56F and 70%RH. That’s almost bone dry considering the last few weeks…
Missed the TV spectacle last night, played a game with the family instead. Haven’t read much coverage, so it must not have been very controversial.
I’ll be headed to Austin for a pickup today and off line for much of the day.
Got a few of my items off my list yesterday, but not enough, so I’ll roll them over to today, and tomorrow, and Friday…
In the mean time, “talk amongst yourselves.”
n
Something to kick off discussion:
“The pro-Erdogan, AKP-supporting Daily Sabah says “a soft coup against Donald Trump” is underway, but that Trump’s “rogue” National Security Adviser got a “rude awakening” upon visiting Turkey yesterday:'”
Um, no shirt sherlock? But what does is mean when even someone on the far side of the world can see it, and chooses to talk about it?
And no link but think about this: Occasional Cortex, the socialist pet of the House didn’t get herself there. NO WAY did that persona file all the correct notices, forms, declarations of intent, etc. NO WAY did that persona raise the money, file the accounting, set up the corps, etc. So either she’s really playing us, or she’s someone’s puppet. SO WHOSE PUPPET? Who convinced her to run? Who put up the helpful staff? Whose congresswoman is she?
n
I have wondered about that myself. She is much too ignorant about how government works to put together a full campaign for election to a congressional office. The forms, the compliance rules, the financial filings are not trivial. She has shown multiple times that her knowledge of money is basically non-existent and money handling during a campaign is critical to avoid charges. The IRS and other agencies take a very dim view of mismanaged money.
She is a front person for someone who cannot get elected or is being fronted by an organization that otherwise would have no political power. This is the person, or organization, way of getting their finger into the US government.
I hope she gets contained and shut down hard by other democrats when she does something really stupid, or rather stupider than she has already done.
Whose congresswoman is she?
Bernie’s money people. She worked for them in 2016.
If that answer doesn’t suffice, I’d say look at a list of her parents’ (parent?) neighbors in Westchester *where she really grew up* and probably actually lived until she decided to run for Congress. She definitely has a Sugar Daddy, twice her age minimum, Boomer/X-er tech or Wall Street money.
Again, stop worrying. One term. People in Congressional districts around Orlando got tired of Alan Grayson. Twice. When the House members get busy with a radical agenda on either side, they tend to neglect landing the pork for their district, part of the reason the House is flipping every decade or so.
Our own (R) Congressman is a stiff who probably should have retired years ago, but he beat back a slick Prog campaign challenge by reminding people who brought home the earmarks.
I have some appointments today and did have “other plans,” but Windows Update has changed my “other plans.”
Windows Update January 8, 2019—KB4480116 (OS Build 17763.253) has broken things, as have ALL Windows Updates for more than 6-months now. What is weird is it breaks different things on each computer, sure some common things, but each computer is effected in some different ways.
The big thing on my main laptop is it broke all my backup programs (what? you don’t have at least 2?). It has also screwed up cloud syncing. And it looks like it tried to re-install Microsoft OneDrive.
So please, Linux and Apple fanboys, be quiet, you have your own set of problems, many hidden by the operating system. At least with Windows what is broken usually bubbles to the surface right away.
A final bit of opinion:
If the liberal/progressive/democrat/whatever parties (basically anyone who is not a True Constitutionalist) take over in 2020 we have lost our freedom and lives for probably a millennium, yes a millennium, or until there is a natural world-wide cataclysm (e.g., pole flip followed by earthquakes and floods, hit by large or multiple rocks from space, Sun event) that puts us back to before the Stone Age, or worse.
Anyone and I mean everyone, who talks up these latest empty-brained “democrats” is someone who is wasting air and needs to be shunned. They are non-persons and a threat to the common good. But that will never happen because we must turn the other cheek, again. Sorry, I ran out of cheeks long ago.
I am amazed out how long it is taking for the “democrats” and MSM to mount a substantive (to them) rebuttal to Trump’s milk toast (IMHO) speech last night. Are they still nursing their New Year’s hangover?
Is Ruth Bader Ginsberg going to show up to work at the Supreme Court today? She has missed two days so far. Is third time the charm?
Ginsberg probably passed away. The corpse can vote from home as long as the smell doesn’t leak out. Retire already. Enjoy the rest of your days Ruth. ProgLibTurds prayed you would retire during Obola’s reign. Now tRump gets to nominate a third SCJ.
So please, Linux and Apple fanboys, be quiet, …
My Mac Book Pro is over a year old now, has every macOS update since day one and no problems. I run ClamXAV on all downloads since I try out a lot of software. I also run the Mac version of Office 365 without a problem.
YMMV
I have some appointments today and did have “other plans,” but Windows Update has changed my “other plans.”
Windows Update January 8, 2019—KB4480116 (OS Build 17763.253) has broken things, as have ALL Windows Updates for more than 6-months now. What is weird is it breaks different things on each computer, sure some common things, but each computer is effected in some different ways.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4480116/windows-10-update-kb4480116
Yup, our entire Windows 7 x64 network is down. Both my file servers are down.
I will never allow Microsoft Windows Update to run again, this has happened at the absolute worst time and is screwing us to the wall.
I have some appointments today and did have “other plans,” but Windows Update has changed my “other plans.”
Windows Update January 8, 2019—KB4480116 (OS Build 17763.253) has broken things, as have ALL Windows Updates for more than 6-months now. What is weird is it breaks different things on each computer, sure some common things, but each computer is effected in some different ways.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4480116/windows-10-update-kb4480116
It is KB4480970 windows update, a 240 MB update. MS patched the entire Windows operating system and removed support for running Administrator across the network ! ! ! We have to be Administrators to run Act! and our development tools.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4480970/windows-7-update-kb4480970
Senior Developer and I are removing this patch from all of the PCs.
There are no adults in charge at MS anymore.
@DadCooks, thanks for the notice letting me zoom in on the bug so quickly.
I love this warning on the Windows 7 patch:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4480970/windows-7-update-kb4480970
“After you apply this update, the network interface controller may stop working on some client software configurations. This occurs because of an issue related to a missing file, oem.inf. The exact problematic configurations are currently unknown.”
You do NOT distribute a operating system wide update without resolving issues like this !
The problem is not the file. The problem is the level of user access across the network.
Ginsberg probably passed away. The corpse can vote from home as long as the smell doesn’t leak out. Retire already. Enjoy the rest of your days Ruth. ProgLibTurds prayed you would retire during Obola’s reign. Now tRump gets to nominate a third SCJ.
We’d know if she passed. The conspiracy to keep that quiet would involve too many players, and protest signs don’t print themselves.
The local Kinkos here in Austin generally required 24 hours just to print and bind a single copy of my grad school project report submissions. I can’t imagine what kind of lead time would be required for a run of signs and banners with different possible nominee names for a rent-a-mob.
I am very happy with Linux, but you’re right, Linux has problems as well. In preparation for the coming semester, I decided to update all of my Java installations to Java 11. This is complicated by the fact that I wanted to update my “from zero” walkthrough for students, so I also updated a windows machine.
Many hours later, I can declare that Java 11 is a fustercluck. For many reasons, as I described on SoylentNews.
Two of these are Linux related. First, Ubuntu has a package called OPENJDK-11 that installs Java 10. This is not a bug, it is deliberate!
Second, For reasons I cannot understand, Java 11 breaks various thing under my normal user account (like LibreOffice). Under any other account on the same machine, this does not happen.
Anyway, the problems and stupid decisions around Java 11 are so bad that I will be working to change the programming language taught in our university. Initial discussions with other instructors indicate that they are just as annoyed. Assuming we are not alone, Oracle has well and truly put their foot in it.
@Brad
Thanks for the heads up on Java 11.
I resume my UoP* online classes at the end of the month and Programming 2 is in Java. I had intended to upgrade to version 11 ahead of time. I will refrain!
*UoP University of the People. DEAC accredited. 4 year degree in BA / CS / something Health for a bit over $4,000 for ALL 4 years. Not noble. Not cool. Not regionally accredited. Not a diploma mill. Let’s you check the “graduated college” box on a job application without going into debt. Classes are better than some online sources, not as good as EdX, however you can’t pull off a 4 year degree with EdX for $4,000. UoP augmentedby EdX can be a good education alternative to brick and mortar.
Senior Developer and I are removing this patch from all of the PCs.
There are no adults in charge at MS anymore.
Adults are in charge in Redmond, but all of the Windows OS development jobs went to Bangalore, where “freshers” run things.
@Jenny: Definitely skip it, especially (but not only) if you use JavaFX.
I had to give up on my walkthrough. There is no way a first semester student can install Java 11 and the necessary tools. Best bet for Fall is to roll back to Java 8, but that is hardly ideal…
Senior Developer and I are removing this patch from all of the PCs.
There are no adults in charge at MS anymore.
Adults are in charge in Redmond, but all of the Windows OS development jobs went to Bangalore, where “freshers” run things.
Nope, the adults in Redmond should not have allowed this patch to go through.
There are many speculations on the problem on the intertubes now. This one says to modify the registry (always a sore point with me):
https://borncity.com/win/2019/01/09/netzwerk-issues-with-updates-kb4480970-and-kb4480960/
With:
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\system /v LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
Anyway, the problems and stupid decisions around Java 11 are so bad that I will be working to change the programming language taught in our university. Initial discussions with other instructors indicate that they are just as annoyed. Assuming we are not alone, Oracle has well and truly put their foot in it.
To which programming language ?
“The rise of Socialism: Standing on the shoulders of morons”
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/the-rise-of-socialism-standing-on-the-shoulders-of-morons-24411/
“There are now 40 socialists in Congress, including the infamous 29-year old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who think it’s a great idea to centrally plan the economy, jack up tax rates to confiscatory levels and even nationalize certain private industries.”
“Their desires are echoed by Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman who believes that 70%+ would be the best tax rate for maximum economic efficiency.”
“It’s even more interesting to note that, according to a recent Gallup poll, more younger Americans (18-29) now identify with Socialism than Capitalism – 51% vs. 45%. That’s a 12-point decline in a positive view toward capitalism in just the past two years… back in 2010, 68% of young Americans viewed capitalism favorably.”
“Anyway, the problems and stupid decisions around Java 11 are so bad that I will be working to change the programming language taught in our university. Initial discussions with other instructors indicate that they are just as annoyed. Assuming we are not alone, Oracle has well and truly put their foot in it.”
To which programming language ?
Python is increasingly popular in academia. The pseudocode out of CLRS (MIT Press “Introduction to Algorithms”) runs with minimal changes in my experience.
Nope, the adults in Redmond should not have allowed this patch to go through.
Anyone with half of a brain still working in Redmond has moved to “cool” tech like cloud or X-Box. At Microsoft, to work on legacy tech like Office or, now, a Windows desktop OS is the dead end of many careers. For the tech people, it is bad enough they aren’t at Google or Amazon.
I imagine that a lot of authority for shipping decisions have shifted to Bangalore. Much like the Cylons, that entire country has a plan. Their Achilles Heel is a culture that is like Pournelle’s Iron Law applied to an economy supporting more than a billion people.
“Patch Tuesday updates for Win7, KB 4480970 and KB 4480960 knock out networking”
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3332202/microsoft-windows/patch-tuesday-updates-for-win7-kb-4480970-and-kb-4480960-knock-out-networking.html
and
“January patches for Win7, KB 44080970 and KB 4480960, break networking”
https://www.askwoody.com/2019/january-patches-for-win7-kb-44080970-and-kb-4480960-break-networking/
Ah, this is definitely an issue on my network !
“The issue is triggered only if the user attempting to make the connection is an administrator on the machine that hosts the Share. If the user is “just” a user on the device that hosts the share, the connection should be fine.”
Heh.
“Definite quote of the Week from Krustyy on Reddit on patching strategy:
I think I have my automated deployment rules set to something glorious.
2nd Tuesday: do nothing. Spend a week looking for complaints like this.
3rd Tuesday: download and deploy to test group.
4th Tuesday: Deploy to all systems.
Haven’t had an issue yet.”
And that is why I’m not having a problem here. NOBODY on my network is an administrator on our servers, so the network shares are fine.
I always apply the patch to my desktop first (patch Wednesday for me). I also update my “template” server (the VM I use for cranking out a new VM via copy). I then observe. I force all desktops to patch on Patch Saturday. Patch Sunday Zach comes in and updates all of our servers.
I agree that it sucks to be a Windoze user. But there are no viable alternatives in my space. I’ll continue to operate that way – it’s the best bet I can make in my situation.
And that is why I’m not having a problem here. NOBODY on my network is an administrator on our servers, so the network shares are fine.
Yeah, now I am wondering if we need users to have administrator status on any other pc in the network.
We use peer-to-peer networking for our backups so I am not sure about this. All of the user locked areas get copied to the servers … occasionally. I need to make sure that the user areas are backed up to the servers each day by automating that script.
Sigh, never enough to do.
I have 150 users on an Active Directory domain. Vastly different than you.
It very easily could have been the opposite – admins have no problem, while regular users get screwed.
In your case, I’d seriously consider a little more software/hardware. We use Quest’s Appassure product. It’s pricy, but it does all of our backups and gives me peace of mind. When I need to add a machine, I do it right from the server (web interface) and check it for two days. Then monthly checks to make sure all of the backups are okay. I even have the backups replicating to an off-site machine. It costs. But I sleep well at night. The machines that DON’T work via AppAssure (my VMWare SCO Unix box and a VMWare-hosted NT4 machine) are the ones that make my life difficult. But once they’re backed up to an AppAssure-covered machine, I’m golden.
“Twitter mocks ‘creepy twins’ Schumer and Pelosi for their Trump response ”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/twitter-mocks-creepy-twins-schumer-and-pelosi-for-their-trump-response
Yup, the minute I saw those two together last night, I got the creepy feeling.
In your case, I’d seriously consider a little more software/hardware. We use Quest’s Appassure product. It’s pricy, but it does all of our backups and gives me peace of mind. When I need to add a machine, I do it right from the server (web interface) and check it for two days. Then monthly checks to make sure all of the backups are okay. I even have the backups replicating to an off-site machine. It costs. But I sleep well at night. The machines that DON’T work via AppAssure (my VMWare SCO Unix box and a VMWare-hosted NT4 machine) are the ones that make my life difficult. But once they’re backed up to an AppAssure-covered machine, I’m golden.
I agonized over buying a new 8 TB external drive in December for $150 as I like to archive one of our seven backup drives every six months.
2018 sucked. 2019 is worse than sucked, so far to the event horizon.
Home. Waved at the racetrack for Greg as I went by. LOTS of roadwork happening on the south and east sides of Austin.
Stopped at the Goodwill Outlet, got some good scores. Cast iron Lodge skillet (modern), and Faber skillet (possibly vintage) $4 each. Some other good smalls to sell, and some stuff for me. 38 pounds.
I stopped at the State Surplus Store too, but restrained myself to a couple of small tools, mainly folding pruning saws. I really like having one in my truck and decided to add one to each vehicle. I got a couple of tent stakes and a boring bar too. They didn’t have any magazines that I could use, and I was running late, so I didn’t dig thru the knife bins.
Outside Austin, traffic was light. I did notice that I wasn’t seeing a lot of Amazon semis. I saw one van, and it might have been doing a local delivery. I saw a TON of campers. Is this a holiday week?
n
Outside Austin, traffic was light. I did notice that I wasn’t seeing a lot of Amazon semis. I saw one van, and it might have been doing a local delivery. I saw a TON of campers. Is this a holiday week?
I believe UT and TX State are still out, but traffic volume seemed pretty normal to me when I headed up I-35 tonight.
East and south have chronic flood issues so land is cheap.
Bastrop has totally changed since we moved here nearly five years ago, and San Marcos had an outside chance at landing the Raiders so lots of redevelopment along I-35 south of Austin started accelerating in 2015.
The NFL has signaled that San Antonio is in consideration for expansion so the Raiders deal with Las Vegas hasn’t put a chill on the construction. The Alamo Dome is considered acceptable only on a temporary basis, however.
There are many speculations on the problem on the intertubes now. This one says to modify the registry (always a sore point with me):
https://borncity.com/win/2019/01/09/netzwerk-issues-with-updates-kb4480970-and-kb4480960/
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\system /v LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
I can confirm that this patch works for us on multiple client PCs. I have not patched the servers with it though.
“Soon, You’ll Be Able To Play Duck Hunt On Modern TVs”
https://kotaku.com/soon-youll-be-able-to-play-duck-hunt-on-modern-tvs-1831548013
I never liked the game very much. But that is a very interesting technical description of how the game worked with a CRT.
I never liked the game very much. But that is a very interesting technical description of how the game worked with a CRT.
I’ll have to dig out my NES gear to be sure, but I swear the gun mechanism is a lot simpler and more foolproof than described.
I’ve seen Ed Fries lecture on programming the old Atari 2600 several times. He was the product manager on the orginal “Halo”, and spent a year making a 2600 version after cashing out his Microsoft options.
If you ever want a real programming challenge, the 2600 is up there.
Ironically, Fries cannot sell his cartridge, but bootleg carts exist, part of a small run. The software is playable at https://archive.org/details/Halo_Atari_2600.
To which programming language ?
That’s the question, isn’t it? Lots of people suggest things like Python, but I disagree. I think it is essential for beginners to use a strongly-typed language. There is just too much ugliness buried in type conversions, and when these happen automatically, new programmers will have no clue what is happening.
Also important: The language must support building user interfaces without too much pain. It doesn’t much matter if these are classic user interfaces, or something web-based – although I can’t imagine anything doing web-based interfaces that doesn’t involve JavaScript, which fails the “strongly typed” requirement.
Within those constraints: strongly typed + GUI development – I’d be interested in hearing suggestions!
Of course, I have a long row to hoe here. Lots of courses currently build on the Java that we do in the first three semesters. Changing out the foundation will be difficult. I expect it’s likely that we will first retreat to Java 8 for a couple of years, in hopes that Oracle gets its act together. Unlikely, but I suppose it could happen.
Within those constraints: strongly typed + GUI development – I’d be interested in hearing suggestions!
My last CS program used C++11 in Code::Blocks as the intro language. GUIs weren’t discussed until Junior or Senior level classes.
Stroustrup as a text is a lousy choice for an intro class, however. I forget which text our department used, but it wasn’t “The C++ Programming Language”.
Stanford had a reader for their C++ intro course titled “Programming Abstractions” developed by faculty. I think Eric Roberts developed it into a formal text, but copies of the original still float around the internet. I’m not sure of copyright.
http://www.cas.mcmaster.ca/~qiao/courses/cs2so3/textbook/ProgAbs.pdf
Strongly typed languages can lead to a lot of frustration at the intro level, and IMHO they aren’t appropriate in an intro course with non-CS students in the mix. Non-CS is better off learning Python since the focus needs to be on getting useful work done. My first Python program ran (probably still runs) an important process for AT&T Uverse which I wrote in a weekend.
Programs which introduce GUIs too early generate graduates who struggle with MVC separation from my experience. I’ve worked with people who headed into retirement unable to grok the concept.
Another issue with C++ is TA knowledge. If, like my last school, your CS program runs a diploma mill for wealthy Indians at the Masters level (c’mon, be honest, even some big schools do it anymore), you will have to teach a rigoruous remedial C/C++ to the grad students before letting them loose on undergrads. The “Electronics and Communications” degree possessed by the typical subcontinent Bachelors grad applying for MS programs here in the US isn’t worth a proverbial warm bucket of hamster vomit — they *might* know Visual Basic .Net, and most don’t have the electronics knowledge implied by the title on their diploma.
(If you’re female Indian grad students self identify as “fresher”, your department is running a diploma mill.)
@Greg: Thanks for you inputs. Some comments back to you – let me know what you think. FWIW I teach in two different degree programs, one technical, and one for business-information-system students (future business analysts, requirements engineers, etc.)
GUIs: It seems to me that, for less technical students, the ability to have a visible program that you can interact with is a huge benefit. Writing programs that only talk to you through the console tends to be too abstract. For the technical students, we do introduce GUIs later – halfway through the second semester, instead of already in the first semester.
C++ is an obvious drop-in replacement for Java, but I’m afraid it has many of the same drawbacks. Mainly, it has become hugely complex. Ok, it was born complex, but it has grown like a fungus. Just like Java has.
Our Masters programs – degree mills? It’s best if I don’t comment on that… Fortunately, TAs are not an issue, because we don’t have any. The type of college I teach for has more professors and smaller classes – and we are expected to handle all aspects of our classes, including the classic TA tasks.
Granted, class sizes somehow keep creeping up – just 10 years ago, it was around 20-25, but now is more like 40. Funny, the administration keeps hiring more people to deal with increased student numbers, but somehow they don’t hire more instructors…
C++ is an obvious drop-in replacement for Java, but I’m afraid it has many of the same drawbacks. Mainly, it has become hugely complex. Ok, it was born complex, but it has grown like a fungus. Just like Java has.
C++11 introduced the somewhat controversial ‘auto’ keyword to mitigate some of the complexity when dealing with Standard Library interactions, but since Stroustrup left AT&T (I used to share an email server with him!), the complexity has grown to the point that maintenance of the programs can be expensive due to the requirement to hire gurus to deal with what is essentially syntactic sugar.
If you seriously look at C++, only a subset of the Standard Library is truly needed for 95% of code.
here’s a windows question–
is there ANY point at all of allowing windows to index the disk? I usually turn off indexing when I set up the machine, but if you forget, and have a ton of files, it takes forever to do later.
Windows indexing seems to have problems knowing when you aren’t using the machine, and sometimes seems to get stuck in the ON position, thrashing away at the drive.
Does any normal user search their drive often enough to make indexing worth it, given that indexing takes machine cycles and occasionally delays you doing something else?
Is this just a holdover from when machine time and resources were precious?
n
If you seriously look at C++, only a subset of the Standard Library is truly needed for 95% of code.
We use C++ and Fortran 77 extensively for our production code. The Fortran 77 is used because our calculation engine dates back to the 1960s and was written originally in Fortran IV. Shoot, maybe Fortran II. My life goal is to convert this code to C++ but I do not hold out much hope. The automatic conversion tools that I have tried do not work and converting 800,000 lines of code is a daunting task. The fact that Fortran vector indexes start at one and C/C++ vector indexes start at zero is an incredible jump to make. That said, we do have well over 10,000 lines of C++ code intermixed with the Fortran code. I am writing more at the moment since I am adding a OLE2 interface to Excel.
We use C++ for our Windows user interface which is hard tied to the Win32 API. We have around 500,000 lines of C++ code which actually dates back to the 1980s. Our diagrammatic user interface was written to the Windows 1.0 API so it is C that has been converted to C++. Kinda chunky there and very loosy goosy about data types with lots of casts. I hate the casts as they are incredibly hard to debug and will make an x64 port difficult.
My biggest beef with C++ is the fact that there is not a common user interface library. I have mentioned this to several of the C++ biggies and they claim UITKs are not a part of the goals for the language. Java tried for a universal UITK using the Swing library and seemed to fail (at least to me).
There is a concerted effort to add garbage collection to the C++ environment which will be a disaster. I just love it when my DirecTV DVR seemingly freezes up and then tries to implement all of the remote button presses that happened. I know that the Java code is doing a root level panic garbage collection and cannot run anything else during that time period.
Strongly typed languages can lead to a lot of frustration at the intro level, and IMHO they aren’t appropriate in an intro course with non-CS students in the mix. Non-CS is better off learning Python since the focus needs to be on getting useful work done. My first Python program ran (probably still runs) an important process for AT&T Uverse which I wrote in a weekend.
The problem with that loosely typed languages have troubles scaling up. We used to use Smalltalk for our user interface and data storage on Windows Win16, around 200,000 lines of code. We would constantly run into the problem where an object would have a method applied to it but that object would not have the method for it. So, crash. We converted the Smalltalk code to C++ and all those problems went away. Plus our program ran 100X faster.
Loosely typed languages are great for small projects but anything of serious complexity requires strong typing which uses early binding by default.