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* Posts by Matthew Malthouse

66 posts • joined Wednesday 6th June 2007 13:46 GMT

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Matthew Malthouse
Flame

High

To a "non geographic" 0845, weekday, daytime (eg to the Jobcentre job line)

BT 2.024p/min (NB first 60 mins free at weekends).

Virgin 11.24p connection charge, 10.22p/min thereafter.

I know 'cause my last housemate was unemployed. :(

Matthew Malthouse
Facepalm

Unbelievable...

Sysadmins and a *live* AppDev in the data centre?

Matthew Malthouse

Not the greatest suckage

Last year I tried getting a fibre connection from Verizon on Broadway, New York. I'm tellin' ya, those Verizon guys could even give the French lessons on how not to serve the customer! (When, that is, they aren't out on strike.)

Eventually got a microwave link from Rainbow and then a bunch of fibres from TimeWarner. But at least in a business heavy area like downtown NY there are alternatives. If you're in a local monopoly area and you friendly local monopolize is bad....

Matthew Malthouse
FAIL

This needs testing?

Why? Aren't they sure it'll work?

If the need some pointers I'll show them round this building where we managed it.

Matthew Malthouse
Facepalm

EU Shmee Moo

They'll be insisting that we put meat in sausages next.

Matthew Malthouse

Not quite

Droplets having PPC code requiring Rosetta Stone will probably be enough to stop an upgrade in our shop in its tracks.

But Adobe have known for years that this needed fixing and they didn't do it. If fingers are pointed anywhere it will be at them, not Apple.

The irony is that if we ever migrated away from Adobe software products our reason for keeping Apple hardware would disappear with them.

Matthew Malthouse
Mushroom

A review with TOC and oomph

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.ars

Granted that I only got to page 7 before nodding off.

Matthew Malthouse
Joke

You needed

this icon.

Matthew Malthouse

Does no one remember

Adobe Photoshop 3.0 on Sun Solaris? November 1994.

We tried it. Main reason for not adopting (good move in hind-sight) was that the wide Sun keyboard made so many key commands two handed that it slowed ops down.

http://www.erimez.com/misc/Photoshop_Sun_Brochure.pdf

Matthew Malthouse

Swap trick

Apple take Mac Mini "Server" and put it in a Mac Mini Desktop box.

Matthew Malthouse

Ha!

The News of the World is dead; long live the Sun on Sunday.

Seriously folks; the title may go but the people responsible stay.

Matthew Malthouse
Thumb Down

For a price

When I bought my N10 there was a version with a sim slot available.. for pennies short of £100 extra. Guess there may be such a thing in the newer models unless the customer base has finally got wise to being gouged?

Matthew Malthouse

When used well

How often does that happen?

Matthew Malthouse
Joke

You've got to be

"Mac Mini. ... aimed at the budget buyer"

<- There, right icon for that line.

Um... no one mention the bottom to top passive venting so you could stack them... or was that a myth?

Matthew Malthouse

yeah but yeah but...

"true hybrid cloud systems will enable applications to be launched first in the cloud and then migrated internally when the server refresh gives you more local processing power to work with."

Once working in the cloud that's where it will stay.

The only thing that would persuade PHBs to bring it back in would be real identifiable cost savings, something very difficult to arrange. Especially persuading the PHB with CapX to spend money so the PHB with OpX can save some.

The next server refresh will result in less not more processing power.

Matthew Malthouse
Meh

It would be nice

It would be nice to have a tidy, rational name system...

But that horse bolted before the stable was built. So, dreaming aside, my only problem with this is the price tag.

Matthew Malthouse

Re: expensive squatting

There is, as they say, one born every minute.

You might be astonished how much some people would be willing to pay to get shafted.

Matthew Malthouse
Flame

I wish I could

just say no.

But the PHBs have got the cloud bug.

When the bills come in exceeding the annual hardware budget I expect a Bean Counters vs PHBs spectacle to rival the best Godzilla movie.

Matthew Malthouse

Minor rises

are significant when your door step is 5cm above mean water level.

Matthew Malthouse

Policy and practice

Saying we have "Strictly defined policies & processes" would be true.

But for accuracy the poll needs to add "that are not evaded more often than adhered to."

Matthew Malthouse
Facepalm

We tried, honest...

Spend a load of time and effort setting up application virtualisation because while dozens or even hundreds of users might need a particular app over the course of a year only one or two needed to run it at any given time.

Then the application vendor changes the licensing terms to prohibit this.

Thank you Microsoft.

Matthew Malthouse
Unhappy

Exceptions....

"If you're in the military you don't want to break the law."

Until ordered to.

Matthew Malthouse
Pint

There's an App for that

but how do you install in on a leaf?

Matthew Malthouse
Coat

Depends...

You only get a saving on the "empty" areas if you use compression.

Matthew Malthouse
Happy

Those were the ones...

That occurred to me.

Except as "must haves". :)

Matthew Malthouse
Terminator

Where is my data?

When Aggrieved and Litigious rock up to my cloud provider's head office or data centre with a writ of seizure in their sweaty hands will the law in whatever jurisdiction it happens to be support them or me?

Or will it never be put to the test because the cloud provider caved in at the first sign of a suited shark?

Matthew Malthouse

That is...

the eighteen seventies.

Matthew Malthouse

CC as oyster

If this were to become a reality I might reserve one credit card solely for travel. Bit of a waste.

Matthew Malthouse
Unhappy

Money spinning

Been looking at a quote this morning: memory upgrade fitted by Mac shop £350, memory from Crucial and fit myself £75.

Adequate explanation of why Apple don't want our grubby little fingers getting into their shiny kit.

Matthew Malthouse
FAIL

One plan

But not one I'd like. Too many layers, too many switches. And where's the structured cabling?

El Reg, either this should be done in much more depth or not at all.

Matthew Malthouse
Unhappy

Less noise please

I've sort of got over the megapixels excitement. (And never was about video.)

What I wish for would be much less noise at higher ISO's So far while there are improvements nothing I've seen makes me want to rush out and spend lots of money of a replacement camera.

Matthew Malthouse
Coat

Surprised...

That the weight of "tubmlr dwon" tweets didn't take out that service too...

Matthew Malthouse
FAIL

Distance no object...

to failure.

90 ft across a road with 18 inch dishes still failed unpredictably. The weight of snow they collected could bend them out of alignment. After a while the £50,000 asked to put a conduit in the roadbed started looking attractive.

Matthew Malthouse
Unhappy

No domestic iSDN any more

although you can still get iSDN2e or (as we have) iSDN 30 for business from BT.

That's a shame because iSDN was supplied with new copper to the exchange and once you had that you could ditch the service, persuade some engineer to transfer your phone to the new copper and then get brilliant aSDL way past the published exchange distance limits.

Matthew Malthouse

Improved by how much

I've had a XL One Europe for some years and I'm not seeing anything here that is an incentive to "upgrade" especially at that price.

The XL has successfully navigated me to Palermo and around obscure parts of Sicily, Siena and Venice, Barcelona and various trips around France. Would this model actually do any better at its basic task?

Matthew Malthouse

Unfortunately there are

apps that only run on OS-X. Final Cut Pro being one we're stuck with and will have to find an alternative to. Other stuff is comparatively small in house development but it will be expensive in resources to re-factor for other platforms.

Matthew Malthouse
FAIL

Datacentre problem

So from January datacentre managers will either have to permit "desktops" into their racks or find an alternative platform for their applications.

For my part any new budget request for Mac hardware will be shunted to developers to write software that will work on something else.

Matthew Malthouse

think about the books

Lovely though the e-reader idea is I still want paper books on my shelves at home.

Now if Amazon were to offer a free e-book download of the text when I bought a real book then I'd get a Kindle.

Matthew Malthouse
Unhappy

safety blanket for the insecure

Advice that doesn't sit well with the company doesn't get into the plan.

Advice that does, does.

The plan goes to steering committee where people who think they understand technology try and improve it. Then finance committee which thinks its sole purpose is to knock zeros off the bottom line ("if we're not filling these racks immediately can just cable the ones we need and do the rest later?").

Once the danger of a little knowledge and the danger of no knowledge have been negotiated you end up with what you knew you were going to get before spending 000's on consultants but somehow those in control now think it's acceptable.

Consultants aren't there to give advice that will be taken seriously. They are there as a big baby-blue safety blanket for the management who don't understand what they're managing and don't trust those who do.

What a way to run a business.

Matthew Malthouse
Headmaster

refinemnets for Floyd's Law

1.) Appropriate use of capitalisation.

2.) More than one successive exclamation points.

Posted in Nokia C3
Matthew Malthouse
Stop

What's it's market?

80 squids might have been tempting but all those interweb toys yet no 3G? No sale.

Matthew Malthouse

Thinking ahead

Back in the early nineties France Telecom decided that all new phone connections would be wired with solid copper suitable for ISDN and old ones replaced - this on the back of an earlier improvement program dating from the 1981 start of Minitel. It turned out that those wires were also very good for ADSL. I a bit of serendipity.

The UK still has masses of poor exchange or street box to consumer cabling - some of it 50 year old aluminium pairs - that is the most significant limitation for ADSL.

What we should have is fibre to the box + UTP to the home (leaving scope for fibre all the way later) which should future-proof us for any reasonable speed. But of course no on wants to pay for it.

Matthew Malthouse

Obviously...

The CERN matter transmitter.

Matthew Malthouse

Or...

A Scottish motorway.

Matthew Malthouse
Unhappy

What of other landlines?

Like Virgin Media who charge 11p connection and 10p per minute to 0845 where BT's landline rate is 4p?

Matthew Malthouse
Dead Vulture

Dab on wheels... or not.

DAB's oaky...

Unless you want to go abroad - and 3K of the 4K miles I've driven in the last 8 months have been in continental Europe.

So no DAB car replacement for me.

Matthew Malthouse
Thumb Down

Brainless in every possible way

The SORN online facility isn't the only one that's functionally brainless.

You can declare as a disabled driver and get your tax disc discount.

But if you buy a vehicle from such a driver and want to change the status - ie pay them the full amount - you have to go to one of their so-called "local" offices.

Matthew Malthouse
Grenade

Apple doesn't allow interception

"Vodafone tells us it's working on an iPhone version, but Apple doesn't allow interception of outgoing calls so we can't help thinking it's going to take them a while."

But Voda owns the cells. For many large corporate accounts a pico-cell in the basement. So it might not take them as long as you think

Matthew Malthouse
Coat

Back in the day....

Does no one feel even the slightest awe at what is produced these days?

Tried a rough comparison with the first data device I ever owned, an Apple HD20SC. If you could put enough of them together (which you couldn't, but this is a game) to equal this storage you'd have to have 1,639 of them, that'd make a cube just over 2 meters on a side and if running would consume 10 KW.

Try putting that in a phone. :)

Yeah, mine's the one draped over the Zimmer frame, thanks.

Matthew Malthouse

Unanswered questions....

What colour are the seat cushions?

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