Posts by Pascal Monett 16728 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
If you followed the link in the article, you would read a good one :
"Rule 48 speeds up the opening by suspending the requirement that stock prices be announced at the market open"
In other words, to prevent disaster, they let things go faster.
This is the world where removing safeguards is considered a viable solution.
#Deity help us all.
Maybe you forgot that, before exposing the data, the hackers were blackmailing ALM ? That they published the data because ALM didn't fold and pay up ?
These scum are NOT do-gooders in any sense of the term. They went in for the money, and when they couldn't get any they decided to blow everything up, without a thought for the people involved and what it could cost them.
I hope the police catch them and they get tried for attempted murder in addition to blackmail and whatever else can stick.
Nom the tiger cage has just come down, and some people are not emotionally strong enough for it.
And if ALM has been keeping details of people that had paid to be unsubscribed, then there is practically a guarantee that some of those "subscribers" had joined when single, found love somewhere else, delisted (or so they thought), and now find themselves in this shitter through no fault of their own.
Those of you gloating at the suicide toll should think of that for a moment. Then go hang your head in shame.
It is truly delightful to be reminded of all the things I, as a computer and programming specialist, know for the past 20 years. However, none of you have said anything that invalidates my statement.
@Richard Plinston : yes, I know the geeky debuts of personal computing. But whether you like it or not, Microsoft is what made the PC into the multi-billion market it became. Talk to anyone in the street about the Apple II. I'll bet a hundred bucks they'll just look at you with a blank stare.
@Mr Roo : and how many people know how to make a bootable USB key, apart from your friends ?
@ anonymous boring coward : I definitely agree with your statement about not being afraid. How many people you know will actually reinstall Windows, not to mention a Linux distro they have never tried ? Sorry to burst your bubble, but the word "Linux" means nothing to 99% of the population.
Gentlemen, I know Linux well enough to admire it, I don't need you to tell me of its many merits. But you are blinding yourself if you think that the common user is even going to be aware of its existence, to say nothing of actually trying it out.
"What's that, Windows 10 thats been out for 2 weeks has a bigger market share than a free desktop os has gained in 20 years?"
You are comparing an OS that has entrenched itself in public consciousness since the beginning of personal computing with an obscure OS that next to nobody uses, is compatible with nothing and requires a vast amount of technical understanding to get to use. It's not apples and oranges there, it's fruit and construction in Dubai.
Oh, and before the penguinistas dive-bomb the downvote button, I will readily admit that Linux (in all its versions) has been improving the interface, the compatibility and just about everything that makes it useable. And I know very well that a hefty amount of websites and servers run Linux. That does not change the fact that people do not use servers, they use the services that are served by the servers (when you're on the web, you use a browser - the OS that serves up the data is not your concern).
Unfortunately, these improvements do not help the vast majority of users since it remains a sea change from what they are used to.
And, as Microsoft is finding out the hard way, people don't like change.
IoT at the moment is just a collection of "you can do this now !" ad-hoc non-features, like lightbulbs with speakers. The issue being, of course, that makers are desperate to have something they can show as a selling point, whereas security is not easily visible and is expensive to implement properly, so it falls by the wayside.
Even here, where the maker thought of using SSL (good show), they failed to secure the chain of information completely, thereby leaving a hole.
Since IoT is absolutely useless at the moment, and anything "smart" is by definition something that phones your private life to the mothership, I am staying well away from all this hoopla for the forseeable future.
So now we have "verification sites" that have basically sprung up overnight to "inform you" if you're on the database dump. Of course, all manner of offers may follow, with removal services in exchange for money as the goal.
You'd be a fool to pay for that though, because nobody is going to change the initial dump, meaning you might pay to get removed only from a copy of the data. Fat lot of use that would be, but I'm sure some poor saps will fall for it.
The fecal matter has hit the blade rotation device and it's going to get worse before it gets better.
Now that is pure gold.
Not only do they make you pay for their "service", but they also force you to use your bandwidth to stream data to other users that they con into paying for the "service" and doing the same, meaning Spotify uses that much less in bandwidth, thus lowering their costs.
Seriously machiavellic. Hats off, that really takes the cake.
Just one thing : who is paying for all that ?
Sorry, but pie-in-the-sky intentions will never overcome the clueless manager whose hands is on the purse strings.
And that is the problem in every post of this kind of article. Issues cropped up because the managers put the budget on something that seemed more important until the amount of trouble was just too big to ignore - by which time, of course, things were much, much worse than they needed to be.
A proper manager should at least have an up-to-date list of logons and passwords, implying an accurate knowledge of what is plugged in where. Anything less than that and you're not negotiating helping them with their IT, you are in point of fact becoming the IT manager. Without the authority required for the job, you are doomed to either fail, or put in a lot more effort than you are being paid for.
Please explain how the conditions of use have anything to do with the rate at which the service is charged.
Real-life analogy : you rent an appartment. After one year and one month, your landlord tells you that, in order to continue living in that appartment, you have to give him your Facebook pwd and the names of all your friends. if you don't, he'll throw you out.
Apparently, you think that that is normal. Congratulations, you are part of the problem.
To which you may "choose" to accept and continue using the service, or refuse and be banned from using it any more.
That is not a choice.
I think it is high time for this EULA/T&C issue to be brought to court. The users who signed up for the service in the beginning did not sign up for this, and there is no right to foist it on them now under pain of banishment. Feels very much like a bait-and-switch argument to me. Come on in, we'll allow you to listen to music, in exchange for money. Oh, now that you're in, you have to agree to selling your soul and that of all your acquaintances, else you can't listen to anything anymore, but we keep your money until you cancel explicitely.
Not acceptable.
It is time to oblige companies to respect the contractual obligations of Commercial Law. If payment is required for a service, then it is a contract. If it is a contract, then one side cannot change the conditions without consent from the other side.
That means that Spotify should not be allowed to change its T&Cs without user consent. No banishment should be possible if users refuse, Spotify should continue to provide the service that users initially signed up for.
I don't think that married men on the site are going to step forward at all.
What I'm saying is that the article makes as if that is all there is, and that is not the case. There are single people seeking to hook up, and it is likely that there are enough to seriously damage ALM in court. Is that a straightforward enough statement of fact for you ?
"anyone suing for breach of privacy could expose themselves to greater risk of divorce proceedings"
Ok, ok, the clear editorial stance on this issue is that ALM customers are dirty, dirty cheaters.
And there are cheaters, obviously. I would not be surprised if the cheaters were the majority, or even the vast majority.
But there are single people in there as well, and you can't treat them the same, now can you ? Given the amount of customers, there is probably a significant amount of single people who should have no qualms whatsoever in going to court. That is a real risk for ALM, but one that this article doesn't even consider.
It's nice to have a clear target to mow down, obviously, and I myself have stated that I couldn't care less if ALM folds or not, but it might be time to set the "cheater, cheater" megaphone down and bring a bit more objectivity to this serious issue, don't you think ?
Let me see, an interface nobody wants and must be replaced with 3rd-party tools (on PC, that is), an OS that rapes your data like never before, a looming threat of subscription to be allowed to use your own data, the promise of unwanted changes automatically downloaded and installed, and now information on WU patches being withheld on a whim.
Really, Microsoft, if this were a Hollywood film, now would be the perfect time for SatNad to stand in front of a mirror and the camera to show no reflection.
Bingo.
That is exactly what this case needed, a clearly unimpeachable example of someone who did no wrong and who was wronged.
Obviously, there were (are ?) cheaters on ALM, but nobody can blame a widower for trying to hook up. He is the ideal poster-figure for a lawsuit.
In other matters, women now make up 14% of ALM members ? Curious, yesterday it was 5%.
Funny, that.
There certainly is a lack of thinking these days. Whenever I search for information on how to get rid of a problem, generally in Windows, 9 times out of 10 the results returned link to some stupid YouTube video. It will last 3 to 10 minutes, 90% of which will have zero bearing on the subject ("I was just, ya kno, thinking about <insert pointless thing> and, like, I realized that there are still people who don't know how . . .) or just be filler (um, uh, hmmm, ya kno ?). So I have to get through all that gunk to get to the 12 seconds that actually explain what I need to know (if they are there).
Instead of just making a web page, taking a minute to grab a few screenies and putting another minute of effort into TYPING A CLEAR EXPLANATION.
But hey, it's a lot faster to just grab the micro and start blabbering without a clue as to how you're going to explain or thinking it through first, right ? Well guess what ? It shows. And you're wasting my time.
So I avoid YouTube links like the plague, unless there really isn't anything else.
Yup, you're getting old.
And so am I.
Old enough to remember my French professor telling us how wonderful it was to have a "living language".
He just neglected to say that it was all the morons who don't know how to speak their own language that actually impose changes that end up becoming fact.
That's why we now see all those things that "effect" change (gah!), or comments like "he would of" (beurk!). Not to mention the eternal confusion between they're and their.
We can now add another one to the ever-growing list. The beauty of a living language appears to be the infected pimple on a teen's face.
Now get off my lawn !
Of course somebody could.
And as soon as that somebody publishes the findings, they will be rubbished by the interested parties. A deluge of counter-facts will drown the results. Ad hominem attacks will ensue, and you will learn that one of the participants in the study once ran a red light, thus casting doubt on his professionalism and, by association, the validity of the study's results.
If all that is not enough, kiddie porn will be found.
There may well already be a "proper" study. You don't know about it because of the above.
It's not called Big Oil for nothing.
How can we be sure of that ?
Do we have an accurate map of the underground ? Do we have 100% certainty that there is absolutely no connection whatsoever between the aquifers and the oil we want to mine that could be opened by high-pressure gas ?
I've read here (and elsewhere) that the aquifers are "above" the oil shales. Yet fracking consists of pushing high-pressure gas until the shales break open. Given that pressure can simply not go down (because more pressure), it follows that it goes back up. Towards the aquifers, apparently.
I'm not a geologist, obviously.
Not knocking the technique, just genuinely curious.
I think you may have hit the nail on the head.
Samsung absolutely needs this case to last until the USPTO renders a final decision on that patent. With an invalidate patent, Apple will have had the rug pulled out from under its feet and the next trial will likely be very much more favorable to Samsung.
Apple is likely going to do everything it can to make the patent stick (if it can).
Well duh, that was part of the business play since Day 1.
I don't like this kind of web site at all. That it got hacked and exposed doesn't bother me one bit, and if it folds as a result, it is no loss.
I will not, however, say that ALM is getting what it deserves. There will be personal tragedies following this and that is sad.
But ALM can bite the bullet any time.
Bandwidth.
Living in France, I have tried to use the Internet TV option of my ISP for two years. Last year, I gave up and reinstalled satellite.
The reason is that I live in a rural area, not a city, and my bandwidth is 10Mbps. Not shabby for surfing or online gaming, but ghastly when it comes to watching a 25fps TV show. The instances where I could watch an entire evening of TV without pixellation, tearing or the picture freezing while the sound continued for a few seconds can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
That is why I have steadfastly refused to subscribe to Canal+, despite their yearly efforts to incite me to. I'm not going to pay even more to watch the same pixellation, tearing and frame-freezing issues.
I suppose that, with at least double the bandwidth, the issues would mostly go away, and with a proper fiber link they should likely disappear entirely. However, the nearest fiber link is in the city 30km away, and there is no timetable on when it might happen to reach my door.
So, until that glorious day, I am staying on satellite.
My point ? I have a 10Mbps connection in a rural area. That is actually rather fast around here. I personally know quite a few people who are happy to have a 2Mbps connection. Of course, I know some who are on fiber (the bastards). In majority, though, rural areas simply don't have the bandwidth to enable Netflix.
So yeah, I'm not surprised. I shrug along with my compatriots.
Now, about those frog legs . . .
I beg to differ.
Record companies make profits because they nail the artist to the wall and strip him of all rights to his creations for the duration of the contract. Then they proceed to milk him for all he's worth while it lasts, leaving him with pennies. Artists accept that because they are young, ambitious and ignorant of the consequences - and it seems to be their only chance at getting known.
Only when an artist is sufficiently well-known to go solo does he start making money, because by that point he is capable of setting up his own recording company and giving the others the finger.
That's why Madonna, Prince and every other music superstar have their own recording companies. If they still worked under their original contracts, they wouldn't be the multi-millionaires they are now.
Parents have already made their "informed choice" by either educating their children or not.
If they count on ratings to decide, then they have not educated their children.
Educate your child properly and he will be able to decide for himself if what he is watching is worth it. But that requires a lot more effort than letting a bunch of people you don't know and have no control over decide what is good "for the children".
In the end, this "effort" is moot anyway. Until you have a foolproof method for ensuring the age of the person using the browser, that is.
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