Posts by Pascal Monett 18239 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
I'm thrilled to learn that someone who is competent in physics had a good YouTube video of why something could not actually work.
Unfortunately, if I'm not mistaken, YouTube is not a recognized, peer-reviewed, scientific news platform.
So please point me to his published paper on why the EMDrive couldn't work, because if there isn't any, I fail to see why Science should take that into account.
Legend has it that, when Thomas Edison had invented the light bulb, someone said to him something like "so it took you (let's say) 1480 tries to make it work ?", to which Edison replied "No, I invented 1479 ways not to make a light bulb".
This is Science. We don't just need to know that it doesn't work, we need to know why it doesn't work, in a mathmatically quantified way. Because maybe, one day, somebody will be able to revisit the maths and find a way to make it work. Or maybe the maths will give him an idea for something completely different.
In any case, some bloke on YouTube is not a scientific reference.
We are so glad you did. We might have been afraid we didn't get it the first time but, then again, we have people who know how to read.
In other words, you are not Trump and repeating your opinion endlessly does not make it any more relevant.
Please excuse me, but the fact that the largest whatever trust chain out there does not recognize DoD as a trusted root chain is neither here nor there. I'm not expecting anyones's browser to be happy about it, I'm expecting the people who need to access DoD websites to know that they're accessing the right ones.
Your remark tells me that browsers are basically beholden to the largest trust chain, which means that I can't trust who I choose to trust. For Joe User that may be a very good thing and I do not dispute that, but for specific military users, I'm not convinced that that is so useful.
If the DoD creates a master certificate and all other military sites get theirs from the DoD, what's the problem ?
Trusted certificates only mean they have been signed by a Cert Authority that is recognized by a central organism and we've seen that go badly already.
I think it wouldn't be such a bad idea to have all military sites of a country have their own trusted authority. Sounds good from a security perspective, IMO.
Thank you for avoiding the use of "AI" in your post - especially since you declare being in the field.
I saw the words "although you may find the module is buried inside an analytics or data science programme" in the article and immediately wanted to go on a rant saying obviously, because that's what ML is and THERE IS NO A.I. TODAY.
I did the Google beginner's course in ML and all there was was statistics and how to apply them. If you don't grep mathematics, you're up the proverbial creek without a paddle, and I'm not good at maths.
Not absolutely necessarily, I think.
My personal situation is that I have moved to a rural village where there is next to nothing - just a communal WiFi tower that works when it damn well pleases. We are, however, going to get FTTH come next August and no, it's not a pipe dream. it's really happening.
Right now, Orange is laying the fibers and will control the backbone, but other operators are allowed to come in and manage the last mile. There are two available right now, one is obviously Orange, and the other is a local telecoms company that already manages connections elsewhere in the region. There may be more operators signing on shortly - or not.
In any case, if I were absolutely anti-Orange, I have a choice. I don't have to go to Orange to use that connection.
YMMV
Um, sorry but that rule is for science stuff, not computer stuff.
Even if you could apply that rule, it would have to be understood that all computers ran the exact same programs on the exact same hardware, and that is just impossible.
How can we expect multinationals to fear the law if the highest bodies are totally incapable of imposing any sort of respect, let alone fear ?
Zuckerberg can only end his tour absolutely convinced that there is no more problem, that he handled the situation fine, that everything is going to go back to normal.
Absolutely no one has even tried to put the fear of God in him if he didn't mend his ways. Nobody has shouted in anger at his question-dodging. IIRC, there's only one person who even remarked that his "answers" have been heard before.
With grilling sessions like that your steak is staying raw.
Your arguments about hosting costs are quite logical, but take a look at Quake Live and find that they are not necessarily always true.
That said, I'm totally with you as far as micro-transactions are concerned.
They do, but said guards have no right to frisk you, they can only detain you until the police arrive.
They generally intimidate you to get you to caugh up whatever they're looking for, but they have no right to touch you.
And supermarkets have no detention cells.
Indeed. If only we had AI, there would be a great many things we could try and apply it to.
What I find interesting is the "social sites should police themselves" attitude. Neatly allows you to wash your hands of the issue, doesn't it ?
You don't ask supermarkets to "police" their customers, do you ? Malls do not have SWAT teams. So why should it be up to social sites to decide what to take down ? Youtube does takedowns based on DCMA requests and that is generally very badly handled because there is very little recourse. You want to see that reproduced on FaceBook and Twitter ? I don't use them and don't really care, but I am convinced that it is a governments' job to force the application of the law.
So someone is not happy about something that has been published, he goes to the cops and files a complaint. The cops check that the illegal nature of the thing is true, then send a takedown request - which is mandatory because The Law - and the site complies, alerting the original poster that a specific piece of his published data has been placed under legal lockdown. If that one is not happy about it, he can file a counter-claim and go to court.
Of course, depending on the level of illegality, he might not even need to go and file a counter-claim ; the police could be knocking at his door to tell him in person that what he posted was not a good idea and could you please follow us, sir ?
Um, sorry but, if we're there, it'll get fucked up.
We are a plague, a virus, and Mr Smith knows what to do with us.
Educate. Educate, educate, educate.
The only budget that has any true importance in any country is the Education budget. The USA gave that budget short shriff and now they have a mobster running the country. The American Empire is doomed and any country that does not make its schools a priority will see the same fate.
. . that it is absolutely unacceptable that a President uses Twitter in any capacity. Whatever a Government is doing or wants to make known should be done through the official spokesperson and not in any other way.
Trump is just unbelievable, in the strictest sense of the word : nothing he says can be taken at face value and anything he does say will likely be contradicted within a day.
I am interested by your reference to IBM. First of all, because I still have the DOS 1.0 manuals I got with my first-ever x86 PC, and I still hold those manuals to be the best ever written manuals that I have ever read. Clear, concise, understandable and useful. There is not one useless page in that manual.
Second, because I clearly remember a Microsoft paper that was circulated in the 1990s (well, after 1995) where I was told to pay attention to the GUI elements, and I specifically remember notes about paying attention to color codes (red does not hold the same significance for Western cultures as it does for other ones) and, most importantly, a rule that was drummed into our heads : if your menu depth goes beyond three levels, You Are Doing It Wrong (TM).
Unfortunately, I did not keep this piece of history, but I still remember its precepts.
Agreed, that is an egregious lack of due diligence on the part of the bank. UPS should sue.
This whole story is just jaw-droppingly unbelievable. If it were a film we would all be criticizing it for total lack of realism. There is not a single person in charge at any level of this operation that employed any actual use of brain cells. It's rubber-stamping galore all the way.
No shit, Sherlock.
Goes to show these guys didn't play Quake back in the 90's. There was a bot program that learned every new map in a jiffy and could smoke your ass if you weren't good enough, and there weren't no hexagonal whatchamacallits back then. When you had that bot on your ass it was pretty "compelling" as well.
Perception is indeed the big point of contention. When you have an interface that is the first point of call and depends on everything behind it, the interface invariably gets blamed for SAN issues, network issues and sometimes even hardware issues.
The real problem is when management starts blaming the interface as well. Management should be listening to reports and getting info on what is actually the cause of the pain in order to properly decide what to do about it. Sometimes, management just hops on the same blame train and uses that as a stick to whack on the interface.
Sometimes it is also a convenient excuse to replace the interface - usually at great cost - with some other interface that will have exactly the same issues because that was not the problem. But that doesn't matter because the PHB having caused the change will then find other reasons to blame, and keep his bonus/new car/expensive gift from company having sold the new interface.
No, no and no. The statistical analysis tool is most definitely not a team member. Stop that nonsense right now.
It's all about maths and statistics. It is not some magical being with feelings and problems. It won't have a coffee and suddenly become more active and more accurate. It will not one day morph into a similacrum of Data and start prancing around the office. It's a data-crunching algorythm based on statistics.
Understand statistics and you have a reliable tool. A tool.
Not a team member.
It's a good thing that journalists are taking GDPR seriously and making the appropriate noises in the appropriate amounts. I do expect that all the hoopla is necessary and, after May, companies will not be able to say they were not aware of their obligations.
That said, I am not expecting all that great an impact for most companies. Nobody is going to go after a customer/contacts database because if so, then every company in Europe can close shop. So most companies will wait for June, then July to see what happens and, since nothing will, there will be a collective shrug and life will go on.
For some companies, the ones that deal with great amounts of data, there is already a flurry of activity to be sure, but I am not hearing of massive data sets being obliterated to ensure GDPR compliance. From what I hear, it's much more massaging existing data to help it squeeze through the GDPR obligations.
Not that I hear everything, to be sure.
Still, I have the feeling that GDPR will be wielded mostly against companies that have been caught goofing around or getting hacked. Those companies will endure the pain of an investigation which will bring to light bad goings-on and, additionally, GDPR non-compliance and they'll be hit with the fines for that.
Actually, I have never had that experience . . because I fucking manage my email.
I have, unfortunately, been confronted God knows how many times to morons who leave everything in the Inbox, don't know what they delete, then come screaming for a restore at quarter to noon because something very important disappeared this very morning and they absolutely need it before noon.
So it all becomes my fault.
If only I had a gun . . .
Well, you could try reverse-engineering with electron microscope, but you'd likely find the FBI beating down your door with a DCMA takedown and at least ten years on a plea bargain, so yeah, fuzzing the secure enclave sounds like a good idea . . for now.
"The VBScript Engine can be exploited [..] The Chakra Scripting Engine in Edge can also be exploited"
Oh Dear God No ! Don't tell me that IE and Edge are vulnerable to hacks ! Please no ! Say it ain't so ! What is the world coming to ? Oh wait, same as usual ? Oh. All right then, carry on . .
Well, truth be said, you are running JavaScript for shits and giggles.
Because if you were in any way serious about your code, you'd not trust some effing download site and you'd vet your code and have it stored locally to be sure about what what it actually does.
Trusting a 3rd party with essential code is exactly like asking the same drug dealer to deliver a perfect product every time for nothing.
Kids these days . . .
"So why are dozens of companies [..] still clamoring to get in on the space where, according to regulators, there's no profit to be had, and nothing to be gained."
Good point. Feels like something fishy is going on. Could it be that this AV tool is going to be used to monetise user data ?
That would be shocking, wouldn't it ?
is that vendors are selling stuff as new when they stuff it with recycled Flash chips, thus lowering the life span of the product I would be paying full price for.
Am I actually supposed to believe that they're not doing it on purpose ? Sure. Sell me a bridge while you're at it.
And that is the crux of the entire issue.
Not to remind everyone of that famous saying about exchanging liberty for safety, but that's exactly where we have ended up.
What I wonder is what is it going to take to put that genie back into the bottle and will we as a species have the balls to get it done ?
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