Re: So...
Newlyweds Justine and Michael .... Justine seems unmoved. When she and Michael retreat to their room for the evening, she brushes off his advances and goes walking on the grounds where she has sex with a coworker.
WTF IS THIS SH*T?
16005 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008
Not only that but...
It was thought that the planets were flung out of galaxies before embarking upon their lonely interstellar journey.
Flung out of SOLAR SYSTEMS not GALAXIES. Good look flunging them out of Galaxies.
Please Reg writers --- STOP PHONING IT IN OR TEXTING FROM THE BUS STOP.
Imminent Reg Tombstone predicted AGAIN (because the Marissa Mayer headline is still spelled as Marissa Meyer 8 hours after release)
> Instead of being proud of being native and upholding high quality standards.
Or bankrupt. Yeah, leftist dreams of "MUH PROTECTIONIST COUNTRY WILL WIN AGAINST EVIL CAPITALISTS"
> produce in China?... then STAY in China! And keep your crap there!
This has been written on a 2500 GBP modem sourced from a British Supplier. Or maybe not.
"Volatile memory should not be considered erased until 24 hours without power has passed".
Clearly the procedures have not been updated since core memory was phased out.
You may note that there still is this "multiple pass secure hard disk erasure" from FIPS something that is making the rounds, and which is not only outdated but based on myth too.
For a company that has redefined the cloud industry through the public pricing of storage and compute, paired with voluminous public FAQ documents, to complain about this transparency advantaging competitors is a bit wrong-headed, we suggest.
Surely not as this is a "private bid", quite probably lathered with peculiarly-priced special sauce, bespoke developments, some judiciously placed cut corners and maybe a rebate or two on some items to get the market. Now IBM can re-evaluate its bid and rejiggle stuff, make more promises on X and Y, suddenly find that "prices unexpectedly can be corrected in favour of the customer" etc. and likely will reduce the overall IBM discount (which they can apply because of the IBM name, natch) The fact that they are changing to "softlayers" (whatever that is) says as much.
it's legitimate to pretend that you are not a dog - but the moment you yank your chain you will come under legislation for "real" activities
I found this item of interest recently, btw:
The FATCA legislation attempts to combat bank privacy on many levels and for many reasons including the American state’s desire for more effective tax collecting. According to U.S. tax law, every American taxpayer is obligated to fill out tax forms and pay taxes for their income attained not only on U.S. soil but overseas as well. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) does not distinguish where the taxpayer lives, since U.S. taxation is based on either residency or citizenship. Therefore America remains one of the two states worldwide that tax their non-residing citizens. The other is Eritrea, a country not known for an exemplary human rights record.
Meanwhile,
Egypt's devastating museum looting of 1,000 artifacts is the latest casualty amid turmoil
Funny how military forces always have tons of time to shoot to death random protestors but don't have any power to guard points of interest. Except maybe oil ministries.
> bailing out failing countries
It's just the banking system that failed. The countries were all right. No bailouts were needed either. Iceland got back on its feet by itself. The southern state-handout-and-devaluation-addicted guys just moaned and bitched while rolling on the ground though. A pox on them.
They use Tide detergent as currency too, so why not?
As has been widely reported recently [beginning of 2012], an unlikely crime wave has rapidly spread throughout the United States and has taken local law-enforcement officials by surprise. The theft of Tide liquid laundry detergent is pandemic throughout cities in the United States. One individual alone stole $25,000 worth of Tide detergent during a 15-month crime spree, and large retailers are taking special security measures to protect their inventories of Tide. For example, CVS is locking down Tide alongside commonly stolen items like flu medications. Liquid Tide retails for $10–$20 per bottle and sells on the black market for $5–$10. Individual bottles of Tide bear no serial numbers, making them impossible to track. So some enterprising thieves operate as arbitrageurs buying at the black-market price and reselling to the stores, presumably at the wholesale price. Even more puzzling is the fact that no other brand of detergent has been targeted.
What gives here? This is just another confirmation of Menger's insight that the market responds to the absence of sound money by monetizing highly salable commodities. It is clear that Tide has emerged as a subsidiary local currency for black-market, especially drug, transactions — but for legal transactions in low-income areas as well. Indeed police report that Tide is being exchanged for heroin and methamphetamine and that drug dealers possess inventories of the commodity that they are also willing to sell. But why is laundry detergent being employed as money, and why Tide in particular?
Of course, the one problem with taxing Bitcoin is that it's often impossible to work out how much any one person owns.
It's not like it's possible to figure out "how much one owns" in that stupid monopoly money infesting the Eurozone either, right?
Yeah, thanks Keynes.
In "The Genesis of a Database Computer - A conversation with Jack Shemer and Phil Neches of Teradata Corporation - IEEE Computer Nov. 1984":
This article gives the context of the The DBC/1012 system with two interface processors, four access module processors, and four Winchester disk units. When fully extended to 1024 processors operating in parallel, the system will be capable of storing a terabyte (trillion bytes) of data.
We read:
Shemer: Another factor [in building the database computer] was the relational data model - the fourth generation of database management software. People wanted it but could not afford it, nor was it practical. The reason was that it took a tremendous number of MIPS to deliver the functionality of a relational system. However, running the software on a mainframe practically relegated the big computer to the level of a personal computer. Consequently, the user environment has retained what I call the machine-friendly forerunners, namely the hierarchical and network database management systems that emerged in the 60's. These approaches were designed to process efficiently in single data stream machine environments, while the relational model admitted to parallel processing.
In the relational model, data is not explicitly ordered, since data items don't have pointers embedded in the data. Rather than traversing a family tree or hierarchy, you're dealing with rows and columns that represent the way most people like to view information. The relational system is synonymous with people-friendly; it's what people want, what the end user and the application programmer desire.
The big problem was to make the relational system cost- and performance-effective. The only way to do that was to provide a great many processing cycles at low cost.
...
Computer: It was an IBM scientist, E. F. Codd, who originally conceived the relational database model. What is IBM doing now?
Shemer: IBM has taken what I regard as a two-phased approach. On the one hand, it has IMS and DLl for the production environment. They use the hierarchical approach of the 60's, now almost 20 years old. IBM appears to be committed to that investment; it is telling users to keep IMS for high-volume applications. On the other hand, it has a new relational product called DB2 that is intended for the what-if query in the end-user environment. It is for the ultimate information user who may be a novice programmer or somebody not well versed in programming at all.
As I see it, IBM has effectively segmented the database world into two disjointed environments. It has essentially stated that the relational system it will deliver under DB2 is not efficient in accommodating production processing demands. In other words, keep IMS for account rendition, master file maintenance, etc., and use DB2 for what-if queries. It is a real dilemma for users. Moreover, this approach complicates matters. You already have an IMS database, let's say. To build a relational database, you have to have a utility program to extract information from the IMS master file. You now have two databases. What's more, they run on different machine environments, producing multiple versions of the truth. One file or the other is always out of date. Having two databases is a step backward, because one of the prime reasons for creating database management systems in the 60's was to allow multiple applications to have access to the same data. That data should have the same value at the same instant of time for both the production application environment and the what-if query environment.
Ok, in "Computer Data-Base (sic) Organization" by James Martin ("The most up-to-date and thorough guide to the techniques of data base organization"), 1975 by Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-165506-X, (printed on excellent paper in black and pink) we read:
Part I (Logical Organization) Chapter 13: Relational Data Bases (pp 149-168)
"Data-base systems run the danger of becoming cumbersome, inflexible and problematic. The logical linkages tend to multiply as new applications are added and as users request that new forms of query be answerable with the data. A high level of complexity will build up in many data-base systems. Unless the designers have conceptual clarity they will weave a tangled web. It is possible to avoid the entanglements that build up in tree and plex structures, by a technique called normalization. Normalization techniques have been designed and advocated by E.F. Codd. ... The enthusiasts of normalization have a vocabulary of their own and a tendency to dress up a basically simple subject in confusing language. The table, like that in Fig. 5.3, is referred to as a relation. A data base constructed using relations is referred to as a relational data base."
There is also chapter 14: "Third Normal Form" ...
1) Gavin, you got a typo: "Turning Award"
2) Hands up who recognized the cover of the december 1972 issue of Communications of the ACM
The main thing to be said about SQL is that persons interested in learning about relational databases could do worse than check out Tutorial D.
From Jimbo's emporium of knollij: On February 18, 2011, Intel announced that it will construct a new $5 billion fab in Arizona, designed to manufacture chips using 14 nm manufacturing processes and leading-edge 300 mm wafers. The new lab will be named Fab 42, and construction will start in the middle of 2011. Intel billed the new facility as "the most advanced, high-volume manufacturing facility in the world," and said it would come on line in 2013.
I don't know whether it was a Time Life book about "Spaceflight" (and another about "Energy") or the movie 2001 that did it. The books were mysterious because they had impressive illustrations - but I couldn't decipher the text. The movie was mysterious because they had impressive footage - but I couldn't decipher anything.
2001 was definitely responsible for the interest in IT.
Did I mention that Scott Aaronson's "Quantum Computing since Democritus" is out in book form?
I look for the inevitable downvotes from idiots who say "modems are prior art" because they don't understand the first thing about how patents are supposed to work or what they're for
Have a hearty downvote for:
1) Being whiney
2) Taking the psychological cop-out of calling others idiots before things even start
3) Thinking you are so superior on your gouty high horse
It's not hard to understand how patents are "supposed" to work (ha ha!) and what they are for. It's just very non-evident that they bring anything to the table except retard development of whole branches of industry for the benefit of a few - mainly lawyers and rent-seekers.
Ok, so he would get out his phone, THEN two guys get out of a car and beat him up. Great.
He should have knifed the mofos. Deeply. Eleganty. While laughing hysterically.
It would look good on surveillance camera.
Ah, hold on. This is the UK, knives are considered weapons of mass destruction. Oh well.
> Let's hope it's something other than a large, flat, black rectangular panel
My first thought was "it will be white, not black"
Then it occurred to me that Apple might make it black - if it looked like the monolith from 2001.
With content projected on its four visible surfaces.
From inside.
Suitable obeisance would have to paid by the unwashed masses if this was ever delivered to the living room.
You could probably download "Also Sprach Zarathustra" from iTunes for free as a gimmick.