Yes, everyone knows that the best way to deal with people who have little respect for authority is to prove to them beyond doubt, with petty, cruel and humiliating behaviour, that (certain) people in authority deserve no respect.
You'd just get people mugging the snipers on their way to/from their sniper nest. A black market sniper rifle has got to be worth way more than an armful of copper cable.
More likely if it did start to work is that people would just throw up the signs everywhere as a deterrent and thieves would eventually realise there was real copper being "protected" by fake signs. Then we'd be back to step one except the thieves would be earning less per average haul and would need to steal more cable to get back to their previous levels. Better to tackle the issue of those who are buying this stolen cable than play whack a mole with those who are stealing it.
What "proof" does he have? He has IP logs to show two different googlebots crawled his site at different times? We have those too, for dozens of sites. It's standard practice - several bots do the crawling (I'm not sure if this is for cross validation purposes or if it simply speeds up the propogation of the result indexing across their server farms) so there's nothing intrinsically suspicious about one Google IP visiting his sites one month and a different IP at a later date. Aside from that all he has is people claiming to be from Google. Claiming to be from a big, well recognised company is one of the oldest scams in the book.
On the flip side, Google don't sell hosting. On top of that, they're one of the richest companies in the world and you think their new policy is to scam a few people in Kenya out of a couple hundred dollars for hosting packages? That's like saying Donald Trump likes to supplement his income by mugging people in the park - sure it's not necessarily untrue but it's so ridiculous it's hard to swallow. Realistically, which is more likely, that explanation, or that this is either a hosting company with shady business practices or a group of scammers out to collect CC numbers? It's worth noting also that he's not mentioned trying to get a response from Google (and if he's tried he's not included their response).
I would have been more convinced had they asked for some contact details from the caller, something like "I'd really like to sign up but I have to rush into a meeting, can you give me your number/email address and I will call back when I'm free?". That way, they would have had at least something other than the person's word for it that they were from Google. They either would have given the number/email which could have been traced back to Google or more likely they would have made some excuse not to do so (which they'd have no reason to do if they were legitimate). I have to say their "investigative" skills leave a lot to be desired and it's pretty flimsy evidence they're using to jump immediately to the conclusion that this is definitely Google. Did they even try calling Google Kenya and asking to speak to any of the 6 callers to verify they actually work there?
Sounds like either a company fell for a scam or a company is scamming tech sites with fake news in order to up their pageviews... (and I'm not saying this from a "Google can do no evil" standpoint - if it does turn out this is true Google should definitely be made to pay, I just don't think anything here looks like proof yet)
On the contrary, a lot of developers would like to document their code (particularly if they have found a rather elegant solution to a tricky issue - everyone likes the opportunity to show off a little at a job well done). Having worked enough 90 hour weeks on projects to last me a lifetime I can tell you that it's never going to happen. You can't get blood from a stone and you can't give people zero time to do a task when they're already gifting you time over and above their 40 hours for free and yet habitually expect that task to be done.
Exactly this. In a lot of instances the best case scenario is that the project timeline already tries to squeeze too much development into too little time, so even to hit the initial deadline for just producing the raw code you're still reliant on developers working over on their own time. To those who suggest incentivising with money, a better idea would be to use that money to take on another developer and spread the work so that the deadlines aren't always insanely tight (though in reality the second another developer is hired either the timeline will shorten or the workload will be increased).
Indeed, there might be several different ways to achieve the same outcome with non-obvious advantages/disadvantages. No matter how elegant the code is, it tells you nothing about the reason for that particular implementation (say you're relying on a third party web service that's flaky or slow unless you format the request in a certain way).
That's fine if you can spare the equipment for the time it takes to get it repaired/replaced. If it's his work laptop he might need it a little more urgently, in which case prevention is still better than cure (obviously depending on the cost of the prevention).
Ditto using the phone app to control the TV (especially for the keyboard, just a shame I need the regular remote to turn it on). In addition I have a DLNA enabled Android phone (with iMediaShare from the app market) that allows me to stream video content wirelessly to my Samsung TV. That small media computer connected to the screen that GP talks about will probably be most people's phone in a couple of years.
Yep, as TV moves towards a streaming rather than fixed schedule model, imagine a TV that forced you to watch X-amount of advertising before it started the show (or the next part of the show, if you're midway through). It would be the broadcaster's dream and the user's nightmare, a TV that effectively stops channel hopping during ad breaks...
That ignores the various uses of PCs today. If a trojan keylogger manages to give a malicious user access to your bank account and he cleans you out, how are your backups going to help? Besides, good regular backups and AV are not mutually exclusive - you should be doing both.
A full wipe and reinstall can't guarantee that either, though. And data recovery just runs the risk of re-introducing whatever infected the machine to start with. AV is the only sensible solution (I'm not sure why GP is talking about cost when there are so many free options - surely the time to install is less than the time to manually check a system).
It seems to have become much more aggressive, too. I'm sure it never used to nag me constantly but it does now. If I've closed the notification I clearly have no interest in signing up, at least respect that and don't push the issue again for a few weeks. This seems to be the case with all the decent free products, eventually they all either go paid or they all have a nag for the paid premium edition that gets progressively worse. I might have to switch back to MSE (at least they have an incentive to keep this free).
What we really need is government to do more to encourage employers to allow flexible working hours and teleconferencing. It's insane in this day and age that we still try and cram 90% of the workforce onto the crumbling infrastructure at the same time, twice a day, when services are relatively quiet even just an hour either side (and pretty much dead if you travel even earlier/later).
This is definitely the key. You'd expect a journey by train to be competing with your share of the cost of a car share to your destination. In fact it can't even compete with you driving on your own to your desitnation. On the one hand you can have all the fun of stations (queues, cold and miserable platforms, overpriced shops, late trains, trains being shunted to other platforms so you have to rush to make it even if you got there early, etc), have all the fun of fighting for a cramped seat or standing for the entire journey and deal with your fellow passengers (germs, people talking on mobiles, people invading your personal space) and pay extra for the privilege. On the other hand you can go by car, it's cheaper (for the time being), comfortable, you can play your own music as loud as you like, take phone calls without disrupting others, you can leave from and return to your front door, you can pull over at any time to stretch your legs and get some fresh air, the temperature is as hot or cold as you like, you can travel with companions and share the cost, there's no issue with how much baggage you can carry and less chance of unattended baggage being stolen. If the government is serious about encouraging greener forms of transport it needs to be getting the cost of trains down so much, not only to compete on a price level with cars, but to make up for all of the other disadvantages of train travel.
If it's going to stimulate the economy as much as they're claiming then surely the sooner the better in the current climate. The sooner it's running the sooner we can start watching the massive economic benefits of people being able to travel a little bit quicker between the two largest cities (because as we all know that the daily commute is the biggest time sink and there must be millions of people already living in big cities who want to go and work in different big cities instead of finding a job in the city they're already in who will benefit from this) come rolling in. In case you can't tell, I'm a little skeptical.
Generous? Homes will be affected along the entire length, but it's not the Birmingham end of the line that's getting concessions with underground tunnels etc. Imagine you've put everything you have into an even more modest home that backs onto some farmland, and take great pleasure in having your breakfast looking out over the grazing sheep and the thicket of trees on the horizon. Then one day you're told that your view is going to be of a grey concrete wall, behind which there will be a train line. Then you find out that the people with comparatively far less modest homes in a comparatively far richer part of the country had their piece of line buried to preserve their views (partially at your expense as a tax payer). And do you think they'll do this in Manchester or Leeds? You'll be lucky to have even the concrete wall to look at, probably a rusty chainlink fence. This is nothing to do with general pleasantness, it's to do with the Conservatives looking after their own as usual. According to them the public sector is a horrible drain on society, but they have no qualms about raiding it to make their own lives easier at the expense of the rest of the country. They should be leading by example and refusing to let the public pay extra for something that benefits so few.
You say that as though coming up with good original ideas and bringing them to market is the easy bit. That's kind of what the whole patent process should be there to protect, otherwise it's almost always better to be second to market, let some other chump do all the costly research and development, then you just bring out a shinier version of their product based on initial feedback. Companies that come up with ideas and put them into production are far more useful than companies who have zero interest in bringing a product to market and just patent the patently obvious so they can reap the benefits in licensing deals/court cases.
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Don't forget that, without the war on drugs, the prisons would need to find another way to fill the cells with profit-generating cheap labour.
Yes, everyone knows that the best way to deal with people who have little respect for authority is to prove to them beyond doubt, with petty, cruel and humiliating behaviour, that (certain) people in authority deserve no respect.
You'd just get people mugging the snipers on their way to/from their sniper nest. A black market sniper rifle has got to be worth way more than an armful of copper cable.
More likely if it did start to work is that people would just throw up the signs everywhere as a deterrent and thieves would eventually realise there was real copper being "protected" by fake signs. Then we'd be back to step one except the thieves would be earning less per average haul and would need to steal more cable to get back to their previous levels. Better to tackle the issue of those who are buying this stolen cable than play whack a mole with those who are stealing it.
What "proof" does he have? He has IP logs to show two different googlebots crawled his site at different times? We have those too, for dozens of sites. It's standard practice - several bots do the crawling (I'm not sure if this is for cross validation purposes or if it simply speeds up the propogation of the result indexing across their server farms) so there's nothing intrinsically suspicious about one Google IP visiting his sites one month and a different IP at a later date. Aside from that all he has is people claiming to be from Google. Claiming to be from a big, well recognised company is one of the oldest scams in the book.
On the flip side, Google don't sell hosting. On top of that, they're one of the richest companies in the world and you think their new policy is to scam a few people in Kenya out of a couple hundred dollars for hosting packages? That's like saying Donald Trump likes to supplement his income by mugging people in the park - sure it's not necessarily untrue but it's so ridiculous it's hard to swallow. Realistically, which is more likely, that explanation, or that this is either a hosting company with shady business practices or a group of scammers out to collect CC numbers? It's worth noting also that he's not mentioned trying to get a response from Google (and if he's tried he's not included their response).
I would have been more convinced had they asked for some contact details from the caller, something like "I'd really like to sign up but I have to rush into a meeting, can you give me your number/email address and I will call back when I'm free?". That way, they would have had at least something other than the person's word for it that they were from Google. They either would have given the number/email which could have been traced back to Google or more likely they would have made some excuse not to do so (which they'd have no reason to do if they were legitimate). I have to say their "investigative" skills leave a lot to be desired and it's pretty flimsy evidence they're using to jump immediately to the conclusion that this is definitely Google. Did they even try calling Google Kenya and asking to speak to any of the 6 callers to verify they actually work there?
Sounds like either a company fell for a scam or a company is scamming tech sites with fake news in order to up their pageviews... (and I'm not saying this from a "Google can do no evil" standpoint - if it does turn out this is true Google should definitely be made to pay, I just don't think anything here looks like proof yet)
Be honest, you don't want to so you don't.
On the contrary, a lot of developers would like to document their code (particularly if they have found a rather elegant solution to a tricky issue - everyone likes the opportunity to show off a little at a job well done). Having worked enough 90 hour weeks on projects to last me a lifetime I can tell you that it's never going to happen. You can't get blood from a stone and you can't give people zero time to do a task when they're already gifting you time over and above their 40 hours for free and yet habitually expect that task to be done.
Exactly this. In a lot of instances the best case scenario is that the project timeline already tries to squeeze too much development into too little time, so even to hit the initial deadline for just producing the raw code you're still reliant on developers working over on their own time. To those who suggest incentivising with money, a better idea would be to use that money to take on another developer and spread the work so that the deadlines aren't always insanely tight (though in reality the second another developer is hired either the timeline will shorten or the workload will be increased).
Indeed, there might be several different ways to achieve the same outcome with non-obvious advantages/disadvantages. No matter how elegant the code is, it tells you nothing about the reason for that particular implementation (say you're relying on a third party web service that's flaky or slow unless you format the request in a certain way).
That's fine if you can spare the equipment for the time it takes to get it repaired/replaced. If it's his work laptop he might need it a little more urgently, in which case prevention is still better than cure (obviously depending on the cost of the prevention).
The only real way to kill a Model M is to throw it into the fires of Mount Doom, where it was forged.
Natural selection will soon resolve that.
Ditto using the phone app to control the TV (especially for the keyboard, just a shame I need the regular remote to turn it on). In addition I have a DLNA enabled Android phone (with iMediaShare from the app market) that allows me to stream video content wirelessly to my Samsung TV. That small media computer connected to the screen that GP talks about will probably be most people's phone in a couple of years.
Yep, as TV moves towards a streaming rather than fixed schedule model, imagine a TV that forced you to watch X-amount of advertising before it started the show (or the next part of the show, if you're midway through). It would be the broadcaster's dream and the user's nightmare, a TV that effectively stops channel hopping during ad breaks...
Indeed - Kinect, for instance, has commands prefixed by "XBOX...". A user-configurable prefix would be even better.
That ignores the various uses of PCs today. If a trojan keylogger manages to give a malicious user access to your bank account and he cleans you out, how are your backups going to help? Besides, good regular backups and AV are not mutually exclusive - you should be doing both.
A full wipe and reinstall can't guarantee that either, though. And data recovery just runs the risk of re-introducing whatever infected the machine to start with. AV is the only sensible solution (I'm not sure why GP is talking about cost when there are so many free options - surely the time to install is less than the time to manually check a system).
Office is good enough, but it's hardly the user experience it could be if MS had any kind of meaningful competition to drive them.
It seems to have become much more aggressive, too. I'm sure it never used to nag me constantly but it does now. If I've closed the notification I clearly have no interest in signing up, at least respect that and don't push the issue again for a few weeks. This seems to be the case with all the decent free products, eventually they all either go paid or they all have a nag for the paid premium edition that gets progressively worse. I might have to switch back to MSE (at least they have an incentive to keep this free).
What we really need is government to do more to encourage employers to allow flexible working hours and teleconferencing. It's insane in this day and age that we still try and cram 90% of the workforce onto the crumbling infrastructure at the same time, twice a day, when services are relatively quiet even just an hour either side (and pretty much dead if you travel even earlier/later).
This is definitely the key. You'd expect a journey by train to be competing with your share of the cost of a car share to your destination. In fact it can't even compete with you driving on your own to your desitnation. On the one hand you can have all the fun of stations (queues, cold and miserable platforms, overpriced shops, late trains, trains being shunted to other platforms so you have to rush to make it even if you got there early, etc), have all the fun of fighting for a cramped seat or standing for the entire journey and deal with your fellow passengers (germs, people talking on mobiles, people invading your personal space) and pay extra for the privilege. On the other hand you can go by car, it's cheaper (for the time being), comfortable, you can play your own music as loud as you like, take phone calls without disrupting others, you can leave from and return to your front door, you can pull over at any time to stretch your legs and get some fresh air, the temperature is as hot or cold as you like, you can travel with companions and share the cost, there's no issue with how much baggage you can carry and less chance of unattended baggage being stolen. If the government is serious about encouraging greener forms of transport it needs to be getting the cost of trains down so much, not only to compete on a price level with cars, but to make up for all of the other disadvantages of train travel.
If it's going to stimulate the economy as much as they're claiming then surely the sooner the better in the current climate. The sooner it's running the sooner we can start watching the massive economic benefits of people being able to travel a little bit quicker between the two largest cities (because as we all know that the daily commute is the biggest time sink and there must be millions of people already living in big cities who want to go and work in different big cities instead of finding a job in the city they're already in who will benefit from this) come rolling in. In case you can't tell, I'm a little skeptical.
The Nazis also had IBM so it kind of balances out.
Surely the whole point of preserving something is so that people can enjoy it. If nobody ever went there, why would it matter?
Generous? Homes will be affected along the entire length, but it's not the Birmingham end of the line that's getting concessions with underground tunnels etc. Imagine you've put everything you have into an even more modest home that backs onto some farmland, and take great pleasure in having your breakfast looking out over the grazing sheep and the thicket of trees on the horizon. Then one day you're told that your view is going to be of a grey concrete wall, behind which there will be a train line. Then you find out that the people with comparatively far less modest homes in a comparatively far richer part of the country had their piece of line buried to preserve their views (partially at your expense as a tax payer). And do you think they'll do this in Manchester or Leeds? You'll be lucky to have even the concrete wall to look at, probably a rusty chainlink fence. This is nothing to do with general pleasantness, it's to do with the Conservatives looking after their own as usual. According to them the public sector is a horrible drain on society, but they have no qualms about raiding it to make their own lives easier at the expense of the rest of the country. They should be leading by example and refusing to let the public pay extra for something that benefits so few.
You say that as though coming up with good original ideas and bringing them to market is the easy bit. That's kind of what the whole patent process should be there to protect, otherwise it's almost always better to be second to market, let some other chump do all the costly research and development, then you just bring out a shinier version of their product based on initial feedback. Companies that come up with ideas and put them into production are far more useful than companies who have zero interest in bringing a product to market and just patent the patently obvious so they can reap the benefits in licensing deals/court cases.