Posts by Pascal Monett 18232 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
My privacy policy is simple : it's my car, you can fuck off.
I will not buy any car that is tied to any other person's server. I don't care what your excuses are, or what service you pretend to offer, as long as I am the one who is legally liable for how the car behaves, you can go drown in a gutter if you think I am going to give you the slightest amount of input in how I drive my car.
Um, it's more like more than Borkzilla has ever been able to.
You might want to revise your computing history. Microsoft has been late to every Internet party. First it ignored it, then it scrambled to rejoin it, then it faught to dominate it, which happened with IE 4, then it forgot about it letting Google take over.
Since then, it has stayed in the background, because it had no choice. Google has taken over, JavaScript is everywhere and none of that has anything to do with Borkzilla.
Borkzilla is now in the back seat, as far as driving the Internet is concerned.
Of course not. We all know how the USA can hold a grudge.
We also know how the USA can withhold its citizens accused from abroad of war crimes and keep them from facing trial.
Justice and freedom for all ? As long as you're white and USAian.
Do you really ?
The fishing industry is driving itself into the wall.
Nobody is paying any attention to ensuring that fish populations can regenerate, all of the fishing industry is about building better boats, bigger freezer units and better catching procedures.
The fishing industry is killing itself and the fish. If it can't learn restraint, it deserves everything that is coming to it.
Of course there has been - it works.
And, on top of that, you can reap extensive rewards by getting automatically inserted into all of that company's customer's networks as well.
It's a blackhat dream come true.
All that because, for the past twenty years, developers have taken the habit of not bothering to check what they're putting on their production servers.
I don't care how much you trust that Github repo, you do not put code on production servers that has not been vetted.
Once again, lessons are going to be learned the hard way.
As much as I love the idea, and applaud Samsung for having the balls to actually set this up and try it, I can only think of one thing : what do you do when it goes wrong ?
If it works, fine, congrats, job well done. But if it doesn't, what are the possible consequences ?
Best case scenario you've got a beached ship. Expensive, but no harm done.
Worst case scenario you've got a collision with loss of life. Not only expensive, but a massive lawsuit in the making.
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to be the lead developer answering questions in front of that jury.
HP is a big company. It had its own review of Autonomy finances. It's own internal high-ups were against the pruchase, but the nitwit at the top made the deal anyway.
So, who is going to drag Apotheker in court to accuse him of 'grasping claws' ?
Not to mention blatant incompetence ?
A decade ago The Cloud (TM) was the bee's knees. Everyone was looking to go to The Cloud (TM). Suggesting and promoting cloudy stuff made you a driver, a forward-looker, a visionary.
Now we're getting reports like yours, telling us that The Cloud (TM) is not for everyone nor for everything.
Par for the course, I guess. It's new and shiny, then the grime starts piling on and maybe a bit of rust here and there, and all of a sudden, The Cloud (TM) is not going to seem so shiny any more.
But, of course, not before all of UK Government and the NHS has wasted billions on it.
For Google investors ? Definitely.
For me ? I don't think so.
Being spied upon, tracked like a wild animal and having stupid ads shoved into my face does not make me feel better about the world.
That is why I protect myself by using Firefox with NoScript and uBlock Origin.
You see ? This "better world" of yours means I have to actively protect my privacy.
You're wrong.
P.S. : I'm guessing you're actually being sarcastic, but I opted to take that at face value.
Seems obvious. FOSS code is public, therefor if you code like shit, you're going to have it up for the world to see and the world will tell you you code like shit.
Proprietary, on the hand, allows a bad coder to do his worst, secure in the knowledge that nobody will see his code so it doesn't matter.
Of course, there are very good coders that write proprietary software, but hiding the code means you can hide mistakes and bad practices - and with the amount of bugs due to buffer overflows that still happen, well let's just admit that there are more bad coders on the proprietary side.
Openreach says conditions do not deteriorate, syndicate says they do.
Somebody is not listening.
Obviously I largely suspect that Openreach is optimistic in its declarations. If it truly had been working with the syndicate for the last year and a half, there wouldn't be a strike, now would there ? It's all well to say you've been meeting, but if every meeting is just you saying "this is how it is" then you haven't been dialoguing much.
On the other hand, I don't know CWU at all, but syndicates in general are kind of prone to siezing any chance they can to strike under the pretense of improving labour conditions. That said, if 80% of its members agree, then something has gone wrong in the discussions for sure.
I can't tell who is telling the truth. Is Openreach really trying, or is CWU just trying its best to defend the workers honestly ?
It is unfortunate that the numbskull decided to try a "prank" robbery against a guy with a gun, but given the amount of weapons that exist in the US, the only thing that surprises me is that it took this long.
That said, there are two things that bother me (aside from the whole death thing, obviously). One, this happened in what is supposed to be recreation park. The guy brought a gun to a recreation park ? WTF ? What is wrong with him ?
And two, and this is worse IMO, he just pulled out his gun and fired ? Couldn't he have drawn his gun and say something like "I suggest you GTFO" ? You know, give the guy a chance to reconsider ? But no, he just rambo'd it and got trigger-happy.
Somebody commented that he would have to live with that for the rest of his life. I'm not convinced that that will be a problem for him.
Ok, mistakes were made, not denying that. But the machines were meant to be returned - can't fault Apple for trying to enforce that.
Yeah, Apple screwed up completely on the recall procedure, but it also corrected the issue and, in the end, played fair.
I don't like Apple, and I always relish a good El Reg bite of any hand El Reg can get its beak on, but overall, Apple did good on this one.
That's not the software, yet, it's the wetware.
There is yet no such thing as self-driving vehicles.
That said, your point about software being more important than hardware is absolutely true. A laptop without an OS is just a hunk of metal and plastic and toxic materials. It's only the magic of software that makes it useful.
And that software has to be written by people who have the means to eat.
Indeed. Users absolutely tend to buy the devices that correspond to their needs, and only after worry about how to get their data from one device to the next.
The vendor that will make that possible is going to be the proud owner of its own money-printing machine.
Checked out that article, it was mostly a fun read.
Basically, I learned that almost every term outlined in US English has a sexual connotation in GB English.
But the one thing that really made me LOL was the reference to an article intitled "This Is the Age When Men Are Most Likely to Cheat".
Really ?
Name me one age where men were not likely to cheat.
I think the only one that qualifies was the period of the Black Plague - because men were locked at home to escape death instead of on the prowl for another chance to dip their wick.
"Gupta moved 3,900 internal documents from his company laptop to two external USB-based drives "
And how exactly was that possible ?
As a consultant, I have access to the servers of a number of customers. Not one of them allows USB ports to work without administrative approval. I might be able to charge my mobile with a cable, but the computer is not going to allow the PC to access the phone.
How is it that someone who is leaving has access to a computer that lets him connect whatever he wants to a USB port and transfer files to it ?
Serious security fail.
Remind me when FaceBook has ever been transparent on its procedures ?
And I'm sorry if I think that fixed delays for takedown times are not entirely a bad thing. Do you really want calls for genocide or insurrection to lie around until a moderator decides to take the time to deal with the issue ?
Yes, I know, we're talking about Pakistan - not exactly a shining example of Democracy. But still, relying on FaceBook to "do its best" generally means another round of congressional hearings where The Zuck is just going to mouth lame excuses and not do anything.
So mandatory takedown times, and FaceBook et al can just put in the manpower to deal with it.
It's not like they don't have the money.
I disagree.
The only solution to the shambles that has become Democracy in the USA is direct universal suffrage, which means everyone has a vote, and every vote counts towards a given candidate.
I don't care if the vote is expressed by ballot, mail-in, email or electronic voting machines. Everyone has one vote, every vote is counted and nothing else matters.
The Electoral College is what put the USA into this mess. Get rid of it.
No one should stand between a citizen's opinion and the winner of a vote.
It's always the same thing : let us install for free and we'll bring you jobs.
And as soon as you start thinking about enforcing taxes, we'll bugger off to some other idiot who believes the malarky.
It should be a federally-mandated rule that companies pay taxes and pay for their installation costs. No tax breaks.
But it's no use complaining. The whole system is broken anyway.
Well, if the data has been properly anonymized I do not fin dit surprising that socio-economic class is not in the analysis.
Gambling is certainly an activity tainted with reproach, but, just like tobacco, that doesn't keep every government from benefitting from it by allowing it and taxing it.
Of course, you cannot forbid gambling because, if you do, you'll just get criminal gambling centers run by thugs. So it makes sense that the government has a hand in ensuring that, at least, the gambling is done fairly.
You also have casinos, where gambling is authorized and, hopefully, the casinos are regularly audited.
But, just like prostitution, gambling is not going away.
It was the very evening of my last day on a contract in a large Luxembourg company. The contract had been slightly difficult because, on my first day, six months before, I quickly assessed that the IT manager's right-hand man had something against me and was not shy of being clear on that point.
Well, I didn't need to work with him, so it didn't bother me much. I learned the hard way that you don't need to work with someone to be bothered by them - especially when they work above your glass cieling.
Suffice it to say that I was not sorry to see the end of that contract. Then I got the call, which went something like this :
Caller : "Hi, it's me. Um, we've had a problem with the database you were working on, would you happen to have a backup of the code ?" <cue antennas starting to quiver>
Me : " Hi. What happened ?"
Caller : "Well the server crashed and, when it came back up, that db was corrupted. We need your backup."
Me : "I'm sure I have a local copy on the desktop of my account."
Caller : "Yeah, but Security was quick to erase that before we could assess the problem."
Me : "Well, there's the backup of my account. Surely you can restore that."
Caller : "Well, no, there is an unplanned maintenance on the backup server - we can't use it. We really need your copy." <ok, this stinks now>
Me : "I'm terribly sorry, but I would remind you that the NDA I signed specifically forbids me from taking any code from your premises. I have no backup copy. You're going to have to wait for the backup server's unplanned maintenance to end."
Then I hung up. The caller had been a guy I worked with, who had generally been nice to me - or so I thought.
This had obviously been an attempt to frame me for doing something that I definitely should not (and didn't). Had I been stupid enough to take the code, and even more stupid enough to admit to it, I would have undoubtedly found myself in very hot legal water, and possibly the end of my budding career.
This event taught me two things early on : 1) never trust anyone when someone high up doesn't like you, and 2) always stick to the rules.
Useful lessons.
That was very stupid from the security company, and it could have landed them in court.
An ex-employee has no authority to be on company premises after hours - certainly not when an alarm had been tripped.
They could have unwittingly been setting you up - or wittingly.
In any case, refusal was the only appropriate answer.
I have no doubt that you are very proud of having relentlessly lied about everything in your blind obedience to the GOP and it's values that date from the days of slavery.
The amount of lies and false information made up to prop up those lies is completely staggering. You did a very good job, really. 60 lawsuits filed and all of them lost, what a record.
Unfortunately for you, all of that pile of trash is public information, you will have no chance refuting it, nor will you be able to brush it away by saying that it was satire.
You're going to be in front of a judge this time, and judges are not well known for appreciating being taken for fools.
I hope Fox News will find the bill very heavy, and I hope that those three pundits will get what's coming to them as well.
It is high time Fox News begins to understand that they are not immune, and are accountable for what they say.
How can they claim that about DNA testing ?
It's a scientific process, there's nothing secret about it.
Also, why not accept NDA's for the people who review the code ? I think that's fair. But there's no need to put a monetary charge on it. You leak, you get caught, you're guilty and risk a sizeable fine anyway. Especially in the USA, where the company could scream bloody murder and ask for many, many millions.
You say yourself that you have a private repo for all the stuff you link to.
You give up the true solution, and ignore it because you want something that is easier for yourself.
I think the real solution is that companies that use FOSS libraries should all have their private repos, and control what it is they put into their production servers.
If SolarWinds123 had done that, they would have spotted that there was a change in a module, checked the change, analyzed what was going on, and pulled the whistle on the issue.
I see no need to try and impose an administrative structure with external checks and balances on people who do their work for free.
I see a great need to impose private repo management on all those paid developers who just link to a library on Git and think that their job is done.
I do not recall that it is forbidden to do proprietary software on Linux, just as it is perfectly possible to do FOSS on Windows.
Of course, if you do go proprietary on Linux, then you have to go all the way and build your own library stack, because woes to the guy who uses open libraries to make his proprietary software.
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