Posts by Martin Ryan

Reg hands portable Sinclair ZX Spectrum to lucky compo winner

Re: Nothing personal Martin but...

Thanks for the messages. I definitely appreciate it - this is an awesome prize. I might buy an airline ticket, just so I can play Jet Set Willy on a plane as suggested. I'll think of you, while doing so, Smitty.

Amazon veep: We tweak our cloud code every 16 seconds – and you?

how many?

"He claimed Amazon added 280 new AWS features and services in 2013"

This means one new feature &/or service every 112,706 seconds. Which is quite different to one change every 16 seconds. In fact it is over 7000 times different. So the other 6999 changes are what exactly?

iPad 4 is so OVER: 5 times as many fanbois now using iPad Air - survey

Not so surprising

What do you do when you buy, or upgrade to, a new iPad? You install your favourite &/or some new apps. Therefore it is obvious app usage will appear to be concentrated on the new iPad model than on the older models. After a few days of elevated app usage, a new iPad user will settle down into their long term trend. No remarkable data in this report.

WTF is... backend-as-a-service?

"Database? Mad idea, but okay if you have a lot of stuff up their."

Up their what, I wonder?

Reg hack prepares to live off wondergloop Soylent

Meal replacement

In what sense is this a "meal replacement"? Surely it is just a meal.

Microsoft: Here's some cash, channel. PLEASE sell Office 365

Re: Why, why ??

It sounds like your usage pattern can be adequately supported with a 15-year old copy of Wordperfect. Not all businesses have such limited requirements. Many businesses require more sophistication in their tools because they are trying to complete more complex activities. When this is combined with an increasingly mobile workforce an Office suite that is also mobile becomes a potentially attractive solution to them.

Build a BONKERS gaming PC

Re: Bonkers?

Keith_C, you are an enlightened guru. I am astounded no one else has raged against the SSD / SATA / USB storage nonsense. Bootable PCI-e solid state storage is so much faster it has to be included in the specification of a bonkers PC. Feel the IOPS.

Yahoo! 'OPTIMISES'! website! for! fondleslabs! AND Facebook!

Lacking an important exclamation mark in the title, there, Reg.

How can family sysadmins make a safe internet playground for kids?

sky fails to give option to protect

I have the misfortune to have signed up to Sky Broadband (uk) which requires you to use their router which in turn does not let you change the dns servers and therefore use OpenDNS. Will be changing once my lockin period is over.

AWS takes NoSQL database to the cloud with DynamoDB

just give it up El Reg

For the love of all things decent, just stop using a picture of a woman's body alongside every story with an Amazon connection. It's juvenile, hateful and seriously demeans you and us, your audience.

Amazon cloud double fluffs in 2011

what decade are you in?

Please El Reg do us all a favour and stop using pictures of women's bodies alongside your stories. It is degrading to women and insulting to us your audience who are implicated through association. Thanks.

World's stealthiest rootkit gets a makeover

Wow, impressive, but I'll leave you to try to explain that to each of the 4.5m infected PCs' owners.

How are we going to search our hard disks now?

Solr?

Has no one adapted Solr to do a desktop search?

NATO site hacked

NATO is a lamer in security

- it's not like "NATO is a lamer in security"

Well actually, yes it is like NATO is a lamer in security.

When you hire someone to do a job for you, you tell them the standards to apply to ensure it is adequate for your organisation. And then you test it afterwards. You outsource the work, not the accountability.

why store passwords

I don't understand why any website like this is designed to store passwords. Surely use of a salted hashed version by now is taught in kindergarten?

Saab-spotter blogger poached by the company

lifting the nose

Perhaps the suspension was faulty?

Oracle drops $1bn on Art Technology Group buyout

Who is next

The lack of a decent ecommerce package has been a serious hole in Oracle's portfolio for some time, so this move is overdue. SAP has a similar ecommerce-shaped hole. Suggest they start looking at hybris which is gaining amazing momentum in the marketplace right now.

Google heats up native code for Chrome OS

Salt

"Native Client - NaCl for short"

or Salt as they call it round here.

Ellison's storage Pillar sits at fork in the road

Now that's what I call copy

"To cope with those you need the 800lb gorilla canine and Workman hopes that Paso and Napa are two dogs that will worry the heck out of the storage supplier sheep out there"

After writing that one, you've just got to put your feet up on the desk with your hands behind your head and bask.....

AMD Eyefinity promises 'six panel, one GPU' gaming

Trademarks

@Rob Dodds - it is so exciting, there is another trademark-obsessed Register reader out there.

Or should that be there is another trademark-obsessed The Register(R) reader out there?

The Register is a registered trademark or trademark of Situation Publishing Ltd in the European Community and other territories.

The IBM DS5000: Best in a field of one

IBM much faster

Fredrik has hit the nail on the head, the response time for writes and reads is far better on the IBM. What are most businesses going to be using this kit for? Databases. What has to be performed synchronously on a database and is going to seriously hit you if the performance is poor? Every COMMIT (i.e. a save of the changes the application has made to the disk).

At every % workload figure, the NetApp fails to impress. At 10% load, the NetApp takes 2 and a half times as long as the IBM to complete that commit. By 95% load, that multiplier has leapt to over 6 times as long.

Not sure about other workloads (e.g. scientific), but for databases give me the IBM every time.

NZ charidee cybersquatter fears burning in Hell

@ 2 x anon - what no banjo comebacks?

Where are all El Reg's banjo players? Why no witty ripostes?

Fooling around at the less glamorous end of mobility

Prevalence of need requires universality of provision

I'm not sure that whether or not a member of staff is "blue collar" is the determining factor in the provision of mobile infrastructure.

A workforce that has a high proportion of its staff in mobile roles, whether "blue collar" or not, should be making every effort to ensure all applications are accessible through well-constructed interfaces (web services, APIs, etc). This will enable applications to be constructed and delivered to a variety of mobile devices.

If there is a difference between mobile blue collar workers and mobile white collar workers, it is that white collar workers tend to be in positions that enable them to demand a degree of flexibility from the IT department in terms of the kit provided to them, and the functions available on that kit. I hate to say it, but I think companies tend to treat the blue collar workforce as more disposable - any increased tendency to walk because they don't like the device they use all day is not an issue since they can be replaced. This is not so much the case with a white collar worker threatening a company with reduced motivation.

There is more often a dictated hardware and software standard for blue collar workers for whom "line of business" applications are the crucial application on the device. There is likely to be only one user interface for that application, hence one device to run it on. For white collar workers, the phone & email functions tend to be more important and these can be delivered on a variety of devices meaning that user choice comes more strongly into play.

Patientline results prompt share meltdown

Free in the USA

Anthony Bathgate lauds the Great American Way, saying "Why does this cost money? Every hospital I've ever encountered in the US has a landline chillin' next to every bed ... And it's all free-of-charge"

What he of course neglects to mention is that the detestable US healthcare system is a private market which many hundreds of thousands of Americans can't afford to access. I assume he is not one of these.

Post Office loses Amazon contract

Amazon gets worse and worse

I don't know when it started happening, but I have noticed that Amazon don't dispatch parcels same day any more. And by them not using Royal Mail I will now be forced on a 50 mile round trip to pick up my parcel, compared to a short stroll through the village to the local sorting office.

Fortunately just as Amazon don't have to use Royal Mail, I don't have to use Amazon.

UK gov skills shortage jeopardising IT projects

Re: Its the womens fault you know...

That's strange. In my 20 years of experience I have found women project managers *tend* to be more professional and successful than their male counterparts. And seem to be less obsessed with "equal opportunity" and "girl vs boy" issues than Brett appears to be.

Microsoft and Cisco eye Iceland for green server farms

How about cooling?

Isn't a lot of power taken up by cooling server farms? Can a cold and windy country use cold air flow to its advantage in cooling a room full of hot stuff cheaply and efficiently?

Non-glamorous gambling ads to hit UK from September

The restrictions make the harm obvious

The government has obviously gone to great lengths to devise a list of restrictions and caveats to be applied to gambling advertising. Does this not point firmly to the fact that gambling is very often harmful and therefore should not be advertised?

Man sues MS after FBI uncovers smut surfing habits

Separation is key

There appears to be an increasingly prevalent attitude that a criminal loses all their rights as soon as they are convicted (or in some people's minds charged) for a criminal offence. "They deserve everything that comes to them". "Lock them up & throw away the key". And so on.

I believe we must separate the crime for which this person has been charged from the entirely different matter of someone believing that a commercial software vendor has mis-represented the features of their software.

The only reason to get worked up about this case is because the two people are one & the same. And that is no reason at all.