Posts by OzBob

If you want real brand-name-association,

"Audi", its german for "overpaid wanker".

Bring back Toxteth O'Grady!

(Cue flames from UC fans).

So, (from down here in the antipodes)

does that mean all pr0n is blocked permanently in the UK, or just by default and can be switched off?

I see what you mean about the moat and the stilts

http://www.equinix.com/locations/netherlands-colocation/amsterdam-data-centers/am3

From Bedrooms to Billions

Am surprised no movie review as it got released about a week ago. It charts the rise and fall of the UK games industry, and for me, does a fairly good job. It runs to 2.5 hours, and has some real cred for the people it manages to track down.

http://www.frombedroomstobillions.com/

If you ever had to load a game off tape, you will very much enjoy this movie!

Dear Tyler Durden

We all work (more or less) 40 hours a week, so there is little extra effort expended to gain labour saving devices. Rather, it is lost opportunity cost, specifically what else could the money have been spent on.

Show me the logistics

So NZ has an "Area 5.1", where the NSA is operating. Please, give me a break. Somehow they are drawing power, installing hardware, filling the coffee machines on a site big enough to slurp massive amounts of data and not being discovered. Wake me up when someone geo-tags the location.

Came back down under after 11 years in England

Was planning to retire but had to find another gig. Was running a large Server infrastructure across multiple countries / time zones / currencies, here I am just a basic sysadmin-for-hire. New Zealand and Australia are a "lifestyle block" in terms of IT (Think "The Good Life" vs a proper farm). They try to big up the innovation side but there is not enough money or scope to build big systems, so it's fringe and small-scale work mostly.

4chan will have to create a whole new category

"lonely tech blokes caught having a w*nk on their security cameras".

Has anyone noticed

how much larger the disasters are getting? How long before we have "the big one" which wipes out life as we know it? Genetic engineering of crops causing famine, large hadron collider "rebooting" the universe, icelandic volcano starting a new ice age. The Emmerich Brothers are the new Nostrodamuses!

Pegging is also called "Reverse A"

and usually costs an extra 20 quid (wear and tear, and cleaning I suppose). Oh, and when a hooker talks about A levels and O levels, they are not qualifications.

Let me break it down for you

Cameron Slater is the premier political blogger in New Zealand. His page hit-count outranks a lot of main stream newspapers. He is the son of the former president of the National (read: Tory) party. He speaks to the current NZ PM several times a year. (and you are right, it is Slater, not Smith.). He is a personal friend of the (former) Justice Minister.

Someone has selectively released hacked emails from Cameron Slaters private correspondence, which he himself chose not to release at the time for various reasons. A lot is quoted out of context. He is very good at getting to the bottom of things quickly, hence the suspicion of insider knowledge. He has admitted he has emails that detail the following that neither he nor the hacker has released,..

Two high ranking Labour (read: Labour) officials having affairs

Gay sex claims from a left (straight) politician

Illegal employment of spouses in parliamentary services

Spousal abuse by left-leaning politicians

(Full details here http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2014/09/david-cunliffes-challenge/)

It is interesting to note that none of these unproven revelations have made it to press, only the ones that damage the right. This is unfortunately hactivism taking a political slant, and being very selective in what it views. This is not in the public interest, like the expenses scandal. Surf his website, you might find an actual Journalist lurking down under here.

I don't get invited to sales meetings now

but the last one I had in the UK was with someone who was touting to "facilitate" a SAP upgrade. A few direct questions and all it turns out all he does is introduce us to the actual company doing the work, pockets 20K for doing so and then disappears. When I pointed this out, I asked "Unless Company Y has no Customer Relationship Managers or Salespersons, why do we need you?".

I also asked about CPU / Memory Capacity (as SAP is notorious for gobbling resources) and he refused to give a specific figure (no doubt afraid I would take an estimate as gospel - hey, been there, had that happen). The techie he had with him (bless his heart) really blindsided the guy by bringing up a planning PDF from SAPNet, showing how much we would expect to burn, so I thanked him and said "So it's not orders of magnitude different to our current capacity but we will need to verify at a later stage". Fortunately I left the country before the project started, so avoided that particular "hospital pass".

So, stealing emails to publish a book is OK?

As is refusing to produce your sources.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10385550/Key-stands-by-Judith-Collins-staffer-as-threats-fly

Kim Dot Blob's name is bandied around as the source of the hacked emails from a prominent NZ blogger with connections to the ruling National (read: Tory) party. No surprises there, he has form with breaching security. But a recent ruling in NZ is that books are not protected "journalism" so sources do have to be revealed. Looks like being an interesting election, muck-raking on both sides.

Data matching comes to passports

I can see a lot of "long-lost twins" being rediscovered that way.

Things have moved on from the 90s

when MCSE stood for Must Consult Someone Experienced. But even now I am dealing with DBAs and Application Administrators who have no critical thinking or analysis skills, despite a better academic qualification than me.

To wit, the conversation I had today...

Unix: "We need you to generate application load similar to a Production run, to allow us to benchmark the server and allow you to tune the application".

DBA: "how?"

Unix: "By creating test data or copying existing data and duplicating it"

DBA:"how?"

Unix:"By taking a copy from another system and restoring it to the test system"

DBA: "how?"

Unix: "You're just playing the thicko card to avoid having to do this, aren't you?"

DBA: "how?"

If they are looking for intelligent life,

then it's interesting to note they are pointing the disk away from Hamil-tron.

There's a shortage of laptops, so I am commandeering yours

Had a lunatic Data Centre Manager who under-estimated the number of laptops he required, so he opened the Cabinets of the HP XP512 Disk Arrays, removed the maintenance laptops inside and reformatted them and distributed them to users.

My co-worker only found out when he opened the cabinet at 2am on a support call. "Unimpressed" was one way of describing it.

At least the pr0n purveyors have caught up

and are offering 4K resolution downloads (got to love naughty america; they do keep up with the technology)

Trying to buy a laptop from Tiny Computers in England

When I moved to England, I tried to buy a laptop from a company called Tiny Computers (now defunct) and the PFY who was dealing with me refused to move on from the "No" answer when asked if I wanted the extended warranty (which he must have gained commission from). Eventually I said "if you do not move on from the question of the warranty, I will walk out right now". He moved on but tried to come back to the question later, so I walked out of the sales office, and ordered the laptop from their website on my credit card.

Game of Thrones - Palo Alto

And will the ghost of Carly please stop rattling her chains and saying "I told you so".

Great title for Sara's autobiography

"Bacon, Bacon, Bacon, Bacon"

Movie where trapped in a house with technical control with someone else

It was called Demon Seed, and was made in 1977.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Seed

The book was better (natch), but you could always hire Sandra Bullock's "The Net" (One of Jeremy Northram's better movies).

Work to Rule (or the Toolset)

I have approached my boss suggesting improvements to perform regular maintenance and reporting tasks and have been rebuffed at every turn. There are also quite a few shortcomings in the toolsets we use, again the case for improvements has been made and rejected (I am in the Run Team; we are not required to genuflect when the Architects walk past but it’s not far off). My boss manages both Run and Architecture Teams.

So, using the development tools available to me already and the knowledge I have gained from previous roles, I have created a small set of bespoke tools that make completing my daily task set a lot easier and faster.

Now, the question to be posed; since I have done this off my own initiative and time, and after having my proposed solutions rejected by the hierarchy, do the time gains I have made become mine to re-allocate, rather than my employers?

My position is “f**k ‘em”; I offered my expertise, they rejected it, I will deliver to the standard they have provided me the ability to do. And I will ration my performance improvements to meet the annual objectives over quite a few years.

Of course, any spare time can’t spend sitting on a couch with a beer and an Al-Bundy pose, so I will probably occupy myself with more interesting work (artificial intelligence, pattern matching and sharemarket trading). And vague chats to my co-workers indicates they are all up for adopting this approach too.

So, what does the illuminati here think?

Had a run of really thick operators at my old job

M rings me up at midnight saying "Bob Bob Bob there's a problem with your script". I ask "what is the problem", he says "its stopped", I ask "what is on the screen", he says "Press return to continue".

Here's an idea

if you are going to think up a way of allowing people to share copyrighted files, read some of the prior art (like Napster and Piratebay) and make sure you are dancing on the right side of the legal ambiguities. And if you stand up and go "nya nya nya", you make yourself a target.

Some more tools I found helpful

Female UPS Power Cable (mating with the power strips inside the cabinet) to a 2-way multibox with local power layout, great to recharge laptops and run either local hubs or DVD Drives (USB powered DVDs are, in my experience, bad at error correction on old CDs / DVDs).

One of every specification of cable (Serial, Power, Fibre) in your architecture, for troubleshooting purposes only (never to be given up EVER! as a replacement unit). Plus at least 3 x network cables, minimum 5 metres length.

3 or 4 Clothes pegs, for marking cable temporarily

At least 2 movies you own legitimately, in physical or digital media form, so when the external supplier brings the wrong part initially, you have something to occupy your time. Rotate on regular basis (Current selection: "300" and "Indie Game: the movie")

Headphones (see above).

Battle over technology licensing here

I believe the RealTouch device used the same technology but lost its licensing with its partner at the start of the year. This may be the partner going it alone (yeah yeah I know).

The Internet Party forms alliance with Mana in NZ

So KDC has pumped 3+ million into the Internet Party, and teams up with the Mana party (Mana = "Pride, Respect, Status" in Maori) to try and gain a seat in Parliament under the "coat-tails" provision of the MMP system.

So when the leader of the Internet Party, Laila Harre, was asked "who is your internet provider", she answers "I don't know, my husband usually pays all the bills". So, really serious about internet issues, isn't she?

Cherry 2000

The blonde, not Melanie Griffiths

Now if you managed the components of the Cloud yourself

but leased them from a provider, you could be in control of the problem and correct it quicker. So "Cloud as a Service, as a Service". (Should I stick a "quasi" in there?)

Avoid anything with "Guru" or "Jedi" in the title

"Guru" means they have a thin layer of personnel supporting the infrastructure and / or are too stingy to pay for training or proper consultancy, so are asking a single expert to bail them out

"Jedi" is just plain immature.

In response to your question

"Yes"

[Ding!]

Next patient, please!

Kim Dot Blob is getting D-I-V-O-R-C-E-D

What is funny is that he tweets the fact then asks for privacy. The local blogger serves him on that one.

Interesting tho that Mona is the major shareholder in Mega as KDC is banned from directorship. The local press is predicting he will be broke and on his way out of the country inside a year.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/10056583/Kim-Dotcom-announces-marriage-split

Grab some popcorn and sit back for the show.

The reason COBOL gained a foothold and became ubiqitous?

It played to the managers and bean counters that they could potentially understand IT, so woo-ed them to open their wallets. Same reason SAP has become so successful.

Yup, Kim Dot Blob's PR machine is in full swing

He is throwing out ideas from his Internet Party about reducing internet costs, scrapping limits and reducing regulation, while at the same time the company Chorus (responsible for the communications networks in NZ) is being court-ordered to reduce line rentals that it was using to fund part of the new ultra-fast broadband rollout. So how does he plan to fix both those problems in one stroke - re-nationalisation? More money?

Throw in the scandal about his Nazi Memorabilia fetish, his impending deportation to the US, his many false-start promises to fund new projects (america's cup campaigns, pop concerts, second pacific fibre cable) and his legal threats to former employees, the-artist-formerly-known-as-Schmitz is not a welcome guest here, and the sooner he tries to stop gaming our political system for his own enjoyment and leaves, the better.

And now he is confirmed as a Hitler Sympathiser

Independent reports verify he owns a rare signed copy of "Mein Kampf", written by someone he refers to as the "greatest german who has ever lived". He was also gifted a Nazi flag in 2011 for his birthday. He says "Seig Heil" when German visitors are present, based on reports from his mansion staff. (Read the whaleoil article for the evidence, the stuff article is a puff-piece).

So, still think this guy should form a politic party and run a business? IBM did well out of the holocaust, creating tabulating machines for the numbers of undesirables being gassed, so there is precedent here.

http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2014/03/real-secret-life-kim-dotcom-seig-heil-mein-kampf-nazi-flags-admiration-adolf-hitler/

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/9871410/Dotcom-owns-copy-of-Hitlers-Mein-Kampf