Posts by Pascal Monett 19020 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
It's MSFT. That's what they do. Outages. They've been sharpening their skills on the desktop for decades, now they're taking it to the next level.
Soon the WILL be a Ctrl-Alt-Del for the Internet.
As soon as Azure Active Directory has succeeded in replacing all other DNS solutions.
Your distinctiveness will be mercilessly erased and replaced by our worldview...
Sealed envelopes are impressive and all that, to be sure, but I doubt they'll be of any use against a rogue BOFH that went and changed the passwords without creating a new envelope.
Said envelopes are only an insurance if the passwords are regularly checked and validated.
And even that doesn't guard against an additional shadow account created with the same credentials and abilities, but using a different password that only the BOFH knows.
Not unless there is a log of some sort that the sysadmin cannot touch that records all instances of password change.
I'll believe in it when you show me an example of something that runs under sysadmin supervision that the sysadmin cannot touch or prevent its functioning.
No. Just, no.
Young kids need to have their minds properly opened to curiosity and inquisitiveness. They need to be taught that searching for answers is not a crime, and finding them is its own reward.
When they are intelligently curious and have thus been properly formed, then is the time to expose them to specific areas of work, not before. Anything done before that time is just replicating the cookie-cutter mentality. Quick ! We need a security cookie ! Quick ! We need an encryption cookie !
Such schemes are bound to lock people in limited roles, enhancing their fragility when the market changes and their skills are no longer in need. That has been done, and the method has demonstrated its weaknesses. We must not continue making the same mistakes.
Oh come now, that's a bit harsh. After all, Dreamworks did Shrek, Chicken Run, and Galaxy Quest. Gladiator, Band of Brothers and Evolution. Saving Private Ryan for $deity's sake. Can't be all that bad.
Ah but they also did Transformers. And Meet the Fockers. And they redid the Stepford Wives.
So yeah, complete shambles.
Universities. That is your justification.
So tell me, what corporate data do Universities deal with on a daily basis ? How much consumer data do they process ? And how does my banking data get into their hands ?
Oh, none of any of the above. So you might as well have mentioned schools in Africa as far the relevance of your example is concerned.
I think you are confused on the term. A MAC address is not the address of an Apple machine, it is the Media Access Control number of the network chip in anything that connects to a network.
Thus Windows machines have MAC addresses too.
"A social media presence should be as natural for a politician to have a computer or cell phone"
Maybe that can be the case for a politician who needs to drum up voter support.
My opinion is that a person in office should spend his time doing his job, and Twitter is NOT part of the job description.
Of course not, if you tell the customer that they are signing up for limited contract and that such is the limit.
If you advertising an unlimited contract, then there is no limit to apply and any limit whatsoever makes the contract a lie.
This nonsense has been going on for long enough. Fines are not the answer, so kneecapping it should be.
And if it harmed a 3rd party, well that's just acceptable collateral.
Because the entire law enforcement machine is no longer burdened with the pursuit of Justice under the rules of Law. Efficiency is the only criteria.
Soon, waterboarding will become an accepted interrogation technique, because efficiency. Then we'll get wires applied to certain areas of the body, because fuck if that is not efficient.
What ? Human Rights ? What are you, a terrorist ? Come here, we've got some questions for you . . .
From everything I have read on backup restore solutions, nobody has ever successfully restored an entire product line.
Oh sure, you have restores of bits and pieces. A database here, a disk directory there. Maybe even an entire server. That works, no problem.
But then Azure goes down and we find that there is a 3-month delay to get one's web site back and no guarantee that everything will be gotten back (any word on how that finally panned out ?).
So I have to wonder, how many companies are actually stopping their production servers to test if their restore solution is functional and reliable ? And how many have found that, yes, that is the case ?
Just one case, please.
The problem with so-called "diet" foods is that the people who eat them are at risk of considering that they can eat more because it's diet food. In addition, in an effect similar to the 5-second rule, if you add a diet element to your meal, then people tend to consider that it makes the whole meal "diet".
Which is why we can all laugh at the bloated mouth asking for a super-sized meal but with a Diet Coke.
Yeah, that'll make all the difference.
Nice to know that we have studies like that.
As far as the limit of our knowledge is concerned, I have often heard that the sea is the final frontier of discovery, but my opinion is that it is our own metabolism that we need to get to know better.
We all know that exercise and a healthy diet is necessary for the body to grow and age in the best of conditions, but we don't know what exactly we need as an individual on a given day. Some people may need more or less food of a certain type than others. In a given dietary environment, it may actually be good to have a bar of chocolate at a given time of day.
What I'm driving at is the fact that we have no idea of what a particular food does to us, nor what is the best time to eat it. I'm not saying that eating fries at a given time of day will be better for us, I'm saying that we just don't know the impact, at a cellular level, of what we eat.
What we need to get to is something like Frank Herbert described in Heretics of Dune, when the character Miles Teg is visited by a local doctor. In this extract, the doctor simply uses a medical scanner on him, then defines a meal for him that will set him right. Of course, that is fiction, but it does describe a level of knowledge of the human metabolism that we are far from having today.
Studies like the one linked above will help us get there, the more the better.
Are you kidding ? Have you never noticed all the flab that is baking on the beaches every summer ?
I call bollocks on the whole thing. Skin cream won't do a thing for your weight, not unless it contains hydrochloric acid. I propose someone grant me a million dollars so I can totally prove that it is my miracle eyedrops, combined with a lot of exercise and a healthy diet, that can keep you slim and fit.
Pff. Amateurs.
They are secondary now. In twenty years you'll have CNN running documentaries on dying of radiation-induced cancer and how the evil Earth Corporations abused the innocence of the First Pioneers to send them to their deaths while benefiting from their work.
Then the Red Revolution will come, the Humartians will rise and shake off the overbearing yolk of Earth domination to declare their independence during the Chocolate Day, when a shipment of chocolate is overturned in protest.
Then you'll have the First Interstellar Conflict, when Earth ups the game and sends a Battleship to pound those unruly resistants into the Martian dust reason. The Resistance will go underground while the Battleship will launch a few salvos endlessly replayed by CNN for months on end, and the War will Be Declared Wun by George Bush IV, but a few years later the Humartian Government will have its own Constitution, Bill of Rights, Parliament and Trading Agreement with Earth Corp.
It's inevitable, because Martian Weed, man. You have to try it to believe it.
If I'm not mistaken, they already use radiators on the ISS. Because when you're in space and lit by that open nuclear furnace we have 1,08 trillion brontosaurii away, well it gets pretty hot real quick.
That heat needs to be evacuated in addition to the heat already generated by the equipment and humans that are there, so some good radiators are probably in use.
It is certainly not, because that would mean widespread modifications of how what we buy is packaged and tagged, meaning most probably that some unknown third party could be aware of my buying habits without my knowledge or consent.
In addition, it would mean sensors and item check-in/check-out when I just want to grab a can. This is not going to be easily automated, so it will most likely be just another nuisance infringing on my private life.
And please do not go the automatic order route, it is not worth the convenience. That path is just littered with Impending Expletive Devices.
Ah, but malware is a purely civilian issue. There are no numbers on how much time is wasted by civilians recovering from malware, reinstalling their machines and wiping their private data in the process. Figures concerning losses due to identity theft are, in practice, a secret, veiled as they are by police proceedings and awaiting judgement limbo.
Oh, and it's illegal to go and put software on a civilian PC to prevent him from getting malware or to remove it - without the owner's consent.
Of course, when covered by the activity of "looking for paedorrists", then it's no-holes-barred we'll-do-whatever-it-takes. And if that means hijacking a malware package, well it's for The Greater Good (tm), so that's that.
I would like to know just one instance where the DCMA was properly used to remove actually infringing content.
It seems to be that every single instance I have heard of its use results in the overbearing takedown of either non-copyright-infringing material, or the wholesale blocking of entire domains that had nothing to do with the notice in the first place.
The DMCA is hopelessly broken. Kill it with fire.
And their idea is to remove all possibility of formatting altogether ?
Wow, that sounds like it's going to work very well for the general public - when in the meeting, that is.
Because I have never met a more pickier nitpick than the general public, Microsoft. Tell anyone that they can post something on the Internet these days and they're going to immediately want to see font options and paragraph options exactly like they see them in Word.
And you can't even resize pictures ? Come on, it's almost 2015 already, wake up in there ! What are you trying to do, Microsoft, reinvent Edlin for the web ?
Oh yeah, let's make the Internet even more complicated so that the bright hackers can do what they want and leave Law Enforcement even more clueless. How exactly are you going to change a landline on-the-fly, pray tell ? It's IP may change or be spoofed, but the copper (or fibre for those lucky buggers that have it) is not going to change places, and can therefor be traced. I doubt there can be any way around that.
As said before, if my password is stolen, I can change it. I can't change my face, or my hands, or my fingers.
And please, please do NOT give the "selfie" any official role. THAT will be the End of Civilization As We Know It.
Zuckerberg is giving a mountain of money for a worthy cause and that deserves some measure of congratulations. Anything that can help fight this is needed, it doesn't matter who it comes from or why.
And I don't care if its pennies compared to his fortune, it's a good gesture and that counts.
I still hate the guy though, and I'll die before signing up to Facebook.
But good on him for that.
Now I just want to know if this is just a publicity stunt to make Mr Bitch! seem more palatable to the general public, or if he's actually doing this out of the pureness of his heart (cough).
I'd be happy if many websites didn't make 10 the maximum possible.
But yes, we need a Password Storage certification that tells us that a site has been controlled and certified for level A, B or C of protection, with A being the latest updated security technology, B would indicate somewhat average hashing and salting but with outdated encryption levels (like 56-bit today) and C being the equivalent of a text file with passwords stored in the clear.
Of course, the certification must be done by a trusted authority, and the level must be evaluated and updated regularly. Websites could only post the relevant certification after authorization by the certification authority.
That would help clear the waters somewhat, I think.
There's none of that left, my good man. Your government has been chipping away at that block for the past half century - aught is left but pebbles now. Only an American can go on about America's moral authority and believe in it.
As for the fear that "small start-ups will not have the ability to operate overseas", I ask : where's the problem ? They're start-ups. When you're small, you start small. Only on the Internet have companies got the habit of considering a world market. Every company that deals with actual goods and/or services knows that expanding overseas is a costly option that can only be realized when success has graced the local operation.
In other words, not going worldwide immediately seems to me to be a pretty good guarantee that, once a company does get to that stage, it has ironed out the kinks in its administrative and production processes. A good thing, in other words.
I'm sorry, how exactly is not being able to freely and easily snoop on MY phone data connections going to lessen the police's ability to arrest the thug who is pushing old ladies around to get their handbag ?
Unless . . is there an app for that ?
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