Posts by Michael Corkery

VMware's ESX Server 4.0 lost in the clouds?

good article overall

One correction, you state that if vCenter/Virtual Center crashes, you cannot manage or change VMs.

Thsi is not true, vCenter is a centralised management tool for ESX hosts, and without vCenter, cluster based management is not possible, but the VI client has been able to connect directly to each ESX host since at leats as early as ESX 3.0 (not sure about ESX 2.x, before my time! :)

So you can manage VMs without vCenter, but not cluster based things (like HA/DRS), and of course as it's a single host connection, you can't vMotion either. But within a single host, you can still work with VMs.

this is how people who run vCenter as a VM restart it if it crashes!

Hands on with the T-Mobile G1

nasty photos

it's not the sleekest phone I've ever seen, and design is a factor in purchase too.

that said, the photos in this first look were mostly unfocussed and taken in very poor light that made the white facade look dim, and the keypad shot is so heavily shadowed I thought the back was transparent (between the keys) until I checked other photos.

I suspect this product may suffer from Applism.

5 years ago I thought my trusty iRiver was great - it did lots more than an iPod, and was cheaper too. But it lacked the swanky interface or simplicity of design, and look what happened. iRiver were pushing ahead in what the technology could do and keeping prices fair, but apple will still succeed by pushing out stylish, simpler models as most people are not technical, and want simplicity and style over functionality - and evidently will pay more for less too. Now iRiver, for all their advances, are the ones pushing to get that sleek apple-style ease of use into their product range, while apple control the market.

google as the late-comer to the party have made a good first attempt, but it hasn't got enough to be anything other than a techy small-percent share yet

'I can see dinosaurs from my back porch'

"I can see dinosaurs from my back porch"

Regards the poster who questioned the validity of the title "I can see dinosaurs from my back porch" as a quote...

1. the register often paraphrases or summarises it's stories into a headline like that for comic effect. See almost any other article on thye site! :)

2. I suspect they're referencing the Saturday Night Live sketch where Tina Fey's "Palin" makes the comment on international relations "I can see Russia from my house!"

It's clearly comic, not a direct quotation!

Did the width move for you, darling?

I like it

the redesign isn't a huge functional change, only the fixed width really makes anything appear *that* different.

keep the content up to scratch and you'll keep the readers. No doubt you'll pick up new readers who like the style to replace the very few who actually stop reading over a surface redesign.

Intel stinks

@anarchic-teapot

I really think you missed the point. Intel pay to purify their waste water, and they paid to build catchment areas, not dump it into the water table. but avian waste, which is beyond their control, makes the stink.

People who bought houses near it should have investigated urban sprawl into an industrial area before buying, and Intel, to their credit, are going to pay more again to resolve the issue.

I'm not an Intel fan-boy, nor do I have any links to them, but in this case I have to say I'd respect a company that is spending money to look after the local populace when Intel aren't directly responsible and are under no obligation to do so.

Is Intel (a company) a singular or plural noun? Is/are?

Now RIAA says copying your own CDs is illegal

Wow...

they really want to push customers away. This sort of mentality will do nothing to convince people to buy music legally - you pay your money and don't even get fair usage?

If any work is copied for your own use, but not in ANY way distributed, then what's the problem? Are they arguing that you're circumventing natural wear and tear on the physical object (the CD, tape, whatever), and stopping them getting re-sales? But then legal MP3 sales have already undercut this argument. Plus, most people won't re-buy the same work twice.

Bad analogy time: It's like if I bought, oh, a hammer, and Black and Decker sued me for using it as a paperweight. I told you it was a bad analogy.

I'll use a stop icon to allow the obvious music/hammer/icon pun...

Nintendo Wii hack opens door to homebrew games

hmmm

I much prefer my Mintendo Wig to my old GameCude anyday

Blu-ray widens US disc sales lead

synergy

It also depends on retail of HDTV! :)

At the moment, HDTV is becoming more affordable, but there's limited support beyond games and purchased/rented discs. The old skool basic DVD market is on the way out, but it's not dead yet - see any rental store to see the numbers. When they reach a tipping point of 50% HD, that'll be proof that the money is there as consumers have finally shifted over.

While the target demo of this website is the young affluent technical spender, the reality is a lot of people will sit back and wait till they have enough HD outputs to buy a HD TV, and until then they don't care. I don't know about you, but in Ireland, Sky HD is pricey and limited to just a few channels in HD. So unless I buy a ps3 or Xbox tree-sitty, it's not worth my while to drop a grand in euro on a nice TV when non-HD is so very affordable.

Ultimately there will be a turning point where buyers stop being early adopters and become mainstream, but there's enough uncertainty at the moment between resolution, HD outputs, and the HDDVD format wars that many people are waiting it out, which makes it all so unpredictable. And of course the wii added to this!

It's great fun, but whichever one you choose, do try to avoid becoming an extremist champion of either format, flaming people for posting on technical websites... ;)

Microsoft comes top of the tech pack

RE: iffy

Stan, you may be right, but it seems the unspoken semtiment is that it's corporate value of the brandname, not the company value, so it means perception, meaning individual consumers.

Effectively consumers respond to big brands like Coke, MS, Google, etc, but peopel don't buy Haliburton oil.

But you make a valid point - the few consumers who are also heads of large oil companies reselling from the suppliers might be worth more to haliburton than I am to MS...

'Suspicious looking' man hauled off translatlantic flight

RE: And the screams of racism ring out again...

@ Ian Matthews:

"Hmm, okay, an illegal immigrant (his visa had lapsed by at least 6 months if I remember rightly) and he ran from the police. Perhaps, if he'd stopped and obeyed the police commands, he might still be alive now."

So you have a guy with perhaps poor English, aware that he's illegally in the country, suddenly finds cops shouting and pointing guns at him. Running was not a smart move, but certainly understandable. Perhaps if the police hadn't decided to shoot first and ask questions later, he wouldn't have been murdered summarily out of fear.

This isn't the first accidental killing and probably won't be the last. But at least the lesson was learned - the police and their families got a free holiday because of the stress... Yeah that's seems fair...

Man cuffed over Jamie Oliver email threat

racism

It's obvious that what the CNLA are doing is wrong, and that's it not speaking for the views of all Cornish at all.

But what I find interesting about these stories is the mild undercurrent of racism it draws out in people's responses.

Microsoft vows to bark like a dog for you in 2008

It's not about Vista folks

it's probably more to do with:-

- their online product suite (not sure if this is pie in the sky)

- Virtualisation software (nipping at VMware's and Xen's heels, but they're locked in the 'software box' unless they tackle hardware direct)

- app virtualisation (softgrid offers something completely new, which has real potential as I see it to make systems more reliable and to allow greater ranges of apps in dev and prod)

- MOM development and partner integration (this is where they're nipping at BMC's and Quest's heels)

- Sharepoint (this has real potential too, for large enterprises, dunno how it'd cost for SMEs)

- presumable some 2008 dev beyond the RC

- anything I've forgotten

Maybe the change is on service packs for Vista to make it work! :)

Analyst rubs crystal ball and sees iPhone 2.0 based on Nano

Rotary

looks like a few of us had the same idea - a classic roatry dialk would be funny...

But I also support an iPhone Free Week.

Or for the fans, a Free iPhone Week.

everybody wins!

Exploding mobile battery kills Chinese welder

Dillon

how does the welding affect th ebattery? Is it heat (sparks and that) or just risk of it coming into contact with welding flame?

ta

iPhone hack bypasses AT&T

Interface reply, and Battery Life reply

An early poster, Paul F, stated that interface alone will sell it. It is certainly true that the interface and stylings of the iPod sold it in droves, despite it being inferior to alternatives, more expensive, limited to iTunes DRM, and having battery life problems. I'll reserve judgement though on the iPhone, as mobile markets are more established, especially in the East and in Europe, and people are fussier about looks and interface versus content. Also, a number of people have mentioned tha lack of tactile return on typing is offputting, so I'd have to use one before I comment fully, but my early guess is that no, it will sell well based on style and interface, but because it's a more technical device (a phoen and multimedia) it will NOT sell anything like the iPod. Apple have spent that one.

Battery Life - someone asked about the complaints on this, so I'll explain as noone else has. The early iPod was heavily criticised as battery life was limited - not only was it much shorter than most players (possibly the drain caused by the touchwheel), but atfer a lot of charges, your battery dies. Unlike other devices, apple priced the replacement battery so high that buying a new iPod was necessary. So after 2 years, your iPod would have to be rebought. Batteries have improved since, and since then thrid parties have fouind ways to provide replacements - although opening it invalidates any remaining warranty.

With the iPhone, the same issue is resurrected. Almost every mobile phone has a battery compartment, which is easily accessed allowing you to replace the battery, and the likes of Nokia, Sony Ericsson, etc sell batteries seperately at a fair-ish price. This allows travelling users to swap batteries rather than wait for a recharge as well. Apple have gone down the same old road as the iPod, with an interface that drains power, meaning lots of charges fast, and no way to swap out the battery, so once it's capacity is diminished, you would have to buy a new phone.

So if you buy a new phone every 2 years, not too big a deal, otherwise, limiting. Bad design.

Inflated real-estate market goes ballistic (in space)

I'm showing my ignorance here

but asiude from ionising radiation, what altitude is this at? With the ridiculous amount of manmade objects orbiting (I don't mean satellites but litterally tools and detritus released from previous shuttle launches), I know that EVAs are doen behind the shuttle, as it travels through the potential debris path, using the base of the shuttle as the blocking platform to protect astronauts. Do the ISS and this structure sit at a higher or lower orbit?

Despite the huge "snag" of current cost and safety to get custyomers, material, etc up and down, it's great to see the growth in private exploration of what can be done. This will always lead the way over government concerns, once a viable return is identified.

Sony teams up with Nielsen to track game ads

I disagree

if some advertising round the fringes is the cost of free online gaming, happy days. If I already have to pay my ISP, I'm not giving MS another cut of my salary for gaming that's free elsewhere. I've used online gaming for ps2 and psp and enjoyed it, but would balk at paying for it.

I'd say some people have more money than sense, but since we're discussing early days next-gen consoles, it might be unwise...

Never say sorry I'm late again

And having anyone track you via a web browser is good why?

I think I'd rather just be polite and call myself, or make the effort, and arrive on time

AT&T rigs net neutrality study

Geography =! topology

despite efforts of countries like China to firewall off the rest of the world.

Yet now, AT+T seem to be trying to create the First, Second and Third worlds online. First world being corporations, and possibly subsidised americans, second world being feepayers elsewhere, and a thirld world of poor nations and those who can't afford ISP tier rates.

Website honours battling Glasgow baggage handler

fairplay to all the punters who helped take them out

Himself and the other lads involved - for all we know they might have gotten the gas off, killed the police and a few others, if it hadn't been for civic minded selflessness. He deserves the pints bigtime!

MEP plans EU build ban on cars faster than 100mph

So...

* Germany won't want it, as it undercuts their autobahn system.

* The big companies will oppose it, as it won't be retrospectively applied to existing cars, meaning that new sales will drop.

* Dangerous drivers will, as they have posted here, disable speed delimiters, although I'd imagine if caught speeding after tampering, they'd face more stiff punishment than points.

* It won't be popular with upper middle class, who tend to buy prestige cars with more power than they ever use, and we all know their votes are worth more! :)

* And in the meantime, anyone who tries to buy smaller, more efficient cars like a golf, etc, will face even more price retention. As it stands, prestige saloons drop in value rediculously quickly, as they are valued as new showcars, and depreciate rapidly, while smaller efficient cars retain value longer for more financially sensible city drivers. This law would end up making this worse, so soem peopel would end up opting for saloons they don't need!

All in all, it will never happen, because it won't fit the whole EU, it's not considered enough to be workable, although a drop off in new car sales would contradict the point some posters make about new cars being more of a carbon footprint than the lifetime of use of an existing one - older cars would stay in circulation longer as they'd not be limited.

Mobile phones should include airbags, says Sony

sounds like a few uses, then pay to replace

but not the worst idea, even if it is a bit silly

I saw aliens at Roswell, claims dead PR man

Or, this guy had a sense of humour

and likes to stir shit up, even from beyond... :p

'al-Qaeda' puts on big shoes, red nose, takes custard pie

RE: You should be ashamed of yourself

N1AK: If you're right and it was in jest, then i'll partially retract it - I still don't think it's suitable for joking about, if only because it's too convenient for us to forget. I don't link Iraq to the current events necessarily, but I do think that people shoul dremain conscientious in the face of what's become commonplace.

David R: You may be right, but I'd worry that these idiots will look at what they did, and the chasm between that and the increasingly common knowledge about what was done more professionally by PIRA and the IRA before them. The danger is that they'll improve, and hurt someone, or at least avoid traceability next time in case they screw up again. The best part at the moment is that they're leaving a trail, and their colleagues are getting collared now. But I will agree with you that it's good to see non-panic-mode media response alright, even if it then leans to the far extreme

NASA snaps mysterious night-shining clouds

Wow,

we're lucky to have so many climate experts here to explain why it definately is or isn't global warming.

How about you read up before commenting? It is suggested that the known growth in appearances of noctolucent clouds MIGHT be related to global warming, given that the area of study is polar, where gasses are being released by the retreating ice shelves. Whether it's cyclical (and natural) or manmade irreversible change is not stated, so thanks all of you for putting in more oars than a viking longship.

Interestingly, there appears to be a correlated rise in noctolucent clouds following shuttle launches and re-entries, as recently noted on El Reg. I don't know how long this lasts, as Atlantis is safely home a while now.

Apple iPhone

It's the iPod all over again

it offers something that's already been done elsewhere, that isn't better than the competition, but packages it sleekly in a way that stands out, and puts a damnably shiny and fun GUI on it.

So people pay over the odds for reduced functionality, but it looks looks the job, and low tech people will probably buy in droves.

In the meantime, amongst the tech-savvy, the Appleites will fail to understand why others tear it down, as they shout incresingly loudly about why it is in fact better, while the skeptics fail to understand how so many seemingly normal peopel could buy into hype not hardware, then shout about it... ;)

All of which means Apple is doing well then.

Gartner reaps iPhone backlash after making business case

Are people in Europe more patient?

I know it's not the same but PTI (Predictive Text Input) must be 6 or 7 years old now, and has improved along the way. A decent phone will allow you to tap out the letter on the corresponding numeric key (with the smaller letters next to the number, simliar to US landline phones) and spells out the word for you. If it's not correct, you tap down and it swaps out alternates. You add words of your own to the dictionary. My Sony ericsson weights words by use, so more popular ones float to the top. It's slightly slower than typing, but really only people with piss poor spelling or low dexterity can't get used to it, so you type pretty fast. You'd be surprised how easy it is.

But then, we were lucky in Europe in that SMS grew along with our phone use over the last ten years. Some mobile (cell) technologies migrated west to the US later, so you might find it more of an imposition, arriving all at once, when you'd already gotten used to stylus input and blackberry, so it might just be that we've had longer toi get used to it, whereas it would feel more retrograde to you now?

Just a thought

Ghostly plastic bathtoy flotilla nears Cornish coast

Explanation:

"many of them reportedly finishing up in Australia, where they were doubtless accorded the traditional hostile reception."

A few years back a ship full of would-be-immigrants from Asia arrived in Australia, many of them sick and starving. Australian PM John Howard was seeking re-election at the time, so played the ultra-conservative card, and decided it would be just fine if they weren't allowed in for help, since they were only foreigners. Evidently disregarding human rights is popular in Australia, as he was then re-elected by a worryingly healthy majority. Meanwhile New Zealand opted to help instead.

It's sick, jingoistic electioneering that works. Akin to Maggie Thatcher letting almost a thousand young men die fighting a pointless war over the Falklands - people died, but hey, she got re-elected

Microsoft security engineer makes top-10 worst jobs list

Rose that's brilliant

It works for gillian mckeith too

Soggy IT pros check in from flooded Sheffield

Rufus? Speak to us Rufus!

</seance>

regards the "completely worng" (?!?), I think he's right to give criticism or praise. Anyone who deals with the public will tell you that praise is rare enough - most people assume good service - fair enough - but everyone likes to have their work appreciated.

Regards free pizza... mmmmm.... free pizza....

and regards the rain, it came down in dublin last friday like nothing I'd seen. I was in viet nam last year while monsoons were swinging around china, so we caught the tail of it - but that's what it was like! Flooding and roads closed. While it may make for better weather in the USA, they'd want to cop on, as it's getting dangerous for those of us not on one large landmass

Paris Hilton walks to freedom

I thought was amusing the way she left

she went from shocked, meek, just-out to skank-walking for the press in less than four seconds. Her body language was so funny - once she entered the optimum papparazi-zone, her walk and demeanour had changed utterly, back to vacuouys limelight-lover.

She was just short of making a Transformers noise.

wha-wha-wha-wha-wha...

HP coughs up surprise update to desktop PC range

Since these are two different frequency lasers,

I imagine it being a case of rotary-swapping out the lens (and emitter possibly) as appropriate, which is pricy and potentially a small risk of greater chance of failure. But at the same time, consumers in doubt will certainly want t drive that future-proofs! :)

Not exactly scientific, but a quick look through the movies in HMV on grafton street, dublin, shows about 60 to 70% of HD disks were Blu-Ray, but with a good amount of HD-DVD too. They also cleverly stock some in the games area near the relevant consoles, and it appears that, while Sony may not have the best games library out yet, they certainly have the btter range of movies available. Again, this is one shop, and I didn't exactly count them all...

CERN plans LHC switch-on for May next year

Wasn't this how Flashback started?

*fires up Amiga emulator so I'm ready when the time comes*

Social networkers lack loyalty: report

Well said, Dillon and Rob.

I don't even blog, so why a social network? My contacts in my phone, my outlook, my girlfriend's memory (so much better than mine), all work well enough for me. And when I become an international man of mystery or somesuch, I'll blog, cos I'll have something to write about, But ramblings about my day? It's like a competition to fill the internet up! :)

Google abstains from blades, VMware and the rest of the hype

Horses for courses

Google's requirements are far different to the average company. In a large utility, we run over a thousand servers, but only 75% are physical servers, the rest test and prod VMware servers runnign on the ESX hardware. We had power limitations, and had to rent new datacentre space, and this kept our in house size/heat/power constraints down, as well as reducing rent on growth in the DCs. It also helps for eliminating old hardware on servers that the business can't get rid of - physical to virtual, and you elimiate issues with the physical almost entirely (still the odd service issue).

If it's right for your organisation, it's a real boon. But if it's not a fit, then why follow hype? Vendors will tell everyone it's for them. That's what IT is for - not to put in what's new, but what's needed

UK Gov boots intelligent design back into 'religious' margins

Wow. Ten years ago I'd not have thought this necessary, but things have changed

Kudos to the UK though for showing some balls, and putting Science ahead of superstition. People have to right to believe whatever they want to make life easier and all, but keep it out of schools, courts, and government please!

Hopefully the rest of the EU will do similar - despite the risk of growing tensions with our more religious brothers and sisters to the east and to the west.

Defamation lawsuit seeks to unmask anonymous cowards

I don't condone the web turning into a litigious playground

but be warned - what you say to your mates in the pub runs only two risks - someone overhearing and taking offense, or being repeated to the wrong person by one of your mates.

In either case, it can be claimed easily that it was misunderstood, misheard, or remembered. It's not like there's a stenographer.

The web, by contrast, is putting your words beyond your reach - always accessible, misconstueable, and utterly beyond your control if there's no Edit feature! Even then, cached versions or the backups of the website contain old content.

Everybody makes the occasional joke that's offcolour, without intent to harm or offend. Just remember that it's different when it's in print. And for the record, I think the posters on the thread in this article went way beyond this, a level of offense that is scary. Whatever their intent, she was defamed and threathened, and now that's recorded in print.

Common sense dictates that you stop and think before you hit Post Comment. Speaking of which...

MikeC

For sale: Herman Munster's MasterCard number

All the best, AJ

this has potential to be a GREAT idea. Anything that disencourages phishers and the like is good for the web and commerce. Someone commented it might be good CV experience - maybe the credit card companies could hire you to do it in partnership with them?

UK Gov seeks 'scientific' basis for nationality

For that money, I'll teach him how to use phrenology

to establish nationality, caste, and whether a person has been reincarnated.. .that way he can try or export them for past-life crimes..

Isn't it worrying when a politico mixes up science and mumbojumbo?

Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale

I can't wait

to see a simulation that accurately models how "group-think" and other peer-pressures influence decisions of administration and military personnel using expensive toys to justify life and death decisions.

Yahoo!'s pink liberation army a threat to America's youth

Is it still satire when the author's the punchline?

He riffs on Yahoo! using lifestyles he claims shock him to gain in readership popularity.

Meanwhile, the Reg - disappointingly - trolls this crap to us to gain readership popularity....

Bush official goes nuclear in Net Neut row

Give it five years

and we'll be seeing Michael Moore's documentary on how the Republicans let the web go down the same moral sewer as US "healthcare", effectively creating a two-tiered system that only caters for the companies....

Any stabs at potential names for it? :)

Sony NAS-50HDE Gigajuke audio system

If you need any SONY manuals, bar consoles

check here:

http://80.88.32.114/manuals/manuals.aspx?l=en

I found it handy

Police officer arrested over IT abuse

Well said, Vernon Lloyd!

There shouldn't be an immediate assumption of guilt, and the fact of the matter is that if there is guilt, it's publicly been announced and is being dealt with.

In the meantime, "Leon" is complaining of the violent petty mindset of the police - I don't see how that is evidenced here at all!

While, as with any job, there will always be a small few who let the side down, the majority of them are just doing a tough job without which society would be a lot less structured!

Chileans mislay large lake

Actually, it should be soccer

In both Ireland and America, football refers to the local game, Gaelic football, or American football. Soccer does make it clear what game you're referring to - English football... ;)

Neverland director to helm Bond 22

Best. Comments. Ever.

Sarcasm for everybody - huzzah!

Humans, not tech, are the greatest security risk

RE: "Is the fact that I have to log in to my computor at work...

...and then log in to lots of programs. Why?"

Your domain login grants you the security credentials required for domain or AD access, and from here all of your AD or NTFS accesses are controlled, so server, file, application, all security control really.

However a LOT of third party vendor applications don't hook into AD or use domain accounts, so they require a seperate non-Windows security credential to grant you the correct accesses required. Multiply by number of non-integrated 3rd party apps, and that's why.

Ambitious Evergrid to conquer VMware, Oracle and whatever else

RE: Billy Verreynne

Eagle eyes there - it is a shot taken from the Simpsons, I suspect the episode in which Lisa becomes a vegetarian (featuring Paul and Linda Macca)

Cornish separatists menace Jamie Oliver

wow there are some bigoted and ignorant posters on here

clearly you have a shaped or entirely absent history of british imperialism (and the bloodshed it required)

George Bush's watch clocked on eBay

What's with the constant french bashing?

Surely the definition of gullible american is any american who attacks the french - you were fed an easy nation to pick on to distract and encourage the move towards war, because the french were crazy enough to point out that there was no credible intelligence for WMDs, and that a war in Iraq might be a bad idea?

This would be the same France that sent troops in to support the independance of three nations that were trying to free themselves from the yoke of British oppression, namely Ireland, India and the United States? But unlike the US, when they send men to die for a common cause, they don't bang on about it for ever and ever afterwards, instead they sent the US a symbol of freedom, the Statue of Liberty. That's right, the French designed and built statue that symbolises what the US used to stand for, once.

It always amazes me. They're idiosyncratic, they have a poor record on early nuclear weapons testing, they lacked the armed forces or political will to stroip German invasion during the war, and they're still dealing with integration of immigrants successfully. Yuo could list a far longer list of excesses, oppresions or atrocities against the UK or US (UK, whoi was the first the gas the kurds, beating Saddam by decades? that's right, you guessed it, the UK!), yet they're still the whipping boy of either. I guess transgressors always need someone else to point at...