Posts by Pascal Monett

Microsoft's top lawyer: I have a cunning plan ... to rescue sunk safe harbor agreement

"the dangers of a Balkanized internet"

Dangers ? What dangers ?

I see no problem in Euro TCP-IP traffic staying in Europe instead of being routed through California (or wherever) and coming back. Nor do I have any issue with Euro citizen data being stored in Europe and not being sent anywhere without consent.

Of course, today the situation is that everything is sent to the US and the US is taking advantage of that to liberally peruse anything they want. So yeah, the US is in danger of not having such easy access to other people's private lives, but that ship actually sailed with Snowden and won't be coming back, so it's no use complaining about it now.

I see no danger to people with a "balkanized" Internet security scheme. I do understand that the US government doesn't like the idea, but I couldn't care less about that. As far as I'm concerned, the White House has no right to look at me when I'm not on American soil or declaring my intention to go there.

'10-second' theoretical hack could jog Fitbits into malware-spreading mode

"the company considers it a bug which will be squashed at some point"

One question : is that point when sales have hit the floor because nobody trusts the product any more, or some time before that ?

The ability to mod the numbers or something is amusing (for us anyway, for companies paying out based on false numbers, not so much), this is not a critical piece of equipment after all. But the ability to root a computer with it is not amusing at all. Technically, even people that don't have a FitBit could be at risk. That is not good.

Made you jump! Space to give Earth an asteroid Halloween scare

Re: Suspiciously exact

Well, they do have computers these days, and I've heard that NASA does have a few people who know their job.

We'll see how exact they are when they tell us exactly how close it did fly by at then end of this month.

Oracle plugs flaw used in attacks on NATO and the White House

"If Java was still in widespread use today"

Uh, am I supposed to understand that it isn't ? Funny that, when you run the installer it says that it is being used on billions of PCs - and now it's even on phones.

Java use may be decreasing, but I do believe it's usage can still be qualified as "widespread".

Yahoo! boss! Mayer! promises! shake-up! in! bid! to! save! her! job!

Hey, don't be so hard. She did personally redesign the exclamation mark.

We SC what you did there, Mikey: Dell emits top-end array, hyper-converged boxes

Re: 5Ghz x86?

It's in the pic titled "SC8000 and SC9000 comparison points".

The CPU cores are noted 2 x 5GHz 6 core and 8 core x86.

So yeah, that's wierd. I thought 4GHz was the current max CPU frequency.

Edit : Ok, AMD has some 5GHz enthusiast models with 8 cores. I doubt anybody would put that in a blade server, though.

Millions of people forget to cancel Apple Music subscription

Re: Nobody knows...

Objectively of course, you are right. There is no way of telling how long the optical disk format will last.

However, there is good reason to believe that CDs will be around for quite a long time. The medium is cheap and reliable, and stores enough data for an album. Nobody is going to want to put more than 80 minutes of music in one album. I'm guessing that many albums are in the 40 minutes mark or thereabouts. So the CD is good enough.

The CD came into existence as an extension of the floppy disk and pretty much obliterated it in a rather short time. When more data needed to be stored, we got the DVD. Now, the DVD has been extended to BluRay. I'm sure that, if need be, we'll get another extension that will take us into terabyte optical storage territory.

But I really don't see what tech could replace optical storage as cheaply and reliably. It can't be magnetic, because that is not a reliable long-term storage medium. Holographic is an eventuality, but labs are still tinkering with that and nothing is in view yet. Even if holographic tech does appear, it will most likely look like another DVD format.

So I don't think we have to worry about CD tech disappearing any time soon. But yes, who knows what we'll have in a hundred years ? Even so, if it looks like a DVD, there's a good chance the reader will still know about that old CD format from the previous millenium.

Western Digital's hard drive encryption is useless. Totally useless

Re: "if you have incentive enough"

Of course, objectively speaking, no security can be absolute, but if you have to resort to dynamite or bulldozing your way through a wall, you're sitting pretty in criminal territory and the consequences will be counted in years.

As far as these disks are concerned, I don't expect a commercial product to resist to a determined NSA probe, but I do expect my data to be sufficiently encrypted so that raw data cannot be read and decrypted from it without using the password. And I do expect that the encrytion seed not be derived from a list of predetermined values.

My company bought a few WD portable drives on the express basis that the data was *securely* encrypted. I now find that WD's security is indeed a fragile illusion that can be broken with a trivial program that will probably soon be available to download for free.

We have confidential company data on those drives, and now we are going to have to consider that they are at risk from trivial break-in attempts. Of course, one will still have to get their hands on it first, but still, this situation is not pleasant.

I will be following what WD does on this with great interest.

Microsoft boss Satya Nadella is paid $18m – and would trouser $20m if sacked

"Windows 10 was successfully launched"

Oh really ?

Let me remember : no PCs available on launch date because image not available in time, first downloadable version made a complete pigs breakfast of many installs, first patch update to correct the mess made other things break, and in the first week of "deployment" Windows Update completely borked a good number of PCs that had to be reinstalled. And that was a successful launch ?

#Deity preserve us from a failed one.

Online pharmacy slapped with £130,000 fine for flogging customer data

Oh really ?

“This is a regrettable incident for which we sincerely apologise," said Daniel Lee, managing director, Pharmacy2U, in a statement. "While we are grateful that the ICO recognise that our breach was not deliberate, we appreciate this was a serious matter.

"As soon as the issue was brought to our attention, we stopped the trial selling of customer data and made sure that the information that had been passed on was securely destroyed," he added. "We have also confirmed that we will no longer sell customer data."

A regrettable incident ? Oh, getting caught you mean, of course. Yes, quite unfortunate.

The ICO recognise that the breach was not deliberate ? How nice of your pal over there. So, golf still on next Sunday ?

You stopped the trial selling of customer data ? You mean, there was a trial ? That had specifically been set up to sell customer data ? And you can say with a straight face that it wasn't deliberate ?

Somebody call the press, we've found the next PM.

openSUSE Leap: Middle ground between cutting edge and conservative

"the first version of Leap is openSUSE Leap 42.1"

When we get to Leap 42.42, the HHGTTG will implode.

And now for a flock of Mint comments. Then again, this is not a Windows article, so maybe not.

BBC shuts off iPlayer to UK VPNs, cutting access to overseas fans

I don't get it

People accessing BBC content are only people who pay their license fee. As such, where they watch it from is neither here nor there.

You can't tell me that companies can evade tax by setting up their HQ in a tax-friendly country, then tell me that the BBC can't stream to its paying customers abroad because of local licensing issues.

Either it is the location of the company that counts, or it is the country where the activity is taking place.

Sort this nonsense out forthwith.

Pluto flashes its unusual pits

Re: the sun light is coming from the upper right quadrant

Unless they are not snowballs but actual pits, and the sunlight is coming from the left, which would explain why all pits are shaded on the left side and have a brightness on the right.

Plus there's the fact that NASA scientists are talking about pits. I tend to give them a bit of credence on interpreting interstellar pictures.

Ooh, you'll be going to the pits for sure when they get here.

Terror, terror everywhere: Call the filter police, there's a madman (or two) in town

Filtering and removing

In other words, the Public is not able to handle the issue and must be protected from it.

Doing so is not going to help the situation, it will only keep it under wraps. That is how you get rabid conspiracy theorists.

Let them splash their hate on their websites. Educate your people properly and teach them the values of civilization and democracy. Maybe even teach them to think critically (ah, I know, anathema for a proper gubbermint official).

That is the only way people will recognize barbary when it is visible.

But yeah, that's probably the long run. Maybe even for after the next election. So it'll never happen.

How swearing at your coworker via WhatsApp could cost you $68,000

Deportation for using profanity ?

Well fuck.

Re: Ye Gads...

Plaster trolls never use profanity.

Your one-minute guide to IBM's financial future – or just imagine a skier tumbling down a slope

Of course he doesn't know. For any true, red-blooded American the entire world uses the dollar and speaks American, or English in some of those really wierd places.

Our intuitive AI outperforms (most) puny humans, claims MIT

"what they've done is going to become the standard quickly"

As soon as it can be monetized, that is.

And if Big Data is anything to go by, it will be by this time next year.

Accidental homicide: how VoLTE kills old style call accounting

Interesting article

So voice calls are (badly) handled with an outdated model for accounting purposes.

In Luxembourg (where I work), I have a company phone with a 15GB data plan. Any call to any Luxembourg number is free. I have the option of declaring a favorite country (fyi : in Luxembourg, border workers are ten times the amount of national workers). Obviously, living in France, I declared that as my favorite country. Calls made to French numbers are thus free as well. I do pay a small amount for international SMS.

Basically, the only thing I see making money for my telco is the monthly allowance (and, at €40, it's not so much compared to what I've seen elsewhere), and the international calls I have to make from time to time (other than France). Oh, and premium numbers, obviously.

Seems it is possible for a telco to make a living without scrounging every last cent from its customers after all.

Sites cling to a million flawed, fading SHA-1 certificates: Netcraft

"a band of tech companies"

The following motion has been proposed by Rick Andrews of Symantec and

endorsed by Bruce Morton of Entrust, Jody Cloutier of Microsoft, and Kirk

Hall of Trend Micro.

Symantec, Microsot and Trend Micro. I expected Microsoft to be in the list, and am not very surprised by Symantec. As for Trend Micro, well they have to get their name in the limelight somehow, I guess.

All in all, the usual suspects in favor of status quo, even if it means less security for the consumer.

Zombie iOS APIs used to slurp private data

Well done, Apple

One API the Youmi developers couldn't get past is Apple's block on reading a device's serial number, so to create a unique identifier for the data they were gathering, the SDK slurped numbers from peripherals like the battery system and used those as the index.

So, you lock down reading the phone's serial number, but you solder in batteries with a unique ID and leave that available.

Brilliant reasoning there. Way to apply the logic all the way to the end. And what a wonderful example of actually checking the stuff you say you check. This absolutely cannot be proof that you use your rules arbitrarily to shut down apps that bother you rather than checking all apps thoroughly and binning all that do not adhere to the rules.

Nope. No lax security here. Oh wait . .

I wouldn't know

I never listen to advertisers anyway.

Microsoft flicks switch for three Azure bit barns in India

"there's a few nanoseconds to be saved on the sub-continent"

Maybe, but it is also within reach of a US judge and the NSA via National Security Letter.

But hey, don't take that to mean that Indians (and everone else) won't be using the facilities. The public doesn't know the first thing about security, and companies haven't been bitten hard enough yet to care.

CIA boss uses AOL email – and I hacked it, claims stoner teen

Maybe, just maybe, some day (like next millenium) people who are responsible will be the only ones nominated to positions of responsbility.

Nah. That would ruin the buddy network.

Some like it hot ... very hot: How to use heat to your advantage in your data center

Sounds like another brilliant example of cooperation between government and private industry then.

I've watched too much Yes Minister, I think.

US senators lean on ICANN, tell it to quit squirming and open up

Nice letter, very well written, will have no impact

Contrary to the title of this article, I read the PDF expecting to find thinly-veiled threats of fire and brimstone.

Instead, I found a very civil letter outlining the beliefs of the senators and the expectation that ICANN will adhere to them.

That's all very nice, but when you write such a letter to the chair of an organisation that can be officially told to accept community governance and reply that it would be a bad idea because he thinks so, then I doubt anything in this letter will have a snowflake's chance in Hell to do any better.

I think that a right flogging in the middle of Times Square is the only thing that could concievably bring some sense to the entire ICANN board.

'Blood on the carpet' ahead for outsourcers, says analyst research

Re: they start wondering if it was all Such a Good Idea

And they will keep on wondering until the situation gets bad enough that they have to lower their bonuses.

At that point, Something Must Be Done, and that will be the point where this outsourcing malarky will finally fall through the floor.

With a bit of luck, someone might point out to them that The Cloud is on a similar track, albeit for different reasons (mainly security), and let them take their time for the light to turn on.

Boffins' twisted enlightenment embiggens fibre

A power loss of -1.5db when sending light ?

I wonder why the power loss is rated in decibel ? It's light, not electrons. How can light lose power over a few kilometers ?

Need to research now.

Standards body wants standards for IoT. Vendors don't care

They ignore IPv6 ?

That may actually be a good thing. Might be able to lock all the traffic at the router's firewall then.

In any case, I have already decided a few years back that I will not participate in IoT. Never will my fridge be connected to the Web, and I will always avoid using my phone to pilote anything in my house.

Good old hardware switches is where it's at. Makes you move that lardass.

Now get off my lawn !

Samsung told to build bots who work for less than Foxconn staffers

Well they certainly diminish the number of people able to read the bad press.

EA Games rubbishes Pastebin breach claim

I have been boycotting EA Games for a few years now

Got fed up with the absolutely crap downloader, unbelievably medieval update (mis)management, and the last straw was EA Games banning me from installing a game I PAID FOR under the pretext that the key was invalid. But when you buy on their site, there is no key.

I might log back and change my password though. I think I'll set it to EAGamesSucksBigHairyDonkeyBalls or somesuch.

Yahoo! launches! password-free! push! logins! for! mobes!

Brilliant

Great way to convince punters to hand over their phone number, thus making them 100% identifiable.

Facebook appoints self world police, promises state attack warnings

Under attack from a state-sponsored attacker

So if it's just a regular attacker Facebook will leave you to be hacked ? How nice.

Junk your IT. Now. Before it drags you under

Productivity demands that we junk everything comfortable, everything safe, everything stable, set our faces to the wind, and explore the unknown.

And while you're off exploring, how do you manage revenue ? You know, that thing that pays you at the end of the month ? Or do you think that your salary just magically appears and nobody has to process anything about it ?

No ? You're aware that a back office is managing things so you can get a paycheck every now and then ? Good. So how long are you going to agree to go without pay in order to "explore the unknown" ?

What a load of bull.

Dinosaur love hug: Dell's $64bn death pledge to EMC

Re: your in-house sysadmin will provide you with better uptime than AWS?

Why do you not think that is possible ? A properly specced and managed server can chug along for years without any problem. I've seen a few myself. I can vouch for one mail cluster that has not missed a minute in the past four years.

Re: What are you guys smoking? You want to run your business on this?

Apparently some do. The added "benefit" appears to be getting rid of local IT.

Like all fads, this one has room to grow before it fades away. In the end of all the hoopla, I think we'll find ourselves with a more robust Internet, and a more balanced view of things. There are things that can go to the Cloud, undoubtedly, and there are definitely some things that should never be put in the Cloud.

So companies will end up with some stuff locally, some stuff on the Cloud, and a clear idea of why what goes where. And Cloud suppliers will become more resiliant and reliable as well (learning from past mistakes, etc).

It's all for the better, actually. But now it's a load of PR bull in a lot of cases.

Want to self-certify for Safe Harbor? Never mind EU, yes we can

Re: the implications of this little USA-EU kerfuffle

I seriously doubt China will bend over and let itself get hoovered by Uncle Sam like the EU did.

As far as surveillance is concerned, the NSA has nothing to teach them, and if their attitude toward Google and Facebook is anything to go by, the US government will be treading lightly when it comes to negociating data exchange with them.

Besides, the US has no big stick to bring to the Chinese negociation table, unlike Europe where Uncle Sam basically expects the drinks to be a gratuity on the tab.

Scotland Yard pulls eyeballs off WikiLeaker-in-Chief Assange

Re: What has suddenly changed?

Somebody noticed the medical bills of all the officers going into depression after being subject to the continual and non-stop talking of that indeflatable windbag.

Cyberwar rules of engagement: Military, law bods mull update

Obviously not.

This is not something to sign up to. This is just a flowery exercise in international PR in order to create yet another rod to bash over the head of the unruly uncivilized barbarians when "proper" armies from "civilized" countries have overrun everything and taken all decision-making people as prisoners of war.

Of course, as usual, anything the US of NSA does will not be subject to any sanctions by this new treaty, even when in flagrant violation of its terms.

Dell buys out EMC in mega-super-duper $67 billion deal

So this is a $67 billion roll of the dice

About to turn into a $67 billion bonfire.

Since Y2K company acquisitions have gone crazy, and practically none of them have been successful (ie made big bucks for the acquirer).

I applaud the balls it took to decide to throw away that amount of money. It'll burn brightly, and might just be seen from the Moon.

EU Digital Commish: Ja, we should have done more about NSA spying

Indeed it won't

But now we can at least officially stop pretending we didn't know about it.

Politicians are like cats : they will shit on your rugs until you rub their nose in it. Only then will they officially do something about it.

Google uses humans as Matrix-style ‘data batteries’ – Open Xchange CEO

I think that country codes only serve to limit football (and maybe some other sports) streaming access, and for governments to have their national admin portals.

Because apart from that, I don't see that anyone uses it for anything else.

The Emissionary Position: screwing the motorist the European way

Buses ?

Most buses I see are either hybrid or full-on electric nowadays.

I don't think that you can gain much NOx on a hybrid bus.

Keep recalling the cars.

Oracle, SAP, IBM: They're rubbish and charge you billions for Excel, says man

So it's an SAP version of Excel with integrated NSA access ?

Re: exponential growth in one year?

I really would like articles to stop referring to small companies growing "exponentially". Of course, if you start with 10 and get 20 more the year after, your growth in percentage is immense.

But come on, you're starting from nothing. Let's not use hyperbole until it is warranted, okay ? The growth of this small company is not exponential, it is simply allowing them to transit from next to nothing to next to something. That's not so impressive, now is it ?

Even by the guy's own words : they have 50,000 customers, they want 100 million. So they have 0.0005% of their target market. There is nothing exponential in that slice of market share.

Come back with the big words when they have gone from 10% to 15% of the market. Then we can start talking "exponential".

Australian Prime Minister runs private email server

It's not illegal . . yet

One break-in, one damning email sent from that server and we'll see how fast it gets shut down by public opinion and how quickly the law will be amended to ensure that only government servers under government authority are allowed to be used by government officials.

I don't care how technically competent he may be. His job is to govern a country, not an email server. Unless he has people managing that server, which he will have to explain budgetarily, that server is a risk.

But hey, have fun while it lasts. After all, what's the worst that can happen ? It's not like all the blackhats of the world know about it now, right ?

Oh, wait . .

The do-it-all storage giant is dying: Clouds loom over on-prem IT

Now I understand

All this cloud malarky has finally come to the real point : getting rid of local IT support. This is why notions like security and confidentiality take the back seat.

The IT peons have always been the red-headed stepchildren of the company. Never enough budget to do things right, never enough personnel to bear the load, and always being given higher and higher goals to fulfill.

Now the besuited CEOs are finally going to get rid of them and everything will be just hunky-dory. Except there won't be anyone to call when their new shiny can't connect to the network. Hmm, I wonder what they'll decide then ?

Oh well, just like call centers, things will go this way until the pendulum reaches pinnacle and starts swinging back. Just like servers, really. We went from mainframes to local PC and now we're going back to mainframes, except they're called "cloud" now.

Now even EUROPE is slapping down ICANN in internet power struggle

I'd really like to know that as well.

I think it's like in a dysfunctional family. Everybody knows the weird uncle is a child rapist, but everybody keeps trying to talk to him. This will continue until the community globally decides they have had enough, and walks away on their own to do something else.

And frankly, it's not like it's difficult to set up an administration.

New mystery Windows-smashing RAT found in corporate network

That memo was lost last millennium already.

There is serious question as to whether it was ever sent.