Posts by The Original Steve 662 posts • joined 24 Jun 2009
It does sound truly ground-breaking.
I mean, a processing unit that does compression for storage, encryption for networking, running virtualisation for compute.
Who knows, in 10 years they may even combine them into a single, super-chip. Maybe call it something more generic like a central processing unit?
/stop sarcasm && stop snark
I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I really, really miss it.
I usually work from a client's site Mon - Thu, staying overnight 3 nights a week in hotels, WFH on a Friday. I miss the diversity, engaging face to face with clients and colleagues and I actually miss the commute believe it or not. Time to ramp up for work or to unwind before seeing SWMBO and the kids is something I sorely miss to be honest. Actually making time to listen to a podcast or a radio show just doesn't seem possible to me when working from home like I am currently - I'm only using my ears so it's the perfect driving / commute task to do. I can't bring myself to sit away from the family for an hour or two just to listen to the radio.
I recently joined an existing project that's been ongoing for over a year, and trying to get up to speed remotely has been a real struggle. The obvious social interactions such as a drink after work is one thing, but just spending 10 minutes by the water cooler / coffee machine / outside having a smoke can be surprisingly productive both directly and indirectly.
Think I probably had the best of both worlds as the nature of the role means it's very diverse anyway, so there's a lot of getting up to speed on the latest project and meeting new clients - both of which are made easier face to face. Combined with a very small commute to/from a hotel and working from home on a Friday does make me somewhat more bias that most I guess.
At first glance yesterday I thought they can jog right on at that price with those spec's, but actually after watching the press briefing video today I'm far more interested in it. Can see the value proposition for those who commute via public transport to be fully productive without having to get a laptop out (which is never practical). The money clearly goes on the screens which whilst isn't as cool as the actual single folding screens from Huawei and Samsung seems to have a lot of engineering in it and does appear to be genuinely well thought through, well optimised and very productive.
But this is MS we're talking about, which means no way will I try a 1st generation product. (Ex-Windows Phone, Band and Groove user here!)
If this is still going strong in 3 years time, I'd be very tempted by a 3rd generation version of it. As long as they have the stamina that is.
I use both a water jug with a Britta filter and also a kettle (well, hot water dispenser) with a built in Britta filter. I do by 3rd party (Amazon own-brand) filters though as the cost is ridiculous for the branded ones.
I'm not clued up at a technical / chemical level, but I live in a very hard water area and find the use of the Britta filters soften the water dramatically which results in next to zero limescale in my kettle as well as removing unpalatable tastes and scents which is ideal for light teas.
I'd rather like it if I could filter the washing machine, dishwasher and shower, but that's purely to reduce the limescale and thus prolong the life of the goods. Although I believe dishwasher salt is mean to do that for me.
I wouldn't bother with a filter for the taste alone, but 6 years on the same kettle without needing to descale it at all is something of a miracle given I had to do it every few months pre-filter.
Sure I'm in the freak in the corner, but I really like the new Edge.
Now I am very much in the "Microsoft ecosystem" both personally and in my work life, so it's value proposition should be higher than FF, Chrome, Safari and the rest of the browsers. Being Chromium based, the engine is naturally going to be pretty reasonable, but I've found I'm getting the best of both worlds. Microsoft have clearly (and finally) thrown considerable focus and effort on Edge, and I find its paid off. Do recommend the Dev channel as a good balcnce between stability and features.
I've been around long enough to understand people's healthy skepticism with Micros~1 and browsers given their history, but I do suggest people give it a try before slating it - particularly if your company uses Micros~1's cloudy offerings as well as selling their own souls by using W10 and a Micros~1 account personally.
That sounds very impressive, and a truly excellent use of the Pi (purists may disagree and think that the Pi should be used for educational purposes only, but that's not my view).
I have to cheekily ask... Have your scripts on GitHub or similar for us lazy admins to get some inspiration from?
Enjoy, it's clearly well earned ----------------------------------------------------------->
Rather interested in the below:
"Despite giving away Hyper-V, Microsoft never won more than about 20 per cent of the market."
Maybe by number of hosts installed or VM's running possibly, but in terms of customers I'd put money on it Microsoft has more Hyper-V customers than VMWare has ESXi customers.
Source is purely my own experience: I worked at a medium sized crisp factory (600 employees) about a decade ago where I ran vSphere, and I then moved to a pharmaceutical firm with > 20,000 users who also used vSphere for a couple of years. I then left and joined a small/medium MSP with about 90 customers. 2 were using ESXi, about 60 were using Hyper-V and one was using Xen. (Rest were so small it was physical servers only or no servers at all!).
Since then I've joined a consultancy and one customer (50,000 employees) was running vSphere and is looking to replace with Hyper-V, and another customer (800 employees) is already on Hyper-V.
If you've deep pockets, vSphere is frankly the best on the makret. However if you don't need the very best, datacentre edition of Windows per host gives you their VSAN (Storage Spaces Direct) and unlimited Windows guests for considerably less considering you'd still need licences for Windows VM if using VMWare.
These days for greenfield sites that are a Microsoft shop guest wise Hyper-v covers it off
There's been two referendums on our membership of what we now call the EU. One a couple of years after we joined, and the other in 2016. Basically a generation between them.
And 1.4 million people in a population (not electorate!) of 65 million is only a rounding error if you didn't like the result.
Finally, whilst the the British often demanded exceptions and different treatment / opt-outs (Euro, Shengan etc) we're famous for sticking to the rules that were agreed. Unlike certain other countries I can think of... The nation of queuers will stick to all rules no matter now ridiculous they may seem. Not sure why us attempting to negotiate opt-outs and exceptions when the rules are made is a bad thing in your eyes.
"It is 2020, what was the customer data and critical systems doing on Windows boxes, rather than Linux with a snapshotted file system underpinning the storage?"
If you think you are safe from attacks, viruses and malware just because of a particular technology choice, then you're both sorely mistaken and I wouldn't be surprised if you've already been done over without knowing it.
Security isn't actually a technical issue per se, it's cultural. As posted above, a properly configured Windows Server is more secure than a poorly configured <insert OS of choice> server.
End user education, tiered security, least user access, well trained administrators and strong processes including the assumption you WILL be compromised (and thus have a strong, tested, offline backup) are SOME of the measures to help mitigate security issues.
Changing an OS is like changing the brand of car you drive. How you drive and maintenance of the vehicle make far more difference to how likely you'll be involved in a collision.
DJI sell products that's literally detect all DJI products (and I think other 3rd party ones too) to airports and other government and related organisations.
DJI drones literally broadcast their location and serial number in real time which their AeroScope product picks up.
https://www.dji.com/uk/mobile/aeroscope
An interesting article which gives a good comment and counter argument.
Although I did raise an eyebrow at the way some facts were worded. Stating 70% of UK made cars are exported and half of those are sent to the EU somehow seems rather more alarming (given we're meant to be leaving the EU) compared to saying that less that 40% of UK made cars go to the continent. Personally if less that 50% to the EU markets then arguable would it not make more sense to be outside of it and take the hit whilst securing FTA's with the majority of the customers of the cars we make? Purely econmically speaking.
Although when going to the website home page it kind of lost it's credibility. 5 seconds on the home page suggests it's a counter to the rabid nonsense sprouted by the Daily Mail. Whilst that's not in itself a bad thing, it does somewhat water down decent articles like the one you linked too as it's clearly just as biased as the pro-Brexit lot.
Couldn't care less about the HP - it's the speed and handling.I'd take a BMW M2 CS over your American motor any day of the week. That's faster 0-60 than your "most powerful car made in Fords history" and can take a corner too.
The CS model is also a bit cheaper, although I'd probably opt for the non-CS M2 Competition instead which is considerably cheaper and 0.5 seconds slower on paper.
Amazing you can honestly write on a public forum that American cars are somehow a better choice. Build quality alone is a different level, then handling. Sure, raw HP numbers the other side of pond wins hands down. Getting from A - B or on a track however and you'll be eating those numbers whilst suffering crappier build quality, worse handling and you'll be paying more for the privllage.
A very satisfied BMW 435D owner. (That's the bi-turbo, 6-cylinder, 4WD, diesel coupe)
My current client is a mid sized pension provider. Whilst lots of staff have access to single records (vetted staff, audit trails, no way to export), the auditors do - apparently - need unfettered access to all the records.
As such, there's a locked down endpoint (kiosk mode, whitelist for executables and no browser, all external ports disabled), chained to a desk in a dedicated meeting room. Screen recording is enabled and for good measure theres always at least one clued up employee sitting and watching too.
It's not bulletproof, but given the sensitivity of the data and the level of access I feel it's entirely reasonable and proportionate.
Funnily enough, the auditor was very unhappy with this arrangement and complained to the FD. When the FD came to 'discuss' it with me I already had a letter printed out referencing this case, and that I'd be delighted to water it down if she signs the letter that clearly shows she has signed off on going against the security consultants advice and on behalf of the company the IT function and myself would not be held liable should something happen.
Auditor still hates me, pension info remains locked down and the world still spins.
Not disagreeing with your headline point about TB being less susceptible to corruption than Outlook.
But...
1. PST files are a PERSONAL export of mailbox content. Outlook uses an OST file as an offline cache, but it doesn't use PST files for anything unless you export content from your mailbox to a PST you create. PST's are really only a thing for end users to do their own, manual archiving and is not recommended in enterprise scenarios.
2. Exchange uses a relational DB for its mailbox store. A cut of what was the JET database. Last 4 or so releases of Exchange have been very reliable in terms of mail store.
3. As PST's aren't used, corruption claims don't apply. Should your OST become corrupt, simply delete it. Only your offline cache, it'll get automatically rebuilt.
4. Both Exchange on premise and Exchange Online have an archive feature, which essentially adds another mailbox for each user for archive purposes. Users can simply drag and drop content from primary to archive, or admins can create rules.
YMMV, and I wish you luck with TB, but personally I'd take Outlook as a heavy duty mail client in an enterprise over TV any day of the week.
Putting to one side questioning my storage knowledge simply because I advocate using native OS for storage subsystems rather than expensive appliances, I take issue with the general point you raise.
Whilst you are right that SMB support on non-Windows devices is still (amazingly) bloody awful, if you don't mind me saying so it sounds as if you misunderstand Storage Spaces Direct (S2D). S2D is the storage subsystem, not the presentation layer. You can of course deploy scale out file servers that sit on top of your S2D to present SMB, but in this context and in the majority of deployments you use S2D as the storage subsystem for your VM's to reside on, not for the OS/apps inside of a Linux VM to connect to.
Therefore you can quite easily and happily use what MS now call "Azure Stack HCI" (S2D + Hyper-V) and run Linux VM's on top, with the VHDX files living on a ReFS S2D volume. Linux VM's wouldn't even need to have SAMBA installed.
I'd much, much rather use SMB 3.02 over iSCSI as it's demonstrably better performing, easier to setup and administer and better resilience. Feel free to search for references, but if you're stuck I'll point you in the right direction.
The only time your concern would be valid in my view is if you are running a heterogeneous environment where your hypervisor is Linux based and you were running S2D as your backend storage subsystem for your VM's, which would be nuts. Might as well use the equivalent of S2D on your Linux distro of choice, either converged or hyperconverged.
Of course let's not forget that you could use the above model (S2D storage and KVM / Xen for the hypervisor), and simply present the S2D storage via NFS which Windows Server fully supports. That might be a goer if you have separate storage and compute teams, but generally speaking if I'm using Windows or Linux for the hypervisor for ease of use I'd likely use the same OS type for the storage layer too.
Far, far cheaper to buy some DL380's or similar and slap on either Windows or Linux to get software defined storage from the OS.
Only familiar with MS Storage Spaces Direct which comes with the OS, has all the features of Nutanix et all but costs nothing extra. All generic x86 tin.
Know Linux can do the same too if you prefer that. Save yourself a packet and roll your own.
I despise the overly complex way MS are handling Windows and the updates.
But my (possibly incorrect) understanding is that Windows is similar to Ubuntu as you describe. LTSC every 5 years (I think, maybe 3), for servers or you could go with the 6 monthly releases for the latest features. Regardless of which one, there's monthly security patches too.
LTSC is also available for the client too, although I know MS highly discourage use of it for normal desktop usage. (In the past at least Office literally wouldn't install if you were using LTSC on Windows 10 which is fucking mental, but since when were MS sensible in that regard?!)
Can't believe I'm saying this, but if you're after bare metal then hyper-v is both free and actually rather good including running Linux VM's.
If your desktop is Windows (which I doubt) then it's also a free option to enable.
Got a couple of devs I know who have just moved to hyper-v and WSL and they seem to like it
Been a big fan of ProCurve switching for years and years. Must have deployed a few hundred of them across multiple clients.
I've found them to be very reliable, but I've called on their Lifetime warranty twice and both times had the same experience as you. Free, fast and hassle free.
Shame pretty much everything else HP/HPE is utter dog shite.
So the majority of MP's voted for the referendum, then when the majority of the electorate that voted opted to leave the EU, a majority of MP's then voted for the EU withdrawal act which sets the exit day (which was amended to 31st Oct). A majority voted against Mrs. May's Withdrawal "Deal" / Treaty three times and the speaker said it can't be voted on again without there being something different.
Because the UK and the EU can't agree a deal, the only outcome is a no deal unless something gives, surely?
Whilst I'm not in favor of no deal as a preferred outcome, leaving should be implemented (as the electorate was told in writing from HMG at the time that it would).
The above seems very logical to me, even if not having a trade agreement in place is far from ideal, it appears to be where we are.
So unless we get some wiggle-room from the EU on the backstop (although I'd love to see a hell of a lot more changed in the rejected withdrawal deal), I'm not entirely sure what else can be done other than to try to make the most of leaving without a deal. If we refuse to leave without a deal, then we can't leave if Parliament refuses to accept what the EU and the UK Government have negotiated.
There's a lot of passion on both sides of the debate, but I'm most angry with the politicians. If you vote on legislation that sets an exit date and then reject the deal negotiated then no deal is the outcome. MP's outraged by no deal that voted against the deal and voted for the referendum and the EU Withdrawal Act have failed to do their jobs, as scrutiny of bills is literally a massive part of their job.
What a fucking mess!
Not a fan of Google's slurp, and sadly FF hasn't performed adequately for me for years now.
Been using the Dev channel of Edge for the last few months and I'm genuinely impressed. Flawless compatibility (as you'd expect) and essentially has most of the benefits of Chrome whilst also having the benefits of Edge. (Yes there are some. Netflix 4K steaming, integration with MS services etc.).
Recommend people give it a play. You maybe pleasantly surprised.
I'm what my MD has called an "expert generalist" in that I've spent the best part of 2 decades doing ethernet networking, storage (FC and iSCSI SAN's) and compute (VMWare and Hyper-V) as well as applications (SfB, Exchange, SharePoint etc.)
Whilst I'm familar with network loops and can have sufficient networking knowledge around TCP/IP for things like QoS/DSCP, STP, VSRP etc, I'm curious as to what the engineers in this case needed to do once they "fixed" the offending kit that sent out the bad packets. Article says that the packets already generated were still bouncing around and continuing to broadcast around the nodes and it took them a further 3 hours to get onto these nodes to remove the bad packets already generated.
My question is how..? A case of just rebooting the kit as the packets and sessions shouldn't be persistent? Or is there some dark art I'm unfamilar with where you can go onto a node (I'm reading a node as a switch / router. Afraid fiber isn't one of my skills) and almost select packets based on a filter and then remove them?
Just curious.
Whilst these tools are good for the most common use case scenarios, there's often very many other scenarios that aren't covered. And if I need to remember to do my Exchange, Skype for Business, IIS servers with multiple and complex cert bindings and other servers, the piss easy vanilla IIS boxes are hardly any bother to add to the list.
Tools to renew certs are all well and good, but generally they only renew the cert in the OS cert store and maybe IIS binding too. They are the vanilla and super easy ones.
Not forgetting certs that aren't issued by public CA's and devices that don't use Linux and Windows such as iLO/iDRAC, routers/firewalls etc.
When I was the Infrastructure Architect at a MSP a year or so back where everything was Windows based for our clients (at least that was critical in terms of certs) I ensured that we raised an automated alert when a cert on a box has less than 2 weeks left before it expires.
Helped prevent certs expiring and also caught the lazy engineers who never deleted the expired one post-renewal too.
I actually didn't think this was really a big issue at all, if all it's doing is allowing Alex to relay stuff from the public NHS website. No more worrying than your ISP/browser/Gov from knowing/recording you've accessed the NHS website.
But the point about a teenage girl using it about a sexual related query and that query being stored on the account is a good example of the worry. Likewise Amazon collating the queries and using that to build profiles etc. Very troubling indeed.
Am I the only person who is a little uncomfortable about Cloudflare? Not just it's dominance in the market it plays in, but also that El Reg uses it.
I have nothing against them, and actually think they are a great company who have done some incredible innovation. I have no issue with them per se. But it just doesn't fit right to me that the mighty El Reg - who operate using open source (https://www.theregister.co.uk/about/company/website/) - have such a dependency on a commercial 3rd party.
Where does it end? The ethos of El Reg comes across to me as being fiercely independent which I like (they have cynicism for all IT vendors equally), but being so dependent on a sole provider just doesn't seem right. I'd like to think that they have half their servers in one colo, and their others in a different one, with different telco's (inc backhauls) supplying connectivity.
I know that they'll likely be dependent on lots of commercial 3rd parties (from hosting to water supplier) but the (valid) DDoS comment aside it's an optional choice to place your tin behind Cloudflare, not a technical necessity. Proudly declaring your technology stack which is all open source on your website just doesn't seem to fit with funneling every inbound packet over single for-profit 3rd party. Might as well use Microsoft/Oracle/IBM (urgh - I feel dirty even writing that) if you're going to give up any semblance of ownership and independence by slinging everything to a commercial 3rd party.
(I know that Cloudflare are also big users and contributors of OSS - it's not that I think it's proprietary - it just doesn't seem to fit with the independent nature of El Reg. I have a huge amount of respect for both organisations and wish them all the very best)
Buying Bitcoin from a legit broker is fine, and you can legitimacy say that transaction was ultimately for data recovery services.
What's the difference? Still get a VAT receipt for what HMRC would register as an asset you brought.
P. S. They paying you freelance for this defence or are you a permie after a promotion?
Long boot up times and shipped with an AV...
You must be referring to Android.
Whilst I use a droid today and I'm very pleased with it, WinPho neither had nor needed an AV and its boot up times kicked the shit out of Android and even iOS at the time.
But let's not let the facts get in the way of a good MS bashing.
Which is odd, as there's a plethora of excellent criticisms you could have chosen from.
WTF are they building?!
Can't seriously be saying there's not a HA SQL cluster in use (with dev/test, DR etc) in use today which can't handle another DB with circa a million records? Sure, blow £500k on another shelf for the SAN and the extra backup tapes, and then what... 3 months development?
They can use existing CMS for the front end too. I can't see where even half their estimate is coming from.
Totally agree.
I do enough beta testing for Microsoft free of charge and that's enough problems, you can forget it on a FUCKING PLANE!
My old mums 60's next year so my brother and me are taking her on a luxury holiday of a lifetime as a present (with us coming with). I'm was giving very serious consideration to refusing to fly in a 737 MAX already, but that's looking like it's going to be anything by Boeing.
3 (super expensive!) tickets is small fry I know, but other than my wallet what else can you do?
The fact these people have lost their lifes is a tradgey, no doubt.
However we don't know why they died yet. I hear on the news that the vast majority of people counting were unemployed and extremely poor / lowest end of the social economic scale. As such this group have a significantly lower life span and higher chance of dying early / severe untreated illness than the general population.
Thanks for the link. Was a big fan of R4, particularly the comedy and news until about a year or two ago where I drifted towards commercial radio.
Not only was the recording you linked to informative, relevant and interesting, you've rekindled my love for R4 again.
Thank you, and have a good weekend!
Nope, but I would expect them to levy the same charges on both my product and their own brand product at the point of retail without special exclusions or rebates for their own brand vs everyone else.
Of course if Tesco can buy their own brand at a lower cost than I sell them my product, then sure, they are more than welcome to charge less at retail. But if the cost price was the same as what I was selling my product at, but the Tesco stores decided to not put their standard 10% markup on their own brand product but enforce a minimum 10% margin on all other products - that would also be very unfair.
Swap out Spotify for "TalkTalk" and for Apple as "BT". BT Openreach must provide equal and open access to their network, so that retail companies can resell it. If BT Openreach charged $$$$ for access to TalkTalk Retail, but charged BT Retail only $, then that also would be very unfair and illegal.
The fact that Apple allow some large companies that don't compete with their own apps a discounted rate for the store / free pass entirely stinks to high heaven. Stifles competition and increases costs for the consumer.
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