Posts by Pascal Monett

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.

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

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".

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.

Three quarters of South Korea popped in online gaming raids

Re: why login with their Facebook account

Seems quite understandable to me. Each web site requires identifier and password. Security bods all over are always harping on about having a different password for everything.

But people are bad at making up passwords, and worse at remembering them.

So Facebook (Google is too) are offering this as a service - log on with them and you don't need to remember any other password.

Except that then it opens you to the single point of failure problem, so it is not actually a solution.

New Snowden leak: How NSA shared 850-billion-plus metadata records

Moment of nostalgia

Remember the Hunt for Red October ?

Specifically, the part where Ramius (Connery) is discussing their future plans with his second-in-command, who, at one point, asks "You can travel from one state to another, freely ?" and Ramius answers "Yes, state to state".

My memory is not perfect on that exchange, but the gist is that the US was once a country where the government was not concerned where its citizens were at any given time, whereas Soviet Russia was controlling anyone who wanted to travel outside of their current state. The exchange was a reminder of the level of control Soviet Russia exerted on its citizens, the amount of freedom its citizens did not have.

And now, welcome to USA 2.0 (*) - where the NSA controls not only your whereabouts 24/7, but also who you talk to, when you do it and for how long.

(*) - package available for export on request, no hurry, plenty of models available for all budgets - get a tailor-made version for your country now !

Harvard boffins 'reverse-engineer' Chinese censorship

Logical

In order to best guarantee state control, keeping the masses from massing is a requirement.

Therefor, any sign that people are grouping together is an alert condition. Under no condition must people do anything together, or they will understand that they have strength like that.

The People must not be allowed to understand their strength in order for the State to be in proper control.

Judge nixes HP deal for director amnesty after $8.8bn Autonomy snafu

Another useless exercise

Initially I was rather encouraged by the fact that HP is not going to be able to make a backroom deal and quietly bury as much of this mess it can. I like the thought that things will be said in court, publicly, instead of being hushed up.

But then it hit me and I realized that it won't make a shred of difference anyway. As has been said in this very thread, Meg has already botched a billion dollar acquisition, now she's responsible for two of them. Once upon a time, failing anything with a billion dollar price tag on it was followed by bowing out and leaving the job to someone else. Nowadays, the high-flyers make colossal mistakes and are faced with barely a threat, while they throw out the small fry in droves as soon as someone forgot the correct amount of postage, or something else equally trivial.

And it's not just HP, it's the entire corporate culture of today. Ballmer lead by example here. During his tenure there were many failures, some quite expensive, yet he kept the helm and bowed out only when he decided to. In other times, recognizing Microsoft's failure to comprehend the importance of the Internet would already have been his ticket out. Of course, it's a bit more difficult to oust a major shareholder, I recognize that, but that's the whole point. If Ballmer stayed so long despite an ever-increasing string of (expensive) failures, it is precisely because he was a major shareholder.

Meg is not. So why is she still in place ? How is it that she was allowed to throw almost 9 billion away ? Where is her acknowledgement of responsibility ?

The higher the pay, the more exacting the requirement of performance. That is how it should be. When you're being paid a million dollars a month, the result should be no less than perfection.

It clearly has not been.

6 Obvious Reasons Why Facebook Will Ban This Article (Thank God)

Stop spying on my life !

Except for the remark on women, I agree with the rest of your post.

I understand where you're coming from, though.

The police are WRONG: Watching YouTube videos is NOT illegal

I fully agree with your position on this matter.

Unfortunately, I am aware that there are people who revel in this kind of stuff. There is also the political aspect of this video that must be taken into account : it is in the interest of the terrorists to bring our attention to this act and make us petition our government to (hopefully) cave to the terrorist demands in order to make it stop.

Re: guilty till proved innocent

Yeah, they still bother with that "proven innocent" part for the moment.

Soon, they'll just be guilty.

Re: What about staging a similar scene in a film?

Yes, what about SAW ?

I hate the premise and despise the series, but it has been rather successful.

Your move, sucker! Microsoft tests cloud gaming system that cuts through network lag

Do they also predict the headshot ?

250ms of movement in advance, cool.

What happens to the inevitable aimbot-generated headshot ? Will it still hit, or will it finally start missing ?

Sony DENIES PlayStation Network WOBBLES despite gamer GRIPES

Re: "Maybe PS will realize money isn't the only thing."

But they know that. There's also CONTROL, and they want BOTH.

Wall Street's internet darlings require an endless supply of idiots

Re: Do I get paid for washing the dishes at home?

Yes you do. You get the payoff of clean dishes to eat in. If you don't wash them, you get the payoff of not doing the work (of course, you still have dirty dishes).

Your example would have been better if you talked about washing your neighbour's dishes.

I’ve never paid for it in my life... we are talking Wi-Fi, right?

Not his fault you chose a bad provider.

Galileo, Galileo! Galileo, Galileo! Galileo fit to go. Magnifico

I respectfully disagree

There are now two GPS providers to choose from, the US one and Galileo.

Saying Galileo GPS is thus specifying which one you're talking about, which can be useful if you need to be precise. We're going to have to find a name for the US one.

Forrester says it's time to give up on physical storage arrays

Sure, these days it's sexy to go to the cloud, we got the memo.

When enough companies have been burnt by connections failing at the worst possible moment, or providers on the fritz for days on end, or simply disappearing from one day to the next, you'll see a move backwards and enterprise storage on premise will have a resurgence.

Nothing new under the sun. We started IT with mainframes and dumb terminals, then we got PCs and distributed computing, then we returned to central servers (but not mainframes). Now, the Internet is driving us back to dumb terminals, and the cloud will supplement that with virtual storage.

Looks like we're going back to mainframe days, but these days it's called cloud.

Someday, we'll backpedal on that too. It's inevitable.

Re: The new physics

The Internet is reliable.

It's the connection to it that is not, either on your side, or on the side of your service provider (not your ISP, I mean the server providing the service you want to use).

Pedals and wheel in that Google robo-car or it's off the road – Cali DMV

Re: "the technology is viable"

Of course it is viable. We will have driverless cars in the future, I have no doubt of that.

Some people here are comparing this technology with their own experience in IT. I'll wager that none of those people have had a hand in aircraft AI development. As I work in IT, I can understand that, generally speaking, nobody wants the average programmer to get anywhere near an application that is supposed to handle controlling a vehicle that contains people, or goes near people. Given the generally poor level of exception handling and the very limited foresight of most programs, it would indeed be suicide to leave such a task to the average developer.

I am confident that the automotive industry has an enormous amount of data and experience in car behaviour, and I am convinced that Google is not learning everything from scratch. Google must have experienced automotive consultants on this project, and I am certain that Google has a comprehensive list of use cases to test with its autoAI.

Not that I think that Google is a saintly organisation that is doing all this out of the pureness of its heart. We all know now that Google is an advocate of DRM, on top of being the most common spook in our lives. No, if I think that Google is doing its best to make a truly safe, automated car, it is because it would be commercial suicide if it put a half-assed solution on the road that started running over kids.

Not even the fortune of a Brin would avoid prison for that. It would be the ruin of several very wealthy billionaires, and I don't think they would like the idea of being ruined and in jail.

I look forward to a future where Google knows where everyone goes before they get there, in order to better target the relevant ads to us - because it's "what the customer wants" (the customer, in this case, being the companies that want eyeballs on their ads, of course).

Brainboxes caught opening Bitcoin fraud emails. Seriously, guys?

Usual precaution applies

Never assume intelligence on the Internet.

It may happen now and then, but it is not the norm.

BAT-GOBBLING urban SPIDER QUEENS swell to ENORMOUS SIZE

"had bigger ovaries than relatives in the bush"

I do NOT want to know how she found that out.

True fact: 1 in 4 Brits are now TERRORISTS

Christianity has grown up ?

Really ?

With all the raving lunatics approving Dubya's wars from pulpits, it has grown up ?

With the nutjobs trying to push creationism (no, I will not honor that name with a capital C) in school, it is growing up ?

All the stupid fools regularly parading with signs that start with "God Hates <insert pet hate here>" prove that Christianity has grown up ?

No, Christianity has not grown up. Quite a lot of Christians have, thankfully, but Christianity itself is still in the Middle Ages.

@Mr Williams

Pleas do not confound media entertainment or historical documents with the horrific act of a subhuman madman.

Wartime footage was made by journalists to show what was going on. The fact that it was war and horrible (or extremely boring, depending on what part is shown) does not detract from the fact that it was reality - that is what they were there to report.

Wartime footage is what proved to the world the Auschwitz massacres and put Nazi genocide into the spotlight. Without that proof, Holocaust deniers would have easy times denying things or calling on conspiracies (not that they don't try, they're just not credible).

Media entertainment, be it films or games, is tailor-made to pull a string, nothing more. Nobody is harmed, it's all magic (pixel or silver, doesn't matter). You don't like it, you don't watch (or play), simple as that.

A beheading cannot be reduced to a simple distasteful act. Somebody lost their life because an asshole decided he had the right to make that decision on his own, for spurious reasons.

Comparing that act to games or films cheapens the victim's life, and that is a shame. Comparing that to wartime films elevates that asshole's act to the same level as wartime journalism, which is totally, undeniably unjustified.

Claim: Microsoft Alt-F4'd Chilean government open-source install bid

"like any business, it is entitled to lobby in a democracy"

The problem is not who is lobbying, the problem is the politicians who bend their positions to whoever is offering the most advantages.

In this case it is a bit difficult to side with anybody. On the one hand, a politician with a just cause is miffed because an apparently good idea got left on the floor. On the other hand, the politician lost support. Microsoft is being blamed, and it is a lot of fun to point fingers at any big corporation, but we're being told that Microsoft didn't do anything bad, it just lobbied.

Objectively, it is not Microsoft that is at fault here, it is the politicians that withdrew their support. The people who had initially announced support for the idea of sparing government money by going for Open Source, who recanted and decided that throwing money at Microsoft is a good idea.

There is alcohol in every supermarket. The temptation is there. The fact that I do not take a bottle is my choice, not the bottle's. So Microsoft lobbied ? The coat-turners didn't have to take the bait.

In the end, it's all just another round of politics. I hate saying it, but maybe there is an acceptable reason to stay with Microsoft products for them, for the time being.

In the long term, though, Open Source will be the norm. It is inevitable.

Don't even THINK about copyright violation, says Indian state

Hang on, isn't there a contradiction there ?

"no bail under the “Goondas Act”, and that the national Copyright Act only allows someone to be jailed after conviction"

So they are jailed for intent to breach the Copyright Act - which they have not yet done - and get no bail, but are still jailed before being convicted. Does India have an equivalent to the Supreme Court ? Because it sure seems somebody needs to throw a monkey wrench in there.

Carbon tetrachloride releases still too high, says NASA

Interesting post.

I was going to blame the cows, but blaming clean people is a novel approach.

Memory troubling you, Android? Surprise! Another data slurp vuln uncovered

Re "should only be granted sparingly to apps you really trust"

Agreed.

Unfortunately, these bloody "smartphones" are not asking me what I trust.

Your Bitcoins aren't money – but it is barter, so we'll tax it, ta ... says Australia's taxman

Re: great news for the exchanges that got knocked off

MtGox is not exactly a stellar example of management in any way. It is actually a perfect example of how not to do things. If I remember correctly, it was even said that its code was based on an obsolete version that had not been patched, or something.

In other words, MtGox was an amateur operation half-heartedly maintained by people who didn't know what they were doing.

A proper exchange will most likely know where its virtcoins are, and who they belong to.

Especially if the taxman starts poking his nose in there. You can bet the trace will become a LOT more precise in that case.

Cyber spies whip out 'Machete', stride towards Latin America

Re: "What kind of idiot downloads and opens a file purporting to contain porn "

The kind who still doesn't know about youporn and can't remember what Google is.

I am not astonished about this, there are whole swaths of the world population that have yet to grasp that perfect strangers do not write each other without a frame of reference. I can very well write to a blogger I have never written to before, but if I do so I will introduce myself, include the fact that I am writing in response to something on his blog, and get on with my mail. If I write to an El Reg editor, I will refer to the fact that I am registered here since quite a while ago. Never, ever will I include an attachment in a first-contact mail.

There are visibly loads of people whose mind is a blank slate when it comes to the Internet. They act as if everyone is their friend and nobody can wish them any harm. Wonderful human nature, in a way, but they really need to realize that the Internet is a vast dark alley with infinite branches and you can get mugged at every step.

That is how you must treat the Internet if you wish to be able to actually appreciate it.

Go on, inhale our G-Cloud via 'Digital Marketplace' – UK.gov

Whoa there, just a minute

"Digital marketplace is reaching a stage which allows us to consider making it the route for G-Cloud purchases,"

It may be true that the digital marketplace is ready, but I seriously doubt the government is. You need to hold your horses while you still have some left (what with all the ones that have already bolted long ago) and give more thought to the whole scheme.

And I don't care how much thought has been given, since past projects clearly demonstrate that enough thought has never been given to any government project.

So get back to the drawing board and make sure that all contingencies have been planned for. Then plan for the ones that haven't, for a change.

TELEPORTABLE storage? Atlantis Computing's PR bods jump the shark

Teleportable storage ?

Well, if it's Atlantean technology . . .

Okay, okay, no pushing !

Roll up for El Reg's 3G/4G MONOPOLY DATA PUB CRAWL

That's one hell of a project

Congratulations on taking on such a monumental task, and on keeping the necessary focus to bring it to completion.

It is controls like this that keep the networks in line, although it doesn't seem - for the moment at least - that the networks are not performing adequately.

May this initiative spawn many siblings !

Boffins propose security shim for Android

"ASM would let users restrict the app"

Ah, a dream just might come true.

One question though : will the user be able to restrict ALL apps, or just the ones Google lets him ?

Need a green traffic light all the way home? Easy with insecure street signals, say researchers

Just a check

Reading that PDF is not going to make me a terrorist, is it ?

Felony charges? Harsh! Alleged Anon hackers plead guilty to misdemeanours

" authorities point to the costs to businesses in damages "

In a country being run by businesses, it is no surprise that offending them brings the heaviest charges on your head.

Can it be true? A BIG DATA benchmark? Yes, says TPC

More fun in benchmark land

This is going to be subverted six ways to Sunday. It will be impossible to get reliable data because every vendor is going to criticize the other vendors' results with endless discussions on how a given parameter skews the results and should have been set to something else, with the other vendor replying in length about how that change would only skew in some way favourable to the first vendor, etc. etc.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong and the benchmark results will be taken as canon by everyone, but given the historical battles we have already witnessed in the business arena as well as in the graphics arena, I doubt it.

The agony and ecstasy of SteamOS: WHERE ARE MY GAMES?

Pff, silly me. A Terabit partition, obviously.