Posts by Roland6 10749 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2010
re: Here's my plan...
1. Don't sign any international agreement with arbitrary rules that are intended to make withdrawal difficult or impossible.
...
Perhaps this can be simplified to when asked to write the rules, stop and think, at some future date you may wish to avail yourself of the opportunities those rules grant you...
>At what cost does AWS provide services to the retail business?
I suspect, given the current organisational setup and oversight by tax authorities, the Retail Ltd does pay the AWS Ltd a market rate for services supplied. However, as both have the same parent shareholder there is a conduit for monies to legitimately move in the other direction.
I suspect that part of the incentive for 'investors' to call for a breakup is where Amazon as a business is now. It has grown big in a market known for slim margins and is now successfully entering new markets which traditionally have better margins. Thus I suspect that what is wanted is to break the internal money loop so that AWS profits for example, get publicly declared and investors getting their dip before monies get moved to subsidise less profitable parts of the business or get invested in new business opportunities...
>There may be some financial advantages in keeping the warehousing and distribution parts with the digital side but it's difficult to see business advantages.
Having spent my early years working in conglomerates, there are significant business advantages, just that they are not trendy, because they are more about business costs and the long-term competitive pricing of products than the short-term enrichment of investors.
Given the size of Amazon's holding company, it perhaps better to consider it to be more of an investment house, where it only invests in and manages its own portfolio of companies. Taking this tack, it is obvious that many investment houses and their managed investment portfolios should also be broken up as they would deliver greater monies to the investors, but then we invest in managed funds to smooth the ups and downs... The last directors of GEC (UK) plc discovered this the hard way, laying waste to a blue chip company in few short years, as they blindly followed fashion...
>I really would like an explanation for that. It seems to me (not a network guy) that all you had to do was tack on a specific IP to all 32-bit addresses and that would make them 64-bit by default.
Back in the early 1990's this was one of the migration scenarios being suggested, namely it had the potential to get IPv4 clients out there that supported 64-bit addresses.
The issues start to arise when you get a little further down the road and want to implement other protocol updates and/or permit the usage of addresses outside of the IPv4 walled garden. One little issue is protocol dependent applications such as VPN clients; it doesn't matter what you do with respect to address fudging, these applications still have to be aware of the fudges...
Whilst I do complain that the IETF/IPv6 working group didn't pay sufficient attention to interworking and migration, I do understand and accept the rationale for the dual stack solution, which is something that was quite common back in the 180's and early 1990's as host systems connected to other hosts over a variety of protocol stacks, however, more was needed and still needs to be done to make real the lighting up of the IPv6 stack and get the wholesale migration off IPv4 rolling.
>That shouldn't be news to anyone.
Whilst I agree that MS (and others) should be applauded for attempting to trialing IPv6 only networks, to see what breaks and then telling everyone about it, I dsagree about this not being (tech) news.
I remember back in the late 80's and early 90's, government ITT's all included requirements around a vendors commitment to Open Systems and OSI. Naturally, we all responded positively about our commitment etc. however, not once was I cross-examined on just what this meant in practice. I suggest what we are seeing here is a company trying to put things into practice and discovering environmental gotchas...
I therefore suggest the lesson here is that if you are using a VPN solution, the time has now come when you need to get vendors to demonstrate their currently shipping products capabilities to support dynamic usage of IPv4, dual stack and pure play IPv6 (yes my dual stack client should be able to use a VPN product over whichever protocol stack is available to it, which will almost certainly vary between hotspots (eg. Office, Underground, Station Cafe, Train, .Home). I suspect that, prior to this news story, no one was actually testing the real-world IPv6 capabilities of VPN products...
>Point to just one negotiation where the U.K. interest was served. You can’t. I worked on the Galileo programme myself.
It would seem you have answered your own question, by getting involved in Galileo, some of the work was contracted out to UK-based businesses and UK residents got jobs. If the UK had not been involved then all the work would have been contracted among the EU27 with near zero spin-off for the UK.
>Can you see any MP who voted against the motion to leave the EU surviving the next election if his constituency voted to leave?
Yes! :)
Remember the last GE...
However, I suspect if the MP was a member of the Conservative party and the nutters in that party hold sway, I suspect they will be deselected...
>We're fucked.
I assume you are referring to Joe Public and those intending to remain in the country post-Brexit, as it is clear the subtext to the government position: "the government warns that now would be a good time to consider the impact" is that businesses that benefit from EU contracts and monies should relocate to an EU27 member state PDQ...
@Missing Semicolon - Remember remaining in the EU was both UK government and Conservative party policy until T.May's election, so there was no real reason for Cameron to do any preparation; other than to organise a referendum that would get the 'right' result. The real reason the (Conservative) government are in such a mess over Brexit is that they have put the preservation of the Conservative party at all costs above that of the nation.
D.Cameron's real mistake was to attach any value to the current incarnation of the Conservative party; he should have put the knife in when he had the chance and so create the opportunity for a new party to once again rise phoenix-like from the ashes...
> but what it actually means ... is "brexit means 'no deal'", surely?
Well, the fat lady isn't due to sing for a while yet, so much will depend on the outcome of the current ruckus in the Conservative party, something we won't see until after the Conservative party conference...
About the only given is that the credibility of Westminster has and continues to fall...
>Jacob Rees-Moggs company will make a shedload of cash out of it
Interesting seeing the news and reading about the Hungarian governments breeches of the EU's core values:
"Individuals close to the government have been enriching themselves, their friends and family members at the expense of Hungarian and European taxpayers. The Hungarian people deserve better."
Seems as if the same charge can be levelled at the UK...
>I've had to drive 250 miles in a day to get the specific bearing needed to fix a tractor. And I was lucky a new batch had just arrived in the country.
Bet you are glad you're not using a John Deere...
Farmers Thrown Under Bus By Own Lobbying Group in ‘Right to Repair’ Fight
I see another advantage, from the (Westminster) politician's point of view. They can more easily change policy to suit their political ends, which means more work for those maintaining the Defra (and other government IT systems). Unfortunately, it also will result in a rather big downside, Westminster politicians talking the talk but totally failing to deliver any real policy decision or provide sufficient funding for the policy to be effectively delivered and that is before we get on to the policy changes as ministers change jobs...
We are seeing this now with Rees-Mogg, he wants everyone to believe that those paid to worry about the UKs future are totally incompetent, whilst his band of Conservative party nutters aren't, yet have yet to deliver anything meaningful that survives the first skim reading...
>If I had gigabit fibre with > 900Mbps up _and_ down I'd use it for backing up my NAS device to a cloud service.
You can do that today on sub 100Mbps FTTC, unless you are into film production/editing; remember it is only the initial sync that really saturates the bandwidth and takes the time.
@Pen-y-gors - Call me an old Luddite, but I do wonder whether the world will be a substantially better place if we can sit at home watching Loose Women in 8K at 120fps.
Don't disagree, as I see little real need for 4K residential streaming. I was just pointing out that 8K streaming is significantly more bandwidth hungry than 4K, and that some vendors are working to bring to market 8K kit in the next few years, hence streaming (tv/film) services that require more than 100Mbps might be closer than we think. So experience tells me to be wary of saying "640K is enough", and, given the longevity of 100Mbps networking, of suggesting that we should be rushing into deploying 1Gbps and greater services into the residential/consumer market.
And, deep down, (and this is my Puritan streak showing) do we really need to be spending hours in front of an idiot-box
Since my son and his friends discovered the Xbox and online multiplayer games, my TV time has dramatically decreased; this might also have someting to do with only having one big screen 'tv' in the house...
>but there are ZERO apps that I can install from the AppStore so its effectually useless.
Well for some apps, if you have a newer iOS device you can install the app on that device first and then install it on the iPad2, this process seems to allow you to gain access to previous compatible versions of apps, if they exist.
However, have had similar problems with Android; I made the mistake earlier this year of doing a factory reset on a Samsung phone running Android 2.3.4 and then having the fun of reinstalling updates and apps...
>I can't really see the use case for a pentium with 256 MB ram.
I can...
However, that takes this distribution into the space already served by more dedicated micro OS's and Linux/FreeBSD distributions with better support. A router for example doesn't need a particularly powerful processor to handle the UI. Likewise, whilst your smart TV could benefit from a decent CPU, doing so would massively increase the price. [Aside: personally, I prefer my TV to be pretty dumb and leave the 'smart' stuff to the Xbox/Playstation/etc.]
As for power consumption, we do need to be a little careful here. Whilst an ancient desktop PC with a Pentium may be a power drain, I'm not sure about newer versions of these 'older' chips that Intel may be producing for specific applications.
>Now we come to the Internet and the search engines remember "everything"
Search engines don't 'remember' everything. They simply maintain a heap of stuff they regularly trawl from live websites. So it isn't Google et al who 'remember' your 20-year-old transgression, but some third-party website that allows search bots to crawl all over their site, giving the same access to their 20-year-old stuff as they give to the new and 'current' stuff.
So the real need is for search engines to better curate the search results and for websites to have some form of public/historical records tag that causes the underlying data to be treated differently by the search engines. All sounds simple until you consider what searches for people such as "John Kennedy" should be returning on their first page...
>while investors might get compensation, people who bought the cars are very unlikely to.
Why should people who brought the cars get compensation? Remember the fuel consumption and emissions figures are advisory and thus will have a disclaimer attached:
It should be noted that as the fuel consumption figures quoted are obtained under specific test conditions, they may not be achieved under ‘real world’ driving conditions. However, the figures serve as a means of comparing models of a similar type. . From 1 September 2017, the new Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP) came into force. Click here to read more about WLTP.
Because of the nature of testing procedures, the type approval emissions figures (shown by clicking on ‘vehicle details’ from the search results) should be treated with caution and specifically should not be used to rank a number of vehicles for which similar figures are quoted.
[http://www.dft.gov.uk/vca/fcb/fuel-consumption-and-co2-tools-disclaimer.asp ]
>dont cash in more than 5K per yeah and its tax free.
+ 1K from your employer
+11K from you tax allowance.
If you run an ESOP and/or (HRMC approved) profit share scheme further amounts can be had tax free... However, much depends on whether the expense is worth it; this is the primary reason why the government achieved higher tax receipts when they lowered the upper income tax rate from 50% to 45%.
>This kind of stimulus is needed to encourage infrastructure competition
I would go further and suggest that the government has to throw money at the Alt-ISP/Telco marketplace, if it is to have a healthy Alt-ISP/Telco players who can compete against the majors such as BT.
>Hence why most other countries electrical systems do not bother.
Suspect the real reason is time, cost and inertia!
Once you've agreed a Standard, got it deployed to millions of premises and people have been using it for 70+ years, it is difficult to change; although not impossible, remember the change over in the mid 1960's from coal gas to natural gas. Also whilst there may be benefits, the probably don't outweigh the significant costs of change.
>Ringmains kind of made economic sense in 1948.
Kind of the same thing can be said for the use of "twisted-pair" for "Ethernet" networking...
Back in the 1980's the use of Cat3 made sense, because that was what many buildings already had installed for telephony. But to perpetuate the "Ethernet over twisted-pair" myth all that had to be replaced by CAT5e then Cat6, Cat6a and in the near future Cat7...
However, the ring main concept makes a lot of engineering sense - just as the ring in computer networking does also.
I suggest that it is, in fact, those that who don't use ring mains as standard are being unnecessarily wasteful of a relatively scarce resource (ie. copper) and also have to more carefully plan their electrical installation and socket usage.
>You mean something like this ?
Probably more like this: RCA Folding Plug , although it doesn't comply with BS 1363–1: What happened to the improved UK plug?
However, you can buy a travel charger incorporating some of the concepts: Made in Mind .
>I wouldn't find those kludgy UK plugs acceptable at all - too complex, too many ways to make them fail.
Kludgy? bulky yes but kludgy?
too complex? about the only significant functional difference between a Standard UK 13A plug and others is the inclusion of a removable fuse.
too many ways to make them fail.? the only different way a UK plug can fail, is for the fuse to blow - is that too many?
>Much better to implement protection permanently at the circuit level, when the building is constructed.
UK electrical installation Standards require this, as has been pointed out by others the circuit breaker/fuse serves a slightly different purpose to the appliance plug/outlet fuse.
Wht are we in the UK so self-congratulatory about our power connector? Anyone who services domestic equipment knows how often an item that should have a 3 A fuse is fitted with a 13 A.
Not sure if the two things are really related. The UK power connector simply mandates a fuse, it is up to the manufacturer to fit a fuse appropriate to their appliance.
>But if it's safe, why not have the 13 A fuse in the socket, and save all those bulky and expensive plugs?
I suspect that if the fuse were to be in the wall socket more often than not it would either be 13A or a piece of wire ie. 'fused' to support the maximum load the socket/circuit can deliver.
However, I agree with you about the bulk, the UK 13A mains plug and socket is a great Standard for home appliances such as kettles, irons, vacuum cleaners etc. ie. stuff that people regularly connect and disconnect and that draw a lot of power. For sub-5A equipment its a bit of an overkill.
I know and have used the mini 5A round pin (unfused) version of the 13A plug, for (fused) lighting spurs, that are available from electrical trade counters.
I have also used a micro 3-pin 4 (or 6) gang multisocket for the hifi/home entertainment system, but this product is no longer available. But neither of these after-market socket styles are particularly standard when it comes to widespread usage and availability and so we can not expect equipment manufacturers to ship products fitted with these plugs.
Which effectively means for over-the-counter products, we have to work within the constraints set by the well established UK 13A socket. The only way you are going to replace it is to define a new electricity supply interface, such as USB...
>We'll lose access to the ISO ? Our companies will be barred from USB standards committees?
Well.... we may lose access to CEN/CENELEC and ANEC...
The point is, like many things, currently the UK has a say in what Standards products sold in the EU28 must comply with. Hence it was the EU, with the UK's assent, that demanded that phone manufacturers standardised on the USB Micro-B connector. Once the UK leaves the EU, it can expect to have zero say in the product Standards set by the EU27.
Which is where the issue arises, whilst the UK is happy with whatever Standards the EU27 specify then (ie. UK product Standards align with EU27 Standards) products shipped to the UK will be to EU Standards.
The problems arise when the UK decides to diverge from the EU Product Standards. If the UK requirement aligns with the Standards used in the RoW then once again no problem, however, if the Standard is unique to the UK eg. phone connector must be a USB 3.0 Type B Jack, that is when the UK will most probably have to bow to the inevitable - the market has spoken...
>The Lightning iPad will only charge from the Apple charger.
I assume you are referring to using the magnetic connector USB charging cable with the iPad and that previously the iPad charged from any other charger you possessed.
From my experience with third-party Apple cables, this will be down to the quality of the (magnetic connector) USB cable, I expect after a few charging sessions the iPad will report that the (magnetic connector) cable has been inserted but that it isn't charging.
Australia's government told telcos not to roll out 5G networks using network equipment from "vendors who are likely to be subject to extrajudicial directions from a foreign government"
Seems to me, that given the "shooting from the hip" directives coming out of the Whitehouse, that also precludes the use of equipment from US vendors...
>Calling them Nazis or comparing them to Nazis - ... , is surprisingly very offensive to them.
Who exactly is them?
I have known German Jews (many now dead but who decided to live in the UK) - yes those that had first hand experience of the Nazis - who quite happily compared the Zionists behind the modern state of Israel to the Nazis...
>The boxes relating to EU transactions will need to be stripped out
Maybe, however in the short-term expect them to remain as this is both the path of least change and thus maintains compatibility with existing financial systems such as Sage. Also by maintaining this separation, HMRC can more easily monitor EU27 VAT reporting and receipts, leaving room for further changes in the way VAT works for EU27 transactions.
Also I expect the survey didn't ask what proportion of their business systems are running legacy OS's and the importance of such systems to the business.
I have a WfWG laptop that gets powered up occasionally - when I have need to go that far back; I also have a laptop running XP with a suite of useful tools; however, all my everyday business systems are running OS's that are in support and thus receiving security updates.
There is a distinct lack of clarity about just what is being talked about. I see no real connection between "a critical remote-execution bug in Apache Struts 2" ie. 'datacentre' systems, and the way an organisation may go about fixing this and relying "on employees updating their own systems" ie. end user systems.
>IBM now have a patent on the idea
You can't patent ideas...
Whilst I agree the chances of anyone actually trying to sell this as a product is small, I expect others will implement the non-patent and then submit their own variation patent eg. "Drone delivery of donut (or other bun) based on a cognitive state of an individual"... However, I doubt we will see "Drone delivery of prize monies based on a cognitive state of an individual"
>Swap Coffee for Beer and this could work wonders
On reading the abstract: "The analysis can include profile data of people, including electronic calendar data, which can be used to determine a potentially predetermined cognitive state." my thoughts were: Must be time for a G&T...
>If only there were an easy to set up and use management system to secure and control all a home's IoT crap...
Unfortunately, I think this will most probably be a case of dream on...
Why?
I remember the 1980's when practically the same problem faced networking, yes we came up with SNMP (and it's ISO OSI equivalent) and MIB, which very quickly transformed into MIB2 with lots of proprietary extensions...
Coming at this from a slightly different angle...
Just been reading/researching Cat6a and PoE and one article was about using Cat6e PoE for smart lighting systems. I can envision the logic that leads to the implementation convergence, so that things that shouldn't being on the data network, being put on the data network because it makes things so much easier...
>The difference being the AI will improve and retain it's "intelligence".
Well given we aren't using true AI in cars, it won't improve unless it gets regularly updated like Win10. The only retained "intelligence" I suggest will be the owner specific such as routes used at particular times of day, driving style preferences, fuel/recharging stop preferences etc. which are probably covered by GDPR and are things an owner would like to transfer between vehicles.
>Fewer car parking spaces means more for living, which either means higher densities and potentially lower rents.
Dream on! :)
Fewer car parking spaces means higher density development and higher rents, which leaves little room for cars. I suggest you live in Tokyo for a while to get the picture.
Interestingly, A quick look on Google streetview of the neighbourhood I frequented back in the early 1990's, shows that even the bicycle park at the metro station has been built on, so it would seem even bicycle usage is falling or being discouraged.
>shows the level of interest people seem to have for infosec
Not really. However, it would be interesting for the scan to be repeated in 90 days to get an indication of how many have actually been changed - that would perhaps be a better indication of just how much attention people/organisations actually give to security disclosures...
>Owning nowt means that only the mega corps will own anything.
Yes the one thing missing from Dave Lee's piece is the monthly pay cheque that enables much of this; stop getting the monthly pay cheque and suddenly owning nothing but a whole bunch of monthly payments becomes a lot less attractive. So the subscription model helps to keep everyone busy looking out for the next pay cheque rather than watching what the mega corps are doing...
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