Posts by Tzhx 34 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Oct 2013
Just my luck.... stuff I use and would like to keep using, whenever it's down for a "small number of users", I'm somehow in that small number.
And whenever I'd rather have the excuse that "oh that pile of shit is broken so I'll just work on what I think is most important"... Jira continues to be there with it's horrific interface and tedious ceremonies.
This... doesn't seem like the best idea.
The reason many people would want code signing is to either:
- get past the additional prompt that warns users of some OS's that applications are unsigned; or
- get past organisation restrictions that prevent running unsigned code
Making this more accessible is great for small businesses, but I don't think it makes up for making it more accessible/free for the malware/scamware market where the users they're going to trick who might have thought twice about a warning (or not have permission to get past it) aren't going to go and audit the certificate/signing record of everything "bob from accounting" has sent them and asked them to run to verify their timesheets.
> In my experience, subject knowledge doesn't correlate very well with teaching ability.
I think anyone who's experienced 2020 as a parent can agree with that. I'm no math whiz, but I can do the stuff they ask of my 5 year old. No ####ing clue how to explain it to her. Teaching (at any level) is a distinct skill set, and I think many lecturers at Universities get away with not being particularly good teachers because their learners are already motivated and engaged in the subject area.
Some years ago I worked for a research group in one of the major universities in the UK; and it was clear many thought of teaching undergraduates as a necessary stepping stone to a research career, not as a vocation for itself.
PEBCAK.
Running something mission-critical from a laptop is a dumb thing to do. Not being aware that a delay of 15 minutes would cause you to forfeit the game is a dumb mistake.
The blame here doesn't rest on Windows. It rests on a) the manager, b) the person responsible for the IT.
>> I think it's more that they lose track of the number of licences currently installed
Sadly, I think it's really, really not.
I've worked with academics have a misguided opinion that everything they do is "fair use" because it's "for the greater good". I've worked on projects that won't pay for things because they can get away with not doing so (e.g. they've got an installer from somewhere like an old MSDN subscription that just works). There may be a small amount of Windows or Office licenses where they've lost track, but what MS/Oracle are going after is clearly unlicensed installs of things like SQL Server / Windows Server where -- if you've got a box running, it should be fairly easy to determine if you've paid for it.
It occurs to me that, for busses at least, it might be more efficient to have two come along at once, and hope that they only have to stop at every other stop, then come along twice as often but stop at every stop. This only works where busses are every ten minutes or so, though, rather than every 30 minutes / an hour.
>> "Since 2000 I have seen an estimated 75% drop in sales and income. I have no doubt whatsoever that the well-known practice of downloading from pirate sites is the cause."
I'd think for the great majority of artists, still getting 25% of the income they got 15 years ago when their music may have been slightly popular would be welcomed. When do you think the last time someone bought a Eifel 65 or New Radicals album at HMV was? Piracy may be contributing some amount, but unless you're Michael Jackson it's probably not the only cause of such a drop.
How much money does the BBC make selling their tat overseas? How much of that is re-invested / set against the costs of making the programmes vs. sent to line pockets of the Trust and their friends? I think probably not a lot, since every time there's a FOI request on that issue they avoid it saying it's "not a public affair".
I don't consume a lot of BBC content. I don't like that I have to pay such a (relatively to me) high price for it. I don't give two flying pigs or a masturbating monkey who killed Lucy Beale. Scrap the license fee, and for the two or so hours of BBC content that I do watch, I can just fast forward through the adverts like I do for everything else on TV.
It may be because I'm an uneducated Brit unfamiliar with American ways, but why would your cable or telephone provider need to know you social security number or your driving license number?
Virgin Media (cable) and O2 (phone) don't ask me for those sorts of details in the UK -- and both of those are just brands of foreign companies.
Well, the article title says MS will do it even if we won't, and they allegedly have previous for updating some things without the users permission.
http://www.informationweek.com/microsoft-updates-windows-without-user-permission-apologizes/d/d-id/1059183?
Also, my concern was more along the lines of, in most places there is a difference between the person developing the application and the person managing the server. In shops where products last five, six, seven years and staff typically don't last that long, there's no way for a server owner to know what a patch might just disable / break under the broad "security fixes" heading without having knowledge of the code for all the products in their care -- which while it may be ideal is an unrealistic expectation to have.
So, does this mean that even if you don't install the updates on your server, this will still happen?
Not that I use this feature, but it sets a worrying precedent and nightmare for giving any sort of low-cost long-term support for "complete" projects if Redmond will just deprecate things as security holes are found in them.
In article:
>> The hacktivist collective has disassociated itself from Lizard Squads' antics a Twittering rep saying it gave "zero fuck" about the former's assault on the Sony Network. ®
What they said:
>> @jaylanjones1231 We give Zero Fucks @LizardSquad party on dudes.
They seem to be encouraging Lizard Squad
Searching CWJobs for 'COBOL' returns around 10 positions. Most of them either high-level or short-term contract. Searching for JCL returned 0.
Searching for C#, you get over a thousand.
Not really surprising people aren't being attracted to it, so picking a few of your new batch of Java or .Net bodies is probably the only way to get people into this field.
Which is a little sad. I'd quite like to go back to COBOL / IBM mainframes -- but #### me if I'm going to apply to be a Java or C# developer.
So, this basically says that Facebook can reverse your password? My understanding was that for 'good security', and Zuckerberg being the "elite hacker-type" the media portrays him as we shouldn't have anything less, the password hashing / salting should not be reversible.
I like how the spell-checker in Firefox suggests 'Cocksucker' as a correction for 'Zuckerberg'. Unhappy former employee, perhaps?
Maybe LibreOffice is getting better at playing catch up, but it's still playing catch up. It's targeting the same market as Word, so develops the same features. For Mr Stross (who I'm sure it's been mentioned is a *nix user anyway), I can't imagine LibreOffice is any better than Word. And for the people who want to do what Word is meant to do, Word is still the best in the market.
There's really not any point expecting a serious competitor for the mass-market word processor, because it's just not feasible for a small company to compete with MS -- and if they did any good at it they'd be bought up by Google or Sun or MS themselves to improve their products.
Microsoft changed their default formats to a much more readable, XML-based "Office Open XML" format with their 2007 releases. Since he complains about the ribbon, Mr Stross is surely aware of it, yet still complains about the old file format. Does he complain about the data transfer rate of using 90min cassette tapes as well?
Word is not without its problems, but it's not intended to be something to fuel your imagination. It's meant to let you type stuff and format it with the minimum of fuss -- which in fairness, it does. For a generic word processor, it is by far the best-in-class -- as are Excel and PowerPoint.
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