Posts by bombastic bob

Re: surpass humans in specific intellectual tasks

in one particular video game, Final Fantay XIII-2, there are some clock-related puzzles that become impossible to solve within the given time limits [unless you cheat and hit the 'save' button which pauses the action]. The only solution was to write a program to do it for me. I published the source on usenet after doing so. A few others have creeped into 'teh intarwebs' since but I might have had "the original".

Cruel humans, programming impossible puzzles into a video game, only to drive people like me into countering their madness by writing a 'bot' to do it FOR me (and giving it away to the world).

[the current incarnation lets me use a fondle-slab via a web page to do it, one written with PHP and NO client-side scripting, very 'REST'-ful even]

Re: old 70's song

I was hoping for something by Monty Python's Flying Circuses

After Brexit, I wonder if France and Germany will be next? Frexit and Dexit? or will Italy break away next?

Eh, time to make popcorn I guess

Re: Parallels bought 2X

Virtualbox started out as an open source fork of qemu, and so it could return to the community if Oracle were to ever decide to EOL it. But why WOULD they? As long as they don't break it by re-inventing the entire UI or something equally redonculous (like Microsoft might do for a "new, shiny") I don't see it as requiring that much effort to maintain...

Re: What moon landing?

@MrReal

if you were serious, I pity you.

Re: Look out

"Smoking where you eat in public is generally not acceptable"

Nor is farting. Mine clear rooms. So I don't do them in enclosed spaces or where people are eating. A well ventilated public bathroom is adequate. Except when at home [in which case I'll lift one leg and lean, and laugh afterwards, or maybe poot out 'shave and a haircut' for laughs].

So yeah. So maybe vapes can have an obnoxious smell, like some perfumes, and bad intestinal gas, and your neighbor's dog when he doesn't clean the crap up for a while. But there are no known lingering aftereffects that I'm aware of...

[minor irritations are everywhere]

Re: "Santa Claus..."

"Computers of the day were BIG things"

The first hand calculators were just being invented, and the first minicomputers. So yeah. But the design for Apollo's computer was from several years earlier, 1965-ish (and some documents I found go back even earlier).

ROM firmware on the Apollo computers used 'rope' memory, sorta like read-only core memory, where the presence of a core or absence of one determined 1 or 0. They were strung by women who were good at sewing, as I understand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory

I also downloaded another document from a related Apollo archive that talked about the ICs chosen in that computer. Apparently it was a dual 3 input NOR gate, plus a memory sense amplifier. Yeah, JUST the two. These were primarily the only things available at design time in or around 1965 in sufficient quantities to be practical. Another photograph at the archive site showed the Fairchild 'F' clearly visible, but the intent was that many manufacturers could compete for producing these things for the Apollo program. And I'm not surprised it if was RTL... one of the 'first and worst' designs for logic ICs. But yeah, it worked. And it was small/light enough to fit in an Apollo capsule [and the LEM had its own as well]. The gate circuit diagram in the document shows 3 transistors and 4 resistors... wheeee!!!! Not sure what the logic gate 'fanout' of a collector resistor would allow you to have, but it probably wasn't much.

The sense amplifier was a bit more complex, consisting of 6 transistors and 8 resistors, with 3 external ref voltages, and an external balanced input transformer with 2 external resistors, and also used a strobe pulse to enable the open collector output. Most likely it was configured as one amp per bit per core board.

I got that particular PDF document from "https://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/groups/apollo/bibliography/q-and-a.tcl_topic_id=11&topic=Document%20Library.html" (I would put a link but I don't wanna deal with captcha).

The actual PDF was titled 'A case history of the AGC integrated logic circuits'.

Several other diagrams show discrete components being used as interfaces and signal shapers. Additionally it shows how 'unpowered' gates could be combined with a single gate (that has power applied) to increase the number of inputs on the gate. If you look at the circuit diagram of the RTL logic it makes sense, basically "leave off" the power connection and you can combine two by tying the outputs together.

The full schematic is probably in there someplace. I'd like to see it as a logic diagram, but that's a lot of downloading and searching... and I think someone already has a simulator out there someplace.

Re: "They checking to see if someone boarding the aircraft has malicious intent"

oh yeah like your password of "jihad" and your facebook page honoring Osama bin Laden are some kind of clue that you're a terrorist. So they look for that to keep you off of airplanes.

[seriously those wannabe types leave rat droppings all over the place, no need to use their phone passwords to spy on them like that, just do simple search engine queries and they'll pop up from time to time so you'll know who they are - use existing laws to get user info from the service providers and a warrant to spy on their activity, and you're all set]

As for the REAL terrorists and spies, they're hiding in plain site and look JUST! LIKE! EVERYBODY! ELSE! and you can't find them by insisting on getting their phones unlocked at an airport.

Next time I fly with a computer, I'll set it up with FreeBSD and I won't encrypt the hard drive. I'll just make sure that it boots into a console and that EVERY virtual console goes to a JAIL. And the root password in the jail will be something like "TSA Sucks".

[its easy to get from a jail to the host; just run ssh to localhost and log in with the host's security, then you can use 'startx' to get the GUI etc. and it'll be fine]

So [b]lame, "them" and their attempts to control and spy on us. TSA and FISA need a _BIG_ _REVIEW_ anyway, and hopefully that will be on Trump's plate in his 2nd term. Under GW Bush (whose administration invented TSA) everybody expressed their concerns that it would get "this bad", eventually. Under Obama it *DID* get "this bad". It hasn't gotten (perceptively) better under Trump, though I think to some extent it [independently] HAS gotten 'less bad'. Let's see how it goes.

Seriously I want things the way they were pre-9/11. Smarter scanning methods, and PROFILING, is more likely to get us there than the current "take of your belt and shoes and hold onto your pants so you don't flash everyone whle you're being scanned" method. And oh, by the way, give up your passwords, too.

post-note - I've been 'more thoroughly examined' at the Mexican border before, car seats removed and left for me to put back, etc. - I had a big car with a big trunk, and so they 'profiled' me for a bit of 'extra' inspection. Whatever, yeah. The agents were polite and it didn't take that long, but yeah, it was kinda 'a pain in the ass'.

Re: @AC Good. Now close FB down

"(Hate speech and illegal speech [e.g. Nazis in Germany] are a different issue)"

No, they're NOT different than any OTHER 'free speech' issue. Aside from inciting riots (or inciting other crimes), libel, slander, threats, false accusations, false police reports, lying under oath, and other similar 'illegal speech' (which our courts have upheld as NOT being covered by the 1st Ammendment), pretty much ANYTHING ELSE is 'free speech', *ESPECIALLY* speech that people DISAGREE with [or feelings hurt, wah wah baby's feewings werwe huwt, awwww, poor baby...].

And that's the point. If you go back to the 1950's in 'The South' in America, you find cases where businesses were regularly discriminating on the basis of RACE, and justifying by saying things like "we retain the right to refuse to do business with" etc.. OK, but if you refuse to do business with black people, we NOW consider that "illegal" under Civil Rights legislation. Actual discrimination is NOT "free speech" or anything similar. It's illegal, and upheld by decades of precedent.

THE SAME PRINCIPLE exists when it comes to the 1st Ammendment, in the USA anyway. So when there is WIDESPREAD "DISCRIMINATION" against SPEECH, it's really a CIVIL RIGHTS issue, and should be TREATED as such by the law!

If additional laws that specify this MUST be legislated before they can be ENFORCED, then I guess Con-Grab (and other legislative bodies) need to get their collective ASSES in gear and GET TO IT.

Re: Good article. Assuming TheRegister is clean with our data.

well, when I read the following:

"in an era where the defining characteristic of the President of the United States is that he lies with impunity"

I just have to cringe. That is, unless you were talking about the PREVIOUS president, in which case lies were his NATIVE LANGUAGE. "You can keep your doctor. You can keep your plan." etc.

But politicians in general are the biggest liars of them all. It's what they do. That's pretty much a universal thing.

in the POSIX world...

I just create a new user with a separate home directory, and 'guest' level group permissions.

if X11 desktop access is needed, for a different user alongside the logged-in user, you can use DISPLAY and xhost and whatnot to configure it. Yeah I do that _ALL_ of the time. Literally.

Re: Not much to brag about

ack - more effective "non government mandate/irritate" methods exist already.

A lot of people switch to vaping, which every study I've ever read suggests is SIGNIFICANTLY less hazardous to the user, and practically benign to everyone else [unlike smoke, which generally irritates EVERYONE, etc.]. But here in Cali-Fornicate-You, the ninny-nanny types are NOW altering the anti-smoking ads [paid for by deliberately excessive tobacco taxes] to _INCLUDE_ vaping, which I believe is incredibly STUPID...

so maybe "that" is next. Then it'll be caffeine and alcohol. Well, alcohol has been tried already [and the dramatic failure of U.S. prohibition stands as a testimony to why such things should NOT be passed into law]. And in China, I suppose anti-gummint thoughts will need to be purged, too...

Re: gained the tools necessary for hosting a static website back in 2011.

"unless you were barking mad and tried to host via DSL in your own small office or bedroom."

I am _NOT_ barking mad! bark! Bark! BARK!

heh

Re: Interesting

"executes the instruction following a branch"

as I recall it's referred to as a 'guard' instruction and can sometimes be taken advantage of by the compiler. But as often as not it'll be a 'nop'

just as a reference, several devices that were used for Wifi access points about 10 years ago (like Linksys) used MIPS rather than ARM. So OpenWRT was designed for MIPS, particularly Broadcom's MIPS CPU, back when it was first released.

Re: 'Murica never ceases...

well, then you won't want to know that LEGAL hunting not only helps pay for conservation, but controls the deer population. It's illegal to shoot a doe, and you're limited in the number of bucks you can hunt. And you can only hunt them in a season where it's easy to tell the bucks from the does, and a bit of herd-thinning would actually be GOOD for the deer population.

And I happen to *like* venison. So yeah if you kill it, you must eat the meat. or let others do it for ya!

Or is it the RIFLE part you don't like? Yeah, thought so.

/me notes that if EVERYONE has a firearm, criminals will be a LOT more afraid to use them to commit crimes...

(but yeah, poachers should face penalties, regardless)

"Are you saying that you can store more on a mechanical drive than SSD"

Yeah, price per gigabyte is STILL better for spinny drives vs silicon drives. They tend to have more storage per device [since buying a <1TB spinny hard drive is kinda pointless nowadays] than the SSDs so if your laptop has space for a 2nd hard drive, it's likely to be just that - a spinny hard drive. Same for PC as well but that was kinda obvious.

what would happen if I'd put Obama's face on a turd in a scientific journal? Or Mrs. Clinton? Or Nancy Pelosi? And so on.

Yeah no hypocrisy nor academic arrogance to see here. Jedi business. Move along.

Re: 1980s library art

"Being shown round the office - every person was smoking. One even had a cigarette and a pipe in his ashtray."

I wouldn't have got past the door, would've been sneezing/headaches the entire time. _NO_ _WAY_ could I _EVAR_ work in an office with open smoking like that.

(fortunately, the rest of the world has caught up, and you don't see that any more in any place I'm aware of)

I just want something that has CAFFEINE in it

Re: Your headline says policymakers...

also, from the article:

"Claims of the damage that rejecting the rules would have on internet access have not come true and so therefore, by extension, the rule change was good."

I'm not entirely sure that THIS is the only justification for the rule change being 'good'. I'm sure it has everything to do with REMOVING regulations, and the lifting of what has been considered to be 'overreach' or 'a power grab' over the internet by the FCC, which could have (in theory) been used to CENSOR or RESTRICT content.

For an example of the latter, consider the so-called "fairness doctrine" that was imposed by the FCC on radio and TV broadcasts, which was (finally) REMOVED in the 80's thanks to Ronald Reagan. FYI Ronald Reagan was NOT just an actor but had been a radio broadcaster AND was the head of the 'Screen Actors Guild', aka a union boss. So I think Reagan had a REALLY GOOD grasp on the CHILLING effects that the so-called 'Fairness Doctrine' had on broadcasting in general.

And the general opinion _I_ have (and others too, from what I hear) is that ONCE a gummint agency has its foot in the door, they'll creep along gaining more and more power and control over time until "the agenda" has been acheved (whatever agenda that is), usually to empower those who are appointed to positions within the bureacracy.

So yeah, the DE-regulation has been GOOD. So-called "Net Neutrality" was ONLY a means of preventing someone from "paying for a fast lane", which, from my perspective, is ANTI-PROGRESS. By removing the fast lanes, instead of regulating them to a sane level, you FORCE EVERYONE to be EQUALLY MEDIOCRE.

Anyway, I've argued these points many times. If your mind is made up, you'll just disregard it anyway. But I had to say it, regardless.

Re: Yes, what MS really needs now is more marketing...

unfortunately (from the perspective of wanting only the BEST QUALITY merchandise available at reasonable prices) Micro-shaft's marketing ACTUALLY WORKS.

I've said it before: They could sell icewater to Eskimos, in the middle of winter, and use poor quality ingredients in it, and their customers would STILL buy it instead of melting ice or using some other reasonable method of getting fresh water to drink.

P.T. Barnum was right.

Re: diving headlong into the Registry

ads down both sides? I'm not seeing it...

I don't mind ads, I just don't see them because, NOSCRIPT.

Now,, El Reg, please consider that MANY readers of your fine on-line news thingy are SECURITY PROFESSIONALS and IT PROFESSIONALS and are likely to do things *LIKE* block script.

I wouldn't mind seeing ads. ADS WITHOUT SCRIPT IN THEM, that is. I might even BUY something from one of the advertised vendors. It's relevant to my interests already, no need for TRACKING via script by the 3rd party ad providers...