Posts by localzuk 1080 posts • joined 25 Jul 2011
How Microsoft seem to be the only cloud provider struggling. Not heard of AWS or Google struggling to scale.
Even down to their productivity suite, I've seen no end of issues with people on Office 365 - Teams being a big issue. Those people using G Suite don't seem to have faced any of those sorts of issues.
A consequence of Microsoft leveraging legacy systems (Exchange, Sharepoint etc...) with fancy modern skins, vs from the ground up built solutions at Google?
I think you may not understand how scientific and medical improvements are made... It is nerds that do that. Mostly in labs, yes, but there's a lot of computing that goes into it all these days. So, yes, the "nerds of the world" are going to rush in and save everyone. That's their job.
Spending your life tiptoeing on eggshells because a phrase *may* offend one group or another is not realistic, nor sensible. Lots of things offend lots of people. The reality is, context and intent always matter - and this wasn't intended to be offensive in either of the ways you or the IP office took it to mean.
Legally, you are correct. Sadly, legality and reality don't always match. What actually would happen is you would stop, as not stopping might cause them to try and detain you by force by making something up. Your only recourse is after the fact. If you have been detained without due cause, you can complain/sue. It is always inadvisable to ignore a police officer telling you to stop.
"When not in use, the Galaxy Z Flip folds in half, with the screen protected from the usual sources of scratches and nicks that are the inevitable byproduct of encounters with keys and coins."
This isn't really true either, courtesy of the rather large gap between the 2 sides when its closed. Could easily have coins or keys slide their way in there.
Why do companies behave like this? What is this gonna cost them, as a percentage of their yearly profit? It'll barely be more than a rounding error realistically. Yet, the goodwill they destroy by behaving like this is worth far more. Why not treat your employees well, and get them working loyally for you?
The issue isn't the authority itself, its the checks and balances, the oversight that is the issue. All such authority should be subject to review and be able to be overruled by other elected officials. So, in the US Congress and the Courts should be able to review it.
"The report argues that competition in the charging connector space has created €14bn of estimated consumer value between 2012 and 2018. Any top-down attempt to enforce a standard, it reckons, would create €1.5bn in estimated consumer harm."
What a mess of a claim this is. What is "consumer value"? Consumers haven't earned €14bn from charging connectors in 6 years. No, what they mean is the consumer has been charged €14bn in this time, and a standardised approach would save €1.5bn.
What does the law say about it? Is there a law in the US requiring Apple to put a backdoor in their phones? No? Then the government should be working with Congress to put such a law in place.
If Congress disagrees? The govt is out of luck, and should move on. Dragging Apple's name through the mud over it doesn't change the law. All it'd actually do is end up with Apple taking the govt to court due to them being lied about by the AG.
"The majority of bank employees are call centre, branch front of house, or HR/other support. None of those people need or want a desktop, just that’s been the legacy heap of junk given to them."
Hang on, what should those people have then? Call center staff? Why would they have anything other than a desktop? It isn't legacy to give them a desktop - its what the job needs.
HR? In my experience, most HR people sit in an office all day. Why would they need something different to a desktop?
Front of house? Most bank branches I've seen have service desks, with security glass over the front. Why would they have anything other than desktops? Not so easy to use an OMR or coin scales if you're hovering about with an iPad...
You are doing the opposite I think - making out that real work is only done on mobile devices and not desktops. The reality is that in the majority of businesses, desktop PCs still rule supreme for working on. Laptops and tablets are often "extra" items as well, and some more modern businesses have swapped desktops for laptops with docks etc... but overall, go into ANY office building and you'll find desktop PCs. Go into your local mechanic workshop, and they'll have a desktop PC at the front for invoicing. Go into your local doctor's surgery, and every office will have a desktop.
We've long known this - whilst the law may apply to the rich, powerful, ministers, prime ministers, spies etc... What actually matters is the consequences.
The reality is that the organisation that would bring any prosecution is controlled by the government - the CPS. They have absolute control over this agency, as part of the executive. If something is determined to be covered by "national security", at the sole view of the Attorney General, who is appointed by the government of the time, then it is entirely up to them whether it goes ahead.
Well, unless someone pays for a private prosecution that is... Ha.
With a majority like the one Boris Johnson has now also, it would be very difficult for anything to stop a change in the law also. So, the Supreme Court's powers are still limited by the government.
I don't get that. Company has a problem with thinking they're crap, so they launch a new business with the same name. Why!? Everyone will just think "eugh, more of the same".
Just like Natwest launching their app only bank "Bó". Great. Nice fresh name (even with the hilarious connotations of BO from the name). But, no, they advertise it as "Bó by Natwest".
Why do they think Natwest, the brand linked to the bank that has major IT outages constantly, would be a great way to advertise this new service? Come, use our new IT only bank...
A potential scenario. You're a vet, out on a farm on a welsh hillside. You vaccinate a bunch of cows. You've done half the herd and head back to the office for the end of the day. Once you get back, your phone connects to wifi and Android goes "ooh, updates" and downloads Chrome 79. You then open the app up, ready to do its sync, but your data is gone.
Beef burgers, pork sausages and dairy milk are animal products.
Last I checked, having a veggie burger doesn't change beef burgers from being beef burgers. Pork sausages still exist and having Linda McCartney Veggie Sausages doesn't change that.
It doesn't damage the "meat" market having those names.
People don't get confused between meat and non-meat burgers/sausages. Saying it is "passing them off" is nonsense. Glamorgan sausages, which don't contain meat, have existed since the 1800s, and people don't confuse them for meat products.
Xerox's business is mostly large MFDs and the like. HP's is mostly smaller printers (workgroup and what have you). The 2 do match quite nicely in that regard. HP also have their burgeoning 3D printing division, and their large format division as well.The technology that underplays all of that is a very nice asset.
Throw in the fact that both engage in "business services" and it kinda makes sense.
But the rest? Laptops, Desktops, Tablets & Displays? I could see that being spun off into a separate business relatively soon after merging.
I would've thought HP buying Xerox would've been the more sane way of things going though. HP could buy them, and bolster their various divisions with the assets nicely.
I'd suggest both your suggestions are technical solutions to a people problem.
I'd approach it a little more brutally - send out a reminder that ALL work must be saved on the network drive, say checks will be performed next week, and that anyone caught using the local documents folder to save stuff will face disciplinary...
The last 2 bulk purchases of laptops for our organisation were AMD - the price:performance comparison for business use at the moment makes Intel unaffordable. As an example, a low end laptop, i5 8GB, 240GB SSD is £20 per unit more expensive than the Ryzen equivalent. Multiply that number out enough times and it becomes expensive. Go up the range, and want better performance, and that price difference becomes bigger and bigger.
So, a user buys a license to something and then leaves. That license does what? Goes into the general pool? Can an admin then assign it on to someone else? What if another user wants a license for that thing, if they go to buy it, will it assign that existing license to them? Or will it buy a new license, leaving the old one unused?
Seems like a really badly thought out system.
Between work and our nearest "big" town, 4G coverage is about 30%. 3G coverage about 30%, 2G around 30% and then total blackspots about 10%. 5G coverage is non-existent, and won't be for a long time.
So, companies considering turning off 3G or 2G are effectively saying they'll reduce the coverage in this area of Somerset to about 30% total. Because that'll be great for business. Bearing in mind there's a good 70,000 people who live in the area too.
That isn't actually true - let's stick to facts.
End to end encryption is when data is encrypted at all points between clients, without the middle bit knowing what was sent.
So, WhatsApp has end to end encryption, as the encryption key is held by the client, and not the server.
HTTPS is a secure connection between client and the server. Once the data gets to the server it may no longer be kept encrypted. VPNs, again, are encrypted from the client to the server. Not from client to client.
This isn't about finding abusers, or child pornographers. That's just the usual excuse. The only use for this sort of thing is mass surveillance. No more, no less.
Actual criminals, the ones out there hurting people, would use something else. As I've said before, there are apps that allow strong encryption that only the end users have - as they generate them when they launch the app. The code for such apps is already online and downloadable. Takes a fairly small amount of time to get your own personal chat network running.
If it truly were about the children, then end to end encryption would be a requirement of all online tools. Remember the old hole in Yahoo Messenger? Allowed people to connect to running sessions and see the users' cameras. If the encryption in place across the net now gets weakened by back doors, then that is what we'll be going back to.
Escape Velocity was where I started with space games. I *loved* all of the series. I just wish there was something like it now, that had the long story to go with the galaxy size.
EDIT: Just discovered that Ambrosia SW seems to have gone out of business too. So will not be able to play my copy of EV Nova ever again :(
Stereotyped nonsense, quite frankly.
Also, the issue with facial recognition isn't that contrast is an issue, it is that we KNOW it is an issue, but we persist in its development for detecting crime etc... We know it'll discriminate, but we persist. We know the tech is flawed, but the police push on with it. Why is the industry releasing this as a working technology? Because the representation of minorities is non-existent within the companies making it. Imagine, a company making facial recognition technology and has only black staff. They run their trials and find that it simply doesn't work properly on themselves. Would they go "ah, good enough"? No, the product wouldn't get out of the lab.
Your number 5 sums up your own standpoint nicely. You think that recognising the privileged position we white men have experienced for decades is itself bigotry.
OK. I'll put things in a different way. When I was in school. Girls did not do IT. They were encouraged to do home economics. And i'm only in my 30s. That same attitude prevailed until fairly recently in a LOT of schools. Hell, its still a view that prevails in a lot of schools, especially in the USA.
Your point 1 is you cherry picking a statistic. Overall, women still get paid less than men in all industries. That is just the reality of it. Saying "oh they get paid more in their 20s" doesn't make any difference to that fact.
Your points 2 and 3 are confusing what is, with what you perceive it to be. The vague arm waving at "active discrimination" isn't borne out in reality. Go and sit in a lecture theatre at the beginning of a computing degree in Sept/Oct - you'll find the rooms filled mostly with men. When I did it? There were around 300 of us in that theatre. I could count the number of women on one hand.
Your first point 4 is itself just nonsense as it is again ignoring the root cause of why there aren't women applying for roles in the industry. You are effectively saying there aren't women in IT because they aren't applying and leaving it at that. Just like the other commenters on this page who say "well, if they don't apply to run a session its their own fault" effectively. It is myopic and just you projecting your own fear of an actual level playing field.
Your second point 4 is factually and demonstrably false. Start at younger ages - girls were not encouraged to look at IT at all until the last few years. STEM has only been pushed more strongly with girls in the last 10 years or so.
And yes, the goalposts WILL need to keep moving, until the industry is representative of the demographics of the societies we live in. Without it, we end up with biased technology being produced as the people making it do not have the wide experience needed to cover everyone who may use it. Just look at facial recognition and how well that works for black people...
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