Posts by Pascal Monett

Official: America now a nation of broadband whingers

Google wants to become an ISP ?

I didn't know that, but it is hardly surprising if you think about it for a second.

Right now, Google has to wait for you to go to its search service and get a query to know what you're up to.

If Google starts serving broadband as ISP, you can bet your children's future that Google will be indexing every single http request coming from your line and thus getting a level of scrutiny of your life that would make the NSA green with envy (that is, until they get a warrant to pilfer that data, which should take around, oh, two seconds in the current US-centric paranoia climate).

So yeah, I can believe Google wants to be an ISP with all its might, and that is not something to laugh at at all.

Big Brother ? Pah ! It had to have cameras to guess at what you were doing. Big Broogle is going to know what your next request is before you do, thanks to statistical analysis and petabytes of data about you, your car, your phone and every place you've been.

All that in the hands of Eric Schmidt - now isn't that a warm, fuzzy thought ?

Oh well, at least disk prices will drop even more once Broogle data centers hoover up all 6TB disks in existence and demand more. Looks like the HDD/SSD industry is going for a boom in a little while.

Hey, they might even finally get holographic storage working at the consumer level.

Boffins make bio-chip breakthrough

I'm thinking more Tleilaxu.

Permafrost melt to boost atmospheric CO₂ faster than thought

Re: scientific ideas that lead from accepting it

Such as Urban Heat Influence ?

Oh, sorry, you were talking about skeptics.

Oh, and concerning forecasts, I do agree that they are based on scientific approach, and they are indeed the best guess we have.

However, it is more and more evident that these forecasts are based on insufficient data and wrong approximations of complex variables, and thus our "best guess" is even more fucked than we are.

Science knows that it does not know all and requires ever more data in order to refine its models and increase the accuracy of its models. Science knows that its models are imperfect, and sometimes uncovers a new element that throws its established thought process into shambles. But Science recovers, takes the hit and comes back, duly noting that its existing model was wrong and a new one need to be established based on the new facts.

It has been said again and again, and it bears repeating just as endlessly as those who think they _know_ the truth : climate science is based on thermodynamics, which is the most complex field of science bar none, and to this day we do not have a model that can reliably predict the behavior of a gaseous mass the size of a country, much less the size of the planet.

The only thing we know for sure is that climate changes, all the time. The last 12,000 years of data we have clearly indicate a global cooling. It is laughable to think that a mere 120 years of recorded data can contradict that tendency, but many people without the slightest grasp of thermodynamics and no more knowledge of climate history seem to think that they are qualified to tell us what is going to happen.

The truth is that we probably will not know for sure before climate historians debate the issue a thousand years from now. By then, they will have a thousand years of data (I'm assuming that the data will not have been fudged by "interested parties" and will be pristine, recorded data only - I may be wrong) and a wee bit of hindsight with which to refine their models.

By then, they might be able to tell us if it will actually rain tomorrow and be right about it (I may be optimistic).

Re: 'this planet is fucked if we carry on like this'

Bollocks.

Planet Earth doesn't give a flying fig if temperatures rise or drop an average of 10 or even 20 degrees Celcius. Earth's biosphere is resistant enough to take the changes in stride. Life will endure, as it can even in the Arctic Circle and in the middle of the harshest deserts.

Humanity, on the other hand, could be quite fucked if we carry on like this, as you say. Obviously, our fragile food base will not survive a 10-degree Celcius average change in one direction or the other, and when our fields are devastated and our livestock decimated, we will shortly follow them into starvation and oblivion.

But please do not extend human hubris to the survival of Life on Earth. There will be innumerable creatures alive to feast on our corpses when we've all ceased to breath, and Planet Earth won't even notice our passing.

Billionaire baron Bill Gates still mourns Vista's stillborn WinFS

Re: no other OS quite like it

Oh come now, Windows Me was certainly Vista's inbred uncle.

Facebook glitch briefly crashes several sites

FB logon for SECURITY reasons ?

For crying out loud, please, let's call it what it is, shall we ? Laziness. That's all it is.

Does Facebook require proof of identity to create an account ? No. Does it require proof of residence ? No. Creating an account with FB just requires an email address, that's all. So the "security" excuse goes flying out the window real fast, accompanied by my contempt for such a lame excuse. This is pure CYA/pass-the-buck marketspeak, perfectly befitting the company name..

You want to rely on some other entity for reasons of security, you create an infrastructure with banks. To open a bank account you have to prove you're you and prove where you live, ergo the bank bloody well knows you're you. From that point, if the bank would certify your online identity, there could be no doubt that you are indeed you.

But that requires a bit more work than a fucking Like button.

OCZ omnishambles leaves flash chippery biz on knife-edge

"OCZ's survival is still possible"

Don't see how. Now that I know that OCZ is on the verge of failure, I am certainly not going to buy a new SSD from them - don't want to take the risk of seeing my guarantee skip town, and I don't think anyone else will either.

This is now a case of watching a company sink and not lifting a finger.

GNOME project picks JavaScript as sole app dev language

So, in other words, this "decision" is pure Web 2.0 rhetoric, ergo I can use the feather they themselves offered and ignore it.

Japan hides anti-piracy warning on P2P networks

A slight correction is required

"Operation Decoy File, which was dreamt up by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in conjunction with RIAA and Madonna (c), will run until the middle of this month."

There, fixed it for you.

Hard drive sales to see double-digit dive this year

"I'll be dancing on the grave of optical drives"

I'm glad you have such simple pleasures in life.

As someone who has seen the birth of this entire industry, I simply prefer the notion of choice. The computer/communications industry is, in my opinion, the most versatile industry on this planet. Today, you can buy almost any kind of form factor (PC, laptop, tablet, smartphone) to do what you want, you can install several different OSes on almost all of them, and you can use tools to access them and manipulate them that no one had dreamed of twenty years ago.

We are chock full of options when it comes to managing our data. We can store it on several different types of supports (magnetic, flash, optical, tape), we can bring it with us in at least three different form factors (optical, USB, external drive), and we can store it remotely to access it anywhere - as long as we have an Internet connection.

I am not for the death of any of these elements. I am pro choice. You like the cloud ? I wish you a stable and reliable connection, and no DRM hassles. I like having my data stored where I can access it and control it. Today, that means either tape or optical (no, I do not use magnetic as long-time storage, sorry, but you can).

The industry is big enough for all these and more. Do not diminish it by removing our ability to choose.

Web smut sites are SAFER than search engines, declares Cisco

Only 5 years ?

It has been since at least 1998 since I have last seen malware on any of my home PCs.

Do I have expensive AV software and firewalls ? No.

Do I seek out and immediately install all updates to all my software ? No.

What have I done then ? Simple :

1) I have set IE as a web browser I only use for specific sites that do not work without it.

2) I use Firefox with Adblock, NoScript, Redirect Remover and Cookie Manager add-ons.

3) I do not use Outlook for my email.

4) I do not install toolbars of any kind, ever.

5) I do not have any IM client of any kind anywhere.

6) I do not use any social sites or even social media of any kind if I can help it.

7) I do not blindly click on every link I get in my mail. Unsolicited crap gets trashed by my whitelist management system, anything else I check and verify before clicking - if I feel that it has a possible relevance to me.

Now, I am a particularly rabid curmudgeon, I agree, but I do believe that the first 4 steps - and the last one - can be easily followed by everyone without trouble. If you do have use for Facebook, Twitter or whatever, it's your call; I'm not criticizing that, just saying I don't use them.

And since malware writers love targeting things that are widely used, not being on Facebook certainly saves me from some measure of risk.

Why did your outsourced IT fall over? Cos you weren't on Twitter

"Social, information, mobile and cloud shouldn't be considered in isolation."

No, they should be be used to carefully construct and precisely explain how exactly this project failed without it being your fault.

Berners-Lee says snoop law could see spies blackmail soldiers

"share more personal data" ??

Are you out of your mind, Sir Berners-Lee ?

Seriously, I think we have just begun to see the misuse of personal data. Never before has there been so much private data available online, and it's already progressing at a rising pace with all the new "social experiments" that declare their existence every other year or so.

Employers are already watching Twitter and Facebook to catch employees cheating on sick days (and stupid enough to post pics of what they did during that time). The way things are going, there will be a lot more abuse before it gets any better - if that is even possible.

So no, I do not agree that we need MORE private data online. We need a LOT LESS of it if we are to once again have a private life that is truly private. But people will have to be bitten en masse before that happens. Like on the day where your insurance calls you and tells you that, since you've posted drunken pics of yourself twelve months in a row, your premium is going up.

Then people might start thinking about it all.

Boeing 787 fleet grounded indefinitely as investigators stumped

"In order to supply enough power, the aircraft depends on its battery packs"

So the Boeing 787 flies on batteries then ?

Somehow I don't find that very reassuring.

Another new asteroid-mining firm: 'First commercial space fleet'

Re: Resource wars??

For the moment, as was stated in the referenced Reg piece, space property is legally non-existant following the UN charter on the subject.

So no, there will be no "claim" to an asteroid by a company, and yes, there will be lasers.

Engineers are cold and dead inside, research shows

Please leave Wo out of this. I'm sure he had nothing to do with your life choices.

SimCity to teach SimMaths and SimScience at school

"what will a SimBoss make of a SimCV?"

Simple, he'll hire and pay in Simoleons.

2013 in storage: Flash, file systems and... Is CDMI actually HAPPENING?

Of course it is happening

There's wayyy too much marketing muscle and bedazzled managers about to not have it happen and, with mobile computing, there is a strong argument for it.

Of course, you also have the all those fingers looking for a new pie (mobile operators, handset vendors, tablet makers, etc).

It's the security aspect of the cloud that intelligent people are worried about, not its usefulness.

And given the amount of importance the security element has had in the evolution of Facebook, I wouldn't bet the farm on the cloud being any more secure than that.

But for the Facebook-sharing mobile tweeters, the cloud will be just peachy.

Boffins create quantum gas with temperature BELOW absolute zero

Re: "do they have other research going on"

Of course they do.

At the Black Mesa facility.

Crowbar mandatory.

Facebook continues to CONQUER THE WORLD

"a very convenient medium for keeping in touch"

Bollocks, my good sir.

The only "very convenient" medium I need is email, and I don't need any "social network" for that.

My real, actual friends have my email and my phone number. The rest I don't need to talk to anyway outside of polite social recognition in public areas.

Facebook is a social network only for those who don't have a network and can't be arsed to make one. Which obviously makes for a LOT of people.

Hey, Apple and Google: Stop trying to wolf the whole mobile pie

"Apple, for example, does hardware exceptionally well"

As brilliantly demonstrated by the iPhone holding fiasco.

And the melting iMac issues, not to mention fading colors once the bright and shiny had worn off and been exposed to sunlight for a while.

We could finally have some objective assessment of Apple as a whole, admitting that the company has had some bright ideas and deserves some recognition, but is far from the perfect idevice-maker that sooo many people insist it is, but I suppose we won't finally bury this stupid Apple reality distortion field any time soon.

Punters rate Apple, Samsung more highly than ever

What is the use of this "survey" ?

Could we stop being subject to useless, baseless factoids please ?

Where companies are concerned, there is only one important fact : market share. All the rest is hoopla and shenanigans.

People "like" HP less ? From what I've read over the past five years, nobody likes HP anymore, yet it is still in the top five and, more importantly, it still has market share.

People think that public image is important. It should be, but is it really ? How exactly ? Which "celebrity" got blackballed from magazines for drug use, or spouse abuse ? Which company got boycotted for slave wages, environmental disasters, or simply disrespecting the consumer ?

Sony is still around, and it has single-handedly found just about every possible way to antagonize and insult its user base (DRM fiascoes one after another, Java on set tops and Blu-Ray . . no, I won't even go there).

The only image that is important is our own, and almost only towards our employers. I've known a few people blackballed in my line of work because of attitude and behavioral mistakes. One or two were a-holes, okay, but none of them spilled millions of gallons of crude in pristine ecological environments, yet they had to move to find a job, whereas BP and all the rest are sitting pretty on billions in profits.

So I'm finding it difficult to grant any sort of importance to this "survey". Feels like paparazzi material to me.

(Disclaimer : I'm not a treehugger or greenie or environutjob in any way, I'd just like to see irresponsible companies actually foot the bill for once)

Big Blue etches silicon nanophotonics with regular chip tech

I went back to re-read the article to make sure, and nowhere is it stated that optical interconnects "do away" with latency and/or bottlenecks.

What the article states is that photons go faster in fibre than electrons do in a wire, therefor optical interconnects are going to minimize latency, not erase them.

And unless quantum entanglement gets even crazier than it is now, you'll always have one absolute physical latency : the distance between RAM and CPU. It cannot go faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, after all.

New research cuts Kepler's exoplanet count by one third

Doesn't matter

Even with one-third less planetary candidates, there's still a whole lot more star systems with planets than we previously thought possible.

So, how about getting those star drives ready ? We got places to go now !

Far Cry 3 game review

So you played Far Cry 3 and everything was just peachy ?

Isn't there just one niggling point that annoyed you ? Can it be that so complex a game did not have a single fault worth mentioning ?

Frankly, this review strikes me as way too smooth to be valid. Come on ! Where's the Bite ?

Sorry, but since when is Wikipedia a "definitive proof" of anything ? Wikipedia does not yet hold any academic laurels that I know of.

The only thing you're proving is that there is a user-based truth-by-consensus website out there that agrees with your point of view.

Sacre Bleu! US fingered for Flame attack on Élysée Palace

Personally I think it's a bloody good thing that a country leader not waste his time on a PC - he's got underlings for that sort of thing and he's not got time to waste on Minesweeper.

I expect my President to be spending his time in talks and negotiations with any and everyone that can influence my country, not mucking about with Facebook and a crackable web connection.

Just think of the humongous amount of egg-on-face if a country leader had his PC hacked and data stolen !

I don't think any President could survive that, especially if top-secret strategic data were to be found stolen.

4chan founder Moot threatens site for using his handle

"He should have picked something more unique"

I respectfully disagree.

I think he chose his handle perfectly, and this whole issue is brilliantly summed up by it.

Microsoft building poo-powered carbon-neutral data center

"cannot go offline any more than a community can stop flushing"

So that means that there will be Linux servers managing the methane production ?

Fossil reveals spider in mid-strike

Bush Jr. already proved that.

You can stop proving that point now, we get it.

Home-grown drone finds ‘missing’ hiker

ROTM note

Looks like they have the Hunter part down pat now.

Just add the Killer element from military sources, and all we need is the murderous AI to finish it all - and us with it.

Purpose of RFID finally discovered: It's for pairing up socks!

Hunks of steel tumbling around my wash/dryer and making a racket such as one has not heard since the good ol' days of next-door metallurgy, your neighbors must just love you.

Not to mention the joy of finding metal shavings all over my clothes and clogging the filter - brilliant.

No thank you, I prefer sorting my socks in peace and quiet.

Curiosity photographs evidence of ancient streams on Mars

Re: "Which survived until the late 1960's IIRC"

Wrong. I saw a documentary not long ago and the alien, named Paul, was alive and well just a few months ago when it got recovered by its fellows after a long and tense pursuit.

DARPA builds faster-than-Usain-Bolt Cheetah robot

Re: the clumsy meatbag method

It may be clumsy next to a nice set of wheels, but it comes in handy when said wheels are flat, or the terrain is totally impractical.

This speed test is certainly useful, although I personally agree that it's a lot easier to reach that speed with all the power and hydraulics removed from the beast itself.

Nevertheless, it's all about the little steps. One small success at a time, and one day we will see robot cheetahs walking all around, breaking into a run, chasing down suspects and then tearing them to shreds with their unyielding steel maws of bloody death.

The only question is, when that day arrives, who will be controlling them ?

War-Droid: Smartphone app 'that could CALL IN drone strikes'

Smartphone upgrade list is now done

I am expecting the next generation (Iphone 6 and Galaxy IV ?) to include night/thermal imaging, proper long-range optics, and laser range finders.

3,000 Guild Wars 2 gamers banned for flogging stolen loot

I like that solution.

I like it a lot.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 Android tablet review

"noticeably different from the iPad – you couldn’t mistake the two"

Oh I'm sure that, for $80k+, we could arrange some sort of confusion.

1 MILLION accounts leaked in megahack on banks, websites

Indeed.

"It's only the beginning" of the FBI hunt for your sorry collars.

And they will be felt, little ones, they will be. Nobody attacks the banks, boys. Not even the government.

Seems to me that the "statistic" itself is proper reporting. What would be meaningless would be any conclusion derived from that figure.

Open source author pulls code after GPL abuse

Re: "I forgot the limitations of the English language"

I agree that there might have been a better choice of terms to start with, and that the current situation is indeed confusing linguistically-speaking.

So let's just chalk that up to American Imperialism and have a beer, okay ?

This is the Internet - you're specifically not supposed to learn anything before spouting off.

Re: "all free software is open source"

No it is not. Anyone can code a program, compile it and release the compiled executable for free, without having to reveal the code.

For example, [url=http://www.getpaint.net/]Paint.net[/url] is a free photo/image editor that isn't bad at all - and that's an understatement - but you will not find the source code anywhere.

Disable Java NOW, users told, as 0-day exploit hits web

Then again

Having re-read my initial post, I have to admit that it does sound a bit smug.

So be it, guilty as charged.

But still virus-free.

I'm not "sitting smug"

I am aware of threats and I know perfectly well that no platform, anywhere, anytime, is immune against problems.

I also have a brain and use it every time I click on a link.

That said, since I have started using Firefox with AdBlock and NoScript all those years ago, I have not once been infected by anything. That is fact, not smug, and if you don't like it I don't care.

I will continue to use Firefox/NoScript whilst keeping up-to-date about its issues and keeping it up-to-date as well because I trust it and it has never failed my trust yet.

But that does not mean I will click blindly on any link that I see or get sent to my mail.

The day IE has NoScript, I might take it for a whirl outside the very small list of URLs I let it see at this time, but until then, my general surfing will be done on Firefox, because it works.

If using a tool because it works is being smug, then so be it, I'm smug.

My PC is virus-free too.

Once again, thank you NoScript

Frankly, I'm beginning to think that Firefox and noScript should become mandatory by law.

If that ever did happen though, then this almost-perfect shield would become the hard target for all the miscreants and issues would be found.

So let the rabble continue with IE and zero protection. I'll just glide by, blissfully oblivious to the carnage until an article like this wakes me up to the fact that there are still people who don't know how to surf securely.

<disclaimer>this post concerns private use of Internet only - I am very well aware that professionals have a different set of problems, mainly that of not being able to choose their work platform</disclaimer>

Samsung fights to stay on US shelves as Apple calls for ban

Question: how many people do you know with a smartphone who have no idea how to use it, so just use it for making calls?

There, corrected that for you.

Re: "[an] attack on America's patent and court system that [..] unfairly hinder free trade"

Could somebody please make that happen ?

Pretty please ?

Cloud 'destroys time' and fracking is great innovation

the Cloud destroys time

Yup, right before destroying your data.

Seriously, I love how out-of-touch these high-level management types can appear to be. Listen to their spiel and you think the cloud is all fluffy and comfy, without delays or implementation issues of any kind. They are akin to Greek gods in Olympus, gliding miles above the issues and only seeing what they want to see.

Meanwhile, on the ground, the grunts deal with the nitty-gritty of reality, such as service response times, availability levels, bandwidth and backup, and that is before sorting out which applications and data can be put "in the cloud" and which can't, for whatever corporate reason.

And then we get to the nightmare of daily usage, when the inevitable failure occurs and the only thing the IT department can do is repeatedly dial a phone number that doesn't answer, despite all the service-level agreements and contractual obligations, until it does answer - only to hear that their data and apps have crashed and been restored to a status that was useful 3 months ago. Oh, and maybe they'll manage to get back to the current state, but God only knows if and when.

But yeah, viewed from space, Earth seems to be a pristine planet too - you don't see the oil spills, the rampant deforestation, or the clouds of pollution. From space, Earth is beautiful.

Earth to cloud, Earth to cloud, get down from your fluffy place and come meet the daily grind for a change.

Chancers try to flog lame Mac malware for $60 a pop

So it's obvious, reveals its presence, cannot survive a restart, cannot run on basic Mountain Lion settings and probably doesn't know how to phone home either.

Well all that should be reassuring, except that this is obviously just a first stage attempt from the miscreants. They're going to correct the bugs and make a more efficient version, one that will serve their purposes better.

In any case, however ridiculous this piece of failed malware may be, it is nonetheless a warning sign : the crooks are targeting Apple machines. Time to batten down the hatches in iLand.