Posts by a_yank_lurker

@thomn8r - Short answer - no. The real answer is about PHBs looking at the wages on their Excel spreadsheet and trying to reduce them. So if they can lie on the form, they can higher someone for less than the going rate and work them harder they save a few bucks short term. The real problem is the burnout treadmill and the fact they had to lie to get approval.

A common trick is to load up a job description with requirements that no one in the world could meet. When this fictitious person can not be found in the US then they file for H-1B visa and get someone to lie on the paperwork. Viola! The visa gets approved by some incompetent, lazy bureaucrat who could care less about doing their job.

Re: Shocked I tell you...

I wonder as a software developer how many patents I have violated that I am never aware of.

@dajames

Bingo! Google is saying a common and necessary IT practice should either not be copyrightable or if it is falls under fair use. Both are defensible positions particularly if you understand how software is developed. But the problem is the Senile wann-a-bes are either too lazy or stupid or both to learn anything about software development with on glaring exception. Thus, they collectively have no clue what the real issues of the case are.

Re: Protecting the numpties

@Brian Miller - The problem is not only inept users but includes poorly designed products with idiotic default settings. The more devices one has to configure correctly with badly written instructions (if you are lucky) the more likely something will be misconfigured. User skills very widely and must accounted for in the product design and software implementation. The designers should do their jobs and not rely on the end user being an expert at network security. Most IT pros are not expert at network security so why would anyone expect the average user to have any expertise? That is fundamentally so stupid as be arrogant. Also, when one is relying on user perfection (not clicking on that dodgy attachment e.g.) you are by default one mistake away from a potential disaster. Given enough time everyone will do something stupid with a computer.

@John 104

More likely afraid of investor civil suits if enough details got out to show Leisure Suit's minions were goosing the numbers a little much. The burden of proof in a civil suit is lower than a criminal case so the minions could get hammered financially even if criminal case is never filed.

Re: telecommuting marketing staff

My experience and my colleagues is that part time telecommuting is the best. You have a good deal of latitude and still have some face time with colleagues and management.

Re: Liar liar pants on fire!

My concern for Bloat 10 is the Spyware-as-a-Service is muted but not truly turned off. Too many industries have very strict data security and privacy regulations. I work in one (not law) and I know how much privacy and proper handling of personal information is stressed. With SaaS, will Slurp indemnify enterprise customers or leave out to dry?

Re: They only object when it costs them money

Blowhard is against using immigrants to displace American workers whether they are illegal or legal. So if your business model and massive profits rely on using immigrants as defacto indentured servants you are going to be upset at Blowhard. He is threatening them where it really hurts - the wallet.

Now on the flip side, the lack of indentured servants artificially depressing US wages might give more jobs and money to Americans. This might be better for the economy overall because people who have money and confidence will spend money. Also, many of the 1% fail to grasp that their long term profits are based on people being able to afford their products and services. No income means no profits.

@AC

Given the actual screwup is Chipzilla, the vendors in many cases do not have any real options until Chipzilla figures out how to fix their mess. Then Cisco can start fixing/replacing gear; they do not have any inventory of good chips. Right now there is no gear except for known defective gear to push out. Cisco has the luxury of nailing Chipzilla with a knockout punch and probably will go after them.

Re: ...

They are more worried about H-1B reform which would force them to stop running an indentured servant shop by abusing the H-1B visas.

Re: If it compiles, ship it

@Ledswinger - The EULA may be void in many jurisdictions and depending on the jurisdiction a nasty civil suit may be much easier to get started. Also, there may criminal statutes that could come in play for various jurisdictions. All it really takes is for someone to file the nuclear lawsuit in the Slurp in a legally unfriendly jurisdiction to have the hammer drop very hard. US is probably friendlier for certain types of cases but check local product liability laws particularly the criminal ones.

Lose a couple of major lawsuits and watch the legal beagles salivate worldwide because much of the work has already been done in another jurisdiction. Think VW in the US, if anyone wishes to come after VW most of the legal work has been done for you by the ferals free of charge. Slurp's primary defences seem to be inertia and FUD - too lazy to make the change away and to scared to sue when you have a strong case under local laws. It only takes a few in both areas to break the logjam and whole rotten edifice to crash.

Re: WOW

This is a district court which may get slapped around by the appeals court. A cursory read is the judge tried to avoid the implications of the Slurp ruling. I think this court is under the same appeals court that ruled Slurp did not have to turn over the emails.

Re: @ Yank "that tech companies are heavily reliant on to get skilled workers into the country"

@Ian Michael Gumby - Part of the problem is that companies do not value the problem solving and business knowledge but the book learning. Solving the problem in an intelligent manner is more important than the details of the implementation. A true code monkey does not care about intelligently solving problems only about writing (usually bad) code. A true professional cares about intelligently solving the problem first then worries about writing code second.

Re: Card counting

Blackjack has odds slightly against the house if one counts cards correctly. Normally poker is not played against the house but other players.

Re: Cisco

Or both, wrote a backdoor that was too easy to discover and use.

Re: Trust? Who, me?

Part of the issue is generational, the norms of one's childhood and early adulthood still strongly influence one's attitudes and tendency to trust strangers. Also, many stop aggressively learning new technology as they age preferring the older, more familiar technologies than the newer. It's not that they can not it's that they do not feel the need to learn many new technologies.

Watch many older movies from the 30s into the 80s and notice how little office technology and procedures really changed. That era lasted longer than most realize. So someone could learn the necessary skills while young and not have learn many new skills later and they needed to learn fewer at one time.

"Spreadsheets are a stupid answer to whatever the question is."

I have come to the conclusion that spreadsheets are probably the worst single piece of office software. They allow the mathematically illiterate to play with numbers and find new ways to invoke Murphy's Law.

Re: Cult of useless HTTPS

The problem Chocolate Factory is trying to address is overall poor security on the web combined with the generally poor user skills. HTTPS is not perfect, no one with a clue will say that, but it does offer more security than nothing (HTTP). To some extent the idea is to slow down the miscreants. Also, another part of this is add more layers to get through - defence in depth.

Remember the average reader of El Reg is likely very knowledgeable about computers, web design, etc. while average user only knows how to use a computer and is otherwise clueless about how they work.

Re: What OS's were the victims running?

My first question about any outbreak is what are the targeted OSes and distros. Bloat is an automatic target, too many installs and too many inept users. But those do not mean Macs or Linux would not make good targets for some. While malware is not very common on many other platforms there is no technical reason why any malware could not be adapted to attack them.

Re: Current pet peeves:

Keep the UI consistent between releases. A menu and GUI one is familiar with is easier to navigate (from memory) than any theoretically "better" GUI. Remember the GUI paradigm was developed by some very wise people in the 60's and 70's.

Having lived in NY state, Albany is a shorthand for the bloated, incompetent, corrupt, state government because Albany is the capital.

Re: Where Satya Nadella messed up...

Slurp is faced with a serious choice in the future. EIther they concentrate on enterprise oriented products or they learn to compete in the consumer market. Windows became dominant partially because of smart moves by Gates but also by the incredibly stupid moves by others. The market is splitting into a business area and a consumer area. Device usage is very different in the two areas. Successful marketing in one is usually a complete disaster in the other. The business market is a fairly stable, somewhat boring market, but one were companies can make decent money. The consumer market is a more fickle and one were last month's hot trend may be passe today. In the business market many companies like to partner with a limited number of key suppliers for many sound reasons. Businesses do not mind subscriptions because of how the tax rules treat expenses versus depreciation. While in the consumer market, while more fickle, often inertia rules then suddenly the herd moves to a new thinging. Consumers do not normally benefit from subscriptions and thus more likely to prefer outright purchase.

@Nifty

A brothel would be step up from most IT companies.

"Would this be true even of formally proven code?" In functional languages functions are typically split into groups: pure and impure. The pure functions, in principle, can be formally proven to work correctly every time. The impure functions such as I/O or database queries can not be given such a guarantee because one can not guarantee inputs will be what you expect or accounted for. So even using a functional techniques at best only partially mitigates the problem. In imperative languages where the program state is much more mutable the problem is even worse (did one unintentionally change a more global variable for example).

The point being made is testing will not cover all the potential cases - they are often infinite - but only those that experience and judgement deems the most important.

Re: Executive orders, a primer

When a treaty becomes binding in other countries one will need to look at those countries' constitutions and laws. In the US, a treaty only becomes binding if it is ratified by the US Senate per the US Constitution. The Senate has rejected treaties before (Versailles Treaty for one).