dan1980 • User • The Register Forums

Friday 27th June 2014 12:54 GMT dan1980

Re: what does that mean

@Nick Dyer

Well, that's what I figured, to be honest. There's simply no way you can 'converge' an ARM and an x86 platform when the only thing the two units really have in common is branding.

At least not without far more work than a recently-privatised Dell are going to be prepared to invest, which is a pity as EqualLogic really does offer something quite compelling in the market.

SANs are expensive so getting the most out of them is important. The expertise to spec, configure and maintain a SAN to achieve optimal performance is, however, not always available to a smaller provider. What that segment needs is a reliable, major-label (as their customers do ask) solution that is easy to configure and scale.

I'm not a Dell fanboy as my usual rut is HP but the product EqualLogic made and that Dell bought is a good one with a good blend of features for a good price. You can absolutely get better performance out of a Compellent but not without spending a good amount more money - either in purchasing the platform or hiring extra staff.

(BTW - Trevor: if you're reading this, I think I now understand your point about SimpliVIty.)

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Friday 27th June 2014 02:15 GMT dan1980

Re: what does that mean

Hmmmm

Not sure how I feel about this - they're both just different products. One is an 'all-in-one', scale-out focussed SAN and the other is a more traditional, controller + storage SAN.

Ideally, the result will be a single platform with three types of box:

> Controller (SC8000)

> Storage (SC2xx)

> All-in-one (SC4xxx)

All three can integrate, tier, scale-up and scale-out. You will have the option of just buying multiple SC4000 units that, as they contain both the controller(s) and the storage, can scale-out just as the EqualLogics do.

Or, you can built a full, traditional SAN with separate controller and storage units.

Ideally . . .

The key will be the ability to mix-and-match and manage all together. For example, starting with a single SC4xxx unit, the way smaller setups do today with the EQLs. As you grow, you find that you require more storage so you add an SC2xx unit - scaling up.

As the SC4000 unit gets a bit older, you decide to add an SC8xxx dedicated controller, and a second SC2xx storage unit and then decom the original SC4xxx all-in-one box.

That will be great because the buy-in for a proper Compellent system can be a bit high compared to the one-box EQL. When it comes time to expand or update, those smaller installs will stay on EQL. With a converged architecture, they could proceed as above and move, gradually, to a full system. Or not.

For some people 2 x EQL is a great option so it remains to be seen if 2 x SC4xxx will be as good.

Of course, the EQLs run on ARM (Broadcom I think) while the Compellents run on commodity general-purpose x86. Are they really re-writing all that code?

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Friday 27th June 2014 11:32 GMT dan1980

What I find most interesting in this is one of Breyer's conjectures that he uses to support his opinion of the "overwhelming likeness" between Aereo and a traditional cable service:

". . . why should any of these technological differences matter? They concern the behind-the-scenes way in which Aereo delivers television programming to its viewers’ screens. They do not render Aereo’s commercial objective any different from that of cable companies. Nor do they significantly alter the viewing experience of Aereo’s subscribers. Why would a subscriber who wishes to watch a television show care much whether images and sounds are delivered to his screen via a large multisubscriber antenna or one small dedicated antenna, whether they arrive instantaneously or after a few seconds’ delay, or whether they are transmitted directly or after a personal copy is made?"

Now, that sounds somewhat reasonable but why isn't it applied the other way?

One could equally use the same argument for Aereo's similarity to a DVR service - it doesn't "significantly alter the viewing experience". And so, given time-shifting does not incur retransmission fees, by Breyer's logic neither should Aereo.

The point of this all is that the 6 consenting Justices of the Supreme Court have decided that, while they believe that it is important what the service appears to be to the end user, they will only consider the similarity to something that incurs retransmission fees, and ignore any similarities to something that does not incur such fees (e.g. Cablevision's DVR service).

What is telling is that, in his discussion of similarities, Breyer never mentions Cablevision. That strikes me as profoundly odd - to not even mention the one service that could be considered most similar.

One of the questions I would put to the Supreme Court - if able - would be to ask how Aereo might change their service so as not to be liable for retransmission fees. Perhaps that's not the Supreme Court's job but they are supposed to clarify things.

As I can't ask that of SCOTUS, I instead as Andrew - In your view, what could Aereo change such that they should be seen as more similar to Cablevision than a cable service?

What if each user was provided a virtual machine, dedicated to them, on which they had to press some buttons to install the DVR feature? I'm thinking something like you see in a parallels-type web host where you can do one-click installs of Apache and MySQL and so forth.

Would that do it?

What about if the users had to scan for channels themselves and then install software on their PC/phone/tablet that queried the TV guide directly and then transmitted the code to the DVR software in their personal, rented VM?

What I am asking (again) is: at what point does a service bear more similarity to a cloud-DVR service like Cablevision (which is not subject to re-transmission fees) than to a cable service (which is)?

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Friday 27th June 2014 08:02 GMT dan1980

Splitting hairs

I wonder what happens if I rent a DVR from the local Rent-A-Center? Are they then 're-transmitting' to me because they own the hardware?

Okay, I still physically control the hardware so there's a difference.

What about if I live in an apartment block and put that DVR into the basement, where the antenna signal comes in. I don't own or control the that location. Is the body corporate then liable?

Okay, there's still just the one DVR there so there's still a difference.

But what about if they allow all the tenants to do that? That's now a bunch of one-to-one transmissions, like Aereo.

Okay, we are still responsible for the hardware (even though we rent it) so still not the same.

But it's all getting a bit messy down there now so what if, as part of our rent, the body corporate agrees to rent a dozen identical DVRs and install a new, stronger antenna to run them. Each DVR is assigned to a single apartment and each tenant has exclusive control over that unit.

What, now, is the difference?

Yes, it's a deliberately farcical situation but the point is that when the scale and the remoteness of the operation are taken out of the equation, Aereo is essentially analogous to the setup proposed above.

At what point does such a setup step over the line to have (as Breyer, J wrote in the majority opinion) "an overwhelming likeness"? I.e., at what point in the progression from personal, in house device to cloud-service does a DVR become enough like a cable service to be excluded from consideration under the 'volitional-control' test?

The majority opinion makes particular note of a difference between a cable service and Aereo, which is that unless and until a user activates the service and chooses what to record/watch, the service is "inert". As Breyer, J. points out, both Aereo and the three dissenting justices believe this to be a "critical" difference as it not only speaks to the volition of the user (and not Aereo) but provides a clear distinction between the operation of a cable service and Aereo's service.

The 6 justices of the majority accepted that difference but were of the opinion that it does not constitute a "critical" difference.

The point is that, far from what some would have you believe, the law actually supports both cases nearly equally and it all hung on the interpretation of a few words ("perform", "public", "transmit", etc...) - all of which were laid down before the advent of the technology currently employed.

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Friday 27th June 2014 08:02 GMT dan1980

The biggest problem here is that the copyright laws being relied on were written prior to the advent of DVRs or the mass, commodity, availability of cloud services. That is why such back-and-forward arguments and judgments are occurring both in the US and around the world. We had a similar thing in Australia with Optus.

Some people are of the opinion that a collection of one-to-one transmissions is just a technicality away from a one-to-many transmission. I agree but tend to think it's a rather large technicality. Computer network terminology should be borrowed to term these transmissions unicasts, rather than broadcasts.

While those arguing against Aereo claim that it is splitting hairs to say that Aereo wasn't the equivalent of a cable service, the hairs must be split finer still when trying to decide exactly what, legally, is the difference between it and Cablevision's cloud DVR service.

The 'volitional-conduct test' established in Cartoon Network vs Cablevision essentially said that if it is under the user's control then the company providing the service is not liable. This is the same provision subsequently relied on by every cloud storage provider to protect themselves from potential copyright claims when a user uploads copyright material to their service. In all other practical respects it is the same concept - a user chooses what to store (record) and when and where to retrieve (transmit) it. In both cases, the material is stored on the provider's hard drives and shuffled around through servers and caches but, as the important parts are controlled by the user, the provider is covered.

It's important to note that this test has not been failed by Aereo. Instead, the Supreme Court has essentially created and applied a new test, which is to have a look at the service in question and see if it provides essentially the same service as a cable company. In other words, 'does the service look like a cable service'.

In practice, they seem to want it to work like this: "if you look like a cable service then you don't get the benefit of the volitional conduct test". Straight-forward enough perhaps, but the big problem here is that the Supreme Court has provided no guidelines for how one might go about deciding whether a given service looks sufficiently like a cable service or not.

The real chaos here is succinctly put by Justice Scalia:

"It will take years, perhaps decades, to determine which automated systems now in existence are governed by the traditional volitional-conduct test and which get the Aereo treatment. (And automated systems now in contemplation will have to take their chances.)"

However loaded with caveats the majority opinion was (very loaded), without clear guidance on how this ruling and new 'what-does-it-look-like-to-you' test can and should be applied to other services, this ruling does constitute a major 'chilling effect'.

The author thinks it doesn't but I tend to side with Justice Scalia on this one - without clear guidelines, other services will be 'taking their chances' and some may well decide it's too risky to proceed. If that's not a 'chilling effect' I don't know what is.

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Friday 27th June 2014 09:02 GMT dan1980

Re: What's the problem now?

@D.A.M.

What other 'information' can be sold like this?

Perhaps in school yards, 7 year olds can sell information about when they will be off the swings. I don't know if you have a family, but what if you go to the local park and all the picnic benches are taken - not by families but by individual people, just sitting there reading with a mobile phone close by, waiting for someone to offer them $20 for their spot; $40 on a sunny day. That situation is no different as both resources are paid for by the public already through taxes and rates.

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Friday 27th June 2014 08:13 GMT dan1980

Re: What's the problem now?

@D.A.M.

Sure there are victims, though the term is perhaps a bit strong. Let us say that there are people who are worse-off under this arrangement than they were before it existed.

Now, I don't live in SF (nor even the US) but I am not so sheltered that I don't know what bad city parking is like.

One potential fall-out from this is that parking spots will end up being occupied for their full allowed time. Perhaps that's not so bad on the surface but what availability there is is helped by the relatively constant coming and going. The less time any individual car stays in a parking spot, the more people can use it through the day.

But think of the knock-on effect with retailers/cafes/restaurants/etc...

The less people there are coming into the area and parking, the less business the local retailers will do. If you drive around for half an hour and can't find a park, you may well leave and that would be money not earned by the shop/cafe you were going to visit.

After a few weekends of such frustration, you'll have plenty of people who just won't bother.

Then, of course, you have the inconvenience for the drivers looking to park and not willing to pay. Again, 'victim' may be a strong word but those people will certainly be in a worse situation than they used to be.

What is happening is simple: a public resource that was free is now being offered on a preferential basis to those willing/able to pay for it.

If you genuinely don't see anything wrong with that then you're free to hold that view but I'd hope you also wouldn't mind if taxis started 'auctioning' trips to the highest bidder - say on a rainy night as the bars empty or at the airport . . .

No 'victims' there either.

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Friday 27th June 2014 08:58 GMT dan1980

There are always trade-offs

What the Office 365 e-mail outage shows is not an inherent vulnerability so much as the helplessness of clients that use these services.

I have clients on the cloud but for each and every one I have made it VERY clear that, while having someone else managing your e-mail might be seen as a benefit, there is a very real flipside, which is that they are the ONLY ones who can manage it.

It doesn't matter how urgent it is or how much you are willing to pay, if something goes wrong, you just have to sit there and let the cloud provider manage it. It does matter if you have to submit a $20m tender or are waiting to receive crucial information from an investor - it will take as long as it takes.

Without going into depth, when I setup an onsite mail system, I provide as much redundancy as the budget will allow and, with a very modest outlay, you can provide quite a lot of options.

The system won't be as reliable day-to-day - sometimes e-mails will bank up if their server has an issue - but the point is that almost any issue can be fixed and fixed relatively quickly.

As I've said many times, that doesn't make cloud services bad, there are just always trade-offs, just as there are with on-site systems. The important point is REALLY understanding those trade-offs and the potential risk to your business.

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Friday 27th June 2014 05:47 GMT dan1980

Re: According to other boffins, won't work

@Don Jefe

"The sheer scale of North America, combined with its geography creates a really weird situation that's unique to this planet."

I've heard of US exceptionalism but that's taking it to extremes isn't it?

On a serious note, I find it somewhat hard to believe that creating what is essentially an artificial windbreak will not have some repercussions beyond the desired "stop tornadoes".

Climate is a complex thing and difficult to predict. You can see that by how skeptical many are about global warming as they tie it up with climate change. An increase in heat energy trapped by the earth's atmosphere is an input into the climate system - the confusion is around how exactly that will manifest so far as climate changes go.

Given the rather stark contrast between one side of the Andes (the Atacama) and the other (the Amazon), it's pretty evident that the blocking and diversion of winds (which carry moisture) can have some pretty big effect.

The proposed walls are nowhere near the scale of the Andes but to think they wouldn't have a noticeable effect all the same is a bit optimistic, I'd say!

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Friday 27th June 2014 00:50 GMT dan1980

@Robert Carnegie

Actually, I think the fact that it doesn't exist yet is most right thing about it.

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Thursday 26th June 2014 23:51 GMT dan1980

@AC

"Never had your bags searched at the airport? Everything (ahem) comes out. If you had toys, I suspect that might be embarrassing."

My post was aiming more at humour than a reasoned argument; evidently I failed.

To address your point, however, it's six or one-half dozen.

Scenario 1:

You get your bags searched and the people who have seen nearly everything (including their fair share of dildos, ball gags, butt plugs and nipple clamps) find your vibrator and silently continue on with their task.

Scenario 2:

You go through the metal-detector with your 'furry friend' and it sets it off. You then put the bear through the scanner where the operator pauses to scrutinise it, trying to figure out what those odd bits are inside. The operator calls over the supervisor and they point and trace their fingers across the screen for a bit and then take you to one side to question you about why you a carrying a teddy bear. Embarrassed, you lie and say it's a present for your daughter, despite it looking a bit worn out around the face. They then ask you why there are wires and electrical equipment running through the inside . . .

But, again, I was trying to be humorous as both problems are easily solved by simply popping anything your embarrassed about in your check-in luggage.

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Thursday 26th June 2014 09:28 GMT dan1980

Re: How bizarre

@Tim Worstal

An opening, perhaps?

BAD DAN!!!! Back in your corner!!!!!

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Thursday 26th June 2014 06:37 GMT dan1980

I've never really considered myself a prude but what-the-f**k? (Or 'f**k-the-what?', I suppose . . .)

It seems like the 'problem' this is 'solving' is the conspicuousness of existing sex toys. The two points that come to mind are:

If your sex toys are hanging out of your bag, the solution is to put them in the bag and zip it up; that's the trick.

If this product succeeds, one would presume that it would become recognisable. Given the odd nature of the toy, one can imagine similar news stories to this cropping-up and thus furthering the awareness of the product. Being somewhat harder to transport surreptitiously than the more conventional option, wouldn't it being a bear now be something of a disadvantage?

In other words, if you are having trouble fitting your vibrators in your bag (such that they don't stick out) then the solution is to get a bigger bag, not a bigger vibrator.

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Friday 27th June 2014 00:39 GMT dan1980

Re: @ dan1980

@Turtle

Re: Jack Halprin.

Even if Mr. Halprin's endeavours were conducted under the instruction of Google, my question/comment still stands.

Google are guilty of many bad practices but these protesters were there to complain about Net Neutrality and my comment was that, they are effectively complaining that Google haven't done enough. Not that they oppose net neutrality, but that they aren't supporting it as strongly as these people would like.

This protest, so far as I can tell, has nothing at all to do with Jack Halprin so I really don't know why you brought it up.

I ignored it because it was not relevant to the protest, the article or my comment.

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Thursday 26th June 2014 03:24 GMT dan1980

Sorry - "even more not against it".

It was a deliberately messy construction (in an attempt to highlight the oddness of it) but it caught me out!

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Thursday 26th June 2014 02:49 GMT dan1980

Correct me if I have read this incorrectly but are these people really protesting because they feel Google hasn't been vociferous enough in its support of 'net neutrality?

So, they know that Google isn't against net neutrality but think they should be even more against it . . . ?

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Friday 27th June 2014 00:26 GMT dan1980

Excellent points, all, and a +1 back at you for your "SLA" comments.

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Thursday 26th June 2014 03:37 GMT dan1980

Re: Time to call "Time ladies and gentlemen" on the cloud...

As a clarification about 'passing the buck', I don't believe that people utilising cloud services can just stop caring about IT.

My comment was based around your definition of 'passing the buck' which explictly encompassed any and all out-sourcing. As a provider of outsourced IT support and managed services, I am fine with my clients 'passing the buck' to me. I do, insist, however, that they understand their choices and what the implications are. Many of them don't actually want to know* but I make sure that I have done my best to explain it to them.

Having a third party manage your IT stuff is 'passing the buck' in the same way that having a builder in to do your renovations is. It is not inherently bad, but just as you would make sure you understood what the builder was going to do to your house and what the risks were, so should you understanding what's involved in using a cloud service.

* - I suspect it's sometimes in part to enable them to blame their suppliers more readily.

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Thursday 26th June 2014 03:11 GMT dan1980

Re: Time to call "Time ladies and gentlemen" on the cloud...

Look, for what it's worth, I am also pro-onsite as a general rule. By that I mean that I will suggest/plan/build/deploy on-premises solutions unless there is a compelling reason not to.

That's a bias that I have based on my experience and, to an extent, age. BUT, and I must stress this, if there is a compelling reason to utilise cloud-based services - either in part or for the entire environment - then that is where the focus will go.

Neither on-site not cloud are flat better than the other because they both fill different needs. Of course there is a LOT of overlap because they offer the same services but the way these services are provided will suit different use-cases.

Getting the best solution for a given situation involves understanding all the requirements (not just the purely technical ones) and being open-minded about the methods that might be used to fulfill them.

If you have a new, 5-person, company renting space in an office, where the owner is interstate every other week, the bean-counter is actually the boss's wife working from home and the marketing guy works at a third-party then Office 365 - or the Google equivalent - may be an excellent choice. Likely alongside Salesforce and, perhaps, Xero for accounting. Insisting on an on-premises solution would be overkill and would involve more upfront and ongoing costs and provide no extra functionality that they actually want or need.

If you want to call that 'passing the buck' then that's fine. I don't actually disagree - it's just important to note that 'passing the buck' is pretty much exactly what that company wants! They want to simply consume the service and have someone else worry about all the rest.

I am absolutely not a 'cloud advocate'. What I am is someone who wants the best-fit solution for my clients and, in that, I am an advocate of choosing the 'right tool for the job'.

Blanket dismissing 'cloud' services is every bit as bad as insisting that everything can - and should - be white and fluffy.

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Thursday 26th June 2014 07:09 GMT dan1980

On the one hand, not knowing who the reviewers are is a good thing as it allows them to get about their job without being unduly hassled.

On the other hand, it prevents the public vetting the people who will supposedly help shape the future of education in this country. Yes, that informal, public 'vetting' does involve criticism of government but that is simply one way for those people who will be most affected by these happenings to have an input.

Wanting to to avoid criticism from the people you have been elected to serve is not at all an acceptable justification for keeping them in the dark about matters that affect them.

That said, I'm not sure it really matters anyway as, when governments commission reviews, they simply use them as justification for any measures they already wanted to implement and (almost inevitably) ignore any they didn't want to do.

That was (and still is) seen clearly with the Henry Tax Review. Each side has cherry-picked those parts they already agreed with while ignoring the rest, despite the fact that many of the recommendations existed inside a system of proposed changes and selective implementation may water-down, nullify or even go against the intended results.

Thus, if a review says to scrap fund A and instead put the money and resources into fund B, which does a nearly identical job, the Government will usually just scrap fund A and declare the money a budget saving.

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Thursday 26th June 2014 06:15 GMT dan1980

Re: It'll calm down eventually.

<clink!>

Make mine a Little Creatures Pilsner!

(And thanks again for the info - at $30K it'd be quite interesting . . .)

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Thursday 26th June 2014 05:51 GMT dan1980

Re: It'll calm down eventually.

But what (one market-speak is filtered out) does SimpliVity offer? Is it really that much more than what VMware provide with their vSAN product?

That's $2500/CPU so bumps the Dell 720xd boxes up to $25K each - still less than half the price and so easily able to fit 3 x 720xd (min for vSAN) inside the cost of the 2 x CN3000 setup. That's 75% of the price with 150% of the RAM, compute power and raw storage.

$virgins, indeed!

EDIT - thanks for the answer, above. I didn't see that when replying.

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Thursday 26th June 2014 05:39 GMT dan1980

Re: It'll calm down eventually.

Well, yes, a CDN would do nicely but you'd still need to spin up more DBs for the back end. (Admittedly, I didn't say anything about that!)

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Thursday 26th June 2014 05:30 GMT dan1980

Re: It'll calm down eventually.

Also, while I, too, believe System Center is some form of extreme punishment, SimpliVity is bloody expensive at $110K buy-in for the (mandatory from what I see) 2 units.

Going from Dell (because it's quick and easy to spec via the site), you can get an identically-spec'ed machine for less than half the price - $20K. That means that whatever 'secret sauce' SimpliVity are adding is apparently worth $30K.

Seeing as you can buy an EquaLogic SAN for ~$35K - make it $40K with switches and some spare drives, you could have a 2-node cluster for much less than $110K!! Especially as now you don't need the storage in the hosts. That drops the price down to $7500 (R620, 1U) per host with the same CPU, RAM and NIC specs. If you're keeping score, thats a 2-node cluster for $55K - the same price as a single CN3000 unit.

Looking at, say, 4 CN3000 units, you are up for $220,000. For that, you could get 2 x PS4000 series SANs and 10 x R620 servers (2 x ES-2640, 128GB RAM) all loaded with Microsoft 2012 R2 Datacenter and you would still have $25 left over so all the sundry bits. That's enough to throw some SSDs and some AutoCache licenses on each host . . .

Switch to, say, SuperMicro and who knows what you might be able to do with that pile of bills!

What am I missing? Is the SimpliVity magic really worth such a huge premium?

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Thursday 26th June 2014 04:13 GMT dan1980

Re: It'll calm down eventually.

The more precise case might be needing to spin up 20,000 more web servers. Or, to be more realistic, perhaps a site with a dozen or so web servers that very quickly experiences a huge increase increase in traffic and needs to spin up another dozen or, maybe they have big promotions (e.g. Black Friday-style sales events) that are predictable but short-lived and require an order of magnitude more servers.

None of which is in any way contrary to your article, just pointing out that even after revising "instantly" to "soon and without having to worry about the infrastructure part of the equation", there are still instances where on site hardware is not the best option. If your loads are widely variable - regardless of if they are predictable or not - then buying and maintaining enough infrastructure to handle peak loads results in a lot of waste during quieter periods.

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Thursday 26th June 2014 03:54 GMT dan1980

I think he was being sarcastic. Which is to say I hope he was being sarcastic . . .

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Wednesday 25th June 2014 14:31 GMT dan1980

Re: Special Needs

With a Jammy Doger I believe I would have a brandy. Perhaps even a Chambord . . .

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Wednesday 25th June 2014 14:25 GMT dan1980

Re: Special Needs

"Trouble", "salvation" . . . it's a fine line.

To biscuits/cookies, I find that a nice shortbread goes very well with a suitably complex Bourbon. The butteriness of the shortbread really works nicely.

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Wednesday 25th June 2014 13:54 GMT dan1980

Re: Special Needs

Sometimes it's hard to differentiate between:

a.) Exuberant optimism.

b.) Deep cynicism.

c.) Bourbon.

For me it tends to be a cycle: b > c > a > b > c . . .

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Wednesday 25th June 2014 04:54 GMT dan1980

Sorry - a HALF inch screen?

I would have though 1" would be about the minimum for a useful display given that current 'smart watches' seem to be at least 1.25" (e.g the Pebble).

I will actually be interested what becomes of this. It's not the kind of thing I'd use but I'm curious as to what it will actually do and how well such a small screen will work. Could you even make out a half-inch screen from normal monitor-viewing distances.

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Wednesday 25th June 2014 04:46 GMT dan1980

Re: A billion people?

How about they start with a compelling use-case first?

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Wednesday 25th June 2014 04:42 GMT dan1980

Re: The same occulus

. . . but yes, your point is still valid, of course!

0 0

Wednesday 25th June 2014 04:19 GMT dan1980

Re: The same occulus

Do you mean Facebook?

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Wednesday 25th June 2014 02:55 GMT dan1980

It's actually quite an odd proposition.

The reason Super PACs are effective in influencing governments is because the politicians want something and are willing to sell their support for whatever currency* they are looking for.

The idea that you could buy your way to a system that doesn't accept your money is not so much ironic as a misunderstanding of what is actually happening.

* - Favours, preferential treatment, investment opportunities, promises of fat paychecks in comfortable jobs, etc...

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Wednesday 25th June 2014 02:44 GMT dan1980

The main point I took from this is that embracing an entire ecosystem can yield benefits that you might not see if you use/evaluate/review individual components in isolation.

That's nothing new and the same can certainly be said for Apple and Google.

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Wednesday 25th June 2014 01:51 GMT dan1980

Re: @dan1980

@Tom 35

Yes, that one was PARTICULARLY bad. Mostly because no-one in the real world uses 'bing' as a verb but also because of the closeups of the Windows Phone.

It seems that MS are blatant even by the shameless standards of modern advertising:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsiXfW75598

This probably tops is for me, though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJCAYS_i5Ls

Product placement is one thing; tag lines are quite another. It's delivered exactly as an ad would be. In fact, when I saw this clip I originally thought it was an ad. Perhaps the 'shame free' comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek.

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Wednesday 25th June 2014 01:17 GMT dan1980

Re: @dan1980

It is interesting to note, however, that both Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser) and SPI (Stolichnaya) complained about their products being used in 'Flight'.

Using real brands is one thing - studies have shown that obviously fake, generic brands are distracting - but in doing so, you would generally use a variety of brands to represent the real-world diversity. After all, that's the point: to make it look real. Everyone drinking Budweiser all the time or everyone driving Fords is not realistic. Or, for example, if every router is a Cisco, every computer a Lenovo and every alien robot a GM.

That's where the annoyance of product placement comes in because just as it is distracting if the producers use fake brands, it is also distracting if they just use one all the time.

Even more noticeable is when specific features of a product are used - one that jarred was the use of a voice-command system in a Ford.

What enhances the experience is making the world believable. That will usually mean identifiable brands being used but it should also dictate that multiple brands should be used and precludes conspicuous usage of whatever feature the company wants to promote.

There is no way that showing a big, conspicuous, Cisco logo with a video conference enhances anything for the viewer.

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Tuesday 24th June 2014 23:39 GMT dan1980

"When product placement is done well, such placements can enhance the viewer's experience," the patent argues. "For example, when the script calls for a character to drink a canned beverage, the character may drink a beverage from a can with a distinct, recognizable color scheme or logo."

A few comments on that . . .

Product placement is almost never "done well".

Explain to me, exactly, how "such placements can enhance [my] experience". Please.

Fuck off. (Please.)

Thanks ever so much.

14 0

Wednesday 25th June 2014 00:38 GMT dan1980

Re: This isn't PROtection... it's just DEtection...

@Malle-Herbert

To be fair, the site does say 'detection' quite a bit.

0 0

Tuesday 24th June 2014 09:30 GMT dan1980

Where's the real birth certificate?!

2 1

Tuesday 24th June 2014 06:55 GMT dan1980

Re: Seriously?

@Big John

Indeed - the complete lack of UFO evidence is merely proof of how well the government is covering it up/in-cahoots with aliens/run by lizards. Likewise less contrails would be proof that the government had found even more nefarious methods to crop-dust their citizens.

12 0

Tuesday 24th June 2014 02:56 GMT dan1980

Interesting, but of little consequence

Questions like this always, always come down to which option is cheaper/more profitable for the company and what is easier for governments.

Taxing fuel is simple so that is what governments like. Taxing based on the actual environmental impact is far too difficult so there will be no incentive for an airline to burn more fuel, which is taxed, to avoid producing contrails, which are not.

7 0

Tuesday 24th June 2014 07:30 GMT dan1980

Re: Coding is a fundamental skill that’s going to be a part of almost everything

@AC

So, you see modern operating systems and the current push towards an 'app'-centric style of computing as being conducive to people scripting tasks?

Addressing spreadsheets specifically - how come ordinary people aren't using the VBA abilities of Ms Excel? Maybe you and some people you know are, but I have managed and supported thousands of users in my career and NOT ONE has ever, to my knowledge, coded VBA in a workbook.

You kind of defeat your own argument, however, by saying that scripting needs to become easier. At that point, it's not programming of the kind that Google are encouraging girls to learn - it's trying to implement a scripting engine/language/paradigm that removes the need to 'learn coding'.

And think of the cloud-based world so many vendors are pushing ahead with - sure some of these programs have APIs you can make use of but not many.

0 0

Tuesday 24th June 2014 07:19 GMT dan1980

Actually, it's kind of a catch-22.

Any such application will either get it wrong too much to be reliable or, if it gets it right, will be privy to more personal information than you might want advertisers to have about you.

4 0

Tuesday 24th June 2014 07:14 GMT dan1980

Having left my foil hat at home today, this actually sounds kind of . . . useful.

Of course, most phones have enough home page real estate to put icons for ALL your most used functions at once without the need for 'sponsored links' so it's not necessarily more useful than just organising it yourself.

1 0

Tuesday 24th June 2014 07:09 GMT dan1980

Re: So that's how Heisenberg compensators work

@Richard 12

"Or rather, anything we teleport becomes spaghetti, just don't tell the test subject..."

REALLY? That would be awesome. It'd certainly give those hokey as-seen-on-tv wonder gadgets a run.

Imagine - anytime you want spaghetti you just generate a quick CTC and BAM: delicious pasta!

The potential relativistic side-effects could be a bit of an inconvenience but then time moves oddly in my kitchen anyway - especially when baking and roasting or following any recipe that says it will only take '15 minutes'. Even 2-minute noodles take 4 minutes in my house.

7 0

Tuesday 24th June 2014 06:42 GMT dan1980

Re: 2Gb file?

@Rick

"How many legally obtained files do you have that are over 2Gb?"

Evidently, you see these yourself in the form of PST files. That you don't think PSTs are a good idea is irrelevant. So it your belief that OneDrive is a poor backup method. For what it's worth, I agree on both counts. But that's not the point.

Whatever the case, Onedrive is an online storage option and people:

a.) have files over 2GB and,

b.) want to store them 'in the cloud'

OneDrive does not cater for those people and thus the increase in storage space to 1TB per-user is great but largely a publicity stunt. That's fine, it just doesn't address the problem of uploading large files, which is what people above were complaining about.

5 0

Tuesday 24th June 2014 04:35 GMT dan1980

Re: 2Gb file?

@Rick Leeming

Well, OneDrive is here discussed as part of the Office 365 suite, which is AIMED at business so that argument doesn't really make sense.

Office 365 is touted by MS for businesses of all sizes, but looking just at a small business migrating away from, say, SBS, they will be looking to get rid of their server and host their files inside Office 365, along with their e-mails.

The inability to backup PSTs to MS's solution (OneDrive) means that such files must be either backed-up locally* or else not at all.

Of course, it's your choice what to use but the point people above are making is that NOT having the ability to upload >2GB files makes this particular choice less compelling and the rectification of that would be more beneficial than the new 1TB limit. Or, at least the increase to 1TB is less useful without it.

* - For the record, I think this should be done anyway, but understand that a big driver of the adoption of 'cloud' services, is the desire be free of all their IT infrastructure and processes like managing a server and backups.

7 1

Tuesday 24th June 2014 02:18 GMT dan1980

Re: Bad news for a lot of physicists

@Michael

Yes, but, if the Higgs was, after the best efforts of CERN physicists, still undetected then that's a 30-40 year head-start on alternate theories. You certainly don't want all your chips on one number.

That's why you have R&D teams working on several simultaneous prototypes and authors and songwriters working on several simultaneous ideas - not everything pans-out so spreading your focus might seem inefficient but if you concentrate it in one area and it turns out not to yield anything then it's an even bigger waste!

2 0

Tuesday 24th June 2014 02:09 GMT dan1980

Technology is one one thing; bitching, lobbying and gouging by content providers is another.

0 0

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Interesting, but of little consequence

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