Posts by Polyphonic

Any social media accounts to declare? US wants travelers to tell

The good old US of A has been off my travel plans for a long time.

This doesn't move it up the list any.

Competition watchdog to rubberstamp BT gobble of EE

Byee EE

As someone who was synergised from EE this time last year I feel sorry for all my ex-colleagues who are likely to synergised this year.

Re: glad I jumped

EE and 3 mast share. I wonder how that will fare in the future.

Michigan sues HP after 'botched' $49m upgrade leaves US state in 1960s mainframe hell

Same old, same old

Better to replace with new than try and port very old no matter how well it works. Things have moved on in the last 50 years.

When I worked at EDS the porting projects invariably failed, the replace with new and migrate the data were normally were successful.

But they did make the classic EDS outsourced mistake on one project. Letting go the coders who were keeping the old system going by patching the code. PL/I can be an unforgiving mistress. They had to rehire 2 of them at great cost as contractors. Nice guys, but one looked like a 1960's OU lecturer and the other a badly aged member of a 1970's glam rock group, who still thought flares were cool.

Thousands cut off from email after EE bungles domain renewal

Re: all ee domains seem to be 1 yr renewals

Or, could it be that they are merging with BT this year and next year all those domains will be defunct?

Could it be that this time next year Orange, T-Mobile, ee, etc branding will be dust? Not sure I want to lose my [e-mail] email, but there again, byeeee.

HP slaps dress code on R&D geeks: Bin that T-shirt, put on this tie

Re: HP Parking

Reverse parking into a slot is not only sensible but safer. A couple firms I know have a reverse park policy purely on safety grounds, you are more likely to reverse into someone leaving a slot than entering.

As you say commonsense, but at one company I worked at, it might been an anagram of SDE, the manager didn't want you reversing as your exhaust might mark the building!

Tape thrives at the margin as shipped capacity breaks record

Re: killowatt per hour?

Regardless of the units used there are other overheads. Assuming those disks are mirrored and in a data centre l guess at the least there will be an overhead for cooling.

Would you trust 'spyproof' mobes made in Putin's Russia?

Unlikely as it may seem..

Given the predeliction of the Russian government for control of all forms of communications in that country I do not believe they will not have a backdoor into this phone.

Smartphones are inherently unsafe.

BT coughs £12.5 billion for EE as fourplay frolics pay off

Re: Can somebody Explain

That's right. OPEX is the operating expenditure that cannot be turned into capital like wages, governance or anything else that counts as cost. EE are already aggressively driving down OPEX but my dealings with BT in the past shows EE to be total newbies compared to them.

Re: For those about to leave...

The Peoples Network is an EE MNVO so the coverage is only as good as EE.

Worth remembering that there are only 4 mobile network operators; EE, O2, 3 and Vodafone, everyone else is buying their network coverage from one of them.

Telefónica to offload O2 to Three daddy Hutchison for £10.25bn

Re: Possible problems

3 don't have a 2g roaming agreement. It's the MBNL ownership that causes a conflict of interest. If they take over the infrastructure share with Voda and retain the partnership with EE their will be a spider in a complicated web.

Possible problems

There are bound to be some problems. O2 and Voda has an infrastructure agreement to mast share and 3 are actually partners in MBNL with EE to share infrastructure. Not too sure how the CMA will view that.

3 also have a large amount of spectrum, including the lump that EE had to unload after the merger, not sure how that fits in with o2's lump. OFCOM might have an interest in that quite apart from the competition problems.

If and when the new annual license fees are decided, that too might have an effect on the new companies pricing.

EU probes Google’s Android omerta again: Talk now, or else

I'm not pro-Google but I feel some of the things that come out of Brussels are driven by the desire to break up big businesses, which the French and Belgiums do not like one bit. Especially if they are not French.

Universal Credit CRISIS: Howard Shiplee SHIPS OUT of top job

Good project (programme) management for Government

It has always been so that a PM/PgM on a Government project will bail before the project/programme is delivered. Like musical chairs the last man standing will take the blame :-)

We need less U.S. in our WWW – Euro digital chief Steelie Neelie

Re: Not specific enough

The last organization I would want involved with policing the internet would be the EU. They would make the soviet censors look open minded.

EE in giant VoLTE-face as it tries voice calls over Wi-Fi... again

Re: No roaming because of 999/112

Not that easy. If the call comes over wifi it hits EE servers where it is mashed to go out on the network. So a call arrives and they would have to do a whois on the IP address to determine the foreign operator and country. But even then they would not have an area to forward the call too.

It is a devil of a job to do it in the UK so trying to do it for just the EU area is a major challenge.

Greenpeace rejoices after getting huge renewable powerplant cancelled

Re: And who will not be happy

Therein lies the problem with the pseudo science and mythology which these organisations base their opinions.

When they were banging on about using bio fuels the potential problems were highlighted but the green lobby won the day.

Now we are committed to a percentage of bio based fuel in petrol throughout the EU and it is harder to wind this out than it is to put it in to law.

EU digital tsar 'Steelie' Neelie Kroes: Telcos must adapt to losing roaming cash

Re: It's already too watered down

EE are the exception in that although the brands T-Mobile and Orange are in that stable they are entirely separate from any other T-mobile and Orange networks and have to negotiate with each business.

Telefonica, Vodafone and 3 in the UK are better placed as they own the firm, as it were.

Currently mobile telephony in Europe is in dire straits, the UK is fairly healthy in comparison, and if they are squeezed on costs there will less choice not more. Why innovate if every time to you try the government is there with it's cap in hand? I wonder if any of the operators in the UK would have introduced new services if they knew that Ofcom were going to reward them for their innovation by quadrupling their spectrum fees?

OK, so we paid a bill late, but did BT have to do this?

Noooooo, not the GPO

For those of us old enough to remember, the last thing you want is an revived nationalised GPO providing telecoms. If the GPO were still in charge you wouldn't have to worry about bills, you'd be unlikely to have a line. The one thing the privatising of the British Telecom did was introduce competition and choice. At least you can leave BT if you don't like them.

Privatisation opened up the market and while BT have, and will continue to have, the majority of the infrastructure, it is open to other operators.

It is unlikely that we would have the mobile operators we have today if the BT had remained a government company.

Snowden: US and Israel did create Stuxnet attack code

Re: Worse than that

David Irving at his best. Fact, the invasion, not occupation, of Poland was part of a general expansion by Hitler and the Soviets invaded Poland after they had divvied up the country between them.

Hanslope Park: Home of Britain’s ‘real-life Q division’

Shift work with trips abroad

My father worked there and at the outstation near Buckingham from the mid 60's till he retired in '92. Lots of shift work, fitting out at embassies with the occasional long tour. He did St Helena and Darwin. I think he enjoyed it but as with all things the transmitters and receivers he worked on were pensioned off, as was he:)

HP sacks English employees to bag Scots gov jobs cash

Back to the subject

Are HP truly evil or just pretending? They do know how to f*ck up a company.

Desperate Venezuelans wiped clean of bog roll

Re: Worst jobs in the world: no 53

There was an intelligence cell in Rheindahlen with it's own room dedicated to studying such paperwork. Brixmis were the guys digging it up for the men and women in the smallest room of JHQ.

Re: Who is in charge of the supply of bread to the population of London?

You must move out of London, we have plenty of bread here in the countryside, but of a shortage of good soft toilet rolls which is why we have a good use for cheap white sliced.

INSIDE GCHQ: Welcome to Cheltenham's cottage industry

Re: "anyone can get their balls out and whack them off among the sheep"

Hey, unfair. We have three golf courses and no sheep on them. Loads in the road, and occasionally my garden, but not the golf course.

Or .......

The RAF HQ moved out of RAF Innsworth (nearer still to Boddington) at this time and the rest of the personnel archives not long after that :)

Maggie Thatcher: The Iron Lady who saved us from drab Post Office mobes

World leader wedded to market economy, privatisation and private property ruins the UK

World leader wedded to market economy, privatisation and private property ruins the UK

In later years we will recall that a world leader in the 1980's changed the UK economy and the global economy for ever, and not always for the good.

Not it was not Margaret Thatcher or even Ronald Reagan, but Deng Xaioping who had the most immediate impact when he liberalised the Chinese economy and it became cheaper to manufacture in China than Manchester. Not a new phenomenon, the cotton mills of England went when the cotton was woven nearer where it was grown, but one overlooked when viewed with the parochial eye of blaming everything on M. Thatcher.

I saw someone say she was a warmonger too. Let's balance it up, 1 war (the Falklands), the ongoing Troubles in NI and I think that was about that. Whereas the peacenik T Blair had at least five wars or interventions to his name within 6 years.

She was strong government when strong government was needed. She made mistakes, I feel the poll tax was not one of them, but there again I've always been a rate payer, but she is not to blame for everything. When all is said and done we are responsible for our own lives and shouldn't expect someone else to sort everything out for us.

Hold on! Degrees for all doesn't mean great jobs for all, say profs

Degrees of torture

I have an Open University degree (maths and computer science and worked in IT (and still do) whilst I studied. But my children's experiences are:

Number 1 son, civil engineering degree, now works in IT change management

Number 2 son, physics degree and works in Nuclear engineering

Daughter, turned down a place on a media and music management degree course, worked her way up from call handler to area manager in the same firm and on the way up has managed graduates from the course she turned down who are now call handlers.

Review: Britain's 4G smartphones

Re: Orange or EE coverage

People don't like mobile masts as they think it fries their brains but like huge TV masts, and in our village repeaters, because they cannot do without Bargain Hunt. Even then some of us have to rely on freesat because we cannot get a terrestrial signal. Mobile signal propagation is challenging, as is any radio signal, and up to now the spectrum available hasn't helped.

Hey HP: You may not rate Autonomy, EDS, but buyers do

EDS was not a basket case

EDS was the only profit making part of HP for the first 2 years and paid for itself. Poor management by HP was the reason for any decline.

Shying away from established markets and not following up on leads because services could not make the hardware margin (40% or more) was what screwed an otherwise good business.

The men in suits were the death of EDS and HP had the biggest suits.

Scottish Highlands get blanket 3G coverage

Re: EE

I'm on an EE box and it is excellent. Never had any coverage here and now 5 bars all over the house and some distance into the garden. It has been a revelation. We can text our family, and phone them on our mobiles at home rather than going up the to the top of the hill!

BT wins another HUGE gov-funded rural broadband deal

Re: 2 Mb/s - whats the point?

I live in a rural part of the area covered and we don't get 3G and 4G is a dream along with fibre. Without fibre for the backhaul we are aren't likely to get 4G

Re: Aim low to ensure disappointment

Well I live in the area, on a very rural exchange, and we already get better than 2mps so it's money for old rope. We don't get mains gas because no one wants the challenge of laying the infrastructure so there was never any hope of getting Virgin interested. Old beardy likes his consumers in a heap.

BT will just beef up the existing infrastructure in the big towns and ignore the rest for a few years.

Why is 4G so expensive? Answer: The Post-Voice Era is coming

Re: I still don't understand what 4G is for!

Your 3G problems are down to capacity and it is not just calls. There will be a lot bandwidth taken by data users, I'm guilty of that, I use my phone to listen to the radio (nice all I can eat data deal on my contract). It is better to switch to 2G if you just want to phone as this is under utilised, unfortunately your phone will always try to use the 3G service it that is available. Your signal will show strong it is the backhaul that will lack the capacity.

With a 4G service all the data users should be using the 4G leaving the 3G clear for voice and SMS.

Capita UK offshoring plan killed by customer backlash - insiders

Re: Two people that won't be missed?

Outsourcing works on paper but is based on a false premise. What most companies miss when working up the case for outsourcing is the amount of unrecorded support and "favours" that most companies with in house support work on. Your keeping a block of cheap mice is a prime example. Before we outsourced our facility work I could get a 1 amp fuse from Tech Support and replace the blown fuse in a desk socket (which was normally down to the cleaner and her hoover) in a couple of minutes. After outsourcing it cost us £160 per visit so we had to wait until a lot of the desk fuses had blown before making a call.

Apple begs ex-Google bods to fix crap maps app

Who do I contact at Apple to report a copyright infringement?

I want to report a copyright infringement to Apple. I asked the old woman in the library for directions twice and both times she sent me to the wrong place. Clearly she is using the new Apple maps without a licence.

Jury awards Apple $1bn damages in Samsung patent case

Re: I completely disagree

@Nine Circles

I understood the interpretation of the Best Buy reports was that people bought a Samsung Tablet thinking it was "just like an Ipad", a bit like the "Just like a Golf" adverts that ran some time back in the UK. In which case should I take my Renault back to the dealer and demand a refund because it's not a Golf?

Daily Mail group boss spoof tweeter fights to protect anonymity

Defenders of truth and soft porn

I note that in the past the Daily Mail have defended the anonymity of twitter users when other rags have reached for the lawyers. Not so f***ing defensive when the guy is twittering about them.

Unions urge under-fire HP workers to 'resist' job cuts

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt

Nothing new here, pass on. EDS culled EDS employees to make the company look good to the vampire squid, then HP started culling yet more employees to boost the share price, so this is nothing new. The unions were rubbish then and no different now. HP won't take any notice.

The fact is HP no longer innovate so the only way they can make money is by sacking employees and looking through their rather bare IP cupboard for some "patent wars".

And what's more

And what's more HP have just lost a couple of contracts with the MOD and others that used to pay the bills. HP were in deficit until they bought EDS with it's big services portfolio.

HP loses MoD payroll and pensions deal to CSC

Nooooo

Paymaster do a good job, they have never screwed up my pension.

Crapita and CSC on the other hand cannot handle anything correctly. I guess they will be "leveraging" their vast employee pool of overseas drones.

Still HP have a habit of losing business that EDS had held for years.

So, what IS the worst film ever made?

So dire they never released it on DVD

Cannibal Girls, saw it on the big screen, awful but it kept me out of the rain.

Greens threaten to sue over solar power cash slash

9% not a few pence

The actual extra on an electric bill is 9% for renewables and environment which is a bit different to a few pence.

On a bill of £1000 per year for all electric assisted housing that's a large lump.

This is a transfer of cash from the poor to the well off. It goes to roof renters too, so big business reaps the profit as well.