Posts by Tom Samplonius

The other OS...

"Didn't HP inherit another OS from Compaq in addition to Tandem's NonStop stuff? Hey Skaugen (and maybe Dan too), here's a hint for you: MVS (some re-assembly required)."

I think you are mixed up. MVS is IBM's mainframe OS. The "other Compaq OS" is Tru64 (aka Digital Unix, aka OSF/1). Tru64 is basically dead, as it only runs Alpha CPUs. HP is ending support for Tru64 end of next year. Initially, HP actually planned to merge HP/UX features into Tru64, but and kill HPUX, but they did the opposite.

Besides Intel's lukewarm promotion of Itanium, HP hasn't exactly been creating a lot of excitement around HP-UX either. Support for a maximum of 128 cores sounds pretty rural in 2011.

Home routers...

Most home routers that run a Unix-like OS, are using dnsmasq to provide DHCP. dnsmasq is a lot smaller than ISC DHPCd, which these days is quite a large daemon process. And dnsmasq also provides a lot of other useful services, including a DNS cache.

Read your own articles

Actually, The Register reported on this about a week before the iPad2 launch. The iPad1 was not locked, even when sold by carriers as Apple only offered unlocked units. But Apple has reversed this policy, and now makes carrier specific models that are locked to those carriers.

I was hoping that Apple would get more customer friendly. If I've received a carrier subsidy for my iPad2, I'm already locked in by a contract. But preventing customers from temporarily swapping in a different SIM while traveling is just mean spirited.

Umm...

But isn't the biggest reason that Redhat is so far out in front, is because they have a larger product portfolio? As you said, MySQL was growing quite nicely. If MySQL had 9 other products besides, just a database, they be at $1B too. Redhat was smart to acquire all sorts of components of the stack. And the value of a full stack is greater than each individual piece. And Redhat is still growing their stack. Their devs have their fingers into the AMQP (messaging) standardization, which is a huge enterprise cash cow.

Canonical doesn't have enough pieces in house to compete. It doesn't seem like they even want to compete actually.

Novell was split between developing their Linux stack and keeping the Groupwise & Netware legacy alive, and failed at both.

@P Zero

Actually, The Register has been banned from Apple press events already. If you want to get on the list, you have to print only positive things.

And the run down of the hits and misses for the iPad2 is accurate, and not certainly not positive. The fact that memory isn't disclosed, is the biggest concern for me. I have an original iPhone 3, and it is getting worse and worse, because new apps require so much memory. I'd only consider the iPad2, if it has 512MB.

Classic "Dutch Sandwich"

The Dutch JV is that the new company can make a Dutch Sandwich. It's a classic tax move.

In fact, the tax advantages may be the only benefit of the JV to NEC and Lenevo.

Re: iPad why?

@Gadget Rage is BAD: "With apps like VLC and Cinexplayer i can already play all my videos on iPad and iPhone without jail breaking anything"

VLC has already been removed from the AppStore. It is against Apple, so Apple removed it. You should also remove it from your iPad.

@Destroy All Monsters

No need to get melodramatic...

SQLNinja only tests SQL injection on MS-SQL servers. Which isn't something that is even available on Fedora. So why include it as a Fedora package?

If you don't want criminals and three-letter agencies to own your data, make it secure to begin. Just like the Google streetview war driving scandal. Everyone is outraged by what Google did, but no one seems a bit concerned that those APs are wide open, and are still open today.

Re: So this reactor took a trip...

@Destroy All Monsters "I mean, ok, how regularly f*cktarded and irretrievably ignorant does one need to be to think that a regulation of that kind makes any sense?"

Well, how ignorant are you? If there aren't regulations on what energy producers could say, they easily manipulate the market with false or misleading news. Energy producers rarely own a single plant.

Imagine if one of your plants were to develop a crack in the containment vessel and the plant had to be idled? That would take a long time to repair. What happened if this crack was discovered just a week before a number of contracts were up, driving up prices immediately, because there is now less supply. And then what would happen, if the plant then announces the contractor doing the work had a faulty x-ray machine, and everything is fine, and resumes production?

There are good reasons for most regulations.

TFE1 was horrible on the Wii

@SKiNFreak: Actually, TFE1 was horrible on the Wii. Levels were cut down from the PS3 version. Physics was simplified.

Here is a decent review of TFE1 on the Wii (spoiler: it's bad):

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/251-Star-Wars-The-Force-Unleashed

Dubai murder?

No one was every caught or even identified after the Dubai murders, so associating this with Mossad is pretty preliminary at best.

Most strange, is that two of the assassins left Dubai on flights to Iran. Iran is suspicious of all foreigners, particularly ones from western countries. Iran imprisons foreign hikers on their borders for months. But for some reason two western foreigners coming on a flight from Dubai just disappeared, and Iran's has no idea where they went. Normally, the capture of foreign spies would be cause for a huge media campaign.

And while Mossad is often spoken of as being the ultimate murdering bad asses, most people forget that Mossad supplied F16 parts to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. So while the current gov't leaders in Iran might get a lot of lift in the polls with their anti-Isreal rhetoric, the reality is that the Mossad has an understanding with the Iranian military.

So the Mossad may have killed this guy, but Iran probably sanctioned it. Iran has a big probably with terrorism as well, and perhaps this guy was supplying weapons or explosives to them as well.

"pane of glass"

is an term meaning a single unified interface. As opposed to swivel chair operations.

Re: Sensible ruling

@Trevor_Pott: "I wonder if it can serve as precedent to prevent Google turning our searches over?"

No. Compliance with search warrants, and court orders is a different matter. Google was handing over search data to comply with search warrants. If they didn't, they would be fined, or their officers would be in jail now. Compliance with a request state taxation official, is rather different. Don't they tech Civics in school anymore?

@Penguin herder: "I hope anyone thinking of moving their family and/or business to North Carolina will think twice based on this. Kudos to Amazon for standing up to them!"

I think people will think twice, but not for the reason you think. If the state is unable to tax purchases made from out of state entities, then the businesses actually in the state need to pay more. Rather than kudos, it sucks to be North Carolina. So much for roads, schools, bridges, police, or sewers. So definitely don't move there. Not only will you have to make the difference for the freeloaders, their infrastructure sucks too.

The state tax system in the US is broken. All 50 states should agree to implement the same state tax system. A state tax treaty. The current system is a huge barrier to running a small-medium business in the US. Especially as more commerce moves online. Initially, it will be a lot of kudos, as businesses avoid tax (tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance is not), but someone has to pay for all of the crap that you use every day. The current system was created, when small businesses would do business with a single state, or open offices in each additional state. Now that you can sell complete virtual products or services to anyone anywhere, taxes get messy.

Re: $5.7B!?

Facebook is turning a profit now, and has for a while. Now that it has no burn to contend with, it is just a matter of "pouring gas on the hockeystick", as Google would say.

As far as "Wall Street" will buy anything, Wall Street doesn't really buy anything. They buy things on behalf of people like you, and take a commission. As Warren Buffet says, "take advantage of market folly" (to make money). I can only image what the firms who are taking the lead on this IPO will personally make. 5% probably. And probably more, and they probably get huge bonuses if the stock rises after the IPO (to discourage traders from shorting their own stock, and then dumping it to drop the price).

It is really about...

... the new incumbents making sure they stay the incumbents by making sure they have irons in all the fires. Facebook was for sale at least once during its early history (apparently to Yahoo), and look how that turned out. Before one line of business declines, you must make sure you caught the next wave, before it makes you irrelevant.

Of course, we also having a new business environment, where if you are #2 or less, you might as well not be there. Yahoo was the number #2 search provider, and shareholders bitched that they weren't profitable enough, and wanted to sell. But as soon as that happened, the talent left, and they lost focus on their business, making the business even worse. So if you are #2 or less, you don't even matter anymore. Who is #2 to Facebook? No one cares. Who is #2 to Zygna? No one cares. And in the social space, it is compounded by the viral nature of social.

Re: The ITU Have A Certain Set Of Expectations

"The old men at the ITU are stuck trying to adhere to their original charter, which was to produce secure and reliable communications systems with clearly defined API and protocols. The progressive younger members don't even know what that means."

Clearly this article struck a nerve for you, as likely one of those old guards. It is not too late to change. Clearly, the TCP/IP was the better protocol. And OSI was probably unimplementable. ITU specs simply don't work. And it the height of irony to support the ITU, after the failure of OSI, on a website accessible over TCP/IP, not OSI, and using DNS, rather than X.500.

And the stuff they have actually put out, is bizarrely complex. Look at the SS7 international standards. Even country has their own specs, that have to translated to a international spec, and back again. The only way to make this secure and reliable, is a lot of money. Thankfully, SIGTRAN (an IETF protocol) will likely subsume SS7 at some point.

I love the quote from RFC2693: "The X.500 idea of a distinguished name (a single, globally unique name that everyone could use when referring to an entity) is also not likely to occur."

War is about winning...

... so it is inevitable when soldiers on one side whoops it up when they finally hit something. Especially in a war that has lacked any long term engagements, but has been a series of skirmishes and booby traps. It is human nature to be glad to have finally done something. Heavy action for weeks at a time, would normally result in soldiers that would be a lot more somber, or perhaps just weary.

As far as the military claiming they don't know what was going on, in a given day, they still don't. Yes, they might have a zillion incident reports, but those are just reports written hours or sometimes days later. And that is just what the soldiers saw. How many combatants were really there? Those reports will never contain every relevant detail, because it is impossible to have complete situational awareness.

War really doesn't change. It is boring, dangerous for everyone, and even more dangerous when people get bored, because they get sloppy, or overzealous. And ultimately, when you kill people, it is a messy emotional business. But "Faill America"? No, that is just how war is. Your country would be the same if not worse at war.

BTW, the US military is in Afghanistan at the pleasure of the Afghanistan gov't. If the gov't asked them to leave, they would. It can't even be called a "war" anymore. The Afghanistan gov't ultimately will cook up some sort of power share deal with the Taliban, but the keep the US military around to keep pressure on the Taliban and various other warlords to come to a settlement.

Re: Talent isn't as scarce as they would like us to believe

"I know it is in these top board members interests to continue this lie as their huge salaries depend on shareholders being hoodwinked into thinking they are irreplaceable."

Board members do not receive salaries. Their direct expenses are covered, and they are paid a meeting fee. Their compensation only comes from being owners. So they are usually pretty motivated to have someone get the value of the company up.

Executive talent is scarce. Most people don't know the basics of even how public company's work, including yourself. Usually CEOs held either VP or C level positions elsewhere. And VPs were Directors previous. And Directors were previous Managers. Yes, the few that make it are the "elite", but that is because they made it.

Generaly blade servers are easier to cool

"...and that most of the current blade chassis designs can't cool themselves properly without refrigerated supply air etc there is a missing justification for the claim..."

That is definitely not the case with the Bladecenter, having several of these in a data centre. Blades in generally can sustain a much higher delta T (temperature increase through the server) than any other type of server. This is a huge benefit to cooling. So you can take in 22C air, and put out 40C air. That means per unit of air, you are carrying much more heat that with 1U or 2U servers.

BladeCenters from IBM only have two fans per 14 blades. You should read up on fan law. Each fan motor is 120W, at 100% speed, but when running at normal 30% or 50% speed, ituses much less power. And certainly much less power than the 4 to 6 fans per 1U or 2U server.

A data centre that can't handle blades, was buggered up already. You should probably invest in some CFD software, so you can fix the problems. TileFlow is a good option. Blaming the servers for exposing the issues is pretty transparent.

Board's frequently resign en-masse

Umm... boards frequently resign en-masse. Especially, in the US. Board members can be sued for breach of fiduciary duty. If you are a public company, the company is expected to maintain a insurance policy for each board member to protect them from lawsuits. I was at a public company, that due to an administrative issue during transfer of the policy to a new company, was planning to operate without a policy for a week. The entire board was going to resign on the spot, because they wouldn't be members for even one day without insurance.

It is just too easy to start a lawsuit. If the board insurance goes away, or the expected liability of an "issue" exceeds the policy, the entire board is gone.

BTW, the board is liable if management embezzles the assets. The management too. And it is probably a criminal offense. I'm aware of this happening in any large US public company's. But again, in the US, CEOs and CFOs of public company's can and do go to jail for serious offenses.

Too many scammers

I disagree with the statement that the lawyers behind this are "human rights criminals". Clearly a smiling picture is not sufficient to prove anything. But some pictures playing sports, for example? Nothing in the original article says they were just looking for a "happy day". This person isn't asking for life-long disability because they aren't happy. Being unhappy is not worth anything. Being unable to work, is worth something though.

The only reason why people go looking for pictures in cases like, is because the medical evidence is sketchy. But if someone claims pain, and there is no apparent medical reason, you have to wonder. So probably a total scam.

And no risk for the gov't to create legislation. Insurance matters are civil. There are all sorts of data retention laws, but they would require that Facebook actually delete data at some point. Though I don't know that Facebook can actually do that. Their architecture can't actually remove pictures from storage (read up on Haystack), they just mark them as deleted. They probably only purge deleted pictures every 6 months or so.

It is kind of suspicious, that the pictures even need to be restored. I've never seen a single one of my friends delete their entire profile, pictures, and posts, and go offline.

Umm...

Zeus infected systems probably number in the millions by now. The latest Twitter thing was installing Zeus via a drive-by-download. Zeus is freaking everywhere now. Stop what you are doing, and update your system. You wouldn't believe the pages of alerts I get every day from customer systems infected with Zeus.

Now Zeus just needs to be spread to your phone, and you are completely screwed. So, no, not a good idea for you bank to drop the SMS confirmations, because without the SMS check, your account would already be empty.

Titanium allergy rates

Titanium allergy rates are about 4%. Titanium is an inert metal, so there is a certain amount of disbelief that the 4% even exists. And the 4% rate is what a producer of Titanium allergy testing products states, so the general population rates are probably a lot lower.

The remaining 4% will have to get by with stainless steel.

Re: A chip maker?

"What, in addition to the $7.4bn he spent acquiring the last chip maker? SPARC not good enough?"

That question doesn't need to be asked. Of course, SPARC isn't good enough. Even Sun knew that. And of the 7.4B, little of it was chips. The value in Sun was the customers.

Re:Finally, network kit that cools properly

Actually, Arista Networks switches have configurable fan direction. No need to order a different unit, so you can move a switch from a top-of-rack to end-of-row configuration.

Lack of RD, or lack of waste?

The thing is, that if HP invested more in R&D, would it have amounted to anything?

I saw a posting from the Personal Computing division complaining that their R&D budget was only 1.5% of revenue, and that of course they wouldn't be able to put out an iPad competitor at level. But would they have been able to do it at 2.5% or even 5%? Probably not.

The frontline HP staff can complain about the lack of R&D, but would they have delivered anything worth buying, had they been given the money? Seriously, of all of the company's in the world, does anything think that HP has the design expertise to make an competitor to the iPad that would have made money?

As far as HPUX, that ship sailed years ago. It was already dead when Carly took over. Too late to revive it now. HP was doing its "Windows NT is the future" thing for a while, and transferred a bunch of VMS tech to Microsoft, as HP hoped to offload the OS R&D to MS.

And NonStop? Seriously? Yes, great engineering, like 10 years ago. But an underpowered architecture today. Might as well buy the IBM crack, and get a mainframe. At least IBM mainframes are fast, and scale to huge workloads. Probably would cost the same, and at least IBM has a proven track record of support mainframe sites. Talk to a VMS user, about their confidence in HP.

Re: Why Hurd?

"Hurd and his predecessor Carly Fiorina were overpaid. The brought no value to HP and left the company poorer than when they came."

You say that, but under Hurd's leadership, HP hit $100B in revenue for the first time, and beat IBM on revenue for the first time. So "poorer" is relative.

How many of these "Hurd ruined HP" posts are by the excess employees that Hurd cut? I guess those people are poorer, but Hurd left HP in good shape, and in much better market position than when he took it over. Yes, he had to cut unproductive divisions, but clearly those divisions were contributing.

This is a patrol craft

This thing is designed for patrol use. There are a lot of UAVs in the sky already, and they aren't crashing into mountains very often, or being lost to enemy fire. And the use case, is patrol, not an active war zone. So, it will be searching for hostiles, who are trying to go unnoticed.

Yes, at 3000 metres, some large caliber weapons could hit it. But also, bullet source detectors would instantly pin point the direction of the fire. Enemy forces would be smart enough to not fire at it, because it would reveal their position. They wouldn't be able to destroy a P-791 and leave the area, before it located the source of fire, and transmitted the location, and a Reaper is diverted to the area. And the Reaper would only have to get within 8km before it could start firing back.

Radar cross sections don't matter either. Hostile forces in Afghanistan aren't lugging around radar sets. When they are attacked from the air, it is usually a Hellfire missile from below the horizon, or behind a mountain, directed by a laser designator on a UAV, or a US military ground patrol nearby. I bet the P-971 will be loaded with target designators.

I think there just be might UAV overload at some point. They can UAVs cover every sq km, but who is going to monitor and sign off on targets? Yes, a UAV that can stay in the air for a week, cuts down on ground crew, but you still need a 24x7 team watching the feeds.

Re: Wait...

"....he has a management team? When are they going to tell him to stop "singing"?"

Well, 50 cent has an estimated net worth of $440 million. So, he doesn't need to sing anymore, but I think he management team would like him to continue doing what he is doing, because it is a lot more successful any of the people reading The Reg, let alone writing for it.

Kim Kardashian is only a worth a paltry $12 million. But even with a stash that small, she doesn't need to care about any of you.

@david wilson

"I do love the way that vehicle stops that end up finding drugs, weapons, or money are almost always described as 'routine'" ...

It is far weirder that people don't know laws involving search. In the US and Canada, vehicles can't be searched during traffic stops, unless there is "probable cause". So, if they see blood, weapons, or body parts, in plain view, then there is cause for search. If they search without cause, then the evidence is thrown out.

It gets very complex sometimes. Locally, the police obtained a court order to attach a GPS tracker to a gang leader's car. While looking for a location to install the tracker, the police tech found a gun. Even though the gun was unlicensed, they can't prosecute on the gun, they only had a wiretap order for the GPS tracker, not a search warrant. So the tech put the gun back. And later, the police did find the gun during a search, but the defense argued that the tech who installed the GPS tracker on the first warrant, told the investigators the location of the gun, and since the first warrant was not a search warrant, that the gun evidence should be thrown out.

The balancing act between personal liberty and enforcement of the law is hard. It isn't helped by the fact, that most people's knowledge of law is based on TV and anecdotes.

Re: Can somebody please explain

IBM basically makes support contract mandatory on their high-end systems. So no specialized staff are required.

I'm remember "working" with an IBM "Shark" ESS. Our on-site staff couldn't even open it. It, like most IBM high-end gear, had a "phone home" system. IBM techs just showed up, did work, and recorded something in the maintenance log book. All part replacements, firmware replacement, just happen by themselves, and were all included in the cost of the unit.

So, no "priests" or "white coats" required.

Plus, uptimes of 10 years on average is pretty good too. If your business needs that, IBM is the only game in town.

Douglas Adams

Nice Hitchhiker reference there. I think the authors knowledge of literature is largely wasted on this audience though.

Supplied by NASA

Since they are supplied by NASA, NASA is likely keeping copies. NASA supplies all sorts of raw data for universities that are conducting research. Several universities could be getting the same data.

Sun research is particularly relevant right now, since the Sun is currently breaking several known patterns on sunspots and energy output. Previously observed cycles have been broken, and no one really knows why.

"Tier 1" doesn't mean what you think it does

It surprises me when experts say stuff, like "...testing in the Tier 1 data center..."

Tier 1 data centers are the lowest form of data center. Tier 4 is the best. See TIA-942, Uptime Institute, etc.

Re: eh?

Mr ChriZ: The WD drive you mention is a 5400 rpm laptop drive, probably with a SATA interface, not a 7200 rpm enterprise disk with a SAS interface.

Theora also a problem...

Except that MPEG-LA has announced that their patents cover basically any kind of video encoding. So even though Theora may be open source, that doesn't mean that won't have to pay a license fee to MPEG-LA some day for it. Canonical is wise to stay clear.

It is too early to see if Google is planning to put VP8 out there enough, and put significant dollars into a legal defense. Or even whether they think they have a good chance of winning that fight. Maybe they don't think it is a lock either, which is why they have been so slow to open source and freely release VP8.

Not to mention, the lock that MPEG-LA has only video equipment:

http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA