Posts by Pascal Monett

Malls suspend plan to track shoppers' cellphones

"We are simply seeking to create a level playing field for offline retailers"

Should be "We are simply trying to screw people over just like on the Internet".

There, that's better.

Need for Speed: The Run

Count me out

Yet another "driving" game where the AI opponents magically suffer none of the issues the player is confronted with, and the player has to succeed perfectly in every aspect if he is to have a chance to win.

And they call that a GAME ?

Sorry guys, for me a game is something that amuses me. Constant frustration does not amuse me, and it seems this title has it in spades.

So I'll stick with NFS Porsche 2000, thank you. It's graphics may be dated, but it seems that its gameplay remains best-of-breed.

EA retreats, offers free Battlefield 1943 after all

"so many console games are gimped due to xbox's lack of HDD"

God am I old.

I remember a time when no console had an HDD.

That must have been sometime during . . . last century.

Just for the record : console will ALWAYS "gimp" games, because they are a closed platform. You can give them terabytes of HDD is you wish - a year after they come out they will be outdated and start crimping again.

Because, until a pocket computer has the processing ability to display any scene in any size with any number of particles/polygones/whatchamacallits, the better platform will always be the one that can be upgraded.

And that means the PC.

Cisco to HP: 'Stop suing former staffers'

No, no, no

You're thinking MANAGER and the article concerns EMPLOYEES.

Wrong caste my good sir.

Managers are the caste that get the good stuff whatever moronic decisions they make.

Employees are the caste that should gratefully PAY for the privilege of not being curb-stomped every Monday morning, and if they have the impudence to actually want to leave the WONDERFUL opportunity that is their employer they should rightfully fear for their lives like the scum they are.

At least, that's how it appears to be at HP.

Software maker sorry for trying to silence security researcher

"we are deeply sorry"

No you're not. You saw the 800-pound EFF gorilla coming your way and ran with your tail betwixt your legs like the bullying cowards you are. Having realized that all that blustering and fleeing happened in public, you are now desperately trying to salvage your reputation with typical PR maneuvering.

But you are fooling no one.

The Register Guide on how to stay anonymous (part 3)

Microsoft makes an excellent mass market browser

I'm sorry, but it's going to take at least two more IE versions and five years of absence of exploits and zero-day news every Monday before I even start thinking of giving any credibility to that kind of remark.

As for Windows 7, since I started using it last year I have been grudgingly forced to accept that it is indeed less of a pile of crap than XP was, and slightly more secure.

But only slightly.

Because my actual security is based on a hardware firewall and my insistence on using Firefox coupled with NoScript and a few other privacy-ensuring addons.

Oh, and my refusal to use Outlook, or to blindly click on any damn popup that tries to make me think it is important.

New human-brain chip can be adjusted for cannabis effect

Another step forward

And going straight for positronic brains, apparently.

Long Live Asimov !

Boffin icon for obvious reasons.

Rambus tumbles in antitrust reversal

Lost 60% of their stock value ?

I hope they never get it back.

I hope all the companies that they intimidated/swindled out of "licenses" will start hammering at their door to get it back.

Bring back corporal punishment - I want to see the Rambus CEO take twenty lashes.

Fingerprint scanner can detect drugs in sweat

The 5th amendment does not exist in East Anglia

I'm sure the police in East Anglia will get a good laugh if you attempt to use that argument against this technology.

But please continue posting excerpts of US law concerning subjects where it is absolutely not relevant in any way, it's always so fun to read about when nobody cares.

Now Russians can't even contact their busted Mars probe

I'm not convinced that satellites need modern CPU technology to do their job. After all, a 486 is still quite capable of receiving and sending radio messages, no need for a quad-core 3Ghz monster.

And, in space more than anywhere else, the need for proven technology is paramount. They don't need to run Crysis, so if a 486 is good enough, slap it in, shield it and sent it up.

Bloke gets wedding tackle trapped in ring

"It is amazing what situations some people end up in"

Yeah, because he was just wandering around without pants but with a boner, and happened to trip over something in the tool shed and lodge himself straight through said ring.

Total happenstance. Unbelievable string of coincidences, honest, guv.

NASA: 2012 solar flares could DEVASTATE CITIES!

Oh really ?

"There simply isn't enough energy in the sun to send a killer fireball 93 million miles to destroy Earth"

Is it just me, or does that sound like another tragic Last Word moment ?

Renault Fluence ZE

Fossile fuels have been running out for the past 60 years, so I think it's about time to drop that argument.

Especially since there are some scientists that have managed to make fuel from algae, so fuel is here to stay.

OFFICIAL: Last Western Black rhino snuffs it

“Human beings are stewards of the earth"

Yep, and they're doing their job perfectly well - for a drunk, cocaine-addled junkie, that is.

Boffins spy on iPhone screens from 200ft away

"can they carry out this analysis from composite CCTV footage?"

Just wait for next episode of CSI. Or is NCIS ? I never watch them anyways.

Open 'Facebook killer' survives on cash donations

PayPal is not your pal

A true bank cannot deprive you from accessing your money unless a court order says otherwise.

PayPal declares that it has signed the bank charter, yet it still allows itself the right to block accounts without any court order or, it would appear, any valid reason.

Deal with PayPal carefully. As long as it works, it's fine, but when it goes sour, you will suffer.

Boffinry summit names 3 new elements

Yeah, why no unotanium ?

After all, I seem to recall a film mentioning that element.

Oh wait . .

Alien city lights could be detected across interstellar space

I have a question

Independantly of the lighting issue, which is a rather interesting thread, I have a question on a different matter.

All I have read about detecting exoplanets indicates that we can only "see" them when they are between us and their Sun.

To me, that says that we see their "night" side.

Now could someone explain to me just how we are going to make the difference between a lit night-side indicative of civilization, and a dark night-side indicating nothing at all ?

At however many light-years away the planet is ?

Overshadowed as it is by its Sun's glare ?

I somehow have trouble believing that we are going to be able to make a difference, from Earth, between a civilization with night-time lighting and a planet made of rather light-coloured regolith.

Now, the day we can start those evaluations from the Kuiper belt of that planet's star, I will be overjoyed and duly impressed - if I am on the ship that is doing the surveying, that is.

Duke Nukem Forever dev slams unfair reviews

Nothing is better than Half-Life

And I'm talking about the original, dated graphics and all (there's a texture patch by the way).

The storyline, compelling action, marvellously devious AI, everything in Half-Life was tailored to perfection. Half-Life is only just as good as Half-Life, with better graphics obviously, but with the same limitations (rails, essentially).

There is no other game yet made that has ever matched the Half-Life series for AI, story or atmosphere. Not in the FPS genre in any case.

I do not hesitate to give Gearbox the credit of having made Opposing Forces, far from it. OF was a great addition to the genre, and the first game offering truly useful sidekick performance. Once again a great Half-Life AI success.

But DNF is not in the same league, it's as simple as that. Of course, the turkey Gearbox was handed is most likely heavily responsible for its current reception. But maybe the Opposing Forces developers are not there anymore either. Taking over someone's code is hard enough, taking over someone's knowledge is next to impossible.

Nude lady recreates Star Wars tauntaun scene in dead horse

"[...] didn't intend to offend anyone"

The epitaph of our civilization.

Want to avoid all private-data breaches, ever? Here's how

Interesting method

Use the biometric data to has the encryption key used to encrypt the private data.

Not only is the private data protected by the length of the encryption key (which can be extended as processing power increases), but being hashed by the biometric data that is not stored ensures that strictly no one can legally access the private data which is thus protected against intrusion and against police meddling.

I like that idea a lot.

Battlefield 3

Sorry but I won't be buying this one

At least not until LAN play is once again on the table.

EA has been continuously constraining the Battlefield franchise. In BF 1942 (the first title), you could have your LAN server, with bots if you wanted (ie not all human players) and you could choose among whatever factions were available for fighting on the map of your choice (one size).

This situation remained in the series up to and including BF Vietnam (the last patch of which controlled the foliage option for the bots and made the game a real pleasure). Then we got BF2, and the options diminished.

In BF2, you could choose map sizes to correspond to your number of players. A great option, until you found out that said option was not available for LAN players, only for official (pay-for) servers. LAN servers (ie your server) could only run the small maps for 16 players.

That was corrected by some community map makers who did a bang-up job of saying "screw that" and made the huge 64-player maps available for LAN play, with bots.

Then, of course, there was the progression system, not available for LAN players at all because you had to be on a public server to be able to use it. In itself, it was not really a problem, except that your LAN server would not allow you to play with stuff you hadn't unlocked on public servers. So you had the incredible situation of being forced to use the basic (lame) weapons on your private server. Why not the best ones ? To force you to play on public servers, of course.

So the community once again rolled up its sleeves and birthed a personal ranking server for BF2. Then the war started. With each patch and major update, EA did something that would break the personal server functionality, and the intelligent people behind said server would toil day and night to produce a patch to the ranking server in record time.

In the end, it became simply ridiculous.

Finally, with BF2 gone was the time where you could choose the factions for the maps. They were hard-coded into the map rules. Sure, there is certainly some very good explanation for that, but let's be realistic, hmm ? If they could do it in the previous versions, there really isn't any technical problem with making such freedom of choice available in BF2. I think it was to avoid certain "political" issues, like peoply whinging over the fact that some public server had Euro forces fighting against US Marines.

Now EA has entirely removed the LAN option. Maybe it's temporary (because that happened in BF2 as well, and EA relented with a patch), maybe it isn't. But one thing is certain : EA is once again doing everything it can to lock down the game and prevent people from enjoying it the way they want to. And I do not want to be subject to the mind-numbing amount of griefers and morons that infest public servers like lice.

With BF2 I did the resistance thing. I installed the official patches, and went hunting for the private ranking server patches. My friends and I played BF2 and the patch game for over two years. We had loads of fun, even though 58 out of 64 players were bots. Maybe even because of that.

I will not submit to the same shenanigans again. If EA does not open up BF3, allow LAN parties and private ranking servers, then fine. What it means is that BF3 is not a game for me and I will not buy it or play it.

The promotional material is stunning, for sure, but my friends and I have other games that are fun to play and don't limit us on purpose.

We'll find the Frostbite engine in some other game that is more gamer-friendly anyway.

Maybe it's because nobody listened to said commander in BF2 ?

Because when I played BF2 on public servers way back when, the commander was expected to do one thing : use the artillery. For the rest, he could put all the targets he wanted on the map - nobody cared a whit about complying.

Oh, and you could be certain of two things on a public server : the most obnoxious players would rush to be the commander, and the ones who lost would spend the rest of the round spamming for a removal of the guy who got the place.

All in all, a frankly annoying string of events that happened with a regularity that I prefer to forget.

Canada founded on 'relentless pursuit of beaver'

Feels like motto material to me ;)

Earth escapes obliteration by comet

Thank you for that precision, M. Yeoman

In other news, the Internet can now start panicking over how the Earth is more at danger from the subatomic particles of JPL scientists than from comets.

Tune in at 11 for details on this new threat to our lives . . .

Tsunami Trojan: First Mac attack based on Linux crack

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.

Google report reveals YouTube takedown requests... by country

So government criticism is no longer accepted ?

Now that is a slippery slope there. I do hope that such an excuse is not going to be seen again.

I also hope that whoever was receiving said takedown request did not comply on that point.

Obama man: 'Global internet surveillance skyrocketing'

"under fierce attack by authoritarian governments worldwide"

Scandalous.

Everyone knows that the USA is the only government that has the right to worldwide snooping.

Last mystery of first recorded supernova laid to rest

Normally, it should be dwerrows ...

Gov: DAB must battle on, despite being old and rubbish

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.

Big Dane study finds no mobe cancer link

One question

How are those who are interested in keeping the fear present going to succeed in demolishing the credibility of this study ?

Because they're going to try.

Web block would 'spark arms race' against pirates

"just because it was hard to enforce the law didn't mean you shouldn't try to enforce it"

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.

Mystery over bogus Facebook login data dump

Correction

"Team Swastika has only been around for a week but has already made itself look ridiculous."

There, got it for you.

Debt collectors warned off pursuing punters on Facebook

"social networks typically make you unfindable if you don't want to be found" ?!?

In what universe is that true ?

Because in this one, social networks are there to show you, whether you want it or not.

If you want to hide, don't join a social network.

Yahoo! revenue! AND! profits! bomb! as! expected!

I'd agree to that package as well.

As a matter of fact, I think we should all send our resumés to Yahoo! with a letter that simply states :

Couldn't do worse.

Duck and cover: ROSAT is the next re-entry

This is an outrage !

6.5 whatsis ?

Oh, you mean 1,572.4 jubs. Now I can imagine it :)

German states defend use of 'Federal Trojan'

Thank you, Germany

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.

Microsoft gets trademark for retail store plans

Bollocks

MS kills, un-kills Zune HD media player

So, the summer intern is still in charge of the Twitter department ?

That's really nice of you, Microsoft, but don't you think it's time to offer a permanent contract ?

Tuesday's iPhone event more than Apple.com can bear

You haven't watched the news in a long time, have you ?

Hackers disguise malware as emailed docs from smart printers

It uses Javascript ?

Thank you NoScript.

Again.

Microsoft mulls OEM distie shake-up

What a surprise

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.

Facebook: 'We don't track logged-out users'

That sounds just like the dentist when he says "this won't hurt a bit" before shoving a shrieking piece of spinning metal in your molars.

Bot spanking for social network ranking

Interesting

There is now a tool to measure the best among the vapid and uninteresting.

I am thrilled to be able to ignore that as well.

Thank you for the information.

EMC exec flames El Reg

Agreed, frank 3

El Reg is doing its job : biting the hand and posting rebuttals on the front page is, as far as I can determine, good journalism.

So keep it up, vultures !

Skype for iPhone makes stealing address books a snap

Excuse me while I re-read the first line of the article

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 BDP-S380 Blu-ray player with IPTV

Oh great

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.

Sixty-seven WIMPs spotted in the wild, maybe

Don't you just love how any discussion about the fundamentals of the Universe are immediately trolled by pseudo non-beleivers and turned into yet another Science vs God debate ?

You neither ?

Oh, good.

Scientists discover Tatooine-style world 200 lightyears off

Re:"We don't even know how life starts"

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) !

PayPal to move into the shop - without cards or NFC

Yes, PayPal is that bad

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.