* Posts by Anton Ivanov

1034 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2007

Google moves to extend DNS protocol

Anton Ivanov

It is not ads, it is apps at question here

It is not ads, it is apps at question here. You gain very little in terms of ads by knowing user IP address at DNS resolution time.

It is however the holy grail in terms of choosing the right server to serve video or to run interactive apps. Especially the latter.

I kept wondering how exactly google intends to pull the Chrome feat and have a working network computer where others failed. This gives some idea on that. For that 24 bits is all you need. That is the routing resolution of the Internet so info at 24 bit level is sufficient to give you the right destination.

However, I do not see how this is going to translate to ipv6 so any advantages gained from this are going to be very shortlived.

Apple's iPad - fat iPhone without the phone

Anton Ivanov
Flame

Spot on

You also missed one more item:

While Sony can easily do MPEG4/h264 in 480x272 and Archos can do full HD, the "i" family of devices so far has been able to do at most 320x180. On any screen above 6 in in size that looks like utter shite.

So, unless they have drastically improved the decoding performance this device will be total crap for any video watching.

Spanish town to reward good drivers

Anton Ivanov
Flame

Spanish habits vary

Spain is a place with some of the best drivers I have ever seen (on La Palma) as well as worst drivers I have ever seen (Fuerteventura and some of the continent). So depending on where this town is the number can be anything between 5 and 6495. You never know.

Solicitor General takes fresh pop at PunterNet

Anton Ivanov
Flame

All dog owners are equal

Some however, are more equal than the others

Only nukes can stop planetsmash asteroids, say US boffins

Anton Ivanov
Flame

World != Space

World free of nukes does not necessarily imply space free of nukes. That is one place where they may actually prove themselves useful.

Airport scanner staff object to vetting

Anton Ivanov
Grenade

Why only muslims?

Some varieties of Orthodox Jews are similarly strict on the matter. So are most Christian sects.

In fact the first male airport security guard to try running that on a group of Russian Eastern Orthodox nuns should probably be awarded the Victoria cross for bravery. If he survives. I am not going to give him more than 1:8 odds there.

That is one thing the Dutch have done right by the way - they completely rehash the body into a diagram in software. No recognisable image whatsoever. I am surprised this is not done in the UK. It is just asking for trouble.

Peppa Pig told to belt up

Anton Ivanov
Grenade

hehe

I guess I am not the only one to use that method.

Though in my case it was taking _BOTH_ junior and the inlaw out of the car. Never had a problem since.

Anton Ivanov
Grenade

Depends whom you ask

There is a significant number of people out there who are of the opinion that children cannot distinguish reality from fiction. That is why not surprisingly Tom and Jerry does not tend to come on very often on the TV nowdays. It is "politically incorrect" and "violent".

Cyber attack hits law firm that sued China

Anton Ivanov
Grenade

You get whatever Christmas you deserve

First rule of AntiSpam filtering - you have to reject any email coming from the outside which pretends to be from your domain or address range. If you do not - sorry, you get whatever Christmas you deserve. Then any scum out there can pretend to be your CEO or the sysadmin sending out by email the latest patches.

Tiny TV could make billions for FCC

Anton Ivanov
Thumb Up

Multiple sync signal sources can improve S/N

Actually, when using digital transmission multiple synchronised signal sources can be used to improve the Signal-to-Noise ratio.

3G does that - it applies convolution filter to its input - the input is multiplied by a coefficient and added to itself at an offset. This is done several times with different offsets and different coefficients. The signal contains "easily recogniseable" patterns which can be used to optimise the coefficients. As a result the more multipath - the better. The entire thing is half a page of linear algebra and it delivers several times better S/N and spectrum efficiency than the "engineering marvel" also known as GSM. Classic case of "Math meet Engineering, Engineering - meet Math. Engineering - you lose".

So if the multiple sources are really synchronised to a level where this can be applied the S/N will actually be better the more ghosts you get. This will require fairly "hard sync", but most radio sites will get that for LTE anyway.

Google 'open' memo betrays deep corporate delusion

Anton Ivanov
Flame

IPs in their majority are shared and non-static

Associating data with an IP address is useless. 95% of consumer services are on dynamic IPs and at least 50%+ of these kick the connection on regular basis (BT and Comcast for example do it every 24h). Similarly, businesses share IPs between hundreds if not thousands of employees. Tracking by IP will only screw the quality of ones data set, not improve it (even when using Google probability and stats techniques to extract data from it).

Microsoft AV advice may aid attackers, researcher warns

Anton Ivanov
Grenade

Signatures on files - Wonderful idea... But not on windows

That would have been a wonderful idea on a Unix system where locking is advisory and you can always read a file.

However, on a windows system in order to read the file sig you still have to read the file itself which is an implicit read-lock. You also have to compute the file checksum so you can see if the sig is valid.

Both operations may in fact be comparable to a legacy AV scan in terms of performance.

Can anyone explain the chunnel fiasco?

Anton Ivanov
Flame

Executive summary: positive thinking

The idiot in charge of Eurotunnel procedures has been thinking happy thoughts. The triumph of positive thinking as prophesized by corporate wellbeing gurus exemplified. Halleluiah...

Unfortunately noone will learn from the lesson.

DARPA scientists demand lightning on tap

Anton Ivanov
Grenade

Missile trailing wires...

Old russian "Little Hammer" missile bought off from one of the "failed states". Shoot up. Boom. Job done.

Alternatively, there are a couple of french ones that are fairly similar.

All use wire spool and manual control.

Boom...

Sony Vaio X

Anton Ivanov
WTF?

Spectacular design, but lost the plot

Portable means able to survive portability. I would have expected a company from a country where _ONLY_ a TouchBook or a "Dell Brick" can survive the Tokio subway morning gro^H^H^Hrush hour to know that.

No thanks, I would stick to my S10-e. It may weight 1.5 times as much, but it is at least capable of surviving being carried around.

Me coat, the big grey-blue trench one with an S10-e in the left pocket.

'CRU cherrypicked Russian climate data', says Russian

Anton Ivanov
Boffin

His credentials are non-issue here

Frankly, his credentials are a non-issue here.

Just read the report. It makes a very interesting reading.

Anton Ivanov
WTF?

Ouch

The report makes a very damning reading indeed (to put it most politely).

However, the report _DOES_ _NOT_ make the "hockey stick" observation in the last 30 years invalid - it is mostly correct (graphs towards the end). The differences are predominantly up to the 1940-es. The data from that period as per the russian analysis shows that there was no significant warming outside major population centers.

However, the data makes an even more interesting interpretation from the perspective of global "soot warming"/"dimming" vs "greenhouse warming". There is one big spike besides the recent years and it is guess when - during those 5 years when most of the earth was being set on fire. There are a few other bits in there that fit that fairly well as well.

Google says ad blockers will save online ads

Anton Ivanov
Thumb Up

Than turn off flash

Register is best viewed with flash off ;)

That is one of the reasons why I always browse the web with konqueror which has had per-site plugin policy long before the relevant plugin in firefox hit a 0.0 version. And the policy for elreg is exactly that - noflash.

GSHP: The green tech even carbon sceptics will like

Anton Ivanov

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8414795.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8414795.stm

No further comment really.

Soot warming 'maybe bigger than greenhouse gases' - NASA

Anton Ivanov
Flame

Regardless of how they are corrected it makes sense

This makes a _LOT_ of sense. Glacier ice retreat so far has been limited predominantly to the northern hemisphere. The retreat in the southern hemisphere is nowhere as pronounced. This in inconsistency is a subject of constant flamewars.

In the case of global WARMING due to greenhouse gas this difference is extremely difficult to explain.

In the case of global MELTING due to the albedo of the ice dropping like a stone things start making a lot more sense.

The temperate and polar zone air flows in the north and southern hemisphere are nearly perfectly isolated. To add insult to injury in the south there is an also little mix-up between the air masses across the inhabited temperate regions and the polar region because of the way roaring 50-es can go around the earth uninterrupted.

As a result any soot going up into the air in the north stays in the north and can be carried all the way into the arctic (no roaring 50-es in the northern hemisphere). Which in turn results in snow staying for much shorter during the winter (observed), glaciers retreating (observed) and arctic ice cap retreating as well (observed). None of that has been observed in the South. There you have a mixed bag. Retreat here, advance elsewhere.

This actually is a _MUCH_ worse scenario than global warming.

1. The sea rise from this is way faster than from global warming.

2. The models show that the worst case scenario for gulfstream interruption is actually in the case of change in ocean salinity due to excessive melting of ice.

So if this is the case we will actually see Europe sinking and frozen in our lifetime.

Western Digital gears up for mighty formatting

Anton Ivanov
Grenade

Finally

The biggest beneficiaries are actually Linux and co which do not support 512 blocks (smallest fs block is 1K) and default to 4K on large filesystems.

Kidnap fears kybosh charity car rally

Anton Ivanov
Grenade

US customs will not allow it

The coffins on wheels which participate in these races cannot get within visual range of US customs. Which is a pity, it would have been fun. I would have never considered taking any car short of a T-72 cross Africa. Cross LatAm in a Citroen Saxo or Peugeout 106, now, after the Salvador and Nicaragua wars are over sounds like a jolly good idea.

IBM punts Linux-only mainframes

Anton Ivanov
Flame

Who cares

After all, in a short time everything will be running on THE MAINFRAME. The Google mainframe, Amazon EC mainframe, IBM mainframe or Microsoft mainframe. Which for some reason somebody somewhere has called cloud.

I guess Thomas J. Watson gets the last laugh here all right.

AMD ATI Radeon HD 5970 two-GPU graphics card

Anton Ivanov
Flame

If I need a heater in a room I may look at it

This thing draws enough power to heat up a small living room. No thanks...

Apple kicks prolific developer out of iTunes shop

Anton Ivanov
Flame

News at ten..

A developer? Faked his own reviews? Yeah... Nothing new here. I am surprised they have had only one busted so far.

Surgery fools Japan's fingerprint checks

Anton Ivanov
FAIL

USA Invent, China implement

If my recollections of biometric history is correct the first time this was done was in the early 1930-es (yes, no kidding) by one of Al Capone and Lucky Luciano competitors. He however, had his fingerprints completely eliminated by having grafts from his behind (or back - do not remember) onto his fingers. Being stingy however he had it done only to his fingertips so the cops meticulously collected the very few prints from surrounding areas (the ones not usually used for identification) and matched him anyway. IIRC there are several cases in russian criminal history from the same period as well.

The surgery is rather trivial and it was only a matter of time until some enterprising soul would have thought of reviving it. By the way, permutating all finger readings and trying to re-match, which I bet is what the Japanese and Americans are trying to do now, will not be enough. Humans have toes. And these have suitably patterned skin as well as gift from our tree climbing simian ancestors. And these are not in the system ya know... Should have gone with iris from the very beginning :-)

2009's Top Set-top Media Players

Anton Ivanov
Thumb Down

List misses the best one - popcorn hour

Frankly it better than either the WD or the Iomega and you can stuff it with any size disk you like. It can also serve as a proper NAS to both windows and Linux kit you have at home so it is not just a "media player".

It is a pity that this fairly popular in the EU or USA media player remains almost unknown in the UK.

The return of the Psion-sized PC

Anton Ivanov

Instant on/Instant off

My Lenovo s10e has instant on instant off while running debian linux. There is absolutely no problem for most other netbooks to have it either. The only thing that takes more than 3 seconds at present is for it to get its bearings onto the right network. The laptop itself is actually nicely up and usable straight away. If I replace the SATA with a SSD it will need even less - around a second or so.

This Psion-like thing is dead on arrival - same as the numerous XP embedded "pseudonetbooks".

Webmasters fume as Google profiles signed-out searchers

Anton Ivanov

Bad idea, good practice

While I deplore the idea on the basis that it invades privacy at the same time I have to admit that it:

1. Follows Google's philosophy - they care only about the end user and the middlemen be damned

2. It puts a large number of parasitic entities out of business. Now this money will have to go elsewhere which is bound to have an overall positive effect

3. The ability of criminal lowlife to push a rigged and trojaned website to a large audience is greatly diminished

4. It is what the rest of advertisers do anyway and it was the primary reason for the existence of the like of Phorm. This now eliminates any remaining reason for the likes of Phorm to exist. The niche has been taken by a 900 pound alligator, any small reptiles need not apply.

VW unveils slippery four-seat hybrid

Anton Ivanov
Thumb Up

Some military tech finally finding civilian application

Variable geometry air intake has been a standard feature on aircraft (and on some military kit) for nearly 40 years now.

Unfortunately, it has not been used in mass production vehicles so far despite it being one of the most bleeding obvious ways to reduce drag.

Tech-savvy UK kids = (over)confident writers

Anton Ivanov
Flame

Not surprising

Any writing is better than no writing at all which in fact is the other alternative.

Honda goes NUTs for future micro-car

Anton Ivanov
FAIL

Yeah, microcar some other time.

Off the top of my head this is actually larger than some cars which in EU are considered as supermini like the Sirion or the Micra. Modus is roughly the same size as well. They all seat 4+ and have reasonable luggage space.

Comcast trials bandwidth cap meter

Anton Ivanov

Whatever, we had it in 1998

Probably the first customer selfservice portal we put online at the time. Also, comcast is doing this region by region so they cannot even complain that "we are big so it is difficult for us"

By the way, the forum rendering is completely buggered in Konqueror - you press reply and the effing thing votes, you press vote and the effing thing asks you "do you really want to report this post".

iPhone upgrades - a one-way control-freak street

Anton Ivanov
Stop

Not just apple

Welcome to the world of Mobile

Ever tried downgrading Symbian? Want to try? You are welcome to. NO GO.

iPhone developer hires worm author

Anton Ivanov
Coat

Sour grapes, mr Graham Cluely

Well... I can understand his dislike for the idea of virus writers finding a job quickly. If they all start doing something productive he will be out of a job.

Me coat...

'Alien spies live among us' says Bulgarian gov space boffin

Anton Ivanov
Flame

It does funnily enough. More than Britain in fact

Britain has only one native astronaut - Helen Sharman, rest were naturalised into yankhood before going into space. Bulgaria has funnily enough two. I know one of them personally from the days I used to live in Moscow and have met the other one a couple of times.

As far as Mr Philipov is concerned, well... Every country has its "special" people. By all accounts - he is mostly harmless.

iPhone anti-malware stuck in state of denial

Anton Ivanov
Flame

Applause to Apple

Bolting down what a system can run is one of the most reliable approaches to malware prevention. If Windows was running only signed apps only a very small fraction of viruses known to date would have been able to exist. Unfortunately the signing checks in Windows at present are predominantly at installation and even at that point Joe Average User is allowed to bypass them with flying colours.

US senators tell EC: Butt out of Oracle-Sun

Anton Ivanov
Coat

The wonders of operating in a global market

Makes you think twice on the merits of "Global Corporation" versus "Franchise" or "Reseller" model.

Billionaire floats eco dream on sailing soda bottles

Anton Ivanov
Flame

Nice way to sink some money

If these are real soda bottles the boat will sink in about 6 months. They are now made from degradeable plastic which becomes brittle when irradiated by UV lite from the sun. Even if these are "ole good not ecofriendly" bottles, these still become brittle in the sun due to plastifier leakage. So unless these are "really old glass bottles" this thing is pretty much doomed.

Weather balloons no longer a crazy idea for rural coverage

Anton Ivanov
Boffin

Sorry to spoil your McGuiver moments...

Re: would be nice, but...

These balloons go to slipstream altitude. Way above any storms, even the really nasty USA ones that actually pierce the tropospheric boundary.

RE: w.h.robinson icon required.

The balloon will be out of range before you can say uncle. Fitting a while base station, its relay electronics and the powerpack into something that a weather baloon can lift is not an easy task. On top of that, if you use 3G to connect to ground stations these will have to have their antennas changed. They presently do not point upwards. So there is no 3G coverage at 20km height.

First malicious iPhone worm slithers into wild

Anton Ivanov
Flame

Re: Some remarks.

The worms that try to crack SSH using passwords as well as worms that do it using a combination of passwords and DNS exploits (attack during the reverse lookup on the source address) are already there.

I will be surprised if some of them do not have support for the iPhone. In fact, I bet they do and have had it long before the latest "specialised" PR stunts. After all, going after iphones only makes very little sense. Capturing them along with badly configured unix boxes is a completely different story.

Is data overload killing off human initiative?

Anton Ivanov
Flame

Spot on

Company legal and intellectual property departments have spotted that long ago (though it has yet to filter to the UK). Nearly all high tech companies in the US and several other countries operate a policy where IP by other companies and their patents must not be discussed during the development process. So in fact, these companies operate a partial data abstinence regime when working on new areas and let the lawyers sort out any "incursions" into other people's IP later.

Similarly, nearly universally deep industry state digging, vendor feature digging or current product digging has never lead to anything new, innovative and forward thinking. At best it is a "deploy new feature once and stay locked in forever". At worst (which is the usual case) it is a "deploy a new feature once and stay magesticaly screwed once the vendor obsoletes it".

There is a finite and rather small space between "knowledge of the subject matter" and "no, I will not go and dig deep here" where creativity lays. Going either side can kill it straight away. So even if you "know the stuff" it is sometimes essential to operate in a "do not recall", "temporarily ignore" or "temporarily forget" mode to get something new done.

Asus intros netbook with desktop CPU

Anton Ivanov
Thumb Down

If it comes with Linux I will buy it

My wife's HP is approaching the time when it will be due for replacement. If this beast comes with Linux it may make my pos-Xmas sale shopping list. While I may grudgingly buy something with HP (as it is nearly guaranteed to run Linux) I am definitely not paying for Vista 2.0.

Users howl as Fedora 12 gives root to unwashed masses

Anton Ivanov
Linux

fedora has been a windosified Linux for a long time

Anyone who needs proper Linux has long switched to "apt-get install light".

IBM lab builds computerized cat brain

Anton Ivanov
Coat

Re: *Yes, but can it love!

I am afraid Dave, I cannot do that.

OCZ unveils 1TB SSD Colossus

Anton Ivanov
Flame

My hard drive is bigger than yours

So now can all those of us who do not suffer from a "My hard drive is bigger then yours" get some of the sane price/capacity drives supposedly in the pipeline like the OCZ consumer drive which is supposed to compete with Kingston 40G V series.

Where is it.? It would probably make my Christmas shopping list even in the austerity budget...

How the Dunning-Kruger effect will stop techies buying houses

Anton Ivanov
Flame

Dunning-Kruger my a*se

This dates back to Socrates: As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.

HELL-beam project now one step from jet-fighter raygun

Anton Ivanov

Re: Totally pointless.

Mirrors are not perfect. They absorb at least some energy. At this energy density the reflective surface on a normal mirror will be damaged almost instantly and the mirror will go on to disintegrate same as a perfect black surface.

Samsung N510 Nvidia Ion-based netbook

Anton Ivanov

The floodgates have opened

Well... Not entirely unexpected.

In fact classic Intel GMA based netbooks will probably go on fire sale from Xmas. I suspect Intel knew this one coming when they brought forward Atom 2 in such a haste. The writing is on the wall, selling a good CPU supported by an ancient chipset does not quite work.

The review misses a few points.

Nvidia does not only HD playback (in fact in a netbook HD playback is pretty much irrelevant because of the screen size). What it does and where its greatest advantage lies is the nearly perfect scaling and interpolation. It can scale SD including bog-standard DVDs to nearly perfect "buttery" HD res image in hardware. When the choice of video was between GMA and GMA it did not really matter. However, now there is a valid reason to do some mean opinion score comparison of SD scale-up performance.

Hotmail imposes tracking cookies for logout

Anton Ivanov
FAIL

Re: Re: Closing browsers

You still have to steal the session cookie for that. While the number of ways to do that has decreased lately, it is still possible.