* Posts by Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

2452 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Sep 2007

IBM trades cold comfort for hot air in Microsoft-AWS slugfest

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

It's all marketing bullshit.

Cloud vs Managed infrastructure / applications that IBM have been doing in their datacentres for years.

There is no difference other than the underlying platform is all ESX or VMware imaged so setup can be automated and scripted for reduced startup time, and that cross frame resources can be added or removed "on account" until requir...

... sorry, I caught myself not using marketing bullshit... of course I mean "be made elastic".

* Facepalm *

Tesco tries to talk Tesco Mobile up from 'Value' to 'Finest' ahead of sale

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

@ Terry 6

I disagree. You are more than able to go and get a mobile and contract via Vodaphone or Three for example.

And no, I didn't miss the finer nuance of your post. You make it sound as though you are being held in stalag 14 - when in fact you are able to go and get a new contract with any number of new suppliers should you wish.

Alternatively you could fire off a complaint to Ofcom... let me know how that works out for you.

Sprint and Verizon to pay $158 MILLION over bogus 'cramming' fees

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

@ ASDF

I share the sentiment of your comment, but would add that the CEO's of these giant telco's probabaly aren't even aware that their marketing and operations departments are running these types of "service" (read : scams).

I'd also posit that it is most likely that the pushing of these services is done complicitly on the back of a risk based business case which goes something like this:

Predicted earnings running scam = $200m

Risk assessment against being fined = - £100m

Scam profit / Ker'chiiing-ment = $100m

Good eh? The new business is all about the money. Fuck the ethics.

The telco cartel long ago realised that customers have a short memory. And when customers have a limited choice in other suppliers, and, when all of those alternatives (i.e. your cartel partners) are running the same scam - the risk of reputational damage means nothing

EEeeeeek, complaints! Ofcom roasts BT-wannabe-spouse

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Interesting...

I'm sure I saw an advert the on the TV other day suggesting that Plusnet was the UK's "favourite and least complained about" ISP.

Granted, it was a Plusnet advert.

Traumatised Reg SPB team barely survives movie unwatchablathon

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Based on an El Reg comment post earlier this week...

On Wednesday evening I did...

Maximum Overdrive

Killdozer

and then, just for luck, a classic from my childhood...

The Monolith Monsters

Canada passes controversial spook-powers law

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Makes you wonder eh?

First the US, then France, Germany, and now Canada...

Microsoft Azure – or how to make the public cloud work for you

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

A foregone conclusion...

"As it turns out, making a workload elastic on Azure is so push-button simple that devoting an article to the topic borders on insulting the intelligence of the readership.."

*cough* *cough* Yeah, absolutely...

HP lifts lid on Autonomy lawsuit claims, but Lynch cries BOLLOCKS

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
FAIL

Mike Lynch is quite correct when he refers to HP management as "inept".

Just my $0.02 - I have been in IT management now for the best part of around 25 years in various forms. In that time I have had the misfortune of having worked on multiple engagements where HP have been either a delivery partner, SI or "consultancy" in some area or another.

In each of these engagements, the HP management and quality of those personnel, the managers themselves, and/or the quality of the usual litany of subcontracted offshore 3rd parties (mostly often also owned by HP BTW) can only be described as inept. "Totally shit" would be a more flattering description if you were wondering about the hierarchy.

I have no doubt that HP have some good people (somewhere) but they certainly aren't in professional services management as far as I can tell, or in the "provision of good value for money" department.

iPhone case uses phone's OWN SIGNAL to charge it (forever, presumably)

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

*cough* *cough* ahem!!!

"Vulture Central is quite sure that our readers will really get behind this device and not pooh-pooh the mobe-charging claims one bit. Right?"

Yeah, because we'd never do that...

Round Two in Sky vs Skype trademark scrap goes to Murdoch's men

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

I can't believe (well I can), but all the same...

That grown-up "professional" people get out of bed in the morning and go to work to argue about this crap.

Whilst I may occasionally grumble about my job, it does make me thankful that at least I spend my work day doing something constructive.

House of Cards UI central to Mozilla's plans for Firefox on tellies

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
Thumb Down

Alternatively...

I might just want to turn on the TV, have a quick flick through the guide, and pick what want to watch in a quick and efficient manner as possible.

Not have to navigate through a cumbersome menu structure just to do the basics.

Strange alien-like life zones found beneath Antarctic glacier

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Re: Science is hard

Indeed it is, and it's a moving target which makes it doubly difficult. Just when you get up to speed with all of the names and timelines of the "periods" and "epochs", you then have to get real to the fact that some of these "eras" actually have their own secondary eras, but that they are called the same as the preceeding era, but actually happened prior to the start of the next econtiguous era...

Take this one for example...

"the glacier sits atop a fjord-like valley that, as it filled with ice after the Miocene era Miocene era"

Brainfuck!!! :-$

>Ring, ring< Hey Wall St. Yeah, it's Google. Yeah, bad news again, fellas

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Yeah.. sorry folks...

We only made 10 gazillion dollars. It's just not enough is it.

giffgaff riff-raff hacked off with lift-off of cash spaff

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Excellent.

The perfect amount of information and abject sarcasm wrapped up in a bitesized news nugget.

McLaren CIO putters sideways into Heathrow Airport

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

@ Little Mouse

Thanks, we all know that PR fluff != Reality.

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Worked for him at McLaren...

He's a really good guy and made the very best of it despite being hamstrung by the trainwreck of McLaren corporate.

If you read this - best of luck Stuart.

Fed-up Colorado man takes 9mm PISTOL to vexing Dell PC

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Err...

So he has the right to bear arms - but not to actually discharge them?

Post Office denies IT blunders led to criminal charges against posties

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Re : A Post Office spokesman said...

"Over the past three years there have been exhaustive investigations which have not found any evidence of systemic problems with the Horizon system."

By whom? The Post Office?

The Internet of things is great until it blows up your house

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

I was going to write a reasoned detailed response...

But I can sum it up in 5 words:

What a load of old bollocks.

Incomprehensible boffins bring quantum computers a step closer

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
Go

Incomprehensible?

It made perfect sense to me once I'd seen through the sciency fog and considered it in relation to 24 Olympic sized swimming pools, 4 London buses... and a set of Bulgarian airbags.

Halifax's '24/7' online banking service is down YET AGAIN

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Perhaps...

All of the staff at the Indian based SI that now supports the majority of the Halifax's IT estate got their location mixed up and were looking for the "on/reboot" button in Halifax, NS?

Jailed Brit con phishes prison, gets bail

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
FAIL

It's no suprise the staff fell for it...

The only pay those G4 types by the hour.

Home Office awards Raytheon £150m over e-borders cancellation

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
FAIL

Honestly...

Even as a work of fiction this utter farce would appear far-fetched.

Google dangles $70m before new CFO to lure her from Wall Street

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Wowsers. That's some package...

...a lady said to me the other day.

In other news that's a hell of an offer. Makes my day rate look miserable - and I bet I do the same hours as well.

Labour has a pop at the government over missed GDS targets

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

RE : "Encountering serious IT problems."

Excuse me, but it is very rarely "IT" that is the problem on these large multi-year, multi-multi-million pound, 3rd party / SI party led programmes. The issue is normally that the fundamental prerequisites such as agreeing scope, putting in place the management controls, adequate requirements gathering and business analysis, and at least some modicum of level 1 design not having been completed and agreed before firing the gun on technical delivery - that is the issue.

It is usually "IT" that inherits the problem*.

Unfortunately, being "SI led" a lot of these big organisations get blinded by the benefits of the "agile method" - but get to hear none of the cons or prerequisites that still need to be in place to control it.

* - Thats's not to say IT are totally blameless all the time. I myself once tried to connect a PX11IES into a SUNZI RZ_11BXY before enabling the webmethods interface between R11a and the R/3 module. Boy that was a tough day. But we laughed... eventually.

BT fined £800k over lax emergency text relay delay blunder

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Perhaps the real reason was...

That BT couldn't hear them?

Aged 18-24? Don't care about voting? Got a phone? Oh dear...

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

@ Dave30

I was going to make this point but you beat me to it. Have an upvote for your efforts.

Attack of the Digital People: The BBC goes fully Bong

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Excellent

It's exactly this kind of article that allows El Reg to win my lunchtime "browsing time".

BBC: We'll give FREE subpar-Raspberry-Pis to a million Brit schoolkids

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

To balance the scales...

Those kids that have no interest in "coding"... what are the BBC giving them?

Because IT is just about coding and apps right?

Bulk interception is NOT mass surveillance, says parliamentary committee

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

I think I'll find myself a small disconnected island somewhere...

"This new legal framework should be based on "explicit avowed capabilities", together with the authorisation procedures, privacy constraints, transparency requirements, targeting criteria, sharing arrangements, oversight, and other safeguards that apply to the use of those capabilities."

Yes, and and prior to Snowden we were told that mass surveillance and interception was not actually happening and where it was required, that any requirement for it was actually covered by a legal framework. Except it was happening, and it wasn't covered by anything other than a tangled web of supposed regulations, with none of them tested legally.

Overall, the problem here is that the public no longer believes anything these people say. Last I heard it was government by democracy, not dictatorship. Has it changed?

Google's chief finance officer quits to go backpacking

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

If they are looking for a safe pair of financial hands...

Perhaps they should ask Andrew Fastow. I've heard he's available...

UK spaceport, phase two: Now where do we PUT the bleeding thing?

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

I'm assuming the minimum it requires would be...

A local pub filled with scum and villainy, and an ION cannon with which to clear the way of other bigger and angrier spaceships.

Lost WHITE CITY of the MONKEY GOD found after 500 years

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Re : Bah!!!

If he was 'illed' - that explains what happened to that long lost Beastie boy.

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Re : A forest 'of the first age'

So, Neldoreth in Beleriand then?

HP gulps down Aruba Networks for $3bn

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Oh Meg, what have you done...

"By combining Aruba's world-class wireless mobility solutions with HP's leading switching portfolio, HP will offer the simplest, most secure networking solutions to help enterprises easily deploy next-generation mobile networks."

And went on to add...

"Although I'd suggest you get your own professional services team to design, implement and support; as to be honest... we're just a little bit shit at that sort of thing."

High Court: IBM staff refused pay increases can claim damages

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
Mushroom

Waaaaah!!!! Judge won't play ball :-(

"The Court has acknowledged IBM's right to make changes in its UK pension programmes, which encompasses IBM’s need to screw a proportion of the hard working and talented employees that allow us to compete in the fast-changing technology world, and thereby pay our US execs their obscene salaries."

ANOTHER shake-up at HP Enterprise Services

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Based on my recent unfortunate encouter with them...

What HP should have done is axe the whole management and technical delivery layer and employ people who actually know what they are doing.

An utter shambles of a PS division.

NO ONE is making money from YouTube, even Google – report

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

You learn something every day...

I had no idea you could add a "-xxx" to a Google search to exclude key words and sites etc.

Thanks folks.

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
WTF?

No-one at all? But I thought...

That people were making gazillions of pounds posting videos of themselves playing and commenting on computer games, and posting shit videos of ugly cats and stuff???

El Reg regains atomic keyring capability

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
Stop

Errr....

I'm pretty sure they sell exactly the same thing at the cash desk of Cotswolds outdoor in Chichester for £1.99.

/* Just saying... */

Europol shuts down darn RAMNIT botnet

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
Mushroom

Gosport!

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Vodafone didn't have a £6bn tax bill. Sort yourselves out, Lefties

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Good article.

Thanks Tim. A very entertaining and informative read.

Just a point of opinion though - the Daily mail is not in the business of "news". It's in the business of selling comics to grown adults that really should know better.

Game of Moans: Sky coughs to BORKED set top box BALLS-UP

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
FAIL

You couldn't make it up...

"Have you tried turning it off and on again, and just for added pointlessness - give the cables a bit of a jiggle".

Virgin Media to splurge BEELLIONS on UK network infrastructure expansion

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
Meh

Hopefully they'll fix it...

So that the bandwidth that I'm supposedly paying for actually is available between 8 - 10 am and 6 - 9pm.

For all the crowing, VM are still pretty shit in terms of consistent bandwidth, but to be fair, very reliable in terms of service availability.

Adobe and software pals haul Forever 21 to court over piracy allegations

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Well...

"According to the companies’ filing with the US District Court of Northern California (available here – 12 page PDF), the amount of money they’ve lost in profits as a result of the copying has not yet been ascertained..."

... but as it's likely to be a minimum of 1 copy of something somewhere; that, at the very minimum must equate to around 100 gazeelion-beelion US restitutional dollars-worth of lost profit by the measure of some "friendly" West Texas kangaroo court.

DDN chap throws in towel, taps on Accenture’s door

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
Meh

Hmmm, perhaps...

But in my experience, what Accenture say that they can deliver, and what they actually deliver without a whole herd of pain and politics, rarely reconcile.

Big Blue's biggest mainframe yet is the size of a fridge

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
Happy

Sexy

Similar to a lot of the older, higher-end Sun data centre kit; and as with other higher end i and z series kit from IBM - it certainly is easy on the eye.

Great to see that mainframe is alive and well.

UNDER A VEST: Man cuffed for smuggling 94 iPhones strapped to his body

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
FAIL

Just when I think humans can't get any more dumb...

Someone goes and raises (or in this case, lowers) the bar.

Disney, McLaren and National Rail walk into bar: Barkeep, make me a Wearable

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

@ Kevin Johnston...

I believe there is already a company called INOV8 that make sports apparel.

What an ACE-HOLE! This super-software will whip you at poker, hands down

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Who is playing the role of the independent dealer here?

Who has independently audited that this poker playing computer doesn't know which cards have been dealt the human player?

The computer being both dealer and player in an online game would scare most players off.