We are moving to AWS
Our company decided since we are already virualized we may as well jump in all the way after doing the sums... Bare metal was second choice with Broadcom a very distant third
Posts by marky_boi
87 publicly visible posts • joined 17 May 2010
VMware customer reaction to Broadcom may set the future of software licensing
Australia to phase out checks by 2030
Twitter set for more layoffs as Musk mulls next move
Start your engines: Windows 11 ready for broad deployment
Friday 20th May 2022 00:52 GMT
I returned to Win 10
Let 2 of my PCs "upgrade" to Win11. Tried to like it but it was so dumbed down in many areas I switched back. File explorer was so munted I installed a Midnight commander for windows and the shite placement of the start drove me insane. The final killer was that I couldn't place the taskbar on the left of the screen ...
looks like Win10 will be my last.
no local account and being forced to replace perfectly good machines is a nope
When Huawei leaves, the UK doesn't lead in 5G, says new report commissioned by... er... Huawei
Friday 11th September 2020 07:45 GMT
whoa !!! sayin' the west coast is not covered is like saying there is little coverage on the moon... basically no people, low returns and little need. when you look at coverage for the population we are then approaching 99% with 4G.... To an Australian, the UK looks like a mobile backwater, you still have 2G.. 2G was closed down years ago and the Telcos are looking at removing 3G too. 2/3 telcos now have usable 5G and the other of course is Voda....
Mortal wombat: 4 generations of women fight for their lives against murderous marsupial
India to build contact-tracing app for feature phones that still use 2G, don't have Bluetooth and can't run apps
Your Agile-built IT platform was 'terrible', Co-Op Insurance chief complained to High Court
IBM: Why yes, Red Hat is doing great. Thanks for asking. The rest of Big Blue? Sure, wait – someone's at the door...
Thursday 17th October 2019 10:48 GMT
We are planning a quick migration strategy
When IBM took over we saw nothing good in this, except for IBM and eventual price rises. We are currently scoping CentOS, SuSE and Ubuntu server.
I personally hate IBM with a passion, for hardware, they take our money and just send parts + support is close to non-existent. they are just circling the bathplug hole.
I don't know but I've been told: IBM slurps AU$95.5m ERP delivery contract from Aussie DoD
Dedicated techie risks life and limb to locate office conference phone hiding under newspaper
You wanna be an alpha... tester of The Register's redesign? Step this way
Reg man wraps head in 49-inch curved monitor
Tuesday 6th March 2018 06:25 GMT
UHD TV 40" 3840x2160 @ AUD $520... bliss
Here in Australia I used a UHD 40 inch TV 3840*2160, bought from the local cheapo department store (Big W) for AUD$520... i can set all my work all round on the screen. lesser stuff to the edges and the important stuff on the centre. Going into work is a downgrade 2 x 23" monitors.......
Batteries are so heavy, said user. If I take it out, will this thing work?
Friday 23rd February 2018 12:14 GMT
Re: Its powered by magic fairies and gnomes
What you failed to mention for a good story is that to access said building you had to sign in and the building was controlled by security people before you even got in. The cleaning staff also worked for the company and had a clearance level almost as high as the techs. These were the innocent days where staff trusted each other. The engineers were trustworthy and actually knew their stuff.... Can't let that get in the way of a good story.... and BTW I look after gear on that said floor now and none of that has been there for a very long time..........
'The capacitors exploded, showering the lab in flaming confetti'
Monday 22nd January 2018 11:18 GMT
Re: Capacitor, HAH !! I raise you 2 stories
Yeah, I worked as an apprentice for a Telco, we had our own school. This was the 80's. One guy wanted to pay another for a prank earlier in the day. He soldered an electro backwards across the 50V supply in a hidden spot on the cct board we were working on, just as we were being let out for lunch. Every lunch as a precaution the Instructor would turn off the 50v so no fire could start. The cct was duly plugged in as he left. ...... After lunch we all filed in and sat at our desk, the instruction discussed the cct and then turned around and flicked the breakers for the 50v to on. Immediately we were all deafened by a loud bang and confetti. Needless to say pranks were stopped that day...
Another time another guy was fault finding his project that involved making a set of telephone exchange relays work in a certain sequence, we had built the loom ourselves and were expected to fault find if it didn't work. Fault finding included making each relay work by pressing the relay in the expected sequence and testing the circuit.. All was progressing well until he pressed the second last relay which closed the contacts across 50v. The battery bank that supplied the training site ran a mini mechanical exchange and supplied power to all the buildings and could supply more than 600A without breaking a sweat. For a minuscule fraction of a second it tried to give that 600+A.... results :: one very shocked and slightly blinded student, tripped breakers and vapourized relay contacts and all the magical smoke let out never to be returned..... happy days hope you enjoyed it.... Atomic picture coz that was the Instructor in story #1
Black & Blue: IBM hires Bain to cut costs, up productivity
nbn™ chair Ziggy Switkowski says HFC remediation mess is business as usual
From the graaaaaave! WileyFox's Windows 10 phone delayed again
£160m ploughed into 5G is a fair sum. Shame the tech doesn't really exist
Wednesday 29th November 2017 11:12 GMT
You don't get 4 Hype?
Here in Australia, we have already turned off GSM and rapidly moving to 4G ubiquity. 4G gives you VOIP calls in HD, [quite noticable] faster setups to ring on the other end. Stonking quick internet with good upload speeds. In the UK I'm not surprised you can't see a reason, your networks seemed to be tied together with baling wire and string. Even Vodafone the poorest telco in Australia has great speed internet but with a much lesser footprint. Here in the antipodes we watch on and shake our heads where one would expect a great mobile network for a small, fairly densely populated country we see steam punk powered GSM. BTW 5G has been demo'd by 2 out of 3 telcos here. you people should be camping in MP offices demanding better
nbn™ pauses hybrid fibre-coax build and will fix current connections
Monday 27th November 2017 10:56 GMT 
not surprised really
I saw the untrained NBN monkeys come in and install a service in my Aunts place. They literally ran in, slapped in the modem on an existing pay TV service using a splitter.. confirmed carrier and just about ran out all in about 5 mins. If it wasn't for me at the door stopping them and asking questions, there is no way my Aunt would have known what to do next. If you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Extrapolate this to anew install, can you see the monkeys taking time to do a workman like install??? I know first hand the care that went into the HFC network originally, to the point of torquing the f connectors to the right settings. Almost everything is contractors who don't give a flying ^%$@*@. take this one step further, if a build out has occurred under NBN watch I doubt it's up to snuff.............
Australia commits to establish space agency with no budget, plan, name, deadline …
Monday 25th September 2017 22:24 GMT
It's a distraction, emmmm bad polls
Come on people, this is a play straight out of yes minister...... get a series of bad events and bad polls...... announce a new <thingy = distraction>,Fast Train, Northern Australia development region .... Think Snowy Mountains 2, now a space thingy
Malcolm doing bad in the polls??? Honestly have they just been watching Utopia as a documentary?!?!?!?
We don't need another hero: Huawei overtakes Apple – even without a big-hitter
Thursday 7th September 2017 12:59 GMT
Can't give an iPhone away
In the technical team I work for, the boss can't even give one away to convince us to change from Android to Apple for testing. All of us have suffered from the Apple walled garden lock-in and don't want to go back there. Even the inducement of a new iWatch when they turn up convinced no one to change. Seen the same thing in real life too, "too costly" is why they turned their backs......
Ubuntu UNITY is GNOME-MORE: 'One Linux' dream of phone, slab, desktop UI axed
Wednesday 5th April 2017 22:18 GMT 
He did put his money where his mouth is for quite a bit
He had his vision and paid to make it happen. Have to respect someone who kills their own pet project even after a spitload of money has been spent. Personally I hated Unity and grabbed onto Ubuntu-Mate with both hands. I am grateful for Ubuntu for making Debian more polished. I wont return to Gnome though.. Wondering if they now take their cues from Ubuntu-Gnome project???
Ad men hope blocking has stalled as sites guilt users into switching off
Australian Tax Office's HPE SAN failed twice in slightly different ways
Thursday 16th February 2017 02:33 GMT
Re: HA anyone
I wouldn't trust HPE to configure my microwave. Had supposed SAN experts contracted to vet a firmware update procedure for a very complex solution for a very large sum of money. They forgot to mention that the SANs would take a moment to 'reconverge'. took out our network for 3 minutes..... well, dealing with those clowns we now know to ask 10,000 question about the config.. Hope the ATO has good IT staff to ask the same type of 10,000 questions.......
New PayPal T&Cs prevents sellers trash-talking PayPal
Stay out of my server room!
Wednesday 23rd November 2016 11:01 GMT
Luckily I work in a large Telco
Where I am, the only real issue we have is that the A/C has been moved from what felt like -15C to more like 25. In the hot Aussie summers. the server room moves up a degree or two making for unpleasant conditions but still within the thermal envelope. Installers left their crap laying about in our room and it was relocated to the hallway duct taped to together with about 5 rolls. didn't happen again....
Telstra CIO Erez Yarkoni quits to return home to family
Smartwatches: I hate to say ‘I told you so’. But I told you so.
Thursday 2nd June 2016 12:33 GMT
Pebble does the job just fine
Bought mine as a notification extension of the phone to my arm. I am on-call every 5 weeks and my darling wife appreciates the fact the watch vibrates to wake me up rather than a jangling phone...... I have an original pebble time and the thing lasted 10 days while I was on holidays. I swapped out the stupid silicon band for a black stainless steel jobbies from e-bay and get comments all the time on how nice the watch looks most are surprised to find out it is a pebble. The epaper display reads well and with a flick of the wrist the thing lights up at night. I will be stumping up some more coin for the updated pebble2 on offer as I have belief in the sense of using the pebble. I looked at android behemoths and decided that the pebble fitted the bill, i have not regretted that choice 3 years later.
Oh dear, IBM. Storage isn't looking like a cash cow any more, is it?
Optus, Telstra, TPG and Vodafone spaff AU$543.5m on spectrum
Friday 5th February 2016 09:01 GMT
Re: Australia have it so good...
1800MHz will be used as an infill around the towns as 700MHz and 900MHz gets rolled out. The biggest driver will be as the phones get replaced in contract and then have access to these lower frequencies. 1800MHz will NOT be the saviour of the bush. Why do you think 850MHz is the MAIN preferred frequency for 3G in AU..... coz it goes a damn long way...
Pebble punts out new firmware to watch you as you sleep
Friday 5th February 2016 08:40 GMT
Re: Very few people are interested in smart watches
Depends on your point of view and use case. I have the cheapest pebble time. I use it to buzz-alert me that I have a phone call or SMS in noisy environments. At night it buzzes while my phone is silent so my wife is not woken when I am on call. I have swapped out the sillicon band for a snazzy black stainless number and it does not look out of place with any clothes I wear.
read SMS or alerts bahhh needs me glasses for that, it needs a 47 y.o suitable font !!!
I have tried the crap cheapo android things on ebay and gave up. I looked at the prices of LG and Samsung thingies and almost died .... pebble very smartly takes the middle ground and it does it VERY BLOODY WELL !!! i get 7 - 9 days at a time on the battery. I have a good collection of watches from Swiss to Japanese and Pebble has carved out a valuable place in my collection.
Dick limps towards inglorious end: Gadget retailer on the brink
Tuesday 5th January 2016 12:39 GMT
Re: Oztralia
Boo !%^*ing hoo.... we could say the same about Tesco and Dixons BUT we are adult enough to recognise that the site is/was UK centric. It's a wonder you don't complain about going to the loo it has foreign objects too..... polish your glasses you myopic TWAT and realize the site has expanded somewhat and the world is bigger than your basement/attic/bolthole......
It's almost time for Australia's fibre fetishists to give up
Monday 26th October 2015 22:35 GMT
Never been called a fetishist before
I work in the industry in Au. The chance to update the copper to fibre was one that should have been taken. It resists water, corrosion, being submerged and all other manner of environmental stresses that Australian weather can throw at it. It was a value proposition, put all Aussies on an equal footing speedwise allow good uplink speeds [good for working from home, my pet reason] and generally falls into the do it once and do it right mentality. you cant sustain good speeds on crap copper PERIOD. the best thing about fibre is that to get a speed lift many years down the track, just swap out the ends, fibre stays in place,,,, Telcos been doing this for years. So in my considered opinion as an insider I call BULs%#T on this article. Why are countries like even lil ol NZ doing the right thing and our politicians ignoring it on purely political grounds.>. not my idea cant be good...........
Volkswagen Australia says 77,000 local diesels need software fix
Ex top judge admits he's incapable of reading email, doesn't own a PC
Monday 31st August 2015 21:08 GMT
Re: Parties and judges
"clicking an icon (to start the E-Mail client or web site), then clicking some subject lines checkboxes then clicking "delete"... or clicking a subject line and reading the text off the screen... are simply not too difficult."
The MAN is a frigging judge, he should have some semblance of intellect. If my 'in her 70's' mother can use a PC I'm quite sure a person PAID by the public purse in high office should do his own email, or is it considered a menial task way beneath him??. perhaps he should be ridiculed for wasting our taxes... what a jerk !!!
Windows 10 in head-on crash with Nvidia drivers as world watches launch
Tuesday 28th July 2015 22:39 GMT
I was lost to them already
Gave up on Microsoft and moved to Linux about 6 years ago.. ended up on Ubuntu-Mate, best of breed at the moment. Even they don't auto-force updates. Gives users autonomy to choose to hang back to see if issues develop, as they sometimes do. The last remaining windows machine I have is on Windows 7 and is always about 1 week behind in updates, so I don't get caught by issues.
Congratulations! You survived the leap secondocalypse
Thursday 2nd July 2015 10:29 GMT
good number F5 boxes around the world started falling down
We got this little gem of a warning about 35 minutes before showtime from F5. A team effort decoupling NTP from the F5s was finished 2 minutes before show time. 150 odd appliances....... wasn't a fun team building exercise.. F5 have some expaining to do for our company. The regional Manager i think had to have a boot surgically removed from his ar%#$....
BOFH: Explain? All we need is this kay-sh with DDR3 Cortexiphan ...
Sunday 19th April 2015 13:58 GMT
Luckily Aussies are bi-lingual
"KAY-SHING – not CASHing, in Australia a router is pronounced rowt-er not roo-ter as the English call it.... in Australian vernacular "to root" to have some enjoyable time with your lady lying down in bed.... to be a root-er in Australia is someone who does lots of this.... so we pronounce it rowt-er ... I enjoy international differences like this, always give me a giggle.. Onto Olivia Dunham, I will always have burned into my memory the scene when Olivia gets out of the immersion tank in bra and undies..... Anna Torv, great export from Australia and in particular the Gold Coast ...
Torvalds' temptress comes of age: Xfce 4.12 hits the streets
Friday 3rd April 2015 10:49 GMT
too little too late
XFCE served me well enough for a few years but the weirdisms got to me in the end. Proxy settings, panel settings and a few others. Moved to Ubuntu Mate, it's like I've come home. Martin Wimpress has almost single handedly created a distro-spin that is perfect.. Not only that, he listens and actively takes advice from the community, making it even better. XFCE could have been there...
NBN Co to deploy DOCSIS 3.1 from 2017
Carriers want 5G to do everything, for anything, anywhere
Wednesday 4th March 2015 13:42 GMT
Maybe in your part of the world.(UK)
"" Yep, just like 4G dramatically improved network performance compared to 3G.
This seems like the HS2 of the communications world. ""
Here in Australia, we enjoy real 4G speeds regardless of network in most areas. GSM is being phased out and the spectrum re-farmed.. I can't for the life of me see how the UK can be so far behind... Under investment is death here, just ask Voda_AU..... Looking forward to 5G, the one caveat is enough backhaul....
3 spectastic Lumias for price of 1 rival flagship: Microsoft sells biz on cheapie experience
Monday 2nd March 2015 13:33 GMT
I bought one in AU for $39
I bought one to see why people who had previously owned one hated it with a passion. I cant type the long list of minor annoyances that added up to me putting it in the bin. Number 1 pet peeve was internet exploder, slowing and then dying ALL the time. Couldn't stream live music from the local radio station, it was death by 1000 cuts.
I can now say I have had one, and will never ever encourage anyone to buy one....I don't was the blame and wrath directed my way
Elementary, my dear penguin: It's the second beta of Freya
Wednesday 25th February 2015 12:31 GMT
Pompous Twats
I saw them on the Linux Action show and the 2 developers I saw came across as whiney Gen Y's. If the software is good I'll pay a donation for it as I have for countless other projects. For this project it's a BIG thumbs down. Bloody hell, Deb-Ian started just like that, Deb and Ian and it was like that for quite some time, didn't hear them whine..... To prove a point I downloaded it and paid $0... so I am another of the 98%+ people who tried it out.....
Personally I am using Ubuntu Mate, a distro that has been spun for the Gen what-ever(46) I am users.. it just gets shite done....
I won't give these twats a second glance good luck with eOS (p.s. I know they hate me saying it like that)
ZTE ups 5G investment
Thursday 19th February 2015 10:05 GMT
I call BS
4G running out of puff???? where I live the roadmap is clearly defined BUT my company also invested in backend infrastructure to carry the data the towers serve up.
More like these muppets want to sell kit that carriers don't yet need.
Fortunately our technical staff have input into the purchase process and are not swayed by shiny baubles ....
Microsoft just saved Windows Phone... Now stop whining
Wednesday 21st January 2015 22:49 GMT
Tried to like one but can't
I bought one, I work in the mobile industry. I could then give an honest opinion. First impression is good but that disapates to annoyance. I cant use a streaming service, crap browser choices. Internet exploder dying at regular intervals. I cant make multiple screens that i can swipe side to side, rather I have a super long tile page. That small setting controls you take for granted in Android are not there. It took a week to discover most of these shortcomings. Changed back to an Android after that.
This fone is now relegated to the bog as a net surfer... about all it's good for. I'm gathering most people try one of these things for one contract cycle and then go back to whatever they had.
This ecosysytem is as good as abandoned in my humble opinion.
El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.
Words to put dread in a sysadmin's heart: 'We are moving our cloud from Windows to Linux'
Monday 10th November 2014 11:42 GMT
Re: @AC
Are there any specific things that make managing Java processes on Windows easier ?
get a good Java programmer who knows how to aggressively recover resources. or better still code in a better language. Java is a dirty word in my industry, all my vendors have now seen the error of their ways and use more robust languages and upspecc'd the software architecture to ensure management of the software environemt takes priority.
Forget 5G, UK.gov is making 2G fit for the 21st century!
Thursday 6th November 2014 12:28 GMT
I find this hilarious
In good old Aussie, the GSM network is being retired in the next few years[can't quite remember the timetable].. You poor Brits seems to be suffering with a creaky band-aid riddled patchwork of operators. Even Vodafone in Australia actually had to stump and update their band-aid solution or face havong the last 20 people on the network leave.... good luck !!!!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
