Posts by Pascal Monett

Hey doc, what's the PC's prognosis? A. Long-term growth below zero

Good question :)

Didn't catch that. My bad.

"I think PCs will be effected by those changes and react to the extent that they can."

No.

PC's might be affected by the change (and I hope they will, actually), but they will certainly not be effected by change.

Please do not fall into the same potholes that affect the common commenter. When you pen an article, you're supposed to set an example. Set the right one.

MtGox: Yup, we're pretty sure your Bitcoin were stolen. Sorry about that.

Brilliant PR piece

I think this communiqué from MtGoX delivers absolutely everything anyone could want to know about the "company".

First of all, the rambling, incoherent mess of words evoking a thought process but one that is too drunk to realize itself, then the random capitalisation and punctuation (demonstrating a clear lack of knowing how to convey information) and finally the total absence of anything concrete to base a conclusion on.

If I were a Venture Capitalist and had been handed a business plan written like this, I would not have gone further than the second sentence before deciding that this guy didn't have a clue and certainly was not managerial material.

Managing a business requires focus and attention, and this "paper" clearly demonstrates that nobody at MtGoX has either, much less an understanding of what the word "managing" means.

MtGoX never should have gotten off the ground. It never was anything more than a bunch a schoolkid-mentality types who bungled together some software they downloaded and then let things flow thinking they had achieved something.

Now that reality is intruding, their illusions are being shattered big time.

Thanks a lot, Facebook: Microsoft turns Office 365 into social network

@ Willie T

" if I am about to begin work on a new project I can scan the internal social sites or put out a query to see if anyone else has done something similar"

Because you think someone will have posted something in that line ? If you are about to begin a new project; it is either because someone has told you to do it, or because you think it will make you look good to your manager.

In the first case, you won't go waste time on the social, you're going to start working on the project in order to not look like you're wasting time or risk getting late. In the other case, you won't want to know if someone else has already done it because you want to be able to say that you did it from A to Z.

Social networks in the company space always end up with a case of the lepers. When they arrive, everyone is told to use them for all the usual, marketingly-enthusiastic reasons. Then people notice that it does not help them do their work which they have already been doing properly for the past x years, and the one or two colleagues they need to talk to to get their work done are either not on the social thingy because not part of the local office, or are more comfortably contacted via other means (walking to the office next door comes to mind). From that point, the social thingy spirales into uselessness, then contempt when the workers realize that the only ones using it are the ones actively pining to look good to management, even at the cost of their productivity (or their productivity doesn't matter to the daily business).

What irks me with this "social" trend is the way its apologists totally forget that all they are doing is trying to force people to replace actual social contact with a computer screen. When you've been working for some years in a company, you have social contact with all the people you need to get your work done - either that on you're fired because you don't talk to the people you need to talk to.

So, except for the people who hate the other people they have to talk to and will gladly take a computer screen instead (it certainly does exist), all the people who are happy interacting in a human way with the people they need to keep in touch with will feel that using this social tool will simply tell the other people that they prefer using a computer to talk to them - in other words it is insulting. And normal people prefer not to insult people that they are happy to interact with.

So if we really are in this happy world where everyone is pleased with all of their other colleagues, then nobody will need to use this social thing because they already talk to their colleagues and prefer doing so the human way. If, on the other hand, everybody hates everybody else, well putting a social thing in the middle will just put a glaring point on how much everyone prefers being somewhere else.

Facebook works because people can pick and choose who they want to stay in contact with and it is done on a private level.

The corporate environment is a place where people have to put up with people they appreciate to varying degrees. Socializing with those other people, especially when forced by managerial fiat, is something that is going to be automatically and intrinsically resisted in every way possible.

Failure by design, in other words.

Re: It really isn't...worth it - or free (unless your time is of no value)

Yes it is free and worth it.

Go get your check already, we can see the logo now.

Not to worry, this is going to be another bust on the (increasingly large) list of Microsoft failures.

Work is to do work, not to pitter-patter around "social" tools. The only ones who think this is good are the people who earn money doing Powerpoint charts. They will be happy with it, for sure.

The rest of the grunts don't have time for social tools. They have a mountain of things to actually get done before the end of the day and if that doesn't happen, no amount of "social tooling" will avoid getting their ass fired.

So for once this is a Microsoft product that will clearly define its users : it will be the ones who consider themselves "deciders" and spend their time crowing about how good they are at it.

The rest of us will just suffer with Office in our dank cubicles and be grateful we get a check at the end of the month instead of a pink slip.

Re: Every large corp. I have worked at (a fair number) makes very extensive use of SharePoint

So you're saying that, since 2001, you have worked at a "fair number" of very large corporations ?

That either means that your notion of a "fair number" is rather limited, or your CV is creatively describing good reasons for several abrupt departures that are commonly described as "getting fired".

And if you've had that many hasty exits in the past 14 years, then you are not well-placed for criticising other people's companies.

In truth though, your attitude is much more of a troll than anything else. So I doubt very much that you have ever set foot in a very large corporation. Unless it's to do the cleaning.

RSA rebel conference TrustyCon sells out despite 'dirty tricks'

"they would have to check with RSA first"

Sorry ? What kind of bull is that ?

Can there be any actual justification to that kind of response ?

Passenger jet grounded by two-hour insect attack

Only if they are fireants !

I was going to comment on how wrong you were about the origin of the word debugging, and went to find a citation to prove my words, but, while reading the part I was expecting to justify my post, I found out that you're actually right.

Thank you for that enlightening experience.

Ok, now I get it

Now I understand why every single post-apocalyptic Hollywood film ever made looks like Australia.

It's because the only people that can possibly have a hope to survive are the ones defying death on a daily basis no matter what they do.

Even lying in a hammock in your backyard can apparently get you killed over there.

I tip my hat to the Nation of Road Warriors and Future of Humanity.

MtGox accepted new customers JUST DAYS before collapse

Because the honest company trying to stay in business does not have rumors of bad dealings trailing along with it ?

Absolutely.

If Hollywood is anything to go by, if he were in America all he would need to worry about is his car or house exploding when he got in, whereas in Japan, that adorable schoolgirl that just walked by may right this instant be turning around while taking out some weighted chains from her handbag to bash his unwary skull in.

Which is probably why he doesn't walk the streets any more. So it'll be barbed crossbow bolt through the eye socket at 3 A.M. from the building roof across the street then. And shadowy figure vanishing in the night without a sound.

Banks love transactions - anonymous or not

Banks have no trouble with virtual currencies, proof being that BitCoin has a market value. Virtual currencies may be virtual, as soon as real money is traded for something, banks take a cut of the transaction - it's what they live for.

If banks really has an aversion to virtual currencies, you simply wouldn't be able to exchange real money for WhateverCoin and there would be no market value to speak of. Then I would believe your words.

Commercial banks have no problem with anything they can get a cut of.

State-operated banks, on the other hand, probably have issues with this new market thingy - until they read up on the latest vCoin scandal and laugh quietly before turning to the latest money-laundering scheme they are in charge of.

You can create a bank called The Pink Fluffy Rabbit if you want - once you have proven yourself to be reliable and professional, the name doesn't really count.

Of course, getting the customers to allow you to prove your reliability might be an issue at the start.

The reverse is true as well - your company can have a perfectly honourable name but still be shunned because of shady accounting practices or PR disasters of the past. I'm sure you can find some examples yourself.

Steve Jobs statue: Ones and ohs and OH NOES – it's POINTING at us

Glad you do

So if it provokes a reaction, it is art ?

Shit provokes a reaction, does that mean it's art ?

On the other hand, that would explain a lot about Microsoft....

MtGox boss vows to keep going despite $429m Bitcoin 'theft'

Re: and the money just flows in

Sure.

But then an exchange falls over and your "money" is either gone or seriously deprecated.

I'm glad that you live happily in a land of milk and honey. Meanwhile, in the Real World, the credibility of virtual currencies has been curbstomped and run over by a column of tanks.

China in the grip of a 'NUCLEAR WINTER': Smog threat to crops

"much of China's farmland will see crops wither or poorly develop "

Hang on, how big is Beijing already ?

This article reads as if all of China's farmland will suffer because of pollution in one city.

I know Beijing must be quite a city, but I doubt the cloud covers 9 600 000 square kilometres.

That said, I read an article not long ago stating the cloud was the size of California - not the smallest of the States.

Microsoft: NSA snooping? Code backdoors? Our hands are clean!

"Because it's unethical and bad for business, he said"

So, given what I remember of Microsoft business behaviour in the past, if it's unethical and good for business, then it's go! go! go!

You just gotta love it when a Microsoft spokesvole mentions the word "ethics". It sounds so schizophrenic.

DARPA wants help to counter counterfeits

Re: Because this system requires either contact with a probe, or close proximity to it.

Actually not.

The system requires a probe for AUTHENTICATING it, which says nothing about what it's doing when not being authenticated.

But, theoretically, it only responds to a probe.

LinkedIn censors self to launch in China

"China needs us more than we need freedom"

Um, you have freedom, nobody is taking it from you.

As for China, it doesn't need you in any way, shape or form.

If it does start to need something like you, it will make its own version.

So go ahead and bend over while the going's good. If you think your customer base is going to have any loyalty to you, well let me just say one day you will wake up very sorry.

Pony up: Botnet succesfully targets Bitcoin

Seems pretty clear then

Virtual cash is .. virtual.

About time people started to get the message.

This is all on par with get-rich-quick schemes, and we all know that the only ones who win are the ones who started it.

In any case, this slew of articles concerning MtGox and sleazy dealings in StuffyCoins is the final nail on the coffin.

As far as I'm concerned, all these CoinThingys are just criminal enterprises, period.

So, where are the hookers and the barmen ?

1bn down, 6bn to go: Zuck to grow Facebook by touting 'free internet onramp' for the poor

"Our vision isn’t to connect a seventh of the world's it's to connect everyone"

Here, let me correct that for you :

Our vision isn’t to track a seventh of the world, it's to track everyone and sell their personal details better than Google.

TFTFY

Sony enlists Michael Jackson's GHOST to flog Xperia Z2

"automatically shoots handsfree pictures through the day"

And does what with them ? Post them on your FB wall ? On Twitter ?

Yeah, I can see that being no trouble at all.

Pics: 'Bitcoin ATMs' spring up in the US

Re: fluctuation isn't an issue

If I put money in my bank on Monday, then come back on Tuesday to take the same amount out and get told it is now only worth 1/10th of what I had, then fluctuation is a damn big issue.

Microsoft asks pals to help KILL UK gov's Open Document Format dream

Re: you're taking away choice

No you're not.

People can very well continue to use MS Office products and save in .odf format.

The thing is, if that happens then they can also use something else to save in .odf format and that is very much what Microsoft does not want to see happen.

I sure hope you're right.

Re: "why do you think posting this patently untrue and discredited nonsense ..."

Because paid shill still has to shill.

Your trolling is starting to show, might want to cash that Redmond check in now.

You’re a LIAR and a CHEAT... la-la-la, I can't hear your lawyers

I think there's a stack of People magazines in the corner that disagree with you.

Antarctic glacier 'melted just as fast Long before human carbon emissions'

Re: What's the chance

Well I think the proper response to that is : we don't have a fucking clue either way.

We're still learning this, people. We don't know everything, and the "models" we use to try and find out are flawed and incomplete.

One day, I am confident we will have the proper data and know how to model it to divine future trends properly. At that time, if the science (not data fudging) says global warming and we are responsible, then that's the deal. Right now ? We don't know.

Once upon a time, people thought the Earth was at the center of the Univers. Today, the same kind of people are steadfast in their belief that Humanity is at the center of everything that happens on Earth, and Earth's destiny is tied to our existence.

Bollocks either way.

Toshiba Encore: The Windows 8.1 tablet that might catch on

Re: For some of us

Yeah, for SOME of you.

The rest of us have to work with Word and Excel.

Oh, and the video is unavailable.

Microsoft tries to re-invent GPS with cloudy offloads

Hang on, this is too good

So, Miss CLEO is now going to assist us in divining our position ?

Who on God's Green Earth (tm) is making up these acronyms ?

Retiring greybeards force firms to retrain Java, .NET bods as mainframe sysadmins

@Anonymous IV

Sorry, but I fail to see where it is said that the process should only take a few days.

Capture and record means meetings with the people working the processes, lengthy Q&A sessions to ensure that everything said is taken down, extensive review of the notes to produce a proper process detail report, and review and quality checks to ensure that the report mirrors reality.

Anybody with a brain can see that the whole thing is going to take time.

What I find very interesting is to find out that the accountants and MBAs/Senior Whatchamacallits didn't notice that they needed to ensure proper training for their personnel. COBOL has had the reputation of the dodo for decades already, it's not new. So how could these extremely (self-)important people NOT see this coming ?

These are bankers. The first rule of making money is that you sometimes have to spend some to make some, and sometimes you have to spend some to keep making more. It would seem that banks (like many big-name companies that have gone astray in the past 2 decades - looking at you HP) have also been taken over by pure accountants, the kind who break out in hives as soon as they see an invoice or an expense report, and start shivering if the next quarterly report is not better than the last.

It is time those kind of accountants go back to where they belong : dungeons. Let them sit on piles of gold and see if it gets more comfortable with time.

Boffins: You'll see, TWITTERNET! We'll get the TRUTH out of you...

It will all end in tears

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

I can accept that the idea behind this project is a good intention, unfortunately I cannot see it end well.

Either it never does work and, like Artificial Intelligence, will always be a few decades away, or somehow, someone does bend space/time / deal with the Devil and produces a working solution that is proven to always be right.

At that point we are one step away from never being able to utter another word on the Internet under pain of perjury. Nor will we ever skirt our fiscal duties as all our administrative declarations will be permanently wired to the worldwide Lie Detector. To summarize : we will have made the worst possible social tool one can think of.

Given that this whole idea will most likely work about as well as web translators (and probably only in English), I think the Truth Hydra (tm) will remain dormant for the time being.

Alca-Lu joins race to make telco networks more cloudy

"They can just turn up a new instance of a cloud application"

Whoosh!, there goes the credibility of the whole scheme.

Another instance of an application is not going to help when the bandwidth is not coming through.

And I'm not talking about hardwired kit. This whole cloudy thing is very, very decentralized now and people want to access it with mobile kit. Mobile kit currently depends on 3G for data connections, and 3G is shitty as hell quite often.

Don't get me wrong, when it works, it works fine. But when you're in a 3G hole, you get nothing. Another "instance" of your application is not going to help there.

Korean credit card companies hit with 90-day, $100m sales ban

I bow before the judicial system of such a country.

Doing that around here would generate an avalanche of protests citing "exceeding authority" or "unconstitutional" and a flood of media spin in favour of the bank subject to punishment.

Remember, our banks are "too big to fail", therefor untouchable even when they patently do wrong.

And yes, I do happen to think that it is the CEO that should go to jail for grave mistakes made by personnel HE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR. But I understand that "responsibility" is nothing more than an entry in the dictionary these days.

Mac Pro fanbois can rack 'em and stack 'em like real sysadmins

Totally agreed. I would have thought that rackmounting Macs would give an aneurysm to most of its user base anyways.

I mean, they already almost all keeled over dead when Apple finally abandoned PowerPC to embrace the Dark Side of x86, and now they're supposed to be used as glorified RAID managers ?

The shame, the shame.

Facebook gobbles WhatsApp for SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLARS

16 billion ? And no ads ? Does he think we're ALL smoking the carpet ?

Come on, please. First of all, $16 billion dollars ??

Clearly The Zuck is having money shower withdrawal issues. I'm looking forward to the inevitable writedown on that, and the media disaster that will ensue.

Second, either this Koum is the most naïve and innocent guy on Earth (I doubt that), or he has a compulsive need to show us he thinks we're stupid. All that money and you want us to think that a) WhatsItsName will remain unchanged and 2) there will be no ads ?

Here's a hint, Koum : FB is an ad broker. It uses its customer base to sell profiles to companies and target ads to its users. Take your time, Koum, it'll end up sinking in.

Unless, of course, Koum is actually just as much a cynical hypocrite as Zuck, in which case this is a marriage made in Heaven for those two.

American Idol host's keyboard firm smacks back against BlackBerry in patent spat

And your family member still calls that guy a friend ?

Somebody needs to refresh his memory concerning what a JOB is. Preferably with a cluebat. Made of wood, obviously.

"the inventors had allegedly withheld known prior art references"

And, once again, we need the Courts to do the job of the Patent Office, which has transitioned from granting patents to just rubber-stamping them.

From 0 to ERUPTION in 60 days: You thought that volcano was COLD?

Re: set up his lair in an extinct volcano

Yes, but then the mad scientist engages the positronic echopositioning confabulator and inadvertently drills a hole to the Earth's core, thereby re-activating the volcano and ruining the draperies.

Official: British music punter still loves plastic

"The UK recorded music industry grew 1.9 per cent last year"

What ?!

What happened to all that PIRACY ? I thought BPI/MPAA/RIAA/et al was being ROBBED BLIND by all those cheapskates who STEAL THE MUSIC.

And yet the CD market grew.

Man. Maybe the world isn't coming to an end after all, eh ?

Silk Road admins: Sorry for the hack, we're sorting out refunds

The FBI does not "have the cash". What the FBI has is a USB with many sets of 0s and 1s that, for some unknown reason, some people appear to attach a value to.

Re: Isn't Bitcoin itself ...

Indeed it is, so much so that there are many people who are absolutely convinced that it is not.

To those people I have two observations to make :

A Bitcoin could initially be fully minted in just minutes. Now it is a lottery where a number of BitCoins are "created" and their attribution depends on who finishes the last block first. In order to finish first, there are now companies that build specialized machines for burning through a block in minimal time, and of course, there are shady merchants who fleece the unwary in various ways with gay abandon.

On top of that, the "value" of a BitCoin varies from day to day by over a percent point sometimes by as much as 10%. It is not stable, not reliable and can be completely buggered by malice or a simple mistake.

So you can go "mint" your BitCoins. I wish you lots of fun and success.

Meanwhile, I will keep my day job which pays the bills and a bit more.

Fine, you can mock us: NSA spies back down in T-shirt ridicule brouhaha

Re: *Yes, I know they don't have one.

That's exactly what they want you to think.

Object to #YearOfCode? You're a misogynist and a snob, says the BBC

Re: I think over-specialization from an early age is very damaging

I agree globally with that sentence, but encouraging a natural affinity does not necessarily have to end in specialisation.

It can very well take the simple form of a voluntary hour spent learning to code via interesting activities, such as in a club house of sorts. Meanwhile, during the day, the child remains in the general courses of maths, language, history and geography and science. Just throw in an available hour on coding with someone who can answer questions, and let the interest bloom.

Re: Twitter, Facebook, Minecraft, youtube, Snapchat, and hundreds of TV channels

One of those is not like the others.

One of those is not passive. One of those promotes thinking and does not destroy neurons.

That one is Minecraft. Minecraft requires patience, planning, observation and perseverance, not to mention some amount of battle tactics. It can even scare you now and then.

Minecraft is a plus in a sea of negatives.

Million-dollar new disk tech could be USELESS for array vendors

Re: So Hitachi can't market its 6TB drives because no one else has them?

Nothing is wrong with innovation.

Everything is wrong with tying your company to a single supplier.

Single supplier means supply is directly tied to that supplier's ability to deliver. One hiccup on the road, and you have no product.

It also means that contract terms can change at the whim of said supplier. Once the supplier has 100% of its market share in you, in can change pricing basically when it wants. "Due to cost increase on the global market, we are raising our gross price by $10 a unit." Then what do you do ? Shout and stamp your feet ? You have no other supplier. Beg for a delay ? Why would he give one ? Switch to another technology ? That will take some time, during which you have to swallow the change - with the corresponding PR impact and - most probably - the lawsuit the supplier will throw your way for abusive termination of contract.

Production lines have inertia like boats, they take time to retool, and industrial companies are the Titanic, ever on the lookout for whatever kind of iceberg can sink them.

A single supplier is very much an iceberg for any industrial company. So it is not so much having a unique advantage, it is more like having a unique weakness.