Posts by Terrance Brennan

Re: I'm a normie

I still have a Windows phone and have no intention of getting anything else. It is cheaper than the alternatives and I simply don't care about all the must have apps on the other phones. I use the phone, text, alarm clock, calendar, and sometimes the mapping feature (you never actually learn a route if you simply follow the navigation instructions each time). The music quality on every tiny electronic device sounds crap (including the iPod I used to have), watching videos or browsing the internet on a tiny screen is just not happening (I remember having a 10-inch black and white TV and see no reason to go back to miniature screens, I love IMAX movies not micro movies), and I don't have enough faith in mobile security to do anything involving banking or buying on a phone. Oh, and I wouldn't touch Farcebook with a barge pole let alone a phone.

The only presidential candidate ever endorsed by the American Nazi Party, the KKK, and the dictator of Russia and you like it. Moron.

Re: This is all has its roots in 'elite' hubris and state corruption.

Take a chill pill, Bill.

Re: Or, for $10...

A cheap box fan has been doing the trick for us for years now. And, in the summer has the benefit of cooling the room a bit.

Re: Typical attitude from the unoppressed...

I don't believe his intent was to say all female applicants were horrible. I believe he was saying you needed to look at other factors than just the CV and interview. Checking references can provide good information on any and all applicants, not just female ones.

Anyone who ignores an applicant based on their own prejudices is going to miss out on good people. Anyone who ignores the fact than any and all classes of applicants can contain some wankers is going to hire some crap people.

Re: I don't know much about Cruz.

Cruz is a not only a dangerous demagogue he is a lying, phony, corrupt sack of shite. While convincing legions of idiots he is ant-establishment and against the Power structure he took millions of dollars in "loans" from the financial industry and then "forgot" to declare them in his financial disclosure forms when running for the Senate in that strong hold of idiots, Texas.

Re: Your paranoia is showing, Andrew

Patents and copyright are two different beasts. The example you give is a good example of the difference. MSFT patents something they never used or knew how to use. An author actually puts out a piece of work and wants his rights to it protected.

I agree there is great room for improvement in both systems; but, they both are supposed to provide protection for people who actually create new things so they are rewarded for their work. Unfortunately, the patent system has gotten a bit carried away with itself.

Re: "Did Donald Trump really just ask Russia to hack the US govt?"

We are whipping Donald for what he does and says, not what some delegate he has never met has done and said.

He was sued and fined twice by the feds for racial discrimination in his housing. A former casino employee reported all blacks had to leave the casino floor when Donald and Ivanka were there. He told a manager he did not want a black guy counting his money. He filed for bankruptcy at least three times. His businesses have been involved in hundreds of lawsuits and hundreds of small companies have complained about non-payment of bills. He encouraged crowd violence at his rallies. His comments to and about women not in his immediate family are classic examples of misogyny. The Speaker of the House of Representatives from his own party called other comments text book racism. He has expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin, Saddam Hussein, and Moammar Qadafi. He insulted not just John McCain but every American veteran who was ever captured and held as POW, while he used four student deferments and finally a medical exemption to avoid serving in Vietnam. He promised to raise money for veteran groups but didn't actually deliver the money until the "liberal media" kept asking about it. He ahs been endorsed by the KKK and the American Nazi party and instead of disavowing either is fine with it.

I don't care what any of his ignorant delegates or supporters think, do, or say. Donald thinks, says, and does enough stupid, vile, hateful things all on his own.

Re: We all know what happened

I have been to Frankfurt and found it a very nice city with public transport, parks, culture, good infrastructure, including a major international airport.etc. Depending on how the break up actually develops I can easily see well paid financial experts happily moving there. As usual, the devil is in the details. My concern is I do not see any motivation for the EU to strike a friendly bargain for the UK out of concern it would only encourage similar exits from other countries.

Re: Dump! Dump! Dump!

So far he has only gotten a plurality of the Republican primary votes; but, partisan politics being what they are these days many Republicans will simply shut up and fall in line. I would like to be confident he could never win in November; but, the prospect is so terrifying I am more scared than confident. Surely, a majority of voters overall in November can't be as ignorant as 35-40% of the Republican primary voters? Right? Right? Please?

Re: Exchange IMAP outage?

I would argue that on-premises Exchange was a great piece of software up until Exchange 2013. I found it easy to install, configure, maintain, and use. My systems rarely had downtime and troubleshooting was relatively easy. However, since MS decided the cloud was where the money was on-premises Exchange has gone south. Exchange 2013 is written for Microsoft's use in their cloud and is not a good idea for a company to run themselves. MS wants all their users to move to their cloud and seem happy to make on-premises life miserable if need be. Then, when you get to the cloud this kind of crap happens.

Good point. One big reason to use Bitcoin is to buy illegal goods or engage in otherwise dubious activity. Another reason is to avoid taxes. As I once read in an El Reg commentary "Civilization is expensive, deal with it". Everyone wants the benefits of an advanced society but would prefer someone else pay for it. What is a legitimate use for Bitcoin?

Re: People?

Just because meaningless metrics are used to make decisions does not make them meaningful. Customer satisfaction? Most users do not respond to the surveys so how valid are the responses you do get? If your QA people didn't find any bugs last quarter does that mean you can assume your coders will never write buggy code again so your QA people are no longer needed? There are precious few valid metrics in this business and just because management wants them does not mean they exist. I had a manager who wanted dynamic DNS to work. After a lot of wasted hours of data collection and research I proved that with the domain and DNS configuration dynamic DNS was never going to reliable. He reviewed all the data and agreed; but, still wanted it to work so we kept using it and kept having to deal with production servers disappearing.

"If you're running a team, you need to be able to communicate to the upper management in a language they can understand, what is happening and why." This is the real problem, upper management is usually ignorant of what they are managing so middle management has to resort to shiny dash boards that look good but mean nothing.

Re: Not happening

We did drop Lenovo as soon as the brand was sold to China. Also, while BB now says they have no way of reading messages passing through their infrastructure I don't think too many people would trust a Chinese company with the data flow.

Re: Wasted talents?

I have no problem with Marketing in general; as some others have noted how do I know a product exists if it is never marketed. I have a big problem with people making money off my activities and stalking me based on past web activity. I don't want Company X being paid by Company Y to shove an ad in my face because at some point in the past I visited or looked for information about Company Z.

I remember when Cable TV first started here in the US (yes, that's how freaking old I am) and one of the big selling points was that sure you had to pay for TV, but there wouldn't be any adverts on it. Yeah, that didn't last long; now we pay for Cable and still have to watch ads.

I fully agree with the original Wasted Talents post: companies should spend more on R&D to improve their products and less on trying to market half-assed products. Marketing may get someone to buy a bad product once; but, an excellent product keeps customers coming back.