Posts by Pascal Monett

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.

Microsoft hawks Home Server

Oh joy !

Finally another excuse for giving my hard-earned money to Microsoft only to get a bunch of empty promises in return.

I can't wait for the chance to see my new MHS box flounder horribly as soon as I ask it to actually do something, not to mention that I fully expect it to not stream anything anywhere at all before phoning home to find out whether it should or not. And let's not forget the pleasures of Genuine Advantage, which will genuinely pop up a message after every other Windows Update to tell me that I have to re-validate my pirate copy within 30 days - except I won't have a screen to see the popup on.

On second thought, I think I'll pass. Microsoft already has a dismal track record when it comes to respecting my privacy on my desktop - I can only shudder to think of what that will become on a system that Microsoft is supposed to manage entirely on its own.

Companies still clueless about their software spend

IT is a cost center

And today's managers that are long in the teeth want to shine, so they shift IT responsibilities to dead-end managers that don't have a future in the company.

Plus, it's a lot easier to blame a subordinate for wasting corporate money. If you've approved the expense yourself, then you're the one who might be shipped off.

Googlewhack trick used to slip junk mail past spam filters

The nice thing about my spam filter

is that it evolves a lot faster than Symantec (anyone surprised ? thought not).

Any sender that is not on my whitelist get his mail sent to the spam bin. In the spam bin, any string that corresponds to anything I have previously flagged gets the mail deleted permanently.

End of story.

I haven't seen any of these reselling jokes since I flagged it five months ago. Besides, I don't click on links sent to me by people I don't know.

Publishers track down news lifters

What was that ?

"It also checks (...) how many visitors the site gets"

Um, by the way, has this page count issue been finally resolved in a scientifically-approved manner ?

Or are page counts still an art of approximation and ego-inflation ?

Because if they are still imprecise, then somebody is going to be bothered for more than he's worth.

Not really fair, is it ?

MySpace ads zero in on user data

Adblock is great

Not using MySpace/Facebook/other-inane-site is even better.

Samsung samples SATA II 2.5in SSD

Good for me

Hey, I'm all for anything that will

1) bring down the energy requirements of a laptop

and

2) increase its performance

With this tech now (almost) in the hands of the public, it is no surprise to expect the cost to plummet in the coming years until no laptop is delivered without a 200GB SSD for a mere $90 premium.

Then my laprop might finally stop chugging along at a snails pace.

Wikipedia not a publisher

Quite understandable

While I do acknowledge that libel is quite unpleasant, I also agree that Wikipedia cannot possibly be held responsible for anything.

It is, after all, totally irresponsible to begin with.

EU cracks down on fake blogger astroturfing

This is great !

Wow, now Sony is going to have to stop with all those muppets praising the PS3 to high heaven - oh wait, this law is only good for stuff posted in the UK, right ?

So that means that 99% of the Web is unaffected, right ?

So it's business as usual then.

Security site knocks spots off Mac OS X Leopard firewall

@John Naismith

Since no one has picked that up, and you seem to not know, I have to point out that a "hardware" firewall is typically a router with firewall code packed into one of the chips - in the hardware, so to speak.

The main advantage of that is that there is simply no way for a hacker to "overwrite" the code. If there is no flaw in the code (and firewalls have had much experience by now - any flaw is quickly found), then there is simply no way to subvert it.

What is commonly named a "software" firewall is the app you have sitting in your Taskbar. It can be more or less well written, it can function better or not, but one thing is sure : it IS open to getting hacked from other components of the PC it's running on (especially if the user is of the run-any-attachment-I-get kind).

I have a hardware firewall and my PC has anti-spyware and anti-virus monitors. I have yet to be infected by anything (but I think before I open an attachment), and my PC is not part of a botnet either. I think that is a pretty good reason to keep one.

Is MySQL's Google's Trojan Horse for world domination?

Can't see what the issue is

Frankly, disk space is so cheap it's ridiculous. Today, anyone with a PC at home can easily get over 300GB of disk space. Aside from rabid gamers and filesharers, that is largely enough for reading mail and the occasional surfing.

And for companies, with incomparably larger IT budgets, I really cannot imagine they'll be interested by an online storage space - what with the security issues, the payment arrangements (you'll probably be paying by the megabyte both written and read), and the lag (you don't get 100mbps lines yet, do you ?), I just cannot imagine the users will be happy.

Why is Vista not selling ? I think the essential issue is the perceived performance. Taking 15 minutes to delete a file is simply unacceptable. In the same way, a remote storage area accessible via Internet is not going to work better either, because of the same performance issues. I don't care how much money you're ready to throw at this, there is simply not enough bandwidth available to get gigabyte speeds to thousands of companies.

And I cannot imagine users being content when they have to wait 10 minutes, or even 5, for their very important rush-job report to just open, let alone get working on it. Autosave is going to be a nightmare. And what about unexpected connexion issues ? What about ISP issues ?

I'm sure there are companies with solid IT practices that never experience any downtime. I'm also quite sure that a backhoe can cause a lot of trouble in very little time. You don't often find a backhoe on company premises, now do you ?

For all these reasons and more, I just fail to see how online remote storage is actually going to do any better than remote HelpDesk call centers.

But hey, that doesn't mean that some Fortune 500 companies won't buy into it, as usual.

Manhunt 2 hacked open to reveal 'removed' gore

Those last to comments I agree with

I am a gamer myself. My game of choice at this time is Battlefield 2. Think Saving Private Ryan but with a lot more virtual people on screen.

I have a long history with FPS games (that's First Person Shooters for the uninitiated), which goes right back to the original Castle Wolfenstein. In other ords, I've been playing these games since they came out.

Each new generation was carefully crafted to run on the current hardware - and each one looked better than the previous one. When Quake 2 came out I was mesmerized - hey look ! I can actually see THROUGH a window !

In short, realism has been going up all the time. Today, in BF2, it is quite realistic enough - for a game. It is NOT a slaughter party though, there are sever limitations to what you can actually do. But that's all right - it's a game.

To answer Mr. AC, as far as I'm concerned we have now all the realism we need. I've been playing the Crysis demo and the artificial blurring is not really my piece of cake. They named in motion-blur, but really I just find it blurry - period. And I somewhat resent having forked over almost €300 for a graphics card that makes things blurry. I can do that if I squint my eyes, thank you. So really, I find we have enough realism. I do not need to play a game that looks like real life. I do not even want to play a game that looks real.

However, I am tired of games that persist to limit what I can do and how I can do it. If a tank rams the side of a house, it's not the tank that should get damage, right ? If a plane drops a few bombs on a building, the building should be rather heavily damaged, right ? Well none of all that happens in BF2, and DX10 does not seem to allow that either. The only thing DX10 does is add pretty pixels. Well I say we have enough pretty pixels already. We have absolutely gorgeous pixels. So let's start working on gameplay, okay ?

Now, in response to Mr. Ball, I really have only one thing to say : I've played a lot of gory games, and I've even played Grand Theft Auto uncensored. In games, I have done atrocious things. In real life, the only thing I am atrocious with is mosquitoes.

I've never even actually punched anyone. I avoid conflict if I can at all - and that just might include running for it if I'm up against more than one guy. The sickest fantasy I have is winning the Euro Lottery. Yet I believe I would have no trouble gutting a virtual character with a sword, if a game gave me the chance. I don't think I'm a wierdo, and I don't think you'll disagree with that. We both know what a wierdo is and I'd say just about anything is capable of pushing them over the edge.

In my opinion, blood, gore and twisted acts in games is no worse than watching any given snuff film (don't know any titles, I don't watch that), of even Hollywood titles like Blade, Basic Instinct, Natural Born Killers, or Reservoir Dogs.

Hollywood has exposed more people to gore, murder and twisted minds than any game can ever hope to touch. And a game does not get reruns on TV after five years.

In any case, you're absolutely right on one point : the debate is far from finished.

Brussels politicos: More cash for Galileo, pronto

"indispensible strategic tool" ?

Well if it is that indispensable to have an independent GPS system, maybe it would also be a good idea to mandate all government structures to use Linux, thereby removing the most widespread malware vector that is Windows ?

And concerning our imperial past, yes, we can actually be trusted because we've grown tired of it, whereas you guys are still getting high on it. As for being forbidden to travel or protect myself, I don't from where you're pulling that but, seeing as you don't live here, it's normal that you don't have a clue. Especially since you seem to think that Great Britain _is_ the EU. I'm sure there's more than one Englishman who'd have a lot to say about that.

As for the right to privacy, you're making the mistake of thinking that what your government does, everyone else's government does as well. You probably think that your Constitutional Rights apply anywhere in the world, too. I hope, for your sake, that you never discover just how wrong you are.

Whois database targeted for destruction

Personally,

I would like ICANN to start actually enforcing proper details on the registrant page. Not necessarily publishing them on Whois, but actually pulling the rug from entries that are inexact or incomplete.

But of course, that would mean the ICANN actually checks the stuff - and I seriously doubt that that gets done unless there's a complaint (and even if, it'll be the honest mistake that'll get sanctioned nine times out of ten, while the visibly bogus entry will sail by unscathed).

Nintendo to fire Wii Zapper into Europe for Xmas

Great fun in perspective

At the condition that they put out a game where you can hunt today's politicians from every country. Could be a very cultural game, you know. Chasing after the Queen in the stately halls of Buckingham Palace, gunning down Sarkozy under the Eiffel Tower, or blasting Dubya to bits in a pretzel parlor.

If they make a game like that, I'll buy a Wii with all the accessories, just for that game. Promise !

Data recovery firm sounds Mac hard drive damage alert

@is it me

Actually, it is you. First you talk about Apple "detractors" (hint : a detractor is generally against what your subject is), then you mention Mac zealots (hint : zealots are 110% FOR the subject).

But don't worry, Apple zealots are being just as knee-jerk reactive/abusive as ever, and Apple detractors are responding with the usual taunts and condescension.

All is normal, you may continue with your lives.

DARPA looking to verify imported military chips

Conspiracy theorist heaven

Just to side with the devil, I must say that it seems quite possible to have the main chip (the one passing the test) devoid of any "fault" that can be detected, and include another, less-important (and untested) chip that will somehow trigger a fault in the main one via a pattern of signals and/or frequencies.

If found inadvertently before use, said fault could be passed off as a "normal" bug, no feathers ruffled. But if it does manage to sneak under the radar, then when needed, the bug could be triggered and bang! there goes the satellite GPS system for all soldiers involved.

Sure it sounds far-fetched, but hey, it doesn't sound impossible, now does it ?

Rhys Jones 'killer' named on YouTube

I'm all for the grammar lessons

But you guys are lacking the long, heavy wooden ruler to make it stick.

Scottish decision threatens PFI contract secrecy

"When they've got nowhere to hide, we've got nothing to fear."

Now THAT's a slogan to live for !

Hear ! hear !

Becks shows Scientology some rispek

Respect ? Nonsense !

The only thing that is respectable about Scientology is its dangerosity. Scientology is a ridiculous premise (pseudo-religion resulting from a brash joke-turned-boast) from which its success is due to more than questionable mind tactics against people who do not have the mental stamina to resist.

Scientology preys and feeds on the weak without any moral restraint. Good ol' Tom has not really been subject to the full course, he's just a gilded representative having suffered through none of the moral tortures inflicted on those with less money, luck and fame.

So sure, for him, Scientology is great.

Now go ask someone who has tried to leave it. I'll wager they paint it in a very different light.

UK.gov lambasted for ignoring peers' cybercrime report

Ooh look ! It's pork time !

Some pork is being distributed so the powers-that-be can be said to be doing something about a problem. Yay ! everything is better now, right ?

Second Life mounts assault on reality

Way to go, SLers

Continue with the lawsuits and stuff and I think you'll be brutally dragged back into Real Life with a note from the tax man.

You know, the guy you can't evade however many flying penises you throw in his general direction ?

Keep whining about the money you're "losing" and I think his ears are going to perk up to the fact that there is a market operating without any taxation oversight. And we all know how the tax man hates to leave something without supervision.

So go on (and on and on as you are prone to do), I'm waiting to know what the IRS percentage will be.

When antivirus products (and Internet Explorer) fail you

The public

The public is supposed to resist the evil corporations and set things right ?

If "the public" was able to do that, "the public" would never elect a President with less culture and intelligence than a monkey, nor would they listen to politicians who change their stance on important subject every time the wind changes, nor would they forget that the moron they are voting for now is the same one that said or approved the exact contrary just months ago.

"the public" is the worst possible failsafe, and can be deemed directly responsible for not caring, not having a clue, and not being arsed enough to find out what the L is actually going on.

You have the democracy, the entertainment, the operating system and the spam that you are worthy of.

The only way things are going to get better is by MAKING people pay attention - at gunpoint if necessary. And that is not going to happen.

Prince's anti-YouTube crusade halted by American mommy

Attention-grab

The pathetic efforts of this has-been to be noticed are really disgusting. I never found any interest in the guy and now he is nothing, so he really could just disappear like he's supposed to.

Carmack's X-Prize rocket explodes on pad

"Armadillo set some records in terms of reusability"

If I understand that right, it means that all other rockets exploded on their _first_ attempt ?

Some record.

Aliens responsible for Italian machine uprising

I really can't stand this medieval mentality

So he's Catholic, but he thinks a sacrifice is necessary ? To what god ?

For Heaven's sake, man, if you say you're a Catholic then you should at least know that the being referred to as God in the Bible has stopped accepting sacrifices since the New Testament at least.

Oh well, if some people can claim their Catholicism and at the same time advocate war (even though one of God's Commandments is Thou Shalt Not Kill - no mitigating circumstances included), I guess this nutjob is relatively harmless (well, except to the animal he'll use to "appease the gods").

Astronauts ride robotic arms into space

Re:Ken

"Are you really that pathetically insecure?"

Do you really have to ask the question ?

I mean, just look at what they have for an excuse of a President.

Brown promises simultaneous liberty and security

What was that ?

"Mr Brown suggested he personally would favour an extension of police powers to hold suspects for long periods without trial"

Gosh, I'd love to see what he thinks of that when he gets his turn in the cell . . .

Online trading site was left wide open

I don't see this as a developer problem

Caveat : I am a developer.

And I have worked on rather big projects. And when you work on big projects, you have powerful people giving the green light on them. And these people generally do not like to hear that they "missed" something. Nor do they have any actual IT experience or even a clue. If you're lucky, they _do_ know what they want.

So what happens is they spend a few days in meetings - except they don't have the time so they let a subcommittee take care of drafting the details - then they waltz in and have every sycophant blabber about how complete the specs are.

So the project goes ahead. And it's urgent of course, and not enough days have been allotted to do it properly because nobody has the money to do things the right way.

So it's up to the coder to shoulder the difference, with his "experience". After all, they always hire "experts" for these jobs, right ? Except that, after 30 years of developing code, it's still up to a junior analyst to estimate how many days a given functionality will take to develop.

So the developer doesn't have the time to do the job, the time for testing is always ignored in favor of a rushed-out "beta" that goes into production almost before the "testers" have plonked their keyboards for a quarter of an hour and called in if they can't log on to the application.

And most of the time, if the developer calls into question any part of the specs, he'll get the "deal with it" look or worse, he'll be shouldered out of the project for "being a troublemaker".

Yeah, the developer really has a lot of power these days. I don't know what happened to the "diva" mentality, but I haven't seen much of that. I've seen a whole lot of nuthin' if it works, and even more whiplash if it doesn't. Yeah, that I see.

But diva ? Nope, got none of that around here.

ICANN investigates domain name sharp practice

Don't agree with you, Mike

I don't see why I should pay more than I already do for my domain when the real answer is to not allow domain name parking for more than a year.

You buy a domain name ? Fine. You buy a hundred domain names ? Good for you. But if you're not doing anything useful with all that in 12 months, they're no longer yours, bucko.

THAT would solve the problem. Or at least, cut it down to size.

Boeing, Ford in hydrogen engine fanfare

I doubt that

I seriously doubt that Boeing is in any danger of "losing the commercial sector". Boeing like Airbus have their ups and downs, but the market has to know that having two competitors levels the playing field.

It's in everyone's interest that both companies stay afloat, just to be able to play one against the other.

Grass up romantic sadsacks for only $4.99 a month

So they post personal phone numbers on the web ?

Isn't that somewhat illegal ?

I hope they've thought this thing out and checked with a lawyer because I think there's going to be loads of lawsuits in every direction once the sewerage hits the fan.

And it will. Whenever you deal with people, you can count on it.

Blu-ray outsells HD DVD 2:1 in US

Storm in a teacup

To set things straight, you've apparently all missed the fact that plain ol' DVD is still outselling both these lame ducks by 10 to 1.

And as long as DRM has its ugly fingers all over any format, I'm not buying in. As has been said, your hardware can be revoked on a whim with these new formats, because they can.

Well I refuse to run the risk of that. Besides, DVD is good enough for watching whatever drivel they're showing these days.

Developer deploys graphics cards to accelerate password cracks

4 graphic cards ?

Imagine that ! On a system with dual-slot quad cores, that would make 8 CPUs and 4 GPUs, and they want to use that to brute-force PASSWORDS ?!?

Move over you idiots, I've got gaming to do !

Nasty PDF exploit runs wild

I just love this situation

Here we have an ISP who, by popular knowledge, provides "bullet-proof hosting" to criminal organizations. Everyone knows it, it's practically flagged on Mappy with a great big sign, yet nothing is done about it.

I should hope that a truly working Russian police force would be tracking its users right now, checking each one of them to weed out any possible innocents, and nailing the real criminals to the wall.

Oh, sorry, I must have watched too many American cop stories. I forgot that the Russian mafia already owns the head cop in every district.

Space shuttle Discovery launched

"the $100bn ISS which will house Europe's first permanent laboratory in orbit"

Just one question : given that the ISS has been "in construction" for what seems like forever, just when exactly is it going to be actually useful ?

In the 23rd century ?

Real Media attacks real people via RealPlayer

I quit RealPlayer eons ago

They have already disgusted me once with their Big Brother tactics and pushy adware tendancies.

I won't be installing that tripe again. I don't care how "good" it has become, or that this issue is independant of their will. RealMedia has proven itself to be run by crooks, and once a crook, always crooked in my book.

As far as I'm concerned, RealMedia can shrivel up and die.

SAS man makes phone-based publicity lunge

Of all the cornball ideas

A book on a mobile phone. Great, count me impressed.

No really, I am. Anyone using that is going to spend as much time pressing the "next word" key as he is reading.

In the list of other utterly useless things to add to mobile phones, I suggest we add a sunshine detector. That way, if ever you have doubts about what the weather is like, just check your phone and it will tell you that, yes, that blinding light up in the sky is the sun !

Come on, you know we need it.

Sheet music site forced offline

Sorry, I've just had a majeur aneurism there

So public domain music is now also forbidden to be made available on the Web ?

PUBLIC DOMAIN ?!? What is it with the conglomerates that they have to squelch any and everything that is not under their sole control ?

It's public domain, so where is the problem ? WHY IS THERE A PROBLEM ?!

Lord, have mercy on us. Send us Gabriel or something, so that the evil minions of Belzebuth be purged from this Earth and we be once again able to enjoy that which is FREE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Where is this Feldmahler vampire anyway ? I've got a stake I'd like him to see, close up.

Comcast busted for bagging BitTorrents (again)

@James

Sorry, but you are mistaken on one point : fascism is not a form of government controlled by corporations.

That's an oligarchy.

Fascism has been given a striking example in recent History by Hitler. Total power embodied in one man suffering no dissent and no refusal, enforcing blind obedience to all economic actors and to the population, whilst pursuing an overtly aggressive agenda against one or more foreign entities, often interlaced with some form of racism.

That is fascism.

The actions of Comcast may feel like fascism in their effects, but that has nothing to do with corporations controlling the government.