* Posts by xj25vm

300 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2010

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Dell unveils 10-inch Windows 7 tablet

xj25vm

Oaktrail

On the other hand, I am really curious about the new Intel Oaktrail Atoms. If indeed it will be based on one of these (the Z6xx series) - it will be interesting to see if the power savings are really up to the hype. Say (theoretically, or wishfully) that the power consumption is cut by about 40% compared to current Atoms of the N4xx series - this will mean that a 6 cell pack should last a *real* 10 hours of work. This would be good news - because it would mean a real hackable device, on which one can install a *proper* Linux and have all the *real* apps they are used to. Even if it means I have to use a pen - at least I would have a tablet format computing device which doesn't tie me in to their farty app stores - I can upgrade and update as and when I please - and use software and peripherals designed for people who want to do some work - not just show off at the pub.

Done ranting now. You can take your fingers out of your years.

Mozilla plans four Firefoxes in 2011

xj25vm

Dicking around

All this non-sense dicking around trying to keep up with the Jones of the browser world. There was a time when Firefox was going to right the wrongs of the browsers world - and give us an alternative for the crap the IE was putting out. Now they lost direction and all they can think is how to out-do Chrome (or whatever else) at completely irrelevant features.

Stick with delivering a solid, bug-free, compliant and efficient piece of software and stop trying to 'innovate' for the sake of innovation and to justify your sorry jobs. That's exactly what fat companies like MS keep on doing and shoving on us all sorts of re-inventions of the wheel. That's exactly what Open Source projects *didn't* use to do.

Nobody seems to be placing any priority on or talking about their other projects. How about the tons of bugs lying around for years in Thunderbird and Lightning? How about the crappy CalDAV support in Lighning? How about the pathetic speed on large calendar sets in Lightning? How about ongoing IMAP sync problems in Thunderbird? They have moved core functionality out of Thunderbird into add-ons - so that they can wash their hands of it and offload the work to outside contributors - in order to have more resources for marketing Firefox? Something has gone wrong there.

Fire all the fluffy marketing execs and hire some software developers that give the community something actually useful - instead of press releases. Unless the money Google is providing come with explicit strings attached that it should be used for anything, except useful software for the community which might compete with commercial products.

They are talking about Firefox 6 and moving to 4 releases per year for Firefox - when Thunderbird has struggled to move to even version 3 - and it looks like it is getting left more and more behind.

Canada? The computer vendor says no

xj25vm

Tablets as (single use) devices

"Unfortunately I believe that Samsung abandoned the early adopters who bought the original Galaxy by refusing to release a firmware updates."

I think the above sums up my biggest gripe with the current tablets situation. Tablets have evolved from the world of mobile phones. Mobile phones are more like devices - like a TV or microwave. Not like a computer. In majority they spend their entire life using the same firmware version (or equivalent of) as they were shipped from the factory. The only time this might get updates is if a fault is found. Classic/dumb mobile phones in their majority suffer the same fate. People buy them, get tired of them, and throw them away. No software upgrades, no new tricks. Which is great for manufacturers. They get to push newer models at us as fast as they can.

Now with tablets (and to a significant extent smartphones) - their level of functionality approaches in a greater degree the level of functionality of a computer. Their price is also higher. Thus people will start more and more to realise that their shiny, expensive toy can't really be taught new tricks. Sure, there are ways of hacking about with these things - but it's not like on a pc. You can't just get your brand new copy of [insert favourite operating system] and install it on a device 5, 6 or even 7 years old. You have to do a lot of research, you have to wait for somebody to have figured out a way of breaking the whichever esoteric variation of bootloader your smartphone or tablet is using - and then do some custom Android (or whatever else) image for it.

However, I don't think the manufacturer (in this case Samsung - but you can choose any other example) is the only one responsible for this situation:

1. ARM might be theoretically a fairly open architecture - but it is mainly open for the licensees - not so much for the end users. With each licensee producing their own variation of the platform - in majority of cases you can't just run vanilla versions of OS's on these devices.

2. The bootloader (or whatever equivalent for the BIOS in the ARM world) seems to vary a lot from device to device. This means even more customisation for a manufacturer in order to release a new version of the firmware (together with point no.1).

3. Google themselves don't seem all that keen to build backwards compatibility with older devices in the newer versions of Android. Devices just 2 years old are not compatible with the latest version of Android. I suppose this is the price of break-neck speed with which Android and the tablets/smartphones develop nowadays - but it leaves people with un-upgradeable devices as a result.

So until the bootloader on various ARM platforms won't be universal, and we won't have a truly open OS to run on these things where the community can contribute and provide drivers and updates in a more universally accessible fashion - the situation will probably stay the same.

I think I'll stick with my 3 years old ultra-portable laptop - which can still be taught new tricks, can be plugged into any peripheral I want to plug it, and can be OS upgraded in any way I please. Bulky and un-tablet like as it is.

Reg readers offered discount tickets to internet future

xj25vm

Title required

"Suddenly it’s a matter of what we as Internet users want – not what we are given."

What a load of marketing tosh. So the big problem with the Internet now is that one can't get a decent domain name. As soon as that is sorted, it's all going to be good and dandy. The 'next Google and Facebook' will not need a quadrillion dollars to get started and fund themselves and compete with the current humongous incumbents, will not need radically new ideas and approaches, will not need to deal with increasing government regulation and 'big money' interests - all they will need is just a really smart and catchy domain name. Geez - is there any common sense left? No wonder everybody went nuts over the whole dot.com boom and lost their grandma's pension in the deal.

Right - I'll get my coat - stop shouting.

BT eases iPad hotspot hop-ons

xj25vm

Title

Am I correct in thinking that all these wonderful hotspots BT is offering to their customers are in fact ADSL wireless routers they have already sold to their (other) customers and connections that they already charge for in the first place? Every BT wireless router automatically creates another BTFon or BTOpenZone wireless network as soon as you plug them in. If that is correct - and as far as I know it is - it seems like a rip off to me. I pay BT for broadband connection - and they are effectively raking money from both directions, allowing others to use my broadband connection through my router. Are they making it clear to their customers that they are sharing their bandwidth with other customers? Are they providing a clear choice to avoid sharing your connection? Are they giving some discounts to customers who accept having their broadband shared? I thought not. Oh well, it is BT after all. I wonder how long will it take for people to realise what's going on.

On the other hand - one can use their own router - and tell BT to shove it. It just strikes me as not a very "above the board" way of operating.

Massive new US spy airship 'could be used to carry big cargoes'

xj25vm

Safety

"No real worries about getting shot down as the HAV 304 normally operates at 20,000 ft and Bin Laden and his boys don't have anything better than a Russian heavy machine gun, which is good for about 5000 ft."

Hmm, can't claim any sort of expertise in the field, but few points come to mind:

1. This thing, when on the ground, will be a pretty large, unmissable object. It would be much easier to hit from a distance with whatever you want then almost anything around it.

2. The 20,000 ft operating altitude is all good and well - but I'm assuming it doesn't teleport to that height in a split of a second. How long does it take to gain the first 5000 ft? Will it be 10 minutes, 20, 30? We could be talking about 10, 20 or 30 minutes of high level of vulnerability after take off and before landing - specially as it is so large and easy to spot/lock onto - and it doesn't move as fast as some other types of aircraft.

Microsoft Small Business Server 2011 - what's in it for you?

xj25vm

Hardware requirements

"At a glance it is similar to SBS 2008, though hardware requirements have leapt form 4GB RAM to 10GB with a quad-core processor. Leworthy blames Exchange 2010, which he says is “a little processor intensive.""

Hmm - where is my 1GHz single core Linux box, with 512MB of ram, Samba file sharing software, OpenVPN server, Dovecot imap server, Exim smtp server, Asterisk SIP/IAX./PSTN pbx server, iptables firewall, SMART monitoring software, RAID software, software to encrypt my backups for safe off-site storage and all the tools that I need to monitor and run my server, allow access from inside and outside, filter packets, filter emails and so on - for up to 25 users easily. And no per-user licensing. Actually, no license fee at all.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention - you have to learn to use all those tools.

Let others share their points of view - but I think I've got what I need already, thank you very much.

Mozilla vows Google 'Crankshaft' riposte

xj25vm

More headline grabbing stuff

Or maybe one day Mozilla will fire all those marketing power hungry types - and hire few more engineers, who will concentrate on squashing those bugs and delivering a solid, useful and functional piece of software. In the true spirit of FOSS software and community. And stop dicking about and squandering millions of dollars on stunts designed to keep up with the similar headline grabbing stunts from large commercial companies.

Where is the performance improvements in the Lightning calendar? Where is an open standards calendar server? Where is a usable and scalable contacts server? Where is the work needed to bring Thunderbird forward to the same version level as Firefox?

Yeah, I know, not enough man power. But 0.0001 seconds shaved off the Javascript engine certainly seems to deserve the extra man-power.

Content producers should chip in for mobile internet costs

xj25vm

Title

Or in other words: "we want more of the action". News flash for you - the content creators *do* pay for delivery. They don't get free data pipes to their own upstream providers.

What the mobile industry really wants is more dough. More profits. If they deserve it or not - well, that is not exactly relevant to them.

Does the Royal Mail or any other parcel/letter delivery company get a percentage of whatever profits are derived from it being used to distribute letters or parcels or other materials? Does it get a share of the profits of the likes of Amazon? No it doesn't. It gets paid for the work it does. Nothing else.

Mobile networks are dumb data pipes - and should get paid just for that - for delivering data. Stop trying to stick your snout in other people's troughs. You have creamed the market enough by charging ridiculous amounts of money for tiny text messages and delivering "exclusive" useless content - which now can be had directly from the Internet, for the mere cost of the data connection.

Nominet forgets what the first .uk domain name was

xj25vm

Title

I see. Nothing to do with it being a requirement in many European countries - and getting fined by traffic cops when you are abroad if you don't have the said redundant oval sticker then?

Ta

xj25vm

Correcting the correction

"but then i can't really complain about you not knowing our code is GB, at least you knew the countries name, that's probably better than half the population..."

Hmm - that seems to include you:

"like united kingdom is the type and great briton and northern ireland is the name... "

How about "Great Britain" - not "great briton"?

You've got to love it ...

SkyFire flees iTunes store

xj25vm

Title

Seems to me like somebody didn't do their homework on the business front. Their servers have to keep on doing work for their customers forever(ish) - but they only charge their customer once upfront. The two just don't add up together.

Sure, from a technical and user experience point of view this was a much needed solution - but financially they seem to have forgotten to think it through.

Dell skunkworks brews ARM server future

xj25vm

Cheap?

"These are very small and very inexpensive machines ($149 for the former and $179 for the latter.) "

What;s so cheap about $149 or $179?

Intel makes and sells the D510MO mini-itx motherboard. With Atom D510 (1.66MHz) with Hyper-threading. And it is fanless. With LAN, video and sound onboard. For £60. OK - that's not a SOC. But add a bit of RAM and some storage - and you've got the equivalent functionality. And I bet you are still below the $179. I also bet that the Atom D510 is faster then both processors mentioned in this article.

I am intrigued and excited by the opportunity to see ARM outside it's traditional mobile devices and low power devices stomping ground. But in this particular case - I don't really see the big upside.

Also, for as long as these ARM incarnations will not use a totally standardised architecture - so that we can have one single distribution of Android/Linux/whatever else that one can just burn to a bootable usb stick or memory card - and then install it on *any* of them - I don't see them making many inroads into the day-to-day geek's life. It's all good an fine if you are a large company like Dell - with engineers on hand. But as an "average" geek - I want to be able to easily upgrade the OS on my ARM thingie without having to wait years for somebody to find a special way to bypass whatever lock the manufacturer has put in place or whatever exotic quirks the architecture has.

Asda prices up Elonex 7in Android tablet

xj25vm

Upgrade

Never mind the hardware upgradability of these things (storage, ram, battery, 3G, bluetooth etc.). How about software? Will I be able to upgrade these tablets to the latest version of Android (or something else) in few years time and breath new life into an old machine? Make it do new tricks? Talk to new peripherals? Without having to hack around with the boot strapper (or whatever they use) and use an install image customised specifically to this device, and a crippled/modified version of Android to fit the bill?

Well, I thought not. From my geek point of view, ARM might be an open architecture/platform. But it is mainly open to *their* customers - which are the OEM's building the processors. Not to the end users. To the end users - the devices are pretty locked up - or at least different enough from each other to make modifying them less then straight forward. Until ARM devices are based on the same boot process, so that one can just take an installation cd/usb and install it on any number of ARM devices without hacking it up - I'll stick with x86. For good or for worse, with all its fallacies, I can still pick a disc for any number of Linux distributions and upgrade any of my x86 boxes around the house/office - of whatever version or generation they are - all the way to 15 years ago.

As for the rest of the public - well, I'm sure they'll happily use whatever you throw at them. No comments there.

Mobile devices hit Trevor's spot

xj25vm

3G

"While Wi-Fi is certainly faster, 3G is dedicated spectrum."

If by that you mean "dedicated bandwidth" - not true, as far as I know. At least not in Europe. In Europe you are sharing the bandwidth with other users of the same cell mast - and, especially, with voice users. And voice users have priority over you. So the 3G connection's speed will vary all the time - even during the course of the same session. Maybe you were in a sparsely populated area - so once you get a signal - you have no competition on your local mast?

If somebody else knows more about 3G specs in North America, or Canada - feel free to bring enlightenment to the issue.

xj25vm

Title

"At first, I thought my Blackberry 8350i was simply too slow to handle most of the things [...] If, however, you are seeking a device largely for text-input, this is still the next best thing to a real computer."

Blackberry 8350i? The one with 320x240 pixels? And a tiny keyboard? Next best thing? Hmm, surely not on planet Earth.

"As for the HTC Desire,[...] it has been brilliant using Wyse’s PocketCloud application. In essence it is an RDP, VNC and VMWare View client and so good that it has to be used to be believed. [...] your tiny little smartphone becomes a functional window into your normal work environment."

HTC Desire? The one with 3.7 inch screen? I won't doubt that it is possible to do *some* remote work on it in an emergency, but a "functional window to your *normal* work environment" (use of "*" for emphasis is added by me)? I'll have whatever you are on. Surely not by regular humans, with regular hands and regular eye sight.

I've been working daily on an 11 inch, 1300x700 screen for more then 3 years. And this is as far as I would comfortably go. I doubt many people would manage to work long periods of time staring at screens much below 10 inch - not filled with large amounts of data anyway (websites, applications etc.). Not without a gun or other equally lethal weapon pointed at their head.

"As for the HTC Desire [...] Any more than 600 words and my manual dexterity starts to be worn down by the constrained keyboard."

Seriously? And you are part of the human, mortal, flesh-blood-and-bones race? Are you sure you don't mean 600 characters? Your enthusiasm is to be appreciated though, although it lacks any contact with daily reality.

"I have worked on my Blackberry 8350i, my HTC Desire and an iPad [...] configured entire fleets of servers using VSphere SSH and Webmin."

My belief will only stretch so far. Excuse me if I find the above hard to swallow. "Entire fleets of servers"? From a smartphones (sorry, I mean, MID's). Hmm, I'll believe it when I see it. I smell the sweet smell of exaggeration here.

Oh, sorry - this article was all a joke. Sorry about that. Took me a while to realise. I'll get my coat now. <grumbling to himself> "Somebody should have mentioned that it's 1st of April on some remote planet somewhere" </grumbling to himself>

Three is voted the best UK network

xj25vm

Three

Been with Three on mobile broadband for about 3 years now. Good coverage and good speeds overall. Started on £15/month for 3GB when they started the service - I pre-ordered on 18 months contract. Recently wanted to take advantage of their special deal, with £10/month for 5GB (24 months contract). I've been told that because I've beens o long with them - they want to give me 5GB for £7.50 a month. I didn't refuse.

Speed will vary, of course, depending on the time of the day and geographical location. I could get a decent connection in many places while driving in the Lake District - which was pleasently surprising.

But I have clients on O2, T-Mobile and Orange dongles. O2 specially is abysmal. Many places in the North West of England (in large cities) where you can only get GPRS. In other places, there is no signal alltogether.

On the other hand:

1. Didn't have any need to use Three's customer support - except when I went for the new contract - so don't know how well that works.

2. Didn't use their voice services, on a phone. So can't comment on that.

3. When I went to the South in 2009, both London and the SE coast were far, far slower on the Three network. Specially the SE coast, in places like Norwich, I could barely get a connection in the middle of the town (or city, sorry, if that is the case).

HD Webcams

xj25vm

Some more

I've worked with MS LifeCam Cinema HD and Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000. Both have been on the market for a while - both are HD. Good looking cameras, good optics, good low light performance. A bit on the expensive side (specially the QuickCam 9000) - but I feel worth the money. The QuickCam Pro 9000 has also been used for all sorts of home brew cctv or birdcam setups - even connected to Linksys NSLU2 - at 266MHz! Just search the net.

Reg Hardware Reviews Digest

xj25vm

Title

Why are these things called "Hardware Reviews" - when you are including Games. Last time I checked games were some sort of kind of software, I think. Why can't they just be called "Reviews"

Two-year wait for Windows 8, MS blurts

xj25vm
Joke

Terrible

Oh no! I will have to wait a whole two years? Goodness me! I'm not sure how I'm going to cope with that. No new wonderful version of Windows from Microsoft. All those previous releases have filled my life with joy. Have brought wonderful productivity leaps to my working life. Have left me full of optimism. No bugs, no problems. Well built, high quality software, satisfying to work with. And good value too - I would love to pay for the same thing again and again. I can't live another two years without the next amazing iteration of this great OS. Please Microsoft. Hurry up. We can't wait that long!

Oh wait - has anybody seen my Linux laptop, I need to connect to my Linux servers to find out why is everything working ok and there are no unexplained crashes and constant updates that brake things. That is unacceptable!

Gemalto leaps into anti-Android fray

xj25vm

Title

Wouldn't Google have been better off making Android from the beginning into a proper Linux OS? Based on all the good (and truly free) stuff that is around - all those userland tools, maybe a customised or shrunken down version of XOrg? This way we would have had a truly free OS - and there wouldn't have been any need for these silly law suits. All they had to do was keep proprietary some of the GSM or 3G bits if they wanted to stop people from messing where they shouldn't.

11.6in sub-notebooks

xj25vm

11 inch

Thank you for this. I have been looking forward to an article on 11 inch machines. They seem to be quite out of fashion. I have contended for a while now that 11inch is an ideal compromise between portability and functionality. I have started at 15 inch, went down to 14, then to 11, then to 10. I had to go back to 11 inch, as the resolution on 10 inch makes so many things a pain, or completely unusable.

In respect to processor, personally I prefer a fairly slow single or dual core part, balanced by the longest possible battery life. I have been using full time a Philips Freevents 11NB5000 (a Twinhead F11Y in reality) 11 inch sub-laptop for 3.5 years - and it has been an excellent work companion. However, I need quite often the optical drive - and the Packard Bell seems to be the only choice with one at 11" in the entire market.

I know they have been out of production for years - but a word of respect for the Sony TT/TZ/TX lines of yonder. All 11 inch machines, amazing build quality, some of them 9 hours of battery at the time, optical drive integrated (some of them BluRay writer!), even optional integrated 3G. Expensive but what a feat of engineering. Long gone now, I'm afraid. Those were the days. Sigh.

Apple rolls out two new MacBook Air models

xj25vm

Netbook

In all fairness, the screen size and lack of optical drive might make it similar to a netbook - but the CPU clearly doesn't. Any portable machine with a Core 2 Duo processor can't be a true netbook by any stretch of imagination.

On the other hand:

1. What's with the battery size and life - specially on the 11" machine? Samsung have had on the market for a while now netbooks stretching to a (theoretical) 13.5 hours battery life. Couldn't Apple muster something a bit further North? Maybe closer to 10 hours?

2. What's with these Core 2 Duo processors in a brand new design? And not only at Apple. I am under the impression that the new ultra low power processors from Intel are i3 ULV and i5 ULV (all ending in 'UM'). Why am I not seeing any laptops with these in? They were launched in May. Any particular reason for this delay?

See here for press release details: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/24/intel-officially-outs-core-i3-i5-and-i7-ulv-processors-for-thos/

DIY cloud box Pogoplug gets integrated wireless

xj25vm

Title

I quite like this little box. And what it does. And the price. Just one thing. The "cloud" thing seems to be turning into the new fashion of the IT industry. A bit like the "e"-everything of the beginning of the 2000's. Everything new had to have "e" in front of it. Now a box which shares storage over a local network and further afield (which we all did in one way or another, with samba/nfs/dynamic-dns/vpn and any other number of technologies for a long time - is all of a sudden "cloud stuff". Hmm - I suppose we always need a fashion of some sort.

New GM worms mean large scale spider-silk production

xj25vm

Get Smart

Oh no. Somebody actually watched that film in its entirety? It must be among the worst scripted, and most unconvincingly acted films I have seen in a long time. Even the bits which were obviously meant to be funny somehow would leave you thinking: "What the heck is going on? Is the director passed out in a corner?" Which was quite surprising, considering it had so many promising names among its cast.

Where is that Selective Memory Erasing Device. *cringe*

Next fashions budget 10in Android tablet

xj25vm

Title

OK, so in the UK, can you buy any other 10 inch tablet (iPad excluded) on the high street, right at this point in time? Haven't heard of any other one, so good or bad, cheaply made or not, at least you can buy it now.

It has real usb, an ARM processor, Android, and it costs way less then the iPad. I'd say, until we have better alternatives in the shops, these are all good points. It's a good start. Let's have other options available to choose from, and will talk about it then. In the meanwhile I'm happy at least Next is offering one. The media seems to be full of *planned* devices - but nobody is actually selling them yet.

Kia POPs out see-through OLED dash readout

xj25vm

@strum

"Petrol/diesel cars are designed round the premise that you need one box for the engine, another big box for the passengers and (optionally) a smaller box for luggage."

First of all - think of so many people carriers in production today. They don't look like three boxes to me. Not even like two boxes. They are all one bubble, pretty aerodynamic - and also built as one compartment to be partitioned and used as needed. So can't really see the electric motor re-inventing the wheel there.

Secondly, I believe the original poster was referring to aesthetic aspects. For many years designers developed beautiful flowing lines for (some) cars - many of them very aerodynamic and with a very efficient use of internal space. Another wheel that doesn't need to be re-invented. Same needs apply to electric cars. So nothing wrong with an electric car looking like a (nice, aerodynamic and functional) petrol/ICE car.

Flying gyrocopter jump-jeep gets $3m from DARPA

xj25vm

Title

As others said:

1. Plenty of top weight and wobbly bids high up - unsuitable for a rough terrain vehicle.

2. Looks like it will take ages to transition from drive mode to flight mode. I wouldn't want to be under fire, trying to fly away quickly.

Also:

1. So it has a gas turbine, driving an electric generator, which powers an electric motor(s), which then drives the wheels. First of all, lots of different bits (and weight). Secondly, last time I've seen gas turbines, they made a heck of a racket. When on ground, you should be able to hear this thing from much further away then a petrol (gas) or diesel engine. I think.

2. All those foldable rotors and wings don't look like such a sturdy and robust idea. I would be curious how they last in real life usage - and how soon the various joints, inter-loocking bits and other parts involved start giving up and creating problems.

3. Gas turbines generate quite a lot of temperature behind. Not exactly usable anywhere such as on normal streets then, where space is confined - without frying civilians or anything else in the way. See Jay Leno's work on creating a street legal (ish) type turbine gas car.

Segway philanthropist found dead

xj25vm

Title

Since when are these things classed as scooters? I see other media outlets referred to the Segway as a 'scooter' as well.

ZeuS attacks mobiles in bank SMS bypass scam

xj25vm

Title

I see. What else do you need to get infected/affected? It also requires that planets are in alignment, your grandma is Elvis Presley's niece, you have a dog called Shakira, and your house is painted in stripes of peachy orange and blue apples. Oh well, clearly we should all watch out for this one.

Maybe they should design a virus which targets individuals called Simon, who live on Mars and drive a lettucemobile.

Dell Inspiron M101z 11.6in notebook

xj25vm

Title

I have a Philips Freevents 11NB5800 - which was really a Twinhead F11Y, and also Avaratec and few other brands in other markets. It has an 11" screen, one of the Intel U2500 processors (1.2 GHz), quite a loud speaker considering the size, about 5 hours battery *and* a DVDRW drive. It has been serving me very well for over three years now.

I know it is not fashionable any more - but I want an integrated optical drive in an 11" machine. I still use it a lot to burn discs, read discs, play movie DVD's. We used to have sub-laptops of various kinds - anybody remember the legendary Sony TT, TZ, TX series? Excellent machines, optical drive integrated, some of them 9 hour batteries. I know, the price was not as palatable - but all that niche market is gone now. Even machines with a bit more grunt (then an Atom machine), like the one above, don't have an optical drive.

Rant over. I'm going.

Critical Internet Resources not so critical

xj25vm

Title

What can I say - I'm impressed. Quite an art to write an interesting article about attending an uninteresting event. Quite entertaining really. Well done.

You don't have to be crazy to work here

xj25vm

Title

"Bacula is testing this philosophy. It's so disproportionately complicated to configure it to do something straightforward and consistent that it is almost not worth the effort. The manual is nonlinear and inaccessible, and I have found myself learning to use bacula through the continuous wrenching of experience, instead of just reading up on it. Judging by the number of emails to the bacula users list I am not the only one. It's the one service I administer that will repeatedly behave in an unexpected manner."

"If a webmin module means I can start to depend on bacula then I may have to move away from the command line on this one."

Sounds to me like the wrong solution. As you indirectly point out, plenty of command line tools have logical and well organised configuration options and/or configuration files. If one (or more) of them doesn't, the root problem should be fixed - i.e. the configuration file/syntax should be overhauled. There is no need to add another layer on top of the mess to try and keep it under control

On the other hand - yes, I know. Easier said then done - overhauling any complex application. But in principle, it would be fixing the problem, not plastering a massive patch on top of it. In principle at least :-)

xj25vm

Title

"Or, to fill those things in: "it took me effort to learn how to drive, for which I needed to know how a transmission works, and how to work a clutch and shift gears, so people who want to learn how to drive should also learn those things""

I beg to differ. We are not talking about drivers, we are talking about mechanics - to use your figure of speech. An IT person is not the equivalent to a driver, he/she is the equivalent to a mechanic. A driver is the users. And indeed, I wouldn't expect a user to be clued-up to the inner workings of whatever system they are operating. And talking about auto mechanics, same principles seem to apply there. As cars get more sophisticated, a lot of them turn into button pushers, and are only good at simple "undo the bolt, change part, redo the bolt" type jobs. Look around on car related forums, and you will see stories of people taking there cars to garages with difficult or subtle faults - which keep on getting misdiagnosed and costs their owners unnecessary money. Lack of true skill and knowledge costs.

No wonder one hears so many disappointing stories about IT people. Plenty of people in technical positions, who are not technical at all. They just learned how to push a certain sequence of buttons - and have no idea what they do. Then, when things go wrong, or users ask questions just outside of their learned-by-heart sequence - their blank stair, or made-up answers shows that they are truly a driver, not a real mechanic - to continue on the analogy.

So I'm afraid the answer is - if you want to call yourself a professional, and not an amateur - you have to put your back into it and learn your stuff.

xj25vm

Title

I agree with much of this thinking. Maybe "buzzinezz" people who are only interested in the short term bottom line might not like the idea of time being spent understanding stuff and really knowing what's going on. But I can't help noticing people supposedly in charge of fairly complicated systems - who are quite clueless about how they work and what to do when something goes wrong.

The debate between point-and-click interface versus command-line hard-core will probably rage on forever - but I never feel reassured when I am surrounded by people who have very little understanding of what they are doing - because they have been shielded by their favourite interface from the complicated, and time consuming detail underneath. The day when things go horribly wrong, they are useless fixtures hanging at the end of a support line, waiting for the tech gods to impart them the knowledge they have denied themselves by believing in saving time, or in using the "easy way".

FSFE calls on governments to stop pushing Adobe Reader

xj25vm

Title

"The general public are, on the whole, ignorant retards."

The commentard above has summed up pretty well the smell of these sort of initiatives. I'm a big fan of FOSS - and I use pretty much only FOSS in what I do whenever possible. But there was a time when FOSS meant having a more choice, and freedom, and being allowed to do what you wanted with the software. Part of that was also "live and let live" type of attitude. These people make it sound more like "You will have our free software, or else...." Not the sort of FOSS spirit I would ever support.

Mozilla sics sea monster on SunSpider and Google V8

xj25vm

Title

Forgive me if I don't agree, in principle, with people building tools for benchmarking their own wares. It kind of defeats the point.

And people at Mozilla Foundation might do better to focus less on headlines grabbing stunts and spend a bit more time at the grassroots level. We have plenty of proprietary software companies to give employment to the PR wizards. Was hoping that Open Source is about returning the focus on techies and true product quality, not marketeers.

Road test: putting the iPad to work

xj25vm

Title

From where I'm standing, I am happy to give the tablet form a try, but:

1. Lack of proper and full usb host support, including for pen drives, 3g dongles, gps receivers, and any other adapters is an absolute deal breaker. I know some of this is already integrated - but I also need sometimes to test devices - I absolutely need this.

2. I didn't spot anything about printing support. Does the iPad support USB printing? If it doesn't - again, although I do less printing nowadays, I can't imagine working on a device/machine without straight forward access to printing.

3. Battery life - some netbooks (from Acer, Samsung and HP, or even MSI with 9 cell battery) already claim battery life in the region of 10-13 hours - so it seems close enough to me to not make much of a difference.

4. Operating system - at least for what I do - I need something that runs Linux. OpenVPN, Asterisk, ssh, ffmpeg, Navit, Thunderbird, OpenOffice. All the tools I know, love and use daily run on Linux. Some of them would run on OSX as well - but I believe far fewer will ever run on the iPad. I am not making a statement regarding the quality of OSX (or whatever the iPad is running) - merely stating the fact that Linux is a necessary environment for my work.

Yeah, so a Linux tablet, with full usb support, long battery life and decently low weight might just be an interesting option.

Die-hard bug bytes Linux kernel for second time

xj25vm

Title

"This is true, but the existence of vulnerabilities like these are a big deal in corporate, government and educational environments, where Linux is a mainstay. "

Well, I find the above flattering to the Linux community. Which is great. But can it be supported with some proof? Wouldn't something like "where Linux has a significant user base" or "where Linux is deployed in significant numbers" been a more defensible position?

Reasons to be cheerful

xj25vm

Title

"Stay or leave, my professional ethics require me to get the network into a serviceable enough state that no one else will have to put in these kinds of hours on it ever again."

It is very much an interesting question. I respect your obvious professionalism, and passion for your work . The following is not really a direct counter argument to your statement(s). More like a follow on rhetorical musing. I have at times wondered myself where the line should be drawn. How much of it is my personal responsibility, and how much is others'. Some points to ponder are:

1. "this is my network". In way, it is your baby. Like any professional who has worked hard on a project, we all know the feeling. On the other hand there is always the danger of failing to realise that this is a business environment, that all that network and everything that it contains legally belongs to somebody else (unless you are one of the owners), and at the end of the day, as history taught us, even in the highest ranking positions, requiring the greatest amount of skill and talent, no one is truly non-expendable. I know, it's harsh, but it's just the way it works.

2. On occasions, there are employees of a company, in management positions or otherwise, who will willingly take advantage of colleagues who have a passion for their work and high principles. It becomes then tricky to really draw a line in these circumstances between personal ethics and responsibility, and being taken advantage of. For example, one might see pulling a network in shape on a minimum finance and time budget as the responsible thing to do, while their superior might look at it merely as an opportunity to spend less then what should be spent on a project.

As I was stating above, I am not aiming these matters wholly and directly at your situation and your articles. It's more the fact that everything that was talked about contributed to remind me of some of my own musings.

In all eventuality - the spirit in which you do your work has to be commended.

xj25vm

@Guido Esperanto

"I think this and the other (if they are similar) articles highlight issues all around the world in companies that want maximum return on absolute minimal investment., and sometimes it does mean cutting corners."

Really? That doesn't exactly go along with the following from Trevor's own comment:

"Thirdly, the CTO is big on “using the newest software simply because it’s the newest software.” The pressure was on to upgrade all the software to Microsoft’s latest and greatest."

The reality of the matter is that, if you look carefully, many of these extreme feats are wholly avoidable by looking sideways at a project, planning differently, and being realistic about what is truly required and when. Sounds more like a combination of business ego from the CTO who naturally has little understanding of IT systems, coupled with a failure of his/hers IT people to firmly educate him/her on the merits, needs and downsides of a full upgrade.

I do know the thrill of getting the jobs done on the edge. The feeling that you are out there, at the limits of the possible. Feeling that breeze - the breeze of the frontier, the great thrill of pushing your personal limits as far as they will go. And it is great stuff never the less. I also can see that Trevor, like others, has enthusiasm for his work. And that is absolutely great. Every industry, not only IT, has benefited from enthusiasm. We all need it - that's how great work gets accomplished.

But may I suggest stepping out of those IT contractor/sysadmin/technical guy shoes for a moment, and slipping yourself into the shoes of a well-heeled business person. The fact of the matter is that we are in an industry where, according to some statistics, 50% of large projects fail. Can you imagine this happening in any other, more mature industry? What if 50% of buildings the construction industry puts out never make it to the delivery day, or collapse after? And this high failure rate is caused in large part by poor management and planning for those projects that failed.

The fact is that running projects on high risk/low contingency ratios will work few times, you will be the hero for a while. But then the inevitable will happen, reality and statistics will catch up with you and bite you hard in the backside. All those screw-ups you hear and read about, where contractos/sys admins/dba admins loose entire email databases at ISP's, entire business databases being purged by mistake, the wrong plug being pulled, the wrong storage device being emptied. All those disasters causing thousands, tens of thousands or hundred of thousands of dollars/pounds/euros - it's just stuff that happens to others? You will be surprised if you look closely at those stories how many of them were contractors/systems administrators/programmers filled with enthusiasm for their work pulling extremely long shifts (like they did many times before), running through a poorly planned, no/low contingency procedure (like they did many times before). They have been heros plenty of times before - but it eventually caught up with them. And everybody will rate them as incompetents - when the high stakes gamble didn't pay off.

Professional drivers are only allowed to work a limited number of hours before they are required to rest. Indeed, they push around tons of metal which, out of control, would endanger lives. But they operate by comparison a far, far simpler set of controls, then a server administrator. Speaking as a hypothetical hard-nosed business person, I wouldn't let employees/contractors in the work place I am in charge of operate a coffee machine after 80 hours of work - never mind a business critical server. I have to admit that, as an IT guy - I'd get a kick out of the feat - but one and the other are two different matters. The potential for human errors in such an advanced state of exhaustion is astonishingly high. Never mind lack of backup/contingency planning. Just having anybody working so tired on IT systems constituted on its own taking business risks way beyond any sense.

xj25vm

Excuses

All these comments and replies on this article, and the previous ones, reminds me of some stuff I read (and learned out of my own mistakes) a while ago. And that is the fact that the higher you are on the IT ladder - the more political skills you require. IT skills alone are not enough anymore. I don't work at this sort of level or scale - but one thing I learned early on when dealing with clients is that if you don't have enough balls to rein in on the clients/managers decisions when necessary - sooner or later you will find yourself in a very tight corner, with half of the world collapsing around you, working insane hours - and sometime even having to take all the blame for decisions that weren't even yours in the first place.

It is a whole different set of skills, but the sooner you learn to walk away from others' wrong decisions, firmly refuse to get involved in what you know is bordering impossible and constitutes awful planning, the better. Even if it means loosing a lucrative contract, or risking a profitable or promising business relationship. The costs otherwise tend to be a lot higher when everything goes wrong. For one's personal health, business reputation and even finances. Sometimes out of greed and the lure of a well paid project, sometimes out of technical enthusiasm and the attraction of a fresh technical challenge, IT people find it hard to put their foot in the door and say "Enough is enough, this is a bad idea, and if you want to proceed with it like this, good luck with that but I'm not going to be part of it".

Just my two cents.

Ofcom outlines accessibility benefits of superfast networks

xj25vm

Title

Absolutely nothing in this report has anything to do with the speed of the broadband/internet connection. All those things can be accomplished today - at least from the point of view of the current generation broadband speed. There are other limiting factors (software implementations, standards etc.). But can't see where broadband speed comes into all this. Just another piece of political/PR/useless twaddle then? Just another report/research/paper that proves whatever the people who commissioned it wanted to prove. Not.

Post Office complaints: Write to M.BARRASS

xj25vm

Title

Two years back (or so) I had a whole bunch of letters with signed-for delivery not showing up correctly on PO website. Even months after, the website kept on saying that the signature will appear only after the things were delivered - or some non-sense like that. I know the letters did actually make it to the recipient. But I needed the signature as a proof. I finally got around to calling their complaints department, who seemed quite helpful. They sent me about 7 forms to fill in (one for each unsigned letter). As I kept the receipt/stickers with serial numbers etc., I dutifully filled in every form, with the recipient's name and address for original letters, the content of each letter and all other details. After two weeks or so - they sent me back seven more identical forms, asking for all sorts of details they already had in the first forms. I stated quite clearly in the initial forms that there were just paper letters in the envelopes, nothing else. It was like they were just taking the piss. After I have paid several times more to get the letter signed for, then taken the time to wait on their 0845 number for their complaints department, then given them all the details on the phone, then filled in the initial set of forms - they expected me to spent the entire rest of my life following a mesmerising paper trail. Like I needed the £1.28 refund or whatever it was. I thought they might take the opportunity to look into why all those letters were never signed for. So much for customer service.

BT preps nationwide TV network

xj25vm

Title

On one hand it seems that this move will ensure better delivery for *some* tv programming. However, bearing in mind that we only have some of the technical details to hand - I can't help but think that it is all going pretty much against the main principles of the Internet as we know it.

Someone above mentioned the mobile Internet providers and their walled gardens with unlimited/priority access to their own services/portals. For good or for worse, these portals and provider specific services have stayed relatively unpopular so far. And this is pretty much a summation of what BT will be doing as a traffic model - just on a much larger scale. However, what comes directly to mind is the tremendous amount of control the companies involved in the project will have over our Internet connections. Over our access to information. I can't but wonder what will happen when they will be able to either exclude, or make it too expensive or slow to consume TV or video content outside their network of affiliates.

What we have known so far on the Internet, at least to the greater extent, have been access controls at the far end of the connection - e.g. the content generator. This is effectively bringing control in the hands of the middle man - not only by being able to prioritise its own stream, but being able to influence the information stream coming from the competition as well. Similar controls are in place at the moment - but they tend to concern spam and illegal content.

I am not altogether sure the advantages of this situation do out-weigh the disadvantages.

Every tech market loves a monopoly

xj25vm

Regarding Linux

I see here and there quite often arguments and remarks regarding how widespread is (or is not) Linux on the desktop, or in the world in general. I have reached the point where I wonder if this really matters. Going back to the roots, the origins - I seem to remember that Linux (at the least the kernel, that is) grew out of frustration from the lack of control the user had over the system. The fundamental benefit of Open Source was supposed to be the fact that the user could take what he/she wanted, change it, make it work for him/her. And to that end, FOSS software has and is still fulfilling its role.

That indeed might not make it the most suitable system for the least skilled users (but you might argue otherwise), or the system with the highest chance of taking over the world (although it seems to have taken over enough corners of the industry in one way or another). But here we have a system and a large number of pieces of software which can be tweaked, which provide the freedom of access and modification, which supports open standards and fair competition, which are built in the spirit of FOSS. A whole ecosystem of software which represents our principles as a community (no matter how heterogeneous that is :-) ). Well, where I'm looking from, it seems like mission accomplished.

Beeb creates new global iPlayer post

xj25vm

Re: Confused

I can only assume that the whole thing is about creating a new platform based on the current iPlayer - capable of charging for content, managing accounts, taking payments etc. Also, I assume that there will be new negotations involving copyright holders for various programmes, as the target audience would be larger/different. It seems that there might also be advertising involved in broadcasting to an international audience - and that will require its own delivery platform as well.

Just taking some guesses here.

Mozilla lights up joystick, tickles developer gaming bellies

xj25vm

Title

That's all very nice and good - and commendable. But I guess we will have to find somebody else who is actually interested in the browser, the email client and the calendaring application. Various bugs and features are lagging (some of them by years) because there aren't enough developers and resources to address them. But there is enough money for other initiatives.

Among others:

1. There is no solid option for a calendar server (or equivalent for sharing and syncronising) - which would handle hundreds of users and thousands of appointments.

2. There is no proper option for a contact server (capable of sharing and syncronising not only with computers, but also with smarphones of various descriptions).

3. The calendar doesn't handle all that great once you get past 1000 appointments.

I know, all of the above is so '90s - but it is truly useful stuff in the enterprise and beyond. For good or for worse, Exchange + Outlook does it - and I wish there was a bit stronger competition from open source. Users access their email, calendars and contacts on a myriad of platforms - and serious push to define standards (except email - imap is well mature by now) here and to have a set of solid server-side software would mean serious progress for open source in the business and organisational space.

(Disclaimer: I do use Thunderbird + Lightning + SyncKolab + exim + dovecot in small company setups - but serious work still needs doing on the contacts and calendar side)

Ofcom gives 3G upgrade thumbs-up

xj25vm

Three?

How would the increase have affected the Three network? The article didn't delve into any detail and I can't work out why Three was opposed to the extra power.

HP punts MicroServer for SMBs

xj25vm

Not bad

The one with the base price is not bad. If you get some server features in, such as ECC, at least it's not exactly the same as using a pc of the shelf. I don't know about the top end price - it's certainly a heck of a difference.

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