* Posts by K

1568 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Apr 2007

It's 2016 and idiots still use '123456' as their password

K
Holmes

123456.. Who is more of an idiot?

The idiot who uses 123456?... or the idiot companies who have not worked out their customers are idiots and allow them to use it?!

Cisco decides that to save the cloud, it must hunt it with prejudice

K

Its rather pointless...

Hosted Services are a fact of life, always have been. Whilst we block a lot of them on our Firewalls, my CEO alone suggests a dozen new services each month, so trying monitor and control every service it pointless unless this adopted as best practise through the company.

American cable giants go bananas after FCC slams broadband rollout

K
Pint

Please can we borrow him

I'd like to nominate Tom Wheeler as the next head of OFCOM (the UK telecom regulator)

Hyper-converged infrastructure? Pop open some 'Azure in a can'

K
Trollface

Lets correct 1 fact..

Scale have been established for at least 6 or 7 years, therefore they are not a startup, but an established business! I first had dealing with them in the UK in 2009/10 and they had already been going in the US for several years before that.

Sorry if thats being pedantic.

Longing to bin Photoshop? Rock-solid GIMP a major leap forward

K

Re: More than three colour channels?

Have 1 up vote for the useful info, and second theoretical one for the moron who downvoted you!

Have to agree on the UI in most open-source software, though its not the projects own fault, open-source projects rarely have enough resources and contributors to keep the UI with the "times". I've often pestered my employer(s) to contribute back with time or contributions, we are profiting, so its right to give something in return to help the cycle.

Researcher criticises 'weak' crypto in Internet of Things alarm system

K

compared to the two to three year.. for.. IoT products

Hence why the IoT is another marketing hypergasm, thats going end in a premature nut bust!

3 years ago I replaced all the lightbulbs in my house with LED ones, so that I could save money, they have a life expectancy of 9-10 years and I expect to get full usage out of them!

Chinese cyber chief plays down censorship concerns

K

Re: "Freedom is our goal. Order is our means."

In many respects, the Chinese are more free that we are - As long as you don't undermine the state's authority, you can pretty much do what the f*ck you want.

K
Big Brother

I hate the fact the internet is censored in China..

Living in the UK we get access to everythi... oh wait, sh*t why is that Torrent site blocked, ah and that website to make home-made "fireworks" not available. WTF?

...

Can DevOps and Agile save the planet? US.gov thinks so

K
Facepalm

DevOps Man...

Neither Developer, nor Operator..his superpower is being mediocre is all fields!

PHP 7.0 arrives, so go forth and upgrade if you dare

K

Re: just my 2 cents...

@LosD - Hosting companies should not even be offering this, it encourages a viscious circle - Customers pay to have a script developed/installed for them and fail to keep it maintained, never being updated or patched.

How can this be a good thing? All if does is help maintain the cycle is security issues, obsolete scripts and outdated versions of PHP.

K

Re: just my 2 cents...

Breaking compatibility will do everybody a favour - it'll help get all the crap and unmaintained scripts out of circulation. I was recently dealing with a vendor who website still ran scripts with .php3..

Splunk, Rocana trade blows in blog 'libel' spat

K

Re: @K Upvote for you

You can DIY it with enough time - but these products work on the basis of they make it easy and quick, which is essential if you have hundreds of servers and different log formats.

K

They're systems for parsing logs and other data, it normalises and indexes this so that it can quickly be search and aggregated, with the results visualised or alerts set up for them. For example, it could suck in all the logs from your Firewalls, you can then aggregate this data to see what the top 10 threats are, or search where those threats came from and display them on a map.

Splunk has enjoyed a monopoly on this for the past several years and their pricing model reflects this, charging by the GB of data is processes. For example, if your collecting 10GB of data per-day, cost if about £7500 per annum - Lets face it, who knows how much log data their servers and firewalls are going to generate on a day-2-day basis.

Personally I hope Rocana wins this one, as I think the per-GB model is a relic.. its actually one of the reason ELK is being so successful... Also for anybody looking for another alternative, I highly recommend checking out Logscape, licensing is based upon number of indexers, and since 1 indexer (which costs less that a 10GB Splunk licence) can parse 75-100GB per day, its not bad value for money.

'Dear Daddy...' Max Zuckerberg’s Letter back to her Father

K

'Dear Daddy...'

You did WHAT??? ... that was my f*cking inheritance!

Getting a little flashy! Funds are in place, and Kaminario targets growth

K
Headmaster

Simplicity..

Its actually SimpliVity.. only reason I know that is case I spoke to them a few days ago!

Telecity's engineers to spend SECOND night fixing web hub power outage

K

This took us out for a period yesterday..

We've resilient leased lines with BT and Virgin (routed through Timico), this initially affected our internet traffic about 1pm, for a brief period, then struck with vengeance about 2:30pm. Fortunately we've not epxerienced any problems today.

Child abuse image hash list shared with major web firms

K

Re: So a hash matches, then what?

More Quango's, NGO's and charities that suck up money, with huge chunks of it going on bureaucracy and administration..

Virgin Media daddy Liberty Global swoops on Cable & Wireless Communications

K
FAIL

"So which Cable & Wireless was it that sold their cable bit to NTL .."

Fail for not reading paulf's comments above posted 20 minutes earlier lol!

Surprise! No wonder Oracle doesn't 'see' IBM or SAP in the cloud

K

I see Oracles ploy..

Give it away free, customer don't even know its there and don't use it.

1 year later, they invoice the customers Finance team which is located in another country, doesn't have a clue about it, just sees "Oracle" and assumes its a utilised service and proceeds to make payment.

Open to the core: MongoDB's enterprise push in 'joins' U-turn

K

Re: we'd pay $100

For $100 I would only expect community support.

GCHQ goes all Cool Dad and tags the streets of Shoreditch with job ads

K

$100k fine.. thats a bargain

Even if they only managed to recruit a few people, thats still a darn site cheaper that the usual recruitment agency fees.

Then chuck in the free publicity.. IBM's marketing, HR and Finance teams must have laughed all the way to the bank.

UN privacy head slams 'worse than scary' UK surveillance bill

K

I like this guy...

How can I put him forward as the next Information Commissioner?

Music lovers move to block Phil Collins' rebirth

K

Re: Quite

There is no such thing as good or bad music, its purely a matter of personal taste!

Warm your fingers by the bonfire of vanity on-premises storage

K

Re: what he fails to mention

Agreed,,, I'd also add like all this type of systems, they're too expensive for the functionality they deliver.

Recently we had a need for a FS (not block) level system that could offer a local cache, but store to S3 and then archive to Glacier or Nearline, the price of these systems was jaw dropping.

In the end I just brought another SAN with a couple of dozen NLSAS drives for local storage, then purchased Cloudberry to run on top of it.. works pretty well, cost me a fraction of the money!

The art of Rapid Recovery: Dell begins rebranding AppAssure

K

Wouldnt touch it with a fart..

let alone a barge pole.

I brought vRanger about 3 years ago, then quickly got told there would be no major updates for a few months as Dell would be merging AppSure and vRanger! 6 months later I switched to Unitrends, and never looked back.

The fact this integration has taken 3 years says it all, Dell are crap at software...

Don't even get me started on Foglight, cause thats even worse.

Big Blue lets Chinese government eyeball source code – report

K

Just because you've seen some source code..

Doesn't mean you can trust the compiled code, as it would be incredibly easy to sneak an exploit or backdoor in at compile time. The only way to avoid this is to also have complete control over the whole build process.

So as usual, another government wasting time and money!

Reg reader escapes four-month lightning-struck Windows Vista farm nightmare

K
Pint

Suggestion for next time

Build a DIY lightning rod then earth it to the MD's chair...

Dell buys out EMC in mega-super-duper $67 billion deal

K

Re: Another one bites the dust

Amen... they practically destroyed Quest, 4 years on things like vRanger and Foglight need taking out the back and shot. Personally I like their hardware, but Dell just don't get software.

A thousand mile Atom merci mission: Driving from Monaco to London in an open-topped motor

K
Devil

"Duck Tape and zip ties are of course essential too!"

100% agree.

Though I see you forgot to mention the other essentials, balaclava and a gag.

Hyundai i30 Turbo: Softly, softly, catchee Audi

K

It would be fairer

To compare it to a Fiesta ST and Clio RS rather than a Focus ST etc.

On a cost front I paid < £20k for my Focus ST3 with most of the trimmings (trick is to find a garage who had one the exact spec your looking for either on display or a demonstrator, and you will instantly save 20%).

Smuggle mischievous JavaScript into WinRAR archives? Sure, why not

K
Gimp

Re: Dear Linux user..

"Did I mention it was free."

That is what your mum said... were you listening in again?

Only paying for Microsoft software that you use? It's coming

K

Re: Perhaps MicroSoft are looking at this the wrong way 'round...

I was one of the Windows 8 doom sayers, and I'm a Linux Sys Admin in my everyday role.. so I've got enough anti-microsoft street-cred..

But I just don't see it with Windows 10, the privacy issues is a cluster fuck.. but as a OS, I would say Windows 10 supersedes Windows 7 in every way.

BT boss: If Ofcom backs us, we promise to speed up UK broadband

K

meh - Minimum broadband speeds of 5 to 10Mbps,

Make it 100Mb to 500Mb and you've got a deal!

Ad-blocking super-weapon axed by maker for being TOO effective

K
Childcatcher

Sorry el-reg

I block ads absolutely everywhere these days, I'm shamed to admit, but I even do it here on my favourite site.

When a page has 3 or 4 targeted and quiet ads on it, thats fine, when a page has 10-20 that takes the piss, then when I read a multi-page articles, which has 10-15 ads on each page, then also have the audacity to have a huge ad between pages, my browser could have downloaded 50-60 different ads. By the time you tie in all the pictures, cookies, JavaScript, tracking pixels, ajax callbacks.. actually ads now constitute 60-70% of the payload and page loading time.

Its just to much.

Rather than trying to squeeze revenue from your visitors, reduce the number of ads and hike your advertising fee.

Brimming with VM goodness: Qnap TS-453mini 4-bay NAS

K

Re: Not quite the same

"However when you factor in the cost of our time, the HP solution starts to look not so cheap"

So your earning capacity is > £200 per hour?..

These type of boxes are nothing more than crippled mini-itx. With the HP units you get far more expandability, flexibility and even more important, you get reuse. My HP MicroServer went from NAS to ESXi Host.

Bible apps are EVIL says John McAfee as he phishes legal sysadmins in real time

K

John McAffee.. The man, the legend..

Come on John don't get all serious on us now.. Your antics are the only thing that have kept me sain over past 3-4 years!

Bigger – and better? How your IT infrastructure budget will change

K

Hmmm

I swear June or July was el-reg's Cloud Sponsorship month... what gives? Saying that, the way this reads, you'd think it was April fools day!

I would never move our Exchange to the Office 365, or any of our business critical applications to the cloud a hosted-service for 1 simple reason, responsibility - Keeping it up is my girlfriends responsibility, any kind of outage and the business demands instant answers.. Its not because I hate cloud hosted-services, I them a great deal of non-critical services

Also given the way Microsoft's legal battle is going, I'm placing good odds that Office 365 will lose a lot of customers!

US court kills FBI gag order slapped on ISP... 11 years later

K
Big Brother

Incredible..

Not a single thing in that list which warrants a gagging order, let alone a heavy handed one.. this was the FBI being underhanded and trying to hide their activity from joe-public - So they were obviously worried about backlash if this became public-knowledge.

Then James Comey along with every law enforcement and politician wonder why nobody trusts them or has faith in the secret "oversight", provided courtesy of their fellow cronies.

I hope Nicholas Merrill gets the recognition and compensation he deserves for having this shoved down his throat for over a decade!

Pro tip: Servers belong in dry server rooms, not wet cloakrooms

K
Facepalm

Hmm sounds familiar..

By any chance was it a iiyama 21" CRT monitor? and a 24 Port Netgear Pro Safe?

...

Just kidding!

Windows 10 to grow up, turn extra enterprise-y beginning this month

K

Re: I'm linking rollout to a h/w refresh

@Esme

Its a nice utopian view, but in business the commercial needs and profit will always come out ahead. This is why so many business fail to refresh and get lumbred with legacy systems.

K
Big Brother

Re: I'm linking rollout to a h/w refresh

@Steve Roper - Please share your source of this information?

Sounds like codswallop to me, it would be fairly stupid of Microsoft to allow this stuff to be controlled via GPO, then try to override it via some local security check.

Likewise, it would be even more stupid for Microsoft to force this stuff, when they're trying to get everybody on it, and Enterprise would simply not stand for it, and even if they did, huge markets would be prevented from adopting it by almost every global regulatory body (PCI, ISO, SAN, SOX, FISMA, HIPAA).

Also let me ask, do you use a Android-phone or iPhone? Because if you really are this paranoid, please do not use an of the Google or Apple services.

Boffins feud over Indian PM's Silicon Valley visit

K
Devil

Re: Rebuttal

All great argument from both sides...

Not that I read either, its far too intelligent to digest on a Tuesday morning..

Layabout, sun-blushed techies have pick of IT job market, says survey

K

Been looking for a Linux Sys Admin myself for around 3 months.. I finally offered the role last week..

My advise if your looking - don't take anything under £40k..

Stealth service – Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

K

Re: micro-transactions

Must admit i've not seen anything micro-transaction based on the PC... also its probably the best games i have seen in a very long time.

My only gripe in the repetitiveness of Afghanistan... also I loved the narrative of previous MGS's.

Oracle laying off its Java evangelists? Er, no comment, says Oracle

K

Re: About Time

@Steve Crook - That is hyperbole. Framework size is everything, especially when it makes up 90%+ of the execution stack and response time. Memory and CPU may be in excess supply, but they still cost money, also the extra resources the OTT framework is utilising could be put to other use.

Also, who said not to use a Framework? Just choose the right one for the job at hand. Often developers resort to a position of comfort such as using Zend and Doctrine for that 3 pages website, rather than practicality and using something like Slim.

As a side note, developers who do choose right tool for the job, find they'll get the implementation done quicker, with less bugs and the project is more easily expanded.

K

Re: About Time

Christian Berger, 100% agree.

I was a Java developer in 2000-05 and saw this start happening, the simplest applications, about 500kb compiled were using 200Mb worth of external jars, it was crazy. So I moved onto PHP, and in recent years, I've seen the same thing happening here.

Lazy ass developers using the Zend Framework for 2-3 pages websites, or inappropriately using Doctrine to run a query which borks a server with 6GB RAM, but if done in raw SQL code would work on a machine with 256MB.

What those developers don't seem to understand is, there is a time and place for a Framework, but choose the right tool for the job!

Hands on with Windows Server 2016 Containers

K

Re: Just another..

Caveman invented wheel.... OMG Ford, VW, Audi saw it as a threat and were forced to chase the innovation AGAIN.

With that brain-dead pattern of thinking, we'd never end up with any kind of standardization. In which case, the internet would not exist, computers would still be based upon 8 bit processors, and we'd probably be living in the world of "Fallout" style technology - with you reading this on a green CRT display.

Linux is no different, do you think things like KVM and Docker were original? Get real.. Containers have been around for decades, just because they are suddenly "cool" doesn't make them innovative.

I see some really good uses for Containers, they won't replace Virtualisation - but we might just be looking at the next generation of software installation and deployment systems (Note I've only recently started playing with Docker, but installation of Docker containers is painless!)

Boffins unveil open source GPU

K
Facepalm

No, but it runs "Breakout" really well!

Jailbreaking pirates popped in world's largest iCloud raid – 225,000 accounts hit

K
Boffin

Agreed..

Warez are the last thing on most peoples minds when they root/jailbreak/custom room a phone, lets face it, Phone apps are very well priced compared to their PC/Mac cousins, and anybody who can't spare £2-£5 for something, should not a have £700 phone or a £30-£40 per month contract!

Most people jail-break phones for the choice it gives, for me personally its about

1) Block the f*cking ads - In-program ads are not acceptable on my desktop, why would I allows them on my phone.

2) Remove the junk - bloatware that the networks deem to be "added value"

3) Customisation - I like my phone to reflect what I want, not how its deemed it should look

I've been doing it for years and fully understand the risks and accept liability - my personal advise to friends is "don't try this as home".