Posts by Steve Knox
871 posts • joined Saturday 16th July 2011 20:38 GMT
Re: Correct Horse Battery Staple
It's for your own good. Bacon is so much better than anchovies.
"Forget phablets, ..."
I'm trying to, but you keep using that shit word.
Posted in Bacon sarnies can kill: Official
Perhaps the Muslims got it right all along.
I think you'll find that they just copied the Jews, who had already been not doing it for centuries.
(Obviously the Apple in the Garden of Eden wasn't the sort that puts a patent on all processes.)
I'm not so sure. Those two groups have been fighting over intellectual property for quite some time now...
Sorry, Eadon, can't do that with a Surface
Re: Just wondering
Spatial indices was my first thought as well. But then I read the rest of his analogy without prejudice.
Turns out that the analogy is still apt, because his entire point is that this problem isn't necessarily solved any "better" with spatial indices. Instead, you've just shuffled the work around to different points in time and storage (i.e, the spatial indices have to be created and maintained [time], and stored in the database [storage]).
Now, if your particular system is amenable to slower inserts and more storage space in return for faster queries, spatial indices are definitely an option. But if your inserts are time-constrained, or your storage budget has disappeared (or you can't afford the licensing fees for a DBMS with spatial indices), then you have to roll your own.
Agreed
I have actually been quite impressed with the quality of the Toshiba laptops I've used -- enough so that I would recommend them as a manufacturer, which I usually don't. But it's almost impossible to get a good resolution screen from them without buying a big heavy 17+" monster.
So you've never played chicken, then.
But stubborn Congress members won the game of "deficit chicken" when it kicked in on Friday.
No, everyone lost. You only win in chicken when someone finally moves. When nobody moves, nobody wins.
Re: Large data bills?
While that is part of the intent of the standard, there's nothing* to stop a script from downloading data indiscriminately into the local storage, thus filling up your storage and running up a large network bill.
But there's nothing to stop the script from doing the downloading bit and just discarding the data, either. So the storage bit doesn't in itself add significantly to that risk.
*Except perhaps a proper implementation which limits a given origin (including subdomains) to a sufficiently low amount of storage, such as 5MB.
Re: Sigh
But if Opera followed the standard as written, it would stop and prompt at 5MB -- in fact the prompt that does show up indicates that this is the intent.
The break from standard that is the underlying issue is not the default amount of storage allocated, but the fact that subdomains are supposed to be treated as the same origin as all other subdomains of the same domain., and that is not done in the current stable version of Opera.
As I explained, the 76MB "limit" in this case is caused not by Opera, but by the way in which the filldisk demo script uses its subdomains. Since the number of possible subdomains for a given domain is practically infinite, a more intelligent script could use Opera to fill a drive.
More to the point, the default setting for Opera is 5MB, meaning that sites can already use 15 times the defined (in this case by the software, not the standard) limit.
Re: Sigh
Actually, Opera IS affected. The limit should default to 5MB per orign, or set of related sites (i.e, all x.domain.com/y) However, testing with the demo page shows Opera accepting approximately 74-76MB before prompting. The prompt that comes up states that the referenced site -- not the master domain, but the subdomain was defaulted to 5MB. That should not have happend. The master domain (domain.com) should have been allocated a default of 5MB, not the subdoman (x.domain.com).
Given that, Opera should only accept 5MB from the original demo page before prompting. The fact that it accepts over 70MB indicates that Opera is NOT treating the storage request properly, and that the demo page is likely using approximately 15 subdomains or a psuedorandom subdomain selection that results in enough collisions to meet Opera's limits after approximately 75MB.
Re: There is a reason for Software Smugness
Consider a job that we know in advance is a one-off.
There's no such thing. There are a lot of jobs where we believe the given task will not have to be repeated and have no foreknowledge of the applicability of the individual solution to other tasks, but that's a very different situation (it's like the difference between "I know that there is not a god" and "I do not know if there is a god").
Furthermore, your argument implies that time is the key factor, that the thinking about the better algorithm happens linearly with the relevant task, and that no other work can be done while the thinking is taking place. Neither of those are necessarily the case.
Thinking about better algorithms is never a bad idea. However, it's important to carefully plan how much time you devote to said thinking, and, often most important, when you think about those algorithms.
Re: And?
Why do we need several sources of energy?
Because we're already using several sources?
From your post:
1. aircraft use an oil derivative;
2. power stations use coal derivatives, nuclear reactions [and stored geothermal energy, kinetic energy from moving water, wind, incineration of garbage -- basically whatever's convenient for that particular location]
Not from your post:
3. automobiles use oil-derivatives, natural gas, and increasingly electricity generated from their own excess energy and or (2) above.
4. Home heating systems use all of the above plus wood and whatever else generates heat.
So petroleum-based products are already inadequate for our current energy needs, and it's already been shown that petroleum oil is a finite resource. Whether you believe that will be next year, or ten, or 100 years down the road, the fact is our society will need to a) develop new energy sources, b) move to rely on those sources some of us are currently decrying as "way less efficient and way more costly", c) develop some amazing improvements in efficiency, d) drastically alter our lifestyle, or (most likely) some combination of the above.
Yes, just saying 'diversity' as a green mantra is not a good idea. But it's a worse idea to ignore the known limitations of our current energy sources. And saying "diversity" as a reasoned conclusion of a balanced social, economic, and ecologic analysis of our energy situation is a very good idea.
I don't think you can be a proper Peer without patronizingly partitioning the plebes from the proper people.
"Peak Wind" is a misnomer
The term "peak x" implies that maximum production of resource x has been reached, and that production will necessarily decline after that fact. However, wind being a renewable resource, production would effectively remain steady rather than decline once the maximum has been reached (absent confounding factors such as more attractive energy resources.) "Maximal Wind" would be a more accurate term, but obviously wouldn't have quite the same negative connotation that Lewis clearly intended.
However, Lewis is right about this: the concept of wind (or any individual renewable resource) as "the" replacement for fossil fuels is not very plausible (in the short term at least; most likely at all). Tom Murphy of UC San Diego has done a pretty good analysis here: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/02/the-alternative-energy-matrix/ (I've linked to the summary article, each section has links to a detailed blog post on the pros and cons of the individual resources.)
Of course, even fossil fuels need help from each other (coal, gas, natural gas, propane, et al.), nuclear, hydroelectric, some solar and wind, geothermal, etc. in order to supply our society's current* thirst for power. It's absurd to posit a single "silver-bullet" solution to our energy needs, but it's equally absurd to discount any given solution simply because it's not comprehensive.
*Sorry. Pun not intended, honest.
Subtitle
This is a blatant plagiarism of my personal motto. You will be hearing from my lawyers.
Also...
What's more, Ubuntu isn't the only Linux-based mobile OS on the horizon. The Mozilla Foundation is taking a stab at it with Firefox OS, and Samsung is backing Tizen.
There's at least one other Linux-based mobile OS out there... If I could just remember its name... Golem? No, not quite right. Homunculus? No, colder... Robot! No, but it's something like that... lemme go Google it...
Re: In other words, $20 isn't going to sway anyone - WRONG
Google docs is more than adequate for most peoples requirements, and completely free.
Except for the part where you have to create a Google account...
Re: Genius
3) CIAPC finds a technical legal hole in PBs argument and nobody wins except for the lawyers, as usual.
Vague Goals
“Explain how text, audio, image and video data are stored in binary with compression”
Does that mean "yeah, it's like stored as ones and zeros, with repeats removed, innit?", or "well, we can treat them as a stream and use a modified Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm"?
“Explain the role of software and hardware components for managing and controlling access, data and communication in networked digital systems”
As in "don't type your password wrong three times or you'll get locked out" or "no, I wasn't the one who hacked the registrar's system, honest'?
“Critique information systems and policies, and anticipate future risks and opportunities for transforming lives and societies.“
I'm not even going to touch this one.
Re: Speed Limits...
Mr Musk apparently has evidence that Mr Broder 'broke the law' and did so repeatedly..
Mr Musk has no evidence that would stand up in a criminal court.
The only evidence he has has been in the unsupervised custody of an interested party with the means to falsify it.
Posted in WTF is... IEEE 1905.1?
Correction
IEEE 1905.1 may well be searching for a problem to solve, and it may, some observers argue, amount to little more than a standard designed to encourage consumers to buy more kit, but it has some big-name brands behind it and it’s coming to domestic networking hardware soon.
s/b
IEEE 1905.1 may well be searching for a problem to solve, and it may, some observers argue, amount to little more than a standard designed to encourage consumers to buy more kit, and that argument is borne out by the facts that it has some big-name brands behind it and it’s coming to domestic networking hardware soon.
@Condiment
1. Not all success is financial.
2. Not all financial success is short-term.
3. Not all short-term financial success is positive relative to previous successes.
Facebook is still the most popular social-media hangout, and even your gloomy Bloomberg report includes the fact that they made a profit in the fourth quarter.
They may not be Wall Street's darling boy, but claiming that they're unsuccessful is rather disingenuous.
NO.
That means developers must code appropriately, meaning they are still getting locked into each manufacturer’s browser.
Developers who code appropriately will not code to the pieces that are browser-specific.
Re: The Balance Of Evidence
What we can't do, however, is ignore the facts.
Hear hear!
If you look at the analysis data provided by Tesla...
The data from the trace [provided by Tesla...
Once again, the Tesla trace data...
So all of your "facts" depend on Tesla's data being correct.
You haven't so much ignored the facts as thrown them away in favor of one side's story.
The facts can be summarized thusly:
The reporter tried to drive an expensive vehicle.
The drive did not go well.
The reporter wrote a review panning the vehicle.
The vehicle's manufacturer subsequently blamed the reporter.
The manufacture has published some numbers which they claim to be the log of the reporter's journey.
Pretty much everything else depends on whom you're predisposed to believe.
Re: Salaries?
... or 8 or 9 or 63....
PARSE ERROR
ON LINE 8:
Unexpected Token 'BBC' near '"WIN!
end Function
'---------------------------------
Function Director_General_Mark_Thompson
_TV="BBC'
Re: >Holding big databases in memory
1. You'd be caching the most-used data, so a big database with some super-important bits and most only somewhat important bits would work much better. This wouldn't work as well for big databases with an evenly-distributed data usage pattern, though. This too is dependent upon the quality of the cache algorithm.
2. As mentioned above, flash already saturates most HDD interfaces, so giving it a faster interface will improve performance. This is (again mentioned above) already being used to justify PCIe flash storage. So even with a database to big to fit entirely in the DRAM cache, there will be a speed improvement as the flash can serve the data faster than via HDD (possibly even PCIe, with a suitable layout and controller) interfaces.
Please No..
If HP hadn't blown so much money on Autonomy, it could pick up AMD for a song...
And run it completely into the ground like everything else HP touches these days? AMD's doing bad enough as it is.
Typical Brits: Preferring Process over Progress
Questions like this should have been aired firstly at the AGM. Then and only then should the shareholder even think of legal action.
This presumes that
a) the shareholder's goal is actually to effect the change he is espousing,
b) the shareholder believes that said change is for the good of the company and/or shareholders, and
c) the shareholder believes that he can convince a significant number of other shareholders of the value of the change.
If any of the 3 above are untrue, then waiting to air this at an AGM is a waste of time. There is ample evidence in the article that at least one of the above is in fact not true.
Posted in Ye Bug List
Re: New comments box on hardware pages seems buggy in Opera and IE
Oh yeah, just remembered I now have an iPhone (again, sorry). This is also how it looks in Safari: no initial comments link.
Posted in Ye Bug List
New comments box on hardware pages seems buggy in Opera and IE
When there are no comments, the box code looks like this (spaces added to stop site from actually parsing HTML):
< div class="comment_block">< /div>
and indeed there is no link to post a comment. At first I thought comments were disabled, but upon returning to a page later, I saw the quote box with the number and link, and indeed the source for an article where comments have been posted looks like:
< div class="comment_block">< div class="comments">< a class="count " title="View comments on this article" href="..../">22< /a>< div>< /div>
Next I thought this was a script incompatibilty with Opera (12.13), but it also happens in IE 9 (only other browser I currently have on this machine, sorry.)
Re: Another doo-doo ?
the reason for having a pixel addressable screen is so you can display multiple things at once
No, the reason for having a pixel addressable screen is the same reason for having internet access: pictures, usually of kitties of one form or another.
Re: Holy crap...
How dare you paint Ricky Gervais with that "I was funny, once" slur?
He was never funny, not even once.
Re: FIPS certification
WP7 isn't certified because it never had on-device encryption. On first release, MS said "that's in the next update" and kept saying it until WP8.
Is this sarcasm?
“When a tech company trots out an ‘official celebrity endorser' you know they are spending their money wisely,”
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. This strategy worked very well for Apple with Steve Jobs.
Posted in Michael Dell to buy himself on Monday?
Re: so what is he exactly buying?
Problem 1 is that Dell the company already does managed services, so if Dell the man tried to get into it with a name anything like Dell Managed Services, Dell the company would sue his pants off. In the US you can use your name for business, but if your name is too similar to a competitor's, it's generally "first come, first served." We had that happen in Maine recently with two "Bob's Discount Furniture" businesses.
Problem 2 is that even if he got away with using the name, Dell the PC company would still exist, and people would associate the services with the PCs regardless of any actual association. So his new services company would still be hostage to the image of the PC company.
Problem 3 is whether he could actually poach the good employees, although in today's economy, he could probably just as easily pick up their equivalents off the streets.
Misquote?
I believe the quote in the ad was actually "I could never get a Samsung. I'm a creative," which served only to make that character even more risible.
Random Poking
Who would have thought that just randomly poking memory of a laptop would brick it.
Has randomly poking anything every worked out well?
Outrageous!
...things like "Winter Driving, drive to road conditions" - which suggests that we don't drive to the road conditions unless told to.
Hear, hear! How dare they suggest such a thing, when the reality is that most of us don't drive to road conditions even when told to!?
By the way, have you ever seen the instructions on a packet of toothpicks?
Re: Karma's a bitch
Thou what?
Incidentally, dost thou have a standard QWERTY keyboard layout?
If thou hath such, please find the L key on thy keyboard.
Now, move two keys to thy right.
Now, rip that key off of thy keyboard and cast it from thine presence.
Posted in Shiny, shiny! The window's behind me...
Re: Incorrect apple bash
Actually, that was a reference to inflexibility.
Not as big a deal as you make it out to be.
Most manufacturers and even carriers in the US will now happily sell you an unlocked device; this exemption was probably considered no longer necessary.
American law does not acknowledge the existence of the phablet.
Good. Neither should you.
Small tablet == okay.
Bulky phone == okay.
Hybrid device == okay.
"Phablet" == stupid, stupid, stupid word.
Re: Correlation != Causation
Or show that global warming is caused by a reduction in pirate activity. Where's Cap'n Jack when you need him?
It got too hot for him. Because it's not one causing the other -- it's a vicious cycle...
Re: It's ok...
Inspur won't care. They don't want to export these servers to the US or elsewhere. China's a big enough market for them, for now at least.
Ponemon Institute?
Does their misson statement exhort the imperative of reaching the entirety of the survey population?
Are they sure...
that's not just a crease in the film?
Re: Just add silicon nano-spheres too
"Powering wheelchairs ... Given the current healthcare spending climate, I strain to see the broader appeal in that particular market."
OK, How about powering battlefield exo-suits for the military, then?
Let's compromise, and power battlefield exo-suits for the disabled. Problem solved!
