Posts by Pascal Monett

Newfangled cookie attack steals/poisons website creds

Just one question

Is Firefox concerned by this exploit or not ?

'Internet Age' means egalitarian 'hunter-gatherer' society

Science is great

Post an article about a trivial analogy between current society and prehistoric society, ensure that you have a proper caveat inserted to ward off serious criticism, and you pass for a scientist.

State attorney nabbed in car with stripper, Viagra and sex toys

Hang on

I'm quite sure that he was not the one doing the entertaining !

Green Berets get wearable combat smartphones

@Matt Bryan

I totally subscribe to your point of view. Low-tech enemies doesn't mean stupid enemies, though. They'll be quite intelligent enough to grasp the significance and usefullness of a wifi locator, and those things don't cost all that much.

Games developers demand tax breaks

Tax breaks, interesting.

Now that is very interesting indeed.

Either the end customer is going to see an effect in said breaks (meaning lower prices), or the tax breaks are going to line the pockets of the CEO and board buddies, along with maybe some investors.

In the second case, this is just a disguised form of government pork, and the deal is already done even if the ink hasn't yet dried.

In the first case, if the tax breaks that are requested are made to lower the prices of games, well then what do you know ? Maybe what gamers have been clamoring for since the last decade has finally made its snail-paced way to the neuron that controls reason in the labyrinthine maze that is a game company CEO's brain these days.

Of course, I realize that under no condition will the game companies actually lower their own prices. Gotta get that new model Mercedes for next week's wife replacement. No, it is much better to complain about how taxes are punishing them so severely that they cannot compete. Meaning, "if you don't lower our taxes, we'll have to lay off some people in these hard times". I imagine that was said with a sly grin over a glass of fine Chianti in some hundred-pound-a-plate-of-noodles restaurant.

But even so, if this manipulation results in actual lowered game prices, then the consumer organizations should take that ball and drive it right back down the game company CEO's collective throats. See ! Lowered prices sell more games. SO LOWER YOUR FRAKKIN' PRICES ALREADY !

China accuses Google of 'malicious' censorship

"pen new laws and regulations"

Whether it is in China or in any other country that already has an extensive legal library to deal with publishing issues, I simply cannot understand why the fact that a publication is online makes so much difference that entirely new laws need to be written.

I can understand that some laws may need to be amended, and maybe some explanation added to some other laws, but entirely new laws ? That would be like making new rules for road security because of TipTronic gear-changing.

Any time I hear of a law being specifically written to control publication on the Internet, I hear of a law that is redundant, not thought through, unnecessarily restrictive, incompetently worded, much too focussed in its action and most probably misses some major point.

Laws like that get struck down as soon as reason once again prevails.

Fake servers sell better than real servers

@TeeCee

I'm sure the El Reg legal department will welcome with wry smiles (and raised glasses) any attempt at likening the expression "apples to oranges" with any well-known (or not so well-known) maker of reassuringly expensive toys.

I'm equally sure that they'll have all the living shit that is required to smother the ill-advised lawyers who would be daft enough to make such an attempt, and some to spare.

Please do not let the Jobs Touch (c) extend beyond the reach of IT. The Jobsian Reality Distortion Field (c) does not have any effect in the courtroom.

Not yet.

Sonic 'hyperlens' offers hi-res ultrasound scans, naval sonar

Brass ?

All they need is a steam engine to compress the sound and the Age of SteamPunk will have finally come to be !

Japanese algorithm 'can tell if you're about to die'

So they are trying to detect if you're going to die

And what, pray tell, is the use of such a tool ?

If I phone for help, I want it pretty damn sharp whether or not I'm going to die.

Up to now I have only had to phone for help twice - once for my mother, once for my daughter. In both cases, I was counting on the ambulance getting there as fast as humanly possible.

In both cases, the computer would have indicated that I'm not about to die. Would the ambulance have been slowed down by that ?

"Hey guys, you gotta get to this address, but take it easy, the victim's not dying, she's just in terrible pain."

"Gotcha Joe, I'll finish my coffee and be on my way."

No thanks, really. I prefer the method without death detection.

Judge rebukes copyright enforcer in ringtone case

Nice one !

Good on the judge for having strung up those money-grubbing pigs by their own copyright clauses.

Aussie Sex Party in evangelist head-to-head

Sanity exits stage left

This is where being a religious person could be an embarrassment. Witches and satanic sacrifices ? Come on. There may be a bunch of nutters who think they are seriously trying to invoke the spirit of Belial or whatever is rad at the moment in those circles, but if invoking spirits was something that worked the world would be awash with angry protoplasms doing ugly things.

If there really is blood spilled in large quantities somewhere, I would prefer someone contact the police and leave the matter to the professionals. If there has been grievous bodily harm done, the victim is entitled to justice, not some ridiculous "spiritual assault" ceremony.

Volkswagen boffins turn staircase into giant working piano keyboard

Well done, I say

Not only is the idea cool, but I observe that people in the video had a marked tendency to use the stairs instead of the escalator - even the older ones.

So it encourages people to take the stairs, which is healthy exercise.

Now I wonder what kind of racket that thing made during rush hour . . .

Zero-day fixes star in biggest ever Patch Tuesday

Well done !

Win 7 not even out yet but already needs patching. Ah, I quit, it's too easy.

On the other hand, the reactivity is great. Now Microsoft can finally claim that it patches its systems before the bugs can attack !

Feel dizzy now, going for a lie down.

FBI chief barred from online banking by wife

Good on him for admitting it

Although I got the feeling that he will soon regret being so forward in his communication. Telling people how you "almost" got caught by a phish is like telling people you had an uncontrolled bowel movement that made you run to the bathroom to clean up - it's embarrassing, not educative.

Critical Adobe Reader vuln under 'targeted' attack

"reinvigorate its security program for Reader"

I wonder how many tens of megs THAT will add to the size of the bloated whale called Acrobat Reader.

Canada laid bare on Street View

Google is taking pics in France too

Saw a Google car last week not a mile from my house.

Don't know if it passed my street, but it was heading away at the time.

Greens more likely thieves and liars, says shock study

"people act more altruistically after mere exposure to green"

I agree totally. If I am exposed to a thick wad of green bills, I will take it and be much more altruistic than I normally am.

Welsh yobs clobbered by cross-dressing cage fighters

I say yay

I can't help but love it when ape-brained lowlifes get theirs.

On the other hand, I must say that that video really does justice to the CCTV debate - half the action takes place behind a mass of twigs and leaves. Thankfully, the "good" part is indeed visible. And good it is !

Well done to the "ladies", and a bloody swift encounter it was ! They knew just where to hit to stop the fight without permanently damaging anyone - thus respecting their adversaries on top of it all !

Impressive, by any account. As is Ms Bee. Not often I get to learn a new word. I'll be bouncing that one around my head for a day or two just to get used to it. Thanks !

And all hail the Moderatrix and her BOOTnotes !

Carla Bruni goes down in a flash

I don't she her either

But I wouldn't have minded a drink with her - before her marriage, that is.

DDoS attack rains down on Amazon cloud

Re:paul brain

"how is this different to running your service"

Well, one might think that an internal service inside a company would not be accessible from the Internet, or only through VPN. Like, um, 99% of company servers at this point in time.

Any serious company knows that work is done on internal servers, and you never, ever, put an internal server in direct contact with the Internet.

That is also why companies need sysadmins and network admins and firewalls and all that jazz. When the data is important enough, the cost is secondary.

The only possible advantage to cloud computing is a provider putting up a bullet-proof environment and using the same structure for multiple clients, thus saving on scale. But I'll bet the cost of that is way above whatever is offered now.

More big failings like this one will be required for companies to notice the real issues and act on them, just like this company has now tasted the true cloud experience and will react.

Of course, since they are still going for cloudy stuff, they haven't really had a hard enough lesson, but they will.

Black-hole sniffing 'laser combs' are go, say Brit gov boffins

Re:peyton?

Of course this is not yet on WhakyPedia - the editors are all busy doing important stuff like inserting goatses in articles about the latest star of whatever TV show was on yesterday. Either that, or they're forbidding such edits to the articles of their own favorite subject.

In any case, this is wayyyy too intellectual for the WhackyP clan - it'll come when a proper scientist has time to do the edit.

Pirate Bay back online and back on Google

Re:hikaricore

You could Google it, but don't bother, it's nothing.

Nvidia fires off Fermi, pledges radical new GPUs

One question

Is all this marvelous architecture going to be once again put on a chip that cracks under stress ? Or has the Green Goblin solved that issue without blaming anyone else this time ?

Hands off our boffins!

shortsighted and venal

Um, I thought we were talking about the government here - isn't that a tad redundant ?

Windows 7 OEM prices revealed

Re:Got my Windows 7 today

And you've barely just finished installing it that you're already waxing lyrical about how stable and "refined" it is. People's expectations have really been lowered, I guess.

How about actually using it for a while before deciding if it is really all that good ?

And by "a while", I mean a few weeks, like six or so.

Study: US web users reject behavioural advertising

That's reassuring

So two-thirds of respondents didn't like targeted advertising without even knowing all the facts about how it is done ? Refreshing news indeed !

And more than a third want jail time for crooks who abuse personal data ? Well, seems that this year has good news at last.

I'll have to remember this survey for the next time that a marketeer tries to get my personal info.

Home Office makes nice cartoon ID card ad

Cartoon fingerprints ?

So Mickey Mouse is going to take action for identity theft then ?

Thieves help selves to PCs from Office for Digital Inclusion

Re: "the complexity of a computer will soon be exactly on par with that of a telephone"

Yep. And the day after that you'll see squadrons of pigs over Bristol.

Proposed change in libel law may shield websites

Why always invent special status for the web ?

For Heaven's sake, publishing is the same thing on the web and on paper. There are libel laws that work perfectly well for newspapers that are printed in the hundreds of thousands of copies - so why can that same law not apply to web stuff ? Because it's electronic ? Because lawmakers can't actually find their rump without both hands ? Because some meddlesome lobbying party managed to push such stupidity in the first place ?

There are intelligent people on this planet - I'm sure of it. I don't know where they are, but maybe someone could, one day, have one of them take a look and set things straight concerning the Internet and libel.

Two previous remarks in this thread are spot on, so _someone_ should be able to translate that into lawyerspeak and have at it, no ?

Troll blockers take Microsoft SGI patents

Companies should not be allowed to hold patents

Intellectual property is created by people, not by companies. People may need the funding of companies to create, but they are the ones creating.

This whole patent mess is directly the cause of letting patents obey the law of the market. Remove patents from the market, and the mess goes away by itself.

So patents should be the sole right of the individuals that put their name on the patent. Only those individuals can decide who has the right to exploit the patent they have. Rights to the patent cannot be sold. Rights to exploit the patent cannot be sold without the express consent of the individuals who own the patent. When said individuals die, the patent lapses into the public domain.

Of course, that leaves the possibility of companies killing the individuals that hold a patent in order for it to fall into the public domain, but I think we already have enough laws to deal with that consequence.

Lawsuit seeks to tag WGA nagware as spyware

@Tzael

"People in favor of abolishing WGA . . ."

Yeah sure. Well, let's put this in another context. Let's suppose that every single time you wanted to start up your car, a cop was waiting and you had to show ID and drivers license. It's still your car, you paid for it and you maintain it and insure it, but you can no longer go anywhere until the cop says okay.

And sometimes the cop is drunk and doesn't get clear instructions over the walkie-talkie, so he says no. No discussion possible, even if your wife is pregnant and on the verge of giving birth.

Still in favor of the system ?

Well I'm not. I paid for my shiny XP disk, I can take it out whenever I want and look at it as long as I like. I am ready to accept that Microsoft checks - upon installation - that there is a disk and that it is legit. After that, any following check is just harassment.

And I hate being harassed.

Next : WGA required for securing hacked PCs. I call bullshit. Those copies sold at $2 a pop have no WGA and they are the problem, so why should mine bother me when I paid through the nose for it ?

People who are in favor of draconian Big Brother surveillance have nothing to worry about, it's exactly what they are going to get. Freedom, on the other hand, needs to be faught for.

Sarko boosts standing by standing in front of dwarves

We don't have dungeons anymore

At least not until the Institut de Veille Sanitaire okays the construction of a new one that complies with all Human Rights regulations and UN criteria, which will cost billions and take at least another decade or four.

Meanwhile, notre illustre Président needs not to throw anyone anywhere, he just slips a note to his aid and scores of people get fired, or administratively displaced. The French media, like the good whipping dogs they have become in the last twenty years, keep a low profile because the various CEOs of the various French TV channels don't want the runt jumping on their balls either. And having a bad note from a President is never a good thing on a CV, now is it ?

Sarkozy is a dangerous man, so much so that three different political parties (left and center) are creating a coalition for the next presidential election. With Sarkozy's despotic behavior and unappealing demeanor, along with his plummeting ratings, it is quite possible that his current term be his only one.

His feverish efforts in "renewing" the administration and failing twelve things at a time have annoyed, then angered much too many people. His repeated appeals for patience have worn off, as has his steadfast assurance that the government is "working". Flailing about blindly is a more apt term.

Several of my friends who voted for him have told me they won't do it again. I voted for him as well, but only because the alternative was too exasperating to consider. I'll wager that a lot of blue-collar workers won't either. In any case, some people are already saying that he's done, but you won't ever hear that in a French paper. Well, not before 2011.

Vista and Lotus: Knowing when to let go of a brand

As a programmer

I think Notes is great to code on. As a professional developer, I have always found that Notes is a great tool, fit for a lot of office purposes. And after over 14 years with it, I've seen a good share of application types.

Unfortunately, I must admit that the UI complaint is quite undeniable, and I understand that people are put off by it. IBM should have put a stop to that nonsense when it purchased Lotus, and made R5 adopt a bog-standard Windows interface. That would have been a sea change for Notes, and speculation abounds with possibilities concerning what could have happened had IBM done that.

But it didn't happen. Not only did IBM leave Notes saddled with the same, mind-boggling interface, but it failed to impress on management types that Notes was to be used for much more than just mail. As a result, many companies tried Notes for mail only, and did no development whatsoever of any application, thus removing almost all reason for having it in the first place.

I hate to say it, because I think that Exchange's place is anywhere but in the professional market, but I fully understand a company that used Notes for mail only, then decided to swap for Exchange. It is indeed a logical decision. Exchange does indeed do mail well enough for the average user, and that is all that is requested. Learning a new interface is not something that the mass market does readily.

Thus IBM has seriously shot itself in the foot with Notes - which is probably why the latest release is all about making Domino apps behave like web apps. The more apps that are designed with the latest techniques in Domino development, the more people will be using Notes from a browser without even knowing it.

And that just might spell the return of Notes in the corporate market, but only if IBM starts marketing the heck out of it and avoids the word "Notes" like the plague.

NASA suffers rocket fail 20 seconds from firing

A few typos ?

It is my opinion that if you're incapable of clearly stating that which you wish to say, then your opinion is not of much worth anyway.

If you know what you want to say and you can express it to others without error, then you're worth listening to.

One typo can be accepted, because we are all, as a civilization, in much too much of a hurry, but a flurry of "cant", "there" instead of "their", accompanied by other glaring mistakes is no longer a typo, it is a sure sign of an incomplete mind, one whose ramblings are best ignored until it grows up and learns how to wield a language properly.

Fed chairman hit by ID thieves

Re: Slaytanic

I believe the guy you're thinking of is already in jail. This is another chairman, since the crook in the position had to be replaced.

Great ! Just what we need.

This will get high-profile people directly concerned in the problems of the little people - you know, the ones who are actually supposed to be protected by the bigwigs. Maybe some better procedures, or even a change in the law, will come of it.

Home Office coughs to larger data loss

We need a counter

On stories like this, I'd like to see a counter tallying the number of people whose personal details have already been exposed. You know, like "IDs Exposed : 1 257 486 000" in big black lettering.

Windows 7: Microsoft's three missed opportunities

"Microsoft has made progress in usability"

No, it hasn't. XP is usable, and I'm used to it now. But every time Microsoft makes a new Windows, it introduces fundamental changes to the interface without actually leaving the good and correcting the bad.

It's just a child tinkering around. The most irksome thing about it is that Microsoft has a number of white papers about interface design and respecting the habits of the user. The managers in charge of Vista and 7 should have read those.

I'm tired of having to re-learn an OS, and 7 does not give me any incentive to think that it is in any way better than Vista - nor is there any indication that 7 does not have what I did not like in Vista (namely, the DRM).

Police drag feet following DNA law change

Nothing to fear ?

It would seem that those who have nothing to hide will be subject to a cavity search anyways.

US military cyber force activated

Air Force Space Command ?

Are they so desperate for work that they need a totally land-based infrastructure to work against ?

I mean, really, why is it that the Air Force gets to play with this so-called Elite section ? Sounds to me like another case of inflated ego. I'm sure the Army could have done the job just as well.

Finger crossing won't lure iPhone coders to Windows Mobile

Just one question

Ever since Ballmer, Microsoft has gone from headache to disaster to debacle.

Why is Ballmer the Monkey Boy still at the helm of Microsoft ? What on God's green Earth has him glued to the command chair like that ?

In any other company, a failure the size of Vista would have seen the CEO leave to spend more time with his family, and yet Ballmer is still spouting nonsense in the name of Microsoft. Does he have the shareholders locked up or something ? Zombified ? Hooked on drugs ?

What is it going to take to get rid of him ?

I think we should be told.

Microsoft warns of 'irreparable harm' on court's Word injunction

Boo Hoo

And cry me a river. Mentioning the retail channel as an excuse is particularly patronizing on Microsoft's part, given what we know about their sales contracts.

Its like the schoolyard bully getting caught hitting a kid half his size, then arguing that, if punished, said kid won't get his quota of daily exercise. Ridiculous.

And what is it with Microsoft lawyers ? Is there a special screening procedure at Redmond in order to only retain the pricks ? I can't understand why the judge doesn't string them up for contempt.

Feds uncover 'bust out' scam that cost banks $80m

Someone's not doing his job

It seems to me that, if a bank accepts a credit application at face value, then it can only blame itself for getting swindled.

I would have thought that, in order to accept a credit application, a bank would run all sorts of checks. At the very least, the bank would normally call the employer and verify the salary and hiring date. That really feels like a bare minimum to me.

But apparently they're not even doing that. No wonder we are in an economic crises.

I say send the petty criminals back where they came from, and drag the banks into court for failure to comply with security measures in a time of hardship.

Most gamers fat and miserable, finds study

Bloody nonsense

I very greatly doubt that gaming makes you fat. Gaming itself does not force you to have bad eating habits, nor does it tie you to the chair and remove your ability to exercise (or think, for that matter).

Gaming is just another activity, a hobby that one can adopt or not.

Now, I would be much more inclined to believe a study that declares that insecure, insufficiently-socialized people with poor communication skills and little respect for their own body (or a poor grasp of personal health) might have a greater than normal tendency of turning to computer gaming (and why not so-called social networks as well) and adopt it as a replacement for more conventionally social activities where their shortcomings would be much more apparent.

Mozilla tries to shunt Firefox 3.0 users over to 3.5

Still on 2 as well

And all this moaning is not inciting me to upgrade to 3.x

Scientists unlock DIY DNA

Film on Tuesday

This would probably make a splendid thriller, in the right hands, of course.

But even in the wrong hands, there is a good chance that the UK government would view such a film rather poorly !

How much has that biometric failure of a project cost already ?

PayPal goes offline again

I can't use PayPal or eBay

Really, I can't. I'm constantly getting notices that my account has been suspended, or that there has been suspicious activity detected, or something, and then requesting me to sign on and check out my account.

Funny thing is, I don't have either a PayPal account or an eBay account. I've never trusted PayPal, which has a healthy history of screwing over its customers, so when eBay made PayPal quasi-mandatory, I decided never to use eBay either.

Stories like this one are not going to help me change my mind either.

Big Blue blows a billion on predictive software seller

Now that's rich

amanfromMars asking for clarification. That'd be like Drashek requiring some coherency.

The mind boggles from such a staggering amount of irony.

Greenpeace unleashes Captain Kirk on HP

Didn't anybody notice ?

There's always some klutz moaning about the IT angle, but here we have employees "greeted at their desks by automated phone messages from Shatner ".

Excuse me ? Has Greenpeace taken over the company phone system ? Or is each employee being phoned individually as soon as he gets to his desk (sorry, cubicle) ? And how would they know that the employee has reached his desk ?

I think we should be told.

Linux Foundation urges fans to sign up to Visa credit card

Re: dump the penguin and put a pair

Brilliant ! I want a Playboy Visa card NOW !

And I want it to be "skinnable", he he.