Posts by Pascal Monett 18239 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
Right, because now that politicians have been the subject of such alterations, We Must React.
That private citizens may have had their lives or reputations destroyed by such activity, or may risk that, is just collateral damage to the great march of Capitalism. We can't regulate that.
But touch the politicians and ohh buddy, then you get their attention real quick.
And apparently you handle them very badly in your own company.
But hey, it's nice to know that you have such an open mind about the other companies that are sprouting up due to your incompetent handling of your staff.
Not that you have much of a choice anyway.
It really seems time to declare a moratorium on this market and freeze sales of all IoT things until the makers can prove that they've understood that they need to think security before thinking product.
It's also time for fusion to become useful, but I'm guessing the latter will happen way before the former.
At least the latest firmware is not subject to this particular threat, apparently.
How to upgrade something that is embedded in a person's body is something else though, and given that I already fear upgrading my motherboard firmware*, I shudder to think of me having one of those things inside me that needs upgrading.
* : somehow I never can bring myself to trust those things - I always fear that, after the update, the board just dies and never starts up again
Its mouth is full of God and Freedom but while you're not looking, it rifles through your wallet, stalks you through your phone and captures everything you say, all while screeching hysterically when anyone else tries to copy it.
Okay, let's admit for half a second that this data slurp was thought of "with the best of intentions". The fact remains that any country buying this airframe is basically giving Uncle Sam the complete overview of its strike capability. Ally or not, there is zero reason to accept this.
Talk of pulling out is pure bunkum though - posturing by someone who wants to look tough to his political base but doesn't have the balls to go through with it. No pity here.
More and more America is looking like your unwanted neighbor. He's a bully, a pervert and he's armed to the teeth. And you can't move out.
When I hear those words, my mind immediately translates to "deep fucking of your data".
I am a free user. I only need Dropbox to share a few small files between friends. Those files have absolutely no importance to anyone but us, and anyone who wishes to take a look can have a copy, I don't care.
But if Dropbox starts fucking with me, I'll find another platform in a heartbeat.
We would do well to remember that we are not safe either : complacency is the preferred attitude as far as TLAs are concerned. And if they get caught, they just trot out something about defending the people and mention terrorism, and we go back to sleep.
I wish all the best for the people waking up to the true nature of their government, but we should not forget to remain vigilant ourselves.
You've managed to find yet another way to shoot yourself in the foot. Congratulations, really.
Oh, and kudos on denying CERN the statute of academic. Honestly, for the life of me I would be really hard pressed to find any other institution, apart from NASA, probably, that is not more worthy of being called an academic institution, but hey, I obviously haven't been through the elite training of your marketing staff.
In any case, bravo. Once again, Microsoft, you have proven that you are the best reason for Open Source software to exist. Way to go. Thanks to you, the world just might finally get a viable alternative to Exchange.
Really, Microsoft, you spoil us.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get a towel to mop up all the sarcasm that is dripping from my screen.
Ah, the eternal battle between the sword and the shield. Except, in this case, it looks more the damn holding back the lake has sprung a leak. Or it would be, if the damn hadn't been built with a hole in it in the first place.
In any case, the good thing that is going to come out of this is that Google is now going to have to find a way to vet legitimate messages from its own applications instead of just letting them through.
The fight against spam continues.
And all the subcontractor gets is close monitoring ?
That's the problem with all the stern wording and posturing - if you don't follow through, then you're the one who is ridiculous. And, in this case, Perceptics should be thrown out and there should be a complaint filed for gross negligence against the company, with damages.
But Perceptics cannot be thrown out, because the company has its arm entirely in the US Border and ripping that out would be very, very painful. So I'm guessing the CEO went in to make his apology, probably even groveling as nicely as possible, promising that it would never happen again, and left secure in the knowledge that he will be able to keep milking that particular cow for a long while yet.
Because actually holding oneself to the terms of the contract would mean getting another contractor, spending time training the peons on the platform and enduring the inevitable mistakes before they get up to speed, and all that's just too much of a nuisance, right ?
"Norman Lamb MP, chairman of the Commons select committee, kicked off the proceedings by asking the executive about Huawei's involvement with governments that have records of corruption and human rights abuses"
I look forward to Mr Lamb's grilling of a Google high-level suit with the same approach.
Oh wait, I forgot : Google is a US company, so it's all good.
It would seem that everyone and their dog has their mouths full of all this new-fangled AI that isn't AI, and the new use for this tool is counting bottles ?
You don't need any kind of AI to count bottles. Industry has been using mechanical means since the dawn of its inception and that works fine.
We are obviously now in Hollywood mode in this market, they're going to be redoing every simple thing that has already been done, slap the AI sticker on it and wham ! A new AI thingamabob.
Look forward to seeing your AI coffee maker, toaster, microwave, door opener, etc.
Humbug.
An interesting read, but I'm not sure Charles 9's statement is wrong on that point.
Given the obvious governmental push for state surveillance (this DNS stuff, backdooring encryption, shoddy age verification, etc), it would certainly seem that, from a governmental point of view, it's either the police state will keep you safe, or it will be anarchy through and through.
The real problem is that the term anarchy is not used correctly. In Joe Public's mind, anarchy and chaos are the same thing, but that could not be more wrong.
Anarchy is, philosophically speaking, the ideal society ; anarchy is where there are no leaders because everyone pitches in and gets the job done, so no leading is needed. It's a world where you see that the garbage needs picking up, so you go get the truck and pick up the garbage. On your way, you see a neighbor filling in a pothole, because that's what he saw that needed doing. Further away, someone else is directing traffic while another person is fixing the street light that broke down.
That is a world in anarchy. Everyone is doing their bit, no one needs orders.
Of course, that vision is literally impossible. Aside from the insurance issues of just anybody walking into a garage and taking off in a garbage truck, there are not all that many people who have the knowledge to fix street lights or potholes via the proper procedure. You may easily find other examples.
So, what Charles 9 should have actually said was : what's it gonna be : chaos or the police state ?
Or typing an IP directly ?
I'm guessing that, if you type in the IP address, there will be no DNS lookup, right ? So how can that be traced ?
Of course, I'm guessing that, just like the vast majority of Internet users, pedophiles don't generally know what an IP address is, much less how to get it, but that information is not difficult to find, and it only takes one to explain things on a forum for the others to realize they need to do that to stay under the radar.
Test in Windows command prompt :
Type a>a.txt <ctrl>
The system cannot find the file specified.
So, unless you've already created file a.txt and b.txt, your script is going to fail to do much more than use CPU cycles and fill the command prompt buffer.
And, as soon as you kill the window, the problem is gone.
The problem there is not the guy with the button, it is the procedure itself.
You cannot expect to have any semblance of security if the guy who should enforce it has no way of knowing who he is supposed to let in. You say "the security guards could not really be expected to know everyone". Well, if you want security, then yes, they should. At the very least, they should have had a list of license plate numbers and checked that every car was in the list.
The fact that the problem was "corrected" with a swipe system simply means that that was the point when authorized people were known. A guard with the proper information would have been just as efficient.
Um, did you miss the part where one was offering a job to the other if he got the model data ?
I'm under the impression that that was in their personal communications - which they set up in the sole intent to "avoid detection".
That is not behavior I associate with loyalty or dedication.
Besides, don't tell me that Hu did not know that downloading confidential data to personal storage was a no-no. He was a professor and had been working there for a while. He knew the procedures and what they implied.
In any case, I also hope The Truth will prevail. Looking forward to hearing more on this.
This is a case in which I completely applaud capitalism. US citizens have been pawns in the hands of greedy oligarchs for way too long. It is nice to see that The People are waking up and getting back their freedom.
Good on Idaho, but what is better is that the dominoes are now starting to fall and Idaho's example will be repeated elsewhere. I agree that utilities should be under local control in any case, be it city or state. That prevents a good lot of situations where you have to wait for some enormous conglomerate to bother dealing with your problem. It mostly means that you don't have to go that far if you need to go and chew someone's desk out to get things moving.
You do not have production servers depend on unknown code.
Known code is code you have evaluated, reviewed and tested, and should be stored on a server you control.
When you are notified of an update, you evaluate the necessity of the update, review the new code if the update is necessary for you, and apply it to your test server only if you do intend to use it. There, you test it thoroughly and validate its merging with production code on servers you control.
This form of attack only works because everyone is abandoning their duty of care and just blindly trusting dozens of people they don't know to do things right. That's like hiring a cleaning lady and getting ten people shuffling around your house, doing things that are not necessarily related to cleaning. You'd have to be mad to accept that, but when it's code, you just can't be bothered (I know, might not have the time either - doesn't mean it's a good situation).
You can find that situation every day in the business world. As soon as you have a marketing guy overhearing a conversation at lunch or dinner and thinking of a way to benefit from it, there you go.
If that were illegal, there would be no business.
Besides, insider trading exclusively concerns the buying or selling of shares before some important news which will make the share price change in an important way. So it's only a Stock Market thing.
I suppose it's another brilliant MBA scheme. I'd love to see the discussion on that.
"Hey, we have all this power doing nothing, we could monetize it by supporting the power grid."
"Great idea, what happens if the grid goes down though ?"
"That virtually never happens, the grid has its own securities."
"Then why did we buy all those batteries in the first place ?"
From my point of view, those batteries are not just sitting there, they are poised to be available if the power grid goes down for any reason. That is their only job.
To give them another job is to ignore why they are in place and, in doing so, diminish their ability to respond to their primary duty.
But hey, I don't get a bonus either way, so have fun.
Good luck with that. For me and, I'm sure, a lot of other people, the situation is very clear : Trump wants to dominate China in every way he can, whatever the cost.
That Bloomberg went and destroyed its reputation to give Trump an excuse is shameful, but it has never been about National Security, that we all know because the allegations have never been proven. it would have been easy to post a picture of modified boards, but no, nothing has ever come to light. No picture, no expert testimony, no corroboration from international bodies, nothing. A big, fat nothing.
And that nothing proves that the "intelligence risks" of Huawei equipment are just about the same as the risks with Cisco equipment, so basically choose your poison and pray. The NSA will get access if it wants it anyway.
I get that microplastics are in the air - I just need to take a look at the sire of the road to know why. I get microplastics in seafood, that's also obvious. In fact, I'm comfortable with just about everything cited, except one : alcohol. How do microplastics get in there ?
I may be mistaken, but as far as I can see making alcohol involves metal (or wooden) vats, glass bottles and copper tubing. There is no plastic in any of that, so where does the microplastics in alcohol come from ?
Then you are incompetent. Either as an IT manager, or as a board member.
I cannot imagine any situation where business-critical data cannot be backed up. There are mirror servers, one-way synchronization, hell, I can't even begin to think of all the ways data can be put somewhere to be stored on tape or disk arrays.
I am sure of one thing : a proper IT administrator will have a backup of business-critical data, and know how to restore it. The only real issue is ensuring that the backup is not infected.
Although I do not like anything HP since last millennium and, as CEO Whitman is partly responsible for that, I have to admit that she does appear to keep her cool and stay in control in a courtroom.It may be that she's already had quite enough boardroom struggles to not get fazed by a court lawyer.
In any case, as a person, points to her.
"Your comment," said Miles to Whitman, "was 'happy to throw Leo under the bus in a tit-for-tat'."
Am I to understand that, since Whitman said something not very nice, Lynch is supposed to go free ? I cannot get how a court case cannot stay centered on facts relevant to the case, the case being Lynch falsifying Autonomy's figures.
That Whitman would be happy to throw Apotheker under a bus is perfectly normal. She shouldn't apologize about that, it is a normal human reaction.
And quite understandable as well. I'm not part of the board and I would happily throw that guy under a bus.
To me, it seems that the entire system was specifically created to be gamed - but only by those in charge.
Isn't it time that Nominet's status as a non-profit be put into question ? If you have a non-profit that hires an acquisition officer, then I think that non-profit has too much money for its own good.
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