* Posts by John Sanders

1735 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Sep 2006

How I went from Unix engineering to flogging Google apps

John Sanders
Linux

The cloud

Or the generalization of managed hosting for the masses?

I love my desktop computer and my closet's server, I'm not giving those up... ever.

Aunt Irma can use her tablet all she wants.

The Register is rocking on Windows Phone 7

John Sanders
Angel

Re: tiny letters

Give me full zoom and re-flow native browser glory!!!

No more tiny letters for me any more!, ah... the mighty screen of the Samsung Note!

I'm sorry folks I came from a Blackberry 9780 to the Note a couple of weeks ago, I'm full of joy ever since.

John Sanders
Coat

Web site apps

Are the spawn of the devil.

Any smartphone not capable of displaying nothing else but the full "El Reg" site doesn't deserve to be bought used nor the right to be called smart.

Mine is the Samsung note in the pocket of my coat.

Ubuntu will hit the big time on Amazon: Here's how

John Sanders
Linux

Year of Linux

Is coming, it is just not going to happen like people think.

The Android kernel and the regular kernel version will eventually merge, by the time that is happened, Android will have such a large software library that putting 2+2 together will become so evident that either google or someone else will release an Android framework to make Android apps run in Linux next to regular apps.

At that time you have cracked two of the biggest Linux problems hampering the adoption for commercial development in linux, the package format and the OS level fragmentation.

Suddenly you do not release .deb or .rpm for your commercial app or game, you release .apks your app running on the Android framework relies on the Dalwik VM so your little accounting package suddenly runs everywhere from tablets to phones to desktop computers.

It is not hard to see that happening.

RIM's new BlackBerry Curve 9320 tempts teens

John Sanders
Linux

Re: It should be £50 and that is a lot.

I meant "and IT would probably be..."

John Sanders
Linux

It should be £50 and that is a lot.

A Motorola Droid Pro + which goes round 10 times around any blackberry (even the high-end models) costs £138 without contract, and I would probably be available for £15 a month too.

Blackberries as they are now feel and behave archaic.

Future Blackberries will not be so archaic (probably) but will have no software.

RIP RIM.

Apple's HTML5 bet against Android extermination

John Sanders
Linux

Re: Lost credibility here for me:

And moving to the medium-high very quickly, in 5 years the development speed has been astounding.

John Sanders
Linux

Re: " While Apple is crushing competitors in the relatively new tablet market,"

Me has a xoom and me managed to crash it just a mere 2h after me started playing with it.

Me crashed an iPad3 three hours after me started playing with it, so it is only marginally better IMHO. The user interface is very polished in the iPAD good luck changing anything you do not like.

There are many good apps on both platforms.

Me likes being able to do with the xoom whatever surgery me fancies, me likes having SD cards and USB ports, me likes not having to buy a Mac to develop for the xoom. Me admits battery life on the xoom not as good as in the iPAD, but me runs heavy games in the xoom and only ran stupid apps in the iPAD.

Me thinks Android evolves as such a fast rate that even Linux distros will end including the Android framework for commercial application support and will be able to use .apk containers soon.

Oracle claims $777m in new trial over SAP infringement

John Sanders
Facepalm

What does it mean "software-stealing"

Does it mean that they made a similar competing product?

This is what you get for corrupting English nowadays, no way to know who the criminal is nowadays.

Star Trek's Wesley Crusher blasts Google+ landgrab

John Sanders
Linux

"You don't get people to enthusiastically use your services by forcing them to. In fact, that's probably a great way to ensure that a huge number of people who may have been interested in trying out your service never even look at it."

That is exactly my case, and I will add that I do not want Google to have my f*****g mobile number.

Six of the best ways to mess up IT change management

John Sanders
Terminator

I got one for automation

I worked once in a company that over the course of a year automated everything as much as possible, the drive to automate came from the IT department as they were overworked.

Most of what they did proved to be a success.

That gave management even more reasons to off source jobs, essentially they opened their eyes to efficiency and not requiring too many people knowing much.

A year after that I joined the company, by that time the IT dept had been decimated from 25 to 8 people.

The remaining people (including the IT manager) refused to ever mention to management anything that we did with regards to any automated way of doing anything.

I automated many database procedures/cleaning/exports/merges, and no one outside the IT dept knew anything about it. I was told recently that this is still the case. From the point of view of management the databases maintenance was something you had to invest weeks working on, had to be done manually and required a month of planning.

From that moment on I have been wondering how many people does similar things.

CAPITALISM without PROFITS - Welcome to the Instagram Era!

John Sanders
Trollface

Silly me...

I was about to buy a new SLR, I must get an Iphone and instagram instead!

John Sanders
Thumb Up

Awsome!

Classic!

Developer leaks Microsoft product plans for next two years

John Sanders
Happy

Re: Scoop

The horse bit made me spill my drink!

Kudos to you!

John Sanders
Thumb Up

Re: Dear Microsoft...

"if I know that my option is near the bottom of the File menu I don't even need to think about where to drag the mouse until it's nearing the bottom of the File menu and then it's a case of fine-tuning where I'm dragging it."

It is called muscle memory and it is one of the ways the brain optimizes repetitive patterns.

The ribbon/metro/unity/gnome 3 completely destroys that notion because things that at some point are in one position could move to another sporadically.

John Sanders
Linux

Re: Dear Microsoft...

My 7 year old said to me not long ago that she preferred to type in Writer than in word, and her answer was, that she could read the options.

My 4 year old loves to click everywhere in Windows 7, but hates to play with my Gnome 3 laptop, I hate it too btw, but I had to try new things, just in case I do not like change.

After all I guess that 15 years using computers do not qualify me to have some criteria about a decent GUI

How much for a kids argument.

John Sanders
Thumb Down

Re: Dear Microsoft...

Stop the "do not like change" song/straw man, if you think you can do more with the software (word 2003 vs 2007 for example) now with the ribbon than before, it is because you never bother to try, or you never needed the functionality in the first place.

John Sanders
Devil

Re: Dear Microsoft...

It seems you did not do much in the past, the functionality has been there 20 years.

I had no problem finding stuff in the help that came with office even considering how bad it is.

I hope you never have to learn to use something like AutoCAD.

John Sanders
Linux

Re: Dear Microsoft...

Agree 1000%

I call this ribbon/metro interface style VCR-like interface.

In the 80, a VCR had nearly a button for every single function, heck even there was a small door somewhere where you could find even more buttons.

It took months to learn how to use the beast, if you could figure what the instructions manual meant this is.

Buying another VCR meant having to re-learn the whole thing again to do essentially the same stuff I did with my old VCR which was to record porn overnight.

It went so bad as my dad buying another VCR of the same brand in the hope that he wouldn't have to re-learn the whole thing again, nope, each new one a new set of buttons, leds and switches.

That is what the ribbon is, and unfortunately monkey see, monkey do, ask the Gnome guys and their unholy mess (I mean Gnome 3) or the Canonical boys and their abortion (Sorry Unity)

John Sanders
FAIL

Re: Dear Microsoft...

"Honestly, for a demographic that is supposed to be good with trying out new things, there are some folks in the IT world who are seriously close-minded. I used Office for years before the ribbon came along. Knew most of the keyboard shortcuts and knew pretty much where to find all but the most obscure features. And I picked up the ribbon in no time and found it pretty effective."

Well congratulations, you're almost as clever as the rest of US.

I tried the ribbon, learned how to use it, even learned a nifty trick or two on it. Then installed OpenOffice, then LibreOffice, then Thunderbird, then and uninstalled Office 2007.

See, I hate the ribbon and I do not have any problem trying new things.

Windows 8 is another ribbon-like turd, can I learn how to use it? yes, I can. Can I get used to it? Sure.

But I question: what's the fucking point of those UI changes?, I can not work any faster no matter how much you fiddle with the design of the GUI, and most of the time it gets in my way!

Last time I had to configure Outlook it was the 2010 version and I could not find the bloody options until I added an icon with the functionality to the window bar .

I'm pretty sure is dead easy and I just missed it on the ribbon because I do not like change (sure).

But can you tell me this:

How comes that spending 10 minutes looking for a bloody icon beats:

menu->settings->options

Aliens Blu-ray disc set

John Sanders
Mushroom

Re: Big mistake

The Godfather III had some good moments, Alien 3 only had many moments that I wanted to leave the cinema...

The opening when they reveal that everybody but Ripley is dead for no good reason was one of the biggest disappointments in movie history.

The whole thing was an epic failing, it truly was an awful experience, It is one of my most hated movies, Resurrection is a masterpiece in comparison.

RIM extends management software to iOS, Android

John Sanders
FAIL

RIM lost the plot a long time ago.

When Gingerbread was released they should have ported their application stack to Android and should have adopted it as the base OS.

Now we'll be talking about the DE-facto enterprise grade Android vendor.

The HTC cha-cha (Horrible name btw) is a thousands times better and three times cheaper than current top of the line Blackberry handsets.

But they lost the plot so long ago it doesn't even matter, I hope htc buys RIM, and then then use RIM's excellent speaker technology to produce an up-to-date cha-cha v3 (the cha-cha-cha)

Star's guts turned INSIDE OUT in supernova mega-blast

John Sanders
Alert

Re: Just a heads-up

I keep telling all my mates that my Samsung note is not that big, now I got proof!

Canis Mayoris looks like it is probably at the very least larger than the diameter of our solar system...

ALL Visa cards blab punters' names - not just Barclaycards

John Sanders
Unhappy

I do not care whose fault it is, and that is not the point!

I do not care if the merchant or the bank is at fault here.

The point is that a wireless bank card will "talk" with whatever reader is on proximity whether you want or not. Encrypted or not it will talk without my permission. That means that if someone manages to decode my card's data they can make payments on some faulty merchant, thanks to a stupid bank.

I do not want that, I did not asked for that, and I swear to god that I'll build some form of sleeve that will stop the card from working wirelessly.

I still remember when the banks refused to encrypt the data in the magnetic bands decades ago because they had to update the ATMs and it was too expensive for them.

John Sanders
Unhappy

Re: I did not ask for a wireless card

It is not just the oyster card reader the one that gets messed up, the card readers in the datacentre also get confused.

I carry now 4 wireless cards incompatible with each other.

And yeah vendors will never implement the latest version of the protocol, nor implement properly the old version.

Jumping the gun and selling new technology nobody asked for is "cool".

John Sanders
Unhappy

I did not ask for a wireless card

But the bank shoveled it down my throat "cos newer is better innit"?

Well the first day that I put it on the wallet I discover that it messes up with the Oyster card.

So currently I have it wrapped in tinfoil and still with the tinfoil it screws with the oyster readers from time to time.

This is a technology nobody asked or needed.

New Google tool lets you PROBE YOURSELF

John Sanders
Devil

From Google

Dear unknown user.

We know you exist, we can feel you, however we can not identify you.

Would you please be so kind to tell us who you are?

Thanks.

Why Windows 8 server is a game-changer

John Sanders
Meh

Re: But why the Metro interface

Why you ask?

Obviously it is so you can enjoy of an enormous clock in the login screen, and never miss the time... ever!

John Sanders
Linux

Re: seems a bit arse about face to me

Yes because everybody knows that windows server require no expertise of any kind when it comes to develop and deploy windows applications.

Death to Office or to Windows - choose wisely, Microsoft

John Sanders
Linux

Re: Linux in its current form will never be mainstream

ReactOS

John Sanders
Thumb Up

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "Windows is dead."

I have been saying the same all my life, people do not choose to run windows because they like it, they choose to run windows because they need the programs that run on windows.

Smart has high IOPS for super-fast, smarter SSDs

John Sanders
Mushroom

And about reliability?

Probably as unpredictable and bad as the others.

Microsoft holds peace talks after Hyper-V booted from OpenStack

John Sanders
Paris Hilton

Re: Re: Re: I've asked this before but here I go again...

Oops, I meant Microsoft Domains in NT4!

John Sanders
Linux

Re: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

@Field Marshal Von Krakenfart

Trust me when I say that that technique it is backfiring Micros~1 big time, we're not in 1992 anymore and the kind of people who will use the product are not home-user customers, users that do not know any better when they go to comet to buy a regular PC.

The kind of people virtualizing Linux servers knows that the Linux server runs stable and fast when:

A) is running on hardware

B) It is running in the hypervisor, if the hypervisor is any good, AKA anything but Hyper-V.

The admins will not go back to daddy and say, look daddy this Hyper-V thing doesn't work as it should, lets drop the Linux VM and migrate to a nice windows.

In any company, they will come back to management and say things along the lines: We need another hypervisor, Hyper-V is shit and can not be trusted/gives us too many headaches/is not well supported. Specially when there are free alternatives XEN/KVM or Paid ones Citrix Xenserver & VMWare that run almost anything just fine. It is either that, or we spend an enormous amount of time and money porting custom-made apps and scripts (that are working perfectly on Linux) to Windows, or we spend peanuts (in comparison) on another Hypervisor.

There is really a big demand for cheap Linux VM's in the market, because they use fewer resources, do not impose arbitrary artificial restrictions, and more importantly run just fine.

John Sanders
Linux

Re: Hyper-V Junk?

A rather clever micro-kernel with enough of the windows driver model built into that doesn't prevent it from having all sort of weird issues very now and then, which causes unexplained performance degradation from time to time and with a certain tendency to forget about VLAN tagging information.

I could go on forever, but the driver bit is just too much, care to explain what are the advantages of that?, In practice can not find those advantages anywhere.

It is slower than the competition, much more incompatible than the competition, and waaaaaay less flexible than the competition.

John Sanders
Linux

Re: I've asked this before but here I go again...

In my opinion Micros~1 will do mankind a favour if they quit making hypervisor's for the enterprise, Hyper-V is based on VirtualPC, a very mediocre product for tasks other than emulating legacy NT4 AD controllers back in 2006.

Micros~1 is doing to Linux support what they always do to any competitor, it runs sort-of, it is supported partially, it gets updates... when somebody else codes them.

The market has a big demand for cheap Linux VM's, if those VM's do not run fast under hyper-v, the market will move away from Micros~1.

If Micros~1 does a good job with their hypervisor and allow Linux to run fine, they lose Windows licenses and pave the way for even more Linux in the DC.

Whatever they do they are losing relevance fast.

John Sanders
Thumb Down

Re: Microsoft hired a co to do the Linux work and that co was purchased by Citrix

@Dough 3

I can tell you: Hyper-V's Linux support goes from mediocre to plain bad, period.

Most of the job of integrating and producing kernel modules based on MS's released source code has been done by third parties, and feels more like "let see if it works" than anything else.

After two years now is when some kernels are appearing with clipboard and mouse support.

Pathetic.

Reptile boffins spot world's smallest chameleon

John Sanders
Linux

Me and my JJ

Me and my J.J

With me he will stay-ay

And then we can play-ay

All night and all day-ay

From his lemur egg my lemur prince will rise

It's little femur leg growing to king size!

He'll be regally,

He be legally mine!

Aw, look at how cute he is!

Me and my J.J

With me he will stay-ay

And then we can play-ay

From June until May-ay

He'll be regally,

I said legally mine!

Official: Sony and Ericsson are divorced

John Sanders
Devil

Re: Optional

Obviously their crap, the one they put in the phones...

PlayBooks lapped up from RIM by distributors

John Sanders
Linux

Too many competitors?

Very easy to explain, here is why:

Vendor - Hey Apple is selling a cheap underpowered laptop without a keyboard, with little RAM and almost no storage, and hey it doesn't run windows, they are not even paying MS!, and they are making a ton of profit!!!

Vendor - Quick, lets put together a cheap underpowered laptop without a keyboard, with little RAM and almost no storage, that doesn't run windows, and make a lot of profit too!!!

Vendor - We're not selling much, but what we sell is pure profit, and sooner or later our product will be polished enough so people will start buying from us.

There that's why.

Mozilla releases Firefox 10, adds developer tools

John Sanders
Linux

Credit where credit is due

I just upgraded to 10.0 and the new inspector is quite good.

Well done Mozilla!

John Sanders
Flame

Most of what Chrome does unconventionally

From the point of view of this 20+ years IT guy is style-farting.

And sadly the Mozilla guys rather than producing a solid browser with no stupid bugs or with worth it functionality they decide to style-fart too.

I will reason this so everybody will understand what I mean:

Chrome as a standalone browser with no extensions whatsoever is a nifty application, and something worth of my time.

Firefox without extensions as a standalone browser is a waste of time.

Take for example its really poor download manager, its record retarded bookmark dialog (search something, give me back results, but doesn't tell me under which folder the found bookmark is) and its sad devotion to try to solve problems that bother no one like the stupid page manager to group pages which is clearly inferior (and ugly) to for example the extension showcase.

Thunderbird is the same, the same old boring email client missing functionality that has been present in outlook for 10+ years, but copying the bloody vote button functionality of outlook is not as cool as copying Chrome's stupid version system.

And let's not talk about the bugs, like the one that prevents Firefox in Linux from using the pop-up menus until you minimize-unminimize the window.

Or the pervasive Thunderbird crashes each time you close Thunderbird, etc.

John Sanders
FAIL

Mozilla have becomed

Browser Cargo cultists.

John Sanders
WTF?

What is the problem with using release or subversion numbers:

10.0.1, 10.0.2, 10.0.3

Firefox used to use 3.6.24 and it was perfect, why change that?

Those numbers do not mean anything to regular users, but to the rest of us (which by the way are the ones who really care about FF) is quite useful.

Dumb salesmen are hurting us – Nokia CEO

John Sanders
Linux

Also consider...

That I get asked all the time, literally 100 of times per week what phone to buy, my answer is always the same:

on the cheap buy a low end bbry, if got money and don't care about brand and want lots of software buy android Samsung/HTC, if you're asking me if you should buy an iPhone, resounding yes, you're dying for it.

It is US nerds working in support who tell to most of the unsuspecting population what to buy, because they know we know.

It is the same with computers, tellys, etc.

John Sanders
Linux

My thoughts really...

But they will do it only when it is too late, by that time they will be a me too.

With some ability (they can) they could produce some decently-priced mid-range droids, if Nokias were good at something it was at building phones that last and feel solid.

The high-end market is out of reach for them now, it is too late.

John Sanders
Linux

@asdf

Calling Micros~1 M$ is childish.

But yes, Micros~1 will always be Micros~1 and will come to kill everything they touch, they are like "The Thing", by the time Nokia realizes that WinMo is going nowhere it will be too late.

I foresee (the dear old' reg as witness) that Nokia will try to commercialize an Android device when they are on their dead bed.

IPTV UK: what's on tonight?

John Sanders
Linux

Wife and kids love XBMC

Kids really like XBMC so much so they refuse to watch regular telly because:

a) There is hardly anything interesting when they want to watch something.

b) They can not watch it more than once.

My 3 year old asked me once:

- Daddy play that again!

--I can't, it is broadcast TV

- Daddy use the remote

--Me: I try to explain to a 3 year old what broadcast is, and how we do not have control over it.

- Daddy I like what I saw and I want to watch it again, use the remote and click on it again.

--I will but you won't be seeing the same show... kid gets angry and makes a crying attempt.

- Do not worry Daddy will download that entire show for you and we will play it on the mediacenter (XBMC)

A few days back my two kids were explaining to a visiting friend of theirs what is what they and on TV, and why do they like it (XBMC)

In the words of a 3 year old:

XBMC is great because you can watch the shows you want as many times as you like, Telly is bad.

There you have it boys. Kids know what's good. For them watching TV is disappointing.

RIM demos PlayBook OS2

John Sanders
FAIL

I meant...

ever again until they DO manufacture...

John Sanders
FAIL

Yes I do read the comments

But most importantly I used to be an enthusiastic RIM user until BES 5 and OS 6 arrived. Seriously I recommended RIM BES & Smartphones to everything that moved.

Now my only form of relief (after being forced to use the turds that RIM smartphones have turned into every single day) is to affirm:

YES RIM LOST THE PLOT AT SOME POINT, AND IT IS NOT FINDING IT SO FAR.

My next phone is not a RIM one, and I'm recommending everyone not to buy a RIM phone ever again until they do not manufacture something akin to the year 2012 expected specifications for a £400 smartphone.