Posts by Pascal Monett

Pizza and beer night out the window, hours trying to sort issue, then a fresh pair of eyes says 'See, the problem is...'

Re: Proof reader

A second set ? On one occasion, it took a third, and fifteen minutes for somebody finally twigged that the server name had been written with commas instead of points.

It had been staring at us for two whole hours !

Two wrongs don't make a right: They make a successful project sign-off

Re: the MCAS on a Boeing 737 Max

No reason to drag Borkzilla into this, Boeing screwed up royally all on its own.

Trump silenced online: Facebook, Twitter etc balk at insurrection, shut the door after horse bolts and nearly burns down the stable

Re: Will we get to a point where our democratic apple is so rotten..

Um, buddy, I don't know if you've been following current events, but that apple is not only rotten, it is decomposing while you watch.

The United States is officially a shithole country. One can only hope that Biden + Harris manages to turn that around but, even if, there's a whole lot of rot to cut away.

Globally I have to agree with you, but in this case I can only say : about fucking time.

This assclown should have been shut down three years ago.

A President of the so-called Most Powerful Country In The World should not be a continuous spewer of lies or a supporter of Nazis.

Facebook & Twitter could have shown the way, instead they just trail the news. Shutting down his account a week before he gets booted from the White House ?

Way, way too late.

Brit registrar 123-Reg begins 2021 in much the same way it ended 2020 – with DNS issues

Wow. What an impressive record.

Of failure.

At this point I have to ask : how is it that 123-Reg still has customers ?

Is there such a dearth of hosting companies in the UK, or are the others equally as shitty ?

Might want to look abroad for hosting solutions. I'm sure you can find competent ones, and I'm sure most of them will handle the transition for you, including managing the domain name.

JetBrains' build automation software eyed as possible enabler of SolarWinds hack

Re: they are ripe for abuse

Indeed they are, but as you stated, they are nobodies, so no impact.

Also, you're talking about web shops. These are often set up by people who have an idea, think they can program, but have no notion of security. For those types, security is the annoying stuff you have to get rid of in order to work.

As a consultant in Luxembourg for the past 25 years, I can tell you that I have worked in banks, insurance companies and government organizations and I can assure you, the network security in these places is impressive. There are institutions where I do not have the right to bring my laptop.

All of these have an IT department which is staffed with people who know their stuff. Many have an Information Security Officer, and I can tell you : you do as he says.

Yes, given the nature of my skills, when I do finally get to a workstation with a working login, I do have access to the server, and to many, many databases. But if I so much as try going around and poking places I'm not supposed to do, I can kiss that customer good-bye as I will be caught out, and then thrown out.

Not every company is staffed by cowboys.

TikTok to be hit by a UK class-action-style lawsuit backed by the Children's Commissioner

Ok, it is clear that Class Action in the UK is just a flawed as in the USA

"If there are 4.4 million claimants, each entitled to several hundred pounds, under the current damages-based regime the maximum share is 50 per cent. "

What is this "maximum share" nonsense ? If it a class action, then it is the entire class that is concerned. What is the justification for one (small) group getting 50% ?

How is that justice ?

It is clear the Class Action lawsuits have just become excuses for making money for people who are in no way concerned by the issue they raise.

And private companies funding government procedures ? They should be thanked for their generous donation and told to fuck off.

The world is going mad, I tell you. Mad.

Get off my lawn.

If you're a WhatsApp user, you'll have to share your personal data with Facebook's empire from next month – or stop using the chat app

Re: Actually the founders seem to be nice and despite everything have morals

Morals ?

I'm sorry, they sold their company to FaceBook. The company that is widely known for pilfering personal data under every possible circumstance, then come meekly promising change when caught out, only to change into something worse.

If they'd had morals, they would have sold to someone else.

But hey, $2bn, I get it. That buys you a lot of morals, apparently.

Titanium carbide nanotech approach hints at hydrogen storage breakthrough

700 bars ! Yikes !

No wonder they're saying that 60 bars is a "low-pressure" storage vessel.

I wouldn't want to drive around with a tank pressurized to 700 bars. I'd feel nervous about having a bomb lurking just a meter away from me.

60 bars doesn't make me feel all that much safer though.

I think I'd prefer electric.

Microsoft's Mojang brings pixellated axe down on AR Minecraft game because it's not like folk are going outside

My Minecraft account was created in 2013

I have been an avid player ever since I got the hang of it, and I have incited not a few people to play it as well.

I play the Java version, obviously, and when MC Earth came out, I was interested in seeing what it was about.

After viewing a few YouTube videos about how it worked and showing the gameplay, I dropped all interest in it. Playing on the phone is already something I loath, and nothing in it gave my any real incentive to change my views.

I know that there are people who find it a blast, so I feel sorry for them, but I won't miss it.

That said, I doubt Borkzilla will delete the code. Maybe, when this pandemic is finally over, it will be revived and people can play it again.

Scottish council awards Unit4 £4.75m support and hosting contract as it seemingly runs out of options

Wow. A Council that made an apparently sound decision

I am so relieved that the Council decided not to replace the recently-installed ERP.

I am a bit less impressed that such a choice was even on the cards.

It's recently installed ? Then you use it until it gets old. It's an ERP. Those things are suppoed to cost a lot and be configured to your needs. If that is not the case, it's not the ERP's fault, it's yours for not having got it configured right.

So configure it right and then use it until it runs into the ground.

There really shouldn't be any other choice.

Facebook appeals ruling that it stole tech. So, Italian judge issues new judgment: Pay 10 times the original fine

Indeed. Good on that judge.

Maybe the example will spread.

America says banks can now transact using so-called stable crypto-coins. What does that actually mean?

"The incongruity between the treatment of cash and cryptocurrency"

Cash is very different from cryptocoins. Cash is real. It's right there in your hands, and there are tools to check if it's legit.

With virtual money, I think it is a good idea to have more checks and controls. It ensures that the market is going to stay safe.

But I would like somebody to explain to me the notion of "stablecoin". I get BitCoin - you churn some software long enough and you get a coin, which you can then use or sell for it's current market value which is established by supply and demand. But how can you "add" virtual coins to state money without either pushing the system out of whack or being guilty of counterfeiting ?

Techies start growing an Alphabet-wide labor union: 200-plus sign up, only tens of thousands more to go

Re: the claims that it is "rampant" is demonstrably false

Fine. Demonstrate it then.

From Uber to IBM to Google, I have the feeling that I have not stopped reading about sexual harassment cases in major US multinationals since about ten years.

So please, demonstrate that I am wrong.

That would actually be a relief.

Interesting

There doesn't seem to be much love for this internal effort to make Alphabet keep to its "founding motto" (I'll leave that point for another discussion).

I used to be part of a company union. There were no dues and, as we all had work to do, our meetings were kept short and to the point.

When I left that company, the employee union was still functioning in the same way.

I fail to see why everyone is apparently assuming that these 200 employees are looking to enrich themselves when they specifically state they are organizing to help non-full time workers and put an end to sexual harassment.

I find those goals laudable, and it seems that Alphabet is not doing enough on the sexual harassment front - which means it is just another large US company, since they seem to all have that problem.

Where in the world is Jack Ma? Alibaba tycoon not seen since October after slamming Chinese government

Re: They will simply not stand stable for a very long time

Well it's been working in China longer than in the ex-Soviet Union.

But I'm sure that, on a timescale of thousands of years, you must be right.

Maybe.

Looks like Ma thought his money made him powerful, and lost

I guess he was influenced by western moguls and thought he could get away with doing whatever he wanted.

He forgot that he lives in a totalitarian state under a rather inhuman philosophy (Ouighurs, anyone ?).

So he mouthed off and got slapped down. Methinks he should have known better.

On the other hand, maybe he was genuinely trying to use his position to improve his country and its government. In which case he sacrificed himself for the greater good, but to little effect.

So, either his ego made him think he was above the fray, or his lack of vision made him make a dreadful mistake.

In any case, the message is clear : you do not criticize the Chinese Government when you live in China.

Be careful where you log into GitHub: Dev visits Iran, opens laptop, gets startup's entire account shut down

Re: where is the balance?

Theoretically it's simple : your freedom stops where mine starts.

The problem is that you need to be intelligent enough to realize that, and that's why we need laws : to educate the morons who are incapable of thinking of anyone but themselves.

It's not a perfect system, I know.

New York Stock Exchange U-turns on decision to boot China's three biggest telcos

A totally useless move

And a U-turn for unknown reasons.

Smells like money shenanigans to me.

Brit infrastructure stuck in neverending restart cycle... and that's just the Microsoft 365 admin center

Yay !

January 5th and we're already at Office 364.

Bug? No, Telegram exposing its users' precise location is a feature working as 'expected'

Re: a huge printed directory of local names, addresses, and telephone numbers

First of all, it was a lot more than 20 thousand.

Second, you're right, but that is the state of technology today. People should stop buying these gadgets that reveal their entire lives for basically no advantage. Why do you need a watch that records your GPS coordinates when you run ? Can't you just run ?

Trump's overhaul of Section 230 stalls, Biden may just throw the web legal shield on the bonfire anyway

Keep descending ?

You've practically arrived, my friend.

Come, chant with us over a sacrificial goat and predict 2021's biggest tech stories to a high degree of accuracy

Brilliant !

A fine bite for the Vultures :)

Suckers for punishment, we added a crawler transporter to our Saturn V

How is that possible ?

How can you not only have missing pieces, but left over pieces that you did not need ?

That is an unbelievable failure of Quality Control. Or is QC a last-millennium thing, only remembered by boomers ?

I don't care that the kit was made in China, if they send pieces you don't need and forget pieces you do, they're wasting money. Surely even a Chinese capitalist can see that.

The myth of fingerprints: The Xiaomi 10T Pro is well-rounded, but it's definitively a sub-flagship handset

"the absence of wireless charging"

Is a Good Thing (TM).

It is once again time to educate people on this abysmally inefficient technology.

It's Global Warming, people. We don't need to waste yet more energy than we already abuse.

China celebrates third year of operations on the far side of the moon

Just goes to show

It doesn't matter where or who, space exploration is awesome !

Indian telco that won Google and Facebook investments flatly denies it’s diversified into farming

"perhaps protestors might think twice"

Protesters thinking ? What next, politicians being honest ?

Brexit freezes 81,000 UK-registered .eu domains – and you've all got three months to get them back

Re: This has been .eu policy ever since the TLD was created

No it has not. The article specifically states that the policy was changed when Brexit was declared and, if you had been reading El Reg two years ago, you should remember the amount of facepalming that was going on in these forums at the news.

I personally find this move despicable. It has no reason to exist and appears to be purely motivated by spite - which is not something I approve of.

Singapore changes the rules and will now use COVID-19 contact-tracing app data in criminal cases

And here we go

Step 2 in the Authoritarian Government Handbook is now accomplished : pervert a system made for one thing into a system made for something entirely unrelated.

Congratulations Singapore ! Way to validate the concerns many people were voicing when these tracking apps came out.

Slack serves up out-of-order messages, shaky comms as world goes back to work

Re: Is it me or ....

And a badly programmed backend.

Judge rules Corellium iOS research app 'fair use' in slap to Apple

Re: How many appeals ?

And appeal the appeal, and the appeal of the appeal, and so on and so forth until some court somewhere finally tells them to go fudge themselves - which unfortunately doesn't happen all that often.

SolarWinds mess that flared in the holidays: Biz confirms malware targeted crocked Orion product

A bit simple

"Orion customers are generally massive companies and governments who should have the capabilities to independently detect rogue behaviors and missed this "

You forget one point : Orion customers were trusting a supplier, and the supplier got hacked. It is obvious that Orion customers had flagged Solarwinds software to not be controlled by any of their surveillance tools, why should they ? Solarwinds was a trusted source.

It will be interesting to see the fallout from this utter failure. Not that it is actually entirely Solarwinds fault - this is obviously a highly-specific, targeted attack. it is most difficult to defend against such things.

Except, of course, that Solarwinds could have had a simple CRC check on its published DLLs, with a warning if anything changed unexpectedly. It is ironic to think that such a simple tool would have stopped this attack dead in its tracks.

And I'm not even a security expert.

Explained: The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32

"the age-old problem of the temporary solution becoming de-facto permanent"

Hardly surprising. Everything in computing has been a continuous discovery, and why change what works ?

That is why file systems have evolved under different names, and will continue to do so. NTFS is much better than FAT32, but FAT32 has its uses.

Not a mistake, a demonstration that computing has evolved ans will continue to do so.

You can't be perfect the first time around.

File format conversion crisis delayed attempt to challenge US presidential election result

"[they] lacked standing to pursue the case, and that they’d sued the wrong target"

Oh FFS, you're supposed to be lawyers, right ? That means you're supposed to know who and how you can sue.

The fact that these clowns filed without standing against the wrong person clearly means the entire cabinet should be disbarred and their accreditation as lawyer revoked.

I would call them a bunch of muppets, but that would be an insult to Muppets.

Oh don't go complicating things now.

Re: proving you needed to be spanked

Yeah but, he likes being spanked.

New York Stock Exchange bins China’s three biggest telcos

"the NYSE isn’t entirely necessary to investors"

Indeed it is not. Finance is global, and been since before Apple became the mage-conglomerate it is today.

The few times I dabbled in buying shares online, I was given a choice of all the stock exchanges that were open at that time. NYSE was not, but Australia was. Of course, I didn't need to choose any stock exchange that far, but the choice was available.

When you have the world available at a click of a mouse, delisting from one entry is not going to make one whit of a difference.

Server won't boot? Forgot to make that backup? Have no fear, just blame Microsoft

Baffleing 'em with BS

As a consultant, I'm guessing it would be easy, but in the long run I believe it is better to be quite honest and own up to one's mistakes. Once you have a reputation for being a liar, it doesn't go away.

That said, I will freely admit that I have sometimes responded quite positively to a user's question about "did you take care of that ?", only to go and feverishly code the solution once the user had gone away.

But I never lie. It's bad for business relations.

The curse of knowing a bit about IT: 'Could you just...?' and 'No I haven't changed anything'

I hate the stuff they sell these days to access TV. I'm on Orange, and although the fiber line is great, their TV box is a piece of shite. Whether it is on or "off", it's always boiling to the touch.

I'm not an electrician, much less an electronician, but it seems clear to me that if the thing is hot, it's most definitely not off.

Thankfully, there's a switch at the back that actually cuts power to the bloody thing. If there wasen't one, I'd have bought a switch and spliced it into the power cord. I do at least know how to do that.

So it's only turned on when we actually want to watch live TV - which is not all that often.

Re: Firewall vs router

I agree with you, yet I am grateful that ISPs have started putting actual security into their kit. There was a time when said router came with a firewall that left everything open.

At least, the one I got from Orange when I subscribed two years ago came a firewall that was pleasantly closed tight when I checked.

Yes, your ISP can access your router. Well what do you expect ? Your network admin at the office can also access your computer, whether you want it or not.

That's just par for the course.

Sun, sea and sad signage: And lo, they saw a shining light in the sky... oh, it's a BIOS error

Congratulations and Happy New Year !

This little ditty is enormously amusing. I wonder if you'll be able to finish it.

Thank you, El Reg, for all your hard work and entertaining articles.

I look forward to continuing to read you in this new year.

Best Wishes to everyone !

Watt's next for batteries? It'll be more of the same, not longer life, because physics and chemistry are hard

I hear you.

My Audi A5 can do almost 500 miles on one tank. It takes 5 minutes to "recharge" it at a any one of thousands of stations.

Unfortunately, my Audi, as much as I love it, is contributing to the problem.

One day, we will all have to adapt and adopt transit times that include spending part of our leisure time recharging a non-polluting car.

And maybe, just maybe, we might learn to appreciate life a bit better by then.

Re: still remember that fantastic 2005 article

I think I've been reading about carbon nanotube batteries for more than a decade.

Where are they ?

Re: the well-known 'good' brands

Might we possibly get a list of those ?

For reference ?

I promise I won't tell.

Buggy chkdsk in Windows update that caused boot failures and damaged file systems has been fixed

Re: Oh wow....

I miss the time when Windows was my OS to manage.

Now Microsoft is deciding what I can or cannot do on my PC.

The only reason I haven't changed OS is because all my customers use Windows, so I'm stuck with this bloated monster that doesn't even obey me all that much.

I look forward to retiring for two reasons : first, no more work days and second, no more Borkzilla software. I'll be on some version of Linux, and Borkzilla can kiss my arse.

Ten more years to go.

Re: Continuous testing is better than building it then testing it after

Maybe so, but continuous change is not supposed to happen in a production environment.

The production environment is supposed to be used, not tested. If you're still testing, it's not ready for production.

What's that lurking behind the borked face of finance? Windows, of course

Re: OS/2

I followed the link and read that it supports 32-bit and 16-bit applications.

No 64-bit applications.

So it runs on modern hardware like a toddler on a tricycle. You have to push it.

After 11 years, Australia declares its national broadband network is ‘built and fully operational’

"legislation governing the NBN build requires a declaration the job is done before December 31st"

Oh, so that's when a project is finished : when there is a law that says it has to be.

Not when the job is actually done.

Thanks for the heads-up.

US Department of Homeland Security warns American business not to use Chinese tech or let data behind the Great Firewall

A fine list of risks indeed

And you can replace every instance of PRC with USA and it still rings true.

UK firm NOW: Pensions tells some customers a 'service partner' leaked their data all over 'public software forum'

That's not a joke - it's perfectly reasonable.