Posts by Slap

It’s a bit of a shame really.

I kind of knew this day was coming really, but it’s still a shame nevertheless.

Whatever anybody thought of MacOS Server after Mac OS 10.6, it did eventually develop into an easy to use and pretty rock solid basic server, with just enough function for SME when carefully configured.

Personally I use it on an old, but still rock solid 2009 20-inch iMac running 10.11 as a general home server. I mostly use it for VPN when in places with public WiFi, but also to sync my contacts and calenders across devices, and obviously file sharing.

I appreciate Apple providing these open source alternatives, but in ll honesty I doubt they’ll be anything close to the “click and go” that Sever offered me - I really don’t want to have to do my day job when at home.

RIP Server. You were well loved. At least by me anyway.

If I’ve read between the lines correctly...

So if I’ve read between the lines correctly the internet giants are removiing 70% of opinions that differ from the “required norm”, and also 70% of uncomfortable facts.

Am I right? These days I feel like I am.

Two Words

Fucking brilliant.

Just what I needed to chuckle my way into the weekend. Nice one.

This is just bloody typical

Quite frankly this is just bloody typical of the UK Government. They want to be the top dog in communications technology, but they just don’t want to carry the can.

Bunging a few million in terms of investment to the carriers with what are effectively only words of encouragement to the carriers to build this just isn’t going to get anywhere when the carriers prime motivation is profit.

If the UK Governmet wants to be top dog then they should man up, grow a pair, put their big boy pants on, and buld the fucking thing with their money, and then recoup the investment by renting the capacity to the private players.

However with the current trend of the UK Government washing their hands of any responsibility, and then moaning when things don’t go their way means this has a about the same chance as the sun going nova tomorrow.

This one’s not quite black and white

We’ve been able to do remote screen sharing since forever on macs. First there was Timbuktu (who remembers that) which crazily was useful over a modem (who remembers those). Then there was the free VNC which I used frequently to support clients. So if it’s just down to screen sharing then there’s a hell of a lot of prior art going on.

However I think that the sticking point here is that on a Mac with multiple user accounts it’s possible to remote into any of those accounts, and this remoting in will work for multiple users simultaneously. I remember being on a Mac OS X server course, back when it needed a bit more than an average chimpanzee to configure, and one of the questions raised was if we could use a single Mac with multiple accounts like a Citrix server. The course leader looked into this and asked Apple directly.

The response was that while it’s possible to do this it would be in violation of the EULA, which only allows such access for system maintanance and support, and not as a working desktop. This is something that I cannot independently confirm, however as the course leader was Apple accredited and had lines into Apple I’ve no reason to disbelieve him

From my extensive experience in the Apple world I do not know of any company utilising ths facility in any way other than support. And then the support workers will be 9999 out of 10000 times logging into an already active desktop to support the user, and then the chances are that Teamviewer will be used rather than the inbuilt remote access.

It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.

When will they learn

When will they learn:-

Biometrics = piss poor security

This isn't fucking Star Trek.

It saddens me

It saddens me, it really does sadden me to see how far behind the UK has fallen in tech services.

I moved away around 11 years ago, and at the time mainland Europe was a little ahead, but not by much. These days it’s a gaping chasm, at least compared to Switzerland and the nordic countries.

We’ve had gigabit fibre to the premises for almost 5 years now, and even before that getting 50 - 100 Mbps was not really a problem unless you lived in the middle of nowhere (which is still a problem but at least you can get a reasonable connection these days)

However there’s a significant difference between how the UK telcos operate and how the Swiss telcos operate. Basically the fibre rollout was government funded and done by the local municipalities. Private ISPs and Telcos then rent the usage of the network. Basically it was an investment by the Swiss government in the economy of the country.

On the other hand the UK has left it all to private businesses, Therefore the people in charge of your internet are only interested in profit and shareholder satisfaction, and won’t do a damned thing in terms of investment until pushed by the government, which apparently they don’t have the bollocks to do.

I say this without even a hint of gloat, as I may well move back in time, and if I do I really do not want to move back to a place that, in terms of delivering tech services, has become a third world country.

Fools Errand

To be honest compared to most of the rest of Switzerland Geneva is a cesspit, and quite frankly would be better suited to being in France.

So, for me, it comes as no surprise that some official would try to teach the Genevans some manners. However it’s a fools errand as their arrogance and superiority complex will ensure that no lessons will be learned from this.

I’m also very surprised that nobody so far has shoved the actress under a moving tram/bus.

Perhaps I can offer an explaination

Perhaps I can offer an explaination as to why this is so, especially in SMBs and corporates.

And that explaination is Deploy Studio. Deploy Studio offers a very fast, easy, and efficient way to image and distribute a standard installation over an internal network

However Deploy Studio is basically a cloner. It’s a bit more advanced than that in that it’s able to fully update the system while doing the clone, but it does not update the EFI.

In order to update the EFI you need to run the actual system installer, which can take upwards of thirty minutes, or longer. A Deploy Studio clone takes around 5 minutes to complete, if not less. So for a Mac admin it’s a no brainer to use Deploy Studio. OK, at least it was when firmware updates were still offered over the Mac App Store.

These days EFI updates are only provided at the point of installing, or upgrading, a system using the official Apple installer (App or pre prepared media), which given the install times means that a lot of Mac admins are going to bypass that in favour of cloning a system.

Even I’m guilty of this when put in time pressure situations, like when we have just a Sunday to roll out an update to 300 seats.

Is this a competition

Is this a competition between James Damore and Kieren McCarthy to see who can write the biggest load of bollocks.

Never have I seen such a handwringing, meandering load of hogwash in El Reg.

I used to come here for the irreverent look at the IT world. I guess El Reg is nothing compared to what it one was if it allows this writing equivalent of a turd on the front page.

The problem with tablets isn't actually a problem...

...because for the last 4 years they've all been more than good enough to do what we want from them. Hence no problem.

For me personally tablets replaced the need for me to carry a laptop around with me.

I still rock an iPad Mini 2. This still does everything I need it to such as being able to remote into servers, general office tasks, entertainment, reading etc. So far I havent really found anything that it can't do, apart from the stuff that I'm not going to do when mobile anyway.

My GF stll runs an iPad 2 - now 6 years old and it still does everything she needs it to, pretty much to the extent that she powers on her desktop about once a month.

To those who say that tablets were a fad: I disagree. The only reason that tablet sales have declined is that there has been no reason to update apart from a very few niche cases. Those tablets sold 4 or 5 years ago are still in use because they already do what people want of them.

And that kind of mirrors the entire computing industry over the last 5 years - It's got to the stage where, for most people, anything you bought within the last few years is already more than good enough.

There's Mileage in this.

There really is mileage in this if, and I mean IF it can be done right.

Most TOTL phones these days are sporting processing and graphics performance on par with low to midrange laptops, and with USB C being able to support video, ethernet, thunderbolt, standard USB over a single connection it's getting to the time it's right for the desktop you can fit in your pocket.

Why oh why

Why oh why do these security researchers always blow their load by giving out all the details of a security problem on the release day of a fix, thus giving all the "bad actors" a chance to capitalise on the situation before some users have a chance tom do anything about it.

OK, I understand that they give the tech companies fair warning, but they totally forget about the users who, for one reason or another, may not be able to apply the fix immediately.

As for me I have no chance to apply iOS 10.3 or 10.10.4 before the weekend as I cannot take the risk that the updates will brick something. OK, generally they don't, but I'm in the middle of a project away from home and the office, so I'm just going to have to wing it.

I also know that the chances of me being hit by this in the next 4 days are minimal, but please, security researchers, give us users a couple of weeks before you blurt you're findings to all and sundry

Tech for Tech's sake

The great thing about the existing SIM model is that you can transfer it very rapidly to another phone in an emergency, or at least you could before they started screwing around with micro and nano sims.

The thing is I've manged to render my phone unusable a couple of times when away from home, and the fact that I could pick up a cheap burner and just stick the SIM has in one instance potentially saved my life.

It's so simple. Just take the SIM out of one phone and put it in another. To fuck up that flexibility would be criminal.

The 4S is not hobbled with iOS 9

The 4S is not hobbled with iOS 9 as long as a few steps are taken.

Turn on "Reduce Transparency" (Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Increase Contrast -> Reduce Transparency)

Turn on "Reduce Motion" (Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Reduce motion)

Turn off "Predictive Text" (Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Predictive)

The last one really helped with SMS and typing in general.

Basically with those steps I have an iPhone 4S, which while not as snappy as my 6, still performs admirably for day to day tasks that don't require the oomph of the A8 processor, which, quite frankly, most normal mobile workloads don't.

Note to advertisers

Note to advertisers:

Static ads are fine, I'll even click on them occasionally if something interests me.

However animated ads are the fastest way to ensure that I will never buy anything ever from the company who's products are advertised.

Agree about the screen size

I totally don't understand this fascination that smartphone manufacturers have with these enormous screen sizes.

Back in April I picked up an iPhone 6 (not the 6 plus) thinking that finally I'd have an opportunity to discover the large screen delights that Android users have had for years. What a mistake. The thing is totally unbalanced in my hand due to the size, it's awkward to pocket, and just plain irritating to use because of it's size. Not to mention the battery is shit.

I used it for a month and then went back to my iPhone 4S, The 6 now lives in my back only to operate as a hotspot and as an oversized iPod (unfortunately my music collection is well over 64Gigs).

I'd be well up for a powerful Android phone if it was done in a 3.5 - 4 inch format. Anything else is just to big to be useful as a phone.

Is this really a suprise

Let's face it, smartphones peaked in terms of usability for most people around 3 years ago. For most there is little point in upgrading unless the old phone has failed or suffered a catastrophic incident.

Apple got a boost this year in that it finally offered screen sizes that most iOS users thought they wanted, which I also bought into (well got "free" on a contract renewal), but I've since gone back to my 4S as it's just more convinient to use day to day.

Gone are the days where a new phone release sparks excitement, and a buying frenzy, as the incremental increases in processor speed and display resolution and size simply do not matter for the vast majority of users when their old phone is doing perfectly well.

Personally I think tech needs to, well, not slow down, but stop with producing new phones every year, and then give people something with a real bang 2 or 3 years down the line. The market is dead partly because of what I've previously mentioned, and that is that small incremental updates on a yearly basis are simply not enough to get people going.

This is actually quite logical

I think Apple has reacted in the best way here.

There are people in Greece who use Apple's cloud and despite having the money to pay for it can't due to the closure of banks as a result of the ineptitude of the government.

So Apple give them a month free. That's right, free. Not a loan, not something that needs to be paid back later, in order to ensure that nobody loses data or functionality. It's simply a tiny bit of relief for the Greeks

I'm no fan of Apple's business practices, but the people criticising this move by Apple are utter wankers. Doesn't the average Greek person deserve a bit of leeway at the moment? (Tip, if you say no then you're an utter wanker as well)

The solution is bloody obvious.

As the title says. My solution is to keep hold of my "old" mobile, as opposed to selling it to get the latest and greatest, and then repurpose it with a cheap PAYG sim card from a vendor that uses a different network to my main phone.

If one network goes down then I have the other - it's so bloody obvious that I'm gobsmacked whenever I hear of somebody winging that their network is down.

we had 2g, then we had 3g

I'll happily remind you.

It stands for Long Term Evolution. A standard that was designed to be able to evolve as new radio technologies emerged.

My sentiment is pretty much the same as your's. I can already receive data faster with my phone than I can with my wired internet connection at home with LTE (but that's because I haven't yet activated the fibre connection in my flat).

The truth is that if they're going to start talking up yet another mobile data standard already then we'll end up with a half built LTE infrastructure as the telcos will hold back, not wanting to invest, while waiting for the new standard to be finalised. Add to that, that the government will want it's wedge by holding the telcos to ransom - er, I mean auction off the relevant radio spectrum for the new standard.

Currently as it stands here in Zürich sitting in the back of a bar with only 2 bars of LTE signal I got just over 20Mbps pretty consistently using that Ooklaa speedtest benchmark - which is actually 10Mbps faster than the bar's WiFi. Out in the open I get 50Mbps reliably and in some places 100Mbps is achievable.

That's way in excess of what I need for my mobile workloads, so a better LTE infrastucture covering weak areas would be way better for me than yet another standard.

I'm just waiting...

I'm just waiting for the first "Well you must be bloody deaf then" comment

Which is the typical retort of an audiophile who's just had his snake oil system slighted by accepted and proven science.

I'm a hobby producer, and yes there is a lot of advantage to using hires audio throughout the production chain. It gives you headroom and it gives you the ability to apply multiple effects without significant quantisation errors. However for the end product delivery there's no point in doing anything more than 16/44.1.

The primary reason is that the vast majority of people will listen to the music on transducers that can't even follow a 16/44.1 accurately,

Even those with truely accurate transducers, if such things exist, will not benefit from anything higher than the CD format as the extra information is simply not audable.

Hires audio is simply the music industry's way of digging into your wallet again for age old stuff that you've already got.

POTS has its place

POTS certainly has it's place, even if it is just as a backup to VoIP

I can't comment about BT as I haven't lived in the UK for nearly 10 years now, but we recently had a major screw up with a european DNS server which basically killed the internet for those of us who didn't have the nous to spot where where the problem was, and to alter our DNS settings (probably about 80% of people didn't have the nous)

That also killed any telecom funtions for those who have telecoms over fibre. A major problem.

POTS however continued to work fine, for the most part. Local calls were OK, but long distance were hit and miss which means that...

...BT might actually be onto something. As far as I understand a whole lot of telephone calls that start with POTS end up getting backhauled over the internet anyway, before being dumped back down to POTS at the other end. So in the event of a major internet outage you're likely to be as buggered with POTS as you would be with VoIP, at least for anything going beyong the local exchange.

Bratwurst with Rösti

Living in the German speaking part of Switzerland the typical post pub nosh would be a Bratwurst with Rösti in a spicy onion sauce, or simply just the Rösti.

Rösti, for those not familiar, is shredded potatoes which are then fried - par boiling the potatoes first is my preferred way and also adding diced bacon or ham. The Bratwurst you an pick up anywhere in Switzerland (Substituting a Cumberland sausage would probably work as well), and the sauce I make from your standard gravy plus onions and a bit of tabasco.

Once the Rösti is done you can then move it to the oven and melt some cheese over the top of it for a bit of extra something.

That said I don't cook it that often as it's so much easier to go to a restaurant or Bierhalle and get it served for a pretty cheap (by Swiss standards) price.

Thunderbolt never took off, eh

"Thunderbolt has always been fast, and has the nifty trick of connecting peripherals, carrying data and bringing video to monitors over a single cable — but it never took off."

No shit Sherlock. The only mainstream manufacturer using thunderbolt is Apple. They've been putting on their consumer gear since 2011, and only on their, ahem, pro gear since early 2014 (yes, I know the mac pro was released late 2013, but nobody could get hold of one until 2014)

You can pick up a 1TB usb spinning drive for, i dunno, going by the prices here in Swtzerland, for around £50. An equivalent thunderbolt drive would be topping £300, and that would still be spinning rust at it's heart. No consumer is going to go for the thunderbolt alternative. In fact I believe the vast majority of pro users would also baulk at the cost of TB preipherals, with perhaps the exception being RAID storage.

It was, still is, a damned good interface, but ruined by price gouging and licensing costs. I have 3 macs with Thunderbolt interfaces and never once has a thunderbolt device graced the appropriate orifices.

Not this again

Somebody or organisation sues another somebody and/or an organisation despite not having any product on the market, or in development for that matter. Not to mention that given the news on Oculus over the past couple of years they could have instigated legal recourse at any time. Seems totally suspect that they waited until Facebook bought it prior to lauching legal action

You guys with the big good ideas in the US should come over to Europe pronto. Our patent laws are somewhat less constrictive (we don't do faffy bouncing screens for example - they're inadmissable as they're a software defined function), plus the plaintiff, upon losing, will likely have to pay legal costs for both parties.

iOS devices potentially have the a similar problem

When you delete all content and settings on an iOS device all it does is erase the encryption key - it doesn't actually erase anything. Good enough you might think, but with things as they are in the infosec business I'm sure there are some working on a way of getting around this.

Maybe

Maybe they should concentrate on fixing and optimising the current buggy and pretty crap OSes before plowing on to the tenuous "New Features" that practically nobody will ever use.

Rock and a hard place

Include Kashmir on the Indian infographic then shit will fly.

Include Kashmir on the Pakistani infographic then shit wil fly.

Make Kashmir it's own region then shit will fly.

You can go left, you can go right, or you can go straight down the middle. Whichever way you go you're still going to piss somebody off.

Let's face it

Let's face it, it doesn't matter if you run OS X, Linux, another flavour of UNIX, Windows, iOS, Android, we're all fucked at the end of the day.

To be honest

To be honest, for the kind of duties I see this device being put to I'd rather have an iPad with one of those Bluetooth keyboard cases.

Sure the iPad doesn't run OS X (well it does but that's an argument for another time) and there's no finder, but by using goodreader as a file manager I could get along fine within the remit of what I would expect to do with the new MacBook.

I'm sure the new MacBook has it's market, but even as a long time Apple user I'm not in it.

I'm calling bollocks here

I'm calling bollocks here, however I do maintain an open mind and would like to see independent testing regards to signal degradation in combination with the amount of power harvested. 30% is a wild claim and without that testing this remains in the same category as magic balls, cable lifters and $2000 interconnects in the audiofool world - bullshit and snake oil.

If you're going to outsource there

If you're going to outsource your manufacturing to these places WTF do you expect. You've handed over the Crown Jewels. Given the wage levels in these countries no normal drone is going to be able to afford the real thing, hence copies which satisfy the the local market, and perhaps beyond, are par for the course.

Personally I can't blame them.

VSTs all the way for me - at the moment

Ok, I really love that proper hardware synths are coming back onto the market, but it's a market that I'm not in - partly because of space...

...but tracing cables, plugging things in and out, setting up various communication channels (MIDI in this example) and then troubleshooting the whole lot when it packs up is what I do as a day job. When I get home I don't want any of that shit - I just want to make music. Therefore VSTs (or AUs as they are for me) are my choice.

Is this really good form

Is it really good form shout from the rooftops about a recently patched vulnerability and then reveal exactly how you can exploit it, literally a day after a patch has been announced, but knowing full well there are thousands, if not millions, of systems that are still unpatched, where some are likely to remain unpatched due to essential legacy software?

While I commend the security researchers for their work, I utterly damn them to hell for revealing the exact details of the exploit a mere day after the patch was released.

While I, like you, are always interested in the exact methodology, it's not always a good thing to make it public. In this case especially considering that it was simply one person who discovered the exploit, and yet now the whole world now knows about it, and can now use it.

While security through obscurity is generally an extremely bad idea, sometimes we need this obscurity thing to last a little longer.

I've had a look at this

I've had a look at this new photos app and I've come to the conclusion that, as an Aperture user since 2008, I've been well and truly butt fucked. I have over 120,000 photos in that thing with around 15,000 fully edited. Moving to Adobe would be, well I'd rather jump off a cliff to be honest.

Ok, I know that software doesn't last forever and I'm reluctantly ok with that, software houses go out of business, that happens. But when a company drops one of it's pro packages, which a lot of professional users rely on, when it's making money hand over fist just entrenches the idea that Apple's is saying "we don't give a fuck about you, piss off".

I now do a lot of work with media production houses, specifically on the music side, and since Apple announced the end of aperture I've been cautioning users on doing long term projects with Logic, now I'm actively advising them on moving to Cubase or Ableton depending on their requirements. I'm no longer recommending Pro Tools as by all accounts Avid is going down the shitter. I do, however, understand why people need Pro Tools.

A tad miffed at the moment