Posts by TonyJ 1595 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Dec 2010
"...I cannot believe some of the absurd and ridiculous comments on here... try to learn and understand something before you make absurd comparisons that have no relation to what’s going on... you show your lack of base intelligence..."
Notwithstanding the aggressiveness in that comment, one could ask "why"?
I mean...it doesn't seem to have factored into HP's decision to buy this company without proper due diligence, and against the express advice of the then CFO.
I've long been suspicious that the interview panels for Microsoft's "ranger" or "architect" or whatever they've degraded it to, these days, where the candidates are presented "real-world type" scenarios are just their way of getting gullible people to design customer solutions for them, whilst paying thousands for the privilege of doing it. ;-)
I don't wish to root my phone (and even if I did, it borks various apps so I wouldn't) but for anyone else in the same boat, I can recommend the NoRoot Firewall.
Basically it installs as a VPN client and routes all traffic through itself, acting as a proxy, allowing you to turn off access to any app on a granular basis.
And it's free.
It also defaults to blocking (as it should, of course) so a new app needs to be allowed through.
Not just in meeting rooms.
I've found in my travels for work that many hotels have a perverse design whereby the mains socket closest to your bed is 20 feet away. That's in a 10 foot square room, by the way.
They just seem to be far enough away that makes them unusable for plugging your phone in to charge overnight and still be close enough to turn the alarm off without waking up every resident of the small town that the hotel is otherwise situated just far enough away from where you're working to be a pain in the arse for travelling to and from but close enough your phone alarm acts as a some kind of air raid siren.
So I learned many years ago that a mains extension lead is popped into my case and the problem is usually solved.
I thought that when I took delivery of my PC Specialist custom built Defiance II in August 2015. The 4k display panel is exquisite in terms of colour and brightness etc, not to mention detail (although until very recently, Windows' high DPI scaling was a bit crap).
With all of the above, the display is incredibly thin but in a plastic case. I was disappointed at how much flex there was in the display and expected it to break either the display panel or the hinges in fairly short order.
Fast forwards almost 4 years and it's as good as new and that thing has been up and down and across the length and breadth of the country with me.
They're surprisingly tough things these days.
We have some of those here from when they first introduced the format.
I have to say it seems like quite a sweet spot - a small, light, portable machine with a much more usable display size.
Although I'm typing this on a Yoga, I'd have no problem with one of those at all.
Way back in the day, when Halo was released for PC, it didn't take long before various cheats were available - eveything from aimbots that could get a head shot every time, however laggy a player was, through to semi-transparent scenery so there was nowhere to hide and so on.
You often saw one player who was just "too good to be true" ruining the game for legitimate players.
Overnight it ruined what had been a decent (for the time) online experience. Had there been anticheat technology such as now, this would have been much less of an issue.
Which shows my age as that's about the last time I played a game online.
That has been true but the more you start to dig into the workings of our governments over the last few years, the less it seems to hold up now.
We're had reports just on here on El Reg talking about closed court trials, businesses being compelled to provide information but not being able to tell anyone they're so compelled.
We've got new laws that allow for mass surveillance and monitoring and we are half a step away from a national firewall that would be the envy of China - all used under the "Terrorism, duh" or "Think of the children" monikers.
Here in the UK, I believe it's still true that there are more CCTV cameras per person than anywhere else.
When you're taking part in a march against, say, Brexit, then the government don't really care and it helps to give the impression that they support freedom of expression and democracy with one hand, whilst they're trying undermine it slyly with the other.
I've said this many times over the last few years and if you follow the various stories on here and elsewhere, it gets even more embarrassing for HP.
El Reg ran a recent story telling how the then FCO was trying to convince the CEO that this was neither a good fit for them nor a good price to pay but was sidelined.
Ultimately, it all smacks far more of HP trying to save face over what was a catastrophic purchase rather than proving there was any actual illegal activity going on.
HP rushed in, failed their due diligence, failed to listen to very senior staff warnings and got their fingers burned. Tough shit, springs to mind.
Caveat emptor and all that.
"...I don't know you personally, so can't comment upon whether you're actually a "c**t" or not... However, it certainly doesn't say much about Sony's camcorders if even their own dealers think they're "poxy", does it? ;-).."
Oh I can be. But that time, I wasn't being, for once. :)
Many years ago I had a Sony camcorder.
It developed a fault, so I took it to the local Sony shop/repair centre.
Many weeks and different stories later, I was "on hold" when I heard the muppet in the store say "It's that c**t again asking about his poxy camcorder, what shall I tell him this time?"
As you can imagine, that conversation took a turn for the worst for them.
They never did repair it but I seem to recall I got some form of compensation and the normal costs to investigate a non-warranty fault were waived.
We've all wanted to say these things but let's face it, whatever the provocation, it's not exactly professional. And, I feel, we've all been the caller at some point, boiling over with frustration at the endless drones who cannot or will not assist.
"...One of my complaints about modern technology is that it appears to have crossed the threshold to become 'magic' for many people...
I'm almost in agreement with this sentiment but I see it slightly differently - for me, certainly in the UK, we've gone from seeing engineering and science as worthwhile activities, from holding people with an interest in those fields to turning them into "weirdos".
Look around - we've got people who want to be "famous" when they grow up. Not a famous singer, actor, sportsperson etc, but simply "famous".
We laud men who can kick a ball around but can't string a sentence together as somehow being "heroic".
With this in mind, is it really any wonder that people look at, say, a TV and think it's driven by magic and pixies?
It's a rather sad indictment of our modern society.
I saw a meme doing the rounds recently that went something like showing a picture of a EDL-type march and the caption "Yes Gary, Mohamed the brain surgeon is taking your job, you with your three GCSE's and all" (paraphrasing it, but you get the drift).
"...If you are talking about Windoze machines, that's quite strange, as RDP isn't enabled by default....."
Now I'm torn.
I'd upvote for the point but I'd downvote for the use of "WIndoze". What is this? 1997 AOL? lol
I guess staying neutral and not voting either way is the best move, so erm, have no vote.
"...Remote Desktop Protocol you say ?
You mean that thing that is practically the very first thing I disable when I reinstall a PC ?
That's okay then, carry on..."
What? You disable the thing that is disabled by default? And has been since at least Windows 7.
I assume you are claiming that you disable remote desktop connections? Or do you mean you block 3389 which is disabled until you enable remote desktop? I'm confused.
Or are you talking non-Windows machines?
I once did an anti money laundering and corruption "course" online.
At the end was a four question test. The pass rate was 80%...they were baffled when I explained the pass rate therefore was 100% since getting a single question wrong meant you feel below the threshold given.
And they still struggled.
I'm not sure if I am amazed or not at the cavalier "Only 4 people complained" response...like the number of complaints is directly proportional to the problem.
It appears, to me, that the full name and mobile numbers were displayed, and that alone is a GDPR breach.
Time to bring out the big stick
Back in the 90's I used to support a theatre. Among other events, snooker was hosted there.
This was back in the day of Netware and coax :)
The "IT Manager" - i.e. the lady that had been elected to look after everything was a nice person and had picked up, quite well, the usual checks to do before phoning in, such as making sure all the BNC adaptors were connected, and that the terminating resistor was present.
So when she did call, you tended to know it wasn't going to be anything immediately obvious or basic.
She called in and it was my shift on the hell desk, so I took the call.
Pleasantries out of the way, and a bit of troubleshooting later, I asked her to tell me what was on the screen on the server. Since it was in the basement, it meant a small trek, so she hung up and said she'd call back when she'd noted it down.
A few minutes later she called back to say "Don't worry. Found the problem - the basement has flooded and the server is off...."
Ok then...
"...I can give you a list as long as you like of Chinese, Russian, American, Dutch, etc... IP addresses who are persistently scanning our web services for vulnerabilities. We know where a lot of it comes from and block them already. The country is already known as a source of badness. *Nobody cares*.."
You're not wrong - when I first moved to Sophos UTM at home, I was stunned at the amount of traffic from these - and other - countries that were scanning, probing and otherwise attempting to behave nefariously.
I blocked all traffic from these countries.
Same again when I moved to XG from UTM.
It was enlightening to see the sheer volume of crap.
It does fuck me off when IT specialists throw scorn on less-IT literate people for not understanding these - and other - scams.
Tell me - would you have known about the one that did the rounds where people were called by someone pretending to be from their bank? They were told "For your own security, please call your back straight back using the number on your card/statement and ask for <name> in <department>"
Safe in the knowledge that they were dialling the right number but not understanding that because the caller had simply put them oh silent hold, the call had never ended, they actually never called their bank back and spoke to the scammers.
Hmm? Is that also the fault of the victim because they don't understand telecoms to that extent?
I've only dealt with these scammers once when a neighbour asked for my help - they'd installed remote control software akin to TeamViewer and the "support company" were calling them back.
At the time I worked for Microsoft.
It was hilarious but short lived when I asked him to spell his name so I could look him up in the GAL and we could carry on over communicator as I also worked for Microsoft.
They hung up on me post-haste, unfortunately. I was looking forward to more fun and games.
Indeed. I once attended a site to try and restore lost data. This is the late 90's
They had a backup regime which consisted of an elderly secretary who's PC had a tape drive.
Her written instructions were very clear - each morning, take the [previous days'] tape out of her computer and replace with the one that had that had today's day written on it.
Don't mess with anything and don't do anything other than this.
Which the lady had followed religiously.
Alas the backup software hadn't run so there were no backups.
The poor lady was close to tears as their "IT guy" was trying to give her hell. I don't think he appreciated my putting the blame squarely back onto his shoulders in front of the MD.
He then, of course, tried to allude that the fault was mine. I genuinely laughed in his face.
One springs to me mind where my then boss emailed me telling me to install the Exchange 2010* Management Console onto a couple of Citrix servers
Then tried to blame me for not uninstalling the Exchange 5.5 management console from them.
Because I should have somehow known...
Of course I pointed out his failure to instruct != to my perceived failure to act and since the two consoles can be present on the same machine to manage both environments, how was I supposed to assume?
I can imagine the screaming if I'd taken it off without being told to find it was still needed.
*Might have been 2007. Was a good few years ago now.
"...I know my tidal rate is 18l per minute. So 36l at 20m..."
Just noticed this. You might want to check your maths there. 20m = 3bar, not 2.
Mind you, I'm making assumption myself that when you say tidal rate, that you mean surface air consumption?
If also suggest you rethink you're buddy having smaller cylinders.. what happens if you need to share gas? You should always cater for the heavier breather
"...My old BSAC DO died while using a rebreather, this is back in the day of question marks over the Buddy Inspiration, an O2 hit can knock you out faster that you can say Ja...."
An O2 seizure in and of itself isn't fatal. It's by virtue of being underwater - you drown when your regulator slips out of your mouth.
On my RB, I have a gag strap. I can do this because of my open circuit bailout being integrated into the loop. It means if I did get an O2 hit and associated seizure, the loop won't drop out of my mouth and I shouldn't drown.
It's something you can do on a rebreather because you can't buddy-breath on them. For that, my buddy and I have our open circuit bailouts configured with a regulator we can pass to another diver if required.
We don't do it on open circuit because we follow the practice of handing off our primary to another diver. PADI expect you to offer your octopus but this has a number of possible problems - first a panicking diver will grab the first regulator they see which tends to be the one in your gob.
Secondly, you know without fail that the regulator in your mouth is functioning and has a breathable gas.
Our backup is on a rubber holder round our necks so it's a quick pull and use - and yes, we practice doing it by touch alone.
Re' Algorithms are notoriously different between different manufacturers,
Not so much anymore. Shearwater and OSTC use the same algorithms and will and give the same results. You can also run something like v-planner that uses the same algorithms and get your dive profile to write out on slates.
Suunto however do use their own closed-source algorithm which they don't publish details on and you can't use things like v-planner to match them so you're then in that very scenario you talk about, relying on a single point of failure and maybe if you remembered, their own software with no checks and balances.
In terms of setting the gradient factors this is where getting trained by someone like Mark Powell is a benefit. You actually get taught what they mean, how to set them and how/when/why you might want to change them.
Also for any technical diver, I'd say his book Deco for Divers should be a pre-requisite before you even start training.
Ultimately it's a fact that all decompression tables/computers/algorithms are best guesses to an extent. You can dive a profile that should be "safe" and still suffer DCI.
@M.W. - Helo2 is far from a bad dive computer other than using proprietary closed algorithms which make it impossible to plan on most widely available software and have the same runtimes.
But the big one is the screen. Ok if you're in clear waters. Crap if you're in somewhere with low visibility.
It should be taught from the earliest levels and reinforced on higher level courses. A wave, an errant fin or even your own hose or hand etc can all lead to a mask on the head being lost.
I have a bungee in my left thigh pocket of my drysuit.
Things like spools and a spare mask are clipped onto the bungee. If I lose a mask, I can open the pocket, pull out the whole lot and find the mask easily to unclip from the bungee - all one handed.
"...Yes there are advantages to them but they do come with potentially increased risks and divers using them also put themselves in riskier situations but in the diving community there has always been that certain element who do appear to have a death wish..."
Ignoring the second-hand market, you cannot buy a rebreather unless you are trained and qualified on that model and can prove it. In many cases you can't even buy spare parts.
I see divers do silly things all the time - from diving twinsets without being trained on them and having no idea how to do a shutdown, or being trained to do decompression diving, to rebreather divers diving with no open circuit bailout of any kind, to divers diving beyond their training - into overhead environments (it's only a wreck right...it's not like a cave, right?), below the MOD of the gas they're on, diving with out-of-test kit (although good luck getting a fill on out-of-test cylinders) etc etc etc
"...Don't you mean a high pressure hose, your tank will empty fairly quickly in that scenario compared to a low pressure hose ?...
No, I don't.
As counter-intuitive as that is - a high pressure port is tiny - literally a pinprick in size, so a blown HP hose takes a long time to empty cylinders. On many dives, long enough to surface.
A low pressure port is large - several orders of magnitude larger. A low pressure blowout will drain near-full 12l twins in around 35 seconds.
I was always taught that PADI stood for "put another dollar in" due to their high fees and requirements to buy brand new text books for every course and not write on a separate notebook and then resell your text book.
Also, Pay Again, Dive In-between
And let's not leave BSAC out - Buoyancy? Sink And Crawl
"...Yawn...
Maybe, just maybe, diving is considered a recreational hobby for some people? Therefore to go diving you don't need to be a *serious diver* [see 'no true Scotsman']. Suunto do pretty well out of their products so plenty of people buy them. I still have a stinger that works fine. So I'm not sure why you 'have an issue with this'. For sure any dive kit sure be recalled straight away when found to have faults in multiple units, but what are you saying - Suunto should have been shut down regardless of this incident as everyone should only be a serious diver and therefore if you're not buying high end expensive makes then you shouldn't be allowed in the water in the first place?
As for manual calculations - the whole of your dive course will be spent on learning manual calculations, creating dive plans and working off manual air cylinder readings. However a dive computer makes life easier especially when ascending, caught in currents or when visibility is poor...."
Way to take things out of context.
I have an issue with people blaming equipment first and themselves second. Dive incidents are almost always down to diver error - and even most equipment failure can be prevented by a few simple visual checks of kit before and after dives.
Also, what I am saying is that relying on wireless kit underwater (which all Suunto integrated computers use) without having an SPG and depth gauge is stupid.
I am also saying that there is never any excuse to run out of gas unless you pop a low pressure hose.
Anyone can count. Any diver should know that at a depth they use X times more gas than at the surface - and if you're in most of the world using the metric system it's dead easy - twice as much @10m, 3x as much at 20m and so on... therefore if they're still down there thinking "hey my gas use is zero and my cylinders are full" (or some part therein) then they are quite simply stupid.
If you know your gas for a particular dive will last, say 60 minutes and your air integrated dive computer or SPG (because you kept that, right rather than rely soley on that little transmitter pod?) half an hour in is not saying you're at 50% or thereabouts then even without adding up you should know something is awry.
But as a diver you know all of that already.
Not sure why you got the downvotes Ken - a timing device and a dive plan written on a slate is a good backup strategy (see my other post below).
There are diving watches with nice big luminous hands and dots that will suffice but people tend to prefer something electronic - I have a buddy device that does a bit more than just timing and it's slipped into a pocket.
Mind you, if I'm on my rebreather, it has a Shearwater computer on my left wrist and I have my OSTC on my right wrist. The OSTC is independent of the CCR/Shearwater so acts as a completely independent backup.
Which means between my dive buddy and I, we have 4 "full" computers and two HUDs
"...The really scary stuff was rebreathers. These are bits of kit that take the air you breath out, scrub the CO2, add the oxygen back in, and let you breath it again. Advantages are much smaller tanks of compressed oxygen rather than air (8o% nitrogen), and no stream of noisy bubbles to scare the fish. The disadvantage is that if the oxygen replenishment fails you die before you realise there is anything amiss. One horror story among many: a device that reset itself to "off" when it got knocked..."
I wondered how long it'd take to get to the scare stories of rebreathers.
I dive a Closed Circuit Rebreather (CCR) manufactured by a company called JJ.
They can be more dangerous but if you use them properly, get properly trained, and use your brain then they are actually, in many ways, safer than open-circuit breathing for lots of reasons, but here's a few:
I can stay down MUCH longer on a CCR - in some cases, hours. That means if I have a problem, I am not panicking that I have to sort it before my much more limited time on open circuit is over.
I always get the optimum gas mix for the depth I am at (dynamically), so my decompression times are always optimised and I feel fewer ill effects than on open circuit.
They have multiple failsafes and backups (two independent computers - one of which is a coloured HUD right in front of my eye), 3 oxygen cells and in my case an open circuit bailout - at the flick of a lever I am off the rebreather.
Yes, they can kill you interesting and quite sudden ways if you're not careful, but they are actually safer than open circuit in many ways (for one thing, the sheer cost alone puts off part-time or holiday divers). The level you have to get to in training and certification before even considering them is a very high bar.
Sad and scary and they should have acted when informed, but also, I have some issues with this.
Firstly, no serious diver would use a Suunto (and certainly no technical diver). There are plenty of alternatives out there - OTSC and Shearwater to name just two. Don't get me wrong - if you only ever dive recreationally and in crystal clear, warm waters, they are ok(ish) but they're usually bought as a first dive computer because the novice diver knows no better and their local dive shop where they happened to train and qualify, stock them.
The pods that send pressure information to a dive computer are notoriously flaky. Anyone without a traditional SPG is just asking for trouble.
However...a diver should also understand their SAC (Surface Air Consumption) - mine is roughly 16l per minute, so I know on a relaxed dive @ 30m I'll be using 4 x that (64l/m). I also know that in my twin 12l cylinders filled to 200 bar, I'll have 4,800l of gas...so I know how long that will last me under normal circumstances and I will plan a dive profile that takes that run time into account inlcluding any required decompression + enough to buddy breath if required. I'll have the dive profiles (different scenarios for ending the dive early/overrunning etc) with timings written on a slate so all I need is a time source and I can still safely manage the dive.
Too many divers - especially holiday divers are all too willing to just jump in the water and not plan what they are doing, or at least plan the dive profile. Too many rely entirely on a dive computer to tell them when to end a dive. Too many divers go in the water with no thought to what happens if there's an issue or without any kind of backup gas source (and as much as I hate 3l pony cylinders, they're just about better than nothing).
Dive computers aren't a replacement for a brain.
Many years ago I got called out to a site in, as I recall, Hammersmith in London.
Quite a long drag for me as a Midlands lad.
One of my colleagues had built the customer a shiny new Citrix farm. With an Evaluation copy of Windows NT4 TSE
Because he erroneously believed that you could simply add a license.
Which back then, you couldn't.
And it wasn't as graceful as the reboot every 24 hours. Oh no...this was a BSOD with a license violation error every 24 hours.
Cue a rebuild of the environment.
At least it was documented...lol of course it wasn't.
Unfortunately the guy who did the original build was a few days into a two week holiday abroad so he ducked that cluster-stuff nicely.
2X were a company competing in the same space as Citrix and RDS.
Although I never had any direct contact with their products, their licensing (way, pre-Parallels acquisition) was always far more favourable than Citrix.
And I know of companies using it and their comments always suggested they were happy with their choice.
I was always impressed with the coherence mode of Parallels (I believe that's the name they gave it? Where Win apps appear seamlessly as if they were native Mac apps) - it always seemed to j"ust work" - which in the IT world, as we all know, is high praise.
It'l be interesting to see how this pans out.
My dive buddy and I were travelling back from Malta with diving rebreathers.
Because of various logistical issues we had cylinders. We always carry the expensive, sensitive electronic head units in our carry-on and everything else goes in the hold in a peli case.
We always depressurise and open the cylinders which is a requirement to take them on any aircraft.
Having just passed through security, dealing with an extremely pleasant border guard who had taken our luggage to one side for further inspection and questions about what it was etc, my name was called on the tannoy.
I had to go back out of security to open both peli cases to show that the cylinders were indeed opened and depressurised.
Everyone was most apologetic at the delays. They promised they would treat our kit with respect and care and I watched as they reapplied cable ties and very carefully put the cases on the conveyor along with an "inspected" sticker.
When I returned to security, the same border guard recognised me and waved me through (i'd left my carry on with my dive buddy).
At every turn they were polite, respectful and even apologetic whilst going to great lengths to explain that they have a duty of care to the aircraft and other passengers to ensure the cylinders are depressurised.
I've heard stories (admittedly always second-hand) of rebreathers being "inspected" going through US customs with some kind of probe - puncturing the counterlungs and rendering the rebreathers useless until spares are bought.
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