Posts by Pascal Monett 18221 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
And that is how it should have been from the start.
All this hoopla/zealotry around Win8 and that stupid Start button is because Microsoft was fucking incapable of giving customers the CHOICE of whether they wanted the not-Metro interface or the Start button they were used to.
And if a simple $5 add-on is enough to solve the issue then it's not an enormous technical problem with unforeseen consequences, it's just that Microsoft's hubris is getting bigger than its customer base.
True, but Jason Bourne was a remorseless one-man murder team of great efficiency, with the added benefit that his murders were covered by Hollywood Anonymity.
Snowdon may be a tad less keen on showing his mad murder skillz, assuming that he has any to speak of, since Hollywood has a lot less importance with Interpol and the International Court of Justice than they hint at in their films.
They're marketing people. With them, the rule is simple : every next month must do better than before, else the performance is "disappointing".
Since the S4 started at 30 million units, the fact that the next quarter "only" does 20 million is perceived as bad.
Which also means that a bunch of Samsung marketroids are going to miss their quarterly targets, and some just might be fired for it, because marketroids have the same quarterly requirements - to do better and better every month.
Of course, for marketroids it is simple : if you cannot follow the ever-increasing rise of your targets, you end up fired and replaced by a junior marketroid with the same target you had when you started. Then the target gets raised and junion embarks on the same treadmill that will lead to his identical demise.
Sorry, but I disagree.
For that, they should be thrown in jail. One year for each mention.
And if they start doing it again when they get out, then back into the slammer they go. This time, with Bubba. Maybe then they'll learn that you don't hijack someone's death to falsely make you look good.
Sorry, but that won't happen until the smallest PC available will be able to render full-size triple HHHHD over any screen resolution with an infinite amount of objects, in real-time.
When we get to that level of computing power, we might pause for a week or two before considering just what we could start thinking about (double the 200k x 160k screen size ! Twice the amount of objects to render ! Half the power requirements ! ...) to improve our computing power even more.
Maybe.
Uh, you might want to re-read his claim ? And the fact that he posted some half-dozen links to support it ?
His claim is that disasters have happened before. Nothing to do with climate, nothing to do with skepticism.
You, on the other hand, obviously revel in strawman attacks. As for pulling things out of your butt, well if that rocks your world good for you.
Stop confusing private sector employees and Civil Servants. One is employed by an individual, the other is in the employ of the entire country. There really is no comparison.
Employees of the private sector may get fired for dissing the company image on the Internet, but that is generally an act that disses the company image even more (even though it can additionally ruin said individual's prospect for finding work again).
Civil Servants DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT to comment on ANY aspect of the government, PERIOD. The advent of Social Media does not change this rule.
Civil Servants have the right to their opinions, obviously, but they have lost the right to express it in public when they accepted work with the government.
The rabbit hole goes nowhere, since to have nothing to do with Google you need to not have an Internet connection.
Yes, I know, maybe you can fiddle with script blockers and use Bing, but I think you're only deluding yourself. As soon as you have a mobile phone and/or an Internet connection, you're on Google's radar.
"It simply isn't cost effective for publishers to spend time tweaking their products to make the most of every possible bit of kit it might run on"
It might be time to update your knowledge of PC programming. Long gone are the days where gaming companies developed for specific "bits of kit".
These days, they develop for specific API functions that have been accepted as standard for the industry. For example, these days DirectX is at number 11, and game makers shoot for those capabilities. If your kit is compatible, then the game works. If not, well then yes, you'll have to upgrade if the game maker has not provided a secondary DX 9 path.
You are apparently confused by the amount of available hardware and its compatibility with existing games. On my existing hardware, I can play SimCity (the original version), just as I can Battle Field 3, and very many games in between. In fact, it is not my hardware that limits me so much as Windows itself - for some reason I can no longer install Microsoft FreeLancer correctly on my Win7/64 OS.
In other words, the opinion you state dates from about 15 years ago and no longer applies today.
Um, not to be contradictory or anything, but if I look at my Android settings panel under Wifi, I see that I can have a tethered hotspot, and an untethered one.
As far as I know, a tethered hotspot is only valid for the device that is physically wired to it. The untethered hotspot would be the vulnerable party here.
So I guess that my question is : does Apple have a different definition for the word "tethered" ?
Aren't RFID tags dirt-cheap nowadays ?
Don't we already have barcode stickers slapped on our luggage when we register them at the desk ?
Why have they not put 2 and 2 together ?
I acknowledge without any problem that RFID-tagged luggage would certainly be easier to sort in the baggage handling area, but I really don't see why I should change my luggage for that.
As for leaving the traveler to declare the suitcase contents before even registering, I cannot comprehend how that can possibly be accepted in a world where you can't bring a half-liter bottle of effing WATER in your carry-on.
For security reasons, it seems obvious to continue with the current procedure of having travellers register their luggage, having that luggage screened and scanned, and adding the RFID technology to aid in routing the luggage through airport baggage handling.
But hey, what do I know ? I'm just a traveler.
Apart from just how badly Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot again, there just might be potential for something good to come out of this.
I'm thinking of a law mandating that any company pushing monthly fees (aka licensing or renting) on games be legally forced to keep the servers running until the very last player has revoked his license, not until the game maker decides that it is not making enough money on it anymore.
I mean hey, if they can stiff us with monthly fees and online registration, we should at least be the ones with the right to decide if or not it is time to retire the game.
And yes, I'd like some fries with that.
You pay £1, they write down £37.
Really ? Where do the other £36 come from ?
Such calculations may work in La-La land, but in the real world when you pay £100, the intermediaries get £90 and the producer gets 10£ (if he's lucky). And concerning the GDP argument, pay your taxes, then come back and talk about GDP. As long as you do everything you can to avoid taxes, I don't see why any country should waste money defending your products.
In any case, that certainly explains the RIAA's method for calculating the amount of the "fines" counting in millions for a few uploads.
Well I'm off that boat anyway, I use LibreOffice. Does 100% of what I need, so I see no reason to pay for more.
Ten thousand testers with bullhorns is hardly what I'd call LISTENING.
The failure of TIFKAM as it is now called is a surprise for no one. Microsoft was warned well in advanced, but bull-headed its way through as it always does.
Money talks, and money is the only thing Microsoft is paying attention to. Now that TIFKAM is indeed gearing up to be the Waterloo that users said it would, MS is suddenly trying to do something else, like actually PAYING ATTENTION to what has been said and repeated in its own forums.
I agree that the Internet is a great tool for knowledge. I had the opportunity to use it in 2010 to get myself a certification in web design and web server maintenance. Did it from home thanks to an online course, saved a lot on travel expenses and could work all day without interruption. There were workshops scheduled at regular intervals, you could chat with the professor in charge and ask your questions. It worked rather well for a group of adults.
Without that course, I would have had to register in a brick-and-mortar place, which might not have had space for me, would be at an hour's drive away, and would require me to bother with noon meals, all that at a time when I was without a job and thus preferred not spending all that money on gas and food.
Now I have a job again, even though I'm not doing much web design I'm mighty happy about how it all turned out.
So yeah, school on the Internet, I'm all for it.
Not at all, my good Mr. You-Have-No-Privacy-Get-Over-It Schmit. Oh, you thought we'd forgotten that ? We never will.
We're not "concerned" that you are "somehow" going to misuse the data. We are CERTAIN you are going to index that data seven ways to Sunday and sic your advertisers on us with it.
Difference.
Steam games often have a demo version.
Not always, I agree, but often.
Personally, I use and abuse of their Wishlist functionality. Games are often sold at lower prices a few months after the initial launch. I can wait a bit, helps me find out from first-day buyers if the game is interesting before I put my money on it.
Then there are the titles I don't feel like waiting for and just buy & try as soon as the download is finished. No need to go to a store, where PC games aisles have all but disappeared.
I think Steam is doing a damned good job of keeping the games industry alive, what with their indie section, multi-platform coding and their "comprehensive" approach to DRM.
I've come to the point where, if a game is not on Steam, I practically don't buy it. There are a few exceptions, but they are exceptions.
I can understand your argument, and I give you an upvote for the basic truth you expose. Of course, if you are happy with a touchscreen, more power to you. After all, a touchscreen is still a screen.
The difference - in my mind - is that I don't mind if the touchscreen on my phone is smudged - I don't look at it all that often. And when it does have smudges, my phone is easy to clean and it's quickly done.
Contrast that with the widescreen I have for my PC, which I stare at for hours at a time, and is placed on the other side of my desk (ie hard to get to because desk against the wall so no going around). Smudges on that screen bring immediate irritation to me because a) they're a constant nuisance while I'm working and b) I'm going to have almost lie on the desk to clean the whole screen for that darn smudge so as not to leave traces on the rest of it.
There are people who are not bothered by screen smudges. Good for them. I'm not one of those. I like my screens spotless. And touchscreens simply cannot be spotless. Ergo, I'd go mad working with one if I couldn't avoid touching it.
What for ?
Do they really think I want to do my coding by poking at my screen ?
On a PC I have a mouse and a keyboard that fulfill 100% of my computing needs. Requiring that I actually touch the screen is not only superfluous but also a waste of time, not to mention a possible health risk, what with the possible hazards to the back. Keeping a proper ergonomic stance all day long is difficult enough without having to bend over the keyboard to poke at some vertical surface.
A touchscreen is only useful when you don't have a keyboard. It becomes necessary if you have neither keyboard nor mouse. If you have both, it is nothing more than a waste of money.
Great idea, Paypal. That way, the miscreants will have just one site to hack to steal personal data on everyone and gain access to absolutely all banking data there is. If ever that site came to exist, it would require ironclad security of the likes we have not yet seen and would probably not be able to implement properly. Hopefully they would at least salt their hashes ?
Uh, Paypal, between your arbitrary account locking based on "suspicions" that you never justify, your inexistant customer support and now this idea, I'm starting to wonder whose side you're on - ours, or the criminals ?
Funny how all those people using that argument against the Ribbon have never found out that you can minimize it to show only tab names and still work with it - since when you mouse over a tab name the Ribbon shows that tabs' content.
I am not a Ribbon fanatic, but I do have to use 2010 like practically all business users (I'd rather stick with Office 2000 - it has more than I need already). It rather galls me that people stay fixated on this non-issue of Ribbon size instead of bashing stuff that really needs bashing.
. . . that all these IPCC "experts" don't know how to write a document.
Really ? And these people are supposed to be experts ? I thought experts in their field were recognized because of the mass of papers that they had published. So writing a report shouldn't be that much of an issue for them, should it ? And if we're talking about some internal policy or another, how long can it take these supposedly intelligent people to learn ? How about an afternoon of training, instead of wasting judges' time and taxpayer money ?
Oh, sorry, I forgot : actually doing something useful is not the goal here.
You make it sound like an annual fair or something.
And you forget to mention that the Gendarmerie (whose members are counted among the nations armed forces - just like the army) has offices all over national territory as well.
C'est bon, on avoue : nous sommes bien une dictature !
Ah, the magic of the Cloud (tm).
As if there wasn't an army of coders hammering away at the code in order for some admin drone to be able to "flip the switch".
And we've seen some pretty ugly results already when the "magic" of the Cloud meets the grim reality of load balancing and other server-side issues (hey Microsoft, any word on Azure clients' web site restore ?).
Let's keep our feet on the ground, shall we ? It may be "someone else's data center", but that in no way changes anything about the number of coders involved nor does it diminish in any way the dangers of rolling out an update or a new functionality.
The BIG difference is that, when it goes down (and it does), you will have no control over when it comes back up nor what state it will be in (eh, Azure users ?).
THAT is the reality of the Cloud.
Yeah, hang on. All those Wikipedia references and you still missed how Ian Fleming was part of Churchill's "Ungentlemanly Warfare Group" ?
And you fail to reference this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming ?
Not to mention this : http://www.cracked.com/article/152_5-authors-more-badass-than-badass-character-they-created/ ?
Really, one might think that you have some sort of bias.
And those who do ensure that their equipment has been hardened against attack are certainly not in the group of vendors who will be considered for procurement, due to the fact that their products are more expensive than those of vendors who do not insure against attacks.
In other words, yeah, smartmeters are dumb, open and unprotected. What a surprise. Security is always a cost, and these "smart" meters were not conceived with security in mind, but with remotely controlling the availability of power on a site (house, appartment, restaurant, industry, . . .).
You get what you pay for.
Since when is that supposed to be an issue ? Sure, it'll work the first day or two, if the company was stupid enough to use a WiFi router for all its networking needs, but somebody's bound to notice that the jamming starts when a given van is parked not far away and when they do, the cops will be bringing down that attack venue pretty quick.
Internet vulnerabilities are dangerous because they are (almost) anonymous, overwhelming, are hard to block when they start and can come from any point in the world, which (in most cases) immunizes the attacker from judicial oversight. So it's easy, carries almost no risk and requires next to no physical effort.
RF jamming needs physical proximity to the target, which then forces the attacker to contend with real-life covert activity requirements. Not to mention that a van has somewhat more complicated temperature-control issues, and an idling vehicle staying in place for hours at a time is going to garner attention.
I file that the Unlikely Attack Venue folder. Especially since a simple Ethernet cable is all it takes to thwart the attack completely.
It's good to see that scientists are still working to improve our comprehension of the Real World (tm) and thus our models of it.
The dogs bark, the caravan of science passes.
Climate is difficult, based on thermodynamics which is a very difficult subject. Anything that forwards our knowledge in the subject is good to take, regardless of the changes in our conclusions it can bring. We need to finally understand how our climate works sooner rather than later, in order to shut up the zealots (on both sides) and get on with doing what is really necessary.
And he's whinging because it failed ?
Well duh.
Here's a counterpoint : it's called Minecraft. That game is all over the place. The graphics are horrible, blocky abominations. The principle is, as far as I can tell, just digging and building stuff. The maker of the game has declared to never, ever include any sort of DRM or protection in it. Minecraft can be bought for 20 bucks, or torrented six ways to Sunday.
The guy (oh, yeah, forgot to add : the ONE guy) who made Minecraft is a millionaire. Hundreds of thousands of people have shelled out for his game. He's so rich he sold his game to a company because he (probably) got tired of the concept of working.
So how does that situate your product ? Firmly in the pile of shit, I'd say. A good game sells, with or without protection.
So go take your righteousness and sit on it. Prick.
Remember the good ol' days when 14" laptops weighed in at 15kg ? And it took eons to get them started, not to mention they crawled along like asthmatic slugs ?
You remember those days, don't you ? And if you do, you do realize that you're complaining about 17" laptops that weigh only 3kg ?
Pff. Never happy, are we ?
"[This year] remains a transition year" - yeah, you're transitioning into loss.
"This reflects the challenging environment on the web " - yeah, people are still not dumb enough to pay you real money for your cloning efforts ; what a shame.
"We’re excited about the entire category of the social casino" - man, there are SO many people yet to con ! And so many ways to con them !
"regulatory obstacles that we can't predict or control" - whassatyousay ? gambling is illegal in most states ? Chucks ! Now what do we do ?
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