Posts by Matt 21

Twitter passes 200 million monthly users

Probably helped

...having the BBC acting as advertisers for them.

Secrets of an ad broker: NoSQL, millisecond auctions and FLASH ARRAYS

500000 transactions answered per second

The key word is answered, not that they do that many transactions. I've certainly managed to achieve better than this with an RDBMS on a €1000 self built system.

TPC kicks out quick-and-dirty virty server test

I think this says a lot

They don't want to compare bare metal with VM performance because it isn't good. I've done quite a lot of tests myself with KVM, Xen and Solaris zones. I have to say VM performance is very poor compared to bare metal and I'd have to advise against running a database in a VM if you're serious about performance.

ScaleIO uncloaks, offers glimpses of mighty SANitisation plans

Yet to be convinced

I still remember when SAN was first introduced and we were told we didn't need to worry about where we put our data anymore, the SAN would take care of it and guarantee performance......... the results were, to say the least, disappointing.

The sad thing is, here I am today, many years later and at most sites I see the same old problems with SAN performance. A number of sites have gone back to local disks for performance using DB technology like replication to handle availability. I've got to say I can see why. It's easier to get good performance and a lot cheaper.

So, sadly, I'm sceptical that ECS is even worth looking at.

Forget fluorescents, plastic lighting strips coming out next year

Re: State intervention may well result in de-civilizatory effects

Charles: Your argument seems to indicate that democracy is doomed to failure..... you may be right but who is this elite who should be making decisions for us? I hope you're not suggesting it should be the politicians!

WWII HERO PIGEON crypto message STUMPS GCHQ boffins

Re: maybe ..... just maybe ......

Wasn't it three and sixpence...... I am getting old so maybe not!

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

Re: What are they on?

True for MySQL, not true, in mly experience, for Sybase, Oracle or DB2.

Re: What are they on?

What a brilliant insight... it should have read RDBMSs scale well.

How spreadsheets (nearly) conquered and killed the financial industry

Re: Cuts both ways.

Not really, they screw up their bit and then tell someone else to buy something based on dodgy info thus losing the company millions.......

Having worked for a few banks where that has happened I noticed that most of them were banning spreadsheets or bringing them under version control.

How can UK TV product placement do better, asks report

Indeed

.......anybody who's tried to watch TV in the US can see why we don't want to go further down the product placement route.

Google India slapped with £8.7 MILLION tax penalty

Re: Any bets

I don't think that can be right as France has recently started taxing the big companies a more appropriate rate.

Boeing recipe turns cooking oil into jet fuel

Re: Why not diesel?

Doesn't the article say that the volume of cooking oil used is actually higher than that used for aviation?

EC: Microsoft didn't honour browser-choice commitment

To add to the point

MS were found guilty at the time and ordered to take certain actions which they haven't done (not in full). They also appealed and did everything they could to delay things in the first place.

So, while it is true that IE market share is fairly small today, the "punishment" is in response to MS actions and IE's position at the time of the case.

As for accusations of the EU taking US money...... hello Mr Pot, this is Mr Kettle, are you aware of your colour?

Why James Bond's Aston Martin Top Trumps the rest

Re: Gold Corgi

He was Korean I think.

Craig, Connery or ... Dalton? Vote now for the ultimate James Bond

Re: "Dalton was given crap films so I can't vote for him"

I'm not sure Quantum is the worst, did you see "View to a kill"? It wasn't that great though. I suppose I'm willing to give him time as he has done another one and I think he's signed up to do more, plus I liked "Layer Cake" :-)

I like the idea that he (Craig) is trying something different. It worked fairly well in Casino Royale, it was so so in Quantum so I'm looking to Skyfall to see if the character matures and finaly builds on what they've started.

Re: Difficult choice

Well Moore was my favourite as I saw him playing Bond first. However, once I was in my twenties I grew to prefer Connery.

Lazenby wasn't in long enough to be sure.

Moore was... well Roger Moore although the bad guy's line in Moonraker almost saved it "I'm going to put you out of my misery Mr. Bond".

Dalton was given crap films so I can't vote for him.

Brosnan was good in his first two but gradually went down hill.

Craig... hmmmm... difficult to say. I liked him in Layer Cake and if you accept that he is trying something new I think he's quite good.

So, Connery first followed by Craig/Brosnan as joint second.

BTW I think the film Ronin has the highest number of Bond bad guys in it without being a Bond film.

The tips stop here: Starbucks to take Square Wallet payments

Re: Keep the Tip

Why on earth would you tip for that in the UK? Are you mad?

'Stuff must be FREE, except when it's MINE! Yarr!' - top German pirate

I can be anything on the Internet: Mafia boss, Barbie, Hitler,

Hmm, Barbie as in Klaus?

With all due credit to "Rat race"

Online dole queue tech 'not grounded in reality', say councils

Re: Airstrip two

I think he was joking, in case you missed it.

To your other point: I've visited Wales quite a lot and have several Welsh friends. I've only ever come across three people who spoke Welsh as a first language (all as children but all of them had migrated to English as they got older). I've met loads who speak it, many who speak it fluently but only three who speak it as a first language. I've never heard of any who couldn't speak English. Do such people really exist?

I'm not trying to make a point about the point of teaching Welsh, that's for another day, I'm just curious :-)

Re: Why the hell

I think the whole thing goes round in circles.

1. Let's have a centralised system that everyone uses.

The system is late, over budget and doesn't do what is needed.

2. Let's have distributed systems that talk together.

They don't talk very well, the overall results is higher costs. Someone says, "why don't we have a centralised system to save costs so we don't keep re-inventing the wheel".............

Perhaps the problem behind both approaches is poor management by the government and poorly defined requirements.

Voyager's 35th birthday gift: One-way INTERSTELLAR ticket

Re: The ultimate engineering project

Not sure the builders of the Great Wall of China would agree :-)

Re: "Good afternoon, Mr. Amer. Everything is going extremely well"

60000 km/h or have I miscalculated somewhere!

That could be described as "bombing" along but perhaps that would frighten the aliens :-)

WiReD surgically removes damaged neurotrash 'expert'

Re: Science "Journalism" works something like this

Of course the statement from the scientist has already had work done to it. The science will have said that it may be possible to toughen wheat to be slightly more resistant to the cold at the cost of lower yields and that there are probable side effects for other plants and wildlife in the area.

The announcement will say "we now know how to make wheat viable in cold climates".

'This lawsuit is not about patents or money, it's about values'

Re: @Matt

Sorry Geoff, what passes for my brain read your joke in the form in which I first heard it (which was two stops on from Barking).

I also heard people being referred to as "Upminster" and I found http://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php?Word=beyond%20Barking. I suppose it's what my Cornish cousins would call " a bit Bodmin".

Re: My postcard

Isn't Becontree Tube Station two stop on from Barking?

Huawei picks Android for new tablets and smartphones

Re: Sounds good

Might want to consider the Acer Liquid Glow.

'United States must renounce its witch-hunt against WikiLeaks'

I've got to say

your comments on Wikileaks seem a bit puerile as if you were determined to misinterpret them.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if the US said they weren't interested in the man concerned. Then we'd see if he's fleeing justice or avoiding becoming the victim of a witch hunt.

Indian censors media, Twitter critics

I don't think

the issue is so much about blocking of access to sites and accounts which are raising tensions and could be considered as inciting violence. The problem is that the Indian government doesn't appear to be acting within the law and are taking the opportunity to shut sites that don't agree with them under the guise of what could be considered legitimate action.

The problem with wireless: all those effin' wires

Went on holiday

...left my electronic junk at home... it is after all a holiday!

Ofcom: 4G won't knock out granny's personal alarm

It's all very well

to make some tests and guess but they should force the manufacturers to meet these guesses.

Unite workers at Capita ITS vote for strike action

Or don't strike

...and fill the forms in anyway! At least they're trying.

We need to keep IT jobs in the UK if we want to pay for things like the Olympics.

Brits obey mobile ads, says mobile ad biz

"All the cool kids are doing it"

Hmmm, I haven't fallen for that one since my early teens!

The reality is that all ads are ineffective and mobile ones which provide a level of irritation are even less so.

Examples: I remember the R Whites ad from the 70s but I've never brought the product, same goes for milk tray. Jumping forward I even quite like the Meerkat and Plus Net ads but have never bought or used their services.

I understand the idea behind brand awareness, so it could be argues that my remembering the names is a victory but it is a bit of a hollow victory if I don't then buy the product or consider it more favourably.... and that's for ads I like! I have the strong suspicion that most people work this way too.

BBC gives itself a gold in 700Gbit-a-second Olympic vid sprint

Covergae was OK

but I couldn't see anything exceptional about it (apart from the lack of ads). The extra channels were very good but if you didn't have access to them the coverage could be a bit disjointed as they either flicked around a lot or spent a lot of time on build ups to events while ignoring others.

I also can't help but feel that it is unlikely that more than 90% of the population watched the Olympics. I suspect this to be an anomaly of the system they use to guess viewing figures.

I did watch some of it from abroad and I can't say the coverage was much different, apart from being biased towards events where that country felt it would do well!

I'm all in favour of the TV license but this was a fairly easy win for the BBC.

HSBC brands EVERY Apple iPhone 'an insecure PC'

In an surprising cock-up

Indeed!

US will fight ITU members for internet domination

Sooner this is done

..the better!

Lords call for the end of TV transmissions

Prosperity

"Current and past governments have failed to understand the importance of broadband to Britain's future prosperity"

Not sure that there's much evidence to suggest that broad band has any effect on prosperity. It provides convenience for some things but buying a book via a Web Site instead of a local shop doesn't make us richer, for example.

On the subject of TV via the internet: I don't see this working well in rural communities where there is often no, or limited ADSL and no mobile signal either.

Brit holidaymakers forced to surf in the sea, not online

Surfing in cornwall

and I couldn't get any mobile signal at any of the beaches I visited around St. Agnes. Strangely this only served to make the holiday better.

Boffins build eye-controlled interface out of game-console cams

MS

Don't MS sufferers often get nystagmus? I wonder how well the system would work under those circumstances.

Reg hack attempts gutsiest expenses claim EVER

Isn't that

how the famous Bistro drive works? So, was this in fact El Reg investigating alternative fuel sources for their next great project?

D-Link DHP-1565 802.11n router with integrated powerline

Re: Aren't they forgetting something?

Don't know about UPS but it works on surge protectors for me. The performance is down a bit but it's still faster than my Internet connection, so fast enough for most things and even fast enough to stream non HD films over.

Sony Xperia P mid-range Android

Re: Tempted

and of course people never buy things they don't need!

My point was that I couldn't see what I'd use one for and no-one I spoke to who owned one for any length of time could put their finger on anything they really needed one for.

Most people said they used it as a music player or occasional camera but they also said they'd got dedicated music players they preferred and dedicated cameras they used in preference.

Oh, quite a lot said work gave them out and expected them to respond to e-mails on them when they were not working.... which I can do without :-)

I'm not saying they're useless rubbish just that I can't see the point and no-one I've spoken to has been able to come up with anything either.

As I said in my first comment... each to their own.

Re: Tempted

Each to their own and all that but I still can't see why I'd want to spend 300 quid on a smart phone. I can't find anything in the article which describes something it does which I really really want or need.

I had a quick chat around the office and with some mates and most seem to buy these things and then, after an initial period of playing with the new gadget, not really know what to do with them.

Serco ate our IT supplier: Now what? – London boroughs

Don't you think

that the council are basically saying one of:

1) We're so incompetent at managing these 300 people that we can push them off to another company and that other company can still do the current job and make a profit.

2) We're so incompetent that we didn't notice that the new contract is actually costing us more than keeping this in house.

On the other hand perhaps it's a bit of both!

Supreme Court dismisses Assange bid to reopen extradition case

Re: sought for questioning?

From what I remember he was accused and then it was withdrawn and then he was accused again and then a charge added... all sounds a bit odd to me.

It also seems strange that the Swedish prosecutor has turned down all offers to speak to him to ask the questions they want to ask.

He doesn't strike me as a nice person but these charges do sound rather trumped up so I'm not surprised he doesn't want to go to Sweden.

BYOD will cost a packet, warn experts

Re: *facepalm*

....or if the company insists on putting a piece of software on the users nice shiny toy and bricks it. I think the usert is going to expect the company to pay.

Then there's the grey are in between where the user says the company's software or advised change has bricked the device or borken it in some way.......

Apple pulls in TomTom, kicks Google off iPhones

Re: Well, there's another reason...

I've also found Google Maps to be pretty useless. I had to map a couple of hundred addresses for on customer and it got about 10% wrong, one was even put on the wrong continent, despite having a UK post code!

I then tried using them to find the hotel I was going to stay at and the office I had to go to when visiting a client site. It got both wrong by about 1 or 2 km, which is hopeless in a big city!

For FORK'S sake: GitHub checks out Windows client

Feeling a little jaded

but.... I've never seen serious problems in a project due to the source control tool. Even sccs does the job. The problem always comes from people not using the tool and not following any kind of change control process so source control becomes "whatever we find in production".

We'll pull the plug on info-leak smart meters, warns UK.gov

Case hasn't been made

for installing these meters. Let alone securing them.

Flexibility needed to score expat gigs in Asia

So....

in effect we've got an agency saying they'd like people to be more flexible and accept less money. I've never heard that before :-)

Why on Earth is Microsoft moving to Euro pricing now?

Interesting

(if you ignore the silliness about the Euro) but the problem with price differentiation is when your customers find out or have it rubbed in their faces. Say I'm an IT directory at a €30 business and I land a new job at a €300 business. I'm going to try and make a name for myself by pushing the price down. The board may even be so pissed off about it that they chuck out Microsoft altogether.

I've seen ti happen!