Posts by Gerhard Mack
188 posts • joined Wednesday 4th April 2007 21:36 GMT
too many models
They seem to have taken the "too many models" complaint to heart. This year they have done the opposite and released too few,. Extra frustrating since former Desire Z owners like me now have no upgrade path and are left looking for a new manufacturer when replacement time comes.
Re: HMRC system is the worst I've encountered...
For me it's a tossup between Telefonica Spain and UPS.
UPS because it demands I speak the 18 Character and I know it will fail be cause the system chokes on my Canadian accent every time. It will repeat the number back to me in a monotone artificial slow speaking voice with the digits wrong and when it realizes it has failed it will ask me to repeat the process twice more before giving up and passing me to an actual human to sort it out.
Telefonica because of their chipper First verse (and only the first verse) of Be Ok by Ingrid Michaelson in a tight loop.
"I just want to be ok, be ok, be ok
I just want to be ok today
I just want to be ok, be ok, be ok
I just want to be ok today "
Ask yourself how long you can stand to hear that before homicidal urges become irrepressible and consider that their hold times are well over half an hour. Picture half an hour to an hour of hearing that stupid verse repeatedly. Even the BOFH was never so sadistic.
Re: Concert spending
There is a missing category: people like me who download what they can't buy. I'm here in Spain and where can I even pay for the shows I like to watch? Most video streaming services lock me out for being in Spain. anything on TV will be badly dubbed into Spanish (Spanish voice actors are terrible).
And here is the best part. I believe authors should be compensated. I have an extensive DVD/Blue-Ray/CD collection and I try to grab whatever series I like that come out on DVD but more than half the time there is no one willing to even take my money.
Re: Riiigghhtt
Because they've gotten fat and lazy doing it? In the case of Cisco, they are overpriced, the command set changes according to the model, security updates are a pain to get your hands on, and worse yet some basic features are insecure by default and require extended options to make them secure. (SSH1 by default, SSH2 requires the Advanced encryption pack)
Re: Available in all good shops?
I have yet to see reasonably priced hardware with multiple ports. The last time I needed something along these lines I ended up building my own.
https://www.innerfire.net/pics/projects/21portfirewall/21portfirewall_2.jpg
Re: I don't get it.
IT people don't mind change for the right reasons, it's the end user that absolutely hates it. Just look at the noise Facebook gets every time it revamps it's interface.
Now consider how upset users get with each minor change and you wonder why on earth Microsoft thought changing everything was a good idea. Users like familiar and tend to want retraining on each little change. They want those little step by step "click here now click there" guides they depend on to be accurate.
With Windows 8 I'm hearing more noise from the people I know who least understand computers than I do from the IT pros. IT people just change settings and install addons until they have what they want.
Re: Outstanding
There is no need to go through all DDs that got declined, just the ones with messages the system didn't manage to parse on it's own.
Re: What the task says about the asker.
No longer speaking to IT? You act like this is a new problem when it's been happening for pretty much as long as we have had IT departments.
The real issue is that managers often don't like to hear dissenting voices even if they are completely correct. The results are predictable: Ask one of my previous employers about the kit he bought and based an entire business model on that ended up being useless because it simply wasn't designed for the distance he needed it to work. Guess who got blamed for it not working? The very IT people they didn't bother to consult in the first place.
Re: Its true.
I'm in the "have no idea camp". I used to be a happy HTC Desire Z user but that phone is just getting old and HTC is discontinuing phones with keyboards in favor of "me too" touch screen only devices and it seems like all of the good keyboard phones with Android are for the US market only.
Re: connection comes with a 99 per cent contract guarantee
As someone with several years experience connecting servers to both networks and power sources with 99.999% uptime guarantees I can tell you exactly what they are worth: nothing. When the connection goes dead they pro rate the time you were down and refund that amount.
Out for an hour? lets say you pay $1000 a month for your rack. Assuming 30 days that is 720 hours in the month $1.30 an hour. Your refund after an hour of being off-line? $1.30. And that is standard operating practice for the industry. I have yet to see 99% actually ever be 99%
XFS
You mean the XFS that, comes with everything except an online FS repair? I have had to boot far too many XFS systems with Linux rescue CD just to run the FS repair to have any love for that FS.
"I tend to find though after a couple of years you need to ditch an old email and sign up for a new one as eventually no matter how hard you try to keep it off the radar it will become full of spam."
Hurray for Bayesian filtering. I've had my email address for 13 years now where it's been on websites and posted to mailing lists that forward to newsgroups. Since my last anti spam upgrade I only get a few spam emails per day.
Re: Still a fail...
It actually does require them to stump up a bond.
The main problem is that most registrars haven't implemented support for uploading the needed DS keys needed for DNSSEC yet. Other than that, there aren't many downsides. On my system I had to switch Registrars and implement some changes to how I update my zone files but since then it has been working flawlessly.
Re: DNSSEC and GSLB
It's not that difficult to sign zone files. I have scripts that I've tested on my personal server that handle the resigning after zone file updates and am about to roll them out to my employer's servers.
Not a lot of money?
If they split evenly (unlikely) That's €90909 each or €7575 monthly. Given that the median wage in Spain is €1400 they should be able to live pretty well off of that. Of course, if they aren't living anywhere near Madrid, the money will go even farther.
@Eenymeeny
> As to the other points, it's about 100% compatibility.
No such thing. There is a problem now where we get Power Point slides for guest speakers that work prefectly on their system with their version of Office but load mangled or refuse to even load on our version. In the end, I installed LibreOffice on the machine as well to at least read the worst cases.
Worst case procedure:
1. Import in LO and resave.
2. Read the presentation with our version of office and edit so it looks roughly how it is supposed to.
3. Load the fixed presentation into our presentation software (uses MS Office to render the slides)
Don't talk to me about 100% compatibility.
Posted in Seagate squeezes out 4TB desktop monster
Re: But at what price
>I suppose you would just buy the USB drive and pull it out of the case for a sata-III install.
Be careful trying that these days. I have had at least one drive come to me for repair that had the USB3 connector built into the drive's electronics directly rather than the USB -> SATA adapter were all used to.
@DanceMan Re: Sorry, wrong.
Last month I had 2 infected machines in my office so I downloaded a bootable Anti Virus CD from one of the more popular companies and was shocked that it was a bootable Linux CD.
Re: No surprise, I predict that there will be more to come
An extended header would have left us in pretty much exactly the position we are in now only with slower header processing (a big deal for routers), no one would have bothered to implement them until the last moment.
One of the main reasons they chose 128 bits was because the designers couldn't see a way to extend the addressing and they knew the transition would be painful so they decided to make it large enough that there wouldn't need to be another transition in the foreseeable future. That's hardly "ivory tower"
Re: No surprise, I predict that there will be more to come
Well you know what they say: "anything is easy if you don't know what you are talking about". IPv4 is a fixed length header field so there was no way to just expand the address length. DNS allows both address formats and IPv6 addressable machines can also have an IPv4 address. The ideal plan was for IPv6 to coexist with IPv4 and then phase out IPv6 when IPv6 was ready. The problem was that everyone waited for everyone else to go first so the ISPs didn't bother because there was no software support and the OS providers didn't bother because there were no uses yet.
To put it simply: we had over a decade to do this the easy way but everyone waited until the last possible moment and now the transition will be painful. Don't blame the IPv6 designers for stupid people who can't see the benefit of spending money on anything that doesn't bring a result before the next quarter.
Re: Like this
The sad thing is I bet a lot of people would happily pay $100 for an attempt at selling him ideas to invest in.
Windows isn´t the largest downside
It is the fact that they feel compelled to tell you what addons you can use with your device. Just try swapping the WiFI card sometime. It will fail to boot with an "unauthorized device" error.
I am the unhappy owner of an E520 and I will never buy another Thinkpad until they get it into their heads that if I pay money for the machine than it is MY machine and I am the only one who can decide what is authorized or not.
@Loyal Commenter
Much easier if your language of choice has a library function for it in PHP it's:
filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)
Re: Even worse; trying to change email...
I try to unsubscribe once if I know it is a store I signed up with and if that fails their IP gets moved to my mail server's black list with an SMTP error message explaining exactly why I added the block.
Life is so much less annoying that way.
Re: Erm...
>On another (kind of related) note, I can't wait to ditch Windows for gaming. Come on Mr Newell, get your >bloody finger out!
Steam for Linux is in open beta with Team Fortress 2 available for download.
@illiad Re: h.264
Unless you are downloading in high definition (720P or better) in which case the dominant container is MKV.
Re: Comment wisdom
@Mark Honman
I agree with 90% of what you wrote but you lost me at the less than 20 lines bit.
1 short functions can be great for things you have to do 50 times and as stated previously the compiler can just inline to improve efficiency.
2. In C they are great for forcing type safety around generic libraries that lose type safety. A good example of this is the function pointers in one of the products in our office. The code has certain options depending on where the calls happen in the protocol so short wrappers can be used to ensure that only the correct functions are added to the list of options. (before anyone brings this up. The items also depend on what modules are loaded so switch() wouldn't even work.)
Re: Standardisation.
There already is a single method of bypassing DPI. It's called SSL/TLS.
Re: All eggs in one basket
Aside from the problem handing every customer an easily duplicated way to open the door in the future, most mechanical locks can be easily circumvented with a bump key.
Posted in Ten Linux apps you must install
Re: I've been using Linux since mid-late 1993 (Slackware).
>"By the way, what do you do when someone sends you a .doc or even a .docx file?"
>manolo@quokka:~$ strings foo.doc
Use "catdoc" instead. The output tends to be much more readable.
Re: The problem with autoconf...
Except that autoconf doesn't really work in a frightening number of examples. In many cases, if the library is new, the programmer who set up autoconf won't have known to add a check for it causing a compile failure rather than the helpful error message it was designed for. The other common mistake is for autoconf to be set to export the report on what libraries exist and then not handle any of the possible results.
I would say most of the time autoconf does nothing except run a ridiculous tests and everyone just assumes it is working because it spends a lot of time doing things and displaying cryptic output and that's why I end up just using shell scripts for my projects.
Re: Simple solution
Better than that, buy an actual keyboard designed for industrial use. You can get washable keyboards that actually feel like a proper keyboard. Mine for instance is an HP and I stick it under the tap once a month or so just to keep it clean. It costs a bit (but not much) more but the investment is worth it.
If we all stopped tolerating crap keyboards the manufacturers would have to actually start producing quality again.
@h4rm0ny
I love android but I would never want that interface on my desktop so I don't see the connection.
It could have been worse.
Imagine if there had been a business critical EC2 instance attached to that account rather than just ebooks.
Re: "community" "open source".. just smoke screens...
Businesses often find it easier to pay a developer on an open source project than pay for a support contract and several of the databases (postgresql for instance)get their development payed for that way. The advantage to that is that since the developers will be the first to suffer if there are any bugs, the releases tend to care more about performance and stability and prefer feature additions that are useful rather than flashy.
they came back in my office
Not long ago one of my co workers sold my boss on the tablet concept and he went out and bought a tablet for everyone in the office. Once he tried his for a bit he discovered he didn't like it so he replaced it with another and then another. Now he has tried tablets from pretty much ever vendor and guess what he uses? None of them. He went back to his desktop machine and got a netbook for when he is travelling. None of my co workers use their tablets much anymore, they all went back to their desktops.
When you need to do a lot of data entry you really need a keyboard and if you spend hours on your computer you really need a desktop since it's more ergonomic. Personally I have a home PC, a work PC, A notebook for when I'm on the road and a smart phone to look things up if I'm on the train or bus(well that and play games/ listen to music while I commute).
Re: Just one question
The real problem was that the PDF reader had the rights to install a rootkit to begin with. The best case result with a fully authenticated boot and system files is that the malware would then be sitting in memory until the next phone reboot and that could be months away in some cases.
Re: Go away
Th reality though, is that Google is doing exactly what their customers wanted when they started downgrading "vertical search engines".
Do you have any idea how annoying it is to search for some product only to have the first page return a bunch of sites that only show links to other sites? To top it off some of the vertical search engines only showed filler pages because they didn't have any info on what I'm looking for.
If I want to use another search I can (and sometimes do) go right ahead and use one rather than use Google but when using Google I'd rather not even see them.
Re: Building regs!
Indeed and Spain takes it to absolutely hilarious levels. A couple of years ago I had an American friend who was living illegally in Spain while working as an English teach for the Spanish Interior Ministry. She even showed me her building access card and parking pass to prove it.
Re: This article is pish
Some developers? That includes Cisco.
A couple of years back a simple Java security patch made my browser incompatible with the firewall's web interface.
Re: Presumably the next stage
You need to put those dishes up against the Paella de Pato Picante that I've had one of the local restaurants in Torrelodones - La Colonia inflict on the local populace. It is always fun to watch the Spanish suffer through two helpings of that.
Re: MUCH worse than WindowsME.
Windows ME's problem was that it was not designed to benefit the consumer.
Windows 9x had a feature that allowed DOS programs to suspend Windows and take over the system. It was there to keep compatibility with some old DOS based software but was primarily used by games. The problem for MicroSoft was that BEOS discovered that it enabled a workaround to MS' "no dual boot" cause in the OEM agreements since BEOS was simply being loaded as an app from the desktop (then reboot back into windows when you are done).
I doubt it was any coincidence that right after several OEMs started installing BEOS on the desktop that MicroSoft rushed out a new version of Windows whose only real change was to disable that feature and since OEMs can only install the latest version of Windows the BEOS loader was effectively dead.
Re: @postfix or something else?
@Trevor_Pott
It sounds like postfix was using system accounts for delivery. That is the default and good for small setups but far from ideal when it comes to larger setups. I am not an expert on LDAP but I dug this up for you and I hope it helps.
http://tom.scholten.nu/weblog/postfix_ldap_howto
Re: For [Insert Diety here] sake
Using standard ports as a honey pot only works if you have total control over who connects to your system and over what links. The idea fails badly if you ever have offices in more than one country or have people who work from home.
Do you want to be the guy to explain to a paying client why their whole office can't connect just because someone ran some software on it's default settings?
@storner Re: For [Insert Diety here] sake
I have an office full of web devs that use SCP with key to transfer files to the server. That's 6 people running SSH connections through our single outgoing IP so take a guess what blindly allowing only 2 connections attempts per minute would do to their ability to get work done.
Fail2ban is a better option since it only punishes the bad users rather than everyone equally.
@Re: postfix or something else?
In more modern distros "apt-get install postfix" is enough to get a running mail system hosting whatever domain you want with a local mail store and an external mail server for sending if you so desire.
I don't see how you consider it hard to use postfix with LDAP since postfix supports it natively and it's mostly just a matter of putting "LDAP:" instead of whatever other store you could have used.
It also has some nice config items I use to restrict message size, ban certain attachments etc before the message reaches my mostly perl based filters.
@Rampant Spaniel
Indeed, and the same goes for Spain. Madrid is tourist crap and you are better off hopping on the Cercaneas and going north to a place like Torrelodones where the locals don't tolerate bad food.
something has been going wrong with google lately
I can't add to my serch block list either so I'm thinking someone really bungled a site upgrade.
