Posts by PrivateCitizen

@Nigel Whitfield

+1 internets for you Sir. Well said.

Truly one of the best posts I have read all day.

Jemma

+1 internets for you.

Choice

"As I can do everything I want in Windows and to move to linux would still involve me buying a Windows license to run in a VM / dual boot then why would I not just run Windows?"

That is actually one of the more sensible decisions to make.

If you are in the situation where everything you need & want to do can be done in one OS rather than another, its crazy to make the change.

In the exact same way, if you can do everything you want to do in Linux (and for free) then why run Windows?

Sadly, I dont think many people really properly assess the two situations - and where they do, some probably quietly ignore the fact that a lot of their Windows software is pirated....

Yes, if you are used to Photoshop, learning Gimp can be quite hard but how many home users have coughed up the full asking price for Photoshop CS5? Despite this, almost everyone I know with a DSLR knows how to use Photoshop.... I suspect that the historical prevalence of pirated versions of Office, Photoshop etc have gone a long way to making it hard for people to move to other packages.

A certain blue company

I doubt it - it is too engrained into its corporate approach...

(need an evil IBM icon)

no title

"Great. The world, apparently, used to think of the British as being gentlemen. Now they think we are just a bunch of boorish tossers. Thanks Top Gear."

Wow - seriously?

If anyone made a value judgement on the entire British population based on Top Gear then I dont really care what they think of the UK... Their opinions are so warped they really dont matter.

Obviously in the case of the cheese eating surrender monkeys calling the British "Roast Beefs" because some people eat it is just as incorrect as calling us "f**k offs" which is just as incorrect as calling them "cheese eating surrender monkeys."

Banter is international. Getting upset about it is pointless.

No Minority

I agree, 100%.

Cloud-ish

Some reasonable suggestions - however.

1 - yes, if you dont mind the speed issues you can keep local copies yourself. However this involves maintaining your own IT infrastructure (however small). This is what starts to eat into the costs of using the cloud. This is especially ironic as the concept is sold to the business as freeing them up from the costs of local IT....

2 - Yes if your office burns down you have offsite backup, but that depends on the cloud implementation you have gone for. If you are using the cloud as a managed IT service (as seems to be the case here) then you would like to think that the cloud provider has the backups. As this case shows, that isnt always true. The risk remains - and in some instances the business has removed their own ability to control the risk.

3 - and contracts are vital. However, there are things a contract cant protect (reputational damage for example) and some items are so irreplaceable no amount of contractual fine will help. All this assumes the cloud company has the resources to pay the claim you make, but doesnt have the legal clout to water it down. Try suing Microsoft, Google etc into forced servitude. Even if you have that mythical beast of a water tight contract it will be a hard battle.

I am not a cloud fan....

titles are for losers

"Or are you suggesting that a bank, for example, thinks "Oh, well, people in London now have net access so I will close my branch in Cardiff to save costs!""

Actually, with a caveat, that is what has happened - the caveat being as you say in the next bit about unprofitable areas.

This is fine with discretionary services (such as shoe shops) but some previously state run services that were passed over to private ownership there was an obligation to provide the service to the public. The easy route turned out to be tell everyone you can access our services online at www.example.com and close the branches. Only the unprofitable ones mind, but then those tend to be the ones serving the most vulneralble areas.

We really do live in a day and age where the only place you can survive without internet is in urban areas and, ironically, this is where you can get the best internet connections.

I moved to Lisburn in Northern Ireland a few years ago and it took three weeks to get an internet connection up and running. Life was chaos. It really hammered home to me how essential being able to connect to a website was - even for basic local government things. I can only assume its more important now.

I really do feel sorry for anyone without internet access. I have no idea how you manage to do things and you are basically paying well over the odds for everything you purchase.

Maria

Wow, Maria, that is much, much less than it normally costs. I will wire you the money right away.

Re: Stuff

Well said Jez. If I could vote for you as Prime Minister I would (*) but you will have to settle for a thumbs up.

All the crazies who want to be "tough on crime" and support the punishment with phrases like "threaten to blow up an airport and you deserve everything" should note that there was NO claim by the CPS that this was a terrorist related offence - as obviously that would be too easy for him to have defended.

Instead, rather than be seen to waste police time, they waste even more and prosecute under the Communications Act.

Evil and malicious with extra added helpings of spite.

Shame on them all.

-

(*) It seems unfair that I cant vote for you when Nick Clegg gets to pick whoever he wants...

Wow

@ Bryce 2

Huge amount of fail there but what makes me laugh is:

"Society takes better care of its criminals than it does to the law-abiding people that live within it. How can you possibly call that "civilized"?"

So we can agree that society fails to look after the law abiders (not that being in prison is so easy, if it was, why dont you try it sometime?) but rather than object to that injustice you seem to think the solution is to bring every one down to the level of suffering...

Bass ackwards.

But as I said, if it is so great in prison, why dont you go and spend your life there. Seriously, what is stopping you from taking up that life of luxury?

Well said Ihre Papiere Bitte!!

As always happens, some retards from a bizare group you've never heard of before is wheeled out to make some dramatic proclamation and allow news / sites to get a good quote in.

Based on the evidence I have currently seen (i.e. this article on El Reg) Keenan is a bit simple. Why CEOP never got to say anything is beyond me.

Paedo's are not buying bikinis for their victims - with or without them they will still have urges relating to children. I suggest Keenan / Cameron / The Sun steer clear of (for example) the disney shop where GOD FORBID they may see som costumes that an EEBUL PEDO might buy to sexualise a young girl.

Fear mongering at its best. Its what concern trolls like Cameron, Keenan et al do best.

As for the Tory SpokesPerson... bit - 100% spot on. +1 * 1 000 000 etc.

David obviously has so little faith in his cabinet that none of them are allowed to speak on any topic. Bodes well for the future government, doesnt it?

Recovery and the NHS

"The NHS cost increased massively with very little commensurate increase in productivity - essentially the wage bill just increased. Performance targets are now met because people sit in ambulances outside hospitals until they're ready to be processed and the clock starts ticking."

Well every one has scare stories. My experience of the NHS through various family accidents, illnesses and the like has been one that has shown a continual and considerable improvement over the years - from early 1990s when it seemed like you were an inconvienience and might as well just die, to now where you are seen fast and efficiently.

YMMV.

Targets are caused by what *we* the taxpaying public demand. If we stopped trying to use the NHS as a political handgrenade they wouldnt have to set bizarre targets. If there werent bizarre targets managers could get on and manage properly. Is this the governments fault or ours?

"If you think our children are better educated than ever before you are simply a fool. "

If you think they are worse educated then ever before you are simply a fool. The argument cuts both ways. Why should an employer care if a school leaver got an A in GCSE PE or a C? The labour market is an odd thing and its strange that employers would rather have a non-English speaker than a native while saying the education system is letting them down because school leavers arent very well educated.

The reality is that most adults would struggle to pass a GCSE now because it covers topics that arent particularly relevant ( check out a maths or English paper to double check this ) but the same applies to the O/A levels of 20 years ago (and 40, and so on).

Some employers who whine about poor standards of education do this because they have slashed their own training and apprenticeship budgets. Why should the state pick up their slack? Do you really think that 16 and 18 year olds are less equipped to live in the world than they used to be? Anyone who really thinks that has probably forgotten how little they used to know.

"The UK recovery is ahead of our peers eh? You mean after a much bigger decline? It damn well should be."

That makes no sense unless you think there is some inherent, fundamental elastic safety net. If you fall faster why should you recover better? And we say our childrens education sucks.

"It would be even further ahead if we saved in the good times to invest in the bad."

Maybe but prove it. Prove that it wouldnt have gone worse faster or gone worse longer. What examples can we point to that show this is valid?

Inevitable

Time to upgrade to Linux you mean?

Erm, no. Sorry.

Wow, way to do the moral outrage with concern.

Wikipedia is not "paedophile" friendly. There is no "signal" that it condones criminal behaviour and certainly not simply because it contais bios and descriptions of Porn related topics. I cant imagine for one second that anyone is going to upload a picture involving a real live child (for example) to wiki simply because its too easy to trace the source (and I am not going to look because that would make me a criminal as well).

This spoiled the attempt at balanced concern:

"(Wikipedia's coverage of pornography is astoundingly comprehensive, especially for a site claiming to be a general-purpose information reference.) "

Wikis coverage of any topic is an indicator of how people are interested in it. Its coverage of most things is astoundingly comprehensive - which simply indicates the broad spectrum of public interests - which is about right.

The problem is *you* dont like porn and dont think it should be covered, so *you* have decided it is not suitable for a general purpose encyclopedia. It is blatantly obvious that *most* people do not think of wiki as a porn respoitory and they are certainly not stopping using it as a result.

I dont understand your final point - are you saying that to prevent censorship, wiki should censor itself? Doesnt that defeat the purpose?

Not liking porn, or being weirdly offended by cartoons, is not grounds to claim moral rights over Wikipedia. If the government of your country is so oppressive that they will ban wikipedia because it has some naughty pictures on then there is a bigger problem to sort out and maybe you need the Shah back.

H1B yes please

I wish there were more tech companies in the US hiring on an H1B, as I would be over there like a shot. Sadly, nearly ever job I see that is open to furriners asks for a green card.