Posts by Pascal Monett 19125 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
There is no political gain to be had from doing that because everyone knows that the answer is better communication, more inter-agency cooperation and more actual justice for everyone. More actual justice for everyone means less wiggle room to fill one's pockets from the trough, so nope, not gonna happen.
I don't think it is the developers that decided to put the telemetry in. It's VW who apparently has engineers that go off and do things without management approval (or so they say).
No, Microsoft managers are the ones to take the beating in this matter, along with the marketing department I'm sure. And not the little managers either, this kind of decision was made at the top and ran down the line.
That is, in my humble opinion, useless - at the condition that modifying the Registry does not scare you.
If that is the case, then first kill the GWX task, then just search your Registry for GWX and delete everything that shows up. Finally, delete the GWX folder. Works fine for me.
Sorry, humility does not advertise itself out loud. If you are indeed humble, the message gets across without being said. From what I gather here, they are anything but humble. They appear to have nailed the lavish presentation schtick, though.
And infinitely scalable ? That falls flat by logic alone, but the buzzword bullshit alarm goes off as well.
What I take from this article is that there is yet another startup playing doe-eyes in front and quietly sharpening a shiv in the back. The only question is how will these new wolves mix things up, and will they be able to ?
If it is indeed test machines, then it will be interesting to see how that number changes when the tests are discontinued.
In any case, it seems like MS is throwing everything including the kitchen sink to bolster its numbers. No matter, MS will survive a while yet, but when the new generation that has grown up on Android and Iphone get to the workplace, they're going to kick that bucket hard.
The fact that they only noticed the loss when preparing the backups for destruction is more worrying : it means that the disc has been AWOL for quite a while in that "secure" facility.
Something needs to be done about the procedures for storing data. From RITA's declaration, it is impossible to know whether the DVD ever got to the storage facility in the first place, or whether it went AWOL on-site. Why is that data not available ? A proper paper trail should allow discovery if the disc ever got there, at the condition that somebody on-site actually eyeballed all containers to ensure proper sign-in of data. I would think that a "secure" storage facility would do that par for the course.
RITA's declaration stipulates that "From our investigation, we believe the DVD was most likely destroyed in accordance with our usual process for unlabeled DVDs". That means that data written to a DVD made for backup purposes went into storage unlabelled ? How can backup procedures function properly if they send unlabelled DVDs into storage, and why didn't the "secure" storage vendor not raise a flag on that point ? Or maybe a flag was raised, which allows them to make that declaration, but then why is the issue coming up now ?
There is something of a mess in the data storage procedures in Ohio.
Thus relying on the tried-and-trusted clueless idiot who clicks on everything without even wondering why he was sent an executable in the first place - if said idiot even knows what an executable is. Well, users need to learn to not open everything they see in front of them, and if losing their personal files is the price, then I'm all for it. Maybe after the initial panic attack they'll realize the error of their ways and correct it (yeah, right).
Personally I would prefer a drive-by attack, since I personally use NoScript so wouldn't be at risk and Google would most likely quickly catch on to the infection and alert its users, rendering the attack next to moot.
But of course that is the very reason it is not a drive-by.
Let's just assume they won't go down until the next attack.
In other matters, I wonder if this region blocking is going to become a standard in security considerations. This is anti-ethical to the very notion of Internet, but if a company knows it only does business in a given area, maybe it makes sense to block all other regions.
Or maybe global companies might start thinking about blocking the rest of the world for each of their regional installations. Microsoft Europe, for example, would block everything that is not Europe, Microsoft US would block everything that is not North America, Microsoft Asia would block everything that is not defined as Asian, etc. That might pull the rug under the feet of those worldwide botnet attacks somewhat, and the impact for the honest customers would probably not be all that significant.
If I am not mistaken, the attacker has next to zero cost in this, since the attack, and the bandwidth cost, is handled by the zombie PCs that are part of the botnet. So the attacker only has to send the marching orders to the botnet, then sit back and watch the mayhem unfold.
The only solution to this is the proper cleaning of the infected PCs and the education of the users. The first will remain difficult so long as bug-ridden Flash maintains its existence, despite efforts to bury it. The second will only bring fruit if the cluebat becomes an accepted education tool.
Either that, or some other OS than Windows becomes the default on Internet-facing user computers, preferably one which is inherently more secure than Windows so that, even if the brainless dolt persists in clicking on everything, the OS itself will resist becoming part of a botnet.
And once botnets are history, DoS attacks will be much more difficult to perform, and (I think) next to impossible to do anonymously.
Given that 66% of major IT bods don't think security is a primary concern, it seems to me that this cloudy future, so rosy on paper, is going to be full of leaks.
As soon as a hacker gets to know the cloud provider security scheme, he will be in and out as he pleases with the data of all companies using that platform.
Fun times ahead.
Good on Zuckland for killing off Flash. Given its market reach, it is a very important step in securing the Web in general.
That said, I always cringe when I hear IT people talk about moving "fast". Practically every time I've witnessed a project moving fast, it generally ended up right in the wall and not moving at all until somebody found a way to revive it.
No doubt we'll see how fast they can _safely_ move in short order.
There is absolutely zero surprise in this nomination.
Chehade is a sleazeball who has played the information hiding game on Master level for years. He is an expert in the domain and a perfect pick for the Wuzhen conference goers.
I'm sure they will be very happy with their choice.
Meanwhile, it looks like the Internet is going to get its balkanization after all. On the one side, the authoritarians indiscriminately snooping on everyone for local political reasons, and on the other, the freedom-respecting countries snooping on everyone for "protection against terrorist" (and occasional industrial espionage) reasons.
Ain't this world just peachy ?
Yeah, but no other country has declared itself the bastion of Freedom and Justice only to piss all over that with indiscriminate surveillance of everyone all the time.
And when caught out, only to move the surveillance facilities to another country to be able to say that no more surveillance was taking place in the country.
Sorry, but as far as being dicks is concerned, the US is indeed #1.
This is the Age Of Internet.
Never Say Never.
Come on, are we capitalists or not ? Adobe certainly has developed a metric ton of expertise and functionality, but that is nothing that the Internet cannot take on and overcome. We're not talking about Google, which has invested billions in its search engine and has harvested #Deity only knows how much data. Microsoft is currently demonstrating how hard it is, and how much it costs, to become a Google competitor.
We're talking about a program that can create and edit images. Any number of mathematicians get together and they can very well create a program that will crush Adobe's product.
It may not be easy, but it certainly won't require the kind of cash needed for a data center. It will only require a collaborative effort, the likes of which Linux has already largely demonstrated is possible.
Yes, I believe that's called the coma after the aneurysm.
It is obvious that what Adobe did resulted in more profit ; Adobe's customers are practically co-joined from the hip to Adobe's products given that the competition is not exactly either ferocious on the market or up to par where competition there is.
Open source, from what I've heard, is stepping up its game, but it's not there yet as far as the professionals are concerned. So the professionals had their hissy fit, then complied with many a grumble and regret.
Adobe is celebrating that as a victory, but the day there is another viable solution, Adobe just might see its revenue tank and wonder why. If so, the why is simple : it's never a good idea to force your customers into anything, you encourage them with incentives.
First we had Wikipedia, the encyclopedia any moron can edit, now we're going to get Wikidata, the attribution-free database that any corporation can subvert. Somewhere, a billionaire is cackling evilly.
Well, progress is still progress, even when it's moving backwards.
Not a judge, are you ?
I have news for you : the scale depends on the crime.
More news : stealing is generally considered less bad than murder.
That's why the officers usually do not shoot you when they catch you over the speed limit.
Where "life without parole" fits in all this is an exercise I'll leave to your discovery.
Oh really ? And who says they are professionals ? Uber ?
If that is the case, then there is the whole "not our employees" thing to review, meaning Uber's foot has found its mouth again. If it not the case, then Uber has just been caught blatantly lying again.
I'm all for convenience and I like the idea of calling a taxi from an app, but Uber is totally looking like a schizophrenic pathological liar and I'm fed up with it.
These reports have been negative for years already - at least that how it feels - but nothing stops the money pit from growing.
A private company would have put a stop to the thing a long time ago, I think, or at least a few top people would have been sacked to bring in a little order and get a better handle on things, but this being government, that is obviously impossible.
What should be possible is taking the people currently in charge away from the project and bringing in people who are capable of getting the job done. However again, this being government, that is highly unlikely.
The whole thing is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Except this train is tax money going to waste in huge fashion.
Indeed, but thankfully politics are not relevant to mathematics, and mathematics clearly state that a backdoored encryption scheme is a broken encryption scheme.
In the end, whatever the frothing-at-the-mouth paranoid are shouting now, politics will bend to the pressure of the market. The only question is how long it will take.
I'm French, and not at all in agreement with this proposal of a law.
I am sick and tired of governments the world over bending over to terrorists and shitting on their own Constitutions under the pretence of protecting the population. I am quite dismayed to see my own government trot eagerly in this direction as well, but not at all surprised.
The French government has historically been allergic to encryption since forever. The issue with Lotus Notes and the 54-bit key length that the French government of the time imposed on the product is the most public issue I am aware of that demonstrates this.
The good thing is that, although my lilly-livered government is hell bent on pushing this through as "necessary", it will end up on the same scrap heap as the aformentioned 54-bit Notes key - only it will happen faster because you cannot go against the tide for very long.
So go ahead, Mr. President, make my country even more ridiculous. It'll pass, just like you.
Noise ? If your water cooling system is making noise, then you haven't bought the right one.
I have a model of the Corsair Hydro series, and the only way I can tell that my PC is running is that the LEDs on the front fans are on.
I used to have a full rig with pump and cooling for the CPU and graphics card and I couldn't hear that either. Hard disks make more noise than a proper cooling system.
On the other hand, I have witnessed low-quality pumps that make quite a bit of noise.
I hate noise.
I have bought one PC in my life. Everything else has been upgraded or bought piece by piece. As such, the three PCs I have today are the result of this endless recycling of stuff.
In all this time (since the dawn of the upgradeable PC in 1990 or so), I have only had one piece of equipment fail catastrophically : a PSU unit that up and blew a capacitor. I had just enough time to shut down the PC properly and unplug before it started smelling of burnt plastic.
That is the only case I encountered where something went so badly wrong on my PC equipment.
Along the way I've had a few hard disks die, like everyone else I think, and I fried a motherboard one day plugging something in that I shouldn't have plugged there.
But all in all, my PC equipment has been absolutely stellar. I have motherboards from early 2000 that still work. Actually, it has only ever been my insatiable appetite for upgrading that has cost me so much money in equipment. That, and the fact that I have never purchased a laptop in my life. Don't trust the things.
Won't trust Surface either. I prefer sitting at a proper desk, in a good chair, with mouse, keyboard and two 26" widescreens, thank you.
That response reminds me of the old joke of guys lost in a balloon in the fog . . .
* link leads to joke in plane, largely less credible but the gist is the same
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.
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.
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