Posts by The Other Steve 1184 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Oct 2007
"Here Atos confirmed this. So Cabinet Office gave some excuse about the nature of the contract."
Ah, so this really is just about hiding the DWP's Byzantine and notoriously inefficient and expensive IT procurement process then.
Why do they bother ? Do they honestly think that people don't know what goes on there ? (rhetorical, obviously)
"the details would erode its ability to obtain value for money in future contracts"
The DWP actually seeks value for money in contracts ? Really ? Who knew ?
And how does that work anyway ? Presumably the DWP are concerned that if people realise just how much they're being ass fucked on this deal, then everyone will know they're easy ? In itself this is practically an admission - as if any were needed - that the contract involved in no way represents good value for money.
Another indicator is that the primary contractor's commercial interests could be damaged by revealing the financial model. There is but a single reason for that to be true, which is that somebody could undercut them. In which case boo hoo for them, welcome to the market, but yay for us because we just got actual value for money.
It shouldn't require an FOI, the stupid buggers would get much better VFM if they stopped trying to do all this under the table.
Paris, because she does things under the table.
But I think it may well be the idea that someone working on spatial technology for armed UAVs was not competent in the correct way to do numerical computing without arseing up the floats and getting rounding errors.
OTOH what's the blast radius on the rockets these thing pack ? Somewhere between 1 and 13 meters by any chance ?
"It sounds like somebody in their IT segment actually understands that the best tool for the job is ..."
Yeah I thought that at first, then I read it again, and this bit jumped out at me :
"He said the council, whose IT service director Paul Arrigoni recommended the mixed open source and proprietary software setting, would try to convince its partners to push the open agenda without cutting the council off from the outside world."
Two words in particular : "open agenda".
So perhaps what happened is the linux jihad in Bristol have been running around declaring non open software to be evil and trying to replace it with 'open' software. And they failed.
But they will continue to push their agenda, so that's nice.
"After all, Google's Chrome OS could arrive on some netbooks as early as next month, so perhaps Redmond is simply trying to stay ahead of the game, or else admitting it needs an insurance policy to keep Wall Street and its investors happy. "
I doubt anyone - least of all MSor Google - seriously believes that Chrome OS Is going to be competing with Windows on the biz desktop. And if anyone on wall street thinks that, then they've been listening to Rob Enderle (unlikely) and deserve everything they get.
In any case, if MS really gave a toss about wall street they'd have pitched Balmer over the side long ago.
"saying how even with the Apple walled garden, there is still malware on the iPhone."
Not a hater, love the iPhone, but if you do jailbreaky stuff there /is/ malware. The whole point of the so called "walled garden" is to prevent arbitrary unsigned code from being run.
As for the actual sploit, can I be the first to say "hahahahahahahahhahahaha". Guess what kids, if you download arbitrary code from 'hackers' on the internet bad shit can happen. Lesson learned, move along.
"If you love transparency so much then open up your AdSense and PageRank algorithms for the entire world to review. If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear, right?"
Erm, but they /do/ have something to hide, the AdSense and PageRank algos are the core IP that generate their profits. There is no benefit to them in opening that up, and frankly no benefit to everyone else either, since once we know the secret sauce Google will be gamed so hard it will become useless.
"Not only do apple bundle their own browser with the Jesus phone, but the specifically ban any other browser?
How is that not getting stomped on?"
Firstly, see above, Apple is not a monopoly. If you don't understand why this is important then you don't understand EU vs MS or DOJ vs MS at all.
Secondly, they haven't actually "ban[ned] any other browser", just mandated that any other browser use the WebKit framework APIs that are already on the phone. Hence the quote from the developer agreement given in the article : ""Apps that browse the web must use the iOS WebKit framework""
"What I meant to say is that MySQL "legitimized" the use of Postgresql in the corporate world. MySQL had a great marketing machine to sell something crappy. Now people realize they can use an open source database and Postgresql is the better technology."
No. Know how I know this ? Because I was prototyping corporate SaaS systems built on PostrgreSQL long before the web kiddies started beating their chests about MySQL.
"Regarding your Windows system - what is it doing ?"
Systems. Plural. But to pick just one : running a multinational pharmaceutical company's entire operation from document management, through mail, through ERP, through warehouse and logistics through monitoring and real time production in factories.
You need to get a dose of reality here and understand that some very large shops run end to end MS kit.
"Or is it a complex, custom system running a stock exchange ? Is it running SAP ? I guess it's not."
I bet you've got the slashdot post about the LSE switch to Linux printed out - with all the comments - and hanging on the wall of your room at your mummy's house, probably all neatly arranged around your candle-lit Stallman shrine. But then again, Direct Edge, Karachi, Bovespa.
You seem to be under the impression that there are no large volume trading systems that aren't based on Linux, once again if we compare your imagination with reality we see there are some large differences.
Linux is unquestionably a good OS and has scored some seriously impressive real world wins, and I have no doubt that it will continue to do so, but your assertion that MS does not, can not, and will not play in these same markets simply doesn't hold up to examination.
And by the way, you do know that you can run SAP on Windows ? With SQL Server as a backing store ? You knew that right ?
"You get low quality software"
Oh I'm going to enjoy the FOSS massive spitting it's dummy over that, but it is largely true, I actually use a lot of FOSS bits n bobs and I constantly see code that would never pass QA in grown up software development.
It isn't universal though, and curiously enough some of the projects that achieve consistently high quality are the ones that have a commercial model, because as you rightly say ...
"and will spend a lot of money hiring people to keep it working, patched, fixed, etc."
The ROI tradeoff is exactly the same as it would be with closed source, is it cheaper to do it here or be a customer amongst many sharing the costs of development.
So basically commercial FOSS is competing on price and quality, with openness being largely irrelevant, and if FOSS shops can do it cheaper or better because they can exploit useful idiots who will work for free then they win. Obviously this is much nicer than the horrid proprietary capitalist pig dogs.
"Other Unixes, MVS and Windows Server are all either legacy or irrelevant. Windows Server only matters where the there are not enough skilled sysadmins and/or programmers available. Small-scale stuff, generally."
Let me stop you there without engaging your prejudice directly by simply saying that I have personal experience of globe spanning windows systems, so your assertion fails in basis of fact. This is what happens when you imagine the world is precisely as you wish it to be rather than as it is, or when in fact you have no actual experience of what you are talking about.
You may also be interested to know that PostgreSQL predates MySql by (at least) five years, and has generally had quite a lead in terms of features.
If you're going to wave your geekWang around and pretend to be a big swinging unix dick, you need some facts to bolster your prejudice. And a beard.
While it may indeed be true that the average MCSE is little better than a trained monkey, and often much less entertaining, a freetard calling an MS pro 'parochial' is keyboard destroyingly funny.
And don't get your little linuxy frillies in a twist, MS have enough market share that they aren't going anywhere for quite a while.
"We need to wake up and think of designing programs or devices that will make it easy for the average person who knows nothing about them."
From the point of view of the user, the ideal application interface is a single button labelled "Do what I fucking want", the further away from this ideal you get, the worse your UI is.
Users do not want options and widgets. Users hate choice. Users want stuff that just works.
The 'not getting it' crowd are a vocal demonstration of my personal theory - developed over the last decade or so - that for some reason, IT attracts a higher than statistically normal number of whiny arrogant halfwits. Oddly enough, this set intersects with the 'users are stupid' brigade.
Is another question that wouldn't require three pages to answer, although if you switch orange to apple you would of course still get a good number of page hits and a couple of dozen retarded comments. Mostly pointing out that they just knew apples weren't good bicycle replacements and that is precisely why they weren't ever going to buy one.
But now we know for sure that a thing that isn't meant to replace a laptop doesn't make a good replacement for a laptop, and all advancement of human knowledge is good. And there is a wider point to made, one which many reg commentards would do well to understand, and that is that quite simply that no tablet is EVER going to replace your laptop.
Not even a mythical Linux tablet powered by unicorn tears. Different form factors, different use cases. Period. Take me for instance, I'm venting this spleen using an iPad from the comfort of my bed (yes, it's nearly two pm, real programmers do it at night, only cube monkeys work bankers hours) a task for which it is well suited. Shortly I will get up and walk to my office where I will use a number of desktop and laptop form factor machines to do other stuff.
You don't have to chose just one form factor and worship it as your god, see ?
Reading the original blog post from Greg DeKoenigsberg, it's clear that he is a whiny freetard douchebag who needs to man the fuck up.
You make your stuff 'open', and 'free' (for GPL values of open and free, warning : may not mean what you think) so that other people can use it and can contribute back to it, right ?
Then someone comes along and uses it and contributes back it and you spit your dummy because you think they aren't doing it enough or in the 'correct' manner ? WTF !!??
If you don't want people to take your stuff and use it, try a different licence, idiots. Oh and saying that anyone is riding Red Hat's coat tails is just the cherry on top, since Red Hat makes (so it tells us) gazillions of dollars off of ... LINUX.
Incidentally, I encourage anyone who wants a good laugh to go and read Greg's apology, which is even whinier than his original post. Gotta love these freetard on freetard bouts.
"The focus on TwitFace and the like and the decisoin to be a quick-boot OS on otherwise Windows Machines also gave me reason to doubt his commitment to open source."
You doubt the commitment to open source of a man who is in charge of the creation and maintenance of an open source OS that he gives away for free ?
Really ? How does that work ?
"And as this pioneer from the past keeps working, he's come into conflict with those on today's leading edge – the NoSQL movement"
Sigh me a river. The only thing the NoSQL 'movement' are on the leading edge of is the NoSQL movement.
And FFS why does it need to be a movement ? I have no problem with some bunch of kids of coming up with a solution in their particular problem domain and being chuffed about it. Look at this, isn't it neat ? Sure kid, have a dime bar.
Where it starts to go horribly wrong is where the happy shine in their geeky little eyes becomes glassy and evil and they run around like peasants with torches trying to burn everything that isn't their solution and shouting "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE PROBLEM DOMAIN!" and completely missing the point.
Lets face it, when Twitter's data store craps on itself and dies, a million asshats don't get to find out that Stephen Fry just had a dump and no one who matters gives a fuck. People doing enterprise OLAP have a fundamentally different relationship with their data and a completely different attitude regarding it's value and what trade offs they are prepared to make to achieve their goals.
But what the hell, MongoDB is web scale : http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6995033/
I can in no way condone burglary, and I am usually more than averagely sympathetic with non technical end users who get themselves into a bind because they don't know what they're doing.
With that said, this is getting way, way past stupidity. I see this kind of stuff all the time, my SO works in .edu and both students and staff are constantly putting stuff where it doesn't belong on the internet. It's gotten so bad now that in Wales right now the school governing body is trying to enforce a code of conduct that basically says something along the lines of "If you are out with your chums on a hen night at the weekend, you may wish to consider that your primary 3 class doesn't need to see those pictures of Shazza giving the stripper a blowie". Obviously I'm paraphrasing here. Individual institutions across the UK have been rolling such policies out with gay abandon the last few years.
There seems to be a fixed (and proportionally small) number of people who haven't figured out yet - and by now this means they are either woefully stupid or wilfully ignorant - that shit you put on the internet is not protected by a herd of friendly magic unicorns who will magically stop anyone from seeing it who isn't in your mental white list. Those same unicorns will not also be around to save from bad people. There are bad people, there are no unicorns.
Clearly, either we have to keep shouting this at people until they finally understand it, or we have to accept that we're probably going to lose some of the shallow end of the gene pool to predators.
I'm leaning toward the second one now. If people don't finally start to understand after this, we probably aren't going to miss them very much.
"Apple is getting increasing attention from competition authorities."
Really ? Which ones ? What does the sound of Apple getting increased attention sound like ? Do you have a .wav file ?
"If you bar one recompilation tool, then you have to be totally pure and bar the lot, without exception."
No. That is all.
"I suspect a Reality Inspector"
Consider to me to be the reality inspector for this comment, so far I have discovered nothing.
"... and has also mentioned the amount of $$$$ that Adobe could suck out of Apple's coffers if he continues with his one rule for Flash and another for everyone else."
On what grounds exactly ? Have Adobe filed suit ? Did they tell you this ? Did they release a statement to the press or just phone you up and tell you directly ?
Clearly Steve Jobs is not the only person with a reality distortion field.
"they were not sure whether some of what they might write might, in some other context, be made available for the delectation of our journalists"
They didn't have the balls to stand behind their assessments. Probably because they couldn't be justified in fact. Boo fucking hoo.
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