Posts by Robert 22

Digital sovereignty is real in Europe. The UK? Not so much

I'm not sure about the extent that this applies to the UK, but Canadian government procurement rules and processes make it extremely difficult for public servants to procure software that isn't from US vendors such as Microsoft and Adobe.

Trump admin pays wind developers to quit, back fossil fuel projects

Yet another economic intervention brought to you by the party of small government!

Palantir's NHS future in doubt as ministers eye contract break

Re: Get those betting slips out

I've found in my experience that large US firms can be extremely aggressive in claiming and enforcing IP rights There is a real danger of getting locked into an unequal relationship.

Capita won disastrous UK pensions gig after acing performance checks

Re: Brown Envelopes

We found out that the large home counties based company who got the job had a team of a dozen proposals engineers whose only job was to write proposals for government contracts.

Of course with all the money being spent on proposal writers, they had to cut a few corners somewhere else.

Usage pricing leaving software vendors guessing what lands on the invoice

Re: IMHO, "Usage Pricing" is...

Printed in a 2 point font.

Those who 'circle back' and 'synergize' also tend to be crap at their jobs

I am reminded of Orwell's timeless essay "Politics and the English Language."

Quebec vehicles agency spent C$245M over budget on SAP ERP it wasn't sure it needed

Re: Anyone surprised?

Brings to mind the Phoenix pay system.

Obviously IBM got the business because the agency managers must have taken an old saying to heart: "Nobody ever got fired for buying from IBM."

Sword of Damocles hangs over UK military’s Ajax as minister says back it or scrap it

I am reminded of the XKCD Cartoon where someone notices that there are 13 standards that cover basically the same problem and starts on a new standard with the result that there are 14 standards.

Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

Re: Not a Trump thing.

The US had an abysmal record on COVID. Much of this was because people didn't take it seriously and/or believed misinformation. It is not surprising we are seeing the return of measles, and, probably other mostly forgotten diseases.

US Navy scuttles Constellation frigate program for being too slow for tomorrow's threats

Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet

It is interesting that ships with a displacement of 14,500 tons are now classed as frigates. In WW 2 that would have been the displacement in the heavy cruiser class.

Russian fake-news network, led by an ex-Florida sheriff's deputy, storms back into action with 200+ new sites

Re: The worse part is people can't spot this bu***hit

The miracle of modern social media makes it possible to identify the biases held by people and target them with messages that exploit those biases. That way the messages can be completely different and/or quite extreme with little risk of alienating the recipients.

Space Command gets Trumped out of Colorado, voting conspiracy cited

Back in the 1950s, there was a decision to shift defense industry to the southern US on the grounds that it would be less vulnerable to a Soviet attack. This contributed to the some of the more northern states becoming Rust Belt states.

Semiconductor industry could short out as copper runs dry

Re: Trump not helping .. as usual.

His ignorance is truly encyclopedic.

Admin brought his drill to work, destroyed disks and crashed a datacenter

There is a time honored principle: Don't use force; get a bigger hammer."

Trump announces $175B for Golden Dome defense shield over America

Reminds me of the Maginot Line. Also, the Asimov short story "Superiority."

Wyden warns telcos still leave Senate in the dark after Trump DOJ snooping scandal

Ironic that the guy who always complains about "Lawfare" is actually its foremost exponent, whether the matter at hand involves stiffing small contractors or going after political enemies, both real and imaginary.

AI models routinely lie when honesty conflicts with their goals

Re: No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information.

Nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, ....

America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

We have met the enemy and he is us!

The fish rots from the head,

Whistleblower describes DOGE IT dept rampage at America's labor watchdog

It is an all you can steal buffet.

Trump thinks we can make iPhones in the US just like China. Yeah, right

That happened to me once on a very expensive piece of hardware.

Re: Trump doesn't think

He is like the guy who thinks he is the world's greatest chess player because he moves the pieces in ways that nobody else does.

Trump's tariff turmoil leaves IT projects in deep freeze

Re: Intended to confuse and distress normal people

I'm reminded of the German industrialists who bet on Hitler.

Re: Overwhelmed

Trump is just like the guy who thinks he is the World's greatest chess player because he moves the pieces in ways that nobody else does.

Re: Overwhelmed

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

― H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe

Americans set to pay more on all imports: Trump activates blanket tariffs

Re: I feel liberated already...

Calculations with 0/0 = indeterminate number?

Signalgate storm intensifies as journalist releases full secret Houthi airstrike chat

Re: They're already

Signal may have been approved for the sharing of non-sensitive information, but it wasn't approved for classified information.

It seems that at least some of the people involved were using their own phones. This is a big no-no. Among other things, there are tools available to state actors (look up NSO Pegasus) that can exploit any activity on a compromised phone. And it is apparently quite easy to compromise a cell phone.

Re: I cannot see how bombing the Houthis helps

If his statements are taken at face value, he is clueless about tariffs.

Re: Pegasus Anyone?

I'm reminded of the Three Stooges production "You Nazty Spy." It is on youtube.

Re: Does not compute ....

Didn't you hear that this "Truth" thing is just an obsolete woke concept? Back to your Newspeak lessons or Room 101 for you!

Top Trump officials text secret Yemen airstrike plans to journo in Signal SNAFU

Re: Incompetence finds it own level

Trump's Law of Incompetence:

Incompetence drives out competence.

This dwarfs anything that Hillary did. There was clearly very sensitive information being discussed using insecure means and it got leaked through carelessness and or ineptitude. Moreover, the 2016 election was close enough that Republican grandstanding on this issue probably succeeded in swinging the election outcome.

Trump orders all government IT contracts consolidated under GSA

"The fact sheet claims agencies spend over $1 billion a year on PCs, and says nearly $6 billion worth of purchases have funneled through the GSA over the past decade - delivering an average savings of 38 percent compared to other procurement channels."

We have a single federal government agency for non-trivial procurements in Canada. The had a standing offer arrangement for computers and software. From what I saw, it seems doubtful that the savings, if any, were any where as near as large as what was claimed. One thing I noticed was that the stuff on the price lists tended to be dated, and when prices were falling (which they were up till recent times), It seemed you were locked into both old prices and old technology. Moreover, if you were looking for anything that wasn't completely standard, you were likely to get gouged.

Museum digs up Digital Equipment Corporation's dusty digital equipment

Innovators Dilemma

Dept of Defense engineer took home top-secret docs, booked a fishing trip to Mexico – then the FBI showed up

I worked for the Canadian government. Where I worked, we didn't have a special briefcase, but I recall that documents that were being hand carried in the outside world had to be specially packaged so that, among other things, their sensitive nature was not evident from the outside. I recall hearing of someone losing their clearance (and consequently their job) because they left a package of documents in a locked car where it was visible. Those documents would have been classified no higher than the "Secret" level.

Were those really "top secret" documents or merely "secret" documents (which would still be bad)? People often conflate the two.

Judge orders Feds rehire workers falsely fired for lousy performance

Saying something is true doesn't make it true.

Giving a false justification for an act that would otherwise be illegal is flat out wrong.

That this was standard operating procedure for some of the most vile governments that have ever existed should give one pause.

France offers US scientists a safe haven from Trump's war on woke

Re: les queer studies?

The US does have an immense edge in snake oil though.

Crypto takes a dip as Trump signs Bitcoin Reserve order

It does strike me that if the government accumulates a significant portion of the available bitcoins, they can't liquidate much of it without crashing the value.

Microsoft tells abandoned Publisher fans to just use Word and hope for the best

I haven't used Publisher, but can attest to the challenges in formatting complex documents in Word. The government R&D organization I used to work for, having gotten into the branding bandwagon, had a consultant design a new R&D document format. The complexity of the new document format resulted in VERY unstable formatting. One would spend hours trying to get the formatting correct after a few minor edits.

Trump says US should kill CHIPS Act, use the cash to cut debt

Re: Orange Cockwomble Ramble

When there are big bucks involved, there are huge incentives to devise complex schemes involving shell corporations and other gimmicks for avoiding taxes.

Please fasten your seatbelts. A third of US air traffic control systems are 'unsustainable'

In my experience, any project whose name starts with "next Generation" is doomed.

So … Russia no longer a cyber threat to America?

I thought it was a wholly owned subsidiary of Eurasia.

Trump teases 25% semiconductor tariffs that will go ‘substantially higher’

For stuff like consumer electronics, having supply chains and economies of scale are absolutely essential. There are few situations where anyone could conceivably justify investing the time and money needed to reproduce them.

I'm reminded of the US Very High Speed IC program back in the 90s. The US government ponied up money to various systems companies to create boutique chip fabs for the military. AFAIK, none of these amounted to much in the end.

America's National Science Foundation workers fired in bulk by Trump now reinstated

Re: Hmm

Robert's First Law is relevant here:

"The more important the decision, the less information will be used to make it."

Re: Hmm

"Isnt this the argument over probationary? And it is a huge problem to not be able to fire people without cause."

Historically civil servants enjoyed a measure of job security in exchange for mediocre financial compensation. That bargain is being thrown out the window. Moreover, it is despicable to tell people they are being let go for poor performance when there is no actual supporting evidence.

Microsoft trims more CPUs from Windows 11 compatibility list

I got caught by that - after installing Mint, my machine wouldn't boot to Windows and, for a while, two of my drives were locked. Fortunately I was able to retrieve the Bitlocker key from my Microsoft Account.

Laptop makers stalled on repairability improvements

I hate designs where you have to undo fragile ribbon cables to upgrade/replace a drive or memory. It isn't hard to run out of storage space if you started with 240 or 256 GB.

NASA's on-again, off-again job cuts – what's the plan?

I understand that some of the outer planets in the Solar system have cores consisting of diamond. I suppose NASA is being punished for failing to follow up on an obvious business opportunity.

Re: Probationary is worse than it sounds

It is perverse that it is a literal case where being promoted gets you fired. And I thought the US had bought into the idea that high performers deserve to be rewarded.