* Posts by Simon Palmer

7 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Mar 2008

Biggest Linux kernel release ever welcomes bcachefs file system, jettisons Itanium

Simon Palmer

Always great to see a new FS.

F2FS performance for certain workloads is interesting too. (The Phoronix benchmark article)

1Gbps, 4K streaming, buffering a thing of the past – but do Brits really even want full fibre?

Simon Palmer

Full fibre please. I don't need the speed, throttle us to 100M-200M for now. It's the reliability, and better upload I want.

We use lots of Openreach ethernet circuits at work. 0 downtime in years.

VDSL at home - copper connection problems 2-3 times/year.

A team of 8 people put virgin fibre tubes all through the pavements in our town recently. Base infrastructure for hundreds of people/day.

Please, some more ISPs, just connect us all up with 1G commodity ethernet circuits. £10/transceiver. <£100/router. Forget the virgin DOCSIS stuff. Have a VLAN/MPLS per ISP and do something like unbundling.

Cabinets: 48Port SFP+ and 100G uplinks for about £100/port.

The number of VDSL copper faults openreach fix each day is incredible. You wouldn't get that with fibre.

They have thousands of vans and people fixing up this old infrastructure.

Chromebooks to break out of US schools: Netbook 2.0 comeback not just for children

Simon Palmer
Happy

Gaining traction

Big differentiator over IOS/Android for FE/HE education is proper multiple user login support to an institution's google apps domain.

Over Windows 8.1 - big cost and simplicity/management/performance advantages,

IOS/Android is fine for primary, but to combating plagiarism, individual bookmarks, cookies, history etc, is very important - with good email support, and a good full size key keyboard for actually creating some work. Google Apps is as good as MS Office for 95% of our students.

8h battery life for <£200 is not to be sniffed at.

Some of our students are buying them for home now they've tried them too.

Nuclear Mars tank prepares for 8-thruster dance

Simon Palmer
Happy

That's slow

Gonna take a long time at 12.3 miles an hour!

Reg hack cops a licking from the bosun's cat

Simon Palmer
FAIL

Ye Heathens!!

Read your Bible!

http://bible.cc/acts/27-30.htm

And as the shipmen were about to flee out of the ship, when they had let down the boat into the sea, under colour as though they would have cast anchors out of the foreship,

Wales adopts mobile average speed cameras

Simon Palmer
Unhappy

More stress, frustration and targetted mottorist charging

First, I'm sure South Wales has more cameras per mile than anywhere else in the UK. Maybe we're easy targets that don't fight back or something?!!!

Second, since cameras have been introduced, many driving instructors are telling people to use 3rd gear for 30mph limits to make sure they keep under the limit!! That puts fuel consumption back to what it was like in the 1950's. Oh - and the average speed is now about 18mph in my town, because no-one wants to get caught, so drive around at 25mph, and do 20-mph through the camera's just in case.

Third. Mobile cameras are surely entrapment which used to be frowned upon/illegal. But it's ok if the police/camera people do it?! Strange world we live in.

Fourth. So people loose licenses for doing barely anything wrong. (It's now a 50mph limit between England and Cardiff with some average speed camperas for good measure - I don't really know why, I've seen hardly any roadworks!). Middle of the night, and you have to do 50mph with 3 lanes to yourself. 70's bad enough, it's 130kph/83mph virtually everywhere on the continent. Anyway, drivers loose license, causes extra stress/strain/trauma in families etc. All well and good saying "they should have been keeping to the limit", but it's us the taxpayer paying for them being on benefits now because they've lost their job because they can't drive, and I suppose no-one cares about the families it splits up, and the children. Oh - no - they need to save some lives and don't realize they're breaking 20 times more hearts. This sort of thing causes huge amounts of stress, worry and time wasting. Think about all those conversations in work about whether it's ethical, or not.

Fifth. Time wasting. Apart from the chatting to collegues during work, finding out how to avoid fines, think about all the time wasted if everyone drives 10% slower, 10%less more time on the road, 10% more traffic on the road, oh - and 10% more traffic means you go even slower! (10% in the town where I live is not exadurated)

Sixth. Apart from the speed cameras: traffic calming. I asked my highways manager if they ever consider carbon footprint, and green issues while introducing them. He said they hadn't even thought about it!! The amount of extra fuel, tyres and brakes used on unnecessary roundabouts, and other traffic calming measures, let alone the cost of implementing the things, through the UK could easily build 2 hospitals per year!

Goverment and highways really need to get some perspective on these things. Look at the bigger picture. I use a motorbike now, so at least I don't have to do 20mph through 30mph, or 30mph through 40's/50 cameras. Oh - and if I die on it, that'll be the highways' fault too.

Boffinry bigwig puts another boot into biofuels

Simon Palmer
Gates Horns

Biofuels from Algae

So if GB isn't big enough, grow Algae in the sea and convert that to Biofuel. We're going to be stuffed if we don't do something soon. We'll be giving half our GDP to the petrochemical industry if things carry on like this! Algae produces something like 10x more net product than from corn too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algaculture