Posts by CFtheNonPartisan 51 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Sep 2017
Reality is a bit of crap code today, full of every sort of hole anyone could imagine, is considered superior to a better piece of code next week by those who pay the bills. Being first to market is all they care about. It is not always the IT staff, it is always their employers.
I thought software/application businesses and thus their licensing had a single purpose, that being to enrich the owner(s) and secondarily pay their staff. Look where Oracle licensing got Larry Ellison. SAP jealously watches on. They do not care a rat's about slowing takeup of cloud services, humans, nature, or anything else not directly equivalent to hard currency in their hands.
If only all applications only ran Linpack and nothing else. A colleague decades ago stated 'I can vectorise to 99.5% and I can parallelise to 99.5% but I cannot do both at the same time'. Make systems dependent on GPUs and voila, it is a 'poor man's parallel vector system'. Software matters more than hardware and scalability makes for a fascinating problem including the necessity of redundant computations burning FLOPS and watts, keeping it over simplified.
s/a dinosaur from the days HPC was called supercomputing
We had an issue with a construction crew starting to saw, sand and paint inside a computer room and had a serious chat with them. Next day we found all the server cabinets on the verge of overheating because each was encased in plastic wrap to keep the dust out. Lucky we found the wrapped equipment fairly quickly. The computer room was operating in an ongoing building construction site but was supposedly cordoned off from ongoing works without special arrangements.
We had an issue with a construction crew starting to saw, sand and paint inside a computer room and had a serious chat with them. Next day we found all the server cabinets on the verge overheating because each was encased in plastic wrap to keep the dust out. Lucky we found the wrapped equipment fairly quickly. The computer room was operating in an ongoing building construction site but was supposedly cordoned off from ongoing works without special arrangements.
Everything old is new again. Liquid (freon, water) cooling was supplanted by air that is being supplanted by liquid (various) cooling. Vector processors have been supplanted by GPUs that are vector processors. RISC once ruled and economics put CISC in the driver seat - but ARM is starting to wave. Big whoopee on all this 'new stuff'.
For thought. A bit of arrogance will be the west's downfall. It was only a few decades ago that Chinese technologies were almost prehistoric. The west was dismissive. Slowly Chinese steps from behind became louder, their sophistication improved, and their underlying infrastructure such as supercomputing capability grew to equal and exceed the west. The capitalistic west will sell anything for a few dollars and the Chinese are happy to buy it or appropriate (steal) it if the west is not selling. Know how and doing it are intertwined but 'doing it' wins against 'knowing how to do it' when they are not one and the same side.
With so much manufactured in China and 'Chinese Taiwan', if or when there is reunification or even if not, who 'owns' the underlying capability of the electronics industry? Globalists have taught there is a common good and a common profit motive and global inter-reliance will temper political interests. Ukraine, Russia and Cuba (in spite of US sanctions) disprove it at least in a century time window. China is today's 300 tonne gorilla and the west seems to be slow marching in response.
3 PCs, 2 being clone whitebox desktops although with different applications, and the 3rd a new LG Gram notebook. 1 desktop installed no worries. 2nd desktop installed after about 3 hours of googling and trying this and that and finally eureka.
The notebook never would install and the errors kept changing as I did one thing and then another; I finally did an in place Win 11 upgrade atop Win 11 and after the 'upgrade' it claimed the notorious update was included.
FWIW I had 40+ years in ICT and have been around the block many times, but out in far orbit trying to deal with Microsoft. On one hand it is amazing so much complexity works as well as it does, but on the other the errors system is almost juvenile/novice most of us in other companies got over decades ago. Simplistically if you know what an error code is about and what probably caused it you automatically fix it in the software and keep going, not send the user bonkers.
Linpack is techno-porn on its best day. Even Jack Dongarra was and might still be fascinated by the attention it has attracted over decades. He was able to make a side career of it. Last I met Jack his reply was, to paraphrase, 'At least the computer has to stay up long enough to run it' as a defense of its usefulness. That was still in the times when uptime could be in hours or a day or two, not with modern resilient hardware.
Another celebration of arm waving in computerdom. Not impressed by that, nor on the amount of misinformation from the esteemed academics, or possibly as mangled by the reporter who misreported it?
Last I was involved (a decade ago) the models could get down to grids a few km square but the amount of compute power to run a climate model at that resolution was unattainable. That was saved for localised weather forecasts requiring obtainable compute power. Physics of land, ocean, atmosphere, cloud, and a bit of air pollution got included.
It is about compute power not language, and Fortran has always been about optimal efficient computing for mathematical models. Nobody needs to read the code excepting the programmers and scientists, and if they are that incapable?
It is not just bottom end PCs without TPM or a slot. I have an upper mid-platform with a 2 year old MB bought for quality components and reliability. No TPM slot. If M$ goes arrogantly into the future it could be what breaks their back (I don't really believe that but remain hopeful they can only overstep so far before it comes back at them.)
I use W10 because of a single application that only runs on it, and not on any of the emulators, but putting a VM on linux and 'any old W10' on the VM could suit nicely. So far I am too lazy, but with a bit of encouragement, maybe not so much to see if it works.
Circa 1980 I took a systems job at a computer facility that was in the top 5 most powerful non-government installations globally. Getting the tour I was led to the systems room adjacent to the main computer room, full of tapes and manuals. My first observation was there was a big red unshielded 'panic button' just above the light switch; I commented it should have had a plexiglass or other protective device so it did not get pushed unintentionally. My concern was dismissed since only we systems types, some management, and cleaners had access to the room. A few weeks later a new cleaner went into the room and expecting to turn on the lights, pushed The Button. The fallout took months before it was over and all the kit returned to its normal stability - in those days stability was a failure every week or two, that became every few hours for a few days. The day after, a plexiglass box materialised to protect the button.
The joys of being a toady to the US government. The evidence in the wild is that Huawei has some sloppy processes and sometimes misses best practices, but the supposed 'smoking gun' is the founder has ties to the Chinese Communist Party, eg the government. The Americans don't seem to care about open malfeasance or anything else on their own turf as long as those dollars keep flowing, but let a competing system have a go? Not on to them and the long arm of the US will do whatever it takes to keep its vassals in line. If the US is not at the helm it will change the rules in whatever way is required to put the competition out of business. Been there, seen that in other high tech industries.
MS learned how to use the same name for differing products from the US government. I have an adobe form from Treasury that has to be signed, sealed, and uploaded every year. They changed it 3 years ago and the old form no longer worked but the error was not very useful until one went back to the web site and found the small print about not reusing the 'old' downloaded form. The new form has the same download link, the same version, the same instructions, the same examples, and the same dates. I suggested they should update the version number or at least the date and would have spent my time better talking to a stone.
It is life under overpaid overemployed geniuses.
Supercomputer Shmoopercomputer. These are almost a joke because there is only so much parallelism in the universe of modelling. To quote an old colleague, I can vectorize the code (problem) to 99%, I can parallelize the code to 99%, but I cannot do both at the same time so all those processors and GPUs reflect prurient interests for the buyers and sellers, and serious challenges for the users.
Conclusion, these so-called supercomputers are essentially big, fancy time sharing systems where the application could be equally served by smaller systems, and the workload by a number of smaller systems. As for the huge file system(s)? Where is my data, how did it get there, and how do I get it back - need another few thousand processors for that :D ?
Microsoft has long been envious of Oracle and their license police where anytime revenue and profit needs a kick up the Oracle (and now Microsoft?) license T&C change or customers get audited to be sure every last seat is accounted for at the highest per dollar cost possible. Hitting non-commercial institutions because they can is what they do these days. Capitalism at its finest where there is no common good, just dividends and bonuses in play. They could gradually kill their customer base and survive on Xboxes. (/snark)
Cray Inc is not really Cray Research. After the SGI takeover Cray 'assets' (ie much of what was left of Cray Research) was sold to Tera Computer who then changed their name to Cray Inc and moved 'HQ' from Minneapolis and Chippewa Falls to Seattle. It has been a long windy road for the Crayons who persevered.
3 fine high priced consultants from the sub-continent were doing some database development. They would 'put data in the database' and then demonstrate 'retrieving data from the database'. Management was impressed by the speed of their database implementation, until it was rebooted and for some reason every time the system was rebooted the previous session's data disappeared. A mere hack of a programmer on-staff realised the hot shots did not know the difference between putting data on the stack as compared to storing it in the database. The hot shots were not sacked and the staffer got no recognition.
Back in the 1980's I knew some Americans who made sure exported US equipment was 'suitably equipped' for the destination market. All had very high security clearances and 'special talents'. The company they worked for has long since been assimilated by a large defence company. Then there was also CoCom that kept American technology in and sometimes better foreign technology out, of the US. I presume that work continues under new generations and descriptions. But look over there at China and Huawei, scary, eh? All the way with the USA? Argh!
I don't think Australia is on Trump's pg ignorance bandwagon, the Australian conservatives originated it and Trump is only copying it as best he can.
Search for the illustrious George Brandis trying to answer what metadata is. Pathetic does not do justice. It has not gotten any better since.
IBM good with software? They 'donated' their OS to Japan Inc decades ago, and set Japan Inc back a decade by doing so. There are many governments around the world who signed big contracts with IBM only to be embarrassed by the incompetence delivered. IBM points to government trail bosses, but governments hired IBM to get it done and they did not know how or could not execute. Industry? They would never admit how bad it could be. I once visited a major 'IBM supported site' as a privileged guest and was invited into all sorts of meetings - until the weekly pow wow with IBM when I was asked to leave the room. Enough written?
IBM has more ownership of failures across government than any single company has a right to own, yet instead of being barred they keep getting contracts. Therein lies the problem - procurement failures. You cannot blame your customer for your own failures that you should have had the capability of working out prior to the fail - unless you did not understand your own business vis a vis the customer requirement.
There is a certain amount of karma that America's failure to enact workers rights gives cause for confrontational situations such as this when one loses his position. There is often no due process or fairness required, just a kick out the door with 2 weeks pay.
If you have rights in the US it is because you have a contract or a union has one on your behalf. It is rarely because you have legislated anything. Without that the employer can fly lose and fast if s/he wants.
America, where everything has a price and selling is job 1 through 1,000. Watching commercials on TV is the hard sell. "Medicine One is new. It treats mental illness and stupidity. See your doctor and ask if it is right he/she prescribe it for you!" It is a socially failed experiment no matter how many billionaires it makes through lop sided taxes.
Ziggy oversaw Telstra losing its grip. For him it is business as usual because he does not comprehend how a technically underpinned business needs to operate. As for him being a Liberal Stooge, what is new? He was, is, and always will be, and is at least as (in)competent and arrogant as any of them.
I have an older Canon scanner. After XP Canon abandoned the drivers that Win7 refused to load, and arrogantly told me I needed a new scanner. Google discovered another model's scanner driver worked for my scan ner just fine on Win7 and now Win10 although I have to manually select-load it. What a great business IT has become. Microsoft is just one of the group.
My guess is restricting admin privileges enough to pass an audit. It is the only choice that involves little work. Patches do over some users because patches break or change things. Whinging about loss of admin privilege or slower turnaround for resolving simple problems is less onerous than having something fall over.
When you are a government without a plan, no policy beyond a dollar in a pocket, no clue, struggling to spell s.c.i.e.n.c.e, and their only capability is answering Dorothy Dix's in question time, stardust and BS seem better than their typical day, Some voters might believe, but those with functioning brains understand it for what it is (not).
Windows complexity reminds one of 100% of all government employees having to agree on what to order for lunch, and from where. Their management seems to think the more complex the better. I see Windows is an Intel-Microsoft arrangement to force everyone to buy newer more power computers every few years, just to run Windows.
You should encourage her to use it to make sure it keeps working. My partner's dual SIM smart phone went dead when Optus turned off the 2G and she didn't notice for 3 weeks! One or the other SIM would work, but not both at the same time. A vendor version Android upgrade fixed it, and she suddenly got lots of weeks and days old messages :D
What a self serving arrogant clown. He reflects those who appointed him. The business model is as faulty as the preponderance of not fit for purpose technologies. NBN gets guaranteed revenue and the RSPs take all the risk while the customers just suck it up. Does it ever get better even in a ponzi scheme?
