you mispelled Capita

and left the "r" out. (Private Eye speak)

Re: About time

if that takes off, there are a few crapware suppliers who'd go under.

It will cost then Dear

that's dear with a capital "D".

Quite aside from the fact that no one in Britain would let them near running a fete stall, let alone their bank account, is the fact that they face a deluge of court cases for *consequential* losses. Not only from their customers, but people who were relying on them to transfer money in a contracted timescale. Each case will need to be decided on it's merits, which means NatWest need to defend each one individually. We've already heard of cases where house sales were affected - what if some of those sales were cancelled, due to the lack of funds transfer ? Everybody so far seems to think in terms of a few quids interest on late payments, or overdrafts. I'm thinking of cases which could run into tens of thousands. Enough incentive for both sides to take to court,

Who cares ?

Well, because it's a building society, it's only shareholders are *you*.

Given that Nationwide appear to have charted their way through the credit crunch with no fuss at all (possibly because they can't play fast and loose with *members* cash, unlike a bank) I would say it matters a great deal.

We moved to Nationwide after HBOS messed us around - can't fault them so far. Pleased we also have our mortgage with them.

Re: Problematic updates are normal?

I was channel hopping a few weeks ago, and hit UK Gold and an episode of Yes Minister, where a bank CEO wanted a few more storeys on his HQ building and had to go to the Department of Administrative Affairs to discuss it.

As he meets Sir Humphy, the "joke" is that the CEO of the bank hasn't the first clue about banking, and that Sir Humphy is lined up for a nice non-executive directorship with the bank when he retires.

Can you guess when that episode was written:

a) 2011

b) 2001

c) 1991

d) 1981

(Answer: d)

Re: Dealing with offshore (Indian/Pakistani) devs is an art from in itself

When I started managing an offshore team, they were pretty much working on retainer. Mysteriously code never worked first time, things weren't tested, etc etc. It should have been apparent to anyone that we were paying for their incomptence.

First think I insisted on, was that they set up a test server (we were dealing in a web app) their end, that I could test *before* they checked it in. Much squealing over that one (in the end I just said if you can't set a simple server up, how can you be expected to be any good at coding).

Then we started using a workflow system for all communications, rather than ad hoc emails. This let us label a fix/change and track it's progress.

Thirdly, we switched to a T&M model, where *we* suggested the initial timeframe. They were free to discuss it with us - maybe we'd revise upwards if they could show why they needed more time. Otherwise, they got paid for the quoted time - regardless of how long they actually spent. I tweaked the workflow to have 2 timescales - worked time, and due time.

Once we got to that state, things were workable. However, despite the firm showering me with the cv's of their team (was there *anything* they hadn't got an MSCE in ?) I would still have to value one good UK contractor=4 offshore devs. And the firm still needed me to liaise. I dread to think how things would have gone if a BA, or worse still, customer, had to deal with them.

Having dealt with an MS employee based in India, whose English was impeccable, I think it's pretty obvious how things are. IBM had first pick. MS had second. Other big name firms third. And *then* your team got formed. So you're stuck with the developers who weren't good enough for the first 3 cuts.

The other problem people have correctly identified is churn. As soon as a dev gets some experience in your team, they'll up and off. My current employer has a 25 man team in India, who have been with the firm for 5 years now, with no one leaving. However, they are paid a *lot* more than they were 5 years ago. Couple things like that with falling UK wages, and outsourcing really doesn't have the same shine it did 10 years ago. It's a shame no one suggested that could happen 10 years ago - oh hang on, we did. But who listens to techies ?

Oh, the irony

Tory MP has slow website.

Are you really that thick ?

suppose a business has been unable to access it's account, and pay a supplier, and as a result they go bankrupt ?

Supposing, thanks to their incompetence, I am unable to pay for my cars service, and therefore can't get to a business meeting ?

As I said, T&Cs can be used to protect you from consequential losses, in reasonable circumstances. A 4 day, unplanned, unannounced outage is not reasonable in my book, not I suspect would the high court find so either.

I am taking your comment at face value. I apologise if you were being ironic.

Re: Why bother ?

Ah the old "why would you *want* to ?" school of hiding your products deficiencies. On that basis, why have any functionality in anything ?

I had a contact in my windows phone I wanted to share with my wife (android phone). So I started going into the contacts menu, and pretty soon discovered there was no "Send to" menu, let alone "Send to using bluetooth".

Seriously. NO ****ING way to send a contact from one phone to another. Not by text. Not by Bluetooth.

I can call that contact. I can email them. But can I send them as a vcard. No. And because my wife is partially sighted, I had to get her phone, and mine, and transfer the number stone-age style.

That alone - quite apart from anything else going on with Windows Phone - should have told people all they need to know.

Re: Why bother ?

Because my 2005 Sony w800i could ? How else can I send a single contact from my phone to my wifes, pray tell ?

Re: Why bother ?

How about a new doozie I just discovered today:

You can't *remove* the wallpaper from Windows Phone7, once it's been set. You can change it, but not go back to the "no wallpaper" state the phone started with.

Re: Apps

Given the number of apps for WP7, they could probably support them indefinitely.

Unfair !

Mrs Thatcher was not "happy" to let the Libyans go. She was incandescant with rage. The government of the day took very detailed and exact legal guidance on the matter, and were advised that since the occupants of the embassy had been accepted as diplomats by the UK, then it would require the Libyan government to remove that status, if anything could be done. Any attempt to arrest or bring them to trial would have been frustrated by the courts, as the UK is a signatory of the Vienna convention.

Libya chose not to revoke the diplomatic status, so the UK was left with no alternative to expel them.

I was in the presence of a senior met officer at the time of the shooting. His radio went off, and he excused himself (he was part of the armed response team). Chatting to him sometime after, he said that the Met would never forget, and if the situation ever changed they would seek to get those responsible before a UK court. The fact that (with him since retired) some met officers went out to Libya last year, with the sole purpose of advancing the investigation - 25 years on.

I wonder if this gets downvoted ...

Has the US actually shown any signs of wanting to extradite Assange. You know, like filing papers, or preparing a case.

I think Assanges nightmare, is being extradited to Sweden and ignored by the US ... for the second time in a day I have cause to think of Oscar Wilde's observation about the only thing worse than being talked about.

Re: Can we knight the Shat ?

Thank you, for my interesting fact of the day. I was starting to wonder about honoured Canadians.

Anyway, honour or not, William Shatner is legend ... check out Henry Rollins tales of jamming with the Shat.

Re: Just out of curiosity...

Of course. We know how seriously the US takes terrorism - they were willing to extradite the IRA suspects who turned up in America.

Oh, hang on .....

well

in this case, I would say the young lady in question has just demonstarted a gold-plated reason why phones and cameras *should* be allowed in school. She's made a cracking job of using all the tools available to her (which back in 1975, at her age, weren't even dreamt of) to engage with the world in a mature, considered way. Her parents should be rightly proud. Whilst it would be a bit cheesy (unlike the dinners) I hope she gets a chance to stand alongside some photo-seeking politicians, so we can see a glimmer of hope for the future.

£10 duly donated.

Which *should* raise more questions

If the ban has been rescinded, then why was it there in the first place ? Or more precisely. Why was there no ban. Then a ban. Then no ban.

Re: Tor

(ii) Tor users will end up as suspects and subject to other kinds of surveillance.

Well, you'd think. Problem is, thanks to other measures, you are going to have a *lot* of people using VPN/TOR type solutions to remain anonymous. If 1 in a 1000 was using it, then HMG might have just gotten away with a tactic of trying to prosecute by insinuation ... "Only bad people use that sort of technology, therefore the person we are prosecuting is bad". Bit like the way whenever a terrorist "suspect" is arrested, they always seem to find "indecent images" on their computer.[1].

But when the number rises to say, 1 in 10, it's a much harder sell. Statistically, that would mean at least one juror would be using TOR/VPNs.

When you are looking for a needle in a haystack, it's probably not such a good idea to call your neighbours, and ask them to add their haystacks to yours.

[1]Bear in mind "indecent" has no meaning at all. Got a cute pic of your baby, in nappies. It's "indecent".

Re: What is an ISP?

just a guess, but I suspect they will deliberately leave the definition of ISP as vague as possible. But you raise a very valid point. How about people (like me) who have been known to run their own email servers ? I had cause to do this for a few months to help out an old employer.

I would imagine that anyone with anything to hide is already running their own servers anyway. Of course *where* those servers are could be problem. Because if I had anything to hide, I wouldn't be stupid enough to keep my server in the UK. That said, I might keep *a* server in the UK. As part of my project on looking for ET, I regularly fill up 1TB drives with recordings of the background noise of the universe. It looks suspiciously like it's encrypted too. ...