Posts by a_yank_lurker

Re: HP defense?

Major publicly traded companies have numerous analysts who follow them. Whether the analysts' recommendations are publicly available varies. But if there is a major split in opinion by the analysts or an overall negative opinion an investor or buyer should be very wary. The analysts' opinions are generally their best guesses of what the numbers mean for the overall health of a company. A split or negative opinion means one needs to very wary of something about the company.

The analysts seem to have an opinion that Autonomy had some issues with sales breakdowns that bothered each to varying degrees. This should have been a red flag to anyone to look more carefully at the numbers and other options before plunking down money on Autonomy stock at that time. However, no of this suggests fraud on the part of Autonomy only that company may not have been as healthy as Leo the Idiot wanted to believe.

Re: Have you tasted American and Aussi beer?

The microbreweries produce excellent brew. Now Buttwiper and the rest of their ilk, glorified piss water.

Re: Don't Blame the Victim, But

Now we can discuss the relative merits of a 9mm, 45ACP, 30-06, 303, etc for taking out computers. Could be interesting. Reminds of an email chain I saw about the good ways to destroy a hard drive, several over here suggested using it for target practice. lol

Re: They make billions

Agile has 2 different but apparently similar definitions. One is the methodology with very specific features such 2 week sprints, design iteration on the fly, etc. The other is more of mindset of the involving all the parties to the project from the start with design meetings including programmers from the start and iterative building until one has a usable or final product. In the first, there are often specific check boxes that must be adhered to. The second is more dynamic and has fewer, if any formal check boxes. Its key concept is the programmers must be involved early one and there must be feedback to the refine the project. Oddly, the second may appear to be more formal as it does mandate specific practices about meetings or timing.

Re: Cloud must be rather Cloudy

Not the issue I was raising, nor am I saying that the Minions cannot charge for support, etc. Nor I am discussing the details of how much they are charging.

Re: When AI Will Be Ready

Sounds like redefining AI to be something that can be done rather anything resembling intelligence. Keep on redefining it and any dbms is now an AI system; the marketing wallahs will love it.

Most of your regular news outlets are nothing more the purveyors of yellow journalism where facts do not matter; only juicy headlines to get attention. Also, running done the source and actually investigating the claims is often real work which these outfits never do; they just regurgitate a press release and get a couple quotes from one of the reliable 'expert' babble-mouths and call it a day.

Doesn't surprise me they would claim they got screwed. It's too big a contract to walk away from. So the lawsuits are attempt to rewrite the bid documents. Whether it flies depends on the bid documents but since it is not a sole source I would tend to say the bid documents are fair as there would only be a few players to begin with.

One problem not addressed is all decisions are made in a partial information vacuum, a fog if you will. When one makes a decision, one does not all the relevant facts about the issue and may never know all the relevant facts afterwards. So one makes a decision based on experience, information at hand, and some navel gazing. How murky the fog is various but it is there. Many wrong decisions in hindsight were not poor or stupid decisions based on what was known at the time.

Re: $50 an hour??

Vietnam, Bangladesh are probably cheaper and most do not know English, Russian, Chinese so they would not be able to moderate the content unless it has pictures.

Re: Such vitriol for something that costs virtually nothing...

I have had some really odd issues with the company supplied Windows laptop that cost me about 4 hours of downtime trying get it work right recently; a very frustrated and unhappy camper. One day Windows updates was causing computers to hang prompting numerous calls to the support desk, enough that the support desk had instructions on how to reboot the laptops. So if each of these updates takes about 15 minutes to resolve with a reboot, etc. that can add up to significant lost production as people are fighting their kit.

Re: Cowardly option

Not to claim the mantel of anything but a coward for myself, I have noticed to truly do the ethically or morally correct action often takes real courage. Often the mob is whipped up by slimes of all types who are only interested in their personal power; political affiliation, orientation, etc. is irrelevant. To stand up to these slimes, often requires one to go against the perceived popular opinion of the day and be hopefully only slurred (some have been murdered for standing up to the mob throughout history). That blinding yellow flash you see is my cowardly backside.

Re: All you need to know about Arkansas

The phrase is "The God for Mississippi" in the South. It sounds like Arkansas is trying to displace Mississippi.

Re: Sale of the Century

"Those who really need Oracle DB do not care how much license fee is," you mean all 3 of them. The truth most people who are using Oracle can use a different db even a different type instead of a relational and be fine. The vendor lock-in for most is the sheer PITA of migrating from Oracle to something else not some specific feature.

If Amazon can ditch Leisure Suit Larry there are probably very few Oracle customers who could not move to another db. This is a public relation disaster for Larry as a major, well known customer has publicly ditched them. And this customer is very large. As couple of noted, Amazon can give Oracle customers guidance on ditching Oracle for first hand experience. I would not

Re: Snowflakes

This is an ethics board and ethics is not a science or technology issue but a moral/philosophical one. If you pack the board with essentially one viewpoint you will fail to consider other viewpoints or their frame of reference. By not acknowledging the existence of other viewpoints in area that has many ethically murky at best applications you blind yourself to real concerns of others. And it does matter which way you stack the board, you have the same fundamental flaw.

The ethical issues they wish to address are not necessarily obvious nor are they likely to have easy answers. Nor are they readily addressed in standard ethical, philosophical, or religious treatises. The fundamental issue is what are the ethical and unethical uses of AI. A perusing of history will show we have often invented a technology, deployed, and starting using it without a clear understanding of any ethical considerations. Often we then trying get the horse back into the barn after it has gotten out.

Re: If it happens

There are a couple newish languages that are both C like and much more type safe than C: Go and Rust. The main reason Java is still big is the enterprise code base and Android apps. Java has notoriously bloated, verbose code which offends many programmers' sense of elegance.

Also, many conflate the JVM and development environment with Java the language. The JVM will probably be around for sometime as many languages use it. Java the language may start to wane as developers get familiar with other JVM languages such as Kotlin.

Re: One, OK, hundred, I have my doubts

Back in those days, no one in the general public was computer literate even by the most generous standards. Depending on how much training the got, which often was virtually none, they often would be found floundering when they first had to use a computer. The administrative staff often got them first since they could type unlike most of the other staff. And the administrative staff probably was the least technically savvy in the company though it might a slim margin over most of the professionals. So the admin staff was often floundering with no help as they struggled to learn how to use the beasts.

Re: Uhm... Nope.

Itsy Bitsy Morons is penny-wise and pound-foolish as the adage goes. There is great institutional memory and skills being lost that is not readily transferable nor written down anywhere. Any organization that has been around awhile has many undocumented items in their operations that have not been formally written down; they are passed on by word of mouth. Lose the font of knowledge and you lost the walking documentation. The cheap PFY do not, cannot, and will not know this lore unless it is taught to them. The PFYs are not at fault for something that was done many years before they ever walked in the door.

Violating the law is not a good way to win points with anyone other than extremely naive PFYs. This will get around as stories and posts get published and the Internet never forgets.

Re: So, no wrongdoing. But $35m in penalties.

Better question, why would anyone with a lick of sense trust someone like Orifice Depot with their computers? You would probably be better off working with a local shop, tech savvy friend or relative. The rates may not be cheaper but you are more likely to get an honest evaluation from them as they will value a relationship with you.

Re: Mature Product

The return of a replaceable battery is about the only 'new feature' that would intrigue me but only if the price is right for me. Otherwise, I will keep my phone for a couple more years.

Re: Optional title goes here

It sounds like the key issue is the correct interpretation of some accounting rules as they relate to properly accounting sales and future liabilities for sale. Then, even if the rules were incorrectly applied, were they do in a fraudulent manner. Just because the interpretation may have been wrong does not automatically make it a crime. His Lordship's question seemed to getting at this; there may be serious technical violations of accounting rules but was there any real criminal intent or action.