1 - Don't use the stupid shit. However, if you think you must use it:
2 - Use a good ad blocker. Of course, this will be a cat and mouse game between the ad company (Facebook) and the ad-blockers (various).
3 - Use firefox and a little "about:config" followed by search for "autoplay". Until you land on "media.autoplay.enabled" and set the boolean value to false. Good for all sorts of crap websites that want to autoplay videos on you.

You're welcome.

You're free to dissent as long as:
- You don't actually represent any real threat to "The Powers That Be". The moment you become effective you'll be shutdown real fast.
- You're not one of the "unapproved" minorities. This differs from country to country. But can be just being gay, black, indigenous, poor, having a different world view.
- Your being missing will be noticed. And even then that might not be enough. The disinformation campaign about you personally (character assassination) will start just before (1) unfortunate car accident, (2) Strontium meal or (3) falling off a boat at sea.

It won't matter if you live in 5 eyes country, 14 eyes country, Putin-empire, Chinese-empire, or any other state.

The only space you own is in your skull.

They are hoping consumers/suckers will fall for the Android marketing model. New features are only available with the new model, not the one you've purchased. Including essential security.

OpenElec (was XBMC) on a hacked Chrombox works well for me. Dumb TVs forever.

All that corporate resource and yet, won't release an Java MSI installer without paying for a support contract. Of course, support contracts for anything touching Oracle involve sums of money usually reserved for oil rich middle eastern nations.

I know one can extract the hidden MSI inside the EXE file. However, frequency of updates and the non-trivial upgrade procedure in controlled/locked-down corporate environments means a lot of businesses are more exposed than they should be.

Die Java, Die. (And I'm not say "The Java, The" in German).

100% Agree. EA is my new job.

I have access to a test lab. And when implementing things. And I can see all consoles/monitors. But I can't touch anything.

My new team will give me access at the drop of a hat by adding me to appropriate groups, if they feel I can help fight big ugly problems.. But this doesn't happen once a day, nor even once a month.

If you feel suitably qualified, simply remove the battery (if remote controlled) or a connecting wire from the the controller.

My anectodotal evidence is that woman will invariably feel coder. I'm fine with heat, just don't like humidity. So even a quick blast in a sealed hotel room to scrub the air, will have my GF complaining in about 2 minutes.

The one woman in our IT department (of 12) will wear thin and skimpy, but will then (1) complain it is too cold when the temperature drops to just below the point of paper catching alight, and (2) start her own heater in the winter, thereby stopping the heating coming on for anyone else. She is always first in the office.

Actually, the problems is not if it too hot or too cold, or if the XX chromosomes feel it more or less than the XY chromosomes, it's GIVE MY A F$@3cking office of my own and I'll control the heating or cooling in the office. Open Plan office suck for physical and mental health and getting any real work done.

Rarely, if ever, does an IT department have what might be called an Engineering or a Projects department.

There are normally more than enough break-fix type tickets from EVERY department to cover all the permanent staff. Plus there is stuff like compliance, routine maintenance, etc that outsiders never see but eat away so much time. And then various managers (1) cut the IT budgets so tools and resources are taken away while (2) complaining that IT isn't agile and responsive enough.

Speak to the IT manager. Pay for dedicated resources within the IT department. I'm sure a competent IT manager would be ready to oblige. Remember your cheque book.

(All spelling mistakes due to too small a monitor running on too few coffees today).

I guess now, short of plastic surgery every other day, there is nothing standing in the way of a totalitarian state - everywhere.

Nothing you do out side of your home is private and anonymous. Every thing you say or do will can be used against you.

Because, you know, no one wants/is able to police the police.

I'd just be happy if I could move the ribbon to the right or left side of the screen. So much real estate there and it doesn't get in the way. But nooooooo, fixed at the top of the screen so I can't see more of my document.

Still wondering if they will be able to publicly release their java MSI package.

I know they have one, because I see it on the downloads and support page for JDE E1. However I don't have access to the inner working of our corporate licence and work out if we are eligible to deploy it.

It would be possible just to download the MSI and deploy it. But Oracle do keep auditing us. So, better safe than sorry. (For various values of the word 'safe').

Really? US dollar? Swiss Franc is much more stable. Euro, is very spendable, mostly stable. Petro-Euro could easily replace Petro-Dollar (but ask Saddam Hussien how that turned out).

US Dollar is not worth its weight in paper.

China holds vast amount of US Dollars and the moment they decide to sell some or all of these, the currency will start to look like the Zimbabwe Dollar.

Very true. I was working in our office in Milan when two users PCs were hit.

Email avoided Barracuda mail firewall device, Sophos on two Excahnge servers, Sophos on the endpoint and Outlook junk-email filters. It also came in through our Cisco firewall with an IDS module.

Email appeared to be a legit email from a logistics company in Italy (in Italian). Only three users out of 60 got the email, those that deal with the company. Two users opened the mail and the attachement.

So, one, it avoided a lots of checking. Secondly it worked very fast. It encrypted hard drives and network drives to the tune of 170k files in a few minutes. Thirdly, seems there were a few critical leaks of email databases (corroborated by the IT manager having spoken with her former colleagues and they had a similar problem only a few days before hand). Lastly, it seems that the attack was highly targetted.

Backup procedures are heavilty audited in our company and the Italian IT backup nightly and test restores daily. It took a while to load data from the tapes, but within 24 hours, all network data was restored with only a few files (those created that day) lost. Pc files lost amount to a few inconsequential files, plus lots of personal photos that the users had been warned NOT to store on company IT equipement.

Think I am going to start wearing hats more often now.

What will happen is that the large denomination notes will just simply not be issued.

Want that $1000 in cash? That will be a lot of 20s or even 10s. This is chump change and of no interest.

Large amounts of $100s make it easy to pay for stuff "of interest" - large amounts of drugs, bribes, high end weapony, keeping wages or other taxable payments of the radar, etc. Smaller notes mean that physical transportation of large amounts of cash becomes more problematic and risky, but not impossible.

Pennies might go, but that will be just coincidence.

Better have a way of getting your 1000 swiss franc and 500 Euro notes ASAP, and hope.