Posts by Pascal Monett

NY probes Facebook over pedophile controls

Can't help but wonder

Technically, it is perfectly feasible to restrict profile viewing of adults to only other adult profiles. If that was done, then said 24-year old could simply not have sent a message to pseudo 13-year old since he would not have seen the "girl's" profile.

And if, for the sake of argument, one had to admit that sometimes adults should be able to view underage profiles, it could be restricted to requiring that the younger one initiate contact first, by sending a request to that effect. One could also imagine that parents could have automatic access to their offspring's profile for parental control.

If this measure was implemented, the only real issues we would have is with the real pedophiles posing as underage teens and trying to catch a new victim. Prosecution would be easy, because there is no way an adult can pretend that he didn't realize that he was creating an underage profile. Once caught, he'd be hooked for good.

So now, if this is technically feasible and not all that difficult to implement, why isn't it done ?

Jack Thompson sets about Halo 3

Disaster strikes

Oh my God ! He has reproduced ! His DNA is going to survive ! This is a major disaster.

On the other hand, now that he has personally sent his own offspring to get a copy of Halo 3 - meaning that there already is an XBox 360 at the home, or I hope - what is the kid going to do with it ?

Is he going to forbid his kid from playing with it ? Or is he going to allow his kid to play the game ? On the one hand, one could accuse him of sadism, and on the other, well he has no business blaming other parents if he does the same.

So which is it, Jacko ? Sadist, or hypocrite ?

Thailand menaces YouTube - again

Stop dreaming

Google, Yahoo, et al will certainly not stop kowtowing to various dictatorship requirements - it's a question of ad revenue, in other words, MONEY.

Stand up for free speech ? Hey, these are companies we're talking about. The shareholders will never agree.

Iraq fiasco creeps into NSA surveillance controversy

@Huh !

Double Huh ?!

"To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself"

So basically what you're saying is that Bush is right to exempt himself from any and every law he wants ?

Do you realize that, if Bush were to have his way, you wouldn't be able to make that kind of remark anonymously, like you so courageously did ?

Human or Hobbit: it is all in the wrist

@Boldman

Don't worry, the people won't understand either.

Still, what will be easy to remember is that "it's all in the wrist".

Right, I've got my coat . .

Dismantling gas giants with nanotech

The Precautionary Principle

I don't know who this Marchant is, but I must say that I agree with him on that point. If we were doing biological weapons research like we do GM crop "research", then we'd all be dead.

I fail to understand how, in the name of Heaven, anyone was able to get a license to do open-field GM crops before all lab-environment tests were concluded. Well, actually I understand very well how this happened : Monsanto poured a few billion dollars into the right ears and all went the way they wanted.

Thanks to that disastrous decision, we now have GM crops cross-pollinated with non-GM crops, and God only knows what is going to happen tomorrow.

This GM stuff should have been grown under vast, environmentally-sealed white domes, just like in the X-Files film. Any precaution-taking at this point is closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.

Sony delays launch of PS3 virtual community

@Cosser

"People really need to look at reality not just make things up."

I totally agree with that sentence, but

"PS3 games are cheap" is totally wrong on a variety of levels.

In reality, £10 for a game is cheap, not £40. Please avoid suggesting to SONY execs - and other game makers - that they can sell their games at £80 or more.

Turkey stuffs YouTube (again)

Going out on a limb here

and I just might get into trouble for it, but for a country that shoots from the hip when it comes to disparaging remarks about the Founding Father (which I personally rather admire), Turkey apparently isn't so keen on keeping His Legacy live and well in the political arena.

I'd like to see a bit more dedication to stamping out integrism, and a bit more effort in educating the rural areas, two things that Ataturk brought to his country by sheer force of will.

California returns once more unto the breaches

So now we know what the cost is to tell people they blew it

So it's $15 to tell people their confidential data has been compromised. That begs the question : how much is it per customer to properly secure the whole thing ?

After all, if it's marginally more expensive, or even twice as expensive, it only needs to be done once, whereas notifying can happen multiple times and will happen again unless nothing is done.

So, any figures ?

World of Warcraft smites den of orc and elf sexual delinquency

Sorry, but I cannot agree

Free speech is NOT the right to do or say anything in public in front of anyone. With that kind of argument, there is no reason to keep people from shagging like rabbits in public places, malls, or on the sidewalk during rush hour.

Free speech does not mean you can insult someone or talk rubbish to anyone who can hear you.

Free speech is meant to defend the right to think differently and talk about it in places and times where that discussion is needed.

Therefor, I agree that these pervs should have kept their grinding and pseudo-erotic key-banging to their own Guild house and their own forum.

I have no problem with what they are doing, I much prefer that they do it virtually rather than go rape a kid, but I do believe they should use restraint when they are not between themselves.

And I really don't get why they don't go to Second Life. Technically, SL is ideally suited for exactly what they want, WoW is most certainly not where they can get their kicks.

Finally, I'm sorry but Blizzard has no obligation to defend free speech on their own servers - it's a game environment, not a political forum. As such, Blizzard is totally within its rights to censor anything they so choose. They are not restricting your right to free speech, since you can go and spout your nonsense in many other places. They are, however, keeping their forums centered on their games, and that is perfectly legal AND desirable.

Censorship is something to rant against when it is done by the government, not when a game company tries to keep people on the game.

Fossett search 'downgraded'

Utterly ridiculous ?

"It's utterly ridiculous that the U.S. taxpayer is funding these searches"

No it's not - it's called Search and Rescue and it is a cornerstone of civilization. You know, the help thy neighbor thing, bringing aid to your fellow man in need and such.

The fact that Fosset was a millionaire does not enter the equation, searches have been conducted in this manner before for entirely unknown people, independant of whatever monetary wealth they might have had at the time.

The fact that search time is being respected is the best way to respect people's tax money. He had his chance, it didn't pay off, they stop.

There's nothing to rant about here.

BitTorrent-busters busted by BitTorrent

Indie is probably good

The one thing I look forward to is originality. Hollywood is always the same drivel, more or less well thought out, and acting is sometimes iffy. Indie films may be lame at the beginning, but at least they will quickly evolve.

Personally, I like the Harry Potter series, and I am a great fan of Star Wars and of Star Trek (Original Series only, and the good films). Even so, there is precious few occasions where I feel motivated to go to the cinema these days. Most of the DVDs I buy are of films I already know, some are quite old.

Between the films that are nothing but actor placements (Ghost Rider, anyone), the films that have a cool premise but totally lack anything called logic, and the films that insist on using stone-age catchlines, stereotype characters and situations, Hollywood is really running on fumes.

It is high time for the Indie groups to come on scene and rock the boat. Natural selection and market forces will do the rest.

Chinese bloke games himself to death

Never been abroad either

The remark about obesity made me smile. Any American who thinks the whole world is just as fat is one who hasn't set a foot out of his borders. Obesity is a rich-country problem, and morbid obesity as purely an American problem.

The rest of the world is rather trim, often starving, rarely overweight. Especially in Asian countries - have you noticed how they are mostly fit and young ?

That's because of their diet, and because their life expectancy does not go over age 60 - whereas in France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Italy and many other European countries, life expectancy is over 80.

I doubt obesity was the issue. On the contrary, I think the guy was thin as a stick and wore himself out.

Build malware protection into operating systems

Even the borged can be right - once in a while

Amid all the brainwashed drivel, there is one thing right in what Steven said : users click on attachments all too readily and without paying the slightest attention to where it came from or why it was sent.

I don't care what platform you are on, this is a basic problem and there will always be someone to find a way to take advantage of it.

For the rest, I'm sorry Steven, but UAC is a joke (ceaseless nagging is NOT security) and Windows Defender is an insult. Besides, even if you could get ALL European and North American users to update their platform correctly (with patches that don't break the OS), you're still left with all the Chinese users, most of whom are running on pirate copies that MS does not update anyway and don't even know what "patch" or "update" mean.

It's going to take generations to sort this out, and Vista is not doing anything to help.

US mercenary outfit shoots 11 Iraqis - and self in foot

Well whaddya know ?

How ironic. The puppet government Dubya set in place is actually growing some teeth. Who'd a thought that Iraqis would actually want peace ?

In any case, it seems clear that they have understood that no US-based organization is going to provide it for them.

SCO files for US bankruptcy protection

"US laws . . .allows bankrupted company to continue abuse the law"

Well, now that you mention it, yes.

ESO galaxy hunters come up trumps

20 Suns per day

Given that these galaxies are vary far away, we are simply seeing star creation near the beginning of the Universe as we know it. Somehow, finding out that stars were popping up like popcorn seems quite reasonable to me.

Aussie politicos in a froth over naval boob jobs

Standardization everywhere !

Soon to be seen on the recruitment panels : "Join the Army and you'll become a 34D !"

Right, I'm out the door already.

Vista attacked by 13-year-old virus

Oh ! Thank Goodness !

Microsoft : preserving compatibility with your script kiddie code since 1998.

Microsoft sets spinners on court verdict

"litigation capital of the world"

Sorry, but the USA is light-years ahead in that domain and will be holding that particular crown for centuries to come. No worry for the Commission on that point, at all.

German police raid home of man who operated Tor server

Ahh the wonderful smell of limited liberty

"where's smoke there has to be some fire too"

There goes the "innocent until proven guilty" bit. There is no more innocence anymore. You'll be strip-searched until we find you weakness !

Ooohhh, random search turns up a pic of an underage girl naked next to the pool. This guy has to be a perv ! "But it's my daughter, officer" "You pig ! Doing that to your own daughter ! Take him in, Sergeant !" Cue twenty years of legal strife to regain one's liberty, to say nothing of honor, and a whole family wasted.

But there was a picture . . and where there's smoke . .

Where there is smoke there may well be a smoke canister, carefully planted to make sure the search would turn up something good. I'm getting sick of this "where there is smoke" attitude. Use it on criminals that have a record, I can understand that, but when you approach a random citizen without any criminal record I would suggest you NOT consider beforehand that he IS a criminal.

Unless, of course, you want the whole country to become one big jail.

Oh wait, you from the USA ? Already done then, forget I ever said this.

Hackers infiltrate TD Ameritrade client database

Well gee, I'm soooo reassured

"We can conclude because of our intelligence that the TD Waterhouse information was never accessed."

You can conclude whatever you damn well want, it's not like we have any proof of the contrary, nor the means to find it. And you're not offering to go over the logs, now are you ? As for your intelligence, well if you really had a lot of it, you would have avoided getting hacked in the first place, no ?

The only thing we can reliably conclude is that Ameritrade doesn't have a clue.

Be kind to your stomach: eat chilies

Curry ? Chili ?

I read chili, which has never been served Vindaloo anywhere. I'd think that chili spice is not the same as curry, which does not, to my knowledge, have peppers in it.

And as for the candles, that is down to improper filtering of the beans. If you boil the beans and change the water two or three times, all that wind power goes away. Plus, you can always use a bit of sodium bicarbonate to nullify the effects.

Microsoft dispels rumors of stealth Windows updates

"ensure that Windows Update will behave in dependable manner in the future"

Read : "ensure that we will retain access to your PC whatever you do".

Nothing new under the sun, folks. As has been exhaustively pointed out above, MS has a perfect (ahem) track record as far as respecting the consumer is concerned.

What is more insidious is that this "you are now mine" mentality has been taken up across the board.

Once upon a time, when you installed a new application, it would quietly go to its own little folder and sit there innocently, not bothering anything else. Nowadays, there is no longer any application from any street vendor that does that. No, these days they impose upon you to let them write whatever they want in the Windows directory (and they write, by God do they write !), they muck up that joke of a database called the Registry six ways from Sunday, and then they have to gall to make you click on a pseudo-legal agreement that they can change whenever they want without your consent, agreement by which you acknowledge that whatever they did to muck up your computer, you cannot hold them responsible.

A hundred years ago, if a vendor had tried to do that, the people would have taken him to the nearest tree with a length of rope and left him hanging.

Nowadays ? Well, we can't let the terrorists win, can we ? Bend over then, have some more. And don't forget to pay on your way out.

YouTube, Viacom bow to light-sabre wielding defender of online justice

Nonsense

YouTube did half the job - it should have checked who is the rightful owner BEFORE responding to the takedown notice.

But companies today have no balls when it comes to resisting any official document, especially if the letters DCMA or FBI figure somewhere in there.

YouTube is not to be commended in any way. It just did its clerical job, and took zero risks for justice.

The ONLY person that is to be commended is Mr. Knight himself, who had the courage to stand up for what he knew was true. I just hope he will always have that courage.

The robe of a Jedi one does not wear lightly.

Pascal.

Enraged bee bursts Taiwanese woman's breast implant

Mashed by motorcycling mammaries

If you cut the motorcycling part, I wouldn't mind passing away like that.

Right, got my coat, I'm out of the door.

Reference kilo shows mysterious weight loss

@sheep related

Funny that, while just having celebrated the demise of the Metric rule, you immediately adopt the same standards in a new measurement system. Surely, as a red-blooded Englishman, you would prefer to avoid the centisheep and rather have one sheep equal six rumps, a rump equals three heads and a head equals seven hooves ?

Proof that the method is better : Kate Moss weighs no more than a rump and two hooves. Now ain't that scientific ?

And as for the culinary complaints, suffice it to say that coming from an Englishman, it ain't worth a doink.

;-)

Facebook application hawks your personal opinions for cash

@I hope this addresses the anonymity issues

It might from your point of view, but given that your company sells private details to unknown third parties without my consent, you're still compromising my private information. If you feel good working for a company that does that, well it's your problem, not mine.

France blames China for hack attacks

@Ashley

And your point is ? Aside from describing a rather interesting life story, what exactly are you trying to undermine ? Alain Delon's reputation - that has nothing to do with the current subject, or, by some obscure relation induced by same name similarities, are you trying to sully Francis Delon by associating him with an actor ?

Frankly, I'd think that his being French would be enough sullying for you.

Also, if you want to shovel dirt around, you could do a bit of research. Alain Delon did not WANT to be a butcher, he studied the subject because his stepfather had a butchery and he was more or less obliged to follow suit. Finally, Alain Delon is a single child, and although he has had quite a few wives and children, none of them are named Francis.

Matching genes for criminal injustice

‘nothing to hide, nothing to fear’

So bend over and let me have it, is that it ?

Well no, I won't. I have nothing to hide, and it's none of your damn business. If you want me to bend over, you're going to have to have a rock-solid reason, and random strip searches aren't part of them.

The right to privacy is just that : a right to not be cataloged, sorted and labeled like chicken. Keep DNA records for CONVICTED criminals - child rapists, especially, and murderers. For the rest, do your job properly for a change, and stop trying to put all of us in virtual jail to satisfy your Dominatrix needs.

Sony loses privacy complaint over Unfit Kids

"Fuck SONY"

Well I can certainly agree with that comment, it's hardly private. And as for "wrongdoing on Sony's part", I don't think there can be any doubt that SONY is responsible for doing a lot of wrongs to a lot of people.

On the other hand, couch potatoes only have themselves to blame, and I do agree that, if the idea of a fitness program for those in need is a good idea, blackmailing any company to get it funded is not.

Finally, I find that companies have entirely too many rights, and are hardly punished enough for stepping over the boundaries. If I go and rob an old lady and beat her up, I'll get a number of years in prison, lose my job and probably get served a divorce, and all that will be just - my life will be deservedly ruined.

If a company goes and ruins the livelihood, or at least the hardware, of thousands of people because of an illegal rootkit, all it gets is a slap on the wrist and permission to go on and do it again. The fines are ALWAYS ridiculous, and hardly a deterrent.

I'd like to see companies feel the same threats individuals do in the face of a judge. A company should be quaking in its boots if it gets hauled into court. It should not be fearing the amount of the fine, but the number of YEARS that it will take to overcome that fine.

Put more simply : companies should find themselves fined of their benefits for years, just like people are fined their liberty for years. Zero kopecks for the shareholders for ten years for the rootkit affair.

Tell me that shareholders won't be more careful with the law after that !

Astronomers detect red giant survivor planet

Interesting find

But there are two points that have not been pointed out :

1) the planetary body has apparently retained its integrity, but that is a gaseous giant, not an Earth-type ball of rock, and

2) there is no way of knowing whether or not there was life on that planet, nor if that life has survived.

The prospect of our Earth orbiting 20000 miles from the surface of a red giant may be very romantic in the picture, but I doubt that anyone will be there to see the sights, much less set foot on what will certainly be a very hot - if not molten - surface.

On the other hand, what guarantee is there that the Earth's orbit will not change ? As the Sun grows in size, its density diminishes. Will that not have an effect on Earth's position ? Even if the overall mass stays somewhat stable, I cannot help but wonder if the spreading out of said mass will not have for effect to let Earth drift away somewhat.

Then again, being 100000 miles from a star's surface is probably not going to be a whole lot better than 20000.

Pascal.

Trojans besiege online gamers

Easy to avoid social engineering

I have a hardware firewall, and I don't use IE nor Outlook. Funny how I have never had a virus-related problem yet.

As far as phishing and social engineering, my rule is simple : mail from approved users is treated with circumspection, for the rest, if you don't know how to write, you're mail is immediately deleted.

No one I know writes "sto ck", or "medic_ation". My friends do not worry about "enlarging" myself, nor do they fret about my self-confidence. My friends have never, ever written the word "penis", not to mention "pen1s", or "pen_is" or whatever other unbelievable variation you can possibly conjure up after a week-long LSD session. And other examples are legion.

Thus, the only way to get me to read your mail is either I already know you (you know, from Real Life), or you write without any mistake at all. For me, that is 99.999% good most of the time, and whatever false negatives are left are quickly dealt with.

Bonus ? There are no false positives. Whatsoever. So what is left ? Well, mail from people I actually want to hear from. Thus, no account-stealing problems ever.

Of course, even from a friend I am wary when there is an attachment. Constant vigilance ! as said by one of the Harry Potter characters (Mad-Eye Moody for those in the know). That is the price of security, and where email is concerned, it is entirely true.

HP inks deal for micro-needle skin patch

ROTM alert !

I cannot believe that none of the regular vigilantes has spied the true goal of this tool : to snap a behavior-controlling armband on every single human being, technically engineered to react to our very own impulses !

This is yet another weapon in the Race to Control Humanity that our lizard overlords are stealthily implementing. It will facilitate our submission when the time comes to decerebrate us.

We must be on the lookout for the next HP-DermaPatch (TM). It will be the sign that the final war is on the way.

Apple restricts ringtone rights

Apple is free to do "whatever the market will bear"

Yep, and I'm free not to bear it. I don't own any Apple gear, and I hate DRM with a passion.

Clearly, the junction between Apple, Job and myself can only be Void.

IBM signs-in to OpenOffice.org

Music to my . . eyes ?

I really like the support I see in this thread for the great application environment that Notes is. I am a developer since 1995, started with R3, and I too have witnessed the progress made in leaps and bounds in this one-of-a-kind tool.

It really cracks me up to hear people say that Notes is crap, then turn around and use Outlook for mail.

But lets not get carried away, shall we ? Notes is indeed customizable, but not at 100% (you're not going to change the order in which view columns are calculated, nor are you going to be able to change background colors in response columns), and certainly not by the end-user.

If you are a developer, yes, you can do a lot, but it sometimes takes a lot of effort to do so. And when all that effort is just for some whinger who's complaining that "it doesn't look like Outlook does", well that kind of puts a real damper on my enthusiasm to help out.

Now, I am entirely thrilled that IBM is going to put some of Notes code into the public domain. Good for Open Source, without a doubt. But which parts will it be ? The replication engine ? The ACL ? The document-centric db structure ? LotusScript libraries ? I'm curious to see what will actually be published, because that will shape in great measure what will be done with the code.

On the other hand, in the past five years I have witnessed Notes fading away on the market, and I see this move as the death knell of my Notes development career. I think that, in ten years, I'll be developing in Java. What about you ?

Britannia triumphs over Johnny Metric

@idiots

Agreed - apparently said idiots also prefer commenting endlessly on extramarital affairs instead of wrapping their neurons around issues that actually concern them, such as immigration issues, electronic (mis)voting, or the fact that heating fuel can still not be bought across borders.

AMD finally goes native with Barcelona

At last !

A new excuse for the latest fanboi wannabe to bash another web site for being anti-oneofem and pro-theother. The regularity of this exercise in futility is really mind-numbing.

Public rejoices at new 'green' nukes

Only 1000 ?

They are going to push a policy forward on the basis of the opinions of 1000 people ? Come on guys, lets do a bit better than that. I'm pro-nuclear, but even I think that a policy should be based on a broader support base.

How about polling 2 or 3 thousand ? For more representativity ?

Discovery of musician on YouTube triggers loss of faith in American Dream and interests

@The Aussie

You I can sympathize with - indeed, I have been through exactly the same nerve-wracking, unending pain as you since our dear Ms Alba doesn't know I exist either.

But Bobby just needs a length of rope. I happen to have some handy . . .

Get a passport, enjoy casual sex with foreigners

Expert advice ?

"expert advice on how to get the message across to the 16 to 24 age group"

Yeah, I agree that a pair of gazoongas will certainly grab their attention. I doubt that any information accompanying said natural airbags will actually make an impression, though.

Greens walk out of nuclear debate

"Lots of alternative energy sources"

Yeah sure, and they are mainly contained in the words : "return of the Stone Age".

In today's world, there are essentially five billion people who toil in miserable conditions so that one billion can live it large and worry about football results. All the nuclear plants we have now cater to the needs of the one billion. Meanwhile, China and India are taking up their spot as new consumers, adding two billion more energy-users in one fell stroke. If anyone thinks that solar panels will handle all their needs, they are welcome to send some.

In my opinion, the only real solution is fusion power, and I place great hopes in the experimental station that is being set up in France. In thirty to fifty years, we will hopefully have it working, and then we can imagine something like one generator per country. No more spent rod storage hassle, and plenty of power for all at (hopefully) rock-bottom prices.

THAT is the future, not solar, not wind. Fusion.

Coming Tuesday: 5 Microsoft patches

Logical fallacy

To have a nasty venereal disease, he'd have to have gotten laid first. Even if you reason by the absurd, it can't happen. ;-)

UK and US team-tag to speed patent prosecution process

If I'm not mistaken

The last thing we need is faster patent processing. Bring in the speed bumps, the donkey carts and the perpetually nagging old hag to slow it all down and make sure a patent is actually worth the paper it's written on !

Orange promises rethink on deleted email accounts

Well for once . .

there are good arguments on both sides of the issue. Interesting.

However, I must admit that I believe leaving one's mail on the Internet is a daft idea to begin with.

Need to contact someone ? Ugh, start the computer, dial in, open mail, get contact details, grab the phone. Need to find that mail you got in 2002 from that friend whose name you don't remember ? Double ugh, need to boot up, dial in, open mail and search mail box, possibly the least efficient way of doing things.

And on top of that, you're at risk of losing all your data if you don't have a backup.

These people have obviously not lost enough data yet. I'm almost hoping that Orange will not be able to restore them mailboxes. These users need the lesson.

Once upon a time computers were expensive, disc space was worth gold and nobody could properly back up data at home. Nowadays a PC is $500, comes with a DVD burner and the media is worth peanuts.

There is little excuse to leave mail on the Internet anymore, and none at all if you only read it from home.

Dino-killing asteroid traced back 160m years

Personal opinions

So Chris is entitled to express his personal opinion, but nobody else ?

Sounds like we're already in Iran.

Facebook to show profiles to search engines

Another major PR disaster in the making

Man, I can't wait for the headlines that will appear when the inevitable hack or privacy breakdown happens : "Facebook exposes all !", "Your face exposed - and all the rest too !".

Of course, I avoid social networks like the plague, so it's not like I have anything to risk.

Raygun 747 test will be delayed, hints Boeing

Physical denial

Physically denying airspace is done with airplanes and ground-to-air missile defense like SAMs, or ballistic ordinance (good ol' shelling and heavy machine guns).

Just because the US of A has been immorally invading countries under decades-long embargo doesn't mean no other country has these capabilities. The entire world has noted that, while Saddam was once given the status of leading the worlds 3rd-powerful army, Pentagon officials have carefully avoided any militaristic stance against North Korea, country that does indeed have nukes and is quite capable of using them.

Maybe, if this laser bird does indeed lift off, we might see Pentagon stance change on North Korea. I doubt that would be a good thing, though.

Aussie scam artist rides bank computer glitch to $9m overdraft

Whatever

The bank made the mistake of honoring the checks (it may be cheque in Australia, but I'm not in Australia). If this guy really croaks it in two years, well there really isn't much that the bank can do, now is there ?

The legal process will take more than that, with a little help from the defense lawyer, so once he's pushing daisies they can indeed all choke on the debt.

He may be a thief, but only because the bank let him become one in the first place. I say he's right. He should blow it all on having a good time before he departs. After all, it's not his fault that nobody checked the accounting properly. It's the banks responsibility to ensure that the funds are available, and refuse any checks that are not properly funded. They didn't do their job, no use to come whining now.

Of course, if perchance this guy doesn't pass away in the next 24 months, but lives on to the ripe old age of a hundred and ten, well this problem sure won't go away by itself.

I think this is the perfect definition of being between a rock and a hard place.

HP boffin predicts preggers spy bog

More of everything, but hold the glossy

More storage, well duh, that one's a no-brainer for sure. More ink, well gosh, I wouldn't be too surprised by that, but the number of managers that have their secretaries print out their mail IS on the way down, I believe.

But more glossy pics ? When we are getting photo-sized LCD panels for less than €50 a pop that have all manners of smart card readers in them ? More glossy pics when even my father-in-law is going to buy a digital cam and already has a DVD player ?

I know that it's a shame for all those people in the glossy paper industry to lose their jobs, but digital is the way forward and that's it. Today the picture taken at the fair an hour ago can already be shown in all its glory on a TV screen, sent across the world and back and plastered all over God knows how many Web sites, and this guy wants me to believe that, in forty years from now, Government surveillance is going to guarantee glossy paper jobs ?

No chance. Government spooks are going to want digitized photo banks they can search through, not laborious paper bibles to endlessly turn pages in. Hey, I looked at my marriage album twice in my life, do you really think a spook will want to go check out stupid people pics BY HAND all day long ? No way.

My prediction on this is that, in 2057, cops will have their mug shot album on digital paper, one page per criminal category and wireless secure (ahem) access to the database.

Glossy paper ? Going the way of the dodo, man. And fast.