Confuser Insultants

Ryan Verner has been having trouble with morons from Windows space... turns out to be a common problem here, too.

I have an “expert” in another state advising people I’ve never met, but who have the ear of the owner (currently an absentee landlord as he opens offices in other countries) of a local company — and while said consultant seems quite well intended, there are some... obvious shortcomings in his understanding of how anything larger than a single fixed MS-Windows domain (or AD equivalent) is supposed to work. I seem to know considerably more about how such things work, which is not exactly a compliment.

Such are the politics of the situation that he’ll probably wind up planning the network, install SBS everywhere at four times the cost of using the equivalent Linux boxes, have problems with dodgy semi-real Active Directory domains, have to maintain the suckers regularly (the head office Linux box has required intervention about once a year on average), and then run into problems trying to synchronise all of the offices reliably.

If things do work out that way, it won’t be a big problem for me in a business sense, since CyberKnights is not short of things to do, but these guys have been through a lot already (had almost all of their repossessed at once stage because of the misbehaviour of a different but related company, for example), and stuck with us throughout so I’d feel bad about the whole thing.

I guess the lesson at the end of the day is that — as it is written — we live in an imperfect world. If anyone knows of a simple comparison which shows Linux doing well at managing Blackberry devices, please email me the link (me via cyberknights com au).

Comments

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b...

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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