* Posts by Mr. Chuck

28 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jan 2011

How exec snatched $6m budget from his infosec team because he couldn't see ROI

Mr. Chuck

There's nothing startling about this. Information security is intended to mitigate business risk. If the cost of an infosec FAIL + fines is less than the cost of fixing it, doing nothing makes perfect sense from the standpoint of a board member. Most people are using windows and so are accustomed to computers not working properly. No particular stigma attaches once the headlines have wrapped the chips.

Come to Oz for sun, surf, ratting on co-workers and surveillance

Mr. Chuck

Appalling

People's Commissar for Law and Order George 'What a complete bastard' Brandis has things well under control here. The words 'slave' and 'lackey' spring to mind, also 'thug' and 'bully'.

Windows XP is finally DEAD, right? Er, not quite. Here's what to do if you're stuck with it

Mr. Chuck
Trollface

No sympathy whatever

Linux user.

Libre Office works well enough for my simple requirements.

All my fave games but one run under wine. Got a vbox for that.

Couldn't care less. Suffer in yer jocks winslaves.

China's CERT blames US for a THIRD of all attacks on Middle Kingdom PCs

Mr. Chuck

looks like WW3 has already started and we missed it.

Bulls hit city streets after alleged Samsung ad shoot hits the fan

Mr. Chuck
Mushroom

bovine road safety

"The beasts would have had to negotiate at least four sets of traffic lights to reach the place in which they are depicted and were probably terrified for much of the journey."

And yet they seemed to make a better job of this than most cyclists.

Help a hack: What's in your ultimate Windows XP migration toolkit?

Mr. Chuck

Hmm, seems to be a fair bit of argy-bargy about Windows vs. Linux. Why not throw this over to the corporates who generally make a lot of money out of end users, and get them to give something back?

So here is a challenge for Microsoft, Red Hat, Novell, Canonical, Apple even, and anyone else who wants to have a crack at it; sort this out, for nothing, for the remote communites. 'Best' (fastest migration, most usable, most interoperable, whatever) solution wins. It'd be a PR win at least.

Mozilla takes Windows 8-friendly Firefox out back ... two shots heard

Mr. Chuck
Mushroom

Re: no surprise here

Does that include NSA implants?

And if Secureboot allows me to boot windows, well, it's not very accurately named is it? Windows is still a toy after 30 years. cf http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/11/microsoft_adobe_patch_tuesday/

Windows XP market share GROWS AGAIN, outstrips Win 8.1 surge

Mr. Chuck
Mushroom

And now a message from Sirius Cybernetics

As a Linux user I'm just going to sit here and radiate smugness.

Big Content wants Aussies blocked from Netflix

Mr. Chuck
Mushroom

Region -1

Everyone under 30 downloads all their shit anyway. Give it up Rupert, it's a lost cause. What you can or cannot bully the Aus govt. to do is largely irrelevant at this point in history.

Boeing going ... GONE: Black phone will SELF-DESTRUCT in 30 secs

Mr. Chuck
Go

Idiot proof?

This is absurd. You don't need to get into a device to get the contents out. No doubt the US and A will pay Boeing handsomely for them regardless. Another $10,000 hammer anyone?

And I'm betting that smart hackers with plenty of time on their hands will work out how to dismantle it anyway.

Prez Obama cyber-guru: Think your data is safe in an EU cloud? The NSA will raid your servers

Mr. Chuck
Go

Them's fightin' words

That would be an act of war these days wouldn't it?

Retiring greybeards force firms to retrain Java, .NET bods as mainframe sysadmins

Mr. Chuck
FAIL

Re: Root Problem

Don't get me started on MBA's. I first encountered one of these horrid things in the mid 80's and nothing I've seen or heard by these clowns since has led me to change my initial, extremely unfavourable impression.

A degree in Empty Suit? Yes please!

Mr. Chuck
Go

Re: On the benefits of keeping knowledge in your own head

That expertise represents a working lifetime of training, experience and insight. Do you think that would matter to most managers looking to cut headcount or outsource? Not a bit.

There are arseholes in play, but you have failed to identify the right ones. Stick to your .net toys if that gives you pleasure, and let the grownups run the real systems.

Mr. Chuck

I don't think so...

Document and hand over your job so some snot-nose .net dev or code-wallah from India can do it for less?? And, most likely, badly??

Stuff em. I hope the mainframe admins have the sense to make the banks squirm on the hook. You want advanced systems cared for and fed, you pay for it.

Internet fraud still stings suckers

Mr. Chuck

Re: Had the bog-standard phone scammer just last night

Well it seems to have worked for Mrs. Kray. What's your point'?

Verizon: 96 PER CENT of state-backed cyber-spying traced to China

Mr. Chuck
Go

on the other hand

Perhaps China's been hacked and the traffic really originates from Mr. Scorpio's secret island base. Larry, care to comment? (He even _looks_ like Mr. Scorpio)

Harassed Oracle employee wins case, cops huge legal bill

Mr. Chuck
FAIL

law vs justice

The legal system is about the law, not about justice, which is quite another thing. Since a civil action is, as mentioned before, about redress and not punishment, if the woman in question refused to settle she was obviously trying to make a point--and if you try that against one of the most famously litiigious and laywered-up corporations on the planet, you only have yourself to blame. Personally I reckon I would have been pretty happy with 85k for some offensive comments, but that's just me. Since I am probably genetically unable to internalise the higher concerns of the sisterhood (being a bloke) I may be all messed up about that.

This is not to say I have any sympathy whatever for the other side, and I've long believed that 10% of all lawyers should be driven into the sea each year (along with marketing departments and politicians) as a warning to all the others. However, no-one seems disposed to adopt this enlightened policy just yet. So, it is what it is. I think she has either been badly advised, or ignored good advice.

BYOD is a PITA: Employee devices cost firms £61 a month

Mr. Chuck
Go

Evolution in action

Let's just imagine that BYOD extended to desktops. Every morning you'd lug in your PC or mac or linux box, loaded with all the crap programs, malware and illegal downloads you and your kiddies have put on it. Somehow your 'fat and old' IT department has to work out a system by which random operating systems at arbitrary revision levels, with random mixes of applications, unknown open and unfixed or badly fixed bugs, can be secured and made compliant with business policy and legal requirements, and by the way perform in a way which you find acceptable.

Now what exactly is the difference between this and a modern mobe, which is no different to a PC you can stick in your pocket?

While you people are happily stuffing around with your phone (the new smoking) in blissful ignorance, your company is well on the way going broke either because of increased costs or decreased security or both, and you will soon be out of a job, and all in pursuit of largely illusory productivity gains. So your problem will soon go away and so will you. Ta ta.

Paul Allen: Windows 8 'promising' yet 'puzzling'

Mr. Chuck
FAIL

Yawn

Yet another version of windows, yet another tweak to the bumper bar, grille and taillights. Why even bother? And for businesses, where exactly is the ROI for all this?

SHOCK: Poll shows Americans think TSA is highly effective

Mr. Chuck
FAIL

Nourishing the poultry

We used to have a wonderfully dodgy state premier Mr. Bjelke-Petersen who called this sort of thing 'feeding the chickens'. Looks like the chooks are full and replete. If the TSA really wanted to make Americans safer, it should leave the airports and disarm the lot of 'em. But apparently it's OK for Americans to massacre each other by the bushel, as long as no goldurn furriners try to muscle in.

High Schools putting kids off IT careers, deepening skills shortage

Mr. Chuck
Go

IT != programming. The quicker everyone gets this idiotic notion out their heads the better. Teach clear thinking, communication (not marketing speak and spin, but the gathering and dissemination of actual information), teamwork leavened with initiative, systems and application architecture, and a bit of some (ANY) programming language--they're all interchangable as far as I can tell over the last 25 years--for basic techniques, and there you go.

Fashions in programming and platforms change, but the basic business problem never does, i.e. I have these requirements, what will I need to get there?

What won't come without hard yakka is how to interpret business requirements in the first place, how to evaluate myriad competing products and environments, how to focus effort and resources and on what, how to set expectations, how to position technology in a business context and make it valuable as opposed to expensive, and all the other things where IT typically FAILS. Technology itself can be cool and fun, but that's hardly the point in the real world.

Anyway if the facetube generation don't get it, all the more work for old bastards like meself until I get sick of it and retire. Thank you very much, invoice follows.

Oz sysadmin says Windows 8 not ready for business

Mr. Chuck
Go

Microsatan changes chrome and bumper bars again

Anyone tried this?

http://www.mstechpages.com/2011/09/14/disable-metro-in-windows-8-developer-preview/

Personally all I need windows to do is run cygwin properly (when I have to mange the real computers) and play games (when I don't).

The moment a computer crash nearly caused my car crash

Mr. Chuck
FAIL

Too much apparatus

Modern cars are getting more and more complicated. It's a rearguard action to save a failing technology--private road transport--that is collapsing under the weight of emissions, congestion and fuel prices. You want cars, you'll have to put up with it. A car is not an appliance however much the makers might pretend otherwise.

Incidentially, I have a Mk2 Jag and while it has other problems, this sort of rubbish isn't among them. I use it infrequently and for pleasure, and with a few simple modifications it's reliable enough. For commuting, I prefer to travel by motorbike (also no computer) as city traffic here has become pretty much unfeasible. In peak hour you're lucky to do 10 km/h in a car.

Since I work with computers and programmers, I don't want either involved with my personal transport thank you very much.

Navy pays 2x purchase price to keep warship docked for 5 years

Mr. Chuck
Pirate

View from the colonies

Several interesting aspects to this.

1. Who else tendered for the contract, and for how much?

2. How does it compare to past maintenance contracts/annual costs?

3. Why does Lewis hate BAe so very much?

As with many media articles, this piece raises more questions than it answers.

As for the other comments about the modern Royal Navy, well, you chaps have about as much as you need and can afford these days don't you?

Windows XP and iPod: A tale of two birthdays

Mr. Chuck
Mushroom

A tale of several operating systems

I'm still using XP. I like it. If you turn off all the useless graphic cruft it performs quite well and is reliable. I've used Vista and win7, can't stand either of them, principally due to the nagware or outright refusal to do what I want. Also the visuals look like they're designed for retarded nine year olds, or possibly Americans.

I didn't have to start using a windows desktop until 2004 luckily, so have some perspective on this, not being totally immersed in Redmond Kool-Aid as some people obviously are.

Hint: use a good uninstaller like Revo.

Some points arising from other comments:

--security. Forget it, it's windows. MS engineers themselves don't know what some of it does any more. Use linux or a unix instead if you care that much, and turn on rbac. Windows based firewall? A joke, surely?

--the windows registry. What a crap idea. SPOE: Single Point of Evil. When they ditch this, they might have something.

--applications. Most people use maybe 30% of the functionality in office, and not much else on a business PC. Why pay more tax? If your app base doesn't lock you in to MS, you should be looking at alternatives, especially for workstations. There are plenty. They work. You'll save money. If you are locked in, bad luck.

--Evolution. A lot of this reminds me of the built-in obsolescence in the car industry. I run the latest Solaris on an Ultra 10 which it nearly 15 years old. It works well enough for file service and a little browsing and doc processing, and is reliable, stable and secure. And yet people are happy to submit to the M$ upgrade treadmill year after year, decade after decade. Ballmer is laughing all the way to the bank. And for what? New eye candy and more nagware.

Wake up you lot.

Police ROBOT attacks and BURNS DOWN HOUSE

Mr. Chuck
Thumb Up

Brilliant!

nuff said...

Praying for meltdown: The media and the nukes

Mr. Chuck
FAIL

Epic fail nuclear

Why does this mag love nuclear fission so much? It's an old hat 40's technology looking for a question. Unless you want blow something up fast, it's expensive, complicated, unreliable and inefficient.

With any luck no-one in school now will be insane enough to want to go into the nuclear industry anyway (any problems? Then YOU'RE DEAD), and the whole sector wil just dry up and blow away--like fallout.

Now if we were clever enough to get fusion working, that'd be another story, but we're not, so get off it.

When one oligopoly screws another

Mr. Chuck
Pirate

Let market forces prevail

Writing from AU here...retail gross margins here are typically of the order of 100% yet most small business people I know are not rolling in money. Who gets it then?

--Their landlords--robbers like Westfield and other assorted gangsters aka property developers, the scum of the earth. Commercial rents here are mental, mainly to prop up many years of property speculation and uncontrolled land banking. This is a huge country but remember, there are only seven things in it: the capital cities (Darwin and Canberra = 0.5 each)

With all this space we have nonetheless managed to create overcrowded cities with enormous pressure on real estate prices. It's an epic policy fail at all levels of government, and it's getting worse.

--Their banks--the four large banks here have a very cosy setup here since they are big enough to have bullied successive governments for decades. Real interest margins (lending rate - deposit rate) and bank fees are the highest in the world. If you can get a loan at all. The other scum of the earth, and another epic policy fail.

--Other overheads--staff, energy, council rates and charges etc etc, which everybody has.

The internet exposes worldwide pricing to Australian consumers, who have been ripped off forever. Long live the grey market and to hell with distribution chains that add cost and no value.