Posts by a_yank_lurker 4139 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Nov 2013
A major problem with many is ideas is the hype machine gets a hold of them while they are still in the early development. I am not familiar with uBeam and their idea but it sounds like it is not ready for commercial release. It may prove to be an idea that sounds good on paper but will not be a market success even if it works reasonable well.
The hype machine is looking for the next major financial windfall but is badly underestimating the difficulties of bring a product to market.
Cameras do not lie, they record what happens without any prejudice. Police cameras are probably more like instant replay in sports. More often than not the replay verifies the officials made the correct call and this often happens with the police. With a camera, you have the classic he said/she said with a twist; an impartial third party.
The rise in murders in the US is not uniform. Some areas are getting hit much harder; areas that historically have had miserable police-people relations. The distrust is caused by the local Stasi playing minor league Himmler.
I saw were someone noted colleges students prefer real text books over e-books for some of their courses, usually major or key prereqs. There is something to be said to paying attention to the lecture and taking notes by hand versus the potential distractions of a tablet or laptop.
I saw an article about the funding of Theranos recently (forget where). It turns out they were funded by VC firms who had no experience in pharmaceuticals or the medical field. So the question to the VC firms is do you understand the industry the company you are funding is in. If not, pass or you will get deservedly hosed.
Also, too many fail to understand that many laws are one the books to even the playing field between the average consumer and the company. The assumption is the consumer can not be an expert at all areas of life. This particularly true in medicine and insurance.
The ferals have not learned that mass surveillance is a waste of time and effort. They need to learn traffic analysis and they might actually do some good. But given the ferals are more interested in playing Stasi than actually doing something useful they will lie about the effectiveness of their mass surveillance.
The real issue for any business is customer trust. If customers do not trust your organization you will not be in business very long. In the case of Slurp, there was a time when many trusted them. However, too many actions have convinces many to avoid Slurp as much as possible. The numbers are going and are threatening to reach a tipping point where Slurp is toast. The fact many have abandoned Slurp means that there are many who are very aware of the transition problems and the solutions.
How many users know how to get the BIOS/UEFI at start up? This type of screw up makes one trust Slurp even less. I have seen something similar with a dual boot laptop (W8.1/Linux Mint) after a Winbloat update reset the UEFI settings which disabled the dual boot. Easy to fix if one knows how but not something I expect must users to have a clue about. Nor should they need to have a clue in their defence.
BYO is a problem but the point is much broader. Does the organization have good control of their network and good access control. If not, the data will be gobbled up by someone. Also, do not assume size matters. The Target breach of a couple of years ago was blamed on a vendor who had network credentials that got hacked. It was really mostly Target's incompetence.
The point is that one can craft a worm that hops from PLC to PLC without needing to go through a PC. It's called proof of concept. Now how vulnerable specific installations and PLCs are is another question. Thus the actual risk varies from complete disaster to almost invulnerable for a specific installation.
Businesses need controls to prevent unauthorized software from being installed. If a version is marketed to businesses then it must come with those tools. Slurp seems to be slowly committing suicide by alienating large user segments.
I am waiting for a similar announcement for the enterprise and education versions.
If they it was Cobol or something as ancient they I would say they definitely have something. Java is still active but I could see some PHB refusing the money to update some ~2000 Java code which is using some deprecated features that runs erratically at best on Java 8.
Close support is a mission the Air Fraud generals hate because it reminds them they exist to protect the army and navy. It and air superiority are the only two missions that ever mattered. Strategic bombing w/o nukes has been very expensive and not particularly effective.
<snark> It does not matter the country, air fraud general is a synonym for traitor.</snark>
I am dubious of the statistics as there seems to a lot of noise and sloppy methodology. I tend to pay attention to what Slurp says or not says as my guide to how well Winbloat 10 is doing. At this point in time it is likely there is a natural drop off of installations. The initial blush is over. Most of the installs going forward will be new kit which is not doing well for anyone. Slurp is not been strutting like a hyper-caffeinated peacock which likely means they are nervous.
Another one who appears to be running for Congress, certainly dumb enough. As my nickname implies I am in the US and we do not have a true national ID but 50 local ones (your state driver's license/state ID card); if you bother to have one. Neither are absolutely mandatory
The theory has been tried and found rather wanting. The real issue is suing in a carefully selected court is not justice. There are two basic solutions to the judge shopping: all cases must be filed in the defendant's district court or the case is filed, then randomly assigned to any district court. The first says you sue in the defendant's home turf and then must convince the judge that a change of venue is required (not likely). The second says the case is filed in your local district court but it may be assigned to any court in the country with no change of venue allowed.
Following up on Kodak and film, the first digital cameras could not provide images as good as film. But in many instances even then they were superior. Digital technology was posed to rapidly improve to now digital images are often better than film.
As a parallel, several camera manufacturers jumped into the digital camera market and successfully transitioned. Nikon and Canon are still going strong especially with their DSLRs.
These two yahoos are well beyond Congress critter levels of stupidity. The problem that everyone is concerned about is the insecure wifi/bluetooth/etc. rf connections in many cars not owners modifying the code. The correct solution is for the automakers to fix the security issues not to pass an idiot law that even the dimmest Congress critter would run from.
To extend Mark Twain - God created idiots for practice, then He created school boards - still for practice, then perfection of stupidity God create the Michigan legislature. I think Mark would approve.
It seems like the feral courts are attempting to declare war on anybody and everybody maybe they need to read a musty old document called the Constitution. But the feral shysters are not a very bright lot and suffer from reading comprehension problems (more like outright illiteracy) so the bit about only Congress can declare war might not be understood.
Also, this stupidity allows, if adopted, everyone else to do the same thing because the ferals set a precedent.
@Hans 1 - It looks like a Wally World run or check Amazon. Given the Wally World clientele is generally not interested in IoT and Amazon seems to carry about everything one might find a basic scale with no connectivity.
I HATE IoT, imbecilic marketing featuritis that has almost no real benefit except to fleece one of their hard-earned money
Since the ad is using my bandwidth and using my kit to be seen it is a guest on my kit. If the ad industry acted like they are guests on users' kit they might not have a the problem they are facing. I suspect most posters on El-Reg use ad-blockers but are not vehemently anti-advertising. What many object to is ramming Flash and script ads that often contain malware down our throats. Hence, the nuclear option of total ad-blocking. The lack of ethics is with the ad industry, clean up your act first, then we will consider removing ad-blockers, etc.
Maybe, more likely the plant is relying on a couple things: air gap between systems and that the two systems are likely incompatible. Also, the hardware may not have such modern conveniences such as a USB port because it did not exist when it was built and never added. Thus, Windows malware is not likely to be a factor.
With the felon and the loon for the donkeys it is arguable there could be a worse choice than the blowhard or the dwarves the elephants are likely to serve up. This election looks to be one which slime makes one less ill. (Note I am not a donkey or elephant I think they both essentially the same crass, mouthy liars).
As a market matures it is more difficult to sell kit to customers. The market is basically at a steady state in terms of total users and most sales will be to either your customers or your competitors customers. Sales growth will be driven by effective marketing and pricing. Margins will shrink and their maintenance will by careful inventory and manufacturing.
The question for Apple, Samsung, etc. is can they properly manage the transition and remain reasonably profitable. A question which really asks to the leaders have a real clue.
As Bumpy Cat noted, in the US companies are registered in a specific state, often Delaware, and can do business through the US. The issue for most Yanks trying to keep from being fleeced by the IRS are related thieves is how to structure the business entities so most of the money is safely out of reach. There are a few legal if morally suspect methods that are well known in the US. Using a Panamanian shyster house would not normally make sense since the various Caribbean islands are a short flight away and would make a nice working vacation.
What the journos find is not a criminal case. That can only be brought by the relevant governments. It is more likely the criminal cases will turn on relatively obscure and arcane points of tax and business law. Stuff that rarely makes a sexy headline, the menage a trois involving Elton John sells better.
To paraphrase, Slurp's marketing mantra is "Marketing, who needs no stinkin' Marketing?" Consumers have options and are more aware of what the options mean personally. Chromebooks are readily available on this side of the pond in Walmart and Best Buys along side Slurp based kit. So there appears to be reasonable consumer demand for them.
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