Posts by James O'Shea 1852 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jun 2007
I stay as far away from MS ‘backup’ and ‘restore’ tools as possible. Instead I use tools like Acronis and Macrium. On Macs I use Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. Note that that’s two different tools, making two different backups, for each OS. If something breaks, it’s unlikely to break the same way with both, and at least one backup will restore properly. And yes, I am willing to spend money for backups.
Business level backups usually involve tape. Yes, tape. I’ve been using tape for literally decades, it works. I typically use dedicated backup software for tape.
The first and last time that I used MS tools was back in the 1990s. A test restore had problems. A second attempt at a test restore failed, in a different way this time. I got 3rd party backup software and never used MS tools again. This is why you test your backup by restoring it to a test system. If you can’t get it to restore, you have a waste of storage, not a backup. I still test backups every ever so often. Just in case.
One of the guys from Ops really hates this kind of thing. One of his ancestors departed Scotland for North America in 16<mumble>; said ancestor took a good look at the state of Scots colonies and voluntarily departed for an English settlement. You gotta know things were bad when a Scot would _choose_ to associate with Sassenach. Said Scot took up with a local girl (there are limits to how far a self-respecting Scot will go when associating with Sassenach) (no, she was NOT Cherokee, he was far too far north for that) and so the Ops guy says that it's really hard to get more native American than he is. He once had words with an 'activist' who didn't like the painting of his great-great-repeat-grandmother, apparently it was 'eurocentric' and 'insulting'. The 'activist' got lit up in all-out Scots Gaelic. Complained to HR. HR recalled that this was the guy who, when certain idiots attempted to set up a dress code, came to work in full-out kilt and plaid https://kiltsandmore.com/highland-wear/men-s-clothing-accessories/kilts/belted-plaid-great-kilt-f-ileadh-m-r-/belted-plaid-great-kilt-f-ileadh-m-r--:p1000BLTP:c707:len.html and dared someone to say anything, and said nothing. 'Activist' was miffed. The rest of us laughed.
Wake me when someone flies something like the Moon shuttle from 'UFO'. https://catacombs.space1999.net/plus/dt/ufo/ufo_lunarmodule.jpg. I'm sure that Branson would just love to be able to order "Interceptors, immediate launch!" whenever Musk or Bezos put something into orbit. Or maybe get SkyDiver into position...
Note: on rewatching the series, I noticed something which flew right past me back when I first saw it: all of the characters were massive tobacco and/or alcohol addicts. The Big Boss had an actual dispenser in his office, like one of those new Coke thingies, loaded with every variety of alcohol you could want. He didn't drink himself, but smoked more than a Russian aircraft carrier. Commander Straker was supposed to be US Air Force, but he really liked his Cuban cigars.
personally, if I were silly enough to live in Texas, I would get a list of female relatives of every politician who voted for that nonsense, and report them on a monthly basis. if I found any female politicians who supported it, report them on a weekly basis. use fake ids.
to never, ever, use Twitter.
Hmm. What if I were to set up Twitter using a web browser (say, Firefox, rigged to report that it's on Win10, when it might/might not be on Win 10. Or it might/might not actually be Firefox...) and get the blue tick using the browser? Would His Muskiness charge me $8 or $11? I don't know if you're required to use an app to use the blue tick, as I've never used Twitter, but if I had to use the app, what's stopping me from downloading it on Windows, Linux, Android, anything except iOS or macOS? Has His Muskiness never heard of, say Parallels or VMWare or even (shudder) Virtual Box? Note that it's perfectly possible to emulate Android on Windows and Mac. See https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/create-android-emulator or https://thedroidguy.com/best-android-emulator-for-mac-1090626 for just a few possible contenders.
This would assume that I was sufficiently desperate for a Twitter fix that I'd go to all that trouble. I have, I repeat, never used Twitter.
<cough> I might, however, be convinced to change my heathen ways if, for example, I could have multiple emulators running in different VMs and use them to poison their stats, troll the hell out of them, and generally screw with them. Even so, I probably wouldn't spring for the blue tick, given that the odds are that they'd yank the account sooner rather than later. Whereupon I'd just fire up a different VM and create a new account, lather, rinse, repeat. And I'd only connect from a large network, such as a major school site. The University of Miami is literally just down the road from me, I can connect to their guest wireless easily, and if the Musketeers tracked the IP address they'd see that it's coming from a location with tens of thousands of users. The main campus (there are seven) of Miami-Dade College is even closer than UM; Miami-Dade is the largest tertiary education institution in the United States, with something like 174,000 students. (No, I'm not making that number up.) Go ahead, Musketeers, block their IP... And MacDonald's and such fast 'food' places with wireless abound. Go on, block Mickie Dee. Hmmm.
Not that I'd actually advocate doing anything like this, of course. No matter how much fun I could have playing with the Musketeers. </cough>
There's no probation in the federal system. You serve the whole sentence, or the vast majority of it, or you know someone who knows someone who can get a senior politician, usually the Prez, to pardon you. Some get out very early because of this. Others never get out.
You could get very sick, but the Feds generally require you to be _very_ sick, and check closely. Famously Al Capone got out early, because he had tertiary syphilis.
"Go on, now express your displeasure with me."
Your wish has been granted.
Hint: your conclusion was neither obvious nor warranted. The 'idle speculation' seems a lot closer to the mark, given Elon's recent behavior.
If I worked at Twitter I would be urgently researching other jobs. Indeed, I would have been urgently researching other jobs since Elon arrived, and my search would only have intensified once I saw those 'bedrooms'. I suspect that there is about to be another mass exodus.
that Apple would not care if all Twitter users ditched their iPhones. I also suspect that Twitter is not long for the Apple store. And not much longer for the Google Play Store. Say bye, Elon. I won't say that it's been fun, because it hasn't. Don't let the door hit you on the ass as you leave, now, boyo.
and just ignore the whole mess until the World Cup is in a country not as obnoxious as Russia or Qatar. Allegedly 2026 will be in Canada/US/Mexico. I foresee trouble, not least playing at Azteca in the summer, or even the autumn. And if in the autumn, the good locations will be booked for American feetball, college and pro. And the weather might be interesting. This weekend there were several instances of heavy snow causing problems. A lot of the really good stadia are in places like Indiana (Notre Dame; massive snowfall this Saturday, the home team won 44-0 'cause they're used to Northern Indiana weather; the visitors wore all white, it's damn hard to make a pass when you can't see who you're passing to because he's wearing white against a white background) and New York State (the Buffalo Bills pro game had to be moved to Detroit because of snow https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2022/11/20/1137579787/buffalo-western-new-york-snow-photos) and if you make the games too early, places like Florida, Texas, and Louisiana may have a slight hurricane problem. California might have a slight wildfire problem, and Colorado is almost as bad as Azteca.
And, of course, there's always the chance that The Orange One returns to power. It's not a great chance, but it's there. The US will then be on a par with Russia and Qatar, and I'll probably be watching from Canada, if I watch at all.
Ah, yes. I read the first three Dune books. Dune was good; I read it as the serial in Analog, and liked it so much that I bought the book. (No, I didn't read it when first published; I got hold of the three issues of the the first part and the five issues of the second when I was in high school. And bought the book shortly thereafter). Dune Messiah had problems. (I should have got the five-part serial in Galaxy before I bought the book, I would never have bought the book.) (note that normal serials in Analog and Galaxy were three-parters; Dune had eight parts spread over 3 years, Dune Messiah had five parts. The fact that Dune was in Analog, the premier SF magazine of the time and still, while Dune Messiah was in Galaxy, which is dead and has been since about 1980, should have been a red flag.) Children of Dune was good, not as good as Dune, but better than Messiah. God-Emperor stunk. I never finished it. Nor have I even started any Dune books since then. Herbert wrote a total of six Dune books, and his son cranked out more based on plotlines left when Herbert the elder died. I have no more desire to read them than I want to read the hordes of 'Tom Clancy' books emitted by various persons since Tom Clancy died. (Frankly, Clancy had been in steep decline since Sum of All Fears and I didn't buy any of his newer stuff in hardback.)
If you've never had either a tetanus or a rubella booster, you're an even bigger idiot than I'd thought.
As for the UK gov paying whoever... it's called 'public health'. Both my parents were epidemiologists. As a direct result I've seen close up the results of assorted outbeaks of polio, rubella, chicken pox, dengue fever, yellow fever, malaria (that was a fun one), cholera (even more fun than the malaria) and assorted others, and am firmly a believer in aggressive public health measures. There really is no excuse for polio, for example, to still be around. None. Other than some people are idiots and won't get vaccinated.
Ah. Never had a tetanus booster shot, eh?
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tetanus/expert-answers/tetanus-shots/faq-20058209
Or a rubella booster shot?
https://www.cdc.gov/rubella/vaccination.html
Lots more.
And I haven't paid a penny for any of the covid shots I've had. Zero.
https://wsvn.com/news/us-world/florida-blue-other-companies-offer-free-covid-19-vaccines-flu-shots-amid-seasonal-concerns/
You're an idiot.
Which I'm not, I'd take my recently replaced iPhone SE. I would:
1. erase it completely and then install the latest OS version which would work on it, making certain to NOT turn on my AppleID. This means a nice fresh new set of non-data in Photos, Contacts, Music, etc. They can snoop to their hearts content, there ain't nothing there for them.
2. insert a temp SIM. Lots of options available.
3. as it's not worth anything as a trade-in, erase it again and just leave it in the airport on my way out.
I might/might not take my new iPhone, the one which replaced the SE, powered off, at the bottom of my bag. It would also be erased, and the SIM would be removed and replaced with another temp SIM. If the authorities detected it, something which would make the level of survielence quite clear, it would be erased again as soon as I got to the hotel, and the real SIM would not go near it. And as soon as I got home I'd report a hardware problem and have it replaced under the warranty. My actual data would never be exposed.
But I wouldn't set foot in Qatar in the first place, so all this is moot.
I suspect ARM has a White Knight in the background: Apple. If Apple decides to buy ARM after all (and if Apple can get past the regulators) then Qualcomm is facing its worst nightmare: Apple's lawyers, locked, cocked, and ready to rock. Apple may just let the stock price fall a little (say, on news of problems in court) and then buy. And unleash the Attack Lawyers.
You mean that there's more than one 8.1 user? Who knew?
How bad was Win8? So bad that I moved to Win 8.1 as fast as possible. (Not very fast on ancient Toshibas...)
How bad was Win 8.1? So bad that I voleneerily went to 10.
How bad isWin 11? So bnad that Win 10 will be l;eaving only to be replaced by Mac and Linux.
Here is a recent attempt to get me to do a little happy clicking.
phish starts:
_________
Regards
I am Mr Aleksandr Bodashk the Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of The Golden Gate Realtor a Real Estate company in Ukraine,
Due to the crises here in Ukraine, I find it necessary to seek for a commercial venture in your country with the expectation of achieving a profit.
For further information please contact : aleksdrbodashk@gmail.com
I'm eager to receive your feedback..
Thank you
Aleksandr Bodashk
the Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder
The Golden Gate Realtor Ukraine
Khreshchatyk Plaza Khreshchatyk, 19A, Kyiv, Ukraine, 01001
______
phish ends
In the original, there were several hotlinks, including dear old Aleks' email address. No, I didn't click on any. Phishing: it's not just Nigerian Princes anymore, though the tactics are identical.
Almost all of the Windows machines around here are Win10 or earlier, in some cases much earlier, as there are XP machines for talking to very expensive hardware which still works but which isn't supported by versions of Windows beyond XP. We are in the process of moving all of our users to Mac and Linux, mostly Mac, as almost all of our required apps (other than the ancient stuff for talking to the above-noted ancient hardware) is available on Mac but not on Linux. We have some custom software; it is being rewritten for Mac and Linux. We have a very few Win11 machines, mostly because certain senior people are MS fanbois. Every time there's a problem with a Win11 system that isn't a problem with Win10, or there's a problem with a Windows system which isn't a problem with Mac or Linux, it's carefully documented, as is what it takes (money, time, effort, whatever) to fix it. Yes, there are problems with Mac or with Linux systems that aren't on Windows... it's just that they're documented, too, and there are a _lot_ fewer of them. There have been more problems with the tiny number of Win11 systems, all brought in despite my objections, in writing, in the last year than with all Mac and Linux systems, combined, notably including problems printing. The Windows fanbois tried to paint the Macs as expensive toys and the Linux boxes as useless paperweights... except that the expensive toys still work, and work for _years_, and the paperweights can do most of the work that the Windows boxes can, only faster and cheaper. The total cost of ownership of both Macs and Linux systems is demonstrably lower than the TCO of Windows systems, at least around here. Even if the Macs cost more to buy, they last longer and require less support, and I can prove it with actual numbers. MS is continually pushing Office; iWork and LibreOffice are free, and can do most of what we need Office for. Free is hard to beat, and a major reason for the lower TCO, you wouldn't believe what the Microsoft365 bill for a few thousand users is, even if we take all possible discounts.
We will be running Win10 until the last Win10 machines die. We will be running Win 7 and XP until the 3rd-party hardware and software which requires them die. We will not care if Win10 goes out of support, any more than we care that XP and Win7 are out of support. New machines will be either Win10, as necessary, or Mac or Linux. And we don't plan on buying many new Win10 boxes.
We have extensive experience keeping older, no longer supported, boxes off the Internet and in keeping items such as USB drives away (there are tools in the BIOS to turn USB and other ports off; use them, and if all else fails there's always a little epoxy, that always works) so that malware attacks are difficult. Yes, we can still be hit by malware, but Windows always was more vulnerable than Macs or Linux, so it's just more of the same, and the vast majority of Windows malware can't touch Macs or Linux, so the fact that we're gradually winding Windows down means that there will be fewer targets.
We will not be moving to Windows 11. Not now. Not ever.
The PFY is, the senior guy isn't. El Reg doesn't respect Redmond enough. Why, El Reg dares to post articles which might somehow imply that something that MS did wasn't absolutely perfect.
The PFY knows that he's not great, and that he gets handed the shit jobs as a 'learning experience' and he lives in hope that we'll hire a new guy who can take his place as the low guy on the totem pole.
why I will never, ever, just 'update' MS anything on my work net (with certain exceptions, see below). And why we will never, ever, use Win 11. Except as an awful example. There is a certain very senior person who thinks that Macs are trash and Linux is worse, and who adores MS. I set him up with a Win 11 laptop. I made sure that he could update that device as he saw fit.There is a little note from him asking me to send someone over to fix a few problems. I have dispatched my least competent PFY. This should be fun. In the meantime, the Mac, Linux, and Win 10 devices work; Apple and Ubuntu don't usually screw up updates, and Windows updates go on the Win 10 systems when _I_ say that they go on, and not one millisecond before. And that is _after_ my minions verify that MS hasn't screwed up too badly this month. Which usually means after MS issues a patch to patch the patch which was issued to patch the previous patch. We are going all Mac and Linux, and it can't happen soon enough.
"If stopping every three hours for ten minutes is too much then you probably shouldn't have a license."
Interesting. Let's analyze this...
1. he's assuming that there are a _lot_ of possible charge points. Why? Because if there aren't a lot of possible charge points, a good fraction (30 minutes? More?) of that 3 hours will be taken up by looking for a charge point, or you'll have to plan your journey by available charge points, or both. I can find a petrol station in short order... and my car will go a lot further than 3 hours before I have to refuel. (Toyota. 12 gallon tank. 34 miles per gallon. That's 400 miles, at 70 mph that's 5.8 or so hours.)
2. who's paying for this charge? At current electric rates _someone_ is going to have to pay a packet for charging over time. Yes, the individual charge is low... but it adds up. And it's more than what the current price of petrol is, at least around here. (I refiled my car yesterday. $2.99/gallon, 87 octane. That's $36 for just under six hours, or just over $6/hr. FPL would charge at least $40 for the power. Note that when the price of petrol goes up, so does the price of electricity, even if most of FPL's power is nuke and natural gas.)
3. it doesn't take 10 minutes to refill the tank. It doesn't even take 5 minutes.
So... I would have to make twice as many stops, after finding charging stations and/or going out of my way to get to charging stations, and pay more, and take four times the time (twice the time, twice...) and if I don't like this, I shouldn't have a license?
Yeah. Right.
Given the way Gatekeeper works, I'd say that it's likely that current ways to turn it off will work for quite some time... unless Apple messes with the hardware again. God knows what will happen when the M3 (or whatever they call it then) appears. I suspect that there will be lots of changes, though.
XCode is free. You can get a free license to sign software; it won't let you onto the Apple Store, so you can't sell for iOS, but you can sell for macOS and you can create iOS software for sideloading, if your company has had a word with Apple about that. You can, for $100/year, get a license which will let you into the Apple Store. I think that there are limits as to how many items you can get into the Store for that license. You can also get academic licenses, free, which let you into the Store. Businesses can get licenses for setting up sideloading, and, for a little more, doing anything they want on the Store.
The main problem with XCode is that it requires a Mac (playing with it with macOS in a VM leads to a very negative experience, or at least it did the one time I tried) and that XCode gets updated every time Apple releases new toys. That's all very well until your Mac can't take the new OS upgrade, but you need a new copy of XCode. Oops. Guess it's time to get a new Mac.
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