* Posts by Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

2452 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Sep 2007

Please replace the sword, says owner of now-hollow stone

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Pulling the sword from the stone?

Completed it mate.

Ex-TalkTalk chief grilled by MPs on suitability to chair NHS Improvement

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Art imitating life.

I'm pretty sure that the mockmentaries W1A and Twenty Twelve were based on how she runs stuff. NHS Improvement? As a job title it's up there with "BBC Director of Better", so to paraphrase Anna Rampton...

"To identify what the NHS does best and find more ways of doing less of it better”.

Watchdog slams HMRC, Amazon over 'dismal' response to UK biz hurt by online VAT fraud

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Ok...

So if it is that much of a problem for UK Govs finances, and they see eBay and Amazon et al as responsible, why don't they just block any access to Amazon or eBay web services via UK ISPs, similar to ISP level blocks on 3rd party movie streaming sites. I'm not saying that is the complete or correct answer, and I'm sure there are reasons why that can't (or wouldn't work) but if they are that annoyed in Parliamentryland, then it would certainly get their attention to kick off the debate on a more forceful footing.

Brit spooks 'kept oversight bodies in the dark' over data sharing

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

The problem now...

The problem for the intelligence agencies now is that no sane minded and/or relatively informed person believes or trusts a word of what either they, the Government or GCHQ utters. Such is the extent of what they want to grab in terms of "powers", the more cynical part of my mindset can absolutely see how they could be entirely responsible for seeding (i.e. by deliberately misplacing) certain datasets out into the wild so as to cause data loss, 3rd party hacking instances, and personal collateral damage to people and organisations, with the intent of thereby reinforcing full-circle their own arguments and demands for those powers.

As I said, it might be a cynical perspective, but I'm not convinced that on past form, previous obfuscation, misinformation and lies; but mostly on the basis that all of their shady operations conveniently hide under the banner of "national security" - that it is beyond these organisations in any way shape or form.

Resellers on Surface: Yeah, go ahead and kill it. What do we care...

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Surface Hubs

We have Surface hubs in each of our IT and core business offices. As far as I can see they are just VERY expensive TVs, as getting all of the supposedly "collaborative" stuff working is a major PITA that just doesn't work. The most productive thing we have done with ours is to present Kanban boards to the wider IT teams, and watch Rogue 1 on it via USB stick.

Tell us what you're doing in DevOps, Containers, and Agile

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Ok...

So what have the organisation I am at started doing? They have listened to too much Pre-sales bullshit and have embarked on the implementation Agile, DevOps and Continuous delivery without any clear transformational strategy, plan, goals or actual benefits tracking.

So what have the organisation I am at stopped doing? They have stopped listening to the seasoned IT delivery experts who are saying that "whilst we support these approaches, before we actually start doing this shit we need clear approaches for transformation, delivery and service delivery / management - and a clearly defined set of plans and goals."

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

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Yeah, no... cool. Very strong.

Reads more like a policy proposal that would be presented on W1A or by a minister on The Thick of It.

Talked about lots. Delivered nothing.

Scouse marketing scamps scalped £70k for 100,000+ nuisance calls

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

I'm not quite sure what to title this post, so this title is the title.

"Companies cannot hide behind paying another firm to make the calls for them. They must take responsibility and, ultimately accept the consequences if they break the law."

How exactly do you plan to do that Steve when they personally take no "responsibility"? The only "responsibility" these sorts of organisations seem to have is to make as much money as possible, through as nefarious means as possible. This as a business plan and/or modus operandi.

And what consequenses? And if they exist, why aren't you able to actually prosecute the directors?

Don't worry, the question is rhetorical. We all know the answer.

I love disruptive computer jargon. It's so very William Burroughs

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Phew!!!

"I appreciate that I might be using some of these IT development expressions incorrectly, and some probably didn’t exist at all until I made them up just now."

Thank Beelzebub for that. I started reading, couldn't understand a thing and had a cold shiver at the thought that I'd turned into a 45 yr old IT dinosaur.

Culture, schmulture. DevOps, agile need to be software-first again

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

I enjoyed reading this, but...

As per the title, I enjoyed reading this but like most evangelical treatises about DevOps, Agile and such like, they all seem to refer to some form of utopian dream or of how these "should" work in the workplace rather than providing hard and fast case studies of actual issues and how they were overcome; and when I say that, I mean in relation to the transformative elements of totally unique and individual fully global integrated ERP solutions for example (in which I include legacy, mainframe, web and all the other components and teams that make up that solution) or to a two man business in a shed somewhere, rather than just seeming to expect everyone to be and work like Tw@ter or Facebook.

I know it sounds dull, as everyone mostly wants to make themselves sound smart by talking in acronym, or focussing on all of the glittering sparkly rocketship technology, but I absolutely support the initial view as to why "culture" is the most oft spoken about piece. This is for a very good reason. Get this wrong and you may as well go and burn all of the cash in a field.

Where I am currently we're in the early phases of implementing these newer methods such as Agile and DevOps - and I'm more than happy to be supporting this. But to do it the supposed "right" way (and I personally do not believe there is a one size fits all "right" way) despite what all of the pointless books and so called "consultants" say, would mean rebuilding the company organisation, people, hierarchies, systems, processes (Business + IT) and almost everything from scratch. Which just isn't going to happen.

Each company is unique in the way it works. Whilst the overarching theories about how to "rapidise" stuff is not, how they are implemented most definitely is, and how that "culture" changes (or cannot change) to absorb them is probably the most important aspect of it.

Rejecting Sonos' private data slurp basically bricks bloke's boombox

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Re: Crap like this...

Not necessarily. My Yamaha network stereo amp has their Musicast system that works seamlessly and perfectly all over my house with music synchronised to all end speakers, or I can route or stream different music and/or sources to different rooms using the app.

With the amp and 3 endpoints it still cost 1/2 the price of the equivalent Sonos, with much more flexibility and functionality.

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

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

I get mine from...

I buy my iPhone lightning and USB cables from Poundland and they seem to be perfectly fine.

Guess how much they cost... I'll give you a clue. I can buy 15 of them for the £15 cost of a single one in Tescos.

Blade Runner 2049: Back to the Future – the movies that showed us what's to come

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Edge of Tomorrow

Tom Cruise... dead... oh, err.. and Emily Blunt.

Exoskeletons and guns. Lots of guns.

Playboy founder and dressing-gown wearer Hugh Hefner dead at 91

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

I like to think...

I like to think it was solely to piss off the Scientologists.

Quebec takes mature approach to 'grilled cheese' ban

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Re: The only one I didn't get...

Can we just agree that it isn't that?

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

The only one I didn't get...

The only one I didn't get was "welcomed as gouda news". All the others were delightfully amusing.

Cheese jokes are always very funny though. My favourite is : what sort of cheese do you use to hide a horse?

I'll leave it to you lot to provide the correct punchline.

Manchester plod still running 1,500 Windows XP machines

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Ahhh...

The old "security concerns" defence. Anyone fancy raising an FOI to find out what these concerns actually relate to?

Compsci degrees aren't returning on investment for coders – research

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Re: Study if you are interested in learning a subject in depth

"If it is just about maximizing income, get some business degree. Oh, and kill yourself."

I thought that was the advice to those wanting to be in Marketing?

Behold, says robo-mall-cop maker: Our crime-busting dune buggy packed with spy gear

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

It's all becoming very "Deus Ex"

First one to hack the security bot or turret with their Multitool whilst wearing a long black coat and augmented glasses wins the internet.

Apocalypse now: Ad biz cries foul over Apple's great AI cookie purge

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Awwwww... 'dem poor advertisers.

As per the title.

UK attorney general plans crackdown on 'trial by social media'

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Why change anything?

If the two examples in the story are representative of the current process then it seems to be working as intended?

Within the realms of decency and civility - people don't generally take kindly to being told what they can and can't say.

Boffin wins (Ig) Nobel prize asking if cats can be liquid

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

I love this observation...

"The author thought the topic worth exploring after noticing that cats seem to form the shape of whatever container in which they decide to sit."

El Reg is hiring an intern. Apply now before it closes

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
Happy

Surely another bonus of the role...

Surely another bonus of the role would be getting to deal with all of us lovely El Reg community / forum members :-)

Or... maybe that should be "care in the community" members.

Or just... members. But I'm not sure if the US contingent would understand that colloquialism.

Intel's €1bn EU antitrust appeal: What the heck is the AEC test?

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

I also just wonder...

I also randomly wonder if this is more stalling seeing as though Intel had AMD as its only (and still only) competitor in the desktop CPU market, and that it employed these tactics at a point when AMD was in a bit of a design slump so as to further push its advantage.

Whatever the weather, it's good to see that AMD is now seemingly on a healthy recovery track with its very good Ryzen line of CPUs, and its ongoing GPU line.

Facebook claims a third more users in the US than people who exist

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
Go

Re: What Is The Point of Facebook ?

@ Jake...

Have you thought about setting up a FB group to advertise your intelligent talking flies? That sounds like a goldmine just waiting for an audience.

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Re: What Is The Point of Facebook ?

Whilst I certainly support your cynical world view, I don't necessarily agree with the "without fear of being contradicted by real life" statement. I would say the opposite [or a least part-opposite] is true.

I stopped using FB a while ago and have been slowly removing any content I had previously uploaded, but I've sniggered, laughed and been at the same time absoutely appalled at many online FB discussions where everyone seems to go off at everyone else at any small point with all sorts of aggressive, outlandish and mostly dumb responses to the initial "petty-world view" stated. This was certainly true during the recent Presidential elections, Brexit fiasco and the UK Parliamentry elections.

FB to me simply became a real-world, real-time, gutter level platform for lots of keyboard warriors who absolutely equate the "reply with comment" box with "reply with lengthy diatribe or essay" - and really shows up a lot of people as being [at best] ill-informed; but mostly uncivil, overly emotional, angry, discourteous and downright nasty.

I don't miss it one iota.

Facebook's music plans mean you'll never leave Facebook

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

"It's odd how some readers, like those Japanese soldiers being hauled out of caves in the 1970s because they refused to concede that World War II was over, still think Hollywood and "the entertainment oligopoly" rule over the internet."

I guess that's true. But it still feels as though that the "entertainment oligopoly" still owns the majority of the production of the actual media content, and controls the decisions as to whom can distribute it, and how?

Facebook though huh? Not looked at it for about 3 years.

Fruit flies' brains at work: Decision-making? They use their eyes

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

How do they know that...

How do the "boffins" know that their own Frankensteinien genetic modifications to the poor innocent fruit flies aren't skewing the results?

Why is it that geeks' favourite enemies are... other geeks?

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Re: Bikeshedding

Excuse me, is this the right room for an argument...?

Snoops 'n' snitches auditor IPCO gets up and running

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
Facepalm

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

“From today, and for the first time, investigatory powers will be overseen by a single body applying a consistent, rigorous and independent inspection regime across public authorities."

Excuse my cynisism but... hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha ha.

Stephen King's scary movie reboot provokes tears from 'legit clowns'

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

I'll just leave this here, and then go hide under my duvet...

That toy clown from the 1982 Poltergeist movie. I never liked that very much.

Japanese sat tech sinks Sea Shepherd anti-whaling activists' hopes

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Re: a matter of pride?

I think you'll actually find that it is your response that is flawed by conveniently(?) missing out a few obvious points of consideration.

Mazda and Toyota join forces on Linux-based connected car platform

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

To be fair to Mazda...

I have a 2015 CX-5 and it's all terribly well made and elegant. All of the external power/aux and USB ports are discreetly tidied away in convenient locations, and it all just works - apart from the voice recognition which is hilariously awful. The only other thing that bugs me is that the OSD for the DAB radio doesn't line break correctly - so you get half of a song title on one line, and the rest on the next. Something like this...

"Now playing : Bruce Springst

een : Born in the USA."

UK.gov is hiring IT bods with skills in ... Windows Vista?!

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Re: It's a trick

I think you'll find you are giving them too much credit if you think this is a sly trick. This is just a cut and paste of everything they could think of to jam into the job ad to make it seem relevant to as many people as possible, and so get as many CVs in as possible so that they can then spam out other irrelevant and untargetted job ads.

Certes, like a lot of the mid and lower tier recruitment agencies (and please note the deliberate lack of the word "consultancy") don't really understand the technologies that they actually recruit. This is why they send out so much irrelevant spam to people in their database, and why I blocked them months ago.

Guess who's hiking their prices again? Come on, it's as easy as 123 Reg

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Because dem millions just 'aint enough...

Norway Quizwall experiment ends with more quizzing than commenting

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Answers...

Liberia

Shane Meadows

6 beans

Blighty’s beloved Big Ben bell ends, may break Brexit bargain

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

So...

Is Steve ¡Bong! now only going to be known as Steve ¡!?

I hope มาลัย (which means "Garland of Flowers" in Thai) will be altering all of his personal stationery.

GoDaddy gives white supremacist site its marching orders after Charlottesville slur

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Re: RE : Brexit

Calm down dear. Go and get yourself a nice soothing cup of tea.

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

RE : Brexit

So we have Betteridge's law, Godwins law, Skitt's law, Poe's law et al etc etc...

Is there an internet law or adage for the needless or blatant mention of Brexit in a discussion forum???

South London: Rats! The rodents have killed the internet

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

That's what you get...

That's what you get when your offering is so cheezy.

70% of Windows 10 users are totally happy with our big telemetry slurp, beams Microsoft

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

I did it another way...

I just Wiresharked my PCs network interface and after my own piece of investigatory fun blacklisted all of the suspect Microsoft telemetry domains and IP addresses on my router. Seems to do the job.

FBI's spyware-laden video claims another scalp: Alleged sextortionist charged

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

What a tw@...

He sounds like a really really awful Bond villain. Hopefully he'll get what he deserves in the clink.

Major Oracle E-business suite upgrade coming in 2019. Or maybe 2020

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

How very nice...

“if you are contemplating moving to cloud, do it for merits of the business not because you are afraid the suite is going to expire out from under you.”

It's a shame then that that view has not been passed down to their Customer account managers, Service delivery managers and Salespeople. Every bloody account review I have to sit through with them they are constantly bleeting on about how we should move our EBS installation to the cloud even though I keep reminding them that both the Oracle public cloud, and the specific EBS cloud application services are not yet fit for critical business purposes.

KCOM whacked with £900k Ofcom fine over 999 call handling

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Gaucho Rasmussen

That totally puts my given name to shame.

You had ONE job: Italian firefighters suspected of starting blazes for cash

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Pretty sure...

Pretty sure that the same thing was going on in Naples recently as there were loads of fires out there when I was there, and it was suspected that it was some collusion between the local Mafia and the adminstration.

Also, excuse the pun, but you'd have thought them smart enough to at least have called the fires in using "burner" phones.

HMS Queen Liz will arrive in Portsmouth soon, says MoD

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

I'm pretty sure that...

I'm pretty sure that Admiralty will be issuing some chart updates soon as they've been dredging the main harbour entrance and inner and outer channels for quite a while now in preparation for these new carriers which will alter the LAT depths, as well as those for estimated MHWS and MLWS.

The dredging has entertainingly uncovered quite a lot of UXBs which have subsequently been blown up by Navy Ordnance in the remoter reaches of the Solent. One of them required Gunwharf Quays to be evacuated, but they should have just let it off in situ to be honest as it's pretty rubbish there.

I certainly wouldn't have wanted that to have had that drop on me during the war though as it certainly made a huge racket when they blew it up and I felt the resulting shockwave over 15 miles away.

The ultimate full English breakfast – have your SAY

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Sorry for the thread subversion...

Rather than go for the best one... the worst "full English" I ever had the misfortune of eating was served up by Nandos at Gatwick Airport last year; and yes, the irony of Nandos serving a full English is not lost on me. It does not forgive however the fact that I did not finish it, because it was actually inedible.

The reason I mention it here is because the unforgivable inclusion of the bowl for containerising the beans in your headline picture looks suspiciously similar to how they serve theirs.

Uneasy rest the buttocks on the iron throne. Profits plunge 14% at Sky UK and Ireland

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Dear Mr. Murdoch...

Never had any of your services. Never will.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Take that, gender pay gap! Atos to offshore hundreds of BBC roles

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Re: If there's no TV in the property...

No, that's not the case (as far as I can see). If there is a rule to this effect then it's been buried so far down in the terms then it would be unenforceable.

This is a tactic that I have heard that Capita try to use though (i.e. than an aeriel == live tv use) but again, it would not stand up in court as firm evidence to support a prosecution.

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Re: If there's no TV in the property...

Whilst I don't want to subvert the thread, I'd just like to point out that you can actually have many TVs in your house - and still not require a license. The licence is not for the "owning" of a TV, it is based on what you watch or consume through that TV.

You only need a licence if you watch TV programmes live at the time of their broadcast - and then for anything on iPlayer also. You do NOT need a license if you watch pre-recorded DVDs, play video games, stream TV or watch movies on-demand or catchup TV via C4, ITV, Amazon Prime and Netflix et al (unless it is being watched live at the time of broadcast).

The rest of your thread is correct. They have no right of entry (neither do the Police btw) and the chance of them being awarded a warrant to do so is miniscule and very easily challenged.

You should never EVER let these people into your property. EVER!!!