Posts by MotionCompensation

The swift in-person response is part of the service (and nothing to do with the thing I broke while trying to help you)

Windows NT 3.51 unintended shutdown

After logging in and out of the console of a Windows NT 3.51 fileserver many times, it had become routine. Click and hold File in Program Manager, release the mouse button on Logoff (the menu item right above Shutdown) and click OK on the “This will end your Windows NT Session” dialogue box that followed. Until the inevitable happened: I released the mouse button a little late. And automatically clicked Ok. And watched the server shut itself down.

I went to the phone, waited for the calls and explained that some emergency maintenance was underway, but it would not last more than 10 minutes. Within 10 minutes, the server was back up. One of the few times IT correctly predicted how long maintenance would take.

Boeing will cough up $2.5bn+ to settle US fraud charge over 737 Max safety

Re: Cheap ripoff justice ......... far too late and too little !!!

If my experience as a family member of a victim of a different airplane crash is anything to go by, 40% will go to the lawyers.

Samsung cops to data leak after unsolicited '1/1' Find my Mobile push notification

Disabled app receiving notifications

Samsung did not answer our questions as to how a "disabled" app was able to receive and display push notifications.

Apps don't receive or display push notifications, the OS does, a.f.a.i.k. The OS knows which app should be started should you decide to tap on the notification and pulls the icon from that app. Seems that "disabling" the app does not unsubscribe from notifications.

Whose cloud is it anyway? Apple sinks $30m a month into rival Amazon's AWS – report

Not enough to build one website

That’s not enough money to build even one functioning website, if you decide to have Accenture build it, according to sources at Hertz.

Ever wanted to strangle Microsoft? Now Outlook, Skype 'throttle' users amid storm cloud drama

Re: I NEVER get tired of posting this

After decades of BOFH treatment, moving it all to cloud so you don't have to deal with that hellish thing called an IT department anymore feels like a pretty good solution. When that cloud experiences a hiccup and it's all over the media, worldwide, it feels good to know that your problem is taken serious enough to make the headlines, instead of IT telling you they have other priorities. Perhaps it's time we (IT) take a good hard look at our own performance, instead of making smug remarks every time there's cloud outage.

Bring on the down votes.

Oracle Database 18: Now in downloadable Linux flavour

They found a way around releasing unlucky version 13.

Massive scale, tight security – what's not to love about Kubernetes 1.6? Well...

Re: Can someone explain Kubernetes in simple terms?

The real world problem it solves is "how can I run thousands of copies of various applications, spread over thousands of servers, without needing thousands of (grumpy and expensive) sysadmins to keep it all well oiled, happy and running?"

So basically, it's automation of tasks (installations, upgrades, detecting crashes, rebooting, removing crashed copies, spreading the load across the physical servers etc etc), so large scale applications can run with tens of thousands of users only paying a few dollars a month each (and many paying nothing) for the service. Real world problems are often all about money.

The gospel according to Blockchain, or is it the other way round?

Analysis? Analyze this

My analysis: information is like a fart. Once it's out there, there is no way to get it back. Putting it in a blockchain doesn't change that.

Samsung set a fire under battery-makers to make the Galaxy Note 7 flaming brilliant

Re: Pushing the envelope too hard

Unsurprisingly, cutting corners to make things cheap, makes them crap.

Have a look at the graphic. It's obviously the rounding of corners that makes things crap. Unless you're rounding corners to make things expensive, of course.

HBO slaps takedown demand on 13-year-old girl's painting because it used 'Winter is coming'

Re: Winter is coming.

Winter is coming®

FTFY

Body cams too fragile for Canadian Mounties – so they won't be used

Re: Hmmm ...

"They just seem to have a procurement department that cares that the product works."

That makes them unique in government procurement.

$17k win for man falsely accused of a terrible crime: Downloading an Adam Sandler movie

Re: Kudos

I'm afraid whoever is paying the Hollywood lawyers, is paying for all the lawyers in this case. Money always flows towards lawyers, even if it has to flow uphill.

Hackers actively stealing Wi-Fi keys from vulnerable routers

What a mess

I get the feeling this is only the beginning. This mess might become so big that even very computer literate users will be affected by the incompetence of these corporations. There is nowhere to hide, sooner or later you will be hit.

Samsung flames out as Chinese march on

Re: Oppo

And I'm still happy with my OnePlus One (trying to ignore the fact that it might be sending all my personal stuff to China).

But... What's the link with Oppo?

Pluto has massive underground oceans, say astro-boffins

It's the plutonium, stupid!

"Firstly, Pluto's still got some nuclear action going on way down below"

Hadoop experiencing growing pains in lamestream businesses

Re: Translation please

I think you need brains to form wisdom, no tool will do that for you.

Translation please

If adopted, the technology offers an organisation the ability to make full use of the data at its disposal to improve both pre-sales and post-sales performance by making organisations more agile and data-driven, an approach that suits firms in industries ranging from banking to retail and beyond."

I come to this site to avoid this type of language. Can someone explain this sentence to me?

UK warships to have less firepower than 19th century equivalents as missiles withdrawn

Don't worry

I'm sure the Americans will help you out. Or Europe. Right? Wait...

What strange madness is this? Microsoft makes patch data RESTful

Wait for someone else to wrangle the API

Imagine the amount of eyeballs you can get looking at your site, if you now build a really nice, eyeball friendly site on top of this API. Someone is bound to do that, probably more than one person. So if you're not into wrangling APIs, just wait. It won't be a long wait.

Laziness and hate drove me to invent my storage engine concept, says MariaDB's CTO

Re: Going public???

I'm guessing it's the company that is going public, as in selling shares to the public.

Google drops a zero-day on Microsoft: Web giant goes public with bug exploited by hackers

At last: a valid reason to upgrade to Windows 10

"Chrome's sandbox blocks win32k.sys system calls using the Win32k lockdown mitigation on Windows 10, which prevents exploitation of this sandbox escape vulnerability."

I may have to upgrade after all. Not looking forward to it.

Florida man ran $1.35m hack-and-spam racket with 50m-plus addresses

Re: What is it with the expensive car collections?

"For one, money needs to move around to be of any use."

That explains the cars then.

Let's praise Surface, not bury it

Re: Your looking at the market wrong

I suspect smartphones will keep outselling PC's even when the same level of saturation is reached. They get dropped on pavement or in toilets, lost in trains, stolen etc more often.

Chinese electronics biz recalls webcams at heart of botnet DDoS woes

Re: What percentage returned?

Good point. Perhaps part of the ddos sources could be logged and reported, a variant of the old email abuse reporting system. Maybe someone else has a better idea. In my opinion, those causing the problem, both those making these devices as those using them irresponsibly, should somehow have a problem too when their devices misbehave. Or else this will indeed continue until there is no more internet.

Re: What percentage returned?

Why not have their ISP disconnect them? For abusing their internet connection by participating in a DDOs attack. Put this in the terms and conditions of the ISP. And automate the detection and disconnecting part.

Once consumers realize that misbehaving devices will get them disconnected, they may start demanding secure devices. Or even better, think twice before connecting stuff to the internet.

Dirty COW explained: Get a moooo-ve on and patch Linux root hole

How did it all go wrong?

Perhaps it has something to do with the security of millions of devices worldwide depending on the actions of one man. A man who seems to have serious communication issues, to point where I'm willing to question his mental stability. It's not a healthy situation and the root cause is not a technical one, I don't buy the long technical explanation in this article.

Cisco president: We've lost to AWS et al on the public cloud

Roads breaking cars

"The road will break it"

Nothing new there, roads break cars here all the time.

Please don't break my car

"The car can even be initiated to break"

Please don't!

Windows updates? Just trust us, says Microsoft executive

Trust is like silence

Once you start talking about trust, it's not there anymore. MS has just acknowledged they have lost our trust.

Internet of pills plan calls for drugs to tell you when to take them

What's the point?

If you're looking at the label, chances are you did not forget the medicine - that's why you're looking at the label, right? A reminder when I'm not looking at the label would be so much more helpful. One that pops up on that display I'm looking at 4 times per hour, the display I'm always carrying with me, the one that can vibrate and make loud noises to get my attention.

A reasonably effective, simple solution to the autopilot problem already exists, no Bluetooth needed:

https://www.amazon.com/Automatically-Auto-Repeating-pill-Medication-Non-Adherence/dp/B004W8EQC4

Are you sure you want to outsource IT? Yes/No. Check this box to accept Ts&Cs

Would like to outsource yes

Few of us generate our own electricity or bake or own bread. Maybe we'll see the same with IT infrastructure. It sure is tempting.

But we do need some regulations here, just like with bread and electricity. If you sell poisoned bread, you don't get away with giving us another loaf for free. If your electricity blows up my home theater, you don't get away with giving us a few kWh for free.

So why can you delete all my data by accident and get away with it?

Oops: Carphone burps up new Google phone details

Re: Never had a Nexus

I had Nexus 5. Too bad the power button stopped working after 13 months. And that rubbery finish becomes sticky in the tropics. Many gadgets don't last long here, batteries overheat and die early, soft touch finishes become icky sticky, white plastic turns yellow. So these things get tested for use in tropical climates at all?

Samsung: And for my next trick – exploding WASHING MACHINES

Re: Eeek!

Where I live, top loaders are the norm. They do the job in in under 30 minutes and they are cheap. But they tend to wear your clothes out faster and they use lots of water. Most people here use cold water, forget about heating the amount of water a top loader needs.

I switched to a front loader, got tired of buying new clothes all the time. A better name for a top loader is a clothes shredder or bacteria incubator.

WTF ... makes mobile phone batteries explode?

Re: Charging

Your 16 amp power outlet at home somehow does not blow up the 0.02 amp LED lamp you plug into it. Even the 0.05 amp (at 220 volt) phone charger seems to be OK with the 16 amp power outlet. Ever stopped to think why?

Want a Dell printer? Unlucky – they've just stopped selling them

Re: Paperless office

Let's introduce BYOP and BYOT, bring your own printer and toner, and see how fast the paperless office becomes a reality then.

Audi works with Chinese technology companies to develop intelligent cars

Re: We'll need self diving cars

Make that driving. I should not have posted that while driving.

We'll need self diving cars

The drivers will be too busy updating their FB status, posting photos of what they see on Instagram etc to be driving themselves.

Dear sysadmin: This is how you stay relevant

Re: It isn't their core business which is why it never gets the investment or focus it needs.

My business won't last a day without electricity. But I'm not in the electricity business.

Bug in Microsoft's StorSimple arrays can kill backups

Just upgrade to Windows 10

Microsoft will have a copy of all your data, just ask them for a copy to restore.

The Rise, Fall and Return of TomTom

As someone noted down here, they do collect data (driver behavior) and have been known to sell this data to the police. Who then used it or determine where to set up speed cameras. The data was anonimized, but their users did not like this at all. It became a marketing nightmare.

Source, in Dutch:

http://webwereld.nl/e-commerce/53548-tomtom-verkoopt-hardrijdersinfo-aan-politie

Little boxes made of ticky-tacky: What Dell's record-busting $67bn EMC deal means

40,000 sales staff

Any organization that employees that amount of sales staff has completely missed the point of the cloudy world we're in now.

Does anybody know how many people Amazon employs for AWS sales?

Speaking in Tech: Windows is coming to smart refrigerators

Smart fridge

I have a smart fridge. It's smart enough to turn the light on when I open the door and off when I close it. An LED lamp mind you, it even has one in the top freezer. That will be all the fridge innovation I need for the next 15 years, thank you.

Sysadmins: Poor capacity planning is not our fault

Re: "get senior management to take the issues seriously"

As an IT guy who's also in senior management (founder), I'd like to add that plenty of IT people expect the business to understand their side, while doing very little to explain the problem in business terms, or trying to understand what the business as a whole is facing and where they fit in. That's not everybody here of course, but it does happen.

I think we should not expect business people to understand the IT stuff. We need to get rid of that somewhat arrogant, smug tone of voice and begin to play as part of the big team, not just the IT team. Of course, it helps if the business people let you play as part of the team (if not, find a different team?).

Bring on the down votes.

HDMI hooks up with USB-C in cables that reverse, one way

Re: Only vaguely USB-C related rant incoming...

USB-C will solve this problem for you in the future. Sort of. Both ends of the cables will fit in any device. Even Tesco will sell cables that fit. The only question remaining will be: will it fry? Don't believe the CPCW-guy when he says it won't.

More frying in the future

Some day, projectors will start coming with USB-C connectors alongside HDMI. Some day, someone will use one of these USB-C to HDMI cables to connect an older laptop to a newer projector. Now, the entire cable has become reversible. Time for a successor to 'will it blend': will it fry?

'I'm sorry, your lift has had a problem and had to shut down'

Notice

Notice to all residents of this building:

Due to maintenance, all lifts in this building will be unavailable every second Tuesday of the month. Using the lift on the second Wednesday of the month is discouraged.

Childcare app bods wipe users' data – then discover backups had been borked for a year

Test your backup as part of any big change

I'm doing a migration tomorrow. First step is always: backup production, restore to test, run the migration there, validate the results. You now know you can restore the production database and you've seen your upgrade or migration run with the current production data. Only then can you proceed...

Want a Windows 10 update? Don't go to Microsoft ... please

MS Worm 1.0

MS Windows 10 is being replaced by MS Worm 1.0.

BBC vans are coming for you

Overly complicated?

I'm not British and I don't live in Britain, so maybe I'm missing something here. To me, this sounds like an overly complicated way to get people to pay for content. Why not simply introduce some kind of authentication, your receipt number is your username or something like that, for online content?

To me, the way it works now looks like Netflix streaming their content without password protection of any kind and then sending vans over to peoples home to find out who's using Netflix without paying. It does not make sense to an outsider.

EE looks at its call charges, hikes a bunch, walks off giggling

Re: When your currency goes down...

I'm sure they have to pay €€ for international calls. And yes, any excuse will do. Here, we see the prices go up when the currency might go down, then go up again when the currency actually goes down, then go up again because to few people are buying the now too expensive stuff and the few people still buying have to cover the cost.