Posts by Flak 100 posts • joined 11 Jan 2013
IMHO there is no other application that comes close to Excel in terms of usability, versatility and usefulness.
Disclaimer: No other application has been harmed in the creation of this message.
Disclosure: I have no financial or other interest in Microsoft or other software vendors
(Attributed to Mark Twain)
There is an experience asymmetry between the buyer (public sector) and the seller which I have seen play out countless times in a neighbouring industry:
The lead buyer often runs their first procurement of this magnitude and complexity, as each organisation only procures one of these types of projects every few years or so, often accompanied by advisors (e.g. procurement advisors on process, external domain experts, internal stakeholders). On the other side of the table you have sellers who are engaged regularly in these kinds of procurements and consequently have experience - often lots of it - on how to maximise the opportunity for them.
The outcome is varied and while there may be a postmortem after the procurement and implementation, lessons learned are forgotten (by the organisation), because the next procurement is a few years away, the lead buyer has changed through promotion or retirement and a new lead is in place, possibly with new advisors and stakeholders.
And that is why history rhymes...
I suspect you meant free space optics (FSO), i.e. firing laser beams for communication through the air.
It is available, used and can provide high capacity links, but it is very susceptible to weather (fog, rain, snow, even heat), particularly as the distance increases, meaning that other technologies are far more common. Today, E-band and V-band point to point radio links are relatively inexpensive and typically perform better, and with more and more fibre becoming available, fixed line connections increasingly substitute wireless technology for longer distance communications.
Great to see a company experiencing and quantifying the benefits of home working. Most companies have been forced into the homeworking scenario rather than actively embracing it pre-Covid-19. If this results in an industry-wide culture shift and greater acceptance and even promotion of home working, there are employer, employee and environmental benefits to be had.
Hope the lockdown will end soon, but also that the lessons learned through the enforced home working scenario are not lost and we all don't just go back to 'business as usual'.
Given that we are talking about streams of typically a couple of hundred MB or more, the lowered overhead of TLS 1.3 fades to insignificance.
Don't get me wrong, it is the right way to go in terms of latest protocol version, security and start up times, but the overhead benefit is negligible.
Excuse me... £369,267 per month?
That is absolutely staggering. For 650 parliamentarians, meaning that would be £568.10 for every MP every month.
Someone should have checked the Zoom website and their pricing plans - the UK government has been had! https://zoom.us/pricing
I am sure they will include in the above costs: new laptops, new echo cancelling conference phones, new broadband connections, new..., new..., new...
Very prudent!
No surprise that Vodafone is looking to augment its choice of providers of FTTP solutions with the use of Openreach.
This will keep both CityFibre and Openreach honest.
Just wait until VirginMedia is added to the portfolio... Given the MVNO deal between Vodafone and VirginMedia, perhaps there is more to come in the fixed line market, too.
The naive thinking displayed here is not new. When I conducted research for my dissertation in the late 1990s, I looked at the use of the Internet by SMEs, comparing UK and German companies. One common finding was that in both countries, companies recognised the new markets that the Internet was going to open up to them (e.g. outside of their current market geography), but failed to see that there would be increased competition from other companies they previously didn't contend with.
This surprised me as it was completely irrational.
So it is here. The Internet provides greater opportunity to work flexibly (completely independent of physical location), but people don't understand that it means that someone in some random country or location can access their services just as conveniently as they do.
@werdsmith
mmWave technology has been and is being used today - but the application is quite specific. In fact, mmWave technology is used by mobile operators, too - for backhaul from mobile masts that don't have fibre. The links use highly focused 'pencil beams' and equipment is placed where there is no physical obstruction, as this would interrupt or degrade the transmission.
For example, V-band and E-band services in particular can be used to transmit data wirelessly at Gigabit speeds. What may surprise you is that links like this using compliant equipment only need to be registered with Ofcom (so they know where it has been deployed), but the actual deployment is not regulated (i.e. you don't need to ask for permission).
Still no health issue, however...
I blame E.T. (just because I have always wanted to use that icon)!
This is an argument that has been used many times - and sometimes successfully - at least in court (e.g. US gun industry).
In some cases that statement clearly doesn't hold (e.g. tobacco industry).
If a company makes a product which has as its sole or at least main purpose the spying on end users (even if it is 'only' governments), it is easy to decide where on the spectrum this case resides.
Facebook's hypocrisy is mindblowing!
AC, because I am not responsible for what my fingers type :-)
Given that the evidence will focus on historical algorithms which have been updated and changed many times since 2006, surely this cannot be as big a deal for Google as they make out.
So, Google, what is it going to be - evidence, or no evidence?
AC, because I don't want to mysteriously slip down Google's rankings...
A wise former colleague once said that contracts should be carefully written and then put in a drawer, with both parties acting in good faith based on the spirit of the agreement.
When a contract comes back out of the drawer, it is because the relationship has shifted and it needs to stand up to scrutiny.
From personal experience I have learned that at that point it will be hard, if not impossible, to change the terms to both parties' satisfaction.
Congratulations to Sark!
I can't help but think, however, that the argument is a bit over the top:
"it doesn't exist online"
ISO's 3166 list - "if you aren't on that list, you effectively don't exist on the internet"
"Without it, Sark faced an existential threat."
Other islands exist - even on the Internet - without their own top-level domains.
But more power to the 500 or so Sarkonians!
(I hope I am not causing an international incident by using this term which is probably wrong - happy to be corrected)
Went through the process of setting up a new business and decided from day one that the office would be a meeting place - not a place where data or applications are hosted.
This means that as long as each user takes their laptop and power cable, it makes no difference from where they work.
In fact, prior to our Internet connection being installed, we tethered our laptops to individual mobile phones while sitting in the office. Slow, but still usable.
Collaboration tools allow screen and document sharing, voice and video calls, etc.
I know that it is nowhere near as easy for companies that have to deal with on-prem legacy applications, desktop computers, etc.
Many devices have the capability to be securely connected and communicate securely - but it is often the implementation that is found wanting:
Default passwords not being changed
Multi-purpose flat LANs or open inter-VLAN routing rather than network segmentation
Patching of OS and firmware
I get the point about some devices running on old OSes - surely equipment contracts particularly in the healthcare sector come with maintenance regimes - a current, patched and secure OS must be part of such contracts.
The same applies to networking equipment.
Can't agree more strongly.
At a previous company a user's corporate O365 account was compromised through the re-use of a password from the individual's private 'standard' list of passwords used for many purposes - one of these was hacked.
I asked the IT manager why MFA was not mandated - particularly as it is a free standard feature. There was no satisfactory response. It was fixed and there hasn't been a breach since.
What a waste of time an energy in this case - Kraft did buy it, Deloitte accepted the narrative at the time of the audit and those are the documented facts of the matter. Simple.
Does a $5bn law suit hinge on hypotheses and alleged intent - or on what actually happened: HP was too keen to buy, was sloppy in its due diligence, overpaid and now has a huge case of buyer's remorse.
I feel for the HP shareholders - they should be taking the HP team to task for what has been some spectacular value destruction!
...calls the tune.
No surprise in the instructions given to HPE's expert - I am sure instructions were given by Mike Lynch to his team explaining their rationale and how what they did was proper and legal.
Cannot wait for the outcome of these proceedings, but in the end this whole saga comes down to HPE's woefully inadequate due diligence.
There is a way to get around this issue - a bit elaborate, but done with our children - one German parent, one British parent, children born and registered in the UK.
Getting the children a German passport based on official UK birth certificate - no arguments about names, spelling, etc.
AC, because too much personal information...
Here is a challenge for the UK government:
Can you negotiate that in return for extraditing Mike Lynch the US agrees to extradite Anne Sacoolas.
Sounds like a fair and equitable trade to me.
The outcome of this negotiation may well set a precedent for what we can expect from a UK/US trade deal...
The separation of handset and airtime contracts and is definitely a growing trend already - the locked handsets being one reason, the other being that bundled deals are no longer attractive. This is largely driven by the maturing of the handset market with intense price competition between the different manufacturers.
Many people didn't realise they were locked in until they wanted to use their handset on another network.
More power to the consumer!
The gap in the logic between 'smart meters save you costs' (which they don't as they only show energy usage rather than controlling it) and actually saving costs is a change in energy tariffs.
Most pay standard tariffs that apply regardless of the time of day.
Some may have Economy 7 meters for nighttime electricity usage, which may be cost effective when using electric storage heaters.
Having smart meters means being able to tell, by household, how much electricity is used at certain times of day and will lead to differential pricing for electricity during the day (e.g. pay less from 10am - 4pm, pay more from 7am - 10am and from 4pm - 10pm, pay least between 10pm and 7am).
Cost savings will only be available to those who then change their consumption profile.
Hold on to your cotton socks for a shake up in tariffs - only this will change behaviour - not looking at today's 'not so smart' meter which doesn't tell you very much.
A dispassionate financial response would be - the costs have gone up, so now the revenues must be increased, too.
Shame we all care about why the costs have gone up!
With an effective monopoly for UK domains, prices should be controlled.
A lawyer should know to be careful with what they 'offer' or 'accept' and regardless of the outcome, if the client instructed the lawyer to achieve a £200k purchase price and the lawyer agreed to a lesser sum without agreement from the client.
One of my children has a book about forensics with the simple phrase 'every contact leaves a trace' on its back cover.
I should be able to choose to purchase with cash and without having to give any personal details the vast majority of goods and many services.
Emailed receipts build up the same plethora of personal data that loyalty store cards collect.
Many people will say that is perfectly acceptable, but may not be fully aware of the power of that data when it comes to profiling consumers and the insights it gives those collecting the data into their (very personal) lives.
Thing is that the presentation of ADSL/FTTC at the customer will still be ADSL/VDSL, which will need to be plugged into something that then presents Ethernet ports (e.g. a broadband router), allowing either an in-built or external SIP ATA to present an analogue port to the legacy phone if someone wants to retain that. FTTP will look differently, however. For those who are interested the Openreach FTTP tech spec is here:
https://www.btplc.com/SINet/sins/pdf/506v1p5.pdf
Other FTTP providers will have similar specs for their services.
While an ATA port mimics an analogue telephone line, the ATA typically cannot provide other legacy services, with the device dependent exception of Fax services (T.38).
Some of the other legacy services such as non-IP BT Redcare may require hardware and service updates and changes from the service provider (and that may mean a move to IP).
The challenge is in the volume of migrations and making sure that every migration scenario is accounted for to ensure continuity of service.
Just read yesterday that the 737 MAX flight simulator at Ethiopian Airlines (they actually have one of the few in the world!) could not faithfully recreate the crash scenario that happened.
This shows that even the flight sim was NOT a full representation of reality.
A stark reminder that any theoretical modelling may be useful, but does not replace real-world testing.
It appears that HP only has itself to blame - hearing what it wants to hear, dismissing warning voices and proceeding with an overpriced acquisition despite the fact that people within the organisation knew better.
Clearly the Autonomy guys knew they had won a watch (more like a large pot of gold).
Looks like this lawsuit will not vindicate the HP leadership at that time - I feel for the HP shareholders who bore the brunt of this massive value destruction.
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