Posts by Roland6 10727 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2010
In the mid~1990's I remember attending a presentation by Peter Cochrane, where he illustrated a point by talking about a shirt pocket 1PB storage device and a similarly high-performance wireless network connection capable of utilising that storage. Naturally, we were all at a loss to come up with any idea as to what you could use both that storage and connectivity for, other than something akin to Google glasses with continuous record enabled.
>You might be surprised...
No problems with having a trade deal with Turkey. However, from the reports, it nicely illustrates that the UK government is both vastly under resourced (it didn;t have the capacity to do any due diligence, deeming having a, or any, trade deal was better than none) and has much to (re)learn about the art of negotiation. Given Turkey was probably one of the simpler negotiations the UK has to enter into, it doesn't give much hope of their ability to sign favourable trade deals with the US, China etc. that deliver against their various Brexit commitments.
>Its amazing isnt it. The EU moans at the lack of regulation in the US yet the US can produce successful companies while the EU.... complains.
Actually, the big issue with the US market is that it is so protectionist - something that won't change anytime soon. Trump et al didn't like the EU because it was big enough to kick back and didn't simply rollover...
>But global Britain doesnt sound a bad thing does it?
Yes it makes a nice emotive soundbite, expect it to still be doing the rounds in 50 years time (when the current debate is history) with little to show other than rose tinted versions of the empire days...
The laugh is that from the UK trade data and positions of influence it had, the UK was making a good job at being global whilst being a member of the EU; I suspect much of the mindset problem was at Westminster...
>You mean the market? The very thing that works. Where some little businesses succeed and most fail? Where some make it from little business to small business and maybe even large or even fewer world players! As a consumer it sounds awesome!
Trouble is BoJo et al talked about global Britain and that somehow after Brexit the UK would become some big fish in the world, overlooking that you can practically count on the fingers of one hand the number of UK companies over the past 60 years that have been successful in the USA, yet I'm sure you can easily reel off a long list of US companies that have been successful in the EU and UK. About the best strategy adopted some years back by a UK government was to encourage foreign companies to do their R&D in the UK which nicely sidestepped the UK establishment problem with investing in innovative startups.
>Why would the standard of kettle be worse if we buy what we want and China already sends stuff to us while we were in the EU?
Because previously Chinese companies were supposed to build to EU standards and could have sanctions taken against them for sub-standard products arriving in the EU destined for EU consumers. Without standards what sanctions are possible?
We can talk about consumer choice, but if the savvy consumer purchases kettles that conform to EU standards (will the UK enforce trading standards against manufacturers who misuse the EU CE mark?) there won't be much of a market for UK non-standard products which raises the question - just what was the benefit of being able to specify your own standard in this specific instance.
>This again has the same assumption. That the EU minimum is better.
You're getting fixated on 'the EU'.
Where standards exist, having a minimum standard is better than having no minimum standard.
Yes, I agree there are games being played over vacuum cleaner and kettle power consumption in the name of 'greenness' within the EU standards-setting forums, which actually suggest that some business interests are having undue influence over matters - it is notable that there seems to have been an absence of UK political will to support Dyson's reasonable objections...
>If they are gonna just copy EU regs then no.
No, the UK is going to have to onshore, much of the work it had previously offshored to Brussels. Whilst good for UK jobs, not going to help UK exports.
>"they are going to see lower wages, longer hours, higher prices, and MORE bureaucracy"
Why? It could happen of course but it could go the other way.
Yes it could, however, this is England, where those with influence and power daydream about going back to the 18th century...
Brexit does gives give an opportunity for the UK to take the lead just as we had the opportunity post-WWII - but somehow I don't see the public school brainwashed establishment changing its spots anytime soon...
> The assumption you make is that the EU minimum standards are better.
Err no, the assumption is that they set a default minimum in the absence of a (better) UK standard...
The UK government has much to do in the coming years, and I expect it won't want to spend £350m a week on the civil service putting in place all the regulatory stuff that we previously pooled with the EU, so don't expect many new UK standards - creating a standards void...
>Why would there be a worse domestic version?
Engage brain?
Due to the UK being able to sign its own trade deals (eg. the one UK has just signed with Turkey that will make it easier for Turkish citizens to come to the UK and the UK to export arms to Turkey...), we can expect it to sign deals with others especially China, where all those UK kettles are made...
Given the joys of purchasing anything of quality from China, we can expect goods such as kettles destined for the UK domestic market to be substandard compared to those shipped to other markets. So yes, you'll be able to buy a kettle from Poundland, but expect it to swiftly become landfill...
For what little say we had on EU regs we had to apply them domestically as well.
Well a big change is that with the EU there was a defined public consultation path, so I could contribute to the regs that applied to my part of the market. With the UK Government, there is no such thing, unless I'm already reasonably well-heeled and able to contribute to the Conservative party...
Secondly, you missed the big thing, the UK reg's only apply to a market of 66M not a market of 514M (EU28 := EU27 448M + UK 66M ). Brexit has simply reinserted a hurdle that existed prior to the Single Market, the 1980's and early 1990's business press was full of companies that tried and failed to go from being a big fish in the UK to being a world player, in part because they were minnows compared to US companies who had grown fat on a protected marketplace of 330M...
Yes, the Single Market had some way yet to go, but we shouldn't forget that it took the best part of 200 years for the US home market to achieve its current form. Remember, according to Mogg it will take circa 50 years before we see the "real" benefits of Brexit...
Given the status of 5G and the expected extent of rollout achievable in the next 5~10 years, I don't see the point of rushing out to buy a phone carrying the '5G' marketing tag.
"the Realme 7 5G sits in a price band that historically housed slow, feature-crippled phones with awful cameras."
Clearly not been in the market for a mid-priced phone some years, with technology getting cheaper and trickle-down etc. that's not been the case for some years now - unless you've been wedded to manufacturers who like to charge a premium for their name and thus want you to purchase their £flagships...
Now take a look at the circa £279 price point, or even the £200 price point - eg. Huawei P30 Lite New Edition...
>Modern Qi is almost certainly not as inefficient as you think it is since most people's opinion on this subject tends to be based on outdated information collected while testing original implementations from many years ago. Current implementations of Qi charging are now up to 80% efficiency of cable charging.
Yes, but if you look at the implementation to get these efficiency levels you aren't using a mat, but a male-female plug of some description so that the coils in the phone are aligned properly with the coils in the charging pad...
"The standards merge the data link with the network layer," says Taylor. That might seem like a weird thing to do. "It's not weird if you want the ISPs not to be just dumbly moving around traffic, but to actually understand and have some active role in authenticating users and reading what's going on."
Nothing weird here, in principle. The ISO OSI reference model was just a way of presenting the different services and functionality a network required. Yes it got implemented with each layer as a discrete protocol, but it could be implemented differently.
So we had the idea of implementing IP directly on to Ethernet, lightweight protocols that merged Transport and Network etc.
Looking at QUIC, 5G et al, it does seem that the current incarnation of the Internet is reaching end-of-life, the only question is whether we resist change and continue to use the QWERTY keyboard of networking or develop Internet V3...
Yes. We have a regulator but somehow that seems to make it a smart idea for those few to dictate what internet speed people should have instead of the people using the internet. We have food regulators but I dont want them dictating only premium corn fed roaming wild chicken worshipped by beautiful women who tend their every need. If I want that I would have to pay.
I think we are actually in agreement here.
We want the food regulators to set Standards so that the chicken you buy is actually fit for human consumption and hasn't been plumped up with water etc. beyond that it is up to the consumer whether they buy an everyday 'value' chicken or something more fancy from M&S say.
The same applies to broadband, the Ofcom baselines, only require operators to install lines that are capable of delivering at least the base (download) speed at the home, not at the exchange/cabinet as at present with xDSL services. Ofcom hasn't yet mandated that providers can only sell particular services (ie. speed combinations) over this infrastructure, so the customer is still free to choose a speed/price offer combination they are happy with. Obviously, Ofcom is setting these baseline requirements at a level that encourages the incumbents (mainly BT) to install fibre, but doesn't require them to ripe out copper where people are already getting service levels well in excess of the base line..
For some reason, it seems there are people who are unhappy with joe public opting to use the lower speed and lower-priced services, rather than
>""Well that should be Ofcom's job"
Why not the people using it?"
@codejunky - are you really that dim?
We the people have appointed through our elected (and sovereign) Parliament, Ofcom to represent our ("the people") interests. So if you contribute to their consultations, you are able to have your say on what the base speed should be...
>Most people are not on modems although I did know someone who still had one little over a decade ago.
I've still got some clients with modems, they are a second route into some key infrastructure systems - if Internet access is not available for whatever reason then the dial-up modem provides an alternative path to the Console port, which can often get things working again without a site visit...
>But speed can only really be economically identified by what people are willing to pay.
Thay's why you specify a minimum, which if you have been following Ofcom's guidance over the years, is exactly what they have been doing. It seems Ofcom's approach is annoying some who would prefer it to be set significantly higher, more for reasons of marketing than actual consumer need.
>This is where capitalism works and the gov spaffing doesn't.
Not been around long enough to realise that capitalism isn't all its cranked up to be. Suggest you go and live in the USA (or even Australia) for a while to get a better appreciation of how dysfunctional capitalism can be - remember GSM, 3G and 5G (which you seem to be a fan of) arose out of European concepts of mutual benefit capitalism, not the "survival of the fittest" neoliberal capitalism that some worship. Also what the 2008 financial crisis and the current pandemic have shown is that government action is a key and necessary player in the economy - without government intervention the UK economy would have died in 2008 and again in 2020.
>Satellite and 5G etc advancing and the gov even bought a satellite network already. Fibre may be a part of it but it doesnt take long to be out of date.
Having worked on point-to-point, VSAT and various other broadcast satellite links, I'm not particularly in awe of the various Internet/5G access satellite consellations getting media hype. Likewise the hype surrounding 5G - you only need to look at the hype around the launch of 3g, then 4G to see that reality was something totally different.
As for fibre being out-of-date, well have yet to encounter anyone removing 1980's/1990's fibre and replacing it with 2020 fibre, people simply replace the transcievers - I'm just upgrading one such circuit to 10Gbps through the purchase of a pair of £50 SFP modules; which in some respects is exactly what we did with copper - replacing the 1200baud modems with 56bis modems, then 512kbps ADSL modems, which in turn got upgraded to 18Mbps ADSL2 modems, which in some situations can be replaced by VDSL and gFast modems... Personally, I expect to see vendors having another go at promoting LTE/5G home cells that utilise the FTTP connection to increase and expedite rollout of 5G coverage.
>I do wonder how low our tax bills could be if they would stop spaffing money on pet projects.
Not much, there have been various papers by economists about tax bills and percentage of GDP.
However, a more level headed approach to matters might mean that projects got properly funded. For example, HS2, from the outset, has been about minimising cost, with corners cut at every opportunity to make it affordable - hence the reason for the dog's dinner 30mph interconnect between HS2 and HS1, the current project fails to satisfy many of the governments original mandatory requirements. Interestingly, lessons from HS1 clearly haven't been learnt and we can expect the bill to continue to rise as more of the thinking and penny-pinching assumptions prove to be wrong...
>But what should the base speed be and who should decide?
Well that should be Ofcom's job, as is determining a price point for the base service...
What is clear the factors that should go into determining the base/universal service are different now to what they were a year ago.
>We have already got the easy fibre roll outs done
Don't disagree, when the government baulked at the cost of universal fibre, the BDUK project deliberately chose a path that delivered the biggest bang quickly and at the lowest cost (to the government): FTTC. Plus it deliberated created a marketplace that was biased towards the pre-existing big player and then failed to properly oversee the rollout to prevent the dominant player from further skewing things in their favour...
We are now paying the price for this shortsightedness...
>You can say there is economic benefit but that doesnt seem to be the case.
The economic benefit is there, just like all infrastructure it is very difficult to economically justify on its own, however, have a business need which depends on an improved infrastructure...
Thus given the widespread business and social benefits, many of which we've had a glimpse of these past 9 months, it would seem natural for government to make the investment and reclaim it from enhanced tax revenues and reduced welfare payouts. Obviously, this doesn't directly gain us a slice of the savings a company may make from say closing its central London office and making all of its staff work from home, but having more money circulating in the local economy is probably a good thing.
>If it was worth it you would expect companies to be wanting that extra money.
From this and previous reports it is clear the broadband providers do want the revenues, just not the capital costs. Additionally, they don't want to be subsidised for providing say 20/5 and then upgrading at their own cost, but get fully subsided for providing 1Gbps from the outset (naturally, they also want to charge the same premiums as if they had made the capital investment out of their own pockets).
As for cost to the taxpayer, well a universal fibre network will last significantly longer with significantly lower on-going costs to the public purse that many of the other projects the Government has been happily spaffing taxpayers monies on... (HS2 is an example of how politicians prefer vanity projects and will blindly fund them regardless of the facts, over ones with solid business/economic cases.)
@codejunky
"But we dont. The uptake of current top speeds is lacklustre and those are in places deemed economically viable."
Once again assuming fibre only means high speed - which some would like to set at 1Gbps, personally, given the experiences of people here, just reliably getting say 20/5Mbps to 90+% of homes would require significant amounts of fibre and deliver economic benefit (although I would prefer 40/10).
The laugh is that those who keep on about 1Gbps etc., keep missing that what really matters isn't speed but reliable coverage; once you have fibre to the home, speed is all-about what people are prepared to live with and pay for; changing from say 20/5 to 1000/1000 (or anything between) should just be a software change (my NIC auto senses 10/100/1000, my WiFi adapter supports even more granularity).
>an argument for them to have superfast broadband cabled to their house even if they cant afford to subscribe to it?
This is where the confusion, and probably deliberate confusion on the part of providers, is arising.
Within the industry, it is known that the time has come to junk the copper/aluminium/wet string POTS network and replace it entirely with fibre. Resulting in a network requiring significantly lower maintenance costs and with lots of future-proofing (depending on your view of 'the future').
So we could justify the entire conversion to fibre as simply a network renewal, which can be performed at its own pace. However, we wish to accelerate the deployment of this new infrastructure so as to capitalise on the performance benefits; this carries an additional cost. Whilst this could be benignly funded from government, we are in a society that demands some form of measurable benefits and return on investment, so what better way to generate the additional monies than to talk up the (performance) benefits and get people to pay and to get the government to provide monies without strings attached (well without strings that do encumber the major players, but do encumber smaller players and anyone wishing to join in).
So yes, people at foodbanks should have superfast broadband fibre cabled to their house, but don't expect them to pay more than they are currently paying, or even use it more.
Interestingly, having for several years worked with UK Online, we've found that many people like being able to access the internet from "the foodbank" as that means the computer/tablet isn't at home where it could be pawned or taken by the balliffs. Also, some don't actually want others in their household being able to look over their shoulder while they do the online banking etc.
" A phone line to connect them via the only means of communication to the outside world. ...
Vs trying to provide a superfast broadband cable to them for them to not use anywhere near capacity."
Well, the only difference between then and now is back then they didn't know that the copper cable was capable of transmitting so much more than a simple analogue voice signal. We, however, know that a 20km fibre can do so much more than 1Gbps (only fools think that is anywhere near the capacity of a single fibre) and get hung up about it. Remember the cost of replacing the existing copper cable with another cable -copper or fibre - is pretty much the same. The price difference comes in the termination equipment. From a marketing perspective, copper has little future, whereas fibre, plenty of opportunity for future upgrades for minimal cost...
As for the alternatives, for practical purposes, 5G/Satellite really mean wait for 10+ years for anything useful to be offered.
>Is that not a thing in Brit-Cit?
Yes, there are conventions for the placement of utilities in the UK and in theory there should also be plans, however, reality can differ...
From my experience, I would not assume the geo location given on a plan to be correct - for my road the reference point is 6ft different - sufficient for utilities to be within someone's garden and not under the pavement/sidewalk.
From work with a utility, one of the problems encountered was getting plans updated. The engineers would go out to site, with a set of master plans, only to find reality differed, they hand-annotated updates on the plan, which for various reasons didn't always result in the masters being updated...
> TCP is rather chatty, after all. Haven't run the numbers
I think because most users don't actually push their Internet connection, they don't see the underlying network performance bottlenecks.
TCP/IP really is the QWERTY keyboard of networking. We knew back in the 1980's that ARPA TCP/IP (and 802.3 Ethernet) wasn't really up to scratch for 'high speed' networks - back then "high speed meant 30~60Mbps, so there were many proprietary modifications to enhance throughput and reduce the 'chat', some of which did get incorporated into RFC's. However, some of the more radical changes incorporated into experimental protocols such as XTP seem to have been lost.
It will be interesting to see how QUIC (aka TCP/2) fairs ie. will it displace TCP or be like IPv6 destined to languish on the sidelines waiting for the world to change...
The question is what do you actually mean by "upgraded to FTTP".
FTTP is available in my area now, however, OpenReach merely connects up the fibre leaving the existing copper POTS line in place. So the issue of mobile coverage can be addressed by maintaining the phone service, until such time as BT turns off POTS.
>This is going to be the next "must have"
Will be an interesting contest, between business and marketing. Currently symmetric commands a price premium and really is only needed for business; who probably shouldn't be using residential grade broadband services...
> if cloud is to become really useful.
Cloud is already really useful. About the only cloud service that needs a fast uplink is backup and that is only if your backup is, as you point out, large.
For a row of 4 cottages near me, BT put in nearly 1 mile of poles for the fibre instead of trenching. Interestingly, they were installed on the opposite side of the road to the existing phone poles. I assume at some future date the phone poles (and cables) will be removed.
>The only way I can see them getting it to the house is by digging up the drive - which looking at their other work (or their contractor) on the paths I really don't want.
There are companies (int he UK) that do moling etc.
If you are worried about the job the contractors will do, lay your own ducting, this also means it will enter the house where you want it and not where the GigaClear contractors decide is expedient for them...
Well we are all assuming the responsibility for the problem lies with MS; however, it is worth remembering the NTFS.SYS update on Win7 which borked some systems, which was discovered to have been caused by some long undetected malware from some unknown third-party...
Surely you meant:
If Microturd spent as much time testing their shitcode as they do writing their legal documents, then we wouldn’t be in the mess we seem to find ourselves all too often.
Or are you implying that if MS wrote their legal doc's as well as their code they would potentially have been successfully sued out-of-business?
>But unless someone tells us what the fix is and how to get it this information is totally useless.
From my reading of the MS KB's and the blogs.
1. If you have installed either of the two updates (highly likely), don't run Chkdsk /f, although you might be safe running chkdsk /scan.
2. The fix is being distributed via the WUP channel. It would not surprise me if the fix is listed with the same KB number as the original update, it just has a more recent version number/date.
So if your system isn't enterprised-managed, ensure all updates are installed - given how Win10 systems can go looking for updates claim your system is up-to-date, yet an identical system next to it can be downloading more recent updates, I suggest you can only really be sure the fix has been applied until after the January 2020 cumulative update has been applied.
If you have accidentally run chkdsk /f and thus have an unbootable system then you need to use a working system to create a recovery disk/bootable usb and use that to run chkdsk on the crippled system. It is probably best to create recovery media whilst you have a running system and make a full disk image backup...
>Windows 7 hasn't received security updates for a year.
So what?
Run a decent AV and a current browser and your risk of malware actually being able to run is about the same as it is on Win10. Problems only really start when AV and browser vendors stop developing for Win7.
Interestingly, there are major AV vendors who still support XP, combine this with MyPal and it's still pretty good to go...
>And specialized Windows backup software does NOT impress me.
The fact that 'specialised' Windows full disk backup/imaging software didn't actually do a full image/backup as it detected and fiddled around with the Windows activation to deactivate the restored image is the primary reason why I use Clonezilla.
> If CHKDSK has not been altered and it presumably does not call any DLL's, how is it possible for corruption to occur when called from within the update, but not when called outside of it?
Not quite right, CHKDSK failed (ie. corrupted the file system) when invoked from within the current OS image (ie. run chkdsk /f on next start up). What is not clear (from the blog) is whether the version of Chkdsk being run in offline mode was the same version as the updated version or had been created previously and thus was a different version - with all the same implications for the various DDL's etc that Chkdsk invokes.
What is also unclear is whether this problem just applies to builds 2004/20H2 or also applies to build 1908. Currently, it gives further reason to hold off upgrading from 1908...
>My virus checker detects me modifying a ZIP file and kills the running application
Get this all the time with several useful NirSoft utilities...
Or better still, the AV detects the signature of the latest Windows/application update doesn't have an approved hash/checksum and so blocks it from being installed (and uploads it to its masters for examination).
>One of the things that Agile does in forcing us to release frequently is improve the release process.
It may do this (improve the release process), however, it would seem that, once again, in this instance the "reversion process" wasn't fully tested (ie. attempt reversion after file system has been corrupted by chkdsk update), leaving users to use the tried-and-tested wipe and reinstall reversion process...
>Computer Science and Software development was never a branch of Mathematics. This has always been a myth and an assumption those that had no idea.
Yet it took until the late 1970's before there was such thing as a BSc.(Hons) Computing qualification (in the UK at least).
Also many universities (eg. Oxford and Cambridge) not only awarded a BA. but had the Computing dept. as a sub-branch of the maths facility. ie. you had to apply to study maths and then specialise in computing.
I know this as having a Computing Department and awarding a BSc(Hon) Computing was part of my criteria when I selected Universities back then - from memory it was a very short list - slightly longer than than the UCCA form permitted...
>I was always pushed down the Computer Science and Software development route when I was in college simply because I was singularly gifted in Mathematics. (later came to realise I was gifted at mathematics because I was a logical thinker and was able not only follow but understand maths examples).
Did you excel at the Mathematical Analysis, which was more about logic and structuring of the logical argument to stepwise solve a problem?
>There are a couple of reasons for packaging it as a loan, not graduate tax:
Also all students incurred it, including those from the EU who were entitled to the same benefits package...
For some reason the UK government permitted Scotland to breach EU rules and not permit students from England to benefit from their lack of tuition fees...
>For the next 30 years the borrowing is an individual's personal debt, not part of governemnt debt.
Yes, successive UK governments were good at getting future liabilities off book and so not count towards the current national debt. Only problem is that Students aren't paying enough off and the debt is growing into a problem which some future government will have to deal with...
>It is remarkable how graduates of apparently non-mathematical subjects sometimes turn out to be very able programmers.
It is remarkable that this still has to be said...
It was recognised way back (1970's and probably earlier) that Computing wasn't just a branch of maths and so struggled both to become a subject in its own right hence the rise of BSc. Computing and dedicated Uni faculities/departments wholly independent of the Maths department.
> I now have to migrate 454,000 nodes over to Ubuntu because Redhat just made the dumbest decision short of letting IBM acquire them I’ve seen.
Whitehurst how could you let this happen?
Nothing like millions in lost revenue from a single customer.
Something doesn't ring right here. I presume they are going to pay Ubuntu for support (and help with the migration?), or is this another case of a big non-paying user discovering there is no such thing as a free lunch...
Thanks, wasn't bashing MS, just noting that there seems to be too many instances of unsecured ie. publicly accessible, cloud instances containing sensitive data.
At least in this instance it would seem it was a deliberate act (by an employee of Probase) to make the instance public - that clarity will not help Probase's data protection defense...
> It seems that software development in particular is mostly conducted without any discipline at all.
These issues are not really anything to do with software development, and everything to do with protocol specification and interaction - ie. the design work done before there is something for a software engineer to implement.
From work on protocol specification, conformance test and interop, I suspect people were focused on getting each specific protocol to robustly perform the core function it was intended to address rather than make it bulletproof, So really much of the Internet and 5G protocol stacks are really at the v1 stage where they deliver core functionality but not much else, we really v2 where wider issues such as interaction (with other protocols) and mischievous use are considered. It looks like we need to revisit the whole RFC and 3GPP approval process to try and ensure that it includes eelements that try and bring these wider considerations into the approval process..
In this contect, it looks like we need a way to incorporate IPv6.1, .2,.3 into the interop. mix. ie. ARPANET was intended to be used with clear cut versions - hence v4, v5 and v6. Interestingly the reasons for not calling v6 v5 because v5 was experimental show there is a need for some finer version information in the packet header/connection negotiation.
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