Posts by Pascal Monett 18221 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
Companies have one principle : making money. It is the Prime Principle (yes, I'm thinking Prime Directive).
And, as soon as start to, they forget every other principle in direct correlation with how much money they make.
Once you get to Board status with more than a billion per month, the Singularity forms and everything is swallowed down to the Prime Principle.
No (known) force in the Universe can stop that.
So we should have all stayed on Windows XP and left protection to the various anti-virus providers and basic user complacency ?
I disagree. Spam is a nuisance and a threat, and any measure to curtail it should be welcomed with open arms.
On top of that, if you make a product that can only succeed based on someone else's product, then you shouldn't complain when new and better security measures make your life more difficult. You modify your product to improve it and integrate the necessary security, demonstrating that you have your users' interests at heart.
Wailing that everything should have remained as it was is only you not willing to evolve. That does not inspire confidence.
As long as the code is not open source, I won't trust it.
RSA encryption is open source and that works fine. It's not because you know how the code works that you can break the system.
So why isn't the foundational process of Democracy not open source ?
Because greedy companies want to make a fortune out of it, and closed source is the direct path to achieving that.
Unfortunately, closed source is also the direct path to shady deals and unknown agreements that might very well undermine Democracy.
That is not acceptable.
Yeah, but, it's Agile !
Although apparently not enough to actually make a working product.
Once again we hear of a medical project gone wrong. What is it with the mentality these days ? Hours to review a chart ? How many out-of-touch admins and managers have added their "ideas" to the workload of people who have better things to do, all in the name of "improving administration" ?
I do not see that it is the job of point-of-sale personnel to review charts. That's a job for managers. They can put down their coffee and doughnut and get to work.
Oh but it can be justified, when you are a military junta. It is absolutely necessary when you want to prevent protests from organizing (well, easily at least).
Just like in France, where Macron managed to pass a law against pots and pans used in protests on the basis of, wait for it, anti-terrorist laws. The poor wittle pwesident couldn't stand not hearing his bweutiful voice over the din, apparently.
Needless to say, democratic reaction was swift and lawsuits quickly quashed that rancid demonstration of dicklessness, but France is a democratic country - for now. Even so, the attempt was made.
It's pretty obvious that, in a country where democracy is just a faint hope for the future, such shenanigans - and worse - are a daily occurence.
You misunderstand politics, my good sir.
It's not about following through, it's all about the noise you make.
When campaigning, it is good form to invoke privacy, respect, the law and anything else on top of hugging babies. If ever something doesn't pan out, it's not your fault, it's the lawmakers who didn't do their jobs.
And when you reach the lofty position of Prime Minister, you have more important things to occupy you than a piddling privacy agreement.
But when you're campaigning, it's all gravy in the poll booth . . .
Doesn't matter though. Borkzilla has managed to graft ChatGPT into Office and, soon, everything else it makes.
And that will be paid for by user subscriptions.
So it's just the Board of the Fortune 500 that will suddenly be asking themselves why they're paying for an inferior . . no, wait, it's from Borkzilla so they won't ask themselves anything.
This "new" "AI" is essentially Borkzilla plugging into corporate data with the blessing of Boards everywhere.
At this point, I have one question : all that juicy data that is being "analyzed" is being sent where, exactly ?
Because I think there is this little thing called GDPR waiting in the wings . . .
Lipstick on a pig is what it is.
You can shuffle it in as many ways as you want, we still see the end result : we're getting profiled in ever more precise ways.
Well we don't like it, and we'll vote the laws that are needed to keep our privacy.
As soon as we find out how to write them.
"eventually accept the login to stop the harassment"
What ? No.
The fact that there is harassment is a clear sign that a takeover attempt is active. That is not the time to just click Yes so that you can make another post on Twitter.
That is the time to contact your provider and warn them that a takeover is occuring.
Of course, it would help if you have another platform than your smartphone to do so . . . so basically only only anyone over 40 can hope to be able to respond properly.
Yes, citizens talking to each other is obviously bad for national security.
But India should take a leaf out of the NSA surveillance handbook. Let them talk, and monitor everything.
Or, for something more repressive, go to China, who monitors everything and suppresses, including by arrests, anything that Xi Pooh doesn't find palatable.
Following this website, the proper order is Chrome, Safari, Firefox. Edge comes after, somewhat bundled with Internet Explorer which doesn't deserve it, then you find Opera (which has .28% better share than IE).
Of course, if you go to a different site, the figures will be entirely different, and the order can change as well.
The one thing that doesn't change is that Chrome is always on top.
I would personally prefer that he not gain additional information on how to manipulate the situation in the future. He is now tainted with not only with cover-up, but with failure to cover up.
Let him do work in an entirely different branch that has nothing to do with security.
Well, apparently the DNA Advantage Cloud license is over $256K for the 2G 5Y version, so yeah, crazy prices are possible.
Also, you pay a quarter of a million bucks and you only get 20G ? Twenty gigabits ? I can't be reading that right.
Seems to me that, for a quarter million, I can buy myself two super-pro NAS units (€11000 each) with 12 8TB SSDs for €1000 apiece, store each one in a datacenter a thousand kilometers apart and securely connect to them both via Internet.
All that for a total of €46000, plus connection costs. Leaves more than enough to pay for years of bandwidth.
Could somebody remind me why this cloud stuff is supposed to be so useful ?
I mean, for me.
And the only answer will be "We're sorry, we goofed. Won't do it again. No need to fine us."
Of course The Zuck is going to fight. Selling access to data is what made his fortune, and that is more important to him than anything else.
Slap him in prison for five years, that might shake some sense into his thick skull.
Specious argument.
Video games are useful. They are a hobby and a pasttime, just like watching TV. Nobody is going to ban TV either.
Funny money is just a burden that does not help society in any way, and gives scum a lot of ammo to actively harm society.
It is a bad thing, and the quicker it disappears, the better.
Biometric, schmiometric. All this is just trading a biological weakness for a hardware weakness.
The passkey is tied to the device ? Great. Lose or break your smartphone and you've just lost all your accesses permanently.
I can create a passkey on my non-laptop PC ? Great, as soon as I upgrade it that passkey is toast. And installing such a thing on a Windows system is madness in the first place. Or are you actually expecting Borkzilla to handle that 100% efficiently ?
Oh well, passwords still work, they say. Good, because I'm sticking to that. And good luck to the phishing attempt that tries to get my password. Yes, I'm a savvy user but, more importantly, I know that there is nobody that needs any of my passwords, so there should be nobody who asks. And if they do ask, the answer is chocolate.
The answer is always chocolate.
Um, sorry, but isn't quantum computing supposed to be instantaneous ?
With all possible results instead of just one ?
We've been told that (current) encryption would be literally destroyed by a quantum computer. The NSA would be swimming in decrypted SMSs and emails.
And now it takes two weeks ?
The more time goes by, the less I understand quantum computing.
And now it's useless anyway.
There is another rarely mentioned Microsoft peripheral : the Strategic Commander.
It's a gaming complement, a secondary keyboard that is also a mouse (or you can configure WASD if you prefer), which is unbelievably useful. It is so useful that I just can't understand why nobody else has taken up the idea.
In a world where many of today's top-selling titles are of the 1st-person shooter variety, the ability to have your movement and essential commands under your left hand, and your targetting and firing in your right hand gives you the freedom to concentrate on gaming without cramping your W finger one bit. You play better for longer, and you don't really need to learn the game keys since your Commander profiles do the job for you. You just know that, to jump, it's the middle top button - what the game actually needs has been configured and you don't have to worry about it. That makes it easier to switch games as well, but that is true for any configurable gaming keyboard. It's the mouse ability that really sets this peripheral apart from the rest.
And yet, Microsoft has dropped it and nobody else has taken it up after all these years. Surely the copyright has lapsed now, given that it has been abandoned ?
I really would like to be able to buy a new one. The one I have is now more than 20 years old, still running fine but one fine day, the keys will wear out or something. I'm afraid of that day, because gaming will no longer be the same without it.
And there you go going all sciency again. We don't want science, we want an Oracle ! (no, not the red one) We want easy answers we can repeat to make ourselves look intelligent and informed without all the hassle of actually understanding what we're talking about !
That's what Cliff Notes were invented for.
If I subscribed to Dropbox it was for one reason : an easy way to share large (non-confidential) files with my friends.
It was a simple and practical idea, and the free storage was enough.
Then the Board got caught up in its own success and started hallucinating that Dropbox could be much, much more than just online storage.
Well, to put it bluntly, it can't. Dropbox is trying to shove the kitchen sink into something nobody wants a sink in, much less a kitchen.
But hey, I get it : the only thing you wanted to do was monetize, and monetizing storage has dismal returns. Well I'm sorry, but for me Dropbox will always be online storage and nothing more. Just like I don't have my insurance at my bank, despite every bank getting into the act in the past twenty years.
I like things simple. My bank is there, my insurance is (a different) there, my online storage is there (and there), my email is in many places (but not Outlook) and my LibreOffice is here, locally stored, just the way I like it.
Now get off my lawn.
Unfortunately for Herr Twitler, being upper class is not just about money.
Given that money is all he has (and he's having less of that day after day), his transition to official lower-class-drug-addict will be officialized soon enough.
Scrooge McDuck will reign supreme once again, just you watch . . .
Even with what we know now, that is not the only possible end.
A new theory has come to light : black holes just might be dark energy. In that case, who knows what will happen when they have all evaporated ? Maybe our Universe will stop expanding, stabilize over untold trillenia, then start to contract again, going right back to the Great Collapse, and then everything starts again. Who knows ?
I don't think we ever will for sure. But that should definitely not stop us from trying to find out.
Creating Javascript was already a bad idea, but giving it to ad pushers was the worst idea of all.
There is only one solution : create a new ad-oriented script language that all reputable ad agencies subscribe to.
This AdScript would not allow manipulating window size, taking over control or preventing the user from closing the window or going back. It would only allow displaying a static image and some static text, with a URL at the bottom. Nothing moving, no flashing, no hidden controls, and no way to do anything else than display the text and image.
Personally I would prefer no image either, but no ad agency would agree to that so . . .
If that subset of JavaScript was created and all ads submitted to it and all ad agencies forced its use, I think ad blockers would become useless.
Not holding my breath though.
Oh but they do.
I am subscribed to a YouTube channel called History Channel that plonks an ad in the middle of videos. It's always the same ad, I almost know it by heart, and nothing gets rid of it (yet). When the ad starts, the progress bar at the bottom of the video is erased and goes blue, showing the progress of the ad. When the ad is done, the progress bar reverts to its previous position and colour.
No clicking on the progress bar to speed through the ad either. All that to push me to go see their videos on their paying platform. Well sorry, but I'll submit to your ad rather than giving you money in exchange for not having that ad shoved down my throat.
If you had been polite enough to allow me to skip it, I would think about joining up, but this forced ad viewing just puts me off.
I have recently found a YouTube Ad Blocker, I'm soon going to see if that works.
Not so sure about that. I can do pretty crazy things with a helo in Battlefield 2, although I will admit to using a Logitech joystick. And that's nothing when you look at what some players in Quake Online are capable of.
An operator sitting in a stable, air-conditioned room with video of a drone can flip and turn 360° in a second if he wants, it's all just pixels on the screen to him (or her).
If the drone can do it, I see no reason a human couldn't follow it.
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