Posts by Pascal Monett

Booming Ballmer bellows 'bulls**t' over Microsoft's cloud revenue run rate

Hang on, is Ballmer starting to have a vision ?

Too bad he didn't retire earlier then - like twenty years ago.

Facebook to Belgian data cops: Block all the cookies across the web, then!

"ensuring the security of the Facebook Service"

I note the wording of that phrase : the security that is ensured by the cookie is the security of the service, not the security of the users. That is not something that I will put in doubt.

However, I am quite certain that there are only two things that are ensuring my security : NoScript and the fact that I have Facebook redirected to 128.0.0.1 in my hosts file.

Ponmocup is the '15 million' machine botnet you've never heard of

Indeed, that such expertise be used to develop scumware is a waste for the rest of the world.

Brilliant, dedicated people in service of evil, and apathetic, ignorant bumblers in service of our governments.

If only there were a way to switch that . . .

Industrial control system gateway fix opens Heartbleed, Shellshock

"new firmware [..] contains known brutal flaws"

Just brilliant. Vulnerabilites are now distributed by patch. Did somebody recently leave the Windows Update team because he was bored ?

Star Wars Battlefront: Is this the shooter you’re looking for?

Re: Why couldn't they take the DICE engine and make something great out of it?

It's an EA Games title, what did you expect ?

I love the Star Wars universe, but I'd really rather they leave out the "hero" characters. Star Wars is fascinating enough without Jedi.

Nevertheless, I would like to get this game, except that I have suffered enough from sloppy EA DRM and abysmal patch management in the past. I am not giving EA one more penny.

I'll just enjoy the videos on YouTube, and relive the glory of Tie Fighter.

Connected smart cars are easily trackable, warns infosec bod

Re: "taking note of license plates"

The difference being that the license plate number is not going to be enough to allow you to hack the CAN bus and put the brakes on, whereas with on-board Wi-Fi, well these days you might as well toss a coin to see if you're secure.

Ice cold: How hard man of storage made Everest climb look easy

"It’s just somebody else’s data centre"

Words to be spoken aloud when the Cloud is being hyped. Every time.

How to solve a Rubik's Cube in five seconds

Thinking of the labyrinth

43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible combinations. Add game theory to that, RPG with a dash of FPS for good measure.

You have 9 x 6 rooms to create, and where the player goes defines the setup of the next room. Equate player moves to rotations, jumble the initial settings at start, and you've got a really infinite game (for practical values of infinite, of course).

LHC records biggest bang ever with 1 Peta-electron-volt jolt

Technically, the "Oh shit we're F***** and going to die" particle exists. It's called a GRB and it comes in swarms (because more than one per burst).

Walmart spied on workers' Tweets, blogs before protests

@ asheep

"there's no way Walmart doesn't get so big without subsidy in the form of reduced transport costs thanks to a government funded road system, or get to smooth over diseconomies of scale without the wholesale intervention in the economy, or offer such low prices without state intervention in the economies of many countries."

Everything you mention there may or may not be true, but there is nothing in there that is dedicated to Walmart. Roads are available to all companies by definition, and yes, the government is supposed to take care of that because the alternative is roads created/maintained only by companies. You'd hardly have enough roads if that were the case.

Wholesale intervention in the economy, whatever that is, is also done for the benefit of all companies. Unless you can prove that only Walmart benefits.

As for "state intervention" in the economies of other countries, again, if one accepts the idea of the existence of such a thing, it is not only for Walmart. Apple is another company that benefits very well from other countries' economies.

Your entire post feels very much one-sided and grasping at straws to me.

German ex-pat jailed for smearing own pat all over Cork apartment

@ Jos V

I'll drink to that !

The, ahem, marvellous variety of the human race

Most of us, when depressed, would likely take to the bottle. Whisky is a stalwart companion of depression, something we are given ample examples of in noir films.

But now and again, you get a behavior that skews from the norm, like this. Psychologically it must be quite intriguing.

I'm sure the landlord would have preferred whisky, though.

Mr Grey, the Russian hacker who helped haul in 1.2 billion logins

Another irony detector in need of updating, it seems.

Kids charity hit by server theft

So, malware isn't the only threat

Sometimes you can also get hit by regular scum.

I hope they at least had regular, up-to-date and useable data backups. If so, the only loss will have been material, and I'm sure that's insured.

BOFH: How long does it take to complete Friday's lager-related tasks?

BOFH getting soft in his later years ?

Liked the story, as usual, but how is it that she's talking about carpets at the end and not in one ?

I used to read BOFH articles that ended with nobody left alive but the BOFH and his PFY.

Those were the days . . .

So why exactly are IT investors so utterly clueless?

That may be the case, but if I lost a million bucks, I think that the fact that the loss would be tax deductible would be more like a kleenex on a 3rd-degree burn rather than the feel of "free money".

Who owns space? Looking at the US asteroid-mining act

Let's get real

I don't appreciate how the US basically considers that anything it does is, by virtue of being done in America, legal and acceptable.

But concerning space, that is neither here nor there. In the long term we, as a species, will have to expand to other planets. In the shorter term we will need to mine asteroids to sustain our population's needs on Earth. Doing that implies industrial activity in space, it is unavoidable.

I read the act as the US saying that it will not pursue US companies or dispute a company's claim to having mined stuff. Well fine, where's the problem ? The act does not say that it does not allow other country's companies that right, nor does it say that only US companies are allowed to mine space. At no point does it declare US ownership of space.

Event of cosmic proportions ? More a storm in a teacup, as far as I'm concerned.

Samsung Gear VR is good. So good 2016 could be year virtual reality finally makes it

VR films ? Not likely.

A film is a story. A story is told effectively when you concentrate on the relevant elements and ignore the mundane, humdrum stuff that has absolutely no interest to getting the story to move along. That's why you never see James Bond at the airport to get to his next exotic location.

VR films would be films in which, theoretically, you could choose to watch the plant in the airport lounge instead of watching the crazy kung-fu fight between the main protagonists. I doubt that will be allowed, the producer is going to want to know why he should fund however many cameras to shoot angles that have got nothing to do with the action that is the basis of the story.

As for VR in porn, sorry but no chance. Shoestring budget issues aside, producers in that industry absolutely do not want you watching anything else than what they want to show you - <ahem> from what I've seen heard.

So, VR in games ? Absolutely. Sandbox games are all the rage right now, and VR lends itself perfectly to that experience. Racing games will do okay with VR, but like 3D in films, it will bring next to nothing to the experience.

And apart from that ? Nothing. Films are a passive experience by nature, VR will bring next to nothing to that.

Australian cops rush to stop 2AM murder of … a spider

Could someone explain the (multiple) phone calls ?

Personally, I do not fear spiders. When I find one in the house, I catch it in a jar and I throw it in the backyard.

I can understand the spider-hate. I find the girly shrieking funny. But could someone please explain how a single guy calls (the Australian equivalent of) 911 multiple times ? While desperately failing to kill a single spider ? Okay, it's Australia, maybe the spider was three feet wide - I would be uncomfortable with that, but come on, calling 911 ?

Sounds like an episode of Fawlty Towers.

Russian nuke plant operator to build on-site data centre

Can't see why nuclear power is a danger for a data center

Once the plant is built, I can't see that there be any emotional attachment to building a data center next to it. Once a power plant is plugged into the grid, the electricity it produces is not stamped with "Nuclear" on it. It goes into the grid, period.

So a data canter will be powered by some measure of nuclear electricity whether it is situated next to the nuclear plant or on the other side of the country.

Let's not encourage running like headless chickens whenever the mere notion of nuclear power is mentioned somewhere.

Sneaky Microsoft renamed its data slurper before sticking it back in Windows 10

Re: immediately bashing MS for all evil in the world

That would indeed be exaggerated.

Putin is responsible for some of it.

So maybe a bit of tinfoil is justified after all ?

There have been commenters stepping up to say that, Microsoft having acknowledged a bug in its download image, we should all consider that MS is not that shady and cut it some slack.

Well here is your answer : no way we're cutting Microsoft some slack on anything.

Microsoft CAN NO LONGER BE TRUSTED, period.

128GB DDR4 DIMMs have landed so double your RAM cram plan

Re: all Intel single-socket desktop CPU's so far support 32 GB max

Well from what I can see, memory limitations are not baked into CPUs but into motherboard chipsets.

And there are quite a few Skylake boards that are apparently ready for 64GB.

Besides, it is not logical that a 64-bit processor able to address 1GB of RAM would be limited in any way to not be able to address 128GB.

Sales, share price sink for HP Inc – but it's relative glee for HPE

Well you know what they say : if a company is stagnating, it is on the decline because it is leaving market opportunities to its competitors.

Funny that, the black/white outlook on company performance. It's almost as if there is no possibility of the market not allowing for expansion at a given point.

Eclipse staggers to feet, gets smacked by second DDoS

Will the real Daniel please stand up ?

MoJ restarts troubled £250m National Offender management ICT system

And don't forget the many high-level government types throwing in contradictory requirements after the fact, or disagreeing with the specs and the realisation simply because they just noticed that it will give them some work in some area.

Don't throw the entire book at the companies, there's plenty of blame to be handed to government incompetence as well.

Paris, jihadis, tech giants ... What is David Cameron's speechwriter banging on about now?

Yes, something else is going on

Our "democratically elected" governments are using every excuse to take away our dearly-bought freedoms, and because we are more interested in what's on TV after the news, we aren't getting our fat(tening) asses of the couch and shouting a resounding "STOP!" in the streets.

Dum dum dum - another cloud bites the dust (Adobe's photo cloud)

Cloudy situation reminds me of streaming services

Cloud "provider" offers new service, gets attention, users decide to sign up, service ramps up, costs ramp up, service maintained for a while, investors decide not enough revenue generated, service gets killed, users are left with nothing.

Whether the service was free or paid for makes hardly any difference.

I do agree with the name though : cloud. As solid as the ones in the sky. Trust it as far as you can walk on it and you'll be fine.

Dell: How to kill that web security hole we put in your laptops, PCs

SOP when buying new laptop (with Windows, obviously)

1) Go through the Services and disable all services allowing for remote control of PC. Why, in 2015, has Microsoft kept those enabled is beyond me.

1) Uninstall all vendor software. It is always crap, and it bogs down Windows like an anvil tied to your foot. No vendor has ever made any update of any worth to the crap it puts on top of Windows. Now we know that, in addition, vendor software comes with vulnerabilities baked in. Get rid of all of it.

2) Remove all promotional, demo, or time-limited applications. You already have paid for what you need to work with, you're not going to be forking over more for any of those.

3) Install Windows Defender and AV of your choice. Check for driver updates. Run complete scan. Decrapify the abomination called the Registry.

4) Backup.

Takes about a day, but it's worth it - if only for the peace of mind.

Superfish 2.0 worsens: Dell's dodgy security certificate is an unkillable zombie

Re: That is so last century

I believe he was being ironic. Anyone with a brain knows that the USA is no longer the shining beacon of Liberty, Freedom and Justice for all that it used to be.

Superfish 2.0: Dell ships laptops, PCs with huge internet security hole

Well if Dell says so . . .

Of course, major corporation says there is nothing to worry about so we shouldn't worry. It's not like major corporations have ever lied to us before, now is it ? Nor has any major corporation ever been proven wrong about something as sensitive and critical as security, right ?

Riiight.

Google takedown requests mushroom as copyright holders play whack-a-mole

Not a chance. There's this thing called multitasking, and Google is rewriting the book on that.

Shocker: Smut-viewing Android apps actually steal your data

Scantily-clad women on a 6" screen, what's the point ?

Bloody kids, can't even do their pr0n viewing on a proper 26" widescreen.

Do we really have to teach them everything ?

Data breach at biz that manages Cisco, F5 certs plus many others

"other customers need not worry"

So first you take the site down "for maintenance", then a few days later you admit that there was a breach, and now you want me to trust your word that I am not at risk ?

I would have been inclined to trust you if you been straightforward about admitting the issue instead of trying to hide it before being forced to come clean. Such shenanigans inspire the reverse of trust because you have demonstrated that you're willing to lie if you think you can cover up the issue.

So I will be checking my details and so on and, if I have the slightest suspicion of foul play at work, I guarantee you are going to hear from me.

Malvertising: How the ad model makes crime pay

Agreed - ads need to be simple

An image, eventually a slideshow, and a web link, end of.

And don't tell me you need script to do a slideshow; HTML5 is here.

Blocking out the Sun won't fix climate change – but it could buy us time

Not to mention that we have people advocating injecting our upper atmosphere with various compounds in just about the same way people advocated introducing new species into Australia in order to regulate some problem or another.

I'm sure the results will prove just as reliable.

Researchers say they've cracked the secret of the Sony Pictures hack

Hollywood : for once teaching security experts how to do their job.

Windows 8.1 exams kept alive six more months, Win 7 tests immortal

Re: Fuck systemd

Thank you for that, Trevor.

I will keep your post in my reference list for all those who incessantly spout off about how "easy" Linux is.

EU's Paris terror response includes 'virtual currencies' crimp

Right, time to link databases

Because the perps were absolutely not known by police forces, no sir. Their whereabouts could absolutely not have been discerned with a bit of eyeball surveillance, not at all. There is no way anyone could have known what the perps were up to if they had simply gone out the bloody door to find out.

Yep, linking databases is the solution. Yessirreeee.

Struggling to understand Docker? Let's start with a Minecraft demo

The one that teaches you to survive more than one game day ?

Who's running dozens of top-secret unpatched databases? The Dept of Homeland Security

DHS - Department of Homeland what already ?

Hillary Clinton: Stop helping terrorists, Silicon Valley – weaken your encryption

Re: "certain Cheney haters"

Because there's somebody who actually likes Cheney ?

How NSA continued to spy on American citizens' email traffic – from overseas

So the NSA spies from offshore now

So much for political promises and official declarations.

It's like talking to a drunk addict. They never stop drinking. Tell them to stop drinking and they go "Yup", then turn around and take an alcohol enema to get drunk again.

Can't trust them, period.

It's time to bring in the ghosts of the Founding Fathers.

@ Matt Bryant

Therefor the OP is correct, since all this data collecting didn't change the result one iota.

What is the use of invading everyone's privacy all the time if things like this still slip through ? If you're invading, then at least make it do the bloody job right.

I don't want to learn that some things are caught. If you're invading everyone's life then I want all things to be caught.

Otherwise it's just not worth it.

Remember Windows 1.0? It's been 30 years (and you're officially old)

Yeah, yeah, we've known that since 1987 and it's not getting any younger either.

US 'swatting' Bill will jail crank callers for five years to life

So you would prefer that one guy leisurely stroll up to the door, ring the bell and wait to see if he gets a bullet to the face to be sure that there is a problem ?

How would like to see that in your job description ?

Re: "systemic inability of the police to handle situations non-violently"

If the call concerned spouse battery of drunken idiot, you would be right. However swatting is a call that specifically directs police to a hostage situation.

The police are therefor going in under the presumption that lives are at risk, and one or more perps are armed (this is the US, remember ?) and ready to respond.

It is normal for them to charge in, because that is supposed to give them the element of surprise. It is also, unfortunately, understandable that in such a tense moment, otherwise innocent acts from totally surprised innocent people can be wrongly interpreted as dangerous. If you're going in expecting bad guys and being told to respond with lethal force, it takes superhuman calm, Buddha levels of self-control and split-second observation abilities to not fire a shot if a threat you expect seems to crop up.

I think 20 years to life is a perfectly reasonable outcome for some asshat who is sooo unhappy about losing that he unleashes lethal weaponry upon the family of his opponent. If someone dies because of this, they won't be coming back.

Android's accessibility service grants god-mode p0wn power

Sigh

The article states that the app installs itself using the accessibility features. You're not even necessarily aware that something is happening if your eyes are not on the screen when it happens.

Re: Just. Frelling. Great.

I hate all smartphones equally.

Now I hate them more.

I can't wait to retire and chuck all that shit out the door.

How TV ads silently ping commands to phones: Sneaky SilverPush code reverse-engineered

I sometimes mute the sound when ads come on, since they obnoxiously increase the sound level to annoying levels. When the ads are done, I turn the sound back on.

Looks like I'll be using the mute button a lot more from now on.