Posts by Oliver Jones
527 posts • joined Monday 14th May 2007 09:02 GMT
Re: Security?!?! We don need no stinging security!!!
"Why bother with doing it at a software level? Just go round and glue up all the usb ports with a hot glue gun, that's 90% of the risk gone right there."
That might be workable, if your users don't require mice or keyboards...
Re: Root password, sure, but why wasn't the data encrypted?
"I work in government, and our software policy is set that USB keyboards/mice work as normal, but if you plug in a USB storage device it will only mount if it's an approved device supplied by the IT dept and you have the right software installed (which you need to have a business case for)"
That's fine, until some smart-arse boots from a thumb drive/CD/DVD and simply copies the data they want using the booted OS. If they have access to a Firewire port (or even an authorised laptop with an ExpressCard slot), you may as well just give up now (DMA attacks.) Even a Bitlocker-protected system is vulnerable to a DMA or cold boot attack - so even full HDD software encryption means very little in terms of real security - it just gives the CIO a nice warm, fuzzy feeling.
(Linux at least has TRESOR and Loop-Amnesia, but Windows does not. I personally favour using HDDs that support on-controller encryption, but their added expense means that most IT departments don't bother with them.)
The recent trend of giving workers laptops, rather than desktops, only makes things worse - because laptop hardware can be tampered with out of sight. Desktops are marginally better, because anyone stupid enough to start dismantling their desktop PC in plain sight would end up being escorted off site faster than you can say "Busted!"
All well and good...
...but what happens to the comparison when ARM devices start getting fabbed at 22nm?
Re: Root password, sure, but why wasn't the data encrypted?
Find me a modern wired mouse or keyboard that is commercially available, today, that doesn't use USB. That should answer your question about why even military computers have USB ports on them.
So much for the three sea shells...
Where can you find a *%#!ing profanity detector when you need one? :)
Re: Who is in charge of the supply of bread to the population of London?
@Andreas Koch:
Sorry to hear that. On the other hand, if you ever go to Tokyo, you will find Roggenmischbrot by the running mile (and even labelled as such!)
Third aisle on the left, second shelf, behind the fridge with the 5-litre kegs of Paulaner in. :)
The new Mac Pro reminds me..,
...of the Amiga Mindwalker.
Well, at least...
...his full stop came without a coma before it.
RIP.
Re: I'm not sure Microsoft *has* won.
There's nothing wrong with Windows 8 if you do not use your computer for work.
Windows 8 is a toy.
Re: I'm not sure Microsoft *has* won.
The problem is that the next version of RHEL will likely be based on Gnome 3, not Gnome 2 - since Gnome 2 is no longer supported.
Therein lies the problem: Do you suddenly expect everyone to revert to a Fisher-Price user interface, or do they go to the effort of bundling Gnome 2 and 3 on the same system - even though Fedora got shot of Gnome 2 at Fedora 17?
I think MATE has a better chance than you think: Most of the effort has actually gone into fixing bugs that were present in the Gnome 2 branch that it was forked from, rather than adding new features or eye candy (Cinnamon.)
RISC OS and applications
Later versions of RISC OS (3.x and higher, 1991-92 vintage) had an Apps icon, next to the disc icons. You could click on the Apps icon, and access a number of installed applications in the ROM, from a window.
I actually thought it was a reasonably compact and elegant way of launching apps.
I'm not sure Microsoft *has* won.
Witness the total disaster that is Windows 8, and Linux is starting to look pretty good - at least you have the choice of going with MATE (or Gnome 2.x on RHEL/CentOS 6.x), which is probably going to make its way to the next RHEL/CentOS version due to massive popularity.
If you're going to kick your opponent in the balls, it helps you maintain a victory if you don't douse yourself in sulphuric acid at the same time.
Re: This is more Micro$oft FUD
Oh, it gets better: Have you seen Office 2013 (and Visual Studio 2012) yet, with ALL CAPS MENUS?
You should have seen the developer response to VS 2012 - most of them had kittens when they saw what was in store for them. I think most of them will be heading for Eclipse at this point. :)
When you start thinking "Even GEOS on my old Commodore 64 had a better UI", you know it's bad.
Re: @ MattEvanC3 Bunch of nancies
Frankly, I have better things to learn than "Now where have Microsoft hidden this, now?"
I earn a fair salary solving problems for my employer - not wasting my time with window dressing like W8 or its ilk. I still use XP 64-bit and Office 2003, and the licence fees for both have proven incredibly good value for money, because I simply have neither the time nor the bandwidth to go on an easter-egg hunt every time I fire up my computer to do work. Yes, work! You know, that thing that pays the bills?
As far as I'm concerned, not running Windows 8 is the solution, rather like not jumping off a cliff is the solution to dealing with terminal velocity - or not cheating on my wife is the solution to dealing with a damaged relationship.
Any fool can deal with a problem. However, smart people choose to avoid problems - rather than be forced into solving them (have you ever heard of the saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?)
Re: We need fewer registers not more!
Actually, SPARC had 128-160 registers (depending on version) - but only 32 were visible at any one time (and one constantly held the value 0 for comparison and initialisation purposes.) The 24 In / Local / Out registers were commonly used for local storage, plus passing values to/from subroutines; every time you called a subroutine, the In / Local / Out registers shifted, so 8 new registers were visible to the called subroutine, and 8 shifted out of view. In this way, it was very efficient to pass values to/from functions without the need to copy pointers.
In addition to the In/Local/Out registers that shifted, there were 8 global registers that did not change when you called a subroutine.
There is no money that would make me move to the UK...
To be honest, I moved to Switzerland with my wife (after spending 7-8 years in Germany) - and although I frequently get agents calling me up, wanting to make use of my C/C++/assembler skills for an exciting new project in London, I always end up having to tell the children that Santa Claus doesn't exist when I say "Sorry, I'm not available for UK work."
For one thing, I don't want to move there - and neither does my wife. I don't know how to put it across gently to the CEO-types, but people of a certain level of experience tend to get married and develop expectations in line with their abilities. At a certain point, you give up living in a hotel room 500km+ apart from your partner (and seeing your partner only on weekends) - and decide that a work/life balance in favour of life is more important. If you are asking for people of a high level of ability (and experience) to work for you in one of the least desirable (and least spouse-friendly) places to live in the Western world, you shouldn't be surprised if the response is anything less than deafening.
Silicon Valley was successful because PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT TO LIVE THERE. There's lots of sun, sand and sea to be had, and an excellent Californian culture. I don't know of anyone who seriously wants to live in London for reasons other than the fact that their work happens to be based there. Even when I was still living in the UK, I drew the line at the South East: London was that place I wanted to avoid living or working at all costs. Having spent the last 9 years outside the UK, I've come to the conclusion that the grass is still most definitely greener here.
If the CEOs in London want to attract more coding talent, I suggest they set up offices in Zürich, Basel, Bern, Düsseldorf, München, Berlin and Wien. People actually move there by choice, to escape places like London! They may also have to adjust their salary expectations, given the competition is paying rates like 120'000 CHF here in Switzerland - and talented coders in Germany and Austria are (given their proximity to Switzerland) seldom poor.
Working remotely
Every time I hear someone ask "Why doesn't my employer let me work from home?", I always ask them "Well, if your job could be done from your house, it could probably also be done from India."
That usually makes them go very quiet.
Much as I hate Windows 8...
...I think the real reason is probably that Intel is about to bring out a whole new architecture (Haswell), which means all change on the motherboard and CPU level.
When you have the choice of going out and buying something in a couple of months or so that will at least be upgradeable (CPU-wise) for at least the next couple of years, compared to buying what amounts to a dead platform right now, why would you buy any of those shiny new PCs now? By making sure that only the tick platfom can be upgraded (tocks are effectively "end of the line" for their respective chipset), Intel has manufactured the same scenario car manufacturers used to have when new numberplates were only issued in September, and everyone wanted to be seen with a new numberplate. Needless to say, August was usually dead in the new car market.
That said, we're all in a deep recession also, and people have far more reasons to save than spend. That means, Microsoft and Intel, that unless you are offering something really compelling, you have no chance.
Re: Kiddie interface
Unlike Windows 8, you could disable the Teletubbies look completely in XP - without the need for any third-party software. And if you disabled the Themes service, and copied the desktop profile as the default (via the Disabled settings in Control Panel - there is an option to copy profile settings to the login screen - but it works for everything you set, not just options for the disabled.) Turn off the Welcome screen, and presto! The clean and simple Windows 2000 look is back!
Don't even think of trying the same thing with Windows 8. User choice beyond XP is verboten!
Why go with Power when Xeons are so much cheaper?
I thought the whole point of running Linux was to get away from all that expensive hardware. Even as a Solaris enthusiast, the idea of running Linux on SPARC hardware just seems wrong to me. Linux took off like a rocket because of the low cost of the x86 hardware platform - and customers started dumping non-x86 servers in their droves simply because to go with a non-x86 platform meant it was too expensive.
I wouldn't run Linux on Power any more than I would run it on SPARC. But ARM is another story...
A future desktop running on an ARM-based Linux (or BSD-derivative), is something I definitely agree with. Only, the apps won't be RDP-based - not necessarily, anyway - I think that the future will be with Citrix-published apps, and their ilk, runnable on the desktop you work on - without the need for a separate screen or "terminal" window to run them in. Many clients are now doing this, even with Windows 7 desktops, right now - so switching over to something like Linux or even PC-BSD would make sense.
Still running XP x64 Edition.
And smiling.
So much for the latest and greatest. I'm happy to upgrade my hardware, but I regard anything Microsoft has released beyond mid-2006 as an utter waste of space.
I'd have been happy to pay for additional service packs for XP 64-bit to be honest, but that would have required less DRM malware on my machine - and for the likes of MS to actually give a damn about their customer base.
That's fine - if you can wait until September 2018...
That is when the first deliveries will be made.
Re: Interesting
Nothing wrong with the Windows XP interface. It is a refinement of 20+ years of professional user feedback in the IT industry.
Windows Vista, 7 and 8 are a departure from this - and force change, merely for fashion reasons. As a result, Windows XP is still quite popular in the enterprise. I would say that Red Flag Linux has a lot going for it - customer feedback has at least been noted, which is more than can be said for the last three major releases of Microsoft Windows.
Re: FAIL fail
If I knew about them, they wouldn't be back doors, would they?
The true state of the art of computer security is never known publicly - the best advances in cryptography are never revealed by the governments that do this research. It wasn't until Diffie-Hellman key exchange was publicly detailed that GCHQ coughed up to having invented the same concept several years earlier.
Since I also feel like nit-picking, Linus would make a pretty poor target: On the other hand, if someone with suitable interest in embedding such code in the kernel managed to bug the compiler used by Red Hat or Debian to assemble distributions, for example, you would never know about it. Internet distribution has made the issue more relevant, not less so - nobody takes a debugger and steps through x86/64 assembler to actually check what it in their distribution, do they?
FAIL
"Because the software is open source it's unlikely that any backdoors could be added into the Ubuntu OS without the global Linux community taking notice."
Er, no. Already been there, done that - in 1984, no less. See http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358210
Posted in Bitcoin prices spike on Euro woes
Re: In troubled times...
None of this is really news - giving depositors a haircut is simply the latest increment when it comes to boiling the frog. Some are even saying that it's early days yet, which shows how fast asleep they are! Frankly, I regard the fact that a European-wide bank run didn't happen on Monday as proof beyond all doubt that the vast majority of people are not capable of thinking for themselves - but have been successfully herded, much like cattle, toward the financial abbatoir.
They have only themselves to blame.
Early days was the grand theft that was MF Global - and, not much later, came the encore that was PFG. Cyprus is only yet another increment in the same game - and the game is legalised theft on a global scale. This won't stop with Cyprus, either - New Zealand is already considering taking similar action, and you can bet more countries will follow - especially when they can justify prior usage - and yet the frog still doesn't leap from the boiling water to save himself.
In the end, you know what happens - don't you?
I can't blame those who want to invest in BitCoin, although I don't see much future for the currency in the event of a reasonably large solar flare. However, much can be said about other digital currencies, too - if the solar flare of 1859 was enough to take out the telegraph systems of the time (or an entire Canadian province in 1989), I doubt many people will be left with power (let alone remain online to trade their BitCoins) in the event of a similar flare today.
That leaves gold and silver as reasonably secure stores of wealth that have stood the test of time, and - as of last week, apparently, keeping your savings in a physical piece of metal you can own and keep somewhere safe now carries a 6.5% to 9.9% premium over keeping it in a bank account, where the bank officially owns it, and all you have is an I.O.U. written on your monthly statement.
Possession is nine tenths of the law, after all.
Amazon is great if you are outside the EU
I have to say, I have never experienced smoother ex-EU shopping than on Amazon. You see, VAT here in Switzerland is only 8% - and when you buy from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.de, you get the goods VAT-free with a small charge levied to cover the 8% Swiss VAT at the border, so you don't even have to walk down to the Zoll, receipt in hand, to go and pay the duty before they give you your parcel.
Nice.
Re: Not difficult
Agreed.
What will happen is that double-taxation relief will apply only when proof of payment of taxes in other jurisdictions has been supplied to the Revenue / Finanzamt / Belastingdienst (or whatever your local word for tax authority is), and proper validation has been done. With today's technology, that kind of recursive auditing shouldn't actually be a big deal. Until the audit is complete, a flat (say, 30%) tax is levied on all money sent out of the country, whatever it happens to be booked against - and the onus is then on the corporation to claim it back, by proving that the tax was paid to another tax authority (and providing a full money trail.) Of course, tax havens will be of absolutely no use at that point - if the money cannot be traced (which is the whole point of using a tax haven), then the payment of tax cannot be proved - and the tax simply isn't refunded.
The onus will simply shift from the tax authority to the corporation. Of course, multinationals won't like it, and they will squeal like stuck pigs - but they will be forced to open their books and declare profits openly and transparently. In the background, tax havens like the Bahamas, Cayman Islands and Jersey will quietly shut up shop and return to being the boring old backwaters they used to be.
HP disappeared from my vendor list a long time ago.
I duly noted that HP's first response whenever Microsoft EOLs an OS was to remove all drivers for that OS from the HP web site, for all product - be they past or current.
Quite frankly, that kind of customer service I could do without.
Posted in Jam today: Raspberry Pi Ram doubled
Farnell is too expensive.
They wanted 70 CHF (about 47 quid) per Pi, which is way over the top. RS was far more competitive. Ordered from RS, and as I have the patience of Job with regard to stuff like this, I'll be very pleased if the two I ordered come with 512MB instead of 256MB.
Ending up with two Pis with a double helping RAM on each will have been worth the wait!
They're just pissed that they didn't manage to get there first...
...and not for lack of trying, I might add: Remember Clipper?
Re: Maybe they have a bit of a point
I would never work in the UK simply because it means I would have to live there. Apart from anything else, HMRC are world-class in terms of incompetence, and I simply refuse to have anything to do with them. That means working in the UK is a non-starter for me.
If you want to attract the kind of people who can live wherever they want (and actually have the ability to choose what kind of bullshit they will or will not put up with), because they can always find work wherever they go (in my case, I live in Switzerland), then you really need to start thinking outside the box - and outside the UK, in particular. It might also mean paying more, since talent tends to move to places where the renumeration is higher, not lower. Wouldn't you, if you could?
Try relocating (or opening an office) in a place where most talented people actually DO want to live. Take a good look at some of the top ten cities in the world with the best living standards, and take that as a template for setting up a remote office. (Hint: Six of those top-10 cities are in DACH.)
Or were you seriously expecting the likes of me to tell our wives that we should give up our nice life in XYZ to come and live in a shithole like the UK, simply because that's the only place you happen to be hiring? Most successful and experienced IT guys aren't single - and treating us as if we are is not going to help you fill those positions, to put it mildly.
Re: Fast boot isn't everything...
Nothing... provided you ensure MDI-X is not enabled. (Switches need to be connected with crossover cable.) A no mdix-auto command issued on the appropriate ports should do the trick. Yeah, if someone uses crossover cable, you're screwed - but you're also screwed if someone comes in with a custom 3-phase-to-UTP adapter...
Then again, you can always fire anyone stupid enough to actually try and sabotage office networks. I heard that pouring coffee down the back of monitors doesn't do them any good, but I've yet to see a coffee-proof monitor.
Fast boot isn't everything...
...quite a few companies I have to work with have their Cisco access-layer switches set up as default - i.e. with spanning-tree protocol set up on each port (no portfast), so there is a 50-second delay before the Ethernet link comes up.
Their Windows 7-based PCs boot up, pant like an enthusiastic puppies ... and then when I enter my username and password at the login screen, report "There are no logon servers available to serve your login request."
You end up waiting anyway. :)
Re: oops
American cities in the desert will cease to be popular, when they have drained the aquifers that lie underneath them: It may not be possible (or economically practical) to bring in water from the sea for desalination.
Buy a few picture postcards, or take some photos - they might be very valuable in a few decades...
Re: Bravo the NZ PM! But actually.........
The beauty is that they don't have to.
Some simpering descendent will come along and apologise for their actions in another 70 years, after all. Shame you probably won't be alive to see it - but that's your problem, not theirs.
Re: Obviously this is on purpose
The cynic in me wonders whether this will eventually be done via a hardware switch, inside the machine - requiring you to void your warranty if you want to install a "non-standard" operating system.
Too complicated for my taste.
Here in Switzerland, you simply buy a roll of bags from the nearest supermarket - and they already have the tax paid on them.
It is literally pay-as-you-throw - unofficial bags are simply not collected - and you pay depending on the volume of rubbish you need to have collected.
I'm just waiting...
...until they release an EX platform with real PCI-Express v3, SATA3 and USB3 - rather than the cock-up that was Sandy Bridge-EX. Unfortunately, since Ivy Bridge will likely re-use the same chipset and socket as Sandy Bridge, it means we'll have to wait until Q3 2013 before we see a "bug-fixed" Haswell-EX platform with everything "done right". Until then, I don't plan on spending any more cash on the Sandy Bridge-EX or Ivy Bridge-EX platforms.
On the other hand, I do like the Xeon E3s - and I plan to build several mini servers and small workstations around those - but anyone who wants a really powerful workstation is waiting for Haswell, due to the bugs in the current platform - and everyone else is probably already happy with whatever they've got right now.
That's the disadvantage of catering to the consumer end of the market first - they're the very people who probably care least about performance, and will buy whatever happens to be current: Intel is pitching the cutting-edge parts to a market that couldn't care less about them, and starving itself of income from a market that does care about what Intel high-end parts can offer, because Intel is ignoring it.
Apart from anything else, when the gap in performance is narrowed enough between generations, you may lose a lot of Ivy Bridge-EX sales to Haswell Xeon E3s, because people are simply unwilling to wait another 15-18 months for the Haswell-EX to come out after the Xeon E3 is released - and will simply ask themselves if buying a Sandy Bridge-EX is really worth it, when Haswell Xeon E3s will make an appearance very shortly after Ivy Bridge-EX. By waiting just a few months (especially easy as there is usually a change freeze around Christmas in many organisations, which precludes hardware upgrades), they can skip yet another generation - and while it doesn't threaten DP sales or 4-way or 8-way systems, it most certainly does threaten the Xeon E5 UP and high-end desktop UP market.
From a marketing perspective, I never really understood why Intel chose to hamstring their sales in this way. In this day and age, where advances between processor generations are not as easy as the glorious scaling days of the 90s, I never understood why Intel is effectively making its high-end products as uncompelling as possible in comparison to imminent technology releases. Haswell is supposed to be a real leap forward, but Intel should be pushing the high-end platforms first for maximum impact. Instead, Haswell Xeon E3s will simply cannibalise sales of Ivy Bridge-EX.
Posted in Titans of tech: Why I'll never trust 'em
Re: Business is king.
Linux as a client OS is a no-go for many companies. I personally have been thinking about the security update issue, and I would probably continue using Windows XP Professional x64 Edition anyway - just not directly connected to the net without fairly judicious (hardware) firewall rules. Run productivity software on it, compile code on it, but keep a Linux (Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is not a bad idea - I despise the Linux kernel, but I can cope with GNU userland) to hand for net access and more risky stuff like e-mail handling.
It's not ideal, but then again, neither is Metro and that damned Office ribbon. Clippy, come back - all is forgiven! (God, I never thought I'd see myself saying that.)
Windows doesn't have a very bright future - and with Apple has cannibalising its professional Mac line and focusing on being another consumer electronics company, I think we're going to be going through some dark times. I regard it as a tragedy that the improvements on the hardware side have not been matched by improvements in the software side - just more bloat, more pointless features (except the ones I want - they've been removed, of course) - and, of course, more expense.
Posted in Titans of tech: Why I'll never trust 'em
Re: well said!
Apple does not stick to traditional vertical integration.
Jack Tramiel understood what vertical integration was - he owned the entire supply chain, and used it to drive his competitors out of business. That is not something you see too often in today's ITIL-obsessed world.
Apple happens to have control of their OS and some control over their hardware - give or take the odd Chinese star getting an iPhone 5 prototype because he knows a few people at Foxconn.
Posted in Titans of tech: Why I'll never trust 'em
Re: Apple doesnt effect the landscape?
Witness the latest young and trendy CEO, one Mark Zuckerburg - who has presided over an "interesting" IPO and impulse-driven splurge on Instagram, and who probably won't be CEO of Facebook for too much longer. Anyone who got caught up in the hype and invested in Facebook also got splashed with the cold water of reality: Young and trendy does not always mean profitable. Ask Jack Wills or Abercrombie and Fitch if you want to know how fickle "young and trendy" is, and they're the ones who really have to pay attention to that sort of thing.
Most CEOs have learned (or learn pretty quickly afterward) that if something doesn't have business legs, it won't run. Look at Nokia: They have ignored their business for too long, and it is costing them dearly. Don't say "Oh, it's Apple" - it's not. Even Nokia's low-end phones (where Apple doesn't compete) - which were always a best-seller, back in the good old days, are being eaten away by rivals, because Nokia simply doesn't deliver what the consumer wants. Not everyone wants an Apple device, but Nokia is generally disinterested in anyone's opinion but its own.
Sun also lost interest in its customer base, too - and decided to focus on "young and trendy" open source, courtesy of a "young and trendy" pony-tailed CEO - while completely ignoring what was actually bringing home the bacon... Completely different market segment - almost identical result: If you ignore commercial reality, expect a bite in the ass sooner rather than later.
Corollary: I do not expect to see many successful "young and trendy" CEOs - because idealism (one unique preserve of the young and trendy) does not lend itself well to commercial pragmatism, which is a requirement for any successful CEO.
Posted in Titans of tech: Why I'll never trust 'em
Re: Business is king.
I still ask that question. It's why I use XP 64-bit Edition and Office 2003 on shiny new hardware.
Does Office 2007/2010 and Windows 7/8 bring me any extra benefits with newer hardware? Or do I get a better deal running Windows XP x64 on new hardware, at speeds the supposedly "faster" Windows 7 has yet to match? I don't need DirectX 10/11 - nor do I need IE9, either: I use Opera. Funnily enough, most of my clients (banks and telecoms) have also been sticking with Windows XP (even the 32-bit version, despite its limitations) - even on new hardware - and this isn't for a lack of Windows 7 licence stickers on the box.
I absolutely love new hardware, and Intel has made sure that the benefits have been pretty good in recent years, with mind-boggling advances in speed, bandwidth improvements and power efficiency. The same cannot be said of Microsoft - does Windows 7 use a miserly 175MB of RAM upon boot-up, leaving the other 15.8GB for me? Does it hell. I have to pay for a shit-load of DRM and "visual experience" features I neither need nor want. Do they help me, or my work? No. 2005 was the high-water line for Microsoft - ever since then, they've been on a decline.
In recent years, quite a few organisations (mostly software - Microsoft isn't alone in their guilt here: Witness the stupidity of Gnome 3 and KDE 4 if you need any further proof that this daft concept of selling an "experience" has gone too far! Witness the growing popularity of Xfce, as more and more people are ditching their digital baubles and going back to human/computer interfaces that deliver REAL productivity) have forgotten about delivering "what works" and decided that they want to sell you an "experience". Never mind that an experience is actually a perception of an event - not a product - and they're all just falling over themselves to put human-computer interfaces back 20 years in favour of more eye candy. Does the Ribbon actually help me, or simply gobble up valuable desktop real estate and get in my way? Does Metro help, or is it just another hindrance?
To be honest, I found myself doing the job quicker with Office 2003 and XP 64-bit, so I simply stopped giving money to Microsoft (Intel and NVidia, on the other hand, have done very nicely out of me - largely thanks to their continued driver support and compelling new products.) Even Intel's own C/C++ compiler software has proven to be worth the subscription charge that I pay for my Windows and Linux licences for Parallel Studio XE. Microsoft's Visual Studio has gotten less and less useful for C programming since 2005 - and if you don't want to induce howls of laughter, you'd better not discuss Visual Studio 2012's new "visual experience". All-caps menus? Yummy.
The computer I use is a tool used for achieving tasks - work: I do not expect - or want - to be sold an "experience" - because, 9 times out of 10, the actual experience is one of irritation. Ironically, when productivity software focuses on entertainment value at the expense of utility, it loses both entertainment and utility value (as far as I am concerned, anyway.)
Don't talk to me about Metro. There are some who think that the full-screen "experience" is an advancement. Quite frankly, I enjoyed the full-screen "experience" on my Commodore 64, back in the day - and I don't think it is a new or improved concept: Rather, I think Metro deserves to stay in the past, where it belongs. At least the Commodore 64 had Creatures and Armalyte...
Re: I could have sworn
Actually, I have found that Amazon have REDUCED the price if I looked at an item without buying - and simply closed the window.
What I would like to know is where this leaves consumers who click-through based on a hit from a price comparison site. I can just see the lawsuits coming thick and fast...
Posted in Titans of tech: Why I'll never trust 'em
Business is king.
Too many in IT have forgotten why they are in IT, and exactly how and why they are fed.
You can evangelise technology until you're blue in the face, but if it delivers no meaningful value to a business, why should it be adopted by that business? This is a question many IT vendors should be asking, but aren't.
Just two problems with that:
a) Offshore staff are cheap, but experienced staff cost lots of money.
b) Customers only complain - they don't change banks, or hold you to account if it all blows up.
I speak as an experienced and certified Sun Cluster practitioner, so I understand your point about redundancy (and to be honest, my first thought was "Has anyone at Natwest heard of clustering?")
But IT (or even security) is not a topic that management in most shops take seriously anymore - the only thing that is "too big to fail" these days is the senior management's bonus payment. They know they won't be held accountable - plenty of case history already demonstrates this - so why bother spending the money? Who needs goodwill when you can shit all over your customers and they'll keep coming back for more?
Look at the number of security breaches in recent months (many involving customers' financial data) - if this stuff actually mattered in the grand scheme of things, the senior management of these firms would be hanging from the nearest yardarm. They would certainly not remain in employment - and definitely not rewarded with more bonuses!
The bottom line is this: The CIA triad (confidentiality, integrity, availability) doesn't matter one jot in the domain of banking and big business. Please excuse my rather jaded evaluation of this farce.
SQL*Forms via Telnet had a better UI than that!
I will be sticking with Office 2003, thank you very much.
Re: "a triumph for nuke power"
When all else fails, ad-hominem wins the day, eh?
Try some basic English comprehension, you nitwit: If you read my comments carefully enough to warrant writing a reply, you would have realised that I'm all for burying the stuff - rather than waiting for something to happen while it's all nice and accessible on the surface...
Re: @Oliver Jones - - "a triumph for nuke power"
Congratulations on missing the point by a clear mile, Graham dear.
As I have already (clearly) stated, I am NOT against nuclear power. I am against how it is currently IMPLEMENTED. Your comment on TEPCO is astonishing in its naivete: When you mix ANY kind of technology with human beings, you automatically get greed, short-sightedness and disregard built in to the equation. Nuclear power is no exception.
