* Posts by MAH

64 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Feb 2014

Page:

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced techie is indistinguishable from magic

MAH

My favorite was back when CRT's were still actively used and we had this one customer who complained that their monitor would have squiggly and wavy lines on it randomly. We eventually stayed onsite the entire day and got to see it happen...we replaced the monitor and the next day, same problem.

I went onsite again and was trying to figure out why could possibly be going wrong when it started doing it again. After a few minutes I realized I could hear a humming noise and after tracking the noise to the opposite wall I asked, what's in that room?

Oh, that's our printing machine for T-Shirts. Apparently the damn thing covered the entire wall on the other side and was nothing but some big electrical magnet (600V power). Everytime they switched it on, the monitor went beserk but no one made the connection there.

Besides telling them to move the system out of the room (surprised the HDD never scrambled) I told them maybe it wasn't such a good idea for people to be in the room either..unless they got some lead drapes for that wall...

IT workers: Speaking truth to douchebags since 1977

MAH

This is still my absolute favorite...the intern that released the names of the pilots. He/She probably got fired, but made themselves a legend in the process.

https://nationalpost.com/news/sum-ting-wong-intern-blamed-for-leaking-fake-names-of-pilots-aboard-plane-that-crashed-in-san-Francisco

Customers furious over days-long outage as A2 Hosting scores a D- in Windows uptime

MAH

Re: Uptime is not easy

unfortunately these bigger malware attacks are not usually phishing emails that get them. Its usually RDP open without a gateway service in front and so they are brute forced and then once they get in, they own the joint.

Facebook blames 'server config change' for 14-hour outage. Someone run that through the universal liar translator

MAH

Re: Not sure the comparison is valid

I think the problem is that everyone's perception of facebook is everyone's kid and mother posting crap, but in reality that's the audience (or mark to be more accurate).

there are probably hundreds of thousands of business's who now pay for the facebook service to market their wares to the audience and really, those are the ones who are rightfully jumping up and down screaming because the service they are paying for wasn't available for 14 hours.

Slow Ring Windows 10 fragged by anti-cheat software in the games you're playing at work, says Insiders supremo

MAH

Re: cheating

Realistically its not people who BUY games that the anticheating is for any longer...however if you play a subscription game (lets use fortnight as an example). Its technically free to play, but of course we know its really not and depends on people being happy and therefore willing to spend more money the game quarter after quarter.

Unhappy people leave the games, and therefore your quarterly revenue stream goes with it....

Google's stunning plan to avoid apps slurping Gmail inboxes: Charge devs for security audits

MAH

Re: Do something!

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater[1] - Us CDN's have used that one before too...but we are joined at the hip so to speak...

It's official. Microsoft pushes Google over the Edge, shifts browser to Chromium engine

MAH

I'm confused why Microsoft would develop their own browser yet again anyhow? I am sure that google would pay Microsoft money to put their version of the browser on every PC by default instead of IE/Edge and Microsoft could still insist the default search engine be bing....

they would then make money without expending any money and still keep their own search engine alive...

BOFH: State of a job, eh? Roll the Endless Requests for Further Information protocol

MAH

Re: Looks like the basic Veritas support for Netbackup

I would argue that's NetApp support...

Surface Book 2 afflicted by mystery Blue Screen Of Death errors

MAH

quote - now it's actually getting into break-it's-own-hardware territory.

Well, they already passed the break their own software territory with the .net updates hosing Exchange, SharePoint and SQL so to up the game they had to move into the hardware layer...

BOFH: Is everybody ready for the meeting? Grab a crayon – let's get technical

MAH

I just had an awesome BOFH moment....

user called to complain that the scanner was making the files too big and asked us to make the files smaller. The DPI was set to 300 so I set it to 75 DPI....

they then called to complain that they couldn't read the text on the scanned files.

My response was, you asked for the files to be smaller, you didn't ask for them to also be legible.

Totally reminded me of the old I need more space on my drive....hey, where did all my files go BOFH article....

Microsoft reveals terrible trio of bugs that knocked out Azure, Office 362.5 multi-factor auth logins for 14 hours

MAH

yup..confirmed in Canada..MFA is broken again...

Azure, Office 365 go super-secure: Multi-factor auth borked in Europe, Asia, USA

MAH

according to the status update they turned it off and on and its now working for me again.

MAH

I'm in Canada on a US instance and our MFA is borked....so much for managing any clients instances today.

Since its unlikely they need to do code changes to fix something that was running fine I suspect they must have changed something and now are trying to fix whatever their eggheads broke.

Garbage collection – in SPAAACE: Net snaffles junk in first step to clean up Earth's orbiting litter

MAH

sent up a massive magnet...I would assume lot of the stuff would have some type of metal in it....obviously not all, but even the natural stuff from comets would have some metal in them.

Now the challenge is not to make it so big that it pulls a comet out of its orbit and make things much worse in a hurry :)

Veeam holds its hands up, admits database leak was plain 'complacency'

MAH

We recently became aware that one of our marketing databases, which was not easily discoverable,

that's a bit of a fib since anyone can access shodan, but pretty good otherwise...

Guys, you need to sit down and have a chat: Skype rolls out SMS a week after Microsoft

MAH

Re: The cycle continues

you missed the granddaddy of them all...ICQ...up until a few years ago I actually still had my icq number memorized (for whatever reason)

lol..found it in my email from 2003 (although I am sure that was the trailing end of ICQ. Even found a mention of Trillian Pro...which allowed you to talk to ICQ and MSN users

- icq# 3175333

Everyone screams patch ASAP – but it takes most organizations a month to update their networks

MAH

Microsoft has made patching a complete cluster with these stupid monthly rollup patches.

Seems every month they break something, but you really can't exclude the one broken component out of 20 so you have to skip the patch. the next month, they fix that broken component, but now a different component is broken so now you wonder which broken component is worse.

Look at July rollup....41 serious issues with the rollup...including the .net which broke sharepoint, exchange,etc. If Microsoft can't even develop a patch that doesn't screw up their own inhouse applications (which should be really simple for them to test right) who trusts them not to screw up every other vendors applications.

It comes down to this, Microsoft has completely lost everyone's trust when it comes to patching because they don't bother to test at all (which is obvious with the july .net patch) so no one wants to just set auto updates and go....

Microsoft devises new way of making you feel old: Windows NT is 25

MAH

quote- I didn't mind NT - did the upgrade from NT 4.03 to Windows 2000 AD -

I did that once in 4 hours upgrade and a 5 client minute outage. Took the BDC for the domain, put it on isolated network, promoted to PDC, upgraded to Windows 2000 AD, took a workstation on the prod network, put it on the isolated network and logged in as if nothing had happened.

Shutdown the production NT PDC, powered on the Windows 2000 AD server in production, and voila, upgraded to AD from NT4...

Of course, if it didn't work I was mostly fubar'd because there was no real backout...once the Client machines connected to the 2000 AD and logged in, only a drop from domain and rejoin back to the NT 4 PDC would have recovered the system if I had to backout.

Was praying it wasn't going to be a brown underwear day :)

Insecure web still too prevalent: Boffins unveil HSTS wall of shame

MAH

I agree, this whole everything must be secured is absolutely stupid. If the site doesn't do login's, it doesn't need an ssl certificate. Its not like every site being secure actually adds to any protection from phishing sites...90% of them nowadays are just registering domains, setting up email, getting a lets encrypt certificate and voila from zero to phishing in 15 minutes....sheeple are stupid and will click links anyhow without looking at the address anyhow. www.micr0soft.com is the same as www.microsoft.com to most people anyhow...

How exactly is that site now NOT giving an SSL warning really providing people with better security?

IT biz embezzlement brouhaha leaves bloke with $456k migraine

MAH

so let the 2 guys each steal 2 million dollars from the company and all he got was a measly $122k...seriously...if you are going to do something stupid, at least make the risk worth the reward to some degree....

CEO of struggling storage biz Tintri quits

MAH

its a shame too because I really think they had good technology....

Google cloud VMs given same IP addresses ... and down they went

MAH

I am guessing it's not duplicate IP addresses but duplicate mac addresses.

Keeping the boot disk bit recreating the configuration would have generated a new Mac address

IBM to GTS: We want you to 'rotate' clients every two years

MAH

Re: IBM about 25 years behind Cannot Stand Continuity

As the owner of a business, I do struggle a little bit to fault the line manager. If the client is willing to pay X for helpdesk role and you've hit the target of Y below which I am not willing to either lose profit or start taking losses on the position) then you've hit the wall salary wise....

if you are happy where you are and ok with the salary then all the power to you, but your company isn't going to take a loss (real or in their margin) if the client isn't willing to pay more for your position (since smart clients pay for the position, not the person).

Tintri shares reformatted by investors: 85 per cent plunge in mere weeks

MAH

Re: Bummer

I was almost a customer last year. their tech is extremely nice looking and I saw a huge amount of value in it, however I was looking at their financials and while I didn't understand everything, I could tell they were bleeding cash...and they were not a cheap unit (I bought a NetApp AFF 200 for the same price eventually (which in hindsight was a smart move)

Admin needed server fast, skipped factory config … then bricked it

MAH

I've done the same thing but not cross country..migrated a clients environment to a true datacenter with 208V PDU's and one of their remote "workstations" got plugged in and same pop, immediately followed by crap....

As soon as it popped I realized I needed to move that stupid little switch...luckily it was same thing..swap PS and away we went...

Shocking. Lightning strike knocks out neuro patient's brain implant

MAH

Re: I have a DBS installed

all I can think of is this:

http://www.brianrxm.com/comimg/cnsmovtv_myfavoritemartian_gone_03.jpg

Citrix sues VDI challenger Workspot

MAH

Re: My guess

Their client is based on RDP and the last I tried it was vastly inferior to the citrix receiver in almost every way.

I loved the concept, but it didn't really work anywhere near enough at the time for me to risk using it as a day to day solution for my hosting clients.

It also didn't have any type of builtin gateway and needed expensive SSL VPN clients to allow the remote connections.

Haven't looked at it in a while though....maybe its gotten better

User asked why CTRL-ALT-DEL restarted PC instead of opening apps

MAH

Re: Feeling Old...

Remember DMA ports....those added additional fun

MAH

Re: Feeling Old...

Further words came out of the copy-protection schemes that required the game manual... leisure suit larry came to mind

MailChimp 'working' to stop hackers flinging malware-laced spam from accounts

MAH

Depends what you want to block. "Unsubscribe" means it's sent from a mailing list, and is therefore not a business email targeted to some specific user at my company. Then again, real spammers don't have "Unsubscribe" links.

actually in Canada, all companies are supposed to have unsubscribe links in all email originiating from a business regardless of its content like (hey, want to go for lunch).

BOFH: Honourable misconduct

MAH

Tim Conway and Harvey Korman - they would have made awesome BOFH and PFY I think....

Fella faked Cisco, Microsoft gear death – then sold replacement kit for millions, say Feds

MAH

Re: "169 Cisco switches and routers worth an estimated $2,344,860"

And don't forget, those prices would have been based on list price (because it sounds so much better to the courts). No one pays list price ever so you can take a least 60% off that value to get to the real price....

Julian Assange to UK court: Put an end to my unwarranted Ecuadorean couch-surf

MAH

The problem I have is that the UK arrest warrant no longer has any merit because it was based on changes from another country that no longer exist, therefore the UK warrant shouldn't exist, and therefore anything related to those invalid charges needs to be dropped.

There is the matter of jumping bail, but since the charges were withdrawn, then I would consider those charges to have been invalid to begin with and therefore anything related to those charges also needs to be excused...

SHL just got real-mode: US lawmakers demand answers on Meltdown, Spectre handling from Intel, Microsoft and pals

MAH

What I can't figure out is why all the panic from these vendors who knew it has been around since July. I mean really...did intel only write and test the BIOS update the week before the official notification.

They had realistically Oct-Dec to actually do testing and refine the BIOS updates in concert with all the other vendors patches...which considering vendors had 3 months to create the patches and 3 months of testing should have meant that the early notification should have been no big deal....

Cisco to release patches for Meltdown, Spectre CPU vulns, just in case

MAH

Re: LInk?

VMware actually released their patches for ESX back in Nov 2017 quietly. I recently upgraded my environment to ESX 6.0 in December and when I went looking for VMware patches, realized it was already patched up.

Donald, YOU'RE FIRED: Rogue Twitter worker quits, deletes President Trump's account

MAH

ah, well, that ex-twitter employee won't receive any severance pay, may well be sued by both twitter and trump, and will never work in the USA again.

I actually expect that all that really happened was the account was disable, not deleted which as long as that ability was within their normal roles and responsibilities (ie, he was authorized to disable accounts) and he was still officially working for twitter during that time (ie, he hasn't officially quit) then really, nothing can be done. I guess the same could be said for deletion too (again as long as it was within his normal roles and responsibility).

He could be fired, but he was already out the door.

About the only way he can really get in trouble is if he performed an unauthorized role, he already quit and was therefore accessing computer system illegally.

They could possibly civilly sue him for damages but a judge would laugh that out of court as an 11 minute recovery obviously meant there was little financial impact to the company.

ps - I am using "he" generally as it could be a She, but usually only us guys are that stupid...

Subscription disappointments keep FireEye in the red

MAH

They have an awesome product and we are using their appliances at a client site, however the client has decided to move to lastline because even though the fireeye is catching Phishing and malware URL's and the lastline doesn't, the cost for lastline is 1/4 of fireeye and rely on Fortigate, Trend and other products to bridge the gap's in lastline since they already have those products in place anyhow.

Fireeye's problem is that while its a great product is way too expensive and so people are going to put in layers of protection from different vendors and still save money.

Fireeye needs to realize that the walmarts of the world make money because they are good enough for the pricepoint and that having a small number of really profitable customers isn't ask great as having millions of marginally profitable customers at the end of the day...especially since loss of a couple customers really won't make a financial impact at all...

Licensing rejig and standard price rises set for Windows Server 2016

MAH

rather we are offering IaaS and hosting our clients servers under Vmware, which according to another licence distributor was illegal, because only we are allowed to have the admin credentials and not the client (which sounds even more like bull, because a clinet may decide to have his server hosted on our hardware without us being allowed access to the VMs administration).

basically you are trying to multi-tenant the hardware and use VMware..you can't use regular VMware licensing..you need to use vCloud licensing.

As well, because mulrtiple clients VM's are running on the same hardware the clients cannot use their licenses unless they have SA agreement AND you have license mobility agreement, and Windows Server/Desktop is not covered under License mobility so you need to be an SPLA partner to license the operating systems....

its all quite clear as mud you see....

Tech giant Citrix, sync 'n' share startup Egnyte fire lawsuits at each other

MAH

Citrix then alleged in its own October 12 counter-complaint** that the staffers, named as co-defendants, had accessed confidential Citrix information after they had left for Egnyte, its competitor.

so basically Citrix forgot to delete the sharefile data off its ex employee's machines and so it being naturally available on their ex employee's home machines, they opened it...

Sounds like Citrix doesn't know how to use the product it so helpfully sell's to customers...

Ah, good ol' Windows update cycles... Wait, before anything else, check your hardware

MAH

Windows 10 should mean fewer headaches for the IT department.

Except every time a patch rollup or New release comes out then its an absolutely crapshow...

Falling apart at the seamless: Inside Apple's LTE Watch fiasco

MAH

It's strange that something so basic wasn't fixed up in months of testing, though.

You can use that same statement for IOS 11...how in the hell does a company release a product that doesn't work with o365 out of the gate? Its not like Microsoft doesn't have any market share and therefore no one at apple really thought to test it.

Jobs would roll over in his grave to see 2 products released at the same time with such obvious and documented and known issues. Like who the hell at Apple really thought they could release those without any noise?

Unloved Microsoft Edge is much improved – but will anyone use it?

MAH

For me the single biggest reason I don't use edge....I cannot right click anywhere on a page and select back.

Its something I constantly do with IE/chrome and it drives me absolutely crazy that I can't do it in edge...

but apparently I am the only one in the world that does that so I am SOL...

User demanded PC be moved to move to a sunny desk – because it needed Windows

MAH

Re: PC fail

awesome...I just spit all over my keyboard and monitor at the toilet brush....

Nearly three-quarters of convicted TV Licence non-payers are women

MAH

As a Canadian this whole TV tax and the costs to enforce and prosecute it is absolutely absurd. No matter how much money they collect I am willing to bet that the true costs for the investigation, prosecution and collection is at least 30% of revenue.

The BBC I think is probably a lot like the CBC (which is government funded) and the CBC is paid for in some way or another through our national taxes.

You can't tell me that it would not be smarter (and ultimately cheaper) if they just added $100/year to everyone in the UK's income taxes (considering there are 65 million people in the UK, 32 million working according to the labour stats) and they could probably drop that cost considering there would no longer be an enforcement or prosecution costs.

Its not like taxes in either country don't already pay for services that we don't use (I for example pay for a public school tax even though my kids don't goto public school). Its the "everyone pay's a little so that everyone has access to the services even if they don't want to access them" civilized mentality.

However, as I was writing this I was reading how much money this TV tax collected and I almost had a kitten. How in the holy name of hell does a television company get away with a 4.827 Billion dollar budget in 2015- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom)

The CBC by comparison (lets not debate quality of programming or anything) is government funded to the tune of 1 billion in 2016 to make up operating shortfall. We have about 18 million employed people here so technically we are paying about $55/year or so on income tax to support the CBC.

No private investigation company, no judges to pay to enforce the individual tax, and no one needed to try and collect a judgment.

Two-factor FAIL: Chap gets pwned after 'AT&T falls for hacker tricks'

MAH

regardless of 2FA or not, I believe AT&T is at fault....simply for the fact that there were numerous logged calls on the account by someone who didn't know the security code..repeatedly...

that should have flagged all kinds of warning and triggered an escalation because its obvious someone was trying to compromise the account.

A single call with no security code, fine..but multiple attempts....seriously...that should have flagged something with AT&T

Lockheed, USAF hold breath as F-35 pilots report hypoxia

MAH

what I don't understand is...why is everyone buying the exact same aircraft. Isn't the whole point of the military to ensure they have a edge over their enemies (or friends as it were today). If everyone is spending millions to buy the same damn thing, all you are doing is spending a whole lot of money just to have a stalemate (and that could be accomplished with a single jet each).

Seems stupid to spend everything you have to not have any advantage at all (because the people are not really what I'd call an advantage)

Nest leaves competition in the dust with new smart camera

MAH

Re: I don't get it

I have a 14 year old with ADHD and the little bugger never sleeps so I've seriously thought about getting one of these to track/alert when he gets out of bed in the middle of the night so I can get up and put his ass back where it belongs at 3am.

Two-thirds of TV Licensing prosecutions at one London court targeted women

MAH

So as a Canadian, I am a little confused as to why this system even works like this at all. Are you telling me there is no way to technically police this system so you don't pay the fee, you can't get the service? I don't quite understand how that system works but from what I've read it basically seems like everyone should be paying a licensing fee be they have a TV or a internet connection (regardless of what they are watching). Its seems like its essentially a social service program to ensure everyone has access to TV (much like I pay for public schools in Canada even though my kids goto private schools).

Wouldn't it actually work out cheaper for everyone if it were just added to income tax or something...Capita wouldn't be needed any longer and I imagine with 20 million people or so paying taxes, the cost per person would be peanuts compared to all this hassle with enforcement,etc

confused in Canada

Awoogah, enterprise bods: Tintri recruits Echo Alexa speechbot

MAH

So..how does it know who's authorized to do what actions. Be great until it picks up the helldesk person telling a user to reboot the system and decides to act upon it....

Grumpy Trump trumped, now he's got the hump: Muslim ban beaten back by appeals court

MAH

Re: Right wing hypocrisy.

Rob Ford

Page: