Posts by Pascal Monett

EA reloads, aims at Activision, goes for headshot

I've seen the trailer for BF3

It is mightily impressive, I must admit. It seems to incorporate some things about destructible environments that I have been waiting for, and the quality is simply gorgeous.

That said, BF2 had one major issue - it was very difficult to get a ranked private server. Possible, but difficult. Me and my pals spent three years running around dozens and dozens of user-made maps, upping our ranks on my personal ranked server, and it worked rather well.

With Battlefield 2142, that became impossible. I do not think that there is any way to get a private ranked server for BF2142, and that is really a shame because there are way too many idiots in the world to have a public 64-slot server work well, and I dont have 63 friends with the same gaming interests as I.

So it seems to me that, given that the publisher is EA, which has a proven history of being positively anal about DRM and user restrictions, I fear that BF3, though promising from a technical standpoint, will suffer from the same lame, useless restrictions that will make basic, user-supportive things impossible.

And that, for me, means that I most probably will not be playing it, because I find no fun to be had in playing with the general public that is full of idiots, losers and griefers. I prefer playing with my friends against bots - stupid as the bots are, they're still more fun to play than regular Internet dweebs.

So, if BF3 is going to refuse private ranked servers (and I see no reason to believe it won't) and, even worse, restrict private servers to piddling 16-player-size maps, then I'm not even buying the game.

Not until someone brings out a mod to blast those restrictions away.

Then we will see the usual treadmill of EA patch that changes something that breaks the mod, mod community gets together to find the flaw and patch it or find a workaround, and start over again.

Because EA can simply not accept that anyone else actually add welcome functionality to one of its products. They're not selling games so people can have fun, no. They're selling games because that is what sells.

Coalition signs up to passenger info slurp

Meal choices ?

Just how exactly does knowing the meal choice of someone improve security against terrorism ?

Because terrorists only choose halal dishes ?

Well I'm sure that, after my state-enforced lobotomy, I'll be convinced that it is a good thing.

Source code leaked for pricey ZeuS crimeware kit

Um...

Maybe El Reg is being responsible ?

It is their duty to report the news, but is it their duty to make malware suits even more available than they already are ?

If this was a report about a cache of Anthrax, do you really think it would be a good idea to tell everyone where it is ?

Really, common sense has not survived the millenium.

Microsoft coughs to wobbly Office Live problems

"The company didn't reveal what had gone wrong, nor how many people had been affected"

Of course they didn't, they never do that unless there is such a public outcry that even the deaf realize that something has happened.

Anything less than that and everything is just peachy fine, no problems at all, really. Don't mind the skeleton in the corner, he's nobody you know.

Virgin outsources techies, pulls plug on Trowbridge call centre

Accenture ?

Isn't that the company that regularly loses customer confidential data on misplaced laptops ?

I'm betting we'll hear about this again.

Want an untracked Android? Here’s how

I have no idea of what use that would be to some of you

I'm sure that the burglar who analyzed your movements and chose the best time to strike will be very happy with your attitude.

Oz boffins in quantum computing breakthrough

So it works statistically ?

I mean, apparently a quantum computer works by guessing the values in its registry. That must make it the perfect marketing machine !

Sony implicates Anonymous in PlayStation Network hack

Sympathy ?!

They'll need much, much more than that to get a shred of sympathy from me.

CEOP accused of misleading public over site security fail

a "technically advanced" hacker

CEO-speak for "anybody who can actually do more than just PowerPoint"

Wikileaks: Canadian piracy arrests were favor to movie biz man

Oh sure

Some guy is dead in connection with some not even illegal activity in his country, but because it's called "piracy" somewhere else, let's get all high and mighty and say it's his fault that he brought it on himself.

The callous disregard for loss of life always leads me to wish that those who wash their hands of it be subject to the same treatment. See how well you guys do after two arrests and some months in prison for walking while chewing gum, because what he did wasn't any worse, legally, in his country.

Is iPhone data collection legal?

Interesting

If I read the above comments correctly, it would seem that the arguments in favor of data collection are :

- everybody is doing it

- it would be a nuisance not to

- the laws against it were written before smartphones

Yes, I can see how such brilliant arguments could sway the shrewdest judge. Not.

Microsoft profits soar 31% on Office, Xbox

Put your fresh money on an Ipad

Um, I have a PC.

Why would I want to waste money on an Ipad ?

Beyoncé sued over aborted videogame deal

Does it matter ?

To the 70 guys toiling on the game, I think it did.

PlayStation Network credit cards protected by encryption

"a very sophisticated security system"

Dear Sony,

There are two issues with the statement that your "security" system was "very sophisticated". The first is obvious : it got breached, so it wasn't sophisticated enough.

The second is also obvious, albeit probably not to you. It is the fact that you are a company who has considered a number of ridiculous DRM schemes, some of which have actually been damaging to your customer base, all of which you have touted as THE solution to piracy, all of which have failed miserably.

So, your idea of "sophisticated" is one in which faith of any kind must be used sparingly, if at all.

On top of that, if you were indeed capable of sophistication, you would not have ANY identifiable customer data in reach of the Internet that was not encrypted with 128-bit secure, hashed and salted, minced and boiled and whatever other neat, top-of-the-line procedures the security geeks gargle with every morning.

Instead, you stored identifiable customer data in plaintext.

Sorry, Sony, but that is quite the opposite of "sophisticated".

It is, on the other hand, exactly what we could expect from the likes of you.

Windows 7 takes PC upgrade for a cycle

Isn't it hilarious

how Linux advocates are continuously trolling Windows threads trumpeting how much better "their" OS is, even though after decades of doing so Linux still has less desktop share than Apple ?

Personally, it really looks like they're compensating for something, because any rational individual would realize that companies are focused on actually making money, not installing and training users on the best OS out there.

Personally, I find that Windows in the workplace is a humongous mistake. Windows is only barely good enough for personal computing. Linux is more robust, more secure due to rarity as well as design, is almost invulnerable to user stupidity (because no user works under Administrator credentials) and good programmers work on Linux just as well as Windows.

Windows, on the other hand, is a vast, fertile terrain for all sorts of malware, can be screwed up by its user under a myriad of circumstances, has fostered all sorts of bad practices and just happens to be the most used platform at home as well as the enterprise.

Companies use what works the best for them. Windows, thanks to Microsofts' selfless student licenses, is known by all new recruits, and saves weeks of training and getting used to. Linux, on the other hand, requires all current business software to be rewritten, all users to undergo weeks of training which will disrupt business practices to no end, and will bother managers during months wondering if the procedures and software are doing what exactly they are supposed to do, without any of their handy flowchart reporting thingies to reassure them.

Managers don't like being bothered, even if it is supposed to be better for the long term, so Linux in the workplace will never happen, simple as that. And since any attempt at making Linux more Windows-like is met by scoffing and scorn from the Linux "elite", you'll never get Linux into schools either, which is where you need to start if you want to really dethrone Windows.

So do that already, instead of endlessly, uselessly chanting "Linux is better !", because only doing that is not going to change anything.

That is, if you actually want anything to change.

WikiLeaks releases classified files on Guantánamo Bay

Re:9-11

What about them ?

Oh, of course, they were unjustly killed in a terrible, man-made catastrophe. Either you believe that it is the US Government (named "previous Administration" in this document) that did it, following a certain amount of conspiracy theories, or you believe that Bin Laden is the culprit, following the official stance of the same US Government.

Either way, I fail to see how that justifies torture.

Unless, of course, you admit that you actually accept to debase yourself to the same level as they did, which you implicitly do in your remark, in which case you are part of the problem, not the solution.

Portal 2

All Hail the Aperture Science Lab !

Proving that good, innovative gameplay is still possible in this world of endless, boring sequels to endless FPS clones.

Google gives Eric Schmidt 124,999,900% salary increase

I'd forego the raise

if my boss gave me a 400% bonus.

Of course, I understand that, in his stead, I would indeed be a bit miffed if I only got a bonus of $4. So yes, put my salary at umpteen million first, THEN give me the 400% bonus.

But really, all this is happening in lalaland and nothing to do with humans.

At all.

Scientists reveal eight-legged Jurassic beast

Tarantulas aren't spiders ?!?

I beg to differ, to they are very much arachnids, belonging to the Theraphosidae family.

Go scare yourself on Wikipedia, I can't read more.

New double-barrelled Taser unveiled

Is this the beginning of the Gilette razor syndrome ?

When will we see a 5-shot taser device ?

Will we get a taser gatling ?

Curious minds want to know.

Calling all readers: Want some new icons?

My choices are

1) a nice little donkey, viewed from behind, to signify that I think the idea/comment/article/whatever was written by an ass

2) a fairy in a woodland landscape, to signify that I think the idea/comment/article/whatever comes from/is written by some lunatic in lalaland

3) a pitchfork, preferably on a flaming background, to signify that I would really, really like to skewer the idea/comment/article/whatever and be done with it

Oh, and let's get rid of the Gates icons, replace them with Jobs icons and it'll be fine.

Thank you for your attention.

Top-secret US lab infiltrated by spear phishers – again

Incompetence & ISO standards

Seems to me that the vulnerability targeted was on IE, therefor without Windows there would be no hoopla.

A data "in the megabytes" is still quite enough to hold thousands of personal details, if not tens of thousands.

Lawsuit targeting RockYou data breach gets green light

Yeah, but

storing passwords in plaintext ? What idiot validated that part of the procedure ?

If I keep the key to my door on a hook next to the door, my insurance will rightfully claim that I have no grounds to be indemnified once the burglar has ransacked my house.

Microsoft's Word fight opens in US Supreme Court

Re:prove the vehicle was mine

I should not have to prove that to you but to the police, which is the case.

SCHEITERN: Scientologists want to friend schoolkids on Facebook

The rest of the religious bunch do not destroy your mind

Nor do they alienate your family and friends, nor do they require that you give them loads of money.

It is simple to make the difference between a religion worthy of the name and a cult that is out for you :

- a religion gives you its doctrine freely, and encourages you to come and listen to its scholars to gain deeper insight into its meaning, after which you are invited (not mandatory) to contribute to its church, all the while leaving you free to decide what your opinion is and how far you want to go

- a cult demands your presence, your money and your devotion to a doctrine that you must work towards in order to receive the full enlightenment, while convincing you that anyone who voices a critical opinion of it is working against your best interests which are to always give it more time and resources until you belong to it

The problem with cults is that people need to belong to a group, and a cult provides a cushy environment where everyone is certain that they are the same, guaranteeing to its followers that they will attain a superior status by following its rules.

A religion, on the other hand, requires critical thinking and personal interpretation, is open to debate on its foundation, its goals and its means, and generally does not guarantee anything in this life.

Frankly, I don't see how anyone with a modicum of intelligence cannot see that.

Google donates a billion cores to boffins

a unique volunteer computing grid ?

Isn't that what Boinc is ? With more than 300,000 volunteers ?

Are you suggesting that Google "stole" your idea ? Because if so, it seems to me that you're late to the party.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Viking Modular plugs flash chips into memory sockets

One thing bothers me

If you have a virus loaded into memory, and your memory is Flash RAM, how are you going to get rid of it ?

Sony Pictures opens wallet for Bond 23

Can I propose a title ?

How about "Meltdown" ?

Or "Swan Song" ?

Or even "End Game" ?

Updates galore in Microsoft's biggest ever Patch Tuesday

Windows Update still disabled here

I'll wait for any follow-up catastrophe articles before I enable it and download the latest ticking bomb from MS.

Indonesian anti-smut MP caught ogling filth

"We need to be cautious. We need to make sure we're not violating any privacy laws."

Disgusting. Because it happens to be about a disgraced Senator, caution is required. If it was Joe Vindaloo, he'd be in prison before anyone even knew about it.

Technology turns us into RAGING CRACKHEADS

24 hours ? So what ?

I've just been forced to go 5 days without Internet access or phone, due to my SFR box biting the bullet and having had to wait that amount of time for its replacement to arrive.

It wasn't fun, but hey, there are more important things.

ICO wags finger at York council after data breach

A quicker way ? In an aministration ?

Come now, they're not supposed to be quick, people would get used to that.

Besides, nobody took any documents away - they just left them on a photocopier, and someone else didn't check that it was his stuff, nor even whose stuff it was, and just copied it and sent it off.

That part bugs me a bit. To who were the copies sent ? To all newspapers, as per Standing Copy Order #17b§5 ? Or just internally ?

No, no, that's not it

They HAVE robust procedures, they just don't USE them.

Teens who listen to music a lot are at high risk of depression

I read while listening to music too

That's why I'm not depressed, just crazy.

Photoshopped image scam used in rogue Facebook app trap

Re:"facebook really has its good points"

Indeed it does. Principally it has diminished the amount of crap I get in my Inbox and replaced the spam with but a few Twitter, Paypal and Facebook alerts.

It would seem that spam and con artists are targeting Facebook and Twitter now, and that really helps me since I do not have an account on any of those sites.

So, for the fact that Facebook is drawing the morons to it and therefor the miscreants as well, I thank it for existing. Apart from that, I despise it and its maker.

Australia, give up your fixed broadband!

Wireless, the future ?

You mean, that radiative technology which gets me only 500kbps as soon as I move to the next room ? And 52kpbs if I go upstairs ?

You mean that publicly-accessible medium that anyone can snoop on from the street with the right hardware, and easily break into with its laughable WPA "encryption" ?

Surely you jest, hmm ? Either that or you work for Echelon.

Give me a shielded twisted pair and 8Mbps please. I'll take that over wireless any day.

Not to mention that, to listen in on my wire, you have to be physically attached to it - which is not easy to do from the street.

Oh, and in Japan they have an *average* connection speed of 60Mbps. That means that there are a lot of people with MORE than that - probably approaching Ethernet speeds. Wired connections are slated to reach the terabit per second range in the next decade or so. Wireless can drool all it wants, it'll never get there.

Single-patent lawsuit hits Apple, Google, Amazon, Priceline...

Just one question

What does H-W Technology produce ?

The basis, the very reason of existence of the patent system is to protect the owner for a limited time during which said owner can profit from his idea by bringing said idea to the market before anyone else.

So, where are the H-W Technology mobile phones ? Has anyone seen them ?

I don't think so. I think this "company" is just another troll, a wart on the economical system that should be excised with liquid nitrogen.

The very first check from a judge on any patent claim should be "does the complainant make anything with his patent". If not, hit him with contempt of court charges and throw him out.

Microsoft: IE9 not yet 'broadly' available

Obviously

Now that the race to be the best in the short term is lost, MS decides to bank on Auto-Update to reverse the situation in the medium term.

And that could work, for there are certainly Win7 PCs without Firefox that MS can push IE9 to.

Still, whatever numbers come out of MS now concerning IE9 "adoption" will oficially be due to Auto-Update, not to personal useage, meaning that a number of people with Win7/Firefox (like me) will probably be counted by MS in the IE9 camp because of Auto-Update statistical shenanigans.

In other words, MS has always lied, is lying now and always lie.

Business as usual, in other words.

Pre-release Windows 8 code hits PC makers

Hold on

Is Microsoft trying to change its OS creation schedule to match its OS patch schedule ?

Windows 7 followed the dismal failure that was Vista after barely two years. It has just started settling down in the market and MS is already making noise about a new version ?

Madness.

Crysis 2

Made for consoles and PC ?

So that most probably means limited AI, limited storyline and limited liberty of action. Oh, and enemies popping up as soon as you cross an invisible threshold, like in Unreal 3, which was a great disappointment.

Consoles are great for some kinds of games - racing or sports especially. Anything FPS or RTS has to be dumbed down horribly to fit the technical constraints.

And besides those considerations, ever since I played Half-Life (the original one), I never fail to be amazed and dismayed at any new game that comes out without the dynamic AI that characterized that game so well.

Half-Life came out in 1998. Since then, nobody has been able to even simply equal that title in AI depth and cunning, let alone better it. Half-Life 2 only did about as well, but that can be considered a compliment since no other title in existence has approached either title in AI efficiency.

AI history has been at a standstill since then, and no title that plays on a console is going to change that.

FBI asks for help to crack mystery code in 12-year-old murder case

That's exactly why they want to know how it works

Because then they can improve on the concept and make a new generation of ciphers.

Corporate hospitality is OK, says new Bribery Act guidance

But of course they will allow corporate "hospitality"

Because, really, it's obvious that serious business discussions always occur around sporting or media events like golf tournaments, football matches, tennis encounters and whatnot. That's where the real decisions are made. If they forbade that, the economy would grind to a halt !

Come on, people, be reasonable. You don't actually expect your elected officials to "work" from their offices, do you ?

RSA won't talk? Assume SecurID is broken

"our intranet page on the issue is very clear"

I'm sure that the hackers have read it and are in complete agreement.

Nokia talks Pure typographic cobblers

"a huge investment in time, skill and money"

Translation : lots of power meetings with heavy deciders, expensive restaurant and hotel bills, some international flights, plus maybe a thousand or two for the poor sap who had to write and re-re-rewrite the font rules actually doing the job.

Plus the inevitable high-level marketing party thrown once the one technical guy had finally finished the endless list of useless modification to make it look like Plus Sans.

Fire-quenching electric forcefield backpack invented

It is not a similar idea

The electrical field is not snuffing out the oxygen nor is it starving the flame - actually, nobody knows how it does work. I suspect house elves myself, but I have no proof.

On the other hand, I must admit that, as a crowd-control device, a vast electrical field seems to fit the bill perfectly. Much like an omni-directional taser, one zap and a hundred people hit the ground writhing. Yep, sounds realistic. Much more than a magical flame-snuffing wand.

I'd be curious to see a video of that effect. The flame-snuffing, I mean. The crowd-control video will show up soon enough on YouTube, I wager.

EU bodies schooled on ethical data-gathering

I cannot agree

I cannot agree that the names of participants in a meeting at any political level be kept secret. The basic notion of all European governments at this time is democracy, and the definition of democracy if government of the people by the people. Keeping names secret is a mockery of the very notion of democracy. The people have the right who is making the decisions for them.

On the other hand, I can only applaud the idea that personal data be kept secret unless authorized by the person. I would even go so far as to say that authorizations should be kept on a case-per-case basis - in other words, I want a new authorization request for ever attempt to resell the data.

My life is private, I have the right to keep it that way.

BlackBerry users get free remote wipe, backup and location

Just a thought

Has RIM tested this new functionality in unfriendly waters ? Such as a hacker convention ? Because if not, I sure hope they really, rreeeeaalllllyy did the use case and security profile correctly, else there will be blood when some high-profile CEO gets his little toy wiped without his consent.

Cloud says 'no'

Where's the problem ?

I'm glad to know that your company is putting its business secrets in the hands of cloud operators. Could you please specify which company it is you work for ? So that I know who not to do business with - after all, I'm not interested in seeing my private and credit card details plastered all over the web the day your cloud operator gets hacked.

Riding a bike can be done without touching the handles as well - right up to the split second you need your hands on the handles to steer around a sudden obstacle.

Virtual Facebook thief jailed for two years

Extreme punishment ?

I don't think so. His shenanigans led his neighbors to become suspect before he got caught himself. On top of that, he was already under a suspended sentence for hacking, so that's a relapse.

Jeanne D'Arc got burned at the stake for relapse. This guy got off lightly.

I floated a site into the cloud, and it didn't rain down in chunks...

nah

troll, more likely