* Posts by Ian Michael Gumby

4454 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Apr 2006

Ireland accused of giving Apple 'selective advantage'

Ian Michael Gumby

While I agree with your comment, its a bit more than that.

Place your EU HQ here, hire one person to watch the shop. We'll give you the lowest tax rate in the EU so you can make billions.

Do this and you starve communities of their tax revenue that they need in order to provide infrastructure to their population.

If you looked at it that way... then the budget shortfalls in the state of California would be non-existent because of all of the tax revenue paid by the companies like Apple. In fact one year of repatriated funds to the US would probably clean up a lot of the debt issues in California. (Noting that state taxes are separate from federal taxes.) Of course having said that... politicians will find ways to waste money so its probably a wash. (But you get the point... ;-)

Ian Michael Gumby

Re: Eu = Articles of Confederation/dysfunction

"Example in the USA: New York pays way more in taxes than it receives in benefits directly paid by the federal government."

This is a fallacy.

Or rather you're not making a clear point.

Are you talking about corporate taxes paid to the US? Corporate taxes paid to NY?

Personal taxes paid to US? Paid to NY? Paid to NYC (If you're talking about NYC?)

Are you talking about all of the NY corporations paying US taxes vs. the federal funds received by the state of NY?

Again, your point is meaningless drivel until you get more specific in your initial statement.

Sorry.

Cabbies paralyze London in Uber rebellion

Ian Michael Gumby

Missing the point...

Does anyone here remember the term Gypsy Cab?

Here's the problem.

You get in to the car and the car is in an accident, you're SOL. Better get a good lawyer who is willing to work on a contingency basis. Driver's insurance company won't pay out on a claim. Driver is on the hook because he was using personal insurance while driving commercially. Sue Uber? Unless they've changed their insurance policy, they won't pay out until after the driver's insurance pays out. So if the driver's insurance refuses to pay, Uber's insurance won't cover it.

Which means you have to go to court against the driver and then Uber.

To me, that's the real issue.

There's more because you have the issue of redlining.

Bechtolsheim's baby Arista Networks soars in stock market debut

Ian Michael Gumby

Re: Are They...

Funny.

They minted money because they jumped on new technology while Cisco milked the old.

Cisco didn't have a 10GbE product offering and what they had was very, very expensive.

Lets see what happens when Cisco wakes up to the competition.

Is it the end of Big Data? Quarta Horribilis for high-end storage

Ian Michael Gumby

Most clusters don't use storage servers.

Most clusters are built on commodity hardware with the disks local to the box.

So as one moves to Hadoop, you lose the need for the large SANs, NASs whatever you want to call them.

Revealed: GCHQ's beyond top secret Middle Eastern internet spy base

Ian Michael Gumby

Funny.

Its one thing to assume that you are being watched and your communications are being monitored.

Its another to actually have proof that it is.

Its a third thing to actually believe that anyone really cares how much internet porn you watch on your own PC at home, or the contents of your emails.

Its definitely no secret that governments spy. Yet its poor form to violate your country's security laws.

Apple: We'll tailor Swift to be a fast new programming language

Ian Michael Gumby

@Joe Re: Swift looks...

And this is why I said ... If memory serves... :-)

Sorry, but I'm dating myself when I look at Objective-C it was from my NeXTStep days. Way back in the early 90's.

To the points raised... when a single company owns, controls and is the only adopter of a language... never bodes well in the long run. Even if its Microsoft or Apple.

Ian Michael Gumby

Re: Swift looks...

If memory serves... objective-C is part of the gcc so that the core of Objective-C is open source. What is closed source is the libraries.

So if you start with the gcc compiler (Apple/NeXT had to open source those bits under GPL) , use the same open APIs, and write your own libraries from scratch, you can do the same thing.

IANAL so don't take this as legal advice, just that you could do it if you wanted to do it. It doesn't mean Apple won't attempt to sue you anyway...

'Failure is not an option... Never give up.' Not in Silicon Valley, mate

Ian Michael Gumby

@John

So if you know something is a bad idea, you'll do it anyway just for the experience?

Ian Michael Gumby

@ckm5 Re: Whoever wrote this article has no idea what he is talking about....

That's pure hogwash mate.

And its piss poor logic.

Did you ever consider that the initial idea for your start up wasn't good enough to be viable?

Had a guy I worked with who left his startup to join another company. Asked him if his startup was so successful, why did he leave? (Note I said leave, not cash out. Bit of a difference there...)

The point is that unless you can show your start up is viable, then its not going to be worth the effort.

Oh and yeah, you can point to Facebook, however... I would suggest you first look at AOL.. ;-)

Anonymous: Why we're PICKETING Glenn Greenwald's book tour

Ian Michael Gumby

Re: Glenn touring the US?

I suggest you read the Op/Ed in the WSJ...

Very enlightening on this topic.

Europe's shock Google privacy ruling: The end of history? Don't be daft

Ian Michael Gumby

Here's the bigger picture...

Google has to submit itself to the laws and regulations of the countries where it wants to do business.

You can substitute Bing, Yahoo! or whomever.

The irony?

I'll wager that some of the comments made by Eric Schmidt and privacy... will have either been removed or buried. ;-)

But back to the point. If ebay wants to do business in Germany then it has to acknowledge that there are limitations to what can and cannot be sold in Germany. (they do) So too should Google. And here's a funny thing... Google claims in a Spanish court that they are an American company. To the IRS they claim that their IP is in an Irish subsidiary so that they don't pay taxes in the US.

It would be interesting to see if some smart lad or lassie in the IRS were to take their testimony in Spain and use it against them to shut down their 'double Irish with a Jamaican twist... or whatever dodge they are using these days...

Boeing shows off 7-4-heaven SPACEPLANE-for-tourists concept

Ian Michael Gumby

Meh!

Go back and watch 2001 A Space Odyssey.

See the trip up from Earth to the space station.

OK, so I'm showing my age.

Oculus rips ZeniMax over claims of Carmack foul play

Ian Michael Gumby

Re: He said, She said.

I don't know...

That's why there's this thing called discovery ...

Ian Michael Gumby

He said, She said.

This is why we have courts , juries and trials.

The interesting thing is what isn't being said by Oculus

ZeniMax lobs sueball at Oculus, says space cowboy Carmack rustled its code

Ian Michael Gumby

@Adam T

Its a good thing that you're not a lawyer. ;-)

Their lawyers would say that it doesn't matter. That he took the IP away from the company by retaining his notes. Regardless of whether he wrote the code or directed others to write the code on his behalf, the work was done based on work products he retained from the prior company.

(Bet you didn't see that coming...)

Its not an easy case and from what has been reported, its a question of how much to value the work he took from his former employers. Its not cut or dry in either direction and will end up being negotiated down to a reasonable amount of money. By reasonable... a point where neither side admits to anything and its enough to make everyone happy so FB can buy the company.

Ian Michael Gumby
Boffin

@Oninoshinko ...Re: With this suit, it is not a question of who to root for

Here's the rub...

When you work for a company, while you are there... you may have to sign an employment agreement which stipulates anything you invent or create while working for them is their IP.

So if you were exposed to their IP that is used in Technology A and you leave to go to some other company and you use the IP in creating something similar to Technology A, then that company may have a case against you.

Note, I said may... its not a simple clear cut thing. They have to first establish that they own the IP behind Technology A, and that you were exposed to technology A in your daily work. (Even if you didn't work on Technology A. )

Note also that the IP doesn't have to be patented for their claim to be valid.

They also claim that he took some of his code with him. Or notes. Those are work products.

This strengthens their claim against him. Even if he just took notes and wrote the basic code from scratch, he could still be on the hook. (It will be up to a judge and/or jury to decide. )

So on the surface they do have a case.

That is not to say that they will win. Based on some points raised in the article... I'd say that they will end up going to court and reach a settlement before a verdict can be rendered.

The issue is what did he take when he left, and what could the company prove that he took when he left.

If he just left with what was in his head... then the company should get nothing.

El Reg Quid-A-Day Nosh Posse crawls towards finish line

Ian Michael Gumby

Interesting...

First,

I think its a job well done, but what exactly were you trying to prove?

(Beyond raising awareness?)

My father told me a story from back in the time he served. ('44-46) He was 14th Armored. They came in and broke down the gates of a PoW camp freeing both British and American soldiers. Both were living on the same diet, yet when the Brits saw the tanks they were bouncing around celebrating. The Americans were more lethargic and looked in worse shape.

He reasoned that most of the British soldiers were living on reduced calories so that the change in rations had less effect on them when compared to the Americans.

To your experiment, it would be interesting to see the normal caloric intake of your participants to see the relative difference and compare it to their notes about hunger.

There's a Sheriff in AZ who boasts about feeding his prisoners on $.24 a meal per day. That's less than your Quid a day. He can do this because he's buying at wholesale and in bulk.

I wonder if you would have allowed the participants to pool their monies so that they could have bought in bulk and then separated out the rations?

Or the ability to barter between participants?

(An extra egg vs 2 cups of rice as an example?)

The other interesting questions is if in communities where resources are scarce is there a tighter relationship between community members?

Just some random thoughts...

US Supreme Court to decide if cops can search mobes without a warrant

Ian Michael Gumby

Re: I'll wager that the SCOTUS sides with the convicts.

There's SCOTUS decisions that go back and set precedence.

The one case that I can think of is when a bookie had his case overturned because there was an expectation of privacy when he stepped in to the public phone booth to place his bets, unknown to him the FBI put a wire tap on the phone. (Without a warrant.)

Had they gotten a warrant, it would have all been legal, however, without the warrant, the tap itself was illegal.

Ian Michael Gumby

I'll wager that the SCOTUS sides with the convicts.

There is some case law going back 40+ years that talk about the expectation of privacy.

Please work for nothing, Mr Dabbs. What can you lose?

Ian Michael Gumby

T.N.T.T.A.A.F.L

You speak at these conferences and shows as a way to establish credibility and to increase your brand.

So while you're not being paid with cash, you are getting something of value from being at these conferences.

If not more business, you can get higher rates.

You have to pick and choose which conferences will garner you the most business and which ones will be a waste of time.

Most Americans doubt Big Bang, not too sure about evolution, climate change – survey

Ian Michael Gumby

@AC Re: Breaking News!!

Funny, you post as an AC which suggest you're afraid to stand behind your opinion.

The fact is that the climate science has been debunked and the emails have shown how corrupt the junk science has become in order to make their point.

Temperatures are rising, but nowhere as near as fast as the 'models' had predicted.

There's more, but your puny human brain can't handle the truth.

Puny Human! Hulk SMASH!

Ian Michael Gumby

@ Leslie Graham .. Re: Breaking News!!

I hate to burst your bubble, but a volcanic eruption put out more CO2 and debris in to the atmosphere in 1 day than all of man did in a year.

But what you never talked about genius is the shift in the magnetic poles of the earth. (Hint: Why is there a magnetic north and a true north and why are they different.)

Also ask yourself what happens when the magnetic poles flip? (And yes its happened.)

There's more, but your puny human brain can't handle the truth.

Man has done a lot to damage the earth... but global warming isn't one of them.

I could demand that you prove it... but that would be like asking a priest to prove that God exists.

Ian Michael Gumby

The big bang?

Makes it sound like the giant flying spaghetti monster created the universe when he farted.

Ian Michael Gumby

Re: Breaking News!!

Funny... but did you see the questions?

Do you believe that global warming is real? Sure. We have evidence going back millions of years that there is a cycle.

Do you believe that global warming is man made?

("Mostly because of Man Made trapped gasses...")

Seriously.

That's the problem.

Junk Science at work.

Internet-of-stuff startup dumps NoSQL for ... SQL?

Ian Michael Gumby

Meh.

At the scale they are talking about Mongo shouldn't have had a problem.

Their problem? Using a tech because its the latest hot buzzword without understanding the basics of the technology.

There's nothing wrong with a relational engine. But you need to make sure your problem fits in to the relational model.

In NoSQL, you need to think more in terms of a hierarchical model and not many people understand this.

OpenSSL Heartbleed: Bloody nose for open-source bleeding hearts

Ian Michael Gumby

@Gene Cash

You must not be very experienced.

Look, there are some very good people writing very good code, however, that's a very small subset of all of the code that is being tossed out in to the public.

Then you have Apache were depending on the project, visibility and money tossed behind it... YMMV.

Oracle smacks JD Edwards help site with cease and desist order

Ian Michael Gumby

@Dutch Re: You are looking at it from the wrong perspective....

Not confusing anything. Oracle is making both arguments in their cases. Not to mention that they have sued to shut down other support sites.

I'm not judging Oracle only saying is that their actions may not be 'evil' but more than likely guided by the bigger picture.

Ian Michael Gumby

You are looking at it from the wrong perspective....

The issue isn't so much JD Edwards... but that if they let the site exist, it weakens the argument that they are using in their lawsuit. So the have to take an even heavy hand to all perceived threats to IP.

After all, there is a lot... a really big pot of money on the table.

The license fee argument would be Oracle going after chump change.

Samsung's thumb-achingly ENORMO Galaxy Note Pro 12.2

Ian Michael Gumby

Meh, Apple has them beat.

Why stop at 12" ?

Apple is rumored to be sourcing 65" panels.

Now that would be awsome except that it would be hard to fit in to your back pocket or backpack...

Rumour: Next Apple iThing to feature 65-inch screen. Four-limb multitouch, anyone?

Ian Michael Gumby

Re: It's just a 4k screen

If Apple can corner the market on 4K or 8K screens, they will have a leg up.

Its not just resolution but the material behind the pixel (LED vs OLED)

LaCie bigs up 2big, 5big, 8big... WHOMP: Lands big data on your desk

Ian Michael Gumby

Re: amateur option but...

Raid 10?

But you need 4 drives.

If you're going with LaCie, you will want to use raid.

How much data must you have before you need Cleversafe? If you have to ask ...

Ian Michael Gumby

Chicago?

You have UIC (University of Illinois, Chicago Campus) UC (University of Chicago)

Depaul, Northwestern, Illinois Institute of Technology, among others.

It could have been either IIT or UIC.

Intel just installed itself in Hadoop guru Cloudera – and why their rivals should be worried

Ian Michael Gumby

@AC ...Re: MapR

While you're an informed consumer who chose MapR, I do need to point out something.

MapR's FS is proprietary. Its not open. It does however support the open source HDFS APIs so that anyone can write and port their stuff to the MapR environment and MapR will run all of the Hadoop products on top of their cluster. So if you want Impala and Tez, you can do it. Don't ask Horton or Cloudera to do that. ;-)

While that's a small nit, its an important one. Horton and Cloudera have made marketing campaigns against MapR because of this. That was, until they partnered with Wandisco to do HA.

MapR built a better mousetrap. I agree that anyone who wants a commercial grade product to look at MapR, however they are not without their faults. They may have a superior product, but that doesn't guarantee them success. (See Informix). Oracle won out because they had better marketing and sales. Not a better product.

MapR also trounced the benchmarks on Cisco kit. While its public knowledge... its not a well marketed message.

I am Hadoop vendor agnostic and I do see things that I like in all of the three major vendors. (As much as I see things that I don't like....)

And yes, I've built solutions on top of the three main vendors. ;-)

Ian Michael Gumby

@jkestelyn

Back in the 90's ORDBMs was all the craze.

Phil White bought Illustra and thought it would be easy to integrate it in. Rather than manage investor's expectations... He cooked the books. Pretty much killed the company.

It took Informix 5 years to recover and integrate ORDBMS in to the product as datablades. Oracle countered as did IBM with their add ons.

Nobody used them because they were complete and utter garbage. But they existed well enough to be a check off in terms of marketing and sales.

So to say Apache has HA, that's not the case. If it were, then why does Cloudera and Hortonworks partner with Wandisco?

I'm not suggesting that Wandisco is a bad product, its not. Its a very interesting product.

But what I am suggesting is that you need to do your homework before you make statements when the market data doesn't match what you're saying. ;-)

BTW, Illustra was a Stonebraker company. Mike Olson worked for him and was part of the company. This was before he did his other companies. Just thought I'd toss in that little fact to tie this all back together.

Apple patent will see Siri remind you to keep taking your meds

Ian Michael Gumby

The scary part...

They are filing a patent.

It's not patentable because the concept isn't new or novel.

The sad thing is that it will be patented....

Seattle pops a cap in Uber and Lyft: Rideshare bizs get 150-driver limit

Ian Michael Gumby

Re: Never quite so black and white

No wonder you post anon.

You make sweeping generalizations.

Poor people don't take cabs. they take public transportation.

Ian Michael Gumby

@ Stu Re: @Ian Michael Gumby

That wasn't the point of my comment.

The truth is that 150 doesn't do anything but try and find a compromise.

I dont agree with their position, because I believer the number should be 0.

As I stated in my post. Uber doesn't carry the right type of insurance, nor do their drivers.

By law, you must be insured in order to drive a car. I believe this liability insurance is required in all 50 states. (It is in IL. Uninsured drivers get arrested.)

But the personal insurance is not the same as commercial insurance.

Ask yourself why cities limit the number of tokens/ medallions in a city to taxi services.

And then there are car livery services...

Ian Michael Gumby

@frank-lee Re: Shocking! and stealing/pirating

No,

The analogy doesn't suggest that at all.

You want to get from point A to point B you have a set of options:

1) Walk

2) Ride a bike

3) Get a friend to drive

4) Public transportation

5) Taxi

6) Hired Car Service / Limo

7) Fractional rental cars (aka Zip Cars)

8) Rental cars (Hertz, Avis, etc ...)

9) Lease

10) Own a car

You are free to choose your mode of transportation.

You choose to take the taxi, you're not their property. They however, have a legal obligation to get you from point A to point B in a safe and lawful manner for which they collect a fare.

They are providing you a service. Not sure how you feel that you're a slave.

Ian Michael Gumby

@Future... Re: @ Dave ..The same-old same-old

I'm a bit older than the average reader... ;-)

It isn't just the driver rating system. I mean there are checks on regular cabbies and many on further inspection some of them should never be driving.

The strongest argument against Uber is the insurance and liability.

That accident did happen and while we haven't seen the end of it, I'll wager the driver is going to end up filing for bankruptcy because he couldn't afford to pay the family's medical bills. They will most likely sue Uber and win or get Uber to settle quietly, putting a gag order on the family.

Since Uber is still private, they wouldn't have to disclose how much they paid to settle lawsuits arising from accidents, or even report the number of accidents.

Ian Michael Gumby

Re: Shocking!

Actually change the third to be steal their IP not pirate.

So a company writes an app to do X, and Company B copies the app and sells it for a fraction of the price.

Ian Michael Gumby

@ Dave ..Re: The same-old same-old

No, this is not exactly a protectionist thing.

1:tax revenue, for one. Uber and company don't pay taxes like taxis.

2: safety.

Uber and company do not carry the proper insurance that professionals (limo, taxi, etc) must carry. Drivers may/may not have commercial license. Cars aren't inspected.

That's a big thing.

A driver hit pedestrians in a sidewalk. He wasn't paying attention and was instead looking at app to find his next fare. Uber... No coverage because there was no fare in car at the time of accident. His insurance? No coverage because he was moonlighting as a gypsy cab. Read commercial use voids non-commercial insurance. Who loses? Pedestrians who did nothing wrong, driver for being a dumb Schmuck for trying to make a quick buck.

Not to mention that uber's insurance probably won't pay out because it only pays after driver's insurance pays. Driver's insurance doesn't pay, then Uber is off the hook.

3: No recourse for passenger if something goes wrong. I'll leave it up to your imagination...

And to top it off... Not really a disruptive innovation.

Radio car service... Oh I press a button on a phone instead of dialing?

And I used the term Gypsy Cab? Been around for years.

Taxes?

It's what pays for the services you take for granted. Think of the infrastructure projects that could be done if the trillion dollars hid offshore (legally) if apple and company paid their taxes that they would owe on the profits they made over the years.

Chinese boffins ginger up Hadoop with OpenFlow funnel

Ian Michael Gumby

Meh.

Its a solution looking for a problem.

In terms of 'Big Data' aka Hadoop, you don't have a bandwidth issue.

Your cluster is homogenous on the internal corporate network and is isolated as much as possible.

If you're running your own data center and are running hadoop, you should have layer 2 VLAN capability as well as high speed switches.

Sorry, but if you're going to be spending millions on a Hadoop solution... (think hundreds of nodes), you're going to be spending $$$ on real ToR switches and serious networking hardware.

Of course, you'll see FB doing something stupid spending $$$ to save $.

Watch the MIT MER-BOT – half droid, half soft 'fish' – swim by itself

Ian Michael Gumby

Meh Re: Biology

Didn't you pay attention when you watched Futurama?

Just ask Fry about Lucy Liu ... ;-)

Facebook's Zuckerberg buttonholes Obama, rages against NSA dragnet spying

Ian Michael Gumby

@MonkeyScrabble... Re: A translation

When you're worth billions, you can be a big donor to the DNC's pockets.

Money talks, so they say...

Ian Michael Gumby

@G E Re: Although

"You can largely avoid Farcebook if you choose to. No such luck with GCHQ/NSA"

Actually you can't.

Nor Google. Unless you want to act like Stallman who doesn't use his own PC on the internet, goes to 'public' PCs at MIT, and tires to hide who he is at all times.

The issue is that even if you go to these extremes, you can't hide from FB or Google.

You have friends, right?

If they use Google or FB, and have any of your contact information... they know who you are.

You would be surprised at how much information that these companies capture, regardless of your precautions and saying no thank you.

You want to get out, you can't. They slurp everything. Every microbe of your digital footprint, no matter how small.

Five unbelievable headlines that claim Tim Berners-Lee 'INVENTED the INTERNET'

Ian Michael Gumby

Yes, fear the wrath of Al Gore! Re: Idiots

It won't actually be Al Gore, but his publicist who will contact you and correct your misconception.

The funny thing is that Al Gore claimed to have sponsored the bill that gave money to DARPA to fund the R&D for the internet. If memory serves... I don't believe he was the bill's sponsor but a co-sponsor...

(A bit of a big difference.)

Intel and pals whip out 1.6Tbit/s cable: Come on baby, light my fibre

Ian Michael Gumby
Thumb Up

Disruptive tech

Unfortunately, its going to take a lot for this to catch on...

What it potentially does is reduce the network as the bottleneck within the data center.

It should drive changes in the Open Compute project, and force a major re-think on computer design.

Those low powered chips aren't going to cut it in the near future.

Google's mystery barge flounces out of San Fran, heads to Stockton

Ian Michael Gumby

Re: The Barge is...

Offshore data center?

Ok, so how fast can you pump data in to it?

Is microwave fast as fiber?

Dell charges £16 TO INSTALL FIREFOX on PCs – Mozilla is miffed

Ian Michael Gumby
Pint

Mozilla is going to have a rough time with it...

Q8: I want to distribute (outside my organization) executable programs or libraries that I have compiled from someone else's unchanged MPL-licensed source code, either standalone or part of a larger work. What do I have to do?

You must inform the recipients where they can get the source for the MPLed code in the executable program or library you are distributing (i.e., you must comply with Section 3.2). You may distribute any executables you create under a license of your choosing, as long as that license does not interfere with the recipients' rights to the source under the terms of the MPL.

This is from the Mozilla web site.

While what Dell is doing seems like a rip off.... It doesn't appear, at first blush, to be against the law or against the Mozilla License.

I too used to charge beers for helping friends, but I no longer drink and while my friends are mad.. my liver thanks me. :-)