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> 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.


> I admire your attempt to deflect blame from the management at boeing.

Bah, what a vile comment. He didn't contest that at all.

It's the engineers who will have to go through this exercise of fixing it, and he identified something most of us can probably relate to.


It's definitely the engineers pain. It's clear that management is the cause of all this shit, but the problem now lies in the engineers lap. So who has to solve it? Right, the engineers.


They're the ones that accepted and designed an unsafe aircraft ( a single sensor known for failure feeding a critical system that can crash an airplane? And they hid it from the FAA? They absolutely knew what they were doing and should rot in jail for at least a few years).


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.


>have the means to create a vaccine and so save the planet

is that true though? Aren't a lot of diseases being worked on in labs without the means to cure them yet


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


Yes, but why would that help?


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

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


No they don't, they usually just use common encryption library and encrypt files directly.


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.


You bough a brand new computer without an SSD?


@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.


"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.


Agreed, it's an inspiring story. The article briefly touches on his involvement in his community. That's an extremely important part of success, for just about anybody.


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


I just tried it on the ZX81 online emulator: http://www.zx81stuff.org.uk/zx81/jtyone.html

You have to type the following sequence of keys:

  P  [Shift]I  2  [Shift]H  3  2  [Shift]O  -
  [Shift]I  [Shift]I  2  [Shift]H  3  2  [Shift]O
  -  1  [Shift]O  Enter
which should appear as:

  PRINT (2**32)-((2**32)-1)
It prints 0 which is not the expected answer! (The 0/0 at the bottom of the screeen is an OK message, the answer is printed in the top left corner). I think this isn't necessarily a bug, it's because the computer used something similar to modern single precision floating point.

Also try this (SQR is entered as: [Shift]Enter H):

  PRINT SQR 0.25
On the emulator it looks like the bug has been fixed, but on early models of the real hardware it would give a completely bogus result.

I think what was interesting was it used a kind of bytecode to run maths routines (similar to the Apple II's SWEET16 code).


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

    In [1]: 2.0**64 - (2.0**64-1.0)
    Out[1]: 0.0
Thats how floats behave like with operands that differ greatly in magnitude. Also this

    In [2]: 2.0**64 == (2.0**64 - 1.0)
    Out[2]: True


> 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.


The sign takes one bit off the mantissa.


"1" in Scheme:

    >(- (expt 2 64) (- (expt 2 64) 1))
    1
http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/SCM.html


Are you sure that isn't just doing integer math? I don't have a scheme implementation handy, but I tried it in sbcl Common Lisp and while (- (expt 2 64) (- (expt 2 64) 1)) does yield 1,

(- (expt 2.0 64) (- (expt 2.0 64) 1)) yields 0.


True, 0. But I think Guile had an exact->inexact function.


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.


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


"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

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