Posts by Pascal Monett 18232 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
Good.
Targetted ads need to disappear, along with the privacy invasion that they impose.
As for the disabled, companies apparently need to give a lot more thought as to how their tech works. Not being able to end a call is ridiculous. How can any group of people take the call project and not deal with how to end the call ?
"The amount of power consumed by the FreedomFi Gateway and an indoor CBRS radio," said Renski, "is comparable to that of a Wi-Fi access point. "
For the operation of the 5G functionality, maybe, but certainly not for the cryptomining functionality. That is going to be pushing the CPU to the hilt 24/7 for some virtual funny money.
Real electricity used up to "create" a fantasy that only has some form of value because people want to believe the shysters.
Yes, we're talking about them.
They don't exist, and it's not because of unions.
They don't exist because nobody has found a way to ensure that the on-board detectors will be reliable enough to make a difference between sun glare and an actual stop sign, not to mention how the system can go completely haywire when it's snowing.
I'm all for self-driving vehicles. I would love to get in my car, program the destination and lay back with a book and a drink (if the time is right) while the car takes of getting me to where I need to go. But that does not exist today and it won't before a long time. Because to have a proper self-driving car, you need to program the damn thing to be efficient in all weather conditions, over bad roads and inexistant signage, and, possibly even more difficult, worn-out road marks.
We're not there yet. When we get there, then we'll see how unions react.
I was once on a team contacted to create a document management application that would allow lawyers to, well, manage their documents more efficiently.
One would think that lawyers would appreciate that kind of functionality.
Here I was, explaining that the application could easily track the contributors and the changes, and all the filing would a quick press of a button. What I did not get was all the questions about whose name was going to be on the document and could the secretaries take care of it.
Once we had lost the deal, I twigged to the root cause : these guys didn't want to touch a computer, they wanted their secretaries to do the work. What I was proposing was that they had to do some work, instead of enjoying expensive lunches at fancy restaurants.
Obviously, that was not acceptable.
Because obviously these days only machine learning can possibly do the job properly.
Actually testing stuff yourselves in a lab is soo last millennium. No, let's test a bunch of ML algorithms we don't know how they work and, when we find one that gives us the results we want, we'll use that.
Absolutely agree. A 4-year old laptop or PC today is not worth replacing.
The last time I upgraded my desktop was in 2015, and it's still doing its job fine. The only reason I'm starting to oogle replacement parts is because I'm a gamer, and those new graphics cards are becoming very, very attractive.
But my work laptop that I've had since 2012 ? I'll replace that the days it dies, not a second before.
Sorry Pat, the notebook market is not the mobile phone market. You're not going to get 400 million refreshment sales any time soon.
Here's my definition of safety : you show your gratitude to the people who give you exceptional deals. And that gratitude is manifested in money, because a pat on the back is just an insult these days.
The bone-headedness of manglement these days defies comprehension. What do you prefer : having a salesman on your team that got half a million bonus, that you can show as living incentive to get the rest off their asses and cracking for the company, or having a lawsuit that clearly demonstrates to the rest of the team that their best efforts will be met with "meh" ?
Morons.
I've said it before and I'll say it again : if you don't want to give massive payouts to your sales team, don't make rules that give them massive payouts, only to create secondary rules that cheat them from it.
In any case, one thing is sure : do not go working for Veritas UK sales team. You're going to be cheated.
Exactly.
China is far from being a threat as far as I'm concerned. The NSA and its snooping largely predates any issues with the "global operating system".
What kind of bollocks is this anyway ? There is no such thing as a global operating system. There is, however, Google and Facebook, and they are not under chinese control.
It's very interesting to see this guy harp on about global impact when, ten years ago, the discussions were about the balkanization of the Internet. China and Russia both exert tight control over Internet access for their citizens (so does North Korea, but who cares ?). Any dictatorship worth the name will do the same in the blink of an eye if it deems that its power is in danger (cf Pakistan).
Where's your global operating system in all that ?
And, as far as digital currencies are concerned, don't make me laugh. The only reason for these are for government surveillance. My own government wants to track my activity down to the last penny.
China is not the threat. It's you lot that are hell-bent on anally probing my life.
OVH has been totally transparent about its troubles, is IBM going to follow suit ?
I know it is not in Big Business tradition to publish the hows and whys of failure, but this the 3rd Millenium. Might be time to wake up and join the transparency drive.
I think that 2020 has brilliantly demonstrated that a lot of people can work remotely.
As a freelance programmer consultant, I have been lucky in that 2020 did not event dent my yearly revenue. I know that there are a lot of people who have suffered. My daughter is a professional seamstress and she is sick of not having a proper work proposal since March 2020. I, on the other hand, have only had one customer demand that I come on-site since January 2020, and I have been lucky enough to get two additional customers during lockdown.
At this point in time, I have no less than 3 laptops specifically configured to access their particular networks, and my other customers I work with offline, sending them what they need when I'm done.
Work remotely ? If you're a programmer, it's a cinch - thanks to knowledgable network admins, obviously.
We now have the ability to make aerial surveys. NASA can send the drone to scout out a region, take a few snaps and report the data, letting boffins determine whether or not it would be interesting to send the trundlebot over there.
That's going to make for more efficient exploring.
Hats off to the boffins !
It will be the best of plans. It will be the best plan ever made.
Funny, I thought we were done hearing bullshit like that. They "plan" to spend a quarter of what Biden is proposing and it's supposed to be better ?
Trump has amply demonstrated the efficiency of Republican planning : the border wall. Four years of xenophobia, lies and fabrications, not to mention financial shenanigans, and the great border wall is a few miles of vertical comb teeth being used by climbers as an exercise.
The only reason they think the plan is better is because it's their buddies who'll be getting the dough.
I think it is high time to make a change,
Interesting. That's the first time I've heard of this rule.
Up to now, for me the rule had always been a backup a day, a backup a week, a backup a month. 7 tapes for daily, 4 tapes for weekly, 12 tapes for monthly.
Granted, I'm not a network guy, much less a backup guy, but that seemed reasonable to me.
For a company, of course. For private individuals you'll be lucky if they have a backup of any sort on optical discs. I have a friend who told me he did his backups on an external HDD. I then proceeded to explain to him in great detail that an external HDD is a magnetic surface, subject to loss of information, and is not certified to be a backup platform in any way. An optical RW disc is.
I'm still not sure he does his backups on an RW CD or DVD.
Um, you mean go with SolarWinds123 ?
Point solutions are fine (if they work properly). This whole blurb is just an excuse to push a cloud-based security service. Well I'm sorry, but cloud-based means relying on someone else's sense of security.
Security is hard, you learn it the hard way, and if you want it to be efficient you need to be the one knowing how it works.
The main contribution of that is immeasurable insights on how the human body works in the absence of gravity, many experiments on how materials react to being made in the absence of gravity, and a whole slew of data on growing various crops and creatures out there.
I doubt we could have done all that with robots.
Of course, robot exploration has its place. If we had decided to wait to get a manned mission to Mars, we would missing out on a lot of information. But there's a major difference between sending a scientific mission to another stellar body and having an orbital science station around our own planet.
Yes, there is a health cost. But the returns are worth it and that's why there are people who accept the costs and volunteer for the missions.
Our duty is to ensure that they can do their work safely, and come back alive and well. If we decide to skimp on that, then we definitely should put an end to it.
Therefor, we are going to abandon our participation and let it die while we pretend to build our own.
Yeah, that sounds perfectly reasonable. You just need to start by building a launcher, because all your leftover ICBM launchers are going to run out some day.
Do that and you'll start having some credibility.
That is a term that is starting to join the sewer of "socialite".
Gandhi was an influencer. Thomas Edison was an influencer. Genghis Kahn was one hell of an influencer. Alexander the Great was the first influencer.
All these people have is a Twitter account. What do they actually accomplish ? Nothing.
"China is building military space capabilities rapidly, including sensing and communication systems and numerous antisatellite weapons "
This from the country that still clings to the fable of modified mainboards from Huawei, despite never having ever brought a shred of proof to the table.
I'd ask for proof on this, but we all know that the answer will be : "Classified".
Of course the US military is hyping up the dangers. I completely believe China is building itself up. Why wouldn't it ? It has a bunch of American warships off its shores 24/7 (for many reasons, I know). But how do you know about any ground-based anti-satellite weaponry ? Did the Chinese military send you pics ?
Two possible values : short or long.
We're not talking about programming, medium should be possible.
In any case, short at 60 minutes is way too long. Short is 15 minutes, and all of us who have been working this past year know very well that hour-long meetings are 50% repeating what everyone already knows, 30% listening to inane comments, 15% telling someone that his microphone is muted and 5% actual information.
As a manager, if you need to block your team for an entire hour to inform yourself on progress, you're doing it wrong. There's a big chance that Sally doesn't need to know about Jack's problems, and is wasting time listening to them. You're the manager. Do a one-on-one with each member of your team to get updated, then write a summary memo for everyone. The entire team should only be present if you have an important global message to broadcast.
Meetings are generally very much a waste of everyone's time, and nowadays a golden opportunity for the feeble-minded among the higher-ups to make themselves feel important by dragging things along when they could pass the message in a concise manner. I cannot count the amount of time I've wasted in the past twelve months listening to inane babble instead of working, but it is starting to get on my nerves.
I'm sorry, how the hell can there be theological arguments about Brexit ? Brexit has nothing to do with religion, it is a secular matter.
CofE, Roman Catholic, Lutheran or Calvinist is all about Jesus, the Bible, Thou Shalt Not Kill, Lie or Covet Thy Neighbor's Wife, etc.
Spiritual matters. Brexit is anything but spiritual.
Nonsense.
The only thing you need to do is not hook your internal code to someone else's code repository.
It's the cancer of today's attitude regarding the Internet : I'll just link that bit of code to my project, what's the worst that can happen ?
Well this.
Take that code inside, check it out and make sure it does what it says.
But of course, to do that you have be an actual programmer, not just a muppet stringing other people's work together.
The only advantage is hinted at in the article : surveillance.
There is no reason to create a "digital" currency. Our currency is already digital for the vast majority of transactions. The only little part that uses cash is when you go buy a baguette or a loaf of bread at the bakers.
It is exactly what they want to know. What we do with our cash. There is no other possible reason.
In Europe, money is digital. I use my VISA card for practically everything. I have no use for another currency of any kind, and I will buy my baguettes with a few pieces of real coin.
I see no reason to change that that will benefit me.
I've never signed an employment contract that had a clause that would prevent me from filing a complaint in court.
Obviously, an employee is expected to keep company secrets, but that only pertains to how the company functions and what it does with its data. It has nothing to do with how people are treated.
If you're treated badly, you have the right to complain to all and sundry, and if it's sexual harassment, take that bastard to court. The company should not be a shield for workplace harassment of any kind.
And that's not something that any study might have brought to light before starting building ?
No, this whole thing was one giant brown envelope for someone. No one in charge ever expected it to work, but it was a good excuse to shuffle some moolah here and there and make friends happy in the high circles.
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