Posts by James Anderson 1175 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Apr 2007
Most likely explanation is that the RNC sends out more begging letters at the end of the month. After all it's when most people get paid.
The RNC is getting desperate as it can no longer hold on to government. Even the rigged system which allowed them to win elections even though more people voted for the other side no longer works.
Thier core support is getting old and dying off. There message of racism and low taxes for the rich is not attracting new blood.
Lies and false beliefs are not "truths" and never will be. The earth is not flat. Vaccines do not contain micro chips from Bill Gates. Trump did not win an election in 2022.
No matter how strongly anyone believes the above it does not mele it true.
There is such a thing as objetive truth based on solid evidence. And there is such a thing as lies propogated by con men and shysters and far too many sad acts prepared to believe them.
Lies harm everybody in some small way and harm some in big ways.
Er.... it's a Swedish private equity fund doing the puchase.
The "merger" is probably just a device to ease the delisting process. Changing a company to private ownership can be quite complex, it's much simpler to pretend it was taken over by another company.
Best case scenario is that the plan to face off Red Hat would be considered too risky for a listed company which has a duty to not engage in strategies the could bust the company.
Well take the history of ISO8583.
It started off as a protocol for ATMs. The main design goal was to minimise the amount of data transmitted over very slow networks. Which was spectacularly successful but resulted in the hardest to parse message format you will ever come across.
However over the years the standard evolved to encompass credit card transactions, point of sale, web based commerce, chip and pin, NFT, phone purchases. Most of the worlds retail transactions involve messages using this format.
The point is having a good standards body with the all the right actors involved and a flexible approach makes this stuff work. Even something as godawfull as ISO8583 is still in use 35 years on and is spectacularly successful.
Said it before but I will say it again.
What the NHS and medical profession needs is a well designed set of messages and protocols to enable systems to exchange information.
This would allow specialist applications or even ordinary applications like appointments to be developed independently and replaced or upgraded independently.
The financial services industries have used this model for decades with great success, think SWIFT, chaps, SEPA, ISO8583, etc. etc.
As the study was based in Texas I doubt the Friday afternoon result was due to lunchtime pub sessions ( regular almost compulsory event in 2970s London).
I think the afternoon flagging is due to the excessive hours gullible mercans get conned into.
You can only expect about 4 hours of high quality work from a techie per day long term. Conning them into 10 hour days only makes more work for the bug reporting software.
The UK is the only major economy to swallow the libertarian lol aid whole.
The US talks the talk but pours billions of public money into their economy via the DOD, NASA etc.
Thirty years of cost cutting and privatisation have wrecked the UK economy.
It’s time to look at the evidence and conclude that a “liberal” economy just does not work.
But there I go with an “enlightenment fallacy ” the belief that a true believers will change their minds when presented with facts and rational argument.
This is a strategy used by many large corporations.
Patent anything you can then if another corporation sues you for patent violations you can launch a dozen counter suits.
Nobody wins but the size of the legal expenses involved deters anyone form launching trivial challenges.
Agreed the main reason for objecting seems to be it looks like "Windows".
However when I coded a long running server to run on an early version of WindowsNT I was deeply impressed by the Server API which was well written and reliable with a great API.
Not all of Windows is cr*p so why not copy the good bits.
Our AIX kit was delivered from Germany along with godawfull german keyboards.
Installing and configuring the OS took several steps before you could set the keyboard layout.
I remember looking at the ceiling tiles envisaging a US international keyboard and touch typing as best I could.
And try programming in a C style language where [.],{ and } were all on uppercase alt keys.
Not Cerner but the Veterans Administration.
In 1995 they won a Smithsonian Award for the best medical software system.
One wonders why an organisation with a track record of writing first class software was buying an expensive and problematic software package.
They are the world expert in MUMPS possibly the best database ever combined with definitely the worst programming language.
Outlook is pretty crap ( especially the web interface ) but compared with notes eMail client it looks really good.
Part of the problem with Notes is that when you complained about the eMail client all you got was the “it’s a database” mantra and all issues were ignored by the dev team.
Given that eMail was the most used notes “application” the contempt for end users was shocking. Any application that got a dedicated section in the “user interface hall of shame” should have sat up and taken note especially as Notes was the only one. But the arrogant team just ignored all criticism and pointed out what a great database it was.
Agreed with comments about Ubuntu -- they seem to mess about with the Gnome desktop with pointless UI changes. I recently fired up a work laptop that I had not used for a year or so, did what I had to do then had to google to find out where they had hidden the shutdown button. Next time I fire it up and have a copuple of spare hours its being switched to Mint.
It still makes financial sense. Replace older western based employees whose benefits reflect a time when profits were easily come by, with younger cheaper asian employees who don't get pensions, bonuses medical etc.
So what if you have to settle a few law suits.
The only down side is your customers get hacked off being charged top dollar for inexperienced employees, but, as you customers already hate you .....
A bit of a surprise from tha Americanized El Reg light.
This week:-
An IT failure at British Airways resulted in (I think can't be arsed to check) 150 flights cancelled.
An IT failure at French immigration regulated in queues two hours longer than normal.
An IT failure at Border Control (UK immigration) resulted in chaos at all the major UK airports.
All this on a holiday weekend that is one of the busiest of the year.
The story was covered by most of the UK newspapers and the BBC but somehow escaped the Registers notice.
It would have been nice to know some more details of the meltdown and which of the usual suspects (Crapita, Gemin, etc. etc.) was responsable.
They really need to think about how a Victorian system does not work in a modern world.
Today's medicine is all about tests and scans. Yet you have to make an appointment with a GP who cannot carry out even the simplest blood and urine tests and has zero scanning equipment.
Why can't I just make an appointment with the appropriate specialist at a hospital with a fully equipped lab and a full set of scanning kit.
However Thinkpads are very popular for people who need a professional Linux setup on a laptop.
Over the years they have got a reputation as the go to Linux laptop (if you have the budget).
The extra expense for the hardware is more than justified by the long life of these machines.
Got a thirteen year old X thingy running windows still in use 'cos I refuse to fork out for another MS Draw license.
There is along history of manipulating paper ballots. From simple ballet stuffing to more sophisticated schemes.
The common election “buying” scheme involves sending the first guy in, he marks your chosen guy on the ballot but does not post it. When he comes out the fixer checks the ballot pays up and gives the ballot to the next guy who posts the previous ballot and hands his ballot to the fixer and collects the money. Repeat until you run out of money or voters.
This system was common in Thailand, when measures were taken to prevent it there were mass protests from poor people who were derived a useful extra income.
Thanks for the link to the anti-vax conspiracy nut case.
Really if these people want to unmask a conspiracy of a an all powerful global secret organisation of pedophiles why not look at the catholic church. There is at least some factual evidence against them.
The safest quickest way to achieve an up to date modern functioning system is to enhance and expand an existing system one step at a time.
However government (and many many private organisations) prefer the Big Bang then freeze approach. These mega projects always go over budget, come in late and never deliver the promised benefits. Once the system is in and the various hacks and bodges to make it work are done the system is neglected for 10 or 15 years and falls so far behind some consultant will come along and propose a complete new modern system with all bells and whistles which will deliver numerous benefits. Not.
Don't know about file sharing on MS, but if you use Google Drive it syncs the files you want, and its much easier to share files with other users than using Dropbox.
Their core product is redundant as MS and Google offer better integrated sync and file sharing along with much much more.
Probably in a medium sized business which bought materials, made stuff, put it an a warehouse and sold it.
Any deviation from this bog standard business model dumps you in a world of painful customisation, with "expert" consultants hacking together solutions for processes they do not understand.
Worse when the next release comes along the whole customisation fiasco has to be repeated from scratch.
Local government is about as far from standard as you can get. Half the staff are "officers" (some with extraordinary powers -- like removing your children, or knocking down your building), every penny spent must be traceable to the individual counsellors who voted for it, most of what they do is mandated by central government regulations etc. etc.
Trying to get a standard business suite to operate for such an organisation is always going to end in tears.
As a life long lefty, I despair of the left.
Socialism has been taken over by zealots who would rather an evil right wing government stayed in power rather than compromise their "principles".
Mild democratic socialism works. Communism does not.
However security is difficult.
Security design and architecture requires someone with a deep understanding of the underlying software, the maths of cryptography and the nature of the numerous and various threats. These people tend to “absent minded professor” personality type. They don’t have the patience to explain simple concepts to lessor mortals like managers and are averse to admin.
Effective administration of security requires someone pig headed, with OCD levels of attention to detail and a religious veneration of the rules.
I between they need a management that appreciates the long term benefits of a good security setup is worth the short term cost.
Very few organisations manage collets all three winning cards.
Had the pleasure of working with the successor system called Viewpoint.
It had what I still consider the best word processor. Miles ahead of anything you could run on MS-DOS or Unix.
As far as I know there were only two customers in the UK themselves and the Inland Revenue.
There is no intelligence in these AI systems.
They have merely automated the process of googling a few articles and cutting and pasting the results.
With no real journalists to write the original pieces the whole thing falls apart. We just get a bunch of applications blindly copying each other and producing nonsense.
Although given the current news output it may be a while before anyone notices.
It was over 30 years ago that I encountered my first relational DB and have been using the, on and off ever since so I would expect to be on the RDBMS side if the vote.
However it’s also about 30 years since I first got my hands on a unix box ( Sun Microsystems Shoebox ) and I whole heartedly endorse the “do one thing and do it really well” philosophy of early unix systems.
So rather than admit there are a couple of things that are better done using a different tool he proposes adding yet more functionality to an already bloated and complex system. Commercial database products are already full of features and extensions that very few customers ever use but add to the cost and complexity of the system.
While I am a big fan of relational and would wholeheartedly endorse the previous posters recommendation of SqLite for almost everything there are a few edge cases where relational falls short.
Anything recursive such as Bill Of Materials just ends up a complete mess if implemented with an RDMS.
Using RDMS to create a customisable product is just horrible ( hears looking at you SAP ).
You have hit the nail on the head.
The UK financial services industry is primarily interested in paying its staff large bonuses.
To raise the money for bonuses they have three strategies
Gaming the system using high speed trading, research and inside knowledge to pick winners and dump losers on retail investors.
Forcing companies to cut costs and forego investments to pay higher dividends.
Then when companies are hollowed out by years of cost cutting, they sell the company to foreign investors who are only interested in what was once a prestigious brand name. (Jaguar, Mini?)
It’s all basically asset stripping and deeply damaging to the UK economy.
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