You've all been had.
It's a honeypot.
Looks like I was beat to it. Never mind, this post is staying.
Posts by foo_bar_baz
752 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Oct 2007
Trump's cyber-guru Giuliani runs ancient 'easily hackable website'
Maps and alarm clocks best thing about mobes, say normies
TV anchor says live on-air 'Alexa, order me a dollhouse' – guess what happens next
Don't panic, friends, but the Chinese navy just nicked one of America's underwater drones
If only our British 4G were as good as, um, Albania's... UK.gov's telco tech report
Thursday 15th December 2016 15:31 GMT 
Landlines
Did someone mention landlines? A landline phone is ancient history for anyone under 15 anywhere else in Europe. My kids wouldn't know how to use one.
I'm about to get rid of my ADSL connection in favour of a 4G modem. Faster, unmetered, cheaper and I no longer need a static IP address so it makes no sense to keep using DSL. Unfortunately I live in a fibre black spot so that is out of the question.
Microsoft quietly emits patch to undo its earlier patch that broke Windows 10 networking
Wednesday 14th December 2016 19:53 GMT 
I got caught by this
Spent a lot of time trying to fix the LAN connection on my son's PC. Strangely the connection was fine using a USB WLAN dongle, so I was testing different cables, switch ports, restarting the DHCP server and tailing logs, checking for driver and firmware updates etc. until I happened to run the correct magic netsh command. Glad to know the root cause.
For the whingers, crap happens and there's even a name for it.
nbn™ aces the easiest construction target it will have for two years
Getting to the bottom of the cloud debate
Thursday 17th November 2016 09:56 GMT
Re: Cloud
You've hit the nail on the head. Moving your legacy J2EE accounting service running atop Oracle from your server cabinet to a rented virtual server is not cloud. Cloud is about replacing that application entirely and buying it as a service. It's about cutting out the cost of running a server in every office and having an IT guy looking after it.
"What if we get an Internet connection issue and can't pay our bills", you cry. You have a plan, just like you should have a plan for the eventuality of a power cut. Turning the question on its head, what if you have a burglary or a fire? Why should your business be dependent on the physical integrity of your office? I'll rather trust my core business to a collection of professionally run datacenters across the continent.
Many core premises of onsite IT are being eroded.
1) Connectivity is improving. With unmetered 4G being the norm in progressive countries, you have the situation where your phone has a faster internet connection than the office LAN.
2) Geography is less important. Not everyone is working in the same office. Increasingly they may be on the road, working from home, or contracting from another country.
3) Online services are competing with in local services. Those services you are running are being replaced by cheaper alternatives like Gmail, Office 365, Azure Active Directory etc.
Obviously the IT guy will have a hard time accepting the state of things, but it's the way we're going. Deal with it, and adapt.
Wednesday 16th November 2016 17:05 GMT
Re: Friends don't let friends have servers
Now set me up a test environment consisting of geographically redundant databases, terabyte scale file storage, a fleet of application servers and a web tier fronted by load balancers and a global content delivery network. Deploy my application to it. You have 20 minutes.
OK, I've run my tests. Please destroy it all.
Now set it up again for a new round of tests. Then be so kind to replicate the entire infrastructure to datacenters on each continent for production.
How's it going? Still updating the BIOS on that blade server? I'm here on the North Pole with a laptop and a ropy satellite connection, yet I'm designing and deploying global infrastructure at a whim.
I'm sorry but anyone developing software or an online service is likely to regard IT departments as mere roadblocks and amateurs compared to what AWS (yes, even Azure) can offer. I say this grudgingly as I've got a sys admin background myself, but the harsh reality is they're right. Knowing how to optimize for performance or being good at hardening a server is not what will let you keep your job. It's being able to do it on 1000 machines at once.
Wednesday 16th November 2016 14:13 GMT 
Friends don't let friends have servers
There is really only one question to ask: Public cloud (AWS) or private cloud (OpenStack). If your answer is "neither", you're probably a dinosaur or have a very specific set of circumstances.
There may be legitimate reasons for running your own server infrastructure, but most often it boils down to "we're afraid of change", "we're afraid for our jobs", or people simply don't understand the possibilities. Renting or running your own virtual servers does not a cloud make.
I challenge you to stand up and say you do a better and more professional job at running secure and resilient infrastructure than the people at, let's say Amazon, Google or Microsoft. That's some hubris.
Virgin Galactic and Boom unveil Concorde 2.0 tester to restart supersonic travel
Getting your tongue around foreign tech-talk is easier than you think
Tuesday 15th November 2016 08:19 GMT
Re: Courriel / "50% extra"
@I ain't Spartacus: You can hardly lay claim on the word "extra" as it's - quote - "a Latin preposition, denoting beyond, outside of".
But otherwise, point well put. It's the same elsewhere here in Euroland and elsewhere in the world - we welcome our Anglo-American cultural overlords with open arms.
While I've got the floor, may I kindly request Britain try return to your sane selves. It was your job to set the standard. Since the Brexit vote we've had to look to Germany for that, and I don't want to learn German at my age.
Pair programming – you'll never guess what happens next!
Wednesday 9th November 2016 15:37 GMT 
Pair programming? So last decade
Mob programming Moar is betta!
And for the "geeks are introverted" crowd: Mob programming for the introverted
Sweden axes 700MHz spectrum sale over 'national security' fears
Boffin's anti-worm bot could silence epic Mirai DDoS attack army
Burgundian iPhone wrecker hit with damages, suspended sentence
LASER RAT FENCE wins €1.7m European Commission funds
Wednesday 26th October 2016 10:48 GMT
Re: One small step...
What is "humanus humanus"? Do you mean Pediculus humanus, or perhaps Homo sapiens sapiens?
A plumber with a blowtorch is the enemy of the data centre
Friday 2nd September 2016 08:11 GMT
Been there
Oh look, a cable with a connector.
Oh look, a box with blinkenlights and sockets.
Perhaps they fit...
Perhaps they should be connected ...
Why is the internet broken?
Lessons learned:
1) Use "proper" managed switches with loop protection, even at the edge.
1.1) No desktop switches.
1.2) Keep the switches locked up.
2) Monitoring - SNMP is your friend.
Tim Cook: EU lied about Apple taxes. Watch out Ireland, this is a coup!
Thursday 1st September 2016 12:33 GMT
Sovereignty Shmovereignty
We western democracies try to foster free trade, because we know it is a Good Thing (tm). That means removing obstacles such as import duties, but also removing other practices such as non-tariff barriers to trade and unfair state aid to companies. Those are agreed upon under the auspices of trade agreements and transnational bodies such the WTO. When a country is not playing fairly, eg. engages in dumping, these organizations intervene because it is their job to do so.
The job of the European Union is to create a common internal market with a level playing field. The level of integration is higher than other treaties, but the principle is the same. Ireland agreed to specific terms when it entered the union and got the benefits of participating in the market. If the findings of the commission are based on fact and Ireland has broken the rules, then corrective action has to be taken.
Crying about lost sovereignty is disingenuous and besides the point.
Newest Royal Navy warship weighs as much as 120 London buses
Making us pay tax will DESTROY EUROPE, roars Apple's Tim Cook
Linux turns 25, with corporate contributors now key to its future
Sex ban IT man loses appeal – but judge labels order 'unpoliceable'
Shocker: Computer science graduate wins a top UK political job
Student Loans Company burns £50 million in IT project superfail
Linus Torvalds in sweary rant about punctuation in kernel comments
Microsoft's cringey 'Hey bae <3' recruiter email translated by El Reg
Remember those stupid hoverboards? 500,000+ recalled in the US after they started exploding
Thursday 7th July 2016 05:52 GMT
That was my initial reaction too
Further reading suggests it's the right way to deal with Li-ion battery fires.
Behold the ROBOT RECTUM... medics' relief
Israeli tech firms make their exits, stage rich
Get ready for mandatory porn site age checks, Brits. You read that right
Wednesday 6th July 2016 06:49 GMT
Re: "Along with the legal right for Brits to demand fast broadband services"
The same way mail and transport services are provided to economically non-viable regions?
You can make the operating license conditional to certain terms. You can also provide subsidies. I'm pretty sure government has other tools at its disposal.
The world is an amazing place. All sorts of obvious and non-obvious things exist despite our skepticism.
Azure Australia turns on physical data import/export service
Tuesday 5th July 2016 07:01 GMT
"rival clouds are trying to overcome the problem of cloud seeding in different ways."
Disingenuous or just ignorant?
You still can't beat the bandwidth of a truck filled with disks, which Amazon acknowledges. AWS too provides an import/export service using portable media: "Disk is often faster than Internet transfer and more cost effective than upgrading your connectivity."
A gratuitous bash at the NBN (which deserves bashing). This is just Microsoft ticking a box in its copy-AWS-features list.
Euro researchers more loyal and cheaper than Silicon Valley folk
Leak: Euro Patent Office 'court of appeals' rails against King Battistelli
Wednesday 1st June 2016 08:30 GMT
The people who appointed him
Mr. Batistelli was re-elected by a majority of the 38 member states of the European Patent Convention for another term of three years to 2018.
Source:http://www.nlo.eu/en/news/news_viewer/562/Beno-t-Battistelli-re-elected-as-President-of-the-EPO
EPC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europan_Patent_Convention
Goa grabs Google, whispers 'come here, you Loon'
Lost containers tell no tales. Time to worry
Victims stranded as ID thieves raid Aussie driver licences
One ad-free day: Three UK to block adverts across network in June
Thursday 26th May 2016 12:22 GMT
Google will be thrilled
This might get interesting, if it goes any further.
As much as I hate many ads, it's a fact that much of Internet content is paid for by adverts. This is huge challenge to the current business model of many online services. Free stuffs, no ads, cheap internet, have cake, eat cake.
All in all a stupid move by a pipe provider. The days of walled gardens are long gone, and this just smells like extortion: "Hey Google, nice advert. Shame if something were to happen to it.."
Biting the hand that feeds IT
