Posts by Dunstan Vavasour

Judge gets it

All I hope is that he will order costs against Moseley for attempting to bring such a futile injunction.

Where was Kablenet?

I wanted to see who writes all those stories.

The Oxygen of Publicity

It was Margaret T who was so adamant about denying the IRA the "Oxygen of Publicity". Instead, this lot seem to be keen on creating judicial martyrs of those who are too inept to physically martyr themselves.

Talk about pouring on petrol.

Varying degrees of separation

Perhaps Dale will clarify: what I find interesting about consolidation and virtualisation today is the continuum of degrees of separation which can now be achieved:

Resource Management (most Unices)

Zones/Jails/Containers

Hypervisor based hardware virtualisation

Hard domaining

It is particularly the middle two which are of interests: the former allows separate "virtual systems" within a single OS instance, while the latter in its various guises allows commodity hardware to be sliced up for multiple virtual hosts.

EULA for your trousers

We all knew this was the direction things were going - convenience is just as potent an erosion of privacy as government fiat. By putting RFID tags rather than bar codes onto supermarket products, we would have the "convenience" of avoiding the checkout - just push your trolley through an RFID proximity scanner and the money just flies off your credit card. Then you have the RFID enabled fridge, which is programmed to order more beer when your stock gets below a certain level - or the RFID enabled dustbin/recycling box, which blabs if you put a beer bottle in the wrong bin.

Returning to the case in point, once your trousers (I assume the pants in the article's title are trousers, not shreddies) are RFID tagged, clothing shops can move to protect their Imaginary Property. They might, for example, ban you from putting them in a jumble sale. Or they might require you to wear them with some other item, flagging up if the tag of one is seen without the other. Sounds far fetched? So did biometric passports 15 years ago. There could be a genuine fashion police, enforcing the EULA on your kecks ("Excuse me sir, do you have a licence for those trousers?")

This is the reality of the world we have created.

Threading and cache misses

Lets look at this based on a single socket system, so we have:

1 Socket, 8 Execution cores, 64 Threads

Now, the whole point of the Niagara design is to deal with what happens when you miss the cache. You only have 8 cores, so only 8 things will be actually processing at any time. But when the executing item misses the cache, instead of just staying on the CPU core (showing CPU busy), something else can go on the actual execution core.

So, Niagara is ideal for workloads where you are inherently likely to miss cache a lot of the time - for example, a webserver which has 100s of users connected to it. A T2 based server reports it has 64 CPUs, but there are only 8 places where instructions can actually operate (the bit which burns power), even though there are 64 sets of registers etc.

So, to spend die space on increasing the likelihood of hitting cache would run counter to the basic design concept - which is to keep the execution cores busy all the time despite the mismatch between CPU speed and memory latency. You have to invert your viewpoint, and instead of looking at the processor from the thread's point of view, you have to look from the execution core outwards. In a fast single threaded processor you keep spending clock cycles waiting for stuff to come in from main memory: in a Niagara processor, you can go and serve another customer instead of waiting - so it takes longer to serve a particular customer, but you get more customers served overall. If your objective is to maximize the number of customers served at an acceptable speed, Niagara may well be the answer; if your objective is to serve each customer as fast as possible then it definitely isn't.

As for running databasen, it is fair to judge the suitability against the Oracle licensing costs. The original T2000s were charged for at 0.25 processors per core, and performance was "mixed". The T2 based systems are charged at 0.75 processors per core, and work much better.

Weather .neq. Climate

For heaven's sake, please can we get past all the "oh look, it's snowing, what global warming?"

As has been previously documented, the most likely change in the short term is that melting ice (which is observed now) will cause localised freshening in the ocean, which will bugger up the ocean currents. Weather and localised climates are very dependent on ocean currents - while it's not an exact science, it is likely that the slowing of the gulf stream would cause Northern Europe to get a lot colder, and some heavily populated tropical areas to get warmer and drier.

Mine's the warm woolly one, ready for when ocean current change makes GB perishing cold.

Miniscule exposure time

I can't get my head round this.

Yes, as the laser is a parallel beam of coherent light, it's not going to be attenuated by distance. So if it's not attenuated, the beam is still only a couple of millimetres in diameter. So, if you *do* manage to actually find an aircraft with this beam, and if you *do* manage to actually get it onto a pilot's face, the exposure time on any area is surely only going to be milliseconds? Even if it wasn't a moving aircraft, you would need an incredibly sturdy mount to keep the exposure on the same point.

So while these lasers have higher power, the miniscule exposure will surely mean that any point will only get a minute amount of energy. Is there any rigorous analysis which shows that this threat is real, or are we back into liquid peroxide bomb territory?

Parallels for other Free Software

Rather than sitting watching and eating popcorn, we *should* be interested in this volley of suits, and we should be cheering for Sun.

Remember that this is a defensive suit - NetApps made their position quite clear when they sued Sun in East Texas. They are scared that the capabilities inherent in ZFS will hit their market share, and they are probably right (look, for example, at NexentaStor which is an appliance based on Solaris/ZFS). While the NetApps appliance was revolutionary when I first saw it in ~1996, its unique selling point is no longer unique. They have developed and improved their product set, but not fast enough, so they appear to have arrived at the point where they think their product set needs the assistance of litigation to remain competitive. This is sad.

Whatever feelings one might have about WAFL, and the rights and wrongs of SW patents, NetApps completely undermined their moral stance by filing in East Texas. Whatever they may say, actions speak louder than anything else, and they filed in the chosen jurisdiction of patent trolls, rather than the jurisdiction where either they or Sun are based. NetApps aren't a bad company, but in this instance they have done a bad thing, and having won against Microsoft, Sun are returning fire.

Please, NetApps, see sense and call a halt. You are in the wrong, and you will lose

Usage examples

It's all very well showing us picture of the machine, but it is difficult to visualise it in use. What would the sort of person who might use it look like, and what are the sorts of settings in which we might see it being used?

Intel clearly need some lessons from Elonex and Asus.

Secular Relativist Gestapo

Mark_T is right, the secular relativists are the ones who preach in such an intolerant fashion, using fallacious reasoning such as ad hominem attacks and deemed guilt by association with the nutty religious right. This does not advance your position, just as Richard Dawkins' faulty reasoning in "The God Delusion" does not advance his cause - indeed, if you talk to many committed humanists you will find they disown Dawkins in the same way as most mainstream Christians disown the nutters in America. I would refer you to http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

To return to the point at issue, we are all (thank goodness) different as human beings. However, Mark_T's question stands: where do we decide that the body should be changed to fit the mind rather than vice versa? Gender is not a cut and dried issue, and throughout history there have been effeminate men and androgynous women, as well as children born intersex - but it is only in the last, what, 50 years that we have assumed that the solution involves a scalpel. Why do we assume that this is the most enlightened course of action?

PS, IT angle?

Systems versus judgement

This comes back to one of my pet peeves: that putting "systems" in place stops people using judgement. Instead of asking "is this person a pervert who'll interfere with the children?", or "I think we want to keep half an eye on X, don't you?" we have progressed to "All the system checks are OK, so we're covered".

Or, put another way, "Computer says no".

Losing to Sun

This all comes down to the fact that the centre of the commercial "Open Source" world is no longer Red Hat, it's Sun. Red Hat don't have, and can't afford, a developer base like Sun's.

For people who don't like hitching their wagon to big vendor free software, there *are* community based alternatives. But for a major company to move its business towards the model proposed by RMS in the 1980s (software itself it free/libre, people pay you for service, not royalties) is an extraordinary development. Red Hat were used to being the big kid on the block, and don't know how to react - hence this attack of petulance.

Jet engines at ground level

No, I would tend to believe the 2 tons figure. Jet engines are designed to be most efficient at high altitude, and a disproportionate amount of fuel is burned when on or near the ground.

The "towing to the end of the runway" thing *is* important, because the NOXs which come out of a jet are a real ground level pollutant. When I spent a while working airside at Gatwick (our portakabin was just next to one of the main taxiways) I went home with a headache every day from the poor air quality.

I wonder what the "working assumptions" were in the BAA study showing that pollution levels with the third runway at Heathrow are still within permissible limits. I wonder if they had assumed that planes would be dragged to the runway with the engines off?

You don't just ignore patents

There are lots of things you can do if your work cuts across someone else's patent. You can pay them royalties. Or you can do things a different way, so you don't infringe the patent. Or, if you think the patent is flawed, you can try to get it overturned.

However, if you take none of these courses of action and just go ahead and sell infringing products, the patent holder will expect damages. Anybody remember how, among others, FSF under RMS very openly and publicly eschewed the .gif format because it was encumbered by patents? Well .mp3 today has a similar problem, and we have a ready solution with .ogg

Reg NIR Security Seminar

I think The Reg should invite the Home Secretary to put forward a panel of techies who believe the thing can be made secure for a public seminar.

The Reg could assemble a panel of IT Security savvy peeps to debate the matter openly and publicly, and we could see how the whole shebang stands up to rigorous cross examination.

I bags the popcorn concession.

Microhoo!

Now then, if MS's plan is to not have "two of everything", how will the unified services be branded? Will it be "Microsoft users, come over to Yahoo!", or "Yahoo! users, come over to Microsoft?"

Well, if they do the latter, what exactly have they bought from Yahoo!?

I could weep

We can all point to our favourite examples of gummint waste - and as Reg readers we see plenty of examples of failed IT projects - but more than the funding shortfall, this highlights the low esteem in which excellence and achievement are held.

As Avi has pointed out above, continually expanding tertiary education (I won't grace it with the title Higher Education) while undermining the excellence which should underpin it beggars belief.

Oh, and Early Day Motions are invariably a waste of time.

Business Use

I'll just upload the Excel spreadsheet with all my customers' names, addresses and bank details.

IT

Well, I think that this falls well within the sociological impact of IT which the Reg should be covering. If you want some puffed up, self important website which religiously regurgitates manufacturer's press releases, there are plenty of alternative outlets.

I value the Reg for its eclectic range of stories, highly subjective analyses of them and generally iconoclastic tone. You don't have to read every story - if you think this one is beneath you, just pass it by.

Copying.

This all comes back to the issue of copying. Specifically, while the CDs with software on are goods which can be bought and sold, doing anything with them involves an act of copying from the CD to a computer (even if this only a transient copy in the system's memory). As the copyright holder, they can attach whatever conditions they want to this act of copying (in the same way as the GPL attaches enduring freedom conditions to the copying of GPL's software). But while the GPL only attaches conditions when you *distribute* copies, most proprietary EULAs attach conditions to the copying from the CD to your machine.

Not a race for the bottom

Sidestepping any remarks about bottoms, what should be giving Sony the willies is not the fact that there may be an inexpensive laptop on the block: it is that there's an acceptable appliance in a laptop form factor on the market.

At the moment there are, frankly, a lot of people who have Macs as a fashion statement, and do little more than email, surfing and word processing. At the moment, the early adopters are mostly people who also have a "full fat" laptop as well, but the potential for non geeks to discover that their next laptop could be an inexpensive and trendy Eee (or the equivalent which will doubtless be coming from other makers) *should* be scaring the laptop makers.Hell, I'd give my kids one of these to take to school, and then they could do anything which really needs Winders on the desktop at home. And it's not a PC out of the box, which is the key feature.

But the phrase "race to the bottom" still bothers me. Will the others try to complete by producing ever cheaper Windows laptops? Will they persuade MS to produce software pricing for the sub-laptop market to compete with free?

Would Paris see an Eee as a fashion accessory?

Sharing

I hate seeing the term "sharing" being used as a negative term.

For young children, sharing goods is a virtue. Taking a packet of sweets into school and sharing them with the other children is to be encouraged. Sharing the world's wealth between the rich and the poor would make it a better world.

But now we have big slogans: "file SHARING IS WRONG". Comes back to the issue of using the language of physical property: you are not sharing the file, because when someone else takes a copy you don't have any less of it; you are not stealing music because the person you got it from still has it. What you *are* doing is breaking a law which says that, even though you can make a copy of something, you may not. Teaching children falsehoods to promote your vested interest is not education, it is systematic deception.

Severe access controls ... at first

He misses the point. The issue isn't what the access controls are now, or at launch, the issue is what the access controls could be like 20 years from now when goodness knows what might have happened.

The only way to be sure data is secure in perpetuity is to not collect it in the first place. Any access controls can only ever be described as "for now". Indeed, the one thing Parliament cannot do is constrain its future actions.

What Changed?

The approach of gummint changed. I well remember La Thatch saying that the PIRA shouldn't be given the "oxygen of publicity". Or later, when a mortar was fired into the back garden of 10 Downing Street during a cabinet meeting, Tom King suggested they all get under the table (stoical and comical at the same time). But this lot seem to consider any attack as a PR opportunity which mustn't be missed, albeit one which isn't on the No 10 PR term planner.

The suicide bomber acquired this demon status because of the grinding series of attacks in Israel. Remember, it was our WMD-less friend Saddam Hussein who was sponsoring Palestinian families to send their offspring for a premature rendezvous with Allah: it seemed as if every week some poor Israeli town or another was losing people to the suicide bombers.

So it is deliberate gummint policy that incompetent kid fanatics who can't be arsed to learn about bomb making are considered to be a dreadful threat - such a threat that the whole population should be subjugated, and British citizens placed under house arrest for looking a bit foreign. Meanwhile, mass immigration from Eastern Europe is necessary to cover up the demographic truth: British Muslims are far more fecund than the non-Islamic population, and will outbreed the rest of us in a few generations.

@Ian Peters

Um, the coat icon was meant to signal irony. For a fuller analysis of "nothing to hide", I recommend: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565

Biocides

I stand corrected.

Next phase in Microsoft's Existence

Well, I think this marks the beginning of the next stage in Microsoft's progress. Essentially they have had a monopoly of the desktop OS and office suite market for over ten years - this is a jolly good run for their money. This monopoly is surely coming to a close, maybe not this year, but within 5 years there will be a significant proportion of IT users who use appliances of some sort (such as the EEEPC) rather than a computer.

So if MS saw their future as being "more of the same" they wouldn't be parting with billions! for! Yahoo! - but they clearly want to be a technology and content provider. They will have considered the place of their proprietary APIs in the new world of technology, and decided that they want the new offerings (for example, online office suites such as Google Office) to be interoperable with MSOffice: users of these suites have *some* association with MSOffice, rather than either/or.

This is neither a selfless act nor a deceptive stratagem. It is, however, a strong indication that things don't stay as they are for ever, and MS are thinking about what happens next. So, on balance, halo rather than horns.

Free content copyrights

Will they include:

1) The difference between "rights reserved" copyrights, which forbid copying and distribution, and Copyleft/Creative Commons copyrights, where copyright law is used to ensure the right to continue copying and distributing content is preserved

2) How to identify whether literature or music is in copyright or not. When author's copyright has expired, whether it is still subject to copyright on modifications or is an original version which has passed into the public domain

Fishworks

If, as previously reported in el Reg, Sun have more appliance like versions of Solaris in the offing, this acquisition means that they can distribute both the virtualisation software and a canned appliance OS image.

So the "suck it and see" barrier is as low as a free download, and you don't need to have hardware available, just a few gig in any old Windows box: once you've taken it through its paces, you can then look to get a real appliance for a proper workload.

My worry, as ever with Sun, is that they will place all this technology out cafeteria style, and forget "The Chef Recommends" to help people through it all.

BTW, I quite agree, Ashlee's usually fun and robust style was a bit off the mark here. Everybody has off days - so lets just move on.

I still don't get it ...

The ISPs can't see inside your P2P traffic what is being moved - whether it is copyright infringing or free/libra. So will they issue warnings on behalf of BPI on the basis of an email saying "I was able to download Teenstar Notalent's new album from this IP address"?

Are the BPI saying "it's too much effort to assemble proper evidence so we can prosecute, so instead we want you the ISPs to cut people off without court standard evidence"?

No wonder the ISPs want indemnity against being sued for wrongful removal of service.

Evidence

Didn't it always used to be that the important reason for having photographs on film rather than digitally was because digital images can't be accepted as evidence?

In a previous employment, we had a massive vault of paper documents transferred to microfilm because it might be needed as evidence, and scanned versions of the documents wouldn't do. By the same token, the ambulance man above needs to have a photograph, not an alterable digital image. Yes, yes, I know that you could doctor an image and make a new negative, and that digital images can be signed, but in principle a photograph (Polaroid or negative) will always be an analogue optical record rather than alterable digital.

FSC systems no longer a stop gap

Well, the SPARC64 based systems themselves had come out late, and the concern was that users would delay purchase because Rock wasn't far behind. This latest reschedule clearly makes these systems a "destination" rather than a stopgap. And they certainly deserve to be a destination in their own right, making a natural progression from much of the USIV+ systems.

Matt is right about the single threaded performance of Niagara, but we already know that the duty cycle of the typical database installation includes *both* heavy OLTP (parallel) *and* batch processing (single threaded). Devising an effective way to meet these disparate requirements is hard whatever processor architecture - there is little more straight line speed to be had anywhere.

Whatever, with SPARC64 systems, Niagara in single sockets now and dual/quad sockets later in the year, and the x86 range, Sun has a comprehensive portfolio with or without Rock. The "this screwdriver is no good for banging in nails" commentary is unhelpful.

Is it just me ...

... or is this another example of too much reliance on systematic controls?

By putting in place systems and mechanisms for overseeing transaction, I bet nobody ever did a visual check.

I despair. accreditations, CRB checks, automatic safeguards etc are no substitute for the use of sound judgement.

Correlation

Is the sample large enough to be statistically significant? No.

Have the independent factors which might account for this correlation been analysed? No.

Is this study, which cites Wikipedia as a source, anything more than desperately woolly thinking? I think not.

Nothing to see here, move on.

Dunstan, M.A., C.Eng., M.I.E.E.

Never mind the calories, what about the caffeine

From TFA: "Alternatively, you could always take your coffee black and without sugar, which of course delivers "practically zero calories and fat". "

And, black without sugar, it still delivers the full caffeine load.

Software can be over licensed as well as under licensed

Of course, if many organisations took a closer look at their software licensing compliance they might well find that there are areas which are over licensed as well as under licensed. As an industry lobby group, BSA are only ever going to see one side of this picture.

Ensuring correct levels of software licensing is getting much more difficult as applications are being deployed into virtualised environments: every manufacturer has a different view of whether the license is per system, or per CPU, or per CPU core, or per CPU thread, or by capacity allocated to a virtual environment. Getting the correct amount of licensing for software deployed into a resource managed zone in a Solaris instance running on a system with an 8 core processor, with 8 threads per core is not simple. Far more software needs to be licensed per employee, or per customer, or on some other form of "all you can eat" license rather than ending up as an expensive game of datacentre cops and robbers. Better still, follow the Sun model of allowing free use of the software, and basing your business on support and other forms of value rather than straight software royalties.

So taking the approach that all software licensing problems can be solved by hitting users with a stick is pretty unhelpful. While there clearly are straightforward cases of people and businesses running unlicensed copies, producing "funny money" estimates of losses is at best over-simplistic, and at worst disingenuous.