Posts by P. Lee 5267 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Dec 2007
>So people had to have virtual machines that scaled vertically and then all of a sudden they have to scale horizontally and it becomes very expensive very, very quickly.
I have to question this. If you're using something like (the very cool but expensive) F5 then yes, its expensive to set up. We really need some cheaper horizontal scaling. If you're running public cloud, renting your servers, then it is expensive. If you are licensing per CPU or core, then it is expensive.
However, If you run your own IT, if you have some cheapish load balancing and you're running open-source, then CPU and memory are not that expensive to scale out. Cloud is based on over-subscription - constant high usage ruins that model and providers cost things accordingly. Commercial software licensing is also often based not on utility to the customer, but technical characteristics. That encourages vertical scaling and discourages horizontal scaling. Just like the cloud providers, if you are scaling out, then acquire the technical skills and use lots of the relatively cheap tin.
>There might be another point. Large companies might move out of the US and set their headquarters somewhere else. Some highly qualified employees might move them,
Isn't that what is already happening? The US companies have gone multinational so they don't pay tax and they bring in H1B-visa workers, which is similar to moving those jobs abroad. The companies are "American" in terms of control, but not really in terms of tax and, to an extent, jobs. If you've got nothing left to lose, you might vote for Trump... oh look! If the government has nothing left to lose in terms of tax, it might start putting up barriers to increase the costs to multinationals and encourage local-based corporations which actually contribute to the local economy... oh look!
Perhaps what is happening is that people are looking at the iphone 7 and Galaxy 7 and think - meh! I don't really need that. Perhaps they look at their laptop and think, "the new ones don't do anything more for me than the old one, but I do really need a job." Perhaps the prospect of cheap IT just doesn't hold much attraction any more. Perhaps they see Dell hiking prices to pay for the EMC acquisition and think, "I see no reason to help Dell pay off his debt." Perhaps they look at the Apple price hikes (yes it isn't a Brexit phenomenon) and think, "Yes it is a better screen and faster CPU, but that doesn't improve my life enough for me to pay what Apple is asking." Apple has lost sight of something they have always known - you have to sell the benefits, not the tech. The tech-industry's problem is that innovation stalled a few years ago. Consolidation, the cloud and now price hikes are an effort to hide the fact that their products are not providing that much additional benefit to customers.
Razer's Core is a product which should have been in the development labs of all laptop makers - its something I've wanted for years and I can't imagine that no-one at HP, IBM, Lenovo, Sony, Acer, Asus, Apple, or Dell thought of it before. The companies have been so good at picking off consumer surplus that they have forgotten that everyone has to win for the transaction to take place.
But back to the tech industry issues. The lack of trade barriers is great while there is a competitive market place. However, we mostly have a (US-controlled) hegemony. In this scenario, higher tariffs, and more expensive imports should stimulate competition. Perhaps the Chinese and the Russians will focus on making their own better chips which will give Intel a kick, much as AMD's competition did a while back. Once we have more effective competition, we can start bringing the tariffs back down. Perhaps licensing tariffs will help put an end to the moving of profits via "intellectual property" licenses to tax havens, leading not only to more government income, but a fairer playing field for those companies too small to take advantage of complicated legal arrangements - again, more competition.
Trump certainly presents himself as an obnoxious idiot. That idiocy may in the short term lead to higher costs and a less free market, but in the long term a more competitive market with lower-cost products. That's sad for the existing producers, but rather good for everyone else.
It isn't a sure thing of course. Tariffs can hide all sorts of inefficiencies, but we seem to have arrived at monopoly or oligopoly markets with little competition. Competition is hard for the companies involved but good for the customers - and who is not an IT customer?
Am I the only one who thinks this might be a good thing?
One of the problems with having massive military superiority is that you never have to ask yourself if a particular course of action which involves killing someone, is something you would be willing to die for.
>"Since the referendum, the UK's currency has fallen from $1.49 to £1 to $1.21, a drop of 18.7 per cent "
Still it appears that there's an opportunity for someone to start selling crisps who doesn't incur these costs by keeping everything local.
Hands up - who thinks leaving the EU will actually add 18.7% onto the cost of sales (to the EU)? Does this extra cost apply to all non-EU countries? Can someone explain why all this is priced in USD rather than Euros? Ah yes, that's why, if we look at the Euro-to-GBP data we find (from xe.com) that GBP is almost 10% up against the Euro's value in 2008 - a relatively recent low-point with no "We're all doomed" Brexit story. As the villain said, "there's no news like bad news!"
Excuse me while I fail to weep for Big Business and selective news editors.
Indeed.
A one-off fee of GBP 9.99 gets you a device which allows you to access multiple streaming services forever.
Or you could visit the charity shops, pick up CD's for next to nothing and give the remainder to charity. Doubleplusgood.
All this, "I must have what I want right now - I'll pay stupid money for it" is not character building. "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" needs to be shown more often.
>If the people don't want it, they won't buy anything from it and it will leave.
More simplistic reductionism.
If we were talking about a startup with very limited cash reserves which naturally fitted into the environment, then perhaps. However, McD can funnel vast amounts of cash in from elsewhere to fund this venture - far more than the typically smaller Italian business is likely to have. This sort of cross-funding can ruin the atmosphere and drive out local business, with profits being funnelled abroad. To quote Ms Gomez, "I could, but why would I want to?"
Europeans don't worship big business as Americans do. "It is profitable" is not the most important consideration. Government is in charge of strategy. Making Florence more like an American city is probably not ideal for its tourist industry as a whole.
> I see no difference between hamburgers and phones.
Ah, the simplistic reduction of everything to "goods and services."
As mentioned above, what's the likelihood of fanbois dropping the packaging from their igadgets all over the streets?
More importantly, when thinking of all things Italian, what comes to mind, food or mobile phones?
>Google will have to balance how to restrict Hover's permissions without crippling legitimate apps.
How about: "Don't let notifications look like an application" or "Notification windows always include the application name" or "No transparent notifications" or even "all notification overlays are logged along with the application they overlay" for after-the-fact checking.
Until an OS is built for the user rather than the producer, this kind of thing will be a problem.
>He's acting with impunity. Sounds like he has immunity.
Or he was brought in to do a hatchet job no-one else was willing to do.
Often someone is brought in to do an unpleasant job and then they leave too. The idea is that hopefully, much of the ill-will they bring from doing the job leaves with them.
Newspapers lying?
I'm Shocked and Disgusted!
Here's a little thought exercise for all those who think Leavers are mostly racist Little Englanders: What is more racist: staying in a trading club of Caucasian Western European countries with collective tariffs against Asia, Africa and South America, or Leaving and being able to trade freely around the world?
Is it racist when Anglo-Saxons vote not to Remain with the, er, Angles and Saxony? Or did you mean the referendum was decided by racist non-Anglo-Saxons wanting to get rid of the Saxon and Norman influence?
Did newspapers print sensationalist articles and outright lies before the referendum? If so, do you think they are now paragons of virtue, or still the same? What sells newspapers?
Do you think Cameron expected the referendum result? Would Cameron have had the referendum if he understood what the mood of the country was? Is there a disconnect between the political system and the populace? Likewise for the BBC - is there a disconnect between what the BBC thinks is right and what most people think is right?
Is the referendum vote more or less democratically important than Labour's pledge on foxhunting and the "constitutional crisis" and subsequent "reform" of the House of Lords to make it more accountable to the executive?
If the will of the people is clearly expressed, is a democratic government bound to follow the will of the people, or should "those who know better" ignore it? Does/did this hold true in other countries, such as Russia or South Africa? If not, why not?
Would we see all this discussion, outcry from business and legal challenges over the result of a general election? What does that say about the state of our (essentially) two-party system?
Not sure about anyone else, but I find streaming fairly abysmal.
The quality of the streaming is poor - frequent pauses. The resolution is poor. Its just an unpleasant experience.
Then there are ads. I don't like them but they are not the end of the world really. But wait there's more. This is no ordinary ad break, this is a streaming site ad break; with three delicious repeats of the SAME advert in the SAME ad break.
So its PVR for FTA or off to the DVD rental shop - an experience I far prefer to scrolling through the pitiful selections online.
Or get out the a deck of cards or a board game and actually talk to the family. The Internet provides so much of what you want and so little of what you need.
So right.
But not for the reasons you say. No-one was expecting Leave to win - not the politicians (who would not have allowed the referendum to happen), not the media and not even the Leave voters. There's a massive disconnect between the populace and the political/big business bubbles.
The reason for the caution was that despite all the pretense, most people know the economy is down the drain.
>But the "weak currency = jobs" myth is just that - mythical.
Then the converse must also be true, strong currency which sucks in imports rather than promoting local supply, does not reduce local employment, must also be true. But I think not.
We are talking long term here, in the short term, not much changes - that's by definition.
I'm also thinking that if we are *so* dependent on imports and sterling has devalued by 10% which should see inflation hitting similar levels to the devaluation. If inflation is only hitting 1.5% then either we are not that reliant on imports, or we've suddenly become 8.5% more productive. Good news either way. Or the figures are being massaged.
The bottom line is we have spent far more than we have and we will be poorer while we correct the deficit. Whatever you think of intentional QE with regard to the financial crisis, somewhere along the line we adopted Keynesian policies of spending more than we earnt and pretending it didn't matter. Now the piper must be paid.
Taking on debt to pay for current liabilities rather than assets creates poverty - only fools think otherwise. We need to put more money into paying off debt and less money on shiny. Depending on demand curves, price hikes (e.g. from devaluation) for imported goods divert wealth to other things which haven't just jumped 10% (or 20%) in price.
>One hacks a toaster in order to gain its help in persuading the Smart-Fridge(tm) to order four cases of Budweiser delivered to the home of a Real Ale fan.
And then take over his PVR and his doorbell, so that the doorbell rings throughout his favourite shows.
That's Big Data for you!
Security is hard and expensive and repressive - more so if everyone is operating in a peer to peer fashion and you are not allowed perimeter controls.
Besides, terrorism is such a tiny threat it's hardly worth worrying about. In case anyone has forgotten the meaning of the word, it works by harnessing an ill-considered response generated by fear.
Both are bad, but MS (and the media cartels etc) tend to use their monopoly powers to stop me getting things done while Google tends to be an enabler.
I suspect that as we get to market saturation (or advertising saturation) we'll see Google act more like a traditional monopoly, as we are seeing with Android.
Use less tech and more brain and more planning. Use tech you control. Be Happy.
>Birds apparently “perceive the approaching laser beam as a physical danger” and therefore go away instead of stopping to munch on crops.
So they starve to death? Is that the outcome we really want?
We aren't actually short of food, so this is just about profits. Perhaps we should rethink our ecological policy.
+1
If you can't swap one cloud for another with minimal impact, it isn't a commodity, its just a vendor with product in different sizes.
Take storage: disk drives - they are a commodity. Common interfaces and multiple vendors with near-as-makes-no-difference features, make that so. but cloud storage is not - stupid non-layered architectures.
>>A pointless toxic place...
>I use it to follow local farmers markets, live music venues, a few writers I like.
Anything which couldn't be done with email, an RSS or NNTP feed?
Tweets (as documented in web pages) seem to be primarily self-promotion - marketing of people.
Full disclosure: I've never been near twitter.
>Addendum: hammering ECC memory does make a good DoS attack, because any multi-bit error forces the device into reboot.
But better a reboot than compromise.
The DOS attack might be fun and all, but malware is for profit. Remove the profit and you're likely to see the problem mostly go away.
Unless the attack is against google by annoying its customers. Even then, without a compromise, you can just deinstall the application.
>Also, if the vendors follow the basic Unix practice of splitting user accounts from admin accounts that will limit the possible damage.
I run linux as my day-to-day OS of preference, but I think the above statement is probably not too accurate if the Linux desktop is targeted. Once crackers have a foothold, its going to be game over on any OS, given time. Most of the time, they don't need root for their requirements. Who cares about damage to the OS if they have access to your data?
What we need is heavy-duty sandboxing so that *when* the application is compromised, the miscreants don't have much in the way of resources to play with. Web browsers shouldn't have access to any user data, they should run in temporary, mostly ram-based file systems with minimal "what bits of the OS does this program need to run?" contents and userland display systems. Yes, you'll probably have to sacrifice speed and battery for security. On the plus side, your AV can probably stop monitoring all file access and just focus on the high-risk, inter-security zone data transfers from designated locations.
"First we try, then we trust."
Dear IBM,
Did you *test* the system? Did you demand to see the test plan for it and demand to see the results before it went live? Did you talk to your offshore branches and get them to try to access the site?
That is the kind of thing you expect a large, competent vendor to do, right? That is why you don't do it yourself or go to the little system integrator down the road - because they might not have enterprise experience.
>Nadella reported that Windows 10 users now number 400 million, and more than 200 billion hours of use time has now been logged by Redmond.
Because that isn't creepy, is it?
--
You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why
SatyaNad is coming to town.
.
He knows when you are gaming
Knows every spelling mistoke
He knows if you are goofing off
So be good for goodness soke
.
You'd better not copy, *his* Windows
But you couldn't say "no", not by clicking "close"
SatyaNad is coming to town!
.
He's murdered his own channel
Sucks all into the cloud
All your base belong to him
Clicked "Upgrade" - or not, he's allowed
.
Oh, Tel Emetry is so much fun!
He even knows,
When you're browsing pron
SatyaNad is coming to town
.
I must confess a secret
I installed Win10 too
But only for B.Y.O.D.
It ain't *my* data - Woohoo!
.
Oh, I've kept it in,
Its own little VM
I gotta laptop, with loads of mem,
SatyaNad is coming to town
.
I'm not sure what he's thinking,
When apps are in the cloud,
There'll be no need for Windows t(h)en
And no casual dev's allowed.
.
He'd better watch out,
And he'd better cry,
AWS is eating his pie,
Maybe SatyaNad is leaving this town!
>These days we know better and are more enlightened, you can thank Science for that.
From History.com:
>Historians have since estimated that the witch-hunt hysteria that peaked between the 15th and 18th centuries saw some 50,000 people executed as witches in Europe.
400 Years, 50,000 people.
In WW1, we were killing up to 75,000 people *per day*
This advance was thanks to Science and definitely during the Modern (benefiting from the Enlightenment) period.
Each year, almost 43,000 people kill themselves in the US. Perhaps Enlightenment doesn't bring happiness after all.
Are these really better days? More efficient tech, certainly - I'll reserve judgement on the rest.
I'm not saying we didn't have some bad laws in the past, but it appears that much of the modern entertainment industry, the media, many politicians and much of the modern society general is obsessed with homosexuality (as far as I can tell) as a proxy for convincing themselves and others that they are good people. I wonder why they are so insecure about that?
A rainbow filter on your facebook photos is so much easier than dealing with the big problems of the pain we cause: the gossip, slander, lack of charity that we see both in the leaders we choose through politics and in ourselves, towards those abroad and around us.
>The deficit might have been made worse by the cutting of headcount over the years. There are now fewer contributing members but many surviving ex-members who are receiving or will be due to receive pensions.
Really?
Surely you aren't relying on subsequent generations of employees to fund your pensions. Otherwise, that's not BT paying in, that's employees and there's no cost to BT. Surely BT should be contributing from profits (which turns them into costs) and they should be ring-fenced so pensions are not diverted to dividends.
Yes you make lower profits when you pay employees. Yes, you make lower profits in the short term and higher ones in the long term when you invest. So What? That is normal. Maybe your profits are due to having good employees who were attracted by the pension scheme.
Its a cost of doing business.
But it is the wrong solution.
The correct solution is not to allow external access. Have a dedicated physical port (ethernet or probably more likely, USB) for admin. You might be allowed to enable other management access, but stick to that as the default.
>But what about the average Joe out there who expects a turnkey solution?
Three buttons:
1. factory reset to ROM
2. My periodic automated checks of the vendors website indicate an update firmware is available for installation. Press to update. (Has flashing status lights, maybe an annoying beep, maybe a QR code for a "more information" website).
3. TFTP boot from a configured IP (default: 192.168...) for experts
Actually, I like the idea of smartphone-router links. It could provide a separate verification channel in case the router is compromised. It also provides more sophisticated systems which would cost too much to put on the router - camera, screen, alternative external connectivity.
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