Posts by Pascal Monett

What the BLOCK? Microsoft to gobble Minecraft-maker 'for $2bn'

Indeed he hasn't.

But there's Blockstorm, Robocraft, Creativerse, Murder Miners . . . I think I'll stop looking there now.

I don't think it's ever late to trouser $2 billion.

I'm even willing to wait until next week.

Hawking: Higgs boson in a BIG particle punisher could DESTROY UNIVERSE

"A particle accelerator that reaches 100bn GeV would be larger than Earth"

Um, far be it from me to cast the eminent Professor's words in a disparaging light, but I do believe that his words should be amended to read:

"A particle accelerator that reaches 100bn GeV would be larger than Earth, with current technology"

Indeed, fusion reactors will exist, and nobody knows what performance fusion reactors will attain, so this declaration must be bound by the current limitations in energy generation, notwithstanding future improvements.

Sorry, Professor.

BONEHEAD FANBOIS encamp outside Apple Stores

Hang on,

People who have been paid to take a queue take pay from other people to leave it ?

Isn't that the very definition of mercenary ?

In any case, it is not the definition of honorable.

Facebook, Google and Instagram 'worse than drugs' says Miley Cyrus

Sorry, that may be the case in the US, but in Europe a "social profile" is not - yet - a requirement for finding a job.

Everyone taking part in Patch Tuesday step forward. NOT SO FAST, Adobe!

Unfortunately, yes.

China is now 99.8% sure you're you, thanks to world's-best facial recognition wares

One question

Can we smile again in our ID photos then ?

Microsoft's Office Delve wants work to be more like being on Facebook

Machine learning

Let's make one thing clear : if your employees are not the ones who do the thinking, your company is up Shit Creek without a paddle.

For fuck's sake enough with the Magical Computer thing. Computers do NOT fix problems, they are not a substitute for people who know what they are doing.

Please take a cluebat to all idiots who think that a computer can think for them.

Especially managers.

Snowden shouldn't be extradited to US if he testifies about NSA spying, says Swiss gov

Re: Silicon Valley would lose its ability to sell to EU clients overnight

Um, the business world already knows that any data that is held by a US company or any of its subsidiaries is fair game to the US government, and that has not lost Silicon Valley any sales yet.

Confirmation from Snowden in front of a Swiss court would not change that fact.

Straight to video: Facebook to add 'view counts' to autoplay newsfeed vids

Fake bomb ?

That is so sad.

A real one is such a blast !

Dodgy Norton update borks UNDEAD XP systems

Whoa there !

BSA made something ?

And it was GOOD ?

I think I need to lie down....

Is there life on Mars? Cloud-gazing Curiosity accused of lacking scientific focus

Curiosity

To boldly drill where no one has drilled before.

Ballmer PERSONALLY wrote Windows 3.1's blue screen text

Re: Maybe I was just lucky

Yup, that sounds about right.

Jimbo tells Wikipedians: You CAN'T vote to disable 'key software features'

sheer unmitigated bullshit

Said by a man who definitely knows what he's talking about.

An expert in the matter, if you will.

The fact is that Wales does not know how to manage a discussion. He confuses the money he is managing with the feeling of importance it brings him, acts like Wiki editors are his to command, and then is all surprised and wounded when they don't really feel like he is their boss.

He's not, of course. He is nobody but a figurehead to attract donations. That is something he does well, apparently, and good on him for it. But he would do good to remember that Wikipedia may have been his creation, now it is a creature of itself, leading its own life.

And Wikipedia's life depends on its editors, not on Wales, so he really should be tuned out and just keep to the charity floor.

He won't, of course, so all this is just another notch in his personal downward journey to irrelevance.

The fact that the engineers paid by their employer are required to work with company tools is perfectly normal. Those engineers are not editors, they're the people who try to make the software that the Illustrious Leader is thinking of.

It is the unpaid editors who create the wealth of Wikipedia who are the ones who refuse to work with subpar software, and nobody is saying they are wrong to do so (well, nobody except Wales).

NUDE SELFIE CLOUD PERV menace: Apple 2FA? Sweet FA, more like

Re: "if you forget your password [..] all your iTunes purchases are gone, forever

Well that's everything settled then, right ?

I mean, what could possibly go wrong ?

Are you a HOT CELEB? Think your SEXY PICS are safe? Maybe NOT

Sell-outs and friend betrayers

Such a nice society some people have.

I know what the word "friend" means. I may not have 100+ "friends", but my friends would never do that to me. Nor I to they.

Snooptastic US CELL TOWERS pose man-in-the-middle THREAT

"It is highly unlikely that this 'interceptor' stuff will become common in the UK .."

And right after saying that he wrote down a Note to Self : Warn NSA that they are starting to cotton on to the scheme.

Internet of Things: Major players agree on goals, but little else

Re: "Without focused commercialization efforts .."

In other words, if somebody else doesn't do the job right, we won't continue swimming in money.

Delaying Abundance, really ? And with a capital A, no less ? The only thing that is going to generate Abundance is controlled nuclear fusion. Nothing else has the potential to do that. Trying to pass off IoT as a generator of infinite wealth is beyond moronic, it is criminal.

That paper just proves that this whole IoT fad is just another money grab.

On the other hand, those guys are slick, I must admit. This fad is only just starting and they have already found their excuse for when the purported "wealth" does not materialize (the commercialization efforts were not focused enough).

CNN 'tech analyst' on NAKED CELEBS: WHO IS this mystery '4chan' PERSON?

Typical CNN-level broadcast

And the "expert" is highly qualified as well - for CNN that is.

NASA clears zero-G 3D printer for mission to SPAAAAACE

3D printing of plastic is not going to save anyone

The idea of printing replacement parts is fine, but it will have to use materials that have much better durability than plastic if we are to be able to use it in a colonization scenario.

A full-fledged colony will have to have mining utensils, maybe even mining machines, smelters, smithies and metalworkers. It might even be a good idea to stay low-tech as much as possible - if a colony bases its management on tablets and spreadsheets then everything will grind to halt when the equipment fails.

But for a proof-of-concept phase, this is definitely a good idea.

Sony backs AllSeen Alliance in Internet of Stuff standards slap-fight

I'm just wondering...

.. how Sony is going to manage to crowbar Java in that thing.

Because they'll try, I'm sure of that.

Hot Celebrity? Stash of SELFIES where you're wearing sweet FA? Get 2FA. Now

Re: INSTEAD OF AN 'AGE RATING' TO JOIN SITES....

What's that ? Common sense ? Man, this the 3rd millennium, there's none of that stuff left.

And making users complete a test in order to sign up to a service is just putting a big roadblock on your highway to money.

Not gonna happen.

'Sony and Twitch' hacking crew Lizard Squad: 'We quit'

"experience the raw thrill of anarchy"

These morons need to take a bit of their copious free time to check the definition of anarchy.

It is not destroying everyone else's toys. Anarchy is a system where no law is needed because everyone does what is needed when it is needed without having to be prodded into doing it by law.

But, given their actions, it is obvious that the notion of true anarchy is something well above their level of intelligence.

Flurry of solar flare-ups sets off cosmic plasma explosion

I must agree that I would appreciate a bit of consistency. If one starts with metric units to quantify something, I have always found it irritating to see the next measurement in imperial units, or vice-versa.

Let's at least stick to one system of measurement, please ?

Oh, and one other thing : I very much doubt that the Sun can only spew forth a paltry hundred million tons at a time. The wiki page on CMEs states that average mass is 1.6×10^12kg (i.e. 1.6 billion tons), and that that measurement is a lower limit because of the detection method.

SHARE 'N' SINK: OneDrive corrupting Office 2013 files

Impressive

Once upon a time, Microsoft only managed to make its Office files incompatible with older versions.

Now, Microsoft has made its own Office files incompatible between its own OSes !

Now that's what I call progress !

Microsoft changes cert test providers, hints at fun new exams

I would love a test environment like that. As a developer, give me the specifications of something that tests my knowledge of the product and the operations needed to fulfil the requirements and let me prove that I can do it in the allotted time.

But I can understand that mass-certification cannot be done like that. You need a dev or server environment for every candidate, and for some admin tests you need more than one server and maybe servers in different states. Setting up such an environment would be a logistical nightmare and would be prohibitively costly, not to mention evaluating the result would have to be done by a committee instead of a test server automatically validating checkbox answers. And you would obviously have complaints about results.

I don't think that Azure will help in any way in this matter, but I sure wish somebody could make something like that work.

One thing is sure : nobody could criticize a cert like that anymore !

Siri: Helpful personal assistant or SERIAL APP KILLER?

Type your question ?

HA! HA! HAA!

Excuse me, but people in cinemas already have apparently extreme difficulty in turning the bloody things off, so I seriously doubt that that is going to be a widely-used option.

KER-CHING! CryptoWall ransomware scam rakes in $1 MEEELLION

Not worth the time.

$10,000 ??

I hope that person at least receives faxes now and then.

Telling me that my PDF Suite has been activated, or that I missed a fax, is like telling me that my lost dog has been found.

I don't have a dog.

Uber, Lyft and cutting corners: The true face of the Sharing Economy

Except that Uber drivers are not Licensed Minicabs either, if I read the article correctly.

Euro banks will rip out EVERYTHING and buy proper backend systems ... LOL, fooled ya

OK, can we cut it out with the cloudy bull already ?

A "private cloud" ? Is that all they could come up with ?

All Fortune 1000 companies already have private clouds - it's called internal servers, for fucks' sake. Somebody needs to stop smoking the carpet.

Any bank that puts banking data of any kind into the hands of any 3rd-party supplier, be it IBM, is a bank I will not have ANY dealings with.

You go on and put your private life, family pictures and whatever else you want on the cloud - your business, your decision, you deal with the consequences.

MY stuff stays as private as I can manage it, thank you.

Software bug caught Galileo sats in landslide, no escape from reality

I don't think that the problem is there

I think that whatever the cause between the two does not matter.

What does matter is that there was insufficient oversight to detect and correct the problem.

Okay, this is rocket science, but we're not talking about an exploded rocket, we're talking about a string of errors that are purely due to bureaucratic incompetence. That somebody made a mistake is understandable, that nobody caught the mistake and flagged it for correction is not. One does not just go and upload flight parameters for a multi-million-dollar satellite without double-checking, then triple-checking said parameters. And the checking is not supposed to be done by the same person !

Come on, ESA, you've done better than this already. Call SES if you need some pointers on how to manage a fleet of satellites - they've been doing it right for more than a decade now.

'Stop dissing Google or quit': OK, I quit, says Code Club co-founder

Britain has a glorious past, there is no doubt about that.

Unfortunately, it is all in the past.

And you can say that about quite a few countries, these days.

I am starting to wonder if our "modern" society is all that great. It seems to me that a model that cannot foster elements capable of sustaining the model is doomed to failure, and our current model has not produced anything near the enlightened, egalitarian world we were promised after WWII. Today, it's all about how soon I can get the next shiny, and if children are slaving away in poor countries to produce it well that's not my problem.

That's not my problem. It is that attitude that brought us here, and now we're all in trouble. And I think it's going to get worse before it gets better.

She was right

The Code Club homepage specifically states : "A nationwide network of volunteer-led after school coding clubs for children aged 9-11".

It is volunteer-led. You don't tell volunteers what to say or how to speak. If you don't agree with what they say, YOU leave.

So kudos to her.

In an ideal world, when such pressure was applied, the Board should have been united in simply ignoring this nonsense. This is obviously a case where the Board is comprised of less volunteers than besuited yes-men standing at attention when Number 10 makes a call.

Not a good point for the "Club".

Feds salute plucky human ROBOT-FIGHTERS

Re: "You can't cheat an honest man"

Being honest is not a scam-prevention shield.

Paranoia is better for that, paranoia and mistrust.

A truly honest man will lack the instinctive mistrust one must apply to all marketing spiel and will be at risk of naively thinking that said spiel-spinner is actually proposing a good deal.

Of course, being honest does not mean being a fool, but there are some pretty slick schemes out there and some you'll only catch on to when you've been hit by them, unless a friend warns you about it.

On the other hand, you can only fool an honest man once. Once the honest man has you pegged as a liar and a cheat, he won't listen to you any more.

TROLL SLAYER Google grabs $1.3 MEEELLION in patent counter-suit

Their website is just one image, no links, no text, no nothing.

Man, sometimes I regret the good old days when useless trash like that was kneecapped instead of collecting royalties.

Researchers camouflage haxxor traps with fake application traffic

Except that, in this case, the roaches can read up on the trap procedures, since the documentation is online.

Does that defeat the purpose ?

Microsoft boots 1,500 dodgy apps from the Windows Store

Look at the bright side

WinPhone users know that they are part of the 1% (of the market) !

And that backfired spectacularly.

Oz fed police in PDF redaction SNAFU

The only benefit of PDF is that it is not modifiable.

That is why it is so widely used.

Twitter gives ANALYTICS to the unwashed masses

Oh the Alpha cast is there.

Just not on Twitter.

Oz biz regulator discovers shared servers in EPIC FACEPALM

Ignorance of the Law is not an excuse

But government has a right to ignore anything and there's nothing you can do about it.

Major cyber attack hits Norwegian oil industry

This cannot continue

Infrastructure attacks on state resources cannot be tolerated, Internet or not.

It is interesting to witness the rise in frequency of this kind of thing. A DDOS on Twitter, or Netflick, annoying as it may be to the users of those services, is not a national security issue. An attack on critical infrastructure is, and governments have a tendency to not put up with that kind of nonsense.

I am almost hoping that this kind of attack will continue in order for critical infrastructure to get its ducks in a row and get the hell off the Internet. The Internet offers near-anonymity in this kind of attack, that anonymity disappears as soon as you have to dial a specific number to log on. Not to mention that DDOS is just not possible anymore, so that's two birds with one stone.

So go on being nuisances, you stupid script kiddies and botlords. In the end, you'll be doing us all a service by forcing our governments to make things more secure.

Boffins attempt to prove the universe is just a hologram

Re: probably already has

And it probably will again.

"the world we see around us [..] may be real"

It may be, but there sure are a truckload of delusional people in it.

HUGE iPAD? Maybe. HUGE ADVERTS? That's for SURE

"Now you can deliver highly engaging ads ..."

Ah, another adberg on the horizon. Thank you for the warning.

I will steer well clear of this iThingy.

Finally, a practical use for 3D printing: Helping surgeons rehearse

From what I gathered in the article, this 3D thing is being used to print the bones that are to be worked on.

I don't think that bone structure changes all that much in a week.

Google kicks PowerPoint in the fondleslab

"You’re on the subway with no reception "

If that is the case then I fail to see where Google is going to help.

Unless, of course, you answer that you can make the modification locally and it will be automatically synchronized as soon as you get a connection again.

In which case I know several other products that can bring me to the same result without giving all my data to The Google.

Six of the best gaming keyboard and mouse combos

Functionality remains poor

This article just reminds me how lacking we are in choices for gaming goodness.

Okay, so this was an article about keyboards and rodents, fine. Nonetheless, the functionality we are given to choose from is still the same : one peripheral to manage aiming (the mouse), and one to manage everything else (movement, weapon choices, spell/techniques/etc).

Fine, I agree, we only have two hands. This is where I long for an updated version of the Microsoft Strategic Commander (review still online here). To those of you who ask what this can be used for, I have one example to give you : any FPS shooter.

What is the major complaint for all FPS gamers ? After an hour of gaming, the middle finger (used for pressing the Q to advance) is simply begging to stop. Of course, since all FPS shooters today punish the camper, everybody is used to moving all the time, so pressing Q to advance is a continuous job. In addition, doing anything else practically requires you to stop advancing because you lift your finger off Q in order to mash something else - even if you use another finger to do it.

Replace all this button mashing with the Strategic Commander and you can play four hours straight without killing your fingers anymore. When basic movement is mapped to a mouse-like support, you're just pushing the movable part of the Commander forward to move instead of mashing down on a key - and that is much less effort. Plus, the programmable keys allow you to keep moving while you use the corresponding functions - thus diminishing the window of opportunity that enemies use so readily.

Obviously, I'm not saying that it turns you into a gaming god - but it lets you play longer and more relaxed, and that has to count.

I can't believe that such a positive peripheral has been so unnoticed by the gaming community.

I'm going to buy a new one soon - there's a key on mine that got a bit iffy around mid-2013.

Yes, I bought it in 2001.

THAT's quality.