Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re: It's in the effort. (Score 2) 79

Most of the second guessing of the pilot seems to assume the pilot could press pause and work out the alternatives on a chalkboard for an hour or two and then resume real-time with a solution in hand.

The fact is, it all happened in a handful of seconds. I doubt the pilot even had time to fully assess the problem before hitting the ground.

Comment Re:Humans are logical in their self-interest (Score 1) 64

The problem is in the solution. Rationally, those Herdsmen need to hash out an agreementfor the fair use of that land to keep it just below it's carrying capacity.

But what really happens that some 'nobleman' declares the entire commons to belong to him and sends a goon squad to wipe out any herdsman who disagrees. He then 'allows' the herdsmen to use the land in exchange for a painfully large share of their productivity. For some reason he expects gratitude for that arrangement.

Alas, we've moved beyond even that. Now the 'nobleman', seeing that the herdsmen are making do with a smaller commons over the hill but unable to grab control of it sends his goons to salt the earth overnight so the herdsmen will have to 'rent' land from him.

But even that isn't enough for some. They want more 'rent' than any herdsman can pay while still making a living. So they leave the field fallow while trying to grab even more land. For some reason they think they can squeeze blood from a turnip.

If you find that unbelievable as an analogy, explain why there are entire blocks in NYC that haven't seen any space rented in over 10 years, yet the asking price hasn't budged even as the neighborhood has been given over to rats and junkies.

Comment Abject lunacy... (Score 2) 53

I can't say that I'm entirely surprised, given what else they've been getting up to; but it seems downright crazy to just unleash a slop engine without even giving your volunteers a heads up; then patronizingly ask if you can perhaps arrange a meeting to understand their concerns.

If your options are 'nothing' and 'hire bilingual tech writer' you can see the attraction of having a not very good but extremely cheap option; but just tossing away the expertise you already get for nothing out of some sort of weird technophilia? Is there actually some nutjob out there who was all "Oh, but machine translation makes my CI pipeline so efficient" or something?

Comment Re: Cloud computing is one the dumbest ideas ever (Score 1) 74

So those funny things that look like desktop machines are not? and there's no LDAP or domain controllers involved?

That's funny because the places I'm familiar with have desktop machines, domain controllers, often a NAS or two, and a router with a firewall.

Comment Re: Cloud computing is one the dumbest ideas ever (Score 1) 74

Cloud servers may have more than one user running things on the same CPU. God only knows who the other users actually are. In a corporate environment, everyone running jobs on the server works for the company. It doesn't reduce the risks to zero, but it does reduce them a lot.

Comment Re: Cloud computing is one the dumbest ideas ever. (Score 1) 74

Actually, the cloud remains more expensive and less secure. Remember all that meltdown, spectre, row hammering, etc? All largely irrelevant to people who use their own servers in their own environment.

You still need an ISP with the cloud. Somehow, you have to be able to launch and monitor, do updates, etc. Smoke signals won't work for that application. You still need IT guys for the office LAN, server admins for your office infrastructure, etc.

If you decide to go with anything but very vanilla virtual hosting, you still need developers to run on the 'upgrade' treadmill as cloud providers update and EOL things nearly as quickly as fashion designers.

If you go with the vanilla virtual hosts, you need pretty much the same people you need for self hosting only they can't touch the physical hardware and just have to sit nervously twiddling their thumbs when things go down.

VMWare is not the best choice these days since the licensing IS a ripoff.

Swapping a failing disk is easier than it ever has been before.

Comment Was this relevant to the theft? (Score 1) 86

Has it been determined whether the IT situation was related to the theft that occurred?

Obviously it sounds like basically no bad option was left unchosen when it came to their IT config; but I'm curious whether this was a situation where the perps were actually sophisticated enough (or unsophisticated at traditional smash-and-grab/balaclava-when-on-camera techniques) to incorporate the bad IT into the heist; or whether the entry was more or less pure physical access control failure that happens to put the general state of the system in stark relief?

Obviously if it were a heist movie there'd be a hoodie kid using the power of fast typing to haxx0r the cameras and guide the operatives while using a precociously cobbled-together AI to selectively delete them from the surveillance footage; but if the overall physical security posture was bad, and the building is largely accessible to the public, it seems entirely plausible that someone just cased the joint and walked in much as they would have 50 years ago; though a different interested party is probably hosting a C2 server or some exploitation payloads on their DVR.

Slashdot Top Deals

2.4 statute miles of surgical tubing at Yale U. = 1 I.V.League

Working...