* Posts by P. Lee

5267 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Dec 2007

Apple: iOS 6.1 network overload caused by our Exchange SYNC OF DOOM

P. Lee
Trollface

Re: Google please take note.

> I wonder if windows phones have the same problem? Then again it doesn't matter since nobody seems to have one.

Rubbish.

I've seen two in the last week!

Big Data: Why it's not always that big nor even that clever

P. Lee

Re: Doh

It isn't what you've got, its how you use it.

I talked to a recruitment consultant a while ago who pointed out that all the recruitment companies have gone "big data." That is, they do word frequency analysis on CVs and just search on a big pile of "stuff" and take the top CVs on the list.

So now you have to keep repeating keywords, add abbreviations in brackets and that sort of thing to make sure your CV ends up on page 1 of the search results.

They have replaced personal knowledge and relationships with a technical solution which will inevitably lead to poorer quality but greater quantity of words in people's CVs. I'd be surprised if people weren't already using white-on-white text to bump their CV's visibility to the search engine.

By destructuring the data they've increased their storage costs, removed information from the system and now they have to keep tweaking the systems to stop them being gamed. Sending a slightly irrelevant advert to someone is one thing, but making business decisions about personnel suitability based on this stuff is dangerous. The reason we have structure is because it organises data into easily understood information. A word-cloud from a comment box might be fine for an initial analysis of what people are talking about, but it doesn't tell you what they are saying - the data is there, the information has been removed.

Micron glues DDR4 RAM to flash, animates the 256GB franken-DIMM

P. Lee

Re: Hmmm.

> I hope you have a very good UPS, is all I can say..

I assume its fast enough to write data to the non-volatile part before the power dies away completely.

Intel's new TV box to point creepy spy camera at YOUR FACE

P. Lee

PR isn't their largest problem

When you're talking millions of devices and very limited function, price becomes more important than x86 compatibility.

Atom is way too expensive.

P. Lee
Unhappy

Re: Black Mirror - 15 Million Merits

Ah that's the film.

They don't need to penalise you, they just mark lots of potential advert points and if you aren't there to watch, the system gets back to the content and waits for you to return, whereupon it inserts adverts again.

P. Lee

Re: Charging by person = FAIL

More likely, the advertiser is charged per person watching.

P. Lee
Happy

Re: Tape

Ha! I'll see your cupboard and raise you a garage.

MythTV server, network receiver are well out of the way and there isn't a TV in the house.

P. Lee

Re: Tape

What was that a sci-fi fim where all the walls were TV screens and the adverts paused and a shrill note was sounded if you didn't look at them?

P. Lee

Re: A choice ...

Except that the STB will belong to the cable co, not you.

Intel missed a trick though. They should have framed it as facial recognition to automatically filter content based on rating. So a parent gets kid to sit in front of box and snaps a picture, enters birth-date and all content rated above child's age is filtered if the child is in the room.

Android? Like Marvin the robot? Samsung eclipses Google OS - Gartner

P. Lee
Boffin

Until you can replicate google maps/mail you don't have a hope of mobile success without google.

Time to rid ourselves of the tech channel zombies

P. Lee

Re: Re High Street

This.

The problem is that we were all ecstatic when the value of our property sky-rocketed, not really noticing that the price of the high-street was rocketing too.

The problem is that the properties weren't really becoming more valuable, it was just that cheap debt was driving the competition for space far too high and then locking it in via mortgages. Now there is a market making money off the process of selling. The cost of selling is far too high - usually higher than the cost of making the goods. Tax laws make renting a more efficient way of amortising cost than property acquisition, but it also drives up costs as you've added another slice of profit-taking to the sales chain.

It annoys me when I see analysts pushing increasing debt as an indicator of a healthy economy. It may indicate rising expectations, that people are willing to live with something so damaging, but expectations and healthiness are not the same thing. Long term debt is bad.

Control debt and mortgages and you control rent. Easy mortgages push up costs which pushes up rent which makes selling expensive and diverts large percentages of income into interest, which only serves the banks.

Perhaps its time to re-introduce communally held market places to act as an alternative to the large chains which can offer so much benefit, but which are inclined to fail on a spectacular scale.

P. Lee

Re: Computer misselling

Which is why Apple is making a killing.

They sell "nice stuff you can do" (iLife), not hardware specs. You don't see hardware spec's in Apple stores.

You never see "intel inside" in an apple ad - it just isn't relevant to the audience. They don't sell screen resolution, they sell "an amazing-looking display" for your photos.

Its the difference between, "look what we made to sell you" and "look what you can do with our stuff."

There is a place for each of those strategies, but the high street works best with the latter.

New cunning linguist computer has got ancient tongues licked

P. Lee

Re: Tongues untied

I'm not sure, but the article references "proto-languages," so I suspect they are making links between languages where we have no evidence. So, language X has some similarities to language Y so we'll see if we can interpolate a language between them (on the assumption they had a common ancestor).

Boffins find RAT-SIZED bug-muncher links man to beast

P. Lee
Stop

Re: No peaceful co-existence...

Evolution and Maths are not anywhere in the same league of scientific thinking.

The point about 2+2 is that you get the same result, no matter the scenario in which you make the calculation. Maths is repeatable and predictable, so you can use that property in many disciplines.

Evolution (as the article notes), is non-repeatable and its based on randomness. That means that 2+2 doesn't exist in evolution. Unlike 2+2=5, evolution isn't falsifiable because you can never repeat the operation. The "Tree of Life" provides no tools for determining from the roots what will appear closer to the leaves and no tools for determining what was at the roots from looking at the leaves.

I'm not sure what the point of calling evolution "science" is. In physics you can calculate how much force you need to move a lever. You can use the same calculation to determine the result from lever-usage in a wide variety of applications. In chemistry you can blow things up by mixing particular chemicals and with biology you can see what happens when you run an electric current through frogs legs, or how to do a quadruple heart-bypass. I'm not sure how evolution helps us, perhaps it is a "leaf" on the "Tree of Science." Massive numbers of variations on theories, few predictable results... sounds as scientific as psychology to me!

I understand that reading out the paper from the article in a British school may now be illegal, since it is the law that you must teach that evolution is "well evidenced" and the paper points out that the fossils are missing. I'm not sure if Maths benefits from an actual law that says that Pythagoras' theorem is true or if students are allowed to work out the proof for themselves. In my day, "proof by contradiction" was an established procedure, but it appears that its now illegal to even consider such things. This isn't science, this is religion.

P. Lee

Re: The thing I find most fascinating about evolution

My understanding is that the empirical evidence suggests the break is so close as to pretty much preclude inter-species mating.

The offspring from a male donkey and female horse is sterile. Sheep and goats don't really work either.

Lions and tigers can (in a zoo due to habitat), but they are both big cats.

P. Lee
Angel

Re: "Boffins have figured out that primates and dinosaurs did not co-exist,"

I take it you didn't read the actual article.

That's a rat-like thing that "scampers," a small vertebrate which eats insects, that you are looking at in the pictures. I'd be somewhat surprised if they didn't find that in the fossil record.

Oh wait, they *didn't* find it in the fossil record. In fact, they said that although the fossil record for their area is relatively good, it doesn't support the hypothesis and expectations of more "scientific" methods, so they are going to use "big data" to create an animal. It probably took them more than 6 days, but they didn't say.

Contrary to what el reg says, the notes (fig 2 for tl;dr) make it quite clear that they made it all up. The skeleton, the reproductive system, the brain in the diagrams are all fake.

You may wish to check the supports for your mockery before, er, going out on a limb...

*Is "fake" a bit harsh? Ok, the diagrams and the creature is real, but only in the same way that the tall, blue aliens on Pandora are real.

Mind out, Apple: Ericsson leads charge against the SIM

P. Lee

Re: eCall

You probably don't even need that. 999 calls are allowed on any (UK) network.

I don't know how soldering the sim to the motherboard fixes anything except a transfer of power between network and manufacturer.

I don't want the manufacturers to keep power after the sale. The split in responsibility is a good idea.

Curiosity raises mighty robotic fist, punches hole in Mars

P. Lee
Black Helicopters

Am I the only one...

who expects Mars to careen around while deflating?

(<- or pop)

BYOD is a PITA: Employee devices cost firms £61 a month

P. Lee
Joke

The next big thing?

A windows installation on a flash device which doesn't throw a fit when you plug it into a different computer, allowing you to run on any handy (at least x86) device.

Hahaha, I've just had my funny-bone license activated for this instance of joke.

Bother, I'm not allowed to repost.

Psst, wanna block nuisance calls? BT'll do it... for a price

P. Lee

Call routing information (where did your telco receive the call from) is the proper way to do it, (which I suspect could be provided with voip systems) due to the problems with CLI.

But then, why would a telco want you to reject a call? That's just lost revenue.

Until a disruptive player comes in, we're out of luck.

P. Lee
Trollface

Re: @ge Alternatively

Haha! I had the "MS support dept" on the phone for over 40 minutes going round and around in circles with various supervisors and so on, trying to work out where the "windows" key was on my mac.

Eventually after much swearing at me (and attempts to get my daughter's names so they could make obscene remarks about them too) they hung up on me.

I take the view that as long as they are talking to me, someone else isn't being scammed.

It was a slow day... but a good day.

11-YEAR-OLD code wizard hacks Greedy RuneScape geeks

P. Lee
Coat

vb... geeky-kid...

Until you have at least one subroutine written in hex, (ok wuss, assembly if you must!) it doesn't count!

Now, gerroff my lawn, young'un!

Mine's the one that patched together from 8 bits of cloth with holes you can peek and poke through...

Every single Internet Explorer at risk of drive-by hacks until Patch Tuesday

P. Lee
Trollface

Re: Linux updates just work?

and versioning in the file system...

I wonder if we could get linux running under a vm on vms?

P. Lee

Re: moving to a system that DOESN'T need it.

Has anyone tried using LibreOffice 4 with Sharepoint yet?

I'd be interested to know the result.

But yes, Sharepoint is a nasty piece of work - it encourages the use of MS word doc format with embedded visio and excel for the storage of useful information. Pre-2010 it habitually ate documents like a spy with a secret on a bit of paper.

If you're going to do distributed web authoring with versioning, do a wiki. Don't faff around trying to make Office a web thing.

Nemo cancels Microsoft's Surface Pro launch

P. Lee

Re: I thought it was named after Captain Nemo

Nemo: known historically for sinking things.

Remember that Xeon E7-Itanium convergence? FUHGEDDABOUDIT

P. Lee

Re: Please No..

The sensible thing for HP to do is still to throw as much cash as possible at AMD to develop server ARM tech.

Suppliers who push you to take a product and then cut support need a good beating. Also, process migration across cores is cool.

Bioshock Infinite, Devil May Cry, SimCity

P. Lee
Happy

Re: I miss space combat.

"Dogfighter" isn't a space sim but it is loads of fun. Available on steam and probably elsewhere.

Biplanes with hellfire missiles and rail-guns!

P. Lee
Angel

Re: Sorry, no time to check these out

I used to think that.

Now I know better.

Ethernet at 40: Its daddy reveals its turbulent youth

P. Lee
Childcatcher

Re: Performance

I'm not sure about Ethernet being better in the early days. Cheaper and simpler, perhaps, and beaconing was a bad thing, but troubleshooting non-star wiring breaks was horrible. Before switches, collisions were a problem which meant the headline Ethernet speed meant little on a congested network.

The joy of Ethernet was the ad hoc doom party - disconnecting from the office lan was easy, or at home nothing more than a bit of thinnet was needed.

When open source eats itself, we win

P. Lee

Re: KDE vs. GNOME

Also, when one GUI dev team goes off the rails, you can switch until they get their act together again, or you can mix and match.

For example, you could run a gnome version of firefox together with a KDE desktop environment, or k3b under the LXDE.

Personally, I'm glad to be able to avoid Gnome3 on the desktop but I like KDE for bells & whistles and LXDE for low-power, low-function scenarios.

Wastefulness and vitality seem to go hand-in-hand in IT as in other areas of life.

P. Lee

Aren't the licenses different too? Apache vs GPL?

It appeared to me that the handover to apache was Oracle being snarky because the devs forked to LibreOffice. Apache sponsors gain from the apache license (for incorporating a webserver into proprietary products), but I doubt there is much call for people to embed an office suite into a non-gpl product.

Study: Gay marriage support linked to pr0n consumption

P. Lee
Unhappy

I'm sure you're correct. However, I often get the feeling that studies are set up for the very purpose of being media-bait, knowing that the media will seize on the wrong conclusion.

For example, "porn watchers tend to be well-educated" leads to a couple of incorrect conclusions:

1) porn watching results from having a good education

2) a good education is what leads you to the conclusion that watching porn is good.

When in fact it could be that educated people tend to be at university, universities are in cities, cities tend to create anonymity, anonymity reduces inhibitions which would prevent you form watching porn; or, universities are full of hormonally charged, inexperienced people who have recently left an environment with parental guidance; or even that watching porn/supporting gay marriage is a moral issue and quite independent of how many facts you know about engineering or comp-sci.

P. Lee
Facepalm

Re: Effect ≠ cause.

> People who are open-minded about one thing are more likely to be open-minded about another thing.

In other news, nobody seems to know what being "open minded" on an issue means.

Most of the people I hear about who support gay marriage seem very closed-minded on the issue.

Samsung: Never mind Steve Jobs, let's snap off a piece of stylus biz

P. Lee

Re: But seriously

> But if your UI can use a clumsy finger and the device comes with a pen then all the better.

But that's a large "if."

I would imagine multitouch with a stylus is hard and designing a UI for both multitouch fingers and stylus is harder still.

Out of ARM's way, Brit chip juggernaut runs over analysts again

P. Lee

Re: Genuine question

Intel wouldn't want to sell stuff so cheaply so price competition is difficult for them. Also, if they get into trouble, they have the nuclear option (if it isn't built in already) of perpetual licensing.

Intel might go in for predatory pricing just to drive ARM out if ARM starts cutting into desktop/server sales, but there is a reason why an atom costs about as much as a hard-disk, which may well have an ARM chip in addition to its precision electro-mechanical systems.

This is all assuming that intel can get their power consumption down to compete in ARM's market, and Samsung et al, think its wise to go with a cheaper intel product over a chip they can control.

Australia joins hunt for corporate tax dodgers

P. Lee

You are missing the organisational dynamic.

Political parties get lots of money directly from corporates, but the cost of non-tax payments is spread over the population at large.

Like all organisations, parties are externalising costs and maximising revenue.

Apart from thinking, "this would play well with the voters," it would be extremely difficult to put together clear rules about revenue recognition without relying on arbitrary ATO/HMRC evaluations, which may lead to more corruption and little extra revenue.

US diplomat: If EU allows 'right to be forgotten' ... it might spark TRADE WAR

P. Lee
Thumb Up

Re: More EU beauracracy. Business costs up once again

Tapes are cycled. The data will drop out eventually.

HMRC doesn't need customer's personal details. Lots of companies don't keep customer records and may even outsource revenue collection (to a debt collector).

I don't think anyone is talking about data required for ongoing customer interaction. We are talking, "delete all my data from facebook," and "I was an ann summers customer last year, but now I'm married and I'd like you to delete me from your system," sort of thing.

This is perfectly reasonable - if you can't afford to manage data on people, you shouldn't be collecting it.

Android gets tipsy on Wine, runs WINDOWS apps

P. Lee

Re: This is not about phones

I have an old G5 running debianppc. I discovered that it is almost exactly twice as fast as an Athlon 1800+ when transcoding.

I suspect redeploying an old core2 is almost always a better option, especially when power consumption is taken into account. I keep mine because 7 fans keep it going through 40C+ hot days.

Samsung mocks Apple lawsuit in SuperBowl teaser ad

P. Lee

> Samsung's position is precarious as someone buying next time has to choose Android first then Samsung

I doubt that. Samsung got where they are by making decent android phones and there is no particular reason why that shouldn't continue. If "non-precarious" means being able to make vast profits out of rubbish phones, then I'm all for precarious. I was rather struck by the fact that the iphone 5 ads didn't appear to have anything to say.

Sorry, I'm still angry at apple for removing working software from their app store so that my ipod touch can no longer obtain software it used to run on it just fine. I didn't upgrade, so features have been removed.

So while I might get a Nexus over an S3 or an iphone next time, its because I want the best deal. These corporates do not have a relationship with me, I see no reason to pretend I have obligations or loyalty to them. "Fanboi" is a derogatory term for a good reason. Build the best phone (for me definition of "best") and I'll buy it.

BBC: What YOU spent on our lawyers in Secret Climate 28 debacle

P. Lee

Re: Considering...

> ...that there's loads of loons out there who think nothing of making death threats to climate scientists, it's only reasonable that a degree of anonymity is allowed.

There are several issues, including:

1. The factors are so complex that a great deal of "tuning" of the data is required in an effort to compare like with like. The raw data is seen (probably rightly) by both sides of the argument as not being valid for the intended use. I that puts both sides on very shaky ground of some observations plus a lot of extrapolation.

2. those involved at the BBC were mostly lobby groups from one side if the debate, not scientists of any great repute anyway. We would not expect them to be able to put forward scientific arguments and if they could, the BBC should have published all the supporting data and analysis along an announcement regarding the decision.

3. if you wish to shape public policy, you lose the right to anonymity. There are always nutters and historically it appears that they tend to be on the ecological protection side of a debate. Conversely, funding trails for studies arguing for the status quo should also be published.

The Death of Voice: Mobile phone calls now 50 per cent shorter

P. Lee

Why use voice?

I only use it when I need an answer right now. The ringing gets attention better than email.

Telstra came up with a lovely wheeze recently. They've upped the initial call length from 30 secs to 60 secs so they can charge you twice as much if you only need to give a quick message.

Did I mention that they put you straight to voicemail with zero rings if the person is on the phone? So you can't not pay if the person isn't available to speak to, plus they can then bill for picking up the message too.

Dell buyout stalled by Microsoft, low takeover price?

P. Lee
Facepalm

Re: Maybe Dell just doesn't understand customers anymore?

> If a company like Dell were to begin selling laptops that were truly upgradable with standard, affordable off-the-shelf parts, I'll bet their sales would take off again.

No, they'll lose sales to some Chinese shop on ebay.

ITU signs off on H.265 video standard

P. Lee

Re: Damn!

It isn't just "when will they be available," the problem is that you still need the old stuff if you want to support old hardware accelerated kit. How many existing tablets and TVs support this format? I suspect that this will be a long migration.

Ironically, I suspect the first volume users will be the those transcoding BR and sharing them with their close and not-so-close friends.

Now, if we could just get Oz TV off mpeg2...

Researchers break records with MILLION-CORE calculation

P. Lee
Coat

Re: Thank God..

> The only decent machine to run EDLIN is one that is switched off...

Yeah, real programmers use vi... in line mode... with a nokia 6310i as a terminal... over an ir link...

Why did your outsourced IT fall over? Cos you weren't on Twitter

P. Lee

Re: Another excuse?

> Am I the only person who think Gartner only write this to give managers an excuse to be on social media all day?

More likely, an excuse to push tablets as a management tool. Outsource your IT and get an iPad!

Without new trends, an analyst isn't needed, so Gartner needs new trends, even if it has to make them up.

Microsoft tries to sell home Office users on subscription pricing

P. Lee

> I'd put that at 20 USD a year.

Which is why the VLA "use at home" deal is around $15

Apple confirms 128GB iPad. A hundred bucks for an extra 64GB

P. Lee

Re: "without needing their old PCs"

How many people do 3d design on their desktop PC with discrete graphics card?

My top tip for Microsoft: Stop charging for Windows Phone 8

P. Lee

Re: Isn't that cute...BUT IT'S WRONG!

Surely the main reason for MS to play in this sector is as a defensive play to prevent IOS and Android creating a diverse ecosystem which might bring *nix into the enterprise.

Permanent loss-leading to help OEMs in that area is reasonable to protect the lucrative desktop sector.

Climate shocker: Carry on as we are until 2050, planet will be fine

P. Lee

Re: The very fact

> that no-one seems to be able to agree on almost anything to do with the evolution of man just proves how flaky the "science" behind it is

For all the twisted models behind each side of the warming debate, at least some of them are aiming to do something useful, to benefit society however wrong or right they are.

What future progress in science or in the welfare of man or the natural world is brought about by the science of the evolution of man?

Shiny, shiny! The window's behind me...

P. Lee

Re: Incorrect apple bash

1. Restrict choice

2. Offer option as a cost extra

3. Profit!