Posts by Pascal Monett 18913 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
I'm sure their clients will value that excuse greatly.
By the way, does this mean that Stratfor is inclined to use faith-based protection ? Because I wonder if that line of defense would hold up in court. Somehow, I am inclined to think not.
If there is a written agreement between the media cartel and the subjects of the research specifying that nothing the subjects can do will be the subject of a lawsuit during the length of the study, then the law will not be brought into the equation.
Simple as that.
As long as murder is not involved, of course.
I am sick to death of being forced to watch that stupid FBI warning.
HEY MORONS ! IF I SEE YOUR WARNING, IT'S BECAUSE I PAID FOR THE DISK !!
Do they really think that their bloody warning will be kept by pirates ?
Not counting the idiots that make film trailers mandatory before being able to watch the film. Yeah, as if six years after the DVD has been sold I'll still be interested in trailers for films that I either have the DVD for, or have decided that I am totally not interested.
Still, could be good for some laughs (hey, remember that turkey ? Man was that film stupid !).
But no. These days I buy my DVDs when I'm interested, and rip the film to keep only the film. That way I can watch what I want, when I want, which is something I find perfectly normal to do in my own house.
In reality, though, the cash-strapped are less guilty of thieving than one would think, and if they do start stealing, it will be to acquire things they actually need, not useless stuff they can do without.
I think that the people most guilty of copyright infringement are people who could very well pay for it, but choose not to for various reasons (some that can actually be valid from their point of view).
After all, we're not talking about survival here, but about entertainment. When you've reached that level of preoccupation, you've most likely done away with more basic issues like where do you sleep and do you have enough to eat.
I know some expensive magazines tend to think it makes them more intellectual or something, but really it is nothing more than a nuisance and a distraction.
Especially when the quote inside has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to the text that is currently being read.
If you really have to keep using those stupid mid-article boxes, at least use them as they are supposed to be used, i.e. to make an underline a phrase that correctly summarizes the current section of the article.
For example, a more interesting sentence would have been "Connecting via the PCIe-based SCSI Express standard is consistent with Fusion’s cut-through architecture".
But really, I would prefer that it disappears. It is not standard Reg layout and it is not something I like seeing.
I will not accept having a digital cop watching my every move any more than I would accept having a real cop in my house watching my every move.
I am more than fed up with these companies that act as if they have the right to police me in my own home just because they create themselves the means to do so.
I will not buy anything with any sort of DRM tech if I can avoid it. I have already decided on a total boycott of Sony products, and if I have to wait for a noname Chinese knock-off to get performance and freedom, then I will do so.
No one has the right to impose anything on me in my own house, period.
And soon we will see the heat bloom of the subterranean energy source that will revive the alien life-form contained within before re-orienting the comet's course to collide with Earth so as to start the second phase of the infestation.
Now we know why the Mayans didn't bother counting beyond 2012.
It's all true !! Run for the . . . oh wait, that'll be useless anyways.
Oh well, better stock up on champagne then, in order to get ripped to shreds in style.
Especially in an enterprise environment.
With terabyte disks available now (generally speaking - the tsunami effect will not last), one would think that all IT departments have stuffed their servers with disk space.
That is not true, unfortunately. For some strange reason, enterprise servers are still quite often choking from mailbox mismanagement and small disk sizes.
Must have something to do with the fact that server-grade disks are held to much higher reliability and I/O throughput than basic consumer disks and thus more expensive in cost per GB.
That, plus the fact that IT is still viewed as a cost center, makes enterprise servers the red-headed stepchild in disk space availability.
On my personal PC, I have no less than 2 disks with 2TB each, plus four other disks for a total of over 5TB of storage space.
I know for a fact that there are a few companies not far from where I live that employ several hundred people and they have far less storage available on their mail server (think 300GB max).
But my disks are not RAID, or SCSI, nor are they high-throughput parity-checking error-correcting disks. They are just high-capacity consumer-grade disks and I was crazy enough to buy that kind of storage for myself.
My money, my choice. Company IT departments do not have that kind of freedom.
The phone was reported a stolen and deactivated, yet it could still connect to the network and send/receive messages ?
What's the use of deactivating the bloody thing then ?
I thought that, when you report your phone as stolen, the phone network operators would refuse connections from that phone. That should mean that, even if the phone is not wiped, it is nothing more than a shiny brick with a screen.
If that is not the case, then what deterrent is there to make the thief's activity useless ?
Yes, the Shuttle was expensive and not altogether reliable. Yes, it was little more than a gliding iron and without computers it would never have landed unscathed. Nonetheless, watching a Shuttle launch was, as far as I am concerned, one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.
Ungainly and expensive as it was, the Shuttle served faithfully for years and allowed Humanity to stay in space for extended periods. It pained me when NASA mothballed it.
Yet, one is forced to recognize that, now that NASA no longer has the monopoly of space flight, interesting projects are seeing the light of day under private management. Allen may be a blowhard in some people's opinions, but rich people are used to such accusations, I suppose.
Meanwhile, he is going to spend a lot of money to try yet another way of keeping humans in space, and for that, I can only say good luck !
A brilliant way to slow the pace of capitalism - since Citrix often spends half the day without being able to do anything productive.
And we'll all have securely encrypted disks for our data, protected by a password of the 1234 caliber.
Not to mention the rise in costs when the Helldesk jockeys have to take their car for a 50 minute drive to go clean up Yet Another Manager's Mangled laptop.
Yeah, I can't wait to see the post-rollout ROI analysis.
I understand and perfectly approve this judicial decision. Enforcement is, of course, next to impossible, but it is extremely important to at least declare publicly that scams and such are not acceptable.
I now await with great anticipation the judgement that will declare and denounce all the actual software pirating that China and such countries are guilty of.
But I won't be holding my breath. I know that Nigeria, Thailand and others have no share of US debt and bonds, whereas China practically owns the US debt all to itself. And Europe is not far behind.
From the World English Dictionary
eclectic (ɪˈklɛktɪk, ɛˈklɛk-) [Click for IPA pronunciation guide]
— adj
1. (in art, philosophy, etc) selecting what seems best from various styles, doctrines, ideas, methods, etc
2. composed of elements drawn from a variety of sources, styles, etc
— n
3. a person who favours an eclectic approach, esp in art or philosophy
Seems to me that an idiot cannot be eclectic, since he won't have sufficient culture to choose from. So that's a compliment then.
One thing that I take from this article is that Air France apparently finds it normal to put two inexperienced pilots in the driver's seats, with no experienced pilot able to intervene when a mistake is made.
I always thought that airline companies had a Captain with experience at the helm, accompanied by a co-pilot that was learning the ropes, so to speak.
Seems that I was wrong, and budget cuts have led to the inevitable loss of experienced (and more expensive) pilots to tutor the new guys, so just bash two newbies in and pray for the best.
Can't say that inspires confidence in the future of commercial flight.
Apparently, they don't need to think about it.
Enough people do so to make it worthwhile.
And not just in handheld/mobile titles either. Take Brink for instance. I got it last week-end for 6€ over Steam. It's a shooter with a bit of RPG thrown in to make for a change in gameplay every now and then. Of course, if you pay money you can unlock better weapons faster, and improve your alter-ego's abilities faster as well.
What this means is that there are enough people globally who do pitch in with their wallets to have a major PC title based on that revenue stream, enough so that they agreed to lower the admission price to a ridiculously low level for a game that has basically just came out.
I mean, it's not like Battlefield III is ever going to reach that price, now is it ?
So this is a real thing, and there is every reason in the capitalistic world to not ignore it.
You know what - you're perfectly right.
Screwing over a few hundred million customers and locking the entire planet on an OS that leaks security like a sieve is a small price to pay for a million-year supply of secure energy that also happens to get rid of nuclear waste.
Because that is what it does, right ?
Saying that "Changes in CO2 [..] have major, long-lasting and hard-to-reverse effects on climate" tends to mean that such changes are slow to take place.
Then you pull a quote (from .. ?) that specifically states that "We went from a warm world without ice to a cooler world with an ice sheet overnight, in geologic terms", meaning that such changes can happen rapidly - in geological terms.
Doesn't really add weight to your argument.
A Vehicle Lateral Defense System. Specifically, side-facing RPGs mounted with radar detectors designed to detect oncoming collision and stop the oncoming threat - permanently.
I dare say that would put an end to light-runners very quickly.
Hmm ? What is that you say ? Immoral ? Because being broadsided by some twat who thought the rules didn't apply to him is moral ?
Bah. No wonder civilization is grinding to a halt. In my time ..... <grumble><grumble><grumble>
I wonder how much additional energy they consumed the next day to get the school back to its target heating level.
If I'm not mistaken, one day without heating is going to increase the inertia the heater is programmed to overcome. That additional inertia is going to make the heater work more.
I wonder if they thought of that.
That must be the new definition of "let's throw together a bunch of stuff, make it look professional and pass it off as information".
Looking over this marketing ploy, I was confirmed in my opinion by words such as "Moving to Windows 7", "personal cloud", "hypervisors you can trust" and, my favorite, "Changing user expectations".
This thing is just a bunch of PR hogwash to impress gullible managers and rake in the dough.
Desktop virtualization is end-user freedom ? Excuse me, but in what world do Fortune 500 IT departments WANT end-user freedom ? In which bank is that even a discussion point (please tell me so that I can make sure my money isn't there) ?
I wonder if anyone in the group that put this together have noticed that more and more IT administrative tools have been (over the years since Windows NT) created and put in place to ensure that the end-user is only capable of doing _exactly_ what his central profile allows him to do and nothing more (like surfing the web, or non-company-approved sites).
Because large organizations want their employees to effing work, not prance through grassy knolls blissfully enjoying freedom. Then again, those employees who do want freedom are usually graciously encouraged with a slip in a beautifully-colored pink , so maybe there is some truth in that notion.
All you Skyrim players are nothing but beta testers.
I'll check out the game in a year or two, when Bethesda has got its act together and the major bugs have been ironed out.
And don't tell me I'm exaggerating - how long did it take to get Baldur's Gate working properly ?
Yeah.
He knew what to do and how to do it. Sure, he made a mistake, don't we all, but once he knew he was stuck, he followed the survival guide as best he could and he hung on.
As far as luck was concerned, I'd say he had a string of bad luck. First, he didn't think to take the necessary precautions, knowing the dangers. Second, he got stuck out of mobile phone range. Third, his coworkers didn't get around to seriously worry about him until Tuesday, instead of Monday afternoon.
He survived the ordeal not because he was lucky, but because he had the training to deal with it - even on a bare minimum of resources.
His one bit of luck was most likely the fact that the temperatures were not in the -40°C.
Of course, most of the rest of us would probably have ended up as a popsicle, even with top-notch gear.
1.3 solar masses in twice the diameter ? Isn't that eight times the volume ? That has to mean (off the top of my head) 1/5th the density of our Sun, doesn't it ?
And it's a young star - so probably burning hot, which might explain the exaggerated diameter.
Boffin icon, for obvious reasons.
This "car" looks like a showcase of how NOT to put technology in a vehicle. It is simply a terrible idea to put all that customization at the mercy of wireless updates.
And, dare I say, it is probably a terrible idea to put all that customization into the hands of the general public. Garish interior "decorating" displaying your bad taste is fine in you own home where I will never see it. Outlandish ideas in garish colors on your car is displaying your bad taste - or a hacker's idea of a joke - for the world to see, and I am interested in neither.
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