* Posts by JonW

58 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jan 2010

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Cruise, Kidman and an unfortunate misunderstanding at the local chemist

JonW

Is no one going to mention...

"...RAID array..." ?

_twitches_

World+dog share in collective panic attack as Google slides off the face of the internet

JonW
FAIL

Impressive

Last Month

AWS: Here's a major outage for you

This Month:

Google: Hold my beer...

Plutus Payroll clients and staff fell for plausible business model fairy tales

JonW
WTF?

Question from a Pom

"Some were overpaid and now tell us that all of their wages have disappeared from their bank accounts."

They pulled money back from a personal bank account? Is this sort of arrangement usual/ actually possible down there?

Facebook is abusive. It's time to divorce it

JonW
Thumb Up

Re: Well-said, Simon

+1000

I committed Facey suicide a few years back when I got to 100 "Friends". I looked at the list and thought "I didn't even like you in school!" and pulled the plug.

Regrettably, I've been sucked in again in order to access a couple of groups. However, setting up using photo ID and dedicated e-mail account isn't too painful and you can't be friended or seen by "Friends of Friends" if you have no friends....How Life mirrors Facebook :)

Billion-dollar skincare biz scrubs IT makeover, spends days in a daze

JonW
FAIL

Sounds like their roll back plan could have done with a little more work...

Drunk user blow-dried laptop after dog lifted its leg over the keyboard

JonW
Pint

Ah, but progress...

Knocked a glass of wine over my Surface a month or so back. Yanked the keyboard off and gave a good rinse under the hot tap. After it dried out? Perfect.

As someone who's trashed too many laptops with Liquid (a.k.a Beer), I see this as real progress. Put it down to no volts flowing to fuzz things up.

New satellites could cause catastrophic space junk collisions

JonW
Alert

Time for a Levy?

UN tax on launches (say 5% of launch cost) to fund a clean up operation. Lots of proposals out there to de-orbit junk; we just need them funded.

I will *not* be happy if I get obliterated by someone's frozen space wee on my way to Mars.

Robo-Uber T-boned, rolls onto side, self-driving rides halted

JonW
WTF?

Bizarre response

Pull the fleet? Why?! From this incident, Uber doesn't seem to have done anything wrong.

Are they being super-paranoid about accidents and over-regulation, or using this as an excuse for something else? If the former, I don't welcome the day when my self-driving car won't take me to the station because the fleet's "Grounded" because someone in LA had a prang.

Large Hadron Collider turns up five new particles

JonW
Pint

Say what?

No doubt very impressive, but I have less than zero clue what 95% of this article means :/

Regardless - 3 cheers for the CERN boffins and their atom smashing; long may it continue!

Tip for darknet drug lords: Don't wear latex gloves to the post office

JonW
FAIL

Progress

Well, the Tech might improve, but it seems your average criminal is still decidedly average.

UKCloud: We ARE cheaper than Microsoft or AWS online storage

JonW
Thumb Up

As a customer...

More than enough, thanks.

Bill Gates joins $170bn climate change investment club

JonW

Re: Trumpity Trump

Regardless of the accords various being signed or not signed, his attitude will be picked up by many at a time when the planet needs all the help it can get. I'm not an environaught by any means, but I genuinely believe that it'll be much harder to roll back 4 + years of a lax environmental policy that it will be (for example) to repair the US:China relationship.

JonW
Facepalm

Trumpity Trump

Out of all the damage this man could do in the next 4 years (please, god, not 8) his attitude to climate change is the thing that scares me most.

3 cheers for the billionaires.

What should the Red Arrows' new aircraft be?

JonW

Let's be different

Replica Spitfires (with new Merlins to keep the sounds right, obviously). Every National display team blasts around doing pretty much the same thing - a nice, tight display by spitfires would be awesome to behold.

The Great British domain name rip-off: Overcharged .uk customers help pay for cheaper .vodka

JonW
Thumb Up

Yes, but....

...will anything happen? A look into how this organisation operates is well overdue. They've been slowly pushing the boundaries for years and need a good, hard, slap, IMO.

Gaze in awe at Elon Musk’s historic 156-foot erection

JonW
Thumb Up

Nice to see things put into perspective

Splendid final sentence; narks me that people lump the two vehicles together as it belittles SpaceX's achievement.

When is a refurbished server not refurbished? Ask this Dell reseller

JonW

One teeny issue

Power to their elbow, but their entire biz is at the mercy of Dell's wider strategy; a small change to the model and they're sunk. I think it's a good value+ service, but you wouldn't find me investing in them any time soon and I hope they haven't got their arses hanging out too far.

Loop Dreams: Top college talents showcase their skills … in cabling

JonW
Unhappy

Pics?

I came here looking for cable porn. Where is my cable porn?

I *demand* cable porn!

Irish mum coughs to children's allowance fiddle

JonW

Out of sight, out of mind?

Not out of mind enough for her to bloody spend it though, was it....

Naiiiil em up I say! Nail some sense into them!

Virgin Atlantic co-pilot dazzled by laser

JonW
Pirate

Simple solution, me hearties.

Pilots wear an eye patch below 2000 feet. That was the plan back when the RAF had a strike role - bucket of instant sunshine gets a bit bright and you dazzle yourself? Use other eye - simple.

Lottery chief resigns as winning combo numbers appear on screen BEFORE being drawn

JonW

Re: Stupids play now

I guess it improves your odds a bit if you're properly connected...

Mathematician: sunspot could mean mini ice age from 2030

JonW

What does this mean for PV?

Move to renewable continues at same rate

Large % of base load PV

ITER still being built with costs spiraling

New Solar Minimum

Bugger

Do we need any more reasons to build good old fashion nuke plants?

Chromecast gains wired Ethernet dongle

JonW
WTF?

PoE Please

PoE and pass through to power the Chromecast would be really useful. Opportunity missed....

Hide the HUD, say boffins, they're bad for driver safety

JonW

Learn from aviation

Having flown with a HUD, KISS is the important thing. If you really need green arrows pointing the way around the car in front, you shouldn't be driving. Reserve it for over speed alerts and other *critical* information - not at all surprised about the findings of this report, tbh

Philae warms up nicely, sends home second burst of data

JonW

Re: Over engineered?

Interesting replies - thought it was going to stimulate some debate; didn't expect to be down voted to oblivion though :)

JonW

Over engineered?

Awesome engineering achievement and not knocking it, but Philae, Opportunity etc all go way beyond their design life. I understand that these things take years of planning and getting them off this rock in the first place is not cheap, but as SpaceX et al lower the launch costs, there must start to be a case to go for more, simpler, cheaper probes with a faster launch rate.

Just sayin'

Taming the Thames – The place that plugged London's Great Stink

JonW
Thumb Up

Shit like this makes me proud to be British.

Shit like this also makes me sad for what we've become :(

Amazon CTO destealths to throw light on AWS data centre design

JonW

Audio on a server

With the big man on this - what possible use is it in 99.999% of deployments? Pretty sure it was still present in the last lot of SM boxes we rolled out and was certainly in Dells before we booted them into touch...

Dear departed Internet Explorer, how I will miss you ... NOT

JonW
Thumb Up

Ahh, the old days...

Good trip down nostalgia alley there, but needs to tip the hat to Trumpet Winsock, as the MS implementation was (if it's possible) worse than the associated version of IE. Best {however much it was} I ever spent.

Are you ready to ditch the switchboard and move to IP telephony?

JonW

Our experience

Used to run 4x analogue lines, but had to move office. New place on a different exchange so would have to change the numbers - disaster. However, simple to port existing numbers to VoIP

Offset the money saved on lines on a biz grade connection (EFM) and gone for hosted VoIP with a load of Yealink handsets (They're cool - can do API stuff with them as well to link with CMS)

+ As many outgoings and incomings as I want, great as we grow

+ Simple, Web panel for call groups, IVR, etc etc

+ Easy to add DDIs for marketeers etc

+ Better Internet for the company as a whole (10Mb up and down, uncontended and unmetered)

+ Great DR as if we lose the office, can carry on from any internet connection.

+ Part timer/home worker carries on as if at her desk

+ No BT involvement, not even their copper

+ Actually, the last deserves many more +++s ++++++++^29

- Lose the 'net, lose everything

- EFM is chuffin pricey, but offset by not having the copper and *is* on a 6hr SLA

- Lost the fax and no easy way to plug the alarm in with an autodialer

- Outgoings are a tad more expensive, but we don't do too much of that

That's about it, tbh. We're a rural biz in a small market town; experience has been uniformly good for the last 3 years+

No advert and no connection, but our provider is Dial9 and they've been brilliant and wouldn't hesitate to recommend them.

El Reg's plucky Playmonaut eyes suborbital rocket shot

JonW

Great, but....

Whilst I think this is awesome and would buy one in a shot, can't help thinking that it's not going to help the space junk situation. Maybe not this project, but one like it and soon...

Elon Musk snowed under with Googley dollars for Space Internet

JonW
Coat

could be worse...

..if it was Microsoft, it'd be all "You look like you're trying to launch a recoverable space craft. Do you want help with that?"

Google: What this planet needs is INTERNET FROM SPAAACE

JonW
Go

Good stuff

I find it really encouraging that private biz is pushing up into LEO.

That's it - nothing profound :)

Mystery Russian satellite: orbital weapon? Sat gobbler? What?

JonW

Re: take a look

You're assuming that this thing is not just a load of cameras and stuff designed to tempt the thing to get close to do the same

UK.gov's Open Source switch WON'T get rid of Microsoft, y'know

JonW

Re: Of course it won't get rid of MS

+1 for you, sir. (Not convinced about the long term accessibility bit, though!)

We've used OO here for ages and are very happy with it, but recently had to fork out for a fistfull of MSO licences just to read some bloody contract documentation and get the bullet numbers to order correctly.

I've no evidence to support this, but I suspect the vast majority of users don't use Macros and other fiddly bits in their day to day ops (we certainly don't) and wouldn't notice the difference.

Big Q for you, though - is this policy going to rattle down to schools and stop the problem at source?

Experts suspiciously eye LOHAN's cantankerous canards

JonW

Re: Canard Loading

Given my Math, that's probably a good plan :) You able to log the demanded servo deflections when in flight?

JonW

Canard Loading

SuperTim raises a valid point - where is the Centre of Pressure on that thing? I'm assuming it was modelled to death in the design phase, but 2 things occur to me and I cba to go back through the archives to see if they were addressed:

1. The air's very thin up there. Relative airspeed will be low, so large control deflections will be required to control the vehicle. The force needed to move the control surfaces will be correspondingly reduced, so rather than gear down (as it looks at the moment), I'd consider gearing up. In a previous life, I used to fly pointy things for the Queen; my aerodynamics are a bit rusty now, but I still remember wallowing around at over 40K feet, full throttle with a stupidly high ground speed and being only a few Kts (Indicated) above the stall...

2. That shape of aerofoil is going to result in drastic shifting of the CoP if it moves far, so the pivot point needs to be biased (imo) to the high load / high deflection position.

My 2p

VSANs choking on VMware's recommended components

JonW

This makes their entire "Certified" program look very questionable - what *exactly* does that testing regime involve? I/O is one of the easier things to test, imho....

Final LOHAN test flights codenamed 'Punch' and 'Judy'

JonW
Thumb Up

fwiw, I heartily approve of the canine naming convention. If Johnny local doesn't "Get" it, that's his loss.

Whitehall and Microsoft negotiate NHS Windows XP hacker survival plan

JonW

"We spoke to an IT operations manager at one major NHS trust who struggled to recall being contacted by central government on the end of Windows XP."

There's a man who earns his salary....

Who's who: 12th Doctor has been chosen, will meet you on Sunday night

JonW

Re: I hope he has breasts

But think of the benefits when (s)he gets all wobbly.

Love in an elevator.... testing mast: The National Lift Tower

JonW
Thumb Up

This type of article

I like it. Bring me another!

Traceroute reveals Star Wars Episode IV 'crawl' text

JonW
Thumb Up

Re: A few corrections

Very well done, my dear sir.

May I propose that you give it a few hours to get around the intertubes, then change to something along the lines of

never.going.to.give

you.up.never.going.

to.let.you.down

etc...

'Leccy price hike: Greens to blame as well as energy biz

JonW
Boffin

Figures are good

Look for another installer :) The delta between a fixed array and a tracker is around 6K istr

Anyhoo - bit of a cloudy start to the day, but note when it begins / finishes generating.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/802/14857530.jpg/

Oh, and you're assuming a catastrophic fail of the inverter, but I take your point.

JonW
Flame

You're not giving the full picture

A friend put up a 3.5KW PV array on a 2-axis tracker a few weeks ago (~£17K). Now I accept that it's sunny weather, but he got 42KWh out the thing the other day - that's a real-world, pukka figure. Also, remember that he isn't paying to import those KWh from the grid out of taxed income which further skews the financial argument.

The ROCs and FIT are doing their job - promoting alternative energy sources and micro-generation. I fully expect them to be reviewed / cut soon (Surprised they weren't in april, tbh) now that the ball is rolling.

It's all well and good to blame the Govt / Fat cat suppliers, but burning dino juice/gas to make electricity is madness - we need to be sharper than that. Personally, I'd like to see a crash Nuclear program in the UK but we've pi$$ed away our expertise in that field and have to make do with what we can.

BT's fibre-to-the-premises trials hit duct roadblock

JonW
Coat

Duct Problems?

Should call Mr Tuttle - he'll sort it out for them.

Choosing a client for desktop virtualisation

JonW
FAIL

Powaaaah!

"both of them claim 3-3.5k watts of power usage"

Thin - apart from the 6' heatsink

Home Office crime maps go to street-level detail

JonW
FAIL

Standard major "Launch" of a Gov website

Step 1 : Spend a fortune on a Web2.x thingamy

Step 2 : Realise you've blown the budget

Step 3 : Rent a low-end VPS from a kiddy host

Step 4: Splash all over the media with a launch date

Step 5 : Leave your audience looking at "Loading" icons or white pages

Step 6 : Audience go away and may come back in a few months if you're lucky

Step 7 : Pats on the back and Martinis all round

Cretins.

Plasma space-drive aces efficiency numbers: Set for ISS in 2014

JonW
Boffin

In space...

..no one can hear you scream. So why are the radiators(?) on that uber-rocket thing streamlined?

Grips my tits when spacecraft are made to look and manoeuvre like aircraft...

BT feathers ruffled over pigeon-based file transfer caper

JonW
WTF?

Rural living

Yes, I live in the country.

Yes, my ADSL connection was an unstable 256Kb at best.

Yes, I now use a 3G dongle with a planar antenna and a transparent caching proxy.

Yes, my speed is still pants.

Yes, I decided to live here.

No, I'm not going to move.

It's not a "Basic human right" (whatever tf that means). When BT was GPO, you had due cause to bitch. Now? Welcome to capitalism.

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