Posts by Dave 15

UK Prime Minister Johnson knows not when 400k+ deleted records from police DB will be back

Re: Johnsons fault or click bait?

On the covid thing....

BoJo doesnt run the NHS and hasnt for the last upteen years decided where the money is spent.

More worrying than the number of dead is the fact that the NHS has 2.7% of the cases dead .... this is the 5th highest in the world. Now you can say the NHS is underfunded but it is NOT underfunded compared to Columbia, Argentina, Brazil all of whom are curing more patients!

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

I bought this up way back in the first months of this over exagerated crisis and still no one has answered why the NHS is so clearly unable to learn from countries who are curing more patients. It surely cant be that damned hard to find out what doctors in Germany, France, Poland, Spain are doing that makes them so much better at curing people than our doctors. Its what I would expect any professional to do. Yet instead we hear about returning doctors needing to go on training on 'how to treat ethnic minorities' (and I would guess all those of relatively rare sexual persuations).

GOOD!

Most of those records were probably there illegally (and certainly immorally) as part of our police state and now its damaged, all I can say is one small forward step hurray.

Meet the new aviation insecurity, same as the old aviation insecurity: Next-gen ACAS X just as vulnerable to spoofing as its predecessor

Re: real weaknesses of ACAS

But if there is no jet coming because it is a spoof then dont want to dodge

Brexit border-line issues: Would you want to still be 'testing' software designed to stop Kent becoming a massive lorry park come 31 December?

Re: Blitz spirit!

Egit

Why do we have dutch tomatoes while some egit idiot planning bonzo is umming and ahhing over a company building greenhouses to produce tomatoes here? (esp as the company in question already has 2 UK sites). The fact is that we CAN grow stuff here, indeed we did - my great grandad grew toms, cues and even grapes (some of which went to the queen and earnt a thank you letter), this was done in what is now part of the splodge of London.

We might well need to stop building sprawling housing estates over everything and start building flats as they do in countries like Germany.

Re: If

In terms of number of ports and docks sorting out a range of goods we are probably ahead of most.

However this is just a yet another scare story. Get over it. We trade more with the rest of the world than with the EU, most of that trade is WTO as the EU has trade deals but largely with unimportant countries we do little trade with.

Lets remember, we have a trade deficit, cutting the trade cuts the deficit, nothing to dislike with that. Replace those imports with home produced and be better off.

Please remember

Lorries from here arriving at the continent are the continents problem not ours!

Stuff arriving from abroad is what we are interested in, IF we decide to check none, some, all is OUR choice.

Now, if the continent really stat making life difficult for us then we only have to retaliate... 1 guy employed to check incoming freight, 1 hour a day with an hour lunch break. NOTHING comes in and tough shite, they have the carpark issues.

Dell: 60% of our people won't be going back into an office regularly after COVID-19

Re: Efficiency gains

Come on, if people arent working when at home it is because they are not motivated. Those people will not be motivated with in the office so are doing sod all there and hiding behind others and their presence in the office.

You can work in pairs, mobs etc using screen sharing and conference calls without a problem so do that hell where I work we even have a morning plank and pressups TOGETHER!

Re: Efficiency gains

Those people are doing nothing whether in the office or at home.

People need motivation.... recognition, interesting work thanks etc.

People need to work in collaborative teams together so they work together on things, this can be done remotely with sharing desk tops and kit.

People not working is a management issue, if your managers are crap then you will have the issues you highlight, get rid of the useless leaches, from the top through the middle ranks except in the small number of places where there are people seriously delivering.

Re: Efficiency gains

MOB programming is the route forward. It forces frequent commits and people to be working together so they cant shirk.

You rotate who is driving and typing, who is checking on specs, requirements. ideas.

You dont need code reviews (it was reviewed as it was typed) you dont need design meetings as it is designed by the team as they go. All you need is a propritised back log of work.

Re: Efficiency gains

Most work from homers are as honest as those working in the office..... how many office workers are surfing their holiday plans instead of working.... and more judging by the IT department at work

Re: I would hate to own commercial real estate

Thats because the UK tax man is an anus, Those big yankee corps the likes of whitbread etc. have head offices in zero tax locations which charge the local company exactly what the company makes in 'profit' thus meaning the likes of amazon pay diddly. If the tax egits were to do something simple like a single flat tax on all income, same for peope and companies, then the cost of tax would be lower (and the collection efficiency higher because the system would be simple and cheap). I know what you are thinking, what about those on benefits or low wages... thats remarkably simple as well, every one legally here gets a very basic income allowing for house shares.

Re: I would hate to own commercial real estate

To be honest the UK is in dire need of the bottom collapsing from the property market.

Read Dambisa Moyo How the West was Lost. A very enlightening book. One (of the several ) reasons the west is losing ground to China, Africa, eastern Europe, India etc. is that we are 'investing' so much of our money in unproductive useless piles of concrete or bricks. Time for the bozos who thought pushing prices of buildings out to the stratosphere to lose their fortunes and for more sensible people to invest in factories, machinery, new processes and improved products that will sell.

Heavens the cost of one London office block would finance the design of whatever flavour of alternative power car you want to name, the cost of another would set up a factory and we could manufacture and export making money and employing people. Instead all that is tied up in the conccrete and that will never ever ever do anything useful

Re: I would hate to own commercial real estate

If the prices were right people will live there. After all there is more to life than work, cities still manage to harbour what used to pass as social life until people started thinking that posting pictures of their pussy (pet cat of course) on social media was a social life

Whoa-o BlackBerry, bam-ba-lam: QWERTY phone had a child. 5G thing's newly styled

Re: I WANT A KEYBOARD!!!!!!

To be fair on the calls it could be an android thing in part, I have another android (android one) that has a similar issue but not as bad, that also leaks memory and crashes

Printing is actually pretty trivial and a small part of the cost so customisation for different layouts there is really cheap.

You could go to the extreme I saw once of LCD key caps that changed with the keyboard layout selected and could even be customised via software.... somewhat overkill really As I tend to touch type on my physical keyboard I can use one layout despite the printing and still get it right

Re: Doh!

My E7 has no USB problems, just measured it against other phones I have - new Nokia, BB one, wifes iPhone etc. Its thicker than most, not by a whole lot to be honest, but less wide and tall. All in pretty damned good and it certainly passes the 'shirt pocket' test

Re: The sliders never had decent keyboards

The Nokia E7 keyboard is very good, movement, feel and when you push the screen off the top of the keyboard it angles very nicely indeed. To be recommended. For all it has it is only a tiny fraction thicker than a modern touch screen

Re: An existing OS is best

Cobblers frankly.

Today it is not impossible to design a new OS with a shim or api layer. We NEED a new OS, maybe a Symbian revival. My old Symbian phone STILL lasts over a week on a charge despite its battery being old, the new phones make about a day. The reason is because Symbian came from Epoc32 which was built for mobile battery powered devices. Android and iOS come from linux which was NOT designed for battery devices

The keyone form factor was fine if the quality of the whole had been good.

The keyboard is fantastic, faster and better than the screen.

Look back at the old Nokias and there are all sorts of ways of doing keyboards... slide out, slide the screen off the keyboard (e7 was cracking, I still use mine), twist (you turn the back and have half a keyboard each side of the screen).

Its really NOT difficult to make a nice design

I WANT A KEYBOARD!!!!!!

It is more accurate, faster and much easier to use than this screen shit

Mind, they need to fix the rest of the phone... my keyone : the back fell off, the battery has swollen, it fails to receive calls properly (more than 80% of calls either they cant hear me or I cant hear me or both). The quality is terrible BUT the keyboard is wonderful!

Transport for London asks Capita to fling Congestion Charge system into the cloud

Super, the whole congestion charge will be destroyed and a good service to man kind done

Butterfingers who don't bother with phone cases, rejoice: New Gorilla Glass 'Victus' tipped to survive 6ft drops

My blackberry

The screen glass survived the high velocity impact with the wall opposite when for the upteenth bloody time I made a phone call using the android software and the other party couldnt hear me.

I dont know for sure what is at fault here.

It could be the phone, but now my new android phone has done exactly the same twice today.

It could be the network, but my old phone acted the same in Sweden, Germany and the UK

Or it could be android, though this is now two versions on two phones doing the same.

Or it could just be that no one today bothers to actually check the shit they foist on us to meet the deadline is actually something more than a crock of shit. No one seems to care.

UK space firms forced to adjust their models of how the universe works as they lose out on Copernicus contracts

Re: It was ever thus

Why did the UK vote to leave, because EU contracts never came here, German and French gvmt never buy from anyone else, our gvmt sacrificed our industry on the altar of being good Europeans. If you want to know who to blame look no further than a European worshipping civil service and a bunch of weak willed, grease pole climbing, back pocket filling charlatons collectively known as politicians (not party political I hate them all)

Re: This project is, though

If we are still pumping cash into it then it isn't eu funded! , as I said, no play no pay, remove all funding, and just to avoid being shafted again stop funding or buying anything from abroad. Get back to developing and making it ourselves, when we have recreated the expertise we can export it or at least not give money away

Answer is simple

I bet our chicken politicians and our europe worshipping civil servants will not take the only appropriate action. The obvious and only reasonable response is to immediately stop all UK funding to ESA and all other European projects. We need to build a navigation system of our own so use the money for that, then invest in creating rockets and launch facilities, after all we used to have them. Stop squandering our money by giving it to these unpleasant and ungrateful bar stewards

Brit MPs vote down bid to delay IR35 reforms, press ahead with new tax rules for private-sector contractors

Then just wait

By the end of the year there will be no contractors left, yet another rise in unemployment and companies bleating they can't get engineers and moving abroad. The civil service that runs the country seem incapable of choosing to do anything other than deliberately and with malice against the UK damage us. MPs are pointless and backpacker filling lackeys giving this whole charade a so thin it's transparent pretence at democracy. It is no better under Labour or Conservative because it is the civil service at fault

I was screwed over by Cisco managers who enforced India's caste hierarchy on me in US HQ, claims engineer

And yet

People here having a go at Cisco. The UK gvmt sends India billions in aid (despite India having a space program we can't afford) and thousands of companies have Indian call centres and development offices (including Microsoft and Intel). But as usual where there is money or profit for the rich shareholders there is, and never has been, any conscience (or any Christianity etc.)

It's now safe to turn off your computer shop: Microsoft to shutter its bricks-and-mortar retail locations worldwide

Very performance oriented

We were bought by MS, 2 years later killed off, we were not as profitable as windows phone despite being (a) in a different market segment anyway - feature phones and (b) making millions a year, it was just not enough for them not even when it was seriously positive cash flow. When working for the the rewards system was fairly horrendous, compared to your peers and if considered not as good getting kicked out so new could be bought in. You didnt need to be behind your peers by any measurable amount but it was very harsh as a company from every side.

Re: Track record

windows phone based on wince, in itself a hack of windows. android and iphone based on hacks of linux. All hacks of desktop operating systems designed to run with unlimited volt.

Symbian was an evolution of epoc32, epoc32 was designed from the ground up to run on batteries, which is why my old Nokia S60 (Symbian) phone runs a whole week without a charge, including browsing, email, phone and using the apps built in and downloaded. Of course out of fashion now so no new applications coming along unles I write them.

Re: Track record

Windows phone was around long long long before iphone, it made no dent on Symbian or even Blackberry.

Then of course the bozos on the board of Nokia imported a failure from Microsoft (the only guy in Microsofts history to reduce the sales of office) and he bought in Microsoft phones despite the massive popularity and profitability of the Symbian devices (that could make phone calls, operate as a smart phone, had a store and a battery that lasted more than 4 hours). He then trashed the whole Symbian thing (including the 3d screens they had working) before closing all the linux development (those in the market and the clipper phone which was ready for launch) before finally closing the whole of the Nokia phone division because the Micorosoft phones never went beyond their historical 3% of the market (despite the 'burning platform' still accounting for over 50% of smartphones when he stopped the Symbian phones.... an accounting limited only because Nokia couldnt produce as many as people were trying to buy).

So, no, Microsoft didnt bring out their smartphone out of envy of Apple, they bought it from envy of Nokia

Re: Isn't it obvious......

Turning them off seems remarkably simple though the mouth continues to carry on, its the turning them on that take the time... oh, just a minute, windows... er... yes, same applies there (15 minutes this morning from the on switch to being able to restart all the apps it had destroyed, 30+ minutes to be usefully functioning... the time cost of yet another update for windoze 10

It's National Cream Tea Day and this time we end the age-old debate once and for all: How do you eat yours?

Re: ...delightful cakey accompaniment is pronounced "scone"...

The majority of times the e appears on te end of the word it alters the sound of the preceeding vowel so it matches its name (eh, ee, eye, ow, you)

so if it was meant to be scon thats how it would be spelt, its got an e on the end for a reason :)

Re: I solved this when I was eight

What???? NO NO NO NO NO.. your solution has entirely the wrong scone to cream ratio.

Your answer does NOT provide nearly enough cream. One other thing, if you have both halves of the scone just how are you supposed to get cream on your nose?

Re: Sorry to be technical

Never drink scrumpy with a cream tea, always have the cream tea mid afternoon or mid morning, and the scrupmy at breakfast, lunch and all night (well as long as you last before collapsing on the floor)

Re: As an outsider

Look online, there are ways to make it. Amazon will also deliver it in 1kg pots (and smaller if you only have half a scone).

What is amazing to me is how few countries actually have cream. The Germans translate 'sahne' to cream, if you check the actual product it is 'whipping cream' in its unwhipped state. They dont have single cream, double cream, extra thick double cream or clotted cream. I was able to demo to a German that with clotted cream you can stand your knife in it, then you can turn the pot upside down and the knife stays in the cream that stays in the pot!

A good way out

I love both Devon and Cornwall, its difficult to choose which way is best to eat the cream so why not split the scone in half and do one half cream on top and the other half cream first? You dont really lose out unless you are skimpy with the cream....

Which leads to another thought... cream first, jam and then cream last ... now that IS an answer!

Ex-barrister reckons he has a privacy-preserving solution to Britain's smut ban plans

Re: This could actually make $$$

We used to swap magazines nicked from the top shelf, found in bus shelters (assuming the pages werent stuck together), books and 'health magazines' not to mention some pretty but dubious playing cards.

Its not really abnormal. True we didnt do any of this at 6 or 7 years old, normally from about 11 on. But at 6 and 7 my kids dont get to use devices without some supervision.

Someone got so fed up with GE fridge DRM – yes, fridge DRM – they made a whole website on how to bypass it

Re: Entirely legal

The other thing is the fragillity anyway of modern stuff.

Coffee Philips machine broke again.. its been back under warranty but once again broke.

Synology NAS - main board broke down 1 week after warranty.

AEG washing machine, 15 months and the pump broke, 5 years and the main bearing in the drum is buggered

The only toys bought for my kids that last more than 5 minutes are Mamod steam engines and 1960/70 vintage TriangHornby or lego.

My Monday morning taxi driver had to return his 90k km Merc because it stopped functioning at all

Manufacturers buy up brand names and then cheapen everything to the point the brand is worthless. Hersheys have done it to Cadbury (not that those in America would know, Cadbury was a good chocolate everywhere else in the world - the American version was made under licence by Hershey and just as shit as they have now made it world wide), Colmans of Norwich ENGLISH mustard is now going to be made in Germany by Unilever, HP sauce with the houses of parliament is made in Holland...... it is FRAUD and is only happening because it doesnt matter who I buy X from, at the end of the day the same over arching company is making it, no competition is leading to shit products, high margins and disappointment for consumers. Any attempt at breaking into the market is stiffled by laws and rules designed to keep people out and keep the cozy monopolies. The politicians know where their back pockets get filled and have no interest at all in fixing it, either in the USA or EU

Re: Entirely legal

Which is an excellent reason not to buy an Apple product. Making something which is deliberately fragile, loading it with software that deliberately slows it down to unusable to 'force' you to upgrade etc etc is a despicable behavior.

Re: Solution

Possibly, but I dont think it is illegal in the EU, certainly fixing your printer so it will only work with approved supplies (i.e. your own very over priced ones) is perfectly legal and widely done.

Re: Solution

In the UK we have safe seats because no one in the area ever elects another 'party'. The problem is that we ALL know from bitter experience that it doesnt matter which tosser you vote for they are all the bloody same, back pocket open at all times and dont give a flying fig about electors between elections, and not even much at elections because once in they are in for life.

Competition? We've heard of it. MoD snubs cloud rivals to hand Microsoft £17.7m Azure hosted services gig

Re: Only the beast of Redmond could meet 'data sovereignty and reliability' needs

One week of using Windows 10 proved beyond any doubt Microsoft has zero concept of reliability. When I worked for them the email servers on exchange were dead at least twice a day and we had a helium blimp to fly the it's dead and it's back up messages around the office

Re: Data sovereignty, eh?

It's our civil service. All educated at Oxbridge to hate the Uk just as Burgess was. They would rather see the whole country prostrate than do anything for us. Why did we leave the EU? Because our civil service loved using the mantra of EU rules to screw us all over. They have been systematically destroying British industry since they started on our aircraft industry in the 1950s.

Re: Data sovereignty, eh?

Really? And you don't think the na or whoever are powerless to put people into Microsoft or just to threaten the CEO?

Re: Yeah, f**k UK industry...

If we don't have the expertise it is one we should be developing. Having other countries able to read your secrets and give them to others fuck the while point of having the MOD. The yanks shafted us over suez and would have done over the Falklands if they could have read and given our secrets to their friends in Argentina. Make no mistake a very significant number of Americans hate us even mire than they dislike the Russians. (And no, the Eu countries dont like us any better)

Re: Fish

The usual stench of corruption and backhand that reeks from everything our civil service does.

Why the hell doesn't someone sort it out? Millions that could have supported a really secure and independent uk system that the U.S. government couldn't listen to which would have created technology and expertise the Uk could sell abroad and are money from which would in the meantime have supported uk jobs has now been given to their second bum buddies. I wonder if it will be as successful as the millions given to Microsoft to develop a software apprenticeship scheme that never happened? Probably about the same, and just as that apprenticeship stab in the back it will kill one or two British companies.

Security??????

Sharing all your data with the USA is secure????????????? Are they stark staring bonkers? Yet again the UK civil service screws British industry right up the arse. All those engineers in the UK can't put together a solution? Blocks as normal. The civil service just hates this country. Better to give the yanks all our secrets directly isnt it? It's a wonder they didn't choose a Russian or Chinese service but I guess they are selling our secrets to them as Burgess and his Oxford educated bunch did. Why the fuck does BoJo not hang the whole civil service as the traitors they are. Can't buy our own pie, can't buy our own police cars, helicopters, jet fighters, Nhs computer systems, tax systems, tanks (just bought some kraut ones). In fact I would love to know how many decades ago our civil service spent any of our money in ou country. Hang them all, traitors

Penny smart and dollar stupid: IT jobs slashed in US, UK, Europe to cut costs – just when we need staff the most

While we are talking about GDPR etc

A while ago the EU decided to do something about cookies. Now it seems sites, including el reg, have decided to splurge a huge banner right across the page so you can't use it. I am pretty sure that is NOT what the EU intended. I am 100% sure they didn't want people to be forced to accept 'essential' cookies because in honesty any decent engineer can design a cookie free website that functions. So el reg, you bang on about others then fuck us all over with your lazy approach.

Intelligence?

You don't expect leaders of companies to use their brains for anything harder than working out how to spend the billions they pay themselves?

Next they will be bleating about a lack of skills rather than realising they are paying so badly people decide on collecting bins, driving taxis or working abroad. If you want seriously well educated and intelligent engineers you do not get them by paying peanuts.

Of course business today is never about building for tomorrow it is only ever about reporting today as profitable so they can pay themselves another multi million bonus.

Sad really

NHS contact-tracing app is best in the world, says VMware CEO... whose company helped build it

Re: Why the heck not a UK developed app?

Why not a UK company for this app, for PPE, for the NHS system, army tanks, navy aircraft, police cars, ambulances, fire engines? All the same problem. The civil service was educated at Oxbridge, universities that have produced the Russian spies that gave away our secrets. These people loath, decide and hate the UK and the pleas that live here. They hate with such a passion they wish to destroy our economy and jobs.

There is no other explanation, if it was once in a while I would suspect backhanders, but as it is always the same I discount that