I have the solution
Give the contract to Capita.
I'm sure that'll work out fine.
16643 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
I went to check them out.
The most interesting thing I find is that there isn't a dollar quote anywhere to be seen.
You get a boatload of MSU ranges and corresponding AWLC percentage reductions (could somebody translate that into English ?), but after skimming over the blah blah I couldn't for the life of me tell you how much one would cost.
Of course, I'm sure a call to my nearest friendly IBM salesperson would guarantee a quote and a nice monthly charge in the blink of an eye.
The problem is not with voluntary data submission. If I choose to activate 2FA then I provide my phone number, that's my choice.
The problem is with all the tracking that done without consent. The fact that ad agencies are basically finding out who you are as soon as you connect, and they're following you all the way whether you like it or not.
I use Firefox with NoScript and uBlock Origin, or Brave. I like to think that I'm rather invisible to ad companies, until I actually make a purchase somewhere. I like to think that, but I'm not sure.
I would like to be sure.
That is a high claim.
The only thing that is secure by default is a safe hidden in a salt mine behind a camouflaged brick wall that nobody knows is there and everyone involved in making it happen has been brought to a pit in another country and shot.
And those that did the shooting were brought to a pit in another country and shot.
Then the person having orchestrated all this took a poison pill and died.
THAT is secure by default.
The rest is just guardrails surfing on hope.
Is this going to improve the various Telecom provider's incentive to update their customers' equipment ?
Because you're not using Android on your phone, you're using your provider's version of Android on your phone.
So, if this means that your provider is going to improve on getting Android updates out to its customers, I'm all for it.
Not really.
You're making the mistake of thinking that Democracy is a thing in Russia.
Democracy is a puppet, and Putin is the puppetmaster. Successful political figures running against Putin have a tendancy of disappearing, so voting for them is not really an option.
Putin leaves the cretins that have no chance to justify his rigging of the electoral landscape. You don't need to rig the votes if you've taken care of all serious claims to your power.
And don't forget that Putin has changed the Russian Constitution to basically ensure he can stay in power as long as he wants (aka until he dies).
So, the only real vote against Putin is a bullet to his brain. The rest is just theatre.
Well, in all honesty, a drone is going to have a spot of trouble finding (let alone taking down) a botnet with only its cameras.
We recently read about a 176-billion-parameter pseudo-AI, now we have a 540-billion-parameter pseudo-AI. I'm guessing it's supposed to be better. It's also likely to need all of SAP's engineers to set those parameters.
So, who's going to invent the trillion-parameter AI ? And which country is going to devote all of its population to configuring it ?
Shouldn't be long now . . .
I once had a very good surprise from my bank. Having ordered some work in my bathroom, when it came time to pay the bill I made a bank transfer of a few thousand euros. It was on a Saturday.
Not really a habit.
The following Monday, I got a call from my bank. The person confirmed my identity, then asked me about the transfer. I explained the situation and, at the question "so you do authorize the transfer ?" I answered yes, I very much did because the artisan deserved being paid for his work.
THAT is fraud prevention.
I like my bank.
Well, let's make one thing clear : if the porn industry does not adopt the concept, it is dead in the water.
Porn is what has made the Internet as useful as it is.
Porn is the reason why you can purchase stuff on web sites.
Porn pushed all it could to get that to happen because it was in its interest to have people buying anonymously.
So, if porn finds this metaverse thing interesting, it will happen, otherwise, it won't because nobody else has the incentive to make it work.
Accountability ?
For the CEO of a multinational multi-billion dollar behemoth ?
Has Apotheker been sanctioned for his shameful dealings in acquiring Autonomy ?
Do these "critics" understand how the world works these days ?
This kind of thing can still be necessary.
I like using recursive functions, whenever possible. It seems quite elegant to me, but I have learned that said elegance comes at a price.
For example, if you need to search and replace a given character in a string of characters (for export to csv reasons, for example), if you have to write your own s&r function for whatever reason, you'd better be sure that the original string isn't too long and that there aren't too many occurences.
Otherwise, your code will crash with a memory overflow error due to the amount of instances of the recursive function.
In that case, there's no choice but to deal with a loop function and handle everything in one instance.
It's a bummer, but it works.
Every time I gave a training course in LotusScript or VBA, the last day I had a session on commenting your code.
I tried to drill in my students' head the fact that you do not write a comment that repeats what the code is saying. Anyone who can read code does not need a comment like "Test for zero".
I tried to show them that code commenting is "If there is no label, then <something> ".
Of course, I have no idea how successful I've been, but I've tried.
Given that there is always a government somewhere that is funding the terrorists, in the broad view you are right.
However, there's a fair chance that it is not your govenment that is funding terrorists, so you are also wrong.
Unless you're in Russia, in which case you do not say such things because, if you do, you're the terrorist.
Which, of course, have nothing to do with the innapropriate and undue influence of Amazon managers going around and hinting forcefully that unionising would entail a pink slip.
It's about time that Ronald Reagan's legacy on this point dies a final death. A direct relationship ? There is no such thing. On the one hand, there is the company, with its HR department and protocols and procedures. On the other hand, there is one employee. There is no such thing as equality in this scenario.
A union is required to ensure that HR cannot unduly impress the employee with falsehoods to keep said employee quiet and obedient. But of course, that means the employee will have support to have his rights enforced, and that means money.
So, obviously, Bezos does not agree even though he has enough money to double the salary of all his employees and he wouldn't even notice.
First of all, wind turbines are not critical energy generation thingies - they're a welcome accessory, when they work, that is. Second, wind turbines have trouble spontaneously blowing up, and even more trouble irradiating the countryside.
The worst that can happen is that they lose their blades, and that would still be a local incident with a drop in production. Maybe the support could be damaged as well, but replacing a wind turbine is a sight easier than replacing a gas generator (let's not even think about replacing a nuclear power plant).
So, all in all, a single data line just might be an acceptable choice.
Besides, your dual backhaul would have been just as screwed if they had the same routers on both lines. And don't tell me that they wouldn't. The beancounters would not allow a more costly solution.
Okay, that right there automatically makes my BS-ometer tingle in the red.
You take it very seriously and spent more than a year in investigation when your own internal manual says two weeks is the allotted time ?
That's really taking things seriously for sure.
I thank God I don't work in such crappy companies.
Yeah, except when it isn't.
Having your crown jewels hacked and stolen makes for some very sloppy internal procedures when you are indeed "supposed" to be secure at all levels.
That's easy.
How about blaming supply line management and the (entirely home-grown) drive for the past two decades to not have any storage ?
Storage costs money, eh ? Well no storage has cost even more this time around.
I think we're going to go back to a time where storage was of more importance, and the supply chain will sort itself out.
Yep. I'm a freelance.
But no, I'm not being treated differently from the regular employees. They've all been corralled back in as well.
I'm waiting to see how this is going to play out in the long run. I've asked some pointed questions to the Helpdesk guys in every company I work in, and they've all answered pretty much the same thing : the technical side is ready to rock if remote work is once again required (which is, in retrospect, pretty obvious - they're not going to undo all that they have achieved only to have to do it all over again, duh).
So I'm just wondering if there is going to be some movement on the employee side. That said, even if there is some sort of protest from the employees, there's a good chance I won't benefit from it anyway. I'm just a consultant. My contract is that I'm there to do a job.