* Posts by Shaun Hunter

62 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Nov 2007

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Apple! and! Yahoo! fight! the! man!, claims! EFFing! daftness!

Shaun Hunter

Alex Martin didn't read the full EFF report before writing this article.

Go Canada: Now ILLEGAL to auto-update software without 'consent'

Shaun Hunter

Re: Excellent news

@larokus "hasn't wrapped up the billions of dollars in taxpayers money in scandal after scandal in the way the Canadian Liberals have. "

You either don't live here or don't watch the news or work for the CPC. The Harper's whole reign has been scandal after scandal with 10s of billions of dollars missing.

Intel's LAME DUCK mobile chips gobbled by CASH COW

Shaun Hunter

XScale

How did they manage to sell their industry leading ARM division the year before smart phones caught on? Their deal with Marvel likely included a no competition clause so they can't just start making arm chips again.

The computer industry has been much more interesting since Intel and AMD dropped their interest embedded systems right before that market took off.

RIM tax break gives firm $14m profit for third quarter

Shaun Hunter

Re: They need to diversify

I also didn't mean buy the company for $1 billion, they could get it cheaper than that. I meant use $1 billion of their $20b stash for R&D.

Shaun Hunter
Facepalm

Re: They need to diversify

Do you know what D-Wave does?

It makes the world's only quantum computer (ie. THE FUTURE) and they're Canadian like RIM.

Shaun Hunter
Go

They need to diversify

Apple, Google and Microsoft use their product to sell content and advertising. Selling just phones isn't going to get RIM any more market share no matter what they do.

I think they need to use their strength which in my opinion is QNX and make the high profit things that QNX runs like medical equipment, stop lights, satellites, industrial robots, etc. The may get a chance at the CANDU reactors depending on what happens in SNC Lavalin's criminal investigation. They should also make networking gear and get into hosted services like Amazon has.

I also think they should buy D-Wave and sink $1 billion of their stash into it. If for nothing else but to prove that their a forward looking company with potential.

New transistor tech could beat silicon and save Moore's Law

Shaun Hunter
Linux

The Cray 3 was a Gallium Arsenide computer.

Cost killed it and Cray's customers were cool with buying multi million dollar computers. I still don't think an imaginary thing like money should block technological advancement.

Microsoft dragging its feet on Linux Secure Boot fix

Shaun Hunter
Megaphone

Re: Windows 8

You can't disable secure boot on all systems.

Intel to slip future Xeon E7s, Itaniums into common socket

Shaun Hunter
Linux

Finally

These chips are even price in E5 ranges. Now if HP would stop disabling cores and charging huge premiums for hardware and subscription price for their OS's the Itanium could get somewhere.

Does anyone else feel that Mark Hurd's vision for WebOS on every PC should have extended to servers. These are a prime target for proliferation via Linux. Kinda like the ARM ISA is doing now.

Shaun Hunter
Facepalm

Re: Where do we get our money back for Tukwila systems?

"The sockets for the Tukwila chips, which support the new Poulsons, already had this speed bump designed into them."

RTFA

AMD posts $157m loss, will lay off 15% of workers this quarter

Shaun Hunter
IT Angle

Re: Steam?

That's an amusing fictional version of reality you have there.

Shaun Hunter
FAIL

A 1GHz P3 is enough for the average user.

I remember hearing that a lot when I started in the computer industry in 2003. First the Centrino went back to it for a big hit, then the Atom for the home run and now ARM CPUs are there at an even lower price for the grand slam against the traditional PC. I guess they were right.

If it can run a browser it's good enough for most people most of the time. Big high performance CPUs were bound to tumble at the consumer level. It's too bad Hector Ruiz sold off AMD's MIPS and ARM divisions to Qualcomm, Broadcom and Raza in 2008 right as smartphones were picking up steam. Surely these sales came with no competition clauses. "x86 is the future" indeed. Dumbest thing AMD ever did.

The second worst move of Hectors and AMD's was to spin off and divest the foundries. AMD was the 11th largest chip maker last year and the largest fabless outfit. What happens when TSMC starts designing their own chips again? "Thanks for paying us to do our R&D fellas, I'll look down on you in the unemployment line."

They have nowhere to go but down.

Foxconn: Worker who lost half his brain in accident must leave hospital

Shaun Hunter
Big Brother

Re: Why must the injured travel to the doctors?

Clearly they want him assessed by Foxconn's doctors.

'It is absolute b*ll*cks that contractors aren't committed'

Shaun Hunter
Stop

They said

Any proof to back their claims?

No scientific value to this study.

Microsoft releases JavaScript alternative

Shaun Hunter
Linux

They just killed .NET for Windows 8, why this now?

This should be called .DOA because I think it will be stillborn.

Vandals break into congressman's office, install Linux on PCs

Shaun Hunter

Violence?

Through a rock through a window or any other inanimate object is not violence. If this guy doesn't know what violence is he doesn't deserve to run a hot dog stand let alone a country.

Global strategic maple syrup reserves hit in Canadian mega-heist

Shaun Hunter
Mushroom

Re: Perhaps the Yanks...

We burnt their capital to the ground in 1812.

Yikes. Supervolcano found under Hong Kong

Shaun Hunter
Go

Geo-thermal power source

Hopefully it can and will be developed, an island powered by a super volcano would be not only awesome but a sign that mankind is still progressing. I feel we've gotten cheap and don't build anything grand any more.

Heartbroken app-maker Qt sneaks into Android's bed

Shaun Hunter
Linux

QT's older than Google

It started in 1992.

Also there is no separate version for phones as the article suggests.

Red Hat juices speed freak MRG Linux

Shaun Hunter
Linux

Real Time Trolls

Linux is real time enough for the London, New York and Toronto stock exchanges among others. It's also real time enough for NORAD to track flights. It's replacing operating real time operating systems like it is everything else.

Spend your time on a debatable issue, it would make comments as interesting is I hope they will be before I read them and realise what a fool I have been.

Windows in a RTOS debate?

Let me give you some examples of reasonable questions to ask.

How does it compare to the latency of VxWorks? Can Linux bring it's stability down to these devices?

What's the deal with RIM not peddling QNX to this market when it used to own it?

How does MRG compare to other RT Linux offerings such a Monta Vista's or WInd River's.

Most importantly can I use these patches to get smoother video playback on my desktop ;)

Ubuntu team questions Distrowatch share slide figures

Shaun Hunter
WTF?

He's right but who cares?

This is not news.

Fedora and OpenSuse had recent releases as well so their home page hits are up. That's all Distrowatch claims to monitor.

Mint has gotten a lot of good reviews this past year although I don't see anything special in what they bring to the table from my own experience.

AMD revs up server channel for Opteron 6200 push

Shaun Hunter
Go

I think a few cheap fixes could put them back on track.

Some no and small cost ways I think AMD could immediately disrupt and take the market.

1. Unlock clocks and multipliers on all chips, evrything should be a "Black Edition"

2. Elliminate the one pin difference between consumer chips and Opterons all are technically the same and can go in N-way servers. This would kill Intel to follow.

3. Open source your drivers and OpenCL API, sceincey types love Linux/Open Source and dictate the big cluster market. Intel's not even in the GPU compute feild and this would prevent applications from being written in Nvidia's Cg. These Massively parallel apps have lifespans of decades.

4. IBM has put 4 chips on a single package using the same Hypertransport technology as AMD. 32 cores per socket is a win in the server market where it is said the battle is won and lost in 2 sockets.

5. Push the APU's hard into consumer goods, their power/performance ratio is great when you consider their multimedia ability.

l like the author's ideas of graphics chips on G34 packages as well as APU's I also think mixing them on package and even off chip L4 caches should be considered.

Shaun Hunter
Stop

Hold on there Cowboy.

AMD's marketshare may have declined from their hayday during the time between the launch of the Athon64, the victorious anti-compatitive lawsuit angaist Inteland Intel's Core acritechture when they even outsold Intel chips for a quarter (and a Q4 at that). They still enjoy a far better market share than they had prevoiusly.

Remeber before the AMD64 Dell, Sony, Toshiba, Gateway, Fuji and others never used AMD chips in their machines. Now they all do and when you stroll through any retail computer aslie you see AMD systems almost as much as Intel. If you include graphics chips in this they may even get close to parity. They've faired even better in the server market.

AMD does need to shake thing up agian IMHO.

Google defends itself before Senate antitrust hearing

Shaun Hunter
FAIL

How is Google a monopoly?

Microsoft is still bigger than them and operates in every market Google does. A coupleb years ago the U.S. had no problem with the monopolizing of the database market when Oracle bought Sun. Maybe Google should start making some empty promises to them since it's seems to work.

Microsoft faces fresh antitrust probes in Ireland and Spain

Shaun Hunter

What does MS have to do with Casinos or Nevada?

Being a taxhaven is exactly why Ireland is broke (Spain, Portigal, italy and Greece as well).

Linux.com pwned in fresh round of cyber break-ins

Shaun Hunter
Linux

The reason we consider Windows insecure by definition

Is because you run as root by defalt and Microsoft often doesn't notify of security bugs and breaches until the have a fix.

Configured properly Windows isn't that bad and if M$ notified of issues immediatly people could find a work around until the fix is ready but they're to worried about saving face.

Microsoft has been repeatedly busted doing this and earned their rep fairly.

Also Windows users are to blame as they complained so much when M$ required a superviser password in Vista they went back to the old XP run as root default in 7.

Sparc T4 chips: Oracle makes stealthy spec change

Shaun Hunter
Unhappy

What Sun give'th, Oracle Take'th away

Too bad the won't be Open Sourced. I might care if the were.

HTC mulls mobile OS buy – but won’t be rushed

Shaun Hunter
WTF?

Been living under a rock since the begining of the year?

It's not offical but it's pretty much a done deal.

Brit tech brings in-stream ads to Canadian TV webcast

Shaun Hunter
Stop

As a Canadian who pays for the CBC

I would like to see them working on something forward looking like web video rather than flash. I don't like it when public money goes to proprietary technology. Espesically a dying one like flash.

I do really want the CBC to freely and openly (as in open source) brodcast at full quality on all mediums, ad supported rather than subscribtion based or both as TV has become.

However my biggest pet peeve about in-video adds is that they appear randomly rather than at proper commercial breaks so at least they're doing something about that.

Mozilla WebAPI: Champion of open source freedom

Shaun Hunter
Stop

What about the FSF's 4 freedoms?

Freedom 0 - The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.

Freedom 1 - The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Freedom 2 - The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.

Freedom 3 - The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

No mention of Apple's use of FreeBSD or the forking of KHTML into Webkit? How about OpenSSH and SSL developed by the OpenBSD project get's no contribution from large companies yet the tech is behind every monitary transaction in today's world?

Oracle buys Ksplice

Shaun Hunter
FAIL

You have a bad memory

Their website doesn't mention patents and the word isn't even present in their white paper.

Shaun Hunter
Pirate

Good buy for Oracle

I hope this does bring about a community driven project and other commercial distros rise to the callenge with their own solutions as this is a great technology.

Canuck ultralight pilot drops in on strip club

Shaun Hunter
Thumb Up

Oooh Can-a-da....

I'm feelin' Patriotic all of the sudden.

Google gives in: Schmidt to face US antitrust grilling

Shaun Hunter
FAIL

Premature to say the least

Microsoft is still a behemoth that competes with Google in every market segment they are in. Finally someone is big enough to take M$ on and their very existence is threatend by the govenment?

Come on, This is all those M$ lobby dollars at work.

If they put M$ out of business then it can be considered a monopoly and that isn't happening anytime soon.

Adobe offloads unwanted Linux AIR onto OEMs

Shaun Hunter
Linux

From a Linux users stand point....

Who cares.

I wish I could get ride of the only peice of Abobe software on my system as it is.

GlobalFoundries shuffles top brass

Shaun Hunter

AMD should just let me run it

I mean really, could I do any worse?

Cybercrooks set up shop in Canada

Shaun Hunter
FAIL

Oh The Humanity!

We don't let unregulated knockoff drugs in our country. Actually we do, go to a health food or sex store dummy.

Or go to your Doc and ask for the real deal, he'll probably shoot you a tester.

Canada? The computer vendor says no

Shaun Hunter
FAIL

It baffles me how stupid companies are...

Sure there are 10 times less of us than there is in the States but on average we make more money, pay way more for everything and we aren't in a reccesion. No don't try and sell products here.

At least we got the per-byte billing ruling overturned by Parliment today (not that Sasktel was changing, gotta love the crowns!). I have to admit our democracy moves fast when we file big petitions. While were at it lets get cell phone companies under control (the NDP has a bill they've been trying to put though for the last too years.) and stop this paying more for everything nonsense. Our dollar's worth more than the American dollar now not the .65 it was 10 years ago. Adjust market, adjust!

In closing Alberta sucks but I wish I still had my old job there ;)

Court orders seizure of PS3 hacker's computers

Shaun Hunter
WTF?

Possession is 9/10 of the law,

I guess this judge and Sony's lawyers missed the first day of law school. You Buy it it's yours. So now will I get sued if I don't use Chevy brand oil in my car?

Wait I'm in Canada, nevermind. I'm going to go download some pirated stuff.

BlackBerry boss renews disdain for Steve Jobs

Shaun Hunter
Welcome

Adobe Air+QNX seems like a win

I think he's playing up web apps because their Air implimentation won't be ready at launch. I think they should take their time and release it with enterprise level features such as RBAC. In my opinion RIM should deepen their corporate focus to keep their main following. I think Andriod and IOS will dominate the toy market and niether really addresses the needs of the Smartphone's early adopters which was the business sector. It's really where the money is anyway.

Then again Intel proved a first to market, temporary kludge can beat out "taking the time to do it right" with their dual chip package quad-core versus AMD's "true" quad-core a couple years ago.

BlackBerry tablet boots from 'floppy disk OS'

Shaun Hunter
Go

QNX with Adobe Air, WOW!

RIM may hit the ball out of the park when this gets on phones and other infotainment devices. I still don't see how Harman couldn't capitalize greatly on QNX considering their market. Hopefully their agreement with RIM also yields some advances in home/pro A/V.

Larry Ellison's first Sparc chip and server

Shaun Hunter
Linux

Good to see that SPARQ's still alive.

I'm guessing this wont be GPL'd hardware though. I really didn't think Oracle would do such an about face on Sun's FOSS as soon as they got EU approval for the purchase. It's sad to see what they're doing to such an innovative albeit mismanaged company. Hopefully this can at least serve as a lesson for FOSS developers on what to avoid spending their time on in the future. Bloody corporate leechers!

AMD's GlobalFoundries consumes Chartered Semi rival

Shaun Hunter
Go

Here Here

It will be interesting to see what going from 1 to 8 foundries will do for the IT market in general and AMD, Intel & Nvidia more specifically but I'm certain it will be great.

Swedish lactating bloke's dream turns sour

Shaun Hunter
Go

Nobody told him about prolactin?

He's probably to much of a hippy-douche to "use chemicals", so never mind.

Of NVIDIA and hybrid computing

Shaun Hunter
Stop

Discount Larabee not AMD

At least AMD has a product. With Intel still licensing video cores on their chipsets from PowerVR, it doesn't seem their even near a release of any kind.

@ AC Beowolf style clusters are the norm these days. You should maybe lean what they are.

I think your right about the legacy code issue. Otherwise FORTRAN would have died years

ago and wouldn't be a major feature on Tesla's marketing campaign.

Corel receives bigger buyout offer

Shaun Hunter
Linux

WordPerfect is the one true god.

Hate to see Corel loosing Canadian ownership but taking it private may be the right think for the company.

I still have a boxed copy of Corel Linux. Ahh nostalgia.

Microsoft admits Win 7 tool violated GPL

Shaun Hunter
Linux

Its amazing how much windows software contains FOSS code

Especially video apps, they love mplayer

Revealed: The amazing premise behind Ridley Scott's Monopoly

Shaun Hunter
Welcome

The movie "Risk" was realy good

waiting for hungry hungry hippos.

Google Docs set for 'get rid of' Office moment

Shaun Hunter
Grenade

You are all wrong as usual. WordPerfect is the one true god.

You can work with google docs offline with przim and of course save and back them up locally. I bet Google apps will make their way on to an appliance soon. Also your docs aren't safe on the Windows machine you browse the internet with. You should all know that by now.

@Chemical Engineer - I see javascript macros on the horizon, why not ODBC?

@Cade Metz - Acrobat is the Photoshop of word processing. Word is more like the Cheeze Wiz.

@Ahem - Works or Wordperfect is generally bundled with prefab comps not Word. Word is $129.

@sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD- I like OOo's outline view better.

@AC - I love the ribbon

@Andus McCoatover - I've never had an import/export problem with google docs and I do it constantly.

@skajake - Android won't kill the iPhone, there will just me a lot more sold. Dude the HTC dream/Magic are on $79cdn promos, get real.

Hitachi GST clears out Simple clutter

Shaun Hunter
Happy

I thought the same thing

Unless that means we save 5% since we're already paying for a GST.

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