Posts by Michael Hoffmann
117 posts • joined Thursday 12th July 2007 22:30 GMT
Re: lol
Is there a nitpick icon (had to use the grammar Nazi one...)?
It's Me 262, and you probably didn't mean the Me 323. Though I did check whether there may have been a Me 232 as some obscure blueprint-only-hacked-out-3-days-before-WW2-ended brainscheme - doesn't look like it.
Tallyho?
Lots of talking about dealing with the threats the way we always have, which is of course by using the products these companies are pushing.
Only near the end does it come to "oh and yeah, hunt the wolves". With not one sentence on how they propose to do that. Under the assumption that Symantec, Imperva, Sourcefire and the lot won't now add missile-armed drones to their network perimeter security arsenal, just what do they propose the average organisation should do to stop the attackers operating out of Russia, China, Romania, Syria, on an on?
Demon powered?
Was I the only one who read "gnomon" and thought... "gnome", "miniature demon", then wondered if this one of those Discworld watches that go "bing, bingle-dee-bing, Time For Work, Insert-Your-Name-Here!"
Ah, the memories....
Thanks for making me feel old, commenters!
The "glass: liquid or solid" brought back memories of my very first witnessed full-bore flame war. On Usenet's sci.physics. Late 80s, IIRC.
That was when even trolls could use multi-syllabic words, with proper sentence structure. Before the Darkness came, before AOL...
Re: Public cloud will grow when experienced IT folks die
You and me both! I too look forward to being the equivalent of the COBOL coder of the future: grizzled, aged - and able to demand $2000/day plus expenses for maintaining IT stuff because the kids just think their data and code comes out of the cloudy/wifi/air-thingy.
Well there goes my hope of seeing the Timothy Zahn novels as movies. The only Star Wars sequel novelisations I ever enjoyed. :(
Looks like the entire expanded universe post-main trilogy will become non-canon? Not enough of a nerd to care, but just looking at the reams of paper that have been produced... wow!
Posted in Meet Antarctic sysadmin Richard Youd
Re: Godspeed, that man.
Seeing as any sort of medical procedure can lead to massive drama and multi-million dollar medevacs, especially in the non-stop dark of winter, little things like that can increase your chance of going.
I still have my appendix, but didn't have my wisdom teeth at the time. If I did, they would have x-rayed them with extreme scrutiny and if there was a chance that they may give me trouble, they would have asked for removal before deployment.
So... requirement? Kinda, sorta. Only if you aren't one of those rare people whose WT come through straight as an arrow. Depends on how bad you want to go.
Posted in Meet Antarctic sysadmin Richard Youd
Re: Godspeed, that man.
Don't think there's really an age cut off (well OK, in your 70s maybe, unless you're one of the top experts in a special Anatarctic science field).
If you're already "close" to the action, see if you can get yourself "PQ"-ed, that's always a prerequisite anyway. If your wisdom teeth are out, your cholesterol is low, your blood pressure fine, and maybe even your appendix gone already - you should be good to go!
Posted in Meet Antarctic sysadmin Richard Youd
Re: Godspeed, that man.
If it's an option for you, try to get a full time job with the contractor, that's how I got down there.
Back then (10 years ago, *sigh*) it was Raytheon, now I think it's LockMartin? Still they HQ is still in Denver, AFAICT.
Good luck! It's an experience you'll treasure for the rest of your life.
I haz a sad...
Did I already miss it? Neither google.com nor google.com.au show the Leakey doodle for me. :(
I read that as Sarah Silverman...
... and my first thought "oh great, that'll sound like some astronaut has developed Tourette's Syndrome".
Re: sub title
There's Klingons in the starboard cluster, starboard cluster, starboard cluster....
Staaaaar trecking, across the universe...
Stop the silecophiles!
Martian police: "OK, rock, show us on the pebble where the nasty space probe touched you."
Re: The Preantepenultimate Deep Field"...?
ITYM: "Ludicriously Deep Field"!
Posted in Libs launch broadband poll
Asks the wrong questions
Well, took the survey, but it never asked any questions that were really meaningful to point out where the glaring problems with Australian broadband are: I took it from work in the CBD and even from home it would have been "warped" as I *finally, after a mere 6 year wait* got ADSL2+.
The problem is the gigantic coverage gaps even in populated areas of Australia. Look at the sparsity of CMUXes and RIMs in the semi-rural areas. Look at the huge gaps in the plan for the NBN rollout up to 2015. We're not talking some outback station in NT, we're talking along major thoroughways, such as the Calder corridor from Melbourne to Bendigo in Victoria!
Tell me how the Coalition will fix those. Labor's NBN won't. Apparently nobody will.
Posted in The Register lands in Australia
Re: Antipodean name
Meh, I'd have no problem with Vulture South, however I *am* concerned about the beer icon. This is a UK brew, innit? Maybe we need a wine icon for us shofistucatud antepodeans <insert quote from Pratchett's Last Continent here>?
Dreading the day
I'm a huge fan of the Kickstarter efforts and the idea of crowdsourcing.
Yet, knowing human nature, I already dread the inevitable day somebody takes the millions and runs, fatally damaging the idea and its reputation.
May it be long off!
Now I really want to know...
... what's Mandarin for "'tis only a flesh-wound" and "We've got the technology"?
Posted in US flags from the 1970s SEEN ON MOON
Re: Hubble
We could ask the Chinese, maybe? I think their military and industrial espionage agencies prolly have it all nicely sorted and filed.
(Hmm, troll or coat icon, which to choose?)
Re: Well
Don't even say that in jest! <shudder> It could happen.
20 years?
Seeing as they're already at what? 4 Sigma for a Higgs at 124GeV (+/-5 furlongperangstromfortnight) and are apparently just being super-duper paranoid by wanting more data at higher beam strengths, doesn't it seem more like a "Higgs now or never"?
(OK, yes, standard model Higgs. I admit most of this I have from reading various sites such as Not Even Wrong and much of it just goes absolutely *whoosh* over my head. But I try to pay attention!)
Re: Cern LHC has become the Augean stables
Could you please post this on the Against the Mainstream forum on BAUTforum? Just let me know so I can grab the popcorn to watch the show when they rip you to shreds.
Re: Juidical activism
Florian Mueller, is that you?
Ceterum censeo...
At the risk of sounding like a broken record (I've brought this up in other threads dealing with this topic): the worst scam is and remains the parallel import ban for automobiles.
So, yeah, I'm currently shopping for an import and the prices compared to other countries (e.g. UK to allow for a RHD comparison) makes me want to punch a brick wall with rusty nails sticking out. :(
Here even the various road agencies are in on it... "securing road-worthiness of vehicles on Australian roads", my a**e! As if most Japanese or German vehicles weren't 2 or 3 generations ahead of anything built here in those terms.
PS: to any Holden or Ford fans, I'm currently driving an Aus made car and I will never buy one again until they can produce one that can compete on the international market.
Posted in 'Attitudes to robot sex will change'
Re: Android sex?
A "seamen" sample? So, is "hello, sailor" the password or the safeword for the android?!
Sorry, sorry, sorry...
That'll be the day...
I look forward to the day I read a headline reading
"CEO slots can't be filled due to the demands for outrageous, greedy compensation packages"
Nah, never gonna happen...
Re: Alternative data storage organisations
Well it'll only make sense to Australians, but:
CERN & NBN -> You collect and transfer all your data at blazing speed, but just when you're ready to start analysis the Liberal Party wins the election and Tony Abbott has all data deleted.
Did I miss something?
"She notes that the technique Weber’s research used would not be suitable for mass-produced chips. However, by demonstrating that quantum-scale wires can be made to demonstrate classical behaviours, the research holds out the prospect Moore’s Law can be kept intact for many years to come."
So, what's the use of this to continue to develop electronics in accordance with Moore's Law when the method can't be used for mass production? Is it an unstated hope that a different method will achieve the same but *is* suitable for mass production?
Any "boffins" (to use El Reg's favourite moniker) around to explain that to someone who isn't quite a quantum physicist? Thanks!
Maybe I'm overinterpreting in reading a message of "we have a boutique method and can maintain Ohm's (and by extension Moore's) Law or we have mass production methods but run into a quantum-mechanical wall".
Hors d'oeuvres the lot of you!
- Sagittarius A*
Posted in Shoppers a boon for Oz Post
Silence in Aus MSM
As of this moment, none of this is being reported in the Australian mainstream media (checking only Fairfax right now). Guess Harvey-Norman called their editors and gave instructions to prepare another article on how hard off they are instead.
Wha...?
Please tell me you're just trolling.
If not... I blame the collapse of our educations systems. :-(
Not just books...
The real big item for parallel imports is cars. I get white knuckles of anger every time I look at the price I could buy and import (container, customs, the lot) a European car from the UK (so it's already RHS) and compare it to outrageous prices down here. And in this case it's not the vendors/manufacturers.
Everybody from the road safety agencies to the dealers to the makers of Australian crap cars are quite happy to ban parallel imports and rip us off by thousands of dollar under the pretense that a new modern European car won't far exceed the safety and road standards set by the level of Fords and Holdens made here.
That's because until recently it was left to the blessed Free Market and Open Competition in the Market that was going to solve the problem of getting a mostly empty continent dragged into the 21st century of connectivity. Read: if it wasn't profitable in the next quarter to keep the shareholders happy, it wasn't happening at all.
So, a new Socialist, Tree-Hugging, Union-Ridden Bunch of Pinkos(tm) said "this isn't working" and came up with the idea of the NBN. A massive boondoggle for government contractors and civil servants alike. A mess in its progression, like any government run project. But at least it would be *something*, so that you poms could order chai-flavoured pizza in Didjabringabeeralong.
Alas, this is bound to last until said government is replaced by Holy Roller In a Budgie Smuggler Tony Abott in 2013, after which it's back to Telst.... err, I mean the blessed Free Market to sit with their fingers up their..., err, bring us all close to the modern world of high-speed broadband.
*sigh* T. Pratchett had it right when he insinuated that the best thing would just be to incarcerate all Australian politicians immediately after election.
How to spot an out of towner?
Only they call it "Frisco".
Posted in Ten... gaming headsets
Speedlink Medusa?
I would have liked to see the Speedlink Medusa in this line-up for comparison.
I bought a pre-decessor of the current NX5.1 Surround after doing research for a month several years ago - had it shipped from the UK to Australia because all I could get here were the Turtle Beach or non-surround ones. Never regretted it through long nights of gaming (incl. MMO raids and FPS). Extremely comfortable even after hours of wear and the surround sound is amazing seeing as to the small space all those little speakers are crammed in.
It's now showing its age and am looking for a successor. My first impulse would have been to stick with the brand, but now I wonder if they're no longer as good, what with them missing in this review.
What made the Speedlink interesting is that they came with their own little pre-amp unit instead of purely relying on the soundcard output or USB. Can't tell if they still do either...
Anybody familiar with them?
Nope
If it yells "spaaace" repeatedly (optionally preceded by "I'm in...") then it's definitely the Core.
Posted in Google's Moto move spells iPhone doom
Which is it now?
Wasn't it an article only today on El Reg that spoke about how, yes yes, Androids are shipping like there's no tomorrow but they're not actually *selling*? Or am I reading too many tech sites and can't keep them straight anymore?
Apparently those precious Androids are starting to fill up the warehouses, whereas Apple can't keep up with demand.
I'm no fanboi arguing one way or the other - I would just really, really love to get some basic, straight facts and not the biased opinion-mongering from both sides.
If anything I expect some form of duopoly to emerge, with mass versus boutique appeal. Yeah, Apple might have to get used to not be the highest or second highest valued company on the play. As if that would have outlived Saint Jobs anyway.
Posted in World needs needs Tequila power: report
I predict riots
Never mind cane and corn/maize-based biofuels leading to food price increases, if this lowers Tequila output there will be blood!
That said, isn't agave a really slow-growing plant?
"The Sydney Morning Herald reports..."
It would have been helpful to add that the SMH, like The Australian, are both Murdoch rags and virulently pro-Liberal/anti-NBN.
We're talking the kind of reporting where, if was overheard in passing that I only get 99.5Mbit/sec with my NBN connection instead of 100Mbit, it'd be front page headlines about "NBN not living up to speeds promised by Labor".
Cum grano salis!
Could be 4 more years...
The Wikipedia says it'll be 2015 when Fred Nile finally plans to retire, barring ... uhm, ... the Lord calling him home.
What?
I'm sorry if I come across as a cynical old fart, but who is this "informed public" you speak of?
Every day that passes shows me that the public is as UN-informed, hoodwinked and ignorant (*) as ever. If not worse, compared to the increasingly complex world we live in. They're kept that way by politics, business and media - and apparently quite happy to be in that state.
Maybe I'll look at it more positively once the caffeine kicks in...
(*) NB: not saying, stupid - I haven't looked at any YouTube comments yet, this morning.
Posted in Apple quietly Trims MacBook Air SSDs
Does it actually work?
I tried the TRIM patch about a month or two ago on Crucial SSD-ed Macbook. After reading some of the comments on the site mentioned, about performance problems and even stability issues, I decided to uninstall it and wait for Lion.
The question is: just because it may say that it "works" - all we see is a TRIM enabled = yes.
Has anybody actually done benchmarking? Watched I/O traffic see TRIM ATA commands being issued?
Also, unless you start with a freshly reformatted SSD, what happens to blocks that had held deleted files in the "pre-TRIM" state? I suppose a SSD with GC will eventually get around to them?
PS: I love some of the comments on www.groths.org like this one "My PLEXTOR PX-128M2S thanks you, and I thank you. I enjoy a screaming fast laptop." Wow! Your laptop got faster just by installing that patch? /facepalm
Posted in LucasArts Day of the Tentacle
You kids and youre new-fangled graphics and sound stuff!
When I was your age, our graphics engine was in our heads!
We played Infocom adventures and we liked it! Real sentences to type, none of that fancy-shmancy mouse-clicky-thingy!
Now get off my lawn!
ObSerious: Oh, for the LucasArts of yore. The days when you saw that guy with the golden arc thingy pop up on your screen and you knew you were in for a treat.
Lots of dino killers there?
I dimly remember that having gas giants in a solar systems is a good thing because they help sweep up the majority of stray asteroids and comets and thus "calm" a solar system, so the potentially life-bearing planets don't get reset to zero every few thousand years.
So, would the bad news here would be that these systems are the equivalent of giant Xtreme Snooker tables?
I think it was a book by Phil Plait or on the Bautforums that I read that. Some serious astro-boffins around there.
Posted in Endeavour heads off on final mission
Thank you, thank you!
Heart-felt thanks, El Reg, for NOT mentioning Gabi Giffords in the entire article!
Seeing as that was pretty much what the entire rest of the global media thought was worth talking about when mentioning the last Endeavor mission. :(
PS: Goes without saying that I wish her all the best in recovering from the horrid attack on her, but really, could we focus on what this mission is about and the sadness that the US is departing from a leading role in access to space, possibly forever?
Son of SCO?
Why can't I shake this sinking feeling that within a year we will hear that Attachmate is all about "vigorously protecting our intellectual property" and we will see the exciting sequel "Attachmate - Just When You Thought SCO Was Dead"?
Good analysis
Very good analysis.
As someone who just put up a 3kW system which cost us less out of pocket than the 1.5kW system you mentioned, thank you subsidy, I'm torn.
Would we have done it without the subsidy? Maybe - the driver would have been energy prices even more than the cost of the system. I suspect that's true for a lot of people, because the real savings is in the grid connection over the lifetime of the system.
I expect there will be an insane run for the doors with the end-of-life of the subsidy, followed by a slump, which pundits will point to with a "told you so", then followed by sales picking up as energy prices inevitably creep up.
Also, you forgot to mention the number one price-raising subsidy: the miserable first home buyers grant!
Whence the SAN?
I've been wondering for a while: is the drive to the insane IOPS that Flash can theoretically deliver just shifting the bottleneck?
Are we going to have to go back to DAS to actually get the advantage of flash speed? Small to medium shops like ours have only reaped the benefits of being to to use significant amounts of shared storage relatively cheaply with the advent and rise of iSCSI. As in, not having to invest in the fibre infrastructure, while getting good and speedy access up to the limits of what the disks can deliver within their array.
At this rate it will be the disks that are bored while our network cables are glowing red hot... I suppose you have to go 10GBit Ether, then trunking it until 40GBit and 100GBit are available. But the investment for that is what makes your CIO very unhappy with you, as the messenger. :(
title
I agreed with you up until the "natural state of affairs". A Chinese jingoist might see it that way (in the same way a Euro-jingoist would say that 'twas them wot brought civilization to the heathen savages) but, seriously...
Historically speaking, the "natural state of affairs" is caves and savannahs or, at best, in terms of recorded history, mud hovels.
I think you meant to say...
"The company, in keeping with its Jobsian obsession with *APPLE'S* privacy *AS OPPOSED TO YOURS*, has yet to utter a peep despite widespread media coverage."
I'm no Apple-hater, I own an iPhone and a Macbook combined with Wintel systems galore, so I don't play the fanboi games, but this is just really offputting.
What I'd like to know is whether there are clean-up tools that I can run regularly for my wife's iPhone and mine to remove this data.
