* Posts by Arbee

42 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Apr 2011

Rust in peace: Memory bugs in C and C++ code cause security issues so Microsoft is considering alternatives once again

Arbee

Re: Hummmmm

That TIOBE index is...um....bullshit?

C# is at 4.4% while VB.Net is at 4.2%? Even Microsoft are happy to admit that C# is an order of magnitude more popular than VB (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/the-net-language-strategy/)

Of course, if you look at their approach, you realise that asking Google how many hits it returns is *maybe* not the most accurate methodology (https://tiobe.com/tiobe-index/programming-languages-definition/)

The best and worst of GitHub: Repos wiped without notice, quickly restored – but why?

Arbee

Re: Backup - ever heard of it?

You guess wrong - a 10 second check on their website (https://backhub.co/) reveals:

> Backups include metadata, such as issues

I don't understand why lazy comments like this get modded +20/0, while the helpful parent comment gets +5/-3.

Beyond the Grave: US Navy pays peanuts for Windows XP support

Arbee

Re: windows for warships or for battleships?

...and minesweeper.

Taylor Swift boycotts Apple Music over no-pay-for-plays shocker

Arbee

Re: Apple - Profit Above All.

They are obviously not thieves. They have proposed a specific type of contract, and the other parties (the labels and artists) are free to accept or reject that contract. Taylor Swift has rejected it, as is her prerogative, while others will accept it. It is purely an economic and business issue - I don't really see how morality enters into it.

'If people can encrypt their cell phones, what's stopping them encrypting their PCs?'

Arbee

<upvotes> 1 +

Hacker catches Apple's Lightning in a jailbroken bottle

Arbee

Re: "If the cables *eventuate* - ffs !

I saw that too and had to Google it to check. My new word of the day :)

It's 2015 and ATMs don't know when a daughterboard is breaking them

Arbee

Re: First rule

Mostly because it's a waste of everyone's time - yours, the cashiers, and everyone behind you in the queue.

Oi, UK.gov. WHERE'S THE DETAIL on your Google Tax?

Arbee

Re: Tax on profits...

The idea is that you are taxing the profits the multinationals *would* have made if they had not transferred the profits to other countries. Since the tax-rate of profits is only 21% anyway, I think the idea is more to get companies to declare them in the UK at 21%, rather than have an expensive court battle followed by a rate of 25% on those profits.

In practice, the law is likely to be a massive pig to write, but the above is the principle behind it...

Why can't a mobile be more like a cordless kettle?

Arbee

Nonsense. It takes a couple of kWh of electricity to charge a phone once a day for a whole year! Let's be pessimistic and say you're half as efficient wireless charging - oh no, you've had to spend another 50p for the year. That's gonna make an impact on my £800 pa electricity bill!

Yes, if you aggregate it over ten million people it starts to sound like a lot, but it's roughly equivalent to everyone making one more cup of tea a month - i.e. irrelevant.

References:

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2012/09/it-costs-basically-nothing-to-charge-your-phone-for-a-year/

Arbee

Yeah - but we measure phone batteries in terms of milliamps, so it's sort of not worth caring about...

Who loves office space? Dell does: Virtualization to banish workstations from under desks

Arbee

Re: Gee...

Can you clarify precisely what your workloads are though? Thin client is a 50 year old idea, but doing workstation-class loads (rendering, CAD design, etc.) is a difficult thing to achieve.

Dear Apple: Want to stay in business? Make an iPhone people can afford

Arbee

"invariably slow"

"Invariably, we and most investors"

You keep-a using that-a word. I do no' think it means what you think-a it means.

WHY didn't Microsoft buy RIM? Us business blokes would have queued for THAT phone

Arbee

Re: That last sentence says it all.

Microsoft is now widely known for their security - they literally wrote the book on developing secure software, from the (painful) lessons they learned from MS.Blaster and all the other attacks on the XP/2003/IIS 5 time of software.

The book: http://www.amazon.com/Security-Development-Lifecycle-Michael-Howard/dp/0735622140.

'Database failure ate my data' – Salesforce customer

Arbee
FAIL

Re: You certainly don't mean an "uptime of *30* years"

@Donald Becker

I'm pretty sure there is - the HP/Tandem NonStop system that runs the ATMs for Britain's biggest building society hasn't had any downtime in 20 years, so I suspect that there are plenty of other systems that have been running for 30 years (I just happen to know about that one).

Facebook's request to the flash industry: 'Make the worst flash possible'

Arbee
Joke

Re: I'd buy that

> (something caused that to get cut short)

It was probably the full stop.

Confirmed: Driverless cars to hit actual British roads by end of year

Arbee
Happy

Re: Ages away

Let me guess - you live near the Almondsbury Interchange?

I share your pain...

RBS Mainframe Meltdown: A year on, the fallout is still coming

Arbee
Alert

To the people asking what £450m will buy a bank...

For a good reference of what £450m will buy you, Nationwide recently completed their 5-year Voyager project, which replaced their Unisys mainframes running whatever banking application they did, with SAP Banking Platform. Essentially, this was a complete replacement of the back-end banking platform, a rewrite of most of the middleware, and a rewrite or replacement of most of their front-end applications. We commonly called it "rewriting the bank."

That cost £400m.

(Note they still have the mainframes, but they just have savings and mortgages).

CTO's man at VMware whistles an 'appy tune

Arbee

Re: Containerising

No - he means containerising. He's talking about putting applications into containers.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define%3Acontainarising

CURSE you, EINSTEIN! Humanity still chained in relativistic PRISON

Arbee
Boffin

Re: Stupid question

> (sorry I haven't figured out how to link to a specific time)

It's actually really easy with YouTube.

You just need to add a "t" parameter, giving the number of minutes and seconds you want to skip, e.g.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsytnJ_pSf8&t=0m50s

Shaky liftoff for Sputnik: Dell's Linux lappie runs its own cloud, ish

Arbee
FAIL

Re: Gloss kills it

"Small screen"

Small laptops necessitate a small screen. The success of netbooks and the Macbook Air, as well as Intel's massive Ultrabook push demonstrate that this is a compromise lots of people are happy to make.

"lack of resolution"

The resolution is 1080p (i.e. 1920 x 1080). What the hell resolution do you want on a 13" screen!

Google offers Adwords deals - but you can't trust their numbers

Arbee
FAIL

Re: More marbles

I think it's a simple clerical error. The answer is (3*3)/(14*15), or 9/210. This simplifies to 3/70, but I think they've just simplified the denominator.

ANCIENT CURSED RING known to TOLKIEN goes on display

Arbee

Re: giant warrior's helmet

Ummm - I don't think it would matter. A giant warrior would have a large helmet for his giant head.

'Mainframe blowout' knackered millions of RBS, NatWest accounts

Arbee

Re: Tandem

Actually, Tandom (or HP NonStop as it is now called) is still in wide use. At the institution I work at (UK) it's the backend to the ATM network. I went to a seminar about it and was told their last outage was in 1991!

Bioshock Infinite, Devil May Cry, SimCity

Arbee

Re: I miss space combat.

Happily, as mentioned in the article, there is hope coming in the form of Elite:Dangerous (and surely the success of that Kickstarter campaign should tell the industry there is still a demand out there).

More importantly, what about the massive success of Star Citizen (the new game by Chris "Wing Commander" Roberts) on Kickstarter? From memory he raised 6 million quid (although he also has a number of private backers, so definitely has the money to produce a proper AAA title).

Amazon: IVONA bevy of 'all natural' blabber babes to beat Siri

Arbee
Thumb Down

Also, she says Tannhäuser like a Canadian: Tannhoooooooser.

Arbee

It was very impressive, but still not a patch on Rutger Hauer...

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."

John Lewis agrees to flog Microsoft's Surface RT tablets

Arbee
Go

Re: Demand has been phenomenal.

I'm pretty sure it's the Intel Inside jingle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VIITf_iLoE

Mmm, what's that smell: Coffee or sweat? How to avoid a crap IT job

Arbee
Thumb Up

Re: A wise check to make

This. THIS!

A THOUSAND TIMES, THIS!

I remember one interview (which turned out to be the best job I ever had), we were talking about university, and I mentioned in passing that I got a 2:1. The interviewer was very surprised, as the recruiter had removed the grade from my CV so he had assumed I'd got a 3rd!

Five go wild with the Administration Tools Pack

Arbee
Facepalm

Re: int getRandomNumber()

Ah dammit! I spotted that but couldn't work out the (obligatory!) reference.

Sanitary towel firm's 'CEO' sets traumatised man straight

Arbee
Thumb Up

Classic. The blue water she is drinking is a particularly nice touch.

'Nutjob' serves half-baked Raspberry PI scam

Arbee

Re: Hahahah. Dick.

I think his point is that it is not a stereotypical Jewish name. When someone states their name is Steve, you don't instantly assume "must be Jewish".

Oracle knew about critical Java flaws since April

Arbee
Devil

Re: CIA?

Larry Ellison?

Mars rover harangues empty landscape with loudhailer

Arbee
WTF?

Re: But to the locals...

Do they have pigs on Mars?

Everything Everywhere to be Nothing Nowhere in rebrand

Arbee
Meh

For the northern markets, especially Yorkshire, it could create a portemanteau of it's 2 brands : t'orange.

UK watchdog snaps on glove to probe Tesco's 'security fails'

Arbee

Re: Not just Tesco

And yes, I am aware that you could link them directly to the password reset form, but that is pretty much exactly the same as emailing the password - it's just that the URL to the password reset form becomes the secret, rather than the password.

Arbee
Thumb Down

Re: Not just Tesco

How exactly would you know what your replacement password was if they *didn't* send it plain text?

And 5 characters is absolutely fine - it is assumed you will be changing it on your next logon (most systems will enforce this).

Virgin Media nukes downloads after SuperHub 'upgrade'

Arbee

Re: Not entirely true

The TiVo box is actually much nicer than the V+ box from a UI point-of-view. It's much faster and more responsive, navigation is easier (fewer button presses to get where you want to go, dedicated Home, Guide, and Recorded Shows buttons), and it's got lots of little bits of polish (if you scroll back in the TV guide, you can select programs and it will load them from iPlayer/4OD/etc, is one example of that polish).

Features like watchlists are good too - just add a watchlist to "Record anything directed by David Lean" and it will.

When I got it it was also £3 a month cheaper than V+ (although it cost me £50 upfront).

However, it won't do streaming, DLNA, or anything cool like that.

Nationwide DOUBLES card payments in fresh banking gaffe

Arbee

Re: The marketing people will be happy.

That's correct. The rule they put in is that if you recieve a windfall on demutualisation, you have to give it to charity (Nationwide have a charitable trust that it will go to - you don't get a choice).

Gamer fails STAM roll, dies after 40-hour Diablo III stretch

Arbee

Doesn't meet the criteria.

Darwin awards are for people who improve the gene pool by removing themselves from it.

I don't think the sort of guy who plays Diablo III for 2 days straight was ever likely to be contributing much to that pool.

Swedish college girls now twice as slutty as in 2001

Arbee
Coat

"Female students had typically had 11 partners by the time they were polled."

And 12 after they were polled?

Hur hur.

/get your coat love, you've pulled.

Fired-up eco-boffin gives it '180 per cent'

Arbee
FAIL

Math fail.

FTA:

'"I am somebody who if I believe in something, I give it 180 per cent."

That's an impressive 70 per cent improvement on the best efforts of professional footballers'

No - it's a 70 percentage <b>point</b> increase on the effort of a footaballer. It's clearly a ~64% increase.

I trust that the Reg put this in purely to generate vitriolic comments, because otherwise I WEEP FOR HUMANITY.