Re: Sun Radio.
He's probably jealous of Henry II.
"Will nobody rid me of this turbulent priest?"
5648 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Feb 2015
"He was the person who famously announced that the age of privacy was over, and he followed that up last year by announcing that people’s personal data was safer with marketers than the US government"
Fuck you, McNealy, for that as well as the rest of your inhuman, hypocritical worldview.
"this is all standard fare for any sort of tech support call"
Then they can ask for that information if I make a tech support call. Collecting it automatically by default is just plain unacceptable.
"they might also want to make sure the printers are actually working in a large scale sense"
I'm sure they do. That doesn't excuse this behavior at all.
No company (software or hardware) that does this sort of thing deserves my business.
"If a COBOL job appeals to you, and you find a vacancy, you are a lucky man and I'd say take it. If you are an old-timer, my suggestion is do a Javascript bootcamp (or something popular that appeals to you). Experience the magic, life after COBOL is good!"
I'm an old-timer, and I'm competent-or-better in most modern languages, so a JS bootcamp is unnecessary. Just because someone is a graybeard doesn't mean that their skills aren't up to date.
Ah, those were the days! (/sarc)
I've never forgotten the old days of turning in a card deck or paper tape, then waiting a day or two for the printout from my run to be returned to me. More precisely, I've never forgotten when the shift was made to being able to compile and run stuff interactively! No longer did I need to spend days desk-checking my code to ensure that my run wouldn't terminate early because of something as stupid as a syntax error (which would come along with a scolding for "wasting the computer time").
I would recommend becoming proficient in a language that is in greater demand, and learn COBOL (along with a lot of other languages) on the side.
I think a programmer who only excels in one or two languages is in a weakened position for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the more languages you become at least passingly familiar with, the better you'll work in the languages you use the most.
The two highest-paid engineers I know (by a longshot) are expert COBOL programmers, working in COBOL.
I used to be well-versed in COBOL, but haven't touched in 20 years or so. It hasn't escaped my attention that should I feel the need to goose my income for some reason, brushing up on that skill would be a good way to go.
True. When I absolutely must print something, though, I use the printers at the local copy shop to do it. It's more expensive per print, but considering how rare it is that I really need to print something, it's still cheaper than owning my own printer. Takes up less desk space as well.
"We worry that printing may be facing greater structural headwinds from the shift to digital (i.e people printing less)"
I don't know about most people, but I stopped buying printers over a decade ago, precisely because of the shenanigans that the printer industry adopted regarding the price of ink. The shift to digital had nothing to do with it -- the terrible business model is what drove me away.
It's not false at all, although this may vary from state to state. I know more than one person who have real problems because they were arrested, even though they were later found innocent or had the charges dropped.
Here's a reasonably good description of the problem: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/20/criminal-records-expunged/72532932/
"Howeve I'd have hoped that this would soon become a case between customer and supplier and the employees will be taken out of the firing line."
If that's the case, then they probably will be -- but they may have to go to court and prove that they were operating in good faith and it's their employer that screwed up. I suspect that if that's the situation, then the pentesters may be able to win a rather juicy lawsuit against their employers, too.
"When he saw his arse he could have thrown the penntesters under the bus."
That's why pentesters must have a written contract detailing what the parameters are, and carry it with them. If you have it in writing, then it doesn't matter if an executive tries to claim the acts weren't authorized later on.
"Where do you draw the line?"
Pentesters can't break the law -- that's the line. Pentesters operate within the law by having permission for their activities. Breaking in? Totally legal if you have the proper permission. Kidnapping? Cant' ever be legal, since you can't give legitimate permission to assault someone else.
"They want to keep the option of claiming that the two men overstepped the mark and acted of their own accord."
If Coalfire knows that the pentesters were acting as instructed and is trying to cover its own ass by throwing them under the bus (or even just keeping that option open), then that should serve as a huge warning to all Coalfire employees that perhaps they should rethink who they work for.
In my experience with pentesters, there is always a contract that clearly spells out what the pentesters can and cannot do (for obvious reasons).
So, either those pentesters were working within the terms of the contract or they weren't. This should be a simple matter to determine. If they weren't, then they were attackers with unknown motives, and the courthouse should probably scour their facilities to ensure that those guys didn't plant any devices on their network.
"pushes the boundaries of taste, flavour and colour".
When I read that, I can't help but think it's code for "this stuff is disgusting".
I don't know if it is or not (and I can't drink beer or wine anyway -- I have to stick with liquor), but that's how the copy reads to me.
"my experience is that very few US people have a bank account as we know it in EU."
My experience in the US is that the vast majority of people have real bank accounts. Most got them as children. I admit, however, that I don't know what you mean by "as we know in the EU", but I have a hard time believing that bank accounts differ much between the two.
Last I heard, the US has an abnormally high number of "unbanked" and "underbanked" people as compared to other modern nations, but they are a minority nonetheless.
"I suppose that's also why companies like Western Union still exist, while in Europe they are dodgy and insignificant"
In the US, I wouldn't call them "dodgy", but Western Union is not a significant player and tends to be used by the minority of people who are underbanked.
Good on Valerie Khan for keeping the real issue squarely in focus and working to prevent Facebook from redirecting the conversation to something that isn't the primary problem.
Facebook is really good at doing that. Just look at how hard they're working to redirect the privacy conversation away from Facebook's spying ways and onto "privacy from anyone who isn't Facebook".
"Windows Search has been dependable for me"
I'm jealous. Windows search hasn't worked acceptably well for me since Win 8. Oh, it'll find some stuff, but it will leave out a lot, too -- which is worse than if it just didn't work at all.
I've given up on Windows entirely now. I mean, I have to use it at work, but I no longer use any of the utilities (except Notepad and the calculator) that comes with it unless absolutely necessary. It's burned the last of my trust.
Yay on using a firewall!
I can't use the no-root variety, though, because they use the VPN service to work, and Android doesn't support more than one of those. You can't use a no-root firewall and an actual VPN at the same time. That a big part of why I consider the ability to root to be not optional.
"I'd be very surprised if many ISPs anywhere did this"
My ISP (Comcast) doesn't do this. It assigns me a hostname, but the hostname includes the IP address as part of it. If the IP address that I've been assigned changes, so does the hostname. That's why I have to use a dynamic DNS service -- if Comcast did what Wayland said, then that would be unnecessary.