Hero

"He was then summoned to meet Bill Clinton to explain the first vicious DDoS attack. "

That sums it up as being a f***ing hero, then. How otherwise you'd explain that to a wig ?

Human IT interface problem

In France, everyone that has learnt car driving more than 15 years ago have done it with:

- a manual gearbox (5 gears) + left clutch pedal

- a key that mechanically turns to start/stop the engine

- a mechanical steering wheel

- a central brake pedal, based on piston + brake fluid

- a mecanical manual handbrake lever

- mechanical lights control

Now, in a f***ing Renault, you have:

- a card you insert (or not, can be proximity based) + button to start and maybe stop the engine. Is no longer mechanical, so f*ck knows what happens in the unlikely event you want to emergency stop, if at all possible.

- a bizarre device, different in each and every model, implementing handbrake. Maybe.

- SW controlled lights. What a great idea ! I've seen that having 1 second latency when activating it. Handy to put the full lights on/off when you encounter someone.

- a power assisted brake pedal. Just touch it lightly and you'll stop the car at 100 KM/h in 30 meters.

Given the amount of cheap ridiculous complexity, how is it a suprise that it fails every now and then and that people are not prepared to read 20 pages to learn the magic procedure to reset the hand brake/lights/cruise control/starter ???

Creepy indeed

"More controversial is the plan to use a camera on the box to look outward, to identify the faces staring at the goggle box... telescreen-stylie. Intel will use that to present personalised options and targeted advertising, in a process which seems immediately creepy but ...^"

Well, yes, it bloody does ! Am I the only one to think some analisys of behaviour will be done at one point, in order to provide adapted ads ? I don't think this is the number/type of faces they're after ... And surely, the SW will be remotely adapted at whatever is marketable.

And would everyone be really happy to see a porn movie pop out of the screen, with an all-scream lady, when having a good rumpy-pumpy with the Missus ?

I'm not even talking on the said rumpy-pumpy fully sent to porntube ...

Really, who on their right mind, would buy this ???

All too true

"All of which should provide some comfort to those organisations that have been struggling to find data scientists to analyse their data. It may turn out that the "mythical data scientist" is actually Lily who works one cubicle over. "

Really, it is. And so many of those companies trying to find the "mythical data scientist" have so often let go Lily already !

Kudos to him, really

I'm not religious, and I certainly never was a big fan of this Pope (I never cared really, since I'm convinced universe was created by a couple of dices thrown). But geez, get the negationists back in church, for Pete's sake !

However, I think the guy needs our hats off for having the courage to resign, as this is not really the fashion of the company. I can imagine all the court faces around him when he announced that ...

I'm sure I would do the same if being forced to do my current job, when I'm 85 ...

So long mate, have a deserved rest !

I'm thinking

Where are all those things gonna crash, at the end of their short service period ?

It is pretty tricky to forecast the landing of any orbital object (when unpropelled), so, hopefully, they'll leave some fuel in, to ensure landing outside of, say, middle of London.

Empty shell

"Hasbro Interactive bought what was left of Atari in 1998 and sold that to Infogrammers Entertainment in 1999 for $95m in stock and $5m in cash. Atari SA was the name eventually adopted by Infogrammers, which promised to revitalize the brand."

At which point, it was already an empty shell doing just vid games production, and no longer any development, state it never left ...

So corporate politics, marketing and greedy salesmen only ...

They also had quite some IP and exclusive rights (D&D vid games exclusivity for example), which they used and abused, often detrimentally to the games (Neverwinter Nights, FFS !), which eventually pissed off a number of players and companies, led to boycott Atari entirely.

But anyway, this ridiculous behaviour led Bioware to never rely again on publisher's IP, create their own, and we got Mass Effect and Dragon Age, so this had a good effect.

Now, I think this is time, for Atari, to rest in peace ...

UK kilogram

"But the Brit boffins' findings aren’t conclusive because they are based on tiny changes to the UK’s kilogram prototype ..."

You probably mean UK pound and not kilogram. No such thing as metric units in the UK.

final blow for Windows

"That will undoubtedly suggest to some - as has been mooted in the past - that the Steam machine will run Linux rather than Windows."

Well, quite an understatement IMHO. This is a sure thing for me ... Why putting it on Windows and incur all the usual MS burden (costs, security issues, management) ?

This move, that will probably be followed by other companies (EA anyone ?) indeed, will probably be the final blow for Windows. In a couple of years, when office-like products will be on all tablets, there'll be absolutely no point in having a PC with Windows.

As far as I'm concerned, my games portfolio has already moved to Macos and I'm looking forward to seeing it on my TV, with a box !

enjoy exploring Windows 8 and TIFKAM

"Our small sample therefore seems to indicate that civilians will occasionally strike trouble, but will generally enjoy exploring Windows 8 and TIFKAM."

Well, for people that like that, "exploring OSes" and researching how things work, that is OK.

But the world contains also a number of people at work that have to be productive, and spending

half an hour to find out where the hell is the print button, shutdown button, or hidden menu, is

not popular to them, when put on top of business as usual.

I know very well why/how I should invest time to learn a new UI and MS should really be cautious

about imposing change for change in the hope of keeping the computer at home locked on the office

one (which is Windows), otherwise it's gonna backfire at them.

Another quarter ...

another X thousands job cuts at HP.

Same goes for acquisitions ... Hardly any scoop here as the HP budget exercise has always gone this way:

- positive = another acquisition

- negative = another round of layoffs

So each quarter would exhibit one of those ...

Interesting Wikilink here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Hewlett-Packard

Shame the same doesn't exist for layoffs ...

See,

our QA dept is in the US, so this went totally unnoticed ...

Appaling parallel

Just to make a parallel, the UK took their time to extradite Ramda. 10 years.

But of course, it was nowhere near the gravity of the Assange case, it was suspicion of complicity in the 1995 Paris Bombing (10 deaths, 200 injured).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/1504576/Terrorism-suspect-extradited-to-France.html

Appaling.

F**k me, really

I understand raising money is tough, and a number of bad/devious solutions can be in sight, which low mind people could follow.

However, promoting real weaponry, through a video war game, for a charity for people killed (likely via the same mark) is just insane to me, geez.

Of course, in the U.S of A, where everyone and their dog has a firearm, this looks like Business As Usual, but elsewhere, think about it, people from USA, this is just like promoting a condom maker through a rape video game, to support for raped women !

Mad

"But BGL, which owns a trademark on the phrase "Compare the Market", ..."

/me rush to trademark the word "Market".

20 mins of vigorous activity

"20 min of vigorous-intensity physical activity on at least 3 days every week;"

I particularly like this one, which presumably happens in bed :-)

Sadly, the distribution of low activity across countries matches what I see in terms of overweight people distribution, across the various countries offices of my employer. This is especially true for women.

Paypal is now history

Being a buyer only, I stopped Paypal when they started to refuse electronic Visa cards* numbers, and demanded my real visa number instead. In essence, this "secure" provider was imposing unreasonable risk on me, probably with the intend to steal money (couldn't think of any other reason). And this was before all the phising problems.

There is no point, today, if your bank is from this century, to even consider PayPal.

* Totally secure way to pay online: virtual VISA number, limited to a certain amount of money, limited to 2 months duration, generated by your bank portal. Very popular in France.

Praise tapes

Tapes are always cheaper, due to:

- no electricity (except minimum environmental control) to keep the info

- lower price per TB

- no mechanical problem on tapes, thus no support needed for the media

- software can accomodate tape aging (TSM does this, some archiving tools as well) at a very lower price (the one of the SW) than disk aging is taken care of

This will remain the case until passive memory techno kills tapes for good (5 years time ?).

Of course, the likes of Netapp and EMC are fighting this to keep their margin, but this only works with clueless CIOs. If there was any valid point in this, tape market would have collapsed years ago.

UI freaking monster

Geez, what a terrible thing. Worst UI since VT100, really, which incidentally, didn't shout at us ...

So what next with you, crazy Dr. Microsoft, eh ? SMS-like menu maybe, in ALL-CAPS, with LOLZ ? I don't think this has been done and this would be truly awfull.

I'll be anyway looking forward to see this, and be sure this will be through a MacBook, with a proper OS and LibreOffice, where we still have "Print" under the "File" menu.

Protons vs. protons

Just wondering if the folks at CERN wouldn't be able to deviate the 2 LHC beams and shoot a couple of bursts of protons to this, for good measure.

Hey, could even be helpfull to find the Higgs boson !

Mad user = trojan

"The malware is programmed to generate print jobs featuring reams of garbage characters from infected PCs until connected printers run out of paper."

Hmmm, in some companies I've worked for, this behaviour would have gone unnoticed. I remember a very depressive user, suffering from the "print-emails-before-reading-them" syndrom, which, in itself, is bad enough.

She was also suffering from the more serious "if-email-doesn't-turn-out-in-10-seconds-print-again" syndrom. This one gave identical effects from this trojan, any time there was a paper jam or any crowd in the spooler.

"As a result, South Korea will complain to UN agency the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as well as the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), warning that its northern neighbour is breaking UN rules and endangering the safety of passengers."

Is beyond me why SK bothers to complain to ITU about a nation whose bonkers leaders give the 2 fingers salute about everything including nuke tests to the whole planet since so many years.

from the WTF department

"It could make you look a little daft that way, but if you're fitting the walls of your home with Wi-Fi blocking wallpaper, how ridiculous you appear to your fellow peer(s) is probably the least of your worries. ®"

LOL. Exactly that. I vote this for the most pointless product of the year.

As said above, paranoid people are fine, they just need to use optical fibers only. Really tricky to get the signal if not inside your home. Great security. Oh, yes, and they need to read the interweb to know how to disable WIFI on the box/router, which apparently didn't come to the poor minds of the manufacturer of this wallpaper.

Only marginal use of this would be exams rooms or similar places where mobile phones or WIFI are/should be prohibited, but this is a niche market. And that's apparently not the selling point they're betting on ...

Follow the money !

"... numerically illiterate Greens and journalists."

This is one part of the problem. Many journalists can't add 2 and 2 without any mistake. So understanding a business case for a water plan, forget it. That's why anyone can persuade them of any number (including numbers in the trillion as they have no idea what they are) without a blink from them.

The other part of the problem is ... follow the money. And see how it may very well lead to big water companies which sole financial interest is to pressure consumers at 0 investment of any kind. Then, throwing a couple of grands to a political big mouth does the trick of keeping their interest safe.

Shrug

Well, it's not even an austrian funny name !

In france, you have (uncomplete list):

- Froidcul (cold ars)

- Pisse en l'air (piss in the air)

- Longcochon (long pig)

- Saint-Vit (Vit is a very obsolete name for penis)

- MontCuq (can be read "my ars" even if spelling is not OK)

I don't think people are doing a lot of fuss about that ...

"On the proprietary side of the IBM midrange house – as if the Unixes were not as proprietary as z/OS, OS/400, OpenVMS, and Windows, but this is the language we inherited from the 1980s ..."

Ah ah, kuddo to the author for this good one, indeed very true. Decades after the last common trunk of Unixes (SYS V R3, if memory is not totally gone), what's left of the "standard", as a common denominator between them would probably fit on one A4 sheet of C source code !

Maybe something linked to "/" as a directory/file separator ....

Industry loves to split up integrated things ...

Redmond << ZFS

To be honest, it was really borderline to put references of such a brilliant system as ZFS

side by side with anything coming from Redmond, the firm which keeps discovering things

invented in the 60s, only later during the 21st century !

When/if they come up with a meaninglfull progression bar for files copy, yes, they

may address advanced storage technology. Meantime, they have plenty to fix.

Is it not each 50,000 years ?

Hmmm, that is coming faster than expected. Other boffins (here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Effect) wrote 50,000 years before

the reapers wipe the whole galaxy.

Anyway, other sources say this war is coming march of 2012 ...

Whatever, bring them on, my Shepard is ready !

/me go write something terrible will happen in 5055, somewhere

in an old cave of the countryside, just to make sure some folks in the

future will have something to think of.

Well done !

Not being myself a big fan of consoles (as their games are too expensive) except for the WII, that is, I find it largely appaling that MS, as their sole response to piracy is gonna:

- come back to the solutions of the 80s (proprietary FS, allegedly readable by no OS except the xbox FW) with for sure the same success: no stop of piracy, and breakage of legit. game media

- kill one of the only pro I reckon for game consoles: you don't have f***ing MS pushing patches to it on a daily basis, turning your computer into a chaotic mess

Well done MS !

/me notes to never envisage to purchase an MS console

Fit PC

largely cheaper and less power hungry:

http://www.fit-pc.com/web/fit-pc2/fit-pc2-specifications/

And the box is all in aluminium !

autorun-based malware has been here for decades

The first time I saw one occurence was on an Amiga 500. Something like 1989, a funny message saying: "you have been infected ... by a virus !"

Quite uncommon malware time by today's standards ...

Anyway, it's a bit sad that some people still think autorun, in whatever OS and for whatever type of executable content, is a good idea.

/me fires up my Amiga emul to play Lemmings

EMC ?

"Thieves drive off with 10,800 Western Digital drives"

That'd be EMC, for sure !

Good luck

"Until we can work with China to respect intellectual property ..."

Good luck with this one. Kingdom will have come long before ...

Evil

"Shadowserver has identified 315 websites that are the recipients of the SSL assault. In addition to cia.gov and paypal.com, other sites include yahoo.com, americanexpress.com, and sans.org."

Let me see: CIA, Paypal, yahoo (with their infernal webmail system).

They're targeting the most evil web sites of da Internet, maybe ?

Research methodology

I have to say the King's College London team's research methodology is appaling to a very high degree.

Research on sexuality using polling on women *on their own perception of their body* is probably some kind of scoop !

It's just like asking "do you have big breasts" and concluding all women have small breasts !

I suggest them to draw conslusions on what to eat tonight by a large study on flies and the ratio of them having apetite for excrements.

Like they say "Eat sh**, billions of flies can't be wrong".

Like I say "Whatever a given point, there's always a statistical study to prove it"

IT angle ? Many IT studies are conducted in the same way ...

Drop it, FFS

"Opera was quite clear on how it sees the matter: "Security issues continue to plague Internet Explorer users, and the latest recommendations from the German and French governments against using the browser are in line with what the security experts have been saying for years." "

Indeed, what to say on top of this ? It's been written all over the place, in El Reg and elsewhere: Drop the *darn thing* !

Spot on

"VOSA said MOT failure rates: "do not necessarily reflect on the ‘reliability or longevity’ of the particular make and model of car concerned – and very often say more about the owner and the way the car has been used and maintained.""

Hmm, political talk, here. It does say a lot as most owners won't waste their investment due to no servicing, right ?

And by the way, it's totally in line with what I've seen over the years and in cars forums:

- Peugeot 307: You realise after 50 000 km the price you paid it is in fact a tiny portion of the total cost. Gear boxes can die at 80 000 Km under normal usage, large parts of the body will fall off unexpectedly, plus the famous recurring clutch problems etc ... Possibly the worst reliability record in Peugeot's history, largely accountable for the problems the firm is through. Gone is the longevity of the 205 ... Better rent such a car ...

- Renault Megane: A lot better than begginning of the last decade, when engine accessory belt would snap and take with it the timing belt (geez, have they heard of timing belt protection ?) but still many issues, in pure Renault style: windscreen joints problems, brakes problems, tires wearing out at mad speed, ...

- Toyota Corolla: you can have problems with it, but very rarely withour jumping off a cliff. Unbreakable. I drive one from time to time as a replacement in the garage. Has been the same for years. Is probably 350 000 km now ... Still driving solid.

As for pre-1999 Alfa Romeo, I'd like to say any statistics here are inaccurate. There are how many of them still able to drive ? 100 ? 80 ? Rust have burnt them since long :-)

latex gloves

"Previously, on 30 December, the Los Angeles Times had informed its readers of a rectum bomb."

[...]

"This was flabbergasting - and wrong. But in the US, and for the mob journalism which accompanies every domestic terror story, careful thought has no place."

Right, so now that the US is gonna make body scanners mandatory any time soon, I think anytime one will be asked to come here for a minute, at an airport security gate, he'll meet a staff with latex gloves ...

Geez, I'm not flying to the US during the next decade !