* Posts by Jon Green

412 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jun 2007

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Apple designer Sir Jony Ive holding up iOS 7 development: Report

Jon Green
Thumb Up

Good.

Apple doesn't need another cock-up like the iOS 6 / Apple Maps débacle. Having someone who actually cares about creating good product, even if it takes a little while longer, in the driving seat is a good thing.

With hardware production, you have to pre-purchase components, reserve whole factories in advance, tool the casework machines, configure hardware pick-and-place component assemblers and gear up a production line. Delays cost fortunes, because the factory will still be charging you for the time the plant isn't making money elsewhere. If software is a little late, it's a lot less expensive. Production lines are much more generic and can be working on other products until the "gold master" is ready to press. If you're delivering electronically - which is far cheaper still - delays cost nearly nothing. Essentially, the costs of software delay are mainly deferred revenues.

Well done, Jony - seriously. Make it a good 'un, and let's see what Apple can do when its innovators are given the chance.

Want to know what CIA spooks really think of spy movies and books?

Jon Green
Facepalm

Well, duh!

""I ask students what is the first thing that comes to mind when they think of intelligence. Invariably the answer is: 'James Bond.' This is a sad state of affairs. Not only is James Bond fictional, [...]"

So go on then, show us all what intelligence work is really like.

Oh, right. Official Secrets. Fair enough.

Back to Bond, then...

Quid-a-day nosh challenge hack forms foraging party

Jon Green
Boffin

Re: Alcohol withdrawal?

If it's white (European), purple or crack willow, you're in luck. If it's black/pussy or weeping willow, not so much. The good news is that properly-prepared willow bark is often thought easier on the stomach than aspirin, and has some extra components that have similar properties to salicylates, and work together with them.

Jon Green
Boffin

Re: destroying angel

A. virosa is hepatotoxic: that's to say, it destroys your liver. But that doesn't kill you immediately: it takes 7-14 days. Ironically, on the day after you've ingested it, you'll feel great: the so-called "false dawn", because if you haven't been put on the transplant list already, you've lost. Then it's a downhill slide through increasing levels of jaundice and delirium, to unconsciousness, and finally death.

So there'd be no problem with someone living long enough to give an opinion on the flavour of A. virosa - but you'd have to get an opinion in the first couple of days or so because, after that, your subject might be a little less coherent...

Quid-a-day nosh challenge hack in bullet-hard chickpea drama

Jon Green
Childcatcher

Dumpster-diving?

Do supermarkets in Spain follow their English counterparts, and throw out perfectly good food just because it's hit a fictional smell-by date?

Fried-egg sarnies kick off Reg man's quid-a-day nosh challenge

Jon Green
Coat

Foraging!

This time of year, there's plenty of spring growth going on, probably some early mushrooms (if you don't know your mushies, do NOT try this at home!), fresh roadkill's usable, and you might just be able to rustle up some rabbit or similar. Wild herbs transform a meal, and they'll certainly boost your bone stew. (Possibly "bone" in the military sense...) For a free, fragrant tea, steep elderflowers - there's a chance they'll be out by now, where you are. And it's all free!

Good luck!

(Icon: forgaging for forgotten sugar/ketchup/... sachets in jacket pockets...never find one when I need it...)

It was the Reg what won it: Online Hitchhiker's Guide thriving

Jon Green
Facepalm

Damn!

I wish I could remember my login - I'd done some of the earliest articles!

Virgin Media: SO SORRY we fined your dead dad £10 for unpaid bill

Jon Green
FAIL

Outstanding

""We've [...] offered our sincerest apologies as automated responses from banks should not appear on customer bills."

So what Virgin Media are really sorry about is having admitted that they knew why the bill wasn't paid. I don't see anything, anywhere, suggesting that they're going to stop charging dead people, just that they are embarrassed about being caught knowingly at it.

Cook: iPad is a gateway drug which leads to harder Mac addiction

Jon Green

Re: Blindfold firmly secured? Let's go!

@Peter2 - if everyone had bought desktops at the same time, you might have had a point. But they haven't. Desktop replacement - IT equipment refresh in general - is a rolling process, and there's no reason to expect a sudden peak in desktop sales in five years' time, any more than there is in four, or three.

Quite the contrary: there's an increasing tendency amongst corporates to "big bang" transitions to "private cloud" virtual PCs, serving desktop thin clients and/or mobile computing devices, and that's where we're seeing sudden sales peaks, driven by an increasingly nomadic workforce that still needs access to corporate resources over VPN and secure client.

And workforces, far from being downsized, are increasing. In the past year, the number employed in the UK has increased by just under 500,000, with the trend generally upwards. [Source: Office for National Statistics] In general, the white-collar recruitment freezes of the past few years are being loosened by the companies that survived the financial crisis, and the startups are competing with them for recruits (as I know all too well). IT departments are having to make big decisions now, to accommodate the new arrivals, because the recycled kit from the previous departees is running out, or breaking down, and it's time to choose whether to continue down the old paths, or make a major transition now.

Jon Green
Facepalm

Re: Blindfold firmly secured? Let's go!

Not at all; I had MacBooks specifically in mind. The thing is: there may be a small migration from iPad ownership to MacBook Air ownership, but anyone who's starting out, or has been converted, by tablet use won't be hankering for a big, heavy laptop or a desktop. That's soooo last decade.

Malwarebytes declares Windows 'malicious', nukes 1,000s of PCs

Jon Green
Facepalm

So malwarebytes ends up as malware.

Kinda ironic.

Xen hypervisor leaps into Linux Foundation

Jon Green
Thumb Up

An interesting turn in the market

(Declaration of interests: I've consulted for Citrix, and have a lot of friends there.)

I've felt for some time that Xen would be better fit as an independent product, with the likes of Citrix layering products, services and consultancy on top of it; becoming, in effect, clients of Xen rather than holding ownership. To me, this is a great move. Once Xen has been properly established in an independent development track, and the market, rather than a single company, has been shown to drive development, this could mark a renaissance, and a solid alternative to KVM and VMWare.

Gates and Allen reshoot historic 1981 Microsoft photo

Jon Green
Coat

That first photo

Bill Gates was Paul Allen's ventriloquist dummy. Who knew?

ANCIENT CURSED RING known to TOLKIEN goes on display

Jon Green
Coat

My tablet curses anyone who steals it, too.

I've got an app for that. Well - I wrote an app for that, anyway.

I've got a super free multi-petabyte storage box for you: /dev/null

Jon Green
Coffee/keyboard

The funny thing is...

...how often do these tape archives ever get read back onto disk?

Exactly.

So you might as well use /dev/null, because your short-term backup covers the critical stuff for disaster recovery, and the longer-term tape archive is just a waste of space and money.

Forget the invisibility cloak: Boffins invent INVISIBILITY FISHNETS

Jon Green
Boffin

I can't wait...

..for the first "anti-radiation" mobile phone case based on this technology. It might actually work, this time...unlike the poor signal-deprived phone....

Inside Adastral: BT's Belgium-sized broadband boffinry base

Jon Green
Facepalm

Bit of a shame...

...that, for all the innovation being done at AdAstral Park the bean-counters in BT seem determined to eke the last penny out of the existing, fossilised infrastructure and to resist rolling out high-speed internet. A pattern we've seen ever since they tried to resist ADSL for as long as possible, in order to boost ISDN sales.

LOHAN slips into tight rubber outfit

Jon Green
Facepalm

Polystyrene? Bubble wrap? Aerogel?

Someone hasn't thought about atmospheric pressure at altitude! Bubble wrap will pop, aerogel will deconstruct, and polystyrene will be useless, as its cells will rupture, evacuate the trapped air, and won't be a whole lot of use as an insulator!

Drilling into 3D printing: Gimmick, revolution or spooks' nightmare?

Jon Green
Boffin

Certainly has its uses

We fabricated component parts for the STRaND-1 satellite using a 3D printer: far cheaper and quicker than sending the specifications to an engineering lab. If you find you then need to alter the design, the turnaround time is unbeatable - seconds from saving the CAD file to starting the print.

I don't think that 3D printing is the be-all and end-all - the materials are limited for low-cost printers, and the resolution is a problem for now - but it's great for prototyping and small-run manufacturing. Will there be one in every home? Not until the technology matures, and perhaps not even then. But there's a big potential there, and a goodly-sized market gagging for improved, cheaper devices, and I'm certain that market will be fulfilled.

Paying a TV tax makes you happy - BBC

Jon Green
Facepalm

Re: Be happy, and enjoy your viewing!

Hmmm, seems like some people haven't read 1984...

Jon Green
Megaphone

Be happy, and enjoy your viewing!

This is a public announcement from Miniluv. Happiness is compulsory, citizen.

Microsoft issues manual on Brits to Cambridge exports

Jon Green
Coat

Ah. I see the mistake here.

You based your article on one from the Cambridge News website, that inarguably-accurate oracle of all things Cambridge.

Um, you might have spotted a little insincerity in those last comments... *grin*

Build a BONKERS gaming PC

Jon Green
Happy

So what's the total build cost then?

'Cos that'd be nice to know!

CCTV hack takes casino for $33 MILLION in poker losses

Jon Green
FAIL

"Do you even understand that it was not the casino's fault"

So remind me: whose lax security allowed the game to be gamed?

Jon Green
Facepalm

Re: No Laws Broken?

Except that Capital Gains Tax would probably be incurred, and Stamp Duty would be payable.

Are your servers PETS or CATTLE?

Jon Green
Coat

I like the analogy

...but it could do with extension. There are also cockroaches - virtual instances that keep spawning even when you think you've stamped on the last of the little b****rs.

Oh, and don't forget pigs: servers that eat data, whilst only ever outputting crap. And they eat. And eat. And eat. Eventually they either get culled or they die from their own obesity: either way, they only serve a useful purpose - being recycled into something tastier - after their demise.

BYOD: Bring Your Own Device - or Bring Your Own Disaster?

Jon Green
Devil

Wonderful timing

What a great discussion to have on Red Nose Day...full marks to El Reg for bringing sysadmin dark comedy to the fore.

(Try working for a security-sensitive company and suggesting BYOD if you'd like a laugh!)

Amazon makes EC2 stickier with default virtual private clouds

Jon Green
Boffin

Elastic IP Address allocation

There's a lot made of the fact that Elastic IP Addresses (EIPAs) are released when an instance stops, dies, or is summarily killed off, but it's not that big a deal. If you're a heavy user, use CloudFormation to launch your instances, and include an EIPA allocation in the launch script. If you're a light (read: hobby or small business) user, create your own Amazon Machine Image (AMI) from a snapshot - it's pretty easy - of an EC2 instance that you've set to assign itself a named EIPA as it starts.

It's good practice to create your own AMIs (with auto-recovery built in) anyway, so that, if/when your EC2 instance terminates for whatever reason, it can be respawned automatically with no human intervention and little loss of service.

Mark Shuttleworth: Canonical leads Ubuntu, not 'your whims'

Jon Green
Facepalm

I'd love to "find something interesting to improve"...

...but I don't think Canonical would accept a patch that annihilated Unity and replaced it with a workspace that works nicely on a screen considerably bigger than a tablet's.

If they _really_ want to support a full range of devices, they could start by not forcing them all to behave like an Ubuntu wristwatch.

Throttled customers rage over Virgin Mobile UK's tight cap

Jon Green
Unhappy

Only just joined VM...

...didn't expect to have to dump the SIM so soon. Fortunately, it''s just one a one-monther.

PC market to spend ANOTHER year soaked in blood, warns IDC

Jon Green
Alert

Re: Windows 8 is killing their laptop and desktop markets

I don't know where you got that figure. PC sales were down 8.3% in the 2012 holiday season alone (source: http://channelnomics.com/2013/03/06/pc-sales-tank-worse/). Google "windows 8 sales figures" for some somber reading for Microsoft executives.

Whilst you should be rightly chary of anecdotal evidence, I'll offer this: I'm a tech consultant working with a lot of very high-tech firms - and I don't know a single sysadmin who's planning to roll out Windows 8. The same people who couldn't get Windows 7 out there quickly enough simply don't see a business driver for Win8, and a lot of resistance.

My feeling, for right or wrong, is that the only significant Windows 8 sales happening at the moment are on new equipment where there's not a choice - and that Windows 8 is a brake on those sales, too. The figures seem to bear this out.

It could all have been handled so much better. If MS had made it easy to switch between a conventional, windowed desktop (needed for business) and the can't-call-it-Metro-anymore touch-style full-screen interface (great for tablets), Windows 8 could have been a great success, with customers choosing which environment they prefer. As it is, it was - in my opinion - botched by forcing the touch-style interface upon users, and MS are paying the price for that decision - literally. The number of web pages devoted to ways to revert Win8 to a Win7-style GUI speaks for itself, as does the number of web articles describing the slow uptake of what should have been a decent step-change improvement of a reasonably well-liked (Win7) OS.

Jon Green
Facepalm

Windows 8 is killing their laptop and desktop markets

If consumers still had a choice between Windows 7 and Windows 8, there might be more movement in the market. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't see things that way: it's Windows 8 or the highway.

For corporates, Windows 8 is an answer begging a question. Who wants to carry the can for rolling out an upgrade to an OS that won't allow multiple document windows (the hint's in the name, guys!) on screen at a time? What's the point of those nice, new, high-resolution screens, with only one program showing at a time? Sysadmins would have to install a custom-rolled distribution with the "Metro" features disabled, and incur large expense for little benefit, and a lot of heartache.

Retail consumers view Windows 8 from a different perspective. They're chary of the unknown, aware of the increased hardware cost for Windows 8-compliant systems, and mindful of negative reviews and experiences.

Windows 8 or the highway? There's a big traffic jam, in the direction of tablet makers. By not really understanding their markets, and trying to brute-force them - no change there in 30 years, then - Microsoft appears to have inadvertently engineered the seeds of their own slow destruction. It's a shame: they've only just started to innovate properly, for the first time since forever, but it's too late, and too little, and often in the wrong directions. Apple's Mac line is also waning, but Microsoft-based new PC products are falling off a cliff.

Penguins, only YOU can turn desktop disk IO into legacy tech

Jon Green
Boffin

NUMA

It's really only a, fairly minor, extension of non-uniform memory architecture (NUMA). Don't forget that the processor doesn't need to "see" the flash as anything but a slowish RAM: you can use flash controllers to hide the complexities of block erases and rewrites. Cache RAM in front of the controller (plus a bit of power buffering and emergency-write circuitry to write back a "dirty" cache on power-down) presents a near-RAM-speed interface to the CPU .

That said, you would get performance improvements if the processor did operate the flash knowledgeably. It really just comes down to what your operating system can handle easily. Obviously, open-source or open kernel API OSes would be easier for hardware designers to adapt than closed systems like Windows, but I'm sure Microsoft already has allowances for non-volatile main memory somewhere: I just don't happen to know those APIs.

Jon Green
Linux

Re: but...

Quark are keeping a watching eye on Linux (see thread in http://forums.quark.com/t/24106.aspx), but it's clear they don't yet see a market there. However, it would be nice if they could at least look into resolving the incompatibilities with WINE, so that Linux users could run it semi-natively without Quark having to do a full port. I'm sure it wouldn't be a huge expense for Quark, and it would generate a lot of goodwill - not to mention first-market advantage in commercial publishing software for Linux.

Have you raised that possibility with Quark?

Jon Green
Boffin

Absolutely correct.

I replaced the head-crashed hard disk in my daughter's reasonably new laptop with an SSD. From being fairly sluggardly (but light), it's now almost as responsive as my SSD-powered Zenbook. But that's still a long way from what's possible.

Firms like Steve Wozniak's Fusion-IO "got it" early: we don't need flash memory that pretends to be a hard disk, we need flash memory (or, better still, next-generation magnetoresistive or resistive RAM) coupled directly to the processor bus. RAM-speed reads, fast writes - in the case of (M)RRAM, near-RAM-speed writes with no "write wear" - and much lower power consumption.

I've argued it since the late 80s: moving-parts memory belongs in the same places as those who once invented it - retirement and (sorry) fond memories.

'Million-strong' zombie army devours Raspberry Pi's crunchy base

Jon Green
Mushroom

I'm not entirely sure whose ideology...

...would be placated by hitting technology-education charities. Nor what an extortionist could hope to achieve. It just sounds like random, mindless vandalism to me.

Perhaps Anonymous might like to try to winnow out who was responsible, and give them the Good News instead. It's the sort of thing the Anons are good at...and it would certainly fit /their/ ideology to do that.

New evidence: Comets seeded life on Earth

Jon Green

The most interesting question is...

...whether the comet that seeded life on Earth - if one did - contained life to begin with, from some other body. The sooner we can get decent comet samples back down to Earth for detailed forensics the better!

Cruel Microsoft will drive us into arms of iOS, Android, warn resellers

Jon Green
Terminator

Re: This is just part of a trend

@AC - I could tolerate it on the basis of the reasons MS gave...but when they reduce the value of the programme by somewhere between 50-66%, and keep the price the same, that rankles. That _really_ rankles.

Jon Green
Facepalm

This is just part of a trend

Microsoft seems to be setting out to annoy its key customers and advocates at the moment. Witness the butchery of the TechNet programme: far fewer licences available, on far fewer products, but the same old price.

MI5 test for Mandarin-speaking snoops 'just too easy'

Jon Green
Facepalm

Has no-one considered...

...that the stilted grammar and mitsakes were deliberate? Those candidates fluent enough to point them out in the interview stage, having passed the first test, would be head and shoulders above the others.

The security services (small 's's) have a long and well-established history of using these kinds of tricks to filter applicants.

Twenty classic arcade games

Jon Green
Happy

Star Wars' "faithful reproduction of both soundtrack and voice samples"?

"Ooo da war, Ploop!"

Oh happy days!

Judge slashes Apple's pile o' cash Samsung judgment

Jon Green
Facepalm

How long will it take...

...before the courts label Apple a "vexacious litigant" and tell the company to go compete in the markets, instead of hiding behind lawyers' skirts?

SpaceX rocket reaches orbit but Dragon fails to spit fire

Jon Green
Unhappy

Tough news

(Speaking strictly on my own behalf only.)

We need a vibrant commercial space industry. SpaceX is (was?) a front-runner, and this is a pretty significant set-back for them. Elon Musk's attitude towards media (specifically, to bad reviews of Tesla cars) is likely to result in a retributive backlash against SpaceX in editorials. This is not good.

Raspberry Pi-powered Tardis blasts off from 'Blighty's Baikonur'

Jon Green
Coat

In space...

...no-one can hear you "Skweeee-gronk! Skweeeee-gronk!..."

(Well, YOU try to transcribe the Tardis noise, then!)

Look out! Peak wind is coming, warns top Harvard physicist

Jon Green
Boffin

Re: This should not be a surprise.

@JDX - you might think that; I disagree. Burning fossil fuel is dumb, cubed. We're only still doing it because (1) highly vested interests are forcing political hands, and (2) for countries like China with large reserves of low-grade coal, it's a cheap way to feed an insatiable demand. In both cases, with scant consideration for the effects on the planet.

If we made use of even a tiny proportion (one ten-thousandth) of the direct solar energy hitting the Earth - and that's at ground level, after the atmosphere, Van Allens and so on have attenuated it - we'd satisfy current global energy demand. Orbital energy harvesting centres could do far better on less, if we can find a way to transmit the power safely to the ground.

Jon Green
Holmes

This should not be a surprise.

Our main and best power source, on this planet, is the nearby star. Wind power is a ridiculously indirect and inefficient way to harness it. We can and should do better than this.

Nexus 1 put in orbit to prove 'in space, no one can hear you scream'

Jon Green
Boffin

Nothing much changed

One of the objectives is to discover how well mobile phone electronics fare in space, as the compactness and low energy consumption make them - not necessarily attached to a phone! - very attractive for satellite missions. The phone really is pretty-much unmodified, software notwithstanding.

Radiation is an interesting question. Of course, STRaND-1 is in a low earth orbit, like most satellites, keeping it in a much lower risk region than geostationary or interplanetary space, but radiation affects all components to some extent and, with only a 3.5kg orbit weight, STRaND can't offer much shielding to any of its manifest.

The satellite has had vibration, vacuum and wide-range thermal cycling testing as part of its launch qualification, and the Nexus showed no issues I'm aware of. How well the LCD copes in the longer term will be interesting to see. Of course, in a large-budget commercial mission (as opposed to this research mission), there wouldn't be an LCD, so that's a bit moot. Everything other than the phone that can be conformally coated has been, and we've another on-board computer that's handling the first part of the mission, so even if the phone does fail there's plenty still running.

Jon Green

Re: Scream

Good point. Everyone who knows is over at the Ops Centre, or taking a well-deserved rest, but I'll come back to you about it tomorrow.

That Firefox OS mobe: The sorta phone left behind after a mugging

Jon Green
Facepalm

JG Ballard?

I thought "Soylent Green" was based on Harry Harrison's novel "Make Room! Make Room!"

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