* Posts by David S

293 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Mar 2007

Page:

UK's national grid 'ready' for e-car expansion

David S
Unhappy

Oh FFS.

Our energy use is unsustainable as things stand. Everyone who isn't part of a special-interests lobby and has read beyond the powergen propaganda knows this to be true. So where will we be getting the power to drive these electric cars, even if they ever become viable for the mass market? Unicorn piss?

Honestly, I can't help thinking we could probably figure our way through this crisis if we didn't waste so much effort fooling the public into thinking the future can in any way resemble the status quo. I despair. We deserve extinction. Just a shame that we're using up all the fossil fuels in the process, so whatever species follows us up the evolutionary ladder will never have an industrial revolution...

Oompa-Loompa and Tinky Winky cuffed for drunken brawl

David S

Will nobody think of the children?

This is going to do nothing good for the developing psyches of any underage witnesses.

Still, as everyone else has said, POIDH.

Star Trek Klingon lingo hits cutting room floor

David S

@AC (Nerdburglars 2.0 (AKA, Gene Hunt wouldn't watch it) )

Very funny. Speaking for myself, I'm pretty agnostic regarding whether Klingon should or shouldn't be l;eft in just so's the sad types who studied it like it was real get to show off their understanding. I'm the same watching Die Hard (Alan Rickman's accent isn't great) but at least the language I show off about is a real one spoken by real people...

Still, possibly because it wouldn't bother me either way, I can't quite understand anyone holding strong feelings one way or t'other. I'll end up watching the movie, no doubt, but I'll leave it for a week or two to let the hardcore Klingon kontingent have their fun...

I liked your last line, by the way. You didn't say anything about being fluent in Ewok...

Meet Phorm's PR genius

David S
Thumb Down

Yes. Woot and all that.

I can't help feeling, though, that these guys are the ones who are laughing. I mean, we can spot all the connections and make all the fun we want, but at the end of the day this outfit is busily worming its way into the soft, yielding guts of our IT infrastructure with the blessing of the establishment and there seems to be very little that anyone can actually do about it.

I mean, really. What can you and I actually do about this? Other than point and sneer and feel clever? And don't say vote for the other guys next time, because I don't think there's a political force in the world which is immune to the power of the brown envelope.

Incredibly poorly thought-out this may be. Borderline illegal it certainly is. But it's also well-funded and well-supported politically, which means it's a coup d'etat. It's happening whether you like it or not, and THEY get to be smug.

Prove me wrong. Please.

LoTR fan film set for net premiere

David S
Coat

Fan of a fan?

Wow. That looks like a triumph of shoestring storytelling!

Mind you, if he's going to insist on walking everywhere as slowly as that he'll never get anywhere... Not so much "Strider" as "Ambler"...

I'll get my cloak.

No-go woe for doughnut co after Vo-Vo blow

David S
Happy

Ho ho ho

Nice headline. Yo.

Phorm boss blogs from a dark, dark place

David S
Pirate

Flawed on so many levels

How exactly are they planning to target adverts based on our browsing habits anyway? Will I be served ads for Igglepiggle blankets while my three-year-old son gets Hanna Montana merchandise, my teen son gets IT-related spam and my thirteen-tear old daughter gets dodgy pr0n links? We share the same internet connection, and yet our tastes and interests differ about as widely as any bunch of people you might pick at random.

So it's pointless, right? As targeted as a splattergun, surely?

Here's another thing: I called my ISP yesterday to ask for reassurance that I could be opted out of Phorm and nobody I could be put through to had even heard of the organisation. I had to explain to their customer service people all about the background and why I was concerned. To their credit, they ALL expressed the opinion that it sounded like a really bad idea, but nobody could reassure me. I feel a letter coming on...

Privacy Pirate T-shirt FTW. I'd buy that for a dollar.

Infosec opens in new venue

David S
Coat

Dolly birds?

I was going to complain about the lack of photographic evidence, then I saw that third photo.

Cute.

Mine's the one with the specs in the pocket...

eBay scammer gets four years in slammer

David S
Coat

@sureo

Nah, they're all legit man. Look at their feedback: "***** A1 Top ebayer!!!!111!1zomg1!!"

Ballmer disses Oracle's decision to buy Sun

David S
Coat

"You'll see us innovating..."

I think he may be talking about the new market he's spotted for thermal underwear in hades...

Mine's the one with the sweaty patches under the arms...

The Pirate Bay loads cannon with official appeal

David S
Happy

...I forgot to mention...

That Mitch Benn lyric I quoted earlier? It was in a song I was listening to, quite legally, for free.

When it comes to music, I'd say Spotify is more of a threat to album sales than TPB. But I'd say it extremely sotto voce, in case someone heard me and took it away.

Sweet, sweet Spotify...

David S

Nice lyric from Mitch Benn...

...in his song "Steal This Song"...

"Home taping isn't killing music

Music's dying of natural causes..."

Genius.

Wacky Jacqui spanked by husband

David S

Oh dear.

Even the most puritanical turn out to be naked under their clothes. How odd.

LG fu**ed off with swearing

David S
Coat

Liked the keynote. Baby laughter very effective.

My ideal telly is a radio tuned to Radio 4. Ha. I win the curmudgeonly-old-fart race...

Seriously though. Half the decent shows on TV seem to have started out as radio shows (new series of "I've never seen Star Wars" and "Genius" on telly, FFS! The picture's entirely superfluous!) and the other half are on Cbeebies. Mr Tumble FTW.

The leather elbow patches, yes...

Eric Schmidt reanimates el cheapo PC zombie

David S

Um...

"There's going to come a point, likely very soon, where people will begin to ask why they need a 4GHz processor and 8 gigabytes of RAM to do word processing or spreadsheet manipulations – the same word processing and spreadsheet manipulations they have been doing for the last decade"

Didn't that happen, like, about a year ago? I seem to remember an attractive lady on a beach going on and on about it.

Ted, I love your work. It's entertaining as all hell to read. It'd be nice if it could be a little more relevant, but we can't have everything. Kudos for the metric ass-ton; that's a concept I'd like to borrow if that's okay. Just, for future reference, the metric ton is spelt "tonne".

El Reg suffers identity crisis

David S
Joke

Bye bye Mr Grumpy

Can someone please refund Ian his subscription money so that he can go read something else, more to his taste? He's clearly not enjoying himself here, and that makes me unhappy. Poor guy.

I voted all of the above, 'cos they all made me smile in a different way. Being called "unethical" by Phorm HAS to go down as one of the more ironic insults of all time ever. Like being called a twat by Noel Gallagher...

World of Warcraft: 'The crack cocaine of the computer world'

David S
Thumb Up

@mycho

Oh yes. Angband. Now THAT was a game...

Got those shakes again. Haven't had them for years, man. Decades! You had to go mention it, didn't you?

UK 'bad' pics ban to stretch?

David S
Black Helicopters

@David Roberts

"Can I therefore conclude that scrawling "Mandy is a great shag" on the wall is perfectly acceptable but any pictures added for the hard of reading will contravene the act and render the artist liable to prosecution?"

Actually, it's getting damned-near close to criminalising anyone who uses that cubicle and makes the mistake of glancing at the poorly-drawn sketch.

"Number two was it, sir? If you wouldn't mind stepping this way. Mind your head..."

Samsung NC10 netbook

David S

My colleague just got herself one of these...

...and she is very pleased with it so far.

That is all.

Spotify: We kick the tyres

David S

Well...

It seems to have some significant strengths in terms of the library. I mean, fair enough I haven't ever really looked at the streaming music field before, but "following my nose", as it were, I was delighted to find some real blasts from my past. BAP, Groenemeyer, Art of Noise... A good afternoon's nostalgia trip, if nothing else...

Would I pay for it? Probably; it would depend on the price, as most things do.

Anyway. Back to work. Gluck auf!

SCO boss to customers: 'Blah. Blah. Blah'

David S

I could be wrong...

...but this looks like a CRM SNAFU. (says the CRM guy...)

Somebody was probably doing a demo on the live system instead of the sandbox. Didn't mean to hit "Send". Oopsie...

DHS deploys undercar Kraken tentacle-bombs

David S
Thumb Up

@Darsyx

Now that would be an advert I'd pay to watch...

David S

Stick that in your Subaru, benefit cheats!

I initially read that as "DHSS Deploys..." and figured it was something to combat all those families on benefits who somehow manage to have the latest widescreen TV / PS3 / supercharged sportscar / designer leasurewear...

Mildly disappointed to hear it's just another Eye-o-Sauron add-on. Hey ho.

Cops taser JCB thief in 'slowest police chase ever'

David S
Coat

Stopping a JCB

I have it on good authority (I read it somewhere) that you simply need to lie down in front of it, wearing a dressing gown. I'll let someone else put it to the test though.

Mine's the knee-length terry one, with the towel in one pocket...

Fantasy author hired to pen Doom 4 plot

David S
Happy

Just in case there's anyone looking for a dose of nostalgia...

Someone's done a nice Flash version of the Shareware level of Doom 1 here: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/470460

It even has the secret level. Doesn't allow saving, though...

Google opens heart, Apps to channel

David S

Shurely shome mishtake

"...especially when Google Apps still, occasionally, has a nasty habit of plummeting ingloriously back to earth with a thud."

FUD, surely?

I kid. I've used Google docs as a handy-dandy tool for collaboration with clients across many domains; it's got its purposes and for some it's ideal. It still seems a mite too flaky to utterly replace local WP, though.

That’s cloud computing. But not as we know it, Jim

David S
Alien

Agree to disagree

Fair play, I guess we disagree on this one. All I have to draw on is my own experience; years of designing and developing on-premise solutions which took ages to describe, let alone build, didn't scale easily, needed translating for each new market, took ages to re-design when the next new market turned out to do tax differently... The synchronisation issues, the backups, the integration, the failover planning...

I'm sorry if it sounds wooly and feeble, but doing it all on shared infrastructure that's someone else's headache is incredibly refreshing. Liberating, even. And it's such a joy to deliver in a couple of months a system which, in your previous life, would have taken quite literally orders of magnitude more man-hours to deliver, and which wouldn't have had a hope of lasting as well because they wouldn't scale as seamlessly, or be as flexible or universally available.

It may simply be the latest in a long line of solutions in search of a problem, and it's unlikely to become quite as ubiquitous as the laser, but I wouldn't be quite so quick to dismiss *aaS as "the old mainframe service bureau concept recycled" - there's a little more to it than that.

Since you specialise in rescuing woebegone victims from second-party-solution disasters I can see that you anticipate a beanfeast when the shine comes off the cloud's silver lining (metaphor stretched to breaking point yet?) but, seriously, I don't think I'd recommend holding my breath. SFDC's user count continues to grow apace, and their customer satisfaction rating is consistently high. People love their product! I can't tell you how refreshing it is to train end users and have them enthuse about their new system! Even the sales guys!

Again, I'd recommend signing up for a dev account and just testing the waters. What have you to lose but your preconceptions?

Jeez. I sound like a feckin' Scientologist, don't I? Xenu loves you...

David S

Right...

Hands up anyone here who has a bank account. Anyone? How's about anyone who's happy to work for a company which uses a bank account, rather than storing all of its money as actual cash in a safe at Head Office.

Is that most of us? Really? So I guess we're all pretty comfortable about allowing specialists and experts in their field to look after our most valuable assets for us, rather than insisting on rolling our own solution every time. Benefiting from the economies of scale (easier for one business to look after the assets of millions than those millions to look after their own as effectively, sort of thing) and, frankly, the much improved security (because, again, the economies of scale make it easier to be properly secure once for millions than millions of times for one each.)

So next question: hands up if you'd reject the offer of working for (or with) a company or client for the sole reason that they didn't own their own office building, but rented an office, or a suite, or a floor, or a wing, or even a building from a managed services company (the prime example would be Regus, but I'm sure we can all name half-a-dozen more.) Anyone?

So it seems we're all reasonably happy about renting out services rather than owning and managing our own infrastructure from time to time, and again benefiting from the flexibility this offers ("You've taken on another hundred staff? You could take over the sixth floor, if you like...") and, again, the economy of scale that comes from using the same infrastructure to support many organisations.

I can't see that any of this is particularly controversial. Thing is, because I've framed it in terms of money and space, with analogies with which we've all been utterly familiar for centuries, it isn't particularly controversial. It's all very straightforward. Sensible, even.

So why do the very same concepts make Jake and John's blood boil when applied to something new*, like business software?

Well, would it be cheeky of me to suggest that, possibly, Jake and John might have some form of vested interest in the status quo? Actually, yes it probably would. I know neither of them personally or professionally, and would hate to be guilty of making assumptions based on little or no evidence. There must be a better reason.

Can it be security? I don't think so. It's pretty obvious that the major SaaS vendors take security very seriously. Follow me on this one: Look at the home page of a significant SaaS vendor. I'll be using Salesforce.com as an example, because they're the primary example with which I work**. Check out their case studies. Look at some of the clients that they have on their books. Now, if it were even a little bit easy for some hacker or industrial espion to break in and make off with their data, don't you think it would have happened by now? And if some hacker had managed it, don't you think we'd have read about it on the Reg? Every day for a month or so?

Nothing's 100% secure. Black holes excepted***. But I know I'd rather store my valuable money in a bank than in my own back pocket, and I'd rather entrust my valuable data to serious, experienced professionals than some of the bumbling (but good-natured) folks I've met running on-premise data centres down the years.

What about flexibility? Scalability? Actually, on both of those counts *aaS will win hands-down. Platform-as-a-Service will allow you to implement pretty much any form of business software in a fraction of the time required to develop the same functionality in-house and.or on-premise. It's the economies of scale again; most of the work's been done already, by some people who seriously know what they're about. And the major difference between a five-user system and a five-thousand-user system is four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-five user licenses. (Oh okay, and a more complex user profile heirarchy. Sure.) - no extra servers, or extra backups, or extra spare servers in case the first ones break, or...

And here's a scenario: You're opening a new office in Swindon. Or Sweden. Or South-east Asia. Where / how do you start setting up the infrastructure, data synchronisation, multilingual/multi-currency requirements for that with your on-premise solution? With SaaS, as long as they have an internet connection (and they will) then all you need is the extra licences for the new users. The rest has been done for you already.

Mobile users? No problem. Download the client. Log on. There you go. With all of your customisations, the relevant data, synchronised seamlessly whenever there's a mobile signal.

And there can be a significant advantage to putting power like this into the hands of the business user rather than their IT support team. The biggest advantage being the significantly reduced turnaround from business need to implementation. Where seriously useful, business-enhancing systems can be pushed out in weeks rather than months or years, there's more likelihood that they will reflect the current business processes (rather than the ones that were current when the system was first thought of) and that a ROI will be seen much sooner.

Okay, I realise that I'm probably a bit like a satan worshipper trying to preach to a choir here, but I figured a little balance wouldn't go amiss. It's not about undermining the IT department, or abdicating responsibility, or hiring "a second party to host applications and store data", but using the best tools available for the job. Frankly, if anyone needs re-educating round the back of the office bike sheds it's the die-hard stick-in-the-muds who'd rather mouth off about something and look good than spend a little time and effort seriously investigating a technology that could make a significant difference to their business's agility.

For those of you who are interested, a developer licence may be obtained for free from salesforce.com, and will allow you to play with the cloud to your heart's content. You'll also have access to any amount of help and documentation to assist you in your investigation. Be warned, your mind may be broadened by the experience.

For the rest, well, thanks for reading this far. Sorry you're unconvinced. It isn't for everyone, and there are certainly applications where "The Cloud" isn't the best solution, but they're pretty few and far between these days. You may be right. in your case. Might I take this opportunity to wish you a happy 1999.

David S.

*for a given value of "new" - as has been pointed out before, this concept's been around for a while. Only recently with this level of potential, though...

** Oh come on. Yes, I DO work in SaaS. I've drunk deeply of the cloud kool-aid, and with good reason. Keep reading.

*** No he doesn't. Hawking says black holes can evaporate over time, sure, but while they may lose their mass, any structure that falls in is lost. Nice try, though. If you really, really want to lose something forever, a black hole's still about your best bet.

Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah set for top two spots in Christmas Day charts

David S

I heard Alexandra's version in the car this evening.

...and it was pretty much your standard R-n-B-can't-stay-on-a-single-note-for-a-second kind of warbling fluff. It didn't sound much like a cold and a broken hallelujah to me. But what do I know.

I quite liked the version that was on the Shrek soundtrack.* Who sang that, then?

* I have kids, that's why. Screw you.

Hubble snaps planet orbiting distant star

David S
Boffin

Elite...

Heh. Thanks folks, I knew that solar system sounded familiar...

As for the eye thing, this image still freaks me out bigtime:

http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys230/lectures/planneb/MyCn18_big.jpg

'Ruggedised, weaponised' raygun modules now on sale

David S
Flame

"...FIRESTRIKE™s come with Ethernet interface as standard"

no USB?

Jezza Clarkson cops flak for 'truckers murder strumpets' gag

David S
Coat

Careful now.

Down with this sort of thing.

BOFH: The Mandelboat virus

David S

@ jubtastic1

For the record, I'm planning to borrow "assisted titsup" in the future. It's genius. I hope you won't mind.

German developers forge Iron from Chrome

David S

@Billy

Nice try, but no cigar. I do work in the SaaS arena (so to speak) and have visited the London GooglePlex on one occasion (a nice bunch, but a spookily friendly office environment. Almost too cutesy and nice...) but no, I don't work for Google.

What I do do, though, is a hell of a lot of work in browser interfaces, which means I can really appreciate differences between browser experiences. It's in that capacity that my comments were left.

David S
Thumb Up

I've been using Chrome for a while now...

...and I've gotten used to its nippiness to the expent that using IE, Opera or FF has become a painful, frustrating experience of waiting, and waiting, and waiting...

Iron sounds interesting as well. Has anyone checked through its source code yet to make sure it won't be skimming my credit card details and sending them to somebody even less trustworthy than Google? Anyone trustworthy, I mean? Can someone vouch for them, too?

Oh, and Paul has a point. Iron? No! Titanium ftw!

Dell launches monster quad-core notebook

David S
Paris Hilton

Is it just me...

...or would you feel somebody's credibility drop if they pulled one of these out in a meeting? Could be the colouring, or else it might be the feeling that they're probably overcompensating for something if-you-get-what-I'm-sayin'...

I guess the target market probably doesn't need credibility in a business context.

PH has more meet cred.

Data centers embrace The Great Outdoors

David S

While we're on the prior art thing...

Wouldn't it be great to harness the waste heat from these data centres and channel it into greenhouses for growing tomatoes, capsicums etc during colder months, thus reducing the "need" to air-freight them from half-way across the globe?

Yay greener tomatoes!

Oz woman sold mobe with preloaded smut

David S
Happy

@Chris Collins

"Wank spanner"

You owe me a monitor. Well, you would if I'd been drinking coffee when I read that.

Lucky escape there, you funny fellow you.

Grid computer recreates ancient Greek lute

David S
IT Angle

The IT angle

I guess if they'd just built one there wouldn't have been any reason for it to be reported here.

No, I'm not really convinced by that reason either. Why DIDN'T they just build one?

Google's comic capers: what they really meant to say

David S

@Stephen Gray

scroogle.com is extremely NSFW, as it happens. I fell for the same trick that Pastamasta fell for; it might help if people referred to scroogle.org instead of just scroogle.

Fortunately for me I work from home, so the chances of my boss spotting my mistake are minimal. My wife and kids, on the other hand... Erk...

The Google-isation of all the net's access points

David S

Well, so far I like it...

Pretty nippy, and slick too. I'll keep playing and see how it performs. I do like the shortcut / minimal chrome thing...

Something that tickled me: When I launched an "incognito" session it warned me to look out for, among other things, "Surveillance by secret agents" and "People standing behind you"

Cute.

David S

I reserve judgement...

...until I get a go. The hype looks good, and the rationale makes sense. I know a number of people already using google docs for collaboration, and it seems safe to assume that this will work nicely with that.. I'm pretty browser-agnostic in the main; most of what I do works wherever, although some things I simply can't get Opera to do properly; I look forward to taking the new kid for a spin around the block, once the fanfare dies down and he makes his appearance...

Teens admit to Grand Theft Auto-inspired petrol bombfest

David S

Didn't realise that Vyacheslav Molotov was a GTA Character...

I'd imagine they were more likely to have gotten their instructions from Wikipedia. There's a pretty detailed article on there; I didn't realise that the original molotov cocktail used storm matches instead of a rag wick as the fuse, for example. Very interesting.

And you might find this hard to credit, but it turns out they were being used more than fifty years before the very first GTA game was released. In fact, I remember footage from my youth of petrol bombs being used in Northern Ireland, Brixton, Toxteth and any number of other places. This was when computer games consisted of guiding a blocky horace down a blocky ski slope, so it's unlikely they were to blame then.

This is scapegoatse of the lowest order.

Hadoop: When grownups do open source

David S

I'm with DavCrav

That was nearly two laptops you owed. Okay, making fun of web2.0 is a bit fish-in-a-barrel, but I genuinely liked the article. As for the people crying "pottymouth"... Well, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

Late-breaking April Fool prangs snoozing Guardianista

David S

Cameras more dangerous than guns, eh?

Sounds like an excuse for one of those trials-by-duel to me. You and your camera vs me and my gun.

I'm assuming that both are allowed to be loaded.

For the record, I neither own nor wish to own a gun, but that kind of ridiculous, asinine statement is symptomatic of everything that's wrong with society these days. Did nobody seriously raise their hand and point out that, in fact, guns are generally more dangerous that cameras? This is why, for example, you don't get offered the latest Nokia handset with an integrated 9mm pistol whenever you upgrade your mobile contract...

Nokia 6220 Classic candybar phone

David S
Happy

Just got one as well...

...and the only thing that annoys me is that the screen seems prone to scratching. I've had it a week and there are already a couple of irritating hairline screapes which it's picked up from sharing my pocket with some fluff.

Other than that, I'm with Stuart (above) - my last few phones have been SE and I've been more than delighted with them, but this little beauty is nice.

Sun may or may not be about to obliterate Oracle and Microsoft

David S
Coat

Been away...

New job; much too busy to hang out around here these days...

I come back, and the first article I read is this one, and it's like I was never away.

Classic Reg. Profanity and all. Classic comments too. Seriously though people, some of you need to get lives. Okay, the style was more bootnotes and servers, but the content was still pretty fascinating. Objecting to the language is like rejecting the contribution of a colleague because he prefers not to wear a suit to work. Very early-to-mid-twentieth-century...

Google and Microsoft have nothing on - drum roll - the SuperNAP

David S
Coat

yebbut

Okay, but the important question is:

Does it run Vista?

Teen battles City of London cops over anti-Scientology placard

David S

@Charles Manning

It's censorship.

Next question.

Making sense of Salesforce.com

David S
Happy

Outages?

Hands up anyone who's responsible for a system with a reasonable number of users that's never, ever had an outage?

Anyone?

Okay, look. I'm biased. I work in the on-demand field (recently moved into the cloud from the on-premise model) and I have to say, the kool-aid is actually pretty damn' tasty.

SaaS/PaaS isn't a panacea; there are certainly situations where it isn't the best approach, but they're the minority. Quite a tiny minority. I also saw Benioff's speech, and the part that struck me most was when he asked for a show of hands from small, medium and large organisations. Roughly the same number of hands showed for each category. How many platforms can you name that work this well for the entire spectrum of client companies from tiny startup to global multinational? That's some serious scalability.

And, on the uptime issue, Salesforce are happy to publish their uptime stats and planned outages (which, as much as possible on a spherical world, are kept outside business hours) for all to see. Probably because they're actually pretty encouraging.

Check 'em out yourself if you like: http://trust.salesforce.com/trust/status/

Tcha.

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