* Posts by TheVogon

3511 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jan 2013

Scrapping UK visa cap on nurses, doctors opened Britain's doors to IT workers

TheVogon

Re: our NHS will be short staffed

"Presumably there would be conversion courses to allow American doctors to learn British physiology ?"

Yep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLi55MV04a8

TheVogon

Re: Where's your sense of balance?

"And address the reasons why people don't train to do these jobs, or stay in their careers."

Paying market rates automatically fixes that. Supply rises to reach demand as pay rises until it does.

e.g. Not enough people with a certain skill? Market rates will rise. More people will then train in that skill until an equilibrium is reached.

TheVogon

Re: What's that sound ? Brexiteers expoding.

"it's also fun to remind Brexiteers that "it was never about immigration" too."

Yes it was. Everyone I know that voted for Brexit including me voted to get control of immigration including from poor countries in the EU.

TheVogon

Re: Where's your sense of balance?

It's about time this was stopped. Make them pay market rates instead of being able to import cheap third world labour to fill these roles.

Microsoft adds Windows module support to PowerShell Core while Amazon unleashes it on Lambda

TheVogon

Re: ...but can it do a decent 'tail' command?

Get-Content ./log.txt -Tail 10

gets the last 10 lines of the file

Get-Content ./log.txt -Wait -Tail 10

gets the last 10 lines of the file and waits for more

TheVogon

Re: How come they can't learn bash, perl ?

"How come they can't just learn bash, perl? "

They could but Powershell is a more powerful and advanced solution in pretty much every regard. And it's way easier to learn

Microsoft: Like the Borg, we want to absorb all the world's biz computers

TheVogon

Re: Testing

"And how exactly would the customers applications be tested to ensure that the patches work before they nuke the entire organisation ?"

Presumably the same way it is now. By deploying to test systems first.

Microsoft: You don't want to use Edge? Are you sure? Really sure?

TheVogon

Re: Dear Microsoft -- You Did It To Yourself!!!

"And yet we have IE-specific apps that won't run in Edge no matter what we do."

See the comment above. Use Enterprise Mode to automatically launch them in IE.

"After the last Win10 update came down the wire even IE would just sit there sullenly refusing to pick them up"

So they used to work but now dont. Probably related to a security lockdown, which can generally be removed with the right policy setting. Suggest pressing F12 to enter dev mode, selecting the network tab, pressing the play button to start it analysing and then typing in the URL. That should show you where it's going wrong.

TheVogon

Re: Dear Microsoft -- You Did It To Yourself!!!

"Entire organizations have web applications that only work on that perverted browser and can't use Edge."

Edge has a setting called 'Enterprise Mode" that automatically switches to IE on websites of choice so yes they can. It's one of the major reasons enterprises dont use say Chrome on Windows 10.

Microsoft tells volume customers they can stay on Windows 7... for a bit longer... for a fee

TheVogon

Re: Microsoft is giving people some extra time...

"And FreeIPA is the Linux counterpart to AD."

Except it's a bolt together of components from multiple companies, and doesn't provide basic AD functionality like Group Policy, Authorization, Conditional Access, Trusts or Federation.

TheVogon

"Moved back to windows 7 for gaming from 10. Better fps."

Only if you don't have a Direct-X 12 GPU. Plenty of benchmarks showing that Windows 10 is faster for recent games / GPUs. That's why most Steam users are on Windows 10.

Guess who's still in charge of your gas safety, Brits? Capita

TheVogon

Re: If ever there was a time...

"you've got a gas boiler for say £3,000 installed"

I paid £2000 for a 130KW boiler AND a Megaflow tank installed to heat / provide hot water for a large house so sounds like you are being ripped off!

Hometree will install a gas boiler for £10 a month.

TheVogon

Re: If ever there was a time...

"Then there's the fact that gas supplies are finite, and are increasing in cost as supplies deplete"

See https://www.flogas.co.uk/frequently-asked-questions/how-long-will-natural-gas-reserves-last

"Proven and probable reserves are sufficient for about 200 years consumption at current rates."

So not a problem unless you drive a Delorian.

TheVogon

Re: If ever there was a time...

"That's a generalization"

Hence the wording "about"

"If you don't use a lot of hot water, the cost of simply having a gas supply can outweigh the savings"

Having a gas supply costs next to nothing. 25p a day is a typical standing charge for low use, or less than £2 a week. It is unlikely that many residents would find using electricity cheaper for hot water versus a high efficiency on demand boiler.

TheVogon

Re: If ever there was a time...

"... to be grateful that I live in a flat with no gas appliances... this is it."

You are glad you use electricity for hot water?! The lifetime cost is about 3 times higher than gas.

I have an electric water heater in an outbuilding and it draws ~ 11KW to be able to run a bath or a shower at a reasonable rate.

Card-stealing code that pwned British Airways, Ticketmaster pops up on more sites via hacked JS

TheVogon

Why are they not downloading the code and running a local copy?

It seems unnecessarily risky to me to run it from a remote source that you have no control over.

Microsoft sharpens its claws to cut Outlook UI excess, snip Ribbon

TheVogon

Re: UI revamp

"I needed a Microsoft account to activate my Office 2016"

I purchased a MAK key for Office 2016 on eBay. Worked just fine. No Microsoft account required to activate. (Although some purchase formats require Microsoft account to convert a voucher to get the license key.)

(Microsoft cant stop people reselling licences under EU law.)

TheVogon

Re: UI revamp

"Outlook 2016 and later requires an Office 365 account"

Nope. Office 2016 still accepts MAK keys. No need for O365.

DraftKings rides to court, asks to unmask 10 DDoS suspects

TheVogon

Re: SHOULD they be allowed to ?

"they have IP's of those involved"

They apparently have the IPs of some systems that sent DDOS traffic. I'm not clear why they think that those would belong to whoever controlled the attack. That seems extremely unlikely.

Detroit sh*t shifter's operating costs waste away with Oracle's cloud

TheVogon

Shit happens...

I bet they would have saved more by moving to anything not made by Oracle.

No do-overs! Appeals court won’t hear $8.8bn Oracle v Google rehash

TheVogon

"Um, wouldn't being a "patent troll" imply use of patents somewhere in the case?"

And being a troll would require Oracle to be an NPE. Whereas Oracle do in fact sell Java based products.

TheVogon

Yep I guess Larry will be going yacht shopping again.

Now we can grab the popcorn waiting for the GDPR fines to roll in. On top of the existing EU ones.

Whoa, AWS, don't slip off your cloudy perch. Google and Microsoft are coming up to help

TheVogon

Re: Azure may win despite shortcomings

"This is despite the devs telling management that AWS is a far better fit from a technical point of view."

Azure is a way better technical solution and far easier to integrate and manage from an Infrastructure point of view and cloud infrastructure services are generally considered an infrastructure decision, not a development one.

TheVogon

"According to Gartner."

A large chunk of Microsoft's cloud revenue is from O365, Xbox Live, dynamics online, visual studio online, etc. Not just Azure. In Azure (PaaS and IaaS) Azure is consistently growing ~ twice as fast as AWS and significantly more Companies are planning to move to it as cloud platform of choice.

TheVogon

"That does not mirror what I see in the industry. Except their forced cloud365 offerings nobody seems to even remotely consider them as a platform to use."

Way more CTOs are planning to use Azure than any other cloud platform. And I guess you are not aware that Microsoft's cloud division overtook AWS in revenue over a year ago now? And are growing much faster.

Chap asks Facebook for data on his web activity, Facebook says no, now watchdog's on the case

TheVogon

"Windows 10 ignores host file blocking of Microsoft metric sites, which is why nobody could block Microsoft monitoring and updates."

Windows 10 has perfectly capable inbuilt firewall service that will happily block all of those.

TheVogon

"You know, that 'Microsoft Logon' that they strongarm* you into using, "

My Windows 10 seems to work just fine with a local user account and password only. Using a Microsoft ID / the Windows Store is optional.

You want how much?! Israel opts not to renew its Office 365 vows

TheVogon

Re: Hope they fail and fall flat on their arses

"I have looked at the fee for a normal user and its £7.90 ($10.20) a month. "

It's £59 a year for a normal user or £69 for a family subscription with up to 5 users.

"In 2008 I bought the Office products for £70 and its done me 10 years."

Well its about £120 to buy it outright these days. You still have that choice.

TheVogon

Re: Balls

"I think it is somewhat hypocritical to be criticising Israel while "we" are happily blowing up weddings, markets, hospitals, school busses"

Not really - those things are not in general deliberately targeted. Israel is deliberately choosing to shoot unarmed civilians including children. Over 2000 shot in the last 6 months alone. That's the difference.

TheVogon

Re: Balls

"Just last week : Palestinians ( Hamas really not Palestinians in general) fire 2 dozen rockets at Sderot, do you think that the Rockets know how to target "only" soldiers."

So you think that makes it OK for the IDF to deliberately target civilians including children?

.NET Core 2.1 – huh, yeah – what is it good for? Bing, apparently

TheVogon

"Bing – for those that rarely venture beyond the ad-festooned walls of Google or won't leave the realms of DuckDuckGo without a handy tinfoil hat"

DDG actually uses Bing as a primary data source.

Texas ISP slams music biz for trying to turn it into a 'copyright cop'

TheVogon

Re: illegal

"In America theft is merely taking some thing that does not belong to you "

So copyright infringement is not theft in America either then as you don't take / deprive anyone of anything.

As per:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

SUSE and Microsoft give enterprise Linux an Azure tune-up

TheVogon

Re: Not that I'm one to support Microsoft...

"after all its not like its been available for decades or anything like that."

Directly to Azure though it's a more recent option.

TheVogon

Re: "this tuned kernel [..] will see network throughput jump by up to 25 per cent"

"Yeah, as long as the connection isn't down. Right, Gatwick ?"

As per any cloud service. For Azure you can get diverse private connectivity to Express Route from among others Megaport and Equinix.

Facebook flat-out 'lies' about how many people can see its ads – lawsuit

TheVogon

Re: And, of course....

"Until you start hitting ad walls you can't see to pass..."

Just turn on your ad blocker's blocker blocker! Or right click and select block element.

Another German state plans switch back from Linux to Windows

TheVogon

Re: Condeco

"So you're telling me the big companies need special software to book meeting rooms?"

Yep.

"They dont have some sort of electronic calendar?"

Sure - they all use Outlook, but they need a system that also allows for updating the display panel outside each meeting room and allows confirmation and amending bookings from there. Also they commonly need to allow for certain meeting rooms to have booking approvers. They need to allow for catering to be ordered, and a cost code supplied. They need something that can request guest names and notify reception. etc. etc. Condeco does all of that and lots more.

TheVogon

Re: Mainstream cloud and systems seen as suspect in the German public sector

"Windows 10 or Office 2016 might take weeks of negotiation to get approval. Linux is seem as the clean, cloud free and free to use solution."

The primary reason they ditched Linux in Munich was that the users hated it.

TheVogon

Re: Surprise may be coming

"the cloudy o365 if far inferior to vanilla desktop versions for 90+% of the average workday."

It's almost the exact same software. Just licenced per user instead of per device.

Amazon, ditch us? But they can't do without us – Oracle

TheVogon

Re: Of course they're still spending...

"We don’t believe that Amazon Web Services has any database technology that comes close to the capabilities of the Oracle database"

Capabilities to extract money from prisoners presumably

2TB or not 2TB: Microsoft fiddles with OneDrive as competition offers twice the storage

TheVogon

Re: scanning directly into OneDrive via the device’s camera

Why is that any worse than one drive just uploading your photos?

Microsoft celebrates a bumper financial year ... by making stuff pricier

TheVogon

Re: "It's a trap" - Admiral Ackbar was/is right!

"Lock in is about making it difficult to move because of ... the cost"

And subscription makes it cheaper to migrate as you don't have to write off an investment in licenses. So as I said, that specific aspect is the opposite of a lock in.

TheVogon

Re: "It's a trap" - Admiral Ackbar was/is right!

"Micro-shaft's strategy seems all about "the trap" and/or "the lock-in". It's followed up by subscription pricing, where you must pay annually for 'whatever' rather than one-time only."

But subscription pricing is the opposite of lock in. You can scale it up and down on demand and if you don't need it anymore you can stop paying with no loss of upfront investment.

Some of you really don't want Windows 10's April 2018 update on your rigs

TheVogon

Re: From experience...

"16% have their heels firmly planted"

Only because the damn thing wont install or they are out of diskspace, etc.

This is the contract you've been looking for: Pentagon releases JEDI bids

TheVogon

Re: Security?

"might be tempted to clone a HDD"

Which presumably would be encrypted.

I predict a riot: Amazon UK chief foresees 'civil unrest' for no-deal Brexit

TheVogon

Re: Vogon

"such as the NHS promise"

There was no promise. All was stated was that we send 350 million a week to the EU (which is true) and the question was asked why not spend it on the NHS instead?

That there would be many other costs to be met on leaving the EU is not in question and I think the vast majority of voters would have realised that.

TheVogon

Re: I'm surprised it hasn't already happened.

"The Poll Tax was abolished, because of those 'yobs'."

No it was mostly abolished because the difficulty of getting people to pay it. The proles simply avoided registering.

TheVogon

Re: I was pro-remain, but this really is "Project Fear" at work.

"Then why the F*&K do they keep voting torys into power"

Because the alternative is far worse!

Windows 10 Insiders see double as new builds hit the deck – with promises to end Update Rage

TheVogon

"And they do lose an hour out of their morning or afternoon when Windows 10 decides to update, often unexpectedly."

They do get the option to refuse the install repeatedly until a time of their choosing. Or if they don't it's because that is corporate policy.

HPE supercomputer is still crunching numbers in space after 340 days

TheVogon

Re: "SSDs fail at an alarming rate in space"

Several hundred Samsung 840 Pros deployed here in desktops. Zero failures over several years.

Oracle Database 18: Now in downloadable Linux flavour

TheVogon

Re: Long live Windows production servers

"What is really choice about Windows production servers is requiring an antivirus program that somehow gets its its new definitions stuffed up and voila you have a hung 2gig Symantec process you can't kill because it has its hooks deep into the OS"

That's not a problem with Windows that a problem with your AV vendor / your testing and rollout process.

For reference installing say an Oracle RAC server cluster to a running state on Windows Server is an order of magnitude faster and simpler than on Linux.