* Posts by cmrayer

23 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Sep 2009

The time PC Tools spared an aerospace techie the blushes

cmrayer
Go

Re: Windows 3.1

Back in the mid nineties I had a whole lab of 64+ PCs booting entirely from the LAN and using my PCs three channel SCSI RAID adapter as the source. Oh the joys of working for a NIC vendor (sadly long gone).

Multitasking is a myth: It means doing lots of things equally badly

cmrayer
Coat

Re: Back in the day

I think you've made a grave mistake...

Windows XP point-of-sale machine gets nasty sniffle. Luckily there's a pharmacy nearby

cmrayer

Re: Best OS Ever

There was an ia64 version, though not sure anyone used it!

Return of the audio format wars and other money-making scams

cmrayer
Mushroom

ZpulNg

I think the typos and other errors are there to filter out recipients with a modicum of awareness, leaving only the foolhardy to click on the links and give all their information to the scammers. They wouldn't want to waste their time with security aware people...

Stage fright or Stage light? Depends how far you dare to open your MacBook Pro's lid

cmrayer

Re: "Thin&Light" means Piece Of Shit.

My XPS13 has the power, USB and headphone ports, a realistic 8 hour battery life, yet is thin and light. Also 3 years old, used every day and display works fine. Perhaps Apple should ask Dell how to make hardware that just works ;-)

Ooh, my machine is SO much faster than yours... Oh, wait, that might be a bit of a problem...

cmrayer

Re: Well that was an invisible problem

In the early 90s early token release was invented so there could be multiple data packets going round the ring at once. By the mid 90s token ring switches existed and did go to 100Mb/s, before then there was FDDI for 100Mb/s and of course ATM at 155 in the early 90s.

Spy-on-your-home Y-Cam cameras removes free cloud storage bit

cmrayer

Re: A little OTT

Milestone, free for up to 8 cameras for 7 days recording. Http://www.milestonesys.com

Uses the same code Base as their excellent corporate versions, that you have to pay for.

StorONE 're-invents' storage stack to set hardware free

cmrayer

Malaise

Oops, Malware, not whatever malate is?!

You forgot that you hired me and now you're saying it's my fault?

cmrayer
Headmaster

Re: Had this from the IT tech side before

Being pedantic; 2016 is licensed per pair of cores so the minimum per host is 8x2 or 16 cores...

BlackBerry admits: We could do better at patching

cmrayer
Facepalm

Re: Epic fail

Truly the last straw for BlackBerry users.

It really is sad how the once great platform and company have destroyed every last bit of good will left.

Hey ho, it was a good run...

Dell gives world its first wireless-charging laptop if you buy $580 extra kit

cmrayer
Happy

Isn't the USB-C connector that can be a charger, a USB dock or a Thunderbolt dock and charger a better option. These days using a Dell XPS and Samsung S8 you can have one dock on the desk that with the same cable can cater for everything a phone or laptop needs.

The problem with Canada? The price of broadband is too damn high

cmrayer

155.77 Canadian $ = 89.30 UK £ so is the bit pricey, but maybe not for 150/50

I get 40/10 FTTC for 37 UK £ including copper line rental

Mozilla looses Firefox 43, including Windows 64-bit variant

cmrayer
Paris Hilton

er sure?

Waterfox i.e. 64 bit Firefox, has been around for years...

El Reg BuzzFelch: 10 Electrical Connectors You CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT!

cmrayer

IT

Shouldn't there have been one of those fiendishly complex proprietary network stacking connectors used by companies that claim to be standards based? ;-)

Microsoft's Windows 8.1 secrets REVEALED ... sort of

cmrayer
Happy

Re: Baffled

So, you've never had a remote that wasn't ergonomically perfect, never had a saucepan where water got under the handle on the lid when you washed it, like the silly dock on OSX that gets over full once you have more than a few applications etc.

Win 8 was better than 7 and now 8.1 has a few good tweaks.

:-)

cmrayer
Happy

Re: Baffled

Totally agree, been using 8 since the launch on non touch multi screen PCs and the only things that annoyed me were:

No start button, the bit to get to it at the corner of the screen was too small - FIXED

Apps took up the whole screen even if it was a 27" monitor - FIXED

Only one app visible at a time (you can have as many as you like running and use win+tab to switch) - FIXED

I'm very happy now!

Ethernet at 40: Its daddy reveals its turbulent youth

cmrayer
Boffin

Errors and omissions

12Mb Token Ring, er 16Mb I think! Also Early Token Release fixed the lost token issue but really it was all down to cost once the PC CPU had enough spare cycles to do in software what the TR NIC did in hardware. Funny there was no mention of ATM, that was a great technology with LAN/WAN QoS/COS all built in at layer 2 and the chips were much more like an Ethernet chip in production costs. Also there was no mention of Madge networks a British company who at one time were nearly as big as 3Com and had over 80% of the Token Ring market. They also pioneered switched TR and 100Mb TR in the early 1990s. Finally Type 1 is alive and well in some of our older buildings running 100Mb FDX Ethernet and the rats can't chew through it ;-)

Microsoft claims Windows Server 2012 is 'first cloud OS'

cmrayer
FAIL

It's working now, oh no it isn't....

They can't even make the errors user friendly!

Server Error in '/' Application.

Runtime Error

Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".

<!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->

<configuration>

<system.web>

<customErrors mode="Off"/>

</system.web>

</configuration>

Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's <customErrors> configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.

<!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->

<configuration>

<system.web>

<customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="mycustompage.htm"/>

</system.web>

</configuration>

World+Dog to demand ever larger tablet-phones

cmrayer
Trollface

I got to "upgrade" a new employee from his old personal high end Nokia to a Blackberry 9900 and I forgot how good phones used to be more akin to jewellery than technology demonstrations... That Nokia was a real pleasure to use!

Skype goes titsup across globe

cmrayer
Paris Hilton

Status page - pah, try the homepage

From the Skype homepage, finally an admission of the problem:

"0 people online right now

Every minute of every day, millions of people around the world use Skype to keep in touch – for free."

Paris, because the poor homepage is obviously confised ;-)

Sony 3D TV kit, PS3 games released tomorrow

cmrayer
WTF?

S470

I've had one for over a month (bought in the UK from a UK retailer) so is it the 3D firmware that is released tomorrow??

US Bank dumps Sharepoint (to spend more time with Lotus)

cmrayer
Flame

@The Original Steve

In Exchange 2010 maybe some are there but even then the WAN clustering is not active/active and depends on the OS that you are using. Oh and we cannot use 2010 because some of the estate is on 2003 (meanwhile in Domino land 5, 6, 6.5, 7, 8, 8.5 all coexist perfectly.

Notes 8.5 F5 is refresh, html rendering is as good as IE7, nowhere near Firefox/Chrome but that's another rant!

8.5 can be slower than Outlook (ie is uses more memory) but if you have thousands of mails in your inbox (not in folders) then Outlook is slower that Notes - maost of our users do!

Windows plays virtualization catch up with Linux

cmrayer
Happy

Looking forward

I think the licensing issue for MS users should now largely have disappeared due to the increased performance per physical host now available.

WIth a dual socket 54xx or 55xx Intel server it is now more cost effective to buy Windows Datacenter licences than Standard or Enterprise. This licence allows unlimited virtual instances and has made a huge difference for us at least.