* Posts by fnj

194 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

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F-35 firmware patches to be rolled out 'like iPhone updates'

fnj

Re: Or more to the point ...

"Rouge" state. Would that be jeweler's rouge or mortician's rouge? Bwahaha.

Headless body found near topless beach: Missing private sub journalist identified

fnj

Obvious and stupid mistake

One look at any photo and it's obvious as hell the sub was a lot longer than "26 feet", snort. It's pretty obvious the length was 26 METERS. God help us from idiot writers who don't know the difference between feet and meters. Who gives length in feet of anything anywhere in the world outside of the the US?

75 years ago, one Allied radar techie changed the course of WW2

fnj

Re: There's a good book called Bat 21

Moved from Korea to Vietnam? I think you are confused. There is a book Bat-21, you can find it on Amazon, but it is the same true story from Vietnam, just like the movie.

Red Hat banishes Btrfs from RHEL

fnj

Re: maintained as a JBOD DAS file system

CPUs and CPU licenses are far more expensive than a HW RAID controller and not only that they are slower too when it comes to things like the checksum calculations. These jobs are better off offloaded to a dedicated piece of HW IMHO.

Years ago, there used to be SOME validity to this. It's long gone now. Today's CPUs can burn through checksumming and parity calculations much faster than crappy RAID controllers can, and the load is inconsequential.

Atomic bonds: Gigabyte, Supermicro fire out boosted Atom CPU range

fnj

Tell me this is an elaborate joke

One single USB3 port, and VGA-only Aspeed video. If you use all 8 SATA ports, you have no PCIe whatever - thus no way to hook up any more SATA ports. OTOH, 4x gigabit ethernet is great.

fnj

Re: Coming soon

It's ECC, not EEC.

Samsung drops 128TB SSD and kinetic-type flash drive bombshells

fnj

"Someone above said that 1TB is all you need. Funny because that was what I was told about my 85MB drive and then my 850MB and then the 2GB one and just about every size increment after that."

Like "no one needs more than 100 hp in a car". Wait, that one is actually true...

fnj

Re: 128TB ?

@Lee D

Hear, hear! That's what I want, too. 1 TB - 2 TB 2.5" SATA SSDs. As cheap as possible. Couldn't care less about the performance; ALL SSDs are blindingly fast compared to ANY HDD.

No expensive NVMe crap here. I don't have the slots.

HMS Queen Liz will arrive in Portsmouth soon, says MoD

fnj

Re: tides and sailing ?

@CrazyOldCatMan

Woopsie, "steam" doesn't work any better than "sail". HMS Queen Elizabeth is combination gas turbine and diesel powered.

fnj

Re: I've been thinking about cheap ways to kill carriers.

You guys are all going at this the wrong way. Every ship in the water is as vulnerable as an egg shell to torpedoes, and that includes aircraft carriers. Torpedoes are the way to sink ships. They have antiaircraft missiles to deal with airplane attacks, and CIWS to put up at least some semblance of last ditch defense against incoming cruise missiles.

But they don't have squat to deal with homing torpedoes. If that thing is coming at you and you can't fox the homing guidance, you might as well cross yourself and pray. If it's wire guided, you don't even have the chance to fox it.

The torpedo can be delivered dirt cheap from even a small sub. Diesel powered works just as good if it can work into position. Nuclear is a slam dunk. There is also no reason I can think of why you couldn't design cruise missiles that carry torpedoes. It would take CIWS out of the picture.

The biggest battleships with the thickest armor ever built were sunk by ... torpedoes. In comparison, post WW II ships have essentially no armor at all. And those huge crews, vastly important for damage control, are gone.

Red Hat acquires Permabit to put the squeeze on RHEL

fnj

@john.jones.name

What the heck would netBSD supporting ZFS have to do with linux implementing it??? That doesn't make any sense.

fnj

@john.jones.name

Wrong. It's nothing to do with patents. The GPL is hostile to more-free licenses like Oracle's CDDL. Look, I hate Oracle too, but they are doing nothing to hinder anyone from using ZFS. FreeBSD is your clue to the truth of that.

Extreme trainspotting on Britain's highest (and windiest) railway

fnj

Texas

There are 27 counties in Texas each reaching an elevation of at least 1000 m.

fnj

Re: 1,097m (3,599ft)

@jake - Guadalupe Peak in Texas is 2667 m.

Concorde without the cacophony: NASA thinks it's cracked quiet supersonic flight

fnj

Re: Next, apply the technology to ...

@MadHacker - the muzzle velocity of the iconic handgun - the Browning M1911 - is only 825 ft/s, well below supersonic.

As you head off to space with Li-ion batts, don't forget to inject that liquefied gas into them

fnj

Re: Article completely misses key misses

-20C=-68F

WTH?! -20C is -4F.

Pai guy not too privacy shy, says your caller ID can't block IP, so anons go bye

fnj

Re: @Charles 9, re: fake info.

@Shadow Systems: ah, "ostentatious" and "ostensible" are completely different words.

Blighty's buying another 17 F-35s, confirms the American government

fnj

Re: I wouldn't call the F-18 one of the most successful combat aircrafts [sic]

Err, the plural of "aircraft" is "aircraft".

Plan to kill net neutrality is the best thing/worst thing ever! EVER!!1

fnj

Re: If US buggers up the net what happens to the rest of the world?

The internet is not just the web. Usenet is very much the internet. So is email. Fido, OTOH, is not. Fido is a pure point-to-point POTS modem network.

Toshiba spins out new NAS disk drive with its fastest transfer rate yet

fnj

Let's not be ignorant

Design life is not the same thing as MTBF. A population of a thousand with an MTBF of 1 million hours means that one failure can be expected in the whole population every 1 thousand hours, which is less than 6 weeks if operated 24x7.

Only someone very ignorant thinks that it means the "average" drive "should" last 1 million hours. The design life may be 5 years. MTBF only applies for the duration of the design life.

Robo-supercar hype biz Faraday Future has invented something – a new word for 'disrupt'

fnj

Re: Yeah right...

F1 cars are not geared for 0-60. This thing is right in the same range as a typical F1 car (2.1-2.7 seconds).

fnj

Re: What is truly disrupting...

It carries the tiresome and stupid trend toward rolling pillboxes with gun slits instead of windows to an extreme. Give me a BMW 2002 or an Audi 5000 any day.

Ruh-roh! Rick Ruhl rolled out of Ham Radio Deluxe in software kill-switch aftermath

fnj

Re: Read his apology carefully, folks.

Seriously, did you mean to say that? He claims his diabetes was caused by him making a threatening phone call? Are you sure you didn't word that backwards?

"Blame X on Y" means X was caused by Y, not Y was caused by X.

Say bye-bye to net neutrality next year, gloats FCC commish Pai

fnj

Pai?

I've watched Kill Bill, and that doesn't look like Pai Mei. Where's the long white beard? They must have the name wrong.

fnj

Re: " "give him a chance" to change to "Give him the F***ing Boot" "

dark suites

"Suites", LOL.

HMS Queen Lizzie to carry American jets and sail in support of US foreign policy

fnj

Re: Bad idea

[HMS Hood] cost just about as many lives as a sunk modern carrier

When virtually the entire complement of HMS Hood went down with the ship, that was only about 1400, not much more than a US heavy cruiser. A Nimitz class aircraft carrier carries over 5000, and even a WW II Essex class carried over 3000.

If we ever lose a Nimitz, that could more than equal the entire US death toll of the Normandy landings in the blink of an eye.

fnj

we surrendered HK

The UK surrendered HK 9600 km away, but the US surrendered the Canal Zone 1900 km away, and many US ports are run by foreign organizations.

Why your gigabit broadband lags like hell – blame Intel's chipset

fnj

Re: From the original article

[Expletive deleted] Whining about windows 10

I choose not to match your rudeness, but jeeze, did it ever occur to you that there is a REASON everybody hates it? I knew enough never to touch Windows at all after 7, and damn little after XP. I have been almost 100% Windows-free for over a decade, having jumped into Linux beginning 22 years ago, and do not miss any part of it.

fnj

Lucked out

Just recently purchased an SB6183 to replace an ancient obsolescent D-Link DOCSIS 2.0 cable modem. Sure looks like I dodged a bullet this time!

USS Zumwalt gets Panama tug job after yet another breakdown

fnj

Re: Welllllll. A B2 was something like a $Bn and this is much larger so by military standards

I always questioned the vast cost of modern weapons. A B-17 cost about $250,000 in WW II, which inflates to approximately $3.4 million today. Manpower costs and losses aside, which do you think would do a better job of pounding jihadis, one B-2 with 18,000 kg of bombs for $1 billion, or 294 B-17s with 294,000 kg of bombs for the same price? Even against a first-class military opponent, I think the 294 would have a better chance of at least some of them reaching and damaging the target than I give the single B-2. Or take the P-51 at $50,000, inflated to $700,000. Compare 143 P-51s to one F-35 at $100 million. My money's on the 143 in a dogfight. The F-35 would run out of ammo long before it could shoot them all down.

fnj

UK electric drive warships have had their share of problems, and the same is true of just about anything cutting edge and clever, civil or military.

Correct, but electric drive is hardly new. Turboelectric drive was routine in the 1920s. Colorado, New Mexico, and Tennessee class battleships, USS Langley and the Lexington class aircraft carriers. In WW II, 102 Buckley class destroyer escorts, 25 T2 class oilers, and close to all of the US submarines. Many ships of other nations, including ocean liners. It was a very reliable technology right from the beginning.

NASA sets fire to stuff in SPAAACE. On purpose. Because science

fnj

Re: How does this work?

I'd assume that the air in a human habitable module would be constantly blown around to stop the 'nauts from suffocating on their own CO2.

Not necessarily. Nothing could STOP the CO2 from diffusing into the atmosphere. Same principle as an airship. Air inevitably leaks into the gas container, but it doesn't settle on the bottom. The whole contents become contaminated and have to purified.

Irish eyes are crying: Tens of thousands of broadband modems wide open to hijacking

fnj

NEVER trust an ISP-controlled firewall/router

Happy horse-pukky like this is the reason I have my own SEPARATE cable modem and firewall/router (a Sonicwall). If my ISP would not allow me to use my own cable modem and foisted their own modem/router on me, I would still put my own firewall/router in series with it. I wouldn't be happy, but at least I would still be reasonably secure.

Lenovo intros monster disk box

fnj

... or ZFSonLinux

Britain must send its F-35s to Italy for heavy overhauls, decrees US

fnj

Re: Look on the bright side

I wonder if traps could be added and the Eurofighter modified to take off from a ramp?

No to both of those. Well, that is, anything is POSSIBLE, but it would be just as cheap to design a new STOL. What REALLY ought to be done is build more Harriers. If the tooling and plans have all been destroyed by criminal idiots, reverse-engineer the things. I'm not kidding. It worked for Stalin when he had the Tu-4 copied from interned B-29s.

fnj

Re: Widow Maker

So the F16 HAS to be replaced, not a matter of IF, but when.

Why? No, I'm serious; why? Much, much older B-52s are still flying and will be for a long, long time to come. So are DC-3s. Heck, there are still two B-24s and assorted other WW II warbirds that are flying. If wing spars and other pieces do fatigue, you just replace the pieces.

Trump's torture support could mean the end of GCHQ-NSA relationship

fnj

Are you referring to that thing that has now been investigated no less than TEN TIMES without finding anything that is legally actionable?

Some of us believe that action was taken by the American people on November 8. Kind of like the British people taking their own action with the Brexit vote.

Kotkin: Why Trump won

fnj

It's not "why", it's "how"

First, let's remember that Trump appears to have LOST the popular vote by a slight margin (counting is not yet 100% complete). Given that a Presidential election depends on the summation of the results in the various States, Trump's win resulted from nothing more than a series of razor-thin margins, many of them so close as to be statistical dead heats. Reading anything more into it than that the country is exactly 50-50 split along ideological lines would be folly.

Finally, the fact is that he HASN'T won UNTIL the electors chosen to the Electoral College have their individual meetings in their respective States on December 19, cast their actual votes, the results are transmitted to the President of the Senate and certain other authorities by December 28, and a joint session of Congress meets January 6 to count the electoral votes and certify the results.

How many US citizens (let alone people in the world) actually understand this process?

Laziness and hate drove me to invent my storage engine concept, says MariaDB's CTO

fnj

Going public???

How can an open source project GO PUBLIC?

Intel punches out data centre flash cardlet

fnj

Junk

Complete lack of data protection means this is garbage. A useless toy.

Samsung are amateurs – NASA shows how you really do a battery fire

fnj

Re: Only 96 batteries

it's a very bad idea to use water on a lithium fire

Yes, burning lithium METAL cannot be extinguished with water. No, lithium ION batteries do not contain lithium METAL (or, pedantically, only minute quantities in free form). Water is fine and effective in sufficient quantities. The FAA tells flight attendants to use water or carbonated beverage on lithium ion battery fires.

Actually, yes, Samsung, you do have to pay Apple $120m

fnj

An idle fantasy

This is just an idle fantasy, but exactly what could the court do if Samsung said "hell no, we ain't payin, so shaddup".

UK will build new nuclear bomb subs, says Defence Secretary

fnj

Re: Shouldn't the new names all start with a "W"?

Excuse me for veering off course a bit, but when did Boadicea get bowdlerized into Boudicea? When I learned it in the, ahem, 1950s it was always spelled Boadicea (and pronounced bow-a-di-see-a). Next thing I expect to be told "veni, vidi, vici" is to be lisped as "weni, widi, wici" and "Caesar" is not "see-zer" but "kigh-zer".

FCC death vote looms for the Golden Age of American TV

fnj

Golden age my foot

As a USAian, color me thunderstruck. I find USA commercial TV to be a vast wasteland. OTOH I am awestruck by some of the UK productions: Endeavor, Wallander, Luther, Wolf Hall, Inspector Morse, Sherlock, Churchill's Secret.

UK copyright troll weeps, starts 20-week stretch in the cooler for beating up Uber driver

fnj

Foul psychopathic behavior

I side with those aghast at the light sentence. Kicking someone in the head while they are at your mercy is ATTEMPTED HOMICIDE; probably attempted murder, considering this low-life initiated violence in response to an innocuous situation.

Only in cartoons can you kick people in the head or slug them on the crown with the butt of a handgun and assume the result is going to be only a headache. In real life these are actions with likely lethal or maiming (fractured neck) results.

It's OK for the FBI's fake hacks to hack suspects' PCs, says DoJ watchdog

fnj

Always watch the watchers

So who is going to bring the "justice" [snicker] department to justice?

VW Dieselgate engineer sings like a canary: Entire design team was in on it – not just a few bad apples, allegedly

fnj

Re: Disgusted

Actually, it was acid rain from particulates in the 70's that drove the US/Congress to gas (or petrol) engines over diesel engines.

No it wasn't. First, Congress had nothing to do with air quality regulation, beyond setting up the EPA, an independent authority. Second, US automobiles were 100% gasoline powered from way before the EPA. Third, acid rain is exacerbated by all combustion which liberates SO2 and NOX - not specifically or especially diesel engines. It is true that diesel fuel in the US (which was and continues to be used by locomotives, trucks, off-road vehicles, and a few imported cars sch as Mercedes and later VW) had a shockingly high sulfur content, but that wasn't rectified until 2006, when it was lowered to significantly below the level mandated for gasoline.

fnj

Re: It seem to me

It is not the tesla owners fault the power plants currently are coal

They aren't; or more precisely, more are non-coal than coal. Worldwide, 39% of all electricity is generated by burning coal; 22% gas; 5% oil; and 35% hydro, nuclear, and "other". In Europe, coal is only 25%. In North America, 33%.

[2014 figures] chart

fnj

Re: It seem to me

@Alan Brown:

Some of the proposed new standards are impossible for petrol engines to meet too.

The green mania is a fetish. It's not about a reasoned tradeoff. It's gone way beyond that. You couldn't have the industrial revolution if you started now. No part of it. We would be limited to hunting and trapping and picking berries, warming ourselves over open fires, the lucky ones having caves. Disease would be so rampant that life expectancy would be about 25.

US Marine Corps to fly F-35s from HMS Queen Lizzie as UK won't have enough jets

fnj

Re: it's Pearl Harbor

American place, English language, English spelling.

I don't think so. The country on whose territory a place is mapped gets to name the place. Look, I think the American shortening "ou" to "o" was stupid, just like I think the inability of the British to pronounce their "r"s is stupid, but these are not windmills at which I spend much of my energy tilting.

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