Posts by Pascal Monett

How is the big switch to the public cloud working out?

"Neither has delivered a knock-out blow to the other"

And that will never happen, simply because the world is a complicated place and no one solution is good for everyone all the time.

Companies and people will find the Cloud useful for some use cases, on-premise for others. I'm convinced that any given single entity (company or individual) will find that it ends up using both, each kind for specific applications or use cases.

And, in the end, that is what computing should be about : bringing the best solution to a given problem. It is not about bringing one solution and removing all the other possibilities.

Forget One Windows, Microsoft says it's time to modernize your apps

What ?

"Microsoft is endeavouring to improve manageability and security by making it behave more like a mobile operating system, including Store-delivered applications"

Just how the hell SECURITY is being improved by making a PC more like a bloody mobile phone ?

And as for manageability, don't make me laugh. Just put the UI back to Windows 7 and a PC can be managed just fine.

Finally, keep your stupid Store. I will not have myself locked in on my PC. It's MINE, Microsoft, not yours.

Oracle users meet behind closed doors: Psst – any licensing tips?

"the murky world of licensing and software asset management"

It's only murky because the supplier is doing its damndest to make sure that it stays that way.

Licensing should be simple : you have how many people using this software ? It's this much.

End of.

AI might outsmart ITIL, make MTBF moot, says ServiceNow strategist

"Artificial Intelligence might..."

When we have AI, there's a ton of things that might happen.

Until that day, we DON'T HAVE A I.

Stop using the notion.

Viasat: We're going to sue Ofcom over EU-wide airline Wi-Fi network

Well he does have a point

""If I have to adhere to regulations and another does not, we don't know how to play in that area [..]"

It is rather obvious that if you build something to international standards and the thing you need to talk to doesn't respect them, there will be issues.

Beyond that, this is major industrial infrastructure stuff and negotiations on that level are completely beyond me. For starters, I have a hard time believing that someone would put up the money for a satellite and its launch without ensuring that it would function properly for its intended use. A satellite is not another sales point you set up over a week-end, it's a major investment and I cannot imagine that everything was not planned and vetted from A to Z.

There was a major communication hiccup in all this, and someone is no doubt feeling very uncomfortable right now.

You may not know it, but you've already arrived at DevOps Land

Re: "I have pointed this out before"

I'm glad you have. You might want to point it out to the author of the article, because he's apparently not got the message since he writes : "Getting to full adoption, however, is tricky.".

DevOps, Serverless, ODFO

Allow me to "get off my lawn" on this subject, again.

I cannot stand this almost condescending attitude that consists in saying that DevOps is the only way to go and Cloud is the only future.

Cloud means Internet means bandwidth and availability limitations. Only big companies can budget failover Internet connections from different providers, and I'm not sure they all do that. In addition, SLAs are all very nice, but the Cloud is still regularly kicking the bucket at this point and I'm pretty sure companies are not okay with paying hundreds of employees to twiddle their thumbs until someone else resolves the issues.

As for serverless, for Christ's sake please stop trying to make us believe that our data is secure in the Cloud. At this point in time, it is most certainly not. I will believe in serverless when you have the ability to assign your own keys of whatever length you decide you need, and all data is encrypted from start to finish and nothing is left unencrypted outside your premises.

Show me a cloud vendor that can work with that and we only have availability and backups to discuss. Until then, I simply do not agree with Cloud for anything resembling confidential data.

Of course, small companies will look at their budget and think "Cloud will cost me less", which is likely true right until Cloud wipes their data and can't get it back, but hey, small companies, eh ? What can you do ?

US energy, nuke and aviation sectors under sustained attack

"depressingly-familiar tactics"

Yes, it is quite depressing that people still haven't cottoned on to the idea that a complete stranger does not send you confidential documents out of the blue.

I receive invoices and such from people I don't know. After a "yeah, sure" moment, I check the originating address to be sure and, generally, that's when the game is up. Either the domain has nothing to do with the purported origin (eg. a mail from Microsoft that is sent from a Gmail account), or worse, it supposedly came from my own domain (I am one of three users in my domain).

It doesn't take more than two brain cells to figure out that a message from SomeGuy2748 is not a professional source. There is no company on Earth that registers its employees like that, ergo no professional mail can come from such a source.

And yet people still get taken in by such stupid shenanigans.

Once more, with feeling: Dawn to take a closer look at Ceres

Hundreds of millions of km away

and yet, the boffins know exactly where Dawn is at any given second, know exactly how much fuel to use to attain a given orbit or orientation, and get the data they're looking for even though it is physically impossible for any available telescope to see the spacecraft and visually check that all is well.

Mind. Blown.

On the other hand, it's very likely they're not using Excel for their orbital calculations...

Pixel 2 tinkerers force Google's hand: Secret custom silicon found

Interesting review. I'm using a dumb phone at the moment, but if I ever have the need for a smartphone again in the future, I've learned of a few things to check on (like Playing Now - that needs to be shut off).

Vodafone, EE and Three overcharging customers after contracts expire

Re: "Sorry, but this would only happen to the most stupid of stupid people."

Welcome to the real world !

IBM broke its cloud by letting three domain names expire

Re: "How about [..] the hosting company sends you multiple letters"

I have a domain name registered. I pay for it by 10-year blocks. When the time comes to renew, I get a mail from my registrar warning me about it.

I don't need a calendar app, I just need to read my mail.

I fail to see how this can be improved.

On the other hand, I can very well see how a major company can fuck up on this kind of thing. The guy responsible for registering the domain has left, the registration email account has been discontinued after a reorganization, and the swarm of managers in between have never wondered or even thought of checking how the domain names were managed.

Thus, the domains lapsed, the functionality was broken, and the managers scurried around like headless chickens until somebody with a clue phoned the registrar and got things sorted out.

Yes, British F-35 engines must be sent to Turkey for overhaul

@ Robert Sneddon

The A-10 Warthog has an excellent reputation among all people who have either flown it, or been saved by people who flew it.

The adjectives generally used to describe it are "awesome", "deadly" and "badass".

Excuse me if I am not impressed by the F-35's mission ; it has yet to prove that it can indeed fulfill that mission. The Warthog has fulfilled its mission, which was to get in close and rain hell upon the enemy while surviving multiple hits. This page details the fact that in Desert Storm a group of 136 Warthogs flew 8077 sorties and only suffered the loss of 6 aircraft.

It seems to me that, even in range of AA weapons, heavy machine guns and light rapid fire cannon, that plane did a damn good job.

How DeepMind's AlphaGo Zero learned all by itself to trash world champ AI AlphaGo

Re: "Does the program actually 'know' it is playing Go"

Obviously not, otherwise we would have AI now.

Computers and programs know nothing, they just execute instructions and flip bits. It's the programmer that knows what he is to code for, and writes the instructions that will achieve the end result.

I'm guessing the atoms don't mind all that much.

Stealth web crypto-cash miner Coinhive back to the drawing board as blockers move in

El Reg should install this tool

I block ads because safety, but I would gladly give you processing time.

And since I spend a fair amount of time during the day with one of your pages loaded in a browser, it would be worth it for you.

What the fdisk? Storage Spaces Direct just vanished from Windows Server in version 1709

What I really like

This update scheme is marvelous. Install the update and play Russian Roulette with your infrastructure !

Guess which core functionality is missing this time !

Scramble to re-architect your infrastructure in 60 minutes !

Live on the bleeding edge of DevOps and see if you bleed to death !

As a side note : why are we finding out about this after the update was released ? Shouldn't there have been a warning before release ? Is this a case of nobody paying attention, or did Microsoft actually forget to say something about the new version's functionalities (or lack thereof) ?

The age of six-monthly Windows Server updates starts … now!

"while Azure users don't notice OS changes"

I'm sure they will.

Soon.

Yeah, but it gets broken a hell of a lot less.

Customers cheesed off after card details nicked in Pizza Hut data breach

Congratulations ! You have found one !

Come back when you have another thousand and we'll start talking about this little-known other thing called PayPal . . .

Yeah, because BitCoin is so widely used by brick-and-mortar shop websites already.

uBlock Origin ad-blocker knocked for blocking hack attack squawking

Hang on a minute

"Helme told El Reg that uBlock Origin’s blanket policy was not only unworkable but ill-conceived. Any information reported back to a website from one of its own webpages should be known to the website anyway: the site generated the page, after all."

So you're saying that anything reported back should be known anyway, then you knock uBlock for not reporting ?

If you know it, you don't need a report. So what's the problem ?

As for me, you're not getting a report anyway, because NoScript. There is yet to be a hack that can pass NoScript.

Aviation industry hits turbulence as Airbus buys into Bombardier’s new jetplanes

Sorry to rain on your parade Big John, but I'm French and living in France. That means that I have absolutely no relation to your "left".

Indeed, most of the time I believe you Americans believe we French are Communists.

In any case, you'll have to continue waiting for your dear 'acceptance phase'.

"if carriers are willing to install Sardine Class on A380s"

If ?

I'm pretty sure that, if I ever decide to take a flight again, I'll have to buy a 1st-class ticket just to have enough room to breathe.

I'm pretty sure it's coming along like everything else Trump promises : straight to /DEV/NULL.

Capgemini: We love our 'flexible, flowing' spade

That spade is sharp ?

In what universe ? To me it looks like a fat slob overflowing the couch. The Cheetos are hidden underneath.

Argh, my loafer just fell down the rope ladder! Yes, I'm in the Microsoft treehouse

"tree-based meeting spaces"

Right. Because rooms are overrated, I get it.

I imagine this is what will happen :

So, which treehouse should I schedule the meeting in ? Ah, Niagra is taken at that time. Too bad, it has the best view. Well I guess I'll just reserve Yellowstone, then. Ah no, I forgot, you have to be more than 5 to reserve it. Well it'll have to be Grand Canyon then. Damn, it takes 10 minutes to walk there. So, do I set the meeting time 10 minutes before, or will that confuse everyone into thinking they have to start out 20 minutes earlier ?

Screw it, the meeting's only 15 minutes anyway. I'll just set the start time to when it's supposed to start.

I hope Janet won't go to Rushmore again. She always goes to Rushmore because it's closest to her office. The we have to wait for her to realize nobody's coming, then she calls and finds out she has to go somewhere else. And, her office being on the other side of the campus, if she doesn't go straight to Grand Canyon, she'll never have time to get there before the end of the meeting.

I have a bad feeling about this. Maybe I should just reserve Meeting Room A in the central building as usual.

The Google Home Mini: Great, right up until you want to smash it in fury

With lots and lots of apathy.

He's been assimilated. He is now lost to Humanity.

Why does everyone always link to YouTube ? Can't anyone read any more ?

That is what they want us to think.

Release the KRACKen patches: The good, the bad, and the ugly on this WPA2 Wi-Fi drama

Re: Has to be within range

I believe that startup incubators have a bunch of companies that are in range of each other without much choice in the matter.

I know one which actually only has one WiFi access point for all the freelancers in the vicinity. No cables available.

Would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Here's a timeless headline: Adobe rushes out emergency Flash fix after hacker exploits bug

"Adobe, [..] proudly trumpeting"

Um, no Adobe. Just no.

You have no right to be proud of anything. Not of the ham-fisted way you bullied your Photoshop customers to the cloud, and certainly not of the historical catastrophe that is Flash.

Neutron stars shower gold on universe in big bang, felt on Earth as 100-second grav wave

"large amounts of gold and platinum were produced in the merger"

Having scoured the Internet for more information, this article cleared up a number of things for me.

Indeed, in my original opinion, neutron stars are made of neutrons. Gold and platinum are not, so how could a merger of neutrons produce anything else but neutrons ?

Obviously, the energy involved has something to do with it. As the neutron stars collide, the residue of the explosion and the inconceivable energies involved create and eject the matter that is detected.

It is absolutely mind-blowing to imagine the sequence of events that conducted to the presence of gold on Earth. First, not too far away from our future Sun, two supermassive stars orbiting each other went supernova in the very early days of the Universe, leaving two neutron stars in the wake of the unbelievable cataclysm. These neutron stars managed to stay in orbit, then gradually came close enough to merge, causing the creation of an Earth-sized amount of gold that was spewed into the local interstellar medium.

Meanwhile, our Sun formed and its solar system followed, and was showered by the gold and platinum from the merger, some time in our past.

Then the Earth formed, capturing some meager proportion of that gold, and now we are digging the deepest tunnels ever made by Man to recover said gold.

Mind. Blown.

Edit : This video is very informative as well.

Ethereum blockchain is sailing to Byzantium – hard fork up and running

2.5 million Ether is $2 ?

Looks like Ethereum ain't gonna cause BitCoin any problem any time soon.

Huge power imbalance between firms and users whose info they grab

"huge effects on things like competition between companies"

Silly me, here I was thinking that companies competed by making a better product. Now, in the 3rd millennium, they will just compete by having better customer details.

After all, who cares about the product, right ?

Keep your voice down in the data centre, the HDDs have ears! I SAID, KEEP...

So, the next '007 evil genius plan will be . .

to stop the London Stock Exchange by blasting a rock concert in the server room ?

Well, we've had worse.

Remember how you said it was cool if your mobe network sold your name, number and location?

Re: Now Americans can see

Of course they can see. They just choose to ignore because - hey look, shiny !

Elon Musk says Harry Potter and Bob the Builder will get SpaceX flying to Mars

Re: Colonist motivation

"What's really needed is an economic reason to go"

Nonsense. Humans do not care about economics, otherwise our global economy would be in quite a different state. There are people who are willing to go simply to be there, on another planet, and damn the cost.

Heck, there are any number of valid reasons to go :

- hipsterism (you lamers are still back on Earth, pah!)

- get away from the in-laws (okay, it's expensive, but it's foolproof)

- see a Martian sunrise

- die on a different planet than the one you were born on

- have a job (those buildings aren't going to erect themselves)

- be able to call oneself a space colonist

I'm sure you can find lots of other equally valid reasons from the human point of view.

As such, any company that can offer the trip is sure to have hundreds, if not thousands of customers lining up at the launch pad, begging to have their cash accepted. All any company has to do is make sure that it can actually survive financially and economically feasible is done.

Especially since you're not getting any right to complain if the trip isn't perfect - because you'll be dead.

Re: "The Moon is harder because it has no atmosphere"

Having an atmosphere is not going to make Mars any easier. Yes, it does have one, but a thin one. It is not, however, a breathable atmosphere. As such, I fail to see just how that makes things any easier.

On Mars or on the Moon, a hole in your suit means you die if you can't get to safety quick enough.

On either, you're lacking running water and have to extract it from the soil. On either, you have dust that will get into everything (okay, bonus for Mars on that one because Moon dust is extremely abrasive).

Nope, can't see that Mars is any easier to colonize than the Moon.

And it's a lot farther away (given current technology).

'Open sesame'... Subaru key fobs vulnerable, says engineer

Re: "a locked car with no trace of tampering"

Would also not figure very high on the list of important things to investigate from a Police Dept. point of view.

Not to mention that every single insurance company would point to absence of break-in and leave you up the creek without a paddle.

So not good in any sense of the word.

Twitter to be 'aggressive' enforcer of new, stronger rules

Go for it.

Please.

Re: "these guys are entirely serious about actually killing people and taking pride in what they do"

On the other hand, it is their job.

They risk being killed whatever happens. Might as well take pride in being competent.

I'm sure you are.

My wife, against my counsel, signed up to Facebook a few years ago. She used it for over two years until one day, out of the blue, she told me she was shutting it down because "it made her aggressive" and she decided that she didn't like that.

I was so happy and relieved that day.

Pulitzer-winning website Politifact hacked to mine crypto-coins in browsers

Re: "suspect I'll get complaints about it"

Be open. Make a poll. Put a page explaining what and why. Gather the results and then you can decide and be confident that your decision is good.

If it were me, I would basically say that if visitors agree to cryptomining, then I will take away the ads. From what I read about ad revenue, it's a hassle finding out what is legit and what isn't in the money you are paid. Better to skip the nuisance and go to a system that is clear and fair.

With readership approval, of course.

It's Patch Blues-day: Bad October Windows updates trigger BSODs

Re: "sue Slurp over breach of contract"

What breach ?

The EULA specifically absolves Microsoft of everything that can happen to your machine.

The only way anyone could sue over Microsoft's repeated failures is to attack the EULA and get the part that absolves MS of any problem off the EULA.

THEN we get to sit back, grab a jumbo popcorn and watch the dogpile.

Top of the radio charts: Jodrell Bank goes for UNESCO World Heritage status

960,000,000GB of data per day

Well that's another exabyte storage house planned then. Maybe they should go directly to Yottabyte ?

They've only gone and made a chemical-threat-detecting ring

"after three hours in open air [..] the agarose gel dried"

Well guys, it was a nice idea, but implementation will not be for mass consumption.

Chuck the ring format, make it a pendant. Give it to hazmat workers evolving in unknown conditions, working in 2-hour shifts, and you'll be on to something.

As it is ? I don't think a kleptomaniac would want to be caught dead with that thing.

'There has never been a right to absolute privacy' – US Deputy AG slams 'warrant-proof' crypto

Re: "What if decrypting that message is the KEY to getting or supporting all the other evidence?"

In other words, what if the message is the only proof ?

In that case, I'd argue that the suspect hasn't done anything yet, in which case why is he suspect ?

Oh, and before you go on about preventing terrorism, the 9/11 guys were known by the CIA and that prevented fuck all.

Dell makes $1bn bet that IoT at the edge can kill cloud computing takeover

As usual, security was mentioned nowhere

A large list of partnerships, covering a raft of areas, but not a peep about keeping things secure.

Business as usual then !