* Posts by TheVogon

3511 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jan 2013

Ever feel like all your prayers go unheard? The Catholic Church has an app for that

TheVogon

Re: Jeremy Clovenhoof....

Presumably it just routes prayers to >DEV>NUL

So is indistiguishable from other prayer options.

Oracle boss's Brexit Britain trip shutdown due to US government shutdown

TheVogon

Almost like being held hostage then!

What comes around goes around....

$24m in fun bux stolen from crypto-mogul. Now he fires off huge fraud charge. Like, RICO, say?

TheVogon

Re: All the King's horses ...

"The miscreants called AT&T, and claimed to be Terpin with a new phone."

But a new SIM card would only be mailed to the account addres? And to collect one in a carrier shop requires photo ID.

IBM to kill off Watson... Workspace from end of February

TheVogon

Re: Sametime viable ?

"SameTime is way better than Skype For Business in a lot of ways, especially for collaborative work"

It what "lots of ways"? And how for collaborative work? I find Skype is much easier to share an application with and run a VC at the same type while messaging!

US Department of Defense to fling $1.76bn at Microsoft

TheVogon

"It's the most common OS on Azure too."

Nope, Azure is about 70% Window Server by OS instance as per Microsoft.

TheVogon

Re: That's actually quite insane

"Linux is cheap and works, Windows is less cheap"

Not unless your time has no value and you don't need commercial support. Commercial licences for say Red Hat are quite a lot more pricy than Window Server for many uses!

Microsoft sends a raft of Windows 10 patches out into the Windows Update ocean

TheVogon

Re: Jet

"Been there, done that. (The dreaded "USN Rollback" message in the event log, along with the afflicted domain controller absolutely *refusing* to authenticate anyone not logging locally.)"

That's pretty rare though - usually a corrupt disk or something extreme. So you just set a reg key, reboot, and it will update from another DC. Or demote / promote it.

Germany has a problem with the entire point of Amazon's daft Dash buttons – and bans them

TheVogon

Re: Is there a Dash button for ordering a replacement Dash button for...

You would surely have to press it hundreds if not thousands of times to kill the battery.

TheVogon

Re: er... so

"It would be interesting to set it up with visa and then complain to visa you didnt get what you expected."

You can already easily return an order to Amazon at no cost if not happy.

TheVogon

Re: Drawer full of buttons

"I think you'd have to start thinking about increasing the number of possible DHCP leases on your wifi network"

Just use IPV6.

TheVogon

You can just return the order if not happy. This a fixing a problem that doesn't exist.

Good news: Microsoft's Azure Data Box Disk is here. Bad news: UK South Storage is having a liedown

TheVogon

"Starting at 13:19 UTC on 10 Jan 2019, a subset of customers leveraging Storage in UK South may experience service availability issues. Engineers have identified that a single storage scale unit experienced availability issues for a subset of storage nodes, and are working with other teams to confirm the mitigation path for this issue. Resources with dependencies on this scale unit, may also experience downstream impact.

The next update will be provided in 60 minutes, or as events warrant. Last updated at 19:54 UTC"

Attention all British .eu owners: Buy dotcom domains and prepare to sue, says UK govt

TheVogon

I already updated my registrations to suitably rude European mainland based place names.

Senator Wyden goes ballistic after US telcos caught selling people's location data yet again

TheVogon

Maybe they could have some sort of law about data privacy to stop this sort of stuff? They could call it GDPR!

Welcome to 2019: Your Exchange server can be pwned by an email (and other bugs need fixing)

TheVogon

Just patched an Exchange DAG cluster and an Edge server - all seems good.

It's December of 2018 and, to hell with it, just patch your stuff

TheVogon

Re: It's all shits and giggles until...

"Patching for days is actually possible."

Fortunately with Windows 10, so is an in-place update from a bootable USB ISO.

Taylor's gonna spy, spy, spy, spy, spy... fans can't shake cam off, shake cam off

TheVogon

Re: "a lack of evidence that it works all that well"

"In fact, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary."

Like what? There is overwhelming evidence that for instance casinos have successfully used such systems for many years.

Boffins build blazing battery bonfire

TheVogon

Re: Interesting idea

"1/ : yes. While truth is not determined by majority vote, I find it completely absurd to believe 99.9% of climate researchers have been persuaded to join a global conspiracy promoting a fake climate change problem."

It's >97% actually: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002

TheVogon

Re: Interesting idea

"1/. Is carbon dioxide really affecting climate significantly?"

That hasnt been in any scientific doubt whatsoever for at least 2 decades now.

"2/. If it is, is the cost of reducing it greater than dealing with the cost of climate change?"

The models show it is much cheaper to do something about it than to experience it.

"3/. If it is, zero carbon nuclear power is already cheaper than windmills "

Nope - nuclear power is way more expensive than renewables.

3/(sic). Adding storage to renewable energy simply adds more cost.

That cost is offset becaise because you need less non renewable and less peak generating capacity if you can store energy.

"The answer is of course that governments - and the EU especially - are not actually interested in lowering CO2 emissions."

Well they are doing quite well at it compared to most of the rest of the planet.

"Presumably they know that CO2 does not affect the climate unduly."

I doubt that they dispute science that is not doubted by a single recognised scientific institution on the planet. You would have to be a moron on the level of Trump to think that.

"Germany STILL has more hydro and nuclear power running than the UK - in the highest CO2 emissions of any country in Europe"

Germany is on 36% renewables and about 12% nuclear (The UK figures are ~ 30% and 15%). However Germany generates about 40% of it's electricity from coal - with corresponding high CO2 emissions.

SEAL up your data just like Microsoft: Redmond open-sources 'simple' homomorphic encryption blueprints

TheVogon

"and still it takes a huge toll on the performance"

Microsoft have solved that problem too:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/24/boffins_from_microsoft_and_academia_cook_up_hardwaresecured_database/

Canuck couple returns home after night on tiles to gaggle of randomers hanging out in their flat

TheVogon

Re: It always pays to carry a Micro-Uzi in a shoulder holster

"Solution: Don't allow the bad guy to take your pointy stick."

And how do you do that when he will have the element of surprise, whilst still being able to use it yourself at short notice?! If you dont have a gun, they cant take it to shoot you with. Simples.

Domain name 'admin' role eyed up as latest victim of Whois system's GDPRmeggdon

TheVogon

Re: Primary reason

The EU haven't done anything to WhoIs directly. ICANN decided on their own to make idiots of themselves in court.

Microsoft reveals terrible trio of bugs that knocked out Azure, Office 362.5 multi-factor auth logins for 14 hours

TheVogon

Re: What's in the fine print?

"How many 9's of uptime are you promised as a paying commercial MS customer?"

In general, three 9s - for basic services and Office 365. Four 9s for certain cross availability zone clusters, etc.

"What is the recourse if they fail?"

Service credits.

Scumbag who phoned in a Call of Duty 'swatting' that ended in death pleads guilty to dozens of criminal charges

TheVogon

Re: So the police bear no responsibility ?

"Sure, so where does that put let's say Swiss police?"

Gun in Switzerland are commonly from national service so the owner is trained in use and gun safety, and those guns are generally securely stored separately from ammunition. So it's really not an issue compared to selling them at supermarkets and letting any gung-ho idiot own one...

Google: All right, screw it, from this Christmas, Chrome will block ALL adverts on dodgy sites

TheVogon

Re: Still worse than an ad blocker (by design)

"It still boggles me that so many people run without an ad blocker."

Well lots of them use Android and Google doesnt allow effective advert blockers in the Play Store. You have to go install block-this.com manually.

We love Kubernetes, but it's playing catch-up with our Service Fabric, says Microsoft Azure exec

TheVogon

"EASY. One is designed to lock you into Azure"

At least if you design for the features of Azure you can always bring it back on premises via Azure Stack. Good luck doing that with AWS or Google Cloud Slurpages.

GitHub lost a network link for 43 seconds, went TITSUP for a day

TheVogon

Re: Weird timing

"I wouldn't count Microsoft out as being able to produce a DB which is top tier in terms of it's resilience during a disaster."

What you are looking for is called SQL Server Active Availability Groups.

TheVogon

"failover works perfectly if you dont have automatic failover. Its the automatic bit that makes split brain possible."

That's what cluster witness servers are for. We have only one server in our office location and that's what it is used for. Or you can use Azure.

Microsoft teaches a 10-year-old Red Dog new tricks and the Windows 10 1809 delay hits Exchange 2019

TheVogon

Re: There's that T word again

"Exchange Server, while released, cannot actually be used yet since it requires Windows Server 2019. Which is MIA while “we work through a product quality issue” according to Microsoft. This raises an interesting philosophical question: if a software product is released, but no-one can install it, can it truly be said to be released?"

Server 2019 was released and then withdrawn. So it was released. I had already downloaded it and it's on bit torrent if you can't wait. No issues using it so far.

Sure, Europe. Here's our Android suite without Search, Chrome apps. Now pay the Google tax

TheVogon

Re: Chaos

"It is not hard, the EU has told Google that giving those apps for free is anticompetetive, so now they are asking money for them."

No, the issue was Google contractually preventing the removal of those apps or the installation of other products as a primary choice. This seems like a bit of a FU to the EU to me. And those tend to come with a very large bill attached.

TheVogon

Re: Or the fourth option...

"What would the regulators do then?"

Nothing other than get the popcorn out.

That 'Surface will die in 2019' prediction is still a goer, says soothsayer

TheVogon

Re: Really?

"Surface sales were up 16 per cent year-on-year, equating to $625m more than it sold in the prior year. El Reg estimates that Surface turned over $1bn a quarter."

So why on earth would they cancel a single device range that sells over $4 billion a year and growing?! Not happening imo.

Every CxO and senior manager wants a Surface these days. No one wants an Ipad anymore as they are largely seen as tools of those without a real job that just read emails.

Does Google make hardware just so nobody buys it?

TheVogon

Re: It's simply the Google's hate for "personal" devices.

"They got beat by Samsung as a single brand"

I think you mean beaten.

TheVogon

Re: When you have the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$

$1600?! I really can't see Slurp selling many of these at that price. You can get a decent proper computer like a Surface Pro for that sort of dosh.

GDPR stands for Google Doing Positively, Regardless. Webpage trackers down in Europe – except Big G's

TheVogon

Re: Google is headed for a Republican beatdown

I think they will find very soon that it stands for Google Does Pay Reparations. Those GDPR fines are coming...

Google Cloud boss promises 'security built into every layer of the system' at UK shindig

TheVogon

Re: Blah...

"The new location restriction policy will allow sysadmins to control who can create new resources, as well as locking down where they can be accessed from"

And how does that prevent trivial avoidance via proxies or VPNs?

High Court of England and Wales blocks iPhone Safari privacy suit against Google

TheVogon

Re: Next steps

I'm guessing that sales of popcorn have climbed in legal circles. And yachts.

On the third day of Windows Microsoft gave to me: A file-munching run of DELTREE

TheVogon

Re: Not a good look here.

"If it was just storing settings in os drive folders, no problem, even in Documents. I've got multiple apps storing log files in them, sometimes 100s of megabytes of them, thumbnails, temp files and all sorts of other non critical shit I don't need "

None of that gets put in My Documents though. It's all in various folders under AppData. Or under \ProgramData\

TheVogon

Re: Not a good look here.

""Roaming" will get copied to other machines that the user logs into when on a domain that supports roaming profiles.

"Local" and "LocalLow" aren't copied to other machines and in many cases aren't backed up either. Eg these are where Temp really lives.

Thus Roaming is user-specific settings and data, and Local is settings and data specific to a particular machine and user - eg cache.

Plus there's appdata for machine-specific but not user specific settings & data.""

No, the above are subdirectories of AppData. And are not under "My Documents".

TheVogon

Re: This is affecting the enthusiasts ...

Worked just fine for my family and I on 5 pretty varied systems so far.

The fur is not gonna fly: Uncle Sam charges seven Russians with Fancy Bear hack sprees

TheVogon

Re: Correction here

"Largely pointless, since they're never going to stand trial"

Unless they ever set foot outside of Russia of course...

Dutch cheesed off with Russians, expel four suspects over chemical weapons Wi-Fi spying

TheVogon

"I think I'd load all that kit into a car and park it somewhere in the expectation that it would be found - and I'd run a second operation a lot more carefully in another location."

But probably not staying by it until caught. And probably not leaving embarrassing details of previous such attacks on the hardware in question.

It's been like something out of a Pink Panther cartoon. Incredible ineptitude.

Google is still chasing the self-driving engineer that jumped ship to Uber

TheVogon

Re: Spazturtle

"They taste good?"

The burgers themselves taste of nothing whatsoever

Try a bite of just the burger next time you are in an MDs and.see for yourself. The flavour is all from the sauce / bun / salad / gurkins etc

AWS elbows Google Cloud aside in fight for SAP HANA customers

TheVogon

Re: But Google has a better network...

"Google offers unmatched network performance due to the fact the majority of traffic is served directly to consumer networks."

Well yes, because almost no one on business networks uses them.

Microsoft flings features at Teams to close the Slack gap

TheVogon

Re: Impressive growth?

"Any app growing that speed is incredible."

It replaces Skype for Business, so they have millions of potential users waiting for it to reach feature parity. Which it now has.

America cooks up its flavor of GDPR – and Google's over the moon

TheVogon

US companies mostly have to abide by GDPR anyway. It wouldn't be much effort to have a proper US version.

Office 2019 lumbers to the stage once more as Microsoft promises future releases

TheVogon

"Microsoft has already announced that Office 2019 will not run on Windows 7 or 8.x"

Or on Windows 10 LTSB.

HMRC contractor scores IR35 payout after yet another taxman blunder

TheVogon

Re: Next:

"more chance of the Daleks climbing stairs ........................."

See http://www.themindrobber.co.uk/new-doctor-who-dalek/dvd647-.jpg

Bug? Feature? Power users baffled as BitLocker update switch-off continues

TheVogon

Re: Not worth the font.

"Companies will decrypt bitlocker encrypted drives for $."

Not without the keys they wont. Read what it actually says

"This only applies in Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 on SafeGuard BitLocker Client 7.0 and SafeGuard BitLocker Client"

"as long as we provide the password or 48-digit recovery key."

DNS resolver 9.9.9.9 will check requests against IBM threat database

TheVogon

Re: IoT?

"Unfortunately that doesn't really solve anything. The DNS requests will still go through the ISP router and be blocked or redirect there. "

Simply not true. Using your own router after the ISP one does allow you to control DNS resolvers, and you could use DNSSEC to prevent tampering if you had any remaining concerns.