Posts by Unhandle

The mod firing squad: Stack Exchange embroiled in 'he said, she said, they said' row

Re: Not just an English thing

You've gotta get that "zzz" sound in there. "Miz" and keep it short.

As we would say in my neighborhood, "They crazy." I have watched various stacks with amusement over the years, especially the Workplace stack. Non-technical stacks are just sooooo tense and uncomfortable. People seemingly are in a constant state of rigid rule enforcement, devoting more resources to rules and submission to rules than to discourse. Stack is, as far as I am concerned, a totally toxic place to be. But this being the Internet, there is nothing to stop anyone from starting a similar gathering place where they'll feel right at home.

IBM fired me because I'm not a millennial, says axed cloud sales star in age discrim court row

Seems like the Big Blue team didn't all get the memo and the right hand didn't know the left hand was giving this guy the finger. You don't let somebody take home the largest performance bonus ever if you're planning to cite poor performance in your conspiracy to take away that person's living. I hope he wins and takes them for many millions just to make a point to corporate America But I doubt it will happen with Trumpets at the helm in government. They'll find a way to get IBM off the hook.

When asked 'What's a .CNT file?' there's a polite way to answer

Really?

Does he know what a .DCK file is? What an ASHL

Server retired after 18 years and ten months – beat that, readers!

Re: Not surprising

NT3.51 would run for eternity and never need a reboot. NT4 was a little buggier due to more stuff allowed into ring0, but those were the days when a windows os could just go and go and go. Anybody still running os/2 applications? That was also extremely stable.

Volkswagen used software to CHEAT on AIR POLLUTION tests, alleges US gov

Re: Long Overdue

Any chance you can get your friend to talk about this some more? I suspected the same thing, but your comment is the first hint I have seen that this could in fact be the case.

Re: I know it's wrong

Why would you want 500,000 highly polluting cars on the road? Do you have any idea of the health problems for children tied to dirty air or is that your lungs are fine, so you really could give a flying intercourse about anybody else?

Am I the only one thinking that this highly sophisticated software was not something the lab just whipped up in a jiffy? I am thinking this incident will uncork an even more devious history. I speculate that somewhere, somebody/some group developed this prior to 2009 and I think it has been deployed elsewhere. If I am right, this could get really interesting.

Re: I'm guessing that...

Wrong on all counts. The cars were tested extensively by a university group which did the testing on a drive from southern cal up to Seattle. After that, EPA was brought in. The results are no fluke and even 2 times over the standard would be a disaster.I don't care if they screw the gas pedal to the floor. It is not supposed to happen. Period. We are talking about an exceptionally well-engineered deception which actually gives the finger to air quality in this country and now VW is going to pay for that. It was an audacious move that has to be responded to with an equally impressive fine and prosecution. In terms of disrespecting a nation, it would be as if we went over to Germany and snatched somebody off the street because we couldn't get him legally...oh...wait...we did that. Nevermind.

Revealed: Malware that forces weak ATMs to spit out 'ALL THE CASH'

It's Windows. What do you expect?

No surprise here. Why are they using any OS from Microsoft?

HBGary 'puppets' FAIL to convince

I wouldn't be so cocky about this

You don't seem to be extrapolating this to an obvious level of deception. For people who are not interested in flinging links into a conversation for product marketing purposes, but are more interested in influencing opinion and/or consensus, this is dangerous software in the hands of a skilled operator.

Of course, it would not have to be used in an obvious "I want banana NOW" way. To be effective, it only needs to be subtle to sway unsure minds and/or give the appearance of a group reaching a common point of agreement or to give the appearance of spontaneous, spirited opposition to something.

This is propaganda software and it can be dangerous and it should not be dismissed as "conspiracy under every rock." This is a digital equivalent of owning the printing presses. It's one way to really skew things. Put another way, people wouldn't likely be putting out bids for something like this if they thought it was a complete waste of time and unlikely to yield usable results.

I don't know about your democracy, but I like mine out in the open.