Posts by Pascal Monett

Hello? HELLO? Major Skype outage hits folk WORLDWIDE

Repeat after me

The Cloud is magical. The Cloud solves all your problems. The Cloud is always with you. The Cloud is always reliable.

At least that's the drivel Cloud apologists wish us to believe.

But they never have to contend with reality.

Pentagon on manual mission to build nation-wide security database

"almost every major US weapons system contained vulnerabilities"

Almost ?

So there's one that doesn't contain vulnerabilities ?

That's a win, then !

Which one is it ? Oh, it's the coffee planner. Oh well.

Astro-boffins plan 3D plot of the universe

Baryon Acoustic Oscillations

Why, upon reading that, did I immediately envision a goggle-bearing, leather cape-wearing minion with a 3/17 occipital left-leaning wrench in hand, trying to find the Acoustic Oscillator in a storehouse full of big complexe machenes ?

AWS outage knocks Amazon, Netflix, Tinder and IMDb in MEGA data collapse

The main, vast difference between the Cloud falling over and the server room of an individual company is the fact that the company's servers falling over only impacts that company and its clients.

When the Cloud falls down, it takes ALL ITS CUSTOMERS with it, and all of THEIR customers are impacted. That is exponentially different.

And I thought that IT was all about removing Single Point of Failure faults, silly me.

US govt: Why we're OK with letting control of the internet slip into ICANN's hands

So the Internet we know is doomed

The despicable manglement of ICANN is going get its grubby mitts on even more power when it cannot begin to be honest and transparent over what power it already has, great idea. I wonder if somebody isn't planning a career change to become an ICANN board member.

Oh well, seems that the future of the Internet will be regionalized, with countries managing their own Internet locally and plenty of issues with global communications. Then again, most people just want the thing to work, Big Money will want it to work, and the Cat Video cabal will positively shred all the drapes until it works, so maybe ICANN is not all that important anyways and we will still have access to our porn, uh, I mean news sites in this new Internet future.

RFID wants to TRACK my TODGER, so I am going to CUT it OFF

Yes, it's all fun and games until the anti-terrorist brigade bursts through the doors shouting at you and pointing their bloody big guns every which way and you get cuffed and rushed off to a dark cell where a blinding light is shown in your face and you have to answer all manner of crazy questions for 48 hours before they are satisfied that you a) did not actually have a bomb, b) do not have a copy of the Terrorist handbook or How To Make A Bomb In Your Basement and c) don't have an actual beard, it's just stubble from 48 hours of not having shaved.

Then, with luck, they let you out with a stern warning and directions for the nearest hospital to treat the bullet you took through the foot when they manhandled you.

If you're not lucky, you get one last bullet and the newspapers get to headline the death of an ISIS terrorist at the hands of swift, citizenry-protecting police forces.

Ad-blocking super-weapon axed by maker for being TOO effective

You're 2 days late on that.

Should've read the comments before posting. The first 5 posts already laid that theory out.

American Airlines: TITSUP computers ground US flights

Maybe they bought a bit too much into the "disruptive technology" marketspeak ?

Or they tried the Cloud ?

Schneider patches yet ANOTHER dumb vuln

Okay, so it's a stupid mistake

But it's an industrial thingy. Who says the threat was real ? If companies set up the production network physically airgapped from the Internet, then what's the problem ?

Oh, of course, silly me. Expecting production lines to be separate from beancounter PCs who obviously have to access Facebook as well when they're not providing colored charts to Upper Manglement detailing the day's production down to the minute.

Ok, I'm off.

Banks team to paint shared target on Target

Yes, it's the gift that never stops giving.

Bigger – and better? How your IT infrastructure budget will change

Ah, the magical Cloud

What I get from this article is that companies will be happy paying 3 times the amount they do now because Cloud.

Cloud is magical. Cloud is always there. Cloud is reliable. Cloud is always with you.

Repeat while banging your head against the wall until you believe it.

Because obviously backhoes are now extinct and land lines never go down. Because cloud providers never fold in 48h any more (that is sooo last century - oh wait, actually no, it's still this century). And because, with the Cloud, users will never, ever lose their spreadsheet or email any more.

Not to mention, of course, that the Cloud protects your data from anyone who is not supposed to have access to it (anyone besides the 60,000 employees of NSA, and the 6,000 or so of the GCHQ, plus however many of your own government, of course).

My, my, the bubble is really growing. It'll make a big pop before it's all done.

Human Rights Watch demands to know who's been snooping on it

The Big Brother Awards

They must be working overtime these days . . .

DMCA takedown bots must respect 'fair use' of copyright – US appeals court

music companies should not be allowed to "rely solely on a computer algorithm."

Finally, after a decade of passing through the system, a drop of common sense is filtered through the labyrinth of the legal system.

And then we learn that it changes nothing.

Hopefully, in future, this case will become a landmark decision and reversing DCMA takedown notices will be easier.

Ashley Madison lawsuit drops GoDaddy and Amazon as defendants

Re: What's the appropriate life sentence for going onto a morally shady website?

People are starting to realize that there is only one time zone on the Internet : Now. Everything you do, everywhere you go, everything you post is something that can be recorded and, once recorded, will never disappear.

As such, when acting on the Internet, you have to keep in mind that you might need to defend your acts at some point in the future, and you cannot count on anyone to keep whatever shady stuff secret. Some do, but it's a bad idea to count on it.

It is a harsh lesson, and some will pay more dearly to learn it than others, but this AM business will at least serve as an additional warning to people : your data is not secret on the Web.

Yeah, well when you're too stupid to put the money in properly securing your data, it seems to be a reflex to put it down in trying to plug leaks. It's useless, obviously, but hey, if they were intelligent they would've done a better job of the security in the first place, so . . .

Of course, this remark has nothing to do with the 17 other defendants who do not appear to be AM manglement. Maybe they don't know that there is no way to put the cat back in the bag on the Internet. Maybe they've never heard of the Streisand effect. Maybe they do know and still have a good reason to go through with this useless action. I do wonder why they're putting themselves in the same basket as those who are responsible for their problems in the first place, though.

But I find it hilarious that AM management is now claiming "irreparable damages". All those emails joking about security improvements must be haunting their nights now. And that's a good thing.

ESA tries UPLOADING PATCH to Philae lander to fix radios

Well

That puts things in perspective compared to trying to find out why some driver can't talk to some piece of equipment anymore.

And I have the luxury of turning it off and on again.

Reviewed: Shadowrun: Hong Kong, Until Dawn, Hearthstone expansion and more

For Shadowrun Hong Kong, Steam says the following :

OS: Windows XP SP3/Vista/Windows 7 & 8

Processor: x86-compatible 1.8GHz or faster processor

Memory: 2 GB RAM

Graphics: DirectX compatible 3D graphics card with at least 256MB of addressable memory

DirectX: Version 9.0

Hard Drive: 10 GB available space

Don't know if you have to multiply everything by, 2, 4 or 10 to be sure, but I'm pretty certain that a 256MB graphics card is going to severely disappoint you.

Disney's light-bulb moment: build TCP into LEDs for IoT comms

Re: do I have to leave the lights on all the time?

Of course not, you'll have an app on your mobile to dim them to almost-darkness, while the TCP-IP stack retains power for transmitting.

All you need to do is install the app, agree to it siphoning your GPS, storage and camera data and log on automatically to Facebook and Twitter, and you're all set to live in the golden age of damn, where's my phone so I can shut off the damn light ? My 2,438 friends need to know I shut my light off.

DARPA adds 'sense of touch' to robot hand

Re: How long until a company patents the 5 senses?

With the USPTO ?

Yesterday.

Look! Up in the sky! It's letters on a plane read with a 250MP camera

Re: Atacama dessert

Does that have chocolate in it ?

Cause if it does, I'm all for it.

USA, China find common cyber-enemy within

One commonly accepted law is 9 grams of lead and the invoice of the funeral costs to the family.

Vanished global warming may not return – UK Met Office

Article based on report from a government agency

Is this going to prevent Lewis Page bashers from indulging in their favorite activity ?

Don't think so.

How did jihadists hack into top UK ministerial emails if no security breach took place?

Didn't have to break into him, they just waved a chocolate bar.

'I promise you I will win', says completely sane presidential candidate John McAfee

"requiring users to actively install unsupported 3rd-party software into Messenger"

Oh, right. Obviously, that has never happened before.

Pro tip: Servers belong in dry server rooms, not wet cloakrooms

Backup

How is it possible to not know that there is only one backup tape, and not be aware of what that means ?

Not knowing IT is not an excuse here, you don't need to be a mechanic to know that your car needs refueling. People know tapes, we've had VCR technology for more than a decade (okay, that was a decade ago now, but still). So people should know that a backup is done on a tape, then you put in another tape. It's not rocket science.

This is a clear case of "It's all magic and I don't understand anything anyways, so nothing can go wrong". Well that only works as long as you're lucky, and these idiots were extremely lucky.

Japan 'charges MtGox baron Mark Karpeles with BTC embezzlement'

So, 3 countries, 3 court cases

This guy is apparently a real bastard. When you've got a police file in 3 different countries (not counting speeding tickets, obviously), you shouldn't be allowed to be responsible for anything more than your car, to say nothing of a company.

Hollywood takes a beating in Oscar cybersquatting battle

Millions in damages, eh ?

This case is a brilliant landmark in how much MPAA/RIAA etc are pushing the envelope to claim horrifying damages due to piracy, whereas the real figures have nothing to do with their hysterical claims.

Good on GoDaddy to have had the balls not to bend over and settle. That is the kind of behavior which encourages those bastards to go ahead with the hype. Now we finally have a proper case where the claims have been laid bare and found lacking. This will hopefully throw some water on the whole process, and it is not a bad thing either to demonstrate that just because you're Hollywood doesn't mean that you can parade around the courts and pocket millions by extorting your victims out of the judge's view.

Excellus healthcare hack puts 10m Americans at risk of identity theft

2015 is bumper crop for personal details market

I wonder how soon we'll have investment portfolios in it ?

Former Ashley Madison CTO 'threatens security blogger with libel action'

He "linked to a sample of the Nerve.com database"

Seems like this case is already over.

Krebs said Bhatia hacked them based on published data. Bhatia is trying to pussyfoot around and redefine terms, which is something judges rarely like.

This paragraph is particularly damning :

The authenticity of the database portion of the dump seems at this point beyond doubt, thanks to the widespread confirmations by users of the site. The letter from the lawyer implicitly confirms that the leaked e-mails are authentic, as it makes reference to parts of the quoted e-mail that Krebs didn't include in his report.

The letter from the lawyer implicitly confirms that the leaked e-mails are authentic.

Bhatia is screwed. Twice.

And that's a good thing.

Monsters defeated in quest to free .onion from clutches of DNS-snooping demons

Will it still be possible to Google the web then ?

Not necessarily using Google of course, I'm describing the search, not the engine.

If I understand correctly, .onion domain names are, in effect, public/private key definitions. Any search engine will have to have all the keys to access the domains it wants to search.

Kind of defeats the purpose then, doesn't it ?

Watchdogs roughed up for picking Morocco (of all places) for next privacy 'World Cup'

"it met the criteria laid out"

The criteria obviously left out anything about the track record in security of the host country.

Either that or the criteria specifically included the ability to shut journalists up about after-conference hijinks (or maybe even during-conference hijinks).

Batteries on wheels are about to reshape our cities and lives

France's taxi drivers will totally ignore this development and go right on offering you the elite sensation of being unwanted baggage just like they always have and like an autonomous car never will be able to.

Re: not using energy (unless heater or AC) when stationary saves a lot

You're probably correct where the engine is concerned, but you've overlooked one point : the people, who will be wanting to view their cat videos during the trip, or play their games or whatever.

If autonomous cars become a reality, I'm convinced that they will be viewed and sold as mobile entertainment rooms. After all, you're not driving, and you know the road on most of the trips, so why not play ?

Or work, if you're that kind of person ?

And that entertainment is going to drain some portion of power, to be sure. Less than the engine, obviously, but not insignificant, I think.

Re: Typical...

I get held up by a traffic jam

Theoretically, autonomous cars should eliminate traffic jams because they should be able to drive at speeds that bring them to their destination smoothly. Any ability for those vehicles to talk to each other, tell each other which way they're turning etc, will only be a bonus in removing slow downs.

We have traffic jams today mainly because everybody rushes forword, often in disregard of speed limits, to try to get ahead of everyone else, then they all come to the next choke point and brake wildly, sometimes causing accidents.

Autonomous cars will be more measured, won't change lanes for nothing, won't "think" the other lane goes faster, and thus things will move along more leisurely, but more regularly.

At least, I hope so.

@dotdavid

I guess it would depend on how widespread that ends up being.

Given the current insistence of grafting wifi and online entertainment to the same bus on which travel system commands, I'd say that it's likely to become pretty widespread before it gets corrected.

And I don't like the idea.

Beardy Branson says own OneWeb sats can replace Australia's birds

Many such mega-projects, e.g. Chunnel or Iridium, fiscally-require a multibillion dollar bankruptcy as part of the commissioning phase

Well, seems that this Branson guy is lining himself up to fill that spot.

Australia builds facial recognition as a service for plod, spookhaüses

"strong privacy safeguards"

We already know what they are : "no unauthorised individual will have access to the data".

They'll just forget to mention that they are authorising everyone sitting behind a government desk, and anyone who is working with someone sitting behind a government desk.

And you will never be able to ask for a list of the people who have accessed your records, not to mention when.

Survival skill number 1

Ungraft the phone from your hand.

When the IT department is 'just another supplier'

Re: Complexity

Exactly that.

Every single article I read singing the praises of the Cloud totally skirts even the notion of the word.

Company email in the cloud ? Well of course, all emails from and to all of your customers sitting like ducks in the cloud. How can that possibly go wrong ?

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

EU-US data sharing deal for cops edges closer as usual suspects moan

“I fear it will be pushed through and not meet with much resistance.”

That is the problem.

Individual rights are in the same conundrum as IoT security. Everybody agrees they are essential, but as long as all the actors don't step up to bat when it's their turn, nothing will happen.

To ensure our right to freedom and privacy, we need to push ALL of our representatives, wherever and whoever they are, to do what is right.

Cash-bleeding Monitise waves goodbye to chief exec

Ah, the ol' "personal reasons" excuse

Come on, everybody knows the CEO was fired during a board meeting. And for tripling losses instead of turning things around, it is understandable, although I wonder how it would have been possible to not incur losses after losing a major customer.

It may be the CEO handled things badly, but it may also be that she's just being handed the blame as a convenient excuse, or to reassure the market.

State cyberspies wriggle into satellites for super-duper sneaky ops

That is crazy smart

Piggybacking a satellite transmission on unused ports to get data to compromised PCs.

Somebody in that group is an evil genius.

HP and Dell flogging Surface Pro direct? No issues THERE. NONE AT ALL

Re: you need to go watch the film 'Her'

Thanks for the heads-up. I will avoid that like the plague.

And I thought Hollywood was only scraping the bottom of the barrel. It's clear that they've started digging. Oh, but it's with Scarlette Johanssen and it's rated R ? A success, then.

Only too right

"loving Windows" ?

Not gonna happen.

You can eventually particularly appreciate one or more programs that you use regularly on any platform, to the extent of qualifying your appreciation with the adjective of love, but to extend that to the OS - whatever it is, makes no sense.

You can love your car, but you're not going to say you love the road infrastructure.

Tech, telcos, and digital crusties gang up against the EU's Digital Single Market

Hang on there

“Only 20 per cent of our customers have a high demand for portability, and fewer than one third have any demand at all,"

I take that to mean that either you really need it, or you have no use for it.

Fine. Is that a reason to ignore 20% of your customers ? Not so sure.

Roll up, roll up: Microsoft, those Irish emails and angry Feds

Ah but it is a living language that we speak (or massacre, as may be the case), and shoehorning expressions into entirely improper grammatical constructs is what the Internet is made for.

This is further extended to anything and everything that can be proven to have as much as a toehold in the USA too

Indeed, and it is high time for that interpretation to get smacked down on the basis that the USA certainly wouldn't like a Chinese judge to reciprocate and order a Chinese subsidiary in the US to hand over sensitive email data. At least, I doubt the USA would agree.

I do hope that the EU is going to find the balls somewhere to stop this nonsense. The Internet is a game-changer because of its globality. Local rules cannot be imposed over the Internet.

"Microsoft maintains that the data is secured under EU data protection laws"

And for once, Microsoft is unequivocally right.

The fact that Ireland deemed fit to alert a US judge that she has no right to disregard its sovereignty will figure as a reference in US Justice dickery.

Hacker mag 2600 laughs off Getty Images inkspots copyright claim

Oh I think of them . . . being slowly lowered into the shark tank.

Heigh ho, oh no! Politically correct panto dumps Snow White’s dwarfs

The PC term for dwarf is dwarf.

Anything else and you're just being insulting.

There is no shame to be had by height or color since there's nothing anyone can do about either, and neither has anything to do with intelligence or usefulness to society.