Posts by Pascal Monett

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 !

Man sentenced to 20 years in murder of online rival

Doesn't make sense

"To gun down a boy over simple jealousy does not make sense to us"

Sorry, but although I can understand and sympathize with their bereavement, things like that have been happening since before guns were invented.

Passion (not love) has been the source of a great many murders. There is no surprise in this development.

Novell vs SCO will go to court after all

Personally, I'll go with the majority here

and just say Die SCO ! Die !

US judge debenched for jailing entire courtroom

Don't see what the problem is

Given that the US is on a rampage as far as personal freedoms are concerned, I cannot see why this is a problem. Frankly it's a case of left hand not knowing what right hand is doing.

And Dubya is obviously a perfect example to drag in (again). After all, he's the one setting examples.

So war cannot be declared by the President alone ? And ? Is that supposed to mean that the muppets would have actually had the balls to go against it ? Of course not, As far as I remember, the war was approved at a dictatorship-like 90-something percent, with only a few abstentions which were commented on as end-of-career decisions. NOBODY said no to the war. Not one. So anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

But hey, what else do you expect from politicians ?

Rare bug blights Lotus Notes

There we go again with Outlook

Frankly, for people to prefer Outlook over Notes just demonstrates how little they know about what they pretend to use.

Yes, Notes is a memory hog. That much is undeniable. And if all you do with it is mail, I do agree that you're better off without it. Blame your management for taking a 20-ton trailer to go shopping.

Lotus Notes is a very efficient development platform that can give extremely efficient applications and can ALSO do mail.

To use Notes ONLY for mail is a bad waste of resources, just as not training users for Notes is bound to bring about the Outlook comparisons and gripes.

For the rest, Outlook is so riddled with security holes and instability that frankly I wonder why the thing was ever accepted in companies in the first place.

The one mistake Notes persists in is not making its interface more Outlook-like. Maybe the fact that Microsoft is just begging for a chance to launch a thousand lawyers at it has something to do with this situation.

Those of you who yearn for Outlook, I truly do wish the best of luck in getting your dream come true. That'll be that much less "it's not like Outlook" complaints in Notes forums. Unfortunately, it'll probably be that much more spam boxes and DDOS launchers to be pwned as well.

And yes, I am a Notes developer, have been for twelve years. And yes, I do make a living out of it, much like a great number of Exchange specialists.

As for the worst piece of software ever written, I'd have to give that gong to IE, hands down.

Businesses blind to the security risks of temporary staff

Frankly I doubt that

After twelve years as a developer and consultant, I must say that I have rarely, if ever, experienced such latitude in my access to client IT infrastructure.

Any bank is going to insist that you use their own hardware to access their resources, and you are generally quite clearly warned that your activity will be logged - which is quite a deterrent if you want to seek for information you're not supposed to have access to.

Most other companies are going to give you a PC as well, and if they do allow you to log on to their network with your laptop, you never have access to in-house network discs.

Besides, has anyone forgot about reputation ? As a consultant, my job is to leave a customer happy so that he calls me back. That won't happen if they find evidence that I've ripped their customer database, now will it ?

Google preps magic GDrive

Easier to access from anywhere

"it's easier to share and access your data from anywhere when it's online, in one place"

Yep, easier for the criminals and hackers too. And more so for them probably, since they likely will not be affected by the downtime your connection has for whatever reason.

No really, someone should gut this fish once and for all. My data is mine, and it stays on my computer. If I need to bring it anywhere, there is a host of possibilities that are easy, readily available and a lot more secure than under-attack-24/7 online storage.

A CD or DVD RW is available to everyone these days for a pittance. If 4.7GB is not enough, USB keys reach 8GB now, which is more than enough for most people. If that is still not enough, you have portable HDDs that connect via USB easily and reliably, which gives you tens of GB of storage, if not hundreds. Some of then even connect via SATA 2 links, which ups the bandwidth nicely.

And all of those solutions are local and secure as long as you don't leave them on a park bench unattended. Much better, in my opinion, than leaving that data on public servers any hacker can get interested in just for the heck of it.

America's 8m victims of identity theft

18% unaccounted for

56% had no clue, so 44% should have given an indication. Unfortunately, only (16+8+2) 26% are reported as having given one. What did the rest say ?

Boffins ponder Galileo signals as ocean monitors

Interesting nonsense

It is really fun to see to what extent some people go to include high-tech stuff in places that can quite well do without. A delivery boy is going to go to the reception desk and drop off the parcel there and get someone from the company to sign the receipt. Delivery boys have no interest in knowing at what floor the recipient is - they have other parcels to deliver.

Same for the window cleaners. If it is a tall building, there is a great likelihood that there is a crane and nacelle available on the roof. If not, the professional will know soon enough whether his ladder is good for the job or not. He does not need a gadget to tell him that, and he most probably isn't interested in one that purports to tell him how to do his job.

The only piece of tech gear that is really useful on a global scale is the mobile phone. The one piece of high-tech gear useful for manual labor is the laser measurer for measuring distances in a house or hangar. GPS or Galileo-enabled kit is not going to be of any use to a carpenter, painter, or blacksmith - not beyond finding where their next workplace is.

In any case, what I really find interesting is the fact that satellite signals can be captured and reused after they have bounced off the Earth's surface. I wonder what use Tom Clancy could make of that ?

Biometrics won't fix data loss problems

For Heaven's sake

What's all this tosh about theft of biometrics ? There doesn't need to be any thievery involved, since the British Government has amply demonstrated that it is perfectly capable of releasing data into the wild on its own !

Civil service apologises for HMRC data loss

all efforts are being made to ensure that such a loss can never happen again

Would that mean that

1) they're learning how to do an SQL query properly, and

2) they're hiring a special courier to convey the disks ?

Given that a mass-mailing of 7 million letters is likely to cost several million itself, I think the cost of a special courier dedicated to just conveying data disks will be largely funded by this disgraceful accident for years to come.

Oh, and one last thing : which senior official lost his job over this ? Nobody ? Then how can you say "all efforts are being made" when there is no sanction for making the error in the first place ?

It's just a load of political arse-covering.

Melting ice kills polar bears, say boffins

We *might*, if we tried exclusively and really hard

Bollocks. All we have to do today is push the big red button on Putin's and Dubya's desk.

Five minutes all told, and the future of Humanity and most of Life as we know it will be to die from radiation poisoning and starvation.

The hard work has already been done. Now it's easy.

Mobe, mobe, mobe. There - we've said it

As for me

I salute our Grand Vulture Poobah. As I grovel in the dust under his baleful eye, I give thanks to His magnificence in tolerating my miserable browser in the august presence of His pages. I totally accept mobe, lappy, linguine and any other wording the El Reg boffinry will deign foist upon my unworthy eyes with relish.

And some ketchup, naturally.

Mars Express circles planet 5,000 times

11 meters ?

78.57 linguine, you mean. Or 1.19 double-decker buses lying on the front.

Hey, we got the converter, we're gonna use it !

Tasers can be instrument of torture, says UN

I have to wonder

Why do people insist on resisting Police force when they are under official scrutiny ? Running away from the cops has always been a very clear "I'm guilty" signal, and I would think, given the recent history of killings, that being pulled over by an officer is a time to stick your hands in view and not move a muscle for fear of being shot in the head a dozen times.

If you are guilty, I would also suspect that spending some time in jail - where there is, after all, a rather good chance of survival - is better than trying to resist or legging it, options which now have a fair chance of getting you a heart attack or a dozen slugs to the upper body regions.

If I ever go back to the US (or the UK for that matter) and some cop starts yelling at me, I'll be splayed on the floor faster than you can blink and I'll just start praying that he isn't too highly agitated to take his gun out and shoot me anyway.

Galileo tugs on public purse strings

Oh my goodness !

Germany has excess funds to give back to the member states ?! How on Earth do they do that ? Never heard of that in France in any case.

German cops shutter school after net massacre tip-off

Re: Weaponry

They might be the last players of Hexen ?

MoveOn tells Facebook to stop shining Beacon

"Information is shared with a small selection of a user's trusted network of friends"

And what does the selection ? And am I supposed to believe that this "selection" cannot be modified by any of all those wonderful "user-generated apps" that are just so much malware waiting for a moron to activate them ?

My God I am glad I don't use any MySpaceBook of any kind.

Info chief renews call for data breach crime penalties

We have a duty

"We have a duty to do everything that we can to protect the public"

Except, obviously, what is actually necessary to protect said public. Such as implement proper procedures and authorizations and technical barriers that would enforce said duty.

Or maybe, just maybe, the word "public" is not actually used to mean the citizens but, in this case, when used by a politician, means "my colleagues who have monumentally screwed up" ?

I have to wonder about that.

Bumblebee boogie analysis in webserver boost

There's better

Bees do indeed have a quite efficient resource-harvesting method, but Aliens do a better job. Not only do they relentlessly pursue and capture all "resources" in their vicinity, but they go one step further by dragging their captives back to the hive and transforming them into more Aliens !

Not sure what killer app we could devise from that example, but I'm sure we could kill something with it.

AMD reveals 'Spider' platform

More "AMD is gonna die"

Hmm . . how long have I been hearing that ? Gosh, just about ever since AMD existed, if I remember correctly.

And it'll continue for the rest of the century, I guess.

AMD has already been in worse shape, and now it has graphics potential to boost it along as well.

I don't know, but I'm guessing that AMD is going to burst the shell again in a year or two, just like it did with the Athlon range that rattled Intel's cage so much. I think AMD is going to give us a really good CPU with integrated graphics in the coming years, and that CPU is going to give Intel a hard time again.

The only frustrating thing about AMD is the fact that it screws up so regularly. But it has survived dire straights before, and I don't think that its current potential puts it in a worse situation than it was seven years ago.

In any case, I've heard "AMD is gonna die" for decades now. AMD is still here, stronger than before. Still got problems, but still here nonetheless.

Gene Simmons blames college kids for ruining music biz

Well there's one good thing in all this

"he doesn't plan on making a new KISS album"

Thank God for that !

Warner Music supremo in Apple-fondling mea culpa

I'll believe that guy

when Disney puts its entire catalogue for sale and download in one go.

No more missing titles, no more artificial rarity. Everything in one place, and I can buy whatever I want.

Do that and I'll start believing you. Anything else is just wind blowing past my ears.

Apple TV goes to the movies

Oh my goodness !

Almost 300GB for a film ?!? Wow ! Is this a special case, or do all HD films reach that size ?

B3ta served DMCA notice for Photoshop Prince challenge

But why ?

Why are we still talking about this nutcase ? He's a moron and attacks his fans, got it. Can we sweep him under a rug now ? Maybe lock him in an attic where he belongs ?

Microsoft animates FlickrYouTubeDotMac -enstein

Alert the world to its plans ?

Do you really think there is anyone that has any doubt about Microsoft's plans ?

It all holds in one word : domination.

21st century travel: building your own warp drive

Now look at what you've done

You cry that amanfrommars has not yet posted anything . . and you get three chunks of gibberish.

When will you learn to just ignore the . . creature ?

US eggheads in spurious va-voom/intelligence linkage

I am so going to rain on this parade

First of all, I seem to recall that there is intense argument around the question of whether or not we have a valid test for intelligence, meaning that the IQ tests those jokers used are anything but approved.

Second, based solely on my personal experience and observations, I believe that the more good looks a woman has, the more she is in danger of not having pursued her studies very far (I'm not saying she's stupid, just that she rarely goes for a university degree).

Because we all know that a stunning beauty has no need for academic credentials - there will be no end of wealthy suitors just begging for a chance to take care of her for the rest of their lives. Her only job is to find the one that will last for the long haul, if she has the presence of mind to worry about that kind of detail.

Indeed, I would even go so far as to suggest that the more a woman is ugly, the more she will work her brain and get academic credentials to make up for that lack in the attractiveness department.

Of course, there are exceptions. Some women are too intelligent to satisfy themselves with triggering the drool reflex wherever they go, and some are simply too thick to notice that nobody ever seems to want to stay next to them for more than a bus ride. As said before, intelligence comes in various guises, and so does the lack of it.

But I think that it takes a rather strong character to keep pushing one's grey matter when one's pink matter has a high rate of success.

And I dispute the validity of the IQ tests completely.

Okay, you may stoke the flames when ready.

Squaddies warned off Facebook

@Nile Heffernan

"This isn't so very different to any major civilian corporation"

Sure it's not - it's only that with major civilian corporations there's no little side possibility of being killed for it.

Winona Ryder to suckle Spock in Star Trek XI

@Kamal

you really need to brush up on your history. Nero most assuredly did NOT try to SAVE Rome from the conflagration.

Nero wanted a new Rome, wanted to do away with the dirt, filth and grime in the streets of old Rome (not actually a bad idea in itself), and he did what any lazy, insane nutcase would do : he tried reformatting.

And, if you manage to read enough History, you'll even learn that Nero actually took a harp and sang from his balcony while Rome burned.

Go ahead and look it up. I'm sure even Wackypedia has that part right.

16,000 namesakes cry foul over US terror watch list

97% not on the list ?

And yet they still get strip-searched ?

Sounds like they're on the list to me. This is madness.

One thing's for sure though, I'm not going over there as long as this lunacy is in place.

Controversial Russian Business Network drops offline

@Double Dekkers

You know, the guy who can understand what you wrote and what to do with it probably doesn't need to read it here in the first place.

Could someone translate that into English ?

Quacks probe brain-boosting tech ethics

1984 dismissed and is now fact

So does that mean that jacking in to a floppy to upload data Matrix-style is going to come as well ?

Where can I sign up ?!

Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail strike out Iran

@John A Blackley

So basically you're saying that US companies abroad have to comply with foreign laws, but they obey US laws when at home ? What insight ! In one fell stroke you basically justify Yahoo! China's turning over personal details of dissidents, AND Yahoo! US boldly refusing to let Iranians sign up as Iranians. Wow.

Really, John, we don't need to SEARCH for "another lame-ass excuse to badmouth America and Americans", all we have to do is wait for one to present itself. It's like waiting for the bus, can't be more than an hour.

Babbling net software sparks international incident

More important

The reaction of the diplomats is one thing, personally I find it understandable that they demand an explanation at the very least. An international incident may be a bit overboard though.

On the other hand, what on Earth possessed the minds of the journos when they decided to use Bablefish to translate their prose ? Don't they have translators in Israel ? It seems to me that plain old horse sense has been seriously lacking here. If you have an official text to send in a language you do not know, it is obvious that you should get it checked by someone who DOES master that language, just to make sure that at least the glaring mistakes can be avoided.

In that sense, I perfectly agree with the Dutch guys receiving this load of tripe. It demonstrates a blatant disregard for anything resembling simply courtesy. it is an insult in itself.

Microsoft hopes to patent 'automatic goodbye messages'

eliminate rudeness across the net

Well if that is really the goal, the means are simple : stop IE from working, stop Outlook from sending mails and pull the plug on MSN and all affiliates.

Oh yeah, one more thing : Ballmer, shut up permanently.

Microsoft spoils Christmas with Xbox 360 locking feature

Gotta love it

When private capitalist monopolies start blathering about their interest in child welfare.

I mean really, we already have psychiatrists specialized in child psychology. No need for "polls". Why not simply consult the expert ?

Or is Microsoft trying to convince people that psychology is a field that can be determined by poll results ?

Real F-15 joins massively multiplayer virtual war

There's the Conquerers too

Timothy Zahn (one of my favorite SF writers) penned the Conquerors trilogy in which future pilots are jacked Matrix-style into an "augmented" reality where their own persona becomes part of a larger consciousness. Okay, my words, but that's the idea.

The nickname "Copperhead" was due to the physical jack at the base of the brain that interfaced the pilot and the enhanced reality machine.

A good read. Looks like we're starting down that path at last.

Microsoft fires CIO for 'violation' of policy

Worse than that,

Maybe he was caught actually SAYING that he didn't use Vista.

Phoenix hijacks Windows boot with instant-on

"One reboot a month doesn't exactly waste a lot of time"

Well aren't you a poster child for energy savings !

Thousands snared by malware warning from big-name websites

AJAX ? Yeah, I've heard of it

Like Flash. heard of that too. And I've FlashBlock and AdBlock on my Firefox browser.

I trust no site that overloads its site with code when simple HTML could have done just as well.

And I don't need no stinkin' app to set a redirection in my etc/hosts file, thank you - did that years ago with my keyboard and Notepad.

Frankly, all this hooplah around code in web sites is getting on my nerves. Stop polluting my bandwidth with all this gunk I don't need that only serves to give you web coders the means to track what I do in the vain hope that you can then target my needs more effectively.

Well I've got news for you guys : you can't "target" my needs. You just can't.

But hey, don't let that stop your career. So long as there are other coders developing AdBlock, FlashBlock and soon AJAXBlock, I can continue to ignore your annoying stuff and you can keep making money out of it.

Happiness all around then, right ?

Sony unveils third-gen 'portable' PS2

What this actually means

is that PS3 sales are so dismal SONY has to some out with a different color PS2 to give a XMas bonus to the CEO.

Ain't it sad ?

Pentagon: Our new robot army will be controlled by malware

We're on to something here

Never before has AmanfromMars waxed so much insanity on the same page.

That must mean something . . .

@"Here we go again" Anon Cow

Yeah, we know full well that TCP was initially put in place for military communications, thanks for the recall.

Fact is, today the IP stack is public knowledge. So much public that a bunch of kids in University with too much time on their hands thought out and started the P2P craze that is making music execs hopping mad. Is that public enough for you ?

Fact again : anyone who can read and code can make another widget to send TCP packets running helter skelter across the Web. And he doesn't even need a license ! Is that public enough for you ?

By the way, just how much bandwidth do you think military comms is taking up today, on a world-wide scale ? Right. Today, TCP-IP is public, and it doesn't really matter where it came from.

Yahoo! Bows! To! Mum! Of! Jailed! Chinese! Journalist!

It's the Reg way

Just like snitching on dissidents is mandatory in China, putting the exclamation marks after the Y word is mandatory on El Reg.

You don't have to click here.

Man wrongly detained for 50 days has ISP to thank

Obvious what ?

I wouldn't call that sarcasm. For me, that's a troll.

Nobody can say that FOX NEWS is balanced without either being a liar or, as has been stated above, publishing one's ultra-right wing Bush croonie mentality.

Freedom of speech 'safe' as Europe tackles the terror web

I know who they've been talking to

His name is Thomson, and he's a lawyer.

Writers' strike hits US talk shows hard

Shaken presenters

"the shaken presenters 'improvising' "

Goodness me ! They didn't have their daily quota of pithy jokes on a prompt card any more !

Once upon there were presenters that could not only steer and maintain a conversation, but also had the knowledge and culture to actually appear as if they had a clue.

Alas, those people retired, either willingly or not, to be replaced by the same generation of useless androids endlessly parroting inane banter. There might have been some measure of cost reduction in the move, but the end result is that TV is now even more stupid than the people who watch it.

Which makes those who watch it feel like they're "on top" of things.

CQFD.

Mac OS X firewall blocks Skype and online gamers

@Giles Jones

Aww, ain't you being a nice one ! Phreaky didn't make an _argument_ at all.

He just cackled madly.