Posts by Pascal Monett

NSA's Christmas Eve confession: We unlawfully spied on you for 12 years, soz

Re: I'm not believing this...

Count my gast as flabbered as well. I always thought that, in such organizations, every file access was logged, every action taken by anyone was controlled and logged, and everything had to be done by the book or you had the book thrown at you.

The reality is that the NSA appears to be a vast group of buddies all aware of what they shouldn't do but without any active measures preventing malfeasance. The employees have their access to something terminated only when somebody finds out that they've been using something they shouldn't have.

Sorry ? If they shouldn't be using something they why the bloody hell can they access it in the first place ? I seem to remember, in the many Clancy novels (and others) that I've read, that the CIA had security so tight that if the Director himself made a mistake entering his password, security agents would come barging in, guns drawn, to make sure things were all right. Accessing the wrong file would not get you terminated, it would get you a personal session with the interrogation chair - then you'd be terminated.

I can see where I was wrong. I thought I was reading fantasy stories based on realistic people and organizations. I see now that I was reading fantasy stories based on realistic people and fantasy organizations.

No wonder the US military is easy to hack. If the CIA/NSA/Homeland Security use the best people and can't set up proper internal security worth beans, then obviously the military won't be able to.

We can change a bit from 0 to 1 WITHOUT CURRENT, say boffins

Got to say that I unfortunately agree.

20 years from now we'll be seeing zilch based on this tech. Maybe, some time in the next 50 years, we'll hear of some new tech "soon to be put into production" that will base itself on some variant of this discovery, but it's in the lab right now and there's no guarantee that it'll ever be getting out in any form we can easily associate with this tech in its current form.

There are literally hundreds of stumbling blocks before this gets into a finished product, the least of them being strictly technical in nature. There will be power plays, there will be infighting, influence wars and outright patent buying with the risk that the buyer has no intent of actually producing because it harms an existing production line.

So, yeah, this sounds interesting, but there's a whole forest of knives to walk barefoot through before ever seeing a price tag on something using it.

Ireland: Hey, you. America. Hands off Microsoft's email cloud servers

Re: Get a grip

Yeah, do that. You haven't been paying attention this year, have you ?

The NSA officially has jurisdiction over the whole world now, from Washington's point of view at least (other countries tend to disagree, but the White House doesn't even pretend to give a flying one over that anymore).

It's only inside the USA that the NSA officially still needs a warrant, but the NSA does whatever it wants anyway since there is no serious oversight of its activity.

Sony releases Nork flick The Interview straight to DVD (digital video download)

Re: "you can't avoid them [..] on DVD(isk) either"

I suggest you invest in a better DVD player that lets you skip whatever you want.

Or, buy the film, then torrent the ad-free version.

If you have bought the film, it's not piracy.

Judge kills Facebook's bid to dismiss private message sniffing case

"it's a chat system within an ad-funded social network site"

No, it's an advertisement tool using sheeple as fodder to make its money.

MY expectations are set clearly. Unfortunately, way too many people are not conscious of this sorry state of affairs, and one can only hope that this lawsuit will bring enlightenment to some of them.

And I still find totally immoral that a company can, as you say, clearly state its nefarious, privacy-invading procedures and yet still be allowed to function. But hey, it's making money, so . . .

Yes ! Have them dragged over the coals, please !

I don't care that Facebook notified people in the T&Cs - private email is not to be trawled through by administrative decision, period.

It is high time major websites - especially the so-called "social" ones, stop thinking that they have the right to do whatever they want as long as its mentioned in some mind-numbing paragraph on an ever-changing document that nobody with a sane mind reads.

Reg man confesses: I took my wife out to choose a laptop for Xmas. NOOOO

Point taken.

I wonder how to reconcile both sentences.

Nobody said it installed on its own. The sentence used was "her agreeing to the Yosemite upgrade nags".

Frustration with Elite:Dangerous boils over into 'Refund Quest'

Conclusions of all this mess

1) A promise made is a promise to be kept

2) A promise made on Kickstarter is not an exception

3) The Eliter-Than-Thou don't care that you care about a promise (and that's not just the developers of the game)

4) OoLite keeps its promises, has NPC AI in the latest update, and apparently makes a mockery of this whole dangerous business and the excuses made to justify it

In any case, I would like to thank the developers of Elite:Dangerous. They have taught me that they are not reliable and don't care about their backers, and it didn't cost me a penny to find out.

More importantly, I have discovered OoLite.

Microsoft patch mashes Office forms and macros

Not bother patching ?

No, safer to update manually, when all the lemmings have gone and reported broken features and fixes have been made.

Of course, it's still a risk, because you never know if Yet Another Bug is going to crop up in reports while you're patching, or if you're a special case and some new bug rears its head.

But it is still better than rushing to patch a running system, running headfirst into problems and having to wait for MS to do a rush job only to find that either it doesn't fix the problem and/or it breaks something else.

I was about to add "because done too quickly" but MS has already failed patches it had ample time to create, so best leave it out.

Sucker for punishment? Join Sony's security team

"face future action over any losses Sony incurs"

I'm sure Twitter must be quaking in its boots. I wonder if they will have any difficulty proving to a judge that any losses incurred by Sony are Sony's fault entirely, and Twitter should counter-attack with a libel charge for being accused of having a hand in Sony's abysmal stupidity.

Bring it on, Sony. You have a bigger lawsuit warchest than you have for security, so go and prove that you are indeed as stupid as you look now.

Frankly I'd like a lawsuit to be filed, just to be able to read how a judge punted it out of the courtroom and fined Sony for contempt of court.

Man I wish that could happen.

Facebook slammed for blocking protest event page at Russia's request

Another chip in the bucket

of all the reasons for which I do not and will never have a Facebook profile.

Well done, Zuck. At least you are consistently disappointing.

NUKE HACK fears prompt S Korea cyber-war exercise

Re: "change direction instantly and at high speed"

For certain values of "instant", obviously.

With current technology, even if a missile reacts in milliseconds, when it is going at Mach 4 (1 361.16 m / s) it still covers 1.36m (0.1475 double-decker bus) every millisecond.

A missile will certainly turn faster than a human pilot can due to its far greater resistance to G-force, but current tech does not allow it to u-turn on a dime.

Flash breaks free from the storage flat earth society

You can always house them in a Faraday cage.

BONK for CASH in Brixton and help us EAT the RICH

That must clearly be the right way of viewing the whole affair.

Thank you for the enlightenment.

Have a beer on me !

Wait a minute

So this whole thing is to keep local money local, yet they're using a Norwegian company and French hardware to do it ?

My irony meter is approaching the red zone.

By the way, "you must use the Brixton Pound in Brixton" - I take that to mean that you cannot use Her Majesty's currency. Isn't that illegal ? I'm sure they can use the Brixton Pound alongside the national currency, but if they are actively refusing the national currency, how is it they aren't in jail yet ?

STAY AWAY: Popular Tor exit relays look raided

He may well be from the UK, but the NSA is listening to everyone.

"I haven't even mentioned a specific agency and the theories are already flowing"

Is there any doubt that the NSA is behind it all ?

Goaded by MPAA, perhaps ?

Who doesn't really matter to me. Any state security organization has the authority to mandate chassis intrusion and intimidating ISPs into silence. And anything they find will, in the end, end up on NSA servers somewhere. The NSA is just the tip of the surveillance society iceberg we are now living in.

'Google catches us in an invisible web of our personal data without telling us'

Good question. What about DuckDuckGo ?

It's Wiki page states :

"DuckDuckGo [..] generating its search results from key crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia and from partnerships with other search engines like Yandex, Yahoo!, Bing, Wolfram Alpha, and Yummly."

Digging further, it would appear that Yandex is Russian, Wolfram Alpha pretends to compute an answer "from externally sourced "curated data"" (no reference provided), and Yummly is a cooking recipe search engine. As for Yahoo!, if it was any good it would not be wallowing at less than 7% of the search market share. So the one source that has a snowball's proverbial is, once again, Bing, which has been available for a lot less longer than Yahoo! but is almost as important - and will become more important since it is backed by Microsoft resources (which are much more plentiful than Yahoo! coffers).

This question is, nontheless, interesting because it taught me that Baidu is a much more actual contender for Google (given the previous link) than Bing, being 2nd in order before Bing but after Google.

If Baidu was not censored by the Chinese government, I might just use it.

Re: "Plenty of alternatives are available"

Bollocks.

There is one alternative available : Bing.

Whether you appreciate it is another matter entirely.

Everything else is either based on Google, or will never, ever return a meaningful result.

And concerning not using Google's services, bollocks to that as well. 99% of todays sites use Google libraries, so not using Google means staying on Microsoft.com or not using the Internet.

That's not a choice.

What's Jimmy Wales going to do with $500k from the UAE?

"he'd planned to do so all along"

Of course you did, Jimbo.

And we plan to believe you just as sincerely as this declaration sounds.

Is there something about being in the spotlight that makes declaring untrue things hoping that we'll buy it a conditioned reflex ? Couldn't he just have bowed his head, said sorry and pledged to do right ?

Oh wait, it's Jimbo we're talking about. Right. Forget it then.

Care.data's a good thing? Tell us WHY, thunders watchdog

Not to worry

Sometime after everyone has his details in the scheme, a North Korean hacker will come along, pilfer everything and post it all on the Intarwebs. Then the data will truly be shared !

Space Commanders lock missiles on Elite's Frontier Devs

If he's buying it now, he wasn't on Kickstarter.

Armouring up online: Duncan Campbell's chief techie talks crypto with El Reg

Re: Why? Because you trust your government?

No, but because unless you really are a criminal/terrorist trying to protect your nefarious activities from Men In Black, it's a level of hassle to implement proper security that goes way beyond what Average Joe needs.

Not that I'm advocating doing nothing, far from it, but if I told all my friends they have to learn and implement PGP if they want to email me the latest joke or get my latest musings about where to go for dinner, I'm pretty sure my mailbox will be suddenly barren of anything but spam.

As for data encryption, well I don't see that my personal data is worth it. I have firewalls and AV that have protected it up to now, if The Man wants to see it, not much I'll do will keep him from it for long.

I don't like the idea that the NSA considers my communications free range for its harvesters, but I'm not about to act like a crime lord to keep them from it. I'd rather they stop doing it, but I'd also like to win the lottery. I think I have a better chance at the latter, even without playing.

Linking two individuals from electronic communication is something any agency can do (with a warrant) since ages. All any agency needs to do is call the telephone/ISP provider, show the warrant and request a list of all phone numbers/IP addresses that the suspect contacted/connected to. Telephone/ISP is legally bound to comply.

So you can put whatever encryption you want on your data, unless you only communicate face-to-face (without a smartphone on your person or in your car) there will be a government-available trace of your comms that can and will be mined if need be.

Microsoft shutters Office 365's free web site service

"a difficult decision to discontinue the SharePoint Online Public Website feature"

Translation : this feature is expensive and hardly anyone is doing anything with it, so we're canning it.

Purple glistening plasma, you say? Orion plummets back to Earth

"transparent ceramic heat resistant tiles"

Don't think that would alleviate the fact that, for a sizeable part of re-entry, all the camera would "see" would be ionized superheated air flowing in its capture range.

As a screen-saver, on the other hand, it might make for nice viewing.

FURY erupts on streets of Brussels over greedy USA's data-slurping appetite

And just why would the USA suddenly change it's ways ?

Because it's XMas ?

Don't think so.

@ Mr. Boyle

Given that the entire US power structure, from the White House down to the smallest court of justice, apparently deem that foreign-stored data is available to them by the equivalent of divine right, your proposal smacks of uselessness.

Legally speaking, the USA already has no right to access international data outside of existing protocols established in treaties that were written up and agreed upon decades ago. That is no barrier to the NSA as we now know.

Might as well change the name to NSA consulates for all the good that idea would do.

Norks: FBI's Sony Pictures' hacking allegations are 'groundless slander'

Dave, I agree with most of your points except the one about Obama securing the internet with his surveillance billions.

Sony is not an American company, so the NSA's billions on Internet security would have changed nothing in this case. Whoever is actually behind this hack, it's Sony's near-inexistant Internet security (and probably shabby internal security protocols as well) that is the heart of this issue.

If Sony had proper protocols and security in place, I might believe a nation-state could be behind this hack. As it is, it seems my neighbors kid could apparently be behind it.

But then I'm saying that North Korea could technically be behind it.

Except that the FBI said it is, so it isn't.

Why the chemistry between Hollywood, physics and maths is so hot right now

I remember a National Geographic thing on giant spiders (the seriously big dog-sized version, not the hand-sized Tarantula kind), purporting to report on said creatures in some South American jungle. Not a giant spider in sight, of course, but plenty of interviews with people swearing that they had seen one.

All the time I was watching it I was thinking "is this how far National Geographic has fallen ?".

Feds finger Norks in Sony hack, Obama asks: HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE KOREA?

Re: America never bowed down

Sorry, but it would appear you are not current on the news. Not only did America bow down, it also dropped its pants and bent over submissively.

That the US of A, most powerful military force in the world and first of all economic powers, would halt the projection of a mere film following empty threats from a motley bunch of keyboard warriors is shameful in the extreme.

NK is supposed to be behind this ? And we are to believe that Kim Jong has elite squads of highly-trained ninjas just waiting to bomb US cinemas ?

Excuse me if I find that eventuality's probability to be asymptotically reaching zero.

USA! USA! should have had the balls to release the film with a great big middle finger to all hackers everywhere.

Then everyone would have been able to judge just what a turd that film undoubtedly is.

Tell me how it is morally right for any country to listen in to all communications of every other country.

That's not National Security, it's dictatorial paranoia pure and simple.

WMD's was NOT about chemical, it was about "nucular"

The only (official) reason the US invaded Irak was the search for nuclear weapons. That was the smoking gun and the reason Irak was branded 3rd most powerful army of the world (hyurk, hyurk).

Time and time again Bush and croonies declared that Irak was working on/already had ICBMs and they were pointed toward US targets. The threat was supposed to be real and present.

Nobody ever mentioned chemical weapons. Nobody ever denied that Irak had them, because there was ample proof (from courageous journalists doing their job - those were the days) they did, but that was NOT the reason to go to war. Twice.

Well, specifically the evidence they say they have that proves that NK did it would be a good start.

If they can't show that for whatever reason of National Security (yeah, like we don't know now that they're tapping everyone, please), then at least demonstrate that there is a clear IP trail between the hacked Sony server and a NK computer.

Because if they can't demonstrate that publicly, then they have no credibility to state that NK did it.

And if they are indeed convinced that NK did it, I find it laughable to believe that they actually fear NK terrorists on US soil. NK is certainly a threat to South Korea, but NK does not have the muscle to be a threat any farther than that.

Sony sued by ex-staff over daft security, leaked privates

Meanwhile . . . "hired a high-priced lawyer to threaten the press"

They didn't have enough money to implement proper security, but they sure as hell seem to have plenty when it comes to miserably failing to preserve what's left of their image.

They're the only ones who think there's anything left to preserve.

Oh come on, they're hackers.

They'll manage to move about 20 meters before they collapse from Red Bull withdrawal.

NASA asks world+dog to name Mercury's craters (back off, 4chan)

Whoa there

If you want to start naming craters after famously-endowed celebs & starlets, we definitely don't have enough craters !

Time to launch the politicians. Maybe if we amend the rockets in a MIRV configuration we could achieve a reasonable equilibrium ?

30,000 people buy a box of BOVINE EXCREMENT

Care to source that ?

Heyyy, you seem to be trying to post a drunk picture You know your boss looks at this?

Reminds me of that other saying . . .

Make a fool-proof system and Mother Nature will make a better fool.

Brit boffins debunk 'magnetic field and cancer' link

Shhhh !

Stop putting those pesky facts in the way of a snarky rebuttal.

It's nearly 2015 – and your Windows PC can still be owned by a Visual Basic script

Ah, if only people had a repository of words that exist in the language they use, with a definition of their meaning . . .

Put me through to Buffy's room, please. Sony hackers leak stars' numbers, travel aliases

Re: how long it will take for everyone to forget the past

Most people have already forgotten the past. Only the nerds remember it.

And they should never forget it.

As far as corporations are concerned, my attitude is "Never Forget, Never Trust".

Sony is no different today than it was with the rootkit, if it could pull off another go, it would. Besides, what do you think HDMI is for, better data bandwidth ? An Ethernet cable can do that, but Sony does not control the Ethernet spec. Sony is still about control, and always will be.

Use Windows software on Android – Microsoft couldn't be app-ier

Re: you would have got Office 2003, Office 2007, Office 2010, and Office 2013

Um, no.

I have an install disk of Office 2000 at home. I see no need to buy every new version for personal use. Word 2000 has largely enough functionality for me to write a letter to someone.

Even so, I've uninstalled Office completely. I use LibreOffice now, and it is compatible enough with Office that I don't care about the differences.

My business laptop has Office 2010, obviously. I hardly use it anyway. I have no intent of purchasing or using Office 2013, and certainly not Office 365. Small company, little utility, no point.

Microsoft hikes support charges by NINETY TWO PER CENT

Go on counting vulnerabilities

I'm sure it makes you feel good.

Meanwhile, in Real Life, every single reported instance of actual, widespread virus attack happens on the Windows platform.

Re: Enterprise Linux distributions are [..] far more vulnerable to remote attack than Windows Server

Hi Ballmer !

Taking some time from mismanaging your baseball team, I see.

I'd suggest a reality check, but with you it's obviously useless.

What a pity: Rollout of hated UK smart meters delayed again

"there had been "some bumps" with the project"

Yeah - like customers not liking the bloody things, seeing no benefit for them, and not accepting remote shutdown without recourse. The fact that £11 billion are needed to save a theoretical 2% of a £200 bill is a real deal clincher too.

Isn't politics a bag of laughs ?

Orion 'Mars' ship: Cosmic ray guard? Go. Parachutes? Go. Spacerock shield? Go!

Well, being no rocket scientist I don't know for sure, but it may have something to do with the fact that Earth's average atmospheric temperature is at least 288 kelvin, whereas in space it's only 3 (in the shade).

Given that liquid hydrogen is solid below 20 kelvin and gaseous otherwise, that might explain things.

Quantum computing is so powerful it takes two years to understand what happened

Impressive

Not only can quantum computing solve all solutions at once, but now we know that it can do so for more than one value at once.

Only one problem left : extracting the solution that corresponds to the value you were expecting.

Oh well, they'll have that sorted out in the next fifty years, no problem !

Microsoft: So sorry for NOT paying Xbox indie game devs on time

"Due to a technical issue in our system"

Let me guess : their system is on an Azure cloud ?