Posts by Pascal Monett 18931 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
That is the point that should be relentlessy repeated.
This is not your run-of-the-mill failed Government IT operation where the higher-ups get their honours and move on, and the public pays the bill and shuts up.
No, this is an abject failure of government where the higher-ups literally walked on the corpses of honest people just trying to do their job for Queen and Country.
The fallout on this should be ruthless and profound. There is no excuse for the Old Boy's Club here.
Of course they did. I was in Luxembourg City last time there was an eclipse there. I saw daylight turn into darkness, went outside and experience the sudden drop in temperature and the silence. Even the birds were hushed.
It was an awesome experience and I readily understand that Humanity was terrified by it.
Well duh, it's just administrative busybodies that are making themselves look busy.
Given the state of US politics, it's certain that any actual decision or accord made now stands every chance to be overturned if the OHSG get re-elected. He did, after all, decide to flush the existing Paris accords down the drain. He doesn't give a shit about previous engagements.
I have my doubts on that point.
The way I see market conditions these days, having an open-source based second-source supplier that becomes successful is going to entail two things :
1) open-source developers are going to attack the company to get what they consider is their "fair share" of the spoils, and
2) AWS, Azure or any other multi-billion behemoth is going to lavish the company board in boatloads of billions to buy them out, and they will fold
So, short or medium term, any successful open-source-based company with big government contracts is going to disappear, either because of lawsuits, or because of bagfulls of money.
Return to step one.
It's almost a mistake, PR-wise. Indeed, now the scum have demonstrated publicly, in less than a month, that they will go back after targets that have previously paid up.
Boards everywhere should be paying attention here. You get hit, you'll get hit again if you pay.
Stop paying. It's the only solution.
Once you've secured your network properly, that is.
I take that as a clear indication that there is a non-negligible portion of users who clearly need a permit to demonstrate that they understand what they're working with, because right now, they don't.
Given that computers and the Internet are becoming central parts of our working and personal lives, what with government portals being the way forward, it seems that a Computing License should be just as mandatory as the driver's license is.
Somehow, I doubt we'll ever get there.
Um, how exactly is that supposed to work ? It's not like you give your name and address when you use a browser.
They'll always be able to sign up for a new gmail account under a fake name, that's not controlled either.
So this injunction is just legal waffling. I don't see how it can be enforced, especially when the culprits aren't on US soil.
"what if organizations shared worker metrics data from AI management systems and that influenced future hiring decisions involving said workers"
In a world where installing a tattletale in your car to radio your insurance about how you drive, supposedly to lower your insurance bill, is becoming common practice, that is not a what-if scenario.
It is blindingly obvious that any AI management system will automatically and almost immediately be taken by upper management as criteria for advancement, not to mention continued employment.
Whether that will be a good thing or not, well, I guess that depends on what your current management feels like to you.
Um, you do realize we're talking government employees ?
If they had nimble minds and aptitude, they'd be working in the private sector.
As far as I can see, this is just another large boast by a German state, which will be followed by close "negociations" by Borkzilla and will end up in everyone adopting Windows 12 and Office 2025. For a price that the German citizen will find on his taxes so, who cares ?
I just checked the specs on my motherboard : I still have PCIe 3 and DDR4. PCIe 6 is starting to get out. My home router is GB-capable, but not 100GB capable.
Not that it would matter, the Ethernet ports on my equipment are only GB-capable anyway.
I wonder if I will see all this bandwidth goodness on my home PC one day . . .
Would it be possible that something has actually been planned this time ?
Nah, there will be overruns, Capita, Fujitsu and others will make like bandits, and the citizen will once again have to deal with unsatisfactory results.
Unless I'm wrong, which I hope, but as far as UK Government IT is concerned, I'm not expecting much else.
Could someone point to a project that was delivered on spec, on time and in budget ? Just curious.
Of course. You don't think that Google (or any other massive conglomerate) is going to see a lawsuit in one country and think "oh, we'd better apply the consequences to the rest of the world as well before they wake up", now do you ?
If the rest of the world wants the same thing, they can sue in their own countries. One by one. Only if a dozen important countries (market-wise, obviously) start the same procedure at roughly the same time would any multi-billion dollar company trot out a statement where it will apply consequences globally, but that is only to diminish the number of lawsuits it'll have to pay for to get the same result.
It's always a question of return on investment. Multi-billionaire business basics 101 : investing in lawsuits works until the number of lawsuits outrun the amount of money that can be made in that way.
It is insane to realize just how complex things are when you're at machine code level. There are really intelligent people out there and it is humbling to realize that, as good as I may deem myself in my specialty, I don't hold a candle to the minds that can not only handle this level of programming, but also extract the proper conclusions and pull the whistle when things aren't going right.
My respects to those who can do this level of code analysis.
The only thing that is surprising is that US Government hasn't directed its IT to globally block access to that thing.
The EU Parliament blocked OneDrive from its Office 2010 version on grounds that it didn't want internal documents floating about on Borkzilla's US servers. I would be very surprised if this kind of thing was deemed acceptable by any responsible government anywhere.
I'm guessing banks will be at the forefront of demonstrating just what it is they consider reliable for the security of their customers. Maybe government institutions should align themselves more on that . . .
You're telling me that, if I get a Windows AI PC, I will be using Borkzilla's cloudy thingy whether I want to or not. Okay, got it.
Now, tell me that I will not be paying for the privilege with a monthly subscription, because I don't think that Borkzilla is going to plan to serve up all that cloudy goodness I never asked for for nothing.
"It further recommends that the designated facility be as close to the San Francisco - Bay Area as possible"
Well I recommend that the facility be as close to the North Pole as possible.
I fail to see where the imprisonement takes place has anything to do with it, and if you specifically want him to benefit from California temperatures, I would personally see to it that he gets as close to Siberia as possible.
I thought NK was practically completely isolated from the rest of the world.
Yes, I know Bhina has "graciously" provided the worst leader of the world with Internet connectivity, and closes a blind eye to all the crime that NK is perpetrating thanks to that.
But how does anyone transfer money to a NK bank account ? Is this another case of funny money shenanigans ?
In any case, somebody should cut that line. Nothing good is coming of it.
It is apparently useless to rail against devs pushing external, unverified code to their production servers. This stupidity is now ingrained into force of habit, and everyone smiles in beatitude at the practice.
So, what is it going to take for companies to put the brakes on this ?
If pseudo-AI and miscreants work together to smash through that wall and make companies understand that you do not run unverified code on a production server, then I'm almost ready to welcome the mayhem that will ensue.
For the 1%, that is.
A country that can't manage its healthcare properly, can't be arsed to manage its procurement or salaries at a county level, keeps spaffing billions to foreign companies for useless IT projects, can't offer a proper administrative portal that actually handles things for the plebs, has endless amounts of Prime Ministers who don't give a fuck and yet, it still manages to support a withering, useless monarchy and pretend that it still has an empire.
Way to go ?
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