Re: why I read the Reg
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223 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Nov 2009
Years ago, I did some contract IT work for a certain large construction company. At the same time, they were having their head office refurbed.
Some surly git of a builder went into the boardroom and dragged a screwdriver down the 20-odd foot length of the solid oak boardroom table. He was caught on CCTV.
Just before they sacked him and pushed him down 15 flights of stairs, they asked him why. His answer was along the lines of, "Well if I can't have something like that, why should they?"
Not sure whether the motivation here is similar, mind you.
I have "WHOOP-WHOOP! TERRAIN! WHOOP-WHOOP! TERRAIN! PULL UP! PULL UP!" as mine, cobbled together from .mp3s of the real thing.
But then, I'm not a commercial pilot, so when my colleagues hear it there's no risk of them hitting the TO/GA button and pulling back on the yoke, etc.
Depends on what it's made of, how fast it's going and what angle it hits at. But to give you some perspective, here's what happens when a 50-metre nickel-iron meteor hits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_crater
Not so bad if it touches down in the middle of nowhere, not so great if it happens in the middle of your road.
Same here - it took me a few minutes to find it, and even then it was by accident. I was about to resort to "shutdown -s -t:1".
I'm assuming it's because it's geared more towards tablets and phones, which typically spend their lives switched on and locked/in standby, (or switched off with a hardware power button).
Seems to me another example - as the article seemingly suggests - that "one size fits all" is a difficult thing to get right, and may not even be possible to get right at all.
...but are we saying that these are *genuine* live chat sessions that are being hijacked?
If so, presumably the person at the bank's end of the conversation finds themselves abruptly cut off mid-chat, right? I accept the fact that it's not the bank's responsibility to ensure your machine is malware-free, but why not hand the case over to someone in the outbound call centre to give the customer a ring;
"Hi, you were just in the middle of a live chat with a rep and it seems you got cut off. You okay there?"
"But...I'm still talking to you. I was just about to authorise XYZ."
"Okay, you might not want to do that..."
Or are these disconnects so common that it would be impossible to detect the signal from the noise?
You're right. Even the mere suggestion of impropriety on the part of a government minister should be grounds for capital punishment, (or at the very least, torture through genital trauma).
I just can't understand why more citizens aren't pounding their spittle-flecked keybards in rabid fury in support of your proposal.
I really shouldn't need to use the sarcasm tag here but just in case... [/Sarcasm]
"Nobody is sure exactly how the snakes were introduced to American ecosystems, although it's likely that many of the species arrived as pets and then escaped or were released into the wild."
Both are perfectly plausible, though the latter is more likely. It's the same reason why Ft. Lauderdale is over-run with iguanas. Pet's size becomes impractical, pet gets dumped into the intracoastal, pet breeds like crazy in the favourable environment.
Interesting to see that there's an active programme of spaying and neutering of them going on at the moment , (instead of extermination). Wonder if they could do the same for the snakes?
...but they remind you when you "need" to buy new ones? The need according to whom? And how often is the message repeated?
I wear old trainers while gardening or working on the car. I really don't want them texting me every five minutes to tell me that I should replace them.
No, I think this is one innovation I'll pass up.
1) Release bogus user credentials.
2) Wait for company to release statement that "The credentials are false, and you know why? Because we take security seriously. Don't worry, you're all safe."
3) Wait for dust to settle.
4) Hack company for real and post customer data on Pastebin.
5) Point and laugh.
If the 3rd Party was contracted to securely destroy the data, then surely *he* should be in the frame for any penalties under the DPA...shouldn't he? Wouldn't that be part of any contract between the NHS and their contractors?
But even if my assumption above is wrong and the NHS *does* have ultimate responsibility, the only people punished by this fine would be the patients whose care would suffer for want of those funds. No one learns anything, the cash re-enters the governmental money-go-round and some treatments are cancelled. Where's the point?
ISTR the problem with this, is that any corporation using that approach would have to become at least as large as the government of a large nation in terms of power and wealth.
At which point, they might as well actually *be* that government. They probably own most of the large-scale industries in the country, are *the* major employers, and have vast influence over the populace. And since any empire must either grow or wither, they straight-up get their fingers into every pie they can. 7-11s and Wal*marts start to disappear, replaced by a single, banal brand.
Either the traditional government all become corporate puppets (moreso than some already are) or they're replaced entirely with compliant board members of our huge fictional corporation.
But either way the corproration gets saddled with all the negative effects (on a space program) that go along with the role of governing. Such as developmental drag on the starship caused by their day-to-day running of everything else... like the prison system that 27.5% of the population find themselves in for violating the laws which were put in place to protect the corporation's profitability.
Since any mention of money being "thrown away" into space causes the stock price to dip, the generations of stockholders who have become wealthy on the corporation's coat-tails refuse to accept the risk exposure.
All you can hope then is that one day the requirement for interstellar travel becomes itself either profitable or desparately urgent.
Or...have I just written an even more cynical back-story to Wall-E?
Anyway: "Good morning and welcome aboard this flight to Proxima Centauri, brought to you by the good folks at the Motion Picture Association of America."
...but from what I've heard about it so far, I doubt it counts as a pure sim and so I probably wouldn't consider it an FS replacement. I know the lines are very grey, but to me it just sounds like a game, and a very limited one at that.
Worse, the Reg implies that it'll be a limited environment with a single plane, that you can pay to expand later. If that's the case, MS will have to lock it down to prevent a 3rd-party market from springing up and slurping their revenue. I can see that leading to lack of choice, if nothing else. Cynically, it's like the IBM PS/2 all over again - slamming the gate after the horse is long gone.
I might download it to give it a go. But I doubt it'll ever be a viable replacement for what we already have. Shame really - can you imagine FS with Crysis2-level graphics...?
Not that I'm aware of, in either FS9 SP1 or FSX - you can happily collide with buildings, antennae, the scenery and other planes if that's your thing.
What they *did* do was disable "visible damage" by default, so if you crashed your aircraft it'd just come to a stop and the flight would reset.
However, they left the breakage models intact, so it can be switched on again by adding a line to the aircraft.ini of whatever plane it is that you want to see going to pieces.