Posts by Phil O'Sophical

No more Nookie for Blighty as Barnes & Noble pulls out

Re: I have a local library ...

I have a local library

Can you get it in your suitcase for an extended vacation?

Uncle Sam's boffins stumble upon battery storage holy grail

less than $10 – a fifth of the price of gasoline

Only because gasoline for road use is taxed much more than electricty. At present.

a matter of how quickly you could get the energy into the car

Which is one place where flow-technology batteries might actually be useful. If recharging became simply a case of draining the used electrolyte and refilling with fresh, refuelling could be as quick and easy as it is today for gasoline vehicles. Small filling stations could be refilled by tanker using a similar system, larger ones with good grid access might have on-site electrolyte recharging facilities. It would be interesting to see numbers on fluid quantity versus range.

Greybeard monobrow baldies rejoice! Boffins comb out hairy genes

Re: Dr Evil

I highly suggest you try it

Be careful...

http://www.amazon.com/Veet-Hair-Removal-Creme-200ml/product-reviews/B000KKNQBK

Windows 10 claimed another point of desktop share in February

Re: Forced upgrades distort stats

clicking on a button where you don't read the details

That would be the button that says "click here to upgrade", where there is no button that says "No, thanks" ? Sure, if you know enough to realise that closing the window acts as "not now, nag me again later" you could argue that it's not forced, but without a "Just STFU and leave me alone" button it most certainly does seem like a forced upgrade to must of its victims.

NASA funds new supersonic airliner research

A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! ?

I'm not sure I want to be in a capsule belting along supersonically in an evacuated tunnel underground across seismic fault zones, thank you very much.

Re: Now if there was a way to talk to people in far away places...

Supersonic does nothing to address the key constraint in air travel. To put it bluntly, the sky is full.

Other than immediately over airports like LHR the sky is pretty empty. The key constraint in air travel is the time it takes to get to the airport, park, faff around for an hour's checkin/bag drop delay and two hours security theatre, all for a 1 hour flight.

Supersonic transport is never going to be a replacement for 4-hour holiday flights, but for 10-18 hour business longhaul flights there's a definite market for something that can shave a day or two off a business trip.

Re: Supersonic flight

I'm not convinced the bird will be any more a money-maker than its illustrious predecessor.

Operationally Concorde made money, it just couldn't recover its development costs because there were so few viable routes because of the boom. Fix that so that US West coast and Middle East are in range of Europe, and they could potentially sell many more. With 150 seats or so it could be comparable with current subsonic business class prices.

Google robo-car backs into bendy-bus in California

Re: Blind-sided?

Some of the subways in Nürnberg, Germany, are driverless.

As are some in London, Paris, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Turin, and other european cities.

Car-makers, telecoms bodies push standards for self-driving vehicles

Re: Dumb idea?

Do you really believe that the people working on self-driving cars have not realised this?

I'm sure they have, and I''m sure that somewhere in their design document there's a small footnote saying something like:

¹This presupposes the availability of 100% network coverage.

The actual implementation is, of course, somebody else's problem.

Wikimedia’s executive director quits after less than 2 years in post

Unionize?

The biggest threat a union can make is to withdraw its members' labour, but would anyone actually notice if that happened to Wikimedia?

Canonical accused of violating GPL with ZFS-in-Ubuntu 16.04 plan

To avoid confusion this work is normally called OpenZFS and Oracle has no claim to it - it cannot have any, since its has been made open source before they bought Sun.

IANAL either, but I don't think that statement is correct. Releasing a product as open source doesn't mean surrendering the rights to it, it means licensing those rights. Sun chose to license them under CDDL, and Oracle (having bought Sun) will likely have acquired the ownership of those licensed rights as Sun's legal successor, unless the acquisition contracts said otherwise. For the puposes of the legal arguments here, Oracle ≡ Sun.

Got Oracle? Got VMware? Going cloud? You could be stung for huge licensing fees

Re: Yep - had to redesign due to this

There's definitely a "mindset" problem. 20 years ago you might have spent $250K on a minicomputer, and $50K on the database package, and considered it a good investment.

Today you'll get more powerful hardware for only $10K, but inflation and extra functionality could have pushed the software licence to $100K. You're still paying less than half the cost in total (much less if you consider inflation-adjusted dollars) yet people get upset because the software costs more than the hardware, and it "used not to be like that".

There's no logical reason that the prices should track. Hardware development is largely automated and manufacture is cheap. Software development is very labour-intensive, and the price of labour has skyrocketed compared to the cost of electronics. We just have to get used to the idea the the hardware is now the irrelevant part of the system's purchase price, and accept that good software costs a lot of money to write and support.

'I bet Russian hackers weren't expecting their target to suck so epically hard as this'

endianness

No-one's mentioned the horrors of having to port between different endian architectures yet.

Like the network code that works fine on big-endian like SPARC or M68K, but fails on intel, because the programmer had never head of htonl() and friends. Or worse, had heard of them, but forgot one in a critical place.

Or the weird things that happen when someone has carelessly passed a 32-bit address to a library that expects 16, which works as expected on little-endian systems, but not on big-endian ones.

Brings back memories of hours of not-so happy debugging

The paperless office? Don’t talk sheet

Re: Paperless office - about as likely as the paperless loo.

Dunno about bidets, but lived in countries that use bum guns and you still need some paper unless you want a funny wet patch on your trouser seat.

Yeah, I'd like to see a Dyson Airblade deal with that.

No, on second thoughts I would not like to see that.

At about the same time we'd just got some DEC LN03 laser printers

I remember them. Worked great on the DEC paper, but our office went on a 'green' kick and bought boxes of made-from-recycled paper. The LN03s all started to jam within a few weeks, leading to new rollers & a warning from DEC not to use anything but their paper. Always seemed like clever design to me, and a trick that HP obviously missed.

Brits unveil 'revolutionary' hydrogen-powered car

Re: Gull-wing doors

I think that gull-wing doors give easier access for a small opening in the body.

As long as you don't need to open them in the garage, or after you've rolled the gadget...

Re: zero emissions?

The point with both batteries AND hydrogen fuel-cells, is that you can swap both to be produced from clean energy sources when you have them.

So why not just make alcohol with this clean technology, then you don't need new engines or a new distribution network?

zero emissions?

Apart from those in the refineries where they make the hydrogen from crude oil, you mean?

Eurovision Song Contest uncorks 1975 vote shocker: No 'Nul point'!

Re: Somehow

It was only ever worth watching to see how badly the 1970s-tech scoring system and international phone links broke down. Once they got that all sorted it took the fun out if it.

Modern technology, ruins everything...

Good thing this dev quit. I'd have fired him. Out of a cannon. Into the sun

Re: thermonuclear FORTRAN

All of my engagements to reverse-engineer any fortran code ended up in a complete re-write in C, as it was faster.

For you, maybe, but that just shows your lack of skills as a programmer.

That's why only computer scientists write good code

In my experience they write absolutely crap code.

Sure, it's elegant, well-structed, well-commented, and may even do what it's meant to, but since computer scientists know little or nothing about the hardware, and are generally terrified they might break it, the code tends to be mind-boggling slow and inefficient. It has little error handling, since they don't know what might go wrong, and is often prone to race conditions because they have no idea what's happening in the real world of the system. Resource management is non-existent, since resources are assumed to be either infinite, or somebody else's problem (Java garbage collection, anyone?).

A ghood programer can write fast, efficient, well-commented code without making it cryptic or unmaintainable. That can rarely be said of "computer scientists". In the real world, computing isn't a science, it's engineering.

Re: IBM 1130

There are several still working 1130s around these days, BTW

http://www.tnmoc.org/news/current-projects/ibm-1130-system-restoration-during-2011

Re: All code should be rewritten from scratch...

Making a 50-tooth cog wheel shouldn't be done by starting with a 49-tooth wheel and adding an extra one somewhere.

That would be silly, there's nowhere to put it.

Much easier to start with a 51-tooth wheel and file one off.

Re: Let me guess, that last one was an academic?

I used to number my punched cards in pencil on the back just in case I dropped the stack. That was considered to be a useful innovation at the time...

That's why Fortran only uses columns 1-72, you punch sequence numbers in the last 8 columns (going up in 10s so you can insert missing cards later, just like you used to do for BASIC line numbers). Then when you drop the stack you can load them in any order and have the system reorder them for you.

Pilot posts detailed MS Flight Sim video of how to land Boeing 737

Maybe all these fly-by-wire aircraft need a big red button in the middle of the dashboard marked "emergency land"?

(only half :) )

Telemarketers hit with £70,000 fine for cold-calling pensioners

Re: Eitherway

I find it impressive that they managed to identify the cold caller behind a withheld number.

"Withheld" just means that the called person's exchange was asked not to present the number. The telco still has the number, and can release it when asked by some suitably-authorized person. Since this lowlife was running his companies in the UK he didn't even have the 'protection' of a faked international number to help him. Bet he'll not make that mistake again.

The fine is a joke, he'll just put it in the 'expenses' column of his cooked books and move on to the next scam.

Bomb hoax server hoster reportedly cuffed in France

Re: Pushing it ? Why ?

I believe it's a criminal offence in Britain to drive away from the scene of an accident.

And France has a specific offence of "non-assistance to a person in danger" used in such cases.

Virgin Atlantic co-pilot dazzled by laser

The local "sports bar" CCTV system has outside cameras but they're always on the blink when the cops want to use them to see who was lazing aircraft.

Sounds like a good way to ensure their drinks licence isn't renewed next time.

iPhones clock-blocked and crocked by setting date to Jan 1, 1970

Re: Microsoft a decade ahead of Apple

At least DEC used a standard (that's the Smithsonian's base date) and didn't just pull a random number out of the air. VMS will also still be going strong long after 2038, when other 32-bit OSes will overflow into negative time.

Bank fail: Ready or not, here's our new software

If the software wasn’t ready – and it clearly wasn’t – it wouldn’t have been expensive to inform customers that the release date was being delayed. I doubt anyone would have cared. But by pushing it out the door unfinished they created such a fiasco...

I've had that argument so many times, sometimes with managers who listren, sometimes with ones who wont.

Late delivery of a project annoys the hell out of a customer, but if it works they soon forget. Deliver something on time but broken and they'll be reminded every day they have to use the stuff.

Don't Fedex your tapes, people! We're so fast it's SANdulous – WANrockIT

@ClaireB

The article says "We're told 40ms of latency is approximately half way across the USA. Transmitting 1GB through an unaccelerated link with that latency took 5 mins 20 secs. WANrockIT accelerated it to 11.8 secs."

Since latency has no actual impact on one-way data transfer speed, any improvement is surely down to delaying acknowledgements, either by using large packets or large windows? Using large packets has a problem on noisy links, since even a small number of retries can kill performance. You're still subject to the laws of physics, and I suspect that a well-tuned TCP/IP stack with judicious packet and window sizes could match these figures, at least for a bulk transfer copy protocol.

When the round trip latency was increased to 360ms, simulating a longer WAN distance, the raw transmission time for 1GB was 42.6 mins while with WANrockIT it decreased to 12 seconds.

So they're using a bulk-transfer protocol with large window sizes, and possibly separate streams within the physical link? Is this really all that novel?

How does it compare with FTPing a tape image? Or even the classic "747 full of DVDs (or Bluerays)" ?

TalkTalk confesses: Scammers have data about our engineers' visits to your home

considering cutting ties with its Indian call centre provider after three employees at the site were arrested for allegedly scamming customers.

Considering "cutting ties" ??? Wouldn't cancelling the contract right away and launching criminal proceedings against the company be more appropriate?

Official UN panel findings on embassy-squatter released. Assange: I'm 'vindicated'

Times change

He's had his 15 minutes of fame, and trying to get notoriety as a fugitive hadn't worked out for him (although admittedly it's hard to play the romantic fugitive when the charges he's sought on include rape) so I suppose playing the "martyr" card was an obvious next step.

Sorry Julien, but you were last decade's leaker, Snowden is the fashion these days.

What's it like to work for a genius and Olympic archer who's mates with Richard Branson?

For one awkward moment I read that title as "Olympic archer who mates with Richard Branson".

I need more coffee.

Fired Norse Corp CEO blames the media

Curious omission

I do want to address the implication that the company was somehow conducting less than above-board operations. The word ‘scam’ was used

He then goes on to say how hurtful it was for this ex-employee to use that word. Nowhere that I can see does he get even close to denying the accusation though, let alone refuting it.

Scottish MP calls for drone-busting eagles

Re: Exploitation

FFS leave our animals alone to do their own hunting - for food.

They are hunting for food, just indirectly, they get fed when they bring the drone home. Think of it as the market economy in action. More of a capitalist flying eagle than a running dog, though.

Assange will 'accept arrest' on Friday if found guilty

Re: Maybe not Friday.

until he is guaranteed safe passage.

To where?

13 CubeSats to ride mighty US lifter

Re: 70 tons lift?

SLS's "Block 1" configuration, capable of lifting 70 metric tonnes. Ultimately, NASA hopes the evolved system will provide "an unprecedented lift capability of 130 metric tons"

50 years on, and they've only just managed to reinvent the Saturn V. I'll bet it costs a tad more, though.

BT blames 'faulty router' for mega outage. Did they try turning it off and on again?

Re: fawlty router?

was the techie named Manuel?

RTFM ?

Re: Horsefeathers -- was it a DDOS or a failed upgrade?

Our router/modems were being assigned addresses in the 172.16.0.0/12 subnet on their WAN interfaces, for a few hours, then suddenly they were assigned proper BT external addresses, and away we went.

Somebody activated the CG NAT too soon?

Layoffs! Lawsuits! Losses! ... Yahoo! is! in! an! L! of! a! mess!

Good to see some energy

"in parallel to the execution of the management plan,"

I applaud the enthusiastic approach, but wouldn't a simple "resignation of the management" plan be sufficient?

When customers try to be programmers: 'I want this CHANGED TO A ZERO ASAP'

customized codebases

we used to customize our product for individual customers, so we maintained a DAT tape of the source code specific to each customer.

Rarely a good idea. Over time as the codebases diverge even the simplest bug fix becomes harder and harder to to apply to each custom build, and takes longer each time. Eventually you end up doing nothing but housekeeping and no new development (I've seen it happen, just before the company in question ran out of money).

It's also risky, we once had a supplier that did this with #ifdef-type processing. When looking at a new code drop one day I saw code that was unrelated to our product. Not only that, it was clearly code for a competitor that I should not have seen. Relations with the supplier were very cordial, one phone call later produced a new code drop, and an embarrassed request to delete every copy of the old one and forget we ever saw it. Trust works both ways, so of course we did so, nothing more ever came of it.

NOTHING trumps extra pizza on IT projects. Not even more people

"Small Teams' != "DevOps"

Small teams do work better, just as small meetings do, but that has nothing to do with DevOps or its principles.

Have a small team do the design, and especially the inter-component interface design, and distribute that to a number of smal teams each of which owns a component. Have the testing also divided into small teams, each of which tests some sub-assembly. You'll get far better results than you would with a single large team trying to do everything, since in my experience such a team will keep "improving" the interfaces, inconsistently. Whether those teams use waterfall, DevOps, or any other methodology is largely irrelevant.

Of course, it takes good management to get those teams working together constructively. All too often "DevOps" is just an excuse for "nobody wants to manage this properly so we'll just let the smart guys do their own thing and cross our fingers". Certainly, with that approach "small teams" makes it easier to spot the fuckups early, but that's no reason to equate "small teams" to "DevOps"

Why the Sun is setting on the Boeing 747

Re: Some dodgy facts in there

In fact most of the time a twin is so over-powered to allow for the engine failure case that it has much higher performance after take-off than a 4-engine aircraft -

There are exceptions. I've watched a 747 take off at Heathrow, ambling down almost the whole runway so slowly and for such a long time that it seemed it was never going to get airborne. A minute or two later a Concorde entered the same runway. The usual earth-shaking roar, and what seemed like 1/4 of the runway later it pointed its nose into the sky and climbed effortlessly away. Hardly a fair comparison, I know, even though they did both have 4 engines.

I won't miss 747's at all, they certainly put the "coach" into "coach class". Concorde, though... :(

Land Rover Defender dies: Production finally halted by EU rules

Re: Just

4x4s have no place on the school run! Your little darlings will be just as safe in a "normal" car...

And as safe, and much healthier, on a bicycle.

'Printer Ready'. Er… you actually want to print? What, right now?

I improvise at the client meeting with the help of a flipchart and a thick black pen

When I'm the client I'm much happier with someone who can stand up in front of a blank page and wing it than I am with a suit who mumbles his way through a bunch of powerpoint.

The monitor didn't work but the problem was between the user's ears

I remember our sysadmin being called to our director's office to fix his "faulty" monitor. After turning the brightness knob back to a sensible setting she just made it into our office and shut the door before exploding into helpless giggles...

You've seen things people wouldn't believe – so tell us your programming horrors

I remember something similar in a VMS Fortran program. VAXen had a block move instruction, somewhat similar in operation to the C memcpy() function. Someone (I think it might have been me, but I can't remember) got the source & destination addresses backwards. Instead of rotating a buffer by 4 bytes when that line was reached, it shifted the whole program address space *except* the buffer by 4 bytes. Neeedless to say the program crashed almost immediately, but the resultant stack trace was incomprehensible, since everything was 4 bytes off. It took ages to figure out what was happening.

Stop everything! PC sales did increase in the UK over Christmas

Lies, damned lies, etc.

Windows 10 Home-based machines accounted for 78 per cent of retail PC sales and the OS was running on 35 per cent of business machines

Truly "running on", or just "licensed on"?

It's true that W10 is driving desktop sales, I'm about to buy a new PC with W7 installed, while I still can. It'll come with a W10 license + downgrade rights, but W7 preinstalled. How will that show up in Context's figures?

Pubs good for the soul: Official

Re: control group

Friendship and community are probably the two most important factors influencing our health and wellbeing

And Professor Robin Dunbar should know.