Posts by vmistery

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

Re: Real Computer Economics

"I purchase a new Mac on average about once every 5 years"

That's a normal time frame for a PC too. Ironically my girlfriends 3 year old MacBook which cost more than twice my Laptop cant upgrade to the latest version of OS X and same with my 4 year old Mac Mini.

"Friends with PCs rarely go half that time"

Unless they are buying the bottom of the range kit they are probably wasting money then. I am using a 6 year old Pentium D based desktop right now with no issues

"Initial cost is more for a Mac but upkeep and depreciation is less."

Very true

Ah lies and statistics. Its all about interpretation. Its a shame they did not also include "donation as a % of income", not that they would have that info but anyway I would expect it to tell a different story.

I wonder how I would be classed in the survey, a Windows PC, an iPhone , a Macbook and multiple Debian servers...

Search engines we have known ... before Google crushed them

I think you are right actually, Must have been a pretty early one.

What about 'mamma' - the mother of all search engines :-D That was the default one we used at school on Netscape Navigator.

BT wins another HUGE gov-funded rural broadband deal

In a small town in Norfolk we are actually in quite a good situation with Broadband surprisingly. Especially if you compare the 60Mb/s I get to the 3Mb/s that my friends in Vienna, Austria get. So perhaps we are not the worst off.

The best smartphones for Christmas

Re: poor iPhone 5 = 90%?

Once you include the brand image factor it accounts for that. I expect without the Apple name it would get 80% or so.

Question is can Apple light the world on fire with the next one? TBH I think its only real weakness is ios

'Build us a Death Star, President Obama' demand thousands

But the question I want to know the answer too - Are these the droids I am looking for? And what would a Death Start make Obama?

Council techie and top reseller talk Windows Server 2012

Re: Err...

Not at all, I enjoy hearing about the latest versions of Windows Server especially as I use it (as well as Debian and CentOS). What I don't appreciate is being advertised to by a reseller which IMO adds nothing to a balanced technical discussion which the reg should be.

BTW Windows Server may have the largest install base per version / Distro but not if you compare it to Linux as a whole. I would expect to see roughly 50/50 windows / Linux installations and therefore articles. The % of Linux installs is also much much greater in the rest Europe.

This sounds very much like an advert for Server 2012. MS will be happy. Why not have some days promoting the latest Debian / FreeBSD release?

Wanna see a 30D-rack beauty that goes like the clappers?

Now how about a SME Budget array? I dont want to be using 15K SAS drives forever ya know!

Comet crashes to Earth: 125 stores wiped out

Re: Employment Fair

Yup, unless you want a 13 hour a week cleaning job they are pointless. All the companies at these events know you are desperate and if you have already been made redundant then waiting till the new year is just not an option.

Microsoft supporting Surface with Windows RT until 2017

Re: What does "support" mean though?

I bet android handsets are supported even less though. A 3 year contract is insane, most here in the uk are 2 years and I think that's too long. 18 months for me is ideal.

BBC Watchdog crew sink teeth into dodgy PC repair shops

I have to agree that the so called 'expert' on this show introduced a fault which would never happen. In over 10 years of repairing mine and friends PCs and when I worked for myself customers PCs I can safely say I have never had a jumper issue that wasn't self-inflicted when putting a dual drive system back together. I see a lot of people on here saying they only charge £60 for labour for a HDD replacement? This is exactly why I moved out of the industry, you are undervalued and no one charges enough, a plumber on the other hand!

But companies like this make me angry, they give IT a bad name, that and those IT directors who know absolutely nothing about IT and award stupidly massive contracts for something they dont even need. But take some heart the problem is endemic across most industries, finance, plumbers, electricians. builders, sales people, garages, utilities etc etc and its not just the little companies either. Whats needed is a fundamental culture change.

Everything Everywhere swept away by its own 4G hype tsunami

Re: Rural not such a bad option

Thats why I am suggesting they are a bit more innovative. If you can make £15 / month and have to supply a phone to people in a city (lower margin) or £30 / month for a landline replacement and have to supply nothing but a cheap router with a 3g card in to someone in the country the margin per sale is vastly higher and the numbers start to look better.

Also as EE wont have ANY competition for at least 18 months and they would have a potential speed advantage over BT the uptake % should be higher in the Villages if they did their marketing right. I am not suggesting they put them up for places that only have a few houses but larger Villages absolutely. If you could grab 25% of 300 homes (using my parents village here) thats 75 households. Per month thats £2250 or £27000 a year. Now assuming that you then offer people in that village mobiles that are going to have great signal and great speed you also make that money too.

Rural not such a bad option

For those saying that it wouldn't be worth putting out in the Countryside I disagree. If you put this out in the Countryside and market it as a fixed line replacement (offering Virtual local numbers perhaps) product then you could potentially extract £30 / month or more out of each customer plus their Mobile contract. Sounds pretty sweet to me, especially if you are the only Operator doing it. At the end of the day me on my FTTC line in a well connected Town is unlikely to move my fixed line. I also will probably not bother with 4G until the cost comes down as we have many wireless hotspots and good wifi at home. EE if your reading by the way I am available to discuss :-D

iPhone 5 wait drives record Samsung smartphone sales

I have absolutely no doubt though that next month or whenever the iPhone 5 is released these sales figures will be very much different. I am actually holding off upgrading My S2 until its released so I can decide if it is actually worth spending the extra on the iPhone. TBH I am also interested to see what MS brings.too!

Patent flame storm: Reg hack biteback in reader-pack sack attack

For me its quite simple, if you actually invent something say a new fuel or design a whole new OS from the ground up or whatever then sure Patent it, you deserve it! Whats not acceptable is for a company to patent something that really isn't an invention for of a modification to an existing design.

Re: Fixing the patent system

Err No. The difference being that they are not patenting the design of 4 wheels and a chassis they are patenting an entire design. Apple are simplistically speaking saying that a rectangle with rounded corners is worthy of a patent. A car can be far more different.

Everything Everywhere bags 4G monopoly in UK - for now

Well this is a very interesting outcome. Thing is my contract is up with O2 and i was about to sign up to another 12 month deal. But now I know that EE has at least an 18month head start I might go with them (4G phone availability dependent). I can see however that this is not fair on the operators that do not have this flexibility tbh I think they should be forced to share their network with their rivals until the auction has been concluded and rival networks setup or the auction should be brought forward to say tomorrow. Some of the spectrum must surely be free already.

Microsoft RTMs final Windows 8 and Server 2012 code

Oh Windows 8. I will be hit with a terrible choice. Pay for a more expensive upgrade to windows 7 (from *cough* Vista) or to Windows 8 which looks kinda like a V-tec toy but will be cheaper. Windows 7 the new XP?

Judge: Oracle must remain on Itanic

Quite impressive really that a seemingly only verbal contract can be worth so much, I guess HP's next battle will be INtel and forcing them to keep developing the processors!

Microsoft: MED-V won't help you escape WinXP end-of-life

Couldn't agree with you more. And as much of the stuff I use is going web based such as my work email (accessed via roundcube), our case management system, our in house developed browser based software and google docs there wont be much need for me to use it at work either soon. All I 'need' most of the time is a good SSH client and a browser and probably Java for those odd Minecraft moments!

Ubisoft assassinates Uplay flaw, denies DRM rootkit

Perhaps Ubisoft could just use steam? Its effective, most of the people I know use it and it protects their game but no Ubisoft seem hellbent on penalizing their paying customers rather than the pirates.

What the game industry needs to do is agree on a common DRM system which is created for the benefit of both customers and companis. Perhaps then they could spend dev time on 'small' things such as customer security and being able to play an offline game whilst on an unstable broadband connection...

Fear not, Linux admins: There are TOOLS to help you

Re: Err?

Not at all snobish. The windows management GUIs are simply much better than webmin.

The problem I have with GUIs in general is just you dont learn as much about how things work. You need this knowledge for when something breaks and you need to manually edit a zone file or change some permissions somewhere and look at log files,once you have this knowledge then using a script to make the task quicker is a good option or indeed - a gui. Obviously when viewing data or typing a letter you are not going to use the CLI but for most server administration functions there is rarely a need. If nothing else Webmin opens up another area of potential attack and is largely unnecessary IMO.

Re: "For pain reduction, I recommend Webmin for experienced admins and first timers alike."

I agree about SELinux, if the devs actually had a suggested config for their apps added as part of the package install process it would be a breeze.

Not sure I agree about using Webmin! In fact a new Linux user should not deviate from the prepackaged stuff in the default repos IMO. It also does not help you learn what is really going on if all you do is use a nice pretty GUI - if you want to do that you may as well use Windows if you can afford it, its hard to move away from a GUIbut is well worth it.

I think its a shame that SELinux is not enabled by default on Debian though and that the default firewall is set to to allow everything! Dont forget to close down you ipv6 too! Time to switch?!

GM to slash vast outsourced IT empire

Re: I disagree

Thats practically what I said, its ok in specific scenarios. Once you reach a certain size however it normally makes no sense at all because you are less likely to require a static system (more users = more chances even if the chances are small).

Outsourcing in other areas falls flat on its face too (experiences from both private an public sectors below):

Cleaning -> we had an increase in theft after outsourcing as it was a variety of people coming in and out so it was hard to prove who it was

General Maintenance -> Suddenly having to get 3 quotes to get a lightswitch changed, more expensive for the common jobs

IT -> Slower support response times, more poorly trained staff -> worse user experience -> expensive change requests -> less flexibility

Care Assistants -> Due to employee terms being reduced (£7/hour, no sick pay, no pension) high turnover of staff leading to much worse care quality for people who required care

I really could real them off. I am not saying it can't work but it often doesn't make sense once you reach a particular size. This is the same regardless of the size of company. For example where I work we Outsource the management of our PABX - this makes sense because we only have 100 phones to manage and we couldnt justify keeping all the spares and experience in house.

Outsourcing IT may look pretty sweet but really never works. I worked in the NHS for a while and if you wanted a desktop fixed, ring company1, if something else went down ring company2 who would then share a contract with company3 and blame it on them. Circles and a load of downtime which you would not have had on an in-house system and a load of users thinking you are an idiot because all it needed was a restart. Want a spelling changed in an app? That will cost you £30k. Thats the efficiency of outsourcing.

The only times I could think you would want to Outsource is if you simply cant get the technical abilities in house or for something incredibly static which won't change like email.

'Extreme' solar storm speeding straight towards Earth

Don't believe them! Its the Triffids! Or possibly I have been watching too much TV?You decide!

O2, GiffGaff network goes titsup for unlucky punters

Set your phone to use GSM only

Just had a little play on my GS2 and I found if i set it to use GSM only then I could send / receive calls and texts just fine., obviously data is verrrry slow but hey at least its something. Would be good to hear if others find the same.

Lincolnshire cops to chuck £200m at G4S in ICT deal

Outsourcing just does not work

Every day I deal with Outsourcing companies and every day it drives me spare. It takes an age to get anything done and then the product we sell ends up costing the end user 5 * the amount because the providers charge so much for systems not included in the original contract . Oh and this is in the private sector. We get customers complaining to us when it is their own IT provider that are causing the delays. It is simply never a good idea unless you environment never changes (and it will). Its probably because they have to employ marketing / sales and accounting staff whereas if you just do it in house these costs just don't exist.

Ubisoft insists DRM 'a success'

Listen for a minute Ubisoft

I didn't buy Settlers 7 until you removed the silly DRM for that, and the same will be for this game too. Fact is I would have paid £30 or whatever for Settlers on release and didn't because of the DRM. Stop bullying your customers and bully the pirates instead. Seriously whoever thought that up truely needs to try it themselves. I live in a rural area with very poor broadband so its not even a starter for me.