Posts by raving angry loony 1244 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Dec 2008
"Fines are meaningless"...
Not if the fine is a multiple of the profits as opposed to the meaningless sums usually touted. As in, if they lose enough money when caught, they might start considering it's not worth doing it. Corporations only respect money. I say take that money away from them when they don't respect the law. Take A LOT of it away from them, so that it's not profitable to get caught - even if they only get caught 1% of the time.
In other words, yet again a company got away with misleading advertising. Probably managed to get their lies up against enough eyeballs that it won't matter if they pull them now. Unless and until there are FINES associated with these findings, these "rulings" are nothing more than a bad joke.
Don't know if anyone's mentioned this, but none of the three updates mentioned were specified as "mandatory". Thanks to this warning I was able to make sure they're never installed on my gaming system. Hopefully. Unless they change how things are done in the next few months. Which they might.
32 years I fought the beast. The beast won. My parting shot is "I fucking told you so" when it comes to Microsoft continuing to prove that it's just plain evil.
Pascal writes: "So it's a clusterfuck, basically, and it demonstrates that nobody in that food chain has given a moment of thought to the problem because everyone expects consumers to change their phone as soon as the new shiny comes out."
Actually, it demonstrates that everyone in that food chain HAS thought about the problem, and forcing people to get a new phone (as you're planning to do now) is to them a valid reason for making sure they can't remove the "preinstalled crap that your operator foists on you without asking for your opinion on the matter.".
Which is another reason they're so down on jailbreaking, as it can extend the life of the phone and thus reduce sales of new phones. They aren't interested in allowing that. If I was even a little cynical I'd say that it's Apple itself doing these hacks that exploit jailbroken phones, in order to scare everyone into compliance. But I'm not quite that cynical. Or am I?
Uber, AirBnB, Lyft and others are not "tech disruptors". They are black marker facilitators whose only claim is that they're encouraging their employees to engage in unlicensed and uninsured black market activities while those same people take ALL the risks, all to make money for a few corporations.
It's not "sharing culture". Sharing culture is about DISTRIBUTED decision and wealth. This is just another form of highly concentrated corporate decision making and profit making, while only distributing the risk onto others.
They aren't inventing anything new. They're simply repeating an oft repeated pattern, one that caused many of the current rules to exist in the first place given the abuses the last time these activities went completely unregulated. They haven't invented the unlicensed cab, they're just using the internet to avoid prosecution. Much like many other black market facilitators. It's just the laws they're flouting aren't criminal laws, so they're getting away with it through a combination of insane marketing and just plain stupid dupes who are willing to take all the risks.
It's corporatism at its finest. Corporations ignoring laws created by democratically elected representatives, just because it's highly profitable to do so. And folks are lapping it up, not realizing that they're cutting their own throats if the corporations manage trash the concept of "rule of law".
I fought Microsoft for 32 years. 32 two painful years of watching more and more people move to Microsoft's crap. 32 years of watching entire departments switch from supportable, working systems to Microsoft's well marketed but unsupportable crap. I tried to convince too many clients that the Microsoft rep was outright lying to them. I also said "I told you so" to too many clients to count as they whined about how expensive their new "cheaper" Microsoft was compared to their other systems (the ones I used to support for them), as I told them to call someone else with their problems since they refused to listen to me in the first place.
I quit the industry a few years ago. I now serve good food to appreciative people, and the only computer I deal with professionally is a poorly designed cash register. The only Microsoft system I deal with at home is my gaming system, since that's what plays the games I want to play. Microsoft was and is and continues to be a foul, harmful blight on an entire industry. I see they haven't changed. The only thing I find continuously surprising is that people keep being surprised by Microsoft's failures. I told you so. I fucking told you so.
Odd, I would have thought that changing customer defaults without ADEQUATE warning (I'm sure there's a line in the multi-page disclaimer somewhere. Sorry, not acceptable.) would be against Microsoft's probation. Or is that particular legal fiction over now, and they get to revert to their usual anti-competitive, "we own you" nature?
It's only a "laudable aim" if driver updates were known to be 100% correct every time. Since they aren't, and have in fact caused some rather catastrophic issues, some of us prefer to let the so called "bleeding edge early adopters" do the bleeding when drivers are broken. Forced updates? No bloody way! Looks like i won't be "upgrading" to Windows 10 for a long, long time.
Last time this was tried I started submitting expenses for dry-cleaning the uniform they insisted I wear. Because as a tech, I often needed to crawl around not-so-clean areas as part of my job. They refused to pay. I refused to comply with their dress code. I worked there for several more years before finally leaving over some other petty bullshit by incompetent managers, having learned that the more incompetent they are, the more spineless they are when dealing with the kind of people who actually got jobs done. I'm guessing they're still congratulating themselves on finally getting rid of that pain-in-the-arse tech who refused to obey idiotic orders. Well, those that managed to find jobs again when the company went bankrupt about a couple of years after I left (no, I had absolutely nothing to do with that, but I wasn't surprised).
Haven't won all my battles. Hell, I've probably lost more than I've won overall. But I very much enjoyed winning that one.
Other than a crowbar, there's no better way to separate the men from the goats than a command line when it comes to computing. GUI stop you from doing things correctly, and only allow you to do things pre-determined by the people who programmed them. People who don't know or understand what you or your business actually need.
Then again, if you're using Microsoft at the deep infrastructure level you're probably using the wrong set of tools, and the GUI won't harm you any more than anything else. So yeah, they should keep the GUI. It'll keep the rabble in their place I guess.
Why yes, I did used to have a beard and deal with Unix. Why do you ask?
Of course, depending on the management they might have changed the engine. We don't know. We probably won't know for a long time. It's still a countdown to an announcement about a game to which there will then be a countdown. I consider this level of meta-hype to be detrimental to the industry really. Although probably great for marketing departments, those hives of scum and villainy.
Not content with announcing and hyping games that have barely even started being developed and won't be available for years, are they now so desperate that they're taking to announcing and hyping announcements that haven't been written yet? Madness.
Fallout 3 was "announced" in 2004 and released in 2008. With Fallout 4, get back to me when the damn game is actually available. Assuming I'm still alive.
If he'd defrauded billions from the American public, he wouldn't have even been charged. If he'd killed thousands based on outright lies and misleading an entire government, he wouldn't have even been charged. But he didn't, so he gets life in prison. This from the same "justice" system that sentences someone who steals millions to 60 days, but someone who steal $100 to 20 years.
In other words, the USA doesn't have a "justice" system any more, if it ever did. It has a revenge system where the more you piss of the people in charge (or the darker your skin) the more time you serve. Periods. Has nothing to do with justice. Or even "law".
The old adage "ignorance is bliss" is evidentially true. If you don't know, or have chosen to deliberately blank out, that you're being screwed, ripped off, used, abused, and fucked with a rusty chainsaw by those with power in our society then you're going to be a hell of a lot happier than the ones who HAVE figured out that something is very wrong.
Buddhist monks might have the right idea in the long run. Own nothing. Know nothing. Be nothing. Do nothing. Institutionalized Schultz (for those who remember). Perhaps not very satisfying if one looks back, but probably conducive to a happier life much more free from worries.
<quote>Don't you just love how sales and marketing promise the customer the earth then kindly drop the shit storm on the back office and leave them to pick up the pieces when the customer finds out they were lied to mislead.</quote>
Been there. Done that. Lost a lucrative, desirable posting because I showed up the sales rep as a lying, manipulative cunt. When the only answer to the client is "the product that was sold to you cannot do that, you need the product that is $eek more for that", and you then find out the salesperson categorically, unequivocally lied to the fucking ruler of Dubai (well, his direct representative), it's only fair that the person who provided the accurate version of events gets tossed aside while the lying little fucker keeps his job.
You have to be IN jail for a "get out of jail free" card to work. Nobody at the NSA, nobody in government, not one corporation that collaborates with them will EVER see anything resembling jail time for the ongoing trashing of American rights. So using the term "get out of jail" is a misnomer, at best, and misleading, at worst.
Shouldn't that be "time to celebrate American Pi"? Seeing as the date convention required for this to work is one that's used by the USA and, I believe, Belize. That's it. It's only seen in Canada because it's so dominated by American corporations, but it's not actually a standard in Canada at all. So yeah, "American Pi". Enjoy.
So yet again the people who are bowing to blackmail: Netflix, are being blamed for bowing to the blackmail rather than seeing their business destroyed?
Netflix is told "pay us or your content won't get through". WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO DO? They can either pay and hope they make enough profit to cover the blackmail, or they can say "no, that's not within the net neutrality guidelines" and see their business get butt-fucked by non-net-neutral ISPs.
Why are so many people blaming what seems to me to be the victim?
I got rid of my wrist-based, easily banged up watch when cell phones came out. If I had to carry something that had the time on it, I didn't need two of the things. Happy times.
So now we have a device that lets me know if my phone is ringing (hey, I can HEAR the damn thing already, OK?), lets me know if my phone is sending out an alarm (ibid.), lets me know if my phone calendar needs attention (ibid.), and generally only tells me that I need to take my phone out to get any detailed info?
I smell... hype. Lots and lots of hype.
That or I've missed something. But looking at it more closely - I don't think I have.
Far be it for me to disagree with NATS claiming they have skimped on IT, but this kind of failure seems to be exactly the kind of thing you'd expect when proper design and testing isn't scheduled or funded. If the description of the problem is even vaguely accurate (which is a big "if", admittedly) then given the severity of the results I'd expect any attempts to set the wrong values should have been caught by a correctly designed and tested system. That it wasn't makes me wonder what other shortcuts they've taken?
Another person here glad to be using AdBlock Latitude, although I was a little annoyed that PaleMoon unilaterally switched me. At the time. Now I'm not so annoyed. But I'm also using Ghostery, NoScript, Privacy Badger, and a few other tools that block things I don't want.
About ads in general though:
Technically, I have no problem with ads. Some are even useful for informing me of products I might not have known to look for. What I have a problem with are the page of ads that over-write my screen, the flashy jittery ads that give me headaches, the misleading ads that pretend to be the "next page" of an article, ads with autoplay sound, ads that beat the fuck out of my weaksauce Canadian bandwidth, and the shitloads of utter fucking crap served up by those who feel that since I'm on their website, then I should bloody well take what I'm given, even if it's a rusty chainsaw dildo.
No.
So I'll use whatever methods work to get rid of the damn things. I occasionally turn off the blockers for specific sites, because they made what I see as promises that the ads they do run would be properly curated. The second they lie to me, I turn the blocks back on and they can go to hell. Currently, The Register is one such site. So far, they haven't lied as far as I've been able to see. In fact, I'm not seeing any ads? Is something wrong?
Tim Cook manages a company that makes money and wins, gets 9 million.
Gregg Steinhafel of Target Canada oversees one of the biggest retail failures anywhere, leaving behind a bankrupt company that owes $5 billion to creditors, and gets $61 million for his efforts.
Either Tim Cook has some other remuneration that they aren't talking about, or Steinhafel just demonstrated why some directors and shareholders are complete idiots.
First thing I thought of as well. I can see destruction after confirmed duplication, but doing it piecemeal before that confirmation is just asking for a lot of trouble.
This isn't "innovation", this is just attempting to enforce unworkable laws with unworkable technology.
I'm a klutz. If there's a way for me to drop something into the bath, I'll find it. Wrapping my reader in a waterproof cover (a.k.a. freezer bag with seal) is useful. To me.
What I wouldn't mind is a touch-screen that I could turn on and off, so that I could use it only when I wanted to use it. I can think of a few uses, such as making annotations, where a touch-screen might be useful. But so far I've not seen one with a touch-screen that can be turned off.
Worst thing to ever happen to e-readers was the touch-screen. Sounds great, until you try to actually use it, at which point just moving your hand around to a more comfortable position jumps the page on you. Or you put it down (or pick it up) without first having carefully turned it off, and boom, lose your page. Or you want to read in the bath so you put it in a waterproof bag? Oh look, it doesn't bloody work at all. My wife has the Sony touch-screen. Soon as anything passes near the screen boom, lost page. Pile of shite.
I like my bog-basic Kindle (no fucking touch screen. I hope the newer ones don't force the issue) with calibre book software. Buy books from where I like (rarely Amazon actually), read them how I like, and I can treat my e-reader like a book, but lighter and more convenient.
Authentication is normally based on 'something you know', and not just 'something you have' such as a fingerprint or any other biometric.
Technically incorrect, unless you add "insecure" to the beginning of that quote. Also, I've always been told fingerprints don't count as "something you have", they're only "something you are", which is lousy security because it can't be changed. Slightly more secure authentication is based on both something you know, AND something you have. Also not just "something you are", such as the horribly insecure fingerprint, which as noted can be duplicated. The duplication can be in any of several ways, either pre (the print itself) or post (the digital "signature" of that print) processing. Just one of the above is, today, not really considered "secure". Or at least, not "secure enough".
I guess if you're comfortable working in a country whose infrastructure depends on slavery, then it's probably an OK country to work in. So long as you don't fall afoul of the corrupt officials, the medieval "justice" system, and don't get into a disagreement with a national, in which case I hope you have a solid exit plan. A very solid exit plan.
Yes, I've worked in the Middle East (various places). It was very profitable, and I probably could have stayed. But I eventually I found it morally indefensible for someone who didn't want to be a complete hypocrite, and I never could agree that slavery was a good thing, no matter what the Qu'ran (or the Bible for that matter) might have to say about it.
So if money is all you care about, by all means work in the Middle East. So long as you're feeling lucky of course. Get into an argument with the local authorities (or worse, with a well connected national. Watch out for those low-numbered plates in the UAE for instance) and you're going to discover just how inhumane the system becomes. And most often definitely not in your favour.
The self-admitted troll I rented a room to, who spent hours counting score on how many people he'd gotten angry, was a scrawny little shit who was bullied a lot. This was his way of "getting back" without getting physically abused. The fact that many of the people he was targeting where the bullied rather than the bullies escaped him completely.
quote: "If someone pays for a support ticket from MS, the problem is usually a significant one, and takes a bunch of time to fix."
Which means that before you can even start to pay Microsoft, you have to already have paid someone to determine if the problem "is significant". Probably someone who paid into Microsoft's protection racket with an MCSE or whatever it's called today.
They really do get people coming AND going. I guess it's why they're so profitable - they're the epitome of cashing in on the whole "there's a sucker born every minute", and they sold it a copy of Windows.
The big ISPs are ALREADY implementing a "pay to play" model. Perhaps Netflix HAD to pay if it wanted to be able to continue in business.
I smell a rat in the FCC revolving door here. They're basically claiming that Netflix bowed to blackmail, therefore it must be guilty of wanting the situation where the blackmail was possible?
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