Posts by Pascal Monett 18239 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
Don't see any reason to downvote that comment which stated nothing but the truth. There is indeed a long way to go before Macs get as pwned as PCs.
That has nothing to do with the vulnerability of Macs, it's just that the Mac is still a rather sheltered platform as far as attacks are concerned.
And yes, the trend is changing since that's the second Mac attack vector I've heard of in the last month. So there is definitely more activity on that front, which would have been unheard of last year.
But that is exactly why DAB has to die, from an industry point of view.
You see, DAB has painted itself into a corner. It's audio, so there's no use increasing bandwidth since the quality is already fine. It's digital, so the only thing they can do about quality is fiddle around with the codec - the hardware itself is probably not going to change often.
In other words, DAB is not DVD, there is no Blu-DAB on the horizon. There is nothing that can be made into an incentive to force consumers to update.
Buy one DAB receiver and you don't buy another until that one dies. Contrast that to the Iphone, which has its replacement model every year and half (the standard upgrade path in tech these days).
The industry prefers the Iphone model.
Hey Mr. RIAA mouthpiece, I have two words for you : laws change.
Proof in point : you're the ones who got that law into the books with your vast sums of money that didn't go to any artist.
Well We The People will, one day, remove that law from the books, because laws are meant to protect the People, not the Corporations.
This brilliant piece of forcefully-legalized crap is now going to be the basis of a whole new generation of spam claiming to rid me of "legal" trojans, or another batch just begging to sell me a "legal" trojan-detector.
Plus, you've just opened the way for other countries to get bright ideas. After all, a paltry million or two is nothing in most countries budgets (countries where a majority of citizens have electronic doodads, anyway), so why not ?
So congratulations for the bright idea. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to lock down all IP packets coming from any teutonic source.
Guy on the top of the heap urges Master to get rid of lower-rung competitors.
Well he would say that, wouldn't he ? Especially if he expects to be among the ones that remain in the Master's good graces.
I'd like his company to be evicted from the MS Distie list just to see what he would go about stuttering to explain himself.
You know, the one where it says "If you use Skype on an iPhone or iPod touch".
In other words, Apple-only products using Apple-only software and apps that are Apple-software compatible.
Now, please explain how anyone could possibly crowbar Microsoft into that argument, except for a troll.
Oh, right.
Sony has succeeded in creating a whole class of people who actually think that waiting a whole bloody minute after slotting in a disk before being able to actually see a menu is normal and acceptable.
Well, I guess congratulations are in order, then. The brainwashing is proceeding as planned, obviously.
Um, sorry to disagree, but I recall reading an article in a science mag about how some boffins simulated the theoretical conditions of early Earth, what with atmosphere, pressure and heat, and came away with proof that amino acids resulted from the steam bath.
Knowing that amino acids are the building blocks of life, it is easy to conclude that the conditions for creating life are not so difficult to achieve.
On the other hand, the conditions for survival are much harder, with any number of elements able to radically or catastrophically change the environment to the extent where the fledgling hold that life had crumbles away - until a new batch has a chance to start.
Even then, it is apparently required to be in a relatively stable galatic environment - in a star nursury life has little to no hope of gaining a long-term hold, what with all the thermonuclear ignitions and subsequent violent space winds and cosmic rays that are an everyday condition in those areas.
So, even if we don't have proof, we do have a pretty good idea of how life can start and maintain itself, along with a rather good understanding of how easy the process is. What we don't know, of course, is how often it has actually happened, in what timescale and just how far along it has gone in each case.
Now, think of this : with what we know about the availability of the building blocks of life, combined with what we are learning about the frequency of planetary systems in the star systems around us, well I think it is quite possible that life is positively teeming in every galaxy in the Universe. Of course, most of that life is probably some form of microbial slime, but still, it's a beginning.
And by the time our governments get their act together to finally get humans into space, added to the time it will most probably take us to get there, well let's just say that the slime will have had ample time to evolve into an entirely new something that will really surprise us (right before biting our heads off) !
And yes, you have been lucky, which is a good thing for you. But do not forget that the essential difference between PayPal and a real bank is that a bank has the legal obligation to ensure your access to your money.
Thus, a bank cannot freeze your account without a court order.
PayPal, on the other hand, freezes accounts willy-nilly, and from all that I've read it never seems to be the accounts of the crooks, only the accounts of honest people who got had and complained.
If you choose to continue trusting PayPal with your money that is your right and PayPal's privilege, but do not go around talking about PayPal haters and making light of their troubles. The hostility towards PayPal is justified.
And I hope, for your sake, that you won't have to find out the hard way.
Definitely and permanently not. If there is reader with something interesting to tell the world, he's already got a blog anyway. And, if he actually has a brain and knows how to write, he's probably got his own site.
If I want to plunge into the madness that is the Word of the Public, I've already got plenty of incoherence and terrible writing in the comments, thank you. When I come to read at El Reg, I expect editorial overview and professional writing. For the inane and utterly idiotic, I have Slashdot.
Let's keep it that way, shall we ?
Why is it that these highly-paid suits imagine that their words can change the face of reality ? Do they really believe that their obscene salary impresses anyone but their mistresses ?
HP is spinning off its PC division, period. As soon as you've said that, you've introduced uncertainty and a space for competitors to wriggle in to. Denying that by spewing words is not only useless but entirely moronic. It would have been better to say something to the effect of "HP is creating and independantly-managed division for its PC branch, which HP is committed to supporting for the next 10 years".
That would have allowed the spin-off and reassured existing customers, thus shutting off a great amount of the margin they created for their competition.
But what do I know ? I've never been to those fancy management schools.
There are places on the Internet where important things are being said and Twitter is not one of them.
History _will_ remember the important things, it will be remembered on the Internet, and Twitter (or its spiritual descendant) will not be the place where people will talk about it.
Using people's image for selling products without first obtaining their written consent is not well accepted ? Well duh.
One question : if I start selling a product and say that LinkedIn endorses it, how long will I have to wait for the lawsuit ?
Even if I put a message on my blog beforehand ?
Frankly it totally floors me every time I read things like this where so-called intelligent people can't seem to remember the basic tenants of the social and moral code, not to mention commercial and legal rights.
Then I remember that it's the Internet, where 90% of the users have left their higher brain functions in limbo.
So obviously this was a Zuckerberg-like attempt to "see how far they could go".
It's reassuring to know that LinkedIn has less sheeple than Facebook - or at least a higher percentage of users that DO use their brains.
That said, I got suckered into LinkedIn by one of my former bosses (it was company policy). I now have my finger hovering over the <delete account> button. One more screw up like this and I'm out.
The purpose of biofuels was never to actually do something ecologically resonable, but to pander to a specific lobby group.
Thus I predict that agave biofuels will never take off unless the lobby groups decide that it is in their best interest.
And that's a shame because I can make a mean margharita when I have the right ingredients !
Don't you get it ? This is MS management's new cost reduction plan : ship servers to customers and lose the electricity costs. It'll look good on the balance sheet, somebody will get a bonus and everyone is happy.
Except the tech who has to go check on the servers after hours because nobody is there during the day. And the manager whose project is unavailable because the server is down and nobody is there to reboot it.
Sure, I remember ! I bought one of their controllers . . . uh, nope, never saw one. Never even knew they existed. And, of all the companies of that name, the only one based in Ohio is a . . . management consultant company.
Well I think they're about to learn how to manage the biggest lawsuit they will ever see. Little Tom Thumb going after the 800lb gorilla. It won't even be funny, it'll be too short.
I'm just as ready as anyone to laugh at Microsoft, and God knows MS deserves a good turn at their own shenanigans, but this is pathetic. MS is going to bury these jokers under so much paperwork that they suffocate and ask for the beheading themselves.
Really, before going after the biggest, most experienced target in the field, it pays to train oneself. I doubt very much that Impulse has enough practice. I think MS is going to crush them like the bug they are.
On another matter, I'm quite glad to see that there are multiple posts about patents that are exactly what I think : patents that do not create product are not worth consideration. One should only be able to go to court about patent infringement if one has a product on the market. If not, it should be considered contempt of court and the fine should be a million bucks and/or a year in jail breaking rocks.
Not many, not any more. Most of the sites I have a login on send you a link that allows you to reset your password within a certain time limit. You click the link and must set a new password.
As long as the miscreants don't change your email address, that seems fine to me.
And it will do so on several levels.
First, the Anonymous members who put themselves in charge of this project will be unmasked, either through some detective work on the part of a news group, another hacker group, or some guy they managed to tick off because of something they said or did or didn't say or didn't do (hey, nutjobs are legion).
Second, it will fail because there is no way that a social site, with the avowed intent of taking on Google and Facebook, can be created by one person, thus there has to be a group taking on the task. And, as every working person knows, the more people you put on a project, the more the chance of a jerk being part of said group. Said jerk will inevitably throw a spanner in the proceedings by outing the group, publishing names or something of equal jerkitude.
Third, and last, the sheer magnitude of this project is going to wear them down and break them. Behind their grandstanding and posturing, what we have is a group of people who come together to revel in a bit of chaos by doing what they think they do best : hacking other people's servers. This kind of activity, which they consider fun, is something they can do when they're ready and willing, and holds the thrill of success to drive them on. Building and managing a social site is light-years on the opposite of such 007-ness. It is a job, a mountain of work, with all the dreary day-to-day Mondays that that implies. They will have to be on their toes from day one, every day, without fail, else there will be issues. On top of that, they will have to learn to deal with unhappy people, something that posting a file accompanied by gloating text does not really prepare for.
All that said, I wish them luck with their reintegration project. And I wait for the day that their site gets hacked by the inevitable upcoming hacker group out to prove a point. I'll be interested in seeing the reaction of ancient hackers gone corporate.
I always thought Defense stuff was so secret that you could not even talk about it outside the special room you were supposed to work on it.
I've been called in as a consultant for banks that have more security than these jokers (no laptop, couldn't touch keyboard and could only look at screen when operator authorized me to do so).
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