Posts by Sampler

Do I have this wrong:

Over the last 10 years, BT has invested £10.5bn in its digital infrastructure, committing over £3bn in its superfast broadband network development.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, were £2.664bn

I mean, I'm all for showing up BT abusing its position, but that seems like a weak argument, that they invested more in a division than it was reasonably likely to return yet they should've invested more?

Investing

"Investing in tools and methods to erase data from IT assets tends to sit low on their organisation’s list of IT security priorities,"

Investing in tools? Because there's not a plethora of secure erase tools available? The only investment needed is giving your techy half an hour to set the bootable USB going and then to check it after.

(half hour includes, as standard, time to grab a brew too)

Even Worse

My CEO has a Pro4 and returned one due to sleep of death, she's a fiery Welsh woman so managed to wrangle a replacement out of the sales staff which now she doesn't set to sleep but instead full shuts down each time (not like it takes long to boot back up) BUT the problem is the battery discharges even whilst powered off.

I've checked all the power settings, checked all the updates, and the thing still drains power whilst appearing to be off (screen's definitely off, no fans, just cook in the laptop bag).

Meaning she can't take it to morning meetings as it needs plugging in first because even a fully charged battery doesn't last being turned off overnight.

I have a strong feeling this one's going back too and someone will be yelled at until she gets a refund!

Work version of my dog ate my homework?

I mean, it's pretty much the same excuse, just when you've moved from school to the workplace:

Yeah, I had the document you wanted, but accidentally deleted it...

Not a fan

Has a fair few kinks to work out, such as mobile apps instead of their tablet versions coming through the app store (notably facebook) when I tried it on my ol' spare laptop.

UI navigation was still fraught, touchpad would do unexpected things, so clearly need a touch interface on any device this is to go on thusfar, plus the ironic lack of screen relestate as everything's blow up (ironic in things like chrome lose a good eight of my 11" screen to the the chrome) and niggles like youtube apps fullscreen still displays the taskbar.

Elephant in the room though was, why? Why am I trying to get a clearly mobile OS to work as a desktop one, with all the caveats it brings, when I have a perfectly good desktop OS on the other partition that doesn't have the oddities, idosyncracities, caveats and workarounds that this does.

Maybe with work and time it'll get there, but, still feels like a compromise. Apps are thrown as the big plus for this, yet most don't work as well as there desktop counterparts or are websites wrapped in apps where, on a desktop, accessing the site is preferably to the app experience. I also lose out on all my existing great desktop apps. so struggling to find a reason for this over the incumbant.

Google Car

So, when automated vehicles become the norm, will such algorithms be built into their navigation systems?

Don't drone's already have hellfire's

And other assorted ordinance attached to them, why would they need lasers? Given that, if the missile the drone fires is too close and the backlash wipes out the drone, it's a "meh, too bad" situation..

5.

Hmm, never thought of using Wikipedia for that, I always go to IMDB (and, occasionally, rotten tomatoes) so, if many were to follow suit and use IMDB, then Wikipedia's traffic would drop off a cliff?

oh man

I spent yesterday on a boat in the harbour and got back around three, if I'd've seen this I'd've been straight on - would've not only nicely filled the time I otherwise wasted wandering JB Hifi for one of those phone battery backup chargers (why they always got to be moving shit around) until it was time to go for my stand up comedy routine in Glebe.

Hell, I'm even in the market for a cloudy server solution (though currently talking to rackspace about aws)

Simon B here

Guess I better get started with the training....oh, actually, I'm out tomorrow, ok, Thursday, I'll start training Thursday...

Osgood

We already saw from the opening double bill of this series that being vaporised and being teleported can be interchangeable - so Missy could've teleported Osgood instead of vaporising.

What I hope is she gets her onside, to be her companion, having seen the Doctor do it so many times (and seemingly enjoying having Clara as her companion at the beginning of the season). There'd need to be some good reason for Osgood to take the 'bad guys' side, but a chance to travel through time wouldn't be too far fetched to believe for her character - and let's face it, motivation can be ropey as hell in the writing for this show, so long as the plot needs it, some people will do things quite out of character.

Those whom don't follow history...

...are doomed to repeat it.

Are we all forgetting which computer system had the first, real, in the wild virus?

Elk cloner, was on a Mac.

This is my day to day job, I automate. I look at the processes being done and I replace them with systems or adjust them so they can be replaced by systems.

When I started working at a Market Research company they had a guy processing sample by hand. Open in excel, vlookups, import to SQL, SQL Stored Procedures to dedupe, export from SQL and stick on an SFTP for a call centre to deal with. He'd spend four hours a day doing this, Monday to Friday.

And, as the article mentions, he'd get it wrong, which had massive impacts for my role. So I replaced him with some VBA, it now runs automatically from a batch file, launches at 8am each day and repeatedly checks the incoming SFTP for sample, once arrived does all the processes he did before depositing it to the call centre and emailing me a confirmation it's run and a nice little tally of what we've received (which we never got before).

The company I worked for were so impressed the inaugurated an annual "Innovation" award and gave it to me and a nice cheque (I also won the second year, in a round about fashion, when someone from accounts submitted the code I wrote for them). When it came to moving on (as I'd automated both my and the girl I was hired to work alongside's month long workload into a batch of processes that took roughly four hours in the middle of the night when everyone else slept) they more than doubled my pay and sent me to Australia they wanted to keep me that much. Simply because I approach each task in this method.

Now I run a department of three people vs thrice that of other locals (whom bemoan the long hours and all the overtime) handling a higher volume of workload and most of my day is spent goofing off - as evident, I'm reading el'reg..

Being a fairly big bloke, size 13 shoes could come in handy for building a male version, afterall the steel toecapped safety boots it's common for IT staff to wear are rather bulky looking to start with.

(though saved one foot when a colleague dropped a HP 4550 Color LaserJet on it - last time I gave him a hand with a two man lift)

Fake sole that detached could stash all this gear in and a bit more. Admittedly I don't have the upper body distraction she has (those are wonderful big brown eyes) but then I do look like I spend every day in a datacentre and not out of place/need to be monitored.

I wish they'd just stop talking about it and get it rolled out - I live in Brighton-le-Sands where we're supposed to be NBN ready and...nope, 8mbit ADSL which seems to stammer more with YouTube streaming than the 4mbit ADSL I had in Pyrmont.

Count me in..

Just joined the team, was doing the ride anyway having enjoyed doing it last year - though it killed my back, not sure if my bike's not set-up right or too small - fine on the ~13km commute from Brighton-le-Sands to Surry Hills each day.

Missed this article when it was first posted and came here via the 'digital doping' link - I've done a similar test some time ago with a handful of smartphones I had, all HTC's (Prophet, Kaiser and Rhodium - yeah, Windows Mobile 6, I said it was some time ago) and had a similar experience.

Ultimately we're relying on signals beamed from space so I expect some differences, could even be down to the number/which satellites the devices were picking up - as I recall the Prophet would consistently pick up two-three less birds than the Kaiser. I figure this accounts for the biggest difference in the Z axis (though Z axis is always ropey at best in my experience).

Also - good idea on the mountain bike, I picked up a road bike (well, touring bike) and regret it on the state of Sydney's roads, mountain bike seems to be the far wiser choice!

Little surprised

At the amount of people who give out wifi passwords here that connect to their network. My wifi is for my devices, the secondary wifi running under wireless isolation and only able to connect to the internet and firewalled off of the rest of the network is the password visitors get...if I like them..

10MB/s in North Sydney?

I live in Pyrmont (ie, right next to the CBD) and barely get 4MB/s sync in my shiny new apartment complex. (actual I try not to think about as it's too depressing).

Death of the Journalist?

Scroobius Pip: https://youtu.be/CGPf1HXX7nw

Seems appropriate..

Windows Mobile v6 - Ok, you'll need to rewrite all your apps for Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone 7 - Ok, you'll need to rewrite all your apps for Windows Phone 8

Windows Phone 8 - Ok, you'll need to rewrite all your apps for Windows Phone 10

And they wonder why no developers want to get around the platform?

A bad joke

Australian internet is a terribly bad joke, I've been to third world countries with better connections.

Leave Nintendo Alone

Yet when you feel a little sorry for the kid who got a Wii-U for Christmas rather than a Playstation 4, it may be too late.

To be fair, that kid got the better deal, I've had every games console since the NES (yes, including the Panasonic 3DO R.E.A.L.) and a fair few from before yet this generation I've only picked up a Wii-U.

It's the only actual 'console' out there, where the other two are just crap PC's, I have a fairly decent PC so I can just wait for a port of everything sans exclusives...of which I can't name one off the top of my head nevermind want.

It's also the console with the games I've enjoyed most last year, the re-release of Zelda and Mario 3D World both beat GTA5 (which I actually purchased my second PS3 for, having left my first in the UK when emigrating to Aus). I'm still playing Mario to-date as the Mushroom World levels are a lot of fun and a challenge to boot - and after that I've got the 2D Mario game to try.

Nintendo would do well if the media stopped slagging them off because they don't make shitty FPS games, there's a lot more to gaming than FPS - or fancy graphics that push up the development cost of triple-A titles, so bagging on a console that limits fancy graphics seems counter intuitive. But then what do expect from a reporter who can't copy check his own work:

The deal sees Nintendo take 10 per cent of DeNA and DeNA take 1.24 per cent of Nintendo as part of the deal. That the 16 year old mobile gaming company is worth 12 per cent of one of the industry giants is a reflection of just how much Nintendo has lost out by avoiding the mobile market.

VLK

So how does this work if you have a raft of machines with the same id?

(genuine question, it didn't seem to be covered - does it use the code as a starting point and therefore all will be unique, I didn't get that from the article)

Resilient?

Transporter 15 with 8TB capacity (6TB usable), 15 users

Transporter 30 - 12TB (9TB usable), 30 users

Transporter 75 - 12TB (10 usable), 75 users

Transporter 150 - 24TB (20TB usable) and, you guessed it, 150 users

Presumably this means they're RAID5 devices:

4x2TB

4x3TB

5x2TB

6x4TB

respectively?

So the canned statement from HSBC is pretty much "Yarp - we got caught and would've continued if we didn't, actually, we're not saying we aren't continuing".

$120b - it should be held frozen whilst investigations proceed, that'll teach 'em, especially as such a case could last decades..

Never going to happen.