Posts by Pascal Monett

Disable Java NOW, users told, as 0-day exploit hits web

Once again, thank you NoScript

Frankly, I'm beginning to think that Firefox and noScript should become mandatory by law.

If that ever did happen though, then this almost-perfect shield would become the hard target for all the miscreants and issues would be found.

So let the rabble continue with IE and zero protection. I'll just glide by, blissfully oblivious to the carnage until an article like this wakes me up to the fact that there are still people who don't know how to surf securely.

<disclaimer>this post concerns private use of Internet only - I am very well aware that professionals have a different set of problems, mainly that of not being able to choose their work platform</disclaimer>

Chancers try to flog lame Mac malware for $60 a pop

So it's obvious, reveals its presence, cannot survive a restart, cannot run on basic Mountain Lion settings and probably doesn't know how to phone home either.

Well all that should be reassuring, except that this is obviously just a first stage attempt from the miscreants. They're going to correct the bugs and make a more efficient version, one that will serve their purposes better.

In any case, however ridiculous this piece of failed malware may be, it is nonetheless a warning sign : the crooks are targeting Apple machines. Time to batten down the hatches in iLand.

Microsoft denies Windows 8 app spying via SmartScreen

"using the SSLv2 protocol which is known to be breakable"

Um, not to defend Microsoft in any way, but could someone please point me to a protocol that is NOT known to be breakable ?

Just for the learning experience.

Re: Of course, they are gonna deny it

If they get caught doing something, they're still going to deny it.

Whatever they do, they will deny until they have their face shoved into the proof that they did it, then they will try and make everyone believe that it was "a mistake" or "a feature in beta" or whatever else passes for an excuse in la-la-land.

Only 3% of UK's TV oglers want more sex

Re:whats the point?

The point is to not impress children's minds with the fact that such language is the preferable way to speak, even if it is unfortunately heading that way.

As for children swearing in school, of course they do and so did we all. But children do it to appear cool to their friends, not because they think it is normal. They know it is not, that it is forbidden, and that is why they do it.

And that is also precisely why watershed is necessary. PVR is under someone's personal initiative, they had to program the thing, they know what they're getting. Just blindly stumbling into profanity, sexual intercourse and suggestive nudity - not to mention bloody violence - is not something that should happen when children are supposed to be awake.

Of course, nowadays that parents no longer know when the proper hours are for children of a given age, watershed is probably still moot, but one has to at least make the effort.

Education is not just for dogs.

Shove off Prince Harry, now Norway's teen royal in fresh photo uproar

When they grow up ?

Surely you mean "if" they grow up.

Don't download that app: US presidential candidates will STALK you with it

Re: Why would you want this app anyway?

Um, we're talking about US citizens here.

Anything goes.

HTC takes another punch to the wallet, loses $40m OnLive investment

One example comes to mind

I bought Hellgate: London, a Microsoft Games For Windows thingy from EA.

Since then, EA has pulled the plug on the multiplayer servers, forcing me to play only the single-player part.

Microsoft and EA were behind this game, yet I have lost 50% of what I paid for back in the day.

Last I checked, neither Microsoft nor EA Games have declared bankruptcy, yet I can no longer play multiplayer on that game.

How's that for cloud reliability ?

Re: Its not suitable for hardcore gamers

Have you taken a look at [url=http://www.quakelive.com/#!home]Quake Live[/url] ?

Of course, not all games can be done like that, but Quake pretty much defined hardcore gaming, and its fluidity is nothing less than astonishing. I used to play Quake III on my PC - and I had to upgrade its essential components to get proper framerate and nice visuals.

With Quake Live, okay, the tech is old, but heck, I'm playing that monster in a browser ! Without installing anything !!

Beats me how they do it, but they did it.

'Sex and the female brain are connected' - shock discovery

Must. Resist. Mentioning. Black. Snake. Moan.

Dang, blew it again.

Brocade global sales boss exits, leaves soon-to-depart CEO to flog kit

"a strategic cul-de-sac"

Well it seems to me that that is a board-level issue, and if high-level staff are setting sail to greener pastures, it is a sign that the board is aggressively divided either over which direction to take (hopeful version), or who to blame (sign-of-doom version).

IEEE admits its MS-DOS history revisionist is in Microsoft's pay

So MS paid him ?

Let's see what the consequences are :

- for MS, which has soooo much dirt accumulated in its history, this is but another shell on the pile of waste in the back room

- for Ziedman, well I can only say I hope the money was good, because paid or not, his credibility is no longer worth the bag you use to clean up after the dog

Assange calls for help from … Quakers?

"citizens must whisper in the dark"

I'm pretty sure there aren't many citizens in the Western World that feel that they MUST whisper anywhere, anytime, even in the dark.

Unless you count the kinky stuff going on all over the world and, in that case, woe be he who tries to stop it.

Curiosity's laser turns Mars rocks to 'glowing plasma'

If they're that hugely advanced, they might be bright enough to not use an investigative method that is (highly) susceptible to inducing changes into what they want to investigate ?

At least not until they get the results back and discover Justin Bieber, in which case a zap with a CEO-salary-sized laser is a perfectly understandable next step.

Better onion anonymity possible: researcher

Onion routing, Garlic routing

What is this, a cookbook ?

eBay invites mystic wrath over ban on spells, potions and lotions

Wait a minute

If you can prove that in court, isn't it attempted murder ?

The Court does not need to believe, it just needs to record that she used something she believed would have that effect, so attempted murder.

At which point, of course, she goes all hysterical and says, on camera, "but it's all just nonsense !", or something to that effect.

Capture, post on YouTube and educate the masses.

She gets fined for contempt of court.

Everyone wins.

Oracle: Google impurifying media's precious bodily fluids

"they don't keep track of what their staffers post"

Yeah sure, as long as said staffers post what they're told to.

NASA picks the target for Curiosity's first road trip

Re: "not like the rocks are going to suddenly get up and walk away"

Well that's just the point . . . maybe this time they will !

Breaking news, literally: Reuters hacked third time this MONTH

What to expect ?

I know next to nothing of the news industry, but it seems to me that, once upon a time, they had people called "reporters" that went out into the wide world to get stories, then went to the nearest phone to report their finds.

Some of these people actually proved bravery far in excess of what any boss could expect, bringing back incredible tales. Some actually died for their efforts.

I suspect that things are somewhat different today if reporters are just paid interns watching blog feeds, or categorizing press releases.

Watch out, PC disk drive floggers: Cloud will rust up those spinners

Irrelevant metaphor alert !

"I don't keep all my cash in a hardware container in my house. Why should I keep my data in hardware containers in my house?"

Because :

1) Your cash is stored and taken care of by a bank that has been specifically and legally chartered with the obligation to be accountable for it - cloud providers, at best, assure you that they have extensive backup procedures, then when things go pear-shaped you find out that their backup system has put your data back to three months ago.

2) Cash is interchangeable - it doesn't matter which dollar bill you have, you still have one dollar. Data is specific and unique because I'm quite sure you hardly appreciate getting a 10Mb file of random ASCII data in replacement of the 10Mb file containing your latest report on whatever.

3) If there is a break-in at the bank, the bank is still accountable of the money it stores for you and you have personally not lost anything. If a cloud service gets hacked and its many discs get corrupted, you're up shit creek with your eyes to cry with unless you have a backup somewhere else. And you don't, do you ? Since the cloud is all pearly and beautiful.

The very nature of this article proves all the misgivings I have about cloud services, and serving up such a wrong metaphor confusing money and data and the legal structures of the services behind them, not to mention the very basic differences between them, just confirms my resolve to stay the hell away from all that cloud nonsense.

And yes, I do use Dropbox. It's a handy way to exchange files with my friends without burdening their mailboxes, but I am not in any way about to expect it to backup anything I find important.

Deadly domino effect of extinction proved by boffins

Re: I could do better, if I could be bothered

Well, it's obviously because you're not bothered that other people try.

Forgive them their inadequacy, O Illustrious One. I'm sure that, if you could just share the ideas of your insightful mind, Humanity in its entirety would make great strides in improving itself.

And please give us more of your precious insight as to how the Illuminati are controlling the world, we all need a good laugh from time to time.

DVD plus nano-rods equals security, density: researchers

Absolutely nanomight

This is science at its sexiest, no doubt about it.

Just one question though : is my GS-DVD (Gold-Sprinkled) going to take six times longer to "burn" due to all those polarization changes ?

In addition to costing me an arm and a leg for a stack of ten, of course.

Arctic ice panics sparked by half-baked sat data

Amen to that !

'Kill switch' flaw found in top web weapon, victims sigh with relief

There is no way to be sure they CAN "stay in".

Fraudsters nick BILLIONS from China's e-commerce Wild West

Lo and behold

And so starts the education of users of the East.

In time, they will get angry. Legitimate companies will start beating a path to a "level playing field". Finally, standards will be put in place and, one fine day, scammers and con artists will have to find some other haven to operate under because China will no longer be safe for them. Because fleecing the West is fine, obviously, but conning their own ? That will not wash.

It will take time, but it will happen - and when it does, China will find that copyright and commercial protection is not such a bad idea after all.

Hopefully, they will not make the same mistakes we did, and they will avoid awarding dead mouse rights to some greedy corporation for centuries at a time.

Hong Kong tycoon sues Google search for defamation

So, he's corrupt and been convicted, but doesn't want anyone to know ?

And the sun rises at what time tomorrow, exactly ?

That said, if push comes to shove I think Google has more combat reserves (meaning money, of course) than said shady tycoon - although I have no idea of how much it is willing to use to fight him.

After all, he's just a blip on the radar - tycoon or not - and not really worth spending mounds of cash on.

YouTube escapes Google's piracy site smackdown

Well, as of this posting, "New Google tool lets you PROBE YOURSELF" gets your article at the first position on the first page.

Lone config file in Mac OS X SIGNALS DEATH OF THE DVD

Re: "multiple NAS servers"

Yeah, I'm sure everyone has that at home.

Flash is NOT a backup technology. Not by today's reliability, that is.

Climate change blamed for rise of life-draining horrors*

I love listening to that video.

Re: "The natural state for this planet"

The natural state for this planet is that it started at several thousand degrees Kelvin in a cloud of asteroid bits conglomerating together, and it is now in the process of shedding its considerable heat into the void of space.

Therefor, barring being swallowed by the sun in several billion years, it will end up at the global temperature of 3 Kelvin, same as background radiation, in eons upon eons of time.

So, basically put, there will be more ice on the poles before it all ends, mark my words.

Watch the cloud get bigger and change its shape

"There are no traffic jams, pile-ups or drivers getting lost."

Anytime I hear some description of a perfect technology, I can't help but think the words related to a certain animal and its waste product that is used as fertilizer.

Let's not forget that Murphy's Law has been proven right more times than anyone can count.

Google to skew search results to punish PIRATES

My thought exactly.

Am now waiting with gleeful anticipation the new Copyright Infringement Denial Attack from Anonymous in direction of RIAA/MPAA and witnessing their websites disappear from Google's front page.

Any day now . . .

Sick of juggling apps on biz PCs? This install tool will save your sanity

Re: "for us, who live in the real world and only own one computer"

You only have one computer ? Good for you. I have mine, my wife's PC and my daughter's laptop to take care of.

I do believe I'm living in this "real world" you mention.

NHS IT blunder biz CSC wilts as profit bleeds, costs staunched

"costs will be reduced next quarter"

Now if that doesn't sound like the call for another round of pink slip distribution, I don't know what does.

Australia on path to social media regulation

"[Facebook] have not yet adopted the standards of corporate social responsibility"

Well duh, it's NOT a corporate environment, it's a SOCIAL environment hosted by a corporation. That, in my mind, is an essential difference.

I despise Facebook for giving a public platform to all the useless nonsense it contains. However, I will NOT agree that Facebook be condemned in any way for what its users publish. Let's not shoot the messenger, shall we ?

Microsoft: It's not Metro, it's Windows 8

Re: "50% boot times over Win7"

Oh, so that's an important argument because . . . you spend all day rebooting ?

My Win 7 on SSD boots in two seconds. Well it did when I first installed it. Now it takes a full six seconds.

Galls me, but I only boot once a day, so it's not really that important.

Windows 8 can boot in less than one second if it wants, I do not care for its tiles. And if moving with the times implies using a PlaySchool interface then I'll be a happy dinosaur, thank you.

And that's an objective decision. We're talking about an OS here, not flying cars. OSes are still made for managing apps and interfacing with hardware, not inciting religious zealotry. An OS is a good OS if it does not get in the way of using the applications people need to use. Moving with the times is not replacing the UI of said functionality with bigger icons. Moving with the times would much more be Microsoft placing its OS code in the public domain in order to let people skin its interface however they wanted it.

Fat chance that'll happen though.

Go on running after your shiny-shiny things and spouting useless religious comparisons. I'm sure you're feeling very righteous.

That was brilliant !

Apple pounces on Samsung doc as proof of 'slavish copy' claims

Dear Mike Moyle

I have a Samsung Galaxy phone.

I have seen plenty of Iphones since they came out.

I am just a layman, no expert in any way, but I am pretty convinced that there is no way to confuse the two, even at a glance. In any case, that is indeed my opinion, whether you like it or not.

As far as paying for expert testimony, I do absolutely agree that expenses should be covered, but I feel that $80 thousand covers a lot more expenses than is justified. Another case of society's current impossibility to be reasonable with money. Supply and demand is not an excuse for being outrageous.

And as far as perjury is concerned, please allow me to laugh. Proving perjury in such a statement is scientifically close to impossible and everyone knows it. As far as lawyers' integrity is concerned, I refer you to the educational experience of Microsoft vs DoD, where we all learned just exactly how much straight-faced lying was possible in court, even with all your eyes watching, denouncing and, at times, positively frothing at the mouth with indignation. I don't remember any lawyers having been disbarred after that one.

Go ahead and get all uppity with your UK justice system if you want, I don't see that it is reacting any more strongly to this. If it was, Apple would have already gotten a rap on the fingers for wasting court time with a useless testimony. Oh, so a so-called expert mistook the two phones ? What does that prove in court ? Honestly, what does it prove ?

Nothing.

"expert testimony by experts"

Experts that cannot recognize the difference between a Galaxy and an Iphone.

Some expert.

Gosh, for $80,000 I think I could be confused as well. For five minutes anyway.

Frankly I am rather appalled at the tactics employed. If you have to lie and cheat to get your point across, my feeling is that your point is not worth being considered anyway.

If I were a judge I'd make sure any company coming forth with such behavior be fined a hefty amount for contempt of court.

Jimbo Wales: Wikipedia servers in UK? No way, not with YOUR libel law

"world's largest unreliable collection of factoids"

Part of me likes that sentence, and relishes the effect.

The other part checks the Wikipedia pages on our solar system, and science in general, and finds that the sentence does not really apply - at least not until some creationist gets a hold of editing rights.

Then I remember all the hoopla that occurs systematically around any topical subject, and I can't help but feel that it applies perfectly.

In other words, yes, Wikiland still has a way to go before the label "reliable" can be applied.

Rivals routed by Apple, Google smartphone onslaught

Um, let me see if I get this straight

On a chart that clearly demonstrates Android gaining over 20% market share, and Apple losing almost 2%, we have an article that centers itself around Microsoft, which gained a hair over 1% in the same period.

Right.

Foldable NFC keyboard could tempt Android users

Can't replace the battery ?

Uh, it's made of silicon, right ?

Silicon has a dismal resistance to a cutter blade, but reacts well to sticky tape.

I think there will be a load of DIY battery-changing tactics in short order.

And if you screw up with the cutter, well the replacement isn't all that expensive. Actually, the new battery would probably be as expensive as the keyboard. Hmm, why bother then ?

Maybe that's the idea.

Rampant fake Facebook ad clicks riddle hits dead end

I have no idea if NoScript and AdBlock are available on browser platforms that do not use the Firefox engine, but I'm pretty certain that even so, they are not installed by 80% of all Internet users.

Something else is going on here.

Meet the company that wants to destroy Twitter. It's Twitter

I have the sinking feeling that that would indeed be an astounding success.

Greenland ice sheet not going anywhere in a hurry, say boffins

Brilliant !

Thank you for that.

Bomb sniffing “electric nose” turns cancer detector

Re: "it's a crap way to die"

Not to contradict you or troll or anything, but that part of your paragraph sent to me thinking about death - and I have yet to think of a "good" way to die.

Apart from in your sleep, I just don't see any.

Republican filibuster blocks Senate Cybersecurity bill

"to better protect our nation from potentially catastrophic cyber-attacks"

Well, in my layman's opinion, to better protect our nation from potentially catastrophic cyber-attacks it would be much better to remove strategic elements from being attackable via the Internet.

In other words, somebody put a damn firewall between the "nucular" reactors and the Internet already ! Why is there a need for a law on that ? And why, oh why, is there a need to discuss the issue ?

Nuclear reactors, city traffic infrastructures, pipeline management, power grids. All those things need to be properly segmented and not Internet-accessible without proper authentication. Not only is that obvious, but it is a fucking shame that such an issue need to be "debated" in a political arena which is only interested in who will get how many brownie points.

Fail all around.

Ice Cream Sandwich still a no-show for most Android users

I am new to the smartphone market, having just got a Glalxy S II from my new job around two months ago.

When I got the phone, it was running on 2.3.4 as you say. Without any intervention on my part, via the WiFi connection on my home router, it is now pegged at 4.0.3.

So something happened, and apparently it works.

For me at least.