* Posts by Chris in NZ

11 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Feb 2010

Microsoft to banish 'responsible' from disclosure debate

Chris in NZ
Stop

coordinated vulnerability disclosure?

Crappy name! Make it: "Free Externalised Delayed QA". There, fixed.

Also, >Of course the developer can't give you a timeframe for a fix until they understand what's wrong with the code.

My manager asks for random guesstimated timeframes all the time. Should I worry?

Aussies face 10 year browsing lock-up

Chris in NZ
Grenade

10 years

That's the old trick, then they "settle" for 5 and claim it to be a huge victory for privacy.

Resurrecting old jargon

Chris in NZ
Paris Hilton

hard work

>There's one fundamental truth at the end of all of this: business analysis is hard work, and anyone who claims differently is trying to sell you snake oil.

And obtaining good (as in reliable, complete, accepted throughout the organisation) data for said business analysis is even harder work.

Decision Support as described in the article sounds like home-made bound-to-create-many-problems-in-the-future-even-if-it-does-solve-problems-now speadsheets linked to miscellanous data sources. All organisations start like that, some spreadsheets are very ingenious, and all turns to custard when the original developpers leave, when spreadsheets from different sources have to be reconciliated, or when an inventory of all the company's reports is made.

And this is when one turns to real tools (and I am not talking about SQL here). I am not criticising this, it is the normal coming-of-age process. No need for big tools when a couple speadsheets will do. One the other hand, the earlier definitions and names are globally validated, the less pain when trying to make sense of all the versions of the truth this creates.

Paris because there is no hard work icon.

Confessions of a sysadmin

Chris in NZ
Happy

crap os still :)

winsxs like uac and the rest is just another layer of plaster on top of a rotten limb. For the same reason you decided to toss your network, MS must toss its trashy OS foundations, and I am nor optimistic. I envy you for being excited by a MS initiative, so I will look into about W8 (thx for the link), just in case I can share the excitement. As far as I am concerned, the last excellent thing coming out of redmond was midtown madness.

Also, don't be put off (you don't seem to be) by some commenters' after-the-facts "easy to avoid" advice, or stupidly, their contempt. Your "By the time you even think about the first project thrown into service at 80% completion, it’s been MONTHS," says it all and the vast majority of us share it.

Side note: That's why IT mostly is NOT engineering. A bridge, a plane, a car or any other machine don't stop at 80% design and test completion. The first 2 typically are 100% completed and verified, the latter not far behind.

On the other hand, except for things like chips and some specific equipment where IT costs are zip compared to the consequences (space, health, military, traffic control, manufacturing machines like your vinyl machine, etc), cheap and good enough is the rule in IT, especially in IT departments (and their suppliers) where IT is a means; Few "engineers" there.

Chris in NZ
FAIL

crap os

I know this doesn't help the debate one bit, as we use what we have, but when will we have well-built desktop OSes? No dll-hell, no rebooting to install an app, or to install a patch (unless the very kernel is patched, and even then, mainframes have done that for many many years).

The last improvement from MS in that area was removing the need to reboot to change screen resolution (remember this one? Ha!).

Yeah, bring aero and UAC instead. Pathetic!

X-51 hypersonic scramjet test: Flameout at Mach 5?

Chris in NZ

We feel a lot safer now...

>The technologies in the Waverider, however, might see the appearance of hypersonic missiles in the near future, able to travel huge distances quickly and close in on their targets so fast they would be almost impossible to defend against.

Fantastic news indeed! Not.

Flash! Enterprise SSD looming at HP

Chris in NZ
Stop

Trim: RAIDZ is the answer?

What RAID6? RAIDZ needs no specific controller, which is a huge safety feature imho, takes care of bit decay, and support trim as far as I know. What is there no to like?

European PC racket's rocket rebound

Chris in NZ
Headmaster

improvements needed

Please correct:

Both HP and Acer had very good growth in France, at 36 and 36.9 per cent respectively, but Acer put them both to shame

Also giving Toshiba's share of the PC market is useless. Can we have the numbers for laptops/netbooks separated please?

3TB Seagate disk drive ahoy

Chris in NZ
Unhappy

Moore's law broken

No chance of doubling 2TB HDDs in 2 years at this pace.

I know, Moore's law is about transistor density, but storage was ticking along too. No longer it seems :(

Nokia and Intel defensive on MeeGo Linux patents

Chris in NZ
Thumb Down

sad

> ... whether or where Microsoft, Apple, or patent trolls will strike next.

should be:

... whether or where Microsoft, Apple, *and other* patent trolls will strike next.

Sad that google can't / won't do the same for Android. With the cash they have, they should cross-licence with someone who has a heftier portfolio, like say samsung, and do the same.

How does all this make you feel about defending your hard-earned little patent, lonely and genuine inventor? The whole system is just broken. Companies too big ... are responsible again, except this time ... too big to sue.

Disk capacity growth rate slowing

Chris in NZ
FAIL

NTFS

NTFS needs to use GPT instead of MBR to use disks > 2TB.

Yeah, you'd think they'd have improved this by now!

So no booting windows of any flavour from these large disks!!!

@DickJones

Not necessarily: a large area is lost where the motor is. So unless the motor size is decreased proportionally in smaller disks, the ratio of useful areas may not be what you mention.