* Posts by P. Lee

5267 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Dec 2007

ARM server hype ramps faster than ARM server chips

P. Lee

Re: So what do you say to Microsoft

So many CPU designs and configs. Can you imagine the horror of the MS license plan for that?

That said, I'm struggling with the use case for ARM in the datacentre. ARM is good at doing very little tasks which is what we try to avoid in datacentres. As much as I would love to see Intel get a bit of a kicking, I'm not (based on what I see now) that this is it.

ARM corporate desktops, now that might be interesting because they do spend a lot of time idle. ARM ultrabooks (sorry, couldn't resist the irony) also might work. ARM home servers, also good.

Where things might get interesting is with Samsung and HP, where chip-to-retail ownership might yield greater profits over non-vertically integrated intel.

It might also be interesting to see some sort of VM migration with Atom and i7/Xeon in the same box (same cpu package?) When the workload is light, migrate processes to the atom and power down the big cpu, kind of like, well, ARM.

Thunderbolt interface strikes YOUR PC: What's the damage?

P. Lee

Re: > Am I right in thinking this gives direct memory access to remote devices?

The point is, even network controllers use DMA. Thunderbolt isn't adding any new risk. Its just a PCIe bus extension. Just don't terminate somewhere you don't trust, such as on an outside security camera.

P. Lee

> Am I right in thinking this gives direct memory access to remote devices?

I believe so. However, its supposed to be a peripheral interconnect, not a comms interconnect. Do you not trust your screen or disk drives or webcam? Its basically external PCIe. There are plenty of server chassis which do that and its what makes the tb premium on devices so galling.

Having said that, I'd like to see a switch providing virtual NICs for thunderbolt (or rather, optical lightpeak).

Microsoft says Google trying to undermine Windows Phone

P. Lee
Happy

I'd be happy to lobby Google for a youtube app for ms phones

Just as soon as MS provide their complete office suit for Linux for the same price as they do for windows.

Hey! Where did that MS guy go?

The year GNOMES, Ubuntu sufferers forked off to Mint Linux

P. Lee

+1 for KDE for "desktop" usage.

You don't have to use KDE apps if you don't want to, but it has shiny if you want it, while maintaining a traditional desktop metaphor.

If MS ported Office to KDE, it would be the end of Windows.

P. Lee

Re: This proves what I have been saying for years..

> There's simple and then there's crippled.

True, but when it comes to tablets, you probably want an interface designed for crippled people when your legs are tied together by the lack of a keyboard. "Take me to stuff" is pretty much what a tablet is for.

The good thing is, another interface shell is just a few clicks (with keyboard or mouse) away. Pity the poor people lumped with windows 8.

What they should have done is spin a tablet distro and then offer it to the desktop world.

P. Lee

Re: A good question

I suspect here's where they got sucked into their own misconceptions: tablet interface means no user generated content (because a tablet's a difficult place to generate content) therefore the only content we expect people to want is on the network.

Something like firefox's "search provider" icon or hp touchpad's "search provider" list should have been used. If there was a click box to use search amazon which wasn't on by default, I'm sure most people would have been glad for the feature. Now they just look creepy.

Build a BONKERS test lab: Everything you need before you deploy

P. Lee

No love for AMD?

I would have thought an FX 8350 8-core would have given you i7 performance for i5 prices and that more real cores would be better for VMs than faux ones.

I'm happy to be corrected - I still run a core2duo, so I'm just guessing :D

Boffins use laser to move maglev disk

P. Lee

Indeed. I wonder if a focusing mirror would work instead of the laser?

Christmas ruined for 2,100 sex offenders booted off online games

P. Lee
Flame

Re: Nanny Nation

Parenting isn't just about care and protection. The point is to create independent and capable adults which won't magically happen at 18.

Parenting requires giving graduated freedom to children. That means that we need space outside the confines of the front garden in which they can make mistakes without the consequences being dire.

That being said, Pedophiles vs Online games vs (M)TV: Which one is pushing sexual activity to pre-teens the most? Why do kids' party organisers think the Macarena is appropriate for small children? Do people ever think through the meaning of the actions? The big dangers are usually brought into the home by parents.

Everything is vetted. No live TV, no unsupervised internet, no unchecked music lyrics or dance moves. Very little modern "culture" makes it into my house and it makes me rather angry that so much non-educational content ends up being force-fed to children at school. I can see no good reason for my 7 year-old to be able to recite the name of Harry Potter's school for her homework.

Bah humbug.

P. Lee

Re: 2,100 sex offenders now have more time on their hands

and herein lies the issue: are we merely being punitive - such as a parking fine is, or are we trying to keep children safe. If its the latter, is deleting accounts effective?

I'm slightly less concerned with the rights of pedophiles than with the fact the politicians are picking easy scapegoates and creating lazy punishments on the fly.

The LINUX TABLET IS THE FUTURE - and it always will be

P. Lee

Re: the tablet shall perish

But we already knew intel chips are better if you are loading them up with work to do.

Just as many people realised that they didn't need the power of a desktop and bought less-capable laptops to gain the benefit of portability, so most people don't need fast phones & tablets, they really need devices which can last longer while doing very little.

It isn't a question of "good" or "bad" its a question of "appropriate."

P. Lee
Facepalm

Re: I still don't get…

Apple should have gone with Solaris underneath.

Years and years of Mac GUIs on SPARC and X86.

It would have been better for them and saved Sun.

Terrible reception for Oz spectrum auction

P. Lee

Re: NBN screwed me over as well!

There's no one solution.

I've a friend who lives in Melbourne's suburbs - her (optus-based) wireless internet is complete rubbish. Even using my telstra connection (my landline was down) is really painful - fine for a mobile phone, but not useful for normal internet.

Physical cables rule in areas with high requirements, wireless works better with lower requirements. Technically, 7.5 Mb/sec is faster than my landline, but contention is horrible.

P. Lee

Re: I don't say this often...

It isn't an asset, it doesn't produce anything.

Its more like a patent.

The government is raising money buy charging for something that cost it nothing, the cost of which will hit most of the population.

That would be a tax then.

Why not just ask the mobile companies to submit a plan for the use of the spectrum and give it to whoever submits the most beneficial plan. Charge the company for deviating from the submitted plan.

"Government *for* the people."

Schmidt 'very proud' of Google's tiny tax bill: 'It's called capitalism'

P. Lee

Re: Talk about stating the obvious...

Corporate structure and paying tax on profit rather than revenue is a recognition that corporates have high expenses associated with generating revenue.

IT Contractors can keep their costs low, but if they want to keep current with training, it will cost them quite a bit. Any test kit they buy will generally be quite expensive too.

Internet Explorer tracks cursor even when minimised

P. Lee

> Every virtual keyboard I've seen jumbles up the keys

Does this work on RT? I assume that has a virtual keyboard where the keys don't move around.

Xamarin tool lets devs build .Net apps for Mac OS X

P. Lee

Re: Mac users will not put up with it.

I suspect the plan is for windows devs to have an option to release for mac as well, rather than enticing mac devs to code for windows.

Email is so last century

P. Lee
Angel

Mostly, IM replaces putting your hand over the telephone mic and mouthing something to your colleagues about the idiot on the phone.

Worldwide Gmail crash was due to Google Sync bug

P. Lee

Re: That just proves..

Its email. It is a bit like sending postcards - it isn't private even if you run your own mailbox.

I suspect the privacy I get by ad-indexing by google is better than the security I'd get by trying to maintain my own, likely more hackable, SMTP server which would provide an inbound access point to my own network.

My home systems are far more sensitive than my email. Its all a compromise and its quite a complicated calculation.

Review: Apple iMac 21.5in late 2012

P. Lee

Re: looks lovely. but keyboard is a no no

Another weird one.

Wired keyboard, but only usb 1.1 I think. Ok for a mouse, no good for a USB stick. Its hard to get to.

Worse, because the keyboard is a USB hub, you can't chain it onto another hub, such as you might find on a non-mac screen.

P. Lee

Re: Not very "Green"

> Because Apple wants you to throw away your computer / tablet / phone every few years and therefore they make it extremely expensive to service.

Its a bit schizophrenic. ip*d/iphone users replace kit frequently, but Macs tend to have a longer than average lifespan.

It would have been so easy to add a little door to replace the RAM and disk without altering the shape. Thinness is only at the edges.

UN's 'bid to wrestle control of internet' stalled by asterisk

P. Lee

Skype a telco?

More like a telephone directory.

Skype infrastructure carries no voice traffic except skype-in/out - a tiny proportion of total traffic.

Get your warrant for the ADSL line instead.

Linux kernel dumps 386 chip support

P. Lee
Angel

Re: It was this decision, plus lack of Linux support for the 6502 that made me switch to Windows 8

HEATHEN!

WHY DID YOU NOT UPGRADE IN THE ONE TRUE WAY TO A LISA?

P. Lee
Happy

Re: 8080, bloody Hell!

Apple ][+ 140k SSSD FD IIRC. Ah, the joys of being able to hook the reset button! :D

Go-go Miner 2049er (but not "lemonade stand" - that's not a proper game.)

My neighbour had a Heathkit Z80 on which we used to play Y-Wing.

You are in a maze of happy memories, all alike. On the wall is an inscription.

P. Lee

Re: The joys of open software

Must... not... feed... the... troll...

Good luck with your W7 on a 386 or OSX support on powerpc.

Bother, failed.

Asia’s chip giant MediaTek reveals quad core SoC

P. Lee
Flame

> “The high end will be impacted. Once a mass market solution comes out people will think harder about paying a premium for a Samsung quad core phone, for example,” he said.

I think the nexus 4 already has people reconsidering that.

I just wish companies would charge you for what you pay for. On telstra you get a "subsidised" S3 or you BYO phone and pay more. That annoys and offends me.

After 50 years, Europe gets one patent to rule them all

P. Lee
FAIL

When spinning is hard, bluster!

> “maintaining a European patent for ten years in only six European countries can be four times more expensive than it would be in the US, Japan and many other advanced economies.”

So, what they actually said was, "its currently 33% cheaper to maintain a patent in a European country than in the US or Japan or other advanced economy."

We can't have that!

Microsoft notices Xbox gamers actually slack-jawed TV fans, adds 43 new apps

P. Lee

Internet TV is hard

If you have a $console plugged into your TV, why not plug the RF signal in and process it there?

Its fine for free-to-air - you could host a cleaned up EPG in the cloud - which would be worth paying for in Australia at least.

The problem is that it all becomes difficult when you get cable and satellite involved. Those companies are rather protective of their STB's because they (over) charge for additional features.

I suspect that xbox's success is due to the fact that it is also useful for games. Setting up a video distribution network sounds complicated and ATV is expensive just so you can sit in a different room, but having a second xbox for multiplayer games, that sounds sensible and you can probably get one cheap second-hand.

Intel launches Atom S Series at servers

P. Lee

Re: the customer is always wrong

Well you need the 64-bit addressing so you can run VMware and only windows shops would think that might be a good idea.

What really gets me is the pricing on the a lot of small computing platforms. Atom SBC with video, ethernet and sata is being sold for $900 for an eval kit.

Come on HP, I want a micro-server on a PCIe card. 6 SATA ports and 2 Gig/E ports please - maybe a proper RAID option too.

Valve chief confirms Steam-centric console-killing PC

P. Lee

Re: You are missing something

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/defense-grid/id410823436?mt=12

Though admittedly, I think it was developed by a different company than the original.

P. Lee

Re: I don't want to use bloody Linux

Indeed, upgrades on linux are generally less disruptive than windows upgrades.

P. Lee

Re: You are missing something

> Windows, OSX or Linux I can play my game on that OS without having to buy a new version of the game.

Mostly, Defensegrid is OS tied (and I think, windows only on Steam),

P. Lee

Re: They say linux but...

> Those that were able to run the game under directx8 complained of a massive performance drop after the "upgrade", I would say because of the additional layers of abstraction required to run a single image under IOS and windows.

Really? I didn't know hl2 ran on iphones. Your problems aside, that's impressive.

While I also dislike the forced upgrade approach, I would recommend upgrading your directx and probably your OS too.

On the plus side, opengl tends to move more slowly than directx (IIRC, openGL: all features are guaranteed, but they might be running in software, vs directx: not all features are guaranteed)

P. Lee
Childcatcher

Re: very controlled environment?

> Sooooooo, it's a console then, no?

Yep.

Except that any Steam game that runs on a Steam console will run on Ubuntu and won't be DirectX, so Mac's will likely get a port of it as well as Windows (running OpenGL).

Its a console jim, but not as we know it.

P. Lee
Flame

Re: @McWibble Console name

>"Not very original, but surely it should be the Companion Cube."

> Well here we have a nascent marketing genius. Son, you have found your true calling.

Except that we all know what happens to the companion cube. :( Did you hesitate?

P. Lee
Linux

Re: Your title is too long! (re: Wine)

There are a couple of issues:

1. Most existing steam users probably won't want this because they will probably lose some of their purchased games if they go linux-only. I haven't seen the native client running games under wine, but I assume it isn't that hard to do.

2. The native steam client isn't out of beta yet. It works pretty well, but I'd be adding more games before release, even if you are targeting the "we don't have a console yet" market. There are plenty of old games they could run under emulation. They could go back to 8-bit for retro gaming too as they tend to be controller-friendly. All the space-invader/centipede/miner 2049er type games from Apple ][, C64, Spectrum days. Just tweak the graphics a bit - these games were not designed for 27"-44" screens... ;)

3. Bluetooth controllers for tv play - yes we want them! :) (and we're willing to nick the Wii controllers too)

4. PC games will need dumbing down to console level if you're using controllers. You can't just slap a game controller interface onto a pc version of COD and expect... oh wait, bad example... Anyway, you get the idea. On the other hand, I would have thought that Wii console game publishers would jump at the chance to port.

5. Ranked games. These are desirable, but you need to be able to deal with different platforms. People won't want to lose rankings because they happen to be over at a friend's house using built-in intel graphics rather than their quad SLI GTX680/i7 box at home. I suspect this is a non-trivial problem.

Wouldn't it be funny if wine became the games target of choice?

Girl gang targets Microsoft's Seattle stores for $5,000 theft spree

P. Lee
Facepalm

With a nod to Dilbert, "the only thing worse than having your stuff stolen is having it returned."

'UK DNA database by stealth' proposed in £100m NHS project

P. Lee
Paris Hilton

Re: GATACA

> Eventually, there will be only one person left. The cleverest one.

And he'll still have an IQ of 100 and be very average.

HP still top of PC league, but trailing fourth in all-devices rankings

P. Lee
Linux

Re: damn that autonomy

True. They could have just given away x million devices to get things going. I think the webos interface is great.

However, just because the tech press is obsessed with tablets/phones doesn't mean that HP should be doing that. Quite a few vaccum-cleaners are sold each year, but that isn't HP's market. Getting into mobile just because the business PC market is tanking may not be the right move. Let's face it, HP isn't really in the consumer space in the way Samsung already was with TVs etc. Autonomy may have been a badly executed decision, but the enterprise is HP's focus, probably rightly so.

If hp want to get into the consumer market there may be better ways of doing so. They have a good micro-server and a cloud. How about cloud-hosted mythtv database? Clean up the EIT data a bit, sell a small AMD box with tv tuner, HDMI and disk space? HP have some ARM expertise they can tap. They could provide non-x86 home servers at high-volume. Talk to Valve, see if they are interested in some sort of collaboration. Lots of options are out there.

Review: Apple Mac Mini 2012

P. Lee
Linux

Weird product

The poor mm seems to be an odd thing.

It appears to be an office machine running OSX - now there's a niche device!

It used to be a cheap media server, but its no longer cheap. It used to be low-powered but it isn't really that either. Now that imac's have 21" and 27" screens, there isn't a great deal of reason behind not getting one of those instead - you're unlikely to want more than a 27" screen attached to this device if you are using it for a computer. It isn't really cheap enough just be a media server under the telly and its graphics aren't capable enough to play games, but its cpu makes it overpowered for media server duties and It doesn't have enough disk to be a media server. It's main benefit appears to be easy disk replacement compared to an imac and you can get a matt screen for it. For media server work, you're better off getting a old laptop off ebay and putting something other than OSX on it.

Battle of the Clouds: Azure goes lower

P. Lee
Joke

Re: $714k per MONTH

Continent cut off (from understanding)!

Report: Apple, Google, Microsoft join forces to buy Kodak patents

P. Lee

Re: US Anti-trust Laws

I think history shows that the laws apply (to MS at least), its just that no-one bothers to follow up usefully.

Fines are a cost of doing business.

P. Lee

Re: only reason why

It's called a patent pool and means you don't sue each other.

But anyone one of you can take action against someone who isn't in the pool. Its very cosy.

Apple: 27-inch iMac won't ship until next year

P. Lee

Re: Much as I love...

+1 forget the aesthetics. A noob-usable backup system in time-machine and ilife are the reasons for recommending a mac to your Aunt May.

Using W7 is nicer than XP, but I find it more confusing with things not where you expect them - Control panel is now a bit of a farce of non-meaningful catagories. The mac's centralised and simple config does much better for non-corporate hosts.

P. Lee
Linux

Re: @JDX

For most of us mortals, we have to look at the things to use them. I have to stare at the thing the whole day.

Here's hoping Father Christmas brings me uber touch-typing, mouse-handling skillz as well as the ability to remember where all icons and windows were and will appear.

I wish dell would get its act together and put a nicer bezel on its 2711 and take off the blue lights. Even without a degree in design, I can tell that's ugly.

Frenchmen's sperm plunges by a third in quality and quantity since '89

P. Lee
Alien

Re: So even the French sperm are on strike?

Not on strike. The Frogs are giving up on being men:

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/

P. Lee

Re: But I am an Englishman after all.

or possibly, "apostasy."

Windows Phone 8 must be Microsoft's priority one, two AND three

P. Lee

Re: and Wrong Market

Agreed. And I disagree with the article - phones are not where MS needs to start.

The phone market is too hard for MS to compete in - it has no leverage and the "Windows" (sounds like office equipment) brand is a disadvantage when buying a personal phone and there is no loyalty

MS should focus on integration between tablet, PC and cloud - even if that means making nice with Google and Amazon. Make itunes look like the ugly brute it is. Don't try to make Windows Live the only option, make gmail work really well. If MS want to gain traction, they will have to do without some income. For example, they could offer ad-free search on their own tablets (for the time-being at least) via bing or back off music/video purchases to Amazon rather than trying to take a cut.

With the cpus in phones increasing in power, it won't be long before they become a de-facto thin client, with wired or wireless KVM. What happens when the GPU's are strong enough to drive a 2560x1440 screen, or monitor manufacturers put in a cheap graphics unit so android can play on a normal screen or two, with bluetooth keyboard/mouse for input? Suddenly, your "too small to use" device gains legs, and MS has accustomed users to a touchscreen-look UI on their work pc. Add to that, the fact that unix can run individual apps off different servers. So email can run off a cheap ARM unit and your big spreadsheet can be running on a beefy x86, being shared without any virtualisation/citrix (or any other) licenses required.

MS have to get people using the windows APIs on tablets or its game over.

I'd go further - create RT blades for mass VDI deployment (also usable as thin clients), because if the linux/android crowd manage to get their ARM bits popular its going to hurt. From VDI, you can back into the tablet and phone markets. You can also re-use a single RT blade as a home-microserver if you have HDMI and some sata ports.

The aim here is to loss-lead your new environment by offering cheap but lower-spec windows and Office.

That's what I'd do if I were them. I don't think they will though. I think they have more hubris than common sense. They think (or at least project that they think) that their product is good enough to to win on its own merits. I suspect not.

Australian Prime Minister: Mayan calendar 'true'

P. Lee
Big Brother

Re: "unreconstructed"?

Those who are unreconstructed shall be sent to the gulag for re-education.

If they fail their re-education, they shall remain in the pit, as they are not fit to be part of society.