Re: "When it's political, technology cannot do anything."
"The problem wasn't Linux, it was lack of standards across all departments."
And it's a big "Hello There!" to the Linux fall-back excuse #1! "It's not Linux fault, it's the users"
783 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Jul 2014
This set of priorities is all very well, until we get down to determining the order within the human subset.
Does the car kill the occupants of the car, or those of the other car? Or those pedestrians?
I predict that no-one is ever going to buy a car that doesn't put their life at the top of the protection list. At that point the production of robot cars becomes an arms race. The car that has the quickest and smartest AI to anticipate what the other is going to do, wins in any collision. Driving last year's model? Tough luck, you're going to die.
Surely the most important thing is that the camera records an accurate and unbiased record of events? If people's (meaning police or public) behaviour doesn't alter because of the camera, then at least we can be more certain that they will better held responsible for that behaviour.
"OP never said "She deserved it""
Indeed. OP said;
"but what did the roomate do to drive him this insane? "
Meaning it was something the room-mate did that was the root cause of this, otherwise he wouldn't have been an insane stalker. This is what is called "victim blaming" and just one step away from saying she reaped what she sowed.
This question is, of course, exactly what the victim has probably asked herself a million times. "What did I do to cause this vindictive, crazy behaviour from someone I thought was a friend." And the answer in most cases is; absolutely nothing. You were just unlucky to cross paths with someone with a deep personality flaw who became obsessed with you.
The correct answer to this statement should be; "So?" If we are in a simulation, we have absolutely no concept how much bigger the environment is outside of the simulation.
Plus the whole point of models is to simplify things. Electrons are models. Effective models, because the mostly explain the behaviour of what we know of electrons in terms that we understand. But you don't complicate a model with information that you don't need for the immediate task at hand. Simulations are no different.
This is equally my problem with BYOD as an employee. Unless you're going to have separate devices for work and personal use (and who is going to bother with that?) all you are doing is layering your work's business all over the top of your personal business in such a way that where one ends and the other starts is difficult to see.
Employers, and particularly the self-employed, might be ok with that. It doesn't harm them if their employees are, in effect, never away from their work. But why would an employee agree to that? Especially if the arrangement means that your employer has access, and the right, to all your personal files?
"I couldn't watch the rest of the interview after that. Easy to say when you're as bright as a button."
I can fully appreciate how many might feel the cloud is a threat to their current job, and maybe it is. But unfortunately, ignoring it will not make it go away. So your choice is either to become someone who has the skills to earn a living on the cloud, or become someone who find their skills are no longer required. The surest way to become one of the former is to be actively involved in a project moving to the cloud.
There's a lot of very experienced IT professionals who should know better than to sit on the sidelines and scoff at new technology, but are doing it all the same. "The cloud just means someone else's computer." "Nothing is as secure as my server in my server room." "It''s just Microsoft plotting to make more money."
Remember all the old systems that you were involved in replacing 30 years ago? Remember all the stick-in-the-muds who simply refused to use a computer/email/internet? Did their derision and refusal to be involved stop it happening?
I can understand how you feel. I can sympathise with your dilemma. However that's not going to keep you employed in IT. That's up to you.
"Doubly stupid if you have something to hide."
Triply stupid if you're doing it for a beard competition.
- "Nice beard you got there, bud"
- "Thanks. Yours too. Not as nice as his, though"
- "Yeah, his is bushier. Give him a prize."
"How often do you really wash your jacket?"
Not very often. But my experience with these sort of things is that when the advertising says "up to 10", it means in reality "5", after which it'll be increasingly rubbish and temperamental to a degree that makes it effectively useless and you'll stop using it.
Uber can't be a monopoly, regulations will not permit that. However, it's their efforts to dominate the market in as near monopoly as possible that will kill any competition. This is not good for the consumer.
We've already seen this in the bus industry. Large national company floods into an area with buses, undercutting the fares of established, smaller competitors and making a loss with every passenger. Continue doing this until the competition has to withdraw or go under. Then cut the number of buses and hike the fares to regain healthy profitability in a near monopoly position.
The unions' problem with Uber, whether they are pulling strings or not, is their disregard for hard-won labour laws where they treat their drivers like hired serfs. Frankly, I'm ok with the unions having a problem with that.
This is Uber's behaviour, quite apart from its usual 'bending' of the rules because it's a special "disruptor" company which thinks the rules don't apply to them.
You are confusing the reason with the justification there.
Like all "religious" conflicts, the actual reasons for the killing are the usual ones; power and resources. Religion is just the tool used to recruit the cannon-fodder.
All it proves is that the NHS, like most public sector organisations, are not free to hush up instances of their IT going tits-up.
There were probably plenty of other organisations that were equally badly hit, but they weren't providing life-saving operations and didn't have any obligation to tell the world how badly hit they'd been. There is only a legal obligation in the event of a data breach. If you get all your files encrypted in situ, it's no-one's problem but your own.
"Don't force password changes."
Unfortunately this message has not got through to many system developers. You still encounter new systems that force you into regular password changes. Sometimes at ridiculously short frequency.
And the frustrating thing is that if you asked them why they were forcing this on their users, they wouldn't be able to give an answer. They're just copying what they recall seeing elsewhere. No idea why it was done, or whether it is best practice.
And the same goes for the ones that have simplistic "how many 'special' characters do you have?" rules.
"If an internet giant like YouTube can..."
Identifying a copyright movie, TV programme or song is completely different from identifying something that might be classified as terrorist content.
No-one has a database off all possible things that a terrorist might say, and how. So unless we can get terrorists to adopt a theme song, by which they must start all videos, it's simply not that easy.
"what will happen after actual Brexit will all turn out to be a bit of an anticlimax as it's already been decided and priced in."
Except nothing has been decided, because those responsible for this almighty mess can't make their minds up on what they're doing, don't know what's going to happen, and have no idea how it might all turn out.
The idea that everything is settled already in advance by the market is extremely naive. The market can't predict the future anymore than anyone else and frequently gets it wrong. Particularly when those who are supposed to be in charge are running about like headless chickens and can't tell the market where they intend taking us. Other than to hell in a handcart.
"Why are huge companies with $billions skimping on security and storage costs and dumping data into the "cloud"?"
This is not a cloud storage vs server storage issue. Badly configured storage is just as likely to happen on either. Sloppy security is sloppy security, whether on a client desktop, in your server room, on a hired VM, or on a enterprise cloud.
Wow. A lot of elitist dinosaurs evident in these comments.
Python is a nice, clean language that extends to being really powerful when you need it. I've written in more computer languages than I can rightly remember, and there's a lot in Python that made me grin when I encountered it. Because it was almost always a tidy solution to the problem.
And now that it looks like they've finally put Python 2 to bed, I see no stopping Python 3's progress. The reliance on whitespace formatting is unusual at first, but once you learn how it works, it makes complete sense and ensures well presented code that doesn't look like shit.
I realise that some take pride in their code being dense and incomprehensible, but that doesn't impress me. Let them maintain their sniffy aloofness about Python not being a language for real programmers if they wish. But coders of the next decade will be in employment using it.
"A bloodless revolution which will return power to those who it should belong to, us the people."
Bwah, Ha, Ha, Ha! You think that giving May and her cronies free rein and ultimate power will give power back to the people! Ha, Ha, Ha!
"businesses have been getting very rich of immigrant labour"
Ho, Ho, Ho! You think that the Tory Government will do anything to stop businesses getting very rich at the expense of anything! He, He, He!
Oh my aching sides are splitting. Are you a comedian or just utterly clueless?
"while our own indigenous population has suffered in silence for too long - but no longer. We want our jobs back""
Ah.... forget it. You're not joking, you're just one of those people.
They're talking about taking his work pension. He will still qualify for a state pension, which he'd qualify for regardless. So the tax-payer will still be paying for his retirement whether he was a criminal or not. (Or more precisely, his national insurance contributions will be notionally paying for it).
The fact that he'll probably be on benefit until retirement age is unfortunate, but what are the alternatives? Pretend he doesn't owe the money back? Either way, he'll be dirt poor for the rest of his life and the only winners are the bookies who, no doubt, pocketed most of the stolen money.
"What do you honestly think would happen to the sales of someone like coca cola or Maccies if they just stopped advertising? "
Advertising is as much about crowding out the competition as it is about sales. If Coke just stopped advertising they'd effectively be giving Pepsi a free pass to nibble away at their markets. They wouldn't immediately stop selling, but with 10 years people would be saying "Whatever happened to Coke, they used to be everywhere? Can I have a Pepsi please?"
Asking for competency in obsolete technologies is a sneaky way of asking for a certain number of years of experience, which is legally dodgy because it can be challenged as age discrimination.
Wet behind the ears youngsters are unlikely to have experience in Windows 2003 Server and Vista. Someone with 10+ years will have.
"If Trump had explained that the Klan has been a part of the Democratic Party for 100 years, all hell would have broken out since no one knows that."
Trump supporters are fond of this old chestnut about ancient history, because they think it can distract attention about away from current affiliations the current president has. While it is, no doubt, embarrassing and shameful that the Democratic Party were involved with the KKK 100+ years ago, it has no relevance to Trump's associations, policies and attitude, which are in need of far more pressing attention.
The same applies to Trump supporter's laughable attempts at labelling ant-Nazi opponents as "alt-left" or "Marxists". There is no evidence that the counter protesters were Marxists, or even if there is such a concept of "alt-left". There were no mobs waving communist symbols, no chants about bringing down the capitalists. The idea that there is a Marxist movement of any significance in American, hell bent on overthrowing American values, is a fantasy created by the alt-right to justify their own actions. They hope to paint their opponents with the same extremist brush that they are tarred with. Indeed, in most cases, I seriously question if they'd know a Marxist if they even saw one. It's just a word they've heard that they understand all Americans should oppose.
I appreciate how difficult it is to illustrate a story about domain registration with an eye-catching image, but what on earth has a guy with his head resting on a laptop and his hair on fire got to do with it? Is this a previously unknown hazard when laptops and domain names collide?
"nobody is obliged to provide a platform for your free speech, you can stand on a corner and screech if you like, but nobody has to hand you a megaphone."
This isn't about hosting the objectionable material, it's about their domain name registration. So this is more analogous to being denied a corner to screech from, because you don't have the documentation that will allow you out on the street.
"Where has he proved he don't work well with others? Possibly Google is, like big companies afraid that the workers will have a voice, think they are important."
The workers in Google *do* have a voice. And the vast majority of them said "this guy is an asshole and I wouldn't like to work with him". That means Google have a problem, they have an employee who has alienated most of his colleagues, and has drawn negative publicity towards his employer into the bargain.
Sacking him, however, has had the unfortunate effect of making him a martyr to even more dreadful people, as referenced in this excellent article. It's a bit of a 'everyone loses' scenario.
I've worked with a system recently that completely broke if you typed & into a free text field. It threw away everything entered and gave an error message that explained nothing. And this was a mature system that had been running for years, but obviously testing hadn't noticed and no-one had thought it worth fixing.
And systems that can't handle Irish O' are so common that it's ridiculous.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that people will be much more inclined to cheat and bend the rules if there is no obvious victim of their cheating.
If Uber presents itself to their employees (yes, Uber, that's what they are) as a soulless, anonymous automation, then their employees are not going to have any qualms about gaming the soulless, anonymous automation.
The message here is that if you have no relationship with your employees that resembles anything human, don't expect to be treated as such.
"Unfortunately, politics entered the mix,"
Ha. The Apollo missions were entirely about politics right from the start, at least in the eyes of the people who allocated the money. It was entirely about US reaction to Soviet threat. It was super-power dick-measuring.
Things got cancelled because the race was over, the US won. End of story. No-one in power was interested any more because it was obvious that any military advantages from space exploration could be had for far cheaper and greatest effect in low orbit.
Erm, the whole point of the original quote is that each time they "came for", it was for a group of innocent people. And yet we did nothing because it wasn't us.
I'm fine with them "coming for" paedophiles, extremists and cybercriminals. So using them as example groups ruins the poem's message.