Posts by TonyJ

Kepler's K2 mission confirms 104 Earth-like planets

Wow!

It never fails to amaze me how the NASA engineers and scientists work around problems with clever, innovative solutions.

Not to mention the brilliance of the mission to begin with.

Hats off to them all.

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

Re: you pay 7 bucks for a coffee?

"...I call bullshit on that. Maybe your average beancounter does not know or cares about difference between Windows 10 and Gnome but try to replace their Excel spreadsheets with Calc and ask rewrite all macros in totally different language and you will very soon know what exactly the costs of transition are..."

Not just macros but plugins.

Anyone that's worked in the public sector will know they often rely heavily on them. And not just limited to Excel.

Re: you pay 7 bucks for a coffee?

"...Properly managed transitions from Windows are not that difficult..."

To be fair, I don't believe being difficult was mentioned. The point is, that it isn't free.

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

Re: Price rises you say?...

"...Customers - "No problem, we we're going to buy any anyway, knock yourselves out"...

In English?

Did you mean to say "Customers - "No problem, we weren't going to buy any anyway, knock yourselves out"?

Win 10 Anniversary: 'We're beginning to check in final code' says Microsoft

Re: There is absolutely no way

"...So you'd rather the OS stay exactly the same and not get any new features throughout its lifecycle? ..."

Yes well...how else can people complain about MS software being so bad when they last used to 20+ years ago?

Heaven forbid that MS do change things.

Not that I am saying all the changes are needed. wanted or appropriate but there is certainly a level of damned if you do, damned if you don't from the folks here.

Attention, small biz using Symantec AV: Smash up your PCs, it's the safest thing to do

"...Between the two different companies I have not had any issues....

That you know about...

And then, I'd put it down more to Avast than to anything Symantec

Debian founder Ian Murdock killed himself – SF medical examiner

Re: With friends like that ...

From what has been written it sounds like he had a long history of drinking and mental health issues combined with a somewhat fiery temper. How would you have handled it?

It sounds like HE fought with the police. Let's not tar every single one of them as violent power crazy mugs, eh?

On the face of it, it sounds like a tragic set of circumstances that lead to someone ending their own life which is always, always sad and my sympathies go out to his family.

Microsoft releases cross-platform .NET Core 1.0 at Linux event

"...It will be interesting to see if businesses use it or not due to deterioration of trust they have for Microsoft software that historically has been unreliable..."

Probably not, for a few reasons: firstly, lots of Linux adopters only remember unreliable Microsoft software that caused as many problems (if not more) than it fixed and these same people hold onto this perception despite generally having had nothing to do with more modern MS software.

Secondly, they remember the old Embrace, Extend, Extinguish approach to other technologies.

And finally - and possibly more damaging than any of that - this data slurping, Windows 10-forcing, behaviour that MS are involved in. That has probably done more to set their reputation back a decade plus than anything before it.

I'd suggest they need to try and get their own house in order before they try to foist their technology onto the neighbours.

Tesco Mobile does what? Hahahahahahaha. Sorry customers

Re: £140 million over 5 years for 800 staff

Oversimplification.

What your bottom line is on your payslip is not what it costs a company to pay you and to employ you -e.g PAYE and NIC contributions; running costs; HR and other personnel management costs; potentially having to compensate staff who can't move, systems integration, etc etc

And after all that Capita need to make a profit otherwise it's only a matter of time before jobs are lost.

Note...I am not commenting about Capita, Tesco, morals, ethics, good or bad decisions etc here, just that there are costs to businesses at the end of the day that people so often overlook.

Third OnePlus flagship: £309

Re: OS upgrades

The OP2 shipped with 5.

In March, OP released a beta version of 6.

Last Thursday they finally released it OTA and bricked mine and many others' handsets in the process.

It was eventually recoverable but given it's not like they were sending out to a wide ranging variation of handsets it shouldn't really have happened.

Still...they have kept to their words on updates thus far.

Ah...One Plus...

The marketing machine that happens to make phones.

In fairness, I had the OPO - sold it on arrival simply because I'd by then got a Galaxy Note 3 which I was enjoying.

Since then I got the Two - within the limitations of it, it's a decent phone.

But I've sat back with popcorn and watched their viral marketing campaigns like offer their VR headsets for any and all before their own customers and the furore that caused when they sold out before they even sent an email to said customers.

Apple quietly launches next-gen encrypted file system

Re: Adobe

"..Adobe products are the only ones that I had fail with case sensitive. .."

I had Steam games fail too - specifically, Left 4 Dead 2.

Microsoft buys LinkedIn for the price of 36 Instagrams

Eh?

I see no synergy here. Unless MS are tying to either get into social media and turn LinkedIn into a Facebook clone and/or they're going to use it as a Windows 10 download path... ;)

TeamViewer: So sorry we blamed you after your PC was hacked

"...Not to bright are ya.."

Says the chap who can't differentiate between to and too

Is Windows 10 ignoring sysadmins' network QoS settings?

Re: Windows 10, amazing for some reasons, awful for others

"...Tying things down should be relatively easy with a decent firewall and judicious use of the hosts file.."

You do realise the OS ignores the hosts file for certain domains, don't you, and has for years?

Some sites are hard coded into DNSAPI.DLL - can you guess whose?

Re: Re-read and remember

"...most people do actually have monthly data cap even if it is quite large.."

Not justifying this in any way (and I had the whole torrent-style of sharing/downloading updates turned off from the get-go, but most people's caps are for download only.

Now I can see why this would be a decent idea for machines on the same LAN segment that are behind a slow link, but come on MS...that's one of the things WSUS is for

Our CompSci exam was full of 'typos', admits Scottish exam board

"...It just goes to show the deplorable lack of competent computer science teaching in this country, when the examinations are seriously flawed..."

Serious question - is it teachers who write the exams?

Or is it outsourced to education "experts" to write the exams?

Midlands tech dynasty SCC bypasses Europe, opens service centre in Vietnam

"...a dearth of skilled techies that come at competitive lower-than-market rates..."

FTFY, SCC.

Greedy, bottom-line-obsessed fuckwits.

Wi-Fi hack disables Mitsubishi Outlander's theft alarm – white hats

Re: Yay, Yet Another Vehicle Hijacking By Maker Lazyness

"...although what happens if you have a heart attack and slump over the wheel is anyone's guess..."

You'd crash, I would imagine ;-)

Aquaboffins sink lost Greek city theory

Re: Atlantis claims were obviously wrong

"...Sadly I can only give you one..."

Have a Finbarr Saunders upvote, Sir!

Fnarr Fnarr!!

'Windows 10 nagware: You can't click X. Make a date OR ELSE'

Re: Is THIS real?

energystar...dude...what the hell are you smoking? I can only assume that English isn't your first language.

FBI director claims that videoing police is causing crime uptick

Re: Simple solution

"...Simple solution

The US could cut their "crime" rate tremendously by removing all statutes that do not involve harming a victim, e.g. drug offenses. The laughably termed "War on Drugs" is just a convenient excuse to discriminate against minorities and poor people..."

I do wonder at this.

How much money would be saved, and potentially raised, if these things were legalised and policed? How much less petty crime would there be? How many needless lives lost in the ongoing, constantly losing "war"?

Likewise, if prostitution were fully legalised and we could protect the women involved, how much less sex slavery would there be? How much more would we actually be able to protect the women involved?

We've lost these "wars" so why can't we have a grown up conversation now about what happens next?

Re: Nothing to hide : Nothing to fear

"...Please don't use this argument..."

You missed the point by such a wide margin, I am not sure you even realised there was one in the vicinity.

Microsoft phone support contractors told to hang up after 15 minutes

The best I can do...

...was about 5 or 6 years ago.

I'd been doing a relatively short-term contract for a company on a "competitive tender".

We were initially engaged to design and proof-of-concept a solution. It was all very hush-hush as the incumbent supplier didn't know they were being terminated at the half way mark. So we had no identifiable badges etc.

Anyway we felt that the PoC had gone really well and the noises from the client were the right ones.

The problem was they wanted to take their time to decide.

So...because they had no skills in-house (hence my being there), I was asked if I would let them pay me to not work. They had no issues with me picking up a bit of short-term stuff here and there but not take anything longer term.

So for about 12 weeks, I was paid effectively twice. Once by them not to work and again by another company for doing a weekly rolling contract.

Happy days. :)

Non-police orgs merrily accessed PNC without authority, says HMIC

Re: corruption

"...Fight corruption? You can't do that when the foundation of policing and justice is this shaky. The UK isn't a well designed car (or even poorly, merely by accident), driven or navigated by the elected body, it's a collection of bits some of which might be car pieces some horse and cart becasue they were overlooked when the modernisation happened, all trundling along merely, some veering all directions only marginally under control or not at all..."

The problem here though is that there has to be will to fight said corruption and that is sadly lacking. Politicians, bankers, CEO's and FCO's of large corporations are all too busy looking out for themselves, creaming off the top.

If they can keep the masses' attention on things like immigration and terrorism, whilst simultaneously keeping as many of them as under-educated as possible, then it makes it so much easier to pull off the above.

EU vetoes O2 and Three merger: Hutchison mulls legal challenge

Re: Dam

"...3's data rates are superb, best out of every network I've been on. But the black spots are big and plentiful. Was really hoping this merge would help fix it...."

Hate to burst the bubble, but my experiences on O2 suggest that this wouldn't be the case.

I had awful connectivity in a lot of places you really shouldn't be struggling.

To the point I used to have a Three one plan SIM on a rolling 30 day contract purely to use as a mobile hotspot (until they decided they wanted to increase the price and cap the "unlimited" data via tethering).

Three - the worst customer service I've ever encountered;

O2 - had good business customer service until they shipped it off to Azzuri then it went downhill rapidly, as did the benefits of being a business customer

EE - had a few misgivings going to them but (touch wood) they have UK-based business support, great speed and coverage and good data capacities

I am actually nervous about the move to BT. From my perspective, it can only go downhill.

YMMV of course.

You can always rely on the Ancient Ones to cock things up

Re: Oh so true (the water feature)

"...That paper's not an adequate explanation. They jiggled the string. As we all know cables can knot themselves without any external source of motion..."

True!

Plug TV into the mains.

Plug various other cables into the TV.

Note with pleasure how neat and tidy said cables are laid.

Watch TV.

Go to bed.

Wake up.

Check cables - knotted. Despite the fact that one end is attached to an effin' wall and the other to something bolted to the wall or laid neatly, untouched below it.

Cable gremlins.

Spaniard live streams 195km/h burn-up

I found...

...that getting a dash cam had the opposite effect on my driving... I started driving like less of a cock myself since I could effectively provide evidence of my own stupidness.

Am I missing the point? Do I need to drive like a complete dolt and share the evidence??? :)

PLA sysadmin gets six months house arrest for yanking US Army docs

Re: House arrest

"...I don't have to leave my house for six months and you guys will bring me food? Awesome! Anybody got any good DVDs?..."

And presumably his rent/mortgage and sundry bills are picked up on his behalf during this time?

London NHS trust fined £180,000 after second bcc fail on HIV email list

"...The real question is, why does the admin not use address/header rewriting,.."

Yep.

Have to agree. It isn't even that difficult to do.

But.

Whilst on the one hand, I wouldn't "blame" MS for this cockup (and I've seen similar with other sensitive lists) in general, one thing I do blame them for is that they don't show the Bcc pane by default.

So we have a bunch of technophobes (which in my experience of 10+ years of working on gov/military contracts is 90+% of users) being expected to understand the concept of things that aren't even put there in front of them by default.

I'm normally an MS supporter, having built my career on their software (and others to be fair, such as Citrix) but this always annoys me. Intensely.

The web is DOOM'd: Average page now as big as id's DOS classic

Re: from three 'double u's to one single 'm'

I give up trying to type posts on my mobile. I just can't do it. Either I mess the word up or the autocorrect has a really good go. :(

Re: from three 'double u's to one single 'm'

"...Because Dublin is a city.

/I'll grab my coat..."

I'll see your city and raise you a preisident... "dubble-yer".

<edit> I am not actually sure what a "presidtent" is. Some kind of camping accessory? Edited for my dire spelling.

Re: Missing DevOps

"...From Spoonfetcher's Leeches ("The Little Suckers") to CMOT Dibbler's pies and sausage-inna-bun. Naked and shameless commercialism..."

Not to mention CMOT Dibbler's "things onnastick" e.g. Sausageonnastick.

Game over for Xbox 360

Re: Dear Microsoft...

Firstly I wouldn't touch Sony gear with a barge pole.

Secondly please...explain how the XB One is a disaster, let alone an "epic" one?

Dear Microsoft...

So now you're retiring the 360, how about responding to the thousands of people on your forums that have been asking for the same kind of parental controls for the One since the day it launched!?

I generally trust my kids - and for goid reason - but they're kids. They'll occasionally try it on.

Citrix's strong Q1

Wonder how much cost has been saved by culling staff?

They fired entire departments such as some of their R&D. Wonder how much this contributed to their profit?

123-reg still hasn't restored customers' websites after mass deletion VPS snafu

Re: Hmm...

"...You're more temperate than I would be..."

Oh I wouldn't be, if I was one of the affected souls. I am just too cynical (experienced) to ever trust any company that hosts, well anything. Hosted myself or by third parties - if it's in any way important, it's backed up and stored off site in multiple locations.

Nor am I in any way supporting the 123 response, hence my comment about their duty of care...you cannot run a script that trashes your customers and then claim on the one hand you're not accountable whilst at the same time claiming you're playing the nice guy by trying to recover what you destroyed.

Hmm...

Ok, it may not be a managed service and yes, even if it was, wherever possible the customers should have had their own backups but 123 have a duty of care here...it was their script that caused the problem therefore to crow about how much they're investing in recovering the data seems a wee bit disingenuous under the circumstances.

I would also be interested to know if there were warnings sent out that this work was going to take place and as such, that their customers should ensure they had a suitable backup just in case. Also missed sales opportunities..."Hey you have no backup...what if...? Why not pay us a little to help you here?..." etc. Of course, the cynics might say this would work to advertise exactly that.

Badges for Commentards

Just realised...

...I've crossed the 2,000 upvote line. Is that all that's required or are downvotes subtracted? :)

If it's all that's required...pretty please may I have my silver badge. I like meaningless trinkets like that ;-)

Dell gives up on vWorkspace virtual desktops

It wasn't a bad product

Worked with it, albeit briefly, early last year and it wasn't actually a bad product in and of itself.

But prior to actually working with it, I think I'd heard reference to it maybe once or twice before and that particular installation was the only one in the wild I'd ever come across, so niche product.

But then...VDI...meh.

It really is time to sort out your professional indemnity insurance

Re: Useless

"...and if you are negligent then PI insurance will not cover you..."

Really? What do you think the insurance is actually for then?

Why choose Hiscox professional indemnity insurance for business contractors?

Our policy provides cover for:

negligence or breach of duty of care – making a mistake in your work or giving bad advice

infringement of intellectual property rights – for example using content from a website or publication without permission

breach of confidence – sharing confidential or sensitive information without consent

defamation – making false or damaging claims about a person or organisation

civil liability – if a claim occurs because of your business activity for a client and we haven’t specifically excluded it, it’s covered.Matters not one jot either way.

Taken from here: https://www.hiscox.co.uk/business-insurance/professional-indemnity-insurance/sme-professional-insurance/business-contractors-cover-information/

Either way you try getting a contract without having it.

Seriously?

I would actually say it is far from common...

As a contractor I have to provide proof of insurances prior to engagements. It also has to have minimum amounts of cover in there for both PL & PI.

This has been the defacto standard for as long as I can recall actually.

I also know from when I've done pre-sales work, part of the pack you present often (and I am again struggling to remember when it didn't) has to include the same.

Personally, I use and always have used, Hiscox. Not the cheapest (though not expensive either and they will often price match) but their cover is very comprehensive.

SpaceX's awesome snaps

Amazing pics

Like, I suspect, most people here, I love it when there's anything like this kind of [good] news. Somehow it feels like it's way past the time that we, as a race, should've been exploring space as much as we can and investing into the technologies that allow us to do it.

Amazing how that thing seems to have come down at an angle (assume it was windy from the white caps on the sea) and then straighten up at the last moment.

Congrats all round to Musk and SpaceX.

Citrix asks you, yes you, to write its certification exams and courseware

To a lesser extent...

...they've always done this.

Though they have their own, employed, authors in-house, Citrix have for many years invited individuals that they class as SME's (usually taken from the amount and quality of answers in their forums) to Florida for a week to work through the questions and improve them/contribute to them.

According to the email I got from Citrix, although they intend to continue this practice, they now understand that a) not everyone can or wants to take a week off to do this, b) not everyone can or wants to get to Florida and c) they're missing out a large talent pool because of this.

So it won't just be a case of allowing everyone under the sun to submit unverified questions.

Now as to the usefulness of these credentials...well that's a whole different story (my own experiences being - 54th CCEA...got access to a 'special' CCEA-only area of the Citrix website. The only content on it was a list of which exams you needed to pass CCEA!).

And, despite the fact I've worked with Citrix products since the mid '90's, since they sold out to VC's and ditched Mark Templeton, we're already seeing the death spiral...product design team, R&D teams either completely removed or cut to the bone. They were looking to offload the NetScaler product at one point (believe this is shelved as an idea for now),

The sad truth is, there's not much that XenApp does that RDSH cannot. VDI...well I've made my views clear on that many times.

FBI: Er, no, we won't reveal how we unmask and torpedo Tor pedos

Re: I am all for...

"...Not even say, murder? Or blowing up a bomb in Belgium that kills dozens of peoples. You're really saying that child absue (horrible although it is) is worse? I think you need to get a perspective here..."

Yes. Yes I am saying that.

Because, generally speaking, murder victims don't go on to commit murder and victims blown up in an act of terrorism don't generally go on to become terrorists. Yes these things can be life changing/ending/altering for the worse, but child abuse lasts a lifetime and there is plenty of evidence to show that abused kids tend towards becoming abusive adults. I would also suggest that there is far more abuse of children going on than acts of terrorism or murder. If there weren't we wouldn't have a need for charities like childine or require social workers.

So yeah - if we treat our children properly, and educate them, and give them the chances they need to succeed then we might just begin to stop the perpetuation of all sorts of violent behaviour down the line.

So let's look again at my sens of perspective over yours?

Re: I am all for...

Two things here - if you see my original response I did say that as he is accused, he needs a fair trial and for that to take place his defence need full access to how the case was built against him.

You show a blindingly simplistic view. "...He is accused of no more than looking at pictures online..."

If there was no demand for this then these sites wouldn't exist. If these sites didn't exist, how many fewer children would suffer? By increasing the demand, even someone who "only" looks at pictures is perpetuating, therefore (perhaps indirectly) taking part in the continued abuse of children.

Re: I am all for...

"...Have your downvote, sir. You are no better than the people you object to..."

Really?

You are seriously saying (anonymously, of course) that you believe that someone who has no feelings towards the continued wellbeing of someone who takes part in the sexual abuse of children once those predators have been through the due process of a fair and reasonable trial that leads to their conviction, is actually "no better" than said abusers of children?

You need to check your moral compass because it appears not to be working.

I can think of no crimes worse than ruining the future of a child, or indeed of harming a child in any way shape or form out of some malice or perversion.

I am all for...

...hunting down and locking away paedophiles, but if you're doing just that - hunting them down, taking them to court with the full intention of locking them away for as long as possible where they will suffer at the hands of other prisoners* then you owe them the right to a fair, transparent and open trial.

You cannot simply say "we don't want to show how this works" because otherwise it could be something as ridiculous as anything from "we got their IP and MAC addresses therefore we can link that to a person" right up to the more useful "we can tell you the serial number of every identifiable component within the PC" or anything in between.

*Not that I have any moral objection to this.

The FBI need to tread very carefully here. Not only with the above, but also the sheer legality or otherwise of their actions.

Amazon WorkSpaces two years on: Are we ready for cloud-hosted Windows desktops?

Re: Other benefits

Sirius...most of these comments are true of any RDSH / VDI environment.

As a user, you should have transparency of upgrades, updates, hardware failure and backups. You may or may not be able to request upgrades in virtual hardware (typically VDI) but no reason you shouldn't be able to.

At the end of the day, all this is and all you are talking about is RDSH hosted by Amazon. Nothing more, nothing less.

In terms of the update issue, I would assume that what they mean is that you don't get access to things like WSUS/SCCM etc to manage your patching. It's Windows Update or nothing.

Re: Thin Clients - Still Rubbish

"...Thin Client systems have always been expensive (lots of server side kit needed), done wrong (X-Windows) and the clients have always been as least as expensive as a standalone PC. Add to this Microsoft's stupid Windows desktop licencing (hence the use of Windows Server for this) - it is really a limited use case to either protect data, provide access to legacy software, or work around some stupid application licence..."

Actually there are good use cases for thin client solutions, for example, ones in high security environments where you don't want the sensitive data actually leaving the data centre.

Or cases where you're shifting large amounts of data around - if it doesn't have to leave your (usually) fast internal server network, you get much better performance than say copying down to a local HDD.

I realise that there are ways to make these things easier without thin client environments. I also realise that unless you stop email, printing, copy and paste, etc, or even ban mobile phones then there are always ways to get some of the information out of the system.

Thin client devices are an oddity in that to get anything like decent performance, you're spending as much, if not more than, a decent spec desktop, and you're tending to add in yet another layer of management requirements, but they have one major advantage over PC's in that when they are rebooted, none of the data is retained locally so for bank tellers etc, they are ideal.

Again, mixing up VDI and RDSH somewhat, but I do agree that MS could simplify their licensing (but if they did, they'd probably make less money as this is one area where confusion abounds, so companies tend to over-buy just to be sure they're covered).