Posts by BILL_ME

Eutelsat in talks with Euro leaders as they mull Starlink replacement in Ukraine

Re: Hmm

Not sure anyone is really concerned with Russian casualties, convicts or not.

Its pretty clear Russia invaded and is wrong.

However, when someone is 'trying' to separate two warring factions from the act of continuing to war, you are not going to move forward with agreement to cease if you don't frame the argument with the suggestion that both combatants are equally losing.

And there are undoubtedly tens to hundreds of thousands of Russians who have died in UKR who had no animosity.

Confused, was there a point you were trying to make?

Re: Hmm

Wow, calling someone out as a traitor for pointing out what a lot of EU leaders have privately admitting for weeks now?

Feel free to send a big check to those UKR equipment crowd funding sites.

Are you willing to send UK troops on the ground in UKR?

UK can backstop the EU, right?

Re: Hmm

It will be interesting to see if this plays out.

In all the armchair generaling, I have not seen anyone discuss whether or not the Ukrainian people want to continue this war.

No doubt they want to regain their territory, however there comes a time for every country as we have thousands of years of world history to review.

There are a fair number of reports that seem to indicate war fatigue is real and pervasive in Ukraine.

And then there are the Z 67% More Woar being reported.

Without USAID, and less CIA, it will be interesting to see if the narrative starts to firm up one way or the other.

Re: Russia is reportedly 5% of EU's combined GDP

"Trump is mercenary and money motivated, so a rare truth when he claims he'll sell Europe weapons for Ukraine."

And I'm sure all the business folks in Europe got rich by being altruistic and giving their money away, right?

I'm sure the EU will keep giving weapons to Ukraine for free forever, right?

Oh wait, most of those past deals have been 'Loans'.

And the Minerals deal UK already signed is In Payment Of.

You were talking about mercenary and money motivated?

And you are right, it is up to Zelensky to either make a deal or continue with war.

The EU will be happy to fund this war for as long as it takes, or until its own citizens start protesting en masse at taxes and benefit cuts. It IS in everyone's interests to wear down Russia as much as is humanely possible.

Its all simple, until Putin decides his stability is really at stake and he drops a low yield tac nukes in Ukraine.

Anyone really think France or UK are going to hit Send on their nukes?

No.

And Putin knows that and has it in his back pocket.

Re: Hmm

Let see what happens when US stocks run out, and the EU is pressed to either give up their remaining small number of spares and 'personal stash'.

Russia has had its advance slowed because they are running low on vehicles.

Enough to start using commercial ones.

Low vehicles mean much lower potential for advance.

And NK will be happy to add vehicles and such to the artillery and other armaments they are trading.

Russia is stretched, however they sure aren't rationing fuel, food, or consumer products.

Russia will continue to fight, with NK re-supply as necessary, turn commercial production to defense, for as long as Putin is alive.

Expecting Russia to collapse is what the Germans did in WW II.

Only if Russia ever did get close to collapse, I expect very low yield 1-10Kt artillery and IRBM to be their final F U.

EU sure seems to want to call Russia's bluff.

Re: Hmm

Is it really?

I mean difficult, for you?

Go look at Russia under Obama/Biden's 2 terms.

Then Trump's first Term.

Then Biden's Second Term.

Still confused?

OK, do the same with N. Korea.

"It's difficult to construct a credible argument that America is reluctant to have a presence in the country to protect the people of a democratic independent state in case it should provoke a conflict, but that it would be prepared to engage in a conflict to protect its mere mineral rights."

That fact that you find it uncredible is likely either a gray matter problem or an attempt to mask a political difference.

Seems like you are saying the US should have military in UKR as their defenders.

Why is the US expected to do that when the EU is next door neighbors?

The fact that you think Pres. Trump would not enact swift military action on a Country that would attack American civilians is not quantifiable either way at this time.

Though if you really, really believed that, you wouldn't be asking for the US to put troops in Ukraine anyways.

You'd be asking why your Country and the EU aren't doing it themselves, now.

"The more you tighten your grip, Trump, the more systems will slip through your fingers."

Thats about the funniest inversion of reality I've seen today.

The US is stopping its bankrolling of a conflict.

The US is attempting to put a cease-fire in place.

The US is attempting to put Americans IN Ukraine as human shields.

The EU is pissed that the USA will not simply throw money at a lost cause, because you all feel entitled.

The EU is semi-pissed that it has to start throwing real money at a lost cause.

The UK has already signed a Minerals Deal with UKR to snatch up those minerals.

Snarky 'Deep' as a stand in for actual thoughts.

American here who has been happy for years seeing the Russians getting shellacked.

As a vet, I follow a lot of the intel/war sites and forums and its only the last 6-8 months that there seems to have been a change.

Not sure what the inflection point was, however UKR's manpower deficit has become more pronounced, or reported on.

Russia is 146M to Ukraines 36M, though a lot of UKR males have gone AWOL.

Asset Trackers have shown old Soviet stockpiles have been burned through to 20% maybe, with a corresponding decrease in Ukrainian territory wins.

Most recent economic data seems to indicate Russia is now at 40% GDP for Defense, and reportedly can produce armaments/munitions in 3 months that the 32-member EU needs a year to produce.

Review that, Russia is reportedly 5% of EU's combined GDP, yet it is capable of out producing the entire EU at this time.

Yes it may be less sophisticated, however quantity is a quality in itself.

Re-tooling and new infrastructure by EU will be extremely costly and take many months/year/years on average.

Unless EU wants to really start digging deep into its Rainy-Day store of munitions/equipment, there is a decided lack of 'spares' available for supporting UKR.

Russia is got an initial tranche of something like 8 million arty rounds last year, and more, slightly newer stock will be coming.

Regardless of Putin being an opportunistic psychopath, it appears pretty clear that Russia can and will continue to drag this out for years or decades if Afghanistan is an exemplar.

It has almost limitless human resources, and with China and Korea cold currency from which to pay for external materials and munitions.

Russia will grind Ukraine into a bloody bog, and no one outside of NATO has the remotest possibility of challenging this.

And if that were to happen, Russia would absolutely drop an artillery tactical nuke of 1Kt to in some UKR desertedish farmland or mountain to force a Put Up or Shut Up.

CodeJunky seems to be pretty logical in his posts, and I'm gobsmacked at how 99% of the rest on here seem to be willing to fight to the last dead Ukrainian, and calling for a WW III brinksmanship event wholeheartedly.

Just a quick thought.

For England to raise 100B with 28M job-earners, you're looking at $3471 in extra taxes on every single worker.

Even at 50B, you're looking at $1700 additional for this years Revenue bill.

And the next year, and the next, etc.

So thats a simple economic cost, next lets talk about who in your family you're willing to send in to actually fight and die for your demands on behalf of UKR.

I collect DownVotes, so feel free.

How a good business deal made us underestimate BASIC

Re: English is one of the easiest human languages...

Native English speaker here, and I also think its the easiest language in the world.......

Every non-English speaker is going to have a different opinion on what language is easier to learn.

German was easier for me than Japanese because of the reverse sentence structure though the actual language is easier as pronounciation is the same as is writen without the weird exceptions English has.

If pronounciation of the new language is not too dissimilar to the native speaker, then probably the most important criteria in classifying it as 'easy' is does the new language sentence structure follow the native one.

Aside from having to learn new words, training yourself to reverse ubject–Object–Verb to Subject–Verb-Object, or others like High-context vs low-context.

Not sure how/why this is in the discussion though, BASIC was written in English because thats what its creators spoke.

Network died, hard, during company Christmas party, leaving lone techie to fix it

Re: Cisco survival

Another good tip is to back-up the running config to flash under another name like bu-date, and a copy to your local machine.

Only problem with the 'rel in 10' is the spastic auto-muscle-memory I have in doing 'wri mem' after x number of entries or cut and pastes.

"With Cisco it's always best to use the following steps:

1) 'rel in 10'

2) do the needful (set the reload time as appropriate for your reconfiguration)

3) test the results. If stuff works, 'rel can' then 'wri mem' and go home happy. If not, nervously watch the clock while you wait for the reboot (optionally grab the BOFH excuse calendar and play defense on the phone).

Learned that after borking a router that was a 4 hour ride away."

So, the difference between an 'admin' and a basic networking guy.

All the comments read so far, and none bothered to mention the basic fault.

Easily since the late 2000's, most decent/large companies were not using VTP Mode Server to manage VLAN synchronization, but were using VTP Mode Transparent.

Transparent disabled VLAN synchronization and central management in favor of manual creation of VLAN's an each switch.

Primary reason why is that installing a new switch with a higher revision version and also default set to Server will quite often overwrite the rest of the connected switches. Usually setting all the switches to default to VLAN 1 as the only VLAN and the hilarity that induces.

This is sort of Level 101 of networking you learn on Day 1-2, and why Transparent is usually used once you get above a small business size.

Not that scary or that hard: Two decades of VLANS

Wow, many of these comments are downright crazy.

I decided to jump back into IT back in 98, where I should have stayed focused on and gone into after highschool/college in the first place.

Even back then we were ripping out Bay Networks and Cat5000s using CatOS, and aside from the the BN's being unmanaged, we were using VLAN's, STP etc.

Now even 2 decades later and there are technical people responsible for networks who are mystified about IOS Layer 2 Vlans?

If I had to interview someone and they were more familiar with routing than switching, they'd be a no go probably for even an entry level position.

Switching may seem as relevent as Y2k nowadays, however its far faster than routing, and all of your User Access and Distribution networks absolutely rely on it.

Vlans minimize your broadcast domain, provide security segmentation, and make our jobs easier.... What can't Vlans do!

I'm primarily on Cisco kit, and the first thing I used to do when I was implementing or a config monkey was changing the the default native Vlan from 1 to something else, disable Vlan 1 and setting VTP Mode to Transparent.

You only need to work through a fire drill once where some idjit plugs a new switch onto the corporate network which happens to have VTP Mode set to Server, which then proceeds to upload its empty vlan db to all of your switches set to VP Mode Client.

Or because VLAN 1 is up/up he actually connects and starts populating his dept. lab with a DHCP server, router, etc and the Help Desk alerts your Dir to a network outage/incident occurring.

Very shocked to hear about SPB, totally missed that the past years. Checking on it, and now I know why, as it appears Cisco spurned it for TRILL which has died.

I know VSS works without STP, and C3850's and above allow both uplinks to be active with LACP, IIRC.

And the reasons for buying new IT gear are as follows ...

"Steal them"

As a netops guy thats worked his way up to net engineer since the late 90's in the F500 space, I still think disappearing your client's equipment even if old/obsolete without their permission is just theft.

Even without experience in the SMB space, it shouldn't take that much brain power to realize that SMB's don't have the capital to engage in such an upgrade cycle.

I can state that even the F500's I work for all have C3560's still in-place.

As a Network Consultant, you should be able to do standard network discovery across their network, and identify what equipment will not support the architecture they have in place.

Part of this may include re-architecting as necessary, and upgrading equipment to support things like trunking, vlan's, etc.

From there you should be able to pull together a proper business justification for new equipment, services, etc.

We all would like to be able to get a client's out-dated mish-mash of equipment upgraded to something modern and coherent.

But the problem is, while that might be what we want, the client is always going to ask if there is any way to keep limping along as they have been.

If you think about it, we do the same thing when the car is in the shop. We get a list of things that NEED to be replace, and there are others that should, or could be replaced.

The problem in the author's story seems to be coming to inherit a customer who was either sold a bill of goods with D-Link or other consumer equipment, or a customer who pushed their original Network consultant to minimize cost as the primary goal.

To some extent, you DO get what you pay for.

While it might seem iffy, eBay has tons of Cisco gear available for pennies on the dollar. I was going to recommend 3560's for general LAN switches, however just checked and it looks like even 3750's are available in abundance down to $125.

This presupposes the client actually needs more advanced equipment.

OCZ Vertex bashes users with Blue Screen of Death

OCZ sucks like its 1999...

I am in the middle of RMA'ing a Vertex2 60GB. Sometimes it is seen in BIOS, other times not. This drive probably has 100 hours on it of light use.

Its a known issue like the V3 referenced in the issue. Fortunately, the last several months I've been busy on my work laptop to not even turn the hex-core the V2 is in, on. So missed the last OCZ crisis and outright malfeasence on the V2 34-25nm fiasco.

But, it did give me pause to think about doing business with them. And Corsair's definately looking like they are a class act.

Once I get this V2 RMA successfully completed, I'm getting away from anything Sandforce for my next SSD, that will be coming as soon as I can sell this one.

Intel, Marvell, Samsung, heck even JMicron.

But never again, OCZ.

Unarmed Royal Navy T45 destroyer breaks down mid-Atlantic

OK....

OK, I'll bite. As an American, I guess I prove the rule here and am just too stupid to get the nuanced view being expressed.

On one hand a number of poster's are complaining about shoddy workmanship/engineering. Which sounds like it is becoming routine.

On the other, there is a sarcastic slam at the author for not adding his obligatory comments on some American kit that he believes should have been bought in its place.

Curious and curiouser.

I've read a few of Lewis' pieces before, some have been interesting, and some rather off in my estimation. However, maybe you should all make up your minds? First bitch at the guy for suggesting American kit that could have been purchased, or bitch that he doesn't make such suggestions. Seems like the classic definition of 'blithering'.

Top Gear is a hit over here, and the wife and I love Clarkson, his typical Euro trashing of the US not withstanding. However here, just like with Jeremey, I hear a lot of bitching, whining and excuses.

Many of you are exactly like Clarkson, comparing and dismissing an American product, even though there is little if anything locally produced. Its interesting to note that when Clarkson dismisses US-made vehicles, its always against some German, Italian, or even French made vehicle. Aside the occasional Vauxhall, I really don't see where Clarkson or the average UK snob has a pot to piss in when it comes to any sort of manufacturing capability/comparison.

I really just don't get how otherwise intelligent people can talk trash about others when they can't make squat themselves, and not feel like total bare-assed baboons.

The UK has poor record of maintaining a consistent defence budget as a part of GDP. As of 2009 IIRC it was below the world average, now, probably even more. If you don't 'invest' consistently, you lose the talent and capability, and are then forced to either join in with a pool of others like you have, or purchase from others.

And, relying on subs is as foolish as relying on planes. For the guy who had the container ship idea, kudos for cheap, down and dirty outside the box thinking.

You can always go talk to the Russians or Chinese you know.

Boeing's 'Phantom Eye' Ford Fusion powered stratocraft

LOL,

LOL, 3 years in development is considered pretty fast. Especially for being a 'hybrid' so to speak.

"Blighty's fighter factories haven't built a new plane on their own since the 1960s: all the UK forces' current aircraft are full of imported technology and have been for decades."

Since you guys haven't built anything locally in the UK since the '60's as you said in the other article, reposted above, I don't quite get some of the jibes.

Oh wait, of course. Those who can do, those who can't sit on the sidelines and let their envy dribble out their mouths.

Yeah, Brits getting as bad as the ChiComs with copying more advanced nations. For the record, from the US Airforce itself:

" X-45A

In 1999 Boeing was awarded a demonstration phase contract by DARPA and the USAF. Under the contract, Boeing Phantom Works completed two X-45A demonstrator air vehicles. The roll out ceremony of the first vehicle was in September 2001. The first flight was completed in May 2002."

So, 8 years for you to get a copy going, eh? Crikey, you must be cream crackered after such innovation....

Fast USB 2.0 Flash Drives

pfft....

I bought the SUPER TALENT Pico_C 8GB Flash Drive from NewEgg last year. Smallest one I've seen, and no problems attached to my my keyring being banged around all the time.

Seems to come in very close to 2nd place.

They just came out with a 32GB, waiting for NE to stock one in gold for a change.