Posts by Pascal Monett

SAP's strength is the basics: Not RPA or AI, but 'consistent' data models that make sense for actual business processes

"You cannot have these modifications that you had in the on-premises world"

Well I guess the world is going to do without cloud.

It's incredible that one company thinks it can dictate to all its customers how they are supposed to conduct their business.

So, The Cloud is not only "give me all your data, you might be able to work with it most of the time", but now it is also "you work the way I decide you work".

Well, in a word, no. Companies have spent millions on tailoring SAP to their needs - when it worked - I doubt they're going to spend tens of millions tailoring their company to SAP.

How'd they do that? It's classified: Microsoft's Azure cloud goes Top Secret

Azure Government Top Secret

The Government would be barking mad to put top secret files in an environment where it does not have total control and cannot shut everything down in an instant in case of a breach.

Then again, the current US Government is barking mad anyway, so . . .

PSA: The 2020 monolith is a dead meme. You can stop putting them up now. Please

You're the one who clicked the article. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.

Cops raid home of ousted data scientist who created her own Florida COVID-19 dashboard

You know how to vote ?

Then you know what you need to do.

Uber sends its self-driving cars on a road to nowhere, with indefinite stop at automated truck aspirant Aurora

Re: around the same time I get a fully functioning Robo-butler™

Oh, so you mean the same time we finally have fusion ?

Pure frustration: What happens when someone uses your email address to sign up for PayPal, car hire, doctors, security systems and more

Yeah, well maybe, if you're a multinational conglomerate making billions, you could pay a paltry million to have actual people sort the wheat from the chaff and offer true phone support.

But yeah, I know, it'll cost a million.

Big deal.

Apple's M1: the fastest and bestest ever silicon = revolution? Nah, there's far more interesting stuff happening in tech that matters to everyone

Re: Shortsighted analysis

Machine Learning on an Apple ?

If you have a reference, please share.

In the mean time, that's just fanboi daydreaming.

Re: What I do locally matters too.

You have basically just justified the entire premise of the article : Apple is painting itself into the smaller picture corner.

Surprise, surprise: AI cameras sold to schools in New York struggle with people of color and are full of false positives

When the tool is not fit for purpose, there is no way to use it right.

UK Oracle users are all of us: They care more about Brexit and the pandemic than, say, cloud transitions

"You're going to have to re-engineer processes within your company to match the product"

I'm sorry, it's the product that needs to adapt to the company, not the contrary.

One more reason to not use Oracle : you're forced to work the Oracle way, on top of paying a fortune to be obliged to do so.

A 1970s magic trick: Take a card, any card, out of the deck and watch the IBM System/370 plunge into a death spiral

So it was your fault ?

Apologies accepted. <sound of neck cracking>

The nightmare is real: 'Excel formulas are the world's most widely used programming language,' says Microsoft

Re: "it is going to be happening"

No it won't.

I do Excel training. I did four VBA beginner sessions last year. I was to do the follow-up advanced sessions this year but, curiously, they were constantly pushed back.

Do you have any idea how many banks, insurance companies and other companies basically exist because of Excel spreadsheets with an ungodly amount of code attached to them ?

All of them.

If Borkzilla removes VBA from Excel, there will be riots in every large city in the world. No way will the Fortune 1000 let that happen.

The only thing that can happen is finding a kludge to make existing VBA code run on Azure.

Borkzilla doesn't have a choice.

Let's check in now with the new California monolith... And it's gone, torn down by a bunch of MAGA muppets

And they're not cool !

Uncle Sam throws Huawei CFO a bone in her extradition fight, but deal will require an admission of wrongdoing

Oh my God, I would have soo liked to see Trump go off on a warpath against Canada and try to justify economic sanctions on maple syrup.

That would have been one bright light in a sea of sewage.

USA adds China’s top chipmaker to list of companies American money can’t legally buy a slice of

"SMIC’s foundries are now capable of producing 14nm devices"

Um, technology is now at 5nm.

You need to catch up.

Intel Labs unleashes its boffins with tales of quantum computing, secure databases and the end of debugging

"once a human expresses his or her intention to the machine"

As in : "I need a video catalogue application". Sure, let's imagine a fantasy world where there is an AI that actually exists and will create the corresponding application. Will it suit your needs ? Probably not. Why ? Because there's not enough input data.

So we're basically going to go from debugging to SAP-level specifications in order to get an application. I'm not sure we'll be gaining much time.

Because we don't have AI. We don't have a sentient computer that can guess or infer that no, this application doesn't need a complete list of actors with their IMDB profiles embedded, but this one does.

So creating applications by specifications means spending hours upon hours on the specifications.

Might as well code the thing. With a bit experience, the debugging won't be too much of a hassle.

"1,000x to 10,000x larger"

If you're multiplying the data by a thousand fold, you're doing less encryption then you are simply drowning the data in noise.

Where's the mysterious metal monolith today then? Oh look, it's atop a California mountain

A new kind of meme ?

It disappeared from Utah and showed up in California. That sounds like a marketing gimmick, although for who, I have no idea.

But in Romania also ?

That sounds like meme to me. A bit of an expensive one, but meme nonetheless.

.org owner Internet Society puts its money where its mouth is with additional IETF funding

Hope ?

We now live in an age where CEO's and other administrative and political responsibles reinterpret and decide what the rules are instead of following the charter that was written in black and white.

ICANN started it (damn you to Hell for that, ICANN), and the rot has spread. Now, if an international body is headed by someone who is actually doing the job as intended, you can count yourself lucky.

Hope ?

Until those traitors are taken behind the chemical shed and shot, I don't have much.

LibreOffice 7.1 beta boasts impressive range of features let down by a lack of polish and poor mobile efforts

What ?

"an option to disable a long-standing annoyance, that when you copy a cell and then press return in another cell, it activates paste "

Excel does that all the time. It was specifically introduced because the users were tired (even back then) of hitting Ctrl-V.

Why is that an annoyance now ? If you copy a cell, it means you want to put the contents somewhere. If you don't, just press ESC.

I really don't see what the problem is. Thank goodness that, unlike Android, they thought to make it an option.

I still would like to understand the reasoning of someone who copies a cell and then gets annoyed that its contents can be easily pasted though.

Four or so things we found interesting about Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888, its latest 5G chip for high-end Androids

5nm engraving, wow

It would appear Murphy's Law is not dead just yet. That a tiny chip like that can handle multiple 4K videos is nothing short of amazing, but I have just one question : how can you watch multiple 4K videos on a mobile phone screen ?

Maybe they'll also put it in tablets ?

New study: DNS spoofing doubles in six years ... albeit from the point of naff all

"about 1.7 per cent"

So, seven years ago it was at 0.85%.

And it's mostly in Indonesia and Iran. And that likely means government meddling, so not much of a choice for the people there.

So not really a widespread problem then, is it ?

DeepMind's latest protein-solving AI AlphaFold a step closer to cracking biology's 50-year conundrum

Great progress

Good to know that our statistical analysis machine technology is finally giving back something useful.

Also good to know that the people involved are not touting this as a replacement for research, but as a valuable addition.

And the best to know is that it will be peer-reviewed.

That means it's serious, not like a lot of pseudo-AI news we've been getting this year.

He's eating it. That's what's wrong.

Tokyo Stock Exchange lets CEO resign to atone for October outage, other execs take pay cuts and rebukes

Well finally !

There is finally one place in the world where the top-levels are bashed for a mistake, not the peons.

Nice to see it happen at least once.

So bye-bye, Mr Ajit Pai. You drove our policy into the levee and we still wonder why

"he was the first Asian-American to head the agency"

Yeah, well, I'm not sure that there are so many Asian-Americans that are going to be proud of that.

Internet Explorer fails to make the cut, banished from Microsoft Teams for good

"we want to be clear that IE 11 isn't going away"

What a shame.

AWS reveals it broke itself by exceeding OS thread limits, sysadmins weren’t familiar with some workarounds

Re: Anyone remember 9/11

Indeed, and I will never stop saying that if your own server falls over, it's only you and your customers that are impacted. You have mitigation options, if you care to put the money on the table.

When The Cloud(TM) falls over, it's you and millions of other people that are impacted, and the only thing you can do is sit and wait until Someone Else's Server comes back online.

I do not see that as an advantage for any company that is serious about making money.

Agreed

As much as I despise The Cloud (TM), I have to admit that the engineers working on it are really pushing the limits.

Now, the amount of RAM on a server is no longer the problem - it's the amount of threads a CPU can handle that is.

Wow. Is there anything we can't push to the brink ?

Uri Geller calls off 20-year ban on Pokémon trading card that 'stole' his 'signature image'

Re: being willing to be involved in making yourself look a fool

I'm sorry, I thought there were thousands of those on YouTube already.

On the 11th day of Christmas TalkTalk took from me... the email address of my company

TalkTalk

It is high time that it's customers WalkWalk.

Gartner: You think Huawei's sales figures are bad now? Wait till you see next year's

5G

Mobile phones are the new treadmill. Once upon a time it was desktop PCs, but the technology has hit a ceiling and nobody upgrades every year any more.

Now, we have mobile phones for that, with a new, must-have model every year and new connection technology every now and again.

Personally, I fail to see the interest. You don't need next year's model if you have a working phone already. Whatever way it is better is not worth the price. Use your phone until it breaks, then buy a new one.

Stop the waste. Mobile phones are full of toxic stuff.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla is a monastery-burning romp that would be way better if it was not an Assassin's Creed game

Re: vast open world games

7 Days to Die. It's as vast as you can stomach, there is next to no story to bother you, and there are very few bugs.

It's just you against a zombie world, and you have a number of ways to try to survive.

And, in the latest version, there is some parkour to be had - although you can't just go and climb vertical walls. But you can create a ladder to get to the roof.

If I pedal faster and feed it spinach, my robot barman might pull more pints

"powered exoskeletons"

Now that is something that I wouldn't mind finding in a catalogue.

Especially the military-grade ones that make carrying 50kg while running cross-country a breeze.

Don't know if they exist yet, though.

European Space Agency will launch giant claw that drags space junk to its doom

"a space garbage collection business"

At $86 million per object, I don't see how that can sustain a business.

£1.3bn National Cyber Security Strategy? Meh – we're looking at 2021, Cabinet Office shrugs

"There must be a clear mutual understanding as to where UK government responsibility ends"

Oh but there is no misunderstanding to be had. If the government makes a promise, it is responsible for making that promise come true. That's why we pay taxes, and that money costs us.

So if government decides on a Cyber Security Strategy, government had better deliver a Cyber Security Strategy, not just produce another report on the subject without any progress to show for it.

That's the problem with government : you can't put anyone against a wall and shoot them for failure to deliver on promises. A government worker is immune from having to deliver results.

Who knew that hosing a table with copious amounts of cubic metres would trip adult filters?

Re: everybody acting like grown-ups

One wonders if there are any of those left, these days.

Re: deadcat.net

I think that, given that site's content today (attention : NSFW), you would have a lot more trouble justifying its use in a workplace environment now.

Re: sorry double post

You have a Withdraw link on your post.

Re: Cubic metres? cm^3? ?? What is its abbrev.??

Surprised here as well. I read the entire article wondering how in heck could m3 trigger any filter whatsoever. Then I noticed the link on "well known abbreviation" and followed it.

CUM ?

Never heard of that as an abbreviation for cubic meter.

I do, however, fully understand how that could trigger a filter.

How the US attacked Huawei: Former CEO of DocuSign and Ariba turned diplomat Keith Krach tells his tale

Re: Boy is he in for a shock

And National Security Letters in the USA.

It frankly strikes me as bollocks when someone can go and accuse another country of doing exactly what his country does and nobody smacks him in the face with it.

And let's face it : is there any country in the world where a CEO is not going to comply with the local government ?

When you find armed men in official uniforms at your door, you comply. You don't have to be in a banana republic, it works everywhere.

Boeing 737 Max will return to flight after software updates, says EU's aviation regulator

Amen to that.

"the airliner will return to European skies in January 2021"

Not in my skies it won't.

AWS admits to 'severely impaired' services in US-EAST-1, can't even post updates to Service Health Dashboard

"severely impaired"

Yay !

Once again the thing that high-flyers got insane bonuses out of to move the company to The Cloud (TM) has fallen flat on its face and millions are impacted.

Well done !

One day, you'll learn.

One day.

Dell reports green shoots in enterprise infrastructure biz after seven consecutive quarters of shrinkage

"how the macro uncertainty plays out"

Wow.

I bow before this piece of business-speak transforming a world pandemic into a beancounter's hedge bet.

Congratulations, really, in not mentioning in any way that people are dying while still hinting that it could, in some way, affect your bottom line.

Retired engineer confesses to role in sliding Microsoft Bob onto millions of XP install CDs

"a single large Bob blob"

A fitting description.

Ad banned for suggesting London black cabs have properties that prevent the spread of coronavirus

Agreed

I fail to see what the problem is with keeping to oneself.

If I'm out and about, especially these days, it's because I have somewhere to go and something to do. Spending dozens of minutes in conversation is not on the schedule.

Yes, I'm not a complete troll (getting there though) - if I meet someone I recognize I will politely ask how they're doing and give the basic responses, but if I want a lengthy conversation I prefer it in a more relaxed environment, i.e. my living room or theirs.

With a glass of something, preferably. And some munchies.

Revenues are up, the boss is about to give his keynote, and results are due. Time to sell shares, says Salesforce CFO

CEO selling shares

I'm sorry, but if you are the CEO, selling shares is not a good sign. It either means you aren't paying yourself enough, or it means that your confidence in your own company isn't worth hanging on to your shares.

Neither of those choices reflect well on the company.

I resent the Wall Street attitude of thinking that shares are just a short-term investment. Personally, I think that, if you buy shares in a company, it's supposed to mean you believe in it and want to fund its development. That means that you don't sell your shares two weeks later.

There should be a law stating that shares must be kept for five years before being able to sell them.

but don't worry - it's just my opinion.

Comcast to impose 1.2TB-a-month broadband download limits across more of America from next year

France here. 1Gbps up and down, €52/month.

There is no "other" definition of unlimited.

Mall of duty: Black Ops. No, you're not a customer, you're just an ad audience metric

"discern both gender and age range"

I call shenanigans.

Facial recognition is fraught with failure ; there is largely enough proof of that for me to utterly disbelieve that a computer program can reliably tell if a face belongs to a man or a woman, and even less what age range the face is in.

But hey, it's marketing so who cares ?

MongoDB loses its mind with marketing budget movie mania: Yep, it's choose-your-own-adventure Hackers with drop-down menus

I second that.

Just reading the review made my head spin.

What dreck.