Posts by h4rm0ny

Re: A great episode

>>"Not a clue what Dr. Who is about."

Then you may be on the wrong article.

Re: Fearless prediction.... number 3

>>"HMRC will come down on these small business's like a tonne of bricks - while continuing to allow Amazon, Talk Talk, Google, Vodaphone et al, to carry on as usual."

But that's the point of the exercise the town is carrying out. They are attempting to position themselves under the same protections these big players use as a means of highlighting the problem. It's a practical version of "if you argue this, then you have to include that".

Having read an article on this some of the local shopkeepers highlight how the tax avoidance affects competition. An independent café may not be able to afford to compete with Starbucks when the latter doesn't have to pay the same tax rate. That's what is motivating the town which has a very high proportion of independent shops to do this.

The government tries to create some special circumstances for these big players. But they can't outright legislate "Vodafone doesn't have to pay tax", they have to set up some criteria that Vodafone can fulfil but others can't. This town are manoeuvring to tick the same boxes. The town are happy for the government to "come down on them like a tonne of bricks". The aim is to catch the bigger players in the same shower of bricks.

Re: MySQL versus PostgreSQL comparison

>>>>"However, MySQL with MyISAM ran a lot faster."

>>"Actually, no, it very much isn't. Even on read-only loads InnoDB has been faster for well over a decade (since early MySQL 5.0 releases)."

I think you may have misunderstood my post. I said that MySQL with MyISAM ran faster than Postgres back in the early 2000's and that this is one of the reasons MySQL became the most popular free database.

Re: MySQL versus PostgreSQL comparison

Well... yes and no. The thing is, both MySQL and Postgres are free and open source. That creates overlap in their market spaces. In terms of using them, yes, Postgres is more reminiscent of Oracle than MySQL. But when you're setting up a service or starting a project, if you're looking at MySQL you can also look at Postgres.

In early days, Postgres was certainly the more robust and sophisticated database. By far, in fact. However, MySQL with MyISAM ran a lot faster. Which made it the DB of choice for the explosion of web forums and CMSs we got in the late '90s and early 2000's that wanted lots of cheap, fast read capability and really didn't care too much about strict data integrity or sophisticated features. Also MySQL had (and has) less of a learning curve. Neither is especially difficult, but MySQL will make smart guesses about what you mean with lots of forgiving defaults and multiple ways of doing things. You can slap on an autoincrement qualifier to a field and you don't have to understand sequences (no, serial is not quite the same); MySQL will default to making everything case-insensitive (just to be helpful) which can actually trip you up but is a great example of how MySQL takes an approach of "I know what the users will want...". Another great thing is to compare query plans between the two. MySQL will give you a basic summation that lets you look at the output and go: "hey, it's not using an index on that join, let's add one". Postgres will give you all the nuts and bolts and let you go: "hey, I wonder if this would run faster if I to set the from_collapse_limit differently here".

Now skip forward and MySQL has more sophistication than it used to (assuming you're using InnoDB and not MyISAM nowadays). Postgres in turn has improved dramatically in performance. For many cases you can use either. But MySQL still carries that legacy of its initial popularity and still has an easier learning curve.

But an easy learning curve can be a two-edged sword. Taking just that little bit longer to really understand Postgres reaps great benefits, imo. It is now performance-equivalent to MySQL InnoDB at the least and remains the more sophisticated of the two. By choice, I will work with Postgres, though often enough I'm called in to consult on MySQL systems and I'm fine with that.

But TL;DR: I think it's absolutely right to talk about comparisons between MySQL and Postgres. They service a lot of the same potential market.

I think Word vs. Notepad is over-doing the comparison. Not least because Notepad is fine for its purpose and people might take this to mean that Postgres is bloated with unnecessary features. It's not, it's a lean piece of machinery, very elegant, very solid. I would go more with something like Surface Pro vs. iPad Pro. And I'm really not attempting to kick off a fan-war with that analogy. I just think that people will know what I mean. Both great bits of hardware, overlapping somewhat in target market, both with plenty of great features. Just one is that little bit more coherent, capable and planned. The iPad Pro is maybe a little bit easier to pick and go "this is familiar" and start poking things, but after a day or two that advantage is gone but one still has a better kickstand and some extra capabilities. But either might be fine for your needs depending on what those are. "Notepad" is a little unfair, imo. MySQL is fine and very capable. It's just that I think Postgres is the more sophisticated and solid. It's what I would choose to build an important system with.

Re: A bit of a Dickey move

>>I always divide by two when looking at AMD desktop processors."

Then you are estimating processor performance badly. FPU operations are a minority part of most use cases. The reasons why Bulldozer is slower than say, Haswell, are complex - scheduling problems, weaker branch prediction and other things... Not, in most cases, the shared FPUs. Even with FP operations, the FPUs have 256-bit width and actually can work on two operations simultaneously (one for each core), they just have to be 128-bit operations. Which is common enough.

Basically, your logic is flawed. SUN make a 16-core chip that has one FPU between all of them. Does that mean each of the cores is really only 1/16th of a core? Perhaps they should be sued.

This is a stupid lawsuit, by people suing over their own ignorance.

Re: nice to see

>>"Hopefully he will not fall for: their dog barked, crapped, went to the wrong school area, etc."

Well one would hope. But he is a political appointee held up as a "don't worry - you see we have someone who will check we behave" palliative to the electorate. On the off-chance he does turn out to be ethical, he will be ignored. If he turns out to be both ethical AND have a backbone, he will be replaced.

What was the name of that senior health advisor who spoke out against his own government about drug legalization? You know, the one that vanished immediately afterwards? He who pays the piper, and all that...

Re: It was fun...

>>"President of Earth etc - Death in Heaven (series final episode last year)"

Oh yes, that would explain why I blocked it out. Thank you.

Well, yes. Kapersky services their customers as they should.

I don't think Kapersky have a lock on the keys, btw. Now that they are available I imagine others could produce similar tools. Kapersky are simply the fastest off the block with building this into their software and their company did some of the initial work examining CoinVault so helped bring this about.

But yes, Kapersky Labs wont be emailing a tool to resolve this to random people who aren't their customers, you are right.

Re: "The only GOOD DRONE is a DEAD DRONE. Y'hear me, scumbags?!"

>>"Switzerland has weapons that are supplied by the military to trained national service men and stored at home. Which explains most of the high numbers."

Even when I anticipate the reply and provide the explanation in advance, people still choose to skip over the parts that would contradict what they want to say! I said this in my own post. I ALSO pointed out that the Swiss people voted down by popular referendum a proposal to change this and store guns centrally. They CHOSE the situation where they all have guns in their home. By Dabb's reasoning, that makes them all psychopaths in training. Or at least the majority of the populace that voted in favour of this situation. I also pointed out that there are many nations in the world that have far higher rates of gun ownership than the UK. Is Dabbs arguing that the UK has some magically far lower rate of "psychopaths" (for whatever they mean by that) than all these other countries? Your brain has gone "Switzerland + Guns = Post about military" without actually bothering to read the rest of my post or that I covered that.

Also, Switzerland is by nearly any standard, not a country with a lot of violence as you acknowledge. So how does the fact that some of it is gun violence factor into the argument that guns mean psychopaths? Is the argument that there are lots of "psychopaths in training" yet somehow they have a low incidence of violent crime? Again, the Swiss people CHOSE to keep guns in their home by popular vote. Just like this guy in America chose to keep a gun in their home. So Dabbs is calling the majority of Swiss people "psychopaths in training". And that doesn't hold up. Nor does it hold up for lots of other countries with much higher gun ownership ratios.

Re: "The only GOOD DRONE is a DEAD DRONE. Y'hear me, scumbags?!"

>>"It is a matter of personal opinion, of course, but I feel that a family man with a shotgun in the house is, by definition, a psychopath in training."

Opinion / Shminion. You're a journalist and have a duty to make sure your opinions are informed. How would you like it if a popular news site made you sound like a dumb, hick bigot based on the author's personal prejudice?

Switzerland has one of the highest gun-ownership ratios in the world. Is it a nation filled with psychopaths? And don't pass it off as being just about military service - there was a proposal that guns should be stored in central armouries and it was rejected by popular referendum. I.e. the Swiss people as a whole actively voted that they all be allowed to keep their guns in their home. And it's not just Switzerland. Very many countries have a much higher proportion of gun ownership than the UK, voluntarily owned. Are you saying that psychopathy occurs much more frequently in other countries than runs in good English blood?

Different cultures perceive the meaning of things differently. Someone who grew up in a big city might stand 50cm away from someone and think it a good conversational distance. Someone who grew up in the countryside might find a person doing so to be aggressive and invading their personal space. You find someone owning a gun abnormal and look for explanations as to why they'd do something like that. In many other cultures, it doesn't signify anything. And not just America, not by a long shot. In much of the world owning a gun is common. 'Ah,' you might say. 'but these areas of the world violence is quite common and its sensible to want to defend yourself and your family'. To which I say "Hello - USA, anyone?"

What is a psychopath ? Someone who doesn't grasp consequences, someone who lacks empathy for others or social conscience? That better describes the drone pilot who hassled their neighbours and then lied about the facts; was aggressive when caught and later tried to whip up support with, as it happens, stereotypes about the guy who shot their drone.

Perhaps I'm simply too far at the opposite end to a psychopath and over-burdened with empathy, but I can't help feeling that I would be pretty upset to see myself maligned by some journalist who had never met me and plainly had just invented their own caricature to suit. I mean you admit outright that you have an a priori view on Their Type. Come to think of it, this is what you did last week with your piece about how a hacker actually wears Iron Maiden t-shirts and smells of urine. Have you not noticed that your stereotypes are rankling with people? I'm sorry if this and my last post come across as aggressive or mean. I know you put work into these articles and honestly, I usually enjoy what you write. It's just this mean stereotype humour I don't get.

Re: Paint balls vs CCTV

>>"Also, more extensive accounts indicate that the drone had hovered over the same yard six times during the preceding year and that a sixteen-year-old woman was sunbathing in the yard. So, unless there is some remarkably interesting arhcitecture, why was Boggsie running his drone there repeatedly? The shooter says that the drone was harassing the yard. Maybe it was."

The drone owner then came round with three mates and were apparently pushy / aggressive enough that the guy felt they were being threatening to him causing him to warn them off his property. Honestly, from all the interviews and coverage I have read on this, the guy who shot has seemed reasonable and calm and the drone owner an anti-social and entitled git.

Re: Lemme help out with that press release Talk Talk

This might be cynical but who checks that these figures are correct? And would we hear about it if they weren't?

For all that I know (and this is probably right), these figures are some sleep-deprived IT person pooring through logs and saying "well if this, then probably that..." Which is fine, but is there some sort of proper investigation that takes place that would inform us if said IT person were wrong? Or TalkTalk had slanted the truth?

Re: Talk talk

>>Anybody here not left TalkTalk yet?

I have a thread in the forum section asking for recommendations of ISPs people should move to. I'm not sure if the lack of replies is due to the low activity level in the forums or, perhaps more likely, that there are no decent ISPs. I'll confess that whilst I would recommend people away from TalkTalk, there are very few ISPs I would recommend people toward. It would be good to find otherwise, though.

Re: Well, it's a start

Actually I'm going to say today is a day to be nice to MEPs. At least the ones who voted in favour of granting protection. Good for them! I'm trying to find a list so I can see how mine voted.

Re: When you're at war....

>>"You will also notice that we're always at war."

...with Oceania?

Kiddies!

I wonder if in Boltar's mind they are pronouncing their wisdom to a mob of naïve yoofs whose heads have been filled with misguided righteous idealism? I think most of us here concerned about things like this are actually the older, cynical ones who have been around long enough to see how successive governments misuse such powers time and again. We're not "kiddies" (not that there's anything wrong with that). We're people who have watched the endless churn of Talibans and IS's and Husseins go from hero to villain (and occasionally back again) and have actually read our history. We'd actually like to be able to understand the enemy of the day, not just listen to the official version. Something hard to do when the government tries to turn every journalist into an informant.

Re: Can we ditch the silly political correctness in reg articles

>>"It isn't. "He" is the non-gender-specific pronoun in English."

"They" has gained common usage as a non-gender specific pronoun these days. You see it in place of "he" quite often.

Re: Can we ditch the silly political correctness in reg articles

>>Feel free to provide a list of well known female hackers.

Off the top of my head, you might want to look up "St. Jude" aka Jude Milhon who was one of the original "hackers" and was unrepentant and highly vocal up until her death that hacking was a good thing because it improved software security. Susan Headley was one of the pioneers of Social Engineering approach to hacking and part of the Cyberpunks group which if you know your hacking history was a significant part of early hacking movements. Joanna Rutkowska if you're willing to accept White Hats (which you should). Kristina Svechinskaya is another that achieved a fair bit of notoriety. Gigabyte is female.

Anyway, I'm sure I could find more if I looked but that's who I can think of right now. You really picked the wrong person to argue with about this as being both a feminist and a software engineer who's been around for a long time, you're actually going to get answers to your questions - which I'm sensing you weren't expecting. For what it's worth, when you wrote "hacker" I took that to mean in the original sense but it's plain from the rest that you're just using the modern meaning of someone who gets access to IT systems they shouldn't so that's what I gave you. But really it's a silly question as successful hackers are often anonymous. Maxim could be female - how would you know? Impact Team could be. Wank Worm could be. Okay, Wank Worm is probably male, I'll give you that.

Anyway, why you seized on hackers as your "proof" of male dominance I don't know. There are plenty of highly skilled female engineers who aren't hackers. I don't know why they don't count for you. But as you can see - yes there are female hackers and some pretty well-known ones as well. So I can assume you'll backtrack and admit that you're wrong now? Yes? :)