* Posts by Ian Michael Gumby

4454 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Apr 2006

Google expands plan to run own internet

Ian Michael Gumby
WTF?

@Kevin 7

I don't think Google will make a single box and say 'behold our master DNS nameserver!' but would create their own set of name servers that will have all of the other records that it can find and cache.

Ian Michael Gumby
FAIL

Don't let Google fool you...

First, be careful what Google says about what and how they manage collected data. If you don't trust your own government, then why trust Google?

Google doesn't have to do any landing to show value in having their own DNS server farm. They will identify who's making the requests and what they are requesting.

Imagine you like to surf for porn late at night when the kiddies are in bed and the wife's in the other room. (Not that *I'd* do that.) :-)

Now all of a sudden, late at night, even though you're not currently surfing for porn, you'll start to see Victoria Secret Ads on your browser. Fancy that.

The point is that by knowing who you are, what sites you hit, they learn more about your browsing habits beyond the stuff you search for.

Also note that with the use of NoScript and Firefox, one can always turn off the GoogleSyndication and other ad tracking scripts on a page. So they are collecting less data about you than they would like.

Using their DNS? You can't block them from collecting Data.

Google doesn't hire the 'brain trust' because they tend to have morals.

'Doctor Dark Energy': The Ultimate LHC eccentric?

Ian Michael Gumby
Coat

God vs Devil Particles...

Unfortunately this doesn't quite fly....

Sure the physics predicts that these particles exist in pairs.

But our concept of God is one of a monotheistic nature. There is by definition no anti-god.

So I must flame the reg and the HTC boffins for their mistake. One of the following *must* be true:

A) Those among us who believe in monotheism have got it all wrong.

B) The nomenclature of a 'god particle' doesn't fit.

C) There really is one god, however he's really a she and suffers from bi-polar issues.

D) The idea that we must have a particle and an anti-particle is wrong.

Either way, we're fscked so we might as well enjoy what little time we have left on this god forsaken earth and enjoy the friggin weekend.

Mine's the coat with the tin foil shielding and an internal pocket for my towel.

Two US men charged with running phony Cisco biz

Ian Michael Gumby
Black Helicopters

Clearly you've never done business in China

Different countries have different set of ethics and laws when it comes to protecting IP.

There are some truths to where factories that produce a western product on a contract basis are also producing the knockoffs that flow out a different part of the factory.

So to say that the Chinese will never do that... sorry you're talking out of your arse.

The bigger problem isn't copyright infringement but the laws concerning product injury. The guy who killed himself over the lead paint did so, not because he made copies but that he created a dangerous product that caused harm. The melamine milk scandal, I believe called for a death sentence. So the point is that the penalties are severe.

With respect to Cisco kit being faked, is nothing new. But hey! That's what you get when you outsource and offshore your manufacturing to countries that don't have the same respect for IP and laws protecting IP.

CRN (Computer Reseller News) did an article a couple of years ago. Looking at the kit, I couldn't tell the difference, but I'm not inspecting it, just judging from photos. Back then the manufacturers were the ones printing the labels, boxes, etc ... Looks like China has cracked down so that now they sell the boxes, sans logos and the dupes in the US now are the ones counterfeiting it. (fake labels and manuals).

With respect to implementing back doors, oh yeah, its possible. Very possible. Which is why Cisco should create a version of their products manufactured here in the US which would sell at a premium.

Be afraid, very afraid.

Nokia to halve its smartphone portfolio in 2010

Ian Michael Gumby
Unhappy

I think they're starting to get it.

Build a platform which can be extensible and offer the components people want. Make it flexible. Then focus the product line on big differentiating factors and not little ones. Size, weight, class of functionality.

Build small phones that are just phones.

Build medium phones that do what commercial customers want.

Build the Business phones that do what business types want.

Then build the prototypes for the next generations.

Simple formula, but hard to implement because all designers what to show the mark they made on the phone. At Apple its all about Jobs so designers focus on tweaks not the basic product.

But yeah, I'd like to see and play with the n900, can't even do that and we have a flagship store in Chicago down on Michigan ave.

I won't be in the market until my e90 dies because to get the n900, I'll have to buy it unlocked.

Google: We avoid hiring too many smart people...

Ian Michael Gumby
Black Helicopters

Well since you brought it up...

... Thickness sounds like a personal problem.

The truth is that Google doesn't want to hire the 'best and brightest' because they'll get more from Google than they put in. (If you're not 'thick' you can figure that one out...)

When I was in High School, I was working for a small computer seller. One of their customers was an MIT grad who ran the family electrical supply company. He had an interesting theory about hiring the 'best and brightest'.

He believed that he would be better off hiring the B students over the A students. Why? Because they cost less money, and would work harder. So that the end result was that they were very productive and relatively more efficient that the over achievers. There actually is some truth to his logic.

With respect to Google, I would also think that those who are 'deemed the best and brightest' might actually peek behind the green curtain and see the 'truth' of that which is Goo-gle.

A little black copter because the real 'best and brightest' don't want to be found. ;-)

High Court: Software dev agreement did not transfer copyright

Ian Michael Gumby

It just goes to show...

That you are best served by doing two things up front...

1) Be clear in your intentions and cone to a consensus at the start of work. If you are joining midstream, be prepared to renegotiate *everything*.

2) Don't skimp on the lawyers. While price shouldn't be the deciding factor, spending the right amount up front will save you more money and headaches later on.

Of course there's a third rule, the *golden* rule... 'Never do business with anyone that you don't trust.'

Google pockets half of 'unlicensed' news dollars, says study

Ian Michael Gumby
WTF?

@DrXym Huh?

RIF (Reading is Fundamental)

The point is that Google is making money off the lifted news which should have been licensed.

This isn't an issue of a blogger quoting 'extensively' of an article (125 words is extensive?) but rather people reposting news articles mostly intact.

The sad reality is that without these funds, newspapers, which are losing money, will not be able to afford investigative journalism.

If you follow the argument, Google is making money for nothing. They don't originate the content and enabling the offending sites to steal something which is not theirs.

The phrase 'content is king' is true. But without compensation, you can expect that the majority of quality content will no longer be 'free' to be stolen.

Murdoch may be an a$$hole, but IMHO, he's got a valid gripe.

Microsoft files cloud data portability patent

Ian Michael Gumby
FAIL

Massive fail if the USPTO lets this one through...

Lots of prior art and this isn't new or novel.

EU waits for wise men to deliver digi-books plan

Ian Michael Gumby
Thumb Up

Wow, EU politicos got it right....

I do agree that allowing a for profit company to scan books in a clear violation of the copyright laws and thus by a legal settlement grant them a for profit monopoly is unconscionable.

No offense to the Goo machine, but were you to plug in Adobe, Amazon, IBM and or Microsoft, I'd say the same thing.

This is a project that for the price of a B2 Bomber or <insert your favorite high tech military project>, you could have something of a more potent weapon... easy access to knowledge.

Hearts and minds... Hearts and minds...

US senators tell EC: Butt out of Oracle-Sun

Ian Michael Gumby

Ah yes, the best politicians money can buy.

Gee I wonder how much money went to lobbyists on this one.

Superconductor forcefield to shield re-entering spacecraft?

Ian Michael Gumby

Why not put a call in to NASA?

Wouldn't be cheaper and easier to call NASA and to pull one of their SR-71 Blackbirds out of mothballs and put back in to service?

While its not a re-entry vehicle, wouldn't is also suffer from some of the same problems flying at Mach 3?? (I don't know the top speed or altitude)

Or borrow an F16 or one of the other 'super jet fighters' to fly really high in to the atmosphere and then launch a smaller rocket in to a shallow orbit for testing?

Yeah I know, I'm a US guy, but surely the EU and or Israel and other countries have similar capabilities without going all Polaris on us.

OCZ promising USB 3 desktop SSD

Ian Michael Gumby
Thumb Up

1TB of SSD? Not too bad a price....

Sure, your average gamer couldn't afford it.

But even with a 3.5 form factor per drive, a 2U high server could contain 4 drives for a small raid subsystem and then also have additional 2.5" disk(s) for a swap drive (if necessary).

This would be ideal for some businesses that need a high performing, small footprint for their small office server, or for some specialized database driven applications.

If you didn't want to use raid, you'd have 4TB+ in a small box that could be used in a private cloud.

Definitely a plus, not to mention that it would probably save energy over the life of the drive.

Google Chrome OS - do we want another monoculture?

Ian Michael Gumby
Grenade

@AC Re Thin Clients don't fly...

When I read the article I was going to post a big yawn because McNealy and Larry was already here 10+ years ago.

But the big difference between then and now is that there is more bandwidth available. (Read Cheap Broadband), WiFi and WiMax for wireless connectivity exist today when they didn't yesterday.

And then there's this guy called Moore who has this 'law'... ;-) Yes, today's hardware is x^4 more powerful than when Larry and Scott pushed their idea.

So yeah, Google didn't invent this idea, they just applied existing/old ideas that were ahead of their time.

It will be interesting to see if someone hacks their distro and releases their own distro that will allow certain traffic to be filtered and or encrypted.

I mean heck when you use Google Docs, you store your document on google. How secure is it? But what happens if your document isn't auto saved back to google and the only copy on google is encrypted?

I wonder if google will then 'outlaw' such a distro and refuse to communicate with it.

The point is that thin clients may fly in certain situations, just that I don't trust Google.

Microsoft co-founder battles cancer

Ian Michael Gumby

Sorry to hear that...

I think that the survival rate for Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma is a bit higher than what the article states. There are a couple of different types of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and if caught early enough, very treatable.

Googlebooks re-deal won't let orphans go

Ian Michael Gumby
FAIL

Too man cowards don't get it.

The author doesn't decide if the book stays in print or not. Its the publisher. If you can't continue to sell enough copies, the book falls out of print.

Many books are still under copyright protection but are out of print. They still have value...

Google is essentially asking for the courts to grant them rights to negotiate the $$$ for reproducing and violating the copyrights unless the author specifically opts out.

The compensation is being negotiated by a guild which may or may not represent them and if they don't object, then the author is screwed unless he already has $$$ to hire attorneys and fight this.

In short, the agreement should be opt-in. Thus if google wants to include the book in their collection, Then the burden of tracking down the orphan work's author is on them. Unless they can find him/her or their estate and get their permission, then they can't copy/reproduce their works without it being a copyright violation. The burden is on Google because they are the ones who are attempting to profit from this. And note, google is doing this because they believe they can profit from this.

If the author is not a member of the guild and they did not explicitly give the guild the right to negotiate on their behalf, then the guild does not have the rights and google would obtain the rights through adverse possession. What makes this worse is that once the agreement goes in to effect, then the clock starts ticking.(Statute of Limitations) Don't know how long, but my guess is that the author or their estate would then have 3 years to object once the deal is done. After that, Google is in the clear. No one else has the same rights unless they want to go through the same exercise.

In short, Google would be using the law to legally still rights not given to them.

IMHO, the US Library of Congress should be doing this, not a private company.

Of course, if the US government wanted to, they could probably snatch this away from google.

:-)

Massive fail because behind the software patents, here's another way the law can screw the honest citizen.

Microsoft admits Win 7 tool violated GPL

Ian Michael Gumby
Grenade

@ Not Likely...

Didn't you know that many lawyers believe that unless you tell a lie under oath, its not really a lie. ;-)

That is, they didn't make a 'mistake' until they got caught.

You do know that Bill Gate's parents are both lawyers, right? Kind of says it all, considering Microsoft's tactic is to fight the charges, making money while in court, and then paying a fine which is much less than their revenues. ;-)

With respect to the 22% of commercial code containing GPL... its possible. But do you really think that those who embed GPL code honestly don't know that they are doing it, or are they admitting that when they did it, they didn't think they were breaking the law, or that they knew they were breaking the law, but just that they didn't think they'd get caught. ;-)

EU 'optimistic' Oracle will see reason on MySQL

Ian Michael Gumby
Boffin

Some people need a free clue...

First, Oracle doesn't scale massively. If it or other RDBMs did, you wouldn't see Hadoop/HBase.

But that's not the point.

If you look at the now massive software/hardware companies, ie Apple, Microsoft, IBM and HP, you can see a couple of different things. (Note: you could probably add other massive companies but the point holds true)

IBM - Hardware/Software (Infrastructure Only)/Services

HP - Hardware/Software (Infrastructure Only)/Services

Microsoft - No core Hardware/Software(OS and applications only on OS with some cross over to Mac, and some Infrastructure)

Apple - Hardware( Desktop, some server(s), Consumer products)/Software (OS and some desktop apps)

Now take a look at Oracle w Sun

Hardware / Software (OS, Infrastructure, Applications) / Services (Not as deep as IBM or HP)

The point is that an Oracle/Sun combo will put Oracle in to a dominant position which can block competition. (Oracle Financial/PeopleSoft on Oracle RDBMS on Sun w Oracle's webservers/app servers) You need a webserver, you have Oracles. You need a database, you have Oracles. You need hardware you have Oracle(sun).

With respect to IBM, you don't have an accounting package. You do have a services group which resells Sun and Oracle products and partners with application providers. Mention Monopoly and IBM jumps scared.

By creating a Sun/Oracle merger, you are creating yet another monopoly player. This is why you need to not let the deal go through.

But hey! What do I know? I kinda liked the idea of Cisco buying Sun. ;-)

-G

PS. Microsoft? Already named a monopoly. Only playing nice with Linux because if they didn't, they would be broken up, which is something they don't want to happen. Do you think their SQLServer could survive as a standalone product/company?

MS patent looks just like Unix command, critics howl

Ian Michael Gumby
FAIL

You cant blame the USPO

Yes, I said it.

They didn't make the laws, they just get stuck with them.

And they are not software engineers with 20+ years of experience.

You want prior art, you have not just sudo but also su. This is Unix. You want to go back the Vaxen days and RSTS, you had the same thing.

So the concept isn't new, and its obvious.

A GUI prompt? Try running Yast from a non-root account on SuSE linux.

OSX? Its got a Mach micro kernel at the heart of it. (Gee, didn't Jobs start a company called NeXT? Didn't it get bought by Apple when Jobs returned to take control of Apple?)

But I digress. The point is that in the world of software and OSs, there is so much out there, so much that may have been developed in house and not released to the public, that you can almost always find prior art. The problem is that you have to know where to look. The patent grunts don't always know and with the whole 'business process' argument, they're swamped with people trying to get patents on ridiculous things.

The US Supremes should get their collective heads out of their collective arses and solve this problem once and for all.

A fail not for the article, but for American Law!

SAP slams Oracle Sun's control of Java

Ian Michael Gumby
FAIL

C'mon SAP...

Not that I'm a Sun or Oracle fanboi, but this is clearly SAP stomping and making noise in an effort to show why the EU should block the merger.

While I do agree that the EU and The US DoJ should block the deal has nothing to do with control of Java, but that unlike IBM and HP, Oracle has gotten in to the apps while HP and IBM didn't.

Going in to hardware would be pushing the limit.

Of course to be honest, I'd much rather prefer to see Oracle drop Sun and then have Cisco pick them up. That would be a much better fit, IMHO.

FAIL because SAP is over playing their hand.

Asus waves farewell to (laptop) fans

Ian Michael Gumby
FAIL

Where's my Grid computer?

Yeah, I'm dating myself here...

The grid laptop system developed back in circa '83-84 time frame didn't have a fan.

So going fan-less is been possible for the past uhm 25 years or so.

Nothing new here except that if you're drinking coffee and using the laptop, you're going to be in for one hell of a surprise when your cat spills your cup of coffee on your keyboard!

BAE mounts the Last Charge of the Light Cavalry

Ian Michael Gumby
Grenade

@cphi

Not quite.

The Egyptians brought in Soviet SAM sites and that effectively nullified air superiority of the Israelis.

The point some are trying to make is that land armor is 'outdated' because of air superiority in terms of jets and more importantly 'tank killers' like the Apache Longbow and the Warthog (A-10).

However, that assumes a doctrine that may not fit current urban combat where you need some form of armor to support skirmishes.

Non-Latin web addresses approved

Ian Michael Gumby
Thumb Up

@Email...

Dude!

This is a great thing.

Since I don't know anyone who'd be contacting my domain(s) using non Latin characters, it makes it easier to block.!

From an international perspective, the domains will stick to the Latin characterset.

From an 'in country' where the language isn't based on the Latin-1 char set, it makes for easier adoption of the internet.

So its really a good thing. Maybe then they'll understand the spam and phishing problems.

Can you see it now? 419ers sending their con's in Russian?

Phishing attacks against Russian and Chinese banks?

Maybe then their governments will crack down on organized crime operating from their countries. ;-)

Dell chief stuffs data center into suitcase

Ian Michael Gumby
Pint

Yawn...

Check out : http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/1026/SYS-1026TT-IBXF.cfm

Super Micro put 2 dual socket machines in a single unit high rack.

You could build a case around that, and in the top, put in a monitor that swivels out when the case is open and leave room for a keyboard to be stashed away too.

The interesting thing is that if you were to virtualize the servers, you could create 20 'virtual' servers easily. (10 per physical server). Note: I believe CRN (Computer Reseller News) ran an article on being able to create up to 18 virtual servers running Microsoft. So 10 virtual servers should be easy, either Microsoft or Linux. With 8 SATA/SAS hot swap (4 bays per server card), you could put 4TB raw disk per server or a total of 8TB raw space in the case. Oh and 48GB of memory...

Of course this would cost a bit more than $2,000.00, however, it would truly be a data center in a briefcase.

(And yes, I want one, however my wife keeps spending me in to the poor house! Or was that pour house? :-)

-G

Big Blue union calls for probe of all IBM execs

Ian Michael Gumby
Grenade

Skewed or skewered?

Look,

Lets face it. One could investigate all of the top execs at IBM for unethical or potentially illegal behavior. And guess what. If you dig deep enough, you will find something.

In order to get that high in the company you had to have done something unethical. Its their corporate culture.

This is why there's a thing that IBM calls 'white space' where the customer's mantra is 'anybody but IBM'.

Hey! Its easy to pick on IBM. But remember Google! They came out with their mantra of 'do no harm.' Er yeah right. And do you now trust them?

Free download turns BlackBerry into remote bugging device

Ian Michael Gumby
WTF?

I don't get it...

Ok, call me silly.

You download an app that when an incoming call comes in and the phone number matches one of the selected numbers, the phone turns on its speaker?

Hmmm. ok, so let me get this straight... I'm talking on the phone and I'm not going to notice the speakerphone going on?

Adam Curtis uncovers the secrets of Helmand

Ian Michael Gumby
FAIL

Re "Hearts and Minds"

I think that this is probably the most over used quote and the most misunderstood.

I think that you have to look at all of the 20th Century history to understand the psychology of the 50's and 60's where the US adopted a plan of nation building. This apparently is something the author of the program didn't do.

If you want to see it successfully done, look at the Marshall plan implemented in Japan ('45).

The real problem with Afghanistan is that when the UN troops ousted the Taliban, they went overboard and implemented their ideals of what the culture should be.

Had they kept to the basics I think things would have been different.

IT contractors aghast as FSA evicts self-cert mortgages

Ian Michael Gumby
Grenade

re: 'Self Cert' Fine 'No Doc' Bad!

AC,

The 'No Doc' is a self cert, just a different name in the states. They're also called 'low doc'.

We're not talking about a 100% loan or 95% loan. We're talking about a refi, or a loan where you're putting down more than 20%.

Heck, I've lived in my house for 10 years now. If I wanted to refi, where I have roughly 50% of the house paid off. (Depending on valuation) I still couldn't refi.

Trust me when I say that there are legitimate reasons why you would want a low doc / no doc loan. Oh and I should mention that you do pay a bit higher on the rates for those loans. The problem is that they are also the easiest to commit fraud. That's the real kicker. Mortgage fraud is part of the problem that is being addressed.

Ian Michael Gumby
FAIL

They're called 'low doc' or 'no doc' mortgages...

Its unfortunate, but even if you can prove that you've never been late or missed a mortgage payment, show that you have enough equity in stocks/bonds, plus a high (700+) credit score, you can still be denied a mortgage.

The issue is that yes, its easy for the mortgage option many 'self employed' IT workers and entrepreneurial types have relied on to put a roof over our heads is now a thing of the past.

In a weak economy, and you're off contract for 5 months or longer, you're now going to be ding'd. And the rates which used to compensate for those down months, well... they're a thing of the past.

Looks like its time to quit IT and get in to law and politics. No shortage of lawyers here in the states, and while they're seeing cut backs, its not as bad as the IT Sector... ;-)

-G

IBM wrings more profits out of declining Q3

Ian Michael Gumby
FAIL

IBM will face trouble in 2010...

"Outsourcing is clearly not only a good business, but good for business, as Big Blue has been shifting big chunks of its support and supply chain operations overseas for the past several years."

In simple terms, this is a sign of the downward spiral and its only a short term trick to fudge the earnings numbers.

What happens when a lot of the outsourcing deals are up for renewal?

The customers of IBM watch and see how IBM is increasing margins by shifting the work overseas. Thus when the contract ends or is up for renegotiation, the customer will crush IBM's margins and negotiate for better terms. This will put more pressure on IBM to increase margins in a declining business and there will be further decline in revenue.

Note, that that is the outsourcing business. With respect to moving operations overseas to lower cost centers... Well what happens when you need a deal done and the back office staff is out of the office because of the time zone shift? Not good.

In short, it looks good for the current quarter so Sam and friends get their options. Longer term... IBM is going to hurt and hurt big time.

Its not just hitting the numbers but how you hit the numbers. You can get anorexic but at some point its going to kill you.

Financial firms face tax bill on outsourcing arrangements

Ian Michael Gumby
Thumb Up

jere,y3 you've got it backwards...

Will this push jobs back to the UK? Maybe. It depends.

The key issue is that if they outsource 'back office' functions to a different country, then they will be responsible for the vat on those services.

Using an example of a company outsourcing back office functions to India where the salaries are a fraction of their UK employees, the company would now be liable for VAT on those services.

Note that this is outsourcing. I don't think it deals with a global corp with operations in multiple countries.

So that deal where some company outsources a function to IBM who uses resources in India, there will no longer be tax savings. The company or IBM will now face the VAT.

Will this bring jobs back to the UK? It depends on the cost of labor in the other country and the amount of the VAT. If the cost savings don't justify the head aches, then the jobs will be done locally.

IBM, Microsoft, HP named nimblest negotiators

Ian Michael Gumby
Black Helicopters

The secret to IBM's success....

Is their SSM (Solution Selling Methodology). If you're in sales, you'll want to go through this course and learn it.

The key is to align your goals to your customer's goals and to ascertain if there's a problem. (And there always is.) Then you need to have the ability to align your products to solve the customer's problem. If you can do that, make your competitors column fodder, you'll win the deal.

The biggest problem with IBM is also their success. IBM is viewed as successful negotiators in that they build relationships with their customers. So they become farmers and not hunters. You need to be both.

There's more to this and it gets in to the culture of IBM.

And yes, I escaped from the borg. ;-)

-G

Ellison whips out his Sparc TPC-C test

Ian Michael Gumby
FAIL

Someone needs to talk to the right people at IBM...

"But in practice, IBM has also announced its own clustering technologies for online transaction processing--that would be the DB2 PureScale extensions for DB2 running on AIX atop Power-based servers announced last week and shipping in December, and a similar AIX-Power cluster called the Smart Analytics System announced in late July that is tuned for data warehousing and analytics on mountains of data."

Hmmm.

When IBM bought Informix, they bought 3 database platforms.... IDS 7.x , IDS 9.x, and XPS (8.x).

XPS was the data warehouse platform which was a shared nothing distributed RDBMS model.

XPS is still available to customers and rumor has it that there are still customers running XPS.

Why IBM refuses to recognize that they own Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) and that its for sale, is beyond me. There's a certain retailer based in Arxxxxs that runs IDS in all of their stores and they are controlled by a small team. (Rumor has it at 8 man team of DBAs for 15K database servers.)

I guess they want to keep it a competitive sekret.

Rate this a fail, not just because Oracle is yet again playing with the numbers, but also IBM for not recognizing IDS and XPS.

Coin-sized nuclear isotope battery minted

Ian Michael Gumby
Thumb Up

A cell battery lasting a month?

Not really long enough, if the life of the product is roughly 2 -3 years.

Plus the issue is if the battery can be recycled to cut down on waste.

Definitely a good thing!

Oh and Steve Evans... An American penny is 1 cent. But just because the Brits have a penny or pence, doesn't mean that its the only currency that can use that name. Take the dollar. There's the USD, Australian Dollar, Zimbabwe Dollar (worth much less than your penny) etc ...

Visa gives merchants crypto card security guidelines

Ian Michael Gumby
FAIL

While any improvement is security is nice, this misses the boat!

Look,

Until you lock down the database with field level encryption and stronger access auditing, then moving outward to the web/external interface, you will never be secure enough to breathe easily.

I rate this a fail because its meant to give the consumer a false sense of security.

Royal Mail lawyers demand closure of postcode lookup site

Ian Michael Gumby
Thumb Up

It makes sense...

These two clowns created a business of hitting the UK's post office for postal code look ups.

This means that every time you hit one of their sites, they're hitting someone else's database causing a lot of traffic and 'cost' that is not a benefit of the post office or the customers using their site.

So the UK post office is correct in shutting this shitheads down.

With respect to Google or your other map companies, they maintain their own database of postal codes. (By this I mean addresses.)

I could go in to more detail of the algo used, but I might get shot. ;-)

The point is that if these two morons used their own database then the post office wouldn't have shut them down.

The North Face trips over The South Butt

Ian Michael Gumby

North Face in a 'Catch-22'.

The problem is that under the trademark laws, North Face must vigorously defend their trademark against all potential 'impostors' else face the loss of the their trademark.

IANAL, so I don't know if sending a nasty letter threatening a lawsuit and then getting the other party to say "No we're not infringing" is enough to satisfy as a 'defense' of their trademark.

Kinda of sucks to be NorthFace right now. BTW, I swear by their products. They work and NorthFace has a great repair policy.

US spontaneous human combustion raygun video released

Ian Michael Gumby
Black Helicopters

Why a laser?

Simple: Because in space, no one can hear you scream. ;-)

If you don't get it, then you've never thought about the velocities and distances space warfare will occur. And yes, while we are not yet at the point of cheap economical space travel, space based weapons are an issue today and will become more of an issue tomorrow.

On a more positive note, this might also be used as a tool to clean up space debris, which too is a very dangerous problem. Ok, maybe not this chemical laser, but I also believe that there is work on a solid state laser too? ...

With respect to the use of a laser on earthbound targets... You have a laser traveling at the speed of light, so the target is always in the line of sight. (No need to lead the target, no need to worry about wind drift ...) Of course not a cheap way to kill a target but that will change in the future.

Oracle cuts database tags for Sparc T2+ servers

Ian Michael Gumby

Interesting price war..

I guess IBM will now have to cut their prices for DB2 and IDS on AIX boxes to keep up with Oracle.

Its important to note the following:

"The Sparc T2 chip has eight cores, with eight threads per core, and includes integrated 10 Gigabit Ethernet links on the chip; it is available for single-socket machines."

Just because a core has 8 threads per core, it doesn't mean that the performance of Oracle on the chip will increase significantly or that it can be tuned to take advantage of the extra thread.

The current round of database designs are not parallel enough to take advantage of these extra threads. While Sun wants to say that a core w 8 threads is really like 8 virtual cores or 4 virtual cores, that doesn't translate to 8 times or 4 times the performance boost over a core and a single thread/ double thread.

There would have to be a major overhaul of Oracle to really scale and take advantage of these cpu advantages. Until more of the major chip vendors move to a similar architecture, there is little incentive for a major RDBMS house to make the effort to change the infrastructure to take advantage of these chip advances.

In short, you may be better off purchasing a cheaper cpu and bring down the cost per transaction, than spending $$$ for the additional horsepower you can't use.

Maybe this is why they're cutting their prices?

Nokia carves out Qt future

Ian Michael Gumby
Thumb Up

This is actually a good thing. A very good thing...

If you can abstract the presentation layer from the underlying OS, you then have more portability across multiple platforms.

While the reporter points to games, thing back to the phones themselves. You have a wide range of PDA, tablets, netbooks, and the phone itself.

Considering that if you have a Garmin map device, if you add a phone, what do you have?

A pda like the N810, even limited in performance, you add a phone and you've got a good investment. (Add in a blue tooth headset that displays caller id, (Nokia has one) and one that can do voice recognition, and you've set up a system where the bulk of the phone is in your purse(ladies), backpack (student and geek workers) or briefcase or jacket pocket.

The reason I add in netbooks is that you have the same thing as a large PDA. Just add in a phone, GPS, and you've got a larger PDA that may be easier to write e-mails or handle spreadsheets on the go.

You won't see a convergence of the physical hardware, but you'll see a convergence of apps and features of the hardware like GPS, Pin camera, radio and then the 3/4G kit.

It seems Nokia is learning.

Ballmer says Big Blue hands in too few pies

Ian Michael Gumby
Jobs Horns

Let me get this straight...

Microsoft, a company who's founder is a son of two lawyers and who's business model is to create a monopolistic position in one area and use its dominant position to enter and dominate other areas of technology. In part thumbs their noses at the law, spending billions on lawyers and settlements, viewing at a cost of doing business ... is trying to give IBM lessons on how to succeed?

Don't get me wrong, there are many things wrong with IBM. But IBM since the threat of being called a monopoly in the 70's has always been shy of litigation. Especially whenever the other party starts to scream 'monopoly' loud enough in a room full of the 'press'. ;-)

Do ya see the picture?

IBM is the borg. They do glum on to anything that they think will make them a buck. They do have a philosophy that the bulk of their software sold are the tools that lie underneath their BP's products, and they sell the services of their own products and their competitors products. Anything that doesn't work out.. they ditch.

IBM has other problems but listening to Balmer blathe on... isn't one of them. Thank god.

Maybe its Microsoft's key to success moving forward. ..."Sorry your honor, but we're just being competitive. Who cares if we violated the law, everyone else in our industry does and we were justified because we have to remain competitive..." Yeah that's the tick. Microsoft is *less* evil because IBM is evil, Google is evil. and Apple, with the must have devices that randomly explode in your pocket ... well that's just *evil* too!

Google shuts down bank snafu Gmail account

Ian Michael Gumby
FAIL

This reporter must have been drunk when he wrote this...

"In any event, the account of an innocent Gmail user has been shutdown - a clear violation of the user's constitutional right to communicate. And whatever Google divulged, the case shows - yet again - that whatever the web giant's intentions, it can be compelled to release user info. ®"

What BS.

1) Read Google's ToS.

2) The gmail account is free, so what damages can you claim?

3) Google could have divulged the user's name, address, etc to the bank besides shutting down the account.

4) Yeah, the data was probably read, transferred, etc... but the law still requires the bank to make a best effort at minimizing the risks of identity theft.

5) And *shock*. A US company can be compelled to release information under a court order.

I wonder if the author knows what LE subpoena is used for...

Utter fail on the part of the Left wing pinko commie author who probably failed their civics class.

Apple's move to kill Hackintosher suit denied

Ian Michael Gumby

@MacRat

I haven't seen the court documents, have you?

While sure, we as software developers know that no product is going to be 100% by release date and that dates get pushed back, I believe that there were statements made by Apple that would suggest to the judge that they delayed the shipping of Snow Leopard to keep it out of the case.

If you went on Pacer, you might be able to find them.

Regardless,their argument could have held merit, but their actions may have prejudiced the judge.

I'm not sure that Psystar's argument for their lawsuit holds water but IANAL.

Union predicts retirement surge over IBM pension changes

Ian Michael Gumby
FAIL

@AC Why this is happening...

Because it looks nicer to say the bloke took early retirement as we moved his job offshore. ;-)

Seriously the issue is that workers who have been with the company for a long time have had great benefits that companies are finding out that they don't have to provide with the newer workforce. So as the mentality of the worker shifts from putting in 25+ years at the same old job to putting in time and moving out to move up, the longer term pension benefits are worth less to this more mobile workforce.

The sad truth is that IBM is cutting corners everywhere all in the name of better margins. The BoD is only concerned with their fiduciary responsibility and this translates to short term fiscal gains. When Sam retires, you should cash out and run away from this company.

Ammo rationing at Wal-Mart as panic buying sweeps US

Ian Michael Gumby

You don't shoot much, do you?

"*Most kinds of .45 have unexceptional muzzle energy and are big and fat, giving fairly poor performance even against light, flexible body armour. It was the standard US military pistol round for a long time and many diehards still swear by it, but people who carry guns for a living - cops, soldiers, criminals - are mostly using other calibres these days. (Some spec-ops troops still use .45, as the bullet is subsonic and thus can be effectively silenced.)"

What you wrote isn't completely correct.

The reason why you don't see a lot of people carrying .45s is that the round is big and the kick from firing the round has to be mastered. You want to be able to hit your target with each shot fired.

Its easier to teach a person to shoot a 9mm because it has less recoil. If you're not trained properly you will flinch with the recoil of the .45 and this will in turn cause you to be less accurate. Also a typical .45 has a magazine capacity at 8 rounds or less. A 9mm like a glock can have a 15+1 rd capacity. So you can carry more bullets. These two facts are the reasons why police and military forces switched to smaller rounds.

With respect to 'subsonic' ammo, any round can be hand loaded to be subsonic, however this will limit your down range energy delivered to the target.

While there aren't any new laws slated, that doesn't mean that there won't be any new taxes on ammo. Besides the day after Obama won the election, many gun lovers went out and bought new guns. ;-)

Oh and BTW, even if the round doesn't penetrate the kevlar vest, if it is large enough and has enough energy, hitting you in the right place can still cause you to die.

Firms still struggling with data security standard

Ian Michael Gumby
FAIL

Risk based approach?

This is pretty much bs.

While the bigger companies are easier targets because you get more in return for the risk of the hack, its the smaller companies that pose more of a threat because the odds are that the hack goes unnoticed and harder to trace.

The point is that you have to have a strict standard and enforce it equally. Its the cost of doing business. I would only suggest that you have a sliding scale of the fines based on the size of the company. As to not encrypting the SS# and other significant data, its because they are used as keys to get to the data. If you want to encrypt everything, you'll need to find databases with hardware encryption support. Currently this is only possible with IBM's IDS database, and possibly DB2. It means that your indexes and tables are encrypted. Not an easy task.

The other problem isn't just encryption but also website security. The majority of website developers borrow code from other sources (read untrusted sources) and put it in to their sites.

This is probably more of a risk than attacking the database directly. This happens more to smaller firms that can't afford dedicated staff....

Service management: A million jobs or a job with a million parts?

Ian Michael Gumby
Boffin

Cowboys exist...

Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that Pete's right about a 10 min fix. But that doesn't mean that being a 'cowboy' is wrong.

There are many of us who've been in the IT industry far too long and have mastered multiple roles, including the business side of the shop. These are your IT cowboys. People who may not be 'expurts' in a specific role, but understand how the pieces go together and how to get things done, and when, if necessary, when to cut corners.

Not everyone who claims to be a cowboy is a cowboy. There's a lot of posers. I tend to say they suffer from SVS or Slicon Valley Syndrome. (You brits can find your equivalent ). The point is that there are some people who feel that the close their proximity to Silicon Valley, the better their skill sets are. Those are the posers you have to watch out for.

The true cowboy? He's the type who works hard, plays hard and no matter what role he wants to fill, he's always going to want to be technical.

He's the guy whom you don't always believe in what he says, even though over time, you're going to realize he's right more often than not.

He's the guy you want on your team, even if he's not the lead architect or developer.

The one skill he brings to the table that you want but don't realize it yet is that he can 'fill the gaps'. And that boys and girls will save your ass in the end.

The IT shops are very complex these days. Because its the one place where if the IT shop fails, it can impact the entire company in a very negative way.

Nokia brings Braille to SMS

Ian Michael Gumby

They already have text to speech

I've got it on my E90.

US Spec Ops operates psywar websites targeted at UK

Ian Michael Gumby
Thumb Up

I think you guys are missing the point...

If you haven't figured it out, if you're reading this, you're not the target audience.

I am a little disappointed that it took this long for the US and British military/government wonks to figure out that they need this.

You have to look at it from this perspective.

Al Queda et al are spreading their 'message' via the web where they encourage recruits.

Psych Ops should have ramped up a set of counter sites years ago to counter the message from these so called Jihadists.

Its all part of winning the hearts and minds of the brainless twits who are willing to become terrorists because they don't even grok their own religion.

Its actually a good thing.

Oh and while I'd love to see the US military taking over the Page 3 stuff, I don't think that their targeted audience would be interested in that sort of thing. :-(

(Yet another reason to call these terrorists a bunch of mindless twits. What red blooded guy wouldn't want to look at and objectify a beautiful woman? Besides being gay?)

Oracle, Sun speed-launch Exadata V2

Ian Michael Gumby

@pierce... RIF...

Reading is Fundamental.

Can you say 2TB 2.5" SATA drives? And yes, they exist.

There are two ways to look at the benchmark ... 1) Biggest Bang, unlimited budget. That is for the highest volume of TPMs that one can pump out. Or...

2) The biggest bang for your buck. That is the cheapest cost per transaction per min.

I think that if you designed your disks w an SSD on the controller, (Adaptec for example), you can use SATA and still get decent performance due to the page caching on SSD.

And to the AC, seems that you either work for IBM or were an ex Oracle guy. ;-)

-G