Posts by Pascal Monett

Seagate demos hard disk drive with an NVMe interface. Yup, one with spinning platters

I have recently upgraded my home PC. My new motherboard has an NVMe slot if you care to check the image, it is behind the RAM and underneath the PSU connector). I have an NVMe drive waiting for it.

Except that, there is nothing that holds the card to the slot. There is no retaining device, so the card just slots in and, if ever the case is moved or jostled in any way, the card is liable to pop out.

Very poor design in my opinion. SATA connectors have blocking pins like Ethernet, so where is the blocker on NVMe cards ?

I'm not slotting that card in until someone does something so that it can't just fall out.

But you'd still need to overwrite the now-obsolete encrtypted data.

I'm not sure there's any gain there.

Chap who campaigned to oust Nominet's CEO and chairman and reform the .UK registry is elected as non-exec director

"Turnout was 24 per cent"

That is a damn shame.

Unless the 76% that didn't bother to move their ass were in favor of the previous assholes, in which case so much the better.

Now, until everyone on the board who has worked with and approved Mark Wood is ousted, I will not be satisfied.

In the '80s, spaceflight sim Elite was nothing short of magic. The annotated source code shows how it was done

Ah, the halcyon days of tight hardware resources

Back then, you had to be competent to make a game run. The difficulty getting anything on screen was already a first hurdle and, as said here, once you had your screen you had crumbs left over for the code and data.

Nowadays, they'll just tell you that you need 16GB of RAM to run the game, but hey! there's 7,486,684,325 planets to explore !

And they're all in memory.

A 'national security' issue: UK.gov blocks Nvidia's Arm deal for now, inserts deeper probe

It's the Competition and Markets Authority.

SAP patent not inventive enough to get legal protection, judge rules

"There is no inventive concept that provides something more than the abstract idea itself"

I believe that that can be applied to about 95% of all patents today.

The USPTO should be disbanded.

US states' antitrust lawsuit against Google's advertising business keeps growing

"We will strongly defend ourselves from his baseless claims in court."

And we will watch carefully to see just how baseless the court sees those claims to be.

Your PR bullshit does not impress us.

Intel's recent Atom, Celeron, Pentium chips can be lulled into a debug mode, potentially revealing system secrets

Oh please

"one way this bug might be abused would be if a miscreant obtained a stolen laptop or notebook computer with vulnerable hardware"

If he's got the laptop it's game over, no need to fiddle with the CPU.

He can just take the disk out, slap it into a USB receptacle and read anything he wants. If it's not encrypted, it's his to read.

How is this supposed to be a vulnerability ?

Sheffield Uni cooks up classic IT disaster in £30m student project: Shifting scope, leadership changes, sunk cost fallacy

What this boils down to

is that the uni spent £30 million to learn that they had to replace everything else before implementing a Student Lifecycle Project, which is just fancy wording for an SQL database of student grades.

Oh well, sometimes lessons are expensive.

I would have said expensive lessons are the best remembered, but somehow I doubt that the uni is going to remember anything from this.

There's only one cure for passive-aggressive Space Invader bosses, and that's more passive aggression

I have a collection of toon ties (from Tie Rack). Tom & Jerry, Sheep, Doc & Wolf, Bugs, Coyote, a bunch of them.

I used to wear them to customer site back when wearing a tie was a common requirement. I got more than a few laughs out of it from customers.

These days, only manglement wears a tie, and sometimes not even them (except at banks - they'll still be wearing ties in a thousand years), so I still dress properly, but no more tie.

I almost regret that, but not quite.

During the XMas week though, I wear my XMas tree tie with Mickey Mouse on it wherever I go.

Tech bro CEOs claim their crowns because they fix problems. Why shirk the biggest one?

And they use cargo sips who burn the absolute worst, most polluting fuel possible.

One of those ships offsets 100,000 Teslas.

We need to start the cleanup there.

Yeah, but Borkzilla wants you to upgrade every two years.

Just sayin'

Cruel and unusual IT fail upstages Megan Fox. Transformers: Windows in disguise

It really is surprising

In an era where alerts abound and computers have never been under so much scrutiny, it is really surprising to see that public ad panels basically have no controlling software that decides whether or not everything is working fine before throwing an image on screen.

You'd think that ad agencies would prefer to ensure that their Windows box was able to function before activating the public panel.

Well, apparently they don't give two hoots about that.

He called himself the King of Fraud. Now this bot lord will reign in prison for years

"Zhukov boldly devised"

Um, it is a fact that people are a lot more bold when they have a keyboard between them and their actions.

If this Zhukov had had to enact something in real life, I think he would have been somewhat less bold.

So let's not get carried away with the rhetoric, hmm ? He found yet another way to screw people* out of their money. There's no boldness required.

* okay, there were advertisers, but that's one step above lawyers

Now here's HPE with the weather in Northern Europe

"help improve the accuracy of forecasts in Northern Europe"

Okay, first of all, they dreadfully need to improve accuracy. They're barely capable of forecasting tomorrow's weather properly, unless it's clear skies all over Europe in which case they just might get it right for 5 days in a row.

Second : if you have to change your forecast every hour, you're not forecasting anything. You're looking out the window and writing down what you see.

I can do that just as well.

Brit analysts formed pact to crash Autonomy's market valuation, ex-CFO tells US court

The Justice system

Apparently the best place to be when you want something to drag out until everyone is sick of hearing about it.

Google denies Gmail users an early start to the weekend after problems accessing service

"a relief for all three users"

Methinks there may bit a wee bit more, especially since I noticed, the last time I logged into my Gmail account, I was logged in to Hangouts.

It would appear that Google, in its vast goodness, has decided that, once you log into Hangouts, you can no longer log out.

I guess the top brass were tired of seeing shrinking usage, so they told the trolls in the basement to do something about that.

The Ministry of Silly Printing: But I don't want my golf club correspondence to say 'UNCLASSIFIED' at the bottom

Optimist.

I had a brush with a bunch of senior lawyers

Luxembourg.

In a high-level meeting to define the specs of an application that was supposed to revolutionize the internal document management system of the company, I was busy explaining how the access rights worked to the database and its documents when one of the bigwigs interrupted me, asking about the access to the documents.

I re-explained how the user creating the document was responsible for the document (at application level) and could delegate reponsibility to other people. After ten minutes of additional explanations my colleague took over and, being Luxembourghish, gave an explanation in that language. I still didn't understand what the problem was.

After the meeting, it struck me : the bigwigs didn't want to have to touch the computer, but they wanted all their documents to be under their name whilst the secretaries did all the work.

I never did get to know what happened to that project, but I didn't have anything to do with it after that meeting. I still believe I got lucky on that.

HP's solution to running GPU-accelerated Linux apps on high-end Z workstations: Rely on Microsoft's WSL2

So, video drivers under Linux still haven't gotten out of hell

Brings me back to the first days when I tried out Linux on my machine. Poking through various MAN pages, very alert to warnings about how trying the wrong settings could fry either my graphics card, my VGA screen, or both.

I still managed to find settings that worked. Then I discovered the wonder of having seven different environments available at the touch of an F key.

Heady days.

FYI: If the latest Windows 11 really wants to use Edge, it will use Edge no matter what

Not an excuse

"a handful of Microsoft applications use Microsoft products and technologies as part of their requirements stack"

It's a call to an Internet website.

There is zero reason for Borkzilla to force the usage of any browser to go open a web page.

It is simply not acceptable.

It's different because Steam doesn't hijack your URL link to steam.com

It is only redirecting links to the games you have installed.

I think that's pretty much a basic functionality.

What, Uber charges disabled people fees for taking a while to get into their ride? Doesn't seem fair, says Uncle Sam

How hard would it be for the passenger to have a "I have a disability" check in his profile so that UBER already knows not to apply the wait fee ?

But that would go contrary to the Uber Way : charge everything you can possibly think of, refund maybe but only if the user complains.

EDIT : hadn't gotten to the bottom of the replies before posting mine.

BOFH: You drive me crazy... and I can't help myself

That was novel

A bit wierd at first. It took me some time to grok that the BOFH was loose in the wild.

And yeah, Shannon was a woman for me too, right up until the text said different.

But hey, nothing like some originality in the BOFH stories.

There's no Huawei back now: Biden signs law that forbids US buyers acquiring kit on naughty list

"meet on Monday at a virtual summit"

Nice to know. At least that way they'll only be wasting time, not millions of dollars ferrying Presidents around along with all the retainers, press, cars and everything else, along with the fuel it would cost.

Hey, maybe COVID will have a positive impact at the political level after all ?

WTF is 'Computing First Networking'? Think load balancers for the age of edge

"have a role streaming video into cars to entertain their occupants"

Because drivers these days need more distractions at the wheel.

Brilliant.

And don't tell me it'll be just for the rear passengers : what is the poor front passenger to do ? Stay bored ?

Until we get true autonomous vehicles where everyone can watch a film, this tech should definitely be reserved for rear-seat passengers (but it won't).

Oh, and does this mean future 5G car drivers are going to have ads for films on their maps ? Like, just before where you need to turn bam! up comes an ad for Gladiator 5 and now you've missed your exit ?

Still reeling from the Great Facebook Blackout of 2021? Turns out Zuck is not the worst offender

"consumers are not so fortunate"

Yeah, but they're not the customers, they're just the cows users, so it's all good.

Freshworks trains sights on startup market as it puzzles over enterprise conundrum

"accelerate implementation by eschewing customisation"

So it's basically their way or the highway.

For small businesses who are starting to grow, such limitations can be quite acceptable, but once the business has grown into generating millions per month, I think that Freshworks is going to find that its abilities are no longer enough and the larger clients will migrate to something more customizable.

Which shouldn't really be a problem for Freshworks, since there's always more little businesses to service.

System at the heart of scaled-back £30m Sheffield University project runs on end-of-life Oracle database

Great idea from project management

"The investment in the programme has already delivered new systems that previously did not exist at the University"

So let me get this straight : you're in the middle of a rather difficult and complex upgrade on some major components of your system, and you go and add a bunch of new components along the way.

That is undoubtedly a wonderful way to keep the system stable and have reliable comparison points for the upgrade to proceed correctly.

I don't know who is in charge of this "world class" project, but I wouldn' trust them with upgrading my standalone PC.

UK aims for 'openness and fairness' in its AI Strategy – unless we're talking about favoured contractors

"extensive guidance on how firms can use the technology ethically and transparently"

Yes, we got it : private industry, not government.

The government governs, dammit, transparency is for the underlings.

New Zealand spooks say satellite snooping is obsolete – better intel is found elsewhere

"More modern methods collect more targeted communications"

Translation : mobile phones and all that Internet access have given world governments the ability to tap into seas of data, whereas satellites are still looking with a magnifying glass.

USA signs internet freedom and no-hack pact it's ignored since 2018

Bit by bit, the USA is returning to being a normal world citizen

And that's a good thing.

Too bad Trump is going to throw it all out again come 2024.

Zuck didn't invent the metaverse, but he's started a fight to control it

"a holographic interface for WebEx"

Dear me, the sheer number of man-hours that are being tallied for useless dredge like this must be mind-boggling.

And it's not holographic. You're looking at a screen. We've been pretending 3D for decades now, that's all it is.

Holographic is like in Star Wars : you're at your seat and the holograph of some other person appears in another seat, but you are not wearing a headset, you're looking at it with your own eyes.

That kind of conference room ain't for tomorrow.

Tencent's growth slows as child gamers switch off under new Chinese laws

"put on a brave face and take Beijing’s beating on the chin"

Well, given that the alternative is a mandatory tour of China's prison system, yeah, I think I'd react like that as well.

A word of warning to CEOs of big-name multinationals : never go to China in person. Up to now, Beijing doesn't have a record for jailing foreign CEOs, but you don't want to be the person starting that record.

Google loses appeal against $2.7bn EU antitrust fine for distorting competition in price comparison websites

One thing is guaranteed though : as soon as you buy something, you will see ads for that thing.

This is the most useless algorythm I have ever witnessed in action.

Why machine-learning chatbots find it difficult to respond to idioms, metaphors, rhetorical questions, sarcasm

Sarcasm

Just about as difficult as humor.

Given that we don't have AI, you can statiscally analyze all you want, a CPU is not going to "understand" what is being said.

I agree that grammar correctors have come a long way and that's a good thing, but the computer is not understanding anything, it is just reacting to a set of rules.

Humor ? That is as far away from CPU comprehension as FTL travel is for us meatbags.

Because nobody can accurately calculate humor.

AI algorithms can help erase bright streaks of internet satellites – but they cannot save astronomy

Interesting. Comparing your eyes to a camera.

I'm glad you're alive now and not in the 1870's.

NASA advised to study up on what open source, free software, and permissive licenses actually mean

Password access has nothing to do with OSS code.

You can perfectly well write an OSS program with encryption and full RSA public-private key stuff for password access.

The code is still OSS.

No day in court: US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rulings will stay a secret

Re: finger print and retinal scan

I think you're reaching there. I can positively assert that I have never had a retinal scan, so "they", whoever you may think "they" are, certainly do not have that on me.

As for my fingerprints, I seriously doubt they have that anywhere either, because they've never been to my house (I do think I'd notice someone trying to lift prints off of my furniture) and my prints on a shop door won't last unsmudged more than a few minutes at best, not to mention how curious it would look to have someone dusting for prints on a shop door without any cops in the vicinity.

So let's dial down the conspiracy theories, okay ? The NSA does not employ a legion of 007s.

It's bad enough that the NSA can listen to practically any conversation in the world, no need to add biometric data.

Re: the NSA or Google

I was going to reflexively reply saying : the NSA, but then I gave it a pause and thought it over.

Now I'm not so sure any more.

Google has oodles of data, lots more hardware and tailored software than the NSA, but it is only looking for ad targetting data.

The NSA hasn't nearly Google's budget (thank $deity for that), but the NSA has backdoors (legal or not) into almost all communications providers and is looking for a lot more than a chance to sling an ad at you.

The real point, I think, is the fact that E2EE is going to put a big crimp on the NSA's data gathering, while I'm not so sure Google is going to feel such an impact.

So, in the end, I guess its a victory for Google.

Labour Party supplier ransomware attack: Who holds ex-members' data and on what legal basis?

"after 10 years why do they still need that data?"

Simple : they hoover up every tidbit they can get their grubby little hands on, but have no way of knowing what is useful today, so they keep everything for fear of deleting something they actually need.

The term packrat comes to mind.

Chip makers aren't all-in on metaverse hardware yet – we should know, we asked them

Re: why should they get away with it just because its VR?

Wrong argument.

Nobody says any such thing about a car they've never been in.

VR has two things that you do not need to have tried to know about : it has a bulky headset and it requires a lot of power. There's also the fact that the visuals are a far cry from what I can see on my PC screen (from published screengrabs on the Web).

Here's a list of other things I know about and have no intention of trying :

giving a blowjob

getting sodomized

being thrown in jail

I don't need to TRY them before having an opinion on these things. I know enough about them already.

Also, I note that you are not contradicting anything I said.

Reg debate asks readers about their post pandemic status. Half ask, 'What status?'

"management never forgives and never forgets"

Oh yes it does. It'll completely forget all the all-nighters you've done and all the times you stayed after hours for no additional pay in order to make sure that everything would go well the next day for that very important presentation.

That is all water under the bridge, especially when review time comes.

But it will remember that one time you didn't manage to make the CEOs new bloody phone sychronize automatically with his company-based mail because you needed a bridge component the company didn't have.

That he will always remember.

Starry starry night? No, it's just more low Earth orbit satellites as BT and OneWeb ink deal

"this is an important step towards"

Ensuring that the Kessler Syndrome will indeed bring us back to the 1940s.

Until recently, to put a satellite into space you needed to be part of the space industry, work with NASA, generally be reliable.

Ever since everyone and his dog have started making rockets, everyone and his dog are now chucking things up in orbit and I don't feel like they know what the hell they're doing.

Oh for sure, they know they want to make money and space seems as good a place as any. No cables or backhoes to worry about (not to mention no pesky local laws to obey).

But there are other things to worry about and I think there are too many companies vying for opportunity for all of them to have competent personnel who know what they're doing.

Red Hat forced to hire cheaper, less senior engineers amid budget freeze

Re: Red Hat turns to running the company by spreadsheet

Indeed, smart companies do. That rules out IBM.

The problem, as always, is management. When the company starts out, they have the world to conquer. It's thrilling to progress upwards, to build a solid team and see competence and experience flourish while making oodles of money.

Two decades later, the management team has changed. The people who built the company are gone, the employees who still like it there are now only "assets". The new management knows all about managing assets : they compute cost and returns on their little spreadsheet line by line. That ensures that they don't have the foggiest idea why Martin is costing so much per month and yet brings in next to nothing.

That's because they don't know that Martin is the living, breathing encyclopeadia on Product X, and spends most of his working day answering pointed questions from his colleagues on the finer points of debugging this or that problem.

So management decides to get rid of Martin, and the whole house of cards starts its trek towards ending up on the floor.

Expired cert breaks Windows 11 snipping tool, emoji panel, S Mode features, other stuff

What about Windows 1 0 ?

Does that also have bloody certificates for the simplest tools of the OS ?

Can Borkzilla also shut down part of my work laptop out of sheer incompetence ? (okay, don't answer that)

I can understand certificates on drivers, they usually work in kernel space (even if that seems stupid to me), but on the Snipping tool ? Really ?

And the clock in the task bar, does it have a certificate too ?

What a bloody mess.

Kyndryl spins out of IBM, stock starts trading on NYSE – and shares tumble

A tendril ?

Jellyfish have tendrils. Some species are poisonous, all are painful.

Vines use tendrils to latch on to another plant and climb toward the Sun, sometimes choking the supporting plant in the process.

Tendril is also used to describe the increase of the nefarious influence of crime organizations or evil intelligence agencies in litterature (and news, sometimes).

I'm trying, but I can't think of a positive use for the word. I wonder how the marketing team justified that reference.

Cisco warns 'unintentional debugging credential' left in some network switches can be abused to hijack equipment

Thank goodness it's shoddy Cisco programming

and not Huawei. If it had been Huawei, it would be a National Security incident, whereas here, it's just a deplorable mistake.

There, that wasn't so hard, was it? South Korea makes Google allow rival payment systems in Play store apps

"whether it intends to extend this payment system flexibility to other regions"

It does not.

But it will have to.

So it is possible for Jeff Bezos to lose: Court dismisses Blue Origin complaint about Moon contract award to Elon Musk

"Jeff Bezos even offered NASA a $2bn discount [to change their mind]"

I believe that that is actually called a bribe.