Posts by Ian Michael Gumby

US judge SLAMS both IBM and the SEC over bribery settlement

Re: What about the laws in China and South Korea?

Why not both statements not being true?

Both IBM & the SEC want this to disappear....

Lets get real...

IBM has stashed a lot of cash off shore. At the last tax amnesty deal, the brought in over 5 Billion USD.

If the SEC were to dig deeper, IBM would comply and more dirt will come out and the SEC can't turn a blind eye.

I for one applaud the judge's decision.

Big corps need to be held accountable for their actions...

Dead Steve Jobs' mega yacht seized by testy Philippe Starck

Re: No contract?

This seems to be a bit much about nothing...

Yes there is the issue of a verbal contract.

Then there is this thing called probate where the executor and the lawyers work out which bills are to be paid and what taxes are to be charged, along with the value of the estate...

Could be that Starke jumped the gun.

El Reg man: Too bad, China - I was RIGHT about hoarding rare earths

The author missed the point as to what it means to be a monopoly...

"Or Google and search engines: we've got two investigations going on right now about whether Google is abusing its market position - one in the US and another in the EU. But this isn't the correct question at all. Sure, they're market-dominant: but if they really try to rook their customers can someone come along and challenge them? I would argue yes they could: not that anyone's been successful particularly yet but there's no obvious legal or technical reason why someone couldn't. It would only need a change in consumer taste for a competitor to beat them."

The trouble occurs when the company who holds the monopoly abuses that power within the market or uses its dominance in one market to take over another.

This is what we saw w Microsoft, and now Google.

You can build a better mouse trap and still fail against a monopoly.

Are your landlines buried in the stone age?

It's funny..

But many people have forgotten that land lines provide their own power...

If you live in a rural area and need a phone in an emergency... Land lines are your best bet.

North Korea's satellite a dud, say US astroboffins

Re: North Korea peeing in the orbital pool?

Funny, but I thought someone would have gone with the 'Why hello Hans Blix... ' from the use of the puppet image used in Team America, World Police. (F - Yeah!).

They could have made a joke that its really a coffin for Matt Daemon or Alex Baldwin... Or something along those lines...

Look out, Flash! Phase-change RAM IS HERE ... in Nokia mobiles

Re: So much for the days of Apple pushing out new tech. (@Zaphod.Beeblebrox)

Actually its the incorporation of tech which could also be innovative.

The poster is correct. And Nokia has a long lineage in being inventive. Where they've failed is in getting the products to market.

No one is saying that Nokia is perfect, however you need to give them credit where credit is due.

Assange^TM spins Oz Senate candidacy again

Re: Survey results

There is lies damn lies and statistics.

The point is that the stats you quote are as meaningless as Assange is as candidate.

He's worse than Billy Carter or Bill Clinton's brother..

Max Headroom?

Sorry but I have this image that if Assange were somehow elected, he would end up having a screen with his face and a camera where he would sit.

So as he rots in the Ecuadorian Embassy, he can still be a member of the Aussie govt.

Astronomers find biggest black hole, 17 BILLION times the size of Sun

Re: The bloody egg

Its all circular.

I would imagine that if you have enough mass concentrated at the center of a black hole, it will explode.

(Boom) or rather a Big Bang.

Of course at that point, time and space would cease to have meaning in the conventional sense....

Dogs would say: size is important, shape - not so much

Meh its telepathy... Re: My dog's very clever

With my dog, I can use multiple words, or adjectives and he always seems to know what I mean when I say them.

He's smart that way.

Its why some dogs tend to bond with certain people and only those people.

Asteroid miners hunt for platinum, leave all common sense in glovebox

Re: Uhm... No.

@AC...

That was sort of taken from a different Sci-Fi story where a sales guy accidentally gets put in to suspended animation while getting his teeth fixed at a dentist office. I want to say it was called Marching Morons or something where the really smart people who ran everything had menial task jobs while the bulk of the population were mental midgets. The solution was to build lots of space craft and send them in to the sun. Its a short story. And it looks like part of the premise was made in to a movie staring Luke Wilson (Idiotacry? or something like that)

The point was that you could get rid of the waste by products...

Re: But there is no concept of private property.

Read Heinlein, Niven, and Gibson. Asimov too for that matter.

I also forgot the author of the Dorsai stories too

Re: This is assuming the products are the same

Sorry I had to down vote you...

Just out of curiosity... Why did they wrap the lunar lander in gold foil?

Which is a better conductor of electricity? Gold or copper?

Just food for thought?

Re: robots

But they do need a source of energy ...

Plus what happens when they wake up?

Re: Uhm... No.

I agree with your comments, however, lets add a few things to it...

1) you can always take your waste and push it in to the sun, or put it on to a trajectory to another planet. (No life, no harm no foul. Especially planets like Jupiter...

2) with some of these metals, if you drop their price, you end up with a greater chance to to more research. Think about it. How much research can you do when your base materials cost thousands of dollars to start with. You had better know the probable outcome before you start.

3) Reusable tech.

If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.... :-)

Maybe that's a poor analogy, but if you create the tech to mine asteroids for metals, you can also use it to mine for things like water that you will need. Not to mention, you will need to mine an iron/nickel asteroid for shelter if you want to have a population of people in space. (Add Niven to your reading list.)

The point is that the new technology to mine an asteroid is going to be key for our future.

4) flow down of patents. Unlike software patents, real hardware means real patents. While the ultimate goal is in mining in space,, think of all of the baby steps and technology advances it will take to get there. Want proof? Look back to the US space program... (The us govt would have no debt had they been able to capitalize on everything that came out of NASA. Oh wait, we did tax the carp out of those companies ... :-(. )

5) the demand curve is not inelastic. More raw material may cause a dip in the short term, however it will bounce back because as price drops, it will be used in more products. Not to mention that the first place some of these materials will be used is in space itself.

Think of it this way. They are mining the materials for space first, earth second.

6) what makes you think that they will dump all of the refined metal on the market all at once?

Can you say DeBeers?

I really have to rate this a thumbs down. Had the author read more Niven, he would have written a better article.

The boffin's head because while I have a degree in Engineering, I could probably have earned a masters in English Lit specializing in Sci-Fi.

The early days of PCs as seen through DEAD TREES

Cleveland Ohio?

The interesting thing...

Techmar was founded outside of Cleveland, OH. (Solon)

Ohio Scientific (Aroura, OH)

And Cleveland is the only city to be insulted in one of the comments in the UNIX source code...

Sorry just thinking back to the good ol days

NoSQL's CAP theorem busters: We don't drop ACID

Re: Same old same old

Actually no...

I mean, yes you could, and you end up with distributed relational database.

(See Informix's XPS, or EMC's Greenplum in terms of shared nothing MPP)

However, you don't have to create a relational database and you would still have to worry about ACID. Its not as simple as some people would have you believe.

Re: CAP theorem - not a blocker in the practical world

Well... The thing about CAP... in any distributed system there is an issue of time. All nodes being consistent at the same time is a bit difficult since each node is distinct and unique in terms of the clock.

I think its a question of your definitions.

Also I think it would depend on your system clocks and networks for true consistency.

Texan schoolgirl expelled for refusing to wear RFID tag

@AC ...Re: @Martin 47

The thing I think most are forgetting that its not just to track the student, but also tie in to their cafeteria billing system and other back end systems.

So the cost could include some additional software too.

We don't know.

As to leaving them in their lockers, I would imagine that they track the student entering and leaving the school.

This would suggest NFC not just a contact against a plate. (Think IPASS that your car uses on the toll roads.)

Re: I predict...

First I wasn't commenting on the toilet issue.

I think that's a bit over the top.

The point I was trying to make is that we as adults do this all the time.

Even as parents there are some who use their kids cells to track them.

Put GPS monitoring devices on their cars.

Granted its their parents and not the schools.

But as I've pointed out, that there is some legal responsibility that the schools have towards the children.

All you need is one hungry and creative lawyer to make an argument that persuades a jury that its the school district's fault and voila everyone has one of these things embedded under their skin.

Again another piece of irony. If a company does this we don't bitch while if its a government, we bitch and don't trust them.

Re: I wonder...

Can you say "destruction of school property?"

Re: I predict...

Its kind of ironic that while everyone is be-itching about a kid having to wear an RFID tag, I'll wager that their parents routinely wear an RFID tag on a daily basis.

Seriously. You work for Company X. In order to enter the building you need to wear your employee badge. Embedded is an RFID tag. If you work in a secured location within the building, every time you enter that location you have to badge in. If there are no rest rooms, then you have to leave and re-badge in.

The sad thing is that for the child attending the school there is probably no expectation of privacy in that the school is responsible for knowing the child's location. Can you imagine the lawsuit of the child is at school, walks off campus and gets hurt or injured in an accident? You can bet your bottom dollar that there is going to be some lawyer ready to sue the school district over letting the kid leave campus.

Yeah, I didn't use your line, I gave you a better example of why this is a done deal.

All the parents hope to do is to get their daughter back in to the school because its offers a better education than her alternatives.

So do you have a work badge? Did you pop it in to the microwave? Did you protest for having to wear the mark of Satan? (Cue the Church Lady)

@AC... Re: Christ (oops!) bloody religion again???

You know you could have skipped the torture of reading the 'Book of Mormon' and instead waited for the Broadway show...

Yeah I know its not the same thing... but you get the idea...

The Spawn of Satan Icon, because I know I am going to hell for promoting the guys behind South Park... :-P

@Martin 47

You should really price what it would take to implement the solution.

God I know I'm just going to get down voted for pointing out the obvious.

Its not just the RFID tags, but the software, the additional hardware, etc ...

It adds up quickly.

I am not saying that I agree with the system, or that its a violation of privacy.

Just that 500K isn't outrageous.

10 Gigabit Ethernet still too expensive on servers

@Captain Save a ho... HUH ? Re: Servers need switches

"You can connect 1Gbps to 10Gbps ports, but the costs of 10Gbps switch and its associated SFP+ optics make that a really stupid decision. Why waste the 10Gbps real estate on 1Gpbs when a smaller 1Gbps switch is much cheaper?"

First you don't have to go SFP+ connectors.

Second, you can go 10GBe at the switch and then have your legacy hardware running, and then add in new 10GBe kit as you build out the rack.

Third, you should also be able to upgrade your 1GBe kit by adding a 10GBe card, provided that you have an open PCIe slot available. (Some 1U boxes can only house a single PCIe slot which may already be in use.

Beyond HPC there's this thing called 'big data' and Hadoop...

-Just saying

Re: Kind of forgetting the cost of the switches there aren't they

I'm not sure who you're looking at but ToR 10GBe switches aren't that bad. Arista seems to have the lead in this space. Cisco? Seems to be $$$.

Not that bad for enterprises... small companies... maybe still a pain point.

Autonomy to HP: bollocks

If true, Deloitte is SoL

Anderson was felled by Enron.

Delloite can be felled by this since they were the auditors.

Re: HP = twats but Twinkies will live on...

Sorry, but when Interstate bakeries goes belly up, they will sell off the brands.

They will appear under a different name.

Apple, Spotify, Amazon: All your Cloud are belong to us, says firm

Re: Not like FTP

Agreed.

Still enough prior art as well as trivial.

Windows Phone 8 reboot woe causes outpouring of forum misery

Funny...

But I have had my Apple 4S reboot on its own. Of course I wasn't in the middle of anything and I don't usually turn my phone off, so I have to wonder if there's a memory leak or something that just takes time to cause it to kill my phone.

Again, it could be nothing, or it could be the combination of apps that I run.

Were it frequent and stopping me from using my phone, you can bet that I'd dump it and go to another phone ASAP. (In all honesty, I'd consider a Nokia, not that I'm a window's guy, but that it's price point with contract, and the solid build makes sense. )

@Simbu It depends....

What do you use your phone for?

Phone Calls? (Yes that's becoming a smaller percentage of time on the phone... ;-)

Emails?

Texts?

Camera?

Surfing the web?

Music App?

Then there's VOIP....

Until you have enough occurrences and enough data of failures, it could be anything. A bad port of an iOS or Android App that causes Microsoft to fail could be the culprit and unless you use said app or class of apps, you don't know what it is.

You can't test for every potential failure. It may just take a 'perfect storm'....

Judge confirms Google's miserly $22.5m Safari privacy FTC payout

Re: Fantastic argument..

No, its that we have a weird legal system that allows one to plead guilty but not admit one's guilt.

Had Google admitted their guilt, then they could have been fined 3 Billion USD or something like that amount.

(Most likely less but much more than 21 Million USD)

Google and Microsoft know how to beat the legal system, and until the courts rule Google to be a monopoly... they will get away with murder, so to speak.

AT&T relaunches walkie-talkie style service Push to Talk

Two way radios had their limitations...

First you had to deal with range. Then you had to deal with the fact that the spectrum was shared. That anyone could easily hear your conversations.

PTT over VOIP, would mean that your signal would not be transmitted in the clear. (Analog vs Digital is the first barrier) Voice isn't txt and then there is encryption. Sure someone could eavesdrop but its would take a lot of work or kit.

At the same time, since you're using a cell network you have a much greater range.

Also you carry a phone that is also a camera, and now a radio, so you still carry one device not many.

The only downside is that if there is an emergency, like a storm that knocks out the cell towers... you're screwed...

Sorority girls gone wild: '1 to 3' casual sex 'hookups' every month

Re: Porn Capital Recruitement

Yes, but if it wasn't for the hordes of repressed men from around the world... well it wouldn't be such a money making industry...

Of course need I remind you of Page 3 ... ?

WTF? Re: pfft Americans

I'm sorry, but maybe you're just jealous, or maybe you're not old enough to remember what was considered the 'sexual revolution' back in the 60's.

That's when God invented the birth control pill and womankind rejoiced. :-P

With modern medicine STDs are more under control and the fact that many college coeds are new to the open freedoms that they didn't have under the watchful eyes of their repressed parents. (Note: That if I had a daughter, I'd be the dad who was busy cleaning his guns on the kitchen table as I met her date. "You will have her home by 10:00 pm won't you son? " :-) [Note: Not that would actually stop them from doing something, but that it would make sure she would be home at a reasonable time and I wouldn't be up all night worried about her. I'll let her mother tell her about the 'birds and the bees' ... ]

To your point, yes, today's students have parents who have very protestant and conservative views on sex. Remember two things... 1) Who founded America? (Puritans) 2) The parents of today were the young republicans of the '80s and also had their sexual freedom stymied by the scare of AIDS

If only I were 25 years younger living in today's society!

Paris, because while her sex tape was a tad lame, she still appears to be a role model for today's youth.

Astroboffins spot smiley face on Mercury

Is that a 3 eyed BEM or a large zit on a pock marked face of a teenager?

At last, a bionic arm that passes the Beer, Egg and Looks Cool tests

Re: That is truly outstanding

While its cool, he has shit taste in beer.

Sorry, it had to be said.

Microsoft demos real-time English to Chinese translation

Re: the time has come to talk ... of hovercrafts and eels?

ma dalag̃u gubi sugam

It looks much cooler in Ancient Summarian.

Facebook warehousing 180 PETABYTES of data a year

Meh! YARN, Mesos, Spark...

Just another cluster fsck manager to extend Hadoop.

Trying to stay relevant in the Cloudera / Hortonworks smackdown coming to a cable station near you.

Mine's the coat with all of the bookie slips in the pocket....

Re: We know that they have lots of data but

Its a bit more than just that.

You now see newspapers and other sites using FB to authenticate the users. This would imply that embedded in to the articles, there are tags that track the user. And then there are other sites. Based on the scale, if you use FB, they can essentially see everything or almost everything you do online.

Now do you start to get a picture of the scope of things?

Bradley Manning submits partially-guilty plea in WikiLeaks case

Re: Oh, I don't like going down this path...

To add what Psyx said...

In both Manning and the White House leaks, charges where brought forward and in one of the leaks, the guilty person was charged, tried and sentenced. Of course the Prez commuted the sentence.

Of course that's a similarity.

Bigger difference. Manning is in the military. Different set of laws govern the civilian world and the military world.

@AC you kind of forgot some things...

There was a bulk of sit reps and after action reports that were dumped. These actually do have value to the enemy because they give insight in to the military's operations.

@radariba And what planet do you live on?

What exactly did Manning do?

Releasing the docs? That's one thing. It doesn't answer how he got the docs in the first place.

Manning is in a bit of hot water because unlike in the 1971 case, the material release by Manning, did not cross Manning's desk, nor did he have access to those documents. His plea of 'guilty' on those counts is merely window dressing in a way to blunt the full force of what the prosecution can show as well as ask in terms of prison time. He could be facing 100+ years based on the amount of documents he pilfered. (Not that he will get that much time.) Pleading guilty to the release of the documents helps reduce the burden and cost to the defense.

No medal there.

Lets set the record straight....

From the article:

"If Manning is found guilty of the charges as they stand, he could face the death penalty."

While this may be factually correct, that under the law, if found guilty this would be the maximum penalty allowed, it has already been stated by the prosecution that they would not be seeking the death penalty. Not to mention that there have already been cases of espionage tried and convicted where they did not seek the death penalty and the breaches were more serious that Manning's breach in terms of information being leaked.

So its a bit misleading to trot out the death penalty (smells a bit yellow) , when its not being sought by the prosecution.

IMHO this is a smart tactic by the defense. Its definitely a way to reduce his sentence and an effort to hide some of the facts coming to light if there was a trial.

Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 handset review

Re: Some questions for the author

To add to this...

The article mentions mail sync w Hotmail.

What about other imap sources including GMail?

Granted its an alternative to Microsoft, but many potential customers rely on it so easy connections/synch w GMail and Google Calendar is unfortunately a 'must'.

One advantage over the iPhone... able to swap sims so I can just buy a sim in a new country if I need to, right?

How IT bosses turned the tables on our cushy consultancy gigs

This wouldn't work in practice.

"Now I wasn’t so sure I’d sneer at these people. And if I were ever laid off again I’d most likely have to adopt the approach I’d learned from colleagues of mine who’ve also spent extended periods “on the beach” in the last decade: I wasn’t unemployed, I was “in transition” — or better yet, “doing freelance consulting”. My list of clients? I’m sorry, but that’s confidential information. ®"

So your client list is confidential. Ok, been there done that.

But what can you tell me about your projects. What was your role in these projects and what technology did you use?

The point is that I can within 15 mins figure out if you're real or full of sh$t.

WTF is... RF-MEMS?

Re: I think the problem

No, your phone will work there.

Oh' you meant your phone's apps that rely on LTE.

Like being able to download a movie or watch clips from tv that are not stored on your phone.

Bond's Walther PPK goes digital: A civilized gun updated

FN Five Seven

You have to look at the bullets themselves. FN makes two rounds. One for civilians, one for military. The military have steel cores. That's what will penetrate body armor.

@Don Jefe Re: P99 & Silenced .45

I tried the P99 I have to agree, it felt weird along with the HK.

I'll stick with my Sig P226 any day. I have bigger hands so I want a gun that fits my hand. The Sig fits. (I'll skip on the E2 frame)

I've also shot the 220 and some of their 1911 models. Sweet!

With respect to a suppressed 1911, its not insane. Your .45 is a large slower moving slug. You could go sub sonic and the suppressor would help. Note that it won't 'silence' the weapon, but it will reduce its signature to the point where you don't need hearing protection.

Suppressors are very good when you want to reduce your muzzle flash, recoil, and noise.

From a civilian perspective... varmint control. (Coyotes and Deer)

Just saying