* Posts by David 14

69 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Sep 2009

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User rats out IT team for playing games at work, gets them all fired

David 14

Re: You can't just fire people like that.

I live in Canada, and of can fire any staff member at any time for any (or no) reason. The only thing you are required to do by law is to pay severance pay in lieu of notice.

The exceptions for this would be union contracts and such which override the legal minimums because of contract/civil law.

I have run in to this same "you cant fire someone without a good reason" fallacy before, and those who think it REALLY believe it.

But hey... I live in Canada, your mileage may vary.

Thought your data was safe outside America after the Microsoft ruling? Think again

David 14

The multiple faces of the USA

So here is another story about the US courts extending outside of the physical and virtual borders of US control and attempting to extend their laws... while this instance is AT LEAST related to a US citizen, past ruling have not been.

Yet, just today, in Canadian media, there were discussions around a potential re-negotiation of the "North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)" between Canada, the USA, and Mexico. One of the noted objections in the current trade environment by US companies is that Canadian government entities refuse to allow data to be stored in the USA. The US note on this is that there is a foolish (my words, their meaning) fear of lack of security of the data.... yet here we are again.

Personally, as an IT professional, I discuss this with customers (public and private entities) and will likely discuss the foreign ownership of hosting companies as well... if a US-based company has Canada data centers, the current environment does NOT protect Canadian data if the US is attempting to force disclosure.

I wonder how the US government would react if Amazon were to release all US data on court request to Canadian authorities seeing as Amazon has a data center in Canada and moves data from USA and Canada regularly.

Ditch your Macs, Dell tells EMC staff

David 14

Common Sense...

Of COURSE this is the case... heck, as a prior poster put it, I am sure there is a ban on HP and Lenovo gear as well... as their should be.

I work at a large Canadian tech firm as a consultant... I would never wear a logo from my competitor to a business meeting... ESPECIALLY if my company was providing me with their own logo-wear... (for the record, I wear business attire, so it is a non issue... lol)

FBI iPhone brouhaha sparks Apple Store protest in San Francisco

David 14

Re: It will never end...

First - this phone does not (and never did) belong to the dead killer.

Second - this request is very reasonable and in line with the laws of the land in the country where Apple has CHOSEN to operate and benefit. This is the cost of that. I am all for Apple being heavily fined for refusal... or even have the assets seized by the state... Apple is successful in many ways BECAUSE of the US government creating a fertile and business friendly environment... and it is Apples responsibility to be a good "citizen" regardless of if it hurts their image or not.

David 14

Re: Hmmm, oddly reasonable

Simply put - that is not true. Based on ignorance and fear mongering, and forgetting that the US courts DO HAVE JURISDICTION simple put... Apple is a US company, the phone belongs to a US Municipality, and the crime was carried out by a US citizen in a US city, and killed 14 US citizens.

If Apple doesn't want to be under the jurisdiction of the US court system... maybe they should close up shop and move. Period.

(For the record, I am Canadian - not American)

David 14

Re: The Bureau isn't asking for a back door

J Bourne - Unfortunately, you do not seem to understand the request or the technology.

The request is for an old iPhone 5C model that does not have a hardware encryption, nor was it designed to be encrypted... rather that was added to the IOS of the iPhone by apple later. Second, the phone BELONGS to the Municipal government and was used by the dead killer..... there is no "privacy" issue here at all... none.

Lastly - what Apple has been asked is provide a custom image for this single device that will disable the self-destruct and a couple of other features.... and these features will not be able to be used on other phones... simply put. The idea of this making Apple phones less secure is absolutely false, and untrue. Apple will be in 100% control of how able this new software will be to be used on other devices.... you see, the code simply has to have a startup check of the specific hardware... they can code the UUID, the SIM card data, and/or anything else they want in their custom software to ensure it can ONLY work on this single iPhone 5C and no other phone. The reason it works is the same reason that the FBI cannot simply do this work themselves... the FBI cannot digitally sign the new code to allow it to load on the hardware. (and Apple will be able to better write and more easily the code, of course, given their access to the actual source code and experienced program architecture, developers, etc.).

The entire "it will let government spy on people" is just a straw argument used by Apple and is based on the ignorance of the public as part of a seeming PR campaign.

Also remember, that Apple operates its head office in the USA for a reason... the US government is (relatively) non-corrupt, and law enforcement operates based on the rule of law. If Apple does not want to abide by US laws, they should leave.

US DoJ files motion to compel Apple to obey FBI iPhone crack order

David 14

Re: Contempt of Court

105% of daily revenue until they comply or die. Simple. They choose to operate in the USA because it is a good place to do business... and has a justice system based on rules of law that are conducive to business. Now... live with that and live by the law. If not, start a business elsewhere and the Apple company becomes the property of the people of the USA. Heck, in some countries that happens exactly that easy simply because a government desires it... and not because the company refuses to abide by the laws of the land.

David 14

Re: This could be VERY bad for American business

Umm... except the employer WANTS the phone cracked... do they not. The only party refusing here is Apple.... so in other words, there is NO privacy issue... just a PR campaign

IBM buys fraud sniffing biz for real-time protection

David 14

Should have bought VeraFin....

Just saying.... VeraFin would have been a bargain most likely... and very well respected product in same lineage....

Dev to Mozilla: Please dump ancient Windows install processes

David 14

Re: Executables in %TEMP%

You are somewhat correct... MANY installers will fail due to this old style installer way of doing things. My own practice in endpoint security implementation is to always prevent running programs from TEMP and DOWNLOAD folders, as those are the major entry points for malware.

I have found that for Firefox, I have to download the full install package and use a tool (7-zip, for example) to extract the installation files to an alternate folder for installation. Not difficult for someone who is in or well-acquainted with IT, but for most office task workers, this is a non-starter.... but those users should never be allowed to install programs anyway if you like security... lol.

Never let an application vendor guide your security policy. Good vendors will be able to adapt to fit within it, or they should be excluded from your environment.

AMD sued: Number of Bulldozer cores in its chips is a lie, allegedly

David 14

Open the floodgates then...

Okay... I get the point of the complaint... and to be honest, it is not an issue to most Reg readers. We understand, or at least comprehend the concepts, behind processor design. We know that it is a very complex process that balances a multitude of items, and are minimized to fit ACTUAL USE to keep costs down.

The legal discussion mentioned in the article is that the "average consumer" is being duped.

Okay then, we are in a world of hurt. Most technology things presented to the consumer market are "dumbed down" quite a bit. Consumers still believe that GHz = speed = performance, which we all know is over-simplistic often wrong. One would presume that a "Core" for marketing purposes would be equal to the number of the same-named components in a processor, would you not?

For history, many have noted the old intel 286/386/486 chips and floating point processing... you do not need to go back that far. Oracle (formerly SUN) SPARC T1 chips, which were announced in 2005 had a single Floating Point Unit for every 8 processing cores. Yes, that was a decade ago, but still half the time since the intel 486 stuff being discussed. My point here... it is not uncommon in chip design to trade off more cores for less FPU.

What other things are commonplace in technology that would be suspect to the masses? How about the size of HDDs? That one has been around the block a few times... number of bytes, versus the number of GB/TB ... we all know of the 1000 vs 1024 conversion, but it is not a concept that many outside of technology are aware of. How about how mobile phones seem to not bother taking about the RAM in the phone anymore? They always report the amount of Flash Storage, and the number of "cores"... and even battery capacity.... but we all know that more RAM will make a world of difference in overall performance.

Will be interesting what happens in this case, as I do not trust courts with always understanding what they are judging... I hope this is NOT that!

Robots.txt tells hackers the places you don't want them to look

David 14

This is news.... why?

This is like saying.... "Security researcher finds that longer passwords work better than short ones".

This is not new, nor should it be surprising to anyone in the IT field with even a passing interest in security or web servers.

My $0.02

Watch: FIRE-SPITTING time-lapse images of Sol showcase NASA's sun-gazing highs

David 14
Mushroom

Just freaking awesome

These NASA guys should get an Oscar for cinematography... and editing.

I now want a new career... though a 43-year old computer scientist with a measly Bachelor's Degree and 20+ years experience in business computing... may not really be what NASA is looking for.

David.

Anti-gay Indiana starts backtracking on hated law after tech pressure

David 14

Its all about "Businesses" being "People"

Maybe my reading of the full situation is incorrect here, but is this not all related to the fact that according to relatively-new US law, Businesses are being afforded "rights" similar to people?

While I am not American, I can see how "freedom of religion" should allow an individual be able to choose who they perform services for based on those grounds... as long as they are not causing direct physical harm, this shuld not cause concern... after all the USA is based on the concept of "tolerance" and not "acceptance" of others.

When they start allowing a company or business to use this argument, I start taking notice. A business is not a person... they get very special treatment and have a completely different set of rules in which they operate.... they form the fabric of a free countries support infrastructure.

What this new law can enable is a town to "oust gays" if only the key companies choose to refuse service... maybe the power company decides they wont give electricity to LGBT people... or maybe the grocery stores will choose to not allow LGBT people to buy food... heck... they would be refusing the basics of life.

I find people who are "anti-gay" despicable... but I can tolerate them. I find intolerant businesses completely unacceptable.

BlackBerry Enterprise chief: Yes, we did leave users behind

David 14

Re: @SRS They're still in deep trouble

I think the issue here is that you are presuming the driving force behind phone choice is the CONSUMER applications... but Blackberry never really was a consumer device... it was a business device.

My experience is that it excels at this function today, as much as it has done in the past. What should be simple things to do in a business world seem exceedingly difficult for the current "mass market" consumer phones of Android-ilk and iPhone/IOS.... things like proper scheduling and calendaring with Microsoft Office... things like BlackBerry Travel that was included for "free" versus the less feature-rich WorldMate (same code base and same manufacturer, but BBTravel was simply better).

I have an Android now... a change from my old Bold 9900.... and while I like my Samsung Galaxy S5, it is still harder to type an error-free long email (after 1 year of ownership and use), and I have had to reset the Active Sync a couple of times to clear up problems... also, my data usage went through the roof even when keeping the usage type the same... the BB was designed to save resources. Heck, the less-than-24 hour charge of the phone is annoying as heck... screw features... if I have a busy day using my device in an area with mediocre cell coverage, I am lucky to make it home after work for a charge before it dies!

BB10 is not perfect... but pretending that the "Androids" and the iPhones are perfect is simply delusional.

Tesla S P85+: Smiling all the way to the next charging point

David 14

Efficiency!

Sure, you could use some sort of induction... but the efficiency of induction is always less than physical wiring... so there is little benefit, and a large cost. Plus, the installation and maintenance costs of such large induction systems would be many, many times the cost of just running a high-amperage circuit to your garage and connecting a charging cable.

David 14

Aluminum "Battery" would be great to see...

I love the "different" idea used by the concept of the Aluminum-air battery that converts the metal to an oxide, and you simply "swap" the aluminum at a "swapping station". The oxide can be converted back to aluminum in a forge.... something that would be key to making as efficient as possible to keep the energy equation good enough for use.

Ultimately, this is a large infrastructure challenge... needing swapping stations is easy, but managing the transportation of spent plates and the ability to have a decent distributed "forge" infrastructure to minimize the cost of exchange.

Aluminum is plentiful and relatively cheap... and is reused in the process. Also, the only other "fuel" used is water, which is also "re-used" in the equation.

And, as is the case today, envision it (at first) as a secondary source to standard battery tech... can make the current range challenges much easier to deal with. If 95% of your driving is in the standard battery range, then you only pay the premium costs of the Aluminum-Air on that extra 5%.

Ex-Microsoft Bug Bounty dev forced to decrypt laptop for Paris airport official

David 14

Re: If this had happened in the US or Canada, at the border

No... they would not "take a copy". My own experience in this exact situation in border control in Ottawa was that they simply do basic searches on the "unlocked" computer for images and videos and then browse through them for illegal images (child porn and the like).

It works, too.... there have been many arrests of dirtbags trafficking in child porn and other similarly repugnant garbage... many of these have been quite publicized, including a Catholic priest with child porn that happened back about 4 or 5 years ago... the searching of encrypted and other media is not new.

David 14

Foreign laws versus Customs and Border Protection

I have had an encrypted laptop searched when re-entering Canada by customs agents... except they absolutely searched the data on the machine. In answer to my courteous and respectful questions as to the purpose of the search request, I was informed that it was for illegal content such as child pornography.

I chose to allow the search and unlocked my device... I did so as it was an agent of my own Government, and I felt comfortable that the corporate data was not at risk.

I questioned my company's lawyer who basically said that I has 2 choices - allow them to search it, or they could seize the laptop and potentially (unlikely) refuse me re-entry in to Canada. When re-entering a country, you are not YET under normal laws and protection against search and seizure.

But, a regular "security" agent or law enforcement, for that matter, in Canada would not be able to seize and search a computer without cause.... and domestic travel is not, to my knowledge, cause to do so.

I will provide advice that I received: if you don't want a foreign official to be able to see it, leave it home. Period.

My $0.02

The Reg's review of 2014: Naked JLaw selfies, Uber and monkey madness

David 14

Typo... small one

"Windows 2013" is not end-of-life in 2015... rather "Windows 2003".

Small item... figured it should be mentioned... love the article!

Lenov-OUCH! 500,000 laptop cables recalled in burning mains cock-up

David 14

Seriously, though... for individuals, I would think that purchasing a new cable at a local discount shop would be less expensive than the postage to send for a replacement.... and far less disruptive.

Raspberry Pi mini-puter TOO BIG and EXPENSIVE for you? Think AGAIN

David 14

Re: No ethernet

The cost of one RPi Mod A+ ordered this morning was £22 (shipping to Canada included) from the PiHut. Pretty darned cheap in my mind for such a function little hobby computer... my fourth RaspberryPi.

Seriously, for real this time, the 12in MaxiPad is totally on the way ...

David 14

Why an iPAD?

If they are looking to make a "Professional" device then why would anyone believe this to be an iPAD architecture?

The Macbook line is used by many in the professional space for the quality, portability and support of little things like REAL business operating systems (read Windows for business... OSX for graphics/video/audio work). I would love to see an apple-quality device to compete with the Surface... consider it a Macbook Air in a tablet form.

Would definitely be appealing to a large group of users frustrated with the "almost good" solution that an iPAD brings to the professional world.

My $0.02!

Hey, non-US websites – FBI don't have to show you any stinkin' warrant

David 14

Two-faced...

Okay... so today there is a defense that if the machine is not in the USA then it is not under US laws and protection. Just a short while ago, the US decided to tell Microsoft that mail sitting on an Irish server, for an Irish citizen is really a US asset because Microsoft is a US-based company, so they had to release this man's personal email to them.

The USA is looking more and more like an evil empire every day... which is sad as I really like the place, have lots of american friends, and enjoy visiting. But the citizen need to really look at this kind of crap and get it under control.

My $0.02

HIDDEN packet sniffer spy tech in MILLIONS of iPhones, iPads – expert

David 14

For security - consider BlackBerry

That is as simple as it gets, really. I have been a longtime blackberry user who has decided to move to Android, but am doing so knowing that I am accepting much more risk in doing so. It means I will not store banking passwords, etc. on my mobile... and I will look to run anti-malware on my device.

BlackBerry may not be as app-rich of an ecosystem, but the darned things are pretty solid in terms of core function, reliability and security..... or at least, that is what the USA's NSA want's us to think... lol.

Greenpeace rejoices after getting huge renewable powerplant cancelled

David 14

case in point...

I was at living in residence at University when another guy living there decided he was going to join Greenpeace and headed down to the waterfront to protest the arrival of a US Aircraft carrier. His protest was about keep Halifax (the city we were in) a Nuclear Free Zone... the ship has a nuclear reactor and capable of (and likely carrying) nuclear-type weaponry.

On his return I asked him if he really felt that strongly about being Nuclear-Free... of course his response was that he was dedicated to it! It was only then that I informed him of his gross oversight in paying tuition to a University with not only a nuclear physics doctorate program, but a functional nuclear reactor that is used for training purposes.

Not surprisingly, his enthusiasm for following the "Cult of GP" waned pretty quickly on facing the fact that he was financially supporting a nuclear reactor operation in the city.

The point of this story is that I somehow doubt that the Greenpeace activists that were protesting here were made up of people without reliable or affordable power... but rather those people that have much more privileged positions in the world, where is is easy to look down at others for trying to climb the ladder of prosperity.

I am NOT a PC repair man. I will NOT get your iPad working

David 14

Re: That's actually quite offensive...

To be fair, the vast majority of people do not even realize that "retard" is considered insulting to people with mental retardation.... probably because the term does NOT refer to people with real mental retardation, but rather to people who choose to not use their fully functional brains out of laziness.

I avoid the term, not because I would be offending persons with mental development challenges, but because the Politically Correct police are always jumping down people's throats for reasons that are mostly benign.

There are a couple of expressions used in my "neck of the woods" when a cashier short-changes you.... well, the one that is most common is that you were "giped" (gip, rhymes with tip)... I have also heard people say "jewed". I immediately found the second very offensive because it was an obvious slight on jewish folks and their supposed frugal money-management ways. So, I used "giped".... opnly to be informed after using the term for a decade, that this was a slight on Gypsies, and I was a horrible person for doing so.... I ask, though, how could I have been insulting to a group of nomadic people for 10 yeaqrs if I didn't even realize that the term was in reference to them?

David 14

Re: Took ages to convince my parents...

Depending on the specific products installed, If you uninstall Symantec or McAfee instead of simply changing the settings to make it perform better, you are doing a dis-service. These products are great in terms of cabability, but shite in terms of "out of the box" settings.

My $0.02,

David.

David 14

Re: Apparel Solution

I like to just float the hourly rate that companies pay for my IT consulting time... between $150 and $200 per hour in the local market (what my employer charges, I wish it was what I was taking home!).... that way when "fixing my PC" question is asked, I can laugh it off saying "you can't afford me"...

In the end, I end up fixing more PCs than I care to count, and I have.t done that work professionally in over 20 years.

What data recovery software would you suggest?

David 14

Crashplan Free

Your question mentioned specific products but not your recovery goals.

I use Crashplan's free edition for my family and friends computers. We all have home fiberoptic internet without caps (50Mb/s upload connections minimum) so speed is not an issue for us.

The concept is that you back up your machine's important files to a friend or family members' machine at another location, and they do the same. If you get a large group, you can simple pitch in for a USB HDD to place at a couple of locations and all use them. The data is fully secured and encrypted, so only you can read your own data.

This deals with 2 potential situations: (1) the inevitable dead HDD, and (2) a disaster like a fire or flood destroying your machine (and backup drives in many cases!).

Has worked well for me for about a year, though I am not sure about the "free" longevity... buy there are never guarantees!

My $0.02

Oracle accused of breaking US competition law over Solaris support

David 14

Re: IBM or Redhat funding Terix to attack Oracle?

Solaris is a good OS... it was the best and others had to catch up.... the problem is that since Oracle purchased SUN, Solaris has been slipping. It is not the "Hottest" OS... not even close.

You mention the single-instance scalability of the OS.... even if I simply agree 100% with you... I have to ask, who actually scales anything to that size in the IT industry? The answer, I am afraid, is very, very, very few customers.

What I will say is that most customers want virtualization... the ability to slice and dice the machine to meet the demands of the various workloads. In that realm, Solaris is WAY, WAY behind. Containers are very old technology, that have some benefit, but many, many drawbacks... The hypervisor component of SPARC boxes, for example, using LDOMs and Solaris VM Server for SPARC is about 5 years behind in the management capabilities of IBM/PowerVM and about 10 years behind VMware.... with whom all enterprise vendors are trying to complete.

Simply put, Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center is an embarrassing product... it is buggy, inflexible, and downright incapable of providing a stable, reliable and robust virtualization management platform. It is getting better, but my own experience says that there is more work needed.

The Underlying technology for Solaris VM Server and the LDOMs is pretty good... but still not at the the level of IBM LPARs.... heck, just ask this simple question: I want to have fully isolated VMs and share threads between them... how do I do that? Oracle Answer: Containers... but the VMs will share a core OS. *FAIL*. IBM Answer: LPARs can share all CPU resources and if you need containerization, we can do WPARs.

Ultimately, while IBM kicks Oracle's butt in the "real world implementation" of Enterprise UNIX... the "Hottest OS" is Linux... Redhat Enterprise Linux to be precise. More traditional UNIX workloads are being moved to X86 running RHEL than anywhere else.

My $0.02..... from an Oracle and IBM and VMware certified consultant and contractor.

Everything you always wanted to know about VDI but were afraid to ask (no, it's not an STD)

David 14

I recommend taking a look at Citrix XenDesktop 7.5

First: yes, I work for a re-seller and implementer of Citrix... we also re-sell and implement VMware.

Second: I just finished a small project to implement a pilot implementation of XenDesktop... and the ease of implementation, and the ability to extend the capabilities were simply impressive.

The latest XenDesktop 7.5 software can be freely downloaded for a basic test of the software... following a couple of the online walkthough guides for XenDesktop 7.x will let you install, configure and deploy desktops in not much more than an hour if you have an available Windows server and one or more desktop images to point clients (physical or virtual desktops will work for this test!).

The Citrix has built in capability not dis-similar to AppSense to really provide some great mobility options, and the Citrix receiver/StoreFront web capability is simply reliable and functional.

While VMware is the "Hypervisor King".... Citrix really has a very deep heritage in remote delivery... and the latest XenDesktop product is showing it.

I was impressed by the product... and think that if you are considering VDI, it would be a dis-service to not download the software and give it a once-over as part of your VDI product consideration.

My $0.02.... and NOT a paid opinion... :)

So, just how do you say 'the mutt's nuts' in French?

David 14
WTF?

Re: Quebecois

Not just Quebecois-Canadian... but being in Newfoundland, Canada, we use the same expression.... except no so polite... "the cat's ass" is our more vulgar expression for something good.... "the cat's meow" for those wishing to be more polite.

Strangely enough, an expression here to describe a person who is a proficient tradesman in welding is that he/she "could weld the arse on a cat".... which is, I am sure, related in heritage to the previous vernacular.

MPAA spots a Google Glass guy in cinema, calls HOMELAND SECURITY

David 14

Re: Going to be a painful future

Hmm... I live in Newfoundland, Canada. Most Americans I speak to have no idea where that is... I guess their ignorance of geography means they have no right to other opinions?

David 14

But... it is the USA...

You know... the same place where property rights as so sacred that it is considered acceptable in many states to kill a person with a gun if they are sealing something from you. Only in the USA does theft of "stuff" mean so much that death is considered an appropriate punishment.

Yet for some reason, John Q. Public of the USA would be at the front of the demonstration that was fighting against cutting of a persons hand for stealing if it were to happen in a Middle Eastern country.... go figure!

Unlocking CryptoLocker: How infosec bods hunt the fiends behind it

David 14

Re: Sensible to Suggest Ways of Blocking The Spread?

Or maybe just download the free VMware Viewer application from www.vmware.com and then download one of the many pre-packaged Web Browser Linux appliance virtual machines. This makes a VM on your machine that is a rock-solid barrier between your web browser and your on-machines files. Use your regular browser for known and trusted sites, let the appliance be your way to browse the net for fun or even for "dodgy" stuff... lol.

Meet the BlackBerry wizardry that created its 'better Android than Android'

David 14

Re: "If it uses QNX rather than Linux"

"... Linux, originally conceived as a Unix-like substitute in larger machines"

Hmm, not sure what you reference as "larger machines". Larger than a cell phone, sure... but back in the 1992 timeframe, when I first started using Linux (and was forever grateful to the 1993 "slackware" release of the O/S making it as easy as downloading and writing only 55 x 1.44 MB floppy disks)... it was designed for "386" processors running in the 12 to 40MHz rating... something that is dwarfed by modern cell phones.

Linux has become a system used in larger server, for sure.... but it did not start that way!

Actifio and the curious affair of the AIX copy reduction tech

David 14

Re: AIX since 1986

I would add that AIX 5.3 is not a bad target to possibly include given the large number of enterprise customers "stuck" at that version for various reasons. But, your point is quite true and valid... the variability is much smaller than they let on.

BlackBerry hits 88MPH, goes back to the future with NEW old 9720 mobe

David 14

embedded batteries = lower refresh cycle

Lets be honest.... having a phone that cannot replace a battery is simply a way to make the electronics "wear out". Otherwise, people (like myself) who are not hard on their electronics may not need to replace their device in 2 or 3 years.

The electronic portion of a phone (smart or otherwise) will continue to function for well over a decade without issue if treated well and kept dry. The battery, on the other hand, will wear out relatively quickly. Even modern lithium cells fade with use... losing (if my memory is accurate) 20% capacity annually, on average. So after 3 years, you have significantly less functionality from the battery than before, and by then the software updates are likely chewing more and more power, making the situation even worse.

David 14

You must have never owned anything except a blackberry!

I have had a 9900 for about 2 years now, and just recently replaced the battery because of recent reduction in life. I can get 2 days out of a full charge without excessive use.... a fully day is never a problem, even with heavy use.... as long as I am not in a 3G area (luckily, there is no longer any legacy 3G towers in my area).

When travelling to other locations that are 3G, the battery life is reduced pretty noticeably.

I would suggest a fresh battery, available pretty inexpensively on ebay - just beware of cheap knockoff batteries!

Apple kept us waiting while it searched our packages every day, claim shop staff

David 14

Not a big deal - should have been able to fix out of court.

This is pretty black and white in terms of compensation, it would seem to me. The time should be compensated at the legal amounts. What may be difficult is that the amount required will differ based on State, as I believe employment standards differ between states... I know in Canada, our Provinces have different standards.

I would assume the issue was brought up to management at the store to no avail... which would have precipitated the legal action. These type of law suits are not uncommon, and are viable and valid ways to deal with multiple interpretations of law - you get a judge to... well... judge.

Hope the requirements are clarified and suitable compensation is offered as/if required,

NSA whistleblower to tech firms, Obama: 'Grow a pair!'

David 14
Megaphone

No real surprise here...

I know this is getting a lot of coverage... but for me, it was about who said it, not what has been said.

Snowden was a spook-for-hire... his job was to be the snooper and help in the snooping. The fact that we have the "name" of the snooping operation and some details on the extent are not really a big deal... as most everyone has already assumed it to be the case... haven't they?

I know, as a Canadian IT person, that the Patriot Act is one of the best known pieces of US Legislation, just behind their constitution and their Miranda-rights which are so often part of TV drama....

The Patriot Act, though, forms a regular part of my consulting with IT departments as reasons why US-based providers or even US-based consultants are issues when dealing with Canadian citizen data... if the data is in the USA, or managed by a company that is USA based, there is a (real) fear that it can and will be disclosed to the US government without notification.

I am not a fan of people breaking a trust to disclose such obvious acts, this does not seem to me to be a situation where the protection of freedom warrants the treason against one's own government.

My $0.02

Ellison aims his first Oracle 'mainframe' at Big Blue

David 14
Meh

Now... if they can make a quality firmware hypervisor and beef up Oracle VM For SPARC to be more competitive in terms of features and stability as IBM PowerVM, I would happily return to the Oracle Solaris fold.

The reality of what I deal with is that few customers need massive oracle-only environments, so virtualization is critical to provide for isolated mixed workloads, and only licensing the amount of compute power you require to do the work.

Oracle has artificially, IMHO, kept the Intel x86/x64 world at bay simply by not supporting sub-licensing in VMware hosts, so that there i really no competition for a mixed workload environment there... the software licensing costs are too darn high for all but large enterprise customers.

My $0.02

IBM skips BladeCenter chassis with Power7+ rollout

David 14
Happy

PureFlex != Flex Chassis

Okay... it was alluded to in another comment, but it should be made clear. PureFlex is not equal to the BladeCentre... though, the Flex Chassis is, arguably, so.

The Flex chassis is a 14-slot chassis, with a lot of I/O bandwidth, power and cooling, etc. It is 10U, but supports higher power and density machines, though it is not the most dense equipment IBM sells.

The Flex chassis is a component of the PureFlex, but PureFlex is actually a full integrated-package offering that includes servers, storage, network and management appliance.

Other components of PureFlex include:

Flex System Manager (FSM) - a single-bay sized appliance that provides a single pane of glass to manage the server, storage, network of the system... can support (currently) up to 8 chassis of equipment, and can also run the full Cloud Management Suite - SmartCloud - from IBM.

I/O Modules - these are the ethernet or fibre modules that would be installed in the chassis. They are designed with full redundancy and very-high thoughput. They also support east-west traffic so that inter-chassis traffic can work at backplane speed versus the network/fibre wire speed.

Chassis Managament Module (CMM) - like the older blade equipment, a management interface for a chassis-based hardware management, also can be installed in redundant pairs.

v7000 flex module - basically, a v7000 that fits in 4 node bays rather than in an external unit.

Compute nodes - xSeries or Power nodes in several versions, including single and double-wide nodes.

I have installed these already, and while there is always a few growing pains of firmware updates, etc. that are to be expected, the systems seem to be fine replacements... even if that is not what IBM had targeted them as (officially, at least) as can be seen by IBM's difficulty in getting their own support staff trained up in implementation services

IBM grafts old AIX 5.3 onto shiny new Power7+ servers

David 14

One reason for 5.3...

Oracle 9. Simply put, this version of Oracle is still out there is a big way.... and to run it on AIX and stay within Oracle's support matrix, you need version 5.3 of AIX.

I have done many projects migrating people to IBM Power systems, and those running Oracle 9 are stuck with the older OS version, and a much-reduced performance capacity due to limited SMT capabilities compared with AIX versions 6 or 7.

I must admit, it is a great carrot to encourage DB version upgrades, and that is never a bad idea to consider when you are running such old versions!

Cheers!

Oracle fudges touts Sparc SuperCluster prowess

David 14
Alert

Of course there is spare CPU cycles...

That is how Oracle rolls... make sure each CPU is highly under-utilized... because how will Larry ever be able to buy a new super-yacht if people onlu license software on the ACTUAL CPUs that are required?

When I read 20% utilized CPU, I see 80% waste and likely a machine that is imbalanced for the workloads... needing more CPUs to address internal system bandwidth issues...

The SPARC T4-4 is a competitive server... and if they took a high road and compared similar systems, they could argue the fine details to claim their's is better... but Oracle is constantly making marketing claims that prey on ignorance of the reader.

My job is to continue to call bull$h17 whenever I see it.

New guide: Bake your own Raspberry Pi Lego-crust cluster

David 14
Thumb Up

Great.. .but better ways to do the power...

I love this implementation, and the link to the UNI blog was a fantastic step-by-step on the IT install, and even some good pics to use as a Lego guide... :)

One thing I will say, is that for a group of techies, they really didn't get creative with the power supplies! That many power strips and each RPi getting it's own mains-connected adapter?

One fo the great RPi features is the simple, 5v DC power input... any old 5v will work when pinned properly to a proper USB cable... so I would believe that a single DC adapter capable of providing sufficient amperage at 5v would work fine...

The RPi, I believe, will demand up to 500mA... if that is the case, they would need to be able to provide 32A of 5v power... something that should be able to be done with at least just a few old PC power supplies, or even just 2 enterprise grade server power supplies from old servers... very little involved in splicing in the required octopus of cables needed for the multiple drops... but would be more efficient, for sure, and much less complex.

Cheers!

HP storage unit battered as buyers dodge EVA, tape

David 14
WTF?

Just what they asked for...

Okay... as a person who works for a successful HP Business Partner, this is no surprise!

They have spent the last year pushing their 3PAR arrays very hard, and for those not looking at that level of enterprise storage, they push the P4000 series.... I have been struggling with this myself as when HP themselves are talking to customers they push 3PAR as the FC option, and P4000s as the other option, but it has been iSCSI only.

This leads customers to see the obvious that EVA is out of the picture and being ignored even by the vendor, so continued investment here is not an option... so they are faced with replacing their FC SANs or moving to iSCSI... and many shops are not ready to strand an investment in FC and go full-on to iSCSI.

Being a business partner with HP is tough in the storage arena often... luckily, also selling EMC, IBM, NetApp, and others helps, when we have that option!

My $0.02

Oracle cans IBM attack ad after ticking off from watchdog

David 14
Happy

There is no comparison in overall quality, scalability and reliability.

Oracle's Exadata system is an Intel-based cluster of servers, so the database scales horizontally which will work well for some workloads... it also is exceptionally complicated to manage and tune compared to a "regular" database, and the hardware is good for one thing only... the databases.

IBM Power servers are general-purpose computing environments that can scale from 4-core machines up to 256-core machines... and the level of virtualization and the robustness of the environment is second to none!

The kicker for many companies is that they get caught up on the sticker price of the hardware, rather than the big-picture, total cost management view of things which will include software, downtime, risk, management, longevity, etc.

And, for the record, I sell and architect solutions based on Oracle, IBM, and HP hardware... but the winner in the enterprise compute environment is a clear one in my mind and experience.

Story gone

David 14
Unhappy

Crud... UK Residents only! :(

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