Posts by h4rm0ny 4560 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jul 2008
Well yes, but if you're going to use the conversion of energy into mass in order to make the article writer 'correct' then you also make a Hell of a lot of other statements correct.
"I had Energy for breakfast."
"I thought you had toast?"
"Mass = ev/c² . Don't try to correct me!"
Let's use the right terms, eh?
>>"My boss at the time said she got a reference request for him a few weeks later, from a security firm to monitor CCTV for theft, etc. I would love to know exactly what she wrote, but I have a pretty shrewd idea what kind of lines it would have gone down, even if there was no way she could write a direct accusation in it."
"Well," she might have replied, "set a thief to catch a thief."
>>"Have comparable provenance tests been made on gold objects found in Cornwall? The Morvah Hoard and the Rillaton Cup for example."
No, but a research team from Athens have done parallel tests on marble and found much of it in Britain was taken from Greece. British scientists currently dispute that however.
>>"There were tin plated cables. They worked OK, but oxidation caused them to get jammed so you could not unplug your expensive kit without breaking it."
Tin plating for cables was later made the standard by the ancient Roman hardware manufacturer Sonyus Profitus for exactly this reason.
>>"Some of us will be rational (those of us in the middle ground who feel there's too much BS on both sides) and then the Deniers and True Believers will do battle. Will that work?"
Um, I have been several times informed by proponents of AGW that those of us in the middle ARE deniers. I've been told in no uncertain terms that the time for debate is over and one is for us or against us. At least when I express doubts that's generally what I receive.
>>"Minor updates to the UI don't mean there could be bigger updates to the OS itself. 8.1 was a much larger update than a service pack. You can call it as you like, but 8,1 was not a service pack"
I'm wiling to be persuaded but I'm not seeing any significant functional change:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8.1
They changed some bits of the UI, re-adding the Start button for example, and they changed some of the default apps (which isn't an OS change). The only thing I see significantly different is that they changed the way it connects to OneDrive and they added device encryption by default (which is just BitLocker which is already there). Obviously some of the code was optimized, but I don't see that means it's a new OS.
It's unhelpful to class them as separate in general terms because they are essentially the same and it confuses things like this where the rise in 8.1 is accompanied by a fall in 8 which is for most people not the distinction that is of interest. It's whether 8/8.1 is rising or falling that is the practical question, not shifts between the two.
What, precisely, did you find so difficult to accomplish on the laptop without touch? If I want to launch a program, I tap the Windows key and type the first couple of letters and return, it launches it faster that way that moving up and down a Start menu ever did. Even if you for some reason have an absolute aversion to using the keyboard, the Start Screen can easily hold around thirty tiles on even a laptop screen, grouped by function, so unless you're commonly using that many which I doubt, it's the same move to lower left (though again, I tap the Windows key) as you would with Windows 7 and then select the program you want. You don't even have to dig through sub-folders.
>>"everything he stated is just plain obvious"
Maybe so, but we're living under a government that appears unable to see the obvious, so it's worth stating.
I like John McAfee. People should not mistake eccentric for unaware - he's a very smart person. And occasionally people tar him with the label paranoid, until they actually read more and find some of what he's actually been through. Someone rich yet still willing to fuck with the status quo, that's a rare combination and it leads to some surprising circumstances on occasion. El Reg should have linked to the video where he distances himself from the software which he actually left behind long ago - thar's hilarious.
By "not outwitted by a direct question", do you mean avoiding any meaningful answer of it? Where are the actual studies - or even study - that shows that the increasing surveillance isn't having an effect on people's willingness to do business here?
I have no knowledge of anybody being discouraged from doing business in the UK by our proposed or actual snooping. However, I do have knowledge of at least two significant deals that fell through with American companies because of lack of trust in the US government not snooping. It's not a small issue for US businesses at the moment. And the UK has been behaving similarly to the USA so I would not be surprised if there were a similar reaction.
I would want more than anecdotes from a few of this guys friends on this before I considered it actual data.
This is kind of an odd article. I'm not sure if my understanding is at fault or the author's. I don't quite see the overlap / conflict between Docker and PaaS that the author seems to be talking about, but I may just not quite have got what they mean.
The point of PaaS to me is that I have someone else providing the services that I need and these people (Amazon, Azure et al.) are going to know a lot more about managing it all than I do. Or quite frankly even if they don't, I want to focus on my applications, not on administration of all these services.
That's why PaaS is my GoTo. IaaS is my fallback if PaaS can't do what I need because with IaaS I can do a lot more, but at a very marked increase in work outside my core business. As PaaS gets better and better, I see the need for IaaS reducing for my use cases (and many people's). I think there will be a big shift away from IaaS towards PaaS because if the latter gives you what you need and lets you focus on what you really care about, why wouldn't you?
But where Containerisation fits into the above conversation, I'm not quite sure. I think the author is saying that Containerisation obviates the need for PaaS to some extent? Or that people think it does and he's saying that actually people are wrong and it doesn't... But I'm not quite clear. Containerization is, I guess you could call it, a refinement / supplement / tool for IaaS and thus keeps parity between the two approaches, offsetting the complexity of IaaS to some extent? I'm not sure if that's the argument.
Paris, because maybe I'm just being like her today.
>>"I stopped using Microsoft Office 15 years ago (yes, in 2000) switching to Open Office and later to LibreOffice. I never looked back [...] I realized how much I do not need this application when I bought recently a PC with a preinstalled Microsoft Office. I deleted it without switching it on, even once"
It's always amusing how the most critical posts of MS products feel the need to emphasize their points by explaining how they avoid being able to make informed comparisons. They're always this unaware combination of "I stopped using this over a decade ago..." and "I deleted it without trying it.." followed by how rubbish they know it is.
Are you sure you're not confusing it with Office Web Apps. You can use MS Office without an Internet connection, including mobile versions. Office 365 is actually a subscription model that can cover both downloadable versions and the web apps. It's not a specific piece of software itself. You obviously can't use the online versions of Office without a connection, but you can use the downloadable versions.
>>"If MS were to make the Trial option mandatory for paid apps, it might solve a great many problems."
It should certainly be encouraged. I have on several occasions avoided an app because it had no trial period. But mandatory would be problematic as there are some cases where it is simply not legally possible - for example the music notation software demo'ed at Build recently which contains third party copyrighted musical scores and so can only be sold, not licenced. (Resolvable probably, but an example). There are also apps that are specialized but rare use. Such apps could have their sales reduced by trial periods by most people only needing to get a few uses out of them and then not needing the app again for a year, or maybe never. I have used a piece of software like that on a few occasions and was able to do everything I needed with their trial version.
But it's definitely a warning sign when they don't have one - agreed!
Not a bad idea in general, but I'm wary of the part about removing apps because they are more expensive than equivalents. Seems like it would favour new copy-cat apps over the original innovators and it might also favour larger vendors over small independents. Neither of which are a good thing. Vendors should be able to set their own prices.
Yes. A couple of years ago:
It was exactly what I thought of when I read the story. I wouldn't have thought they'd be caught out like this twice. Apple are usually better than this, but there you go...
Incidentally, El Reg. seem to be giving up any pretence of knowing parody these days and just going for direct Daily Mail style gratuitous sexualisation. Unless I'm missing some subtle relevance to the giant image of a strapless model to this article. Off-topic, yes. But then so is the photo.
The thing is, we don't NEED the government to provide such filtering. There are plenty of cheap solutions and ISPs commonly offer it as part of the package in the first place, anyway.
People can argue the merits of that back and forth all day, but the government isn't trying to do this for the sale of children - it's about introducing pervasive monitoring.
>>"an inside regulator can cheat the system, and an outside regulator can poison it."
Well if you accept that anyone without a vested interest must be ignorant to the point that they cannot effectively regulate, maybe. But is that the case? First off, the reason you have regulators outside the market is generally the regulations are for guarding against externalities. People within the market are pretty capable of working out what is most efficient for their goals. You get the regulations to prevent those goals conflicting with the wider society - environmental pollution, anti-trust issues (where one market reaches over into another), defrauding investors, etc. And people outside of a market are often very capable of recognizing where that market is impacting them.
>>"Not really a surprise that Worstall gets the author of Lord of the Flies confused with the writer of The Princess Bride."
I don't know much about the VFX industry, but I do know that every time Worstall has blundered into an area that I do know about with one of his polemics, his analysis has been shallow, misguided and above all, setting out to prove his desired conclusion. So I can well believe your post. Honestly, there's always that difficult choice when I see a Worstall article as to whether to read it and reward him with clicks but have the opportunity to correct the worst of his excesses, or play the long game and hope not reading will eventually mean he goes away.
VFX studios keep going bust because they run below capacity, do they? That might harm some investors yet somehow doesn't seem to be harming the market as VFX continues to become ever cheaper and more commonplace. That is likely the greater reason - IT investments depreciate quickly and with the rate of progress in VFX by the time you are set up and ready, you have a very limited window because your next competitor springs up without the weight of investment in legacy technology holding them down. You spend ten million dollars on your hardware and software (and to some extent staff as skills also depreciate in a fast-moving sector), and six years later whilst you're still paying that off, someone else spends ten million dollars on hardware and software and new hires and they're better equipped than you are.
Normally start-up costs are significant barrier to entry. But when your investment depreciates with time, that offsets it to a surprising extent. A second factor is staff retention. In a growing market, staff have supreme mobility. And the VFX market is growing and healthy.
>>"Along with being bright enough to see Minix and copy the idea"
Hmmm. Windows seems to have been pretty successful. I'll copy their idea and then I'll be rich too.
Step 1. Look at what they've done.
Step 3. Sell my own version.
I seem to be missing a step. Never mind, I'm sure it's trivial - riches here I come! :D
"In the U.K. there will be a referendum on the E.U., but the people will be lead sleep walking in to the TPP/TTIP treaties"
Despite this treaty coming through the EU, we actually have a better chance of avoiding it by staying in where opposition to TTIP is growing daily, rather than leaving as all of our main parties and UKIP are actually in favour of signing it. (caveat, not sure where SNP stand) and would do so independently immediately on withdrawing from the EU.
Stallman is a great man. He was instrumental in the success of Libre software. Without him, there might well not have popular GNU/Linux distros for example and the entire Open Source movement would be a decade behind where it is today at the very least, or more likely unrecognizable as what we have today.
And he ALWAYS backs up what he says. If MS give the NSA advance notice of vulnerabilities that is a bad thing and worthy of criticism. I don't care if he looks like Jesus. Hell, I don't care if he thinks he is Jesus! What I respect is someone who is intellectually honest, self-consistent and supports their beliefs with facts.
A lot here could learn from that.
Your post is, excepting that JAVA's cross-compatibility is a factor in its success, start to end nonsense.
I'll just do the highlights and that alone will take me ten minutes.
>>However today we have POSIX.
POSIX has been around since the late nineties. In fact, the main parts of it were around in the Eighties! First public release of Java was around the same time as the formalization of POSIX. POSIX has been available throughout all the time that Java was establishing itself.
But that's a minor detail in comparison to your suggestion that POSIX obviates the need for Java. POSIX is limited standard focused solely around the UNIX model and very limited in scope. It's never even been revised to deal with Object Orientation which it just pretends doesn't exist. It would be quicker to list the things it does cover than all the things it doesn't. The most modern thing it attempts is a well-intentioned [b]attempt[/b] at ACLs. Which are ignored by most GNU/Linux distributions. And that's another thing. Aside from only being good for writing programs that move a few files around, it's not even fully implemented on all major GNU/Linux distributions! Heck, [b]systemd[/b] isn't even POSIX-compliant and that's everywhere! And I haven't even started on Windows yet! If, and let me emphasize the IF, you install Cygwin on Windows you get the limited capabilities of POSIX on Windows (at a snail's pace and unable to use most of the Windows OS). POSIX is just a set of UNIX standards not even fully adhered to in the GNU/Linux world and you are offering it up as a cross-platform alternative to Java? They're not even the same type of thing. Tell me how I compile a C++ program on GNU/Linux and run it on Windows 7 using "POSIX". Your argument doesn't make any sense.
>>You no longer need to port software you can just re-compile it. So it's trivial to just publish your software in source code.
Well that's just great. Because 99% of the computer users you want to run your program are just great at downloading a C++ compiler appropriate for their platform and then assembling it into executable code and setting that executable up as installed along with any library dependencies, resolving version issues, etc. And you're aware that Security is a thing these days? That with the JVM you can actually handle permissions in a sensible way. Exactly how safe do you think sending people source code to compile would be?
>>Java, like C++ and similar languages seem to make it easy to write complex software
ROFL! No-one has ever, ever sat in front of a C++ compiler and thought, "Oh! Writing complex software is easy now!" Not for more than two minutes, anyway. And I speak as a former C++ programmer who regards the language as very impressive. I mean, Visual Basic might fool (until they get into the second week and realise they've just created a huge unworking mess), but C++? No. And the same for Java.
>>Now most problems in IT are very trivial
Please, you're hurting me.
>>the core of the operation of most companies could just as well be managed by punchcard collators or very simple computer programs, often not even needing an SQL database
I would love to know what you do for a living. Have you ever even seen the inside of an office?
>>"However since it seems so easy to write complex software people don't bother having a nice and simple design first. The result often are brittle and inflexible systems."
Sometimes someone's post is wrong simply in the odd factual detail. Sometimes someone's post is biased and slants facts or omits inconvenient ones. But your post is so lacking in familiarity with the subject matter it is beyond correction, it should just be dismissed wholesale as meaningless.
>>"You beat me to it, a responsive Google Love Doll would be the ultimate product to rake in the bazillions. Just don't let MicroSoft screw it up. Please, keep it Open Source so it can be "dinked with" and modded."
You really want such a product to be made by the world's largest advertising and data gathering corporation?
Actually, scratch that - you really want such a product to be made?
Oh you question the sanity of such parents now, but wait until everyone has them and then listen to the faux-polite comments you get for depriving your child of one...
* But isn't it safer knowing they have a Smart Toy keeping an eye on them. Did you know that every year thousands of children are abducted / die in accidents / are seriously injured whilst unattended, many of which could have been prevented if they had a Smart Toy with them that could report the child's distress / non-responsiveness / absence.
* But don't you know that Smart Toys are designed to stimulate your child's learning. Smart Toys are shown to lead to a 4.7% improvement in maths scores in primary school children over those playing with non-interactive / education-focused toys.
* All her other friends have one. Don't you realize how unhappy and left-out your child feels?
I'm sure that I've missed a few things. Wait until these toys start networking with each other or allowing the parent to tune in and listen to what the child is doing at any time.
>>"@H4rm0ny If a client passes out in front of me, then I try to revive, then I CALL A FUCKING AMBULANCE..."
Well that depends. Are you willing to spend the next five years of your life locked in a prison cell because some stranger with thousands of times your own money who pays to fuck you has passed out? And it's a fairly certain choice - the US legal system has major hate for people who accept money for sex and who are complicit in drug use. You're almost certain to spend years of your life in an American prison. So make the choice and tell me: are you willing to give up five years of your life for this stranger? You probably have friends, probably have family. Even if you, Brewster's Angle Grinder, are willing to give up half a decade of your freedom for this person, would you do that to those you're close to? I want an honest answer from you here.
And even if you claim that you're willing to do this, at what stage do you do this? The guy is slurring his words a bit. Do you accept your life in prison because he's a bit woozy? No, he's on heroin, of course he's not going to be sitting there as if nothing is odd. So no, you're not going to choose to go to prison because he's off his face. You're not a doctor, btw. It's not like you're an expert on this stuff. So now he's passed out an wont come round. Do you decide to go to prison at this point? I've seen people passed out who wont come round or just mumble at me. They were fine afterwards (well, had a headache, but anyway...). She has almost certainly seen the same thing. So tell me now, are you going to go to prison five years because someone has passed out? Remember, your prison sentence is a near certainty because you slept with someone for money and there are drugs present. Hell, even assume this person is someone you like, do you want them to wake up next day with a loss of their career and losing their wife and kids because you got jumpy and panicked? No, even if you're thinking of the other person's well-being you don't call 911 because people pass out from drugs or alcohol all the time without dying. It's not like calling the authorities is necessarily a good call even from their point of view. Remember, you don't know that they're dying.
And all this assumes that she is sitting carefully by his side monitoring him. For all we know, she comes over at some point (maybe she was a bit out of it too) and can't get a response from him and then there's an "oh shit!" moment where she realises he's not breathing. That's actually a lot more plausible than her sitting there checking him every few minutes. It's not like dying of a knife wound, there isn't screaming and yelling for help. He was probably just quiet for a bit. So now tell me, are you going to subject yourself to five years of prison over someone who is already dead or would die before an ambulance got there? She's not a doctor. If someone stops breathing, how long do YOU expect them to hang on waiting for an ambulance? She tried to revive him, couldn't, people only are revivable for a very, very short time once they stop breathing. Almost certainly less time than it takes an ambulance to arrive.
In short, you haven't thought this through.
>>"I have no idea, how you measure "rational" in these situations. But when an adult does something wrong, they face up to it. Actions that lead to someone's death are about the most wrong you can do. And attempting to avoid responsibility is wrong."
Well maybe I don't have faith that the consequences would be proportionate. I might well be willing to "own up to what I did" if it were a question of it just being people knowing what happened. But I know that's not the case. Maybe what happened was that some rich, married stranger paid me so that I would let him fuck me and then voluntarily took drugs which he'd wanted me to supply and maybe I don't think that I deserve to be thrown in prison for half a decade because of that. I might even have people who depend on me that I actually DO care about.
So yes, I'm sticking with "rational" in this instance and I don't believe you have actually considered things from the point of view of someone in her situation or in the circumstances of her life. It's called empathy.
She spent two years in prison before they decided she was guilty?
Separately, I like how news coverage of this always reminds us that she "finished a glass of wine before leaving". I'm sure we're meant to take it as some act of callous indifference. But I think if I had just killed a client, I would probably need to finish the whole bloody bottle! Removing evidence of your presence if you are able, is also a rational action whether the killing was deliberate or accidental.
It's not the device that needs any particular OS. It's the user. As someone else said - choice is good. Now developers from both UNIX and Windows backgrounds can easily develop for the Pi so that helps the Pi become even more useful and successful which is good for all.
But the question I want answered is how much does Windows IoT edition cost? Because I can program on both platforms and whilst C# is nice, so is Python. if I can stick Rasbian on there for free I don't see how Windows IoT will compete with that. At least for non-commercial use which is a major driver of uptake.
>>"When one party is 10 times the size of everyone else put together, there is no "number 2". There's just a market leader and a more or less equal collection of also-rans."
I would say when the market is worth two-hundred billion and growing rapidly, I would say number 2 position is a pretty awesome place to be. ;)
Besides, the Gartner Magic Quadrant isn't really a leaderboard where people come first, second, third, etc. A company could be far bigger than its nearest rivals in terms of revenue but be in the upper left rather than the upper right. The difference is significant because the report is not only a summary of where vendors are, but on where they are going. Anything in the upper right, Gartner are predicting good things.
Both AWS and Azure cover a lot of different services and features. Given that both companies are well-established and not going away, then decision as to which must be based on suitability and quality of the services rather than market position. AWS has come from a position of IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) and spread a little into PaaS (Platform as a Service), whereas Azure has targeted PaaS aggressively from the start. To me, this is more interesting because I see PaaS as far more the future than IaaS. I want to offload as much maintenance and administration as possible. I also find Azure has better management tools, though it depends what your use case is, of course.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that #1, #2 - these things matter only to the shareholders and the fan-people. To the customer, it makes no difference at all, save that underdogs will price more competitively long-term.
>>"How naive. They can't code their way around the law."
Of course you can. Accountants do it all the time. If you are hosting only encrypted content that you yourself cannot access, then for example, you cannot be made to reveal what you know because you don't know anything. MS are simply taking it one (well two) steps further and finding ways to make it so that even processes cannot be accessed by them. Remember, MS's goal is to get your money, not to get your internal data - that's the government's aim (though they would like your money too). So it's entirely within MS's interests to find ways to lock even themselves out, odd though that sounds.
I think it's more the opposite. All these technologies are new and enhance your control. I don't mean they're new in the sense of updated versions of old tools, I mean they're new in the sense of doing things that weren't actually use cases previously.
In the Olden Days, data was data and security was about not letting someone have access to your computer. Then it started to get more sophisticated and it was about having the right user accounts on the box, but if you could access the hardware you could still read the data off the drive. Then we started to see technologies that guarded data against physical access - TruCrypt, Bitlocker, et al. Essentially making security entirely about verifiable credentials.
Now we're seeing that taken to the next stage where entire "machines" (as in VMs) and processes depend on verifiable credentials. The uptake of the Cloud for people's platforms is actually driving the development of tools for controlling what happens and what is accessible that are even more capable than their predecessors. Because the Cloud makes such things necessary.
And ironically, governments' determination to spy on people is running headlong into existing business needs and pushing forward this technology far faster than it would develop on its own. MS have and will always have, one overriding goal - get your money. What we're seeing here, is them finding ways to code around the US government. The article is right to say that this will make the NSA howl.
And I have no problem with that. ;)
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