Posts by AdamFowler_IT

Optus to refund NBN customers for slow connections

How is Optus identifying these customers? I get good speeds, but never see the actual 100/40 advertised.

Cattle that fail, not pets that purr – the future of servers

Re: What Goes Around

Probably a redundant use of the word 'single' - should just be implied :)

Re: Cattle vs pets is not really about cloud

I thought I covered those points in the article, yes you can achieve cattle without cloud, but you won't have super elasticity without buying a lot more tin to cover way beyond your best guess at a worse case scenario.

The cattle cloud approach really applies to treating your entire infrastructure the same way as the servers wherever possible.

Re: "on-premise" !?

Although I do fundamentally agree with you, surely we have better things to do than argue about terms when whatever used method is clear. If it was a term that had ambiguity sure, because that's not clear communication. I use both terms and rarely think about it.

I'm not a fan of the term 'serverless' but I know what it means, so I let that go too.

Re: Not on my watch!

So, no SSD storage for you?

Re: thank you for that

With you and me, that makes two of us that chuckled :)

Intel's Compute Sticks stick it to Windows To Go, Chromecast

Re: power button

At a guess, they'd expect this device to be always on.

The included ~10cm HDMI extender covers different scenarios I guess, and a right angled HDMI would have made the device bigger/less compact.

Re: Expense

You could also buy a mirrorcast or similar dongle if that's what you want to do, this is a standalone unit. Everyone's needs are different :)

I have heard the Win10 version is coming very soon, just reboxed/different OS loaded, same hardware.

Browsing was quite decent in my testing. I've used a RPi2 before for XBMC, and it was too slow for my liking.

Re: Windows... for Bing?

It's a strange label, but I didn't notice any difference to the standard Windows 8.1 Home Edition.

Re: HDMI power?

I found many sources claiming the next version would be fully HDMI powered, such as http://liliputing.com/2015/06/intel-compute-stick-roadmap-core-m-and-64gb-model-in-2015-broxton-models-in-2016.html - but since I haven't got one to test, I don't know.

I'll check the chipsets tomorrow, but the 2gb also has 32gb storage, while the 1gb has 8gb storage. Otherwise identical.

Watch out for the products that have snuck in behind your back

IMHO, iThings definitely have a significant role in ShIT than other devices... if you're looking at it from a % point of view.

The iPad and iPhones are great examples, and the problem is it's hardware AND software, with an incredibly inflexible approach to working with any other system.

MDMs (and Android) really only exist because of iThings.

Welcome, stranger: Inside Microsoft's command line shell

Re: re: Windows XP was the first PC operating system to drop the MS-DOS

The same paragraph explained that:

Windows XP was the first PC operating system to drop the MS-DOS Prompt and change it to Command Prompt, due to a change to the NT kernel. The Windows NT family has used the newer Command Prompt since it started with Windows NT 3.1, so it was nothing new on that side of the fence.

You're right - well done!

You can still do that command in a PowerShell window.

How is "dir c:\*.* /s | more" the same as "So get-childitem | where name -notlike Windows" - yours will stop at each page waiting for a keypress, mine lists everything excluding the directory name 'Windows' ?

Re: re: Windows XP was the first PC operating system to drop the MS-DOS

Happy to be corrected, but I don't think so:

http://www.mdgx.com/msdos.htm

Re: From the article:> get-childitem | where name -notlike Windows

Just tested again on a Windows 7 box from the standard Windows PowerShell window, and it works for me:

get-childitem | where name -notlike Windows

What error are you seeing when trying? PowerShell is pretty good at telling you what's wrong.

Spice up the Sheriff of Nottingham with pinched pepper and brie bribes

Re: You're right

Funnily enough, those were real players but one wasn't female.

Re: re Uno

Whot! I just looked that up and remember playing it as a child, loved that game :)

Concerning Microsoft Azure Active Directory

Re: Advertorial?

I think the intro to the article made it clear what I was testing and the scope.

This isn't a product comparison article, nor does it get into the nitty gritty of all scenarios and real world strengths and weaknesses.

Dirsync/AADSync didn't seem bloated to me in it's install or what it did, but I also didn't test 10,000+ users or inspect packets.

It's an intro article for people to know what it is, and go off to find more and do their own testing... there's never a 'one size fits all' answer in IT.

Re: Advertorial?

I'll take that as a compliment :) it's hard to pick faults in a cloud based add-on to single sign on, but I'd say the biggest consideration is security. If someone knows your AD account, they can now access a bunch of third party sites. That should help a push for better password management including more complex passwords, and hopefully reduce password sharing.

You're welcome to have a look and point out any big negatives... I couldn't find any that aren't stretches (e.g. not every cloud based app in the world is supported yet?).

It's a value add and easy to do.

Rolling the ATTACK DICE in King of Tokyo

Re: Ameritrash...

Yes that's what I meant, sorry if it wasn't clear. You get to enjoy the game more rather than realising you have no chance.

In saying that, you can take pot shots at your route tickets and hope to get lucky, so there's that.

Re: Level Up!

Agree and agree. Once you know you like King of Tokyo and want a little more, get the Level Up expansion which adds a bit extra (more cards via a different mechanic). Then you won't want to play without it, because it just gives more options on what you can do with your dice.

Re: just had a look on boardgamegeek

I have that one also :) It is chaotic and fun, but due to being a full on 10 minutes you can't play it many times in a row! Fisticuffs is usually avoided because you can go and help someone worst case, and it's mostly luck anyway. This is what I'm torn between, reviewing something released in the last year, or the last several years as board games age well?

Re: Ameritrash...

Agree, that's why I said best with 4 players, and really emphasise you've got to be careful not to die.

Although games like Carcassonne let you play to the end, if you're that far behind it's rather hard to catch up as there's no mechanic to give you a chance, apart from the random draw of tiles. If you're better at the game, it's hard to lose and it's can be 'unfun' to play through to the end for a beginner who has no chance to win.

Ticket to Ride has a decent hidden score element, so you may be a long way behind but you don't realise it which helps.

I'd highly recommend Cutthroat Caverns over Munchkin - CC is up there in my top 10 games.

Haven't heard of Gauntlet of Fools, will have to check that one out.

If your son likes dice games, you could check out Dungeon Roll, it's a cheapie but decent.

Pitchfork-wielding villagers hunt hairy shapeshifters in One Night Ultimate Werewolf

Re: A board game series?

Hoping so, we'll see how this goes - for my reviews, they won't be deep 3-4 hour games that require hours of reading rules, but they will be more complex than One Night Ultimate Werewolf. I thought it was a good starter and was hoping to see some reactions on what people wanted.

I'm also not planning to do any plain technical reviews - there's plenty of sites out there that can tell you the basics of a game. I'll tell you why I like a game, and what's good or bad about it.

I have a copy of that exact one. That's a different reprint of the more original Werewolf game, which was just based on a free Mafia game I believe.

Sadly I'd have to recommend avoiding Werewolves at Millers Hollow - the game itself is good if you have a larger group, but the cards are of poor quality and don't actually have your role written on. Unless you know exactly what the picture on the card means, which is often very difficult to tell, it's a confusing game. There's several other prints of Werewolf out there, check any other one out that says the roles on the cards (ideally with a description on what it does).

ONUW is better for a smaller group, and has no player elimination (other people don't stand around most of the game just watching because they died in the first round).

Re: Looks fun

King Of Tokyo is a good one, but I might as well review the newer King Of New York.

Re: Looks fun

Very different but fits in well with the same groups IMO. I'm tempted to review Cards Against Humanity next, but it's a very simple concept that barely needs reviewing. I am a fan though :)

The Resistance needs players to have more of an understanding of what's going on, or the bad guys seem to win. ONUW has each round as a standalone game and there's only a single decision at the end, so is less harsh on a group.

The Tanner role which I didn't mention, is it's own 1 man team as the goal is to be killed, or you lose. Lots of nice variations are possible.

You're right, Avalon is very similar. I think ONUW scales players a bit better and is easier to get anyone to just join in and give it a shot, partly because of the theme.

Tell us about your first time ... on the internet

Adam BBS and Trumpet Winsock

Mid 1990's: Using Windows 95, I used hyper terminal to dial up to one the local BBS's, Adam. From there on the text driven menus, I had to choose something like 'Internet' and then launch Trumpet Winsock. that would show a bunch of text and then be 'on the internet'. From that I could then launch the web browser I was using (pretty sure it was Netscape Navigator) and start looking at geocities pages.

Hardware was a 14,400bps modem at that stage, although I owned a 2400bps modem too which was used just for BBS usage as I enjoyed that more being a teenager and playing Hack n Slash (which I believe was hosted on Amigas only).

How farsighted is Microsoft's Azure RemoteApp?

Re: Powerpoint, Visio...

The licensing part is a bit unknown at the moment, AFAIK.

If you're on an Enterprise Agreement, you roll up yearly on how many people have access to things like Visio. But if you used Azure to temp give access and take it away, and it's not available to the user at the time of True Up, then you don't pay for it at all.

Re: what's the difference

Great points korpo53. The other consideration I can think of is licensing - you don't have to pay Citrix fees.

Of course, if your database was moved to Azure too then you wouldn't have those issues, which I'm sure is part of MS's plan :)

What's more scary? Downtime or hackers?

Re: What's more scary? Downtime or hackers?

That's a big question.

Usually switches are internal only, so it's much less risky. Hackers need access to something to be able to talk to the internal switches, and if they've gotten that far then you're probably exposed in several ways anyway.

Switches are probably one of the least patched things because they sit there and just work, and are normally configured to do nothing but pass traffic on the same LAN.

What is a hacker going to do to a switch - mirror a port and listen to all the traffic might be the worst. Then it depends if your internal communications are encrypted or not - generally environments are a mix of both. But again, if they're at that level you've probably got a bunch of doors open, not just the switch.

But again, it's a switch. If you're that worried have a single cold spare and patch them one at a time. You can't guarantee the network remains stable due to not running patches, that's bordering on negligence.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft – A jolly little war for lunchtime

Re: annoying game

Don't worry too much about the ranked games if that's how you feel - play casual games for practise and to complete quests - then play the arena where everyone is on the same playing field, and it's based on a mix of luck and what you choose. The cards presented are based on all possible cards, not just the ones you own.

Microsoft's Windows 8.1 updates also tweak Windows Server 2012

I'm surprised at the 'beginning of the end' comments. These updates are actually good updates, there's nothing negative about them.

Re: The beginning of the end of Microsoft.

Agree here too. I'm recommending and using Server 2012 - if your reason for not recommending it is that you don't like the Tile interface which you can ignore almost all the time, then you shouldn't be recommending anything.

Server 2012 has a huge amount of extras and improvements both under the hood, as well as actual tools/utilities/features.

Re: Don't need to reboot each time @Tim Jenkins

Agree this is often the case. And even for a IT Pro dedicated SysAdmin, finding the shut down button for the first time on 2012 is not obvious.

What server tasks are you doing via touchscreen?

SLAPPING an iPhone out of a corporate drone's hand: You're not the only one who longs to do it

Re: Windows Phone 8 is not yet ready

Agree there's a lot of work still to be done. It's tougher for Microsoft, because it took Apple years and years to add a lot of functionality that should have been there from day 1, but Microsoft doesn't have that luxury.

Re: Fine

What are you basing this on? You can get decent WP8 devices so much cheaper than any iOS device, ignoring all the other factors. Seriously if iOS devices were that cheap, there'd be much less of a push to go WP8 until the planned business type extras turn up.

VPN for WP8 is supposed to be released first half of 2014, and MS have started AD auth with Office 365 and SkyDrive Pro. Intune is the MDM/Group Policy Microsoft is pushing for - not that I've used Intune yet, but they're still building up the full picture. I think they'll get there but it'll be between 1 and 2 years.

Agree on the Apple configurator, which is why you need a 3rd party MDM solution. To Apple's credit, they have build a decent MDM base for 3rd parties to use.

Re: "must have" apps

I think the former - the must have apps currently pop up on iOS first usually, then Android not long after... then eventually they might bother with WP8. If I was an app writer, I'd also be targeting the biggest purchasing market of apps first.