Posts by david 12 2374 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jul 2009
The internal problems in Microsoft were certainly already visible in Y2K. That was the year they released Office 2000, linked with SQL Server 7, which was invalidated by SQL Server 2000.
If Y2K was the year they introduced stack ranking, that was because it was already a dog-eat-dog war of internal silos.
Novell introduced peer-to-peer networking in 1981. In response, MS built SHARE into DOS 3, and introduced MS-NET.
Yes, you needed to add support for whatever network protocol you wanted to support. The MS TCP/IP client for DOS was free after WinNT 3.5. From DOS7, the MS TCP/IP client did not support peer-to-peer DOS networks, because the necessary SHARE support was moved into Windows.
"Share" was a DOS command that was part of MS-DOS from v 3.0 or 3.1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_(command)
It allocated memory to allow you to share files between different processes. Since DOS was mostly a single-process operating system, the reason for allowing files to be shared between different processes was to allow network sharing.
Networking was not a native part of DOS 3, but SHARE was.
The resident parts of DOS that SHARE configured were moved into Windows. This had the effect of preventing the use of network sharing without Windows.
Some of us are still using assembly language. The 6800 matches the architecture of unix and c. People who grew up on unix and c like to use an architecture that matches their expectations: partitioned memory (like on IBM mainframes) does not match that expectation, and causes cognitive dissonance.
It's technically difficult to define "addiction", since it targets parts of the human physiology that exist for other purposes. As a result, the accepted definition of "addiction" now is that it's only "addiction" if it's illegal or has known harmful effects. As a result, opiods are "addictive" (illegal), but caffeine is not (legal).
It follows that things can be arbitrarily made 'addictive' just by making them illegal.
I'm not sure if an 'average' human would interpret that correctly, but I'm 100% dead certain that some humans would interpret it literally. Apart from the fact that many people don't "do" numbers, many humans do numbers in only a superficial ideographic way.
I know someone who can spot mis-spellings like they were highlighted in colour, and business types who can do the same with a spreadsheet or a column of numbers, but they're the exception, not the rule.
It wasn't Windows Defender: It was WD "for Endpoint", which is a different product.
I've not tried to uninstall/disable WDFE. I've not (in the past) had any trouble disabling WD. Disabling WD is a normal supported operation, so you must be looking at a different system than I have.
no business EVER should have remote web management
But if it's unsafe why is it sold as a feature?
To be fair Small Office is just about the only situation where the feature is useful. No redundant connections to allow indirect management, no redundant support to allow on-site management.
During COVID, I was going into the factory every couple of weeks to restart elements of the computer system, Some of these trips could have been avoided if I'd allowed remote web management of the router.
phones are isolated ... and won't hurt anything else
Supplier installed our phone system without changing the default password. Several $1000 AUD in call charges just in a couple of days and ramping up: we only noticed when all virtual connections were used up.
LUnix ... It supports TCP/IP networking
From a time when many people thought that the significant defining feature of unix was unix networking.
"Open Source" meant that you could try to build and compile software to run on a different unix, but that was normally a major effort, done by somebody else. There wasn't even a standard c library, let alone a standard unix. But if you could connect your LUnix to a unix network, and talk to the other unix machines -- that was another win for unix.
This is the same reason MS continues to support SMB1 (not by default), and old authentication methods (not by default). They don't care about supporting Win95: they'd rather Windows users bought new computers with recent OS, and there is rarely any kickback. But they have had, and continue to have, outrage from users of old unsupported OpenSource systems whenever they deprecate a network authentication feature.
carrying a large round object labelled "BOMB"!
An obscure cultural reference that only remains current because of its use in cartoons and satirical art.
'Bombs' were, amongst other things, early (spherical) artillery shells. AKA 'cannon balls'. With a fused bursting charge, so that, like 'shrapnel', they would burst just before impact. Hence, the American national anthem: "Bombs bursting in air, gave proof, through the night, that our flag was still there". It was, right up through WWI, difficult to get the fusing right (by then they weren't using cannon 'balls'), and a 'bomb' might explode early, or might land, like the iconic cartoon bomb, with the fuse still burning. One of the ways of fusing was to have something that was lit by the firing charge. Or it might be lit by your iconic anarchist.
The numbers are different, but the results are the same: heavier vehicles kill more people, cause more wear on roads, and damage bridges.
I take your point that German roads are much tigher and smaller than American roads, and that even on the Autobahns, where the death toll is much higher than city roads, it's often choked instead of open. (One of my friends complained that even after though speed was unlimited, the only time he could open it up was 2AM on Sunday). But ~2600 accidents in Germany is going to cause more than 3 and 370 if and when cars are replaced by heavy-weight vehicles.
Poster is downvoted for actually reading the article? Citizens have to pay for use, exactly the same as you or I or the rest of the world.
Argument can be made that regime is stealing from the rest of the world by nationalizing license fees that are not collected in three years, or by licensing use of products that corporations are not licensing for use in Belarus. But neither of those are "regime is allowing its population to steal"
Microsoft Edge ... will continue to work...
I wish that had been true. What actually happened is that after saying Edge would no longer be updated, MS sent me an update that broke edge on Win7. I was on the Canary distribution, if that makes a difference.
I rolled back to v109, but in the process lost all my favorites/bookmarks. Not a happy camper
Only have one 95 machine, one '98 machine and one 2K machine in production now. Expect that in 15 years will probably only have XP machine left.
8 years later now, and factory now has two Win2K servers and two Win98 machines. Win95 machine upgraded to Win2K svr, 2 DOS machines upgraded to Win98. Four XP machines still in use in test and production equipment.
School with cadet unit here built a proper mil-standard armory (for storing arms) when the government demanded it (in an effort to close all school cadet units).
The armory was eventually re-purposed as a chemistry lab, but the high-current redundant power connections were not repurposed: when some student shorted a power point, it took out all the power back to the substation
It's not just Nuclear Engineering -- the whole Boomer engineering workforce has reached End-Of-Career. In 'normal' times they try to balance workforce reduction by new hires and encouraging people to stay. Every thing that triggers a 'temporary' workforce reduction - COVID, Fujushima actually enacts a total workforce reduction.
USB-C charging is compulsory: this is the response. I was downvoted for suggesting that the response to the EU requirement that charging must use USB-C would be increased push to wireless charging. Dunno why: no explanation was given. From where I stand, this was entirely predictable.
After running closer and closer to the wall, eventually we realized that we just didn't have enough crews and planes to run scheduled operations.
So we had to abandon our scheduled operations, and run a skeleton operation while we did crew off-time and aircraft maintenance.
Then, since our scheduling system wasn't able to schedule 5 flights into 6 flights, we blamed the software.
SouthWest has a specific problem: a larger-than-normal fraction of their flights are loops, rather than out-and-back flights. With an out-and-back flight, when one airport is closed, and you cancel one "out" flight, the corresponding "back" flight is also cancelled, and you still have a plane and crew in position. With a loop schedule, when one leg is cancelled, the entire loop is cancelled, and the plane and crew isn't in position for off-time and maintenance. They also have a general problem: there isn't any fat in their operations, and they don't have enough spare crews to cover crew down-time and aircraft positioning when the schedule is badly disrupted. Blaming this on the scheduling software is disingenuous.
I did a simple optimization problem for cutting shapes out of sheet stainless-steel. I understand that there is no closed-form solution for allocating the position of shapes withing a shape. Sometimes you wind up with off-cuts where the total area of offcut is larger than the next small piece you want to cut. But your offcuts are thin jagged pieces, not the circle or square you need next. But at some point, a "better optimisation system" isn't what you want. What you need is more sheets of stainless steel.
"illegal" is a big elephant in the middle of that sentence.
There is a sense in which something is 'illegal' even if the courts and police do not enforce it, but there is another sense in which 'legality' is what the courts decide it is.
Is the 'right to bear arms' conditional on a 'well formed militia'? Does it include the right to operate an anti-aircraft battery? Who decides what the law means, and after it is decided, do the words "legal" and "illegal" apply to what the courts think, or to what you think the legislation "clearly means"?
Around here, Arts-Law or Commerce-law are common double-degrees, but Arts-Science is uncommon, because it is difficult. The target mode of thinking for science students is fundamentally different than that required for high-school essay writing. It's not just that the students learn different content, and different skills. I won't bore you with my own experience.
AI isn't good at writing university-level essays. It doesn't have to be good to be better than BioChemistry students. BioChemistry students may be dumb, and can't write good essays, or smart, and pointed in the wrong direction.
It was always cheaper for large power stations to use cooling ponds or direct outlets if the water was available.
Large cooling towers were always expensive, but because of "Legionnaires disease", it's rather more expensive and complicated to run cooling towers than it used to be.
(Also, the 'steam' coming out of those large cooling towers was a marketing disaster. People always thought it was 'smoke')
about to put the third (and last) copy
My employer had been a contractor at a business where, when the day shift came in, they found that the (IBM) hardware had self-destructed, the back-up copy had been destroyed in turn, and the night-shift operator was trying to get into the safe ...
something with real world application.
Pascal had real world application up until comp-sci courses stopped teaching it, Development shops shifted away from it when they couldn't hire graduates.
Personally, I worked on a transport ticketing system, an agricultural cattle-tracking system, and finance-treasury system.
I've heard two arguments for why comp-sci shifted from pascal to c:
(1) They actually didn't like the tighter/safer environment and prolix syntax (they had to do their own code entry instead of using a typing pool)
(2) They wanted to teach operating-system design.
It certainly wasn't the case that c had a lock on 'real world' applications. Although I was working in Pascal, most of the existing enterprise systems were Fortran, BASIC, COBOL or assembler. The business schools were using IBM or business-oriented mini-computers, of which unix was only a minor player. The IBM people laughed at unix and c: memorably, unix was 'not a real operating system' -- a phrase the comp-sci students later adopted without knowing the origin or why it hurt.
I doubt companies that small would qualify as critical infra.
I guess it depends on how it's counted. We were 'critical infrastructure' during part of the COVID lockdown -- the part where the carefully constructed definitions were in use -- and then not 'critical infrastructure' in the later part of the lockdown, when the categories were defined by a press release from a minister's office.
Being small, we were only critical for a small number of customers -- off-grid residential, the odd telecom tower, bits of railway infrastructure :)
In any case being suitable for use with the odd remote community or railway system, the equipment is designed not to fail, and we go from one century to the next without any actual critical incidents.
American unions can't represent workers unless management agrees, or they are certified:
unlawful "to picket or cause to be picketed, or threaten to picket or cause to be picketed, any employer where an object thereof is forcing or requiring an employer to recognize or bargain with a labor organization as the representative of his employees ... unless such labor organization is currently certified as the representative of such employees"
As I understand it, American labour law is very complex, with rules and exceptions. Like the tax code.
But I do not believe that any of this is a problem inside the USA in the 21st century.
https://www.lung.org/blog/covid-19-mortality-and-air-pollution
"researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute also looked at the impact of long-term exposure to fine particle pollution on COVID-19 death rates. They examined 3,089 counties, accounting for 98% of the United States’ population. The researchers found that..."
Death rates as a function of air pollution are still a fact, even in the USA.
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