Posts by Fred Daggy 650 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Sep 2018
Ink Tanks you say?
Well sorry (not sorry), HP. Too little too late. Bought a nice MFP, laser, and I had great satisfaction in ensuring that the manufacturer selection did NOT include HP. Not even passively dismissed, pro-active action to exclude you. As I did for my PC purchase, and will be recommending the same for the next round of enterprise printer purchases (all laser, except actual printing department, which is a different beast).
The board will ALWAYS, ALWAYS find a way to avoid this if they can. The can afford the lawyers. Meanwhile, they will hang the rank and file out to dry.
Jail for those doing this and jail x 10 for the members of the Board. If you're on the board, you're in charge and the buck stops with YOU.
I suspect theft and to a lesser extent vandalism might be an initial problem, but one that self-solves. Mainly by sudden applications of several hundred tons of fast moving train. (See also "Darwin Awards"). Noted that live cables don't necessarily stop copper theft, which should also be self-solving problem. "Self-Selecting group" might have nine lives.
I hope that any train drivers and other personnel are not affected by the self-selecting group of idiots.
This whole AC post is a good excercise in negging. The points raised are non-issues.
"The area between the rails is tiny compared to available building roof space" What? Yes, for a single building. But there are thousands of linear kilometers of tracks multiplied by 1 meter wide or so. In Switzerland alone. Most buildings go up to, about, what 100m2 or there abouts?
*the railway is dirty and other than on the most lightly trafficked branches* The railways usually use .... electricity. At least here they do. And no they are not dirty. Other countries may use diesel. Has the UK moved out of the coal era yet?
Yes, the tracks could be subject to being covered in snow. But it's been like that since railways were invented. And the have a solution : A massive freaking snow blower. Also works for a few leaves.
I am disappointed by the "only 6 years" of support. I know I can install Linux on my Intel Mac, but this one still has more than enough grunt.
Even another year or two of purely security updates would be nice. I hope the installation and update servers stay online, just in case one ever needs to re-install.
They have students. Thousands and thousands of low paid, success starved, not yet quite cynical enough (but getting there) post-grad students.
They are cheaper and more expendable, and (another STP), haven't have education wasted on them yet.
Why would you waste money on AI?
1 - Do NOT install an Oracle product unless you're willing to become a millionaire (of course, you would have to have started as a billionaire - otherwise, YMMV )
2 - Do NOT install your office suite with Access. No quick and dirty, no proof of concept, no installs, no screen mockups. NO. I'd nearly say the same about Excel, but even I can't BoFH my way past that many bean counters. But you can nuke thier macros on security grounds.
There is probably a third rule but after ensuring the above 2 apply, everything else is pretty easy.
Just for the record: All so-called "Free markets" tend toward a monopoly. Or, at best, a cosy duopoly - with strict informal rules and anti-competetive behaviour.
Funny thing is, when markets are state controlled, it is normally already a monopoly. With strict formal rules and anti-competetive legislation. Just go there faster.
Anyway, what was the point I was trying to make?
I'm not sure why governments are rushing hand over fist to tempt big bit-barns to the backyard. Aside from a temporary construction blip, they contribute nothing long term to the infrastructure. There is very little long term employment compared to the resources they use. Do US states tax by square meter? Those at the top of the top of the programmer tree and senior managers (c-Level) are a rare bunch and most move according to lifestyle and outright financial incentives that probably cost the state more. Those programmers at the low end are all in Low Cost Countries in IT sweatshops and AI is weilding a sythe through the programming and systems engineering middle class.
Better to encourage some actual manufacturing or other value-added production. At least then, you know the competition is mainly China.
So the best argument against a monoculture at a specific level (iOS) is to force a monoculture (all devices)? Wait ... what?
The Chrome/Chromium monoculture needs to stop. It has clear that Firefox has lost the battle and the war. So, it becomes "Help me Safari on iOS, you're my only hope".
If you want openness and competition, then split Google's Browser division out from Google (and Edge from MS where applicable). Prevent Chrome being installed by default on Andriod devices as well. Then the argument about Safari on iOS holds some weight.
No, it's a logical, if not entirely moral or ethical choice.
VMware build up x billions of capital in the form of goodwill and patents over a decade. That's from satisfied customers, happy Administrators, calm Service Desk personnel, etc. Anyone in the ecosystem that used their own time to build up expertise in VMware.
Broadcom have said, ok, we can buy at $X Billion, but we can get $Y Billion of revenue in the next 5 years. So long as Y > X, profit. They are turning the VMWare capital into Broadcom revenue. Plus the revenue (not a misprint) of extortionate locked-in sales. After 5 years, they will write off VMWare at value zero, having exhausted the good will, flog off the patents to another player and find a new target.
I wish you much success. It will help make documents better and easier for the world.
There is just one small problem, that is, people. Most of them can't write a damn. Some can barely use capital letters and full stops. The greatest tagging system in the world is no one even thinks about the structure of their document. Graph images are missing scale, title and axes, let alone a text version. And 101% have different ideas on what the damn document should look like. But if you could beat them into submission, I'd say you've done a great service to humanity.
PDF does a good job of (sometimes) looking ok.
Theoretically, it looks the same everywhere. But, lack of semantics (for example: is that a paragraph, or does the line just end? Is that a double space or a new paragraph?) makes machine parsing impossible.
Case in point. Try converting any reasonably complex PDF document to an EPUB for reading elsewhere. It's not the tool's fault, the specification just doesn't provide those details. Intelligent guesses have to be made.The results can leave the eye twitching.
So, I propose encode everything in PDF to throw a spanner in the AI machine.
Modern ones have a motor that mean they run for many kms without wires. Useful if the wires cover serveral routes and then branch off (as just one example).
Unlike a Hybrid (car), the motor weight is less significant for the trolleybus (still not zero, though). I've not paid any attention if they are conventionally powered, or diesel-electric.
I will never, ever buy HP anything ever again.
Unless someone offers me a Laserjet III.
I have told family and friends, that I will not support HP anything, anywhere or at anytime except on payment of a 1,000 "local currency", in cash, per hour. Payable in advance. 10 times that for a commercial arrangement.
HP will never ever see a single cent/rappen/rupee or zloty of mine again.
If you value your sanity, do the same.
Not just bundling, it was one of the first tech to expoit the lax permissions on the user profile folders in Windows, other than viruses. Even if the user was not administrator, Chrome (and other Google Software) installed by using the users profile folders.
Tsk, Tsk. Maybe they are not administrators for a reason?
The Youtube algorith does not reward correct, coherant nor clear. Sadly.
It rewards views. The long the better (in order to insert more ads). The creators are just following the money. Click-bait, content-biat and view-bait, eventually you'll get to Master-bait.
If you have one DC then you absolutely MUST have a second. Or more, depending upon your environment. Never perform maintenance (eg patch) on them both at the same time.
So, a single loss of a DC isn't a big deal. As suggested above. Nuke it. Metadata cleanup. Re-install - FFS give it a new name, even if you must keep the IP address.
When replicaiton is finished THEN you reboot the other one.
This is "basic stuff 101".
PS: You can back up a Domain Controller, but you can never restore it. Write a 500 word paper on why not by Monday morning for 10% of your grade.
PPS: What do you mean you installed Exchange on the DC / File server on the DC / ERP on the DC? You don't.
"There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the best practices and planning charts and have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for thirty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal change request and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.
What do you mean you've never read the documentation and best practices? Apathetic bloody administrator, i've no sympathy at all"
Windows DOES have a single user mode. It is when the file renames are done. BUT, you can't access it nor do any work in it.
Architecturally, files are locked when in use by Windows. Not like unix where "everything is a file". So, should a patch need to replace a file, it can't do it live. It writes it to a placeholder and during the reboot, renames the file. And there can be a LOT of files to rename. There is a sysinternals tool to look at the pending renames if you're interested.
Yes, MS has released hotpatch and I haven't looked deeply into it, but I have heard that it basically has a special name for the new file and the algorithm that searches for the function in the DLL will move through the file and its later version until it finds the latest version. (Correct me if I am wrong, please). So its nothing really like hotpatching in unix where you can replace "files in use".
The recovery console and pre-execution environments are just cut down versions of windows with many services turned off. It's like they saw how unix worked and tried to emulate it, but couldn't kill enough services to actually make a true single-user mode. Its not even akin to busybox, where all the runtimes are build into a single executable.
Time and time again, we see the same thing.
You don't win the technology war with technology. Or Betamax would have won, minidisk would have won and countless other examples.
You win the technology war by winning the marketing war. "What is the problem that IPv6 is trying to fix"? The answer is not to make my printer globally addressable on the internet.
The answer is "There might not be enough global IP Addreses to route to your local LAN / Net".
You can debate if IPv6 is superior, or not. But you can't deny that the marketing around it sucked. While GLOBAL level players have adopted it, because it fixes problems on the national or global scale, it helps Johnny local IT guy not one whit.
"This report is of the utmost importance" ... and other business lies.
It is of the utmost importance that the user appear busy creating the report. Or perhaps their department is kept busy. But 9 times out of 10, no one, but no one reads the report.
I had a wonderful one at a former employer. Very important report. (er, VIR? rather than VIP) and was dutifully sent out monthly. To an impressive sounding mailing list. Which, upon investigation, was empty as the users at the site had been laid off a year prior. The one person in the org who could have used it, worked at our local site looked at it : "Er, don't need it. And it's wrong anyway".
Jobs change, business needs change. But one thing you can count on is no one ever, ever thinks to ask if task "X" is really necessary.
Once in a while, one report or process will be necessary, but my money on "NOT".
"Don't call us, we'll call ERROR UNDEFINED 0x00008032 exception", as would say a Microsoft HR Bot
Will then blue screen, reboot, spinny ciricle for 30 minutes, rolling back updates, reboot, rollback more updates taking 60 minutes and then sit there with a bitlocker key prompt
FTFY
Luxury! Now we, we had it tough
In my day, we had to cat a file to UUencode, while we were in elm, having written out the address with all the right bangs. Then we'd hope that we hadn't filled the spooler disk and we waited until the next scheduled connection to the main university over ISDN. Which them might make it to the US.
(So, where indeed is an icon for four gentelmen of Yorkshire extraction?)
Seems that rewards are only for the C-Suite, not for the working plebs.
Sign a contract, work hard, acheive stellar levels ... get stiffed. I can see that a deal with Salesforce can be basically changed whenever they like. Thus, I'm making a mental note to put them in the same bin as Oracle.
"Let them eat cake", indeed.
No, it wants EVERY customer paying a 7 figure sum to them.
Short term win here. Is and will be massively profitable in the next 3 to 5 years. After that, few (but very profitable) customers. No maket-share, no mindshare, no flow of cheap technicians that can implement the product and essentially to the marketing from within. VMware techs will be like getting a 40 year old with business knowledge and 15 years of Cobol skills. The tech will stagnate as there is pressure to increase profits even more. Then, disruption from someone else.
Every reasonably complex IT product takes BOFH and PFY to run. Run out of these and you just wont get the success stories that are the IT equivalent of "Viral Marketing". No more though, trust is broken.
After that, VMWARE will be a note in the business text books at Universities. (See also Novell circa release of Windows NT - any they had market share and mindshare and Novell techs everywhere and are now a footnote in history).
Unpopular opinions: Shell and usability is setting new lows in likeability and function since 2K. Of those, 7 was the least worst. Kernel has been getting better since XP Sp3 but impoved leaps and bounds from 7 upwards.
Security has been tracking downwards since the days of BillG. Just too much legacy.
Jeebus, hasn't any council a list of priority works (aka "wishlist"). When that shit happens, retitle the last wishlist and resubmit.
Hell, when SWMBO asks "What are you thinking" ... the answer is always "Who would win a battle between zombie orangutangs and vampire wolfhounds on the moon". You just have to be ready.
Having seen the damn straitjacket that the ERP enforced at a former employer, I’m not sure if any “off the shelf” product are fit for purpose.
They are so hideously complex that no one can understand them. Not what business functions they should support, nor how it works underneath. The business processes require so much customisation to fit the business, it’s better to fit the business to the function (tail wagging dog). Users (non IT, non tech savvy-financial ones) don’t know WHAT the buttons mean. Literally, “for my job I do to this menu and enter this, because the other system told me to”. They really don’t know WHY they are doing it, or even what information they are really giving it. Maybe the person employed in the role when the system went in knew what the data means. But, you know, human nature means the job transfer wasn’t complete, or documented, and no one read the documentation and its now lost. In the end, garbage data mangled by a system no one understands.
Suddenly these mainframes (and IBM is the only game in town, now) and ancient COBOL codebases don’t seem such a bad idea. Business process that haven’t changed in decades.
I think its 30% WAAAAY over my experience.
In everyday life, I think its around 5 to 10% by volume of customers. Seen a LARGE number of people withdrawing cash from the bank and then going to their safe deposit boxes, though.
Negative interest rates as well as a wealth tax will do that. That being said, there should always be the option of cash.
Little Johnny is at school when the teacher asks each student what their father does for a living.
One child says, “My dad is a doctor.”
Another says, “My dad is a firefighter.”
When it’s Johnny’s turn, he says, “My dad is a piano player in a brothel.”
The teacher is shocked but moves on. Later that day she calls Johnny’s father to discuss the comment.
Johnny’s father sighs and says, “Look… I’m actually a Microsoft support engineer. But I didn’t want my son to be embarrassed in front of the class.”
---
The GF knows the drill and backs the story - I completely lie about what I do for a living when I meet people. If I tell them I work in IT, the first question is "I have a problem, $X_MS_PROGRAM, does $Y_ANNOYING_THING, how do I stop it?" and expect free support, for life.
The requirement for being a good consultant is the ability to be a good consultant (eg, milk as much money for as long as possible from the client while avoiding any responsability). That's what pays the bills and that's the focus. Giving good advice and helping the client is quite a long way down the list of priorities.
Quite different from being an in-house employee and needing to actually provide some productive output.
