Posts by Pascal Monett 19056 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
On-board GPU is good enough to display 2D Windows for work or browser-related purposes, no doubt there.
I don't care what Intel tries to push, if I want to game or do heavy video computing, a discreet board from a specialized company is where I will seek the solution.
It's a pretty nice drop, though.
Yes, it's only 1/16th of the budget. Yes, more should probably be done. But this is yet another case where statistics are used to fudge reality.
One billion of anything is quite a number. One billion of government funds spent on "local" companies is not a bad result. It will take some time to change mentalities, meaning that the old fogies and their buddy group need to retire to make place for the young fogies with their buddy group, then we'll be able to measure results.
Of course, by then, requirements will have changed and everyone will be clamoring about how the government is wasting money on small suppliers when economies of scale can be had with larger ones.
And the wheel turns.
Because then you might get beat to the post by someone who didn't consider Do Or Die and just chucked it out to patch it later. That way he gets the problems and the patch issues, but he also gets the money and the market share.
Meanwhile, your company folds.
That is the wonderful world of Capitalism which Americans are so prompt to defend to the teeth. Unless they're the ones standing to lose, in which case they cry out for arbitration (in their favor, of course).
There are people who want to do right the first time. Generally they go into Open Source, I guess, meaning they have to live off something else until the project is done.
Right, so realistically that means 2.4Mb/s for 250 connections, and 0.24Mb/s for 2500 connections.
Because really, 250 connections ? Over 37km ? Did they calibrate that for the desert ?
A 37km radius is going to cover tens of thousands of connections. They'll need more than one of those for all that.
But never mind - the important bit is that connectivity is on an inexorable march forward. If only privacy could be on such a path.
Bringing back the total lack of procedures and oversight that the industry has spent decades trying to put in place.
It is marvelous to think that the most disruptive technology to ever hit a production server is the lazy developer who couldn't be arsed to follow procedures because reasons.
Because you cannot make me believe that all those containers have been created by small mom & pop shops who don't know better, hmm ? I don't think so. They've probably been created by companies who have an established protocol for managing servers, but who call in some DevOps evangelist who blinds them with "expertise", dizzys them with buzzwords and proceeds to screw them over with shoddy installs, no documentation and a fat bill.
"Last year HMRC was awarded £1.3bn to "build one of the most digitally advanced tax administrations in the world", which the department reckons will yield £1bn in extra tax revenue after 2020."
No, no, not at all. The HMRC was given a first installment of £1.3bn to waste on a project that will endure until 2020, burn billions more every year and amount to nothing much before it is scrapped and swept under the rug.
FTFY
And the police can get the phone company to cough up the forwarding number and track down the miscreant.
This is not an email/bitcoin scam thing that can be anonymized via Tor, this is a scam that relies on phone companies not snitching them to the law.
And apparently it works, so why not ? Capitalism at its best.
How typical. The company is going bust, the accounts are in the red, but never mind - the desk where the buck stops will see a bright day anyway.
Sorry, but from where I stand, you only get the rewards if the company is doing well.
And when the ship sinks, the CEO should be the first to feel the pinch. No bonus package for a botched sale.
But I'm daydreaming again. Nurse ! My medication ! In a glass of Glenlivet, as usual, my blood pressure is rising again.
My interior conspiracy theorist says duh, of course they would. If this study is in any way funded by Monsanto, its results are to be viewed with utmost precaution.
Chikita bananas are dying due to mold and the fact that we've grown Chikita exclusively. The entire banana production industry is set to expire in the coming years because of our lack of precautions.
That fact alone is sufficient to put in question our ability to judge whether or not we are capable of properly evaluating the impact of our decisions when it comes to determining the consequences.
I am quite sure we need to enhance our food production capabilities if we wish to avoid slaughtering half the world population to feed the other half with the remains. I am not so sure Monsanto is the right entity to trust with that job.
Only when every other possibility of subversion, replacement, obfuscation and obliteration has been totally exhausted, died in the desert and was dragged 10 miles to the nearest water hole to find out that no, it still won't move any more.
Then, with extreme reluctance and a twitch of disgust, Microsoft will integrate it into its world, gagging all the way. Until it starts making money out of it, that is.
I'm looking forward to seeing a website that will allow you to download an ISO image of the bundled patches for Win7 that have been carefully vetted for weeding out telemetry and GWX nonsense.
That way, us 7 diehards could download the image for when we need to wipe our machines and reinstall. We could then install Win7 without the network connection, apply the ISO patches and then connect the machine (more or less) securely.
I would do it myself if I knew how.
Seems like the banks are going to have to man up and lay down some money to get a proper, secure solution in place.
Then again, if the crooks can get access to the internal network, it's game over anyway.
Still, it seems high time that banks up their security along with the rest of us.
I keep reading about how things go TITSUP, but it's never really important and nobody is ever really impacted.
I'm sure all the companies that have lost tens of thousands in sales agree completely and are ready to do it all over again.
What Benioff is really saying, of course, is that this failure will have minimal impact on his bottom line, since all the companies using his "service" are absolutely unable to pull roots and go somewhere else. So the devil sign was very appropriate.
I do believe porn is the most dangerous category of stuff you can try to get on the web. It has been the first center of attention for malware authors since the first grainy GIFs appeared on the intertubes.
Porn apps/games/whatever is THE category of things I never, ever download on any platform.
Way to risky.
It is also extremely unlikely to win the lottery, yet people do that all the time. The lottery happens more often than killer asteroids, granted, but all you need is to win once.
The problem with your point of view is that you'd have us avoid pointlessly "wasting our time" until it was far too late to do avoid the issue - which means we could all thank you when the killer rock shows its nose and we find that we're fucked.
So I thank the scientists that are actively trying to save Humanity as a whole, you included, so that you can keep spouting such nonsense.
I think he's absolutely right.
Let America show what its educational system can do. Stop importing intelligence from abroad, use your own.
We'll see how well that goes.
P.S. : couldn't include a sarcasm tag large enough
Again with this flawed comparison. Apples and oranges, my good sir.
If your in-house IT fails, it only bothers YOU and YOUR customers.
If the cloud fails, it bothers EVERY SINGLE COMPANY RELYING ON IT.
It's a question of scale : to fuck things up you need a computer, but to really fuck things up you need a cloud.
Yes, but that is the theology of things, the religious principle.
When you get down to the gritty realities of practice is where you find out that your genie has a cop-out clause.
I agree with your idea, intellectually speaking, but basic principle of staged rockets is to shed the dead weight to get into orbit using less fuel. Keeping the dead weight kinda defeats the purpose.
Until we find some other way of lifting mass into space, we're probably stuck with the current status quo.
"Highly unlikely" does not cut it. Government has no right to do spy on citizens, period.
Take whatever lines concerning this practice out and clean up the practice.
Change "is highly unlikely to" to "is legally obliged NOT to" and things will be slightly better.
Agreed, but Watson is some helluva new-fangled computer thingy.
Check out this video. If you're not scared of the possibilities hinted at after viewing this, you have nerves of steel.
No, at this point it will take decades.
Spintronics ? Purely lab-based. I'm impressed that they've found another way to store digital information. I'm happy that an EM blast cannot erase it. I am however too old to be taken in by the hype.
Maybe, just maybe, a copper-whatever-arsenide SDD thingy will be commercially available before I die.
I won't hold my breath. Not until I start seeing those wonderful nano-carbon-tube batteries I've already been promised a decade ago.
I am quite impressed. Apparently there has been a warp in space-time, and someone has managed to get access to lectures of the year 2185. That surely is a remarkable feat, if only because the universe has not imploded through the sheer weight of all the paradoxes that will be generated.
Meanwhile, in good old 2016, a pound of cargo still costs upwards of $10,000 to get into orbit.
Call me when that cost is down to a dollar. Then we'll be able to talk about the "latest frontier for business".
Oh, I'm sorry, you meant "the latest frontier for billionaires" ? Nothing to say there. Carry on !
I don't think you understand the situation.
In order to bid for a contract, time is spent evaluating and writing the specifications, and more time is spent evaluating at what price the prospect will accept your bid.
That time spent cannot be spent on other things, or other bids, or other projects. So, not winning a bid is indeed a loss. Not only do you lose the opportunity, but all the time you spent on the bid is gone.
There is no company that can survive without getting contracts. Something must cover the operational expenses. So yes, not winning a bid IS a loss - it just doesn't show up in accounting.
So you're an advertiser. Well the article says that next year's income is already going to be sizeably smaller whether you like it or not. And given the issues of security that are cropping up with alarming regularity, it seems this trend is not going to go away.
The question you need to ask yourself is : are you ready to try a different way of doing things, or are you just going to carry on driving over the cliff ?
That is my principal beef with accounting. Accounting is NOT there to authorize things, it is there to count where the money goes and provide a realistic picture of what the company is earning and how it is spending it to the Higher Ups.
It is Production that knows what it needs, when it needs it and why. I honestly cannot fathom why Production needs to explain itself to Accounting. Production should only need Executive permission. Obviously, Production would very much like to blow x millions on the new shiny as well, but a proper ROI study should be enough to decide what to authorize or not.
But of course, Executive likes to delegate, so it makes the budget rules and leaves Accounting to enforce it. That is why we have this stupid system, with the assorted waste it produces.
And there we have it : the true nature of IoT.
It is not to make your life easier, it is to allow corporations to freely spy on your habits, gather data on you and sell that to some advertising agency to make more money off your back.
Oh, of course, it will be said that they are doing that "to propose products better suited for the customer". Sorry, I don't buy it. The current products are sufficiently suited for customers ; we like having the choice.
My laundry machine has 7 programs. I always use the same one. The others don't bother me, they're there if I need them - which happens once or twice a year. Do they want me to believe that they will make a laundry machine with only 2 settings ? Nonsense.
I'm sure of one thing : this article is just reinforcing the IoT ban field that is around my house. Not only do I find IoT rather gimmicky if not outright useless, but now I know to look out for yet more spying features.
I really need to dig that bear pit around my house someday.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
