Posts by Pascal Monett

Moscow raids could signal end of global Dyre bank trojan menace

"Dyre's domination. Image: IBM"

I know it's called Big Blue, but for Christ sake could somebody put some red in there ?

17 shades of blue does not a readable graphic make.

Flash flushed as Google orders almost all ads to adopt HTML5

I think that any ad with a size over 80Kb should be banned. The html in the pages I read rarely goes over 20Kb, having 4 times that for ads should be largely enough.

I would welcome a browser extension that only downloads 80kb of ads and not a byte more. If all the ads in the page can't fit in, too bad.

That would kill almost all flash thingies in one stroke.

GSMA outlines thoroughly sensible IoT security rules

"do it right, or we won't connect your stuff"

Now THAT is the right kind of approach. No molly-cuddling, no pretty please, no endless collection of second chances.

Where security is concerned, I totally subscribe to that. Enough with the kindergarden view of connecting things to the Internet.

I hope the words will be followed by actions.

The Mad Men's monster is losing the botnet fight: Fewer humans are seeing web ads

Well then it hasn't been done properly. No matter, we'll just keep blocking them until they sort it out.

Given that it's directly linked to the famous bottom line, it'll hit home one day.

Glad to hear that advertisers are feeling squeezed

It is only just that they get some misery out of all the shite they think they have the right to fling at us.

I have a solution for this situation, which I have already outlined in the columns of this memorable site. It is called separation of powers. At the moment, ad creators have complete control over the ad. They build it the way they want it, and shovel the end result to the channel for distribution. Thus, they have the power to make it as annoying/vicious/fullofmalware as they want.

I propose that ad agencies put a stop to this by creating an ad submission environment in which ad creators will only be able to submit images (eventually a video), and set up a script containing only commands from a given set of options. The ad agency would then check the script for any fraudulent commands, build the ad and serve it.

In that fashion, ads served by a given agency would always be built by that agency and the reputation of that agency would be made following what behavior it allowed in ads it served. Thus, agencies would (hopefully) compete by being graded by customers, while the public would bask in a world where ad blockers would only be used to block ads from agencies you wouldn't like.

In my view, everybody wins. Except for the scam artists, of course, but I'm not shedding a tear for them.

Not to mention malware vectors.

SCO slapped in latest round of eternal 'Who owns UNIX?' lawsuit

WANTED - URGENT : Vampire hunter with gatling holy-water crossbow to end useless sucking

Could somebody please finally put a stake through all SCO stakeholders ?

Why can't a judge just say "effin' eff off already" and condemn SCO for contempt of everything ?

Alibaba security fail: Brute-force bonanza yields 21m logins

Great start to the year

Not even mid-February and we already have the counter pegged beyond 20 million account details slurped.

Way to go to reach 100 million before the end of the year. Who says 100 million before July ?

Anyone ?

Oracle issues emergency patch for Java on Windows

"a suitably inept end user"

Well it's not like those are a dime a dozen now is it ?

Oh, wait . . .

Reports: First death from meteorite impact recorded in India

The Tunguska event was quite a big blast, but it did not kill many because it happened above a (very) sparsely-populated area - which is probably why it took a decade to get the first recorded expedition to find out what happened.

Norks uses ballistic missile to launch silent 'satellite'

Interesting idea, and strategically valid, I do believe, at the condition that the owner is the only entity that can give it the marching orders. But that is an issue for the spymasters to resolve.

The real issue is that orbits degrade. If you want a loitering anything, you need to include the necessary fuel and exhaust ports, plus comms and telemetry to know how high it is, how fast the orbit is degrading and when and how long the burn needs to take to recover an optimal amount of time before the next burn.

Given that there is currently no satellite in existence that can maintain orbital altitude on its own (even the expensive telecommunications satellites that are very valued by their owners and would certainly benefit from such technology), I'd venture that, if Western economies with their ready access to best-level physicists and boatloads of money do not include such tech, I highly doubt that the Norks have the brainpower, not to mention the resources, to do it on their lonesome.

But hey, ingenuity knows no bounds, so I'm willing to be surprised.

That's cute, Germany – China shows the world how fusion is done

Re: "super-heated plasma that turns the Earth into another star"

Um, no. I'm not a physician, but I'm certain that no fusion reactor Man can make will turn Earth into a star. We might be able to return it to the molten slag state it started in, but we have nowhere near the mass, nor the hydrogen required to make Earth sustain fusion reactions in its core.

Personally, I admit that there will be mistakes - to think otherwise wold be foolish, given Man's history. I also think that a broken fusion reactor will simply make one spot rather hot for a bit, and that should be it.

Maybe we should always build them underground ?

Dragons and butterflies: The chaos of other people's clouds

"built in redundancy at the application layer because that's best practice"

No, Netflix created their software and built in redundancy because upper management had made the decision to put the money in it, probably because they decided, after analysis, that it would cost them more in the long run if they had a service that fell over every other week.

Best practice is hardly the reason for doing things when the accountants hold the purse strings.

Microsoft explanation for Visual Studio online outage leaves open questions

"built on the enterprise-grade infrastructure of Microsoft Azure"

Enterprise-grade, except memory management and automatic failover are conspicuously absent.

So it's more like piling sub-par software on a platform that can fail for several continents after a wrong DNS command.

So it's totally Microsoft-grade quality, then.

What's it like to work for a genius and Olympic archer who's mates with Richard Branson?

You could get away with it 25 years ago

Today, you're just one web search away from being thoroughly debunked, right after spinning your tale.

Thing is, that kind of people hasn't stopped telling porkies. I wonder how they adapt to the enormous risk of being called on their fabrications.

Sir Michael Lyons tells .uk registry Nominet: Time to grow up

Nominet board members

Is this a training ground to become ICANN board members ?

From what I've read here, it sounds like a rather excellent fit.

Cruz missile slams into DNS overlord ICANN over Chinese censorship

"accepting the role represents a conflict of interest"

Of course not, it is totally in Chehade's interest.

It doesn't have to be a competition, both are just as bad.

Go phish your own staff: Dev builds open-source fool-testing tool

"SaaS solutions that require you to hand over your data to someone else"

Sounds like the ultimate phishing scheme to me.

The question is : where did you get rid of the rolled-up carpet this time ?

I sense a BOFH in the making . . .

It killed Safe Harbor. Will Europe's highest court now kill off hyperlinks?

So you're saying that once a thief has stolen something it becomes legally his ?

New AI chip from MIT gives Skynet a tenfold speed boost

Anyone else find the concept a bit frightening ?

So, my future phone is to have Cortana/Siri locally, check my face/fingerprints and decide if I can use it, maybe even decide to forward parts of my conversations automatically to some "interested" 3rd-party.

All this just so people can continue their incessant jabbering whether or not there's anyone around to listen.

Humbug.

Microsoft's malware mitigator refreshed, but even Redmond says it's no longer needed

The day I replace Win7 on my computer, it won't be with a Microsoft OS.

I'm not yet sure what I'll go for, but Win 7 is the last Microsoft OS that will ever encumber my disks.

For sale: One 236-bed nuclear bunker

"Security could be racked up if needed"

Yup. Needs a zombie-proof wall if they hope to interest me.

I love you. I will kill you! I want to make love to you: The evolution of AI in pop culture

"what it is that makes us human when computers and machines can educate themselves"

Wait a minute, every single example I've seen, or heard of up to now, of a learning system was specifically trained to learn in one domain.

I have yet to see a machine that can learn chess without any programming, then learn backgammon, then move on to learning knitting and finally learn how to plan and build a wall. Of course, said computer will need arms, at the very least, in order to actually do something, but I think that will be easier than the learning part.

I think we might actually get there one day, but I'm sure the scientist in charge will not recognize it and erase it to start over.

AI no longer needs to fake it. Just don't try talking to your robots

Indeed. If the future is to be that robots do the work, then the notion of economy will have to take another definition and humanity will have to transition from "working" to "occupying themselves" or "pursuing personal interests".

An optimist would say that Humanity will finally have time to become better, more intelligent, more understanding. People will work to improve themselves, to advance knowledge, or develop artistic skills. Society will be a cornucopia of intelligence, communication and understanding.

A pessimist would say that, instead of working, Humanity will just sit in front of a screen all day, lying on its ass watching inane soaps or some other drivel while scarfing the future equivalent of chips. Communication will be limited to SMS's full of LOLs rapidly typed out in the tweetroom of all followers of whatever they are watching alone but together by the magic of connectivity. When the inevitable despair sets in, a call to the psychbot will help get them well enough to restart watching the lolcats.

Personally, I would prefer the first scenario, but one thing is for sure : one day, robots will be doing all the work. That day everyone will have to make a decision as to how they want to occupy their time.

VirusTotal bashes bad BIOSes with forensic firmware fossicker

Impressive

I hope this actually works. I'll be checking it out and, if it seems workable for me, I'll include a check in my regular scans.

30 years on from Challenger, NASA remembers the fallen

Re: NASA is terrified of taking risks

And well it should be. You do not roll the dice on the lives of people that go beyond the atmosphere, alone and without even the possibility of help. If you're sending them that far away, you make damn sure that they can come back, that everything has been foreseen and accounted for, and that a working, dependable procedure is in place in every case.

And when they do come back, you go over every bit of data with a fine-tooth comb to make sure that nothing unforeseen happened - whether or not the result was successful. You do so to ensure that, the next time, the crew will have 100% of the information they need, and 100% of the available chances of survival.

It's called doing things right, and when people's lives are on the line, you don't do it any other way. When that is not done properly is when things like Challenger happen. Apparently you'd want that to happen more often. Well I don't. The Shuttle fleet was end-of-life, continuing to use them would have been criminal. The absence of replacement is Congress' fault, not NASA. Go blame them.

The monitor didn't work but the problem was between the user's ears

Plausible nonetheless. But yeah, we all know that one.

Can't upgrade, won't upgrade: Windows Mobile's user problem

Reality check ?

Come now, Microsoft has left reality behind since last millennium. MS is in its own little world now, no overlap with reality any more. It has marketing people to deal with that ugly stuff.

Back to the Future's DeLorean is coming back to the future

You'll have to admit, that market is not a small one.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise axing services techies again

Going to get hard for the marketing team

When they try to convince a prospect that HPE can do on-site support they're going to start hearing "Oh yeah ? With who ?"

NSA’s top hacking boss explains how to protect your network from his attack squads

My car is in my garage. When not there, either I'm in it, or it's locked.

Why do I need to know how the engine works to ensure that it is protected ?

I agree that it is good to know how the lock functionality works, but it's not like you can tell the garage to install something else if you don't like it.

Not many, I'll wager. The conference was attended by IT quys, not the guys who sign those deals.

Still, it will add ti the list of things to take into account when drafting such deals.

Is hybrid cloud fundamental for your organisation? Tell us, readers!

Which all goes basically back to the things Cloud is suitable for.

Scaling workloads : yes

Ensuring privacy : no

If you work with sensitive data, then you have to keep that data where it is secure. Those companies that made that choice were right in not looking at the technical aspect because that aspect is not pertinent to the decision.

Government in-sourcing: It was never going to be that easy

I don't think that the statement itself is wrong, there are big companies that do exactly that - but those big companies have high-level management that make the decisions and then, when it has become corporate policy, no one goes against it.

What we have here is the prospect of capable people eventually being found and hired as middle management at best, then being continually overridden and denied by the same clueless upper management that is partly responsible for the current situation in the first place.

Because I don't think those project managers and architects are going to be hired as directors, do you ?

That one weird trick fails: Google binned 780 million ads last year

"destroyed more than 10,000 sites foisting software like download wrappers"

Funny, CNET is still online . . .

Re: planned ?

I thought they'd actually done that.

AMX backdoors US govt's comms system with Batman-inspired surveillance mode

Re: "A/V control is not meant to spy on anyone"

What it is meant to do is irrelevant to the hacker. What it can do is the only thing that counts.

And that hardware can be remotely accessed and used without owners suspecting anything. That is a hackers dream.

Putin, obviously.

Someone please rid me of this turbulent Windows 10 Store

I second that

I have a NAS at home, and I used to pester every time I had to open a folder on it until I removed Windows Search and started using Everything Search.

Now my NAS is as fast as a local disk.

Not only does Windows Search take ages to find anything, but it also prevents basic file directory reading to proceed efficiently.

No matter, I will be moving to Linux. Win 7 is my last Microsoft OS.

And that is the true beginning of the end for MS.

What a sad decline from "developers! developers! developers!".

Eight budget-friendly 1TB SSD data packers for real people

I feel your pain. My associate was singing the virtues of SSD performance until, one day, the thing just died out of the blue. Took two days to get a replacement for his laptop.

He doesn't sing the SSD song anymore . . .

That being said, HDDs could be treacherous as well. I remember trying to get data off a failing one, only to find that every file I recovered was corrupt and unreadable.

Thank God for backups.

IRA’s former political wing takes aim at Apple over back tax

Interesting

We hear more and more about how disgusting it is that major multinationals never pay anything of significance tax-wise.

Right up to the election, that is. Then nothing more.

I doubt it will be really any different this time, but I'm still hoping.

Thousands fled TalkTalk after gigantic hack, confirm researchers

7% = lost faith ?

Weird, does that mean that 93% of the customer base doesn't care ?

Because if they haven't left by now, they won't be leaving because of the hack if/when they do.

This is the problem I have with these grand statements. If TalkTalk customers had really lost faith, then it would be more than 7% leaving it, it would be more than 50%.

But these days, anything that is over 5% is treated like a major disruption. Meanwhile, it seems to me that TalkTalk will not go bankrupt anytime soon. So it's business as usual, with a slight shift in figures.

Pentagon fastens lasers to military drones to zap missiles out of the skies

That would seem logical, but kinetic interception of missiles has a dismal success record if I am not mistaken. Even if you have a dozen drones at the ready, there seems to still be a good chance that you'll fail to take it down reliably. That is why the military chose lasers, because if you've got it in your sights, you'll hit it.

The issue with laser is power, and if they couldn't get a bloody big Boeing to succeed, I don't think there's a snowball's proverbial they'll get a drone to win that contest.

So this is just money down the drain and pork for buddies again. Then again, there might be a remote chance that something actually useful will come from this program, and succeed in miniaturizing power generation to an extend unheard of at this time.

Re: evaporate the whole missile

I don't think so. Given the stress the missile is under (due to its speed), all you need is to puncture the shell. Air friction will do the rest, and that will be very hard to not look like a launch issue.

Indonesian government cracking the whip on lazy telcos

Now THAT is a solution to Internet Access problems

Not like Facebook Basic.

Good on the Indonesian Government. With any luck, that will prevent the likes of The Zuck from tying up the market before local companies can ramp up. In any case, it will make Facebook remain just another web site, instead of become the de facto portal for an entire country and reaping insane profits from that.

Now Indonesia's future is clearly resting on its telcos' shoulders.

Could India take a leaf from that book too ?

New open-source ad-blocking web browser emerges from brain of ex-Mozilla boss Eich

If that is the case, you have to ask yourself if that driver is important enough to risk the integrity of your system.

I wouldn't, even if I had to buy another equipment. On the other hand, I have no equipment with drivers that obscure.