Posts by trindflo

Re: Banned from the site?

He was banned because he embarrased the supervisor that committed false imprisonment. Good! Who would want to encounter that supervisor again?

Re: air *cleaner*

The idea of some bright bulb taking a power washer to early PCs adds to the hilarity for me

I figure it is mostly to maintain market leadership.

If you stop changing things, eventually you need to add something your competitor invents.

If Microsoft keeps changing their software, competitors are kept busy adding the latest Microsoft good idea and they don't invent things for Microsoft to worry out.

Re: This isn't an issue if you use a proper password manager

or by using bookmarks rather than asking a search engine to supply the address every time

Re: How long before a juicy government contract drops?

The way all of the trump scams work is to use someone else's resources to create chaos that shakes everything up, then try to grab falling fruit.

He may not make a lot directly off his crypto businesses, but he can make a ton off a company that trades in crypto if he is able to get others to use his trading company by leveraging his ability to cause trouble.

He doesn't need an original idea or even a good idea to restrict progress in any endeavor until he gets a piece of the action.

It's like that joke with the punch line: you don't need to be a brain to be the boss ...

Re: OK, you know the phrase by now

In new economy, you work for cloud.

Re: Another workaround

PeerTube looks interesting, but requires donations to run. I have obvious reservations. It sounds like they provide all the server hardware, so I would expect the funding issues to show up early.

Re: It's almost as if...

In Redmond, software uses you

lazy policing

OR, it is a state-funded publicity stunt.

Not to mention that Trump is actively trying to kill anything to do with alternative energy. Just because he pretended to negotiate with South Korea doesn't mean he is any more sincere than Putin.

Re: Let's hope for the best, but...

Let's hope science survives cynical polititians and industrialists.

That said, I think the DSN technologically has stretched how far we can communicate with voyager about as far as it can go. It is somewhat amazing what they've done.

Just as an example of the challenge: at ~15E09 miles away, Voyager 1 is almost an entire light day away. At the speed of light, it takes nearly a full day for a command to reach Voyager.

Assuming you would like to see an answer back, it will be another full day for the response to arrive.

Loss of signal will cause things to reset.

While all of this is going on, the earth is turning. One DSN station cannot maintain the link as it will be facing away from voyager for most of the day.

The link must be passed, phase continuously, between the 3 DSN stations in order to communicate.

And the rotating earth adds a doppler shift to the frequency Voyager receives, making the handover even more interesting.

What's not to like?

We cease being the United States and start erecting border walls between states? Perhaps a bit maudlin, but it is a step along that path.

The problems are:

- you become banned from the establishment

- there is no regulation or recourse to the technology

- falsely adding someone you don't like to the database isn't a crime

- now add the bad stuff you know about the tech (like it thinks all minorities look alike)

Re: But...but...but...

Gee, how long has there been a fantasy about computers programming themselves?

I can find this version of it from 1956: The_Last_Question

Thanks for pointing out praying to the Rust god is just a variation on a theme.

Re: I don't much like this idea at all...

DDOS isn't a single click from an IP address. I don't see how the RDOS you propose would work unless you could trick someone into clicking several million times a second for a while.

I'll agree that for the scheme to work, the ISPs would need to be coerced into becoming part of the solution. That makes sense to me the same way it makes sense to tax businesses that pollute rather than tax everyone to clean up the pollution. Put the burden at the source of the DDOS rather than trying to mitigate it at the destination as we currently do.

Oh yeah. I forgot to comment about that "cores don't make computers faster". BS!

You don't think cores matter? Turn off your hyperthreading. The author is either flat out wrong or is trying to be clever with language and failed.

The 2nd core you add will make a lot more difference than the 22nd; that is the only thing Amdahl shows. Try playing around with sound and networking at the same time with only a single core. Multiple cores can be simultaneously running in ring 0. The difference in performance is night and day.

Re: in the wall of Winston Smith's apartment was a

Gads that looks like a scientology / dianetics ad!

Re: The Trump regime reminds me of a joke

Andy Breckman put it to music So Far So Good

Re: Backdoors bite back

Not what I've seen. I worked at a place that used a service to keep all the on-premise machines running. The service would install some important Microsoft patches, but not most of them. The service would never update firmware. When I took over managing them and reviewed the state of things, I was horrified. The service felt it was in our best interest to make sure they didn't do anything that might impede us...like updating firmware...at least that was their story.

So rather than backdoors, I propose it is mostly horrible IT practices.

Based only on the above observations.

Re: Such as?

You seem to be assuming universal acceptance and support of adverts. If adverts don't work, maybe they will go away!

For litter to be litter, it must be publicly displayed. That isn't a good reason for it to exist in the first place.

Re: How refreshing

Emphatically yes. This is a good formula for breeding a world of morlocks.

Re: spam coming from inside

Who gave your brand new shiny email address to the spammers? So many culprits to guess at.

The company has an ISP that information flows through and they could set themselves up to notice new email addresses.

Various services the comany uses, a payroll vendor for instance, will know there is a new email address.

The company that configured the PC can setup all new users to send an email as part of a 'phone home' tracking system.

A job placement firm might have announced the new employee.

Anyone will happily rat you out, because it isn't a crime and really what's the harm </sarcasm>

Re: Running interference

That sounds like a rudimentary infrasonic weapon. I'm not surprised it was giving people headaches.

Re: "...dev's hard-earned bonus..."

Pretty much what I wanted to say.

If everyone else was getting a bonus then it would need to be a serious breach of job responsibility to take the bonus away. A company puts out a product with a bug in the beta code and the lone coder is being given the full blame? I think that is weak and the fellow should have sued. It doesn't sound like he was operating as a professional company guaranteeing them a product with better QA than Microsoft.

Best way to do this in my opinion: get a legal aid to fill out paperwork for the lawsuit. Legal aids can often give really good information, but can only follow your instructions as they are not lawyers. They should be able to tell you what is and is not likely to fly.

If possible file it in a court where the customers are likely to see the president wandering in and out of court. Make sure to name the company principals so you can haul them into court for questioning or they will try to just send their lawyers.

Even if you don't win, the bastards will have to pay their lawyers.

I've been down this road, but I am definitely not a lawyer and in my case the company didn't win the contract so they just decided they weren't going to pay any of their subcontractors. Pretty open and shut case.

In any case get real legal advice before walking away from a pile of money that you feel you deserve. At least figure out if you have a case first.

Re: How to profit from Tariffs

<OR> sell them without the tarrifs added to drive your competitors out of business.

Re: reduced to about 34 million gallons through evaporation.

Good point and funny.

In fairness, mostly water evaporates and heavy metals are unlikely to tag along. It is an older technique of distillation known as 'jacking'.

That said, I wouldn't want to be downwind from the evaporative pool even if it has been carefully hidden underground.

Re: Haters

Whatever happened to all the Reg commentards who recognise sarcasm when they see it?

Between Brexit and Covid, we have discovered there are intelligent people who believe in mind-numbing bollocks. If you don't want to be misinterpreted, use the joke icon with the sarcasm.