petergwilson · Monitoring Specialist · ✭✭✭✭✭

You should drive in the UK. Plenty of drivers driving cars that actually need to be driven and they are texting etc. whilst driving. Almost every day there is a story on the news about a crash involving an HGV on the motorway with the driver far too busy on his mobile (or watching TV) to actually drive.

The biggest problem I face is that I'm the SysAdmin for a company that has evolved and grown rapidly over the years. There's about 130 companies in the group. I have a mixture of old, not quite so old, middle aged, youngish, young and new systems. They are all required. I'm trying to create a new infrastructure which will…

How come we didn't have bacon at the London SWUGs. I'm upset now.

The internet isn't for newbies. They rushed out Video Recorders and the public had no idea how to set them up to record. They rushed PCs out and the public had no idea how to set them up or use them. They gave internet access to the public and look how well that worked. No lessons have been learned. The public can't be…

Passwords are a very contentious issue. I've always been against long complex passwords as they are so difficult to remember that most people just write them down. I have to remember hundreds of them for work and even more for personal stuff. Pass phrases or combinations of short unrelated words are much better. 

Agreed again. The problem wasn't the alarm clock. It was the idiot using it. When in an hotel where I really need to get up on time I contact reception and ask for a wake up call. That usually gets around any idiocy on my part. Most hotel staff can tell whether it is day or night. I can also set my phone to alarm mode. As…

Yes, Monitoring and automation should be high priority but management just see it as an expense. Things are getting better here as management are starting to see the benefits of this. Quicker response to outages, shorter downtime, proactive support and more time for senior engineers to get on with project work. All leads…

Very nice tribute. Always enjoyed his cameo roles.

Yes, I guessed that's what they meant. It's called a Rosette.

You would also have to force the people renting out their property to pay the appropriate taxes.

Not particularly happy about Q18. If you have used an incorrect work in the question then how is the question supposed to be answered correctly. There were two answers that wer correct according to the hint but only one answer was permitted. I believe people guessed at it but I don't work that way. Very disappointed.

I think the hackers have bitten off more than they can chew. I'm sure the Feds are involved and with the amounts of money being quoted I guess someone will end up doing quite a lot of shower dodging behind bars.

Funny but that how I've been feeling for the last several months. Really being ignored by management then being blamed when their stupid ideas that I said were stupid (not in so many words) failed. Far too much workload including having to take on extra when colleagues left and then having to waste time trying to train…

We have 50,000 accounts in O365 (all students). In the process of moving the 5000 staff accounts from on prem exchange to O365. They won't be happy with the loss of functionality, slower performance and IT's newfound inability to provide the same level of service. Management are happy so that's OK then. Ho hum.

Yes, I stupidly used today's hint to answer today's question and got it right. D'Oh. 

Fortunately I live in the UK and we have a National Health Service which is free at the point of delivery. It is paid for out of taxes on pay (both from employer and employee). When I had my major motorcycle accident (not my fault) I didn't have to worry about anything other than getting better. It was all taken care of. I…

I'm a big fan of change control but only when it is done properly. I've acted as a change manager and have been technical oversight for change control at several clients. In spite of this I was recently told that there was no point in me attending change control meetings as I probably wouldn't understand it. OK. I sat back…

Yes. He was sending the rocket up anyway and didn't have a payload so why not do something wacky to get the press' attention. Just marketing and self promotion. Hopefully all the money he is spending really does lead to improvements and benefits for society.

Old school way to hijack a car ...

The Matrix is the reality. Office Space is what we experience.

There are plenty of cloud providers all with their pros and cons (mostly cons). I'd suggest using the correct tool for the job. If something is cloud agnostic it just means it runs at the lowest common denominator and therefore isn't as good as it could be.

That isn't one of the possible answers. 4202vi-48G versus 4202vii-48G. Too many i's.

We are hoping the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will help to focus people's minds and they will start to get rid of data that they don't need or shouldn't be keeping. Should save some disk space on the SANs. If we also get the new Hyper-converged system with data-deduplication and compression as well then…

Why, it was the only correct answer.

Confirmed that it is now working for me too. Thanks whoever pressed the magic button.

Not a bad office view. Suddenly I don't like you any more

We have ISO27001 so security is right up there when any new system is being considered. ISO27001 is a pre-requisite for some of our client contracts. It does make life easier as we can wave the certification in front of people who want to bypass security and show how much money we would lose if they don't do things right.

OK. Maybe I'm misreading it (not enough coffee yet) but there may be two possible answers.

Broadband providers misleading us. No, I can't believe it. Oh wait, of course they do. I was promised 54Mbs at home. I know I can only get 4.5Mbs as that's all the line can take. I've tested it with the same kit the telecoms people use so know. Still they promise me the earth to get a sale. I'm now playing them off against…

Never mind 'No brand loyalty'. There's no loyalty at all. Comes from management and suppliers ignoring the technical guys who actually do the work and use the products. Management pick products and force them upon us even though the product won't do what is required and suppliers don't make products with the features we…