I appear to be under the impression that quoting 'DevOps' or 'Agile' is simply a way for many people and organisations to produce shit and without having to apologise for it.
I assume that done properly these process can work?
Posts by 0laf
1980 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Nov 2009
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Fancy yourself as a bit of a Ramblin' Man or Woman? Maybe brush up on your cartography
Lenovo unfolds time frame for bendy ThinkPad: Pricey Windows PC out in summer '20
Thursday 17th October 2019 14:56 GMT
A foldable desktop all-in-one makes more sense to me. Make the thing a tri fold with a stand and add a folding full sized keyboard. Ok it needs a desk to work on but it could be any table and it'd be far more useful for actual work than a pishy little screen half taken up with a virtual keyboard.
Three UK goes TITSUP*: Down and out for 10 hours and counting
Well, well, well. Fancy that. UK.gov shelves planned pr0n block
Wednesday 16th October 2019 14:42 GMT
Re: Thank goodness this was announced
Oh cum on! You know the government will have spunked at least few million quid on consultants and consultations with their rich friends. A golden shower of cash for them to gobble while the rest of us remain in bondage with our delicate encryption to be vigorously violated by government probes and insertions.
Devs getting stuck into Windows 10X on Surface Neo will have to tussle with UWP
Thursday 3rd October 2019 12:05 GMT 
I feel dirty but with the little keyboard on I quite like that. But I wouldn't care about the rest of the screen
TBH a bit like a mini version of the Asus Zen Duo. I nearly bough one of them but then found I could get a workstation with a proper keyboard for hundreds less. The engineer in me went for functional over shiny.
Cassini may be dead – but its data shows basic building blocks of life spewing from Enceladus
If your org hasn't had a security incident in the last year: Good for you, you're in the minority
Tuesday 1st October 2019 14:54 GMT 
"Details of exactly what constituted a "breach" were not made available by Carbon Black". Then their publication is really pretty meaningless. I don't doubt that 84% (probably low) have had a breach of some sort but the majority will have a fairly negligable impact.
In terms of data you can have breaches and/ or incidents which many / or may not be the same as a security incident.
It's really lies, damned lies and statstics
An unbearable itch to migrate your OS to the cloud? You might have a case of Windows VD
'Six' in the city: Kiwi sportswear shop telly beamed X-rated flicks for hours over weekend
Hold up, ace. Before you strap into Firefox's latest Test Pilot, ask yourself...
Friday 13th September 2019 09:08 GMT 
I think the question is really "Are you safer with this than without it?".
But even more specifically "Are you sometimes safer to use this?"
It might be that in some circumstances "new coffee shop with unknown wifi" you will be much safer with this even if Cloudflare is mining you for 24hr.
But then you'd be safer overall if you didn't use unknown wifi and wait till you get home to do anything that involves shopping or banking.
From pen-test to penitentiary: Infosec duo cuffed after physically breaking into courthouse during IT security assessment
Friday 13th September 2019 08:21 GMT
Re: Naivety...
What was the scope of the testing? If the company didn't make it clear that the testing could include measures up to and including physically breaking and entering premises then they could be in trouble.
Unfortunately I'm guessing that the customer here has probably given a vague scope of works, "we need a security test", and the supplier hasn't made it clear within the contract documents what that will entail. Howeve I'd have hoped that this would soon become a case between customer and supplier and the employees will be taken out of the firing line.
Infosec prophet Bruce Schneier (peace be upon him) is only as famous as half of Salt-N-Pepa
Oops: Rockets lighting their tails is a good thing – but not three-plus hours before lift-off
In Hemel Hempstead, cycling is as bad as taking a leak in the middle of the street
Friday 6th September 2019 08:40 GMT 
Sounds like the problem isn't cyclists or cycling but people.
A large proportion of people are twats.
Some ride bike, some drive cars. But fundamentally they are twats and would irritate and annoy the rest of us no matter what they do.
(To cite an example from today, we've received a complaint from a parent for not feeding her child whilst the school was on fire. Oddly the HT took the position that getting wee Johnny out of the burning school overruled his need to get sausage and mash)
Look, we know it feels like everything's going off the rails right now, but think positive: The proton has a new radius
Friday 6th September 2019 08:34 GMT 
I opened that story and saw words on a page. Individual words made perfect sense to me but as a whole this article served to inform me that there are some things in the universe I will never understand in the slightest. I am now comfortable with this.
Boffins please continue.
If any of this quantum doofery will affect the price or taste of my ale please let me know.
OK, let's try that again: Vulture rakes a talon on Samsung's fresh attempt at the Galaxy Fold 5G
Friday 6th September 2019 08:24 GMT
Re: Why?
It's at the top of the hype curve right now. In 2-4 generations we'll see something affordable and useful. But not right now. I'm happy to see something different and dare I say innovative.
I can see more use for the folding screens on netbooks than on phones. Say a 6" square device with a 3 fold screen to give ~18" wide screen with a similar fold out keyboard. It wouldn't fit in your pocket but it would take up less space in a backpack.
MAMR Mia! Western Digital's 18TB and 20TB microwave-energy hard drives out soon
Thursday 5th September 2019 08:10 GMT
Re: Feeling Old...
I'm clearly a young wippersnapper since my first PC (in 96) came with a 20Gb drive.
Cooincidentally I got a new laptop yesterday with 16Gb of RAM, for pretty much the same price as that 1996 PC which had 16Mb of RAM. But it came with Theme Hospital therefore was better (bloatyhead FTW).
Tesla Autopilot crash driver may have been eating a bagel at the time, was lucky not to get schmeared on road
Wednesday 4th September 2019 08:31 GMT
Re: What a complete plonker!
Beat me to it. He basically states "I was not in control of the vehicle and I was not engaged in the process of driving therefore did not see the object I crashed into".
Your vehicle, you are in control, your fault.
As I keep saying, I'm not interested in 'autopilot' until it is legally responsible for driving the car.
Devon knows how they make it so steamy: Phantom squatter of Torquay curls one out on bloke's motor
Divert the power to the shields. 'I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain!'
Monday 2nd September 2019 08:26 GMT
Re: Another Place, Another Time
I am aware of one Local Government that in the spirit of greenwash filled it's emergency generator tanks with biodiesel.
A considerable time later (months, possibly years later) a failover test was scheduled. This went 'orribly wrong. The biodiesel had 'gone-off' and turned to jelly in the tanks.
The whole lot had to be chucked and the generators repaired. I assume they were filled with non-green derv with some sort of preservative but then again maybe not.
No it's not Russell Brand's new cult, it's Microsoft's Office crew rolling out their Save Experience
Friday 30th August 2019 14:04 GMT 
fugging MS
Get used to Onedrive saving coz that's where MS want all your stuff and increasing they do everything they can to encourage, confuse or force you to use fucking cloud storage.
I don't even hate Onedrive it has it uses. I just hate the way MS is driving everything towards their flawed strategy which isn't often how I want to work.
Behind time and way over budget, but the James Webb Space Telescope has finally been put together
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moves to shut Parliament
Yes, TfL asked people to write down their Oyster passwords – but don't worry, they didn't inhale
Pokemon Go becomes Pokemon No as games biz Niantic agrees to curb trespassing addicts
Monday 26th August 2019 08:59 GMT
Yep, people are idiots. We had a few 'players' climb into a recyling centre and were wandering around blindly following their phones while a large amount of heavy plant was driving around.
We emailed Nintendo and the site was excluded from their game.
I reckon we should have left it, Darwin effect etc. Or put a really important (rare?, precious? I dunno how it works I don't pay) pokestop 10m of the edge of a partiuclarly high and steep cliff. Just put a skip at the bottom to catch the spash.
Sueball claims Tesla solar panels are so effective, they started fires at Walmart stores
Thursday 22nd August 2019 12:53 GMT
Re: $deities have a sense of humor
They worked for a year then the inverter packed in about a month out of warranty. But the manufacturer and fitter had all gone out of business anyway. He tried to sell the panels as a 'income revenue" when I bought the house but at £30 a month on a good month I didn't care. Offered to let him remove them if he still wanted them, they added nothing to the house to me. If they were cheaper to remove than to fix I'd consider it.
Thursday 22nd August 2019 09:34 GMT
Re: $deities have a sense of humor
Not just that. The previous owner of my house put on 6 solar panels at a cost of about £8000. They generate about £20 a month on average thoughout the year (£35 on a good summer day, about £0 in January). So they'd have taken him about 33yr to pay for themselves assuming he was on 0% finance (which he wasn't, also he was 72 so he'd have had to live to 105).
Also the inverter is now broken after 5yr. Cost to replace £500 - 1000. So on top of the £8000 plus interest you have say £500 to find every 5yr (probably).
Realistically they'd never have lasted long enough to turn a profit.
I'm not planning on fixing them. They basically act to shield my slates form bad weather and nothing more now.
Here's a top tip: Don't trust the new person – block web domains less than a month old. They are bound to be dodgy
Brit-built trundlebot eyeing up a July 2020 launch as cams fitted to ExoMars mission rover
Buying a Chromebook? Don't forget to check that best-before date
Thursday 22nd August 2019 08:57 GMT
Re: Consumer Rights?
I dunno.
That 6.5 years only applies at the point of a new OS release. So if you buy a Chromebook a few years into that release you might only get 4.5yr from it. Possibly less, I'm not a big 'Droid user so I'm not sure how regular the relevant releases are.
But if you bought a more expensive Chromebook (£500+) I think it would be reasonable to epxect more than 4.5yr of use from it especially if the hardware appears to be fine.
It may continue to function but if you have warnings on screen to say that your device is no longer safe then it is arguable that it is no longer usable for many normal functions i.e. online shopping or banking.
Also if it was bought for business (like the one I work for) all of our equipment must be in support. So we would have to dump all chromebooks at expiry. I know these trading laws don't apply to businesses but this clearly needs to be a consideration especially for education establishments which often buy chromebooks by the thousand.
Don't panic! Don't panic! UK IT job ads plummet as Brexit uncertainty grabs UK tech sector by the short and curlies
Wednesday 21st August 2019 11:25 GMT
Re: Sure there'll be some bumps in the road. . .
But that's ok because of all of Bojo's new wizzy fibre broadbad links to every house everywhere we'll never need to leave the house to get to our assigned jobs. If you never step outside you won't need to see the militaristic state of emergency that will be introduced to Airstrip one.
Eggagerated for effect. I doubt any of our politicians care capable of running a functioning dictatorship. We'd need to outsource it.
Microsoft's Cortana booted off yet another service while Google and AWS get a bit catty over licensing shakeup
Let's see what the sweet, kind, new Microsoft that everyone loves is up to. Ah yes, forcing more Office home users into annual subscriptions
Wednesday 14th August 2019 09:48 GMT
Re: I've been recommending it to people for years
Yeah, I was using Libra Office but needed more storage. I already had used up the 15Gb that I'd wangeled through my WinPho and other strange upgrades they gave randomly over a couple of years.
The Office tax seemed reasonable for the storage space.
I could throttle you right about now: US Navy to ditch touchscreens after kit blamed for collision
Crunch time: It's all fun and video games until you're being pressured into working for free
Monday 12th August 2019 14:32 GMT
There are many professional industries like this. Friend of mine is a partner in an accounts firm he reckons his job is actually killing him with stress and that the younger employees are actually getting it even worse then he ever did. The structure of the company mean that effectively those at the top suck the blood of those below them to get their 'due' despite never having had it much easier themselves. The excessive hours and pressure are very similar to the story above for the games industry.
This is apparently the same in the legal services. Young employess are just meat to the machine. If you survive you might get to be in the position to exploit the new blood below.
However my mate has said that is is gettign to the point now wheree the wheels are starting to fall off. The new blood is looking at the culture in these sorts of firms and turning away and it's getting increasingly harder to recruit. Which mean those at the top turn the screw even harder on these they have already. He think many will leave but they've locked to the firm by becoming partners. When he's decribed it to me it sounded very much like a pyramid or Ponzi scheme.
I'm sure the games industry being new and desirable has a few years to go before the shines comes off like accountants but it'll happen.
Saying that my 9yr old want to be a 'games designer' when he grows us [sigh].
One person's harmless japery can be another's night of LaserJet Lego
Monday 12th August 2019 14:20 GMT
Re: I know the series well...
Me too. I wonder what killed them off. I can only guess that HP refused to make carts for them or stopped supporting the software. Not much else would stop them running.
We had a bunch of Kyocera printers form the same era that survived terrible abuse in car dealers workshops.
Ransomware attackers have gone from 'spray and pray' to 'slayin' prey'
1Gbps, 4K streaming, buffering a thing of the past – but do Brits really even want full fibre?
Thursday 8th August 2019 08:25 GMT 
I don't pay for 4k netflix so what would I bother about having enough bandwidth for it? Prime has 4k stuff inclusive but I really can't tell much difference between it and and HD. Possibly compression means the quality is about the same but HD is good enough so I really don't care.
I have access to 70Mb broadband but I only pay for 34MB becasue it'ds fast enough and half the cost. TBH when I was on a 17Mb contract I rarely had issue with it.I understand that some people have a need for 500Mb/1Gb broadband but most don't.
I use powerline networking in the house right now and that shares 100Mb across multiple devices. What's the point in having a broadband speed higher than one I can deliver across my home network when I have no issues? This will maybe change in my new house since I've flooding it with ethternet and putting in a Gigabit switch, but probably not.
Reminder: When a tech giant says it listens to your audio recordings to improve its AI, it means humans are listening. Right, Skype? Cortana?
Off somewhere nice on holibobs? Not if you're flying British Airways: IT 'systems issue' smacks UK airports once again
Wednesday 7th August 2019 10:43 GMT
Re: How are your BC Plans then?
See above. From my humble experience BA have no contingencies for any issues; small or large.
And no staff training to deal smoothly with minor issues to prevent them becoming major issues.
I guess their business plan is to monopolise some route so you have no alternative to fly with them.
Wednesday 7th August 2019 09:48 GMT
BA
It's maybe just my bad luck but BA are the worst airline I've ever used and I've had to use them numerous times.
Last time was on a return leg from Rome just a few weeks ago. It was late, cabin was deeply dirty (just just a few bits of rubbish from the outbound flight) and there was hardly any food on board (ran out of M&S sandwiches by row 5).
Compared to the EasyJet we flew out on. The Easyjet was cleaner, had more legroom and the food was far better quality for the same price.
I get that they are based in the UK and the planes will be cleaned overnight and restocked in the UK. But it was as if BA was unaware that their planes would fly back from where ever they flew to. That seems to be my predominant experience of BA, everything is a surprise. When a plane had a fault it was as if no plane had ever had a fault before they had no idea what to do or how to tell passengers. When the passengers complained it was like they'd never had a complaint before. It's not comforting to see an airline rep wander about shouting "I don't know what to do".
I guess their staff are just thrown in with no training. I just avoid BA now if possible, they're shit.
Side-splitting bulging batts, borked Wi-Fi... So, how's that Surface slab working out for you?
Wednesday 7th August 2019 08:09 GMT
Re: They suffer from keyboard problems too
We have a lot of Surface 4s in the office. Generally they are popular and so far have been reliable. We're also buying the Surface Go now.
Personally I wouldn't touch a device that costs more than £500 and has a glued in battery but that's my own money.
Jeff Bezos feels a tap on the shoulder. Ahem, Mr Amazon, care to explain how Capital One's AWS S3 buckets got hacked?
Tuesday 6th August 2019 08:14 GMT
Re: Please re-read the article, between three lines
The senator may be clueless but unless he's been working on cloud technologies in the last few days following a significant amount of training and previous IT work experience then tbh he's going to struggle to get his head round cloud full stop.
Cloud security is feckin hard. The shared responsibility model seems to work very well for the big vendors, "yeah we're really really secure, unless we're not; then it's your fault".
I know of more than a few significant hacks that have happened because of a single mistake in a single checkbox buried in the depth of a cloud admin console. This stuff might just be too complex and too motile to keep on top of.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
