* Posts by AdrianMontagu

49 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Mar 2016

Cisco says its AI crystal ball can predict network errors

AdrianMontagu

Artificial Intelligence

Ah - The Pre-Cogs!

Ancient with a dash of modern: We joined the Royal Navy to find there's little new in naval navigation

AdrianMontagu

Re: The RYA Yachtmaster (Ocean) still includes sextant use

Dead Reckoning and sextants work when a missile has gone through the ship's power supply.

IT WORKS. "IT" won't work when that happens.

GPS systems are the first thing to be attacked in a warfare situation.

Take-off crash 'n' burn didn't kill the Concorde, it was just too bloody expensive to maintain

AdrianMontagu

Concorde II

I can never understand Government and their link with industry.

You do all the development; you understand the problems; you understand the commercial element has changed; you now have better materials; you have invested millions into it and all the attendant engineering.

You lead the world in this technology.

So instead of government taking the project forward and benefitting from this - what do you do?

YOU SCRAP IT AND DUMP EVERYTHING.

Why?

It is the same with MagLev and Eric Laithwaite. Who now benefits from this technology? Germany.

Working from a countryside plot nestled in a not-spot? Consultation opens on new rural mobile planning laws for bigger masts, wider coverage

AdrianMontagu

Disguise them

There is a mast not far from Peas Pottage on the A23. I can no longer find this as it is so well blended in with the other trees in the woodland.

It can be done with a little effort.

Missing GOV.UK web link potentially cost taxpayers £50m as civil servants are forced to shuffle paper forms

AdrianMontagu

Driving Licences

This also happens with "D" driving licence renewal. Some but maybe not all could be handled by online forms. Lots of forms being sent out, lots of forms being sent back. Lots of man hours. Needs investigating.

China showing signs of brewing IPv6 eruption

AdrianMontagu

Re: IPV6- Choice of Base System

What I meant was that it was easier to process:-

192.168.192.168.192.168 etc

and work it out to

11000000 10101000 etc

than

C0:A8: ... ... etc

to calculate this to

11000000 10101000 in your head

I know that there are some of you that can work out hex to binary in your head but I definitely have problems with it !

AdrianMontagu

IPV6- Choice of Base System

Why on earth did they use Hex.

It is easy to use Decimal / Binary

It must put a lot of people off

Did I or did I not ask you to double-check that the socket was on? Now I've driven 15 miles, what have we found?

AdrianMontagu

Re: Failing switches?

What about a broken plug?

AdrianMontagu

Re: Failing switches?

Now that is an issue. European and other countries use two pin connectors that are in most, although not all, cases reversable. That means that if, say you had a bedside light with a switch on the wire and a faulty bulb. You switch off the light and by doing so may make a 50% choice that you have switched off the supply. Then your fingers touch the contacts in the socket. hmmmm!

I firmly believe that we have the best plug and socket system in the world. I also laugh when I hear North Americans talk about our dangerous 230v against their safe 115v. Most disasters in domestic electrical problems are caused by fire. Remember that it is I squared R that matters in the heat produced.

Software engineer leaked UK missile system secrets and refused to hand cops his passwords, Old Bailey told

AdrianMontagu

BAE SYSTEMS' SECURITY

How is he able to email documents from their systems? The IT System should NOT be connected in any way to the internet. If he emailed from his own personal computer then how did it get there? By USB stick you might say. Those USB ports should have been locked down on BAE kit.

Some questions need to be asked.

Proposed US fix for Boeing 737 Max software woes does not address Ethiopian crash scenario, UK pilot union warns

AdrianMontagu

Re: Deadly platform

Lockhead StarFighter. I think it was the 101 but I may be wrong. It was known in Germany as the widow maker. Lockhead Martin are no angels. They lost the design of the F35 to the Chinese - That is really good management.

AdrianMontagu

Fundamentals

Pilots need to be able to fly the plane as individuals. If flying is dependant on computers all the time then when those computers fail - which they will - then the inevitable will happen UNLESS the pilots can take over. That's what Pilots do.

Did this airliner land in the North Sea? No. So what happened? El Reg probes flight tracker site oddity

AdrianMontagu

Re: Obviously not GPS jamming

Good dead reckoning takes a lot of beating. Good to use if you get electrical failure.

0ops. 1,OOO-plus parking fine refunds ordered after drivers typed 'O' instead of '0'

AdrianMontagu

Characters

Why don't we use "Ø"for zero.

I always use "7" with a bar through it when writing a seven.I prevents a mix up with a german styled 1

When Huawei leaves, the UK doesn't lead in 5G, says new report commissioned by... er... Huawei

AdrianMontagu

Re: 4G

4G? 3G? 2G - we would love to have a raven here in Wales!

Raytheon techie who took home radar secrets gets 18 months in the clink in surprise time fraud probe twist

AdrianMontagu

USBs

Who in the SECRET or TOP SECRET environment allows access to USB ports?

It might be necessary on certain machines but only with logging (electronic and wet ink) and witnesses.

Also any stick must be an encrypted stick.

I know of one American defense company that allowed (without realising it) changing the file name extension to get through the blocks. This is now handled by other protection systems. But this was after some secrets had beed stolen.

Amazing!

From 'Queen of the Skies' to Queen of the Scrapheap: British Airways chops 747 fleet as folk stay at home

AdrianMontagu

Please can we NOT chop them up but store them in some desert ready for an unexpected use in the future

Capita's bespoke British Army recruiting IT cost military 25k applicants after switch-on

AdrianMontagu

Why aren't Outsourcers held to account?

There have to be repurcusions for such an appalling waste of money. It is simply not good enough to embarrass Capita management in front of the Public Accounts Committee.

There have to be financial penalties written into ALL large Government contracts. Those penalties MUST also have a financial impact upon the management individuals. That is the only way we will bring this ludicrous situation to an end.

Heir-to-Concorde demo model to debut in October

AdrianMontagu

Lost Opportunities

Why oh why can't the UK follow through with the technologies that it develops?

Concorde

Maglev

etc

We have Huawei to make the internet more secure: Dump TCP/IP to make folks safer says Chinese mobe slinger

AdrianMontagu

Sounds a bit like SPX/IPX

Huawei launches UK charm offensive: We've provided 2G, 3G and 4G for 20 years, and you're worried about 5G?

AdrianMontagu

Insidious attack on the west.

China will bully the rest of the world because they can. Once they have got their trojan horse (Huawei) into other coutries, the insidious attacks will begin. BEWARE!

Fed-up air safety bods ban A350 pilots from enjoying cockpit coffees

AdrianMontagu

Re: How hard is it

Waterproffing is used in boats - radios, nav equipment etc. Often shown in boat shows working in a fishtank.

AdrianMontagu

Wasn't there a film some 50 years ago where the plane crashed and it was finally deduced that it was a coffee spill that caused the accident?

Have we learned nothing?

What about if the air systems fail and we end up with condensation water dripping around the electronics?

There are various solutions to these problems.

Banning coffee in the cockpit should not be one of them.

Why is the printer spouting nonsense... and who on earth tried to wire this plug?

AdrianMontagu

PAT Testing

We had a PAT tester that put the "passed" sticker over the vents on our Cisco kit!

Former UK PM Tony Blair urges governments to sort out online ID

AdrianMontagu

Digital ID

We need structure.

Stop spam and other untraceable abuse.

Everyone should have a digital ID

Same numbers for NI, Passport, Hospital, TAX etc.

No Digital ID - No VOTE

It would help with secure banking too.

Things would change then.

Bloke accused of conning ARIN out of 750,000 IPv4 addresses worth $9m+ to peddle on black market

AdrianMontagu

Using IPv6

People would use IPv6 if it was simpler. Using hex is not as easy as binary. There are also various add ons. The golden rule is keep it simple.

Police ICT Company kills £500m procurement, no longer wants one box shifter to rule them all

AdrianMontagu

No overall policy from the Home Office

43 Police Forces all delivering the same basic services to the public.

43 different systems.

43 different ideas on how to firewall it.

43 different ways on how to connect it

43 different budget percentages

43 ...

43 ...

If you want to keep costs down, standardise the approach, standardise the systems. Join up the systems completely, not piecemeal. Look at the unification of strategy.

The trouble is, you won't get any unification whilst there are individual Crime Commisioners who would go if the forces joined up. There would need to be a rethink there too.

It is all about little feifdoms! As long as the Home Office allows this, the costs will rise and rise and the systems will move from one problem to another.

As a country we are very poor at large scale management. Could do better!

'Software delivered to Boeing' now blamed for 737 Max warning fiasco

AdrianMontagu

Control of the Aircraft.

Whatever happens, the pilot should always be able to take full control of the aircraft.

Secondly, why are passenger carrying aircraft not inately stable in the event of a fault?

Sky customers moan: Our broadband hubs are bricking it

AdrianMontagu

I have BT Fibre to the Premises with a Fibre Copper converter, then a BT router. The router nails the DNS down to 172.16.16.172 which is a private IP address. I am told that BT do this to conserve public IP4 addresses but the routing side of it concerns me. I get very erratic performance sometimes a web page can take up to a minute to load; when it does load, the whole page is loaded very fast - it is not a gradual feed. This indicates to me that the backhaul is having some problems. I am not sure exactly how the private addresses are used in the public domain as they are not supposed to be routable. Anyone got any ideas?

Dear Britain's mast-fearing Nimbys: Do you want your phone to work or not?

AdrianMontagu

Re: Femtocell

Yes we have two of them - They work now. Had lots of problems with them and many died.

They need to be provider agnostic so that ANY telco can operate through them.

AdrianMontagu

Visible or not visible

Anyone spotted the mast on the side of the M23 just south and opposite Three Bridges?

No? Well they can disguise masts if they want to.

I now live in Mid Wales. Signal - what signal. We don't exist here as far as Telcos are concerned.

But London - that is a different matter. We still pay our phone bills, taxes and council taxes but we might as well be in Antarctica!

OFCOM are completely toothless and should be disbanded and replaced.

A few reasons why cops didn't immediately shoot down London Gatwick airport drone menace

AdrianMontagu

Re: Drones are noisy

It probably takes off from a field or a car park.

AdrianMontagu

Set a thief to catch a thief

Racing Drone enthusiasts could be allowed to disable the geofencing on their devices. They could then be allowed to chase after the rogue drone when it appears. We need to find the operator. The rogue drone is just a drone in the wrong hands.

It worries me that we don't yet have a solution.

One rogue drone carrying botulinum toxin or Novichok flying into central London doesn't bear thinking about.

European Union divided over tax on digital tech giants as some member states refuse free money

AdrianMontagu

If you generate the sales here, you pax the tax here - simples!

Brit IT contractor wins appeal against HMRC to pay £26k in back taxes

AdrianMontagu

The driver for using Contractors

Most Government departments have restrictions on their expenditure for employees/workforce. This is managed by accountants who draw this from OPEX (Operating Expenditure).

Thus to employ people without affecting OPEX you must use CAPEX (Capital Expenditure). This is usually defined as project cost.

Thus using CAPEX instead of OPEX you separate Contractor from Employee. Therefore, Contractors are not employees. No IR35.

Meet the open sorcerers who have vowed to make Facebook history

AdrianMontagu

ID4ME

ID4ME is the interesting bit. This could be coupled with one's passport, Driving licence and NHS number (they should all be the same anyway). This with full certification would establish a person totally. If the public move into this with email etc then anything from a false ID gets dumped. That helps prevent spam, viruses etc because they can be traced. Needs more thought but interesting to an old codger like me!

Russia stares admiringly at itself, flexes internet muscles

AdrianMontagu

Russia Off the Internet

I have no problem with Russia coming off the internet as long as they do it soon!

Russia will be in dire straights if it cannot export it's oil and gas. The west needs to obtain it's oil and gas from elsewhere. It CAN be done. An unhappy population will then turn on its' leader.

Brace yourselves for the 'terabyte (sic) of death', warns US army IT boss

AdrianMontagu

The Military is connected to the Internet ?

Russia could chop vital undersea web cables, warns Brit military chief

AdrianMontagu

OMG - No facebook!

Vodafone, EE and Three overcharging customers after contracts expire

AdrianMontagu

If you need to complain to VodaFone - go straight to the top.

CEO email address is nick.jeffery@vodafone.com

They will do anything that they can get away with - there is no honourable business ethic

You can't find tech staff – wah, wah, wah. Start with your ridiculous job spec

AdrianMontagu

What always amazes me is the gap.

That is - some people have amazing skills AND can use them well.

And - some people in the workplace - you wonder how they got that far.

It seems to me that what is important is whether you can apply your skills well (or even learn to do that). I have looked up to some and then realised - they have built a monster - now how do we get out of this mess!

Yes, British F-35 engines must be sent to Turkey for overhaul

AdrianMontagu

Blind leading the blind !

AdrianMontagu

Are we insane ?

London Mayor hires former PR man as Chief Digi Officer

AdrianMontagu

What experience if the technicalities does a PR man have?

Why not employ a Professional Boxer to do your PR?

The biggest British Airways IT meltdown WTF: 200 systems in the critical path?

AdrianMontagu

It needs to be understood

The golden rule is "Don't build a monster"

Ockam's Razor

"Plurality must not be posited without necessity."

Or in modern day terminology - Keep it Simple Stupid - KISS

BA IT systems failure: Uninterruptible Power Supply was interrupted

AdrianMontagu

Re: Electrical Interlocks

Good comments. Proper power "Transfer Switches" should automatically "break" before they "make". However, there are times when you want to isolate a UPS and run direct from mains for maintenance. This requires a sequence of switching to occur. Get it wrong and you lose power. This still doesn't address the lack of DC2 coming on stream.

AdrianMontagu

Re: A data or application problem most likely

I think this has some credence. I have experienced a faulty earth on a newly rewired three phase system. This can cause voltages +280V (Interphase voltages). This could cause higher voltages in the logic circuits and thence zapping of chips and insidious faults. Furthermore, the higher voltages in the logic circuits could pass to the connected DC2 via the data links (NOT POWER CIRCUITS). That could take out the DC2. Just a hypothesis.

BA CEO blames messaging and networks for grounding

AdrianMontagu

IT Failure

Is there going to be ANY comment from the IT chief?

If not then we must assume a cover-up.

Dodgy software will bork America's F-35 fighters until at least 2019

AdrianMontagu

Re: A boondoggle through and through and now ejection seats are also a problem?

Well a committe designing a horse will come up with a camel. Why oh why are we trying to make a "can do everything" aircraft. You know and I know that it just can't be done. Stick to what you are good at. We Brits know how to build aircraft but we are controlled by incompetent idiots who all went to the same school and are good mates! This needs to be nipped in the bud NOW.