Posts by bombastic bob 10282 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015
I expect this was done with a modification so that the normal systems would catch the "unexpected" event, thus demonstrating the ability to function in a REAL emergency.
Or at least, that's how _I_ would set it up... [you need to simulate the actual abort trigger condition after all]
When I was in the Navy we simulated trigger signals like this all of the time, for the reactor safety shutdown systems, to make sure they were working [but of course it did not have to have a real catastrophic failure to do it - it was just routine maintenance, with the simulation stuff built in].
mine's a dumb phone. pre-paid cell that I rarely use. It's nearly always OFF. I have a droid slab for development work and e-mail when I'm at a remote site. And no GPS or other tracking in my 20+ year old car.
and I also put aluminum foil in my wallet so that the chips in the cards can't be read. The newer ones apparently have actual electrical contacts so it's less likely they'll be a problem but I think my driver's license is as insecure as any of them evar were...
but seriously, I would hope that none of this information would be given out without a proper warrant FIRST. We don't need any aggressive investigators investigating individuals, looking for a crime [rather than investigating a crime, looking for perpetrators].
Except that the assertion is wholly untrue. Their highest priority is to maximize profits.
this is to be expected. keep mind that airlines don't purchase unsafe planes... [which affects profitability]
In order to maximize profits, they will attend to quality and safety issues if and when the publicity arising from those threatens profits.
No. See what I said above. it's *impractical* (and unprofitable) to be so heartless. Dead customers aren't repeat customers, after all... (nor are they satisfied).
remember ActiveX? "Oh the control has been marked 'safe' so THAT means it is OK!"
What about downloadable windows font files? Not web fonts, WINDOWS fonts [which are actually DLLs]
The tech itself is not dangerous. No, no no. It's what people CAN DO with it. It's almost like why the local 7/24 convenience store doesn't sell dynamite...
I am looking for the option in firefox to just DISABLE it. A less-than-quick search online shows "javascript.options.wasm" in about:config might do it... but of course, IT IS NOT IN THE NORMAL PREFERENCE OPTIONS.
(the article has done nothing to convince me I should actually ALLOW it)
" CO2 was at 330ppm when I was at school and is now, what, 410?"
is the water warmer also? You have to consider several physics and chemistry factors when making your claim, otherwise the conclusions you present are "less than accurate" (read: complete B.S.)
a) warmer water cannot hold as much gas in it, and so the gas is released from water. Result: like a soda going flat when it is warm, CO2 is released from warm water. Additionally, carbonates are dissolved and converted to CO2. This causes increased measured atmospheric CO2 levels, which are due to the equilibrium state. [study chemistry, you'll understand]
b) Additionally, underwater volcanoes are a major factor in water-borne CO2 release. if you measure atmospheric CO2 near an underwater volcano over time, you'll see "elevated levels". This happened a decade or two ago, skewed atmospheric CO2 levels at a particular measurement spot off of the coast of California, due to a nearby underwater volcano, and it was somewhat quietly covered up once the truth got out... even though the people presenting this were CLAIMING it as "evidence" for man-made CO2 climate-apocalypse-doom-gloom-disaster-whatever. (and your freedom and money MUST be given away, FOR DUH PLANUTZ)
I know that the enviro-wackos behind the CO2 nonsense won't publish the truth about it. There have been at least 2 major scandals with respect to "cooking the data" to get a RESULT, rather than STUDYING the data and formulating scientific conclusions. Yeah, they were in the news, even. So I call B.S. on your claim. Not because it wasn't measured "that way", but that you're leaving out important information that does not present the ENTIRE truth.
There are those who understand chemistry, and those who don't. Those who DO understand it realize (I love saying it that way, using the left's leading question techniques against them) REALIZE that temperature alters the equilibrium constant. In 1970, the temperatures were at the bottom of a COLD cycle in the Northern Hemisphere. Not sure about Southern, they have different cycles. in any case, if the 300 ppm measurement was from, let's say, 1970, and the 410 was from, let's say, 2010-ish, you'd be measuring it at two peaks of a 70 year temperature cycle. You can expect the equilibrium levels to be different because the water temperature is different.
Those who UNDERSTAND basic chemistry REALIZE this.
Wake On LAN - a way for evil hackers (aka 'crackers') to take control of your computer while it's still plugged into the network (but otherwise 'off'). No thanks.
How about just make Windows not so INTRUSIVE with respect to "updates", get the code right the FIRST time by PROPERLY TESTING IT [instead of having end-users be the QA department], and allow PARTIAL updates rather than "We take over your machine for 4 hours so UPDATING becomes its primary function, too bad YOU wanted to do WORK or PLAY A GAME, MUAHAHAHAHAHA!"
WOL does NOT fix the inherent problems with Win-10-nic, and its constant NEED for "updates".
[I fixed that recently by upgrading an old Vista laptop to DEVUAN with MATE - and the owner is VERY happy with it!]
you can have CO2 concentrations as high as 2% without serious side effects. FYI.
(above that you start getting headaches, etc. and it becomes bad for animals)
I know because, when in the Navy, the sub constantly monitored air quality. The scrubbers would keep CO2 below 2%, but you needed consumable canisters to get it below 1%. Hovering between 1% and 2% was fine. And since CO2 doesn't really absorb or reflect IR energies for black body radiation [for temperatures actually found on earth] then it won't have an effect on temperature, either.
But it might rain more. And plants would grow WAY faster! And they'd deplete it all, and we'd be back to where we are now at < 0.04%. Equilibrium.
"busy telling everyone that they need to buy a new Windows 10 compatible computer ... with more memory and disk space than the old Windows 7 box."
And put LINUX on it! I suggest Devuan with Mate desktop.
I recently did this for a "content consumer" relative, who LOVES the Linux. $30 for 500Gb hard drive, built it in a VM, swapped it in, a few UI and settings tweeks, and all good! Computer owner took a few minutes to get used to it, and lots of "thank you" replies. It solves MANY problems, actually. [it's a Vaio from 2008-ish that came with Vista on it].
of COURSE it is a marketing ploy.
a) humans are NOT causing climate change. But a lot of people *FEEL* and so MS is doing a MARKETING PLOY.
b) CO2 is NOT even a greenhouse gas! A greenhouse gas is supposed to trap heat that would otherwise radiate into space (black body radiation). CO2 really _sucks_ at doing that. Look at the IR absorption spectrum, compared to temperatures actually FOUND ON THE EARTH. G'head I _DARE_ you!
c) CO2 is less than 0.04% of the atmosphere. Compare that to water vapor, a *REAL* greenhouse gas, which can be as high as 8%. Yes that's 200 times as much as CO2. And is ANYONE trying to control WATER VAPOR? Of course not! The planet is FLOODED. That'd be even MORE laughable.
d) CO2 is at biological and chemical EQUILIBRIUM. You could double, or even TRIPLE, or even MORE increase in the production rate of CO2, and the reactions and biological factors would shift to match the depletion rate at a slightly (very slightly) higher concentration.
e) CO2 is used in greenhouses to MAKE PLANTS GROW. Increasing atmospheric CO2 would do that, too. And they'd deplete it faster.
In short, this is NOTHING MORE than "pure politics" MARKETING MANIPULATION of people's FEELINGS. And it's _NAUSEATING_.
I'd be MORE impressed if they invested $1Billion in FUSION RESEARCH, something that WOULD make a difference!!!
"porting code from 32bit to 64bit should be straightforward"
assuming the APIs haven't changed. But this was MacOS 32-bit vs OS/X 64-bit, most likely. That wouldn't be trivial (not the way I understand it, anyway)
It has to do with the way the old MacOS windowing and menus and other OS APIs work. I looked into it once. I understand that OS/X was a MAJOR change to how this worked, hence the compatibility layer.
again, I don't think it's the "bit-ness" in this case. I would expect that this 30 year old code was written for the MacOS APIs and is effectively incompatible with OS/X APIs. As such, the "32-bit" code (which would be for older MacOS APIs) would have to be re-done to use the OS/X APis instead.
I'm not familiar enough with OS/X coding to really know for a fact, but I suspect it's NOT a trivial thing. That being said, a re-write is apparently in order. And like I mentioned before, if you're going to have to re-write, use GTK or maybe even Java, so that it becomes cross-platform, so that the market goes beyond "just OS/X" and covers every OTHER operating system, too.
If I read the article correctly, the program was originally written for MacOS and *NOT* OS/X.
There seems to be a significant difference between the two from the software side. So I expect that it has _LESS_ to do with 32-bit vs 64-bit, and MORE to do with a lack of a backwards compatibility later for MacOS API calls... (or did I miss the point here?)
Something like this would require a MAJOR re-write. Basically it would be a "start from scratch using the old code as a guide" effort. This might explain things better...
My opinion: If you're going to do THAT, re-write it using GTK and make it available for ALL platforms, from Apple to Linux and even Windows.
And THAT would be a GOOD thing! [Just don't make it 2D FLATSO like Firefox with Australis and Chrome - too much of THAT crap out there already]
I've always *HATED* application and driver certs. In many ways, it's an ASSAULT ON OPEN SOURCE AND FREE SOFTWARE.
A lot of this started with windows vista, so the problem exists in 7 as well. Microshaft NOW requires all kernel drivers to be signed by *THEM* for a "modest fee", a TOLLBOOTH on the information highway, in essence. It's a TOTAL RIPOFF.
iOS's attempted "lockdown" is no better. At least there's a method by which an indie developer for Android can make an APK available for whoever wants to download it.
anyway...
It was ONLY a MATTER OF TIME before it got CRACKED. THEN they'll issue a "fix", which will "work" for a while, and it will get CRACKED AGAIN.
It's really a false sense of security.
The biggest problem behind this (other than poorly written poorly tested windows code) is RUNNING WITH ADMIN CREDENTIALS *ALL* OF THE TIME!
In Linux (and other POSIX) systems, running as 'root' all of the time is discouraged on many levels. Some programs won't even run without explicitly setting a flag someplace to allow running as 'root'. Others simply warn you and force you to click through an approval every time.
Windows COULD use a POSIX-like security model, too, because 'administrator' usually doesn't give you the *kinds* of access you REALLY need. Unless you're MALWARE...
This "cert" nonsense SHOULD be a reason to NOT use Windows. I think that *eventualy* it COULD become that. In the mean time, Micro-shaft charges a FEE to "certify" your CRapp or driver, to give a FALSE! SENSE! OF! SECURITY! to end-users, because HOW many "the store" CRapps for iOS and Android have been distributed with "certifications" on them, only to require being REMOVED from "the store" because they're really MALWARE???
Yeah. FALSE sense of security. I say let developers make what they want, and let users just BEWARE and EXERCISE CAUTION instead. Like a form of "street smarts" except it's with SOFTWARE.
"poor Jeff is pissed because all the dirty money and time he spent to game the system didn't work."
just like the rest of us, "the government" (which _IS_ "the people" or supposed to be) should be able to pick what it wants and buy THAT product, and NOT be *SUED* for *NOT* *BUYING* *A* *DIFFERENT* *ONE*.
"Sewers" - ABusing the legal system to enrich lawyers since, like, forever.
YOURS is *PRECISELY* the kind of "feeling" (not THINKING) that we can expect from POLITICIANS that INJECT POLITICS into technology via STUPID-REGULATING it!!!
The article sort of addressed this - you need sufficient TRAINING DATA. Otherwise, "all *INSERT DEMOGRAPHIC HERE* look the same" to the algorithm...
What we *REALLY* need is an SJW detector, so we can stamp "un-hirable" on their applications... [thus avoiding MUCH legal expense and office drama that results FROM the SJW types]
"they keep adding idiotic stuff that just bloats it. Pocket, for example"
And, the "developers" who do this are RETAINED...
If I ever get around to forking Firefox (I'd like to call it "Rebellion", with a 3D skeuomorphic appearance, no 'hamburger', no overt touch-friendliness, and *NO* *POCKET*) it would look more like it did prior to Australis, NOT have idiotic "features" like 'pocket', and do ONE THING WELL: browse the web.
it's my general opinion that the SINGLE THING that did the MOST HARM to firefox is AUSTRALIS.
That, and everything ELSE that comes with it.
Mozilla has finally learned that FEATURE CREEP (and removal) isn't "an upgrade".
So what they need to do, now that they've reduced their "head count", is focus on the basics. That is:
a) backward compatibility (something that FF 57 _REMOVED_, remember?)
b) reliability and stability (on FreeBSD and Linux this isn't bad)
c) *SPEED*
d) *PRIVACY* - give us a reason to *NOT* use chrome, because Firefox does NOT track [or at least lets you bit-fiddle manage what's happening]
More anti-tracking pro-privacy features: good
Hijacking DNS so _YOU_ can track us: bad
Just sayin' Mozilla, it's *OBVIOUS* to some of us...
You apparently think PROFIT itself is IMMORAL, don't you?
Making a PROFIT (when you're a FOR PROFIT company) is NOT immoral. It's business.
Profit is _GOOD_. It's been driving our societies for MILLENIA. Without gain, why bother working? No "profit" means SLAVE LABOR. NOBODY wants to be a SLAVE. So you should be paid for what you do, and if you buy and sell things, the PROFIT is your pay!
(and if you're GOOD at it, your financial reward should be HUGE)
"many local internets"
yeah same here, fixed IP with a domain and a web site, DNS, and other things. Helps with customer projects, too. I can mirror a customer web site on my local LAN server, as an example, fix stuff locally, and say "hey take a look at yourdomain.mydomain.whatever" to see if they like it.
But as for ALSO being "part of the big intarwebs" - why could THAT be a problem? Or is it just the DNS system?
If you hate all that in the current DNS system, just use ".onion". Or create your OWN DNS system [which you'd have to pay for, probably, but it's usually cheap]. As for me I could create as many names as I want if you don't mind "mydonain.whatever" tacked onto the end of every name...
but yeah the existing system is there, relatively unfiltered, reasonably secure, and apparently NO POLITICS INVOLVED [or that's the goal]
/me imagines "Cancel Culture" applied to web DNS registration... *shudder* [and it's my general opinion that a FOR PROFIT corporation is LESS LIKELY to engage in this kind of DISCRIMINATION]
transparency would be a good thing, yeah.
Aren't there existing laws with respect to companies doing international business? In the USA (well in Cali-fornicate-you at least) you have to file a statement of information with the state indicating who the primary corporate officers are, mostly for legal purposes.
So I would expect something similar, here.
There are also laws _AGAINST_ borrowing money to buy stock. That one dates back to the 1930's, something about unsecured loans being used to fund stock purchase and after a crash the banks have no cash...
Purchase of a company, I suppose, CAN be financed, if it's not through stock... though it _DOES_ seem to be a bit "shady" in that regard. But that's between the lender and the borrower I suppose, and I doubt the loan is without any kind of collateral.
Still I would expect that much of this "must be a non-profit" stuff is a complete misunderstanding of for-profit vs non-profit. Seriously, I bet a for-profit corporation could do the job at LOWER COST TO THE END USER than a non-profit one, simply because they have budgets and investors and bottom lines and need for revenue. And there is a LOT of competition out there for domain names.
And from MY experience with a non-profit, they're sometimes run by COMPLETE IDIOTS when it comes to things like spending money, retaining employees, and even JUST GETTING THINGS DONE.
all you really need to do is convert the time_t data type to be a signed 64-bit integer and then fix whatever software bugs happen NOW to deal with it...
ideally any code using time_t will simply work. And it helps to pay attention to integer truncation warnings, which would be there if you try to assign a 64-bit time_t to a 32-bit integer. THEN you would see it as a compiler warning and HOPEFULLY go "why is that" only to remember that time_t is NOW a 64-bit value.
Even in 32-bit kernels, you should have support for 64-bit integers... EVERYWHERE.
As for "other than POSIX" operating systems, let them deal with their own issues. POSIX can simply adapt a time_t that's 64-bit to fix it once and for all.
you DO have a good point...
/me has been using ZFS with FreeBSD for several years, since 8.x even, and it saved my ass a couple of times when hard drives started going bad after a few years of use, and I found out early because of ZFS, and preserved all files when moving to a new hard drive in both cases.
well I favor convincing the author to ALSO have a GPL version of it. dual licensing is probably the best way if you want your code to be TRULY "open" source.
MIT or BSD licenses merely require a copyright statement, can ship closed.
GPL demands code to be 'eternally open', no additional requirements (like a copyright).
So you do this: license under EITHER an MIT or GPL license, end-user's choice. Once GPL'd that fork will remain GPLd, but the original can be used ANY way desired, provided you include the copyright in your docs/license/whatever. Best of both worlds. It's what _I_ do.
"the problem is Oracle, the same wankers who want to copyright APIs so they are not to be trusted."
Mostly true; however, GPL is unfortunately incompatible with a LOT of other kinds of licenses.
Oracle _could_ dual-license their open source code if they wanted to. [I do that] Something like "You can use this code with EITHER a GPLv2 or [whatever license]" then include text of both and let the end-user choose which one. Once GPL'd it remains as such and becomes part of Linux, eternally patched and forked like every other chunk o' code that's been contributed to it.
I think that's what Linus wants to do. But it's hard for him to express this without the use of profanity...
well I like Earl Grey (black tea) with enough sugar in it to kill the bitter... as well as my daily quad cappuccino with lots of "fake sugar": (stevia) in it, and heavy cream in the foamy stuff. An chocolate syrup. yum!
I often use bags of Twining's English Breakfast to make iced tea. 4 bags makes 1 gallon of it (on the stove for ~10 minutes in a large pot on high, just short of boiling) then cool it in a sink partly full of water, then into a pitcher with 2.5 cups equivalent of stevia, and some 'fake vanilla' to go with it, or maybe peppermint oil, or something equally interesting, THEN into the fridge. I typically do a gallon of such tea every couple of days. Gotta maintain those caffeine levels!
/me wonders what kinds of looks of shock and horror will emerge from this description.
"I'd rather burn Windows 10 with fire and go back to a fully supported Windows 7, thank you very much!"
and Khaptain asked: "Why?"
Answer: TOO MANY REASONS TO LIST HERE! But I'll start with these:
a) 2D FLATTY FLATSO McFLATFACE FLUGLY UI design with "The Metro" "The Start Thing" UWP and "The Settings": and all of that "change because *WE AT MICROSHAFT FEEL* in spite of what customers actually want"
b) The Spyware and The Adware built into the OS.
c) The Store
d) The MIcrosoft Logon - able to track you WHEREVER you are online, or ON! YOUR! OWN! COMPUTER! for that matter! If they haven't already leveraged this, they will at some point.
On a related note...
recently I swapped in a new hard drive for a relative's older laptop, with Devuan Linux and Mate. It originally came with Vista. The performance benefits alone are worth it, but at least the system will NOW be maintainable... And the owner of this computer is a "content consumer", and it took only a short time (read: a few minutes) to re-learn to use a Mate desktop vs what was set up before in Vista. Lots of "thank you" responses. Data files and settings were preserved when possible. I copied _everything_ that was in C:\Users into the new file system, just in case.
even e-mail settings were just copied because the windows system was using thunderbird...
(ok remind me why people are actually USING WNIDOWS 10 again?? Because someone like ME hasn't come along and converted them over to Linux, right?)
"A new spawn of XUL must rise again!"
if *ANYONE* wants to fork Firefox to use the OLD INTERFACE (pre-Australis) I'd LOVE to participate in the development. Sadly I lack time (or funding to PAY myself) to do all of that work myself...
I suppose it'd have to be re-named, and merged frequently with the 'master' branch on Firefox for fixes and whatnot but the MAIN IRRITATION I have with FF is what you described as a crappy-looking interface, and plugin config is only PART of the problem!
Possible new name: "Rebellion" [I've been wanting to use that name for a long time, for this very purpose]
Here's what I've been doing... it requires Linux or FreeBSD to work properly though
a) normal browsing [including posts to El Reg] has NoScript plugin running in as restrictive a mode as I can manage for normal things. Fortunately, even Amazon usually works in this mode [I white-listed one or two of their things though]. [amazon seems to track itself, not others, so kudos for that]
b) For everything ELSE, I 'su - differentuser' and then 'export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0'. Since I'm listening on TCP port 6000 with the X server [not hard to set it up that way, but I don't wanna repeat myself with full instructions, just make sure you do NOT use '-nolisten tcp' in the X server command line and block external incoming connections on port 6000] i can THEN run Firefox as a different user's context, ON THE LOGGED IN DESKTOP. Easily. And it even plays videos properly!
c) in the 'differentuser' context, Firefox is configured to automatically DELETE ALL HISTORY AND CACHE whenever I close it. I have NOT figured out how to do that with chrome, but you can always delete its entire cache directory yourself and ONLY run chrome with a shell script that does this for you... [and the cache stuff is always in the logged-in user's /home directory so it only affects that user]
d) with FULL awareness of this I do not surf from site to site unless I don't care if site 'A' tracks me looking at site 'B'. If it's all on the same set of servers, who cares. If Faece-book (for example) is tracking me surfing the New York Times web site (for example) then I'll view them with separate browser sessions, so that no cookie/history/cache exists when I open up the NYT site. [an El Reg article from a while ago suggested that even cached vs uncachedd pages CAN track where you've been...]
Sure, my IP address will be known. Ideally it won't be traced back to me. But it could. So the next step would be Tor or a VPN. But for now, what I described is "secure enough" for me.
And THIS way, I can STILL view those sites that _INSIST_ I promiscuously allow javascript... and then I exit the browser and ALL of their tracking B.S. goes byebye!
Not sure what Firefox's 'private browsing' does but I expect it's LESS than what I just described.
" I can't see many Linux user paying for software, or they won't be using Linux in the first place"
are you assuming that people using Linux are just CHEAP, and _NOT_ using it because it's more "fit for purpose" than WIN-10-NIC ???
(I wouldn't mind paying for software that's worth paying for, and have done so on many occasions in the past. It's just that there aren't a lot of commercial things designed to run on Linux, which is sad and a part of the problem of getting Linux onto desktops...)
I'm about to put Linux on an old laptop that a relative has. Doing this will actually SOLVE problems that slowly crept in BECAUSE of it having Windows (Vista) on it. No Win-10-nic. Linux. With Mate. Just put new hard drive on order, just today even.
said the man who posted on the comment section for an El Reg article about video games
(did anyone else see irony in that?)
(oh I guess the post above mine said something like it - what I get for NOT being able to just 'see all' and have to only see only one 'page' at a time - makes it hard to follow threads properly)
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