Posts by Paul

I just deleted the mms settings

I just deleted the mms settings off my phone, I'm a three customer. I never use it, and want to ensure I can't accidentally use mms.

I don't care if I cant receive mms. Also, chances are receiving mms messages is still a security risk.

given the way security is going, I think airports and airlines will simply sedate passengers and load them into coffin-shaped pods and stack them up. You'll get loaded like cargo, and then woken up at the other end of the journey. If the plane ditches, the pods will be ejected and can float. If the plane crashes, you can be buried in the pod, no need to scrape out the hamburger meat inside!

Any technical information?

Does it run Linux?

User replaceable battery?

Expandable memory or soldered in?

Many years ago I inherited a Sun workstation to look after because I'd shown some interest in learning about it. I was fairly proficient in DOS, and had used unix a bit at university. It was the only unix box in the company, and had been installed with the new fangled Mosaic web browser and had a 4800 baud modem to attach to the internet, wow! People would login and spend 15 minutes doing this new email thing!

One job was to apply a bunch of patches to upgrade the system. The instructions said to reboot into single user mode, and make sure the /tmp directory was empty. I did that, and deleted all the files in /tmp. But I did "ls -la" and there were a load of files starting with a dot. So I did "rm -rf .*". After a long time, I wondered what it was doing. I ran "ls" and it failed, I forget, but it was clear the machine was f**ked. The rm command had traversed to .. and had deleted pretty much everything.

The boss asked why I'd not backed it up, because the machine had a floppy drive! I think it had an amazing 40MB drive, so I said it was impractical to feed 60 floppies in (720K), even if we had them. He wasn't impressed. He later bought an adaptor card to use with a Plasmon (I think) optical disk storage thing.

So, I ended up reinstalling the system from scratch.

I'm so, so sad for them.

Oh wait, I'm not.

Sad news. BBC news really positive about his life, and showing him meeting Mandela and others, but failed to mention he was ripped off.

William Tell Apple turnover

Surely if you're shooting at Apples, you should be using arrows and your name should be William Tell

availability zones

And now we find out how many companies blindly use Amazon without reading the documentation and understanding they need to use multiple availability zones!

they didn't get to ask what he thought about languages where whitespace was part of the code?

Just as well Apple are so benevolent

When the level of control that Apple have over their closed ecosystem, it's just as well they're so benevolent and caring towards developers and customers.

Imagine how it would be if they ignored customers' needs and raised their prices every year and obsoleted useful features, or made their products unrepairable?

more fibre

we've been told we need more fibre in our diet, well, we also need more fibre in our internets, however, I want my fibre in my house, not in the next street.

I've heard this before, alongside coffee cup holders and tippex on the screen.

I usually pick the best deal from the LowEndBox blog.

I'm currently with ChicagoVPS, pay less than DO and get a higher end box; their support is good too. Downside is they don't do IPv6 and don't appear to have any plans to.

This is kind of a non-story.

Anybody who relies on a single device or single service to store valuable data deserves to lose it. It doesn't matter if you use Google Drive, Amazon Glacier, Box, Dropbox, Spideroak (just off the too of my head) or any other of the many services, you should always have replicas of your data.

Sometimes I've been asked to help because the person can't print, say, a Word document.

So I go over and operate the computer, and let them watch me see it being done. I'll open the word document in question, click the right buttons to print it, and we'll walk over to the printer where everything is printed just fine.

Then I'll say "it seems to be working now", and "how were you trying to print it?" and they'll mumble something incoherently whilst looking at their feet.

So where is IBM statement about and Power8 and Power9 in this?

I'd be Ok with paying a few thousand to get fibre in to my house, BUT, it's the fact I'd then be stuck with paying a bill of hundreds every month that I can't justify.

Sure, I know that there's a big difference between domestic/contended and business/low-contention services, but the cost of fibre once deployed surely has the same price (to an order of magnitude)?

Minimum viable product

A friend worked at crapita, there were two things he hated. One was having to commute into London. But by far the biggest was crapita's mantra of "minimum viable product". I.e. What is the least they can do to satisfy the contractual terms? This allows them to put in low bids for contracts, knowing they'll pick up lots of work fixing design flaws.

This, coupled with basic IT illiteracy* in the government and the default choice of taking the cheapest, leads to the usual clutterfunk situation.

* e.g. I recall the head of the home office (I think) complaining about how salaries of IT people were too high because she didn't think it was a skilled job!