Posts by Pascal Monett 16741 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
Sorry to disagree, but the Internet has been violent ever since the plebs have had a connection.
Remeber Swatting ? That didn't happen last month.
When it was only academia that had access, sure, it was a lot more civil, but then the hoi-polloi got on the bandwagon and ever since the first XBox we've has 12-year-olds threatening everyone else's mothers.
Violence on the Internet is hardly a new thing.
I've never seen much tolerance of other people on the Internet, to be frank.
Sure, there are some commentors in these hallowed pages who are generally an example of how everyone should behave, but they are not enough to hide the ugly selfishness of many.
Still, El Reg is the only place I go read the comments, so that's saying something.
I agree.
I don't like being hounded, but if you are too stupid to respect the security distance, it's your fault if I have to brake suddenly.
I won't brake for no reason, I don't want my car damaged, but I'm not going to pay attention to you if I have no choice. You'll hash it out with the police.
Indeed, that is quite obvious. My consultation fees are also higher than my costs. Duh.
But I do not take 45% of my customer's revenue if the project goes well. Lawyers, in some cases (class action) take the lion's share of the rewards - and they aren't the ones who were wronged in the first place.
That is totally unacceptable.
But hey, it's the American Way !
That simple notion is everything that is wrong with the legal system.
You want to make millions ? Invest in buildings, or work the stock market, but leave the courts alone.
It is simply unacceptable that establishing justice should be a source of insane profit for anyone. The only person/entity who should derive any "profit" from a court case is the one who has been found Not Guilty. That person/entity is entitled to not bear any of the costs of the trial, and be reimbursed of all damages incurred.
Lawyers are paid by the hour, period.
Ever since Office 2010 I have had a message when I open Office documents not from my organization. It says that the file is open in Read-Only mode and I have to click some button to make it editable and run macros.
Is this some special hack done by the network admin ? Policy or something ?
Because, as far as I can see, the protection is already in place. Does this message have nothing to do with macros then ? I don't see how that would be logical.
Then again, this is Borkzilla after all. Logic is not it's strong point.
We might be able to hammer out the issues in the next decade or so, because we definitely didn't give anything any thought when we decided we wanted to leave.
But we've taken back control, and that's the most important. Right ?
"the purpose of cookies is to gather personal information – and doing so allowed Facebook to serve custom ads in Australia"
I'll bet the legal department at FaceBook HQ is kicking themselves over that right now.
Heh. Good on the judges. I hope a massive fine will ensue.
That is interesting. I know nothing about server loads in the Cloud, but I'm guessing that they're more hammered than many on-premise company servers. Does that have a real impact on hardware life ?
I mean, sure, the disks will need replacing every now and then, but that depends on the disk, not on an arbitrarily-determined lifespan record. I've just bought a few 8TB NAS discs for my Synology. They are guaranteed for the EU-standard 2 years. They will likely have a much longer useful life, but they're spinning rust. I will use them until they fail, not until the warranty runs out.
So five years for a server, why ? CPU and architecture progress has slowed to a crawl, and I seriously doubt the newest USB protocol is a requirement for a server.
So, if you replace the disks when they fail, why throw out a motherboard if it's still working ? It's not like a CPU slows down over time, its cycles don't wear out like batteries.
So why set an arbitrary limit of five years for kit that could well do double that ?
Then what is the point ?
The digital form of my EUR currency is my credit card, and it is converted into cash every time I go visit an ATM.
Why this dogged determination to invent a new digital version of money you already have ?
There has to be a sane reason somewhere. Maybe not a good one, but a sane one.
Because this is insane.
You don't need to invent an entirely new money scheme if the only goal is allow micropayments or money transfers. Just make your credit card and your banking portals handle that with the money you've already got.
How am I supposed to give any credit to an industry where this kind of shenanigans is going on ?
They have just proven that Ethereum is actually just whatever they want it to be. It's certainly not a monetary value of any reality.
When any idiot with a keyboard can create a new brand of funny money you don't have a market, you have a clown act.
But you keep on Sticking it to The Man.
<mutter> <mutter> damn fools <mutter>
A lobby group blatantly created for Big Tech interests. How these people manage to look themselves in the mirror in the morning is beyond me. No doubt a large infusion of cash is putting their conscience to sleep (supposing they ever had one).
I'm sure they will soon start bleating think of the children as a last resort.
But it is nice to see that the media is now putting pressure where it hurts : $100 million to operate, $15 billion in revenue.
There is no sane person in the world who can think that that is normal.
As brilliantly displayed by that scene in True Lies where Arnold's character asks for a tap on his wife's office phone to track her "affaire", his buddy/colleague starts spouting law and saying that it's illegal and Arnie smashes his fist on a window pane yelling "and we do it a hundred times a day !"
And he gets his tap, and hilarity ensues.
In real life, though, there is far less hilarity.
The difference is that they are elected officials and, as such, practically immune to judicial action unless they really, really push too far. And if they do really push too far, it takes a dozen years or so before anything actually starts catching up to them.
This guy was s mall-timer without a lot of imagination. He's already in prison and they haven't finished stripping him of his gains.
Brilliant retirement plan.
I'm sorry, you want jail time only if they don't pay up an insignificant fine ?
They actively called people they knew they shouldn't. They lied and passed themselves off as other companies. They are crooks and should be thrown in jail now, whether or not they pay the fine.
I am sick and tired of companies getting caught behaving like scam artists only to get a few tens of thousands in fines.
The company manager knew and, if he didn't know, he's still the company manager. He either goes to jail for condoning it, or he goes to jail for being incompetent.
CEOs in jail is the only way we are going to stop this nonsense.
Indeed they are, and you have just demonstrated that there are several layers to your core, meaning some people are more core than others.
Engineers are already, and logically, the best-paid employees in a company. Giving everyone a fixed percentage of bonus means that engineers will get the most.
Engineers will agree with that.
But fiddling around with the bonus level following what department you are in just demonstrates the true importance you give to said department. That means that IT is valued at half the engineering department at Arm. I can understand that from a beancounter point of view, but the truth is : if engineers stop working, you can still make and sell what you've got. If IT stops working, you're not making or selling anything any more.
So who's more important ? Discuss.
Wow. I'm impressed. No, really. If it took the description of a problem and turned out a working bit code as a solution, that's a good thing.
Now, my current problem is the statistics of how fast users respond to an email recieved. Responses and forwards of said email need to be taken into account.
So, what's the solution to that, AI ?
And the only "win" you can provide is Huawei.
You needed a racist President and an entire Government to get that "win".
I don't think your other actions are as useful as you want people to think.
It would be better if you directed infrastructure companies to harden access to their innards, like by not allowing it from the Internet in the first place.
Oh it sure will. It will severly dent the revenues of those scoundrels that harvest everything they can in order to produce pitifully weak "targetted" ads that are only capable of telling me what I bought yesterday.
You don't deserve money you useless fuckers.
Now, if I buy a UPS in January 2019, and you are capable of reminding me in 2026 that I might be interested in a replacement battery, then that would be another story. Frightening maybe, but at least useful.
But no. I buy a UPS and on the very next page you try to make me believe that I might want another one.
Bunch of wankers, the lot of you.
Interesting. While reading this article I launched my LibreOffice and checked for updates. It opened the official site with a download button on the latest version, which I clicked on.
The download progresses to almost the end, then indicates Failed. No file is recorded in my Downloads folder.
Seems like they have something to correct.
If I am going to install a Linux distro, I will do that on my own, thank you very much. I don't need or want Borkzilla's interference in any way, shape or form.
And if I am to use a VM, it will be on a Linux machine hosting a Windows VM. Seems much more secure to me.
A nationwide digital currency does not need blockchain, and blockchain is only going to ensure that it will fail.
India can perfectly well invent itself a digital currency if it wants, although it could also very well create its own version of VISA with certified banks participating and its roupee would go full digital at the press of a button (ok, slight exaggeration there).
Money is already digital. 99% of my transactions are bonking my credit card on a contactless reader or, for paying bills, an IBAN transfer. I haven't used actual bills and coins since 2019.
So why this blind adoration of blockchain ? It doesn't bring anything banks are not supposed to handle, it does not scale, and if I have to lug around a terabyte of ledger data to buy a loaf of bread, it is insane.
Please explain this insanity to me.
Revenue is trending up, losses are trending down. Everything's fine.
Alphabet has enough in the bank to survive until Google Cloud gets in the black, and it will.
I'm not sweating over the fact that one bit of Alphabet is not contributing to the increase of its already absurdly large money pile.
Apparently you don't have any good restaurants in your area. Or you call McDonalds a restaurant. It isn't.
A good chef in a restaurant is hard to beat. Yes, there are definitely people who know how to cook at home (my wife is one), but just saying learn how to cook and you'll do better than any restaurant chef is a rather tall order.
And, if you do, you can always open a restaurant ;)
Don't worry, all those electric cars that are being planned are going to ensure that coal-based generators will be severely swamped, and as for wind, well I'll get a kick out of seeing how many people have to stay home because their car didn't charge enough during the night.
Without nuclear, we as a society can kiss goodbye to all the power-hungry amenities we have grown used to. There will not be enough juice to power the fridge, the freezer, the aircon, the TV box, the laptop and two smartphones per person, and on top of that, two electric cars per household.
Because people don't want nuclear, but they do want all the gadgets and "smart" doorbells and all the rest.
In 1950, people had a fixed-line telephone, a TV set, a radio, a fridge and, maybe, a washing machine and a dryer. Plus a few lightbulbs. If we go back to that, we could probably do without nuclear. But today ? And IoT on top of all the stuff we have ?
There's no way we can make do without nuclear. Fusion would be better, but that's 30 years away, as we all know.
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