Posts by Pascal Monett

Sarkozy fails to stop sale in voodoo hoohah

The whole situation is rather ironic

I found it quite funny when my dear Mr. President's lawyer said, in response to the judge's dismissal, "I know civil law, and I know criminal law, but I never knew there was a right to humor" (liberally translated from memory).

Such an answer proves two things :

1) this guy has a rather inflated view of his abilities. IANAL, of course, but I highly doubt that one man could possibly grasp all the laws that my Parliament passes like crazy all year round in not one, but two very complicated legal arenas. Oh well, I suppose bluster is one way of upping one's tarif.

2) this guy has even less humor than Mini-Prez.

Now the really ironic thing about this whole issue, in my eye, is the fact that Mini-Prez has abundantly and publicly professed his admiration for The Merkin Way in the social and economic arenas, yet now, just when the public is taking up the Merkin habit of Protected Speech in the domain of humor, he turns around and tries to stomp on it.

No cookie, short stuff. Your ego really is quite a bit too large for your head.

Windows 7 borrows from OS X, avoids Vista

"built on the same kernel"

There goes any interest I could possibly have had in Windows 7.

Same kernel, therefor same embedded DRM.

So I'll stick with XP yet again.

Yahoo! begs world+dog for free engineering

Bring! back! the! !!! for! Yahoo! article! titles!

It is a mandatory feature.

Shame on the editor for not catching it.

Oz pub dishes up really crap ice cream

Suspicions

Let me see, a whole family who has close relations with a branch of pubs, goes to dine at a competitor's pub, raises a fuss over some trivial matter, gets a complimentary ice cream, then accuses pub manager of serving human waste with it. Media takes to the story like flies to, um, right.

Let me try a different scenario : guy who owns a pub asks his sister to go trash his competitor's reputation. Sister kindly obliges and packs some dog doo and the rest of her family for the mission. When the complimentary ice cream comes along (proof that the pub owner has a sense of commerce as of yet unknown in Paris), she sees her opportunity and strategically stores the dung, then accuses the competitor with holy wrath. The almighty ruckus that follows means mission accomplished. Original pub owner now smug over his teleguided victory, and tabloids all over the world have three days of subject matter. Money shower is an additional bonus which family will conscientiously spend at brother's pub (if they get it).

Trojan attacks Microsoft's emergency patch vuln

Yet another Code Red

Dear me, dear me, another end-of-times, Internet Armageddon, everything is going to melt down worm thingy that won't be able to get past my firewall either.

Color me utterly shellshocked. I'm off to stock up on canned foods - sometime next year.

English speakers hit hardest by ID theft

"claiming to have never shared"

Shouldn't that be "claiming to have EVER shared" ?

I mean, if only one in four Germans has never shared a password, that means that 75% have shared a password, so that beats the living daylights out of the others, doesn't it ?

As for the crux of the article, in my opinion 100% of PayPal users are at risk of having either their money locked or their details swiped, so anything less is good news for those concerned.

Personally, I wouldn't use PayPal unless they put a gun to my head.

Microsoft sued in China for black screen of death

@frymaster

So you presume that WGA never has any false positives ?

If that were true, then your position would be understandable, unfortunately there are a lot of people around who have perfectly legitimate installs and were bitten anyway, so your presumption goes out the window of veracity.

That said, China is a poster child for piracy, with XP discs (hologram and all) available on the street for something like $2, so, ironically, it is indeed possible that his copy is a fake one even if he doesn't know it.

I'll wait for the results of the Chinese court to call it either way - he is a lawyer after all, he should be smart enough to avoid ruffling feathers if he is at fault in the first place.

Yahoo! axes! (at least)! 1,400! workers!

"getting Yahoo! more fit"

Great idea, Jerry.

Start at the top, won't you ?

Microsoft raises anti-piracy posse

trade in copies of XP to increase

Let's make one thing clear : if MS is not selling XP any more, then copying XP is not piracy and the company is not losing money. Well it is, but it can't complain about it.

I might even go a step further and say that somebody should sue. There is no technical reason to retire XP at this point, it is still compatible with current hardware and a large proportion of users have decided that it does the job well enough. Therefor, putting a stop to XP sales is tantamount to a refusal to sell.

Of course, that argument will probably never sail in court, but this is the first time that we have the case where the latest and brightest (Vista) is massively shunned by the market which prefers the old, clunky but functional XP. When XP came out, it was indeed an improvement over 98, so there was little question but to upgrade and nobody cried when 98 was "retired".

Vista is not an improvement over XP, it is an impediment and an intrusion into the privacy of innocents. People don't like it, people don't want it, and XP is still the order of the day.

By that reasoning, MS has the duty to continue selling and supporting XP since the market demands it does so.

I'm sure there's a lawyer somewhere that can argue this successfully.

Even so, the day MS stops selling XP is the day it can no longer complain about people copying it. It's the only solution left, and it'll be MS's fault.

I'm waiting for the day MS stops the authentication servers. If the current trend continues and XP remains on the market radar, MS will have one hell of a backlash.

Germans seduce Jacqui over remote hacking of disks

The spirit of the law

I'd really like to meet one single politician who understands what the spirit of the law actually means.

I am innocent and I have the right to not have my privacy invaded just because some lunatics deem that my privacy needs to be rectally examined to prove it.

I do not need to prove my innocence, and you who are in power are not empowered to violate my life just to "make sure".

That is the spirit of the law.

Yes, it makes it harder to catch criminals and terrorists, but nobody said democracy was easy.

Besides, all this being done in the name of protecting me from terrorism ? Utter bollocks. Since 2001 we haven't caught a single terrorist worthy of the name, what makes them think that breaking into my house and planting a trojan on my PC is going to make things easier ?

It has nothing to do with terrorists and everything to do with locking down individual liberties to a level we have not seen since the 13th century and pope Innocent III (what irony in the name !).

Stardock revises 'Gamer Bill of Rights'

Game protection

Because computers and OSes are complicated things, vendors have taken liberties with our hardware and software that we would absolutely not have accepted in any other domain.

Imagine that you buy a car, and are told that you can only park it in three different places once you get home. Park it in a fourth place and it won't start anymore. Who would accept that ?

Worse, imagine that the car you buy and bring home makes your boiler stop working one hour out of six. When you call the repairman, he says it has nothing to do with the boiler, when you call the car vendor, he says the car is functioning as designed. What do you do now ?

After a few months with your car, you notice that there is a new box in the cellar, but you do not recognize the logo. There is also a warning that says "do not open or remove". If you remove the box and throw it away, your car doesn't start any more. You call the car salesman and he tells you, after much questioning, that the box is a required component of your car and you have to have it in your cellar for the car to work. But nobody told you that when you bought the car.

Oh, and you can have no other box in your cellar either. If you do, there will be a conflict and one or both boxes will disappear.

Because such things are not possible in real life, they have not happened. But that is exactly what is happening on our computers - because the vendors believe they have the right to treat your hardware and software as they see fit - with or without your permission.

They probably believe that, since you bought their product, you implicitly give them permission.

Well I don't.

How about you ?

French police probe Sarkozy bank fraud

Punishment ?

But of course ! That is the main tool or my illustrious President, and just about the only thing he does well. You can be sure that somebody is going to get fired over this, even if Sarkozy has to buy the bank via state funds to get it done.

Whether or not this incident is going to translate to better handling of accounts by the banks for the rest of us plebs is not something I'll hold my breath for, though.

Microsoft's 'ordinary Joe' promises Windows 7 bliss

DRM, DRM, DRM

Unless Win7 has that cancer removed, it has no more of a chance to be on my PCs than Vista did - which is to say nil.

US Air Force outlines combat raygun safety

@Simon

LASER stands for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation".

Yup, that's an acronym.

Ballmer stirs excitement with Yahoo! comments

Ballmer relieved ? Oh I get it !

So that's why we are in this financial crisis : because Ballmer wanted to tank Yahoo!'s price and that's how he did it. Kind of like throwing chairs in the office, but on a global market scale.

Now Yahoo!'s price has tanked and it is easy pickings for Monkey Boy, who can snap it up for a song and a skip.

Oohh, I feel the conspiracy threads building up already.

PayPal glitch freezes sellers' cash for weeks

Just comforting my opinion

I have never cared for Ebay and I have never liked PayPal (the name itself is a lie) which has always played fast and easy with people's accounts AND money, without any support worthy of the name.

And stuff like this just tells me I'm right.

If PayPal was a real bank, there's no way it could just hold you money like that. Real banks do not have that kind of problem. And with a real bank, if for some reason the web-banking portal is out of service, I can always go to the brick-and-mortar version or even just an ATM.

There is no way a real bank can lock my money from me unless it has a court order.

But PayPal thinks it IS the court.

Jackasses.

AVG tags ZoneAlarm as Trojan

I took that boat too

I was happy with AVG from v5 to v7 - right up to the point it told me for the third time in a row that a commercial version was available.

I get the point, you want to sell it. Now leave me with my free version and go away.

No ? Still nagging me every time I boot the PC ?

Fine then, off you go. Deinstall and Register cleanup (the inventor of THAT abomination should be shot).

Now I use COMODO, firewall, AV and surf-protection all in one. Works quietly and only pops up when it actually has a good question to ask.

I hope it won't bloat too soon.

Android comes with a kill-switch

Time to legislate

It is high time that a law be passed that declares any programmable item to be the sole property and purview of its physical owner.

I am sick and tired of companies pushing products that consider their operation to be the sole goal of whatever it is the product is supposed to run on.

Be it a PC or a phone, it is mine, understood ? If I want it to load a given app, they that app should be loaded, period. If I want to run a trojan, then that trojan should run, period.

And if I'm not smart enough to keep virii off my pieces, then I should pay for it in cash until I wake up to the fact and get it cleaned.

It should be forbidden to sell a product that limits user interaction in any way beyond the scope of the application. If a phone OS allows for downloading third-party apps, then there should be no centralized kill switch to turn some of those apps off.

Sure there will be scum and assorted virii, that's life on the intartubes. Profit from it and create a firewall app, don't muscle in with a kill switch that I cannot control.

Control is mine, you hear me ? MINE !

Adobe breaks sound barrier with Flash Player 10

"directly access the sound buffer"

Not in Vista it won't.

So it's an XP product, DX-9 compatible.

Doesn't matter, I have FlashBlock on my Firefox, and I fail to see why I should install another instance of bloat from Adobe.

Controversial ad serving firm Adzilla pulls out of the US

"None of us saw that it would become this much of an issue this quickly."

Uh-huh, sure. Well I'm glad you woke up to the fact, even if it was a bit late.

Mostly I hope that this will serve as a warning to other would-be companies willing to spy on people's lives and sell the results.

But frankly, that sentence shows one thing : they knew it WOULD be an issue, and they KNEW they would have to work around it, so they also knew it would get big, but they were banking on it not becoming a problem before they had time to settle in and become unremovable.

Has anyone tried to douse them in garlic and see if they shrivel ? No ? Too bad.

Storm botnet blows itself out

Re:flying below the radar

I've noticed a marked drop in spam mail across all of my accounts as well. If you call that flying below the radar, well then they can fly all they want, I don't mind.

What you might mean to say is that a new Storm II is quietly replicating itself without activating, extending its footprint and keeping mum until the day it unleashes a hurricane of spam and all security centers are drowned in data.

Now that would worry me if only for the ungodly amount of spam I'd be getting across 7 accounts.

I hope that is not what you meant.

MS roll out exploit prediction with Patch Tuesday

Thoroughly trolled

The trolls got in early on this one at look at the result.

Dennis Hopper joins French Legion of Honour

Another actor

There are five levels of commendation with the Légion d'Honneur, they are Knight, Officer, Commander, Grand Officer and Grand Croix.

Of the military who have given their lives in the course of their duty and who have been rewarded posthumously, most of the time if it was a grunt he got Knight, and if was an officer he would get Officer.

Being commended as Commander or Grand Officer hasn't happened in a long time.

It frankly bugs me that an actor gets a bigger commendation than a soldier who has laid his life down under orders.

Granted, there aren't that many any more and that is even a good thing, but really. If you do extend the once-renowned badge of military honor to people who have zero military merit, could you at least leave them as simple Knight.

NComputing pushes OLPC to one side in Indian schools deal

enabling affordable access

Curious, I would have thought that, in a country not yet beholden to proprietary, costly software, a free OS would be the best choice.

Especially since any educative software for the Indian subcontinent probably needs to be written from scratch, thus removing any justification for existing proprietary platforms. I mean, DirectX is not really all that useful for educative software, now is it ?

Let me guess, Steve, once again you promised a low, low, low eternal rent (in the small print) coupled with blatherings about SLAs and other stupidities, and maybe you even threw in 72 virgins to seal the deal ?

Gates predicts 'significant' US recession

All is well then

Gates has predicted misery for everyone else, so I'm reassured that everything will be fine.

Thanks, Bill, that's just the word I needed to regain confidence in the market !

Sarah Palin ordered to preserve Yahoo! emails

Reality USA

The entire US political process is a reality show that should be entitled : Democracy, The Failure.

The Land of the Used To Be Free would be a lot more entertaining if it didn't have so many nukes.

Microsoft's second Silverlight courts open-source coders

What heresy is this ?!?

An Open Source project "supported" by Microsoft ? But, Steve said that Open Source is a CANCER !!

Obviously he doesn't know about this project. It's impossible that he could possibly accept that his oh-so-virtuous-and-professional company be sullied by such a dangerous leprosy.

It has to be the doings of a fringe group that has infiltrated the Redmond compound.

Time for a purge, Steve !

Next Windows name unveiled: Windows 7

"this is the seventh release of Windows"

Will it be the 3rd failure ?

If 7 is just Vista in a new skirt, then my answer is YES.

Texan boffins working on electric cyber-heart

Just a thought

Did it really say "large external unit" to provide "pneumatic pressure" ?

And that is supposed to be hooked to an artificial heart in someone's chest ?!?

Yikes !

Blackswift hypersonic plane cancelled

So project cancelled ?

But they still get $10 million ?

To do what with, have meetings on a golf course ?

Phishers adapt old scams to exploit bank turmoil

"Phishing emails commonly pose as security checks from a prospective mark's bank"

No they don't. They come as checks from PayPunk, Bank of Merkins or Merkin Express, establishments in which I have no business at all, making it all the easier to just trash the stuff.

Vista scrabbles for X Factor

Vista works just as well

Gosh, you get a Vista machine with specs that would make a grown man cry, and when comparing to an old XP machine you say "it works just as well" and that doesn't make you pause and think about it ?

Hello ? Anybody home ?

If I go from a circa-2006 single-core machine with 1GB of RAM to a circa 2008 quad-core machine with 3GB or RAM and it doesn't work any better, then I just have to question the usefulness of the investment.

If you bought yourself a 300hp SUV to replace your economy car, yet couldn't put more stuff in the trunk, do you really think you would believe that you had made the "right" choice ?

Romanian national cops to $700,000 phishing trip

@David

Having a remote, abandoned warehouse is not something he thought of because that would mean still having to "go to work", an act which he obviously had trouble with.

Ford cars to gain prang-preventing radar rigs

80% - you're being kind

Personally, I am impatient to get to the point where we have cars that drive themselves from start to finish.

I dream of getting into my car, ordering the destination, and sitting back with a book and a drink.

When we're there, call me.

Geode - the Firefox add-on that knows where you are

Cool !

Another neat toy for hacker to hijack and misuse.

This could be fun.

US teen cuffed for sending nude phone pics

Turn the tables

Get a warrant to search the judges house, find the family album, search for the inevitable baby in the bathtub pic, and lock him up for child pr0n.

Then ask him what he thinks of his ruling on the girl.

Personally, if she was dumb enough to take pics of her own body and send them to classmates, it's her problem. She'll learn the hard way (and soon, if what I remember of school is still accurate) that once you send something out in the wild, it never disappears and always comes back to haunt you. At least one of her pics is probably already posted on a web page somewhere.

Otherwise, I totally agree with Mike on this. If she can get 20 years, then she's old enough to be responsible for her acts. If not, then there's no way she should get more than community service.

Facebook and Microsoft complete Live Search crowbarring trick

Without leaving Facebook . . .

Yeah, like Ctrl-N is so hard to do these days.

World's largest ad broker targets web games

Ridiculous

Playing web-based games means using a browser and going to a host page.

Every host page already has banner ads and placeholders for ads and ads on the sides and more ads on the bottom.

Now Google wants to include yet more ads ?

Thank $Deity for Adblocker.

UK.gov £12bn comms überdatabase 'wouldn't spot terrorists'

Miracle solution found !

Got a problem that, by traditional methods, is very hard to solve ?

Got a difficult task that would require thousands of man-hours and hundreds of trained professionals, maybe employed on a nation-wide level, to take care of ?

We have the solution ! It's called a DATABASE !

A DATABASE can solve ALL your problems !

The extreme processing power and efficiency of todays' hardware coupled with the data-mining techniques of a DATABASE means you can forget all about needing actual people who are trained and competent and spend entire months/years of their lives on a project.

The DATABASE will be able to solve all of your pesky issues just as soon as you have accurately modeled your base environment.

Looking for thieves ? Model your entire population and the DATABASE will find the culprits.

Looking for terrorists ? Model your entire population and the DATABASE will single out those with murderous intentions.

Looking for white-collar criminals ? Model your enti . . . ahem, please hold the line while our certified representative gets a hold of your nearest SWAT - uh - marketing team to outline for you the details of such a proposal.

Don't forget : the DATABASE is the key to a future without any more problems !

Especially for our company, that is.

</satire>

Boy band sings praises of Windows 7

Just need a good description

It's white guys pretending to be black rappers.

You know it can't be good just by saying that.

That said, the level of credit I currently give to Windows 7 is hardly tarnished by this piece of embarrassing spew. I'm already not going to buy it nor use it, so this rather comforts me in my decision.

Manhunt 2 to hit UK on Halloween

Vulnerable Adults

Is that a category of the population that is recognized by law ? Do they have a card, like the "physically impaired" ? Do they get tax breaks ?

An adult is an adult. Those, like me, who do not mind a bit of gore and mayhem if it is well done, and who like their games polished and deeply immersive with a good storyline, will make up their own minds.

I've already made up mine. I don't need no stinkin' ratings !

Anonymous plans zombie Scientology protest

Religion vs sect

A religion is something you are entitled to embrace or refuse, and are free to leave if you decide that it is not fulfilling your spiritual needs.

A religion does not lock you in, does not pester you to come to service, does not stop you at the door if you do not contribute, does not incite you to abandon friends and family, nor does it stalk/harass you once you have decided to leave.

A religion is a spiritual matter and, as thus, can simply not "force" people into following it. Any priest/pastor/mullah worth his salt knows that.

Given this definition, if your "religion" demands that you hand over a significant part of your monthly salary, and especially if you are threatened with banishment if you do not comply, then you are in a sect.

If your "priest" continuously demonstrates to you that what you think you know about the real world is wrong, you are in a sect.

If your "community" repeatedly denigrates your relations/family and tells you to get rid of them, you are in a sect.

If your only goal in life is to live for the community, then it's too late, you've been brainwashed.

In short, a religion lets you live your life and enhances it with spiritual guidance, a sect destroys your life and, instead of guiding you, imposes its rules on you for the worse.

Defrauded punter says 'catflaps' to PayPal marketing stunt

Funny thing happened to me too

Just last month, someone used my credit card number to make a purchase via Paypal for 250€.

Now I don't have a Paypal account because I have never trusted them within a mile of my pocket, and I don't go out giving away my credit card number either - it was most probably found via a generator.

The only good thing is that my bank (a good and proper one) actually contacted me about the transaction, and I was easily able to explain that I cannot make purchases via Paypal since I do not have an account with them. I also stated that I never will and I asked them to block Paypal purchases permanently.

Unfortunately, it would appear that my bank cannot do that (yet) - but I did get my money back (and my credit card has been replaced).

Now I am left wondering what poor soul got screwed out of 250€ thinking he made a sale, sent the goods and got a chargeback in return.

Paypal really is the pits.

'Windows Cloud' to descend this month, says Ballmer

@Norfolk Enchants Paris

What do you mean we cannot "objectively assess" what Ballmer has to offer ?

Nonsense !

We've known Ballmer for years now, we can very quickly assess his words, and 9 times out of 10 they amount to just a lot of hot air.

Nothing coming out of MS these days is designed in any way to respond to the needs of users, it is always meant to respond to the need of MS - which is ripping off more money from anyone they can catch.

This cloud thing has no substance, and it's obviously nothing but a copycat announcement.

Microsoft promises, fails to keep things simple for partners

We want to make it [licensing] as friction-free as we can

I'll bet they do.

What they would like is to charge you directly even if you just looked at the box.

EU bids to dominate future nebulous buzzword

God help us all

Web 1.0 - someone makes a web site, you connect to it via computer and consult its contents

Web 2.0 - someone makes a web site, everyone connects via computer and exchanges inane, unfounded opinions on anything except the topic

Web 3.0 - someone hosts a website where everyone connects via computer to chat about a multitude of subjects without listening to anyone who doesn't agree

Web 4.0 - The website is your computer and the whole world is connecting to it to relentlessly post inane and offensive remarks about your furniture, interior decoration, hair style and clothing habits - whether you are connected or not

Web 5.0 - There is no more computer - everyone connects directly to your brain and you hear their stupid, useless remarks directly in your head, all the time

Music and pics coming to next-gen Nintendo DS

Not named yet ?

Perfect ! Let's start some suggestions.

For example, the Poo.

Okay, okay, I'm out already !

Developers to get Windows 7 pre beta next month

@Rich Turner

I think you are confusing encryption and DRM. These things are not the same.

You state that DRM is useful in a corporate setting. I highly doubt that. Encryption is though, as is controlling who accesses what on a server, but DRM does not serve in either function.

You state that DRM is used in the (Windows) OS to protect private data. That is not true either, once again it is encryption that is used for that purpose - and rather feeble encryption at that, given the ease with which hackers and other scum are able to pry the data they want from OS weaknesses.

DRM is used only where media is concerned. DRM is what downgrades a signal from movie file to screen if Vista is not 100% sure that everything is fine and dandy throughout the chain. DRM is what prevents you from installing that brand-new game you just bought, because the stupid protection cannot even recognize its own official disk. DRM is why Vista had so much trouble deleting files and transmitting files across the network, because each byte was being checked in case it was a pirated byte - and since the system had no chance in Hell of knowing, the whole thing was hopelessly bogged down.

In short, encryption and controlled access have all the virtues you mistakenly attribute to DRM, whilst DRM has only one : to royally piss of any honest customer (whereas pirates, ironically, are plague-free and can do as they wish).

I refuse DRM the right to exist on my computer. I do not have Vista, and if Vista II is the same turd, it will not do any better in my house. I do not play Spore and I refuse to buy any EA game until they abandon the practice. I have stopped buying music ten years ago, when all this nonsense started, and the only music I listen to is what I have in my existing CD collection. I have enough to do in my life without kowtowing to outrageous demands from organizations that act with an authority no one has given them.

Life has enough restrictions as is, I will not be imposed more in my leisure activities.

RIAA filesharing target Jammie Thomas wins retrial

Requiring proof of actual transfers

It's about time.

Requiring proof is, in my mind, supposed to be the basic necessity to condemn someone in a court of Justice. That this requirement has not been met until now is a shocking display of the lobbying power of that most-distasteful organization that is the Recording Industry Ass. of America.

And I seriously hope it will indeed cripple the diarrhetic flow of frivolous lawsuits against grandmas without computers and little girls in Primary school.

It is only logical that if you intend to get a $200,000 fine against someone who earns less than $50,000 a year, you should prove your ass off that you are indeed right and entitled to it.

The RIAA has done nothing of the sort. It has, however, amply proven that it can fire off lawsuits against anyone for the tiniest, weakest sliver of suspicion, and expect to be handsomely paid for its lack of work.

Death to RIAA !

Sun's solar wind hits 50-year low

"we are in a period of minimal activity that has stretched on longer than anyone anticipated"

Hmm, so much for those who want to equate "global warming" with increased solar activity.

But, as usual, someone will come along and claim the reverse - and who will the public choose to trust ?

Someone might want to make a backup of the records of solar activity - in case some governmental organization decides to fudge the numbers again to correspond to the perception of the day.

Or is it too late for that already ?