Posts by Ian Michael Gumby 4454 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Apr 2006
For those who are conspiracy nuts: Blame the NSA, CIA as a way to spy on everyone.
But that's not all.
When the parents away, they could use Big Data to get more information on the children and families and then brainwash the kids by having Barbi talk to them in their sleep.
Are we now going to start having a contest on how many USB connectors we need and have this replace penis envy?
Seriously?
When I'm at a client, I have the power cord, one USB to my personal wi-fi hotspot and the thunderbolt port to a second monitor.
That's it, unless I need to use a thumb drive to move data.
@Andrew,
I was going to write up a post mocking you, even though I agree with everything you've said.
But have you seriously considered that neither you, nor I, are the targeted demographic?
IMHO, I'd say this would be a machine that a school age kid would use. Just enough machine to be used for school and not as a gaming console...
While I don't know the price point, the fact that you can put this type of storage in a 2.5" drive, you can now use it for faster Hadoop clusters. (Hadoop, Spark, etc ...) Even if you use two of these drives for local temp storage, you can vastly improve the performance of a compute node in a cluster.
The next disruptive tech would be persistent storage based on memresitors ?sp? where you put 1TB on a 1cm^2 die .
Soon, you'll be able to build out PB scaled clusters in a single rack which sips power compared to today's state of the art. (And less noise from the fans. )
Definitely cool.
In order to hold a manufacturer liable you have to show that they intentionally created a substandard product. If the lack of security is the 'state of art' ... don't have much of a case, along with you the plaintiff who needs to show damages.
In addition, you have a price point that you need to reach because consumers don't want to pay the cost of a commercial wireless access point / router which has these security features. Its also the price point where cable / broadband providers will install and 'maintain' the unit for you for a 'small' rental fee.
So unless you're willing to pony up the extra cash to be online, you will have this problem because some of the software, firmware you find in a commercial grade access point costs the manufacturer licensing fees and even under FRAND, it adds to the cost.
My consumer grade wireless access point got hacked. I made the decision because I run a SOHO to upgrade to a Cisco Meraki. So I paid 4-5X over the cost of consumer grade, plus an annual license for management software. (Its actually worth it.) Not only did I increase my home security, but I upgraded to ac in addition to a/b/g/n. Now my ac enabled devices can access the network with greater bandwidth.
In addition to this, I also found out that there were several compromised APs that were flooding the network and causing interference with those using a/b/g/n routers.
I agree that companies that produce equipment should improve their products, however we as consumers need to be willing to pay the price. Not everyone is a consultant like myself and can afford to install commercial grade hardware in the home. But you're limited on being able to force companies to do the right thing until you can show true damages.
This was posted to the TPC.org site over a month ago and it took El Reg this long to notice?
I guess here's the thing... Unless you have another hardware player who can beat the TCO of MapR on Cisco, you won't see another benchmark.
MapR is hands down the best performing version of Hadoop and its going to boil down to the TCO of the competitors to see if they will post.
"If an existing user does not like the changes, they do not have to accept them and the existing rules have to be used until both parties agree on the proposed changes."
Nope. Doesn't work that way.
Facebook posts its ToS, if the ToS violates local law, then the local law enforcement will investigate and it goes from there. If Facebook is unwilling to fix the problem... then it will no longer be allowed to operate in those countries.
FB can block access and can be forced to do so.
It was the Germans who bombed Pearl Harbor. Some of us remember watching Animal House in the movie theatres and "Kool-Aid" is a trademarked product hence the misspelling is intentional as not to confuse the likes of you who had their brains rotted out by the sugar content. :-P
As evidence... the bombs were dropped well after VE day. And the Russian's tactics treated their soldiers / civilians as cannon fodder. (Battle for Stalingrad as an example). And there's more to it too.
But seriously... The conferences at Casablanca which led to the Yalta conference made it impossible for the US to allow for a conditional surrender. So if we were to estimate the US casualties for an invasion of the Japanese mainland, based on the cost of taking Iwo Jima, along with the fact that every Japanese citizen would have fought to the death... That number would far outweigh any other battle's casualties on both sides. (And I would never had known my Uncle who would have been leading a platoon in the second wave of the invasion.)
1) If I had proof, it wouldn't be a rumor. And no, I didn't start it.
2) I'm not one for the cool-aid crew. I'll leave that to you.
You just don't understand what is happening and why its not a good thing.
How many people have died in Syria?
Now how many people died in Syria under Assad's oppressive rule?
The despot is the lesser of two evils.
Its weird but until you do the math and understand why is going on... it doesn't make sense.
To give you a historical example... The US dropped two bombs on Japan to end the war. They intentionally targeted cities that had civilian populations. (Oh and of course some military value.)
But the truth is that it would be considered a war crime. Yet what would have happened if we hadn't dropped the bombs?
Again its the lesser of two evils.
BTW, you don't seem to get it... the snooping isn't illegal. Its the actual use of the evidence uncovered from snooping that is illegal. And that's a quirk in the law that will take time for you to get your head wrapped around it. All while you accept your freeware from Google not realizing the true cost of what you get for free.
Actually that's a bi-product if that happens.
The truth is that they are kept secret longer for that reason but not why they are made classified and secret.
Look at Arab Spring. Something that was credited to Wikileak's leak of Manning's docs...
Are we more secure or less secure from having the North African governments of Libya and Egypt in turmoil? Syria, Qatar in the Middle East?
And lets also give credit to Obama and Bush for not having an exit strategy in Iraq nor following examples found in Marshall's post war Germany plans. ( I have to post that because if I didn't someone else would accuse me of being ignorant. ;-)
And that's the point. The leaking of sensitive information made things worse. Beyond having incompetent fscks in office to begin with.
Snowden?
Rumor has it he was FSB.
And the trouble is that Snowden like Manning don't understand why secrets are kept. In truth they are done to protect you. Yes, you. But many who will down vote this comment will never understand why or how they protect you.
Those who look towards Arab Spring as a good thing, look again. Look at what happened in that power vacuum.
All of their internet properties are linked together.
Anyway you split it... Google's properties would fail on their own.
YouTube doesn't make money, but it does help gain data on those who link and those who view videos on YouTube or on sites that link to YouTube.
Search can't be pulled from ads. Its a bit more complicated.
As someone in the know... no the hype cycle isn't over and your conversation makes no sense.
2 years ago and even in the past year, your CIO has been saying that they want or need to experiment in the Big Data space.
There's more to this and it is more of a question of what really is Hortonworks. Hint: Its a professional services company. That's where the revenue comes from and not the Hadoop licenses.
And no, if done properly, its not shelfware.
Speed is relative.
And yes, several things got dumped in to HBase which should have core components rewritten.
I was saying that HBase will run on a lot of platforms and even without the native Intel additions, its fairly fast if you know what you're doing.
W.R.T encryption... and security... I'm unfortunately not allowed to talk about that. Maybe in a couple of months... ;-)
My point is that outside of Linux, only Windows is a 'viable' platform thanks to Hortonworks working with Microsoft. And while that's possible, its not recommended. No Power PC or Sparc chipped versions exist although they could. Even on the mainframe. (Which can run a Linux partition (LPAR) )
I've had customers move away from HBase because it wasn't stable (Still isn't) and you really need to have an admin who knows both Hadoop/HBase but also is a software developer and knows distributed systems. (That's a lot of things to ask and besides myself... maybe a handfull of people can do it. )
Jonathan Gray comes to mind.
The real trouble of HBase is that people don't understand what it is, how to use it and why you shouldn't consider it an RDBMS (Sorry Splice Machine guys...) ;-)
And yes, we're in violent agreement. ;-P
I have to ask.. you in the UK? If so, I'm pretty sure I know who you are, even though we haven't met.
(And if you're in Germany, the odds are we have met. ;-)
No,
The only 'extension' to Hadoop / HBase is the use of encryption that came from Intel. Compression is either Java or native. So if you compile the native compression you can link to it.
You can run HBase out of the box on any Linux X86 platform which would include AMD chips.
If you want, you could run it on Hadoop that runs on Windows, but only Hortonworks would probably support that. (Microsoft funded that project.)
Hadoop hasn't been ported to other OSs although in theory you could port it to run on the mainframe in their Linux distro...
But really, who's running PowerPC or Sun boxes these days that isn't running a Linux variant?
"It doesn't matter where the Snowdens are. You saw what everybody did in response. They made some brief, loud disapproving noises and then slumped back into their Barca-Loungers and La-Z-Boys and shoved more episodes of Amurican Idull and Big Brother into their flaccid brain-holes."
The irony is that Google, FB and others are doing what you have accused the US Government of doing. But you seem ok with it.
So who really has the flaccid brain?
"The reason HTTP/2.0 does not improve privacy is that the big corporate backers have built their business model on top of the lack of privacy. They are very upset about NSA spying on just about everybody in the entire world, but they do not want to do anything that prevents them from doing the same thing. The proponents of HTTP/2.0 are also trying to use it as a lever for the "SSL anywhere" agenda, despite the fact that many HTTP applications have no need for, no desire for, or may even be legally banned from using encryption."
So true.
And if we did remove the cookies and put the onus of privacy back on the user, it would force companies to have an opt-in model. The larger issue is that the sucking sound would be all those digital marketing companies losing the bulk of their business.
I think its unlimited, considering that its probably 1Gb/s down 10MB up or something like that.
However to your second point... per the article:
"It remains to be seen how many of buyers are wowed by the prospect of paying $348 a year for privacy. "
I think that El Reg is being a bit unfair. They are matching Googles price and most likely the same T's and C's where Google is monitoring the traffic for their $70.00 offer.
So why get irate with AT&T when they are being a bit more transparent about their offering than Google.
"He WOULD be free now, and yes the charges are that trivial. But once he's on Swedish soil, and he's free, they can do whatever they want to him. And that includes extraditing him to the United States, where he could conceivably receive the death penalty as a co-conspirator to a traitor."
And this is patently false.
He goes to Sweden. Faces the music. They charge him and there's a trial, if found not guilty, he's sent back to the UK to face charges. Then he's put on a plane back to Australia. That's his future travel plans.
Unless of course the UK waives the right to try him for jumping bail, then Sweden sends him back to Australia.
In Australia... that's where you can bet the fun to begin.
As to the US. Sorry, the fantasy of facing a death penalty is not real. Manning faced far more serious charges in a military court and the death penalty was off the table. At worst, Assange faces a long time in prison if your fantasy holds true.
"He has not been charged at all. An arrest warrant has been issued so he can be questioned in relation to alleged sexual offences. "
And again... this is incorrect.
He was about to be called in for formal questioning and then to be charged. (That's their procedure) But with the help of his lawyer, he fled the country. So they need to bring him in for 'questioning' so that they can charge him. And that's actually on the record as part of his appeals hearing. They do intend to charge him but they need to bring him in for questioning.
"What Assange was charged with in Sweden was not rape. The sex was consensual. The charge was for not using a condom when the girls thought he was. That's some sort of crime there apparently!"
While I doubt many will read this...
Assange is charged for non-consensual sex. And that is by definition RAPE.
She consented to sex, iff (if and only if) he wore a raincoat.
He didn't wear a raincoat. Thus it became rape.
Got it?
While its a nice analogy... do I need to tell you that Cuba doesn't have an embassy in the US?
(Unless you talk about the UN ambassador.)
Had Assange not been granted bail, this wouldn't be an issue.
Had he been smart, he could have dyed his hair, use false papers to get out of the country to France, jump a ship leaving Europe and then hop a flight to Ecuador. He would have had plenty of time to get papers ready and in place.
That would have been the smart move.
"Costs? He didn't ask for the siege."
Uhm. He was out on bail and jumped bail.
The UK government which granted him bail is responsible for him and by law is required to do what they can to honor their end of the treaty.
In short. He jumped bail, UK is honor bound to do what it can to capture him.
(And to deter others from being this stupid.)
Did you ever think that they were also there for his protection too?
Seriously... do you know how many people would consider tossing a brick through the window?
(Or something else for those who are less evolved.)
Just add it to his tab.
After Sweden he still has to deal with the Jumping bail charge...
I don't know why he doesn't go to Sweden, get that over with, he comes back to the UK, faces the jumping bail, and this expense... he gets a cot, 3 square a day, plus a free health plan thanks to the NHS. He'll also get a chance to get out and stretch his legs around the prison yard.
Sorry, no.
Just because you don't like the fact that IBM is suing someone for protecting their IP.. tough.
First Priceline... then Google... ;-)
The point is that IBM isn't a patent troll, they still make and sell products.
If you don't like the lawsuit, maybe you should figure out why the patent itself should be outlawed. Software Patents was a bad thing. Patent reform was blocked by Reid in the Senate under Obama. Maybe now we could move ahead?
CIO are management types who manage the bottom line and try to make rational decisions on tech that they don't really understand.
Having said that... I do happen to know some very good CIOs who actually do get it. While they are so many years and steps away from getting their hands deep in the code, they are still techies at heart.
But those are the types of CIOs that would say no thanks to Obama who's gone through 3 CIOs while in office and still hasn't launched a decent tech program. Can you say Obamacare's Healthcare.gov roll out.
WHAT A JOKE!!!
In Chicago, there are a couple of companies that had been collecting data.
Nielsen Media, Symphony and a couple of others...
The difference is that when you make a purchase from a store, they capture the data. but they aggregate it and its not your, Matt B's purchased a pack of condoms (I won't say the size ... ;-) , but at Store X in City Y, n number of condoms brand XYZ was sold.
Pretty big difference from that in to knowing that
You bought the following: condoms, duct tape, a ski-mask, rope/cord and a flashlight.
And then Uber knows you scheduled a ride service to take you from your home to where your ex lives.
Now the funny part. Many would assume that you may be out for revenge, yet you bought the duct tape, flashlight and rope/cord, to fix some duct work in your loft and the ski mast because you live in the North Midwest and its cold out. Yes, the condoms are for you and your ex because... welll, you got back together for some make up sex.
(Shame on those who jumped to conclusions. ) ;-)
But you see Matt, that's the point. Thanks to Google, they know what you bought, (everything), where you searched online, and if you have gmail. Your emails have been read. (By a machine of course.) What you read online.. websites visited.. etc ..
All your thought belong to them... ;-)
You visit the p0rn site.
You are being tracked by Google.
Even if you log in to said p0rn site with an identity associated to a hotmail account. Google knows its still you and now associates said hotmail site to you as an alias.
Google doesn't need cookies anymore. They already know who you are, even if you've switched to a different machine, as long as that machine touched an account affiliated with you.
Yeah, you have no where to hide.
The problem.
I don't have an android phone.
I don't use chrome.
I don't use FB
I don't use google search.
Yet Google and FB can still get information about me without my approval.
That's the issue.
"people don't seem to value that data, that information, about who they are, where they are or what they do - or not very much."
I believe they do, or would if they knew the extent of tracking undertaken by these Internet giants. The fact that much of this is done (effectively) by stealth, or "permitted" by terms buried deep in the T&C muesli rather undermines this argument.
-=-
I have to agree with you that its not a question of our valuation of the data.
Its that we don't have control over the data being captured.
Suppose you're like me. You don't have a FB account.
Yet unless you install a script blocker in your web browser and stop certain scripts from running, if you visit a site that FB has an agreement with, FB would now have data about you and will build a profile about you.
Same for Google.
So I may choose to avoid using a service from FB or Google, yet they still capture information about me. And here's the rub. A company may not sell or have a contract in place to share this information, but that they may do so because their IT guy grabbed some code that embedded scripts from FB and Google.
And it gets worse.
Google analytics.
Its a catch-22.
Google uses data collected from these tools to help do page ranks so if you're El-Reg, you might want to take out the google analytics code. But in doing so, you may no longer show up in their web statistics.
Which hurts the site so that they have an economic reason to run google analytics.
But from an end user... we have no control over the capture and sharing of this information, regardless of the data protection laws.
Again the point is that sites may unknowingly be sharing data w Google, FB, and others without knowing it because they don't audit their website's javascript.
Wow. Trying to be politically correct?
Zog, Aldi and Lidl have marketed themselves as discounters. Its their business model.
The truth is that many corporations have latched on to the term 'Big Data' and have yet to truly understand how to use it, or when best to use it.
To use the example of pricing. Amazon doesn't have a physical storefront. The price displayed could be calculated on the fly whereas in a supermarket, you would need to spend $$$ to upgrade the store shelves and the registers to do this. Yes it can be done and the technology is pretty straight forward.
Yet, here's the rub.
What do you buy on Amazon and what do you buy in the supermarket?
Big difference in terms of price margins and when it gets down to price optimization... it doesn't work in the grocery store....
Here's why.
In your neighborhood, there are at least 2-3 grocery chains close to you that you have a choice as to where to shop. You most likely shop regularly at two of the three if not all of the stores based on quality of product, choice of products and convenience. So if your favorite cans of beans is 5p lower at tescos but you're close to Sainsburys, are you going to go to Tesco to save 5p a can?
The issue is that the grocery business is low margins, high traffic. Not a lot of wiggle room. For most of the products, the price optimization within the margins where a store will make money is too small to sway the average consumer.
When you start to put certain products on sale to get customers in to the door, your competitors may match the price (potentially losing money) and will counter with other products where they have better margins or deals with manufacturers and will force you to match and you potentially lose money.
Amazon doesn't sell products that have that small a margin. They aren't selling perishables and shipping direct from manufacturer on some products, they can reduce their holding costs. (Again holding perishables cost more because usually they have to be refrigerated or frozen.)
There's more, but in general the cost of trying to optimize prices is going to exceed any tangible benefits.
Aldi's does their discounting, but its more 'old school' and its much simpler math. You can bet your bottom dollar that when they do run a special on product X, its because they got a deal on product X and have some wiggle room.
Depend on the package, role and division.
I was in S&D where if you quit, you could come back. If you took a package, you were gone and couldn't come back. But if you took a package, and went to work for a company IBM bought, you were allowed back in.
Learned a lot from my time within the Borg. Some good, some bad...
But life truly is better outside the Borg.
Weird as it sounds, the only way to get a monopoly to make changes is to force them to do so.
The have no competitive reason to do so unless they are forced to do it.
Govt PUC: hey Comcast, you need to improve you broadband offering beyond 4Mb/s down.
Comcast: why, we are already offering Broadband services...
Govt PUC: Not anymore...
Yes there is a difference.
Bribe == gift to congress critter in exchange for a favorable outcome on a vote.
Lobby === paying a high priced spokesman whom the congress critter trusts who will explain the issue to the congress critter in such a way that the congress critter will vote in his/her favor.
Bribe == filling a brief case with $10,000.00 cash and giving it to Congress Critter to vote X on issue Y.
Lobby == giving me $10,000.00 to sit down w Congress Critter over an expensive lunch explaining why he should vote X on issue Y. Of course I put the spin I want on the issue and gain Congress critter's trust.
Consider a Lobbyist as a trusted advisor that corporations buy and Congress Critters use for free. They help break down complex issues so that Congress Critters can understand them. ;-)
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