Posts by Pascal Monett

Greenland ice sheet not going anywhere in a hurry, say boffins

Brilliant !

Thank you for that.

Bomb sniffing “electric nose” turns cancer detector

Re: "it's a crap way to die"

Not to contradict you or troll or anything, but that part of your paragraph sent to me thinking about death - and I have yet to think of a "good" way to die.

Apart from in your sleep, I just don't see any.

Republican filibuster blocks Senate Cybersecurity bill

"to better protect our nation from potentially catastrophic cyber-attacks"

Well, in my layman's opinion, to better protect our nation from potentially catastrophic cyber-attacks it would be much better to remove strategic elements from being attackable via the Internet.

In other words, somebody put a damn firewall between the "nucular" reactors and the Internet already ! Why is there a need for a law on that ? And why, oh why, is there a need to discuss the issue ?

Nuclear reactors, city traffic infrastructures, pipeline management, power grids. All those things need to be properly segmented and not Internet-accessible without proper authentication. Not only is that obvious, but it is a fucking shame that such an issue need to be "debated" in a political arena which is only interested in who will get how many brownie points.

Fail all around.

Ice Cream Sandwich still a no-show for most Android users

I am new to the smartphone market, having just got a Glalxy S II from my new job around two months ago.

When I got the phone, it was running on 2.3.4 as you say. Without any intervention on my part, via the WiFi connection on my home router, it is now pegged at 4.0.3.

So something happened, and apparently it works.

For me at least.

Oi, missile boffins! Stop ogling web filth at work - Pentagon

Re: politicians that start wars

I generally agree with your sentiment, but you seem to be unaware of how many times those DEFENSE systems you mention put us a hair's breadth away from annihilation ?

Check it out, and be happy the Cold War is (almost) over.

Russia slashes space station ship trip to just six hours

Not a bad idea, but your rocket would have to be made of unobtanium. Do you have any idea of how much that weighs ?

Re: there's a huge list of benefits

There is one benefit, apparently : gets there in 6 hours.

That means that an eventual emergency rescue operation can enter the realm of possibility.

However, to get this boost in speed the launch needs to perfect - not just "more accurate". Timing, launch profile, ascension, everything needs to be good to within the second.

This speed boost comes at a zero-tolerance price.

So I now ask : what if the launch is botched ? What happens if the launcher lifts on time, but loses an engine before reaching orbit and has to go for an additional burn or some other somesuch that voids the short trip ? Can they revert to the 2-day schedule, or is the whole thing written off and they just abort and go for re-entry ?

Using Facebook causes less eco damage than farting, figures show

I propose a new unit of pollution : the Facebook Fart

1 FF = 0.269g of CO2 annual

Now let's see how we can use that :)

Stop !

Stop trying to bring intelligent arguments into the climate debate - you're messing up the zealot message !

Samsung flogs 10 million Galaxy S IIIs in 7 weeks

What special app ?

My Galaxy S II can read it fine, thank you, and I haven't downloaded any app to do so.

Now IPAD victor Proview is sued by its OWN law firm

"[Proview] should not be bound by such terms"

Should have thought of that before signing the contract.

Windows 8 'bad' for desktop users - Gartner's one-word review

Spot on !

This mouse-gesture fad has obviously gotten Ballmer's ear and has subjugated him so completely that he thinks that a touch interface can work just like a mouse/keyboard combo.

You have to be brain-dead to believe that.

I can believe that Metro works on a tablet. Ever since I got a Galaxy S II, I understand how the touch interface evolved into what it currently is. For a phone, a tablet or any other small device that cannot have a dedicated keyboard, it is the perfect choice.

But nothing that has a touch interface can possibly be used like a desktop PC, and vice-versa. And I'll believe the fairy tale about how desktops are disappearing when all the insurance and banking businesses have replaced them with tablets everywhere. Including the back office.

Won't happen, ever.

My next upgrade is not due until Win7 no longer runs the hardware I use - I give it about a decade, based on WinXP experience.

Smart meter hack framework goes open-source

Another, more realistic one, would be "Remote Meter Control Adapter", because somebody is going to have theirs hacked for sure.

Office Web App upgrade adds long-needed features

Re: "women have more car accidents per mile driven than men"

They might, but they are largely scratches and fender-benders, whereas men have a tendency of plowing their cars into walls or around trees.

As for the brain size thing, I was about to comment on how basic machismo was alive and well, but a gander on the Internet told me that this was actually true. Well, learn something every day.

YouTube blurs faces to protect the innocent

"users will need to delete the pristine version in order to protect privacy"

Well that about kills its usefulness then.

Chinese gov splurges £102 MILLION to replace pirated software

Damn right. I don't see why China would do anything more than pay lip service to international IP agreements.

China bloody well knows it has the greatest internal market of the whole planet, and if it starts selling things overseas, it has the rest of the world's debt in its coffers.

So this is probably just a bunch of PR malarkey.

Move along, nothing to see here.

Dumpling squid do it WHENEVER THEY CAN, FOR HOURS ON END!

"lifetime of less than a year"

Yes, but what a life !

Re: I've seen enough hentai

yeah, but now we know where all that hentai actually came from...

Dropbox brings in crack team to probe spam leakage

Re: One possibility

That probably explains why I haven't received anything (yet).

I do get spam, average 15/day over six different addresses, but nothing about gambling at this point.

PayPal is bleeding market share and it's all eBay's fault

And THAT is why PayPal will never be a bank. I don't give a flying monkey's that they signed a charter, a bank operating under the law cannot prevent you from accessing YOUR money without a court order.

PayPal deems itself above the law and that is simply not acceptable.

Personally I don't care either about Ebay or about PayPal. Ebay was a great idea and had a wonderful start before the suits wrecked it, but it may yet have some use left. PayPal, on the other hand, should simply die, and it is a good thing that the competition is starting in the online payment arena because Lord knows it needs it.

Spotify coining it at home in Sweden: But are artists getting any?

Congratulations to Mrs Zoë Keating

Whatever you think of the current situation, it is acts such as Mrs Keatings' posting of her earnings that clarify the debate and put things back on the ground of reality, allowing the public to understand what is really going on - something that the "entertainment industry" has being trying their damnedest to keep a lid on.

Microsoft 'didn't notice' it had removed Browser Choice for 17 months

"we deeply regret that this error occurred"

Could the Commission please make sure that they actually DO regret ?

Pretty please ?

What exactly is hamstringing you ?

I have Firefox, Seamonkey, Opera AND Chrome installed next to IE and I see nothing preventing me from using any of them.

Valve to raise Steam for Ubuntu

Interesting rant, obviously never tried it

Steam is most probably the least invasive game-controlling environment I have ever tried.

- it does not run a hidden service that runs whether you play or not (looking at you, EA Games)

- it does not require that you re-download your entire game collection if you restore your Windows system (looking at you HARD, EA Games)

- it does not even require that you reinstall Steam if you wipe your OS partition and reinstall Windows (I'm bloody sick of looking at you, EA Games) - if you install the same OS in the same version as before, obviously

- Steam has weekend deals that are sometimes astounding (got L4D2 for €5, can anyone top that ?)

- Steam allows me to play my games without bothering with a bloomin' disk

- unless the game I play uses an online server, Steam allows me to play offline (hear that, Blizzard ?)

- most importantly, the games on Steam play on the PC I have - yes I know, that's obvious, but it is also true of titles that were WinXP or before, like Evil Genius, or Supreme Commander, or, say, SimCity 4 - games that I have but did not succeed in installing on my Win7/32 configuration

- my Steam games have always been available to me when I wished to play them, not like LotRO or Diable III

- there is no such thing as a license error on Steam

So your rant against Steam seems perfectly unreasonable to me, and if your rant actually concerns DRM control or whatnot, then you must have stopped buying games since Y2K, because most major titles since 1995 have had some form of (annoying) DRM control embedded into them which seem to bleed onto the PC and take control of it. Why I remember a certain Lemmings II that wouldn't run anymore if I so much as chose a different boot option in the bad old days of DOS 5. And I also remember Painkiller, which I bought in a lovely box set and brought home only to find that it simply wouldn't install, since its paranoid DRM didn't believe that its own install disk was genuine. I was forced to go find a pirate copy to be able to play the game I bought - and I'm sorry, but I do not for one instant feel like a pirate for doing so.

On the other hand, Steam has survived two OS versions and I don't remember how many OS reinstalls and has never bothered me more than to ask for my login and password after the fact. It has even survived partition change and disk swapping without complaining. My game library is intact from day one, unless I feel like uninstalling something to free some disk space. And I can re-download whatever is in my library whenever I want. Heck, I can even install Steam on two or more PCs if I feel like it and access my same game library. Of course I can't play on two computers at a time, but I can have my home configuration and my laptop configuration for when I'm traveling - and that one can be offline, remember ?

To sum it up, Steam is great. It is the best game-selling platform there is. You may not appreciate that your are being checked when you play, and I basically agree with you on that point, but you're not really being given a choice anymore - well, not outside of indie titles, that is. So you might as well choose Steam, because there is nothing better.

Yahoo! fixes! password! leak! vulnerability!

"we will continue to take significant measures to protect our users and their data"

Does that mean that they will finally start salting their hashes ?

Yahoo! hack! leaks! 453,000! unencrypted passwords!

Re: "Speak freind and enter"

Not on par at all. It is specified in the film and in the books that it was a mechanism devised in a "simpler time", probably a time of peace and trust.

And besides, it'd take forever to thread an invading army through that itty bitty door - not counting the path to get to it. Finally, it was written in Elvish, and not many folk of that land knew how to read that. Not to mention the possible confusion between "speak, friend" and the other possibility which could be understood as "speak the password, friend", meaning that, if you were a friend, you'd know the password.

So, all in all, pretty secure, even for a fairytale.

Microsoft offers beta of Windows Server 2012 Essentials

Microsoft

By far Linux's best advocate - despite itself.

Watch out, Apple: HTC ruling could hurt your patent income

Re: How to fix the patent process

There should be no need to "make it unattractive" to patent anything.

The job of the Patent Office is not to grant patents, it is to control whether or not a patent can be granted. To do so, it has one control and one control only - prior art.

Given that the Patent Office is no longer controlling prior art and has resorted to granting patents willy-nilly (possibly in exchange for cashbacks or undeclared "bonuses"), it has clearly ceased to fulfill its primary function and must be dissolved.

A new body should be set up and a new mandate implemented for managing patent application. Personally, I would prefer that no one from the previous organization be included in the new one. Blindingly obviously, the new mandate must be official, publicly sanctioned and relentlessly enforced. Legally, there should be a "grace period" while ALL existing patents are re-examined and their validity controlled by the new mandate.

Hopefully, it will result in a massive dumping of all vaguely-worded, non-reproducible or otherwise incomprehensible patents that have stuffed the system, as well as the immediate invalidation of all patents that offer no actual method of implementation other than a drawing made on the back of a handkerchief on a restaurant table.

That done, we will once again, as a civilization, be able to progress with things that are truly useful and innovative, and not just a useless encyclopaedia of every single technical tidbit some busybody has been able to throw on a paper before anyone else did.

A patent should be granted exclusively for something that improves human technology - i.e. that improves the available technology for ALL HUMANKIND - and is fully described to be completely reproducible. Anything else is useless and should be discarded.

Gaping 'open data' loophole could leave your privates on display

"I wonder whether you would allow us to look at your last five GP visits"

Response : I wonder what my last medical visits have to do with my being co-operative or not. I wonder why I should unveil my private life to a future business relationship that has no moral or legal authority to invade my private life in this way. I wonder if this "sharing" thing is going to stop short of "friendly" cavity searches. By the way, are you going to "share" your salary, your wife and your car with me ? Or is this "sharing" thing only one way ? It is ? Thought so. Well thank you and have a nice day.

Salesforce goes titsup, causes CRM outages worldwide

Re: "testing configurations as one system"

But that's exactly what Salesforce is doing - with the results we see.

And even though they are having some issues, from what I see their reliability is above that of RIM with its proprietary Blackberry thingy, so they're not doing so bad.

Still doesn't convince me to put company data in a place where I cannot control access.

Sony grabs cloud-gaming group Gaikai

A general reply to "streaming games"-deniers

I used to think the same thing, ie streaming games was a bad idea and the implementation would be horribly laggy.

I was convinced of this right up until a friend of mine called my attention to Quake Live.

The experience put my arguments to rest.

That said, I do believe that the Id crew has always been at the forefront of game networking - they were there first with Doom after all, and there is no guarantee that other companies, even (I wanted to type _especially_) Sony will be able to reproduce such a flawless level of gameplay.

But somebody did it, so it can be done.

Darwin alarmed by six-legged mutant cane toad

Just one question

What is it in Australia that accelerated animal mutation so ?

In a mere 80 years or so, the cane toad has not only mutated stronger/longer legs, but is now growing more of them ?

Is the Australian cane toad the basis of the future Zerg ?

I think we should be told ?

Lithe British youngsters prioritise fun over privacy and security

Excuse me

Did you actually mention security-conscious and Facebook in the same sentence ?

Gah !

Re: "are you sure"

Citing a Cracked article gets an automatic upvote from me :)

US East, West Coasts face fast-rising sea levels

That's new, isn't it ?

Legislators defining the acceptable limits of reality. I love it !

Next step : outlawing any reports on pollution and claiming that the world's air is pure.

Final step : outlawing illegal behavior and giving the pink slip to all cops in the state.

Paradise, here we come !

Ballmer welcomes Yammer to the Microsoft family

First we had Twitter

Now we have Yammer

Once we get Crapper, the circle will finally be complete.

Schneier spanks AV industry over Flame failures

Re: "There's no such thing as an isolated system, there never was."

That may be true, but if the data you want is on a computer that is not linked to the Internet, then it gets substantially more difficult to reach.

What I continuously fail to understand is why, oh why, do military installations persist in having their entire network connected to the same Internet as everyone else.

Get a local network, and use one, isolated PC to connect to the Web. Or at the very least, put your security stuff, military-grade secrets, etc. etc. on a network that is physically isolated from the Web.

Is it really that hard ? Or do the generals absolutely have to have the latest Friday video too ?

Mobile device enslavement a plague on British workers' health

Re: most of us (I'm guessing) aren't paid for time

Wrong. Most of use are paid for an 8-hour day. Either that, or you're one who is paid by results - taxi driver, dentist, plumber.

Your employer pays a sum for 8 hours of your work, not for a result. That mentality only brings two consequences : first, you give your employer a free discount on your work, second, your employer no longer realizes how many people he actually needs to get the job done.

The conclusion ? You're cheating someone out of a job and your employer is laughing all the way to the bank.

China makes human rights play ... but forgets the internet

Re: Since when is broadband Internet access...

With more and more government services accessible from the Internet, with all utilities companies clamoring for your email and begging you to log on to their portal, with more and more shopping options available from your computer screen it's only a matter of time until Internet access is considered just as important as being able to phone 911 (or whatever number you use to call for help).

Where I live, in addition to the previously mentioned items, there are no less than two supermarket franchises that have an Internet site where you can shop the virtual aisles, place you order, pay for it and decide what time you go pick it up. They have a special Internet Delivery parking area that looks a heck of a lot like a Mc Donalds drive-in, just scaled up a bit. You stop the car in front of a booth, give you order number, a clerk puts the bags in your trunk and off you go - all the pleasures of shopping without the screeching kids, bustling busybodies and entire families who seem to consider that clogging the aisles on Saturdays is the height of their week's entertainment.

So we're already getting to a stage where you can organize practically all your administrative and daily needs from a screen. We're at the CAN point, we'll get to the MUST BE ABLE TO point soon enough.

Re: "why is the Internet censored"

Different people, different ways.

You can criticize all you want, you live in a theoretically "free" country. The Chinese have a different culture, different social needs, a different social structure. Stop trying to impose your view of what is right on other people.

10m years ago there was less CO2 - but the Earth was warmer

Re: "I generally prefer my news reporters to offer an unbiased opinion"

The day you find a reporter like that, please tell me who it is !

LinkedIn admits site hack, adds pinch of salt to passwords

Re: Oh Joy.

They hardly needed to have the list to try that one. I get that kind of mail regularly from PayPal, Ebay and sometimes from Linked in as well.

Oh, and from a few banks I have never had an account in and probably never will since I don't live in North America.

We'll pull the plug on info-leak smart meters, warns UK.gov

Am I mistaken ?

Or is this the biggest Ethernet-over-powerline that has ever been envisioned ?

Or are they plugging in a data cable when they change the meter ? Don't think so - the costs would be horrific.

So we have a nationwide data grid being put in place. Be it over powerline or wifi, power companies are going to become defacto Internet providers.

I sincerely hope they've secured this access to the hilt, because they ARE going to get hacked.

Dinosaurs on a diet shed tonnes

I'm all for improving scientific analysis and exactitude

but I rather liked the idea of a lumbering Tyrannosaurus making the ground shake as it pursued its prey.

We already know that dinos were feathered and not like lizards, I do hope that we won't end up with a Barbiesaurus Rex daintily prancing through the prehistoric jungle in search of some man-sized appetizer to keep her weight down, taking special care not to disturb the shrubbery.

China and US argue over smog tweets

Vienna Convention this, internal meddling that

Sorry, but I find that the US Government is not "meddling in internal affairs" at all. As long as the embassy is not plastering the walls of the city with publications on pollution, but confining its findings to Twitter, then China has nothing to say about it since they block the feed at the Great Firewall of Peking.

As for not respecting the "spirit" of the Vienna Convention, come on, since when has any "spirit" of anything kept any country (US, China or otherwise) from doing anything ?

Lawyer up on your way into the cloud

Gee golly gee

So the moral of the story is that moving services to the cloud is an important project.

Wow, who'd a thunk it ?

The ironic thing is that here we have an international, world-class "communications" company that got blinded by the marketing spiel of cloud vendors only to find that the road to the cloud was not actually filled with grassy fields and daisies.

Somehow, that makes me smile.

Facebook testing "announce important post" feature

Spot on !

Given that FaceBook is already full of twats who are full of themselves, this will immediately become the standard way of shouting their oh-so-important "news" so that they can feel even more important about themselves.

Lard-busting specs trick snack-happy Japanese

That's not a joke. I swear there has to be a lab somewhere working on just that.

After all, we have those crab sticks that are based on soya and don't have an ounce of crab in them.

Re: "they'd still be obese"

Oh dear, they won't become fashion models in 24 hours ! Let's just shoot them and put them out of their misery, hmm ?

The all-or-nothing mentality you display is not compatible with the world we live in. In this world, if you want to do anything you have to go step by step - and it's always the first step that costs the most. Stating that one step is not going to give you the 100% perfect result you expect and therefor is not worth taking is just ensuring that you will never attain that perfect result at all.

Rockefeller didn't win the lottery to get rich. He worked at it for years. Of course, some people do win the lottery - but to base your success on it is a sure road to perdition.

Back on subject, if fat people eat 10% less (and maintain that), they'll end up 10% thinner (let's just assume correlation here). Oh sure, they still won't win a marathon (unless it's a TV one), but I'll wager they just might feel 10% better or thereabouts. Which will encourage them to cut down another 10% on their diet, and the ball starts rolling.

The real problem with being fat is that it is not just an eating disorder, it is an eating disorder tacked on top of lack of self-confidence or some other problem. That is what kills the efforts of those who try to cut down on the eating - they're dealing with the symptom and not the cause.

Truth be told, I'm not sure I like this gadget. Oh sure, the IT side is interesting and, as a psychological experiment it has obvious merits, but nobody will always be wearing special food goggles every time they want a bite, so I think that the real-life effect of this will be severely impacted by all the fuss of day-to-day humdrum (so, what shall I order ? Rats ! Forgot my food goggles again. Oh well, I'll take the King Size Spare Ribs platter with the all-you-can-eat veggie buffet on the side, the one including fries).