Posts by Ashton Black

Sysadmin ignores 25 THOUSAND patches, among other sins

Gotta say, I agree with DougS on this one. Never apply patches without a rollback plan. Especially if you don't have time to pre-test on a clone.

Testing times as NASA rattles Mississippi with mighty motor burn

Obligatory KSP post...

Needs more struts!

CAUGHT: Lenovo crams unremovable crapware into Windows laptops – by hiding it in the BIOS

Re: @AC - Avoid

To be fair, I'd rather have incompetent and evil, rather then competent and evil. The latter guys run the world, the former tend to suffer from the Dunning–Kruger effect.

Techies! Shadow IT means you need to up your game

To be honest, it sounds like the policies haven't changed for 10 years.

At least 10% of the IT department I work with at the moment are involved in assessing new products, re-writing policy and procedure and basically, trying to continually improve. (which does involve retiring old apps!)

Hasta la Victoria Siempre, GDS! This is not the end, no way

Re: These ¡Bong! articles....

Oh come on... have a heart! (or a lung, spleen etc and so on.)

Microsoft Edge web browser: A well-presented mea culpa

Well, fair enough. When I upgraded my Surface Pro 3 to WIn10 I kept on using Chrome. But after reading this, I'll give Edge a fair go.

Unredacted: ICANN's hidden role in fierce battle over .Africa rights

Well, it is a very brown nose.

No cheeseburgers.

ICANN haz bribe?

WIPO whistleblowers beg UN for protection as probe into possible corruption starts

Power corrupts and a bureaucracy tends to evolve to protect itself rather than function efficiently.

There are exceptions, obviously. In this case, however, not so much.

Are you a Tory-voting IT contractor? Congrats! Osborne is hiking your taxes

Upvote for content, however "there, their and they're"

On the main topic, yes I will be worse off and I most certainly didn't vote Tory.

Pisspoor EE customer service earns it a cool £1 MILLION Ofcom fine

Re: Can we have...

The problem with fining such that profit margins are squeezed, where they would pass on those costs to their shareholders, is that they wouldn't. Firstly as the board is most likely shareholders themselves. What is more likely is that to protect the share price, they'd just cut back in some other area or even pass the cost on to their punters, well before lowering the divvie.

Sprint: Our 'unlimited' mobe plan has one tiny limit: High-quality video

Re: Why

The implication is, that they shouldn't offer "unlimited" if it isn't. If they don't have the capacity to actually do "unlimited" then why do they get away with lying to their customers?

US SaaS firm bows to Snowden concerns with UK-based datacentre

Indeed.

Isn't there a Microsoft case going on, whereby a judge in the US has ordered files from an Irish Datacenter?

Better to avoid a US company altogether. (If such a thing is practicable)

As the US realises it's been PWNED, when will OPM heads roll?

Re: Such amazing security measures worth $82bn...

Yes. Bonkers.

SpaceX gets ready to crash barge-land ANOTHER rocket

Oh ok.

He's just hit the "Revert to Launch" button on his personal Kerbal Space Program I see.

BOOM! Stephen Elop shuffled out of Microsoft door

Indeed.

""This change will enable us to deliver better products and services that our customers love at a more rapid pace."

The implication being the products they don't love (I would suggest most of them), will stagnate in a sea of bugs and zero days.

Poison résumé attack gives ransomware a gig on the desktop

Not huge amounts of sympathy.

"Cryptowall is being cloaked under the file name my_resume.zip and has been sent from Yahoo email addresses. The extracted files are screen savers that, when executed, download Cryptowall from compromised servers."

An enterprise network connected to the net need to be whitelisting all the software upon it in addition to preventing standard users from executing ANYTHING, without permission. Not to mention AV, Firewall and other Endpoint security measures.

A simple "Please send your CV in ".doc or PDF only" helps (not perfect, but there you go) too.

The Martian: Matt Damon sciences the sh*t out of the red planet

Re: Dances with Smurfs

Fair enough. :-)

Re: I'd watch it.

Indeed and Avatar was Dances with Smurfs. You say it like it was a bad

thing. You know Defoe allegedly plagiarized the shipwreck story from the draft of the memoirs of Henry Pitman.

I'd watch it.

Might even pick up the book before then. I need some light sci-fi. :-)

MONSTER GALAXY spotted hiding behind IMMENSE BLACK HOLE

Re: Our location...

Everywhere is "the middle" to all observers since spacetime is expanding for everyone is all directions.

A 16 Petaflop Cray: The key to fantastic summer barbecues

That's all very well, but can it run a Doom LAN?

(Nod to User Friendly Comic)

Bitcoin blackmail gang start hurling DDoSes at Scandinavia

Re: NSA/GCHQ?

[nsa-gchq] But combating cyber crims is haaaaard. Slurping peoples private stuffs is easy and we might find something fun!

[/nsa-gchq]

What hyper-converged storage really means for you

Tell me if I'm wrong...

Does Hyper-Convergence mean this:

Instead of buying several low storage, but high CPU/core count servers for the hypervisor to sit on and then having a separate SAN fabric to provide storage. You would buy several high storage, high CPU servers and let the hyper-convergence appliance allocate resources based on a pool of those servers?

I can see the advantage of having a SAN-less network, simplicity. But is this just good for start-ups or new builds?

If anyone has any decent guides (The Wiki entry is not much help) I'd appreciate a link.

Sysadmins rebel over GUI-free install for Windows Server 2016

Re: Interesting.

Really? Don't bet on that one AC. I've run networks over both MoD satlinks and microwave LoS.

That said, obviously exceptions exist and I wasn't trying to be dogmatic, just pleased that lower footprint, more automated options will be default, rather than the exception.

Interesting.

With those default diagnostic GUI bits and bobs and powershell, I'm pretty sure I could diagnose most issues with a Windows Server.

The remote access argument is a bit fallacious too. I suspect the vast majority of modern servers would be on some sort of hypervisor of some flavor. If you've got access to that, a simple console would let you in, generally.

I would consider putting a desktop on it, if there was non-server admins (eg the DBAs playing with SQL, aww bless.) who had to use it.

Bring it on!

One USB plug to rule them all? That's sensible, but no...

Re: Argh!

The only problem with that, is, as someone pointed out. You'd have to have the most expensive type of cable/plugs, rather than a lower spec for simpler tasks.

No point in having a £30 cable to charge your phone.

Dutch efforts to decapitate Pirate Bay could end up before ECJ

Easy Peasy...

Just redefine any copyright infringement activity as "terrorism" and bingo, you can do whatever the hell you like! (apparently)

/sarc.

But seriously, TPB wasn't communicating illegal content, they were providing links to torrents, which in turn pointed to others with said "content".

Sure, "Copyright Infringement Enabling", but not content per se.

Well YES, Silicon Valley VCs do think you're a CRETIN

I could sort of see this if....

If you could discount the toaster to such a point, where the "extra" leccie bill is offset then I could see this being a thing.

For example (the numbers are ex culo, but just to make my point)

Say you make and sell a toaster costing $20 (cost), but would be $40 retail normally, that generates $1 per month, on average (For 21, not the consumer, who would get say 1c.), and uses $1.5 more electricity per month (which the consumer pays)

This means that every month, for the life of the machine, 21 make profit they would have made selling at $50. However, using these numbers the toaster would have to be running for just under 2 years to bring the profit back to where it was if they'd have sold it retail.

It's FREE WINDOWS 10 time: 29 July is D-Day, yells Microsoft

Hmmm....

Might be worth it on my W8.1 Surface, but on my Win7 gaming rig, I think I'll wait a bit.

NSA dragnet domestic phone records slurp halted after key spying powers lapse

Controversial

"US President Barak Obama had earlier lobbied the Senate to support the Freedom Act because it offered reforms for "the most controversial provision ... the gathering of phone exchanges in a single government database".

The proposed legislation would still allow law enforcement to access mobile phone metadata of American citizens but it won't be able to stockpile it. Instead, phone companies would be required to store the records and then respond to lawful access requests on a case-by-case basis."

That's not the controversial bit, IMHO. It doesn't address secret courts rubber stamping warrants and gag orders, without effective oversight. All the Freedom Act does, is move who holds the raw data.

As a Rightpondian it doesn't actually matter to me, as our overlords are in the process of passing even more draconian rules. *sigh*

Long, sticky summer ahead: Win 10 will be with OEMs by 31 August

Re: I really don't have the time or patience for all this...

Why? How much are they going to pay us?

Backwaters in rural England getting non-BT gigabit broadband

Excellent!

This is great news. I only hope they'll come to rural Somerset. Well done those chaps!

Oculus Rift VR bucket will be seen on noggins near you in 2016

Well.

I came *this* close to buying a Mk2 dev kit. Kind of glad I didn't, as I'd like to see what the competition has to offer before investing in a VR/AR system.

It's beers and bacon all round for our Quid-A-Day Nosh Posse

Congratulations guys. Braver than I.

Strange alien-like life zones found beneath Antarctic glacier

Mr Stross.

The Laundry Files are great, a cross between the action of Ian Flemming, the mythos of H.P. Lovecraft and with a large dollop of well informed geekyness!

One bit to rule them all? Forget it – old storage types never die

Pointy Haired Boss.

Horses for courses. Good article.

Now, the question is, how to present this to a PHB who's heard the word "object" somewhere and thinks its a really good idea. *shudder*

Burger me! Microsoft's chainsaw rampage through sacred cow herd

Interesting times.

Indeed, there is a part of me which likes this, as I own a Surface 3. I will keep an eye on this development. ('scuse the pun.)

iPhone vs. Galaxy fight hospitalises two after beer bottle stabbing

One last hit man,

Oh just one more, I can take it. I mean, I can give it up whenever I want. It's not really a problem. They just released Hearthstone for Android. I needs it man. Cut me some slack. (etc and so on.)

High on bath salts, alleged Norse god attempts tree love

Typical!

In the land of the Freyja, no one gives a Frigg.

Snakes on a backplane: Server-room cabling horrors

Co-inky dink.

I'm doing a small DC uplift at the moment (just 60 racks). Replacing under-floor cable non-management with lurvly new in rack structured cabling (fibre and copper). Makes a massive difference. New server goes in? Just patch to the sides of the rack, rather than running new cables under the floor.

Once it's all migrated to the new racks, we can rip out all the old crap and there is tonnes of it. I would take pics, but it's a bit of a no-no.

EU digi-chief clashes with robo-veep over geo-blocking

Duplicitous Deutcher Dunderhead

Geo-Blocking has got bugger all to do with "Cultural Diversity" and everything to do with "Maximizing Profits".

Wearables market action is all in the wrist says market-scryer IDC

Interesting..

But the table is spanning across the page, running behind the adverts, so I can't read it.

(e-mail sent to corrections)

I'm still waiting for a decent wrist slab. The current generation is still a bit, well, meh.

Encryption is the REAL threat – Head Europlod

So, in translation...

"Waaaaa! decryption is hard."

It's not impossible to break a single target, but that's not what he's after. He wants mass, unwarranted surveillance. This is just sour grapes, not a legitimate argument.

Atomic clocks' ticks tamed by 3,000 entangled atoms

Boffinry!

Yet another story, with cool science bods NOT inventing my personal jetpack!!!

It's almost like they're not interested!

David Cameron's Passport number emailed to footy-head

Empty Deleted Items....

'Fraid not old bean. If you select Deleted Items and (depending on your version) select "Recover Deleted Items" you'll see that even those ones "emptied" are recoverable. Depending on your Exchange config, they can be in there for 14 days. It's known as "deleted item retention time".

Oh, and yes it does get backed up.

Oops!

Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge in Vulture's claws: we find looks AND brains

Convergence.

As hardware converges, it seems to me, that the only differentiator will be in who's walled garden you want to be in. The design philosophy behind these Samsungs seems to lean more towards the walled garden than in the past. Lack of SD and Removable battery was this very differentiator, now, sadly not.

Shame.

As H-dot Oettinger drafts Europe's new copyright laws – who's he been talking to?

Re: he's talking to the bad guys instead of creators :(

If by little chance you mean the same chance as finding a straw in a haystack during haystack building week in Haystackia.

AT&T, Verizon and telco pals file lawsuit to KILL net neutrality FOREVER

Re: Time For An Alternative

Agreed that the US needs a political shake up. However, UKIP? Saying what the public think privately? How do you know what the pubic think and furthermore, privately? Do you work in the doughnut?

Piffle, sir.

Vote Green!

A little amusing...

That on Wikipedia, that the US mobile market is used as an example to define what an oligopoly is.