Posts by Smudger 1

What's HPE Next? Now it's unemployment for 'thousands' of staff

Re: In a nutshell

"Pre-sales people" are just that - people who work on a project before the customer has placed an order or the contract is won.

Sales people in small IT businesses are expected to be sales-orientated technical people. They may have shared access to technical experts on an ad-hoc basis.

However, winning a large contracts involves more than meeting-and-greeting, drawing up a two or three page proposal and closing the deal - there can be a raft of technical consultancy, architecture planning, system specification, BOM/BOQ/proposal generation, installation-costing, licensing negotiation, support agreement negotiation, training services negotiation and graphic design/presentation work - largely undertaken by qualified professionals. These are the "pre-sales people". Their work is often wasted if the company does not win the order.

There are, of course, post-sales people who can do all this stuff as well - but they're too busy delivering projects HPE already won.

Brit uni builds its own supercomputer from secondhand parts

Re: is 256 pi's enough?

"(Unrelated aside from confused non-native speaker: shouldn't it be are 256 pis ?)"

referring to: "Is 256 pi's enough ?"

It should be "Are" because Raspberry Pis are countable.

It should be "Pis" because the official Raspberry Pi Foundation style is to capitalise the P.

It should be "Pis" (without apostrophe) because the s is pluralising not possesive nor abbreviating.

It should be "enough?" because in formal english Grammar and (totally unjustified sweeping generalisation alert) in just about every English style-guide, there is no space before a question mark.

So, technically, it should have read "Are 256 Pis enough?"

However, "Pis" just looks wrong and causes cognitive dissonance, so the apostrophe is added in because it looks better. Acronyms are often pluralised with an apostrophe as well because it just looks better (e.g. CD's, DVD's).

I would have written "Are 256 Pi's enough?"

HTH

Space station to get shiny new ringpiece for automatic penetration

Passive?

"It's a passive system which means it doesn’t take any action by the crew to allow docking to happen and I think that's really the key,"

If it does things automagically, that makes it an active system in my book. Just sayin'

Court to Wikimedia: Your NSA spying evidence is inadmissable, so you can't prove NSA spying

Re: Get a big broom, judge!

@ratfox Er, no

10 mm x 10 mm x 10 mm = 1000 mm^3.

1000 mm^3 of sand is the size of a sugar cube.

The US taxman thinks Microsoft owes billions. Prove it, says Microsoft

Re: I hope this will be useful

"It's a question of avoidance vs evasion. Avoidance (structuring your financial dealings to mimimize tax) is legal. Evasion (misrepresenting financial dealings) is not."

Actually, that used to be the case but the game has changed.

Tax evasion is fraud and is a criminal offence.

What you refer to as tax avoidance is now called tax planning and is acceptable.

Tax avoidance is about structuring your business transactions in an entirely artificial way to avoid paying tax without actually breaking the letter of the law.

The government considers tax avoidance schemes to be against the spirit of the law and will move to close loopholes in legislation/regulations. Companies employ tax advisers to create new tax avoidance schemes to employ as soon as the game is up on the current scheme. A bit like zero-day exploits, really.

Range Rover Sport: Like a cathedral on wheels, only with comfier pews

Shiny shiny

I think the OP is implying that you run around boasting you have a brand new vehicle for six months before transferring your (no-doubt pre-existing) vanity plate.

Toyota to launch hydrogen (ie, NATURAL GAS) powered fuel cell hybrid

substandard subheading

"Only in Japan though - until Sept 2013"

...apparently, it's a time machine as well.

Simian selfie stupidity: Macaque snap sparks Wikipedia copyright row

not likely at all...

"Give a million monkeys in a room a typewriter each and they will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare, it’s said."

It may be said, but...

"If there were as many monkeys as there are atoms in the observable universe typing extremely fast for trillions of times the life of the universe, the probability of the monkeys replicating even a single page of Shakespeare is unfathomably minute." -- Wikipedia

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

Reddit users discover iOS malware threat

Re: "Reddit users discover jailbroken iOS malware threat"

@gerdesj: I don't think proscribed means what you think it means...

Crimelords: Stolen credit cards... keep 'em. It's all about banking logins now

Over draught?

Is that like when the foam on the top of your beer runs down the side of the glass?

Jammy b*stards: Admen flog chocolate bars with 'Wi-Fi-free' zones

Re: Even a Portable Faraday Cage?

I suppose you would have to check the definition of 'apparatus'. If the definition is akin to 'an active device or process' then a Faraday cage gets a pass.

Anyhoo, if blocking radio signals by virtue of building a large building with metal in the walls caused strict liability under the Wireless Telegraphy Act, then every shopping mall developer would be culpable. Shopping malls usually have mobile phone booster systems installed to compensate for their Faraday-cage-like construction.

Tiny tech ZigBee harnesses puny power of the press

Re: Pot, kettle, etc...

Yes, but if I had used the word use I wouldn't have been able to make the no-pun intended pun.

HTH

Re: Am I missing something?

Yes.

The switch in question is not switching a load current, it is a wireless/remote switch. The mechanical action of the switch can be leveraged (no pun intended) to provide the energy to power up a transmitter which then reads and transmits the status of the switch to a controller which then switches the load current accordingly.

Took me a while to figure the gobbledegook out.

Que?

"Green Power is an extension to the Zigbee protocol that allows switches and sensors to operate from tiny amounts of power - such as the power generated by the physical act of flicking the switch, or from tiny solar cells out of direct sunshine. It offers the promise of a wireless future which doesn't shudder to a halt when the battery runs out."

= "Green power allows switches to operate from the power generated by the physical act of flicking the switch".

Gobbledygook.

This should probably read "Green power allows the status of a switch to be transmitted wirelessly using power generated by the physical act of actuating the (physical, mechanical) switch".

HTH

'Leccy-starved Reg hack: 'How I survive on 1.5kW'

That's 100A per phase...

or the equivalent of a 300A single phase supply. A 200A three-phase supply (equivalent to a 600A single phase supply or 140kW) would be suitable for a medium sized light industrial unit (say 30,000 - 100,000 sq feet).

Also, your 100A residential service is probably only 80A or 60A. 100A is the rating of the fuse carrier. Most residences do not have a 100A fuse fitted. Many newer small houses in the UK with gas central heating, hot water and cooking have only a 40A supply (9.2kW).

HTH

'Holey code, Batman!' Microsoft to patch 12 vulns on Tuesday

Re: reason for Patch Tuesday

@TiddlyPom

Security (software or physical) buys you time and (by a law of diminishing returns) approaches 100% asymptotically. No system is 100% secure.

Having a "secret password" to get access to some system or service is (by definition) security through obscurity.

Not telling anybody that you nicked a Mars bar from the corner shop when you were twelve is security through obscurity.

IMHO, you're not doing yourself any favours by asserting a sweeping generalisation that security by obscurity does not work.

Re: reason for Patch Tuesday

@TiddlyPom "Security by obscurity does NOT work."

Of course it works - witness that Roman coin hoards are still being discovered nearly two thousand years after they were hidden. How does secure for 2000+ years count as "not working"?

There are circumstances where security through obscurity is the statistically/probabilistically best option - and other circumstances where security through obscurity is clearly foolish/ill advised/shortsighted/reckless.

Shark versus shark in Barrier Reef DEATH MATCH

Well...

...at least one of them is a scum-sucking bottom feeder.

Mysterious sat-pic China desert markings - EXPLAINED

...and the M25

is purportedly the Dread Sigil Odegra...

Entrants called for 80s-era games coding contest

EA

F0 FE

Street View Terminator warps into Dublin

Is it worth eating dirt...

...to avoid getting snapped by Google?

http://preview.tinyurl.com/5rrtg2a

Government flies kite for VAT changes

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

"What is so special about Guernsey flower growers?"

They're in Guernsey, which is not in the UK, therefore VAT would have to be paid on import to the UK rather than being invoiced by the growers. It allows Guernsey flower growers to send their perishable produce to the UK on a daily basis in small consignments without customs clearance, which would otherwise make the transaction fail if there was any kind of bureauocratic delay.

EU halts carbon trading after 'concerted' hack attacks

Arithmetic doesn't add up...

We start with: "some two-million allowances worth about €30m"

We then get: "While each ton of credit is worth about €2m apiece"

Finally, "the theft of 250,000 carbon permits worth over €3m."

If we assume that 1 "allowance" = 1 certificate = 1 credit = 1 ton = 1 tonne = 1 "permit" of CO2,

then apparently the price of a credit starts at 15 euro, rises to 2 million euro and then falls to 12 euro. Phew, that must be difficult to keep track of...

Fate of porn domain left in government hands

Unfortunately, it's not a well thought through plan...

I can't tell whether or not you're being ironic; but, in case you're not...

We are in a war in Afghanistan because the inhabitants thereof are arguably "culturally, sociologically and technologically" left behind. So what do they do? They grow opium poppies so that they can get money by selling heroin to the first world. They get politically overtaken by the Taliban who apparently want to terrorise the first world over cultural and sociological differences.

We were in in a war in Iraq, not because they are "culturally, sociologically and technologically" left behind, but because they have oil and they are slap bang in the middle of an area where other countries have lots of oil. And we want stability in sandland.

We are likely, at some point, to go to war with Iran and/or North Korea over the fact that they have nuclear weapons programmes. Both countries are "culturally, sociologically and technologically" different. Is different good enough or do they absolutely have to be backward in your world?

Zimbabwe is "culturally, sociologically and technologically" left behind, and desperately needs international intervention. But Zimbabwe doesn't have international terrorists and it doesn't have oil and it doesn't have mineral reserves we are particularly interested in, so we leave it to become a rotten, corrupt, failed state; a place where the UDHR means nothing.

How about Somalia and piracy on the high seas? Not so easy to build a wall 200 miles offshore...

You can build a Great Internet Firewall of China if you like, but it's no going to stop China's ICBM's from blowing your arse to hell.

HTH

OpenSolaris spork ready for download

Wot's a spork?

Am I missing the joke, cos there doesn't seem to be an accepted use of 'spork' in an IT context?

Is sporking different to forking?

TIA

'Poo-powered' Volkswagen astounds world+dog

Just build a fertiliser plant

You only need methane, air and water to make ammonium nitrate.