Posts by Kurt Lundqvist

Paranoia

Yep severe network intrusion .. someone sufred for pr0n and downloaded a trojan

Peeing in the Wind

I'm in the middle of trying to sort out a college's It infrastructure. They wont pay for quota software, or much of anything else. The entire system will collapse if they dont spend some money and their main concern is recruiting students to fill the coffers. It really doesnt seem to matter how much these problems are stressed, as long as the system is running, albit slowly, its fine.

In one industry I worked for an FM company, that like all others I've encountered, oversold its abilities. They couldnt deliver good service if they tried. That turned really nasty when their standard number of calls was exceeded and their customers ending up paying through the nose for extra calls. The client company ended up directing their employees not to raise calls until all the available machines were dead.

Its crazy, if I had experience in other sectors I would move from IT.

Way forward ?

From my recent experiences help desks are becoming useless anyway. Its almost impossible to find someone who actually knows whats happening via the helpdesk. i.e. Asking Tiscali why the company internet was down while they insisted the internet connection wouldnt be supplied for 2 weeks. A quick reboot of the router sorted it out. Tiscali still insist they arent providing the internet, although they charge for it. Helpdesks I've built and operated always work on the basis of trying to solve a customers problems. It seems to be financial pressures and outsourcing that turn it into an accountability exercise. If businesses could actually see that it could be used to look for trend problems and even which software people needed to use then it would have a future.

As far as I can make out IT is going backwards rather than forwards. A lot of users know enough work arounds for their normal problems that they dont need to the helpdesks.

Massaged Figures

Microsoft arent bothered about costs of free W7 upgrades. Their policy has always been one of providing false figures. They will claim a Vista sale on the original pc and a W7 sale for the upgrade, free or not. As far as their official publicity figures go thats 2 sales.

Mission Impossible II

I've been down the VM route and it does work, as long as management are willing to spend enough money on infrastructure and servers. Network overheads tend to be high and servers need plenty of ram and disk otherwise it really is back to the 60's. Linux of any variety isnt comfortable enough for most users. The favourite argument against switching to Linux is the amount of time retraining users. I did a global rollout a few years ago, moving to leased Compaq kit which did away with the need to repair machines on site. Standardised software loads on machines which reduced the amount of supported packages. All automated so the user got a replacement machine and plugged it in. End result, company made savings by cutting the IT contractors out of the company. I know of another huge corporate where one of their critical systems runs on OS/2 and was written in COBOL. It can only run on old hardware which cant be repaired anymore and they wouldnt pay up to have it redeveloped for a Windows environment. That one got outsourced to India for a cheapo VM solution and their IT dept got throughly shafted. I've been supporting desktops and servers since 1988 and probably seen every scenario going. Companies are cutting experienced IT contractors all the time, I think Barclays has already shown the results of that game plan recently, but they try and make do with practically half trained monkeys and it doesnt work. Or it works until there is a screw up and then the half trained monkeys turn into headless chickens. For me IT support was always about service but thats been totally thrown out of the window IMHO due to costs.

Professional Integrity

I wouldnt .. its down to being professional ...

Arrrrrrr

Lived in Pompey for a while. a friend of mine has keys to the dock yard and we spent many a happy hour plannintg the departure of the Warrior. Piracy ... its so old school lol

Amateur TV

I did a lot of work about 10 years ago running 10GHz Tv and data, its relatively simple. As for range there are a lot of odd propogation effects that take place so weird results sometimes happen. Its certainly possible to do 300 plus miles on 10 watts or so. These days its even easier to generate higher power signals too.

Hail to the Chief

I heard this morning .. I'm really saddened, another icon from my youth gone .. some people get a country mourning for them .. a few get the whole world .. this guy has the flags lowered in worlds without number .. RIP Gary ...

They're Here!!!

I've been working on HP T5000 boxes all day .. I'm sure they are eating and replacing users but I cant prove it .. Obviously South Korea has already been taken over so the robots can sneak into North Korea and pinch nuclear weapons .. I dont know about some kind of robot hugging policy but we do need a robot extermination policy