Posts by Pascal Monett 19423 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
No they don't. The people who care about their data are the ones burning it on optical disks. The clueless are the ones putting it on an external spinning rust drive and find out the hard way that after a while, their drive (and data) is dead.
Linux ? Please.
And cloud services to store their data ? Are_ you _ mad, or just _ totally _ off _ your _ rocker ?
Well there's your problem my good man ! Why are these reprehensible appendices appearing in biology textbooks ?
Think of the children ! Let us remove any and all references to them. For the good of the children, of course.
It worked so well for the Prohibition, right ?
And, in hindsight, obvious.
Of course this is a copyright issue, should have thought of that. Everything finely tailored to maximize the company's revenue stream.
I hate Facebook with a passion, but you gotta admit, for a privacy-invading application, it is one fine package. And the cherry on the top is that it is the users who voluntarily part with their own privacy.
Superbly done.
Selling company data for 100 quid ? When you risk prison and a lifetime black mark on your CV that will prevent you from ever getting work anywhere again ?
Please people, be reasonable. You agree to risk your employable future for money, fine, that is your right. But risk for something worthwhile.
Something like €20 million. That should be enough to see you through the lengthy legal process and have something to retire with afterwords.
Because you won't work again anyway, right ?
I totally agree.
The one thing business want above all is stability. Patching is already a nightmare to do in a managed fashion, and now MS wants to go in and basically say : you're entire user base is going to change at least every 8 months ?
Oh sure, I read the part where businesses can pay extra for not having the latest Angry Birds demo package installed on their users' PCs. Does anyone really think MS has the required professionalism to not cock this up big time ?
I'm stocking up on popcorn, I'm telling you. Buy stock now.
Damn right. I don't care if people think that "consumer desktops don't need the speed" - I want that speed along with its reliability.
I have 2 120GB SSDs on my main rig right now - I am ready and willing to replace them with similar-sized SSDs based on this new tech in the blink of an eye.
I have a 4-slot NAS with 4 3TB disks in it, and I am positively drooling at the idea of replacing them with 3TB disks with this tech - of course, that's not going to happen next year, but it will.
Ah, technology is marvelous.
There's one thing in that sentence that does not go with other.
Kind of like saying stopping at a red light is voluntary, yet legally enforceable.
It's either legally enforceable, or it is voluntary. Can't be both.
Unless, of course, it is like the "volontaire désigné d'office*", the old joke in the French army.
*translates into the designated volunteer
Wrong. There are many people who will continually misuse the online space, and there are enough of them that you should never take any message at face value.
Thank God that all this is just for Internet activity. If I had to police my real life relations like I do my Internet communication I think I'd either go mad, ballistic or become a paranoid superspy.
Possibly all three.
This is a great incremental progress that will bring benefits to all electronic communications devices much sooner than those instantly-rechargeable carbon nanotube batteries we've been hearing about for the past 15 years without seeing so much as a shadow in the stores.
Given the length of time I take between changing phones, there's a good chance my next will have this tech and I'll be able to have it on WiFi all day long without needing to put it on sector all day as well.
And anything that reduces power consumption should be greeted with open arms anyway.
Well, objectively speaking, no trade pact can be enforced without it becoming public.
When it does become public, the Public to which it applies will be able to review it and notify their representatives that they do not agree. If popular opinion is sufficient, the pact will be struck down.
The real issue is that the secrecy of the negotiations means that all the work to straighten things out will have to be done after the fact instead of before its implementation, which obviously means taking time and judiciary resources that would have been better employed elsewhere.
Personally, I can't say that the secrecy of the negotiations bother me. It's much more the fact that the result will be imposed without so much as a "by your leave".
If, however, the deal was written up and then democratically voted on for its acceptance, then it would be all right - for the People. For the multinationals, that would be something entirely different though.
It is high time we get used to the fact that the Internet is a global resource and any decision that pertains to it must be available globally as well, without hindrance or delays.
Take all the time you need to make the decision, by all means, but once made, that decision should be public immediately, no later, and the implementation date (after the publication date, obviously) clear and available.
It's like traffic regulations. No one would think of changing the regulations that concern hundreds of millions of people every day without warning them in advance, right ?
Well the Internet concerns BILLIONS of people every day. You damn well better warn them in advance and not hide anything from them.
That's about as useful as saying that gangrene can be taken care of by any competent surgeon.
Sure it can. You know how many competent surgeons, exactly ?
The scale of this issue is such that EVERYONE needs a solution, not just the competent programmers.
If solutions were only made for competent programmers, the IT industry would have been dead in the water 20 years ago.
Let me see, a vector that is present on every single Android phone in the market, cannot be stopped and can barely be contained, with the end game being complete control of all data on the phone for a billion potential users ?
I'd say one million US dollars would not be much compared to the cost of the PR disaster if this weakness had been discovered by malware users and exploited.
I think you missed the part where it was said that it will no longer be REQUIRED to have a G+ account in order to comment on YouTube, or do other googley stuff.
One day, long ago, I had an account on YouTube and I saw a vid that I really felt like responding to. Went to the comment section and got blocked by this Google+ nonsense. Never went back.
Now that I know that Google is going to be removing the forced G+ login, I just might feel like going back to my fav vids in YouTube and putting a comment on them. When they actually get around to relaxing that G+ requirement, that is.
I think that is the whole point : nobody did.
Not in any real numbers, that is. And most people did not like being forced to create an account to do the OTHER things they wanted to do.
Forcing people to do something always initiates a negative emotional reaction in people.
Google+ should have been entirely opt-in, with benefits to those who opted in as far as managing their other Google stuff is concerned, but zero consequence for those who did not opt-in. That way, Google would have attracted buzz and people who actually wanted to find out what it was and how it worked. The experience would have been positive.
Instead, Google ran roughshod over people's personal choice, basically blackmailing them into signing up, which ensured that most users were put off by the whole thing and never set foot in + land.
A lesson harshly learned, for sure, but deserved nonetheless.
New reactor designs are slated to totally eliminate waste storage by milking existing nuclear waste for all it's got.
And Fusion will complete the solution.
We just have to decide to do it, instead of wasting resources on buddy-financing wind or solar programs that are, apparently, supported by the Mafia.
"I guess I will wait several months to upgrade"
I will not change my OS until the hardware doesn't accept Win7/64 anymore.
Windows 1 0 does not bring any useful security items to the table, enforces radical change in my habits, ties me to the effin' Cloud which I do NOT accept, expects me to rent my applications and forces a godawful Store on me that I have not had to cope with since I started my computing experience in 1986.
In other words, Personal Computing has disappeared with Windows 1 0.
Well I am of the opinion that it is MY hardware, and MY computer to use as I damn well please. Windows 7 does that for me. The day my hardware dies and I have to change OS, if Microsoft wants to be on the list of candidates, it had damn well better have an OS that gives me the same options I have now, otherwise it'll be some flavor of Linux.
I don't WANT to choose Linux, but if Microsoft thinks it can push me into a corner, well I have news for it : it won't.
But that is the whole problem : Microsoft's core business is disappearing. Windows is being replaced by something else everywhere that matters (iPhone and Android, and virtually no tablets on the market have Windows), and the upcoming generation is growing up without looking at the Microsoft logo.
Office is disappearing because Google Docs, which explains Office 365 which only has a chance because everyone is used to Office. Except that governments the world over, thanks to Snowden, are starting to push for Open Standards, in other words ODF.
ODF is the death knell of Microsoft. If Microsoft cannot hold its customers to Office format, then any office suite will do - and Libre Office is free and Open Source.
Microsoft HAS to find another way to remain relevant. Cue The-Interface-That-Used-To-Be-Called-Metro and all the hoopla around the App Store. Microsoft will not change that because it cannot. It has to look like Android because otherwise it is doomed.
Although some will argue that it is doomed anyway.
Yeah, except that Windows 1 0 is shaping up to be another bloody fiasco again.
This maddening obsession with tiles is not going to do Microsoft any favors with the PC crowd (they still exist, there are just less new ones coming in), and Microsoft's bull-headedness when it comes to the UI is becoming legendary.
It already cost them the tablet market, I wonder when they learn ?
Ah, I'm sure that, when Microsoft only has $10 billion left, someone will start yelling "fire !".
Open Source is arguably the future of computing, where OS and platform security are concerned at least, so this seems a good idea to me.
Unfortunately, there is the fact that AV scanners are all based on after-the-fact signatures, rendering 0-days possible, that kind of diminishes their value. I have always felt that an executable white list, with the user authorizing new programs at he launches them, is a necessary complement. If an .exe you haven't yet launched tries to start up, you should get a warning and decide whether or not you want to authorize it. At the moment, the Task Manager can only help you shut down an application you don't want running - and malware does its damnedest to keep you away from the Task Manager.
So yeah, an Open Source AV engine, why not ? Sure, it's not perfect yet, but I think it has potential. Let's give it room to grow, shall we ?
That is your prerogative.
What the author is saying is that he is not happy with this situation. That is his prerogative.
Personally, I agree with the author. This situation is not only unpleasant, but also unacceptable. It's not like Flash memory is a new, untested technology. It is extremely simple to integrate a flash chip to store the settings and operate off that.
But aside from the decision to go to white state or not, I welcome the article because it describes exactly what the situation is concerning the management of it all : chaotic.
Thank you, but I'll stick with switches for the moment. That is an interface that is simple, understandable, does not require a bloody smartphone and even works in the dark.
It's true, but it is slowly changing.
The prime example I have is that I have been living in the Three Border zone, the area where Luxembourg, France and Germany come together (Schengen is the spotlight, yes the Schengen Treaty was signed there).
In my area, it is quite common to go shopping in all three countries in a single day. Today.
But ten years ago, while the French and Luxembourg shops all accepted Visa and Mastercard, German shops held steadfastly on to cash only. Result ? Not so many border shoppers, because cash is a nuisance when you are not planning on just buying one thing and you know its price range.
Consequence ? German shopkeepers realized, somehow, that staying on cash only was preventing impulse buying, because you can have no impulse when you only brought a fixed amount of cash.
It's been around five to eight years that German shops in my area have almost all adopted credit card payments. Now, if you go shopping in Perl, you see Luxemburgers and French. Go to French shops and you see Luxemburgers and Germans, etc. It's all a game of merry-go-round, but it seems everyone is happy about it.
But it still took the German shops until past Y2K to finally cave in to the credit card.
There's another story on this subject. It is said that, when crafting the Eurozone bills, Germany wanted a national side and a Euro side. That idea was refused and, it is said, it's a good thing because otherwise, German shops would only have accepted German-side Euro bills.
I don't how much of that is true, though, but it's always good for a chuckle.
I know about liquid nitrogen, and I thought that was the coolest anything could get.
I look at the pics and nitrogen glaciers and then it hits me : when the heck does nitrogen freeze ? It's already bloody cold when it's liquid, how much cooler does it have to get to actually freeze ?
So I check it out : nitrogen is liquid below 77 K, solid below 63 K.
Not a lot of difference there.
The Universe really is mind-boggling.
Sorry ? What kind of sorry excuse is that for scrounging more money for what is already a public resource ?
Are you seriously trying to make people believe that they have to pay to consult what their taxes have already paid for ?
It's the LAW. If your local government cannot maintain its services and duty to its public, then it is high time Georgians find a government that can.
It is blindingly obvious that the institution that is ICANN is no longer trustworthy and is being managed much more like mafia than like a proper institution.
Every employee should be sacked and have criminal charges brought against them.
Every board member should immediately be arrested and put in jail for subversion, blatant backroom dealing and collusion with intent, and forbidden to ever sit on a board or position of responsibility again.
The US government is obviously incapable of bringing this situation to order, probably more interested with hoovering up the entire world's communications than dusting its own porch. Something will have to be done about that, and at this point, I'm feeling that the UN is the perfect place to put a new ICANN - decisions might take years, but they will be public at every step of the process, the mirror of what we have now.
I am sick and tired of this rigmarole. It is time for the curtain to come down on this farce that is ICANN and put some honest people in charge.
That's called cheating. The Golden Rule of Security is if you get physical access, there is no security.
What should obviously be done is to totally separate the critical driving chips, bus and software from the infotainment part.
The only reason that this has not been done is to save $3 on another chip and maybe $20 on the associated infotainment hardware bus.
So, for less than $30 we have this stupid hacking nightmare.
Somebody deserves to be taken out behind the shed and shot.
Furthermore, if religion abolishes you-got-what-I-want-give-it-or-I-kill-you (which is unproven), it does so in order to substitute you-believe-something-different-convert-or-I-kill-you.
<cough> ISIL, the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, burning or drowning 'witches' <cough>
Religion does not do that.
Men do that.
But it's okay, we'll get it right in a few millennia.
Religion is not "bunkus", it is a necessary tool in the construction of a society that is not based on you-got-what-I-want-give-it-or-I-kill-you.
Religion is also a tool that can help people be better to themselves and to others. It is not the only tool, but it is a good tool when properly used, like all tools.
Finally, religion is a very good intellectual exercise, and anything that makes people think is a good thing.
Unfortunately, most people don't think. They just repeat endlessly the same words without bothering about the significance. Also, people just love to spout doctrine and feel superior. THAT is bunkus, not religion itself.
Science does no better on that score. You can discuss endlessly with someone who thinks the Moon landings were faked, you will not convince him because he doesn't want to engage the brain and make the effort to understand.
Religion and science stand hand in hand to enlighten us, it is we who are stupid cavemen, mouths agape in our ignorance.
Exciting it is, but I agree, the title is rubbish.
Earth to Scientists : you will be able to declare that you have found a new Earth when you find and Earth-sized rocky planet in the Goldilocks zone.
Five times the size and twice the gravity is NOT Earth-like. It would be very uncomfortable to try and establish a colony there (forgetting all about getting there in the first place), assuming the atmosphere is breathable.
On the other hand, hats off to people who can look at a planet 1400 ly away and determine that it has volcanic activity. They must be wizards.
I think the idea is to use turbulence as a power source - probably something kind of like self-winding wristwatches, but maybe on a bigger scale.
Must be a fascinating project. I really would like know how that idea cropped up, it's genius.
The issue I see is that these probes won't be able to phone back home properly on their own. I think we'll need a comms satellite orbiting Jupiter to capture the signals and relay them back to Earth with a proper antenna.
