Not Surprised
If true, I am not surprised at this.
4138 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Nov 2013
This reminds me of the Imbecile Explorer days when you had to have 2 versions of your website. One for Imbecile Explorer and the other for everybody else (e.g. Netscape); or it felt like that. Issues with browser rendering badly have been an issue ever since there has been more than 1 browser available. Part of it is with the browser and part of it is poorly coded/tested websites. I have seen browsers within the same family handle sites differently even now.
When a company places important functions in a country outside of its home country the managlement makes key parts of the company vulnerable to international affairs. While a US or EU company placing key functions within those countries has relatively low risk of disruption because of a war, placing key functions in semi-hostile country or fairly unstable country puts the company at serious risk when things go sideways. Corsair complaining they cannot work with their Russian office deserves the world's smallest violin.
The issue of raw materials will to some extent be problematic as the geographic distribution of some ores is highly localized to only a few places. I was surprised about the need for Palladium for chip manufacture but that is more about I am not overly familiar with all that is required.
Many have found they can work efficiently from home and rarely need to darken the door of an office. The manglement at Chocolate Factory has to justify the money spent on real estate and buildings. Buildings that are too large for the staff that needs to be onsite. This points to a bigger problem for many Silly Valley companies with expensive real estate they own.
In my case, one of the major onsite groups actually expanded into the cube farm my group was located. We had to pack up stuff into boxes and I have not seen my boxes since I packed them up. We have not heard any chatter about going into the office as many of us do not anywhere to sit. The site is rented.
If they waived a large enough chunk of change there will be a settlement. What most plaintiffs want is to made financially whole not necessarily to win a lawsuit. Now these chunks of change will begin to add up and also I suspect a very good lawyer would use the evidence of these settlements a civil suit as an indication of a pattern. Manglement needs settlements to avoid discovery when their hands are dirty.
While Gartner has a well deserved reputation for publishing useless drivel, I expect supply chain issues to all areas to persist for at least a year. With the possibility of a widening war, it may even get worse. What I have seen is erratic availability of products in many areas I pay attention to. So to expect networking gear not have these issues is rather stupid; I just do not know how bad it will really be and what options might be available.
Mark Twain observed that 'Congress is America's native criminal class'. So they can be bribed, (small bills in many brown envelopes works best). All he needs to do is grease enough of the palms of the Congress critters aka native criminal class to change the law. He must relatively or stupid.
If this is Crazy Ivan doing this could be a parting shot if their claim of standing down is true. The goal is hamper Ukrainian activities for limited period of time but not go far enough to risk kinetic warfare. I have been suspicious of some of the claims in the media as floundering tyrants love foreign misadventures to get the serfs to rally around the flag. Some should ask what happened to Galiteri after the Falklands War in the 80's. But if the serfs do not rally around the flag the tyrants are often toast.
Often the issues were intertwined between the hardware of the era and competency of the user. The hardware was rather primitive by current standards. Many issues could not be handled all that nicely back then on any desktop computer. As a percentage, users were more technically savvy back then. Many of us early adopters were STEM types who had some vague familiarity with computers already. The OS designers to some extent relied on this background and understanding, possibly naively. Being STEM types many of us were more willing to poke around into the OS and the hardware.
You are dealing with a very different era in the 80's and 90's were many did not have a computer either at home or at work. Those that had one at home were often technically minded.
What all companies need is a culture that says we will listen to ideas that might help the company, realizing many will not work. But there will be many worth following up on. The value of youth is they often see things without baggage while the grey hairs have experience to know why many have failed in the past.
An example, in 1964 at the New York World's Fair AT&T was showing off video phones. Phones were you could see the others on the call. It went nowhere. The problem was not concept but the technology of the era. Move forward many years and we video conferencing tools that can live stream people on a call and do more than the video phone of 1964 could ever do. What changed was the technology.
Other ideas were stupid in 1910 and are still stupid today. Because they really do something useful for people. What is needed is someone to filter ideas based on what can be now at a reasonable cost, what is conceptually good but not feasible now, and what are still stupid and will always be stupid.
Typical bafflegab. The real issue with Activision/Blizzard is not the app store but monopoly in the game development space. I do not trust the Rejects from Redmond to release most of there game titles to competitors' devices. They would try to force you to buy the Xbox or some other method of lining their coffers with ill-gotten gains. I home the regulators tell them to 'sod off Swampy'.
What would happen if governments got rid of income taxes and instead used VATs, sales taxes, excise taxes, duties, etc; taxes that would normally be collected for a business. There is no need for the either citizens to log in or the government to go through these systems as most would never any need to do so. Just thinking outside the box.
The best solution for macros is to get read of them entirely. No macros, no vulnerability to a macro. Yes, I can hear the morons in marketing and accounting screaming bloody murder because they might have to learn how to do things correctly in Orifice and when to use applications that have properly vetted and tested. Applications that export data in format that can be imported into Orifice.
Some sites and channels have generally well behaved commenters even when we get snarky and sarcastic. The difference is the target; I have a low opinion of corporate manglement and their shills and government goons where ever they are. But sites like Twatter, Reddit, etc. get very nasty and personal fast. So how vicious the Internet appears to be is probably more dependent on where you hang out on it. I do not see that much but I do not hang out in the most notorious cesspools.
For this 'research' I would like to know how the Rejects of Redmond selected and rated the sites in more detail. I suspect they have serious methodology problems which I think points to an underlying design problem. The Rejects want to show specific outcome for their own purposes which might at variance with most people's experience. Given the popularity of Twatter and Reddit amongst some and the notorious vileness on both sites and the probably strong overlap between the 'researchers' and the users I could see the data being skewed badly. There is strong tendency among Twatter users in particular to think it is more popular than it actually is.
The binary ideal is puts the resolution on the code wrangler. The issue is how much does the code wrangler know to avoid issues with the software. Where I work my group sees an internal specifications derived from the customer specifications. We never see the customer specifications. Even if we catch errors in the internal documents we will never catch any errors when it is compared to the customer documents. Also, we can come up with scenarios not covered in the internal documents but we do not if the scenario was missed or not needed based on the customer documents. The later is the normal situation.
At some point the spec writers need to do their job and not rely on someone a couple of levels removed to fix their errors.
If Lynch gets to the People's Republic of California he will be lucky to avoid a rope burn. To many CA criminals got hurt by Leo the Galactic Idiot blunders and want to lynch anyone they can get their grubby mitts on. They should be going after Leo the Galactic Idiot; there is the real criminal in this saga.
The allegation is not about the issue per se but Chipzilla sat on it until someone at Google blew the whistle. Also, during this time Chipzilla did nothing to fix the issue. In most cases of a bug being found, say in Bloatware, the affirmative defence is two-fold: start working on a patch as soon as you find out and when announcing the bug officially have the patch in the works if it is not ready. Also, Chipzilla was advertising performance that was negatively impacted by the patches. So there is a possibility of a false advertising suit in the background.
I call BS on human error unless they mean it was human error they got caught. Managlement had to be involved.
While online reviews are not noted for always being reliable (in both directions), they do serve an aggregate function when enough people actually review the product or service of giving a sense of what the people think. Trying to skew the results is more likely to lead to the Streisand Effect as people will notice. Also, bad reviews are not necessarily as harmful as one might suppose. If there are a couple of hundred reviews, there will some poor reviews but the average rating will help give an idea of how much weight to give these reviews.
For non athletes and media, the best option is not to go. Empty stadiums are a horrible optic on TV. For those who have to go, get a burner phone and ditch it after leaving as many have suggested. If you are an athlete, how about a convenient sprained ankle or similar injury conveniently just before leaving. If enough athletes are 'injured' the games will be disaster.
Another for those who were not going anyway, don't watch the broadcasts at all. Tank the TV ratings and anger the advertisers. I won't be watching but I haven't really paid much attention to the Olympics for about 20 years.
Cesspool meet Sewer. From the reports about Acitvision they are a company to avoid. Also, I am not sure what the Rejects of Redmond are thinking with this one. They are saddling themselves with a company of ill-repute when picking over the carcass after bankruptcy with not saddle them with as much.
Vivaldi is focusing on being a useful browser thus is avoiding the latest fad. Whether cryptocurrencies are fundamentally fraudulent can be debated, I am not convinced of their long term viability, but the issue is whether software intended for some specific use (browsing is a good example) should even be mining in the background. I agree here with Vivaldi, miners can be installed by the user if they want but should not installed by a browser or other non-mining application.
The problem with CVs is the initial review is looking for reasons to screen out not in. So if your CV lacks the right buzzwords, qualifications, etc. you are out. So strategies the try to avoid the initial review are often suggested to get your name in front of the actual hiring manager; they often do not work.
As far as coding interviews, the failure of this is it is testing coding skills not logical thinking about solving the problem. My last interview, I was posed a problem to discuss my approaches to solving it. I came up with a couple reasonable approaches without writing any code; pseudocode was fine. The key in programming is not being a code monkey but solving problems with code. If you can solve the problem you can code the solution.
The paper is a staff study of a scenario that might happen. Many of these plans exist if for no other reason to exercise the minds of planners so they actually think about the problem in a somewhat realistic manner. Many are also flawed because the premise for the plan is dubious. The classics for dubious thinking are some of the Canadian defense plans in 20/30s against a US invasion or the German naval plans against the US circa 1900. The conclusion in this study is based on certain scenarios not happening such as geographical diversification of the foundries, united stand against the PRC (many in the area distrust Beijing), etc.
If the issue is interference with radio altimeters, why wouldn't this affect them in other areas as well as near an airport. If the reported altitude is incorrect, pilots are going to try get their assigned altitude. If they are flying on instruments this could lead to all sorts of accidents and near misses; assuming the problem is real. Also, 2nd or 3rd harmonics of the signals would be an issue around an airport; I have not looked up what is assigned those frequencies. The 2 bands are not harmonically related.
US traffic circles are intended to be take at traffic speed, usually highway speeds by design. That is what made them dangerous; you are maneuvering to get into the correct exit path at high speeds in minimal distances. Roundabouts are intended to replace other traffic controls and are designed to have much lower speeds while in them.
The US has traffic circles which look similar to roundabouts but allow vehicles to move at much higher speeds. Most US drivers rightly hated and feared traffic circles as the speeds were too high safe merging (think 100 kph/60mph). Roundabouts are designed so the traffic moves through at much lower speeds which makes merging much safer. Roundabouts are becoming more common.
On the surface relocating manufacturing and design of products including commodities so regions are less dependent on 1 source is sound. But I am not sure if this will occur. Partly for political reasons, I doubt the politicians will rise their petty provincial stupidities, and partly because manglement has not figured out even now that being dependent on 1 source is basically stupid.
The allegations are pretty specific. But there might an issue with whether his actions were illegal in Russia vs Feraldom; I do not know. But having watched Feraldom prosecutors (persecutors?) in action minor details like that will not phase them in getting a scalp and they love collecting scalps.
Too many mergers fail for numerous, usually avoidable reasons in all industries. So that this merger failed is not a real surprise. And when a merger fails often miscreants who did the merger try to blame someone else but their own stupidity. Many companies never serious consider how to properly integrate until after the merger has occurred. Different cultures, structures, etc. have to been integrated carefully without alienating the incoming staff who might just walk. But asking a judge who probably has no experience with a merger to understand these nuances is fool's errand. If UK lawyers and judges are like the shysters over here, they would a relatively dim and arrogant lot.
With that pay rate, it is highly unlikely you would get any competent person to stay long enough to be familiar with the code base, which takes a few years realistically. Thus, the code is either written by incompetents or amateurs. While the amateurs are probably moderately competent, they are lack experience and do not deal with code on a routine basis. The incompetents, the less said the better. The net effect is the poor code that probably has serious issues.
When I see a politician bloviate on banning end-to-end-encryption I wonder how much of the sum total of human knowledge has been destroyed (hat tip to Thomas Bracken 'Czar' Reed of Maine). Encryption, to be effective, has to be end-to-end as any point were there is plain text will allow someone to see the details which may be very sensitive.