Lewis' Blog Tales from the trenches of information technology

26Oct/180

Noisy utility company email

Why do utility companies feel the need to email and phone to advise of their readiness for an impending storm? Would I otherwise suppose they were not ready? And, if they were indeed not ready, then what?

On top of this, my phone rings incessantly with this nonsense, advising me that they are prepared for the coming nor'easter (for those of you unfamiliar with this type of storm, these are particularly nasty - high winds, lots of rain - in the northeast US). Anyone living on Long Island (New York State) more than a year should be quite familiar with these regular occurrences. So, why is my Inbox filled with this junk? (Okay, my Sophos UTM catches most of these, but sadly can't do anything about the telephone ringing.)

This is a tremendous waste of resources. Don't tell me that you're ready, just focus on being ready.

Regular readers here will know of my profound distaste for poor email etiquette, and sending superfluous email falls into that category. Messages should be sent when relevant (they don't need to advertise to me; I have no real choice in the matter, other than slapping immense, ugly solar panels all over my roof).

4Dec/170

Navigating Coinbase’s customer support

A company with which I am involved recently reconfigured its Coinbase account. This was precipitated by a change in the Stripe API, where Stripe shifted away from Coinpayments.net to another exchange for handling cryptocurrencies.

So, while this company had a prior arm's length arrangement with Coinbase, it never actually had to deal with the entity directly...until recently.

9Aug/140

Google’s HTTPS Everywhere initiative: not so fast…

It seems that Google has a new factor to consider for web rankings: HTTPS.

I understand the allure of encryption. Heck, I use StartPage as my search site, and all of my searches go over HTTPS. The problem is that HTTPS is expensive.

14Jan/140

More Social Networking Nonsense

Regular readers alreaady know my stance on social networking (now called simply, "social media"). I have a couple further examples to share.

6Jun/130

Why should CPAs care about the cloud? Let’s count the ways

Why should CPAs care about the cloud? Let's count the ways.

Egad... Drinking the Kool-Aid? Who are these people in this blog post, anyway, and what on Earth do they know of data security?

12May/130

In the “What are They Smoking” Dept: Staying centered – The Official Microsoft Blog

Wow...

It appears that some analysts have compared Windy 8 to New Coke (or Pepsi Blue, according to this article in The Motley Fool). Frank X. Shaw seems to think that touting the "selling [of] 100 million copies" of the ill-conceived (IMO) OS is some great achievement; however, what he doesn't break out is the percentage of those sales which are forced on consumers simply by nature of the fact that the OS comes pre-installed on a new device, and that Windy 8 runs on both tablets and PCs (so we can't even tell how many PCs ended up with 8 on them, or how many people opted to then "downgrade" to 7 upon delivery). Typical nonsense from Redmond, and as an OS/2 user who recalls when the "NT" in "Windows NT" stood for "Not There," it seems to me I've heard this song before. wink

Read the full response from the link below:

Staying centered - The Official Microsoft Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs.

11Feb/130

Cloud adoption brings unexpected costs, KPMG survey says

I don't know what might ever sway my opinion of the utter uselessness of "moving to the Cloud" (ever see a cloud with a floor under it?)... Indeed, there are uses for everything, and even I have an Evernote account. However, that does not mean that I am not careful about exactly what I store in my cloud-based notebook, including the potential risks to privacy and matters of a critical nature, to which should I lose access for any period of time, it could mean a considerable inconvenience or worse.

16Oct/120

A Little Windows 8 Humor

Sorry, I just couldn't resist. The following was linked from Windows 8 ads hit US screens: Death Metal, exploding laptops and I just had to share it. Those of you who think as I should truly enjoy it, and for everyone else, please take it as good natured fun:

28Jul/120

More cloud disasters

I can't stand it...

What is so hard for people to understand? Hosted services are a greater security and stability risk than applications and data maintained in-house.

There, I've said it. Please feel free to disagree and provide examples.

15Apr/120

Why I still use OS/2 (eComStation)

As a consultant, I look at computers and operating systems from a "best tool for the job" perspective. Some systems are better suited to some things than others. I wouldn't expect to play modern computer games, written for Win32 or Win64 on Linux or OS/2, no matter how far advanced Wine or Odin was/were. Likewise, I wouldn't consider running a web server on the Win32 or Win64 platform vs Linux or OS/2.

Along with other suitability considerations, I factor in my own (or the client's own) comfortability factor with a particular environment. The Mac object oriented desktop is quite nice, though it's not my environment of choice. On Linux, I prefer KDE to Gnome, but neither of those nor the Mac desktop nor Windows Explorer approaches the level of comfort, familiarity, or ease-of-use which I experience using the Workplace Shell, which is - for me, at least - the main reason I stick with eCS.

Stability concerns? These affect all platforms at one time or another. Unless the problems are inherent to the overall system design (Windows' weak security model and the dangers of the single registry paradigm), such things need to be considered in the course of business. that is to say, they happen. Cars break down, too, but I'm not quite ready to go back to a horse and cart (and carts break - ever change a wagon wheel?).