Posts by Wallsy

Tired: What3Words. Wired: A clone location-tracking service based on FOUR words – and they are all extremely rude

Suffolk and brilliant

Indian government reverts to manual tax filings as new e-tax portal remains badly borked a week after launch

TITSUP

Total

Inability

To

Supplant

Unwanted

Paperwork

AWS Free Tier, where's your spending limit? 'I thought I deleted everything but I have been charged $200'

As a student I wouldn't expect to have to put personal payment details in to access an environment in the first place. Surely the organisation running the training (which sounds like AWS itself) could provision an environment for training and then tear it down afterwards?

This product is terrible. Can you deliver it in 20 years’ time when it becomes popular?

And after having one for three years I still end up inevitably holding it upside down and pushing completely the wrong button.

Making the thing completely symmetrical doesn't seem to be a great idea, given that many people like watching movies with the lights off...

Apple hits back at Epic, says Fortnite crew wants a 'free ride' on fees: Let the app store death match commence

Re: Compare

But in this analogy the film makers are also demanding 30% of the popcorn and soft drink sales. Isn't it enough that they get 30% of the ticket sales?

Admittedly there is an issue if the cinema were to move to a 'free movie, just buy lots of popcorn' model, but I think there has to be a middle ground between nothing ever and 30% of everything forever.

UK contractors planning 'mass exodus' ahead of IR35 tax clampdown – survey

Re: hyperbole?

The length of the contract has nothing to do with whether the contractor is acting like an employee or not. Some 'permanent' workers stay in roles for less than a month; contractors can certainly work with a single client for many years without necessarily taking on the attributes of an employee.

Why is it seen as fine for two companies to have a successful multi-year partnership (or even unsuccessful when it comes to Capita, IBM, etc) but a contractor cannot?

Buying a Chromebook? Don't forget to check that best-before date

Re: That's Chromebook right out of my buying list then

I think a better analogy might be that my sink can't wash dishes with 2019 dishwashing liquid, whereas it was fine with the 2018 version...

It's not the repair / upkeep so much as the inability to support any new applications that kills me. Eventually you're left behind with an unpatched unsupported sink OS and no dishes apps.

IBM declares it's the 'backbone of the world's economy'

Re: Where will it end?

Outsourcing only really works in a "steady state" environment, which is why accountants think it's great and everyone else knows it will end in disaster. A change usually means T&M charges and extra chances to fleece the customer.

I worked on a contract at the turn of the millennium where the customer (or at least the customer's accountant) was very smug about the "nailed down" agreement... to support OS/2 and to roll out a new application (that was Windows NT based). Cue huge unplanned costs to migrate to a new operating system.

HPE 3PAR storage SNAFU takes Australian Tax Office offline

Bruce CABs

They're no less painful down here, even if they are all called Bruce. A colleague of mine had his change request rejected due to lack of a back out process, which would be fine except that the change was to reboot a server.

Disks with Ethernet ports? Throw in some flash and you've got yourself a HGST p-a-r-t-y

Is it cheaper in the long run?

It sounds great in theory, but what's the cost in terms of switch ports, IP management and cabling? One SAN/NAS can host hundreds of drives, and use only a handful of ports to provide access. There's also a bit of resilience built in, whereas an Ethernet connected drive will need to be protected by application logic.

I suppose these are aimed squarely at the bold new world of cloud ready apps, not my old-fashioned internal data centre ways.

Chaos Computer Club: iPhone 5S finger-sniffer COMPROMISED

Re: At least with a swipe pattern

Of course, my swipe pattern is usually left on the screen in a big greasy smear, so there's only two possibilities required to figure it out...

Xen hypervisor gets tech preview support for ARM processors

PRISM Aware

I guess the NSA aren't even pretending to hide any more... or is that an entirely altruistic 5% they've added?

Review: Intel Next Unit of Computing barebones desktop PC

Re: Gahhhh, when will people learn kettle style IEC leads are different to others?

Or if you're from Nuu Zuuland you can call it a "jug plug" instead...

Re: It's not uncommon for large firms to get ripped off.

I used to work for a very big financial firm in England too... and we had an RFP followed by a dutch auction. It was amazing just how much further those prices dropped over an hour.

One year based on our anticipated purchases (around 25,000 units) we knocked over five MEELLION pounds on the price (from the RFP pricing, not RRP).

Dell directors foresee unremitting brutality in PC market

Re: The Tree is Dead

I actually think it's a good thing being able to buy the computer with 2GB of RAM - I'd always buy the memory aftermarket for less than half the price the manufacturers charge. Same with hard drives...

Indian outsourcers Infosys outsource to WISCONSIN

Indian Density

1,400 staff in a 14,000 sq foot building... that's 10 square feet each. Wouldn't want to work in that office!

'Shame on the register to post wrong informations'

Re: Creationsists

And as someone who has lived on both sides of the world... it's a real arse having to have a separate DVD player connected to the telly, just in case you want to watch one of your "old" movies...

Facebook's open hardware: Does it compute?

What about support

Most people agree the cost of the box is tiny compared to the amount spent running the thing. If you've got your own datacentre and dedicated full time staff it's fine, but most companies can't afford to pay someone full time to monitor, manage and meddle with those boxes to keep them running.

Vendors with 4 hour SLAs make much more sense for companies that aren't all about the datacentre.