Posts by returnofthemus

UK network Three hikes pay-as-you-go rates by 400% to push punters to buy 'bundles'

Re: Three, Don't know where I'll go

Step 1. Search eBay for 'Classic O2 PAYG 321 SIM' you'll probably be able to pick up two for about 99p, the ones I recently received have an activate by date of 11-08-2021

Step 2. If you are looking to keep your number/s request a PAC by texting 'PAC' from your 3 enabled handset to 65075, you'll receive a text back from 3 asking you to include your date of birth, if you haven't registered with them any data of birth will do e.g., PAC010150.

Step 3. Once you get your PAC from Three, go to the O2 website and complete the Port-in request form, you will need to provide a name, email address, your new O2 SIM and Mobile Numbers, as well as the number you want to keep. Note that there is no drop-down menu for the Port-in date, so just write in the note section ASAP or a date you would like the transfer to happen.

As far as I'm aware O2 are still honouring the 3-2-1 PAYG rates for existing customers, but for obvious reasons you cannot get these SIMs direct from O2 themslves anymore ;-)

A bit like yourself I too have a number of devices and cannot justify bundle offers on all of them.

Each month your usage is reset.

Not entirely accurate, most bundles will roll over unused data (EE, O2, Vodafone etc.) and if you consider unlimted voice calls and texts (O2) then it could be worth considering.

MVNO end of the market

Extremely likely, the clue is in the acronym Mobile Virtual Network Operator, Not an actual Mobile Network Operator all of which are heavily dependant on the Big Four, no-one should be deluding themselves of this FACT!

I don't know if "killing off PAYG" is fair?

Yes, it is unfair, because it penalises extremely 'Light-users', especially when you consider the annual cost of maintenance, this is the ability to keep your number active, by making a chargeable activity every 180-days or 6 months as per the terms and conditions of most PAYG operators, before they cancel your SIM, delete your number with you forfeiting any unused credit.

Pat Gelsinger vows to upgrade VMware's once 'bad' open-source rep to the 'very' best by 2021

Re: Oh shit ......

LOL!

Don't worry, those Oracle licenses include access to the Oracle Cloud , there I think you'll find the database is completely autonomous, just like one of those Tesla cars on auto-pilot, just sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.

IBM, Intel tease 2020's specialist chips: Power9 'bandwidth beast' – and Spring Crest Nervana neural-net processor

Linux is not ISA-neutral...

Hmm!

Let's examine this one.

Introduced on the Mainframe in 1999 with a growing MIP count, ported to POWER in 2000, with little endian support added via the OpenPOWER foundation in 2014. Then you've got Fedora SPARC for....well you've probably guessed it already?

Nothwithstanding all those ARM-based so-called smart devices.

So you've got Linux on the Mainframe, Linux on POWER Systems, Linux on SPARC and Linux on ARM, as well x86 both Intel and AMD.

I'm not sure how you'd describe it, but I think much of the world would describe it as ISA-neutral

PS Microsoft's Cloud was initially called 'Windows Azure', why do you think they changed the name to 'Microsoft Azure?

No prizes for the right answer ;-)

Is the world going to switch from Microsoft Windows...

Depending on the world that you live in, I'd say that it already has, the cloud was built on Linux and Linux is ISA neutral, you no longer have to choose the architecture for your applications, you can run your applications on the best architecture

Having flogged off its data centers, AT&T cozies up to Microsoft, IBM to keep it running

"... transition all their IT to Microsoft"

Gross misconduct is grounds for immediate dismissal and prosecution, whereby you could forfeit your pension.

As Red Hat prepares to become part of Big Blue, its financials look as solid as Linux kernel 2.4

Re: Gluster

No real match for Spectrum Scale formerly GPFS, but customers' will still have a choice ;-)

IBM servers crashed in Q4 – just sales, not the mother of all outages

Re: Affected servers were all IBM-badged.

Given that it has been sometime IBM retreated from the Intel x86 server market, could it be possible that those rather old machines you are running, were possibly surplus stock?

I wouldn't have thought that thermal pasting cpu's was a modern day practice?

IBM wins five-year whole-of-government deal with Australia

Microsoft and AWS are already going hard for cloud business in Canberra

I'm not sure the business of Government is sitting around playing Xbox all day or even conversing with Alexa, but then again I'm not Austrailian, so I could be mistaken?

LOL!

Meet TLBleed: A crypto-key-leaking CPU attack that Intel reckons we shouldn't worry about

Re: Sparc is better than power8

"I take it your an IBM guy who scoffed at Sun in the sale hoping to slice it up and take it out of the market back in 2010?"

No, watching it's slow demise under Oracle's ownership has been much better to watch ;-)

Re: Sparc is better than power8

LOL, yeah apart from having no ecosystem, no roadmap and no future, it's GREAT!

And the Hits just keep on coming

Thank-you Intel

My job is getting easier by the day.

LOL!

The strife of Brian: Why doomed Intel boss's ex86 may not be the real reason for his hasty exit

Had the board just had enough of Krzanich?

LOL, what do you think?

IBM’s McAfee-as-a-service cloudy antivirus wobbled for nearly a day

Re: Security = McAfee?

No, anything that renders your machine inoperable whilst running is a Virus, I'm surprised IBM has it running on their cloud, let alone anyone being stupid enough to pay for it, was this not the security outfit that Intel divested???

Microsoft Azure Europe embraced the other GDPR: Generally Down, Possibly Recovering

Re: That sounds like a fire to me

Wouldn't have been an issue if they had stuck their Data Centres under water ;-)

Where have all the M$FT Fanbois Gone?

No doubt still working out how to connect AzureStack

Come out, come out wherever you are

HPE CEO pledges $4bn Edge R&D splurge

Did he Jump or was he Pushed?

I guess when you haven't got a Cloud, the Edge is all you have left.

LOL!

IBM’s cloud adds availability zones

Re: AWS don't sell Prime subscriptions dumbass...

LOL!

Alexa, when did AWS spin-out from Amazon.com?

PS Let's try and put this in perspective and not get too carried away ;-)

Re: I work at IBM...

LOL, of course you do and my name real name is Bill Gates.

I use to run a software company, clueless customers made me the richest man in the world, one of the key features of our software was turning SVGA colour screens blue, not only did our customers love it, they came back for more in future releases.

It's truely amazing what people will put up with when they are the impression that they are getting something for FREE, look no further than Amazon AWS and all those clueless numpties that have been duped into Prime subscriptions ;-)

Re: intention to just about rebuild its entire cloud

"@returnofthemus the customer doesn't need to manage those things, and so the customer doesn't need to pay for a managed service on those things".

Manage what things?

You're obviously confused, may I suggest that you familiarise yourself with the NIST Cloud Computing definition for a better understanding of the general deployment models and service models, failing that this short tutorial should help ;-)

Re: intention to just about rebuild its entire cloud

"Other than the application code and the deployment code there really isn't anything there. No patching, no security monitoring, no networking, no operating systems, no hardware ".

Fuck me, you're either not of this planet or you've been smoking some seriously strong shit!

Re: Charles Fitzgerald...

Who???

I would've thought it common knowledge that IBM's cloud expansion follows it's aquisitions of

a) SotfLayer,

b) Verzion's Cloud and Hosting Business

c) AT&T’s managed application and managed hosting services business

As previously stated IBM has clearly been focused on the Cloud Managed Services aspects of it's cloud (multi-year, multi-billon dollar, long-term contracts), whilst differentiating what it offers more generally.

The public cloud has moved beyond IaaS and being able to spin up a VM is no longer a novelty.

PS I too purchase books on Amazon, subscribe to Office 365 and upload, as well as watch video's on Youtube, but that really is just about it.

Re: intention to just about rebuild its entire cloud

LOL, I think the you'll find the real intention here is to differentiate it's cloud, though it would be fair to say the emphasis to date has been on it's Cloud Managed Services.

IBM may appear slow moving, but it moves strategically and with purpose, some people just do not pay enough attention and usually end up making dull comments on matters that they can't comprehend.

Though it really shouldn't take a Phd to work out the Cloud is a journey NOT a destination, the likes of the likes of American Airlines, Etihad Airways, Lufthansa, the US Army, the US Air Force, the BBC, New Zealand Ministry of Health, Marriott Hotels etc., can't all be wrong?

Anyway let the architectural battle commence I think we all know how the story ends ;-)

Waiting to exascale: Now that IBM has Summit-ed, who's to node what comes next?

Aurora has given way to Aurora 2

Don't you mean given a three-year extension or a stay of execution?

LOL!

US regains supercomputer crown from Chinese, for now

The US Exascale answer to that effort, the Cray/Intel Aurora A21, is expected in 2021.

LOL

Isn't this the same duo that couldn't deliver on their portion of the COREL project, I certainly won't be holding my breath!

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins preaches the cloud, but nothing new

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins preaches the cloud....

Yeah, so did his predecessor!

Just a shame they never got round to building one :-(

Microsoft doubles Azure Stack's footprint, embiggens Azure VMs

Re: “customer demand and supportability”,

HTF is Office365 separate from Azure, Office 365 is maintained and supported by M$FT and runs solely on Azure, it's their killer app, their only killer app, if not for Office 365 what would you use Azure for?

Azure Active Directory???

Re: “customer demand and supportability”,

'office has nothing to do with Azure'

LOL,behave yourself cherub, do you seriously think Office 365 and the rest of the legacy deal they've bundled in runs on vapourware?

It's not hate, it's a matter of fact!

There is no magic unicorn inside of Azure, it's made up of the same infrastructure components every body has access to.

“customer demand and supportability”,

I guess that equates to zero customer demand, hence no real need for it to be supported, it was always going to be a a long-shot, the growth of Azure is solely down to the office productivity suite, why on earth would you bring the garbage that caused you so much headache in the first place back in house, the recycle bin has been well and truely emptied of that crap.

VMware declares energy-guzzling blockchains 'immoral'

Until someone comes up with something useful that uses a blockchain...

Errr, they already have , I do the believe the euphemism preferred is, 'thinking outside the box' or in this cas beyond cryptocurrency.

Where some lead, other's are sure to follow ;-)

The great Dell EMC storage slimdown: Giant to trim off product bloat

Re: Not unlike IBM's move a while back

Not quite, IBM actually decoupled the software from XIV and rebranded it Spectrum Accelerate, the software can now be bought standalone or acquired as part of their Spectrum software suite.

The Flash System A9000 storage appliance incorporates Spectrum Accelerate, which is denoted by the 'A'.

Apart from the name, the only thing that IBM are sun-setting is the use of HDDs in their storage appliances as the world moves to Flash ;-)

NetApp goes all in on Fibre Channel-based NVMe-over-Fabrics

It's a minor point....

Since when did the NVMe protocol dictate the use of SSDs, as opposed to custom-built flash chips, which already inherit the characteristics to deliver improved performance and lower latency, not only a minor point, but also totally irrelevent.

That said, I'm genuinely pleased that NetApp have finally found something to crow about, however short-lived.

Certainly more refreshing than listening to the Orange people drooling over Blade Servers.

Who will fix our Internal Banking Mess? TSB hires IBM amid online banking woes

TSB hires IBM amid online banking woes...

I sense deep dissappoint amongst the anti-IBM brigade, but you only have to take a good look around, who else were they gonna call?

LOL!

One of IBM's latest financial figures was off by four cents today – so down go its shares

Literally what sort of muppet looks at AWS, Azure and GCP.....

Depends what you are looking for from your Cloud Service Provider , I think it's fair to say Cloud has moved beyond IaaS, a repository for storing Word documents/Excel spreadsheets or even a playground for video game developers

However, the short answer to your question is, a muppet looking to avoid vendor lock-in ;-)

Re: Cloud?

"I used to work for IBM eBHS, (e-Business Hosting) we hosted the servers that customers web sites ran on".

It's funny for a term that was used to refer to platforms for distributed computing as early as 1993 is still causing so much confusion in 2018.

I don't think anyone should be surprised by the fact that IBM's eBusiness initiative has evolved over the years, unless of course, you think that 'Cloud' doesn't constitute the hosting of web applications?

Re: Cloud?

"I have it on good authority..."

LOL!

Don't you just love the smell of BS, I can smell it from here!

IBM swings shrink ray from workforce to mainframes

Re: terminology - I was using 'Junk' as a collective term....

Yes, it was rather crasp and somewhat illogical, I'm not sure anyone in their right mind would go out and buy a 'shed', ....potentially costing more than a house...., to store sentimental household ornaments.

Having never worked on a mainframe and far from being a mainframe expert, I'm struggling with your 'shorthand, my understanding is that you get a choice of either LPAR, zVM or KVM, which can also co-exist side-by-side on the same platform.

When did Vendor lock-in become a dysphemism for consolidating high-volume OLTP and OLAP mission critical linux workloads on the most reliable, most secure and most performant commercially available platform in the world?

Astonishingly, it's the one platform the majority of technical folk don't quite get, what leading business folk do, which is probably the reason why it has been around for 50-years+.

Re: Why Linux on z rather than on another platform?

>>My analogy is different > the mainframe is a shed.<<

PMSL!

Where I live, the local authority still provide us a weekly refuse collection, all my junk goes in the bin.

However, I see you too are confused!

In this instance you are not going to buy a mainframe to distribute your linux workloads, you're going to buy one to CONSOLIDATE them!

A simple rule of thumb; 'Consolidate where you can, Distribute where you must'.

PS I voted you up for the comical analogy.

Why Linux on z rather than on another platform?

Considering that Linux was introduced on Z back in 1999 that question appears a little late in the day, especially as the total number of MIPS that run Linux has been growing steadily at a 45% CAGR.

However, I imagine the question you're probably asking is why would it be considered today, for which I can give you a very simple analogy....

Is not the Range Rover the best commercially available off-road vehicle in the world?

Re: I'd like to have an honest non-marketing answer to the question...

I guess it's a matter of how many docker images you require and the nature of your application.

Bare in mind unlike x86 hardware, you don't get Spectre & Meltdown built-in ;-)

HPE swallows cloud consultancy RedPixie

Cloud is what it is about today in a Hybrid world...

Apart from the fact that HP capitualated when it came to operating a large-scale public cloud, do you seriously believe that the world's largest IT consulting firms are somewhat oblivious to this trend, including DXC

This is classic HP, no sense of direction and still pissing in the wind!

Re: deja vu?

>>Didn't HP spin out their services/consulting arm?<<

Yeah, funny isn't it only gawd knows what they smoke round that boardroom table.

Cisco shrinks Tetration for ESX and SaaS

See? We really are a software company now!

Yeah, but nobody really cares!

Microsoft reinvents Massive Arrays of Idle Disks for Azure, 'cos IBM tape ain't enough

How many times can you spin up a tape before it disintegrates?

I take it they longer teach HSM in Storage 101 classes

How many times can you spin up a hard drive before it fails and how many times can you write to flash before it wears out?

So much for Tape being dead...

Just when you thought that everything in the Cloud was stored on Flash and now instead of focusing on Project Hololens Microsoft wants to disrupt the Tape storage market to try and save a bit of money for storing peoples garbage. Looks to me as if Microsoft is exposing itself and The Empire is Striking Back!

Stop us if you've heard this one: Job cuts at IBM

Re: Cutting investment in R+D and engineering would also be a good idea.

"....but if you make most of your money on financing and realise that the IT game is too hard".

One of the advantages IBM has is that it's been playing the game longer than most ;-)

Re: Cutting investment in R+D and engineering would also be a good idea.

"HP has pioneered this process to a fine art".

LOL!

IBM has placed it's big bet on Cloud & Cognitive, nobody's got a clue as to where HP is placing it's big bets?

HP's acquisition strategy was the straw that eventually broke the camels back which is why you've got two HPs instead of one ;-)

Do you mean there is a bridge Ginni hasn’t burned yet?

Ginni doesn't burn bridges... She builds them

And I Quote:- "note to The Register that it had just announced a plan with French president Emmanuel Macron to open a new AI research center in France that will create 400 new jobs".

Sacre (big) bleu.