Posts by John Sanders

Is VMware starting to mean 'legacy'? Down and out in Las Vegas

Re: More hype than reality ... in operations

Containers fit very well with the workload of I have an unattended compiler server-chain that produces a bottled application+filesystem at the other end each time anyone makes a commit to git.

Anything outside that model and containers quickly become a chore.

Sure, you can replace a container with another when upgrading and that is nice, troubleshooting the containers, making non-trivial changes to the container, changing the compiler chain... that's another story, and it is the same with any complex system.

Making us pay tax will DESTROY EUROPE, roars Apple's Tim Cook

Some would say that this is an oversimplification

But this proves that there are two standards, one for us and another for the very rich who can afford these tricks, then they use the profits to rig the game even more in their favour by buying themselves political favours (H-1B visas, shhhhhh)

http://fortune.com/2016/08/24/apple-tim-cook-fundraiser-clinton/

"And fuck you common people, we know better than you, we're royalty".

Microsoft baits new vSphere-to-Hyper-V switch offer

Slowing down development of vSphere

"virtualisation isn't a growth business any more and is gently slowing vSphere development"

One wonders if the real reason has more to do with not much to copy-paste over from kernel.org these days, currently kernel.org is not undergoing any significant architecture changes and they are embarked in a "just refining stuff" phase for the time being.

But that is just me :-P

Your wget is broken and should DIE, dev tells Microsoft

Re: They are quick to shutter services

>> Otherwise folks, use at your own risk with wearing a full Hazmat suit and a 40ft barge pole.

No one other than testimonials will use PowerMeh! in Linux because there is no god-damn point to it in the first place!

This is like trying to come out with a device for voice communication over wires with a limit of 100m and call it "talkphone" when the world already has "telephones" that go over any distance and can even be wireless.

Wintards thing everything must work like it does in Windows...

No, and a thousand times NO!

In a Unix box (not just Linux) the distinction between the shell and the utilities is: NONE. (The system's design makes automation-shell functionality an inherent quality of the OS)

The integration is provided by the environment itself, there is no requirement for a program to do anything to be integrated in the shell, and the shell doesn't need to do anything special to interact with a program and automate things.

To achieve object-level functionality as you do in PowerMeh! all that is required is to have something in the environment that the shell can use and there you go.

We call that Perl/PHP/Python.

I haven't bothered to check PowerMeh! for Linux, but if MS have done things correctly in the Unix style I should be able to leverage PowerMeh! and .net scripting from bash or ksh without having to do anything special.

However I seriously doubt that a lot (Microsoft doing things correctly) every piece of Unix related stuff that I have seen from Microsoft was a pile of crap.

When Microsoft's world and the real world interact...

It is not even that, PowerShell solved (more or less badly and for the second time [wscript anyone]) an issue that existed in the Windows side of things.

PowerShell does not solve any problem in Linux, this is not a question of PowerShell being better or worse, PowerShell does not provide anything on Linux that's not there already in a better more refined fashion.

Whatever you do, don't run fsck. (It installs Windows 10)

You sir won the interwebs today, have a pint on my behalf!

Microsoft has open-sourced PowerShell for Linux, Macs. Repeat, Microsoft has open-sourced PowerShell

Re: Have you used Powershell?

>>> When Powershell first emerged in Exchange 2007, I didn't like it. It was new, it was wordy, it was different. Why do I need to learn something new? Then I started to use it more and began to realise how powerful it is.

Are you for real? are you serious?

Of course powershell is da bomb in Windows, its fossil terminal and batch prior to powershell were utter crap.

Re: Just another part of their move to the cloud.

>>I supported Hyper-V at my last job and personally watched the cluster fail about 2-3 times per month, usually caused by running updates.

I used to work on a very large Hyper-V cluster which used to have all sort of failures several times per week, usually caused by god knows what...

One of the worst experiences ever with a software product, even the Windows guys were left scarred.

Re: Yecch.

>> So this is actually rational. Amazing as that is. This allows people to run MS stuff on top of a real operating system.

Like... what, what exactly?

Re: Yecch.

>>>Shame that us mere plebs (who can't legally buy enterprise edition) can't stop W10 patches from being rolled out and crapping all over your system.

If only... there was... another...

Re: Why is ssh built in?

On an imaginary version of Windows this object-oriented interface is robust and works well, but in the best version of Windows yet, this is not the case.

ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Re: "On Linux we’re just another shell"

You're in for a nasty surprise, what makes you think that it does integrate well in Linux? This was designed in a Microsoft centric way.

To control an application from powershell you require to have an interface with it provided by the company who made the software.

Also, I wonder what type of Linux sysadmin is going to deploy this on a Linux server to do anything just because someone feels comfortable with powershell syntax.

Why?

Why, just why?

This is of no use to Windows people, they do not use Linux, this is of no use to Linux people, we already have a number of decent functioning shells that cover many use cases.

We have a number of scripting languages that we can combine flawlessly with these shells.

Why? What problem does this solve?

I'm sure there is a psychopathic reason for all of Microsoft's Linux love and this has a dark purpose.

Microsoft to overhaul Windows 10 UI – with a 3D Holographic Shell

This is the future...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22KZBhrksbk

Microsoft bins Azure RemoteApp, says go with Citrix instead

Citrix ICA

Was always great, and almost the only product that mattered on the Citrix product porfolio, hence why Citrix neglected it lately (At some point they though on discontinuing it due to MS RemoteApp pressure)

I have fond memories of setting Citrix server farms.

I never understood why Citrix kept changing the name, WinFrame, MetaFrame, Presentation Server, then XenApp.

Funny how over the years everybody kept calling it just Citrix.

I think what MS has done here is to cede Citrix the Remote application side of their Azure operation, in exchange Citrix is to finish the screwing of Xen (the virtual platform)

I foresee that Citrix will get rid of Xen in 3...2...1...

Re: That must hurt

Grandson,

Citrix WinFrame became a thing with NT 3.5.

These youngsters...

Linux security backfires: Flaw lets hackers inject malware into downloads, disrupt Tor users, etc

This is not trivial to exploit

But obviously stating this does not help the click-fest.

There are already patches proposed in the kernel mailing list.

Bet by tomorrow this is a non-issue.

And it is not a Linux vuln but a protocol flaw.

Bungling Microsoft singlehandedly proves that golden backdoor keys are a terrible idea

Re: Securer boot

""Windows 10 to make the Secure Boot alt-OS lock out a reality""

Of course, that was always the plan, surprised? not.

Re: When is something insecure ?

>> ROFL - People are so, how can I say it - hmmm STUPID !!

The entire industry (and IT people) for some reason love to be fcuk ed in the arse and love to deep-throat MS.

To this day for 30 years I have yet to understand why.

Oh well, this is the best windows ever, but the next one will fix everything wrong with the current one.

Re: Surely you don't believe the "security" excuse?

From Linus mouth:

--------------8<----------

Guys, this is not a dick-sucking contest.

If you want to parse PE binaries, go right ahead. If Red Hat wants to deep-throat Microsoft, that's *your* issue. That has nothing what-so-ever to do with the kernel I maintain. It's trivial for you guys to have a signing machine that parses the PE binary, verifies the signatures, and signs the resulting keys with your own key. You already wrote the code, for chrissake, it's in that f*cking pull request.

Why should *I* care? Why should the kernel care about some idiotic "we only sign PE binaries" stupidity? We support X.509, which is the standard for signing.

Do this in user land on a trusted machine. There is zero excuse for doing it in the kernel.

Linus

Rackspace CEO: Yes, Brexit has hit us, yes we sold our Cloud Sites biz

Re: Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Yeah, Brexit is what is killing rackspace's growth.

Sure, because the past 5 years of bad decisions here and there were because of Brexit.

The fact that AWS is built on the money poured on that popular shop, how is it called...amarillo? I don't know.

The whole world seems to react to AWS and MS in this fashion: "Run for the hills!!! they're unstoppable and they will absorb the world".

Sure.

Don't want to vote for Clinton or Trump? How about this woman who says Wi-Fi melts kids' brains?

Re: Now That Bernie is Out....

Except if you're Obama, then things happen because you're lucky.

http://hotair.com/archives/2016/05/09/video-obama-to-college-grads-your-success-is-pure-luck/

Re: Now That Bernie is Out....

What has he said that is extreme?

That the USA should pull out of the middle east and stop senseless wars there?

That uncontrolled migration for the sake of cheap salaries should be controlled?

That the corporations are moving American jobs to 3rd world countries, China, Mexico, India?

What? what exactly, I want examples out of the horse's mouth.

Because so far I haven't heard anything that is not within the powers of POTUS.

I'm no fan of Trump (I'm no fan of any politician, they're all crooked aristocracy in my book***) but nothing that the man has said so far is too far from what a silent majority of people think.

I think Trump gets bashed by the MSM relentlessly in stark contrast with the lack of coverage of Clinton's shenanigans. (BBC Propaganda much?)

***If you want further proof check any leaked information about a bunch of politicians, including but not just the DNC leak.

Re: Now That Bernie is Out....

The Democratic party and the Klu Klux Klan:

http://russp.us/racism.htm

There fixed it for you.

At last, a candidate with some integrity!

Cthulhu, a candidate you can trust.

At least you'll be sure of what you'll be getting.

VMware: We're gonna patent hot-swapping your VMs' host OS

Re: Oh Dear

Amazon and Google maybe.

Not MS.

Yes, there is this niggling issue

That VMware likes to copy paste from kernel.org.

>> Nobody wants to reboot these machines for updating

Then something is wrong with the whole set-up.

>> If this works, in theory telcos could update switches and routers without rebooting

So we make the switches & routers more expensive with all the extra hardware, while at the same time we do not solve the conundrum that you require two units for resilience.

Which leads me to think that these people who can not restart one of their core/whatever for patching are doing it wrong.

Patching without downtime is a solved problem if you care about it.

Also moving VMs out of a host is something that happens automatically on most decently set-up virtualization farms, and at most a VM loses a couple of network packets.

If my memory serves me right VMware excells at this, the vm is first activated on another host then stop on its current host once it is up and running on the other host.

The only problem that's not solved is when you have dedicated physical hardware for a VM, but no one does that in large scale deployments*, perhaps at home or for testing purposes.

Containers... we'll talk about it another day, and trust me the problem is not the OS the containers run on.

I guess VMware can do something clever with this, but I fail to see the "redefining future of IT" here.

* People who get upset by generalizations usually have low IQ.

Going! going! pwned? 200! million! Yahoo! logins! leaked! allegedly!

Meanwhile....

"Marissa Mayer, who was hired to turn Yahoo around, has just sold Yahoo's assets in a fire sale for $4.8 billion dollars to Verizon, a mockery of a company which once had a valuation of $140 billion dollars. But we've also just learned that for her expertise Mayer will be collectively paid about $220 million for her efforts in the past four years. That's about 5% of the value of Yahoo!"

Thought I should mention...

Microsoft buries the bad Windows Phone news: Mobile sales collapse

This may shock you

But he never left.

MS Still operates the same its always been.

Expect double down on the MS store and locking down of the Windows platform.

IPv6 now faster than IPv4 when visiting 20% of top websites – and just as fast for the rest

I'm sure many of the punters here

Have never had to set-up IPV6 infrastructure from scratch, or have to administer any large IPv6 network.

It is an abomination.

Fork YOU! Sure, take the code. Then what?

Facepalm

Complexity... it is all complexity isn't? always the bloody complexity.

Who's there knocking at the door? it's complexity.

You can't kill complexity, nor reduce it significantly beyond a certain scope.

The only silver bullet for complexity is: PEOPLE.

People that can deal with it that is.

Harrison Ford's leg, in the Star Wars film, with the Millennium Falcon door

Re: Snirk

My laugh was completely stateful.

BT customers hit by broadband outage ... again

Re: Some sympathy -but not a lot

I would not go with a very large company unless they have something I strictly require.

There are plenty of competent small-medium sized ISPs in the UK.

Just my 2 pence.

Alleged skipper of pirate site KickAss Torrents keel-hauled in Poland

Re: What first amendment?

>> That's why people worry about the bad guys making dirty bombs

They worry because they do not understand how it works or how pointless the endeavour is.

Say make a dirty bomb out of cyanide, lead, mercury, botulinum, I would be more scared about that than some low grade radioactive actinides.

At most a "radioactive" dirty bomb would cause about the same body-count as a regular bomb because of the conventional explosive, it will contaminate a reduced area, and will be easy to clean (I say easy, not cheap) because the radioactive particles are... well... easy to detect. Some people may die months or years later due to the exposure, but it will not be for example 9/11 levels of damage by a long long shot.

Too much effort for the same reward as a conventional bomb.

Hail torrents

Cut one head and two will take its place...

Hail hidr... torrents!

Re: Big content: 3

>> Problem is Big Content has the stupid on their side.

I do agree with you, but the stupid watch less and less new content because they have realised it is all garbage lately.

ASUS first Asian PC maker to warn of price hikes... in 2.5 months

Re: The Brexiteers were

>>> morons.

>>> Fixed that for you.

Leftist snowflake types always project upon others the qualities and attitudes they most despise without looking at a mirror first, or have any form of introspection.

Grow up and present convincing arguments like an adult.

MPs tell BT: Lay more fibre or face split with Openreach

>>BT's spokesperson told us: “We are disappointed to be criticised for having invested more than £1bn a year in infrastructure when the UK was emerging from recession and rival companies invested little.

I am disappointed with BT because:

* They force expensive line rentals. (Which they hike up every now and then)

* When they made fibre available in my neighborhood they only made available 20 fibre connections for 100 states.

* They are lowering everybody's upstream unless you go for a more expensive package.

Etc.

If managing PCs is still hard, good luck patching 100,000 internet things

Re: The IOT Support model is already there

>> As a result, I will not be partaking in this madness. ergo, my Fridge will never be conneted to anything other that the 230V S supply.

AMEN BROTHER!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3RjP6_TV0E

Re: re: Neoc: No, no, nope.

That's what the VPN/SSH/secure portal is for dear.

Re: Oh for Goodness Sake

Perhaps having 2 VLANs, one that can get out to the interwebs for computers, and another that can not can be helpful here.

Or do like me, do not connect anything non easily auditable/upgradeable to the interwebs. job done.

EU waves antitrust claims in Google's face, snarls 'You want some?'

Google must be stopped

If only there was a way to choose what websites you want to visit, I don't know like a universal resource locator bar, you know a text field at the top of the browser, I could type something like www.anothersearchenginewithacatchyname.com and not use google.

Aaaah a man can dream...

But in case I can not, the t**ts in Brussels will look for us and purge evil google from the interwebs.

VirtualBox 5.1 debuts

DX11/DX12

Non-trivial to achieve, at least not until the FOSS stack (Mesa) is OGL 4.5 compliant (They are very close)

If my memory serves me right lots of code for the DX9 video driver VBox uses came from Wine, and Wine is busy implementing DX10/11 right now.

So it will be a while for that to happen.

You can buy Windows 10 Enterprise E3 access for the price of a coffee

Re: The Question Remains....

>>> ACLs are fine for a few machines, now go and manage a few hundred geographically dispersed systems...

No one has said that ACLs is how you manage a few hundred geographically dispersed systems.

>>> There are reasons why tools such as SCCM and AD exist; Systems configuration and management tools also exist for Unix/Linux - I used one back in circa 1989 for the management of 6000+ systems.

No one is saying there is no reason for these to exist, or that they are not justified, although Linux exists since the early nineties (1991).

>>> The real issue with Unix/Linux is that you generally have to go and look for these tools, rather than simply browse the MS resources. Plus the Unix/Linux tools cost compared to the MS management tools due to then not being cross-subsidised from the sales of other products.

The issue you are referring to is that you use an operating system called "Windows" which is produced by a company called "Microsoft", and are arguing that you like the Windows + Microsoft tools to manage workstations better than the equivalent tools on the Linux ecosystem, tools that you're unaware of or have never used.

I'm not going to argue that, I will simply note again some details most Windows chaps ignore.

In a Linux environment it is not a problem to have a designated server running some kind of service taking control of other machines, down to any level of detail you need. Making a computer do something remotely is as native to Linux as it is to click on the start menu in Windows.

AD is nothing but LDAP+Kerberos, DNS and DHCP in pre-configured form (yes and the GPOS and another myriad of components that do not work as well as most people think), any Linux person worth its salt is capable of setting these up and tailor them. Whether it is easier to do in Windows with MS's tools, or if there are enough Linux people out there to do that customisation in Linux, is part of another discussion.

Once the time is right and demand is there, Linux distros will provide easy point and click tools to leverage those services in a palatable form (add water and stir) to Windows sysadmins IE: IPA.

The biggest challenge Windows sysadmins face when setting up infrastructure is their lack of knowledge to separate services into components, and distinguish when an issue is platform or protocol specific, plus an annoying insistence on doing everything the MS way (which is usually the worst way even in Windows).

Example; I have seen people join Linux web-servers to AD and painstakingly modify Apache to run under the domain account, something that may have some purpose in Windows, but doesn't serve much purpose at all in Linux. I could go on and on.

The new MS

>> And at that point you realise that MS have engineering their offerings and policies with the effect that you have to pay them a monthly fee to be able to control your own PCs.

But... But.. But it is all rainbows coming out of the mouth of Nadella, the new MS and all.

Re: What I want to know...

>> Surely subscriptions cannot work in all situations?

Congratulations on the purchase of your secured boot new PC, you have 30 days to comply, we mean to activate your Windows subscription, we mean license, if you fail to comply, we mean activate your license your OS will be able to use only 2GB of RAM and you will be subjected to ADs, also your shiny new 3D card will run at half the speed, we mean won't perform at full speed.

And so on, if I can imagine it, the new MS can imagine it too, years in advance.

Re: The Question Remains....

""you would pay literally any money to get anything even remotely comparable to SCCM or AD on your Windows-disabled PCs. And you will fail, because there's no such product.""

No, all you need to do is focus on "what I need these workstations to do", not on what AD or SCCM can do.

See the issue is that you know how to use SCCM and AD, but nothing else, SCCM and AD make sense to you, but anything else you come across you instinctively just run a checklist comparison and of course on Windows any MS solution wins.

You remind me of someone I had to show that you can have ACLs on Linux that behave like on Windows, not twice but four times, and his argument in the end was that it wasn't as sophisticated as on Windows. The point that you could achieve exactly the same functionality was of no value to him.

Think that perhaps your issue is that you do not know how to do something in Linux (and any other platform) and not necessarily that Linux can't do that.

The only area where Linux lacks is if you are locked-in With a MS only technology, office documents, Exchange PIM (for email Exchange is a bad joke) or Windows-only applications.

One thing that I find funny is when people confuse what you can do with Shell scripts in Linux with what's possible on Windows (even with powershell) and conclude that because you have to write scripts the platform is of lesser value (tip is totally the contrary).

Re: And so it begins

>>Hell, I'd even offer to pay it out of my pocket is I was given choice between Windows and Mac/Linux.

No, you wont.