Posts by Pascal Monett 19006 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
Don't worry, as soon as that mesh is in place, someone will be wanting to control it. And they will find a way.
No, the answer never is in doing away with the existing to create something new that will fail in the same way.
The answer always is in fighting the rot and making sure the rot does not take over. In this case, the indie labels should band together and create their own service. Yes, it is complicated, yes it will cost them, but they're shafted anyway so might pay for the right thing.
Bearing in mind that the unlocker is probably supposed to be a tool that can execute from a web page, it seems logical to use the programming language that can do that, which is Java.
Microsoft C may be another possibility, but that does not mean that choosing Java is a bad choice in and of itself.
The real issue us that, whatever the language used, some criminal will come out with a web page looking like the one to unlock Simplocker, but actually uses Cryptolocker to nail the phone down permanently. The usual crop of inattentive/clueless users will get caught and mayhem will ensue.
These encouragements are handed out at the moment to incite people to buy electric cars. If and when people start buying them en masse, you can be sure that the government will cut the funding and attendant favors.
At that point, you'll be back here complaining that car parking is expensive again, that you have to drive with everybody else again, that you no longer have reserved spaces, etc... and car dealers will be whining that the government is crimping their sales because no more subsidies.
The wheel turns slowly, but nothing stops the complaining.
Keep us updated as to how well that works for you. I'm interested in your experience.
That said, I doubt your solar panels will be doing much recharging outside of weekends. If you take that car to work, then you're back by evening, so not much influence from solar.
But still, I'm interested in how well solar panels work up north, so do keep us informed please.
Will have Microsoft and everybody else banging on their door with Vuitton bags of shares worth billions.
Come on, Microsoft will not invent this, it'll just buy out whoever does.
And if whoever does doesn't sell because they're intelligent enough to not sell out, then Microsoft will finally have to publicly bow before the new king of computing and resort to its usual FUD tactics to try and keep people buying its stuff.
It really is very dangerous, in these days where the Internet can be used to instantly verify any claim, to state things like that.
Indeed, only one kind of pterodactyl had an 11-meter wingspan : the Quetzalcoatlus. The other kinds of pterodactyls all had wingspans that were smaller, some of them much smaller.
But of course, when one spouts bullshit at the rate you do, it is not surprising that you neither provide links to back up your "claims", nor take into account anything as mundane as "facts" when they get in your way.
A word of caution : when you take a moniker like yours, Faux Science Slayer, you would do well to not post things that can be so easily proven false.
Because at the moment, you are not worthy of the name you login with.
Well I'd also collaborate with a thief holding a gun to my daughter's head.
Now, far be it from me to defend Microsoft (or any of them, actually), but you do have to acknowledge that the NSA didn't just phone the majors and ask politely. They came to the door with a legal document saying basically "drop your pants now, 'cause you're shafted anyway".
That being said, some companies may have been more enthusiastic in their cooperation than others, but still, they didn't really have a choice.
Let's make one thing clear : anything that takes your eyes off the road for any amount of time is a risk; the faster you drive, the higher the risk.
So, if by "interacting" with a phone you mean connecting a call or hanging up, then I will grudgingly admit that that should be fine, in a cradle or Bluetooth mode.
But as far as anything else is concerned, I'm sorry, your hands are supposed to be on the wheel and your eyes on the road at all times. If you can slip in texting or anything else than checking a GPS screen for your position, you're not doing it right.
Bah, soon The Google will be driving us all around anyways. We will thus be free to happily provide all of our movement details to the infinitely-tentacle data slurper in exchange for being able to HEY! I'M TXTING IN A CAR!
I'm not tight-fisted. However I am getting more and more paranoid about how much personal information people can leech out of those marvellous gadgets that I am surrounded with.
So, given that we have all heard the reports about how PIN code VISA is broken but remains steadfastly in use (because nothing else and too expensive to replace), I am very wary of a technology that actively broadcasts my "secure" banking data to the immediate surroundings.
And don't give me tosh about how the range is vanishingly small or whatnot - we've read right here about how supposedly secure ATMs were subverted from the inside to phone home credit card details.
If they can do that on a supposedly secure ATM machine, then they can stick a customized Raspberry PI on the backside of the card machine and none will be the wiser for weeks, if not months. Meanwhile, the crims will reap the rewards.
So no to NFC anything until I have a technological guarantee that it is unsubversible.
Obviously not since we've read his words here.
That said, I would counter that same argument by stating that the computer I use to post on Internet forums is not the one I use for work.
And I can actually agree with that kind of separation, to the point where I do believe that the military should not have ANY computer attached to the WWW.
But if you're using Chrome, you really shouldn't be surprised that it phones home to The Google To Which All Data Belongs.
The Board is being "honest" : it is declaring the equity program and it is public about it. That is the definition of honesty : say what you do, do what you say. I doubt very much that the complainant will get any traction against that in Court - it is in General Assemblies that such a point should be raised.
Honesty has nothing to do with morals, though, and this case outlines it brilliantly. The Board at Facebook is giving itself three times the payback compared to other companies with similar capital, I can understand that a shareholder doesn't like that. Said shareholder would probably expect the "excess" wealth to go into his pocket and, given that he is a shareholder, I can understand that as well.
However, I contend that to compare Board revenue with other companies is, by definition, approving the way the other Boards are doing business and allocating resources. I don't agree with the way Disney does business (I certainly disagree with its stranglehold on copyright laws) and I wouldn't use that as a reference for anything.
Besides, didn't anybody tell him ? Facebook is The Zuck's baby. You don't like his decisions, then don't invest in it, bitch.
I am relieved that the efforts to secure our privacy from the ever-increasing might of online surveillance are continuing by virtue of intelligent people devoting their time to the (complex) issue.
And anything that secures more of my privacy from the grubby mitts of Google & Big Brother Inc is a plus in my book.
From the extract in the article itself, the Turing Test makes no mention that the subject tested is supposed to be anything but an adult.
But hey, you gotta start somewhere. Personally, I would have failed it straightaway. 13-year-olds use way to much l33tsp35k for me to understand them. This one wrote complete sentences. That, in my book, is a dead giveaway that it can't be a human child.
I don't get it either.
I am pretty sure though, that DARPA employs people that are actually intelligent. I am convinced that they have their case covered and are ready.
I will be waiting for the report of a bug (or security hole) in the programs that are being "game-tested". That, in my mind, will prove whether or not this method has merit.
I was going to dispute that, but it turns out you are perfectly right.
Thank you for educating me.
I can't help but imagine such a road at night in the rain. Headlights and raindrops and showers of sparks illuminating everything.
Beautiful.
But of course someone is going to come along and painstakingly explain that it won't happen because <technobabble>. And I'm sure the person will be right.
But I prefer my vision . . .
Funny, that reminds me of something. Something from those WWII films in Paris. Something about vehicles.
Ah, yes. Diesel engines.
Maybe there's a parallel there ? Diesel engines used to be cranky things to get started too (like me in the morning). Now they're very efficient and will be beating gasoline engines in market penetration at some point in the future.
Might something similar happen for these solid oxide cells ?
I do think that, if proven, that kind of hijinks lands you right in jail territory.
Given the difficulty of game publishers, I don't think that that is the kind of problem they wish to pile on themselves intentionally.
Now, maybe one disgruntled cubicle programmer who got keyboard rage after one to many weeks of crunch time . . possible. But as a corporate strategy ? No.
Thou speakest thruthfully, and nary a voice could say nay to that.
But pirates being hoisted by miscreants . . . I just can't bring myself to get all hot and bothered by it either.
On the other hand, if miscreants are now actively targeting pirated software, well let's say that that could be a much greater incentive to walk the Straight & Narrow than anything the police could pull.
And that makes me even more unlikely to get up in arms about this.
Because I pay for my games.
Ah, the Rise of China, the Red Tide, etc. etc.
China will rise, no doubt about it, it's happening now. They manufacture nearly everything, they are making their own models and doing their own engineering, and they're even on their way to the Moon. Nobody can say the Chinese industry is a just bunch of copycats anymore.
But to say that their culture is much more interesting is wrong, their culture is different. It is the difference that makes it interesting to us. They have Leshan Park, the US has Mount Rushmore. China has the Great Wall, and that has been a World Marvel since it was built, but the US has the Grand Canyon, which is totally naturally awesome, so tie.
As for native cuisine, I don't much outside of what I find in Chinese restaurants around here, but I have heard of the 100-year egg nest. I can't image that being actually healthy. On the other hand, I can see unhealthy American food every time I go to the supermarket or pass a fast food outlet, so ok, I'll leave you that point there.
But "Women treat their men better" ? Really ? What agenda are you pushing there ? What misogynistic point does that make ? The US has actually made the term "wifebeater" into a proper name for an element of clothing, so I just can't see where you're going with that.
ANYONE could have guessed indeed, but proving it is another thing entirely.
Everybody knew, deep down inside, that the Government could do shady things in order to ensure Order and Peace. We all knew, but had no proof and no way of getting any. Nor did we really have an issue with it.
But Snowden pulled the curtain and now we know what kind of ugly is sitting behind. And it is fearsomely ugly.
That is worth a frig in my book.
First they are upfront about the issue and about the cause of the issue, and they declare publishing the follow-up and not hanging the admin.
That's a far cry from just about everybody else who start by denying any problem until it is absolutely blindingly obvious to everyone that they've got their heads up their ass, then go on to make absurd "only a small percentage of users were impacted" statements.
Joyent sounds like a rather good company to work for, where the entire management chain is capable and takes responsibility. Almost unheard-of these days.
HP, are you noticing ?
Maybe because when you give your name to someone in Real Life (TM), you don't expect them to be going through the roof of your house in the next ten minutes to check out all your stuff, mosey in the cellar and leave a turd in the fish bowl.
Because on the Internet, they can do that and more, if they are determined.
The EULA has no legal backing. You can only agree to it once you have forked over the money and removed the shrinkwrap. Following where you are in the world, doing that can void your possibility of returning the software you bought.
Even if you can return it, you still cannot read the EULA before you have installed the product, making the EULA anything but a contract.
If you check up on your commercial law, I'm pretty sure that, whatever your country, you will find that a "contract" is an agreement between two parties to exchange goods for currency, or something approaching that. The key notion here "agreement" : you cannot agree to something you can't read before having already paid for it.
The fact that we're talking about EULAs at all is simply because, as of right now, nobody wants to enforce anything legal about them because doing so would require shops to house stacks and stacks of EULAs for their customers to read before making the purchase. And nobody wants that to happen.
All apps installed on a standard Android have all the "permissions" they can want since, if you want it, you have to accept everything. So any app at all can go read the storage area, extract any useful information and send it off to God knows who.
There is zero actual security on Android "smartphones", and I suspect that Iphone is not much better.
Smartphones. Riiight.
Updates for free ? Maybe not. But I certainly do not think that Microsoft has the right to arbitrarily decide to no longer support a product that millions of customers are still using.
The proper lifecycle of a product is that it is retired when its market share becomes negligeable. Millions of customers are not negligeable. Software, as it has been said, has no date limit, so Microsoft should continue and support its product until at least 90% of XP users have switched to something else.
It is time for Indies to unite and dictate their terms.
The Internet allows anyone to create a forum, one of them should create an Indie Label Union site and get the word around.
Order of business would be : set the rules of what an Indie label should accept, get agreement on said rules, then go to Google with THEIR template.
It's always in the numbers. Ideally, ALL indies should just remove their videos on their own, now. Once Google's revenue has been eviscerated, then they can come back and say ok, now we do it like this. On their terms.
The problem, of course, is getting the indie labels to play ball together - the difficulty of which is, of course, what Google is counting on.
That do not spot spelling mistakes, obvious strawman arguments or downright falsehoods.
I'm sure the sub-contracted company (that may or may not be located in Earth's Southern hemisphere) that "controls" the reviews had a hoot when they read that.
By the way, what "penalties" can you leverage against anonymous people with false logins, false contact details and changing/spoofed IP addresses ?
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