Posts by Henry Wertz 1

I don't understant this at all...

There's loads of IT and comp sci guys with no work (a few cohorts and I have founded our own IT company so we aren't in this position.). There's few listed IT and comp sci jobs. These companies seem to manage to go DIRECTLY to claiming they can't find anybody and hire H1-Bs, without the intermediate step of even seeking hiring in-country. And now they want to raise the cap? Most odd.

Unless things have radically changed, the standard procedure to get an H1-B employee hired a few years ago was... a) List loads of requirements, to the point that nobody will actually have the skills. (Maybe throw in "5 years experience with Office 2013" for good measure.) If anybody DOES claim "Yes I have every skill" you call them out for lying at the interview phase. b) THEN go say you couldn't find anybody qualified and seek an H1-B. c) When THEY claim they have every single requirement, "Great, you are hired!" d) Probably do about a ream of paperwork. The red tape is ineffective at keeping this system from being gamed, but nevertheless it's still there.

"I was hoping that maybe they just emulated ActiveX; then maybe I thought it would automatically detect when it needed IE, but you have to do it manually. So what good is this?"

If you look at usage stats, there's all these businesses that run IE6 because they'll have one or two horrible ActiveX "IE6 required" intranet apps sitting around. So, the IT admin puts those sites into the legacy browser support plugin, and can let the users use a browser from this century (so long as it's Chrome....) They get IE6 on the few sites that need them, while avoiding the security and compatibility implications of having anyone try to use IE6 on the open internet.

Too bad they don't have a firefox plugin for this, I really don't like Chrome's user interface too much. That said, I have nothing that needs a plugin like this anyway *shrug*.

"I also strongly get the feeling that both Amazon and Microsoft doesn't really expect (hope?) people to dive in so deeply but instead solely focus themselves on virtual low prices instead."

Also, they don't specify the specs because they in fact are not specific. Now that they've been at this for a few years, the spec on a brand new machine on the rack is pretty different from the ones they bought 2 years ago. But, my understanding is those 2 year old machines are also still on the rack. I read an article about someone finding pretty high performance differences between one Amazon instance and the next (on the order of some running at 50% of the performance of other supposedly equivalent instances.) The average seemed to work out (i.e. it wasn't like you'd order 10 machines, and end up with them physically all running on the older models.) They seem to just assume you'll "burst your cloud" or whatever and order more VMs without looking too specifically at the performance of your existing VMs.

FPGAs and ASICs...

Not to piss of Intel's parade, but they first say how it's a problem that current switches use all these FPGAs and ASICs, then provide a solution with... FPGAs and ASICs. Yeah.

That said, sounds like it's got useful features and probably won't be a bad piece of kit.

Done before and done again...

It's been done before and will be done again -- whomever at the company decided IT doesn't need in on a decision, picks some random vendor, then (most likely) then expects IT to sort everything out for them. (Of course, IT may be able to salvage the situation depending on just what is going on.) The advantage of some cloud vendor talking to marketing -- what will cloud computing do for marketing? If they don't plan it out, absolutely nothing -- just like a PC without software, it'll sit there doing nothing -- but it can be made to sound so impressive that it's a no-brainer to pick it (to a non-technical person.)

Want to avoid this situation? You'll have to suck it up and interact with these people, otherwise they will see you as out of the loop (and in fact you *will* be out of the loop) and decide to just make decisions like this on their own. Also, remember that you are providing services for them -- if something seems unnecessary but the users really want it, figure out what it'll cost and if they still want it, give it to them.

Shoot it

If a drone started circling over my house, I'd get a slingshot and shoot it down. Anything buzzing over my property is mine for the taking. (Given I'm in the good ol' USA, my lot rent agreement does specifically prohibit shooting off guns outside, since otherwise it'd technically be allowed by default.)

Bitcoin as a metric...

Personally, the interesting use I've seen for Bitcoins (which doesn't require possessing any), is as another data point in comparing currency values. Of course this is not useful when the Bitcoin goes through it's own wild fluctuations... but a lot of the time, it's more stable than even gold or silver. So, OK, say the yen went up in value relative to the US Dollar and Euro. Did the yen increase in spending power, or did the US Dollar and Euro both simultaneously decrease? Compare it to other currencies? Quite a few are indexed to the US Dollar or Euro, and a lot that aren't formally end up following the USD, Euro, or Yen closely anyway, muddying the information. Enter the bitcoin -- it's not indexed to anything, so compare the bitcoins per euro, yen, and dollar, and it becomes much clearer just what happened.

Regarding the bitcoin as a currency -- I have not been able to prove to my own satisfaction that there is no shortcut for making bitcoins. I don't think there is but couldn't prove it. I also couldn't determine just what inherent value these bitcoins have -- but then again, the US Dollar has the same problem now (with nothing but promissary notes and IOUs in the federal reserve to back the dollars now being printed.)

Aww man....

Aww man, I just got most of videos shrunk with H.264 AVC. Oh well. (Actually I don't feel that bad about it, most shrunk by 75% or more, and the H.265 support in mencoder is, well, non-existant as far as I know.)

"All those pretty words and not a single mention of WebM "

That's because it's an article about H.265

"WebM is superior to H265 in that it's good enough, not that much difference in performance, but has a totally open license. "

Actually, there's a pretty big difference in performance. If you look at comparisons, it's pretty comparable to H.264 (one review says VP8 is better, the next H.264 -- suggesting to me they are pretty close.) H.265 will achieve much lower average bitrate for the same quality compared to H.264. WebM still wins on the licensing terms though 8-)

Pot, meet kettle

Does Microsoft permit other app stores on win phone 8? I don't think they do. And as a convicted monopolist, they should really not be in the position of calling out others for things thehy are doing themselves.

Anyway, I don't think google is behaving anticompetitvely, but the EU can certainly decide.

Should improve things.

"But will this improve Chrome's resource hunger? It sucks the life out of the battery on my Nexus 10, wile Firefox and Dolphin seem to do a perfectly good job with a fraction of the processing power."

I'd guess not really at first (the lines they remove would not be built, or ifdef'ed or optimized out). But it seems to me like radical changes in webkit would be slowed down by compatibility concerns, whereas now Google can do some serious optimizations on the HTML engine. Hopefully webkit would also be able to pull out chrome-related cruft and speed things up their own way. Often times with a fork, as long as both forks stay active, even if the forks diverge pretty wildly improvements still flow back and forth between them.

Profiteering

Yes, the EBooks do not deteriorate. However, they also cost ~$0 to distribute, while the cost of paper is quite high. Nevertheless, I see all these EBooks selling for virtually the same price as their paper counterparts. Hey book writers and distributors -- suck. it. up.

As for all the rest -- there's this app the libraries here in the US use. Bad part -- it only runs on proprietary systems. Why they can't do like Amazon, and have a web version of the reader so if you don't have your Kindle handy you can read on anything, I have no idea. The good -- it allows for books to be checked out and returned, and (as well as rights restrictions ever work) prevents copying. I don't know if the book expires at the end of your checkout period, or if you can forget to return it and wrack up library fines. But, anyway... Although the computer version is useless (being only for Mac and Windows) they have versions for almost anything else -- android, iphone, blackberry, winphone, and several others.

California driving

"Where does US law stand on accessing actual Satnav units - either built in, or third-party (suckered to the windscreen)?"

US law says nothing, these are all state laws. But, indeed, this is a good reason I opposed anti cell phone laws. People'd look at me like I'm nuts and I'd point out, well, no, I don't want people on their phones while driving. But, the right way to handle it would have been to make it clear that dicking around with electronics while driving will be considered distracted driving and enforced as such, rather than a narrow law that makes cell phone use illegal but probably not even tablets. Oh well.

That said, sounds like he was not using Google Nav -- he was using Google *Maps*. Important difference, Nav would have just been sitting there and reading directions, Maps he would have been dragging the map around while (probably) insisting it didn't affect his driving at all.

"Now which do you think is more distracting? Using your phone as GPS, or trying to unfold the correct portion of a giant map and read the tiny writing to figure out where the hell you are? Personally, I find that I'm far more focused on the road when using the GPS on my phone."

Probably the touch screen, because your dragging a little picture around on a little screen instead of having a persistent printed map. That said, both are distracted driving and you should get a fat fine for both. Plan your route ahead, and pull over and stop if you need to seriously work over your map (electronic or paper.)

So, I don't recommend driving distracted in California. I took I-5 north from San Diego to Los Angeles about 10 or 15 years ago... well, through San Diego, the traffic slowed to about 60 in the 30MPH zones. Up I-5, the slow lane was doing about 100MPH (people were passing me, because my Chevy Celebrity would top out at about 95-100MPH unless it was very flat), middle lane about 110MPH (I could hear cars bounce off their speed governor every so often, which on some cars is at 111 or 112MPH), and faster lanes appeared to be pushing 140MPH. In LA, in heavier traffic it alternated between 50MPH or so and gridlocked at a dead stop; lighter traffic people just drove as fast as physically possible as near as I can tell. I seriously doubt you'd be hassled IF you were messing with a map stopped in gridlock, the rest of the time it would have been SERIOUSLY unsafe to even think about it.

In principle...

In principle, I think the idea of something like a $25 computer is laudable. Raspberry Pi costs roughly that amount and has enough processing power that it'd be nice to have around. The trouble at present is the cost of a screen for a device like this, but the price could be kept pretty low.

That said, this sounds like sour grapes over Aakash, but I haven't used it, maybe it is pretty bad.

It really isn't a big deal.

It really isn't a big deal. If there is a problem, notch filters are cheap, and a good one drops the passband 0-1db while knocking 40db or more off the blocked band. You don't even have to replace the amp; I would expect for a strong 4G signal, the amp may actually still get a weakened signal that it amplifies but it'd keep it well under the point of overload.

I haven't ended up with any problems -- I have a Grey Hovermann antenna set up for pulling some UHF stations 70 miles away, with a 20db amp. I'm sure this amp runs well into the US 4G bands (which Verizon and US Cellular both have live networks on locally) and I haven't had any trouble. A phone there shows 4 bars of LTE, so i think the signal has to be quite strong indeed to be a problem.

Indeed...

Indeed, the one person I know with a 360, he like brings it over every so often to get the updates and such (and play some games). I know some people do carry their XBox around, bring it with them to play. Having to set up the Wifi constantly would make that pretty unbareable when you just want to play a quick round of golf or car racing or whatever.

Pretty concerned...

I'm reasonably concerned about this whole situation. Really, the North, if they nuked the South they would not even have anything to take over (since it has been nuked.) But I get the definite impression North Korea's past and current leader were both blissfully unaware of the reality of the outside world.

Move outside the US

"Those companies may now have to provide a backdoor if legislation does go ahead, and that's going to make their products a lot less appealing if the US government has full access. "

Or move outside the US.

Sorry police, but you may have to go back to doing, you know, police work.

All I can say is, NEVER buy a product based on promises of what it'll do in the future. I've seen too many cases in the past where some feature simply didn't materialize; if Quantum's software already does what you need, then you won't be disappointed if promised features never materialize.

And, best of luck BruceBacka @ NTPSoftware. Sounds pretty nice.

A sort of loss leader...

"It's problems like this where an end-to-end monopoly provider would theoretically be able to provide a better solution than a bunch of independent operators. A monopoly would be able to leverage income from profitable parts of the network to subsidise necessary infrastructure elsewhere in order to improve services."

A monopoly would also be able to leverage income to fatten their wallets, and (because they are a monopoly) do NOTHING elsewhere.

The thing the economists are missing here is this -- I think these rural upgrades in some cases are actually a sort of variant of a "loss leader" rather than just being an investment that was a big money loss and a waste. If you look at the big 4 cell providers in the US -- Sprint and VZW use the "CDMA path" (2G CDMA 1X -- which they still must keep running for voice until VoLTE.... 3G EVDO, and 4G LTE. Sprint started using Wimax for 4G but scrapped when it was clear LTE was going to "win" as 4G standard.) AT&T & T-Mobile are 2G GSM (EDGE/GPRS)->HSPA/HSPA+->LTE. (T-Mo uses 21mbps or 42mbps HSPA+, AT&T generally 14.4mbps with areas still on 3.6 or 7.2 last I heard.)

So, Sprint and T-Mobile cover mainly urbran coverage. T-Mobile has nice 21 or 42 HSPA+ urbanly, but EDGE and even GPRS along highways, with "no service" or roaming otherwise. Sprint has mostly 3G coverage, but again just cities and main highways generally. Verizon Wireless has nearly ubiquitous 3G coverage, 100% of their network is 3G with ~50% (by area) LTE now, and planning 100% LTE by year end. AT&T has less than Verizon Wireless (less overall coverage, a good ~33% or so 2G-only still, and less 4G) but way more than Sprint or T-Mo.

So, the economists making this report would see AT&T and VZW as wasting money on rural coverage, and I'm quite sure on it's own it doesn't pay back. But, AT&T and VZW charge FAR MORE for their service than Sprint or T-Mobile would dare to charge, specifically because they have more extensive coverage, more 3G, and more 4G, for people who travel a lot, or that value having their phone not pack up over price.

Not the same strategy...

Not really the same strategy. There's a very significant differences between Microsoft's past browser strategy and Google's. That is, when Microsoft "recommended" IE, they were at times making pages that did not follow industry standards, or even attempt to. They were in fact trying to use non-standard behaviors and addons and extensions to lock people into the use of IE specifically, making pages that in fact did not work properly except on IE. They then made no effort FOR YEARS to improve their standards compliance, expecting people to accomodate the limitations and bugs of IE. See the complaints of businesses that still have IE6 for their custom site for the remaining examples of this.

Google is making Chrome conform to HTML5, recommending people use HTML5, and (by specifically supporting recent IE and Firefox), making sure they are not using some odd corner case of HTML5 that only Chrome supports to lock out other browsers. Also, in reality I haven't come across a google product that actually *needs* newest firefox, they just don't want the support nightmare of providing *formal* support for browsers that the browser vendors themselves aren't really supporting (they support it by recommending getting the newer version.)

Well...here int he US

Well, here in the US, my parents get 1.5mbps for $35 a month. And that's the best price available, the $20 promos from phone or cable co require like $50+ of bundles services which they don't want. Suffice it to say, wireless solutions are not affordably priced here in the US either.

Surprisingly, I found since h.264 is so efficient that videos stream fine over a 1.5mbps connection. The big problem is those areas where there's nothing (but costly wireless) available. There's indeed areas in town that were not put on a remote DSLAM, but the line to the central office is too long for DSL. (So that brings them down to having cable, if they can get it.)

Best way to do it...

Best way to do it.. if you are going to make some "cloud" app, make sure it runs on OpenStack (which is Amazon EC2 and S3 compatible). Then you can switch between Amazon, a couple other OpenStack providers, or getting some Ubuntu and/or Redhat servers and running it on your own "private cloud".

For me it's simple...

For me it's simple, if someone wants to talk a bit it's fine. If they want some work I give my rate, and point out no one would expect free plumbing work. No one's been offended by it, and it cuts down on that spurious work -- people are motivated to plug in the printer, pop in the CD and see if it works first (which it will), instead of asking for help when it's still in the box.

"The separate partition method ring fences the space for swap files so as to prevent fragmentation and so performs the same on day 1524 as it did on day 1. Obviously a day 1 comparison will show little difference between the approaches and lead the easily lead to conclude MS knows what they're doing."

Well, a swap file will perform the same on day 1524 as it did on day 1 too. If you make the swap file when the file system is pretty "fresh" it won't be fragmented. If you make one when the disk is virtually full and has been used a bit, it'll probably be pretty fragmented. I favor swap partitions too, but it really isn't bad if you make the swapfile before you fill your hard disk. In Microsoft's case, of course, they keep resizing the swap dynamically, so this seems like it'd be pretty bad for fragmentation.

"However, I don't understand the hate here for Word. Word is one of their better products, and I have much more frustration trying to use LibreOffice than I do with Microsoft Office (e.g. in LibreOffice Writer I can't even crop an image visually, images pasted from the web are linked by default etc. Etc.)."

For me one frustration is that there had been better word processors on the market -- Wordperfect and Amipro were both quite nice -- but Microsoft forced them out of business. (They had Office down to like $75 while they put their competitors out of business, then raised it back to like $400 or whatever.) Other word processors were faster, smaller, got right to the point, allowed more formatting control; Wordperfect's equation editor was pretty incredible. I haven't had problems with LibreOffice, but as a basically clone of Office I'm not particularly in love with it either. I really can't say anything good about the ribbon either. I know some people like it, but I think it's rubbish.

Prefer soemthing like the Volt

"f you need a car that can travel further than 75-odd miles, the Zoe is quite obviously not the car for you. Bitching about it makes as much sense as complaining that you can’t get a three-seat sofa and five fat blokes in a VW Up. Of course you can’t, so don’t buy one."

The same goes for people who question the practicality of EVs because they happen to live in a place where they can’t have the (free) wall-mounted 13-amp charge box installed. That’s not a problem for me, or my neighbours, or most of my friends, or a lot of other people. If it’s a problem for you, that’s just hard luck."

I'm not going to bitch, but I see again and again somebody wondering why people aren't rushing out to get electric cars... then just saying "of course if it won't work for you don't buy one." Welp, the public has spoken, given the current charigng infrastructure and vehicles, they don't want a car where they have to worry about it working for them, so they aren't buying them. SImple as that.

In contrast, I *LOVE* the idea of something like the Volt (until such a time as the charging infrastructure matures). Charging box? Go ahead and top up. Can't get access to one, or need to go on a longer trip? It has a little gas engine to keep it going (apparently plenty good enough to drive, not just to limp to a power station.) This means it's technically a plug-in hybrid, but while most hybrids still rely on the engine (using the mile or so range of batteries to increase engine efficiency), the Volt can go about 40 miles on battery, so it's more like a (rather short range) electric car with a "backup" engine.

Not flashy but owns a market...

Yep, ARM has never been one to make big, flashy announcements. They found the ARM is a very good design, that they've been able to add features too without losing the simplicity (in terms of die size) and low power usage while having good performance. They see just what needs to be added from one model to the next and put that in, as opposed to using a "kitchen sink" approach which ends up with an overly large complicated design.

This is why I think a CEO change is not too big a deal -- these guys don't rely on smoke and mirrors, or flashy demos, or some risky "next big thing", or "constantly reinventing themselves" or whatever. They have a large customer base and work closely with them to design what they need. They avoid the risks and costs of running their own fabs. I mean, if he pulled a Carly Fiorna and decided he should "cut costs" by eliminating R&D, they'd coast on patent payments but be irrelevant in the long term. But clearly he has no plans to do that.

As for IPhone and IPad -- sorry, but you overinfalte the importance of Apple, I didn't see anyone suddenly become aware of ARM just because Apple put them in their ho-hum phones and tablets.

Maybe...

Maybe... *my* guess is (in some cases) the companies are being cheap and not implementing basic common sense. But, I'm guessing in OTHER cases, this type of security is a done deal, they just don't want to have to file ream after ream of paperwork (yes, on PAPER) to the gummint to prove it.

Lesson learned...

Lesson learned... if I find any hole in any AT&T product or service, I'll make sure to sell it to the highest bidder, and try to keep AT&T from finding out about it, since they will just take you to court if you actually report a flaw to them.

"the Huawei OS X update app (ouc.app) has unrestricted access to /usr/local.

"Can anyone verify that the Telekom LTE Stick from Huawei makes /usr/local world writable on OSX? WTF?", Esser posted."

The second paragraph is far worse than the first.

The Huawei update app has unrestricted access to /ussr/local? Well, it probably must run as root anyway to update drivers and so on for itself. No big deal.

The Huwaei update app makes /usr/local world writable? This is VERY bad, this means any software running as any user whatsoever on your system can put stuff into /usr/local (most importantly, /usr/local/bin/, which is almost certainly in the path on OSX since it is on any normal UNIX system.)

Running IIS6 is a big joke too of course. Not too unusual though, I've seen several cases where I was real glad I was running Ubuntu, I'd get some piece of hardware and find the web site (for the Windows software) was just SO SO dodgey I couldn't believe it (of course, served off incredibly old setups like IIS on Windows 2000.)

Torn...

I'm torn. On the one hand, I think this type of bill is actually a good idea. If the school provides essentially a "mandated" E-Mail account, this account really should have to be ad-free, and at that point there's no reason to be trolling through the E-Mail to target ads if there's no ads. (I also opposed the "channel one" they had luckily after my time in school, where they'd waste about 15 minutes of the students day showing basically 10 minutes of ads and about 5 minutes of pseudo-educational content. Our local school district never went for this.)

On the other hand, this is quite obviously Microsoft trying to scuttle plans of their webmail competitors (who, to hype it will call it "cloud services" or something now.) Standard dirty pool on their part.

Ultimately, I think this will fail though. If Google doesn't already have the capability to mark accounts "no ads" (so it won't display ads *or* collect ad data), I just can't imagine it's that difficult to add. I'm sure neither Microsoft or Google intends to provide the E-Mail for free, so Google just has to figure out how much they need to change their quote (if any) for no ads service.

Kudos to Stardock, LOLs to Microcsoft

"I'm running Windows 8 on an old Dell AMD box with 4GB of RAM and a 5400RPM 2.5" HDD, and I don't see that kind of lag."

Oxymoron. If you have a system with 4GB of RAM in it, it's not all that old. Moore's law is truly Microsoft's best friend.

Anyway... As with Robert E A Harvey, I'm more amused by this than anything, I'm 100% Linux, and things like Windows 8 make me ever so glad of this.

That said, if I could buy StarDock stock I would. Microsoft shows their massive, overpowing egotism by making Windows 8 forceable boot into the Metro interface, and by taking away the user's choice (i.e. by not allowing traditional and metro apps on whichever desktop the user chooses.) StarDock has made improved shells for Windows for quite a while, kudos for them for continuing that tradition and I wish them the best.

Loss leader?

I had always assumed the Nook would break even at best, and they wanted to shift them into peoples hands to increase EBook sales. They should probably not waste mony designing a bunch of NEW Nook models, I mean, if it's already good for reading books their job is done. It'd be best to ship their books in non-proprietary formats (if they aren't already), but a Nook app would be good as well if they don't already have one; there's something to be said for having the same books pull up on the web Kindle viewer, on the Android device (with Kindle app) and on whatever actual Kindle you may own.

Brand new code?

On the one hand, Microsoft forgetting to renew their own certificate is a big fail, and I'm highly amused by it.

On the other hand, no, I do not expect them to manage this using technology just released for Windows Server 2012. a) (I doubt it but...) maybe they DID use this and it failed. b) If they did use this and it failed, people would give them even more grief and jokes than they are now. Like it or not, it is essentially new and untested code. c) Azure was out before Server 2012, I for one would not rip out and replace a SSL certificate server without good reason -- and they may have decided auto-SSL renewal was not a good enough reason. (Maybe they will re-evaluate that now.)

Search results reflect what is popular

What can I say? I'm sure Google did de-emphasize these pages. But, their very popularity re-emphasizes them, and apparently the are more popular than paying for the same files using proprietary software and receiving the file in a proprietary file format. (I'm looking at you ITunes -- if they are going to give people non-DRM m4a files now anyway, why require running proprietary software on a proprietary OS to do it? That eliminates me as a customer.)

Possible reason to get rid of BIS?

One positive of not being so reliant on BIS -- if RIM were to run into significant financial difficulties, it'd be pretty bad to have just shipped all these new BB10 devices that are completely BIS-dependent, only to end up shutting the BIS server down say a year later. BB10 as it stands, it sounds like just the BlackBerry Messenger would go if BIS shut down, the overall impact would be pretty minimal.

Oh, so like .NET?

Oh, so like .NET? Not the present-day .NET (Common Language Runtime and C#). Like .NET years ago, when they were going to have Server .NET, .NET web services, .NET programming language, .NET desktop, .NET ID stuff, Vistual Studio .NET (this one actually shipped..), Office .NET, and on and on.

I have nothing else to say really. Just, I've seen it before -- I guess they can go ahead and call everything "blue" if they want. It'll just make it all that much more confusing for people relying on Microsoft products and services.

Too expensive

"But then people start saying the same types of thing. 'Yes, but they're all crap.' 'Yes, but none of them have even _seen_ an Editor. Well, crap is a value judgement. But as soon as you start adding in costs like that Editor (or more likely Editors) - you start getting back to similar costs to paper."

I'm not expecting 99 cents or anything. But, when a paperback is under $10, it's no surprise that people aren't going to be happy being expected to pay $9.99, $12.99, or $14.99 for an E-Book. Of course, those publisher that do try to charge more for the EBook than the physical book are then just SHOCKED that those new-fangled E-Books don't seem to be catching on.....

I had this trouble recently with a sci-fi magazine. I considered switching from physical subscription to electronic... but, when I got an electronic copy, it was the same price as the physical magazine, while losing the formatting and most of the detail on the illustrations (and some illustrations were missing entirely.) No thanks!