Posts by Pascal Monett 19020 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
What I have trouble accepting is that on the one hand, the software I buy is under license, but on the other, software makers generally absolve themselves of all fault in case of trouble.
This one-way deal has been going on for too long now. I pay for my software, if you don't accept responsibility, then you damn well better not tell me it's not mine to do with as I please.
That the function is the same is not, in itself, an issue for me. That it comes from a group of people not supposed to be under the influence of governments or spooks is a very big plus in my book.
The fact that the NSA could have purchased a board is not a problem either. A proper cryptographic process can be entirely public, it will be no less efficient in keeping data secure because the keys are not public (well, half of them aren't). If the code and hardware of this project are properly thought out and truly secure, there is nothing the NSA can do to it without physical access - and we know the rule on that.
I believe you've hit the proverbial nail on the head. I agree that electric cars using this kind of liquid battery would be a godsend.
But I do not see that we'll avoid the need for high power grid connections. Solar and all renewables are limited in their production capacity, so a local array of panels is not necessarily going be enough when recharging the used fuel. There would be tankers, obviously, they could take away the used after delivering charged fuel. That way, the tankers would unload the depleted fuel at a recharging station with vast capacity. I guess that could be a solution. Not convinced that it would remove the need for local recharging though.
"Many people might not realize that running their own cellular networks is not only possible but also doesn't require substantial technical expertise."
It requires next to no technical expertise to install a Wi-Fi access point : just switch it on. On the other hand, considering the level of complexity simplicity of passwords revealed in reports of user id hacking, the technical expertise to understand how to secure it is beyond a lot of people.
Now you want Joe Schmoe from the deepest parts of Africa to go install an open cellular network node ? Are you working for the NSA ? Because they're gonna be listening in as soon as that thing boots.
And the best case scenario is that they are the only ones listening.
Hang on there, we've been sending rovers with microphones to Mars before and nobody thought of sending back the sounds ?
Why ? How can a microphone be of use to the rover without being used to send back audio data ?
Is there some sort of audio map made of the immediate vicinity, for route planning, perhaps ?
On reading this line, I thought that there are some smart criminals out there. Curious, I looked it up. This fast-flux thingy is basically the botnet being able to rewrite DNS records every minute because the registrar doesn't give a flying monkey's about it.
So these crims are smart, but if every registrar did its job properly, this technique would not survive.
Win7 works fine for me, thank you. I have everything configured the way I like it and no desire to find out how Microsoft will change everything with Win 1 0.
Additionally, I have locked the OS down as far as I can, no remote access of any sort, no telemetry, nothing. Windows Update is disabled until I reactivate it.
In short, I am using a personal computer and I have no desire to hop on to the slurp bandwagon.
When I do change OS, it'll be for some version of Linux because I won't be needing Windows anymore.
Creating a metaphor is not given to everyone. Creating a proper metaphor on a topic concerning the virtual zeros and ones of the Internet is particularly difficult, because there are many cases when reality simply does not apply (e.g. the eternal copyright infringement/theft debate).
Politicians, on the other hand, are supposed to be adept at that, since they're business is mostly speaking and making verbal connections to win over public support. But it is easy to see that some politicians are much, much better than others in that domain.
For the existence of "self-driving" cars to not end in a nightmare of civilization collapse, the whole industry needs to be handled in the same way airline planes are.
In other words, we need a Car Transport Authority just like we have an Air Transport Authority, with the same process and the same clout when it comes to immobilizing a car series that is not up to snuff.
Until we have that, the whole situation will be an unending game of chaotic security whack-a-mole, and insurers will run for the hills.
The PC is indeed obsolete - in its current form.
People like tablets and smartphones and, for what most people do, the PC is an over-complicated, prone-to-getting-hacked, clunky piece of kit - even if it's a laptop.
Joe User does not need a PC anymore.
People who do still need PCs are content creators, anyone wanting to dabble in photo/film modification or creation, programmers and, of course, gamers. Outside of that, why burden yourself with a PC ? A tablet for surfing, social nonsense, light gaming and film viewing on the go and you're good.
A promise is a promise. That fact that the price was zero does not change the fact that people were promised something, got used to using it in the given parameters, and now are being deprived of the usage they were promised.
Boiling it down to a "free" thingy change is you missing the point.
"I should be entitled to continue paying for that amount at the "contracted" rate"
Yes, you should, but you don't actually have a "contract". What you have is Ts & Cs that can be changed anytime by the provider, in other words, you've got an empty promise.
A contract is a binding agreement between two parties, agreement that cannot be changed without the consent of both parties. It was decided, somewhere at the beginning of the IT industry, that this model did not correspond to the Internet, and now here we are : companies are all-powerful, can change offers at a whim, and the only thing you can do is lose and go somewhere else if you don't accept the new terms.
One of these days, Joe Public is going to have to wake up and realize that he's being taken for a fool. That day, somebody might think of doing away with the EULA nonsense and Ts & Cs that only the paying customer cannot change. That day, the law will once again enforce the proper idea of "contract".
In the mean time, bend over and try to enjoy it, because that's the choice we have.
Stop right there : Cloud is not backup.
Not when the providers can authorize themselves to delete your files without your permission.
A backup is supposed to be reliable : the Cloud is not. At this point in time, there is not a single cloud storage provider that can be trusted to not lose your files, delete your files or not hand your files to any TLA that mentions your name in passing.
Yes, the Cloud could be a perfect backup service, but relying on it today is just putting your data on a straw rowboat and hoping it won't sink before you need it.
That is certainly a worst-case scenario : just having the module on the server can get you hosed. The high profile of this issue just makes things worse. I'm thinking of porting my company's web site to a CMS like Drupal - now I'll be waiting for the correction before going further.
Local carriers need to adapt to new conditions. The Internet is not going away, even if its future is somewhat uncertain due to privacy concerns and indiscriminate data hoovering.
It will take the time it has to, but any local carrier that wants to survive will have to get on the ball. Any regulation removing the need to do that is simply a temporary stopgap measure.
Given that said visitors pay over $100 million to get there, I don't think that'll be happening all that often.
On top of that, using a firearm in the ISS would be suicidal, since the bullets would go right through the hull, thus depressurizing the station. The takeover attempt would stop pretty quickly after that.
Maybe, but it's implementation is stupid.
ContentID does no check that the notice is justified. There is no oversight and no recourse. Thousands of fair use videos have been shot down without any say to the process.
ContentID is just another monopolistic, fascist tool in the hands of the company that cares the least about content.
Can someone say ironic ?
I totally agree with you. In a civilized area of the world, under a proper ozone layer-protected zone, without 99 different venomous species trying to kill you, it wouldn't happen.
But this is Australia.
Let me rephrase that :
THIS. IS. AUSTRALIAAAAAAAHHHHHHH !!!!
And I find laughable the idea of an Ombudsman independent of the US TLAs.
If he is truly independent, he will have no power. If he is not independent, he will be part of the apparatus and his job will specifically be to do nothing, while appearing to do something.
There is no reason for our data to migrate to the US. Each persons' data should be handled in that persons' country. It is the only way local law can apply.
And don't tell me about international treaties : the US has no respect for those anymore within its borders (and sometimes even outside its borders).
Not to disagree with you on a general basis, but personally I have never felt that I had any unused disk capacity before I slotted in my first 3TB disk.
The only reason I now have more than 20% unused space is because time has curtailed my disk needs - and I now have a NAS on which I can store over 5TB of data I was previously sticking in 3 different PCs over 14 (comparatively) tiny HDDs.
Before that, I was continually having to free space up by destroying existing data (sometimes said data was given the luxury of a backup before deletion if it was important enough to me). It was a major nuisance, and the space-shuffling always annoyed me until I found a new, temporarily stable situation.
Now I revel in seeing over 50% empty space in my partitions. I install new things without even thinking about disk space for a nanosecond. I am finally constraint-free. I am content.
Good point. I think a bit of Internet balkanization wouldn't be such a bad thing.
Pushing the point further, I feel it perfectly justified that a person's data is held solely in that person's country of residence, because an individual has no practical possibility of legal recourse outside of his own country anyway.
For someone who is obsessively anal, it does make a difference.
For those who want absolute control over every single part of what they see and do, it must be quite irksome to have other people do things slightly differently.
For my part, if you want to box your comments, it's your time to spend. As long as the comment itself is useful, I fail to see why that is important.
I'm obviously not obsessively anal enough.
There was a film (with Sean Connery and Nick Cage) in which a general was prepared to turn traitor to get the men who died in his platoon proper care and recognition.
If I cite that film (the Rock), it is because said general gave a speech to his men promising them a million dollars each for their services, because, in his words, they would never again be able to set feet on any soil that had an extradition agreement with the US. In essence, they were traitors going into exile and they knew it.
It seems to me that if you are setting yourself up to be such a traitor purely for monetary purposes, as apparently in this case, you should be smart enough to realize that you're in the same spot. You should therefor make sure that each transaction has the possibility of giving you the means to vacate the country ASAP and, at the very least, set yourself up to get some form of revenue somewhere else. $1,000 is not going to do that.
So this guy sells state secrets at a thousand a pop. He must have thought himself very smart and able to do so for years without getting caught. He apparently thought he was just supplementing his income or something.
Smacks of unbelievable stupidity to me.
I'm sure that every single acquisition was lavishly examined, amply powerpointed and endlessly discussed, before beaming management gave the OK to spend the funds, then took a nice bonus for having managed things so well.
Now, all those acquisitions are good for the chopping block, meaning that either manglement did not properly analyze the data beforehand, or they did not properly manage the acquisition after.
There is no case where management cannot be held responsible for this, but there is no case where they won't get a bonus out of it.
That is a concept dedicated to full-blown computers with powerful CPUs at 3GHz or more, gobs of RAM and a fair amount of storage space. And even there, it's not guaranteed.
IoT is a world of microprocessors that run in the Khz, next-to-no RAM and zero storage space. There is no possibility of platform independance here, unless you're ready to buy a toothbrush that is connected to your PC.
So, you're right, there is no relevance to run-anywhere in IoT. IoT is just-run-there-and-be-happy-you-can.
Right, because it's the language that decides if there can be security issues, not coders writing sloppy code.
I can't agree with that. In my opinion, coders the world over have demonstrated a disturbing knack of being able to create security issues in any language.
It says here that Theranos received funding to the tune of $690 million from 6 investors, in 8 rounds.
That's 6 guys who likely knew that the specialized investors had refused to back this project, but decided that they would give it a go anyways. Probably cautiously at first, but as Holmes put up her smokescreen of "success", they became more generous (the last round of funding is half the total).
So she totally played everyone, and now she's getting what for.
No sympathy.
Who the hell is feeling sorry for Microsoft ?
Microsoft built its fortune by screwing customers over and locking them into Office at every turn using every single underhanded tactic available.
It continued by undermining every standard it could get its claws into, repeatedly launching new products/functionalities, getting people to invest in them, then dropping the whole thing, missing entire markets through hubris then wasting billions trying to play catch up, and topping it all off by burying its own rulebook on UI functionality and fisting the new version down everyone's throats.
Feel sorry for Microsoft ?
There's no way I can get drunk enough for that.
And zero personnel for on-site maintenance and repairs when things go wrong.
Brilliant piece of analysis from people who haven't a clue how harsh reality is compared to management projections.
Yes, a vessel with every single container properly secured and every inch properly maintained and verified before launch will likely perform admirably in calm weather.
Add two months of salt water drenching the deck, zero eyes on the lookout for weakened or snapped restraints and a nice bit of storm and you can kiss goodbye to your fully automated ship and its cargo.
Go explain to the insurance company that everything "should have been fine". I'm sure they'll be quite interested in your opinion, while denying any claim for faulty oversight.
No ship has ever needed more than 5 people to steer it. Most ships have always needed many times that to keep it working order. Come back with your fully autonomous ships the day we have robot butlers capable of clearing the bilges on their own.
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