Posts by thondwe

Has Windows 11 really lost marketshare to Windows 10?

Stats eh?

Suspect some statically anomaly somewhere? Eg could just be a lot of pcs having been dormant for a while and are now being pressed back into service - e.g. kids revising over Easter for summer exams??

Some smart meters won't be smart at all once 2/3G networks mothballed

Never worked - No Coverage

Ours never got to "commissioned" - supposed to be covered by Telefonica (aka O2) - but village is a not spot for most providers - still waiting on Rural mast sharing to be fully implemented

JUST why cant the meters hang off Wi-Fi as a option - Have had various reasonable ISP connections for years - now 1GB/s FTTP and have depended on that for mobile (Wifi-calling, etc, and now even rarely used "land line" is a freebee VOIP/App setup.

Local councils struggle with ill-fitting software despite spending billions with suppliers

Suit(e)s you sir?

Have a feeling that in a number of sectors (Local Council, Education etc) we may have reached the tipping point given what modern development tools and developers are capable where getting a tailor made suite for the sector is going to be much more cost effective than customising some off the self package?

Noting that clearly it would take a time and money to get started, but should save long term?

Paul

VMware customer reaction to Broadcom may set the future of software licensing

What do you get for "Support" anyways?

A lot of sites have a lot of local expertise or a 3rd party support outfit, who more often than not discover the solutions on 'internet - forums/knowledge bases etc. Training is something else which usually costs extra.

So what does "Support" actually provide - access to fixes for things that are broken - which arguably should be free? What else - "insurance" to allow C-suite to shout at someone when fan gets hit?

EU antitrust cops probe Microsoft ties between Entra ID and 365 services

Entra ID came with O365?

IIRC what is now Entra ID came with O365 from the get go, it then morphed into Azure ID (when Azure appeared) and then rebranded for no good reason to Entra ID.

I think Google Apps/Workspace has a similar history - and the need for a google account to do anything on Googleland - so Pot calling Kettle...

TrueNAS CORE 13 is the end of the FreeBSD version

BSD death by a thousand linux migrations?

Every time a BSD based product loses to Linux, it becomes a little more unappealing - support for new hardware is likely to be a ongoing issue. e.g. Graphic cards drivers for Plex/Jellyfin encoding I'd guess might be something disappearing as a result of TrueNAS moving to Linux? pfsense presumably focuses on Netgate tin, likewise Juniper and Apple (M* chips now)

I'm sort of expecting OpnSense to be looking seriously at a Linux switch as a final step to separation from PfSense??

How to Netflix Oracle’s blockbuster audit model

Re: Oracle Cloud

Smart people in I.T. usually focus on the I.T. - If you're lucky they ask the local licencing guru (hopefully an old wise former "smart I.T. guy") before deployment - but more often they ask after the system started moaning about licencing or are picked up by an internal "audit"!

A reminder that Oracle, Microsoft licencing people should be on the Goldafrinchum B ark!

Oracle Cloud

Suspect Oracle Cloud licencing is the self auditing solution you are looking for,,, Still can't be recommended though!

Nutanix doesn't expect a rush of VMware refugees – maybe for years

Re: Hyperconverged

VSAN deployments vs SAN deployments - evidence needed?

Likely that sites buy a solution (Software + Servers + Networks + Storage) at a single point in time. Much more likely Nutranix et al will pick up new customers based on hardware refresh cycles - so the Hyperconverged nature of the system is then down to customer requirements...

Greener, cheaper, what's not to love about a secondhand smartphone?

Re: Mmmmmm

It's where Apple seem to have the edge. My family is on it's second round of refurbished iPhones (8s and now 13s) - no issues - and all on £9 EE deals which seem to accumulate more data than we use - and that includes two teens! Overall cost if the phones last a few years (8's only swapped to get onto current IOS) way lower than buying new contract....

The self-created risk in Broadcom's big VMware kiss-off

Re: I was lucky

We were lucky too - already on Subs model and renewal was cheaper - go figure! Still looking at options though as underlying tin is on it's last legs!

Cutting kids off from the dark web – the solution can only ever be social

Re: A reasonable solution is needed

Vast majority of Parents (and politicians) have zero clue with technology - and certainly not to the level of effectively managing parental controls or producing workable laws.

Laws should be stating which acts are illegal (e.g. Possession of images, Cyber Stalking etc etc) and not trying a whack-a-mole approach to the all methods people use to perform the acts?

AND My kids get regular classes from police etc - as part of "Well Being" days - but parents don't! and certainly don't get parental tech classes - most parents don't get how to be a parent classes!!

That's not the web you're browsing, Microsoft. That's our data

Big Problems?

Given that you've got a OS full of Apps that can do all sorts of queries of the data stored/used by the user, (see the MS 365 portal!) would think that a bit of tab sharing is the least of the problems - if you want properly isolation use a sandbox, separate machine etc.

Cloud Software Group effectively snuffs open source XenCenter via a README file

Re: This would have been news in 2014...

That does appear the Achilles heel in the XCP-NG offering - Kernel appears to come from Citrix world and is only 4.19 from Centos - Got legacy written all over it!

Would anyone be surprised to see support for KVM from Xen-Orchestra and a possible name change...

Zen Internet warns customers of an impending IP address change

ISPs - Aquiss

I've been with Aquiss for a while - not a big outfit - a cityfibre reseller, but quietly competent. And given I'm with FTTP and it's all OpenReach doing the donkey work - does it really matter?

Competition is decreasing in enterprise IT – and you’ll be poorer and dumber for it

No just Enterprise I.T. Hardware

Enterprise Software has been in the same boat for sometime - choice remains limited - Obviously MS Office etc- but any line of business application is likely to satisfied by one or two companies.

What is Model Collapse and how to avoid it

Multiple LLMs make matters worse

So there are multiple LMMs at work in this, so it's bit like two polluters feeding into the same river - each on it's may be tolerable, but mix the two together and ....

For nerds - c.f. Thunderbirds episode "Danger at Oceans Deep!

Veeam researching support for VMware alternative Proxmox as backup buyers fret about Broadcom

Proxmox has "native" backup

Proxmox has thier own backup solution - Proxmox Backup Server

Works fine for my HomeLab needs - real questions do either Proxmox or XCP-NG fit your use case and how much will it cost to switch, retrain etc.

University chops students' Microsoft 365 storage to 20GB

Education licence covers all schools and universities,

MS365 A3/A5 licences cover all age groups for schools and Universities. Uni's clearly have different reqiurements, but are treated like primary and secondary schools - it's a PITA always - Uni's miss out because some features are excluded for under 18s other things are foisted on us because that's how MS want a School to operate.

BTW, Storage licencing - basically a free lump + a per STAFF quota. So 5000 staff if licenced for A3 - gets 100TB + 50GB * 5000 = 350TB, or A5 - 100TB + 100GB * 5000 - so 600TB to cover pretty much all of MS365 storage. After that it's more ££££ for additional storage - yes be nice to do hierarchical storage into cheaper Azure etc options - but no tools to do that nicely at present :(

Microsoft 365's add-on avalanche is putting the squeeze on customers

"Premium" is an artificial construct?

With some of these "Premium" things - Teams, SharePoint, etc it's hard to work out functionally is premium at all - corporate branding for teams for example - should be standard? Then there's the standard big bundles - a mishmash of stuff you wanted, and stuff you never did - Power BI or MS Access (really!) for every staff member

Co-pilot I can see as a cost due to the CPU/GPU/NPU running costs - but the model of per user for a large org is just too expensive - needs a Power BI Premium style shared capacity licence?

Really need a customisable bundle option - add in the discounts based on simple basis of buying more...

Oh - and if you need something, then you HAVE to buy it for a year not just the months you use it!

Licencing people - Golgafrincham B Ark anyone

Microsoft touts migration to Windows 11 as painless, though wallets may disagree

Re: Small to invisible

I did a clean install over Pro on an old nearly compatible machine - TPM present, CPU missing ONE tiny instruction - no checks get done, just the usual pain to install with a local account!!

Agreed cosmetic changes over windows 10 are of minimal interest to most people, Mostly just jumping through same hoops to get rid of some the annoyances - e.g. disabling widgets, beefing up the UAC prompt for installing apps etc.

Broadcom ditches VMware Cloud Service Providers

Re: The End

Kubernetes doesn't solve the same problem - running 100s of Windows VMs for corporate applications. Likewise Proxmox/Xen-Orchestra etc OK at some level of scale -neither can scale to a multi-customer platform?

Assume some/most the partners will get invites to new Broadcom scheme with new T's and C's attached - e.g. use Broadcom products over anyone else's'? They are Hostage to fortune now.

DARPA's air-steered X-65 jet heads into production with goal of flying by 2025

Formula 1

Any formula 1 teams looking at this - actve areo - no (external) moving parts? Guess FIA would ban it if Merc came up with it first?

HP customers claim firmware update rendered third-party ink verboten

Re: "If a printer is connected to the internet, the update downloads automatically"

HP has a sorry history of buying a company only to mess it up - Compaq, 3PAR, Lefthand come to mind. Not as bad as Broadcom mind!

TBF we've had a number of HP laptops over the years and they've been fine - so suspect it's like every big corp - some business units run OK, others less so!

Windows boss takes on taskbar turmoil, pledges to 'make Start menu great again'

Only me?

Is it only me who hardly ever uses the Start Menu then - pin most apps to taskbar (having killed widgets - I have a phone for that sort of junk) and use search for everything else?

So could ditch start completely - not sure what programs you have - look at add/remove programs - ideally enhance that to list the group Apps that an installer actually installed ????

Probably just me!

Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

Just cos Parrcel Force are sitting on my new PC

Delivery companies will be able to track their own parcels

AWS plays with Fire TV Cube, turns it into a thin client for cloudy desktops

Overcrowded Niche?

So another entry in the overcrowded niche for thin clients - always as expensive as a low end laptop and pretty useless without an network connection - add a monitor - who's going to want to use their own TV and a keyboard etc...

Yes I get security, but If you want to do this - why not just get into the "refurbished" laptop market and stick chromos on them?

How to give Windows Hello the finger and login as someone on their stolen laptop

Re: fingerprint works <25% of time

Works fine with my £30 gadget from Amazon - works fine on iPad and old iPhone 8. TBH Face rec is also a mixed bag - Surface is OK but fussy about being "in shot", iPhone is brilliant. Finding fingerprint is more natural for a PC setup, but face on phone is makes things like the MS authenticator, bank app etc much more usable.

So maybe just finger trouble?

Firefox slow to load YouTube? Just another front in Google's war on ad blockers

And the cost?!

Youtube costs £12/month, or £20 for a family - compare this with Netflix, Disney etc where your tenner or so gets you full TV and Movies content for the household (OK only 2 concurrent)- it's a bit steep.

Plus you can't buy a subscription for Google Workspace accounts - so even if an org, school, etc (or in my case the family) wants to pay to get rid of ads - e.g. for training/educational videos - not possible.

So blockers it is - DuckPlayer within DuckDuckGo's browser anyone?

1 in 5 VMware customers plan to jump off its stack next year

Re: How many supported enterprise level virtualization systems ...

Throw in Xen-NG/Xen Orchestra and SUSE new "Harvester" thing looks interesting.

SaaS and Cloud IaaS is eating into this space and I think VMware's share will just drop, and suffer as a result? Expecting a slow death as it becomes a niche market product?

Musk thinks X marks the spot for Grok AI engine based on social network

Musk vs Heinlein

"The informal verb grok was an invention of the science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, whose 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land placed great importance on the concept of grokking. In the book, to grok is to empathize so deeply with others that you merge or blend with them."

Wonder what Heinlein would make of Musk and Xitter?

Progress towards 'Gigabit Europe' is slow, with UK also lagging

Yep - most of house on wifi - max speed 1GB/s to wired desktop (WFH, so wanted best upload speeds, downloads a bonus), 400Mb/s is the fastest I've seen on our newest iPad.

Imagine it'll be a few years before Wifi 6/7 is omnipresent to make paying the premium for 1Gb/s is worth it for the average house - even then it's overkill?

Once your link matches your wifi, you've sort of reached the situation we have with PCs - way faster than most people need for normal use (unless they have a I.T. Pro/Gamer in the house?)

Millions of smart meters will brick it when 2G and 3G turns off

Re: Wouldn't be so bad if they actually worked

Yep - no O2 2G coverage in our "Rural" backwater for the Smart Meter - so never worked - the remote display won't work until the unit gets a signal, so have to use the on unit display - which is a pale LED thing, rather than the old mechanical clock. Worse I can't subscribe to local solar power company because I don't have a working smart meter.

4G works for 2 out of 4 networks - only just, to the point where we rely on wifi calling - over the 1G fibre (or the neighbours wifi/fibre - with agreement! 0 when ours went down). Maybe Smart Meter should use wifi calling when/if they get 4G?

Take Windows 11... please. Leaks confirm low numbers for Microsoft's latest OS

Re: There's nothing particularly wrong with it except for its hardware requirements.

Hardware reqs are disappointing - two kids laptops - OK bit old HP kit, but do have TPM - it's just their i5 CPUs which are missing some obscure instruction which means it's not on the MS list

Go ahead, let the unknowable security risks of Windows Copilot onto your PC fleet

Also Bing Chat Enterprise

Also wonder how many sites enable Bing Chat Enterprise? Replaces the Edge Bing Chat with one which is supposed to safeguard your corporate data - if you believe the blurb

Not even the ghost of obsolescence can coerce users onto Windows 11

Re: not happening

Company's will also make a choice between a hardware refresh and paying MS for extended support - which ran for several years after the demise of Windows 7. Hardware cycle to go from 7 to 10 happened in 2020 - added in with the COVID WFH laptop refresh. So that' kits 3 near 4 yrs old by time of W10 eof - and likely as not was OK to run W11 anyway?

It's places like schools, unis, councils, where they don't have £££ to spend

Home - factor in chromebooks, smartphones, tablets etc - how many households worry much about their PC OS??

Microsoft introduces AI meddling to your files with Copilot in OneDrive

Re: "Microsoft hopes these will help users find files and stay organized."

Or Outlook Search!

ChattyG takes a college freshman C/C++ programming exam

So Chat GPT was helped?

So the first answer is many cases wasn't right/complete, so a human helped it try again - IIRC outside help in an Exam isn't allowed?

Human knocks down woman in hit-and-run. Then driverless Cruise car parks on top of her

Re: "Should the Cruise car have not started moving if there was a person still on the crosswalk?"

Likely the Cruise Car will have sensors mounted right at the front - so much more likely to have sensed someone on the crosswork - but NOT in the front of the car at the time of movement - Yet another "What if scenario we should have already thought about" Software update required?

The home Wi-Fi upgrade we never asked for is coming. The one we need is not

Re: Interest, expertise and time

And a UPS for those times when the world goes dark (happens too often in my village!) - Oh and am friends with the neighbours so could use their wifi for VOIP/wifi calling (no worthwhile mobile signal) when my FTTP died - damaged connections in the splitter apparently... DR/Backup plans!!

Re: Not the ISPs Router

Noted - but the mix of household devices I have doesn't really need the latest greatest wifi speed. Real reason I've got 1Gb/s fibre (My brain knows it bits not Bytes, but my fingers not always that accurate!) is to get more upload speed/response when playing Office/Teams/Zoom et al.

Why oh why can't FTTP be speed symmetric?

Not the ISPs Router

Better still pick an ISP that doesn't even provide a router (not many, but I'm with one - Aquiss FYI) - so my own kit (pfsense etc) just hooks to the FTTP ethernet port.

Happens, I've got a whizz connection (WFH) - but really can't see the need for Wifi to go faster that the 1GB/s I've got wired to my desk.

Guess what? Ask clouds to behave like old-school vendors, they will – and you lose

Lock in - always been a thing

Lock in for any Software system has always been a thing - cloud no exception. You'd just as easy get "locked in" to Lotus 1-2-3 or Excel, or a specific C compiler...

IaaS looks on face to be "safe" but VM drivers, networking setup, agents for monitors... PaaS, SaaS, on site systems, etc nearly always a lock in as soon as you start using the useful unique functionality that you bought the thing for!

OpenAI pops an enterprise sticker on ChatGPT to give big biz some peace of mind

Re: Microsoft

I would love to know if ChatGPT Enterprise and MS Bing Chat Enterprise are actually the same system - OpenAI trained on the same data sets etc?

Guess a few random tests would reveal all?? e.g. Where's the best place to eat in Ottawa!

Perhaps AI is going to take away coding jobs – of those who trust this tech too much

Testing

To anyone using an AI tool to generate code, I've got an expensive AI based testing tool to sell you! (SIC!) - might be useful??

Microsoft 365 guest accounts + Power Apps = security nightmare

Not just Guest accounts if you have a population of Students for example...

Zoom's new London hub – where 'remote work' meets 'we need you back in the office'

Hybrid is a PITA - you turn up for a meeting which invariable involves someone who needs to Zoom in, or you try and find a desk and stick on headphones to get some peace and quiet, having paid over the odds for transport/parking as the "deals" are for full time commuters...

ChatGPT's odds of getting code questions correct are worse than a coin flip

It's Boris

ChatGPT aka Boris - Appears to have a nice pleasant demeanour but spouts wrong answers a good chunk of the time?

RIP Bram Moolenaar: Coding world mourns Vim creator

Curious

Even after years not using Vi/Vim my fingers still know the commands!

BUT - Debian doesn't show the Charitable Message? Just Version, Bram's credit and Modified by [e-mail] - is the Uganda thing historical?

XenServer teases free VMware migration package

XCP-NG

I think if Xen is what you want, then XCP-NG + XenOrchestra could be an live alternative. I tried it for a while, but was a bit OTT for my simple home lab use case. Neither this nor Proxmox are as feature rich as VMware, but both systems claim to scale and as org's local VM footprints drop - increased SaaS, (and PaaS and IaaS) they may suit,