Posts by Voland's right hand

Re: Maybe they should've thought the whole video ad thing over

text-only ads won't be able to force malware onto a device because there's no javascript,

There is. To load it as the alternative is server code which is not feasible. Otherwise agree.

There are several issues here:

0. There is no Google. The company should be called is Doubleclick. It subsumed Google and Google adopted its advertising practices after it "took over" it (quotes needed).

1. Text only ads need a very high degree of relevance in order to generate significant click-through rates. Google decided to forgo the relevance level for sake of more realtime ads and trending. This is the so called dumb-ass to smart-ass transition ~ 9 years ago. In reality - that was the moment of internal takeover by Doubleclick - as the ads stopped being relevant they had to become Doubleclicky shout in your face crap (primary reason Google text ads took most of Double's market).

2. We are back to a point where the lion share of ad spend on the market are from big brands. These do not rely on clickthrough at all - they are per-impression ads. They are there to "maintain presence". They are also the ones who have marketing departments with budgets sufficient to feed the ad agencies to generate the flashy video crap. If Google decides to switch to text this revenue goes elsewhere. As it is now a public corporation a 90% drop in revenue is not going to work well with its shareholders.

It is a classic lose-lose situation where the only solution is the emergence of a new player which does text only ads. That unfortunately is not likely to happen as there is no way for a newcomer to push out Google from the search space which is both its relevance info provider as well as primary opportunity to serve ads.

Re: modernize and renew

Presumably to ensure that the EULA sanctifies a repeat of such action in the future?

Cannot. There is a law for that - a rare occurrence of sanity in the US lawmakers. Voted in last month right before Xmas. So pulling a stunt like that makes you guilty by default.

Re: Puzzled

I remember - and have blacklisted - the pub where the staff were too busy chatting to bother to take my lunch order until it was after last orders anyway, and that was FIVE WHOLE YEARS AGO*

+1. How much of a moron you have to be to fail to see that imprinting into potential customers subliminal feelings of annoyance is counterproductive... Even if we assume that the consumer is the proverbial Pavlov's dog, Pavlov (and his followers) tried negative stimulus experiments as well as positive - negative reinforcement proving fairly effective too.

Re: One laptop does not a blackout make.

Hehehe... have an upvote.

Pity I cannot have an upvote for the Russians solving the issue of "the management of utility XXX is an idiot" which would be the correct way to describe the so called "right laptop".

They recently voted a raft of laws around the so called "critical national infrastructure" legislation. The exec summary of said laws is that - management of companies who operate critical national infra are personally criminally liable if they fail to secure them against a cyber attack. No ifs, no buts, no coconuts. "Right laptop" in that context there means that the CEO will have an excursion up the Death Road to Kolyma. Something we should probably replicate - until we do, security expenditure and threat analysis are considered by PHBs a waste of money.

Re: Out of State

There are. But not in USA or UK.

Some of the Russian, German and Scandinavian examples of the "legislative gem on the subject of the Internet" genre are actually technically literate (especially when compared to the US and UK idiocies).

F.e, there was a Russian law proposal recently featured on the register which had correct definitions of a peering point, prefix, autonomous system, ip addressing, name servers, zones, etc as well as correct scoping of criminal responsibilities if you fail to secure them enough after they have been designated critical infrastructure. Similarly, if you want a watertight definition of privacy rights, etc open any German law on the subject.

+1 for quoting ELO.

Let's finish the quote though:

She's only programmed to be very nice

But she's as cold as ice

Seconded

If you do not have one, build one. Well worth it. Most useful 2 grand I ever spent on the garden.

Are you going to contemplate there on your next patch or just provide yourself with heat resistance training is up to you.

Re: Not as far as they are concerned

PLA got itself involved in resulted in them being given a sound kicking (by Vietnam)

Dude, do you have any ideas how many shipments of Child Toys, Cucumbers, Household Soap and Laundry Detergents did the Bulgarians deliver to Vietnam during that War on a credit line which was in fact backed up by USSR Central Bank.

I do. I am also not surprised that China at THAT time ended up going home with the tail between the legs. T72 are nice Children Toys. So are MSTA Howitzers and Grad launches if you hook them up to proper fire control software (something the Bulgarians made a killing on - making export and supposedly dumb versions of Russian weaponry smart). Some toys you know (that was what the manifests on the ships cargo said - toys).

We now live in different times. China of old which threw waves of people at the enemy and could be countered with tech is no longer. It has tech which is on par or better than any of its neighbors except maybe Russia itself. It now can overwhelm both technically and in sheer numbers any of the "Pacified Southern Provinces".

Re: I can see the benefits.

And how does this differ from today?

I have been coached by people once upon a time and I have coached people too on how to adjust their body language to improve their chances in an interview as well as what not to do.

Here is an example of what not to do. Legs are above chest level when seated and she is holding leg up in hand mid-interview. The only thing that screams "arrogant s/d of a b" more than that is to hold your arms/hands behind your head while talking.

Like it or not looks and body language are important. Though most of it usually not static stuff - you cannot judge stuff like that from a single picture, especially a passport style mugshot. In fact face alone is insufficient - you have to observe the person for a while to pick up things like this.

Re: hmmmm

They don't fly too many missions for some reason.

They are significantly more expensive than a scheduled launch from Airana Space, Space-X or the Russians. The payload is relatively small too - so they cannot launch the monstrous comms satellites which bring most of the bacon.

Is it an underlying cost or is it just marketed that way - no idea. The end result is that there is a feedback loop as well - as they cost too much they do not get that many launches, as they do not get too many launches they cost more and so on.

They are used primarily for flexibility and it is marketed that way. They claim that they will put a payload in orbit for you within weeks or months tops which is significantly shorter than the lead time on conventional launchers. For the same reason - they are happy to do weird orbits.

This one is in a perfect match for them (not something that comes along very often) - fairly high (580km), high inclination, low SAT mass - a big launcher would have had to run half-empty to do this job and that would have cost a fortune.

Re: Not News!

I don't get it:

What these guys did is leaking it online via a pretend hack. That is the fraud part. They went in at least one case as far as to get the pretend hack part to police and court. That bit of overdoing was what undid them.

Some RIAA and MPAA members had "leaks" and seeded torrents initially too. They abandoned the practice based on legal advice - this is an entrapment in most legislations and courts did not look at it kindly.

For their purposes it is also unnecessary - there is more than enough torrents floating around for them to plug in a heavily modified client and listen on the network chatter collecting participating IPs. In fact, the average time until your IP is recorded after joining a torrent is ~ 12 minutes if memory serves me right. So from there on, they can wait until enough evidence is accumulated against a person and deep six you with an infringement notice.