* Posts by Andre 3

37 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Oct 2009

University ordered to stop running women-only job ads

Andre 3

You worked with her too? She was an absolute nightmare, and couldn't manage a p1s5up in a brewery despite spending 90% of her time inebriated.

Cloudflare goes retro with COBOL delivery service. Older coders: Who's laughing now? Turns out we're still vital

Andre 3

Where's the RPG version?

Ideally with a DB2-compatible file system and backend.

Data surge as more Brits work from home? Not as hard on the network as their nightly Netflix binges, claims BT

Andre 3
Pint

You get what you pay for

My neighbours are all already moaning about their internet speeds on their crappy 20:1 or 40:1 contended conections. I'm glad I pay all those pennies extra for a 5:1 business-class link. My slowest has been 60mbits throughout with no latency changes.

Take Sajid Javid's comments on IR35 UK contractor rules with a bucket of salt, warns tax guru

Andre 3
Pint

Re: So how will this increase HMRC's tax take?

What exactly do you do? I would like to re-train in that please.

South Africans shivering in the dark after file-scrambling nasty hits Johannesburg power biz

Andre 3

Re: See Katrina, or Flint Michigan

On another note I know little of South African politics, but if the governors are anything like Blair/Cameronians, or Bushobamaites, they'll be falling all over themselves to line their pockets

FTFY.

Gone in 120 seconds: Arianespace aims for stars, misses, as UAE satellite launch fails

Andre 3
Mushroom

Sounds dodgy

Falcon Eye 1 was built by Airbus Defence and Space and Thales Alenia. It featured a high-resolution Imager, HiRI, imaging system with a ground resolution of 70 cm across a 20 km swath. It was built for the use of the UAE Armed Forces.

Sounds like there might be more to this than is being made public.

Guy is booted out of IT amid outsourcing, wipes databases, deletes emails... goes straight to jail for two-plus years

Andre 3

Re: Both sets of wings?

Errm that would be a Triplane...

Just the small matter of the bill for scrapping Blighty's old nuclear submarines: It's £7.5bn

Andre 3

Add them to the power grid

Surely it would be easier to haul them onto land and cable them up to the power grid - no need for any new power plants when we have prefectly good working ones laying about in the sea...

VMware bods – you back at work yet? Guess who's just poked their head into the software-defined data centre...

Andre 3

Sounds like a re-badge of Virtuozzo

Looking through, the help guide and the overall description smells like Virtuozzo Infrastructure Platform:

https://www.virtuozzo.com/products/virtuozzo-infrastructure-platform.html

Not sure when it'll be ready for release, but the site doesnt give any info on who's using it (or how to get it other than via Sales)

'Incomprehensible failure' – Canada's $1bn Phoenix payroll IT fiasco torched by auditors

Andre 3

About 90% of any government could vanish into the void without any meaningful loss of service.

Fixed that for you

OK, this time it's for real: The last available IPv4 address block has gone

Andre 3
Mushroom

Stop doing IP addresses and use DNS

IPv6 will only start taking off when people (thats *you and me*) stop working with dumb IP addresses and start using DNS correctly. The amound of times I have to shout at people who hard-code IP's into apps, files etc gives me an ulcer. THe *point* of DNS is that we dont need to remember stupidly long IP's.

And don't get me started on the abombination that is CGNAT. WTF - its a too-small plaster for a festering boil, and I hope it breaks and takes all its apps with it.

British government to ink deal for yet another immigration database

Andre 3

Applies to *any* project *ever* - rules to success.

* If the wheel exists don't build another one;

* If the wheels aren't exactly the shape or size you need, augment the wheels and contribute your augmentations back for review and inclusion in the wheel inventory.

* If the wheels don't exist, build a wheel and share the plans for the wheel.

NB. If you work at a Big5-Con, don't do this

Crowdfunding small print binned as Retro Computers Ltd loses court refund action

Andre 3

Would the same have happened to a UK based backer, funding a US based "project"? I wonder if I could force a bunch of the unicorn projects to give a refund through this judgement.

Your future data-centre: servers immersed in box full of oil, in a field

Andre 3

Asperitas

A Dutch bunch called Asperitas has been doing this for years using Supermicro servers.

BOFH: That's right. Turn it off. Turn it on

Andre 3
Boffin

Re: Reminds me of an energy management company I used to work for

<thermostats .... were put back and everyone was happy.

We never told them they weren't connected to anything...>

This happens in 90% of all commercial offices - its there to make sure the users feel in charge while ensuring the system runs itself without morons changing it every 5 minutes. Bonus points to those installes who throw in the CxO A/C remote control that beeps and the wall panel with actual working numbers!

WannaCrypt: Roots, reasons and why scramble patching won't save you now

Andre 3

Windows Embedded

Most people (even IT) don't realise that there are actually Embedded versions of Windows. Many use the same old screensavers, desktop look-and-feel and logon screens as XP, but are based on later versions of OS (with the lifecycle's of those products). Many medical imaging devices, ATM's, screens at the train station etc will be running these rather than the "full" desktop.

From https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/18581/lifecycle-faq-windows-products

How does the end of support for Windows XP impact Windows Embedded products?

Windows Embedded products have their own distinct lifecycles, based on when the product was released and made generally available. It is important for businesses to understand the support implications for these products in order to ensure that systems remain up-to-date and secure. The following Windows Embedded products are based on Windows XP:

Windows XP Professional for Embedded Systems. This product is identical to Windows XP, and Extended Support will end on April 8, 2014.

Windows XP Embedded Service Pack 3 (SP3). This is the original toolkit and componentized version of Windows XP. It was originally released in 2002, and Extended Support will end on Jan. 12, 2016.

Windows Embedded for Point of Service SP3. This product is for use in point of sale devices. It’s built from Windows XP Embedded. It was originally released in 2005, and Extended Support will end on April 12, 2016.

Windows Embedded Standard 2009. This product is an updated release of the toolkit and componentized version of Windows XP. It was originally released in 2008, and Extended Support will end on January 8, 2019.

Windows Embedded POSReady 2009. This product for point of sale devices reflects the updates available in Windows Embedded Standard 2009. It was originally released on 2009, and extended support will end on April 9, 2019.

Why does support for Windows XP Professional for Embedded Systems end with Windows XP?

Windows XP Professional for Embedded Systems is a specially licensed version of Windows XP Professional for industry devices, delivering the full features and functionality of Windows XP. Given this relationship, both operating systems followed the same release schedule and share the same timeline

Why will Windows XP Embedded be supported for two years longer than Windows XP Professional for Embedded Systems?

Windows XP Embedded is a modular form of Windows XP, with additional functionality to support the needs of industry devices. It was released separately from Windows XP and provides a separate support lifecycle to address the unique needs of industry devices. Devices running Windows XP Embedded will be supported through 2016.

Public IPv4 drought: Verizon Wireless to stop handing out static addys

Andre 3

PEBDAC

Until admins stop using IPv4 to refer to servers and get to grips with the fact we have had a system to make clever names-to-horrible-addresses, IPv6 is going nowhere. Day to day I see almost half the people I work with refusing to use DNS names and instead remembering the IP's

So you want to roll your own cloud

Andre 3

Re: Euro Versions

Trevor - I have (re-e)mailed - hopefully it doesnt get caught in the spam filters this time!

Andre 3

Euro Versions

Trevor

I assume you can see the emails on comments. I'd be keen to discuss this with you further, as I am interested in doing the same thing in Europe

Broadcom quietly dismantles its 'Vulcan' ARM server chip project

Andre 3

Re: Xeon price rise coming in 3, 2, 1, ....

So something like Amber doesnt count? http://opencores.org/project,amber

Amazon cloud sinks, smothers Web 2.0 darlings

Andre 3
FAIL

DR

Wonder if any of these so-called 'big names' have heard of DR....?

Intel supercharges storage Atoms

Andre 3
FAIL

Prices?

Just make them cheaper, then we'll all buy one. Home NAS for £300? I dont think so. £150 maybe I'll think about it.

Acer Aspire 1825PT 11.6in touchscreen notebook

Andre 3
WTF?

CD Drive

WTF is up with the Reg Hardware reviewer and banging on about "missing" CD drives? I have one in my laptop and used it last over 6 months ago. Windows 7 can be installed from USB, and almost everything else can be downloaded or sent via email. Please get the reviewers to state WHY they NEED a CD drive?!

Cisco slips out Atom-powered block and file box

Andre 3
FAIL

Netapp Storevault

Oh Netapp, can you now see why you were so dumb to kill off the Storevault? The competition would be blown away by ONTAP running on one of these little boxes, with dedupe and RAID-DP inside...

Idle gear: It's too darn hot

Andre 3
Go

VDI on ESX with HP iLO

With VMWare building DPM into its systems VDI on ESX with HP kit, DPM connected to iLO and the whole lot in a automated DRS cluster means we can have servers power up and down according to load, and rebalance the cluster as needed. Users don't see any performance slowdown thanks to PAM cards on the NetApps we use for storage and we save on power overnight and weekends as most of the hosts power down.

Gizmodophone may have forced Jobs' hand

Andre 3
Go

Cheaper version?

Has anyone thought maybe Apple will release 2 versions - one 'top-spec' model with all the whizz bang features, and one 'budget' model for those on lower budgets, say Africa/Asia/Latin America? I can see many going for the budget model if the price is right...

'Switch to Century Gothic to save the planet'

Andre 3
FAIL

Neither font nor ink the problem...

Just don't print it, then you save electric AND forests. Everyone wins.

9TB in 20 minutes? Sign me up!

Andre 3
Terminator

orders of magnitude improvement in other analytic tasks

So they can apply this to the XIV's then?

Tandberg goes atomic on NAS

Andre 3
Go

When can I have one?

And how much are they? If these can get below the £500 mark then there's a big home user market that would love dedupe for all those copies of photos and music they have around the house.

Elgato intros networked HD-capable TV tuner

Andre 3
FAIL

Price?

Why buy this when you can get the same (and possibly better) in a HDHomeRun for £120?

Dell floats new line of lighter, pared-down servers

Andre 3
Thumb Up

Home use

These would be great for those of us with servers at home - low power use and cheap enough to buy a few. I could think of a number of applications already.

Sony Ericsson preps BlackBerry-style WinMo phone

Andre 3
FAIL

Nokia...

Can anyone say "E61"?

Tesco iPhone priced, dated

Andre 3
FAIL

Competition...

..is so over-rated. These are the same prices as everyone else. Nice to see the financial clout of Tesco won over Apple.

Drobo restrings boxes to double-up product range

Andre 3
Pint

@AC: Ouch

@ AC - you forgot to link to the (much better) FreeNAS - http://www.freenas.org/

It now includes ZFS so you don't need a fancy RAID card to get the full peace of mind and storage pooling you have in the Drobo. Point and click software is also easy to get going and use.

Best of all, its free (as in beer)

3Leaf makes big SMPs out of x64 clusters

Andre 3
WTF?

Sprawl

So we're going to end up with monster servers virtualised to run single dinky VM's, and dinky servers 3Leaf'd to run single monster servers..

EH?!

3PAR developing united federation of clusters

Andre 3
Go

@Colin_L

NetApp R4 and RDP is a Raid 4 tech that sticks parity onto dedicated disks - this causes them to run very 'hot' in a busy system and can cause slowdowns. The 3Par system sounds more like a tweak of Raid 6 to work on the 3Par 'chunklet' system (check their site for the exact details or see http://bit.ly/2YzQK5 ). This means that loads are still striped across all disks in the array which boosts performance.

Source(s): 3Par user

Parallels bares all with server hypervisor

Andre 3
Alert

Management?

We manage over 2000 VM's on 500 servers across multiple DC's... vSphere has a great management tool that makes this work. What do these fools have?