Posts by Death_Ninja

Twilight of the idols: The only philosophy HPE and IBM do these days is with an axe

Re: Delusional Thinking

When offshoring happened big time I stated the (seemingly obvious) that the fall in quality would cause rejection by clients, like it did with offshored call centres.

What I hadn't realised at the time was that clients actually care less about quality and more about cost. If you pitched the offshoring deal as "same price" (not not "cheaper") vs onshore "more expensive" (ie price RISES) to the client, they took the cheaper option.

Clients care about their SLA's being met. Their SLA's being defined as a good enough service to meet their requirements and supplier cock ups are a positive financial thing to their balance sheets as long as it doesn't totally kill their business. The SLA and indeed the entire deal is "good enough" and as cheap as possible.

Basically, most clients do not reject offshoring, despite every person in the Western IT world knowing that its an inferior service.

In the same way as people buy a cheap car brand and not a premium one. Its good enough.

If you were able to find someone exclusively offering a truly gold standard service, I doubt if you'd find their order books full.

Serverless: Should we be scared? Maybe. Is it a silly name? Possibly

COBOL

Haven't we been here before?

For those of you not old enough to remember....

"Representatives enthusiastically described a language that could work in a wide variety of environments, from banking and insurance to utilities and inventory control. They agreed unanimously that more people should be able to program and that the new language should not be restricted by the limitations of contemporary technology. A majority agreed that the language should make maximal use of English, be capable of change, be machine-independent and be easy to use, even at the expense of power"

(Wikipedia quote)

And what happened to COBOL? Far from being an enabler which rid the world of computer geeks, it simply created a new one - COBOL programmers.

Did it reduce development costs? Maybe. Did it create a whole new layer of hell? For sure.

HMS Queen Lizzie formally joins the Royal Navy

Re: Two ways to look at it: Massive overkill or massive target

Wasn't the same always true for RN or USN carriers since ww2?

Just because some military asset can be destroyed is not a reason for it never to have been built.

That's just stupid arm chair general top trumps.

The perfect indestructible weapon system has never existed and never will. Assets are consumable and you expect to use them up.

Strategy is how you preserve them or choose when they get eaten up.

Hangar?

"The ceremony, held this morning at Portsmouth Naval Base inside the carrier’s own hangar"

They built a hangar to put the carrier in? No wonder the project cost so much!

Denied: Uber's request to skip to UK Supreme Court to appeal workers' rights

Game of Monopoly

Yes, undercutting and driving out competition is what they are doing. Its the modern business model isn't it? That and ensuring that even when you do make money, you don't...thereby avoiding staff pay raises, bonuses (for plebs, not C level), pay no tax and no dividends.... all the while promising jam tomorrow.

They've all seen Amazon, Apple, Google etc do it and they want a piece of it too because they too are "sexy market disruptors" (even when they aren't)

MPs draft bill to close loopholes used by 'sharing economy' employers

Re: I run a business that competes

@disgustedoftunbridgewells

"The assumption that capitalism will eat itself was alway the hope of the Marx's of the world. It's hopelessly naive though."

Actually, Marx uses the term "dialectic of history", which implies that Socialism is inevitable because of the nature of capitalism.

Much like the Baby Jesus, all we have to do is wait :D

Anyhow, when I used the term "Socialism", it doesn't have to be the sort of thing many imagine when they see that word. Most of Europe is actually a socialist democracy. Their people are far happier than ours and their workers more profitable for their businesses too.

We seem to be caught up in American style ultra-capitalism, which really isn't healthy for anyone in the long term.

However, the moneymen have led us away from the possibility of European Social Democracy and into the arms of the offshore banking slave labour world. Ironically, by telling everyone that the EU is all about big business. Quite an effective lie it would appear too....

Re: I run a business that competes

Trouble is, these days, people see these ultra-race to the bottom sorts of business model as the "new idea".

Ultimately though, the race to the bottom game has an ultimate bottom level... no, not that its impossible to cut costs any more, but that eventually when everyone has taken part in this game things actually fall apart in a much wider sense than your own business.

Its short termism. They think they are being clever and making a fast buck, but ultimately it will crash the system. Where is the market for your goods and services when nobody has the money to buy them?

I suppose that is the end game of capitalism (it will eat itself) and actually what will be needed to correct that is socialism.

Shut the front door: Jewson 'fesses up to data breach

Card details ripped by the ripper

Cryptic message left behind in the logs

"The Juweson are the men that will not be blamed for nothing."

Rackspace, HPE pitch pay-as-you-go private cloud

Re: CIOs are becoming buyers of Cloud

Unless you fancy getting murdered by GPDR you'd better hope shadow IT caused by random people with credit cards is something you can fix...

Brit moron tried buying a car bomb on dark web, posted it to his address. Now he's screwed

Re: Improvised Marketing Term to defend the defence industry.

Yes, improvised bomb... explosives and a detonator.... that's pretty much covering every base isn't it? Unless they mean that it wasn't commercial, hadn't got EU type approval and didn't come with a risk assessment and environmental impact assessment paperwork.

I believe "bomb" also now has a EU Protected Designation of Origin claim filed by BAE Systems. Its not a bomb if its not made in one of their factories.

SSL spy boxes on your network getting you down? But wait, here's an IETF draft to fix that

Re: Huh?

If you are talking about nation state spying, they have compromised/paid for the root certs higher up the chain and are decrypting further down the line - boxes in ISP's or taps on international cables or simply ordering your favourite social media provider to allow them to sniff the unencrypted traffic at the other end.

Did you not read Snowden?

Flagging outsourcing biz and sports rights weigh down BT profits by 4%

Re: Love it...

I got it wrong probably because I don't give a stuff about football, other than it seems to cost me money anyway, occupies media space that could be used for something more diverse and is one giant massive cartel of excess.

Its about time that media refused to prop up a multi billion pound racket and let them suffer.

Literally however the only thing that was going to get subscribers to BT television was by holding football fans to ransom by cornering the market - even if you like football you have to see the dicey capitalism monopoly there.

Re: Love it...

Yes that does seem rather evil doesn't it.

That's the 1% in red raw reality - greedy FIFA and over paid footballers extracting their blood money from ordinary workers loosing their jobs.

On the other hand, looking at the rest of the figures, where is the growth coming in BT?

EE added some customers? Great, but how much did buying EE actually cost them? When are they going to see the actual purchase price covered by future profits? Probably never.

Just another corporate cluster f*** like they all are, desperately trying to find the holy grail amongst an economy that has been flat/falling/failing since 2008 and no sign of turning a corner other than in the fake Ponzi games played on the stockmarket.

Why Uber isn't the poster child for capitalism you wanted

Al Capone

I see the TFL case against Uber the same as putting away Al Capone for tax evasion.

Uber is symbolic of everything that is wrong with employment today and if they get shut down because of some issue which is the tip of the iceberg, so be it. Find something to destroy this disgusting exploitative plague.

When you are done with that one, target the next one.

Dump X of your crew, DXC Technologies UK told. Hundreds face axe again

Re: Sure a merger...no decimation

The current load of closures are a mixed bag but mainly former HPE sites because:

a) HPE had hundreds and hundreds of sites

b) CSC had already shut most of its sites!

DXC was 180,000 people on day 1.... it will be 100k at the end of the first three years - that's not speculation, that's fact from the investors day presentation.

That's a 45% head count reduction, almost every other employee to get the bullet.

If decimation is the term for a form of Roman army punishment where 1 in 10 soldiers are executed, I'm not sure what the term for this is. Something like Russian roulette with a double barrelled shotgun?

HPE unscrambles its services eggs, calls the results 'Pointnext'

Re: What's the strategy?

Move on to the next suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H talent pool.

The world is a big place, there are always countries poorer than the USA.

HPE CEO Whitman says everything's 'on the right track' as sales are literally decimated

Re: Yesssss........

You have to wonder exactly that point don't you.

Although on the investors call you did see some of them getting quite pointy - which is a rare thing, usually they close ranks to prevent their funds crashing in value by their own hands.

From the call:

Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi pointedly asked whether the current issues stem more from market dynamics and the company’s execution problems rather than currency and memory-component issues, noting those issues should have been known and accounted for by now.

“Most people were aware of a much tougher commodity environment in November,” Sacconaghi said. “In fact, your sister company HPQ had been calling that out well before November and had made provisions to adjust for that both in pricing and in building inventory. So I guess the question is, the only thing that really seems new, or that you shouldn’t have known about, was either the market changing or execution.”

TBH whilst I think the likes of Meg (and similar CEO's at other similar companies) *SHOULD* be brought to the same book as the employees who take the shitty end of the stick each quarter, I don't actually think the situation is one that anyone could resolve. IT, particularly big IT, is a declining market at about 7-10% per annum. Its been like this since at least 2008 if not before. Its a downward death spiral that I think is some way off of finding its natural level.

I'm never quite sure where the actual root cause of this decline of the industry comes from, but given that Amazon are in there with their usual loss leading cut price approach, I wouldn't mind betting its something to do with them.

Hold the phone! Crap customer service cost telcos £2.9 BEEEELLION in 2016

Yes I am sure switching to a cheaper product is exactly where you are going to find better customer service.... NOT.

Given the utter shitefest you see when you look at the complaints numbers for all of the telco providers its unlikely that you will find any better happier place than where you are either - unless you get lucky and in the swap whatever problem you had went away by magic and you are problem free until you have a problem...

Asteroid nearly gave Earth a new feature, two days after its discovery

No El Reg SI units in this article?

How far away was the asteroid? In Nelson's Columns or Olympic Sized Swimming pools...

Was the asteroid bigger than a London Double Decker bus or just the size of a Shetland Pony.

I demand proper measurements!

Xmas software update knackered US Customs computer systems

Go on, lets out the culprit contractors

And your winner is... Unisys

http://federalnewsradio.com/technology/2013/07/dhs-awards-460-million-it-contract-to-enhance-border-management/

I'd forgotten those dinosaurs still existed until now.

Six car-makers team to build European 'leccy car charge bar network

Fast, how fast?

What this article is lacking is just how fast a 350kw fast charger could maybe charge a car?

Anyone care to guess?

IoT worm can hack Philips Hue lightbulbs, spread across cities

Re: Tinfoil wallpaper time

You can get foil coverings for windows too. One of my company's new offices had it - to stop being dazzled in the new all glass modern building.

We had to deploy our own bloody femto box to the site because nobody could get a phone signal....

So yes, perfectly possible to have a sexy looking emcon building :)

Tinfoil wallpaper time

Or if you want a classier look than the inside of a Soviet space capsule, there is always:

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/18/tech/signal-blocking-wallpaper-stops-wi-fi-stealing-and-comes-in-a-snowflake-pattern/index.html

Your 'intimate personal massager' – cough – is spying on you

Hackers with no ambition

I'd have rigged the thing up to buzz the Monty Python theme tune.

Eight in ten IBM Global Tech Services roles will be offshore by 2017

Globalisation

No customer of an IT service provider cares about a high quality service. They are all trying to drive their own internal costs down just the same as everybody else.

They want to define the absolute bare minimum service level for their business to function and then pay absolutely the least possible price for it.

If any of you think we can ever put that genie back in the bottle, then you are sadly mistaken.

The technology no longer is a nice pet thing that people play around with because the MD "likes computers", its just another piece of business tooling that needs to be as cheap as possible.

Sophos grabs ATP-thwarter tech firm SurfRight for $32m

Someone doesn't like tennis

ATP thwarter?

APT surely...

Sinclair is back with the Spectrum Vega ... just as rubbish as the ZX

Re: 1000 copyright violations

Exactly.... I suppose the retort will be that "users can load whatever software images they legally own onto the system themselves".... in which case, why not run a bloody emulator in the first place if you're going to pirate the stuff.

At 100 quid this only makes sense if it comes with the software titles!

1000 copyright violations

Thats going to be a fun one to face in court...

There is no way they will get permission to make a commercial product like that using all that (not so old) code, especially as you will probably find most of the titles people desire have been handed down from owner to owner and are probably all owned by Ubisoft/Activision/EA by now by acquisition.

I can't imagine those blood suckers being happy that their IP is being handed out commercially.

Forget passwords, let's use SELFIES, says Obama's cyber tsar

Disposable endpoints

Disposable endpoints is a good idea and used by certainly one very security conscious company I know of.

The other ideas, not really relevant because if you users can find their way to the data sources, there has to be a mechanism for finding them automatically (shall I patent the idea I call "DNS" now?).

The main source of attackers hooks into your network are the endpoints, they typically copy and emulate the legitimate user access paths hiding their access amongst perfectly normal traffic making abnormalities hard to detect.

As with all security concepts, you have to balance security with usability, no point in having a very secure system that doesn't enable use.

Phones 4u slips into administration after EE cuts ties with Brit mobe retailer

Re: Fight it and you will lose

Actually, I disagree with your analysis.

P4U and other sellers of mobile phones (with airtime) contracts don't work like that - the clue was in that you never got a network branded (and locked) handset from them. That suggests there was some sort of way they were providing the handset, effectively selling it to the network at whatever cost (the exact details obviously remain opaque to consumers) which the end user then paid the network for over the period of the contract.

It has to work something like that otherwise:

a) I wouldn't have got my 500 quid smart phone for "nothing"

b) I wouldn't have got a differently priced deal to what EE were offering directly

They quite obviously were not just skimming money for a "sign up", although even if they were, retail is all about the middlemen and the competition it creates.

You are advocating only direct sales of products - which is not good for the consumer in the slightest.

BTW I haven't read anything today about CarphoneWhorehouse being in a similar position... are they next or have they taken it up the behind in terms of the networks bashing them on their margins? (which the other report on El Reg suggests actually was the root cause here)

Well I liked it anyway...

I've had all of my family's recent phones from P4U.

Why? Because my network provider wouldn't give me anything like a decent upgrade, despite spending a fortune with them and all of them have this wonderfully competitive world where their retail shops and their online business operate totally differently with different tariffs and a whole range of smoke and mirrors and BS. Oh and customer service that really is no service at all.

I'd sooner chew off my own arm than use any of that.

On the other hand, P4U have consistently been helpful, better value and genuinely useful.

I for one am disappointed at how these multi-nationals have effectively stamped out competition from my own high street and laid off 5.5k British workers - if this was other industries the government would be telling us how they tried to prevent it, but no, not this. Not the bit where the ordinary people are the customer. I guess Dave and the boys are siding once more with the boards of big business to suck the last drop out of us.

If your telco or mobe provider hikes 'fixed' contract fees you can now ESCAPE - Ofcom

This way to the exit

Sure you can exit your contract, but I take that as meaning you can avoid paying the service provision element of the balance of the contract - ie pay for the balance on your handset, then you are free to go.

They aren't going to give you the shiny new I-Thing you've got for free!

Maybe they might offer you to hand it back, but I doubt it.

Paris - because even she knows there's no such thing as a free lunch

Space Station bags extra 10yrs of life as SOLAR STORM scrubs resupply

Re: Oh crap.

That's not a moon, it's a spacestation!

(had to be said!)

If you want an IT job you'll need more than a degree, say top techies

More than a degree to get a job...

...given that pretty much no large employer wants to train anyone to do anything any more, unless your skill set and employment history reads exactly like the job spec they won't touch you - even if it means they have a hundred applicants and nobody matches it. There's zero risk taking any more.

It always was hard to get into IT, but the problem today is that the low level jobs most of us started in to get a foot in the door no longer exist in the UK - they've all been offshored or replaced by (more) technology.

UK based IT is now a 100% skilled and experienced, mid to high level job market but once we all are worked to death or retire (LOL assuming our pensions are worth jack shit!) , I can see it won't exist at all.

Here's my advice kids, use your university education to become anything else than a IT bod.

IDS finally admits what EVERYONE ELSE already knows: Universal Credit will be late

Its early days

You can tell its early days because this article fails to mention IBM, Hewlett Packard, BT and (mainly) Accenture who are delivering the system.

I guess stage one pissed off is to say the project is overdue and over budget, stage two is to name the contractors and stage three is to make stupid public comments like "you'll never work in this town again" (whilst signing yet more contracts with the same people).

US Navy coughs $34.5m for hyper-kill railgun that DOESN'T self-destruct

Re: Nifty

Civvie use?

1) Putting the cat out

2) Imroving the England cricket teams batting capability

3) Upgrading airsoft nerf throwers

4) A better mousetrap?

El Reg encounters mObi: R2-D2 for retailers

Re: Pretty shit really

"performance related targets" for stock accuracy? ie have people taken out and shot for being screwups?

Shouldn't be too hard to adjust systems to provide per user accounting accuracy.

Pretty shit really

So it trundles around, gets knocked over by the robot tipping El Reg gang, mains a few small children, blinds some others and even then, all it does it to take photos of the shelves so a human operator can look at the photos and decide if the stock levels are too low?

I mean really, that's pretty shit.

As someone else said earlier, anyone likely to be in the game of requiring such an item already has an inventory system that contains a miraculous thing called "location" and a POS system that magically decreases the "on shop shelf" location as they scan the products.

You'd still need that same system as well as Robbie the Robot.

Better solution - use the damned tools you've already paid for - the same ones you've probably been partially using since the 1970's

Funny how large companies never seem to get a handle on that magical concept.

Massive EXPLOSION visible to naked eye SEEN ON MOON

Re: SI nitpick

Impressive?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

Re: SI nitpick

Linguine?

I'm just dissapointed to not see NASA using proper size measurements, I mean, this is 100th of the size of a small family car or maybe the size of a domestic cat and it was travelling 1000 times faster than a chaved up Vauxhall Nova.

THATS science NASA!

BTW, I was massively dissapointed with "huge explosion", 5 tons of TNT is pretty small and the video was truly meh

Montana TV warns of ZOMBIE ATTACK in epic prank hack

Anthrax fans at work obviously

Remember kids, Fight 'Em 'Til you Can't :)

Motörheadphönes ears-in review

These sound like a cool thing....

....but neither the article nor the manufacturers website nor even google suggests where you can buy them :-/

Apple Java update fails to address mega-flaw – researcher

Re: how?

Yes Java has a sandbox which is supposed to make it safe....

...however the much talked about exploit breaks out of the sandbox.

Thats the simple story.

Spy under your car bonnet 'worth billions by 2016'

Re: Speed cameras outside schools

Presumably the rev counter is more important to get the fastest gear shift ;-)

CSC axes another 640 UK IT workers

Re: Outsourcing is all about ease

Still easier than firing all of the NHS's own IT staff for gross incompetence...

Getting rich off iPhone apps is b*llocks, say UK devs

Re: Apps are the new word processing.

Get rich quick in programming? Wasn't that back in the 80's when that Monty Mole kid or the Codemasters twins were photographed with shiny new sports cars?

Didn't millions try it on back then too to join this mega rich elite... I suppose the only difference now is that you are self publishing not trying to find/startup a publishing company yourself.

Seem to remember none of my friends who tried it ever earnt a Porsche...not even a Austin Allegro.

Funnily enough, the people who retrospectively made the money were the publishers, not the programmers/artists - or if they did, it was because they became publishers and stopped writing code.

Whilst we like to praise coders as the elite geeks, if you look at any large company heirachy they are pretty much near the bottom of the pile - the big bucks are earnt in business skills - sales, marketing and finance. Always was, always will be.

Commodore founder Jack Tramiel dies at 83

Another person who owes him my childhood

Vic20, C64 and Atari ST - three things my childhood would have been less without and almost certainly what lead me to my career in IT.

These are the "toys" that today's children are missing out on - science thats fun.

Jack T, thank you so much.

PS I never knew you were a holocaust survivor...

Microsoft 'yanked optical drive from Xbox 720'

Isn't it obvious?

What they are talking about is a combination of:

1) Steam type pay and download - XBL already has this.

2) A memory transfer card type thing, the blank device will be signed by your XBL account by inserting it in your machine and "formatting it" (which will apply your PKI key to it) and then a retail outlet will copy your purchased game onto it. The device is then connected back to your xbox when you get home and uploaded/decrypted to your hard disk. Maybe the device can even be signed in shop by you logging into a terminal with your XBL account userid and pw?

#2 being the alternative for people with no decent internet connection.

There won't be packagin, boxes, expensive duplication distribution etc etc

Just like iTunes or Kindle... its really nothing new and not a great leap forward for MS.

The only question mark is how big the transfer device will be - its not going to be a "memory card" its going to be a SSD I'd have thought.

The issue will come when you are a non-internet user and you own 100 odd games - clearly the hard disk won't hold that many, so you need to swap them around, which means you always have to have the storage device - which probably means buying more than one.

The storage device won't be for 90% of the user base, just the non-wired.

Retail sales will bomb...

In answer to the question how do you give a game to someone for a present - you buy them MS points cards... just like now or with Itunes or Kindle...

For a tech savy crowd you really are a bit slow with this one.

PS the 2nd hand market will of course die, but you knew that was coming one way or another didn't you?

Squirrelled away: seeds survive 30,000-year winter

No Tom Baker fans out there?

Seeds of Doom anyone?

These are obviously from the Krynoid!