Posts by David

Ford cars to gain prang-preventing radar rigs

Not exactly new

Sounds exactly like the systems on the Volvo XC60. Which is out now I think. And isn't Volvo still owned by Ford?

Aussies: Eat roos, save the planet

In bad taste

Seriously, roo's are just are not as tasty as cows. The meat is quite a lot tougher and not as flavoursome. It won't catch on I tell ya!

Mind you the barbie sausages that the aussies eat are even worse, so you might be able to replace some of the pigs with roo and improve the cuisine somewhat...

<--- bbq flames

The New Order: When reading is a crime

RE: What happenned to moderacy?

I think a couple of things here are:

1) They were arrested and interrogated for 6 days. That can't be nice, and can leave a rather large stain on your reputation. And try getting into the Disneyland with an arrest under terrorism laws on your record....

2) Falling foul of immigration and being removed is fine, immigration laws are there for a reason, but being held in a detention center and then denied the right to argue you case because of an *emergency* sounds draconion, and (assumption here, but there you go) like punishing someone because they could not make the other charges stick.

To be fscked by "due process" in the first and then fscked again by being denied "due process" sounds like a situation I would not like to be in. And I would not like anyone else to be in either. And that makes me want some more public scrutiny applied to this case.

Dell moves 40,000 Ubuntu PCs

Why just Dell?

I seem to recall that there are other large computer makers in the market. How about HP, they sell direct, and after a couple of minutes on their UK site I could surmise that they only sell Windows, and Vista at that (no XP options).

Or is it they just don't want the competition for HP_UX? Cough, cough.

UK.biz faces severe penalties for hiring illegal workers

RE: NI Number

The checks on getting an NI card are quite stringent, or at least hard to jump through. It won't help though - what we have at the moment is that it takes 6 months to get an appointment to get an NI number, so while you are waiting for one and paying tax you end up with a "temporary" NI number.

In fact I know several Australians who have come over, worked for 2 or 3 years, paid tax and even reclaimed some all without bothering to get get a real one.

Anytime you introduce red tape the two most likely outcomes are:

a) no-one can do anything till it is completed, harming people, businesses and the ecomomy (see teachers having to get police certified - wasn't completed in time and left a lot of them unable to work)

or

b) lots of "temporary" loopholes in the system which let people get on with life with minimal (but still some) fuss, but make a mockery of the intent of the law.

Which one will this end up? Any guesses?

Senior officials now in frame for HMRC data fiasco

the NAO asked for the data be "desensitised"

I don't think it would be as easy as a "filter" as some people have suggested. If you are doing an audit, you might want to see correlations in the data, such as how many people with the same name in the same house claimed more than x.

To do that you would have to change everyone's names, but not randomly, and have to be sure you ended up with the same statistics (i.e. don't change all Smiths and Joness to Williams). And the same with NI numbers, and addresses, and how to you make the postcodes anonymous and still useful in a geographical search, etc.

Sure there is a sliding scale on how much work you can do on this, but to do it right (and I can imagine the civil service being a do it completely right or ignore it place) would be a small project in and of itself.

All of this would mean that you can pass it onto the NAO and not worry about the security clearance for their DBA. (We face similar problems when sending copied of our live system to the vendor when trying to debug problems.)

Not encrypting - criminal. Saying making it "desensitised" has a cost - completely true.

Former Juniper attorney faces SEC's wrath

insure?

"Ms. Berry was in a unique position to insure that the companies accurately disclosed their stock option expenses"

Does

a) The SEC mean to infer that they should have taken an insurance policy against malpractice?

b) The SEC not know the difference between insure and ensure?

c) Someone at a press conference needs to learn how to transcribe?

Virgin Media boss in shock exit

An alternative view

I moved into a new flat a few weeks ago, which didn't allow a satellite dish on the building. Given the choice between "freeview & BT line & random ADSL", or Virgin, I plumped for Virgin.

I had heard so many bad thing (and remember how bad C&W were as a student) I was crossing my fingers and wondering what would go wrong.

However, in the month I have been connected, I have had pleasant customer service, installation on time, connection straight away, a better (subjective) internet speed on a 2Mb account than I did on my previous 8Mb ADSL, and a new PVR in the V+ box that let me record both the rugby and the Aussie rules game on Setanta (included for free with the Sky sports package) at the same time, while I was away on Saturday (incidentally at the V festival!). And all for a better price that Sky.

By the law of sod it will all come crashing down now I have posted this, but so far I would recommend the service. (And no - I have no vested interest in the company or connection to the bearded one).

Just leaves me thinking on the difficulties of judging a service on online comments, since generally only the disgruntled / fanatics post reviews, and there is little way of empirically saying what chance there is of fault (rather than the total faults)........