Posts by PowerBenny

You thought you bought software – all you bought was a lie

An excellent article

You have succinctly summed up all my misgivings with proprietary software, and more besides. In real-world use we all make compromises, I too like a Mac laptop, but you won't find expensive commercial software licenses on it, only web apps, Darktable, GIMP and the like. I still rue the day I finally saved up enough to pay Apple for an Aperture license only to have them discontinue the product 6 months later, replacing it with Photos, which is like making the leap form Lego Technic to Duplo.

I'm happing with my Eclipse IDE at home, if work wants to pay $500 per year for an IntelliJ license then who am I to stop them, but when I'm spending my own money then FOSS is the right product at the right price and it is the supportability and convenience that wins it, not financial concerns.

Now if only I can persuade my parents to read this and understand it and then I'll maybe, one day, cease getting those calls for MS Office support, despite not using the suite myself for twenty years.

Thought Patch Tuesday was a load? You gotta check out this Oracle mega-advisory, then

Begin again

Hands up who hasn't yet applied the July updates? I have, but I burnt all my good will charging through the dev and test environments disrupting the business-value-delivering initiatives with my mundane "patching". Hey, I'm only keeping the core systems secure, trivial shit I know.

Fed up with cloud giants ripping off its database, MongoDB forks new 'open-source license'

Open Source FUD

Section 13 seems pretty clear in scope to me:

"If you make the functionality of the Program or a modified version available to third

parties as a service, ..."

So providing I do not make this available to third parties then I can deploy the community edition of Mongo DB to AWS and use it for myself without fear of entering into the scope of this clause. I don't see how this can be read in any other way, but of course, IANAL.

Disappointed to see Open Source advocates stooping to the FUD-based practises of Microsoft et al from the early noughties. :-(

Azure running out of internets in UK South, starts rationing VMs

No, no, no! Didn't you get the memo? In the cloud everything automagically scales to infinity.

Euro bank regulator: Don't follow the crowd. Stay off the cloud

It's just somebody else's computer

You can do things terribly on-premise or in the cloud. Just as you could, theoretically speaking of course, fund things properly and do them well either on-premise or in the cloud.

It doesn't matter where you do it, it is how you do it that counts.

Oracle's new Java SE subs: Code and support for $25/processor/month

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, but neither should it be panic stations. There are lots of ways to continue using Java for free. Obviously there is Open JDK, which has proven just fine for a large number of systems we've migrated over, with very little pain. Alternatively you can continue using Oracle version of Java for free, you just have to stay up to date. Upgrade to Java 8 now and Java 11 in September when it is released. I'm electing to skip Java 9 and 10 as the public availability for those is too short to make a transition worth our while.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html

Beware the looming Google Chrome HTTPS certificate apocalypse!

PITA

Symantec brought this on themselves. They put profit growth, expansion and partnerships above maintaining their core business. Now they lost it all. You reap what you sow. Nothing new here.

It's just a massive pain in the ass that thousands of sysadmins across the world now have to do extra work to make up for their dodgy business practices. Like we don't have enough to do.

And yes, Google has a scary amount of power. Just remember that and fear and respect them appropriately.

AWS users felt a great disturbance in the cloud, as S3 cried out in terror

Re: Questions to ask

I settled for just trolling them with comment like "Well, S3 never goes down though does it."

Questions to ask

I've got four AWS consultants in the room with me right now. What should I ask them?

What's your point, caller? Oracle fiddles with major database release cycle numbers

Applies to other product lines?

I've just spent about three years trying to get our Fusion Middleware environments upgraded from 11.1.1.6 to 11.1.1.7 and what started as a pro-active upgrade in 2014 became one trying to bring us back into support in 2017. The prospect of having to do that every year is so terrifying that I'm shutting down now and heading straight to the pub.

Spied upon by GCHQ? You'll need proof before a court will hear you...

I'm Spartacus

I am one of the 663. I'm not an overt political activist, not a union leader, rarely summon the energy to go and protest about anything, am not a spy, not an illegal hacker, and I'm not a foreigner. What I am is an interested UK subject, someone who cares about my rights and who identified an opportunity for me to stand up to the government and add my small voice to this challenge and hope to see them have to justify their actions.

So, given all the above, I am now placed in a situation where I have to offer this extra evidence as to why I think I have been spied upon. I can come up with some stuff about Edward Snowden's revelations but if there are any other suggestions on what I might send back to them then I would welcome your input.

Five years of Sun software under Oracle: Were the critics right?

These things take time and 5 years is a blink of the eye

In large corporations the 5 year time frame has not yet given enough time to see the effects of Oracle's stewardship. Many of us are signed up for multi-year subscription deals and it is only as those come to an end that any thought of departure will arise. Once it does it then takes years to plan an execute the migration.

For myself we're just at the start of what will be a long journey away from Oracle WebLogic and onto open source middleware. It has taken until recently for regulators, auditors and high-up decision makes to get comfortable with the idea of using open source application servers for mission critical platforms in highly regulated financial industries. Now that we are happy with this move then Oracle will shortly be receiving the unwelcome news that we are not going to be renewing the multi-million pound contract.

I'm sure we can't be the only ones who are only just getting to this position?

Get NAS-ty: Reg puts claws to eight four-bay data dumpsters

FreeNAS seemed difficult

So I went with Open Media Vault. It's been rock solid for the last two years and I managed to buy the HP N54L and 4 x 2TB for the same price as any of these boxes empty. It took a bit of fiddling to be sure but was still worth it for the saving.

I would definitely advise any friends and relatives to get the COTS models here rather than rolling their own as I don't want to have to do tech support for them.

IBM Hursley Park: Where Big Blue buries the past, polishes family jewels

You forgot to mention the smell

I was lucky enough to enjoy a tour round the museum last November and my overriding memory was the wonderful smell of all the old technology. When you head down into the basement it has that dusty aroma of ancient technology. The collection of equipment was indeed impressive and I hope hope to go back again to see the newer stuff which I was not able to get around to last time.

I hope you enjoy working there wchild because it definitely looked like a great office and environment to me.

Organic food: Pricey, not particularly healthy, won't save you from cancer

Missed the point much?

For me the whole point of organic food is that it has a lower impact on the environment through the reduced use of chemicals while growing it. I understand that whether my veggies get their nitrogen from manure or chemical fertiliser matters not one bit. But if a farmer has to accept a reduced yield because he's not using pesticides then I expect to have to pay more for the food that is produced.

Oracle halves cost of ExaLogic middleware platform

Cached version here

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wVx7w4UQ6F4J:https://blogs.oracle.com/emeapartnerweblogic/entry/exalogic_price_update

HP adds 'Haswell' Xeon E3s to entry ProLiant servers

WHS? WTF?

My microsever runs Open Media Vault and of the 10 or so guys I work with who have them at home I'd say maybe 2 have Windows on it. To their eternal shame.