Posts by Pascal Monett

Australian State to sue IBM over $AUD1bn project blowout

This is going to be good

I look forward to seeing IBMs (lengthy) exposition of how the project was derailed by continued and repeated government official incompetence, indecision and meddling.

All of that will have been duly recorded in the meeting minutes, and their lecture will be a feast for everyone who enjoys seeing yet another shameful government debacle come to light.

Sure, IBM project managers will have made some mistakes, but we all know that their most grevious mistake was not pounding their fist on the table and saying "NO!" to the umpteenth scope change.

They should have walked out.

Nobody ever walks out of a government contract.

No government contract ever gets done right.

Could someone please set a precedent ?

FTC torches Android flashlight app for spying on users

"a user's preferences not to have their data shared were ignored"

So an app can tell you (or not) what it is going to do, then proceed to do whatever it wants anyway ?

That is just ridiculous. I should have the possibility to DENY access to a functionality for an app and the app should not have the possibility to ignore that.

Google, please fix that. NOW.

Microsoft 'cautiously optimistic' about Christmas sales

Oh but Microsoft should be concerned.

The question is : is it ?

Oh no, RBS has gone titsup again... but is it JUST BAD LUCK?

That's an interesting picture you paint there.

I see the core systems becoming something of a religious practice in the coming decades. Maybe even with rituals and sacrifices to ensure proper functioning.

And the sysadmin in a long red robe, holding a dead chicken and chanting in front of the blinkenlichten...

I completely agree. In assembler, it does exactly what it says on the tin. There are no mysterious side-effects to take into account. Even if there is ten times the amount of code to check, once you've analyzed a block and signed it off, you're SURE you know what it does.

Consumer disks trump enterprise platters in cloudy reliability study

All of my personal disks spin at 7200. I have never bought the 5000rpm ones, I find them too slow.

On the other hand, the 15000rpm ones may be faster, but they're louder, and in a tower next to my feet, that is not an option.

Two million TERRIBLE PASSWORDS stolen by malware attackers

Your post does not prove that open source code is not secure.

Your post indicates that one must use a non-compromised compiler to create a program from open source code.

Bold Bezos aims skywards with liquid hydrogen and SPACE ROCKET engine

On the other hand, say that one of the rocket engines uses Windows 8 and we'll be all over it.

MINING in SPAAAACE! Asteroid-scoopers? Nah - consumers will be the real winners

Awesome idea !

Let's start training for this by building an arena on the Moon.

Re: In Apollo 13

True, but they DID have to be pilots to put the whole thing back on a proper return trajectory to Earth when everything had gone wrong.

So your example seems to be contrary to your initial theory. A pilot knowing the workings of the vessel, where the kinks are and what to do in case of failure of the machines is going to be a precious commodity to avoid a $2 billion vessel (not counting the cargo) from missing the proper burn duration and orientation and ending up on a solar-centric orbit outside of Jupiter.

And I'm thinking that employers will pay a pretty penny to an experienced and reliable pilot/on-site repairman as a proviso against needing to call on the insurance policy.

NSA-proof Euro cloud gang: Cool idea, bro... until it turns into MARKET-EATING beast

Re: I think I'll take my chances with the NSA/GCHQ

The thing is, you don't really have a choice either way ;)

Beijing leans on Microsoft to maintain Windows XP support

Re: the fact that people like it is not an excuse for keeping it alive

You're new to this whole "market" thing, aren't you ?

We're talking about software. Software does not rot, it does not go stale, it has no "sell by" date.

The only thing that makes XP unsuitable for today's hardware is the fact that hardware has progressed by leaps and bounds since XP first hit the market. My original XP disk - Service Pack 0 if you wish - cannot install on any PC that is less than five years old. But an XP SP3 disk can - because it was updated to "understand" the new hardware world it can live in. It is still XP, however.

This demonstrates that XP need not be retired for reasons of age, that is not a proper argument. And, on any market, people liking a product is very much the perfect excuse for keeping said product "alive". It's called maintaining revenue. Only in the software market do we have notions of "old" software that is no longer suitable. XP can be upgraded.

That said, I do not think that XP should be upgraded. It was a messy, bloated piece of kit with one saving grace : it was better than Windows 98.

So yes, let it die. Replace it with Windows 7 which is a messy, bloated piece of kit that has one saving grace : it is better than XP.

And, while you have Windows 7 running, wait for Windows 8 to die because it is a messy, bloated piece of kit with no saving grace whatsoever.

Women crap at parking: Official

"female brains are designed to facilitate communication between [..] processing modes"

The credibility of this "study" fell through the floor at that point.

Our brains are DESIGNED to do one thing : establish connections between neurons. In our early years, our brain is creating new neurons and they are latching on to the comm path, establishing their own connections and existing connections are modified.

Saying that a woman's brain is designed differently is blatantly false from a scientific point of view.

What should have been said is that a woman's brain is subject to a different environmental pressure system than a man, and thus creates synaptic connections in a different way.

And, as far as I'm concerned, one's skill behind the wheel is most highly correlated with the number of kilometers/miles one has driven and that's all. I have clocked over a million kms in personal vehicles, rented vehicles and company vehicles. Because of that, I am used to being called upon by friends (male ones) to drive their moving vans when they change appartment because they know they can count on me to not have them forfeit their deposit because of mishaps.

I see people drive/park terribly all the time. Not all of them are women, not by a long shot. I do however agree that men are generally WAY more obnoxious when they want. And I think that young drivers should be forbidden by law from driving a car with more than 80hp. More than that is just asking for trouble in the hands of the hormone-ridden security-oblivious youth of any day.

And get off my lawn !

Sony brags: We've hit over 2 MEELLION PS4 console 'sales' worldwide

Not unfair at all

Consoles were initially a one-step affair. No Internet connection and no hard disk made for a very isolated console. The advantage of that situation was that there was no possibility for game makers to patch their games, so it had to be perfect on day one. Hard for the developer, but good for the consumer.

Now consoles are actually restricted PCs because they use the same hardware, have the same Internet connection and a hard disk, but they are restricted to only buying titles from the console maker's platform.

I read in these comments that people are really happy about the PS4 because now they can switch from the game to something else and go back to where they left off. In other words, they can now do what I've been doing on my PC since I bought XP. So consoles have finally caught up with practically 15 years of PC computing.

On top of that, I can get my games from anywhere. I am not beholden to EA, Origin, Steam or anyone in particular. I can play practically every game I have ever bought on my current PC - including many old, old games that now need an emulator because the hardware has changed so much since the original Populous.

Also, I can upgrade whatever portion of my PC I decide to. I can replace my 500GB with a 3TB disk now, and Windows will barely notice the difference. I have already slotted two SSDs, and my Windows performance - especially at boot time - has taken a bit kick in the rump.

Finally, I can game with a keyboard + mouse combo, something that is still alien to the limited world of consoles. I don't like console controllers. Left-Left-Up-Right-Down is a manipulation that holds absolutely no appeal to me compared to the smooth, controlled motion of the mouse.

I have really no inclination to go buy any console ever, and none of what I read about the latest generation has made the slightest dent in that fact.

PC market staging a RECOVERY. (Only joking, it's through the floor)

But it is. Because people never really did need a PC most of the time, but when it was all they could get, it's what they had.

Now, most people can do what they want on something other than a PC, be it tablet, smartphone or something-pad. And good for them. Many, many people do not spend their days and evening on a PC, they have other centers of interest and their smartphone is enough for them in a pinch.

The PC will stay - you don't work on a tablet, you read mail, eventually documents (PDF or Word) and you consult the company intranet, but you don't create data on a tablet (not on the long term anyways) - but it will slowly revert to a more discreet role of productivity in the business area, and hardcore gaming in the personal area.

All the rest can be handled by a handheld something or other.

Windows 7 outstrips Windows 8.x with small November growth

I'll wait and see what Windows 9 looks like

In the meantime, I'm treating my Win7 disk as if it was made of solid gold.

If Win9 sports the same kind of half-baked stupid Microsoftian idea of a PC interface, then I guess I'll be royally screwed and will have to finally submit to the penguin gods.

I'll like that no more than a new Windows TIFKAM, but at least I'll only have to do it once more, not on a schedule imposed by effing Redmond.

Inside IBM's vomit-inducing, noise-free future chip lab

Helmholtz Coils ?

Would the town where this technological terror is installed be called Mechanicsburg ?

Somebody call Agatha : a spark is breaking out.

Solar enthusiasts rays idea of 'leccy farms on MOON, drones

Re: where the cost of delivering heavy equipment and maintaining it is minimal

You clearly have no idea of what maintenance means in a desert environment.

Here's a clue : fine grain sand and mechanical gears of any type do not mix well.

Come to think of it, fine grain sand doesn't mix well with electronics either - something about static charge buildup that's really fun in the vicinity of a motherboard.

That toolbar you downloaded is malware? Tough, read the EULA

Remind me again

Is there even just one good reason to install a toolbar ?

Any toolbar ?

Someone ?

Aussie boffins can detect orbiting SPACE JUNK using rock gods' radiation

No, the idiots in the US Congress shut down the Space Fence and the ISS could no longer properly forecast where it needed to be a day in advance. That's why they had to upgrade the boosters.

At least, that's what he wrote.

EMC: Backup is broken, do you hear me? Now buy this other thing

Speaking of terminology, enforce and enable all you want, but imbue, please.

Re: On behalf of everyone,

Amen to that. This whole thing is just a PR stunt to make people think EMC is at the forefront.

The Cloud is just a bubble of fog high in the sky. Azure is tripping over its own feet every other month for any reason and you want me to think that I should backup my DATA to the cloud ?

Manage my website at five nines for ten years already, THEN you'll be able to talk about data.

And you still won't get mine.

Apple dodges data privacy sueball: Fanbois didn't RTFM*, says judge

Re: Due Diligence

In my opinion EULA's are simply illegal, period.

When I studied a bit of commercial law, I was told that a Contract is a binding Agreement between Parties. Once agreed to the terms, said terms cannot be changed by any of the Parties without amending the Contract and obtaining a new Agreement from all Parties.

But the EULA can be (and is often) changed by the company at whim, without waiting for agreement from the consumer (the other Party). Instead, we get notices that "by reading this you agree to the new terms", or some other bullshit to the same effect.

In other words, consumers have NO POSSIBILITY to NOT agree to the terms, therefor EULAs are not contracts and their legal weight is not even worth the pixels that display them.

What irks me to no end is that there is no lawyer that has driven a train through that hole yet.

You have a Skype voicemail. PSYCHE! It's just some fiendish Trojan-flinging spam

If you're so aware of the latest spam trend then I think you're less well insulated than you think.

invest in a proper Anti-virus package ?

Find me one that actually works and I'll buy.

In the mean time, the best anti-virus package is a skeptical brain that does not click on attachments willy-nilly without knowing where they come from, what they contain and how useful they are supposed to be.

Of course, that also means you don't open an attachment while thinking of something else.

Think of every attachment as a black alley at one in the morning : in other words, the risk of mugging is HIGH.

Be paranoid about what you accept on your system BEFORE accepting it. Once it's there, it's already too late.

Samsung hauls in chiefs for 'CRISIS awareness' confab – report

Re: but then Sony launched the Z1

As far as I'm concerned, Sony can put the very best, most flexible and wonderful piece of computing equipment on sale, I won't buy because it's Sony and there will be broken, draconian DRM and unacceptable limitations embedded in it.

But that's just me, surely.

Chinese prof brands gamers no better than drug dealers

Re: The Cure

The way things are going now, it looks like the US will turn into China before China turns into a free country.

Oh, by the way, there are no more free countries. There are only countries where you are not finger-searched every time you board a plane, and the USA.

So true.

Unfortunately, there are people who are not intelligent enough to make the difference.

Apple supplier's '11-hours-a-day' toilers have '1 day off a month'

For evil to triumph it only takes no good man to stand up.

Why Microsoft absolutely DOESN'T need its own Steve Jobs

Re: Gates nailed if first time around

Oh yeah, he really nailed the Internet on his first try - right to the wall.

Same with tablets. He nailed that to the table and they never took off.

Gates also nailed the Courier. He nailed it so hard that Allen left the company.

Gates has his failures, and the absolute worst thing that could happen to MS is that Gates gets involved in future management decisions. He was a successful business man in that he created the most powerful software company in the world, that is undeniable, but that success is like a glacier - you can track its progress by counting the litter it leaves in its wake.

I do fancy a Genghis Khan heading Microsoft though - as long as he directs his beheadings to his own personnel.

What ? You don't want to put a proper Start Menu on Windows 8.2 ? <thwack!><thud><roll> Okay, anyone else opposed to that idea ? <silence> Good. Next point : porting DirectX to Linux as an open source project . . .

Noisy qubits destroy data in order to save it

Nah, it was a screen clipping of the upcoming Star Was film, with a spaceship approaching a Saturn-type planet, no doubt to land on some orbital station off-camera.

You're not pulling the wool over my eyes !

Cow flatulence, gas emissions much worse than thought - boffins

You have my vote, sir.

The real problem is that the ACC apologists have understood that, in order to get funding, they had to drum up interest, and they decided to use the good old partisan wars paradigm to do so.

So, while I have no doubt that real scientists are doing actual work together to find out what the situation really is, there is all this smoke and noise distracting us from the real issues.

And since anyone call call himself a scientist, and the Internet is the ideal disinformation breeding ground, we have hysterical zealots on both sides that would be ready and willing to in clude beheadings for anyone that disagreed with them.

I will come back to this page in 20 years, and check how much snow I have on my lawn in February, then again in July. Then I'll re-read these kind of comments with either quiet commiseration or sad approval.

But right now, we just don't KNOW.

Scores of profs give hated US patent law an F minus, demand massive rewrite

Re: a healthy money spinner for for the actual lawyers

Lawyers do not make the law - they argue (endlessly) about it in Court and a Judge decides what to apply.

That said, given how many lawyers are in Congress (where laws are made), I'm sure your argument still has some amount of clout.

Yahoo! staff! slapped! for! 'snubbing! own! webmail! and! preferring! Outlook!'

Re: What is it with GUI designers?

They are convinced that they are the annointed. They have seen the light, and they are going to make you see it whether you like it or not.

It's for your own good, you see.

Revealed: How Microsoft DNS went titsup globally on Xbox One launch day

MS can learn from a number of things.

Trouble is, MS never does learn. It just redefines the paradigm and calls it a feature.

Re: management should probably take some of the blame as well

Hah.

It'll be a cold day in Hell indeed before anything like that happens.

Re: Because, of course, internal systems never, ever fail

That sort of stupid response needs to stop right now.

An internal system can fail just as well as any other, obviously. The key difference is that and internal system failure affects only you and not hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other people/businesses.

On top of that, when the failure is internal, you have monkeys to whip until it gets back in shape. When you're on the cloud, you only have a telephone number, which may or may not respond, and you still have to wait until THEY corrrect the issue - which may take days - after which you are left contemplating the pieces and wondering about restores (as Azure users have already learnt, much to their chagrin).

In an internal failure, if you don't have proper backups (that have been tested) or don't know how to rollback cleanly, you only have yourself to blame.

So please cut it out with this internal failure nonsense. It has absolutely no bearing and is totally not comparable in any way to the nature of the issue.

Thank you.

Beijing hits back at US: Don't you DARE blame China for collapse of duty-free IT talks

Re: a country whose entire manufacturing culture is based on making shit for less

Um, and why exactly do you think they work like that ?

Because we send them production orders that do not accept more than a given price, and they have to accept to get the deal.

If they're cutting corners, it's because some CEO over here is intent on lowering the price per unit by another 5% before XMas so he can get a nice bonus. Meanwhile, over there they are scrambling like ants to try and find a way to still make the product requested while getting less and less money for it.

Taking their buildings as an example is a strawman argument. Yes, there is corruption at all levels in China. That has nothing to do with how they make the products we buy. You think there's no corruption in Washington ? Ignorance is bliss.

So don't blame the Chinese for this situation - once again it is the First World that created this mess, nobody else.

Our TINY flying robot moves like a JELLYFISH, say NYU boffins

"flying robots just the size of a centimetre"

I do hope boffins will make that come true - not for the surveillance nightmare it will create, but for the brand-new field of flying robot protection.

Because a centimer-sized flapping thing is bound to be of interest to some passing bird, who will snap a beak around it, find it inedible and spit it out - except that said robot will most likely flap a lot less well after the ordeal, not to mention that the bird might concievably die due to the mechanical monstrosity flapping in its beak.

But let's say birds don't die (beaks are rather strong), the robots will still suffer (heavy) damage.

So, will we see black/yellow-striped stealth surveillance moths ? With flight code including evading predators ? And eventual pheromone-based discouragement sprays ?

Nature is going to get confused in whole new ways with this.

Re: Surveillance uses

Agreed, but I'll wager that there will be a law against selling to non-government-authorized individuals.

Of course.

We're making too much say CryptoLocker scum in ransom price cut

I agree wholeheartedly with you, and have been saying much the same thing since they introduced the bloody option.

Except for one thing : I'm pretty sure that in most cases, even if users saw the proper extension, they'd still click it.

I'd find that information a lot more interesting if their Rescue Disk actually worked.

When I tried it last month on a PC I had been given to repair (Windows was borked - again), it didn't even boot properly.

Neither did any other vendor's Rescue Disk, for that matter.

Thank God formatting & reinstalling still work.

I think the mega-rich and powerful view Bitlocker as pocket money.

They are lobbying for easier transit rules and less tax on drugs, petrol, gas and/or weapons imports/exports, and they laugh at the notion that would think them interested in mere millions.

They don't even get up in the morning before their first billion (of the day).

Re: Who doesn't back up valuable data?

Easy : idiots.

Their numbers are uncountable.

I cannot count the number of times I have told people to back up their data. In the best case, the response I get is "yeah, I know, I'll get to it". Then, six months later, I hear that they are in a spat of trouble because their PC went down and they . . didn't have a backup.

The worst part is that some of these people, the ones who have already HAD the problem, felt the pain and KNOW the solution, STILL don't backup their data.

There truly is no cure for stupidity.

Microsoft releases wonderfully loopy experimental GIF-jiggler

Re: this is getting a bit absurd, don't you think?

I have only one response : George Dubya Bush.

Ever since that, the US of A have forfeited any right to not be responsible for everything.

Rackspace patches Windows Updater vuln

Yup, that's technology.

You can always screw up, but to really screw things up, nothing beats computers.

Astronomers spot 13-BEEELLION-year-old hot galactic threesome

Take me! Take me! I drink burbon too!

Doom god John Carmack teleports from id Software to VR upstart Oculus Rift

Everything needs to feature Christina Hendricks somehow.

'High impact' Gmail password security hole blew accounts wide open

fixed it within 10 days ?

Now THAT has to be an industry-wide record.

Not bashing Google - on the contrary, someone flagged a serious problem, Google assigned it a high priority and IT GOT DONE. Then the useful researcher got his due.

Which is the way it should be.

Unfortunately, many other companies should take note of this (eh, Yahoo! ?).

Those Xbox One first-day glitches: GREEN screens of DEATH, disc crunching

Re: run a Steamworks-hobbled game

Mr Gale:

I respect your choice of not wanting to purchase games through Steam. That is your undeniable right as a consumer.

I do, however, take exception to your notion that games are hobbled in any way through Steam. Steam does not hobble games, Steam enables you to enjoy them over two different platforms and through whatever hardware change you might have to go through - unlike the other turds that claim the same functionality (I will not give them the honor of naming them).

I buy ALL my games through Steam now. I have over a hundred titles purchased - sometimes titles that I already purchased on DVD. Yes, like Punisher, a title I had bought legitimately (like all my games) and screwed me over with DRM so draconian it wouldn't recognise its own install DVD. For that game I had to go and torrent a copy just to play with the game I had just bought (no return on unwrapped boxen - store policy because of "piracy" - once again it is the legitimate user that is screwed). Result ? I found it one day on Steam for €10 and now I can play it whenever I want without trouble.

I am tired of DVDs now. I never did appreciate the idea of having to slot in the CD/DVD just to play my game, and now I am fed up with it. I buy old titles I already have just for the pleasure of having them in Steam, where I know I can play them without hassle.

Steam lets me play my games when I launch them. Steam is always there, always has been, and has a track record that is light-years better than Azure. Steam does not lock down my games, it allows me to play them at my leisure, without hassle. So it checks I'm the owner ? What do you think your DRM-on-DVD does ? Same thing. And if my PC breaks down and I have to replace a component, when my PC is back Steam does not complain, does not force me to redownload everything, just asks me for my login info and voilà!, my game library is all there, ready to go (not like the other turds, who can force you to redownload if you so much as update your driver video).

I have never been more free to play than with Steam. Steam is a good platform. That is my experience.

Oh, and as for pricing : Left4Dead 2 for €5 during a firesale.

Beat that with your DVDs.