@asdf
Annoyingly the US keeps knocking on the upstairs door looking for help. Our current "tenant" however helpful he may have been to the US lately, is possibly looking to be replaced in October. (I sure as hell hope so)
Posts by Alistair
3023 publicly visible posts • joined 18 May 2007
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EU threesome promises good times for data protection reform
Login creds for US agencies found scrawled on the web's toilet walls
Facebook dunks Instagram in new search filter sheep dip
Triple glitch grounds ALL aircraft in New Zealand
Wake up, sheeple! If you ask Siri about 9/11 it will rat you out to the police!
Amazon enrages authors as it switches to 'pay-per-page' model
Tuesday 23rd June 2015 20:49 GMT 
cynical grumpy bastard comment
Amazon, big international conglomerate that *sort* of makes money, depending on which of their very expensive lawyers you ask.
Independent authors putting out books on service offered by Amazon.
Subscription service offered by Amazon has books from independent authors. Pays out based on "read".
Subscription service changes terms to based on pages read.
a) nothing says that "payout" in (a) = "payout" in (b)
b) nothing says that "the pool of money" that provides "payout" = "subscription fees collected"
Cynical bastard points out that Big International Conglomerates *DO NOT* do things to make their suppliers *richer* EVER. Any change is done to put more dollars in Big International Conglomerate's coffers.
Might it keep garbage producers from making too much money? possibly. Will it make decent independent authors more money? possibly. But I seriously doubt that it was done for this reason.
SpaceX gets ready to crash barge-land ANOTHER rocket
Tim Worstall dances to victory over resources scaremongerers
NIST issues 'don't be stupid' security guidelines for contractors
Webmail password reset scam lays groundwork for serious aggro
California über alles? Is MEP Reda flushing Euro copyright tradition down the pan?
Friday 19th June 2015 12:18 GMT
Limit the Term.
Disney has absolutely mangled the concept of copyright into a nightmare that needs to be attacked with an axe and a chainsaw.
This mess is just that, a terrible mess. Furthered by complete misunderstandings of the differences between copyright, trademark, patent, and real honest to pete "intellectual property" (not this crap that gets called IP now, such as the one click patents), and exacerbated by the differentiation of the *legal* interpretations of these items around the world.
I'm no fan of the Disney interpretations, nor am I hot on the Amazon interpretations. I know damned well what happened with my patentable material, however that was terms of employment (and **there is a rats nest of patent/copyright crap that NO politician is going to attack) I'm inclined to believe that at this stage of the game, the only direction that any legal frame work is going to go is to bolstering both the Disney and Amazon positions, and you and I and the rest of the folks out there can get screwed.
</hmmms, seems I need more coffee and possibly a valium or three>
Hey Google, what’s trending? Oh, just the death of journalism
Chancellor Merkel 'was patient zero' in German govt network hack
Intel inside: Six of the best affordable PC laptops
Hey kids, who wants to pwn a million BIOSes?
NASA on track to triple Discover super's grunt
Poison résumé attack gives ransomware a gig on the desktop
Friday 12th June 2015 13:19 GMT
"Anyone stupid enough to run an screensaver executable that's packaged up in a zip file titled as a resume deserves everything they get."
Whist I'd tend to agree with your sentiment, I'll point out that a large number of those idiots work in the same places as a lot of the commentards here. And the idiot will not be tasked with mopping up the mess. It will far more likely fall to the folks that read this site regularly and comment about how stupid these end users are.
That said -- they mention a compromised wordpress site. And I'm pretty sure there are some sigs to add to the blacklists.
VMware unleashes Linux on the (virtual) desktop
Friday 12th June 2015 12:38 GMT
Linux on the desktop debates
Have been going on for years.
IBM moved huge swathes of staff onto linux desktops over the last four years.
- Lotus notes is java based, it made no difference to that, in fact given better memory management in the OS, the app behaves better.
I'm aware of a (middle sized) financial trading house that tossed MS desktops to the side of the road in the last 8 months, reduced their MS server population by 85%, and are now working off a combination of linux workstations and Mac laptops. (not sure I can name them, I was a subC) and a huge fleet of virtual linux and Solaris servers.
To my knowledge a middle sized police force in Europe are engaged in switching to Andriod/Linux endpoints and minimizing their MS server fleet, moving to Virtualized windows apps only where there is no alternative.
Guess what - other than PowerPoint, Project and Visio - LibreOffice/OpenOffice/(there's another fork of this somewhere) has covered the office suite territory. (Yes it has a presentation document engine, but I'll admit *that* has a learning curve that is a bit longer) - Project can be swapped out for one of three options - again with a learning curve, but they do work reasonably well.
Visio I *personally* have not found a *decent* replacement for - but that may again be a learning curve and *I* may be being stubborn.
My current group of co-workers don't typically have wacky crap added onto the Office Suite components they use, since our analysis tools are in the TeraData/Informatica/MicroStrategy territory, and with the addition of Hadoop and the herd of OSS tools that brings, I've been asked to provide linux desktop access for them. The Desktop team have been trying for years to get it adopted, and with the work that RedHat has done, the virtual desktop tools we have already, its starting to look like we may have a valid reason to cut almost $8MCA out of the IT budget, *and still* be able to present everything the end users need, whether it be MS, MAC or linux.
However, in the long run, there will be folks who are *petrified* of moving off of MS's platform, either because they've bought the FUD that "nothing works in linux" or simply because they've no faith in their ability to change their tools.
As much as Trevor is apparently foaming at the mouth (to some of the commentards) and as much as that AC is apparently ignoring the real world, I'm one of those rational types that goes for logic and reason. Trevor is quite right in many of the things he says, and I'm inclined overall to agree with him, and the AC *does* have a couple of points, however they may well be based on the FUD that is *still* being spewed about "linux sucks as a desktop".
Right tool for the job at hand is my take, and what we have here from vmware is quite simply something that may well be the right tool for *many* folks that want to reduce costs, and improve their working environments.
Wednesday 10th June 2015 12:36 GMT
*shakes head*
About time we got this out there -
Yes X11 is a network protocol. Have you ever *looked* at the shit signalling and traffic volumes involved? - Perhaps ever considered the bandwidth your core network might need to support in order to have more than 25 clients on the network?
I've managed to muddle along with vmware using viperl and firefox on linux for quite some time now.
once the VCSA is up who cares where the windows went? ( apologies WvB )
Mainframe staffing dilemma bedevils CIO dependents
HGST shimmy shimmy shingles its way to a 10TB spinning rust drive
Wednesday 10th June 2015 13:01 GMT
Replacing a tape archive system in the next FQ
Too bad I wont be able herd these in.
340Tb of Legal hold and financial historical data - and they want it *off* of tape since it takes too damned long to get at now. 160-180 of these in two arrays in different geo's, and a block duplication FS on top, or reasonable raid.
I could imagine repopping a pair of frames with a ZDL type appliance in the middle and taking 10 weeks to migrate off. But that would be too easy for management as it has $$$ attached to it. Meantime they want to use anything that has the room but doesn't have $$ attached. Or for that matter offsite. *sigh*
TERROR in ORBIT: Dodgy rocket burp biffs International Space Station off track
NSA slapdown prompts Privacy Int'l to file new lawsuit against GCHQ
Undetectable NSA-linked hybrid malware hits Intel Security radar
DARPA's made a SELF-STEERING 50-cal bullet – with video proof
Virty servers' independence promise has been betrayed
Monday 8th June 2015 16:06 GMT
Re: What am I missing?
Most clustering software (including OS level) requires direct hardware access to a shared disk somewhere. -- in Vmware language, device passthrough. Once done, typically, your VM is now pinned to a specific node. This applies for most OS clusters, Oracle RAC, Vertias, MCSG and a number of applications I've had to deploy in the past.
To my knowledge, RH has fixed RHCS for VMware and kvm environments, and the MCSG for linux incorporated a similar fix - I believe that Vertias clusters now can *have* virtual nodes, but any master must NOT be virtual - I've not worked with them recently.
I still have DBA's talking about putting RAC clusters in virtualization - to whit, we have an exadata coming shortly to solve that issue.
Monday 8th June 2015 15:53 GMT
I've seen this architected.
And then spent 5 months raising every red flag I could wave at everyone on the damned project.
Now they don't understand why changing anything in the environment takes 3 months of planning.
New platform is being built to replace it. I still have my original emails. Will likely end up trotting them out for the next round.
Sadly none of the vendors involved decided to step and admit that it was a mistake to do this...
Chips can kill: Official
So why the hell didn't quantitative easing produce HUGE inflation?
The weapons pact threatening IT security research
Stand-up and be counted²: Nerd is the funny word
A pause in global warming? What pause?There was no pause
Friday 5th June 2015 22:36 GMT 
ohboy
Again we have the debate about the value of data used to run the calculations.
Again we have the calculations showing something different.
I stand by my position. We as a species know that the climate is changing.
We've got thousands of scientific minds digging at the problem of "what is causing climate change", we're spending millions of dollars/pounds/marks/francs/yen whathaveyou on the research. There are entrenched camps that are already decided on "what is causing climate change". There are as yet no concrete conclusions on what is actually causing the changes, there are as yet no concretely guaranteed expected results of what these changes will mean to the planet as a whole.
We've got entire economies dedicated to "renewable resources development" that are spending *billions* of dollars/pounds/marks/francs/yen whathaveyou on new ways of turning sunlight or wind into power. We've still got entire economies dedicated to burning whatever form of carbon to make energy, and spending billions of dollars/pounds/marks/francs/yen whathaveyou to keep that industry going.
Personally, I suspect/feel/have a reasonable suspicion that tossing millions of tons of CO2 out there is not a good thing for the planet overall, but I don't believe it is the *only* reason why we're seeing climate change. I think there may be other factors involved that are far beyond our ability to control that are contributing. I still have yet to see a projection from the scientific community that has reached mainstream media that has come even close to what we get to observe (10/15/20 years) down the road.
Events like this where a primary source of analysis is *tossing data out* of the calculations or models and saying that the result is truer than other models, demonstrates clearly that the scientist(s) doing this are NOT interested in accuracy, but rather only in proving their theory. The method calls for adding all observational data and having the theory work with it. Or tossing the theory out the window and finding one that DOES work with all the observational data.
Star Trek's Lt Uhura hospitalised in LA after stroke
Don't believe the hype: When that DATA seems just too good
Large Hadron Collider gives young ALICE a black-hole ray gun
Why did Snowden swipe 900k+ US DoD files? (Or so Uncle Sam claims)
Friday 5th June 2015 11:28 GMT
Re: I know I'm in a minority on here
I think I can add Harper to that list. Mind you he's more of "too stupid to see how bad the example he's following is" type of issue.
Personally - The figureheads aren't really the issue -- I'd like to see the advisor type folks that lead the charge over the cliff pinned to trees, kept alive and breathing and used as target practice by small children using globs of honey. And keep a few dozen fire ant hills in the neighbourhood.
(sorry - its early and I've only made it through half a coffee)
Passions run high in EU parliament debate over air passengers' privacy
Virgin Media wins ELEVENTH patent case against Rovi
Mad John McAfee: 'Can you live in a society that is more paranoid than I'm supposed to be?'
One USB plug to rule them all? That's sensible, but no...
Secure web? That'll cost you, thanks to Mozilla's HTTPS plan
Holy SSH-it! Microsoft promises secure logins for Windows PowerShell
The rare metals debate: Only trace elements of sanity found
Intel gobbles up chipmaker Altera in $16.7 BILLION splurge
Google's Cardboard 2.0 virtual reality device is a triumph for humanity, said no one sane, ever
Sony sees the cold light of optical archives, buys ex-Facebooker's upstart
Thursday 28th May 2015 19:11 GMT
Re: Robotics
Ummm.
circa 70's era juke boxes did this.
with DVD/BlueRay to get the data throughput you'd want putting the optics in the retrieval arm means that you have your 1 dedicated arm tied up while the disk is read off. The model presented allows you to stuff the disk in the drive and go get other disks to satisfy io requests.
other point, air flow becomes an issue if you have the optics on the moving bit, it will alter the head flight.
This has a place for WORM data. With allowed higher latency. That you don't call back all that often.
The 'echo chamber' effect misleading people on climate change
Thursday 28th May 2015 15:42 GMT 
Social media "echo chambers"
Yes - there are huge pools of stupid out there that folks get stuck in, and tend to have a hard time wading their way out of.
Yes - folks that don't like to think too hard will tend not to wade their way out and will be vociferous in defending their pool of stupid.
Personally I tend to look at positions and read about them because they are different from mine. I don't tend to brand folks outright simply because they hold a different opinion or perspective than mine. My balance is logic. If there is *some* logic in place its worth looking at the perspective. If I can find no trace of logic in the perspective I move on. However, since our governments have been slaughtering education for 40 years, I've found that many, many folks don't comprehend logic.
I cannot even shoot down some of the most vociferous "Climate Change" deniers, nor can I shoot down the most panicked "Climate Change" proponents, as they use *some* logic, and have *some* evidence to back them up, especially when you can trace the path to the backing/funding that supports them. In reality, you cannot call someone who is a virulent CC denier *stupid* if they are earning dinner and a pension from the BigOilConglomerate -- shortsighted perhaps, but not stupid. You read the article and it inflamed you didn't it? -- The same can be said of the "Oh My God, New York will drown in 15 years" crowd. -- typically you can't call them stupid, they have some facts ,they have some logic and there is a source for their income, likely with a vested interest in RenewableSourcesofEnergy.
Sadly - my take on the use of the word "consensus" is that it is a typical cop out to "I've heard this somewhere once". Or that the consensus was based on three people getting drunk one night on a deck in the back yard.
My largest problem with the entire "climate change" debate is that the science makes it clear that there are changes happening, but we (as a species, not us Reg Readers) don't have sufficient knowledge, computing power, or data to concretely correlate what sequence of events puts this change in place. And, as such, we as a species, have to put hard logic in place, and point out that we can make some changes in what we are doing to remove the deltas we as a species apply, but that those changes may or may NOT have any affect at all on the changes that our climate is undergoing. We simply do not have sufficient knowledge or correlation.
You find your car takes longer to stop at stop lights, you change the brakes right? Does this fix the problem if you've added a 7,000lb trailer to your car? Possibly, possibly only for a short time, possibly not at all.
< hmmmmmm /endrant>
Biting the hand that feeds IT
