Posts by Peter Hawkins

Internet of Car...rikey what the hell just happened to my car?

"Hardware manufacturers seem to see it as an afterthought."

Better not get on any planes then if that's what you think !

Actually most software development could benefit greatly from the engineering approach used in a lot of hardware design rather than its usual cylce:

1. Get it sold

2. Find the problems (or more likely someone else does)

3. Maybe fix it if it's worth the hassle

2 and 3 to be repeated as needed.

If the costs to fix software mirrored those to physically fix hardware we'd get better products

Quick note: Brexit consequences for IT

Re: What a shambles already ..

"He did say that yes but went on to say he thought we could be in the EEA and also have some control over immigration which seem to contradict what everyone else is saying"

Well that's fine if the negotiations are between the UK and this German MP, unfortunatley they aren't. Would have been nice though if Boris had thought to ask the Norwegians or Swiss or even the EU itself what it costs to access the EEA before the referendum

UK needs comp sci grads, so why isn't it hiring them?

Re: Science?

"The software developers who engineer the fly-by-wire controls for airliners might disagree. Safety related software requires a colossal amount of discipline."

I think you'll find that those who are producing this sort of software are either engineers themselves or working closely with, or under engineers. Engineers can do software, but I agree completely that software developers are not engineers. The typical software development cycle of 1. get it working, 2. get it out there, 3. fix it - runs completely against all that defines engineering.

BT broadband is down: Former state monopoly goes TITSUP UK-wide

Yep, BT broadband is down in Belfast too

CHEAT! Volkswagen chief 'deeply sorry' over diesel emission test dodge

Re: Time for petrol only for private transport

Hybrids use petrol rather than diesel for a few reasons. Petrol engines per Kw are much lighter, diesel engine blocks need to be heavier due to the higher compression ratios. New small petrol engines are therefore per kg more efficient than small diesels. Then factor in the emission control, diesel will require many more bolt on devices to meet the new standards, yet more weight. Petrol engines also allow more fine grained control of engine characteristics to integrate power from combustion and electrical sources and offer much better engine braking characteristics than diesel for energy recovery.

My self-driving cars may lead to human driver ban, says Tesla's Musk

Re: Not a problem solved

"VW spent $17Bn on R&D last year. Toyota and Ford aren't far behind. Toyota's revenue was $26Bn. I think they can afford to do this properly."

Given that their current R&D software component would be some bespoke adaptions to largely off the shelf ECU's etc. along with some infotainment, I think you don't understand much about R&D in the motor industry. The vast majority of that will be next gen platforms, engines, emmisions etc.

Airbus, Boeing style technologies is a whole new game for motor manufacturers.

Fourth Euro star truck christened Albert Einstein

This is a title

They learned the hard way that a pure oxygen environment can be very bad. See "Apollo 1 disaster" for the reason why.

Synology USB Station 2

Wot no wireless part 2...

Yes most people will have a wireless router, however this device is also a print server. Most routers are where the phone line terminates, most printers are on a desk somewhere else, maybe next to a wireless PC if the house isn't wired with CAT5/6. Given that this has to sit beside the printer for it's USB connection wirelss would have extremely useful to save having to use a PC as a print server. This isn't a NAS device only, it would seem to be most useful serving portable devices for combined NAS/print.

Wot no wireless ????????????

The lack of wireless connectivity makes this a non starter for most users.

Forget Xmas: Get set for the octacore v Bulldozer DEATHMATCH

Yawn.....

File under: HP, Itanium, dead horse, flog.

Cowon iAudio V5 HD media player

No ID3 - WTF?

Even the chapest £9.99 MP3 player hanging on a hook in Tesco does ID3

Russians approve, um, Sunacle deal

Wrong... it's still free

Solaris 10 is still free. If you don't register for a free Entitlement Document it's just 90 days.

"The registration process to receive an Entitlement Document is part of the Solaris download process, with the Entitlement Document being returned to you via e-mail. For this reason, YOU MUST PROVIDE A WORKING E-MAIL ADDRESS AS PART OF YOUR SUN DOWNLOAD CENTER ACCOUNT. If you fail to do so, you will not receive an Entitlement Document and will only have the right to evaluate Solaris for 90 days. "

Street View spymobiles invade CeBIT

Not that liiving room...

... as in comfy couch and big screen TV. More like the the sweeping steps of the motherland. Lebensraum was used by the nazis to refer to extra "living space" for Germany offered by those countries conquered by them.

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

NHS hurls iPhone into booze abuse fray

Probably counterproductive..

Does it have the facility to post your "high score" for everyone to see??

RIP Personal Computer World

Re: Awwww

That was the ACT Sirius. 1.2M floppies in the early 80's using variable speed drives.

OpenSolaris ported to ARM chips

OpenSolaris on ARM - perfect fit

"It is hard to imagine there is a lot of room for OpenSolaris on the kinds of devices served bv Atom-based processors"

Embedded NAS anyone. Throw in some cheap SATA and/or flash and with ZFS you have proper NAS on the cheap. Current ARM Cortex cores are more than capable of running that setup. Perfect media hub in a black box.

'D'oh!' tops fave kids' TV catchphrase poll

D'oh! - Homer Simpson??

If I remember rightly Peter Glaze of Crackerjack (...... CRACKERJACK!!!!!) fame used it long before Homer.

"It's Friday.... it's five to five ... it's ....." If only it was!

Welsh mum amazed by Marmite Messiah

Son of God ??

Looks more like the bass player from Spinal Tap

Intel drags feet on Itanium quad-core (again)

Good grief Matt

HP's delivery of Tukwila based systems is making Sun's Rock timescales look positively speedy.

Anyway what do you expect from a reseller, it's not like HP actually design anything any more anyway.

FAIL

HP's servers and storage hit a wall in Q2

Why is this under Servers and not Channel

After all HP are now just a big reseller of other peoples IP.

"Invent"... my arse.

eBay put Skype on iPhone 'to boost price of NSA backdoor'

Nice try

I'll believe when I see the Playmobil.

Samsung PB22-J 256GB SSD

Useful metrics?

Any chance of including some useful metrics in these benchmarks, like IOPS?? Not everyone wants to schlump multi-gig files all over the place. For example somme SSD's really make ZFS fly when used as a ZIL device, but IOPS is the killer there.

Too busy to make a jam sandwich? M&S can help

@ AndyC

With you on that. Butter spoils it. Me ma made jam sandwiches for my school lunch in the 70's. By the time lunchtime came all the jam had soaked into the the bread. Nothing beats a couple of slices of rasberry flavoured pink bread !!

Photography rights: Snappers to descend on Scotland Yard

Snapping plod on double yellows outside the chippy...

"In line with the model used in related laws, the offence itself is "strict liability": it is the gathering of information that will be deemed to be the offence, and a defence that the person had a "reasonable excuse for their action" is only allowed after the offence has been charged."

So let me get this right. If I photograph an officer committing an offence, I can only use this information once I've been charged as part of my own defence.

WTF

Don't shout at your disk drives, warns Sun engineer

Re Device above

It's the head unit for the 7410. It's actually a 2U AMD based server.

Geeks whup Marine ass in Call Of Duty 5

An observation on games like this

"key clashes between US, Japanese, Soviet Union and Nazi Germany forces at the close of World War II"

Seems to be someone missing here...

I'm not British but I if I recall correctly they did play a major part in the battles against all of the Axis forces. Yet that contribution seems to be ignored in most WW2 shooters/RTS games etc. In fact the Commonwealth forces in general get a pretty raw deal. In this particular case it can't just be the usual "Merka saves the world single handed" as the Ruskies are included.

Just wondering.

Lords demand DNA database deletions

The thin ermin line....

How many people like myself have previously held this lot in near contempt yet time and again they seem to be the only branch of this whole rotten system with any grasp of reality.

Forelock duly touched/tugged in your general direction, your Lordships and Ladyships.

Sun takes four-socket Victoria Falls Sparc plunge

Oracle Licensing

These systems are perfect for consolidation, LDOMS and/or Containers; a big pool of threads and memory in a 4U enclosure .

Listen just because Oracle are still clinging to a late 20th century licensing model, that's not going to stop hardware evolving. Eventually as the core count increases on AMD and Intel also, Oracle will be dragged kicking and screaming into the real world.

Apple ARMs up iPhone

...a little bit of Acorn that refuses to die...

And the venerable 6502 of course which ARM borrows heavily from..

Where are all the Z80 fanbois now.. eh.. eh.. ?

Sorry just warped back to 1982 for a minute there

NASA preps Atlantis for Hubble mission

Just out of curiosity...

Does anyone know why the shuttle can't go from Hubble to the ISS. I thought the ISS was lower so it would involve slowing the shuttle to a lower orbit which I would suppose is easier than raising to a higher one. I know there is a reason but what is it?

Elon Musk might deliver new plasma drive to ISS

Private space couriers vie for NASA deliveries

No delivery and a card stuck through the airlock if they don't open the hatch within 10 seconds.....

Chinese takeaway biodiesel man in garage explosion horror

@AC Re: "and the chance of then being mistaken for a terrorist"

You might like to know that "scotch" is a drink. I think the term you are looking for is "Scots" or "Scottish"...

.... from an Irishman

Japan kicks off electric car format war

A car with a Sony Li-ion battery.... !!!

Mines the Nomex one.....

US hackette ponders jub-powered iPod

Micro generation is not just for the ladies...

Anyone who remembers those shots of Linford Christie doing the 100m can see the possibilities for the lads too .... well for some of us anyway!

IBM's Power6 slaughters world+HP in transaction cranking

Interesting but meaningless

TPC-C has become the 0 to 60 of benchmarks, interesting and entertaining for the vendors as a test of tuning skills and extravagant hardware configurations, but absolutely useless as a real world performance metric.

Intel: future iPhone to be Atom powered

@ Nono Nano

"Will my Atom require extra TMS2114 RAM chips to run iPhone software ?"

Yes and you can still solder them on top of the originals and bend out the Chip Select pins !

UK's tallest bovine soars to 6ft 6in

I'll have ...

.. 10 litres of pepper sauce and a couple of cases of your finest claret. Bring the fillet first, then the sirloin.. then

Reaper aerial killbots enlist mobile phones against owners

Just a thought

In the accompanying picture, just who is the US ground crew directing his hand signal at .. ???

Nintendo Wii 'like a virus', games boss sniffs

Couln't agree more

My two kids saved for a Wii after playing one at a friend's house. When they got it - it was used every day for about two weeks. Since then it hasn't been touched, that's two months ago. My son has gone back to his PSP and my daughter is once again engrossed in SIMS2 on the PC.

I think the Wii is now buried under DVD cases...

Syria orders cybercafe owners to ID customers

In five years time...

......replace "Syria" with "UK".

ESA's space truck heads for ISS

What a contrast..

...France, Germany and the rest of ESA, produce technology like this and the U.K. can't find a couple of mil' to run Jodrell Bank properly.

US cruiser nails crippled spy-sat on first shot

Software part was easy

They didn't have to do much, the software has been around for years.

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

Porsche to challenge London CO₂ penalty in court

@Robert Hill Diesels Pollute more

Funny how all the oil burner drivers whine on about CO2 emissions as if they were the only pollutant. In a city environment by far the most dangerous emissions to people are PM10's and soot, emitted by guess what - diesels. You only have to watch some moron in TDi flooring it away from the lights and you'd swear the thing was running on house coal from the smoke. That's also why my air-con automatically switches to re-circulate after a couple of mins behind a diesel.

When diesels are as clean as petrol cars, i.e. active catalytic converters and soot filters, then you can lecture petrol drivers on the environment. Until then, as I drive round behind your stinking hulk, my petrol car is actually cleaning up after you.

Paris, because she knows all about emissions.

Brits can't distinguish history from the TV listings

UK TV History

FYI on Freeview UK TV History (Ch12) is "history".. after 6pm. Then the slot switches to Dave (Ch19).

Dave is sh*te and I was really getting into the repeats of Secret Army on History, one of my favourites from the 70's, but can't get them after 6pm now.

Not all repeats are crap, and don't mention Allo Allo ... please!

Parent power pulls Woolworth's 'Lolita' kiddies' bed

Think that's bad???

I saw a "Snow White" style bed in my local furniture shed. I went straight to the manager and demanded it be removed. I mean imagine putting innocent children to sleep in a bed themed around a slut who's idea of a good time is to shack up with 7 men she's never met before.

I was outraged, we must protect our children's innocence....

Now if you'll excuse me I have to attend to my 10 year old son who can't work out how to use the rocket launcher in Call of Duty 4.

Paris, because she is the model daughter.

Flash-based iPlayer is go

@Simon Proctor

Works fine on 64 bit Solaris 10. If you will use a toy operating system then expect these things...

.... grabs asbestos jacket.

Paris Hilton heads for the cryogenic freezer

Ouch.....

What if the dogs defrost first and are a bit hungry.....

IBM's beefy Power6 boxes slaughter Java

Even with licencing costs the T1 still wins.

For example Oracle:

Power 6 - 0.75 licence per core = 1.5. Round up (Oracle say you must) = 2 licences

UltraSPARC T1 - 0.25 licence per core = 2 licences

T1 wins hands down on performance, cost, power consumption.. and the T2 is just a few months away!

Straight blokes best at reading maps

Title

"On that sort of anecdotal level, when was the last time you heard a group of women start off talking about a camping trip and wind up in a discussion of whether or not they knew enough to raise steam on a tourist-line locomotive, in the event that the zombies attacked?"

Now that's just forward planning... another thing us blokes are better at!