Posts by Pascal Monett 19006 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
Travel to loyalty profile ?
Why am I surprised that airlines are profiling us as well ? I'm sure there are plenty of people who, having traveled for business from Sydney to Dhaka to Frankfurt to Vancouver during the week, would be absolutely overjoyed in taking a short hop to Osaka to unwind during the week-end.
Right ?
I believe that that is generally due to technology catching up with the idea. Da Vinci imagined the helicopter and it took centuries before technology could create the engine and the blades and the rest that was needed to actually make a usable version.
As far as blockchain is concerned, it's software, so the tech is here now. So yeah, if no one has found a different use today, there's not much chance of finding a better use in a decade.
It's the act of crossing the street outside of the municipality-approved crossing path, an egregious offense in any stuck-up, prudish culture that most definitely thinks it knows better than you. Another side-effect of the nanny culture, except this one dates from at least the Nazis before 1939.
I know because my grandpa told me about how he had found Germany back in 1938 when he was visiting. He found the local constabulary to be very keen on people crossing along the dotted path, and woe to anyone who tried to skimp.
Personally, if there are no cars coming in any direction, I am not going to wait to get to a crossing, nor will I press the button, I'll cross wherever I am. I see no reason to hold up traffic just for my personal benefit. Of course, if there is traffic, I'll be very careful about it.
I actually agree with that. Trump has so many skeletons in his closet that taking him down should have been a crapshoot .
Attack ads like "Do you really want a failure for President ?", referring to his many bankruptcies, or "Would you want your daughter in the same room ?" referring to his pussy-grabbing, I mean, there is a wealth of things to attack him about, and I heard nothing about any of that.
You reap what you sow, and when you don't sow anything, you reap a big fat failure.
Then what on Earth is he doing on the Internet ?
Go back to reading Shakespeare, my good fellow. Oh, and don't forget to put wax in your ears when school kids are walking by, you'll sleep better.
The only language that doesn't change is Latin. Hint : it's because it's dead.
Linux certainly is, at the OS level. I am certain that, in time, Linux will be the Enterprise OS of choice.
But at the application software level, Linux is woefully undersupplied. LibreOffice works fine for me, but Calc doesn't have the polish of Excel's formatted tables, or the fun but useful things like Sparklines, not to mention that its charts are somewhat disappointing and lack every formatting option Excel charts have.
Writer is not much more evolved, has no themes, no header formatting, is basically Word circa 1998, albeit a bit more efficient and faster.
For the rest, a company migrating from a Windows environment will have a devil of a time getting apps in Linux that can compare with the ones they use in Windows.
So no, Linux is not actually an alternative and won't be until those gaps are filled.
That is probably a significant part of the issue. Everyone remembers an MS that was lean and executed rather well. Not everyone realizes that when MS was a lean, mean fighting machine, it's because there was competition.
Where does MS have competition in the OS space now ? Nowhere. Ergo, no need to pay attention, got fat, got sloppy, got childish. Is now more interested in bling than functionalty.
And what can we do about it ? Zilch. Nobody is going to migrate to Linux because that is a functional nightmare for a company of just about any size.
So we bend over and take it, and MS knows we will.
Not to mention a pic of "compromised" motherboard. Why isn't there a single pic ? Produce that and all the doubters will have to shut up.
Instead, we have this endless continuing of a useless argument, useless because nobody can prove anything either way.
Show me the goods or get out of the room.
I disagree. We should bring it up (*), disassemble it and examine the pieces and how they fit together to perfect our knowledge of their level of shipbuilding. I think that would give valuable insight into why they did things the way they did. I'm sure we'd learn a lot from that wreck.
* - if feasible, obviously, and given the depth, there may be a bit a challenge.
Taxman turned a deaf ear and demanded payment, and got a hard slap of truth : when someone calls, you answer the damn phone. You are neither a jailer nor a judge, you're an administration and your job is administer, not bully.
Yes, there are undoubtedly companies that are doing their best to skirt taxes (eh, Apple ?), but you do not decide to punish before you have probable cause to do so and, in this case, you didn't because you refused to listen.
How long will it be before companies start phoning Redmond offices to say "hey, cut the bullshit releases out - we are working here !".
Constant uproar in the IT area of a company will inevitably have consequences on revenue at some point. If these shenanigans continue, Microsoft just might find itself in legal hot water.
The optimal number is, of course, three because if one disagrees with the two others its results can be ignored in favor of the most common result.
Independantly of whatever argument there may be about using two, I think the point is that one of the three has gone bad, two are left and you need to have a spare. So they're shutting down the faulty one, keeping one as a spare and only using one gyro. When that one fails, the spare will pick up the job and Hubble will continue to be useful.
That's how I see it anyway.
The only reason I keep it is because it is a required work tool, it's not because I like it. I don't, I hate the things. Every update changes something in the UI. Options move, some things are reset and there is never any warning or explanation. I hate it all.
Please explain why it was soooo necessary to move the Flashlight option from lower right to middle left ? It's nothing, but it is supremely annoying when you had the habit of going lower right.
Either you let me put it where I want, or you LEAVE IT WHERE IT IS. You are not "enhancing" the UI by changing stuff all the time, you're just making everything confusing and frustrating.
Nobody knows how AI is done. We don't have AI, we have statistical analysis machines.
And The Economist : if you think a company cannot be held responsible for it's pseudo-AI, you are totally smoking something you shouldn't.
It's the companies' tool, if the company cannot manage it properly, it will be fined into oblivion. Or shut down.
But it will be held responsible.
Everything is wrong with Windows 1 0. An OS should not have ads, it should not do its own thing without your permission, it is there to do your stuff, not Microsoft's.
The fact that some people find it fast and responsive is like liking a drug lord because he doesn't shoot you.
It's in the telemetry. Remember the film Apollo 13 ? Some of the brightest minds on this planet planned that mission, and NASA has experience in determining what it needs to know in order to find out what goes wrong.
This is not your bullshit Windows telemetry, this stuff was set up by Engineers, with a capital 'E'. They'll figure out something, I'm pretty sure of that.
"the Army says it will be commissioning officers into is cyber security programs with the rank of colonel"
And now I can't help but picture a roomfull of PFYs with colonel shoulderboards. Feels like I'm looking at Major Valerian all over again, and that doesn't feel any more credible now than it did then. The Army should just stop with the grade nonsense, create a special designation/grade with the salary that will give them the required clout to get talent, and move on. These guys are hackers, colonels they are not and they never will be.
"The feed viewer has its own 'special' XML parser, distinct from the main Firefox one, and has not had a significant update in styling or functionality in the last seven years"
It's an RSS feed, it works fine and there is no need for updating the styling.
As for functionality, bloody hell why is it that everything has to get more functionality ? When it works, it's good enough - leave it alone. Adding more functionality is called feature creep and is a sickness that has killed many a product's usefullness. You don't add functionality for the sake of adding it, you add the functionality you need and you stop when you have what you need.
Somebody get a cluebat, I feel the need for some percussive education.
Um, sorry, but the wheel is a thousands-of-years-old design, where's the problem ?
If it was a 50-year-old rocket, yeah, I could see the issue.
Designs do not grow old, they get replaced by better designs.
SpaceX et al are apparently in the process of doing that, but the Russkies have a design that works now. They might just have to tweak it, but with its track record, I'm not sure that's a very good idea.
If I agree with you completely on the headphones, I cannot help but disagree on the mouse.
Cordless mouse have come a long way in the past decade. They are very reliable, and working with a cord attached is something I simply cannot do anymore on a daily basis.
In my Logitech G602 I put two AAA batteries and they last me for three or four days of daily use, plus gaming evenings. Not too shabby.
That said, I have a respectable amount of rechargeable batteries and yes, I admit that I have a set in the charger once a week.
Next to my Samsung Galaxy A3, you'll excuse me if I find that peanuts as far as hassle goes . . .
"This group eschews custom malware and uses living off the land (LotL) tactics and publicly available hack tools to carry out activities that bear all the hallmarks of a cyber espionage campaign," Symantec claimed.
"The most interesting aspect of Gallmaker’s approach is that the group doesn’t use malware in its operations. Rather, the attack activity we observed is carried out exclusively using LotL tactics and publicly available hack tools."
The second paragraph is just a re-ordering of the words in the first with a bit of added fluff. No new meaning can be inferred, nothing more can be learned.
It is a waste of time and of space. Enough with that already.
Are they TRYING to make things easier for hackers ?
Nobody thought this through at all. Nobody wondered what could happen if "none of the above" was selected across the board, and obviously nobody tested the final result beyond making sure it didn't crash on first try.
There certainly are a few more niggles I could have, but the big one is allowing another email address. For frak's sake, nobody does that. There is no reason to, you already have the subscribers' address.
I've been wondering how people can honestly put their crown jewel data into someone else's server, and now I think I get it :
1) Make sure technical network expertise gets rare by making training more expensive
2) Complicate everything by introducing new technology and make sure to constantly repeat that it is important
3) Companies go to The Cloud en masse
4) Profit !
That moment happened to me a few years ago, when, as a consultant, I responded to a call from a university.
As I reached the double glass door entrance, a student on the other side noticed me coming and casually reached for the door, holding it open for me. What floored me was just how automatic and casual the gesture was, as if it was a given that that was what he had to do. Some people would call it education.
I call it my "now you're old" moment.
Absolutely agree. This has been tried before, as has already been noted here, and it never took off.
It won't now either because people do like to show off, but on their own terms. They post their lives on Facebook because when they're not on the computer, it does not affect them. This is invasive and forces them to be their show-off selves when they're not ready.
You can take a phone call when you're naked, no problem. With this, you're liable to get a bad surprise when you answer and find that your wife is looking at you wondering why the hell you're in the nude at 3 in the afternoon.
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