Posts by Voland's right hand

I/O holds up the traffic in virtual systems

Vmware, Xen (and the article author) are all missing the point

We have now reached the point where it is necessary to provide proper networking features at the v-Net layer including merging correctly n x XG interfaces into m x virtual interfaces with trunking and other network protoocols working as needed on top of this.

Similarly we have reached the point where it is necessary to have the more advanced OS features like QoS, policing, reservations, etc all working too.

Neither of these are on the v-world horizon. In fact if you look at where they are going it is the completely opposite direction - transparent dumb VLAN passing to VMs using PCI virtualisation and killing all OS advanced networking features to achieve the required performance.

That already flattens out the network prior to any accel (as observed in the article). It cannot be the way forward. It is the way backward.

Apple outs iPhone micro USB adaptor

That and remote control too

It is a relic of bygone age with a lot of analogue connections including analogue remote lines. Makes integrating it to a car stereo, etc a breeze.

Premier League loses footie decoder case

Single market does not apply to excise liable goods

Single market only applies to goods which are normally liable to VAT only and do not have per-country specific taxation.

Excise goods which include all tobacco, wine or even cars for that matter are not subject to single market regulations.

The only reason you have been allowed to import "personal allowance" when traveling is that the EU governments have surrendered on the subject of enforcing that for small personal purchases.

Innovatio targets Wi-Fi users with patent suits

Do not think so

If I build something patented and use it myself I am still infringing on it despite it being personal use.

Example - I get the patents for a Dyson cleaner off freepatents.org and build one myself following the descriptions (rather difficult feat as they are deliberately vague) will put me on the wrong side of the law.

The only case where courts do not go after you is when you have bought something in good faith and the person who built it infringed and even that is being diluted nowdays.

Check your machines for malware, Linux developers told

We have been here before. People just forgot.

First of all, there ain't such thing as a secure OS.

Second, in the days before the authors of Back Orifice showed that a windows rootkit is possible Linux was the primary target. I used to run a mid-size academic network in the mid-90es and there was a point where the average time before we got hit by a _NEW_ rootkit variety was down to 48 hours. Sendmail compromises, compromises in basic daemons like ntalk, compromises in bind, etc - you name it. I lost 7 kg spending sleepless nights in front of the keyboard with tcpdump chasing k1dd10tz (it was in the days before snort), rewriting code and patching systems like mad.

The first automated exploit framework observed in the wild was targeting linux too (I had to deal with the fallout from that one too in my day job).

These petered out towards 1998-2000 and dropped to nearly nothing after all major distributions picked up key components out of OpenBSD.

All of this happened versus the backdrop of the rising wave of Windows rootkits so people simply forgot where we started. It however never went away. It was there, it is there.

'iPhone 4 to be free' when new iPhones ship

It depends how they got the stock

There is more than one way to get stock in the business world. Buying it "cash and carry" and reselling it is actually not that common.

Quite often you do not pay for stock. Quite often (especially in high tech goods) you do not own the stock you are selling. It is still owned by the manufacturer and the manufacturer determines the sales price so all you get is a commission.

So is it sold at 300 or at 30 is bugger all difference provided that your commission does not change.

Ellison brandishes 'speed of thought' Exalytics appliance

More toys for the "analyze your way to growth"

http://blogs.hbr.org/martin/2011/09/you-cant-analyze-your-way-to-g.html

We have long extracted all possible advantages from doing BI and have hit diminishing returns. So the money wasted on this appliance is better used on the salary of someone capable to produce a new and innovative product. Yeah, I know, heretical thought, paying smelly designers and engineers without an MBA. Like that is going to happen.

Samsung offers Apple TOP-SECRET peace deal in Australia

It is not about theft

It is about lunacy

The entire IT industry is a bunch of lunatic hippies which deliberately hides its head in the sand and ignores IPR law and then cries foul.

There is an essential part of product development in _ALL_ other industries - it is called FOA - Freedom to Operate Analysis. When you have an idea for a new product you sit down with your IPR person and do an analysis of the possible traps and pitfalls. If you are likely to walk into a minefield you work around them _IN_ _ADVANCE_. A startup business plan without of FOA will never get any money in all other industries.

The law is an arse, but its the law. It may be better to change it, but as long as it is as is we have to live by it and in the current law landscape that means doing FOA. Now tell me which IT company does it? In my 20 years in the field I have yet to see one.

iPhone 5 to support 21Mb/s HSPA+ not LTE

LTE handset is pointless for Apple for other reasons

LTE == IMS. You cannot do voice without it as VOLGA is now effectively dead.

IMS == in-application per-session operator driven charging model.

Apple has succeeded in wrestling away financial control from operators. It now owns the charging model and it is per-app and not per session and the operator sees nothing of that (and nothing of the cash changing hands).

Why on earth do you expect it to surrender it voluntarily? They do not strike me as stupid.

It will stick with HSPA++++ for as long as it can and even longer because this is what matches its financial strategy. I really do not see it doing LTE any time soon. Even if it does it, that will be for data only and it will be with 3G as well so it can have legacy circuit switched voice and avoid doing an IMS stack (3G has better voice channel efficiency than GSM for most use cases).

Amazon's Silk looks creepily Phorm-ulaic

You underestimate the power of Bayes

Trust me, you seriously underestimate how much a well written set of Bayes stats can get out of seemingly random information.

Murdoch organ intrudes into readers' private places

What "identifiable" information?

They do not have "identifiable information". They actually have your _IDENTITY_ as it is behind a paywall so they have collected your name, credit card and billing address in the process of you getting to it. In fact they even had the authority to do a credit check on you and collect that data too.

That is slightly different from scraping some "identifiable" information from bits and bobs.

Firefox devs mull dumping Java to stop BEAST attacks

A lot of banks which use "virtual keyboard" to try to fool keyloggers rely on Java to do so.

Elon Musk's SpaceX to build 'Grasshopper' hover-rocket

Parachutes were successfully tested

Parachutes were successfully tested either on a Proton or Soyuz-Fregat. I cannot remember off the top of my head which one it was around 10 years ago. The analysis of the first stage returned to earth this way however showed that there is little benefit in reusing it.

You have to design something to be reused which in turn puts extra weight and extra cost on the first stage. So it is not just fuel which is the problem here. Overall, at the current level of technology we are still most likely in the "diminishing returns" part of the curve in any such design.

Power cut knocks Miliband off-air mid-speech

So are you saying he will win the next election?

Charisma of a cat? That is a sure win.

Worst case scenario we can feed him some catnip.

Red Hat engineer renews attack on Windows 8-certified secure boot

... and I've seen it before .. and I'll see it again

The word is about, there's something evolving,

whatever may come, the world keeps revolving

They say the next big thing is here,

that the revolution's near,

but to me it seems quite clear

that it's all just a little bit of history repeating

Propellerheads / Miss Shirley Bassey - History Repeating,

Facebook: 'We don't track logged-out users'

Even if they did not they can develop it

Well, even if they did not have that interest what is exactly is there to prevent them from developing it?

They can also track a number of other interesting things regarding the overall state of play on the Internet like for example round trip time, jitter and packet loss to 90% of it. That in itself costs a lot of money (and doubly so if you for example offer media)...

Byte-dock MacBook Pro port replicator

Close but no cigar

That will not appeal to Apple usual audience. While functional it does not match the overall design of a Powerbook.

Ancient auto: still running, up for sale

Well...

It was a prototype allright. De Dion went on to build steam trucks and steam buses.

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

By the way, it was taxation which killed it, not technical superiority of the Allmighty Petrol. Less than a hundred miles on a tank of water? So what, it is not like you cannot fill it nearly everywhere. It was still going faster, carrying bigger loads and cost less to run than the average petrol lorry all the way up to WW2.

Google Wallet and PayPal in electro-purse war

No, purses at down

Purses at down I guess and these are some very heavy purses so we may as well stay out of the way until they are done with it :)

Apple sued for iPhone, iPad chip 'patent rip-off'

Re: Monkeys

Quoting from "Madagascar": If you have any poo, fling it now.

Yes they did, but in another way

Via nowdays is the biggest 2nd tier Android SOC manufacturer through their Wonder Media ARM SOC series. If you have a cheap noname droid device 99% that it is Via based.

They also have LOTs of processor IPR. It is cross-licensed between them Intel and AMD from the days when Via was still doing chipsets. It is not licensed to other ARM players. This will be interesting to watch. Popcorn please...

How the Yahoo! homepage predicts your clicks

Give it a second thought would ya

First of all, these are the kind of stories that provide click-through rate on Joe Average cittizen.

Second, quite clearly you are classed in that bucket. Either the system does not have enough information on you, or it the information it has collected shows that you are likely to click-through on Metro material. Recognise yourself? : http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/guardian-readers-finally-get-excuse-to-buy-a-tabloid-201107114058/

In any case, it further confirms that you make money buy showing the news "we would like to see" instead of showing the news.

Neil Armstrong: US space program 'embarrassing'

I beg to differ

The demise of NASA started long before the current government. In fact Dubia did much more towards its destruction than the current goons.

So blaming it all on Obama is a bit disingenuous. He has done his fair share, but he stepped on the shoulders of 'giants'".

MS denies secure boot will exclude Linux

Be careful for what you wish

If you can easily upload your own keys so can any exploit code.

Want to find yourself in the interesting situation where you are not allowed to run a "clean" non-troianed OS?

Dunno, we will have to go down that route sooner or later and it is a lose/lose in any case where you do not have a "personal" certificate which signifies your ownership of things solid or digital and it is your unalienable right to upload a cert signed by this "ownership" cert into anything you own.

How - that is for standardmongers to figure out.

On the negative side - bye-bye anonymity, it was nice knowing you. On the positive side, anyone trying to define what is essentially a monopoly license can be told to f*** off on two counts:

1. You have the right to upload

2. He has _NO_ technical reason whatsoever to deny this because he can now identify you and your equipment for purposes of commerce.

Every time I think of it, nothing short of this will stop attempts by people like MSFT, Sony and the like to push this through the backdoor. Let's face it - we are going into the direction which Neil Gibbson (Neuromancer) and Peter F. Hamilton (Commonwealth) have foreseen. We might as well bite the bullet and lead there as free people instead of being lead on a slaver's chain.

Lancs shale to yield '15 years' of gas for UK

The political establishment will kill it

There was a word in their press release which has signed their death warrant.

They will create a few jobs and all of the qualified middle class engineering jobs with an average salary of 50K. That has signed their death warrant.

Neither the band in charge, nor the band in opposition want any middle class.

1. Middle class is bad for the economy. Instead of impulsive spending and filling the govt VAT coffers it saves, thinks before it buys and is overall a pain in the arse. So while it may be paying a higher tax rate it will contribute way less to "key parameters" then distributing the same amount of money to a large group of what once upon a time used to be called lumpen-proletariat. Just ask any "think tankist" - they all hate the middle class as it spoils their numbers. So bad for the band in blue.

2. Middle class and the band in red - no comment needed.

So the merits of the scheme are utterly irrelevant here. It will be the socioeconomic effect of the scheme which will decide its faith and that at this point is guaranteed an empathic thumbs-down from 2/3rds of the political establishment.

Mars trips could blind astronauts

Spin That Wheel

If we can build that multinational modular hodge-podge up there, we should also be in a position to build a proper space station and/or spaceship which has a spinning habitable section.

In fact, in the case of the spaceship you might as well spin the whole thing. It is not like it will need docking/undocking operations before the end of the flight. Even if it does, spinning up something along its axis to sync to another spinning object is not a particularly difficult engineering problem.

Even that may not be necessary. You can have the docking apparatus be able to separate from the main ship body via one more dock/airlock to the spinning section. You undock at that junction to accept an incoming ship, slow down the docking bay relative to the main body, stop, dock to the incoming ship, spin up together with the docked ship (shifting some ballast to stabilize as needed - just put fuel and water reserves there), equalize rotation and dock back.

That solution was envisioned as early as Von Brown and Tciolkovski. Is it me being thick and having too much coffee in my blood system. Or am I missing something?

Schmidt ducks antitrust questions lobbed from Congress

In any case, as far as this one is concerned I am with Google

This is just a repeat of the price comparison search complaint.

As a consumer I am greatful that Google cleaned up its search results. Prior to the "price comparison site eviction" up to the first 3 pages in search on anything product related were price comparison sites. It was a thriving industry allright ( they were dishing out salaries on par with the financial sector circa 2006). It was however a thriving industry of parasites which added little or no consumer value.

FFS if I want price comparison I would ask for price comparison. If I am searching on Google I am more likely interested with what the thing does, what people think about it, what faults it may have and so on.

In any case, he is actually right - Google is not seeking to maximise profit across all of its enterprises. A large number of projects and enterprises run by Google are "scorched earth" which protects search results and adwords. As far as that one is concerned Google is also not seeking to maximise its profit because it will be in the dock 15 minutes later as it has a near monopoly on that one.

Nissan Micra DIG-S

You do not need a Renault for that

Quote: "So you want your new car to be in the local dealership more often than it's in your posession ?"

For that you need a diesel Honda, not a Renault.

57 days in less than 2 years before I got rid of it... Leaks from all holes on one side of the engine, duff alternator, charging faults, exhaust fumes going into the cockpit - you name it.

On top of that, because "Honda is reliable", when you ask for a courtesy car you get a " you do not deserve one" answer.

You most likely had the 1.3 or 1.4 version

You probably had the 1.3 or even 1.4 version, not the 1.0 16v sewing machine.

The 1.3 and the 1.4 versions of the old Micra (not the bubble, but the 1990-es model) were a classic wolf in sheep clothing - around 9s 0-60 and sub 4s on 0-30 combined with nice stiff suspension, good cornering and good grip. Definitely lots of fun to drive. One of my colleagues had one of those and I remember her passing me while I was doing 70mph as if I was stationary on the way to work :) That thing went like the clappers.

Still, IMO, these Micras were not as nuts as a Daihatsu Sirion Rally2/Rally4 with its sub-8s 0-60. That was the peak of the SuperMini class evolution - 107bph non turbocharged engine in a 800kg car with factory stiffened suspension. Go cart with a jet engine. From there on it all went downhill.

Hehe

The look on the face of that cretin behind the wheel of the "erectile disfunction compensator" which was toying with the accelerator behind you at the traffic lights - priceless. For everything else there is MasterCard.

Seriously, a lot of people enjoy driving a wolf in sheep clothing. Me included. It is something nobody will key in a parking lot just because it looks sporty and nobody will try to break in. It is economical, has low insurance and at the same when you need so (or when you feel so) can be driven in a manner which will give M3 drivers complexes of inferiority (especially in a city).

Rumor: HP giving Apotheker Das Boot

Even if its a das boot it is "das gold boot"

Well, he did his job - he destroyed a couple of things on which HP would have always failed to capitalise. That can now be assigned to him and another person can step in to "fix the damage".

In any case, if one happens to be in the vicinity of Redwood Shores, CA they need to buy some ear plugs. They will be needed to muffle the hysterical giggles coming from 500 Oracle Parkway.

HP axes up to 525 webOS hardware staff

Actually it does

525 staff? On hardware only? To produce a couple of phones a year?

How many of that were "programme directors", "R&D managers" or various "facilitators" (most facilitating pocket tennis)?

The axe is probably a little too late here

MySQL founder savages Oracle’s move to 'open core'

Kettle calling the pot black?

Innodb MySQL engine anyone? "Open" - maybe... without the backup and all the tools necessary to do that. In reality - closed.

That is just one example. I have used MySQL in all of my projects as far back as 1998 and I cannot remember a period when they were using any different from that model. The "core" was always open and was enough for most developers. The more interesting stuff required money.

Oracle is doing what MySQL tried to do for many years, just doing it properly putting a proper support infrastructure, sales staff, etc behind it.

US survey: 1 in 5 telecommuters work an hour or less a day

PJ is the first mistake

Your home office is still an office, you have to get out of your PJs and get into some more reasonable attire if you want to get any work done. It is part of the routine which puts you in the mood to work. If you stay in your PJs I am not surprised that you are clocking 1h.

Also, there is more than one way to look at the results. Pets may take an hour or two out of your day, but so will the corporate gym. Running after your dog is for some reason sniggered upon and requires special management attention. At the same time disappearing into the gym in the company basement to lift some weights or play squash for an hour does not.

Ditto for the chores. Chopping wood for the stove if you happen to be working from somewhere away from the civilization is no different from lifting weights in the company gym. In fact it is probably better for your physical and mental health than lifting weights (imagine various different things placed on the chopping stump before smacking them with an axe - works a treat).

In any case, I know plenty of people who put less than 1h of real work per day while spending 10h daily in the office so you might as well send them to do that at home and save on the electricity bill :)

Yes, there's a Tech Bubble. But that's OK

It is more bubbly than before

The problem with this bubble is that it is more "frothy" than the previous one.

This is very different from the previous bubble(s). Those were "build it and they will come". There was LOTS of roadkill in those. The survivors however, were sufficiently ahead of the tech wave to survive for many years (and florish in some cases).

We live in the "incremental" bubble. This means that the survivors will be only a few "seconds ahead of the wave" and can fall pray to it after a minimal mistake. Continuing the wave analogy they are no longer droplets flying ahead of it, they are the froth on the top of the breaker. Froth goes the way of all froth. A "sure bet" today can be roadkill in a jiffie.

The end result is actually very bad for the tech sector in general. As the "frothiness" goes on money will start withdrawing from the high tech sector. No-one wants to invest into something which can go tits up or at the very least lose most of its market positioning at the smallest mistake. That means that we will have less and less investment into anything but the incumbent market leaders and the investor money will go elsewhere.

So all in all, we need not less, we need more "build it and they will come" companies contrary to the current overwhelming managerial wisdom.

Intel extends JavaScript for parallel programming

Worse

It is OpenCL specific.

So while it is not x86 specific, it apllies only to vector problems - stuff that can be parallelised using OpenCL. While there is a host of problems which fall into that category - image transform, video transform, etc they are only a small fraction of what can be made faster through parallelisation. It will do nothing with regards to accelerating "classic" software. For that you need threads (or something similar).

Intel demos ultra low-juice chippery

Trivial

A lot of the old P3 MBs have a plug-in (not soldered in) voltage regulator. At least all worksation and small server MBs from Compaq and HP as well as some Asus MBs do.

I am in fact typing that on one - Dual 1GHz P3 which I use as a development platform and an X-term. Its voltage regs IIRC are soldered in, but I have a couple with plug-in regs in storage somewhere.

In any case, there is more than enough space on the P3 CPU board to put a local voltage regulator which takes the 1.75 VCore and feeds the modified core at the voltage required. P3 is also a good point to start off with. All P3s are in the 15-22W thermal design range. So a P3 core (if made at modern silicon tech) should be sub-5Ws to begin with or even less.

As far as dumpster diving... They are making me laugh. I still have a whole bag of working P3 MBs. My DIY NAS is a P3, my workstation is a P3 and I have at least 3-4 working P3s (single and dual CPU) in storage.

How gizmo maker's hack outflanked copyright trolls

It does not have the CPU power to strip. Throw 4-5 times the CPU power and then... maybe... But at present - nope.

Big Apple fake Apple stores agree to rat out suppliers

Corpoprations behave to maximise their profit

Moralizing is pointless. As long as the current taxation systems stand stuff will be manufactured in China, IPR will be stolen and knockoffs will be produced.

If you _WANT_ stuff to be manufactured locally you should give your MP, Senator or whatever other "political critter" represent you a couple of soviet block books on taxation. No, I am not joking here. They had one point kind-a right there (they just took the idea too much to the extreme). The best way to shorten a supply chain and force it to be semi-local is to use turnover tax instead of VAT.

VAT naturally creates long multi-step supply chains which naturally lead to the lowest cost labour and resource. That used to be penalized by import duties, however most of them got removed as a part of the WTO and as a matter of fact they were being ineffective even before that.

The truth is somewhere in-between. If VAT is complemented by a TURNOVER tax which is collected at each step in the food chain and is cumulative (no refund) and ALWAYS collected on import half of these 30+ step supply chains will dissolve overnight to be replaced by in-country (or at least in-economic-area) verticals which will also be more product driven rather than supply-at-lowest-from-third-world driven. Overall, this will be a good thing and it is a pity that there is no way in hell it can happen any time soon...

iRobot Roomba 780 automated vacuum cleaner

Yes and No

It stops when it is operating OK.

All Roomba cleaners have a maintenance quirk. They do not navigate by counting revs on the main wheels which would be the obvious solution, but through counting revs on the front wheel. It is painted black/white and functions like a mechanical (ball) mouse. There is a sensor behind it which counts the revs and thus measures the distances.

In my experience this wheel assembly picks up gunk way too easily. I have to clean mine after every 4-5 runs. Once gunk gets between the wheel and the sensor the robot starts getting lost. It will fail to navigate back to the base, it will fail to deccelerate before hard objects and it will approach stairs at stupid speeds. As a result, at the very best it will get stuck on the edge. At worst it will fly out.

By the way - 95% of complaints about Roomba behaving stupidly are related to this issue. Funnily enough it is not mentioned anywhere in the booklets. The robot does not do any diagnostic on it either (dumb, dumber). There is no convenient way to remove the wheel assembly either (you have to use a big screwdriver or a blunt knife to flip it out).

Why Android houses should give Google the 'fork you'

Logic flaw

You are making a flawed assumption that they will _WANT_ to compete individually versus Apple.

That is not true for all of the Android crowd. Half of it is manufacturers which have grown up building to order, the other half has been there, done that with regard to having its own software. They have chosen to compete as a part of the "ecosystem" instead of doing their own software.

Now is this the right or wrong decision long term is a different story.

AMD: Windows-8-on-ARM app compatibility is relative

You are missing the point

The power of ARM is in the offload.

Arm SOCs have offloads for anything and everything - media, network, security, encoding, decoding, etc.

These have been designed _WITHOUT_ a common software architecture in mind. There is no way in hell to abstract them to a common API which high level programs designed for Windows can use. It is a throughly balkanized platform and this is the reason for it being so popular - you can create whatever obscenity you want to satisfy reqs from business development.

That may not matter for things like Word which need little or no offload, but it will be a serious hindrance for the biggest market driver in the windows world - Games.

In any case, whatever AMD, Intel, etc are speaking here is irrelevant as they are not the ones who are facing the exact part which makes ARM a throughly balkanized platfrom. It will be more interesting what people like Carmack, Romero and the like say about it. They are the ones that are actually facing what makes ARM powerful and nightmare at the same time. They are funnily enough strangely silent on the matter...

Sid Meier's Civilization

That may have been the case 10 years ago

That was true 10 years ago when you could buy Loki (most of Civ addicts on Linux did). It is not true today - the only way to play it if you have a Linux desktop is to run freeciv.

It is quite good too :)

Cancellation technique doubles wireless throughput

Yes you have - it is called CDMA

You can do that with CDMA today.

You just feed the transmit code into the same algorithm which separates the logical channels in receive.

You do not even need two antennas. You can do the entire thing purely at signal processing level. It will not come three however - you will get a hard range limitation because of how long do you have to keep the transmit code sequence around to feed it into the algo.

This approach however does not double the throughput. You use up codes for transmit out of the same code space that was used to receive and the overall bandwidth of the frequency band remains the same.

Apple plan to rate shops etc by number of iPhones visiting

Great? Me think not... Actually I take that back

Prague, conference this year.

3 restaurants found by my dear colleagues using iPhone - all hideous rip off, food substandard (by czech standards) in 2 out of 3, crap service in 1 out of 3.

2 restaurants found on foot using standards methods of "good booze and food" location - cheap as chips, food superb, service superb too. It took a considerable amount of time to make the iPhone users abstain from using the slabs to locate these and some abstained from entering a venue that was not "blessed" in an iPhone app...

From a first glimpse, wrong type of positive feedback and reinforcing crap choice. Bad for users... Second thought: "Fool and his money will soon be parted". We should let the shiny-shiny brigade stick to their shiny-shiny. Better for the rest of us who are not so lazy to walk down a street in an unknown city and look around for a good place to eat, shop, stay, etc.

Galaxy Tab remains illegal in Germany

Re: Ooh look - I don't have to put a title!

1. Samsung can and should charge this to apple and the current law allows them. When someone interferes with your legitimate business you can and should sue them for damages.

2. Samsung should file a case with the EU comission. Apple possesses enough of the mobile market to be classed as a "company with significant market power" under EU laws which means that it becomes a subject to the competition comission. All it takes is to either show that tablets are a market of their own or to add tablets to mobile phones market (something apple has been doing itself). From there on, EU is in need for some money to bail out failing fraudulent governments and getting it of someone with a bigger cash pile than the US government sounds like a jolly good idea.

VMware 'to work with just five storage companies'

Indeed

It is not just server people who are failing to grok how much row power is flying around in an average x86 box, it is network people too.

In any case, while there is a method into the "move it to another VM or the Hypervisor" madness, there is a flaw in this particular Vmware idea.

If the intelligence is moved to the hypervisor (or a dedicated VM) which runs a virtual storage controller the dedupe scope will be limited to what is seen by this particular hypervisor. So instead of getting dedupe across a whole rack you will be getting dedupe only across each of the servers in the rack and the VM images in it.

So all in all, it does not scale unless you make the controllers talk to each other.

‘We save trips to the library’ – Google

There will be no end in sight

Google and Apple are invincible as long as:

Their competitors (current and future) run a pricing/business case oriented development cycle led by "excel spreadsheets". Compared to that Google, Apple, etc run product oriented business cycle. As a result Google, Apple and their ilk come, see and conquer through the creation of _NEW_ consumption patterns and hereby _NEW_ business cases.

From there on there is bugger all you can do. They are destined to become natural monopolies (or at least companies with significant market power). If you regulate them in one market they just go on to become in another.

The only way to fight them is to fight them with products. That however requires to build and design new products instead of "best of breeding" Chihuahua to a Saint Bernard through a masterful exercise in bundling existing products.

Early Earth’s ‘golden shower’

Not just that

If memory serves me right C dating is limited to a few hundred thousand years tops. The C14 halflife is not long enough to date prior to that.

Prior to that for the few M range you have to use K/Ar (pray for nicely solid rocks which do not release Ar) and for anything beyond a few M your primary choice are methods based on Pb isotope ratios (Pb mainline vs impurities from U and Tho alpha-decay products).