Posts by Matt Bryant

Re: Down not accross Re: cripple your own economy

"....how is that going?" Those of us that can read the news have already seen it starting to happen, as shown by Ford's decision to scrap a new plant in Mexico and instead expand production in Michigan:

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38497898

Re: LeeE Re: So....restore from backup

".....This was a cockup waiting to happen." First rule of process design - always assume at least one user will do something wrong if you give him/her the means to do so, do not assume they will be able to over-ride the impulse to follow an incorrect direction. The management were responsible for the process documentation, therefore, IMHO, they were responsible for the failure.

Re: AC Re: >>>Next copter hire will result in IBMers having to pay to park....

"....don't give them ideas." Looks like someone needs to, they seem to think that simply refusing the travel claims will stop them circling the drain.

Re: Locky Re: 31%?

"....That many people accidently clicked the upgrade now button...." Whilst the article highlights the problem in big organizations like healthcare, my own experience is that the problem is worse in smaller companies where IT policies and updates are subject to personal whim rather than professional process. In such companies, where many IT "professionals" have the same sniffy attitude to updating Windows as you displayed, there is also a similarly blinkered approach to security patching. Just last year I was at a small software company that wants to work with Wall Street financial houses, they considered themselves very avant garde, only I had to tell them my customer was declining the opportunity to work with them because my review of their practices showed it to be close to "head in sand". These guys included an MIT grad whom insisted Windows 10 was "no more secure than XP" and MS updates were there "just to keep Windows users living in fear"! Hipster snarks will not keep hackers out of your data.

Re: TkH11 Re: messaging

".....he was eluding to network switches going down....." Ahem, not wanting to point fingers, of course - perish the thought! - but, knowing some of the "solution providers" involved in the designs of BA systems, has anyone asked CISCO for a quote about the resilience of their core switches in "power surge" situations?

Re: Voland's right hand Re: There are more levels than that

".....Stockholm...." Er, no! Just check out the Scandinavian winters for a good reason why not to.

"....Dublin...." Much better option than Berlin on just about every point, plus the fact it's a lot closer so you can just pop back to Blighty for a visit without it being a major journey. The one problem is Ireland is one of the PIGS, and will suffer when the wheels fall off the EU wagon. Indeed, Germany only currently has a booming economy because the EU allows it to dominate the PIGS and the rest of Southern Europe. What will cause Germany future problems is when the PIGS and the rest of Southern Europe stop buying German export goods. Just look at how acutely the Germans reacted to the Greek mess to understand how the whole German banking system and economy depend on there being a supine EU for Germany to sell to.

Personally, Barcelona tops the list. Berlin wouldn't even be on it.

Re: Dave 15 Re: The land of the ....?

Can't decide whether you're just a poor troll or actually baaaahlieve what you posted. I mean, it's just silliness from start to finish, but then agan plenty of UK Labour members did vote for Jeremy Corbyn.....

For a start, if you had actually read anything about George Orwell, you would know that Animal Farm and 1984 were written after Orwell witnessed the vicious nature of Communusm firsthand, when the Russian NKVD and Spanish Communists spied on and then massacred their allies, Orwell's friends and fellow Anarchists and Socialiats, during the Spanish Civil War. So, when Yank-haters like yourself blather on about Orwell during your Pootie-kissing posts, it simply displays your ignorance.

Re: AC Re: AWS infrastructure Boss is Ex-Car mechanic..

".....No one that’s serious about Database performance will run on a virtualized environment....." And therein lies one of Oracle's biggest problems - they are convinced they are still fighting the Big Iron Database War of a decade ago. The vast majority of cloud customers are not mega corporations, indeed one of the highlights of how cloud has developed is that it really developed from the SMB market. Little web-based software shops in particular, seizing on the cost-savings of using cloud-hosted services so they didn't have to pay for in-house systems and maintenance. Those type of companies were very happy to go with virtualised environments, and the absolute screaming end of database performance was way down the list of their requirements compared to availability, low cost and low latency. AWS cornered the market because they met those requirements for the SMBs whilst having the stretch capability to also provide more performant solutions for the corporations as they moved in after the SMBs. Since Oracle has always had an awful time selling their high-priced software to the SMB market they have always been poorly positioned for the general cloud market that AWS has dominated.

Oracle really needs to clean out all the old management dross like Hurd and Fowler with their blinkered view of the market and get a real cloud CEO.

Re: @wolfetone

".....where did Saddam get his Anthrax and Hawk fighter jets from? China?...." Saddam never had Hawk jets. The majority of his chemical weapons material came from Germany, and the majority of his rocket technology came from China via Pakistan and North Korea.

Re: Kevin Re: I read this as...

Agreed, IMHO the only reason stopping Comcast from selling their customers' browsing data is the incompetence of their IT staff.

Re: ST Re: Adrian 4 extreme

"....you also have the choice not to drive a car....." You also have the choice not to work, or not to work for a company that has genetic testing as part of their healthcare requirement.

"....Do we really have to re-litigate this argument about the difference between commodity insurance - i.e. vehicle insurance - and health insurance?....." Yes, because so far you haven't argued anything, just bleated another emotional appeal.

".....This sudden need for coercing employees into handing over their genome is nothing more than excessive greed disguised as an actuarial optimisation exercise....." And you proved that.... Oh - surprise - you didn't prove that at all, just regurgitated that preformed conclusion.

"....These companies are some of the major donors paying for the GOP's re-election campaigns....." IIRC, not only did Shrillary and her party receive far more in donations from US companies and fat cats, her shadowy Clinton Foundation has an even bigger take from foreign "donors".

".....They get a nice fascist law on the books in return..." And their is your sociology-political failing exposed - you can't see past the "Big Bad Capitalists" bullshit.

Re: AC Re: Palpy @palpy: corraboration from a legit news source --

"....There was, as the Republicans were desperate to find something to stop Hillary from winning....." Firstly, the Republicans didn't need to, as Shrillary shot herself in both feet with wonderfully stupid comments like "We are going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business" - those miners and their families didn't buy her hogwash about replacing their lost jobs with ones in mythical "clean energy" industries. Sure, such crap went down well in hippyville California, but just sounded like more East Coast elitism and waffle to ordinary workers. Secondly, the so-called investigation was run under Obambi's pet, Loretta Lynch, a Democrat appointee. We'll probably never know what she and Bill Clinton had a cosy chat about at their secret airport meeting, but it was no surprise the Obama administration found nothing wrong with the Clinton Foundation, or Clinton's lying about secret material on her email server.

".....check out how much donor money Trump was pocketing during his election campaign....." LOL, let me know when that imaginary figure matches the hundreds of millions from "donations" to the Clinton Foundation from foreigners trying to curry favour with Clinton whilst she was Sec of State.

Re: Pen-y-gors Re: Government Investment

They best get it in the budget before Brexit leaves German taxpayers paying even more for the next Greek bailout.

Re: barbara.hudson

".....a court case that will apportion liability between the named parties." Not necessarily. Once professional lawyers get involved it becomes more about the settlement amount than blame. This is what is referred to legally as the "Shotgun Approach" - sue everyone involved, and then whittle it down to those that can actually pay the most in a settlement. Blame becomes largely irrelevant. The US example case we were given waaaaaaay back in school was as follows.

Two hoodlums broke into a man's house and, amongst other items, stole the keys to his Italian supercar. They then went on a rampage around town in the supercar, before trying to race a freight train to a level crossing. Unfortunately for them the outcome was a draw, and the car was thrown into the air, not only killing the two hoodlums but also landing on and killing a man making a call from a roadside telephone box (which gives Deadpool fans a hint as to how old the case is!).

The family of the man making the call hired lawyers and sued everyone - the estates of the dead hoodlums; the owner of the supercar, for not having secured his vehicle's keys; the makers of the Italian supercar, for not having additional security beyond the key; the train company, for having an engine design that threw the car into the air rather than holding onto it; the local county and state for allowing a phone box to be placed "too closely" to the crossing; and the telephone company. They eventually withdrew all the suits but one - the hoodlums didn't leave any money worth suing for; the car's owner had quite extensive security on his house, making it hard to claim he hadn't taken proper precautions; the supercar maker showed their car's security was to the industry standard, and that the security had not been disabled or bye-passed, but had operated in the correct manner in being disarmed by the key; the train company showed their design too met the relevant standards; and the local county and state simply did the legal equivalent of laughing at them. But the telephone company settled, because they did not want to go to court and risk losing on the basis that they had not properly designed their road-side telephone booth to allow it to withstand a vehicle landing on top of it! Do you think the telephone company was the party "most at fault" in that case?

I am not familiar with the design of the robots involved and the safeguards built into them, but there is a simple rule of thumb when dealing with machinery - if in any doubt, switch it off before you risk your life or limbs servicing it! IMHO, it seems Wanda should have followed that simple rule or refused to carry out the work.

Re: The Nazz Re: Increased population huh?

".....a) an increased population due to a increased birth rate....." Which begs the question; have the normally uber-liberal Swedes forgotten about The Gays? Surely, in line with the usual equality mantra, they will still be allowed to have their daily hour of paid "exercise" even though there is zero chance of non-hetero sex actually producing any pregnancies?

Re: PlinkerTind Re: The worlds fastest cpu

"....You do the math." Well, actually here is the math that really matters - I don't know a single customer that has any long term intention of using SPARC. Those that still have some SPARC are all migrating off it. Now, I am no fan of IBM Power and some of IBM's hilarious benchmarking shenanigans, and if you search these forums you'll find my ridiculing of their "one CPU performance" (where one CPU used 32 CPUs' RAM and interconnects). But, if I was given the choice between Power and SPARC as a platform tomorrow, then I'd choose Power over SPARC for 99% of use cases without any hesitation.

Re: Archtech Re: In Abkazia and South Ossetia

"......But you should remember who started WW2 - not Russia....." Very debatable given how the Soviets attempted to spread Communism through revolution throughout Western Europe. Spain's Civil War is a good example of Russia's meddling in Europe and is considered by some historians to be the real first action of WW2.

"....and losing 27 million lives...." One of the reasons the Russians suffered such high losses was Stalin's pre-War purges and horrendously ineffective government, which slaughtered millions through executions and starvation, and left the Soviet forces poorly led, poorly positioned and poorly equipped to face the Nazi invasion. Stalin thought nothing of sending such poorly led and equipped troops to certain death in the vain hope of slowing the German advance. For lefties to now whine about "Russian losses in the Great Patriotic War" is to completely fail to understand that Stalin and Communist policies were the direct cause of those losses.

Re: MooJohn

"would Comcast have paid their workers had they walked out to SUPPORT the president? Or does "social justice" work in only one direction?" Comcast owns MSNBC, supplier of some of the most left-wing-biased "news" out there, are you at all surprised they're encouraging the myth of a "Muslim ban"?