Posts by Steve Davies 3 7145 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2009
Syria is already destroyed. Just look at the pictures of Aleppo. It reminds me of Berlin in 1945.
If Drump does one thing then that should be to only take out Asad. Anything else and Drump's best mate (and pal of the new Secretary of State) will piss off Putin big time.
I've visited one of the Refugee camps in Jordan. It was not a nice place but everyone there was just happy to be out of Asad and IS controlled land.
Users of this will get targetted adverts
"Hi Mommy, It looks like Aiden could do with a change. We know that you are a busy Mom, holding down three jobs so we recommend that you let our mobile nanny change your son for you. A snip at $50.00 per change. Available in your area now."
etc
etc
How secure is this POS eh?
The child pron fans(sic) would love to get access to your live stream when it is potty time.
No, no and no.
Oblig... Because it is Samsung, 'does it explode?'
Sarcasm intended by the way.
should change his name to
Donald Tweeter
After all, that seems how he is going to run the White House after Jan 20.
Even though the GOP controls both the Senate and Congress the 'Dear Tweeter' seems determined to bypass them and rule by tweet. Apparently he has 17 Million followers.
These are the boots on the ground that will mobilise to follow his orders.
This won't end well for the USA or the World.
Could he be impeached by his own party? That would be interesting.
In reality, the Eurasian view is
'Do whatever Moscow and/or Bejing say'.
Look at Tibet since the Chinese annexed it.
Look at Georgia. The Russians took a good part of the country
Look at Ukraine. Putin wanted the Crimea for its Naval base so he stirred up the locals and walked in pretending to be protecting the minority.
Just like the USA in many respects.
I don't click on any advert. Sometimes the barsteward page designer hides adverts as a genuine link. I'd like to tar and feather the lot of them.
I also use an adblocker because... well you know why.
The ad networks are getting more and more devious.
Pages don't wotk unless you enable some frameworrk that is underneath the ad pages. Yes Google I mean you and a lot of others.
Those sites get blacklisted.
And so the war goes on. A game of cat and mouse but with diminishing returns for the ad slingers as more and more people get peed off by the ads.
May all the Ad slingers rot in hell.
I spent 18 months working for an Ad company. Before that I was pretty ambivalent about ads but after seeing what was going on from the inside, I just want all of them to shrivel up and die a horrible death.
We are almost there with Fitbit/Pebble
No more updates and I expect that the Pebble servers will be turned off once the deal closes. That basically bricks all the Pebble devices out there.
If you had bought one in recent months I'd be off to the retailer demanding a full refund. The device does not do what it says on the box. We have to thank the EU laws for this. How long before we are like the USA where is is beholden upon the makers kindness to give us a refund outside the first 30 days.
A plague on all of them.
Two Important questions to ask:-
Have you upgraded your {insert router device/ISP etc} device recently?
Has Microsoft forced an update to W10 on you in recent weeks?
Then ask yourself what has changed and who is the more likely culprit given that other (No MS) operating systems seem to be immune from this....
IMHO it is a case of "Hey Redmond, Fix it NOW"
The few Windows users I know have put in place a lot of measures just to stop the slurping of data and worse, the W10 Adverts. Ok, one of them has a really shit hot Windows Admin for a son and he put it all in place.
Many others have dropped windows totally. As they are photographers, the 27in iMac is hard to resist.
The 5k screen is magnificent.
I think that MS may well have learned their lesson with Surface-RT.
If they have not then this will be another dead duck walking.
If they want this to really fly then they have to do things properly. Full Windows 10 in all its slurping and control glory.
I agree about the Windows-10 only booting. This will be the key to keeping total control over everything the users do on the mechines that they have paid for but don't really own anything but the hardware which will be as useless a paper bag is for holding water when MS move onto their next big thing.
MS will also have to scrap their per core licensing system with ARM devices. Already 48 core chips are available. Imagine the cost of SQLServer or Dynamics for that...
Hardware cost $200
Software cost $200,000
Recepie for success? I think not.
Have we suddenly become part of the Empire of Trump? Aren't 'pink slips' a USA only thing?
P45's here in the UK.
Tis the season to be jolly
but you can't have any lolly
Here's your P.45
Don't drink and drive
Obviously windows 10 isn't either 1) selling or 2) needs a the POS that Symantec sells.
The mayor of London could follow the other cities like Paris etc and ban Diesel vehicles from central london. That won't bring this rail line back into daily use though.
The MailRail hub in Willesden made sure that there would be no need for the mail system to use this link.
However as much as I hate to say it, Amazon would probably love an artery like this through the city.
Except that the likes of Foxconn are replacing workers with Robots at a great rate of knots.
Go read up on Elon Musk's plans for the Tesla model 3 and how it will be built with very little human interaction.
Go read Mark Carney's speech on this today.
5% unemployed will become 15-20% unless there is a new Ned Ludd lurking in the wings.
but to buy something that has internet connectivity,
Just don't connect it up.
Just don't enter your WiFi password etc into the device.
However, I would not put it past the bad guys (or spooks) to get their malware on the device before it leaves the factory.
Then all they need to do is when the device is switched on, find the strongest WiFi signal and spend as long as it takes to crack the password and thus gain unfettered access to the internet.
Keeping the supplier name in your access point is also a weakness. 'VM1234456' and 'BT234345567' are invitations to the hackers to exploit know weaknesses in these devices.
As I write this, the more I am convinced that I will never buy a device that must be 'connected' in order to operate.
Exactly.
They'll just pass this off as anti-Trump Fake news OR an FBI Plot just like the Moon Landings.
I am waiting got the 'Dear Leader' of the USA to Tweet his thoughts on the matter. I don't know if I should laugh or cry at the stupidity of some recent tweets.
You seem to forget that Apple has a test track and 'apparently' they have been using it heavily for the past 18 months.
Apple will naturally be conservative when it comes to actually venturing out on the public highway.
There are sure to be some out there hoping to gain financially from Apple by engineering a crash and suing them for a few million etc etc. All just because they (apple) have the money and need to be taken down a few pegs.
Perhaps it is all a smokescreen?
Are Apple actually going to make an electric car?
We won't know for some time.
At least it keeps more than a few people employed.
Oh, and the USA still uses Feet, Inches, Pounds, Gallons, Pints and Miles. {even if the pints and gallons are the wrong size}
Don't forget Cloud.
That seems to be the solution to everything [1] these days but quite how you will backup multi-TB databases to/from the Cloud when the Cloud provider starts getting uppity at more than 50GB of traffic/month/client.
[1] not forgetting DevOps, Agile and all those other here today, gone next week (After the mandatory conference or three) fads.
I agree with the lack of testing. Even writing the test plans and agreeing test coverage could take several months, then writing and proving the tests could take just as long.
One system I worked on took us FOUR days to run the tests. Lots of physical measurments of things like SNR, Db levels and crosstalk were needed in order to get approval to connect the computer system to the BT phone network (BT Voicebank). I suppose none of that is needed these days but back then it was kind of important not to mess up the telephone exhange operation.
1) the refuseniks will cite
- Non removable battery
- No SD card slot
as reasons why this will fail
IMHO, they need to get a life. This does not need a second battery and apart from dual sim phones there is very little need for this extra storage if the maker offers a decent amount to begin with.
2) There have been a number of Hacks that think that grey or gold are so passe and that matt black is the only colour in town. These seem to be mainly from the USA where there does seem to be a penchant for Matt Black cars.
3) the points about the UI would be enough to make me say no, I'll pass on this. Why do these companies think that theyt need to reinvent the wheel?
4) This is not a low cost phone. It is a 'mid-range' phone in terms of cost.
5) Does this 'phone home to China' with all your details? In this day and age this sort of thing does need to be covered in reviews. How secure is it.
6) The fingerprint reader being on the rear is an odd choice. Does it really work and do you get false positives when you pick up the phone?
Other than the fact that the backer seems to be having severe money problems (read the reports about the delays etc to his plans to be the Chinese Elon Musk) it seems to be nice alternative to Samsung.
Samsung are supposed to be getting out of the low end device market. This leaves it wide open to the Chinese.
anyone using Raid-0 for business critical data needs to be taken outside and shot, hung, drawn and quartered (IMHO) and then burnt at the stake if thay are still breathing.
As a minimum you need Raid-1 (Mirroring) not Raid-0 (Striping)
I've just had a 5-drive NAS spend 16 hours rebuilding itself after one 4TB HDD (WD) went Phut.
Thankfully it was configured as a Raid-6 array.
How much does it cost to send an email?
Yet I see £2.50 delivery fee even for email.
This whole thing (touts/bots/charges) is a huge issue. How can a Bieber concert sell out in 8 seconds without the bots?
This means that the real fans don't get a chance to buy a ticket without paying through the nose.
I can remember queuing up outside Brighton Dome to pay my £4 to see Pink Floyd open their 1972 UK Tour. We were treated to a very early DSOTM but that is another story.
Then there were the evenings at the Marquee. No advance tickets, just queue up outside.
These days, I've even seen the touts out at places like 'The Anvil' in Basingstoke for a gig.
For real music (and theatre etc) lovers this is not progress.
The other thing I hate is paying lots of money 9 months in advance for a gig. Who gets the interest on that money between the time that tickets go on sale and the show?
Yours a grumpy old rock fan.
Where are the Shysters when you really need them?
I would have imagined that the class actions would have been flying now. The county should be on the verge of going Chapter 11. Yet this and the other reports I've read don't mention this at all. Can you sue the Legal System? IANAL etc.
Meanwhile the people who made the decision are off somewhere else wreaking the same sort of havoc.
That's life ain't it?
Nicely put but you didn't go far enough. One cost is Capex and the other is OpEx.
As IT director you can gain kudos by cutting your CapEx.... Never mind the increase in OpEx...
The mantra seems to be "The only place to do computing in the future is in the Cloud".
Just watch those content free Microsoft Cloud adverts. Quite why they are played to Joe Public is beyond me. They have no idea what cloud really is (or importantly is NOT).
For an SME, (as I did have my own SME at one time) the certainty of expenditure was the name of the game. Predictable Cash-flow. Both OpEx and CapEx have their place (but see my last paragraph)
The industry seems to want you to move to a Pay Monthly model. Be it Servers in the cloud or for software (Adobe CS). you never own anything but keep paying for it. Just like that High St shop called Brightside...
I prefer to have kit that I own and I can touch. It is an ASSET. Something in the cloud where you pay monthly is a LIABILITY. Different sides of the Balance Sheet.
Just my (worthless) 2p on the subject.
despite the Reg going crazy on NVMe articles lately (kind of reminds me of how they went crazy on all the FCoE articles for a time...)
This place seems to have a thing for storage in all flavours. Remember all those articles abour Violin and its Pals...
For us mere mortals, we go WTF? when we see the price of a 2TB SATA SSD.
Honestly, you are speaking right out of the Musk Manifesto.
He's promoting the idea that Tesla owners let other people drive their car while they aren't using it.
It is not a big step to the idea that no one owns their own car.
Are you now a shareholder in Uber by any chance?
Put all this together and you can get to your utopian view of the future.
The problem is (As usual), that the vested interestes will get in the way.
By vested interests, I mean Big Oil and all the conventional car makers.
With no one owning their own car and effectively sharing it, means that the car makers will need to produce IMHO about 1/10th of the cars that they do at the moment. Do you honestly think that they will sign their own death warrant?
you have a nice idea. Sad that it won't come about.
Hydrogen?
Perhaps you need to get up with the latest news.
Even those who were big fans of Hydrogen are moving away from it as fast as they can.
Tesla (love or hate Musk) have shown the way to all the other car makers.
They seem to be scrabbling to catch up with Tesla at the moment.
As has been said, the biggest issue is the Battery and the time it takes to charge.
My PHEV has spent most of the morning charging at home. The nice sunny day means that when it is done the leccy meter will start spinning backwards. By the time the sun sets the meter will be almost back where it started this morning.
If more people had their own generator (eg PV) then the overall baseload for EV's will be reduced.
I have suggested here before (and got downvoted for my pains) that ALL new buildings are constructed with a PV array on the roof.
Ah, a new plug type that is naturally incompatible with existing charging plugs, cars and charging stations.
Well done guys!
It hates me to say this but I think it is time for the lawmakers to get their act together and mandate that all 'plug-in' vehicles (BEV or PHEV) have standard charging plugs and that includes you Tesla. Makers should be made to retrofit existing vehicles to take the new plug.
As the owner of a PHEV I did try to use Public Charging stations but in my area they are almost all of a type that I don't have a cable for and I'm not paying out £120 (knocks Apple for six in the cost of adapter cable game...) for a new cable that will only get used once or twice a month. The ones that are compatible are never free. People park up, plug in and go to work. There the car sits all day even if it is fully charged. I can plug mine in at home and get it charged for free thanks to my PV system.
systemd free Linux distro Devuan releases second beta
I'm with you here. I started using 'Unix' when DEC released Ultrix (BSD). Moved onto Linux with Slackware 1.1 and to be honest I have found the old init system rather clunky. Getting things to shutdown in the right order was always a bit of hit and miss. more often it was a big miss.
I've recently moved for a Distro (CentOS 7) that uses systemd and the sky didn't fall in.
A bit of experimentation and I have got a system that does what I want it to and only when I want it to.
I've not seen the claimed system instability but there again my workloads are not that taxing on modern Kit.
Yes I am late to the systemd game and yes I did have some trepidation about using it but in the end, I cam to the conclusion that it is as the Bard said,
Much Ado About Nothing.
YMMV but that is my honest opinion.
Are these factory farms you are talking about in the UK?
I was under the impression that we'd improved the lot of the animals we use in the food chain considerably. For example, banning factory production of eggs etc.
If there is considerable suffering of animals on UK farms then call the RSPCA and any of the Animal Rights Organisations. They'll be on to it in a flash.
I have seen intensive beef farms in the USA. The cattle there never see sunlight. Bloody awful places.
The article used the word 'Superior'. Perhaps that is where AC got it from?
Tallow has been used for centuries for Lighting. I've seen Tallow lamps being used in at least one part of India that is heavily Vegan.
IMHO, kudos to the Royal Mint for using a sustainable (by-)product rather than an oil based substitute.
seeing this on any kit we are likely to get our hands on is about as certain as Hens sprouting Canine teeth.
TBH, we have seen so many 'magic solution' storage vendors come and go over the years here on El Reg that I for one am getting a bit wary of these companies and their claims/promises.
IMHO is that all they want is to get bought out by a bigger org so that the directors can make a killing and then move on to their next 'big thing'.
Hiroshi Tsuji, of Japanese telco KDDI, got it right by saying that the IoT "doesn"t need high specifications, high speed or high performance", which in relative terms is what the NB-IoT spec achieves for IoT.
The hackers won't like this. The Botnets that use IoT devices need full speed access to make an effect.
The Carriers will love it. They can add a $20/month charge + $5/month (for the bill) for this 'extra' functionality (if you are in the USA and called AT&T or Sprint or Comcast)
This will be on top of the extra $50/month for using 5G. (sorts like EE did when they introduced 4G)
Lovely jubbly if you are a mobile carrier.
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