Posts by a_yank_lurker

Re: That's actually quite insane

The initial version of Linux was developed by 1 college kid. But your point is well taken, get a small, competent team together and let them at it. You would probably have a truly modern OS in a couple of years. Given that all the common commercials are lineal descendents of 40+ year code it might a very good idea.

Re: Quite sad

Actually this type semi-tangential charge to the main concern is often what is first use to break a cartel or criminal enterprise. Al Capone was nailed for income tax evasion and given a rather harsh sentence for it. The goal here is to some how to force Suckerberg to act more ethically by any means possible. What caught my eye was the Fatherland has the authority to levy some rather mouth-watering fines if Suckerberg refuses to shape up. This is not an uncommon tactic, you nail the slime with something that is relatively easy to prove initially and then maybe move up the ladder of charges as the case unfolds.

Re: Amused that IBM thinks its the geezers repelling the Millennials

Good point, what does Itsy Bitsy Moron make that anyone with a couple of functioning brain cells knows about or wants. Google, AWS, Slurp all have products that are potentially (or actually) useful to me personally and professionally. And there are others. I've Been Moved - crickets.

Re: The only solution..

I work in an industry that has worldwide very strict privacy laws (they vary some but are essentially the same philosophy). We have training on proper handling of the data including that we cannot disclose it to internal colleagues who do not need to know even within your own team. And you can imagine the rules about sharing to anyone outside the company. These laws have significant PERSONAL penalties for violations (again vary somewhat by country).

The phone providers and various IT services that deal with large amounts of customer data have not been under rules like this. But people are realizing the data they are abusing is significant and can put people in real jeopardy. Thus the GPDR in the EU. The hounding of Suckerberg. Once it becomes a major problem (very close now) they will get hit with laws like the US HIPPA or EU GPDR and will wonder why; their own greed, stupidity, and lack of ethics.

EULAs are contracts that in general have not been tested thoroughly in the courts of any country. Given the one-sided nature of most EULAs it is almost certain many of the provisions in them are illegal in some or all countries. But because of the current legal limbo, it is hard for users to clearly determine what is legal and illegal so they tend to omnipotentcy about them that is false.

Re: There's a simple solution to this

By law, feral employees cannot strike. If they do, then they can be fired without recourse or reinstatement. Reagen did this the air traffic controllers in the 80s. And there are some nasty other penalties if fired for striking.

The bigger problem for many feral employees as this drags on is if the impact on the broader public is mild. The public might start asking the question 'Why do we need you, your agency, or function?'. So far for me, there has been no impact (will not say there will be none yet). If this holds for several weeks or months for enough people there may be a push to make the feral government permanently smaller and eliminate most of the furloughed employees' jobs.

Re: Comparison

More accurate way of looking at all Congresscritters is that are local pols closely affiliated with the state party and more loosely with the national party. Depending on how closely the two parties align depends on how much they will support the President even if he is nominally the same party. Also, Congress was deliberately set up to force compromises within each house, between the two houses, and with the President to get legislation passed.

Re: I haven't updated my win 7 box in _MONTHS_

Not bothering to update at all as it works fine for what I need it for.

Re: H1-B abuse

The H1-B requirements are easy to game. Part of the problem is companies do not want to retain older workers (see Itsy Bitsy Moron) who cost more salary. So they try to game the job opening with idiotic requirements that no one in the world can meet to show they cannot find US talent. Then they go hire an H1-B visa slave on the cheap and fire the older workers. Silly Valley is the worst for this behavior and they wonder way they getting a backlash. If it walks like a duck, quakes like a duck, it is a duck, bloody frauds.

Re: $10bn cloud contract

It is not that big of a feral contract in reality. The real issue is Leisure Suit Larry and his Minions have asleep at the switch and are late to the cloud game. While this would be nice contract for AWS or Azure neither needs it for credibility. Both are well known players in the cloud so are often invited to bid as a matter of course. I suspect they are often engaged in precontract technical discussions also that occur before a spec is even written. (A practice that is not all the uncommon with government contracts at all levels.) But Leisure Suit needs to a biggish contract with a big entity to give some real credibility as a cloud vendor. Thus, the minions' carping about probably losing the bid because in reality they are probably not competitive. Lose this contract and the minions do not have a big name client to bandy about.

Often in a major contract, the buyer will require an 'installation list' of customers using your equipment or service whom the buyer can contact. So a few very big name customers that are reasonably happy with you help your credibility with the buyer. Getting a good customer list is hard to do for someone late to the game. And often only prequalified vendors are allowed to bid. So if you cannot get on the bidder's list you bid will be rejected. So the minions being late probably do not have an impressive customer list, certainly nothing like AWS. And they are probably having problems convincing the contract officer they have the skills to handle the project (the importance of the customer list). Thus they are likely to be excluded from bidding while several others will be allowed to bid. I have experience with bidding capital equipment contracts with various governmental agencies and have seen the process first hand.

It depends on if you are dealing with an advanced script-kiddy or someone who is actually IT literate. QR codes are a bit more advanced than normal script-kiddy stuff but would say one has to be IT literate to use one. MAC addresses are less well known as generally they are not that important to the average user. They have probably seen them when pairing a Bluetooth device but would not have much need to be really aware of what they are or do.

Re: Right to NOT be forgotten?

A similar situation occurs with the US and Canadian press at the border. Under Canadian law the press cannot report the identity in many cases of the defendant but in the US the press can name the defendant. There have been cases in the Niagara Falls region where the Canadian press could not name the defendant but the US press did. So if you got the US media (TV or print) you knew the name of the defendant.

The problem with the EU right to be forgotten is one can use a VPN or TOR browser to possibly get around the block. It just makes getting information more inconvenient.

Re: That data is useless anyway, why keep it?

It really depends what you want to do with the data. Knowing where someone lived or worked means one can try find some dirt from old neighbors and colleagues. Also, it give a sleaze ball an idea of who to talk to about where someone is currently working or living if for some reason that information is not readily available. If you have lived long enough you probably know a few people you really do not want showing up at your doorstep or office.

Re: Also facebook

Short answer no. This decision is squarely aimed at public officials official accounts as a method of communicating with the public.

Re: Freudian reading

Smoking weed almost certainly

@johnnyblaze - Bloat 7 is the last version of Bloat in use by me. That is for a couple pieces of software SWAMBO uses occasionally. It is far simpler to just run Linux otherwise and avoid Bloat 10 and Spyware-as-a-Service. SWAMBO uses Linux Mint as her daily driver.

Re: Look out

Yes smoking and vaping are bad for long term health, no debate but my problem is not with the smokers and vapers but with the holier-than-thou hypocrites who do worse than the smokers and vapers. (I never smoked BTW). I would turn the question on the hypocrites and tell them they can accuse smokers and vapers of being evil only if they never have done anything wrong. Then let's see how many of the hypocrites are left.

Also I wonder how many of the mouthy idiots support legalizing marijuana but want to ban tobacco products. While not identical medical problems, both do have long term medical issues which is what the anti-tobacco are complaining about. I personally feel both are smoking weed and tobacco are stupid but cannot see why either should be illegal or all the posturing over them. But as above I have done plenty of stupid things in my life so I am not in the best position to hyperventilate over either.

The question is not are some habits bad for you but whether bad habits and dumb actions should be illegal. I say keep it legal and whatever the associated problems with the bad habits or dumb actions are limited to social/medical problems not criminal problems.

Re: Yes, I'm laughing...

After gagging on Fortin's bullshit and buzzword bingo, I wonder how long Slurp is going to survive period. Not like Itty Bitty Morons who are still lingering but actual DOA. Slurp needs to get their QA act together very soon or they will be facing an exodus of users, small at first but growing into a tsunami. Bloat is the linchpin of the whole ecosystem, without Bloat their cloudy garbage has much less appeal. About the only cloudy offering that would be popular is Orifice 3??.

Re: Quality of design

My observation as code wrangler is the more time spent on design, thinking, and talking to users up front is well spent. Once you have a sound idea of where to begin the actual coding is often fairly straightforward. But what is often done is dump a vague 'design' document on top the programming team and isolate the team from the actual users. So you have team that does not understand the problem guessing what mismanagement wants without any input from users. A recipe for complete disaster.

Re: Nope

I've Been Moved is run by PHBs who fail to realize you need a mix of people with varying levels of experience. The idea is the more experienced mentor often informally the young'ens. When the greyhairs do leave, the young'ens are now well trained and can take over without missing a beat.

In my career, I have worked in a number of different industries in a number of different capacities. What I have noticed is no matter the position it takes a couple years or so for a new person to become fully competent at the position. Mostly because they do not know in which closet something is hidden or fully understand why something was done. This takes time to grasp. Experience will help come to speed a little more quickly as you probably have a better grasp of what is going than some PFY in their first job.

@sanmigueelbeer - While the incompetent failures on the bench are probably too stupid to grasp that a massive screw up this big is partially caused by mid and senior mismanagement not making IT security a priority. Compound this with mistakes by the grunts and you can have a perfect storm brewing. While a wrongful dismissal should be slam-dunk I am not so confident that the shyster in robes cares about justice and is capable of understanding how this really occurred.

Re: Invalid numbers

By bundling Skype with Orifice Slurp automatically gains enterprise users. Given most enterprises are Slurp shops this gives a massive installed user base at the enterprise level. Any other competitor has to overcome the (illegal?) bundling, internal inertia, and PHBs believing all of Slurp's lies. A tall order even for someone with deep pockets.

Re: Conflicted

One of Leisure Suit Larry's complaints is vendor lock-in. No matter how much you try to avoid lock-in you will have some degree of lock-in. Whether is proprietary products with proprietary file formats, a query languages with non-standard syntax and extensions (looking at you Larry, you lying scumbag), familiarity with the UI, or something else you end up with a degree lock-in with any product. Whether DOD selects AWS, Azure, or someone else they will have some degree of lock-in even with Larry's Minions.

The main advantage with a sole source cloud contract is to have one point of contact instead of many possibly incompatible systems in use. One way to drive up the costs of a system is to have parts from many vendors with no one have the responsibility to make it all work. You saw with the Obamacare rollout, no one vendor had the authority to force the subvendors in line, so you ended up a morass of non-functioning, incompetently designed and written systems that did not work together. Note of the chief offenders was Larry's Minions.

@ASAC - I suspect there was more of a 'nod, nod, wink, wink' to this whole affair. The documents were conveniently with a C-suite who could claim he needed to review them while on the road in a foreign country. Said foreign country issued a warrant to get those documents as they wanted them to. Said person coughs up the documents rather willingly. The only issue is how did said foreign country know the documents were in the country unless someone made sure they knew.

Re: WebAssembly & Blazer

Looking at HTML5test.com, most of the major browsers are reasonably compliant, with Imbecile Explorer being the a serious laggard. Edge is competitive with Firefox and better than Safari and worse than Chrome. So for generic website, you can probably ignore the deficiencies of Edge as you are likely to use Safari as your baseline for feature support since Imbecile Explorer is being slowly exterminated by Slurp.

The problems with Edge had nothing to do with standards support, it is quite reasonable but with how badly it was rushed out. This gave it a noticeable alphaish feel to users which was a major turn off. It never recovered. Its guilt by association with the t*rd Imbecile Explorer also meant that it had to be a grand slam from day one or it will in trouble.