* Posts by FutureShock999

310 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Nov 2011

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Ecuador: All right, Julian, you CAN stay on our sofa - it's your human right

FutureShock999

Nothing needed...

I doubt he has much if anything on Ecuador, but he doesn't need to. The smaller countries of South and Latin America are so TIRED of American intervention in their internal politics and affairs that helping Assange is just a stick back in the eye to the US. No compensation needed, no threats needed - the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And Assange has some well-off connections that I am sure are happy to help the Ecuadorians with the expenses, and perhaps a bit more, if you catch my drift.

FutureShock999

Re: How does he pass his time...

Do you mean the VPN tunnel so that he can keep running Wikileaks from inside the Embassy? Because, you know, the fact that he is locked in an Embassy means what to someone that runs an on-line enterprise?

Leaks point to new mystery Macs 'with Jony Ive's fingerprints on'

FutureShock999

Yes to third-party...

I haves external USB Blu Ray writer for my 2012 MBP, and it works just fine. I think the base drive is a Toshiba or Sammy.

Having said that! I've used it only to rip CDs and DVDs...

Microsoft SQL Server 14 man: 'Nothing stops a Hekaton transaction'

FutureShock999

Re: Question...

Most databases use write-behind caches for performance reasons. That is why they are always UPS powered, etc. There is always a slight risk, but you have that for EVERYTHING that has not yet been mirrored to a secure, off-site backup.

Very interested to see how this plays with High Availability clusters behind it, to your point.

Ecuador: Let's talk about not having Julian Assange on our sofa

FutureShock999

These are a distraction...

The real story is that they have been spending the past year digging underneath the embassy into the next building... what they will do is surprise everyone with having him appear on a webcam from another country the second the talks start...

Twitter, Facebook are 'a MENACE to society', says Turkey's PM

FutureShock999
Megaphone

Re: When will they learn

But they have no viewpoint that they can publicly admit to - selling off one of the last public parks in the city to developers to be paid bribes doesn't sell on Twitter, FB, or any social media channel.

Closing down alcohol sales "within a distance to a mosque" - which will kill bars, nightclubs, etc in the metropolitan areas because there is a mosque on almost every corner - is not something they can rationalise on FB, except to say that the clerics want it and so they will do their bidding, in return for the clerics support at elections.

Basically, the only "viewpoint" they have is to create stories about anything OTHER than the real story....the gradual loss of secular society in Turkey.

EFF files objections with W3C decrying addition of DRM to HTML5

FutureShock999
Big Brother

Re: @ge: I still don't see the problem

I like what you write, btw. But to your later points, if you think the big media business model is outmoded, then PLEASE suggest one that will recoup a $100MM investment in a film in a reasonable amount of time, that does not involve pay per play. I have talked to business school professors that are dealing with JUST that problem, and they can't find a way frankly. And they _are_ trying to see how it could work.

I know what "cheap" movies look like - go watch some bad, older Bollywood, or Korean cinema. Or Eastern European (non-porn). It SUCKS, frankly. Not worth my time, and once you are used to better, not yours either.

What every business school professor that has studied it, that I have talked to or read, says is the same - get used to that type of "decontented" movie if studios cannot make money. Because they will not be paying the big bucks to the big stars, they will use cheaper talent. Because they will not invest in the special effects, nor the music production, nor the post-production....too expensive.

I'm not saying it is right...just that no one has an answer to that problem. Right now the effect of piracy is limited, because few people can afford a Synology 1812+ NAS, 8 x 3T drives, with a fibre connection, etc. to make it a real threat. But storage is getting cheaper all the time, and fibre is now common.

I KNOW I will get downvoted for this, but all I am doing is presenting the facts of the economics. Given the above, I can see why they want it...better business models would help, but not sure anyone has an answer.

NASA: Trip to Mars would exceed 'fatal cancer' radiation risk

FutureShock999

Re: Um, bad analogy in bringing up Christopher Columbus.....

I KNOW that the tragedies that befell Columbus were legendary - I used to live on Columbus Circle in NYC. You do some reading when a giant statue of the man abuts your building.

In fact, something like 1 in every 3 seamen or more died on his voyage, if not more.

But the point is...people KEPT SAILING WEST.......because that is the nature of mankind...

FutureShock999
Mushroom

Let's be blunt: did ANYONE on Christopher Columbus's crew do the fatality maths?!?!?!

Didn't think so. FUCK YOU HEALTH AND SAFETY!!! WE HAVE A UNIVERSE TO SETTLE!!!

UN report says killer bots could fight WAR WITHOUT END

FutureShock999
Terminator

Collateral Damage

The real risk is that the machines may just fight a never ending battle, with any and all humans in the way just "collateral damage". Until finally there remains none of us left, just our war machines endlessly reconstructing themselves for the next battle amid the ruins of our civilisation....

Hey, O2 punters: Kiss goodbye to 4 MEELLION* Openzone hotspots

FutureShock999

Re: Baffled

I assume that you, like most good El Reg readers, have a VPN installed on your mobile device, so that you can ensure the end to end security of your logins and passwords when using out-of-home wifi.

However, the general public does not. And if I were THEM, there is no freakin' way I would log into generic "FREE PUB WIFI!!!!". Gack. You might as well scream "Please log my passwords and ID!"...

At least with branded WIFI, you do have some assurance that at least the device itself is not logging your details if you don't have a VPN....or so you can hope.

FutureShock999

Change of terms???

Isn't the dropping of OpenZone a change in contract terms? They DO tout it heavily in their advertising.

If so, then any smart O2 customer would immediately phone them and say that as O2 has breached their contract terms, they would like to cancel their service. As the new service has substantially less WiFi functionality, they MIGHT stay if there was a corresponding reduction in their contract price per month. Otherwise, off to a competitor you go...by the millions...

Forget tax bills, here's how Google is really taking us all for a ride

FutureShock999

Re: A lot to be said for 0% corporation tax

You don't scrap the corporate tax for the simple reason that everyone that CAN declare themselves a corporation immediately does so (plumbers, doctors, independent consultants, etc.) and pays zero tax on income (or close to it) and leaves all the paying of earned income tax to those of us that have jobs working for others.

And the lower you make the corporate tax, the more incentive there is to do so.

Yes, once you are a corporation, you still have to pay yourself a salary, and get taxed on THAT little piece, but with creative accounting you can end up making £100,000 and only pay yourself (and be taxed on) £10,00 of it. Everything you can possibly make a business expense is one, and you hire your wife, children, etc. all to work for you to, and they pay tax at their rates (near 0%). This is an old game (it was written up well in "Rich Dad, Poor Dad"), and the sucker is the working stiffs that have to show up at their job and pay 40% tax while others pay 5% effectively, for the same job.

Most people reading this are wage slaves, like I am currently. Understand that all a zero corporate tax does is shift even more of the cost of running the country onto us, and allows a select segment to largely escape it at our expense. If that is your definition of a fair tax code, then good luck to you.

The way you avoid this is by making the difference between the personal tax rates and the corporate tax rate just a little less than the pain of the marginal effort of going through the trouble of incorporating, selling your own contract work, doing the accounting, etc. Figure 10% to 15% less corporate tax rates than personal tax rates. And then no one is disadvantaged just due to their employment structure.

'Catastrophic failure' of 3D-printed gun in Oz Police test

FutureShock999

Re: If I was making a police video for this

Bravo, well said.

FutureShock999

Re: @SuccessCase (was: "The point is it has now been shown these things ::are useless::")

Dude, if you have access to a metal printer, then you probably also can get access to a CNC machine and/or lathe. The latter two have been used to produce QUALITY gun parts for decades, and do it via subtractive means that leaves the material in a more solid condition than additive printing - no cracks, no leaks. In short, they will ALWAYS produce a better gun.

I mean I can assemble a gun from parts at B&Q or Homebase that will cost me under £20 and be a lot more solid and reliable than any printed plastic gun. Only desperate crims USE zip guns, because of the inherent risk of firing a weapon that has not been proof tested and is held together by duct tape or worse. Until you can hydraulically proof test your homebuilt gun, they will be as risky to fire as a first-timer's homemade aeroplane is to fly..

Mobile tech destroys the case for the HS2 £multi-beellion train set

FutureShock999
Thumb Up

Re: Working remotely

Bloody brilliant reply, that.

I am borrowing it, if I may. Many times too.

FutureShock999
FAIL

Re: Bah!...errr

I am sorry to say, you failed miserably in economics and social policy, Tim. I have done a great deal of business between London (where I am based) and Birmingham, where I have some clients. From this, I can tell you: the cost justification is NOT about the time savings in transit. Simply not.

The cost justification MUST be done on the economic and social integration of the UK's two largest cities, one of which is over-stretched, over-populated, and too expensive, and the other of which is lagging in development economically and socially. Fuck how long Mr. Businessman gets to work on his laptop - this is all a strategy play (or should be for anyone with any foresight and intellect) about how the UK better balances development and social striation between London and Birmingham to start with, and perhaps other cities later on.

The idea must be to enable business the choice of locating to outlying cities and still feel that they can be successful away from the congested mess that London is fast becoming, and for cities such as Birmingham to encourage investment and business successes to power their economic survival. For anyone looking historically, it is clear that Birmingham has improved it's city centre markedly recently, but the business development and economic gains still have not accrued to scale. For the UK, as a country, this is a HUGE problem - if cities like Birmingham cannot continue to develop economically, they will become huge, huge millstones around the national economy. There is not room in London to move everyone South, and anyone in business in places like Birmingham must feel that they can get to meetings with clients/customers/co-workers in the business hub of London quickly and easily. The existing roadways are a mess (drove them too many times for anyone to say otherwise), and the Virgin service is OK at best, dismal more often than not. The personal cost of that travel (especially repeated weekly or so) is so high that only very keen or very desperate businesses would willingly locate there in the future. HS2 has the potential to reduce that personal cost.

The REAL cost/benefit analysis of HS2 is to look at the cost of NOT doing it - a Birmingham increasingly filled with non-competitive or local-scale only businesses, a social and economic drain on the rest of England in-perpetuity, and increasingly socially un-restive. Try doing the 50-year projections on THAT future state, and tell me that HS2 is in any way "expensive".

MI5 spymasters axe intel database upgrade, pour '£90m' down drain

FutureShock999

And the other half the story....

I would really, really like to get Deloitte's take on this. What they say happened, and why.

Was it a case of shifting-sands requirements? Did the MI5 project bosses even have a clue as to what they wanted? That's the killer with these applications that are not well defined - everyone can agree they want a new intelligence sharing database, but HOW it is to do that, and for WHOM, using what OPERATING PROCESS MODEL, and offering what SECURITY of what DOCUMENTS...ahhh, that is hard. And if it is not a well-defined, common business process (say keeping the books, or operating a call centre) then there is little "best practice" to crib from.

My guess is that MI5 leadership probably couldn't get their heads around any of those questions, or kept changing their minds in circles. I was recently working with a UK governmental agency that had a similar problem - because apparently once you take the profit motive away from an organisation, it is difficult for them to actually know what it is they are trying to DO, and optimise for it. Turf wars abound, and determining priorities and KPIs is near impossible - or at least getting leadership to agree on them. Again, because without profitability as a key metric, everything else can be argued qualitatively to death. "We need to do this as our top priority, but we also can't not do this other which is equally important...and in opposition." I left that project saying that we didn't need a systems design, we needed the top executives locked in a room for a few days to actually agree on what the organisation wanted to be and how it should be run, because everything we were going to design was bollocks without those decisions first. They might get to that conclusion in a few months...maybe.

I highly suspect that similar leadership/organisational issues are at the root cause of many UK government project failures...

Your Flying Car? Delayed again, but you WILL get it, says Terrafugia

FutureShock999

Hmmm, most people drive pretty poorly to start with, and are REALLY out of their depth (so to speak) when trying to do something like sail a boat. I have had 40' sailboats slam into my boat while at anchor in broad daylight in open water. Given how many poor sailors there are in the water, I cringe at the thought of people with the same training (or lack thereof) taking to the skies - things get very, very messy when there are no marked roadways or lines, and you have to rely upon personal judgement and spacial awareness - many people seem to lack one or the other.

On another note, will these things have Breathalyzer interlocks to prevent drunken flying? I can't see a patrolman stopping a pilot in mid-air, and given that you can land a Transition nearly anywhere they will be hard to audit. But how long will it be before the first drunken Transition pilot slams into a housing development, or a skyscraper even?

Japan begins planning exascale super

FutureShock999
Boffin

Re: Sparc

I would think that it would depend upon the workloads they planned on executing on it. Some workloads do not respond well to CPU-GPU clusters, and a pure CPU cluster would suite them. But for sheer benchmarking performance, it is hard to see how a CPU-only cluster can compete with a CPU-GPU stack, at a given cost point. My bet is that they go the CPU-GPU hybrid, and the real question is how hard is that to do with SPARC chips, given that most of that work has been with x86s.

Still, it is fascinating to watch a country invests heavily in infrastructure that it knows it needs to be competitive...

Apple asked me for my BANK statements, says outraged reader

FutureShock999

Re: Apple is not unique...

Totally laughing that someone downvoted you on this...because you are 100% correct. As someone who does a LOT of online purchasing, I have had it happen at least 3 or 4 times, plus innumerable times I've had to phone my bank and verify a transaction because of fraud prevention. And none of it from Apple (I usually go to an Apple store for fruity purchases).

Anyone that is raising a stink about this just hasn't done that much online shopping - it isn't unique to Apple, it applies to any company that is being hit hard by fraud and has easily re-sellable merchandise. The banks have policies to ensure THEY don't get stuck with fraud as much anymore, so now it is on the retailer.

The "email us these things in an unecrypted email" side is a worry however...as someone said, a secure upload to a HTTPS:// site would have been better.

'Liberator': Proof that you can't make a working gun in a 3D printer

FutureShock999

Spot on...

You don't need to seize guns, simply have sufficient penalty for getting caught with one in your possession that is not licensed. Make the terms of getting a license semi-reasonable (training, gun club membership, pass NRA exam, pay a fee, etc.) and you will soon have a core of people serious about owning guns (hunters, target shooters, ex-military, etc.) that will get licensed, with few casual, dangerous people owning guns. Crims will still have guns, but aware that even being caught HOLDING one means that they will not be parading around with them, as even a stop and search will get them 10 years for holding it.

FutureShock999
Mushroom

A UK gun owner responds...

I call BULLSHIT on your post. Why? Because gun control is more than just about gun crime. In factual analysis, MOST gun killings are accidents and suicides, not from gun crime. And THAT has been drastically, drastically reduced by the current UK gun laws. Because now you need a license, and training, and they will try to bar you if you are depressive or mentally unwell. So the accident rate has gone way down, because imbeciles cannot pass the NRA training and get a license, and suicides are down, because most seriously mentally ill people cannot buy a gun either. So, overall, gun DEATHS are the merest fraction of what they were. Here in the UK, we don't have 2 year olds blowing off their own heads, or 5 year olds killing their sisters (both of which happened in the past two weeks in the US). THAT is a result of UK gun control, and mandatory training and licensing.

I've owned guns in both the US and the UK, and frankly while I think the UK system is a bit too restrictive, it sure beats allowing people to purchase semi-auto AR-15s with less training and testing than it takes to drive a car....

Suspected Chinese NASA spy smuggled smut not state secrets

FutureShock999

REPUGS: the party of anti-science...

REPUGS, the party that backs Creationism to the hilt, discourages critical thinking and intellectualism (except "trickle down" economics theories), scientific birth control, etc., and then gets it's panties in a bunch that NASA has to hire foreign nationals to actually get any work done.

Fuck em all, really...

Scramjet X-51 finally goes to HYPER SPEED above Pacific

FutureShock999

Re: X-51

You will be happy. The best thing about this test is that it uses cheap-ish fuel, that is available at most airports (OK, lower grades are, this isn't too much of a stretch). But the big thing is energy density - drawings for hypersonic planes always show a cabin, but in reality with hydrogen the entire plane would be devoted to having to carry the fuel. But petrocarbons pack a lot more energy in a litre than hydrogen, so your commercial plane travelling hypersonically suddenly can actually carry PEOPLE, not just a huge hydrogen tank.

Will it ever go commercial? I don't think so, it will always be hugely expensive. And the failure mode of such a fast plane is pretty bleak - things would go wrong so fast, and probably so violently, that it's ultimate safety record for a large number of flights looks pretty suspect. It's one thing to have that happen in an SR-71, where at most two aviators are at risk, and have ejection seats. Its another to have that with 100 passengers with no hope of escape. Even Concorde was positively sitting still compared to this. There will be no "Salt Lake, Salt Lake...." radio transmissions, I suspect crashes with hypersonics will just be either a fireball or no wreckage at all...

Master Beats: Why doesn't audio quality matter these days?

FutureShock999

Re: Sad realities

TOTALLY agree on the Beats influence. Pah. My current headphone of choice is the AKG K701, which is a tad analytical, but very revealing. I demoed a pair of Beats White Tuxedos today in a store, just because I had seen someone endorse them recently. ARGHGHGHGH! That heavy, smeared bass nearly did my head in. Then I realised that they were perfectly suited for playing pop and hip-hop, and probably dance club music of all types.

Currently I am listening to Donald Fagan's "The Nightfly" on 180g vinyl via my hot-rodded Pro-Ject Debut III turntable through a Creek Evolution 2 amp into the AKG cans. Bliss...and as near as I can afford, the way music was meant to sound.

Court orders Visa partner to allow donations to WikiLeaks

FutureShock999
Holmes

Re: Not so fast

Criminal? Criminal in what land, and to what citizen? The whole crux is that American law says that AMERICANS cannot release US secrets, but since when does American law apply to an Australian citizen operating a business out of Iceland? The short answer is, it doesn't - in the same way that Australian laws don't apply to Americans operating a business in the US. I know that may come as a shock to those of you that believe the US is the only country in the entire world, but, yes, really, your laws do not apply everywhere, and to everyone. They apply to Americans, and they apply to those living or doing business in America. Other than that, you are SOL. And therefore Wikileaks is not a "criminal organisation", because releasing American secrets isn't forbidden under Australian or Icelandic laws. Sorry, nice try.

White House backs US web sales tax - eBay hits panic alarm

FutureShock999
Pirate

Re: You've gotta love the dumbness of POSTERS.

You have to love the DUMBNESS of someone who obviously hasn't taken ECON 101 classes. Any differential in taxation is a subsidy to the one getting lower rates. Because they are enjoying all of the benefits that the government provides (which includes a business courts systems that allows businesses to form contracts between them, enforce them, mitigate disputes, etc., protected borders so that businesses do not have to hire their own defence forces (don't laugh, in years past they DID), water, sewers, an educated workforce, etc.) WITHOUT paying an equal share of the bill. That is a subsidy, plain and simple.

And yes, we ARE charging businesses...not for the "privilege of making a living", but for all of the benefits that they get from the government - starting with stable borders, enforceable laws, courts to address disputes, a police force that prevents looters from rampaging their supply warehouses, the educated workforce they use to make a profit, an interstate transportation network for delivering goods, a stable energy supply, etc., etc., etc. They literally cannot do business (in any modern fashion) without the above, and it's all provided by the government. Try doing business in Russia to see what it is like when there are no fair courts to enforce a contract - you are likely to end up dead if you try to enforce payment that is owed you by the wrong people in a deal, happens all the time in places like that. As a result, their entire economy cannot produce jack shit except sell off their natural resources, because nobody trusts anybody unless they know them very well - so their are no entrepreneurs to speak of. America has a dynamic business environment because we have business courts to settle business and contract disputes, and a relatively uncorrupt police force to enforce the judgements. And somebody has to pay for that...

Get your head out of your Faux News ass and learn something. We pay taxes for a reason.

FutureShock999

Re: God I hate politicians...@Charles 9

It already exists in the UK, it's called Argos...and it is all over the UK. The "Showroom" has a few in-store specials and impulse purchase items, a few TVs on display, but nearly the entire store is a back-of-counter warehouse and a conveyer belt system. Up front is a set of kiosks, that you can order from on-site and pay to collect what you ordered on-line. I don't think they have the NFC yet, but that is obviously next. Highly efficient, sells OK stuff, and are reasonably good at taking stuff back.

Are biofuels Europe's sh*ttiest idea ever?

FutureShock999

Re: @Matthew 3 - Another carbon reduction failure

Locating near your job only works well when one member of the household works. If you and your wife both work, GOOD LUCK finding jobs with futures for both of you (i.e., not working in fast food) that just happen to be located nearby. And with the rise of contract employment, the job you have now is less and less likely to be the job you have in 12 months. Makes that very difficult, especially if you have children that you don't want to pull out of schools every 12 months. The new work paradigms seem to stipulate that commuting will be in many people's cards for the long term...

Foxconn must pay Microsoft for EVERY Android thing it makes

FutureShock999

Re: Another nail

How can MS be seriously in decline if this has just brought them another revenue stream? I mean, usually business analysis looks at decline where a company has LOST revenue streams, not gained them.

If you told me XBOX sales halved, then I would agree. But just getting another revenue source, legally, and the same way ALL of their competitors do (bar Google, which just violates your data privacy to sell advertising), is hardly a decline. LIke it or not, it is MS getting more powerful.

FutureShock999

Innovative?

I hate patent trolls, but to say that patenting a UI that your company has developed, and then defending that innovation via the patent law system is "hurting innovating companies" is just weird. If the targeted company was so bloody innovative, then why would it have to look just like the UI (or elements of such) that my company developed?

There are any number of very, very good UIs that can be developed by properly good UI developers. They don't have to look or feel anything like the same. So...if a company happens to develop one that just happens to mirror aspects of mine - barring elementary things like "rectangular boxes of text" etc - then it's hard to say they are innovating.

Of course, there IS that slight problem that really, really good UI development is very expensive, and takes talent sets and artistic skills that most pure technology companies frankly do not incorporate well....

Logitech launches MEGA-PRICEY 15-in-1 remote

FutureShock999

Phillips

...do make good electric toothbrushes and groomers, too. And their top end TVs are both stylish and great displays...for, as you put it, 3 - 5x the price of others. Own the toothbrush and shaver, would never touch the TV or electronics...

SWARMS of ZOMBIES unleashed on innocent bloggers

FutureShock999

Re: 2 important steps to take...

I had three joomla sites get hacked recently (they were older, on Joomla 1.5), so moved to WP. And discovered Better WP Security immediately. Made me glad I changed. Joomla is much better for building more complicated sites, but the availability of such a comprehensive security plug-in for WP makes up for that. Great tool, worthy of support. No, I am not the author... :-P

Mars orbiter finds remains of pioneering Soviet Mars 3 probe

FutureShock999
Mushroom

Nuke 'em

We have to nuke those old probes from orbit, it's the only way to be sure....

HGST straps Intel Thunderbolt onto uber-pricey drives, docks

FutureShock999
Holmes

Isn't this old news?

As a Mac user, I could have sworn that HGST have had these Thunderbolt drives out for a while...like this page showing user reviews from September 2012 would indicate:

http://store.apple.com/uk/reviews/H8248ZM/A/g-tech-4tb-g-raid-thunderbolt-hard-drive?fnode=5f&fs=m.productGroup%3Dexternal%26m.productKind%3Ddesktop_hard_drives

So do these drives simply not exist if a Windows-only user doesn't have a Thunderbolt port to actually hook them to?

FutureShock999
Boffin

More pedantic STILL...

LaCie don't just make enclosures - they make POPULATED enclosures, which separates them from those manufacturers making JUST enclosures. Their POPULATED enclosures have warranties on the storage inside, as apart from those selling JUST enclosures. Please get it right.

More importantly, they make some COOL LOOKING enclosures....

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/H9379ZM/A/lacie-3tb-porsche-design-p9233-usb-3-desktop-hard-drive?fnode=5f&fs=m.productGroup%3Dexternal%26m.productKind%3Ddesktop_hard_drives

Industry upstart: You know what high-end HPC needs? More DAY-GLO

FutureShock999
Boffin

Wow...great stuff

Firstly, gotta agree with Christian - the video was shocking. Shockingly BAD. Mobile phones are not camcorders - they lack the ergonomics especially, meaning that you are always trembling or shaking your hands when holding them for any length of time. Camcorders are designed to allow a much better, more ergonomic grip, AND have better built-in anti-shake, in many cases mechanical as well as digital. This is like a 48kpbs MP3 recording compared to what should be a CD-quality sound.

With that moaning out of the way, the actual devices and application was very, very sweet. Really loved to see it come to life on the video wall. I think the new 4k-class projectors would also work well for that, especially if you can stitch the image together at the seams properly for 9 of them. But the use of GPUs is rapidly going mainstream, and it is great to see the level of code support for super-parellelism really take off.

Frightening fondleslabs branded Hannibal Lecter of UK PC market

FutureShock999

Sales figures don't tell the whole story...

Netbooks may be down and out, but that's not because people won't buy them - it's because manufacturers decided to stop cannibalising their own notebook sales...

NASA-backed fusion engine could cut Mars trip down to 30 days

FutureShock999
Pirate

The Kzinti Lesson...

This is it - the perfect combination space drive and space weapon. Now we are ready to fight the Kzinti when we meet them...and their telepaths will report that humanity has NO WEAPONS of any kind on their ships...hehehe.

(props to Larry Niven, of course)

The ten SEXIEST computers of ALL TIME

FutureShock999
Paris Hilton

Nearly ANY 1990s supercomputer should make this list...

As others have said, Thinking Machines CM-series (I used to work on a CM-5, we had it in our data center), Kendal Square Research KSR-1, Cray as mentioned, Oracle's nCube, , SGI - take your pick, Tandem Himalaya, MassPar, and who can forget Teradata with their early Y-net machines? They were all built in a day when these machines were HUGELY expensive, and had the looks and styling to match. Today's supers are just lines of equipment racks with blades or subchassis, and look like nothing special (that is why I omitted the IBM SP-series off this list, even though it was a contemporary). They are built to a competitive price, not to let you know that your data centre holds something special. But back in those days, machines LOOKED the part - something that could change the world and wanted you to know it visually. Compared to these, the PS3, and indeed most of this list just are not that sexy - I'll give you the Next and Apple cubes, but a lot of that list is fairly boring. For that matter, I think an IMSAI 8080 should have made the list too - who doesn't like paddles and lights?

N.B. - When Thinking Machines went bankrupt, there were CM chassis literally picked out of their Cambridge, MA dumpsters, that had a retail price of hundreds of thousands of dollars... :-( I don't know where I would have stored it...but I wanted one. Sigh.

Paris, because she knows all about the importance of "style"...

No, really: Austrians develop hi-tech jewellery made out of concrete

FutureShock999

Re: It's not 'supported by'

"It's not like you can take away the steel once the concrete has cured. Bad things tend to happen if you try."

Or if the steel melts. Refer to "Towers, Twin" for details....

CCTV hack takes casino for $33 MILLION in poker losses

FutureShock999

Re: Incompetent security is worse than none at all

I've spent time at The Crown - I lived nearly next door for a year. NOTHING about that place is "incompetent". It is run like a machine, as well as any Vegas casino I've been in. It had huge investment, it's physical plant is first rate, and the staff seem switched on. This is most likely a money-induced personnel failure....

FutureShock999

Re: Sometimes it's just luck.

Casinos are not "predators". They are an amusement that one partakes of out of one's one self-judgement. I lived within 5 blocks of The Crown for a year, I think I lost maybe $100AU to them. I "lost" far more in the restaurants, bars and nightclubs that are part of the complex...and waiter, another bottle of "Ten Minutes by Tractor" for the table, please....yummy.

FutureShock999

Re: Brings a new consideration to the phrase

Yes, because it is in Melbourne's best interest to destroy the massive investments the city has centred around The Crown Casino in the Southbank area, which over the past 10+ years transformed the area south of the Yarra from a dump into valuable real estate, corporate headquarters, and luxury residential skyscrapers. Let's go ahead and pull their entire license because someone scammed them. Do you even understand that it was not the casino's fault, but actual crooks operating there? That's like saying "Let's close down Citibank because some mobsters installed credit card scanning devices in a few Citibank ATMs." EVERY business gets scammed or taken at some point, period.

Huawei USB modems vulnerable

FutureShock999

Everyone is worried that Huwai might be a vector for cyber attacks from the Chinese government and/or military. These "vulnerabilities" could then be very useful in being able to deny it was every Huwai's own attack - they can claim that someone merely used them as a vector.

Time to ditch every piece of Huwai kit...

'Mainframe blowout' knackered millions of RBS, NatWest accounts

FutureShock999
Boffin

High Availability and Resiliance

This should NOT have been about DR or backups. This should have been handled as part of any high-availability , RESILIENT cluster system design. I've designed and architected HA on IBM SP2 supercomputer clusters and can well attest that it works - our "system test" was walking the floor of the data centre randomly pulling drive controller cables and CPU boards out of their sockets, while having the core systems still running processes without failing! And that was 10+ years ago - I find it appalling that a live banking system would not be engineered to have the same degree of _resiliance_. Don't talk in terms of how many minutes of downtime it will have per year - it should be engineered to have the failure of x number of disks, y number of controllers, and z number of processors within a chassis/partition/etc.) before failure. For a live, financial system, those should be the metrics that are quoted, not reliability alone.

IT'S HERE: Seagate ships 'affordable' desktop hybrid drive

FutureShock999

Outstanding drives from experiience...

I have a 750GB Momentus XT in an i7 monster laptop, and I have to say it made the thing fly as soon as I switched it for the old drive. I have since moved to a SSD main laptop, and yes it is quicker, but at only a third of the storage space I often miss my old drive. If you have a larger case you can certainly get the same effect with two drives, but for smaller form factors having them both in one package is fantastic. Having said that, I would probably not retreat from SSD in my laptop with a private Synology cloud for my main storage...if you have the dosh. Otherwise, get this.

HGST: Nano-tech will double hard disk capacity in 10 years

FutureShock999
Boffin

One of MANY dimensions of improvements...

I think the important thing about this announcement is that the are saying this is ONE dimension that they can exploit - the can also deploy this with other types of improvements to give even greater gains, but THIS one dimension of improvement will give a 100% increase. Add in other dimensions of improvements, and you might get quad density improvements, much faster seeks, etc. Tech is like that - it usually seems to need many things making small gains that add up to much larger ones....

Health pros: Alcohol is EVIL – raise its price, ban its ads

FutureShock999
Boffin

Not about the drinking...

I can say that some of the overwhelming reasons people drink to excess in the UK are 1) the shite weather much of the year that prohibits many outside activities for much of the year 2) a cultural norm that it is simply not acceptable to speak freely and openly to people unless you can claim to be drunk 3) a severe lack of social mobility that is often drowned out with alcohol. Raising the prices does nothing to address these and other driving factors - so a price rise will have no affect other than to lower the overall standard of living, as other necessities will be cut in the budget to provide room for the rise. Exactly what is needed in a recession...NOT. Poor policy.

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