Posts by Henry Wertz 1

I just thought they could take any old machine, and stick hello kitty stickers and glitter all over it. *shrug*

Decline of Facebook?

So first off, I don't really use Facebook -- I have an account JUST for single sign-in on a few sites, but never use the rest of it. If you value your privacy you will do the same (or not put anything on there you don't want everyone on the planet to know.)

But, anyway.... this seems silly to me. Having people pay to have BETTER visibility of their post (like maybe pushing it to the top?) Sure. Changing it so the people who "Like" you (and haven't blocked your posts...) don't actually receive your posts, unless you pay for them to get them? Ugh, it seems to me that breaks a whole tenet of Facebook, just like having Twitter only send tweets to SOME of your followers would break the whole point of Twitter.

As for stock... well, I figured (before the IPO) that fair market value for Facebook was approximately $9 a share based on a reasonable P/E (price to earnings) ratio of approximately 15 (meaning basically that the overall value of stocks is 15 times the current years earnings.). The IPO used a P/E of over 60, which is VERY VERY high -- over 20 (or 30 for a risky investor) is considered overvalued and a likely bubble unless there's some unusual reason P/E doesn't apply*. There's still hype so it won't surprise me if it still sits at $18-20 for a while, but Facebook WILL sooner or later have to bring in more money (or hype it better) to stop a slide down to $9 or so. As for the investors, sorry, but those of you who bought this at $40+ did not follow BASIC economic principles, so I feel for ya and all but it's really your own fault for buying stock based on hype.

*I'm no investor, but off the top of my head P/E could be inaccurate if 1) A company chose to invest profit in some one-off expense like a new factory, rather than taking out a loan for the factory... this would save the company interest and such in the longer term, but make earnings look terrible in the short term. 2) Tax games with deferred earnings and shell companies and such.

Competing users....

The number of competing users is key. If your throughput is dropping to like 1mbps, and you are the only user, then you have all this other bandwidth sitting there unused. If there's loads of others uers on the wifi, then this technique may just give you a higher share of the wifi compared to everyone else.

Still, though, some improvement would be great. I can assure you that throughput truly turns to hell once packet loss gets above 1%. If something like this can fix that, that is fabulous.

Autopatcher or the like?

Well...

a) rolling a bunch of seperate patches into a single service pack SHOULD NOT take away loads of time Microsoft wants to use on Windows 8. The patches are already there.

b) I don't use Windows anyway so I don't give a toss. You shouldn't either.

b.5) This isn't going to push anybody into using Windows 8, if Microsoft actually thinks it is going to they are delusional.

c) WSUS may work for patching EXISTING systems, but this doesn't make up for the lack of a service pack's ability to install a bunch of updates at once to a "fresh" install. Autopatcher, however, does... stick all the patches and autopatcher into some directory (usually on a USB stick) and it'll install them for you, problem solved.

Make it optional?

Why don't they take the middle ground, have the page that asks for donations, BUT put a close button on it? I must agree, after getting these leaks with the promise of making these leaks available to all, putting them behind a paywall after that is greasy. But I think soliciting donations is not.

One correction...

As far as I know, in most countries *downloading* as much stuff as you want is not illegal. It's the uploading that is copyright infringement. People get caught up because they p2p such as bittorrent, so they in fact ARE uploading. (Laws like the one in Japan are unusual in this regard).

For the US this is a steal, since data here is a ripoff

The local Casino here... charges for Wifi! Yes, it's ON the gambling floor, where people are already shoving huge wads of cash into the machines as fast as possible, but they then want additional money to check E-Mail (the cell service inside is poor.)

Anyway.... VZW's minimum is 1GB a month for $20, AT&T's 300MB for $20. Overage? You don't want to go over -- although there even more expensive plans have $10/GB overage, *these* ones... well.. AT&T's is $68.20 a GB ($20 per 300MB) overage... VZW $15/300MB ($51.15/GB) overage. Damn! Oh, yeah... US Cellular also has 300MB for $20 (but their 2GB is $25). I wonder if anyone seriously tries to save that $5/month?

So, in comparison this is a steal. Actually, you can get MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) service through these very same carriers and get data for like half the cost. But it's still more than this costs.

*shrug*

*shrug*, as long as it can be turned off I don't care too much. That said, I'm not about to use Unity anyway.

4G LTE in reality

"Circuit switching is a lot less efficient than packet switching, that's why it's not the best for data and ultimately why it's not best for voice either. When some technical person hands their boss a piece of paper in the future indicating that they can support 10-20% more users by going entirely to packet switched VoLTE they'll see savings and do it."

CDMA and UMTS already effectively do this. I mean, you have a voice "circuit" but really it's not a dedicated timeslot or frequency, it's all virtual; the actual capacity of the cell site is interference-limited, not circuit limited (there is a limit on # of circuits but it's unreachable unless you intentionally load the site down with dead-silent phone calls). There is a symbol to indicate a whole frame is silence, and with variable bitrate voice background noise will not be transmitted full quality while your voice will. Forget 10-20%, they actually increase capacity by over 40% this way! VoLTE should still save since LTE is more efficient in terms of bits/mhz however.

"Is it just me thinking that yet-another-technology will be destroyed by commercial interests, deliberate incompatibilities, differing pricing structures and lack of co-operation?"

Frankly, I think the plan is to just keep billing voice and data just as now. Unfortunately, here in the states... MetroPCS has publicly stated they are intending LTE to lower their costs, which they plan to pass to the customer. Verizon? AT&T? US Cellular? They have increased data pricing significantly as they roll LTE. USCC for instance went from $30 for 5GB to $30 for 2GB.. ouch!

As for delays or whatever.. I have an LTE phone now. From what I've read, Verizon DOES run IMS over LTE, using CSFB to CDMA-1X for voice calls. What can I say? I don't have a 2-4 second delay; I just dialed my voicemail and it took approximately 1 second. Maybe CDMA kicks on faster than UMTS?

As for 4G<->whatever handoffs.. I guess the plan for voice is CSFB. You should realize, though, the chances are good that for the few moments the handoff takes it should be possible to run the 4G and (3G or 2G) *simultaneously*, known as a soft handoff in CDMA/UMTS world. I think this is one reason VZW is not running VoLTE, this type of handoff would require digging into both networks and without this type of handoff it'd be dropped call city.

As for data, my 4G drops back to 3G seamlessly, the 3G will kick up to 4G seamlessly due to some rig Verizon calls eHRPD (I think extended High Rate Packet Data?)...in general. I have had this not work though, instead the 4G will fade, there'll be a huge 15 or 20 second time period with no data, then the 3G will kick in. Kicking into 1X (in roaming areas -- Verizon effectively has at least 3G over their whole network...) takes about 15 or 20 seconds too.

That said these are NOT a significant problem -- we listened to slacker on a road trip (about ~1100 miles each way), I had 4G about 1/3rd of the way and on average had to reset slacker maybe every 300 miles.

It's called a proxy...

The excuse "federal IPv6 deployment has lagged due to a lack of support from government contractors who still use the old standards" doesn't fly.

It's called a proxy! Note they just demand that *external-facing* stuff is IPV6. So, if their gov't contractors are stuck in the 1990s, no sweat! A proxy can trivially be set up that will accept IPV6 connections and forward them to your IPV4 gear. Since it's just passing through connections, as long as you keep Windows Server far away from said box you don't need high-end kit either. Maybe I should come up with a box like this and charge the gov't huge sacks of money for them.

Yeah they're called Fox News viewers

Yeah, they're called Fox News viewers. The Fox TV network, it's up to each local station to have news or not... Murdoch-owned newspapers here in the US have a certain political stance, but Fox News stands alone. In all seriousness, I don't know how it is overseas (other than the phone hacking scandal), but in the US this channel has the most distorted information I've ever seen concentrated in one place. They did in fact espouse Obama being born overseas -- even after the certificate was released and verified to everybody else's satisfaction; that global warming is false (see below); the vaccination thing (again, after it was both proven false, and furthermore they made sure not to mention that newer vaccines have had the mercury-based preservative removed anyway); and the WMDs -- they STILL bring up every now and then how they were obviously there, just hidden or destroyed. They have been known, when some piece of information they aired is PROVEN to be false, instead of a retraction they will bring it back up again, with THEIR OWN PREVIOUS COVERAGE as some kind of support "proving" it's true, because after all it was aired on a national news network.

To paraphrase a partciularly ridiculous exchange I saw on there (when my dad was watching it -- and yes, despite being a scientist I've found he eats it up and is gravely misinformed on numerous topics):

(during a cold snap in the US)

(some ditzy "reporter"): "So, this seems to disprove that whole global warming thing, doesn't it? The whole country's cold!"

(climatologist): "Well, no, we are having a cold snap in north america, but the whole planet has not cooled off, and on average temperatures have increased over the last xx years."

(ditz): "Well, I think this proves the falseness of global warming. I guess we'll just agree to disagree, why is your point more valid than mine anyway?"

(climatologist): "Well... I'm a climatologist, I study this for a living."

(ditz): "I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree."

Yeah!

I'd feel like...

I'd feel like some kind of asshole (that's arsehole for you brits..) having people start cheering and clapping just because I walked into a store to buy a product. Just saying.

So....

So.... does that mean there is an open market here for some kind of middleware, i.e. a daemon or library that accepts... well, XAM, or something, on one end, and the dozen proprietary methods on the other? Or, do the people that buys these things become so phobic of changing vendors that this is not an issue?

I could see XAM not catching on if a) It was a "standard' that other vendors were *expected* to support, but in actuality was only supported by EMC. b) If XAM was pants (either bad by design -- i.e. hard to use, not feature complete compared to native libs, etc.... or, bad in terms of the implementation being slow and/or buggy.) But otherwise, I know for sure I'd rather code so my app is not tied to one vendor's product if feasible.

Doesn't matter

That's right, they aren't selling unlimited plans any more (for data -- they are for voice and text). But, then, why are they even talking about unlimited "just being a word" then? The thing is, other's DO have unlimtied -- Sprint has true unlimited, locally IWireless has true unlimited, and T-Mobile has both MUCH cheaper per GB costs AND just throttles when you hit that cap instead of charging cash overages (i.e. "unlimited" if you're not in a big hurry.)

Actual vulnerabilities

Well, not really. I didn't find the Trend Micro Analysis terribly useful; it just lists numbers of vulnerabilities patched, while not mentioning severity. The fact of the matter is, in IE blackhats and researches keep finding one hole after another that completely subverts security, sometimes even in kernel mode. The vast majority of the Firefox holes were like "We found a potential problem in the source code" and it's fixed without necessarily even knowing if it's exploitable.

CoffeeScript looks good to me

"(having not played with CoffeeScript ) I would imagine debugging has to be done at the JavaScript level which may more than remove any benefits writing in your favourite language gives you."

Not really. To me, it appears CoffeeScript is just Javascript with cleaned up syntax... it's just making some bits that in Javascript are unnecessarily verbose much less verbose. (just go to the coffeescript.org site and you'll see what I mean, there's a short code sample right on the main page in javascript and coffescript side-by-side.) It's not like writing in python or perl and having your code converted into completely different Javascript, you'll just have the occasional one line of CoffeeScript that is blown out into 5 or 10 lines of Javascript. So, if the Javasript threw an error, I think it'd be pretty easy to find the equivalent line(s) in the CoffeeScript original.

If I'm not mistaken...

If I'm not mistaken (and I could be) the XCeive XC5000 already did everything the Intel guys claimed were impossible like 5 years ago (it was already on the market by early 2007.). It's a single chip multistandards TV tuner, basically an amp and set of DSPs. Even the bandpass and notch filters are software defined (i.e. so it can handle both 5mhz and 6mhz channels.) Of course it does not run at microwave frequencies. Of course it is not operating at microwave frequencies; nevertheless, I have the feeling the Intel guys may have spent a tad too much time in the lab as opposed to seeing what people are already doing.

Doublespeak

"Our overarching goal is to maintain price stability for our partners and customers."

Doubleplusungood doublespeak.

Of course they can charge whatever they want. But this was the most ridiculous canned response I've probably ever read.

Well....

I would hope there would be some registry option or whatever for those who are utterly unprepared. That said, *shrug*, I was already over-riding ssh (of old's) default 1024-bit keylength like 15 years ago, using 2048-bit keys instead. Back then, the 16-mhz boxes (or so) that I had would actually take extra few seconds at key-exchange time due to this. These days, there's really no reason not to use a long key length. Hopefully anyone unprepared won't go to a 1024-bit key -- remember, that is bare minimum these days.

Rhetoric aside...

I don't support Apple in this (particularly with any evidence of one Samsung model being kept out of the trial due to Samsung filing the evidence late). But, if Google and Apple sign some cross-licensing perpetual license or whatnot then that lets OEMs not worry about a repeat of the Samsung situation. Most likely Apple violates some Google patent or other too. I'm sure cash will go one way or another (due to what I'll call "corporate ego", Google would probably pay Apple even if Google had loads of violated patents), they are both wealthy companies.

numerology....

7.6 billion *is* "over 7 billion". This is a standard technique here in the US politicians and such use to massage figures... going from a hard figure to a "soft" figure which makes it sound like something unpalateable has been reduced, or a "soft" figure that makes it sound like something is happening more than it is. If there's, say, 8.2 billion records now, and 7.6 billion then, some would say that 8.2 billion is "over 7 billion." Others may make it sound like the cameras are running overtime, they could decide to call that "almost 9 billion" or, why not, "almost 10 billion".

DLNA codec problems

Problem with DLNA was that Microsoft intended and assumed that everyone would just be using Windows media formats for everything. DLNA takes care of throwing a file at a device, giving the device the file size and (if the server supports the file) it'll tell a little extra info like FPS, resolution, video codec, audio codec, etc. The player can also indicate which codecs and resolutions it supports. But, I'm not sure DLNA actually mandates support for any given codec (and if it does, it's like 10 year old Windows media codecs contemporary with when DLNA came out.) And generally DLNA servers don't transcode either. The PS3 receives firmware updates, and essentially is a general-purpose multi-core CPU, so it is pretty flexible in playback support compared to something like a TV, which'll have a MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoder chip but probably doesn't have the muscle to decode anything the chip can't handle (noteably, I doubt many can do H.264).

Anyway... we'll see. I'd guess some of these TVs that have like youtube and facebook and such on them will slap on the proprietary Apple stuff as well. There's lots of plain-jane tvs and radios still for sale that I'm sure won't. And I'm guessing at least Samsung (given Samsung and Apple's spats) may simply tell Apple to piss off and implement actual industry standards, not proprietary Apple stuff. At least I hope so, I don't want to give Apple money for stuff I'll never use.

Windows is the enemy of netbooks

First, I want to say (despite the excessive Windows) that these are good reviews, it's good to know there's still some netbooks on the market instead of just those stupid Ultrabooks.

@Jerry, sounds like Windows failed to me, not the computer! Windows 7 is bloated. And your driver experience is typical; people tend to have this mythical belief (based on pre-installed copies of Windows) that it supports all sorts of hardware without drama, when the reality is as you've found that the out-of-the-box driver support is quite lacking. I bet if you ran a LiveUSB (yes, Ubuntu will install off USB stick) you could boot and find everything works out of the box.

"When netbooks first came out three or four years ago, they were £229 or thereabouts. And they are STILL that sort of price. They've got slightly better specs - but that's all. They seem to be the only form of computer life which doesn't go down in price. I cannot see any good reason why they shouldn't be sub-£150 these days."

Blame it on Windows. I have a Dell mini 10 with a Atom Z520 @ 1.33ghz on it. It had 512MB of RAM. I upgraded to 1GB solely so I could run the occasional copy of VirtualBox (yes I'm serious.) Ubuntu runs great on it. So this was like $300-400 new (I bought it used) and would probably be well under $200 by now if it were on the market. The original netbooks like this, people would either put XP or Windows crippled edition on it, then bitch incessently on how underpowered they are (phrases like "barely adequate for basic tasks" were bandied about back then) and of course about how crippled the crippled version of Windows is. They are not underpowered, Windows is just too bloated for it! (Well the CPU *is* weak, but I don't have to wait for it even if I have a video playing as well as everything else.) They started phasing out the Linux models, then the specs started going up and up and up... dual core processors, higher clock speeds, more RAM, more storage, faster chipsets, and so on, instead of more modest increases but a decrease in price.

"It would be interesting to see what would happen if Asus or Acer were to produce a fairly minimal spec box for £149. I reckon it would fly off the shelves."

People would bitch at how bad 7 runs on it, instead of running ones with Ubuntu or something that would run great on it. I'd love this too. My ma just got a Asus with a single-core 1.6ghz Atom, 512MB (I think?) for $120 at the pawn shop. It was less than 6 months old, they ditched it because the copy of 7 crippled edition ran like absolute shit on it. I immediately wiped it for Ubuntu and it ran fast and supported all the hardware right out of the box. I do wish that Penguin Systems or someone did just this, sell some nice cheap netbooks with a nice cheap Linux distro on it.

IBM revisionism

""When IBM made the x86 PC platform popular and Compaq made it affordable, sensible minds decided neither could charge a tax on the development of the platform."

Revisionist historians have forgotten how IBM applied their patent portfolio to extract fees from PC clone makers. The popularity of selling PC parts, motherboards without CPUs, originated by those looking to bypass IBM's license fees."

Actually that started when IBM started producing Microchannel computers -- ISA-based systems were intentionally kept fully open. For the XT, IBM even provided the BIOS source code in a printed book (Compaq had to clean-room reverse engineer it though since it was copyrighted.)

On an unrelated note, glad to hear Apple does donate something even if it's employee matching.

Pr0n already is opt-in!

These numptys of course want a national-level censorship regime in place, which is absurd. Pr0n already is opt-in, in fact they'd prefer to have your credit card information as well. I'm all for having those few sites that don't already have a fairl plain front page, and a "Porn ahead! Only click this if you're over 18!" type warning to adopt one. THAT IS OPT IN, and most sites already have it! But of course that is not what these people REALLY want at all.

No office fan...

But I do have to admit that sounds pretty cool. Extra kudos if it's not some sort of IE-only hack (i.e. perhaps a remote desktop viewer, and the 15 seconds to 1 minute is to cache graphical elements to make it all faster?)

Microsoft denied nothing....

They said they "eventually" delete IP addresses. "Eventually" can mean 1000 years. They do not deny your app list is sent to them, which is the heart of the problem. I'm quite sure the SSLv2 thing was an oversite, and I wouldn't hold that against anybody. I'm glad I don't use Windows though, knowing they plan to send lists of your software to themselves. None of Microsoft's business!! Indeed, the right way to do this (if they bother at all) is to update a blacklist locally, NOT to send everything to Microsoft to compare against Microsoft's blacklist.

Re:"Just stop buying recorded music". Done and done. But, the assholes at the record companies claim sales are dropping ONLY because of piracy, not because they release loads of drivel, and people don't want to buy CDs from these dinosaurs. And the talking heads on the mainstream media parrot that line, ignoring numerous studies showing this is simply not true.

Anyway, simple solution -- so $675,000 is supposedly not excessive. Well, following this logic, surely a 22,500 year term to pay off those fines is entirely reasonable.

That's a shame.

That's a shame. When I was younger, I wanted to eventually go to Akihabara. Now, not so much.

He's a douche but still...

"No, he's a douche because he's a self-publicising arrogant twit who would step over his own dead grandmother for a pot of tea if he thought it would get him an advantage and more publicity."

In fact I do get the distinct impression he's a douche. Sorry (for everyone else) but whether he's doing important work or not, I do simply get this distinct impression off him.

"He's skipped bail on very serious charges"

He left when he was told he was allowed to, then didn't respond to an improper extradition request.

"refuses to defend himself"

He's defended himself. I mean, I hope you don't mean in court, because there are no charges against him, just vague accusations (reportedly, the accusers themselves requested any potential charges to be dropped, and were refused.) There's been a smear campaign against him, of course the television media is not going to give him a chance to defend himself in the so-called court of public opinion.

"claims he's being persecuted by foreign governments"

Umm, yes, he's not just some guy. Government officials have talked about how worried they are about wikileaks, how it should come down, talking about espionage charges and so on. He IS being persecuted by foreign governments!

It's standard procedure for the US (and some other governments I'm sure) when they don't like somebody: 1) Try to pick them up. 2) Didn't work? Smear campaign. (I think this is where things went wrong this time -- clearly the plan was to make Assange out as a rapist. A lot of people believe it. But, enough people now do not just believe what the nice talking head on the news says, but verify their news, that this was not fully effective.) 3) Try to pick them up again -- people are less likely to help a dirtbag hide. 4) Try to use legal procedure like extradition, either using "information" from the smear campaign or a just plain fabricated charge.

"and all the while pushing himself forward as the saviour of mankind, whilst those who did the actual work are languishing in jail or go completely unacknowledged."

Well, firstly, there's an attempt to extradite him (and at that point probably either disappear him or spring the REAL charges on him and toss him in jail). But secondly, yeah, really what you say is quite true, he's at least a bit of a douche for talking wikileaks up like it's 100% him when without his contributors (some of whom are in jail) there'd be nothing there.

Yeah indeed...

Indeed, the bandwidth issue is major, as Nate Amsden covers so well. The other part of that, STORING the data is $0.01/GB/month. This does not cover transfer fees to get your data in and out of that storage. These fees may or may not be quite high.

Also as Paul Crawford begins to allude to, I could see significant regulatory issues with this for a lot of people that are using tape.

What bothers me...

is that it's not a proper translation. I'd guess that phrase means "the American president". It doesn't mean a specific American president, so the translation would be incorrect even if it translated as "Obama".