Point taken that VB was a programming ghetto. But the actual seniors were fighting the language to call Win32, writing MTS servers, and etc, they 'got' all that stuff.
I did some VBS ASP back in the day (not VB), and the language was more just annoying, at least partially due to the BASIC legacy stuff. Like it didn't even have a hashmap, you had to import something from Internet Explorer.
For the most part, this wasn't an individual problem. Corporations purchased these pretty expensive Pentium computers through a distributor, and just got them replaced by the vendor, per their support contract.
I've been in some consumer Apple "shadow warranty" situations, so I know what you are talking about, but IMO very different than the "IT crisis" that intel was facing. "IBM said so" had a ton of IT weight back then.
You make a great point, but I think we're going to see stuff like Microsoft selling 'supported NPM' to corps, rather than a zillion volunteers showing up to do monkey packaging work for Debian. (In fact, inserting some rando to fork the software makes the problem worse.)
Right but the point is then open source by necessity needs to constrain it's dependencies to sensible, auditable sets.
But I'd note that a hypothetical "verified NPM" would also result in the same thing: Microsoft does not have infinite resources for such a thing, so you'd just have a limited set of approved deps yet again (which would in fact make piggy backing them relatively easy for distros).
I can't see a way to slice it where it's reasonable to expect such a world to just support enormous nests of dependency versions.
Agreed, but on the other hand I never understood the business model of the for-profit NPM Corporation, or why Microsoft would buy them out, so there has to be some angle here. Maybe they cannot solve all of "the supply chain", but like 80% of it, yeah sure, sign here. Debian can package that too, whatever, they will get the F500s.
The verified npm will be like the verified pypi: "this thing was built on github, but we actually have no fucking clue if it's a bitcoin miner or a legit library"
Intuitively, this seems opposite, because you could obviously 'mutate' (or mutilate) your Debian system until the updates break. Isolating user changes should make updates easier, not harder. Also MacOS uses a 'sealed' system volume and updates are like butter there.
> Also MacOS uses a 'sealed' system volume and updates are like butter there.
Smooth as in "no data loss", sure. Smooth as in "supports the software I buy and use for long periods of time" is most certainly not true, even despite half the software for Mac being statically linked. Windows and Linux arguably do better at keeping system functionality across updates even with their fundamental disadvantages.
While true, this isn't even slightly related to the os being "immutable" or not. Immutable-OS upgrades can and do break things - that's the reason it's even a thing. They just give you a reliable rollback.
I was looking for this comment, because rake is great. One big thing is it never felt good imposing Ruby on a (say) a JS project (and I'm not sure of the current state of macos default ruby), so next time this comes up, I will be taking a look at just.
I was going to post about something, but according to Wikipedia, the IBM 486SLC found in super slow PS/2 crap computers had nothing to do with the Cyrix 486SLC. Learn something new everyday.
Please use regular hyperlinks so I can open in a new tab. (The visit button should probably open a new tab by default so users aren't taken away from your site.)
If you care for an opposing opinion, i find this obnoxious. I can easily middle click/modifier+click your links to open in a new tab if i want to and this is way les annoying than going back to previous tab to close it.
I think the parent commenter is referring to a general dislike for target="_blank" (i.e. new tab) links. Probably because there's a way to force a link to open in a new tab, but not a consistent way to force it to open in the same tab.
They might have had the most perfectly developed decommissioning process. And nobody is going to care when their paychecks stop showing up, and everything suddenly gets trucked-off into receivership.
Given the era and constraints, I don't see how it was irresponsible or 'sloppy' to have a local database on these things. This most likely is not on development.
> and everything suddenly gets trucked-off into receivership.
That's the problem. These things aren't getting collected and trucked off. They are just left rotting in their installed locations. I'm pretty confident that you could just show up to any of these with a tool box to just start opening one up to take out whatever you wanted from the insides, and not one person would question you. They already said they don't care if you never returned any discs you had in your possession, so nobody would care if you emptied their inventory of discs within. And until now, I'd wager not one person inside the company ever thought they might be vulnerable to a PII attack like this either.
The host locations are pissed off that the machines are sitting there taking up space and using electricity. They certainly aren't going to be happy with someone opening it up and making a mess. Or potentially creating some sort of additional liability for them.
But if you show up with a van or a large truck, they'd probably pay you money to take the whole thing off their hands. And you can tear it apart in your own garage.
how hard would it be to unplug the units? if these things are on a shared electrical circuit with anything else in the store, then that's on them. If they are separated, then just flip the breaker. otherwise, there's going to be j-box some where near the thing connected to some conduit. ten gets you twenty that there's some wire nuts in that j-box that could be disconnected in less than a minute.
also, just show up with a clipboard, and if anyone asks you, just say you were hired to collect certain items from within but not remove the entire thing. just print up a fake work order. i don't think i'm thinking too far outside the box on this one.
There was an article in some source (sorry, I forget which) that interviewed a person somewhere in the Southeast US that has been paid to remove a dozen or two of them. It had some photos of the inside of the machine. You should look for it!
I often wonder what was left behind when the financial crash happened. Watching documentaries and movies about it, it looked me like several large banks and insurers closed up shop overnight, and people were leaving the next day with boxes containing their personal effects.
I think you're right in general -- that is, regardless of the original company's practices, the entity selling off the assets should be required to do that responsibly -- but then:
> the unit I've got an image for has records going back to at least 2015.
Whether or not it's "on development" -- that's sloppy. Like how it would be a problem if your preferred grocery store kept your details on the cash register you checked out through almost ten years ago. It's a point-of-sale terminal holding on to high risk data for no reason.
I recall being surprised to see people using a Redbox in the grocery store. Like, wow, (a) this company still exists, and (b) ppl still watch DVDs. And that was years ago. I think it's not unlikely the company was already in total zombie-mode by 2015.
The end of Chicken Soup for the Soul media (who owned RedBox and Crackle at the end) was a complete shit show. I’d be unsurprised if they just walked away from the DVD boxes leaving the whoever had them on their property with the job of dumping them.
CSS just stopped paying vendors before the Redbox acquisition to make their balance sheet look better then just never paid after that until going bankrupt a year later. (My company was a vendor who had to get our attorneys involved to reclaim some payment prior to their bankruptcy and will never get the rest)
I’ve seen a bunch of these SPAC style (there’s usually some sort of penny stock starting point so the company is publicly traded from the jump) rollups of bankrupt or failing media and entertainment brands over the years and they all blow up.
I did some VBS ASP back in the day (not VB), and the language was more just annoying, at least partially due to the BASIC legacy stuff. Like it didn't even have a hashmap, you had to import something from Internet Explorer.