Posts by ElNumbre

Wonder..

.I wonder if this is the cause of my laptop knifing itself. Consuming most of the CPU resources with nothing running. I was going to blame McAfee, but it seems like it may be Microsoft.

Jobs for the Boys

Blimey, and I thought our government was into Cronyism.

Stock Libaries

I have reason to use Stock Libraries to get media for various projects on an occasional basis, and even those don't really help the creator of the works. The same item can often be found in multiple media libraries with seemingly different creators attributed in the information. And its quite usual to loose all that metadata at the point of purchase. I now make efforts to embed whatever necessary information is required to trace the original sale in the media as well as tracking that information 'offline' in order to track the custody of that image and that we as an organisation have made every effort to act responsibly.

Most others don't bother, but I think its very important to credit the creators of this media; I don't have the skills to make some of the great content we use. but I do benefit from their hard work.

Fleabay

The greatest thing with Fleabay is being able to pick up ex corporate stock that would have cost four or five digits five years ago for sometimes less than three digits. And a lot of stuff still has a lot of grunt for the money. Where it does fall down is the power consumption and heat output. I managed to reduce several HP G3 and G4 servers to a single AMD 6100 based VM Server saving over 500 watts for no noticeable performance loss. So you have to be careful with your purchases and compare old with new.

But good to see I'm not the only one with a bad habit for ex-corp electronics.

Blackjack

I'm going to make my own Google Reader, with Blackjack, and Hookers.

Ahh, forget the reader.

I'll say it then...

I hope they know their AaaS from their elbows.

Citrix

I wonder how the licencing works with Citrix? Do the five 'device' licences count for each server you log into, or on a farm basis. And if its the former, can you scriptamagically bin the licences off when the session ends. Because I'm not sure the other way works either, especially if you have a dynamically spawning virtual farm based on load.

MS licencing blows.

20 goto 10

To err once is human.

To err twice takes a super-mega-corp.

Brilliant Article

A really interesting look, behind the scenes of what we don't normally get to see. I knew it was a complex operation, but never realised quite how complicated.

Something popular in not taken up by refuseniks shock!

Well well, something that is quite popular with a large proportion of the population isn't something that appeals to another percentage of the popular. Whatever next, people not owning televisions or motor vehicles. They must be freaks or something...

Target Acquired?

Seems like a good way to become a target for a Low Orbit Ion Cannon attack and bring your main business to its needs.

Not that I would condone such activity. I will just avoid doing business with them.

Glitch in the Matrix

Funnily enough, this only seems to be affecting my Asian friends and colleagues, and they've all said that they've ended up hearing a quite upset lady speaking Hindi. I was blaming their iPhone 5's (because that's what they all own) but now it appears to be more indepth than that.

My thoughts on the matter?

My thoughts on the matter? Well, that would be an ecumenical matter.

1pt *

I'm desperately looking for the * for the further terms and conditions attached to this 'unlimited' allowance. Have they put it in 1pt white font somewhere?

Backend Throughput

Pay for a premium ISP and you shouldn't experience this fluctuating throughput. Not so much anyway. AAISP gives me a stable 7.5 Mb/s all day and all night because they try and keep the backhaul capacity above that which is being used.

I could switch to SkyTalknet2 et al and save 50% on my bill, but then I may end up with 50% service degradation and that's not something I prepared to put up with. Ye' pays ya money....

Trans-Warp Conduit

The Trans-warp conduits emit different signals based upon if something is passing into, or out of, the aperture.

Maybe?

Similar Sentiments

I also share the same sentiments as those above - Intel Desktop boards are brilliant and 'just work' as expected. They may not have fancy lights or unique colour schemes, but like a battleship - pretty reliable.

I have always been reassured by how many desktop boards found their way into network appliances. I guess the smaller form factors and SoCs mean the ATX market is collapsing for all but hard-core gamers, and this was never a target market for Intel. Whilst I like the ITX form factor, I've yet to find a supplier that offers four memory slots which kind of knackers it for me using it in my builds.

FAO Sales Road Warriers...

Pitch up with one of these at our offices, wanting to borrow a capable screen, bluetooth mouse/keyboard, wifi that can connect to your portal and anything else required to get your computer working will be laughed all the way to the car park.

Confused

Don't quite get why video card drivers need to have access to any networking capability what-so ever.

Home Use

Its amazing how cheap second hand, high-end computing equipment is on the fleabay, but when it makes as much noise, kicks out the same amount of heat, and costs almost as much to run as a kettle, it's difficult to get that passed by the home office for personal use.

TVHeadend

If you just want TV Streaming and Recording, I've found TVHeadend an excellent little (free) install.

It streams to XBMC and if you install the transcoding branch, you can stream to Android devices over the Internet.

Of course, you need Linux installed with a compatible TV tuner, but its not insurmountable.

And it will fetch TV listings from the Radio Times too.

I/O Concerns

I wonder what Redmond has planned for this lot. If they're looking at easier ways of getting content into the Xbox, well don't they already have that? Whilst its not great beyond MS's walled garden, it can be made to work.

If they're going after the home automation angle, then I'm sceptical about the offering.

The key information will be is it a closed system. What happens if you don't want to buy a Windows Phone? What happens if MS give up on the project after 5 years or the next best thing comes along?

What happens if your Xbox gets an RRoD?

..and so on and so forth.

I'll watch with interest, but I'm not about to get excited.

IOPS

Id of been interested to see what the IOPS performance was for each interconnect method. Could be an option for my VM environment going forward.

It'd be interesting to see how it performed against fibre channel, like wot the big boys push.

Meh.

Chinese company selling Chinese made products (all-be it American branded) to trade friend.

Since Huawei seem to have no chance working with the US, they may as well work against them and make some money out of the deal.

The Good with the Bad

At least this is positive news for Apple;

They are still seen as a positive brand for Nu Yoikers, even if they are of a criminal persuasion.

And sales will be up, because most of those devices will be replaced with Apple devices.

One question though;

Does Apple ban stolen devices from iTunes, or can they also continue to profit there too?

Futurama

In the future, I'm going to build my own satellite navigation constellation, with Blackjack, and hookers.

In fact, forget the Sat-Nav constellation.

Programming

Presumably someone enterprising could write a tool that picks out a selection of jobs and automatically submits applications to the quotiant level required by the DWP. All whilst they're looking on sites which actually hold jobs of relevance to their career?

BT need this...

Having had a play with the a 4GEE mifi, BT NEED to be in the 4G arena in the next few years.

It absolutely killed my copper ADSL2+ Annex M connection for upload speed (6.5x quicker) and download was at least twice as fast. Plus, I could take it with me.

With no prospect of FTTx in my suburban area, if one of the new licence winners can come out with a sensible cost vs data allowance tariff, then I will be more than happy to move from copper to air. If one of the providers could offer say 100GB of 4G data at about £35pm, they'd win my business in a shot.

Goog.TV

So, Google don't see any mileage in Google TV then?

Unless of course they've already black-coptered the brains from that division before throwing it into the sea.

No Home Brand

Dunno what all the bashing of Linksys above is about - they made great products for the home environment that worked well (in my experience). Since they were assimilated into the Cisco collective, their products have gone a bit downhill - overpriced without a lot of new features, but Id still rank them above Netgear, Belkin and D-Link for reliability and ease of use in the consumer space. You're a fool to use residental products in any major production environment in the Enterprise mind.

The brand that is making great headway into this space is TP-Link; I've bought a couple of their products to try and so far, they've been absolutly flawless. And Jo Public who doesn't know any better will go for price over brand and should be pleasantly surprised by how good they are.

My only other tip for consumer network gear is can you, if you need to, run OpenWRT on it without too much faffing around.

Silver Lining?

Whilst they were operating this cartel, where any of the companies suing each other for patent infringement?

7" tablets an easy upsell

I've certainly managed to "sell" two Nexus 7's to family, in that they were thinking of getting e-readers and photo frames and I've suggested they spend a little more and get something that does way more. £70-£80 upsold to £129 or even £159 is an easier proposition than £260+ which is what you'd be paying for a decent tablet 12 months ago, or a mini iDevice now.

Plus, I think with the tide turning from iOS in the phone space (have you noticed how many S3's are about?) means that Android tablet is a better proposition for those who already have an Android phone as your paid for apps will work across devices.

I'm still not sure that Kindle Fire/HD should be in the Android camp though.

Careful Now. Down with that Sort of Thing!

“The vendor has stated that models released after October 31, 2012 are not affected by this vulnerability.” Which will be welcome relief for those who acquired a printer in the last month.

Except the chances are that that device has been sat in a warehouse/shipping container/factory for a while and may still be vulnerable. I'm not sure if Samsung printers have a 'built on' date printed on them, but id be worried on any new Samsung printers for at least the next year.

Vegetarians, or Vegans?

I presume they're not taking anything living other than the plants and what the human body hosts on and within it. Unless they're taking livestock, I can only assume they're going to live as vegans.

Also, people in their mid-40's. Is that to reduce the risk of making native martians by the colonists?

Still, I like Elon "adventurous" Musk and his idea's. Better for humanity to dream than sit in our cave's wondering how to get round the problem of cold weather.