Posts by Pascal Monett

Sun's activity not to blame for climate change

If it were bogus science

Well maybe CERN has to look into it to judge whether or not it is, in fact, bogus ?

There is one thing that is sure : the perpetual motion machine is bogus science. That is fact and no scientist worth his diploma will say the contrary, nor will you see CERN fund a project on that.

For all the rest, well if it holds up in theory then someone has to check it, right ?

As for what is causing global warming warming, I submit that we have very scarce data to go on (less than 200 years total, and probably most of it is very much less reliable than what we've had in the past 30 years). There is, as of yet, no accurate model of weather on a planetary scale, although the meteorologists, aided by ever-more-powerful computers and increasing data points, are doing their damndest to get there.

We are, as of now, capable of predicting tomorrow's weather within an acceptable accuracy in terms of living conditions, but certainly not in terms of scientific certainty. We can have an insight into what the weather will be in a week's time, but more often than not we are dead wrong.

In short, it amazes me that, given the admittedly overwhelming difficulty of comprehending and modeling thermodynamics, people can use barely a century of reliable weather data to state that the cause of climate change is one thing or the other, or even that our climate is changing and not just going through a variation of some sort.

Personally, I do believe that something is going on. I used to see snow on the ground in winter that lasted weeks at a time - it's been fifteen to twenty years since a snowstorm left the ground white for more than a few days. My mother used to tell me stories of how she sometimes went to school in her childhood in a sled, drawn by her father - fat chance my daughter would get to do that, even excepting that her school is a bit too far for that kind of trek anyway. And I do believe that we are currently living the very worst "summer" I have ever experienced in a string of summers of decreasing quality.

So something is certainly happening, but I think we're going to need at least a few more centuries of data before we know whether it's getting hotter or colder.

In the meantime, maybe we should kill 2 or 3 billion people and find out if that brings us back to 1700s weather patterns.

Not that we will, of course (we won't, right ?), but hey, billions more people raising billions more livestock should count for nothing ?

Nah, that can't be. There has got to be an impact. Pass me the salt so I can think it over while munching on this juicy steak.

A serious browser vulnerability, but whose?

that's kinda childish

It's all kinda childish, like 99% of forum discussions on the Net. Why ? Because it's mostly children (meaning fanboys) that participate.

I'm surprised that the rhetoric here has remained quite calm and rather level-headed. Must be the moderators putting down 90% of the comments.

Ballmer charts future of online togetherness

Long live the troglodytes !

Hmm, I don't think people will flock to put their personal data to unsecure, unreliable online storage brokers, so I'm a troglodyte ? In that case, viva troglodyta ! Or something.

I think that, at the moment, 90% of all meeting minutes, reports and summaries gets printed. It may be that it has something to do with readability - some people have an innate distaste of reading things on a screen. I'm okay with that, even though I think it is a waste of tree matter. But I believe there is something more : paper is 100% reliable. It does not change version, it doesn't store malware, it does not bluescreen on you nor does it reboot, and it doesn't have connection problems. Plus it is actually quite difficult to change its contents unnoticed without changing the paper, so it is quite secure as well.

If, in 50 years starting now, ISPs and online storage brokers demonstrate the same uptime availability as my telephone company does for my phone, well I'll start thinking about it.

In the mean time, the PC is just about the most unreliable piece of kit I have ever owned, and certainly the most unsecure when I'm connected to the Internet. Put personal or business files on an online shop ? Are you freaking nuts !?

TiVo and Amazon get with the picture

All purchases are stored online by Amazon

The better to track what you buy and how often you watch it.

Women prefer well-built blokes: official

Other sub-cultures

"Other people in other sub-cultures have other considerations."

Yeah, like sex.

And booze.

Texas porn actress stole classmate's name

"There is no bad blood between them."

I believe that sentence needs the past tense.

Also, I note with interest that, if I were to choose a scene name with the rules above, it would be Kye Berry.

Hmm. Not bad, actually.

Microsoft, Cisco, EMC team to plug government data hole

Ooooh, now THAT one's a gem

Congratulations for one of the most incomprehensible pieces of gibberish I have ever laid my eyes on.

Now if you'll excuse, me I have two eyeballs to gouge to prevent me from ever seeing such nonsense again.

Google in Colorado safe cracking caper

WD-40

Not knowing what that is, I google it and what do I find ? It's a lubricant. These idiots actually PLANNED to spray a known camera with . . lubricant. They could have eventually chosen . . paint, or even Silly Putty. But no, they chose lubricant.

It's a wonder they were able to read a page on a computer, not to mention searching for one.

I hope they get caught - the trial's going to be a riot.

How to measure website success? Page views or time?

I wonder

What are they going to do about people who don't allow JavaScript and have adblockers ? How are they going to measure my activity ?

I'm not going to download no plugin that'll help them, that's for sure, not if I know what it does.

And what about people who have several browser windows open at the same time ? I'm not talking about tabs, but about whole windows. Some people have multiple screens where they can do that.

As always, measuring virtual eyeballs is not an easy task.

Microsoft vows to bark like a dog for you in 2008

$7bn in research ?

That DRM thingy cost them $7 billion to develop ? Shafting a planet-wide market full of users usually eager to upgrade cost them $7 billion dollars ? Creating a monster three times as bloated as XP, taking an hour to delete a single file, cost them $7 billion dollars ?

Oh, and does that amount include the cost of replacing the furniture that Ballmer throws around when he sees the sales figures ? Because if it doesn't, you might want to add another billion. Just for safety.

Wanted: business model for free mobile network

There's another option

Don't use a mobile phone (ducks under the desk).

Chinese netizens prevent 800-cat stir-fry

What was that ? Eating herbivores is less efficient ?

Tell that to my steak !

I have never eaten carnivore, so I cannot guarantee that a tiger steak is at least 4 times better than a cow steak, but I have eaten quite a lot of herbivores (duck, rabbit, chicken, cow, pig - omnivore I know - and horse) and they all tasted quite good, at least 5 times better than broccoli by my reckoning.

And Mr. Kruger, you had better avoid American airports - they probably have you on a CIA list now, marked in the column "potential serial killer".

BBC stumbles on email list

If that happens in a bank

Someone gets fired. You know, privacy, accountability and all those quaint things.

Betcha if the CEO's email went out the issue would be solved real quick !

Postmaster kills off 'free for life' webmail

You'd pay a few pounds, eh ?

Then why not get your own domain and web site. Domain names are cheap, and you can certainly find web site deals with 5 email addresses for a pittance.

Geek Squader gets fruity with customer porn

Wait a minute

"This is like your neighbour breaking into your house and going through your stuff"

Sorry, but no. The guy didn't break into a house, he was brought a PC for repair. That's like bringing your car to the garage, then complaining that the mechanic took a look at the trunk, in which you happened to have stored a load of skin mags.

Privacy is in your own home, that is where you can expect to have it. Anywhere else and you must expect that some things will be discovered by the less delicate of our fellow man. And the sheer comic value of some people's pic folders is too tempting to not dig in to - especially since there is no way, short of having a PC specifically rigged for it, to discover what has been copied. And even that would not work if the tech took out the disk to slave it to a dedicated repair machine.

I am knowledgeable enough in PCs to be able to repair and maintain my own - so I have never had to bring my PC to a repair store. Had that happened, the data disk would most certainly have been taken out of the casing, so as to remove any chance of discovery of my bank account details, financial spreadsheets and, as an afterthought, my vast collection of Garfield and other toons.

An ounce of prevention . . .

Dodgy anti-virus update bunfight goes to court

Where did you read that ?

I have found no comment anywhere that Rising whatever had included live malware code in their application. Do you have a source to substantiate that claim ?

Microsoft points robots toward point upgrade

Microsoft is preparing to make a robot army ?

Not a problem, really. The day Ballmer gives the coded attack signal is the exact moment where all the bots will do a General Protection Failure, followed by a Blue Screen of Death, then they'll all reboot and, having forgotten why they were activated, will all just stand there looking stupid.

And if the bots are running Vista, it'll take them 20 minutes each time they want to move a leg or an arm, so we'll have largely the time to get away, regroup and prepare to crush them.

Apple emasculates the iPhone

If this was a Microsoft product . .

. . you'd have Apple fanboyz crawling out from the woodwork to say that Apple is sooo superior and would NEVER release a half-finished product.

But, because this is Apple, we hear instead of "unimplemented features", perfectly normal, do it the clunky way and shut your whingtrap. Besides, you're just too stupid to find out how to do it right.

With all this objectivity floating around, it's a wonder we still have wars.

UK going to hell on hardware, eco group warns

Wash up by hand

Now there's a sin against water instead of electricity since washing by hand is inherently more wasteful in water than using a good dishwasher - not counting the lighting you use to see what you're doing instead of just programming a wash for 3-to-6 a.m., shutting off the lights and sauntering off to watch the TV like every civilized being should.

As for multi-function thingamajigs, it's sheer bollocks to think that such devices will save energy. It seems plain common sense to have a single-function device to turn on when needed and turn off when done with it.

I wonder what the so-called "eco" group would have said to a multi-function TV, DVD/MP3 player/radio - where you would have to turn on the TV set to listen to the radio ! Any fool can see that it is much better to have an MP3 player, a DVD player, a TV set and a radio - and not let any of the bloody things go to sleep mode. OFF is the proper mode for things that are not in use, and OFF means 0 watts drawn from the mains.

As for set-top boxes that do phone, internet and TV, please don't get me started on what a waste that is !

(Un)lucky UCLA student cops Paris's old mobile number

I believe

that it's nuts to have a mobile on all night. Shut the darn thing off and get a good night's sleep !

Sweden may block Pirate Bay over child porn

The police should request that files be taken down ?

Of course not ! That would defeat the purpose of shutting them off, which is what this whole story is about. The laws of Sweden are what they are, but the politicians are always bought by greenbacks - and MPAA and co have lots and lots of greenbacks to throw at politicians.

More, it seems, than they have to redistribute to honest artists, which, incidentally, is supposed to be their actual purpose.

Microsoft boots Savvis from data centers

It may not matter now

where those "bright young lights" go, but it sure will matter where they are in about twenty years, since they will be in a position to actually make the strategic decisions.

For having worked with University graduates, I can say that Linux is very much in favor over Microsoft, viewed as an inherently flawed and inferior OS. When these bright types hold managerial positions, I think Microsoft is going to have it's rear handed to itself in so many ways it'll make Gartner dizzy trying to keep track.

Insuring iTunes: are your digital downloads covered?

24% have already lost their music collection ?

I'd be surprised that 24% had lost it to fire, really I would. So let's just admit that these people have lost their precious music because they failed to make the required backup - as usual.

Well it's the normal process, people. You buy a PC, you have a friend who knows about them tell you how to do things, you don't do what they tell you and one day, inevitably (hey, we're talking Windows, right?), you learn the hard way - the same way everyone learns - that they were right.

And once you've learned your lesson, you do your backups (well, mostly, right ?). I fail to see why insurance should cover this, it's a case of education, not loss. If people are smart enough to do their backups properly, they don't need insurance.

And if your house goes up in smoke, you're going to have a lot more to worry about than your music collection.

Psst - wanna buy a pirate MPack toolkit?

I'm just waiting

for the first lawsuit. Surely these hackers are going to want to protect their valuable IP, right ?

Right.

Oh, and concerning the above subject, I stop reading a post any time I encounter a sentence that has almost as many capital letters as words. I also stop reading anything that gives me a headache. AMFM manages to do both in just two sentences. I wish I had that spidey-sense !

Turing test challenges spam filters

I use a whitelist

The vast amount of mail I get is first filtered on whitelist - anything not approved is thrown into a temp file. When I'm interested, I go through my temp file and filter on blacklist - anything from domains, countries and subjects that I do not approve of is deleted (and yes, Bangkok is on the list since none of my friends or acquaintances will ever write from there).

Whatever is left is usually spam, allowing me to refine my filter, or it is a message from some outfit I have not yet filtered, allowing me to choose whether to whitelist it, blacklist it, or ignore it.

PDF spam ? Pah ! If it's in the temp box, it can only be crud. All attachments are destroyed without even hesitating.

University boffins squeeze 500GB onto a DVD

Who would want 500 GB discs?

And who would want more than 512 kilobytes of RAM ?

Back in the 1980s, the answer was nobody, but today it is quite hard to run a Windows machine on less than 512 megabytes of RAM.

So the question "Who would want 500 GB discs?" is averagely-valid today. I have a personal backup space of no less than 76 DVDs, which amounts to close to 330GB total. I'd welcome the opportunity to have it all on one disc, and I'd be even happier to have a second backup copy. But that is a matter of personal convenience.

On the other hand, the IT industry evolution points strongly upwards in every single domain. Storage space is expanding every year, and its cost is plummeting. CPU power has doubled for decades now, and pure horsepower is set to continue to multiply furiously - albeit with a catch on how efficiently it will be used by compilers due to multithreading constraints. RAM has grown in availability and accessibility every year without fail. In other words, there is no domain in IT technology that is not on a fast track to more powerful and more abundant versions.

Thanks to that, the variety of data formats available to the common user has grown as well. First we had text, then we got graphics, then we got sound, now we have video. Soon we will get HD video. Who knows what we can have after that ?

Video is the most demanding application there is. Be it in storage space or computing power, editing video can bring any high-end machine close to a hernia even today. Do you know how much data a simple half-hour film can take ? For having edited a simple school project I can tell you : the raw data takes up 18GB, and that is in VHS-level quality. DVD-level quality would most probably quadruple that, but I don't know that for sure.

In any case, never knock the next generation of anything IT-related. There will come a point when we will have a need for it.

Well, except in the sound arena. It's time to stop the nonsense. 7.1 Surround ? I only have two ears, guys, knock it off.

Dinner party guest makes gruesome discovery

Can count herself lucky

Looks like this particular person can thank her lucky stars that she made it outside alive. In any film, upon discovering the bodies, the girl would turn around suddenly and see the guy at the basement door, holding a long knife and a wicked smile (or sad frown).

So life CAN actually be different from a Hollywood film !

Helium balloon Brit breaks distance record

Why the ginger nuts ?

I can understand that pork scratchings contain all the necessary nutrients for a balanced balloon diet (got to have something to get it back down), but ginger nuts ? What's good in those ?

Better to have brought cashews, in my opinion. Try it next time with cashews, and I'm sure you'll go farther.

Google: Our data retention is not data protection watchdogs' business

Sounds nice

I would be much more confident in Google's ability to properly manage data without government supervision if Google hadn't kowtowed to the Chinese government and helped put somebody in jail.

It seems that if China asks something, then it's Yessir! RightawaySir!, but if it's a regular (what's left of) democratic government, then it's more like Shove off it and Get Out Of My Way.

Could it be because Google already owns the market here ? I wonder.

Police hunt renegade cow sex youth

Time to update the law

Typical acts and consequences here. Now that there is a law against donkey shagging, cows are taking the rap. So we need to update the law to include cow protection along with donkey protection.

Now, given that the law protecting donkeys was approved in the late 1800s, suggesting that there were quite a lot of surprised donkeys before that, it seems that we'll have to wait until at least the late 2100s before extending the protection to cows.

Then, one fine day (hopefully before the 5th millenium), sheep will finally be offered the precious protection or the law. On that day, bisons will have a lot to fear.

Showdown persists over '100% undetectable' rootkit

What an expert !

Great insight, this guy. "Malware is easy to find, all you need to do is to find what part is missed".

Sure, and fighting crime is easy too - all you need is to catch all the criminals.

With "experts" like that, no wonder the world is being taken over by dimwits.

Red ring of Xbox death costs Microsoft $1bn

Can't bear to hurt Bill

I just cannot bring myself to consider hurting the already suffering bank account of my dearest Bill. In light of this news, I now have full justification for my decision to never buy an XBox whatever - it hurts the bottom line of the most famous monopoly in the world.

And I can't do that, now can I ? Absolutely not. By practising total abstinence against XBox and Vista, I will bring Microsoft back into the black simply by virtue of not costing them any money.

The fact that I won't be giving them any money is irrelevant - thanks to me Microsoft loses less !

Help Microsoft lose less ! Don't buy its products !

;-)

El Reg to bite hand that feeds ICT?

Long live freedom !

Personally, I would prefer that we place a ban on banning.

I have no problem with mobes, lappys or boffins because I understand that this is not an American (specifically USA) site and the people who maintain and animate the site do not have the same background I do. Plus, I like the typically English humor and the insight into UK that such terms give.

The web being (for the moment) a free things in which anyone can participate, I say let the whiners make their own site - if they want to ban things they can do so on their own pages.

Sole competitor comes second in cake-baking contest

Breathtakingly logical

Gotta love it - a ridiculously small village has a contest, and not only is there no more than one contestant, but said contestant doesn't even get first place !

And let's not forget how a piddly village judge is an obviously internationally-renowned authority on just how perfect a cake is supposed to be, and is obviously totally qualified to judge any cake by the strictest and most absolute rules there is. It wouldn't do to let a scrungy little cake win first prize when maybe there is someone somewhere in Africa or South America that could have made a better cake but just neglected to enter the competition.

Frankly, the attitude of the jury just astounds me. I would find normal to judge the selection before me, and award first prize to the best of what is offered. If there is only one contestant, it might have been a better idea to cancel the whole thing anyway. Maybe if they weren't so callous in their judgments they might get more participants in their stupid competitions.

German courts demand no more Gmail squabbling

You wouldn't be unsurprised

So that means you're totally surprised then, right ?

Ah, the beauty of the double negative.

Defra appoints new top boffin

Overqualified ?

For what exactly ? If he is a "former aid to the White House", especially on issues if climate, I'd tend to think that he is one of those who "counseled" Dubya on matters of climate. If that is so, then he should be considered as quite ready to give his "expert" opinion once he knows what you want to hear.

Not exactly a stellar reference in any case. Plus, if he's only been doing politics for the past 20 years, then his expertise in the scientific domain is more than put in question.

No man can involve himself in politics for 20 years without compromising with the devil at some point. So, what kind of skeletons does he have, I wonder ?

Blades carve up Top 500 supercomputers list

One question

Does it run Quake IV ?

Teens using M-rated games to vent anger

Umm, Internet does not count as social

Sorry, but Internet play cannot really count as a social activity. Unless you use a VOIP client to talk with the people you game with, you are just replacing computer AI with human intelligence, you're not talking to people in a game.

And if you are communicating in-game without VOIP, then you're doing a lot of typing and not much playing, basically using an overly complicated IM chat line.

Playing with a bunch of friends physically present in a LAN is social. Playing with the same friends over the Internet with VOIP is slightly less social. Playing over the Net with friends and no VOIP is playing alone against much more difficult enemies that sometimes type you a message you can relate to. No social there.

Dublin college introduces video game degree

State of the art and Microsoft ?

A "state-of-the-art learning environment" from Microsoft ? What's it going to be like, sitting in the middle of a Blue Screen of Death ?

US reclaims world hotdog scoffing crown

What a wonderful sport

And how classy as well. A "no-spewing" rule really marks the difference between stuffing food down a gaping maw and the lesser sports of, say, horse riding, ice skating or even water polo.

Well, at least in this kind of "sport" there is no need to check for drugs. There is, however, a great need for medical personnel and emergency surgery equipment, since it's a wonder each such "competition" doesn't end in a few busted guts.

Hyperion harbours building blocks of life, says NASA

Cool

Now all we need is a mad scientist hell-bent on destroying the world to go out and "harvest" the biological stuff on the space rock, transforming into a deadly virus that will destroy all of Humanity, or transform us into fritters.

CSA IT 'a turkey from day one'

No surprise there

"MPs remain sceptical about its replacement" - no wonder, they know perfectly well that any replacement will just cost billions more and work no better.

Enraged reader savages iPhone fanboys

Use as intended ?

Since when do geeks use things as they are intended to be used ? It is the very nature of geekdom to seek out ways to use an object that were absolutely not intended by the maker of said object - to the point of sometimes making the object do things it was supposed to not be able to do.

This so-called flamer smells a lot like a troll to me.

Linux media centre integrates YouTube

And this is supposed to be a good thing ?

Color me nonplussed by this gadgetoid. No offense to the makers, but the ability to watch grainy, pixellated video on my widescreen instead of on my 20" does not really rock my boat.

Brown calls for e-petitions to get debated in Parliament

You believe

"I for one don't understand the finer points of European Macro economics, but I believe that the party I choose to support does"

Yes, well we all have our illusions, now don't we ?

Mobile handset selection

My head is buzzing

Gah ! Am I really supposed to think about all these things when I choose a mobile phone ? Heaven help me, I thought I just needed to choose a phone, it turns out that they want me to choose a mobile office.

Well I won't do that. For me a phone is for phoning. My email and Internet needs I quarantine to my PC, thank you very much - the last thing I want is to be pestered everywhere I am by email. I'm not a crackberry addict.

I choose my phone for connectivity to the network and battery life, nothing more. A phone is a phone. I don't need it for anything else than phoning. For the rest, I have other, reliable tools.

EC wants to suppress internet bomb-making guides

Great, now it's starting over here

File that under "Things to do to seem busy and taking care of issues without actually doing anything".

First of all, starting down the road of forbidding specific URLs at the ISP level is going straight to a government-controlled Internet. It seems to me that referring to China is just about the worst possible basis for making a decision that impacts freedom of speech on the most basic level.

Second, actually blocking some sites or URLs from some countries will not change the fact that the information is already in circulation. Those who are interested will find it, if only in the Anarchist Manual or somesuch which is certainly available over P2P networks.

Third, what about legitimate research ? Some people actually have jobs dealing with explosives, and I'll bet that online references that are freely available are probably quite handy to them now and then.

Don't tell me that my security needs the Internet to become a regulated, government-approved and politically-sanctioned place, I will never believe that. Whatever terrorists exist today have the info they need and know how to apply it. As for the rank amateurs, well the availability of bomb-making instructions didn't help the latest group of fools in the UK, now did it ?

Dedicated people with a will to succeed will find out how to make the bombs they need whether the info is available or not. Censoring the Internet for that excuse is nothing but an invitation to censorship for whatever excuse is the flavor of the day.

I think there is one quote that is totally relevant to this subject :

"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will"

Fidelity employee steals 2.3 million consumer records

Hey wait a minute

I'm first in line to bash a company for a stolen laptop with personal details, but hey, this time it's a "senior level database administrator" that made off with company data.

An admin is one of the most crucial, security-sensitive jobs there is. An admin can get his hands on just about anything, and companies everywhere live in fear of not being able to trust their own admin.

There is nothing you can do against an admin that he won't find out sooner or later. Either you trust him, or you fire him.

This despicable individual abused his employer's trust to make himself some fast money. Can't blame the company on that one.

AT&T rigs net neutrality study

We need more bandwidth, right ?

"an internet where all traffic is treated equally would require much more capacity than a tiered infrastructure"

Well duh. Obviously it would need as much capacity as there is traffic. Why is that a bad thing ?

A "tiered infrastructure" under control of AT&T would simply mean that I would get billed for each byte I cause to pass on "their" network, instead of paying a fixed fee per month. Oh of course, that's not how AT&T puts it, but in the end, that's what will happen.

I find it rather galling to see telcos try and find more excuses to bill me for copper that they put in the ground 50 years ago instead of using their immense profits to put fiber everywhere and get a good image for furthering the increasing need in data transfer.

Here's a thought for all those important CEOs : instead of trying to extort money from me by visibly shafting me, be nice and friendly and I'll give you the money you want on my own.

Pensioner used live shell as doorstop

I wonder

After the positively chilling accounts made of the antics of the Al Qeida Circus Squad, I wonder how breathtaking the account would have been if the "doorstop" had activated its primary function.

I also wonder how the media would go about justifying the "bombing" of a private property. Most assuredly, though, they would take advantage of the almost certain casualties to bang the Drum of Fear and go on and on about how nobody is safe anymore if the Terrorists are bombing regular houses.

I'm just happy that the worst did not come to pass. Does seem a bit lunatic to bring back a live, non-detonated shell though. Did someone have a fantasy about Russian Roulette ?