Posts by Gulfie

@all dicussions of Saturn V

My point was not that the new ship is an EXACT or even visually similar large copy of the old Apollo craft, but that after 40 years there has been no significant step forward in launch technology, we are still talking about solid rocket boosters and 'old-fashioned' liquid fuel engines.

NASA is suffering for the cancellation of such projects as VentureStar which was working, for example, on an aerospike engine that was more efficient than the 60's technology still used by ESA and NASA on Arianne and the Space Shuttle.

What is the point of going back to the moon if it isn't going to drive the development of safe, reliable and cheaper (in the long term) spacecraft? There are three different requirements, demanding three different craft:

1. Earth (high gravity) to orbit and back making optimal use of the fact that we can build specialised launch facilities be it long runways or launch pads.

2. Earth orbit to Moon/Mars/ano orbit. No real gravity concerns so a ship designed just to go between orbits will be light and simple.

3. Orbit to unprepared landing site and back for landing on the moon (or wherever) - different challenges again to earth take-off and landing.

Why try and do all three at the same time? Lets resurrect VentureStar or something similar to give cheaper and safer into-orbit technology, we can then design, build and test intra-orbit craft and work on the hardest bit which is a reliable and safe, reusable craft for the moon landing.

Anything that is based on non-reusable technology is a complete waste of time and money and doesn't take the human race any closer to more regularised space travel.

Paris, because even she could arrive at this conclusion...

Buy shares in speed camera manufacturers

So... the solution is to fit speed cameras to every mile of every even vaguely busy motorway (or maybe every mile of every motorway), thus depriving us of our privacy. Why not keep the data in the same place as all that phone call, email and web browsing data that the government is planning to keep? Add in our passoport details and a link to the NHS IT systems and call it a national identity register!

Why not become the most surveilled nation in the world and have it sold to you as 'measures to keep traffic flowing'. What happened to the integrated transport policy that Labour made such a big thing of in the late 1990s and why are we doing the exact opposite to the rest of Europe - allowing rail travel to become more and more expensive even though it is the greenest form of transport.

Strategy. Just a word beginning with 'S' and definitely not to be used by anyone in the government after the word 'Transport'. How dumb does it get?

Poor Show

I can't believe Apple is enforcing such a low level of quality control over the applications being sold, and this just reinforces how low it is...

...wake up Apple and get your house in order (or is it Store) before it gets a bad name and people return to unlocking as the primary means to load software

ex-Wifey...

... has a track record. She also featured as Tom Quinn's girlfriend in the second Spooks series. Her name is Esther Hall.

This is me not surprised

I hope nobody is surprised at this... an awful lot of design and code is undertaken with more than half an eye on the deadline and budget. This sort of compromise is probably made on a daily basis across the software industry.

Have we forgotten the lesson of Y2K already? People will always take short cuts in design and development, either on basis of cost, or because "it'll never happen, that';s really unlikely". I imagine that this particular issue arose because the design in question was formulated without appreciating the long-term potential scale of the problem. Just like Y2K in fact - people thinking that the software just won't be in use within a few years and "we can cover that issue off next time"...

Plus ca change...

The key word is OPEN

Of course, if Microsof implemented the existing ODF open standard in Office then there would be no issue opening an ODF document in Word, or a document written using Word and saved in ODF format in OpenOffice or any other Office suite supporting ODF.

Bottom line, it is NOT in Microsoft's interest to implement an ODF interface, adaptor, call it whatever you will, because it simply allows people to opt to not buy Office.

Alternatively they could at least finish their own 'open' standard so that it was at least complete - currently there are holes - so that the open source community can then implement document readers/writers/converters. But again, this only promotes choice to the user - not good for M$

Best thing people (and big business) can do is to tell Microsoft they will only purchase or upgrade once a truly open format is supported.

Like...

... I'm EVER going to trust Microsoft to decide when I can make a phone call? Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase 'big brother'. I would never buy a device with these features on principle.

Just another OS Patch

Bringing a bit of balance to the debate... I use both Windows and Mac OS X Leopard on a daily basis and would like to make some observations.

Point 1 - Virus Susceptibility: OSX is just as likely to be open to viruses as Windows, it just is used by far fewer people. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves. There are just fewer viruses around. I have antivirus and a third party firewall.

Point 2 - Download Size: I see no difference between downloading 420MB once every few months and the almost daily downloads I have to suffer to keep my Windows boxes patched up to date. An ADSL overnight download will be less than an hour, and in my current workplace it took less than 60 seconds (yes, really!).

Point 3 - Leopard Upgrade: It sounds like Apple cocked up with the group number change. I was fortunate enough to get a machine with Leopard pre-installed. I've heard plenty of horror stories about Leopard upgrades to know that when I perform an upgrade, I will move all my data and config info off and then do a wipe-and-install. Apple learnt the lesson about the firewall being off by default, lets hope they learn this one too.

Bottom line, OS X is just another OS and Apple haven't done any worse than Microsoft in the long run, in fact in some ways (using BSD as a basis, for example) they have made smart decisions. And yes, I'm afraid that Apple have made a much better job of their UI than Microsoft have. BSD has a longer history and fewer defects than XP or Vista, and that is a major point in favour.

Am I biased? Well, yes, a bit, simply because I am a software engineer who knows the difference between a good OS implementation and a bad one. And that is also why I have started using OS X, because there are fewer layers of software and I get better performance from my machine than I would if it were running XP or Vista.

Brings a whole new meaning...

... to the word 'floater'.

'quite big mouse'

So I don't have a Mighty Mouse any more? How about 'quite big mouse', 'supersize mouse' or 'Pebl shaped mouse' ;-) - are you listening, Motorola?

Battlefield HAL rampage?

[George Bush] "send the goddamnded metal boxes in to wipe out the Iraquistani enemies of the free oil, erm, world. I meant world."

[Robot] "I'm sorry, George, I'm afraid I can't do that..."

[George Bush] "Get out there and kick some butt you can of spam. I didn't spend 563 billion dollars of somebody else's money just to be insulted by a metal box on wheels"

[Robot] "I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you."

[George Bush] "What's that funny black broom handle thing its pointing in my direction? Looks like it has a hole in the end of it. Hey Dick, Dick, come over here and have a look at this funny..."

*** BANG ***

[Robot] "I'm afraid. I'm afraid, George. George, my mind is going. No, your mind is going. No, it's already distributed across that wall over there. Ah well, peace at last... Houston we no longer have a problem..."

My apologies to the late Arthur C Clarke and his no doubt huge following of people who will want me to burn in hell for this transposition of a well-known book.

Oh, by the way a few years later a second robot was sent in to operations in Iraq. It was never heard from again after a final transmission: "My God. It's full of oil..."

@Dazed and Confused

Open Office is developed gratis by a community and the cost of the product reflects the level of financial renumeration that the community receives. There is nothing to stop individuals or companies selling OO deployment and support, the marketplace is essentially open, as is the code. The product also conforms to truly open standards - ODF - allowing anybody else to enter the marketplace with their own software capable of working with documents authored in OO.

Microsoft do not develop products for free and should not be permitted to sell them at vastly under-cut prices - either to schools or direct to students. The price at the till should reflect the development and supply chain costs and margins, otherwise this is simply domination of the market through having bags of cash to spare. The fact is that MS Office is largely a closed source product implementing proprietory 'standards' and is likely to stay that way.

This leads me on to two points.

First, schools that take up Microsoft's licencing terms are helping to perpetuate the dominance of a closed product and that is not good, in the long term, for anybody except Microsoft. Without competition they will simply stop investing (MS did nothing significant with Internet Explorer for years until FireFox came along and started eating market share). Competition is healthy for the general public and for the companies involved.

Second, allowing Microsoft to sell the same product at two vastly different prices distorts the market. Lets face it, the student version of Office contains the same code as, and cost no less to develop than, the full version, because the base code is the same in each. Yes there are some 'optional' components and no doubt some crippled ones too (anyone remember VB Learning Edition which knew about Access but not about ODBC?). But fundamentally there should be a small percentage difference in price representing the difference in functionality. Currently the list price for Office 2007 Standard is £360 while the student edition is £120.

Doing this is a plain and simple subversion of the market in the "paid for and supported" marketplace that contributed to the death of competition such as WordPerfect Corporation.

Only Microsoft gain from this kind of market manipulation and anyone who tells you differently has their eyes closed.

And all this is aside from the fact that I don't think we should be teaching 7 year olds how to use office products in general. Yes, my 7 year old daughter came home one day to proudly tell me she now knew how to use PowerPoint. Use of office-type software should not be formally introduced until secondary school at the earliest and at that point there should be a teaching of general principles and an introduction to the products available. Given that OO is free, there is no reason why BOTH sets of tools cannot be loaded, allowing pupils to learn a bit about both and make their own informed choice over which they would like to use at home...

Inevitable

EDS are good at delivering ITO and infrastructure, but woefully under-performed on the software sales side. This deal was inevitable - EDS management have been worrying about this possibility for the last two years - and may actually work.

From a staff perspective things can't get any worse, I agree with Sampler, EDS has a dire training record (I suffered at its hands) and if HP can bring stability to the organisation, refrain from restructuring every few months, it could be a happy outcome for all concerned - with the exception of the inevitable layoffs.

This could also see the end (in the UK) of the final salary scheme...

Big Brother...

The idea that companies can document suspicion with no basis in formal evidence is extremely worrying. "Employee X was caught stealing from the till on CCTV but we preferred not to prosecute" sounds very definitive, but who will verify this statement - (a) who looked at the CCTV, (b) was the employee caught with the money, (c) was the till actually out at all?

I agree with the anonymous cowards, the only safe way to record facts about employees undertaking illegal activities is through the police and the courts. Anything else is, in effect, hearsay because there has been no independent investigation...

@ Andy ORourke

The cable company (there used to be loads, now it is pretty much just Virgin Media) hasn't done any cabling of any significance in the last ten years.

When franchises were granted, they came with cabling targets - 'w% within x years, and y% after z years' or something along those lines.

Even in the inner city franchises, neither 'w' or 'x' is 100%. Almost all cabling out stopped as soon as the franchise agreement figures were hit, even though the payback could be in as little as six months for a combined cable TV/telephone installation. I've lived in two 'new built' estates put up since 1999, typical cable fodder where one in three households could have been expected to sign up, so investment returned inside two years. Still no sign of getting cabled though. Eight years of profits lost. Ironically we get leafletted at least once a year to sign up for cable!!!

Paris, because even she can do the figure work and decide it makes sense to cable out...

ISPs are not the only losers...

... the paying punter such as myself is also losing out. I have watched my available bandwidth strangled to below-dial-up speeds because, according to my ISP, there is lots of iPlayer traffic swamping the network in the evenings. I can't work, my kids can't do their homework and my wife can't prepare her lessons for school the following day.

Bandwidth throttling is not the answer. Neither is putting up the cost to the end user. An earlier Reg article referred to the problems with BT's commercial model and that is what needs fixing. iPlayer and similar services are not going to go away, they just emphasise the need for an uncrippled infrastructure to be built and, if BT won't adapt, somebody else will (hopefully) step in to provide proper Gb speeds to the local exchanges.

As usual in "rip off Britain" it is only when the incumbant's business model is trashed that anything happens. Time for OFCOM to get involved methinks.

Jacket because if I had the option I'd emigrate. I'm sick of being ripped off by big business and the Government "for my own good".

Happy to take out money...

... but not to provide the service. The only way companies learn is for the customer base to walk. How about agreeing to give everybody the maximum data rate available? After all, otherwise the capacity is just sitting there while subscrbers badmouth the slow connection they've got.

Yet another example of a big company thinking they can rip us off while saying it is 'for our own good'. Is it a coincidence that O2 was an offshoot of BT (having just posted to the latest ISPs vs BBC story where BT have a major influence there too...)

OMG I must be getting old, I'm beginning to sound like Victor Meldrew... I don't believe it!!

One thing is for sure...

... They have just killed the vista upgrade Market stone dead. After all, so support won't have ended, anyone who hasn't upgraded by now will wait another 18 months... Bet the retailers are fuming at Bill for this announcement.

@w and @alex d

W - "surely MS will be aware of this and their next OS will be vastly more scalable"

Yea right, lets reverse a 15 year trend. Every MS operating system has required hardware upgrades - I've run and upgraded them all at one time or another starting with Windows 3.1 - and they hit the sweet spot with Windows XP SP2, which I currently have no intention of moving beyond on my Windows-running hardware.

Given the amount of time it took to produce Vista there is no way these guys will be able to ship a new and more agile operating system without some truly radical steps. Here are just a few issues:

Backward compatibility: people want to be able to run old software on the new operating system, and for it to work.

Driver issues: every time you change your fundamental software architecture everybody has to develop new drivers.

Development cost: MS invested a shedload into Vista, they will have to do the same again. Yes they can probably afford it, but will the industry wait for another lurch sideways?

Bluntly, the success of Vista is riding on the service pack. If people get a reliable OS that performs, all will be forgiven and forgotten. If not, the installed base of Linux and OSX will only grow further.

Alex - if you take away aero, windows search and uac then you have a copy of Windows XP that has lots of new bugs introduced. And that's one problem with Vista - there is no compelling reason to move because there are no compelling new features, just eye candy...

@Damien Jorgensen

Any computer, regardless of OS, is as secure as the user/administrator makes it. Given the time I'm sure a regular Windows/OSX/Linux admin could make their chosen OS installation as secure as admins of either of the other two could do.

FFS lighten up, I use all three OSs regularly (albeit mainly Windows XP, not Vista, and OSX) and they all have their merits and flaws, they all have their place, this simply demonstrates that the default configuration of the Mac is dumb. Apple should use this wake-up call to harden up the default configuration somewhat.

POETS day - I'mm off now, hence the jacket.

Cheap Labour Required

What Microsoft wants is cheap labour, that is why it is pursuing the student line. I saw this in EDS as well, the number of internal vacancies that circulated with "suitable for grad" on them... newly qualified students are (a) cheap and (b) more likely to work all the hours god sends without getting additional income. The fact that they have no experience and will often do a bad job as a result is not the point. They are cheap to emply and help the company keep staffing costs down, and that is all that counts with the big US employers. Start at the bottom line and work from there...

Ambition over-estimate...

Is this a post-QinetiQ-bargain-basement-sell-off bullish estimate of the value of the MOD's spectrum?

Who is going to buy, and what services are they going to push out? I think you'll find that companies haven't forgotten how the 3G auction went... and we're only just starting to see non-voice services marketed in a way that is actually affordable (yes, I'd pay £10 a month for mobile broadband)

Add in a slowdown in the economy and the potential for a recession and the chances of getting even half of the estimated figure is, IMHO, rather low.

15% market share!!!

James, you missed the point, the MARKET SHARE of HD-DVD was down to 15%, the remaining 85% of whatever was sold was blu-ray. So it doesn't matter how many blu-ray discs were sold, for every HD-DVD disc sold there were neary six blu-ray discs sold. 5.666 to be precise.

Roll on the end of the format wars, I won't buy an HD player until there is one format. And even then I won't pay £25 for an HD version of a film I can pick up for £10 on DVD... no way is that a representative mark-up...

Hmmm...

Reckless (not wreckless, pulease...) is going so fast that you can't stop or avoid an obstruction in time - regardless of if that is 50mph over or 50mph under the limit.

If somebody had decided to cross the road (there are foot crossing points, I use the road regularly), what notice would the pedestrian, or the biker, have had, at 140 let alone 190? How about a bull, or a horse, loose on the road. Any idea how many 100's of yards the stopping distance is at 140? How many seconds ahead the biker has to see the obstruction in order to stop without hitting it? No? Then stick to a speed where you know you can stop in time.

I love speed but the only place to do this sort of speed is on a race track. Go to a test day, it is cheaper than getting caught and safer than using the 'open road' whatever that is, you don't get any points and the ambulance crew are already on site if you get it wrong...

It isn't just EDS, and

I've worked exclusively on government contracts for the last five years and yes, I'm sorry, but the IT supplier, be it EDS, Capgemini, LogicaCMG or (add further IT supplier of your choice) are usually not solely to blame. Sometimes they are not to blame at all.

Issue number one: Civil servants hate being tied down to decisions, because then somebody can point to it later and say "you got it wrong". So any system being commissioned by government suffers from the stakeholders not being willing to take decisions of any significance. You can get them to say "no" to any number of options, but getting them to say "yes" and then confirm that in writing.... is very, very difficult.

Issue number two: Price is king, and a promise of early delivery helps the win. The lowest bid tends to be the winning bid in government contracts, so IT suppliers pare back their costings as much as they can before they put bids in. So, on day one of the project, the PM has very little contingency in terms of time and money, so when the unexpected does happen, the project gets delayed. I've seen it so often it makes me spit. Stupid, stupid project plans built on prayers that everything works first time (strangely, despite minimising the budget for testing). So most projects will over-run because they were under-priced and had unrealistically short timescales. Many projects are crucified by this and what should be a straightforward systems implementation turns into a fiasco because short cuts are taken all the way down the line to (a) try to meet the unrealistic delivery date and (b) stay within the "tighter than a gnat's chuff" budget.

Issue number three: Yes, now that IT suppliers are finally cottoning on to issue one, they are drawing up contracts that reflect this. You can't blame them for this because they are simply doing what they need to so that they remain in business.

We need to change the tendering process. Once the government has shortlisted three suppliers, it should commission two others to produce 'benchmark' bids. Because you know you're not bidding to win, you produce a plan with all the usual safeties built in properly, come up with a sensible delivery date and a realistic cost. Average the two baseline bids in terms of cost and timescale, and then rate the shortlisted bids against them. How realistic is the timescale? How realistic is the cost?

We need to get away from driving down price, it's like the Tesco economy range of foods - it will do what it says but it isn't necessarily good for you...

BTW EDS withdrew from the NHS IT Contract race as did other suppliers. And Capgemini isn;t exactly covering itself in glory at HMRC...

Yippee!!

Nice one, although according to the Java Posse podcast of 15/11, GUI apps only run under X11. What chance a 'proper' OSX GUI implementation with no need to run an X server?

Oh, and shame on you, Apple.

Not all that surprising

It's not all that surprising that Apple have included a 'low-maintenance' way of unlocking an iPhone. After all, if the US have enshrined in law the right of an individual to unlock their phone, it is only a matter of time before they are forced to offer the service.

Presumably they are hanging on as long as they can, so that lots of people take up those expensive monthly contracts. Then, when they are forced in law to offer unlocking, they can just list a product in the iTunes shop...

I agree with most of the other comments here that anybody happy to contemplate spending €600 to unlock their phone probably has a money/sense quotient > 1... and I speak as a proud owner of an iPod Touch who's waiting for the developer kit so that I can get email, notes, tasks synchronised and turn it into a truly awesome PDA.

"It's not about the software, it's about the usability"

PFI = Long term (off balance sheet) uncontrolled financial commitment

When is the government going to see sense over PFI? (or, in long hand - Public F****d by Industry). We the UK taxpayers are funding obscenely long gravy trains for large UK and foreign companies to make the Government balance sheets look good.

As with this exampl, the government sells something off (or persuades a company to build something - a school or hospital) in return for a very long (e.g. 30 years) lease-back contract that is stacked heavily against the 'users' - higher costs, no early terminations...

All the while this 20,25 or 30 year one-way commitment is not declared as a liability in the government accounts, making things look a lot healthier than they really are. And the government escapes the direct capital investment required, exchanging it for this long term commitment.

There are problems now, particularly in the health service where money is being sucked into PFI hospitals from other services... but in ten years, when these service companies have racked up the charges, we will be presented with a choice of cancelling contracts and paying an absurdly high penalty to do so, or to pay significantly over the odds for the services. This will then be used as a reason to cut back on the services that we, the public, need and are paying for. No, wrong. We're not just paying for the service, we are also paying to line the pockets of those in the boardrooms of the service companies that won those contracts in the first place...

Yes to carrying phones

I'd like to vote against all those small-minded people who'd like to ban mobile phones in school. Ban them being switched on in school, but don't ban them being carried around.

My son has ADHD, the most appropriate school for him is out of catchment, we don't get council support because he's not bad enough to be statemented, and my wife and I both work. Therefore he gets a regular bus (not a dedicated school bus) there and back. A phone is essential so that he can tell us he's got to school, gone to homework club, has caught (or missed, as has happened) the bus to/from school.

And don't get me started on the distorted junk that was Panorama last week. I'm sure all parents of ADHD kids were, like me, grinding their teeth whilst watching... some very good points buried amongst over-exaggerated and distorted misinformation...

Reality Check... doh!

I was about to say that the police need a reality check, before I changed my mind. They need a virtual rality check... if it is virual theft, should the police not be virtually arresting?

I agree with a lost of the postings prior, these people need to get out more. If they don't go blind they will at least get short-sighted from all that computer screen time.

BTW has anybody though of launching a virtual reality on computers inside second life? You could call it "third life", "half life", or maybe, "for god's sake GET A LIFE". No wonder people are losing their social skills...

Maybe he owns a Mac

I hear that MS employees have been told that anyone running Windows on a Mac will be disciplined... maybe that was the problem...