* Posts by TheVogon

3511 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jan 2013

Windows 10 free upgrade offer ends on July 29th

TheVogon

"I found out after I'd upgraded that it was temporary free licence and they considered a change of motherboard a different PC and that the license wasn't transferable."

So exactly the same as most people's existing OEM license that came with their PC then.

TheVogon

Re: People will do what they did before

"Most will get an Open Source hypervisor (Xen or KVM)"

KVMs market share is about 1%.

"Some will get a Microsoft hypervisor."

Hyper-V has over 30% market share.

"Microsoft isn't top dog on servers or endpoints."

According to Forbes, Microsoft have about 75% market share for servers.

Restaurant booked, flowers ordered ... Microsoft has a hot date for SQL Server 2016

TheVogon

Re: Who'd want SQL server

"http://www.pg-versus-ms.com/"

That page supports what I said about Postgres performance sucking. In between lots of largely uninformed rants that are basically moans that MS SQL does certain things in a different way that he clearly doesn't understand - for instance "I don't know how easy MS SQL Server is to update".

TheVogon

Re: Microsoft Lifetime Software Assurance

"You can recover from microsoft and its suppliers only direct damages up to u.S. $5.00"

So $5 more than if you used Postgres?

TheVogon

Re: Who'd want SQL server

"So you request benchmarks yet provide anecdotal evidence? Remind me not to hire you for advice."

An example of the many similar comments I see, and of my experience:

http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/60zlrwuyqb.fsf@dba2.int.libertyrms.com

Postgres is generally way way slower than MS SQL server and whilst SQL Server has no difficulties at all handling vast databases with 100s of TB, Postgres runs into multiple scalability issues at anything over modest sizing.

TheVogon

Re: Who'd want SQL server

"when PostgreSQL is faster"

Do fee free to post some recognised benchmarks to back that up? In all recent examples I have seen, SQL Server was much faster.

"better"

How so? Vastly smaller feature set, much less support from other products, and more security vulnerabilities don't exactly seem like that to me...

"and available for free?"

If your time, cost of additional hardware for required similar performance, and security and system capabilities have no value to you - and you don't need support?

The 'new' Microsoft? I still wouldn't touch them with a barge pole

TheVogon

Re: The lock in Question

"My experiences with MS phone support have almost exclusively been transferred to the far east. Namely: every single time I want to exercise downgrade rights. That's two hours per bloody key, every time."

That's NOT professional support. That's license admin.

Professional support is accessible here if you don't have a subscription / other support options:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/gp/offerprophone?wa=wsignin1.0

In many Microsoft support calls over a number of years I have never had anyone who didn't speak English fluently.

TheVogon

Re: The lock in Question

""2) per call support costs."

The prices are per incident, not per call.

What competing products do you use where you get free phone support?"

It IS free if it's found to be a fault or bug in Microsoft software - the incident is credited back.

Yay! It's International Patch Your Scary OpenSSL Bugs Day!

TheVogon

Re: To those screaming about OpenSSL again

"And how often does Microsoft patch their version?"

Not as often as OpenSSL!

"Are you sure that the dozen or so MS lawye^wcoders are up to the same standard as the hundreds of eyeballs looking at OpenSSL"

Microsoft source code is available to organisations for inspection / analysis too.

These "hundreds of eyeballs" looking at OSS don't seem to actually make much difference - if in fact more then the odd security researcher even bother looking. Some of the recent and very big OSS holes in Bash and Open SSL were 2 decades old...

Wi-Fi network named 'mobile detonation device' grounds plane

TheVogon

Re: The kind of idiot who does that on a plane...

"Determine the MAC address, look up the OUI, use WiFi tool on another mobile to look at signal strength.. could figure out which part of the plane it's in, and which type of device it's likely on."

That's the 2 hour delay explained then. By which time the perpetrator had no doubt simply turned off his hotspot...

Opower, my power: Oracle spends $532m to get some utilities cloud, er, power

TheVogon

Re: Oracle's buying an IoT Cloud

"because most enterprise IT people I know are avoiding Oracle as much as they can these days"

+1

AWS outgrows its own resource numbering scheme

TheVogon

Re: Mathematics

"Why limit the length at all?"

Because of potential buffer overflow vulnerabilities? Database schema requirements? Software tool support? That they are not likely to need more possible resource labels than there are particles in the universe?

Microsoft's Azure and Office 365 growth slows

TheVogon

Re: Revenue is not margin

"Amazon makes 25% net margins on AWS."

Amazon's annual and quarterly reports show large on-going losses on AWS. You could argue that this is due to massive on-going investment, but anything suggesting it's currently "profitable" is quite clearly not the case.

TheVogon

"Microsoft "intelligent cloud" does not equal cloud. It equals cloud plus Hyper V"

Hyper-V Server is a completely free product. Zero cost with all features enabled.

Microsoft's "intelligent cloud" in terms of reporting does NOT include on customer premise solutions.

TheVogon

Re: Rapidly changing (negative) dynamic for Microsoft

"but Amazon makes a ton of profit on AWS. It is their most profitable division."

Not sure where you get that from, but Amazon's financial results show AWS is a massive loss maker - and is the main reason they nearly never declare any profit.

TheVogon

Re: Rapidly changing (negative) dynamic for Microsoft

"The fact that Microsoft is feverishly attempting to integrate Redhat Enterprise Linux with Docker Containerization into Azure Cloud Computing"

Microsoft are making it so that it integrates with Windows server too. Don't forget Microsoft have had a container solution for many years via SoftGrid / App-V so have a lot of experience in this space.

Besides, Azure (Hyper-V) scales better and is more efficient than KVM, so it makes sense to run your Red Hat cloud on it too if you want Red Hat.

This is why Azure is growing market share faster than AWS, and Microsoft overtook Amazon in cloud revenue a few quarters back.

TheVogon

Re: Office 365 stinks.

"In constant currency, Intelligent Cloud was up eight per cent"

8% a quarter is ~ 47% growth a year.. So still on target for $20 billion from cloud in 2 years.

Ad-blocker blocking websites face legal peril at hands of privacy bods

TheVogon

Re: Click here to view this title.

"I live in Poland so £5 will buy a barrel lol :) (of Vodka)"

No doubt with product labels in Braille, and also certified as a high performance motor fuel...

TheVogon

Re: Hooray

"You really think EU is not owned by business?"

Nope - it's an improvement on the American model - instead it's owned by corrupt and unelected bureaucrats...

Snafu! BT funnels all customers' sent email into one poor sod's inbox

TheVogon

Re: Keep your e-mail seperate

" "I have supported 28 million email accounts and 80 million emails per day.""

And from 1 inbox too....

NZ Pastafarians joined in noodly wedlock

TheVogon

Re: Bunch of tosspots

"is because societies have tended to function reasonably well and flourish under Christianity"

Society tends to function reasonably well and flourish in countries that have Rabies too...

TheVogon

Re: Finally, a GOOD religion

"I though Rastafari objected to "Rastafarianism" - on the basis that calling them an "ism" is calling them a cult"

Let's check - oh "Catholicism" - yep - no wonder they are upset !

TheVogon

Re: Finally, a GOOD religion

"In all seriousness, it's a spoof. I don't really see this as much different to any other "themed" wedding,"

Or much different to any other religion...

TheVogon

Re: Bunch of tosspots

"they jump on a trendy new, look at me I'm different, non-religion religion. aka cult"

They don't show any signs of going down the cult route just yet - for instance having someone who claims to represent their god on Earth. They can leave that to the catholic church...

And how would you define a "non-religion"? - what they claim to believe in is a lot more reasonable, possible and believable than most other religions that I can think of!

Google found 760,935 compromised web sites in a year

TheVogon

Re: 760,935 breaches Google detected

As usual it's nearly all OSS software holes being successfully attacked despite Microsoft IIS having a 32% market share of all web servers - as per Netcraft. (That's less than 1% behind the market leader - Apache).

Oracle plans Exadata-as-a-service, in cloud or on-prem

TheVogon

"MSFT is now giving away SQL licenses for free to any Oracle customer "

But you have to agree to pay maintenance so it's not entirely free. So Microsoft is getting an on-going revenue stream...

Google broke its own cloud AGAIN, with TWO software bugs

TheVogon

Re: Storing your Companys' commercial secrets on Google Cloud ...

Fortunately, only the tumbleweed rolling across their near empty cloud noticed the outage...

BlackBerry boss mulls mid-range Androids

TheVogon

Re: Couldn't agree more

"No it doesn't. I bought one, it sucked compared to the 1020 in many ways. Sure, unlike the 1020 it can take the photos fast from launch, but that's about it."

If you didn't upgrade the firmware it shipped with. When it was shipped there was already an upgrade that addressed the issues you mention. I have both (my kid now has the 1020) and the 950 photos are noticeably superior. The review of the 950 also points out how much better than the 1020 the 950 camera is due to the improved sensor, optics and flash.

TheVogon

Re: Couldn't agree more

"I have a Lumia 1020. Great phone, but now stuck on Win 8.1"

It runs Windows Mobile 10 just fine.

However if you want a replacement for the 1020, look at the 950 / 950 XL - It has one of the best cameras of any currently shipping mobile.

How to not get pwned on Windows: Don't run any virtual machines, open any web pages, Office docs, hyperlinks ...

TheVogon

Re: Allowing a VM to corrupt the host is a sin

"I mean really, so much of the hypervisor stuff is done in the hardware nowadays I'd think that someone was asleep at the wheel, a code kiddo, or a malicious agent. (Hmmmm.)"

I seem to recall Amazon, Rackspace, etc. having to panic patch a similar hole in KVM not so long ago?

Windows 10 debuts Blue QR Code of Death – and why malware will love it

TheVogon

" trying to grab the error code on a Windows blue screen, which only flashes up for 500ms"

It's likely in the event log. Also the code is usually displayed for a few seconds as the OS will complete a crash dump before rebooting.

Websites take control of USB devices: Googlers propose WebUSB API

TheVogon

Re: Where to begin?

"1. I want drivers to install locally"

This - once and it's done. This is a solution without a problem...

And allowing websites to "control USB devices" sounds like an invitation for new types of viruses and spyware. As Google have a pretty awful security vulnerability record with Android and Chrome, it's hardly reassuring that this comes from them either.

UK competition watchdog gripes to Brussels about Three-O2 merger

TheVogon

Re: BT+EE

"Can someone explain why the BT merger with EE was considered acceptable but this is not?"

Because BT didn't own any other UK mobile networks?

However I would ask why the EE / T-Mobile merger was OK and this not....

Bash on Windows. Repeat, Microsoft demos Bash on Windows

TheVogon

Re: How is this different?

"It won't spy on you and runs smoothly on much less powerful hardware."

Third party benchmarks at RTM showed that Windows 10 outperformed the latest Ubuntu in many common use scenarios on the same hardware...

TheVogon

Re: Hmm.

"Vulkan is coming. You won't need a proprietary driver soon".

PC gamers probably won't care by the time it arrives. Direct-X 12 is here with similar performance and feature benefits now.

TheVogon

Re: This isn't Nan friendly

"And fortunately Linux has AppArmour and SELinux (depending on distro) to do that too."

But that's a selection of Elastoplasts on top of a broken design, not a proper ACL model to start with...

TheVogon

Re: It will have the same limitations

"For starters, directly interfacing to block devices from the shell"

Yes it can. For instance https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/hh849882.aspx

TheVogon

"After years of never fully being able to kill a machine in the shell (hardware issues aside) I'll be able to experience under windows 10."

You have been able to do that from a command prompt for years. Try

Shutdown -f -r

Or if you really mean from the shell, you need:

Restart-Computer

TheVogon

Re: Stealing VMS

"Its a bit slow on spawning processes"

Which you need to do relatively rarely. However it's lightening fast at starting threads and fibres...

TheVogon

Re: It's just like...

"Hardly an impartial source of opinion are you?"

You must point out all the impartial posters on this thread that I am distracting you from? I must have missed them...

TheVogon

Re: It will have the same limitations

""Windows simply cannot do what Linux can do under the hood"

Such as?

"Windows doesn't need very much to be POSIX compliant, so they may well have added the missing bits."

Windows is already fully POSIX compliant with SUA etc installed - and has been for many years.

TheVogon

Re: It's just like...

"... putting lipstick on a pig."

Well, yes. The Windows 10 GUI is rather an improvement on Unity....

TheVogon

Re: This isn't Nan friendly

"The first time she tries "rm -rf /" I won't be responsible for my actions!"

Fortunately Windows has a proper ACL model that can deny even the "root" user from being able to delete critical files...

TheVogon

Re: Hell is indeed freezing over

Yep - just the new version of Services for Unix - which was able to run a *NIX shell and utilities on Windows since at least a decade ago, and was supported up to Windows 7. Move along, nothing to see here...

Although I suppose it's the only way we will ever see "the year of Linux on the desktop" - seeing as there are already over 275 million Windows 10 installs out there....

Linux is so grown up, it's ready for marriage with containers

TheVogon

"All Windows is expensive"

Well no - Windows is commonly the lowest TCO option for many corporate uses - and additionally you only need one set of support skills if you have uniform environment.

What would likely be more accurate is to say that virtualising much of his server estate would lower his on-going support and licensing costs...

TheVogon

"Hyper-V does look promising but the need to run WS20xx is a hurdle"

You don't need to run Windows Server. Running Hyper-V under Windows Server is optional. Hyper-V Server is a standalone hypervisor that runs with all features enabled without Windows Server.

However, even if you do choose to run it under Windows Server - it's not a hurdle at all. Especially as if like most companies - and as you mention - most of your servers already run Window Server.

Microsoft rethinks the Windows application platform one more time

TheVogon

Re: Although 97% of desktop computer users prefer non-Apple OSs

"That must be why iOS and Android/Linux are only 98% of the smartphone market, which is 3 to 4 times the size of the PC market."

Actually according to Forrester, there are now over 2 billion PCs - which is somewhat more that the size of the Smartphone market (~1.8 billion). And >90% of those PCs run a version of Windows.

Microsoft smells Musk, splashes on 'Mune' space program

TheVogon

Re: April fool?

"But why “Mune”?"

See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3858372/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Maybe they are moving to the Moon for tax reasons?

We wrap our claws around latest pre-Build Windows 10 preview

TheVogon

Re: Bad version

"I had to roll my insider preview back as the graphics locked up or the login screen hung."

Check you are running the current BIOS and latest OEM drivers...fine here.

TheVogon

Re: I wonder if the Edge update fixes the inprivate not being private issue

"I have noticed that Edge has a problem with it's inprivate feature not working.

Namely it remembers URL's from previous inprivate sessions and shares them with the normal edge sessions"

Yes that was fixed on Insider builds a while back.