Posts by Ian Michael Gumby

Google apologists get real!

Its funny watching the posters who side with Google and make excuses.

Here in the US, post TJMaxx, there are laws against WAR Driving. That is, when someone specifically drives around snooping on wi-fi's that may not have security turned on.

Other countries also have data privacy laws that are similar to the laws in the US.

What Google did was illegal. While they claim that they have only 600GB, we don't know if they had captured more and had already deleted data and are now only coming clean before someone blew a whistle on them.

Google has been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Sure, I think anyone who has an open Wi-fi gets what they deserve, but then again I also believe that if you jump on any network that isn't yours and without permission, you also should get what you deserve, especially if it means you committed a crime.

No shock here...

The key is being able to do more with less.

The problem with any Bureaucratic Organization is that there is a 'use it or lose it' mentality.

So you want to keep bloated over priced systems in play.

The reality is that you can do a lot more with fewer highly trained, highly compensated, smarter people than hiring many lower grade people. (One of the increasing costs is in staffing.) Looking to cutting edge technology changes and redesigning existing bloated systems is one way to reduce costs over the long haul. Short term costs rise because you can't just shut off the old system while you're building the new system.

So you need a CIO who can calm the politicos and bureaucrats while leading his CTO and team.

Unfortunately there are too many posers who claim to have this skill...

Thumbs up because at least they are facing the reality of tighter budgets, and are actively looking for a solution.

BMC is on thin ice...

Didn't another company, albeit with less deep pockets try the same thing?

I doubt that BMC will shout the "A" word and we should expect a nice legal battle.

Fail because in the mainframe world the customers are always the lusers.

Of course Doug C. welcomes IBM

It makes Cloudera's cloud support contracts look more than reasonable. :-)

Oh there's more I could say, but I'll just wait for Bernie to pop up again and put his foot in mouth like he always does.

Bernie is one of the few people who praised DB2 yet could only give Informix a couple of back handed compliments.

Oh yeah, now the Hadoop arena is getting interesting. ;-)

Bad Patent.

Sorry but this is a bad patent for a couple of reasons. 1) Its obvious 2) prior art.

This is kind of a good thing...

On the plus side, you don't need to carry your wallet, but just your phone. Which is more than a phone. Its your GPS locator, your music box, your personal tv and web device, your PDA, your camera ... all rolled in to one. And if you want that nifty online purchase? Your phone already has that trusted information built in. ;-)

Forget about cash, you have your payment card, which incidentally means you'll be more inclined to spend more money because you lose touch with how much you're actually spending. (If you only have 20 quid in your pocket, you tend to spend only quid. If you have your entire bank account accessible, you tend to spend more.)

Now when someone steals your iPhone, they not only stole your phone, your PDA, all of your personal data, including access to your facebook account, but now your bank account and you don't even need a PIN code. So you then need to set up multiple banking accounts where you transfer $$ from your real account. So you may put $500 dollars (US) a month automatically on the card. Then if you lose your phone, you are at risk for at most $500.00. Assuming that once you report your iPhone stolen you are no longer liable for things purchased on it. This will make banks happy because they can now charge you more in fees or have an account that doesn't pay you interest so they make money off the deposits.

You see, now the crook doesn't want to steal your phone because its nifty new tech to be resold, but rather as a way to rob you of your money.

I'd worry more about snatch/grab robberies than someone going high tech and scanning data from the NFC device.

But what do I know?

I'm the tech guy who likes new tech, but is still paranoid.

;-)

Mine is the jacket with the foil lined pockets so you can't read my RFID enabled identity card(s)

Its a political issue.

Note: I'm no apple fanboi, but here's an instance where the FTC is way off base.

Jobs isn't anti-competitive in his stance. He's purely making sure that his vision for the user experience is kept clean and correct.

This isn't anything new. Jobs has built his whole career around this from Apple, to NeXT, back to Apple. He has firmly believed in controlling the hardware and software that he uses when he creates his products.

Note that anyone can write and develop 'acceptable' applications if they adhere to the rules.

So the FTC has no legal grounds for an investigation. If you don't like Job's decision, write apps for the 'droid, Pre, Rim, Nokia markets.

Sorry, I wonder if we're in an election year for something?

Uhm... the cleric may actually have something ...

Clearly this picture went up on the 'net prior to April 25th.

The female poster is a student at Indiana University?

Well from :

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/nmhnw0424a.php

There was a quake in Indiana not really too far. Approx 75 miles from Bloomington.

I would have to say that her study is inconclusive and that definitely more testing of her theory should be done! After all, we do want to be scientific about this, right?

Paris because she does know how to dress!

But what does it cost?

Ok, If we look at the technology, the advancements also show a clear reduction in costs too.

One has to ask how much 6 320 GB PCIe cards cost, along with the motherboard that has 6 PCIe slots...

This would be the more important graph to indicate the ability of companies to adopt this technology.

Thumbs up because its pretty cool if you think about it.

Opt-out BAD, Opt-In GOOD.

Having said that...

If these companies actually went to an OPT-IN model, they'd have a high rate of "No Thanks" and very little people willing to give them their permission.

So 'targeting ads' is a massive fail with respect to a viable business model which complies with the law when it comes to user's policy.

Its a fail because the companies involved don't want to disclose what they track and how they use it because this is competitive knowledge and will lower the barriers to entry.

Am I mistaken?

"“But many of you started using Google Buzz before we made these changes, and we want to help you ensure that Buzz is set up the way you want. Offering everyone who uses our products transparency and control is very important to us, so if you started using Google Buzz before we changed the start-up experience, you'll see [a] confirmation page the next time you click into the Buzz tab.”"

Didn't Google just pop Buzz in to place with the default features already turned on to the least amount of privacy and the most amount of exposure?

Assuming what Google wrote above to be true, then our new US Govt CTO clearly wanted the full attention of the press to notice that he was still in contact with lobbyists and he best buds at google.

Eric Schmidt is right. If you've got something to hide, then you should probably not be doing it in the first place. A senior staff member of the President of the US maintaining communication with former employees and lobbyists via a non-standard channel? Yeah, right. Its funny the Republican's are not calling for his head. Maybe Google's got their hands in both parties' pockets?

-G

Interesting...

I'd like one, except that it doesn't seem to have GPS functionality. Now that would be of value.

Still a geek toy that those who grew up in the era of garage computing would want one!

Why do they just dump it in to a lump of graphite?

I mean, heck, what would happen if they focused the beams a little and were able to point them at the moon? (In a controlled fashion of course.)

Wouldn't it be cool if they could actually make a large enough 'smiley' face to brighten up everyone's life when there's a full moon?

Or should they just dump it out in to space so it acts like a very large galactic flare gun?

PR Slacker!

"More than half the time I call a reporter back, the story's already run," she told The Register on Thursday afternoon. "I find it a little odd that someone would call someone at 9:30 at night. That is not within normal business hours."

What a friggin slacker!

I rate this a fail, not for the article or the story, but that you have a PR spokeswoman (no-name) who is in the middle of a 'crisis' and rather than have her office phone forwarded to her mobile, she's off duty because its 'after hours'.

How many IT professionals have gotten a 2AM wake up call because there was a problem in production and a job failed to run properly. Of course if the IT professional doesn't fix the problem ASAP, nightly jobs don't run and the company is in deep she-it because it cant function.

When you work for a global company, its normal business hours somewhere... ;-)

Interesting Site.

I gave this a thumbs up.

The key here is to see what you're willing to give to get the features that you want.

You want a 5" screen? Ok, but its not going to be a touch scree but it can do 21:9.

The key is that if you gave the choices to everyone and said 'tell me what you want in the next phone...' everyone would say that they want the world.

What this site does is try and figure out what you're willing to live with to get the feature that you want the most.

In the end they can say that people who want a 21:9 screen are willing to give up x and y. Or that z is the most popular phone feature based on a 'random' sample of people. Or rather a random sampling of the targeted demographic.

Where's the feature that with a breathalyzer that will stop you from drunk dialing your girlfriend? I know a number of people who could use that feature.

Funny.

Some of the smartest wonks I went to school with were Philosophy majors who were working on AI.

But I think that was an exception.

Not so sure about Pratt though. He actually made money from not having any talent. I doubt anyone here can claim that. However, getting paid to play the role of Zippy the Pinhead and doing cyber security? Two different things entirely.

If you think about it, Pratt doesn't provide cred, but 'flash' to get the cash.

And for that, he'll make some money out of this.

BTW, not all in Hollywood are morons. Wood went to MIT and didn't graduate because he didn't take a PE class. Aston Kutcher ?sp? made a fortune and married a MILF.

But a FAIL none the less.

I'll wager Nexus doesn't break the million mark ...

The analysts who put the phone on track for 1 million phones are probably not factoring in the early adoption factor that people bought based on Google's name.

As it was pointed out, the features found are available on other phones and those phones are discounted as part of a contract. Google's not so much.

Fusion IO vs SSDs

The interesting thing about FusionIO is that they are doing 'raid' within the ssds on their pcie card.

Unfortunately, its a very pricey option unless you can justify the 13K or more for a FusionIO solution. Then if you can, its a better way to go.

Also they need to solve the boot problem. When they do, you have a very fast, low power, low heat solution.

Riddle me this...

And how is this 'patent' any different from any publish/subscribe event messaging system?

The system publishes an event record about a user's action, and you subscribe to it to view the event.

There is nothing new or novel about the patent, therefore this is yet another example of how/why the US Patent Office is fscked up.

Super!

Is it just me, or does the over use of the term 'Super!' remind anyone of the

South Park character 'Big Gay Al'?

Sorry to anyone who doesn't grok 'South Park'.

Shirely you jest!

"Gmail users that their inbox won’t be sabotaged by spammers."

<sarcasm alert>

Spammers, really?

Didn't you know that via Eric Schmidt that there is nothing bad on the net and if you wanted to keep your private details, er well private, than you shouldn't be doing that on the net in the first place?

Shame on you El Reg for promoting 'evil' things on the 'net...

</sarcasm alert>

C'mon, anyone who uses Google's e-mail, etc should know by now that Big brother is watching you. And by big brother I'm talking about Google itself.