Posts by Alan Brown 15090 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Feb 2008
"But against any country able to produce a credible EMP weapon then there's a big problem for drones"
Ballistic missiles are a bit harder to spot and zap than cruise missiles (which are also drones)
EMP zapguns have been touted for decades but none have actually worked against a hardened target.
"Not sure of the cost on a laptop but fairly Apple only charge about $70-80 for a new battery in an iPhone - fitted with warranty. "
Considering you can buy an Iphone4 battery for about $12 (new, with 3 year warranty) and it takes about 5 minutes to change that "only" starts sounding like gouging.
> I just don't care about the opinions of people who start with "I'd like some Apple gear" then bitch about it not meeting their requirements.
I wish I had your luxury.
_Some_ people talk to the IT folk about specifying their kit.
Others spend 2-3k on equipment and then "discover" it won't run XYZ package. (Not just Apples. There's at least one scientific imaging package for windows which will _only_ run on laptops with nvidia GPUs)
"Indeed, Apple gear reliability is no better or worse than any other firms."
I'll disagree.
Apple equipment failures at $orkplace run at approximately twice the rate of "PeeCee" equipment.
The all-in-one desktop kit runs at about 5 times that rate and usually expirees just outside the 3 year extended warranty.
Current policy is to keep systems running for 5 years if possible and replace at 7 if it hasn't failed before then, so this _does_ increase our IT spend.
"Shouldn't law enforcement types be MORE vigilant about malware than the average jimmy-joe-bob and thus less likely to pass the clap to someone else?"
The stories elsewhere on this site about cops paying off ransomware (presumably because they didn't have working backups, _in addition_ to the lax security policies) speaks volumes about the average police department's IT abilities.
"That's when AT&T was broken up, forcibly by the Justice Department in the landmark antitrust lawsuit."
In case you've been asleep for the last 30 years: AT&T has reassembled itself over that period via a bunch of holding companies and a couple of renames, regained local loop monopolies over most of the USA and is no longer bound by that pesky 1930's "universal service for all" settlement.
Take a closer look at that man behind the curtain.
Flash is cheaper then spinners.
Yes really.
For any given task set where you specified spinning drives you can do it cheaper overall with flash and usually for a longer period of time between maintenance windows.
This is _especially_ true in high speed applications where a couple of high performance flash drives might end up replacing 20 shortstroked spinning drives all hanging off a hellaciously expensive raid controller.
About the only area where flash is still more expensive than spinning media is bulk storage - and the fact that just about all enterprise flash comes with warranties at least twice that of their equivalent spinning media gives a good indication of manufacturer confidence.
I've replaced more 1Tb seagate enterprise spinning drives (constellations are best avoided) than I care to think about, but 500Gb flash drives installed at the same time just keep on trucking. By the time you factor in downtime, access speed and labour costs the inescapable conclusion is that the extra money upfront is worth it - especially as the reliability of spinning media is getting worse every year.
"I know fuck but why is it apparently being left exclusively to the rocket to pop its clogs on a bit of tarmac smeared on a barge in the middle of the sea and then fall over."
Because once SpaceX have proven they can do it without the "Fall down go boom" part - and do it reliably
they'll be allowed to start doing land recoveries.
The barge is at least about proving they can bring it back to a precision target as about landing the thing.
> Even a surprise audit isn't that big of a surprise if the people have to come to the main entrance and wait for someone to escort them.
Exactly - hence emails circulating like "The fire service are in the building, please ensure all smoke stop doors are closed and hallways are not obstructed"
Common occurance in UK companies.
"What if you start backing up the encrypted files? Can it tell?"
Did you ever hear the story of the telephone exchange which turned out to have corrupted images onboard? Didn't matter until it was rebooted.
At that point it was discovered that the backup system had been backing up corrupted images for at least 2 years.
Do you have any idea how long it takes to restore a 3 year old backup, then all the incremental database updates since that point? Do you have any idea how much disruption it can cause when your phone numbers start ringing on the other side of town for 6 weeks?
"if this isn't done and a disaster happens and wipes that data, the individual worker is on the hook to repay the company for lost profits directly related to that missing document."
In most countries this kind of "fine" is completely illegal. The most you can do is sack the worker.
In any case, for the situation described the whole "desktop" and "fileserver" paradigm is a nasty kludge anyway. Thin clients, centralised everything solves the discipline issues at a single pass.
> Notice that all the other comments just talk about how dumb the cops are for not better protecting their systems?
They are, but that's normal practice and not different to the users who refuse to pay for their systems to be covered by the sitewide backup system, then come screaming to us demanding instant repairs when a disk goes tits-up (this _has_ happened and @ $2k per recovery it adds up fast)
> No one cares about going after criminals.
I'd love to go after the criminals. Unfortunately that's not my job.
"but keep them available for months, then they ask for the ransom."
That all depends how long you keep your backups around for.
On most systems at $orkplace I can tell you what date any given file changed for the last 3 years AND offer to restore that version for you AND if there are other copies of the same file anywhere across the enterprise.
"2) that Samsung joins the likes of Apple and presses for better conditions in the factories of their supplies."
2 points were made:
1: Samsung has already taken business elsewhere in a few cases.
2: Samsung is not only auditing the factories, but also the _suppliers_ to the factories - so hiding all the kiddies in cousin Wang's premises down the road isn't going to work for long.
I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that the factory owners concerned have made representations they're paying decent wages and obtained contracts on that basis, then shortchanged the workers and trousered the difference. It's a time-honoured practice which didn't originate in china.
"Take the BBC B, without a monitor or disk drives, adjusted for inflation you'd be forking out £1,176"
I don't need to inflation-adjust. People in "some commonwealth countries" were paying more than that for the things back then, thanks to 200% import duty AND 40% sales tax.
"The problem is the huge electronics assembly industry in China built to produce goods at the lowest possible price and the highest possible speed."
As I understand it, the Samsungs of this world specifically don't go for the cheapest bidder because they want to ensure everything is above board. They also audit companies before they start contracts.
As with scheduled fire brigade visits in this country, if you have warning an inspection's on its way then you can remove all the wedges holding the fire doors open. Should the fire brigade show up without warning one evening and find half a dozen exits chained shut (this _has_ happened at one place I know of) you can be assured the language used the following day won't be pleasant.
" It is basic capitalism and no surprise that they have all joined forces to NOT compete against each other"
It's basic capitalism (and past history) for the telcos to amalgamate - which is how AT&T came into dominate in the first place - refuse to interconnect with competitors, wait till they go out of business and swoop in on them at fire-sale prices
This time around they're supposedly different companies but if you lift the curtain and look at the web of cross-ownerships and holding companies, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the AT&T borg has reassembled itself already and is just maintaining a facade to try and "fool" anti-trust regulations.
There are only 3 or 4 panel makers:
AOC, LG-Philips, Samsung and maybe a couple of others.
Everyone else wraps their cases around those panels (including iiyama - they may have made great CRTs but the LCDs are fairly run-of-the-mill) - and I've opened samsung + philips monitors to find AOC panels inside too.
For monitors with external PSUs, it's fairly easy to make up a molex adaptor cable to feed them 12V from the computer.
"You Brits have to get a license to watch TV? Are you serious???"
At least you have to have a TV and be watching live broadcasts.
Pity the poor belgians: TV licenses there are mandatory for every address, TV or not AND there's no belgian state broadcaster receiving the fees.
Many other countries have rules that merely having something capable of receiving means a license is required.
"it depends on who you get from the TV licensing people"
1: "TV licensing" is a wholly-owned for-profit subsidiary of the BBC
2: They outsource enforcement to Crapita
3: The only "training" given to the "TV licensing people" is along these lines:
"Everyone has a TV. Therefore anyone who says they don't is lieing"
It gets even more fun when you have a license and they pound on your door claiming you don't.
FWIW if one ever does come a-knocking, they are _extremely_ camera shy.
As in "run away quickly" camera shy.
> I think it's a real shame that these vehicles need (or are seen to need) "noise makers".
At road speeds tyre noise is more than enough. These things kick in at low speeds so you don't scare the shit out of pedestrians in car parks
They're usually disableable if you're into doing such things, but (at least in the Leaf) you can't choose your noise - which is a shame as I want mine to sound like George Jetson's flying car.
"One accident or any significant downtime on that one track is going to send customers streaming back to more established transportation modes."
The construction costs of hyperloop are such that redundant tubes are an option - either in parallel or alternate routing (or both)
HSR has massive cost due to the extensive roadbed work needed.
"The biggest question is whether either the Hyperloop or High Speed Rail are of any benefit. "
If we must move towards a low-carbon future, then yes. Both of these can be fed from the power grid.
Aircraft will become progressively more expensive to use as oil prices inexorably rise. For reasons of fuel economy and turbofan efficiency they'll also slow down by at least 10-15% over current speeds. Expect to see straight(ish) winged jet transports at some point.
"If you want to move 100,000 each day you need to move them by hundreds (aircraft) and thousands (trains) at a time. A small pod carrying 20 - 40 people at a time isn't going to work."
There's a departure from Heathrow about every 2 minutes during the day. By your logic this would be impossible as you can't bring an aircraft up to the gate, load it and send it on its way that quickly.
The Hyperloop system design has fairly specifically decoupled passenger access to the pods from the actual trackway. Even if one pod is unduly delayed the others aren't affected.
"Compare that to the N700 bullet train in Japan."
OK, let's do that.
"There's a departure every 5 minutes from Shinagawa to Osaka and it carries 1,300 people."
They're pass through and they only stop for 2 minutes, so you're not loading/unloading that many people in that amount of time.
The departures from the endpoints (Tokyo and Osaka central) don't all leave from the same platform and nor would hyperloop transits.
As for seatbelts, passengers are not subjected to the g-loadings needed to require them, while accelerating or deceleating. (In the case of a tube repressurisation peak g-load would hit about -0.5 and stay there for about 30 seconds.)
Hyperloop itself is rather small (too small, in my view: It should be large enough to accomodate a carriage loaded with a standard 40 shipping container), so there's no reason it can't share elevated trackway with shorthaul HST systems.
Once up to speed there is no reason that individual passenger pods can't entrain themselves into batches. This would make route switching a lot easier and en-masse slowdowns much easier in the event of repressurisation.
"Imagine the blue wire from one cable being cross circuited to the orange-white of a different cable altogether? "
Imagine someone banging panel pins (those are 15-30mm long 1mm diameter nails with quite sharp points) into a few cable bundles and trunks in hard to notice areas.
"Unless he did the backup tapes as well"
You'd be surprised (or not) at the number of outfits who either don't run backups or "backup to disk" (and those who do use backups invariably don't keep enough generations because it costs too much)
A mounted disk can be scrubbed or removed in short order
RAID != backup
Replication != backup
etc etc.
When something like this would happen.
Central London's been running on overload for years and the undermaintained infrastructure blowing up more and more regularly as a result. It's like that scenario in Brazil min us trying to blame it on terrorists.
For an idea of how bad it can get, lookup the big Auckland nz power outage. Power was out to the central city there for 6 weeks...
Seeing as this has degenerated into cats: Check out "Citi Kitty". Less mess, less fuss.
One of my moggies started using the monkey toilet unprompted after she decided the feline one wasn't being cleaned often enough....
There are a bunch of selfcleaning litterbowls available, including a couple which are plumbed in. I have no idea how well they'd work for "nuclear waste", or whether the results could be fed to a LFTR
" the desiccants in cat latter are bad for both your cat and you"
This is true of some varieties of diatomaceous earth - make sure you buy _un_calcinated stuff - aka food grade - as the dust from heat-treated version can damage mucous membranes (silicosis)
For the usual Fuller's Earth litter (attapulgite clay) it's mainly down to dust hazards (silicosis), but it's generally so coarse that's not an issue.
In both cases: You'd have to breath a _lot_ of the dust for it to be an issue.
For clumping litters: It may be a problem if kitty eats it - in which case you should use something else.
By the way, it's a good idea to keep a big bag of the clay-based stuff in the boot of your car if you drive in snow or encounter muddy conditions. It's cheaper than a bag of pea-gravel, environmentally benign and tossing a bunch of it under the tyres often gives enough traction to get unstuck if you have wheelspin issues whilst stationary.
"Especially now Ethernet's escaped from the WAN and spanning tree problems can go global in a hurry if you're not careful."
"The answer my friend, is blowing in the TRILL
and your router will soon be in the bin"
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-trill-irb-03
Seriously, routers end up being a major bottleneck and this development solves that plus a big mess of wiring.
TRILL itself was designed with widescale deployments in mind, specifically _because_ of spanning trees storms and convergence issues. Spanning tree was never envisaged as being more than 8 hops wide.
The other good thing about TRILL is that you don't have to faff about with LACP. As with fibre channel networks, when you add more links between switches, they "just work" (bear in mind that every LACP disturbance == a spanning tree rebuild, even if the LACP is to an edge device.)
If you can wean yourself off Cisco, there are a bunch of devices out there from other makers all based on the Broadcom Trident2 chipset and all selling for about 1/3 of cisco's prices (and I don't mean their "list" prices) for 64*10GB/s(*). The big hassle at the moment is that they tend to be "all SFP" or "all copper", which doesn't suit campus distribution well. Terbabit L3 forwarding rates aren't to be sneezed at.
(*) usually 48*10Gb + 4*40Gb, but there are QSFP-only versions and a few 100Gb/s versions too. Higher speeds allows rack switches == less cable == less mess - and that keeps us on topic :)
"This was done by a helpdesk drone and yes we had a packet storm."
Or in other words you were so cheap you used dumb switches without loopback protection?
Wrt the other comment: We're in the process of livening up most of the unused ports, because once you have 802.1x going, nothing happens unless the device on the end is authenticated and it means less hassle overall (extra switchports and running jumpers _once_ as capex cost less than extra manhours playing musical ethernets as people shufti around the buildings.). Besides, there's always the interface "shutdown" command.
"The other ends, no idea which they are - they're probably still patched in "just in case" somewhere"
Telcos have faced this problem for decades, which is why pingers and tone tracers were invented.
I get a bit anal about cabling, probably due to my telco training, but it means that the cables _stay_ traceable and every end is documented.
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