* Posts by Pascal Monett

18232 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007

Talk revealing p0wnable surveillance cams pulled after legal threat

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Congratulations, security camera makers

Thanks to the threatening actions of one, I now consider all makers to be suspect and will not be buying any security camera at all until you guys come forward with objectively-assessed proof that your equipment is secure.

Given that one of them doesn't even know what to do, I won't hold my breath.

Google and pals launch Accelerated Mobile Pages project

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Destroy Javascript, OK

Given that 99.9% of all malware exists because of Javascript, I'm on board with that.

But kill HTML ? Where's the technical justification for that ? HTML doesn't make page loads longer, HTML loads in a jiffy.

No, the things that make pages load slowly is always the additional cruft from anywhere but the site you're loading. Meaning, of course, ads.

And Google is not going to kill its revenue stream.

So this is just another useless announcement for everyone but Google.

You want fast-loading pages ? Block ads. Problem solved.

EU desperately pushes just-as-dodgy safe harbour alternatives

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: "overrule foreign legal systems"

I don't know what they're smoking, but it's gotta be good if they think that US law can be imposed outside US borders.

Microsoft, Tesla, build battery that knows how much (energy) you suck

Pascal Monett Silver badge

I'm skeptical

This "software-defined" tech only works if there are multiple batteries.

I can see that working for cars. I'm sure there are lots of places to slot in a battery in a car, and the amount of space will likely define what tech can be used, so the system does need to be able to work with various battery types.

But frankly, I'm not convinced with wearables, and even less with computing in general. Extending a watches battery life ? Great. Instead of buying a battery every year, I'll buy it every other year. Big deal. And if I have to lug around anything with enough juice to power my laptop for six hours more, well it'll be another battery anyway, so what use is the software ? Smartphones have the same problem in worse : they're a lot lighter. Any additional battery worth a damn is going to weigh them down and make them awkward to use.

Oh well, we'll just have to wait 25 years and find out what they actually did with it.

Assange™ offered 'plans for escape by flying fox to Harrods'

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"he has banned smartphones"

Funny, I would have thought the Ambassador would have something to say about that.

Obviously the prick has decided that anywhere he is, he commands. I wonder what mental condition he should be filed under.

Microsoft gobbles Chipzilla's Havok 3D physics unit in cloud gaming play

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Congratulations

Looks like Nvidia has smooth sailing ahead. AMD/ATI is trying to extract itself from the tar pit as usual, now Havoc belongs to the one company who's touch is the reverse of Midas.

I think I'll be looking into acquiring some Nvidia stock.

Junk patent ditched in EAST TEXAS

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: It's a perfectly legitimate business model to [..] licence it to others

Indeed it is, and when that happens, said inventor will be backed by said investor and they will be selling product, therefor will be entitled to damages.

Also, I never said that damages should be limited to sales, I said they should be linked to them. I am quite aware that trolls have vast lawyering coffers, so I will not venture to provide any rule more specific than the one I indicated : you produce nothing, you get nothing. Anything more complicated than that will likely have to be hashed out by lawyers in order to protect true innovators.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Good idea, but that still allows the troll to start the procedure

I have been repeating for years now that the only surefire way to prevent patent trolling from even starting is to tie the amount claimable to the revenue of the company.

Because the only entities harmed by patent abuse are the ones selling product. You don't sell product, you are not harmed if someone else is doing the selling.

That way, patent trolls will know that unless they make and sell what they have patents on, the judge will only grant them whatever they claim times the amount of goods they sell, which is zero.

If you know you're getting zero, you're not going to start the lawsuits.

And that nips the issue in the bud, and frees the Courts from dealing with them in the first place.

Weird garbled Windows 7 update baffles world – now Microsoft reveals the truth

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Trollface

And Windows will remember to "correct" the setting with the next update . . .

Pascal Monett Silver badge

No, set them up and run all the updates now, before MS includes W10 telemetry into the kernel, like IE, and you can't get rid of it anymore. Then disable WU and put in storage if you want.

If you wait two more years, you might as well write them off for Windows and install some other OS. I'm sure plenty of people can give you an idea or six.

Adblock farms out acceptable ad policy to independent reviewer

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Thanks for the tip

Now that AdBlock is whitelisting, I'm going to have to find another adblocker.

I'll give that one a try.

It's the white heat of the tech revolution, again!

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Government’s role is to provide the opportunity for massive advances in technology [..]

Um, no.

Government's role is to ensure that its citizens are safe from attack (and unjust prejudice), are adequately educated, do not drop of hunger or rampant disease, and have access to infrastructure that is adequate for the load it is subject to.

Anything else is mostly a justification that Government has too much money to play with, and should pare down the taxes to leave research institutes and corporations to care for technological advances. Those entities are more engaged in advancing things since they intend to profit from it, profit that Government will skim the top off of in order to ensure funding for the required infrastructure.

Government's work is already cut out for it, no need to go adding more things which will only serve as troughs for the few to put their snouts in.

Relax Schrems, EU-US Safe Harbour ruling coming soon

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Coat

Re: "The US does not and has not engaged in indiscriminate surveillance of anyone"

I'm sorry, for a moment there I thought I had read "I did not have sex with that woman".

My bad.

Herbie goes to a hackathon: Mueller promises cheatware fix

Pascal Monett Silver badge

I drive an Audi and I think he's totally right.

Massive global cooling process discovered as Paris climate deal looms

Pascal Monett Silver badge

As usual, nobody's going to change their minds after reading this

Thank goodness scientists are still at it. If we waited on the pro/denier factions to sort themselves out, the heat death of the Universe would happen first.

Smuggle mischievous JavaScript into WinRAR archives? Sure, why not

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Thumb Down

"software download sites like CNET and Softpedia"

Who never give you a link to the file you wish to download, but link to a wrapper that has to install on your PC and launch in order to download.

I know how to download. You know I know how to download. You putting a wrapper in there has sod all to do with "enhancing the user experience" and everything to do with sucking private data from me.

I never download from any site that forces a wrapper on me. There is literally no good reason for that behavior.

Besides, I've been using 7zip for years now. That's not going to change.

Raytheon: Ho hum, another day, another $1bn cyber-security contract with Uncle Sam

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Coat

We all know how this works

Raytheon has a warehouse full of large crates. Whenever they need a few new certified security contractors, they just go and pop open a few crates.

Top men, I tell you.

Top. Men.

Do you agree with our fee hike? Press 1 to answer Yes; or 2 for Yes

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Flame

Problems with the voting software

Yeah sure, at this point, why not ? It's not like they would have tested the thing before putting it into production, right ?

ICANN can say whatever they want anyway, it's not like anyone is going to trust their words.

I see only one solution : not voting. If they don't have the votes, they can't pretend everyone agrees.

Well, there is another solution, but it involves a hit man and a contract, and I think that, for us law-abiding citizens, it's rather frowned upon.

Pity.

Find shaving a chore? Why not BLAST your BEARD off with a RAYGUN

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Coat

Brilliant idea !

To be followed by a laser axe, a laser chainsaw, and a laser sledgehammer.

Why a sledgehammer ? Because we can.

Need discrete encounter with some hardware? Of course, we mean AMD's new Embedded Radeons

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Embedded gaming.

Nothing to do with sales terminals, everything to do with the screens in the back of car seats or plane seats.

At least, I think so.

Google 'cubists' fix bug in Linux network congestion control, boost performance

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Right. Wrong wording on my part.

I agree that the issue impacts everyone. What I meant to say is that I think this can only be _corrected_ on the server.

Once the correction is in place (and, as I said, since it is a server-side issue, it will be), then indeed everyone will be happier.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

This seems to be mostly a server-side issue

I know next to nothing about network management, but it seems to me that this bug mostly impacts the server, not the client.

As such, it will be fixed, because generally admins are vastly more consciencious of how their servers work than plain old desktop users.

So this is good news.

Audi, Seat, Skoda admit they've been fiddling car pollution tests as well

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"I'll sell you my Skoda for 80,001 euros and it's not even a V8"

So you agree that V8s are in high-end cars. Given that we agree that you'll never find a V8 in a €25,000 car, Skoda does not make high-end cars.

That does not mean to say Skoda does not make reliable cars, nor does it mean that Skoda does not have a high-end tier.

It does, however, mean that high-end at Skoda is below anything at Porsche. Porsche is high-end. Skoda is not.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Given that Skoda's most expensive model starts at under €25000, I don't think so.

But if you find a Skoda V8 at €80,000 don't hesitate to post the link, I'd love to take a gander.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: "open source their car management code. Our lives do depend on it after all"

Not really. Our lives depend mostly on the efficiency of the brakes and ABS, and on the precision of the steering. The engine is generally what gets us into trouble, rarely what gets us out of it.

Herbie Goes Under Investigation: German prosecutors probe ex-VW CEO Winterkorn

Pascal Monett Silver badge

he was unaware of the "defeat device"

If I can bring myself to accept that that statement might be true (and I'm having a bloody hard time of it), then that would mean that he did not decide or approve its creation, installation or use. Which would appear to imply that the Board had no knowledge of it either, since the CEO reports to the Board.

So I am supposed to believe that strategic decisions with, as we have seen, major shareholder impact are being decided under the radar and without even the knowledge of the CEO, much less his approval ? And that is happening on the engine, which is by far the car component that undergoes the most scrutiny and is shrouded in the greatest protection ?

Does VW have a shadow government or something ?

Sorry, no. I just can't swallow that.

NSA? Illegal spying? EU top lawyer is talking out of his Bot – US gov

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Uncle Sam is not happy

Good. Neither are we.

And, apparently, there is a glimmer of hope that something is going to be done about it.

Marijuana from heaven: Bundle of blow bombs bow-wow's boudoir

Pascal Monett Silver badge

You could mostly have gotten jail time

Breaking Bad was a TV show. In real life, if you just start selling illegal drugs, you're going to get caught. And if you get caught with over 20 pounds of the stuff, you're going down for a loooong time.

Feds want a phone smart enough to burn itself if it falls into the wrong hands

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Trollface

Neuromorphic

So that's the new biometric, then ?

Meet the new workplace : you can't enter because the fingerprint scanner won't recognize you, and you can't call for help because your phone didn't recognize your fiddling with the badge so it wiped itself.

Then you get fired for being late for the third time that week.

BlackBerry's tactical capitulation to Google buys time – and possibly a future

Pascal Monett Silver badge
WTF?

And when exactly did Google start going out of business ?

As far as I can see, it is still the major player in Internet Search, and on mobile phones. The financials don't look bad either, especially for a company that "tanked".

Is Windows 10 slurping too much data? No, says Microsoft. Nuh-uh. Nope

Pascal Monett Silver badge

You were already saying that about Vista, weren't you ?

Remember how that turned out ?

Don't forget one thing : us technophiles are the ones the clueless people come to for advice on computing. If we say don't use something, they won't. It's just that we have to wait for them to get around to asking the question.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: Mint does not demand sys admin skills

Good to know. I have been refurbishing an unused box I've had lying around for years with the express intention of installing some flavor of Linux, not knowing which one to try. I regularly try out Ubuntu and some others, but they all require that you know Linux to use them (aka mounting hard disks, etc). Nuisance.

If Mint works similarly to Windows (meaning it can find the bloody partitions by itself and not demand that I be a computer engineer to use it), then I will install that and make it my permanent Linux platform to educate myself about leaving the Windows world with which I am thoroughly fed up now.

World panics, children cry, workers sigh ... Facebook.com TITSUP

Pascal Monett Silver badge

The Graph thingy . . AGAIN ?

Wasn't that already a problem some time ago ? Maybe Zuck should think of unlinking the availability of people's profile from that useless non-enhancement ?

Oh wait, he can't, it's baked into the system. Too bad.

You want a 6% Google Tax? Get lost, German copyright bods told

Pascal Monett Silver badge

The Internet is global

It is useless to pursue Internet companies locally, the case of Spain is a brilliant example.

The only solution to the current taxation predicament is to set up an Internet Bureau of Taxation, which has authority in ALL countries. Internet revenue - whatever the amount - must be reported to the IBT, which will coordinate with the country where the revenue was generated to apply the required tax to the transaction. It can happen after the fact - everything is recorded.

Thus, no more upping and outing. You made a billion dollars of revenue from Spanish ad clicks ? You get whatever tax is applicable, whether you are based in Honduras or New York.

It's the Internet, don't tell me it's not technically possible.

But of course, the money lies with the corporations required to make that happen, so not very likely.

Bletchley Park remembers 'forgotten genius' Gordon Welchman

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Thumb Up

@DuncanL

You are perfectly right. I have actually forgotten that the bronze/silver/gold badges are also Vulture symbols. I assumed that the question concerned the red ones. My only excuse is that I hadn't had any coffee before responding.

Thank you for doing the job right.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

@Alexander J. Martin

The Vulture symble is for Vulture editors - tells us that the person commenting is not just a commentard.

And as for trying to understand Amanfrommars, don't. Save your brain cells and go read on Quantum Theory, you'll have a better chance of understanding that.

EU data protection chief: Snaffling all air traveller data goes too far

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Coat

"massive, non-targeted and indiscriminate"

The conjunction of those particular adjectives concerning just about anything feels just wrong.

Although, if I were to nitpick, I would say that indiscriminate and non-targeted seem to be two faces of the same coin.

Nevertheless, common sense would dictate that any system that can be described as massive and indiscriminate surely needs a redesign.

But who am I fooling . . .

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: "they manage to do that with a straight face"

Well they are politicians. Their whole life is devoted to lying convincingly.

German regulator sets VW deadline

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"can only be done with a big hit to the performance of cars on the road"

Seems to me that a lot of people are going to end up quite unhappy with their VWs.

They bought a car with a given level of performance, and they will apparently feel a substantial difference after the patch.

It doesn't matter if you bought a 300hp car or a 120hp car, if you lose 20% of your usual performance, you feel that the car handles like a wet log.

Millions of cars are apparently concerned. Long term, that means millions of people unhappy with their vehicle, and millions more people avoiding second-hand VWs for a long time - which will mean the resale value will take a hit as well.

This is going to mean years of trouble for VW, however fast they patch up the current problem.

ICANN chair plays chicken with internet control-halt-shift

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Trollface

And to expedite the process, make the cieling go down at 1cm/hour, and put downward spikes every 10cm2.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

At least things are official now

The Board will not accept ?

Fine then. REPLACE the Board and IMPOSE the change. End of.

It's like talking with an unreasonable child, You discuss the matter for a minute or two, to give the child a chance to comprehend. If the child still refuses after all reasons have been given, then you just MAKE him obey.

The problem here is that apparently the US Government, on this matter, is just like gutless parents who cannot abide forcing their children to do anything and must wait for them to get around to accepting things on their own. With a child it already doesn't work, and here, we're dealing with grown-up Machiavells who have a very good grasp on just how untouchable they appear to be.

What utterly fails my comprehension is why has this been allowed to go on for so long already ? Is there no one in any position of power that can do an Alexander and just cut this fracking knot already ?

Astroboffins snap BREATHTAKING, WISPY Veil Nebula supernova debris

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: Sir

The colors are computer-created following what elements the scientists wish to visualize.

In other words, what you would likely see with your eyes, were you in a position to do so, would most probably be just a shroud of darkness, or maybe wisps of smoke backlight by stars.

Spirit of the Ghost: Taking a Rolls-Royce Wraith around France

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Coat

If you flip a couple of times, I think you'll find that the door mechanism not working is the least of your troubles.

SAUCY INCEST and brutal VIOLENCE boosts UK space sector

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Currently reaching the end of Season 4 in the dead tree version. The TV version is very similar, for a given value of very.

Obviously, a lot of trimming had to happen to fit the series format, but I'm getting on in age now and I understand that they cannot possible keep everything.

There are some shocking suprises though. The biggest one for me was having discovered that the splendid scene where Drogo rocks the yourt swearing that he'll take his khal across the sea and lay waste to all who oppose him in honor of his wife was glorious, moving and quite thrilling on TV. The actor playing Drogo must have had loads of fun doing it, and I look upon that scene as worthy of a Grammy in its own right.

It's not in the book.

But, as usual, the books explain way more than the TV series, and allow understanding the details behind a number of things that the series glossed over. Some things are presented differently in the book, and with a bit of thought, you can understand why they did things a bit different for the series.

That said, I think both are good, in their own ways.

If you got Netflix for Miss Marple, you're out of luck (and a bit odd)

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: I rip them to MP4 or MKV and watch them on a standard full HD TV (or laptop).

Yes, that.

I bought myself a Synology NAS this year, and since I've had it I've been ripping my DVD collection to it without pause.

The NAS is obviously hooked up to the TV via a media box, and it works great. Now I can watch my films without the hookey commercials or stupid FBI warnings (hey, I live in France, FBI, and I bought the bloody disk, so fuck off).

I will continue buying physical media, and ripping them to my personal local cloud. The Internet can fall down, I will always be able to watch my films. THAT is convenience.

Get ready for a grim future where bees have shorter tongues

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Climate change is real

That is an undisputable fact.

The only question is which way the change is going and why, and there are two staunchly opposed factions on the matter who will neither agree nor change their minds in a thousand years.

But nobody can say that climate does not change.

VW: Just the tip of the pollution iceberg. Who's to blame? Hippies

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: [..] ship that will emit more NOx [..] than the entire fleet of VWs ever will

I have no idea how big the "entire fleet" of VWs is, but I'm pretty sure that one "blip" of any ship's engine is not even going to equal tens of millions of car exhausts for any measure of time you care to set.

Yahoo! Gits! Web! Security! Scanner!

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Trollface

Of course someone already did this

How else would Yahoo! get the idea ?

Smartphone passcodes protected by the Fifth Amendment – US court

Pascal Monett Silver badge

A passcode is a thought process [..] whereas a biometric identifier is out in the open

So, whatever you access by being you, is also accessible to the Government. Well that finally kills the "biometric security" platform in one fell swoop.

Kudos there, maybe we'll finally stop hearing about that nonsense.

Global productivity explodes as Facebook's service takes a dive

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Trollface

Productivity actually went down slightly

Since everyone was on Twitter finding out if everyone else was also out of Facebook.