Posts by Is it me?

A cautionary tale, trotted out again

When BT got too close to Huawei it caused all sorts of problems with their accreditation status, in fact I believe it lost it for traffic over the PSTN. Even if it didn't many security focused government services refused to have BT as their carrier. I understand that BT has taken steps to rehabilitate themselves, but the damage still lingers.

With Symantec the problem would be the same, the governmental trust level would be broken, and Symantec technology is widely used.

Would you want to be the VP who had to report, we've done this bang-up deal to share technology and cut costs, but we've lost all our government business in the west. I always wonder what happened to the BT director who signed up Huawei.

Much easier solution

Ban motorbikes with engines over 50cc.

Come back the Yamaha FS1E, all is forgiven, it's difficult to look tough on a moped.

Tech savvy, but legally nieve

So, let me see I'm going to put my personal IPR, and content on someone elses servers, probably a US company who will not hesitate to hand it over to the US government, or another part of their organisation. The RIAA will vet your music, and Video content and then demand proof you actually own a copy.

Their T&Cs will naturally ensure that you have surrendered your ownership of anything vaugely useful to them.

By the time regulators catch up, it'll be too late.

This very tech savvy IT Strategist, Solutions Architect and Legally minded IT won't be putting his content on someone else's cloud. Do Gartner really believe that crap.

Call me stupid

But didn't previewing a document or picture on a screen appear in Windows 1 or whatever it was, maybe GEM, pretty sure you could do it on a Xerox Star (Yes I have used one).

Yawn

Yep, heard it all before, like when BT bought Huawei digital PSTN kit, newer mind the cosequences just look at the price.

There's loads of these reports floating around from just about every security vendor going, and yes they are designed to get government to spend money. I think it's called marketing your products isn't it? Do you really expect the industry to wait for government to come to them?

It's well known that one type of Firewall had to be withdrawn because the code had been tampered with by a certain allied government.

But hey

It's fine to punish the millions of Catholics, and thousands of clergy who find such as abhorrent as anyone else, is it? Don't assume that the Catholic church is worse than other institutions for covering things up, Governments, Schools, Companies and clubs all try to cover-up misdeeds for the good of the organisation. Don't forget how many years there have been jokes about vicars and choirboys, Scouts and Public School boys.

You shouldn't assume that all Catholics think the same about liberal values either there many more Western Catholics who are quite happy with the idea of married priests, women priests, gay marriage and so on than don't, but the church has to carry it's entire congregation with it and that takes time, so why disrupt our Sunday worship.

BTW - The church does punish clergy who commit crimes, they send them into seclusion, which is actually worse than being sent to prison, regardless of any civil punishment.

Not just text books.

There is an argument that various bits of Government use from time to time.

"Because you are writing this for the Public Sector, the IPO belongs to us, because you wouldn't write it if we werem't there"

This is so that they think they can collect the royalties if you resell it, usually what happens when they win the argument, is that they demand far more in royalties than a commercial organisation would do, and thus never sell another copy.

It's the obvious next step, in the mind of a cost saving government Agency. Don't pay for IPO, and then market it as you own.

Transparency, fairness and value for money.

Our expectations of government systems and how they are delivered exceeds the capacity of any IT organisation to deliver them, certainly on a macro scale.

Because, for any of the above reasons, every IT project has to show the above, and the governance required often costs more than the technology and implementation work, in-fact when budgets get squeezed, its the technology and implementation that suffers, not the governance.

Those mantras often, as already pointed out, government, or their consultants hanging on like grim death to requirements that have no value, and will never be used, just so that they can show that they have got what they paid for. The consultants are the worst, because they more than anyone else have a vested interest in delaying contracts, as they get more money, the supplier gets the same, and the government pays more.

These delays mean you have to descope, because a Minister wants to make an announcement, on a certain date, so you have to go-live with half tested, and incomplete systems.

And those are just the tip of the iceburg. Perhaps the Reg would like to do an article on 101 things not to do as a customer or supplier in a government contract.

Just in case you think, I might be coming down on the supplier side, actually no, we're all as bad as each other.

What is a correct weather forecaste?

It is highly unlikely that we will ever be able to predict that there will be a 10 minute shower over central Oxford at 10.20 tomorrow, which will deposit 1mm of rain. But I get the idea that's what some people expect.

Actually the Met get their forcastes pretty well right most of the time, the weather is however very dynamic, and subject to change. Macro features such as The Jet Sream, El-nino, or the Azores High have vast effects on the weather, but how, when and why they change is not fully understood, something that appears stable, can move in a few hours and divert the course of a front from running over the north of Scotland to dashing up the channel instead, although more likely move 50 miles south.

Once you understand the variability you can appreciate the accuracy, the forcaste was correct, just not the location and globally the UK isn't that big, so if weather predicted in London actually occurs in Newcastle, big issue for a tiny human, but not for the earth.

Single Non-emergency number

I thought that 101 was being set up as a single number to report any thing a crime to a gas leak, so why does the NHS need its own.

The point being, you only have to remember 999/911 or 101, not the myriad of 0800, 0845, and so on numbers to report stuff, as the 101 operators would be trained to know if you were describing an emergency and direct you to the right service, or to the right non-emergency number, be it the Gas Board of the local A & E.

I Can't help but think

For SOCA to be involved, there might just be a bit more to it than illegal music downloading.

Perhaps

El reg could help us all out with our understanding of the stupidity of this kind of legal action. Please can we have an article or two on:

W=Who, in this case

WTF - Vets these patent application, in what way are they qualified to assess them.

WTF - Applies for the patents, how long have they been working in the industry?

WTF- Starts the actions, do they know how computers work?

WTF - Judges these, how much experiance in computing d o they have.

Having said that, I suspect that Symantec through Norton and Veritas do own an awful lot of patents. I also suspect that an awful lot of prior art has been forgotten as various OS and hardware solutions have fallen by the wayside.

I Think you'll find ....

that it's "Kiw the wabbit"

I may not like the Sun

or for that matter Woopert, but the world is a better place with the Sun than without it. Look at the alternatives.

The Sun was put in a position of power by its readers, its owners exploited that, but for all the harm it has done, it's done as much, if not more good.

Just remember, it used to be said "I thought my wife was having an affair, but then I read it in the Sun and knew it was Bo**ocks".

Lets keep the Sun, its popular appeal, and improve the quality of its journalism.

Still not going to read it though. Sticking to my Grauniad.

There is a View

That having radicals and terrorists posting their ideas on-line isn't such a bad idea, as it means you know what they are thinking, you can work out where they are, some of the time, and counter them.

If you can't see them, then you don't know where they are or what they are thinking.

But at least Kieth Vaz won't be scared of them.

let's just hope

They don't build the factories on a flood plain.

One Dreds to think

What Rambus thinks is patentable in LED lighting that no 10 year old electronics hobbiest didn't think of 20 years ago.

Why do we need this.

Do we really need to know the crime hot spots and detection rates on line, what benefit do we, the public get from it, does it make us any happier or safer?

Only asking.

Couldn't the money be better spent detecting crime and prosecuting the criminals.

I often wonder if we spend more money on reporting and proving value for money than we actually save.

Solve that one Grissom

I'd expect the US to allow its citizens to buy these, I should think the NRA are having orgasms all over the place at the prospect, and they will certainly fall into the hands of criminals, if only through corrupt military, it's just a matter of time. Once that happens its a short step to your local terrorist.

So the CSIs will have the joy of trying to work out the firing position of a guided bullet, just think of the freedom that will give to bump off your next door neighbour without detection.

Another project Athena - 0/10 for originality

That's at least six current or just completed government projects called Athena, that I know of.

Northgate has just won one for Police IT, which makes it involved in two projects called Athena, in the Police market,

Jury Service

Mostly, people who do jury service don't actually talk about it widely, especially as you are told not too, at least the cases anyway. Unlike the US, jurors are bound to secrecy even after the verdict.

My experiance was, that for the cases I sat on the Jury for, the Jurors took it very seriously, and did take the line that, well he might be as guilty as hell, but the prosecution haven't proved it. There was absolutely no, well he's such a nice boy he can't possibly have done it. It was all about the evidence.

Its Management Stupid....

Any company can reinvent itself, diversify, invent, it's just a case of vision, but how many times have we heard managements state that they need to concentrate on the core business/markets Fine if the process makes you more agile in the market you are in, but how often does that happen, against now being small enough to be swallowed by a bigger player, or not generate sufficient revenue to invest.

To me this means they are not capable of doing more than one thing at a time, and don't want to step outside what they know, thus, are incapable of innovating into new markets.

The other failing we have is the odd idea that a company manager does not need to understand the business, only how to manage, get enough of those on your board and it doesn't matter how much you innovate, you are doomed, as managers won't undersatnd the innovation or its potential.

Oh, then there are the managements whose main aim is to sell the company, who don't invest because they want high profits to attract a buyer, works for a while, but if you don't get bought, where do you go?

Of Rochester's two horses, Kodak was always going to be the first to go. The other had a $100 full colour ink jet printer in in the late 80's, see where that got them.

Um

Sorry, but just what do OpenText think they have done with this that's so wonderful. Setting up an air gapped network to operate at TS is not that difficult. Expensive, but not difficult. Their software would provide most of the separation needed. Unless of course, they set up 20 or more separate neworks and linked them through controlled gateways. Even then it's easy, but even more expensive, and uses even less of the applications segregation abilities.

It's only when you want to connect it to the rest of the world that it gets interesting.

Yawn

Wake me with something interesting.