical pass phrases - your favorite book chapter X and paragraph N, as an example!
"MS is transitioning to Linux"
I wish they were, but it's more like "Embrace Extend Extinguish'. They are on step 1.
Although _I_ would actually PAY FOR a Wine-like layer that MS blesses and supports... where I can run Win32 applications, and ALSO do Linux stuff, and ALSO pick a 3D Skeuomorphic desktop (like 'Mate' with the a classic theme) rather than the Win-10-nic 2D FLATTY FLATASS McFLATSO FLUGLY that a bunch of clueless just-out-of-college "developers" *CRAMMED* down all of the customers' throats, courtesy of Ms. Larson-Greene [inventor of the ribbon] and Sinofsky, starting with Windows "Ape" (8).
And this is ALSO why none of us were surprised at that "accidental/bug" wallpaper problem as the very last "screw you" (read: update similar to GWX) from Micro-shaft.
/me points out I haven't updated my dedicated accounting and music production Windows 7 box, which NEVER goes online with a web browser, for over 3 years! And it STILL WORKS! All those "up"dates, _SO_ overrated! For safe web surfing, uh, practice "safe surfing".
so many possible references to the same *kind* of appliance...
Clue-by-four
Clue-bat
Clue-hammer
but my favorite is STILL the Cat-5-o-nine-tails
I once made one using 4 cat 5 ethernet cables that came with wifi access points, being too primitive for modern networking (so they were in a boneyard bin), and I used a modified noose-not which gave me a nice handle and 9 perfect "tails" with plastic ethernet thingies on the ends - ouch! Took a photo even, hanging on a cube wall.
ack. Back in the day, Benz had a patent on "the automobile" and wouldn't let Ford make cars, at ALL, because they simply refused to license the patent to Ford. So Ford literally CHALLENGED THEIR PATENT and its validity, and WON. Since then, pretty much EVERYONE owns cars, and NOT just "the very rich".
Similarly with APIs and protocols. Using a copyright to STIFLE COMPETITION or determine who can play in the sandbox - this is what it's about.
you anti-Trumpers just gotta get yer 'digs' in.... even with POSITIVE topics like launching more rockets to the moon, because HUMAN space exploration IS cool, and don't forget why NASA is actually DOING this (Trump, that's why).
Using 'spare parts' like that is actually not a new concept from a sitting U.S. President. Reagan had the DOJ bring a few WW2 battleships out of mothballs, with modern weaponry and electronics, at a major overall cost savings, Same idea.
icon, because, facepalm
I suspect that KDE's Konqueror, Gnome's Nautilus, or Mate's Caja could view a Samba share with an "explorer view" that would do the same thing that IE users want to do with SharePoint.
I've already seen references to using Konqueror with 'WebDAV://" URLs and also something called 'davfs2' to mount SharePoint shares onto the Linux file system. So it seems that there are actual SOLUTIONS to these problems already for Linux.
(might as well just run Linux, then!)
This is one very valid side of the argument. The other side suggests that there aren't enough U.S. Citizens to do the job.
I think the truth is somewhere down the middle, but much closer towards the 'Silicon Valley Wage Suppression' side...
maybe they should move their headquarters to a place where the cost of living is REASONABLE?
after discovering she had more than 256 items, I suppose the thief sent the remainder of the items back in order to make the number 256 happen.
Well I hope they get a proper museum exhibit, at any rate, if not just for the fact they're Turing's items, for the fact that someone stole them.
And I think this woman sounds too much like some kind of stalker... taking trophies... did she talk to his ghost [in her mind or otherwise] ? At some point will 'crazy' become a defense for her?
I'm almost 60 years old, I *HATE* C-pound and ".Not", but used to like Visual Studio before the 2000's when they went all "VB propery sheet" and became HARD! TO! USE! for typists - all that moving my right hand off of home row to mousie-clickie where a HOT KEY used to do the job!!!
MS's IDE has sucked too much following Visual Studio '98 where it actually made sense - well, for C/C++ devs at any rate. And that's what I do. And that's what I want. And yet I'm still forking over the $800/year for MSDN, because I need it on occasion for customers. It's a net gain, but not much gain.
The latest crop of "feelies" making BAD decisions ("feeling", not THINKING) "on behalf of us developers" first resulted in ".Not", then C-pound, and *ULTIMATELY* "The Metro" and UWP and the 2D FLATASS look.
And they want to prove WHAT now by putting their ".Not" lipstick on Windows 3.11 ???
Hey Microsoft, make sure you apply it to the end that goes OINK!
don't forget THIS gem: "C# remains popular, ranked sixth after JavaScript, Java, Python, PHP and C++"... forgetting the fact that ".Not" and/or "C-pound" are less than 10% of the total amount of development going on, and THE MOST POPULAR lingo (Java) just happens to be cross-platform...
though the current group of free IDEs really disappoint me (IntelliJ, Eclipse, etc.) there are some people who like SlickEdit [I've seen but not used it, long ago] and I just use Pluma and the command line tools.
Recently a friend of mine, who was a ".Not" developer some 10+ years ago, sent e-mails around about finding work. My suggestion: learn cloud and Kubernetes, something with an actual FUTURE.
looks like something disabled the older "lan manager" share method, the SMB protocol version 1 I think it was. It was insecure, but not *THAT* insecure. If you're only doing local shares, between XP VMs and 7, shouldn't be a problem I'd think, to re-enable it. Might have to hack the registry though. Some "UP"date probably turned it off.
"whereas with C/C++ any old pointer could be wild."
Not when you write the code properly. An experienced kernel programmer would know this.
(if you're talking new college grads first time trying their hand at coding, that's completely different, but when you've been coding longer than those people have been ALIVE... *NO* need to limit things or over-generalize the 'paranoid case' just because SOME people just aren't competent enough)
there are many reasons I do not use the Rust language, low-level code efficiency being one of the big ones.
I don't much like their model for threading either. I'd must rather hand-tweek my own algorithms based on the understanding of the system they run on, Then you can decide whether the overhead of a job queue is worth the performance benefits of spawning multiple threads, from the total number of simultaneous jobs you can run [based on the total # of CPU cores available], to the nature of the threads themselves (do they have I/O wait states or in any way lock global objects or cause priority inversion) and so forth.
And when you've been coding long enough, you can use pointers SAFELY. It becomes SAFE CODE because you WROTE IT to BE SAFE.
There's really no substitute for proper design and techniques, ESPECIALLY _NOT_ some "new, shiny" language that pretends there IS...
my language of preference: C, or C++ when the need arises. It usually doesn't. And good C++ code looks very much like good C code.
yeah this "community" thing usually gets conceived as something *really* *nauseating*, all "touchy feely" and "we all just get along", which is the EXACT opposite of STARK REALITY.
A "community" (read: small group) of contributors who submit patches and occasional features is fine, but SOMEONE has to have the gonads to say YES or NO to all of that. Because, we do NOT all "just get along". There are agendas and personal vendettas and crusades and "i want this feature dammit" and so on... and *WAY* too much *FEEL*.
maybe this is why what the CUSTOMERS (i.e. end-users) want has become such a LOW priority these days... you know, like with major ball-busting changes like Australis, Gnome 3's UI, 2D FLATSO, removal of user customization, EVERYTHING looks like Chrome and CHROME LOOKS LIKE CRAP (all bright blue on blinding white), et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...
"Large swaths of the open source community have become intolerable"
This is why you need a project manager with a heavy hand that isn't afraid to say "no", or even "NO!" or "*HELL NO*!!!", as well as enforcing coding style consistency, and putting certain kinds of pull requests permanently on the shelf.
Someone like Linus, let's say. .. WITH the profanity and unafraid to insult people. [I particularly like his comments regarding 'compiler masturbation' by which he meant using "new, shiny" features simply because they were there, not because they were better or easier to maintain - which in the cases he pointed out, were NOT]
"People publish Open Source software because they're hobbyists who think others might find their work useful."
Although I am certain that there are many people who fall into this particular category, you are being QUITE arrogant if you make the assumption that ONLY "hobbyists" publish open source.
I had someone say "hobby" with respect to a serious hardware project I had designed for my own company. I considered that to be BOTH condescending AND arrogant. Well, *THAT* guy's contract ended early, for a number of reasons, in a major project we were both involved in. He was one of those "UX" designers who "worked" by slapping canned packages together, writing sloppy code that barely worked, and calling it "a user interface". Oh, wait, that's "User eXperience". *facepalm* (he couldn't meet design deadilnes, even acted out and deliberately interfered with getting things done - last I heard, he applied to work for the EPA, suits him perfectly I guess)
yeah, _I_ took over his duties, and actually made the thing work, cursing his name and choices for MONTHS... [customers happy with it though]
"If your project is successful and popular you will attract the slugs, the uses who want it to do everything for them but aren't prepared to contribute."
well said!
Also a corollary of that: don't try to make your project do TOO much or it will bloat into an uncontrollable mass of feature creep. If the 85/15 rule applies, let's say 15% of the effort going into 85% of the functionality, and the rest of the functionality (15%) taking up 85% of the time and/or amount of code to support it.
Contrast this to the UNIX principle of "do one thing, well".
So at some point, all of that extra functionality should become add-ons and not built-ins. Then when the slugs complain about "no feature" you can say "write a plugin, contribute it, and then it will do what you want". So simple!
then again, if you do like Firefox and CHANGE THE API such that the old plugins break...
I would also expect that later down the road, as more companies get involved into space, that NASA will make it possible for OTHERS to qualify, using the standards set with Boeing and SpaceX.
There's [apparently] a government expense, though, in qualifying the candidates, so for now, there are two... and then once we have suppliers, others get into the game.
I suppose Virgin's hybrid attempt might be a possibility at some point.
Imagine 100 years ago when airlines were first forming. I expect it's a bit like that. Only thing is that the cost for entering the new private sector space race is considerably higher than "just get yourself a big biplane and learn to fly it".
when you buy things with tax money, it goes into the pockets of the corporate investors and employees.
Why is _THIS_ a problem? Better to buy "something" (in this case, rockets) than just HAND IT OUT TO PEOPLE WHO WILL DEMAND MORE AND MORE AND MORE...
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