* Posts by Mike Friedman

78 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jul 2007

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DeepSeek means companies need to consider AI investment more carefully

Mike Friedman

Just the latest IT fad.

Repeat after me. AI is a fad. It will never been anything more than a niche thing.

Remember how Blockchain was EVERYWHERE 10-12 years ago? It was going to REVOLUTIONIZE EVERYTHING!

Note. It did not do so and is now .....a niche application.

Guess who left a database wide open, exposing chat logs, API keys, and more? Yup, DeepSeek

Mike Friedman

So they stole data to make their LLMs, which were also made with stolen data and then they couldn't even be bothered to secure it. And this is what caused $1 trillion drop in the US stock market? These people sound deeply incompetent.

South Carolina's abandoned nuclear reactors positioned to fuel the AI datacenter boom

Mike Friedman

Re: Best case scenario

Or they bork the construction again. American utilities are notoriously bad at this.... enormous cost overruns are the norm an c few plants are built on time or budget.

Sysadmin shock as Windows Server 2025 installs itself after update labeling error

Mike Friedman

It's not a bug! It's a FEATURE!

AND YOU WILL LIKE IT.

Or else.

Palo Alto Networks execs apologize for 'hostesses' dressed as lamps at Black Hat booth

Mike Friedman

Someone thought they were in a production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

That's the last time I remember seeing women as lamps (it's during Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend). That was in 1953.

CrowdStrike unhappy about Delta's 'litigation threat,' claims airline refused 'free on-site help'

Mike Friedman

TBH I can see both sides here. Delta refused their "free" help.

But do you really want the vendor who royally screwed you to "fix" the problem? Perhaps not. I would imagine Delta (and many other companies) will be looking for a new vendor to supply these sorts of services.

CrowdStrike is probably going to be forced into bankruptcy by the litigation that's surely coming. And they might deserve it.

Mega-city's Oracle system won't have effective cash management until 2025

Mike Friedman

Re: All at sea

Another ISLAND. The mo-fo owns an entire island in Hawaii (Lanai).

Mike Friedman

I'd really love to know why public agencies continue to give contracts to companies that fail constantly. The number of times I've read about Oracle contracts going titsup and being scrapped (or years delayed or both) is incredible.

Stop doing business with Oracle if they suck so badly. Maybe the problem is that SAP and other companies of its ilk are no better.

An arc welder in the datacenter: What could possibly go wrong?

Mike Friedman

Bets on if the guy who caused this used eye protection while using that arc welder? You can easily damage your eyes while doing it without the proper protection.

That's a bet I would not take.

Oracle Java license teams set to begin targeting Oracle users who don't think they use Oracle

Mike Friedman

This is a sure fire way to get companies to rewrite all of their Java code in other languages that don't try to shaft them every year with crappy subscription nonsense.

City council audit trail is an audit fail after disastrous Oracle ERP rollout

Mike Friedman

Reminds memos the Florida US Senator Rick Scott who was CEO of HCA Corp (a large hospital company) that was fined $1BN for defrauding US Medicare ( health insurance for older folks) and claimed to know nothing about it.

So he was either lying or incompetent. Or both. But voters mysteriously believed him

Mike Friedman

Oracle rips off everyone. This is not a new type of issue. In the us they are notorious for burning through wads of money and the implementations never work properly. Oracle is evil.

We never agreed to only buy HP ink, say printer owners

Mike Friedman

After HP bricked a printer I owned (for not using their ink), I vowed never to purchase their products again. They replaced the bricked printer, but it failed quickly. Utter garbage.

Sad too, because I'm sure there are thousands of Laserjet 4000s and Laserjet 5s still printing every day. The 4000 was the pinnacle of their printer engineering. Those things are made like tanks.

All Brother, all the time now. They're better made, don't install tons of bloatware and they don't care if you use generic ink. And their lasers have a separate drum and toner which is less wasteful.

Iowa sysadmin pleads guilty to 33-year identity theft of former coworker

Mike Friedman

The bank didn't believe real documents presented to them. Including his Social Security card and number.

As for the family. I feel bad for them, but all of his property should be forfeited to make the victim whole. I saw this happen when I was a kid. The father of a classmate was arrested and sent to prison for embezzling from the bank he was CEO of. The kids took it hard. I felt bad for them, since they lost everything.

Mike Friedman

Holy crap. That's an insane story. I hope the entire fine goes to restitution to the victim for ruining his life.

I also hope the victim sues the police for false imprisonment.

We're not Meta support: State AGs tell Zuck to fix rampant account takeover problem

Mike Friedman

This is a real problem....

Happened to my husband. He wasn't a heavy Facebook user, but one day couldn't log in and was never able to recover the account despite repeated attempts. He finally gave up.

EU repair rights bill tells manufacturers to fix up or ship out

Mike Friedman

Good. I just paid an absurd $250 to replace the battery in my husband's four-year-old MacBook Pro. I could've replaced it myself except the stupid thing was glued down and the number of steps to repair it was like 52. I'm an experienced IT guy, but I was not about to undertake that nonsense.

A replacement battery on Amazon was somewhere between 30 and $60,

HP's CEO spells it out: You're a 'bad investment' if you don't buy HP supplies

Mike Friedman

Re: Security

Not landfill. They need to be OfficeSpaced first!!!!!!

Mike Friedman

Longtime IT Nerd says...don't buy HP crap

That says it all. I've been in this business for 30 years. HP sells GARBAGE. Their printers last maybe 10K prints, if that, and the cost/page is enormous because they can't stop milking their customers for ink and toner that's more expensive than gold.

F them. I stopped buying their printers when they bricked one of my personal ones. And Brother printers cost the same initially but the ink is vastly cheaper.

Long gone are the days of Laserjet 4000/4050s that printed 200K pages and showed no signs of slowing down.

Never, ever again if I have anything to say about it.

Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered

Mike Friedman

I realize this guy has only been there since 2019, but why does he still have a job?

Why do ANY of them still have a job?

I don't know if the UK has a version of criminal charges against a company, as in the US, but if it does, charges should be laid against the Post Office AND Fujitsu. They've both lied repeatedly.

This whole thing beggars belief.

Infosys co-founder doubles down on call for 70-hour work weeks

Mike Friedman

India's youth should say with all due respect (which is none)......F YOU, douchebag. Billionaire assholes should stop saying nonsense like this. Just hire more people, you idiot. Your company is so fabulously wealthy, you even bought the UK PMs office by marriage.

How governments become addicted to suppliers like Fujitsu

Mike Friedman

Not just the Uk

This is hardly just as British problem. American governmental units of all levels are notorious for poorly managing IT projects. Oracle in particular is notable for walking away from a project that is deemed unfixable afte,,r say $150 million has been spent. Then they just get another contract with the same entity.

Republican politicians in the US are always talking about waste, fraud, and abuse, but they ignore stuff like this which happens all the time. Larry Ellison of Oracle is a notable Republican donor.

HP customers claim firmware update rendered third-party ink verboten

Mike Friedman

Re: S

Yes. Brother. When I was a freelance consultant, I bought brother printers for all of my clients. They're very reliable. The software is decent and pretty straightforward and it doesn't install a lot of garbage. I also like that their laser printers, have a separate toner and drum and you can buy third-party toner and it works just fine.

Mike Friedman

This happened to me

They bricked my printer by sending me an unauthorized firmware update in 2015, and I raised such a stink that they ended up sending me a new printer for free. But I was really pissed and I have never bought another HP printer. And I never will. When that "free printer" died, I replaced it with a Brother, and I've never looked back.

Mr Cooper cyberattack laid bare: 14.7M people's info stolen, costs hit $25M

Mike Friedman

Now we can add crappy security to "the stupidest name in banking."

Mr. Cooper was my high school Russian teacher, not a bank.

Cloud engineer wreaks havoc on bank network after getting fired

Mike Friedman

The guys superiors should get dressed down for this too. Revoke credentials BEFORE you fire someone. DUH.

Mike Friedman

Re: Amazing!

You would? When I worked for a large American university, I unfortunately walked in on my BOSS watching porn in his OFFICE. More than once!

Musk's first year as Twitter's Dear Leader is nigh

Mike Friedman

Clearly YOU haven't been the target of nasty anti-Semitic vitriol.

Get your head out of Muskrat's ass. You should try using your brain for a change.

Mike Friedman

It's been a complete and utter disaster. I'm routinely getting anti-Semitic stuff pushed at me and when reported, there's never a violation of TOS. In addition to "groomer" this and that because I'm openly gay.

It's completely absurd. Muskrat has also descended into being the nasty racist, anti-Semitic (replete with Soros memes) piece of trash that we always knew he could be.

It's only a matter of time before the whole thing goes titsup because advertisers don't want to be next to LITERAL Nazis.

Zoom CEO reportedly tells staff: Workers can't build trust or collaborate... on Zoom

Mike Friedman

Astoundingly idiotic. But not a surprise.

I've been working on remote software development teams for 3.5 years. And we've done just fine, thank you very much. My company has its problems, but they are very clear that we don't need an office to do our work, and they're RIGHT.

There is an office if you want to go there (and I do occasionally, it's not far from my house) but it's not necessary to do the work.

First of Tesla's 'bulletproof' Cybertrucks clunks off production line

Mike Friedman

It's ugly as shit with stupid blind spots. The latest giant American small penis truck. A completely ridiculous creation from musky.

Rigorous dev courageously lied about exec's NSFW printouts – and survived long enough to quit with dignity

Mike Friedman

Clueless users

My favorite version of this story was finding emails from the co-owner of the business that was my client (a gymnastics school). He was sending emails USING HIS WORK ACCOUNT to Craig's List personals for escorts.

This was the week after I'd heard his wife's diatribe about how she had caught her 16 year old son looking at porn. DUH. He's sixteen and he's male. Of course he looks at porn. She ranted that all porn ALL PORN is exploitation of women. Um. Sure. OK.

The other was walking into my boss' office, during work hours, at a large University to find him looking at porn on his work computer. DUDE. REALLY? At least turn the screen away from the frickin door!

Don't panic. Google offering scary .zip and .mov domains is not the end of the world

Mike Friedman

What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

Just trust us. Have we ever steered you wrong in the past?

Well, not that time.

Or that one.

Or that one.

or that one.

or that one.

or that one.

or that one.

or that one.

or that one.

or that one.

or that one.

or that one.

JEEZ, stop being so negative!

Dyson moans about state of UK science and tech, forgets to suck up his own mess

Mike Friedman

Never got over the end of the Empire, have you?

Once again Britain has never come to terms with the end of the Empire. The UK just isn't that important anymore, and hasn't been since 1945, except to itself. It never figured out that it was just a medium sized power. France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the Netherlands all did.

Ex-Tweep mocked by Musk for asking if he'd actually been fired

Mike Friedman

What do you even say to someone who thinks he can manage an entire company (including HR matters) via Tweet, in public. Then when someone kindly points out that he's being an mega asshole to a person that EVERYONE LIKES he backs up and lamely apologizes.

Twitter's bankruptcy is going to be hilariously terrible. I can't wait.

No more free API access, says Twitter: You pay for that data

Mike Friedman

Sure Elon. That's going to make up for losing 75% of your ad revenue because you allowed fascists back on Twitter.

Muskrat is the poster child for rich guys with no one around them who says "No. That's a stupid idea. Don't do that."

Man wins court case against employer that fired him for not liking boozy, forced 'fun' culture

Mike Friedman

Hubby calls this the “forced march to fun.”

Two arrested in massive $575m cryptocurrency 'Ponzi scheme'

Mike Friedman

Re: Charles Ponzi

PT Barnum's (or not, it's not clear who first said it) adage about a "sucker born every minute" is no less true than it was in the 1870s. People are badly educated about money and still believe in get rich quick schemes.

Mike Friedman

Re: Crypto is a ponzi scheme...

Not only that but it's always a ponzi/pyramid scheme. By design. The whole thing is a scam. Anyone who invests in it now needs therapy or they can just give their money to me. The result will be the same.

Sage denies misleading customers over perpetual licensing, users not happy

Mike Friedman

Licensing? Clear? HAHAHAHAHAHA

SAGE isn't even the worst. They're terrible, but so many companies are far worse.

But pretending that your licensing mode is "clear" is absurd. All of us know that.

Intel to sell Massachusetts R&D site, once home to its only New England fab

Mike Friedman

I was living in Boston when DEC and Wang were dying in the late 80s and early 90s.

Wang's huge headquarters (five or six buildings), in Lowell (built there to spur business in an old mill town that had seen. better days) ended up selling for $525,000. It had cost $60M to build.

They just couldn't catch a break.

The perfect crime – undone by the perfect email backups

Mike Friedman

None of you has ever been yelled at because some stupid executive thought "deleted items" was his archive?

That was fun.

Mike Friedman

I was once the IT manager of a now defunct taxi company in New Orleans, USA.

One day I got a call from a police detective on a Monday afternoon, enquiring if he could look at the tape of our outside security cameras on the side street. Someone had been murdered a block away the previous Saturday night.

I said "sure," and arranged for him to come down. When he arrived, I pulled up the footage, only to discover that the cameras did NOT HAVE INFRARED. So about 10 cameras were taking video all night. Of nothing. The previous IT manager was apparently a total idiot.

I had to replace all of the outdoor cameras, which involved climbing a 20' ladder. Did I mention that I REALLY don't like heights. Yeah. It was a fun job.

Thinnet cables are no match for director's morning workout

Mike Friedman

That guy has now been CEO of 12 companies.

All of them failed because they did lunkhead things like this.

He's never figured out that he is the common denominator.

Elon Musk wants to take Twitter public again 'within 3 years'

Mike Friedman

He's already bored with his new toy and he hasn't even bought it yet.

Happy birthday, Windows Vista: Troubled teen hits 15

Mike Friedman

Anyone who thinks Vista had any redeeming features never had to use it. It was a giant steaming pile of crap from start to finish.

When civilisation ends, a Xenix box will be running a long-forgotten job somewhere

Mike Friedman

I really hope he charged them a LOT of money to fix that. I would've charged £25,000 to fix it. Just because it wasn't my problem anymore. I've done a lot of these in my day.

My favorite was the one where I started as IT manger in 2005 of a video production company which had never had one before. Just part time contractors who dropped in now and then. During the second week I was setting up a new email server for them. I had gone to run an errand at lunch and got a panicked phone call saying email was down. I got back to the office a few minutes later and it was the exact same problem. Disk was full. I cleared years of old logs and rebooted it and it was fine.

For my trouble I was fired the next day. They told the unemployment people that I "crashed the email server on purpose." I told the woman "why on earth would I create more work for myself?" Which made her laugh, and I got my benefits. I later found out that the people who ran the company were nuts. One of them had fired an entire department of people over the intercom once before.

Activision shareholders demand Kotick's head after CEO 'failed' to take claims of staff sex assault seriously

Mike Friedman

Of course he knew. No one believes he didn’t. But even if he didn’t know he should be fired for THAT. The behavior is so egregious.

My favorite detail is that they’re going to ban drinking booze at work but haven’t done so yet. Never get drunk at work. Why is this complicated?

Internet Explorer 3.0 turns 25. One of its devs recalls how it ended marriages – and launched amazing careers

Mike Friedman

And yet, IE 3.0 was complete crap. Unsigned Active X controls that run without your knowledge!? SURE! I'll sign up for that!

They should've just called it "Virus Vector 3.0." That's exactly what it was.

84-year-old fined €250,000 for keeping Nazi war machines – including tank – in basement

Mike Friedman

If that's your life's work, then maybe you should've gotten a different life. Doing something useful.

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