Posts by Uncle Ron 345 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Feb 2013
All airplanes with radar altimeters (the avionics in question here) use the same frequency spectrum for their operation. In the US, the spectrum from 5G is "the next one up" from radar altimeters. 5G around the world DOES NOT use the same spectrum as the US. I don't know about Japan, but I know that EU 5G spectrum is much further (higher) away from radar altimeter frequency than 5G in the US. The problem of 5G interfering with radar altimeters in the EU (and probably Japan) and other places is effectively non-existent. Seems like the authorities in the US should have foreseen this MANY, MANY years ago. Huh?
I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but please tell me why the powers-that-be couldn't have installed a few GoPro's on the thing to give us all a look at how things were going. I mean, after all, we paid for the damn thing, why can't we watch? I'm not a rocket scientist, but I know for sure and for certain that a picture is worth a thousand sensors, and many times even the gear-heads looking at the data streams have gotten big help from seeing pics and video. The buzz-cuts at NASA don't have the PR sense that Elon has. He's got cameras all over the place. A few extra pounds--at most. Huh?
The article says: "IBM isn't doing the best job of marketing Db2, in general, both on Linux-Unix-Windows and System Z." Please name for me any PRODUCT that IBM does a good marketing. All of IBM's products are nearly invisible to the public. A customer has only the inconsistent pitch of a briefer in a center, or across his desk by a salesperson to understand what IBM is "behind," or "plans," or even -has-. Occasionally a TV ad or two during a sporting event--and even that ad is never a 'product' ad, but some wispy strategy ad like "Cloud," or "AI." Honest to god, the last time I remember a real IBM product promotion was the one-time "OS/2 Fiesta Bowl" in the US. I think IBM's product promotion is pathetic. It's like they believe touting their products is somehow 'unclean...'
I see nothing in this but endlessly increasing costs for patients, providers, insurance companies--basically everybody. Healthcare in the US is the largest single industry on EARTH. Not just the US, but on EARTH. Voice interface? HAHAHAHAHAHA. Has anything from Oracle ever saved you money? This combine should be stopped.
It seems to me that the "Ingenuity" people could have used off-the-shelf components (of course not the rotor blades and motors) for tracking, imaging, and more. The intelligence and control of, for example, the DJI stuff is amazing, and the quality of imaging is far better than what I have seen from the Mars copter. Sad.
It seems to me that a very simple solution to the stupidity of users of ALL organizational email systems is to simply disallow ALL attachments. None. Nada, Zero, Zilch. Strip them out before they ever get to a numbskull user. "Don't EVER send attachments. Don't EVER click on attachments." Sure, it would cause some pain and lost productivity. But not NEARLY as much as an attack. Simply include in a legitimate email something like an unassailable pointer to the "Excel" file or whatever, along with a regular, maybe daily, warning to NEVER click on an attachment. NEVER. No matter who it's coming from, or how TEMPTING the damn thing looks. DON'T CLICK. EVER.
There should be NO resistance or argument or push-back by anybody to getting vaccinated for COVID. None. Zero. No excuses, no opt-out, no push-back. What are you--NUTS? This is NOT a "personal decision." It is a decision that should be made my our society--like speed limits and building codes. For the good of ALL OF US. Unvaccinated (and even vaccinated) people can harbor and mutate and spread the disease. These are FACTS. Only people who just can't stand being told what to do resist this. It's a fact. Give me good reasons why I'm wrong. Reasons why we should let this virus be harbored and mutated in people who refuse to be vaccinated. Cicso is right: Get vaccinated or vaxx-off. I only wish political leaders and governments had the guts to stand up and demand this.
The mRNA vaccines are NOT experimental. They've been in development for TEN YEARS or more. They have been successfully used against SARS and MERS and perhaps stopped a pandemic from those two viruses. The only thing that was accelerated in the COVID case was the clinical trials. The trials used the same regimen and precision, just a HUGE expense to rightfully speed it up. The people driving the resistance to the COVID vaccine are doing it for political advantage. They want the votes of ignorant government-haters and they have fed these people misinformation and downright lies. They know what they're doing. I am really very tired of the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers and half-maskers getting ANY sympathy or agreement or "both-sides" attention. Again, this is NOT a "personal decision." It affect us ALL.
I vividly remember all the multiple disappointments I had when showing my wife some new and exciting thing I could do on our PC now that I installed a new OS, or program, or utility. On multiple occasions, her response was, "I thought it could always do that." No, non-techies,users, executives, wives, will NEVER appreciate what we do. This is a uniquely IT experience. Sales people, marketing people, product design and engineering people all get praise that is much longer lasting. IT people are mostly invisible--or worse, reviled. 'Twas always thus. So, whatever 'benefit' we got from the pandemic will not last.
Hubble is just a Keyhole spy satellite that's pointing up instead of down. I know that sounds like a simplistic comparison, but it literally is true. Hubble was made in the same factory by the same company with the same basic components. We have ONE Hubble. How many Keyholes are there and just exactly what good do we get from them? How much revolutionary science and stunning images and inspiring insight have we gotten from Hubble? And how much from the Keyholes? (At least a dozen of them...) We could probably put up another Hubble with 2020's computers in 12 months if we only had some real leadership in this country. It makes me want to hurl.
TCO savings of 30-50% with a performance hit of ~15%? In my mind, maybe not so much. It is important to remember that HW contribution to TCO (HW, SW, Service, Personnel, Power, Space...) is relatively small. Saving even 50% on something that is, maybe, 15% of TCO may not be worth a 15% hit on performance. Especially since the implementation of 'memory servers' won't be free. Huh?
Do you think there is any possibility that this outage was purposely launched by some nefarious entity as a demonstration of capability? "We'll shut down *everything* in the lauded Facebook empire--including their card entry systems and internal email. The next thing we'll shut down is the Pentagon or the entire US banking system, unless you pay us ONE MILLION DOLLARS." Signed, Dr. Evil.
Actually, the demand would be more like ONE TRILLION DOLLARS. And it's not Dr. Evil, it would be Vladimir Putin, or Xi Jinping, or whatever his name is. Or maybe some totally anonymous and untraceable someone and wants the ransom in bitcoin. There would never, ever be any public knowledge of this. Huh?
My understanding is that 10 will continue to be supported (at least with security "fixes" until 2025.) Am I wrong? I will dual-boot all my home machines to Linux (either Zorin or Mint) beginning about 6 to 12 months in advance, and when 10 "goes away," so will I. Unless MS relents on it's terrible plan.
If I believed for a nano-second that 11 would place even a *dent* in the vulnerability of every Windows computer on the planet--viruses, malware, hacks, leaks, ransom-ware, identity-theft, etc.,--I might be interested. Evil-doers all over the world will take said nano-second to get around TPM and whatever else is in this new spaghetti code. And I'm not at all interested in spinning up and maintaining virtual machines in order to run Windows 11. Forget it. The only beneficiaries of this HW BS are the HW manufacturers. New PC's will be required for ~50% of EVERYBODY. No Thanks. When support for 10 ends, it's Linux for me. Goodbye MS BS.
I have seen *nothing* in any of the coverage of this ho-hum Windows release (11) that talks about SECURITY. If I believed for a nano-second that it would place even a *dent* in the vulnerability of every Windows computer on the planet--viruses, malware, hacks, leaks, ransom-ware, identity-theft, etc.,--I might be interested. But *nothing*. Evil-doers all over the world will take said nano-second to get around TPM and whatever else is in this new spaghetti code. And I'm not at all interested in spinning up and maintaining virtual machines in order to run Windows 11. Forget it. The only beneficiaries of this HW BS are the HW manufacturers. New PC's will be required for ~50% of EVERYBODY. No Thanks. When support for 10 ends, it's Linux for me. Goodbye MS BS.
The article said, "Microsoft does not appear to be backing down on its vendor-delighting and customer-frustrating hardware requirements for the new operating system."
"Vendor-delighting" is the key phrase here. If I had even a scintilla of a stray thought that this new hardware BS would have even a tiny impact on malware, virus-ware, ransom-ware, data-theft, bugs, leaks or any other of the mountains of insecurity Windows represents every single day, I'd cave to it. There is no such assurance anywhere in any of the coverage I have seen. Evil-doers will get around this new HW nonsense in 5 seconds. It is a pure JOKE. Further, the focus on VIRTUAL INSTANCES is of NO INTEREST to me. I have no interest in implementing and managing and dealing with the complexities and performance hit of operating a virtual machine to get around the non-benefit of Windows 11. Forget it. When 10 goes out of support, I'm going to Linux. I intend to leave Microsoft behind forever.
Here's the thing: What IBM does is so much more visible, and it is so much more cautious than other companies, because it is so damned BIG. Whatever it does makes headlines all over and makes them appear to be the bad guys whatever the merits or facts of the case are. I worked for IBM for 42 years and found the company to be *very* sensitive to legal grounding and PR issues, and *very* careful, before filing law suits and taking employee actions. That said, IBM is not a pushover. If it thinks it's right, it will go ahead. IBM is not any more or less greedy or unethical than any other big company, and probably less so than your average small startup or NY real estate developer.
From the article: "Some clients lost data due to the incident and OVH has put in place measures to prevent a similar mishap from taking place, including a lab to model the impact of fires on data centres."
I wouldn't invest a shilling in a service that "lost data" due to a fire. What kind of cloud service doesn't have near bullet-proof disaster recovery procedures in place? That would seem to to me to be the very first thing on the check-list. Huh?
If I (or anybody I have read) had even the slightest tiny crumb of an idea that this nonsense MS is putting us through would end (or even help) the security crisis the entire universe of Windows installations goes through each and every day, I would scrap my entire home network of machines and "upgrade" the HW tomorrow. But it won't. TPM will NOT stop the malware, virus-ware, hackers, ransomers, scam artists and evil doers out there--even a little. Minutes after "11" gets entrenched, they'll be new threats and bugs and back doors, and whatever, and all that will happen is that PC manufactures will get a windfall of orders. Plus, us users will have a Mt. Everest of work to do setting up new machines. This crap MS is putting us through is simply ridiculous. When "security" support for 10 ends, I'm going to Linux. Probably equally as much work, but I will no longer have to worry about stupid people making me buy new machines for no reason whatsoever.
This is certainly not new at IBM. Thirty years ago, I was part of a 3 or 4 person team that sold a huge deal to a university. My share of the commission would have been 10's of thousands. In today's dollars--probably $60 or $70K. I got nothing. The branch manager simply didn't like me. So he cut me out. They didn't give more to the other guys, they just didn't pay me. I didn't fight it because it was a time in my life when I didn't want to lose my job--part of the calculation I'm sure. The quota letters were the same then as now: "Not a promise or a guarantee. Not a contract," and, "at-will employment." I heard many stories of guys earning million dollar commissions that simply weren't paid. They just couldn't stomach the idea of paying a salesman a million dollars. An IBM Director once actually told me, "The product sells itself. We don't really need sales people." I am certain that the IBM Company and it's shareholders have been paying for this attitude for decades.
The article says that the US "may be inclined to engage with Russia at the UN to modify the language of the proposal so that it's compatible with US norms and policy goals." My guess is that the US government is at least as heavily engaged in "cyber crime" (and probably better at it) as Russia is, just not for altogether the same ends. Our "super hackers" are more into espionage and bringing down infrastructure, and not citizen extortion and theft, like Russia is. Russia's behavior is much more visible to the public at large, which puts a little (just a little) pressure on the West to respond. So, how do you think the US will "modify" Russia's proposal so as to protect our "norms and policy goals?" Russia wants to stop our deep government hacking and get the UN and the world community in general to enforce against us, and we will NEVER agree to it without extreme public pressure, which will never happen. So, you may as well throw Russia's proposal onto the trash heap.
Russia is being very clever here doing this in public. The West will never agree to a proposal that will in any way endanger or expose our hacking, while they will never stop stealing credit card numbers, Social Security information, employment records, raiding bank accounts, and distributing malware. It is much cheaper for Putin to hack into every private computer and commercial server in the West, than to build weapons and hire armies. When the Soviet Union collapsed, literally 100's of thousands of first-rate programmers were thrown out of work for Putin to hire. And their English language skills are getting better and better. Maybe we should look more closely at the Russian proposal. Huh? (Somebody downvoted this less than 4 minutes after I posted it. WHY ??? What reason? Who do you work for???)
Is it fair for a company to have to honor it's warranty if someone breaks it trying to repair it? Or if a product is modified by the user in some way that makes software updates fail? Should the company have to allow for this? Should they be held accountable for doing something on purpose (that doesn't add value) to cause this? This is not a black and white issue, is it? I think the right to repair already exists, but the warranty is voided, yes? Parts availability, or purposefully designing a product to be "tamper-proof" is another issue. No one honors a warranty if you "break in," but should they? Should they? Purposely making it impossible to repair, or the lockout of 3rd party supplies, with no actual benefit to the user, is what should be regulated. Huh? Apple (and others) have been doing all sorts of unnatural acts for years and years, in HW and SW, to make users throw up their arms in despair and just buy another one. That should not be allowed. And it shouldn't be rationalized away by marketing BS, or accepted as BAU.
I always get a big kick out of all the self-righteous criticism of these public-sector procurements. Private-sector operations have all the same problems and snafus and failures as happen in the public-sector, it just doesn't get in the papers. It's private. Plus, the onerous specification and bidding procedures and low-bid requirements aren't nearly as stupid, inflexible, and self-defeating in the private-sector as they are in public entities. Never, ever forget: It's easy to spec a window air conditioner and take the low bid, with complex integrated IT systems, not so much.
Hubble is just a Keyhole spy satellite that's pointing up instead of down. I know that is a simplistic comparison, but Hubble was made in the same factory by the same company with the same basic components. We have ONE Hubble. How many Keyholes are there and just exactly what good do we get from them? How much stunning science and fantastic images and inspiring insight have we gotten from Hubble? And how much from the Keyholes? We could probably put up another Hubble with 2020's computers in 12 months if we only had some real leadership in this country. It makes me want to hurl.
Those other programmers in his team are probably now the heart of the Russian hacking of every Western country on earth. And maybe some of the assembly line workers as well. They were so good and hacking and messing around with their own systems it was only natural to hire them to destroy the West.
I don't know a thing about these Wyse clients, but if they use VNC for any part of their function I wouldn't be caught dead recommending it or using it. I use VNC at home to remotely control and use the PC's in my home network (8 of them,) and the performance is awful. Barely usable. So, No Thanks Wyse.
I'm no apologist for Putin or Russia's inveterate state-sponsored hacking, but the press and analysts and talking heads all over the place have all failed to mention that the US has exactly the same capacities and capabilities and efforts (if not much better) as they do, and has been probing and poking and infiltrating their systems (and many others countries) for YEARS. For example, multiple credible sources have stated that we (the US) have planted malware throughout the Russian power grid and can turn off the electricity all across Russia at will. The Russians know this. It is pervasive and sits in their systems today. Put there by us. They don't seem to be able to fix it. We actually want them to know we can hurt them if they go too far with their shenanigans. Apparently, reading our homeland security and treasury and health system records and e-mail is not too far. I haven't seen or heard of the lights going out back in the USSR... If the media would only get the story straight, it might lead to a discussion and debate on some kind of "arms" agreement that gets us out of this stinky business. Huh?
I will never understand why companies buy HW from Oracle. Even heavily discounted, it's still just x86 servers with tons of Oracle (read: expensive) spaghetti code. This is a few years old, and heavily IBM oriented, but I don't believe they are lying. And I think still relevant: https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/WOZDNBYX
I worked for IBM for 4 decades. I am not exaggerating, in those 40+ years, there were DOZENS of instances, events, situations--call them what you like--where I could have been a 'whistle blower' but I was simply too much a coward to act. I was cheated out of commissions, I was discriminated against for multiple reasons, as a senior (expensive) person, I was given impossible jobs to push me out, and more. I was determined not to get pushed out. I will say this: I loved IBM and I still do. The vast majority of the people I worked directly for and directly with were first-rate. The company has some stink in various places, there seems to be a personnel rot-process that goes on up the ladder, in the middle zones, that upper levels are either unaware of, or simply ignore, or actively encourage in order to meet their own objectives. IBM is still doing wonderful things, is still technologically very smart, and continues, IMHO, to be indispensable to the industry. At the end of the day, I feel that the pressure placed on every company in the world by the capital markets has been very destructive. I believe more destructive for IBM than others, because IBM has had further to fall.
I'd really like an opinion on whether it's time to cordon off these evil state actors like China and Russia from the world wide internet. Russia has taken steps to cut it's own people off, and China has been filtering the web from it's people for years. I feel China and Russia (and Iran, and well known scammer domains) need to be cut off. Huh?
I'd really like an opinion on whether it's time to cordon off these evil state actors like China and Russia from the world wide internet. Russia has taken steps to cut it's own people off, and China has been filtering the web from it's people for years. I feel China and Russia (and Iran, and well known scammer domains) need to be cut off. Huh?
This is not new at IBM. Thirty years ago, I was part of a 3 or 4 person team that sold a huge deal to a university. My share of the commission would have been 10's of thousands. In today's dollars--probably $60 or $70K. I got nothing. The branch manager simply didn't like me. So he cut me out. They didn't give more to the other guys, they just didn't pay me. I didn't fight it because it was a time in my life when I didn't want to lose my job--part of the calculation I'm sure. The quota letters were the same then as now: "Not a promise or a guarantee. Not a contract." "At will employment." I heard many stories of guys earning million dollar commissions that simply weren't paid. They just couldn't stomach paying a salesman a million dollars. An IBM Director once actually told me, "The product sells itself. We don't really need sales people." The IBM Company and it's shareholders have been paying for this attitude for decades now.
I'm not so worried about my case being thrown out, as I am worried about some low-paid CBP or ICE agent clawing through my personal info and using it for some nefarious purpose. Don't forget that every tin-pot county sheriff's office clerk has access to NCIC and every other data-base about you, your kids and your ex-spouse's personal total history. There is no public interest in allowing warrentless, casual, low-class free-for-all access to your private finances, health, employment, information.
Think for a few moments: 1) The orbital PLANES (remember it's 3D up there) are HUGE. There are 9 Billion people here on the Earth's surface, about the same size as one of these sats, and we barely ever see one (joke) so I don't think a few thousand small sats are going to be more than a pin drop, and 2) The ESA had to move it's sats TWENTY EIGHT times in 2018 to protect some imaginary "exclusion" zone. The press never covered even ONE of those movements. Why do you suppose el Reg and others keep mentioning and ridiculing StarLink for this one movement?
Internet service is (currently) one of the most profitable industries on earth. The fat, cushy, regulated fees and charges and prices and MONEY the semi-monopolies charge for this service is hugely threatened by StarLink. The incumbents have billions to protect their safety with the press and governments. I believe they even have astronomers up in a lather about space clutter (space is HUGE.) I refer you back to point 1.
Some of the coverage of StarLink represents the real reason the term "fake news" was invented (long before Donald Trump.) I feel you should be VERY skeptical of this coverage. Waddaya think?
This is not new at IBM. Thirty years ago, I was part of a 3 or 4 person team that sold a huge deal to a university. My share of the commission would have been 10's of thousands. In today's dollars--probably $60 or $70K. I got nothing. The branch manager simply didn't like me. So he cut me out. They didn't give more to the other guys, they just didn't pay me. I didn't fight it because it was a time in my life when I didn't want to lose my job--part of the calculation I'm sure. The quota letters were the same then as now: "Not a promise or a guarantee. Not a contract." "At will employment." I heard many stories of guys earning million dollar commissions that just weren't paid. They just couldn't stomach paying a salesman a million dollars. An IBM Director once actually told me, "The product sells itself. We don't really need sales people." The IBM Company and it's shareholders have been paying for this attitude for decades now.
"40,000 cloud customers?" I don't know WTF that means. In the entire world, there aren't 40,000 enterprise businesses that I would cross the street to do sell to. If you're counting welding shops and insurance agents and funeral homes, at the very least, WHO CARES? Selling and supporting to those kinds of businesses is a loser. Oracle can have 'em. A much more meaningful statistic would maybe be "Enterprise Average Quarterly Invoice" or some such. If that was the metric, I bet IBM would be #1. Huh?
Soon, these countries will once again go dark, much as they were dark up until about the late 1980's. Their people will again be locked out of knowing anything about the "West" and to us they will once again be like Mars. This movement MUST be condemned by us and fought against. Sadly, our current leadership (and even some of our citizens) is not only clueless, but beholden to Moscow, and likely would love to implement the same kind of censorship. We're screwed if we don't get rid of these people.
Whoever offers a printer that works and allows third-party ink will get my business. Not HP. They've eaten dinner off their distribution, and lock-outs, and clever tricks and retail spiffs and give-backs to procurement people, and not their product, for YEARS. Not any more--at least not for me. Just look at Sam's and Best Buy and all the rest and see the shelf space given to HP by devoted, loving buyers in their home offices. Build a long-lasting printer with quality ink at a REASONABLE price. The clever tricks they have used to disable third-party ink--with NO value-add for the customer--stink, and I will scour the earth to find vendors who use a decent business model.
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