* Posts by Ian Rogers

132 publicly visible posts • joined 2 May 2007

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Big Blue's big iron daddy Gene Amdahl dies aged 92

Ian Rogers

Single thread...

...for 92 years and now shuffles off to the parallel plane.

Hey devs. Forget Siri – Amazon's Alexa will show you a $100m good time

Ian Rogers
FAIL

wtf?

Elsewhere in this excellent journal we've had articles wondering why women find IT an uncomfortable profession, then we have this headline "Alexa show you a good time" and a fantasy image getting her kit off...

Even as an egalitarian I normally let this sort of thing slide, but this one seems crass even for a Friday.

Vodafone to spend more time hanging out at bus stops

Ian Rogers

Minority Report

Hello Mr. Yakamoto and welcome back to the GAP.

Supercomputer water-cooling comes to solar power

Ian Rogers

The trick is *useful* energy

They're getting 12KW of electricity out of 40m^2 of collector (the area of the mirrors) so that's still 30% efficient using the rule of thumb that there's 1KW of sun energy per square meter.

The extra 20KW of hot water is interesting, but how useful is that on a hot sunny day?...

Netscape plugins about to stop working in Chrome for Mac

Ian Rogers

NPAPI already RIP on Linux

NPAPI in Chrome has been killed in Linux since chrome 35 - http://blog.chromium.org/2014/05/update-on-npapi-deprecation.html - which kills Java! Without an alternative way to access sites with Java plugins I've seen various comments of people moving back to Firefox.

Google seems to be shooting itself in the foot with this, I can't see this being a good way to force Go onto websites....

Who will kill power companies? TESLA, says Morgan Stanley

Ian Rogers

Left hand meet right hand

Morgan Stanley are scare-mongering that cheap batteries will destroy demand for incumbent energy utilities due to everyone making their own power, but there are others scare-mongering that the increase of electric cars on the road will mean that the utilities won't be able to cope with the load!...

In fact cheap, grid-scale energy storage is the only thing that can make the whole system work: wind energy only becomes useful if you can store it until needed, along with the excess energy from nuclear power in the low-demand periods. Add in some bog standard Rankine-Cycle Energy From Waste burners for peak demand and Bob's your uncle.

BitTorrent launches decentralised crypto-fied chat app

Ian Rogers

Re: Whenever toast be a croissant and one be loving the COFFEE.*

Good grief, I haven't seen Pop11 referenced for years!

But amanfromMars is certainly written in Lolcode (or possibly Brainf*ck)

Volunteers slam plans to turn Bletchley Park into 'geeky Disneyland'

Ian Rogers

relevant petition

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/59686

World's OLDEST human DNA found in leg bone – but that's not the only boning going on...

Ian Rogers

Re: The meaning of "Theory"

Likewise, as Tim Minchin says: Gravity is also explained by a scientific theory. Now please leave your house from an upstairs window.

Ian Rogers

African or European?

So it's not the picture of evolution that's been "thrown into question" but the migratory habits of your early coconut carrying Neanderthal...

What's the first Kinetic Ethernet hard drive? Psst, it's the 4TB Terascale

Ian Rogers

cycles of the mind

Instead of having all those cat5 cables in forest from these NAS boxes to the switch it would be great to have some kind of enclosure or tray with its own switch to slide the disks into and have just one or two network cables per tray.

...then perhaps aggregate the NIC and processor onto the tray and maybe add some kind of RAID logic

...of course that would require a faster processor but that's amortised over the disk bundle

...connect the disks to the tray with a fast interface that's already a standard perhaps and put the disks into caddies so you can hot-swap them

...add some memory too and a general api that's also already a standard

Hmm, what did I just invent?

Seagate: Fibre Channel? RAID? SATA? File System? All RUBBISH

Ian Rogers

A NAS by any other name...

So they've built some single-drive NAS boxes the size of a disk drive and with a proprietary api? Colour me unimpressed...

Facebook lowballs on initial IPO price

Ian Rogers
Thumb Down

Rob(b)in' Hood

This bubble will burst, but it won't cause a catastrophe, just a redistribution of wealth from the greedy and/or slow to the smart, quick, con artists (sorry, investment advisors).

Unfortunately there will be a number of pension funds run by the slow lot...

Yahoo! countersued! by! Facebook! in patent! spat!

Ian Rogers
Holmes

It seems money is knowledge

So, you can buy some patents from another company and then act all hurt and pouty-faced 'cos someone else copied something you did from before you even existed.

You know, the US patent system seemed so perfect up until now but this appears to be ever so slightly out of kilter.

Gosh!

Privacy worth piffling pennies to polled punters

Ian Rogers
Thumb Down

Flawed study?

I'm always happy to give an email address, or accept adverts by email, 'cos I just give a fake or add them to my spam list after the initial verification.

My mobile phone number is a different matter as there's no spam filter yet.

You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

Ian Rogers

So cynical...

...it hurts. But I suspect it's true.

We all know someone who produces nothing but glossy presentations and brown-nosing the big boss. Unfortunately I have integrity and self-respect so I'm happy with a lower bonus.

Playboy, Virgin Galactic tout zero-grav nookie in spaaaaace!

Ian Rogers
Paris Hilton

Drinking what?

Floating around with globules of random "liquid"...

Facebook preps for public showtime with $100bn price tag

Ian Rogers
Thumb Down

50 bucks per eye

$100 per user!!

This is either a lastminute.com moment (which will be very funny) or a sad bubble moment...

Bitcoin slump follows senators’ threats

Ian Rogers
Facepalm

3 deciduous forests buying one ships peanut

A "currency" that's "not meant to last"? Ooh, that sounds stable and worth investing in...

Bitcoin is an artifically limited asset that has no actual value and only perceived value. Apart from early miners who were effectively just handed cash, it's only worth now is to speculators who will buy, hold for a bit and then sell to the gullible.

Soon, when no-one wants to buy, there will be a crash when bitcoin's perceived value will match its actual value and a lot of mugs will be left holding nothing.

Cabinet Office talks to Facebook & co about new ID system

Ian Rogers
Unhappy

Who do I trust with my identification

Banks yes, Facebook no.

Facebook moves into Sun Microsystems carcass

Ian Rogers
Black Helicopters

Virus

By His Noodly Appendages! Facebook isn't a virus, it's a bacteria - its mouldy spores spreading into all dead (or soon to be dead) parts of society...

$50bn-valued Facebook goes public about going public

Ian Rogers
Thumb Down

How to make money from Facebook

1. Splunk some cash in during the "insider dealing" underpants round.

2. Sell quickly during the IPO before it does a lastminute.com

3. Profit

Wind turbine bonanza expected in Hull

Ian Rogers

When the wind blows

"...generate just over 84,000 gigawatt-hours annually. ...approximately one-quarter of present day UK electricity demand"

As long as you can store it between generation and demand that is. How many pumped-hydro stations do we have? Anywhere near enough?

Investors fight to buy secret special-offer Facebook equity

Ian Rogers
FAIL

Balls of Titanium

Every pic of that smug git Zuckerman here on El REg makes my skin crawl.

But all credit to him - valuing Facebook at 100$ per account (200$ or more per active user) is the bluff of the century!

The "investors" are going to lose their shirts...

Hefty physicist: Global warming is 'pseudoscientific fraud'

Ian Rogers
Boffin

In this case curse the sinners not the sin.

Harold Lewis makes the careful and accurate distinction that it's the global warming movement that is corrupt (and therefore possibly mistaken), not the issues around global warming.

The use of the word "incontrovertible" in an issue as complex as climate change is of course repulsive to any decent scientist.

I think Prof Lewis would be quite happy if global warming is proved to be true - he's a scientist, he doesn't care either way - but he is obviously insensed by the way a single point of view is being steamrollered through a supposedly scientific organisation. He wants the debate to be open and treated the same way as any other in the APS.

Las Vegas death ray roasts hotel guests

Ian Rogers
Thumb Up

Turn a problem...

...into a feature. World's largest sundial anyone? Place tubs of water in the appropriate place, when they start to boil it's time to head to the bar...

Monster Afghan spy airship to feature quad drinking straws

Ian Rogers
Alien

Tinny Overlords

Compare the Lockheed with this http://www.daleklinks.co.uk/gallery/daryl-joyce/daleks-flying-saucer

I'm just saying...

IBM declares undying love for Mozilla's Firefox

Ian Rogers

standards != implementation

There's an important distinction between standards - particularly in representation, filing and API - and an implementation of those standards.

IBM is saying that open standards are good and that they'll use the best implementation of those standards. Firefox just happens to be the best implementation at the moment. The benefit of focusing on open standards rather than implementation as that one can always switch to a better tool/program if one comes along. There's a reason why MS has always dragged its feet about making their API and filing "standards" open...

Bono doubles down on Facebook

Ian Rogers
Thumb Down

29x !

IMHO if/when facebook does IPO it will be the next lastminute.com - there's no way the market will stump up 29bil for this nonesense.

... and it will be very very funny :-)

The market may pay 5-10 times multiple though, which will still be a lot.

No secret to stopping XSS and SQL injection attacks

Ian Rogers
Thumb Up

Little Bobby Tables

Ob XKCD (you'll be getting a lot of these) - http://xkcd.com/327/

Bloody George's Budget: How bad is it really?

Ian Rogers

Three major deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut

May I refer you to the works of Douglas Adams, in particular the bit where the Golgafrinchans adopt leaves as legal tender...

Facebook in 'solid net profit' shocker

Ian Rogers
Thumb Down

ROI?

How much investor capital was consumed to get there? When will the return on investment be? If it's still in the red then it's still a hobby not a business (although a very big one).

Siphon Wars: Pressurist weighs into Gravitite boffin

Ian Rogers
Alien

Atmospheric pressure FTW

It's atmospheric pressure that powers siphoning and obviously so.

The pressure at the two liquid surfaces are equal, but now imagine travelling "up" the long pipe - the higher you go the lower the pressure will be due to the weight of the liquid below you acting against the surface pressure. When you're level with the end of the short pipe this difference in pressure is what drives the siphoning.

Telegraph trips over the Large Hardon Collider

Ian Rogers
Thumb Up

Spellchecker

The Telegraph has "hardon" in it's spellchecker dictionary?...

'The LHC will implode the Moon or PUT OUT THE SUN'

Ian Rogers
Headmaster

Wandering around all by itself

Mark, if you want to advance the cause of science how about starting with some simple maths:

1. Given the collision energy at the LHC what is the diameter of the event horizon if a black hole is created?

2. How does that compare to the diameter of electron orbit around the proton/neutron core of an atom.

3. Therefore, as the blackhole oscilates from one side of the earth, through the centre, to the other side just how much matter is impacted by the event horizon?

Clue: it's very, very, like you-know *very* small...

Linux coders do it for money

Ian Rogers

multi-monitors?

The last time I tried Ubuntu Karmic it was still rubbish at doing heterogeneous multi monitor display - i.e. laptop (Sony Vaio) plus external monitor. It's the only thing stopping me from going fully Microsoft free...

Intel cash pays down AMD debt

Ian Rogers
WTF?

Ocean Finance

"and offer up to $500m in new senior notes to help finance the debt-reduction scheme"

When individuals take out a loan to pay off another one it's stupid. When corporations do it it's sound business practice...

ZFS gets inline dedupe

Ian Rogers
Thumb Up

Lustre

I'm waiting for replication and de-duplication to come to Lustre, then everyone else can shut up shop and go home...

Virgin hijacks empty pages

Ian Rogers
Boffin

3rd Way

Now the cat's out of the bag, like spam, this isn't going to stop. The exec's at the top of ISPs won't understand what the issue really is - they can only see the internet as the web and think this is a great idea to make money from <ahem> I mean "help" the users.

So DNS needs to come up with a 3rd way - a response that includes a NXDOMAIN but also an address of a "useful server" to redirect some protocols to.

Tr.im cuts air supply, says no money in tiny Web 2.0 pot

Ian Rogers
FAIL

Shock Horror

Webtards won't pay for free service!

Who'da thunk it...

Groovy punts SQL turbocharger

Ian Rogers
FAIL

We respect the laws of physics

- by eliminating the "wait" -

This is of course marketing nonsense. There will still be a "wait", they've just made it short enough not to notice.

Microsoft's Azure cloud price pipped by Amazon's Linux

Ian Rogers
Unhappy

The Sun sets?

Sun started all this on-demand cluster malarky with www.network.com and then got left in the dust by a book seller, a search engine and now the horned beast!

What happened???

CGI Thunderbirds sadly not go

Ian Rogers
Black Helicopters

CGI would be rubbish

...just like the CGI remake of Spitting Image.

Do it with puppets on the BBC and call it ThundaBirds to get down wit' da yoof and stuff ITV's hold on the name Thunderbirds :-)

Black Helicopter is Thunderbird 6...

Costa Rican snacks on boyf's todger

Ian Rogers
Paris Hilton

balanced diet?

Went for the meat but (fortunately) not the veg?

David Carradine found dead in Bangkok

Ian Rogers
Unhappy

Ahh so

Grasshopper,

You hop no more.

Russian blows off ex-boyf's todger with firecrackers

Ian Rogers
Coat

Dinner

Did they have Coq au Bang?

Mine's the jacket without the trousers...

London to become Europe's e-car capital, says Mayor

Ian Rogers
Boffin

500V

The new "standard" euro e-plug - http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/05/21/rwe_plug/ - only goes up to 400V...

Permabit archives your bulk data

Ian Rogers
Thumb Down

Nice advert

Not much analysis....

Darling banks on offshoring to save UK plc

Ian Rogers
Thumb Down

offshoring ... the civil service

With 3 hours till the budget comes this is all speculation... but IMHO this would be a crazy idea!

Forgetting the worsening (if possible) civil "service" by having it done thousands of miles away in a foreign language there's a distinct Total Cost of Ownership benefit to keeping it in-country: for every local job you outsource you have to add in the extra cost of paying job-seekers and other benefits to the sacked person, plus the lost revenue of those ex-earners no long spending cash in local shops and entertainments etc.

This is the one bit of protectionism that the Yanks have got right. It is *much* more expensive to spend tax money abroad than it is to keep it in-house, even if the local wage costs are higher at first glance.

U2 song whacked my hard drive

Ian Rogers
Thumb Up

Vibration

Vibration kills disks. See this video of a Sun engineer shouting at a disk stack and measuring the performance :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4

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