* Posts by jonathan rowe

60 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Nov 2008

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Amazon's 'schizophrenic' open source selfishness scares off potential talent, say insiders

jonathan rowe

Another example of it's leechlike behaviour, operating within the letter of the law yes, but certainly not in the spirit of decency. A freetarding corporation purely for it's own selfish short term benefit. Standing on the shoulder of giants, but refusing to tell the giant what it sees and doing a but fart as well.

Although I have made 400% on their shares, I still think they are a bunch of cunts,

Silicon Valley 'no-hire pact' lawsuit gets class action status for tech workers

jonathan rowe

this is good

being from the UK, I cannot understand how even top techies who earn 140K dollars can ever hope to put down roots in the ridiculously expensive bay area

Doesn't surprise me how the big tech companies in close physical proximity conspired to push down salaries, I thought the US took a strong stance against anti-competitive companies? or is the full weight of the law reserved mostly for foreign owned companies?

Knocking China with shocking phones and mocking tones

jonathan rowe

Fit an RCD

Perhaps the newspapers should have used the chance to educate people why a simple $20 RCD would have probably saved her life?

Ofcom: When shall we squeeze Freeview's girth?

jonathan rowe

just like the phone numbers

we've had this before from OFCOM, lack of strategic thinking meant that some landline numbers were changed twice instead of once, e.g. London: 01 -> 071 -> 0207

Keyboard, you're not my type

jonathan rowe
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5250 terminals

Nice article thanks.

We had one (decision data?) which had 2 rows of function keys: F1-F12 & F13-F24, need to hit F23? - no prob - we don't need no stinkin shift key.

But curiously, page up/page down was by using shift-up and shift-down arrow. By far a more popular key press than any of the upstart newly promoted function keys.

What the green screen god giveth, the green screen god taketh away.

Oh, yes and one word for decent keyboards... cherry.

Helium: Can it prevent the onset of Shingles?

jonathan rowe
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8 inch platters

Lets just go back to 8 inch platters from my mainframe days, problem solved!!

'Leccy-starved Reg hack: 'How I survive on 1.5kW'

jonathan rowe

just stick a bigger MCB in

As long as you don't exceed the 1.5kw for an extended period of time then you will be OK, kettle/microwave will only be running for 4/5 minuites at a time.

Why do Smart TV UIs suck?

jonathan rowe
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nice article

Nice article, even non-smart TV's are pretty diabolical.

My 5 year old samsung has a UI that is sluggish as hell. When selecting the input source there are no direct selections - you just have to keep prodding the button til you get the one you are after and it always reverts back to the built-in TV tuner when power cycled. If the source is offline then you cannot select it, so you have to go through all the sources again. There is no config option to set a default source on power up or to remove unwanted source that nicely clutter up the selection.

So my power up cycle for my PVR + TV is:

PVR on - wait til booted

TV on

press input source 5 times

press enter

This all takes about 20-30 seconds, if you goof then it can take a minute or two.

Whereas using a tablet is just a press of the power button, a swipe to unlock and then selecting the TV app - 5 seconds max.

And don't even get me started on my diabolical smart samsung DVD player, I have used the youtube function just once, the UI was slower than wading through a swimming pool full of treacle.

Ten four-bay NAS boxes

jonathan rowe

Re: @ZFS Fanboys:

Sean, believe me if any of these NAS boxes used ZFS (or BTRFS or the new windows FS) I would buy one at the drop of a hat, but my data is just too important to put to chance. I am glad you backup, but if the data on the disk goes bad, then so do all your backups - the problem is that you don't know that your data is corrupt until it is too late and all your backups have been 'polluted' with bad data.

You can do a freenas setup in about half a day - there are no arcane spells involved at all, a modest investment compared to the immeasurable expense of losing important data or worst still, not knowing that you have lost important data when your NAS box says 'yep, all hunky dory'.

jonathan rowe

Re: I don't get NAS boxes...

OK matt, you have 2 disks in RAID 1. One disk says a bit is 0, the other says it is 1 (perhaps flipped by a cosmic ray, power surge, flipped memory bit, or an intermittent disk surface error). Which one is correct? You don't know. That's where ZFS comes in. Read up on ZFS and enlighten yourself.

jonathan rowe
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microserver N40L

Don't waste your time with any of these, an N40L with 8gb of ECC RAM and an intel NIC (N40L built-in does not do jumbo frames) will wipe the floor performance wise. It has an internal USB slot onto which you install FreeNAS and then you get ZFS.

ZFS + RAIDZ2 + ECC memory - don't trust your precious data to anything less.

Why Java would still stink even if it weren't security swiss cheese

jonathan rowe
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ignorance

"I wrote a few crappy programs in Java that could do some basic things"

Hey, but that obviously didn't stop you speaking from a position of ignorance.

PayPal is bleeding market share and it's all eBay's fault

jonathan rowe
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ebay final value cap almost doubled on 10th July

Well, ebay obviously feel comfortable enough to double the cap on the final value fee.

Before 10th July: £1000 sale, ebay get 10% of £400 = £40

After 10th July: ebay get 10% of £750 = £75

Plus, the paypal double dip of 3.4%

Plus the risk that paypal do not investigate a seller complaint properly, and take the whole lot

Lightsquared cremation postponed

jonathan rowe
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Wrong wrong wrong

"GPS interfering"

"the perception that it too could interfere with GPS systems"

"supposedly "GPS interfering" spectrum "

Check out the laws of physics and stop being so nice to lightsquared. GPS devices must have weak filtering to pick up a weak signal. Strong local signals will spill out onto the GPS band. No amount of shouting on behalf of lightsquared will change this fact.

Hitachi GST lays 4TB Easter egg

jonathan rowe
Happy

Don't use RAID1 or RAID5

Use ZFS with mirroring :) - kill bitrot for good

T-Mobile clams up over Full Monty 'speed-cap' claims

jonathan rowe
Unhappy

Carry on asking questions

Is the cap 1.01 mbps? - NO

Is the cap 1.02 mbps? - NO

...

Put down the Java manual

jonathan rowe
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Take a look at Haskell

A truly beautiful and pure language that has little CV fire power, but will open your eyes to other languages and FP.

UK to make White Space devices legal

jonathan rowe

competitive databases?

No chance of inconsistencies between different databases then?

And what value is there to add? - either you can transmit at a given location/frequency/power level or you cannot - end of.

Ten... Desktop USB 3.0 HDDs

jonathan rowe
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Capacity vs price

Pleasant to see some vendors gouging tech ignorant consumers by charging 3 times as much for a 3TB drive as a 1TB drive!

Adaptec adds DRAM cache to entry-level RAID

jonathan rowe
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oooooooo!! 128mb of cache

Well that's really going to take the heat off a 256gb SSD isn't it??

Oracle's Java plan trapped in last century

jonathan rowe
FAIL

volatile and synchronized

This whole article is peppered with technical inaccuracies, it's frankly embarrassing for the register to publish this nonsense. Just to clear up one of them:

Variables changes can be seen by other threads, you just use the volatile and synchronized constructs, this tells the JVM to flush out the cache so other cores can see the update. This is very expensive, that's why it's optional and has to be explicitly stated by the programmer, that's why all other languages will have a similar construct.

Java also has the java memory model, which ensures that multi-threaded code works the same on all processor architectures and types. From ARM to POWER7, be it NUMA or not.

Oracle and Itanic: Tech's nastiest ever row?

jonathan rowe
Happy

Splashback on oracle

Very interesting article, let's hope that oracle see sense and realise that this could backfire on them. The consolidation of the Unix platforms strongly contrasts the proliferation of choices when it comes to databases. Oracle need to tread a bit more carefully.

Facebook's open hardware: Does it compute?

jonathan rowe

wheres the power supply?

The article is a bit unclear, is there one PS per rack or one per motherboard?

Google bids $900m for Android and Chrome patent shield

jonathan rowe
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Don't startup - you'll get sued

Just shows how patents only raise the barrier to entry for new startups, get anywhere successful and you'll get sued.

The sooner everyone (excluding patent hoarders) gets together to reform this nonsense, the better.

Seagate triples up heads/platter ratio

jonathan rowe
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At last!!

Have been waiting for someone to do this for a couple of decades now, I suppose with really smart firmware it has the potential to more than treble random i/o since you can pick the head that is closest to a given request. However, with more moving parts - reliability may be less than current single head designs.

With the much larger HD capacities, this should keep hard drives in the game with flash for a lot longer.

Intel re-invents its mainstream SSD

jonathan rowe
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sandforce - compare like with like

Sandforce relies on data compression to achieve it's throughput stats, call me old fashioned, but I would prefer my CPU to do the compression via a compressed file system. So, when comparing performance - make sure you compare like with like.

I am seriously tempted to buy one of these, I have a 160gb G2 from intel and it has never let me down.

Credit cards at the turnstile across London by 2013

jonathan rowe
Pint

lots more £6 fares for TFL

I have had several incomplete journeys where I have definitely touched at both ends, most of the time it happens at rail stations. The oyster helpline will not give you a refund unless you call them within 6 weeks, so you still need to check your account at a station every few weeks, the online webapp does not show you incomplete journeys.

But hey, by the time most people receive their credit card bill and scrutinise it, the 6 weeks will be up and TFL will be quids in!! trebles all round

Evil grain-speculating OVERLORDS will starve us ALL

jonathan rowe
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Words of wisdom

Excellent article, I'm sure anyone with even pass lay knowledge of economics would realise this.

Also, food is much more expensive to store/hoard than other commodities. A lot of foodstuffs degrade over time, are consumed by pests (try keeping a grain silo free of mice without tainting the grain), run the risk of being infected and rendered worthless by moulds or insects and are an extremely bulky way of storing value.

BBC kills off WML site

jonathan rowe
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The ceefax of the mobile internet

I really liked WAP and appreciated it's thriftiness with bandwidth and processor resources, and the concept of decks within cards was very nice as the browser could easily prefetch the next page.

Thinking back. it strikes me how bloated most web pages are now, taking so much time resolve all the various DNS names, load the page, load the ad networks ads, start up flash animations etc etc and then the page is so busy with crap you have trouble finding the link you are after.

Here's to a simpler, but far faster web...

How I used Space Shuttle tech to insulate the living room

jonathan rowe
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fantastic

please keep us updated on any more home improvements! I'd never heard of aerogel, but will certainly look at trying to use it in the future

Virgin Media begins 100Mb upgrades

jonathan rowe

throttling

What's the bet that throttling kicks in for the next six hours after a few minutes worth of full pelt 100mbps??

No thanks, I'll stick with my 14mbps ADSL thank you

IBM kills off Irish server works

jonathan rowe

What about shipping delays?

It's a lot easier and quicker to move kit around within the EU, instead of shipping it in from Asia with shipping and customs delays.

Oracle sues Google over Java in Android

jonathan rowe
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look at the patents

Look at the patents, they are generic enough to apply to just about any other language runtime. What utter bullshit.

Tube data feed shut for being popular

jonathan rowe
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Hunger for data

Show's the hunger for the data, other government departments and organisations - TAKE NOTE - we want our data!

BCS trustee threatens rebels with libel action

jonathan rowe
Grenade

ooooooo!!

Elbow patches at dawn...

Canon EOS 550D DSLR

jonathan rowe
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too many pixels

Sorry, 18mp is way too much for my liking. I think canon are racing too far ahead on the pixel count, and they need to slow down and let some aspects of the sensor technology catch up.

Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB Sata 3 SSD

jonathan rowe

wait for intel

you need intel to show everyone how to do SATA 3 SSD the right way

Lower termination rates will bring pricey data

jonathan rowe

the future is data

mobile voice telphony becomes a commodity - that's no surprise really, since it's just a stream of data, albeit with strict quality of service requirements and low bandwidth requirements

Woman finds Romanian living in shed

jonathan rowe
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HA!

In soviet romania, shed lives in you!

Google pushes out Chrome 5 beta for Windows

jonathan rowe
Happy

print preview PLEASE

please!

Virgin contractors grip up for more cuts

jonathan rowe
WTF?

2009 just called and they want their rate cuts back

are they fucking serious?

has no one told VM the job market is well into a spring thaw? and rates are back up again?

I hear the sound of 400 contractors suddenly logging onto jobserve

UK shoppers ignorant of online rights

jonathan rowe

re: amazon

That's the whole point of the original article, most buyers don't "look further down the page" - they wouldn't need to bother looking at returns policies in the first place if they knew exactly what their rights are, and they had the confidence to enforce them rigorously.

jonathan rowe
Go

all shopping sites try it on

Check the refund policy on your favourite shopping site, chances are they contradict the distance selling regulations.

Take Amazon: "We can only accept the return of opened items if they are faulty. Please note that we reserve the right to send back items to you that have been returned to us after 30 days unless they are faulty."

Bzzzzzt!! wrong ... you can open the item, play with it, try it out - the whole point of the regulations are that you cannot see the item and try it out like in a shop, therefore you get the chance to do this at home for 7 days. You just have to take reasonable care of the item and return it in working condition.

The shops usually assert that they cannot resell opened goods as new and therefore you cannot return them. This is *not* your problem as a consumer.

(some items are excepted of course: CD's/DVD's/software/underwear etc)

Opera Mini 5 betas on Google Android

jonathan rowe

Just downloaded it

works a treat, pages load a *lot* faster - which makes a difference when you are on a crappy 3g network like t-mobile

Vodafone ships Mariposa-infected HTC Magic

jonathan rowe
WTF?

XXXX takes XXXX extremely seriously

If I here another company say that again, I will go postal.

Obviously, you didn't take it seriously, you didn't even consider it all, and didn't put safeguards in place, otherwise it wouldn't of fucking happened in the first place.

BBC protects 'unique' 1Xtra listeners from radio cull

jonathan rowe
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BBC PR Profit

1. Threaten closure of previously sacred service providings

2. Reprieve previously threatened sacred service providings

3. erm, PR profit!

Meanwhile the board are paid millions for doing sweet fuck all

BBC to cull radio stations, halve websites in painful biz review

jonathan rowe
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Is this a real story?

Is this a real story? or just Murdoch fantasising and wanking in public?

15 new suspects named in Hamas Dubai assassination

jonathan rowe
Grenade

What is the world coming to?

What about the hamas guy, he was on a false passport - I guess that's OK since dubai is the premier centre for islamic terror finance. And are you telling me that MI6 have never used false passports?

I mean, what is the world coming to when you can't travel around on a false passport, doing some casual arms dealing without getting bounced off?

Lotus Symphony 3 beta goes OOo

jonathan rowe
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eclipse base

it's all written atop of eclipse now and is actually rather good, although I couldn't work out how to integrate the symphony plugins into my existing eclipse install, that way I could stay in eclipse all day!

NAO tells HMRC: Pick up, dammit

jonathan rowe
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corp tax helpline constantly engaged

Wow, this report is very timely. I have been trying to get through to the corporation tax helpline, have been trying 8/9 times a day for the past 8 days - CONSTANTLY ENGAGED.

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