Posts by Pascal Monett

Alca-Lu joins race to make telco networks more cloudy

"They can just turn up a new instance of a cloud application"

Whoosh!, there goes the credibility of the whole scheme.

Another instance of an application is not going to help when the bandwidth is not coming through.

And I'm not talking about hardwired kit. This whole cloudy thing is very, very decentralized now and people want to access it with mobile kit. Mobile kit currently depends on 3G for data connections, and 3G is shitty as hell quite often.

Don't get me wrong, when it works, it works fine. But when you're in a 3G hole, you get nothing. Another "instance" of your application is not going to help there.

Korean credit card companies hit with 90-day, $100m sales ban

I bow before the judicial system of such a country.

Doing that around here would generate an avalanche of protests citing "exceeding authority" or "unconstitutional" and a flood of media spin in favour of the bank subject to punishment.

Remember, our banks are "too big to fail", therefor untouchable even when they patently do wrong.

And yes, I do happen to think that it is the CEO that should go to jail for grave mistakes made by personnel HE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR. But I understand that "responsibility" is nothing more than an entry in the dictionary these days.

Mac Pro fanbois can rack 'em and stack 'em like real sysadmins

Totally agreed. I would have thought that rackmounting Macs would give an aneurysm to most of its user base anyways.

I mean, they already almost all keeled over dead when Apple finally abandoned PowerPC to embrace the Dark Side of x86, and now they're supposed to be used as glorified RAID managers ?

The shame, the shame.

Facebook gobbles WhatsApp for SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLARS

16 billion ? And no ads ? Does he think we're ALL smoking the carpet ?

Come on, please. First of all, $16 billion dollars ??

Clearly The Zuck is having money shower withdrawal issues. I'm looking forward to the inevitable writedown on that, and the media disaster that will ensue.

Second, either this Koum is the most naïve and innocent guy on Earth (I doubt that), or he has a compulsive need to show us he thinks we're stupid. All that money and you want us to think that a) WhatsItsName will remain unchanged and 2) there will be no ads ?

Here's a hint, Koum : FB is an ad broker. It uses its customer base to sell profiles to companies and target ads to its users. Take your time, Koum, it'll end up sinking in.

Unless, of course, Koum is actually just as much a cynical hypocrite as Zuck, in which case this is a marriage made in Heaven for those two.

American Idol host's keyboard firm smacks back against BlackBerry in patent spat

And your family member still calls that guy a friend ?

Somebody needs to refresh his memory concerning what a JOB is. Preferably with a cluebat. Made of wood, obviously.

"the inventors had allegedly withheld known prior art references"

And, once again, we need the Courts to do the job of the Patent Office, which has transitioned from granting patents to just rubber-stamping them.

From 0 to ERUPTION in 60 days: You thought that volcano was COLD?

Re: set up his lair in an extinct volcano

Yes, but then the mad scientist engages the positronic echopositioning confabulator and inadvertently drills a hole to the Earth's core, thereby re-activating the volcano and ruining the draperies.

Official: British music punter still loves plastic

"The UK recorded music industry grew 1.9 per cent last year"

What ?!

What happened to all that PIRACY ? I thought BPI/MPAA/RIAA/et al was being ROBBED BLIND by all those cheapskates who STEAL THE MUSIC.

And yet the CD market grew.

Man. Maybe the world isn't coming to an end after all, eh ?

Silk Road admins: Sorry for the hack, we're sorting out refunds

The FBI does not "have the cash". What the FBI has is a USB with many sets of 0s and 1s that, for some unknown reason, some people appear to attach a value to.

Re: Isn't Bitcoin itself ...

Indeed it is, so much so that there are many people who are absolutely convinced that it is not.

To those people I have two observations to make :

A Bitcoin could initially be fully minted in just minutes. Now it is a lottery where a number of BitCoins are "created" and their attribution depends on who finishes the last block first. In order to finish first, there are now companies that build specialized machines for burning through a block in minimal time, and of course, there are shady merchants who fleece the unwary in various ways with gay abandon.

On top of that, the "value" of a BitCoin varies from day to day by over a percent point sometimes by as much as 10%. It is not stable, not reliable and can be completely buggered by malice or a simple mistake.

So you can go "mint" your BitCoins. I wish you lots of fun and success.

Meanwhile, I will keep my day job which pays the bills and a bit more.

Fine, you can mock us: NSA spies back down in T-shirt ridicule brouhaha

Re: *Yes, I know they don't have one.

That's exactly what they want you to think.

Object to #YearOfCode? You're a misogynist and a snob, says the BBC

Re: I think over-specialization from an early age is very damaging

I agree globally with that sentence, but encouraging a natural affinity does not necessarily have to end in specialisation.

It can very well take the simple form of a voluntary hour spent learning to code via interesting activities, such as in a club house of sorts. Meanwhile, during the day, the child remains in the general courses of maths, language, history and geography and science. Just throw in an available hour on coding with someone who can answer questions, and let the interest bloom.

Re: Twitter, Facebook, Minecraft, youtube, Snapchat, and hundreds of TV channels

One of those is not like the others.

One of those is not passive. One of those promotes thinking and does not destroy neurons.

That one is Minecraft. Minecraft requires patience, planning, observation and perseverance, not to mention some amount of battle tactics. It can even scare you now and then.

Minecraft is a plus in a sea of negatives.

Million-dollar new disk tech could be USELESS for array vendors

Re: So Hitachi can't market its 6TB drives because no one else has them?

Nothing is wrong with innovation.

Everything is wrong with tying your company to a single supplier.

Single supplier means supply is directly tied to that supplier's ability to deliver. One hiccup on the road, and you have no product.

It also means that contract terms can change at the whim of said supplier. Once the supplier has 100% of its market share in you, in can change pricing basically when it wants. "Due to cost increase on the global market, we are raising our gross price by $10 a unit." Then what do you do ? Shout and stamp your feet ? You have no other supplier. Beg for a delay ? Why would he give one ? Switch to another technology ? That will take some time, during which you have to swallow the change - with the corresponding PR impact and - most probably - the lawsuit the supplier will throw your way for abusive termination of contract.

Production lines have inertia like boats, they take time to retool, and industrial companies are the Titanic, ever on the lookout for whatever kind of iceberg can sink them.

A single supplier is very much an iceberg for any industrial company. So it is not so much having a unique advantage, it is more like having a unique weakness.

Not to, mention; punctuation?

10,000 km road trip proves Galileo satnav works, says ESA

Re: "proving that the people that design smartphones have made a FAIL"

It does not prove that smartphone designers have made a fail.

It does prove that a smartphone does not have the same power requirements as a dedicated GPS tracker.

Who knew ?

Rand Paul launches class-action lawsuit to end NSA phone spying

If I'm not mistaken, you may be able to have phone snooping software legally, but I think you'll find that if ever anyone finds out you've used it on them without their permission or knowledge, the water you'll find yourself in will not be lukewarm.

I have to say, that sounds pretty unconstitutional to me.

But the solution is probably not in a lawsuit.

I think the solution is in changing the law.

And nothing should be allowed to be kept secret in a Congressional Hearing. Congress is the manifestation of The People. Nobody has the right to blindfold The People.

Dr Hurricane unleashes FUSION POWER at Livermore nuke lab

Re: "it is being developed by the US Navy. That should tell you something."

Oh it does. It tells me that there is some prize Defence Budget pork that has been secured by a private company whose CEO and board and going to live comfortably for decades to come.

It also tells me that there will be cost overruns, delays and assorted problems with the tech for decades to come.

Finally, it tells me that there may well be a final product, but it will not perform as per specifications and it will be more expensive to maintain than was initially planned.

Re: These can neither be slowed down, nor shielded effectively by anything sane

Don't worry, if we can't find a sane solution, we'll find an insane one !

Re: Stars do it trivially

Not really. Stars do it with quadrillions upon quintillions upon sextillions of tons of mass, so much mass that when the fusion process starts, the turbulence is contained by the x-septillions of tons of mass bearing down on it.

When there is no longer a stable reaction is when stars bloat to red giant status, or explode in nova or super-nova.

Hardly trivial matters. Then again, I acknowledge that it is difficult to wrap one's head around the fact that our Sun contains 99.5% of all matter in our Solar System.

And that there are billions upon billions of others just like it in the vast void of our Universe.

Rotten to the core: Apple’s 10 greatest FAILS

The Register bashes everything and everyone if there is a point - contrary to your post.

Where were you in these occasions ?

Yeah, nowhere to be seen. You probably didn't even read them, and you sure as hell didn't comment.

So if you go cherry-picking your way through El Reg and only read Apple-specific stuff, then you have no right to complain about the general content of this site which you apparently ignore. You have even less right to mention anything about constructive criticism.

You are, however, perfectly correct in mentioning pettiness, except that you have the wrong target.

Yeah, because we never see an article bashing Microsoft or Google around here.

disclaimer : for those of you without a clue, that is called sarcasm

Trials of 'Iron Man' military exoskeleton due in June

Re:"we can operate for weeks without taking in any energy at all"

I would say "go on and try to operate for a week without swallowing anything", but that would likely open me to a charge of attempted manslaughter.

Look it up or ask your doctor. You spend three days without even a drop of water and you are already on the verge of death. There are people who have gone on hunger strike for weeks (and I salute their resolve), but all of them drank water - sometimes sugared - in order to survive. And if you think that those people were in proper "operating" form after two weeks, well I think you need to go back to your doctor. Most of them were permanently confined to their beds after 15 days because too weak to get up.

We are not efficient energy users. We heat up as soon as we exercise, which means that we are wasting energy. If we were truly very energy-efficient, we would constantly be at room temperature. Take a look at humans in IR photos. You can clearly see the areas where skin is exposed - it's the whitest part of the picture.

We are not efficient in using energy, we are however quite efficient in recovering it from what we eat and in storing it.

FBI offers $10,000 bounty for arrest of laser-wielding idiots

Will never see the light of day.

All the cat owners will boycott that thing out of existence.

Minecraft developer kills Kickstarted Minecraft movie

And strawberries cost more in winter.

Your point is ?

Greenland glacier QUADRUPLES speed, swells seas

As far as the 85 most "successful" are concerned, it's 7 billion losers, and we're all part of that group.

Yes, you included.

Sorry, but could you explain just exactly what your third point has to do with climate change ?

Re: Your move

This is not a game of chess.

This is science in the making.

You can quote whatever URL you want, when it comes to science I don't give a damn about the opinion of someone who is not a scientist.

What I want is a scientific study giving unequivocal proof, approved by every other scientific body, with no caveats, no shady issues and no omissions.

When I see that report, when scientists have finally understood how climate works and can reliably predict its evolution, then I will know that we know what is happening and why.

And that ain't happening tomorrow, so let the scientists work and stop being oh-so-sure you know what's going on because you don't and nobody does.

Climate science is based on thermodynamics, and anybody who has studied thermodynamics knows that it is by far the most difficult are of science. Climate studies have only started, we have weather data that is barely 200 years old and reliable data that is less old than that (when it's not being mucked about with to fit someone's agenda).

We do NOT have sufficient knowledge of our planet, or of the science, to claim that the planet is warming, or that Humanity is a cause.

Deal with it.

Microsoft gets with the times, builds two-factor authentication into Office 365

Re: "but really, does anything you are storing need that level of security"

Sorry but that question is out of touch with reality.

The Cloud (tm) is being marketed as "the perfect solution" for data hosting, targeted towards companies. As such, client lists, contracts, payroll information and even production data can be considered sensitive information.

Last I looked, I didn't see companies posting either their full client list nor their payroll on the web.

Since The Cloud (tm) is supposed to offer hosting services for company data, then yes, it should also include encryption and secure access by default. Saying that companies should host their own data if they have sensitive information is not serious given the way The Cloud (tm) is being marketed.

California takes a shot at mobile 'killswitch' mandate

"let's see if it can be done reasonably with proper safeguards"

Done reasonably ? In that industry ? Imposed by law ?

Fat chance of that.

JavaScript is everywhere. So are we all OK with that?

"If I was just getting started in programming, and I didn't know what language to pick...."

I wouldn't pick JavaScript because I would not know it existed.

I'd more likely pick Visual Basic because I've heard of that in school.

Of course, if I were a somewhat enlightened individual I would use the web (who am I kidding? I'd Google it) and search for "programming language", intent on finding what is the best language for beginners.

And I'd probably end up choosing Visual Basic anyway, once I had been allowed to leave the hospital after my trauma treatment of having read all the bile that is thrown around on everyone else's programming language and had managed to decide to learn programming in spite of all the hate, condescendence and mockery that abounds when commenting programming languages.

But I doubt that a beginner programmer is going to go for JavaScript since JavaScript is nothing without a browser and HTML, CSS and probably PHP, and all that is a bit much for someone who doesn't even know Hello World yet.

NYPD dons Google tech specs: Part man. Part machine. All Glasshole

So, NYPD is crash-testing Glass in the field

I'll be interested in hearing just how long those things survive in the streets in such conditions.

Methinks not long.

Re: "The old trick of yelling...."

That's an old trick already ?

Life support's ABOUT to be switched off, but XP's suddenly COOL again

Re: Lets go with the ever popular software/car analogy

Lets not.

A car is a physical object that cannot easily be replaced.

An OS is a collection of ones and zeros that can be copied indefinitely and, therefor, replaced without effort. In addition, the ones and zeros do not rust, do not change color and do not become less efficient over time (not talking about the cruft).

Apples and oranges.

Re: writing new malware for an obsolete OS

An obsolete OS that still holds 29% of the market.

Win98/95 are part of the block labelled "Other", representing 0,10% of the market.

So Win98/95 are definitely not worth working on. WinXP, on the other hand, encloses almost one third of all computer users, who are more and more clueless home owners, ie ideal pickings for scammers and criminals.

This is very much an opportunity for the crims, since XP users may only be a third of the market, but probably represent a better return on investment since anything that works is something the crims can soon consider stable.

Re: "none of them have had any security problems"

You mean to say "none of them have been targeted yet", don't you ?

Crafty French hackers tweak 'My Account' page, slurp 800,000 Orange users' details

"never provide personal data over email"

You mean, over the email address that you guys just leaked ?

Why, thanks for the suggestion. Now all the affected Orange customers need to do is reinforce their spam filter to face the veritable deluge they will no doubt be getting.

Yup, now is the perfect time to remind users of security measures THEY should be taking.

Well done, Orange.

Indian press focuses on Satya Nadella's love of cricket

So now we'll see what a cricket player can do at the head of Microsoft

Once he has shown his mettle, maybe we will see the next MS CEO tout his experience at StarCraft as reference ?

Or maybe Counter-Strike:Global Operations ?

What would be the best game for leading Microsoft into the future ?

New Microsoft CEO Nadella could earn FOURTEEN TIMES what Ballmer banked in 2013

"79 per cent of the max"

Just curious, but what maximum are we talking about ?

The revival of survival – the gaming genre that refuses to die

I've hated PvP since Quake I.

When I do play online, it is almost exclusively with my friends and people I personally know in Real Life (tm). Every time I can, I set up a private server with a good password, and only said gaming buddies have access to it. We have loads of fun.

If we have to connect to a public server, we look for empty ones with bots. Nine times out of ten, when someone else connects to our game, it is some lame idiot who does crazy things or asshole things before leaving with some smarmy insult. Every once in a while, it is a good player who says nothing but thoroughly kicks our ass and we are left admiring how he did it. On top of that, he leaves after typing a "gg" for us to cherish.

Doesn't make up for the idiots, though.

Steam will be the #1 cause for Linux gaming to actually take off - if it ever does.

And I do hope it does, because I would just love to let my Windows box finally die and be rid of all the endless OS quirks, the thrice-damned Registry and Microsoft thinking it knows what I want better than I do.

Now all I need is to find a good Linux distro that has help files that are actually useful and a n00b guide that doesn't insult me for not being a Linux guru on the first day.

Facebook turns 10: Big Brother isn't Mark Zuckerberg. It's YOU

A message from your anti-Facebook association :

BOOOO ! HISSSS !

Thank you for your attention.

I concur with you, JonP. It is not Facebook that makes people conform.

It's the conformists that flock to Facebook and revel in conforming together.

I revel in letting them conform outside of my horizon.

I totally agree. My own wife created herself a Facebook profile to "see what it was all about", but she created it under a fake name with fake details.

There certainly are real-name profiles in that hive of scum and . . oops, wrong train of thought - there are real-name profile in Facebook, but I doubt that they are even a majority.

Not if you take into account the pet profiles, the fake name profiles, the multiple-account game profiles, and the business profiles. Heck, there may even be a profile or two for famous landmarks.

There are real people who post in there, but the only way you can be sure is if you already know the person in Real Life (tm).

Anonymous means NO identifying element left behind – EU handbook

Yeah, but

Since you're electing the next batch of snoopers, you might as well go the whole nine yards, no ?

Microsoft claims victory over second-hand software broker

Interesting idea.

Given Microsoft's behaviour in the open document standard fiasco, I wouldn't put it past them.

HELLO LENOVO. Do you really, really want to make smartphones?

Upvote for acknowledging what you are ;)

EU warns United States: SHAPE UP on data protection OR ELSE

Re: "a stupid weights and measures system"

Only considered stupid by people with zero grasp of basic mathematics.

But carry on, ignorance is bliss after all.

'I had a rare Twitter handle... I was extorted into giving it up'

Re: "he didn't want to sell it"

I can understand that position.

I have a little website which is nothing at all, but I wouldn't want to sell my domain name off either.

On the other hand, this tale now prompts me to think that large piles of money are harbingers of the end of whatever it is they target because it would seem that, if someone is offering you a suitcase of money for something, someone else is lurking in the shadows, looking for a way to steal it. Either way, you lose the thing, so you might as well get some dough out of it.

I do hope that criminal will get caught and prosecuted, though. Piece of slime. Obviously the NSA has nooooo information on this, no sir, not at all.