Posts by jeff_w87 39 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jan 2017
Maybe it's time to put together a class action lawsuit for all the damage the last 3 months or so of Microsoft patches have caused with SQL, Active Directory, Windows 10/11, etc.? The lack of vetting of these patches and updates before being released into the wild is getting kind of ridiculous to say the least!
We bought a few of these for a backnet solution a few years ago as a test case and they worked great (also 1/3 the cost of a comparable Cisco solution)! Easy to manage, configure and secure since it's Linux based. Also available for Mellanox switches as well if you don't want to go the "white box" route. Might be worth a look for anyone looking to move on from Cisco's lack of support for their products.
If Microsoft can't even properly patch the OS on their Servers or Desktops (and this month is just the latest example of their poor QA process), why do we keep pushing this crap on our users? Anyone who has any say so in the future direction of their network infrastructure should be pushing for alternative OSes where applicable.
That's pretty much any of their licensing guides. No idea why it takes 42 pages (2019 SQL Server Licensing Guide) to explain (I use that word loosely as by the time I get through the document I'm more confused than when I started) how to properly license SQL Server. At this point I really push people who are looking for a database option to the open source alternatives if applicable to their use case. It's time to try and wean ourselves off the Microsoft product line where feasible as their prices and data collection practices are getting untenable.
1. Don't connect your network to the Internet (sorry, people you can no longer pretend to work from home)
2. Don't use Microsoft products on your network.
3. Spend the money to properly secure and monitor your network (i.e. hire a competent network/SA team, pay them properly and buy appropriate resources/equipment to help protect your network and configure them properly).
It's not easy, but if you want security you have to make sacrifices.
All the shortcuts on my home Windows PC all of sudden ended up with a .url extension and would no longer work. Removing the .url extension from the name did not help either. It would be really nice if Microsoft would spend some of their billions to actually, properly QC this trash OS before sending out patches to have their users Beta test for them.
About 50% of those people "working from home" are only pretending to work, but still getting a full paycheck while those of us who actually go to work have to carry the load for the slackers. It really comes down to a management problem as no one is held accountable or metrics tracked for the work they do and people will and do take advantage of that.
I'm not sure Windows is any better with all the "telemetry" it sends back to Microsoft and who knows else. At least with Linux you can examine the source code since it's open source and see if there's anything odd going on there. With Windows you just have to trust Microsoft, which I do less and less with every release of Windows.
Intel: It'd be a shame if some of that sweet taxpayer money didn't make it into our hands - we might just have to slow down or curtail our buildout.
These American owned Corporations have no loyalty to our Country which has enabled them and their executives to become rich beyond their wildest dreams due to the freedoms of our Country enabling them to grow and prosper. It's all about the greed. At the end of the day, it wasn't China that "stole" jobs from America - it was the American Corporations who shipped those jobs overseas just so they could make a bigger profit. Anything made overseas by an American company and imported back to the US should be hit with tariffs to curtail this behavior of chasing cheap labor they can exploit.
Does MS even test this crap before they push it out to their users any more? Maybe it's time for users to engage them with a class action lawsuit for damages suffered for hours lost having to fix what what should have been tested properly before being pushed. You've also got the issue that since most all patches are included in one big patch instead of a bunch of little ones that your machine is left vulnerable to additional issues that could impact the security of your network and home or business resulting in, potentially, other damages that could be sued for.
Obviously it is. Same for the really old version of log4j that ships with SQL server - MS says it's not a problem, but it is as well. Wish we could all dump all the MS "insecure by default" OS and Applications. Any Government or Defense Department on this planet should ban MS software from running on their networks, especially if it's a connected system.
This is why moving your "stuff" to the cloud is probably not the best option for a lot of people. Centralized target for hackers of all stripes and a central point of failure when someone on staff screws up an update or maintenance activity. This happens way too often with all these big players and the fact that they promise resiliency with their cloud offerings, it just doesn't seem to pan out and customers are down for hours or days. Hopefully their customers in this case, since it looks like they've violated their SLA will be getting some major refunds, but I'm sure the CEO will still get his/her bonus for the year.
Having to run this in an offline environment while keeping it patched is a nightmare due to all the bloat in the packages. A couple of months in a row, offline patching will work fine, and then things will just blow up in your face necessitating a complete removal and install (MS offline documentation for this is abysmal!). Online systems it seems to work fine on, offline however, I absolutely hate this application.
As much as I despise Donald Trump, I don't think this is necessarily a bad idea (full disclosure: I work in the IT field). If you're going to be bringing in a VISA applicant they should be paid the same as an equivalent American worker. Same pay for the same work. Companies go for cheap labor at the expense of the American labor force (profit and investors before country).
If you're buying a system today you should also look at the performance hits Intel has been taking lately on their various chips due to Spectre, Meltdown, etc., etc. flaws. AMD has been affected less and with the products they're putting out today, they're out performing Intel in a lot of areas so definitely worth a consideration if you can't get Intel parts.
If only Oracle would take all this money that they're throwing into this and other legal challenges and instead use it to make their products better and perhaps even cheaper - then maybe they might be competitive. Instead they throw legal tantrums when they don't get their way just a like a two year old throwing a fit when they don't get what they want.
Pot calling the kettle black here. I think the real problem is that Edge hardly worked properly at all on most sites. Every time it was given a chance by me it failed. Chrome and Firefox seem pretty rock solid nowadays; however, I can't say the same for much that comes out of Redmond anymore (maybe they should hire some QA personnel again vice using their users as guinea pigs???).
The big question is now: How much money did IBM and Oracle (and probably a few other potential vendors not named Amazon) give to these two? As we all know, America's government is bought and paid for by the highest bidder nowadays (thanks Citizen's United!). Maybe one day we can take it back at the polls, maybe institute some term limits and major limits on lobbying for elected officials. Pipe dream, I know....
If HP(E) would build things like they used to (i.e. quality) then they might not be seeing a loss of sales. Even the support has gotten much worse. We had a new server we bought in the last year that came with a bad RAID card. The system had a next business day warranty, but it took two weeks to get it repaired since HP didn't have the replacement parts in stock. Since then, we've been buying Dell hardware and have been very happy with the change.
If you've had to deal with their support lately (both HP and HPE), you'll find that the split did neither side any favors. It just took 2 weeks to get a keyboard replaced on a laptop and another 5 days on a server issue (we have NBD support) because they didn't have the repair parts on hand. This is not to mention that their tech support site is currently broken (open a new ticket, get errors about 50% of the time and then try to go look at your ticket once it seems to actually be in the system and get an "access denied" error). We're pretty much going to not be buying HP or HPE products again.
$73,000 is only .004 percent of the over $18,000,000 received as compensation by the CEO of Verizon in 2015 according to salary.com. He could donate this out of his own pocket and write it off on his taxes, but then greed is something that CEO's and Verizon, in particular, are very, very good at.
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