Posts by Pascal Monett

UK is 'not a surveillance state' insists minister defending police face recog tech

I'd like the minister to explain his definition of a surveillance state.

Just for the laughs.

ConnectWise fails to connect: Customers down and out in the EU

Ah, routine maintenance

It is astounding how many times something goes wrong only when you tinker with it.

Microsoft slaps the Edge name on SQL, unveils the HoloLens 2 Development Edition

Re: Linux only for now

I think that what bothers me the most is that Microsoft has clearly transitioned from a Windows-is-the-only-true-path culture to an anything-that-will-bring-in-the-money culture.

Of course, that fact that Microsoft has had to use Linux for its Azure platform, instead of an army of Windows servers, was certainly a painful cluebat to the face. Apparently there was some brain damage after all.

IBM Watson ?

Oh, you mean that thing that is failing to bring the expected benefits ?

Brilliant example.

Re: SQL technology is obsolete

Yeah, it's old, so it's obsolete.

Just like the wheel. We've been using that for thousands of years now. It's obviously obsolete.

By the way, out of curiosity, what do you have to replace it with ?

Because, if you don't have anything, then maybe you should check the dictionary for the definition of obsolete. I don't think you have the right one.

A real head-scratcher: Tech support called in because emails 'aren't showing timestamps'

Another solution

Save the trees, get the hell out of there.

You are very right, but still, it should not be terribly difficult to understand that, if you take a piece of paper, write stuff on it, put it in a box, then take the same piece of paper, erase everything and write something else, you no longer have the first version.

I'm guessing she just needed someone to point out the equivalence of what she was doing.

In defense of the solicitors

It would probably be a lot more damaging to have a partner send out an email by himself only to discover after the fact that he had made a mistake or included a detail he shouldn't have.

There is one advantage to dictating a response : you have another pair of eyeballs reviewing your text and thus a better chance of spotting goofs and correcting them before sending.

For solicitors, I'm guessing that that is important.

House! Microsoft wins at buzzword bingo with AI, ML and Blockchain in cloudy Azure wrapping

The Azure Blockchain Workbench

I'm curious to see if the public at large is going to be able to do anything interesting and/or useful with this, instead of just creating more opportunities for criminals to steal money from the clueless.

Water big surprise: H₂O found in samples of 'dry' asteroid brought to Earth over millions of miles by plucky probe

"It’s a strange move"

No, it really isn't. Science is all about experimentation and confirmation. Stony asteroids were considered to be devoid of water, but not proven to be.

Science likes proof when it can get it, and this was the perfect opportunity to verify the hypothesis.

Now we know that stony asteroids can have water. Science is advancing.

A day in the life of London seen through spam and weak Wi-Fi

Tsk, tsk, Dabsy

It's your regular work routine and you still waste your time trying to connect to train wi-fi ? You should stop that and protect your blood pressure ; you're not getting any younger either, you know.

As for not knowing how they get your email, if you stopped signing up to all the stupid wi-fi maybe it would help.

'I do not wish to surrender' Julian Assange tells court over US extradition bid

Well since you can't be arsed to post a link supporting your views, I did the search and I found that :

Frida Ghitis, journalist on CNN, definitely states he is not a journalist

Peter Greste on stuff, another actual journalist, says he's not and why

Gabriel Schoenfeld, a columnist for The Bulwark, says the question is irrelevant and why

David French, journalist of National Review, calls him a leader of a non-state hostile intelligence service

On Wikipedia, his page states that he has been a member of the Australian Journalist Union

Kathy Kiely and Laurel Leff, two professors of journalism at The Conversation, explain why calling Assange a journalist is a bad mistake

Of course, I also found quite a lot of articles supporting the thesis that Assange is a journalist.

What I did not find is any report of a judge stating he is not.

So, citation please.

Hey, those warrantless smartphone searches at the US border? Unconstitutional, yeah? Civil-rights warriors ask court to settle this

Re: they need "reasonable suspicion"

They have reasonable suspicion. That's what they'll say anyway.

Apple, Samsung feel the pain as smartphone market slumps to lowest shipments in 5 YEARS

Just one question

What's the level of market saturation ? How many people are there in the world who do not have a phone and have the means to pay for and use a flagship model ?

Does anyone really think that such people exist ?

I don't. I think that just about everyone who can have a phone has one. The market is saturated, so shipments are dropping.

Nothing to see here, except marketing people in panic. Well, you're supposed to analyze the market, not react to it. A drop in shipments is inevitable, as we are now transitioning to a replacement market - which is something marketing should know.

Julian Assange jailed for 50 weeks over Ecuador embassy bail-jumping

Re: "resulting in literally *nothing* happening"

I must disagree with you there. What happened after Snowden was Schrems, who killed the existing data transfer agreement and forced the world to agree that the NSA are a bunch of above-the-law, cannot-be-trusted people. For you and I, not much has changed right now, but the GDPR came out of that mess, and that has kicked the hornet's nest for sure.

Apple iPhone sales down by double digits, Mac sales knifed by Intel CPU 'constraints'

Not to mention

Eventually the market will get to a point where what you sell is a commodity, and you will have to settle for commodity prices.

Apple has always set its flagship phone at eye-watering prices, but that is less and less justified by the incremental improvements in what you get for the price. I cannot see that this trend continues long term. People are going to come to their senses and stop forking over thousands of dollars for a bloody mobile phone. $200 is more than enough for a phone and it should last five years at the very least.

Woke up on Wednesday, expecting a SpaceX launch? Surprise! It got postponed

Hey, good news

At least this time the delay is not due to a SpaceX problem.

Extortionist hacks IT provider used by the stars of tech and big biz, leaks customer info after ransom goes unpaid

"once [..] learned of the vulnerability [..], it backed out, fixed up the hole, and refused to pay"

Oh, poor little hacker got cheated. Look at the tears in my eye. No, take a good look. There's got to be something, no ?

I guess not, then.

Re: Weird measure of success

Yeah, and hey look, they let 500+GB of data slip under their noses. Way to go to monitor your network.

Microsoft promises to boil down its lengthy and confusing privacy controls… in 1,500-word announcement

Feedback ? I'll give you feedback !

My home server is now running on Mint. I have discussed with my sister and she has agreed to let me put Mint on her laptop as well. My wife's laptop is heading for Mint. As soon as I find the right video drivers, my nephews' game laptop is going to Mint as well.

Obviously my work laptop will have to stay Win7 for the time being, but I am looking into making the transition there as well. My home game rig will, unfortunately, have to stay Win7 for the foreseeable future, because gaming, and my daughter's laptop will have to as well because the video editing program that she uses for her projects does not have Linux version. But all those rigs that are not Mint will stay Win7 until the hardware dies.

How's that for feedback, SatNad ?

Huawei, Huawei. Huawei, Huawei. Feeling hot, hot, hot: US threatens to cut UK from intel sharing over Chinese tech giant

Re: Blame Lafayette

Yeah, well, you know what they say about hindsight . . .

Besides, at the time, it seemed like a good idea - and maybe it was after all.

They should definitely review

Go right on ahead and review. Cut yourselves off, I dare you. I am sick and tired of all the sharing that you have going on anyway. Let's stop sharing, let's stop handing over every snippet of even the most insignificant stuff simply because Uncle Sam wants it.

The US wants to bully the world into obeying it ? I'm French : I'll do the contrary just out of spite.

Everything's just fine at Google's mothership: $1.7bn EU fine, slower growth take their toll

That is called swimming in money

$36.34bn in three months is $12.11bn per month and that makes out to $403.77mn per day, or the piddling sum of $280,401 per minute.

I think Alphabet will survive this setback.

Out-of-office email ping-pong fills server after server over festive break

Well hey, they are professionals at it.

The difference between October and May? About 16GB, says Microsoft: Windows 10 1903 will need 32GB of space

Minimum RAM requirements remain 1GB for 32-bit Windows 10 and 2GB for the 64-bit version

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAA HAAA HAAAA !!

The only version of Windows that ever ran on 1GB of RAM was XP - and even then it was a lot better with 4GB.

My personal minimum RAM requirement for Windows has been 16GB for the past ten years, and now I have 32GB. Once I have completed transitioning my family entirely to Mint, things will be a lot easier on the support side.

And in current affairs... Apple recalls three-prong AC adapters after some shocking behavior

have I missed something?

A chance to complain ?

This is the Internet ; complaining is the national sport.

Bitcoin drops 7 per cent on New York Attorney General's allegations of $850m fraud by Bitfinex

"The New York Attorney General’s court filings were written in bad faith . ."

Yeah, because it always pays off to insult the Attorney General. Looks like they handle lawsuits just about as well as they handle their responsibilities : badly.

In any case, this is just one more in a long list of either incompetent or criminal bastards. I have long been convinced that all virtual currencies are just a front for criminals, and to date I have nothing to prove me the contrary.

Ok Google, please ignore this free tax filing code so we can keep on screwing America

As does France - and actually now you have to use it. Plus, it works rather well.

It's springtime for Springtown as Seagate rains nearly £50m on Northern Ireland plant

One thing is for sure

Storage technology is not getting simpler.

Soon, you'll have to be a full-blown boffin just to take a course in designing new storage solutions.

Customers furious over days-long outage as A2 Hosting scores a D- in Windows uptime

Uptime is not easy

Hosting companies have a lot to worry about : server stability, virtual server management, complicated administration rights, I get it.

But there is no reason on Earth that I can accept a hosting company falling to malware. Your staff is supposed to be alert to that, phishing is a well-known concept that network administrators are supposed to know by heart. A hosting company falling to malware has failed its number one obligation : having trained personnel to deal with issues. If A2 has indeed had its servers taken over by malware, then it is through sheer incompetence, either of management or in implementing procedures properly.

If I were being hosted by them, I would be transferring my site elsewhere pronto.

Thank you, your DNA data will help secure your… oh dear, we've lost that too

An interesting take on security, but you're talking about industrial environments. Security is something people do actually pay attention to in those environments, because people have died in industrial accidents.

People have also died in elevators, but that is not something anyone pays attention to when going back to their hotel room. Personally, if I'm going back to my room after a well-liquored evening, the security guy has one thing to check : do I have my keycard. After that, I will take offense and make one hell of a stink, and if it has to go to calling the manager, it will go there. I paid good money for that room, no two-bit sentinel is going to stand between me and my bed.

NSA: That ginormous effort to slurp up Americans' phone records that Snowden exposed? Ehhh, we don't need that no more

"It might just work"

Oh it sure will. The NSA is counting on apathy and forgetfulness, two powerful elements in its favor. It will do its song and dance, take a bow for being nice, and by the next Superbowl everyone but us nerds will have forgotten all about it - including the media.

Down is the new up at Intel: PC processor sales rise while data center chips fall (So much for that data-centric push)

"I find it interesting that US Gov will protect Intel but not US consumers"

Simple answer : US consumers do not have powerful lobbyists working for them and lavishing the lawmakers with swanky parties and brown envelopes. Also, there are not enough lawmakers or senators that are there to do their job of managing the country properly - they're all blinded by the big issue : getting enough funding for their next re-election bid.

Zuck it up: Facebook hit with triple whammy of legal probes, action in Canada, US, Ireland

"Facebook, [..] claimed it had cooperated [..] and was in negotiations to settle the matter"

Yeah, we all know how FaceBook negociates : it listens to the litany of damning evidence, then it says something to the effect of "Uh-huh, um, we'll see what we can do about that". Then it returns to its lair to laugh maniacally before instructing its programmers to find more ways to track everyone and everything.

What should happen is that all of its servers and datacenters should be cut off from the Internet until it can prove that it has solved the issues.

That would focus its attention.

Is that a stiffy disk in your drive... or something else entirely?

Seconded. This Sheila is a true gem.

Gather round, friends. Listen close. It's time to list the five biggest lies about 5G

Re: Security

Well don't stop there, tell us more.

Re: Chinese law

"the law in China states that a company MUST give the state any and all information when requested"

Sorry, but the US has a law by which, with a National Security Letter, anyone, any company, must comply to the instructions. Oh, and they must also keep secret that they are doing so.

Don't see any real difference there, so if that is your basis to be wary of Chinese equipment, then you must agree that we also need to be wary of US equipment.

And let's be honest : do you really think there is a country wherein a company based in that country can say no to the police or government of that country ?

Boffins bring home the bacon as AI-powered robo-medic performs heart surgery on pigs

Kudos to that effort

Well done and congratulations.

That said, I hope they'll have a 100% efficient version before I need it, and I hope even more that I'll never need it.

Facebook: Not saying we've done anything wrong but... we're just putting $3bn profit aside for an FTC privacy fine

"servers operating in a country where the government couldn't demand access"

Uh, about that idea Zuck - it won't work. You need to have your headquarters in a country where the government couldn't demand access. As long as your company is hosted on US soil, a US judge can and will demand access (they don't always get it, but they ask for it).

You will find that judges are a lot less accepting of being brushed off and/or ignored.

'We're not omnipotent,' trills National Cyber Security Centre in open-armed pitch to UK biz

"We're talking about how to design telecoms systems properly for the long term,"

Yeah, we know what that means : the Government has access to all comms without a warrant, and nobody else does. I'm so glad that there are some highly-paid people spending their time saying all this when it is the comms companies that are going to do all the work.

Sounds like my mother-in-law when she tells me how I should mow my lawn.

Rising sea levels? How about the rising risk of someone using a nuke?

Why did you drag Tony Blair into this ? Put that shit back where you took it from and go wash your hands.

Directly ? Of course not.

By proxy ? Good question, but you can safely say that there's a 50% chance that Russia is facing it off with the US.

NPM is Not Particularly Magnanimous? Staff fired after trying to unionize – complaints

In China, the vast majority of the population is Chinese. Same for Japan and India.

In America, the vast majority of the population is American, but the genetic past is much more diverse than in China/India/Japan. The problem in America that you do not seem to get is that Americans from genetic pasts that are not white are being discriminated against by white Caucasians that mistakenly believe that they still live in a mostly-white America.

They don't, but they're having trouble adapting to that reality.

Bloke faces up to 20 years in the clink after gun held to dot-com owner's head in robbery

Re: All this talk of domains ...

I'm thinking that ICANN got whacked over the head enough times for the message sink through it's (very) thick skull - but last I'd read about it there was Yet Another Appeal in preparation.

Wannacry-slayer Marcus Hutchins pleads guilty to two counts of banking malware creation

You seem to be really worked up about the lying part. I take it you have never, ever told a lie to anyone, ever, since the day you were born ? Really ?

Liar.

Not one of the 12 steps: Rehab patients' details exposed in publicly visible database

Re: Cute. But please try to come up with words for the actual acronym HIPAA.

Heavily Invaded Privacy Appalls All ?

Who's using Mueller Report Day to bury bad news? If you guessed Facebook, you're right: Millions more passwords stored in plaintext

That doesn't matter - Facebook is still making money out of you.

Stop feeding the monster : close your account and get out of there.

Facebook is a blight that not only feeds on the feeble-minded that subscribe, it also impacts anything that comes withing clicking distance of it.

Don't you understand ? It's the plague - revisited for the 3rd millennium.

Kill it while you still can.

Idiot admits destroying scores of college PCs using USB Killer gizmo, filming himself doing it

What a fucking idiot

Let me see, what was his thought process in all that :

1) I'm going to intentionally destroy a bunch of university campus computers - yeah, that will demonstrate my l33t h4xxor skillz against the softest target in the universe

2) I'm going to go in without a hoodie, just to make sure cameras can catch me in the act

3) on top of that, I'm going to record myself. For what ? To post on YouTube of course, what could possibly go wrong ?

4) once I'm done with my Evil Genius scheme, I'm going to retire to a moderately remote location and absolutely not get rid of any incriminating evidence whatsoever. What for ?

I admit : I'm a racist. I hate stupid morons. And this guy hits all the qualifiers.

Huawei thanks US for 'raising 5G awareness' by banning telecom kit giant's wares

"fair, just and transparent"

Sorry, but right now, those words associated with the US of A just stick in my throat.

Yes, I may have advised 'some' investors to flog their Autonomy shares, analyst tells High Court

Oh yeah. Now we get an account of the seedy underbelly of high-level finance, and it is disgusting.

I can't wait to see what other cockroaches are scuttling about.