* Posts by TheVogon

3511 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jan 2013

Microsoft's paid $60 per LinkedIn user – and it's a bargain, because we're mugs

TheVogon

Re: I predict they write off $20 billion in value before 2020

"MS is not a healthy company"

An AAA credit rating (better than Apple) says otherwise...

TheVogon

Re: Gone now.

Thank god it wasn't bought by Google or Facebook.

Thief dresses as Apple Store drone, walks off with $16,000 in iGear

TheVogon

"The source story said the phones were unlocked phones"

Presumably Apple could easily turn them in locked phones by barring activation.

Brexit? Cutting the old-school ties would do more for Brit tech world

TheVogon

"Yeah, close the borders. We don't want no stinkin people fleeing from some disaster."

Quite. Let the EU play migrant table tennis without us. Especially when it's likely going to be many millions of them. We already spend 0.7% of GDP on foreign aid...

TheVogon

"but I also will be voting for Brexit, beacuse I care about democracy!"

I will because of immigration. Just think about what's going to happen when say much of Bangladesh sinks under the waves in a few decades due to global warming / sea level rise.....The EU will be inundated by even more undesirable economic migrants and refugees.

Microsoft thinks it's fixed Windows Server mess its last fix 'fixed'

TheVogon

Re: Windows management tool started to go down the sink...

"Err, you know that formatting input and outputs can also mean things like getting fields in the correct order"

The major advantage of Powershell is that you DO NOT need to keep track of the text position as it passes around objects. In Bash you select parameters from multiple commands piped together using text position often using awk, cut, etc.and that can sometimes be difficult if the text rows have different number of arguments such as iptables logs for example.

A longer list of some Powershell advantages over BASH:

1) Object oriented pipes so that I don't have to format and reparse and be concerned about language settings.

2) Command metadata. PowerShell commands, functions and even *script files* expose metadata about the names, positions, types and validation rules for parameters, allowing the *shell* to perform type coercion, allowing the *shell* to explain the parameters/syntax, allowing the *shell* to support both tab completion and auto-suggestions with no need for external and cumbersome completion definitions.

3) Robust risk management. Look up common parameters -WhatIf, -Confirm, -Force and consider how they are supported by ambient values in scripts you author yourself.

4) Multiple location types and -providers. Even a SQL Server appears as a navigable file system. Want to work with a certain database? Just switch to the sqlserver: drive and navigate to the server/database and start selecting, creating tables etc.

5) Fan-out remoting. Execute the same script transparently and *robustly* on multiple servers and consolidate the results back on the controlling console. Try icm host1,host2,host3 {ps} and watch how you get consolidated, object-oriented process descriptions from multiple servers.

6) Workflow scripting. PowerShell scripts can (since v3) be defined as workflows which are suspendable, resumable and which can pick up and continue even across system restarts.

7) Parallel scripting. No, not just starting multiple processes, but having the actual *script* branch out and run massively parallel.

8) True remote sessions where you don't step into and out of remote sessions but actually controls any number of remote sessions from the outside.

9) PowerShell web access. You can now set up a IIS with PWA as a gateway. This gives you a firewall-friendly remote command line in any standards compliant browser.

10) Superior security features, e.g. script signing, memory encryption, proper multi-mode credentials allowing script to be agnostic about authentication schemes which may go way beyond stupid username+password and use smart cards, tokens, OTPs etc.

11) Transaction support right in the shell. Script actions can join any resource manager such as SQL server, registry, message queues in a single atomic transaction. Do that in bash?

12) Strongly typed scripting, extensive data types, e.g first class xml support and regex support right in the shell. Optional static/explicit typing. Real lambdas (script blocks) instead of stupidly relying on dangerous and error prone "eval" functions.

13) Real *structured* exception handling as an alternative to outdated traps (which PowerShell also has). try-catch-finally blocks.

14) Instrumentation, extensive tracing, transcript and *source level* debugging of scripts.

15) Consistent naming conventions covering verb-noun command names, common verbs, common parameter names.

TheVogon

Re: Testing on a live system

"Microsoft sending out updates which break your storage means you have to roll it back to the version which worked"

Or you have a proper testing and deployment process and don't allow untested automatic updates to production systems...

TheVogon

Re: Windows management tool started to go down the sink...

"especially since programmers must spend more time now parsing, transforming and formatting inputs and outputs"

With an Object Orientated solution like Powershell you don't have to spend time doing this. It's one of the many advantages of PowerShell. These types of structural problems are far more an issue with say BASH and similar text data only based scripting formats...

"positional text-based exchange formats"

See the above.

Dell finds liquid cooling tech on eBay, now wants you to buy it

TheVogon

Re: Call out break-fix now requires a plumber too

"Water and electricity are never a good mix. Too many opportunities to damage a pipe leading to significant outage."

That has never seemed to stop the Americans using water based overhead fire extinguishing systems in datacentres regardless of the obvious stupidity and inherent safety hazards...

Why Oracle will win its Java copyright case – and why you'll be glad when it does

TheVogon

Re: The code is trivial

"The code is utterly trivial"

So surely Google should have been able to write their own instead of copying 11,000 lines of it?

Oracle laying off its Java evangelists? Er, no comment, says Oracle

TheVogon

Re: The world is not Java, nor even the JVM.

Today's jobs on http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/ :

.Net : 1352

C# : 1381

SELECT features FROM bumf... What's new in MS SQL Server 2016

TheVogon

Re: Oh wont someone think of the EULA

"but rather granting the server internet access (so the server can get critical updates, anti-virus signature updates and so on)."

Those should normally come via a managed and controlled internal infrastructure - not direct from the internet.

Samsung: Don't install Windows 10. REALLY

TheVogon

Re: If proof is needed...

"Windows 10 = 15%."

Nope - latest figures are 17.43% OS share (BetaNews) with over 300 million active installs.

So by far the fastest deployed version of Windows ever.

The Windows Phone story: From hope to dusty abandonware

TheVogon

Re: Too little too late

"NOBODY wants to use a slow, sick, virus-trojen-malware prone device as their smart phone"

Obviously they do as Android phones are still selling...

'Australia tax' doesn't apply to Azure

TheVogon

Likely a large company such as Microsoft at least to some extent will cover the risk of currency exchange rate movements with FX hedges back to USD, so they would only need adjust the exchange rates between countries every year or so....

FOURTH bank hit by SWIFT hackers

TheVogon

"but how would such large thefts be cashed by the Norks?"

Probably to finance Kim's personal DVD collection (20,000+ !)

'Grey tech' broker DP Data Systems has gone titsup

TheVogon

Re: Vowed to go clean rather than shut up shop. Shuts up shop

'grey tech'

I had visions of things like these: http://www.ttfone.com/

Quiet cryptologist Bill Duane's war with Beijing's best

TheVogon

Re: "a previously unknown, or “zero-day,” flaw in Adobe’s Flash software"

"The real surprise is having a spreadsheet tool with access to flash..."

Yes awful, nearly as bad having say a spreadsheet tool that uses Java?

TheVogon

Re: Easy fix

"Its easy to run a stripped down version of a Linux system - less software running then the less attack space."

It's even easier to run a stripped down version of Windows Server - it comes out of the box. It's called the "Server Core" version. Or "Nano" in the newer versions.

Victims stranded as ID thieves raid Aussie driver licences

TheVogon

Re: Good lord,

"Those victims have little recourse because no state will reissue a new driver licence number"

But what sort of security system relies solely on a short personal number as any sort of protection?! That's ridiculous - the problem is whatever organisation is stupid enough to allow a license number to have any meaning in terms of personal identity. It's like being able to take someone's money just by knowing their bank account number...

HR botches redundancy so chap scores year-long paid holiday

TheVogon

Re: January 1st?

"When has anyone ever worked on New Years Day?"

Ever since mission critical 24 x 7 businesses have had IT departments?

HPE spins out enterprise services business into CSC

TheVogon
Holmes

Re: An HPE Insider's View

Adding more turd to a turd still leaves you with a turd....

Windows 10 build 14342: No more friendly Wi-Fi sharing

TheVogon

Re: Good

"If, like me your main firewall/NATS is your ADSL router but have a sep. wifi access point then the firewalls on all your devices have to be OK if you let anyone connect to your wifi."

ADSL firewalls by default let open ports on your internal devices connect to the internet. No home grade device does anything significantly more than stateful tracking of connections, which stops nothing if the port you want is open anyway. Therefore allowing access via WiFi is little different. Most modern WiFi routers can separate the traffic between an internal DMZ and the WiFi network to provide the same degree of "protection" anyway...

TheVogon

Re: Good

"Hope your device firewalls are in good shape !"

Because being already connected to the internet, the main risk is from someone using my WiFi, right?

TheVogon

Re: Good

"And some will probably do so without asking if you're okay with that.""

They can do that via notepad and share them anyway - I always keep a record of wifi passwords I get given.

TheVogon

Re: Intriguing...

"Just to give you an example, it still runs an outdated (almost 30 years old) filesystem -NTFS-, while others have made enormous progresses and also taken into account new things like SSD"

Just like ext is an outdated (almost 30 year old filesystem) ?

NTFS has multiple versions - currently we are on 3.1- and has had many feature updates along the way. And there is ReFS - which isn't feature complete yet, but it's pretty good.

nb - NTFS doesn't need to take into account SSD as that's handled in other layers in Windows - for instance Storage Spaces that provides features like automated tiered storage.

TheVogon

"Given the push to put Linux tools on Windows (and not use something like Cygwin) makes me wonder if WIndows 10 will, as some have already put it, turn into another distro."

The driver seems primarily to be to not have to use Linux on the desktop, so I doubt that.

TheVogon

Re: symlink support for Linux subsystem

" I know that symlinks under Windows were always tricky"

In what way? - always worked just fine for me under say the Windows 7 Korn shell, or the Windows Command prompt.

TheVogon

Re: Good

"know they were sharing their WiFi keys with people by default??"

You have to actively tick a box each time you add a network to share them - it's not by default.

TheVogon

Re: Good

"actually came up with it and thought it was a good idea, obviously not even bothering do a cursory security audit"

It doesn't let you share keys on corporate type WiFi setups - only home / public ones. In general it's no big deal if someone can use your internet connection.

Android Lollipop sucks at security, says researcher

TheVogon

Re: Promotional hack for security "researcher".

"In the real world this isn't happening"

There know there are many Malware infected Android phones, so clearly it is.

Queen's Speech: Ministers, release the spaceplanes!*

TheVogon

"we will never be like China"

We are already like China. It's just a bit more subtle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_the_United_Kingdom

TheVogon

"Ofcom to have power to regulate internet-streamed material from outside EU"

Really? By what god like powers are they planning on subverting foreign jurisdictions and the ability of the internet to route around censorship?

Storage array firmware bug caused Salesforce data loss

TheVogon

Re: Bugs, eh?

"Circuit breakers broke bad"

Is that meant to read "badly" or is this written in American?

Nokia offers up 10 Gbps HFC demo

TheVogon

Re: "Symmetrical"

"tell me the use case for even 1 gigabit service at home"

Streaming multi-angle 8k porn?

Russia poised to unleash 'Son of Satan' ICBM

TheVogon

Re: Two steps forward...

"No I am thinking of the Ukrainian Soviet leader who gave Ukrain Crimea."

It was given to Ukraine by the Presidium - which is a council of leaders, not by just the head of state at the time Kliment Voroshilov.

"Middle East has been a total screw up since the demise of the Ottoman Empire"

I think you mean since the demise of the British Empire....

TheVogon

Re: Wonderful

"the Russians annexed land they loaned to Ukraine"

It was given, not loaned:

"the transfer of Crimea from the RSFSR to the UkrSSR was carried out in accordance with the 1936 Soviet constitution, which in Article 18 stipulated that “the territory of a Union Republic may not be altered without its consent.” The proceedings of the USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium meeting indicate that both the RSFSR and the UkrSSR had given their consent via their republic parliaments."

"the Russian Federation expressly accepted Ukraine’s 1991 borders both in the December 1991 Belovezhskaya Pushcha accords (the agreements that precipitated and codified the dissolution of the Soviet Union) and in the December 1994 Budapest Memorandum"

TheVogon

Re: Two steps forward...

"I think Crimea is understandable, looking at recent history"

You mean that the world generally ignoring Israel's illegal occupations meant Russia thought they could get away with it too?

TheVogon

Re: Two steps forward...

"That Russians will try to do exactly that and will just put more missiles, more expenses, etc"

Europe and the USA will win that battle. The Russian economy is screwed.

Laser-zapping scientists will save the Earth from meteorite destruction

TheVogon

Re: Big Laser

"Instead the Lawrences plan to destroy meteorites"

Presumably for values of "plan" that primarily include threats that happen to be right on top of Russia or China at the time...

Microsoft half-bricks Asus Windows 7 PCs with UEFI boot glitch

TheVogon

Re: No, but seriously ...

"PS What did "RICHTO" mean?"

Nothing - some people assumed it referred to money so I changed it.

TheVogon

Re: Stabbity stab stabbity stab.....

"Hopefully they will take Wintel with it."

Some Windows versions run on Arm too don't forget...

TheVogon

Re: No, but seriously ...

"The thing is it is overkill, a read-only SD card slot that is only used to load the boostrap would achieve the same thing."

Your SD card could be malware infected when you obtained it. Secure Boot fixes that.

TheVogon

Re: Secure Boot is Security Theatre

"If malware is in a position to modify the boot stack you are already owned."

Not with secure boot. If the malware tries to modify the boot stack, the PC wont boot, and you can then restore the boot stack to a known state. Malware cant persist.

TheVogon

Re: Secure boot

"A recent Windows 7 update partially bricks computers that have an Asus motherboard fitted, it emerged this week."

Either it bricks them or it doesn't. Reading the article implies it does nothing of the sort. And it's not a Microsoft issue.

"Microsoft half-bricks Asus Windows 7 PCs with UEFI boot glitch "

So actually it's more like "Asus Windows 7 PCs fail to boot due to UEFI bios glitch" - but I guess that wouldn't get as many clicks?

The 'new' Microsoft? I still wouldn't touch them with a barge pole

TheVogon

Re: The lock in Question

"Hmmm... strangely plausible... worked "helpdesk" for a while?"!

No one in a frontline helpdesk role would be calling MS Pro Support - it's a feature of 3rd / 4th line engineering type role. And yes for about a year, many years ago...

TheVogon

Re: The lock in Question

"Why should license admin not be considered a support task?"

The service he was using is a consumer focused service. Enterprises usually use MAK keys and have no normal need to make such transfers. There IS a professional support option for license admin via the Microsoft Licensing Portal and associated services but again those are always fluently English speaking.

Anyway, personal license transfers are not in anyway part of Microsoft Professional Support (which is usually chargeable per incident).

TheVogon

Re: Seriously!

"First of all, a machine cannot boot off a ReFS partirion, it also doesn't work with databases"

"Users do need to be mindful that ReFS in its current iteration is not meant to be a replacement for NTFS. Instead, it is a complimentary file system, designed to handle tasks where NTFS falls short, such as file and data archival servers."

"Later versions of ReFS may very well replace NTFS as the default Windows file system, but it isn’t going to happen soon. After all, it took NTFS 8 years from its introduction until it became the default file system for consumers in Windows XP"

TheVogon

Re: Seriously!

"Databases? They go in a VM"

Not in any large environment. Or for anything that needs licensing from Oracle.You would normally have an SQL Server (and maybe Oracle) cluster that hosted multiple databases with appropriately sized hardware. There is no gain to be had from virtualising such an already shared platform.

"Get your databases on a proper DB server and thus on a proper OS!"

Yep, SQL Server is the easy choice. My condolences for those still stuck with Oracle.

Linux Mint to go DIY for multimedia

TheVogon

Re: Who cares

"Butthurt of Mint evangelists to follow in 3..2..1"

Now that's a collective noun I hadn't heard before. This sort of nerd-ville springs to mind:

https://gallery.confuzzled.org.uk/main.php?g2_itemId=57338&g2_imageViewsIndex=1