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* Posts by slideruler

5 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jun 2011

iPhone 5: skinny li'l fella with better display, camera, software

slideruler
FAIL

Missing the touch of Banquos ghost?

I'm a fairly happy 4S user, but one who's progressed through 3G, 4 and then 4S. Call me a fanboi at your peril though. I've no time for their ethics or legal tactics, but I'm prepared to buy kit from any manufacturer as long as it does what I want, and is well designed, built and supported. I have to say that I'm pretty disappointed here. I wonder if Apple seem to be directionless under Cooke, or whether Ive is really are running out of ideas without Jobs dictat.

Changing the dock connector was both needless and stupid, thereby pissing off every owner of a third party dock. We can use their "adapter". Spend money on an expensive hi-fi dock or car kit, and welcome back the days of ram-pack wobble... The move to a proprietary 'nano sim', hidden in the fine print, is another anti-competitive measure. Until the clever chinese fab-labs get a 'nano to micro' adapter available for a tenner on ebay, forget any idea of doing a temporary sim swap to a standby phone. Once again, no capacity bump. 64gig is your limit. No NFC, just when contactless payments are starting to pick up.

I wonder if its me or Apple who have lost the plot. I don't want a 'bigger screen'. I find it big enough, thanks. I can zoom if I need to. Thinner and bigger just means that it's more likely to get damaged when I stick it in my back pocket, and then sit down on the damn thing. I don't want Apple branded maps when Google worked fine, more farcebook and twatter integration, video calling, panoramic pictures or any 'cloud' related bollocks, many of which are present and remain unused on my 4S. I've got a bunch of apps that do what I want, in a phone platform that I've genuinely had no problems with. All of the usability and software improvements and fixes are available in the IOS 6 drop, on my existing phone.

Much as I'd hate to go back to the days of rattly Nokia N95's, I'm starting to think that the market for phone facilities and capabilities has matured - and all the manufacturers are trying to flog us stuff that we don't want, need or use.

I for one won't be in the queue this time. Like most people who've bought into iphones, I'm not likely to jump ship to Android or Windows. I might buy the next one (or more likely, the one after), but for the meantime, I'll stick with what I've got thanks.

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Ten... dual-band wireless routers

slideruler
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Re: Stability

Another upvote for Draytek hardware from me. It's not cheap, but it is rock solid. Firmware updates are frequent, and they tend to support their older kit for quite some time.

The only issue I have with my 2800Vn is that the n band is either/or. If I set it to 5ghz, the PC's can see it - and fly along - but my phones and Ipads can't. Consequently I have to run it in 2.x ghz limp mode to keep everybody happy. I'm also looking at getting the Apple Airport Extreme as a parallel n band solution.

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'Inexperienced' RBS tech operative's blunder led to banking meltdown

slideruler
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Re: Astonishing @AC 13:14

Not quite. ITIL done out of the book, is a pile of crap. A recipe for red tape disaster. But applied selectively, in a common sense way, it can work well.

Certainly if they'd done Change and Release properly - as the book suggests, (i.e. tested the change in a pre-production environment, tested and documented the backout, specified appropriate post-implementation success/fail criteria) they'd probably have been in a better state than they ultimately got into.

I'd *love* to read their major incident report though... :-)

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slideruler
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FAIL

Re: Astonishing

You have to understand something about mainframes, and the history of RBS/Natwest et al.

The golden rule of mainframes, from the day they first appeared, is that they are *not* idiot proof. They're unfriendly, ruthless, highly reliable, highly efficient data processing engines. Issue a shutdown or force command with master console authority, and it will do it, no questions asked. Its assumed that an idiot wouldn't be given authority to do something stupid. The same assumption tends to apply to people who have high levels of authority within its various subsystems, like Netview, CA7, RACF etc. You can't blame the technology.

Historically (ten years or so ago) RBS were the most conservative of banks. They were risk averse within IT, and had a high body count of experienced people in both Edinburgh and London who generally knew their jobs well, and the merged clearing systems worked reliably and efficiently.

Fred the shred then trashed the bank with his dutch gamble, and Hester arrives. He says to his general "cut costs at all costs". They start swinging the axe on all UK based techies. Nearly all techie level jobs are to go overseas, or to UK based Indian staff on ICT visas. I had a colleague working there. He was told to hand over to Indian staff - and they started interviewing for his 'replacement'. Many who turned up for the phone interview had difficulty in stringing two words together. Others were plainly clueless; pure CV creativity worthy of the booker prize. He eventually found three (yes, three indians to replace one UK based staff member) and spent weeks explaining his job, and processes to them. He documented, powerpointed, and PDF'd to excess - so that any reasonable techie with the skills as advertised could have picked the job up. He then left. Within three days, he got an email at home. They'd managed to stuff things up - and would he help.... The three replacements soon became two, as one left to go elsewhere for more money...

I'm rather enjoying seeing the fruits of Hesters slash and burn decision. Please, please,please lets see him in front of the house of commons select committee, being grilled on what he's done - and why it went wrong. If they want evidence, I'm sure there are plenty of ex RBS guys who can attest to what's happened.

I really don't trust any of the banks today - with my personal financial data, or my money. I've got another colleague - now made redundant from Barclays, due to 'cost effective global sourcing'. The problem is, I see few other UK owned and operated banks left.

Mattress stuffing really does seem to be the only option left.

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Travelodge hacked, investigating

slideruler
Flame

And another one..

Why can't these idiots realise that running an online presence is a bit more complex than 'corporate branding' and dumb software that pretends to be an 'automated assistant'? Some years ago, when involved in running a major online service - I was able to watch the logs of our external facing servers and proxies. Direct and indirect attacks, password attacks, brute forcing, dictionary attacks, SQL injections. The bad guys are persistent, and smarter than the idiots who think that outsourcing at the lowest possible price is 'the best way' to run an E-commerce service.

I've received the same spam, to a unique address created a month or so ago - for a stay in a travelodge a couple of weeks ago. Like everybody else, it was personalised with my full name. My stay with them was booked and paid for online - so who knows if my credit card details have headed east too. Its about time the ICO started to hit these muppets hard. Fine them (or withdraw their online payment collection facilities) for having insecure systems, inadequate Intrusion detection, and poor or non-existent independent penetration testing. Hitting them financially is the only way that they'll learn the data protection lesson. I think it's about time a few very public examples were made, to concentrate the minds of the rest...

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