NASA dumpsters
NASA people used 8086 for shuttle computers IIRC, so presumably they were operating in the much deeper geologic layers of the said dumpsters
Mine with Geode LX800 EPIC board comfortably fitting in a pocket
Posts by Ramazan
808 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Aug 2008
Intel demos ultra low-juice chippery
Google brings out new programming language
Thursday 15th September 2011 09:17 GMT
@Charles Manning
Actually, Algol was quite late to the market, so this should reed "Ya don't need anything more than Fortran, LISP and COBOL." And, of course, real programmers don't use Pascal, patch program image directly in core memory and use machine codes directly without need for even an Assembler.
Thursday 15th September 2011 09:10 GMT
@Ben Hanson 1
"In case you hadn't noticed generic programming and meta programming is where the interest is now".
Wow, how wrong I was thinking that Haskell is the hottest thing at the moment :)
And, what do you mean by metaprogramming? LISP? lex/yacc? IDL/WSDL code generators (e.g. ZSI.generate.wsdl2python)? Since when have they become more interesting than ever before?
I think you should just get the right tool to get the job done, regardless of where the interest is now. If you can solve a problem with Smalltalk, great. If you can't, then there's no sense in flagging the dead horse, better go find something else.
Google plan to kill Javascript with Dart, fight off Apple
Thursday 15th September 2011 08:43 GMT
Just to clarify my point: not every language designed by one person is great (example - C++, shitty from the beginning).
Regarding ACNE^H^H^H^HECMAScript - thanks for educating me, I didn't know that Eich designed it alone, but then my first statement holds true.
C is great, and I regularly get my hands dirty with its K&R variant (hello, PA-RISC HP-UX!), ANSI C and ISO C99. I see no major problems compiling K&R code with gcc though. Can you elaborate, please? There's another problem - how do you compile ANSI C code with HP-UX bundled K&R compiler, for instance? Go buy ANSI version? Try to build gcc with K&R (well, I can do that, can you?)?
Thursday 15th September 2011 08:40 GMT
@Oninoshiko
1. Yes, thermal design in MBA is total crap.
2. I don't like Apple very much for what they did with MBA and iPad 2 3G and iPhone etc (I won't comment further 'cause it's off topic)
3. Now how much interactivity/flashiness/poppines/social_friendliness and other crap do you need when surfing for information on some subject? I don't need Flash here and there all over the place just to read one damn article. Same holds true for Java applets, silverlight applets and Darth applets when they get there. Moreover, why do you need Web2.0/AJAX and other features to just read email (I mean YOU, gmail). Me doesn't. I was perfectly ok with gmail's basic HTML mode when I could't access it by other means (I mean _console_ email application called mutt).
Wednesday 14th September 2011 15:52 GMT
@David Gosnell
Probably also as a result of multiple OSX hacking contests, where Flash was popular as an attack vector. By the way, I have Steam version on Machinarium, it's a great game written in Flash AFAIK, but I was never able to beat it on Macbook Air in single run, because MBA overheats half through the game and makes it impossible to advance past the Owl/electrician level. Similar problem with a lot of Flash content on the mentioned MBA, Flash eats all available CPU cycles, and for what?
Wednesday 14th September 2011 13:45 GMT
designed-by-corporation?
I'm simplifying here, but:
Great languages:
LISP - designed by one person
C - designed by one person
Tcl - designed by one person
Tcl/Expect - designed by one person
Python - designed by one person
Ruby - designed by one person
Shitty languages:
Java (Oak) - designed by Sun
FORTRAN - designed by IBM
Total crap:
JavaScript - designed by committee
COBOL - designed by committee
P.S. Probably Dart will be OK, it's too early to judge without seeing actual Dart code. If it's easy and fun to learn and fun and easy to program with, it may eventually exhibit The Python Effect
AMD snags Guinness World Record for clockiest chip
Star Control
Apple seeks product security boss after iPhone loss
Thursday 8th September 2011 17:16 GMT 
thanks to AC @08:54
For providing the link. As I read it:
1. Apple investigators didn't impersonate themselves as police officers, they just came in the same group so that someone could just believe they are from the police too and Not Ask Questions
2. Calderon himself let them in, he wasn't forced to do it. Most probably he agreed because he didn't have the iPhone or didn't have it at the moment of search
3. Police officers did not enter because for them it would be illegal to perform search without search warrant or how it's called in USA
Patent wars: Apple attacks Samsung in Japan
Notebook makers cautious about Ultrabooks
Wednesday 7th September 2011 09:43 GMT
@AC 11:12, WRT MBA
My MacBook Air overheats very quickly and then slows down to a crawl. Samsung Q40 was _definitely_ better (and ran faster under overheat conditions) aside from its cheap plastic case. And Q40 didn't have any stinking fan in it, it just dropped from 1.2GHz to 800MHz when it was getting hot, but its speed even at 800MHz remained acceptable, contrary to MBA. AFAIU MBA doesn't drop MHz/CoreVoltage but forces CPU to spend 90% of time in idle loop so that you experience 10x drop in performance.
Gamer claims complete console collection
IBM 'Blue Waters' super node washes ashore in August
Coder cracks iPad 2 jailbreak block
Who'll keep taking Windows Tablets in the iPad era?
Netizens mobilise to recover precious stolen guitar
Foxconn staffer jailed for iPad IP theft
Wii U has 50 per cent more power than rivals
Thursday 16th June 2011 08:42 GMT
But will Nintendo screw you?
Of course they will, because Crytek wants their share of those £39.99 and other devs too. It's a tough business, just imagine spending years developing single game paying 100k salaries to scores of programmners, designers, their pinty-haired managers and all those sales/marketing staff.
Apple pulls app after dev publishes users' PINs
Thursday 16th June 2011 04:27 GMT 
10 most comon PINs
but there are only 3 attempts before smartcard gets locked / data are wiped. So what's the point? BTW, El Reg has omitted the "out of 204,508 recorded passcodes" phrase from its article, making calculation of expected break-in success ratio for a particalar strategy impossible. The best strategy yields only about 9.23% chance of success.
iOS dev nemesis Lodsys pressures Android coders too?
Otellini: ARM servers 'ain't gonna work'
Apple: Yes, Safari outperforms embedded iOS web viewer
Ten... over-ear headphones
CoD: Black Ops 'not fit for purpose', fans claim
Thursday 27th January 2011 13:11 GMT 
fitness for any purpose
Is el'Reg a tech site or not?
/usr/share/common-licenses$ zgrep -B2 -i fit.*purpose *
Artistic:10. THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR
Artistic:IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED
Artistic:WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
BSD:THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
BSD:ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
BSD:IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
GPL: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
GPL: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
GPL: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GPL-2:PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED
GPL-2:OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
GPL-2:MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS
GPL-2:--
GPL-2: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
GPL-2: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
GPL-2: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GPL-3: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
GPL-3: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
GPL-3: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
LGPL-2: This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
LGPL-2: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
LGPL-2: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
LGPL-2.1: This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
LGPL-2.1: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
LGPL-2.1: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
Intel shells out $1.5bn for Nvidia tech
Tuesday 11th January 2011 19:38 GMT
@Arnold Lieberman
Do you think 35W at idle is OK? Mindspeed's Picasso chip (two ARM cores plus about dosen of Countach 64 DSP processors packed on the single die) processes 672 G.711 voice channels in realtime (i.e. no frame drops when OS (I mean you, Windoze) decides to swap something in/out). The chip consumes about 1.5W at full load. Code for new codecs can be compiled and loaded to DSP processors given there's enough room left.
Seagate snubbed $7.5bn bid
Motorola dual-core Android phone to pull off laptop trick?
Monday 10th January 2011 10:50 GMT
@Mike S
gnu screen, ssh, awk, grep, sed, perl, vim, iptables, make and (native) compiler. And of course source code of the phone's kernel ('cause some modules will surely be missing, e.g. nbd or nfs) and sources of all its bundled apps, and cross toolchain for Debian/Ubuntu, not just unbuildable pile of source codes like they tend to provide.
In fact, I doubt that Motorola is capable of ever producing a decent s/w and even less providing any level of support for it (e.g. updates).
Apple does excellent job with its iPhone BTW. All phone makers must learn this lesson and do better (and more open) or just die.
Dubai assassins used email trojan to track Hamas victim
Nokia sues Apple in European courts
Steve Ballmer proposed $15bn Facebook acquisition
Apple scraps 'never-formed plans' for iPhone SIM in 2011
GSMA opens the way for Apple SIM
Monday 22nd November 2010 00:27 GMT 
@Ki being transmitted to the SIM? Really?
Ki is transmitted to HLR/AuC through the operator's core network in almost the same way. Operator doesn't receive plaintext Ki - he gets Ki encrypted with A4 algorithm from SIM card manufacturer (e.g. Orga, Gemalto), and provisions A4Ki to AuC (Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei). AuC decrypts A4Ki to Ki and stores it in special kind of memory, so that when AuC board is deliberately or accidentally removed from HLR chassis, contents of this special memory is wiped out. SIM card manufacturers and AuC vendors posess The Secret Knowledge of A4 keys while GSM operator do not.
CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'
Tuesday 28th September 2010 14:05 GMT
IISi were lazy/greedy
Netezza was able to produce a port in requested timeframe, and they weren't the original developers, mind you.
So could do IISi of course, they just didn't want for whatever reason.
All this buzz about 1-13m regress is a nonsense. x86 FPU can produce more precise results than PPC, and any good CS person must know that and how to accomplish that (not the case with El'Reg readers apparently).
> "They are satisfied," Wiltshire wrote in an email to Netezza executives, adding that the customer "believes that the minor discrepancy in metrics between the 10100 and the TwinFin 12 is due to the TF doing a better job."
IBM splits with Solaris 10 on x64
Google denies carriers fled Nexus One webstore
Friday 21st May 2010 22:13 GMT
provisioning? billing systems?
So, what the fuck with billing systems? How many different ones are out there, what'd you think? Maybe 2? or even 3? Same for mediation/provisioning. There are relatively few systems from few major vendors, so I think the Google just didn't have enough oopma-loompas to throw into the reactor to get the necessary acceleration (like Druuge ship captains did)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
