Posts by Pascal Monett

UK Ministry of Justice secure email system browns out

Indeed, one wonders how the system is monitored. Is the admin just getting to his desk in the morning and waiting for calls to tell him there's a problem ?

Or is it more like the admin has been screaming for additional capacity for the past year, and now that the whole things is falling under its own weight, somebody is grudgingly accepting to sign the check ?

Because replacing the whole system sounds like they seriously underestimated the workload initially and, now that they have the usage figures, they realize that the existing infrastructure was hopelessly lacking in scaling ability, thus the wholesale replacement.

Whatever the reason, this is just another example of non-existent foresight and total lack of planning.

Approved: Master plan to end US gov control of internet's highest level

The Internet is made to route around blockage

If ICANN becomes a blocking point, I am certain the Internet WILL find a way around it.

That is why I find all this posturing totally ridiculous. ICANN does not own the Internet, nor does it have the power to impose anything on people that do not work for it and do not need it to attain their goals. The only reason ICANN still has any sort of position in the matter is imply due to the professionalism of all the rest of the Internet which, for some reason that is beyond me, accept this farce of an organisation as the lesser of two evils (the other being what, I wonder ?).

I can perfectly envisage the day that DNS operators will simply get together and say "okay, enough is enough - from now on WE decide what we're doing and we're setting up an independent committee to handle that".

And there is eff all ICANN, or anybody else for that matter, will be able to do about it.

Don't fear PC-pocalypse, Chromebooks, two-in-ones 'will save us'

"Industry experts greatly exaggerated the death of the PC,"

But of course, the PC is going to live on forever. Except it will no longer be a heavy tower requiring a desk to make use of it, it will be a sleek, inch-thick screen you can hold on your lap wherever you are. In the future it might be an ocular implant, with the CPU being powered by oxygen in your blood. Still a PC though.

So we are all still driving horse carriages then, except that there are no more actual horses and the carriage has a top and a steering wheel and, instead of smelling of horse dung, it smells of gas.

But still totally a horse carriage.

Microsoft has crafted a switch OS on Debian Linux. Repeat, a switch OS on Debian Linux

WinPhone 10 will miss the public.

By at least a farthing.

Beware the E E E effect

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

It is the Microsoft Way.

Granted, extinguishing Open Source is pretty much out of the picture, but Microsoft will stop at nothing to pervert what it touches.

So let's accept, but verify, ok ?

Go No! Google cyber-brain bests top-ranked human in ancient game

Congratulations to the team of DeepMind

I am thrilled that a machine was able to outwit the best human player in one of the hardest games with predetermined rules. It is truly an achievement in data analysis.

Now I'd like to see that same machine, without any modifications whatsoever, play a game of whist. Or poker. Or try shooting a 9mm at a firing range. Then take it fishing and see how many it can catch in an hour. Then ask it if it can remember one of the coders that left ten years ago and recognize his face in less than a second. From a photo it had never seen before. Taken in questionable lighting.

Without any additions to its code.

If it can learn to do all these things with what it already knows, then we might actually be progressing towards AI.

If not, it is just a great achievement in specialized data analysis.

Knackered Euro server turns Panasonic smart TVs into dumb TVs

TVs are supposed to be dumb

I am thrilled to see this complete failure of an inane system. There should be no such thing as a "smart" TV.

A TV is a portal, nothing more. What is on its screen, however, can very well be controlled by an external item connected to it. Thus, instead of trying to put all the hardware into the TV set, which carries risk of increased obsolescence and uncorrectable bugs, keep the TV the dumb screen it's supposed to be, and put the "smart" into the peripherals where they can be maintained, replaced or junked as need be, and will not impact the function of other peripherals if that one doesn't work.

But of course, doing so means the risk of losing valuable marketing data to people who want the screen and not the phoning home, so it looks like we'll all just have to wait for the vendors to lose money on this shite technology before realizing that nobody wants it implemented like that.

Home Ebola testing with a Tricorder? There's an app for that

This might prove scientifically valuable

Massive data points concerning an entire aspect of our biology that we have next to no knowledge of. I think this is guaranteed to bring some insights into how our individual biome is changed by outside factors, and at what point that change becomes dangerous for us.

For science, this can only be a good thing. If the information is handled responsibly, of course.

And that's the major stumbling block.

What are you doing to spot a breach?

Re:phishers are now sending pixel-perfect copy of legitimate emails and faking senders

That they are, but they are still including links to URLs that have nothing to do with the purported origin of the mail.

If I get a mail posing as being from my bank, asking me to click a link to validate something or another, and said link goes to http:\\mybank.com.cn, well sorry, but that is a spoof. When somebody sends me an attachment and the return address domain does not correspond to the domain it should come from, I know it's a scam. And they may be making pixel-perfect images of legitimate mails, but they're still mangling the language.

Of course, one has to pay attention to those things.

Don't snoop on staff via wearables, says Dutch privacy agency

100 is generous

I deal with a number of small companies of less than 10 people and I can assure you that some sort of ID is used in every case to identify who wrote what and when.

Besides, you are already stamped, indexed, filed and numbered since you were born, and moreso when you get paid a salary. Do you think your local Tax Office is using your picture to know who you are ?

Boffins bust biometrics with inkjet printer

Of course there is an urgent need to secure things properly

The need would have been less urgent if the whole thing had been properly researched beforehand, instead of being rushed through with marketing people having more say than the engineers.

If the research had been correctly conducted, it would have concluded that using fingerprints was not a 100% secure solution, and the whole thing would never have made it to the market.

Instead, we got teams who had to rush to put the thing on the market because nobody stopped to think if it actually answered the issue properly, so now somebody has to find a way to make a 3-legged horse gallop.

The whole things is just a waste of time and resources, but hey, terrism.

Is there anything left to ask Bill Gates? (Other than gissus a million?)

I cannot agree with this

"Eventually the software will understand what you should pay attention to by knowing the context and learning about your preferences."

It is wrong to expect software to "learn our preferences" in order to manage our lives. Doing so means expecting human intelligence to abandon the concept of oversight, responsibility and planning, and just handing the decision-making to somebody's code.

Instead, humans should learn to manage their stuff properly, to not frantically dive for the phone when they are already in face-to-face conversation with another human, and to LEAVE THE BLOODY THING ALONE when driving. That last point will, of course, be solved by self-driving cars - which means self-driving cars will become a reality given the massive amount of morons that simply cannot let go of their sexting tool.

Strike! European Patent Office staff vote in their thousands for walkout

Wrong man for a hard job

Getting any group of people used to progress by seniority to accept that now they'll have to accept to have their progress impeded by actual performance is not an easy task. It requires patience, diplomacy, tact, strength but not bull-headedness, and a whole lot of scheming plus the ability to compromise.

Apparently, Battistelli has none of those qualities. He went with the bulldozer, and now everything is a shambles.

Somebody will have to get the message across, though.

Microsoft has made SQL Server for Linux. Repeat, Microsoft has made SQL Server 2016 for Linux

The arrival ?

For a new spec only announced in 2015 and the spec only published last month ?

Call me when it has arrived, we'll talk about then.

MS's exposure to the Internet is driving Windows into the shadows

The requirements of Internet-based services for millions of concurrent users have taught MS that Windows is not up to the task.

The current market drive is all speed ahead toward the Cloud. Once there, the OS on the client side is irrelevant. All the *aaS stuff is essentially handled by Linux servers in the back end (basically nobody, not even Microsoft, runs a data center on Windows), and the youth of today is more exposed to non-Windows platforms than ever before.

Now MS is porting major parts of its portfolio to the platform. Seems to me that MS is gearing up for the day when Windows will finally become a footnote in the computing industry. There is only one important roadblock in the way before that happens : DirectX needs porting to Linux as well.

The day that happens, Windows will definitively be on the way out.

Final Euro Parliament vote on passenger name records delayed

But of course

"PNR data collected may only be processed for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of terrorist offences and serious crime"

This statement is perfectly valid and acceptable. The only issue is : what is the definition of "terrorist offences and serious crime" ?

What happens when disagreeing with government policy on any matter becomes a serious crime ?

IBM staffer at risk of redundo? Capita will wipe away your tears

So, IBM is firing people, HP is firing people, and Capita, who handles the firing for IBM, is firing people.

Is this the result of a New Years resolution ? One wonders.

Software dev 101: 'The best time to understand how your system works is when it is dying'

"Failuretect" then ?

NatWest tightens online banking security after hacks' 'hack' exposé

So giving them your phone number makes you less secure ?

Brilliant. They introduce the phone as a 2FA security measure, then they proceed to hand over your entire bank account to any moderately enterprising criminal.

Or should I say business partner ?

Bill Clinton killed off internet taxes, says Australian politician

It will happen, eventually

Objectively, no government has ever wasted a tax opportunity, and I'm guessing governments all over the world are watching the billions being made in Internet transactions and are pinching themselves in frustration.

This guy may be an excellent example of a dimwit, but I'm convinced that online retailers will, one day, have to contend with local taxes everywhere they sell.

Steam already handles European tax on game sales, so it's not like it can't be done. What will have to happen (off the top of my head) is something like an API made available from a government site, where the vendor can query the API for the local tax to apply and integrate it into the sales process.

It's just a question of time.

Flying blind: F-35's radar software fails in the air

"can't check engine and airframe maintenance data from government networks"

Well, given the sorry security state of government networks, I'd take that as a plus for cybersecurity.

It's probably the only one, and they want to fix that.

Dead Steve Jobs is still a crook – and Apple must cough up $450m for over-pricing ebooks

"We know we did nothing wrong"

Stellar example of not acknowledging any fault. Brilliant management stay-the-course dedication. Admirable start of judicial decision whitewashing in Apple history books. Reality Distortion Field functioning at 110%, Sir.

Outside of that field's influence, it's just a bunch of twats who have learned nothing and will obviously do it again first chance.

I'd say it's time to bring back public whippings.

Eight in ten IBM Global Tech Services roles will be offshore by 2017

"it is hard to be agile when most of the coders are based in another time zone"

I vote that for the Best Statement of the Week Award !

Oracle support sackings and 'consolidation' almost complete

“consolidation” of support resources [..] Oracle has no comment to make

Funny that. There is not one example of support outsourcing that has brought actual, tangible benefits to customers.

I would have thought that the industry, as a whole, has gone through the call center outsourcing fad and seen the light. Several large companies have declared recreating support centers in-country in the past 18 months. I took that as a sign that this was the end of the fad and things would be set straight again.

I was obviously wrong.

Alice, Bob and Verity, too. Yeah, everybody's got a story, pal

I think the proof reader is still locked in the basement. Whether or not he is still hungover is irrelevant since it is quite obvious everyone else is.

And now I'm in a hurry to get there as well.

UK.gov will scrutinise all its Atos contracts following IT cock-up

What exactly makes you think that the investigations are meant to ensure IT failures cannot happen again ?

If I remember the lessons of Sir Humphry Appleby, those investigations will most likely be made to ensure that the people responsible will be whitewashed, while the culprits will be designated as "market forces" and other assorted "outside influences" over which nobody has any control and no one could have forecast.

So nobody's actually at fault, bonuses all around and, as we can see, new contracts awarded in a jiffy.

Me, cynical ? Whatever makes you think that ?

Aye, AI: Cambridge's Dr Sean Holden talks to El Reg about our robot overlords

"the only rule is that you can't tell a new player what the rules are"

But, supposedly, you do tell them when they've done something they can't. Sounds suspiciously like Calvinball to me.

Can't fault an AI for not understanding that. I'd have trouble myself.

Flash is too fat. A glut of supply means growth is slower and slower

Flash is the future - in a way

My personal use of Flash is two 180GB SSDs - one with the OS, one with the swap file and those few programs I use that really need the speed (for me anyway).

For all the rest, I have a few TB drives that have ample space and are good enough for what I want. Having a TB SSD is a nice-to-have at this point, one I am not about to spend any sizeable chunk of my monthly salary on.

Business-wise, I could use a TB SSD in my laptop, but I can't honestly justify the price for the convenience it would bring, which I can live without right now.

Flash simply needs to reach spinning rust prices per GB before I will switch in any meaningful way.

And if I were running Linux (which I am studying), it would be even less important.

Apple: FBI request threatens kids, electricity grid, liberty

@LDS

Um, legislation is not going to magically create a backdoor into a proper, mathematically-proven encryption scheme.

That is the entire issue that tech companies are rightfully defending.

Either you have a sound encryption scheme and people and companies will benefit and thrive, or you don't and it is only the scum that benefit.

As for TLAs they don't actually benefit. They just have a lot of activity for very little return, and everyone else's lives are raped in the process.

"it be used only on government or Apple premises"

For now.

How long will it take for the FBI to request a special room at FBI HQ with permanent presence of the cracking software and Apple people to ensure National Surveillance Security ?

How long after that will the FBI dispense with the Apple people and replicate that room to every FBI building in every state ?

It's National Security, people. You know it has to be done.

Microsoft: Ditch your phone biz and do crazy hardware experiments

"looks for ways of getting people to write Universal apps"

Here's a tip : get rid of the 30% fee on revenue.

Here's another tip : make the bloody Store properly searchable. You know, that Search functionality you've consistently screwed up for the past 30 years ? Look it up in the dictionary. It's time to get it right.

High time.

India challenges US visa price hike at World Trade Organisation

Re: I thought that the USA was highly in favour of Free Trade in every form?

Of course it is highly in favour of Free Trade in every form - that benefits the USA, that is.

Hacker 'Guccifer' extradited to US

Dubya paints ?

He should have stuck with that.

First working Apple Mac ransomware infects Transmission BitTorrent app downloads

"malware's executable was smuggled in an .RTF README file"

An RTF ? Is there nothing sacred anymore ? Do they have to go and pervert every single aspect of our poor lives ?

Obviously they do.

MAME goes fully FOSS

Retro gaming is now Open Source ? Great news !

Now all someone needs to do is peruse that code to recover the elegant simplicity of some of the gems of old.

Playing a boring "game" that looks gorgeous but does little else is not entertaining.

I abandoned Battlefield at #3. I never was interested in Call of Duty.

I now play Diablo III or Minecraft. One for the mouse-twitching action and loot, the other for the simple beauty of deciding on something to do and going about getting it done the way I want. Yes, Diablo III looks gorgeous, but it is much more than that. Minecraft looks . . . well nobody plays Minecraft for its looks.

McAfee gaffe a quick AV kill for enterprising staff

Or maybe it is because the vast majority of companies do not have dedicated IT staff or even someone knowledgeable enough to properly manage what little IT they have, and if they did try to enforce no local admin rights there would be a lynching before noon on the next Monday morning ?

Microsoft wants to lock everyone into its store via universal Windows apps, says game kingpin

Whoa there

Why is it that everyone is thinking that, just because MS is attempting to get all devs on their Store, that all devs will blindly run into that direction ?

I find that 30% is nothing less than usury for the "benefit" of using the UWP ecosystem. MS is really pushing it just for maintaining the Store. The big labels are not going to accept losing almost a third of their revenue just to be able to sell their wares. Steam, for one, will likely say eff off, it is already a perfectly functional platform with a Store included. Valve will just do what it takes to create a tablet version of their games and that will be that.

Maybe we'll have a joining of efforts from the gaming industry in response to this monopolistic maneuvering. Maybe all major labels will create a common platform/store and work from there. But even if they don't join forces, they already have their own Stores. I fail to see why they will kowtow to Redmond and lose 30% just because Windows 1 0.

Once again, Microsoft might find that pushing in one direction is just going to create the opposite effect that the one it wanted.

Here's to hoping it does.

And even when the hardware is constant, they still can't get the game out on time with all the functionality working as it should.

How the FBI will lose its iPhone fight, thanks to 'West Coast Law'

Obama is just trying to clean up the mess made by Bush. If you think you only need one year to erase the consequences of an immoral war (Iraq) plus a useless one (Afghanistan), you are seriously out of touch with reality.

French parliament votes to jail tech execs who refuse to decrypt data

That stuffed clown is on his way out, thank goodness.

What will be interesting will be what right-wing character will take his place. And, given my governments' history on encryption, there is no guarantee that such a shameful bill will not be enacted to some degree.

We shall see.

I am relieved to see that my government is opposed to this - currently.

Hardware – yes, hardware – is driving Hewlett Packard Enterprise's top line

"exiting another 30,000 heads will likely help… in the short term at least"

But only in the short term.

In the long term, the collective knowledge held by those 30k will be irrecoverable, because a procedure on a piece of paper will never, ever replace human interaction and experience.

Machismo is ruining the tech industry for all of us. Equally

I think it all depends on who/what you define as your opponent.

For too many people, it is you, not the job.

North Dorset Council hit by ransomware, flips the bird at miscreants

"providing organisations have the correct security measures in place"

Yes, I do believe that that is a sine qua non condition.

Good on them for having done so. And damn right to be smug about it too. Now can we have a report on their IT infrastructure, to make a blueprint for all the ones who don't have it right ?

Maybe some of others will see the light.

Backup bods at Microsoft lose CA audit data after server crash

Microsoft never was and never will be a services company.

Every EULA of every one of their products has always indicated that you use it at your own risk and Microsoft is liable for nothing.

It seems Microsoft is not even liable for the proper record-keeping of its own certs.

And people keep on buying these clowns' software.

Everything bad in the world can be traced to crap Wi-Fi

Re: "make the management baulk"

Well that really isn't hard, now is it ?

All you have to do is say that what they want is not cost-free. They generally start choking right then.

Docker may be the dumbest thing you do today

"enterprises are confused as to how to use Docker in real production scenarios"

Well I think that remark sums up the Cloud situation quite nicely.

There are, of course, a few companies for whom the Cloud is entirely justified, useful, and contributing to the ever-important bottom line.

The majority, however, are just fumbling around, toying with the tools, trying to wrap their heads around how to get that stuff into production in a useful way.

Right now, I'm against using Cloud services for security and confidentiality reasons, but I do believe that that situation will improve with the current drive for encryption (despite the US governments best efforts). When data security will be properly guaranteed by Cloud operators (and technically verifiable), then I see no reason why companies couldn't have their production environment entirely cloud-based. That way, we could finally get rid of Windows in the workplace, go for a secure Linux setup using business-oriented browsers and finally rid the world of Windows-based botnets and malware.

I'm hopeful, but now is not the time.

Good eye, Hubble! Space 'scope spots furthest-ever object

Scientists are used to not being able to service equipment. Hubble was an exception in that regard.

Because they are used to not being able to service their tools, they design resilience into said tools. That's why the Mars Rovers have been functioning so long beyond their programmed end-of-service date.

That's also why their tools cost billions to put into service. It is not money down the drain.

Now stop confusing NASA contractors with the military/industrial conglomerates. They're really not cut from the same cloth.

Third of US banks OK with passwords even social networks reject

"why do social networking platforms [..] adopt much stricter password policies?"

Simple.

You have insurance for your money.

There is no insurance for your reputation.

People will not care so much for the safety of their bank account since they can have a discussion with their banker face-to-face, prove their ownership and innocence, and get things set straight.

Try doing that with a Facebook representative when your account has been hijacked (don't know if that has ever happened).

Hardcoded god-mode code found in RSA 2016 badge-scanning app

the security gaffe is "par for the course" in app development

Well that's reassuring.

NOT.

Don't expect AI to save our security skins, warns RSA boss

Be respectful, but carry a heavy cluebat.