The Channel logo

* Posts by Craig Foster

75 posts • joined Wednesday 25th April 2007 14:31 GMT

Page:

Craig Foster

Hello, meeeeeeee!

I guess Eugene's bleating about AV on iOS got laughed into obscurity and he's looking for more angles to get another 15 minutes of fame...

Besides, if the All Blacks were any good, we'd just claim 'em for our own like we do your musicians and artists ^_^

Craig Foster
Big Brother

Patient

Substitute "wave" for "fad" and you'd be getting somewhere...

Australian businesses are flocking to co-lo and internal clouds (private clouds, whatever).

We're just not as convinced about "The Cloud" since our privacy laws don't count for squat in the US (or the US chooses to ignore them), the international transit links are congested during peak time, and many cloud providers are still completely rejigging their systems in the background (not just OS wise, but management systems).

You guys flail about a bit longer and once you know what you're doing, we'll see how it goes...

Craig Foster
Unhappy

Ohhhhh. What a let down...

As an Aussie, I though we'd hit Friday and you were referring to somebody's "map of Tasmania"

But, noooooo. :(

http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html#M

Craig Foster
Unhappy

Damn!

I was hoping for a use for my LaserDisc player :(

Craig Foster
Paris Hilton

lucadatv for duvde

When the missus wanted to double check just how much I was spending on the big telly, explaining that I wanted a high base refresh (200Hz min), more than enough brightness (has to cope with 3D glasses blocking some light), fast pixel refresh (to limit ghosting) was difficult to put in layman's terms.

I found the easiest way to explain it was "I'm getting 3D because it covers almost all the base requirements, even if we never use it for 3D"

I always thought 3D was a way to shift the high refresh panels because Joe Schmoe didn't understand the benefits and they couldn't move the stock...

Craig Foster
WTF?

Samsung S2

Why not include the camera phone the public is buying - like the Samsung S2?

The Nexus, N8, and S2 all have better lenses than the 4S.

Craig Foster
FAIL

Huh?

Most sound engineers I know put a tab of tape (usually gaffer tape) around the cord for the left earphone, less than a hand width from the earpeice.

Quick, cheap, and you know which one is which if you're sharing monitors during a gig.

Craig Foster

KDL-55NX720?

It's a beautiful screen and apart from the lack of DD/DTS on the Toslink, it's a joy to watch.

The complaints seem to stem from bad remote/menu UI, and 3D - but I still consider 3D a gimmick.

Any word on what you though about it?

Craig Foster
Devil

WD Green 2TB went from $79 AUD three weeks ago, to $139 two weeks ago, and $179 AUD 9 days ago. (It's $189 AUD at the moment...)

20% my ass!

Craig Foster
Linux

Not happening...

Michael Malone *will not* give up control of iiNet. Period.

He's released extra shares for a merger partner, with the intended side-effect of diluting Amnet's 23% shares to below 17% over time.

He's like Steve Jobs, except he's still got his humanity.

Tux, because iiNet runs mostly on linux infrastructure.

Craig Foster
Boffin

'LDAP' vuln. should not include MS or Apple sites

Apple OpenDirectory and Microsoft Active Directory use Kerberos. LDAP lookups in a Golden Triangle setup (the "Apple Way") only use LDAP authentication between the OD Server doing the authorisation and augmented records and the AD servers doing password authentication.

Any ACTC could tell you that.

LDAP *should* only concern those not using a Kerberos-based system, namely authentication against a vanilla LDAP directory.

Craig Foster

Pfff

LOIC is as deft as a sledgehammer and just as elegant.

I'm not surprised to see someone has neutered it....

Craig Foster
Flame

It's not ministerial staff..

It's Senator Conjob.

That complete tool is more than willing to make a dictatorial decision and damn the consequences. He's more than willing to be a patsy for the factions who receive and appropriate "donations". He's more than willing to silence opposition to his plans.

The right person for the job is Kate Lundy, she has no factions backing her for Cabinet selection.

While AFACT (ASTRONGLYHELDBELIEF doesn't have the same ring to it) was battling an ISP that refused to do the leg work for them, and in fact pushed the studios to follow the right procedure in asking for law enforcement help, Conroy stood on the sidelines and refused to even have an opinion.

The man's a waste of public space, and I bet AFUKT it heavily advising him at the moment...

Craig Foster
Thumb Down

Acronis Backup & Restore has "Symantec'ed" True Image

ATI and ADD were awesome, then someone decided to bring the Vista compatability and look, and now AB&R runs like pus.

Seriously, a backend code revamp was all that was needed for Vista/Win7/2008 compatibility, but no, they went all pretty graphics and forced the use of their flaky licensing server on everyone (even for a one license AB&R machine)

Definitely following in Symantec's footsteps :(

Craig Foster
Coat

Why has this gone on for so long...

something doesn't add up...

Craig Foster
FAIL

Lose-lose situation

Bryce's post - "Thankfully, I highly doubt any jury in the world would convict this guy. Every guy on the jury's going to be privately thinking that he, too, would have done the same damn thing and every woman is going to think the "victim" is nothing more than common gutter trash."

A tenner says every jury woman sees a conviction as punishment for the beating, the adultery will taint her divorce proceedings, and the prosecution (and precedent) will see this as a win against hackers.

Walker sounds like trash, but a good prosecutor is going to bring up his past and it will sway people.

Everybody could lose here...

Craig Foster
Thumb Up

Ouch!

<i>To keep things über-realistic and save some money in the process too, there's no need to buy her any friends either.</i>

Craig Foster
Thumb Up

Perspective...

I think the feature most people don't realise is that the config files are templated.

Change your internal IP? Change the setting in the web admain, and hit apply...

SME will reconfigure web, email, relay filters, *FIREWALL*, ldap, samba, etc.

If the service isn't used or is denied to external users, the application is configured to not listen *and* the firewall is automatically configured to block traffic to that service.

It's the SBS 2003 of the linux world - it's not SBS2008, but plenty of us are annoyed with the crap we've put up with to configure SBS2008 or the preview SBS2011

I'm a big fan of e-smith/SME Server but I work with a MS Gold Partner. Anybody who doesn't want to spend the cash on hardware and licenses, we recommend SME and point them to Contribs to make a donation.

Craig Foster
Grenade

10.7?

I hope so, because 10.6 hase been one massive bug after another for Macs in enterprise. 10.5 worked better. Only problem is newer Macs won't run the older software :(

Craig Foster
FAIL

Recent Toshiba lemons

I've got a bunch of clients with Toshiba Portege R700s and they they lock up every other day with fans at 100%.

The "fix" is to disable the fingerprint scanner - seriously? We're already on firmware 1.4 (started as 1.1 earlier this year) and it hasn't fixed the problem on what is an expensive not-so-heavy paperweight as far as customers are concerned...

Toshiba 25th Anniversary models = FAIL

Craig Foster

iOS 4 runs fine on 3GS

Turn off location services... background apps will keep the GPS running while they're not doing anything which kills the 3GS battery.

Luckily iOS4 gives the ability to set which apps can use location services if you do want to keep it on.

There's also a fix for the exchange sync having too long a timeout which may also keep 3G data services going longer than needed.

Craig Foster
Coat

Umm...

Are you sure you don't mean "damp squid"? :)

Craig Foster
WTF?

Symantec'ed?

Dammit!

GFI makes kludgey software. Vipre is a lean, mean, virus-beating machine....

I see this going the way of ESET's NOD32, unfortunately.

Craig Foster

Re: Free economy?

<quote>1. the resellers do not mind getting a (fat?) commission from selling Apple products</quote>

Apple hardware margins are tightly controlled and are not high at all (tier2 reseller <5%) . They rely on a couple of things:-

1. Education gets decent discounts (double figures)

2. Buyers are usually fanbois or have been persuaded by a fanboi, making the sale fairly easy

3. There's no tech support required - you just palm them off to a hardware repairer or to AppleCare (or sell them Apple Care Protection :P )

Craig Foster
WTF?

IE8 protects against email?

How will a browser protects you from replying to an email from the last relative of a rich dead nigerian?

Then again, they're trying to peddle the equivalent of month-old rancid milk.. It's newer, but it'll still have you heading for a toilet...

Craig Foster
Grenade

Devil's Advocate

It's not like you weren't putting out that information already...

My Cisco AP lists the "Rogue APs" including SSID, strength, and MAC

Craig Foster
WTF?

What the......?

Microsoft *and* Symantec are faster at picking this up than others like Sunbelt?

Jokes about Symantec picking everything up as a virus aside, this does surprise me a lot.

I'm honestly interested in which AV vendors are combating 0-day stuff like this best...

Of course having a tied-down account and Firefox with no-script helps.

Craig Foster
Coat

oblig.

But does it do Flash?

Craig Foster
Thumb Down

Seriously?

This will be the Vista ME of the mobile world.

They have taken *EVERYTHING* bad in the competitors and rolled it into one stinking floater.

There is *NOTHING* that is a sales plus in the platform description, so it's guaranteed that MS will lose what little they have of their market share.

I like the third party UI's like Sense, and MS has ignored the usability fixes others have made and screwed the platform due to what is obviously internal committee decisions.

Craig Foster

Business *NEEDS* Windows Home

Microsoft Volume Licensing and Schools Agreements are an UPGRADE. Every machine we load a VLK/MAK on requires a copy of Windows be purchased for the machine beforehand, then we can load whatever takes our fancy - including when we have a Office site VLK.

Win Home is the cheapest copy of Windows required to fulfil our contract obligations.

We're also required to purchase Win 7 home for our bootcamp Macs to be covered :S

Craig Foster

Why not go after the real scam - WhenU?

Why is no-one bitching about WhenU?

Why are these leeches on the internet society (dodgy search bar and search hijackers) going to be taken down a peg. As far a Google is concerned, there's two page views, one on the original site, and one through WhenU... Guaranteed WhenU is maknig more money out of this scenario than Google.

(If you can't guess I hate these search bar, etc, as they slow down web browsing and *may* interfere with things like webmail or Outlook's RPC over HTTP)

Craig Foster
Big Brother

Seriously, Schmidt?

Is Schmidt serious?

At least Google is *UP FRONT* about how they log everything, and the implications of doing stupid /illegal stuff while browsing - and you can see what they've got in your Google account page.

While it came across badly, the Google guy is correct. If you do something bad on the internet, there are plenty of ways you'll get logged. Tor, shell accounts, next-door's wireless, anonymous proxies are some tools in hiding that, but don't expect any browsing to be completely private.

Craig Foster

Commercial Purpses

AVG may be widely used, but it's usually against the license.

We've replaced many a customer that has AVG free on their business machines. So far, free AV in a commercial environment is limited to Comodo and MS Security Essentials.

Secondly, the only AVG customers we have, are sites that use Kaseya and their inbuilt AVG option.

Lastly MSE is small, fast, and unobtrusive. The same cannot be said for AVG past 7.5...

Craig Foster
Flame

Ahem!

You could have at least mentioned the words

*** SPOILER ALERT!! ***

For those that haven't yet seen it... (not me though)

plonkers....

Craig Foster

Acronis alternatives?

I like Acronis. Nice simple software that just works.

Does anyone know of any real competitors other than ShadowProtect?

Symantec overcomplicated LiveSate when they integrated it into BackupExec System Recovery.

I'd just like to know my options...

Craig Foster
Flame

Bollocks!

What a crock of shite!

Decent enterprise wireless kit like Cisco is normally configured as WEP with PEAP. That's encryption + user authentication.

If your "enterprise researchers" couldn't be bothered emphasizing this point, then they really are the talentless hacks they first appear to be.

The WEP (as well as certificate) encryption is there so that the machines can encrypt the user's login to the network in the background. What's more, you can set the machine's mac as part of the authentication just to make sure no home machines end up on the network either.

Bah!

Craig Foster
Unhappy

Oh noes!!!

Does this mean no more Asus Eeepc Girl!

Craig Foster

Could be used for good too!

Imagine your laptop gets stolen, and you could log in to see where your laptop is currently being used... I'd suggested this months ago to the Adeona (http://adeona.cs.washington.edu) people for the next version.

Oh well, should've patented the idea.. j/k

Craig Foster

Smart move

Distance yourself and grab the money before Facebook's worth becomes more realistic.

Craig Foster
Flame

'Bout time!

Nice to see they finally support Vista 64-bit without nagging and calls to account managers :P

Craig Foster

Bwahahahaaa!

"she herself is off on sabbatical to Madagascar and Australia - no doubt having offset the carbon from her flights."

I get quite a bit of mileage off a greenie friend who loves "the Amazing Race"... Each week I give her the approximate carbon amounts according to http://www.carboncounter.org/offset-your-emissions/personal-calculator.aspx

Yeah, my day job is a BOFH ^_^

Craig Foster
Flame

Not bloody likely!

"why use a top-of-the-line graphics chip for rendering Windows XP's UI, for instance?"

And how many of these laptops will allow Windows XP? I'm already sick of hearing "we don't support XP in this laptop, and don't expect any XP support in the future"?

I've had this response from all major vendors (except HP)

Craig Foster

What about SPF

I use SPF quite a bit, and it usually dumps the paypal and ebay scams quickly.

There's also not much overhead, other than dns (since we're doing rbl lookups anyway)

Craig Foster

@AC

It's not just a headset... the fact the thing has three or four sets of optics and must *still* line up with the actual gun barrel - meaning you spend 4 minutes aligning the scope once, regardless of which mode it's in.

Some seriously well-aligned prisms rerouting the single scope image through various sensors would make the most sense, but unless is is completely redirected (and not split) the image would be degraded fairly easily...

Craig Foster

re: Rubbish Gigabit LAN

It's a decent gigabit... the Broadcoms are also used in servers, support VLAN, QoS, and wire testing, and mine easy transfers files at 40MB/s+

Craig Foster
Heart

Corrections...

1) a DVI to HDMI cable is available

2) Seiko LCD panels have an slight blue tinge

3) It have a freaken numberpad - woot!

4) The Logitech Panel is programmable and there is an active development community.

5) Dell doesn't provide 64-bit Vista drivers, however going to the original suppliers yields working drivers. (it runs FAAST!)

6) No comment on the 230W power supply? That's the same as some of those small form factor cases.

7) I'd recommend the Targus XL notebook bag. It fit's The Beast nicely.

8) I've lost the feeling in my legs during the time it's taken to type this comment... :S

Craig Foster
Gates Horns

Not on my watch

"Aastra, D-Link and Quanta and software from Microsoft"

If you add Acer to that list, you'd have my "DO NOT BUY FROM THESE PEOPLE" list.

Seriously, we have replaced so many Quanta sites with Cisco Call Manager, and for the price concious there's nothing like the price and ease of a new UCE520.

I like TrixBox, but we've had various issues that forums and mailing lists seem to fix a month after the customer has hit their limit and we've replaced it with Cisco.

Craig Foster
Flame

Too Late

An update to .Net is too late for me...

.Net corrupted on my Vista Ultimate. Various MS blogs and articles suggested ngen updates, sfc /scannow, etc with a last resort of reinstalling.

I'm sure reinstalling will fix it, but as far as I'm concerned... it's WinXP TCP/IP stack all over again. If it munts the system that badly, a reinstall from scratch is the only real real fix since Vista installs .NET as built-in components. I've even tried installing SP1 (from TechNet)

That said, my machine now runs WinXP Pro again and I'll reconsider Vista only if I get desperate.

Craig Foster

.NET has screwed the pooch

After updating to SP1 from TechNet, other machines all went well. However *my* machine has a corrupt .NET, which semi-official blogs say require a complete reinstall since it's built in to the OS so much.

No .Net programs work, event viewer doesn't load, running sfc /scannow and ngen update doesn't do anything, system restore hasn't made a difference, and there's nothing else out there apart from a suggestion to change the path environment variable

Long live Windows XP!

Craig Foster

He said...

"I watch me sneak a litre of Dioxihydride on board"

Page:

Forums

Forgotten password

Opinion

euros_channel_money

Tim Worstall

Time to take a sniff at the coffee, perhaps
joe_tucci_emc_channel

Chris Mellor

Will they have to drag him back like last time?
chain_relationship_channel

Features

cloud_accounting
Playing the SLA long game
channel_teaser_money_top
cloud computing Fight
Applications must work for the cloud to float
Paul Cormier, Red Hat
How a Unix killer crawled from the dot-com bust