Posts by MalIlluminated

Right, weren't a number of the recent heists due to bugs in the "smart contract" implementation? I'm skeptical that an enclave can protect against shitty code.

Re: People went to digital photography to get AWAY from this

An important lesson from those days was “always invite the girl at the photo counter to your parties.”

Today, digital cameras exist, as do multiple means of online and offline storage. I can’t see where this invasion of my privacy will actually solve the stated problem.

It seems the real problem is that people can’t be trusted not to do atrocious things. I’m thinking of torture and blowing up people in other countries because you don’t like them. So I think when the government is ready to allow me to root around in their phones and cloud storage for immoral behavior, perhaps a compromise could be reached.

Re: We only dreamed of having a T-shirt when I was young

Man, that's rough. Microsoft graciously sent me an Internet Explorer "Midnight Madness" tee shirt for nothing. Now, which of us do you suppose had it worse?

Re: And contrary to "expert" advice ...

This can be set in the "Power Options" control panel.

And I'm not so sure about altering a setting via Group Policy. Unless someone can present evidence that this specific setting is being altered by whatever 1st/3rd party component is causing the problem, it might do more harm than good. AFAIK this is equivalent to disabling UAC which causes all processes to run at the highest integrity level. Of course, you weren't running with an Admin account in the first place, were you?

I just think that if there's half-a-dozen other ways to get the computer to turn off peacefully, taking a hatchet to an important security restriction seems the least advisable one. UAC has saved my from my own clickhappiness at least once.

Re: We'll get there yet

I'm sure it's a ban-worthy offence to bulk create thousands of accounts to upvote a post, but I'm at least considering it.

Re: "I just pity the jury"

If Lynch is "sent over," maybe he'll get really, really, lucky and AC will be selected for jury duty.

Re: Sabotage

Seems like a very good idea. Regardless whether other people do this, I gain a personal reward for ruining their database about me. It might be selfish of me, but provided the system can't identify me or anyone I care about, I'm bothered less by it's existence. I have a limited amount of indignation to go around, and there's plenty other problems clamoring for their share.

Re: What is it about domain name registries that attracts so much scandal and bad behaviour?

ICANN imagine that the institutional prototype is a poor example, and they've worked hard to duplicate it.

Are you saying that all Mac Pros are manufactured at this factory, but because the number of Mac Pros sold is less than other models, because they're sold to a certain target market, and (possibly) because they're made in the USA they're more expensive then other Macs like the iMac?

Or are you saying that some Mac Pros are manufactured in China, and these are cheaper than Mac Pros which are manufactured in the USA and then sold to a certain target market? In this case, are you saying that only certain configurations of the computer are manufactured in the USA? Or are you saying that Apple somehow manages to get certain higher-end customers to buy the same product at a premium price?

These days, I don't believe anything is true, no matter how reasonable. These days, anything could be true, no matter how unreasonable. So, thanks for clarifying.

Re: BOSE, yuck

What really bothers me is that they actually have some decent technology available to them. There are technical arguments for and against waveguides, but regardless what you think of them, there's no excuse for using one to compensate for bottom of the barrel components while charging top-of-market prices. Every time I hear Bose equipment I find myself wistfully thinking of what it could have been.

Re: a really stupid way to run a country?

The concern I have is that assuming Amazon retains contractual exclusivity, I'm betting the political will to restrain their anti-competitive behaviors and dubious data-collection practices will evaporate rapidly. We have a tradition here in Ummerikuh, although it's probably shared throughout the world: do not screw with your tier-one military supplier.

Re: WTF: Windows wont boot

This is not based on actual knowledge, but rather an educated guess, so please correct me if I'm wrong here. I highly doubt the problem is the absence of necessary drivers. Frequently, though less often in Win 10 vs previous versions, a system that won't boot normally from an alien boot device will manage fine after a run in "Safe Mode" and the installation of perhaps a dozen low-level drivers. I mean, it'll probably deactivate on you, but for certain values of fine...

I think the problem is that Windows versions have increasingly stopped checking for certain kinds of new hardware on boot, on the theory that you "shouldn't be doing this," in order to decrease boot times. Win 10 is a beast compared with previous versions, yet "it boots faster to the desktop." Now, some of that is down to creatively redefining what stage of the game "boot to the desktop" actually represents by delaying the start of various services that are more-or-less integral for doing anything beyond displaying the desktop slideshow, but I doubt that's all it is.

Re: when I was a System/370 operator in the 70s / 80s...

In my experience, this kept up through the mid-noughties at least. Before I worked in technology, I was in a physical profession, providing "relocation services" under corporate contract for their people. Moving furniture. Say what you will, I never had to worry about the job I had just concluded again past the end of the day. I'd still be doing it if the money was there and my body would take it. Technology was a lot more fun when it was a hobby.

Anyway, the company had contracts with Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, Google, etc, and packing up the belongings of their employees, I got to see a side of them that I doubt their colleagues ever did. Meth use in particular was a persistent theme. Especially at Sun Micro around the time that Oracle devoured them. I can empathize with the decision to get high, under the circumstances. Sun was an awesome company, and from what I heard, the best place to work in the Valley at the time. Being made redundant and watching everything you'd built get chewed up and masticated into paste by Big Red must've hurt.

Re: Let's see if I can come up with a few.

There's already a good one. I started reading the reg because the BOFH came to live here. Although he hasn't tricked anyone into electrocuting themselves for awhile. I miss that.

Re: Wendell should have offered

I'm reminded of the IBM "mouse balls" memo

Either that, or you're living in the same-old reality where politicians will say whatever they think most impressive to the particular group they're addressing at the moment. This one has seemingly learned to properly judge his audience, and I suppose that's a start.

Re: again?

I'm reminded of Archer S3E1:

RILEY: Uncuff me, you idiot!

Holy God, if we overshot our chance to refuel…!

ARCHER: I thought you put it on auto-pilot!

RILEY: It just maintains course and altitude!

It doesn’t know how to find the only airstrip within a thousand

miles so it can land itself when it needs gas!

ARCHER: Well, then I misunderstood the concept.

Re: So, do I have this right?

I think there was a story about this. Cheese is scarce at Cheese Station A, or something similar.

Re: “These sites are everywhere”

"If you outlaw it, then the rates for using private companies needing information will go way up because their risk increases."

I don't buy it. Insurance and credit have been around a lot longer than creepy internet information brokers. Beyond that, I'm sick of hearing how if we regulate egregious bad behavior, or stop providing governmental incentives, or charge a reasonable amount of corporate tax, or enforce fair labor practices, that private companies are going to raise rates for their services and prices on their merchandise. They raise their rates anyway, to the absolute maximum that the market will bear.

And I'm pretty sure that Hillary made information *excessively* available. Allegedly.

If you've accidentally swallowed DevOps, we recommend a JFlaxative. This will help ensure your delivery is continuous and liquid, and your binary download will stream, unimpeded, through the pipeline.