Posts by Fatman 2400 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Apr 2008
If When humanity ever reaches Europa, one of the most likely first opportunities for exploitation of Europa's water will be by one of the global conglomerates that sell bottled water.
I can picture the 'tag line':
OUR bottled water is TRULY out of this world!
And those with more money than brains will engage in 'conspicuous consumption'.
<quote>then you either have to follow each subsequent release until the next LTS, or else somehow jump back to the previous LTS (not sure if you can do that without re-installing).</quote>
Here is a hint: 'IF you can afford the space, set up at least 5 partitions (6 if you must have 'swap'), and keep your data files separate from /home. Load the O/S into its own partition, and set up the data partition to be 'automagically' mounted at boot. Like this:
/dev/sda1 : Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
/dev/sda2 : Ubuntu 16.10
/dev/sda3 : Ubuntu 17.04
/dev/sda4 : Ubuntu 17.10
/dev/sda5 : data
/dev/sda6 : swap
You might 'adjust the location of 'swap' if you want it in between the O/S partitions. You get to the other O/S installs by embedding the GRUB bootloader for in that partition in that partition and chainloading it. In essence, you 'boot twice' for any of the non LTS installs. It isn't the easiest thing to do, but once you "get it", you are free to blow away an outdated O/S partition, and experiment with something else.
<quote>"I wanna toy!"
"No."
"I wanna toy!"
"No."
"I wanna toy!"
"No."
"I wanna toy!"
"No."
"I wanna toy!"
"No."
"I wanna toy!"
"No." Adult, fed up with petulant child whining, takes out 3 inch wide leather belt, and gives child deserved ass whipping. Child gets message.</quote>
FTFY
<quote>As I type, I am watching Windows 10 IoT Core apply a system update on a Raspberry Pi 3. It is taking ages, whereas when I have done Linux updates on a Pi it is generally quicker and does not require a reboot.</quote>
More evidence of the bloatware that Windows has become.
And WHY would one WANT to use it?
<quote... aimed at the kind of people who think that their data is safe in the Cloud.</quote>
Are best utilized to impress upon manglement what can go wrong if you are not paying attention.
Picture this:
Your typical pathetic mangler, out driving around in his (or her) latest self driving car which has been hacked to accelerate at top speed into a brick wall, and the only way to stop the looming crash was to jam on the brakes. Mangler """trusts""" his (her) life to the self driving car, and gets a rude awakening.
Which is all fine and good on the surface, but, when you come down to defining a 'school', you may be looking for trouble.
Does a very small group of children meeting for religious services at a house of worship constitute a 'school'?
That is the core problem with loosely drawn statutes, their interpretation is in WHO does the interpretation.
A very recent case in point. In Flori-duh, state law requires students 'participate' in state assessment tests; but that statute does not explicitly define PARTICIPATE. Thus a student who takes the state test, breaks the seal, writes their name on the form, but answers no questions is considered to have participated. Recently, due to the state's third grade retention policies, this issue has been thrust in front of a judge.
So, be careful of what you wish for, the Law of Unintended Consequences may rear its ugly head.
<quote>Who do you sue? Simple answer to both of your questions - Google.
Dear Google, I am a small business owner and your outage caused me to lose so much business I've ceased trading, I plan to sue you for £1m. Yours, Small business.
Dear Small Business, Bring it on you soon to be unemployed layabout. We direct you to the Terms and Conditions of Service, Section (blah) Paragraph (blah): "Limit of Damages". You will note that those Terms of Service do not provide for compensation for Lost Revenue or Profit. Tough Luck! Yours, Google's Army of Lawyers.</quote>
FTFY!!!
<quote>If the bot were to fail, we could include a special bot that's designed to repair the defective bot so that it could repair the satellite!</quote>
No, that is what ejection mechanisms are for. Then you report to manglement that the spacecraft is hopelessly fucked.
2016
AFTER MORE THAN TWO CENTURIES OF PLANET WIDE DESTRUCTION
WE HAVE FINALLY HAD ENOUGH
YOUR WORLD NO LONGER BELONGS TO YOUR SPECIES
HERE IS YOUR 'EVICTION NOTICE'
YOU HAVE ONE CENTURY TO COMPLY
ONCE YOU ARE GONE
THEN PERHAPS YOUR PLANET WILL RETURN TO THE BEAUTIFUL PLANET IT ONCE WAS
LEARN TO LIVE IN HARMONY WITH THE PLANET YOU TRAVEL TO
OR ELSE YOU WILL BE ERADICATED AS A GALACTIC PEST
<quote>Frankly I am at a loss to suggest any measures short of electric shock treatment that would get the average punter/employee to show a modicum of common sense.</quote>
Now, if you really wanted to send a message, you would have security summarily execute the next offender as they sat in their chair.
<quote>She said the move was part of the company's £2bn investment in its network and services intended to address issues around customer experience.
A 2bn investment and you penny pinch like that.</quote>
<sarcasm>They have to think of the shareholders <u>think about not decreasing the executive bonus pool</u>.</sarcasm>
<quote>Perhaps the F-35 is equipped to be remotely hackable (let's face it; practically everything else these days is) but that would not alter the fact that the aircarft were on "foreign" soil with little or no chance of recovery.</quote>
You underestimate the deviousness of some TLAs, and their profit from war comrades.
Do you honestly think something as <sarcasm>advanced</sarcasm> as the F-35 doesn't have a "Repo" function hard coded in. The ultimate in DRM.
I can picture this now, Turkey gets their F-35's, tells the USofA and NATO to fuck off thinking that they have pulled one over. They take the planes out for a spin afterward, only to have the pilots automatically ejected, and the planes diverted to a friendly air base.
<quote>As to wired communications, that is a mix of private/regional/state/federal authorization. Almost nobody owns all the property that their wires traverse. Those right-of-ways can be revoked in many ways.</quote>
Which is why there are regional monopolies/oligopolies - that is called franchise rights.
Local governments (be they state, county or municipal) gave many 'cable companies' exclusive or virtually exclusive franchise rights in exchange for the investment in building out the systems. The point the lobbyists made was that investment will not be made if there is little potential for return on that investment. Often, the 'virtually exclusive' component was achieved by allowing an incumbent telco to offer cable TV service. Thus leading to a duopoly. And, in markets with such duopolies, competition often was a case of one never seriously undercutting the other, price increases often in lock step.
There are some core services for which the duplication of investment needed in order to provide a service is ridiculous. Can you imagine duplicate sets of roads, with drivers of Ford manufactured vehicles restricted from accessing 'Chevy' or 'Dodge' roads? Can you imagine the clusterfuck that would result if you had multiple sets of sanitary sewers going down a street? Or water lines?? Or electric lines??? Or telephone lines????
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the skylines of large cities were a rats nest of wires and cables; not unlike some I have seen of what can be found in India. Local officials determined that duplication of investment is a waste of investment, and thus the concept of a regulated monopoly was born. To some extent that needs to be extended down to the provision of wired communications services.
It will be necessary to separate the internet, video and voice services provider from the communication services provider (i.e. separate the 'service' from the infrastructure providing the service). It is time that provisions of the Communications Act of 1996 that forced incumbent telco operators (ILECs) to open up their wired networks to competitors (CLECs) be applied to the provision of cable and fiber optic communications services. Telcos made a lot of promises while that bill was going through Congress; most of them are still not fulfilled. One of the more shitty aspects of that bill was that "opening up to competition" was applied to wired copper networks only, fiber and cable networks were exempt. ISPs had 20 years to recoup those investments, so what excuse are they going to pull out of their asses this time.
<quote>I started my system running the Windows Update Client (WUC) this morning at 0655Hrs PST. It's now 1610Hrs PST & the WUC is still waiting for a reply. If I ask it to check again it complains it's already doing it, admonishing me as if I were a kid in the back seat whinging about being bored on a long car trip. So I'll have to wait for it to hear back from MSHQ before I can figure out what updates are coming down the pipe for my Win7Pro64 system.</quote>
I truly feel sorry for you. Too many of my WindoZE using friends have bitched and moaned about the SLOW WindoZE Update process. To demonstrate that 'there is a better way', all I have to do is allow them to see how most Linux distros do updates.
This PC is running Ubuntu 12.04LTS (long term support). Using Synaptic (a package manager), I can reload the package information quickly. Generally that task gets completed in way less than 5 minutes. One of my friends exclaimed "You're fucking DONE!!!" already. Not exactly, that was just updating the package list. This is what needs updating. I then click on 'updatable' and a list of packages gets displayed.
YMMV depending on the speed of your internet connection. Mine is not all that fast, but a lot better than DSL or ($DEITY FORBID) dial up. Depending on what is needed, you can be looking at less than a Mb, to as much as 500 Mb of packages to be downloaded. You can put off downloading them if you don't want to be interrupted. One session required 338 Mb worth of files. I started the session, and clicked to show the file download progress. Unlike WindoZE, where you just have this bar moving back and forth; you can watch which file is being downloaded. At least you have this 'feedback' that something is getting done. The entire session was complete in about 45 minutes, most of that being download time.
Yes, Microsoft, there is a better way, you just don't have a fucking clue.
<quote>Why insider trading is illegal?
Surely as long as you arent manipulating the market in some way you've done nothing wrong..</quote>
I will second the suggestion about bring a clue bat.
Since you fail to comprehend what is wrong, then try to comprehend this:
Publicly traded companies (at least in the USofA) are supposed to communicate matters that affect current and potential stockholders in an equal manner. IO(simple)W - do not play favorites.
When you act using knowledge from privileged sources, not known to the general public about an event which may have a material effect on a company; you are committing insider trading.
The wrong is the appearance of fraud.
Example ABC company is about to announce disastrous quarterly earnings, and you find out right before the public announcement, and get rid of your holdings. The announcement is made, and the per share price drops 20%. YOU knew that there was bad news looming, and got out, but whoever bought those shares, didn't, and you perpetuated a fraud on them. You """pat yourself on the back""" for "getting out in time". THAT is the wrong here
Another example, but in reverse: ABC corp has decided to buy out XYZ corp for $25/share. XYZ corp is currently trading at $15/share. Knowing that a buyout is imminent, you buy up all available shares based upon this privileged knowledge. The deal gets announced, and you make a killing on the upside. THAT is the wrong here
Now, where did I leave the old Louisville Sluggertm.
There are two possible outcomes:
1) Do NOTHING and let ICANN take over the IANA functions. I suspect that this is the default as there most likely has been some greasing of the wheels to insure this happens. or
2) The US government agency that will transfer control finds some excuse reason for putting the transfer on hold, or (hopefully) killing it altogether. But, this, I feel is unlikely to happen.
<quote>The difference is when you outsource your IT, they're now in control.. If it fails, you can blame them all you want, ... </quote>
Those two excerpts are part of Damagement 101 How to Destroy a Company Through Sheer Incompetence.
The First Rule of Damagement: Never Accept Responsibility for YOUR Incompetence.
The Second Rule of Damagement: Always Deflect the Blame Upon Others.
The Third Rule of Damagement: Always Feign Ignorance of Potentially Disastrous Outcomes.
Repeat at each new employer until someone finally figures just how incompetent you are and send you on a deserved career path into a brick wall.
If I were a Microsoft stockholder, then I would be quite interested in the rationale behind this extravagant waste of shareholder value.
Why did you piss away so much money for a dud product line???
Isn't this just another example of manglement getting itself into superfluous areas outside their core expertise?
Microsoft's manglement must believe that it can burn through shareholder value like shit runs through a goose. I thank $DEITY I am not a shareholder in Microsoft.
<quote>
5) Sales and Partner Sales take customer Management out to dinner
-- > Customer gets pampered with a nice meal and drinks, vendor pays
-- > Sales and Partner Sales a celebrating their success and compare wrist watches
-- > vendor Support and Idiot Sys Admin stay up all night working to resolve the issue
-- > Management want regular updates
</quote>
You forgot:
-- > Vendor Sales and Partner Sales reps reap a huge bonus for 'saving the company's ass'.
-- > Vendor Support and Idiot Sys Admin get their asses reamed for """incompetence""".
<quote>People just think you hit it with a hammer, but there is an art to assessing which hammer to use and exactly how much excessive force to apply. And which sacred chant to speak, ...</quote>
I had an old Micropolis full sized 5-1/4 inch 145Mb unit seize. The customer's most recent backup was more than 2 months old, and there would have been a shit load of work lost if I could not recover that data. I told the customer that anything done since the last backup will be gone if I don't manage to get the drive functional, and they MAY get lucky if I can unfreeze it. BUT NO GUARANTEES I even got that in writing to protect my ass!!!!
To replace that oversized beast, I had procured a replacement hard drive (a Quantum Fireball 540) and I had formatted it, and loaded the O/S and the backup onto it. I got it to boot. At this point, the customer could be back up, albeit having lost more than two months worth of work. I powered the box down, and completely unplugged the drives power and data cable, and removed it from the case. I did not want any "accidents" fucking up the hard work I just completed.
I borrowed a small 4 oz brass hammer and deftly whacked it on its long side close to the motor spindle. (i.e. Force applied perpendicular to the motor shaft.) I then connected the power and data cables, and fired up the box. The damn thing spun up. The customer, trying to get out of paying for the repairs exclaimed: "You fixed it!!!, We don't need the other drive."
I reminded him that this was only a temporary fix, in an attempt to recover the lost work, and it is highly likely that this drive will fail again. I jam a 150Mb QIC into the tape drive, and make a backup; then I made another one, and finally a third.
I re-installed the replacement, booted it up, and restored the backup over the old files. I let the customer check the data, and all of what they expected was there. Whew!
The customer insisted on me reconnecting the failed hard drive because he didn't believe that the 10 year old drive had failed. To humor him, I did so. I powered it back up, and the motherfucker started to smoke. God damn was I lucky.
He had stalled on paying the bill, so the company ended up suing him, and won. He refused to pay, and I contacted one of their office staff, and was able to find out where they had their bank account. A garnishment order took care of collecting that judgment. That shithead got blacklisted by us, and his company name made the rounds. I wonder who was unfortunate enough to ever make the mistake of doing IT work for him in the future.
<quote>Ready just in time for them to flog it off to someone else for a pretty penny?</quote>
They have already done that with some bad results:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-frontier-puc-verizon-switch-20160518-snap-story.html
http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/05/frontier-outages-persist-35-days-after-switch-from-verizon/
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/can-frontier-communications-get-over-its-fumbling-takeover-of-verizon-fios/2271934
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/frontier-isp-failure,31663.html
In Flori-duh Frontier took over back on April 1 (and the 'joke' was on the customers) and they still are having issues!!!
Without getting too detailed here, this is just a lesson on how to defraud an employer.
BTW - this """lesson""" does not purport to represent what happened at the company mentioned, it is a general description of how this fraud can go unnoticed. (BTSTGTTS)
Imagine the amount of fraud that occur if a whole bunch of executives were in on the fraud.
You have your low level 'retail' managers that can divert income from the company (especially if that revenue stream comes in as cash), with them taking a cut (of that cash stream) on its way to the upper level fraudsters.
Then the fraudsters hit the company on its expenses.
The fraudsters use accomplices that infiltrate and use legitimate supplier companies to perpetuate the fraud by generating 'phantom invoices'; which purport to provide products and services to the prime target company, but which in fact are just plain bogus.
These accomplices are situated inside the "phantom" supplier in such a way that they can intercept the incoming payments and direct them to "bogus" bank accounts the accomplice controls, often created with forged documents that provide for the power to open and close bank accounts.
Another aspect of the fraud involves overbilling the prime target for a legitimate product or service, with that overbilled invoice getting approved and paid for the entire over billed amount. That supplier's records either show a credit memo for the over billing, or the invoice is reduced before posting. The overpayment is refunded to the prime target, but it is deposited into an unauthorized bank account controlled by the fraudsters. From that supplier's perspective - YOU over paid, and we refunded that overpayment. End of discussion. The supplier can point to the check as proof. Unless someone took the time to determine where that check ended up, ...
One of the easiest ways to induce this fraud is to bill the prime target for "consulting services" by another legitimate company where some more fraudsters are in on the scam, where those payments are directed into unauthorized bank accounts.
Since the prime target company managers have approval authority for invoices for products and services (many times NOT) performed; and cover by the upper level executives in on the fraud, unraveling this fraud takes a lot of time. Which is why it took so long to discover in this case.
A very good reason why one should run criminal record checks on anyone who handles cash, or has payment approval authority. Also, a good reason why larger firms should audit their financials at least every two or three years. Six years is way too long. Even spot checking invoices could have led to an earlier discovery of this fraud.
I only wish there was an appropriate icon for a thief in the night.
<quote>Dump the plane somewhere that would make it super difficult to find, and even if it was found make it super hard to find out what happened to it.</quote>
In the movie The Hunt for Red October, there is a scene where the US sub commander and the American agent discuss how to make the Russian sub disappear. The agent finds a deep spot on the charts, and sends that location to the Russian sub commander.
It is part of this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBU6C6lA6vI
and can be found at about 1:35 - 1:39.
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