Posts by bombastic bob

Re: Ha! Rust Is The Answer To All Our C Programming Security Issues?

I once wrote a windows 'command.com' shell I called 'WinCMD' that did a lot of what CMD can do, specifically batch files and asynchronous windows applications from the command line. CMD in Win '95 of course made my application obsolete.

Maybe someone might write a console application for Win 7 and later that can do similar things, NOT be PowerShell, and contain improved command line security features...

Re: Ha! Rust Is The Answer To All Our C Programming Security Issues?

"They've never claimed to be a silver bullet for all security issues ever."

which means we should snark even harder, for laughs

/me rolls on the floor in a wild snicker fit

/me thinks: a shill for Demo[n,c][R,r]ats would say...

* FACEPALM *

[the left cannot meme]

I think we should let the people decide, and make sure that NO speech is silenced, filtered, nor edited [including the vile kinds of things that are often said about Trump] so that everyone is well informed, NOT motivated by pure emotion nor psychologically manipulated. and that ONLY legal (live) citizen votes are counted, exactly once per voter.

Do that and I'd accept the results. But I doubt that will actually happen... (the neo-nobility is compelled to divide us and keep us peasants in our place, RIGHT CCP???)

Re: Coders vs Developers

Ahem. count the number of 'goto' statements in the Linux and BSD kernel source. Efficient code often requires old-school methodology.

Re: Coders vs Developers

"String building SQL commands etc etc should just be an absolute no no."

You mean like constructing an 'INSERT" or "SELECT" command yourself? Works fine every time for me. Hard rules like that are what do not belong. Old school C code building queries and passing it to psql (or whatever) could be the best solution, even using 'malloc()/free()' on pointers, fixed length temporary buffers, and stdin/stdout to send and get data to/from a forked process that does the DBMS work, I do that a lot. It also means not having to link your code to a specific library, nor re-writing the interface too much if you switch DBMSs.

Re: "developers allow user-input data to be supplied to a database directly as a SQL command"

One method I try to use (always) is to make sure that the data itself will never contain characters that might cause SQL injection, such as a single quote mark or semicolon., Or I can explicitly escape them somehow before building the SQL command myself. This gives you the opportunity to test your code to see how it responds to a data field like "Boo'; DROP TABLE MASTER;" and so you check for the single quote, the semicolon, and so on, and test for control chars that might also do something bad. Then you can create generic SQL good for any DBMS that's also safe, use utilities like "psql" to do the dirty work, and so on.

But yeah getting that sanitized input takes some effort. Not hard with PHP though. Time worth spending regardless.

Re: There's a very simple fix that can't be bypassed

That is until some "vehicle inspection" system requires that this circuit board trace be functional...

Re: Going Fishing with Another Can of Worms

Any jingle from a "Big Pharma" TV ad will require only a small number of repeats

Re: See icon

exactly. Gummint at "work"

A federal mandate requires most heavy-duty trucks to be equipped with ELDs, which track driving hours.

So, because gummint cannot trust drivers to keep logs and maintain things on their own (including themselves) they have to INVENT A CRISIS in which a SURVEILLANCE system is MANDATED because we're just a bunch of DUMB PEASANTS who cannot manage ANYTHING without THEM.

And, naturally, they made it WORSE.

What's next, AIRLINE PILOTS? No, wait...

My uncle was a trucker, owned his own rig. He's probably FURIOUS. With the mileage he accumulated he had to buy a new one every few years. Long haul, interstate stuff. Gummint dweebs have NO clue as to what truckers need to know, and the skills involved.

And without the truckers, there will be CHAOS.

Re: The Hollywood script writes itself

I learned it as:

Ooey Gooey was a worm, a gooey worm was he;

Ooey Gooey!

Re: Microsoft's actions remind me of a past romance that really, really wants you to come back

"We value providing our customers with choice, so there is an option to dismiss the notification."

[who ELSE remembers GWX?]

Re: There's no such thing as silicon heaven..

Electric Sheep-land

Re: No way-land

I think we're gonna need a "Devuan" style makeover on RPi OS

Re: Are the United States

(RE: China becoming world's biggest economy)

All done with slave and child labor, grossly underpaid employees, totalitarian control, unfair international trade practices, and [specifically] theft of intellectual property [which I have seen clear examples of]

(under communism there is *NO* *REAL* *INNOVATION* - because the nail that STICKS UP gets THE HAMMER!)

Re: The lack of features as a feature

EV migration does not need to happen, nor will it. People will just fix up OLD cars - JUST! LIKE! CUBA!!!

(and I do not want to live in a place like CUBA, nor does anyone else, so there will never BE an "EV migration")

Re: By 'no radio' you mean AM/FM

but specifically NOT an AM radio.

Most conservative talk radio is on AM after all, and is VERY anti-CCP and pro-Trump. Make up an excuse like "the power converter creates too much noise for the AM band to be usable" and now Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Clay&Buck, and others no longer threaten the CCP domination of the world, since nobody can listen to them while driving any more.

Re: Came to say the same thing

that would be illegal and unusable

Has not stopped such things in the USA. FISA abuse, for starters.

A distributed database with 250 million sets of records is NOTHING. I can see how to build and use such a thing, tie it in with motor vehicle departments and law enforcement, and make it available for anyone that wants the data with the right "warrant" even though we know FISA has already been abused like this.

A daily report of GPS location and time, taken every 5 minutes, means 12 records per hour of driving, consisting of a 64-bit integer (seconds since the epoch), and 3 double precision floating point values (longitude, latitude, elevation). Total 32 bytes times 12 for each hour of driving, indexed to your VIN number, which is associated with YOU.

NOT hard at all. Not a lot of data, either. (I know)

And all law enforcement needs is a place to look or a person to investigate, and if this information NEVER shows up in court, it does not need to be "admissable evidence" as far as anyone is concerned.

Best hope those in power do not suddenly say "Find me the man and I'll find you the crime".

Re: Came to say the same thing

see icon

Re: Came to say the same thing

Yes, but are they equipped with the EV equivalent of 'Atmos'??? (invented by Sontarans, of course)

When it suddenly steers you into a deep body of water and leaves the windows up and the doors locked... "You have reached your final destination"

Re: Came to say the same thing

"I don't want China to be able to disable my car as part of a tit for tat if they invaded Taiwan and the US was helping Taiwan defend itself. But I wouldn't want a US or EU based automaker to have that power EITHER."

A VERY SANE summary.

Besides, the one thing about the actions of that doddering old fool (King Bidas, and his puppetmasters behind the curtain) is that it is currently an election year. And you always know he is lying whenever his lips are moving.

(This will all blow over after November)

DEI *IS* discrimination. I rail against it ALL OF THE TIME.

Re: What is it with these hard-right muppets?

"Hard right"

I do not think those words mean what YOU think they mean...

If 'hard right' (Adolph, Mussolini) is not a mirror clone of 'hard left' (Mao, Stalin) then I think your definition might be "inaccurate" at best... [in fact both circle around and meet at the bottom, In My Bombastic Opinion]

Re: Odd, isn't it?

Elon's cars will never be "affordable" for most people. This is not his market. Earlier Cadillacs had air conditioning and cruise control when few others did, and now it's standard equipment. But back then, only those with a lot of disposable income could afford cars with them.

In the "Marketing Cycle" world these customers are the "early adopters". The masses will not have this for a decade or more.

Early in Ford's history, Benz sued him over their invention of "The Automobile". Benz lost Ford's patent challenge, i.e. "too broad" or similar. European car makers only wanted cars for the WEALTHY and not for the masses, after all, and Ford wanted his own employees to own some of the cars they made [mostly for PR I bet but he understood the MASS market].

Anyway new/shiny is generally bought by early adopters. In a decade or so the features that CAN be in mass market cars will end up there, and patent royalties will enrich the inventors.

Re: Odd, isn't it?

"But there's a reason those things never got beyond kids comics..."

meanwhile re-usable SpaceX rockets REGULARLY land on their tail on a barge that moves with the ocean,.. like a 1950's kid's sci fi comic.

Re: Can someone man'splain this to me?

in reality it is children who grew old enough to say "It is OUR turn now", but have convinced themselves that the choices made in the past were NOT based on experience, but on a LACK of what THEY (the younguns) have, something that us "old farts" cannot POSSIBLY understand.

And once again I mention Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority"

https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/superiority-by-arthur-c-clarke-full-text/

Re: Can someone man'splain this to me?

can we just fix the bugs and stop mucking around with the UI? This change for the sake of change, is why I'm moving to Linux instead of Windows. The last thing I want is for that disease to infect Linux.

Welcome aboard!!!

Mate for a traditional interface

The one thing Mate has going that nonefew of the OTHERS seem to "get right" is a 3D skeuomorphic look with TraditionalOK and related themes.

AdWaita and ALL of the 2D FLATSO FLATASS themes (including GTK 4 and above) should be taken out back and KILLED until they DIE to DEATH, possibly out of a 4th floor window onto the boss's car.

I took a look at some of the LXQt screenshots https://lxqt-project.org/screenshots/ and I saw Win-10-nic TIFKAM title bar and buttons and OTHER window decorations. YUCK!!!

What is WRONG with people these days, taking away CHOICE from users by ONLY OFFERING 2D FLATASS themes??? And, GOING WITH THE BORG's DESIGN AS THE *ONLY* CHOICE!!!

I think you pretty well nailed it

yes, a "halt and catch fire" situation seems even MORE likely how...

Some years ago I did a lot with LiPo batteries, charging circuits, determining how much battery is left, yotta yotta and one time I accidentally plugged a battery into a test circuit that was inadvertently shorted directly across the battery, In under 2 seconds it swelled like a sausage shaped balloon (from being flat and rectangular) and made a weird hissing noise when it did it. I yanked it out of circuit and got it to a sink in a few seconds and ran water on it, then it immediately collapsed into a wrinkled version of its former flat rectangular self. And this battery was under 300mAH if I recall correctly,.

So yeah, put multi-KAH batteries into an electric vehicle with this electrolyte, along with Lithium electrodes, and see what happens in a traffic accident,..,

Re: Doesn't

good resource. needs javascript enabled though

Re: A new solvent.

flouro-something means it has flourine in it. This by itself is not so much of a problem, unless it re-combines with OTHER things. HF acid is extremely toxic and dangerous, for example, though a flouride buffer solution used by your dentist really isn't [when use properly], nor is the flouride in toothpaste. CFCs used in air conditioning are non-toxic unless you BURN them, and then you can get phosgene gas (from the chlorine) and possibly similar kinds of chemicals from the flourine (I am not sure on this however, just making a point about what burning does in general). And as we all know lithium-based batteries have been known to "halt and catch fire" now and then.

That being said, my SPECIFIC concern here has to do with a technology MONOPOLY by CCP regarding electric vehicles, and the FLAT OUT UNSCIENTIFIC LIES that are being used to (literally) FORCE people to switch over to them from gasoline and diesel engines. We know that CCP scientists have done their best at industrial and academic espionage on our technology for a LONG time, and they have finally reached a point with EV batter tech where WE must honor THEIR patents (when THEIR lack of patent respect towards US has been BLATANT).

THAT is my main concern. We do NOT need to enrich the CCP. any further.

"U-Bend links"

heh - good one