<snarf>

"There’s no better place to gauge the economic viability of a new business sector than from the vantage point of a moving bicycle". Direct hit!

Must try cycling to work via Old Street, apparently things go zoom that way :-)

IRIS definitely worked

Given that normal queues were often long and slow moving, I was very glad to use IRIS, which worked fine for me. BTW, given the cost of pensions for the border agency ppl, 9m quid looks real cheap...

The EU *proposed* these plans...

http://www.eureferendum.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/complete-coincidence.html

Dream on if you think the ECHR is going to circle wagons for your privacy. It is legally required to support EU integration, and hasn't yet said boo to the Euro arrest warrant specifying "xenophobia" as a valid reason for extradition

Cannot improve interconnect speeds until April?

What complete cobblers. Be, O2 and Akamai are all on LINX, just turn up some peers!

Just a data point to add

I spent an hour chatting up a very attractive Chinese PA in Chengdu back in Dec 1999. She spoke very good English, and we shared some details of our lives for comparison. She *said* she was paid 3000RMB per month, which was around £250 by the then official exchange rate. On the other hand, Foxconn provide food and accomodation, which can be very steep in places like Shezhen

Miaow! But very funny :-)

It's remarkable how many ppl really have no idea what's inside their iPhone, or who think it doesn't matter :-(

What a twit

He drove off wearing nothing much, on an expedition in winter, to "see how far a road winding to the north would take him". I think he probably drank several crates of beer before he set off....

The shame!

I sometimes go to Asda. Better give up the network engineering and take up something more...basic :-)

Mmmm!

I think those graphics will stay with me forever :-(

Au contraire

There's loads not to like, from the environmental activist point of view. The biggest advantage to global warming was it's ability to justify endless interference in everyone else's business. If it didn't exist, it would have to be invented...and when it's "gone", something else will suddenly emerge

Purpose of trial

Obviously, this was started as an LMG prototype because the thermodynamic and physical issues are hardest to solve for an LMG: sustained fire plus the requirement to be as light and compact as possible. I can't see the point of buying it until we change the calibre from 5.56 to something larger, eg 6.5, 6.8, 7mm, and hence restore some more commonality to ammunition load within a section at least. I suspect plastic cased ammunition will be more robust and less environmentally sensitive than caseless...it still looks like a massive improvement on what we have now

Hmmph!

Good to see consideration of out of band management there: interesting use for a fax line. The emphasis on lab verification of changes is useful too. That being said, this sounds more of a wish list by someone who hasn't had to deal with either a) hard business realities or b) very complex network failures. I would hesitate to describe myself as any sort of network "guru", but I do build out and support data centres, offices, and WAN links of various sorts, including metro rings, and the biggest causes of long outages are usually poor design (usually too complex), poor software (Brocade gets a special mention here!), and carriers (no comment!): in that order. Doubling and tripling up redundancy can improve failure rates (although I should mention that most vendors won't load balance links properly with IGP's or port channels unless they can be divided by 2), but that ain't necessarily so. My worst outage involved a stray OSPF default screwing up a multi-homed site without out of band management: a single homed site would have had higher reliability over the same calendar year.

Not really news, IMHO

More than 100Gig to a site (DC) is really not that unusual. 40 or 80 Gig to a single space within a DC is not that unusual either.

Pity

Chongqing was one chinese city I really liked; it just seemed less doctrinaire than most of the others. First, the telly there starts showing non-stop "Red" agitprop, and now this...<sigh>

BT: more accurate than you think

The usual problem with BT is that they never communicate with you. Them sending you the wrong stuff too late is probably an improvement :-)

Hardly news

Who needs to worry about introducing hardware to exploit this? I've dealt with virus's introduced via email in a v4 environment that act as rogue DHCP servers, making themselves the default gateway for clients so they get to see outgoing traffic from affected clients. Not really news because v6 is hardly more affected than v4

Tanks for nothing, Lewis

Lewis

You're at it again, Lewis, ensuring your many sensible opinions are tainted with way too much raving over hobby horses. Please explain to Register readers how the 5 (shortly to be 3) tank regiments and 8 armoured infantry battalions, equipped with kit bought 20 years ago, supposedly suck up all the money from the other 32 non-armoured battalions when the biggest expense in the Army is personnel?

You could try familiarising yourself with British operations in Basra, Al-Amarah, and Afghanistan, where tanks from the British and Danish armies remarkably proved and are proving remarkably useful, despite their opponents not having any. Indeed, the US Army has upgraded hundreds of tanks for fighting in built up areas against insurgents precisely because of long experience in Iraq (see TUSK).

It's strange how our "light infantry" war in Afghanistan seems to rely on infantry riding large, heavily armoured vehicles, that are hard to transport. Of course, they are called Mastiff's and Ridgebacks, so they are, like, so totally different, and much better. Until, of course, the Taliban accquire Kornet missles, whereupon those tanks will be seen in a different light; if there are any left

Facinating

I was working a largely ATT outage yesterday in the US, in which developed quite large packet loss and latency. Some US ATT home customers were being routed (with a lot of packet loss) via China Telecom US addresses (accessible via whois, CT don't believe in DNS records). Other traceroutes went via what looked like ATT addresses. Must revisit some of those traceroutes.....

Stop funding most "cooperative" projects

The really big overspenders are usually "political" projects (A400, Eurofighter) where the programme objective is not biggest bang for buck, but "promoting euro-cooperation" or industrial policy. They usually result in the wrong subcontractors being chosen, and these cannot be "fired"

R

Useless Puma's

Lewis

Meanwhile, the MOD is upgrading 35 year old Puma's which no one wants to use...

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/britain-prepares-to-modernize-its-puma-helicopters-03784/

R

Not the case for Chemistry?

I personally know one inorganic Chemistry PHd working in NY state for a drugs company who got canned. Sadly, there are exceptions...he knows a few :-(

I was hoping for something better...

Some EG ISP's are notorious for not aggregating hundreds of /24,s, so I was hopeful the drop in advertised routes was just an improvement; sadly, not the case!

Operationally, convenient

Juniper tend to ship routers internationally *without* SSH in their installed software, which can be a bit of a pain in the arse. If you're in a *bare* DC/office and your corporate laptop has a restrictive personal firewall that prevents FTP, using SCP is much preferable to upgrade software.....a minor point, but I've run into it before :-)

Shouldn't be a problem for him...

If memory serves, every morning they blare military music and annoucements from loudspeakers in the streets, at least in the part of Shigatse I was staying in. Surely a "one imperialist communist is feeling lonely, apply at main gate for screening" would be easy enough to slip in :-)

Not the "tank is obselete" canard again...

1) Tanks are essential; still. Read up on Basra, Al-Amara, or even the Danish contribution in Helmand today, let alone their primary purpose in high intensity combat. The British Army prefers to avoid such vulgar brawn, but it's still required

2) Mastiff's are already half the wieght of a Challenger 2. Since they are wheeled, they will be largely restricted to roads. Still finding it hard to see why tanks are "obselete". Please look into the actual

3) Absolutely agree we cannot afford a UK-first attitude to armoured vehicles. If it exists already, buy it off the shelf. The same could be said about the Type 45 (should have bought Aegis like the Spanish, Japanese, Australians etc), A400 (massive disaster, C17/C130).

Facinating

When I rolled out my company's Munich office 4 years ago, I was informed that most DE companies used shielded Cat7 office ethernet cabling due to very severe RFI compliance requirements. Sorta surprised that the cable operators didn't deploy the same shielded stuff...

Define those items which you want manufactured in the UK

Lewis

Issues would seem to be:-

1) poor definition of what the UK needs to retain design and production capability for (eg, nukes, nuclear subs, ships, some aircraft, some missiles, small arms and ammunition ). Having decided on this, ensure that we maintain numbers large enough to ensure production is ticking over at least; rebuilding capabilities after they have atrophied is difficult (see Astute).

2) make decisions and stick to them. We have repeatedly bought penny packets of aircraft rather than deciding to replace an entire class, eg C130J/C130K, EH101/Puma/Chinook. This has caused large additional costs

3) buy off the shelf by default if the class of equipment if it exists already, license produce only if the numbers are large enough. Examples of silly decisions; MRA4 Nimrod

4) avoid european collaboration as much as possible because of the political interference. if the governent is signing the teaming agreement, it's probably already poorly specified. If it already exists, see point 3. If it doesn't, take a leaf out of the Swedes and pay a contractor from where ever to do the work for you. BAE designed the Gripen's wings for example

R

FADEC hardly the issue

Why were two experienced pilots flying at low level in fog, rather than just flying above all known terrain? There's hardly a small arms or SAM threat in Scotland.

R

Sigh...

Company taxes are an exclusive "European competence", and the ability to pay your tax in any EU country is a feature of European law. Frankly, Mr Cable should STFU since he's merrily advocating further European integration including single currency membership, or has he suddenly decided that Libdem policy is now to leave?

R

Oh dear, the "tank is obselete" shtick again...

Lets see, we agree that heavily armoured vehicles are necessary, even for those "light" wars which are supposedly the only ones we will have to fight. The current MRAP's weigh a minimum of 10-12 tons (eg the US M-ATV), with the bigger ones like the the Ridgeback and the Mastiff at 24-30 tonnes, which is about the same as a Warrior IFV. However, off road these vehicles have very limited mobility, which is why the Army uses tracked Vikings for the Helmand "green zone". Now we have to improve their mobility, the logical solution is to mount them on tracks. The Canadian army (after retiring all their tanks after the Cold War) has just bought 100 Leopard 2's from Germany after their wheeled LAV's failed to cope with much of the terrain in Afghanistan. Once you have a heavily armoured vehicle, on tracks, and doubtless mounted with some sort of stabilised weapon, you have a "tank"; something that was supposedly obselete! As for the supposed replacements for "tanks", apart from the vastly increased cost, fuel and maintenance requirements of helicopters, they are about as much use as a telephone directory in the Amazon when they are on the ground. A vehicle can be an excellent fighting platform even when stationary.

As to the merits or otherwise of the CV90, I would aver it's too big and heavy, although a good replacement for the Warrior, and something in the CVR(T) weight class would make more sense, with an up-armoured German Wiesel being a good example. As for the disaster that is the Jackal, the designers have come up with a non-mine protected deathtrap that weighs as much as a CVR(T), but without the 360 degree armour and a 30 mm cannon.

If memory serves...

Most brothels seem to operate out of hairdressers in China, hence the large numbers of the same open at 3am, with bored looking women slouching around behind the blue smoked glass inside. Hairdressing often comes with a head massage too, so it's a great stress buster without the "extras" :-)

Not entirely surprising

VxWorks is the core of IOS-KR. That sort of thing is nice to have in house

Methinks you all protest too much

It's a prison camp for those who are not entitled to POW status, or a civilian trial, or indeed to ever be released. Compared to 99% of prisons in the world, it probably counts as a model facility, with the Red Cross in constant attendance.

If Guantánamo Bay is so bad, how should we define the GULAG, Belsen, North Korea, the Khmer Rouge? If shouting at prisoners and putting them in solitary confinement counts as "torture", what are we going to call hacking off people's arms and legs?

Oh hang on, we won't discuss them at all; it doesn't suit the "narrative". Of course, this will involve ignoring breaches of human rights elsewhere.....

The naughty boy...

I can guess where his phone was lifted; the prostitutes on La Rambla are seriously out of control, it's non-stop attempted pickpocketing and feeling up :-(

Interesting

Let's face it, the most likely reason for SSBN's to collide on open ocean is that they were part of the same exercise. Perhaps we will shortly hear of the "merging" of the British and French deterrents into a "EU" deterrent...doubtless run by the French :-(

Umm, ancestors?

Ancestors...in the future? Shurely shome mishtake?

Perhaps

Perhaps that evil NSA was targeting upstanding journalist truth seekers...or perhaps the journalists concerned may have made or received calls to ID'ed terrorist numbers. All those "inside the mind of a terrorist" articles have to be sourced somehow. Will the journalists in turn disclose details of these conversations? Approximately as likely as acknowledging that international calls are hardly "domestic" or that the FISA wiretaps concerned have been confirmed as legal by court case methinks

What's wrong with a bomber force?

Sorta surprised that no one mentions the option of buying a few B2's; it can be used for the conventional stuff when there's no immediate threat, and graduate to standing air patrols when needed. Having some land based cruise missiles as a bad up would be fairly cheap too

R

VOIP doesn't save much money; in the WAN

After you have actually costed out office builds and looked at the cost of office to office calls you could "toll bypass", it becomes painfully obvious that unless it's a new office in which the reduced cabling buildout will save money, there's not a lot of point in VOIP

Wish fufillment Lewis :-)

I know you're not a fan of tanks and artillery Lewis, but we've been through all this before 30+ years ago with anti-tank missiles that would "make the tank obselete". Precision guiding artillery will certainly reduce the requirement for massive artillery units (something that has been in train in the US Army for 5+ years), but armoured vehicles of some sort will always be with us, and very often they will be tracked, unless they are going to be employed on roads only...

Cogent again cont

The agreement between Sprint and Cogent is best described as "settlement based peering" just for everyone's information. The reason for this being an "issue" is that Cogent will not buy "transit" to allow Cogent customers access to Sprint via their networks if Sprint and Cogent do not directly peer, which is a poor customer care frankly

When I buy an IP circuit, I expect access to everywhere...and since I was burnt before when Cogent decided to de-peer Level3 and Telia, I don't use them anymore. I think their attitude in not buying transit is rooted in their belief that they are a Tier1 carrier and shouldn't need to, which is nonsense

Worthy of Prime Ministerial attention it's not...

...but it was a thoroughly nasty thing to do anyway. I don't suppose I can get a discount on the TV license when the pair of them get fired, can I?

Not likely

Woodward is trying desperately to avoid the implication that the surge was actually responsible for a vast rise in tip offs, partly down to the move to local basing of US forces within communities and the declaration of will that it represented. Being on the losing side is a poor proposition, and as soon as the Yanks declared they were doubling up, it had a remarkable impact on the number of tip offs.

We could spend vast amounts of time speculating as to embedded unpowered RFID, but given that the signal to noise ratio required to pick out signals approaches space probe requirements, I think it's rather unlikely. Good old fashioned COIN and a spec ops community having had 4 years of practice can explain all this just fine IMHO.

As to why fantasies such as this are the best Woodward can come up with...well, I'll leave that to others to comment on

They aren't that big

Zapatero's balls are only big when the issue requires no bravery, see his attitude on fighting people who actually might threaten him.

Since these great apes now have person status, I'm sure the Spanish taxpayers will look forward to them paying taxes and being tried for snatching bananas out of turn. Perhaps they could speak at PSOE rallies?

R

Of limited utility? This is a proof of concept

Lets face it, a 747 loitering near even a nation with limited air defense capability very vulnerable. However, given the fact that they are only planning 7 of them says this program is a proof of concept. Once it's proved that this stuff works, then your justification for a longer ranged system has written itself...

About FAST technologies...

Yahoo bought some of FAST too, via Overture

Ouch

"Our vote goes to the radiant Tracey Emin, who's no slouch in the rock'n'roll lifestyle department". Having a good day Lester?