* Posts by David Dawson

467 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Jul 2008

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Billionaire baron Bill Gates still mourns Vista's stillborn WinFS

David Dawson

Re: XP Search Function

It doesn't work, and as far as I know, it never did.

It lies to you by not really searching in a meaningful way, and then gives you a puppy to talk to instead of the answer.

I always ended up searching using textpad or something like that.

JBoss is juicy, but Vert.x could bring sexy back to Red Hat

David Dawson

How does rollout of openstack

Affect the use of JBoss?

To generalise somewhat openstack gives you VMs, it doesn't give you application stacks. That would be a PaaS job, like cloudfoundry (vmware) or openshift (Red Hat).

Either of those could (and indeed, probably should) be put onto something like openstack or vsphere.

They provide full stacks in the way that it is implied that openstack does. In fact, OpenShift, from Red Hat, is based on JBoss.

GNOME project picks JavaScript as sole app dev language

David Dawson
FAIL

Re: Worst decision after the Gnome 3 pratfall.

Well good for you, you went off on one and didn't bother to read the comment I was replying to.

I've used Java, and javascript, for more than a decade, I know what it is, Java is good at what it is, although there are now better languages for particular domains that run on the JVM.

JavaScript has not been finished yet, was added to over time by competing groups/ companies and is missing some fundamental things, like a sane modularisation system.

However, that is irrelevant, as I was actually, in fact, replying this :

"Guess this will be like Java, where adequate and usable languages will emerge over time (after much slaving, moans, lost money and time) that compile down to / can still be transformed into the one primary party-decreed big-brotherly language where their proponents can still say "but technically it's still X" without causing Papal writs against heretics to be issued."

Thanks for reading, or not.

David Dawson

Re: Worst decision after the Gnome 3 pratfall.

Java, the language, is actually pretty good. Excellent IDE/ tool support, well understood proper ways to do things.

In any case, the other jvm languages almost all compile straight to JVM bytecode now, which is unrelated to java the language.

Introducing the Open Source Rookie of the Year... Whoa, it's Microsoft

David Dawson

Re: Obvious troll is obvious.

WebKit and jskit are forks of their KDE equivalents. So they didn't originate at apple, but have been improved there.

Here we go again: New NHS patient database plan sets off alarm bells

David Dawson

This happens already. My local hospital reads data from the local GPs for patient information.

US Dept for Homeland Security shafted by trivial web bug

David Dawson
Facepalm

obligatory xkcd ref

http://www.xkcd.com/932/

Hm, nice idea that. But somebody's already doing it less well

David Dawson

This echoes one of the major differences between Common and Roman law.

In Common law, everything is assumed to be legal, unless a law is made to curtail it. In Roman law, the opposite is true. This is a gross generalisation, but it points to an alternate solution.

Instead of the (politically 'left wing') response of centralizing control to fix a perceived issue, the solution could be framed by asking the question, why is there even a law about this in the first place?

This is what I take from the article, instead of tweaking the edges of the taxi (or whatever) monopoly, shouldn't we periodically question whether it should even exist at all?

Dutch script kiddie pwns 20,000 Twitter profiles

David Dawson

Are you completely sure about that .... ?

Scientists build largest ever computerized brain

David Dawson
Facepalm

Re: "This is nothing like as quick as the human brain,"

I think that we should include Brian in the conversation directly, if you want to start comparisons.

Boffins BREAK BREAD's genetic code: Miracle of the loaves

David Dawson

Re: Colour me unimpressed

I am the 99%.

Now make me a sandwich.

Global warming still stalled since 1998, WMO Doha figures show

David Dawson

Re: Forever is a long time

Ooh, I know this one!

"If man survives for as long as the least successful of the dinosaurs—those creatures whom we often deride as nature's failures—then we may be certain of this: for all but a vanishingly brief instant near the dawn of history, the word 'ship' will mean— 'spaceship.'" - Clarkey.

And the dinosauruseruses were around for 160+ million years or so, versus a few hundred thousand for us.

But they are all dead now, like we all will be soon.

Oracle de-cloaks JavaScript Nashorn project

David Dawson

Re: "JavaScript is finding its way on to the server in particular, thanks to PHP"

Seems nonsense to me.

What has PHP got to do with Javascript in any way shape or form?

You may write a site using a JS front end and a PHP backend ... buts thats the only thing I can come up with, and that just ain't the same things as JS on the server, which is then properly discussed in the last bit of the article.

Google, Apple, eBay shouldn't pay taxes - people should pay taxes

David Dawson

Re: Results of the OECD are based on cross-country regressions

Correlation does not equal causation, certainly.

However, that does not mean that correlations should be discarded.

A strong correlation between two things is indicative of a relationship, and could deserve further investigation to discover if there is, in fact, a causal link rather than just a statistical anomaly.

Restaurateur jailed for customer sex profile revenge plan

David Dawson

Re: And I thought the UK was bad?

The basic assumption under English law is that one citizen most certainly can prosecute another person and they go to prison. The police are employed as full time "good citizens", who spend their time doing it on our behalf.

----------

YES.

I get so annoyed with the term 'civilian police employees'. Everyone in the police is a civilian, some have warrant cards and wear uniforms. They are not the army, they are not a militia, therefore they are all civilian.

Patent trolling to go under anti-trust spotlight

David Dawson

Surely it's a question of degree? Even then, China's economy doesn't seem to be suffering too badly given their relatively extreme position.

---------

China has only just started to create its own IP. It has large corporations that manufacture, but they all grew up as outsource manufacturers, without their own patents, trademarks and the like.

They are starting to move towards that, and the Chinese government will be watching very closely. Observe over the next few years as China massively increases enforcement of intellectual property internally and externally as Chinese companies will actually make a profit from them doing so.

Naughty-step Apple buries court-ordered apology with JavaScript

David Dawson

Re: Stupid, stupid move.

The use of "ordered to" and especially "commanded to" sound a bit odd to me

------

Heh. That didn't sound odd to me at all, but we've obviously understood different things...

With my children, I tell them what to do, I'd be happy calling it command, and then i fully expect them to do what I tell them. If they don't, which is infrequently, I coerce them.

Based of the above description, you will still have no idea what I am like as a parent. How do I coerce? What do I tell them to do? It's too ambiguous, just like the previous statements.

This is really quite off topic now, but I personally get quite frustrated by the lazy, condescending, assumption that equates discipline with abuse, which is what is being implied above.

It devalues real abuse, in my opinion (there's the magic o weird, again!).

David Dawson
Trollface

Re: Stupid, stupid move.

On the other hand, if you need to YELL at your Son to get anything done is it any wonder he has no respect for you?

--

how did you make that leap?

is the OP a bad parent now in your opinion?

Well, guess what, your opinion is based on so little information that it is completely worthless, troll.

Apple brand channels hefty profits to iThing maker Foxconn

David Dawson

Re: Hefty Profits!!!???

I get 2.59% profit.

based on

"Foxconn has bagged NT$57.8bn ($1.98bn; £1.23bn) in net profit for the first nine months of the year and revenue of NT$2.23trn ($76.3bn, £47.4bn), up 21 per cent from last year."

$1.98bn for 9 months, over $76.3bn. Which is 2.59% profit.

Still not awesome margins, but I'd be happy with an extra billion in the bank to spend on beans.

Theresa May gets a smile out of Gary McKinnon at last

David Dawson

Re: "If only we were a sovereign nation capable of making our own decisions...."

She did also set out a plan to introduce a 'forum bar' (I think thats the term). Where a judge in an extradition trial will be able to decide that it would be better to prosecute here, and so that the extradition is denied on those grounds. This isn't currently the case. The implication being that this would've applied in the McKinnon case.

Assange chums must cough up £93,500 bail over embassy lurk

David Dawson
Facepalm

"which is recognised legally as Ecuadorian territory"

This is just wrong.

Embassies are not the sovereign territory of their operating state, and have never been recognised as such. The treaty that this flows from is the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961), and has been signed by almost all countries (this is how 'international law' works).

The clause in question is this : " .. The premises of a diplomatic mission, such as an embassy, are inviolate .."

This means the host country can't go in, by agreement. It does not give a piece of the hosts territory away to do with as the recipient chooses, which is what 'sovereign' means.

There is a legal agreement that UK officials won't go in without prior approval by the ambassador, but thats a very different thing from having sovereignty.

'It is absolute b*ll*cks that contractors aren't committed'

David Dawson

Mercenary

Contractors are mercenaries ... I certainly am, anyway.

And what's wrong with that?

I go to work to get money. I do a good job for it, and get paid appropriately. I don't go for personal fulfilment.

It makes me extremely easy to motivate. Just pay me, and I'll work hard. Don't screw me around, or I'll leave with no qualms.

So long as the relationship works, it continues, if it doesn't, then it doesn't, this works both ways, and I like that a lot.

I see this as a very honest and straightforward way of working, and its done me well for a long time.

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 review

David Dawson

Quad core is overkill when few applications are massively multi-threaded, just optimise your OS or stop using hooky interpreted Java code.

===

please understand the difference between interpreted code and a JIT bytecode compiler, otherwise don't bother commenting on this aspect, as you look a bit silly.

Boffins suggest orbital dust-up to combat climate change

David Dawson
Happy

Re: What in the name of ...

The image of the regal Cow as the apex predator of plants....

Very good, carry on.

Caching outfit Terracotta gives away freebie Java doritos

David Dawson
Meh

Re: Bullshit

Yup.

I wonder if they mean GC pauses. In certain circumstances with a very large heap you can see a GC pause of a minute or two every so often if you have a very large heap (say, the 30gb in the article) and it needs to be GCd. That is in certain circumstances though. At that level, you need to start understanding/ profiling your heap usage and tune the garbage collection.

The big selling point when I used the terracotta product before it was the ability to have memory in use larger than that available on any one server. So you could keep huge object graphs in memory, and they would be split across the cluster, and serialised to disk as a backup. It also propagated thread messaging across the cluster (wait()/ notify()). Very pretty. That was 3/ 4 years ago, no idea what this BigMemory thing is or if its related.

New benefits website at risk of hackers, no Plan B - ministers

David Dawson

Re: I am glowing with confidence

Butt?

David Dawson

Re: No plan B? Seriously?

I'm tired of people taking money from taxpayers and whining all the time about how hard they supposedly have it. You don't have to work for your money. You don't have to lift a finger for it so you don't have any right to say how it should be paid or even if it should be paid.

---

I truly hope you're never condemned to live a life of someone forced onto disability benefits. It generally means you're in pain all the time, or physically damaged. Whatever the case, its not a life you would have chosen.

As a society, we have decided to treat people who can't support themselves with respect, and to support them. Personally, I agree with this decision. The results are not perfect, and the methods are sometimes imperfect too, but they are much better than the alternative.

We live in a democracy, not a plutocracy. Those who pay taxes do not have the only say over what happens with the money.

So, sorry dude, you got it wrong.

Smartmobe Wi-Fi blabs FAR TOO MUCH about us, warn experts

David Dawson
Headmaster

Re: Not breaking the law

That's the problem with analogies.

A closer analogy for network interception would be If I created a duplicate of your house, tricked you into coming inside, then took photos of you in the shower.

Profs: Massive use of wind turbines won't destroy the environment

David Dawson
WTF?

Re: There seems to be a problem in the calculations

Tidal barrage - will interfere with migration patterns, generally screw around with the estuary causing many known and unknown effects.

Wind - I want a cup of tea when the wind is not blowing, got it! Uses significant amounts of rare earths in the generators, which are necessarily not the larger/ massively more efficient ones used in large power stations.

Hydro - probably the best understood, but still involves covering rather large areas of nature with a shiny new lake. Hence a very limited supply of useful locations.

Geo - Yay! Not enough locations available with current tech... but looks good as far as I can tell.

Solar - Very significant amounts of rare earths required. What to do in the night time?

--

There are huge engineering challenges to be met in building the above at the scales needed. Sourcing the required rare earths alone is going to be prohibitive at current costs.

It is not irrational to point this out.

Neither is it irrational to say that a toy power installation is not representative of a commercial scale installation. You can make a solar panel that works without any issues.

If a large country were to convert to solar/ wind (for example, although it holds for most renewable sources as they are currently understood) in earnest, then the minerals needed to manufacture them would run out almost immediately, causing large price spikes; as these minerals are shared with other industries, it would make electronics, motors and the like spike in price as well.

Then there's the more basic commodities like steel, concrete and the like. These are already in heavy demand due to economic development around the world. It is not clear that sufficient quantities are even available, let alone that they can be had at a price that makes the project economically viable.

It is not a simple, or straightforward, thing that is being proposed.

I have an issue with people looking 10 years down the road and saying that we will have to endure power cuts and rolling black outs. I refuse to accept that this is somehow reasonable; given how much warning we have, it simply isn't.

If that is the projection, then we cannot 'wait on XXX', we need to build power stations now, of any description, so long as they will generate power when it is required.

David Dawson
Thumb Down

Re: There seems to be a problem in the calculations

"When calculating the energy required, Page says we should assume a growth in energy use of 3x as the world's economies grow. He calls that "realistic"."

This is vastly more realistic that fantasising about energy consumption reducing. Its unlikely that energy consumption will drop in the developed world, and terribly unfair if it doesn't rise in the developing world. There are many times more people in the developing world... so, yeah, I'd say thats realistic.

"Then when calculating the GDP he says we should assume a "drastic" reduction in output because of those evil IPCC scientists."

Yes, that has been stated on more than one occasion that the most realistic way to drop CO2 emissions is to cut energy use. The two statements are in opposition, that's really the point. One is the demand, the other is what is going to happen. Guess which is which.

"Finally Page assumes that even when producing 4 million wind turbines there will be no economies of scale whatsoever, instead suggests we should "multiplying our $12tn cost figure a few times at the very least"."

The multiple was about including all the costs of building the infrastructure necessary to support the millions of turbines. Did you not see that? Economies of scale don't really exist in the way you seem to expect for building huge new road networks, electricity grids and so on. The technology is all there now and well refined, very little refinement economies to be had here, engineers could price out an implementation pretty well for all the support infrastructure.

There's problems in this article, but these ain't them.

First Irish-speaking virus holds bloke's computer to ransom

David Dawson
Happy

Re: Argh.. the G-word again :(

(c.f. Australian Rules Football, a similar riotous assembly that seems to have arisen from a dispute about wanting to play Rugby during a cricket match)

--

Thanks for the chuckle, I might need one less coffee to be functional now.

Windows Server 2012: Smarter, stronger, frustrating

David Dawson
Trollface

Re: I hate per core licences

Well more like if you were charged some kind of registration fee for being able to drive cars on the road, and if you had a more powerful/ bigger car, you paid more even though you don't particularly take up more space or go over the road more.

Yes, imagine if the government levied different levels of tax on more powerful cars! The tragedy....

So, just what is the ultimate bacon sarnie?

David Dawson
Happy

Re: I disagree

It's supposed to be a hangover cure. Ergo trying to per cure FRESH bread of any sort is out of the question under any circumstances.

------

That would be procure, as in, take great care to obtain. From the latin (etymonline.com) pro- ob behalf of, cure- curare, care for.

lesson ends.

Nice fresh brown bread, butter, ketchup, good thick smoked back bacon cooked till the edge is nice and crispy. Optionally add a goose egg for taste (yellowest damn yolk I've ever seen from a northumbrian goose). Needs to be a big sarnie to accommodate the egg, but oh so good.

We need a bacon sarnie icon.

'United States must renounce its witch-hunt against WikiLeaks'

David Dawson

Re: Straw man

I see no reason why Sweden couldn't give out a guarantee not to extradite him to the US, and simply return him to the UK after the trial (and punishment in case he's found guilty) has been completed.

=====

They'd be breaking their own legal obligations under treaties agreed. In the case of expulsion, I would expect that he'd go to australia. Why would the UK want him? Except maybe to prosecute him for jumping bail.

David Dawson

Re: Second time around.

This and all the other defences continually thrown up have been examined at length through the many court cases that have taken place before coming to this point.

Each one has been proven to be incorrect, ill conceived (based on confusing the swedish legal process with the UK or US one) or just wrong.

They are out to get him, yes, because he's accused of rape.

China could penetrate US with new huge missile

David Dawson
Headmaster

Admittedly, the gulf war was a while ago now... but they weren't protecting kuwait, they were protecting Israel, and the Saudi military bases.

Kuwait was the place they were about to invade...

As far as I remember, they did shoot down scuds, but tended to hit their engines rather than warheads, so, not really a big improvement when its flying over a city.

Their biggest success of the deployment was giving israel enough of a reason not to attack Iraq, which was the whole point of the scud attacks on israel, as it would've fractured the whole coalition and stopped the counter attack.

London Fire Brigade: This time we'll send the NEAREST fire truck

David Dawson

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

I suppose that could put out a really tiny fire that you put inside it?

Chinese man's six-ton balls save lives

David Dawson

Re: 300 patents?

No, no... they ignore other peoples patents. These are chinese ones, violate those and you'll talking to a nice gentleman from the PLA.

Why women won't apply for IT jobs

David Dawson
Facepalm

Re: Interesting

The adverts are very commonly put together by recruiters.

Many of them use them to filter down CVs based on technologies and what not mentioned, rather than trying to understand the content of it properly. It just leads to lying in CVs, or just listing things to get past the recruiter keyword filters, which is annoying.

On my own CV I've actually gone as far as to put a table at the start just full of technologies, languages and buzzwords for the recruiter to read. They don't tend to read the rest of the CV (I've checked).

Since I put that in I've invariably been given an interview, as its the choice of the recruiter in most places these days.

It annoys me that we all have to play this weird, sick game though.

Google asks YouTube commenters to stand up and be counted

David Dawson

Re: Big Brother's Fabian deception strategy

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

----

Nope, nothing about google doing whatever the hell it wants to in there. Thought not.

The first amendment to the US constitution is just that, the US CONSTITUTION. Nothing to do with me, as I live in the UK.

Secondly, it deals with the government, not commercial, or personal interactions. When you post on a google website, you sign a contract with them to get an account. Thats a private agreement, nothing to do with the government, and nothing to do with the 'first amendment rights'

FFS. get another tune.

Ofcom saves piece of 4G spectrum pie for '4th operator'

David Dawson

Re: Cui bono?

Where I live, it's really good, suburban east Manchester.

Central London, on the other hand, where I work, is really quite patchy.

Canary wharf and the city are really variable with frequent dropouts.

If they can calculate coverage like they could with 2g, maybe this will improve things? Dunno if that's the case.

iPhone 5 poised to trounce Android, devastate BlackBerry?

David Dawson
WTF?

Scale drawings of screens

.... er .... what?!?

Here's a rectangle. Here's another rectangle, slightly larger. Which is better...?

I don't get that question at all....

WikiWin: Icelandic court orders Visa to process WikiLeaks $$$

David Dawson

Re: NHS (hardcore pornography, Klu Klux Klan, and online gambling sites)

A&E : Accident and Emergency

If you have an emergency, go there.... the clue is in the name.

Similarly the regional eye hospitals all run emergency drop in centres. Ambulances will take you straight there if you have an eye problem, or you can walk in off the street. I've been to a couple of them now, they're really quite good at their jobs.

I'm not sure dental work is quite what we're discussing, it rarely kills you...

I, for one, am not saying american medicine is bad, far from it, so long as you can afford it, its great.

If you can't afford it though, you're in deep trouble. Many, many, people in the US can't afford it, dooming them to substandard care, or no care at all; which is sad.

David Dawson

Re: NHS (hardcore pornography, Klu Klux Klan, and online gambling sites)

It failed me, the one time in my life I had a real medical emergency that couldn't wait. Wouldn't even give me an emergency GP appointment for sooner than two and a half weeks ahead. Which is not what you want to hear when your eyesight has faded *very suddenly* to the point where things suddenly look dark, you can't sustain reading a book for more than a couple of lines, and you're bumping into people on the pavement.

========

good God! Surely A&E would be the pace to go for that kind of thing?

The somewhat harsh reality is that modern medicine is founded on statistical responses by the population at large to medical interventions, not individual responses; although this is starting to change a bit recently with tailored drugs and all...

Britain's stats are generally better than the US' with less money spent. In that sense, the nhs is no failure.

There's room for abject failure to individuals in both systems, and room for heroic success too... but the stats are what they are.

David Dawson
FAIL

Re: hardcore pornography, Klu Klux Klan, and online gambling sites

Oh, wait, that's right. He was a Progressive who wants the US to implement our own version of the British failed healthcare system.

===

Did you miss adding the joke icon? Or are you just badly informed?

The NHS hasn't failed by any reasonable measure. It costs a lot less than the US healthcare system, and is applied relatively evenly across the population. Life expectancy is greater under the NHS than in the US, and survival rates for many diseases are also higher, in most cases due to earlier intervention for people who couldn't have afforded their own care.

It has plenty of flaws, certainly, which are regularly rolled out and analysed in the press and society; but at least it doesn't leave people to die lingering deaths because they had to change jobs - "pre-existing condition, not covered.", were made unemployed, or simply couldn't afford the medicine they needed.

On Teddy, spot on. It really is quite disturbing the gross hypocrisy the US political establishment thrust on the UK in that regard. Maybe we should just unfriend them? ;-)

David Dawson
Facepalm

Re: hardcore pornography, Klu Klux Klan, and online gambling sites

"For thirty years the US allowed Noraid to collect donations to buy weapons that to protect their community from ethnic cleansing."

--

O grow up!

UK.gov to clear way for Britain's first SPACEPORT

David Dawson
Mushroom

Re: Meh regulation

Well... its more like what is permitted to fly in UK airspace. Its not a free for all now, provisions need to be made to allow rocket planes to fly/ land here.

Health & Safety regs have been widely misused and abused. They were originally intended for industrial settings where too many workers to getting squashed in machinery or ending up wading in molten steel.

It wasn't originally intended for office workers et al, but somehow its been applied everywhere...

On an airport though (with rockets!), it seems a good idea to have decent regs on on what is deemed to be safe... no?

All the rest though, yeah, absolutely!

Watch out, Apple: HTC ruling could hurt your patent income

David Dawson
Megaphone

I'm mostly speechless...

Chinese boffins build nuclear-powered deep-sea station

David Dawson

Re: technical

.. aren't they quite different sets of pressure vessels?

A nuclear reactor has high internal pressure and low external, a submersible is the reverse. Quite different engineering challenges. Eg, a bottle holding a fizzy drink can withstand quite high internal pressure, but its is very easily crushed by external pressure.

Conversely, I would fully expect a submarine with high internal pressure when put in space to pop like a balloon.

US ponders fibre link to Guantanamo

David Dawson
Go

Taking bets ....

... on how long it'll take the cubans to 'accidentally' drag an anchor over it.

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