Posts by Pascal Monett

It is 2018 and the NHS is still counting the cost of WannaCry. Carry the 2, + aftermath... um... £92m

So the solution is to redesign all the software for Linux

Including all machine interfaces, all MRI machines, all everything.

Simples ! Won't cost a thing, for sure.

UK.gov asks: Are sadistic AI price-bots ganging up on you?

Re: Someone clearly does not know how it is done

Nobody knows how AI is done. We don't have AI, we have statistical analysis machines.

And The Economist : if you think a company cannot be held responsible for it's pseudo-AI, you are totally smoking something you shouldn't.

It's the companies' tool, if the company cannot manage it properly, it will be fined into oblivion. Or shut down.

But it will be held responsible.

That 'Surface will die in 2019' prediction is still a goer, says soothsayer

Re: Is there anything wrong with Windows 10?

Everything is wrong with Windows 1 0. An OS should not have ads, it should not do its own thing without your permission, it is there to do your stuff, not Microsoft's.

The fact that some people find it fast and responsive is like liking a drug lord because he doesn't shoot you.

Facebook mass hack last month was so totally overblown – only 30 million people affected

Oh but you can believe it.

It's just that Zuckerberg doesn't give a shit.

Well whaddya know, there are kids that read El Reg.

I'm gonna have to pay more attention to my vocabulary now.

NASA's Chandra probe suddenly becomes an EX-ray space telescope (for now, anyway)

It's in the telemetry. Remember the film Apollo 13 ? Some of the brightest minds on this planet planned that mission, and NASA has experience in determining what it needs to know in order to find out what goes wrong.

This is not your bullshit Windows telemetry, this stuff was set up by Engineers, with a capital 'E'. They'll figure out something, I'm pretty sure of that.

Azure goes quiet, Huawei Canada ban urged, US Senators are after Google, and more

Oh really ?

"the Army says it will be commissioning officers into is cyber security programs with the rank of colonel"

And now I can't help but picture a roomfull of PFYs with colonel shoulderboards. Feels like I'm looking at Major Valerian all over again, and that doesn't feel any more credible now than it did then. The Army should just stop with the grade nonsense, create a special designation/grade with the salary that will give them the required clout to get talent, and move on. These guys are hackers, colonels they are not and they never will be.

Your RSS is grass: Mozilla euthanizes feed reader, Atom code in Firefox browser, claims it's old and unloved

I fail to see the problem

"The feed viewer has its own 'special' XML parser, distinct from the main Firefox one, and has not had a significant update in styling or functionality in the last seven years"

It's an RSS feed, it works fine and there is no need for updating the styling.

As for functionality, bloody hell why is it that everything has to get more functionality ? When it works, it's good enough - leave it alone. Adding more functionality is called feature creep and is a sickness that has killed many a product's usefullness. You don't add functionality for the sake of adding it, you add the functionality you need and you stop when you have what you need.

Somebody get a cluebat, I feel the need for some percussive education.

With sorry Soyuz stuffed, who's going to run NASA's space station taxi service now?

Re: "Even if it's basically a fifty years old design"

Um, sorry, but the wheel is a thousands-of-years-old design, where's the problem ?

If it was a 50-year-old rocket, yeah, I could see the issue.

Designs do not grow old, they get replaced by better designs.

SpaceX et al are apparently in the process of doing that, but the Russkies have a design that works now. They might just have to tweak it, but with its track record, I'm not sure that's a very good idea.

Yale Weds: Just some system maintenance, nothing to worry about. Yale Thurs: Nobody's smart alarm app works

What a moron

He works in IT, he's a fucking engineer, and still he buys into this IoT "smart" lock shit ?

I think his education is now being perfected. Never too late I guess.

Microsoft Surface Pro 4 owners: So, about that other broken update…

Re: Triggered obsolescence

Just one question : are you ever going to buy Microsoft again ?

Re: and doing Microsoft developers out of a job!!!

They're already not doing their job.

Does Google make hardware just so nobody buys it?

@JohnFen

If I agree with you completely on the headphones, I cannot help but disagree on the mouse.

Cordless mouse have come a long way in the past decade. They are very reliable, and working with a cord attached is something I simply cannot do anymore on a daily basis.

In my Logitech G602 I put two AAA batteries and they last me for three or four days of daily use, plus gaming evenings. Not too shabby.

That said, I have a respectable amount of rechargeable batteries and yes, I admit that I have a set in the charger once a week.

Next to my Samsung Galaxy A3, you'll excuse me if I find that peanuts as far as hassle goes . . .

Who needs custom malware? 'Govt-backed' Gallmaker spy crew uses off-the-shelf wares

Stop writing two paragraphs that say exactly the same thing with the same words

"This group eschews custom malware and uses living off the land (LotL) tactics and publicly available hack tools to carry out activities that bear all the hallmarks of a cyber espionage campaign," Symantec claimed.

"The most interesting aspect of Gallmaker’s approach is that the group doesn’t use malware in its operations. Rather, the attack activity we observed is carried out exclusively using LotL tactics and publicly available hack tools."

The second paragraph is just a re-ordering of the words in the first with a bit of added fluff. No new meaning can be inferred, nothing more can be learned.

It is a waste of time and of space. Enough with that already.

PINs and needled: Experian site blabbed codes to unlock credit accounts for fraudsters

The email address was not necessarily the one associated with the account ?

Are they TRYING to make things easier for hackers ?

Nobody thought this through at all. Nobody wondered what could happen if "none of the above" was selected across the board, and obviously nobody tested the final result beyond making sure it didn't crash on first try.

There certainly are a few more niggles I could have, but the big one is allowing another email address. For frak's sake, nobody does that. There is no reason to, you already have the subscribers' address.

Oh no, Xi didn't! Chinese spymaster cuffed in Belgium, yoinked to US on aerospace snoop rap

Selling out for a mere $3,500 ?

Shame on you guys. You should have demanded ten times that at least.

The state of our engineers' knowledge is flirting dangerously with appalling. If you don't know the value of what you've got, how can you do treason properly ?

Your pal in IT quits. Her last words: 'Converged infrastructure...' What does it all mean? We think we can explain

I think I get it now

I've been wondering how people can honestly put their crown jewel data into someone else's server, and now I think I get it :

1) Make sure technical network expertise gets rare by making training more expensive

2) Complicate everything by introducing new technology and make sure to constantly repeat that it is important

3) Companies go to The Cloud en masse

4) Profit !

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave me tea... pigs-in-blankets-flavoured tea

Brussel sprouts are an abomination

I literally choke on the things. I hate them with a passion. And now they do tea bags of it ?

Let me show you where you can put your tea bags . .

Punkt: A minimalist Android for the paranoid

Re: Crazy old man

I second that. I like that phone, and I decide that is the kind of phone I want when I retire and can finally ditch the shitty "smartphone" stuff.

Watch Series 4: What price 'freedom'? About as much as you'd expect from an Apple product

I know the feeling

That moment happened to me a few years ago, when, as a consultant, I responded to a call from a university.

As I reached the double glass door entrance, a student on the other side noticed me coming and casually reached for the door, holding it open for me. What floored me was just how automatic and casual the gesture was, as if it was a given that that was what he had to do. Some people would call it education.

I call it my "now you're old" moment.

Facebook's new always-listening home appliance kit Portal doesn't do Facebook

Absolutely agree. This has been tried before, as has already been noted here, and it never took off.

It won't now either because people do like to show off, but on their own terms. They post their lives on Facebook because when they're not on the computer, it does not affect them. This is invasive and forces them to be their show-off selves when they're not ready.

You can take a phone call when you're naked, no problem. With this, you're liable to get a bad surprise when you answer and find that your wife is looking at you wondering why the hell you're in the nude at 3 in the afternoon.

Google now minus Google Plus: Social mini-network faces axe in data leak bug drama

Still,

"If this were a bug in Facebook . . "

You know things are bad if you have to use Facebook as a positive reference.

Hate to burst your Hubble: Science stops as boffins scramble to diagnose gyro problem

One can only hope

Nothing is eternal and all that, but here's hoping that Hubble can yet be useful for some more years.

Intel's commitment to making its stuff secure is called into question

What ?

""The statement is typical PR, and as such of no value," he said.

[..] Intel has made a concerted effort to pay more attention to security or at least to talk about it more."

Oh, so you consider that Intel talking more about security is not PR ?

Microsoft yanks the document-destroying Windows 10 October 2018 Update

Well thank goodness

Thank goodness this release wasn't changing much, right ?

Right ?

Didn't you get the memo ?

If you keep your backups on the same computer, You Are Doin' It Wrong (TM).

Which? That smart home camera? The one with the vulns? Really?

"Our rigorous testing programme . . ."

Was established by Sir Mortimer Lefancy in 1867, based on approved journalistic reviews of the time. We make it evolve continuously, once per geological epoch.

Come on guys, if you can't be bothered to Google, don't go pulling a "we value our customer's privacy" shit.

You didn't, and you don't have a clue.

End of.

Super Micro China super spy chip super scandal: US Homeland Security, UK spies back Amazon, Apple denials

"It is bonkers to think it would have screwed up a story this huge"

The facts seem to say otherwise.

And I'm not talking about what companies say :

Fact #1 : Bloomberg says an FBI investigation is/was underway

Fact #2 : the FBI denies any investigation

This may be the Trump era of politics, but if the FBI unequivocally denies that there is an investigation, I believe the FBI.

So either Bloomberg reporters decided to try and cook up a story, which does indeed seem out of character to say the least, or somebody conned Bloomberg into publishing this story.

Conspiracy theorists, start your engines !

30 years ago, NASA put Challenger behind it and sent a Space Shuttle back out into the black

I envy you guys :)

Uncle Sam gives itself the right to shoot down any drone, anywhere, any time, any how

What the hell is that gun in the picture ?

What kind of shoulder-mounted cannon is that ?

Does it have auto-fire ?

High compensation ? What on earth for ? It's just a frakkin' drone.

Keep it away from places it's not supposed to be, end of.

I have popcorn ready for the impending reports of idiots getting their kit shot to pieces next to an airport or prison.

It's over 9,000! Boffin-baffling microquasar has power that makes the LHC look like a kid's toy

Be careful though, microquasars always play for keeps, and you don't get to argue.

On the third day of Windows Microsoft gave to me: A file-munching run of DELTREE

I have a PC with Mint on it

I am actively trying to wean myself Windows, because 7 is the last Windows I will ever have.

I am not yet strong enough to replace my Win7 machine yet, because it is my gaming rig and I'm sorry, but very few of the games I play run on Linux. And don't tell me about Wine, if I'm leaving Windows, I don't want a nicotine patch. I want to quit cold turkey, no messing around.

The good news is that Steam is doing a bang-up job of getting Linux games into the mix. I'm basically counting on that for my retirement.

Win7 will have to hold until then.

Re: Microsoft needs to fix this ongoing bug and fast

Absolutely not. Microsoft needs to stay the course and hold fast.

It's the only way users will get sufficiently fed up with Windows and move to Linux once and for all.

Then we will finally have world peace.

@JohnFen

Due to the fact that my wife and daughter are fanatical XMas enthusiasts, I have ruthlessly enforced my own policy in the house - with success - so that, from January to the end of October, the official name is The Holiday That Shall Not Be Named.

Because if I didn't, I'd be hearing XMas carols in June. In my own house. Just. No.

I like XMas very much ; in December.

ONLY in December.

Convenient switch hides an inconvenient truth

I just love the comments on On Call stories

You learn the damndest things.

Decoding the Chinese Super Micro super spy-chip super-scandal: What do we know – and who is telling the truth?

Re: Which Nation State

The same ones that argue that encryption should come with backdoors ?

Former General Electric boss explains how he got the internet wrong

Re: Password managers

I have a password manager for my home PC - it's a text file. It is there for my convenience, given that nobody but me uses my PC.

Because it is a text file, I think it will fly under the radar if ever my machine is hacked. I imagine hackers are looking for programs in memory, not all the text files on disk (besides, this one is on the NAS, so if I'm not connected, it's game over for finding that).

Where can I hide this mic? I know, shove it down my urethra

Dear God

The sheer amount of innuendo almost made me dizzy. Way to go, Dabbs !

Windows 10 1809: Now arriving on a desktop near you (if you want it)

Re: why is it your problem?

My wife is an elementary school teacher here in France. If you think the Education Nationale has on-call IT techs for hardware issues, I have news for you my friend.

Nobody cares about the equipment, nobody knows why the WiFi isn't working and if a reboot doesn't do the trick, the computers stay unused until such time as I walk in to check what is (or isn't) going on. If I get the things working again, everyone will be happy until it all goes pear-shaped again a few weeks later.

The younger, new teacher generation isn't all that better because now they've grown up on mobile and skipped the formative years of faffing around on school equipment or a home PC.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel : my wife is planning on retiring in four years. So I have at most four more years of school IT support to bear, and then I'll be done with it.

Organic stuff, radiation, unexpected methane... Yes, we're talking about Saturn's surprising rings

Space, it's fascinating

I've had National Geographic posters on my bedroom walls during all my childhood. The solar system, of course, but also one great map of the local galactic cluster, going from our solar system to the local cluster in a reverse zoom effect.

I always thought the Great Red Spot was eternal and lo, it is shrinking.

I've always thought Saturn and its rings to be eternal and lo, it is draining.

Nothing is eternal, even if the timeframes are measured in millennia instead of years. It is awesome, but sometimes a bit sad. One day, our descendants will look at Saturn they'll just see a second Jupiter.

It's good to be alive now.

UK space comes to an 'understanding' with Australia as Brexit looms

Poppycock

"To date, the UK remains the only country to have the dubious honour of developing an orbital launch system and then dumping it."

That is utter bollocks. The USA made the Saturn V for the Apollo landings and then scrapped it. They can't even make one any more.

Then they went and made the very impressive and expensive Shuttle, which also got scrapped for reasons we all know.

So the UK is most definitely not the only country to have developed and scrapped an orbital launch system.

You dirty DRAC: IT bods uncover Dell server firmware security slip

Well it was previously a good thing when access to the hardware was much more limited, the Internet was non-existant and malware was limited to making your computer say hi on boot on a specific day.

Nowadays malware is much more dangerous, and a disgruntled employee with server room access is practically one web search away from downloading code that can hurt your business, so yes, being able to install unsigned hardware code is now insecure.

CEO pleads guilty of conspiring with drug cartels to sell them stealthy Blackberrys

Possible, but not required.

If you market a secure phone and guarantee that nobody will be able to snoop, you will naturally attract criminals who appreciate that sort of service.

And I think that, at that level, making a difference between high-flyers in criminal activities and high-flyers that don't want to be caught cheating may not be all that easy.

Clouds gather as Cloudera and Hortonworks settle on uneven merger

"allow the new business to cut down on duplicate staffing costs"

Yay for yet another example of merger followed by layoffs.

And congratulations for making it sound like a good thing. I'm sure those who will be fired for XMas will be thrilled for this opportunity to make the shareholders happy.

California cracks down on Internet of Crap passwords with new law to stop the botnets

No need for a unique password

It seems everyone is fixated on that point, when the article clearly indicates that another option is possible : forcing the user to change the default password on setup.

So no, there is no need to have a device-specific manual or anything else. Every manual is the same and printed the same way, it's just the consumer that has to change the password on setup and not forget it. Then curse and snarl six months later when he forgot it and needs to to force a reset on his IoT thingy.

Wi-Fi Alliance ditches 802.11 spec codes for consumer-friendly naming scheme

Re: Actually , no.

Indeed, and in the rare instances where I talk about WiFi with what the article names "common people", I just say WiFi, because that's all that is needed in the conversation.

But hey, change the name by all means. When it doesn't matter, I don't care.

Microsoft: OK, we have no phones, but look how much we love Android

Uh, because the hardware makers will tell MS to get stuffed ?

This isn't the '90s anymore, and Microsoft is not only not the only game in town any more, it has forfeited its presence in that particular market.

So, when you're begging for a seat, you do not give orders to the driver.

JAXA probe's lucky MASCOT plonks down on space rock Ryugu without a hitch

Flywheel ?

As I am obviously not as informed as some of my fellow esteemed commenters, I went a-hunting to find out what this mechanism was, and found this, which clarified everything.

There is, however, nary a flywheel anywhere.

Tsk, tsk.