Posts by Field Marshal Von Krakenfart 1737 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jun 2009
Ah yes, didn't Sir Fred the Shred... sorry Fred the Knave now that he was stripped of his Knight hood have the same brain fart in 2012,
How much did that cost RBS, oh yes, £56 million in fines, plus the cost of reputational damage, lost business and the cost of fixing the problem.
Now that everyone has gone Agile, I'll write the user story..
As a director of Lyods Bank I wan to cut corners and cut costs as much as possible so that I can maximise my bonus.
Who'd 'ave thought forty five year ago we'd all be sittin' 'ere drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?
bandwidth! You were lucky to 'ave bandwidth! We used to all work in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all using t'same IBM knotted string reader....
Well of course the de-aging plan is not a corporate wide plan, otherwise the execs would have to fire themselves.
IBM = Important Bits Missing, mainly the experienced staff needed to their systems work, this story also gives me an IBM (Intense Bowel Movement).
Hubble has the NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer-1 (NSSC-1) computer which was developed at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in 1974. A co-processor for the DF-224 was added during Servicing Mission 1 in 1993, which consisted of two 80386 processor and 80387 math co-processors.(wikipedia).
"system design documentation", what's that?
"data names were all of the form XX99" - That looks like some sort of generated code to me, I have worked on one system where a lot of the application code was generated by Cobol programs that generated the application Cobol code by reading parameter files (screen layouts, file formats, standard I/O modules). I've seen the same thing done in Clipper.
The worst Cobol code I've ever seen was written by ex-assembler programmers who wrote Cobol as if they were still writing assembler, jumping in and out of loops with GOTOs, freely mixing sections and paragraphs as control structures (PERFORM section-name THRU paragraph-name UNTIL....) and it would not be uncommon to find a GOTO in the loop.
Contrary to what some else said, Cobol-74 is not always compatible with Cobol-85, Not all Cobol-74 programs will compile with later versions of the IBM m/f compiler. Another issue is that Cobol-74 compiles and links to 24-bit addressing mode, which is OK if you are calling programs with the same addressing mode but can cause the dreaded adressing exception if you call a program linked in 32 or 64 bit addressing mode.
Still the New Jersey Department of Labor should be glad they don't have old PL/1 programs as the earlier versions of PL/1 have what IBM euphemistically call "depreciated language elements"
Also see: Real Programmers and https://xkcd.com/378/
Java???? The Java Licence used to say you can't use Java for real time systems or Nuke Power stations. Last thing you want is a garbage collection when you're on finals. Still mightn't be as a bad as windows:
Captain: "Flaps 40"
Co-Pilot: "Roger; Flaps 40"
Beep-beep-beep
Co-Pilot: "Master Caution.... Flight controls..... Flaps device driver has become unresponsive, please reinstall"
"The patterns and clusters enable the stored data to be partitioned into subsets of roughly equal size." " resulting in a database tree that is balanced, meaning that all paths or branches through the tree have roughly the same length"
Hmmmm.... sounds like IMS to me..... Do IBM know about this?
"Scientist and true technicians are not for "most practical discussions" - try to tell an astronomer GMT = UTC.... or a someone needing to drive a space station or probe... or just a GPS device.
What about relativity effects?, are the astronauts in orbit not running 38 microseconds slower than earth?
It all adds up y'know
You're right, the issue is not the tax laws of countries but the very lax transfer pricing regulations (not laws) that exist.
And it's not just an European problem.
Micr0$oft "licences" the right to sell Micr0$oft products in the USA to Micr0$oft Puerto Rico for about $8Billion, Micr0$oft Puerto Rico then sells Micr0$oft product to the 'merkins for $16Billion, effectivelly off-shoring $8Billion profit to Puerto Rico.
The last time I bought a Micr0$oft product I paid a UK company for a CD for a product that was that shipped from Germany to Ireland.
Of course the real issue is not that companies are actually doing this, but how did the laws get set up??
Bloomberg claims that the "grand architect" of the double Irish Dutch sandwich is Feargal O’Rourke who heads the tax practice at Price Waterhouse Coopers in Ireland, he is a member of the O’Rourke/Lenihan political dynasty in Ireland and at one point in time was advisor to his cousin, the late Brian Lenihan, former Irish minister of finance. According to bloomberg "He advises both multinational companies and the government on tax policy and has emerged as his country’s leading defender".
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-28/man-making-ireland-tax-avoidance-hub-globally-proves-local-hero.html
No conflict of interest then
They should show it bouncing off Frank Poole's (yellow?) space suit, now that would be a true homage.
And why not, they found a pod... http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/EVA_Pod
... and re-certification every 3/4 years ...
It's just a racket to generate revenue for companies, they churn their product every few years so you have to take a course to see what has changed been churned. If they were insurance products they would be illegal.
Did you fail your Java (tm) exam because you used a capital letter instead of lowercase letter. Bollocks! that's what the syntax checker in the compiler is for.....
I'm not picking on PMI/PMP specifically, but I have seen on their website that they will "revisit" the course material every 4 (?) years. Why? Did they not get it right the first time??
Strange though, nobody in the past 26 years has ever asked me "Am I COBOL, AIX or MQ certified?", but I have been asked am I java, oracle cicso certified, I guess the IBM marketing machine missed a golden opportunity there.
And even stranger, my Alma mater has never contacted me ask me to "re-certify" my degrees.
Can I conclude that IBM and universities are the only ones that are capable of delivering a education first time and getting it right?
It's just as well IBM didn't get that patent, Halliburton would have had to sue them....
Techdirt.com : Halliburton Tries To Patent Form Of Patent Trolling
As Tom 35 said "it's digital coin clipping by parasites"
The purpose of HST is to suck money out of the markets for the brokerage firms. The way HST works is the the software 'spots'a difference in the share price of a stock on two exchanges, it will sell the dearer one and buy the cheaper one.
For example; a brokerage house sees that microsoft is trading at $39.69 on the Chicago stock exchange and trading for $39.67 on the New York Stock exchange, the software will sell the brokerage firm's 1,000,000 microsoft shares in Chicago and buy 1,000,000 microsoft shares in New York netting the brokerage $20,000 less fees. The client's stock-holding is unaffected but the brokerage firm has somehow managed to siphon $20,000 out of the market.
It's just modren day coin clipping, it's also part of the reason why Lewis' claims that the American stock markets are rigged to the disadvantage of the non-HST trader.
Paris, see paragraph 2 above
My epiphany came a few years ago as well. I decided that I wanted a copy of "The Cruel Sea", a film made several years before I was even born, but was shocked to find the only copy I could get was €22.00 (no extra features).
Thankfully the Daily Mail sorted me out by giving away a copy of the film some months later, so it only cost me €1.00 and I also got a free "newspaper" with it. The promotion continued for a week and I also got "The Mouse That Roared", "Kind Hearts and Coronets" and a few other Ealing comedies as well, all for a euro (and a free newspaper).
Obviously a newspaper is not going to spend €11 (assuming a 50% markup on the retail DVD) marketing a €1 newspaper, so I am assuming that the costs of obtaining a copy of the film and putting it on a DVD are pretty low.
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