Posts by Pascal Monett 19487 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
That is the whole problem - they don't think.
Management these days is not able to manage, it is just there to give orders and take paychecks.
True management would have a clue about what is going on, what needs to be done and a plan to get it done that is written on something other than a paper napkin.
Indeed, I found that little line in the article very interesting as well.
A "security" contractor who 1) takes confidential data out of NSA premises without authorization and 2) uses a malware-infested cracker to unlock an unregistered copy of Office without wondering what might go wrong.
And those are the goons allowed to spy on us. If that's how smart they are, no wonder Russia can pilot US elections.
And that will never happen, simply because the world is a complicated place and no one solution is good for everyone all the time.
Companies and people will find the Cloud useful for some use cases, on-premise for others. I'm convinced that any given single entity (company or individual) will find that it ends up using both, each kind for specific applications or use cases.
And, in the end, that is what computing should be about : bringing the best solution to a given problem. It is not about bringing one solution and removing all the other possibilities.
"Microsoft is endeavouring to improve manageability and security by making it behave more like a mobile operating system, including Store-delivered applications"
Just how the hell SECURITY is being improved by making a PC more like a bloody mobile phone ?
And as for manageability, don't make me laugh. Just put the UI back to Windows 7 and a PC can be managed just fine.
Finally, keep your stupid Store. I will not have myself locked in on my PC. It's MINE, Microsoft, not yours.
""If I have to adhere to regulations and another does not, we don't know how to play in that area [..]"
It is rather obvious that if you build something to international standards and the thing you need to talk to doesn't respect them, there will be issues.
Beyond that, this is major industrial infrastructure stuff and negotiations on that level are completely beyond me. For starters, I have a hard time believing that someone would put up the money for a satellite and its launch without ensuring that it would function properly for its intended use. A satellite is not another sales point you set up over a week-end, it's a major investment and I cannot imagine that everything was not planned and vetted from A to Z.
There was a major communication hiccup in all this, and someone is no doubt feeling very uncomfortable right now.
Allow me to "get off my lawn" on this subject, again.
I cannot stand this almost condescending attitude that consists in saying that DevOps is the only way to go and Cloud is the only future.
Cloud means Internet means bandwidth and availability limitations. Only big companies can budget failover Internet connections from different providers, and I'm not sure they all do that. In addition, SLAs are all very nice, but the Cloud is still regularly kicking the bucket at this point and I'm pretty sure companies are not okay with paying hundreds of employees to twiddle their thumbs until someone else resolves the issues.
As for serverless, for Christ's sake please stop trying to make us believe that our data is secure in the Cloud. At this point in time, it is most certainly not. I will believe in serverless when you have the ability to assign your own keys of whatever length you decide you need, and all data is encrypted from start to finish and nothing is left unencrypted outside your premises.
Show me a cloud vendor that can work with that and we only have availability and backups to discuss. Until then, I simply do not agree with Cloud for anything resembling confidential data.
Of course, small companies will look at their budget and think "Cloud will cost me less", which is likely true right until Cloud wipes their data and can't get it back, but hey, small companies, eh ? What can you do ?
Yes, it is quite depressing that people still haven't cottoned on to the idea that a complete stranger does not send you confidential documents out of the blue.
I receive invoices and such from people I don't know. After a "yeah, sure" moment, I check the originating address to be sure and, generally, that's when the game is up. Either the domain has nothing to do with the purported origin (eg. a mail from Microsoft that is sent from a Gmail account), or worse, it supposedly came from my own domain (I am one of three users in my domain).
It doesn't take more than two brain cells to figure out that a message from SomeGuy2748 is not a professional source. There is no company on Earth that registers its employees like that, ergo no professional mail can come from such a source.
And yet people still get taken in by such stupid shenanigans.
and yet, the boffins know exactly where Dawn is at any given second, know exactly how much fuel to use to attain a given orbit or orientation, and get the data they're looking for even though it is physically impossible for any available telescope to see the spacecraft and visually check that all is well.
Mind. Blown.
On the other hand, it's very likely they're not using Excel for their orbital calculations...
I have a domain name registered. I pay for it by 10-year blocks. When the time comes to renew, I get a mail from my registrar warning me about it.
I don't need a calendar app, I just need to read my mail.
I fail to see how this can be improved.
On the other hand, I can very well see how a major company can fuck up on this kind of thing. The guy responsible for registering the domain has left, the registration email account has been discontinued after a reorganization, and the swarm of managers in between have never wondered or even thought of checking how the domain names were managed.
Thus, the domains lapsed, the functionality was broken, and the managers scurried around like headless chickens until somebody with a clue phoned the registrar and got things sorted out.
The A-10 Warthog has an excellent reputation among all people who have either flown it, or been saved by people who flew it.
The adjectives generally used to describe it are "awesome", "deadly" and "badass".
Excuse me if I am not impressed by the F-35's mission ; it has yet to prove that it can indeed fulfill that mission. The Warthog has fulfilled its mission, which was to get in close and rain hell upon the enemy while surviving multiple hits. This page details the fact that in Desert Storm a group of 136 Warthogs flew 8077 sorties and only suffered the loss of 6 aircraft.
It seems to me that, even in range of AA weapons, heavy machine guns and light rapid fire cannon, that plane did a damn good job.
Obviously not, otherwise we would have AI now.
Computers and programs know nothing, they just execute instructions and flip bits. It's the programmer that knows what he is to code for, and writes the instructions that will achieve the end result.
This update scheme is marvelous. Install the update and play Russian Roulette with your infrastructure !
Guess which core functionality is missing this time !
Scramble to re-architect your infrastructure in 60 minutes !
Live on the bleeding edge of DevOps and see if you bleed to death !
As a side note : why are we finding out about this after the update was released ? Shouldn't there have been a warning before release ? Is this a case of nobody paying attention, or did Microsoft actually forget to say something about the new version's functionalities (or lack thereof) ?
"Helme told El Reg that uBlock Origin’s blanket policy was not only unworkable but ill-conceived. Any information reported back to a website from one of its own webpages should be known to the website anyway: the site generated the page, after all."
So you're saying that anything reported back should be known anyway, then you knock uBlock for not reporting ?
If you know it, you don't need a report. So what's the problem ?
As for me, you're not getting a report anyway, because NoScript. There is yet to be a hack that can pass NoScript.
Sorry to rain on your parade Big John, but I'm French and living in France. That means that I have absolutely no relation to your "left".
Indeed, most of the time I believe you Americans believe we French are Communists.
In any case, you'll have to continue waiting for your dear 'acceptance phase'.
Right. Because rooms are overrated, I get it.
I imagine this is what will happen :
So, which treehouse should I schedule the meeting in ? Ah, Niagra is taken at that time. Too bad, it has the best view. Well I guess I'll just reserve Yellowstone, then. Ah no, I forgot, you have to be more than 5 to reserve it. Well it'll have to be Grand Canyon then. Damn, it takes 10 minutes to walk there. So, do I set the meeting time 10 minutes before, or will that confuse everyone into thinking they have to start out 20 minutes earlier ?
Screw it, the meeting's only 15 minutes anyway. I'll just set the start time to when it's supposed to start.
I hope Janet won't go to Rushmore again. She always goes to Rushmore because it's closest to her office. The we have to wait for her to realize nobody's coming, then she calls and finds out she has to go somewhere else. And, her office being on the other side of the campus, if she doesn't go straight to Grand Canyon, she'll never have time to get there before the end of the meeting.
I have a bad feeling about this. Maybe I should just reserve Meeting Room A in the central building as usual.
I believe that startup incubators have a bunch of companies that are in range of each other without much choice in the matter.
I know one which actually only has one WiFi access point for all the freelancers in the vicinity. No cables available.
Would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Having scoured the Internet for more information, this article cleared up a number of things for me.
Indeed, in my original opinion, neutron stars are made of neutrons. Gold and platinum are not, so how could a merger of neutrons produce anything else but neutrons ?
Obviously, the energy involved has something to do with it. As the neutron stars collide, the residue of the explosion and the inconceivable energies involved create and eject the matter that is detected.
It is absolutely mind-blowing to imagine the sequence of events that conducted to the presence of gold on Earth. First, not too far away from our future Sun, two supermassive stars orbiting each other went supernova in the very early days of the Universe, leaving two neutron stars in the wake of the unbelievable cataclysm. These neutron stars managed to stay in orbit, then gradually came close enough to merge, causing the creation of an Earth-sized amount of gold that was spewed into the local interstellar medium.
Meanwhile, our Sun formed and its solar system followed, and was showered by the gold and platinum from the merger, some time in our past.
Then the Earth formed, capturing some meager proportion of that gold, and now we are digging the deepest tunnels ever made by Man to recover said gold.
Mind. Blown.
Edit : This video is very informative as well.
"What's really needed is an economic reason to go"
Nonsense. Humans do not care about economics, otherwise our global economy would be in quite a different state. There are people who are willing to go simply to be there, on another planet, and damn the cost.
Heck, there are any number of valid reasons to go :
- hipsterism (you lamers are still back on Earth, pah!)
- get away from the in-laws (okay, it's expensive, but it's foolproof)
- see a Martian sunrise
- die on a different planet than the one you were born on
- have a job (those buildings aren't going to erect themselves)
- be able to call oneself a space colonist
I'm sure you can find lots of other equally valid reasons from the human point of view.
As such, any company that can offer the trip is sure to have hundreds, if not thousands of customers lining up at the launch pad, begging to have their cash accepted. All any company has to do is make sure that it can actually survive financially and economically feasible is done.
Especially since you're not getting any right to complain if the trip isn't perfect - because you'll be dead.
Having an atmosphere is not going to make Mars any easier. Yes, it does have one, but a thin one. It is not, however, a breathable atmosphere. As such, I fail to see just how that makes things any easier.
On Mars or on the Moon, a hole in your suit means you die if you can't get to safety quick enough.
On either, you're lacking running water and have to extract it from the soil. On either, you have dust that will get into everything (okay, bonus for Mars on that one because Moon dust is extremely abrasive).
Nope, can't see that Mars is any easier to colonize than the Moon.
And it's a lot farther away (given current technology).
Would also not figure very high on the list of important things to investigate from a Police Dept. point of view.
Not to mention that every single insurance company would point to absence of break-in and leave you up the creek without a paddle.
So not good in any sense of the word.
I'm sure you are.
My wife, against my counsel, signed up to Facebook a few years ago. She used it for over two years until one day, out of the blue, she told me she was shutting it down because "it made her aggressive" and she decided that she didn't like that.
I was so happy and relieved that day.
Be open. Make a poll. Put a page explaining what and why. Gather the results and then you can decide and be confident that your decision is good.
If it were me, I would basically say that if visitors agree to cryptomining, then I will take away the ads. From what I read about ad revenue, it's a hassle finding out what is legit and what isn't in the money you are paid. Better to skip the nuisance and go to a system that is clear and fair.
With readership approval, of course.
