* Posts by Dinsdale247

186 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Apr 2014

Page:

Open-source storage that doesn't suck? Our man tries to break TrueNAS

Dinsdale247

Hey Trevor, have you seen the NEW ui?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TS6vvpP1yQ

A couple of comments:

-While the UI is stodgy, the handbook is very complete and accurate and will be able to walk most people who have some understanding of ISCSI through setup. The documentation is excellent (like FreeBSD). I was a strictly windows guy when I started using it. Now I'm a bit of a FreeBSD wonk. :-/

- To put the "mediocre performance into perspective, I run an entire windows development domain with 40 VMs and 5-10 developers on a 3 year old FreeNas 8.3 server (a TrueNas unit without the warranty). I would think there would be more than enough horsepower for significant workloads. Do you have any numbers on what you consider an average user load (I know, I know "it's hard to estimate blah blah blah")?

Who killed Cyanogen?

Dinsdale247

Same as the hardware makers

Cynogen fell for the same lies that the handset makers fell for: the belief that they could take Googles OS and differentiate it enough to compete against other handset makers/vendors. It was the same bate and switch that Nokia pulled with Symbian. The "bait" was AOSP as an "open platform" that allowed companies to create proprietary apps and skins/launchers to differentiate their handsets. The "switch" has been the exclusivity that Google has hammered into contracts. To get the Android license your skin and launcher need to be substantially the same Googles design. Proprietary apps don't run unless they use the higher level proprietary Google APIs. The only access vendors have to the big social apps is through Googles app store. You only get the Google API and Playstore through the Android contract. Surprise, your screwed!

Just wait until they make ART the only supported runtime on Android licensed handsets. Then they will have closed everything off entirely.

The only way to protect our freedom of communications is to design an entirely open source system from the hardware up, without corporate/government interference. Seeing as the Linux kernel is now the domain of big business, I think it's time the world started looking at alternatives to that as well.

First look at Windows Server 2016: 'Cloud for the masses'? We'll be the judge of that

Dinsdale247

SMB Alternative

For an SMB, Samba4 provides "Active Directory Like" services to Windows clients and you can set up windows shares without too much fuss. If you're not sunk in the SQL Server/Exchange/Sharepoint bucket then Windows Server is pretty expensive. Licensing for new versions of the above + Software Assurance for those other products will come out pretty close to a prototype of alternative systems.

FBI wants to unlock another jihadist’s iPhone

Dinsdale247

Re: More pantomime!

I just can't believe people are falling for this charade. "Oh, look, we're the most powerful spy agency in the world but Apple Security (tm) has foiled us again. I hope the bad guys don't here me say that out loud in a press conference and start using iPhones because then we would not be able to spy on them. Again, I hope terrorists don't start using iPhones for all their secret communications because the iPhone is TOO secure for us to break."

Dinsdale247

Re: Killswitch?

Ten failed pins in a row on a BB10 and it wipes your phone.

Star Trek's Enterprise turns 50 and still no sign of a warp drive. Sigh

Dinsdale247
Happy

Nanoriffic!

Starshot will propel nanocrafts weighing a single gram to a fifth of the speed of light by powerful laser beam, says Avi Loeb, chairman of the Breakthrough Starshot advisory committee, and professor of science at Harvard University.

I suggested the same thing back in 1998 using magnetic rail guns instead of lasers.

Microsoft has open-sourced PowerShell for Linux, Macs. Repeat, Microsoft has open-sourced PowerShell

Dinsdale247

Re: "On Linux we’re just another shell"

Because it's an excellent shell system. Consistent, well thought through, object oriented, and works well with dotNet.

Maintaining the Windows NT kernel used to confer an advantage to Microsoft. As the profit drains out of Windows and on-site software, you will see Microsoft first open source the kernel, then dump it because it's millions of dollars in development costs that they can do without. The first step to dumping that cost source is to get all their dev's on GNU/Linux using familiar tools like VS, Powershell and SQL Server. When MS is charging you per second to use their cloud systems, there is no point in stopping the the tidal shift to FOSS operating systems.

Intel fabs to churn out 10nm ARM chips for LG smartphones next year

Dinsdale247

Re: StrongARM?

Another X86 trick is their instruction pre-fetching. Intel cache is now big enough they just pre-fetch a ton of data and hope for the best. The length of the pipelines and canceled fetches makes pre-fetching very inefficient, but if they gain 1 or 2%, then they go with it. Not what I would call great design. I couldn't find the article again, but it was an x86 engineer lamenting that his job came down to statistical analysis of pre-fetch failure to success rates.

Dinsdale247

Re: No love for servers?

I never in a million years thought I would be calling x86 the "high end" server architecture. But there it is, the pig HAS reached escape velocity...

FreeBSD devs ponder changes to security processes

Dinsdale247

Grumblings

There have been grumblings about the security in the binary update and the age of the freebsd-update system since I started playing with FreeBSD 4 years ago. As has been stated, use svn and build from sources if you think there is an issue.

I think @Rainer is talking about using the pkgng system for binary updates to the base packages (as well as the user packages). I didn't hear why it won't be in 11.0 though?

BlackBerry DTEK 50: How badly do you want a secure Android?

Dinsdale247

Re: Fingerprint Snesor ? WTF!!!!

It doesn't matter where the data is stored and if it's encrypted or not. None of the methods currently available are transparent and secure enough to guarantee that your fingerprint won't be compromised. ESPECIALLY with Apple and their proprietary kernel. There is nothing stopping the iOS kernel from piping the unencrypted data or even your private key to a secret NOR flash or even embedding it in standard iCloud messages set to the mother ship. Don't believe the puppet play between Apple and the FBI, Apple must by law conform to security requests and the only mobile operating system software not behest to the American government is the soon to be defunct BB10. Kiss your independence and freedom goodbye.

Oh, and once the Russians can make money on stolen/locked fingerprint data, you'll see a bunch of new and unpatched Android exploits taken advantage of.

Android's latest patches once again remind us: It's Nexus or bust if you want decent security

Dinsdale247

Over Simplification

PS: Yeah, yeah, BlackBerry's Priv and DETK50 Androids get patches at the same time as Nexuses. We know. Good for them.

Your a git Iain and that is not correct. You paint everything in a "Google is the best" light when these problems have been around since the inception of Android (yes Googles fault). All vendors receive the updates at the same time, however Blackberry has put in place a policy to release patches on the same day they are publicly available. Maybe you should quite being a biased moron and write something like:

"Blackberry has a chance to shake up the market as they are the only other vendor besides Google themselves that will have security patches available as soon as they are publically released. That is, if users (and moron tech writers) are smart enough to see that something needs to change in Android security."

CloudFlare pros pen paranoid phone plan for pwn-free peregrination

Dinsdale247

Don't Trust American Companies

Apple is a major US company under the control of the US government. I will not trust an iPhone until there is a neutral party reviewing their kernel code and hardware. Yes, the data is encrypted when it is written to your nand flash, but who says there is not a switch in the kernel that directs a non-encrypted copy to a nor chip that nobody has access too? The data can then be padded into standard iCloud sync messages and nobody would be any wiser. Too far fetched? Not in an age when they are finding sleeper code in hard drive firmware...

One container to rule them all? No. Um, a plastic box* refresher

Dinsdale247

FreeBSD Jails

FreeBSD has had jails since BSD 4.0. ZFS allows for write-on-copy, thin-cloning, snapshots and a ton of other features. FreeBSD has tools called ezjail and iocage as well as a few others, but unlike GNU/Linux, there is only one underlying technology, making it far more stable and widely compatible.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, it can run GNU as well.

https://wiki.freebsd.org/VIMAGE/Linux/CentOS55

New phones rumoured as BlackBerry cans BB10 production

Dinsdale247

Idol 4

Nice looking phone. I really liked the Idol 3 I played with. It's not on the same level as my BB Passport, and Android is a mess, but there are no longer any alternatives. It's just mind boggling that the planets entire tech industry has handed all our data to two American giants and their government. Don't believe the puppet play between Apple and the FBI. All your base are now belong to the NSA.

Slack smackback: There's no IRC in team (software), say open-sourcers

Dinsdale247

Adding Slack to the list is just well, adding another problem if you ask me (which you didn't but I'll tell you anyway!). We don't need more protocols, we need more "aggregaters".

For FreeBSD, there are multiple IRC channels, 20 or so mailing lists, Google+, Google Groups, IRC, FreeBSD Forums, FreeBSD Wiki, Handbook, Developers handbook, Documentation handbook, Freshports, Bugzilla, Phabricator, Subversion AND Git! It's impossible to get a complete picture. That's not even including the many great blogs out there.

Google's 'fair use' mass slurping of books can continue – US Supremes snub writers' pleas

Dinsdale247

It's amazing what the supreme court will do for a big enough american corporation. American companies can patent a "look and feel" of a square hand held device and sue foreign companies, but individuals are not allowed to protect actual intellectual property from Google. Sickening.

Learn things? DROWN HTTPS flaw proves we don't even test things

Dinsdale247

Clearly SOME people have learned...

http://www.libressl.org/

http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20160301141941&mode=expanded

Nuf said.

Microsoft releases Windows 10 preview for Raspberry Pi 3

Dinsdale247

Re: No, thank you.

You bet, because no other company would entice you to use their operating system and then close you in to their ecosystem for the benefit of making money on the people using their products. Especially not, oh, every single major vendor except Debian? Even Ubuntu sells your data by default.

This argument is so outdated it's ridiculous. All platforms have their strengths and weaknesses. I build FreeBSD if I want un-encumbered, I use windows if I want something to work without fuss. It's good to see Microsoft has been forced to innovate and is starting to match licensing models that can compete with Android. Competition is always good.

Mobile: DevOps for IT shops. Minus the upheaval

Dinsdale247

Shit Code

DevOps is what happens when the developer that wrote the shit code is the only one that has the login to the cloud services so he has to push multiple fixes per day because there are mutliple bugs because everybody is to rushed to do anything right. That, and nobody else understands all the super complex configuration settings that need to be changed so he has to push it from some custom script on his desktop (that eventually gets uploaded to a Jenkins server as a proof of concept that goes into production). I know, I'm that guy! DevOps isn't new, it's what you do when there aren't enough damn people on the team. This is the same reason I now have to call virtualized servers "a private cloud".

Microservices are not the same thing as components

Dinsdale247

Oh, for the love of Pete!

Container and Microservices... too funny. Can we just bring back time shared mainframes and be done with it? Seriously, they were doing this in the 1970's and someone said: "Hey, wouldn't it just be easier to run all the pieces in one instance and make it easier to debug and more reliable?"

Dinsdale247

Re: 'Architects' can bitch with each other about terminology until the cows come home

Because you can't disrupt the incumbent and still call what you're doing the same thing that they called it, even though that's all you're doing.

Nokia, ARM, twisting Intel bid to reinvent the TCP/IP stack for a 5G era

Dinsdale247

FreeBSD?

I'm wondering what part of this is FreeBSD TCP/IP? The high performance userland network stack in FreeBSD is called netmap and it's a stand alone project:

http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/

I don't see any reference to netmap anywhere (yet).

Does scaling out bring TCO advantages over scaling up? The Reg offers advice

Dinsdale247

Not so sure about that

Except I've seen lots of instances where the "scale out" nodes are no longer supported so "sorry, you're going to have to buy this $10,000 router to convert between the new and the old system". You've also not taken into account the added complexity that more networked gear inevitably entails. I've also seen vendors sell hobbled scale out systems for a slightly lower price to an unsuspecting manager and then gouge on the upgrade path. Don't think you're going to get away any cheaper. Just remember, regardless of the vendor or the scaling system, they want to make you part with as much money as possible and none are above back handed tricks to do so.

From Zero to hero: Why mini 'puter Oberon should grab Pi's crown

Dinsdale247

I get it.

Lolz. I got your point. I've been a programmer for damn near 25 years and I've been fighting through learning FreeBSD for 3 years. I love learning that ZFS is a non-overwritting FS with checkpointing, but that's not what kids want. I think something like the Cosmos OS is a great idea for teaching:

https://cosmos.codeplex.com/

Written in C# (high level) using Visual Studio (easy to visualize and free), and should run on just about anything (like the RPi0). *looks* like C but easier...

There is also .Net Micro that has specific boards manufactured for it with super cheap "shields" that plug in for added functionality.

http://www.netmf.com/

https://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/category/34

http://www.netduino.com/projects/

http://www.mikroe.com/quail/

http://www.mikroe.com/quail/

Tons of cools stuff out there for these platforms.

Also, there is a couple of different RTOSes out there like RowBots and FreeRTOS that are super small and simple (compared to GNU/Linux).

Okay, let the anti Microsoft rants begin...

Oh dear, Microsoft: UK.gov signs deal with LibreOffice

Dinsdale247
Childcatcher

Too bad for the workers

I feel bad for the people that have to pay for this politicized decision on a daily basis when they can't get their work done. I use LibreOffice for lots of things at home and even publish a newsletter (replete with user database in Base that crashes every time I open it), but there is no way I could do my job with LibreOffice. I understand where this is coming from because I get angry every time I read Microsoft Licenses, but honestly, there is nothing else on the market with the capabilities and integration of Office.

BlackBerry Priv: Enterprise Android in a snazzy but functional package

Dinsdale247

As someone who has worked through the Sailfish Hardware Adaption Tool Kit I would say don't hold your breath, the porting effort to phones is going VERY slowly. Someone created a build to run Sailfish on a Oneplus (which I tried), but it's basically just alpha software at this point and there has been no updates for some time.

Dinsdale247

Re: Dual SIM

Blackberry has Virtual SIM services that allow a single SIM card to route to multiple carriers.

Five things that doomed the big and brilliant BlackBerry 10

Dinsdale247
Unhappy

I hate using android. The UI experience is inconsistent, and not fit for function. BB10 is consistent, well thought out and designed for communications. Once I got used to the swiping of BB10 I found the buttons of any phone to be relics from pre-touch days.

BB10 is a far superior operating system both technically and for the function of a communication device. It has security features and business integration features that no other system has. It is BUILT for business communication and Samsung and Apple made sure the carriers never let it see the light of day.

Also too bad 3 passports had the screens separate from the frame in my pocket. I loved that platform. :(

KARMA POLICE: GCHQ spooks spied on every web user ever

Dinsdale247
Facepalm

Silly

I bet every single person screaming about privacy has an air miles card or equivalent incentives program and gmail account. Just sayin...

Does Linux need a new file system? Ex-Google engineer thinks so

Dinsdale247

FreeBSD

"Practically, it'd be more productive if everyone got together and worked in perfect harmony on the UberFileSystem. But helping debug some else's already 3 years overdue file system isn't nearly as fun as writing your own new one. And it's the *nix way to have 5 projects when you could have 1. I can't blame him."

No, that's the GNU/Linux way of doing things. That's why GNU/Linux has 5 projects and FreeBSD has zfs.

BlackBerry on Android? It makes perfect sense

Dinsdale247

I think this is a distraction. BB10 is QNX with a qt front end. This is good tech. My passport is a great device. The problem is marketing and perception. It's unfortunate.

Russia will fork Sailfish OS to shut out pesky Western spooks

Dinsdale247

Get Real

First, this is nothing but a "me too" grab at peoples data. Like the Russians and the Chinese are somehow above putting in their own back doors?

Second, as someone who has worked through the porters Hardware Adaption Toolkit for Sailfish I can tell you there are lots of places to hide nefarious code. Sailfish relies on binary Android drivers and the entire "phone" part of the OS is a proprietary blob. If they had said "we are using mer and QT/litpstick" then perhaps they would have a point.

Either way IT'S JUST LINUX PEOPLE! Forget the compiler, as heartbleed has painfully pointed out, no code is perfect, no matter how many eyes are supposed to be on it. Slipping a little buffer overrun into millions of lines of code is easy. Also, once you install a third party app, all bets are off.

Anyway, if you want real security then start with OpenBSD. Everything else is vulnerable.

A year with Canada's Volvo-esque smartphone – The BlackBerry Z30

Dinsdale247

z30

I couldn't help myself and bought a Passport when it came out, which I love. I had a z10 and loved it, but it was "a little slow". I wanted a Z30 but wanted to wait for a better resolution display, which obviously didn't happen.

I'm a big fan of BB10 Hub and their auto complete/swip. My biggest grip with my Passport is that a truly usable SSH environment is at my fingertips, but there is no native BB10 SSH app to take advantage of the keyboard. JuiceSSH is awkward. Also would like IRC to show up in Hub.

Does the Googler tapped to run the US Patent Office still believe in patent reform?

Dinsdale247
Go

Not just the good old USA

The practice of handing government posts to industry insiders is common around the world. Japan has the same problem with their nuclear industry. Government officials are picked from within the industry to run the regulatory body and then when they are finished their term, they often wind up at cushy jobs back in the industry. And Obama is incredibly consistent. Check out the movie "Inside Job" about the financial crisis, it will make you want to vomit.

The problem is, who else knows enough about what is going on in these highly specialized industries besides the insiders? Truly self serving. But I'm only angry about it because I'm not getting my piece!

Microsoft: Hey, small biz devs – Windows Store apps are for you, too

Dinsdale247

Long Live BSD

I have been a Windows Developer and Microsofty for a long time. I don't mind paying for software that integrates and works well together like the Microsoft environment, but this has all gone too far. I can't run away from next gen Windows and cloud lock in fast enough. Anytime a company moves perfectly good client side software into the server without giving you a massive advantage (i.e. Office365) they are doing it to lock you down. I'm also not a fan of Mr. Stallman either so I've been picking up FreeBSD as fast as I can. If I'm moving to the cloud it's going to be on my terms...

Page: