Nice
Nice to see that at least someone is still upping the non-x86 chip roadmap. I still hope someday we will finally break away from the Intel stranglehold, hopefully.
Posts by Daniel B.
3134 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Oct 2007
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You won't find this in your phone: A 4GHz 12-core Power8 for badass boxes
Groklaw goes dark
App cr*p
Monday 26th August 2013 22:43 GMT
Um...
There is a mobile-friendly site for El Reg, and has been there for quite some time. If anything, my only complaint there is that I can't add an icon to my comments. But it is pretty friendly for mobiles :)
Top 10 Steve Ballmer quotes: '%#&@!!' and so much more
Monday 26th August 2013 04:16 GMT
Re: One Smart Thing
There may be appetite for non-MS stuff in tech companies, but move into the wider world of non-tech business and you'll find MS most everywhere.
Move into the financial business world and you'll find the absence of MS on the core systems everywhere. Most of 'em use either Linux, BSD or the remaining commercial UNIX variants. Mainframes still do most of the core stuff as well.
MS is only the main option for backends for companies with lesser experienced IT departments, or those holding a stake on the MS ecosystem (say, MCSE or .NET devs)
Need the loo AND need to build a website? There's an app for that
Friday 23rd August 2013 20:37 GMT
Re: Fine but...
WordPress being the hackalicious CMS that it is, I would shy away from it. Especially as most "sites" done in it look more like blogs than actual sites, which also detracts from the professionalism involved into making said site.
Interestingly, someone I know actually built a Jimdo site, and it looks pretty nice for a cheap site thingy. Definitely more professional than the standard Geocities site.
Russian spyboss brands Tor a crook's paradise, demands a total ban
Friday 23rd August 2013 18:15 GMT
Yes, it works
As long as the entity you're avoiding doesn't control most of the nodes, and thus the chances of it having both the guard and exit nodes within its control is slim.
FSB only has Russia, and most nodes are in Western countries. So what works for the NSA, works against the FSB thus their "concerns".
Germany warns: You just CAN'T TRUST some Windows 8 PCs
Friday 23rd August 2013 15:40 GMT
TPM
Heh. The fun thing is that TPM is good when it is actually used by the user vs. being a remote MS borging control. A couple of talks at DEFCON actually showed useful things that can be done with the TPM iron like random keys used for encrypting stuff and having them protected by the TPM ... basically serving as a poor man's HSM.
But noooo ... MS and the other evil entities insist on using the tech for DRM evil. Meh.
BALLMER TO RETIRE FROM MICROSOFT
Oh noes! New 'CRISIS DISASTER' at Fukushima! Oh wait, it's nothing. Again
Thursday 22nd August 2013 22:25 GMT
Re: @ Itzman
If you're talking about the US, it isn't a Democracy. USA was founded under the idea that Democracy is a horrible thing; thus what you have in the USA is a "Polity".
If you're talking about the UK, it isn't a democracy either; it is a "Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy". It does operate with a limited use of democracy, mostly in that you get proportional representation.
Wednesday 21st August 2013 21:45 GMT
Re: Re. fracking
I agree on you with both Fracking and space-based Solar.
But I strongly disagree with your stance in Nuclear. There's a reason I stopped funding GreenCheese; they not only have a pathological hatred against Nuclear, they spread outright FUD and lies on that topic. No, fusion isn't fission. No, ITER can't be turned into an atomic bomb, no matter what the last Batman movie said. No, it isn't the same. No, Fukushima wasn't that bad. No, No, No. And they love to mix in actual weapons nuclear testing with "nuclear power". I'm sorry but putting dudes within the danger area of U235 without shielding isn't the same as a power plant. Or blowing a nuke.
We should be building Gen-4 reactors, if only to substitute the Gen1 and Gen2 ones (like Fukushima Daiichi) and start switching over from coal to nuclear. And even those are stopgaps as the final goal is to do fusion. Meanwhile, burn most of the "useless" fuel with the molten salt things so we don't have nuclear waste lying around as well...
Kim Kardashian's bosom pal in bling snatch Instagram unpleasantness
Thursday 22nd August 2013 21:35 GMT
Re: Wow, too bad...
...that guy didn't get away with the watch.
So I wasn't the only one thinking that! $500k would clear my debt, pay off my apartment and probably give me a 2 year long vacation period. There's no way in hell I'd buy something as expensive as that; but even more, if I did have one I wouldn't Instagram it! That's just asking to get mugged!
Brazilians tear strip off NSA in wake of Snowden, mull anti-US-spook law
Thursday 22nd August 2013 17:32 GMT
Laws on citizen data @Chris W
I've worked for a certain bank that has branches all over Latin America. One of such branches is Venezuela.
That oh-so-unloved president passed a law quite a couple of years ago (2005? 2006?) stating that any bank information or whatever should never, ever be stored outside Venezuela. At all. The bank then initiated a titanic effort to move all the Venezuela branch stuff back into Venezuela, thus complying with the law in a timeframe that was within 12 months.
So yes, it can be done, it just depends on how big the balls of the country's government are. In Venezuela, it was either complying with the law or face expropriation.
Bank man: System's down, let's have coffee. Oh SNAP, where's all the CASH?
Space-walker nearly OPENED HELMET to avoid DROWNING
Wednesday 21st August 2013 15:51 GMT
He did that!
In the first article on this subject, it is mentioned that "drinking the water" was actually one of the things he did, noting that it tasted funny (I think it was iodine in the water?) But it was just too much to drink it all away.
Now that's courage, drinking water you don't know where it came from!
Windows NT: Remember Microsoft's almost perfect 20-year-old?
Wednesday 21st August 2013 08:17 GMT
CAD
The CtrlAltDel is still there for all of us who have had to login on a domain-attached Windows computer. I know it was still there in Win7. As others have mentioned, it is a security feature to avoid keyloggers and fake login screens as C/A/D can't be intercepted. Kinda like kill -9 in that sense.
Disabling that feature is a no-no for obvious reasons.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak disses Ashton Kutcher's Steve Jobs
Court throws out Icahn's demand to stall Dell shareholder vote
Friday 16th August 2013 22:28 GMT
eek
The good thing is that it seems Icahn is going to lose this battle. GOOD. And I wouldn't call Icahn & Co. Vultures because I think it's offensive ... to the poor vultures. :)
Good to see that evil didn't prevail here; either that or the courts and shareholders have finally wisened up that Icahn is only using 'em.
BlackBerry: It's the end-to-endness, stupid
Friday 16th August 2013 20:11 GMT
Re: Rage.....
There was an article a couple of (months? years?) ago that mentioned BYOD would actually morph into "Buy Your Own Device" and this would be the fault of the iTards wanting to use their iToys instead of the company-issued devices. I even agreed with that view, as my then-current employer had issued us company cellphones ... but they were "dumbphones". We were expected to answer emails on the move, but that would be using our own personal smartphones. Don't have one? Too bad, you have to buy your own.
At least having the company dumbphone meant I didn't need to cave in with privacy issues; only calls from the company cellphone were scrutinized.
Friday 16th August 2013 20:11 GMT
Re: They should try to hold on
Nokia's WP sales are climbing at over 30% a quarter
7 years ago I increased my income by 260%, which should be very impressive. But if you look at the actual numbers, it was actually an increase from $233/month to $623/month. Not that impressive, is it?
Same goes for Nokia. Their upwards climb is negligible, especially taking into account that they had the #1 spot before Elop shat all over Nokia by killing Symbian.
OWN GOAL! 100s of websites blocked after UK Premier League drops ball
Friday 16th August 2013 19:13 GMT
The burden of evidence is totally within the FA. So basically they're guilty of screwing the pooch, the article even mentions the legal aspects of the ban. BBC, DuckDuckGo and the other affected people should be enabled to sue the FA for zillion pound damages for their downtime. Mostly to serve as a warning to other trigger-happy entities...
Friday 16th August 2013 19:01 GMT
Meh with the ISPs.
If I were an ISP, after finding out exactly what went down, I'd simply sit my ass and just say "Well, the law tells me I have to enforce this ban. Either take it down, repeal it or change it for me to unban that IP." or even better, just say you'll wait till a court order tells me to unban the IP.
This reminds me of Montag's plan where he would plant books on the firemen's homes and then report them, thus having the firemen burn themselves down.
Microsoft cuts number of countries that will have Xbox One by Christmas
Friday 16th August 2013 18:26 GMT
Re: Xbox Two
I am one of those affected by the OtherOS brouhaha, in so much that I still have my original phat PS3 stuck on 3.15 because of that. I eventually caved in and bought another PS3 for updated games & stuff, because I have always had more distrust at MS than Sony. And I was proven right by MS themselves with the Always Online requirement!
So it isn't quite that everyone has forgotten the OtherOS thing, but that we all are more pissed off at Microsoft and that Sony does seem to have had a change of heart on key issues. They could've easily gone down the same MS route, but they didn't.
BlackBerry hits 88MPH, goes back to the future with NEW old 9720 mobe
Tuesday 13th August 2013 23:42 GMT
Re: I miss my berry
I changed my BB 3 weeks ago ... and went for a BB 9790. I hate keyboardless phones, and in the "I wanna ripoff the iPhone" frenzy it seems that most smartphone manufacturers have gone for big-ass, shatter-prone monstrosities. No thanks.
Also, BB still has the security strength on its side, something that actually has much more sway on me than having ADD-fueled games or the latest shiny. So basically, I'm ok with BB even if it isn't "the hot thing" to have. Because I don't care about what's hot, I care about what works for me. And in my case, it's a secure handset with a keyboard. Also, one that survived DEFCON's public wifi w/o getting 0wned. ;)
Court hearing on Icahn's Dell buyout block set for Friday
Xbox 180: Microsoft scraps mandatory Kinect policy
Tuesday 13th August 2013 23:28 GMT
Re: The Xbox actually looks quite promissing for online games.
Most parents won't have seen all this rubbish about DRM or always on Kinect so won't have any prejudice against the xbox,
But the kids definitely have. If they were pissed off, they will ask for a PS4 even if it were more expensive than an XBone.
Why do you think the Wii sold so well compared to the more powerful ps3 and xbox 360?
Indeed it was cheaper and it sold most, but it wasn't the only reason it was a smash hit. The novelty of the controller stuff appealed to the non-gamer community so people that would usually not buy a gaming console bought up the Wii. And well, according to the previous logic, the Wiiverse should be full of shouty annoying kids, shouldn't it?
Tuesday 13th August 2013 23:15 GMT
Lots of better stuff
Sooo... how is now PS4 better? I know it has better hardware and that MS can't be trusted, but is there anything else? I lost track.
Well, to begin with the hardware stuff. I usually don't delve that much with this new gen, as both have the craptastic x86 architecture which is a backwards step chip-wise. They could've just stayed PPC but added the GPU juicy bits they're currently doing on x86.
PS+ will be mandatory only for multiplayer gaming. If you want Netflix or the other stuff, you don't need PS+ while XBL will still demand Gold for all those goods. And even then, PS+ gives tons of freebies every month, sometimes cheap games but occasionally even good games (I got inFamous 2 for free, Bioshock 2 ... a couple of others)
Sony was bit hardly by their past errors and seem to be acting on getting back their goodwill. I doubt they'll backtrack on their promises as the X-BONE serves as a warning of what happens when you do something like that. (Mind you, they also experimented a bit of this with OtherOS: pissing off the one demographic that had the tech skills to crack the PS3.)
No mandatory Sauron device.
Basically, while both Sony and MS have done real bad things, it seems Sony has learned its lesson, while MS tried to pull off the Win8 strategy on their users. Except it backfired so bad, the XBone was declared DOA about 24 hours after it's unveiling at E3.
Tuesday 13th August 2013 22:45 GMT
Re: @Trevor
on top of their recent record revenues you mean?
Yes my dear MS shill, but you forget that revenue isn't profit. And in that sense, profit is falling. It seems they're finally getting hit by all that Fisher Price OS kit that isn't selling? It's bound to get worse when the XBoxOne tanks as well. I doubt their 180's are good enough to bring gamers back.
Elon Musk unveils Hyperloop – the subsonic tube of tomorrow
Tuesday 13th August 2013 22:20 GMT
Re: Yeah, good luck.
Interestingly, maglev is too expensive for China, I don't think they intend to build more maglev lines.
They were going to extend the Shanghai one to somewhere else, can't remember where ... but the project stopped because they favored their own home-grown HSR system. I also remember some weird ripoff they were doing (called something similar to Feng Shui) which was suspiciously similar to the Transrapid Maglev, so much that it is suspected it was basically stolen/copied Transrapid technology. So maybe the Chinese do have the money to do maglev, they just want to pirate it ;)
Netflix dares UK freetards: Watch new Breaking Bad NOW or torrent it?
Monday 12th August 2013 19:33 GMT
It is a first for a program that isn't just watched by blokes in their underpants who live in their Mum's house. Anime, eh? Is it so hard to get a girlfriend?
Nope, anime isn't tentacle rape or kiddy Card Captor stuff. They've got adult stuff (that isn't the aforementioned tentacle rape hentai stuff) which has in fact permeated to mainstream Hollywood stuff. Think The Matrix, but also Elysium which seems to have ripped off Battle Angel Alita. Or Pacific Rim, which is an outright tribute to the Mecha genre and the Godzilla big monster movies.
And um... I live in my own flat since I was 20, long-term relationship with a live-in girlfriend for 4 years. Maybe it is you the one living in Mum's house?
Monday 12th August 2013 19:32 GMT
Re: I hope it works
Actually, doing worldwide releases, or releasing internationally first does seem to be curtailing piracy, even here in Mexico "pirate paradise" land. Of course, the ones that aren't moved to the legal channels are the ones in the poor group, who use an entirely different argument on why they pirate: DVDs cost as much as 3 days of their salary. (And even then I'd argue STOP buying them at all! I'm irked at seeing SKY dishes in slum neighborhoods...)
Think your smutty Snapchats can't be saved by dorks? Think again
Notorious Mexican drug kingpin nabbed thanks to drones and spyware
Monday 12th August 2013 18:25 GMT
That's why they are called Zetas, you know...
The name comes out from their callsign/codenames used over the radio. Z1, Z2, whatever (as the article mentions, they used to be former Mexican Federal Police or ex-Military) so they named their org like the one letter that identified them.
It takes a criminal organization to change a single letter from beloved (Zorro!) to feared.
Monday 12th August 2013 18:22 GMT
Re: Drones help capture drug kingpin
Mentioning the holocaust is not trivialising it. We need to talk about it and remember.
I agree with this sentiment, and it is why I rarely agree when someone shouts "Godwin's Law!" on every single comparison. The point does seem to "Whoosh!" over most heads that the Holocaust was possible because of the firm grip the NSDAP had over the country. Nobody thought they were dangerous until it was too late to act against them. They started their power grab under "for your protection" emergency laws; remember what the Enabling Act was called? "Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat" or in English: Order of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State. Geeze, it sounds as corny as the Patriot Act, doesn't it?
The point is that those who want to do a power grab won't be obvious on it. They know an outright power grab will be noticed, so they'll go down the stealthy route. Beware of all-encompassing laws "for your protection".
Monday 12th August 2013 18:13 GMT
Re: The war on drugs @Robert Helpmann
Narcotraficante or entrepreneur? Mexico appears to be the libertarian paradise: weak government, fungible justice, low taxes, do as you please if you have the pesos.
Ah, taxes are high: 30% income tax and and extra 17.5% IETU tax (it snowballs on your income), 16% VAT on everything but food & meds. Of course, if you have the pesos, you can bribe your way out of taxes.
All the other stuff: weak government, fungible justice, yes, you're spot on. I'd add that we also have a couple of idiots in certain Mexican states pandering to the Catholic ultra rightist zealots; pro-lifer laws have been passed in a couple of those states which would land a woman far longer jail time than most narcos ever get.
My country is in dire need of heavy duty fixing...
BlackBerry pie sliced up: Nuke-plant OS, BBM chat app, etc sale mulled
Acer to downplay Windows in favor of Android, Chrome OS
Monday 12th August 2013 07:47 GMT
Re: Next step?? @mmeier
Ah sure, because doing the switch means changing all the desktop PCs. I've been too long in the biz to know that won't happen in a close timeframe. But the backend? Swapping out Windows Server for RHEL? Switching from AD to OpenDJ/389DS? Sure, especially as some organizations are moving key stuff to "web applications" and thus can change the backend stuff without confusing users. That's where I've seen orgs leaving MS; the core business no longer running on the MS stack or being migrated away from it.
On the desktop side I have seen smaller organizations do the full Linux switchover, notably a small minimart chain switched all its POS PCs to Linux about 4 years ago, as well as a security camera services company. But even I would admit that an OSX switchover would have better odds on anything larger given the dependency on desktop software, including Office.
Friday 9th August 2013 21:33 GMT
Re: Next step??
Anyone who has been in the chain letting anything get developed on VB should be fired and put in the wall of shame. Even MS knows its crap and made VB.NET basically C# with syntactic sugar over it. And even that was to please the VB crybabies.
That said, any organization with more than half a brain in their IT department will see the benefit of breaking out of the MS ecosystem. Some are already doing it. Others have already laid down the MS opium and made the switch.
At this point, I wouldn't even be surprised if OSX were even seen as a viable alternative to Windows if only because the base software compatibility is there (Office!) and actually looks friendlier than MS Fisher Price OS 8.
Study finds online commentards easily duped, manipulated
Friday 9th August 2013 22:46 GMT
Not here, I think
It seems that the commentard/readership demographics also help. Over here, a different effect comes into play; good comments usually get upvoted, bad comments get downvoted and it is usually fanboi/shill stuff getting really downvoted.
But an interesting thing is that the later your comment gets in, or the further down the pile it is, the less up/downvotes you get. Or it might even get zero votes. That's mostly because it's rare that commentards will ever read all the comments and will start skimming if it is large enough.
But no, I haven't seen the balancing out stuff going on in here. Those that get balanced votes (like say, 10 up 10 down) are usually like that because their comments actually do have the same number of people for and against the comment, not because of a balancing out thing.
Apple returns to courtroom once again to contest ebook shafting
Friday 9th August 2013 23:11 GMT
Orlowski, you didn't study the case did you?
The real problem with Apple's price-fixing case was with the MFN clauses. The publishers could claim they had to jack up their prices because Apple was "forcing" them to up 'em via the MFN clause. And they did. The prices did go up across the board for the involved publishers, they didn't go up for non-involved publishers.
Obama proposes four-point plan to investigate US data spooks
US feds: 'Let's make streaming copyrighted content a FELONY'
Friday 9th August 2013 21:54 GMT
Re: Sad
Why not just make downloading a movie terrorism?
They already did it. A bogus research sez that terrorists get their monies from piracy. They even made an effort to tropicalize this FUD to Mexico, where we're told that piracy funds the drug cartels. Which is stupid, as the original "terrists fund themselves with piracy" was under the assumption that piracy had better margins than drug dealing... so wouldn't drug dealers just get off the drug dealing and do piracy instead?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
