Posts by Pascal Monett

If at first you don't succeed, fly, fly again: Boeing to repeat CST-100 test, Russia preps another ISS taxi

"Hats off to Boeing for recommending a repeat of their Orbital Flight Test"

Um, in a word : no. Boeing should not get accolades for simply trying to do a second time around what they should have done the first time around.

Cost-cutting, absence of testing, and general not-giving-a-shit made their first test flight an utter failure. In an environment where the slightest mistake can mean death and loss of billions in equipment (try replacing the ISS), you do not get applause for starting to pay attention.

Real-time tragedy: Dumb deletion leaves librarian red-faced and fails to nix teenage kicks on the school network

Damn formatting. If you make your browser window smaller, you'll see it properly.

Yes, that was the trick, but it was not just a space, it was ASCII 240 if I'm not mistaken, which is actually a transparent block.

That much more devilish, don't you think ?

Our IT professor had us stumped for a long time

At my first uni our PCs were still on DOS - this was way back in the late eighties. I think it was DOS 4.0, in any case it was a version where you could put the disk prompt in color and many other things.

The first time I got my hands on those PCs I obviously wanted to have a look around the C: disk, but I got an error each time I tried to cd to a directory. It took me ages to finally grep that, with the prompt embellishments, our professor had managed to rename "C:\" to " C:\".

Simple, yet devilishly effective.

Of course, when he had noticed that I had discovered the ruse, he gave me his trademark stern look and made me promise not to tell anyone - promise which I honored scrupulously.

Re: My uni had similar rules :)

True admins are the bane of gamers everywhere.

Ethernet standards group leaves its name in the dust as it details new 800Gbps spec

Re: Multiplexing?

While I agree that telcos use multiplexing, I disagree with the simple application of that solution to improve throughput.

When the GB standard reached my motherboard NIC, I didn't need to change my Ethernet cable. The same wires work on 100Mbps just as well as on 1Gbps networks.

Fiber optics can have a signal multiplexed to multiply the bandwidth available, but it's still happening in the same glass tube.

So I think that the consortium is working on specs for signals that will allow for 800Gbps in the same wire (probably fiber). Those wires will then be multiplexed to provide for Tbps-capable boxes where you plug in 16 wires or something and boom, you have the enough bandwidth to stream all of the porn at the same time.

Because that's the endgame, right ? Right, I've got my coat.

Atlassian issues advice on how to keep your IT service desk secure... after hundreds of portals found facing the internet amid virus lockdown

Rather inevitable wasn't it ?

We've been hearing for years now how Azure/AWS buckets are not properly secured by devs everywhere, what makes you think that this rush of making everything compatible for remote working was going to go any better ?

I am willing to bet that, had we had months to prepare, there would still be some who couldn't be arsed to do things properly. We didn't have months. We barely had a few days. Sure, I could throw the book at the admins who were not capable of properly configuring their service desk (especially easy from the comfort of my home office chair), but I won't forget that the service desk was but one of the hundred thousand things they had to take care of in record time.

Security is not easy in the best of times. These are just about the polar opposite of the best of times.

Google tests hiding Chrome extension icons by default, developers definitely not amused by the change

Once again, the question is choice

Why is it UI tinkerers think that they have the ultimate wisdom and impose their worldview on their users ?

Put it in the settings and make it a choice the user can decide to implement. Why is it so God-damned hard for you people to understand that ?

You think you've got a nifty, useful idea ? Start by making an add-on, see how many users download it and base your actions on the result.

But, above all, STOP FUCKING WITH MY HABITS.

Infosys, Accenture take leadership positions at India’s tech lobby NASSCOM... as on-premises call centers wither

DigiLocker, it uses 256-bit SSL encryption

Well, what do you think of that, Boris ? You gonna go tell India that they should backdoor that sucker ?

Time to brush up on current affairs. Because we're predicting Li-ion batt lifetimes using impedance and AI

Sounds nice

Call me when you sell it in a handheld format, where I put the battery I want to test in, press a button and get a cycle number on a LED screen.

And, obviously, it has to be able to test all three common battery formats (AAs and AAAs especially).

NASA reveals the new wavy Martian wheels it thinks can crush the red planet

You all made very good points. Thank you for bringing them to my attention.

I doubt that there are many tire manufacturers that make tires for surfaces other than roads. There may be some models that are special for all-terrain models, but all tires made on Earth have one thing in common : an atmosphere around them.

Rubber tires in space would be a catastrophe. I saw a documentary on the lunar landing, where it was explained that the tires for the lunar rover were, in fact, a wire mesh that behaved basically like a normal tire.

I wonder why they didn't use that concept ? It's not like NASA didn't know about it, so what reason did they have to reinvent another wheel type ?

'Anything' related to remote working is a winner for Euro disties, but classic enterprise hardware? That's another story

"shortages in areas such as notebooks will start to feel this pressure"

I don't think it matters all that much. It's funny how nobody is talking about the consequences of notebooks "flying out the doors", namely the fact that, when the confinement is lifted, workers will be going back to their cubicles, hand in their laptops and get back to regular work. All those laptops that have flown out will still be out there, companies are not going to throw them away. They'll keep them as replacements.

Which means that the laptop market is going to tank, and soon. If everyone who needs one has one, then no one will be needing one, so sales are likely going to pancake.

That's what I'm guessing anyway.

Kaspersky cleans up poisoned watering hole, Google presses pause on cookie crackdown

Automobile makers : here's a free tip

Make your entertainment bus separate from your CAN bus before somebody gets killed due to a hack and you have a ginormous lawsuit and an impossible recall on your hands.

It'll cost you less in money, PR and image costs, I promise.

Washington state governor green-lights facial-recog law championed by... guess who: Yep, hometown hero Microsoft

"the first [..] new law devoted exclusively to putting guardrails in place"

Um, sorry, but banning its usage is also putting guardrails in place.

Very effective ones, at that.

We're number two! Microsoft's Edge browser slips past Firefox in latest set of NetMarketShare figures

Re: Am I a bad person

If you are then you're far from alone.

Pan-European group plans cross-border contact-tracing app – and promises GDPR compliance

"the app detects other devices with AarogyaSetu installed"

Only if BlueTooth is enabled, I'll wager.

I only enable BlueTooth when I'm in my car to get hands-free communications, so it won't work. And if you think I'm going to enable BlueTooth just because I'm leaving my house, think again.

I've been quarantined for three weeks already, this is going to be my 4th. I don't have the bug, and I'm not meeting anyone so I still don't have the bug.

I don't need the app and I won't install it.

British Airways and Marriott UK data protection fines deferred again as coronavirus shutdown hits business

"The ICO's legal budget [..] is a relatively paltry £2m"

We've already discussed that point. Let the ICO retain 10% of the fines it collects until it has a war chest of around 100 million.

That will ensure it has the teeth needed to impose the fines.

Not only is Zoom's strong end-to-end encryption not actually end-to-end, its encryption isn't even that strong

POTUS does not belong to that group. With Facebook and Google, it takes time and research to find the lie. With POTUS, it takes at most twenty seconds for him to contradict himself if it's not blatantly obvious in the first place.

Details ? My IP address, you mean ?

Because you don't think I'd sign up to something free and input anything actually meaningful about myself, now do you ?

China is welcome to my chats with my friends. I'm sure they'll be fascinated in listening to us plan and execute raids in 7 Days to Die. There's a lot of tension sometimes, there can be victory, but there can be death as well.

No, I'm not bothered about China listening in, or anyone else for that matter.

What I am very bothered with is high-placed people and/or companies that lie to my face. You said you had end-to-end encryption, but you lied. You said you had actual encryption, and you lied again. Don't come to me saying that you don't use the same definition of the word. You know very well how people use that word, and you used it on purpose. Now that the truth has come out you're trying a charm trick to pretend that you care.

Well I don't care about you, you are on my blacklist and I will never be using your product, even for gaming chats.

You should have been honest from the beginning. Nobody would have cared if you had said that your product used basic encryption. Nobody would have batted an eyelid if you had stated that comms were encrypted from client to server. It would have been honest, the public couldn't give a damn, and you wouldn't be in the spot you are now.

Serves you right.

COBOL-coding volunteers sought as slammed mainframes slow New Jersey's coronavirus response

It's still a great plan - but only if you can still maintain it.

When you can't maintain a thing any more, you should basically consider it broke and search for a replacement.

NSO Group: Facebook tried to license our spyware to snoop on its own addicts – the same spyware it's suing us over

So, a tussle between Facebook and a spyware maker

This is one case where I would dearly like to say : hang 'em both and let God decide.

Absolutely everyone loves video conferencing these days. Some perhaps a bit too much

I've had my fill of trouble with keyboards. Now my passwords have neither Q nor Z in them.

Must remember to avoid A and M as well.

Australian digital-radio-for-railways Huawei project derailed by US trade sanctions against Chinese tech giant

"This decision will also ensure the state complies with US trade restrictions.”

Could someone please explain to me how Australia is subject to US trade restrictions ?

They are aware that they are an independent country, are they not ?

Because even if the Australian government is hinged on the White House's every word, it's still Australian law that counts, no ?

Tech services biz Allvotec furloughing staff, asking remainder – including top brass – to take pay cut

Things are rather difficult for the services industry

And I, just like tens of thousands of others, am right in the middle of this.

Thankfully, my best client has given me a special VPN account so that I can still help them from home. Of course, once the crisis is over, I will lose that account. That's something I will regret.

Another client has notified me just yesterday that they are willing to send me a laptop via DHL so that I can help them as well.

I guess I'm rather lucky. On the other hand, being a freelance means I can't furlough myself, so it's all relative.

Why is ransomware still a thing? One-in-three polled netizens say they would cave to extortion demands

One in three

I'm willing to bet that all of them

1) have no technical understanding of what they're using

2) are incapable of making a backup if their life depended on it, and

3) will still not learn the importance of backups if it does happen to them

That is the price to pay when computing has been commoditized. That thing that is grafted to your hand is a computer. Learn how it works beyond just flicking screens from right to left.

Google changes course, proposes proprietary in-app purchase API as web standard

"see the capability gap between native and web apps closed as much as possible"

Yes. Great idea. For the hackers and scumware writers that is.

We've tried that already. It was called ActiveX, and it was a bloodbath.

Do you really think it's a great idea to offer local resources to someone else's server without any control whatsoever ? Hackers can already encrypt your data and hold it to ransom, what more do you want to give them ?

Tech tracker Tile testifies in Congress: Apple's geolocation nagging is so not fair

That's Apple

Apple is a specialist in observing what works around its ecosystem, adopting the key functionalities into one of its own apps, and then throwing out the "copiers" because they're doing the same thing.

The only difference is that, this time apparently, they tried that on a company that has the money to take it to court, instead of some lone developer they could shit on without retaliation.

I'll be interested in reading about this case.

US prez Trump's administration reportedly nears new rules banning 'dual-use' tech sales to China

It doesn't matter anyway

Trump has been pushing China and trying to get people to think that he is punishing China.

The only real effect is that China is gearing up to be self-sufficient. It's going to happen, and when it does, the USA is going to learn just what it means to not have a practical, pliable industrial base for creating all the shit it consumes year after year.

Because if making stuff for the USA becomes an optional activity for Chinese companies, the US is going to actually have to learn to make stuff for itself again. With all the pricing effects that is going to have.

And I can't wait for that to happen. We need to learn to pay the just price for the things we want. That will encourage us to really think about what we want. And that will put a brake on plundering the riches of our planet while throwing them away at the same time.

Well, I hope so anyway.

Boeing 787s must be turned off and on every 51 days to prevent 'misleading data' being shown to pilots

Turning it off and on

So, Boeing is using Windows in its planes now ?

Run for the hills !

ZX Spectrum prototype ROM is now available for download courtesy of boffins at the UK's Centre for Computing History

16KB

The rom's size is 16KB. That is what you call tight.

I wonder what's the size of the next XBox rom (yeah, ok, its not a rom, I know, but you get the point) ?

Do you want to be an astronaut when you grow up? Yeah, you and 12,000 others: NASA flooded with folks hoping to visit Moon, Mars

Re: mission to send the first woman and next man

Well, I'm just guessing - and I'm probably reaching a bit - but I think it might be because the US government isn't really bothered with ensuring that Native Americans are educated to the point of being able to get a degree. In anything.

I'd be glad to be proven wrong, though.

Vietnam bans posting fake news online

I am not defending the Chinese government. There are a lot of things to correct over there, and Amnesty International has a long list. I am not disputing that.

But, in this case, it has redressed the situation correctly and swiftly, and that should not be forgotten either.

Yes, and he has since died. The Chinese government has also expressed its displeasure on how that was handled, is now treating that man as a hero of the nation, and has forced the police to offer their apologies to the grieving family, leading to disciplinary action against one or more police officers involved.

Google Cloud Engine outage caused by 'large backlog of queued mutations'

Thanks for the responses

I had no idea that there were motherboards that could support hot-swappable components.

I knew about hot-swappable HDDs/SSDs, but I thought DRAM was way too delicate for that.

Thanks for the info.

"allow emergency configuration changes without requiring restarts."

And how the heck do you install more memory without powering down the whole thing first ?

It's nonsense to think that the server would be installed with maximum physical memory, then configured not to use it all. If a server needs more memory, you need to physically get the DRAMs to the server and slot them in. How can you possibly add memory without doing that ?

And sure, I get that these are virtualized servers, but the physical box they run on still has to have the memory needed in order to increase the amount allocated to that cache server. I'm guessing we're not talking about 4GB here, but much more than that.

Huawei signs non-aggression patent pact with membership of Open Invention Network

"What of the company's controversial status today?"

Yes, what of it ?

Where is the proof that there is anything to be controversial about ?

The only controversy about Huawei is why the US Government is harping on about it without ever bringing any concrete evidence to the table. And you can fuck right off about national security concerns. Huawei equipment is publicly available, anyone can snap a pic of a suspicious motherboard, yet no one has.

This bullshit has been going on for longer than I care to remember, and I'm sick of it.

Fitbit unfurls last new wearable before it's gobbled by Google, right on time for global pandemic lockdown

"a built-in GPS receiver"

So, on top of all the functionality that that little wristwatch-sized thingy already has, they've added a built-in GPS receiver. And they can log the data for a certain amount of time.

My, my. Technology really can do wonderful things.

I wonder how much energy a GPS receiver uses ?

Amazon says it fired a guy for breaking pandemic rules. Same guy who organized a staff protest over a lack of coronavirus protection

Re: not believe unions are in the best interest of our customers or shareholders

Agreed. I read that and noted that nowhere, in the list of entities that concern Amazon, nowhere are "employees" mentioned.

It is blindingly obvious that unions are not in the best interest of shareholders or associates. The interest of customers is not so clearly defined and seems to have been added to the list purely for numbering points.

In any case, the only people who do indeed have interest in unions are the employees, because they have no other way to voice grievances with a chance of getting a positive result.

If you thought black holes only came in S or XXXL, guess again, maybe: Elusive mid-mass void spotted eating star

“Intermediate mass black holes might not be rare,"

So we now know that there are indeed intermediate-mass black holes, which we did not know before. Since we didn't know that, we could not factor their mass in our calculations for the amount of normal matter that exists in the Universe, which means our ratio of dark matter to normal matter is wrong.

Of course, we still don't know how much mass is harbored inside those things, and evaluating that is not going to be easy.

Add to that the fact that brown dwarfs are also an unknown quantity and it seems to me that there is significantly more normal matter than we initially thought. Probably not enough to do away with dark matter, but likely more than the 15% it is apparently currently pegged at.

Well, 2019 finished with Intel as king of the chip world, Broadcom doing OK, everyone else shrinking. Good thing 2020's looking up, eh?

Except one : sales.

Let's get digital... digital: Microsoft Ignite switches to online-only as 2020's tech calendar clears

Venues

Their future is indeed dark. If I'm not mistaken, even in good times they're not rolling in dough and, right, now, they are cursed and avoided at all costs.

I hope the people who make their living in that market manage to pull through.

That said, concerts are not going to disappear any time soon, so they have a chance, I think, at survival.

Internet Archive justifies its vast 'copyright infringing' National Emergency Library of 1.4 million books by pointing out that libraries are closed

Re: How Archaic Are the Opinions Here?

I don't see how Human culture is restricted by copyright. You have the right to read the book. The author has the right to be paid for writing the book. Where is the problem ?

Oh, you mean that the plagiarists cannot use someone else's idea ? And what are they adding if they just use someone else's idea ?

Of course, saying that, I remember that Science-Fiction would be much poorer if our greatest authors had not liberally plundered each others ideas and built on them.

Hmm. It looks like this is more complicated than I thought.

But let's make one thing clear : life + 70 is only because of Disney, which is especially ironic when you think that Disney pushed that to defend it's hold on Mickey which we haven't seen in 50 years.

It is high time copyright gets revised to something more reasonable : lifetime + 5 years, for example.

And it has to be the lifetime of a human being, not a company.

Sun storm probe OK'd: 'Our motivation is a fascinating signal that we have detected for decades but never been able to make an image of'

Oh my God !

We can do Science with toasters now ?

And to think I've always used mine just for browning my slice of bread in the morning. Sorry, Toasty, I'll point you to the Sun tomorrow morning and wait for you to talk to me, promise.

NASA mulls restoring Saturn V to service as SLS delays and costs mount

Well done

It took me two paragraphs to realize. The iPhone 8s were enough, the golf stuff was over the top.

Great April fool's !

Soichi to join three-spaceship club, SpaceX is going to the Moon (no, really), and rocket boffins step up COVID-19 fight

Volodymyr Levykin

Thank God for people like him.

Him and all medical personnel who are on the front lines and putting their lives on the line in order to help everyone in this time of crisis.

These are the people who restore my faith in the future of Humanity.

Zoom's end-to-end encryption isn't actually end-to-end at all. Good thing the PM isn't using it for Cabinet calls. Oh, for f...

Re: To be clear ...

Right, so when they say "we do not sell your data", what should we infer ?

Obviously.

Stob's vital message to Britain's IT nation: And no, it's not about that

The finger firmly on the pulse of IT

Once again, Ms Stob demonstrates an iron grip on the true issues that beset us, to illuminate our minds with the understanding of the processes that grind finely to control our lives, while peppering the text with delicious jabs at chosen targets.

Donald d'Orange. I love that.

Half of organisations willing to be led into the first circle of hell, or what Dante might call upgrading an ERP system

Yup, I've got a job : stay at home, like 70 million of my countrymen and countless million more across the world.

So I occupy myself by reading the hallowed pages of Vulture Central and, because I'm insufferable like that, I sometimes post my opinions.

Just like everyone else here, I guess.

Re: Move ERP to the cloud

That is actually a brilliant summary of the true issues. The next time I have a discussion with an ERP vendor, I'm going to quote you.

This round is on me.

"79 per cent said by migrating infrastructure to the cloud"

I've got the feeling that there's a good share of those who think "moving to the cloud" is going to solve all their problems.

If your only solution for IT is The Cloud (TM), you're in for a big disappointment.

Oh, and "76 per cent said by standardising and consolidating applications" ? Methinks there's some overlap there. As well as some bullshit bingo. What does "standardising and consolidating applications" mean, exactly ? Getting your accounting, HR and CRM from the same vendor ? That might not be such a good idea. Maybe your vendor's accounting package is a pile of crap compared to another one. And how do you standardize an accounting package with a production management package ?

All that boardroom lingo is just code for "we're going to throw money at new versions until the problems stop". Cue the anguish when they've solved all their old problems and find themselves with a bunch of new ones.