* Posts by Marc 25

111 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Dec 2009

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Naughty sysadmins use dark magic to fix PCs for clueless users

Marc 25

Proximal IT

In a previous role, an end user used to regularly bring their laptop to my desk just to be "near me" so that their computer would work properly. I never had to lay a hand on the thing, but oddly, it ALWAYS seemed to work.

All sysadmins obviously have an energy field of sorts!

Head of GCHQ Robert Hannigan steps down for 'personal reasons'

Marc 25

Couldn't have chosen a worst time.

The very fact that BoJo and Mistress May get to choose the next head of GCHQ just confirms how f*cked up the current situation has become.

Astroboffins glimpse sighting of ultra-rare circular galaxy

Marc 25
Coat

shuda

If you like the core, you shoulda put a ring on it

suggest renaming it to the Beyonce galaxy/

'So sorry' Evernote rips up privacy changes

Marc 25

damage has been done

and like Elephants, customers never forget.

KKTNXBAI

Meat pies in SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE!

Marc 25

wondrous, magical and majestic!

(the story is not bad either)

Oi, you, no flirting, no touching in the back of our rides, sniffs Uber

Marc 25

Re: disruption

Ok, it would be smothered in law suits pretty quick"

Thats not ALL the cars would be smothered in!

Cargo capsule goes AWOL, explodes on its way to Space Station

Marc 25

What an interesting turn of events it would be if the SpaceX lifters became more reliable than the Soyuz-U rockets.

Investigatory Powers Act signed into UK law by Queen

Marc 25

oh f*ck off you unelected, nosey, busybodying witch!

London cops' tech slammed for failing abused kids – report

Marc 25

Stupid is as Stupid does

"In one such incident, the report went on to explain, a 13-year-old girl who went missing overnight was assessed as only being at medium risk because she was “streetwise” despite the Met's communications centre receiving a report that the child was “alone and unsafe in a house with three men”.

Connectivity issues with the Met's IT systems meant this information was “in an email inbox in the MPS for 14 hours before the force acted on it.”"

Why the hell was that report EMAILED to the MET, why wasn't someone on the damn phone getting hold of a bobby or private dick (sic).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EBfxjSFAxQ

Sharing's caring? Not when you spread data across gov willy-nilly

Marc 25

The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil

but if they can't share the information with the Police forces then how will PreCog even work?

If your browser history shows you conspiring with ISIS or watching BDSM porn then the gov needs to send round the thought police to pop you into clinky with Gary Glinter asap.

I think these people are just busy body nimby's with no regard for public safety and should be locked up immediately for not towing the party line.

“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”

Fancy the new HTML vSphere client? Go get it: The old one has a security problem

Marc 25

Hold on

"Or just ditch the client and go to the shiny new HTML 5 version, just like VMware wants you to."

Except that the new HTML5 client is heavily lacking in features still. You can't even create a vSwitch yet and not being able to do that is going to make resource abstraction rather tricky.

The new GUI is very good, don't get me wrong, however it's going to be a few months yet before its a full production replacement of the old interfaces.

Reg man 0: Japanese electronic toilet 1

Marc 25

you could just leave the damn buttons alone.

an unpressed button is like catnip to anyone in the IT world.

"What does this do?"

<JAB>

Dell EMC's Pure-crushing benchmarks are flawed, says, er, Pure

Marc 25

Oh no, not THIS again!

/waits for Howard to weigh in.

VMware joins Brexploitation gang, double digit price hike in the offing

Marc 25

Re: Taking the urine

"Just say your going Hyper-V if you dont give same price next quarter"

...and the very best of luck to you with that.

Panicked WH Smith kills website to stop sales of how-to terrorism manuals

Marc 25

Re: Madness!

"Boeing 747 operators manual" is now on the list too after 9/11?

Marc 25

Re: What's the thinking?

Since the lizard GCHQ overlords OWN duckduckgo then why go to the bother?

Got any proof of that?

Software-defined traditional arrays could be left stranded by HCI

Marc 25

If you're a storage vendor and you haven't thought of this by now, you're already dead. Any vendors worth their salt should already have a plan in place to provide some sort of HCI offering.

Brit loan firm gets comeuppance for 7.7 million spam texts

Marc 25

£130,000?

Seems like a small fine to me.

Ocean make that sort of money in interest from a £100 loan right?

Dear sysadmin: This is how you stay relevant

Marc 25

Re: I call bullshit....

I hear that painful cry brother and rest assured if misery loves company, you sir, are amongst loved ones.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx is off to nick some rocks from asteroid Bennu

Marc 25

The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill

It's like NASA has never watched the Creep Show films!!!

Nice knowing you all, now, where did I leave my shotgun?

O2: Float or flog. What's it going to be, Telefonica?

Marc 25

I find it utterly stunning that a business can be £41bn in debt and still be in operation!

Lightspeed PoS vendor breached, sensitive database tapped

Marc 25

Re: Impressive

Yeah but you don't want a breach in your boats

FBI Director wants 'adult conversation' about backdooring encryption

Marc 25

Re: Feels ...?

I completely agree with you. I read that line and recoiled in shock!

For that line alone he should consider his position untenable and step down immediately. He's completely failed to understand that his role is to protect the people and not to protect the rights of the elected temporary government.

That line would not wash in the UK and I'm concerned that this is happening in the US, especially when we use so many US online services.

Right now in the UK we have the Human Rights act 1998 and article 8 states that we have these rights.

Mind you, Mistress May is doing all she can to tear that down and remove that critical line about phone tapping and email monitoring.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-rights/civil-rights/human-rights/what-rights-are-protected-under-the-human-rights-act/your-right-to-respect-for-private-and-family-life/

ISS astronauts begin spacewalk to install new docking adapter

Marc 25

Re: In space...

... No-one can drop a wrench...

Pretty sure we're all failing through Spacetime. We're failing around the sun, the spacestation falling around us. So actually the wrench is failing at the same rate as the Spacestation around us on our pale blue dot.

HMRC: We've got £1.3bn for digital tax schemes. Tell us how to spend it

Marc 25

Beggars Belief

Not so sure I want to live in a country that has the world's most "technically advance tax avoidance system". How about handing the "excess" back to the Government, so that they may spend it on more worth while causes, sack your beancounters for f*cking up the budget so spectacularly and start streamlining a little, like every other private sector business in this green, unpleasant land.

Idiot flies drone alongside Flybe jet landing at Newquay Airport

Marc 25

Prop vs Jet

Anything hitting a TurboProp is gonna get shredded - think "will it blend". There's surely enough RMP there to blend a primarily plastic drone into plastic snow flakes.

Flybe manly fly Q400's (which are not jet engines) I think bird strikes are usually less severe on Turbo Props as Jet engines are more delicate?

More damage is caused when bird/drone hits just about anything else instead. Pretty sure it could easily punch it's way through a window or even take off the tip of the tail plane at the right angle.

I agree with the main sentiment though...what a sodding arsewipe!

Hybrid cloud: Deciding the right mix for your workloads

Marc 25

Yeah, we're not convinced that Azure, Office 364, Failsforce and 123reg (web unhosting) are the right solutions for us thanks.

Seriously, when these boys can offer services that are always online, don't lose the data, secure and aren't extortionately priced then maybe we'll consider them. The only barrier then will be the obscene costs for internet connectivity/bandwidth charges here in the UK.

Us Brits don't "need educating" we just ain't drinking the kool aid before it becomes a financially viable and we're sure our data is going to be safe/available/where we left it/unfondled

Power cut crashes Delta's worldwide flight update systems

Marc 25

I keep trying to call the CTO but oddly, he's a little busy today...

Marc 25

Re: Single point of failure

Rumsfeld:

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

Forget your RTO*: Real world Disaster Recovery needs garbage bags and bubble wrap

Marc 25

I take it all your gear is EMP-hardened, then?

Nope, it was geographically placed to minimise political impact

Marc 25

If, in your career, you've never had to rescue a server or backup media via means of a makeshift boat. You aint lived!

4 times in my career i've watching gleefully as my place of work has sunken beneath the waves of the various rivers of the UK. All of those businesses recovered with very little data loss. All of them continued operation and still operate today.

First rule of IT: Have you backed it up? Do you have 3 copies, in two locations, one offsite?

It's amazing how many people don't plan for the major disaster situations, fire, flood, earthquake, nuclear attack or even war.

Jovian moon Io loses its atmosphere every day

Marc 25

Not a single pun about the "Sky is falling" anywhere to be found here. Very dissapoint

The return of (drone) robot wars: Beware of low-flying freezers

Marc 25

"the UK – a country where gun ownership is tightly restricted and its citizens are happy and willing to have every fucking second of their private lives filmed because they already live in a corrupt police state with the Big Brother-like cosh of closed-circuit TV on every street corner."

Not all of us are "happy and willing", but apparently we live in a democracy and stupid people are entitled to vote too

UK councils refuse to push data into the cloud

Marc 25

Re: Alternative possibility

"Or that local government has had its budgets cut so severely in the last few years that, after decades of money being sucked back to the centre and grudgingly redistributed with political allegiances in mind, THEY'VE GOT NO FUCKING MONEY LEFT!"

This...exactly this. The simple fact of the matter is that Private Clouds and SaaS is usually way more expensive in the long run. When you consider boring old 3 tier hardware, being run in a store cupboard by Admins that get paid a pittance (30% below private sector workers), cloud is vastly over expensive for the tiny budgets that the councils get given.

I meet Council Admin staff every week all over this country and none of them, not one...gives a shit about paying over the odds to have someone else host their stuff (even if they could keep it safe and available).

Get ready for mandatory porn site age checks, Brits. You read that right

Marc 25

gerontophiliac.... Quite the opposite sir.

(although, I've been called worse)

Marc 25

A the wench that put this legi-shit-tion into place is potentially going to be our next (unelected) PM...i weep for this island sometimes

Marauding monkey blacks out Kenya

Marc 25

Re: Huh?

Really? Where? Cos it sounds like complete and utter cr@p.

It was in an Nation Research Council report titled "Terrorism and the Electric Power Delivery System". The report has been summarised many times by scientific website, all over the interweb.

Maybe have a google and consider the idea that I might not be lying rather than swearing at me and calling me a liar. It's kind rude.

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12050/terrorism-and-the-electric-power-delivery-system

Marc 25

Re: Huh?

Yup cascading power failures are a real threat. When you combine them with something like an EMP over a major plant in Europe or America, you could basically move an entire continent back to the Dark Ages.

Repair times are not quick either, as transformers get damaged. I think I saw a stat somewhere that said if the whole of Europe went down, the worlds total manufacturing output for 10 years would need to be dedicated to rebuilding transformers and the rest of the burnt out grid.

Securing power plant from Electromagnetic Pulse threats have been serious investigations for the EU, UK and America since 2013...

Marc 25

Re: In a startling reversal of roles ...

great punage. Have an upvote!

Scots denied Saltire emoji

Marc 25

there WAS one but they lost it.

Marc 25

where does it end?

They'll be wanting a Thistle next....and don't even get me started on Cornwall...!

Astroboffins create music from SPAAAAAAAAAAACE

Marc 25

Re: And Voyager "sounds" from 1992

By far the coolest sound in our tiny little corner of the Universe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3fqE01YYWs

So. Why don't people talk to invisible robots in public?

Marc 25

I use it all the time!

However YMMV

I'm sorry Barwwy, I didn't understand "wecomend a westuwant?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA5Zhir8rbc

In-flight movies via BYOD? Just what I always wan... argh no we’re all going to die!

Marc 25

Preflighting

Incidentally, the production process of checking print pages before they go to press, or are published digitally, is known in the industry as a “preflighting”.

Are editing and Preflighting the same thing?

What you have described, to me is "editing". As I understand it, editing is the act of checking the content is valid, understandable, meets the agenda and has no spelling or grammatical mistakes.

Preflighting is the act of checking that all the required digital pieces are together before printing. For example Indesign has a preflight feature which checks that all of the images and fonts are gathered so that when an output is done you're not missing bits from the PDF.

Either way, Editing is an age old probably that seems to have gotten worse as the digital era has matured

Nutanix slims down code, chases after small business

Marc 25

Re: Nice to see them validate scale computing

IPO ain't gonna happen. They are already asking workers to go part time...

With all due respect, that's absolute toss.

Close to 100 new staff in the UK alone this year. Just posted their best ever quarter.

No signs of slowing at all.

FYI: Not a Nutanix employee.

Marc 25

you're positively drowning us in details here...

Is the world ready for hybrid cloud?

Marc 25

Can it be recorded please?

The ‘Vaping Crackdown’ starts today. This is what you need to know

Marc 25

Re: About time

seems like you've met a lot of idiots and I sympathise.

But maybe, just maybe, not everyone in the world is an Ars@hol* and you perhaps shouldn't judge an entire group of people of the actions of one or two?

VMware flushes Windows vSphere client and Adobe Flash

Marc 25

Vsphere and the vsphere client are different things

vSphere is the hypervisor.

The "vSphere Client" is the software you use to connect/manage the hypervisor and vCenter.

For years we've used a windows application to manage the hosts and vCenter. VMware have now insisted that we use this shitty HTML5 abomination.

This article represents a collective sigh of disgust for vAdmins across the globe.

ESXI Free is a cut down version of the hypervisor and remains available, but you're probably need to manage it via the afore mentioned "shitty" web interface from now on.

Apple's iOS updates brick iPads

Marc 25

The more things change, the more they stay the same

After 25 years in this business some things in life appear certain....Death, Taxes and bugs in software.

I would say cut Apple some slack...but hey this is The Register and vultures clearly hold grudges...even after 15+ years!

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