* Posts by Adam Salisbury

344 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Dec 2008

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Schmidt: I 'misspoke' over Street View

Adam Salisbury
FAIL

@ Avatar

I'm pretty sure that there's no specific law prohibiting you from sitting outside a random house for as long as you want, assuming you're not trespassing, causing a nuisance or appearing threatening.

Adam Salisbury
FAIL

@AC 15:47

Give up the "please think of the children" defence, there's a massive difference between taking photos of a house and people's children. For instance, my original house is on Street View, I don't live in it anymore so what's the problem?

My current house was put on Street View BEFORE I moved in, what's the problem? Unless you somehow define the essence of your inner being by the front of your house and garden vvery little privacy is eroded with Street View

UK border police seize £500k from Nigerians' hand luggage

Adam Salisbury
Joke

This money will soon be yours...

We just need another £1000 (ONE THOUSAND POUNDS STERLING) to grease the customs officials with!

Tesco's iPhone app gets barcode reader

Adam Salisbury
Grenade

Yep, good enough

Good enough according to Tesco-shopping iPhone owners if that's who you want t take recommendations from!

Facebook comes down hard on Faceporn

Adam Salisbury
Thumb Up

Damn

You beat me to the Streisand Effect reference, I was wondering how long it'd take!

Trucker jailed for deadly motorway gamble

Adam Salisbury
Grenade

Nearly...

Try those sentences the other way around, 15 years is still to low for murder, even facebook-induced manslaughter. The porr guy would be spinning in his grave if he knew he died as a result of some facetard's obession with no-stakes hold 'em.

You know it's time to get out when pot dealers and con men do more time than murderers

Drug-addled scooter twock teen hit with bizarre crypto ban

Adam Salisbury
Coat

Well Shirley...

...He can plead infringment of his 1st Admendment rights again, just as he did to oveturn the social networking ban and by using a similar arguement to the one that saw the malware clause amended.

I'd argue that some systems require compulsory encryption measures (online banking goverment websites etc) and his inabilty to use them would be a curtailment of his freedoms (or something!)

UK IT projects must pull up socks, says hefty maven

Adam Salisbury
Grenade

"Actually I quite like learning from failure. I think we learn a lot that way."

That a pretty much vertical curve for our Government! Gershon's completely missed the point when he talks about skills shortages for starters; the governemnt spends far too much money on overpriced consultancy becuase there's no-one in governement with the sufficent knowledge of IT.

What they should be doing is bringing some real skilled technical staff in on a permanent basis to deliver existing projects so they can stop paying the consultants. His comment that there will be a skills shortage a result of job losses is complete tosh, the already is a skills shortage and now they need to shed jobs they'll have to carry on paying hand over fist.

That and his "I'm not going comment on procurement, I'm doing project management is a) a spineless cop out and b) indictative of the asre-covering nature of ministers and c) a damning indictment of how blinkered they are, without visibilty of the wider picture nothing will change.

XP? Thanks for the memories

Adam Salisbury
Thumb Up

A Long Time Coming

Bearing in mind 64bit hardware has been with us for years now anyone upgrading to Windows 7 should most definitely go 64, we're doing it now and haven't had any problems in so doing. While it's still not yet essential it soon will be if you consider all the new technolgies being developed today; UEFI, 3+ TB hard disks and ever increasing memory requirements mean making the change now will be more cost effective than waiting until you're pushed to do so.

Not only that but the more people who switch the more incentive there is for developers to finally moveto the world of 64bit too. The general concensus amoung our beloved code monkeys seems to be the inherent difficulty in writing much more expansive and multithreaded code, furhter uptake will bring us better tools to overcome this.

Mobe operators foresee SIM-based contactless payment

Adam Salisbury
Grenade

F**k contactless payment

How about making chip n' pin secure? How about redesigning VilifiedByVisa and SecrueCrap so they actually provide MORE security than they erode, THEN they can start thinking about contactless payment becuase so far even all form RFID/NFC have been proven easily snoopable, think of the American e-border-type project on the Mexican border and an Oyster-like card for public transit in Boston? You know, the one that when broken saw the feds bury the findings of the whitehats who exploited it?

Once we're not using any cash at all think of the (ever more) liability the banks will foist upon us.

If they want this technology in use it should be submitted to whitehats and assorted pen testers before market.

Just how special are Power Users?

Adam Salisbury
Go

No more power users

I think in terms of hardware we have reached a point where everyone can use the same standard kit, the only modifications being more powerful graphics adapters or more RAM. For instance, I use the exact same make and model laptop our Sales Director does and surely thats's a job in which you're considered a power user.

Bu then again, the power user is a complete myth most of the time, all they are is users of status who feel they should have something different to, and better than, the proles. the point made in the article about systems being perceived as personal rather than a business tool could'nt be more correct hence the higher up in the org cart you go the better the systems get.

I'd like to know if anyone who's "power users" now have iPhones for business use actually issued them after sound technological assessment or just because the executives starting using them. It's the sames with software too, announce your Windows 7 rollout and watch the number of "accidents" which require a replacement soar!

Nokia to cut 1,800 jobs

Adam Salisbury
Thumb Down

Bad times

We're one step closer to nothing but Android or iOS, Apple vs. Google and they're both companies I always love having less to do with

DARPA orders miracle motor for its flying car

Adam Salisbury
Thumb Up

Good point

In fact they're bound to know the odd trick when comes to high rotatory speed engines! Shame Honda folded their F1 team or they could've knocked suitable out without breaking a sweat.

Facebook games maker sued in privacy flap

Adam Salisbury
Megaphone

It's not the first time by far

I've regularly been told than an app using one of my former profile pics was claiming me as a happy user of whatever shit service or product they were peddling. So it's defnitely not the first nor will it be the last. FB solely exists to scrape and scrape and scrape as this Zynga thing proves entirely, Zuckerburg probably knows and is even more likely to be skimming a layer off the top, how else do you pay for global datacentres?

Glad I'm rid of the fscking thing now, I shall rue the day I was foolish enough to have been zuckered in for a long time to come!

Google ends all Street View Wi-Fi data collection

Adam Salisbury
Grenade

When you're done with that...

Send it to to me in sunny Bracknell, it's just like Worthing but without the sea!

Cameron cocks up UK's defences - and betrays Afghan troops

Adam Salisbury
Joke

Ahahahaha

Did you really *need* to ask that question ;)

Adam Salisbury

That Peston..

Wouldn't have a clue if you beat him to death one

Dixons risks future of humanity with Star Wars-themed ads

Adam Salisbury
Megaphone

FFS

As if advertising isn't already insulting, patronising, condescending and invasive we're now inflicting it on the rest of the universe!?!! Whether or not there's anyone out there eyeing up this blue-green bag of pepprami sticks we call home it just seems like we're being noisy neighbours now, blaring jibbersh out the windows with reckless abandon!

It beggars belief that the boffins haven't thought about carefuly enough, besides there are far better things to beam into space than Dixons ads!

The True Cost of Desktop Support

Adam Salisbury
Boffin

Cutting (or at least loosening) the Gordian knot

Virtaully every organisation I've worked for has at one point or another embarked upon the same excerise and when you really start trying to calculate that it can become impossibly difficult. It 's everso easy to keep unravelling the minuatae of every process, work instruction and interaction, for instance; how to you calculate and cross-charge the cost of an engineer's time wasted by a user-inflicted IT issue (such as installing unauthorised software) or by a user who's lied or withheld a crucial nugget of information required to diagnose the fault (c'mon, we've ALL done it!).

I did work for an emplyer who must've eventually worked it out as all of a sudden desktop computer equipment was charged to the budget of the department requesting it (inc. cost of replacements and third-party engineer visits), the same for software too. Departmental projects that required the services of tech support would have to budget for the cost of the bodies they'd need.

However even with a rough idea of the cost and some measures of mitigation so much in a more general sense comes out of the IT budget than really should. Our cost centre used to bear the brunt of the cost of servicing and maintaining infrastructure equipment bought using capex. The reason the equipment had been capexed was that it comprised the core systems everyone used so it shouldn't come from one budget!

While many of the examples I've used admittedly involve shifting wooden dollars around sometime the best method of prepresenting 'The True Cost of IT' s to position the department almost as if it's a contractor, calculating and billing each department for the services and equipment they use. Whatever your approach, first agree a upon a level of detail you won't exceed, one that's managable for you and your business

Court strikes down Facebook probation

Adam Salisbury
Thumb Down

Just grounded?

If I'd have nicked a motorcycle and been caught with drugs on me at that aga, my folks would shop me into the cops themselves!

And IMHO they'd be right to do so, too few parents dare implement a bit of tough love for of upsetting their darling brats these days

Microsoft loses chief software architect Ray Ozzie

Adam Salisbury
Stop

You almost had it there

While I'll happily agree that virtually nothing MS have ever made was entirely (or even mostly) their own, citing the xbox as a rip-off is a bit disingenuous, I mean ALL consoles are rip-offs of one another and the xbox (or at least the 360) is a massive success unrooting the previous hitherto undefeatable imcumbent, Sony.

WD thrusts forth its mighty 3TB internal hardness

Adam Salisbury
Dead Vulture

Epic lulz

So this means 64bit versions of Windoze can address exabytes of RAM but only terabytes of hard disk space!?!! And you still can't load the whole OS into RAM! What monkeys have they got writing their code, are they able of thinking even a few months beyond the planned ship date or their OS du jour?

These new disks are quite the unexpectedly jab in the eye for an ever more prehistoric software house who're lagging behind all their competitors...again!

Microsoft's fear of an OpenOffice

Adam Salisbury
WTF?

You had me until...

"But the odd and sad thing is that, if true, it's Microsoft acknowledging competition in a market that five years from now no one will care about"

No-one will care about, at all, really?? Granted Microsoft's stranglehold on "fat-client" Office products will almost certainly become less significant, largely due to Google Docs and even Microsoft's hosted Office offering. If OpenOffice can hone in it's interoperability then as many commenters have said, it'll become a contender.

But we're still a way off in terms of mass uptake of the alternatives, cloud offerings still need to be proven robust enough for mission ciritcal work and I suspect that in five years the fight for the lion's share of a hitherto unbreakable market could just be hotting up.

Adam Salisbury
Thumb Up

There's a term for that...

"I can't install Sliverlight on Linux" = Lucky!

Adam Salisbury
FAIL

OEM Office bundle?

That's called Works, I don't think I've ever seen anything other than trial versions of full-fat Office on a home PC.

Adam Salisbury
FAIL

Because....

At least 95% of big corp is Type B all over, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle; they all fiercely guard their OK-ish products and stifle any attempt by any Type A to produce anything that might be better than the recycled dross they're making.

Microsoft is looking more and more like the record industry, trying the cling to it's fiefdoms while the ground beneath them is eroded away. They couldn't answer the iPhone (or clue-phone for that matter) or indeed any fruity throwdown, Phone 7 won't conquer Andriod and now Office is under threat.

The moment anyone designs a real SQL Server alternative and get big corp using it Microsoft will find it under attack on all fronts.

Dead baby taunting troll feels wrath of law

Adam Salisbury
Grenade

All Trolls Are Stupid

But some are more stupid than others

Gov axes £35bn Severn Barrage tide-energy scheme

Adam Salisbury
Stop

Don't be a fule

Did you read the article? 4.8% of current demand for £35bn! While I can't stand the whole wind farm debacle this plan seems just as foolish (with the exception that tidal barriers are always on unlike turbines).

Nuclear is the only cost-effective way forward in the short term to both meed demand AND meet emissions targets, I'm not saying nukes forever but at least until we can actually develop useful renewables. I'd prefer geothermal but the pork's in windmills :(

Want to do a desktop refresh? How would you like to pay?

Adam Salisbury
Boffin

Rampant consumerism finally abating?

This three year refresh cycle is pretty much rubbish for most organisations, just a window dressing excerise in many cases As a result of the tough business conditions we're facing and a recent. costly merger and subsequent "syngerisation" and office move our little SMB is still running on 6 year old kit that isn't breaking a sweat yet...and it's all Wintel/Microsoft servers and laptops.

With virtualisation coming into it's own it's becoming more and more easy to extend the life of much your kit, the justifications for most upgrades are speculative and mostly intangible, existing only to make the case for a budget equal to, or bigget than last year's.

The salefolk always say they "need" the most shiny laptops and phones to convey an image of professionalism and competence (as if having the most shiny trinket would indeed fool anyone). Finance will always plump for bigger and better desktops for heavy-duty number crunching and as they pay the wages they'll nearly always get them!

It's always going to be a nightmare justifying the pruchase of more infrastructure kit as it's very difficult to measure a person's productivity and therefore how much revenue is generated by said productivity, especially if you're not performing a "revenue leading" role (sales, project manager, account mamanger etc).

It's something companies really need to sort out because while it's diffcult to quantify the benefits of having better, faster systems it's very, very easy to qunatify the cost of an ageing server coughing up it's disks or the comany's website or CRM spontaneously combusting at the end-of-quater!

Branson 'spaceship' successfully falls off mothership

Adam Salisbury
Headmaster

OK pedant...

It's a commercial spaceship becuase it can go into space...then what? Fall back out out of it again?? So yes, if you insist, it's a commercial spaceship, just a bloody pointless one at the moment.

Call me when it can dock with the ISS or perform an otherwise useful task

Depts declare dumped IT deals

Adam Salisbury
Grenade

Theft?

Surely the appropriation of public money and a complete lack of records on how it was spent should constitute what is probably multi-million pound theft!

US demands right to snoop the world

Adam Salisbury
Grenade

Indubitably

It goes like this:

Be friends and bend over of get fsking bombed

That is all

Google shocks world with unthreaded Gmail

Adam Salisbury
FAIL

Wrong client

If you can't delete a single email from a thread then you either need a new email client, more training on email clients or to be reunited with your carer.

Las Vegas death ray roasts hotel guests

Adam Salisbury
Flame

Yes but...

Surely they'd have modelled that *before* building the damned thing!

Nvidia boss: cloud, ¡Si! Intel, ¡No!

Adam Salisbury
FAIL

I wanna live in a Tegra house too!

But what happens when you hit your monthly bandwidth cap eh? It's been obvious for a while (since x64 architecture IMHO) that hardware horsepower will always be knee-capped by either the internet pipe if we're talking cloud services or by software limitations if we're talking about 64bit and parrallel systems.

All these cloud/HPC evangalists keeping underestimating the desire of people to have some CPUs at home as well as in the datacentre, they seem to have put the cart before the horse by trying to finding reasons to use something they've already built (rather than the other way around)

Facebook on the blink for second time in two days

Adam Salisbury
FAIL

The cheek of it

I'm no Facebook fan but the cheek of a Twatterer to try and make fun of the Facespace mob!

Meanwhile the recent complete Twitter failure has left thousands realising no-one cares what they had for breakfast nor what the bus smells like this morning...

Adam Salisbury
Grenade

If only it'd been longer

I'm still waiting to see what real Facebook withdrawl looks like, most people start getting more twitchy than heroin addicts if they can't log on between work breaks let alone for hours at a time!

Adam Salisbury
Troll

H3ar c0m3z teh l33t hax0rz

Facebook downtime courtesy of 4chan? Gues the skiddies are good for at least one thing then

Adam Salisbury
Coat

Surely you missed a bit...

You know, the bit where you take hundreds of photocopies of all your most personal details and hand them out the everyone you meet?

Crash grounds RAF Eurofighters - for Battle of Britain Day!

Adam Salisbury
Grenade

On one condition...

The board of directors are all imprisoned for massive missapropriation of public money, then used for target practice.

Adam Salisbury
Pint

Truly amazing

That wa a fanstastic endeavour, sadly I doubt we'll see this country do anything half as impressive again without flogging the knowledge to someone to build this time.

Beer for the bomber builders!

Adam Salisbury
Flame

Yeah they should...

Sweeping for IEDs by hand preferably!

Adam Salisbury
FAIL

He's got every bloody right to!

I could stomach the EF project if it hadn't (nor still is) costing us the earth, did you read the article or just fancy a pop at the author? THEY COST THE SAME AS RAPTORS FFS! The yanks stopped building those as they were too bloody expensive but thanks to good old fashioned pork barrel politics we're wasting more money on less capable kit.

Adam Salisbury
Thumb Up

How about....

The money they wouldn't be robbing from us anymore?

Check Point defends ZoneAlarm scareware-style warning

Adam Salisbury
FAIL

Drag 'em over the coals!

If that's not a scareware message then I don't know what is, it's exactly the same kind of "alert" the nefarious malware vendors use to dupe the n00bs and for an IT serucity firm to do the same is unforgivable.

These kinds of things are looking more and more realistic and believable all the time with these jokers adding to the FUD, times must be hard and money short at Check Point for them to stoop to this

Google Apps tap mobiles for beefier log-in security

Adam Salisbury
Pint

At bleedin last!!!

Normally I'm not a fan of the Googleplex but give them a hand for beign the first to do what the IT security industry should've been doing years ago - bring two-factor authentication to consumers, the only other exception I know of being Barclays.

Bout damned time!

Intel to keep laptops from losing cool in bed

Adam Salisbury

What're the odds

Who thinks this will be something dead simple like wiring a thermal sensor to the speedstep function to dial all the components down to accomodate the reduced airflow?

Intel introduces Sandy Bridge chippery

Adam Salisbury
Unhappy

I'll be reserving judgement

Going on Intel's treack history of graphics adapter performance (including the ones they made Vista Basic for) I'll be sticking to my AMD/nVidia for the foreseeable future

Grand Theft Auto to launch on the Mac

Adam Salisbury
Thumb Up

That's what I was thinking!

No killing of 'real entities' now!

Apple issues moral regulations apps dev guide

Adam Salisbury
FAIL

That real entity rule...

That non-realistic gaming rule certainly hobbles Apple's attempts at pitching the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch as an alternative portable gaming platform.

Methinks this is just yet more off-the-cuff abitrary thinking we've come to expect of Apple, I'd almost wager money on rule being changed within a month. Or at least that long until a mini-scandal about The App Store Stasi breaking their own rules!

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