Posts by yeah, right. 639 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Apr 2007
One of the posts above got me thinking. If the UK gov "loses" data on everyone in the country, that means they can do lots of scaremongering about ID theft and the likes. Then they could sell a "National (Anti-)ID(theft)" card to all those scared-silly punters that they claim will make ID theft a lot less likely. There are probably enough stupid people in the UK today to perhaps make such a scheme work.
Because in the USA, "arms" has been determined to mean "firearms". So whereas it's probably legal to give 8 year olds functioning semi-automatics to take to school for "self defence", it's illegal to carry any weapons that do not create profit for the American weapon makers each time they are used.
Be interesting (although probably not possible) to determine who first put said game onto the p2p network in the first place. They stand to make a lot more money by abusing copyright law than by creating a good product in the first place.
Of course, can they prove that the IP address is associated to an individual? Or is it automatically "guilty by association" for the owner of that IP now?
it's because many of the good ones left in disgust (or refuse to join) a system of idiot bureaucrats who are more and more is taking decisions about education away from those most qualified to make them, and instead treating the teachers simply as replaceable resources to be blamed for everything but not given the authority to change anything?
Just perhaps?
As usual, their EULA allows them to change their minds at any time, without going through the usual "legal contract" rigamarole of offer-acceptance-consideration. So although they've now graciously allowed you to do what you can do with other products, there's no guarantee they won't change their mind once they have used their monopoly to yet again crush any competition.
Avoid the hassle. Don't allow yourself to get locked in.
One sets out and implements a working solution to an IT problem. One applies standard engineering principles (Yes stu, not all "computer science" folks fail to understand them) to the design, implementation and support of said solution. One applies standard business principles (because those have been studied and applied as well) to issues surrounding the solution, including return on investment and ensuring that the solution resolves the business need it is supposed to solve.
In other words, one creates a solution that works.
One is then told to change the solution by some muppet in management who thinks he knows IT because he once wrote a spreadsheet. Protests that proposed solution will fail go unheard, because protests through the management chain are intercepted by lying, self-serving managers, and protests outside the management chain are simply ignored. Like most managers, this is one who got their job because they lie, cheat and steal with impunity and gets lots of practice because that's what management does. Unfortunately, you don't get much practice lying, cheating and stealing in IT, because computers can't be lied to, cheated or stolen from.
Solution breaks. IT guy gets blamed, not the fucking asshole manager who ordered the mess in the first place, or the illiterate butt-kissing sycophantic accountants or salespeople who usually populate the management layers of IT.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Which is why I work for myself now, so that I can simply ignore these lying scumbags if they decide to screw around with what works. Dilbert isn't just a cartoon, and the pointy-haired boss isn't an oddity, it's the standard.
So if there's an IT problem, don't blame the people working in IT. Look at the management, because that's invariably those who created the problem in the first place, and it is invariably that class of creature that perpetuates the problem.
But they're really good at deflecting blame.
Apart from a new noteworthy cases, the coppers are too busy arresting photographers and shooting innocent techs to be bothered with actually finding and arresting those committing crimes. Even if they did bust their arses to find and arrest these people, the CPS (or the American equivalent) would just refuse to prosecute, preferring instead to spend court time on that evil tv tax evader.
So don't expect any help from the "Justice" system. Need to find some way to use the so-called "anti-terrorism" laws (available in a western country near you) against them. THEN we'll see some action, but only if the malware authors have brown skin.
Actually, the western press has been doing this type of uncontrolled "conviction by unsubstantiated allegations" for decades. Given this large amount of precedent, it's not surprising that the police are now getting involved with it in a more organized way. After all, if it's good enough for the press, surely it's good enough for the state? This is not a new thing at all. It's just the next step in a logical sequence towards the destruction of the rule of law.
Yep. Yet again unethical and potentially illegal behaviour wins the day. I guess dealing with MS is like dealing with a lethal virus. You know it has no morals, it's expensive to deal with, it's sometimes useful for thinning down the competition, and you hope like hell it doesn't turn on you.
I guess you really CAN buy off the ISO. So much for the relevance of that organization in setting standards anymore. Now anyone with a brain is going to just look at the ISO stamp of approval on a standard and wonder who paid how much to get it approved. I know I will.
This and the OOXML appeals being rejected make this industry watcher fervently wish that there were, in fact, many more terrorists than currently imagined by the incipient police states of USA and UK. Then there might be a better chance of having certain corporations wiped off the face of the map.
Then I wake up, and realize that people are still sheep, and it doesn't matter anyway.
Right, go ahead, try to change a culture that treats women as property they have to bribe someone to take. Of course, those people hide their misogyny behind wails of "religious freedom", so it's unlikely to change unless you do us all a favour and first remove that overused excuse.
While you're at it, there's a few countries just west of there that wrap their women in cloth bags because they're ashamed of them. You could try changing that culture too?
And, since you're doing all that, you might try putting a hat on a snowball so that it'll last for hours in an operating blast furnace.
I say let the bastards do it to themselves. Perhaps with less women available, they'll finally get a handle on their population problem? Hey, if they can be convinced to war with each other for the few remaining women, maybe they can even bring down the population. Never underestimate the types of behaviour that evolution will find in order to ensure survival of the species.
Perhaps now these "security" people will pay more attention to what they do in day-to-day life, rather than just telling others what they should do? I mean, come on, using gmail if you're at all interested in security? They deserved to be cracked just for that. People in a field should apply what they know, or risk being caught out.
And people still want to use this crap? OK, if you have thousands invested in MS only software, I can see that, and will try to mitigate. But new installs? Gimme a break. If they can't keep it working for world-can-see-you events like the Olympics and product demos at international press conferences, what's the likelihood of keeping it running for a business that really depends on it? Answer, in my experience, is zero.
Bill, because he's managed to convince people that being unreliable is ok.
Adobe doesn't have a monopoly they repeatedly leverage in order to force others out of related markets. Microsoft, on the other hand, has done so repeatedly for the last 3 decades.
Silverlight is more of the same from Microsoft. Embrace, extend, extinguish. Microsoft is not in the business of creating cross-platform open standards that anyone can use. Microsoft is in the business of foisting off sub-standard crap down gullible peoples throats, then shutting down any competition that raises its head.
They'll give the gullible fools enough rope, use their monopoly to make sure nobody else can compete, then cut everyone off at the knees - with great profits for Microsoft. It's illegal, it's immoral, yet they've been getting away with it for almost 30 years.
Don't fall for their latest trick. Avoid Silverlight. Avoid Mono. Avoid anything that Microsoft wants you to use, because it's just bait to destroy your company, or at the very least suck as much money out of it as they can. Whether they provide anything in return or not.
a plugin that automatically adds "-wikipedia" to all my searches.
Quite frankly, it's a pile of crap. This latest Byrne thing is nothing more than Wikipedia and its overlords deliberately and with malice using Wikipedia to libel Byrne. Stuff like this makes me want to stuff a used toilet brush down the throats of anyone who uses Wikipedia for anything. It's like Fox news, but without the integrity.
I wonder if this is the same manager who was told he had to have the report ready the day he returned from holiday, so he was forced to take his work with him? The same manager, perhaps, who was never told about the availability of encryption software to keep things safe and was told that "locking the laptop" would be sufficient, because the board of governors were too damn cheap to pony up for proper data security?
Yes, leaving the laptop in the car was stupid. But I still smell "scapegoat".
You're only subject to the whims of US Customs and Immigration if you actually bother to travel that that pit of lies. Personally, I'd have to be extraordinarily rendered before I'll ever go there again.
There is nothing in the US that can't be had elsewhere either better quality or better price. Often both. Leave the US to the Americans, go visit the real world.
Ah yes, the "head in the sand" approach to security. If we don't allow ourselves to see it, then it doesn't exist. Besides, the sales rep said it was secure, what does a pesky researcher know about such things?
Surprised he hasn't contacted Sirit yet. Or has he tried to contact them and been forwarded to their sales and marketing department, who reassured him that his research was incorrect since they have assured their customers that it's completely secure?
Why is the person who put that unencrypted data on the computer not in jail? Why is their manager not in jail? Why is the CEO of that company not in jail for allowing the company to have policies where this sort of thing is done?
Oh, right, because they have the right Washington connections, and privacy, along with anything else, is easily bought and sold in the USA. It'll get swept under the rug and quickly forgotten, with nobody getting even a minor slap on the wrist so that when the next one does it they can claim "there's no precedent".
Idiots.
Tell any company in the USA that wants my time to fuck off. I've done so before, and now I have yet another reason to do so again. If they want me to work for them, they'll deal with me outside the USA. No way in hell am I travelling to that increasingly fascist state that is proving yet again it has no respect for "due process".
7 years they find nothing, have to settle a lawsuit for having suggested that someone else was responsible, then claim they were "about to charge" someone who very conveniently dies. Now they don't have to provide any evidence, and they don't have to lose yet another lawsuit when they heap all the responsibility on this now-dead person.
Too damn convenient by half.
I mean, really? Is anyone actually surprised that the Chinese (or ANY government for that matter) isn't keeping promises? Any promise by a government is worth exactly nothing, because there is no enforcement possible if they renege.
The Olympics are a scam, designed to suck money out of taxpayers and funnel them to the IOC and their friends. Anyone making promises with regards to that scam really should not be trusted.
Insurance companies will do ANYTHING to avoid having to pay out on insurance policies. Even trumping up fake evidence that someone faked their death.
That's what they get paid to do. Make unfounded accusations of fraud in order to delay as long as possible having to pay anything out on insurance polices that people purchased in good faith.
Insurance companies are scum.
Step one: sell a product at a decent price such that people don't look too closely at the real pitfalls to buying that product.
step two: make sure customers become dependent on said product, while making sure that they are still dependent on company for support. Do this by making the product so insanely complex and poorly designed they'll have to call for help if something goes wrong.
step three: jack up prices to just under the level that it would cost for businesses to switch applications. Screw the businesses who have become dependent on you, your profit is much more important than their bottom line.
step four: watch a competitor come in with step one.
Pity someone was (a) granted a patent for cars using nicad, (b) that said patent is controlled by GM and (c) that they aren't licensing it or allowing it to be used to others, instead sitting on the tech doing nothing with it.
(http://www.ev1.org/chevron.htm). Lithium-ion has a long way to go still.
Of course. The "quarter to quarter" reaction to appease the all-powerful stockholders. To the detriment of the product, the long term prospects of the company, and of course the employees who actually built said company. Meanwhile, the execs keep getting their multi-million bonuses. I sense a complete disconnect there between "authority" and "responsibility".
I guess "The Corporation" pseudo-documentary was right when they said that the modern corporation, as a "individual", is clinically a psychopath. I wonder how long people are going to put up with being used, abused and tossed out before the revolution comes (again)? Or are we just so many well trained sheep by now that people think this type of behaviour is completely acceptable?
If recovering access to the system was as easy as some people here seem to think, I'm pretty sure they would have done it by now, if only to avoid the embarrassment. So it seems he has truly managed to secure the network that was under his control. He'll probably serve time for tell overpaid idiots to go fuck themselves, but I'm guessing he'll have a job when he gets out, if not before.
Tar and feather is too good for them. Let's make the tar boiling hot, and let's sharpen the feathers and stick them in.
I'm starting to see a need for encrypted communication between my browser and ALL websites I visit. SSL all the way. Not impossible to break, but at least it puts a pause on the deep packet inspection. Speaking of which, isn't that considered an illegal interception of communications these days?
I guess I fall into the category of "apple fan", having three of the damn things at home. Of course, since they went to Intel it's just not been the same.
That said, I find this kind of business practice should see the company heavily fined and the person responsible taken out back and introduced to a cattle prod. It's just not on.
Yea, sure, Opera. Take what they give you and no more. The company that fought tooth and nail against advertising blocking (thanks AdBlock), and still didn't get it right the last time I tried it (4 months ago). The organization that, as far as I could tell during my short trial won't let me turn off javascript on a per-page basis (thanks NoScript). The browser that doesn't last 4 minutes on my system before crashing.
Firefox might suck and have a long way to go, but at least it has a well developed add-on mechanism to get me over the sucky bits. I feel sorry for the few developers who got stymied by the new version, but most of the stuff I use worked right away so it seems to have been possible to do it right at least.
Don't they know that privatization ALWAYS leads to everything being better and rosier and more efficient and cheaper and better? How dare they insinuate that government (by the people, for the people) involvement might actually have benefits for the people governed? How dare they interfere with the god-given right of corporations to screw the people so long as there is a profit to be made?
It's just un-American I say! Ban California!
Uptime, according to Microsoft, is the time between mandatory reboots. But because you know a few seconds ahead of time that the system is going to be unavailable, they don't count it as "not up".
Which is, of course, utter bollocks.
I wonder if they're using the same lying scumbag redefinition of "uptime" in this latest glorious announcement?
You write: "getting a perfectly decent Windows Mobile smartphone"...
I for one would not put "decent" and "Windows Mobile" in the same line.
That said, your losers lineup is interesting, but each one seems to do only bits and pieces of what the iPhone is capable of. Not that I'll be getting an iPhone, as I'm currently in Canada and, well, the Canadian mobile companies take major prizes in the ripoff sweepstakes.
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