Posts by Captain DaFt 3821 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2007
"would you chance running the entire corporate fleet on an unsupported OS with a long and well founded reputation for insecurity?"
You yourself pointed out how Microsoft is leaving a shorter and shorter time the latest Windows is supported.
So therefore, most do, every time they move to the latest version of Windows.
"Thank the gods that I don't have an Facebook account!"
Yes you do, you just can't see it... unless you open an account.
"but they have all your data not from you but by your friends and so who do use these services"
Too true. Facebook tracks you via your friends that use Facebook, and via trackers on the websites you visit.
They maintain so called "Shadow Profiles" on non face book members:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/firm-facebooks-shadow-profiles-are-frightening-dossiers-on-everyone/
And track or infer 98 data points from your web behaviour.
http://gizmodo.com/all-of-the-creepy-things-facebook-knows-about-you-1785510980
Facebook makes the old Stasi look like a bunch of slackers.
"I am not convinced that being scattered in pieces on a battlefield either from wearing a bomb or just being hit by one is an advert for a better life."
But it is an enticing escape for a lot of people suffering hopelessness, despair, and violence, especially since they're told it's a sure ticket to Paradise.
It's not just them either. World Wars 1 and 2 had chaplains on the battle fields exhorting the troops to lay down their lives for God and Country™, and God would welcome them to Heaven with open arms.
Alternative alternative plan, satellite delivered pizza!
(Please step outside before ordering)
"Someone above posted that it would be a good time to open a Windows repair shop. In brief ; I would rather gnaw my arm off rather than try to fix Windows 10."
Rather than repair, collect. Just emulate the plague scene from Monty Python and The Holy Grail:
Pull a cart through the suburbs labeled WINDOWS 10, ringing a bell, and chanting, "Bring out your dead.", Profit!
"Read a space book today and it's pablum."
I dunno, this site: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php is a pretty good read, discusses a lot of rocket theory and practicality.
(Scroll straight down to the bottom to get to the actual links. They push their Patreon pretty hard.)
Defeat all back doors by couriers carrying hidden micro-SD cards, or just swap "family snaps" on Facebook with the occasional stenography, or with coded messages like "Look how well the wife's dahlias are doing this year"*.
Backdoors are useless at best, harmful at worst. They're a placebo for the paranoids in power.
[Look how well] -Louvre, France- [the wife's dahlias] -10:00 UST, April 12- [this year] -next year-
"Dozens of countries have tried – and largely failed – to recreate the extraordinary culture and innovation attitude of Silicon Valley. The post-mortems on most of those efforts have concluded that the over-involvement of government agencies and the existence of too many rules and regulations have been behind their lack of success."
Most countries that tried went the route of insuring taxes will be paid, rules and regs applied along treaty lines to ensure that toes aren't stepped on with other countries and corps.
China sets itself up as a major stockholder in ventures, so no taxes needed, just profits. And as for regs and treaties?
The major stockholder (China), and consideration for the largest market (China), dictates how those will be followed.
Watch out World, this could be a major game changer!
"To establish a colony on Mars we'd first have to send the shielded structures for people to survive in while they assemble the machinery needed to excavate the sub-surface habitats - that's a lot of very heavy stuff that has to be got from Earth to Mars."
Or we could land at existing caves, and set up temporary shelters inside them whilst we build the permanent ones.
Take Olympus Mons, for example. Huge, HUGE, volcano, riddled with caves and tunnels.
Find an underground dome about 1-2 km across, preferably near the top for ease of getting on/off the planet (Did I mention that it's HY-UUUGE?), and set up a habitat in there for long term, or use smaller caves for short term outposts for exploration.
Natural rock shielding from solar/cosmic radiation, plus insulation from cold.
"If you want some of the world's best engineers fixing it then do."
News Flash!: Google doesn't have some secret farm where they breed "the world's best engineers", they use the same labour pool that you do.
However, if you're just hiring someone to shout at, Then just hire someone that passed his exams because his mother passed him notes. All you're looking is a body to yell at, apparently no skill needed and works cheap.
If you want "the world's best engineers", expect to pay a decent wage.
The bonus you get is that when things go tits-up, you'll have them there and working on your system first, instead of fixing some other company's system so that they can get around to yours... eventually.
"Please give us a few examples for our education and amusement."
A couple of stateside companies, Wang Laboratories and Fannie Mae.
One from France, DiC Entertainment, pronounced 'dick'.
Always brought a smile when a cartoon ended with a little girls voice chanting "DICK!"
Wrench? They "dropped" a whole tool bag.
It floated away and later re-entered Earth's atmosphere.
On the plus side, it wasn't a classic Nokia. :)
"Microsoft's daily earnings restrictions which limit users to scoring 25 credits a day across 50 searches, 20 of which must be made on mobile."
So you have to use Edge, on mobile, to qualify?
And give up all privacy while doing so?
MS, Even you don't have enough money to pay me to do that!
The eternal game goes on, Once it was Bell Telephone ,today it's Microsoft.
To big to care, and powerful enough to ignore the Plebs.
You'll just have to wait until they inconvenience the Powers That Be™ before anything happens.
"so what keeps dark matter diffuse?"
Whatever it is, it helps create the Universe as we know it.
If dark matter wasn't kept diffuse, it'd clump inside regular matter, increasing the mass of stars of and planets until they collapsed into black holes.
(Most of the Universe's mass is allegedly dark matter, so the mass increase would be >ahem< astronomical.)
It's demonstrably not EM, strong or weak force, due to the lack of interaction with normal matter, so it must be another type of force(s).
Possibly the same force that's causing the Universe's expansion to accelerate?
"Gravity, in fact, tells us where the dark matter has to be - in a relatively low density halo around galaxies - where it is diffuse enough not to have us wondering why some of the stars are apparently in small tight orbits around nothing."
And that's what makes my head hurt about dark matter.
Apparently it interacts with regular matter via gravity, but doesn't interact with itself that way, otherwise, it would form "dark planets", or somesuch.
Is there some force interacting in dark matter, but not regular matter, that overcomes gravitational attraction, keeping it diffuse, or does gravity only work dark-regular, or regular-regular, but not dark-dark, and if so... HOW?
Guaranteed Nobel for whoever figures that one out, I'll wager.
"this will cause a serious contraction in insurance revenues."
I already see the answer to that coming, and I don't like it.
Mandatory traveler's insurance.
Insurance companies will lobby for laws that anyone getting into any vehicle, car, bus, aircraft, ship, whatever, must have fully paid up traveler's insurance for that type of vehicle, or no travel for you!
Most likely a default "personal" policy allowing travel in land based vehicles.
A "business" policy that allows air travel.
A "Holiday" policy for air/ship travel.
Etc, etc, and so forth.
The Future is coming... for your wallet. :/
Especially since defining intelligence is about as futile an exercise as arguing about "How high is up?".
Intelligence is a combination of many factors, sentience, self awareness, sapience, maths, curiosity, and on and on.
Some points are easy, like maths. Even a simple calculator is faster/more accurate than 99+% of the human population.
Self awareness, my computer can already do a much faster and accurate job of monitoring itself than I can.
Sentience is coming along at a frightening pace, sapience is probably decades away, and curiosity is, so far, completely lagging.
Other things like empathy, is anyone even working on that?
Not homeopathy, this:
In the beginning was the plan.
And then came the assumptions.
And the assumptions were without form.
And the plan was without substance.
And darkness was upon the face of the workers.
And they spoke among themselves saying,
"It is a crock of shit and it stinketh."
And the workers went unto their supervisors and said,
"It is a pail of dung and none may abide the odor thereof."
And the supervisor went unto their managers and said,
"It is a container of excrement and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it."
And the managers went unto their directors, saying,
"It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength."
And the directors spoke among themselves, saying to one another,
"It contains that which aids plant growth and it is very strong."
And the directors went unto the vice presidents, saying unto them,
"It promotes growth and is very powerful."
And the vice presidents went unto the president, saying unto him,
"The new plan will promote the growth and vigor of the company, with powerful effects."
And the president looked upon the plan and saw that it was good.
And the plan became policy.
This is how shit happens.
http://ogun.stanford.edu/~bnayfeh/plan.html
"Oops, better post anon, because I disparaged 'free' software!"
Actually, the only thing you're disparaging is the corporate mindset:
"We've paid a fortune for this, and keep paying small fortunes to keep it running. It has to be superior! Our infrastructure is addicted to it!"
And here I thought I was only kidding!
-The proper expression is "I couldn't care less..."-
Nope; "I could care less." is the proper term.
I always take it to mean, "I could care less, but it's not worth the effort."
"Surely someone senior inside Microsoft will be principled enough to ask if all the ill-will its nagging efforts have generated are really worth it?"
More likely, someone in marketing is saying, "If only we'd pushed Harder, we'd have hit that billion mark!"
"If it don't fit, use a bigger hammer.", is the marketeer's credo.
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