* Posts by Pascal Monett

16643 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007

Jimbo Wales: Wikipedia servers in UK? No way, not with YOUR libel law

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"world's largest unreliable collection of factoids"

Part of me likes that sentence, and relishes the effect.

The other part checks the Wikipedia pages on our solar system, and science in general, and finds that the sentence does not really apply - at least not until some creationist gets a hold of editing rights.

Then I remember all the hoopla that occurs systematically around any topical subject, and I can't help but feel that it applies perfectly.

In other words, yes, Wikiland still has a way to go before the label "reliable" can be applied.

Apple pounces on Samsung doc as proof of 'slavish copy' claims

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"expert testimony by experts"

Experts that cannot recognize the difference between a Galaxy and an Iphone.

Some expert.

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Gosh, for $80,000 I think I could be confused as well. For five minutes anyway.

Frankly I am rather appalled at the tactics employed. If you have to lie and cheat to get your point across, my feeling is that your point is not worth being considered anyway.

If I were a judge I'd make sure any company coming forth with such behavior be fined a hefty amount for contempt of court.

Rivals routed by Apple, Google smartphone onslaught

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Thumb Down

Um, let me see if I get this straight

On a chart that clearly demonstrates Android gaining over 20% market share, and Apple losing almost 2%, we have an article that centers itself around Microsoft, which gained a hair over 1% in the same period.

Right.

Foldable NFC keyboard could tempt Android users

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Can't replace the battery ?

Uh, it's made of silicon, right ?

Silicon has a dismal resistance to a cutter blade, but reacts well to sticky tape.

I think there will be a load of DIY battery-changing tactics in short order.

And if you screw up with the cutter, well the replacement isn't all that expensive. Actually, the new battery would probably be as expensive as the keyboard. Hmm, why bother then ?

Maybe that's the idea.

Rampant fake Facebook ad clicks riddle hits dead end

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I have no idea if NoScript and AdBlock are available on browser platforms that do not use the Firefox engine, but I'm pretty certain that even so, they are not installed by 80% of all Internet users.

Something else is going on here.

Meet the company that wants to destroy Twitter. It's Twitter

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Facepalm

I have the sinking feeling that that would indeed be an astounding success.

Greenland ice sheet not going anywhere in a hurry, say boffins

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Thumb Up

Brilliant !

Thank you for that.

Bomb sniffing “electric nose” turns cancer detector

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Re: "it's a crap way to die"

Not to contradict you or troll or anything, but that part of your paragraph sent to me thinking about death - and I have yet to think of a "good" way to die.

Apart from in your sleep, I just don't see any.

Republican filibuster blocks Senate Cybersecurity bill

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Facepalm

"to better protect our nation from potentially catastrophic cyber-attacks"

Well, in my layman's opinion, to better protect our nation from potentially catastrophic cyber-attacks it would be much better to remove strategic elements from being attackable via the Internet.

In other words, somebody put a damn firewall between the "nucular" reactors and the Internet already ! Why is there a need for a law on that ? And why, oh why, is there a need to discuss the issue ?

Nuclear reactors, city traffic infrastructures, pipeline management, power grids. All those things need to be properly segmented and not Internet-accessible without proper authentication. Not only is that obvious, but it is a fucking shame that such an issue need to be "debated" in a political arena which is only interested in who will get how many brownie points.

Fail all around.

Ice Cream Sandwich still a no-show for most Android users

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I am new to the smartphone market, having just got a Glalxy S II from my new job around two months ago.

When I got the phone, it was running on 2.3.4 as you say. Without any intervention on my part, via the WiFi connection on my home router, it is now pegged at 4.0.3.

So something happened, and apparently it works.

For me at least.

Oi, missile boffins! Stop ogling web filth at work - Pentagon

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Re: politicians that start wars

I generally agree with your sentiment, but you seem to be unaware of how many times those DEFENSE systems you mention put us a hair's breadth away from annihilation ?

Check it out, and be happy the Cold War is (almost) over.

Russia slashes space station ship trip to just six hours

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Not a bad idea, but your rocket would have to be made of unobtanium. Do you have any idea of how much that weighs ?

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Re: there's a huge list of benefits

There is one benefit, apparently : gets there in 6 hours.

That means that an eventual emergency rescue operation can enter the realm of possibility.

However, to get this boost in speed the launch needs to perfect - not just "more accurate". Timing, launch profile, ascension, everything needs to be good to within the second.

This speed boost comes at a zero-tolerance price.

So I now ask : what if the launch is botched ? What happens if the launcher lifts on time, but loses an engine before reaching orbit and has to go for an additional burn or some other somesuch that voids the short trip ? Can they revert to the 2-day schedule, or is the whole thing written off and they just abort and go for re-entry ?

Using Facebook causes less eco damage than farting, figures show

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I propose a new unit of pollution : the Facebook Fart

1 FF = 0.269g of CO2 annual

Now let's see how we can use that :)

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Trollface

Stop !

Stop trying to bring intelligent arguments into the climate debate - you're messing up the zealot message !

Samsung flogs 10 million Galaxy S IIIs in 7 weeks

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What special app ?

My Galaxy S II can read it fine, thank you, and I haven't downloaded any app to do so.

Now IPAD victor Proview is sued by its OWN law firm

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"[Proview] should not be bound by such terms"

Should have thought of that before signing the contract.

Windows 8 'bad' for desktop users - Gartner's one-word review

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Spot on !

This mouse-gesture fad has obviously gotten Ballmer's ear and has subjugated him so completely that he thinks that a touch interface can work just like a mouse/keyboard combo.

You have to be brain-dead to believe that.

I can believe that Metro works on a tablet. Ever since I got a Galaxy S II, I understand how the touch interface evolved into what it currently is. For a phone, a tablet or any other small device that cannot have a dedicated keyboard, it is the perfect choice.

But nothing that has a touch interface can possibly be used like a desktop PC, and vice-versa. And I'll believe the fairy tale about how desktops are disappearing when all the insurance and banking businesses have replaced them with tablets everywhere. Including the back office.

Won't happen, ever.

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My next upgrade is not due until Win7 no longer runs the hardware I use - I give it about a decade, based on WinXP experience.

Smart meter hack framework goes open-source

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Another, more realistic one, would be "Remote Meter Control Adapter", because somebody is going to have theirs hacked for sure.

Office Web App upgrade adds long-needed features

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Re: "women have more car accidents per mile driven than men"

They might, but they are largely scratches and fender-benders, whereas men have a tendency of plowing their cars into walls or around trees.

As for the brain size thing, I was about to comment on how basic machismo was alive and well, but a gander on the Internet told me that this was actually true. Well, learn something every day.

YouTube blurs faces to protect the innocent

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"users will need to delete the pristine version in order to protect privacy"

Well that about kills its usefulness then.

Chinese gov splurges £102 MILLION to replace pirated software

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Damn right. I don't see why China would do anything more than pay lip service to international IP agreements.

China bloody well knows it has the greatest internal market of the whole planet, and if it starts selling things overseas, it has the rest of the world's debt in its coffers.

So this is probably just a bunch of PR malarkey.

Move along, nothing to see here.

Dumpling squid do it WHENEVER THEY CAN, FOR HOURS ON END!

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"lifetime of less than a year"

Yes, but what a life !

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Re: I've seen enough hentai

yeah, but now we know where all that hentai actually came from...

Dropbox brings in crack team to probe spam leakage

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Re: One possibility

That probably explains why I haven't received anything (yet).

I do get spam, average 15/day over six different addresses, but nothing about gambling at this point.

PayPal is bleeding market share and it's all eBay's fault

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And THAT is why PayPal will never be a bank. I don't give a flying monkey's that they signed a charter, a bank operating under the law cannot prevent you from accessing YOUR money without a court order.

PayPal deems itself above the law and that is simply not acceptable.

Personally I don't care either about Ebay or about PayPal. Ebay was a great idea and had a wonderful start before the suits wrecked it, but it may yet have some use left. PayPal, on the other hand, should simply die, and it is a good thing that the competition is starting in the online payment arena because Lord knows it needs it.

Spotify coining it at home in Sweden: But are artists getting any?

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Congratulations to Mrs Zoë Keating

Whatever you think of the current situation, it is acts such as Mrs Keatings' posting of her earnings that clarify the debate and put things back on the ground of reality, allowing the public to understand what is really going on - something that the "entertainment industry" has being trying their damnedest to keep a lid on.

Microsoft 'didn't notice' it had removed Browser Choice for 17 months

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"we deeply regret that this error occurred"

Could the Commission please make sure that they actually DO regret ?

Pretty please ?

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What exactly is hamstringing you ?

I have Firefox, Seamonkey, Opera AND Chrome installed next to IE and I see nothing preventing me from using any of them.

Valve to raise Steam for Ubuntu

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Interesting rant, obviously never tried it

Steam is most probably the least invasive game-controlling environment I have ever tried.

- it does not run a hidden service that runs whether you play or not (looking at you, EA Games)

- it does not require that you re-download your entire game collection if you restore your Windows system (looking at you HARD, EA Games)

- it does not even require that you reinstall Steam if you wipe your OS partition and reinstall Windows (I'm bloody sick of looking at you, EA Games) - if you install the same OS in the same version as before, obviously

- Steam has weekend deals that are sometimes astounding (got L4D2 for €5, can anyone top that ?)

- Steam allows me to play my games without bothering with a bloomin' disk

- unless the game I play uses an online server, Steam allows me to play offline (hear that, Blizzard ?)

- most importantly, the games on Steam play on the PC I have - yes I know, that's obvious, but it is also true of titles that were WinXP or before, like Evil Genius, or Supreme Commander, or, say, SimCity 4 - games that I have but did not succeed in installing on my Win7/32 configuration

- my Steam games have always been available to me when I wished to play them, not like LotRO or Diable III

- there is no such thing as a license error on Steam

So your rant against Steam seems perfectly unreasonable to me, and if your rant actually concerns DRM control or whatnot, then you must have stopped buying games since Y2K, because most major titles since 1995 have had some form of (annoying) DRM control embedded into them which seem to bleed onto the PC and take control of it. Why I remember a certain Lemmings II that wouldn't run anymore if I so much as chose a different boot option in the bad old days of DOS 5. And I also remember Painkiller, which I bought in a lovely box set and brought home only to find that it simply wouldn't install, since its paranoid DRM didn't believe that its own install disk was genuine. I was forced to go find a pirate copy to be able to play the game I bought - and I'm sorry, but I do not for one instant feel like a pirate for doing so.

On the other hand, Steam has survived two OS versions and I don't remember how many OS reinstalls and has never bothered me more than to ask for my login and password after the fact. It has even survived partition change and disk swapping without complaining. My game library is intact from day one, unless I feel like uninstalling something to free some disk space. And I can re-download whatever is in my library whenever I want. Heck, I can even install Steam on two or more PCs if I feel like it and access my same game library. Of course I can't play on two computers at a time, but I can have my home configuration and my laptop configuration for when I'm traveling - and that one can be offline, remember ?

To sum it up, Steam is great. It is the best game-selling platform there is. You may not appreciate that your are being checked when you play, and I basically agree with you on that point, but you're not really being given a choice anymore - well, not outside of indie titles, that is. So you might as well choose Steam, because there is nothing better.

Yahoo! fixes! password! leak! vulnerability!

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"we will continue to take significant measures to protect our users and their data"

Does that mean that they will finally start salting their hashes ?

Yahoo! hack! leaks! 453,000! unencrypted passwords!

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Re: "Speak freind and enter"

Not on par at all. It is specified in the film and in the books that it was a mechanism devised in a "simpler time", probably a time of peace and trust.

And besides, it'd take forever to thread an invading army through that itty bitty door - not counting the path to get to it. Finally, it was written in Elvish, and not many folk of that land knew how to read that. Not to mention the possible confusion between "speak, friend" and the other possibility which could be understood as "speak the password, friend", meaning that, if you were a friend, you'd know the password.

So, all in all, pretty secure, even for a fairytale.

Microsoft offers beta of Windows Server 2012 Essentials

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Microsoft

By far Linux's best advocate - despite itself.

Watch out, Apple: HTC ruling could hurt your patent income

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Flame

Re: How to fix the patent process

There should be no need to "make it unattractive" to patent anything.

The job of the Patent Office is not to grant patents, it is to control whether or not a patent can be granted. To do so, it has one control and one control only - prior art.

Given that the Patent Office is no longer controlling prior art and has resorted to granting patents willy-nilly (possibly in exchange for cashbacks or undeclared "bonuses"), it has clearly ceased to fulfill its primary function and must be dissolved.

A new body should be set up and a new mandate implemented for managing patent application. Personally, I would prefer that no one from the previous organization be included in the new one. Blindingly obviously, the new mandate must be official, publicly sanctioned and relentlessly enforced. Legally, there should be a "grace period" while ALL existing patents are re-examined and their validity controlled by the new mandate.

Hopefully, it will result in a massive dumping of all vaguely-worded, non-reproducible or otherwise incomprehensible patents that have stuffed the system, as well as the immediate invalidation of all patents that offer no actual method of implementation other than a drawing made on the back of a handkerchief on a restaurant table.

That done, we will once again, as a civilization, be able to progress with things that are truly useful and innovative, and not just a useless encyclopaedia of every single technical tidbit some busybody has been able to throw on a paper before anyone else did.

A patent should be granted exclusively for something that improves human technology - i.e. that improves the available technology for ALL HUMANKIND - and is fully described to be completely reproducible. Anything else is useless and should be discarded.

Gaping 'open data' loophole could leave your privates on display

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"I wonder whether you would allow us to look at your last five GP visits"

Response : I wonder what my last medical visits have to do with my being co-operative or not. I wonder why I should unveil my private life to a future business relationship that has no moral or legal authority to invade my private life in this way. I wonder if this "sharing" thing is going to stop short of "friendly" cavity searches. By the way, are you going to "share" your salary, your wife and your car with me ? Or is this "sharing" thing only one way ? It is ? Thought so. Well thank you and have a nice day.

Salesforce goes titsup, causes CRM outages worldwide

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Re: "testing configurations as one system"

But that's exactly what Salesforce is doing - with the results we see.

And even though they are having some issues, from what I see their reliability is above that of RIM with its proprietary Blackberry thingy, so they're not doing so bad.

Still doesn't convince me to put company data in a place where I cannot control access.

Sony grabs cloud-gaming group Gaikai

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A general reply to "streaming games"-deniers

I used to think the same thing, ie streaming games was a bad idea and the implementation would be horribly laggy.

I was convinced of this right up until a friend of mine called my attention to Quake Live.

The experience put my arguments to rest.

That said, I do believe that the Id crew has always been at the forefront of game networking - they were there first with Doom after all, and there is no guarantee that other companies, even (I wanted to type _especially_) Sony will be able to reproduce such a flawless level of gameplay.

But somebody did it, so it can be done.

Darwin alarmed by six-legged mutant cane toad

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Just one question

What is it in Australia that accelerated animal mutation so ?

In a mere 80 years or so, the cane toad has not only mutated stronger/longer legs, but is now growing more of them ?

Is the Australian cane toad the basis of the future Zerg ?

I think we should be told ?

Lithe British youngsters prioritise fun over privacy and security

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Excuse me

Did you actually mention security-conscious and Facebook in the same sentence ?

Gah !

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Re: "are you sure"

Citing a Cracked article gets an automatic upvote from me :)

US East, West Coasts face fast-rising sea levels

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That's new, isn't it ?

Legislators defining the acceptable limits of reality. I love it !

Next step : outlawing any reports on pollution and claiming that the world's air is pure.

Final step : outlawing illegal behavior and giving the pink slip to all cops in the state.

Paradise, here we come !

Ballmer welcomes Yammer to the Microsoft family

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First we had Twitter

Now we have Yammer

Once we get Crapper, the circle will finally be complete.

Schneier spanks AV industry over Flame failures

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Re: "There's no such thing as an isolated system, there never was."

That may be true, but if the data you want is on a computer that is not linked to the Internet, then it gets substantially more difficult to reach.

What I continuously fail to understand is why, oh why, do military installations persist in having their entire network connected to the same Internet as everyone else.

Get a local network, and use one, isolated PC to connect to the Web. Or at the very least, put your security stuff, military-grade secrets, etc. etc. on a network that is physically isolated from the Web.

Is it really that hard ? Or do the generals absolutely have to have the latest Friday video too ?

Mobile device enslavement a plague on British workers' health

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Re: most of us (I'm guessing) aren't paid for time

Wrong. Most of use are paid for an 8-hour day. Either that, or you're one who is paid by results - taxi driver, dentist, plumber.

Your employer pays a sum for 8 hours of your work, not for a result. That mentality only brings two consequences : first, you give your employer a free discount on your work, second, your employer no longer realizes how many people he actually needs to get the job done.

The conclusion ? You're cheating someone out of a job and your employer is laughing all the way to the bank.

China makes human rights play ... but forgets the internet

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Re: Since when is broadband Internet access...

With more and more government services accessible from the Internet, with all utilities companies clamoring for your email and begging you to log on to their portal, with more and more shopping options available from your computer screen it's only a matter of time until Internet access is considered just as important as being able to phone 911 (or whatever number you use to call for help).

Where I live, in addition to the previously mentioned items, there are no less than two supermarket franchises that have an Internet site where you can shop the virtual aisles, place you order, pay for it and decide what time you go pick it up. They have a special Internet Delivery parking area that looks a heck of a lot like a Mc Donalds drive-in, just scaled up a bit. You stop the car in front of a booth, give you order number, a clerk puts the bags in your trunk and off you go - all the pleasures of shopping without the screeching kids, bustling busybodies and entire families who seem to consider that clogging the aisles on Saturdays is the height of their week's entertainment.

So we're already getting to a stage where you can organize practically all your administrative and daily needs from a screen. We're at the CAN point, we'll get to the MUST BE ABLE TO point soon enough.

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Re: "why is the Internet censored"

Different people, different ways.

You can criticize all you want, you live in a theoretically "free" country. The Chinese have a different culture, different social needs, a different social structure. Stop trying to impose your view of what is right on other people.

10m years ago there was less CO2 - but the Earth was warmer

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Re: "I generally prefer my news reporters to offer an unbiased opinion"

The day you find a reporter like that, please tell me who it is !

LinkedIn admits site hack, adds pinch of salt to passwords

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Re: Oh Joy.

They hardly needed to have the list to try that one. I get that kind of mail regularly from PayPal, Ebay and sometimes from Linked in as well.

Oh, and from a few banks I have never had an account in and probably never will since I don't live in North America.