Posts by Pascal Monett

Analyse this: IBM moves Watson machine learning to mainframes

"develop insights instantly and dramatically grow the[ir] business"

As usual these days, for anything to be positive it has to be instantaneous.

Contrast with reality : this week I put in place some stat reporting agents on the size of a customer's databases and the number of new/changed records. The code works fine, the results are gathered daily.

Insights, however, will only be available (at best) beginning of March.

You can have the fastest, most intelligently-programmed platform in the world, you still have to wait for the data points.

That said, as the articles mentions, there is certainly room to improve data analysis. But let's cut the instant gratification crap, shall we ?

Bruce Schneier: The US government is coming for YOUR code, techies

@ Updraft102

You are eminently right, obviously.

I suppose you also use a flamethrower to redecorate your living room ?

Pwnd Android conference phone exposes risk of spies in the boardroom

"The integrity of our customer systems and data is a high priority for Mitel"

A high priority that apparently ranks below actually making sure the product is secure before shipping it.

Dear Microsoft – a sysadmin's wishlist

It's no longer YOUR computer

And MS has a long history of fudging about with Windows settings because it knows better than you do what it is you need - except that before, the impact was not so big since you could control and roll back any updates you didn't want.

But you no longer have control, and MS has decided that every Windows install is its own little playground to do with as it pleases - never mind that you paid for the hardware.

It's kind of like inviting someone over for dinner and five weeks later he's still there with his hand constantly in the fridge. He's eating your food, paying for nothing and you can't get rid of him.

Windows 7 is my last MS OS. I am currently contemplating Debian for my home server. That move will happen this year.

Thanks, MS - you've managed to finally push me out of my comfort zone.

Two words, Mozilla: SPEED! NOW! Quit fiddling and get serious

NoScript is my #1 priority

Firefox is the only browser I trust to run what I authorize to run, that makes it my #1 choice.

I have eliminated Chrome from my personal desktop because of Google's malware tactics when it comes to trying to remove it.

And IE is only used when I don't have the choice.

I also use Pale Moon and Seamonkey (with NoScript), but for specific things and to compartmentalize my data.

So I'm all for alternatives, but Firefox remains the only one I trust to do what I want. I pray that the devs aren't going to screw around with that, but if they do, then Seamonkey will take the slack (because NoScript).

Welcome to my world of The Unexplained – yes, you're welcome to it

What ?

"I sold my old car after 13 years to a dealer. Several years later a knock at the door announced a subsequent owner . . ."

So, you sold your car to a professional, who then sold it to a customer and told him/her who you were ?

Isn't that grounds for a lawsuit for breach of trust and violation of privacy ?

Want to come to the US? Be prepared to hand over your passwords if you're on Trump's hit list

@ Aodhhan

Congratulations, you managed a pretty good troll without any capital shouting. Well done.

First, you admirably redirected the issue about immigration, when the article actually mentions "tourists, travelers and visa holders". Brilliant reduction to your personal arena, masterfully done.

Then, having thus set the piece in your complete control, you take the mantel of authority to admonish The People about things they don't know. Of course, you follow by a pseudo-attack on the legitimacy of The People questioning government authority. A must, obviously.

But the end is a bit disappointing, really. A little half-hearted rally on lefties and parrots, no, that's just weak. And repeating "left wing" twice in the same paragraph, tsk, tsk. That ending is a letdown, really. Not half as a good as the paragraph before.

I'll give you a B -.

Carry on.

"g-men can log into Twitter, Facebook, online banking accounts, and so on, and rummage around"

With that kind of criteria, my guess is that around 75% of US citizens under the age of 30 would likely not be able to fly either if this search was applied to them.

In any case, if I had any inclination of wanting to spend money in the US (which I don't under the current Administration), given that I have no social media accounts and my webbanking account needs an OTP key which I will certainly leave at home, I guess those eagle-eyed intellectual wizards at the border control desks will just have to repeal me if I tried.

Somehow, I am almost wishing to see this go through just for the fun of watching (from afar) the meltdown that will undoubtedly ensure. Looks like The Donald is going to wreak more havoc on the US itself than anywhere else.

Can we have a popcorn icon ?

Cattle that fail, not pets that purr – the future of servers

"the ability to change services in a way that you may not like, and have no control over"

Thank you for putting that down in black and white. It is high time some PHBs start reading that more often.

More tech companies join anti-Trump battle, but why did some pay for his inauguration?

Of course it is. The best way to weaken an enemy is from the inside:

Eee by gum! Aye up, Microsoft, what's tha y' got? Cloud for accents?

"the technology is improving"

Undoubtedly, but it still fails with way too much regularity on anything that is not the simplest of soundbytes.

One day, we will undoubtedly have speech recognition capability that can actually recognize what a person is saying with a 95% or better success factor, but expert systems have to be fine-tuned and it has already taken years to get them where they are. I'm not holding my breath for this.

Honeypots: Free psy-ops weapons that can protect your network before defences fail

"a great experiment to analyze the adversary's moral limits"

If you're counting on the moral limits of your opponents, you have nothing to do managing security.

This is the Internet, the Wild West of human nature. Anything goes and there are no limits. Expect the worst and you'll never be surprised (maybe dismayed from time to time).

IBM's Marissa Mayer moment: Staff ordered to work in one of 6 main offices – or face the axe

So IBM wants to make its money in the Cloud now

Great idea.

Then I happen on this article, telling me that an IBM BlueMix cloud thingy is now free.

I'm sure IBM is going to have a roaring success if they manage their cloud like that.

Chinese pirates are facing lifelong 'social credit' downgrade

Re: "Nobody buying the fakes would pay for the real thing"

Um, does that mean that if I will never buy a given film, it's OK to torrent it ?

Don't think so.

Now, I do agree that the copycats are indeed giving publicity to the brands, I can imagine that the brands are somehow semi-tolerant of that because of that, and we all know that the flattery is the sincerest yada yada, but those arguments won't save you in court if you're caught selling fake branded merchandise.

Mixed bag of emotions right now

On the one hand, obviously it is a good thing that China be cracking down on all the fake Vuitton and the rest, no denying that.

On the other hand though, China is now going to be courted by the likes of RIAA and MPAA, who will no doubt "educate" the Chinese on "proper" DRM measures, trying to continue spreading their infectious influence and brain-dead ideas to the far reaches of the globe. That I appreciate a lot less.

Microsoft's DRM can expose Windows-on-Tor users' IP address

And that is indeed the only reason I still use Windows, of which 7 will be the last Windows I will ever have at home.

By the time the hardware requires 10, I'm guessing between Steam and some others that will surely crop up, I'll be able to kiss that infested swamp good bye without (too much) regret.

I just hope Blizzard will grow up about it all, because Diablo III is great fun a half hour at a time.

Re: So MS lost the keys already

Absolutely. As with all DRM, once again it is demonstrated that, where security is concerned, a closed-source "solution" is just a disaster waiting to happen.

What this means is that there are people out there who could conceivably wrap a film with the proper DRM security (without MS' knowledge) and serve that up to unsuspecting victims in order to grab their IP address. For Tor, which is specifically a platform supposedly enabling you to hide it, it is nothing less than a targeted attack.

I suppose this could also blow through most anon proxies as well, though I may be wrong.

And, given that the people who have this capability are not any open-source advocates or geeky teenagers wanting bragging rights, there's a good chance that they are blackhats, which means that once they have the IP address, mayhem will ensue.

Not good news in any case.

NASA's Curiosity puts cat among the climate pigeons: Lack of CO2 sinks water theory

Re: "which was supposedly a lot thicker"

And that is the entire question : what was in it ? Because apparently it wasn't carbon dioxide.

So the situation is :

1) there has been liquid water on Mars

2) for water to become liquid, there has to be a certain amount of atmospheric pressure and a certain temperature

3) the Sun was never hot enough to provide the temperature component, so there had to be greenhouse gas involved

4) evidence suggests that carbon dioxide is not that gas

It is a conundrum, no doubt about that.

Hello? Police? My darknet drug market was just hacked by criminals

I think the legal situation is very much a no for that kind of thing, not to mention that I do not believe that the police have the necessary chops to do it in the first place. The brightest minds do not look at a police salary and think "yes ! this is my ideal career path".

Unfortunately, some very bright minds do look at the dark side, see the money involved and think "yup, I'm going there".

Update or shut up: Microsoft's choice for desktop Skypers

There's a good run-down of Skype alternatives here. Most of them are basically free, but I don't think any of them are FOSS.

FYI: Ticking time-bomb fault will brick Cisco gear after 18 months

Re: Planned obsolescence

Generally that plan is set for five years. 18 months seems a bit ambitious to me, and some people just might notice. Oh, wait . . .

Chinese hackers switch tactics for spying on Russian jet makers

An impressive list

China basically has every important weapon type the rest of the world has. Including nukes, but not aircraft carriers (unless I'm mistaken).

Chinese weapons not battle-tested ? If the jets fly, they'll reach a target. I have no doubt the Chinese are as intent on testing and training as any other Air Force, and nobody has ever said that Chinese are dumb.

But all this is rhetoric. We've passed the stage where a major country could declare war on another major country - we all know that such a war will be devastating, maybe to the point of annihilation. China, like Russia, will continue to be treated with the utmost caution so as to not push them too far.

As for the US, who knows what the Orange One will consider is "too far" ?

2016: Snapchat loses $515m... 2017: Snapchat rips veil off $3bn IPO

Not only that

What money it makes is based on advertisement, it already doesn't make enough and specifically plans to not make enough in the future.

A company that "may eventually break into the black" is not a company I'm interested in, and I can't see how anyone who wants to make money will be.

A $3 billion IPO ? We'll see how that crashes and burns (unless, of course, the Internet proves once again how stupid the collective can get).

Hard numbers: The mathematical architectures of Artificial Intelligence

Congratulations. Thanks to you everything seems so much more simple. You should go and teach all those scientists who have dedicated their career to this field.

Unfortunately, I am a more literal person. Artificial Intelligence, for me, means that we can "make" a construct that, when activated, is capable of learning and deciding on it's own. Like a teenager, if you will.

At this point in time, you can spout weighted phrases all you want, but there is no AI that will decide it wants a cigarette despite all the medical data that weighs against that.

A true AI would be capable of going beyond the data, because it would decide that it wanted to know what it was like to smoke. So maybe intelligence is partly defined by emotion - in which case AI is even farther away than we imagine it to be.

Is it the beginning of the end for Visual Basic? Microsoft to focus on 'core scenarios'

"the writing has been on the wall"

That may be the case, but there's a lot of people not looking at the wall. I know a fair number of financial organizations that are still heavily invested in VB - not to mention a few governmental ones I have visited in the last few years.

Microsoft may eventually state that it is stopping development and/or maintenance on VB, but just like Window XP, it doesn't decide when people finally stop using the damn thing.

US tech giants take brave immigration stand that has nothing to do with profit whatsoever

"welcome the changes your administration has made in recent days."

Well, there must be some mighty brown noses today.

And I love the mention of "American values". Funny they never mention those when it's time to actually make something.

Fear not, Europe's Privacy Shield is Trump-proof – ex-FTC bigwig

"[..] fire any Attorney General who does not agree to his executive orders"

So much for the constitutional separation of judicial and executive powers. Well at least the AG won't get shot, which is just about the only difference between Trump and your run-of-the-mill tinpot dictator.

Brill can say whatever she wants, and she can even believe it, but nothing is safe from Trump at this point in time.

Oculus gift: VR biz to cough up half a billion dollars for ripping off software copyright

@Klatern

"GPU's are catching up fast, and should allow the resolutions needed which are the only key problem right now"

I beg to differ. VR has a certain number of issues, not the least being weight and freedom of movement. I have cognitive dissonance when told about how immersive it is - you're immobile in a chair and tethered by a cord. A good friend of mine told me it was pretty good though, so I have to think that there is a future for it beyond medical applications.

For gaming, however, I think that VR will only really be immersive when you have a sphere around you in which you can walk, run, roll and jump. That, along with whatever headset tech exists at that time, and then you can talk about immersive. Until then, my 26" Iiyama is plenty immersive to me when sitting at my desk.

That said, I am keeping tabs on this newfangled toy. I'm sure that, one day, the tech will advance enough to win me over. Not yet there, though.

"Oculus products are built with Oculus technology"

and ZeniMax employees.

Honestly, Oculus would not be where it is today if Carmak hadn't gone over to Oculus with a group of colleagues. If I were the CEO of ZeniMax, I'd be seething. Half a billion wouldn't seem exaggerated to me.

Dido queen of carnage steps down from TalkTalk

Yup, that's definitely a grade A whitewash right there. And everyone is saying the words with a straight face. There comes a time where you think there just might be a bit too much education in some circles.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go wash my monocle . . .

Kylie withdraws from Kylie trademark fight, leaving Kylie to profit from… existing?

Botox.

It's thanks to the Botox.

Former Mozilla dev joins chorus roasting antivirus, says 'It's poison!'

Re: "getting rid of JavaScript would have EVEN MORE SEVERE consequences"

Yeah, all those cool sites would become a lot less cool, all the tracking and data gathering would be drastically reduced, and ads wouldn't be able to infect machines any more

Can't have that, obviously.

You cannot apply reason to markets that are governed by lawsuit.

New York to draft in 250 IT contractors because state staff 'lack talent'

For me, Albany was a city. Thanks to your remark, instead of making a snarky comment on how New York could possibly be called Albany, I now have to thank you for teaching me that Albany is a cornucopia of different places and the USA has more Albany than the entire rest of the world put together.

Any day I learn something is a good day, so thank you.

Texas cops lose evidence going back eight years in ransomware attack

It was a US police station. You really think there's a chance that they're running Linux ? Because if they were, the story would be a lot bigger since there would be a vulnerability exposed in Linux.

No, this is a bog-standard Windows environment, likely running with Outlook email. If they're lucky, they've got funds for an Exchange server.

Which means they're about as secure as a whore who never uses condoms, and the consequence is inevitable.

In passing, maybe it might have been worth 4 fucking Bitcoins to ensure that a single accused person (not to mention the dozens that might be implicated) could have his innocence proven ?

Oh, sorry. This is the US of NSA - an arrest means YOU'RE FUCKING GUILTY, YOU PIECE OF TRASH.

2017 is already fail: Let’s try a Chinese reboot

Re: "fuck off, I've got work to do"

Amen to that.

I have often been encumbered by excessive reporting structures - often in environments that are more administratively oriented than productive (meaning a small company doesn't have the time to waste on this shit, they want the result, not the report).

The gem in this collection was when I was consulting in a bank which had a guy working on a time reporting tool for the IT department developed in . . . Access. Between the multi-user issues and what I must suppose was either bad programming or a truckload of specification requirements, it took one hour every day to fill out the timesheet for the day. To the point that everyone was specifically filling a 1-hour slot with the title "Time Reporting".

Just starting the frakkin interface took 5 minutes.

Thankfully my contract ended shortly after this abomination was put in place.

Stop replying! pleads NetApp customer stuck in reply-allpocalypse

Good.

It takes a looooong time to educate people and the only way they really learn is with pain. So let them live the pain of this ReplyAll hell that they have inflicted on themselves - it builds character, as I once heard.

Seriously though, what organization is stupid enough to let the Reply All function remain available ? I remember one large administration that actually had the balls to put a check on that button. It was greyed out, but you could still click it. If you did click it, you got a popup asking you to confirm that really, really wanted to be singled out for replying to everyone instead of just the sender. If you insisted, you could hardly pretend that you had done so by accident, so it was your ass if you did it wrong.

For my part, I think the Reply All button should be tightly controlled in a company, with only managerial-level staff being able to use it. And even then, lower-level staff would be excluded from the catfight.

In truth, if you do not agree with something someone sent, you answer that person and you leave everyone else the fuck out of the argument until it is solved, in which case you could eventually send a notice out to everyone with the final decision.

But everyone has to treat mail like a frakkin soapbox and broadcast their opinion to all and sundry.

Learn to speak when you have something important to say, and shut the fuck up if you just want to spout off. There's 4chan for that.

Microsoft's Cloud UI brings Windows full circle

For the love of God, get your bearings straight

You insist on shoveling the Start button into a phone UI, then you turn around and insist on taking it away from a full-fledged PC ?

Is the MS design department based in Colorado, by any chance ? Or was it the MS design department that managed to lobby hard enough to have their weed decriminalized ?

Which schizophrenic idiot approved all this ?

Of course, silly me, there must have been hundreds of idiots on the managerial merry-go-round. No way you can so totally lose the plot with a single, coherent corporate vision. This just proves that MS never, ever had any vision whatsoever. It started by stealing someone else's code, and continued blindly flailing about the two sole products that ever brought in the money.

Success is overrated.

H0LiCOW! Hubble's constant update paves way for 'new physics'

Yes! Another "hang on, that's wierd" moment

Science is advancing again !

And it is important, since the slightest microscopic change in value could have an immense impact when multiplied by the billions of light-years we're already looking at.

Machine-learning boffins 'summon demons' in AI to find exploitable bugs

@ Smooth Newt

"Which would seem to be a bit of a showstopper [..] for, like self-drive cars"

I think we're going to see about that in the years to come. Then again, I'm against calling that AI. It's just reams of code developed for a specific purpose. Highly complex code to be sure, with a boatload of requirements such as we have never seen before, but specialized code nonetheless. You won't be able to put it up against Kasparov in a game of chess, which is something a true AI could do.

Nuclear power station sensors are literally shouting their readings at each other

Encrypted Morse code transmitted via sound

This is the definition of an elegant solution. Using Titanic-era communications to monitor nuclear power stations is just magnificent. Well done to that company and the engineers it employs.

HummingBad malware returns in new, more annoying variant

"the authors have added better ad fraud capabilities to the code"

It uses VMs, downloads malware by the dozen, and doesn't even have to root the phone.

And you still want us to not install adblockers ?

Thank goodness those Play stores are so severely scrutinized and controlled to avoid letting a copy of something Google wants to keep for itself piece of malware through.

(yes, I did read that they removed the offending apps - it still means that had to remove them instead of blocking them at submission, which is what a proper control should have done)

How Lexmark's patent fight to crush an ink reseller will affect us all

"patent exhaustion doesn't apply when patented goods are sold outside the US"

Isn't that wonderful ? Finally US law acknowledges that there is an "outside". Well, in some cases. When money is to be won by an American company (duh).

Oh well, baby steps, I guess.

Cisco's WebEx Chrome plugin will execute evil code, install malware via secret 'magic URL'

It could be called the Flash Awards.

Samsung Electronics is on fire! In a good way as profits leap

Trillions of Won

I've always wondered about countries that keep a financial count that requires their banking statements to be a foot wide. I understand that it is quite pleasant to see that one's salary is in the million range, but I would personally prefer the currency to be at least dollar in that case.

What is it that keeps countries with a currency that you need to count in hundreds just for a loaf of bread ? Is there an economic justification to all those zeros, or is it just social pressure ?

Furby Rickroll demo: What fresh hell is this?

"with a suitable proxy"

Yes, because 99% of Furby buyers will obviously have the suitable proxy already waiting and configured . . .

Oracle lied: Database giant is axing hundreds of staff – at least 450 in its hardware div

"[..] politically motivated, based on false allegations, and wholly without merit."

And you won't be laying anyone off either, right ? Oh wait, I get it, that was true for 2016.

Now that we're in 2017, they can axe away with a clear . . nope, doesn't apply either.

Ah, to live in the lofty spheres of existence where other lives are just numbers on a spreadsheet to be jumbled about while sipping a drink until the desired result is obtained . . .

Government to sling extra £4.7bn at R&D in bid to Brexit-proof Britain

Re: "identify those athletes that will probably succeed"

Although I generally agree with your point, there is the issue of identifying said research "athletes". Not an easy thing to do because research is, by definition, a domain where nobody really knows where they'll end up.

It's not because you say that you're looking for room-temperature superconductive materials that that's what you'll find. You can just as easily find nothing, or something completely different.

That is why funding has to be less selective - you never know which horse to bet on to finish the race, nor do you know if the money you spend on one thing isn't going to show results in a totally different area a few years (or decades) later.

We've found a ‘vaccine’ for fake news. Wait! No, we really are Cambridge researchers

I'm willing to submit to a test to find out.

Symantec carpeted over dodgy certificates, again

Certificates are indeed expensive

Not having them can be more expensive. Think lost business because not trustworthy.

It's about building a chain of trust and showing that you are among those who make the effort. Of course, the fact that there are self-signed certificates kinda defeats the point, but then again, it can be argued that self-signed are just as valid as CA-signed, especially when CAs goof up and do stupid things. Errare humanum est and all that. For Joe User it must be impossibly confusing.

The fact remains that we are in dire need of knowing who to trust and who to be cautious about in the Wild Wild Intertubes. This certificate thing could help in the long run.