Posts by Trixr
71 posts • joined Tuesday 30th June 2009 00:10 GMT
Posted in SimCity 4
Re: I miss this!
...or use the "WinXP mode" virtual machine to run them on your Win 7 device, if the XP compatibility mode doesn't work
Seriously, if your machine has enough horsepower to run Win 7 plus modern games, why on earth go through the hassle of building a physical box for playing retro games? Unless you need some 3D acceleration, of course. And then VMWare or VirtualBox will give you 3D acceleration through Direct 3D.
Posted in SimCity 4
Re: Where the "report errors" link gone
There's something about "have the reigns" in there as well (can't be bothered finding the actual sentence).
It's REINS, in that context. REIGNS is what the queen does, and it's a VERB, not a noun that you can "have" or "hold".
Re: "insisting on special treatment"
Some feminists argue quite vociferously against AA.
Some acknowledge that even given equivalent skills and qualifications, there are plenty of places that will hire men first, with such excuses as "team fit" and so on. Most AA schemes are about ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL, give women a fair shake (and are designed for environments which are still dominated by men for no good reason).
"Hopper did more than most to beat chauvinism in our industry, not by protesting or insisting on special
treatment, but by getting out there and doing the job better than anyone else"
So why should women have to be so much better to be considered for this kind of thing? It's that whole narrative about "exceptional" women breaking the bounds that gets up my nose.
I'm a good sysadmin, but I don't pretend to be a guru. And nor should I have to for my mid-range job. And yet I'm the only female systems administrator (I'm not talking DBAs or developers) I've encountered in any organisation I've ever worked in (except one, in one other job), in 15 years of IT. That's really appalling if you think about it.
Re: Still enforcing "real names"?
I use Gmail, but I was deeply bothered by the lastest set of nags on YouTube to provide a profile (in the last couple of months). I had to go through a number of steps to INSIST I wanted to keep my current handle with relatively anonymous information. Since I signed up with YouTube years before they got bought by Google, it's even more irksome.
Definitely seems like a slippery slope at present. Look at Google Play - I enjoy my Android, and I used to leave reviews of apps regularly. Not any more since their latest change enforcing a G+ profile.
Posted in Top tools for junior Linux admins
Re: Rule #1 : Read the man pages
I have to put a big caveat in here, that SOME man pages are excellent. But there are so many full of endless cruft, and it's a fairly unintuitive format - obviously written by old-school engineers.
When I was a real newb, I was endlessly frustrated with the endless advice to "read the man page" when I needed a quick one-line solution to an issue. WHICH man page? (Sorry, man -k can find even more cruft.) Then multipage listings of obscure switches that are never used in real life and lengthy explanations of underlying architecture can make it almost impossible to get to the info you need. Not to mention the idiosyncratic format and use of conventions that a naive user find difficult to decipher.
The famous example of sudoers 5 is a great case in point. Ok, after traversing many many pages, you get to some examples of how the thing might work, but wow, it's a mission.
So, sure, I think any documentation is better than none (a particular curse for opensource), but the accessibility of many of those pages could be vastly improved.
Still enforcing "real names"?
Meh, if they still have that stupid policy of insisting you use something like a "real name", I'm still not going to venture in there.
Where's the "wanker" icon when you need it?
Yeah, who gives a toss about your system load without any idea of the underlying hardware spec?
And no, I don't give a toss your hardware spec EITHER.
Re: WTF?
5-year-old Dell Studio XPS here - backlit keyboard and all.
What a waste of time
If you want an AD server in your environment, go out and buy the licence and get over it. Sure, use your Samba implementation for your file shares, but why all this effort on reinventing the wheel?
Oh, right, *gasp*, Microsoft's implementation of LDAP + kerberos is actually easily maintainable and works in enterprise environments. There has been nothing stopping these earnest Unix admins from rolling their own LDAP implementations, but if anyone has been involved in one of those from the ground up, you know it's a horror story.
AD server - install, add user + computer accounts, and it "just works" (with apologies to the Jobs-ites). Ok, I do see where if you're in a single small/home office, saving the OMG $500 on an unsupported solution might seem to stack up financially, or if you have expensive Unix gurus on tap who can get all low-level with their troubleshooting and fault-fixing.
For most environments, buying something you can get vendor support for is just common sense. I'm sure Red Hat or Suse will be releasing Samba 4 in due course with their offerings... and have you seen how much a full RH licence costs?
I'll take it all back if the opensource implementation gives you vastly improved performance benefits without any additional administrative overhead compared to a standard MS implementation... but I haven't yet seen any analysis along those lines.
(steps into flameproof suit)
Re: "Chances are..."
This is pretty obsolete, though. Distros like Ubuntu are pretty much using the microwave. If you want a hardcore roll-your-own distro, good on you, there are plenty out there.
But I do get sick of techie purists wanking on about "learn to configure all the gnarly stuff under the hood, moron, before you're pure enough to lay your hands on the Holy OS". A computer - for nearly all of us - is a tool, not the sum of our lives. I personally don't like the Mac experience, because I do in fact want to have reasonably simple control of my computer, but I'm not going to bag out people who are "plug it in and use it". How many techies know how to drive, but don't have the faintest clue how to replace brake pads or do an oil change?
For Ubuntu and Mint, etc, they're pretty much at that "plug and play" level on most consumer hardware. This means that the Linux desktop has been gaining traction with average users, thus making it a stronger OS - more users means more investment, in both money and time.
Seen that coming
Meh, if you expect to be doing classic sysadmin work in the next decade, you will either be guru-class or one of the lucky few working in these barns.
I've got my exit strategy planned - 5 years should be a good time to be onto something else (since my interest in managing clouds in barns is fairly minimal)
Re: The plural of box...
Yeah, I remember about the boxen with the blinkenlights, but good lord it's irritating to see in a semi-formal article. The joke wore pretty thin back in the day.
Re: Appreciate the irony..
Oh, so you were the cowboy who left behind half-b0rked Samba "BDCs" all over the place when the time and effort involved in standing up a vanilla domain controller and file server in Windows was *significantly* less.
Samba was adequate for doing file shares if you were too cheap to buy MS server operating system licences, but if cost wasn't a factor, it was a waste of time.
Re: So what?
Exactly.
I also think its valid to know whether a company uses its profits to lobby/support political campaigns/candidates.
But knowing how a PRIVATE individual chooses to spend their income? None of anyone's business. Or doesn't the idiot know the difference between individuals and the companies they work for?
If so, he doesn't seem to know much about "individual rights" the Repubs are supposedly so big on. Or is everyone supposed to follow the Chick-Fil-A model, and just funnel company profits in the right directions.
Re: I'm far from being a native speaker
Well, that's really the ONLY two valid uses these days, possessives and contractions.
Despite the attempts of many idiots to turn it into another plural for words ending in vowels, or dates. "I ate lots of pizza's" = ARRRRRGH
I hate to say it - but an engineerinng perspective is appropriate
I dislike it in general when engineering principles are shoehorned willy-nilly into IT operations, but in this instance it's worthwhile. The analogy with aircraft at the end of the article echoes this.
Firstly, someone has actually carried out a proper root-cause analysis here, in terms of looking at the actual decision and process chain, not just individuals and software products. That's a refreshing change in this business.
The next step is to follow up that root-cause analysis with actual fixes and improvements.
In the aviation industry, while certain standards are thoroughly mandated, what you do underneath to achieve the right outputs is kind of moot, as long as you have your standards covered (e.g. triple redundancy, outputs in x format, etc etc). If there is a failure, then the regulator can and will pull an operating licence if there is a standards breach. Root-cause analysis will go right back to manufacturing processes, staff management/training processes and so on and so forth to base its airworthiness directives on to enforce the appropriate fixes.
Cumbersome processes have been stripped away with airworthiness directives - at one point, there was a dozen-step procedure for pilots to get through before they could evacuate themselves from a burning plane. I believe it is now 4 steps (shut down engines and fuel being the major components).
Of course, in this instance, the regulator has the power to enforce anything they like, with the operating licence as their ultimate fallback. Financial sector regulators seem to only concern themselves with accounting standards - ok in the days of paper - but this is not the reality now. Perhaps they need to start concerning themselves with all the operating aspects of a financial entity, including how transactions - people's livelihoods and life savings - are processed, secured and managed, beyond the basics of balancing the books.
Still (cr)ap
Great - $2K for the OS and extra three digits on top for the poxy software you want to run on it.
Posted in Ten... dual-band wireless routers
Yes, please.
I've got a Cisco jobbie, but really, it's pants. I had a Belkin a few years ago that was great, but obviously that model isn't up with the times now.
And yes, with DD-WRT written for legions of router devices, are there that many variations on ADSL connectivity? (There may well be - I have no idea)
But I'm not going to buy two devices when you can get one that does the job for not much more than the router price (not to mention the clutter).
G+ lost me at "real names"
I've got two fb profies - one for the innocent lambs that consist of my family and colleagues, and the other for my actual friends. While FB say in their ToS that you should use your real name, they don't seem to enforce it, and even if they did, I wouldn't give a toss if they closed down one.
However, Google say you MUST use your real name, and if you don't they will yank your ENTIRE google account, not just the G+ part. Since I am pretty married to my Gmail and Gcal, I can't take that risk with my default Google account (which certainly not in my real name).
so, yeah, joined for a while, learned about this stupid policy, and got out quick.
Re: Indeed
Yup, it's quite revealing that all these blokes (as I assume the majority of commenters in this forum are) think it's all a bit of a laff.
Posted in Vevo comes to Australia
Subeds, please
"Takes the reins".
Like controlling a horse, not pretending to be the queen.
The irony...
So quaint, since that his govt is busy trying to bully NZ into NOT getting rid of patents for software, which is currently on the agenda.
Posted in IT urine bandit fired and charged
Re: Double insult
As a female with that kind of nutcase in the office, I'd be perfectly happy to be considered "ugly" by that kind of individual. Since he sounds like he'd be stunning looking himself - not.
Markdown is just really nice ... and I'm speaking as someone who first learned 'er tagging in SGML. (Roll your own DTD, bitches)
As for BBCode, yup, "sanitised" html - what's the point.
And another vote for *<code>* please! (<pre> is deprecated for that purpose!)
Observability
Well, speaking as someone who is a female-type person, as opposed to nearly everyone opining here, it IS an observable phenomenon for me. G-spot stimulation is quite different to general vaginal simulation, and an orgasm involvinng the g-spot is qualitatively different to one that is external-clitoris only. And every woman I know of (and have shagged) who has a sensitive g-spot area says exactly the same thing.
Given the extent of the clitoris, I wouldn't be surprised if it's involved, but it really does feel quite different to external stimulation. Perhaps the deeper nerve structures relay a different sensation type.
So anyway, if the study was to "prove" an actual unique anatomical structure exists, well, evidently there isn't. But individual sensitivity is different - we all know of people who find having their ears blown into an erotic sensation, whereas others would like to punch the blower in the face - and so for the researchers to say (if they are, not having read the paper) that the *sensation* categorically doesn't exist is cobblers.
...let's just say your first guess is along the right lines.... *coughcoughcough*
(how else do people charge up their ipods? seriously?)
Posted in Motorola Razr Android smartphone
A note to subhead writers
You'll find that OCCASIONALLY women actually buy some of these modernz technolojeez as well. How else do we do our 987 texts a day? Or maybe this phone isn't right for us because there are no pretty Swarovski crystals embedded in it.
grammar check
It's FLOUTING the ban, not "flaunting" it. Although maybe they are trying to show off their fondleslab assets.
Uh, outright vicious homophobia is not the same as "tall poppy syndrome", nor was it reserved for the English in that era. Heard of the McCarthy witch hunts in the US?
Are you trying to say the plural of paradox in English is "paradoxa"?
It isn't.
Posted in Ten... in-ear headphones
Big omission
Yes, no Klipsch offerings in this list? They do excellent in-ear phones.
Nice exercise in logical contortions there
No, actually, administrators expect that if people do not have Local Admin rights on their machines, they should not be able to install anything that allows them to circumvent the IE security settings and configuration that is generally put there for a specific reason.
So now you're telling us that after circumventing Windows's default protection in that area, WE now have to install some frigging GPO to undo the chaos you're causing?
Thanks so much for that.
That ship has sailed
Dude, give it a rest about IE being embedded into Windows. You can hide it if you don't like the ugly icon on the desktop. Or if you REALLY don't like it, use one of the alternate OSes out there.
Of course, suggest in an enterprise they get rid of Windows, and you'll soon find out who controls IT (hint: not the IT people).
Posted in Acer Iconia Tab A500 10in Android tablet
Very easy to root
Just do a quick search for "root iconia a500", download the apk and run it, it reboots your system after AGES, and then bob's your uncle. You can re-run it to "unroot" if you would like to run an OS update or the like.
Posted in Acer Iconia Tab A500 10in Android tablet
7" vs 10"
Dual core, better graphics, etc. If you don't need those features, fine.
Posted in Acer Iconia Tab A500 10in Android tablet
Would have knocked off a bit more
...due to the weight of the thing. I don't mind the thickness, but I wish it wasn't quite so heavy!
Also, I found that application grouping interface a PITA, and I've deleted it already.
Otherwise, it's a nice piece of kit.
Posted in Acer Iconia Tab A500 10in Android tablet
Did you read the article?
Drawbacks - it's heavier and thicker than an iPad, but it's not a brick. You need to root the device to do wireless tethering.
It has better graphics (720p right now, and 1080p shortly with a software upgrade coming soon), SD card slot (a must-have for me), mini-HDMI that you don't need to pay Apple for a "special" cable for, and a full USB, although that's not much good for USB disks until you "root" the device and monkey around a bit.
And you don't need to install and run bloody iTunes just to be able to switch the thing on.
Posted in Verity Stob and the super subjunction
What is the remedy
...for humourless sexist w*nkers? ???? ?????
Can't believe anyone is still using it
First it was one dev with some very idiosyncratic coding/implementation practices, and now a bunch of maintainers who release something once a decade, if you're lucky.
I personally think it's a maintainability nightmare, and wouldn't touch it with a bargepole.
I'll stick with Postfix, thanks. Designed from the ground-up to be secure - you simply can't install it in an insecure manner, and it requires quite a bit of work to get it sufficiently b0rked to be a security risk as an MTA, unlike Exim and Sendmail, where you have to work to lock things down (although I believe Sendmail is ~slightly~ improved these days, if you ignore that horrible M4).
Posted in RHEL 6: how much for your package?
FFS
What gets me is that you have to pay for an additional module to simply support something above 16TB. We're running into limitations in that line already.
Yes, what kind of survey is this?
To be meaningful, the survey should have hit MS shops (and other *nixes shops) as well. Telling us that Linux users are going to continue and perhaps slightly increase their use of Linux tells us nothing at all, other than the fact they're going out to buy more kit.
We're a hybrid - 1/3 of our systems now are Linux, with the bulk Windows. We HAVE in fact increased our Linux server fleet by nearly 30 boxes in the past year while reducing our Windows servers (due to a major LOB application replatformed from Windows to Linux), but this survey wouldn't have teased out that information either.
Posted in Ubuntu 10.10: date with destiny missed
Not that simple...
My upgrade to the 10.10 beta succeeded in b0rking my grub loader, due its prompting me in the middle of install about a trivial change I had made (to the screen resolution), and prompting again as to the location it should be installed in. Whatever I chose was the wrong choice (I thought it was hd0,0, but whatever) - nothing logical like putting it back where it was without prompting.
After fixing that little problem (after several hours), and at least being able to boot into Windows, Xorg is not working. Last time I at least was able to logon to the gui (even with a vile screen resolution) and install envy-ng to obtain the correct ATI driver. Not now - it struggles for a few minutes and then dumps me back to the shell. It's a Dell XPS that I've had for over a year - hardly bleeding edge.
I like Ubuntu, but this kind of thing is immensely offputting - I'm not a Linux expert, but I do know the basics, and if I can't do a simple upgrade, I feel sorry for new users.
How ironic
We just came from meeting with our account manager this morning and unleashed on him a bitch session about HP support standards going into rapid decline of late, and off-shoring has been part of that.
We managed to get rid of Dell years ago because of their shite support, and while part of the premium you pay for HP gear is the better quality, part of it was their (at one time) superior responsiveness in terms of support.
It's starting to get to the point where we're wondering why we're paying the premium - maybe we should go with the crappier Dell gear, which is still adequate, and use some of the cost savings to keep onsite spares. No point paying for value-add in terms of support when we're not getting that value.
This is in Australia, btw, so things are not different in old Blighty, by the sounds of it - or maybe they're finally getting the gumption to wind things down over there now.
Posted in Diary of an Overflow Addict
*Flame on*
Actually, there is nothing grammatically *incorrect* about a dangling preposition in English. Stylistically, ok, it often sucks, but it's not wrong, as such (I'm not talking about examples like incomplete sentence fragments and the like).
It's one of those stupid "rules" about English, like split infinitives, that is residue from the days when Latin was used to develop some of the rules of *English* grammar. Of course you can't have a split infinitive in Latin (and most - all? - other European languages), but hello, we have a 2-part infinitive in English. Split away.
So too with dangling prepositions. Quite often they're redundant, but other times, they just make more sense to use than locutions like "that with which...". Saying things like, "I can't see what you're looking for," is a heck of a lot more natural than other more laborious constructions. "I can't see the item for which you are looking"? Please.
Posted in Red Dead Redemption
Double *ahem*
Funnily enough, most of the colonials I know - and I know quite a few, being one - tend to spell words like "voilà" and "per se" more accurately than many individuals from the Mother Country.
So who uses Xen anyway?
Since it was a buggy PoS, we've been using VMWare for any VMs we've been running with RHEL. I'll think I'd rather wait for a couple of years to see how this new technology works out before trying any more horrible migration tasks.
Comparing Apples with ...what?
Ok, so Apple are making huge profits, from what? iTunes and the iPod/iPhone devices, and the new iPad?
And so how are their server (lol) and desktop products going (64-bit Snow Leopard, finally, such as it is, lol)?
Sure, MS don't have any sexy consumer devices right now (and I can't imagine them ever getting into that space), because despite their paltry efforts in the past (*cough*Zune*cough*), they are not device manufacturers. And it's glitzy consumer devices that earn the big margins, not licensing boring OSes or software suites.
Posted in First among SQLs
Erm
Are you pulling our legs? It's -supposed- to be humour. Also, Verity is not a "good sir".
Posted in HTC Desire
Still Android 1.x
I was looking forward to the X10 myself, but they haven't even gone Android 2 yet. And absolutely no information as to whether there's an upgrade path shortly. So yeah, I'd rather get the more up-to-date OS, although the X10 mini looks very nice.
