Posts by Pascal Monett

Judge sits on Microsoft for two more years

For what it's been worth up to now

That judge could sit on Microsoft for another ten years, I don't see that it's been of any use in the real world.

Of sure, Microsoft has a "compliance" department, which cooks up a new "we're being nice, see ?" press release every now and then that has to be approved by the judge or something.

And ?

Ever since the DoJ lost its balls and forgot to go after Microsoft for what really counted, this whole affair has been just a lot of hot air and a revenue stream for a bunch of lawyers - who are the only ones who have gotten anything out of it.

PayPal buys Israeli security firm

That is the problem

PayPal is not a bank, which is why they can royally screw you by locking your account and you can't do anything about it.

A bank has the obligation of letting you have your money. If the bank suspects fraud, they cannot do anything without alerting the police first (granted, the procedure can be quick, but still, it's not one-sided).

If push gets to shove, with a bank you can always go to your nearest local branch and have a face-to-face discussion with someone who will actually be able to sort things out.

From what I hear about PayPal, not only is there no one to see in person, but PayPal can just ignore you if it feels like it.

Meanwhile, PayPal is getting interest on your money.

I know that Ebay and PayPal work fine for many people, and I'm happy for them. I'm just not willing to risk my money like that.

High Court approves software patents

"looking for a leg-up in the software industry"

Sorry, but if you think allowing patents for software is going to benefit small business, you're clearly not aware of the millions big business puts into the patent box every month.

Heck, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Intel and all the rest - they have dedicated lawyers working in-house ! By the time the small business has tested its product and is ready to patent it, it will be to discover that any number of the big guys already have 20 variations that are patent-pending.

Sorry, but I cannot believe for one second that granting software patents is going to do anything but consolidate the revenues of the pigopolists. If it does help a little guy, we'll be sure to hear about it because it'll be the only case.

Translate my website... bitch

Won't fly far

I'm not on FaceBook or MySpace (but I did get strong-armed into LinkedIn by my boss), but as far as I'm concerned, all these self-centered, gramatically-challenged monkeys who have no doubt that their dribbling is of utmost importance are going to find it quite tedious and irritating to go and translate the self-centered, gramatically-challenged dribblings of others.

I think that this project will end in a collective throwing up of hands and mutterings of disgust.

And @hans : that is without doubt the very best pig-German I have ever read. I almost bust a gut on "das cotton-pickenen Hands in die Pockets muss" !!

Drive-by download menace spreading fast

Won't affect me

As owner of a web site, I am glad to see that my complete lack of java, ActiveX modules and Apache anything in my site code preserves the security of all users who get to my pages - even if they are sufficiently misled to use a prime malware vector such as IE (any flavor).

Heck, I don't even set cookies on my site ! It's pure HTML, all the way.

Of course, I don't attempt to sell anything either, so it's easier to be clean.

As for my own security, I am confident that my browser will not foist a download upon me without a warning, and that I can actually make an intelligent evaluation before clicking on something.

Librarians challenge Web 2.0 youf-work myths

@ Dave Harris

As a Notes developer with 12 years of experience, I just have to thank you for this rare and objective evaluation of the difficulties of Notes integration.

I have heard so many disparaging comments from the Outlook crowd that I just have to acknowledge that the Microsoft interface monopoly has nothing less than a steel grip on the minds of users.

Thank goodness that the future of Notes is being integrated into the backoffice. With the local client gone and everything done by browser, more and more users will benefit from the advantages of Notes without even knowing it.

Skype blocks poison movie peril

That's what you get

When you try and shove the same bunch of features into every single communication tool.

Skype is for voice calls of the Internet. Why oh why should anyone need to search DailyMotion for a video during a call ?

Integrating these features into every comm package ends up with every comm application being vulnerable to the same things - and does not really bring any added value to the package.

Just allow Skype to open a browser on a URL like any other app.

In a few years they'll be telling us we need to be able to search Google on our toaster to get the latest toast recipes. Bollocks !

Dip into concept programming

Dinechin sees the software creation process falling behind the pace of hardware development

Man what a visionary ! So software development hasn't fallen behind yet ? Funny that. I seem to remember that when the 32-bit 386 came out there still wasn't a compiler to develop 16-bit code for the 286. And it took ages to get a proper 32-bit compiler - especially in the absence of the Internet and easy downloads.

So software development got faster then ? Probably. Lots faster because doing a lot less checking. Which explains why we have all those buffer overflows and memory leaks - nobody knows how to do their checks anymore.

Now software development will be slowing down again ? And that is a bad thing, how ? Once upon a time you had to be an engineer to develop code. You painstakingly hunted down bug after bug, taking whole nights to understand just why the code crapped out when a certain condition was met in order to implement the right solution.

Nowadays, any teenager full of acne can start a social web site and code in a bunch of things off the top of his head (or rip off the code from his school project for profit), but if there is a crash, just file the memory dump and forget it.

Memory dump. Does anybody actually remember the days when UNDERSTANDING one was a requirement ?

OOXML marks the spot, says research firm

Chalk up another phony "think tank"

So, Steve "Blowhard" Ballmer has finally wizened up to the fact that everybody knows the Alexis de Toqueville Institute is a just a front for Microsoft opinions, and he decided to change source ?

No problem. Ladies and Gentlemen, we hereby welcome the Burton Group into the very special and select group of Translators of Microsoft Opinions And Reality Be Damned.

Congratulations, Burton Group. You have just destroyed whatever credibility you might have had.

Messenger reveals Mercury's hidden side

A long time ago

A married couple worked hard and put their lives on the line to discover Radium, irradiation and how to detect it. The work of Pierre and Marie Curie ultimately led to X-ray machines, and founded the first stepping stone to what is nowadays nuclear power plants.

At the beginning of their research, not many people were interested. For years their "research" was done in an unused hangar, with a bare minimum in material. But their discovery and the conclusions it yielded were hailed as a great achievement. No one could have guessed it when they started.

If the director of the university where Pierre and Marie Curie worked had decided to forbid their research (and supposing the couple abided by that decision), we just might be still using candlelight today, and nobody would have computers of any kind.

Space research is the same thing. It's long, it's expensive, and Joe Public sees no use for it. But that same Joe Public just might, one day, be able to set foot on other planets because of it. If that is just remotely possible, I say today's research is money well spent.

FDA approves cloned animal products

Cloning clones

This mania we have of trying to keep "perfect" examples of something is not going to be good in the long run. Insisting on implementing genetic traits that never were part of the species' gene pool is most likely to land us in a heap of trouble somewhere down the line.

So now we're going to have penicillin-producing, medicinal drug-dispensing lamb chops ? Somehow I have the inkling that all this perfection is going to be the death of us.

US boffins create darkest material ever

Stealth ?

As in night camo suits ? Just wondering, but if this is really that black, then being a nice gaping black hole under the moon is not exactly what I would call stealthy.

On the other hand, it could be a very good coating for weapons - keep moonshine or streetlight from gleaming on the barrels.

FBI to get UK biometric database hookup?

Anyone can be taken from any country without due process at any time

Isn't that already existing under a different name ? It's called 'kidnapping', I believe. I doubt any country would take kindly to disappearing citizens.

Military industrial complex aims to revamp email

I can't wait

for the hack of the central key database purloining millions of keys. After all, they're supposed to be public keys, aren't they ?

And when all those public keys have been purloined and we find out that they are but 64-bit RCS keys (that take about a day to crack nowadays), what then ?

After all, the military doesn't really have a stellar record in web security on sites that are not supposed to be open to the public, and unless the central key storage is on some platform that is inherently secure (nothing Microsoft then), it'll be a prime target for spammers all over the world.

Price war looms in corporate 100Mb market

£800 a month ?!

Remind me again what kind of bandwidth they have in Taiwan and for how much ?

Microsoft develops 'intelligent' shopping trolley

Will be ignored by most

People are probably going to give it a try at the beginning, but I don't see this working for long.

Supermarkets change aisle content on purpose to keep consumers from acquiring movement habits and force them to see new products, lose their bearings and search through aisles to find what they want.

A gadget that'll tell people where to go is going to defeat this tactic in part.

Plus the references must be maintained - which will probably be a major hassle.

To me this is another solution in search of a problem. If I really need to know where a product is, I just ask an employee or the desk. No need for an expensive flatscreen that will probably be broken more often than not.

Scarlett Johansson to play Courtney Love?

I just can't wait for it

Really. I'm as excited about this film as I am about a documentary on the love life of cockroaches.

Besides, nobody is going to make me believe she will include as many arrests in the film as she got in real life. That would make the film run for 10 hours.

Then again, she's addled enough to think 10 hours on her sad life is just what people want.

Brighton professor bans Google

Not actually the right solution

While it is par for the course for a teacher to expect, and even impose, references from the material said teacher gives to the students, I do not think a blanket ban is the right answer.

The proper way to approach the issue would be to teach students a strange and alien concept : "critical thought". This concept is quite radical and extremely difficult to grasp, and I therefor understand that, in search of efficiency, the professor resorted to a simple ban.

But Google itself is not a bad tool, just as Wackypedia is actually an interesting resource in some domains - as long as you are wary of what you read.

Then again, students will always be students. Why read a long, boring, technical book when you can get results with a 5-minute search ?

I think Google needs a Schoogle section, where it scans school books and makes searches only on the contents of those books. Larry ? Sergey ? That'll be just $50 million - by check please.

Latest Vista SP1 tweak open to everyone with a week to spare

Re: I dunno why

Gosh, you're right. After all, reading about embedded DRM, increased nannying and scores of functionality being ripped out is no reason to not want to play with the product, is it ? And 20 different license versions is absolutely not a reason to complain, hmm ?

Because, really, if you're told that a new product will OBJECTIVELY decide that you cannot read a DVD without even asking your opinion, well it's not a problem, now is it ?

Absolutely not. Now why don't you go and play some more with the nice man in the white coat ? He has some ice cream for you and he'll take you to the park, promise.

Steve Jobs' Macworld Expo spiel spied on web?

Frankly obvious

A blog claiming WackyPedia as source ? It has got to be true !

Yeah, right. And I'm King Tut.

Bjork lays into NZ snapper

It's all quite confusing

Reading just the comments here it seems that the same guy who took the pics is sometimes a "journalist" and sometimes a "papparazzi".

Now I despise paparazzi as much as any other human being that is not a celebrity does, but hey, if he's a journo then it's not the same thing. I give much more credit to journos than to papzs (actually, I give journos some, papzs none), so I really would like to know. Was the photographer a journo from a respectable journal doing his job in a professional manner ? Or was he a piece of slime out for some celeb shot ? Or was he some piece of slime trying to pass off as a journalist ?

I think that a real journalist does not take pictures if he is asked not to. So that would make the guy a papz. If so, I'm not really sorry for him.

But still, I think events like this are going to be fewer are far between as the word gets around in the photographic circles : Björk is a no-no ! Wherever she is, whatever she is doing !

What will be funny is the day she actually wants her picture taken (like for PR-related business, album launch, whatever) and, in protest, nobody takes one.

Immigrant ID cards and border checks slip towards 2009

2,000 colleges, 256 inspected, 124 bogus ?

For Heaven's sake that's almost 50% !!

Of course, nothing has been said about how the inspections were conducted and on what criteria the colleges were chosen for inspection, nor of the time span of the inspection period (is that 256 inspections in three months ? Six years ? A decade ?). It could be that the inspections were made on "suspicious" colleges only, in which case it would be a great demonstration of fine-tuned sleuthing and well-placed administrative effort.

Nah, can't be.

But if it's random inspections, then it's high time to put an end to student visas !

This does beg the question, though : why aren't colleges inspected BEFORE they are allowed to submit requests for visas ?

California to snatch control of citizens' air-con

Typical political solution

So there is a supply problem, that much is proven. What's really funny is that, instead of increasing supply, or improving the infrastructure, the decision taken is to try and limit demand with Soviet-style management.

As France has proved in the heat waves a few years ago now, old people have just as much trouble coping with heat than they do with cold. I do not see anywhere in that bill that the age of the occupant is going to be taken into account in the remote temperature-control procedure. So that has to mean that, if this wacky scheme is ever actually put in place, the day the utility company dials down the air-con to have demand meet supply, old people will be dropping of dehydration like flies above a vinegar jar.

And if it can be proven that the utility company is responsible for dialing down the cooling and thus causing mass manslaughter, the mayhem in court that will follow will make Enron look like harmonious picnic.

Now, I'm not against Americans learning to curb their outrageous level of resource wastage, but there are other means of doing so than by putting lives at risk. Increasing the cost of electricity is certainly one idea. If people still keep windows open while the aircon is active, then electricity is still not expensive enough.

But I do think that, in this particular case, the utility companies are at least partly to blame for the shameful lack of supply. In the richest state of the most powerful country of the world, a brownout is certainly not something to be proud of.

Wikia unsheathes antidote to 'unhealthy' Google

taken round the back and quietly shot

No, no. It needs to be taken round the back and very noisily shot with hundreds of rounds of very high explosives.

Former beauty queen cuffed for torturing ex

Not the most savory individual

Oh well then, 10 hours of torture and death threats is fine then, right ?

One thing's for sure though : Ms Fulbright is indeed going to become a promising law student - she's going to have an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of a prison.

There aren't enough lawyers that have that knowledge.

Microsoft readies Hal 9000

What's the problem, people ?

After all, it'll only work under Vista, of course, which no corporation in its right mind is using anyway.

Besides, it's a Microsoft product, meaning it will be so buggy and make everything else crash so often Helpdesk people will suffer extreme depression every Monday morning.

The network will be bogged down in "phone-home" requests, the phone system will be overloaded by people trying to contact the Helpdesk, reschedule appointments and call the medics.

Frankly, I can't see this new gadget surviving any longer than Bob did, and Bob hardly had the amount of possible anti-constitutional lawsuits that this thing does.

First Vista, now this. I wonder if Ballmer isn't actually trying to run Microsoft to the ground ?

Google researcher calls for Flash flush

Can't stand Flash

I do not criticize the format itself, some good things have been done with it. What I do criticize is the tendency that much too many sites have to manage everything in a single Flash applet.

Useless, annoying, bandwidth-killing and destroyer of HTML links.

Whenever I stumble across a site that is Flash only, I quickly go away and hopefully never return.

Sears admits to joining spyware biz

a Sears vice president vigorously defends the practice

One question : would he still "vigorously defend the practice" if he were strapped to a tree and threatened with a hundred lashes ?

I think we should give it a try. Bring back corporal punishment for white-collar crime !

Thom Yorke dismisses net-only album paradigm

I don't know Radiohead

So I cannot comment on whether they are good or not, but in my view it doesn't even matter. What matters to me is that they have demonstrated publicly that selling an album online without getting shafted by "the majors" is possible and economically feasible, and for that I thank them.

The more artists stay away from RIAA and consorts, the quicker that ugly, greedy, corporate malfeasant will hopefully die off and leave us alone with the music we love.

I prefer a million Radioheads to one RIAA.

Microsoft warns on Home Server bug

Microsoft is, always was and always will be crap

I've been a Microsoft user since the days of DOS 1.0, and no one (especially not a certain Hewitt) will ever convince me that MS does not make crap products.

The only reason I continue to use the crap that comes out of Ballmer's domain is because I have to.

Why do I have to ? Because my work is centered around it, my hobby is centered around it, and finally, I am wayyyy to lazy to be my own personal Sysadmin at home.

To those who continually chip in their inevitable "Linux is better !" comments, I say call me when Linux can run the 250+ games I have bought without any hassle for me (I'll start listening when Linux gets a DirectX version).

So there you have it. I'm a developer by day, and a gamer on my free time. I have done all desktop OSes MS has ever made, and none of them has been the perfect, stable and discreet OS that I expected. Of all the versions MS has made, I must say that XP Pro SP1 is by far the best of the lot - even with all its shortcomings.

So when MS talks about Home Server, or Vista whatever, I just laugh and forget about it. MS handling my data ? One look at the history of its backup programs and you forget that idea. I do my backups myself, thank you, with Nero and a blank DVD. Works fine and MS can't screw it up, not today, not tomorrow either.

You want a data hub ? Get a NAS unit (working under a Linux kernel). You want a server ? Either Linux, Sun or IBM are your only choices, anything else will only bring pain in the long run. MS is only still around because of the immense software library that was made for it - and with Vista, MS is actively trying to kill that off.

The day any game I buy can run on a Linux box, Windows will be sailing out my window for good. Meanwhile, I'll stick with it, but don't ever ask me to trust it.

Portuguese-speaking worm attacks Google Orkut users

Within hours . .

Hey, Microsoft ! Did you read that ? The hole was patched WITHIN HOURS.

Not years, not months, not even days.

Does that mean ANYTHING to you, Steve ?

Gates' spontaneity highlights IE data gap

Will it comply with web standards?

Wrong question. The real question is : Will it comply with non-Microsoft web standards?

Serena promises dev teams shorter hours

What a great idea !

No, seriously, from a business point of view this has to be great.

Sell a product that allows the management, who has no technical know-how whatsoever, to define their own security rules and object definitions.

And who, in management, is going to actually, you know, READ THE MANUAL ? Who is going to take the time needed to implement a test environment ? How many suits are going to worry about side effects before going in and implementing their latest brainstorm in production ?

The management is going to love it, fiddle around with it, and - most importantly - continually break everything. And when something is broken, what will management do ? Ring IT, of course, and issue a terse "fix it !" command because, you know, this thing has to work RIGHT THIS INSTANT.

And IT will slave away at the trash that the managers put in until it's fixed, get no thanks at all for their efforts and just pray that those suits won't break the thing again in the next five minutes.

I think we've got a winner here !

Software maker releases the hounds on security vuln reporter

"every effort to nicely ask"

Yeah, that sounds really credible.

A bit like a scene from a cop story where the bad guy has just broken every finger in the cops' hand, then sits down in front of the pain-blinded victim, pulls out a gun, puts it to the guys' head and says : "okay, I'll ask you nicely : where did you put the advisory ?".

In any case, I've just added one more company to my list of who-not-to-deal-with. Thanks for the warning, Autonomy !

Microsoft releases battling OS release candidates

@Mark

"the two products share a source code tree"

Beyond my first reaction (uh, duh !), I must admit that I am a bit skeptical about the claim that "the server group generally keep more or less on track". If the source code tree changes, then the server group is stuffed and the keeping on track is likely to be rather less than more.

But nonwithstanding the on-trackiness of the server group, what I conclude from your rabid defense of this pile of turkey doo is that, if I should get a lobotomy and actually want to try something named Vista, I should actually try the server version.

Hmm. That could be feasible actually, at the condition that the server version forgoes the embedded DRM and useless and annoying UAC. I would guess that, for a server version, speed in copying files is of the essence, and a UAC popup kind of defeats the use of server in the first place.

So it's nice to know that the day I lose my brain I'll still have something to play with. Meanwhile, I'll stick with XP if you don't mind.

Well actually, I'll stick with XP whether you mind or not.

Phone phreaks spoof LSD-induced multiple homicide

And they find that funny ?

What if some innocent person had gotten shot during one of these "pranks" ? It would be entirely possible, I think.

You really have to be a moron to get your laughs out of launching the cops on some innocent person. I would think that, should the cops burst down the door of these sad pranksters in the middle of the night and come in weapons ready, these losers wouldn't find it so funny.

They'd probably crap their pajamas.

I hope they get the maximum. Such behavior is beyond despicable.

Facebook CEO capitulates (again) on Beacon

@Christopher Martin

"you don't need social networking websites to destroy your own privacy"

True, but thanks to social networking websites you can now destroy your privacy in view of the entire wired world. You can make yourself so ridiculous you will be instantly recognized from Alabama to Tokyo via Berlin and Cape Town, and that reputation will follow you until you see a plastic surgeon to change your face.

Before, you could make yourself the village idiot, but if the situation became intolerable you could pack and move to another village and start with a clean slate.

With the Internet, YouTube and the rest, if ever anything ridiculous gets posted about you, it is likely to be there for the rest of your life - and wherever you are, someone will find it sooner or later.

I'm guessing that that'll get real annoying in the long run.

Nokia sees a good future for Nokia

One quarter of all content will be user-generated

Well that's basically already the case on YouTube, no ? And what exactly is generated by users ? Cat videos, dog videos, baby videos, and generally very boring stuff. And the occasional happy-slapping vid, or even outright fighting. Then you have the massive group of people who film themselves talking, thinking that not only people are interested in their inane blabberings, and that they look good doing it as well.

But frankly I don't really care what kind of content is generated. For me, a phone is for phoning. Videos and films I watch on a widescreen TV from my couch, thank you very much.

Flying robots get aerial highway code

Outsource pilot call centers ?

What a daft idea. First of all, for military operations it will be unheard of - you don't want to give control of tactical assets to a party whose security you are not in control of either. Second, if outsourcing call centers is an already-not-so-bright idea for helpdesk and customer support, just imagine the nightmare it will become when you have a soldier trying to understand a stream of east-Asian engrish in the midst of a conflict situation.

Might as well ask the Army to take its orders from an Admiral. It won't work well.

Counterfeit Vista rate half that of XP

plans to further curtail piracy

Um, that has to mean "even more restrictive DRM", which will inevitably lead us to "more false-positives in WGA" and hilarity ensues as the DHS is reported as being locked out of its own computers.

Meanwhile, normal users will continue to use XP SP2 for the foreseeable future, and they will be vindicated when Microsoft finally ports DX10 to XP.

Yes, I am convinced it will happen.

Beer makes people have sex with you

Drinking leads to more rumpy-pumpy

Addendum sorely needed to this stunningly useful study. As all Vulture readers know, the beer glass effect has a real impact on most drinkers, making some go and shag whatever moves. So yes, they probably get more pillow time, but I'd say there's a faire chance they don't remember it well either.

I prefer less quantity with more quality. Remembering is half the fun, after all.

Appraisals are dishonest, waste of time

Yup, been there and seen it all

I've worked in several companies, and the appraisal process was different every time. In one, nobody trusted the whole thing since it was a foregone conclusion that the ones getting bonuses or perks had already been chosen, and that's exactly what happened. In another, the appraisal process was a very formal thing, with an HR psychologist interview first, a week for analysis of interview, then review of analysis with employer, but for all that hubbub nothing ever came out of the whole waste of time. I've witnessed civil service appraisals as well (safely from my contractors' position) and I must say it was almost funny seeing how so many people took the thing seriously when the managers had already decided which gorgeous personal secretary was going to accompany them on the bonus trip to Paradise Isle.

Right now, the company I'm in is the fairest in my view. Funny though, there is no yearly appraisal - my boss actually talks to me more than once a month, and lets me know his opinion of on an ongoing basis (whether good or bad). I rather like that.

Ex-HMRC boss gets shiny new civil service post

Re:flog them

I'm right with you there. 40 lashes seems to not even begin to suffice, but historically speaking people have trouble surviving more, so I guess we'll have to cap it at that.

Can we have the ceremonies in stadiums ? With a gladiator fight after the flogging ? And some terrorists let loose with hungry lions after that ?

Pedophile gets 110 years in MySpace extortion scheme

Locked away eh ?

And what guarantees that he won't get access to Internet while locked up ? Because I've heard that there are convicts that do have Internet access.

So ?

NASA pondering electro-hypersonic jet boosters

If access to space is ever to become easier

Then Earth's orbit is going to need a serious cleaning. The thousands of nuts, bolts and assorted debris that are floating around up there will be a navigational hazard of much greater importance if the traffic is multiplied by civilian activity.

Secret mailing list rocks Wikipedia

Well that's a good example

I have now the perfect example of what I call a Wikinazi. Secret lists, secret tribunals, information on need-to-know basis that you never need to know, all the typical behavioral patterns of an organization that has none of the goals referenced under "freedom of information", "justice", or even plain old "common sense".

It would appear that common sense is not so common after all.

In any case, behavior like this is the very reason why I despise Wikipedia : ignoramuses who abuse their powers remove all credibility from anything they touch. I'm sorry for all the people who honestly work to contribute to this failure of a model, but I approach Wikipedia with just as much circumspection as I would approach an angry rattlesnake.

Facebook 'to drop' creeptech ad system

@ Darren Coleman

Thank you for copy/pasting part of the article I just read. You seem to have forgot, however, to make any comment on it. What exactly is it you wanted to say ?

US Army plans robot planes operated by non-pilots

'This will set back robot planes for decades'

On the contrary, multiplying the amount of operators means multiplying the amount of drones, which in turn means higher build rates, more improvements, innovation and cost reduction.

And, in turn, we get better drones for less cost, while operators get easier-to-control interfaces to get used to.

Looks like a boom is coming for drone builders.

Google wants to make renewable power cheaper than coal

The problem is actually . .

that the Matrix is true, we're a part of it, and Google has found out the truth.

The terrifying part is going to be when Keanu shows up at Google HQ in a black gown.

Boffins report lightning on Venus, our non-identical twin

Send over the crust sub !

I think an urgent mission to put Venus' core back in rotation is required. All we need is a tunneling train made of Unobtainium and a crew willing to sacrifice its life to get Venus a magnetic field.

And concerning liberals and biaised scientists, it's useless imposing on Venusians the same pathetic public institutions that a country on Earth has. Venusians certainly don't have liberals or conservatatives - heck, we don't even know if they have politicians !