
Standard procedure
"b) were they already watching the "diplomats""
Perhaps standard procedure to keep a close eye on all (Russian) incoming diplomats?
74 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2010
I get this:
- Russian diplomats gathering information. And for being diplomat (or more correct in the possession of a diplomatic passport) there is no risk, besides to be trown out of the country.
- the Dutch who throw them out
- the "denial" of the Russians (because they always deny)
But why all the media attention? What do the Dutch try to accomplish? What is the spin? Anyone?
"from the dog show world"
And when you look at the dogs that are considered by the experts (the dog owners/jury,...) top dogs you immediately wonder what is "top" about a dog that can't breath or walk properly. Dog people are so living in their bubble they can't see the big picture anymore. So in a sense it is a good analogy.
"It is entirely possible to run an old, insecure operating system on a machine in such a way that the rest of the network is protected. It takes a bit of work and know-how, but it's certainly doable."
Yes doable. But also leading to the assumption that "you only have to invest once to run any software system" which is the mother of all fuck-ups. Any automated system needs lots of funds during its life-time to operate secure and according to expectation of the (end) users.
Isolating the lack of proper funding will leave you eventually with a spaghetti of total unmanageble systems and a total stand-still of changebility of all the organisation. Because organisations change and the expectations change. For example that stand alone MRI scanner one day will be connected to the other systems, al be it for monitoring, input for patient files, etc, etc. Bye, bye air-gap.
I believe Google is doing all it can to make the devices secure. Through the Play services which they completely own they fix (circumvent) bugs, they prevent apps being installed, they scan apps and they monitor (and control) all Play devices. And for what I can see they do a rather good job. I've never heart about mass phone infections or virus break-outs on either iDevice or Android (play) device. So they must do something right. Patching the core Android system should be far better than it is right now, but it has improved a lot over the last three years or so. And I think it will get better over time.
No the 'I don't like to chase the Interweb for stupid drivers. Binary drivers are so stupid and annoying and do taint your kernel so bye bye to secure boot. That's why Linux sysadmins dislike closed source drivers. Take a look at PCI flash storage: sane people running Linux workloads choose Intel vs FusioIO for this. (BTW Intel 'hides' the proprietary firmware inside uefi. Problem solved.)
A few weeks ago I visited a brand new datacenter in the north of the Netherlands. They use ambient air all day except for about 6 days a year!! It was a neat facility with they treated the ambient air (filtering, dehumidify etc) and blow it into the datacenter with a little over-pressure. They just let the air fall from above, no raised floors, all cabling from above. The hot aisles had a huge chimney so the hold air could get away the natural way. Because of the huge amount of ambient air it wasn't that cold inside (~20 degrees C). And the over-pressure kept the fans quiet: you could actually talk to each other!! They managed to do 1.25 energy efficiency!! Nice DC :-)
Or does it run on OS-X? When I encounter developpers I only see MacBooks running either OS-X or Linux I guess market share is about > 80%. So if Microsoft keeps ignoring this they will lose even more markershare. Especially with the younger ones. I can not recall running into a young dev (in the twenties) running the microsoft toolchain. Not ONE.
According to Cringerly (http://www.cringely.com/2013/11/25/intel-wants-everyones-chip-maker/) maybe Intel will be making Google's chips.... at 14nm.... And not because Intel likes Google but because they have so much 14nm capacity and (maybe) not enough buyers. What will they do? Next years will be very interesting.
Oh and Googel wants this because they rather buy a design than they must buy the whole package from one. Macchiavelli's "divide and conquer"... In all respects.
What a crap. Market share CAN be about units, it MUST not. For example in the server market, market share is normally measured in income not units. Otherwise is was impossible for MS to have a (out of my head) share of about 30 ~50% while (nearly) all big clouds are running Linux only. Linux server market share is exclusively about ENTERPRISE Linux distros. For the proprietary unices the (unit) market share is almost not measurable, but in income they still count (just like mainframe).
If market share was about income instead of units Apple is probably on top, followed by Samsung. Android is invissible and Google's mobile revenue is (black?) magic.
> You just hit the core issue Don Jefe... WindowsRT is NOT Windows.. in the same way iOS is not OSX.
> Microsoft never quite got that message.
That and they should have based it on Windows Phone code instead of Windows nx/xp/7/8 code. And built win8 as a proper desktop OS without all that touch nonsense. Just like Apple (iOS/OSX) en Google (Android/Chromebook) are doing. One size doesn't fit all devices.
Sharing a kernel can be wise, sharing a UI code base for desktop and touch is foolish.
jm2c's
The main reason for succes of iOS and Android is the ease of use or better the ease of system management of your own device. You don't have to be like a system administrator. Quite different from Windows (Pro/i386/x86_64) devices with its endless ways of installing and updating software from all sources. My experience is that ordinary people are not capable of properly take care of their device. With the controlled environments of Apple and Google this is a no-brainer. Maybe WinRT can compete but this platform lacks all other advantages of 'normal' windows. A very difficult game Microsoft has to play.
Microsoft tries to get a piece of the action (remember their cloud presence is almost like their phone's) with higher prices than their biggest competitor? Good luck! Because I can see no compelling reason that one has to buy Microsoft in the cloud. Cloud == web and web based stacks on Linux are hot while Microsoft's stack is not. The only reason is some old-fashioned enterprise app that requires windows. There are a lot off them, but I hardly see any new load coming to Windows.
If you really want to master Linus system administration:
0. Take a LSB course
1. Linux from scratch
2. Choose family
3. Master the package manager (pkg/apt or rpm/yum,zypper,..)
4. Learn basic vi
5. Learn basic regex
6. Learn to script, start with basic bash later you can matter python
7. Learn autoyast (side family)/kickstart (red hat family)/preseed (Debian family) for fully automated OK installation
8. Learn puppet/chef
By then you've got a few years of experience.
Or will it be like this: you pair your smartphone our tablet with a dumb terminal with real keyboard, mouse and use your window () as screen at the office only if you have to do some 'real' work. When you are done you just take your device with you stop you can access your work everywhere from out of the cloud. Or am I smoking something now?
So what you're describing is a 100% Microsoft lockin: sharepoint and O365 do not work on all devices (far from it) and it does not look like it's going to get better. Only if you buy in this Microsoft thingy for the full 100% it will work. And they trying to sell this in 2012??? They're still living a decade ago...(LOL)
"Metro is perfectly suited to those who want an entertainment/information displaying/social networking device... ie:a consumer. Productivity and use of a PC as a working tool is something else entirely, so whilst MS may win over the consumer with Metro they are going to have a hard time pushing it to those who use a PC as a productivity tool."
If this is their target who on earth will they win from iPad and Android? Don't see it happening. They will be third and that's not how the Microsoft eco system can survive... Start selling your shares...
What if the tablet market keeps growing like it does now, how long will it take before more tablets than pc's are sold? I don't believe MS will have the same market share in tablets as they have in PC. MS has to reinvents itself to not become the next mainframe builder (you can still make shigloss of money with it, but you won't lead anymore)