Posts by bombastic bob

Re: fraud claims vs bank-covered fraud

so, if my funds are transferred without my permission it is THEIR fault, so they re-imburse me. That is fair.

But if I authorize the transfer it is MY fault? That is unfortunately NOT a 'wrong' position to take.

In the USA a credit transaction can be reversed within a reasonable time period (60 days I think it is). A debit or EFT (as I understand it) can NOT be reversed. So when I do online orders it is always with credit, not debit or EFT [except in a very few cases, like paying taxes or doing business with extremely trustworthy vendors].

Anyway part of the problem may lie on a lack of understanding by the users. We hate the outcome, but that's how it is.

Re: Stockholm syndrome

when it comes to loans and business banking, sometimes the larger banks are easier to go to.

Re: "any external analysis done is incomplete.."

welll... did you check the e-mail headers to see what mail server sent the spam? sorry, but I have to agree with chase on this one, if in fact someone merely crammed their e-mail address into the 'From' on the mail header, and the 'reply to'' would have been their scammer address...

I sometimes get spam like this, even spam that pretends to be from Wells Fargo, or rarely, Chase, More often it claims to be from my own mail server admin (which I run for my domain) which is laughable but still sad. (If I am in a rotten mood I report it to all of the appropriate agencies and ISPs). Clicking the 'remove me' link just confirms your e-mail address is real so you can get even MORE spam.

In any case I do business with Chase also and have not seen problems, though the spamming in their name (i.e. joe job) DOES happen.

I disagree with 'spanking'. even a small one. More like a Pyrrhic victory.

Big losers: media predictors, polling operations, democrats in general (especially in Florida). Think of the money spent on 'Beta', for example.

Big winners: The People getting a government that really can't do any more (significant) damage for the next 2 years

Strategists get a lesson learned. The problem is not bad politicians. The problem is NOT Trump. The problem is not GenZ either. The problem is a lack of proper communication, and relying on demographics and a polling horse-race down to the last day, when as many as half of the important places voted early.

Re: Simple approach?

"Cue a Supreme Court case in about 5 years..."

We hope it never has to go there, but it is true that a bureaucracy overstepping its bounds of power can ultimately be spanked by the courts,. but it will take a LONG time and a LOT of money to do that. In the mean time Congressional oversight can put the brakes on a lot of it. If special interests do not rule the day, a sane GDPR-like regulation will result for privacy protection, and gummint snooping will be eliminated, at least if it is done the RIGHT way.

[and this 'diversity' thing (from gummints) may be the NEXT thing on the Supreme Court chopping block - valid lawsuits notwithstanding, gummints need to stop legitimizing discrimination in the name of diversity to "comply" with their NONSENSE]

Re: Damn!

they must be like QWERTY keyboards, now.

Re: From Brazil directly to the CCP

a good point. I'm glad they handed it over to FBI (at least this time). Not sure how long this had been going on, though, or who the initial contacts were...

I guess it;s a bit like their 9/11 . Did not know there was a national comemoration for that.

So it was sorta like saying "Celebrate your 9/11 by buying this cool product!"

(This probably means that you should never let computer AIs generate advertisements).

Re: FOSS conditions

I would rather have the positive affirmation of "OK to use" rather than "NOT OK to use", sorta like "Opt In" vs "Opt Out"

Re: Snowballs anyone?

true - imagine the litigation over use of 'for' or 'if', or (worse) variable names! "I had a 'for(i1=blahbnlah)' in MY code and YOU COPIED IT!"

Re: "Open source is a cancer"

This asks the addititional question: who exactly is going to assimilate WHOM? At least for the OS, a workable windows running on Linux would be a better model...

As for open source licensing, in theory this whole situation with CoPilot begs the question of "what exactly is plagiarism"? I'd say if you look at code in a book or online and then write your own it is NOT. But if a machine creates an AI model (like fractals for a photo) and then re-creates that code from the model (in a nearly identical way) it IS plagiarism. Hopefully the courts will agree.

I am not too happy with such AI writing code. I see gross obvious junior-coder mistakes in THAT future.

"employees can be fired for no reason at any time"

that is actually not true. "wrongful termination" is still a legit reason for a lawsuit. And nobody wants to work for a company that is that 'unstable' with its employees.

Then again I work mostly as a contractor and am used to projects lasting for a time, then I leave and go elsewhere as there is no more work for me to do. Personally, i like it BETTER that way.

being laid off entitles you to unemployment compensation, which is billed to the company that did the layoff. If you get work within the next 6 months, that bill to the company no longer exists. It is in the best interest for the company to give you a nice reference for your next gig.

being fired gets you an accompanied speed-walk carrying your personal things in a box, right out the front door, and not a very nice reference for future employers that want to know why you left. NO unemployment is paid by the company or government.

If there is a reason to FIRE rather than LAY OFF, guess which route will be taken?

not "everyone"

Re: Some people go to car races to see the accidents

train wrecks. I have a nice meme graphic for that. Usually it is accompanied by a rough quote from a Futurama episode where the giant brains made everyone stupidER. "Let's send more trains!"

Re: Just started twittering this week...

I bothered signing up after Elon's first announcement early this year. Had his offer to buy it been canceled, I would have deleted my account. Now I'm watching things unfold, and it seems to have already changed in subtle ways. Fewer "bots" are a possibility already, based on my perception of the level of trolling and the nature of it (compared to a couple of weeks ago anyway).

If it is worth while I think more people might like the *new* *improved* version.... or hold even more contempt for it.

whatever.

Re: "the bird is free"

$55 billion? well seems nice that he'd get a ~20% profit!

*whisper* the truth about these acquisitions is that the company becomes a form of currency, and as long as the banks continue to get their loan payments, it becomes part of "net worth".

But yeah, "Free Bird" was his goal.

/me now goes into that classic Lynyrd Skynyrd guitar solo...

reminds me of Wednesday Adams in the original "Adams Family" TV series. Her headless doll was named "Marie Antoinette"

Re: Geez ...

you know the O.P. thought the article was "over partisan" right? (I also think so)

But what you said sounds like you were disagreeing with that same point... by making that same point.

Re: More court cases to come?

Those kinds of contracts are called "golden parachutes" and are often done to make buying up a company and "evicting" the "Ivory Tower" more expensive.

Seriously, it is a fraction of the total cost of buying the whole company in this case. And as I recall, such contracts require approval from the Board of Directors, who (at the end of the day) want to MAKE MONEY on the purchase (if any).

Re: The taste of schadenfreude

I often call the downvotes "badges of honor". It is fun to see how many I might generate with something that might even be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. heh.

(if you can't have fun with it, why bother?)

Re: The taste of schadenfreude

"listening" is NOT the same as "agreeing"

But to argue that point, I have occasionally done a "repeat back" of what was said [using skills learned in the U.S. Navy for short-term memorization] just to make a point. I "listened". Then I *DISAGREED*,

So yeah, "listening" and "agreeing" are TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS.

"fact-checked by my experience and observations" - something like that.

There are 2 things that can be done to any computer to secure the bootup

1. a jumper on the motherboard that disallows writing anything but TRIVIAL CONFIG to the BIOS (etc.) unless you physically remove it (installed by default) [such trivial config excludes things like BOOT ORDER]

2. A proper OS that does not allow unprotected writes to the boot partition or OS files (like Linux or the BSDs).

Couple THAT with "no physical access to the computer" and proper settings (i.e. no net boot) and you're fine. NO NEED for "[in]secure boot"

Re: Fixable

I just got done spending HOURS trying to trace down whatever it was that was causing power button behavior to be "that way". No simple acpid, no, no, HAD to be logind as a part of systemd, and after HOURS of searching docs AND an e-mail to the board maker (a board similar to RPi that had a power switch thing on it that wasn't very well documented) I discovered (without their help) that logind was sending 'power key' events to the GUI and xfce-power-manager was handling it [so I had to alter THAT config file, and not one at system level].

In the days of 'init' this was a LOT easier to track down!!! [but the board has IT'S flavor of debian,with special drivers, and so I have to deal with that cancerous malignant tumor known as 'systemd').

Re: *I* propose ...

I think there is a numeric sort in there somewhere also, so that S01* is done first, S02* next, etc. but yeah what you said

Simple. Easy to understand. Easy to fix and maintain. "Do one thing, well"

And in particular, requires no monolithic "weak point" to work

Re: ...using TPM 2.0 hardware

Unless I buy a used machine on e-bay (or similar) I typically build it myself using "gamer" motherboards, then install FreeBSD or Linux on it.

Those gamer motherboards tend to NOT require 'secure boot' (if they did I'd never buy their brand EVAR again!) as they are intended for people like me who do NOT settle for "the defaults". And I bet I can build something as good as or better than something from a major computer maker that costs as little as HALF as much, without an OS because downloading Linux or FreeBSD and burning+booting the DVD is all I need.

Re: ...using TPM 2.0 hardware

Embrace, extend, ... (what was that last one again?)

Of COURSE Poettering is involved in this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD4TLmNyGYA (not the ad, the video content)

Re: Wind power

not only that but if the heat generated by the diesel generators is applied to pre-heating hot water and either steam or hot water for building heat, it can be significantly more efficient by saving additional power that would be used for building and water heat. Additionally the hot water and exhaust heat can generate chilled water for summer cooling via an absorption chiller.

Co-generation. It's a GOOD thing!

Worthy of mention, DG's can run off of natural gas as well as propane and diesel fuel and whatever else makes sense. The only difference is the fuel system i.e. the way the fuel is metered and injected. The rest of the system is identical regardless of fuel type. So if fuel types change radically it should only be a matter of a relatively quick retrofit.