Posts by Spencer Tomlinson

Do not try this at home: Man spends $5,000 on a 48TB Raspberry Pi storage server

Not all is what it seems!

Back in my early days as a Sys-Op operating Wang mainframe controllers and Unix systems for a well known commodities company we used to experience similar bottlenecks. Renting data from the NYSE, Tokyo etc, over satellite at around $1 per second you can imagine data was super expensive in 1987, that data landed on our network as jobs and we were tasked with backing up our jobs to 9 track tape (yes those big massive reels you seen spinning back and forth in films). Problem is even though we were at full capacity the data was coming in to fast for native 80mb tapes (yeah those tapes stored around 80mb native) and bottlenecks. Now these were the days of thicknet AUI and token rings. So if you went to the loo and a backup job finished and you took 10 minutes for a sit down job thats 600 seconds that your satellite at $1 per second is costing. Needless to say the Sys-Ops worked 24/7 - 365. Bottlenecking also cost around about $300 an hour roughly until Compaq QIC cartridges came along and 9 track went obsolete in weeks as the QIC was better , higher capacity and more reliable storage and a damn sight smaller and could be dispatched by courier and bottlenecks went away and had also developed later to auto loading so no need to rush back from the bog. We’re talking about commodities worth millions of Yen and dollars so the cost had been factored in..... $5000 was pretty much the cost per day and yet we haven’t moved on one bit!!!!

Windows 7 back in black as holdouts report wallpaper-stripping shenanigans

Re: I only need windows for ONE program...

Schnieder Twido Suite

Depends

Depends who died, street parties are by order of the day when the mother in law croaks.

Nag screen defeated

I get a strange feeling the roll out may have been aimed at restricting or preventing a widespread abuse of “nag screen muting”. After all, if you went into work on Monday and the M$ nag screen wasn’t there you may wrongly assume your bosses had switched to Xubuntu or some other Windoze 10 and you were safe..... there I managed to squeeze Linux in to a message and make it look like it was intentional.

London's Metropolitan Police arrest Julian Assange

Extra extra read all and doubt it!!

FYI he has an extra willy ‘not’ an extra finger. Man in pub who was an extra in the original movie “Get Carter” told me..... and since it come from a bloke in a pub it must be true.

Uni IT man stole £22k of Macs to pay for smack

Re: Cash Converters

On the assumption went to the same Cash Converters, which is highly unlikely.

RIP... almost: Brit high street gadget shack Maplin Electronics

Re: Failed when they moved from Electronics to Electrical

2N3904.....I meant.

Re: Bums on seats not Priced to profit, priced to death

I'm a radio Ham too, I know what I'm buying and it's made worse as Hams are like a sewing circle, gossiping about rip off Maplins.

You don't employ a Road Sweeper to run an electronics shop..... do you.

Re: The interest is still there.

I work with PLC's or programmable logic devices/controllers and field programmable gate arrays but having them on the shelf and having the staff Xylinx trained is another. Throw away world.... sad

Re: Failed when they moved from Electronics to Electrical

You mean a OA71 Germanium diode and a metal can BC108 general purpose transistor....2SC3904 is the modern equiv.

Bums on seats not Priced to profit, priced to death

The last time I shopped in Maplin I think I had been fleeced for 39p for 1 resistor. The fact I can buy 100 for the same price elsewhere (not Amazon as they don't pay tax and I refuse to shop with them). I immediately contacted the highest management I could, pleading with them to lower the price on components to a minimum markup, they replied "we have no immediate plans to change the pricing structure on resistors and other discrete components. It is unlikely this will change in the future!", obviously miffed I scurried away. Bums on seats, get the consumer inside the door and not to force them underground.

Swann CCTV system which is a £399 model marked up as £599! The thing with Maplin they missed the part where you see what the other guy is selling via Google and undercut him/her. I remember Maplins 30 years ago when I took 3 busses to get to the Ilford store, packed to the rafters with electronics geeks to car enthusiasts. This has zero to do with Brexit and more to do with the consumer wanting the best bang for their buck, unfortunately to little too damn late.

Guntree v Gumtree: Nominet orders gun ads site must lose domain

Where will it stop

What about Banker.com. I always thought my Bank had been jerking me off.

Murdoch's £11.7bn Sky takeover referred to competition regulator

Who will suffer!

If the British language has not been decimated enough, we offer up a News paper with a reading age of Seven years old I.E: a normal Seven year olds vocabulary would understand the long words, however it's not to say that the Sun does not lean heavily on a farcically limited dialogue it promotes zero copula and hatchet jobs on language too. Now move that to Sky television and the English language is lost altogether. With Sky in the pocket he will have all football, cricket, tennis, golf, F1, darts and more pay per dummy. Normal TV won't be worth the license fee. The world is full of crusty old bstrds like Bernie Ecclestein who are willing to sell their soul for a few bucks and favouritism.

People don't buy into a company for anything other than power, influence and profit. I would not be suppressed if James Murdoch does not run for the American Prez in 5 years.

Currently on a train on a mobile phone, don't blame the lack of English content here.... move along, nothing to see

Would you let cops give your phone a textalyzer scan after a road crash?

Worse than drink driving!!!

Here in the UK phones are already banned when driving throughout the UK. The police will subpoena your mobile phone records anyway if your involved in a serious accident. Failing to submit you phone after an accident is a good as an admission of guilt. The law states quite clearly that you are not in full control of your vehicle if your using a mobile phone while driving, however does show exemption to two way radios making the police, ambulance service, taxis and even radio amateurs exempt however you can still be prosecuted for driving without due care and attention. In my book you should have nothing to hide from the police. If your attention was not fully on the road and half on your mobile phone then your as guilty as a drunk driver. All mobile phones should be banned while driving unless it's via a car kit. Hence I believe the rules around texting tightening because your eyes can't be in two places at once.

Countdown contestant pays homage to IT Crowd's Moss

Re: 604, Toxteth O'Grady, USA

You Quote Bambi. Worlds Stupidest bottom burp, Vivian ...Britain

Apple tool: Buying an iPhone in a carpark? Find out if it's STOLEN

Great Idea - Not Fool proof

It's a great idea but you still have some very horrible people who will report the phone stolen within about 10 minutes of the purchase and claim on insurance etc. Either that or simply stop paying the monthly contract. A better app would be to see if the phone is still attached to a monthly contract and if that contract still has time to run.? The Apple activation lock is a one hammer to smash all phones approach, It hurts the legitimate sales as well as the illegitimate ones too.

3 drags rivals into court over number porting

Cross network charges

I think that this may generate problems, if you call for example orange to orange then you may pay 15p per minute, In fact you may call orange to orange for 10 minutes a day costing £1.50p per day, simplified over 10 days is £15, then you find the orange number you had been calling is now with 3 and its cosing you 18p a minute to go across networks, where the courtesy of the same network provider is gone, Now you may find bills over a 10 day period going up to £18 or more dependent on the other network charges, and the orange caller will have no idea as there will be no number change that they are in fact paying higher call charges. I think the transistion period of 5 days to transfer (becoming 2) is a very good idea as it will leave a gap for the 2 consumers to reach a mutual agreement on how they will deal with this increase in charge.