Posts by Pascal Monett

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.

Apple: FBI request threatens kids, electricity grid, liberty

"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.

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.

Microsoft gets into the advanced intrusion sniffer game – but only for Windows 10

"no technical reason why the software couldn't run on Windows 7 or 8.1"

No surprise there. The limitation is for marketing reasons, not technical ones.

We all know that.

But, but . . . this is the Internet. It's the only place geeks can whine.

We're doing SETI the wrong and long way around, say boffins

Maybe we could combine ?

First off, I'm sure Science is the same for potential Aliens than it is for us, but who's to say that the Aliens do not have other means of detection ? They could have decided to create a vast observation net with buoys every two light-years, and search that way. Or they could literally be sending probes to every system and take a local gander.

So sure, put a priority on those planets that exist in the narrow band where Earth transits, but I fail to see why that should mean we should abandon the rest.

Windows 10 claimed another point of desktop share in February

Windows 7 is most-used OS then

Windows 1 0 is slowly taking from 7, but Vista and XP are neck-to-neck at the bottom of the race. 8 is all coked up in disappointment and going nowhere fast.

If that continues, then 1 0 might actually overtake 7 by the time it is EOL'd. That would be fun to watch.

We survived a five-hour butt-numbing Congress hearing on FBI-Apple ... so you don't have to

There is only one political party, carefully orchestrated to make people believe they have a choice.

In truth, everything is arranged beforehand by committee, deals are sealed in advance, and the "election" is just a reality show.

McDonald's Sweden adds fries to VR

Pizza Hut cartons

Having scarfed more than my fair share of those cholesterol-packed grease pies, I doubt very much that they can prove useful in any role other than serving as container for all the used napkins on their journey to the circular filing cabinet.

In any case, I would certainly think twice before sticking my valuable projection unit in such a stained enclosure.

NASA funds new supersonic airliner research

Supersonic flight

I'm interested that this QueSST initiative has begun, but I can't help but wonder if this is going to be any more economically feasible than the Concord was.

Going faster requires more energy, there is no way to avoid that. I'd be quite happy to have a Paris/New York flight in under three hours, but I'm not convinced the bird will be any more a money-maker than its illustrious predecessor.

Then again, whatever it looks like, I'll be happy for a chance to board it, and thrilled at being told that I've finally reached Mach speed. I'm sure I'm not alone in that, so I guess there's a serious shot for a sustained commercial existence.

Not to mention that getting to Sidney or Hong Kong in less than 2 days would finally be feasible.

Great news! Only 707,509,815 records breached in 2015

2 million records a day

So that means we should expect a total loss of 120 million records today.

With only 1 million almost accounted for already, we're due a major announcement any time soon.

Google Project Zero reverse-engineers Windows path hacks for better security

: in a path name ?

Really guys ? How drunk were you when you included that in the kernel ?

And it still needs to be allowed today ? In the name of all that is holy, WHY ?

The sooner Windows is consigned to the dustbin of History, the better off we'll all be.

Obama administration softens stance on Wassenaar

Not at all, my good sir. Software makes at best a few billion here and there. Gun exports are in the tens of billions yearly, and the market is always booming.

ICO fined cold-call firm £350k – so directors put it into liquidation

"lay down a marker"

A much more efficient marker would be a gravestone, that of the CEO who piloted this scam operation.

I think that would send a very different "signal" to other companies, one that they would heed with great attention.

Tor takes aim against malicious nodes on the network

All you need to confuse advertisers is Firefox with NoScript and an ad blocker. TOR is not indispensable for that.

SCO vs. IBM looks like it's over for good

I'll drink to that

But somebody put a watch on the grave.

If anything moves, nuke it.

Wikimedia’s executive director quits after less than 2 years in post

Because prisoners are obviously the people whose knowledge will most benefit Humanity.

Yup, sounds good. No need for all those boring PhDs and other assorted scientific experts. Nope. What we need is Weedkipedia.

On second thought . . .

90% of SSL VPNs are ‘hopelessly insecure’, say researchers

Well, yes

If you consider that they just forgot to prefix that sentence with In theory,

Orange is good to go on VoLTE, Wi-Fi calling in Europe

"dropped call figures [..] were similar to what the operator gets on 2G or 3G"

I'm pretty sure that his definition of a dropped call is not mine.

As far as I'm concerned, if I get a call and cannot hear the caller, I drop the call and wait for the caller to call back. Most often, I can hear the caller next time. If I call and my respondent cannot hear me, I drop the call and start over. Again, the second time I can generally be heard and hear and the call proceeds normally.

In both cases, I consider that it is a dropped call, because the call did not complete satisfactorily. This is undoubtedly a situation that operators do not consider a dropped call, but it is a situation in which the call is not complete because one person cannot hear the other.

Congratulations to 3rd millennium tech for having brought top-of-the-line technology that is less reliable than the POTS we had in that boring old 2nd millennium.

Oh, and just recently my sister called from her mobile to our landline. The echo was deafening, we could hear everything we said to her come back to us. It was so bad, she hung up and called back a quarter hour later when the train had arrived.

I do not recall a thing like that ever happening before Y2K. So kudos for having invented issues we never saw before.

Google wants new class of taller 'cloud disk' with more platters and I/O

Wishing wells are nice things

Google would like the butter, the money for the butter and the fridge thrown in for free.

I am not a hard disk expert, far from, but from where I sit I don't think that what Google wants can be done. From a logical point of view, what Google wants is contradictory. Higher disks with multiple platter sizes, multiple RW heads and multiple I/O ports. That means more complexity, which means a shorter life span - if it can work in the first place.

I think the solution is simple : multiple slim disks in RAID configuration. That way you have a maximum amount of RW heads per I/O port. Oh wait, that's the present situation. Oops.

But I'm not knocking Google engineers - these guys are not idiots. Which means I wonder why they ask for these things. There's something more to this.

Tor users are actively discriminated against by website operators

There are obviously some Tor champions out there who consider that 99% of Tor users are perfectly legit and restricting Tor IPs is a direct attack on Freedom and thus to be downvoted without fail and stomped on with great virtue.

Yes, Tor is used to protect anonymity. Yes, there are perfectly innocent people who use it legitimately. They are apparently 10% of Tor traffic. Those are not the people website owners are trying to protect themselves from.

If I can pin 90% of malicious traffic to one IP, I'm sorry but I'm blocking that IP.

Indeed. If you come in on the same bus as the hooligans, you can't play surprise at being looked at with suspicion from the store owners.

European Patent Office heads rapidly toward full meltdown

Re: "businesses are considered legal entities with rights supposedly comparable to humans"

In the US, not Europe.

Yet.

Oh TechNation. Britain's got tech talent. Just not like this

"the average digital salary"

My Diablo III witch doctor just made 45 million gold this week thanks to a treasure goblin portal. I'm not sure what the conversion rate to pounds is, but I'm pretty sure that counts as a digital salary.

I made considerably less last month, as usual, but I'm pretty sure I do not earn a "digital" salary. I earn real money that pays the bills, even if I know that it is stored digitally.

Any report that makes such fanciful and sweeping vocabulary changes on a whim is not one I would trust to begin with since it has obviously been written by a bunch of tweens fresh out of high school with the impression that their blathering is professional and has world-impacting importance.

Hint : it doesn't. Get back to work and do things properly next time.

Ker-ching! IBM paid 10 times Cleversafe’s funding for the startup

Silly money

Dropping a billion dollars for something not worth one-tenth the list price, wow, there's some right fine financial management right there. I can see now why I am not management material. I'm sure that, if someone gave me a billion to splurge, I could do a lot better.

There's something to say about having too much money. Oh well, at least it'll be reinjected into the economy (via massive parties and large bowls of white powder that are totally legit, officer, promise).

Bleeping Computer sued by Enigma Software over moderator's forum post

Of course they had "no intent", a bully doesn't want everyone and the news to know he's bullying, that would paint him in a bad light.

ESG just wanted to do some good ol' back alley intimidation and skim a lil' profit from it.

It's just business, right ?

This program can detect if you're bored – which is going to make annoying ads, articles so much more annoying

I'm sure they're trying something in Gitmo right now.

No, it means that your boss will soon install software that checks how engaged you are with your work software and, when an insufficient level has been detected, will send a mail to HR, activate the electrical plate at your seat and blare out "GET BACK TO WORK !" through the loudspeakers.

Who hit you, HP Inc? 'Windows 10! It's all Windows 10's fault'

"we have not yet seen the anticipated Win10 stimulation of demand"

Um, anticipated by whom, exactly ?

Oh, right, by those who looked at every previous Windows version sales impact and blindly took the same numbers, forgetting all the while that :

1) Windows 1 0 is the first Microsoft OS to be offered as a free download (for the moment, at least)

2) The OEM image for new PCs was months late, due to MS faffing about with the code right up to the last minute

3) PC hardware no longer has anywhere near the jumps in year-on-year performance that we enjoyed pre-Y2K, meaning that a 3-year-old PC could still conceivably be used to run the new OS without much trouble

In other words, the only people "anticipating" a surge in PC sales were those who had their blinkers on and took PC sales and new Windows version as an article of faith.

The rest of the world checked GWX and either tested their PC or threw the whole damn thing out with the bathwater. No new PC involved.

Once again, a major organization demonstrates just how unconnected it is with the Real World.

Data centre inventory tools have come around again? Yup, they have

I'm guessing statistics are in its favour as well.

Because one thing is sure: Humanity has a hell of a time learning from its mistakes, or from the past in general.

Linux lads lambast sorry state of Skype service

Re: It just makes us think you might drop our Linux support on Azure when it suits you

Microsoft cannot drop Linux support on Azure because without Linux Azure is dead in its tracks.

Linux is what Microsoft uses for its networking - packet switching and stuff if I'm not mistaken - because only Linux has the grunt and reliability that such an activity requires.

Presumably, Microsoft first tried with Win2K servers and the whole thing never took off.

Not to mention the irony of someone dissing Facebook while being signed up to the most privacy-invading company of the Internet which has its scripts all over the Web and follows you everywhere you go, tracking you all the time and correlating everything.

You say you're an Ansible expert, wise guy? Come and prove it

Isn't DevOps just posting code updates until something works ?

Because everyone is already certified, in that case.