Posts by Matt Bryant 9690 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2007
"....Gary McKinnon has been having a nice, relaxing easy life...." Which raises two points - firstly, the positive discouragement of other skiddies to go messing with military systems; and secondly, the thought that if he was so sure of his innocence, Gary could just save himself a load of time, money and stress by just getting on a plane to the States....
Here's a funny thought - since Mangham's seen the Facebook code, he has seen the FB "secret sauce", and could therefore be unhireable by any software company. Why? Well, any company that did hire him runs the risk of FB suing them to look at any code developed with Mangham's input to make sure he hasn't reproduced that "secret sauce". There doesn't have to actually be any infringement, FB just has to send the legal beagles round to any future employer and the majority of them will roll over at the sight of the FB lawyer posse. Any that chose to go to court could be looking at a very expensive jaunt, whether they are innocent or not. In essence, if FB really want to, they can make this guy leave the software industry. Mangham should just shutup, apologise long and hard, and hope FB forgets about him.
"....I don't recall hearing of any martial arts instructors assaulting strangers in the street and then offering to sell them lessons...." Stupid comparison. Martial arts instructors have to be licensed, have insurance, and be able to explain the law regarding their art, otherwise they don't get to teach, not legally anyway. This numpty obviously was too stupid top know the law, and definately didn't bother following it.
"....But you'll note there's that word 'appropriately' there...." LOL! I always laugh at that one when haxor wannabes sprout it. They always say "it was a victimless crime, no-one got hurt", but they're usually the same type that think bankers should be hung.
"This time they didn't even wait to get in front of a judge....." Neatly ignoring all the times that the M$ patents have won before going to court. There is no indication that B&N had any better arguments than all those companies that have already folded when faced with a court date with the M$ patent lawyers, which kinda implies M$ were actually targetting the Nook and using the carrot-and-stick approach. For B&N the stick ws the patent action, which would have tied them up in court and drained resources, and a whole bunch of carrots in $300m, the escape from standing alone and being gradually ground down by Amazon and Apple, and the chance to latch onto what is still the most common OS. You h8rs really need to try thinking a bit more about this whole deal.
LMAO! Let's just look at the detail on that slide for PowerL8 (sic), shall we? Does it have a date for PowerL8? No, we have to guess it may be in 2013, going by the "3 years revolution, 18 month + evolution", but by that Power7+ is already late, pushing PowerL8 out to 2014 or later. If Power7+ is just the easy evolution (read "speedbump") and that's running late, what does that say about IBM's chances of making a real architecture change and delivering it on time?
Anyhooooo, back to the IBM roadmap slide. Does the IBM it say how many cores PowerL8 will have? No, it just says "many". Any details on cache size? No. Any figures at all? There is only one figure giving any details and that is where it does say it will be 22nm. In all, a big, fat nothing there.
Compare this IBM leak to the Intel public roadmap, which has been up on their web for ages (http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/public-roadmap-article.html), and you'll see on slide 19 the details for Poulsen with a lot more detail.
"....or the fact that kittson is the last chip for Itanium...." Neatly ignoring that Poulsen is the next generation of Itanium due, already taped out, and Kittson will follow that. Details of both have been released by Intel. Now, how many future generations of Power are there on their public roadmap with any details? Oh, none!
"....You are really getting desperate..." Which is funny, seeing as I hadn't seen a bit of IBM FUD attacking Sybase ever, but within a month of the SAP purchase it started flowing at full volume! Looks like IBM are the ones getting desperate.
"....EnterpriseDB is supposed working on an Itanium port...." EnterpriseDB ASE is already supported on hp-ux on Itanium, as you can see here: http://www.enterprisedb.com/products-services-training/products/postgres-plus-advanced-server/downloads . I note it is not an option for AIX yet. Once again, you're just showing that you know nothing outside your little IBM bubble.
"....IBM will still be able to pass down technology from z and Power to x86...." Was that a joke!?!?!? IBM has no technologies that would be either of interest or of value to Intel. The IBM mainframe tech was matched years ago with Xeon kit like the Unisys offerings, and exceeded by Itanium kit like the Superdome. One glaring example of that was how IBM reacted when PSI started loading their own BIOS onto Itanium Superdomes and running emulated mainframes at a fifth of the cost and twice the performance - IBM squealed for the legal eagles, tied PSI up in court and then bought and killed them. IBM can't afford anything that exposes the sham of their mainframe operation for the old-age tech it is.
"....HP does nothing above the OS layer..." Actually, hp does a lot through partner programs with companies like Microsoft and VMware, integrating their products with hp's control software, meaning they do provision databases and application servers.
"....They should focus on those commodity two-sockets, because the market for x86 Superdome is small." And your supporting statistics for that are .... non-existant! Just because you want it to be so, doesn't make it so. Indeed, I can remember when we first looked at Unisys E7000s back before the Y2K party, and IBM were desperately FUDding Unisys as they knew that customers would switch out mainframes for cheaper Unisys Xeon-based gear. I'm not surprised the IBM trolls are now throwing FUD at what would be a Xeon server with mainframe class RAS from the leading x64 vendor.
"Oracle's PR has actual quotes taken from HP execs...." Yes, and please do give details of exactly which hp personnel, from whom to whom the emails went, and the content of the emails? Oh, you can't - not a surprise. In fact. all you have is Oracle's sliced'n'diced version, which I'd take at as much face value as their claim that ZFS is stable.
".....HP is clinging to the possibility that the courts will consider the Hurd settlement PR as a formal contract to support all of HP's products seemingly until the end of time....." Oracle and hp had a development agreement from prior to the Sun purchase that committed Oracle to releasing versions of their software on Slowaris and hp-ux concurrently. Before that, Oracle had developed primarily on SPARC and released the Slowaris version of a product first, then ported it to PA-RISC and Itanium. As part of the agreement, Oracle started developing on Itanium and also took a load of hp servers and storage in joint hp-Oracle demo centers (IIRC, the one in the UK was the Oracle ETC up in Reading). You may also recall at the time that hp helped Oracle with their Collaboration Suite, providing the know-how to get Oracle's Worldwide email system off a large number of Wintel servers and onto a few Itanium boxes. All hp meant was that they asked if the Hurd agreement meant Oracle was back to business as usual and was re-affirming that agreement still held.
"....DB2 is the only enterprise grade option...." I think you need to go tell SAP that, they have plans for a little something called Sybase. Non-SAP, there are other hp-ux options like PostgreSQL, which is a lot better and cheaper than DB2 even in the full-fat EnterpriseDB form. But I wouldn't expect an IBM troll to know that.
".....HP-UX and the other Itanium platforms are dependent upon IBM going forward...." Well, seeing as IBM Software sell more software licences on hp kit than IBM's own, I'd say IBM Software was the one more dependent on hp.
"....The replacement of Itanium with x86 blows a huge hole in HP's profitability..." Not that big. Looking at the spread of profits, if hp were to lose the Itanium bits tomorrow it would be painful but not that bad, they are well-diversified. If IBM lost the Power/mainframe gig then it might even be fatal. After all, hp have already chased them out of desktops, just about chased them out of x64 servers, and IBM are now dropping the POS bizz as well. And IBM have nothing to compare to the success of hp's networking or printer businesses.
Your predictions of Itanium's demise, as with all the IBM FUD depends on two falsehoods - Oracle have already won their courtcase; and that all hp-ux servers run nothing but Oracle instances. Seeing as one Oracle fraud claim has been rejected already, Oracle are not looking good for their courtcase. They also have the partnership agreement from way back that predates the Hurd agreement, all hp is arguing is that the Hurd settlement was a re-affirmation fo the previous agreement, i.e., that Oracle would release versions of their software for Slowaris and hp-ux concurrently. And as for not all hp-ux servers running Oracle, I have over a dozen hp-ux servers in my care running no Oracle software at all. From what I hear from other hp-ux users, the majority of hp-ux servers don't run Oracle either. Which kinda shows the limits of the desperate IBM FUD.
"....Tukwila which is sadly still dual core...." Oh dear, nowadays Ali is slipping almost as badly as Wunderburp! Tukwila is quad-core, and the bench figures Oracle are sitting on seem to show it ouperforming even the Power7 chips too powerful for the IBM blades to handle, let alone the crippled ones. Back to troll school for you!
Oh, almost forgot your segway into the Oracle Land Of Fantasy! After reading the Oracle press release, where I'm sure they quote any hp or Intel emails in their full and not out of context, Shirley, you might want to swing over to the hp pressroom which has the more legally damaging (for Oracle) fact that Oracle's fraud calim got kicked out of court (http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=1166547#.T4_hzdXLsuI).
"....It is all about the automation and software level integration...." Yeah, go take a look at the hp Cloud Matrix offering, that might give you a clue as to how far ahead hp are of IBM. And as for application integration, hp do that with a range of partners (including IBM Software), whereas IBM have this fraught relationship where they can't talk honestly to a customer about a competitor's software product without pushing the IBM equivalent.
".....I think HP is going down the wrong path in trying to produce a massive scale-up x86 box...." But hp aren't just going down the massive x86 scale-up option, they offer everything from ultra-dense x86 HPC blades through the market-leading 2-socket rack server to scale-up and scale-out x86 solutions, all with integration offerings for a swathe of partner software. It's that range of offerings which is why they are the leading x86 vendor, not IBM. The only unique IBM have is the mainframe customer gouging operation, and that is shrinking too.
"....that wasn't an insult in NonStop's direction..." No, it was an attempt at FUD.
".....NonStop is solid gear with great I/O bandwidth..." But it runs on the same hp Itanium servers as OpenVMS and hp-ux, which you seem intent on FUDding on one hand but then say is "solid gear with great I/O bandwidth", so I would have to presume you actually don't have a clue about the Itanium, hp-ux, OpenVMS or NonStop products.
"....land of misfit toys..." More FUD. OpenVMS has a clear roadmap with a lot more details and range than any IBM AIX roadmap, either public or NDA'd. Tru64 was always for the chop simply because hp were committed to hp-ux which had a bigger marketshare, as good or better features (especially with the Veritas content), and superior performance on Itanium to Tru64 on Alpha. And PA-RISC was hp's own CPU technology, which Itanium was designed (by hp) to replace. You need to go do a lot more reading outside of IBM sales brochures.
"....It doesn't matter how many versions of Itanic are released if none of the major ISVs, except IBM, will support them...." So, is SAP not a major ISV? LOL!
"....It is taking over the Unix market ...." Hmmm, whilst that's debateable, it also ignores the fact that the UNIX market is shrinking, has been shrinking for years, and was predicted to decline long before Itanium arrived. And what is making it shrink? Well, that would be x64 eating it from below. And which company is the undisputed market leader in x64, either Windows or Linux, especially in the blades market the new IBM Flex is launching into? Well, that would be hp. So, good luck in the long term when IBM don't have a CPU roadmap, no options to port AIX, and are already losing the replacement battle!
"....Not really...." LOL! So demonstrating that Oracle and a host of other software providers are available for NonStop isn't completely demolishing your attempt to imply NonStop had no software support? Wow, you're just so blinkered, did you used to "work" for Sun?
Well, it's actually an advance over the preceding IBM Power blades, which require you to use expensive low-profile memory, in that you can actually use cheaper (that's relative - no IBM memory is ever cheap!) full-height memory now! As long as you don't want onboard disks, that is, in which case you're back to the extra-expensive modules. And then the disks aren't hotswap. Again. But you still have to use the crippled versions of the Power7 CPUs, not the full-power (4.25GHz) ones. Again. I'm also wondering, where are the built-in NICs? Seriously, you have to buy mezz cards just to get LAN connectivity? Why are the Power blades such retarded designs, is it really so difficult to get full-powered and featured Power blades working inside the power and coolling capabilities of IBM's blade chassis designs?
"......(iti is much more similar ot HP's and Dell's blade enclosures...." Don't be silly! In the same 10U the hp c7000 blades chassis has more blades slots, more switch module slots, a superior converged solution with Virtual Connect and Virtual Flex, even the option of a DVD drive. Oh, I see now - this is a new IBM blades chassis that is only slightly more of a copy of the hp one than the existing IBM blade chassis, but still lightyears behind hp's! Can we expect the IBM sales FUD to drop the bit about hp's "small and noisy fans" now that they have copied them too? Now, if only IBM could produce something to match the hp Matrix offering, which has only been out there gaining a headstart for two-and-a-half years.....
"....HP-UX will go down with the good ship Itanic..." Well, I suppose it's a good thing there are two fully-detailed versions of Itanium still to come, then! Oh, by the way, how many versions of Power are there on the IBM roadmap after Power7? What, none with any details after Power7? Power8 is just a placemarker on the public roadmap. Instead we have another non-development called Power7+, running six months late, which has been added the IBM roadmap to hide the lack of progress. And what happens to AIX after Power8 seeing as it also has no x64 port? Trolls in glass houses should've learned by now not to throw stones.....
"....Out of curiosity, what sort of application is running on NonStop?" Well, for starters there is Oracle 11g GoldenGate for NonStop, then there's IBM's WebSphere middleware, TIBCO, BEA Weblogic..... Oh, did I just poke another big hole in your FUD? Maybe you should leave it to Ali, she can at least get one good point every now and again, whereas you seem stuck on a duck every innings.
".....the high point of Odyssey are that they are going to unify the Unix and x86 architectures in the same enclosure around a common chassis...." Yeah, only hp having been offering Itanium and Xeon (and AMD) blades in the same blade formats in the same balde chassis for years. All the software features you say will be in the IBM Flex offering are already available for hp. What Odyssey will bring is common servers (not just "in the same enclosure") for Itanium and Xeon, ie socket-level compatibility, which IBM simply can't offer (and probably never will) with Power, meaning hp will be able to maximise the savings of a common platform whilst IBM will still be gouging their customers for two seperate hardware streams.
".....vPars first became available for the i2 blade family late last year with vPars A.06.00...." Yes and no. I'd say it's more accurate to say vPars became SUPPORTED by hp with the release mentioned. Prior to that, vPars was supported on the cell-based Integrity servers (rp/rx7xx0, rp/rx8xx0 ranges and Superdomes), even though the software could be run on top of any hp-ux 11i install. Years ago I had two-socket testing box with vPars on it, which was strictly speaking not supported by hp, but worked just fine. When I asked our hp rep why vPars support was restricted to the cell-based servers he told me it was due to hp wanting it to be used in mission critical solutions, and for them the that really meant the larger servers. I assume that now those larger servers are being replaced by the blades-based offerings I suppose hp just decided to widen the partitioning offering for them.
"....Prior to this, only IBM's DB2 V9.X and Oracle's 10g and 11g databases were certified for use with Serviceguard clustering...." That statement is a bit misleading. All Serviceguard is under the wrapper is a set of scripts that handle the calling of application executables and associated resources (storage volumes, IP addresses, etc) to start and stop them in the order required on the node of choice. Whilst hp added some extra support and scripts around certified applications, for years users have been able to make their own scripts for just about any hp-ux application to run inside a Serviceguard cluster, inlcuding databases like PostgreSQL.
Rather unlikely, Shirley, seeing as the Kharg computers are not going to be linked to the top secret networks of the Iranian teams likely to be working on the captured drone. No, this was more likely a luser fault, someone looked at little-girls-in-swimmingpools pr0n (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-17823927) on a laptop and then plugged that laptop into the Kharg network, or they used a USB memory stick on a laptop or PC that had been used for looking at little-girls-in-swimmingpools pr0n and then plugged it in at work. Seeing as the virus doesn't seem to have been targetted to do anything specific like Stuxnet, I'm guessing it's a random attack or from some Israeli "patriotic" hacker group.
So, now he's made his book sales, enjoyed his very extended fifteen minutes in the spotlight, and sauntered off into retirement, only now does he admit he was "alarmist". And the comeback for his exageration is zero. He doesn't have to return any of the money he made from his deliberately alarmist bunk, nor does he have to return any public money he received to fund his "research". Unfortunately, most of the AGW faithful out there will continue bleating his "teachings" regardless, never accepting that Lovelock took advantage of their stupidity to make a buck or two.
We have some old Texas RAM-SAN devices and we somethimes get marketting emails from their UK partners. One that came in last month makes almost as big an oranges-vs-apples comparison as the Oracle one, except they compare the June 2011 SPC-1 result for the RAM-SAN-630 with the Oracle ZFS 7420c device from November 2011 and claim it means the RAM-SAN gives "nine times the value":
"....our Ram-San 630 scored 400,503.26 IOPS at a cost of $1.05 per SPC-1 IOP! That's almost three times more performance than the Oracle system (137,066.20 IOPS) for almost a third of the price ($2.99 per SPC-1 IOP)!...."
Beware of vendor benchmarks and comparisons!
Because Oracle used 280 disks but only presented slightly over 36TB, which means they short-stroked the disks like crazy, whilst leaving the FAS running fatter and probably more expensive disks - 85.8TB exported off 288 disks, almost three times as much as the Oracle offering from almost the same number of disks. Nobody knows what other steps Oracle took to "optimise" the FAS result but I'm betting there were a few tweaks NetApp probably wouldn't advise. They also failed to include the clean-up costs when your ZFS device falls over.....
"Yes, but these "official" Linux only mainframes had much lower prices, just like these "official" Power-Linux boxes do."
Which is why I now feel extra sorry for IBM mainframe customers. Up until now, they were just being gouged to subsidise the the IBM Linux mainframes and the AIX servers, from now they're going to be severely rooked to pay for what is going to have to be massively subsidised Linux-Power servers. Why? Simples! Three examples why are the hp DL160 Gen8 (same number of cores, much more RAM, more disks, and all in 1U), the hp DL360p Gen8 (same number of cores, much, much more RAM, and waaay more disks, all still in 1U), and even the old hp DL385 G7 (2 x 12-cores, again oodles more RAM, more disks, all in 2U). And, IIRC, the Gen8 version fo the DL385 is going to have the 20-core Opterons this year. The DL160 starts at just $1769 list, before any discounts. IBM trying to put Power up against Linux on x64 is an instant fail. Hard luck, mainframers!
"....In which case the death penalty actually encourages murder rather than deter it..." You have failed to link cause and effect, simply pointed to two symptoms and assumed one caused the other. It could just be that the people in the state with the death sentence are more likely to murder for other reasons (they drink or do drugs more, or have people with more strongly conflicting views/beliefs in the same area, or have more deprived cities, etc, etc).
".....Most murders are crimes of passion and/or anger....." Most crimes of passion do not get death sentences. In fact, the majority or murder convictions do not lead to death or life sentences even when that option is available.
Either way, you are also ignoring that we are all emotional creatures but we control our emotions as part of being sociable creatures. We do so by balancing the desire to emote with the consequences. Most people will bite their tongue if insulted as they realise they cannot be sure the result of a confrontation will be good, others just fly off the handle at the merest slight. For an ordinary person to lose control and commit murder takes an exceptional emotional pressure and there are legal guidleines for establishing just what point a person's argument that they "lost control" is justified. Not every husband that catches their wife in bed with another man immediately loses control and beats her or the other guy to death, in fact it is quite rare given the number of affairs. If it was massively more common then it would probably be more of a deterrent to infidielity!
However, most violent incidents with real loss of control do not end in a fatality simply because unintentionally killing people is simply not that easy, just look at the number of muggings or Satruday night street fights compared to the number of deaths. It is when the violence is sustained, usually long after the point where the attacker could claim they were still inflamed, that fatal injuries usually occur. Or when a weapon is used, which leads to discussions of premeditation.
If you were to get in an argument with your alduterous wife, start fighting and land a punch that kills her, you might get away with it being classed as a loss of control leading to manslaughter or second degree murder. However, if you got into the argument, then went to get a carving knife from the kitchen for the fight and ended up killing her, that premeditation of getting the weapon would usually rule out genuine "loss of control".
Sentences have alwasy been meant as a punishment and a deterrent. And they are not imposed for just any crimes, even many murders do not get life sentences. They are supposed to be the ultimate punishment for exceptional crimes. Public executions back in the day were all about letting the public know that justice was being served and to deter them from acting illegally themselves. Now we have the media circus to do the publicity for us.
"......I for one would rather have people released from prison rehabilitated, rather than be released after harbouring a grudge against society for 25 years." Which is what parole is about - if you're judged to have "rehabilitated" you get out early. Even murderers can get out on parole. It is only if they are judged not rehabilitated or still a risk to the public that they are kept inside, therefore protecting the public. The latter not only prevents crime by the incarerated but deters other crims by letting them see they cannot just bank on getting out early. However, some people, like Moors Murderer Ian Brady, simply cannot ever be judged to not be a threat to the public, and so you have the choice of locking them up or executing them. In Ian Brady's case, I'd rather they'd hung him.
".....Option b achieves the same as a without killing the convict...." The reality is unles you die before the end of your term, i.e. your sentence is so great it exceeds your llifespan, most "lifers" do not die in prison and will be eventually released on parole. Here in the UK we are subject to Article 110 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which sets minimum (25 years) and maximum (35 years) terms for life sentences before a review which could lead to a parole or even a reduction in sentence (e.g., reduced from life to a fixed term of years). The state actually has to go to court after these periods to keep you locked up, as shown in the Myra Hindley case after her sentence was upped to life, and where the Home Secretary even considered charging Hindley with additonal crimes to keep her locked up (thankfully she died unexpectedly before her campaign for release could succeed). So, no, option b is not the same as option a, which guarantees the criminal will definately never enjoy freedom again.
"If its wrong to kill someone, then its wrong to kill someone." Yes, I can see that your mind is very numb. Please consider the following train of thought:
1. How about self-defence? If I'm going to kill one of your loved ones, and the only way to stop me is to kill me, would you get off your moral hobbyhorse and do it or let your loved one die (probably in great fear and pain) just to keep your moral cleanliness intact?
2. Is it easier morally if you can stay on your hobbyhorse and keep your hands clean by having someone else, a designated, trained and authorised person (such as a soldier or a cop), do the defensive act of killing for you, as long as you are 100% sure I'm a threat and they act within the law?
3. How about if you really want to ensure that nasty old me does not get even close to your loved one, because if you wait too late I may manage to kill that loved one anyway, would you be happy if the authorised defender killed me as soon as it was shown I had an intent to kill your loved one?
If you thought at point one that a killing in self-defence was not justified then I just pity your loved ones, they obvioulsy mean less to you than your ideals. If you agreed to point two then you're like most civilised people - agree that sometimes killing is justified, just don't want to do it yourself, hence why we have military forces. If you got down to the last part at least thinking "maybe", then you just came out in support of the death sentence.
"1. People who are convicted of crime are punished to deter them and others from further crime.
2. There still exists crime.
3. Ergo, punishment does not deter crime."
You cannot say how many more crimes there might have been if other criminals had not been deterred by seeing the sentence given to other criminals. Saying punishment has to be 100% effective in reducing crime is unrealistic.
".....raise your hand if the penalty being a decade in a Singapore prison rather than exectution...." The argument is not logical as we all make decisions on the basis of how good or bad the likely outcomes are going to be, and the relative chance of each outcome happening. If the punishment was twenty years you'd think that was worse than ten years because it is twice as many years of your life lost, so you might consider it more of a risk. An execution means you lose all the remaining years of your life, often far greater than twenty. Criminals often make poor decisions because they think more about the "good" outcomes of a criminal action than the "bad" ones. Not many crimes are committed with the criminal already decided he will go to prison but still going to do the crime, not unless they think the punishment is less than the benefits of dong the crime, and very few people would think death was a benefit unless they were suicidal already.
Where the death sentence fails to be a deterent is to those whose life is already so sh*t that they really couldn't care, which makes their likelyhood of behaving like model citizens unlikely anyway, or those that simply fail to see themselves getting caught. The latter would do the crime regardless of the likely punishment, but for every one of those "I'm-too-smart-for-the-cops" numpties that does get caught and executed, more and more potential crims will see the chances of them getting caught is actually higher than they might have thought. I'm betting you don't know much about Thai law, I certainly don't, but we have both heard about the harsh the harsh penatlies for drg-smugglers there, emphasising the actual deterent effect. Would the point have been raised if the Thai sentence was just ten years in prison? Unlikely.
"The absence of any compelling evidence of a deterent effect...." The ability to measure a negative is always going to be hard. No-one is likely to stand up and admit "Hey , I was thinking about killing so-and-so but changed my mind at the thought of being executed if caught"!
"......Not in a civilised society, anyway." Which gets to the crux of the problem - if we were truly all 100% civilised there wouldn't be any crime at all. Indeed, all we would need would be a set of behaviour rules taught to us as children, and our overwhelming desire to be good citizens would then preclude us from committing any crimes. But the reality is we are human and even "normal" people are driven by many emotions (let's not even get into discussing sociopaths and psychopaths), hence we have laws and associated punishments.
Laws and their associated punishments are actually aimed at 99+% of the population - those that can tell right from wrong. Of the remainder, some will be unable to make that judgement call either due to psychological issues or mental disability.
As human beings, we are designed to make judgement calls as part of everyday problem solving, just like every other animals. Cats may not conciously think about "can I make that jump from the tree to the roof" but they instinctively do so, judging the distance relative to their own jumping prowess. The cat may make the jump for fun or curiosity but is usually driven by a simpler emotion - wanting to hunt the birds on the roof, for example. For the cat, the desired result is caching the bird, with the undesired result being an injury due to a missed jump.
We do similar judgement calls daily just when crossing the road or driving a vehicle. We largely get those decisions right, as shown by the ability of even whitevan drivers to pass the driving test. We often get those decisions wrong, as shown by the large numbers of road accidents, either through not evaluating the parameters of the situation correctly or by not being realistic about our driving ability. We have road laws and training to help us make those decisions. In effect, we take that decision-making ability originally designed by Nature to help us survive in the wild, and apply it to the "civilised" issue of driving without killing ourselves or others. But we don't always follow the road laws, as evident in the number of people that speed without crashing, beacuse we also look at the situation and often decide (rightly or wrongly) that we can exceed the lawful speed and survive. It's all about weighing up the situation and looking at the resulting pros and cons - can I go faster than the speedlimit and get to where I'm going sooner (or just get the thrill of driving faster) without crashing?
So, to make us more likley to err on the side of the safer option of following the driving laws, we have punishments associaited with driving crimes. We don't have to know the exact details of each punishment to be deterred by them. I'm not a lawyer or judge, I can't tell you the fines you get for different speeding offences, just as I can't tell you the exact prison sentence you would get for a violent crime, but the thought of losing my licence makes me think twice about speeding. I'm sure you drive and don't speed continually for the same reason - not because you can't drive faster than the limit, and not because you may not want to do so, but because you weigh up the deicision and decide the pros (getting there faster or getting the thrill) often don't match the cons (death, serious injury, or losing your licence).
You can't measure how many times it has stopped me or yourself or any other driver speeding as it is a negative effect, so you cannot say exactly how effective a deternet it is, just as you have no way of even guessing how many potential murderers were deterred by the thought they might get the death penalty.
So then it comes down to a judgement call by that civilised society you mentioned - can we afford to keep the convicted killers locked up or could we spend the money on making the lives of other citizens better? What would be your decision if you had to chose between keeping a multiple-murderer locked up for the rest of his life, or spending that money on funding a project that would keep deprived kids out of streetgangs and possibly stop them entering a life of crime, which then frees up even more tax dollars for the "good" citizens' needs?
Most anti-execution arguments seem to be driven by the idea that it is "wrong" in a civilised society to kill people regardless, that we should just shoulder the cost of keeping killers locked up for life. This is amusing given that societies make decisons daily that condemn people to death due to cost. Don't believe me? OK, a simple example is driving - why do we let people drive themselves? We could cut the number of road deaths by insisting on automated vehicles which self-drive, also neatly reducing the need for expensive road law enforcement and safety services. The technology to do so is already available. We choose not to because we see automated cars as too costly to implement, either as an individual cost to the car owner or as a vote-loser for politicians. We choose to accept the chance of road deaths as we, the civilised society, have made the judgement call that it is "unlikely to happen to me" and therefore not worth the cost. We instead satisfy ourselves with driving laws and safer vehicles to reduce the likelyhood of a fatal accident, neatly ignoring that in civilised countries more people die every year in cars than do by murder.
Another more ironic case is hospital care. Due to the restraints of budgets and taxation, every year civilised societies forces doctors and administrators to make funding choices about treatments that literally mean some people get to live and others die. We accept that even though we don't like it, the truth is when we choose which politician to vote for, we citizens make the choice of how the money is spent. If we don't like the politician's choices then we may choose to vote them out. We don't often ask ourselves "Could I save another ten cancer patients' lives if I spent more on cancer treatment by not keeping one convicted murderer in prison for life?"
Just an opinion, of course.
"....The inflated prices on HDDs has been great for the HDD makers...." Not really. They will have set-price agreements to deliver against for the major vendors like hp, IBM, Dell, EMC. HDS, etc, etc. The ones making the money are the middlemen, who can take the disks and then flog them to the end users at a raised price.
No! No, no, no, NO! The political ramifications of sharing anything with the Fwench would be a disaster. Just look at the history of NATO - rest of Western Europe agree on the need for NATO, accept its standardisation program despite the impact on national programs, but the Fwench throw a tantrum and go their own way in 1966. They even insist on referring to NATO as OTAN (Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord) just because they have to have everything their way. The Fwench would be a nightmare to work with, they would insist everything had to be Fwench or written in Fwench or designed by a team with Fwench lead (i.e., Fwench). Just look at their awful history of co-operation in European military projects to see their determination to destroy projects if they can't force their view on everyone else.
I can just imagine the problems if something like Falklands 2 or Gulf War 3 happened and we had to go ask the Fwench if we could take the carrier our for a bit of action. You might as well just give the carrier to any potential enemy.
And then you have the unbearable Fwench insistance on bragging that would follow any independent British action. I'm not kidding, if we had a shared carrier and took it out for Falklands 2 the Fwench would soon be claiming any victory was solely due to them. Think I'm kidding? Fwench historians like to claim it was actually the Fwench "defence" in 1940 that won the Battle of Britain! Anyone contemplating sharing anything military with the Fwench should remember the quotes following the Fwench surrender in 1940:
King George VI: "Personally I feel happier now we have no Allies to be polite to and pamper."
Air Chief Marshal Dowding, architect of the RAF victory in the BoB: "I went down on my knees and thanked God."
"....Tornado - decent ground attack, especially low level. Absolutely awful fighter...." The ADV variant was designed as a long-range interceptor, not a pure dogfighter. In apprasing the F/A-18, the RAF confirmed it did not meet their equirements met by the ADV. However, the Tornado F3 also had quite good combat capability through excellent speed, especially at low level (faster than the F-15, F-16 and F/A-18), combat persistance (lots of missiles - more than the F/A-18 or F-16, both BVR and SRAAM, and a gun), and reasonable electronics. Of all the US jets of its day, only the much pricier F-14 came even close to meeting the RAF requirement met by the Torando ADV.
"....SEPECAT Jaguar - decent small ground attack...." Actually, at the design stage the Fwench wanted to make it smaller and less capable to prevent it stealling sales from the Mirage, but the Brits perservered in making it larger and more powerful. The result was the Jaguar actually beat the Mirage III/5 in fighter competitions such as that in Oman, and the Viggen and Mirage F1 in the case of India. Whilst the RAF versions were always ground-attack only, the developed versions, as used by India, are very capable multi-role fighters, being tasked with anti-shipping strike and deep-penetration interdiction. Indeed, despite having Mirage 2000s and various Russian alternatives, the Indians are currently extending the lifetime of their Jags with engine and avioincs updates.
"....BAe Hawk - great trainer. Did move it into reasonable ground attack for small/poor nations..." The Hawk 200 series offers developed F-16 avionics and multi-mode radar (and therefore BVR missile capability) in a supersonic platform. Personally, I'd rather see the RAF buy a mix of Hawk 200s and Typhoons than F-35s, it would seem to be a lot cheaper option and just as suited to UN "peacekeeping" actions.
"....Lightning - you have to be joking..." Oh dear, the limits of your knowledge are showing again. ".....a good fighter let done by dodgy missiles...." The Red Top had all-aspect engagement capabilities against supersonic targets years before the Sidewinder, a superior performance, and a larger warhead. A SARH version ("Blue Dolphin") was proposed and would have been a match for the American Sparrow, but the Sparrow was already working with the Phantom. So the Brits just made a better Sparrow called Skyflash for the Tornado. "....It could carry next to nothing..." The Saudi F53 version could carry up to 6000Lb of ordinance, including 1000Lb bombs and rocket pods, which is a long way from nothing, and more than the F-15Cs that replaced it in the Saudi service (they were fighters only, the Saudis didn't get bombs on their F-15s until they bought F-15S models in the late 90s). When the RSAF got Tornados they set themselves a target of being able to match the F53 in ground attack exercises as their acceptance criteria, such was the popularity of the Lightning amongst Saudi pilots.
"....Typhoon - good fighter. Ground attack....lets wait and see..." Why? Job already done in Libya, in a combat environment. Don't tell me, you now want to move the goalposts and insist it has to see X number of wars before you concede you're wrong.
".....In all these, you can say it has the capability, but making it practical and usable is a whole different kettle of fish....." Well, the Tornado is proven in combat, and so now is the Typhoon. Case closed.
"....Low level attack is pretty much a relic in most wars these days...." Yes, tell that to the Israelis. Indeed, the Yanks have been pushing that bilge since before the Vietnam war, where Aussie Canberra B2s managed to operate just fine in low-level bombing (using visual sights!) in an environment where Phantoms, Thunderchiefs and Skyhawks were being shot down by AAA whilst employing computerised dive-bombing tactics. The drive to laser-designated bombs was a result of the losses by the Yanks in their use of dive-bombing.
"....Using a F-16 for strafing is an example of gross stupidity...." Strafing is a common part of ground-attack, still taught to RAF pilots and used in action (Falklands, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan). The F-16C/D is supposedly a fighter-bomber and ground-attack aircraft, the only problem being it suffers from serious sink when pulling out of attack dives, which is what led to the loss of the F-16 in question.
"......The Sea Vixen v Harrier comparison is a little dubious as the Sea Vixen is from a decade earlier....." Not really. The Sea Vixen was operating on the larger carriers, not the little "through-deck cruisers" the Sea Harriers operated from, making the Sea Harrier record all the more remarkable. You're also forgetting that the USN operates much larger carriers than even the ones the Sea Vixens were operating from, and hence the navalised F-35s are designed for those larger carriers, not the smaller QE class ones the RN will get. The Harrier pilots I've spoken to have said they see vertical landing as better because "you stop, then you land, whereas with a normal carrier jet you land and hope you stop!" That hasn't changed from the days the Sea Vixens were operating. If you like, we can compare the number of RN Sea Harier
landing/takeoff accidents (zero) with more recent USN F-14s activity (two lost in 2002 alone).
"....but you have to compare the performance differential when up there as well...." OK, lets compare. The VTOL RN Sea Harriers managed a score of 22-0 against the Argentinians, including much faster and supposedly superior Mirage IIIs with BVR capability. The F/A-18 only managed 2-0 against inferior Iraqi MiG-21s in air comabts in Iraq in 1991. BAe has the clear winner there! And in NATO exercises the ordinary Harrier GR1/3s completely trounced the Phantom, so guess again. Don't forget, our over-cautious politicians often insist on RoE which include visual identification (one reason the Tornado ADV had a long-range TV camera which the Phantom did not), meaning the Phantom loses any BVR advantages even if the Harrier wasn't carrying AMRRAMs (which the Sea Harrier FA2 could). Indeed, when the Marines got the original AV-8A they trained against Phantoms and found the Harrier won most engagements. You're not really helping yourself here.
".....What happens if your HANA server blows a gasket...." HANA is designed to be clustered, in fact there's even an IBM clustered solution for it (http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/solutions/sap/hana/index.html).
Can we have some new IBM trolls, please, the current crop are severely sub-standard? Where's Jesper gone?
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