Posts by Grahame 2
39 posts • joined Tuesday 14th July 2009 11:08 GMT
"The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry. "
— Henry Petroski
Re: Not there, James
Opps. IEEE 1588
Re: Not there, James
Indeed. You can use most enterprise switches as tap aggregators (by using VLANs (or QinQ VLANS) with MAC Learning disabled). Which is great of you don't need precision captures.
What makes these a bit special is the ability of the switch at add a timestamp shim to the packet so you can work our how many nanoseconds it spent in the switch. The hardware to do this is part of the switch ASIC and is required to support Precision Time Protocol (IEEE 1583).
Re: Printing in wax?
Or just skip the whole wax stage and use laser sintering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_laser_sintering
Re: UK businesses may have an unduly negative attitude
That sums up the general concern with outsourcing.
When you do something in house, your primary concern is value.
An outsource provider's primary concerns are margin and volume.
Re: VAT
Companies don't really pay tax, people do. Taxing companies is simply indirect way of taxing customers or shareholders.
What Adam Smith said about tax :-
The Four Cannons of Taxation.
Equality – Tax payments should be proportional to income
Certainty – Tax liabilities should be clear and certain
Convenience of payment – Taxes should be collected at a time and in a manner convenient for taxpayer
Economy of collection – Taxes should not be expensive to collect.
Corporation Tax does not fair too well on any of those.
Spherical Cow
Brass Eye fans?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgnuxd0tiHk
If it moves tax it..
"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
- Ronald Reagan
Re: First obvious step
That's one seriously deformed ferret.
blue model
They probably would have sold faster if Samsung did not cock up the manufacture resulting in a delay of the dark blue model, launching only with the white model, a lot of people (like me) waited for dark blue one.
I do the same, i have a trash password for stuff that does not matter that much (can't loose money or harm my employment / reputation). But its really important to have a unqiue email password, once someone can login to your email they can reset all your other passwords that use that email account.
Re: Just more unecessary junk packaging
Most of use a equiped with a bio-molecular analyser (sampling intake middle of face), what is wrong with smell-by-date?
Re: Redundancy
I was given some very good advice regarding redundancy from a friend, he said same as you, to use two circulation/filter pumps in parrallel and use multiple but smaller heaters,rather than a single big one. that way if one gets stuck off, or worse, stuck on the tank does not freeze/cook.
Re: Project
Yep, that was the sort of building block I would be using. I intend to use as much stuff that has already been done as I can possibly get away with. Like using rrdtool for the graphs.
Re: Project
Having meationed relays and things, it is my intention that at least for phase-1 the system is purely monitoring, and will not control anything (I will leave that to timers and manual intervention). As I don't want to have my code hanging like a sword of Democleas over the innocent occupants of my aquarium.
Once I am happy it works and may think about giving it control.
Re: Fish nerd + tech head = fish head?
A horror story from a friend with a Roomba comes to mind. Not great for with pets.
Freshly laid steaming runny dog poo in middle of living room carpet + roomba 90min floor sweap = not the best thing to come home.
Project
I have long been planning a aquarium (tropical marine, mainly invertebrates but with a few fish), but have wanted to do it well (large tank, good lights etc..) so this represents quite an investment of both time and money. The latter being why I have not started already!. However now I am in a position to kick it off.
Being of a somewhat geeky nature, remote alerting and graphs (oh hell yeah! lots of graphs!) are kind of an essential for me. But looking at the market for monitoring equipment, it is very expensive and rather limited. Like the article states, loads of clever monitoring but no good if its flashing away in obscurity on an LCD screen in a cupboard.
So I intend to roll my own, probably a embedded Linux box, with analog to digital hardware to connect probes (flow meters, pH, EC, DOC etc), and some relays to control pumps, lights etc.
There are a few of these sorts of projects already out there, but mainly to control hydroponics systems.
But given the number of potential contributors, I think this would make a good open source hardware/software project.
Hopefully next year I will have stopped talking about it have something to show.
Posted in O2, Be Broadband axe Pirate Bay access
DNS
Be had an issue with their DNS cache servers a while back, which meant a lot of people switched away from Be's internal service to OpenDNS or Google as has already been mentioned.
scaling
Of course something like this is going to attract a lot of attention just after launch, but it would be wasteful to scale a permanent platform for the initial load.
Of course the best option would be to able to dynamically assign hardware to services based on predicted and/or actual load,
No central database = network of mandated privately held databases accessible in real-time (net result, same damn thing)
Strong safeguards (today) = burdensome red tape (tomorrow)
Serious Crime = All crime is serious, otherwise it would be be crime, would it?
Paedos, Terrorists and major criminals = whatever floats ya boat to get it passed, we will widen the scope later.
This would all seem to be deeply cynical and paranoid, except when you take into account history on various other laws ( RIPA, Terrorism Act, POCA etc etc...)
OpenOnload works with Solarflare NICs, so its a mixture of the hardware and software.
not new
Sound like it, just like Solarfare's Open Onload.
Doors?
"The architects wanted the windows to open. Jobs said no. He had never liked the idea of people being able to open things. ‘That would just allow people to screw things up.’"
So presumably the doors would be sealed shut too, would certainly help stop those pesky people interfering.
RIPE NCC
If this was RIPE not ARIN the address range would revert to the registry when the company ceased. RIPE's terms prohibit sale of IP space, a very sensible policy to prevent land grabs IMO.
Posted in LibDems call for gov 'IT skills' office
Understanding the problem being solved, is the problem.
From what I have seen the massive 'IT' projects that fail are also massive business process change projects.
Applying technology to an broken process designed around a poorly understood problem only makes matters worse, and costs us taxpayers a shed load in the process.
They need to understand that techonology is not a magic bullet, and that getting the fundamental business right is of the utmost importance.
ceases?
I know the review included a review of all telco services.
The number of billed services that were not being used by anyone was shocking. In one case I was told of, the rental of a PBX and phones was being paid 10 years after building had been demolished, contract index linked to inflation of course.
Offices move, things get upgraded, but no one cancelled the old contract with the telco, and they don't tend to remind you. A big part of the re-negotiations was was getting fully itemised billing from the telcos, so that they could see what they were paying for.
Posted in BOFH: Ready for the Judgment Day
ssl proxies
Actually you don't need to recompile the browser to intercept SSL wrapped sessions.
Just install your own Trusted Certificate Authority certificate on the employee's machines.
SSL session between the browser and the proxy uses a made up on the fly cert for www,whateversite.com and the browser trusts it as a valid cert because it has been signed by BOFHsign CA which it trusts :)
So when at work worth checking actually who signed that cert you are trusting by clicking on that padlock :)
Posted in BOFH: Ready for the Judgment Day
modified
I think BOFH modified cattle prods use AC. AC is better choice as it is harder for the 'cattle' to get away.
Posted in White van men swipe British black bees
Maybe the police...
..could catch the thieves in a sting operation.
Posted in Save the planet: Stop the Greens
politicians and perception
It is far more important to politicians (the people deciding where to spend to money) that they are perceived to be doing the right thing, rather than actually doing the right thing.
Ask the average voter what green is and they will think sunshine and windmills, not nuclear technology, whatever the reality.
Wind, solar, efficiency, demand management, storage (thermal, pumped, etc), nuclear all have something to contribute, but overly focusing on one solution will not work.
PS: You can also add China to the list of countries seriously pursuing thorium reactor technology, they know their energy demands are only going to go in one direction.
Big Business like Regulation
A lot of regulation is brought in on the back of lobbying / advice from consultations with big companies (politicians tend to like help big business, you never know when a speech needs doing or non-exec position might come up you know...)
Large companies like it because hiring a compliance team of say half a dozen it nothing in the grand scheme of things to them, but it effectively pushes small upstarts out of the business. For a good example look at what regulation the FSA has been putting forward.
reward?
They seem to forget that the 'rewards' are taxpayer funded, so are in effect a rebate on a fine already paid by everyone.
Minus the huge admin costs of course.
Posted in Police send Reg hack CRB check database
Data Loss Prevention?
I would have hoped that an organisation responsible for a great deal of sensitive information, some of which could put peoples lives at risk, had some kind of DLP system deployed on their email system. It’s quite simple to check outgoing email for tag like 'NOT FOR EXTERNAL DISTRIBUTION’, and hold it for authorisation before sending to external addresses. Such measures are becoming increasingly common in business where fines, loss of business and reputation are at stake.
BGP
There are methods to filter route updates, but these are almost never implemented between carriers. However, the threat of loosing peering and not getting it back keeps everyone in line.
the 13
Mainly UKIP, they were either against democratic scrutiny, or weren’t really paying attention. I doubt they are representing anyone, just there to pick up cheques.
William (The Earl of) DARTMOUTH - UK (UK Independence Party)
John Stuart AGNEW - UK (UK Independence Party)
Marta ANDREASEN - UK (UK Independence Party)
Gerard BATTEN - UK (UK Independence Party)
Louis BONTES - NL (Partij voor de Vrijheid)
John BUFTON - UK (UK Independence Party)
Trevor COLMAN - UK (UK Independence Party)
Nigel FARAGE - UK (UK Independence Party)
Mike NATTRASS - UK (UK Independence Party)
Paul NUTTALL - UK (UK Independence Party)
Nicole SINCLAIRE - UK (UK Independence Party)
Laurence J.A.J. STASSEN - NL (Partij voor de Vrijheid)
Daniël van der STOEP - NL (Partij voor de Vrijheid)
UKIP?
Hmm.. Seems the main block of votes against (supporting the commission in the secrecy) was from the UK... UKIP in fact.
I wonder if they knew what they where voting for, our they were just voting the opposite way to everyone else.. cos they're rebels.. yeaaah!
http://votewatch.eu/cx_vote_details.php?id_act=456&lang=en
Sad.
only the most serious cases?
"hardly anybody, other than the most serious and egregious recidivistic offenders".
How can anyone with a memory trust a statement like this, especially from this government. We have heard it all before.
Terrorism Act 2000 was only to be used in the most serious of causes to protect the public against terrible harm, we find section 44 used hundreds of times a day, against ordinary people going about their business (especially if armed with a camera!)
Regulation of Interceptory Power Act (RIPA) 2000, another counter terrorism measure, now routinely (ab)used by local councils for trivial offences
Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which grants to power to confiscate assets unless the accused any prove they were not "the proceeds of unlawful conduct or intended for use in such conduct.", related criminal conviction not necessary. Only to be used against the Mr. Bigs of the criminal world, now after repeated extensions (local councils soon to gain powers) and reductions in the minimum threshold (£10,000 (2002) to £5,000 (2004) and now to £1,000 in 2006, it can be applied to just about anyone.
Posted in Home Office stonewalls ID findings
Surprised?
After taking a look at mylifemyid.org when it was up. I was please to see that despite what is said in the papers, young people are smarter and better informed than the Home Office took them for,
Owners?
"Cats exhibit this behavior in private with their owners,"
Cats don't have owners, they have staff.
