Posts by John 104

Surprise! British phone wins Best Product at Mobile World Congress

Want

This is a nice bit of kit. I want one. But my S5 Active still works great.

Apple fans take iPhone unlock protest to FBI HQ

Safe

@AC

We all want to be safe. But we all (at least in the US) also have a constitutional right to privacy, due process, and personal freedoms. (kind of why those patriots gave the queen the finger a few hundred years ago). Your statements on the surface seem fairly straight forward and well reasoned. However, when the government you place your trust in becomes untrustworthy then it is a greater risk to society to forgive these rights in the name of safety than to stand and protest.

Recall that the NSA was slurping data with secret court orders hidden from the public. Why hidden? Because they knew that if the public ever got wind of what they were doing there would be outrage. You know the rest of that story.

We are already being slowly boiled alive in the U.S., lets not ask them to turn the heat up.

Re: RIPA

@Sir Runcible Spoon

Contrary to alarmist activist groups misleading statements, you can't just go buy one at a fair (gun show). You still have to pass a background check or possess a concealed weapons permit (which requires an even more thorough background check).

NASA's Orion: 100,000 parts riding 8 million pounds of thrust

Re: What?!

@Lynsenko

I salute you, sir!

Easter Islanders didn't commit 'ecocide' after all, says archaeologist

Re: There was no evidence they were primitive Jeremy Clarksons

Are there any other type of Jeremy Clarksons? I'm confused.

Can DevOps be applied to the whole company?

I can't upvote this post enough.

Terrified robots will take middle class jobs? Look in a mirror

Re: GPs

No, you couldn't be a good brain surgeon unless you had training. However, Most GPs are unimaginative play book followers. Anyone can do that, it just requires a modicum of knowledge of pharmaceuticals and human biology. hardly worth the 6 years of college and internship IMHO. And as a result, GP's (in the US at least) don't really make much money these days. Only the specialists are able to take home traditional "Dr." wages.

Public enemies: Azure, Amazon, Google, Oracle, OpenStack, SoftLayer will murder private IT

Re: Not so fast

@KeithR

"I can't think of a single damn' thing to envy the US about."

I can think of a few:

The lack of cameras on every street corner watching your every move.

Ridiculously high tax rates. (seriously, a tax to use the receiver in your TV? Who comes up with this stuff?)

A DNA swab upon every arrest, stuffed into a database for ever, even if you are acquitted or no charges are filed. (not that I've ever been arrested)

Sounds like the same old nanny state Britain that we left behind a few hundred years ago...

Why Tim Cook is wrong: A privacy advocate's view

Nice Article. Still Wrong, Trev.

Give the US government the tool to unlock the phone and you can bet that they will illegally use it in the future from the biggest court cases all the way down to petty crime. Don't forget, this is the same government that has been hijacking your cell communications for years. All in the name of crime fighting. Don't forget, this is the same government that has been collecting all of your internet traffic, without a legal warrant, for years. Yeah, let's give them more tools to invade our privacy.

Volvo offloads IT biz to HCL, then outsources own IT to.... HCL

Awful Choice

I've worked with some HLC folks. Nice people. Terrible at tech work. If it isn't scripted perfectly, they cock it up. And the language and cultural barrier is highly problematic. That was with American English. Can't imagine how they are going to handle Sweedish.

Zero. Zilch. Nada. That's how much Netflix uses its own data centres now

OK, that is fixed. Now get some decent content. Sick of all the documentaries and crap movies.

IT's Holy Grail, but is DevOps a Poisoned Chalice for sysadmins?

Is it May 6th yet?

Re: Bring on the Future

Sadly, neckbeards do exist. Most of them work at Adobe, though.

Used a cell phone in NYC? The cops probably tracked you

Military Grade

Throw that in there. It always makes things sound more scary.

Sick and tired of modern Windows? Upgrade to Windows 3.1 today – in your web browser

lol

assuming you are able to figure out how to actually run Windows 3.1 on your system

Psh, easy enough in a virtual.

Boffins' gravitational wave detection hat trick blows open astronomy

Neato

Very cool. Way beyond my pay grade as an un-mathed IT guy, but my son will be thrilled to hear about this.

And yes, a facility in India would help, as would an orbiter attempting the same thing.

Microsoft quits giving us the silent treatment on Windows 10 updates

Re: Microsoft... shooting itself in the foot for four decades

Hey, now. We are really good at making things that blow things up.

Coho Data leaps aboard layoffs train: Another startup cuts jobs

Typical

So... Hire two vice presidents and lay off some staff. Somehow that will aid their engineering efforts? Sounds more like favors to me.

Don't you see these simple facts? Destroy Facebook and restore human Liberty

Re: Yeah, yeah, FaceBook bad...

Oh bull shit. We aren't talking about an exclusive dial up network from the 90s. This is connectivity to a modern infrastructure with networking capacity to see the world and all its horrors. With Compuserve, you could still get out on the internet if you wanted to. It just sucked because it was slow. This is restricting people to the shite service that FB is so that they can gather demographics, sell them ads and whatever else.

"You have one identity." Zuckerberg's identiy-destroying silo, the biggest plague that has threatened to engulf mankind in a long time.

While not a physical plague, it certainly is a mental one.

<rant>

And I, too, would punch zuk in the face if I had the opportunity. FB is a steaming pile of crap (and not just the joke of an interface). If it isn't people using it as a life comparison tool to bring themselves down, then its an oversharing, who gives a fuck about your vasectomy operation, or your kitten's cute face, waste of humanities time. To be fair, it isn't just FB. It's all social medial. It is a societal killer. Less and less face to face interaction and more and more avoidance of real people.

</rant>

Re: Wow, lots of hate...

You certainly can ignore FB. However, it doesn't matter. Your info is still getting mined and put on someones DB. Whether you like it or not. Have a friend who uses FB? Done. FB now has your contact info and is selling it.

It's 2016 and a font file can own your computer

TTF font files.

True Type Font font files? I keep those next to my Network Interface Card card.

Re: Disable font downloading.

Hercules. Ahhh, that was good for a chuckle. Haven't heard of that one in years.

Private clouds kinda suck, you know?

Also Confused

Perhaps a definition of "Cloud" might be useful? What is it? Is it just compute power hosted someplace else? Is it software provided by someone not on premises? If it is either of these things, then businesses have been providing "private cloud" services to companies for decades. If it is something else, then I'd like to know.

When I started in IT we used a drawing of a cloud to represent networking outside of our boundary firewall. Internet, direct connect to service provider, etc. Somehow this evolved into marketing bull shit terminology to represent services.

In the end, it is robbing Peter to pay Paul. Cloud infra is no less of an expense than on prem. From an administrative standpoint all that is eliminated is patch management. From a cost standpoint, if you are hosting large amounts of servers, you can save on rack rent or power costs. If you are a smaller shop, the savings won't be there. The rest still requires hands on or scripted configuration. Either of which cost money in engineers to develop or maintain.

We recently went to O365 to "save on costs of infra and allow our team to work on other projects". This was in October. We are only just now freeing up time to work on our normal work load due to the cock up that is O365 and all the crap that doesn't work as expected. New projects? Not likely to get more room for these due to the "unexpected" overhead of managing Exchange. Still. We shifted the location, not the work.

While there is value in off prem hosting and services, I expect that the pendulum will swing back the other way in the next 5-10 years as companies realize that they still need or require on premises services and expertise (have you TRIED working with MS on service issues?). That should take me close to retirement. Then I can get a fun job like cabinet making or some other work that doesn't require me to work with idiot executives who fall for each others BS over an over again.

Fake Flash update malware targets gullible Apple users

Yeah, they are called Mac users. How many of them really understand what they are doing? In my experience supporting them, I have not seen many. Most of them are typical clueless users who would just as easily click on an OK button to install malware on a Wintel box.

Frankly, I'm surprised that more of this hasn't been seen. Knowing the average Apple users, this seems like easy pickings...

Roll up, roll up to the Malware Museum! Run classic DOS viruses in your web browser

Very cool.

The Mad Men's monster is losing the botnet fight: Fewer humans are seeing web ads

Re: Look at all the people that care

No, the marketers.

NOTHING trumps extra pizza on IT projects. Not even more people

RE the continuous deployment of DevOps articles here on the reg of late... Just look at the click adds on the side.

Continuous Lifecycle London. Sponsored by none other that The Reg. and Heise Developer.

Deep Devops In The Heart Of London

Like it was said elsewhere, gotta keep the lights on somehow. Of course, if the trend continues, the quality will continue to drop and so will the viewership...

P.S. The lure of pizza was a cheap way to hide a Dev Ops article. Like another poster, I read a few lines into it and went straight to the commentard section.

Re: Bank worker

Lucky!

Chef reviews internal update plans after 'degradation incident'

Re: Errm...?

You must be. Chef is nothing new, but certainly something to have a laugh at from time to time. Look it up, but the short version is that it is an automation framework designed to minimize or remove human error in deployments.

Yes, the irony is so thick on this one it made my Monday.

NSA’s top hacking boss explains how to protect your network from his attack squads

QR Code

he displayed a QR code for attendees to scan for more information, joking that who’d really trust something like that from the NSA.

The first thing I thought when I saw the image was, " Who would scan that?"

Back to the Future's DeLorean is coming back to the future

I had the displeasure of riding in one of these a few years back. It was the most terrifying ride I have ever been in. Aside from the noise, the car continuously hunted in its lane, shook uncontrollably at any chance, and generally felt unsafe. Hauling it down to a stop in traffic, I thought for sure we would rear-end car after car. It barely managed the task - from 45 MPH. A truly worthless car. And not that appealing to look at either.

I would hope that they come out with an updated exterior and interrior for the re-launch. And better brakes. And more powerful engine, and better chassis, and. Oh screw it, just design a new car please.

For my money, if I was going for short run coolness from the era, I'd go with a Pantera. Far better looking, real engine, and still has that 80s style.

Pubs good for the soul: Official

Re: Save the pubs! Fix the beer!

My favorite pub in town does British style pours. Room temperature kegs and glasses. Love it. At home, the IPA's, ales and reds are in the fridge and pour into freezer cold glasses. The porters and stouts are garage temp into a warm glass. (Russian imperial stouts are my favorite - and on NO2 it is even better)

Sam Adams. Meh. When I first started drinking beer it was passable. I've gone back to in in recent years and found it to be pretty mass produced tasting. They've even tried to get in on the micro brew vibe and put some beers in 22oz bottles. Artsy labels and cool names. I tried their IPA. And promptly poured it down the drain it was so awful.

Drink on!

Re: Your pint has been marked

P.S. I just looked for it, and it's gone again {sigh}.

Check your local pub. Chances are, you walked it back for a refill and forgot it there. :)

Re: Save the pubs! Fix the beer!

@Dakooba

Thanks for pointing that out. I've had Bass, Guiness, Harp, etc. They are all unenjoyable. Although I can handle one Guinness. Beyond that and it it makes my stomach feel - not right.

Gotta love beer, though. Brings all kinds together no matter what the preference.

Save the pubs! Fix the beer!

CAMRA says that boozers "are increasingly under threat of demolition or being converted to another use by large developers with 29 pubs closing every week"

Save the pubs. Some day I'm going to go back to the mother land and sit in one of those pubs. Can't do that if they all close.

That being said, I'll have to find a proper brewery from which to drink. I've had some of that liquid you Brits call 'beer' (and that funny German stuff too), and it's pretty awful. Even that swirly Irish stuff they call a stout is not that great. Although, I may be spoiled for choice living in the U.S. Pacific North West. :D

Walmart takes its DevOps platform and piles it high on GitHub

Funny

They should spend some of that time developing their awesome solution on fixing their US web site. it stinks.

Berlin takes down ‘for sale’ sign over top Nazi’s love nest

Flatten It

Can't sensibly nuke it from orbit without political fallout.

Raze it and put something else up. Keeping that sort of thing around for movies doesn't cut it IMHO.

Re: once

Or perhaps a B24? Pretty sure we sent a lot of those over there before we joined the party. :)

Holy sh*t week forces Twitter top brass to go on ‘retreat’

Re: I dream of a world...

@Keef

I can't give you enough thumbs up. I work in tech and have for quite some time. I can't fucking stand social media for your reasons above among others. I just wish it would go away, but I don't think that is going to happen any time soon, or ever.

Re: Real Big Beta MetaData Bunker Busting Block Buster ...... with Future AIKeys Unfakeable

What the FECK did you just say? I read it but it made my head hurt.

Newly minted DevOps consultancy roams world, looking for CIOs in pain

Hmm

Mixed feelings here.

I used to work for Steve Anderson here in Seattle and know him personally. Great guy, super smart and he will surely succeed.

On the other hand, Dev-Ops.

The last time Earth was this hot hippos lived in Britain (that’s 130,000 years ago)

Re: So what are we supposed to think?

@Bullseyed

A hearty thumbs up to you, sir. I will remember your logical post tonight when I drink a fine North West (US) stout.

Microsoft herds biz users to Windows 10 by denying support for Win 7 and 8 on new CPUs

Re: Linux Mint

Running Mint 17.3 since last December. Slowly but surely wrapping my head around the *nix file system and how things work. No where near my Windows chops though. I'll keep using it for home use and keep supporting Win at work. Eventually I'll be as competent in linux as Win and then perhaps my job prospects will broaden a bit...

Come on Win admins. Take the plunge. I for one am loving the simple interface and no fuss interaction. The only thing I'm missing is Visio and One Note. The rest is provided and works great (Libre Office).

NASA books space shuttle delivery truck

Barf

"Few would have imagined back in 2010 when President Barack Obama pledged that NASA would work 'with a growing array of private companies competing to make getting to space easier and more affordable', that less than six years later we'd be able to say commercial carriers have transported 35,000 pounds of space cargo (and counting!) to the International Space Station - or that we’d be so firmly on track to return launches of American astronauts to the ISS from American soil on American commercial carriers. But that is exactly what is happening."

What a load of political crap. Anyone with a brain could see this coming for decades.

Stop, look, listen: Don't be 2016's DevOps roadkill – here's how to survive

Dev Ops Week?

What's with the overwhelming number of these articles this week?

After-dinner Mint? Stylish desktop finale released as last of the 17 line

Re: Mint has worked with ALL my hardware

I have the ENVY 13T. It installed Mint 17.3 no problem at all. Recognizes all my hardware as well. It dual boots nicely with my Win10 partition.

For any *nix distro make sure you turn off UEFI. Other than that it should be plug an play.

Re: Exactly what an operating system should be (IMO)

@Anthyony H.

"Dodgy mangled mess of spyware"? That's disingenuous to say the least. It's a fucking huge cock of steaming horseshit software that's not so much designed as congealed.

Fixed that for you.

Microsoft’s Get Windows 10 nagware shows signs of sentience

Re: Prepare for disaster...

I say we nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Re: Fancy going back to a fresh install of Win7?

That's what I did. I just keep 10 around now for a few programs. I suck at Linux but I'll figure it out eventually. :)