Posts by Salestard

US minister invokes Maggie Thatcher, says she would have halted Huawei 5G rollout

You can see his point

It's understandable that the Americans wouldn't want Huawei doing the wiring on their largest aircraft carrier.

I can't say Mike Lynch knew about Autonomy dodginess, star witness tells High Court

IT Salespeople eh?

You just can't trust em to say the same thing twice... why anyone thinks putting them in a witness box is going to change their natural inclination to bend the story to suit the audience, I don't know.

Salestard

IT Salesperson since 1997.

What a meth: Elderly Melbourne couple sign for 20kg shipment of drugs, say cops

It's worth how much?!?

Back in the early 90s, a friend was arrested for possession after getting pulled over by plod on a Friday night.

He had about a fiver's worth of cannabis resin, and two ecstasy pills when they were £15 a time. Basically, a decent night out for one person.

By some amazing feat, this turned into a street value of an Escobarian £2500.

Watch out, Bali! Big Bluers set to realign their chakras at Best of IBM event in May

3 days of Corporate Gulag

Satre was of the opinion that hell was being trapped in a room with one's friends - obviously he'd never attended any kind of IBM convention.

Fly to Bali, spend 3 days being battered senseless by powerpoint delivered by people far too enthusiastic about the job/company, and then get to do the really important bit of telling any senior management type within earshot how great they are.

Unsurprisingly, the people who find this kind of activity worthwhile and fulfilling are precisely the ones that get nominated for this kind of thing. Which makes it the perfect positive feedback loop... which goes a long way to explaining IBM's problems. More amusingly, they're also the kind of people who don't need to be sent on some jolly to keep them happy and motivated.

So I suppose that makes one man's hell, a true IBMer's eternal paradise of powerpoints, hashtags, and grovelling sycophancy.

UK joins growing list of territories to ban Boeing 737 Max flights as firm says patch incoming

Re: The reason that the Max series need MCAS

I can happily report that the auto-braking on the 2015 Volvo S60s works excellently after I was momentarily distracted by a pedestrian whilst approaching a set of lights. Car in front stopped whilst I was still, erm, distracted, and the Swedish Logic Box neatly brought proceedings to a proverbial and literal halt before anything impact-y happened.

At the opposite end of the scale, the forerunner to the S60 was my 2003 V70R, with an astonishing AWD-Traction-Suspension system - within reason, it was basically impossible to drive outside the thing's envelope. Idiotic cornering speeds aside, the really impressive thing with the safety suite was the adaptive brake assist.

In essence, it learned your usual braking style, and thus recognised when you were panic braking - at which point it would give you the full benefit of AP 4 pots & 330mm discs all round, wind front suspension up, and stop you and it to the very fullest of its ability. Only triggered it twice in five years, but it was impressive just how hard it could stop, and slightly concerning that even for an experienced aggressive driver of performance cars, how far away I was from being able to consciously brake that hard.

Bored bloke takes control of British Army 'psyops' unit's Twitter

Re: Nimrod?

That wasn't really the problem though, was it?

The problem was that somewhere, some daft twunt (or committee of twunts) decided and decreed that the new AWACS should be shoehorned into shagged out old handbuilt/non-standardised airframes based on a non-standardised airliner airframe. Effectively building the damn things from scratch, using a firm that makes printer ink look like value for money.

It was only ever going to end up a massive money sink... to sit in the pantheon of massive money sink cock-ups cooked up by the Triumvirate of Success that is the MoD-Treasury-Defence Contractor. Although even Nimrod 'upgrade' isn't going to trouble to undisputed champion of cockups that was the Chieftain Multi-Fuel engine.

The British... war on a budget, peace on a shoestring.

Attention all British .eu owners: Buy dotcom domains and prepare to sue, says UK govt

Re: Brexit just gets better?

It's not that we won't be able to do that, it's that we won't be able to do it at the same commercially advantageous terms that we have now for trading within and without of the EU.

We're a net importer of just about everything. We have no bargaining chips on our own as we don't have anything anyone wants in return - no coal, steel, oil, etc. Our largest single private sector - banking - is the size it is precisely because it's in the unique position of being in the EU but not having to play by all the rules that the German or French markets have.

Despite what the Leave crowd seem to think, Britain is not a global power now. It hasn't been since the sun finally set on the Empire with the Suez crisis. There will be no return to the imperial past, no restoration of power, mainly because the world is now defined by trading clout. The only three players in that game are China, the US, and the EU.... and we're leaving the EU.

Once the dust has eventually settled from all this, we'll still be trading with everyone, but everything will be a lot more expensive. Everything... because even the things we produce domestically rely on imported goods or services to facilitate.

It was a lit CeBIT see, got teeny weeny, world's biggest tech show yearly party... closed its German fest's doors yesterday

Free Tat

Let's face it, the main reason any of us ever go anywhere near trade shows and expos is for the carrier bags of free tat with the occasional useful thing thrown in; Mouse mats, memory sticks, pens, lanyards, and all sorts of other stuff to keep your desk full of semi-useful clutter.

Brit spending watchdog brands GP Primary Support Care a 'complete mess'

and to think...

we used to mock the Soviet/Communist system for its ability to squander vast sums of money on achieving massive inefficiency...

Capita strikes again: Bug in UK-wide school info management system risks huge data breach

Three words

"How do they keep getting these contracts?"

"Why are we outsourcing to Crapita? Can someone explain it to me?"

Three words - Lowest Economic Bid

Not helped by the marvellous tangle of budgets from LEAs, Central Gov, and lord knows what else. I understand in some instance it is only Capita that bids for these things.

Always the cheapest

Consequently, always the worst.

'Fibre broadband' should mean glass wires poking into your router, reckons Brit survey

Re: Virgin Media are the worst

And, being completely pedantic about it - CoAx cable does have fibrous content in the shroud.

Past a point, Bandwidth is academic

It's a minor bugbear of mine, not helped by 10 years in fixed line sales, that calling something 'superfast' because it's high bandwidth is also misleading. Bandwidth does not equal speed - it's just capacity, which itself is a contended thing on looped domestic services.

True enough, if you're downloading endless cat memes, a 250mbps broadband is 'fast'. However, if you're doing latency sensitive applications (such as FPS gaming), then it's academic whether you've got 2.5, 25, or 250mbps when the carrier takes >20m/s to shove your packet from the south coast, up the country via various congested routes, then hand it to Telia for a cross North Sea jaunt to Amsterdam... with a high chance of dropping said packet somewhere on the way.

If you're really stuck for several hours frustration, ring your broadband provider tech support and complain of packet loss. Once you've gone round the off and on loop several times, they'll default to sending an engineer out to the house... even when you're telling them that you can see it's the local switch and not the poxy Superhub 3 tat.

/and breathe

That went well – not! Broadcom’s value dives after CA biz gobble

Re: CA Bought my disk compression company

An unpleasant bunch.

For us salestards, CA was always somewhere to avoid - like Data General, Intergris, Bull, and a number of others, it was a place only the truly psychotic seemed to thrive.

I had an interview there seven or eight years ago, after the recruitment consultant / estate agent swore blind they'd changed, and shed the old boiler room methods and people.

Bloke conducting the interview was unpleasant, even by the level of wankers I get to deal with. Confirmed nothing had changed when after a short monologue about every salesperson owning a Porsche*, he asks me how much I earned the previous year.

Fed up, I told him, adding 25% for good measure.

"Huh, I paid more than that in tax last year'

Odious is the best word to describe that guy. I think I got bored of his posturing at that point and just took it dark, for entertainment. I think I might have hinted that I'd married my sister and had a chronic glue sniffing habit.

*Golden rule of field sales - never, ever, turn up to a customer meeting in a car they themselves can't realistically afford. Good for you if you've got some £200k super knob extension in the garage, but expecting someone to spend money with you whilst rubbing their nose in your success isn't going to work.

You're indestructible, always believe in 'cause you are Go! Microsoft reinvents netbook with US$399 ‘Surface Go’

On previous form...

..of Microsoft and devices, I think I'll give this one a miss.

Surface RT - good idea, terrible execution, product dropped.

Band & Band 2 - great spec, terrible execution, product dropped.

Lumia 950/950XL - murdered WP in one fell swoop, badly made, product dropped.

I'd love to find a replacement to my dead Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2 that doesn't cost an arm and several legs, but don't think this is £500 gamble I'm willing to take.

Cancelled in Crawley? At least your train has free Wi-Fi now, right?

Imagine my surprise when...

As a very long time sufferer of Southern, GTR, and all the various permutations since BR, I was genuinely astounded to note a Wi-Fi Onboard sticker on the brand spankers new Siemens thing into London Bridge the other morning.

Actual wireless telegraphy on an actual train just into service! Only a mere decade or so after I remember using it on a forty year old repainted Intercity 125 to Brizzel from Paddington!

Much less of a surprise was the fact that it looks like GTR think putting a sticker on your train makes the Wi-Fi magically appear.

There was no Wi-Fi.

Then the train was terminated at, funnily enough, Haywards Heath for reasons not explained, but almost certainly down to a chronic shortage of trained management.

IBM memo to staff: Our CEO Ginni is visiting so please 'act normally!'

Smells like paint

Grandfather was in the Guards for 34 years, and maintained the Queen and most of the upper echelons of the royal family must think the whole world smells of fresh paint.

After they swallowed up SEMA, we had one of the head sheds from Schlumberger US do a state visit to the regional backwater I worked in. Most people had made themselves scarce, and the guys entourage almost outnumbered the grunts in the office.

Veep arrives at my desk

"Hello, and what do you do?" says the man with unnervingly white teeth, looking straight through me

(cluster of Veeplickers behind fix me with baleful stares)

"Err, I sell stuff, sir"

"Well, great job, carry on" comes the reply, and he's already moving away before finishing the statement

As they sweep onto the next poor sod, one Veeplicker murmurs in my ear "well handled, thanks"

So inspiring.

CEO of comms tech biz Daisy splits as sale and IPO talks off the table

A fair chunk of what was left* of 2e2 went to O2 (who had bafflingly decided to partner with them for non-mobe stuff).

*which was basically nothing bar a load of salespeople

Audi chief exec arrested over Dieselgate car emissions scandal

Re: My sympathies....

Well, you managed to include politics, thermodynamics, aerodynamics, and quite a lot of other stuff in one post.

But I'll pick out one;

["The auto manufacturers, presumably left to their own devices to compile the test schedules, did what so, so many organisations have done throughout the history. They wrote the schedules to comply with the letter of the Law. Look back to all those road tests and fuel consumption figures, going back donkey's years, in cars stripped of all removeable weight, on new engines very carefully run-in, on tyres pumped up to brick hardness, and in weather noted to be good for fuel eficiency (the colder, the better)."]

Whilst this was true for a period - I remember the quoted coefficient of drag for a car I owned wasn't the bespoilered fat tyred 164mph version, which comparatively the aerodynamics of the blunt end of a barn, but actually the weedy 1.8 version on super skinny tyres, gawky hubcaps, and covered in Teflon. Similarly, power outputs were usually given for a blueprinted engine operating under absolutely perfect conditions running 100 or 101 octane fuel. Bike makers were the worst, with the Italians taking it to quite absurd levels (looking in particular at the FZR1000 EXUP engined Bimota YB10 Furano of the early 90s - magically gained 40hp by being put in an Italian frame).

However, the Euro emissions tests were undertaken by an independent testing body - hence the need for the software to recognise it was being run under test conditions, thus wind the fuelling back to ultra-lean, and in the case of petrol, ignition advanced as close as you can without it knocking.

Re: Bureaucracy rules...

The MOT emissions point test is nothing to do with the VAG emissions dodge. (Which was a software mode enabling ultra-lean running to cheat through the Euro IV-VI emissions regs and others).

But in answer to your questions;

1) Cooling air not required, especially not for short duration tests

2) Emission ducting is usually provided or accommodated for in the test area, or with a pipe attached to probe

3) Noise - operator discretion. Most engines operate in a dB range well below that of an airgun or other machinery in use

4) Fuel wasted by 2-3 minutes stationary revving.... unless you're driving a Mazda 787b on full qualifying settings, it will be miniscule.

Capita admits it won't make money on botched NHS England contract

Summed up in a sentence

As you chaps might be aware, I've been selling IT and IT Services for a long time, for companies far bigger and more unwieldy than Capita. Indeed, I recently declined the opportunity to be interviewed for a role with them.

Most people's perceptions of IT Sales are shaped by the small percentage of total wankers they deal with, rather than majority who might be varying degrees of useless, but usually want to do the right thing by the customer.

Then we get this shit;

"and some 162,000 items of clinical correspondence going undelivered because the terms had failed to make forwarding a contractural obligation."

A simple thing.

Somewhere, someone missed out on this at contract stage. It happens. No big deal to deal with it.

Except when it is - When collectively, nobody at Capita takes responsibility for it... the account team don't regard it a problem, nor the service team, the lawyers, the management, nor anyone else.

'nah, not in the contract, not our problem, not our problem to even tell NHSE of the problem... fahgedabowdit'

'Tesco probably knows more about me than GCHQ': Infosec boffins on surveillance capitalism

Re: They does

I think this was assumptive data based on marketing category (ABC1 type), location, and god knows what else cross referenced back to your constituency.

Thus, a middle aged woman with two kids and husband living in Guildford who fills up her Audi A6 once a week is likely to a different political outlook from a young woman with one child living in Tower Hamlets is likely to be different to the retired woman living in Taunton... (For example)

Quite what Tesco needed that kind of data for is a another matter entirely...

They does

Some years back had the dubious pleasure of sitting through a presentation by Tesco Clubcard - they were a major customer of my company, managed within my sales team. Usual account manager was on hols, so my boss went and dragged me along.

Part of the way through, chap from said evil empire asks for a volunteer clubcard number. Just the number. My boss duly obliged.

Clubcard member number entered into system right in front of everyone.

Tesco bod duly reels off the following information about her - Name. Age. Gender. Address. Usual store, and a few other completely innocuous bits.

Pause.

Then details the age and gender of her two kids, age of husband, husband's probably occupation, favourite foods, usual payday, preferred brands, ABC marketing category, political persuasion, level of education, and a load of other information

He also said he could tell if she was trying for a third child (no, I don't know either), her menstrual cycle (obvious), and would then know if/when she was pregnant.

It alarmed me just how much personal information you give away from your shopping habits. The deeply troubling bit was the barely restrained glee that Tescos exhibited at having this kind of data at their disposal, to flog you even more tat from the Buy N Large empire.

Even more worrying - this was seven years ago. Can any of us honestly expect that data to have remained uncompromised in that time?

Platinum partner had 'affair' with my wife – then Oracle screwed me, ex-sales boss claims

Employment law, huh!

What is it good for?

Well, if nothing else, from protecting us from the worst excesses of such progressive, modern, employers like this who treat their staff on a level barely evolved since the industrial revolution.

The really sad thing about this is that in an organisation the size of Oracle, this would have required numerous decision makers to approve it. Away from the employee and line, who are emotionally involved, second line, HR, and so on all have sat down and gone through;

"We want to sack this guy, he complained about something"

"Okay, what's he doing now?"

"Well, he's in hospital on approved time off for serious health and mental issues. It looks like his marriage is breaking down"

"Fine, sack him"

Humans...

Surface Hub 2: Microsoft's pricey whiteboard gets a sequel

Re: This is actually a 'PR release' statement, not a product for topping sales charts.

>"you can trust your investment in us and our other products."

Well, I'm specifically targeting Lumia 950 owners with that strapline.

Indeed, during the one day's Surface Hub training I had, I raised this very issue with the MS team. Much sucking of teeth, shuffling of feet, before eventually "yeah, maybe best not pitch this to a customer with a Windows Phone"

Re: Microsoft hopes users will leap from their seats and prod the screens with excited fingers

>The downside is that the Spark app pretty much does exactly the same thing as the Webex app. why 2 are needed I have not a clue.

That's changing - it's a legacy of Cisco buying things in, rather than organically growing a mutually compatible ecosystem.

This, apparently, is happening soon(tm)

They're good... but...

We sell them. I've sold a couple.

They're really nice bits of kit, no mistake. They also make sense if you're in the ecosystem.

However, I would suggest the use case is fairly narrow - if you're doing truly collaborative whiteboarding across different sites, and you need an excellent hand drawing capability, then they're bang on the money. Software planning, marketing/advertising, engineering, etc etc.

If your use case is to just webex/teleconf, and batter the snot out of people with slideware, then just get a Cisco Spark board because it's a damn sight cheaper.

IBM bans all removable storage, for all staff, everywhere

They were banned 5 years ago?

I left the blue hellhole five years ago, and I'm pretty sure they were banned already then... despite the fact IBM branded USBs were available to order from the branded marketing catalogue.

Also recall the CD/DVD drive on the Thinkslab was locked out. Extremely clumsy BitLocker (or similar) drive encryption which required unlocking even coming off screensaver.

I've also got a vague memory of the corporate BlackBerry having some shit-awful MDM smeared over the top, because BES wasn't enough.

The paranoia extended to travel policy - if you needed to work on a train journey, you HAD to travel first class... which given I had to lug the laptop about with me everywhere, meant I always travelled in the slightly less shit seats on Southern.

T-Mobile owner sends in legal heavies to lean on small Brit biz over use of 'trademarked' magenta

Come the revolution

When I eventually put my plans for benign world/national/county* domination in action, then the first against the wall won't be the lawyers. No, that'd be far too expensive, time-consuming, and fraught with wrangling.

In the glorious republic, I will instead give defendants in blatantly bullshit C&D, trademark, and IPO cases the option for Trial by Combat; The respective MD/CEO of each organisation in a fight to submission with weapons decided by the smaller party. No stand-ins or champions.

*Actual extent of domination may vary. Level of benign also variable. In fact, it'd be like Populous, only with better graphics

Apart from that, I have nothing constructive to say about this article.

Apple and The Notched One: It can't hide the X-sized iPhone let-down

Is that perspective I see vanishing into the distance?

I don't really like Apple, and regard their products that I use somewhere between unremarkable and really unremarkable (iPhone 6S, iPad Air, and occasionally MacBook Air, all for work porpoises). I get the fanboi thing, I get the ecosystem argument, and hey - nobody forces anyone to buy their electronic tat over and above anyone else's.

But let's put the X thing into perspective;

1) it's a phone, product cycle life max 2 years

2) it's a phone, just a phone... one phone only, Mishter Vashily

3) Apple were, are, and will remain Effing Big, even if they write-down the entire X inventory

4) Is it, cosmically speaking, really important that they didn't sell as much as they thought they would?

Truly, nothing to see here, move along please

Javid's in, Rudd's out: UK Home Sec quits over immigration targets scandal

Aside from the usual noise

There's an interesting thing to note - Javid is not considered an ally of May. This in itself is interesting - May's grip on power is tenuous; mostly she seems to still be PM because nobody else is stupid enough to want to lead the mess she's gotten them all into... except one man.

The real danger we face now is that May goes and we end up with HIM as PM. That would be a Very Bad Thing Indeed.

You know of whom I speak.

Even Microsoft's lost interest in Windows Phone: Skype and Yammer apps killed

Re: Just one more month

I ended up on the OnePlus 5T when O2 finally offered to cancel the remaining device plan on the near-as-dead 950.

That was back in early January.

I miss the tiles... but that's literally the only thing.

The novelty of a working browser, functioning apps that have been updated in the last decade, and a phone which doesn't randomly restart/forget how to Bluetooth/fall over still hasn't worn thin.

A litany of squandered chances

Former WinPho advocate during my time at Mobe Op.

WP's chance came and went with RIM committing corporate suicide - the enterprise market panicked and set about trying to find a replacement for BES. At the time, WP7.5 was nearing the end of its lifecycle, to be replaced with the vastly improved WP8, with the much needed BitLocker.

The goal was wide open; a corporate standard (Office, Windows) in mobile form, from a trusted vendor also dabbling with tablets (Surface), with a trusted handset maker (Nokia), not even needing acceleration to market of 8.0... just marketing, development commitment, and a coherent product strategy.

They missed it completely. In fact, they didn't even take a kick at the goal. Over the following year, MobileIron, Good, and so on replaced BES, along with the grudging acceptance of iPhone and Android in the corporate space.

Then it all went really Microsoft when they bought Nokia, promptly released the half-finished 950 and WP10 platform, then closed the lot down. In my opinion, WP reached its zenith with 8.1 on the Lumia 920/925. It was a steady descent into oblivion from then.

Usual Microsoft nonsense - I've still got my Band 1. It works better with my OnePlus 5T than it ever did with either my 925 or 950 Lumias.

Capita reports pre-tax LOSS of £515m for 2017

Re: Doubt it'll happen

Big stain on my soul, never mind the CV.

If only

Salesmen don't get to choose to bid on stuff - the business decides whether it'll bid on what the salesman brings to the table. That'll involve product, pricing, marketing, legal, finance, management, service delivery, support, and sometimes the bloke who cleans the fountain in reception.

Nobody bids on anything without huge numbers of people agreeing it can be delivered and supported.

Once the deal is struck, delivery is down to the Service Delivery guys, who will have previously agreed they can do it.

Doubt it'll happen

Phone call three weeks ago from a recruitment consultant I know

"Hello Salestard. Capita are recruiting salespeople, would you be interested"

"Not a chance"

"They're paying well"

"Still not a chance"

[sighs] "This is getting silly. You're the twentieth person this morning who's dismissed them out of hand"

The humane thing for Capita would be to take it round the back of the shed with the shotgun and put it out of its misery.

Remember the Yorkie pizza horror? Here's who won our exclusive Reg merch...

Northerners...

Story time. (because I've not got one for the Friday on-call thing)

Decade ago, I'm at Manchester airport awaiting my evening flight back to Gatwick. It's delayed so I wander round to the 'International' terminal in search of some food. Because I'm a soft shandy drinking southerner, I have a fundamental aversion to gravy with everything, which limited my choices somewhat.

Eventually I arrive at what would best be described as a Tortilla wrap bar. No gravy in sight. I scan the menu on the wall behind the counter, discounting the various options until I arrive at Pepperoni Pizza. This seems like a sensible choice - enough carbs and saturated fat to tide me over until I get home.

My request for said pizza results in a flourish from the guy behind the counter, as he whirls the worlds biggest tortilla bread around. He throws the tortilla on the counter, grabs a slab of pizza, and plonks it in the middle of the pitta. I call a halt to the proceedings;

"Woah, stop - what are you doing?"

"A pepperoni pizza tortilla wrap, it's what you asked for!"

"Erm, can I just have the pizza?"

"No"

"Why not?"

"This is a tortilla wrap bar... I have to wrap it in a tortilla... of course, you could always unwrap it once you've bought it"

I turned down this culinary adventure and went to find anything else. I remained bemused by the concept of a pizza wrapped in tortilla, wondering if it was truly a north-south thing going on here. So I ring my good pal, a Boltonite through and through, and the most northern person I know.

"Hello mate, need your help... I'm gonna say four words, and I want your immediate, instinctive reaction"

"Go on"

"Pepperoni. Pizza. Tortilla. Wrap."

"....what? together? a pizza wrapped in tortilla?"

"Exactly that"

"That is utter... GENIUS!"

Chips and gravy it was then (and I threw the gravy away)

I see you're writing a résumé?!.. LinkedIn parked in MS Word

It's the ultimate echo chamber

In the world of salestards, LI is reasonably useful in keeping tabs on where old contacts have gone, and identifying people to cold call (and before anyone moans, the pre-LinkedIn way to identify people was to simply ring up and ask who the IT manager is... all LI does is save a bit of time).

However, extended phone book usage aside, it really is an endless stream of self-promoting shite from self-proclaimed 'influencers';

We've had that Russian chap from the Daily Mail parent for while, but he's now been replaced with Brigitte who has written a book on AI, recruited 4,000 homeless pregnant disabled veterans, and regards the sun rising every day as an event so awe inspiring she has to make some vapid post about it so thousands of time rich halfwits can hit the like button.

The news feed algorithm is totally borked, and a premium account won't save you from promoted/sponsored content.

The supreme mark of it being a Microsoft product though? The fact the site doesn't really work with Explorer.

Borked bog forces flight carrying 83 plumbers to bug out back to base

"... we did not take the risk to send a plumber [out] at 10,000 metres."

The actual risk being that having sucked their teeth, made the leak worse with a set of mole grips, and rummaged about in the back of the van for ten minutes, all 84 of them then vanish off 'down the plumber's merchants' for several days.

UK Army chief: Russia could totally pwn us with cable-cutting and hax0rs

Why would Russia want to fight us??

Russian checklist for war with Britain, as of 5pm London time.

Natural Resources - used most of it

Industrial base - owned by the Germans and Japanese

Banking Sector - mostly American

Houses - already own most of the larger ones in London

Football teams - ditto

Which can only mean they're in it for regime change... and given the regime we're currently under, this would possibly count as a liberation.

I for one welcome our new vodka fuelled nepotistic former communist overlords! May they succeed in overthrowing the old gin fuelled nepotistic former public school overlords!

NHS OKs offshoring patient data to cloud providers stateside

Quick as a flash

scuse the pun...

Just as the rest of the world starts to notice that cloud storage, particularly massive cloud storage with big security requirements, mostly isn't as cheap as you thought it was, especially when you scale it... the British public sector comes crashing through the door with both feet.

But hey ho, better than it going to Capita

Crappy Christmas! Dixons Carphone dials back profit expectations

Carriers being more aggressive methinks

Certainly if my own experience was anything to go by...

This month, three months before the much anticipated end of my Lumia 950 contract, O2 offer to pay off the rest of the device plan if I re-sign early.

What could have been a look-in for Carphone with the big Nokia just turned into me staying direct with O2 on a OnePlus 5T (which I hadn't previously considered, but was cheap enough to see no increase in monthly outgoings).

Curiously, Mrs Salestard's mobe - also with O2 - two year stint finishes in July. It's low-mid range Xperia - they're also offering to pay this off early. The only thing in Carphone's favour here is they have a much bigger midrange, erm, range than O2

IBM turns panto villain as The Reg tells readers: 'It's behind you!'

Re: IBM is proud to be in the forefront of workforce training and development

@AC fellow IBM salestard

Mwahahahahahaaaaaahaaa *cough* ahahahaaahhhaaa

Now, granted, IBM Global Sales School (all three days of it for experienced guys) is fairly good - it would have been better if the trainers weren't purely ex-IBM, and CVM wasn't presented as some magic IBM only formula (which it isn't). Do you still have to do the use cases from the Aussie telco and the American whole foods thing?

It's good, but by no means is it world class, industry leading, or any other superlative.

As for the rest of the 'mandatory' training (which I usually found wasn't that mandatory) - remember this, my fellow shiny besuited charm wrangler; in the eyes of Big Blue, attending training sessions is absolutely no excuse for not doing something else it wanted you to do.

In other words, be careful to note your concerns in writing to your line about the amount of time required for training.

What do voters want? An IRL Maybot? Sure, give that a whirl

Except it wouldn't be AI

Because once they find out how much AI costs, and how much dealings they'd need to have with long-haired liberal hippy IT types to make one, it'll get dropped faster than an anvil down a well. It'd have to be watered down a bit price-wise, and they'd need to be sure of it'll do nothing but drift centre-right, be fluent in non-speak, and be of sufficiently mature technology that their core supporter base can cope with.

It's got some keen young tory intern behind mIRQ written all over it, this one.

Butt plugs, mock cocks, late pay and paranoia: The world of Waymo star Anthony Levandowski… by his kids' nanny

Clearly she's in the wrong career

Can recall times, events, part numbers/colours, entire conversations including names of people she's never met, licence plates, and numerous other tiny details - rather think that level of memory would be gainfully employed in some kind of security or espionage role.

Or

She was taking notes from day 1 with the intention of suing the snot out of him. In which case, perhaps greater rewards available operating in sleb circles, rather than silicon valley

Worst-case Brexit could kill 92,000 science, tech jobs across UK – report

Re: But the good old days!

Right then. That being the case, show me the money - as the saying goes.

Here we are, arguing on a thread about published report on a probable downside of leaving the EU. You say that I'm ignorant of the alternative case - which may indeed be the case. So, show me the published reports on a probable upside of departure.

Now, I don't disagree Remain is on a negative pitch - as far as that side of the argument is concerned, it is all doom and gloom. Perhaps this is because in all probability it will be doom and gloom, or perhaps this is because for a long period, the Leave side were just screaming treachery at any point which ran counter to their narrative.

So, tangible stuff please - this particular study claims 92k tech jobs could be lost. You're certain this is scaremongering, so where's the report stating the opposite - that 92k tech jobs could be created.

Tangible stuff - If X happens, they Y occurs, which equals result Z.

Oh, and please don't bother with the dream of a painless, skilfully negotiated, masterstroke agreement - this *is* David Davis we're talking about here.

Re: But the good old days!

I think, old chap, that we'll have to agree to differ on this whole thing, rather than churn up more internet going round in circles.

Let's reconvene in two years time and see who was right - I really don't want Brexit to be a massive fuck up, but from most points I can't see it being anything but.

Re: But the good old days!

Well he's rub then - Why are we leaving?

Because I'll be buggered if I can think of a decent, tangible, objective, reason why it's happening.

There's been plenty of reasons put forward by Remain as to why leaving is likely to be an unmitigated disaster. Leave, however, seems to (still) be hinging on the vagaries of "taking back control" - which seems especially strange given we still have a Head of State, Parliament, armed forces, police force, borders, currency, and judiciary.

As I said - I was never a fan of Project Europe, but leaving without a plan, without a clear idea of what we want at the end, potentially screwing up a very large part of our economy, at a time of economic stagnation, with an astonishing level of national debt, with ALL public services in a funding crisis, does rather seem to be suicidal

Re: But the good old days!

@codejunky

Chap

I wasn't being serious. The clue was the reference to the long dead John Mills, unemployment being compulsory, etc.

However, my point remains quite serious; much of the Leave crowd seem to have this dream of returning to some long lost past national glory. An England of endless summer afternoons, cricket matches on village greens, vicars on bicycles, and a Bobby on every corner. Essentially, a self-invented partial myth fed by the post-war output of Ealing Studios.

I have no love for the EU, but I do believe that the vast majority of the 17.whatever million have been sold an absolute pup.

Re: I stopped at the "Daily Heil"

Whilst it has always been a right-leaning, ageing middle England, NIMBY, indignant rage at whatever, kinda rag, since Brexit it has lurched so far to the right its almost come back on itself.

For example, labelling the three Judges as "Enemies Of The People" when they ruled that parliament would have to vote on Brexit. Not withstanding the mind-bending irony/hypocrisy of this headline when said rag has been foaming at the mouth over parliamentary sovereignty and loss of power of our courts for so long.

But the good old days!

It'll all be worth it, as the Daily Heil crowd gleefully pitch us back to the 1950s. Come with me, as we return to the halcyon days!

Free rickets and tuberculosis for the under 5s!

John Mills (dec'd) the lead in every film!

London covered in yellow smog every day!

The Gold Standard!

Compulsory unemployment for anyone who didn't go to public school!

All Johnny Foreigner sent to PoW camps!

Ha'pennys, Farthings, Shillings!

Dialling the operator and asking for Kensington 237 (for those who can afford a telephone in their home)

Being used as an aircraft carrier by our friends and allies, and paying for the privilege!

Marvellous!

We'll have none of your European nonsense of peace, prosperity, collaboration, and increased standards of living here, I thank you very much.

No, Britain shall rule the waves again. She'll skip merrily into the sunlight uplands of buggered economy, continental ostracism, and total loss of what little international influence we had left.

*sniff*

It will be glorious