* Posts by Ken 16

1414 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jul 2009

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Indian defense chief admits China’s cyber-weapons would ‘disrupt large number of systems’ whenever Beijing presses the button

Ken 16 Silver badge
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Good to recognise the threat early

Procedures on how to work around an outage, fast recovery from secure backups and a plan on how to improve security. How does that compare with other militaries who might be in a similar position? The real danger is when someone says their systems are secure already.

Yep, the 'Who owns Linux?' case is back from the dead

Ken 16 Silver badge
Devil

Re: What?

The verb is 'spawned'

Greenland's elections just bolstered China's tech world domination plan

Ken 16 Silver badge
Childcatcher

Overselling the title a bit

The article didn't call out a plan for world domination and the same heading could (would?) have been used if the election went the other way and the mining company with Chinese backing were allowed dig for uranium. Either way, I don't think Greenland has a dog in the fight. If you have evidence that the Chinese government were interfering in the election or funding the Inuit Ataqatigiit party, THAT would be a story.

Scottish National Party members found among list of names signed up to rival Alba Party after website whoopsie

Ken 16 Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Michael Gove?

Ken 16 Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Shocker

Yes, misrule of Scotland is a Westminster prerogative.

Ken 16 Silver badge
Pirate

Re: Shocker

I'm sure some joined the mailing list just to do opposition research but I'm afraid Alba will just split off existing SNP members rather than attracting new members from unionist parties. The SNP tends to take voters from left and centre (Labour and LibDem), Alba could be really useful if it attracted the right wing Tory voter to the cause.

What could be worse than killing a golden goose? Killing someone else's golden goose

Ken 16 Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Re: I know

I've worked for several banks in several countries and if you go back a couple of decades it could have happened in any of them.

UK's Health Department desperately seeking service provider to run IT after 'cloud-first' shift

Ken 16 Silver badge
Facepalm

Cloud First

I've heard that before, expect it usually turns out to be cloud first unless it's more expensive or slower or needs us to retrain, or cloud first then look at the monthly charges or cloud first then try to hand over to operations and integrate with current systems management.

Cloud first sounds great but is never defined in a useful way, then all the second choices that drag you down. Don't even ask which flavour of cloud.

ThinkPad T14s AMD Gen 1: Workhorse that does the business – and dares you to push that red button

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: Red pointy thing

I've been using ThinkPads for more than 2 decades and liked the trackpoint until I got RSI of my thumb during an intensive diagramming phase. I still use it for short sessions but plug in a mouse for serious ones. In all cases I disable the track pad as I keep moving it with my wrist as I type.

BOFH: Are you a druid? Legally, you have to tell me if you're a druid

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: Plagiarism

It depends what alternative uses of that time were available to you.

Dratted 'housekeeping', eh? 150k+ records deleted off UK’s Police National Computer database

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: Backups

For third countries?

Leave.EU takes back control – and shifts its domain name to be inside the European Union

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: So Leave have left?

Leave.UK is too expensive, there's a bidding war for it between Scotland and Wales.

Just let this sink in: Capita wins 12-year £1bn contract to provide training services to the Royal Navy and Marines

Ken 16 Silver badge
Headmaster

They're big enough to keep a team together for a government procurement cycle, they can cite experience of similar contracts in the past and they know the process.

We got it! Japanese space agency confirms its probe has Ryugu asteroid samples

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: Meanwhile

Except the beer, it just doesn't have the strength.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledges £12bn green economy package

Ken 16 Silver badge
Terminator

The nuclear stations power the giant lasers

I assume it ties in with the GBP16.5B for the giant lasers and the killer robots.

UK tax dept's IT savings created 'significant risk', technical debt as it faces difficult conversation with Chancellor

Ken 16 Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: SDLC?

Yes, and then there's bespoke application code, requiring updates to business logic to keep in line with current legislation, written in languages that only those whose IT career precedes Java can support and how much it costs to tempt them out of retirement, or compiled on processor families that are no longer manufactured, with a file format that only a previous generation of tape drive can read and a user base that would take months of retraining per person to migrate off of it.

You know that quote about when you owe the bank £500 you have a problem, when you owe the bank £500 million, the bank has a problem? Extend that to technical debt. Past a certain point it's not even an IT problem anymore.

£8bn digitisation strategy for UK's health service doesn't count as a strategy, says spending watchdog

Ken 16 Silver badge
Trollface

Leadership

Is there perhaps the wife of a government MP or minister who's willing to take on this challenge?

Somebody's Russian to meddle with UK coronavirus vaccine efforts, but GCHQ won't take it lying down

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: it could "turn people into monkeys".

I liked Planet of the Apes, let's see what happens.

With less than two months left, let's check in on Brexit: All IT systems are up and running and ready to go, says no one

Ken 16 Silver badge
Thumb Down

Re: QR

Not while respecting Covid regulations

Ken 16 Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Apparently still negotiating

you're right, maybe if the dev team become Agile they can finish it in a sprint by then!

Ken 16 Silver badge

"think about the E.U. being marooned financially"

I'm sure we'll cope but thanks for your concern. As for Russia, you do know it's got an economy about the same size as that of the Iberian peninsula?

Are you seeing this, Amazon? British military steps up robot tech tests with drone capable of carrying 60kg payloads

Ken 16 Silver badge
Trollface

Aerial ammo deliveries

That's been around for some time, it's called incoming fire.

I'll give you my passwords if you investigate police corruption, accused missile systems leaker told cops

Ken 16 Silver badge

The kind who smacks himself in the face with it.

The Huawei Mate 40 Pro would be the best Android flagship on the market – were it not for the US-China trade war

Ken 16 Silver badge

Phone review?

How well does it receive and transmit, cope with low signal strength? What's the battery life? Is the sound quality good?

You can't spell 'electronics' without 'elect': The time for online democracy has come

Ken 16 Silver badge

Untrue. I've always been asked for ID when voting. What third rate banana republic do you live in?

Ken 16 Silver badge

Blockchain

At least the author didn't mention blockchain.

IBM: Our AI correctly predicts onset of Alzheimer’s 71% of the time, better than standard clinical tests

Ken 16 Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: I'm guessing...

I was just thinking they should play the presidential debates into it.

To stop web giants abusing privacy, they must be prevented from respawning. Ever

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: Not going to happen

Imagine? What do you think we did before 1999?

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: I've seen the movie just few days ago

Spot on. They need you more than you need them. Unless they've contributed to party campaign funds.

UK tech supply chain in dark over Brexit preparations months ahead of final heave-ho

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: Bye lads....

You really think France doesn't have an Embassy with a consulate in Ireland?

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: The wings are coming off

I'm sure a trade deal can be negotiated between the end of November and Easter next year, once it's clear who's won the US elections, whether the Japanese Diet will ratify the UK FTA despite the UK's internal markets Bill (violating State Aid provisions of the Japan-UK FTA) and everyone seeing how well the UK handles the no deal situation.

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: Latest from the PM

The EU hasn't rejected anything yet, it's still waiting to hear the realistic proposals from the UK. Anyway the EU-Canada FTA explicitly excludes financial services and the UK isn't keen on that.

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: It's almost as if

Maybe there was a plan not to have a plan?

Ken 16 Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Hmm

This isn't a "dead in a ditch" hard deadline, like last October, this is even more flexible. Anyway, there's plenty of time to prepare once the EU realises who holds all the cards.

Oracle starts to lose patience with Solaris holdouts

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: A warning!

Well, usually the Notes license is bundled with an Enterprise license so there's no licensing cost benefits in removing it and the effort involved is so high that post apocalyptic cockroaches will find Domino servers still running beneath the rubble.

Sailfish floats v3.4 'Pallas-Yllästunturi', its latest Jolla good reason for itchy-fingered Android and Apple swervers

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: Quite happy with Sailfish

I tend to do something similar, with my 'work' phone being deliberately awkward to install frivolous apps on. I've gone through Bada to BB10 to Windows 10 phone. Maybe Sailfish will be next.

UK's Cheshire Police tenders for whole new ERP system after Oracle Fusion went live with 'significant deficiency'

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: Are they complaining about root level app privileges?

Yeah, Visa require it for PCI compliance and they hold less information than I imagine the police do.

Ken 16 Silver badge
Trollface

Re: And just to confirm

A bell-what?

Ken 16 Silver badge
Trollface

Re: "after a troubled launch of Oracle Fusion"

Excel is the database, silly.

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: "after a troubled launch of Oracle Fusion"

No. Please not 'best of breed'. Integration is a nightmare. Build your own system before that.

In fact given Oracle buys up any product that looks like becoming best of breed and sews it into Fusion that's not very different than what is happening, just with Oracle at least owning source code on all the bits.

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: Kerching!

It's the size of Luxembourg with 50% higher population. Next you'll be saying Cheshire is too small to have it's own army.

UK taxman waves through £168.8m Fujitsu contract because no one else can hold up 30-year-old infrastructure

Ken 16 Silver badge

Re: Johnny Logan

who's getting used to being alone?

Ken 16 Silver badge
Trollface

Re: ICL

But it's programmers may fade away.

Contract to run .eu domain-name registry is up for grabs as Brussels tries to avoid a .co-style debacle

Ken 16 Silver badge
Facepalm

"a kind of punishment on the UK government"

Do we have to bring out the golf club analogy, again?

Indonesia’s black-market phone prevention plan bricks a whole bunch of handsets

Ken 16 Silver badge

"seemingly because it lacks the capacity to do so"

I assume this means it has the capability but has not catered for the volumes, it could be read either way. That does sound like poor planning. Maybe the capacity was supposed to expand dynamically?

UK, French, Belgian blanket spying systems ruled illegal by Europe’s top court

Ken 16 Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: Can I say it now ?

Sources? I looked up the World Freedom Index and the UK is No 20, behind the usual suspects such as Uruguay and Chile.

Ken 16 Silver badge
Holmes

Re: Not for much longer

That's not the way to get an Adequacy ruling

Former antivirus baron John McAfee collared, faces extradition to America on tax evasion, securities allegations

Ken 16 Silver badge
Trollface

Re: is he still a US citizen ?

He might have more success running on a pro-virus platform than an anti-virus one.

What a Hancock-up: Excel spreadsheet blunder blamed after England under-reports 16,000 COVID-19 cases

Ken 16 Silver badge

It's not the software

It's the process. Yes CSV have limitations, so does Excel and, God knows, so do people. It has to come down to the process owner not specifying that the process be robust in terms of getting complete and correct data through; ultimately the Minister.

Fix it, apologise, ensure it doesn't happen again and take the blame at the subsequent enquiry.

Since the EU won't share all its toys, UK Space Agency fires up fund to support more international collaboration

Ken 16 Silver badge
Facepalm

Odd choice of path

but at lease you can play cards before you walk over the cliff

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