Posts by Ammaross Danan

It could be yours!

You can have it too! Sticker price says $2.6bn, but I'll let you have it for $2.5bn.

Missed the point

Very informative reply, but I think jake simply missed clicking the "joke alert" icon, as his "Flash? What's that?" comment most likely implied he chooses not to install flash at all and therefor has no problems. Good attempt though.

Well

They already stated ways to possibly power these base stations: stick them on a mobile unit. So, if an alternater in a vehicle isn't good enough, I'm sure sticking an antenna on the back of a Paladin for some good'ol tank grunt should both protect the tower and power it sufficiently. When all else fails, mobile generators in on a trailer should do nicely. Probably the base ballist to keep it upright in high winds....

Fail

"every time I browse for porn and erase my dirty tracks with the push of a couple of buttons."

Last I checked, this is a good way to get stuck permenantly browsing porn as all the crapware shoves itself onto your system through the crap they call a browser.

And as for the tracks, isn't that what porn-mode, erm "In-Private Browsing," is for?

Fail for crappily-constructed sarcasm (please say it was just sarcasm).

Unless

"Oh, and the next "modern" machine I see with a modem needs to go in the blender - waste of space and power"

Unless, you're a Road Warrior. You know, the kind that may need to make (or receive) a fax whilst in <enter a random nowhere-ville location here> for business reasons. You know, the type that might be in to the ultra-portable and light, but cheap for the beancounter's approval, type laptop.

Title

Last I checked, they didn't park the ISS next to a stream, or even a mud hole for that matter...

Never

Jobs would never pull those apps from the store! They help add (pad) those app counts with zeroes! "Over 100,000 Apps! There's an App for that!" (as long as you're looking for a fart app or something equally younger than 12)

heatsink

To answer the question of water-cooled or no, as well as the size of the heatsink, the author did mention that "We'd have shown you a picture of the part, but really, all you'd have seen was a lot of fan"

The keyword is "fan" in case you didn't see.

Alternative

I take it no one read the Reg article about how Sex may be the culprit in Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, not typing?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/21/carpal_tunnel_syndrome/

Not quite RSI, but perhaps linked?

But seriously, to make a brief (well, sort of) mention of the brainjack idea. A halo that can interpret thought it nice and all, but a brainjack into the brainstem will allow total Nervous System interception. When you run in your VR world, you don't have to be physically running, so the BrainJack2000(tm) filters such actions from passing along your spinal cord. Of course, it would need to be positioned above the lower brain so breathing and such isn't affected (or better hope the ipchains/tables people got their filters correct!). There is the added benefit of the brainjack being capable of SENDING information back to the brain. Neurofeedback and the like. Kick a rock? Make you feel like you kicked it. Of course, more ipchains/tables to sort out to prevent rogue software from sending a "you're being burned alive" signal.... Perhaps have a sliding scale of pain and such you would like to be let through, like adjusting volume.

@Bob 18

Yes, because Java and .NET are well known to be fast and entirely effective at driving events on a webpage.

RE: Myth Busted!!

Yes, mythbusters busted the bullet-stopping capability of implants (didn't they use Silicone ones anyway?). However, they didn't measure its effect at REDUCING penetration depth. The round fragmented (obviously, since "fragments" are mentioned), and with the extra inch or so of "high pressure" salt water to penetrate, the fragments didn't penetrate deep enough to kill her (by mere millimeters in this case). Ever see a bullet shot into water? Stops quite quickly. Or didn't you see that Myth Busters of shooting a cube of gel at various angles/depths in water?

I hate to admit it

...but AC has a point. If I put a rule on our main firewall that drops all inbound traffic NOT from the USA and ALSO drops all outbound traffic to anywhere EXCEPT the USA (and the UK for The Reg of course), my network and users would have ZERO impact. Unless of course there's a search result piping me to a bot drone "web server" punting malware. Since Google or their ilk don't provide search results from their "anywhere in the world" datacenters /directly/, shouldn't be an issue. Now, to look up the IP ranges provided to US-based carriers....

Well

It was probably suggesting remote administration ports to the router/DSL modem. The article stated it redirects port 80 (from internal to external at least) to a malware-loaded website.

However

But who would want to use the "better OS" if it only played on a small subset of specialty devices? Go buy a "better format" HD-DVD and see how far you get.

Disclaimer: No flames about using a "dead" format please. It was for sake of argument and as a common-knowledge visual. Only flame for the fact this was a stab at a "OSX Rules, Wind0ze has Virii!" post

And

And if you have any doubt Cisco isn't trying to gouge you, just go to their website and try to download their VPN client.

Fail

Yes, because AMD would like their ATI competitor, nVidia, to be coupled with their CPU. ATI also has a form of CUDA (albeit not as mature and popular [if CUDA could even be considered that...]).

Siesta

Many people have lauded the boost in performance a Siesta can deliver, but many people ignore a minute detail: a Siesta "power nap" should NOT exceed a MAXIMUM of 30 minutes. Ideally, it should be 15-20min. This is the "power nap" time parameter used in most research (Google it if you must). So, the "up to 3 hours" of Siesta that some people prescribe to does more harm than good in productivity terms.

A Thought

"Always an interesting discussion when someone says that a solution 'requires' SCSI or SAS, because you know SATA drives and controllers haven't sped up at all in the last 5 years. "But I need high throughput......""

Just made me think, off-hand, what would happen if a hard drive implemented 2 read/write arms (positioning the additional one on the opposite side/corner), instead of just one? Simultaneous data access anyone?

Mines the one with the patent application in the pocket.

IE6

Many companies mandate IE6 and WinXP due to problems vetting newer browsers/OSes. The Gov't in particular probably runs custom software that demands a certain browser or uses an out-of-date plugin that requires an older OS. I work in Healthcare and I know of several EMR solutions that either directly embed browser windows into their interface (thus requiring IE6 for instance, so everything stays working as intended), or uses some plugin for managing PDFs or images that is running 4 revisions out-of-date which only supports XP. Why? It costs money to buy licensing for the new plugin, or to pay someone to update the interface, etc. Until people start refusing to use software solutions that REQUIRE them to stay on older, more insecure, platforms, nothing will be done by those lazy software vendors.

Well

Just slap a nuclear reactor in the back of the plane. Electro lasers powered by such would be more than capable of one-shotting a missile in a few seconds, not this horrid 1-minute crap. Hate to have to stem off 5 missiles at once.

Re: Apple isn't prosecuted for monopoly abuses because it isn't a monopoly

A <6% share of the "personal computer" market is not a monopoly. Saying Apple is a monopoly is like saying Nintendo has a monopoly on the Wii. If you don't like the iPhone, there's several other smartphones out there you can use. What? They are all crap? Then get an iPhone and live with the manufacturer's restrictions. It's called Vendor Lock-in. Get used to it.

A monopoly is only a monopoly if there are no other choices to be had.

Agreed

"Second Life is a metaverse, not a MMO game."

Agreed. Even after sludging through the rant about how SL truly is a MMO "game," I still agree it's a metaverse and not a game. Calling it a game on the mere basis that you have a user that can "interact" (view and generate content), and can perform actions others can see/read, would make it essentially a graphical BBS. Should we start calling phpBB.net a game? Thought not.

@Mad Hacker

"Really? I'm not a fanboi but the all too common BSOD in a medical scenario seems scarier to me then whatever you are imagining might go wrong with an iPad."

Last I checked, the physicians I know don't rely on their Windows PCs in a "medical scenario" that could be considered "scary" by any means. Of course, when your personal physician (of whom your basing your comment on) runs blind because his iPad ran out of juice and is no longer able to get help from a First Aid for Dummies app, I really will feel for you.

@Commentard

"iPad "equivalent" for Win 7???"

I believe the subtitle was "alternative." Wait, let me check...yep "alternative."

Would I use it? Most definately NOT. As you so annoyingly sum up, most all of its features FAIL. However, you my friend get a FAIL banner. Why? You assumed "equivalent" and it shows in your rant. This is a band-wagon item from an obscure(ish) company.

Items like this are never going to seriously compete against the iPad. Of course, if Jobs had the iPad run OSX (or simply allow multi-tasking), and drop the price a touch (I could probably wait 2 years and never have that happen), then there is no one that could compete competantly.

However, what's the one (well, perhaps 2 things) that this device has going for it? You can (with a varying degree of slugishness) run ANY Windows application. This is not to say you can fire up Need for Speed: Shift on the thing, but more along the lines of what the article tested. Run Firefox, with Javascript!, OpenOffice, and VLC Media Player. I'd like to see any of these on the iP[ao]d. And let's not forget you don't need iTunes to copy your media files to and from the device....

A thought

A cop I know was in a foot pursuit of a suspect when the suspect pulled out a hand gun and was firing at the cop (while still running btw). At that point, the officer emptied his entire clip into the suspect. Justified? Yes. Why? All shots from the suspect (6) did not hit the officer. How many could have potentially hit bystanders like yourself? Thankfully none did, but it was a risk that needed to be put down ASAP.

Chalk at least 1 up to "entirely justified." I'm sure most, if not all, fall into the same category. It's the 1 officer-involved shooting that has some grey to it that gets blasted (and hyped) by the media that makes you think that all police officers may be racist and quick-to-the-trigger.

Well

The next time I have to buy solar cells for my house IN SPACE, I'll look you up.

I say just create these as shingles for roofs, and "plug" them into a circuit system on the roof. Make a building code to mandate their use (if it's within reasonable price compared to normal asphalt shingles), or at the very least gov't (or utility co) subsidize their use. A bit of tar underneath and you get roofing AND the entire roof surface for lecy generation. Siding might be nice, but too vertical for any real gain (unless my house was north of the Arctic Circle).

On the utility co. subsidizing note, perhaps have one of these solar array projects rent suburban roof space to reshingle and maintain. Sure, it's not a dedicated space in the desert, but your power generator(s) are on location to the people who need the power in the first place. Save on infrastructure!

@A_USER: Positioning and Appeal to Authority

"...I'm OS agnostic, son, I can..."

Just a note, but a classical mark of manipulating and making an argument is the appeal to authority (the parenthetical inclusion of "son," in the attempt to demean/lessen the authority of the one being spoken to, and strengthen the authority of the one positioning himself as "older"), as well as the postulating of experience given by providing examples of a wide use of systems. Both are in attempt to make this rant seem a worthwhile source of information.

It irritates me to hear (read) people that have to resort to these tactics (albeit subconsciously) to make their point rather than standing on the shear logic and soundness of their argument. Of course in this case, we can see why the author resorted to such measures....

Where's the [Info] icon when you need one?

@DMH

"where the scientist touches his iPhone like tablet to the computer screen and swipes a 3D image off the screen on to the tablet. He then walks across the room and swipes the image on to a window"

This would be EXTREMELY easy to implement if the whole "web-based OS" platform idea took off, where everyone's computers were simply localized data-chunking systems and your actually desktop is "out there." Then it's just a simple matter of dumping your desktop session to whatever device you desire. You can already do this with Citrix remote sessions or Virtualized Desktops, just not so seemlessly as in Avatar. With a 30mm range for the TransferJet, I don't see a huge need for complicated authentication. If they reduced the range some more and REQUIRED the device to be sitting on a landing pad of sorts, then it really should work just like a USB device IMHO.

Insert Title Here

The service executible just decrypts the virus from within the help file if the original virus is deleted. That is all it does, thus nothing would get flagged by a heuristics-type scan. A virus definition scan may pick it up if they thought of checking if a helper service was installed in addition to the actual virus, but it looks like an oversight.

As for the hidden virus, no virus scanner can remove it because it is encrypted (presumably with a key generated upon infection), and thus not something that can be described by a "virus definition." They best they could do would be to check the .hlp file for any non-standard info (hashes of all versions of the file perhaps?) and simply quarantine it if it fails. Granted, now they know, they should check for the service exe and quarantine the .hlp if one if this virus is found. But that's just sensical, and what would an antivirus be (especially McAfee) if they did something that made sense?

Overhead

Latency to ship PCIe info across a presumably medium-length wire ought to be fairly high (compared to on-the-board channels). Slicing up the hardware interfaces does make some sense though, considering 10G ethernet can be hard-pressed to be saturated, let alone 100G in the near future. Shuffling RAM off the board and stuffing that in a nearby box seems a touch more daft to me. Serious OCers tweak timings to maximize the "laggy" link between CPU and RAM as it is. Pushing this over a connector, across a wire, into a processing unit of some sort, and back just sounds slow. Perhaps this could be supplimented a bit by a mega L3 cache or somesuch.

As for Single Point of FAILure, if this was used to host VMs running in some form of cluster enviornment, with a NAS-based setup, you could essentially afford the risk of an entire blade cluster going down, due to the "Live VMotion"-esque capabilities of VM systems. With all the cost and power savings (not to mention supporting hardware such as switches, rackspace, etc), one could afford to practically double their hardware to provide hot failover systems without incurring increased cost over a traditional solution. More computing power, with the same amount of wattage and (arguably) less money, with the potential for BETTER redundancy/failover. No wonders the slant in this story is toward extreme knife-in-the-back hype.