* Posts by pete23

40 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Sep 2009

Python explosion blamed on pandas

pete23

Re: Execution speed...

There are millions of EUCs in excel/VBA that never need to get in front of an "experienced programmer".

Python is filling a similar niche for people with more specialised number crunching requirements. In terms of hyperbole it's solving a smaller set of problems than the spreadsheet but it's solving them exceptionally well...

This is actually a super-happy story in that we've actually managed to grow some combination of language and tooling that people want to use!

Apple blings up new iMac with latest Intel chips, next-gen Wi-Fi

pete23

Re: Can we PLEASE get to grips with this "Apple are expensive" line?

Yeah, I spent 15s on Dell, found their XPS 27 which is the logical equivalent, clicked on Select... and apparently "this machine is no longer available online, we just left it on the website for fun". So I guess it's much less likely to trouble my wallet...

Production-ready ZFS offers cosmic-scale storage for Linux

pete23
Pint

Re: Must say it..

Tell it to the pasta, cos the sauce ain't listening.

The Oric-1 is 30

pete23

Re: Is it really 30 years ago

There was a level 9 emulator we compiled up on the HPUX boxes back in the late 90s... Another couple of days wasted completing Emerald Isle, but this time on the company's dollar;-)

World's oldest digital computer successfully reboots

pete23
Pint

Re: Each holding a single digit

Brilliant, thanks, that was my first thought... One *digit* per valve? Thanks for the clarification.

Apple MacBook Pro 13in Retina display review

pete23
Thumb Down

As a complete fanboi with a 15" rMBP...

...and almost all mod cons, I have to agree that this isn't a winner.

Dual core only, no discrete graphics, and there's only £100 between the 13" and the 15" with 256Gb of disc! That one needs to be at £1399 or so to make any sense.

So you want an office of Apple Macs - here's a survival guide

pete23
Alert

RDP client is free from MS

"straight up RDP will do; Microsoft offers a client with its Office suite"

Actually it's a free download - no MS purchase reqd.

Register SPB hacks mull chopping off feet

pete23
Windows

Re: Fond of Fahrenheit

By eck lad, art tha a sissy?

Brighton marathon munchers banned from all-you-can-eat diner

pete23
Facepalm

Re: Fair usage policy applies.

You, sir*, are living proof of the decline of civilisation.

* or madam, or wrapping for a conundrum.

Organic food offers basically no health benefit, boffins find

pete23
Coat

Re: Simple tool to determine the quality of food

Paging the Audiophile conspiracy to the thread...

Blizzard faces court battle for 'misleading Diablo III fans'

pete23
Gimp

Pedant's Corner

Oh come on, case insensitivity reduces the number of distinct symbols you have by 26. Assuming you're picking passwords from the 96 character printable ASCII set, you just need a password that is 37% longer. No biggie.

Leap second bug cripples Linux servers at airlines, Reddit, LinkedIn

pete23
Holmes

Re: Its a kernel bug

Heh. I have one where a combination of DTRACE and the jvm results in spiralling startup times for shortlived java process on Solaris 10u7. Any suitably complex systems can interact in unfathomably chaotic ways...

I need to multitask, but Windows 8's Metro won't let me

pete23
Trollface

Unless they pay for VS, of course.

Microsoft is pushing amateur developers towards Metro only apps.

Real-time drone videos get GPU-tastic

pete23
Pint

Best thing I've seen today. Only to be superceded in 21 minutes by the first pint...

Basic instinct: how we used to code

pete23
Thumb Up

Re: Dragon 32

I'll never forget the name Roland Waddilove as long as I live...

Apple set to drop 17in MacBook Pro, says watcher

pete23
Pint

Re: iPad as secondary display

AirDisplay. Works nicely, although with apps with a bitmap interface (Ableton for example), it's clearly using a lossy compression algo where something like GIF would be compact and ideal. I like it. And obviously use it as a second monitor... For my 17".

iPad to reign unchallenged as KING of FONDLESLABS

pete23

...or was it corrected? Mysterious.

pete23
Flame

Re: apple-armageddon

Brilliant! So the horror of the bloody Windows XP ThinkPad X200 can be swapped for an 11.5" Air and my Z600 workstation can be swapped for a Mac Pro... Practically most of my work is done either in an e-mail client (Notes! Gone!) or a web browser or Eclipse (works fine on MacOS) or a shell (bye bye Cygwin) or a word processor (to be honest even OpenOffice is OK these days)... About the only thing I can see me really getting upset about is the lack of Visio.

So what's the worst movie NEVER made?

pete23
Thumb Up

Hawk the Slayer

A masterpiece of cinema.

Vote now for the WORST movie EVER

pete23
Coffee/keyboard

Re: NOT ZARDOZ

Zardoz is a fine fine piece of moviemaking and I have no idea how it made the long list. Shame!

Google asked to bin autocomplete results for Japanese man's name

pete23
Big Brother

You need to switch SafeSearch to GOATSE ONLY mode.

Intel Xeon E5s pruned for single-socket workstations

pete23
Megaphone

re GPUs - "maybe it can work for your workstation apps, too."

Great! Rather than pay $6000 a pop for trader spec workstations I'll get our quants to rewrite everything in OpenCL. I can see that taking a few years to pay off... Not to mention the fact that high-end workstation GPU cards will cost as much or more (Quadro 6000 pushing $3K a pop at the cheapest venues, I see).

Sometimes it's cheaper to buy iron than cut code.

Antimatter asymmetry: new results bring solution closer

pete23
Pint

Re: Bubble

Sulphuric nasty in my jacuzzi sounds more like it...

Is it beer o'clock yet?

Apple will not kill iPad 2 at iPad 3 debut

pete23
Trollface

Disagree. For a device which has largely replaced books etc for me, the noticeable pixellation on the iPad is quite annoying, especially as I have the iPhone 4 to compare. It's not about "more productive" it's about quality of experience.

If people buy numbers, how do you explain the near-total Apple dominance of the tablet market? I imagine there's an Android tablet that improves on it for pretty much every number...

Schoolkids learn coding at GCSE level in curriculum trial

pete23
IT Angle

I'm not fussed about training up the next set of programmers - the talented ones will auto assemble, the untalented ones can be bought in the 3rd world for 2p/kilo - but an understanding of code and how it works should be a mandatory part of the pre-GCSE syllabus, just at the

10 print "about time"

20 goto 10

level. At GCSE hopefully there'll be Raspberry Pi for everyone!

I suspect given the level of GCSE maths these days I'm being damned optimistic. Paging Frank Chalk to the thread... Syllabus rearrangement is to some degree a deck chairs/titanic affair. At least the Feng Shui of this arrangement is pleasing.

Icon: IT? bleh. Computer Science forever!

DARPA wants a working manned starship for $500k

pete23
FAIL

Assuming for the sake of argument...

...that Lewis can invalidate the opinion piece of his whole article in a single assumption, why does he bother? Expanding a bit upon the actual reportage would have been more interesting.

The KILLER MUTANT FUNGUS in YOUR DISHWASHER

pete23
Windows

That's my birthday pressie sorted out...

One subscription to Fungal Biology please, love.

Terrorists stamp on Indy's Kate Middleton jelly bean

pete23

marmite

I'm a bit ambivalent about marmite AND nipples. Does this make a nonsense of existence?

Bit upset - I was hoping the Indy had fallen foul of "render a query argument as a title"-itis. This... not so innaresting.

Chicken Little report: Sat-nav dependency spells DISASTER!

pete23
Heart

No content, but...

<3 Lewis Page's defence coverage.

BURNING LUST for SEXY BUSTY BLONDES - Science explains

pete23
Happy

Oh dear.

Based on the crop of stories - complete with subsubeditor taglines of excruciating excrebility - awaiting me after lunch, did you have your 1 December drinks today?

Bloggers swallow iPhone 4 screen weakness claim

pete23
Gates Horns

cased and slippy

Hmmm. I actually got a case due to the fact that the iPhone 4 slid off everything, landed face down and scratched the screen. I'm unsurprised by the headline, as my 3G managed two scratches of significance in 2Y and my 4 managed 10 in a month.

Anecdotal evidence may cause cancer.

Google Earth 'Liquid Galaxy' open sourced*

pete23
Coat

I think

I should get the GF this for her birthday rather than the Cayman S.

Apple to reveal musical something on September 1

pete23
Jobs Halo

Or GarageBand

Or something.

Wikileaks clambers aboard Pirate Party network

pete23
Coat

More posts with classic New Order album subtitles please

Nostalgia for the 40+ demographic. Surely Movement / Lowlife / Technique could be shoehorned easily into a weeks subs. Nothing post-1988 though, if possible, it's all been downhill since then.

Czechs toast Bud-beating beer win

pete23
Pint

Pub anyone?

I really have a fierce thirst now. And not for the merkin piss at that...

Apple updates MacBook Pro notebooks

pete23
Jobs Halo

higher rez - 1650x1050?

you can get 1650x1050 as a BTO option on the 15" now which seems like a sensible rez... 1920x1200 is just too much at that size.

Microscope-wielding boffins crack cordless phone crypto

pete23
Happy

Scanner

Someone get this kit to Robin Rimbaud - there's been a paucity of Scanner over the past few years...

O2 takes a Christmas break

pete23
FAIL

intermittently down since last night at least

Couldn't use GMaps to find the damned pub we were going to:-(

Seemed to work much later in the evening, briefly.

Dead again today. Grrrrr. Might try the APN workaround...

Star-watchers: Famous moon left half-smeared by dirty ring

pete23
Pint

All these dirty rings...

In my day, it was all Eye of Iapetus jokes round 'ere.

- A Concerned Clarke Fan

SGI's Itanium super smokes Java test

pete23
Thumb Down

open to interpretation

"The real pity (perhaps) is that Java, because of its interpreted nature and therefore its high overhead compared to compiled languages..."

did we miss the last ten years of JIT compilation technology work? once you've been through a piece of code a couple of times and the JIT has been at it, it's not interpreted at all... java's reluctance to give you access to the low-level fiddly bits you need to implement efficient HPC code is the real problem.

is C++ comparable to FORTRAN these days? people were up to all sorts of template-unpleasantness to do efficient vector calculations last time i looked...