Posts by Denarius

Office wage slaves face extinction at hands of ROBOTS - if bosses listen to Gartner

How would we tell if CEOs believed them ?

do they mean mass sacking of the dwindling middle classes is not already SOP ?

Billionaire dumps Apple stock because Steve Jobs was 'really awful' guy

what trolls ?

A mildly interesting story about a financial guys assessment of a company followed by comments and the odd rant. Not trolling, unless one is a fanboi. Trolling would have something offensive, like suggesting Steve borrowed ideas from other people without attribution or tried to rip off friends. Inconceivable !

Re: @tkioz jerks we have known

@Amourous Cowherder: Bit more work there and you would have a flame of the week recommendation. Up the caps, bit more spittle and it's done. Editors thoughts ?

Nice Touch

very good closing sarcasm and perceptive assessment of Apple. IMHO, perhaps investor is an example of the best of the robber barons. Ruthlessly get rich, then have a moral epiphany.

US spy court says internet firms can't report surveillance requests

Re: err ,,,,

much as I wish that could be true, there are so many laws, rulez and directions it is impossible not to do something illegal without knowing it, just by walking down street now. One is guilty, just unconvicted. The greenies, loud defenders of liberty that they are, have stated their goals of covert surveillance to protect blowflies, feral animals and pests. My enemies enemies are more enemies. In a continuing trend, New Scientist have a wishful review of a book arguing civilizations grow out of their gods. Cynics like me suggest the gods merely change names. But it is a palatable myth to keep the gullible, such as lefties and humanists quiet as the slave masters get bigger chains ready.

relax, it's a disintigrating country

The only question is how long to go. As for company responses, follow the money. No other motivation exists in most of western civilisations ruins. The USSof A is at war within its own ruling classes using their $deity, money, as the weapon. Religious wars tend to be messy. As fellow commentards have noted briefly, here is a chance for the remnants of Europe and the Asia to grow their businesses. (if the Europeans can eliminate their career bureaucrats and downsize the Eurozone so it is not supporting unmanaged countries who resemble the merkins in spending habits.) One wonders if nimble companies will move data center sites out of the Americas as profits get threatened.

<off topic> the gun nuts might learn something about armed societies, if they can read, by going thru a study on historical sword usage, titled "The Sword and the Centuries" Armed societies can be polite, but still lethal as the psychopaths have even fewer restraints. </off topic>

Beat this, cloud giants! Musk rocket flings 1TB hard drive into SPAAACE

Re: If they could be networked

I thought one of the bankrupted orbiting network groups of the turn of millenium did that ? Part of Iridium now ITIRC. As sat to sat comms has been demonstrated using lasers, Gen 2 of these things might be able to do two levels of service; short delay and near immediate for a higher fee. Interesting concepts to which I think the biggest threat is reliability. How much junk is there in LEO now ?

NSA's Project Marina stores EVERYONE'S metadata for A YEAR

Re: How stupid does the NSA think we are?

hey, it works for elections of pollies few like, or worse, electing pollies that are popular. And incompetent at governing for the people who elected them. just good at governing for the people who gave them electioneering money. Got to the stage where if candidate is well known for no obvious reason, they are suspect. {S}

A downside

to bigger faster hard drives and networks. Still, the tweenies and older like to put up debateable selfies, so this wont stop. never stand between a spook and info. Kind of an obsessive compulsive hoarding disorder, isn't it?

One wonders if the Amish have a valid point.

NSA in new SHOCK 'can see public data' SCANDAL!

the irony again

for some merkins, the irony will be that the merkin gov has created release 0.8 of their favourite boogyman, AntiChrist, instead of some liberal commie European socialist.

Actifio and the curious affair of the AIX copy reduction tech

Re: "We will try to help"

have you read any EULA ? that all you get from anyone. Just some vendors are more honest about it than others. AIX is complex because it was very advanced in its day and has to cover a _lot_ of legacy situations in critical Big Corp (tm) and not so big corp systems. The programmers who wrote the AIX6/7 virtualisation are brilliant. Very configurable and while a bit hard to get head around virtualised hardware running virtualised machines which may contain containers in Solaris speak. With dynamic hardware movement. RAM and CPU can be added or removed on the run. Setting up any software to run reliably on such an OS is a big ask. That there are issues is not unusual.

I still know of some IBM MCA AIX 4.2 units still doing useful work. Fortunately, they don't need this articles kind of software magic.

NSA: Yes, some of our spooks DID snoop on overseas lovers

seems familiar

cant recall which Roman emperor made the comment, but think it was a first century one. Informers are the curse of the empire. Nothing on Google that seems relevant anyway. Nothing changes, nothing new under sun. Hmm, 3000 years old that one. Still not learned to distrust pollies bearing promises of peace and security, have we ?

IPCC: Yes, humans are definitely behind all this global warming we aren't having

Re: Let's decide.

overly simplistic. One religion and spinoff explicitly claim to be based on history. Ironically, most of the spinoff professional management seem to be adamant that their $deity is incompetant and unable to say what it means, so they adopt the entire belief system of its current proposed successor. Mind you, that successor claims to be based on hypothesis, experiment and subsequent theory, except it is impossible to falsify as its devotees adapt it to explain anything while ignoring data that demonstrates it fundamental assumptions are false. An exercise for the few educated thinkers to work out which formal religions I refer to. Any naming of them before thought and question tends to cause intellectual blindness to set in.

In short, as a few philosophers of science have pointed out, what you believe depends first on what model of existence you chose. Also known as prior assumptions. So materialism is as a much a religion as one of the Hindu cults, say original Buddhism or greenism/ we all gonna burn/die/starve IPC reports. No doubt Andrew will be swamped with wasted electrons over this. One must not question the faith. Fire extinguishers to the ElReg border gateway. Must be smokin!

30 years on: The day a computer glitch nearly caused World War III

Re: The Soviets claimed the flight was a spying mission, but it was ... off course

cause is known. Bad design of the autopilot navigation user interface. IITIRC it could be read two ways and the usual human problem of complacent trust in the computers made error fatal. SR71 flight was running down Russian coast at time. Used to do it to flash up missile radars for analysis. Took the Russians a while to realise they were being mislead and giving away info for decoy creation.

In defence of the Russian fighter pilot who fired the missile, it is hard to determine aircraft model details in the dark thru a fighter windscreen. A 747 can look like a KC135 (707 tanker to civvies) at night. PPRUNE forums had some useful informed information about this incident.

I have read claims 4 Korean intel guys and gear joined KAL flight before takeoff. Which may mean nothing more than 4 service people traveling. If one has blackbirds probing, probably with sig-int aircraft listening further out, why would quickly kludged portable gear be used rather than the dedicated automated systems ?

See book Skunkworks for some further reading on this incident.

do not forget other noble men

Such as the Soviet sailors who returned to their sinking crippled sub in Atlantic to manually shut down the reactor so the Gulf Stream would not cover western European coast with serious radiation. The automatic shutdown had failed. The sub was hot in both senses as well as filled with HNO3 fumes so going into it was a suicide mission, to save the nominal enemy. No icon seems appropriate.

but how much cheaper it would be if

the system was documented, procedures in place with contractual performance requirements and the monitoring was outsourced to the cheapest provider. Performance bonuses for CEOs all round ! Good enough for essential government and critical infrastructures, isn't it ?

Thorium and inefficient solar power? That's good enough for me

Re: Thorium reactors

Chinese are building at least one. ITIRC Yanks had them running in late 1950s but as no good for making bangs they were shutdown. Perhaps a few years of cold might change some greenie leaning minds about nuke safety. Freezing to death really ruins ones evening and not being able to charge the i-whatsit at night really annoys the chavs and fainbois.

I, for one, welcome our robotic communist jobless future

Re: Oh,ffs...

agreed, the word you need is in economics 101 courses and almost invisible in modern free market cant. Its oligopoly.

Re: A robot that can make other robots.

@ JS19: >>I'll not argue with a well trained economist, just as I would avoid dispute with a Jesuit, and for pretty much the same reasons.

>>

What are your reasons ?? Both can be taken on the same way.

a) why aren't you rich

b) how do you know that ?

The only sure thing is that experts are going to be wrong when it counts mosts. We have been saved from disasters more by good engineers, canny business men (Tommy Sopwith for instance) and eccentrics than experts.

Who will be the next Barnes Wallis or Tesla ?

Re: If you live in a lake, it takes longer to walk to the well

@Flocke,

Ah, either a Malthus or Aynn Rand disciple, thus wrong. As living standards rise, birth rate drops. Most of Europe imports its children via migrants as the locals don't breed much. You might console yourself with the thought of a flu pandemic in some crowded hellhole. Europe for instance.

Re: I see a flaw.

@Suricou: See Beyond This Horizon; Robert Heinlen where this economic situation was discussed, over 50 years ago.

However, this article reminds me of the automation will shorten your work week fad of the 70s. instead I worked longer and lost paid overtime. As others have commented, when I had to work, I wanted to work and often, despite the worst the PHBs could do, enjoyed it. I liked solving problems and coming up with a better answer for the challenges of the organisation. As it is, I am still finding things to fix and improve.

A final response on food is to suggest the author is half right. Food has dropped in price, risen in quality (generally) and is much more available. For how much longer is the issue. Emptying oceans, chemically flogged soils and cities built on good dirt instead of semi-useless terrain. None of these issues are insurmountable, despite the best pessimism of New Scientist and Limits to Growth groups, but I see no real effort to implement workable solutions. <irony> Greenies and other hysterics are the biggest hindrances to developing a sustainable high quality life. No matter how good the technology, humans will stuff it up if the mass media get involved. </irony>

THE TRUTH about beaver arse milk in your cakes: There's nothing vanilla about vanilla

@Robin: financially viable ?

Good point. Vanilla is one of the few flavours/scents that can be made in lab chemically identical with the bean extract. Much prefer the product of a clean test tube/retort than a beavers back end.

and I thought that luwak coffee was a bad idea

now icecream is off the menu. Where will it end, no lets rephrase that, what delight next becomes disgusting ? Wont some-one think of the children ?

Australia ponders 160,000-seat ERP possibilities

Re: Demystifying consultant-speak

since when has budget meant anything when pet projects are dangled before the management classes ? Just ask Qld gov.

Re: Demystifying consultant-speak

so true. Corporate sclerosis is loved by the IT clueless. Fortunately, it will be so over managed that the next gov but two can bin it. No doubt large foreign multinationals will be brought in to advise, specify and manage while local staff are sacked to pay for it. It used to be called treason, but now it is called outsourcing and free trade.

Pizza drones, mad cyclists and Bitcoin-for-arms traders: A vision of LNDN 2023

makes Judge Dred look almost desirable

Sounds like hell with bicycles. BTW, who buys the new clothes for the trendies to buy second hand ? City to city remote relationships ? Given the use of substances like ecstacy which make takers feel connected, perhaps enough people will discover direct human interaction again as we techs already know. A good pub night is very relaxing.

Facebook reveals plan to WIRE THE PLANET

Re: In otherwords ...

they are acting as modern corporate law states they must, profit above all that they can get away with. Ethics are not laws, merely in the mind of the beholder. just ask the Nork emperor god. Unless one believes in absolutes that is, in which case modern toleration deems one intolerant/denialist of truth of week/fav pejorative here.

As for whether being "connected " is a good thing, just found my copy of Clifford Stolls "Silicon Snake Oil". It has aged well in its assessments. Mobile phone access would be far more useful, but then, I don't own tech shares.

Another 2e2 collapse is possible, but don't let customers fear the cloud

well put sir

About time balanced pro and con discussion on cloud and supplying IT was done. Fail fast and cheap is an excellent concept as not enough testing is done, often due to cost and affordable access to kit. Definitely a good use for a bureau service, aka cloud.

Still the problem of cleanup of data on disks. I was often surprised by organisations that do not have sanitised data to test on. Often testing was done on real customer data copies which often means disk destruction is mandated. if the cloud providers can offer secure data wiping after the tests or project, their takeup for peak loads in the gov sector may increase at a minimal investment cost. Perhaps something as simple(?) as bit striping over encrypted volumes. Any security pundits have thoughts on this ?

Microsoft no longer a top Linux kernel contributor

at this rate

the kernel will make whatever MVS/OS/390System Z is called this year look small. How much cruft is accumulating in there ? Time for more development of microkernel OS methinks. At least a human has a chance of keeping the possible state combinations in mind so debugging without massive tools becomes faster

OK, forget the 3D telly fiasco: 4K is gonna blow you away - say tech giants

more waste

when there is something intelligent or funny to watch, then, maybe. Thats if I dont have a life and want something synthetic and pathetic. Until then, mere SVGA grade or less will do fine for viewing the latest propaganda pieces or Top Gear reruns.

Smartwatch craze is all just ONE OFF THE WRIST

Re: I remember watches

yes, the inexorably, miserable backwards march of progress. My ancient analogue watch is self winding, glows a bit in the dark and works 30+ meters under sea surface. Get it serviced every 5 years and it just works. Unlike any mobile phone.

Oz government-in-waiting releases new online child protection policy

Oz pollies contempt for the citizens

is only exceeded by their owners contempt for rational discussion and freedom to dissent. One day for the citizens to assess a few "costed policies" checked by that most economically reliable of all classes, business droids. Then we vote in reasonable knowledge of what we are voting for. And now this policy reversal on run. {S}

Intel shows off 'disaggregated' rack of servers, storage, and networking

Re: I get it now

so thats why Intel license AMD silicon designs ;-) Safe, nothings safe.

Re: HP CTO on a similar topic

dunno about HP. Poor hit rate these last few years. However, Intel has done well. I vaguely recall them saying they were working on cheap optical NICs years ago. Doing high speed optical comms on servers is a good first step in perfecting the technology so prices drop and performance rises. For those inhabiting Oz cities, it means FTTP is the way to go as consumer end devices can use all the traffic that can be sent to them by then. Lets hope it's not consisting of some big brother type show in 3D. Real life is already like that thanks to the spooks and the gullible pollies.

Australia votes and Vulture South picks the flesh off tech policy

if only

there were policies, not slogans. The advertising truth laws should apply especially to political parties. About time all taxpayer and company funding was forbidden. Let the lying sods get cash from their party members only. Might be some accountability then for all the bagmen of all sides.

'WTF! MORONS!' Yahoo! Groups! redesign! traumatises! users!

Re: If something works ...

stuff it up. What has happened to UI design teams these days ? Useability is not considered. Even the newer KDE has colour schemes which are insane. Wont start on Gnome. Lastly, for those who have reliable high speed connections, thousands of active whatsits crapping up the screen might be fine, but many of us like a simple non-dynamic pages that load adequately on slow networks. Must be MBAs going into design or "managing" the design teams.

Cognitive Networks to bring creepy awareness to LG's smart TVs

at least it simplifies choice of brand

Samsung off list then At last an upside to this crap near non-connection to internet thingy. So slow that smart TV will fall asleep waiting for response from cloud or the connections will break trying to upload what ever is being used to spy on my limited viewing habits. Mythbusters and ancient DS9 anyone ?

'World's worst director' plans Snowden-inspired movie comedy

was that Paris ??

cant be bothered trying to view trailer thru this piece of saline soaked string, but that looks like Paris. At last !

Australian coalition promises digital pigeonhole for all

heard it all before

as soon as one hears _any_ Oz pollie burble "work with private sector" several consequences flow. Not assuredly, but so far it seems to run as follows;

(a) $$ gets given to local dominant supplier of X, where X is any service or good that is current buzzword.

(b) no increase in X occurs,

(c) Costs for users of X rise.

(d) any government entity providing creation of X gets sold off for a song

(e) Sold off entity price increases magically 3 months later to 10 times price it was sold for.

Conclusion: politics in Oz as usual. The NBN will be used by Merkin crap show providers, what little of it exists. The rest of us will continue to struggle with crap cable, 3G or nothing. Nothing to see here, move on.

HMRC nabs 5 after £500k 'cyber attack' on tax systems

Re: Those advanced HMRC systems

You expected otherwise ?

'Kim Jong-un executes nork-baring ex and pals for love polygon skin flick'

Re: Propaganda

I believe you. No doubt the usual shock, horror tabloids/pollies will burble on in denial when open access becomes possible. I remember the useful idiots who praised the hell on earth that was the USSR, not to mention those did not believe stories of atrocities in a closed SE Asian agrarian paradise where it was easy to die, because socialist states always get bad press. I worked with a guy who praised Pol Pots atrocities as cleaning up society. Never understood his attitude.

Must be something about the insecurity of some people. The propensity to admire uncontrolled authority invested in the most egocentric paranoid types seems to be recurring. And there are still plenty of people who deny the documented atrocities of the last major European tribal war. BTW, how did the deceased Norks have the imagination to come up with their own grumble flick ?

Behind the candelabra: Power cut sends Britain’s boxes back to the '70s

Most UIs are crap

Well put Mr Dabbs, the time settings on all these devices is much harder than it needs to be. Two simple HH and MM buttons for instance. And a decent capacitor that can hold the clock chips power for an hour might cost all of 50 cents and save so much blasphemy. And why is only a monophonic beep all that these monstrosities produce.? How about different tones for each control button ?

Look out ARM, Intel, here comes MIPS – again

Synergies ?

As the PRC has licensed MIPS instruction sets for the native Dragonball CPU development (ITIRC), would this also expand developer resources and create an alternative very non-USA based source of hardware ? This would also offer the oportunity for Chinese developers to cut into coding and apps on a big scale.

I miss Paris in the springtime.

We've cracked riddle of ANTIGRAVITY mountains on Saturn's Titan - boffins

Re: This is why I love Science!

tch, you are trusting. As some scientist said, "Science advances one funeral at a time" I suggest that quote indicates that a dominant set of presuppositions holds sway until the originators or more accurately, popularisers cark, so previously ignored anomalies might get admitted and a new set of (depending on discipline) rigid presuppostions becomes the received truth. As for the Titan observations, great analysis, but until something is drilling holes and running seismic observations it ain't science. Plausable hypothesis though. Still lots of odd stuff out there. Makes one wonder just how thin the ice shell on Europa is, if Titan has a thick shell and a lot less tidal heating.

Another big SAP project hits the rocks in Oz

whats hard about Darwin ?

Done a system install there. Nothing hard about working in Darwin, _if_ you dress right and do not take yourself seriously. Which so many PHB/suit types who are drawn to SAP do not seem to. Affordable accomodation is a problem but this is becoming so across all of Oz. The weak minded do get drawn into the local alcoholic culture. I suggest the BOFH might meet his match in a few pubs there. :-) <offtopic> I would love to see monkeyboy do a presentation there in the Wet to general public And take bets on whether he would make it offstage. </offtopic>.

IMHO, the turnover in PMs is an indicator they saw a badly drafted design, bad or no measurable specs and implementation, you get the idea. Very sensible to run. Why has not IT got the equivalent of a construction quantity surveyor ? In the construction industry I saw them save taxpayers and bidders millions by investigating doubtful bids in very early contract evaluation. Bidder could and did gracefully withdraw and no harm done. If QS figures were out, an investigation was done as to why, to keep QS costs knowledge current.

Now places like Kunnunurra and Katherine in pre Wet are unlivable. Dunno how they do it, even with A/C.

ACCC wants to check broadband performance

Yes, Yes, Yes !

About time something like the secret shopper programs was run to keep the b* ISPs slightly honest. I thought the ACCC was a toothless tiger after Samuels left. Be nice for them to do something well. Have to standardise the kit so it is a fair assessment.

'Congressional watchdog' reports patent trolling rising fast

why is this unexpected ?

I thought that was the intent of software patents ? Laws made by lawyers, for lawyers. And a government whose inner circle is mostly lawyers. Thats most in the west these days. Governments that serve mostly the big end of town, no matter how well intentioned the individual local rep may be. The concept of the common good and citizen seems to have been lost in the welter of special pleading from self appointed victims that want money. I digress. Perhaps the cure for the current flood of overly prescriptive government is to ensure all candidates for legal roles have a decade in the real world first. Running a corner store or small engineering firm spring to mind.

Lenovo to ship all new PCs with Start Menu replacement

think of the ecosystem !

if the manufacturers, to use the word very loosely, gave customers what they want, what would all the little "we hear you" software firms do ? Think of the employment the broadscale adoption of user hostile UIs has generated. Think of the extra coffee and other medication selling to help users cope with the IT rage currently infecting the planet. M$ have done a great job making work. <sarcasm>I know using their more recent "stuff" made 2 minute jobs take 45 minutes. Wonderfull for using up all the spare time job automation was going to free up </sarcasm>.

And no, why should anyone have to relearn how common software works so a sales weasel gets a bonus? Some of us have real jobs to do rather than fiddle with stuff that suddenly does not just work.