Posts by Pascal Monett

Drunk user blow-dried laptop after dog lifted its leg over the keyboard

Good on Jim

He was perfectly right to dump the whole sorry mess. Being a manager does not entitle you to making a godawful mess and then expecting everyone else to clean up after you - except that, obviously, that does tend to happen quite a lot.

In any case, a melted keyboard is certainly to be interpreted as a dead laptop. Even without the aroma and hygiene issue, it was most likely dead as a doorknob anyway.

Once I had a work laptop (a Thinkpad) which, due to a mistaken movement which I very much regretted, some Coke spilled onto the keyboard. I immediately turned over the laptop and tried to shake all the liquid out, finishing the job with tissues to dry everything as best I could. The laptop continued working for the rest of the evening, seemingly without trouble. I backed up everything important before shutting down, just in case. Turns out in case was the case, and the laptop never started up again. I got a replacement with an admonishment to keep the Coke away from the keyboard and that was that.

So yeah, dog pee all over, no attempt to dry it up with paper towels and applying hair dryer until the keyboard melts ? That thing was completely dead. No use wasting time on it and so much for that moron's budget and "important files".

Google's 'adblocker' is all about taking back control

Firefox, NoScript and uBlock Origin.

FTFY

What a To-Do! Microsoft snuffs out Wunderlist

"You have to wonder how a company like MS, that really did produce some of the best (and certainly popular) software around has turned into the total insane asylum it appears to be nowadays"

Easy : mountains and mountains of money that insulate MS from the cost of failure.

Any normal company that pours $200 million into something does so with the firm intent of recovering the cost and making money from the investment because its survival is at stake. Microsoft, on the other hand, has money coming in whatever happens, so the fact that it can afford to lose $200 million basically means it has no clear incentive to monetize said $200 million to survive.

Oh, of course, high-level managers are around implying that the investment had better bear fruit, but then they run off to pay attention to the next billion-dollar investment and everything is lost in the maelstrom of day-to-day business. Then, at some point later on, somebody stumbles on the file and takes a look, brings it to some high-level manglement's attention and gets told "eh, that thing ? Didn't you follow last week's management session ? It's out-of-date, no longer part of our new outlook. Get rid of it."

Because Microsoft can still afford to change outlook every week. Companies that fight for survival cannot - they have to stick to their guns because they can't afford new ones. Not until the investment has paid for itself, that is.

Mastercard launches card that replaces PIN with fingerprint sensor

@ patrickstar

In all of my bank history, I had one brush with fraud. I had gone on holiday to the US (back when it was still the Home of the Brave) and one small shop had tried to skim me by presenting the same bill twice, but the second date was days after the first.

As soon as I found that on my statement I went straight to my BNP representative and showed him the issue. The refund was immediate and without fuss.

As far as I'm concerned, the EU environment of Chip & Pin is very efficient for me and I largely prefer it to the totally insecure magnetic strips still used in the US.

That said, I'd prefer my VISA to not have any mag strip at all. I guess it's to remain compatible with the US and other countries that have not yet migrated or are still in the process of doing so.

Flaws found in Linksys routers that could be used to create a botnet

"11 per cent of the active devices exposed were using default credentials"

That is a user issue. I doubt there's anything any company can do to thwart that kind of problem - unless the password is by default the serial number of the kit. Don't think that's very easy to set up, but it should be doable - for a certain sum, obviously.

EU plans for blockchain 'observatory' raise concerns, says expert

Indeed. The only question is : who's going to do the stealing ?

Trump's lips sealed on surveillance, complains EU privacy chief

"We've given them time"

In the mean time, without any assurances and all, I hope that the data transfers have stopped, right ?

Oh, silly me, I forgot. The US has everyone's balls in jars in the Ready Room on level -4 of the White House - if you do something they don't like, they squeeze until you get the message.

The fact that EU citizens have singed up en masse to Facebook et al without a moment's thought to the privacy they have heard for years they are giving up does not bode well for EU governments having any nous to try and actually protect our data.

At this point, Hell and handbaskets come to mind.

Infinidat puts array to the test, says it 'wrecks' Pure and EMC systems

"virtually no IOs came direct from or go directly to disk"

I sincerely hope, in case of power failure, that they have a very capable battery back-up system with proven failover and generators that kick in to immediately supplement the batteries because otherwise I think there'll be a hell of clean-up job when the power comes back on again.

I'm sure they have that in mind, though. Just wonder what the figures are on power consumption and time-to-shutdown in case of outage.

Apple's zippy silicon leaves Android rivals choking on dust

The ol' PC performance race has shifted to mobile phones

And that is logical since the majority of computer users now use their phones (or a tablet) to do all the stuff they used to have to need a PC for.

Personally, I prefer watching YouTube or general surfing on a platform that has at least a 19" screen and a keyboard/mouse combo, along with a comfy chair to enjoy the experience in - but apparently I'm a rabid old curmudgeon. And I'm perfectly fine with that.

Re: What's so wrong with a Ferrari engine in a metro?

Let's see, maybe it's the fact that the tires are not up to the task, the brakes are certainly not either, and I'd rather not see the result of a Ferrari-engined Metro having skidded into a wall after failing to brake in time.

A car is not just a chassis where you drop an engine in. Cars are designed in every aspect to conform to the performance they are supposed to give. That is why you don't have any small cars with 8 or 6-cylinder engines either. They're not made for that kind of power and it would be dangerous to try.

Startup remotely 'bricks' grumpy bloke's IoT car garage door – then hits reverse gear

"users (Sheeple) are lapping up this connected IOT requiring external servers"

Yes, they are, but I'm not so sure that it is unfortunate. I think it is an excellent exercise in education.

When enough stories like this, or cloud brownouts making it just as impossible to operate the frakkin' IoT POS, have been published, the sheeple will intimately know that cloud-enabled IoT is nothing but a risk with little reward.

Cowbow outfits like Garadget who give themselves the right to cut off a paying customer simlpy because some thin-skinned support guy got brushed the wrong way will be a marvelous force in this direction, not the least because people are more intolerant than ever and the confusion between what I can do and what I have the right to do is constant these days.

In any case, Garadget is one more company that I have filed on my personal blacklist for abuse of power. I don't care about excuses here - the fact remains that a simple support bloke has the power to cut off a customer. Since the power remains, it will be abused.

Just like I have blacklisted Amazon's Kindle because Amazon has the power to remove a book that customer's paid for without the customer's consent.

It is urgent to realign tech companies with reality : having the means does not imply having the right.

McAfee is McAfee again, promises security with kum ba yah

Can't - he locked himself in his nuclear bunker and is on high alert for aliens.

WWW daddy Sir Tim Berners-Lee stands up for end-to-end crypto

Brilliant plan - which is already in place and progressing nicely

Just check the continued rants concerning STEM problems, the total absence of critical thinking in the educational curriculum and the rise and multiplication of "reality shows" and "social media" that suck out the collective IQ like leeches.

We're on the right path, nay - the path of righteousness. Amen, brother!

Hundreds of millions 'wasted' on UK court digitisation scheme

I take it you work for the Government ?

Yeah, but Moodle is not the solution that was pushed by the golf-buddy of the high-ranking official who awarded the contract, then waited for his new Mercedes to be delivered.

Re: "we have come to value ... Working software over comprehensive documentation"

Seems that, at this point in time, the UK Courts have neither.

Personally I think Agile or Waterfall make no difference if the project is not clearly defined and the steps to realizing said project not perfectly understood by everyone, from top managers to the underpaid code monkeys that hammer their keyboards.

It's time to stop thinking that we can implement country-wide IT projects without a year or two of high-level, expert study and preparation, followed by ruthless implementation of said project.

I'll always remember the best project manager I ever met - it was in an industrial tire-making plant. When we went to progress meetings, there was an agenda he had sent to the participants. Anything outside the agenda was mercilessly swatted aside with an imperious remark to the effect that that was not on the agenda. Any suggestion for additional functionality or unplanned functionality improvement was automatically put on the list for v1.1. And nobody dared complain.

End result ? Project delivered on spec, on cost and on time, with discussions for that famous v1.1 to happen later.

Greatest project I ever worked on.

Android beats Windows as most popular OS for interwebz – by 0.02%

"It marks the end of Microsoft's leadership worldwide..."

I wonder how much of a grudge the guy who wrote that had against MS.

Feels like he's been waiting a while before a chance to publish that sentence.

Not that it is any less true, of course. MS failures have been many, and their combined weight has finally dragged the behemoth down. It will still wallow in the mud for while, bleating loudly before silenced by sheer exhaustion.

Then we'll dress up the bones in a museum, and Life will go on.

D'oh! Amber Rudd meant 'understand hashing', not 'hashtags'

Re: "Banning end-to-end encryption"

A great idea, obviously. Here's something we cannot comprehend . . let's ban it ! Yea !

Go ahead, ban encryption. Apart from the obvious fact that, as soon as you have actually passed that into law every single UK-based website with personal details will be seeing their customer lists pilfered like there's no tomorrow, you are - again, obviously - overlooking the fact that banning encryption will only ban it in your little country. The rest of the world will still be using it.

That means you will be depriving your economy from an essential tool that everyone else will still be using. Does that sound like a good idea ? Only if you're a member of HM's Government, apparently.

Might as well bin the guns and arm your troops with swords & crossbows while you're at it. At least they'll look rad and the LARP fans will go wild with joy.

Reg now behind invisible HTML5 Bitcoin paywall

Re: Nice one

Indeed. I'm actually hoping El Reg does implement something like that !

Facebook, Google, etc: Yeah, yeah, we'll work on the nasty stuff about bombs – but we ain't doing no backdoors

Re: "that fruity company"

Remind me exactly which social media thingy Apple is responsible for ?

Europe to push new laws to access encrypted apps data

Re: "not be much of a challenge for an intermediate programmer"

Encryption is NOT EASY, and implementing it properly is NOT the domain of an "intermediate programmer".

In order to properly implement encryption into a home-grown product, you have to have a programmer that is bloody good. Not Torvalds-level good, I agree, but better than "intermediate" for sure.

Financial fraud losses in the UK last year topped £20m a day – report

"every organisation with a role to play unites to tackle it"

Meanwhile, CryptoLocker criminals get (traceable) BitCoin payments every day and that just sails under the radar.

Fighting crime is not easy, I'm sure, but dammit all, when most transactions take place electronically in a world where a single government organization can listen to and record every single mobile phone conversation, you still try to make me think that you can't trace a frikkin' bank transfer and find a criminal ?

Sorry, not buying it.

New plastic banknote plans now upsetting environmental campaigners

"300 football fields of rainforest per hour is cleared"

Okay, that is a statement that demands verification.

The total land surface of the Earth is apparently 148.3 million square kilometers.

Of that, rainforests cover allegedly 6%, which means 8.898 million square kilometers.

From this wiki entry, I find that a football field is 7140 square meters which, with the magic of the metric system, means 7.14 square kilometers.

300 football fields is therefor 2142 square kilometers, which is supposedly cleared per hour.

So in a day, 51408 square kilometers are "cleared", and at that rhythm it takes a mere 14.67 years to remove all the rainforests on the surface of the planet.

Given that I've been hearing about this issue for the past 20 years, we've already finished clearing rainforest and have started clearing, what - savanna ? Desert ? Dirt ?

If I'm not mistaken, the rainforest still exists, if only because there are still people trying to save it. I do not dispute that logging companies and, apparently, local farmers are indeed clearing out land, nor will I dispute that some oversight must be put in place to control that and ensure that we are not, in fact, burning the Earth's lungs to provide yet another effing snack, but claims like that do not incite me to think that the issue is as serious as it undoubtedly is.

BDSM sex rocks Drupal world: Top dev banished for sci-fi hanky-panky

Many people have wrong, preconceived notions concerning BDSM. I am not personally into that sort of thing, pain - or inflicting pain - goes full contrary to what I believe sexual pleasure should be. But BDSM is not just about sex, nor is it just about pain.

I have read about BDSM and people who practice it. I think a good starting point is this article.

Read it and think about it. Make a decision if you want, or don't. But do not remain willfully ignorant about it if you intend to decry other people's practice of it.

@ dan1980

"What those comedians are doing is getting a cheap laugh by shaming someone's private sexual preferences."

Not just any someone, the President of the United States. The most public person on this planet - one who is still supposed to be an example of moral rectitude, even in these days of almost-anything-goes. And if Clinton could risk impeachment for a simple blowjob, then presidential sex with prostitutes is definitely on the table.

How to leak data from an air-gapped PC – using, er, a humble scanner

Is this some James Bond-esque fantasy ?

I thought this was going to be an article about a credible-but-obscure threat. Instead, I get a Rube Goldberg machination that would only work in a Hollywood spy film.

Let's list the setup requirements :

1) a bot-infiltrated network

2) an open scanner next to a window

3) a drone with a laser

4) nobody looking out the window wondering what the heck a drone is doing there while a document is being scanned

5) nobody standing between the scanner and the drone while a document is being scanned

6) the document being scanned is miraculously transparent to laser light while simultaneously being scannable

7) no heavy gust of wind during the entire process

I can accept that, to scan a document, the user leaves the cover open. I have done that very thing every time I had a sheaf of papers to scan. But, if I have a sheaf of papers to scan, I am not moving from in front of the scanner, which would put me squarely in the path of the laser beam. And if I am only scanning one (or two), then I always close the cover.

Plus, on multifunction printers these days, the cover is likely not just a cover, but integrates a paper-feed mechanism that is way too heavy to effectively leave the cover open.

And, if we're talking big multifunction printers, they're in a separate room, likely without windows, or a window high up.

All of that to spend over 3 seconds sending "d x.pdf", which is 7 bytes. God forbid you need to send a dozen ddos orders - you'll be there all day and somebody will end up taking a shotgun to your drone (or, more realistically, calling security).

If this is your solution to sending commands to your virus bot, you're going to die of hunger before next month.

How about a nice game of ... Tetris? Oxford eggheads slow PTSD onset with classic game

Does it have to be Tetris ?

I will attempt to validate that study with extended sessions of Minecraft if ever I find myself in such a situation.

Windows 10 Creators Update: Clearing the mines with livestock (that's you by the way)

Re: "it's unfair of me to blame Microsoft's OS"

I beg to differ.

Windows 1 0 is supposed to be the very best, the cutting edge, the bees knees of OS products. Sleep mode has had trouble since it was introduced in the previous millennium - you'd think MS would have had the time to iron out the kinks by now. Vendor drivers are unstable and can crash the OS ? It's Windows 1 0 - you'd think the OS would be robust enough to have the code to not crash from a bloody driver. And it's not like nobody else manages either.

The OS is made to run programs and interface with the hardware. It has been since its inception. An OS that crashes because of a program (or driver) is NOT an OS - it's a POS.

So my ISP can now sell my browsing history – what can I do?

Well now it's final

The Land of the Used to be Free has finally entered its sunset period. The Empire is waning, and all this will end in tears.

President Eisenhower warned you, but it was too late.

Oh well, we'll just have to wait for the storm to pass. It'll take years, but it will pass.

Oracle doing due diligence on Accenture. Yep, you read that right

"If buying Accenture was a 100 metre race, Oracle is at the 10 to 15 metre stage now"

Which still means that the race was prepared, the track put in place, the public and journalists convened, the athletes trained and gotten ready, everyone put on the starting line and the referee pointed the gun and fired the starting shot.

A hell of a lot of activity needs to take place before a race, and it doesn't take place if the race is not supposed to reach the finish line.

ICO fines Flybe, Honda for breaking data rules. They were, um, trying to comply with GDPR

Time to get the message, methinks

You do not ask your customers or prospects if they want marketing email - they don't.

You put the option on your site and you wait for the clicks to tell you about those who do.

This whole situation just might have an interesting effect down the road. One day, we just might see marketing managers be like mother hens : very attentive to how much they contact their (short) list of email addresses lest they provoke yet another enraged Customer to come in and opt out of their marketing. Losing 20 contacts gets them fired.

I like the sound of that.

Firefox Quantum: BIG browser project, huh? I share your concern

"It surprises me that Firefox seems to take such ongoing criticism ..."

This is the Internet - there's always some vocal minority taking a stand and, as soon as you do something, somebody will be unhappy about it.

For me, I see the proposed orientation favorably, if I can keep using NoScript and uBlock Origin, that is, because those two add-ons are the keystone to online security. Without them, I am exponentially more vulnerable and I don't like that.

So go for the changes, Mozilla, but keep things secure where at all possible.

CompSci boffins propose scheme to protect privacy in database searches

Agreed

DBadmins are going to wince while reading that.

Engineers and experts have spent the past thirty years trying to lighten the load imposed by database queries, and here these guys come proposing to apply each and every query to every record in the database - in multiple ways.

The performance impact is going to be ugly.

Ex-military and security firms oppose Home Sec in WhatsApp crypto row

Oh my Gawd

A Gubbermint mouthpiece with a clue. And The US that elected a racist carrot.

Clearly, The Rapture is nigh.

Repent ! Repent before it is too late !

What's that ? Oh, yes nurse, I'll take my meds, thank you . . .

Boffins crowdsource hunt for 'Planet 9'

And who has Deep Mind beat at Poker recently ?

Dear Lord, don't temp them !

Northamber's Phillips ponders non-exec role after nearly four decades

"blessed with some of those unwanted encumbrances of age"

Nicely said.

I'm going to have to remember that for in a few dozen years.

DevOps brings your teams to delivery faster and with better quality

Commenters are forbidden to make PR posts

I would think that El Reg writers should be as well.

Where is the bite ? Where is the (objective) criticism ? This "article" is just a PR puff piece to sell a book. There is no commentary on the expertise of the writer, no reference to previous publications that would allow us to evaluate the possible quality of the product, nothing, in short, that is meaningful and forthcoming.

DevOps does not have a saintly aura around it - not in these forums anyway. I'm going to need a lot more persuasion before shelling out on something I view as basically "get the developer to talk to the sysadmin" - which is something any professional worthy of the name has been doing since sysadmins exist.

Please elaborate on why this book is of use to me a bit further on than just saying "companies don't get it yet".

Robo-Uber T-boned, rolls onto side, self-driving rides halted

Indeed. It is high time that Uber show it can do something right.

Astroboffins stunned by biggest brown dwarf ever seen – just a hop and a skip away (750 ly)

Re: "It was invented to prop up existing theories"

Sorry, but you are misinterpreting the facts.

Nobody is talking about dark matter as a means to sweep an issue under the rug. Quite the contrary, scientists have agreed that our existing view of the Universe is lacking and we need to find out what is missing. Dark matter is one theoretical possibility that scientists are, in the purest tradition of the Scientific Method, trying to find proof of to determine whether or not it is a proper answer.

This period of research may take a while, so buckle up and settle down, we're not there yet.

TRAPPIST-1's planets are quiet. Quiet as the grave, in fact

I believe the structure would be made of metal, enclosing spaces filled with rock for the protection it offers from harmful radiation. There would be no tension to speak of on the rock, although there could be a modicum of compression as the station rotates.

Coppers 'persistently' breach data protection laws with police tech

@David 132

In theory you are absolutely right and I support your point of view completely.

In reality, unfortunately, police business is done by humans, not robots. A 2% rate is, I think, just about as good as it's going to get.

Microsoft loves Linux so much, its OneDrive web app runs like a dog on Windows OS rivals

Re: Loved to Death

Trump loves the poorly educated as long as they remain nowhere near him.

It's happening! It's happening! W3C erects DRM as web standard

"improve online privacy"

Since when has DRM ever "improved" anything for the law-abiding end-user ? The list of DRM failures is longer than I care to mention, much less research.

This whole article tells me one thing : Internet authorities have finally been bought out by RIAA/MPAA et co.

Thank God for Open Source, it's all we have left.

Malware 'disguised as Siemens software drills into 10 industrial plants'

4 years

This malware has been spreading for 4 years and we are only hearing about it.

How many industrial companies have been brought to their knees because of that ? Apparently none. How many gas lines have exploded because of that ? None either.

How long did it take for Heartbleed to grab our attention ? What about Conficker ? And let's not forget CryptoLocker, which has birthed a slew of variants that are very much a threat today.

Person of Interest may be called visionary, but unfortunately Live Free or Die Hard quite obviously isn't.

Can we learn to love AI and sex robots?

"Can we learn to love AI and sex robots?"

Are you kidding me ? We're going to welcome them with open . . ahem . . arms.

Yes, that's it. Arms.

Uber bans 'brilliant jerks', will train staff on Why Diversity Matters

Re: What profits ?

I don't think that it is the absence of profits that matters. If that were so, we never would have seen the startup bubble with so many young companies bleeding cash yet still looking like darlings. Well, until Chapter 11, that is.

The thing is, Uber is operating in the billions range, and that matters. It is what makes Uber a company with weight. The fact that, like a young bully, it doesn't yet know how to throw its weight around properly is neither here nor there.

What should password managers not do? Leak your passwords? What a great idea, LastPass

"local storage is great... if it's not 2017 and you don't already have half your life in the cloud anyways, trusting it with tons of other important shit like I don't know, your finances, School curriculum, taxes, email, calendar, photos, relationships, etc"

Congratulations, you have been perfectly assimilated integrated and are now a valuable marketing commodity. I wish you luck on relying on someone else's server and backup procedures to provide you with what you apparently still think is your data.

As for me, I prefer "losing a small piece of my life" actually backing up MY photos and data, rather than discover one day that the cloudy thingy I thought had my back actually didn't.

Nokia blasts 250 Gbps across Atlantic in optical test for Facebook

"PCS will let the cable handle as much as 32 Tbps per fibre in the future"

Wonderful. Brilliant.

Can I finally get a 100mbps connection then ?

Now THAT'S a landslide victory: Astroboffins snap avalanche on a comet in science first

Unbelievable

It's incredible that something with only a few cubic kilometers of mass can have enough gravitational influence to enable landslides. I would have thought that it was already extraordinary enough that it can hold together, given its rather exotic shape, but no, it just wasn't enough, was it, Mother Nature ?

You had to one-up things once again, didn't you ?

Mother Nature : the ultimate over-achiever.