Posts by AlanT1

Hapless engineers leave UK cable landing station gate open, couple of journos waltz right in

Google it

I wonder how many looked for this location on Google Maps after reading this :) ?

HMRC IT boss quit £185k job for more cash

Get out before the crash

The move from Aspire is one black hole. A fail after all budgets have been eaten up by the massive gravity of the situation.

UK.gov is doing sod all to break £20bn of locked-in IT contracts

Damn near impossible to sort

Once the free market cat was let out of the bag to hunt in the public sector the public skill set to run projects as given here became rather difficult to maintain. It will be an interesting study, if anyone was to be allowed to undertake it, to see just how the new HMRC project and publicly owned private company (I think) cope with dealing with the scale of operation done by Capgemini Aspire. We continue to see contracts with no plan for exit, no concept of knowledge retention and escalating costs. Tough times continue.

Delete Google Maps? Go ahead, says Google, we'll still track you

Reciprocal Lability

Wouldn't it be nice if having tracked you, should any harm come to you as a result of it, the trackers were held accountable in part or whole...

Here WeGo! Google Maps rival drops Maps branding

Rather good as a navigation tool.

I have, for some time, used an android app for navigation on my bike. It is pretty essential and HERE seems to be about as good as you can get. I can here the Google maps lovers ready to hit back and my life would be so much simpler if I could use Google (a mapping service I contribute to) but off line maps is a must for me.

Having said that HERE is slow to update and act on input but until the day whole maps can be downloaded for Google for off line use it will remain a back up service when mobile.

Top IT bod Sally Howes leaves the UK's National Audit Office

One step too far?

This reads like she maybe;

Did not have the skills to have the things she knew needed to be done done

or

The system placed too many obstacles to actually getting the job done in the way.

My money would be on the latter.

Dell confirms price rise post Brexit vote as UK pound stumbles

Re: Is this what they mean....

As I see it the speculators selling £ are making the UK a whole lot more attractive as a manufacturing base.

Plus it is becoming more and more clear it wasn't the Brexit voters that won the vote it was the Remain voters who didn't bother to vote...

great opportunity

What a great opportunity to move manufacturing to the UK and make more profit

Prominent Brit law firm instructed to block Brexit Article 50 trigger

what a misleading headline

as far as I read the law firm is simply ensuring the correct procedure is followed. What is the problem with that? It is not as I see it been instructed to block

Don’t let the Barmy Brexiteers wreck #digital #europe

Dyson a Dinosaur

From someone who employs how many (I south east Asian I can see.) Calls Dyson a Dinosaur and cannot work out that an independent UK may just look to grow the digital future.

Lacking substance it seems to me.

FBI tries again to get warrantless access to your browser history

Coward

I thought I would comment here but as I do not live in a democracy like the USA, the UK or even the EU but live in Military dictatorship with some of the toughest anti regime measures of anywhere I elected to tick the post anonymously box. I then found myself labelled as a sniveling coward. Really?

Smartwatches: I hate to say ‘I told you so’. But I told you so.

Basic watch function

I tend to agree with a lot of this opinion, just what is a smartwatch for? Is it a watch or is it a mini phone on a wrist?

It surely must be high on the marketing track of built in obsolescence and no matter how much you paid for the most expensive and popular of brand, my guess is that one of the multiple of factors that combine to make the smartwarch function will run out of time and the item will be confined to the back of a drawer somewhere.

Not that I am immune from the appeal of technology I just prefer a watch to be a watch. I like my watch to tell the time, the day and the date. I like a second time zone. I like it to set itself to the correct time for where in the world I travel.

I need it to be waterproof and always to be operational so no charging or seals to replace changing batteries.

I achieve all of this using a Bluetooth watch that is paired to my phone. It used a solar cell to provide the power and is waterproof not to 1m but 100m.

Of course it does a few other things but nothing like a smart watch and no screen, just a traditional watch face.

That is the technology for my watch.

UK govt right to outsource everything 15 years ago – civil service boss

Just because...

Just because everyone was doing it does not make it right UNLESS you subscribe to the Lemming theory of national government.

Kent Council cheerily flings about £100m at managed services bods

Ah the privatisation of public services. Once Thatcher let it out of the bag it took over and destroyed all in its path aided by purchasers and users of the service who knew little of what they were buying in to.

Capita lands spot on mega £5bn NHS commissioning deal

And they wonder where the money goes?

How can it be right to pour more cash, increasing prices into private intermediaries? Since Thatcher started this more and more changes have been implemented for the sake of change, never for the service.

What a mess

Red-spattered Android figures sinkhole Sony's healthy financials

Marketing Marketing and Some thinking out of the Box

Sony make super phones, robust smart innovative but still the mobile market press should Samsung and Apple. You can't blame the guys in the media (can you?), you have to promote your product. Marketing Marketing if you will. And the thinking out of the box, have a look at the media players they sell with phone docking. Do you see ones with Sony docking? I don't but I see a lot with iPhone docking. The company that brought mobile music to the masses!

Is docking obsolete with NFC, WiFi and Bluetooth? Not until they also charge the phone.

Multi-billion pound UK.gov tech framework awarded to 33 suppliers

Just what does it cover?

It is hard to grasp what this is all about given the track history of cock ups the UK public sector embarks on where contracts and technology is involved. Just what are the types of services covered?

Sony Xperia Z2: What we REALLY thought of this Android fondleslab

New tech is fine but

Once a gain Sony prove they can produce new product up with the best of them but my worry is if they will lose interest in it when they release the Z3. If the tablet mimics the phone experience then this model may be out of date soon and out of favour with Sony support.

For this reason I am wary of purchasing Sony which is a shame as it is not bad tech.