* Posts by NinjasFTW

214 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Apr 2009

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Antitrust this! EU Commish goes after HOLLYWOOD’s big guns

NinjasFTW

agreed,

the only posts i've ever had refused at this site were ones that questioned Andrews stance/logic/impartialness.

interesting to see if this one gets through :)

BT issues formal whinge to Ofcom over Sky dominance in pay telly

NinjasFTW

Re: Competition is usually great for consumers,

I agree,

I'm not sure breaking up the sky 'monopoly' would result in benefits to the average customer unless there is regulation about channel exclusives.

I don't want to have to pay for a separate subscriptions to 10 different providers

If all providers had access to the same content and fought it out over prices or they all offered a la carte deals then that would be another story.

Virty servers' independence promise has been betrayed

NinjasFTW

What am I missing?

I'm not an expert with virtualisation so i'm trying to work out why its so bad to have cluster nodes virtualised.

The only thing that I can' think of is that you don't want your cluster nodes all sitting on the same host which is resolved with DRS/Affiniity rules.

I know that dba's usually have objections due to disk access speeds etc which is fair enough but I can't think of any other reason

Age guessing with Microsoft is FUN! Now give us your metadata

NinjasFTW

Re: Really, there were no other massive photos?

Is the definition of irony someone complaining about sexism telling someone else to grow a pair?

SpaceX in MONEY RING shot, no spare juice for tail backdown this time

NinjasFTW

I travelled through Turkmenistan a few years ago as part of the Mongol Rally and can honestly say that what I saw of Turkmenistan was a hell hole.

I know this is an unfair generalisation but if you do a bit of reading into the place you will be surprised at how much of a police state it is.

There are literally microphones badly disguised and hanging from trees in local parks (I didn't believe that until I saw it for myself). All hotel rooms are supposedly bugged as well.

The bureaucracy and corruption at the border is excessive even for that part of the world.

Internet access is forbidden unless you got to a state run internet cafe and hand over your passport while you're using it.

Mobiles don't work for international calls and text messages only go through 50% of the time.

Granted this was in 2009 so maybe some more reforms will have happened by now.

I didn't managed to make it up to the Door to Hell as it was a good couple of hundred miles out of my route and we had run out of money by this stage owing to the corruption at the border.

There are no cash machines and the only way to get money was through Western Union transfer.

The people seemed relatively friendly but no one really wanted to talk to you openly for all of the above reasons.

Definitely not a place i'll be revisiting any time soon!

Microsoft uses Windows Update to force Windows 10 ads onto older PCs

NinjasFTW

Re: The only 'advertising' I see ...

I'm not a big fan on Windows but i've re-installed several times and never had that problem.

Have replaced HDD and graphics card as well as updating to 64 bit. The HDD rebuild accepted the same key without a fuss, the graphics card change didn't actually require anything and the 64 bit upgrade required me to call a number and deal with an IVR system.

Are you running an OEM version of Windows? I'm using a boxed Win 7 Professional version.

Marvell: We don't want to pay this $1.5bn patent bill because, cripes, it's way too much

NinjasFTW

Re: A school owns patents?

For my final year uni project we were required to sign over all rights to it for the princely sum of $1.

No, I never actually got that dollar so I guess I could have got it invalidated.

It wouldn't have bothered me if the education was free but it certainly wasn't!

Encryption is the REAL threat – Head Europlod

NinjasFTW

Allergic to actually working!

What a load of rubbish.

The last two major terrorist attacks that come to mind (Boston Marathon and Chalie attacks) the security agencies had flagged the perpetrators as dangerous and simply couldn't be bothered to do some actual work and monitor them the old fashioned way.

There's not always 'an app for that'!

I do wonder if these people actually believe the shit they are trying to sell.

Bye bye, booth babes. IT security catwalk RSA nixes sexy outfits

NinjasFTW

Re: Give the feminism a rest

@fearnothing

god how demeaning can you be to women.

Perhaps we should protect them from any possible harm/offence by keeping them at home, maybe in the kitchen.

Looking around the office now I see about 30% women on an IT floor including devs, project managers, architects and team leaders.

All of them are treated on their merits rather than their sex

Here's a tip, talk to a few women who have been in tech for a while and get their perspective before jumping on the men must be sexist bastards bandwagon

BT Home Hub SIP backdoor blunder blamed for VoIP fraud

NinjasFTW

unless they are only using it for outgoing voip calls

NinjasFTW

Re: A few at fault here

As for the "locked down" part. If they did lock down 5060, how was the SIP provider going to get SIP call into the system (unless using a custom port) unless this was open. If they are attempting to justify using a basic router to do complex firewall rules, then god help them.

You're assuming they want incoming voip calls. The article mentions that the pbx was connected to the voip trunk as well as the pstn.

I would assume that they were only routing outgoing calls through the voip trunk.

The pbx installer should probably take some blame if they left an easy access test account.

However a router that lies to you about its firewall state and then 'helpfully' auto-detects and routes traffic to any voip interface it can find is pretty hard to defend...

The network engineer who set it up can object all he wants to the equipment he is provided but if the client says just make it work then that's what he does.

Australia threatens to pull buckets of astronomy funding

NinjasFTW

glad I left

The longer that government stays in power the more happy I become that I left!

I was always a liberal voter but I can't believe that anyone could support what they are doing to the country.

Slashing technology/education/environment and accelerating mining/logging of old growth forests/domestic spying/religious establishment in a race to the see if they can fuck up the country for anyone who plans to live for a another 20 years.

Nokia boss smashes net neutrality activists

NinjasFTW

Re: Hmmm

"Bloke on the intertubes uses a deliberately emotive argument, however much he knows it's not really valid, to try to gain favour from the non-technical masses for his own agenda."

To extend slightly

"Bloke on the intertubes uses a deliberately emotive argument, however much he knows it's not really valid, to try to gain favour from the non-technical masses for his own agenda which is the sale of equipment to produce a tiered internet."

NinjasFTW

Re: He seems to have failed to understand

I thought it was more that netflix's traffic was being artificially restricted when traversing through comcasts network until netflix paid for 'priority' peering and the resulting media storm when Comcast were trying to defend their position?

Sick of Chrome vs Firefox? Check out these 3 NEW browsers

NinjasFTW
Trollface

nah, Microsoft wont be able to help themselves and in three years it will have ActiveX mk2 tied so deeply into it we will be comparing it to ie6 :)

Jolla launches Sailfish 2.0, now with added security

NinjasFTW

Re: The bees knees, the wasps nipples.....

I am looking to replace my Nexus 4 soonish as its been dropped one time to many.

I would really like to replace it with a Jolla phone but there are two things that I regularly use phone for (outside of making calls/txts)

1) exchange sync with work. I had a look a few months ago but couldn't find any definite proof that it was supported in a corporate environment

2) Sky Go app

I'm highly dubious that the Sky Go app will be ported any time soon but could probably live without it. The lack of secured device exchange sync is unfortunately the big killer for me.

If that worked then I would buy one tomorrow

Does anyone have any information that would confirm/deny the above points?

Which of UK's major ISPs will let you have exotic p0rn? NONE OF THEM

NinjasFTW

Re: Sweet...

There is definitely something wrong with the interconnect between Virgin and Sky.

I get on average 1mb/s (often lower) downloading movies from Sky while a Steam game will come in at 12mb/s

I called Virgin about it once and explained what was happening, said they would forward it to second line support and within an hour I was getting much better performance.

I moved house the next week and the problems were back with my new connection so will have to call again and see what happens.

NinjasFTW

Re: Sweet...

Hanlons Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Have a search for "Virgin Media youtube buffering" and you get posts going back a long time. i.e http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Up-to-120Mb-Speed/Tired-of-YouTube-buffering/td-p/1746698

Its unbelievable that they have had the same issue going for so long that affects a large swathe of their user base.

Spanish scraper scrapped: Google axes Google News

NinjasFTW

Re: "We're not a monopoly, honest..."

lol did you even read what happened?

Newspaper says pay up or go away so Google stops including their articles in Google News.

Fast-forward a bit and newspaper realises that most of its traffic is driven through Google News (not the search engine which still returns searches for the newspaper) so they come crawling back and ask to be included again.

If they have issues with copy-write of the snippets that Google use then that is fair enough, they can simply disable indexing/robots etc.

It seems strange that no one actually does though, obviously the newspapers get more value from the service than they believe their snippets are worth.

Google obviously make money indirectly from the service, so it is a symbiotic relationship. Certain publishers would much rather it be a parasitic relationship.

What is crap is that its been make a requirement. Shouldn't publishers get to choose if they want to use the service?

Another lick of Lollipop: Google updates latest Android to 5.0.1

NinjasFTW

Re: YMMV

FWIW

My nexus 4 works pretty well. Battery life is definitely better although I think they have changed how its reported because it drops to 'half' quicker but the last half lasts a lot longer.

I have had a couple of intermittent issues with wifi not reconnecting after i've disabled/enabled it and I had to reboot once because it couldn't connect to the camera module.

Quite unimpressed that they removed the default email app for the gmail one but didn't merge the accounts over.

I really like the separate user accounts, the pinning ability, the ability to turn the flash-light on from the drop down menu (finally) and some of the new effects but overall a bit meh for all the hype.

Hunt for Higgs Boson and dark matter now starts ON YOUR SOFA

NinjasFTW

There goes my weekend.

I have no idea what to look for but I suspect that once I start tonight there will be a time dilation effect whereby it is suddenly Monday morning and my very angry wife is reminding me that its time to go to work and that I might want to eat/shower

What a Mesa: Apple vows to re-use titsup GT sapphire glass plant

NinjasFTW

No doubt they will get to pick it up for a bargain discount price while all the original investors get pennies in the pound back!

Makes for an interesting business plan

1) get company to commit to manufacture something that it probably wont be able to meet its targets

2) cancel very expensive contract based on breach of targets and force company to declare bankruptcy

3) pick up companies remains for nothing and get good PR for rescuing American manufacturing/job - Profit!

All but full-fat MS Office to be had on iPads, Droidenslabben for NOWT

NinjasFTW

Re: It's free....

Wasn't the ooxml standard the one that Microsoft was pushing so that it could comply with European requirements that documents be saved in a standard format.

I can't understand your logic on why open/libre office wont work with Microsoft formats. Microsoft is the dominant player, a big argument for not using open/libre office is because of the lack of interoperability with everyone else using Office and the legacy of office documents laying around that is only compatible with MS products.

There is absolutely no reason why libre/open office devs wouldn't want their product to work with Microsofts.

On the flip side there are some very solid reasons that Microsoft wouldn't want competitors to be able to work with their products.

There is a good quote from wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML

If ISO were to give OOXML with its 6546 pages the same level of review that other standards have seen, it would take 18 years (6576 days for 6546 pages) to achieve comparable levels of review to the existing ODF standard (871 days for 867 pages) which achieves the same purpose and is thus a good comparison.

Considering that OOXML has only received about 5.5% of the review that comparable standards have undergone, reports about inconsistencies, contradictions and missing information are hardly surprising

If MS simply said that the format is closed and will not be made available, I would be fine with that.

The fact is that they forced a standard through ISO so that they could pretend to governments and organisations that their formats were based on open standards and that they wouldn't locked into a single vendor for ever.

NinjasFTW

Re: It's free....

yeah because there was no controversies over OOXML being 'fast tracked' through ISO certification with vote stacking and bribery etc.

Also, not sure what other major players actually support ooxml?

Nothing wrong with a company making money. I have nothing against the office 365 product but anyone who thinks that Microsoft aren't trying to draw people in so they can then lock them in using any means possible have drunk way too much kool-aide.

Mozilla: Spidermonkey ATE Apple's JavaScriptCore, THRASHED Google V8

NinjasFTW

Re: Fundamental disagreement

on a similar vein i'm sick of recent releases of firefox trying to nanny my connections.

I stopped using firefox on linux as it simply refused to allow me to connect to a webmail portal on a server that I own that had a certificate with an invalid CN name. Yes I expect a warning but I also expect to be able to click through the warning to get to the page I want. I simply couldn't find the setting to allow to me to get through even after disabling all security checks I could find in the menu.

Then last night I was using firefox mobile and was getting OCSP errors that I had to disable in about:config to get it to run.

It simply takes too much tinkering just to browse the web.

Huawei prez: A one-speed internet is bad for everyone

NinjasFTW

shocker

Guy who sells equipment to created a tiered internet is against net neutrality!

No TKO for LTO: Tape format spawns another 2 generations, sports 120TB bigness

NinjasFTW

Re: Lowest-cost archive medium

This makes me wonder if there might a business model for a consumer level tape backup service.

You register, I send you a prepaid mail back which you put your hdd/dvd/bluray etc and send in.

I move all the data to tape and send you back the tape with an index file of everything that has been copied over.

Restores work in the same fashion.

Yes its a slow service but I would take a yearly option to have that done for piece of mind.

Google on Gmail child abuse trawl: We're NOT looking for other crimes

NinjasFTW

they don't have the images.

They have a list of hashes provided by a child protection agency (or similar)

BT: Whew, we've been cleared of major privacy breach. Oh SNAP, another webmail blunder

NinjasFTW

you have a fair point.

just goes to show that proverbially, once you've gotten away with murder, you will always assumed to be guilty.

NinjasFTW

not surprised on either front

Considering BT got away with the whole Phorm thing, its no surprise that ICO once again doesn't care what they do.

Aereo has to pay TV show creators? Yes. This isn't rocket science

NinjasFTW

average user suffers again

yes, how dare someone who is buried in a concrete jungle and can't receive standard free to air broadcasts throw a few pennies to a company that is prepared to pick up the signal for them.

The user still sees all the adds in the original transmission which is not manipulated and which is all the compensation the broadcaster would receive from people out in the suburbs.

Yes technically it is retransmission but its just the cartels being bastards, The broadcaster just saw

an opportunity to double dip and went for it.

and lol at the portrayal of media companies as the plucky underdog!

Netflix agrees to end network warnings in Verizon slowdown spat

NinjasFTW

ah good to see the kettle calling the pott black!

DevOps is actually a thing – and people are willing to pay for it

NinjasFTW

Re: The words in the title

I'm not in a DevOps team but there is a fairly sizeable one in the company I work at.

I recently sat through a presentation on how the DevOps team have setup their own architecture and it was the mother of all bundles of duct-taped cats!

They had hundreds of individual web servers with a one to one relationship to an application server.

Each application server only ran a single app and each app had a number of point to point connections to other app servers as well as back end infrastructure.

Absolutely no thought to scaling (except though more VMs at it) or performance outside of individual components.

They recently had an outage as the load of connections spread across two data centre sites were swamping the load balancers.

This was my first exposure to a DevOps environment so it may be affecting my view of the process as a whole, however I think that the majority of people will never be good at multiple roles but will never admit it.

The one thing that I did like was that whoever made a code release was on oncall support for the next 48 hours so there was a lot of incentive to make sure it wasn't going to fail.

Apple haggles with ISPs for fast lanes to its own websites – industry guru

NinjasFTW

Re: Like a motorway, perhaps?

I would say that its more like Apple pay ComCast City to build them a separate motorway/Lane for them and pay for the maintenance.

This then provides incentive for ComCast city to spend less on the common motorway in the hopes that other cities will pay for their own dedicated motorways because the existing ones are falling into disrepair.

Do you use NAS drives? For work? One just LEAKED secret cash-machine blueprints

NinjasFTW

how is it vulnerable?

Maybe I'm being slow today but I can't see how this would affect 99.5% of the user base.

If you put the device on your home network then any service that it exposes will be restricted to the home network.

If it is accessible from the web via a intermediate cloud service then the access controls can be restricted by the company running the service to require a password rather than having to physically update all the devices.

Yes, if you go to an internet cafe etc then you may be vulnerable to whoever is also connected to the network or if you've set your nas to sit in your DMZ however if you can do that you probably know enough to not have a no password access.

Not saying that its not a nasty security issue that needs to be resolved but not sure its worth doom prophecy of the article.

WTF is Net Neutrality, anyway? And how can we make everything better?

NinjasFTW

wierd facts

There are some strange points in this article.

It states that Netflix drops Cogent and peers with Comcast directly because of congestion. Presumably Netflix still delivers traffic to ISPs other than Comcast so they are infact paying twice.

Are Netflix now paying less for their Cogent bill as well as having to pay Comcast?

Why are netflix raising their costs to cover the new peering arrangements?

The reasoning that performance was poor because of congestion seems extremely odd seeing as soon as the Netflix cheque cleared the congestion magically disappeared! Either Comcast have a magical way of adding capacity to their networks or there is something fishy going on there.

I have heard that Cogent tend to skimp on their peering infrastructure and I would much rather some action to get that fixed rather than the slippery slope we are heading down.

If a ISP can feel free to ignore is public backbone commitments in exchange for juicy dedicated peering contracts where do you think we will be in 10-15 years.

Also calling this article as non-idealogical with all the references to 'well-funded net neutrality' and beardies etc while ignoring associated campaigning by big ISPs is frankly disingenuous at best

Microsoft in 1-year Windows XP survival deal with UK govt

NinjasFTW

Re: Wasting taxpayer's money again

What 3 year degree course are you referring to?

I guess if your teaching a business course or similar then I could see the justification for it but I wouldn't call it IT skills

I don't want to get into a slanging match here but if you are only teaching students vendor specific base level products such as Office etc then I would suggest you are not teaching them IT skills.

We're being royalty screwed! Pandora blames price rise on musos wanting money

NinjasFTW

grocery stores complaining

Of course grocery stores complain about the cost of the food they sell.

Large chains often manipulate the market so that they pay less at the expense of farmers. Do you think Tesco and co would have ended up selling horse if it wasn't a race to the cheapest supplier?

BT demands end to Ofcom wholesale broadband subsidies for BSkyB, TalkTalk

NinjasFTW

Re: As much as I hate to say this....

Except BTs network was originally provided by the tax payer.

If BT are worried they lack the capital for infrastructure investment then maybe they should have just spent a godzillion £ on TV rights.

Q: Just why are AT&T, banks snubbing kit from Cisco & co? A: Control

NinjasFTW

Re: A problem in the making...

There may be multiple components to it but it is still a one off cost.

I've been lucky enough to get some good training in my career but it never came with a pay rise! I did get a pay rise after training once but it came with a new position/title/responsibilities so I don't think that counts

If the company is losing people after training them then I suspect the salary package wasn't appropriate to start with in which case the .

In the context of the article if you switch to a cheaper supplier then you may still be vendor locked but then you are with Cisco currently anyway.

NinjasFTW

Re: A problem in the making...

Its not always easy to focus on QoS.

As much as I hate myself for saying there is always going to be a QoS to cost ratio that needs to be considered. If you can get a slightly inferior product in terms of feature or performance for 1/2 the cost then you are probably mad not to take it (usual disclaimers about product having to actually be fit for purpose etc)

Also I hate seeing training always brought up in these discussions. Training is a once off cost (per employee granted) but as long as you are locked into an expensive solution those hardware/support costs will keep reoccurring.

I guess what i'm saying is that due diligence should be performed where the bean counters have input to the decision process but not a controlling interest.

Linux backdoor squirts code into SSH to keep its badness buried

NinjasFTW

Infection Vector?

I get how it hides itself in a shared library once its installed but how does it get there in the first place?

Presumably you would need root permissions install the shared library. Is there an update system compromised or could it be a rogue sysadmin?

GCHQ hijacked LinkedIn profiles to hack Belgian telecoms network – report

NinjasFTW

If nothing else, the should get the RIAA etc industries involved because GCHQ must have copied and used LinkedIns content without permission.

Wonder who would win? ;)

GIMP flees SourceForge over dodgy ads and installer

NinjasFTW

Re: Ch Ch Ch Changes

when was the last time you were on ./ So many promotions badly disguised as stories.

Its not ruined yet but certainly spend a lot less time there than I did

Thought you didn't need to show ID in the UK? Wrong

NinjasFTW

Re: Some rules do need to be tightened

And the tactic works all too well.

I had a conversation with my mother not that long ago that I started by moaning about having to take my belt off when going through an airport checkpoint.

I said that next they will be wanting us to strip naked and then fly in airline provided surgical gowns.

My mum replied that so long as it keeps us safe from terrorism that's ok.

I'm still not sure whether to be angry or depressed at her attitude.

Apple patents technology to STALK YOU in your own HOME

NinjasFTW

Re: discrimination!

The USPTO certainly shares a good chunk of the blame.

It could have been Google, IBM, Msft or a host of other however, as usual it wasn't. They could also grab the patent and then not use it offensively however they don't do that either.

Plenty of blame for both parties.

Steve Wozniak: 'I wish to God that Apple and Google were partners'

NinjasFTW

Re: Blackness

I haven't time to read the interview transcript but does Woz actually says anything like that?

The quote says that he wants them to work together rather than singling out either company for not wanting to share.

Some flame bating from the author perhaps? Especially given Apples refusal to licence any of its 'patents' and quick to throw a sue-ball tendencies.

Google and Samsung bare teeth in battle for LANDFILL ANDROID™

NinjasFTW

Re: Nexus 4 owner here - caveat emptor

I'm not sure what you mean by build quality issues in the nexus 4. I have one and the only complaint is the glass back but I use a cover so its not an issue anyway.

I have never noticed any screen inaccuracies and get 2 days battery use with light usage (including background tasks that sync backups and lot of push messages).

I don't use the camera much but the odd pics I take with it seem ok to me.

I wont be getting the Nexus 5 (unless something happens to my N4) and am hoping that a Ubuntu/Tizen/Sailfish phone gets up and running for my next phone because I'm not 100% comfortable with the direction that Google/Android is heading.

I find it funny that you think that Apple do hardware right after so many issues with home button breaking, dust in the screen in the 3's, various antenna issues in the 4, 5s accelerometer etc. It is a high quality product but not so good that its worth putting on a pedestal!

MPs to review laws on UK spy-snoopery after GCHQ Tempora leaks

NinjasFTW
WTF?

Sigh

so the same committee that basically said move along, nothing to see here is now going to be in charge of determining if the laws need changing.

Anyone willing to offer odds on them making a proposal that simply requires all data to be routed through GCHQ with criminal charges against anyone who dares to question what is being collected. Of course the wording will be slightly different because they are doing it for our benefit and of course lets not forget TERRORISTS!!1!.1!1!!! with a side order of Think of the Children!

Google's Wi-Fi not good enough for its home town

NinjasFTW

Re: Google's ISP ambitions

Why would you think its a backhaul rather than a simple saturation of the airwaves?

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