Posts by Rogerborg 510 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2009
It takes 4 years for the oversight committee with responsibility for the steering group that provides guidelines to the asset management strategy team to bring in a special advisor to outsource the decision about which consultancy to use in order to produce a really top quality mission statement.
How can you expect to see any results before every civilian support staffer has a mug and/or pen with that mission statement on it to inspire them?
By the way, anyone who hasn't yet realised that this is a stalking horse for charging for bike parking, well, I'll be delighted to say "Told you so" when you return to your 'bollard' and find the remains of your chain and a Penalty Charge Notice saying where you can pay £60 to get your bike back.
Cue the shrieks of "They couldn't!" Well, who's going to stop them? You didn't speak up when they came for the motorists. You didn't speak up when they came for the motorcyclists. Who's going to speak up when they come for you?
"increasing visibility and reassuring the public"
ORLY? And what did Robert Peel have to say about that?
"The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it."
It's like he actually predicted the existence of these PR obsessed weasels.
Crib notes: it doesn't matter if you're SEEN to be doing your job. What matters is DOING your job.
...with our tentacles."
Delayed disclosure isn't a responsibility, it's a courtesy. And the less courtesy Microsoft show, the less they'll receive.
Is it possible that someone with half a brain there has figured out that pissing and moaning about immediate disclosure is a sure way to encourage it?
I'm guessing not, actually, and that this is just PR flim flam to try and get vulnerability researchers enfolded in the loathesome Embrace of the Beast.
The tender was for a Windows NT 3.5 based SCADA system for monitoring the rod drops in a nuclear power plant. How we laughed. Then we realised they were serious...
Sleep sound though: all nuke plants run double-redundancy, and have 3 independent monitoring or control systems doing each function.
At least, that's the way it used to be, back in The Day.
Hmm... I actually may not sleep quite so soundly tonight.
It'll be at full cost, by salary garnishment, accompanied by a missive along these lines:
"Be the first to own many of these super-magical paradigm destroying devices! Pre-order as many as you feel is commensurate with your company loyalty for your [soon to be ex] friends, family and neighbo[u]rs. As we confidently expect your loyalty to be high, we have pre-allocated ten (10) units specifically to you. However, you are under no strict legal obligation to purchase your full allocation, and our lawyers have instructed us to tell you that the number that you order will not stay on any permanent record that you are able to obtain, nor provably influence your future salary reviews. Enjoy!"
Threaten to disclose the vulnerabilities publicly, get paid hush money to go away (hey, I've been bribed, not 'threatened'), then rinse and repeat as necessary.
After the first bucket of hush money, what are they going to do? Call my bluff, and switch to lawsuits, or keep paying every time I have a talk scheduled?
For bonus point, I'd pretend that I'd never even meant to give the vulnerability talk. Dumb Dutchies must have been high when I told them what I was going to present.
I mean, that's what *I'd* do, but then *I'm* a loathesome unethical parasite. I'm *sure* that's Chiesa is *nothing* like that, and his bizarre explanations for the much threatened but never given disclosure are all true, *especially* the crazy sounding and contradictory ones.
Right?
Raytheon likely just did the usual: put in a ridiculously low bid without getting requirements, or asking any of the engineers how long it would take, or believing their answer. That's business as usual; let's all put the torches and pitchforks down.
The border will always be porous, so long as we have a coasline. Better to spend that £1.2 beelyon on extra shifts for coppers to kick down doors and turf out the illegals who are already here, then build an annexe to the Chunnel and start shoving them in. Shouldn't take too long before the pressure starts popping out the other end, then they're Jeanny Frog's problem.
A big old gaudy branding mess slapped on what's essentially a disparate set of services that you can find a lot faster just by Googling.
That they keep moving things around doesn't help either - it really is easier to just Google for what you want rather than to play hunt-the-moving-link.
Aggregator FAIL.
"You are NOT obliged to carry your driving licence with you when driving a 'vee-hic-le' in the UK. That is a complete load."
Actually, you are. Producing it later is merely a defence that you can offer against the offence of not producing it at the time. Don't take my word for it: read the legislation.
Road Traffic Act 1988 Section 164
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/ukpga_19880052_en_13
"a person driving a motor vehicle on a road [...] must, on being so required by a constable, produce his licence for examination
[...]
In proceedings against any person for the offence of failing to produce a licence it shall be a defence for him to show that [...] within seven days after the production of his licence was required he produced it in person at a police station that was specified by him at the time its production was required"
The HO/RT 1 'producer' is a courtesy, not a right. There's nothing to stop a copper arresting you on the spot, or the CPS beginning proceedings against you immediately, if they don't much like the cut of your jib.
I can think of a UK Ltd who used regularly to get gushing reviews here whenever it dumped a steaming press release, right back to that 2001 "price list". Then when it was teetering on the edge of going titups (or sputit, perhaps) last year, a negative scoop got mysteriously pulled until the wailing and gnashing from its own staff became too loud to suppress.
So I'd lay down a few beer tokens that the price list was never really satirical, and that money can't buy you love, but it sure can get you good press until the credit card get maxed out.
Ordinary Decent Britons refer to the BBC news as Pravda for a reason. After spending 11 years fawning over zanuLabor like a roofied cheerleader, they have to expect a few backhanders from the new quarterback.
And that's the Colonial-soccerball analogy that Hitler would have driven.
You traitors caught bitching about your iPhone 4 or, Jobs help you, asking for a free cover or even... sweet Lady Sosumi... attempting to return it? You'll be shitlisted for iPhone 5. Your names and faces will be memorised by all Apple Geniuses. You'll be IP blocked from the Apple site. You'll be BANNED FROM STARBUCKS.
Us Denialists will have the last laugh while we're being eaten by polar bears and penguins and whatnot.
The problem with both historians and climatologists is that they're the people who couldn't handle more academically rigorous subjects like Sports and Exercise Science, or even Social Anthropology. You don't see physicists bleating on about "ritual purposes" or engineers disclaiming "If our models are correct, but there's no way to be sure..."
If you can't test it, it ain't science, it's horoscopes with peer review.
Yup, no surprise. Judges eat from the same trough as other civil servants.
Synopsis of the judgement (and yes, I've been following the issues, and have read it in full):
Sure, it's unlawful to levy parking charges solely and secretly to raise revenue. But as long as you're quite open that you're going to turn a honking profit, you can charge whatever you like, break as many promises as you like about what you're actually going to provide in return for the charging (as long as you keep promising it), and spunk the huge excess on anything you like.
Any car drivers minded to point out that motorcyclists are moaning about paying just £1 a day for parking should please bear in mind that it's £1 today. When the case is finally put to bed, the screws will turn.
Ah well. As they say, on to the appeal. There may be some judges left, in Brussels if not in London, who still care about what the law actually says, rather than inventing post facto justifications for those who break it.
"only 1 of my 11 friends with an iPhone has any issues"
Translation: 10 out of 11 chatterati sheep sit in Soho and Kensington Starbucks braying into each other's uncomprehending entitled iFaces using WiFi, without noticing any problems.
Here's a hint: send your Trustafarian brain trust on an expedition outside of the M25 and tell us how the signal holds up. They'll need guides and bearers, mind, and make sure they take their own Evian - you can't trust Provincial bottled water.
Even the wife is on 10.04 now, and not missing the Vista malware that came on her box.
Granted, XP is better for gaming - even though 2K shares a kernel and DirectX 9 with NT5, there are too many lib snafus to make it practical as a gaming OS.
But I still keep a 2K partition for the sheer joy of it. Rock solid, stable as all get out, no DRM gubbins, and it runs like a freaking rocket. Let's raise a glass to the best OS Redmond ever made, and no mistake.
In this case though, not so much.
What's the use scenario for this? Most soldiering is hurry up and wait. Carrying heavy loads to the point where you stand around guarding them is best left to wheels or tracks. Anywhere you're out of vehicle supply range, i.e. special forces, you're going to run out of batteries pretty fast, then you're nobbed.
You know who's going to buy this? SWAT teams. They flip for war porn, and they'll cream their leopard print thongs[*] over a proper Power Armour version of this, as long as it makes scary whining noises and comes with a full face armoured mask, with a stupid little moustache painted on it.
[*] All 'special forces' copper wear these. Next time you see any Plod toting machine guns around, be sure to tell them I said so.
"He's lucky no open carriers were in the bank at the time. Otherwise they'd be bagging and tagging him."
Yes, because putting a bunch of panicked, untrained, armed strangers in a confined space and having them all start whipping their Glocks out and blazing away at anything that they perceive as a threat - the Bandana Bandit, each other, the other customers or staff, guide dogs, pot plants, furniture... - often ends well.
What do economics graduates like Vince contribute? Hot air, seemingly. GLOBAL WARMING DENIALISTS!
Seriously, he needs to quit vaginafooting around the issue and point at the elephant in the room: the engorged public teat that feeds so many graduates with no marketable skills.
The State educates yoof in order to make them productive. If you're paid by tax money - surviving off the sweat of MY brow - then you wasted your time, and more of my money, arsing around doing Social Anthropology for 3 years.
The solution isn't to nob around with the tax code, it's to get rid of the non-jobs that these parasites end up in, like the BBC, Diversity Empowermentisers, and political office. Without these cosy no-risk job-for-life bolt holes to burrow into, the next generation might be inclined to actually do real degrees, or learn a trade instead.
The search is down, but I did like the motions to repeal the laws of gravity and thermodynamics.
Note that doing so would be marginally less difficult than an Ordinary Decent Briton managing to remain aware of all the laws that are currently in effect, and their practical interpretation by the various incarnations of the State.
They're all about decentralising power, except when they're all about centralising power.
As noted above, RIPA is the only thing standing between what we have now (a camera on every street corner) and what we'd have if ACPO got its druthers (a camera looking in every window).
The 'new' phones have better reception as they're network termination feeders for the Perfect Citizen leaf of the Total Information Awareness branch of the Sigma trunk meta-program run under Majestic 12 aegis out of the Area 51 division relocated to the Dugway Proving Grounds 'Eternal Vault' underground mega-complex.
Also, Steve Jobs is one of the Reptoid Overlord Cabal, but I think that was already common knowledge.
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