Posts by Pascal Monett

Sure, check through my background records… but why are you looking at my record collection?

"you can no longer laugh at Dance of the Vampires" ?

What ? Why ? It's a great comedy ! If you don't laugh, what on Earth are you going to do ?

F8 accompli: Facebook, Epic Games, Microsoft, Unity abandon conference plans over coronavirus fears

I would agree with you if there was proof that that is how the virus appeared, but we have no proof on that, just a supposition.

Now, personally, I think that placing wild animals in a food market is quite unsanitary, but that has nothing to do with the kinds of animals they eat. It's just gross in itself.

Trashing privacy? That's our job! Facebook accuses analytics biz of harvesting people's info from software dev kit sold to app makers

I just checked out the homepage of that site. When I read the words "It allows people to look at the same data with different apps at the same time", it doesn't make me feel that this is going to anything else than exacerbate the problem.

I heard somebody say: Burn baby, burn – server inferno!

But of course

Oh dear, I got some water on my laptop. Should I bring it home and use a hairdryer to try and fix the problem ? Nah, I'll just use the company server room equipment, which I will reconfigure to my needs. Oh, there's a reason why the aircon is set to cold ? Doesn't matter, I need warm. There, my problem is solved. I shall now leave everything the way it is without a care in the world. If anything bad happens, it's not my budget.

Man, I would have so fired that guy.

Nokia said to be considering sale or merger as profits tank

"intense pressures on profitability"

Ah, corporatespeak. Sounds better than saying "can't make enough money", doesn't it ?

Northrop Grumman's space zombie slayer grants Intelsat 901 five more years in orbit

"heads off to assist other client spacecraft"

Because after five years it's going to have the fuel to do that ?

I thought they made one MEV per satellite to service.

Pope tells his followers to log off for Lent

Not yet, but in time . . .

If you're serious about browser privacy, you should probably pass on Edge or Yandex, claims Dublin professor

You can configure that in Options under Search.

Poor old Google. Its cloud division only brought in $8.9bn last year. So it's chucking a few billion at US offices and data centres

Never forget

"improve how we market, partner and engage with customers"

Google's customers are ad slingers, not you and me. So all data center plans are about increasing the amount of storage Google has to keep on reaping our personal info and sell that to its customers.

Hacker swipes customer list from controversial face-recog-for-Feds Clearview. Its reaction? 'A part of life'

“Security is Clearview’s top priority"

Sound the bugle, we have another hypocrite !

As soon as I hear that sentence, I know you didn't give a flying one about security. It's a badge, you see. It's like a criminal saying "But I didn't do nuthin' !" while getting caught with the goods.

Getting hacked is a way of life ? Well sure, when you can't be arsed to set up the proper fences.

Salesforce's revolving door spins amid shopping spree: Co-CEO out, BT alumnus G-Patz up, Vlocity slurped

The executive merry-go-round continues

This is our version of People, or Vanity Fair. We follow the hallowed lives of individuals that "manage thousands of employees" and have experience with the upper management of billion-dollar companies, knowing that we will never attain those lofty heights.

But that club has the same admission rules as the Jet Set : you just need to know the right people (which I don't, obviously). Given the abject failures of some of them (eh, TSB ?), it's obviously not a question of competence.

Game over, man: Microsoft test engineer who laundered stolen Xbox credits into $10m guilty of fraud

"he didn't intend to defraud Microsoft"

No, of course not. He bought a $1.6m house under constraint.

This guy is proof is that you don't have to be a genius to rip people off. It's also proof that you'd better be smart enough to avoid associating your own name in any way with funds that been obtained illegally.

He should have paid more attention to money laundering processes. But that takes time, and the money was right there.

And now he's going down for twenty. Serves him right for spouting such nonsense. "Oh, Your Honor, I didn't do it on purpose. For months. By exploiting test code I had access to."

Moron.

Admins beware! Microsoft gives heads-up for 'disruptive' changes to authentication in Office 365 email service

I do. All the time.

I am not leaving my mail on somebody else's server. My mail is mine, and goes to my local storage.

I love POP. I'll never stop using it.

But then, I'm the kind who keeps mainly to himself and doesn't spaff his private life all over the web for all to see without a thought.

Google begs for US Entity List exemption to let Huawei use its mobile services – report

It's only a question of time anyway

Thanks to Trump, now China is on the verge of declaring its economic independence. It has access to all the blueprints, it has PhDs formed in the best Western universities, it has the economic need to grow, and now it is banned from growing in the West.

Well it'll grow in the East, and make products that Think Different, and expand the competition like Apple and Google have never seen before.

Hey, it's Capitalism, so the US should be overjoyed.

Famed Apple analyst chances his Arm-based Macs that Apple kit will land next year

5nm ? Where did that come from ?

Last I'd heard, Intel badly fumbled 10nm (giving AMD a royal red carpet), and was trying to get 7nm going because 10nm was royally FUBAR'd.

And now Apple suddenly has 5nm on the roadmap?

Apple ?

Is there some alien tech I've not heard of yet ?

Someone please explain. I'm in the dark here.

Hey, £18bn-revenue defence megacorps screw up ERP overhauls too: BAE took a £36m hit for delayed rollout

"replace seven legacy ERP systems with one"

Holy effin' cow pats. It's already almost impossible to replace one legacy ERP system with a new one and guarantee operational continuity, how the hell did some genius think that they could go do that with seven ?

I'm pretty sure a rocket scientist couldn't solve that equation.

The Ghost of Windows 10 Past shrinks back as Microsoft's axeman tiptoes ever closer

Re: just Windows borking itself

Yeah, but ; it's a feature !

Departing MI5 chief: Break chat app crypto for us, kthxbai

Backdoor only for authorities

Okay, fine. I'll accept that if you accept that the front door to your house and to the houses of all top-level government officials, including the Queen, can be opened by a special button "only known to the authorities". That button also disables all alarms.

Deal ?

No ?

What a surprise.

Microsoft uses its expertise in malware to help with fileless attack detection on Linux

No. Linux is open source, yes, but there is no obligation to open source applications on Linux.

If Adobe has a Linux version of PhotoShop, you can bet your last dollar that the code is not open source. Adobe can, however, sell a Linux version of its product. The fact that the OS is open source has nothing to do with that.

Identically, Windows is not open source, but there is nothing to prevent you from creating open source software on Windows.

While hype merchants push chatbots, CIOs are saving up pennies while expecting a recession, reckons study

So, around half or even three quarters of dis-satisfaction

I have the notion that satisfaction would be greater if IT wasn't saddled with implementing the latest new shiny simply because the CEO's nephew likes it and wants the bragging rights.

Last year one of my important customers abandoned a Helpdesk application that was providing reliable numbers and complete reports on the Helpdesk activity levels. They were influenced by the siren song of a vendor no doubt promising better analytics and an interface via web, of course.

Result ? After having transferred everything over, they found out that there are no reports, just pages and pages of data, summaries and percentages. So now, they have an inferior tool that needs, obviously, some bespoke programming to provide the results that the previous application already delivered.

Methinks that somebody should have asked a bit more questions about what the new shiny provided in reporting before signing off on the purchase.

I'm convinced that there are a lot of projects out there that follow the same result template.

Now Internet Society told to halt controversial .org sale… by its own advisory council: 'You misread the community mindset around dot-org'

You misunderstand my point. I am not advocating gratuitous murder, I am advocating capital punishment.

ICANN has a mandate of managing what has become the most important human technology of communication that exists, and it is dealing with that responsibility like an irresponsible teenager.

I charge the members of the board of treason, pure and simple. The punishment for treason is execution by firing squad.

It is necessary in order to ensure that the next board will be aware of the consequences of taking advantage of their position and ignoring the charge that they have been honored with.

It is more necessary since the behavior of the ICANN board has now tainted other organizations of equal importance.

So I say shoot them. Not because of any bloodthirsty sense of entertainment, but because order must be restored and I see no other way of restoring it in a way that will leave the proper mark on the successors of the charge.

Duped into running bogus virus scans at Office Depot? Dry your eyes with a small check from $35m settlement

Oh ? So insurance companies are now part of the legal system ? I didn't know that.

Thanks for that. Now I have an entire new channel to peruse !

"Office Depot agreed to fork out $25m while not admitting liability"

They paid, so they're guilty. Only in the fabulous legal system of the US can you be a scumbag and keep your record clean.

BAE Systems tosses its contractors a blanket... ban on off-payroll working under upcoming IR35 tax reforms

"[HMRC] has predicted the reforms will recoup £1.2bn a year by 2023"

Nope, not a chance. With all the contractors that have left already, are on their way out or planning to be, HMRC will be lucky to get a quarter of that.

And when they've all walked, you'll be left with companies that cannot complete projects in the initially projected timeframe, at the initially projected cost and, in some cases, will not be able to complete the project at all.

If you're going to issue a blanket assessment of your contractors, then just hire them officially already. This whole situation is not only ridiculous, it does nothing to help the post-Brexit performance of the economy. Quite the contrary.

The Wristwatch of the Long Now: When your MTBF is two centuries

Re: Beware survival bias

Very interesting link. Thank you for that.

It remains, though, that the article is on target concerning the shit that is sold these days. There are precious few things that will be working in the next ten years, let alone two hundred, and I will venture that nothing Apple sells today will be part of that group since Apple has a thing about not making the battery easily replaceable.

Google rolls out Titan keys to Europe, Japan. Plus: Group Policy bug is a feature, not a flaw, says Microsoft

"this scathing analysis"

That link no longer resolves. I get a 410 error with a message that states "This post is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules".

It seems that his report was a tad too scathing for the tastes of the website moderator.

Pity. The next time, you might want to think of keeping a copy of things you link to. The Internet is not, in fact, eternal.

This is your last chance, HP. There's no turning back. You take blue poison pill, the story ends. You take the red Xerox pill, you stay in Wonderland

The tug of war continues

Xerox has stolen one end of HP's blanket and now both are tugging on it, yelling and screaming.

This is fun to watch, whatever happens.

It'll be less fun when the inevitable layoffs begin. And they will, whether or not those two merge.

Managed services slinger Ensono waves goodbye to staff on both sides of the pond

Well, you gotta admit, he knows the Wall Street lingo

I predict he will have a brilliant career in laying people off. Who knows ? He might even end up CEO of HPE.

Why so shy, Samsung? Weird Find my Phone push notification did not only affect Galaxy mobes

So a disabled app can receive and display push notifications

Just another demonstration of how little you actually "control" your mobile phone.

All the big names are doing it, it's just this time it's Samsung that got caught. Somebody fat-fingered a config file and notifications were sent when they shouldn't have been.

It'll be interesting watching how Samsung is going to try to weasel its way out of this one.

California man served with restraining order for allegedly 'stalking' Apple CEO Tim Cook

Don't forget the Trump defense

If it's in his best interests, then it's legal.

Come on baby light me on fire: McDonald's to sell 'Quarter Pounder' scented candles

"Slap it all between two cheddar grilled cheese sandwiches for buns"

Sir, I salute you and your casual disregard for your arteries. Maybe we can have lunch together one day ?

"Please let it be a joke"

I'm convinced that there are many people who would gladly light up one of those candles purely for fun, out of sheer curiosity (does it really make it smell like a Mc D hamburger) and, for some, for simple convenience (it's a candle).

I would be part of the curiosity crowd, then I switch to convenience. Only for the one, though. Scented candles are not really my thing.

If you're struggling to keep new year resolutions, try NGTS-10b, a mere 1,000 LY away. One year is just 18 hrs

Shirley is away for the moment, but I'm sure she'd agree when I say that, if Earth was hit by an object with 0.1% of its mass, Earth would survive just fine.

For life on Earth though, the matter would be quite different.

Doubtful. Our Sun is 99.8% of the mass of our solar system. Throw Jupiter on it and you're just adding 0.1% of its mass. Won't make a difference.

AMD takes a bite out of Intel's PC market share across Europe amid microprocessor shortages, rising Ryzen

"success based on successfully executing our strategy"

Um, look, I'm very happy that AMD is riding the wave right now, but you're fooling no one. AMD has had capable products before and not attained such levels. You and I both know that, despite AMD having an excellent product, it is Intel's failure to deliver over a long period that has pushed companies and consumers to switch their mindset and go to you.

And that's fine.

Decent, legal, honest and searchable: C'mon, Ofcom. Let us check up on the ad-slingers ourselves

An online, searchable ad broker activity database

I'm all for it.

And, while we're at it, let's set up an online database for tracking who is paying lobbying which elected official.

Breaking bad... browser use: New Mexico accuses Google of illegally slurping kids' private data via G Suite

"we are committed to partnering with them"

Oh, I can believe that all right. You are committed to catching them all, as soon as you can, for as long as you can.

Yup, we can agree on that.

Windows Dressing: Psst... Fast Ring folks, whispers Microsoft. You're in this for the cool icons, right?

"carrying more than a whiff of Windows 7 (or even XP)"

Um, I use Windows 7 and 1 0 regularly. I can't say that the icons on 1 0 are so much more appealing. Maybe XP icons would be jarring, but I wouldn't know since I haven't used XP for more than a decade now.

Frankly, I'm happy that the winter intern's work gets some recognition, but there are more important things to take of as far as Windows is concerned.

Google product boss cuffed on suspicion of murder after his Microsoft manager wife goes missing, woman's body found, during Hawaii trip

Why "tell them where their Mom is" and not "bring their mother back home" ?

Did he already know she wasn't coming back ?

How's this for a crossover? Scumbag scammed victims with fake gem mines – then pivoted to fake crypto-mines

"The investing public should be aware that cryptocurrency schemes are" . .

A massive load of bullshit, and always will be.

I've said it before and I'll say it again : if you want to lose your money in funny money crypto, buy yourself a PC with the latest specialized NVidia graphics card and churn them out yourself.

Samsung will be Putin dreaded Kremlin-approved shovelware on its phones, claims Russia

"Fines for non-compliance range between 50,000 and 20,000 roubles"

That's interesting. Generally, when price ranges are quoted, they go from smallest to largest value. Might there be a 0 missing ?

VCs warn: Pumping millions into an AI startup? You mean, pumping millions into Azure, AWS or Google Cloud...

I didn't say no bullshit.

When the air gap is the space between the ears: A natural gas plant let ransomware spread from office IT to ops

Re: Consequences

That's nice, but if you burn everyone at the stake for their misdeeds, you'll have no one left who have learned from their mistakes and you'll always be on the witch hunt.

Re: Paranoia mode on

If you're in, it would be a lot better to not make waves since doing so would inevitably introduce changes. As in, now this plant has likely separated the production network from the admin network. So, now that you have raised almighty Hell, your knowledge and access had been shredded and you can start again.

Real spies leave no traces of their access.

Re: This is with the presumption that it is a Governmental facility

We're talking about the USA here. If something can be monetized, it will most certainly not be a Governmental facility.

Well the clean up has to happen, so no surprise there.

What is always astonishing is finding out that nobody bothered to implement any sort of security beforehand.

Oh well, two days revenue lost is a lesson. Now, how many other natural gas plants will sit up and take notice ?

Because I'm guessing that plant was not unique in any way.

Oi, Cisco! Who left the 'high privilege' login for Smart Software Manager just sitting out in the open?

I'm guessing no senator is going to step up and rant about this

No way any political figure is going to step up to a microphone and rant about how the security of US citizens and institutions was put in grave danger by this.

Nope. Not gonna happen.

Forcing us to get consent before selling browser histories violates our free speech, US ISPs claim

And there's your problem. Everything wrong in the US today can be traced back to the day that decision was made.

Galileo got it wrong – official: Jupiter actually wet, not super-dry: 'No one would have guessed that water might be so variable across the planet'

“No one would have guessed"

Interesting. I know nothing about the layers under Jupiter's visible surface, but from here, it's pretty obvious that the bands of color don't mix very much. It logically follows that the contents of one band mostly stay inside that band and don't mix with neighboring bands. That would go for water as well.