Posts by Pascal Monett

CTOs warned to prepare for Windows 7 budget squeeze

Ah, Gartner

So they're still in the market selling ludicrous "forecasts" ? Oh well, one born every minute.

Twitpic pulls 50 Cent bum burger snap

Re:"You also don't get where he is without working, really, really, really hard"

Poppycock.

You get where he is by shouting really, really, really loudly and repetitively, until the morons start believing that your drivel is justified since you've been blabbering for so long.

Stockholm schoolgirls fined for bugging staff room

Re:"avoiding any feeling of insult"

You' re on the Internet, bud. There is no way you'll avoid insulting somebody.

Assange denies 'sexual assault' allegations

Yeah, it's bullet-proof . . .

but have you seen the latest bunker-busters that them thar Air Force jockeys can unleash on "strategic" targets ?

Intel's embedded security strategy faces tech obstacles

Huh ? Security in TVs ??

Good God please say it ain't so ! TVs are dumb terminals and should stay that way.

Any effort to grant them programmatic knowledge is just a security hole begging to be abused., or to imprint them with the ability to refuse to show the film we just bought at the store.

TVs should stay dumb, period.

That is non-negotiable.

Woman sues to force exposure of YouTube bullies

One thing is for sure

There are now dozens of videos entitled "Carla Franklin is sues Google".

One of them is only more than 2 minutes of a blurry still shot (a man and a woman on a beach, could be any couple) - I did not listen to the audio but it doesn't matter really since, if there is no positive identification of the individual, the words cannot be linked to the person.

Facebook login page still leaks sensitive info

Re:Lou Gosselin

"Get used to it; an email address can not, never has, never will be considered secure. It would be folly to pretend it is."

I understand the technical truth of your argument, however I cannot stand the idea that spammers basically have free reign to discover my email address because of the error (or insufficient protection) of a third-party website who _says_ that my data is private.

I still prefer the idea of a unique login error message like 'Permission denied. Please try again."

I know the lusers will find that maddeningly uninformative, but those who are consistently told everything they must do will never learn to pay attention anyway.

Apple fans drool over Liquidmetal widget

"ceramics which are [..] totally transparent to radio"

Gosh, must be great to have that kind of patent lying around.

Too bad they didn't think of actually using such a thing in making their Iphone.

Croydon Advertiser blows lid on 'sinister' brothel

Got it the wrong way around

The Croydon is actually a public service company, rigorously checking the morals of all companies who pass ads in their paper. Those who fail the test get exposed, in addition to having paid money for ads.

It's a moral win for everyone !

Isn't it ?

Police slam internet justice - then use it themselves

End of Cragslist personals

Hey guys, forget Craigslist ! Just go to the Met's website and you can pick TRUE professionals !

Verizon demos 1Gbps over existing fiber network

Just a small correction

>Brian Whitton, executive director of Verizon's technology group, put a marketing spin on the results. "This kind of bandwidth capacity will provide Verizon the ability to start meeting FiOS customers' needs by offering more bandwidth to support services such as email, Usenet, multiplayer texting and limited browsing in privileged areas," he said.<

There, reads better like that.

Microsoft's volume licensing site goes titsup - again

Wrong question, mate

The real question is :

"What is right with Microsoft ?"

It's a question of what still works, because making a list of what is wrong would take days.

DARPA funds Mr Spock on a Chip

A probability processor ?

Calculating the probability of something requires extensive knowledge of the factors that come into play, as well as their relative importance.

Referring to Mr. Spock, it has been demonstrated time and time again that, faced with a totally unknown phenomenon (the staple of T.O.S. episodes), you simply cannot state any probabilities whatsoever with any sort of scientific basis.

The processor is not going to be the thing defining the factors, now is it ? So how exactly is this "probability processor" going to work ? If it has to be fed all the parameters - which is the only way for it to do any statistical analysis - then there's a human that will be doing the work and the "probability" processor will just be a calculator, like any processor today.

It must be more complicated than all that, since there are so many much more intelligent people than me working on that kind of thing, but I'd like the description to be at least something I have a chance of understanding.

George Lucas names Star Wars Blu-ray release date

I still have the VHS

Quite worn out, I admit, but there is still enough detail to notice that HAN SHOT FIRST.

And, as has been outlined in quite a good argument somewhere else, making Greedo shoot first is a disastrous decision for Han's character. In the original version, Han went from being a true selfish smuggler to an actual good person.

With Greedo shooting first, Han goes from semi-innocent good guy to . . good guy, with a bit of selfishness in between that, all of a sudden, is not so comprehensible.

Way to screw up your own story, Lucas.

Hurd snubbed HP board to settle claims

What ?

Jodie Fisher is on Steam as well ?

Nvidia licenses Rambus memory tech

Hardware patents are perfectly normal

They are undoubtedly a driving force in innovation.

At one condition : those who hold the patents make the product.

It is normal for a patent holder to be rewarded for establishing a new, innovative product and making the effort to bring said product to the market.

It is not normal for a patent holder to be rewarded if all he does is brainstorm without ever actually making anything. That is called intellectual masturbation.

I don't care if your idea works, if you do not create wealth, you're just a parasite and I see no reason to give you money.

Excuses such as "we license our know-how to companies" are not valid. If you don't create a product and bring it to market, you are nothing but a parasite.

Hackers spoof car warning system

Unique identifier fore and aft

No more dangerous than having a unique physical identifier per individual (ie: a face).

There is an enormous difference between being recognizable anywhere and being trackable everywhere. That difference is called privacy.

If I drive my car to given destination, I do not expect the police - or anyone else, for that matter - to take any notice of my trip as long as I do not cause any accident. Even if a patrol car happens to follow the same route for a few kilometers (or miles), I don't expect them to write my number down until I actually do something reprehensible (like cross a white line, or exceed the speed limit).

If my trip becomes a line in a database whether I've done something wrong or not, then there is violation of my privacy and i will fight against it as much as I can. Nobody has any business tracing my activity without my express consent if I remain within the limits of the law.

Cashpoint mugger flashes distractionary chesticles

Add insult to injury

In French that would be

"ajouter l'insulte à l'injure"

Microsoft delivers dedicated 30-minute big Fail support

Actually, it had better be costly

I hope it will cost an arm and a leg.

That way, when the inevitable screw-up occurs, MS will have heavyweight, top-dollar-paying customers screaming down their ears and the true, appalling cost of MS software will become apparent.

After one or two of those, management will have a chance to become desensitized with MS and maybe finally switch over to another platform that was built for security and robustness.

Mission-critical used to exclude MS as a matter of course, back when true IT engineers were still listened to, but that was before the rise of PowerPoint management. Now, you have Windows for Warships. If that does not send a shiver up your spine, then you are part of the sheep.

NT box up for 6 years without a reboot ?

Shame on you for not properly updating that box !

Because if you were following proper MS patching schedules, it would be rebooting at least twice a week - or more when the patches were faulty.

6 years without a patch ? That box probably accounts for .01% of worldwide spam.

Congrats !

Microsoft: Hotmail fix coming soon to a browser near you

"switch off the High Contrast display mode"

That's like asking me to roll down my window to ensure proper power steering.

Microsoft digs Macs in back-to-school ads

Gaming on a Mac ?

You knock Windows and your excuse is gaming ? In what universe do you live ?

This is the list of games I have currently installed :

AI War, Bejeweled 2 dlx, Battlefield 2, Brothers In Arms, Car Tycoon, Civilization 4, Crysis + Warhead, Diablo II, Dungeon Keeper II, Evil Genius, Far Cry, Freelancer, Galactic Civilizations, Hellgate London, Imperium Galactica II, Lemmings95, LotRO, Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries, Nuclear Ball 2, Star Wars Rebellion, Rome Total War, Settlers 2, SimCity 4, StarCraft II, Unreal Tournament 4, WarCraft III, Capitalism 2, Company Of Heroes, Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War, Dungeon and Dragons Online, Driving Speed 2, Etherlords 2, FreeCiv, Future Pinball, GTA 3 San Andreas, Lode Runner, Mahjongg, Micro Machines 4, Transport Tycoon dlx, Plasma Pong, Prison Tycoon, Stubbs, Supreme Commander, SWINE, Syndicat, Transport Giant, Theme Hospital, TOCA Race Driver 3 and World of Goo.

And you can add Steam games if you want :

Alien Breed Impact, Alien Swarm, Counter-Strike Source, Day Of Defeat, Defense Grid : The Awakening, Enemy Territory Quake Wars, Gratuitious Space Battles, Guild Wars, Left 4 Dead 2, Operation Flashpoint : Dragon Rising, Portal, Half-Life (+Opposing Forces +Blue Shift), Half-Life 2, Serious Sam HD : First Encounter, Supreme Commander 2, Torchlight, UT3: Black Edition, WH40K DoW II.

And these are just the games I play currently, not all the ones I have (legitimately, I must add).

So, MAC boy, how many of these games do you have on your platform ?

Since not long ago, you have Portal. That much I know, since they made a great PR stunt about it on Steam.

What else ?

And consoles, pah ! No console has the selection I have, period. No console has any RTS title worth anything. I doubt you can play any Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, or other MMORPG title on console.

How many subscribers to World of Warcraft already ?

Windows is far from dead, troll.

Far from.

How an ancient printer can spill your most intimate secrets

Sure, today it's inkjey and laser

But one has to start somewhere, and it seems rather logical to use the most obvious system to weed out the errors first.

After all, what input is being used may have little influence once the patterns have been defined.

Thus, the next step of this boffinry is to ensure that recognition gets boosted to at least 95% in all cases.

After that, all that is needed is to define the patterns of an inkjet printer and presto ! Industrial espionage via the secretary's personal paper waster.

It's a work in progress, don't knock it.

Ellison blasts HP 'idiots' for Hurd's exit

The claims are "utterly false"

So that's why Hurd resigned. And that's why he cut a private deal with the miss, paid out of his own (deep) pocket.

Come on, since when do companies have a history of telling the truth ? They are not part of the legal system, they say what they want to say and if what they say is not true, tough cookies.

The HP board decided to do a cover-up, well duh. Meanwhile, if millionaire buddies pitch in for each other, that does not keep the rank and file at HP from not regretting Hurd one bit.

Besides, why agree to a private deal and resign if you have not done anything wrong ? No, the truth is that Hurd actually screwed HP over for a lot more than just 20 grand and he decided that, since the excrements have started to fly toward the fan, it was best to make a quick exit and not have a real inquiry uncover all the dirty secrets and meddling he is guilty of.

Microsoft ends Office lovers' employee discount program

Office 2010 ? Pah !

My Office 2000 works fine, thank you. I'm not paying for anything more.

HP's Hurd quits quickly on sexual harassment probe

Resigned as soon as he found out, did it ?

So it has to be true and, more importantly, it has to be rock-solid undeniable because otherwise, we'd get the righteous indignation of a poor, wronged millionaire CEO.

There is now a big GUILTY sign hanging over his head.

And dinner conversation must be rather bleak.

Serves the bastard right. You can't screw everyone all the time.

Defcon speaker calls IPv6 a 'security nightmare'

Internet connection requires an address

Thus, if a gaming console has Internet connectivity, it must have an IP.

IPv6 has squintillions of available addresses, and that is a good thing. Unfortunately, humanity has a track record of occupying available resources until their exhaustion. That trend is already well underway for IPv6 as well.

Just think about it : smartphones, consoles, even some BluRay players have Internet connectivity already. There is talk about connecting fridges, televisions and freezers as well. Cars will end up connected one day.

So, let us imagine a future where a 4-person household has the following elements connected to the Internet :

- 2 cars

- 3 televisions

- 4 media players

- 3 consoles

- 7 smartphones

- 2 fridges

- 1 freezer

- 1 dog

Yes, the dog. Don't tell me that they won't end up with GPS-tracking collars you can follow on your PC, because they will. Add as many dogs as you want.

So that makes a total of 23 IP addresses required for 1 house of 4 people.

Today ? We have 1 IP connection per household, with NAT inside the house.

The ration is then 1 to 23.

Yep, that IPv6 is well on its way to becoming saturated as well.

Won't be enough

It will never be worth enough to restructure to IPv6.

And if it does become worth big bucks, then the buying company will, at one point, have to decide to go IPv6 anyway.

Ballmer's 'lost generation' note finds resonance

Re:"I can open Terminal.app"

Well I'll be happy to leave you to your delusions and your keyboard-only environment, gramps.

Meanwhile, I'll be loitering on MMORPGS, FPSes and RTSes in various GUI environments including Windows, Suse, Fedora, Ubuntu and a few others.

On the same hardware.

Because I'm intelligent enough to know the difference between hardware and OS, and I do not confuse the OS I use, much less one single app on said OS, with "the computer".

Microsoft responds to IE8 'privacy quashed' report

Well that is hardly surprising

Anyone who thinks that Microsoft has its "users" best interests at heart should now be clearly aware of who Microsoft believes its users are.

It's not you and me.

Since Vista it is clear that Microsoft favors the RIAA/MPAA/rights holders, and now it is officially nurturing advertisers.

If only my favorite games ran on Linux, I'd be there yesterday.

Futurologist defends 'malevolent dust' warning

Well duh

Because nobody likes a liar caught in his own fibbing.

When you make claims based on technology, they had better be true, and his claim of having the idea of text messaging that nobody was interested in is a blatant lie.

And claiming easy success rates without proof is not doing his image any good either.

Easy

Just start posting bullcrap all over the place and the morons will start to believe in you.

Czechs toast Bud-beating beer win

There is no beer like Belgian beer

And you have not tasted beer until you've had a Brigand, or a Grimbergen Triple, or an Orval, and I could on and on for a lot longer than the size limit allows.

I bless the fact that I live not far from the Belgian border, so as to be able to easily sample any number of simply astounding beers whenever I fancy.

The Brigand, the Duvel, the Mort Subite, the Kwak with its hourglass-shaped glass that is the foundation of so many laughs (and spills !) . . .

No. Nobody can make beer like the Belgians.

Not the Aussies, not the Germans, not the Czechs and most certainly not Americans.

Mozy insists: It's not a bug...

Not an archival service, really ?

Could someone please explain to me the difference between a backup and an archive ?

I've worked in environments where "backups" were done on tape every day, with the now traditional one tape per day, one per week, one per month scheme, with enough tapes to keep a full year of data.

How exactly is that not a 365-day rolling archive system ?

Nuts to that excuse. They just forgot about, or specifically decided to forbid, archiving to external discs and are now trying desperately to spin it in a semi-positive way.

Own up to your mistakes, people. You actually get respect for that these days because so few people/companies have the balls to do so.

Microsoft should starve on radical penguin diet

The past is also littered

with all of Microsoft's failed projects.

For all the shine and bluster of the pyramids of cash that Windows and Office have brought to Microsoft, there are acres of fields full of the bones of past (and soon-to-be-past) projects that have failed more or less miserably.

In fact, one might say that there is nothing that Microsoft touches that does not wither and die, or live a stunted and limited life.

And I'm not talking about C# or any other programming "initiative". I'm talking about products that were supposed to bring in money. Next to none of them have, and the (very) few that have not been miserable failures have not had the shimmering success that they were supposed to at launch.

Not by a long shot.

Windows and Office are still around because of businesses that can't do without them. That is the Microsoft lifeline and I believe it will last for a while yet. But the market is becoming diverse on this point, which is something that Microsoft worked very hard to stamp out in the past and will not be able to do in the future.

Thus, yes, Microsoft is now on the decline and desperately needs to find a new cash cow, if you admit that desperate is living on top of a Himalaya of money with a badger nibbling away at the bills from the bottom.

Turkish pranksters load Facebook Translate with swears

Beggar's belief ? Hardly !

From an organization whose operating motto concerning users is "dumb fucks", it's hardly unbelievable.

It is, on the contrary, totally in line with the Wikipedia mentality, which is more than a bit hippy in believing that "the people know best".

Unfortunately, it has been proven time and time again that the only thing "people" know is how to destroy culture.

"People" are only interested in booze, money and your daughter's boobs.

It takes an enlightened mind to create - and such a mind is, by definition, the exception rather than the norm.

Am I becoming a misanthrope ? Check.

NoScript 2.0 beefs border patrol

So

The hillbillies now have Internet access ?

Who knew ?

Software emulation copyright case bumped to ECJ

This is good news

This case is shaping out to be a great improvement in the lives of developers. Copy code ? Unlawful and forbidden - normal. Copy functionality ? Lawful and allowed - great.

After all, if functionality could not be copied, then every car maker would have to have a different steering function since only one could have a steering wheel.

Can you imagine how awful that would end up being ?

Foxconn India closes factory as 250 workers fall ill

How about meshing the windows ?

If pesticide spraying has become "routine", then there has to be something really bad going on. Even a "normal" dose of pesticide every day simply cannot be good for anybody.

Software giant SAS loses copyright case in London

Can't agree - much too risky

Initially, copyright was for a mere 14 years. It got extended again and again until today's properly mind-boggling "life + 70 years". It can be extended farther than that, since all copyright lobbyists work for companies that do not "die" and would fervently wish for "life + as long as we own it".

Create a software patent thingy and you will simply open the door for the same shenanigans. It took only one stupid judge to grant companies the same rights as people, and that was before the time companies had big money to impress senators and anybody they needed to buy.

As long as software patents do not exist, all that big money can only be spent on trying to make it exist. The problem stops there. If, however, you open the door only a crack, you'll be giving a toehold for big money to open that crack wider until they can pass a bulldozer through it.

And they will.

Hubble eyes sun-roasted exoplanet

Sorry

As per this article : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_tail, comet tails ALWAYS point AWAY from the sun, given that it is the solar wind that creates them in the first place.

It's like candles : when you blow them out, they're never going to point towards you, always away.

What about mass and orbit ?

I mean, as the planet loses mass, it is supposed to drift away from its star, isn't it ?

Admittedly, given its short distance, that may not be enough to avoid being engulfed in the red giant phase, but it might delay the inevitable a few millenia.

In any case, I doubt the planet will actually "evaporate". Once it is small enough, the pressure from the solar wind will logically push it far enough for it to stop being sand-blasted like it is now.

Then it'll need a few million years to cool down.

Which should be about what we need to invent the technology to get there and mine the wonderful crystals that must form.

P2P judge trims student's fine by 90 per cent

@Robert Hill

I must say that your attitude in defense of the RIAA riles me up.

You adamantly bring forth the artists as an excuse for RIAA's extortionate maneuvers. We all know that it is not about the artists, and no artist is going to see one cent of this fine because RIAA is fucking artists over at every turn.

You claim that artists are clamoring to sign up with labels. It is true that young groups waiting to be recognized may accept to sign up with Big Records, but it is also true that, in doing so, they give up their rights to their songs - which, in turn, ensures that RIAA is the only one who gets the proceeds of fines and exploitation.

If artists are clamoring to be under RIAA rule, please explain why so many artists that have suceeded (Madonna, Michael Jackson, ...) have created their OWN publishing house ? Because they have understood how the industry works and want to turn it to their own advantage.

In other words, successful artists do not need to accept being screwed by RIAA. It's the unsuccessful ones who accept being shafted for a chance at glory.

That hardly sounds like an industry worth defending to me.

Europe approves mass data transfer to US

No, really ?

If that was actually the case, methinks an Al-Quaida-dominated government would actually refuse to hand over financial details to an enemy state.

So, by virtue of consequence, said professional moron is just spouting bollocks as usual. But of course, it's an American radio, so no intelligence is required.

Reverse engineer extracts Skype crypto secret recipe

The fail is for you

It has been long proven that knowing an encryption algorithm is not equal to being able to decrypt a message encrypted by said algorithm (cf RSA).

Of course, that supposes that the algorithm is actually efficient and not subject to backdoors or other failures that make cracking it easier.

So yes, if your algorithm is good, publishing it ensures that everyone can see just how good it is.

Security by obscurity is only good for crooks and the simple-minded morons who can't write good code.

Parliament misled over Climategate report, says MP

"Why [..] make the data available to you, when your aim is to [..] find something wrong with it."

Uh, well maybe, just maybe, because that is the scientific method ?

Publishing your results if fine, but it is meaningless if you do not publish the data as well as the method, because that is what allows fellow scientists to evaluate your results, reproduce them, and validate them.

Science is not an "I have the answer" sort of affair. Science is a "This is what I found based on this data with this method, check it out" affair. Collaborative.

That the CRU used such a moronic attitude to sharing its data speaks volumes about the reliability of its personnel and its conclusions.

I refuse to consider anyone in the CRU as a scientist worthy of the name.

I refuse to give in to the current GW hysteria as long as such shenanigans continue to take place.

If it is true, then science can validate it. GW should not be a religion, it should be fact. Facts are established by data, not by spouting dogma and covering up or tweaking data to suit the conclusion.

Everything Everywhere now something somewhere

One question

Everything Everywhere - so can I order pizza and have it delivered ?

US authorities shutdown websites accused of movie piracy

Only billions ?

The losses are now counted in mere billions ?

Not tens of billions, or hundreds of billions, just billions.

Less than 10, then.

So, things are getting better.

Microsoft's KIN is dead, long live Windows Phone 7

Let's be charitable

BOB is last century. Let us forget it and RIP.

Besides, Microsoft has had such a string of failures since Y2K, there is ample enough fodder to make fun of without digging up that old corpse.

Hey Ballmer !

I've got an idea :

Instead of continuously ridiculing yourself in the mobile arena, the next time you have a bright idea, just sum up all the expenses and write me a check for the total.

At least you'll make someone happy, and without the fail.

It's a win-win as far as I'm concerned. !