* Posts by Danvighar

22 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jun 2010

When the IT department is 'just another supplier'

Danvighar

Complexity

Not only is it more complex than ever (especially interoperability of all those 'easy' answers), I saw not even a hint of a whiff of security in that article. Business may not (read: don't) understand that it's a critical requirement and only works correctly as an in-house function, but that doesn't change the fact that it is.

United Nations pledges to get everyone online… by 2030

Danvighar

Well...

At least they were something approaching honest: "strive to provide" makes no promises at all.

IT bods: Windows XP, we WON'T leave you. Migrate? Chuh! As if...

Danvighar

Keeping my VM, will make it "offline" when support dies.

YouTube co-founder either HATES Google+ or his vid account just got HACKED

Danvighar

After playing with my filters at home, the comments appear to require communication with G+. So I'm leaving it off unless I _want_ to see what others have commented on a vid.

BOFH: Welcome to Helldesk, ma'am, may I take your bags?

Danvighar
Trollface

Malicious?

Naw, it's just time for a new boss. They have a shelf life, and this one has just learned Too Much. It's for the best really, now he can go be a bastard interviewer elsewhere.

Jurors start stretch in the cooler for Facebooking, Googling the accused

Danvighar
Headmaster

Re: The origin of the jury

Having served on a jury... it sucks.

I've wondered from time to time if "a jury of your peers" should be a little more closely defined than "random citizens (insert local restrictions on jury selection here)". It would make convictions more meaningful, at least.

For one possibility:

If taken to a certain point - similar social class, similar professions, but still 'either unaware of the media presentation or able to set that aside and decide impartially': if the prosecution can convince, not 12 people picked for either susceptibility to sob stories or "professions we've decided are good at working based on the evidence we let you see", but 12 people who would be inclined to protect 'one of their own' that you're guilty and deserve punishment...

Not advocating any changes, more speculating on possibilities.

Why I'm sick of the new 'digital divide' between SMEs and the big boys

Danvighar
Facepalm

14 reasons

Wow. A lot of those are, well, stunningly ignorant. Most of the valid complaints are better addressed to security or the beancounters, and the rest are based on having an obsession with Teh Cloud!!!!111!!!eleventy or "Nothing could possibly go wrong with just giving me what I want. You have monitoring tools and backups! Who cares if the beancounters wouldn't buy the tools you need, since they could find a 'functionally equivalent' POS."

IBM puts supercomputer Watson to work in ROBOT CALL CENTRE

Danvighar
Terminator

To never have to work Helldesk again?

Sign me up!

(I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords if they'll take over the most stressful jobs)

Ubuntu without the 'U': Booting the Big Four remixes

Danvighar
Linux

Have to admit...

While I'm a Windows user and administrator (there is no 8, only 7!), I have to admit I rather like the Mint Cinnamon I set up for my sister when rebuilding her old laptop. Most stuff did, indeed, 'just work', and it was easy to pull the packages she needed. Not so sure about packages I would use, but enough to do everything she needed just fine. Even the wireless was happy to play right out of the box.

If (9 minus 1) is the way of the future from now on, mark me down for a likely penguin convert next time I have to replace my box (if I can't find an old 7 license somewhere).

Who ate all the Pis?

Danvighar
Facepalm

Slash

Real DOS experts - and real Windows Admins - know that the forward slash is just "slash". Unfortunately, the ravening hordes of Windows _users_ always get confused. "h t t p : / /" you say. "Is that forward slash or backward slash? And which one is which?" they reply. For the 20th time in the same conversation.

Mozilla picks JavaScript titan Eich to lead charge against 'Droid, iOS

Danvighar
Thumb Up

FirefoxOS

Haven't googled yet, anyone know if they're planning a desktop version?

Only I've got a spare older desktop that would be great for testing that out...

Former CEO John Sculley: Apple must adapt or die

Danvighar
Paris Hilton

Regarding Apple prices...

They must have adjusted their prices in the last few years. Last time I tried to spec a Dell laptop vs a... Macbook? Powerbook?, getting each part as close as possible in capabilities as the respective site allowed, a slightly more powerful Dell was cheaper by about 50%. This was back before SSDs took off massively, mind.

NASA snaps pics of China's 'Airpocalypse' pollution disaster

Danvighar
Stop

Now...

if they would just stick to their original intended purpose.

Exploding stars drive Galactic geysers

Danvighar
Holmes

Interesting...

Does this affect our theories on the rest of the Universe's nature at all? The requisite balances of dark matter and dark energy?

Does this same phenomenon look to be true for other galactic cores?

It's official: Mac users are morally superior to Windows users

Danvighar
Facepalm

Er... what about those of us who donate directly to a charity rather than going through a site? Don't we skew the numbers?

Antarctic discovery: ALIEN LIFE may be FOUND ON MOON of Jupiter

Danvighar
Alien

That was my first thought too...

Mozilla deploys Firefox safety net for corporate mindreaders

Danvighar
Thumb Up

Agreed

Centralized patch and settings management FTW. I've got mandatory security configuration requirements to implement if I allow Firefox, and it's a dog to finetune and lock the relevant user settings.

Chrome is the most secured browser - new study

Danvighar

Firefox...

Why the heck wouldn't they test the _current_ Firefox builds (8 and whatever the 3.6 series is up to now)?

Future Firefox to slurp updates silently

Danvighar
WTF?

Auto-updates

Howabout a silent-install package, either of the self-extracting exe or a good ol' msi file, that could be distributed by my patch management server?

If they did that instead, I could endorse firefox on my network.

Chrome browser 'is becoming Number Two'

Danvighar
Windows

browser wars...

I find Firefox 7 to be a big improvement. And while I presume Chrome has 'em, I really really like tab groups.

I've had... not zero, but damned near zero issues with my plugins for the last several iterations of Firefox.

Still looking forward to 64-bit, though...

Payroll jobs and Canucks on an iPhone

Danvighar
Go

Required Title

Kudos on having a -good- CEO!

And, it's so irritating when a company is selling your company a product, that you're expected to support in-house (for most issues) after rollout.. but you can't get any IT data from them until the product is purchased.

@AC, 1548GMT:

<quote>Make _the technology_ serve the end user. The department is there to keep the stuff running, not "serve" the end user. You similarly don't want to turn IT departments into "shops" that cater to "customers". That way you get the end user claim he's always right, which causes all sorts of systemic pains later on. You want to have your IT department _work with_ the end user to tailor a solution, which is what your example did. So I'm a pedant, so I work in IT.</quote>

Spot on!

Knowing your GPPs from your GPSes

Danvighar
Pint

GPPs adding function

Discovered GPPs - and specifically, Item-level Targetting (will you be covering that?) just a few months ago.

I've found GPPs to be incredibly useful in enhancing the level of control and security compliance in my network - policies that I used to have to kludge an ADM template together for, I can now perform via GPP. Their mere existance lets me simplify management of my non-GPS policies immensely, and some of the additional features like Item-level targetting let me consolidate policies heavily without having to keep a script file updated with every name change, etc, as the network evolves.