...8 years ago they were still selling units running XP embedded ( I installed and serviced them). I saw at least a dozen easily exploited holes in their management procedures back then, and I'm not talking about outre' software & firmware hacks like we're seeing with all these IoT devices that everybody's all up in arms over... but just plain poor security implementation on a procedural and management level.
That said, I've been out of the trade for several years now... while it's possible they've tightened up their ship, as sloppy as things were back then I find it hard to believe their gear is now inherently any more secure than a Chinese smartphone.
Cheers,
mnem
Security of any sort in any large organization is more a matter of running around putting out brushfires than anything like actually sealing up a leak.
Quite right. We are even now the antithesis of socialist; as a nation we aren't even fundamentally socially responsible. But we certainly are going gangbusters on the fascist state thing.
mnem
This is what it was like to live in Germany during the rise of the 3rd Reich.
... the problem is the "Shopping Experience" at most Best Buy stores, which is typically on a par with Dollar Tree and about as welcoming as an unannounced cavity search.
When I shop for music, it is a "Shopping" thing; I want the assistance of knowledgeable sales staff, just like a woman wants knowledgeable staff to help them find the right makeup, and for the same reason.
Most Best Buys I've been in in the last decade have been dingy, poorly laid out, some with utterly hideously stained and ripped carpeting and store fixtures that look like GoodWill rejects. If you can find store help you're lucky if they can point you to the registers ior the restrooms. Nobody knows anything about anything they sell because there isn't anybody on the floor who's an actual adult; they've fired all the competent/experienced staff for sub-minimum-wage college kids who'd rather be cramming for finals.
Seriously; I can't WAIT for Best Buy to go the way of Circuit City and CompUSA... they WON the race to the bottom and they deserve their ignominious end.
...THIS is the reason for this new round of Copyright Extension BS.
Starting in 2024, Mickey Mouse will no longer be treated with the "Kid Glove Care" he has enjoyed for a FREAKING CENTURY, and as time progresses and Dis-SkyNet's copyrights expire, more and more of his puerile antics will become public domain.
The underlying cause is the fact that the copyright owners know they haven't produced anything of value in the LAST 50 years. Particularly corporate entities, which already get an EXTRA 50 years above private entities with this BS, so you KNOW it was NEVER about protecting the original artist's IP rights.
This was the real reason for Senator Sonny Bono's original bill, and it worked so well for Coprolite America they couldn't NOT try for ANOTHER round, DUH.
No, we didn't ELECT this imbecile. Like the Shrub before him, he was installed in the Presidency against the will of the American people via election-tampering as part of the endgame in the current hostile corporate takeover of our once-great nation.
Of a field of literally DOZENS vying for the opportunity to sell us all down the river, he was the BEST his party could offer. Think about that... a racist, rapist, misogynist, admitted Hitler-wannabe, 4-times-bankrupt, career deadbeat, imbecile KGB asset on the verge of being locked up for a hundred felonies was the BEST they could come up with.
Chump is not the sickness; he is merely the most visible symptom of the disease.
RUSSIA Connection? Puh-leeze. While still probably true, the whole thing is mostly more smoke & mirrors BS to distract you from the people who really put him there... our own corrupt Congress and State officials who legitimized this tampered election.
When Chump screamed about how "the election was rigged", he wasn't crying foul... he was reassuring his faithful that no matter HOW horrible things looked for him, the fix was in. The only election fraud committed was committed BY him and his GOP cronies, NOT against him. Massive illegal removal of voters from the rolls committed by GOP-controlled Election "Officials", wholesale gerrymandering on a criminal level and outright CONSTITUTIONALLY ILLEGAL voter suppression laws passed by GOP Governors and State Legislatures across the country, added to voting machines in key districts that "conveniently" reported 4-12% different results in his favor than exit polls (even though all polls with paper ballots still remained within the historically documented less than 1% variance) made this possible; NOT the will of the American people.
Saying he was “elected” even when rebuking him STILL reinforces the legitimacy of this hostile corporate takeover of our highest office; I refuse to normalize the batshit crazy that has made Chump possible even THAT much.
mnem Douglas Adams, arguably one of the most naturally funny and insightful people who ever lived, had this to say about the role of "The President"; while he referred to the fictional "President of the Galaxy" in his series of books, the similarities to our current State of the Union are disturbingly similar:
"...The President is very much a figurehead - he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.
An orange sash is what the President of the Galaxy traditionally wears.
On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had. He spent two of his ten Presidential years in prison for fraud. Very very few people realize that the President and the Government have virtually no power at all, and of these very few people only six know whence ultimate political power is wielded."
Of particular note, IMO, are the points about fraud, orange sash and not possessing any qualities of leadership; but most importantly the nature of his job:
"His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. "
Yeah; that's the problem: THE CURRENT SYSTEM. At its heart, it is 1800s technology STILL being flogged to serve today. We really need to completely overhaul the entire grid, but the people who would have to pay for it are the people making all the money from THE CURRENT SYSTEM and its inefficiency.
The whole point of the battery is that it is the FIRST response, not the LAST response to surge current demands. Tesla has shown pretty conclusively with this trial that trying to feed the grid directly from the turbine is grossly wasteful; however this wasteful state is precisely where Big Energy has long made the most profit.
In all reality, this will not change until the last drop of dead dinosaurs and the last fart of natural gas is burned by these a-holes; then they'll be demanding we let them burn effing COAL again.:facepalm:
If we don't dismantle the CURRENT SYSTEM, build actual green energy instead of making one stopgap after another decade after decade, and stop BURNING STUFF to make electricity, we as a species are DOOMED. ANYTHING that prolongs our change from the CURRENT SYSTEM to the latter is just exponentially increasing the cost to our grandchildren.
We are ALREADY at the point where this cost will likely be inescapable decimation of the human population; we need to face that and try to fix it instead of engaging in still more of the politics of rats on a burning ship, which is what we've been doing for the last 40 years.
But molten-salt is ultimately just another steam generator; it can't act as a capacitor, smoothing surge in milliseconds like these cells do. We STILL need them, no matter what technology we use to generate power.
What will probably be the reality, once we finally get over the suicidal idiocy that is Big Energy as we know it, will be a multi-tier approach with primary generation, 24-72 hour storage like molten salt, and finally high-surge storage like this Tesla project. This of course will be fought every step of the way, as those who would have to pay for the new infrastructure are the very same folks who are making enough by dint of the currently grossly inefficient system to successfully engage in a hostile corporate takeover of the government of the largest consumer economy on the planet.
I expect us to be paddling around Houston like they do in Venice before that happens.
Hopefully before we reach that state, smart folks like those at Tesla will be looking further ahead to new cell designs where recycling is a priority, so that the same cells we decommission tomorrow will ultimately become the next generation of cells after that. Done properly, even Li-Ion technology can have a similarly high reclamation factor as we've already seen with lead-acid; possibly even better.
Yeah, except that people a LOT smarter than these fools already banned similar hydraulic drilling methods decades earlier, because they were smart enough to understand that you can't drill through a sponge and pump poison into the hole and expect it to stay where you put it.
You're putting the "technicality" of this idiotic proviso up as if it were actual protection against the poisoning of our planet, which is patently absurd. I stand by my assessment, and I call them liars and thieves.
Why do you snowflakes have to keep bringing up Clinton? You got your man; he's a sack of sh** just like we told you he'd be.
Yet you all have to constantly compare him to an imaginary Presidency, instead of admitting to yourself the White House is serving as daycare for an idiot child with the temperament of a rabid rat.
Stop being such shi**y winners and get to work fixing your fu**up.
mnem But wait, there's more! Now how much would you pay? Never mind... you'll pay EVERYTHING.
...whether Mr. Kim lying to a known lying sack of sh** (Resident Chump) even constitutes a moral turpitude rather than simple self-defense, for himself and his country.
mnem
"Don't trust a word he says; not even 'Hello'..."
Please, keep Resident Chump out of this. His purpose was never to wield power, but to act as a lightning rod and draw attention away from the evils being perpetrated by those actually wielding power. Those who placed him there (No, NOT the American people) did so knowing full well they didn't DARE let him actually hold the reins.
In short, our nation has been without a President since the inauguration.
mnem
Since I gave up all hope, I'm much better now. I used to be constantly disgusted; now I'm merely amused.
Oh, FFS... this isn't conspiracy theories, you bonehead... it's just following the money. Ignoring real corruption and conspiracy that is actually happening all around you is just as idiotic as assuming everything evil you hear about is just the ranting of some wingnut fringe.
"We the People" are currently witnessing the biggest hostile corporate takeover in history; that of our own sovereign nation. Yet evidently you somehow think, in the midst of this very plainly visible corruption from the top of our government down, that somehow the FDA has remained untainted?
I never ONCE suggested any of the things you attributed to me; you pulled ALL of that straight out of your own mental fog.
mnem
I know, it's so much easier to talk out your arse when you post as AC; Ifni forbid you should take the slightest amount of responsibility for what you say.
That's the reason such governing bodies do reviews in most of the civilized world. Here it's much less about public safety and much more about the bidding war and influence peddling of one big pharma vs another.
Almost every kind of "breakthrough" medication that's been up for approval in the last 40 years has had multiple candidate formulations from various vendors in roughly the same time frame; which formulation gets reviewed to death vs which get fast-tracked is far more due to to politics than it is due to the lives saved.
mnem But wait; there's more! Now how much would you pay?
Absolutely... in exactly the same way as we in the USA have "perfected" the economy in general, and "perfected" elections, and "perfected" the justice system, and "perfected" mass media, and continue working "to form a more perfect union" tailored to the only people who matter. [Insert sarcastic emoji of choice here]
Yes, I do fully understand that this is known as "cultural imperialism". And yes, I do also understand the irony as I type this from the comfort of my air-conditioned home in the heartland of America on a PC built from 99% China-manufactured components.
Slashdot Mirror
...8 years ago they were still selling units running XP embedded ( I installed and serviced them). I saw at least a dozen easily exploited holes in their management procedures back then, and I'm not talking about outre' software & firmware hacks like we're seeing with all these IoT devices that everybody's all up in arms over... but just plain poor security implementation on a procedural and management level.
That said, I've been out of the trade for several years now... while it's possible they've tightened up their ship, as sloppy as things were back then I find it hard to believe their gear is now inherently any more secure than a Chinese smartphone.
Cheers,
mnem
Security of any sort in any large organization is more a matter of running around putting out brushfires than anything like actually sealing up a leak.
Quite right. We are even now the antithesis of socialist; as a nation we aren't even fundamentally socially responsible. But we certainly are going gangbusters on the fascist state thing.
mnem
This is what it was like to live in Germany during the rise of the 3rd Reich.
When I shop for music, it is a "Shopping" thing; I want the assistance of knowledgeable sales staff, just like a woman wants knowledgeable staff to help them find the right makeup, and for the same reason.
Most Best Buys I've been in in the last decade have been dingy, poorly laid out, some with utterly hideously stained and ripped carpeting and store fixtures that look like GoodWill rejects. If you can find store help you're lucky if they can point you to the registers ior the restrooms. Nobody knows anything about anything they sell because there isn't anybody on the floor who's an actual adult; they've fired all the competent/experienced staff for sub-minimum-wage college kids who'd rather be cramming for finals.
Seriously; I can't WAIT for Best Buy to go the way of Circuit City and CompUSA... they WON the race to the bottom and they deserve their ignominious end.
mnem
Social Darwinism at it's best.
...THIS is the reason for this new round of Copyright Extension BS.
Starting in 2024, Mickey Mouse will no longer be treated with the "Kid Glove Care" he has enjoyed for a FREAKING CENTURY, and as time progresses and Dis-SkyNet's copyrights expire, more and more of his puerile antics will become public domain.
The underlying cause is the fact that the copyright owners know they haven't produced anything of value in the LAST 50 years. Particularly corporate entities, which already get an EXTRA 50 years above private entities with this BS, so you KNOW it was NEVER about protecting the original artist's IP rights.
This was the real reason for Senator Sonny Bono's original bill, and it worked so well for Coprolite America they couldn't NOT try for ANOTHER round, DUH.
mnem
Follow. The. Money.
Not gonna give half a fu** about any of this backstory as long as my Electrum Remnant gets delivered before I go see Solo this weekend. :P
mnem
*AKA Darth Paul - Sith Lord, Retired*
Just business as usual in the Corporate States of America.
mnem
Justice is for those who can pay.
...when everything Twitter is finally killed off. They are a cancer on the global subconsciousness.
mnem
Modding me down won't make this any less true.
No, we didn't ELECT this imbecile. Like the Shrub before him, he was installed in the Presidency against the will of the American people via election-tampering as part of the endgame in the current hostile corporate takeover of our once-great nation.
Of a field of literally DOZENS vying for the opportunity to sell us all down the river, he was the BEST his party could offer. Think about that... a racist, rapist, misogynist, admitted Hitler-wannabe, 4-times-bankrupt, career deadbeat, imbecile KGB asset on the verge of being locked up for a hundred felonies was the BEST they could come up with.
Chump is not the sickness; he is merely the most visible symptom of the disease.
RUSSIA Connection? Puh-leeze. While still probably true, the whole thing is mostly more smoke & mirrors BS to distract you from the people who really put him there... our own corrupt Congress and State officials who legitimized this tampered election.
When Chump screamed about how "the election was rigged", he wasn't crying foul... he was reassuring his faithful that no matter HOW horrible things looked for him, the fix was in. The only election fraud committed was committed BY him and his GOP cronies, NOT against him. Massive illegal removal of voters from the rolls committed by GOP-controlled Election "Officials", wholesale gerrymandering on a criminal level and outright CONSTITUTIONALLY ILLEGAL voter suppression laws passed by GOP Governors and State Legislatures across the country, added to voting machines in key districts that "conveniently" reported 4-12% different results in his favor than exit polls (even though all polls with paper ballots still remained within the historically documented less than 1% variance) made this possible; NOT the will of the American people.
Saying he was “elected” even when rebuking him STILL reinforces the legitimacy of this hostile corporate takeover of our highest office; I refuse to normalize the batshit crazy that has made Chump possible even THAT much.
mnem
Douglas Adams, arguably one of the most naturally funny and insightful people who ever lived, had this to say about the role of "The President"; while he referred to the fictional "President of the Galaxy" in his series of books, the similarities to our current State of the Union are disturbingly similar:
"...The President is very much a figurehead - he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.
An orange sash is what the President of the Galaxy traditionally wears.
On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had. He spent two of his ten Presidential years in prison for fraud. Very very few people realize that the President and the Government have virtually no power at all, and of these very few people only six know whence ultimate political power is wielded."
Of particular note, IMO, are the points about fraud, orange sash and not possessing any qualities of leadership; but most importantly the nature of his job:
"His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. "
...was this utterly ignorant article even approved for submission?
mnem
Alternative facts 101
You just said EXACTLY what I was about to post... almost word for word. :D
mnem :P
Thanks; now I can get back to being a "productive" member of society again!
...building the perfect Congressman again, are we? Like that has worked out so well thus far...
mnem
But then, I repeat myself...
Yeah; that's the problem: THE CURRENT SYSTEM. At its heart, it is 1800s technology STILL being flogged to serve today. We really need to completely overhaul the entire grid, but the people who would have to pay for it are the people making all the money from THE CURRENT SYSTEM and its inefficiency.
The whole point of the battery is that it is the FIRST response, not the LAST response to surge current demands. Tesla has shown pretty conclusively with this trial that trying to feed the grid directly from the turbine is grossly wasteful; however this wasteful state is precisely where Big Energy has long made the most profit.
In all reality, this will not change until the last drop of dead dinosaurs and the last fart of natural gas is burned by these a-holes; then they'll be demanding we let them burn effing COAL again. :facepalm:
If we don't dismantle the CURRENT SYSTEM, build actual green energy instead of making one stopgap after another decade after decade, and stop BURNING STUFF to make electricity, we as a species are DOOMED. ANYTHING that prolongs our change from the CURRENT SYSTEM to the latter is just exponentially increasing the cost to our grandchildren.
We are ALREADY at the point where this cost will likely be inescapable decimation of the human population; we need to face that and try to fix it instead of engaging in still more of the politics of rats on a burning ship, which is what we've been doing for the last 40 years.
Cheers,
mnem
Pants are highly overrated.
But molten-salt is ultimately just another steam generator; it can't act as a capacitor, smoothing surge in milliseconds like these cells do. We STILL need them, no matter what technology we use to generate power.
What will probably be the reality, once we finally get over the suicidal idiocy that is Big Energy as we know it, will be a multi-tier approach with primary generation, 24-72 hour storage like molten salt, and finally high-surge storage like this Tesla project. This of course will be fought every step of the way, as those who would have to pay for the new infrastructure are the very same folks who are making enough by dint of the currently grossly inefficient system to successfully engage in a hostile corporate takeover of the government of the largest consumer economy on the planet.
I expect us to be paddling around Houston like they do in Venice before that happens.
Hopefully before we reach that state, smart folks like those at Tesla will be looking further ahead to new cell designs where recycling is a priority, so that the same cells we decommission tomorrow will ultimately become the next generation of cells after that. Done properly, even Li-Ion technology can have a similarly high reclamation factor as we've already seen with lead-acid; possibly even better.
mnem
No, tomorrow doesn't look good either.
Stop spreading BS you heard on Fox noise, Dumbass. Everything in your post is utter fabrication.
mnem
SMH
Yeah, except that people a LOT smarter than these fools already banned similar hydraulic drilling methods decades earlier, because they were smart enough to understand that you can't drill through a sponge and pump poison into the hole and expect it to stay where you put it.
You're putting the "technicality" of this idiotic proviso up as if it were actual protection against the poisoning of our planet, which is patently absurd. I stand by my assessment, and I call them liars and thieves.
Have a nice carcinogenic swim in the results,
mnem
*Allergic to the BS*
Why do you snowflakes have to keep bringing up Clinton? You got your man; he's a sack of sh** just like we told you he'd be.
Yet you all have to constantly compare him to an imaginary Presidency, instead of admitting to yourself the White House is serving as daycare for an idiot child with the temperament of a rabid rat.
Stop being such shi**y winners and get to work fixing your fu**up.
mnem
But wait, there's more! Now how much would you pay? Never mind... you'll pay EVERYTHING.
...whether Mr. Kim lying to a known lying sack of sh** (Resident Chump) even constitutes a moral turpitude rather than simple self-defense, for himself and his country.
mnem
"Don't trust a word he says; not even 'Hello'..."
"Enforced by the EPA"?
You mean the SAME EPA that sold a blanket exemption to the Clean Water Act to the fracking industry a couple decades ago?
Or do you mean the CURRENT EPA, headed by a man who was deliberately placed there TO DESTROY the agency?
Have you lost your mind, or are you just daft?
mnem
"If you think the EPA is the problem, YOU are the problem."
Please, keep Resident Chump out of this. His purpose was never to wield power, but to act as a lightning rod and draw attention away from the evils being perpetrated by those actually wielding power. Those who placed him there (No, NOT the American people) did so knowing full well they didn't DARE let him actually hold the reins.
In short, our nation has been without a President since the inauguration.
mnem
Since I gave up all hope, I'm much better now. I used to be constantly disgusted; now I'm merely amused.
Oh, FFS... this isn't conspiracy theories, you bonehead... it's just following the money. Ignoring real corruption and conspiracy that is actually happening all around you is just as idiotic as assuming everything evil you hear about is just the ranting of some wingnut fringe.
"We the People" are currently witnessing the biggest hostile corporate takeover in history; that of our own sovereign nation. Yet evidently you somehow think, in the midst of this very plainly visible corruption from the top of our government down, that somehow the FDA has remained untainted?
Now who's drinking the Kool-aid?
Cheers,
mnem
Good luck widdat.
Yes, I DID think that through. It is STILL true.
I never ONCE suggested any of the things you attributed to me; you pulled ALL of that straight out of your own mental fog.
mnem
I know, it's so much easier to talk out your arse when you post as AC; Ifni forbid you should take the slightest amount of responsibility for what you say.
That's the reason such governing bodies do reviews in most of the civilized world. Here it's much less about public safety and much more about the bidding war and influence peddling of one big pharma vs another.
Almost every kind of "breakthrough" medication that's been up for approval in the last 40 years has had multiple candidate formulations from various vendors in roughly the same time frame; which formulation gets reviewed to death vs which get fast-tracked is far more due to to politics than it is due to the lives saved.
mnem
But wait; there's more! Now how much would you pay?
These home assistants do record and store a considerable buffer locally, which the service can access at any time remotely.
mnem
Remember the fuss our NSA had over Furby? Now we're at Frrby Freakout Level... until they get the keys.
Absolutely... in exactly the same way as we in the USA have "perfected" the economy in general, and "perfected" elections, and "perfected" the justice system, and "perfected" mass media, and continue working "to form a more perfect union" tailored to the only people who matter. [Insert sarcastic emoji of choice here]
mnem
With six you get egg roll!
Yes, I do fully understand that this is known as "cultural imperialism". And yes, I do also understand the irony as I type this from the comfort of my air-conditioned home in the heartland of America on a PC built from 99% China-manufactured components.
mnem
" "(Holy Testicle Tuesday!)