Posts by Down not across

If I had to interview someone and they were more familiar with routing than switching, they'd be a no go probably for even an entry level position.

Switching may seem as relevent as Y2k nowadays, however its far faster than routing, and all of your User Access and Distribution networks absolutely rely on it.

In larger networks routing can be preferable to trunking for faster convergence times as opposed to STP/RSTP and to avoid having to have some VLANs on the switches where they would just pass through.

CWT

arlson Wagonlit Travel? Doesn't Accenture also use them? For some reason I feel the urge to laugh. No particular reason.

I think quite a few of the large corporates use them.

I worked at a place using them and the amusing thing was, I could've gotten much cheaper room prices booking direct than what "corporate rate" via CWT was. Backhanders are us I suppose.

Just when I thought the world couldn't get any crazier.

Careful there. To quote great DA:

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Re: Don't give me no static ...

...nobody noticed the forecourt covered in petrol,until the pump had delivered 200 litres of petrol ...

Sounds like a faulty nozzle.

The nozzles cut of fuel even if the trigger is held when fuel level hits the nozzle. Let's face it, the nozzles have provision for locking the trigger, just that at least in UK they have elected to remove the locking mechanism (which, when present, also unlocks and releases the trigger when the aforementioned cutoff happens due to sensing fuel at nozzle).

So whether the trigger is held by hand, strapped in via strap/fuel cap, or held by the locking mechanism makes no difference as pump will cut off automatically when fuel starts to build up/splash in the filler pipe.

Re: Never liked SNMP

That argument would apply toa ny protocol.

Personally, I like SNMP. Yes of course it (as any other management or monitoring) should be configured with appropriate ACLs and preferably be in fairly tightly controlled VLAN.

Re: Bit stunned to find it's not nuclear

Gas turbines for 'auxiliary' poke, but Wärtsilä* diesels for normal running.

Interesting to have it that way around. I suppose might be bit more fuel efficient that way around. And lets face it Wärtsilä does know a thing or two about marine engines (and power generation).

Re: Microcode is hard

Yes it is. Which reminds me that I should probably re-read Tracy Kidder's excellent book on Eclipse MV/8000.

Super hub 3 is a 12 alpha/numeric/lower/upper wifi password so at 1 billion guesses a second it's going to take a maximum of 150 years from what I understand.

Isn't SH3 based on Puma6? Might take longer as Puma 6 kit connectivity isn't exactly stellar. At least I've not yet heard that VM would've patched it (especially the latency issue).

Re: Unwanted scum calls

Why stop at fines. The way this company appears to be operating, custodial sentences would seem appropriate.

Airfares

Region plays a big role as well. Which is why I always book airline tickets via SSH tunnel to South Africa. Usually at least 10% cheaper on BA and Emirates. Especially if the RAND is weak(er).

Airfares are funny things. A while back for some journeys (within EU) it was cheaper to buy 2 return tickets "the wrong way around" than the one return ticket you actually wanted.

Re: Wait - what?!

There isn't anything compelling for me to run Cisco anything any longer, just seems like a big world of hurt for doing anything with them. (from somebody that has done Cisco since the days of the Gold and White boxes and them being cisco without the capital).

It is starting to be that way. I still run mostly Cisco at home thanks to old kit from tat bazaar. Yes, purely because I've used Cisco kit a long time and am comfortable with IOS. Sure you can get other EOL kit, for example (and just an example, there are others) 3Com switches, with better performance (lower latency, higher throughput) but they're clunky and don't offer many of the features of IOS (EMI / IPServices are rather feature rich).

Having said that, with current cable modem speeds you would need silly Cisco kit if you didn't want your router to be a bottleneck where you could just as easily run for example a cheap Edgerouter Lite (and Vyatta based EdgeOS is not too bad actually).

For corporate use its a different story. Whilst you can, of course, mix and match vendors (to some extent depending on your environment and requirements since interoperability on some features can be quirky) but most corporates won't unless they're replacing everything in which case all bets are off as there are indeed other players on the market and Cisco does have its work cut out securing those deals.

By carefully muffling it with a spare user.

Is there any other kind?

Re: Finally fixed my WD20EARS

Intellipark (yeah I know... intelli-something is bit like smart-something, ie anything but) on the Green drives.

Whilst their reasoning is not entirely baseless, the 8 second delay for hear park is rather excessive. Especially as the landing zone is not traditional, but bit of a special and only rated for 250k to 350k cycles. You could hit that well before the drive is out of warranty, and I suspect WD will look at LCC and deny warranty replacement if count is higher than rated.

Worst is that they had some Reds with same aggressive 8 second park delay. Luckily the delay is easily changed (or even disabled if that is what you want).

Re: MS love to create "standards."

Back then everybody liked to create "standards". NetBIOS was introduced I don't remember by whom to add some network connectivity to IBM PCs.

IBM (may have been a third party). It was IBM's PC-Network. There was also a layer (original NetBEUI before Microsoft nicked the moniker later) allowing you to use token ring as the underlying network and keep using NetBIOS API. Novell also played the game and offered NetBIOS encapsulation with IPX/SPX.

But this was all in 80s ..and my memory isn't what it used to be.

Re: Oh dear...

They also expected the dissertation to be written with nroff, but my pre-release copy of Impression desktop publishing software was a lot easier, and produced a lot better results when it came out of their postscript printers.

Really? I would've expected LaTeX.

Re: The real scandal

Almost cheaper to fly to the USA to get one!

Dunno. I'd rather pay bit more than have to travel there.

t-shirts

Hmm...I need to see if I still have the old t-shirt back from Clipper days. The front had '1984 "We're behind schedule" NSA' graphic and Wired's anti-clipper graphic.

Fair few graphics from that era in that directory.

Re: "Twhingers"

Many companies (Hertz, United Airlines, Natwest bank, to name a few) no longer respond to email or phone calls, so the only way to reach them is to contact the 19 year old work experience student on Twitter.

And that is precisely why some companies no longer have me as their customer. I suppose it won't be too long until there are no more companies left not doing it and I will start saving money.

Re: Icicle Works

I raise you John Mellencamp and Crumblin' Down.

Re: Next version will use camera

It's not that hard to chop ears off...

Thanks. Now I have "Stuck in the middle with you" playing in my head.

Re: Virgin

Shame indeed. VM used to dish out just cable modem's. I suppose it would cost them more to have cable modem option along the "SuperHub". Their compromise is the "modem mode". Which took a while to arrive in the first place and I refused to replace the old Ambit until they had SH firmware with "modem mode".

<pedant>"modem mode" in quotes as that is what VM calls it. Bridge mode would be bit more accurate</pedant>

Really I'd like to have the option to just dump their kit and be able choose my own DOCSIS 3 modem but I do understand why VM won't allow that.

Re: Am I the only one

Now that you mention it, no.

However that picture is a spitting image of the blanket one of the cats have been using to sleep on.

Re: There's something fundamentally important they're missing.

So, like I asked, if you had no choice, you'd sooner not fly even if your job depended on it?

Absolutely. In fact, I'd already refuse to fly to US if I was asked. If refusing to fly would lose the job, then so be it. There are more jobs if need be.

Re: How many are from India?

Taking skilled workers more non-EU countries is a perfectly legitimate and sensible plan for plugging skills gaps, IMHO.

Wouldn't taking skilled workers from EU (and arranging a visa, should one be needed post-Brexit) work just as well?

Re: The obvious IT use

In my experience, a hardware modification or repair will not be successful unless blood has been drawn at some point in the process.

But of course not. The ritual sacrifice is mandatory.

Re: 10base2 outside of the building you said?

10base2 was known for unstable connections with bad quality or badly installed BNC connectors.

And people who decided to relocate the t-connector from back of the machine near the wall so they could run just a single cable to the machine. Sigh.

Even more fun to be had chasing badly installed vampire taps on 10Base5. I never quite understood how anyone who was installing it would NOT know that the markings in the cable are for a reason and yes it does bloody matter where you put the tap.

DDos attack and no mention of the Russkies?

Unlikely in this case, since Russkies are somewhat pro-Qatar I believe.

Re: I have a feeling that ...

Here you even have hidden complexity, as many people will not know about that feature. Since it's also on your main network interface, you cannot even go the sane way and use a dedicated control network. (or in fact have it on a separate switch and just activate the ports you want to do maintainance on)

I would've thought that leaving on-board NIC(s) unused and using separate NIC would neuter this approach as it would seem logical that AMT would rely on the PHY built into the PCH on the motherboard. Then again if your add-on NIC is also Intel based (quite likely as many Realteks for example are, well bit crap to be honest) perhaps it is not beyond reach of AMT tentacles.

Likewise, if you did actually want to use AMT, you could at least have that on separate switch and/or VLAN and use additional NIC for non-management traffic.

@Charlie Clark

Yes, but it's not discretionary so Congress can't stop it.

Surely not re-authorizing (as I suggested) it would effectively stop it.

Officially at least. What the data fetishists carry on doing without telling anyone is another matter.

Re: I'm not sure why you're still reporting on these clowns.

Am I the only one who wrote a little bit of assembler to turn on and off the NumLock LED to match the actual state of the key back in the day?

Nope. Definitely not. I abused the keyboard controller a lot back in the days of DOS and Coheren t. I had a 286 laptop (more like a luggable) that had all keyboard lights in nice row under the screen, so I often repurposed them for other than their intended use.

Re: It's a shame there isn't an SGI emulator out there...

I'm a little bit surprised nobody has mentioned video processing (excluding the fleeting reference in a post about Amiga) which is something where SGI was also ahead and had no real competition. They did practically invent webacm.

I remeber playing with the built-in composite and s-video input in my Indy. I'd have to dig it out, but IIRC mine has 4400SC (may have been 4600) and I never did find a cheap enough CosmoCompress so it wasn't quite good enough to convert old VHS stuff. Nor did I ever get hold of Indigo2 Impact with R10000 for reasonable price. I haven't, of course, looked for years.

Re: cripple your own economy

the US can take advantage when some areas of manufacturing come back onshore

Oh yeah, how is that going?

Thats funny. I'm not buying an S8 because it doesn't have the option to uninstall Bixby.

Sadly it seems likely that Bixby will also be present in Note 8 (no, not the tablet..). I wish I could just get a refurbed Note 7, but those are unlikely to make it to UK (if they even ever become available).

Unlesss it can be turned off, S8/Note8 get no sale from me. In fact, Samsung is really doing me a favour forcing my hand to look for alternatives which, for more than sufficient specs, are considerably cheaper.

They really started going downhill since Note 4.

Re: But will it...

It would be nice surprise if it did not have locked down UEFI to stop booting anything other than Windows, as I can't see why Linux wouldn't run just fine on that hardware.

I'm not holding out much hope for that to be the case.

I say they did a fair job and a novel process. And nothing of value was lost! These are just shitty Jeeps, not the real Willy's Jeeps of old, just crappy SUVs barely suitable for a family outing, much less climbing hilly terrain. If you want a good off-road vehicle, get an old Toyota Land Cruiser, or a proper Indian(? or is that just the Jags?) built Range Rover, but not the Sport, or that Evomitch. Those are city SUVs, and strictly for the ladies.

Novel? Duplicating keys with dealer doesn't sound particularly novel to me.

Wrangler is pretty much descedanct of Willys/CJ-7 as it has evolved around the years. Sure they had some models without lockers that never should've been sold. Unless you got crap version without lockers, its fairly capable off-road vehicle. Saying it is no good for hilly terrain is at odds with Wrangler setting Guinnes world record in 2007 while climbing Ojos del Salado. (linky)

No objection to your opinion on old Land Cruisers or Land Rovers, or RR Sport or Evoque (horrible thing that is).

As for Range Rover, I'd rather take Jeep Grand Cherokee to go off-road with.

Re: Does Oracle

+1 for Percona.

Room for innovation

The funny thing is, there's tons of room for innovation in the Android handset market. Not that this is it, obviously.

For sure. Ther are two kinds of phones I miss. One would be Nokia Communicator brought to 2017 (but not with Android...) without going completely overboard. The other (which could be Android) is Motorola Razor V3 or close approximation. I know Samsung has W2017, but I don't particularly want two large screens sucking juice not to mention I suspect that will be only available in Asia and unlikely to end up available in UK,

I stopped playing that game while trying to make a Kodak printer work without having to replace various parts that cost more than their $10 ink carts. I just visit the copy store with a USB drive, print, and go about my business. Either that, or just use the various work printers.

Not to mention if you don't need to print often enough, most inkjet cartridges end up being effectively single use they just dry up.

My solution was similar. For normal occasional draft printing I use HP Laserjet 4700 colour laser printer. Given reasonably low print volumes, I've stuck to original HP toner cartridges which you can get for quite reasonable prices. The yields on cartridges are quite good and actual price per page end up being very low. As a bonus it doesn't matter if I print every day or once in a month or two. The beast just works.

For the occasions where I really need photo quality it is either some of the online print shops or walk to a local one with USB flash drive.

Re: How To Test Your New Computer

Excellent book. Highly recommended reading. I did have a MV/4000 and AOS/VS did indeed contain an easter egg with regards to Colossal Cave. Even more amusing is the difference of the easter egg between 16-bit AOS/VS and 32-bit AOS/VS II.

With lots of shiny interfaces so that modern stuff can be done with the source data.

Dunno if its shiny, but probably something like MQ.

For most parts it seems to do fairly decent job in distributed systems if it has been properly configured.

Re: Common guy interpretation?

1- The fibre optic cables feeding the SAN were not optimally fitted -

How is this possible? There should be a "click" sound when the LC connector is fitted in. It's always been "insert" or "not inserted". I don't recall any instance where a FC cable can be halfway inserted. Maybe the cables were "bent".

One situation I have seen is when someone with OCD had zip tied fibres (and other cables) to the rack posts. Yes rather tight. Explained why we had some storage and network issues.

Yeah granted looked very neat and tidy, too bad it didn't work too well.