Posts by Phil O'Sophical

Production-ready ZFS offers cosmic-scale storage for Linux

Re: Gordon Gordon AC Destroyed All Braincells Gordon BTRFS? You must be joking...

> maybe over an hour (!) to import a pool

More nonsensical FUD. Have you ever got closer to ZFS than posting abut it on the Register? You've clearly never used it, so why should anyone take your rants seriously?

I've yet to see a zpool import take more than a second or two, unless the underlying devices have some serious problems, and even there ZFS will correct and import the valid pool in less time than a traditional FS will complete an fsck and present a maybe-correct volume.

but

nobody would put a dot-zero release of anything into production.

FBI on trial for warrantless Stingray mobile spying

Re: Misleading headline

or a submarine?

Gartner's gurus forecast future tech spending splurge

Sun with an initial capital?

Wishful thinking?

Torygraph and Currant Bun stand by to repel freeloaders

More to the point, what's El Reg going to do for news,seeing as how it seems to get most of it's non-HiTech stories straight from the Telegraph's website?

Forget the invisibility cloak: Boffins invent INVISIBILITY FISHNETS

Only hides an object from microwaves

Sounds like an ideal replacement for ye olde tinfoil hat.

Oz shop slaps browsers with $5 just looking fee

Re: A gluten free food Nazi.

What's the connection between being vegan (a lifestyle choice) and requiring a gluten-free diet due to a potentially fatal food intolerance (cœliac disease)?

Microsoft LOVES YOU: Free Wi-Fi on the British railways for a month

Re: Office 365 vs British Railways

> Most reliable? Discuss.

No-one's having to hand out free tickets to get people to use the train...

Help save the endangered QUANTUM OWL, pleads Reg man

Re: Good ol' classic values.

It wasn't random, it was carefully considered.

Re: Bootnote

I wouldn't mind seeing more of Aleks Krotoski. If you see what I mean...

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

Re: Yes, very impressive BT.

So, call a local building company and your local planning office, find out what it would cost to lay a fibre along those 30-50 metres. Divide it by 20, get your neighbours to chip in. Then call BT back.

Voda: Brit kids will drown in TIDAL WAVE of FILTH - it's all Ofcom's fault

What is inappropriate about telling children that services intended for adults cost a lot of money? Are Voda worried that this will immediately make the kids think "ooooo, sex, I'm going to blow £10 pocket money on that number I've just learned about" ?

If the kids are old enough to know what a sex line is, it does no harm to tell them that it's expensive. If they aren't old enough then the worst that will happen is one of those "Mummy, what's a sex line?" conversations that any parent should expect at some point, and should take advantage of to educate his/her child.

Sounds to me much more like Voda trying a "won't you think of the children" scare to persuade Ofcom to back off on something they don't want. Muppets.

Wireless charging on the Galaxy S4: Samsung goes VHS not Betamax

Samsung isn't a single business

It's a conglomerate. It's entirely possible that one part of Samsung's R&D department is officially committed to the Alliance for Wireless Power, while the division that designs the Galaxies has made it's own mind up over what it thinks is best. If it's anything like the UK/US companies I've worked for & with, the managers will let both camps run with their ideas, and take the credit for whichever one succeeds in the market.

Watch the skies: SPACE HEDGEHOG plunges to Earth in Oxfordshire

Re: Aiee!

> horribly mutated half-cactus, half-clanger "hedgehog" rampaging around Oxfordshire

Are you sure it wasn't just Jeremy Clarkson?

The UK Energy Crisis in 3 simple awareness-raising pictures

Re: Too right we are running out of gas.

> If it gets too cold, perhaps we can all go down to Westminster and set fire to some politicians?

Too wet to burn, I fear.

Re: Burning Gas = Electricity

"sending it to your home as leccy (losing 40-60% during transmission) and then turning it back into heat (and losing some more)."

Don't be daft. Grid losses are around 2% - 4% (slightly more on the low-voltage grid), and when you turn electricity back into heat you can't lose any, all energy ends up as heat in the end.

Google patent filing suggests Glass will be ULTIMATE REMOTE

Re: I can see it now...

> Tank; I need a pilot program for a V-212 helicopter..."

Didn't Joe 90 already have that back in the 60's? His glasses weren't quite so fashionable, IIRC.

Nokia deflates Google's video codec thought bubble

Re: AC@Trevor_Pott

> patents are specifically for the purpose of preventing certain kinds of competition?

No, patents are specifically for the purpose of encouraging the publication of new ideas, so that they can be improved on, while allowing the inventor limited protection against having the idea stolen by the competition.

Chinese graves use quick response codes to recall the dead

pictures of items to order for home delivery by scanning their QR code

Oh, think of the fun you could have with a packet of self-adhesive QR codes.

"Honestly, darling, I didn't order THAT!. Nor the vaseline"...

Dongle smut Twitstorm claims second scalp

Re: Sendgrid, a name to remember ...

"Says an awful lot about Sendgrid corporate morals."

Yeah, says they were probably delighted to have an excuse to get rid of someone who's chip-on-shoulder persecution complex likely made her the biggest PITA in the team

Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop hailed oddest book title

Re: Euphemism?

"Must have been the vindaloo, I was goblinproofing the chicken coop all night"

There's a Kindle edition ($11.23), does that make it OK?

Review: Renault Zoe electric car

Re: EV lifetime vs ICE

> Ah, I also just noticed that you actually hire the batteries now, so the above issue of replacing them is worthless.

Not at all. Paying £70/month for 10 years just means you've paid the £8K replacement cost in installments, so you don't get a big bill at the end.

Re: The thing that amazes me about electric cars...

Good, it'll melt the snow.

Re: It's not bitching, it's reality.

> You could, cost permitting, hire a car for longer journeys.

Only if there are just a few electric cars around. If most people had electric cars there wouldn't be enough "long journey" cars, because it would be uneconomical to maintain a hire fleet.

Besides, price is irrelevant here. Electric cars are only cheaper than diesel/petrol ones because:

1) Other taxpayers subsidise your purchase. That won't last.

2) Electricity isn't taxed at the same rate as road fuel (of which > half the pump price is tax)

The moment a government realizes that tax income has fallen because too many people are driving electric cars, it'll find a way to get the same per-mile income from them as it does from diesel or petrol ones.

There are sound reasons not to extravagantly burn finite resources like petroleum, but plug-in electric cars aren't a solution.

Wind farms make you sick … with worry and envy

> Strangely many older people in the village seem to develop cancer,

Not so strangely, you'll find that is true everywhere. If you haven't died of something else by the time you're 85, the odds are pretty high that you'll have a cancer of some sort. Most people will die with it, rather than of it, though.

It is one of the reasons that cancer seems more common, we can deal with most of the things that used to kill people earlier, before the cancer was noticed.

Boffin road trip! The Reg presents Geek's Guide to Britain

Re: Adastral Park ... call it by it's proper name BT Labs

I remember the pre-Adastral days when BT was adding to the campus there. A very high tech-looking building was going up near the entrance, and staff took great delight in impressing visitors, telling them that it was the new chip fabrication facility. It was, of course, the new staff restaurant...

Re: Late Arrival

Found the "Museum of the History of Science" in Oxford thanks to the Geek Atlas. Well worth a short visit, small but perfectly formed :)

Voyager goes off a (helio) cliff

> The Forever War is to me the finest piece of sci-fi that I've ever read.

Yes, I read it as a teenager. Been afraid to reread it in case it wasn't as good as I remembered, but maybe I should.

Re: JPL is raining on this paper and author's parade

> People are more motivated and enraptured by fear than they are by curiosity.

So, that's solved the problem of the name for the next Mars rover, then

Re: Imagine

On past form we won't notice it until it explodes over the Russian steppe...

LOHAN slips into tight rubber outfit

Re: @SW10

> higher level of heat generated

"Do you smoke after sex?"

"I don't know, I've never looked"

Re: A low friction connector?

Or braided brushes, a la Scalextric cars/track?

Or don't use wires, use foil strip and pass that behind the exhaust. It should melt rapidly. In fact, foil with a small notch cut each side should just tear apart as LOHAN's powerful drive thrusts its slim body along the supporting member to penetrate the unknown void...

Sorry, getting carried away there, as you were.

Mobile kingpins to marketing mavens: Bonking is brilliant, wanna try?

SMS is the carrier of choice

This had damn well better be an opt-in service

The Lynx effect: The story of Camputers' mighty micro

Re: Pretty nice machine

I'd guess that you would bank-switch the RAM, leaving code running in PROM? I don't remember if the Z80 could play PDP-style I&D space tricks to increase address space, I think that some processors of that era could (M68K?).

ICO clamps down on nuisance calls, slaps £90k fine on Glasgow firm

Re: Not nearly enough

You really interrupted those activities to answer the phone and find out? Me, I'd have let it ring.

Re: Feeble

Too true.

"Today’s action sends out a clear message to the marketing industry that this menace will not be tolerated,"

Yeaj, like fsck it does. £90k is a derisory fine for these scumbags, it's just a slap on the wrist.

Hit them with a £10k per call fine, and ban the directors from being a director of any company again until the total is paid.

UK's 'Nobel prize for engineering' given to 'inventors of the interwebs'

Re: Standing on the shoulders of giants

Well, to be fair, the work done by Pouzin et al. on the invention of packet-based networks was a lot more than just inventing "a comms protocol". It was the invention of a whole new type of network.

Re: Nominations?

> a vomit repellent road surface would bounce the stuff right back at your face

Or it might just float there, a few mm above the surface, being blown around at the whim of any passing breeze (and no doubt being chased by a dog).

Would there be a market for artificial vomit, which could be attached under a vehicle, to get a "maglev" effect? The possibilities are endlessly revolting...

Sysadmins: Let's perch on Microsoft Santa's lap, show him our wish list

Re: And the reaction in MS Towers is?...?

If they want a quick way to bring in some cash they could just offer Windows XP -> Windows 7 upgrades for, say, $50/£30, instead of the ludicrous prices they charge for W7 at the moment.

It might not get people onto Windows 8, but at least it would help get them off XP...

Google Drive goes titsup for MILLIONS of users

Re: Upload speed?

> I also wonder when we will get equal up/down speeds, probably never if BT are in charge

Whenever you want, just ask (and pay) BT for an SDSL link instead of an ADSL one.

Most domestic users want fast download, and don't need fast upload, so a 10/1 Asymmetric ratio is just fine. Business users want roughly equal, say 5/5, so will order Symmetric DSL. It's not BT's fault if you order a product that isn't what you need.

Freeview suddenly UNWATCHABLE dross? It may just be a 4G test

Re: Why do it anyway?

This red herring keeps coming up. It has nothing to to do with interference on nearby TV channels.

The spectrum associated with TV used to extend to 860MHz. As part of the digital switchover Ofcom reduced this to 800MHz, and sold off the higher frequencies for 4G. A lot of people who were out of range for pre-DSO Freeview installed aerial amplifiers to bring weak signals up to viewable levels. many of these installations used amplifiers which covered the whole 470-860MHz TV band, even when that wasn't actually necessary .

If a 4G signal in the newly-released band above 800MHz is strong enough it will cause the amplifier to overload, and when that happens any channel within the amplifiers passband can be affected, not just those that are "near" to the 800MHz top end.

I would expect any arguments here to centre around whether the amplifier was required to get local TV, or was installed as a way of getting a weak signal not intended for the given reception area. In the former case full compensation should be forthcoming, in the latter case I suspect you're on yoiur own.

This all sounds so like the power-line comms issues. Its funny how people don't care about interference when a service they like interferes with "a few beardies" , but get so upset when a service they don't care about spoils their reception of Corrie. At the end of the day, it's the same situation, well designed radio gear won't interfere with well-designed equipment. If it does, action should be taken against the user who causes the interference.

CCTV hack takes casino for $33 MILLION in poker losses

Re: The VIP handler..

Which VIP is going to trust that handler again? (S)he has just become dead wood.

Schmidt still scanning the skies 50 years after defining the quasar

Counting his millions, yes, but I honestly don't think Schmidt's in the "fsck the poor" category, unlike some other Silicon Valley CEOs. I'd put him more in the PT Barnum category, Google does a great job of fleecing that sucker born every minute...

Google+ architect: What was so great about Reader anyway?

Re: Leaving Google didn't hurt. Who knew?

> let me pass this toy back to you, it seems to have fallen out of the pram.

You'll regret that. Ever played with a baby? Throwing toys out of a pram and waiting for a grownup to pick it up is the greatest game around. It'll be thrown out again in seconds, just to see how often you'll pick it up. Worse than playing with a kitten, that is :)

Ten pi-fect projects for your new Raspberry Pi

VPN

Two Pis, one at a UK-based friend with BT Infinity, the other at your non-UK home. OpenVPN, some configuring, and you get BBC iPlayer, Sky on-demand, etc...

Perish the fault! Can your storage array take a bullet AND LIVE?

Re: AC AC Bullet-proof?

".....Of course you can run SC active-active....." Not like VMS clustering. In Slowaris Cluster the best you could do is run different apps on different cluster nodes and fail them back an forth, just two or more instances of failover clustering in one cluster, you cannot share an instance actively across two nodes at once.

Sorry Matt, but you're wrong on this one. Solaris Cluster has supported scalable apps spread across multiple nodes for decades. It started with SPARCcluster and Oracle Parallel Server back in the early 90's, through to Oracle RAC, Apache, web loadsharing and a bunch of other services today. Go read the docs, they're online.

(incidentally when running RAC in top of Solaris Cluster, RAC delegates cluster membership management to the Solaris software, a far cry from your suggestion that Solaris somehow needs RAC to get the functionality).

Seriously, when you post this sort of easily-verified BS is it any wonder that people don't take you seriously?

'Wireless charging' in Galaxy S4 will betray Samsung's best pal

Re: Frying of testicles

I can see why owners of aluminium goolies might be concerned, but unless I've missed a big advance in prosthetics technology the risk would seem to be manageable?