* Posts by Steve Knox

1972 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2011

RIP HPE's The Machine product, 2014-2016: We hardly knew ye

Steve Knox

Re: Welcome to 'The Machine'

Come in, HP, boy, have a cigar...

SQL Server on Linux: Runs well in spite of internal quirks. Why?

Steve Knox

Re: Interesting

This is a cut down SQL Server version for development environments and limited use cases.

No, it's not. This is full Enterprise SQL Server. At SQL Pass, they were even showcasing Availability Groups and clustering (using a Linux clustering engine), and talking about their work on Full-Text Search. The only reason these and other features aren't yet available in the preview is that they haven't gotten the SQLPAL and SQLOS layers for them stable enough to showcase.

This is Microsoft's Data Group recognizing 3 things:

1. A lot of Oracle runs on Linux and if they want to cut into that market further, they need to support the OS their potential customers are used to.

2. A lot of development is moving towards containers, so they need a database engine which works well with those containers, including Linux ones.

3. Only about half of developers develop on Windows; the other half are split between MacOS and Linux. If they want those developers writing for SQL Server, they need to make it accessible to them.

CompSci Prof raises ballot hacking fears over strange pro-Trump voting patterns

Steve Knox
Boffin

And its amaaaaaazing that every single piece of video I have seen about wonky machines were a vor Trump being recorded as a vote the Hildebeastand machines were started up with votes already recorded for the Dems.

No, it's not amazing. You're selecting evidence which matches your preconceived notions. That's human nature, and the nature of the internet actually enforces that behavior.

Steve Knox

Re: Vote Fraud? Are you CRAAAZY?

"Some academic" who just happens to be a Democrat.

Do you have a source for that? None of the articles I've seen on this identify Halderman's political affiliation.

Re-read the article, particularly where it says:

"I believe the most likely explanation is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was hacked. But I don’t believe that either one of these seemingly unlikely explanations is overwhelmingly more likely than the other," Halderman writes.

In short, this isn't a partisan academic claiming that vote fraud happened, or that it's even likely. He's simply saying it's one possible explanation for the swing in those close states -- and if it happened anywhere, those states would be the places to look for it.

The rest is just El Reg being true to form, and oversensationalizing a story with little sensation in it.

Microsoft ❤️ Linux? Microsoft ❤️ running its Windows' SQL Server software on Linux

Steve Knox

Re: Target audience?

A lot of Oracle runs on Linux.

Microsoft has an application to convert an Oracle database to a SQL Server database.

They don't have an application to convert a Linux admin to a Windows admin.

Former Autonomy CFO indicted in USA for misleading investors

Steve Knox
Trollface

Extradition Won't Happen

It'll take more than two months. With a Name Like Hussain, there's no way our President after that will let him into this country.

Zuckerberg says just one per cent of news on Facebook is fake

Steve Knox
Trollface

Re: This is hilarious...

That's because people are generally upset by things that aren't true.

Steve Knox

Can't Be Zuckerberg Saying This.

He's dead -- Facebook told me so.

Panicked WH Smith kills website to stop sales of how-to terrorism manuals

Steve Knox
Thumb Up

Re: Well, this is silly..

Nice one. Of course, El Reg would never actually ████████████████ your post like that...

Retiring IETF veteran warns: Stop adding so many damn protocols

Steve Knox

Yeah but no but yeah but

Ok, I agree with him in principle, but this:

"You can take an Internet Protocol (IP) packet and encapsulate it in an IP header. There are four options just for that: IPv4 in IPv4, IPv4 in IPv6, IPv6 in IPv4, and IPv6 in IPv6. Given all those options, it's hard to get one of them implemented and deployed everywhere."

is wrong on several counts.

First off, IPv4 and IPv6 are not different standards; they are different versions (editions if you will) of the IP standard.

Second, these four options are just the Cartesian product of the two versions. Want to make any list exponentially larger? Throw in a Cartesian product.

Third, each of these four options have clear uses, as defined by the capabilities of the host network and the desired capabilities of the virtual network.

There are a lot of unnecessary duplicate or overlapping standards out there. But the options for encapsulation of IP traffic over different versions of the standard don't deserve to be lumped in with them.

Google makes it to third base with Home digital assistant

Steve Knox
Megaphone

Re: Music?

How bad is your music if it sounds good on a pint-sized monaural coaxial speaker?

How bad is your music if it requires a large complex multichannel sound system in order to sound good?

Good music sounds good on all but the very shittiest of sound systems. Yes, it can sound better on better systems But only truly horrible music requires anything more than an OK speaker.

Great music can even sound good on one of these:

Steve Knox
Thumb Up

Re: Same wake word for all devices, really?

Prikazyvat Kendy.

Recognized but couldn't place it*. Had to resort to searching. First result started with the following excerpt:

"The crew were not supposed to be aware that the ship's computer and its recorded personality could eavesdrop on them."

Your comment was result #4.

Have you been manipulating Google search results again?

* ( to be fair, I haven't read The Integral Trees in over 20 years...)

Steve Knox

Re: These devices are game changers

Make no mistake - these things are the PC / phone / tablet replacement for the non-geek person.

That's what they said about the Mac -- then the PDA -- then the netbook -- then the smartphone -- then the tablet.

The truth is that people are much more complex than "geek" and "non-geek". This is why all of these devices (yes, even the humble PDA) still exist and are still in use.

In fact any time you find yourself thinking of people in two categories, just fuck right off.

Look out, SpaceX et al – China's Long March-5 rocket blasts off

Steve Knox

Re: Ambitious China is Ambitious!

...but there (are) bound to be a few failures glorious fully intentional tests of emergency response procedures.

FTFY.

Computer forensics defuses FBI's Clinton email 'bombshell'

Steve Knox

Re: It's Time To Fire FBI Director Comey

@Big John,

Are you complaining about the imagined violence or the lack of real violence?

PS This is not limited to progressives. Even conservative candidates are indulging in this. If you think DerekCurrie has a mental disorder, you must believe Trump is batshit insane, given the frequency with which he expresses the desire for violence against Hillary, other women, men, etc. ad nauseam.

Steve Knox

Re: Governmental emails had already been provided

"3) How are the accusations against Bill Clinton around sexual misbhaviour relevant to email retention?"

it's the COVERUP part that's important. Mrs. Clinton has a history of coverups. It seems to extend throughout her entire career.

Oh, of course. If there's not enough evidence, there must be a cover-up (that's how you write it, by the way.) It can't be that the evidence simply doesn't exist because your batshit insane conspiracy theory isn't true...

"4) You should really provide a link to this supposed 'lost evidence' "

http://www.hannity.com...

Really? You link to Sean Hannity's website as your source for truth? I rest my case.

Build your Type 26 warships next year? Sure, MoD – now, about that contract...

Steve Knox

All You Need To Know About The Type 31

's 5 better than the Type 26, innit?

Google drops a zero-day on Microsoft: Web giant goes public with bug exploited by hackers

Steve Knox

Re: No Angels Here

Apple software has no bugs; you must be using it wrong.

And so we enter day seven of King's College London major IT outage

Steve Knox

"What is the point of putting your stuff on VMs and then running them from one bunch of hardware? "

Not having to buy many bunches of hardware, each specced out to peak usage and hence idle 99% of the time.

You are absolutely correct that virtualization allows for the recovery options you mentioned.

However, you completely ignore the fact that virtualization was originally and still is most often sold not as a recovery solution but as a cost-cutting solution.

For public entities required to jump through hoops for every penny spent, and then still criticized by moronic taxpayers for any expense with more than three digits to the left of the decimal, no matter how well-spent,the natural tendency is to cut costs rather than to optimize. The net result is what you see here.

Ecuador admits it cut Assange's internet to stop WikiLeaks' US election 'interference'

Steve Knox
Facepalm

Really?

"...with potential extradition to America..."

You're pandering to that tired old line? Is El Reg that desperate for readers?

SHA3-256 is quantum-proof, should last billions of years

Steve Knox

Re: Hash functions

This doesn't solve hash collisions. You can't solve hash collisions.

No matter how you do it, mapping data of size > n into a space = n creates collisions.

This paper just illustrates that quantum computing doesn't completely obsolete current hash functions.

Google DeepMind 'learns' the London Underground map to find best route

Steve Knox

Wrong line of thought

This is all reasonably interesting, but indicates just how far down the wrong road they're going.

True AI isn't about giving the right answers, but about being able to ask the right questions.

Let me know when they get that far.

IBM Watson Xprize is a chance to make AI more open, says prize team

Steve Knox
Happy

Also: English, Asian, African ? :) One of these things is not like the other two.

Ah, good catch. Should be " Anglish, Asian, African ".

AT&T pilots dedicated IoT mobile network

Steve Knox

If your IoT things...

are using > 1GB per month, you have far too many IoT things and they are far too inefficient.

Windows updates? Just trust us, says Microsoft executive

Steve Knox

Wait...

"Now I have got my cloud services outside of the perimeter and that network-based perimeter is no longer effective,"

So a Microsoftie is admitting that putting your stuff in the cloud is bad for security?

Ex-army sergeant pleads guilty to using private browsing mode

Steve Knox
Holmes

Re: Since when has it been illegal to use private browsing in the UK?

It is illegal for this one individual due to an order from a previous court martial for making an indecent photograph of a child.

This is from paragraphs 3 and 4 of the article. How much of it did you even read?

Internet handover is go-go-go! ICANN to take IANA from US govt

Steve Knox

Take your pills, dear.

One-way Martian ticket: Pick passengers for Musk's first Mars pioneer squad

Steve Knox

Re: Brexitters

Shut it, expert.

That's the most concise summary of the Brexitter/Trumper mentality I've seen so far!

Elon Musk: I'm gonna turn Mars into a $10bn death-dealing interplanetary gas station

Steve Knox
Boffin

Re: Heart of Gold...

As long as it's a finite improbability, and he's got the kettle on...

Oh, and:

I'm all for massive ambitions, and this programme will generate technological and possibly scientific progress, but sending people to die on this ocean voyage will be a huge turn-off for the general population, even if the pioneers are well-informed volunteers.

Hapless VESK hit by second major two-day outage

Steve Knox
Facepalm

'A failed hard disk in its Storage Access Network caused a “panic event” '

A failed hard disk? as in ONE?

Video service Binge On 'broke the internet' but 99pc of users love it

Steve Knox
Boffin

Re: Yeah, brilliant!!

If you're using a sub 10" screen to watch video... then it really doesn't matter one iota if it's served up in 480p or 1920p, because the human eyes ability to accurately distinguish between the two is severely diminished at that scale.

What matters more is the DPI than the screen res.

Neither of those two statements is true.

To take the second one first, what matters is DPA (dots per arcsecond [of vision]). That changes with the distance of the screen from the eye. This is why "jumbotron" type screens at sporting arenas and advertising venues can use individual light bulbs (as low as 0.5 DPI depending on the specific type of bulb) and still create high resolution images -- the screens are far enough away that each light bulb occupies ~50-100as of vision.

Now to the first: my 5" phone, when held about 1-1.5 feet from my eyes, occupies about the same space as my 50" televison across the room (and about 1/2 the width/height of my laptop screen 2.5 -3 feet away.) I can clearly make out the pixels on any of those screens at a 480p resolution at those distances. I can even make out the pixels at 720p. At 1080p, the pixels are hard to see, though still visible on my laptop (the largest in terms of arcseconds at the distance I keep it.)

British unis mull offshore EU campuses in post-Brexit vote panic

Steve Knox
Trollface

How much more of this...

Until some enterprising MP comes up with a Bre-entry* strategy?

* Copyright, trademark, etc.

Do AI chat bots need a personality bypass – or will we only trust gabber 'droids with character?

Steve Knox

But is the technology getting ahead of what users actually want?

Not at all.

The technology is actually falling further and further behind what users actually want.

What users actually want is someone to help them.

Unfortunately that costs money, and that's not what shareholders and CEOs want.

TV industry gets its own 'dieselgate' over 'leccy consumption tests

Steve Knox
Paris Hilton

NRDC:"We found these specific issues with specific televisions."

CTA: "Stop fighting a war or television with your lies!"

One of these two is a constructive statement.

ICANN latest: Will the internet be owned by Ted Cruz or Vladimir Putin in October?

Steve Knox

Re: Just a "clerical function"

The USG is hardly perfect, but it can usually be relied upon to do bugger all when bugger all is exactly what is required.

It's the "usually" part of that which scares me. "Usually" by definition includes "sometimes not." The current volume (and volume) of technologically illiterate, theocratically tyrannical, and scientifically ignorant politicians in the US is high enough that I don't feel comfortable leaving this in the hands of my government.

Steve Knox

Just a "clerical function"

As I've expressed before, clerical functions are some of the most thankless chores to have.

I think you'll find it hasn't been handed to some other body because nobody else wants it.

Nvidia: Eight bits ought to be enough for anybody ... doing AI

Steve Knox
Big Brother

Re: 8 bit sound

But would you want your AI to sound like that?

ANOTHER VISITOR

STAY A WHILE.

STAY...

FOREVER!!!

It actually will be Obama who decides whether to end US government oversight of the internet

Steve Knox
Pint

Re: I'm with the dickheads on this one.

You can both rest relatively easily -- Ted Cruz isn't actually on any side; he simply picks the position whereby he can most inflate his own ego.

Florida Man's prized jeep cremated by exploding Samsung Galaxy Note 7

Steve Knox

Re: Puzzled

I mean, really: if smartphone batteries contained that much energy, you wouldn't have to recharge your smartphone so often.

If you were aware of all of the things your smartphone did, you'd be amazed that the batteries contain so little energy.

Wait, wait – I got it this time, says FCC as it swings again at rip-off US TV cable boxes

Steve Knox

True

Cable companies warned that the plan would allow third parties to introduce their own advertisements and could cause the leak of consumer data.

They know it's true because that's how they make money.

Hypervisor security ero-Xen: How guest VMs can hijack host servers

Steve Knox
Pint

Ah the joys of segmented memory

This one's for all you out there who actually remember what CS:IP stands for.

Sex is bad for older men, and even worse when it's good

Steve Knox

Re: I think, on balance,

Perhaps this stress and slight wording change will make it clear:

The study found that older men who had sex once a week or more were “much more likely to experience cardiovascular events after five years than men who were sexually inactive.”

Sophos Windows users face black screens after false positive snafu

Steve Knox
Holmes

winlogon.exe is presumably signed by Microsoft so why exactly doesn't AV software respect this ?

Might have something to do with the fact that signing keys have been stolen in the past. Might have something to do with the fact that signing keys don't even have to be stolen to infect signed files:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/08/stealthy_malware_infects_digitallysigned_files_without_altering_hashes/

Basic defense-in-depth principles require that the design of each layer must assume that the other layers may have been compromised.

Google scraps its Project Ara modular smartphone wheeze

Steve Knox
Paris Hilton

Re: Really?

No MicroSD?

No SIM module?

It's OK to fine someone for repeating a historical fact, says Russian Supreme Court

Steve Knox

"He who controls the spice, controls the universe"

-- Paul Muad'dib

When Irish eyes are filing: Ireland to appeal Europe's $15bn Apple tax claw-back

Steve Knox

Re: What if taxation is inherently unjust?

Cart before the horse.

The vast majority of tax is not investment in government for future benefit. Most of it is payment for benefits already received from government. Your taxes pay for your education already received, the roads you travel which are already built, the infrastructure you depend on every day.

USBee stings air-gapped PCs: Wirelessly leak secrets with a file write

Steve Knox
Paris Hilton

Air-gapped...

and USB-enabled?

Someone doesn't know how to security.

Our pacemakers are totally secure, says short-sold St Jude

Steve Knox

Re: That's not Capitalism.

That's crime.

Presumes a significant difference.

More gums than Jaws: Greenland super-sharks live past 400 years old

Steve Knox

Re: Typical specimen is older than America

In a more serious note, I don't think that calling USA's citizens "Americans " is correct or admissible, even if mostly everybody does it.

Well, technically, calling US citizens "Americans" is as correct as calling squares "rectangles" (i.e, the first is a specific subset of the second.)

However, using "Americans" to refer ONLY to US citizens is, yes, extremely stupid.

Render crashing PCs back to their component silicon: They deserve it

Steve Knox

Re: Dune

But if you don't read some of the sequels, you won't get the B-52s reference...