* Posts by Norfolk Enchants Paris

128 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Aug 2008

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Jaguar stumbles on stairway to Google cloud

Norfolk Enchants Paris
Badgers

Doesn't seem so bad

What I am surprised about is that IBM wasn't trying to flog their own (terrible) 'cloud' email service to JLR.

Migration of this many users in a weekend with a relatively small impact is probably not the end of the world.

Howeverrrrr.... IMHO I'm still very wary of 'cloud' based services like this - relying on some internets to get access to your corporate email is like relying on the M25 to get you home. One day it will all come to a grinding halt or near as damnit, and you won't be able to hold Mr Cloud Provider responsible cos of the prevailing conditions of some internets.

World's first iPhone worm Rickrolls angry fanbois

Norfolk Enchants Paris

And a recent poll

Run by a well-respected* survey company showed that 82% of iPhone users prefer Rick Astley.

*I made it up.

Windows 7 lessons - the must know before you buy

Norfolk Enchants Paris
Thumb Up

's OK

I am having mostly good results from my Win 7 machine. It's quick, looks great, and seems very stable. Support for older hardware is not so great, even though it helps older kit work faster than XP or Vista ever did. My old Dell D400 laptop has a few graphics driver issues when unplugged. I'm sure I will get to the bottom of it. Or write some new drivers.

I was interested in the article where they said that they didn't add this or that into the OS, even when people asked for it. I was dumbstruck really - someone actually managing the scope of a development project! What next? I assume, with absolutely no knowledge at all, that Vista suffered partly because the project didn't manage to keep all the requests out of scope and tried to make it everything.

To those people who can't see the point, I guess that's what people said when Win 95 came out. I know someone who is still happy with his Win 3.1 computer. After all, solitaire and freecell still work great for him...

So from me, it's a hats off. To a project well executed and to a useful, well finished product. At last.

MS, US take aim at data protection laws cyber trade barriers

Norfolk Enchants Paris

So what they really really want

Forget record labels - it's largely about the cloud. Currently many corporates and govt agencies are not able to comply with the law of their land and use cloud-based (read: US-owned) services at the same time. (Many still do it but that's a whole different problem...)

For example: Privacy laws demand the protection of the privacy of customers (and their data) on the one hand, yet the Patriot Act allows unfettered access by US law enforcement agencies on the other. There are many other ways under US law that personal data must be handed over, and there are other data protection, data ownership and data governance "law" that can't be adhered to once your data leaves your legal jurisdiction.

Until that "issue" is cleared away, it presents a barrier to the excellent idea of countries pouring money into the US for things cloudy.

@GM Fanboy (AC 18:44) GMO corn, as you well know, is somewhat different to hybrid varieties that american indians came up with. They weren't manipulating individual genes to ensure that they could be weedsprayed but survive, or guaranteed sterility. So less of that shit please, and get back to your job at Monsanto.

Microsoft's Office Web Apps - a long way from here

Norfolk Enchants Paris
Grenade

@Derek Kingscote.. Oh Puhleeeeze

Can we please drop the tired, teenaged "M$" rubbish. It's about as funny as the "my dog has no nose" joke.

You should also use the Troll icon.

There are any number of shortcomings with MS Office let alone MS Office Web Apps - but please show me the perfect application suite & I'll use it.

Rather than demonstrate the closed-minded approach that you seem to be stuck with, why not have a look and see what this might do to existing web-based apps. Ponder this: Surely this is the sort of competition that you would want to see to ensure that Google Apps and so forth are pushed and challenged to make them better and better? Or would you prefer that MS slunk off somewhere and let Google turn into what you perceive MS to be today?

Highways Agency plans new speed cameras

Norfolk Enchants Paris

Active management?

Having driven round the M25 from J27 to J21a for forever, and round to J14 regular-like, can I just say that there's nothing remotely active about the way traffic is managed. It's bloody chaos!

Super-soldier exoskeletons ready for troop tests in 2010

Norfolk Enchants Paris

Wow. The incredible HULC

It should be green and look bublously muscly. And make the wearer's shirt rip open. And make their hair go to hell in a handcart.

Bank of America demands thumbprint from armless bloke

Norfolk Enchants Paris

An outrage but...

I'm wondering how he presented two forms of ID with no arms. He may have used his feet but I'm going with a prehensile tongue.

Sun sales plummet 30.6% in Q4

Norfolk Enchants Paris

I called it ages ago

Call me an Oracle, but I did pick this when the Sun/Orcale deal was first seriously mentioned. And AManFromMars may be right about accounting practises and so on - who knows / cares - but AC 21.18 may have touched on it when he mentioned MySQL. Damn LAMP installs must have cost Oracle a bundle over the years in lost Oracle sales, probably almost as pesky as MS SQL Server.

It's a shame as we'll have one less basket case to laugh about.

FSF launches Windows 7 anti-upgrade letter campaign

Norfolk Enchants Paris

Oh FFS FSF

How on God's blue earthdoes Windows 7 make me any more "stuck" than Win XP ?

Oh and for the sake of pedantry for the 'letter from history' bit, an operating system is distinct from a kernel, so you can have multiple, different OSes on one version of a kernel. I believe that this is common in the Linux distro world.

Off to shave now.

Ubuntu man extends olive branch to irate Debian devs

Norfolk Enchants Paris

I agree with Mark

When Mark Shuttleworth says that the only way that free software will win out is to have a coordinated approach, he is correct.

Too many IT operations & IT people have been burnt by interoperability issues between versions of Linux-based OSs, or by compatibility issues between software running on Linux, to have great amounts of faith in it. It is a perception thing, but you generally don't even get people considering something asan option when their perceptions are negative.

I have a favourite example from a friend. He inherited responsibility for running a Linux / Apache / MySQL website which struck a table size limitation in MySQL. To overcome the problem, an upgrade was in order. To upgrade required a new version of Red Hat. That version of Red Hat required a new version of Apache. And that no longer supported the version of PHP that the site ran. And that meant a re-write of large chunks of the website. And to top it all off, the version of the mail sending program, which the website relied upon, changed from postmail to sendmail or vice-versa.

This drove him mad and made him get the site rewritten in .net. In that order.

As I am all in favour of choice and competition, then I fully support Mark in his desire to get a more homogeneous product. And as for those in the Linux community complaining that Ubuntu hasn't done enough for Debian - what a joke! Debian would be just another also-ran without Ubuntu.

Microsoft gets personal on Windows 7 "show stopper" bug

Norfolk Enchants Paris
Unhappy

Aaargh the sky is falling

Oh wait, hang on, it's OK. The sky's still up there.

I mean really, all this fuss over chkdsk /r ? A "show stopper"? Next they'll be wanting to stop the presses because the diskcomp command refuses to find floppy disk drives...

How does rubbish this get any press time?

Microsoft under threat from Linux - it's official

Norfolk Enchants Paris

Non-story

It's a SEC filing FFS. They have to 'warn' people or get sued, as has been pointed out already. As for the stunning earnings drop and laying people off, well them's the times. Google just did it, and many others besides. (In fact, a 'recession' is a great time to shed a few pounds without upsetting the real value employees)

BTW - a few people here on about Vista and so on... We didn't upgrade from XP to Vista as I never saw the value. However... Win 7 is much lighter and works better - even in RC mode - and we will be upgrading.

Apple accused of lowering cone of silence over iPod flame out

Norfolk Enchants Paris

@Ivan Headache

Well as they say, one bad Apple spoils the bunch.

I however am pleased that I gave my iPod to the Missus to go to the gym with....

Microsoft offers EU choice on Windows browsers

Norfolk Enchants Paris

Wonder if Google is watching

They probably are I guess. So one also wonders if Google's mooted OS will also come, for the EU, with the choice to select browsers or if it will be integrated with it. So if it is the latter, one wonders whether the mighty EU will look at this with the same level of scrutiny. Anything else will smack of imbalance.

DHS chief accused of using no-fly list for political payback

Norfolk Enchants Paris
Coffee/keyboard

And in related news

Arizona State Treasurer Dean Martin orders a tin foil hat, and blames humans for "global warming"

Sun shareholders approve Oracle deal

Norfolk Enchants Paris
Go

Merger dicates a new name

My suggestion is a portmanteau as it were, a combination of Sun and Oracle. I call it... Suckle

Yes, I added a K.

The competition is open to all. Blaze away.

Sun: Q4 sales to drop by a third, sees deeper losses

Norfolk Enchants Paris

Amazing

that Sun lasted this bloody long with all the drivel they've given us o'er the years.

I'm off to enjoy the sunset.

Microsoft rubs Web 2.0 noses in SharePoint cash pile

Norfolk Enchants Paris

Well, a few comments

1: Saying 9/10 customers want this is not the same as saying 9/10 customers want this as their sole and exclusive way of delivering these applications.

2: I think there's probably a typo in the articel - not even MS has 100,000 million licences installed unless they have an intergalactic business we don't know about.

3: It seems to me that the achilles heel of clouds apps is ironically displayed by the "WPC WiFi network overload" issue referred to in the article - and if more & more people are using the web to do what was the local app domain, the problem may well be exacerbated.

4: I like the _idea_ of cloud computing but the practicalities need work. All those issues (where's my data, how secure/private is it, who owns it, what's my comeback if the service is down, what happens to my service and my data if the provider folds, how do I deliver service to users if there's a network outage, how do I integrate with legacy apps in a timely and performant manner etc) need to be sorted before I'd be comfortable recommending a cloud approach for my organisation.

However, I'm looking forward to seeing what MS has in the pipeline on this front, it could be interesting.

Google strips beta wrapper from Gmail, Docs et al

Norfolk Enchants Paris
WTF?

5 years?

5 years in Beta? Even Longhorn wasn't that long in the tooth...

Google laying off more 'second class citizens'?

Norfolk Enchants Paris
Badgers

@AC #2 and #1

Bankrupt? Not for a while yet I would say. They have around $20 billion in current assets (mostly cash and short-term investments) and their normal annual expenditure (on staff, etc) is about $2.8 billion. So, they could run, from reserves, their business with absolutely no income for about 7 years.

What I would suggest is that Google are seeing income reducing and, in order to maintain their growth and therefore stock price, cost-cutting is the order of the day. But if they are smart, they'll keep treating their permies well.

As for Google being evil/not evil... they are no better or worse than most other companies. They have just tried to foster a better image, which is now in need of a boost if they want people to think of them differently from MS. To me they operate in teh same way as MS, Apple, IBM and co - they do their thing and try to maximise profit.

Microsoft's Bing feeds you, tries to keep you captive

Norfolk Enchants Paris

Looks OK

Works OK. I would have to try it more to see if I could be arsed moving from the Big G though.

Jacqui's jihad on web extremism flops

Norfolk Enchants Paris

@carbonrough

Yeah well rather you than me mate.

NSA offering 'billions' for Skype eavesdrop solution

Norfolk Enchants Paris

@Stupid

Of course it's bloody privacy invasion! You are not exactly going to invite the NSA to every phone call you make if you're Osama Bloody Bin Laden are you?

Jacqui Smith ecstatically ignores more scientific advice

Norfolk Enchants Paris
IT Angle

Talk to the hand

Seems to be the modus operandi of this autocratic busybody. Say anything you like as long as it is what I want to hear. It's the same with ID cards, CCTV, DNA database etc etc.

Personally, and from a purely chemical point-of-view, I don't know why E is in a different to speed and methamphetamines. Whichever they are in it should at least be the same as they are all in the same family and all have similar neurological effects upon people.

The real worry though is how this woman, who let us not forget is morally decrepit although not technically breaking the rules that her colleagues wrote, can dismiss the results of experts. She knows better, that's all I can think.

It is high time that someone, somewhere reminded her that she is there as part of a government, and government is supposed to be for the people, not of the people.

I have not and will not use these kind of drugs, and would hate my children to. But they should be classified according to how harmful they really are and not in a subjective, autocratic manner.

Not sure what this has to do with IT though.

HP printer hack risk prompts update

Norfolk Enchants Paris

@Lee

I can't work anywhere that requires an employee badge. Or uniform for that matter.

New Zealand bolts net filtering regime into place

Norfolk Enchants Paris

@TheOtherMe

Just correcting a wee mistake, the six original stars on teh Aussie flag were for the original SIX colonies, NSWales, QLD, S A, Tassie, Victoria and W A. The seventh was added for the territory of Papua, now PNG. They never removed the star... I guess that the Northern Territory can borrow it.

On the topic of net filtering... I think it is right and proper for the Internet to be subject to exactly the same levels of censorship as publications, films and so on. To all those who say 'how dare the govt. censor what I read' etc., would you condone the publication of child porn magazines and allow them for sale at the corner shop? I don't, and don't think that it should be published via the web. Of course this means that the danger exists that censorship can go too far, but that is when the people need to speak out.

On another point, the article points out that the NZ law is more coherent and clear than the UK law. I believe that in some countries, the law is made _deliberately_ unclear and obfuscated to enable proceedings to be brought where this suits the powers that be.

Apple delays 17in MacBook Pro

Norfolk Enchants Paris

Nice but

Expensive. So Expensive.

Sage struggles in subdued market

Norfolk Enchants Paris

Offending people

Not that this is what we are meant to be discussing, Paki is (presumably) an offensive term to Pakistanis, whereas Welshman is the proper name for one from Wales.

Taffy would probably be the equivalent for a Welshman, so uk08blahblah should have mentioned his stupid Taffy manager. Much better.

Well done again Sarah Bee. Play on.

Norfolk Enchants Paris

I'm with Mark

Except that with the sheer volume of customers that they have (about 750,000!) they'd need a few support techs and implementation dudes, let alone the sales bods and managers.

Happily, their stuff behaves as if it was made by five blokes in a shed. Which keeps the likes of you and I in a job.

Open sourcey bulletin board offline after hack attack

Norfolk Enchants Paris
Dead Vulture

Where's me penguin?

What are the open-source fan base going to say here? So many times I have read 'blah blah blah wouldn't happen on open source.... open source much better blah blah blah'

Are we going to see some balance from them? Don't think so. And here's the problem - when you are blinded by the wonderfulness of that which you worship, you cannot see the danger. This is true for all diehard fans, be they Linux, Open Source in general, Apple, Microsoft or whatever.

That's why I am a proud agnostic.

Man robs convenience store with Klingon sword

Norfolk Enchants Paris

What?

I'm no Trekkie but I always thought that like Star Trek was in the future, and that the Klingons were advanced. So why would they use swords anyway?

Stupid idea.

MP wants Welsh text on ID cards

Norfolk Enchants Paris
Happy

This is going to be BIG

Well, the card will be anyway.

Name:

Huw G. Rection

D.O.B

1/2/69

Address:

123 Myfanwy Rd

LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWYRNDROBWLLLLANTYSSILIOGOGOGOCH

How big will this card have to be to contain the place names in Wales?

Google will tell your mates where you are

Norfolk Enchants Paris

@AC

Yeah, maybe but I don't want to do any of that shite. My car is already tracked by CCTV in this country!

Norfolk Enchants Paris

So what's in it for me

I currently give Evil Google my search data by using their service. This allows me to find stuff on the web, with the quid pro quo that they have my searching behavious (sort of) and can make money targeting me with ads that I ignore.

So what's in this for me? Most times I don't want to be found. If my mates want to get hold of me they call/text/email me. And vice-versa. Why do I want to give Google more revenue for geotargeting me with ads? There's no payback that I can see (but please enlighten me) so I'd want to be, at the very least, paid for this service. Not that I will use it as I value my privacy more every day.

.

Time to axe Microsoft's Zune

Norfolk Enchants Paris

@Robert Hill

Ha ha... pwned by the Bee with a sting in it's (presumably cute) tail...

EU security agency draws 'privacy baseline' for ID cards

Norfolk Enchants Paris

@Graham Marsden

Yep.

Swiss EV coupé gets Berlin runabout

Norfolk Enchants Paris

And yet

I read today that the Bolivian el-presidente is endeavouring to ensure that the world's supply of Lithium is 'controlled' like OPEc manages the oil price. So producing Li-Ion based cars may well become rather costly.

Shame really.

Never mind, I shall have to put up with my Italian V6 for a while longer :-)

Digital Britain: A tax, a quango and ISP snooping

Norfolk Enchants Paris

Irony

Sweet sweet irony here.

On the one hand, the Govt supposedly wants 'better, more affordable broadband for everyone'.

On the other hand, the Govt will increase the price by burdening users/ISPs with costs.

How does that make sense?

Feds: IT admin plotted to erase Fannie Mae

Norfolk Enchants Paris

@P.Lee, @Pierre, @AC (Bad Management)

P. Lee - Well I disagree with your contention that this dude willnever work again. Many organisations are very lax at contacting references or even on checking up on whether a person has worked where they say they have, doing what they say they have. Especially for contractors.

Add to this that today's news is tomorrows fish & chip paper, when the guy gets out of the nick he may not have the problems you think he will.

Gutting but true.

@ Pierre - yes, I agree that a simple, single line calling a compiled programme (so not Perl) would be the better way to do it. It's the needle in the haystack (Only one line of code) and a seemingly discreet, small programme waiting to do its thing.

@AC - you might have the world's greatest change control process, but if you have sysadmins with root access to servers in production (which you have to, no way around it) , there's your security hole right there. They don't need to copy files over for release - they can make 'em. No disk needed, just vi and a keyboard.

Most Americans without broadband don't want it

Norfolk Enchants Paris
Alert

@Jeremy

Google Earth?

These are Americans you're talking about. The one's that don't want Broadband are the ones that have never heard of any country that the US has never invaded, and would have difficulty with the concept of a spherical planet.

25 years of Mac - the good, the bad, and the cheese grater

Norfolk Enchants Paris

In my opinion

The IIci was a cracker, I ran one with an outrageously expensive Pivot screen (A giant CRT that swivelled from Landscape to Portrait) that I thanksfully didn't pay for.

I also love the Mac Mini - so much power in such a tiny wee box. It makes a wicked media centre.

You have to say though that, for what you gets, you pays a lot. Hats off to them if they can get away with it.

Cows can't detect earthquakes: Official

Norfolk Enchants Paris

Re earthquakes as illusion

``The illusion of reality, you know. Cows are on a higher transcendental plain. Or meadow``

That's because they're all on grass.

Experts trumpet '25 most dangerous' programming errors

Norfolk Enchants Paris

@Norman Andrews & @ Geoff Spick

Norman - Conversely, if your programmers are rubbish then the best Project Managers won't make much difference either.

Development is a team effort and needs great analysts, developers, testers, project managers - oh, and a good client, to deliver a successful product.

Geoff - which bit needs a refresher?? The coding or the drinking?!

There's no riddle to Dell's Limerick move

Norfolk Enchants Paris

@ The Irish Penguin

Yes, that's true. But 'up 61%' took them from 4% of the market to 6%. So while it looks like a great number, they're still way down there. And let's not forget that their 'desktop' products were cannibalised somewhat, which is why their overall market share is around 5% and holding.

I'd say that if anything is 'reaping benefits' it's Linux.

Norfolk Enchants Paris

@AC 15:47 and @ the article

AC 15:47 - I agree. But not in such a fundamentatist way. The reduction of trade barriers means that the work can easily flow to the cheapest place, or (as we have seen at places like JCB) pressure and threats can reduce the cost of labour where the jobs ~currently~ are. There are few barriers to this behaviour and while it creates opportunities for some, it creates disadvantages for others.

@ the article... Apple's Leopard OS is reaping the benefits .. really? with Apple's giant 6% of the dektop and 4% of the laptop market? Making around 5% of the overall 'PC' market, that's not exactly ''reaping''. That's not to say it isn't better than Vista....

NASA deploys huge clingfilm strato-pumpkin over Antarctic

Norfolk Enchants Paris
Happy

Pumpkin?

Looks more like a giant floating Terry's Chocolate Orange to me.

Good luck to them. An idea like this deserves to succeed, as I love Terry's Chocolate Oranges.

Ohio prof develops CCTV people-tracker 'ware

Norfolk Enchants Paris
Black Helicopters

Nefarious!

So the next step is to catch people engaging in "Nefarious" behaviour. Lovely. A subjective term if ever there was one. What's the next step - tasers duct-taped to the cameras to automatically prevent said nefariousness from nefariating the non-nefarious?

Well, at least there is some hope. I'm sure the software won't distinguish between car theft and car clamping, so some poetic justice would be meted out...

Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

Norfolk Enchants Paris

Oh come on...

When you have to manage a large and complex network, you need to ensure that the traffic is prioritised so that 'stuff that must get through now' (AKA Real-time traffic) gets through in real time and 'stuff that ain't that important' (AKA the other sh!t) gets through when it can. In reality, this only matters when the pipes are full.

VM are going to offer (up to) 50Meg. Now seriously, they aren't going to have a backbone here that is 50 Meg* number of subscribers, so in order to make the best use of the network when it is full or near full, they will de-prioritise some traffic. I did it with large, complex networks that I was responsible for and it resulted in a better experience for everyone. Why? Simple. Because things like VoIP, video conferencing and http/https traffic got priority, and they are the things that people see happening in real time and are affected by other things blocking the network. Stuff like SMTP, FTP, BitTorrent, BITS and so on can get deprioritised because essentially the end user doesn't really see the difference.

-So your email turns up 2 seconds later than it would have. Problem?

-So your Torrent download takes 3 minutes instead of 2 minutes 40. Is that really a problem?

You will probably suffer more from latency than from prioritisation if your torrent source(s) are far far away.

Having said all of this, VM only needs to look at packet headers to see what sort of traffic it is & it definitely shouldn't be looking at packet contents, which would be a breach of trust in my opinion.

People here are sooo quick to jump to a conclusion and pour forth with an opinion. At least nobody has *welcomed our packet sniffing overlords* etc. thank god.

Chip boffins hone silicon-brain interface

Norfolk Enchants Paris

Step 2

Step 2 requires something in between slugs and humans. I suggest the bipedal life forms I have seen in Ipswich.

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