* Posts by Aaron Em

1548 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jul 2009

Apple 'hasn't really run out of iPhone 5s AT ALL'

Aaron Em

A core of truth indeed

Without Mr. Jobs, Apple is done for -- just like last time, during the ill-starred reign of the fizzy-water salesman, save that this time, there's no hope at all of the visionary's return. It just takes a little while for the collapse to get properly underway.

Apple's first batch of iPhone 5 preorders sold out in an hour

Aaron Em

It's called "schizophrenia"

Dial 111 for help.

Aaron Em

Actually

I was hoping the release would drive down the price of an unlocked 4S, but no such luck...

Error found in climate modelling: Too many droughts predicted

Aaron Em

Keep on mouthing that cant, Quaker.

Aaron Em

Re: Rate of change

And when it takes a trillion bucks' worth of scientific bureaucracy and tendentious modeling to suggest that a car wreck is a bad result, you'll have a valid argument.

HGST floats helium for low power, MASSIVE capacity HDDs

Aaron Em

"a bit out of whack with the market need"

In light of the push toward virtualization, I might beg to differ --

Aaron Em

Depends on cost, but

I might almost rather spend even as much as $2X-$4X per disk on this, or possibly even more, than $X on an SSD. More expensive, sure, but it'll be larger as well, and given the destructive nature of SSD writes and the inescapable lifetime limit that imposes on any such device, it'll probably last longer too for the sort of busy workload where SSDs' speed really shines. Considering that a properly configured RAID, across enough disks, can make up for a lot of that latency difference and offer improved reliability as well, this really might turn out to be worthwhile.

Apple Lightning adaptors reveal limitations

Aaron Em
Meh

E for effort, Gordon --

-- but it has to scan and to rhyme, dunnit? Otherwise we could just slop anything we like in there and call it a day...

Aaron Em

Oh mamma mia, mamma mia, mamma mia, let it go

Stevelzebub has a socket set aside for me-e-e, for me-e-e, for MEEEEEEEEE

...okay, actually done this time, I swear!

Aaron Em

BISMILLAH, NO!

They will not let it go!

...okay, enough.

Aaron Em

Easy come, easy go

Will you let it go?

Aaron Em

He's just a poor boy, from a poor family --

-- spare him his cash, from this monstrosity!

Aaron Em

Galileo, Galileo

Galileo, Figaro --

Aaron Em

Magnifico-o-o-o

I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me --

The iPHONE 5 UNDERMINES western DEMOCRACY: 5 reasons why

Aaron Em

Same would've happened with a paperback

although I will grant no one these days has the patience, or the brain-cells to rub together, to do anything with a paperback. I mean, it doesn't even light up!

Aaron Em
Pint

God bless you, Mr. Page!

You've delivered a good hard laugh, when I really did need one. Thank you! Next round's on me -- you've got the email address to which to send the pub slip and remittance instructions.

GoDaddy stopped by massive DDoS attack

Aaron Em

Different for each site...

...but not every GoDaddy domain server ends in .godaddy.com. In particular, if the nameservers you were seeing were .domaincontrol.com, that's -- guess who? -- GoDaddy! So it doesn't necessarily mean anything, what you're saying right here.

Aaron Em

Wow. Bad day for you, asdf?

Quoting what you may decide not to stand by once you've realized how embarrassing to you it is, or should be:

Where in their press release does it say anything about a botnet? They specifically say it was internal. You would be owing me actually.

You're right. I already said as much. To make it painfully, pedantically clear:

1) I offered to stake $5 on the claim that the cause of the downtime was a DNS amplification attack delivered via a botnet.

2) Assuming you'd taken me up on the bet, you would implicitly be staking $5 on the cause of the downtime being anything else but that.

3) GoDaddy's PR statement says it was indeed not a DNS amplification attack via botnet, but rather an internal error.

4) This being the case, had there been a bet, you'd have won it, and I would need to know to which address I should send the $5 to pay off my losing bet. Which is what I already said, in the very comment you've quoted above.

"It's five o'clock somewhere" is a line from a song, not an axiom by which to live one's life. I wonder if you have trouble recognizing the difference; if so, may I suggest you investigate Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in your vicinity? They tend to be listed online, I gather.

Aaron Em

Re: Fair enough

...and then you deleted the post in which you had previously called me those names. Coward.

Aaron Em

Fair enough, asdf, you didn't call me a muppet

Checking back, I find I did misattribute that particular personal insult; instead, I see that you called me both an incompetent and a shill.

So: apologies for the error, fuck you, and fuck you, in that order.

Aaron Em

Business sense, you say?

OK then, asdf, let's look at the figures. Surely, being the hard-nosed, bottom-line-driven businessman you are, you're not going to argue with cold, hard numbers, right? Well, here's the numbers on my company's experience with GoDaddy.

We've been hosting DNS on GoDaddy for a bit over 4 years now; for simplicity's sake (and to save me looking up start dates for what is a back-of-the-envelope estimate), let's call it four years even, which gives a figure of 365 * 4 * 24 = 35040 hours.

Seven of our clients experienced downtime yesterday; the longest individual outage lasted just over four hours. In order to make our estimate as uncomplimentary to GoDaddy as possible, let's assume that all seven clients were down for the full six hours which some unlucky GoDaddy users saw. That gives us a combined total of 7 * 6 = 42 hours.

Expressed in percentage downtime, that gives ((42 / 35040) * 100) = 0.12% downtime; expressed in percentage uptime, that's 99.88% uptime.

Now, that's pretty damn good for a service that's so dirt-cheap it may as well be free, wouldn't you say? I've done business with companies whose SLAs were less stringent, and less stringently met, than that -- and I've paid much more for their services.

Aaron Em

Update: GoDaddy claims internal error

See here, GoDaddy's PR release on the subject.

Too bad you were so busy calling me a muppet to take me up on the bet, asdf. Otherwise I might even now be asking you to which address I should PayPal $5.

Since you didn't bother, I'll replace all three of those with the following:

$5 there is a former GoDaddy network admin who is now trying to decide to which town he should move, to what he should change his name, and with what organization he might possibly ever again hope to find employment.

Aaron Em

Re: Do people still celebrate this kind of thing?

Just as it's easier to destroy than to create, it's easier to celebrate destruction than to face the fact that one's not up to the task of creating anything worthwhile.

Aaron Em
Facepalm

FAIL indeed; well done

Straight to personalities! Aren't you adorable.

You do get what you pay for. That's why we don't host with GoDaddy -- we tried their VPS service once, and it was execrable. Their name service, on the other hand, has been quite reliable excepting today's issue, which is the sort of thing that could reasonably happen to anyone once. If it happens twice, of course, that'll be a different story.

...see there? That's how grown-ups talk in the real world, and please note the complete absence of '$' for 's' anywhere in anything I've written. You'd do well to try to emulate that sort of thing, if you can. Even if you can't, you'd do well at least to mention the name of someone you prefer over GoDaddy, rather than just slinging shit that's of no benefit to anyone.

Aaron Em

Re: GoDaddy no wonder

$5 says DNS amplification via a reasonably sizable botnet.

$50 says you wouldn't handle it hitting your DNS servers one-tenth as well.

$500 says you won't stop bitching about GoDaddy for a second, nonetheless.

Day-long outage 'not a hack,' claims GoDaddy

Aaron Em

And who,

might you suggest, could "speak with authority" for Anonymous?

Aaron Em
WTF?

Really?

You'd rather issue a mea culpa and an apology for screwing up, than say a bully came along and kicked your ass, but you're going to boxing classes to make sure it doesn't happen again? Metaphorically speaking, of course, since judging by your past comments you're thick enough to need it pointed out.

iPhone to account for half of US economy by 2030 - projection

Aaron Em

That, Grikath, is because

you are among those for whom the Joke Alert icon is not necessary in the first place.

Pity so few of the comments on this article were made by people of whom that's true.

Aaron Em

It seems to me

that the Reg web development staff could do worse than to make the "Joke Alert" icon available for articles, as well as comments.

There is life after the death of Microsoft’s Windows 8 Start button

Aaron Em

Still has Quick Launch?

I am one of those people! Thanks for the clue --

Aaron Em

A suggestion with regard to widescreen displays

Try putting your taskbar on one side or the other, rather than at top or bottom. You can fit more open windows onto it that way, and it frees up a considerable amount of vertical space, which is a boon when dealing with aspect ratios which don't give you all that much to work with in the first place.

Aaron Em

"Only get Windows 7 drivers"

If you can turn up a copy of Windows XP x64 Edition, you should be able to use the Win7 drivers with it; you may have to screw around some to get them to install, but they should work without too much trouble. (I've successfully installed 32-bit Win7 drivers on a 32-bit XP machine, at any rate; I see no reason why the 64-bit equivalent should not work as well.)

Of course, finding a (legit) copy of XP x64 may be its own problem in this day and age, to say nothing of learning your way around its multifarious foibles...

Aaron Em

Quite possible to avoid grouping

"7 Taskbar Tweaker" is what I use for that; it's lightweight and lives in the system tray, and can be configured to turn off grouping. Works quite well, installs cleanly with no BS as far as I recall.

Another good reason not to pin anything to the taskbar: I use the Virtual Dimension desktop pager, and pinned apps always appear, whether I'm on their desktop or not. This would rather defeat the purpose of using virtual desktops.

E-publisher 'fesses up: 'Apple UDIDs were ours'

Aaron Em

Re: So let me get this right...

Oh, don't be a troll. We all know deceit is perfectly virtuous in the service of Higher Truth.

Aaron Em

Probably debug logs

It's awfully useful to be able, when some random user calls and complains about "this happened, then this happened, then it caught on fire and screamed demonically while shooting rubber bands at my cat", to be able to tie that problem report unambiguously to a set of log entries saying "this happened, then this happened, then the user totally fucked up".

Using UDIDs to do said tying might not have been the best idea. On the other hand, this being a "privacy violation" on the same tempest-in-a-tiny-teapot level as most others we've heard about here and everywhere else, I fail to see why anyone should really give a damn.

Aaron Em
Trollface

Not a single thin dime

Apple, on the other hand --

Judge: Apple not liable for dropped, broken iPhone screens

Aaron Em

Nothing attracts more downvotes...

...than complaining about downvotes. Especially on a site where your up/down ratio a) means fuck-all, and b) isn't even visible to anyone save yourself!

Downvoted for obvious reasons: specifically, I'm wondering whether it is possible to induce spontaneous human combustion through sheer apoplexy, and you seem an excellent candidate for this research.

Aaron Em

"The cause of your rage"

-- judging by the way you write -- seems to be, not so much smartphone wonkiness, as an enthusiastic and insufficiently controlled stimulant habit.

Settle down a bit, lad, and lay off the crystal meth or Vivarin or hi-test coffee or whatever it is you're sucking down so much of. It'll do a world of good, for your heart and your workmates both.

'GNOME people are in total denial about what their problem is'

Aaron Em

Re: *REAL* maple syrup

Hard to find good maple syrup in the US, true. The stuff out of Maine and Vermont tends to be pretty reliable in my experience.

That said, why expect anything at IHOP to taste like anything good? Only reason I'd go there is if I felt my intestinal parasite load just wasn't up to snuff lately.

Apple Java update fails to address mega-flaw – researcher

Aaron Em

That's OK --

-- Oracle's update didn't address it either, so I hear.

Why Java would still stink even if it weren't security swiss cheese

Aaron Em

Python?

Whitespace as syntax? Wasn't that lesson learned with Makefiles twenty years ago?

Brummie plod cuffed in Facebook troll hunt

Aaron Em

Re: usenet

Indeed it has. Those are crimes, not acts of 'bullying', and they should be prosecuted as such. This does not make any less tiresome the butthurt brigade and their inability to tell the difference between rudeness and abuse.

Aaron Em

Same question I've got

I was bullied plenty in school; and I mean actually bullied, not Internet 'bullied', which is to say that a day in which I had only harsh language to put up with, and didn't get the ever-loving crap kicked out of me as well, was actually a pretty good day for me.

Upset and whining about it because everyone on the Internet is not always nice? I gather that's what a Tumblr is for. Why don't you go start one?

Watchdog probes rules for naughty mobe fondling on flights

Aaron Em

"Mythbusters said it can't"

Oh, well, that's all right, then.

Aaron Em

Phil O'Sophical: Not me, guv; after an initial moment to ensure I'm properly lined up with the target, I'm pretty much good to go. Of course, my parts work properly, which I appreciate is not true of everyone.

Steve Knox: On a single flight? Of course not -- who could? I usually don't get through more than a few hundred pages' worth on a single flight, not least because partial anoxia isn't the best thing for concentrating on a book -- or on anything else, for that matter. I do, though, quite like having a sizable library from which to choose what I feel like reading right now, and with 32GB of Flash to play around with, even if I only just might decide to read something a month from now, or even a year from now, it's still worth putting it in my pocket, where it'll be handy no matter how long I take to get around to it.

Aaron Em

Don't start that "get a real book" nonsense

Not, at least, until you can find me a way to fit into my pocket what would take up two hundred linear feet of shelf space if it were printed on paper.

That said, I have no problem turning off my widgets during takeoff and landing, purely for safety's sake, and I don't really see why anyone would -- if you can't do without reading for that long, you really do need to bring a paper book with you as well, or do something at any rate.

And this comes from someone who reads with one hand, and aims with the other, while he's standing in front of a urinal -- you're going to have to work pretty hard to say you're a more serious reader than I am!

Office 2013 to offer one-off apps on demand

Aaron Em

Re: Has anyone actually used it?

Don't forget the people complaining about Microsoft's nefarious plot to lock customers into their subscription service by means of a proprietary file format which only a half-dozen or more open-source software packages can also open and manipulate, not to mention the fact that zipped XML isn't exactly an opaque binary format in the first place.

Aaron Em

Re: Internet Streaming

As mentioned many times in both the article and the thread, it caches most of the guts on your local machine. That way, as the actress explained to the bishop, the only time you have to wait a while is the first time; once that's out of the way, things go a lot faster.

As for the rest, may I recommend a good antiperspirant?

Mars rover harangues empty landscape with loudhailer

Aaron Em

Science, pah

Forget science -- they've got some funding they could be earning!