* Posts by Robert Hill

563 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Apr 2007

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Kinect blamed for Red Ring of Death outbreak

Robert Hill

Not an excuse...

Well, more of an explanation. From what I have read, the RROD really is often caused by overheating. Thermal problems are a side effect of everyone wanting a really small box with very limited active cooling, and lots and lots of graphics and processor power. The designers had to make a trade-off, and a difficult one at that. When pushed, the thermal demands of the box will exceed their balance point. IF they had doubled the case size, or added more active cooling fans - this would be a non-issue. But then MOST people (that don't play 36 hours straight) would be stuck with a huge box or an obnoxious whine from the fans.

They designed a balance point that best meets the needs of MOST users, in most situations. They probably thought they had more headroom than they did, but at least MS have extended the warranty and taken care of the affected boxes. It's an "OOOPS", but not enough to say MS is evil or even incompetent...more of a lesson as to how hard product design is.

Google battles Derby cops over access to Street View data

Robert Hill

Yawn...

That was a programming mistake made by ONE programmer working in his spare time on a project. NOT a corporate strategy or intent. Pillorying them for it only makes sense if you have never made a programming mistake yourself. And there is only one type of person that has NEVER made a programming mistake: a non-programmer!

BT confirms broadband upgrades for rotten boroughs

Robert Hill
Thumb Down

*$*%& BT...

BT has recently decided that West London - which had been on the plans to get Infinity - has now been dropped. I had been waiting eagerly. Now apparently they have decided that cabling up the hinterlands is more important.

I think Virgin is beginning to look a whole lot more attractive...

Gov gone wild: Mad new pub glasses, bread freedom introduced

Robert Hill

Exactly...

The whole REASON of standardizing on the pint and half pint was so that consumers ALWAYS knew what they would be getting as a measure. And prices standardised based upon those amounts, and price comparisons are EASY because of those standardised amounts.

This will, frankly, end up costing all of us money in the pub. You will order a beer, and shock - you will get a schooner, but it will cost as much as the old pint. The pint WILL still be available, but at a slightly higher price. This won't happen all at once, and it won't happen everywhere - but happen it will, and we consumers will gradually "get used to it".

"Rip-Off England" continues...

iPad's biggest rival? Microsoft's dead Courier

Robert Hill

It's not about the copying...

The point is, whether MS copies or not is inconsequential - GR was taking "content creation" to mean the actual building of the tools. But it is NOT - it is the users using the tools to actually create docs and files. And that is the whole point - he is definitionally incorrect.

Sure, MS copies, and often poorly. But that is not the point of the article.

Why is MS so popular for content creation? Because way back in the day, WordPerfect blew the transition to a GUI environment pretty badly, as did WordStar (which had been my favourite due to my extensive Borland Turbo Pascal programming, and use of WS under CP/M on Z-80 machines). So the reason for MS being "widely installed" is simply put because they were the first content creation programs that really used a GUI well - a feat MS pulled off by developing them FIRSTLY for the new Macintosh, THEN developing them for Windows. At the time they dropped, NOTHING on the market was close to them in ease of use - in the computer labs I taught in then, nearly everyone abandoned Symphony and 1-2-3 within the first year of getting Macs with Excel and Word. I'd call that doing it "very, very well".

Ironically, your one positive MS example is actually a BLATANT example of something MS copied - VB was a direct rip-off of a coding environment called PowerBuilder, since bought by Sybase, and very, very popular with corporate developers circa 1990. I know it too well...spent 2 years using it on projects at the time...

Robert Hill
Boffin

Umm...late yourself?

It is pretty industry standard terminology - "content creation" means the apps that USERS use to created computer content - documents, drawings, spreadsheets, computer-generated music, presentations, web pages, writing computer programs even. Stuff that MS Office, MS programming languages, MS web development tools, and other MS apps have historically done very, very well. In fact, the majority of user-generated computer documents worldwide has probably been created with Microsoft software, especially Office.

PC World website went titsup on Boxing Day

Robert Hill
FAIL

Not the only ones...

From personal experience, I know that the Best Buy USA site was down pretty much all of Christmas too, as I was trying to buy a washing machine for my US-dwelling Mom as an emergency replacement. No dice for days...

Anonymous hacktivists fire ion cannons at Zimbabwe

Robert Hill
Grenade

Really?

Tell that to, say, Amazon, or PayPal, or...well, any web based business. Tell that to a bank that doesn't want to lose their online customer services. Etc.

Businesses have already coughed up millions in suspected greenmail payments to avoid DDoS attacks. I expect the trend to continue...and now that we see botnets that can be hosted on Android handsets and the like (possibly embedded devices soon), the eradication will be even harder. I suspect that it will get more interesting before it gets better...

Apple slapped with iOS privacy lawsuit

Robert Hill
FAIL

So you admit it...

"The spreadsheet works, just, it can't lock rows or cell, even tho' if you go on the developers website it's one of the most requested features for nearly a year"...

So you admit - you really didn't do any product research at all prior to purchasing the apps did you? Not even visit their website? I spend time on the product websites before I even download and trial FREE apps and modules...not to mention reading the other reviews.

And good luck getting a refund on ANY opened and used software...from any retail outlet.

But yeah, somehow this is Apple's fault...

How I watched a holographic storage company implode

Robert Hill

Read the article much?

The article states that the DISK is 1.2 Terabytes, but the redundantly formatted capacity (remember it's archival) is only a quarter of that. Big difference. So they are where BR hopes to be in 2013...

Zeal Optics Transcend GPS goggles

Robert Hill

+1

Nice idea, but as said above just WAY too expensive for the abuse and short lifespan of most ski goggles. And frankly, at THAT price I don't want "an anti-fog coating", I want dual-pane sealed lenses like Uvex and Oakley offer that are FOG-FREE (almost). I can put up with single-pane coated lenses in a set of Bolles at £55, but NOT at that price. (And at that price, I want my Vermillion lenses, not junky orange!)

Sony sells Playstation-packing TV

Robert Hill

Fantastic...

Make this in a 42" screen size with LED lighting and I'll buy one tomorrow...

With media streaming being the "new DVD", having it built-in to the set makes total sense. The lifespan of major consoles is almost equal to the lifespan of TVs these days, so problems with obsolescence are minimal.

Hezbollah sting bust sees first phone-unlock DMCA conviction

Robert Hill

IRA

Of course, the USA's definition of terrorism managed to miss the ONE organization that looks an awful lot like Hezzbollah - the IRA. One part political, one part terrorists...but somehow it was just dandy for the IRA to do the bulk of their fundraising in the US for decades with no bother at all from the US government.

Official: Playboy back cat stashed on hard drive

Robert Hill

THAT is rather cheap...

I really don't know how the author thinks $300 for that many YEARS of back catalogue is expensive. Try buying back issues of ANY magazine...they are usually a few dollars a piece, even if downloaded from the publisher. This gives you about 684 issues, which equates to $0.43 per copy - a relative steal, considering that even the effort to DOWNLOAD (via torrent or legally) this much stuff will cost a fair amount if you value your time at anything reasonable.

And unlike a download, you can be pretty sure that the material is in good shape,even the early years.

So it seems like a decent value, and probably worth it to see just how society has evolved in that time, and the articles.

Elon Musk's SpaceX gets unique commercial re-entry licence

Robert Hill
Thumb Up

Used to think Elon was a joke...

I admit it - I had zero faith in his ability to run something this large, and to generate the right ideas in an area not his area of speciality expertise.

But BOY was I wrong...SpaceX has just done everything right...the right design decisions, the right fuel decisions (the Saturn V was fueled by a first stage of kerosene too), and finally winning the contract to the ISS. Now this.

He may just do it - provide REAL orbital capability for the masses.

US crewless, automated ghost-frigate project takes shape

Robert Hill
Pirate

Hmmm, I don't care HOW good the AI is...

Having a boat on the water with no watchkeeping is frankly against all nautical practice, particularly near the coasts and on shipping lanes. Will these things be squawking on AIS transponders so that we sailors can see them coming, or will they be running dark? Will they have radar to enable them to see the radar reflectors of a sailboat at night? If they do either then they are not exactly stealthy are they - and if they DON'T then they are a meanace to navigation.

N.B. to Blofeld's Cat - any sub in transit around the Isle of Wight submerged is more likely to be killed by an incoming or outgoing auto transport ship, or even a cruise liner, than actually evading a tail...those things are doing over 20 knots in the Solent, and have a pretty deep draft...

Why Microsoft is Acorn and Symbian is the new CP/M

Robert Hill

Very good...

I was going to suggest RIM as Altos, but I think OS/2 is a much better comparison. Perfect actually.

PCI Express 3.0 spec sneaks out

Robert Hill
FAIL

Falling behind...

OK, how long has PCIe 2.0 been with us? More than a few, depending upon when you want to start counting (spec, mobo availability, common in add-ons, etc.). So here we have a spec that doubles the effective bandwidth - but in several multiples of 18 months. Given Moore's Law, that means that PCIe is effectively falling behind the rate of progress of computing power.

The only brightspot is that more chipsets are moving critical communications links off the PCIe bus onto direct links - but then again, given the turgid pace of PCIe development, what choice do they have? The killer is disk and other large storage interfaces - those with minor storage needs (desktop PCs) can use SATA interfaces embedded directly to the chipsets, by-passing the PCIe bus. But those with larger storage needs (i.e., add-in RAID cards) have to plug into the PCIe bus - which is NOT keeping pace with either storage development or computing development.

The PCIe 3.0 spec needed to be at least a quadrupling of bandwidth - it offers half that. Perhaps it is time to consider dropping the entire "legacy compatibility" mantra and design a new bus from the ground up for current and future needs. They have done that in the past - PCI to PCIe! - so perhaps it is time to do it again.

Apple, Oracle air-kiss their way to OpenJDK deal for Mac OS X

Robert Hill

Legal...

Boy, you sure write a lot of text for what it clearly just a case of Apple scheduling an announcement on Java support but did not get the legal agreement with Oracle finished in time. Happens in business all the time, it's not evil or even planned. The legal agreement between Apple and Oracle probably took MONTHS to negotiate, and they always get held up at the last second because SOME top lawyer decides to change one or two terms days before it should be finished. Given a planned announcement, but no Oracle agreement finished, they announced that part they COULD comment on...that they were dropping their own support. Cut a couple of weeks, and now they can complete that thought.

'Superb' Apple 1 on the block for £100k-£150K

Robert Hill

How much...

I have a competitor to the Apple I in near mint condition - the Ohio Scientific Superboard II...the ROMs are copywritted 1977, and it has the very third version of "Microsoft BASIC in ROM" by Mr. Gates himself...

Got to be worth £10...

Netezza pays to shut down CIA killer drone lawsuit

Robert Hill
Pirate

The phone call...

"Hello, this is Netezza here...yes, we finally admit that we ripped off your software, and yes, we agree that our salesmen shouldn't have promised the customer impossible dates for product release when the port hadn't even been started. Even if that customer scares everyone silly during sales negotiations.

Our goof. Want to retire somewhere warm and never have to work again?"

Elon Musk vs NASA and the US rocket industry - ding ding!

Robert Hill

Velocity, not height...

The problem with achieving orbit is NOT height - both a balloon or a rocket plane can get you to the edge of space. The problem is that you need to be travelling at about Mach 25 to actually achieve orbit - or about 8 times faster than Virgin Galactic's craft. To achieve that speed requires that you burn A LOT of fuel - more than you can lift via a balloon, or even by a B-52 or White Knight. THAT is why ballistic rockets are not "old tech", because they burn most of that fuel right off the ground without having to lift it very far, and so are actually efficient ways of getting to Mach 25...

Robert Hill

NASA - failed how??

Let's see in the past 40 years:

1) Conceived and built the only re-usable, heavy-lift to low/medium orbit spaceplane in the world

2) Designed and assembled in orbit (with partners) a decade-old, fully functioning space platform in earth orbit, and kept it supplied and ever-expanding

3) Launched, rescued, repaired, and re-launched the US's premier visible light observatory

4) Launched and operated several highly successful Martian probes

5) et al...including development work into hypersonic travel, ion drives, and long-term human endurance in space for Martian missions.

Huh...such failures. Time to dismantle the entire organisation, because it's obvious they are incompetent.

I remember watching Apollo 11 land, and the coolest book on my bookshelf is the Hayes Apollo 11 inner-workings manual I bought last year. I also have both volumes of the NASA Apollo 11 debriefs in book form. But the Moon is a dead end. It's a gravity well, and requires quite a bit of fuel to get to and back, up and down. It isn't even a good launch point for a Mars mission - orbit would probably be better. To say that NASA is a failure because they have chosen not to go back is really stretching it - in large part because that simply wasn't their mission for most of the past 40 years. Remember - we CANCELLED the last block of Apollo flights because we had concerns about the safety of the Apollo program after 13, AND because we just couldn't justify the results returned. That led to Apollo-Soyuz and Skylab, which frankly was probably a better use of that gear, as it led to the ISS...

Clive Sinclair unveils 'X-1' battery pedalo bubble-bike

Robert Hill
Thumb Up

Lewis...

"Nowadays Sinclair is known as much for... or for his longtime relationship with (and recent marriage to) a former lapdancer 36 years his junior"....

Lewis, you say that like it's a BAD THING?? Bloody hell, if having a couple of good ideas in your life and capitalizing on them get you the money to have a fantastic sex partner in your older age isn't a passable definition of success, I don't know what is...

Forumware giant vBulletin sues ex-devs (again)

Robert Hill
Pirate

Internet Brands...

LOL...Internet Brands bought vBulletin because they thought it would be a nice cash cow for them. Immediately upon buying the company, they radically scaled back the investment and development on the next version of the product, the features of which had already been publically announced to their user base. Instead, IB decides to greatly water down the enhancements, and then promise the rest "over the course of several longer-term releases". In short, whenever they might decided to finance the work.

So the best of their development team leaves...because they could see the writing on the wall. Apparently IB thought that their old dev team would be happy working at Wall Mart, or really do anything other than, say write bulletin board software (which is all they know, having done it for so long).

Now IB is faced with the introduction of a far superior competitor, written to be what the promised version of vBullitein was SUPPOSED to be...and on a newer framework.

So of course...you can now see the genesis of this lawsuit.. IB has realized that their "cash cow", their golden goose...may not be so golden after all. Reading the web forums, there are HUGE numbers of old vBulletin customers that cannot wait to switch to the new product.

What IB wants to say is "you kids were supposed to go quietly!!!". Instead, they are leading the insurrection...and are likely to make IB's investment return look exceedingly poor...

Motorola Backflip Android smartphone

Robert Hill
FAIL

Funny, this just killed the Moto Defy for me...

Was really thinking about NOT buying an iPhone upgrade, but buying the Defy when it comes out in a few weeks, as I sail and a waterproof phone would be a good thing...

But this treating non-US customers differentially is just shite, really. Totally unacceptable, regardless of reasoning (probably due to reseller/channel/carrier issues, I would guess). But in the end - I DON'T CARE - I will NOT be treated as a second-class citizen just due to the side of the Atlantic I live on. HP does it with their laptops, others do it - but Samsung seems to do it less, and Apple also seems to be pretty good at treating it's customers as global customers.

I'll get a waterproof case for my iPhone, thanks for playing Moto...

X2 triplex super-copter to be offered as Army 'Raider' craft

Robert Hill

Only as good as it's sensors...

Sure, it'd be great to double the speed of an armed scout, but it's really only worth it if the crew can actually perform the scouting role at that high speed, and can react to threats it runs into. So until we know more about that, it's hard to say what the actual combat value of this might be...

HP unwraps Palm Pre 2

Robert Hill
FAIL

"Tons of FUN???"

Hard to see that, even though they quote it a lot on their website. Of all of the smartphones out there, this has the lowest resolution screen, underpowered graphics, and a second rate games developer community. It isn't good for games. With that screen resolution, it isn't good for media.

Short answer - it is THE least fun smartphone on the planet, short of a BlackBerry Bold - which is at least honest about it's business bias. The Palm is still a "personal organizer" first and foremost - the problem is that that market has been subsumed into the much larger smartphone market, and now people expect one device to do a lot of things well...not just keep them organized.

Alternative iPhone 4 nears end of test phase, claims insider

Robert Hill

Better Value?

I'm trying to think of which phone you might be referring to? Yes, there are cheaper Android phones, but none of them have the battery life of an iPhone 4 - not even close in several cases (just read the user reviews on shopping sites like Expansys or Carphone Warehouse).

Worse yet, those cheaper Android phones come quoted with no memory cards - by the time you add a 32Gig microSD, you've added another £90 to the price of the phone.

Then you take a look at the app stores available - and Apple's is still far larger.

So...we have a line of phones that (factoring in memory costs) is a LITTLE cheaper, but with worse battery life and a smaller app store. I'm not sure how that translates into "better value" in anyone's books.

Seagate's shrinks GoFlex drive

Robert Hill

I think it is all about sales...

PCs have changed - they are now disposable home electrics, like a toaster or a coffee maker. The way the economics look, most people simply don't build their own machines any more, even hobbyists. Sure, SOME of us will put in new storage, but overall the sales from that market are minuscule to the sales Seagate makes to systems builders like Dell, Acer, etc.

Most people that buy storage now want something they can plug in - and THAT means, 90% of the time, USB. Most mobos in circulation don't support eSATA, as do very few laptops. I recently helped a friend increase his storage for VIDEO editing on his aging PC, and he would not even countenance any internal storage, insisted that he was going to buy a USB drive...even when I explained how much slower it would be. That's a market reality - most users today care about convenience more than speed.

Manufacturers putting their latest model drives into USB casings are probably NOT "beta testing", but most likely putting them where they have the second highest volume sales (after system builders).

Microsoft loses chief software architect Ray Ozzie

Robert Hill
Boffin

Note to Ballmer...

I've met you both...be worried he's gone. You are forceful, he is insightful....

Microsoft steers OEMs away from putting Phone 7 on Tablets

Robert Hill
FAIL

Totally misjudged the critical success factors...

It seems that MS has really misjudged the critical success factors of what makes tables work:

1) Applications that support digital (as in FINGER) use and data input

2) Applications that support digital (as in Finger) use and data input

3) Applications...

You get the picture. And that is what has made the iPad a success, and that is what will make the Android tables a success - ALL of the phone apps are already touchscreen driven by default. All of the developers for those platforms already designed applications with that in mind, all the GUI development is geared for it...etc., etc., etc.

By being able to leverage the applications stock of the associated phones, both IOS and Android came out of the gate with a huge advantage. Now is seems that Microsoft (CLEARLY thinking about internal revenue splits and politics, not marketplace realities) is willing to forego this and start their tablet platform from scratch - and ensuring developers will have to code for and support two separate platforms.

Or develop for Android, or even IOS. Hmmm....

BT blasts hundreds of would-be customers' data into Infinity

Robert Hill

No choice...

ALL PR companies are pretty much technically incompetent. PR companies entire business is about marketing and spin, and their is NO viable career path in such a company for a serious or even good techie. That's not to slag them off - it's just the way of the world - only a fairly incompetent tech would chose to work where he has no career path.

Ballerina canned for flashing her assets

Robert Hill

Ballerinas are a wild bunch...

I remember reading my gf's copy of Lisa Rinehart's autobiography, when she talked about her first meeting with Baryshnikov. He saw her at a party, and his opening line to her was "Have you ever taken cocaine up the *ss?"

They went on to have three children together, so I don't think she was exactly offended...

Google robo cars drive selves on public streets

Robert Hill
Black Helicopters

It's now obvious...

The name in the movie was wrong, but the effect will be the same:

Google == Skynet!!!

Doctors' appointment system goes tits up

Robert Hill

Most local surgeries are rubbish at IT...

The fact of the matter is that most NHS local surgeries are rubbish at IT. They are small, don't have the staff and manpower, and what IT support they do get is generally of the level of "advanced hobbyist" rather than a true IT professional. I know, my brother is a GP, and I've seen and heard it all for years.

THAT is the reason they centralized the appointments database, and as much other data as they can, and while they will be moving onto a web-based system ASAP. It's a good call really - when the local staff is barely able to get a few PCs up and running and connected on a network, then that is ALL you should have them responsible for doing.

The problem is the current system really is not designed for a large centralized implementation, which is why they are at risk for these problems until the new one comes out.

Bulgarians bag German pair for pinching panzer

Robert Hill

Safety rating?

Anyone know how many stars a Panzer gets in a front to front impact? I'm thinking that at only $75,000, this is just the thing to out do my neighbors Hummer...

Hackers hijack internet voting system in Washington DC

Robert Hill

It WAS examined...

examined so well it was hacked with a month to go before elections!

The philosophy of FLOSS is that given enough people and enough time to review, things will get fixed. Great as far as it goes - because it doesn't specify WHEN.

But what about projects and software that ABSOLUTELY have to go live in a short amount of time? When is there the time for FLOSS to be reviewed, discovered, and fixed? And then those fixes themselves reviewed and tested?

Given a short amount of time, all FLOSS seems to do is expose your vulnerabilities to those with the time and inclination to put the resources into finding them in a short amount of time - i.e., hackers. As was provably the case here...

The fact that EVENTUALLY all the vulnerabilities will be discovered and fixed is poor consolation to the millions of voters that may have their votes challenged, thrown out, or even stolen in the election in a month's time. And even if the vulnerabilities are eventually fixed, the system NOW has the perception of being "unsecure" to Joe Voter (no relation to Joe the Plumber). You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

I'm not saying FLOSS isn't a great idea - I use a bunch of it, including Blender 3D. But let's at least examine when it MIGHT have limitations...such as short time-frame deliverables on systems that have to be verified. I would rather have an open source voting system than one owned by "Republican-controlled Diebold" anyday...

Robert Hill
Grenade

How can it be HACKED?!?!?

It's open source, how can it _possibly_ have been hacked? :-()

ToryDems nearly swallow Labour blueprint of equality for all

Robert Hill
FAIL

Tribunals...

A close friend of mine is a GP, and he is going bankrupt (and his practice) over his decision to remove a salaried doctor that he inherited with the practice. This person is lackadaisical, dishonest, and provably took maternity leave at full rate WHILE working 20 hours a week at a competing medical practice! Then she claims a fifth week of holiday with pay - despite having only 4 weeks in her contract!

So he initiated dismissal. It has dragged on over a year now - with she and her lawyers deploying every trick in the book. She claimed TWO types of discriminations (she is a minority, and a mom!), and then claimed that my friend's medical practices were against code. So, the medical council orders an investigation by an outside doctor..which my friend easily wins. But HE has to pay for the investigation - at £15,000! What does she do - she raises MORE allegations, and appeals - another cost of £15,000 to him for the appeal! Which he wins, but he has just lost £30,000 in income for the year. He fires his cleaner, cancels his gym, and sells his car.

The saga is not yet over, as an employment tribunal has refused to hold against her because - get this - "we believe that she stole from the practice by taking the extra holiday which is clearly not in her contract, but to dismiss her would MAKE HER UNEMPLOYABLE IN MEDICINE WHICH WE FEEL IS TOO HARSH." So my friend lost his dismissal, still has her on the books getting paid, and NOW must pay her legal fees - about £20,000. And after all that, he will in the end have to pay her to leave - probably 6-12 full months of salary to reach a compromise agreement.

THIS is what employers fear - it's not that they really, really want to discriminate and eek out a few extra quid (by and large). It is the impossibility of even removing someone that is provably dishonest, and detrimental to your business - but who can claim "DISCRIMINATION" at the drop of hat - which now is everyone that is NOT male, white, and straight.

Frankly, having watched this whole saga unfold this past year...I just don't see much hope for English small business...

Man vindicated for videotaping his own traffic stop

Robert Hill

Hmm, is it just me?

Am I the ONLY person that saw the entirely obvious and well-badged State Police patrol car pull in right behind the motorcycle? It was a Crown Vic, pretty easy to spot, with a nice big badge on it...and as SOON as the door of the Crown Vic opens, the first cop puts his gun away. Once, basically, he knew that someone had his back...you will of course notice that he never RAISES the gun and levels it at the cyclist, he just has it out and at the ready.

The other thing to consider - if the cop WAS off-duty when he made the stop, then it is very possible that he wasn't wearing a bulletproof vest. Now, in the US, where guns are like water, EVERY cop on duty wears a vest - and they save an awful lot of lives. But if the off-duty cop wasn't wearing one, reaching for his gun as he exited was probably a reflex action caused by having no vest - in short, if you have no defense then at least have your offense ready.

Cops get shot in traffic stops very frequently in the States...sometimes for an obvious reason (i.e., carrying drugs, or outstanding warrants for arrest), sometimes because the heavily armed and tanked on steroids driver just doesn't think the law applies to him. It's very, very easy to criticize from here in the UK, but UK police don't have to deal with the sea of licensed and unlicensed handguns that permeate the States - and we as UK citizens just don't have that much experience with it. Not saying it doesn't HAPPEN, but it's at least an order of magnitude less frequent.

I think the wiretapping charges were foolish, but I'm just not convinced the cop did anything all that wrong, or at least nothing that I myself might not do in that situation, lacking a vest and arresting an unpredictable, hyped-up motorcyclist...

Terry Pratchett computer sniper-scope deal inked

Robert Hill
Grenade

Banned at Bisley...

I give it 10 years before these are explicitly banned from civilian rifle competitions...just long enough for the price to fall to £3000 or so each and then to hit the civilian market.

What with F-class and benchrest rifle competitions now being all about reading the wind and not steadying your shot (cause it's off a bipod or rest), I'm not sure what else there would be to DO if these were allowed - squeeze the trigger perhaps?

Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that these have't been made before - certainly a lot of the basic tech has been around for a while - must have just been a packaging and power issue.

Grenade - because we don't have a gun icon!

Nuclear merchant ships could open up Arctic routes for real

Robert Hill
FAIL

SUCH a bad idea I don't know where to start...

I am trying to figure out what scares me more:

1) The fact that a ship-board nuclear reactor is VERY different from a land-based atomic power plant, in that it runs at much higher internal coolant pressures (to take less space on-board) and thermal ranges?

2) That such plants are MUCH more likely to go unstable, and potentially very quickly in the event of a coolant accident (the most common kind).

3) The fact that the Navy deals with this by rigorously training and re-training highly skilled reactor techs for on-ship use, which is a highly expensive undertaking

4) Even WITH such extensive training, they still get it wrong from time to time, as the USSR did with the Lenin nuclear icebreaker:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin_(nuclear_icebreaker)

5) The fact that commercial cargo lines operate with the lowest-cost, just-barely-trained crews they can get away with, usually Asians or South Americans, often illiterate?

6) The fact that commercial cargo carriers have no trained security force, nor weaponry in sufficient amounts, to safeguard such a nuclear, travelling plant...

I mean, this is futurism circa 1955, when we thought that atomic cars would be in dealer's showrooms by the '70s...

It is also an incredibly bad, bad idea. EPIC FAIL in the making...and I even endorse nuclear power on land.

Google Percolator – global search jolt sans MapReduce comedown

Robert Hill
Boffin

You're not getting it...

the new method uses the same data input at the same speed (i.e., crawlers), but what is different is what happens to the data once it is on Google's servers. The fact that it is "more distributed" is only on Google's hardware, the fact that it uses double the number of servers to process updates is, again, only on Google''s servers.

Think of it this way: if the crawlers can return 10,000 page updates* per hour under the old system, it would have taken 2 to 3 days for those updates to show in Google's index. With Caffeine/Percolator, the crawlers STILL take in 10,000 page updates per hour, but now (using double the number of internal Google servers to power it) Caffeine/Percolator shows those same 10,000 updates in a few minutes or hours.

The speed of the crawlers is governed totally independently of the post-processing, and is probably driven by a strong desire not to piss-off web admins by overloading their servers - or risk having robots.txt suddenly become a lot less welcoming to Google's crawlers...

* - a number simply for illustration

Robert Hill
Grenade

You forgot one thing...

the most notable function that Google provides to the WWW is NOT search - it is advertising revenue. There were other search engines (AltaVista anyone?) before Google. What Google did was index the web in a way that was relevant not just for search users, but also for ADVERTISERS, via their link scores.

This totally transformed the web income model, as now their was an objective metric for a site's popularity besides mere page hits. It also allowed semantic linking of a web site to relevant content, via AdWords.

What this has done is enabled about a gazillion web sites to be advertising funded, rather than paywall, subscription, or simply non funded at all. Which has dramatically increased the move of a whole lot of content on-line in an astonishing short amount of time. Which has enormously benefited the human race, as now we can get info on things in lighting fast times that is up-to-date, comprehensive, and even socially filtered. We are connected in ways that a generation ago would seem incomprehensible (and I know, because I span those generations).

THAT has been the uplift of Google's indexing, and one that TBL's specification of a functional index could not have accomplished...

ConLibs get shifty on spam and behavioural ads

Robert Hill
Grenade

Single-issue analysis...

It would be interesting to read this analysis if the author had more than a one-dimensional concern. As it stands, he so obviously only cares about "enhanced" privacy measures that he is looking to make hay out of even the slightest differences in wording or omissions.

Perhaps the most important part of this article is the sentence "Of course one can argue that an enhanced privacy protective option might be judged to harm economic activity but that position should form part of the informed debate."

The obvious problem with that sentence is that everyone in the industry KNOWS the answer to that point a priori - it is not a debate. Online media competes with all other media in the marketplace, and without the ability to target that media then it becomes much, much less attractive and thus less profitable. Selling non-targeted ads is not a very viable business case, the rates are simply too low (sometimes only a quarter of what targeted ad rates are). So sites that rely upon advertising to be free to the public (i.e., non-subscription) need targeting to STAY free to the public. The only other option is conversion to pay-for-play sites, which most users do NOT want.

Anyone who doubts the veracity of this need only look at the "profitability" of ad supported sites - most of them, even some very large and well-known sites, are not very profitable, even with targeting as it exists today. What is needed is better targeting (while maintaining confidentiality), not more restrictions.

But back to the question - why no public debate? Because frankly a debate along the lines of the one above will NEVER be settled by 2011 - the public privacy advocates will never back down from their "privacy at any cost" line of argument, and those needing to make a profit from building a web site will always hew to their need for profitability and thus targeting.

The current consultation merely recognizes this, and says let's simply do something practical in the middle ground...

CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

Robert Hill

So few actually know about ports here...

The answer to the problem was apparent on page one of the article, to anyone that has had to actually port software. The second someone read "PowerPC" to "x86" port, alarm bells should have rung.

The PowerPC arch is so different from the x86, and more importantly THE MATH LIBRARIES are almost certainly different between the compilers. Not too much different if you are adding up two-decimal currency transactions, but on successive floating point calculations the aggregate errors are most certainly going to differ.

So the iiSi engineers probably had to do a deep dive on the respective math libraries on each compiler, and take into account various register precisions between the two architectures. Yeah, that can take a few months, easy. And frankly the salespeople of Netezza should have expected a few months lead time on something like an architecture port...

Oh, wait - I forgot. People who actually understand the base technology aren't hired any more...

How do you copy 60m files?

Robert Hill
FAIL

Non nonsensical conclusion...

SO...RIchCopy will do it just as fast if not faster than cp, and if restricted to one thread will not fragment...but your conclusion is that it is still better to install another OS and use cp?

<boggles mind>

iPad app throws TV games at your head

Robert Hill
Thumb Up

I think this is fantastic...

Very inventive, very clever.

OK, I hate what it says (hold a sec while I answer that..) about our (one sec, just have to read this text) society in general. But what can (click!) you do?

And I can find one great use for this - the BBC need to use this to present their web overview of the F1 driver's on-track positions during a race...and synch it to the TV broadcast! I tend to religiously watch F1....from a recording! It means that I always miss the simultaneous web stuff. With this though, I could get the true F1 multi-vision experience even off a recording!

Surprise Automotive X Prize winners announced

Robert Hill
Thumb Up

VLC = ?

Am I the only one that looked at the VLC and thought - "close cousin to the F-117 fighter"? It's got the same pitched angles, the same weird lines. I wonder if it is radar absorbent?

Seriously, a very, very good call to do the EFFICIENT thing, rather than the politically correct thing.

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