Posts by welshie

Batteries and renewables

Any data centres will have battery storage, which normally is just enough to run the systems until backup generators are up to speed, or in some cases, where all data is replicated offsite, long enough to shut down or migrate processes to another site.

Increase the size of those batteries, get the local renewables to charge those batteries. Use the batteries as a buffer, and any surplus generation (or battery state of charge greater than required for generator failover) can go straight into the data centre power, reducing the draw on the grid.

By all means, have on-site generator backup running on some heat source or other, because the bigger the data centre, the more there is to lose if any power source goes down.

Net result is data centre has cheaper than normal grid power, is more self-sufficient. Choice of fuels for the on-site backup generator is down to economics and local availabilty of the fuel.

Nowhere near as bad as the SNAFU with NT4

Back in the days of NT4, when it only shipped with IE2, to visit microsoft.com to download a more up to date browser or service packs (no Windows Update back then), you had to use a web browser.

IE2 didn't support http/1.1. www.microsoft.com didn't support http/1.0 (at all, it redirected to an error page)

Still, I guess that taught a generation of Windows support techies how to slipstream an install CD or PXE install rather than rely on retail installs.

Might it be the proposed EU citizens registration for the UK?

4 million is an rough estimate of non-British-but-otherwise-EU citizens that may be living perfectly legally in the UK that might end up having to apply for residency permits depending on how the Brexit negotiations go. It seems that the politicians pushing for Brexit have just realised that there are no accurate numbers, and to get accurate numbers will require some sort of census or audit.

The number of people involved in doing this task will probably be more than there are EU civil servants.

Giffgaff was a MVNO in Jersey

Last time I was in Jersey (July 2016), Giffgaff appeared on my phone as a MVNO - it looked no different than being in the UK, and was charged at the same rates. The handset didn't think it was roaming.

Is this all a storm in a teacup, and only applies if the handset roams onto JT instead of picking up the MVNO?

Of course, it's possible that Giffgaff no longer appears as MVNO in Jersey.

different frequencies

Where two (or more) operators share the same mast, this does not mean the same coverage footprint, the lower frequencies have greater coverage than the higher frequencies, so it depends on what frequency bands the operators have on their licence.

"in your area" billboards outside their franchise areas

The way that the cable franchise areas were originally set up led to large chunks not actually being allocated to a cable operator. Big digs and lots of civils work in the early 1990s meant they multitude of little cable companies could never pay back the expenditure, they slowly got merged into what became Virgin Media, who have had no major new network build-outs in their areas for about 16 years now.

If you are outside the old franchise areas, forget it. They're not coming, even if they erect enormous billboard adverts saying they are here.

I used to live in a franchise area, but they refused installation because my flat was more than five metres from the street junction. Now I live a hundred or so metres outside the old franchise area (as the crow flies, but no cable in the street). Again, no chance.

I knew this, but I still found time to waste the 25 minutes time of their salespeople replying to an addressed (to the property) flyer, and suggested they should only send such stuff out in streets that they have actually cabled.

Wait. No. That's can't be happening

The printer driver has detected that the inkjet head is still succesfully squirting ink, and the cartridge should only hold one thimble full, not a bucket load that the device's owner has hooked onto the side via a series of tubes. The printer will now go into a bit of a decline and sulk in a corner, intentionally delaying printouts until the user acknowledges that the impossible has indeed happened.

Server component still has security bugs from before then

So NT 3.1 was a Netware killer? Not quite. It was positioned to steal market from another of Microsoft's products, er. OS/2 Lan Manager.

For what it was, OS/2 Lan Manager was reasonably good, had some sort of security model, with file system permissions and acccess control lists, which is pretty much what Windows NT stuck with until Active Directory came along, and it was only then that the Netware market share started falling.

The Server, and Workstation service in Windows NT was a direct port of the OS/2 Lan Manager code, and took all the bugs with it. To this day, there's a security bug that I raised with Microsoft for OS/2 Lan Manager in 1991, that still isn't fixed in the latest Windows server product. Microsoft's solution to this seems to have been to hide the exploitable functionality from the GUI and documentation, but it's still all there.

makes you wonder why have the chip

If the chip only contains stuff that can be optically read from the passport, and if it needs to be optically read for data that is needed to retrieve data from the chip, what's the point in the chip, other than supposedly to spot when the optical data and the chip data doesn't match? I take it that the data on the chip is in someway officially signed to prevent someone tampering with it or faking it.

HP Omnibook

No mention of the HP Omnibook 600C? This was a neat little machine that could run windows, and as a pointing device had a pop-out little mouse-on-a-stick thing that sprung out of the right hand side of the machine. Interesting form factor.

http/1.0

The reason why many modern web sites don't work too well on ancient web browsers is http/1.1.

The original NCSA Mosaic did http 1.0, from a day when there were enough IPv4 addresses to go around to give each web site its own IPv4 address. Forward just a few more years and it was obvious that wasn't going to be sustainable use of a finite resource, so along game http/1.1 which allowed virtual web servers to run on a single network address. Everyone jumped on the bandwagon, for it was a good idea.

However, there was a time when Windows NT 4.0 came with a version of Internet Explorer that only did http/1.0 yet Microsoft.com didn't have a default web site on their web server IP address (which would make it available to older web browsers), so you couldn't access their web server with their web browser to be able to download updates.

I have to touch type

...because the symbols on this laptop keyboard have worn out through many weeks of use, and the cheap plastic keys are already pitted and gouged. The symbols seem to be as flimsy as transfers in an Airfix kit.

Can't beat the old buckling spring IBM Model M for sturdy build quality. These days, people are unwilling to spend money on proper build quality, especially when a laptop that the proprietary keyboard design it attaches to becomes obsolete in a few years, yet the old model M goes on, 23 years on. Dell clicky keyboards, circa 1999 were okay.

The suggestion about wifi on trains making HS2 unnecessary is bogus. Passenger numbers on trains are rising, the network is running over capacity for much of the time. There are only so many carriages full of wifi swilling, pasty eating, self-loading freight that can fit down a railway track in a given time.

The main requirement for HS2 is to rebuild capacity into the network, much of which was taken away in the Beeching Years, because it wasn't just branch lines that were cut, the main lines, such as the Great Central Railway, along whose route HS2 is due to follow in part.

And so, if you're (re-)building a brand new railway track, as an engineer, you'd at least try to build it to modern standards, and capable of high speeds.