Posts by Trevor_Pott

Re: strange...(Bias indeed, misinformed bias)

"You are a criminal when you commit a crime."

Everyone breaks the law at least three times a day. Our laws are structured like that. We're all criminals. It's just a question of whether or not we've irritated someone in power enough for them to put effort into finding out what they can nail us for.

What is the point in trying obeying the law when the law cannot reasonably be obeyed? Rome had this problem, you know. Their laws were too many and too complex that - eventually - people just stopped caring. This is where the USA is today. It's not about whether or not you break the law, it's about whether or not you obey your "betters".

And that's a really shitty way to run a society.

Re: Hmmm... can we re-think the goodness of Google fibre?

Canada, for one. Canada is part of five eyes - and thus participates in some questionable things - but we have some very strict regulations on what the hoi polloi police can get up to.

Now, not that the cops haven't tried pushing through some truly egregious crap. $deity knows, they've given it a go, as have some very strident members of the conservative government. That said, the Supreme Court has slapped most of that shit right down, and the stuff that was brewing in the bill stages got at least one prominent cabinet member sent to rural northern Manitoba in order to get his ass out of the spotlight, after the massive backlash his rampaging ineptitude caused.

I also happen to know that at least three of our telecoms companies don't want to be snooping on traffic. They'd rather actually pay for infrastructure than open the can of worms that comes with having that level of DPI or even "metadata retention" capability. Canadian privacy law is pretty damned strict, and that's a live wire they just flat out don't want to touch.

Are there forces within Canada that want to strip up of our privacy? Absolutely. Count the Prime Minister and his cabinet chief among them! Hell, the biggest reason they're so eager to fasttrack the TPP is the pat where they can get through privacy-defeating crap as part of an international treaty that they'd never pass as laws.

But I really do question whether or not it would stand in court. Unlike the US, we don't elect our judges. They aren't bought and paid for. They aren't beholden to anyone, they don't need to seek reelection. And they don't seem to have any problem slapping down the government in whole or in part.

So I wonder how far this anti-privacy thing will go here. Will we fall like the US has, like the UK is doing? Or will we hold fast and retain some semblance of democracy; a nation where the government belongs to the people and the people have the privacy to organize to ensure it stays that way?

Time will tell...but I know which side I'll be on.

"There is too much competition in this space for Google to accomplish anything meaningful."

Unless Google launch an all-data Internet of Things MVNO focused on the ability to bind multiple devices together under a single account and share data between them instead of having a bunch of individual packages.

That is something Google could do that would disrupt everyone.

Re: But it's Google...

"Start Chrome, you are asked to "sign in to Google". Start IE, you are not asked to "sign in to Microsoft". Google is the only browser publisher that wants to know who you are from the outset."

Microsoft asks you to sign in to their public cloud based authentication system to get in to the goddamned operating system. And they've started tying core system functions to that public cloud identity, too! Not to mention they stream every search you make on your local computer/local network to Bing.

Sorry mate, but Microsoft is far more insidious and in to tracking your every move than Google.

Edit: yes, you don't have to sign in to Microsoft's public cloud account to use the OS...but you certainly don't have to sign into chrome to use it either. Both, however, require you to hand over your privacy in order to make all the features work as intended, not just a subset. The difference is that Google wants you to sign into specific services (such as a browser, or IM client) whereas Microsoft wants your privacy just for the OS itself.

I don't know that christmas was "invented". It sort of accreted from a bunch of different holidays/celebrations/festivals/religious rites into one thing. Saturnalia comes to mind as one component, but not remotely the only one. A lot of celtic traditions got wrapped up in it, and I am sure that Hanukkah had more than a little influence on the creation of christmas, given that christianity derives from Judaism.

And, ultimately, which christmas are we talking about? Observation rites for this particular bit of religiosity vary massively around the world. Even if we set aside people who are in fact celebrating other faiths (or have no faith to celebrate) at that time of year, christians the world over are massively diverse. The variety of rites, rituals and amount of religious involvement (and what form that religious involvement takes) isn't consistent even within individual cities, let alone nations or across the scale of the world.

Re: a mere 20 years...

"That's just rubbish."

I CAN'T HEAR YOU, THE HP'S ON. WHAT?

""Motherboard, Chassis, Power supplies and Super Barebone products: Supermicro provides a three-year warranty for labor and one-year warranty for parts."

Seems to depend on the product. I was looking at servers, Twins and blade systems. Seems their "parts only" stuff, like mobos only get the one year warranty. Gotta admit, I haven't bought "just parts" in some time.

"Where did you get this nugget of information? SOME SM servers are designed like that. And in specific configurations (couldn't find the specifics on SM website though). Most Supermicro rack servers seem to be operating at max 35°C like the competition."

From their product managers. Though they aren't warranted for operation beyond standard temps, most of their lineup is actually designed to handle far higher temps than advertised. And yes, I believe them when they say it. Why? They've been nothing but honest and up front with me for years, about the benefits and the drawbacks of everything I've asked about.

What's more, I've been able to have their standard servers run at 45Cish temps for prolonged periods in testing.

"Dell, HP and IBM (Lenovo?) all have some server configurations for 45 C operation and SM has a couple models with designation for 47 C inlet temp."

Yep, with all manufacturers, only some systems are warranted for high temp environments. The difference I've found is that you can consistently push Supermicro's gear far past the advertised temperatures for rather long periods of time.

That said, Supermicro doesn't have any of the really exotic stuff. look here for a discussion of why I think that HP's liquid cooled blades might well be the bee's knees.

Liking Supermicro doesn't mean I don't like other manufacturers. (Though Dells are louder AND TURNING ON THE HP MEANS I CAN'T HEAR YOU!) As a general rule of thumb I find the following applies:

1) Supermicro is the default vendor. The price is right!

2) Supermicro is the vendor you choose if you need to install servers in warm or really cramped places (or in the same room as people.)

3) Dell if the vendor you choose if you're a rack monkey and/or see yourself frequently moving things around on racks. Dell rail kits = godlike.

4) HP is the vendor you choose if you need something exotic or bizzare. Beware you'll have to license every freaking feature and you'll get nickled and dimed to death.

5) Lenovo/IBM is what you buy when you just need to shut up people who are stuck 20 years in the past and/or your distie doesn't sell Supermicro.

6) Supermicro has nice starter switches, Dell has much better switches, and HP can make your whole universe into a dynamic routing table made out of sex and awesome.

7) They all use the exact same company to provide global support to rural areas, so ask them pointed questions about part availability and distribution.

8) When trying to talk to sales, Supermicro will be honest and tell you everything you want to know. Dell will be honest and tell you what they can (on the record) but have to switch to "off the record" to tell you the rest. HP will just try to sell you more things every time you ask a question, so never call them unless it's an emergency and you have the ability to blackmail the salesguy. Lenovo is yet an unknown.

9) HP's phone-in tech support are amazing, but I wish turnover wasn't so high. Dell tech support are not at HP levels, but you can form longstanding relationships with them, as they don't go anywhere. Supermicro's tech support isn't really anywhere near so good, it's still largely reliant on the channel. (Mind you, they don't support a lot of software other than their BMC directly, so...) Lenovo is an unknown.

No one vendor comes out ahead of all others. They each have their niches...and clearly I'm not the only one to recognize that Supermicro are worth the time, or they wouldn't be kicking ass like they are.

Re: Just wondering...

"Manuals? Wiki? Videos? FAQ cheat sheets? Basically why the need for actual presence?"

Because someone has to make sure that the partners aren't phoning it in? It starts with convincing them that there's value in selling the product in question, but finishes with convincing them that it's worth taking the time to actually learn enough to sell it. You are starting from a premise that people to what is rational, or that they are motivated to learn. They are both false. People are irrational and learning sounds like work, so they'll avoid it unless someone stands over them with a whip.

"Again issue tracker or wiki?"

Again, you are presuming that people will do something that doesn't directly benefit them without someone standing over them and forcing them to do it. That's false. They aren't going to update an issue tracker or a wiki. You need someone whose job it is to coordinate things and to disseminate information.

To put it more succinctly: the job of a sales exec is to herd cats. Angry, apathetic cats with autistic tendencies and the attention....oooh....squirrel!

Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

"EULA != the law, consumer rights trump EULAs"

Really? You have the money to fund that lawsuit?

Re: I'd rather see another Chris Carter series

"I miss Fringe..."

I miss Walter. And Astrid. The rest I could really do without. Man, Fringe as a concept, with Walter...but an actual plot, and main characters that weren't wooden and horrible? I'm in! Especially If we don't let Jar Jar Abrams anywhere near it.

It's bad enough he's created Jar Jar Trek. Remember when Star Trek was about something more than just sex and blowing shit up?

Re: I smell bullshit...

Not yet. Will update here when I know.

Re: Sky surveys

@Sir Runcible Spoon

And what will they occlude? Unless they just happen to wander in front of Kepler (which looks at the same chunk of sky all the time) we could go centuries before accidentally spotting them. From our reference point they don't really move all that much, and we're constantly repointing every telescope we have to look at all the interesting things out there.

Humanity, in general, doesn't do a whole lot of "pointing a 'scope at the sky and just waiting for something interesting to stumble across." We set out on missions to find specific things in specific places. And unless you get a NEOWISE-style set of scopes to ring the Earth and just stare at fixed points (Kepler style), goof effing luck relying on occlusion.

Re: #JeSuisLeRameau

I will defend your right to say your piece, but I will also express my belief that your religion is fucking clownshoes. You have the right to believe what you want and to say what you want, but you have right to force me to think you're anything other than a befuddled and easily led twatdangle.

Take me out to the black

Tell them I ain't coming back

Burn the land and boil the sea

You can't take the sky from me

Correction: idiot managers put guns to the heads of sysadmins and threaten to splatter their brains all over the wall unless they use Hyper-V. Because there is no universe in which rational people would choose to use the steaming fuckpile of horrors that is System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

Now, Hyper-V manager on it's own is decent. ISH, even if ESXi's C# client still beats it silly. But for actually running a production environment? Hell no!

At least KVM is so bad that anyone selling KVM virty solutions seriously (like Scale Computing) has to come up with a UI that doesn't suck...and they usually do. Hyper-V just has the soul-evaporating horror that is System Center...and the horror that is the new "Azure portal" will soon be the new alternative! And if you've seen that, you've probably already started self-harming because you can't unsee what was seen!

Re: Before the usual MS bashing....

" Before the usual MS bashing....

...remember they were one of the biggest supporters of Do Not Track header and the first to add it as a default setting in the web browser, so the bit about Bing is a little muted.

A certain other search engine..."

Who cares, mate? They're both American. No business with an American legal attack surface - let alone one headquartered there! - is to be trusted. Ever. Everything else is a moot point.

Re: For fuck's sake

"hell even AlQaeda does not ridicule anyone"

Al Qaeda ridicules the faith of all Muslims every time they pervert religious teachings into a rationale for extremism, totalitarianism and death.

Re: Excellent news

"Invaded by the Americans three times and still here"

Like that's hard to do. The yanks can win a war to save their fucking souls. I mean, hell, that lot can't even club a bunch of poor sand people on the head and steal their oil without getting their asses handed to them.

Nah, the US is best used as an adjunct to a real nation. They can sit on the sidelines and fire missiles into some dictator's tank collection, or bomb (mostly) industrial facilities while real soldiers do the hard work on the ground of removing the douche canoes from office. However good the USian soldiers are - and US soldiers are damned fine soliders! - their military and political leader are utterly worthless, and it cripples their ability to achieve objectives.

The best army in the world is worth nothing if you waste them on fool's errand after fool's errand.

Re: There is a BOFH story here somewhere

Microsoft Licensing and moi? I don't know if Lewis would print something with that much swearing in it.

Re: "right to freedom of expression"

"The closest thing we have to "God-given" rights are those enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...which only apply to you if your Government has agreed to abide by them."

The UDHR applies to all people, whether or not their governments have signed it. It is the duty of the signatories to use whatever means possible to ensure all humans everywhere have these rights, regardless of what their governments happen to feel about the topic.

That requires no god, nor any government. It is a universal ethical obligation. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance; those of us who are free may be called upon to lay down our lives to protect and/or ensure the freedom of others.

Governments that recognize the UDHR and try to abide by it are merely protecting their own power. Without such commitment, they will be removed from power, eventually, and replaced with individuals more capable of supporting the universal rights of the people they serve.

Governments serve. The people rule. No other configuration is to be tolerated.

Re: @veti

"You think if the CIA comes across evidence that someone is plotting a coup d'etat in, say, Spain, they wouldn't communicate that, PDQ, to the Spanish government?"

No, they wouldn't. The Americans have been spectacularly unable to stop people from committing horrific crimes on their own soil, even when the Russians flat out told them shit was going to go down. How in the metric monkey fuck do you think those thundering chowderheads are going to A) know something is going on in a part of they world they barely acknowledge exists and B) manage to communicate that using some form of language that will be understood by people who have advanced beyond smearing crushed up flowers on cave walls?

Americans don't care about their own people. What makes you think that for a second they care about anyone else?

You realize Elon Musk is from South Africa, eh? And so are a fair number of fairly rich movie stars. Just off the top of my head...

"Having been raised where I was, I know and have known a quite large number of commando and special forces folks. *None* of them were violent nut jobs. In order to do what they did, they needed the sort of sanguine calm demeanour you describe for the submariner. I guess your old teacher was the exception."

I grew up around SpecOps people too. And I too would describe them as calm. But I would never ascribe to them the demeanor of a submariner, which is far more akin to that of a soldier in a foxhole. A submariner, like a solider in a foxhole, fights for the man to the left of him, and the man to the right of him. This is not at all what motivates the special forces commando. For that, you need a little bit of Firefly:

The Operative: I'm sorry. If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to. You should have taken my offer. Or did you think none of this was your fault?

The Operative: I'm not going to live there. There's no place for me there... any more than there is for you. Malcolm... I'm a monster.What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.

Re: Support is impossible

"IMHO the 8.1 haters have simply never used it and are parroting the popular press"

Well, Dave Horn, you're wrong on the internet.

Cheers, from a member of the unpopular press.

Re: Rare Earth

Being the only shitball we currently have doesn't make it any less shit.

Re: Major update cockup? @Eponymous Cowherd

@Ragarath what would be the point of calling a UKIP supporter names? It's not like they'd have the intelligence to understand the context. FFS, they support UKIP.

Re: Dear Marriot

I run a company. It is eGeek Consulting Ltd, a Canadian corporation. We (being the three shareholders whose decisions make up the body public) are greedy. At least when performing our corporate duties. Some would perhaps argue we're not greedy enough (we probably should charge more) others that we are too greedy (they really want us to charge less.) But our goal is to make as much money as reasonably possible. Because we don't want any more student loans. And I want this frakking mortgage gone.

Greed is evil. I get that. But I'm willing to live with being a little evil in order to make the company go. I do try to restrain it all some, but...It's a business. We do get greedy.

So, um...what the hell was so hard about that? Admitting to greed is the first step in placing rational and pragmatic limits on said greed. Prevents expensive facepalming. Seems like good corporate policy to me.

Glenrothes or GTFO.

Re: Single Volume?

"SATA Express PCIe doesn't allow multiple volumes on one interface"?

Wrong, it does. And WD sells a unit like that today (though for SATA). This is a different unit aimed at a different segment.