Posts by Tom 13

Re: Aiming at the cash

No, the richer companies don't necessarily make the best targets for trolling. The risk with Apple is that they have the money to fight the suit. The prime target is a small to medium sized company with a mid-range profitability. You target them with a settlement fee of about 2/3 the mean cost of defense. Since they save 1/3 of the expected cost and eliminate the measurable risk of the defense greatly exceeding the mean, they'll be more prone to settle quickly. At which point you can move to your next target.

Now, and NPE does not have to be equal to a patent troll. I could theoretically see an entity structured that way to enable people who come up with good ideas but don't have the capital to enter manufacturing to profit from their ideas. I don't know if any of the current NPEs are such companies. I would expect their behavior to be different from a patent troll. For trolls I'd see the tactic described above to be their primary and likely even only modus operandi. I'd expect legitimate entities to engage in more sales negotiations on behalf of their clients. So I think it's that behavior that needs to be targeted. I don't see that any of the proposed changes do that, although I can see their proponents believe they will.

Re: But what does a woman dress like?

heels and Ann Taylor outfits = pricey and dressy. Appropriate for a sales meeting or dog an pony show, not day to day tech stuff. Also suitable for Devs, but still looks like you are a manger, not a grunt.

I had a similar experience when I first shifted to IT support work. I've always worn what I consider business casual, button down shirt, pressed pants, but no tie. But my super wore khakis and polos. If we went to a new customer location, they'd look at my clothes and assume I was the lead when the reverse was true. You could always see the internal double take as I looked to my super for confirmation or advice. At some point the owner of the company bought polos for all of us. After that clients looked at body language instead.

Re: will it make a cuppa tea without hogging

Yes, but only if you first both have and do not have tea when you program the computer.

Re: Still in denial

Still probably right. Which people will discover when the case gets overturned on appeal. Apple clearly read the tea leaves (or more precisely the financial reports of the book publishers) and knew what was coming. So they are playing the long game and are likely to win, precisely because you aren't prohibited from gaining a monopoly, only doing so by illegal means. So long as no conversation setting the price of the books took place, no illegal means were used, even if Jobs expected the price would eventually settle at $9.99.

Re: PC's have become fridges now

I agree with you up to the point where you went off on an unproven malware tangent. I think the systems just haven't been as targeted yet. The PC landscape is still target rich. Sure Android, using the Linux kernel is easier to secure. But I expect the manufacturers to frell it up. We've already seen signs of that. What may save the phone/fondleslab market is that the manufacturer differentiation is sufficient to provide the diversity we never had with the Windows monoculture. But as the Windows monoculture dies, the targeting will shift.

And you're back on track with your conclusion. Sad to say, I think we are the new bearded Cobol programmers. Of course, with a little luck in a few years we'll have our equivalent of the Y2K bug.

Re: I think Microsoft will be quite humbled by this..

If you are correct, they may still be able to save the company.

Unfortunately MS has gotten so big and disconnected from their market, I suspect nothing short of bankruptcy that will humble them.

Re: we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I'm not so sure. This exact conversation no. But I think the gargantuan size of the bone-headed move of forcing the touch metaphor on us is covering the enormous mistake of trying to force the app change on us. If they removed the gargantuan mistake, we'd be talking about the enormous one, and probably classifying it as gargantuan.

Re: The world is filled with Sheep

If the keypad and trackball worked, yeah. Frankly although I frequently find some of the onscreen keyboard layout choices odd, I find them more useable than the BB keypad ever was. Although even with more real estate available, sometimes the precision of the grid on the touchscreen leaves something to be desired and I find the phone detecting for the wrong keys.

Re: are you blethering on about?

Actually, that's the first post here that makes sense and might move me toward supporting the project.

Early poster with the 4 downvotes (at the time of this post) is mostly right: this is a PR stunt from NASA in a desperate attempt to garner funding. Robotic missions are cheaper and safer. Adding the manned angle on generates good PR, not knowledge. Maybe you count working the PR angle as smart. I don't. And frankly, even if it only works out to a little money each year, that just gives Congress more opportunity to fuck with the plan.

But if part of the selection process is a rock big enough and stable enough to mine it into a space station, put engines on it, and possibly use stuff on it to drive the engines, yeah, that might work. It's high risk in the sense that you don't know what you'll get from a given rock, but the other parts are logical.

Re: what crime have they committed?

Based on the article it sounds like the code acquired implemented trade secrets. The crime isn't stealing the code, it's stealing the trade secret. Which is assumed to be damaging to the company and I believe is a criminal offense, just like stealing their servers outright would be.

It's been 20 years now since I was privy to a trade secret covered by a patent. Given the time period, I assume the patent is expired and I wouldn't be liable for talking about it. It was a very, very small detail. Certainly something any competitor willing to invest in a research team would have found because it was how the patent owning company found it in the first place. But common decency prohibits me from talking about it. That company is the one that spent the money on the research, they are the ones who should benefit from it.

Re: Disgraceful disregard for security

If they've got it marked as a dead account it can be transferred relatively safely. First up, delete all the old email. That seems pretty straight forward and like something they'd legally be required to do. That should kill anything YOU put in the account.

Next up, you're most likely going to set a new password. So you won't know what they set. Sure you could trawl around looking for alternate valid domains that might be pointing to Yahoo for a password reset. Frankly, if someone is currently using that account, they should have pointed it to a valid email address anyway.

I'd think spam would be the most serious issue with a recycled account. Frankly, I have one with a service provider we no longer use, and see no good reason why it couldn't be recycled if they follow the caveats above. Not that it would in this instance since the company has changed names, and therefore domains.

Re: Don't forget Google is still denying involvement in PRISM...

Legally they are required to.

Anything about how deep their involvement is must necessarily be pure speculation.

Re: Forensic investigation?

I will grant Merriam-Webster doesn't seem to have updated their definition yet, but wiki, which is more attuned to these sorts of subtle changes has. I frequently hear "forensic" used in this new form:

the application of a broad spectrum of sciences and technologies to investigate situations after the fact, and to establish what occurred based on collected evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_science

And frankly given the size of the failure, the number of companies involved, and the sums of money exchanging hands, even your strict definition may be more apt than some (many?) of us would like.

Re: Silent Culture

That's another characteristic of leftist organizations. Actual intellectual activity is known to always upset the brainwashing functions. So, while it is a given that you can't brainwash everybody, if you can at least ensure everyone know expression of such activity is a career limiting move, you can at least keep the rebels quiet while you continue brainwashing those who are susceptible.

Re: Yeah!

If the article description is accurate, "shotgun" is the wrong adjective. This is more like aimed rifle fire since it impacts one group more than others.

re: manages to convince Tim to buy them back.

Doesn't even need to do that. Just needs to pump the stock up to a higher price, and sell to the stooges silly enough to have bought on his rumor making.

So to the first poster, yes it is a "pump and dump" scheme, it's just one that is within the boundaries of the law.

Re: Money

Money is both fungible and liquid. It transforms and flows around obstacles, so all attempts at thwarting its collection are doomed to failure.

Full disclosure is the only real solution. Any amounts in excess of $500 which are paid/donated/collected by the public official and any immediate relatives (husband/wife, children, brothers, sisters, mother, father, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews) must be publicly reported and accessible on the interwebs. The name of the person making the donation must be publicized. Corporations would need to list sufficient information so that if it were an attempt to circumvent publicity laws the person can be identified. And no, I'm not sure how this last bit can be accomplished.

Re: A solution for a problem

I can easily see this getting past testing. All it takes is two or three rotations of the management teams. First team put together the idea when everything was expensive. They set out testing parameters for the edge cases, ran it and everything checked. Rotate in the second team. They tweak some things to speed testing. Rotate in the third team. They tweak some things in the algorithm. Now the tweaked algorithm cause a problem the tweaked test no longer checks, but it passes the test.

And that's assuming they all respect the work that came previously. A friend came back from a convention I helped run. He noted the registration line never really cleared the whole weekend. It's a problem some friends and I solved with hard work and by spending some hard earned money years ago. But they figured we didn't know what we were doing and made a change "to improve efficiency." In this case the specifics are that they axed the paid help we brought in to assist because "they were just slowing things down." Never checked to see if the free volunteers (who do tend to be faster because of enthusiasm) could supply enough free workers to staff everything. I saw they also converted our modified bank line algorithm to a full bank line model. We'd stack registrants two or three deep at each booth, but feed from a single bank line. In theory the bank line is more efficient because the next person moves to the next aisle. That's fine as long as the walk to the booth is quick compared to the average processing time. But as the walk to the booth approaches the average, the efficiency goes away. So if you stack two or three at the booth, you don't lose down time for the walk. All critical when you are trying to hit a mean processing time of about 47 seconds a person including information confirmation, badge selection, assembly and payment. But we didn't understand their new problems so they've tossed us on the ash heap of history.

Re: Is this even believable?

I've got a yahoo account for spam, never been bothered by their toolbar.

But then I have more than 3 neurons and disable toolbar installers unless it's one I really want.

Also, Yahoo News is getting a bit more attention these days. One article a week hitting Drudge is probably more than enough to drive their unique visitors count up.

Couple that with more and more people realizing Google hoovers up more information about them than the NSA and you'll notice some changes in behavior.

Re: how does HP draw in the talent they need to complete their turn around?

That's a tough problem even without headwinds. The first thing you need are leaders who recognize talent. That doesn't come from bean counters. The second thing you need is a reward system that promotes talent. A the moment, as well as for about the past decade, HP seems to have been missing both of those items. Given it has been that way for about the past decade, there are significant headwinds. And the bean counters keep counting fewer and fewer beans.

Re: Who will be the Elon Musk of nuclear power?

Can't be done because the problems aren't technical. They are purely political and fear driven. Anyone bright enough to do the technical work takes one look at the political mess and decides their skills are better used elsewhere.

Re: I bet they hoped they would get "good press" from this.

And they did.

Depending of course on your definition of the phrase "good press."

@AC 21-Aug-2013 8:16 GMT

I find my limit is about 20. After that I have trouble finding what I'm looking for.