Posts by Pascal Monett

Memo to Microsoft: Windows 10 is broken, and the fixes can't wait

Re: "In the 1990s, MS could never have been as stupid . . "

That is probably a significant part of the issue. Everyone remembers an MS that was lean and executed rather well. Not everyone realizes that when MS was a lean, mean fighting machine, it's because there was competition.

Where does MS have competition in the OS space now ? Nowhere. Ergo, no need to pay attention, got fat, got sloppy, got childish. Is now more interested in bling than functionalty.

And what can we do about it ? Zilch. Nobody is going to migrate to Linux because that is a functional nightmare for a company of just about any size.

So we bend over and take it, and MS knows we will.

Re: "Office was always far more reliable"

Except when the newer version couldn't read files created with the previous version.

Or corrupted them when saving.

El Reg is against sloppy software. It's not El Reg's fault that Microsoft is now in that category, nor is it El Reg's fault that all other "major" tech sites are brown-nosers.

Remember the "Biting the hand . . ." line ? That's what El Reg is for, and Microsoft deserves to be bitten.

Hard.

Forgotten that Chinese spy chip story? We haven't – it's still wrong, Super Micro tells SEC

Re: No trace of spying!

Not to mention a pic of "compromised" motherboard. Why isn't there a single pic ? Produce that and all the doubters will have to shut up.

Instead, we have this endless continuing of a useless argument, useless because nobody can prove anything either way.

Show me the goods or get out of the room.

I ship you knot: 2,400-year-old Greek trading vessel found intact at bottom of Black Sea

Re: Leave it there

I disagree. We should bring it up (*), disassemble it and examine the pieces and how they fit together to perfect our knowledge of their level of shipbuilding. I think that would give valuable insight into why they did things the way they did. I'm sure we'd learn a lot from that wreck.

* - if feasible, obviously, and given the depth, there may be a bit a challenge.

Zip it! 3 more reasons to be glad you didn't jump on Windows 10 1809

Re: "based on an immense, mostly undocumented database"

It's undocumented for the public - Microsoft is supposed to have its documentation in order.

There is no excuse for this continuing stream of shitty code. There's a reason - no QA - but no excuse.

Brit smart meter biz blamed Apple's iPhone 7 launch for its late taxes

Good on the judge

Taxman turned a deaf ear and demanded payment, and got a hard slap of truth : when someone calls, you answer the damn phone. You are neither a jailer nor a judge, you're an administration and your job is administer, not bully.

Yes, there are undoubtedly companies that are doing their best to skirt taxes (eh, Apple ?), but you do not decide to punish before you have probable cause to do so and, in this case, you didn't because you refused to listen.

Silent running: Computer sounds are so '90s

If they are, they don't have many versions left to go.

Which, apparently, is a good thing.

European Commission: We've called off the lawyers over Ireland's late collection of Apple back taxes

So does that mean that Apple had indeed received preferential treatment ?

Or is this just another magnificent political example of "we're not guilty of what you said, but here's the money to bury it anyway" ?

Haunted disk-drive? This story will give you the chills...

Put a heater in the safe then ?

I really would have liked a bit more of the forensic details on this one. I think I would be amazed as to how the guy actually realized there was a consation problem.

This story was worthy of a bit of the Columbo treatment - too bad it didn't get it.

Once more with feeling: Windows 10 October 2018 Update inches closer to relaunch

I'm just wondering

How long will it be before companies start phoning Redmond offices to say "hey, cut the bullshit releases out - we are working here !".

Constant uproar in the IT area of a company will inevitably have consequences on revenue at some point. If these shenanigans continue, Microsoft just might find itself in legal hot water.

Mobe networks battle to bring comms back after Hurricane Michael smashes US Gulf Coast

That involves digging, which is tiring and covers you in dirt.

Plus, the beancounters prefer spending money on fixing tomorrow than on digging today because digging is more expensive in the short run and nobody knows what the long run is anymore.

NASA gently nudges sleeping space 'scopes Chandra, Hubble out of gyro-induced stupor

Re: The Optimal Number of Gyroscopes

The optimal number is, of course, three because if one disagrees with the two others its results can be ignored in favor of the most common result.

Independantly of whatever argument there may be about using two, I think the point is that one of the three has gone bad, two are left and you need to have a spare. So they're shutting down the faulty one, keeping one as a spare and only using one gyro. When that one fails, the spare will pick up the job and Hubble will continue to be useful.

That's how I see it anyway.

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

Did you read the post before mine ?

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.

Samsung: Swanky hardware alone won't save a phone maker

I was given an S2 for the job, now I have an A3

The only reason I keep it is because it is a required work tool, it's not because I like it. I don't, I hate the things. Every update changes something in the UI. Options move, some things are reset and there is never any warning or explanation. I hate it all.

Please explain why it was soooo necessary to move the Flashlight option from lower right to middle left ? It's nothing, but it is supremely annoying when you had the habit of going lower right.

Either you let me put it where I want, or you LEAVE IT WHERE IT IS. You are not "enhancing" the UI by changing stuff all the time, you're just making everything confusing and frustrating.

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.

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.