If they don't like them
They can all just give their unwanted fivers to me! I'll have 'em even if they're dripping in suet.
Posts by TechicallyConfused
124 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Sep 2012
Vegans furious as Bank of England admits ‘trace’ of animal fat in £5 notes
Windows Server 2016: Leg up or lock in?
Is hyperconvergence about to take over the enterprise data centre?
Tuesday 13th September 2016 09:00 GMT
Weren't data centers populated by all in one compute, storage and network systems waaaay back in the 70's and 80's? I'm sure they were. . .now what was the term used for those systems . . . hmmm!
The way I see it, if you can afford to buy these HCI systems then you should also be able to afford the skills to properly manage and maintain them because no one with any sense is going to leave that to the vendor. If you can afford those skills then you will probably find it cheaper and more efficient to have build out your own environment specific to what you want. Unless your storage needs equally match your compute needs you are going to be over provisioning one or the other with these single SKU systems.
MAINFRAMES. . . that was the term I was looking for...
HCI is just a lazy way for IT to buy kit in more cases than not and in all cases a cheaper way for vendors to try and differentiate themselves - at least it was until they all came up with more or less the same offering.
Sony wins case over pre-installed Windows software
Microsoft takes shot at Amazon as it wraps up UK cloud data centres
Thursday 8th September 2016 08:59 GMT
Steady on big fella. You are forgetting that in order to re-invent, optimise and streamline you require skills, planning, vision, and a host of other executive buzz words. To sign an Azure PO you require a pen......
Half the time I swear it is more cost effective to use your existing SQL licenses and move to AWS rather than Azure anyway,
Donald Trump promises 'such trouble' for Jeff Bezos and Amazon
Monday 29th February 2016 14:31 GMT 
Gotta love it
I mean really, what's not to love. Election time in America is like driving along the motorway and seeing a full on 500 car pile up on the other side of the road complete with burning corpses, body parts littering the road and big dripping chunks of meat splattering around after being exploded a half mile into the air.
You KNOW you should be horrified. You KNOW you shouldn't stand and stare. You KNOW the spectacle will haunt you for years. You KNOW that it hurt a LOT of people,
You ALSO know that you simply can't look away because morbid fascination has rooted your eyes to scene to see if it can get any worse and you are both thrilling and appalled by the prospect.
Of course the other great thing about election time in the USA is watching the Canadians enjoying the show.
Bill Gates denies iPhone crack demand would set precedent
Tuesday 23rd February 2016 13:19 GMT
Really?
Do you really imagine that the NSA or GCHQ can't decrypt an iPhone? I mean REALLY?
If I were a cynical man I would suggest that this furor is just smoke and mirrors because in fact it only took them a matter of minutes (maybe hours) to crack the phone but they just don't want people (well terrorists) to know that this isn't a safe form of usage/storage anymore. Oh and they probably need a "Legal" way to get at the data so it can be used in a court.
Brit censors endure 10-hour Paint Drying movie epic
Ex-TalkTalker TalkTalks: Records portal had shared password. It was 4 years old
Tuesday 9th February 2016 12:38 GMT
Not just Talk Talk
We have had a "BT Engineer" calling us trying the same scam. His downfall though was that he simply wasn't credible as a BT call based engineer, he wasn't Indian and I could understand what he was saying, so immediate alarm bells there from the outset.
If anyone from a services company calls you ALWAYS ask for the name and a call reference and tell them you will call back. Go online, find the relevant number on the website and call that and give them the reference and name.
Microsoft hammers first nails into Enterprise Agreements' coffins
Tuesday 26th January 2016 15:04 GMT
No Shit Sherlock
"“This is unquestionably the most significant announcement thus far in 2016,” said Neil Lomax, exec veep for worldwide sales strategy at Microsoft licensing solutions partner SoftwareOne."
You don't say.... and us being almost at the end of January and all. How have they managed to keep the lid on so much for so very long!
'Phantom' menace threatens to down Xbox Live, PSN at Xmas
How to build a server room: Back to basics
Wi-Gig signals are bouncing off the walls, can't settle on the sofa
Oracle brews perpetual, all-you-can-eat database licence
Tuesday 8th September 2015 11:46 GMT
Sounds a lot like a subscription to me
So let me get this straight, you have unlimited deployment rights but it is based on an assessment of the size of your estate. You pay every year based on this, and I assume you would have to reassess each year.
So forgive for probably sounding stupid but this sounds more like a perpetual subscription than anything else and also suggests that you are effectively going to have to audit yourself every year to assess your estate size.... which after a year or two of unlimited deployment, don't give a crap about clusters or vSphere 6 type apathy because hey you have unlimited deployment, your estate is suddenly bloated beyond all believable bounds.
Magnet-wobble wireless charging system dishes out a respectable 10 kW
Capita: Call centre workers, can you fall on your swords? Please?
Friday 26th June 2015 08:49 GMT
Re: Deflection through obfuscation
I'd laugh hard if this statement wasn't just so bloody close to the mark.
I think though what really staggers me is that companies are STILL stupid enough to sign into contracts with Crapita. I mean their central services even treat their own component companies like crap and fleece them shamelessly yet outsiders still think its a good idea to get into bed with the worst kind of money grubbing scum outside of the drug cartels (or politics).
Oh, wait! My mistake. I forgot. Crapita wins business by lining key pockets. Go find out who just bought the Bajan mansion and you'll find the bloke the signed on the line.
US students prevail in rocket-powered egg challenge
Chips can kill: Official
Tuesday 9th June 2015 09:29 GMT
Missing the point of this new warning
People, people, people
You are all missing the real point of this new warning. It is a slow research day for them and they need to secure their next round of funding. No one is going to pay cash money to them if they just say "We've been feeding rats a bunch of chips and the fat little ba**ards keep dying, we think it might possibly be this, or maybe it's because there legs don't touch the floor anymore."
Don't eat eggs, do eat eggs, butter kills you, butter is good for you, no salt, eat salt, the world is flat, the world is round.
The one and only sure thing about science (and apparently food science more than anything) is that we as a species know very little about it because we appear to change our minds on an annual basis as to what is good, what is bad, what works and what doesn't.
BUT, these people need to feed their families and at the end of the day what they are doing, in their own way is no different to a car salesman flogging someone a car they don't need and can't afford. You just have to take everything they say with a pinch of salt.... umm, LOW Salt, no Salt. Oh hell I don't know.
J
Microsoft's certification exams: So easy, a child of six could pass them. Literally
BOFH: Getting to the brown, nutty heart of the water cooler matter
There's a BIG problem with Microsoft's VDI rules
Wednesday 13th May 2015 08:08 GMT
Re: VDI still too much for a small business
Wrong again. You need and RDS CAL to connect to any remote Windows system as a user sessions (i.e. non admin connection). The VDA license is to compensate for using a non Windows OS on the base system to connect and use a Windows OS on the hosting system. The RDS (Remote Desktop Service) CAL is needed for the terminal session itself.
Tuesday 12th May 2015 14:48 GMT
Re: Educational
Wrong. A VDA license is a "DEVICE" based license not a user based license. If you have 100 terminals and 20,000 students then you only need 100 VDA licenses, NOT 20,000.
You would need 20,000 RDS CAL's to cover all the students that use the terminals but the applications presented by the Citrix servers would only need licensing on the number of DEVICES that they are being accessed from - i.e. 100 to cover each terminal, unless of course you have user based licenses but in this scenario you just wouldn't.
Amazon boss Bezos' Blue Origins declares test flight 'flawless' ... if you overlook one snafu
Ex-cop: Holborn fireball comms outage cover for £200m bling heist gang
Thursday 9th April 2015 07:54 GMT
Hollywood Eat Your Heart Out
Does anyone else think this sounds like a cliched movie script? If this is really how it went down then you have to take your hat off to the sheer audacity and imagination of these guys.
Though I hasten to add that they deserve locking up forever given the staggering amount of damage the could have caused and the lives they put at risk.
Apple's Tim Cook and Salesforce's Marc Benioff DECLARE WAR on anti-gay Indiana
Monday 30th March 2015 10:50 GMT
Re: It's never black or white.
Bull-*cough*-shit!
All I will say is this, once again religion is being used as a catalyst to make people’s lives just that bit less enjoyable. If god loves as all as these hypocrites say then how can we make a law based on religious belief that clearly smacks this down?
How free will people feel when they walk down the street and every third shop fronts a sign stating "Straights Only, No Gays or Transgender".
Talk about taking a walk back in time 50 years.
Got a killer Microsoft or Oracle cloud deal? Start sweating
Tuesday 24th March 2015 11:07 GMT
Nice Article - riddled with crap though
While I agree that sales drones are being incentivised to flog cloudy tat irrespective of whether you need it I would also point out that it is down to the buyer to do their due diligence and ensure they both understand what they are buying and the terms under which they are buying it, especially when it is a significant spend like an EA which you have to live with for at least 3 years.
Equally some of the assertions made in the article are just plain wrong and the author should go do his homework: -
"Big customers with a volume Enterprise Agreement may have Software Assurance. This program entitles you to receive the next version of a specific product for free if it’s delivered in the two- or three-year life cycle of your SA. In other words, check the small print: you might already qualify for Office 365."
WRONG. Just plain and simply not correct.
1. If you have an EA then there is no debate about whether you "may" have SA. SA is always rolled into an EA.
2. Office and Office 365 are considered two distinct products with their own SKU's. Having Office covered under your EA gives you no rights at all to "upgrade" to office 365 because it isn't considered an upgrade in the same way that having SA doesn't not allow you to "upgrade" from office standard to office pro. It is a different product edition not just a different version. In order to be able to use Office 365 against your on premise office estate covered under an EA you would need an "Office Add On" SKU included in your EA which entitles you to move some or all of your enterprise estate to 365 and move it back if you wish. However you must consciously choose to add this SKU and pay for the pleasure of it.
3. SA doesn't entitle you to anything for "free". You have paid for the right to upgrade (among other things) in buying SA or signing up to the EA.
Tuesday 24th March 2015 10:51 GMT
and another thing...
"DeGroot recounts how one customer accepted Office 365 for 15,000 users under a three-year contract. After three years and following early, unsuccessful tests, the customer is only now talking about a wider pilot. He reckoned the company had probably already spent $5m and was about to sign away another $5m on Office 365."
More fool this customer for not trying before they bought. It would take maybe 10 minutes of effort to google Office 365 migration issues and fill them with enough trepidation to not just buy it and brazen it out. Trial it first, do some tests, work out the kinks and then sign up for me. Don't buy 15k seats up front, keep your existing office SKU's in your EA and either add a few 365 seats in (this doesn't need to be enterprise wide) or use an "Office Add On" SKU to give you 365 rights against your existing on premise estate which can be either used or not. If things don't work out and you decide you want to step back to in premise you can and then you drop the "Add On" license at the next opportunity.
The issue as I see it is that the sales people work incredibly hard to sell for their own interests a lot of the time, which in fairness to them in kinda their job. However it is increasilngly apparent that the people in charge of IT and procurement (mainly those in charge of IT though) simply don't do their due diligence and spent the time understanding what they are being offered.
Laziness is it's own reward, just not for the lazy themselves.
iTunes snafu: DNS fail borked Apple's app & iTunes stores for 10 HOURS
SanDisk launches 200GB microSD card
BT fixes home hub drop-out glitch ONE YEAR after denying flaw existed
Tuesday 24th February 2015 13:30 GMT
Re: Shocker. . . well no, not really.
Yes, all filtered up. I tried different filters as well. There is no way it is a signalling issue on the line because it exhibits the same behavior when my mobile phone rings in the house, as noted in my initial post.
Anyway, short of the HH catching fire and burning down the house I can't be arsed to ring BT again to try and sort it out. Not worth the additional health insurance premium going down this route carries.
Tuesday 24th February 2015 12:05 GMT 
Shocker. . . well no, not really.
So I have had a BT HH 5 Type A since January 2014. Initially I had all kinds of issues with it dropping and restarting but this stopped after a month or so with the BT chaps in India claiming it was the line speed adjusting.
Since then it has been relatively stable but does have period where if the land line rings then Infinity connection drops and a restart is required. During my due diligence checking all the phone sockets I noticed that in fact the damn internet connection was dropped when my mobile phone rang as well. This was linked to a sure signal which made for a good laugh.. . .mobile connects to sure signal, sure signal connects to home hub to off load mobile call across the interweb, mobile phone rings, I answer, the internet drops, so does my phone call.
I have never gotten to the bottom of this problem but since it is now only occasional I have decided it is less stressful to suck it up than try and deal with BT Customer Support who made me want to end my life on any number of occasions.
I have just checked my router and the last software update: BT Home Hub 5 (Type A) | Software version 4.7.5.1.83.8.204 | Last updated 11/01/15
I've not had a problem for a number of weeks so it'll be interesting if they break it when the "new" update is applied.
J
BOFH: The Great HellDesk geek leave seek
Apple: Fine, we admit it – MacBook Pros suffer wonky GPU crapness
Vodafone didn't have a £6bn tax bill. Sort yourselves out, Lefties
Wednesday 18th February 2015 17:18 GMT 
Fresh Air
If it were possible to read a "breath of fresh air" that is what I would just have done.
Great article, explained a set of simple issues nice and simply. While I'd love to be able to tax Vodafone £5 Beeeelion just for screwing my bill up so many times ,,,,,, Well, let's just say I wish that the "news" could report this is such simple terms but I suppose it would turn something sensational into what amounts to a "non-event mass with a quantum probability of zero".
Hollywood vs hackers: Vulture cracks Tinseltown keyboard cornballs
What was Tim Cook worth to Apple in 2014? $9 MILLION, apparently
Friday 23rd January 2015 13:16 GMT
The real potential money is in the share options
£6M pa doesn't seem astronomically high given the performance of Apple and its worth.
I notice they don't mention the share allowances in here, which is where the real value is probably hidden.
It also doesn't note the value of other benefits and expenses allowance.
2015: The year of MAD TV science, but who can keep up?
Thursday 22nd January 2015 17:08 GMT
Requirements for selecting my next TV
1. Will it keep my kids quiet?
2. ....
Nah, that's it. I'm sure I'll enjoy all the bells, whistles, blacks, whites and dots but honestly, I could give a crap about them. They manufacturers are trying to create a marketplace out of thin air if you ask me. It really isn't that long ago that we were on CRT sets with PAL that lasted 7 - 10 years typically.
The way they are going now we need to buy a new set every three years or they go out of business. It's stupidity.
Okay for public displays and events and stuff like that I can see a market but again unless it is an event selling new technology features in other visual technology who even really notices this stuff unless someone is pointing it out to them.
Microsoft wants LAMP for wireless mobe charger
Tuesday 20th January 2015 11:25 GMT
Re: Fantastic
Yep, I was about to post more or less that but you just saved me the effort of doing that bit of research.
From a purely academic and engineering point of view it would be a very interesting project that may well in the future deliver some useful application but charging a phone in the most inefficient manner imaginable is probably not going to be one of them.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
