Posts by alien anthropologist

@Quality

AC wrote: "SQL Server is probably the best engineered, most secure software product ever produced."

Utter and total bullshit. One of my most satisfying hacks ever used SQL-Server. Had this colleague that was so full of how great and secure Windows was. Told him not. So he challenged me to hack into his system. Which I did. Locked his account and created a new one for myself with admin access. And it took a mere 5 minutes to do. Thank you SQL-Server.

He had to beg to get access to his system again - and never again touted Windows and Microsoft products as being so fine and so secure.

@JP Strauss

Seeing something awesome from good ol' SA?

Then you only need to look at our Julius Melama. A more awesome example of a giant asshole you won't find anywhere else on this planet. Even that magnificent example of asshole-hood, George W. Bush, fades to a tiny little balloon knot in comparison.

latency

When we talked to Voltaire about their QDR grid director switches (Infiniband), they made the comment that port to port latency can be as low as 60 to 70ns.

Now even if that is only under the best of situations/environments/configurations, and you average around 140ns.. why on sweet mother blue earth would you even want to bother with GigE - that does not provide the same scalability and does not provide the same performance?

GigE and HPC? The two terms just do not seem to be good friends at all.

I'll pass...

.. on trying to find this enclave.

It is a known fact that a group of women living together have sync'ed cycles.

Now imagine a whole town.. where every single person.. every one of 25 000... have PMS.

And we blokes can scarcely deal with one.

No thanks.

Mine's the one with "The Male Survival Guide" in the pocket.

@boltar

"..to compete with its own core product is fecking dreaming"

Seems like you do not have the faintest clue about marketing and product management. What do you want.. someone else to compete with your product, or being able to compete yourself.. with yourself? Where will you find the most flexibility and profit?

Jay Levinson was one of the first to recognise this tactic in the market place (and used by some of the very big boys) in his book "Guerrilla marketing".

Oracle already has other database products in their stable. Berkely DB. Times10 DB. mySQL will not be an odd fit, or even an uncomfortable one.

Look at IBM who owns both DB2 and Informix.

The real question is what is Larry plans with mySQL.. as he will decide on the strategy. And he can be unconventional. He would also be quite familiar with "guerrilla" marketing too. mySQL provides Oracle Corp with *more* opportunities. Not less.

@AC 12:09

AC wrote:

"See, I've thought of everything there."

And just how exactly do you get to enjoy a lap dance in a low g environment?

Paris - as she knows g's belongs to strings.

@AC

AC said:

"Actually it does NOT. Number of threads per core just increases utilization of the pipeline. They still run on the same core and the performance never scales lineraly."

Threads in what format? Oracle for example does not use a threading model on Unix/Linux systems.

"And Oracle does NOT scale linearly as well -- that's what documentation says."

Please provide URL to said documentation. And btw, Exadata database machine has shown to scale linearly.. so it depends on WHAT you want to scale and HOW you measure that. I/O? CPU? Number of transactions per second? Number of SQLs per second? What?

All I see here is a lot of FUD with vague and broad statements being made on how well Oracle runs/does not run on a specific CPU design.

I run several Oracle clusters.. if there is an issue with a specific CPU design or technology, I am interested... in hard technical facts. Not hearsay and rumour.

Sniff..

..sniff.. CRIPES! This article does not merely smells, it reeks!!

The best place for hot data is in memory. Accessing data in memory in a storage array using fricken large pipes.. like 40Gbit Inifiband running RDMA protocol.. is fast. Very fast.

Recipe is simple. Storage cell or array, running 8 or more CPUs with 512MB RAM (RAM is cheap). 2 or more PCI-E Infiniband ports running into a Infiniband switch. Where the LUNs on the storage cell are published as SRP devices to database servers that are wired, via Infiniband, into the same switch.

And this is not just something we alone are using.. Oracle's Exadata storage nodes use the exact same technology. And according to all accounts, at truly blistering speeds (they also use special s/w juice at the storage layer that builds custom data blocks on the fly).

Looking solely at the physical I/O storage layer is idiotic. For performance and scalability, you need to look at the complete I/O subsystem. Not just storage. And with RAM being pretty inexpensive and with incredible pipe sizes available with Infiniband.. this is not rocket science.

Back in the old days...

..a lot of companies were hooked up via Mail Gateway Servers (pre-Internet boom down here in my part of the colonies). MS-Mail was the de facto standard at the time.

Anyway, one lady from a company e-mailed an ad for selling something like 2nd hand furniture/car/whatever. And selected everyone from the global mailing list as recipients. Which ensured that said e-mail was delivered to 100's of companies in the region and 1000's of users.

I hand crafted a response, delivered via an open relay, that requested her to attend a disciplinary hearing where she could potentially be fired for gross misconduct. Suggested that she bring legal council with. Provided date and time and venue for hearing. And added all the extras to make it look like it personally came from the CEO's offices for the company she worked for. Even the SMTP headers were hand crafted.

Wish I could have seen her face reading that mail.. would have been a small measure of satisfaction for having to deal with the never-ending spam that started with the first Dave Rhodes letter that hit may QWK mailbox decades ago and never ceased since...

Er.. what is the difference..

... between an inkblot test and a CoS e-meter test?

Nothing.. as both are pseudo science.. (though I prefer the common term "bullshit" better as a far more apt description).

In fact, many years ago, had to do these inkblot tests in order to get the "appropriate security clearance" on a government project. At the time, I thought it the safest to call each blot a butterfly, bird or flower..

@Antony Riley

> Typically 64 bit apps run slower because they use more memory for their data structures as they

> have to store 64 bit address pointers instead of 32 bit.

Bullshit.

Gnome sucks..

.. and that's all there is to it. Even Linus have had a spat with the Gnome team over the idiotic user interface concepts of Gnome.

(typing this on a KDE desktop using Compiz as window manager)

@Mr Tempest

> I'm surprised that this anti-trust case focuses so closely on possible

> changes to Java licensing, that MySQL isn't even mentioned

mySQL? What is that? Definitely not something is even slightly important.

And you want to compare that with the importance of Java!?

Missing the point...

Delphi is such an awesome language (even C# is a poor imitation), that said virus would equally likely be an awesome looking virus too...

And there's so few those around, we should be more appreciative of a virus written is such a kewl and gnarly language.

Delphi Rules! C#/java sucks snot. (as I overhead a hardcore Delphi programmer in a dev team meeting telling the Java heads many years ago)

Miss using in Delphi.. cannot say the same of Windows though.

Kind of pathetic actually....

.. those of you who shout "travesty of justice" because of the Dutch Court's ruling, yet you did not open your mouths against the piracy supported and facilitated by TPB.

Selective morality?

Just remember,,,

..despite the jokes and the humour, a claymore is one nasty piece of work. A slab of explosive with loads of little metal balls.

And no, despite the THIS SIDE FACE TO ENEMY, it does not mean that you want to take cover behind it. You want to be at 45 degree angle to the side of it, safely out of range, with your "clicker" (assuming manual detonation).

As for a mine - yes you can use it as a mine against soft skin vehicles. You bury it in the (dirt) road, top side facing up. And detonate it as the vehicle passes over it. Does a lot of damage. Can wound and kill vehicle occupants.

Next lesson - how to place an anti-tank mine on a tar road... (yep, that can be done too).

Needs to be asked...

... who cares about OS/X root kits?

Macbois believe their beloved o/s invulnerable and are not interested in counter revolutionaries and their black OS/X propaganda.

The rest of us already have our fair share issues with Windows and Linux. And we sure as hell do give a job's liver about OS/X either.

Rootkits for OS/X..? yawn.. fart.. belch..

We. Just. Don't. Care. (unless there are some half naked women involved, or beer, Paris, aliens, or more Soviet Brittan exposé or any combination thereof)

Horrible..

..just horrible music in the background of that video clip.

Sounds like some sick and twisted combination of elevator music, jazz and a 70's porn sound track.

What is the Real Flaw here?

Not a US citizen (from Betelgeuse originally), so not entirely sure how SSNs are used. However...

What is the real problem here? The fact that SSN can be "calculated" to a fair degree of accuracy? Or is it a system that relies on an individual to have a "secret" number for identification?

In most parts of the world, identifying yourself requires some form of government issued paper identification. Not just rambling off a "secret" number as your identification.

@AC 15:52

> Hmmm... Is it just me, or does the image in the opening video frame resemble a

> close-up shot of a nipple?

A nipple!? Just where/what/how did you came to that conclusion.. er.. on second thought, we do NOT want to know.

Oh yeah - and it just you mate. Definitely just you.

(mine's the one with the airsick bags in the pocket)

The IT Angle is...

.. getting IT dumbtards to respond to a non-IT story, asking where the IT angle is.

Works. Every. Time.