trynton

> I mean, good? Defending the nation and its citizenry (including their businesses) is ostensibly one pillar of the NSA's mission. Glad to see them act upon it.

One backdoor got found-out so the NSA goes public with a pretend security announcement. Microsoft “security” is designed to keep the casual browser out but not prevent the state security apparatus getting access to your data, anytime anywhere. Anyone who says different is a fool or is invested in the “cyber security” business.

It's not the engineers pain, as it wasn't an engineering decision to mount the engines higher and forward of the wing. Precipiting a pronounced nose-up aspect. All the same, I admire your attempt to deflect blame from the management at boeing.

Without any verifiable evident, it just doesn't make sense. There is a continual exchange of information between Wuhan and other centers of disease control. So it would be very difficult to keep such a secret. Besides, if it was a virus that escaped, then the Chinese would already have the means to create a vaccine and so save the planet. Instead they did nothing and sat on it.

@chefkoch: "Yes, but why would that help?"

Most/all of these ransomware attacks use the built-in Windows encryption.

@cl0ckt0wer: "You bough a brand new computer without an SSD?"

I already have an SSD, I was planning on installing it and using the harddrive as an archive. Then adding some extra RAM and an M.2 memory card.

Is it possible to disable the built-in encryption in Microsoft Windows?

You never sent me a response on the question of what things an app [application] would do that would make it run with MSDOS and not run with DR-DOS, Bill Gates circa 1989

@1vuio0pswjnm7: You forgot to post the sacarism smiley.

“Bill Gates .. was such a thoughtful developer, e.g., autmatically overwriting MBRs installed by other OS with a Microsoft MBR, and making it impossible to boot Windows from partitions other than the first one, in case you accidentally tried to boot another OS from partition one."

I recently bought a brand-new desktop PC after the other one gave up the ghost after eight years of service. After disabling Secure Boot and enabling legacy USB. The PC rebooted with a BIOS Corrupt error. Requiring a recovery of the original BIOS.

So now I'm stuck on this innovative “Windows 10” desktop that is as slow as molasses and the harddrive is continually churning running background process that don't do anything.

"Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves: Deprecated. A story from Arabia interpreted by a French colonialist and profiteered by Disney."

"Blind Dubbing: Deprecated as we no longer need to use the term blind. Replaced with Reversed Dubbing."

"Blind Stalker: Title of Blind Stalker has been Deprecated because it is insensitive. A fish net stocking may be funny, but stalking is not."

"Corridors: Deprecated because of unnecessary and outdated language: pimping, and slut shaming."

"Deaf Translation: Deprecated due to ableist shenanigans."

I have a great deal of admiration for someone who managed to succeed despite the obstacles placed in his path.

> 0 is actually what I'd expect as an answer. Even on very modern Python you get

Given a four byte mantissa, it should be 1 for anything under and equal to 2^32 and 0 for anything over 2^32. Instead it outputted some random number. A bug in checking the flags or some-such. Or maybe a bug in the float to string routine.

According to the link to ""ZX81 ROM Assembly Listing"", it used a "FORTH-like, stack-based language.". Amazing all the same how they managed to squeeze so much out of so little.

According to something I read somewhere. The ZX81 floating routines did incorperate some unique math:

(2^32) - ((2^32)-1) did not return 1

And the group of Cambridge mathamaticians that wrote the ROM turned out to be one man.

"ZX81 ROM Assembly Listing"

https://www.tablix.org/~avian/spectrum/rom/zx81.htm

"Power Fx" is going to be a big advance on Python /s

@perl4ever: "I don't have experience with dieting or diet pills per se"

If you need to go on a "diet" then your eating too much for the amount of physical excercise you engage in.

People who are morbidly overweight don't seem to have a "I-am-Full" switch. Or have a "I-am-always-hungry" switch that's stuck in the on position. They eat too much, the body responds by burning off the excess. They soon feel more hungry and so on. There's also a psychological component involved, comfort eating etc.

All medications come with side-effects, taking such for long periods is not wise. Certanly not to combat weight-gain. Go for a five-mile run Weekdays and on Sunday. You can have Saturday off.

@biren34:

Well put ..

'Larry Sanger blasts increasingly woke Wikipedia's whitewashing of socialist and communist human rights atrocities as "propaganda."'

@tovej:

I concur, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

@teh_klev:

>> nebulous black boxes

> Probably a nitpick, I think you mean "opaque black boxes", you can see things through a nebula.

Your comment has been modded into invisibility :[

@CyberRabbi

Given the way most modern software is made, refering to the makers as "software engineers" is a bit of an exaggeration. If you could visualize the average software project, a Rube Goldberg machine consisting of cogs, wheels, relays and bricks-and-pipes, all held together with duct tape.

> .. I can't remember the last time Windows crashed ..

Short-term memory loss ;]

"bugs would have been completely prevented by using a memory-safe language"

Relying on safe languages isn't going to work as the defect resides in the Memory Management Unit. You would think by now these 'integrated' 'innovators' could come up with a MMU that provides total process isolation.

@srazzaque: "For those situations where someone emails me an Excel or Word file that they would like my edits in, and I'm simply not in the position to extoll the virtues of open formats or coach them in Markdown or LaTeX, I have a Windows VM and office."

Why not get them to install LibreOffice and sent you the spreadsheet in the native format?

https://www.libreoffice.org/

@scruffyherder: "I had friends do the mail in but, I didn’t care as I used windows under OS/2.. I tried really hard to go full Linux before but compiling all the dependencies of everything got so old quick. Sadly nothing has changed there."

:] you're a really funny guy :]

@saberdancer: "When I saw this, I was blown away."

I've seen something like that, that took a whole weekend to produce a report. I suppose it does the job, as long as the accountant doesn't mistake 30 for 0.03 (30%) in a formula.

"A malicious container running on a Docker-run host is deployed and ran"

A most relevant question being, how does this "malicious container" get onto the host in the first place?

Banksy the pretend street artist?

"Bill Hicks on advertising"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gd01vfKfr0

'Richard DiBona, a 53-year-old software manager at Wayfair, sent a message to his team letting them know he would probably be “getting bugged more” by his kids due to his wife’s new high-level job.'

The obvious solution being for Mrs. DiBona to retire and apply herself full-time to raising the kids. That would totally free-up Richard DiBonas' time.

Seriously though, no business owes an employee extra privileges in relation to their domestic arrangements.

In such a serious case, once the accused was identified by TrueAllele, shouldn't a further test be carried out by a human to verify the results.