Posts by Pascal Monett 18232 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
Well we knew that, didn't we ? It's only ever a small number, even when the actual number is in the millions.
Okay, right, in this specific case it might very be true that only a small number of users were affected - mainly because there hasn't been large headlines and furious tweets about the issue, but still - I just can't read those words any more and take them at face value.
Seems difficult to avoid that happening when you give the users the ability to choose who they want to associate with, especially since if you don't, the users will just go to a platform that does.
I think it is clear that people today demand convenience and the illusion of freedom without paying attention to what they are actually paying to get it.
Another Brockovich arrangement, then ?
How is it legal that lawyers who have been subject to absolutely no prejudice get more money than all the people who have ?
In absolutely every other professional domain, if you arrange a contract between two entities, you get at most 15% of what the guy who actually does the job gets. Only in the courtroom can you arrange to get such a return and set yourself before everyone else.
Yeah, I know they worked. It's still disgusting.
At a government level, there is only one solution : download a Linux distro and compile the source code. That is the only guarantee against backdoors and other nasties.
For the life of me I can't understand why companies today keep with the Windows treadmill. Yes, historically I get it, Windows is everywhere and everyone is using and/or coding for that platform. But for today's companies, most of what they really need is on Linux, and what's left can just as well be coded for that platform instead of Windows, so why all the heartache over Windows ?
The only reason I see is that Windows is easy. Not in the sense that Linux isn't, but in the sense that the current managerial crop thinks it knows it, and then there's all that legacy environment. Okay for the business side of things, but government should not have that problem.
Should being the operating word.
Don't understand why the article link sends me to some proprietary nuisance page that needs more Javascript permissions than a nuclear bunker.
This link on YouTube does just as well, with a full explanation (in French) for the first 2:30 minutes of the video.
Just want to see it bumble around ? Jump to 2:30 and enjoy.
Now that would be one hell of a project. Unfortunately, it would also be fraught with more dangers than we can know since we know nothing of the space between our Sun's heliosphere and the one over there.
Then there's the fact that they want to do the trip in 60 years, which pretty much guarantees that anyone there at mission start will be retired (and possibly dead) by the time the probe arrives and that just might complicate project management a smidgen.
On the other hand, it'll just be a question of monitoring the data flow - it's not like we'll have the option of sending commands back. On the matter of the data flow : how will it be possible to ensure that the probe's signal will be distinguishable from Alpha Centauri's output ? I am sure that the probe will be able to pinpoint the Sun and aim the emitter properly, but I'm also fairly sure that the signal arriving here will be very, very weak. I wonder how they'll solve that little problem.
You can replace Windows Search with anything up to and including a divining rod and you'll be pleased with the result.
I installed a home NAS two years ago and started placing all my various data files from my home PCs onto it. Some folders got pretty large, as in more than 1,000 entries. Whenever I tried opening those folders in Windows Explorer, it took ages. Anything under 400 files was slow but acceptable, anything above a thousand was agonizing.
People were telling me it was the protocol used by network access (wasn't that named SMB ?). I was seriously miffed that a bloomin' protocol had transformed my storage dream into a bloated snail.
For reasons I do not recall, I decided to try removing Windows Search from my PC (you know, Uninstall, Windows Options, Search). Once done (and rebooted), I opened a folder on my NAS. To my surprise, in the millisecond after I clicked, there it was. Just like a local disk, actually.
Needless to say, Windows Search has been removed from all of my PCs. I use Everything Search now, for the rare occasions when I don't quite remember where I stored something and, you know what ? Everything Search doesn't take five bloody minutes to find a result. Not even five seconds. The result is there practically as I type. You know, like it should be on a system that is ten million times more powerful than the one I had ten years ago.
Windows is the only OS that has succeeded in taking all the performance gains hardware ever offered and keeping UI response times at the same levels since '95.
Keep these articles coming, Reg editors. I am showing them to as many people as I can.
It feels as if peak cloud hype is passed. We're beyond the unicorn stage and now there are enough people having rolled up their sleeves and put their hands in the gunk to come back and tell us their cautionary tale.
Um, no they don't. Check out the OECD report and scroll down to the Speeds section (5.5 actual speeds).
The downloadable spreadsheet indicates the US in 10th (out of 34) position (with 10.513), behind Korea (23.6), Japan (14.6), etc.
On the contrary I feel that this article should be on the desk of every PHB in the world. With the number of times I hear some mangelement idiot casually dropping sentences like "We'll just go to the cloud and our problems will be fixed" (yes, I personally heard someone say almost that), there is obviously not enough of this kind of article to go around.
It seems to me that that is not any fault of mine. I think they'll be careless whether or not I get a cert for my site. I do not have a commercial website, nor do I have a site managed by any CMS or other mechanism that can be hacked without my knowing it.
There isn't even any PHP, it's just plain ol' HTML. And the .htaccess is as locked down as I can make it.
I do know how to make a self-signed cert, I just don't see the use for a site that is used by 6 people, tops.
That actually might have an impact on me.
I have a little website of my own, practically only known to my friends, where I post various things about our common online hobby-of-the-moment (we game together).
This little website is absolutely nothing special, only html and some pics. No cookies, absolutely no ads and not a speck of Javascript in sight.
Why should I slap a certificate on that and bother with https ? Is it really necessary for such a useless thing ?
It should be :
3. Someone with access evaluates the legitimacy of the demand, seeks approval to gather the information and, only if approved, collates it and sends the data to (2)
The problem is not being able to send the data - the problem is the usual lack of attention to context and detail that makes this kind of mistake possible.
And no software, nor any amount of messagebox questions, will ever be able to circumvent the problem.
Outlook may indeed have a recall option, but that can only work for email sent to a recipient on the same mail network (ie an office colleague).
As soon as your email leaves the domain it was sent to go to another one, your recall option dies.
Edit: aaaand a FuzzyWuzzy beat me to the punch. Well done !
Same in France and nobody is complaining about count time.
Might be time to review the voting system in the US and simplify things a bit ? Besides, I find it quite curious that the "popular vote" counts for everything except the election of the President. That is something that should be corrected right there.
Our closest neighbor is the Centauri system, which happens to be a multi-star system. I don't think it likely that our Sun's hypothetical twin can be found there.
The second closest is Bernard's star, which is over 6 ly away. Other star systems are at over 8 light years away, but they are all multiple systems.
So, for our Sun to have a twin, it would have to be Bernard's star, but apart from the distance, one would also have to explain how it could be a twin of our Sun when it is over 2 billion years older.
The next closest single star is not even in the 26 closest list linked above, so it is over 12 ly away and that's getting ridiculously far for a so-called twin.
So, for our Sun to have a twin, it would also have to have formed with our Sun, failed to ignite, got ejected from our system and cooled down sufficiently fast to not show up on infrared satellite surveys.
That's starting to be a bit much to swallow.
Why did I, upon reading that, immediately imagine that the new system hadn't been tested properly ?
Doesn't anyone do dry runs before putting into production any more ? I'm guessing they tested the parts, but they obviously didn't test the whole thing.
A user-managed password token generator for users who forget their passwords exists to avoid admins being hassled. Who exactly thought this was a good idea ?
I get it. Support hotline and marketroids are getting remarks on how bothering it is to deal with forgetful users. Pressure mounts and some manglement bod starts getting annoyed with the problem. He convenes a meeting with the techs and berates them for creating this issue, then requires solutions. Techs balk at figuring out a way to circumvent security, but a marketroid present in the meeting spurts out a suggestion about a "temporary token". Manglement bod approves, techs implement despite themselves, and now here we are.
Because clearly we need to relieve admins of the bother of securing their network. They don't need to worry about who is accessing it either. How's about we just subcontract that to the NSA ?
"it would seem that they were paid by Uber to write a report that cleared Uber of any wrongdoing"
I tend to agree with the previous posters, but I have to ask : what's the point of paying for a fake report to clear you of wrongdoing if you keep it secret ? Wouldn't the point be to wave it immediately in the face of anyone expressing doubts ?
Because your Credit bureau/lender knows what web pages you've visited, what pictures you've downloaded and when ?
I think you might be a bit fuzzy on the fact that your ISP knows everything you do on its wires, whereas your Credit bureau only knows what you fill in on their forms - and lender it may be but it has no right to know that you visit HappyHamster.com every evening at 11 P.M..
Your telco knows that, and all the rest as well.
Surely you do not think that the International Red Cross is as bad as this ?
The Wikimedia Foundation is not a charity - it is a money-hoovering operation that poses as a charity. This article just reveals some of the squalor that the WMF is desperately trying to hide, but the truth is that when we hear that the WMF has a ten year reserve and keeps asking for more money, well that is already a sure sign that a charity it is not.
I give money to the Red Cross - whatever evils lay within, they still save lives. The WMF will never see a cent from me because I refuse to fund money-grubbing liars and thieves.
I think the root of the problem is clearly defined : "Full automated fail‑over for the entire suite of applications and services in the event of a complete Sydney array failure had not been considered to be cost‑effective.”
They didn't think it cost-effective to properly design for automated failover. In other words, this government project wasn't worth the effort. So, now that it has indeed failed, one of two things should happen : either ATO has the balls to publicly state that a few days of downtime of its services is no big deal and resumes as before, or it wimps out and decides that it should actually implement full automated fail-over and, as a consequence, fire the top management moron who decided and signed off the document stating it wasn't cost-effective in the first place.
My guess ? The ATO meekly implements proper failover procedures and nobody gets fired.
That might be true, but as far as big rocks in space are concerned, all of humanity is playing peek-a-boo like a toddler : can't see it = not there. That is not good and it likely means that we will wake up to this threat only when half a continent has been erased from existence.
That will be a very expensive wake-up call and I approve any measure that will keep the funding going on this subject.
Most people don't. Most new users don't even know what a file type is. Oh, they recognize a PDF, all right - by the icon. Just like the icon will tell them if it's an Excel file or whatever else they use on a daily basis.
Hiding the extension has been a Microsoft default since Windows 98, if I'm not mistaken, and that abysmally stupid decision has given malware writers years of fun and years more are to come.
It is good to know that there is actually a viable market for this kind of product.
I am glad that it can help the elderly and, by extension, the more fragile part of the human population.
Now excuse me while I still value my personal privacy more and still do not consider the Cloud as a reliable, or safe part of my life.
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