Posts by Pascal Monett

OK, Wyse guy: So how do YOU think 'boosting' legacy tech is a winner?

Imposter !

That's not Tarkan Maner ! That's Castle - laughing at the perpetrator he just caught thanks to a keylogger his daughter surreptiously installed on the perp's PC !

Valve showers Debian Linux devs with FREE Steam games

Re: "So I pulled out the drive, hooked it up to my desktop, and tried it out on there"

And if you had tried to do that with EAGames, the first time all of your games would be invalidated and you'd have to download everything again, and the second time your account would have invalidated and you'd have lost everything permanently.

But it's Steam, and Steam is more intelligent than that.

On the other hand, I now have the possibility to legitimately run my Painkiller game that I bought years ago on DVD but with DRM so draconian it didn't even recognize its own install disk. Now that I have purchased a Gold Edition of the game for a low, low price, I can do away with the pirate copy I had to get to play MY game.

And I can run Sim City 4 again. And I got Space Marines, a game of last millenium that I had missed but knew about. I runs beautifully well.

I have CSCZ, played it for some years. I now have CSGO and am playing it twice a week on average with my friends. Never realized anything was broken with CSCZ since we haven't played it since CSGO.

Steam is the best online gaming vendor there is bar none. But everyone stumbles from time to time.

Ex-NSA guru builds $4m encrypted email biz - but its nemesis right now is control-C, control-V

"we would fight an order to cooperate"

And here's how the fight would go :

Government Spook : "Hand over the encryption keys for user #362846284, please."

Virtru : "We. Will. Not."

Government Spook : "Then you go to jail as a terrorist and get held indefinitely without trial, and we'll ransack your servers and get the keys anyway."

Virtru : "Here. They. Are."

Government Spook : "If you say anything to anyone about this, you go to jail same as before. Sign here."

Virtru : "Sir! Yes Sir!"

Microsoft seeks patent for blade server chassis

And that was your big mistake !!

Snowden speaks: NSA spies create 'databases of ruin' on innocent folks

Re: A single example

I've got an example for you : the continued existence of Guantanamo, despite it being illegal, immoral and supposed to be shut down.

When ZOMBIES go shopping: 40m Target customer breach? That's NOTHING!

Re: 40 MEELLION? Now that, is incredibly hard to believe

No it isn't. Every family unit needs to shop for food at least once a week. The latest census states that US population has hit 315 million.

Even if only one in ten of those 315 million people go shoppping, that's 31.5 million cards right there.

Now, if what you're saying is that you find hard to believe that 40 million high-rate cards were lifted, I tend to agree with you. But 40 million bank details ? That's easy to believe.

What I find difficult to believe is that they didn't get more.

Cryptocurrencies now being pooped out by cartoon cat

Coming Next !

<drumroll>

SpongeBobCoin

<ba-dum, tish!>

Sweet work, fellas: Boffins build high-density battery powered by sugar

Boffins build high-density battery powered by sugar

No they haven't. They have demonstrated that a hypothetical energy source can be made to produce electricity.

The day that that process can be found in a battery is decades away if all the previous impressive declarations of these past years are anything to go on.

Not knocking the work in any way - I find what they did quite interesting - just putting things in perspective.

Botnet PC armies gulp down 16 MILLION logins from around the web: Find out if you're a victim

Re: "governments are not entirely immune to the will of the people"

The NSA might disagree with that statement.

And I'm pretty sure the CIA will ROFL.

Boffins measure 27 quantum states of light

27 Dimensions ????

We can barely measure 4 properly, what on God's Green Earth makes them think they can measure 27 ?

"Dimension" must not have the meaning I think it has.

MPAA spots a Google Glass guy in cinema, calls HOMELAND SECURITY

No, but ...

The MPAA is apparently allowed to whistle and Homeland Security will come a'runnin' to bitchslap the terrorist motherfucker who dares to attempt to bring prejudice to the Glorious Land of IP Protection.

It is not the MPAA that detained the bloke, it was DHS. The DHS has the right to detain anyone they just suspect has been talking to anyone they might feel needs a bit of detaining (like a journalist learned to his detriment a few weeks ago). And they bloody well have the right to ship you off to prison for terrorism if you sneeze too loud.

So keep your buttocks well clenched, citizens of The Land That Used To be Free. Otherwise, Homeland Security will probe you like the alien you might be.

Idle question : when will DHS agents wear jackboots ? It's about time they did, isn't it ?

Microsoft empties a can of BUG SPRAY on Visual Studio 2013, hands sticky result to devs

Agreed, a simple fix - that involves editing registry keys.

No problem for proficient PC users, I agree again.

I wouldn't want my mother to have to do that, though. I have a number of friends who would probably go into shock if they had to be exposed to the Registry Editor.

Bottom line is, yes, the Registry Editor is the official application hack tool. What people want is not a hack, they want a vendor-made solution, in this case, a correction.

You shouldn't have to hack your products so that they function as per specifications.

Office 365 Microsoft's fastest growing business, ever - Microsoft

"it’s time to stop [..] Microsoft products and start selling its online services instead"

Of course he would say that. Doesn't mean I'm buying into it.

150% uptake ? So you're still small-time then, call me back when you've got 51% of the market using your stuff.

Even then, I'll still ask you why I should rent my data to you when I have already paid for the right to create and use it - several times.

Telling me you have x hundreds of thousands of customers does not impress me. There are alledgedly half a billion people getting their personal lives scrutinized by advertisers on Facebook, I still don't see that as a reason to throw myself into that particular pit either.

In fact, I'll go so far as to say that there are two types of customers going to the cloud : those who have money to burn and are trying out something new to see how to adapt it to their existing infrastructure, and those who have no resources for local IT and are outsourcing until they do.

That leaves those who care about the security of their data and have the means to manage it locally. They will likely not be swayed by the siren calls.

Look out, Earth! Here comes China Operating System (aka Linux)

Re: I don't think there will be any other way to get this to market

Maybe not to our market, but I doubt the entity making this is targetting our market. This product is clearly for their home market, and I don't know if Chinese users have yet grasped the importance of Open Source.

And if their product is user-friendly and useful, then the question may be moot. Besides, we all know that, if the Chinese government wants integrated surveillance, there will be no one (alive) to oppose it.

Nearly HALF of South Korea hacked in insider data theft

Re: "Are [..] marketing companies allowed to buy personal records that include sensitive stuff "

Do you really think they care if they are "allowed" or not ?

Note that the guy heading for prison is not the one who <alledgedly> bought the data, it's the one who sold the data.

Which, of course, is the reverse for drugs, where it's the people buying the stuff that get locked up.

Obama reveals tiny NSA reforms ... aka reforming your view of the NSA

Re: Anyone cares to explain how it will work exactly?

You don't need to know, Citizen.

Carry on with your life and Trust Your Government.

Move along, now, move along.

Smog-hit Beijing shows sunsets on a giant TV to remind people what the sun looks like

Re: probably mostly caused by power plants burning dirty old brown coal

Unfortunately it would seem that the pollution problem is caused in greater share by individual furnaces using dirty coal for heating purposes.

The industry most likely has a share of responsibility, but it would therefor seem that it is much more the amount of population, its concentration and its heating source that is the issue.

Therefor, you could likely replace all cars with eletric versions, and convert all power plants to nuclear and you will not see the pollution issue disappear.

Not until people in Bejing can heat their homes with electrical-based solutions instead of coal-based.

And that will take a lot more time.

Feds to flog off $28m in Bitcoin from Silk Road drug souk seizure

Re: Big Banking does not like competition

What makes you think that BTC is competition for Big Banking ?

They deal in a hundred different currencies all day long, one more is not going to be a problem.

BTC is anonymous and not beholden to the banking system, you say ? Then why is there a conversion rate ? Who do you think tracks the conversion rate and updates it ? Where do you think the conversion rate is logged and analyzed ?

Big Banking already has its claws in BTC, like a remora on a shark. Big Banking doesn't care what makes a currency, it already doesn't make the currencies that flow through it. Big Banking just wants to ensure that ALL currency flows go through it.

So dollars, euros, drachmes, bitcoins, it's all the same for Big Banking. BTC can go on being "anonymous", a dollar bill is anonymous too.

Re: sharktopusses with bearclaws

That's gotta hurt !

Apple badmouthing of court's monitor proves it NEEDS him - judge

Re: In fairness to Apple

Fuck fairness to Apple.

Apple is not a teenager that needs to learn a life lesson. Apple is a multinational corporation with highly-paid managers listening to highly-paid consultants telling it what can be done. It has made corporate decisions based on making profit - like every other company - and has been caught doing wrong.

Punishment is deserved, not fairness.

Bitcoin's so over. We're mining Primeco... Oh SNAP, my box is a ZOMBIE!

He's referring to the fact that BTC mining is a pipe dream today - anyone intending to make money out of it is kidding themselves. There are factories making machines specifically created only for BTC mining. If you are not using one of those, you're so far behind the curve it's laughable. If you are using one of those, you're just making the wheel go 'round.

Proof : the one guy in this thread who thinks he can still mine a BTC says that he'll use the money to buy better equipment.

I'll just sit back and have a margherita. Sounds like a better investment to me.

MANIC MINERS: Ten Bitcoin generating machines

Re: misunderstanding of a pyramid scheme

A pyramid scheme is when newcomers only serve to fatten up previous entrants and the first entrants are the ones who win the most.

In the BTC mining era, this is exactly what is happening. Newcomers today have no chance of making money. They are simply the treadmill mice running endlessly for no significant reward. The ones mining last year are better off, the ones mining last century are far better off, and the ones who started this whole mess are the ones who see their initial, easy mining results multiply in value without lifting a finger (I'm not saying it is their fault, it's just what is happening).

That is a pyramid scheme.

You are free to not agree, and I will gladly leave you on the treadmill. Happy running !

Re: it doesn't mean that a plot on 5th avenue is worthless today

There's a big difference : that plot is real. The government cannot declare that it doesn't exist anymore.

BitCoin is another Internet fad, one that, as had been said, profits the most to those who started the pyramid.

Everything in this article tells me to stay away from BitCoins. From the fact that the hardware is dedicated, to the fact that the vendors themselves can be thieving scum, and finally the fact that BitCoin mining is becoming so exponentially difficult that soon only industrial plants will be able to mine them. Oh, and copycats are rising, mudding the waters further. What ? Does everyone think that a dozen virtual currencies are a Good Thing (tm) ? It's just a dozen more pyramid schemes which won't actually bring anything useful.

The only way I'm going to see a BitCoin is if someone gives it to me, and the only way that will happen is if I accept one in payment for something. Given that, at this point in time, I have no use for BitCoin nor anywhere to spend it, I won't be accepting one for a while yet I think.

HACKLASH! Syrian Electronic Army's website hacked by angry rivals

Time for popcorn !

<ding!> the fight is on !

I don't much care about defacers in general, but when they are defacing each other I'm willing to chuckle.

Intel shutters BRAND NEW chip factory as PC market storm rages

a beacon of domestic manufacturing

Yup, it's a beacon all right.

Pointing straight to nothing.

Tales from an expert witness: Prior art and patent trolls

"the absurdity that exudes from the patient office, the patient trolls"

Patient trolls are probably the most vicious adversary you can possibly encounter.

Explained: How LSI and Oracle cooked up magical flash-embiggening sauce

Re: Even office documents are compressed now

Wrong. Office documents can be compressed now, at the condition that the user saves them in the latest format.

I know quite a few (large) companies with a wealth of documents in Compatible Mode format who are not lifting a finger to convert them all. Most of them are creating new documents in the new format, but all of them have some legacy app that cannot deal with the new format so the old docs stay as they are.

Security holes in Word, the Windows kernel and Adobe Flash. Party like it's Patch Tuesday again

I thought it was Java that is a remotely exploitable hole

Modern spying 101: How NSA bugs Chinese PCs with tiny USB radios - NYT

"compromised 100,000 computers around the world"

Maybe they should have targetted 100,000 computers in China if they wanted to spy on the Chinese ?

Ok, I got my coat . . .

Top patent troll sues US regulators for interfering with its business

So their scam is "protected" by Free Speech ?

Well I've got some Free Speech for MPHJ : Fuck You.

That will be all.

Two websites you should show your boss if you want to be paid in Bitcoin

Re: The ones who were paid in them previously and made huge profits seem that way

Of course the ones who started this whole things were savvy - they are on the top of the pyramid !

Everyone knows that the higher you are in a scheme's hierarchy, the more rewards you reap.

Not knocking Bitcoin, but those who started it minted coins in way less time than it takes now, so sorry, but it does look like a pyramid scheme to me.

Google stabs Wikipedia in the front

State religion ?

State religions are based on rhetoric and imaginary friends.

Google is a state in itself.

It is not imaginary, it is not rhetorical, and it certainly is not your friend.

Re: "the constant lowering of standards of content on Wikipedia"

Wikipedia has content standards ?

Woz backs Chinese 'Apple of Far East' in play for US hardware market

golf shirt, not turtleneck ?

Hang the traitor !

Hackers slurp credit card details from US luxury retailer Neiman Marcus

You think of $7500 and compare it to your revenue per month, and your jaw drops. The people who get this kind of invite see $7500 and think in terms of revenue per day and they don't even blink.

If you get that invite you'll be thinking about it in your mansion by the fire, playing a game of snooker on your own snooker table. You'll finally accept during one of your weekly $1000 dinners.

At that point, the fee is the last item on the list of your worries.

Hubble 'scope snaps 600-LIGHT-YEAR-wide pic of star-spawning nebula

It's called planning ahead.

Or job security.

Ok, I got my coat.

Microsoft to RIP THE SHEETS off Windows 9 aka 'Threshold' in April

Threshold

I wonder if that name will become eerily prescient in the coming years.

As in, "Microsoft was on the threshold of (success ? failure ?) with the release of what became known as Windows 9"

Sharepoint ? Great ?

I'm not sure I want what you're smoking.

Dropbox outage was caused by 'buggy' upgrade: DDoS us? You hardly know us...

1775Sec

All hail the new bunch of slef-important jackasses who will "entertain" us for the next few months by being uselessly disruptive and proving nothing, then either fade into obscurity or put the final FBI nail into their rickety coffin.

I look forward to forgetting you before the end of the year.

No, it's a stark reminder of how much you rely on cloud-based services.

Sane people don't rely on it, they use it when it's convenient and as a stopgap, temporary measure.

Target's database raided, 70 MILLION US shoppers at risk of ID theft

Sony was "brutally" honest ? Really ?

Oh sure, I remember Sony as a paragon of virtue, always fully disclosing its issues and never trying to stab its customers in the back. Oh wait . . . no it hasn't ever been that.

Sony is a powerhouse of paranoid executives who consider every customer as a potential thief and will respect no limit in nailing customers to a post to bleed them dry. HDMI is entirely geared to do just that, as there is nothing HDMI can do that a CAT-6 Ethernet cable can't - except limit user rights, of course.

If Sony was a bit more forthcoming about its infamous PS Network outage, it's because you can't really punt in a corner the fact that you are shutting down the whole thing because your security was abysmally stupid. No "only affects a few customers" this time.

The timeline is clear. The intrusion happened starting April 17th, but it was only on April 20th that Sony said anything about it. At that time, the solution was supposed to be a day or two away. Of course, Sony had shut down the network, so it had to state some facts, distasteful as that may be.

You probably don't remember, but there was a veritable hurricane of outrage hitting Sony's Twitter account at the time. Sony was being ridiculed left and right, and PlayStation owners were incandescant with rage.

So yeah, Sony might have been rather honest on that one, but with over 20 million angry customers and a downed network, what choice did it have ?

It's not like the rootkit issue, where Sony blithly denied everything until a class action was instigated, or the DRM backpedalling on the PS4, where Sony tried to pass the notion that there wouldn't be any but an alert Joe Public soon found out that there was.

That is Sony's usual behavior : sneak the bad stuff under the radar and deny it until millions of angry people are knocking down the doors.

On that subject, Sony is certainly not the only company to adopt that attitude.

Nevertheless, the only thing brutal with Sony is its total disregard for consumer rights and privacy.

Never mind bungled Universal Credit rollout, Maude wants UK to be 'most digital' gov by 2015

The UK with the most digital gov by 2015

In light of past projects, I think we can all agree that the UK will certainly have the most expensive digital government by 2015 - if that isn't already the case.

Also, if 500M is the best economy they can do, it'll take near 40 years to recover the more than 18bn already splurged on non-working, unfit for purpose government projects.

At least, those are the figures I read here and there, IIRC.

New FCC headman brandishes net neutrality carrot and stick

Re: There is no reason we can't have

I think there are plenty of reasons. Historical limitations, no magic wand, and it's not because Ferrari exists that everyone has one.

Yes, it all boils down to money, namely who foots the bill.

No reason not to have 1Gbps ? How about changing all copper to fiber ? That's a heavy cost right there. Then there's changing all the switches everywhere with ones that can handle the new load. I think that won't be a small cost either - we're not talking about a new 4-port home box, we're talking about heavy-duty industrial switches. Not the same cost. The company that goes and pays for all that needs to pay for other things as well, and needs to be sure to recoup the costs as quick as possible or go down because of the strain. Municipalities aren't rushing to pay for it either, they have other problems to deal with.

Last, but far from least, if all the above was done, you only have a thousand-fold increase in the amount of traffic, not to mention everyone and his dog piling in for access rights. That's another pretty nightmare to manage effectively.

Gigabit Internet for consumers will happen - in its own sweet time.

As for the telecomms industry, their model was based on one copper line for analogue phone connections, which they implemented across the country. That was already a pretty impressive task, and they've been milking it for years. Then, all of a sudden came this Internet thing, requiring much higher quality connections, and throwing their entire backend into one godawful mess.

I have no intention of defending the telecomms industry with rabid support, but accusing them of having imposed artificial scarcity just for the fun of it seems a bit much. They have an entire network that was created to do one thing, and is now tasked with doing something entirely different. There will be adaptation problems, that is inevitable.

Now I do feel that they could adapt a bit quicker, no problem there. But asking them to change everything overnight is not realistic either.

Well done for flicking always-on crypto switch, Yahoo! Now here's what you SHOULD have done

Very sorry for your misfortune.

Congratulations on coming back from that (what I infer from the tone of your post).

No more syncing feeling with file portability service Younity

Oh great

Yet another security hazard that uses social stuff to hook people.

Haters of lurid supershow CES: The consumer tech market is still SHRINKING

Re: "by their rules; otherwise, you go home"

On my way already.

I have no use for 4K. I have no intention of replacing my entire set of living room appliances (that work just fine) just to pander to some corporate paranoia, and I will NOT submit my personal viewing habits to the Overview of people who I deem have no right to put their noses in my living room.

They want to lock down their system ? They're welcome to, and they're welcome to rot with it as well.

The future is open. Those who lock down will die of suffocation.

No sign of Half-Life 3 but how about FOURTEEN Steam Machine makers?

SteamOS means Win7 is my last Windows ever

I'm not all that chuffed by the SteamBox, now that I know that it's just a PC.

But SteamOS ? Hell yeah !

As soon as that puppy is released I am installing it on a free partition and, from then on, I will only use Windows when I have to - i.e. for working from home.

For my gaming needs, most of the games I play are already in my Steam library, so there will come a time (soon) when I'll be booting into Steam more often than into Windows.

And for a lot of Steam gamers I suspect that it will be the same. Dual-booting to get rid of Windows cruft in order to play on a lean OS is not a chore, it is a godsend.

This will most probably also give a kick in the rear to nVidia and co to get their driver departments into gear and making their Linux driver versions better more often. nVidia in particular has a rather weak history concerning Linux drivers, the SteamOS has the potential to change that.

But the SteamBox ? I wish it to be successful, but somehow I don't really see it happening.

Doesn't matter. A+ for the effort, whatever happens. The SteamOS will rock the gaming world anyway.

Prez Bush email hacker Guccifer is BACK: A-list celebs' inboxes 'raided'

Random attacks on celebrity personal life, and for what, exactly ?

Proving that he can do it, proving that their security is insufficient, or what ?

We know that email is not secure thank you very much you can stop flogging that horse now it's long dead.

Another pathetic individual with an overblown sense of self. He's not proving anything, he's not doing anything useful, he's just a nuisance.

Pah.

Google tickled with TINY fine from French privacy watchdog

Penalty laws in France are ridiculous for multinationals

It's like oil barges - the penalty for degassing in the high seas is less than the cost of doing so in the proper fashion. No points for guessing where all the oil slicks come from.

It really is high time that France and some other countries stop treating multinationals like movie stars and get gritty when it is required.

The issue is law, of course, but it is also the idea that, if you're actually going to levy a heavy fine, the company could up roots and go somewhere less costly, thus "taking away" their business. Well the facts are that they'll do that anyway whenever it suits them, so fine the buggers with a heavy hand and at least get something out of them.