Posts by Pascal Monett

Can't wait to bonk with Apple? Then try an Android phone

Re: it's up to you

Theoretically yes. In practice, well it gets a bit more difficult.

Yes, it's up to you to ensure that the number on the register is the one you're expecting. That said, a confirmation on the screen of your phone is entirely reasonable and justified.

Especially since this whole thing is going to run on code that you will never, ever see, much less be authorized to debug.

But hey, I'm never going to bonk with a phone, so I'll leave you to find out what happens when things go wrong.

Hadoop ODP: No thanks says MapR, and Cloudera isn't impressed either

Re: I wonder why it took the CEO of MapR several months to respond to ODP

Maybe it is because he took his time reviewing the situation and making sure his opinion was founded ?

Hopefully, that's the reason.

Disk drive shipment numbers set to spin down

Outrageous prices ? Really ?

Let me see :

1996 : 2.1GB for €285.70, €136/GB

1997 : 4.3GB for €468.52, €108.96/GB

1998 : 2GB for €190.63, €95/GB

1999 : 13GB for €248.65, €19/GB

2001 : 30GB for €396.38, €13.2/GB

2001 : 40GB for €272.43, €6.8/GB

2002 : 80GB for €400, €5/GB

2002 : 120GB for €254, €2.11/GB

2003 : 80GB for €145, €1.8/GB

2004 : 200GB for €169, €0.85/GB

2005 : 200GB for €120, €0.60/GB

2007 : 320GB for €89, €0.28/GB

2010 : 1000GB for €89, €0.09/GB

2013 : 2000GB for €179.85, €0.09/GB

2014 : 3000GB for €111.95, €0.04/GB

Yeah, fucking outrageous.

(prices based on my personal experience - I still have the tickets)

Licence to chill: Ex-CIA spyboss Petraeus gets probation for leaking US secrets to his mistress

Yes [Prime] Minister nailed it

That is because Yes Minister was not a comedy show, it is a documentary.

There is no part of politics that this series left untouched, and every single thing they said in it is valid for all time until the end of the Universe, because the people who made that series touched on the fundamental behavior of the human soul which will never change.

God Bless them.

Now I've got to go and watch it again.

Citrix decides to share its WAN optimisation with the world

Citrix's schtick is that [they say] they can get away with DSL or even 4G connections

And then they sell you a solution that acts like it was on a 56kbps line.

Windows 10 Device Guard: Microsoft's effort to keep malware off PCs

Where did I say that the demise of Windows was imminent ?

What I said is that the demise of Windows is now inevitable.

But the coffers of Microsoft are such that said demise is going to take a bloody long time.

Even though some might say that it has started.

"If that enterprise wants to sign bad stuff, they are entitled to do that"

So, just another layer of buggy crap wrapped around a bad idea that will change next to nothing for the user, unless it is the need for a more powerful CPU and yet more RAM because of the resource hog that this thing is going to be.

And when that solution has been proven to be useless and just as subvertible as anything else MS has tried, what next ? ANOTHER layer of software firewalled by hardware to ensure that the previous one is not bugged ?

Windows will not die because some other OS takes its market share by storm, it's going to die fibrillating in the throes of its own morass, and other OSes will just have to fill the void.

Ransomware crims drop Bitcoin faster than Google axes services

Nice to know

And I completely agree with the practice. Just out of curiosity, what tape drive do you use on your personal PC at home ? Oh, none ? What I thought.

Your data backup solution is perfect for the business area, I've seen it used (and have been part of the support personnel for it) many times.

Now tell me how many home users you know make backups. Personally, I put that tally at 3 : myself and my two best friends. We are all computer-savvy, and two of us work in the IT industry. Even though, nobody I know uses tape. Optical backups are the norm in the home user area. Some mistaken souls use hard disks, they will find the error of their ways the hard way.

I doubt very much that the ransomware business targets mostly businesses. The home user is the biggest market, and one that is easiest to infiltrate because by definition home users are not computer-savvy and, generally, only become aware of the risk once they have been bitten.

LA schools want multi-million Apple refund after kids hack iPads

"there have been challenges"

Yup.

Challenge #1: imagining that school children would play nice. Result ? FAIL.

Challenge #2: thinking that your code was resistant enough to keep children in the straight and narrow. Result ? FAIL.

Challenge #3: persuading people that not being able to use the core component of the tool (accessing educational content) is just a challenge. Result ? ABJECT FAIL.

Challenge #4: Persuading the police that you had no idea that your insufficiently tested platform was going to be such a clusterfuck. Result ? PENDING.

And, as for standing by your performance, I sure hope you will be made to. All the way to prison.

DTS announces DTS:X – sparks object-based audio war with Dolby

Re: Harry could be talking in English, but Hermione in Swedish

Yes, technically it probably could.

Unfortunately, copyright laws and their assorted wolfish lawyers will dumb down the tech and you'll never be able to actually use DTS:X to its full potential.

Not unless you unlock those abilities with a patch, obviously, but then you become a filthy pirate for wanting to actually use your material the way you intend to.

WORLD+DOG line up to SLAM Google after anti-trust case unveiled

Nobody forces you

It's just that almost 3 people out of 4 do.

And the biggest alternative to Google is currently Baidu, capturing the Chinese market. You do your searches in Chinese ? Don't think so.

So you're down to the 2nd-biggest alternative, Yahoo!, with just over 6% of market share. That's 1 person out of 20. Bing is 1 point less. What is left, your ad infinitum if you prefer, is 1% all wet. So that means that 1 out of 10 non-Chinese people do not use Google.

Which, conversely, means that 9 out of 10 non-Chinese people use Google. And Chinese people use Baidu.

Google has a monopoly on search results. Baidu has a monopoly on Chinese search results.

Nobody else counts.

Boost your attachment size with this one weird trick

Re: Not everyone is connected to the local network

I said "a network location".

Nothing there means "local network", but I rather like that you took that as a given.

No, never increase attachment size limits

Make it zero. Please kill that despicable tendency everyone has to mail files around.

Business knowledge is lost in email. It must be properly filed on a network location, and email only serving links to the latest version.

All this attachment emailing is the best way to lose information or lose time finding it. Stop it.

Hybrid IT? Not a long-term thing, says AWS CTO

the consequences [of a] global outage [...] become correspondingly more severe

Once there was the Mainframe, and all cables led to it. The Mainframe never slept, never stopped, always answered. Except when it didn't.

Then there was the PC, and Mankind learned that distributed computing could be a Good Thing (TM).

Now there is The Cloud (TM), and all cables eventually lead to it, except when a backhoe breaks the link, a hacker gets to the DNS, a DDOS prevents access, or some internal update procedure is screwed up (eh, Microsoft ?).

Funny how we insist on inserting single points of failure in business-critical procedures.

Sort of, yeah.

Except for the fact that no US company can guarantee security from a National Security letter.

Or even a US judge, for that matter.

But I'm sure that's not important, eh ?

IBM’s 700TB security threat database enters the cloud. Look to the heavens, hackers

Um, wait a minute

"images and details of more than a million IP addresses linked to hacking"

Okay, I want to put the scum down as much as anyone else, but isn't there a conflict with personal data there ? Do they have the right to go and publish such data just like that ?

I mean, somebody might learn that his neighbor's address is in there and go all rambo on him or something, then the ensuing investigation reveals that it was a mistake, but too late for the innocent neighbor.

Exaggerating, of course, but still . . . is publishing data like that allowed ?

Exchange Server 2016 will be mostly Cloud Exchange ported back on-premises

That is reassuring. Thank you for the response.

So, like console ports, Microsoft is developing for "the cloud" first, then every now and then porting some of that to the "non-cloud", with all the uncertainties that such a move entails.

Did I get that right ?

Exchange 2016 is going to be in the cloud, but you can pretend you have it on-premise even though there will be a part in the cloud. Is that right ?

Well if it is, we're going to see just exactly how important all that privacy stuff actually is, because if it is important, companies will be avoiding that version like the plague.

NASA probe sent to faraway planet finds DWARF world instead: Pics

Yup

Science is marvelous, when properly employed, ain't it ?

Nvidia's GTX 900 cards lock out open-source Linux devs yet again

A solution for the wrong problem

"to prevent grey market dealers from flashing modified firmware onto cheap graphics cards with low-end GPUs, then passing them off as the high-end versions"

A card sold as a high-end version that barely breaks 60fps will be decried and slaughtered on the Internet in no time. That is not a proper justification for NVidia to put a chastity belt on its software.

The bitter truth is that the Linux community is still just a bump on the gaming road. As long as that is the case, Nvidia will be able to ignore them and run them over ruthlessly without impacting their bottom line.

When the Steam OS comes of age, when Microsoft will be just a souvenir in the minds of gamers, then Nvidia will be singing another tune entirely. Not before.

2550100 ... An Illuminati codeword or name of new alliance demanding faster Ethernet faster?

Yeah, but that was back in the day when nobody was using Internet.

These days, everybody wants to stream, chat and Facebook all at the same time. These days we have HD TV over Internet, which needs at least a 10MB line to be barely watchable.

Bandwidth is in short supply, everybody wants more. No executive that can lounge around a pool is going to risk his bonus restricting that.

Not any more.

WHAT did GOOGLE do SO WRONG to get a slapping from the EU?

Poseurs will pose.

Nuclear fusion simulator among boffinry tools picked for monster Summit supercomputer

"Models seismic wave propagation through"

Um, through what exactly ?

And, pray tell, but what source other than thermonuclear power drives supernovae ?

Come now, you didn't really think that you could slip that by unnoticed on this site, now did you ?

There's TOO MANY data-leaking healthcare firms, growls Symantec

Almost lookes like hospital staff do not know IT

And, on the face of it, I think I rather prefer it that way.

Okay, sure, patient data should be safeguarded and all that, I agree. But you can't really blame the staff for taking more care of patients than of their computers.

Yes, the situation has to change. I'm sure the orderly who is on his second 24-hour shift in a row would agree. I'm also sure that hospital management could do a lot better.

But let's face it, a hospital is a leaky dam at best, and everybody is running around trying to plug all the holes at once most of the time.

I'm not surprised that IT issues find themselves at the bottom of the stack.

However, people who integrate hospitals to abuse the system and sell off patient data should be jailed.

For a long time.

Google’s plan for WORLD DOMINATION takes shape. And it begins with a patent

That is true today, but what about tomorrow ?

Android lands on Microsoft's money-machine island fortress

Uh, we're talking ATM's here, not PCs.

The software better fucking be able to use the hardware, else there's a lawsuit for unfit-for-purpose in the wings that's just begging to fly.

AC is just trolling, ignore him.

COME BACK – I never said we were quitting public cloud, says HP bigwig Bill Hilf

It's HP

Who cares what their strategy is ?

They're dying anyway.

EU says dominant Google illegally alters search results

People can use other search engines

That's Google's response. And it is true, people can use other search engines.

The fact is, most of them don't.

So just because there are other search engines does not excuse Google from a bit of fairness in the market.

On the other hand, I'd be interested in learning how exactly a search result can favor Google (or not). Google has its paid adverts on the top, which I accept because it is their site and they can do as they wish, but I always skip those. The normal results are never sites belonging to Google anyway, so how can Google be "favored" by a particular result ?

Dwarf planet Ceres has TEN bright spots, astroboffins say

Which means it had to happen !

It's 2015 and a RICH TEXT FILE or a HTTP request can own your Windows machine

LibreOffice does everything I need it to, and it's free.

Incomprehensible boffins bring quantum computers a step closer

We are now one step closer

to the positronic brain.

But really, influencing atoms with local electric charges, turning the knob by modulating the voltage, this all sounds more Star Trekky than Star Trek itself.

I just hope nobody's going to reverse the polarity....

Verizon to world: STOP opening dodgy phishing emails, FOOLS

One thing is very interesting

"Around one in four (23 per cent) of recipients opened phishing messages, while more than one in 10 (11 per cent) of recipients clicked on attachments. Half (50 per cent) of successful phishing attacks involved emails that were opened in the first hour after their receipt."

With all this email activity in the corporate sector, you'd think Microsoft would include a security feature in Outlook/Exchange. Maybe something like Open Untrusted Email which would sandbox the thing internally until the user decides to trust it. Or maybe establish a list of trusted contacts and any email from anyone else would be automatically treated by Outlook as potentially having a virus, instead of just going and executing every single bit of code that anyone sends anybody else.

And please, please, could we have an automatic detection of when the sender and the Reply To names/domains are different and instantly class that as Criminally Suspect ? With a popup when clicking on such a message that reads something like "The address of the sender and that of the reply to are not the same. This is generally a sign that the message is spam or may originate from a criminal source. Are you sure you want to open this mail ?"

Microsoft ? Is that too much to ask ?

Cloud DNS, VPN, HTTPS load balancing ... Google looks at rivals, thinks: Yeah, we'll do all that

Google now has more than 70 points of presence across 33 countries

Google. Tightening the total surveillance noose one ad at a time.

Facebook does fling COOKIES around, but privacy is assured

"privacy is assured", with Facebook ?

Excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor.

The day I trust anything Facebook says is the day I need to be put in a straightjacket.

+5 ROOTKIT OF VENGEANCE defeats forces of gaming good

What a lot of effort for what is supposed to just be amusement.

RELICS of the Earth's long lost TWIN planet FOUND ON MOON

Re: Front row seat

I propose a scale for such things. Planetary collisions should be 1 Michael Bay.

Meteors are thus only a milli-Bay.

A large asteroid could be a centi-Bay.

Not Earth's twin

If the Moon was Earth's twin formed by accretion, you would expect the Moon to be made of pretty much the same stuff as Earth and in the same ratios.

That is not the case. The Moon's composition has different proportions of nickel, iron and other significant things, ergo it cannot be our twin.

Game changing ?

As far as planetary physics are concerned, I think we have passed the point where anything game-changing can occur.

Like you, I was living under the impression that the sister planet theory was pretty much the most valid theory for a while now. This paper is just another proof that that is the case.

Good to have, and good to know, but indeed, not anywhere near game-changing.

Microsoft uses Windows Update to force Windows 10 ads onto older PCs

Nonsense. People who know better already have no goodwill left for Microsoft, they just realize that they have to suffer it because workplace. Or gamer.

Beyond that, people who know better and can do without it are either on Apple or some version of Linux.

Re: Confused author

You should go back and read the other half of the article.

Specifically the part where it says that most users never look at the Windows Update screen, much less check stuff out. Some even have everything installing automatically.

How's that for English ?

Bad news everyone: Cybercrime is getting even easier

Re: "it should not be possible for data to subvert the application"

Friggin' A for that !

But that is the marvel of modern tech : there's always someone to find a way to do something you hadn't even thought was related to the code you wrote.

ALIENS ARE COMING: Chief NASA boffin in shock warning

Not digits.

Suction cups.

The Internet of Stuff is a gigantic ultra-perv robbery network – study

Re: My fridge

During your ride home, you get an angry call from the girl you just dumped who is furious about the chocolates she just received and assures you in no uncertain terms that there isn't a snowball's chance in Hell that you'll get her back.

After that call, you get a notification from your landlord about a problem in your kitchen that made him call for security and a repairman. The smart cat feeder had a blockage which caused a freak current feedback that sparked your smart coffee maker which just happened to overload and cause a loopback to your smart cupboard which went haywire and filled its order queue for cat food, billing it automatically to your account. You now have a year's worth of cat food to be delivered tomorrow, order non-rescindable due to contract clause about encryption keys and digital signatures perfectly in order. You also have a $7500 bill for the repairs, payable by next Monday.

Also, there is cat food all over the kitchen floor.

You get home to find a patrol car waiting for you. The investigation will demonstrate that it is the electrical surcharge from your smart coffee maker and the subsequent order activity from your smart cupboard that triggered an obscure unpatched bug in your social profile's agenda organizer which caused an inordinate amount of meeting emails to be resent with today's date. In all, seven of your previous girlfriends, and some of your mates, have received invitations and messages from your stored message archive - some of which have salacious content that was, at the time, perfectly understood. Five of your exes have filed a complaint for harassment and are pressing charges.

The policeman tiredly listens to your explanations for a minute, then cuts it short with a curt "You'll tell us that at the station, sir" before moving you to the rear of the patrol car.

Finally, you realize that the cat will gorge itself during the night, meaning that when you get back there will not only be the remaining cat food to clean up, but probably also an unknown amount of cat vomit and maybe worse.

IoT - what's not to like?

It's all got complicated: The costs of data recovery

I would agree with you but for one thing : if management has no clue, then the "solution" employed doesn't matter ; whatever it is, it'll get screwed up.

So forget the clueless management, they're doomed anyway. We're talking about backup solutions that work, which implies management know how it works and, more importantly, why.

And for those cases, cloud simply does not cut it.

However, I fully expect future disasters to be laid squarely at the feet of incompetent management, so saving the bacon of cloud providers despite the fact that they cannot possibly deliver on the bandwidth and availability they promise because they do not control what happens between their cloudy servers and the client's door.

Boffins: Large Hadron Collider NOW movin', we're getting down and crush groovin'

Oh no, not more sushi !

Are you sure there are servers in this cold, dark basement?

He's obviously fizzy, though.

Microsoft drops Do Not Track default from Internet Explorer

Re: Yahoo sez:

As far as I'm concerned, one size does fit all. Privacy IS, or IS NOT.

But I'm not expecting a marketing department to understand that.

Tsk, tsk

Typical confusion there. You think the "users" are the people.

That definition is now obsolete and has been superseded by "the entities who give us money", i.e. the advertisers.

The people are no longer users, they are targets to be hunted down as efficiently as possible for the good of the users (i.e. their bank account).

Please update your dictionary accordingly.

Streaming tears of laughter as Jay-Z (Tidal) waves goodbye to $56m

Re: they may get the "idiot market" too

Now you know why they are rich.

The idiot market is by far the biggest one.