Posts by drexciya

Re: "keep track of what other people are signaling or emoting in a natural way"

I've been using both WebEx (there seem to different versions - free versus a paid version) as well as Teams (the basic version, not the educational one) for delivering training. I prefer WebEx, since it has all the functionality, and even some very basic things, like having both participants and chat open simultaneously (very important for class control), are still absent from Teams. WebEx is a bit clunky, and isn't as polished as the other offerings, but it just works and that's what counts.

And now that people have noted the resource hog behavior of Teams, I checked WebEx. And it uses a very limited amount of resources, even now the session is running for almost 5 hours.

Re: i need to get out more

At a brewpub in The Netherlands they offered growlers (based on their taps), and they were one use only, not resealable, and would last for about two weeks maximum. Only properly sealed bottles or cans can last for a long period of time. High ABV beers can, officially, last for 10+ years easily, just like the Belgian sour style (Geuze).

Re: Build it and they will come...

The VMware restriction is well-known, but it's there for a reason. Some of the newer, fancy security features, like virtual TPM, have additional requirements. You can still use version 6.5 if you have an unsupported CPU; the restriction was only enforced in 6.7 and later.

The Web Client (Flash based) has been removed in version 7, and the HTML5 interface has improved a lot in 6.7 and 7.0.

Re: As it happens I've got a Webex tomorrow morning

Totally agree with the sentiments here; it's clunky, but it just works. I've been delivering a number of classes recently with WebEx, because Wu-Ping Cough, and it just works. Yeah it isn't fancy, or hip, but it does what it's supposed to do.

Cyanide salt solution by themselves are not dangerous. They become dangerous if you make such solutions acidic. Then you generate actual cyanide gas (HCN).

Re: Who is in charge of the henhouse??

On top of that, the makers of the software involved have ties to Hillary as well. This looks like, smells like and feels like a setup. Hillary is obviously very afraid of the support for Sanders.

Some additional information points out, that there was only read access to the database and that this was fixed in about 30 minutes.

Re: Another site disagrees

Correct, and it's a testament to them that they manage to get out a comprehensive review of the papers in such a short period.

True if you have the applications that are compatible with containers. But if you run "old-school" applications or legacy software, you really want the isolation that comes with VMs. Like always, there's no solution which satisfies everyone's needs. There's a place for both containers as well as VMs.

Re: Old news.

Ha and why do they let those pick-up trucks and SUVs get by with horrible fuel efficiencies and emission stats? Because they're important for GM. This case stinks with the harsh treatment of a foreign company. Everyone has forgotten about the misdeeds of GM and they got off with a paltry fine.

Re: A few things are needed to make Office great again

I've heard from consultants that using Office 2013 uses so much more resources, that you have to reduce the number of clients on a Remote Desktop environment with as much as 25%. I'm wondering what the verdict is on the latest Office version.

Re: I am not sure of the law in various parts of the world where microsoft operate

Have you ever heard of the WinSxS directory? I reclaimed 10+GB of disk space by cleaning that one up. That took about 30 minutes after the next boot which was quite annoying. Also, your profile and Programdata seem to grow in incredible ways as well. Now of course I can do a reinstall of my OS, but I really don't want to go through all that trouble.

Re: Escalate beyond the hosts file?

This works if your PC is only running at your home network. I'm taking my work laptop to different locations (on-site training and so on) and then these measures become way more important.

Re: And the upshot is...

It depends; I've been playing around with PowerShell recently and I found it lacking from time to time. For something relatively easy; changing ownership of directories (cacls for the win), I needed a third party module to enable performing such an action. The actual setting worked, but in a real environment you're not just allowed to run unknown 3rd party code.

It's quite powerful and way better than what you could do with VBScript, but it has taken quite a lot of time. In earlier versions of Windows (before 8.1/2012R2) it was still lacking easy access to a lot of functionality. to be honest; I became a PowerShell fan, because it worked wonders in the vSphere environment (PowerCLI), from there I looked at what you could do with it in Windows itself.

Or NoScript.

The problem I have with these developments, is that less-savvy computer users cannot even browse well-known web sites without getting targeted by this type of malware. Why don't the owners of these web sites actually do something about this?

Re: 9 years ago never thought I would say this

From ESXi 5.5 u2 onwards, the "old" client (you must explicitly download the 5.5u2 client) can still manage VM settings, even for virtual hardware 9 or 10 (or in 6: version 11). The only things that don't work are the new settings from version 5.1 onwards, but these are not used often.

I totally agree. We used to offer virtual desktops (Horizon View), when delivering training on-site or on different locations, but officially, you need to pay up for each separate physical desktop that connects to a virtual desktop. Let's say you use the same desktops at three different locations, you have to pay 3 times the cost of a desktop. This is simply stupid and it totally kills any reason to offer desktops this way.

Re: It's OK

As far as I know, the problem is exponential; 2 times the weight is 4 times the wear on the road. Someone, familiar with the local politics, explained that was the reason they blocked a specific road for non-locals. Given the amount of heavy traffic, it would sustain a lot of damage, since the road wasn't made for that amount and weight of traffic.

There's also weight limitations in the Netherlands for trucks, but that has a second reason; inertia. Stopping a truck which has 70 tons of load (metric) is a big challenge and so there are limitations on that kind of thing as well.

Re: Drugs for morning sickness...

That's the first thing that come up for me as well. Interestingly, the non-teratogenic isomer of thalidomide seems to have some uses nowadays.

As to the whole Kim thing; I read something about a TV host who couldn't stomach having to "report" about those creatures anymore and walked off-stage. Now if everyone would do that, the world would become a better place.

Re: RSAT-tastic

RSAT is useful, but it introduces a nasty OS dependancy. You must use an up-to-date client OS otherwise you can't manage the latest and greatest MS OS. There was a lot of frustration coming from admins when the RSAT tools for Windows 2012 only worked on Windows 8. Now if you would have some sort of tool which can be installed on any OS to manage your environment, then it would make sense.

PowerShell is useful as well, but as in your example, it's not that friendly and you have caveats popping up left and right. I came across a problem with Windows 2012R2 core; I wanted to add a Windows feature and had to point to a full GUI image on the installation medium as a source. That was a feature.

It's the military-industrial complex

I think this just shows that it's only about filling the pockets of the military-industrial complex. There's not even a hint of trying to come up with something that just works.

On top of that, what's the actual use of an "advanced" fighter plane? As other people have noted, what you actually need in this day and age is something that is relatively cheap, sturdy and can deliver ordnance effectively. The A-10 Warthog is just such a plane, but the Top Gun loving Air Force really hates it.

Re: Revenue generator

Very true, back from the start it was all about the money. It's the combination of certification and training which can be quite profitable.

What vendors seem to forget, is that you need properly trained people to get your products to work in the marketplace to begin with. That should be the driving force and not making money, but I guess this will never come true.

The whole ITIL and PRINCE2 thing is something I've never understood to be honest. My guess is that it's really popular in large, rigid, top-heavy (as in too many managers, red tape) IT organizations. The problem with both is that they try so hard to be risk averse, that you create a very static environment, which is almost violently opposed to changes.

Re: VW Badge

No, the Beastie Boys are opposed to any sort of commercial use of their songs. That's something the offending company could/should have known from the start. Note that this type of thing is a matter of principle; lots of bands earn money by having commercials use their songs.

Now, Goldieblox took things one step further, by pre-emptively suing the original artist. With that, you've lost any semblance of sympathy in my book. The suit by the Beastie Boys points to this as being done on purpose, to generate publicity and I tend to agree. It's just showing off the company's true colors I guess.

That was already so in 5.1

There are some strong reasons to get rid of the classic client and VMware has made some functionality web client-only in version 5.1 already. The main gripe I have with the Web Client is that it uses Flash, which doesn't get much love for various reasons. Also there seems to be a lack of support in Linux for it, so the platform independence argument doesn't hold any more.

If you really hate the Web Client, you can access certain functionality using PowerCLI or another comparable tool as well.

Re: At the risk of...

Now the technology may have improved, but there's lots of OLD nuclear reactors around. The Fukushima reactors were more or less end of life (reactor design from end 60s/begin 70s), but the Japanese government allowed TEPCO to keep them running for some 10+ more years.

On top of that the efficiency of current reactor types (which mostly use enriched uranium, which can also be used for nuclear weapons) isn't particularly high. There are some better options in development, like the much quoted thorium reactor, which should receive more attention. But we still have loads of old reactors around and there's NO simple and cheap option to get rid of them.

My biggest gripe is that the management of TEPCO, as well as the Japanese government, handled this disaster in a very unconvincing way. In my opinion there were some fishy things going on, long before things went wrong and the actions performed by TEPCO have not done much to actually solve the problem.

The biggest problem for nuclear is mismanagement (read: corporate greed) and sheer stupidity from a design point of view (nuclear reactor in an inappropriate location, too many reactors at one location, inappropriate designs, no way to decommission reactors safely and cheaply).

Nuclear can be a good, or even better, alternative for wind and solar, but only if we take into account these very important characteristics.

Re: Why, not How?

Given the cost of SCVMM (it's NOT free), there's still an important alternative for smaller shops (up to 3 ESXi Servers, 6 sockets) which includes vCenter Server - Essentials (Plus). Note that you get lots of functionality (Replication, Backup, HA, vMotion) already with the Essentials Plus version. So VMware isn't necessarily much more expensive then Microsoft.

In general however, licensing is just one of the costs of running a platform. Just like a number of other people noted; management is something totally different. And there things might turn out to be radically different.

Also, migrating to a new version seems to be a real pain with Hyper-V, whereas it's relatively easy with VMware.

The point is that you do not necessarily need all those features. Furthermore, Hyper-V with SCVMM isn't exactly free either. If you go down that path, I'd say put everything on Linux (Xen or KVM).

On 3 ESXi Servers you can run enough VMs for the average small business and in this environment it's very easy to setup and everything just works. Hyper-V, in my opinion, still has some parts that need some polish, like Cluster Shared Volumes.

My impression is that there's more to it then just pricing. Up until now, MS didn't have the feature set to compete with VMware. This is the usual thing; MS overpromises and underdelivers. So, in the meantime, lots of environments have already settled on VMware. It's hard to get that installed base to move away to a new and unknown platform.

What you do see is hybrid solutions, consisting of multiple hypervisors. That's the way they will slowly gain some ground. As to the actual merits of Hyper-V. It seems to run nicely, but there's no feeling of control. If something goes wrong in VMware/Xen/KVM you can grab logfiles and check out what's happening (even "real-time" with tail). In Hyper-V you're more or less locked out of advanced configuration settings and logging. That is something I'd really miss when migrating.

Re: Conflation

There are concerns about GM crops for a reason. To stimulate the expression of the added genetic material, you use promoter genes. And the big question is what these promoter genes will do to the crop or to the person or animal (GM soybeans) eating it. So some reservation is appropriate.

It's unfortunate that an extremely evil company (Monsanto) has made it nearly impossible to get some decent research and discussion possible about what we're doing here. Also the whole agricultural-political complex in general doesn't have a good reputation for a reason.

In the case of Roundup ready crops the solution is, IMHO, not dousing your crops with a herbicide, but to use other techniques (less monoculture!) or improved crops. We see the problems pop up already in the US, where resistance to Roundup has become a serious problem.

It's a bit reminiscent of the use of anti-biotics; overusing them creates selective pressure for the bacteria, which stimulates the development of resistance. So long-term this is not the way to go.

And as to the saving millions of people part; as far as I'm concerned the bigger problem to tackle is population growth, but that's a completely different discussion.