Posts by Pascal Monett 19006 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
Yup indeed. Microsoft used to be a company that benefited of a minimum of respect concerning its products. Office in general and Excel in particular have been viewed as top-of-the-line and no business these days functions without Excel.
With all the clueless blundering around Windows 1 0 updates, that respect has now gone down the toilet.
It starts out by saying "unprecedented levels of protection", and then we get this :
"Clinicians working in any location with any third-party technology will be able to view and share vital patient information safely and ethically"
So you're telling me that any 3rd party app is going to be able to hook into this data container that has "unprecedented levels of protection" ?
Because zero protection is not exactly unprecedented, and anything more is going to be a big hassle for 3rd party apps to be able to use.
.. they can get hacked, and black hats can get their mitts on juicy zero-days that they can exploit quickly because the spooks will have a devil of a time admitting that they sat on those problems instead of protecting the public - which is their official duty and gives them all their powers.
One day, I would like a Game-Of-Thrones ruler to turn on them and say "You knew this and kept it to yourself ?" - and then a public beheading.
As a lesson to the rest of them.
Never going to happen, because National Security is more important than your security as a member of that Nation.
The hardware you paid for, using the OS you paid for (one way or the other*), is going to stop working unless you install the update that doesn't work.
Man am I glad I stayed on Win 7.
Waiting for Linux to do everything I need doing.
* either you updated a Windows that you paid for, or you bought a new computer - so you paid for it
Wrong. Those consequences have been repeatedly and frequently exposed, so that there is no one that works anywhere near IT who can claim that he didn't have a clue.
What this is compares much better to a lesson in sheep herding, with major CEOs and "decision-makers" being the sheep, herded to this position bleating gleefully about how much money would be saved (and counting their additional bonuses on the way).
Well, people, you can now take out your calculators and count the money lost, per hour, for all your employees who cannot do their jobs. You should at least return your bonuses in a token gesture to offset the cost of such short-sightedness.
Given that the admin was on the ball and the breach was closed before any data extraction took place, I do not think it is fair to start bashing Dell on having been breached.
They did a far better job at securing their data than many others who have been discussed in these columns this year alone.
Security is not a passive affair. Firewalls and such are not the only answer, you need active surveillance to be able to catch issues before things go bad and data is extracted. That is what happened here, so kudos to the IT people who knew their job and did it well.
My question exactly. I've had radio headphones plugged into the TV for years, they didn't need no stinkin' app to work.
My current headphones are a not-too-pricey Sony model that work fine and plug in like every other kind I've ever had. I fail to see what is the point in having an app at all. You have an app for the sound card (or chip these days), that is where the tweaking should take place.
But headphones are for listening to the output, not for fiddling with it.
Wrap the obligatory "AI" around it, and attach a 3D printer and voilà ! you have a grant and a project.
But there is no AI in there. The color analysis can be done in Photoshop and, unless I've missed that news, I don't think Adobe is crowing about how it crammed AI into Photoshop.
So it's a program that inputs an image, does some pre-programmed fiddling and outputs said image. Don't try impressing me with the mixing of inks, that's something that dumb inkjets do a hundred times a day.
I'm not saying this is a useless project, don't get me wrong, but there's even less AI in this one than usual.
There's a minimum of decency that is supposed to exist between the people who agree to something and that is to stick to what was agreed.
Anybody tries ignoring any part of an agreement with me is going to find a closed door the next time they come knocking.
Did you hear that rushing water sound ?
That's the sound of millions of Microsoft customers salivating at the prospect of a cloud that actually helps them, instead of keeping them from working.
But hey, Nadella, stay the course ! Nothing like being a living promotion for Open Source tools, right ?
Meanwhile, US telcos will do everything in their - admittedly - immense power to retain the status quo.
Might as well try to stop the winter from coming. Change is inevitable and trying to avert it only means you will fall harder.
That the US criticizes any other country about human rights obligations is something rich, but saying that "the nation doesn't adhere to human rights obligations and commitments" is, as far as I can see, simply wrong.
The UK has ratified the Bill of Rights, it has ratified all protocols of the Geneva Convention (something the USA has yet to do), and, as far as I can recall, British soldiers have never found themselves accused of torture, neither has Her Majesty approved of such methods - contrary to US soldiers and government.
Yes, there is that spying issue and it is not going away any time soon. Still, I find it quite rich to see USAians accusing the British of being untrustworthy with data !
It's a niggle, but for me it is important : the keyboard lacks a dedicated numeric keypad. I am very used to that, and not having one is a miss for me.
Still, I'm sure I've seen USB numpads, so all is not lost. I might look into that more closely when the time comes to replace my current workhorse.
Get with the program. Moving things for no reason is the entire raison d'être of the new UI paradigm. Many consultants in expensive suits promote the idea to "surprise the user" and "enhance the experience".
Because, once you have a product that does everything the user needs, it's the only thing you can do to maintain the appearance that you did some work.
Oh - that and breaking it, of course.
That argument was valid from the onset of this current cloud fad and it has already been validated a good number of times, Daz.
It's not our fault if you ignore reality until it bites you in the demo.
And honestly, with Microsoft's could performance this year, you can thank your lucky stars it only happened to you in November.
The answer to that is simple : anyone who has a warrant.
That means probable cause, approved by a judge and enforced by proper police force.
Of course, that also means that US-based IP lawyers can go fuck themselves, which is an outcome I entirely approve of.
China must actually be paradise on Earth to have no other problem than shaming jaywalkers.
If they tried putting something like that in place in the Western world, in no time flat you'd have scores of bored teenagers competing to see how fast they could get their mug on the big screen.
Acquisition. Taking over another company and folding some or most of their employees into yours. Merging two different corporate cultures, making a mess of both in the end. Sure, it makes for bigger numbers on the ledger, and hopefully captures more market and customers, but it really feels like a pain to go through for the expected result - which is not always attained.
Here, we have the remnants of HPE employees who are apparently leaving in droves. That is a sign that DXC has a rather big problem on its hands ; its experience is bleeding away. That does not bode well for future execution, meaning acquisition is just going to mask the problems to the outside.
Right now, I do not see a rosy future for DXC.
I've completed a few big projects in my time, with thankfully only minor niggles to correct in the new version.
What gets me the most is that I know that, however much preparation and planning and caution I employ, in the end, on launch day, there will always be one user who will have an incredible problem nobody else does. And when I'm confronted with it, I then have to tie my brain into a knot in order to find a solution that doesn't break it for everyone else.
And, often, that one user will be a VIP or otherwise important person in the company, so the solution just has to be found ASAP.
It's almost as exhausting as the entire rest of the project.
I smell massive tax evasion tactics coming soon. Followed by tearful reports of fiscal revenue going into the toilet.
Funny, normally the government does everything to ensure that tax revenue keeps flowing, so why isn't anyone getting the ball rolling on this ? What political thing is worse for someone's image than ensuring tax keeps coming in ?
Because that's what it is. This is purely someone who does not want to be seen saying something definitive that nobody will like, so they keep quiet despite the guys at the Tax Bureau going blue in the face over their inability to move forward.
You are correct. In France, any education institution with "Supérieure" in the name is University level and logically ends in a Masters-level degree.
The Ecole Normale Supérieure is actually the golden highway for future politicians and high-level functionaries. The other preferred method is becoming a lawyer, then getting into politics (like Sarkozy did).
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
