Posts by TonyJ

Microsoft Surface Book: Shiny slab with a Rottweiler grip on itself

FFS MS...

...will you stop trying to copy Apple already?

(In this case I am talking elevated prices)

Middle-aged US bloke pleads guilty to iCloud celeb nude photo hack

Re: Middle aged?

..."Middle aged?

Is 36 middle aged note? Ye gods I most be an antique then!..."

WHAT??!?!? SPEAK UP!!!! NEARLY TEN PAST THREE!!

Hotel light control hack illuminates lamentable state of IoT security

Re: Let there be light!

"...Let there be light!

Well, the guy's name was Jesus!..."

To be fair, I think credit there goes to his dad for that statement. 6,000 years ago or something?

Staff 'fury' as penny pinching IBM offers legal minimum redundo payoffs

Re: Owners matter too

"...Owners matter too

As a shareholder, I'd be pissed off if IBM offered anything more than the statutory minimum..."

Don't worry Mr typical-nasty-comment-made-anonymously...the way IBM are heading, they are already in the death spiral. Enjoy your dividends whilst you can, because I predict it's not going to be much longer before IBM can no longer fund any.

Re: The smarts saw this coming years ago

I think it's a little harsh to call them deadwood. There's this funny thing with IBM'ers - an awful lot of them cannot see or envisage a life outside of IBM, so the idea of leaving voluntarily just doesn't enter into their minds.

Microsoft's done a terrible job with its Windows 10 nagware

Re: I've had a rather productive weekend.

"....An article on your experiences with a Hackintosh would be most welcome.

How about it? Or are El-Reg journo's trying to get back into Apple's good books these days?..."

Unlikely, given that it's a direct breach of all of Apple's EULA T's & C's.

Re: The Terrible...

"...Not because Outlook is any good, it's not. It's horrible..."

Why? Why, exactly is Outlook horrible? Or, like many often do on here, are you remembering back to the likes of Outlook 97 which was pretty grim?

Re: The Terrible...

Hard not to agree with you, Bazza.

Fair play to MS with 8/8.1 - they tried something new. Although the counter-argument to that is if they'd listened all the way through their various beta testing they'd have heard loud and clear that in general, people don't want their laptop or desktop to look, feel and behave like their phone.

Windows 7 was actually a good release. It ran on relatively modest hardware and included some nice tricks that even made it feel quicker than previous OS's even if it wasn't. But more than that, it cleaned up on the horrors that they'd inflicted with Vista and the crappy "Vista ready" programme whereby PC's that clearly weren't capable of running it anything like well were deemed suitable.

Windows 10... I do have it on my personal laptop and I can't say I mind it all that much but it does have quirks and oddities but I do prefer 7. And that, to me, in and of itself is a worry as I've always enjoyed getting and playing with the latest OS...10, though, was more of an Ok, pop it on then if you have it as an option, otherwise pop 7 on.

But fundamentally it's not the way the OS looks or behaves that is caning MS here, it's the insidious tracking they've built into it and the way they refuse to come clean and tell people exactly how to turn everything off or what, exactly, they're tracking to begin with. And that, more than any nag screens or other 'issues' is why it's got such low market penetration. Trust. Lack of.

Heartless hackers break into Florida cancer clinic network – 2.2 million records exposed

Scumbags

That is all.

SQL Server for Linux: A sign of Microsoft's weakness. Sort of

"...The only surprise for me is that it's SQL Server going to Linux first. I honestly thought they'd port the cash cow that is Office to Linux desktops first..."

I'm with you on that. It seems to me that they're trying to penetrate a market (like they did with phones) that is already saturated with enough products across the whole spectrum of lousy to brilliant in a sphere they're not really trusted, so whilst the server market for Linux might be a bigger cow for them to suckle from, I'd suggest it's going to be a tough fight to get to the teat. And on top of that, they're not the big boys in this playground and can't give things away to decimate the competition.

Even if all they started with was Outlook, I think they'd get more uptake.

I'll be watching this with interest.

Re: .NET stored procedure

"....Hope you failed your degree..."

And let's follow the trend of personal attacks/uncalled for nastiness being posted anonymously.

You're not so much a prick as an entire cactus.

McAfee gaffe a quick AV kill for enterprising staff

Re: responsibility

"...Or, depressingly often, the software company considers running without admin rights an "unsupported configuration" and won't troubleshoot problems if you set it up that way..."

I must confess that isn't a problem I've ever encountered despite vendor support occasionally being involved. Of course, I'd be happy to show them that changing to an admin account makes no difference and it would always be a test anyway in case anything was missed in the original admin-removal process.

It was always the same with Citrix - does the problem occur using RDP? Yes - most likely (not always) not a Citrix issue. No - most likely (not always) a Citrix issue.

I'm intrigued by the downvotes - not that I'm unhappy but I'd love to know the counter arguments of my points? Or was this a case of the same laziness?

One other thing I've noticed lately - there seems to be a lowering of basic troubleshooting and support skills. Some of it may be down to not having to wrangle with software to the level we used to even only ten years ago, but a significant portion simply seems to be a general lack of understanding. Worrying, really.

Re: responsibility

I hear this time and time again (still) - particularly about Citrix..."but the software needs admin rights"

And my answer is always the same - "No it doesn't".

All you need is Sysinternals' process monitor (and this dates back to when they came as filemon and regmon) and filter on the executable of the app(s) for access denied's.

I have never yet found a piece of software that requires elevated rights that cannot be 'fixed' in this way but people are too lazy to put the effort in or too uneducated about the tools available.

North Dorset Council hit by ransomware, flips the bird at miscreants

Re: AppSense

..."

Surely you can do this with a well setup Windows security policy rather than having to use third party software?..."

Sort of but then you're managing dozens or more of program hashes (for dependent executables and binaries too) or you revert to executable names as updates will alter the hashes and then users can simply rename files.

I should really caveat that - it's been several years since I looked into it on a purely Windows based offering. AppSense just works. And can log.

AppSense

This is exactly one of the reasons I love AppSense Application Manager and it's trusted user model.

Your average joe/jane user cannot launch any untrusted executable.

Worth every penny in the long run.

And no - I am in no way affiliated with them.

Vendor rep 'Stinky Sam' told to wash and brush teeth or lose job

"...Well, that was a let down..."

Hard not agree... the story just fizzled and faded.

Donald Trump promises 'such trouble' for Jeff Bezos and Amazon

Re: Inherited Wealth

Wow sandlewould. Just had a quick glance through your posts and...well you don't half talk some shit, eh?

Climate change is bull; anyone who doesn't agree with your socio-eco-policitcal views is a liberal pansy etc etc etc and most of your responses to whatever post you feel the need to troll tend to be argumentative and personal attacks...stay classy.

I have a lovely bridge for you to buy but something tells me you're probably happy with the one you're clearly already living under waiting for goats to come along.

Official: Toshiba pulls out of European consumer PC market

Upsetting news

I used to repair Toshiba (among others) laptops back in the mid-late '90s.

They were the ones that set the standard of quality, customer service and support back then. The build quality was supreme. Mind you, this was when a colour laptop was multiples of thousands of pounds.

They weren't short of having the odd bit of fun, either.

Pre-internet days, they sent out TNS bulletins to qualified repair engineers. One April we received one announcing the left handed laptop.

http://hoaxes.org/af_database/permalink/left_handed_toshiba is the best link I could find.

Yelp minimum wage row shines spotlight on … broke, fired employee

Re: Trump?

Did you even read what was written? Any of it? Nope..thought not.

I'm not saying I think any prez should interfere.

Sounds like it.

What I am saying is that prematurely blaming Trump when he isn't even in office is stupid. Blaming Obama would make more sense, but that's not to say I think he should interfere.

As others have pointed out, no one is blaming Trump. The comment was that people like him - you in this case - seem to think it's perfectly fine to attack those in a less privileged position than themselves

rather than consider the reason the unfortunate soul is in that position to begin with

To the best of my knowledge there is no time machine that Trump can use to fly back from the future to cause current woes.

Dick comment.

As for Ms whiny pants....why does she choose to live in expensive SF area when she only has the capability to earn a paltry $1500? Perhaps she should move to somewhere where someone that generates as little value as she does can afford to live.

Not knowing the geography of the area or at which point rents become affordable to her, or the kind of area it would be, I suspect it's probably because it would be either a dangerous area to exist and/or take far too long and cost far too much to travel.

Another case in point of you being a dick again with the personal attack.

If we give people like her handouts then it can only come from one place: jacking up national debt and robbing unborn children even worse than now. A kid born today in the US owes about USD60k (doubled under Obama) before (s)he has a first suck on a breast.

Live within your means... not just the entitled little Ms, but also governments and nations.

And...again...you clearly didn't read the article, did you?

Not once was there any suggestion of giving anyone state handouts. The point was that a billion dollar value company chooses to have it's office in a ridiculously expensive location yet pay its staff the legal minimum wage whilst understanding that their staff most likely cannot afford to live there.

The point being made was that just perhaps Yelp should stop being greedy and selfish and pay a reasonable wage to live on like many of the other tech companies.

In most cases, I hope people never fall on hard times. In your case I believe it would teach you a little humility and understanding because you are one cold hearted, selfish son of a bitch. And yeah - in that respect, you're just like Trump.

Between you, EE and the lamppost ... this UK cell network is knackered

Re: To EE customers - it could be worse

"...That is day in, day out for FIVE YEARS...."

Why not ask them for a boost box (femtocell) to send the signal down your broadband? They work rather well, although I moved from O2 a long time ago because they never seemed to have a good signal anyway.

But I'm more curious, if they're so shite, why you're with them after five years?

Google to snatch control of Android updates from mobe makers – analyst

"...About bloody time..."

Couldn't agree more.

Pain in arse when manufacturers (I'm looking at you here, Samsung) don't update with even security patches so soon after they release a handset.

Citrix kills Sydney research lab, vows to focus on 'core products'

VC's walk in...

Cut staff, sell off core technology, cut more staff, sell off the IP, cut more staff...oh ffs! Nothing left to sell. Cut more staff and close down facilities. Cash out, sell the still warm corpse to yet another VC to pick whatever meat off the bones they can.

I love(d) Citrix. In fact, I've worked with it since the mid-90's but seeing what they are doing now is painful and I hope I'm wrong but I see them going down the pan, too.

For me the thing that would really signify that end is coming will be when they sell of the NetScaler range. It's just been such a core of their business for so long now and they are actually brilliant devices.

As I say, I really hope I'm wrong, but...

UK to stop children looking at online porn. How?

Re: Wanna stop kids looking at porn?

" ... the fictional rubbish that makes up porn fantasies." --- msknight,

Yeah, have you ever tried getting a washing machine repair man round within five minutes of phoning?

(yes I know it's an old one ...)

"Oh dear...my clothink appears to have fallen off!"

"...so pushing web filters from the other end?..."

Yes and I personally have a real problem with their entire approach to this - I've said it before on here but any government, or government-controlled agency, that has the ability to effectively censor information would do so.

This whole "think of the children" thing is really "let US think of the children" to allow the generally stupid - that are exactly the kind of people who think that if they do something stupid, they should be allowed to claim compensation from someone else because it must be both someone else's responsibility to protect them from themselves and well they deserve it.

I mean notwithstanding the whole question of how you control this for sites in say, Canada or Japan, the whole concept is insidious and ridiculous.

For crying out loud 1984 was supposed to be a warning not a set of instructions!

Apologies for the rant.

This Android Trojan steals banking creds and wipes your phone

Re: Darwin is calling

"...Darwin is calling

all those who are stupid enough to click on a link from some random SMS and then click "install" when prompted if they want to proceed with an MMS messaging APK from an unknown source..."

Have to agree here. The only times I've ever turned on unknown sources was to install the Amazon app (apparently Google don't allow alternative play-type stores by default and to install a diving app my own dive buddy wrote, to test for him.

In both cases, it was immediately disabled again.

My bank do send me SMS messages. To date they have never, ever, sent me an SMS with a link to install anything and frankly if I received one, I'd be very highly suspicious of it but I guess the kind of people these target don't fall into the tech savvy/above average intelligence/overly cynical and suspicious group(s) as found here.

Microsoft quits giving us the silent treatment on Windows 10 updates

Re: I loath what Microsoft are doing

No idea why you got a downvote for trying to be helpful, so have an upvote to balance it.

BT blames 'faulty router' for mega outage. Did they try turning it off and on again?

Re: One f*****g router?

ITIL...ITSM... all nicely wrapped up in arrogance... I smell a "consultant"

Oooh I know. .. I'll see yours and raise you a TOGAF!

People so needlessly aggressive as you are being and tryIng to prove endlessly they know more than random strangers online tend to be hiding behind the buzzwords and bravado.

Ladies and gentlemen we seem to have found Dick from the internet (see various Dilbert sketches). That or... do you by any chance work for Capita???? I suspect so given your complete lack of a sense of irony or humour.

Re: One f*****g router?

"...

You need to read up on Spanning Tree..."

No I don't. I have networking specialists to do that side of it for me. Failing that there's always someone on el reg happy to prove they know more than someone else and to do it in the most condescending manner possible. You know, like you just did.

Delegation. Didn't learn that on any course, ITIL or otherwise.

One f*****g router?

Dear BT... if you have single points of failure that can bring down hundreds of thousands of your customers then you need to fire the useless gimps who designed it, and employ someone who actually understands the concepts of resilience, high availability and possibly even DR.

Understandable that you had your support call centres flooded with calls but over the space of an hour I either got cut off immediately or an engaged tone. On the handful of occasions I did get in a queue you disconnected me to silence after 3m 30s. You are BT ffs! If you can't handle call volume correctly there's no hope for anyone.

Eventually you had a recorded message. Of course, by then world+dog had already worked out there was a major outage.

Single router ffs.

As I said elsewhere, myself and most people will accept the odd problem and this is only the second in 3 years. I am pissed off though that it was nigh on impossible to get information from the horses mouth. Bad, BT, bad.

Reg readers speak out on Thin Client technology

Re: You need the staff and good software...

"...VMware VDI with Nvidia video cards are VERY good, you need Gig networking and a peppy thin client,...

That. Right there. You are throwing high end equipment in to support generalised desktop users.

"..Your mileage may vary if you use the substandard VDI vendors like Citrix or Microsoft. LOL.."

Can't comment on the MS offerings, but Citrix can hardly be called substandard. Dropped the ball in areas perhaps, but still...

Xendesktop can work. But. Again. You need to throw lots of money and resources at it.You need things like NVidia GRiD cards etc.

Done properly, VDI can work. Done properly, VDI is complex and expensive.

Re: Hmm

Agree. WinFrame which eventually morphed to XenApp was ideal at what it did. As the underlying RDP/RDS technology evolved and matured it still had a real use case.

Still does for a lot of the things people have already mentioned.

VDI on the other hand just seems to be a solution looking for a problem. Factor in the IO requirements, the additional hardware requirements, the specialist knowledge and the crazy licensing that sometimes goes hand-in-hand (which can be true of RDS environments, to be fair) and you have something over-complex, over-engineered, over-costly and requiring specialist knowledge and hand-holding to keep running.

You've got all the traditional support headaches of a typical desktop estate combined with all the additional complexity and support headaches of the VDI backend infrastructure.

And yeah, thin client device manufacturers shot themselves in the foot a decade ago when they stopped making cheap-as-chips Linux embedded / WinCE type embedded devices with low-spec CPU's and only the minimum amount of RAM, CPU etc and started to make what was effectively a full-blow PC, at similar or higher prices.

Surprisingly, people bought PC's.

BT fibre TITSUP

BT fibre TITSUP

Myself and a colleague 100+ miles away have both lost our BT infinity this afternoon.

These things happen but their service status page is unavailable and calling for support is lamentable. If it's not ringing engaged it's cutting off after queuing for around 3 1/2 minutes.

Shit happens but when it does I want to be able to get in touch and find out what's happening and an eta for repair.

Microsoft sinks to new depths with underwater data centre experiment

Re: Why put it all below water?

"...Why not just pump seawater out the sea (or a river), pass it through some heat exchanges and then let it back out into the sea? Works pretty well for power stations and they need to get rid of quite a lot more heat than a data centre would ..."

Pumping seawater is a vicious thing, especially when heat is involved. The salt causes all sorts of problems when it solidifies. It can be done, of course, but it adds to the complexity and cost of any equipment you need to do it.

One of the reasons you see most power stations by rivers - fresh water.

Re: @TonyJ - divers

"...@TonyJ - divers

No one will dive to it. If they need to service it they'll raise it up. Probably isn't worth the cost of servicing, they'd just replace the whole thing as a unit.

It is the same theory as mega datacenters that are built as units that fit in shipping containers. They don't service those either, they just replace the container when enough stuff inside it has gone bad..."

You don't even get a joke when someone tells you it's a joke...? I even admitted it wasn't a very good one but hey don't let that stop you.

Re: Haven't they heard

"...

Re: Haven't they heard

It would also be ideal for growing an artificial reef on (cold water corals, like we get here in the UK), although I would stick it a bit deeper; 30m would be optimal...."

Warning...SCUBA joke (and not a great one, at that, but I couldn't resist)...

Make it 45m or deeper then you'd be able to justify getting technical divers in...

Home Office lost its workers' completed security vetting forms

Re: As someone...

"...Never heard "bollock" used as a verb before.

Hmmm...seems "bollocking" translates into "tea-bagging" in American street slang. Maybe there's something to that..."

Never heard the phrase along the lines of "I got a right old bollocking"? In this context it means "I was told off, big time".

Investors furious that Amazon only made $482m last quarter

Let's face it - that right there is the problem. Projections are just guesses. They might or might not be educated guesses but ultimately it's saying "we did this before and we now expect to do this next time".

As others have pointed out, there is also a lack of patience and the long view.

It is just a cycle of optimism (greed, in some cases) and disappointment or delight (or anger).

But ultimately it's a guessing game based on the hope that since shares have tended to only rise over time, they'll continue to do so.

My point was this - these very same people who guessed how much they'd make (and I'm talking about the analysts) are the very same people who seem to lack the understand, patience and vision of what makes Amazon what it is. They are the very same kind of people who, during the recession talked about the likes of Microsoft making a loss for the first time ever when what they really meant was they weren't making the kind of profits they had previously.

Blind, leading the blind, leading the gullible.

...Sales up 22%, profits double, AWS profits triple, but the "investors" (we're not told who) are "furious"? Someone took a gamble on the stock market and got it wrong. My heart bleeds for them..."

Profits double but their investors are furious??

Hundreds of millions a quarter...yeah I'd be furious, too.

Capita hiring temps to cover for call centre redundancies – staff sources

Re: I thought this was illegal?

"...When that's happened and you have seen the employment laws twisted into a pretzel then you'll understand the number of gaping holes in employment laws mean they are effectively worthless..."

Such employment laws are effectively moot to me - I am a contractor and have been since the beginning of the recession. The only company I work for is my own limited.

However, I have seen closely various things unfold - the collapse of a relatively large company when it suddenly went into administration. And yes, that was an eye opener seeing how basically all contracts effectively become null and void and customers, suppliers and employees are all equally screwed over.

I've seen companies like HP strip away their staff without seemingly have any compassion or idea of the value of said employees.

I've only ever had one contract terminated early when a bean counter somewhere decided that the "tower" I came under could lose all the contractors and he'd look good by saving a perceived fortune (the decision for me was eventually reversed but by then I'd already secured something else). Inevitably within about a month both myself and others were being contacted to see if we were free to go back.

In a nutshell, my own experiences and those I've seen of others has just convinced me that contracting is actually a safer bet on the whole than being a permanent employee.

Re: Does not surprise me

"...Unless you mean to say that they couldn't care less..."

Yeah this gets me every time... the (generally) American "could care less" really makes no sense.

But then...'merkin. :)

Have an upvote

Re: I thought this was illegal?

"....I spy somebody who wasn't made redundant in the recession!..."

Correct. How on earth did you manage to make that sound like an insult?

Bitter, much?

I thought this was illegal?

You don't make a person redundant, you make the job they're doing redundant.

You can't then hire contractors (or anyone else for that matter) to then backfill...

Police Scotland will have direct access to disabled parking badge database

Re: Also Parent and Child bays

"...In my experience having children didn't make me a special person who is more important than others and nor did it stop my legs from working.."

Now, I didn't say it made anyone special or more important. Nor did I say they should be closer to the store/replace the disabled bays. I asked a question about a parking configuration that's there. Get off your high horse and stop making assumptions. Also...you have a very high and mighty attitude, so I suspect you actually really do think you're better or more important than others (and your next comments back this up).

"...I also found that one of the keys to being a parent is making the children do what I say, so I've never found going to a supermarket much of a challenge even though, by modern standards, I've got a large family..."

Yeah and 99.9% of the time my kids will do exactly what I say when I say. But they're kids. They do things seemingly at random and y'know it's part of being a kid. So is a bit of rebellion.

"...I really can't see the need for parent and child spaces at all and certainly not nearer than the disabled spaces which are often used by people who can only walk very short distances..."

Narrow spaces with car seats - things which maybe you didn't need to use by law back then - can make it extremely difficult to get a small child into and out of a space, Many - granted not all - parking spaces are really too small and could be made a few inches wider to everyone's benefit.

Just because you cannot see a need for something doesn't mean that need doesn't exist.

Also Parent and Child bays

Usually the same selfish, often fat and lazy feckers that will abuse the disabled bays.

I do have one genuine question though. Many of my local supermarkets - especially the local Asda's have literally dozens and dozens of disabled parking bays. One of the larger ones has to have more than a hundred of them. And yet, there are about 20 parent and child bays. Even on the busiest of shopping days, the disabled bays are mostly unused - is there some kind of ratio they need to stick to with regards to total number of bays and percentage of disabled?

Just looking around, I'd honestly say there are far more parents with kids shopping at these places than disabled folks so it seems an odd imbalance.

Linux Foundation quietly scraps individual memberships

Sheer arrogance.

This can only come back to bite.

Move vSphere VMs to XenServer? Citrix thinks someone wants it

Re: The best hypervisor value keeps improving

"..Despite TonyJ's belief that "It's a irrelevant", XenServer continues to thrive and grow.."

Proof please. Point me at the evidence that Citrix XS is a growing market, let alone a thriving one.

Still playing catchup

It's a irrelevant in the virtualisation market.

I believe even most Linux disties moves away from open source Xen to KVM some time ago.

It does sadden me to see them becoming more and more of a side note but I can think of precisely two customers using Citrix XenServer in the last 3 years and one of them is actively looking to move away to VMware.

If I recall, too, the fired a lot of their XenServer development and management staff last year?

Gotcha: Symantec fires reseller nabbed in tech support scam

Well...

It's nice to see a large vendor taking affirmative action.

But ultimately it comes down to how much more the scumbag operators lose and if I had to guess, it'd be less if the vendor cuts them off than stopping their sharp practices.

Virginia man charged in intriguing 'suspicious bacon' case

"...See this for NSFW bacon on bacon action, enough to cover any bacon lovers kink..."

You should be ashamed of yourself! Posting such pornographic filth to a decent site like el reg! And at this time of day, too!!!

(I'm just off to vote if I still can!) ;-)

Samsung sued over 'lackadaisical' Android security updates

Re: Move along, nothing to see

Yeah it's one of the reasons I'm getting less than happy with my Note 3 - I did manage to get lollipop onto it and although it's an 'official' Samsung release, it's not officially for the UK.

It really hacks me off that they are so poor about their updates. Now I wouldn't want to go back to Apple but my experience of their handsets was that the updated iOS would support a good three generations back and often more, although sometimes with limited functionality.

I've been scractching my head what to eventually replace the N3 with. I want something that I can put a microSD card into for one thing. I'd _like_ a stylus. It isn't essential but I do use it occasionally.

I would quite like to see this lawsuit go through to be honest. I am not too fussed about the latest OS but I do want my device to be as secure as possible for as long as possible. Otherwise, it becomes less and less likely it'll be another Samsung.