Posts by Pascal Monett 19078 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
"Slade adds that their introduction should lead to fewer disconnections, as the improved data will make it possible to spot and manage payment problems earlier."
I think that's bollocks. I think that "managing payment problems earlier" means disconnection when payment is getting close to overdue, and if you don't pay you freeze in the dark until you pay again.
After all, a payment problem is only a problem for the power companies if they distribute power and don't get paid. If they have the power to selectively shut down bad payers, in today's NSA-watched society I can't for the life of me imagine why they wouldn't do it and blame it on some malfunction until payment has resumed. They probably already have a chart outlining how many "involuntary interruptions of service" are necessary before pretending to "fix" the "affected" unit becomes economically acceptable for them.
And when they do, they will objectively tear you a new one. You are going down as the hinging point that turned the USA from a democratic state to a police state.
Your conscience is clear ? A Muppet doesn't have a conscience !
I agree with Richard 12. Although I have personally bought one or two handsets outside of carrier shops, I can vouch for my friends and most people I know in France who typically go to their carrier shop when they want to change phones.
And if they want to change carrier, they go to the new carrier shop and make the deal, getting a new phone out of it as well.
Buying a phone without a carrier contract is not all that common in my relations, although it is not unheard of, given the number of prepaid phone refills on sale next to cashiers desks in every supermarket/gas station.
So I'm guessing that, in France at least, there is a substantial share of people who go to their carrier for their handset model replacement, and a non-negligeable share of people who buy outside of carrier shops (maybe secondhand as well) and use prepaid SIMMs or something like that.
Another point that is gaining in importance is the online secondhand market (Ebay, I guess, but Leboncoin is seriously gaining in activity as well). That has to have an impact on carrier sales.
Well, given that the Iphone is selling for almost a thousand bucks on the retail market (and more on the black market, apparently), I'd say that's one fad that has had no problem with either the language barrier or the country's borders.
I don't really see that there is a choice in the matter. Shareholders are obviously much better off with the man who founded the company, given that the alternative is a person who has the history of a financial vulture.
Besides, I must admit that I'd rather see Michael Dell at the head of Dell Enterprise. That way, whether failure or success, it will be his legacy.
If Icahn gets his hands on Dell, the company is sure to go the HP way (i.e. to shame and ridicule).
I totally agree with you. Any solution will have to Open Source by nature, so that multiple eyes can guarantee the absence of any backdoor, given that government guarantees in this domain are totally not credible (hey NSA, remember that little thing called the Constitution ?).
It will also have to be idiot-proof, which is a major stumbling block right there. Finally, all operators will have to agree to use it, which will mean setting aside their own solution - and that will be another major issue.
Since AVG has brought this issue to light after having purchased a company dealing in securing privacy, it seems obvious that this is a ploy to trumpet their own horn and it will be that more difficult for them to abandon the investment and adopt an Open Source solution.
So, right from the start this whole issue seems practically moot already.
Although I do agree that privacy is going to become a more important concern than it is now, but given that it's level of concern is currently nil (otherwise Facebook, Google and the US government would be facing quite stiffer resistence), that doesn't seem to mean much.
Instead of wasting so much water, we could still include a turbine in the last part of the plumbing just before the tap. That way, wherever and whenever you draw water, some energy would be recovered.
A turbine right before the toilet reserve seems to be a must. Maybe e could put several turbines (probable loss-of-pressure issues there though).
... is the explanations for removing the cron jobs (from the article linked in the linked article ), where the (certainly competent) technical writer warns that a simple space "could have disastrous consequences".
In other words, if you fail trying to remove the malware, you'll bugger up your system much worse than if you left it alone !
Of course, any command that includes rm in its list of arguments is not to be trifled with !
And yet again we learn that a good product drowned because IBM couldn't be arsed to do its marketing properly and ignored OS2.
It was 1995, and it was IBM. For Heaven's sake, IBM should have wiped the floor with Microsoft, established OS/2 as the business OS and blared the message over TV and radio.
Did IBM have a marketing budget in those days ? I wonder what it was used for. Inviting VIP customers to barbecues in exotic locations, perhaps ? Because they sure didn't do any sales pitches.
Losers.
Of course, old-style IT is doomed because the Cloud is better and cheaper.
Sure it is.
Except if you don't want governments snooping through your data.
Except if you don't want hackers snooping through your data.
Except if you're not sure your ISP can guarantee the link to your data.
Except if you want to be sure that, in five years time, automagical updates of your on-line applications haven't rendered your old data unreadable.
Except if you want to have an actual person on call in case of trouble, instead of an automated answering machine that will, after x hours, connect you to someone in Bangalore who calls himself Jonathan.
And don't tell me that it is just a question of negociating the proper conditions. SMEs don't have the means to negociate anything near those conditions.
So it's an A for effort then ?
Good on Yahoo! (for once), but it really only goes to show that resistence is futile.
That is a sad state of affairs from a country that prides itself on being "the Land of the Free" and the "Home of the Brave".
Sadder still since I am convinced that the American people are not that kind of people. I know quite a few of them, and to the last one they are all nice, kind and caring, not arrogant prying pricks at all.
There is a clear difference between the American people and their government, and now we are just beginning to see the extent of that gulf.
That should not be all that difficult. It's the Internet - all we need to do is create country nodes and manage continental communications independently.
The USA has no responsibility for the work we do not do ourselves. The Internet is open, it was built that way and nothing can change that. Therefor, to keep NSA away from our comms, we just have to pay the price to keep our comms away from american shores.
I don't like the NSA listening in, but in this particular case, it's our fault for sending them the traffic in the first place.
The Cloud has absolved itself of all responsibility, so market forces are stepping in to provide some measure of guarantee.
I dare say the abject failure of Azure was probably a wake-up call for those new companies. I just hope for their sake that they managed a proper risk evaluation, or else they are going down.
In any case, I can't help but feel that this is the true nature of the Cloud - pay to access your data, and pay again to recover it in case of trouble.
I wonder how many more paying steps will become involved in all this nebulous business before bean counters finally wake up and smell the coffee ?
My S II now runs 4.1.2, and although I can express support at a number of UI improvements, I find that my battery life has taken a shot in the leg - and not in a good way.
To prevent my need for recharging during the day, I have had to implement power saving measures. This may be temporary, at least until I find what is causing this drain and shut it off, but in the meantime I am seriously hampered by having my phone at 14% battery every morning.
Oh, and I do not really appreciate having had to redefine my entire workspace. Why did they have to trash my icon settings ?
At least they didn't pull a Facebook and managed to keep my essential settings instead of resetting them.
Yes it is. That is probably the reason why, at one of my client sites not long ago, they had - I kid you not - a Work Without Email day, specifically touting the advantages of talking (gasp) to people (GASP) IN PERSON (<faint>).
Besides, do YOU want the full-on sweat effect of an unwashed user speeding towards you at full waddle ? With his coffee-stained maw wide open yelling for you to stop so you can see the lettuce on the rear molars ?
I prefer the email, thanks.
The Mainframe computers of the olden days were models of reliability. Connections to them were via proprietary cables. To program for them required a gaggle of highly-paid PhDs in engineering and mathematics, and projects took years to painstakingly realize. Code was written instruction by punch-code instruction. When projects were finished, users took what they were given and didn't complain, because it was all brand-new and nobody had any reference point.
The Cloud has nothing to do with a mainframe in any aspect, except that data is remotely accessed, which places it at the mercy of ISP reliability on top of Cloud Provider reliability.
You need to check out Real Humans (http://en.wikipedia.ord/wiki/Real_Humans), a Swedish TV series about how sentient robots are trying to make themselves a place among humans.
Not a bad series at all. It also takes a good look at how robots can deal with concepts such as morality and empathy.
P.S. : where'd the bloody link function go to ?
The reliability of your missile defense system has never been properly evaluated in the first place, and is obviously made of complete porkies at the moment.
Which is not a problem, really, since nobody is going to lob any missiles at you in the forseeable future.
All that nonsense about employees wanting corporate access on their personal phones/laptops is, in my opinion, bollocks. I don't know ANYONE who wants to recieve application alerts on their phone during off hours or, worse, weekends.
Furthermore, I fail to see just how it is sooo important to have one's work mail on one's personal phone when employees are generally sitting in front of a PC with all required access during the day.
Also, I really don't see how management is going to trust the people on the bottom rungs of the latter with corporate-sensitive data on their personal equipment when they barely have access to it on their PCs.
Now, of course, if we are not talking about the 99% of drones but of the few high-flyers who are intent on building their careers and impressing the management, in other words, those with high-level diplomas and overbearing personalities who simply cannot live an instant without total and complete access to eveything they need to impress the upper echelon, then yes, I totally can see BYOD being an indispensable part of the landscape. For the chosen few.
Which still means that it's just another status symbol.
For the rest of us, we couldn't care less that our work PC is lagging like a dead horse. On the contrary, it gives us the perfect excuse when things start piling up and we're asked "why is this not finished yet ?".
Personally, I would be quite miffed if my work PC were more powerful than my personal PC. I'm quite happy that it is not.
Finally, that reference to the cloud - "it is far better not to have the data on the device in the first place, nor on someone else’s servers, let alone something as nebulous as the cloud" - well sorry but that just about clinches it. The cloud is just as much a fad right now than BYOD is. Everybody has a cloud, every cloud wants you to climb on board, the cloud is computing paradise (that is what we hear).
Dissing the cloud while touting BYOD is the mark of pure marketing drivel.
We can absolutely trust them to send regular summaries to the NSA, and fork over everything any time the NSA so much as twitches its pinky.
Funny how, when it comes to our privacy and personal life, companies fall over themselves to obey gubbermint spooks, but when it comes to paying taxes, no spook can seem to find them anymore to bring in the dollars.
Leaves me baffled, I must say.
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