* Posts by JamesPond

268 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jun 2013

Page:

UK government puts IR35 tax reforms on hold for a year in wake of coronavirus crisis

JamesPond

Re: One-nation Barmy

"but some also pay the correct taxes " which implies as a contractor you didn't pay the correct taxes.

I'm currently inside IR35 but when outside, I paid corporation tax, employers NI and VAT, all the taxes I was legally obliged to pay.

F-35s grounded by spares shortage

JamesPond

Re: F-35B jet ‘not a waste of money’ says RAF test pilot

Have to agree, the F35-B is never going to be an air-superiority plane, it is too heavy and doesn't have the payload capability. Also I don't know if anyone has noticed but our carriers do not have any missile defence, so they are entirely reliant up AEW, the F-35s and the Type45/23/26's for protection, none of which have large VLS capability.

JamesPond
WTF?

Re: A tale of 2 carriers

And the story just below

"Royal Marines have stormed the beaches of North Carolina but don’t worry, it’s just an exercise"

....but not for much longer with the proposed retirement/sale of the Uk's two Albion-class landing platform dock ships, the UK won't have this capability or 1000 marines.

JamesPond

Re: Thunderbird 0

"As far as I can see, a VTOL F-35 would lose out to a Harrier."

Supposedly the advantage of the F-35 is that it has stealth and has a high degree of intelligence integration. So it can work with other F-35s plus carrier radar, Type 45 SAMPSON radar etc. to build a picture of all combatants in the area. Aligned with over-the-horizon air-to-air missiles, it 'should' mean that a Harrier or Super Étendard won't know where the F-35 is in order to start a dogfight, so the F-35 'shouldn't' need VIF and can score a kill before the enemy knows it's there. Rather have an F-22 though.

https://theaviationist.com/2013/09/19/f-22-f-4-intercept/

JamesPond
FAIL

Re: F-111 : extrapolating a couple of the above mentions

"Was the VC 'pulled' to the negotiating table before or after the fall of Saigon?

Or is this revisionist history at its best?"

Clearly you have no knowledge of this history.

The VC was never at any negotiating table. The US negotiated with the North Vietnam government at the Paris peace talks from 1968-1973. And yes the North Vietnamese were finally brought to agreement not by bombing, but by USA starting to thaw relations with USSR and PRC and NV thought they would lose support from their communist friends, plus US agreeing NV to keep their NVA in south Vietnam after the cease-fire.

At the fall of Saigon, all the US land based fighting forces had left Vietnam 18 months earlier. All that were left were the embassy staff, a small force of marines and CIA.

JamesPond
FAIL

"As a comparison the F22's availability rate is 46%. The Luftwaffe and the RAF appear to be similarly similarly boned."

Bit out of date those reports from 2014 and 2015! One would hope things have improved and it's quite clear Britain has been able to bomb ISIS as and when required.

JamesPond
Thumb Down

Re: Let's make planes that can't fly......

"Were it not for the Treaty of Versailles and the Allied goal of squeezing Germany"

Were it not for the Treaty of Versailles and the FRENCH goal of squeezing Germany

FTFY......The British stated at the time that the treaty was excessive and probably counter productive. The French thought the treaty too lenient.

JamesPond
FAIL

Re: Let's make planes that can't fly......

"Equipment was not the problem, really, it was the head-in-the-sand attitude of the political classes.'

I don't think you've read your history very well. The British leaders knew exactly what position they were in. They knew they could not afford monetarily to defend all of the British Empire, it was just too big. Also politically after the first Great War, the British public were in no mood to go to war with Germany again. There was also a known threat from Japan, not just Germany. As for Churchill, he was in the political wilderness because of his mis-management of the 'soft underbelly of Europe' campaign in the Dardanelles. Where they did miscalculate was over USSR signing a non-aggression pact with Germany which effectively took them out of the war for 2 years (and let USSR invade Poland) and they clearly did not understand how mad Hitler was.

Chinese whispers: China shows off magnetic propulsion engine for ultra-silent subs, ships

JamesPond
Joke

Re: I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again...

According to wikipedia, there are various types of err prototypes

Paper Prototype, Proof-of-Principle Prototype, Form Study Prototype, Visual Prototype, User Experience Prototype, Functional Prototype, Working Prototype

Lets hope the sub isn't a paper prototype, it might get a bit soggy.

JamesPond
FAIL

Re: Double Bluff?

Does no one think that DARPA hasn't looked at this already? If Japan tested it decades ago, I'm sure the US either reviewed the results, were involved or tested it for themselves.

NHS could have 'fended off' WannaCry by taking 'simple steps' – report

JamesPond

Re: I work in the NHS

Having worked for both hospitals and for IT suppliers to the NHS across a lot of different NHS England hospitals, there is a huge variation in how IT services are delivered and their professionalism.

The best I've seen are in-house staff who were reasonably well looked after and had down-to-earth managers with reasonable IT and management skills (many originally trained in the armed forces). The worst I've see are where

a) IT services are outsourced to a very big blue company who won't react until they have a purchase order

b) outsourced to tiny local companies with insufficient resources to handle anything but the normal day-to-day 'my pc won't boot' fault and find it difficult to retain skilled staff.

c) in-house staff are badly managed by maniacal leadership who are only concerned in advancing up the ladder and think that staff motivation has a 1:1 link with how loud they can shout.

Unfortunately in my experience, there are a lot of very competent and dedicated indians (small i) being lead by incompetent chiefs. I have seen first hand that once you are in the NHS, it is a job for life unless you actually kill someone and where the only way to 'get rid' of someone useless is to promote them.

JamesPond
WTF?

Re: They will not learn

"The NHS will continue to do business with software suppliers who will not allow you to add the latest Microsoft security patches to their supported versions"

That is easy to say but what is the alternative? Upgrade the servers and workstations to the latest patch without validation? Ok if you are dealing with a desktop running a spreadsheet or wordprocessor. More risky if you are dealing with a workstation that has software manipulating patient data that if it breaks down, or worse, manipulates or displays data in an incorrect manner, could lead to patient safety being compromised.

Would you be prepared to certify Microsoft's zero-day patch will not affect your clinical software without first going through validation testing?

I worked on NHS clinical messaging systems for BT that used Microsoft Exchange 5.5 with x.400 messaging as the underlying routing platform. Microsoft released a patch and I found in our test lab that MS had introduced a bug so that in certain circumstances messages could enter an infinite loop and cause the server to crash (in x.400 a message should only loop 255 times before being non-delivered but Exchange was incorrectly re-writing the message ID in the e-mail header so the server couldn't recognise that the message had been received previously). We reported this to MS and stopped NHS sites installing the patch. Without this testing, many NHS end-sites could have been down for days whilst they restored their systems from scratch.

JamesPond
Thumb Down

"the current structure of the NHS is almost entirely the work of one Tony Blair'

Lets get this correct,

NHS Trusts started in 1990

PFI contracts started in 1992

CCGs were created in 2012.

Labour were not in power in any of these years.

NPfIT / CfH was a Labour initiative and whilst it produced some good systems (for example national PACS, ePrescribing), it was not overall good value for money, too top-heavy, the contracts were rushed and there was no accountability.

Car trouble: Keyless and lockless is no match for brainless

JamesPond

Re: It's a f'in car!

But if they didn't change everything on each replacement model, what would be the incentive for you to purchase the next model?

JamesPond
Unhappy

Re: Reminds me of the time

My dad had a Cortina 1600E which was the sporty version with bucket seats. One with the same registration but 1 digit difference and the same colour got stolen from near where he worked. At least once or twice every month my dad would get pulled over by the local police thinking they'd found the stolen car.

JamesPond
WTF?

Re: Hire cars are a mixed blessing

My worst experiences in hire cars were:

A Renault Megan decided to go into maximum revs and accelerate on it's own whilst in cruise with no pressure on the accelerator, nearly rear-ending the car in front.

A Renault Laguna's engine decided to lose a couple of cylinders whilst pulling across an intersection on a derestricted dual carriage-way, coughing, spluttering and then dying.

A Mercedes E-Class decided to go into limp-home-mode whilst doing slightly north of 70mph in the outside lane of the M1. The turbo's top-hose had collapsed and starved the engine of air.

A Vauxhall Vectra decided to throw one of it's connecting rods through the bonnet, depositing lots of fluid and other engine parts on the outside lane of the M1.

JamesPond

Re: Dear Mr Dabbs

Not driven a Tesla screen but if it's anything like a Lexus touch-screen, every fingerprint is viewable and the angle reflects the sun so it's not viewable is bright sunlight.

JamesPond
Facepalm

In the late 90's, the company I was working for rented me an Astra/Focus sized car for me for weekend working. The hire car company delivered me a Mercedes S class because they'd run out of other cars! Only problem was when I got to the petrol station, I couldn't open the petrol cap. Every car I had driven until then either had a pull cable under the driver's seat or just an exposed petrol cap with a key. I pressed every button and looked under every seat for a petrol-flap release button, to no avail.

No information in the hand book at all about opening the petrol cap either.

Eventually I had to put my pride on hold and ask at the petrol station. Turns out that the petrol flap unlocked when the car was unlocked and you only had to pull the flap open! So advanced these Mercs.

JamesPond
FAIL

'Ok' to a message on the infotainment unit

Lexus is like this, and the sat nav won't let you manually change the destination or add an intermediate destination whilst the car is moving. I mean, who'd ever change their mind about where they want to go when the car is moving, or have a passenger in the car who has two free hands and could 'safely' change the destination?

JamesPond
Facepalm

Re: Possible Solution

"That's exactly WHY the doors auto-lock"

In the 70's my uncle Jack had a Hillman Hunter, before the time of mandatory seat belts. He was driving near his holiday home in Loch Luichart, Scotland, going round a left hand bend, he was leaning on the door when it opened on its own and he fell out. Fortunately given the single lane roads in Scotland in those days he wasn't going too fast so he ended up with only minor injuries but the car was a write-off.

NB Loch Luichart was a wonderful area for walking but take midge repellent if you ever go.

UK.gov: Use police body cams to grill suspects at scene of crime

JamesPond
Terminator

Under caution?

Presumably this has to be done under caution and the suspect advised of their rights? Otherwise I'd suggest whatever the suspect has said would not be admissible in court. Any criminal worth their salt is just going to request a lawyer and refuse to talk further. Can't see this helping reduce time spent back at the nick unless they get an admission of guilt right on the spot.

The UK's super duper 1,000mph car is being tested in Cornwall

JamesPond

Terminal velocity

Felix Baumgartner reached a terminal velocity of 834mph but the air was thin, falling from an altitude of 128,000 feet. So I doubt your less than aerodynamic Corolla could match that, even off a very tall cliff.

JamesPond
Thumb Down

Re: Saw this on the news this morning

"They are having to plan their runs to dodge the incoming and outgoing planes using the same runway."

Guess the news was wrong then as they've closed the runways. Look at the YouTube live feed.

JamesPond
Thumb Up

Re: Love them

I don't think they are aiming a the car speed record, but land-speed record, which I guess means any vehicle that has one or more wheels in touch with the earth, driven by the wheels or pushed by a rocket / jet engine. Even Malcolm Campbell's 'Blue bird' from the 1930's wouldn't be considered a normal car.

Even more warship cuts floated for the Royal Navy

JamesPond
Unhappy

Re: ah the costs of buying abroad

@Marketing Hack

Completely agree, so why did the RN either not go down the same route or develop a destroyer that is more than a one-trick-pony? The type 45's can't defend against or attack submarine or surface ships, so not only do the carriers need frigates to protect them, so do the destroyers. And the carriers will have planes with no anti-ship capability at the time of deployment.

JamesPond
FAIL

Re: No escorts = bye bye HMS QE

Quite agree, RN soon won't have any anti-ship or anti-submarine capability, the type 45's have Harpoon but this is old and easily defeated by modern anti-missile defences. Unless we have subs patrolling, Russia could sail her Kirov-class battle cruiser into Portsmouth and sink the carriers without much trouble.

Maybe we should ask USA if we can buy the USS Iowa, at least we'd have some big guns to defend the carriers with, and with 12" armour, could any modern missile get through?

JamesPond
Thumb Down

Re: Not sure what the UK could do about it.

@Nick Z

"when Ukraine's government set up this conflict situation in 1991"....not sure what 'facts' you think you know here.

In 1991, 90% of the Ukraine population voted for independence from Russia. Therefore this wasn't a divided country at the time.

In 1994, USA, Russia and UK signed a nuclear non-proliferation agreement with Ukraine to decommission all their nuclear missiles (they had the worlds 3rd largest arsenal at the time). The agreement was based on the written understanding that USA, UK and Russia would guarantee Ukraine's sovereignty and borders.

Then 20 years later Russia invades Ukraine sovereign territory, annexes Crimea and funds and arms a proxy war in Donbass. The country is now only divided because of Russian propaganda and funding of separatists. I think the only reason Russia doesn't formally invade Ukraine is that it would end up like the 1979 Soviet-Afghan invasion.

So the lesson is don't believe anything Russia says or writes, believe their actions.

JamesPond
Pint

Re: Any war with Russia probably will be a Nuclear War

@I ain't Spartacus

Totally agree, have a pint on me. If anyone has been watching the BBC 'Army: Behind the New Frontlines' series over the last couple of weeks, it seems plain that the Baltic states feel threatened by Russia.

It's unlikely that Russia will invade using conventional forces whilst NATO has troops on the ground, but there is still the threat of Russia fermenting turmoil with the indigenous Russian community as per Ukraine.

Russia has already spread lies about German troops raping Baltic state women when there weren't even any German troops on the ground. So it is clear Russia is already fighting a propaganda war against the Baltic states.

If we want to keep our NATO commitments, and expect our friends to keep their commitments, we need conventional troops, armour, ships and aircraft to deny Russia the opportunity to attack.

JamesPond
WTF?

Good to know, when we finally track the Taliban Navy to their secret Afghan port.

@Tim Jenkins

So the UK surface fleet hasn't been used to fight sea piracy off the Horn and East Africa? As an island nation dependent upon sea trade, do we not need to protect the sea lanes? A couple of years ago there were reports of Russian submarines off the north coast of Scotland, when we didn't have any surveillance planes of our own (gap now filled by US RC-135W Rivet Joint) we had to ask France to send over one of theirs to help out. So to defend just our own shores and interests we need a strong combined Navy/army/airforce but this govt. seems keen to reduce all the armed services.

JamesPond
Mushroom

Re: ah the costs of buying abroad

The UK could never afford to develop from scratch anything as technologically advanced, cutting edge and costly in R&D as the F35. Therefore if we want this capability we have to either be in the consortium or buy off-the-shelf.

However given that S.Korea can develop the most versatile destroyer on the sea with anti-air, anti-surface and anti-submarine capability, you have to ask why we Brits with 100s of years of experience develop a destroyer that is only capable of defending itself from air threats but only has a small number of VLS tubes. Which means we need capable frigates to defend the carriers from sea and submarine threats. Or as others have said, the carriers will have to stay in port.

UK's NHS to pilot 'Airbnb'-style care service in homeowners' spare rooms

JamesPond
Joke

Re: I have a cunning business plan.

And if they die whilst in your care, even better, don't tell anyone, keep collecting the rent, not outgoings on food and cornflakes. On the yearly council inspection, just tell the inspector that the lodger has gone out for a walk, no one need ever know.

JamesPond
Unhappy

Re: Something needs to be done

"who's been cutting the funding for the council "

The Conservatives, who else!!!±

In 2011/12 the coalition government closed primary care trusts at the insistence of the Tories. Whist they created CCGs to take on some of the work and funded these (but not to the same extent as the SHA/PCTs), the Tories also moved a lot of the responsibilities for public health into council ownership, without increasing council budgets. This all helped the Tories sell the idea that they had put more money into the NHS, when in fact what they had done was keep the funding the same for the NHS but essentially decreased the funding for Councils. Council funding is a lot less politically sensitive than the NHS and is 'local' rather than national.

JamesPond
Stop

Re: I have a cunning business plan.

You'll only be able to hire the east europeans up to March 2018! Then you'll have to make do with Brits wo won't want a menial job for £8k per year.

JamesPond
FAIL

Waaat?

Care homes are in crisis because councils have cut spending per head, but they can afford £1k per month for this? Going to require some very careful contract wording to persuade anyone to give up a spare bed/bathroom with potentially no ability to turf the 'lodger' out at short notice if they become abusive or incapable of looking after themselves.

Keep your voice down in the data centre, the HDDs have ears! I SAID, KEEP...

JamesPond
Mushroom

TLAs using SSDs

I guess all the TLA security services will be using SSDs from now on then, along with the Iranian and NORKs nuclear research facilities.

Grant Shapps of coup shame fame stands by 'broadbad' research

JamesPond
FAIL

Re: Coup shame fame?

You seriously can't be comparing Johnson with the giant statesmen of Churchill & Lloyd George? Johnson isn't fit to wipe their arses never mind be mentioned in the same sentence. He let himself get stabbed in the back at the last Tory leadership battle, he clearly has less political sense than he likes to pretend to us he has.

JamesPond
Unhappy

Re: I don't think openreach cares enough to want to pre-empt faults.

Profit is the motive so they will monitor systems and links to the SLA only.

When I worked on NHS IT systems for BT, our monitoring and alerting and number of failover systems was based upon the SLA, especially % availability. If the cost of building systems to maintain % availability was out of proportion to the penalties for failing to meet the SLA, then the failover systems were not built, no matter what we told the NHS. It was base cost/benefit analysis.

Remember how you said it was cool if your mobe network sold your name, number and location?

JamesPond
FAIL

"very rigorous framework of security and data privacy consent".

Target and Yahoo! and Sony and Experian et al said their customer's data and privacy were their highest priority....and then singularly failed to do very much to actually protect it. Not so much a police state as a commercial state. Lets face it, data on us is worth money to someone somewhere so is this latest revelation really news to us?

WPA2 KRACK attack smacks Wi-Fi security: Fundamental crypto crapto

JamesPond
Trollface

Re: Explanation Please?

The solution then is to either shoot any black van that parks outside your home, or make your home into a faraday cage. I'm going to cover the windows and my head in foil now, who knows where these compromised WPA2 packets can be forced to go.

'Open sesame'... Subaru key fobs vulnerable, says engineer

JamesPond

Re: This won't be addressed

A mate of mine had his Subaru RB320 stolen by thieves that broke into his house, took the keys and used the car for a post office robbery. Police rammed it several times, came back with every panel but the roof damaged, all 4 alloys bent! Very nice fast car but if you ever watch police car chase programs, the thieves are usually driving a Subaru WRX or Mitsubishi Evo, although maybe now Audi RS3's seem to be preferred.

'Israel hacked Kaspersky and caught Russian spies using AV tool to harvest NSA exploits'

JamesPond
Unhappy

"I actually blame a Microsoft"

Does anyone seriously think any o/s isn't vulnerable these days? I have a/v installed on my Mac, we have a/v on Linux at work. I don't think it's the fault of Microsoft, but that to get just about anything done in the business and even private world these days in a relatively speedy manner, you need to be online, and that brings the risks. Win 3.1 probably had hundreds of vulnerabilities in it, but at the time the majority of computers were not connected to the internet, or f they were, we weren't all keeping out financial information on it.

Equifax: About those 400,000 UK records we lost? It's now 15.2M. Yes, M for MEELLLION

JamesPond
Unhappy

Maiden name

Do the credit agencies even check your mothers maiden name or do they just use it as a security question? I have only ever given my mother's maiden name to banks when I opened an account, not even to credit card companies or Equifax itself when I had an account with them.

Unfortunately I did use the same fake maiden name I used with Equifax at other companies such as my mobile phone provider.

Fortunately I have used a password manager for several years so no account has the same password and the majority of accounts with money involved have two-factor authentication.

How much for that Belkin cable? Margin of 1,992%?

JamesPond
WTF?

F35 costs

So prior to Brexit, $:£ was 1:1.48 , currently 1:1.30

Current cost per F35C is $122.8m , UK is buying 138, total is $16,946.400,000

Before Brexit, cost £11,607,123,287

Now, £13,035,699,051

Difference: £1,428,575,764

So £1.4bn cost increase, and that's just the flyaway cost, without maintenance that has to be done in Turkey, or training, or parts etc. So that's 4 weeks of the NHS's alleged extra £350m per week down the drain, along with 3 warships and 1000 marine's jobs.

Google touts Babel Fish-esque in-ear real-time translators. And the usual computer stuff

JamesPond

Re: No audio jack

USB-C and bluetooth headphones are the future. Personally I'm going to stick with wired headphones because they always work. I did have a pair of bluetooth headphones but I didn't use them for about 2 months and when I tried to recharge them, they wouldn't so I had to throw them away.

JamesPond
Pint

Re: USB-C Connetor

Cheers Dave 126, Mr Benson Leung from Google rates the cables I've bought at 2* out of 5* ....guess that's my answer, i'll try one he's rated at 5* . Have a pint on me.

JamesPond
Unhappy

USB-C Connetor

I'm not sure about USB-C. I've had an Apple MacBook since launch. Like all other Apple supplied cables, it started wearing at the point where the plastic sheath meets the metal ends. I have tried several USB-C to USB-C cables from 3rd party suppliers and whilst the sheath isn't a problem, after a couple of months use, the USB-C cables start dropping out of the laptop under their own weight. The Apple cable doesn't fall out so this doesn't seem to be a problem at the MacBook end. I know USB-A & B and micro cables are a pain because they are not reversible, but they didn't fall out on themselves, whether OEM or 3rd party.

Commodore 64 makes a half-sized comeback

JamesPond
Happy

Can i play Speedball 2 on it

My and my uni mates used to play Speedball 2 on the C64 for hours. Tried it on a PC but just wasn't the same gameplay or joystick feel. So if Speedball2 is available then I might think about it.

BBC Telly Tax petition given new Parliament debate date

JamesPond
Happy

Re: Telly Tax

You only need a UK TV license if you want to watch or record any live TV channel, on whatever service it's on, BBC, ITV, Sky, Virgin, Amazon Channels etc. , by whatever methods are available (TV, computer, mobile phone, tablet etc) and you do not use the BBC iPlayer.

If you only watch catch-up or non-live streaming services not on BBC iPlayer then you do not need a TV license.

Personally I quite like HIGNFY , QI, Mock the week and Horizon programmes so think that for £2.80 per week it's reasonable value for money.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/tv-licence

Vibrating walls shafted servers at a time the SUN couldn't shine

JamesPond
WTF?

25x 3 1/2" MS Office 1.0 disc error

Whilst working in IT Support at a local hospital, I got a call from a secretary at one of the other sites. She was trying to install Office 1.0 but the installation kept getting to disc 21 and crashing.

So I picked up my rucksack of discs and drove across to the other site. I started the install process running and started swapping floppy discs. All was going well with my set of discs and the secretary asked me if I'd like a tea or coffee. "Coffee please", she switched on the kettle, the PC blipped and the installation failed at disc 21 again with "unable to read disc" error.

JamesPond
Mushroom

Re: At DEC's headquarters in Maynard

"With no servers responding, of course, it can't alert him again,"

And that is why you should have an external system monitoring and alerting, not rely on kit on just one site.

Working at BT we were responsible for monitoring all the systems connected to the NHS Messaging Service. As part of this we ran three datacentres that monitored each other plus other third party supplier systems.

When Buncefield oil refinery blew up, our systems alerted that Northgate's Newborn Hearing Screening service had gone offline. As the on-call engineer, I contacted Northgate to find out what had happened. They did have an RFC in place for server upgrades that day but their engineers had been delayed getting to site. This was fortunate for them because their servers were found 3 floors below where they had been.

Page: