Posts by Pascal Monett

"put on a brave face and take Beijing’s beating on the chin"

Well, given that the alternative is a mandatory tour of China's prison system, yeah, I think I'd react like that as well.

A word of warning to CEOs of big-name multinationals : never go to China in person. Up to now, Beijing doesn't have a record for jailing foreign CEOs, but you don't want to be the person starting that record.

Sarcasm

Just about as difficult as humor.

Given that we don't have AI, you can statiscally analyze all you want, a CPU is not going to "understand" what is being said.

I agree that grammar correctors have come a long way and that's a good thing, but the computer is not understanding anything, it is just reacting to a set of rules.

Humor ? That is as far away from CPU comprehension as FTL travel is for us meatbags.

Because nobody can accurately calculate humor.

"after 10 years why do they still need that data?"

Simple : they hoover up every tidbit they can get their grubby little hands on, but have no way of knowing what is useful today, so they keep everything for fear of deleting something they actually need.

The term packrat comes to mind.

"management never forgives and never forgets"

Oh yes it does. It'll completely forget all the all-nighters you've done and all the times you stayed after hours for no additional pay in order to make sure that everything would go well the next day for that very important presentation.

That is all water under the bridge, especially when review time comes.

But it will remember that one time you didn't manage to make the CEOs new bloody phone sychronize automatically with his company-based mail because you needed a bridge component the company didn't have.

That he will always remember.

"this is an important step towards"

Ensuring that the Kessler Syndrome will indeed bring us back to the 1940s.

Until recently, to put a satellite into space you needed to be part of the space industry, work with NASA, generally be reliable.

Ever since everyone and his dog have started making rockets, everyone and his dog are now chucking things up in orbit and I don't feel like they know what the hell they're doing.

Oh for sure, they know they want to make money and space seems as good a place as any. No cables or backhoes to worry about (not to mention no pesky local laws to obey).

But there are other things to worry about and I think there are too many companies vying for opportunity for all of them to have competent personnel who know what they're doing.

What about Windows 1 0 ?

Does that also have bloody certificates for the simplest tools of the OS ?

Can Borkzilla also shut down part of my work laptop out of sheer incompetence ? (okay, don't answer that)

I can understand certificates on drivers, they usually work in kernel space (even if that seems stupid to me), but on the Snipping tool ? Really ?

And the clock in the task bar, does it have a certificate too ?

What a bloody mess.

A tendril ?

Jellyfish have tendrils. Some species are poisonous, all are painful.

Vines use tendrils to latch on to another plant and climb toward the Sun, sometimes choking the supporting plant in the process.

Tendril is also used to describe the increase of the nefarious influence of crime organizations or evil intelligence agencies in litterature (and news, sometimes).

I'm trying, but I can't think of a positive use for the word. I wonder how the marketing team justified that reference.

Thank goodness it's shoddy Cisco programming

and not Huawei. If it had been Huawei, it would be a National Security incident, whereas here, it's just a deplorable mistake.

"whether it intends to extend this payment system flexibility to other regions"

It does not.

But it will have to.

"Jeff Bezos even offered NASA a $2bn discount [to change their mind]"

I believe that that is actually called a bribe.

"is working on encryption algorithms, data security"

Um, you've already handed out tens of millions of wallets. I would have preferred you worked on that before letting people sign up.

There's enough hacking history around funny money and it's all available on the Web. You should have done your homework first.

After all, it's not like there isn't a national currency available. There was no rush to put E-CNY in place.

Ain't life good ?

BT gets a vast reduction in taxes, suddenly finds that fibre rollout is less expensive than it thought, and will now be posting insultingly positive results and keeping the moolah to itself.

Way to go, BT shareholders ! Congratulations on having skimped on fibre rollouts until costs "miraculously" came down amid the rest of the world's industries crying panic over extended delivery lead times and vast increases in costs from sourcing materials and products.

You really are a shining example of capitalism at its finest.

"they want to hear the member stories [..] what the end result was and how successful they were"

Sure, because companies spending tens of millions on an ERP are going to loudly state how unsuccessful they were.

IIRC, it took a long time before any of SAP's customers dared bring out a lawsuit for non-achievement of contract. Even now that there have been a few, you never really hear about them for long (and I'm not even comparing with SCO).

So, to me, listening to "success stories" about SAP is basically listening to one guy's tale about he justified a massive yearly bonus (*).

* : as usual, caveats apply - I'm sure there are genuine success stories here and there, I just wouldn't trust an Internet forum about that.

Palemoon, check. Seamonkey, check.

Now I can add Waterfox to the list of browsers to install and check out.

Thanks for the info !

On the other hand

HPE's investment is an additional incentive for the US to involve itself if matters get out of hand.

Climate change ? Pah. Humanitarian aide to hurricane-striken Puerto Rico ? Please.

Billions invested by US companies in danger of Chinese grab ? WAR !

"figure out how business processes are actually performed"

That has been part of my job for the past 25 years.

As a Notes consultant, I learned very early on that the person giving you the requirement list is very rarely the person who is going to use the product or even knows anything about requirements. I am used to paying close attention during the meeting, then finding out who is actually going to use the product and get to talking with them in order to find out the real requirements.

Only then can I be reasonably confident that my code is going to be useful.

it expects 6G to be deployed starting in 2030

Meanwhile, 4G will still be good enough for most people.

Fully immersive VR ? Does that mean that I'll have to work with a bulky headset all day long ?

No thanks.

"prompting the decision to reform under a new name"

But everybody knew it was the same group.

And yet, they were once again accepted in the hacking community ?

Or is it because everyone knew them that law enforcement was getting too close for comfort ?

"Clearview, meanwhile, sails on serenely"

So Clearview cut itself off from Australia. I doubt it removed any images though, so it is likely still scraping images of Australian citizens.

In other words, it continues to do the very thing it has been told not to, but because USA, it doesn't give a flying one.

Well, if Clearview doesn't give a fig about other people's rights, it is time for the countries of the world to have a word with the White House and get things sorted out vie international agreements.

Sure, it'll take longer, but given the callous disregard of US Internet CEOs, I doubt there is a better solution.

"the automated vehicles have a 5G network chip"

So, communication by radio.

Which can be intercepted and probably spoofed.

What could possibly go wrong ?

Crossing my fingers

It's not looking good. Another safe mode so soon after the last one.

I don't like it.

I hope the engineers will once again be able to work their magic, but the pot is starting to get low on mana.

"how Jupiter's beautiful and violent atmosphere works – in 3D"

Can't wait to see the videos they're going to make of that !

"What the neighbours made of their sudden disconnection is . ."

. . their problem.

You log onto an open wifi, you accept that that connection is not under your control. If it disappears, well tough cookies.

I'm not blaming them for using an open access point, but they have nowhere to complain. Back in the day, though, this kind of thing usually meant people with PCs but no internet connection, and those kind of people could likely be quick to jump on an open access point rather than pay for their own connection.

We've all heard the tale of the guy who gets a knock on the door and opens it to find another tenant asking him for his wifi password.