Posts by Pascal Monett 19252 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
Who still uses free stuff from Adobe ?
It's invariably bloated, full of holes, and much worse than the independent free version that does the same thing.
If you're not a publisher of PDF files, you have no use for Adobe products. Foxit is the only thing you need - and it is a lot faster and a lot more secure than Adobe products will ever be.
And it's free as well ! What more could you ask for ?
"Time is relative and something which we have designed"
I do agree with the first part of your statement. Einstein himself has proven that Time is relative, so I doubt anyone can actually put those words in doubt.
However, any pretense of credibility you might have had falls flat on its face with the last part of your statement.
Nobody in the Human race has "designed" Time. If that were the case, we would have included methods to "wind back" Time and otherwise exert full control over it.
What the Human race has designed is its own understanding of time, yes. But Time will go on whether there is a human being to measure it or not.
I accept the idea that the Universe originated in the Big Bang - until a better scientific theory comes along. I accept the idea that immense and numerous stellar explosions were required to create the various kinds of matter that exist beyond the humble hydrogen atom. I accept that it probably took billions of years and untold trillions upon trillions of events to create the conditions that made life on this planet Earth possible.
And I also accept, and welcome, the idea that there is a God who, in His godly wisdom and intelligence, set the whole thing in motion and made sure to provide all the tools we needed to understand it.
The two items are not mutually exclusive, and I see no reason to consider that Science is diminishing God in any respect. On the contrary, I believe that Science simply demonstrates that God does indeed have a vastly superior intelligence to our own, and we should be in awe of what God has created and thankful to have the ability to take tiny steps in understanding it.
Because if we had designed the Universe, the specs would still be stuck in a committee and the beta version would have blue screened right after the first black hole.
Blogs DO NOT need to be optimized !
They NEED to be as precise and as big as possible, because BIG means MORE INFORMATION (and, especially, lots more time to load).
So PLEEAAASE do not tell them to optimize anything. I'm looking forward to upwards of 30 minutes load time on dial-up, and at least 5 minutes on broadband.
Come on guys, you can DO it (no I won't use that other slogan - not yet).
Maybe, just maybe, when their bloated, useless rantings are 100MB a page, maybe those clueless nitwits who have nothing better to do with their time than read inane babblings from nutjobs with nothing important to say will finally decide that it's not worth their cheap time and go watch TV.
At least on TV they might learn something.
And the nutters with too much time on their hands to say nothing in very large; badly punctuated, sentences: will finally just spout their inanities in the virtual desert they deserve.
Quite independently from the actual jail issue (which has already been commented to death and is, as mentioned, in the hands of politicos and out of the hands of Justice anyways), I would rather like this trial to start in order for McKinnon to demonstrate officially just how easy it was for him to become "the biggest military hacker of all time".
Seems to me that his is as big as Saddams' army was the 3rd most powerful.
I'd like to see just how dangerous he was supposed to be.
Of course, I'm expecting that trial to be public.
Highly skilled ? Do you know how many n00bs crash their plane on take-off in BF1942 and BF2 ? After shooting one of their teammates in the back to get in it first ?
Some are good, of course, some are very, very good. But the majority couldn't pilot their way across the Channel in a straight line.
Training will still be needed, and very much needed.
I find hilarious all this hoopla about "paying what you use", bandwidth-capping and the rest.
Where I live, the bandwidth you subscribe to is the bandwidth you get (connection parameters permitting), and if you pay extra for the no-limit contract, THERE IS NO LIMIT.
Such a fact demonstrates clearly that some ISPs are actually capable of factoring an unlimited access contract properly in their workload projections - so when they get 20 new customers on an 8mbps unlimited contract, they actually forecast 20 people downloading all day long at 8mbps and ensure that their network can manage the load.
Given that, I can only imagine that all this arguing is down to the fact that ISPs in some "advanced" countries have advertised more bandwidth than they can handle, and are in trouble because of that.
Blaming users for actually using their contracts along the terms that were agreed to is just hilarious - from afar that is.
What kind of nonsense is that ? There is no such thing.
There is material that is unsavory, there is material that is downright disgusting, but there is no material that is "unsuitable".
Not for an adult with proper education and a critical mind anyway.
Now there is most definitely material that is "unsuitable" for certain governments, that is something that we can see every day. There is also material that is "unsuitable" for certain people with limited minds, but how those kind of people find themselves in positions of power in a functioning democracy is beyond me.
There is, however, no excuse for imposing content filtering on adults in what is supposed to be a democratic country, and Australia, although apparently a bit south of reason, is still a democracy and a free country.
Shame on the aussie government for once again putting a minority agenda item on top of the list of country-wide preoccupations.
I was about to contest, but then I looked at the front image again and I must say you are perfectly right. They should definitely do something about changing that grill.
That said, the rest of the car is gorgeous, just like a supermodel indeed. I wouldn't mind having one.
But with a different grill.
It is not people who need to learn that, it is the makers of these stupid surveys.
The comments here and elsewhere on such subjects often outline the parenting issues, but next to no study has even made a passing mention of how the children they study are brought up. It is not part of the survey, so it cannot be made part of the conclusion.
So I will eventually accept that a child without any parental supervision will eventually be more subject to confuse what he plays with with the reality around him. After all, I've known some adults who have certainly majored in denial of reality, so what can you expect from a child who has but a tenuous grasp on the subject ?
That said, a child whose parents demonstrate every day how to behave, who pay attention to what is said and call the child on the less nice things that he/she does while praising him/her (moderately) for the good things he/she does, who show care and affection and only resort to physical violence when nothing else has worked (confrontation, discussion, a bit of yelling maybe), in short, parents who take their responsibilities as parents, well, I adamantly refuse to imagine for one second that a child brought up in such an environment will nonetheless become a psychotic killer because of the influence of some video game.
Preposterous.
Of course, parenting like that is a full-time job. It's demanding, it can be quite tiring and, to top it all off, there's no guarantee of success. There is no greater potential reward, though.
Words of reason, to be sure.
But before looking for a silver bullet, they might want to try paying attention to warnings that are ALREADY IN PLACE ?
This guy already admitted that he bears responsibility, so it's no Kerviel again, but still - once again I hear on the radio that system warnings were ignored.
Sorry guys, but if the managers ignored warnings, then they should shoulder part of the blame as well. Knocking the trader is easy, but a trader is supposed to be controlled and supervised. Who takes the blame for not doing that ?
As far as business models are concerned, free hosting is one that has not yet received any sort of viable solution. I expect FaceBook to die a lingering death, hopefully followed shortly thereafter by MySpace, at which point the teeming masses of morons who want to "publish" their lame and idiotic rants will have to pony up and pay themselves their own website, meaning they will finally shut up.
On that blessed day, millions upon millions of inane babbling and pointless non-discussion threads will all cry out and be silenced, and the Internet will return to being what it was meant to be - the place to read things written by people who actually have something to say and are willing to put their money where their mouth is.
And, as a side benefit, we just might get things to read that are actually written correctly.
I found it quite funny when my dear Mr. President's lawyer said, in response to the judge's dismissal, "I know civil law, and I know criminal law, but I never knew there was a right to humor" (liberally translated from memory).
Such an answer proves two things :
1) this guy has a rather inflated view of his abilities. IANAL, of course, but I highly doubt that one man could possibly grasp all the laws that my Parliament passes like crazy all year round in not one, but two very complicated legal arenas. Oh well, I suppose bluster is one way of upping one's tarif.
2) this guy has even less humor than Mini-Prez.
Now the really ironic thing about this whole issue, in my eye, is the fact that Mini-Prez has abundantly and publicly professed his admiration for The Merkin Way in the social and economic arenas, yet now, just when the public is taking up the Merkin habit of Protected Speech in the domain of humor, he turns around and tries to stomp on it.
No cookie, short stuff. Your ego really is quite a bit too large for your head.
Let me see, a whole family who has close relations with a branch of pubs, goes to dine at a competitor's pub, raises a fuss over some trivial matter, gets a complimentary ice cream, then accuses pub manager of serving human waste with it. Media takes to the story like flies to, um, right.
Let me try a different scenario : guy who owns a pub asks his sister to go trash his competitor's reputation. Sister kindly obliges and packs some dog doo and the rest of her family for the mission. When the complimentary ice cream comes along (proof that the pub owner has a sense of commerce as of yet unknown in Paris), she sees her opportunity and strategically stores the dung, then accuses the competitor with holy wrath. The almighty ruckus that follows means mission accomplished. Original pub owner now smug over his teleguided victory, and tabloids all over the world have three days of subject matter. Money shower is an additional bonus which family will conscientiously spend at brother's pub (if they get it).
Shouldn't that be "claiming to have EVER shared" ?
I mean, if only one in four Germans has never shared a password, that means that 75% have shared a password, so that beats the living daylights out of the others, doesn't it ?
As for the crux of the article, in my opinion 100% of PayPal users are at risk of having either their money locked or their details swiped, so anything less is good news for those concerned.
Personally, I wouldn't use PayPal unless they put a gun to my head.
So you presume that WGA never has any false positives ?
If that were true, then your position would be understandable, unfortunately there are a lot of people around who have perfectly legitimate installs and were bitten anyway, so your presumption goes out the window of veracity.
That said, China is a poster child for piracy, with XP discs (hologram and all) available on the street for something like $2, so, ironically, it is indeed possible that his copy is a fake one even if he doesn't know it.
I'll wait for the results of the Chinese court to call it either way - he is a lawyer after all, he should be smart enough to avoid ruffling feathers if he is at fault in the first place.
Let's make one thing clear : if MS is not selling XP any more, then copying XP is not piracy and the company is not losing money. Well it is, but it can't complain about it.
I might even go a step further and say that somebody should sue. There is no technical reason to retire XP at this point, it is still compatible with current hardware and a large proportion of users have decided that it does the job well enough. Therefor, putting a stop to XP sales is tantamount to a refusal to sell.
Of course, that argument will probably never sail in court, but this is the first time that we have the case where the latest and brightest (Vista) is massively shunned by the market which prefers the old, clunky but functional XP. When XP came out, it was indeed an improvement over 98, so there was little question but to upgrade and nobody cried when 98 was "retired".
Vista is not an improvement over XP, it is an impediment and an intrusion into the privacy of innocents. People don't like it, people don't want it, and XP is still the order of the day.
By that reasoning, MS has the duty to continue selling and supporting XP since the market demands it does so.
I'm sure there's a lawyer somewhere that can argue this successfully.
Even so, the day MS stops selling XP is the day it can no longer complain about people copying it. It's the only solution left, and it'll be MS's fault.
I'm waiting for the day MS stops the authentication servers. If the current trend continues and XP remains on the market radar, MS will have one hell of a backlash.
I'd really like to meet one single politician who understands what the spirit of the law actually means.
I am innocent and I have the right to not have my privacy invaded just because some lunatics deem that my privacy needs to be rectally examined to prove it.
I do not need to prove my innocence, and you who are in power are not empowered to violate my life just to "make sure".
That is the spirit of the law.
Yes, it makes it harder to catch criminals and terrorists, but nobody said democracy was easy.
Besides, all this being done in the name of protecting me from terrorism ? Utter bollocks. Since 2001 we haven't caught a single terrorist worthy of the name, what makes them think that breaking into my house and planting a trojan on my PC is going to make things easier ?
It has nothing to do with terrorists and everything to do with locking down individual liberties to a level we have not seen since the 13th century and pope Innocent III (what irony in the name !).
Because computers and OSes are complicated things, vendors have taken liberties with our hardware and software that we would absolutely not have accepted in any other domain.
Imagine that you buy a car, and are told that you can only park it in three different places once you get home. Park it in a fourth place and it won't start anymore. Who would accept that ?
Worse, imagine that the car you buy and bring home makes your boiler stop working one hour out of six. When you call the repairman, he says it has nothing to do with the boiler, when you call the car vendor, he says the car is functioning as designed. What do you do now ?
After a few months with your car, you notice that there is a new box in the cellar, but you do not recognize the logo. There is also a warning that says "do not open or remove". If you remove the box and throw it away, your car doesn't start any more. You call the car salesman and he tells you, after much questioning, that the box is a required component of your car and you have to have it in your cellar for the car to work. But nobody told you that when you bought the car.
Oh, and you can have no other box in your cellar either. If you do, there will be a conflict and one or both boxes will disappear.
Because such things are not possible in real life, they have not happened. But that is exactly what is happening on our computers - because the vendors believe they have the right to treat your hardware and software as they see fit - with or without your permission.
They probably believe that, since you bought their product, you implicitly give them permission.
Well I don't.
How about you ?
But of course ! That is the main tool or my illustrious President, and just about the only thing he does well. You can be sure that somebody is going to get fired over this, even if Sarkozy has to buy the bank via state funds to get it done.
Whether or not this incident is going to translate to better handling of accounts by the banks for the rest of us plebs is not something I'll hold my breath for, though.
So that's why we are in this financial crisis : because Ballmer wanted to tank Yahoo!'s price and that's how he did it. Kind of like throwing chairs in the office, but on a global market scale.
Now Yahoo!'s price has tanked and it is easy pickings for Monkey Boy, who can snap it up for a song and a skip.
Oohh, I feel the conspiracy threads building up already.
I have never cared for Ebay and I have never liked PayPal (the name itself is a lie) which has always played fast and easy with people's accounts AND money, without any support worthy of the name.
And stuff like this just tells me I'm right.
If PayPal was a real bank, there's no way it could just hold you money like that. Real banks do not have that kind of problem. And with a real bank, if for some reason the web-banking portal is out of service, I can always go to the brick-and-mortar version or even just an ATM.
There is no way a real bank can lock my money from me unless it has a court order.
But PayPal thinks it IS the court.
Jackasses.
I was happy with AVG from v5 to v7 - right up to the point it told me for the third time in a row that a commercial version was available.
I get the point, you want to sell it. Now leave me with my free version and go away.
No ? Still nagging me every time I boot the PC ?
Fine then, off you go. Deinstall and Register cleanup (the inventor of THAT abomination should be shot).
Now I use COMODO, firewall, AV and surf-protection all in one. Works quietly and only pops up when it actually has a good question to ask.
I hope it won't bloat too soon.
It is high time that a law be passed that declares any programmable item to be the sole property and purview of its physical owner.
I am sick and tired of companies pushing products that consider their operation to be the sole goal of whatever it is the product is supposed to run on.
Be it a PC or a phone, it is mine, understood ? If I want it to load a given app, they that app should be loaded, period. If I want to run a trojan, then that trojan should run, period.
And if I'm not smart enough to keep virii off my pieces, then I should pay for it in cash until I wake up to the fact and get it cleaned.
It should be forbidden to sell a product that limits user interaction in any way beyond the scope of the application. If a phone OS allows for downloading third-party apps, then there should be no centralized kill switch to turn some of those apps off.
Sure there will be scum and assorted virii, that's life on the intartubes. Profit from it and create a firewall app, don't muscle in with a kill switch that I cannot control.
Control is mine, you hear me ? MINE !
Uh-huh, sure. Well I'm glad you woke up to the fact, even if it was a bit late.
Mostly I hope that this will serve as a warning to other would-be companies willing to spy on people's lives and sell the results.
But frankly, that sentence shows one thing : they knew it WOULD be an issue, and they KNEW they would have to work around it, so they also knew it would get big, but they were banking on it not becoming a problem before they had time to settle in and become unremovable.
Has anyone tried to douse them in garlic and see if they shrivel ? No ? Too bad.
I've noticed a marked drop in spam mail across all of my accounts as well. If you call that flying below the radar, well then they can fly all they want, I don't mind.
What you might mean to say is that a new Storm II is quietly replicating itself without activating, extending its footprint and keeping mum until the day it unleashes a hurricane of spam and all security centers are drowned in data.
Now that would worry me if only for the ungodly amount of spam I'd be getting across 7 accounts.
I hope that is not what you meant.
There are five levels of commendation with the Légion d'Honneur, they are Knight, Officer, Commander, Grand Officer and Grand Croix.
Of the military who have given their lives in the course of their duty and who have been rewarded posthumously, most of the time if it was a grunt he got Knight, and if was an officer he would get Officer.
Being commended as Commander or Grand Officer hasn't happened in a long time.
It frankly bugs me that an actor gets a bigger commendation than a soldier who has laid his life down under orders.
Granted, there aren't that many any more and that is even a good thing, but really. If you do extend the once-renowned badge of military honor to people who have zero military merit, could you at least leave them as simple Knight.
Curious, I would have thought that, in a country not yet beholden to proprietary, costly software, a free OS would be the best choice.
Especially since any educative software for the Indian subcontinent probably needs to be written from scratch, thus removing any justification for existing proprietary platforms. I mean, DirectX is not really all that useful for educative software, now is it ?
Let me guess, Steve, once again you promised a low, low, low eternal rent (in the small print) coupled with blatherings about SLAs and other stupidities, and maybe you even threw in 72 virgins to seal the deal ?
An Open Source project "supported" by Microsoft ? But, Steve said that Open Source is a CANCER !!
Obviously he doesn't know about this project. It's impossible that he could possibly accept that his oh-so-virtuous-and-professional company be sullied by such a dangerous leprosy.
It has to be the doings of a fringe group that has infiltrated the Redmond compound.
Time for a purge, Steve !
