* Posts by Pascal Monett

18221 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007

IT blamed after HR forgets to install sockets in new office

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: HR or Steve's Boss

I agree. Steve's boss was not on the ball on the matter. Worse, he cowardly shut up and let it happen, else the president would have been aware and Steve wouldn't have had to explain.

It's all for the best, visibly. Not a company I'd like to work for.

Microsoft says hello again to China, goodbye to Russia

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"China's huge market"

Make no mistake. Xi can throw as many undesireables he wants into "reeducation" camps, the sheer market potential will ensure that ginormous tech giants will always be at the door, begging to get a slice.

Russia has less than 150 million people, and they are spread over many time zones. Claiming to support Ukraine is the current fad, and the tech giants will come back later whatever happens saying "now it is time to heal the wounds". They will say that whether Ukraine still exists or not.

China is a totalitarian dictatorship much like Russia.

You cannot claim to support freedom and rush to invest into a billion-sized market that is under near-total surveillance.

Your cupidity belies your words.

Proprietary neural tech you had surgically implanted? Parts shortage

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"unnecessary computer sounds"

When Windows 95 came out, it was all the rage. I got the Vader "but you are not a Jedi yet" wav and set I don't remember what Windows sound to it.

I am still a rabid Star Wars fan, but that wav lasted all of two days before I banned all Windows sounds from all my computers forever more.

I just can't stand useless noise, and a computer's only right to make noise is when I'm playing a game.

Saving a loved one from a document disaster

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"decades past, when DOS was king and remote access" . .

Was nothing but a glint in Vint Cerf's mind.

Debugging by phone still happens. Not all your family members have TeamViewer installed (even today, not everyone in your family is using Zoom), and as for asking them to configure a Windows Remote Connection, forget about it.

And it's always urgent, isn't it ?

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla agree on something: Make web dev lives easier

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

I agree totally with what you say, but JS and CSS are here to stay, however much we don't like it.

Management wants the bells and whistles and, if that can prevent direct linking which bypasses that intro page they spent $150K on, so much the better.

Here's why prolonged Russia-Ukraine war would be really bad for us, say chip designers

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"if a chip was stolen or illegally shipped to the Soviet Union, it was very visible"

And, in the very next sentence, we learn that the Soviets cloned Intel's 8080.

So visibility is not really a problem, then ?

Europe's largest nuclear plant on fire after Russian attack

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"illegal, illogical, and inexplicable"

Illegal, yes, undoubtedly.

Illogical ? Not so much. Putin has already made clear his distaste with NATO, and Ukraine is a nice buffer zone to keep NATO troops further from his borders. It is no secret that Putin has always refused a NATO-subscribed Ukraine.

Inexplicable ? Even less. If I'm not mistaken, Ukraine has been making moves towards becoming a member of the European Community, as stated in the wiki : "The EU and Ukraine are seeking an increasingly close relationship with each other, going beyond co-operation, to gradual economic integration and deepening of political co-operation ".

Ukraine part of the EU means Ukraine part of NATO, and that is a big no-no in Putin's book.

So not inexplicable at all.

Fujitsu claims world leadership in headache management

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"Internal calculations found the total cost of headaches was $22.5 million a year"

Sure. Because you have all the required variables to determine the cost of a headache.

Although I am apparently immune to that scourge, I can see the effect a headache has on my wife, and I have a friend who is subject to migranes. Everyone knows that a powerful migrane means locking oneself up in a dark, silent room and suffering until it goes away.

That's not fun in any book.

But assigning a cost to a headache ? Come on, did you just tally the number of days taken sick and call it a day ?

What about people who have headaches but keep on working and don't say anything about it ? Some headaches are minor inconveniences, and I'm sure that, in a culture like the Japanese have, they won't let a minor inconvenience get in the way of doing their job. So, no cost there then ? They are still inconvenienced, they might work more slowly, or have to check twice. That's time lost, ergo cost, but you have no way of counting that.

$22.5 million a year is a large number, but I have a tendancy to file it with declarations of the "this virus cost that many billions to the industry" sort.

In the round filing cabinet.

Zero trust? Not yet a must for most IT departments

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"what other potential security concepts those people and companies are also missing out on"

I'm sure we'll find out soon, what with all the Russian miscreants on the keyboard warpath these days.

Research casts doubt on energy efficiency of 5G

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"what the report calls a rebound effect"

Which will be nicely compounded by Google's decision to remove data saving.

Well done, Alphabet. Way to go to help save the planet.

UK government starts public consultation on telco security

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"controversial plan to bring back [..] records monitoring has been deleted after pushback from ISPs"

So, if I understand that correctly, there is no publicly elected official that found any problem with said plan, it was up to private companies to put the kibosh on another Big Brother tentacle.

That says volumes on just how twisted Democracy can be.

Sometimes, I think that a Benevolent Dictator just might be a better solution.

The zero-password future can't come soon enough

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: The problem isn't a lack of solutions

Oh, so what brilliant idea do you have to replace passwords ?

Please share, the world needs to know.

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Stop

"the charge into a passwordless future"

This charge had better have a solution that is as easy to manage as passwords are.

It's not my fault that the Joe User can't be arsed to manage his passwords properly.

I do, and I do not want my fingerprints, eye scans or tongue surface spread all across corporate databases managed by the summer intern.

If one of my passwords gets compromised, I can change it. I can't change my fingerprints.

So, what's the passwordless solution ? I haven't heard of one yet and, if somebody had an actual solution, I'm sure we'd be hearing about it and seeing it implemented already.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

If everyone is using the same tool, then everyone is at risk as soon as some miscreant finds a way into it.

Just sayin'.

Startups competing with OpenAI's GPT-3 all need to solve the same problems

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: "lack of common sense and inability to be accurate "

Indeed, and worse, any example purporting to prove you wrong will just be a tweak of statistical nature.

There is no AI.

It's statistics all the way down.

Conti ransomware gang's source code leaked

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Oooh, basement keyboard hackers are playing virtual soldier ! Fear the byte !

People are being killed in an unjustified agression and these clowns think they are contributing to "the war effort".

Conti states that it will retaliate against any agression of Russian IT. WTF do you think Russia has been doing for the past decade ?

You started this shit. It's a bit late to get all high and mighty about it.

Alphabet's Wing drone unit inks supermarket delivery deal

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Coat

"better vehicles for greenwashing"

If Canberra has less high rise towers than Sydney, that might justify trialling the drones in Canberra. Towers inevitably create wind currents that can be finicky, and I don't think we have the coding chops to ensure that drones navigate through turbulence safely.

But apart from that, Canberra also has plenty of sunshine if I'm not mistaken. The drones can almost certainly be recharged by solar power, which would mean that they only cost maintenance, not energy.

I have no idea if this is fact, but it is plausible.

I'll have a tin of caviar and a bottle of champagne for delivery . . .

Indian services giants target emerging technologies with PaaS plays

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"By decoupling the auto software from the hardware"

And just how decoupled is the software from the hardware ? Did they remove the infotainment system from the CAN bus ?

Somehow, I don't think so.

EU, US close to replacing defunct Privacy Shield II

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: if they believe the US [..] agencies have unlawfully handled their personal information

I already believe that.

Where do I submit my complaint ?

EU cuts off key Russian banks from SWIFT system

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"heavy sanctions against Russia's [..] corrupt elite"

Somehow I doubt that said corrupt elite is going to feel much of a pinch at all.

Putin has been preparing his move since a while already, and I'm convinced that financial sanctions were on his list of things to mitigate. He will, obviously, have warned his ultra-rich friends, and the word will have spread because the rich have ways of finding things out when it comes to money.

So I'm guessing that the Russian rich will just have to take an extended vacation in their datchas on the shores of the Black Sea. Oh, the humanity.

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Coat

So, caught between the hammer and the anvil then ?

Right, exit stage left . .

Intel's 12th-gen Alder Lake processors will not include Microsoft's Pluton security

Pascal Monett Silver badge

I like it when Borkzilla comments on the effect of its projects on Linux

It can't even guarantee the effect of its updates on its own OS, but we're supposed to believe that Pluton will have no effect on a Linux distro.

I'll be scouting for the fallout on that.

Concern over growing reach of proprietary firmware BLOBs

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Well, like it or not

There is no law that says that firmware has to be open source.

Vendors have every right to keep some cards close to their chest, even the consequences are a very difficult time finding bugs and vulnerabilities.

On the other hand, blackhats will have a hard time as well.

Ukraine asks ICANN to delete all Russian domains

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"your authoritarian government is committing human rights abuses"

Hmm. Namecheap urgently needs to put that statement in effect on China because Uighurs.

What's happening to Ukraine is not good in any way, but reacting now kinda demonstrates a certain level of bias that doesn't really look good when you take a step back and think about it.

But hey, let's go and punish Russia every way we can (while studiously ignoring that every statement can likely be applied to China as well). What's the worst that could happen ?

BitConnect boss accused of $2.4bn crypto-Ponzi fraud has disappeared

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Ah, the ol' hire a hitman thing

Better know how to do it right.

Apparently, hiring on Craigslist is not the best of ideas.

President Biden calls for ban on social media ads aimed at kids

Pascal Monett Silver badge

15% minimum tax rate ? Great idea.

It will also ensure he doesn't get re-elected.

Which is something he might not mind.

Volcano 'shredded' submarine cable, vastly complicating repair job

Pascal Monett Silver badge

90 kilometers of cable impacted

And no new cable before 6 months.

That is quite the repair job.

Apple seeks patent for 'innovation' resembling the ZX Spectrum, C64 and rPi 400

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: 99% of modern industrial control kit

No, they won't. But the first lawsuit over that laughable but pitiful excuse for a patent will be quite entertaining.

Russia is the advanced persistent threat that just triggered. Ready?

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Stop

"if the data is safe from physical compromise then it's doubly so from virtual"

I completely disagree with that sentence.

I think it is way harder these days to secure from virtual intrusion than from physical.

IT advice fuelled by beer is the best IT advice of all, right?

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: He is very bright

Not really, no.

It's one thing to have an opinion on stuff you've been told, it's another thing entirely to go off on a revenge campaign about what you think you heard.

He should have confirmed his suspicions first by asking pointed questions. On top of the fact that he visibly offered the drink just to get something he could thrash after the fact. That behaviour is despicable.

In any case, if it had been me, that would have been the last time I ever had a drink with that guy.

IBM cannot kill this age-discrimination lawsuit linked to CEO

Pascal Monett Silver badge

This has been going on long enough

I do hope that somebody is not going to agree to settle out of court and get IBM nailed to the wall for once.

Intel blasts Bitcoin mining, unveils own mining kit

Pascal Monett Silver badge
FAIL

Yeah, but no

ALL funny-money mining schemes are the problem. Giving them a chip that consumes less power is not the solution, the miners will just look at their power budget and buy that many more chips.

The hypocrisy of that interview is staggering.

UK starts to ponder how Huawei ban would work

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: We need both the US and China, but more the US.

Oh really ?

Try buying something not made in the US. Not too difficult, I imagine.

Now try buying something not made in China. Outside of food, you're going to have a hell of a ride.

I think you need to rethink that statement.

Microsoft gives tablets some love in latest Windows 11 build

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Trollface

Yeah ! 35 new emojis !

I'm sure everbody was waiting for that.

Oh, sure, you would've preferred something useful but remember : it's a Microsoft product.

Fujitsu confirms end date for mainframe and Unix systems

Pascal Monett Silver badge
WTF?

Support for five more years ?

It's a mainframe, not a laptop. You support a mainframe for 25 years, not five.

If Fujitsu thinks that it's going to sell a mainframe that only has five years of support left, I think Fujitsu is in for a bad surprise.

They may as well stop making them now - as long as they still offer support until 2035, they just might still sell one or two.

Your app deleted all my files. And my wallpaper too!

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: Even Worse

And it's with that pain that she learned not to trash her files.

Pain is a good thing. It's the only thing some users understand.

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Flame

I so agree with you. Especially when it comes to laptops, which are often delivered with a single partition for OS and data. So, when the inevitable Windows crash happens and you have to reinstall Windows, it wipes the disk and your data with it.

Once upon a time I insisted on having two HDDs, one for the OS, one for the data (and swap file). Nowadays, with SSDs and their size, a single disk is enough, but I still insist on a data partition and I install all my programs and put all my files there.

That way, when Borkzilla borks again, at least I can reinstall Windows without losing any actually important stuff.

Icon because Borkzilla still hasn't understood this.

Ukraine's IT sector looks to business continuity plans as Russia invades

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Well it's kind of difficult to tell everone to relocate to another country, right ?

Although that's what might end up happening anyway.

EU proposes law forcing manufacturers to share data

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"the EU was still negotiating with US officials on a solution"

Sorry, what is there to negociate ?

The US does not get EU citizen's data. Simple.

I can agree to an exception when an EU citizen is physically going to the US, but that is it.

And if the White House don't like it, it can stuff it where the sun don't shine.

Mobile-based ID wallets for government are coming

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"mobile-based identity wallets"

Oh yeah, absolutely. We really need an identity verifying app on the most insecure, unupdated platform that has ever existed.

Bonus round : having to prove that you are the owner of the phone once you've "proven" your identity.

Different standards will create opposition to those initiatives ?

I'm already there, mate.

Intel energizes decades-old real-time Linux kernel project

Pascal Monett Silver badge

So, two people in their spare time

If OpenSSL is only maintained by two people, then how many other crucial Open Source projects are there out there that are only maintained by a handful of people ?

Sometimes it feels like the Internet only works because of a dozen people . . .

Yes, Mark Zuckerberg is still pushing metaverse. Next step, language translation

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"a model designed for developing smart chat bots that operate in the metaverse"

Oh good, Zuck is going to fill his Meta-fied Second Life with a bunch of virtual people. Then he will declare the Metaverse a success and spend his time chatting with bots.

And the rest of the world will watch him burn all his money on that particular pie in the sky.

I'm glad you believe that a computer program can teach itself. I can't wait to see how that turns Tay.

US winds up national security team dedicated to Chinese espionage

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"China [..] does not permit the operation of a free press"

I think there is a certain US political party who would love to be able to do the same thing and ensure that only its point of view was published.

Google kills download-shrinking Lite Mode browser tech

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Thumb Down

"mobile data services offer many gigabytes of monthly downloads"

Be that as it may, Lite Mode has many advantages and there is no real reason to remove it.

It's like saying "the price of gas has fallen so low, we've stopped making economical cars". No, you don't stop saving data just because in India they have great mobile data plans. I have a budget of 4.5GB/month - normally more than enough. Recently, there was a storm that cut my fiber connection for three days. Working from home, I used up a total of 6.8GB during that time, with a nice 70% increase in my phone bill for that month.

Keep saving the data, you never know when you might need that.

Besides, less clutter on the backend will do good for everyone.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Brave does a good job of saving my data - it blocks ads.

That alone has allowed me much more surfing bang for my bucks.

Americans far more willing to hand over personal data

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"73% of users worldwide use their Google or Facebook accounts to log into other apps"

Well that's a big, fat single point of entry if ever I saw one.

Of course, I've been working in IT for more than a quarter of a century. I have no problem managing (checks list) around 200 passwords. I never use the same password twice, nor the same login.

But I know what I'm doing. People who view the Internet as their own personal shopping space, and their computing device as an enabler, those people simply cannot imagine everything that goes on behind and likely wouldn't understand if you explained it to them. It's a shopping cart, what's the problem ? That is their point of view, and I'm not going to blame them.

Maybe, just maybe, all this data sharing and consumer pressure just might end up in creating a world where everyone, not just IT professionals, have the means to really manage where their data is going and who can use it.

Maybe.

Samsung shipped '100 million' phones with flawed encryption

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Why leave implementation to the vendors ?

It would seem that a proper encryption scheme should also have a default implementation function/procedure.

Encryption is difficult. Even if you (like me) have no idea how difficult it actually is, there's largely enough history to demonstrate that fact.

So don't leave it up to the vendors. If you create an encryption scheme, give a default, secure, functional scheme that vendors can rely on.

That way, if they go their own route and screw up, it's entirely their own fault, whereas here you kinda built the scaffold for them to hang themselves.

US imposes sanctions as Russia invades Ukraine

Pascal Monett Silver badge

It would be. The issue is : there is no position of ACTUAL power.

Well, except for Putin.

IRS doesn't completely scrap facial recognition, just makes it optional

Pascal Monett Silver badge

But he said "a proper facial recognition system".

His point is valid in that specific, restricted area.

As in, a facial recognition system that does not just a picture, but LIDAR technology or somesuch to create a 3D map of the face on top of visual cues.

That should prove more difficult to cheat, whatever makeup you have.

Of course, if you go putting Silly Putty on your face and makeup on top of that, then all bets are off.

I guess facial regocnition is just doomed from the start.

China's APT10 cyber-spies 'targeted Taiwanese financial firms'

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Interesting point

The USA could not simulatenously handle Putin and Xi.

Even though aircraft carriers and Green Berets are not going to be in the same places.

Once upon a time the USA handled the Atlantic and the Pacific fronts simultaneously.

What a fall from grace.