Posts by Ian Michael Gumby

Re: 4 x RE: I can't imagine the near future has many innovations ahead

And I used punch tape. So what's you point?

Re: Links? Links! to Global Warming?????

The sad thing is that this is common sense. A change in the world's climate will cause a shift in the weather patterns. (No duh!) Sorry you don't need an army of butterflies to get a change in the weather pattern.

All scientists have to do is to pull enough core and tree ring samples to see the temperature change also impacted the amount of rainfall and or lack of it in the area.

The key thing is that many involved in the climate gate fiasco is blaming this on man kind. It isn't.

Having said that, if all nations followed the Kyoto Treaty, having cleaner air wouldn't be a bad thing. Unfortunately that won't happen any time soon.

Along with the lack of clean power from nuclear energy and research in to fusion reactors.... we're doomed to keep polluting our planet.

Re: Not one to defend Apple but....

You do realize that Apple is the clear winner here.

How many people are going to file a claim?

And if they do, the bulk of them will receive apple credits, not cash.

The lawyers receive the cash. So parents will spend even more money through Apple's iTunes.

Apple will end up generating more revenue and continue to lock in their install base.

The only good will come when Apple forces their army of app developers to lock down the permissions and allow parents to turn off the ability to buy in app products unless a different password is used.

Then its the parent's fault for not supervising what packages their kids buy or that they know the parent's passwords.

Re: I love this organisation

It sounds more like the squabbling between the Judeans People's Front and the People's Front of Judea.

(Yes, I went there with the Monty Python reference. (Where's the Graham Chapman icon when you need it?))

Sorry but having seen the ad too many times, I never once thought about beastie love.

Actually pedophilia did cross my mind because this pig seems to act like a kid in most of the commercials where he's featured. (Remember the one where he's in the back seat of the car on a ride home from school? )

Yeah, its a dumb commercial. Just as bad as the overacting Gecko. However the fact that we know this means that they are effective ads.

But lets boycott their products not because of the Million Mommies who do enough damage to their childrens' mental health but because they make silly commercials.

And on the note of using fake animals in commercials, lets start a petition to bring back Gilbert Godfrey as the voice of the AFLAC duck! I think he learned his lesson ....

Re: Better names

Maybe it sounds better in Finnish?

Here, There and Everywhere ?

Täällä, täällä ja kaikkialla?

Thats the Google translation.

Re: Good piece

Unfortunately you don't grok 'Big Data'.

It's not something to be ashamed of. Really. There are a lot of 'Big Data' pundits who don't really understand it either.

If you want to be useful, you should know both and understand how to put both systems in to play working together.

BTW, the price of one Oracle license of a large 'enterprise' server would cover the costs of an entire cluster of Hadoop machines along with a licensed support contract. Then add in your hardware to boot.

That s why people are looking at Hadoop.

To answer your question...

Before Apple, or Windows, there was no hardware company using the name Apple. Same for Windows, or how about Acorn? (What every happened to them?) Common words.

IMHO the guy fighting to trademark Python is going to have a hard time on his hands.

Python is a computer language and has been in the public eye for quite some time.

Python is also slang for biceps.

And Python is a snake.

Could Verber be looking to brand a computer, service or class of service as Python?

I really don't know.

To your point, you can trademark a common word like Python, however in the US, it would only stop competitors in using the term. A company in a completely different line of business who didn't trademark the name could still use it... (Apple Records vs Apple Computer)

@Swarthy Re: Not just Coke (@ IMG)

Uhm yup that is why I wasn't diagnosed until I was 40. ;-)

My addiction to caffeine and the fact that I started to take harder courses in high school (requiring more focus and interest) cause a dramatic improvement in my GPA.

While some joke about ADD, its both a blessing and a curse.

Re: MySql

MySQL vs Oracle?

Puleeze. Get a real RDBMS in Informix's IDS now under IBM.

Even with IBM's inept management of the product there's a rabid core following and for a good reason. ;-)

Its more ORDB than its competitors and is still the fastest when tuned properly.

There's even a scaled down free version...

-Just saying!

@AC changing weather patterns

The change in climate results in a change in weather patterns. Weather patterns change, you don't get a consistent rainfall or snow to replace the water in the region.

Traditional crop lands dry up, resulting in lower food production.

Now what has a greater effect on weather patterns?

A) a shift in the earth's gravitational poles?

B) increased solar activity? Aka Sun spots?

C) natural volcanic events?

D) cooling of the earths molten core?

E) man made pollution?

If you've said E) you just might have a future in climatology and slinging BS

Note: I am all for cleaner air, but using junk science? Really?

@Anon 16 Re: Searching for diamonds

Clearly you don't grok Hadoop.

If you did you'd understand that your M/R is Java code. Or it could be streaming C/C++ code.

There are plenty of use cases that prove you wrong.

Hadoop is a parallel framework. Pretty basic in concept.

Its a wonder that any recruiter called on your.

The fail is for you.

Re: Disposable

The article states that the orbit is low enough that it will decay over time burning up in the earth's atmosphere. Since these are small enough devices, I seriously doubt that anything of size would be left to even hit the surface of the planet.

Of course if this were mainly 2KG of depleted uranium... launched at the surface from that hight?

That could be a different story...

@AC ... Re: Obama's Justice Department is Cruel and Vindictive.

Not sure why you were down voted.

I believe that you succinctly mentioned the facts of the case.

Aaron did in fact break in to an MIT networking closet and circumvented the APIs for interfacing the system.

The WTF is for those who down voted the Anon.

C'mon guys Seriously?

Is there really something to blame?

Maybe I'm the odd one since I don't replace my phone unless it breaks or starts to have problems.

So why would I go out and buy a new iPhone if I don't need it?

Maybe that's killing part of the demand, along with competition from other vendors?

Sorry, but I don't think that its a question of build quality, but more of the fact of supply and demand.

There are more smart phones to choose from these days.

At Matt Bryant... Re: 9mm?

"Since when has the UK military EVER had the best tool for the job?" History has shown many times that the tool is often no better than the training and commitment of the man holding it. Outnumbered and underequipped British troops with the "outdated" SLR won the Falklands War for a reason."

The interesting thing is that with a .308 round. the SA-58s that were full auto tended to become 'spray and pray' weapons. The SA-58s that were semi-auto only worked fine.

But to your point, the biggest difference is that the Argentines used conscripts who were suited up, armed and then dumped on the island. The Brits used professional troops. Now who do you think will win? ;-)

I've had the fun of firing an MP-5 (9mm) FN-2000 (.223) and the P90 (5.7 full auto)

I was the most accurate with the MP-5 because it was easier to fire short controlled burts and stay on target.

The larger .223 kept pulling me off center.

I guess if I had more time than just two mags with each gun, I could have mastered them. The point is that with a sub-machine-gun, I was able to control the recoil and keep on target. Didn't adjust well to the trigger and sights on the P90, but it was a rental. I also shot the 5n7 pistol and while loud, it was fairly accurate, however... so to is a .22 and the ammo costs a lot less.

Its not that clear cut... Re: Let me get this straight

Here's the rub...

The EFF may argue on some issues on behalf of FB or Google.

It may on other issues argue against FB or Google. It depends on the issue.

Should the EFF not accept money from Google or their employees because they one day may be on an opposite side of the issue?

I don't know. Truthfully I find the entire Silicon Valley to be incestuous as well as a bit out of tune with the rest of the world...

So there may or may not be a conflict of interest.

Re: illegal already

Not quite...

Starbucks buys their coffee beans from a supplier in a more 'tax friendly' country. Of course they own the company which is supplying them beans. So they capture a reported 20% mark up on the beans. Nothing illegal, except that they could easily have purchased the beans directly and brought them in to the UK 20% cheaper which would mean more profits which can be taxed at the higher UK rate.

With respect to services companies like IBM and CSC... they use an internal company transfer. So if they pulled a resource from India, there's an internal cost for the body. That cost goes back to the country providing the resource. So its possible to then hide the revenue or a reduction on the revenue accrued in the UK.

All of this is very legal.

@Cyborg Re: If you've got a TV big enough for this to make any difference,

I actually have the space for it.

But here's the rub.

1) 4K would be nice, but no content.

2) No content means that its not worth buying. And any content would be on multiple disk blu rays, right?

Cable bandwidth is nice, but then you would have to reduce the number of channels to get the bandwidth.

Meaning the same cable that carries 500 stations would only be able to carry 100 or so channels, right?

Cable stations don't care about program quality as long as they can sell advertising on them so more channels beats higher definition channels.

Or you could go and launch your own set of satellites which can handle the higher quality images and create your own networks.

Re: Sounds like...

You mean like Nuclear Energy?

Yes, safe plants can be built along with recycling the fuel and proper fuel disposal ...

Re: It's but one more facet of the British stiff upper lip

Sorry?

But we believe that its much cheaper and more fun to find some undergrad lab pukes (pun intended) who we can feed copious amounts of food and beer/alcohol and then get them to blow chunks.

Much cheaper, more realistic and it helps with their college tuition.

Shame on you Brits for not being so economical in your research.

Re: Trevor, you need to move in to a first world country away from Canada...

Sorry Trev, but a ToR is ~10K.

If you're building out a rack of machines for a Hadoop cluster... that's not a bad price.

If you're talking about cards to upgrade current kit, Solarflare makes one that's reasonably priced.

My guess is that you're stuck on Cisco pricing.

Re: A technical question

Funny, but it looked more like a wired bread board for designing test kit from the '80's.

Re: Maybe North Korea is opening up?

Sorry,

Call me a sceptic.

Suppose Kim Yong Un wants to upgrade the country from starving peasants to a bit more modern....

His nuke program, missile program, etc ... have made it impossible for him to legally import anything more powerful than an iPhone. (Ok, so even these phones have more than enough CPU capacity to launch a rocket and land a man on the moon.)

If he is planning on opening up N. Korea, its going to take years before the West will allow any real tech.

The first thing if any... they will allow farm aid and some civil engineering projects to move forward. Of course it would be interesting because one would have to wonder what China will say or do if the US or its allies get involved.

Re: Where is...

That depends on where the puppeteers are these days?

My guess is that he's drinking off the money he made blackmailing them watching the economy collapse as they flee the Galaxy. ;-)