Posts by F0ul

Microsoft wants screaming Windows fans, not just users

Isn't MSDN a Microsoft User Group?

I am liking Microsoft more and more - having been a huge M$ hater in the days of Win 95 when I discovered Linux etc.

These days its Microsoft who are doing the interesting things with Server 2016 and Powershell etc

where they are adding ease of use to concepts that used to be the reasons you'd have to use FOSS

Having people loving your desktop is so 20th century - we are now almost totally virtual, and M$ is getting good enough that I want to tell my friends about it - and that is how fans are made!

Wanted: Bot mechanic. New nerds, apply within

This is how an industry is built.

When I was doing the 90s tech thing, I saw similarity with what I was doing to the way the automotive trade had developed 50 years earlier.

The robot trade with be very similar - a few years of doing stuff badly will lead to some standards and simplification. Most of the companies with go bust or be bought up and order will start to be seen.

Most of these techie jobs - besides thouse that need physical access, will rely on container technology, so robots will just boot up their new OS every morning, and everytime something goes wrong or needs a bit of a skills update, it will download a new arm movement control container, or delivering coffee to the customer container or cleaning up the mess made by an old person container - Robots will be just another node on the datacentre devops list of things to update.

Within 10 years, it will all be automated much like the mobile phone industry is today.

But what do I know, history never repeats itself perfectly.

Patent trolls, innovation and Brexit: What the FT won't tell you

This is a story I was aware of, but the reactions in the comments certainly isn't.

Its as if the readers have never had to actually deal with the EU and just believe that political systems work as advertised - bit like a fridge, only bigger and more expensive!

Microsoft lures IT pros with breadcrumb trail of candy to its cloud

Azure is brilliant - I've been playing with it for the last year - but our company is still not ready to move anything there yet - its not the technology, its the compliance - they are still in the 90s!

Once the paperwork works, then cloud will be for everyone!

Cisco says CLI becoming interface of last resort

CLI won't disappear - but its got its place.

I don't play much with Cisco stuff anymore, but I do use Powershell and Azure - your modern day CLI and GUI - and the rules stay the same, use the tool that makes most sense at the time.

Crap IT means stats crew don't really know how UK economy's doing

There are several simple technical fixes - modern Middleware being the most obvious - but the real problem is that a greater accuracy of a made up number is still going to be a fantasy!

Ready for a nostalgia kick? Usborne has put its old computer books on the web for free

Kids today

Best books on programming ever written - assuming you measured from know nothing to getting paid to code - bet a very large proportion of the current 40 something in UK IT learnt something from these pages!

'Sunspots drive climate change' theory is result of ancient error

1984, Anyone?

A quote from George Orwell's 1984:

It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.

This 'correction' of the data story reminded me of it for some reason!

Throwing all the facts in the world at me to tell me its getting warmer doesn't alter the fact that I've had to put the heating on in my house - and its August!

Bill Hicks: 25 years on from the cult comedian's big break

Dying was his best career move!

He was funny in the day, but so were a bunch of other comedians (Daniel Kitson etc) who had the misfortune of getting older.

If Bill Hicks was around today, he'd be a columnist in the Guardian, and have a DVD out every Christmas of his fringe show!

We tried using Windows 10 for real work and ... oh, the horror

I can't wait!

I have liked and hated most Microsoft products over the years, but this one, I am actually looking forward to.

But, what is wrong with all the dicks in IT who insist that they can only do a task the one way they learnt to do it, and get a heart attack everytime the OS changes?

The blessing and the curse of Big Data

Loved the article - but ..

The article really highlights the real problem with enterprise IT systems, People and their lack of knowledge.

They know what sort of tablet they want, and what sort of software dashboard they want, but have no interest in how the system is developed, or even what its capabilities are out of the box - they just want it to work, when they use it. The problem is, nobody is willing to take the can for ensuring that everyone else knows - especially beyond their department.

The outcome is that nobody is aware of how the data fit together. Each process is regulated, as is the hardware, as is the software, but software configurations is not - so it slowly strangles the company.

Too much of a good thing, is a bad thing!

Bitcoin, schmitcoin. Let's play piggyback on the blockchain

a fear for sale

The bloating of the Blockchain was a potential problem all the way back to the original document for Bitcoins in 2008-9 and there was a simple solution, prune dead transactions. The idea being that transactions have a life, where they go around in a circle or sorts. Eventually, there is no need for that extra information because newer information covers it and it can be deleted safely

Plus, there is the data storage is cheap argument - where a browser was 3Mb in size and took 3 hours to download in 1994, in 2015, we have webpages that are far bigger than that and download in fractions of seconds. Its a non issue.

Give it 20 years and we will be sharing 1TB files in the playground. Obviously, not me, because I'd be arrested for being an old pervert if I did that! ;-)

Bank of England CIO: ‘Beware of the cloud, beware of vendors’

welcome to the old way of thinking

Management really don't get virtual, do they? Data doesn't need to have a specific server to link it to reality, just like I don't really need the same bank note back from the bank that I put into my savings account.

The answer is PaaS. Let someone else worry about the boring stuff, like the hardware, the backup, the power, the patch management, the security - all you want to worry about is your data - and it doesn't matter where it is, as long as nobody else has access to it in an unencrypted form. You do encrypt everything you do, don't you?

The hardest part of learning about containers is to know anything about IT from before 2000 and still firmly believe its relevant to today's infrastructure.

Microsoft to Linux users: Explain yourself

MS and Open Minds

It seems to me that while Microsoft has turned the corner, and is now embracing reality, there are a lot of Linux users with minds that closed in or around 2004.

The OS is now just a VM image that rests in the cloud, and Microsoft is now doing cloud. Is Linux a cloud company? No, and that's why MS don't see it as competition.

Linux or rather its fan club is starting to become very bigoted in its viewpoint, and that is the sad thing.

Scientists love MacBooks (true) – but what about you?

Its about ego and risk

Good article, and you almost hit the nail, but then don't.

Scientists and Academics do fashion, but not the same fashion as everyone else. They do fashion as a reduced risk of mockery type fashion. They might be very knowledgeable about stuff that nobody cares about, but they have very thin skins, and are very self conscious. Why do you think they like being published? Its all about ego, baby!

They like Apple because they look good, and their work mates have one. If you ever want to sell a computer to a scientist, tell him that the scientist down the road has one like this, but with something missing. What's better than getting your work published? Having better equipment than the scientist who just got published! That's another Macbook sold, then! ;-)

Scientists don't do IT networks, or even use more than 1 or 2 desktops at once. They never see the problems of Apple hardware that IT bods see - so they don't care. All they want is a better laptop than their colleague who just got published! ;-)

Hyperconvergence: Just where is the technology going?

You've missed a bit!

There is a total disregard for the concept of virtualization here. By focusing on the hardware, you are missing out on the real revolution of the last few years. The splitting of processing from the hardware doing it.

I have no intention of ever buying expensive hardware again, realizing that Azure does everything I need it to. Datacentres filled with blade servers are far more efficient than a single CPU, regardless of size. they get rid of idle time, and make it possible to centralize your hardware costs. They also make auditing and compliance a lot easier - assuming your compliance people understand the concept too!

Technology steps from the past are very interesting as part of their time (remember the memory boards on 286's?) but are totally irrelevant today. Today its about some thing as a service, and I'm fine with that. I am far more interested in making sure that the application that makes money carries on working,

Docker death blow to PaaS? The fat lady isn’t singing just yet folks

Docker and PaaS have a place in the future, but its not the same space, and maybe that is what's confusing the author. Yet again, the simple minded media believe in a zero sum future, where what docker actually offers is a kind of private PaaS.

The whole point of the way technology moves forward is that we get better tools for our individual roles. Its not about everybody stopping to use one technology, and starting to use another for the same solution. Personally I think there is a place for an embedded OS running Docker and using PaaS to store its data.

Or is that IoT, and suddenly IaaS is out of date?!

'The Internet of Things is like the Cloud 8 years ago' ... Boss of Dell's new IoT biz spills beans

So Dell decide to act all Novell and bring something totally out of proportion to the marketplace?

The insanity of companies not understanding IoT is mind blowing. You'd have thought we've seen this type of change happen so often, that it would be easier to work out what will happen?

For internet of things, think hardware equivalent of a class and an instance. Old school had a device which was a class. New school has IoT, which is your instance. It needs to be stupid cheap and does everything as virtually as it can. These will be like RFID's with enough processing power to do Docker.

The hardware will become so cheap it will be disposable. The clever money will be being able to take the data and do something new with it. Microsoft are already there with its various service bus options. IoT will be about messaging and big data processing. Who bought an R specialist recently?

Dell should focus on building nice looking ultra light laptops and damn good data centre servers because the rest of the market is going to disappear - in about 8 years!

Docker vs the container world: Techies rally around CoreOS-led spec

I'm still going to use Docker as the generic name for a container - although most people I speak to about this have no idea what I'm on about - its going to be a few years before containers are even as popular as VMWare in the world of business IT.

Popular crypto app uses single-byte XOR and nowt else, hacker says

Get a grip!

They never claimed it was military grade - its designed to stop your files being copied to another machine and viewed without permission. Its not designed to stop the NSA or the Cartel from viewing your sex tapes.

What is it with security geeks that they think everyone needs AES256 or higher for their personal files?

You don't use a F1 car to go to the shopping centre because its not appropriate, even though its the best form of vehicle technology available.

Time for getting expectation back to reality

Midlife crisis, suck ingenuity? Microsoft turns 40; does the dad dance

Been a hater - but Bill helped me earn a living

The first time I hated Microsoft was when they introduced Windows 2 and the trick of renaming a file with a hidden character for security was killed off instantly! I hated Windows 95 because it bypassed DOS during loading. Then there are a million things I hated Microsoft for, and I thought I could find salvation in Linux. It worked for a while, RedHat was immune to the Millennium bug, unlike Office 97!

But, and its a big but - My MCP and other various letters ensured I have been able to put food on the table for the past few decades. Microsoft made it possible to get paid for fixing computers. As it became easier to fix them, I left it to the open source crowd and got into the more complex stuff. I now use BizTalk for a US company and so Microsoft is still helping to put food on my table.

It only needs to be around for another 20 odd years, and I'll get a carriage clock - and I'm sure MS will be a part of that too! :-)

It's the EU and me against the world – Euro digi-chief

No enforcement means it really doesn't matter!

The US is, unlike the EU, very happy to enforce its rules in places its laws shouldn't be (FATCA is a great example) where the EU seems to think people naturally self enforce laws, the fools!

Anyone want a long term bet on if the EU ever find out that nobody, who are not looking for a grant, cares a bit what it thinks? ;-)

Over 50? Out of work? Watch out because IT is about to eat itself

IT skills are not all equal

I can see 50 coming towards me but I'm not worried.

I moved from management back into technical a year or two ago. Simple rule. Don't work for small companies or small customers. Old school skills are best used in industries that appreciate best practice.

Find one of those jobs.

World's mega-rich tax dodge exposed: Meet the HSBC IT bloke at the heart of damning leak

Didn't realise it was so long ago!

So an IT bod, decides to run off with 100 Gb of data from a bank and finding that he can't sell it, he decides to go all julian assange! What's the story?

His moral outrage is neutralized by what he did having broken enough written and unwritten laws to make sure nobody will ever trust him again with their data.

The legal issue doesn't even exist in that EU law is not relevant in Switzerland, and advising people of the law abroad is also not illegal.

Since the US successfully introduced their worldwide financial laws (how do their enforce such a thing, except through raw threats?), the EU wants to do the same, and this story is helping bring it into the social agenda.

While I seem to be in the minority opinion that Tax is theft, it does seem to me that far too many people think there is something illegal in not paying too much tax. Funny enough, none of these people are willing to pay bonus tax - maybe just a few percent of their annual wage?

Not paying too much tax isn't just a rich thing then?

UK air traffic mega cockup: BOTH server channels failed - report

Re: So magic number on *two* systems didn't match up.

Its not random at all -

11000001 (128 + 64 + 1).

Seems quite obvious to me why 193 is the chosen number!