Posts by Pascal Monett

The D in Systemd is for Directories: Poettering says his creation will phone /home in future

Re: the backlash on that revelation was what ended the Ballmer era

That probably didn't help, but I think the fiasco that was Vista followed by the utter failure that was Windows 8 was what did him in.

And it was about effing time.

That was a serious breath of fresh nerdiness

I'm glad that there are people out there who are intelligent enough to tackle these kinds of issues and do so for the sake of my protection.

That said, I kinda doubt that "most people" encrypt their laptop drives. Most of the people I know who do have laptops have work laptops, and even they are not always using disk encryption, although their IT department should be pushing that.

As for private users, try and talk them into encryption and watch their eyes glaze over in real time.

No, sorry, I don't see it happening any time soon.

Behold the perils of trying to turn the family and friends support line into a sideline

Re: We'd regularly get the blame for their ineptitude.

Well obviously, you touched it. Doesn't matter what you did, the curse is now upon you.

BOFH: We must... have... beer! Only... cure... for... electromagnetic fields

EM sensitivity is like UFOs

All the proof in the world will not change the minds of those who believe.

Pupil mental health monitor promises app rewrite after hardcoded login creds discovered

As usual, once they are found out, they take security seriously

"Data privacy and security are Steer's absolute priority"

Yes, now it is, because you realize just how much your reputation is fucked. That said, you apparently only had the realization after El Reg had to shove it up your nose.

There is no excuse for hard-coding credentials in an application and I don't care that the account has been disabled. Those credentials should never had been coded in the first place.

I will STEER well away from your applications in the future.

Oracle: Yeah, we've had a bunch of G-Men come sniffing around asking questions about Google

"The open internet has delivered enormous benefits to Americans"

Sure has. Now imagine how much better things would be if access to the "open Internet" wasn't being controlled by a couple of cartels who are more interested in fleecing the customer than providing performant access.

HMRC chief digital wonk Jacky Wright takes flight back to Microsoft's light

"I am so proud of all that we have achieved in my two years"

Of course you are. It's called padding your resumé.

Glasgow extends middle finger to southern fairies as London ranks bottom in mobile signal top 10

Woah there

Glasgow is taunting London because it is 4 percentage points better in wireless connectivity ?

Call me back when you've reached 90%, then you can crow. Right now, you're advance is 50% due to measurement errors.

Now Uncle Sam would like a word with Brit teen TalkTalk hacker about a huge crypto-coin heist

Okay, let me imagine a world where that is acceptable. Now I have one question : what kind of twisted sexual pervert takes pics of himself while trying to reach sexual release ?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if I'm choking the one-eyed snake, I am paying attention to a video, a slideshow or a bunch of pictures, i am most definitely not fiddling around trying to make a fucking selfie.

Four words from Cisco to strike fear into the most hardened techies: Guest account as root

Man it must be hard for Cisco

Patching all these holes to keep China out while ensuring the NSA still has access.

Gagarin's Start now Soyuz-FG's End as shutters pulled on historic launchpad

The days of Gagarin and Apollo are truly over

Thus ends one of the most exhilarating and bold chapters of the history of our species, bogged down by beancounters and politicians with no balls.

But everything must end some day, so enter Musk and Bezos and capitalism and corporate profits, which will be the basis of actual space expansion.

Sad, but inevitable.

Fairytale for 2019: GNOME to battle a patent troll in court

I have said it before

and I will say it again : the only way to neuter patent trolls is to tie the amount of damages to the amount of money the patent troll is making with his patent.

In other words : if you're just sitting on your patent and not producing anything of value with it, then you get no money for someone else actually producing goods with it (or something similar).

That will sort the wheat from the chaff.

macOS? More like mac-woe-ess: Google Chrome slip-up trips up SIP-less Apple Macs

Re: Not surprised

Google is nothing if not persistent. I have Chrome on my work laptop and I installed Google Earth as well. Thinking it would be useful on my home computer, I installed Google Earth there as well. To my surprise, at next boot I found out my home computer had Chrome installed as well.

I didn't want Chrome, so I removed it. The following boot I found it there again. I'll spare you the details (rummaging around the Registry, checking startup options, controlling services, etc) but suffice it to say that after four days of these shenanigans, I gave up and removed anything Google from my home computers and Google is blacklisted on my personal hardware.

Dropbox reinvents itself as a collaborative workspace – no, not the WeWork kind (phew)

"Dropbox’s storage service is consistently better than its rivals"

Oh really ?

I use Dropbox for non-critical, non-PII storage only. Anything important goes on Sync if I need it there because Sync has encryption and, if you trust their blurb, only I have the key and that means that I am indeed the only one to be able to access that data.

So you'll excuse me if I believe that Sync has the better storage service.

Confused why Trump fingered CrowdStrike in that Ukraine call? You're not the only one...

Re: A slavic oligarch is the exact equivalent of a western successful businessman

No it is not, since you specify in the title of your post a "successful businessman", meaning one who has made a lot of money.

And that is still not true, since the notion of oligarchy implies a small group of people who are thus called oligarchs.

Elon Musk is a very successful businessman, but he is not an oligarch. He rules alone.

Match.com? More like Match dot-con, claims watchdog: Cyber-lonely-hearts 'lured into forking out to view bot spam'

"We catch and neutralize 85 per cent of potentially improper accounts in the first four hours"

The problem is not how many you catch, the issue here is the fact that you monetize those you don't catch.

And frankly, a photo no older than a week and connecting with 5 people per week in order to "qualify" for a refund ? Do we have permission to work, or are we supposed to just spend all our time on your site ?

Dating sites are just a huge scam IMO.

Black holes are like buses: You wait for one – and three turn up at once in galaxy merger

A singularity enters an event horizon

I can't even begin to fathom how a black hole merger happens inside. The singularity that crosses the event horizon first (I'm guessing the smaller one because smaller event horizon) is attracted to the bigger singularity just like anything else dropping in. What happens then ? Does the singularity start orbiting the other one for a short while ? Does it go straight for collision ? And what is the energy release of such an event forever contained behind the ultimate shroud ?

Mind-boggling stuff.

Why worry about cost of banning certain Chinese comms providers? Fire Huawei, says analyst

I'm getting tired of this bullshit

So, China has its fingers in Huawei, hmm ? And nobody mentions that the NSA has access to Cisco equipment ? If you're beating the security drum, beat it all the way.

The main hacking threat comes from China ? Really ? So Russian hackers are not that much of a threat, then ? All the data encryption and ransomware we have heard about this year came from China ? I don't think so. And let's not forget North Korea. I seem to recall a lot of fuss centered around a state-sponsored Nork team, but that is not important anymore now, right ? Riiight.

Strand Consulting is obviously just another Trump muppet, spouting the bull and spreading the FUD. He's toeing the line, dumping on China and waving unicorns. The US has achieved nothing in 5G. Show me the market using it before telling me how good you are.

Time to check in again on the Atari retro console… dear God, it’s actually got worse

It is breaking. Goodwill has been spent and used up. Now the fans are in torch & pitchfork mode, as well they should be.

Re: Cheese it!

Get away clean ? I think they've already blown that as well. Atari fans will never forget this shambles of a botched project, nor the names of the people attached to it. The head architect may have gone to another startup, but that will not diminish the furor of the people who paid good money on a promise made of empty.

And frankly, said architect managed to go for over a year with nothing to show for in the end. I would not want to have anything to do with his new startup after such dismal results.

Roscomos: We know all about how the hole in the Soyuz went down, but we're not telling you

Re: Success rate

Given that the rover's job was to study the regolith in the South Pole region, and that the results were highly anticipated by just about every space agency on the planet, I think that measuring success by the distance covered is wrong.

You do not pass an exam by showing up at the school door.

That the orbiter be credited with a 100% succes rate is fine, it is doing its job. But the mission had two components and one is DOA.

The success rate for the mission is 50% at best.

EU court rules Right To Be Forgotten doesn't apply outside member states

"illegal content should be deleted where it is stored"

That can only apply if it is stored in the country where said content is illegal, and that is the whole problem with the Internet that lawmakers are trying to comprehend.

This one clearly doesn't.

Re: if the EU is allowed

The EU is making decisions on what content is allowed inside the EU. The whole point of the article is that the EU decided it cannot impose its decision outside its borders.

Way to completely misunderstand what you theoretically read.

The US is free to decide that its laws apply worldwide.

Sending in the cops, however, is a non-starter, even if they send the FBI.

No happy ending for the 93,000 Kazakh domains that got nixed instead of massage parlour's site

Well it is Khazakstan. They're already happy they have wires.

How to fix the global slowdown in broadband rollout: Redefine what broadband means

"thoughtful approaches towards meaningful universal connectivity"

Meaningful connectivity means you have a connection that brings you the information you need in less than a minute. 4G should basically cover that, so why faff about it ?

It's all very nice to heartache over populations that cannot afford a mobile phone, but I think they probably have more pressing problems - like how to get something to eat for lunch, or (in some cases) how to not get shot before dinner.

Chef melts under heat, will 86 future deals with family-separating US immigration agencies

Re: Screw Chef

I applaud your attempt to educate the rabid white racist portion of your population, but I fear that, by using more than 20 words, you lost their attention and they are back to watching Fox News again.

Good try, though.

Nine words to ruin your Monday: Emergency Internet Explorer patch amid in-the-wild attacks

Emergency ?

Hardly. IE isn't even mentioned on StatCounter any more.

At ease, everyone. Carry on with your normal lives.

Vimeo's Clippy-for-video-bumpf app 'breaks biometric privacy law by slurping thousands of faces without consent'

Re: You are the product

It's another New Age in Sillycon Valley : now they are out to get all the data.

After all, FaceBook has brilliantly demonstrated that government doesn't have a clue and can't stomp down on anything privacy-related, so why restrain oneself ?

Quick!! The! top! five! things! you! want! to! see! from! Yahoo! – what! are! they!?

Hadn't thought of that one, but I have to say that the intersection of consumer media and what passes for AI these days does seem like exactly the place for her. Nothing special to do, looking good while doing it.

Devonitely not great: Torbay and South Devon NHS declares 'major IT incident'

Re: it would be unfair to penalise the current members of the committee

I do not see the current members of the committee putting in £6bn to correct the situation, so they are guilty.

Unless they can demonstrate that they are scraping every farthing they can find to correct the situation, they are guilty.

What ?

"There is £6bn backlog of repairs across the NHS & the underinvestment in physical & IT infrastructure has led to repeated safety failures & delays"

A £6bn lack of funding is not a mistake. This is not somebody who forgot to sign an expense. This is willful negligence and someone should pay.

More likely an entire committee. The last five years of top-level decision-makers are all collectively responsible for this complete and utter failure of management.

Are you a Nim-by? C-ish language, gentler than Go, friendlier than Rust, reaches version 1.0

Re: I see not a few pascalisms...

Ah, Turbo Pascal, that was fun. My first OO language.

What memories.

Trump-China trade war latest: Brave patriot Apple decides to do exact same thing, will still make Mac Pro in US

Re: Oooh, Look..

Yup, that's about the most exact description of the situation I could think of myself.

Calling all the Visual Basic snitches: Keep quiet about it and so will he...

Tell me, if you're the top boss and you want a 4-letter password that never changes, do you really think you're going to accept one of your employees tell you NO ?

Probably were, and they had the official version. The reality of IT is that any rule is only a generality, a guideline, rather than hard fact. That is because it is IT's job to make sure everyone else can work, and nobody is interested in hearing IT say that they can't because rules.

When a manager wants something, he doesn't care about the rules, he just wants the result. So IT bends the rules because, in the end, it's always IT's fault when something doesn't work.

Several months after the fact, CafePress finally acknowledges huge data theft to its customers

"Dear Valued Customer"

Not valued enough, however, to bother encrypting your passwords, or implementing network traffic awareness tools, or just locking down our fucking database in the first place.

But you are valued, until you give us your money, that is.

Microsoft: Dynamics 365 to hook up online, physical retail... 'cos we love tracking so much we want it offline too

"alert staff of long queues at checkouts"

Because without a cloudy server, there is no way some mere human could possibly be charged of supervising the floor and noticing such problems. Funny that, when I got to a supermarket and arrive at checkout with long queues and half the checkout lanes closed down, pretty soon somebody shows up to open a lane. I'm pretty sure that they don't have no Microsoft Cloud Supervisor available.

I wonder how supermarket chains have managed for the past century.

If you have enough of this type of gut microbe, you can get drunk for free after eating carbs

Re: Reverse it and get rich!

There's a simple solution : when you start feeling tipsy, stop drinking booze. Drink water and eat something filling, then wait an hour or two. After that, maybe you can have another glass.

It's ace that UK.gov 'in 2030 will be joined up, trusted and responsive' – but what about now?

Re: Let's be clear...

Oh, cut them some slack. They're not going to be slurping people's personal data for political reasons, they'll be slurping it for marketing reasons.

But they'll be slurping it.

Pizza prankster's prisoner plea plot perturbs police, Norks invading and Uber woes

I think Twitter is doing not too bad a job. If you compare it to FaceBook, Twitter is a paragon of virtue.

I won't ever use it and I think most of its users are nincompoops, but those who manage Twitter I have to grudgingly admit some respect for.

Please explain

Please explain why a voting machine needs an overblown behemoth like Windows to run ?

Apart from the fact that the developers (and their managers especially) don't know anything else, of course.

Class-action lawsuit claims DXC 'selectively timed' job cuts to inflate short-term profit target

"The allegations in this suit have no merit"

Um, sorry but the decline in share price is a fact, and that decline is clearly due to publication of news that the shareholders did not like.

I don't like Wall Street, but one clear benefit is the ability to counter run-of-the-mill PR bullshit with cold, hard numbers.

Emergency button saves gamers from sudden death... of starvation

"pissing into the empties in situ to avoid leaving their chairs for toilet breaks"

Well that's me never participating in one of those things, then. Congratulations, you have just completely grossed me out.

Those furious gun-toting Aussies were just a glitch. Let's try US drone deliveries, says Wing

Re: the stock would have to be held locally

I totally agree. Amazon is surviving because is has vast central storage with high turnover. Turn that into many local storage points where 70% of the stock is just going to sit there and you are bleeding money.

I can't see that this will work either on the drone side, or on the storage side.

Bulgarian phishing gang member who lived with his parents jailed for part in £40m fraud ring

Re: crime doesn't pay

Well it did for those who got their mitts on the rest of the £40 million.

It's like pyramid schemes ; when you're at the top, it's great. It's the peons at the bottom that are doing all the work and making none of the money. He was one the peons.

My Little Bromium: HP Inc inks security deal to slurp micro-VM slinger

"a family health matter"

Yup : the ship is sinking and he doesn't want to drown with it. That's a health matter all right.

Hey, NPM. How do you like your Bogensberger? He's, well, done: CEO Bryan ejects from biz

"to pursue new opportunities"

So he's going to go fuck up some other company then ?

We sense a great disturbance in the Salesforce: File-slinging feature breaks down for more than 12 hours

Not to bash Salesforce, but

I have to wonder how many file issues there were when everyone had their server locally on the network.

Cloud is just someone else's server, and that also means subject to someone else's problems.

I can't help but think that this cloud mania is going to die down and recenter itself on things that people really need Cloud for : sharing data (securely, I hope) between distant locations.

Using Cloud when everyone works in the same building every day is just asinine, you win nothing and you set yourself up for this kind of problem.

Disgraced ex-Kaspersky guy made me do it, says bloke in Russian court on hacking charges

"passing details of an FSB [..] investigation to the US FBI"

What ? That's not in the right direction ! No wonder things went wrong.

Normally, information goes from the President of the United Shaesh to Putin and the FSB, not the other way around.