Posts by Mark 85

Once upon a time....

Many municipalities had their own ISP including infrastructure. The big guys sued on "unfair competition" and made the usual promises of high speeds, reliability, and connections for everyone. If they didn't win the lawsuit, they just raised their rates to where the users in the cities couldn't afford the ISP. Well, here we are now... poor service, lousy speeds, and high prices because the big guys can "compete". They won't connect to rural areas or anywhere it might be a tad unprofitable, but hey... they're the good guys and they're still promising the green pastures to all who listen.

And now, we have (other than Google) non-ISP companies backing this idea of muni IPSs. The big ISPs are strangely silent.

Reminds of the shenanigans the major power companies pulled with muni-owned power companies.

"Finally, we will continue to advance transparency" says he...

I'm with the others.. Win10 and ramming it down the user's throats? Not telling anyone "transparently" what the updates actually do? Should I add all the telemetry that, of course <cough>, is only there to improve the experience? And we won't get into what is being done with all this data being collected from the users.

Keep talking, Brad. And you might need a bigger shovel because I expect a lot crap to be shoveled out of Redmond.

And my wife wonders why I'm cynical about certain things...

Humbleness?

You expect to see "humbleness" from any government agency? These are people who "know better than the rest of us". It seems to be part of the job description for any department or agency at any level of government in any country.

Meeting and PR like this...

are what they feed to the boards.. and they buy into it. As usual, IT isn't involved and has to clean up the mess on the floor and in the server room... and on the desktops. It does explain a lot about how they sell the upper management types, though.

I guess this is slightly better than having everyone lock arms and sing "Kambaya"? I've been through some of this previous mentioned stuff that was "embraced by the board and senior management". Did it change anything? No. Did anyone really feel it was anything other than a waste of time? No. So how is this "better" or more productive? Especially under the constraints? I see it as a warm, fuzzy type of moment, then back to business as usual.

Thanks for the heads up on this though. I think when the place I work decides this is the fad of the moment to follow, I'll be out sick that week...<cough><sniffle><barf> with the flu.

Pass the popcorn. I'm waiting for the first (probably many) script-kiddies or state type actors to hack into it and take control*. This should be interesting to watch. I'd lay odds that after the first one, it would be manned by if nothing else than some armed guards who have access to a master control switch.

*It's not "if" anything IT related gets hacked, it is "when" and it will happen.

Before I drop the drawbridge to have a look at this.....

Is this part of it a Trojan Horse that Win7 users will get that includes all the Win10 "Get it now" updates and folderol? <peers head over parapet><wonders if it's a trap as we've seen it before>

I'll go have a peek and report back as to whether it's a trap or not... <sigh> a dark and dirty job but someone's gotta' take a peek.

Edit... seems the coast is clear... <keeping fingers crossed as the GWX Blocker might be stopping them>

The way this is headed sounds like: "if you don't want to be tracked, leave the cell phone at home". However, it's unclear as to when the tracking info was received. Was it while looking for a suspect (fishing expedition) or after they had a suspect and were adding to the evidence pile? If I'm standing outside a bank at 9 am every morning, and at 9:05 one fine day it's robbed, I guess I'm a suspect. Or a guy waiting for a bus. Phone data says I was there, witnesses say I never went into the bank but got on the bus.

I think that "probable cause" and a warrant for phone records needs to be established and if it takes Congress to pass an act to clarify the Constitution, then so be it.

Thank <$DEITY> that I don't use FB and run Ad-Block. Now if I can just figure out why the flood of spam and phoney gift cards started. I don't recall giving my email to anyone in the last 3 months or so.

may want to spend longer evaluating the client release of Windows 10: for the system today lacks the fit and finish they’ve come to expect.

I'd say not just for the mobiles but for the PC's as well. Then again... the "come to expect"... which is pretty much what we're seeing. We've come to expect crap coming out of Redmond.

I'm a long time Win user and not a hater. I've just become very apathetic towards MS's total lack of customer needs and wants instead of their schedule and bottom line. I do believe that MS is about to become irrelevant and there may not be a chance to turn things around.

I guess I'm jaded. I've worked in retail (in the 60's and early 70's) and in the defense industry (70's and 80's) and bag/briefcase searches were the norm at both. I don't see the problem.... .

$325M (US) in one year <low whisle>

I realize that they have <ahem> expenses... but this is unbelievable. I almost would expect them to drop out of sight and go live on their ill-gotten gains.

Ok.. expenses.. cops maybe? Influential country leaders? Bankers? Someone's handling the money at their end.

Who would know...? Since TOR is involved, I'd suspect that NSA or one of the 5-Eyes would or could know but then they would lose a tool for their escapades in spying.

Still.. that much money and they're still at it. They must have one hell of a retirement fund set up. And yes, if their ever caught, hanging would be too good for them.

Funding...

I guess it depends on who's in power as President and which crowd is running Congress. It would be deplorable if some idiot decided that since the universe is only 6000 years old that we don't need pictures or science.... <sigh> It's a shame that my country's government has so many idiots running things.

I had the Radio Shack Color Computer here in the States.

Happy times... trying to stuff as much as possible and be efficient about it into the memory. Waiting forever while the tape loaded or saving to the tapes. Learned Basic and assembly which carried over when I learned (self-taught) C and x86 assembly. Those old dinosaurs were great for teaching how not to write bloatware.

It's really a shame that these types of machines aren't around much except as curiousity pieces. I think any kid wanting to learn computing and programming would benefit immensely as the one thing you learned was how to write fast code, especially if you learned to write games. Debugging was half the fun and much of the satisfaction. A magical time for me.