* Posts by Mark 65

3432 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009

Android's scariest nightmare: resurgently sexy Microsoft

Mark 65

I believe, perhaps mistakenly, that the part you are quoting is given in the context of a slate/tablet machine and is therefore on the money. Would you want to use OSX on an iPad? Likewise I wouldn't want to start an app on my Windows slate machine and see the ugly-arsed impractical (*in this context*) desktop version appear. I would argue that the machine for a corporation remains an ultra-portable, unless it is just a consumption device in which case you don't need windows at all.

Provider: Anti-piracy ruling has 'killed Usenet'

Mark 65

How about we have a new law that says politicians can only work for the benefit of the electorate as a whole? See how quick Government shuts down then.

Mark 65

That internet concept of re-routing around failure etc for post-nuclear war reliability is really starting to bite. I wonder if the US military would have let their baby loose on the world if they knew what it would be capable of as it grew up?

Bo Peep insures jubs for $1m

Mark 65

The items concerned warrant a separate policy as the story will carry a picture of them and hence generate required publicity.

Microsoft takes the Android profit, the Wonkas take the pain

Mark 65

"Oracle are looking for over $1 bill per year based on current sales!) ."

Perhaps Google are banking on the fact they don't have any "sales"? Your 3x damages cost is worked out against MS licensing fees - that seems a little strange to me given it's Google being sued and they aren't selling licenses.

Mark 65

@Peter

I'm also interested in why some of these companies don't stand up to MS. Obviously there's the cost, but also the fact that MS would be suing some of its biggest customers - not a great way to stay in the mobile business with your new mobile OS.

Ultrabooks vs tablets: tablet demise greatly exaggerated

Mark 65

Question

What I'd like to know is why do the Android tablets seem a bit sluggish in the UI when doing things? From just playing in an electronics store the iPad 2 seemed much sharper/more responsive to input, especially when scrolling and zooming. Is this hardware or OS?

Mark 65

@Bullseyed

You don't want to hook the TV up for couch based browsing as:

1. It affects everyone else in the room

2. Tablets probably get used for reading/browsing with the TV as background noise and/or whilst others are in the room using it.

My PC is in the lounge of my house yet still I'm considering getting a tablet as I can then casually look things up/read without needing to crank up an i7 and move away from others in the room.

If Google builds it, will the applications come?

Mark 65

Porn?

"that if you put a 100 Mbps symmetrical connection in people's home, that they will figure out ways to use it"

See title.

Fixed broadband rules downloads, mobile rules new services

Mark 65

Why the asymmetry?

You need look no further that what you typically receive in capability living in a city. In the CBD yesterday my mobile (smartphone using SpeedTest.Net) connection managed 0.42Mbps down, 0.06Mbps up. These low speeds are typical and explain why most people would struggle to download much on mobile broadband connections. I've easily hit my 50GB cable download limit before however.

Apple victorious: Courts deny hackintosher's final plea

Mark 65

Next move

Setup outside the US and carry on as before.

Turnbull storms Paris with NBN’s doom

Mark 65

Errr, no. As part of the deal Telstra will be transferring my service over to the NBN - like it or not - and any of the ISPs with NBN deals (Telstra, Optus etc) have a contractual obligation not to slag off the NBN offering compared to any competing services (Wi-Fi, 4G etc) they offer. How quaint.

His point about creating an over-capitalised (i.e. fucking expensive) Government owned monopoly provider not being good for prices still stands. You will benefit in the short term - Telstra have been expanding their usage offerings and lowering prices over the last few years - but rest assured this is a future budget stocker. If you don't believe that then take a look at how the States have massively upped the transmission costs on their monopoly power networks to fill their budgets. Electricity in QLD has risen 50% in 4 years, mainly through this cost. Short term gain, long term fucked.

'Delayed' Facebook iPad app claims lead coder casualty

Mark 65

Indeed, I do not desire the integration of this piffling Gen Y attention deficit shite. Leave it as an app I can happily leave off of my phone.

Should your system offer Mr, Ms ... and Mx?

Mark 65

@J.G.Harston

I can assure you that babies don't have sex.

Mark 65

It might be useful in marketing though - you may or may not want your favourite online clothing store sending you sales notices about bras and panties.

Taxmen extend biz record check pilot

Mark 65

Tax Gap

"The tax gap is the difference between the tax that in theory should be collected by HMRC and the amount that is actually collected."

Is this tax that should be paid in theory if everyone pays the maximum giving their income rather than using legitimate means to minimise their tax? I'm just wondering how realistic this supposed amount really is.

Apple Thunderbolt Macs have chips for optical links

Mark 65

USB 3.0

On the subject of its bandwidth far exceeding that of hard drives, I'm looking forward to portable SSDs becoming common place once the ports are.

Byte-dock MacBook Pro port replicator

Mark 65

I think the better form of "dock" will be a port replicator making use of the thunder and lightning port that the newer machines have. Don't have to jam it in a dock and mark the case, don't need to get one specific to your machine etc.

Red Hat engineer renews attack on Windows 8-certified secure boot

Mark 65

Do servers even count? I mean, wtf would a server vendor care given how many boxes are used for running VMs on top of ESX etc? The secure and fast boot part tells me this is desktop/device related - I don't tend to restart my servers all that often and I'm not convinced this will stop anything given just about every other cryptographic signing key used in this prohibitive way has been cracked. Blu-ray anyone?

Mark 65

Why should anyone who buys from a big box vendor get shafted? Should old people start building their own machines? Why shouldn't they benefit from Linux? Should I be unable to fix a relative's machine using a rescue disk/thumbdrive? Should all these PCs get dumped after 2-3 years as they're too slow to run the next incarnation and cannot be loaded with Linux?

Please think a little outside your own use-case before posting.

Samsung shifts 10 millionth Galaxy SII

Mark 65

A great phone. No lock-in of apps if someone brings out a better model or you get the arse with this one. Google or someone just needs to sort out the marketplace/app store/music store/whatever you call it. Please don't tell me you can "use any app store" as, like most of the public, I don't care. One stop shop thanks - it's the only reason I can see for the iphone still selling so well in the face of devices like the SII.

MS denies secure boot will exclude Linux

Mark 65

For those hardware vendors intending that some hardware will not have this option I look forward to the EU court cases brought against them on restraint of trade or whatever the appropriate law is that covers this. If the hardware has the ability to have the on/off option then I believe it is illegal to remove it through firmware especially when such a measure prevents the free use of a machine by its owner.

Experts suggest SSL changes to keep BEAST at bay

Mark 65

Question

Does keeping the SSL 3.0 and unchecking the TLS 1.0 in firefox do any good, or more harm than good? I thought I read that the TLS part was the issue.

GM OnStar cars will upload all data unless owners opt out

Mark 65

If GM were going to make better, safer cars they would already have done so. Instead they just sat around making big-arsed SUV shitbuckets that chew fuel and it sent them broke.

Mark 65

@Chad

"So some information on whether youve been wearing your seatbelt now additionally gets to sit in done company's database until a court requests it."

I don't think you need monitoring software to tell if a seatbelt was in use - tell-tale strap marks and/or your face decorating the windshield normally suffice.

Xbox Live patrols hit by ugly SWAT attacks

Mark 65

@Arctic Fox

Never underestimate the ability of adults to behave like teenagers.

Ten... all-in-one inkjet printers

Mark 65

Do HPs still use those annoying tricolour ink cartridges - a consumate fail?

Mark 65

Happy Pixma MP4?0 user here. Everything working well after 4 years, photo output still excellent for the price. Even has/had Linux driver (though I don't use it any more).

Mark 65

The primary problem with cheap ink is if you wish to use the printer for photos. Unfortunately it is still the case that (unless you wish to profile the printer properly) manufacturer ink with manufacturer paper still gives the best out of the box results (essentially because the profile is already in the driver, and they were made for each other). Kodak paper is pretty good as they'll tell you on their website what changes to make to the printer settings for the best results. I've found third party ink to give awful results when printing photos despite trying all manner of changes to the settings. Print longevity can also be an issue.

Put your hard drives into the cloud

Mark 65

"Something doesn’t feel right about the 348 Kbps average"

Remember that it is the upstream speed. I have cable internet and that is 17Mbs/1Mbs so it is entirely plausible for the average to be 384Kbps especially when you consider that, until recently, Telstra still had plans with 128Kbps and 256Kbps upstream on their site.

Finance software bug causes $217m in investor losses

Mark 65

At 68 years of age I'm guessing he certainly won't be giving a shit that he can't work in the industry any more.

Lancs shale to yield '15 years' of gas for UK

Mark 65

With regards North Sea oil you have a point. With regards this, £6bn in tax won't even pay the annual interest bill.

Why do these traders get billions to play with, unchecked?

Mark 65

Ironically, as they made the move they were possibly among the best in that department meaning they know exactly what to look out for and how to evade capture.

Mark 65

@IDC

Arbitrage is valid work. Look it up if you don't believe.

Mark 65

Re: Nope

I wouldn't really call BT traded in London versus NY arbitrage as you are, say, short an NY stock and long a London one. You may have locked in this price differential but at some point you need to close out unless the NY share is fungible with a London one. Otherwise you are carrying fx risk until you close out.

A better definition of arbitrage is the future on an index being a function of the index and borrowing/discount rates. Even then risk-free is only theoretical as you have execution risk - the ability to get both sides of the trade on at the prices and in the sizes you need. Due to this prices vary by an amount reflective of this and the ability to borrow cheaply (close to the "risk free" rate)

A lot of what is listed as arb these days is just big basis risk due to playing around with proxies (gold mines/shares vs bullion) as true arb opportunities are thin on the ground.

Mark 65

Obfuscation, acronyms and other ways of sounding smart

Paul Wilmott does a good job of debunking the bullshit and I would certainly recommend his "introduces quantitative finance" series

Mathematicians slam UK.gov plans to fund statistics only

Mark 65

Great

"This means that this year's students of pure maths, applied maths, fluid dynamics, number theory, geometry, astronomy and theoretical physics will have to leave the country to continue their research interests."

Let's fund the bullshit/marketing side of mathematics and let other countries gain the benefit of some of our smartest minds.

Microsoft milks Casio for using Linux

Mark 65

@bean520

I hope you were being sarcastic as all versions of Windows after 3.11 are fine with v1.02 of UDF, Windows 2000 onwards are fine with v1.50 (virtual re-write), and XP onwards support v2.0

UDF is the disk format of CD-R/DVD-R/DVD+R... in case you weren't being sarcastic.

I suggested it because it requires no drivers so would work (in theory) for plug-n-play devices whereas EXT2 could be used if you wanted users to use a "driver disk"

Mark 65

Could they not have used UDF?

Mark 65

@CmdrX3

I think that in this case it is the distinction that would be made between a software company i.e. someone using a RedHat/Oracle/IBM distro and an appliance manufacturer (HTC, Casio etc) whereby you could probably claim some alteration has been made to the standard kernel or base image etc for device compatibility and therefore that customisation makes it not a Linux problem per se but a manufacturer problem. If I'm running a software company I just turn around and say "fuck off and sue IBM, it's their OS". Not sure why Amazon would have signed, maybe that's kindle related (an appliance yet again).

How to go from the IT dept to being a rogue trader

Mark 65

Volunteer

Mark 65

I'm guessing private ownership made the difference - personal loss vs. shareholder loss.

It also sounds like most of that "education" is based around a transfer of risk from the business to the individual for litigation reasons - "they knew what they were doing was wrong because we gave them XYZ training every year"

Mark 65

Re:Not Funny

You could argue that the executives are the successful rogues of which he speaks.

Mark 65

@jai

Yep. I've worked from back-office IT, through Risk IT to front-office desk development and backup everything Dominic says - from other things of his I've read he seems to be on the money in the industry. I can also vouch for risk paying poorly - despite doing a fantastic job (appraisals, peer review etc) I got paid shitty money and bonuses because "what you're doing is not high profile and there's another team we desperately need to prevent leakage from". I moved from there to a front-office desk role with a 75% pay-rise.

I can also vouch for the technology stack. Excel/VBA, SQL, and I'd also add a bit of C# these days. Perception is everything. It may be a laudable aim to write excellent flexible code using paradigm XYZ or pattern ABC but traders don't give a fuck. As far as they're concerned you took too long. I'm afraid it is the whims of these sometimes attention deficit seeming individuals that will decide your pay, bonus, and future. If perfection or moral high-ground is what you seek then the front-office is not for you. If high remuneration (with a side-serve of verbal punchbag) is what you seek then it is.

I think it is no coincidence that a lot of rogues seem to have worked their way through the business. This gives them a perfect insight into trade flow, procedures, and system visibility. The fact that their user accounts on these systems never seem to have their privileges corrected also helps.

DigiNotar goes titsup: Disgraced certificate firm is sunk

Mark 65

Evolution

I view this merely as evolution in the certificate issuing business. Companies whose business is security or security related need to make sure their own house is in order - from this ordeal that much is clear. Those that don't will promptly sink without trace. If it weren't for the global reliance on its devices/solutions then I suspect RSA could have gone the same way. That it didn't is reflective of its domination and the fact that, on the other hand, certificate issuers are two-a-penny.

Microsoft's high-risk Windows 8 .NET switch

Mark 65

"Microsoft has already open-sourced F#, and whilst C# is an excellent language, it has not dislodged Java for Enterprise Applications because it was tied to Windows and Mono has failed to keep up."

Not in the enterprises I've worked in - anything developed in-house on the desktop was .Net. Period. It's also moving into a lot of the server-side code previously the sole domain of Java principally, I would guess, because you're already employing C# on the desktop so why not just get some server guys too? Server OSes from MS have improved and it certainly doesn't hurt that Visual Studio is an excellent IDE even if it does come from MS.

It may not have dislodged it in that Java is still heavily used but the split seems pretty even in terms of employment prospects at present (Jobserve UK/Europe search). Be interesting to see what difference this announcement and Oracle's continued arsehole behaviour makes.

IBM pitches overclocked Xeons to Wall Street

Mark 65

I don't think they need to locate as close as possible any more as a lot of exchanges offer co-location for a fee. Where I worked we used to do the old locate closest and hire Cisco engineers to tweak the switches but I believe they co-locate now.

I'm interested in how many places use overclocked CPUs versus how much is done using CUDA or similar? I see these boxes have 4 PCI slots which would enable GPU usage and/or PCI storage.

Apple makes a hash of password security (again)

Mark 65

It is certainly looking to be a bit of a turd to the point where, were I to buy a new machine I would certainly install snow leopard on it.

Microsoft 'paid over £1m to silence UK exec over sexism'

Mark 65

"According to Microsoft’s own figures, 24 per cent of the company’s workforce is made up of women, and around 40 per cent of “executive positions” are held by staff who are women and/or members of minorities. That said, just 11 per cent of the senior executives profiled on Microsoft’s website are women, and two of the company's nine board members are women."

2 from 9 at board level is what, 22%? That seems remarkably compatible with 24% of the workforce being women.Unless all senior execs are profiled on the website then the 11% figure needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Royal rugby star bar snog CCTV upload - bouncer in court

Mark 65

I liked this quote

"I knew there was no chance of me ever standing in front of Tindall and giving him a piece of my mind about his conduct"

Is that because he isn't so much smaller than you and has some large friends with him or because it's hardly the job of a rent-a-thug to judge the morals of someone being kissed on the head by an old friend?