IronTed - no steam produced by gas turbines? Do no naval types read this? Try looking up county class destroyers and their propulsion. Had V short sea time on HMS Devonshire many years ago. Propulsion type is COSAG. Checked only with Wikipedia to ensure it is not senility leading me astray.
NOT, a may add, that I am proposing returning to the 70's - hot and steamy were those machinery spaces....
"since pensioners have no interest in the internet whatsoever"
Cheeky devil, I am a uk pensioner and have been doing computing before you were thought of. I have Windows, Linux(es) 100Mb/second network, firewall, run dns, provide high speed backup for neighbours etc. etc. here at home. Either you euthanize all your techie pensioners down under or you move in the wrong circles.
Surely if an ActiveX (aka .dll) can be buried in a Word document and executed, the attacker has at least got control of the account being used. It could attack any vulnerability, not just IE and more or less install what it likes. AFAIK Word executable has full user rights so any ActiveX running in its address space can do ANYTHING that the user can do. Am I missing something. Surely the major hole is in Word???
Better to worry about about resurrecting fungi, bacteria etc from the distant past. Maybe WE are only here because THEY died out. One thing is for certain, they once were viable in the wild unlike black holes on earth. I'll skip the beer.
I had a great experience at PCWorld (East Kilbride) two weeks ago. Young, enthusiastic sales guy was very helpful. All I was buying was a memory card interface. He asked me what cabinet slots were vacant, explained that mounting kits came with my cabinet (he knew the model!) and spent a few minutes chatting about cabinet, processors latest games etc. Very helpful, not pushy but pleasant and enthusiastic. I left the store feeling great. That being said, I didn't buy my pc from them.
PS, hope they don't fire the guy for being too helpful....
HMRC IT is outsourced, the outsourcer has to be profitable!
There is no point in thinking that you could offer do the work for £500 unless you offer to do it for CapGemeni ; see: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/11/13/capgemini_job_cuts/
I think that there might be a markup put on your work as well as some overhead of writing the requirements, formulating the demand for extra IT work when costs are being reduced, 5 layers of management to get the request approved after choosing the appropriate budget line, possibly a committee or two to pass through, then the costed proposal from the outsourcer, the quality plan for the work, fully detailed PERT chart, test specifications, approval process, proposed modifications to service level agreements, approval of tea breaks (oops, only kidding) etc. etc. etc.
EPO being cited to coerce UK patentability of software
The European Patent Office is issuing patents in contravention of article 52 of the European Patent convention. See paragraph 2(c) of http://www.european-patent-office.org/legal/epc/e/ar52.html where it is very clear what the position should be.
Companies are using these EPO granted "software patents" to try to weaken the UK patent office position regarding "software and business processes are not patentable". The current UK patent office policy needs to be supported vigorously. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/16/patent_wrangling/ for an example of citing EPO as virtuous in its wanton dis-regard of the patent convention.
It is despicable that US law permits patents which are simply an application of computers to a well-known principle i.e.
Faster than playback time download - high speed compressed text transmission (used during 39-45 war).
Compressed file reader - any mechanised decoder such as paper tape reader (text transmission is much more compressed than voice).
Compressed information download (to reduce bandwidth) - any number of compression schemes dating from Roman times.
The fact that these have now been applied to video is somewhat obvious. I guess the next patent will be the same principle applied to maps, surround sound, 3d viewers, virtual worlds etc etc. The application of a technique can cover quite a wide range of applications. Some innovation!
I was a (happy?) compuserve user in the uk until one day the log-on failed. I phoned support who said "Tough, now it's aol, download the aol crud and convert - compuserve accounts are no more". Er, no thanks, and that was it. That was many years ago now.
Happy days, well, not quite so happy as with broadband of course.
In the event of an important interview, everybody should get into the habit of saying "This conversation may be recorded for the purpose of protecting the innocent"- whether being recorded or not.
I always thought that the French government were very good at retaliation when the US imposes crappy conditions. I presume that the "passenger record" agreement is fully reciprocal i.e. European governments get all the info regarding flights from the USA. Surely all it will take is a little innovative use of the data from the USA to persuade them to accept less info about passengers. I have not read the treaty so don't know what the constraints actually are, but maybe publishing some details about passengers would assist.
Pity they don't have things like persons weight in the data, then "the fattest American travelling each month" could be published in Canard Enchaine. Perhaps getting all non-EU citizens to sign their recent itineries under some massive penalty if it is wrong. What is needed is something to REALLY upset the US travelling public to get the message across that our travelling public is less than pleased with this sort of accord. Any thoughts commenters?
Of course US coat-tail UK could not do anything like that, but Belgium or France might give it a shot.
Walter Riggs and David Norfolk are both right depending on the circumstances of the development.
If it is neccessary to synthesize a brand new algorithm to carry out some complex task, or perhaps find a much faster way to do something than previously achieved, then the contribution to success of process (of any form) will be relatively small. It will more or less all depend on the skill and background of the small team tackling the problem. Not that they will develop successfully with NO process, just that it can be quite light and will not be a major determining factor in success.
If on the other hand, it is neccessary to develop 500 "screens" of well-understood business processes, all dipping into a database i.e. a more or less design-free activity, then getting the 50 programmers to work together to produce consistent and working software on time, is MOSTLY process i.e. "follow the process and the results will pop out at the end". Highly skilled developers would make a somewhat better job but such skills would not be the determining factor in success.
The more innovative and synthetic (as in "synthesizing") the work, the less contribution to success is made by process simply because written process cannot substitute for skill (or we would not need teaching establishments such as universities). On the other hand, even the small team needs SOME process, if only to keep the management quiet and the CMM evaluation consultants/salesmen off their backs.
Register
17 posts • joined Monday 26th March 2007 20:04 GMT
Re: BAE
IronTed - no steam produced by gas turbines? Do no naval types read this? Try looking up county class destroyers and their propulsion. Had V short sea time on HMS Devonshire many years ago. Propulsion type is COSAG. Checked only with Wikipedia to ensure it is not senility leading me astray.
NOT, a may add, that I am proposing returning to the 70's - hot and steamy were those machinery spaces....
Just a minute - bracken is dangerous
Some species give off hydrogen cyanide in growing tips. Spores are carcinogenic.
Good job we have lots of unemployed get to work - stickers on every piece of bracken clearly needed.
"since pensioners have no interest in the internet whatsoever"
Cheeky devil, I am a uk pensioner and have been doing computing before you were thought of. I have Windows, Linux(es) 100Mb/second network, firewall, run dns, provide high speed backup for neighbours etc. etc. here at home. Either you euthanize all your techie pensioners down under or you move in the wrong circles.
Argh, more effort removing Adobe crapware
Only just finished removing Adobe crapware (getplus something) installed when I update flash - another update and more registry cleaning....
Another step along the way
to red-tape reduction for small businesses?
ActiveX in a Word document?
Surely if an ActiveX (aka .dll) can be buried in a Word document and executed, the attacker has at least got control of the account being used. It could attack any vulnerability, not just IE and more or less install what it likes. AFAIK Word executable has full user rights so any ActiveX running in its address space can do ANYTHING that the user can do. Am I missing something. Surely the major hole is in Word???
Delayed Christmas?
I hope nobody is proposing to delay Christmas 2009 for a few months - I like Christmas in December...
Worried about LHC black holes?
Better to worry about about resurrecting fungi, bacteria etc from the distant past. Maybe WE are only here because THEY died out. One thing is for certain, they once were viable in the wild unlike black holes on earth. I'll skip the beer.
Latest experience
I had a great experience at PCWorld (East Kilbride) two weeks ago. Young, enthusiastic sales guy was very helpful. All I was buying was a memory card interface. He asked me what cabinet slots were vacant, explained that mounting kits came with my cabinet (he knew the model!) and spent a few minutes chatting about cabinet, processors latest games etc. Very helpful, not pushy but pleasant and enthusiastic. I left the store feeling great. That being said, I didn't buy my pc from them.
PS, hope they don't fire the guy for being too helpful....
HMRC IT is outsourced, the outsourcer has to be profitable!
There is no point in thinking that you could offer do the work for £500 unless you offer to do it for CapGemeni ; see: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/11/13/capgemini_job_cuts/
I think that there might be a markup put on your work as well as some overhead of writing the requirements, formulating the demand for extra IT work when costs are being reduced, 5 layers of management to get the request approved after choosing the appropriate budget line, possibly a committee or two to pass through, then the costed proposal from the outsourcer, the quality plan for the work, fully detailed PERT chart, test specifications, approval process, proposed modifications to service level agreements, approval of tea breaks (oops, only kidding) etc. etc. etc.
Techies like you make things sound EASY. ;-))
EPO being cited to coerce UK patentability of software
The European Patent Office is issuing patents in contravention of article 52 of the European Patent convention. See paragraph 2(c) of http://www.european-patent-office.org/legal/epc/e/ar52.html where it is very clear what the position should be.
Companies are using these EPO granted "software patents" to try to weaken the UK patent office position regarding "software and business processes are not patentable". The current UK patent office policy needs to be supported vigorously. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/16/patent_wrangling/ for an example of citing EPO as virtuous in its wanton dis-regard of the patent convention.
Title
It is despicable that US law permits patents which are simply an application of computers to a well-known principle i.e.
Faster than playback time download - high speed compressed text transmission (used during 39-45 war).
Compressed file reader - any mechanised decoder such as paper tape reader (text transmission is much more compressed than voice).
Compressed information download (to reduce bandwidth) - any number of compression schemes dating from Roman times.
The fact that these have now been applied to video is somewhat obvious. I guess the next patent will be the same principle applied to maps, surround sound, 3d viewers, virtual worlds etc etc. The application of a technique can cover quite a wide range of applications. Some innovation!
"Microsoft last year singed a deal with Lego"
Freudian slip. Only deals with the devil end up singed.
You kept a compuserve account in the UK?
I was a (happy?) compuserve user in the uk until one day the log-on failed. I phoned support who said "Tough, now it's aol, download the aol crud and convert - compuserve accounts are no more". Er, no thanks, and that was it. That was many years ago now.
Happy days, well, not quite so happy as with broadband of course.
Tell them up front
In the event of an important interview, everybody should get into the habit of saying "This conversation may be recorded for the purpose of protecting the innocent"- whether being recorded or not.
Turn up the heat a bit...
I always thought that the French government were very good at retaliation when the US imposes crappy conditions. I presume that the "passenger record" agreement is fully reciprocal i.e. European governments get all the info regarding flights from the USA. Surely all it will take is a little innovative use of the data from the USA to persuade them to accept less info about passengers. I have not read the treaty so don't know what the constraints actually are, but maybe publishing some details about passengers would assist.
Pity they don't have things like persons weight in the data, then "the fattest American travelling each month" could be published in Canard Enchaine. Perhaps getting all non-EU citizens to sign their recent itineries under some massive penalty if it is wrong. What is needed is something to REALLY upset the US travelling public to get the message across that our travelling public is less than pleased with this sort of accord. Any thoughts commenters?
Of course US coat-tail UK could not do anything like that, but Belgium or France might give it a shot.
CMM and other Process
Walter Riggs and David Norfolk are both right depending on the circumstances of the development.
If it is neccessary to synthesize a brand new algorithm to carry out some complex task, or perhaps find a much faster way to do something than previously achieved, then the contribution to success of process (of any form) will be relatively small. It will more or less all depend on the skill and background of the small team tackling the problem. Not that they will develop successfully with NO process, just that it can be quite light and will not be a major determining factor in success.
If on the other hand, it is neccessary to develop 500 "screens" of well-understood business processes, all dipping into a database i.e. a more or less design-free activity, then getting the 50 programmers to work together to produce consistent and working software on time, is MOSTLY process i.e. "follow the process and the results will pop out at the end". Highly skilled developers would make a somewhat better job but such skills would not be the determining factor in success.
The more innovative and synthetic (as in "synthesizing") the work, the less contribution to success is made by process simply because written process cannot substitute for skill (or we would not need teaching establishments such as universities). On the other hand, even the small team needs SOME process, if only to keep the management quiet and the CMM evaluation consultants/salesmen off their backs.