Posts by Mickey Porkpies 103 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Aug 2007
They acquire companies and technologies and usually shit them up and eventually let the go to die. They are like a bad China copying others ideas but worse. Shame but they lost their way a long time ago and now just try to monetise and maximise profit over usefulness, design and certainly the customer. Trust is long gone and even their security side is turning bad.
Used to run workshops on Data Protection now it is all online CBT tick box training to cover themselves with the ICO - still get regular breaches from my Local Council and Car Dealers sending me other peoples insurance details Even the ICO give up on minor breaches and only really target large and potentially public facing one.
still dragging on with copper (we paid for they rented) and slowly replacing with Fibre and NO not full fibre when it is Asynchronous but much like most Regulators Offcom supports business not consumers so we make do with 20 year old connections when Europe "full Fibred" decades ago. Business pad a fortune for lines for years until new modern infrastructure was installed. BT (when it owned Openreach) poured money away on crap ventures (Italy) and TV when it should have focussed on infrastructure and much like water we the customer end up funding the poor management,
once the last government wound down Digital Service and moved us back towards a reliance on Office 365 Azure and AWS based on out dated principles or trust in our "Special Relationship" we were stuffed. Shame our Government has sleep walked into this and there is still a feeling it will all get better later and frankly the rest of Europe is waking up to this pipe dream.
No issue relaxing them as long as power and water are available but when we all realise AI has to be paid for and half the DC's being built become unprofitable they will need to ensure the fallout is picked up by the tech industry and not bailed out be local authorities again. We are building infrastructure that as yet has no customers or actual business case it is a bubble that will eventually burst.
worked in gov for decades spent more on consultants to tell us how to save money and spent more what we ever saved over years - the issue is with senior management not trusting their own staff and trusting consultants more (usually as they came from that sector) so it is a learned behaviour that will never change
Spent the past year migrating tons to Linux as the chip impact raises PC/Laptop prices many just can't afford to move to the mess that is Windows 11 and faced with impending security holes felt the only LTS option is Linux. Even home users now are asking me to move them onto Mint or Zorin (other brands are available!) Telling someone you need to spend >£500 just to carry on doing what you are doing and helping MS fund the AI black Hole just isn't an option.
Broadcom have a history of maximising investments (buy out) of products whilst running them into the ground. The sooner more large VMWARE hostages move away the sooner they will either sell it and return to normality or lower their ridiculous inflated pricing that puts a massive burden on business. The hypervisor and virtualisation market is catching up and unless you use all of the product you are overpaying and many alternatives are available and viable. When larger users like Tesco migrate it shows it can be done and may make IT Management get off their comfortable chairs and actually deliver innovation - the old "nobody got fired for buying IBM" mentality is costing businesses and if a market dominant player like Broadcom want to exploit their customers so be it, but IT Management needs to step up.
the US can turn off a system the West is relying on to do work, manage systems etc. What moron builds your country's critical infrastructure and your business models on someone else's systems that, if they decide to can turn it off at a blink of an eye ... ahh oh wait .....
When we finally wake up and smell the roses that there is no "special relationship" and we have more in common with Europe and even China than we do the US.
we all know who needs controlling the big tech companies but they have bought governments to control us - I would have expected Labour to be more intelligent but looks like they are as in the back pockets of business more than the Tories. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck.
having worked in Government for years it is unsurprising that decision makers who have little understanding of delivery only costs and reports have moved on this. Most of my career was trying to explain to management why the suppliers promised endless functionality for little cost (it didn't exist) and even with the likes of Crapita and Fukitju history still went on to award contracts that later failed on the same issues. Same story just different companies. The problem is they think only large companies can deliver at scale and are so poor at setting scope that the suppliers define it though sales pitches. Basically stop employing professional managers and go back to IT professionals making decisions (or at least listen to them) hey ho
Stop the press Tech Fraud detection company tells us people sell creds so why don't we buy their tech or Uncle Joe's Companies Tech blah blah sales pitch. Spent most of my career reading this BS and not really a trusted story so disappointed in TR for running this as a story rather than an advert. Go munger you fear somewhere else - I remember the InfoSec creds for a choc bar shenanigans how much fun that was an put on 2 pounds
worked in GOV for long time - when we looked at this M$ turned up with loads of support resource dropped threats to bump up licences and everyone behaved. They then disappeared as quick as they arrived, tumbleweed for a few years and off we go again. Now we have more cloud and SaaS it is much easier to change the endpoint and disengage with the enshittifcation of the desktop. There really is no reason a large proportion of IT estates couldn't move off reliance on Windows and Office $365 but it is the usual fear that yonks back was "nobody got fired for buying IBM". It take a brave IT Manager to move into this area and good luck as the rewards for reducing dependency on lining the pockets of US companies annually and focussing on actual support costs will pay dividends long term. Europe has always been more open to open source, the UK prefer to blag on the special relationship we have with the US (not looking so good now guys!) but maybe as costs increase it will return IT to actually being more radical that the lackluster homogenised environment it has turned into.
absolute BS and they know it I aspire to be King and distribute the wealth to all but the chance of this happening is as likely as AWS reducing it's carbon footprint - smoke and mirrors and we should stop gaslighting people and companies have to admit to outsourcing their targets to AWS and stop pretending to care. If you care about your carbon footprint you run it yourself and control and own the issue.
BBC keep me sain in a world bombarded with adverts and sponsored crap it is the only way to watch stuff and is the true personal media service. Whilst news has sunk to the depth of Daily Mail so much good TV is available on the big screen without the need to pay for high speed broadband and even with the streaming service offers a massive selection to the widest audience. It is a truly inclusive service that is an island in a world of haves and have nots and should be protected as such
It isn't a commercial streaming service it is public service and selfish interests will destroy it. If we have anything left of the British Identity in a stupefying globalised homogenised world it is this.
VPNs will eventually be banned - Business lobbies politicians pretend it is to save the kids when it is really to protect Netflix / Disney etc and make them more money so they can feed on users until they have every penny. Once business went online it was the beginning of the end greed corrupts everything alas so back to drinking down the pub with your mates... oh they are closed.
More and more IT is commoditised and companies pay less and less for what is probably the most important part of a modern business yet they wonder why this crap happens - Russian Rolette to outsource your IT to the lowest bidder but as they aren't held responsible for losing personal data what do they care. JLR gambled and lost most companies have no idea of the consequences.
MS have an army of people convincing you they are green whatever they do. The race to the beat the AI bubble bursting will render billions of e waste that will make the 400 million tons of windows 10 pcs seem like small change. We will all be huddled around fires sipping puddle water while all our resources are burnt up so they can solve a problem that was theirs in the making.
This more about cost tied into property investment and how we can't have all these posh offices empty and some tired old working practices rather than data driven productivity.To get the best people Dell need to compete with employers offering hybrid approach and for me as a corp customer this speak volumes on the old dog no new tricks scale. Anyone who has had the misfortune to trial their hybrid personal AV kit will know how little they know about how people work from home.
