Slashdot Mirror


User: drunkahol

drunkahol's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
113
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 113

  1. Re:Why is Amazon the bad guy? on Amazon Will Resume Selling Apple TV, Google's Chromecast (axios.com) · · Score: 1

    How on earth can you compare the Amazon Marketplace with the Google or Apple websites?

    Google and Apple sell only their own hardware on their own stores (perhaps will the odd authorised accessory).

    Amazon purport to sell anything via their Marketplace, except they had deliberately chosen to block Google and Apple products.

  2. Re:Desktop Repos? on CentOS Linux Version 7 Released On x86_64 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Guess that's why we run Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 here.

    Looking to roll out RHEL Workstation 7 sometime Q4. Or tomorrow if some of the Admins/Devs get their way.

  3. Re:ESXi on Ask Slashdot: Little Boxes Around the Edge of the Data Center? · · Score: 1

    2 points. Not all firewalls/routers do NTP. Seems like they're phasing it out. None of our current network kit provides NTP - much to my frustration.
    Second, ntpd can be configured to not care about how big a time difference there is and sync no matter what - "tinker panic 0".

    Cheers

  4. Re:Farewell MODE 7 on BBC Turns Off CEEFAX Service After 38 Years · · Score: 1

    I had (and still have) an Acorn Electron, so the syntax of MODE 7 has always been beyond me :-(

  5. Re:TFS is not accurate. As usual! on BBC Turns Off CEEFAX Service After 38 Years · · Score: 1

    Those two words were "See" and "Facts".

    Makes more sense now yes?

  6. Farewell MODE 7 on BBC Turns Off CEEFAX Service After 38 Years · · Score: 1

    Goodnight

  7. Master & Archimedes models next please on Raspberry Pi Model A Makes First Appearance · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Loving my Model B Pi, but can't help thinking that there's a niche wanting filled for systems that can actually function as a near normal desktop. Something with more grunt, more RAM etc. My phone is a quad core ARM CPU, why not a system a little larger than the Pi for the older audience who remember the Model B, Master & Archimedes the first time round. We have the cashflow and desire to use.
    (just don't make an Electron version - even if it has Plus 1 and Plus 3 expansion modules like I had back in the day!)

    D

  8. Re:multitasking on Why the NTSB Is Wrong About Cellphones · · Score: 1

    Only so long as there are zero drivers who are exactly *on* the median. Just sayin'.

  9. Ask to work from home on Ask Slashdot: Working As an IT Contractor In a War Zone? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Works for me.

    Seriously. They have interwebs and everything out there. Leave the kidnappings to the oil engineers and charity workers.

  10. Re:Archimedes on 30 Years of the BBC Micro · · Score: 1

    My mate had one of those Archimedes - red function keys if I remember?

    I still had an Acorn Electron - but I had the Plus-3 disk drive and Plus-1 cartridge interface. Rendering the initial Mandelbrot set took me 8.5 hours. His machine then managed it in 15 seconds. Man was I gutted.

  11. Block access to highways on BT Ordered To Block Usenet Binaries Index · · Score: 2

    Because some people OR(speed, drive dangerously, fall asleep at the wheel, road rage, drive without insurance, drive without license).

    The list here is quite long. Very few people, in fact, never break any laws on the UK highways.

    Shame on the judge and/or law. Understanding the problem FAIL.

  12. Re:similarity to Libya? on UK Men Get 4 Years For Trying to Incite Riots Via Facebook · · Score: 0

    Who are you and what have you done with "Anonymous Coward"? Even AC's normal comments, miserably low on thought process and deliberately provoking aren't a patch on this steaming pile of manure.

    Are you just visiting this planet? If so, please take everything you've learned so far and delete it. If not, please take everything you've learned so far in life and delete it. You need to start education again from scratch. Try and listen this time round.

  13. Re:WTF? on US Energy Panel Cautiously Endorses Fracking · · Score: 5, Informative

    Fracking is just another tool in the arsenal of getting hydrocarbons from the ground. Doing it too close to underground wells, on the other hand, is a completely different matter. I would suggest that these cases come down to negligence on the part of the individual drilling company rather than an systematic failure of the process as a whole.

  14. Nuclear? on New Scottish Wave Energy Generator Unveiled · · Score: 1

    Perhaps we ought to invest in some nuclear power stations before all that resource gets used up. Don't quote any Fukushima nonsense to me - that event has been handled really well by the team there and the overall result is that the most exposure to radiation of ANYBODY in Japan has been roughly the same as mild sunburn.

    Nuclear needs to deal with the disposal issue, but we really need it to provide the firmest baseline for any energy policy.

    The SNP response? Let's build a 200mile corridor of the biggest pylons in the UK right through the highlands. Quality idea - devoid of nearly any rational thinking.

  15. Re:British and Oysters on New Scottish Wave Energy Generator Unveiled · · Score: 1

    Your figures are embarrassingly one eyed. The commonly held belief in Scotland regarding "ALL OUR OIL AND GAS REVENUE" is so incredibly short sighted. I've worked for several oil companies and I come from Aberdeen. The oil and gas revenue does NOT make Scotland in surplus, nor is it all Scotland's.

    The politics of the SNP government in Edinburgh have been distinct for quite some time. Not a peep comes from Alex Salmond's lips without some underhand comment about Westminster being to blame or holding us back. The task in the UK is to balance the budget. Scotland as an independent nation would never have been able to bale out the banks - regardless of what ideas you peddle as the "truth".

    The financial "shit" in Scotland can easily be traced back to our two big banks fighting it out to take over NatWest. From that point on, financial controls at both banks started to slip and were never checked back to reality. The result is plain for all to see. Wasn't helped by the Chancellor Gordon Brown loosening the controls on the banks on a near yearly basis. Our two big banks took a path of richness that ended up in the financial mess we are all in. They weren't alone, but to try and pin the financial crisis on England is simply ridiculous.

    We are stronger as a whole. I'm British, Scottish and Aberdonian. Don't bother questioning my loyalty to any of those. But perhaps because I live and work outside Scotland gives me a broader outlook. Every country has a favourite target to hit. England just can't get over Germany or Argentina being an enemy at football. As a nation, we seem to pick England as the enemy for anything we choose.

    Sad really.

  16. Re:Better to focus on the big fish on British Tax System Uses Web Robots To Find Cheats · · Score: 2

    Correction. None of the Lords get in by birthright. There are 88 hereditary peers currently from the total of 789 members of the House of Lords. Of the 88 hereditary peers, 15 are elected by the whole house (700 of whom are not hereditary remember). The rest are allocated to political parties to match the ratios of non-hereditary peers.

    So - a pretty piss poor description of the House of Lords from you.

    It also doesn't take much investigation (or even reading of the newspapers) to find that tax evasion is something that happens across the spectrum of political affiliation. When HMRC call it tax avoidance, it becomes legal. Evasion is illegal, avoidance is legal. That's the terminology used.

    Complain all you like about whether one person falls in the evasion or the avoidance pile. Complain all you like about the rules. They do, however, apply to all of us in the UK.

    D

  17. Re:Hierarchical File System? on Fedora 16 To Use Btrfs Filesystem By Default · · Score: 1

    Oh - and inline de-dupe. Much discussion on it in some lists, but it's a killer feature that would be of huge benefit in the right place.

    Argue all you like where that right place is, but an admin ought to have the right to use a tool such as dedupe where they like - even if that may not be your ideal use for dedupe.

  18. Hierarchical File System? on Fedora 16 To Use Btrfs Filesystem By Default · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd like to see btrfs implement a proper block tiering system. They're doing something for storing "hot" blocks on SSD, but what about giving us the full monty? Where I can rank storage types myself, assigning a different cost to each type. Hotest blocks in RAMdrive (battery backed of course), next step down fast SSD and then slower SSD, followed by Fibre, SAS, SATA and finally tape. Yes tape. Just create snapshots as backups. These blocks then sit there and drift down to tape storage when required.

    Funny how this has all been done before when disks were really slow. I suppose it's the big gap of incredibly fast SSD's (compared to mechanical) that's resurrecting these ideas. With this done, btrfs could be stuck in as a relatively cheap SAN/NAS solution. All done in a big tower case in my loft.

  19. Re:Btrfs features forced on users? on Fedora 16 To Use Btrfs Filesystem By Default · · Score: 1

    Conversion to btrfs, however, isn't out of the question. It is unlikely that this would be forced on you during pre-upgrade though.

  20. Re:Swaps some problems for some more on OnLive To Launch In UK This Autumn · · Score: 1

    Thing about scene data is that it gets sent once. You then perform transforms on the models, textures & maps etc. I'm figuring that although there will be an initial load phase for complex scenes, textures and the like, there wont actually be an enormous amount of traffic from that point on.

    Although graphics rendering is the largest part of a game at the moment, physics and AI are being pushed harder and harder. There are also games out there with huge AI & Physics requirements that are extremely modest in terms of graphics rendering. If I prefer 2D games to 3D shooters, could I not opt for a very basic graphics module?

    Sure, this does mean graphics processing and graphics memory at the local end, but this is scaleable no? Android tablets are playing pretty good 3D games at the moment with very little in the way of classic 3D hardware.

    This kind of stuff could be included as a modular part of cable set top boxes for example. User then buys the graphics module that suits their needs and the cable company provide low latency connection to their own hosted games servers.

  21. Swaps some problems for some more on OnLive To Launch In UK This Autumn · · Score: 1

    Basically you're solving a load of issues like game patching, licensing, piracy etc for some other ones; mainly latency related.

    I think it's a great idea. Publishers could set up rental periods, pay per play, outright purchases etc. Players will always be connecting to the latest patched version of the game. AI engines and game physics could be improved throughout the lifecycle.

    My biggest concern is the client end. I'd prefer to see a local render engine capable of displaying the entire scene. The current solution renders the entire lot on the OnLive servers and then just sends you the screen image updates - is that right? I'd have thought that sending scene and POV updates would have compressed better. Then players could buy whichever capability render client they want/afford.

    At the end of the day, this isn't for low latency gaming just yet. But that's purely down the nature of the internet.

    Cheers

    D

  22. Re:GNOME 3 at it's glory; Fedora strenghts/weaknes on Fedora 15 Released · · Score: 1

    You said "First of all" twice. Doesn't count the second time.

    I would mirror most of the rest of what you said though. GNOME 3 is actually pretty good - unless you WANT your desktop to be based on Win95.

    Cheers

    D

  23. Re:This would be really great... on Red Hat Pushes Out Enterprise Linux 6.1 · · Score: 1

    You should really take a step back from the keyboard and look at the history. .0 releases are, without fail, a major step forward in the technologies that Red Hat want to put in their distro. New kernel base, new packages, new security, new authentication etc. The list goes on. To call it "half-baked crap" is really little short of a half-baked comment. You can demand a flawless OS all you like, but without early adopter customers (of whom I've worked for several), these things don't stand a chance of getting ironed out. What do these early adopters get? They are first to learn how to use the new release and have accumulated a wealth of experience with RHEL x before x.1 comes out. It's their choice - just as it's your choice not to use it in the first place.

    Finally, I've worked with Red Hat distros for over ten years too. I've got the badges, felt the hurt, dealt with their support guys and even engineers. At the end of the day, it's been worth it. If what is delivered isn't what you expect/demand, change your expectations/demands, or wait until the release that does match those expectations/demands.

    Cheers

  24. Re:Sounds good to me on Oracle Plans To Hand Hudson To Eclipse · · Score: 1

    When they looked at Red Hat, they saw a distro that they wanted, so copied it, before ruining it and pretending it was theirs. OK, so they weren't actually pretending it was theirs, they were more pretending that it was any good!

  25. Re:BAU on UK Government Wants to Spring Ahead Two Hours · · Score: 3, Funny

    They're trying to creep closer to the Falkland Islands?

    Cheers

    D