* Posts by Gordon 10

3872 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2009

Backup bods Acronis extend disk-imaging support to Macs at last

Gordon 10
Thumb Up

Re: Time Machine

Agreed - where's Time Machine for Windows when you need it?

Now I appreciate Time Machine isn't an all singing and dancing solution but the fact that its super silent and JustWorksTM makes it a no brainer in my view.

I wish my Win7 Box was as simple to back up.

AT&T plays Game of Thrones: Every bit as ruthless as HBO version

Gordon 10

Am I the only one

who wanted some kinda of graphic to follow all the names and offering that I have never heard of being a rightpondian.

Wi-Fi WarKitteh and DDoS Dog to stalk Defcon 22

Gordon 10
Terminator

Re: ... is an exercise in futility.

I would have thought the beauty of using cats is that once you reach a critical mass of them - it doesn't matter whether 1 cat or many cats pass by your target - you can be assured that one will at some point.

Besides the logical next step is equipping them with Google Glasses and guiding them to their target with judicious application of AR fluttering birds and scampering mice.

YouTube in shock indie music nuke: We all feel a little less worthy today

Gordon 10
Pirate

Im shocked I tells ya - shocked!

Famed content thief will wiggle like a worm to avoid paying for anything.

Aren't YouTube and Google the ultimate freetards?

Titan sprouts 'Magic Island', say astroboffins

Gordon 10
Alien

Re: Re Titan is alive and kicking

^(;,;)^ :€

must contain letters - bah humbug

Sky-scraping boffins mash amateur astronomers into huge virtual telescope

Gordon 10

Re: Precedent

How can we be sure the new information is real and not an artifact of the processing algorithm?

Gemalto rash cache clash dashed: US courts trash Android patent bid

Gordon 10
WTF?

wtf?

Common sense for a Texas patent court? What ever next? I suspect the fact that the plaitiffs were French didn't help their case.

Oracle shares pummeled after giant reports glacial growth

Gordon 10

Re: "Missing analyst expectations"

true - and in most cases I would agree with you - but with flat revenues against the background of an improving market - the ANALysts might just have a point this time.

Bankers bid to use offshore temp techies

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Guus Interesting on who is and who is not on the map....

Thanks Matt - funniest post ever. You have obviously never worked in financial services.

Every bank CFO and CIO has behaved exactly as you have assumed they wont.

Even if they wont - there is some ladder climbing PHB below them who will.

Source :10 years FS IT experience.

Gordon 10

Re: Er, I don't see anything wrong with it

Im sure that may have been the initial intent of the clause. However who would be surprised to see it used to parachute some "offshoring" or "cost management" specialists into a high cost location.

DON’T add me to your social network, I have NO IDEA who you are

Gordon 10

Re: I wonder if today will be

Love the *cough* *cough* at the bottom.

Australia's eMinister has policy-crush on UK's Liam Maxwell

Gordon 10
WTF?

really?

"The UK's disdain for customising commercial software is, however, something Australia may do well to consider."

Really - not my experience. My statement would be more along the lines of :

"The UK's inability to restructure processes to support out of box functionality rather than mandate bespoke builds is something Australia would do well to avoid as an example."

to be fair this is not just a UK Govt failing but industry as well. I would be strongly surprised as to whether most other nations are any different. I also hold the vendors to blame for COTS software that is a million miles away from real world use cases - otherwise where would they get their consultancy revenue from?

Example - every Sap programme I've ever heard of.

Canada to Google: You can't have your borderless cake and eat it too

Gordon 10

Re: Be careful what you wish for

But if I read this right - that's not what was being asked.

Google were just being told to do a proper job of local de-indexing on their .ca domain, but in several of their arguments Google were trying to conflate that with global de-indexing.

Gordon 10

Mybe its only my reading of the article but the inference I was making was that whilst Datalink had been found guilty of using trade secrets in Canada - it hadn't in the US. Meaning that it is still free to help sell its products in the US, hence having distributors - that seeing a crafty buck - set up websites that can cover both US and Canada.

I have to wonder here if the root cause is failure of the aggrieved party to go after Datalink in the US via copyright, patents or what ever other due process exists and therefore instead getting the Canuck judge to extend the reach of his judgment into the US - albeit only for those results accessible by a Canuck domain (.ca).

The fact that the distributors are playing whack-a-mole with google over the domain names - suggests to me they may be a little bit shady. i.e. the only reason to try to get around the block is if they know of and are deliberately trying to flout the judges order.

Having said that - with their vaunted search prowess Google should excel at whack-a-mole of this type.

Capita says bye-bye to Updata bigwigs: Been good slurping you

Gordon 10
Happy

Re: Ouch for all concerned

That's pretty much Crapita's raison d'etre. Take something of value, borg it, and toss the drained husk away.

Crapita is basically a vampire - sucking all the goodness out of its acquisitions with no long term benefit to anyone - just getting a temporary prop to its balance sheet and underneath is just a withered husk itself.

Where's Buffy when you need her?

Today's get-rich-quick scheme: Build your own bank

Gordon 10

Re: Been there, done that. - well more or less depending how you view it

The user id doesn't work on your demo app.

Gordon 10

Re: Slight snag.

Your terminology is wrong and your point poorly explained. Private banks are something different to high street banks. The word you were looking for was leverage.

And high street banks DO lend out deposits - albeit with a significant leverage ratio attached. ie if you can reasonably predict the rate of default you can actually afford to lend out more money than you actually have.

example. If you have an average amount owed at default is £100 on a £1000 loan, and you have £1000 worth of deposits, you can actually afford to leverage those £1000 deposits by lending 10 x £1000 out = £10,000 - which is how banks use debt to grease the wheels of the economy.

In reality the maths gets more complex when you add in the ratio of defaulters to non-defaults so the ratio can go sky high.

DANGER MOUSE is back ... and he isn't half a GLASSHOLE

Gordon 10

Re: Load of Shite

Nnnnnnnnoooooooo!

Virgin Media boss AND ex-Murdoch man: BSkyB broadband is 'lousy'

Gordon 10

Re: Virgin fan, but no more

That kinda suggests they don't have massive bandwidth then doesn't it. Whilst they may have it in the fibre - they probably have choke points in other places.

Gordon 10
Pirate

Meet Mr Pot & Mr Kettle

Mr Pot : You're a tosser

Mr Kettle : You're a bigger tosser

Mr Pot : No no I insist you're the bigger tosser.

A pox on both their houses.

Pirate icon as they are both scurvy dogs.

Microsoft 'Catapults' geriatric Moore's Law from CERTAIN DEATH

Gordon 10

Re: Here's a Lesson Learned (from SDR) for anyone going down this road...

Doesnt that suggest that the future of CPU's is in Software Defined Computation?

ie Future iteration of FGPA's or similar that can load new CPU models on the fly whenever a non-trivial set of operations are detected.

Ohio man cuffed again for shagging inflatable pool raft

Gordon 10
Unhappy

Bike sex

From memory didnt the poor b*stard get lumped on the sex offenders register too? So now everyone automatically assumes he's a paediatrican.

Intel prods PC market's corpse, corpse shouts 'I'M NOT DEAD!'

Gordon 10

Re: It was only a matter of time

Let me fix that for you.

"Their market is 7 billion people" - who no longer give a stuff if it says "Intel Inside" on the box.

Waiting gamer slams no-show show: E3 – was that it?

Gordon 10

Re: E3

thats a little unfair to the Oscars - i think you meant the Brit awards.

EU probe into Apple's taxes: It's NOT to do with double-Dutch-Irish anything sandwiches

Gordon 10

Re: Selling apple kit is a loss leader, almost

Not sure I get you - they are all probably at it to a greater or lesser degree. Transfer pricing goes on in any multinational.

Measure for measure: We visit the most applied-physicist-rich building in the UK

Gordon 10

Re: Peak pedantry

I presume you used the send corrections link?

/correct procedures pedant

So, what exactly defines a 'boffin'? Speak your brains...

Gordon 10
Boffin

Re: The socks have it

Plus one for the incomprehensible to mere mortals bit.

I was lucky(?) enough to be taught Molecular Physics as a proto-boffin by the great boffin Harry Kroto.

We were all 3rd year physics undergrads - not one of us understood a single word he said. The huddle around the teaching assistant who explained things to us mere mortals after class was the biggest I ever saw.

Sadly I neglected my nascent boffinry career for one in IT.

Microsoft challenges US gov over attempts to search overseas data

Gordon 10
WTF?

Re: This is why american companies can never be trusted.

eh? What kind of basis do you have for the drivel you have just spouted?

I'm no MS fan but even ai can see there's a major difference between an in the open and up front court order and some NSA sponsored data slurp.

for the record they can't ignore this - they risk fines and jail time for contempt of court. Instead they are continuing to fight it at the legal level. It's also irrelevant if it's a publicity stunt - if it results in case law making the next chancers to try this much less likely to be sucessful then it serves its purpose.

Every US corp with a European base - and that's most of them - can see their cushy double Irish South sandwiches at risk from this so I suspect the behind the scenes pressure to squash this is immense.

And that's even before the case is examined on its legal merits which are dubious to say the least.

Swiftkey: We just want to be free - Apple didn't bump us

Gordon 10
FAIL

Commentard Fail

Interesting no-one mentions that Google have being doing exactly the same as Apple on android for years.

The stock keyboard on my Nexus 5 does Swype style typing out of the box.

Apparently "one faceless corp does same as another faceless corp" doesnt play well to the biases of the more bigoted of the commentard zealots on here.

We're ALL Winston Smith now - and our common enemy is the Big Brother State

Gordon 10

Re: Honesty is the best policy

No we dont. Informants generally make a conscious choice to inform. When you dont make that conscious choice you are just being used as a tool or a dupe.

Its an important point - most people dont seriously consider the data will be used against them, and in a right thinking and operating society they shouldnt have to.

Gordon 10

@Irongut and others

Where is the evidence that the state has access to all our data? The potential to access it all via a MITM attack via our ISP's I grant you but thats not quite the same thing.

UK govt preps World War 2 energy rationing to keep the lights on

Gordon 10

Im sorely tempted by a Micro-CHP boiler. - unlimited electricity until the Russian/Fracked gas runs out.

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Failure? No. Complete success.

Nice paranoia commentard. I presume that for consistencies sake you are NOT one of those who think the banks and ftse100 run the country?

This is what I love about conspiracy freaks - you only have to put 2 differing sets of them in a room and what the fur fly. Much more humane than badger baiting. Although there is always a danger that they will come up with a theory SOOOOO twisted it explains both opposing views.

Write 100 times

"Never ascribe to conspiracy what can be adequately explained by cockup"

Glacier's hot butt melts ice, boffins say

Gordon 10
Joke

Re: No boom today

Maybe it will implode due to weight of ice and go MOOB?

mmmmm MOOB's.

Urine a goldmine for fuel-cell materials: boffins

Gordon 10
Thumb Up

Best sub-heading ever!

As you were.

Bank of England plans to shove cyber-microscope up nation's bankers

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Banks are all the evil that exists in the World

Grow up you child.

Or alternatively shut down all your accounts, hand your house back and go and live on the streets somewhere.

On a more relevant note - I would question how closely the threat models are between say something like Zeus compared to what a state actor would employ which presumably is where most of the "govt" expertise lies. Besides how can we trust GCHQ and friends not to game the tests to weaken defenses in an area they are most interested it.

The bigger threat imo is espionage at a bank - not a massive money slurp.

Apple is KILLING OFF BONKING, cries mobe research dude

Gordon 10

I wanted to play with it when I got my new nexus 5 but if Google can't be arsed I can't either.

Gordon 10

No USP.

Us in the west are used to our debit cards and suchlike.

Where they should be aiming this technology is at the African market and in the dumb phones that support it.

HP Simplivity buyout rumours: Could it be worth HALF a BILLION?

Gordon 10
FAIL

See Icon

Given HP's aquisitions team obviously can't find their ass with either hand expect them to pay $4bn or so. They have form for an 8x overvaluation, and these bubble days wont help.

HP M&A - made of fail since 2010

Silent, spacious and... well, insipid: Citroën's electric C-Zero car

Gordon 10

Re: What?

And how much would your mini weigh if it had to get a 4 or 5 star NCAP rating? Its not exactly Apples and Oranges is it.

That said I wonder if there is mileage in the thought of a seperate test for electrics given their weight distribution and the need to bias them towards low weight.

Cunning Reg reader cracks LOHAN hot coupling condundrum

Gordon 10
Thumb Up

Re: Weight

I asked that in a previous comments section. How heavy is the plane these days? Whats the lift calculation?

Massive news in the micro-world: a hexaquark particle

Gordon 10

Im tempted to agree with the first poster. We have found another way that quarks can glue together woop de doo. If glue is the right word for something that has such a brief lifetime.

Does it really tell us anything new, or just refine a tiny little detail? Unless they are a building block for something exciting, or a step on the path to what ever the next Higgs scale particle is it all seems a bit meh......

Apart from the Higgs experimental particle physics seems like gilding the lily these days. Unless they can come up with ways to stabilise and study the properties of these particles, apart from confirming theories - what good are they?

Where are my tachyons and portals to a new dimension?

DARPA gamifies open-source software testing

Gordon 10

Re: I don't understand

I presume this is just smoke testing where you map a set of code variables to a set of in game equivalents then let the internet go through all the possible combinations. Not sure why that is more effecient than another route?

UK govt 'tearing up road laws' for Google's self-driving cars: The truth

Gordon 10

You forgot an important reason any reason the manufacturer can sell you something for $profit

Compare Apple's and oranges: LaCie's hi-vis jacket-wearing disk is not for hipsters

Gordon 10

Dont you mean Apples with Apricots? /halycon days

Gordon 10
WTF?

Re: Worth every penny

So why wouldnt I buy a commodity drive and stick a £10 ebay bumper on it? Or buy an SSD that will work unless physically crushed by a lorry - regardless of the case its in.

Seems a like a lot to pay. The only USP is the thunderbolt connector.

Look inside ELON MUSK'S CAR! Tesla S wundervehicle has voom

Gordon 10
Stop

Re: "Tesla X. Looks cool, but try doing that in a car park."

plus - if you are ever lucky enough to own one of those bad boys - you'll be parking it in the street where everyone can see those cool doors. Multi-storey schmulty storey.

Gordon 10
Paris Hilton

Eh?

Ou'est le Tesla review?

Google reaches into own silicon brain to slash electricity bill

Gordon 10

Re: All good stuff

Interesting point. I wonder if the article includes the power reduction for data center cooling into the equation - although you cant run the AirCon on the same kind of latency - there must be an aggregate effect thats worth noting.

Anyone know the ratio of Rack power to DC power in a data center?

Whoops! Google's D-Day Doodle honors ... Japan

Gordon 10

Maybe coz they were too busy developing the atom bomb.?

And weren't the Germans well ahead in jet engine research?

Just sayin.