Posts by Ashton Black 332 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Dec 2010
No. It'll be much, much worse. They company can sue the government, in a court of arbitration, which will have the power to interpret and void a sovereign nation's legislation if that legislation damaged "investors" potential profits. So the FCC would be up shit creek, as would the EPA and in the UK, all the "Off-X" entities. Investor-state dispute settlement is fucking scary.
Well.. some of the money. For example, BT group have a D/E of 0.7 meaning for every £1 of investor's money they have borrowed another 70p, to fund the groups activities. But you're right, of course, I'm not sure about the UK, but in the US, if a CEO failed to get "Shareholder Value" (Read, increased share price, dividends, or performed a buy back of shares) with profits, then he can and in some cases have been sued.
So the landowners don't set the prices, the government does? What happened to the cold hand of the market?
And where do you think the savings will go to?
1) Infrastructure, albeit unprofitable rural ones.
2) Passed onto the customers with cheaper prices.
or
3) "Shareholder Value" and "Executive bonuses"
If the kid told them, before the hack, that "x" exploit was open, but they ignored him and did nothing, with a reasonable fix time, then they have been negligent and in my opinion, should be liable for their own security costs. (Bearing in mind, the kid does now have a criminal conviction over and above their sueball.You can't sue a burglar for the cost of a security system, after leaving your windows open.)
If however, this was a straight black hat hack, then yes, he should be liable.
It doesn't state if this was the case or not.
I've read and re-read most of them down the years. Being a D&D and fantasy literature fan, the Colour of Magic/ Light Fantastic really tickled my funny bone. I do remember looking forward to each book, to find out which story arc it would be for. I think he wasn't considered "literary" for the simple reason, his style was fun and accessible, without a degree in English Lit.
Very sadly missed.
"Congratulations, you destroyed the internet from selfish ignorance!"
Wow, your ESP is awesome, posting without the use of the internet, on the internet.
But seriously,
The most corrupt organizations on the planet are ANY organizations that have a monopoly/oligopoly of power.
For example, when it had a monopoly of power, the Roman Catholic Church ran roughshod over those who dissented and screwed the populace for tithes and the like.
As proven time and again, corporations, who by definition are there to "maximize shareholder value" will stop at very little to gain a monopoly.
We invest our supposed representatives with the monopoly of power to reign in these tendencies. These, in turn have been corrupted, by the fact than in our society, money = power.
It all depends on the business, of course, but I suspect most businesses will have some functions they'd rather keep on-prem.
For example, the contract I'm on now receives vast quantities of raw data over time which then needs real time analysis, conversion and then passing to a production facility. The compute costs alone would make your eyes water if it had to be done on a public cloud. Not to mention the security and IP implications of chucking it off site.
Archive, yes. Web front ends, probably but business critical 5x9s functions, I doubt very much.
It's actually the other way around. It's the gravitation on large scale structure of the universe that they noticed that led the scientists to conclude that there wasn't enough visible mass to account for it and in addition Dark Matter accounts for about 28% (approx.) of the total matter/energy in the universe, but coupled with Dark Energy adds up to the 95% you mentioned.
... and as I understood it, the Higgs bosons very quickly degenerated into the Higgs Field soon after the Big Bang but before the "quark soup" period of inflation. This would lead one to suggest it's the integration with the field rather than boson, that gives particles their respective masses.
I use the same caveats as you and would welcome a better explanation from a learned commenter.
Sir,
I'd just like to be on the record as saying, that I thoroughly enjoy reading your contributions to whatever topic you pronounce upon. I try to find pattern in the verbiage and do find occasional lucidity. Please ignore the vulgar cretin ACs and don't stop posting.
Yours,
Ashton.
Not necessarily, for example after the heavy bombardment period (approx. 600mil years) after the formation of the earth, with nill oxygen and very harsh conditions, life emerged on Earth. Similar conditions (with liquid water oceans) existed on Mars. Combine that with the somewhat speculative exchange of organic materials from meteor strikes, then it's not inconceivable that life could form on more than one place. Not impossible, I may point out, just improbable.
Unfortunately, with our current technology and the human passion for things that go boom and blow other humans into bite sized chunks, I am not optimistic about this happening any time, let's say, within my lifetime.
Until, company or government can make more money by doing something in space rather than down at this end of the gravity well, then I'm afraid relying on altruism or curiosity won't cut it.
As an aside: the NASA budget in 1966 was 4.41% of the total government spend. In 2014 it was approximately 0.5%
Government IT Contracts 101:
1) Requirements written on the back of a fag packet. Certainly not addressing "typical and extraordinary" usage cases.
2) These requirements, lost, when in translation into legalise for the contract.
3) Duly signed off by a committee who didn't understand the requirements in the first place.
4) Shock horror when the IT Biz delivers what the contract says.
5) Change or Terminate contract at great cost.
Rince/Repeat.
Unfortunately, for me anyway, they won't be coming anywhere near out village. It appears, that they are concentrating on urban areas. *shrug* So it goes. Privately owned businesses will always choose the more profitable areas, first and foremost.
*sigh* Back to my 1.7Mb ADSL. (On a good day)
It doesn't need to be steel lined room. Tempest shielding (basically a Faraday cage), can be done at rack or room level. It's basically conductive material, well earthed and there are a number of companies who specialise in this.
eg: http://www.euro-emc.co.uk/Products/TEMPEST-EMSEC-Protected-Areas.aspx
I've worked with chaps who ran IT in local councils. As talented as these guys were, they were paid a pittance, swamped with idiotic management, changing priorities, empire building, hamstrung by a lack of resources and a resistance to change that, if in the private sector, would mean the company moving swiftly into bankruptcy.
I've contracted at a number of businesses that would want to upgrade, but have fallen into a technical trap. They purchased bespoke, carefully tailored apps, written, at great cost which run their business or manufacturing processes. It's not the problem of upgrading windows, but in shelling out to have these varied esoteric applications either upgraded in parallel or in some cases, completely re-written.
In one case, a re-write of some control software for laboratory networks, was quoted at £1.2million since the company who wrote it was bought out by BAe several years ago and they didn't want to do it. (This was to go from a Win2k3 to Win2k8R2 box... one box).
Unfortunately, in this case, it was unelected peers in the House of Lords, rolling the dice. To be fair, it would have had to go back through the Commons for a debate/vote, but nevertheless, it wasn't elected MPs that bunged this in.
That all said, I have no trust in our elected douchebags to act in the interests of the majority.
Edit: Beaten to it!
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