Posts by Rob D.

Re: @Hamish Sadly Not Really New

By SLA fetishist, this means someone who understands the impact of legal contracts?

"I would like to pay the minimum for third party, fire and theft car insurance for a full year, but if during the year I have an at-fault accident, I'd like it to be handled just as if I'd paid full price for the fully comprehensive insurance."

In the actual case, the affected company might not have done their due diligence or might not have understood the difference between 'third party, fire and theft' and 'fully comprehensive' (or even that the different options existed), but ignorance is no defence. The resolution (systems back on without lasting damage to the business) embodies a harsh, proportionate and relevant lesson in why shifting to cloud provision really isn't a case of abdicating all responsibility for business continuity.

The way the commercial world handles this is through contracts (good and bad ones) with measurable SLAs to define or challenge compliance. No fetish required.

Re: Fgs

> there's plenty of good reasons to maintain that trade as well

This is true. And in the same breath, how much of Germany's business relies on export to other EU countries and export/import to/from non-EU countries? Germany's leaders and business leaders have already acknowledged multiple times that Brexit will hurt Germany, but nowhere near an extent that means Germany will not protect the integrity of the EU as an economic and political organisation even at the expense of German business with the UK.

More generally UK exports to the EU are about 12-15% of our economy, while exports to the UK from the EU are about 3% (might have been 4%), so even in the EU, Germany's influence in protecting Germany's self-interest with UK trade will only go so far anyway.

This is not a game of pick one anti-EU/pro-Brexit factoid and assume that it is the trump card to all the other issues that all the EU countries are weighing up. The fact is that it doesn't matter how much trade Germany does with the UK - the UK leaving will be damaging to both Germany and the EU but the damage is less important than protecting the EU for the remaining 27.

Re: Fgs

@Dr Dan H

> This is already happening right across the EU, hence economic growth is stalling everywhere ... the EU is showing every sign of descending into a long, slow and drawn-out death of its own making.

BS called - https://data.oecd.org/chart/5dnL. That's the OECD data on the EU 28 and if facts count in this debate, rather than made up stuff to suit whatever crud is being trucked out today, it's pretty obvious that growth rates across the EU are broadly unchanged over the last few years - not stellar and with some struggling, but generally steady after recovering from the 2008 crash era

Oh, and almost at the bottom of the pile for the last couple of years - the glorious United Kingdom. No idea why that could be happening though but maybe that same forensic, analytical approach could be applied to determine if it's actually the UK looking more like it is heading for a long, drawn out something (decline rather than death) of its own making.

Re: Fgs

> I do find it saddening that so many people refuse to even consider that there could be a better future, and are happy to leave everything in the hands of someone else.

I do find it saddening that some people are unable to recognise that rationally pointing out the impending harm for the country as a direct, predictable and unavoidable result of Brexit in the planned form (sign A.50 ASAP to avoid what happens when the blather is seen through, then see if we can cobble together some fantasy that the EU will buy in to as a favour to the special UK within the two years available) is not the same as giving up trying to get people to see sense.

Let's start with the economic impact of geographically close markets versus geographicaly remote markets, the various studies in this area (go find them, there are plenty to read or listen to, but start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_geography if unsure or try the LSE), the nature of trade deals and trading regions, and the reasons why the bulk of economic opinion is indicating that trade with RotW will not mitigate the impact of leaving the EU, unless either we have the kind of economic collaboration of a Norway-model (and stop being so Middle England about it all) or don't bother leaving the EU on these terms.

Or we can spit the dummy again about not getting what we want when we ask for fantasy stuff or when anyone points out what is really going to happen, eventually leave, then negotiate a Norway-style trade agreement with the EU in a few years time after our economy has lagged by a few percentage points, our stock has gone down a bit for negotiation, and the EU federalists have run riot absent the UK to moderate.

Re: Don't fret. It is all part of Trumps grand plan

In the interests of accuracy, you must specifically exclude countries with smaller populations otherwise the US is about 10th in the per capita queue, with a lot of the middle east countries higher up. Qatar in 2014/15 (sorry, last date I have a reference for), was up over 40 tonnes CO2pppy. See https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?year_high_desc=true.

Re: Don't fret. It is all part of Trumps grand plan

Perhaps there's some confusion here between straight talking and straight talking ill-informed bollocks - it is easy with Trump in the Whitehouse for this confusion to arise. For example, from the State of the Union address in Jan, "We have ended the war on American energy, and we have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal. We are now very proudly an exporter of energy to the world."

It's straight talking and includes the word 'beautiful' but is still unremitting bollocks aimed at a receptive audience: the US is a net energy importer with even the US Dept of Energy saying next decade for that to change; 'clean coal' is about the burning/capture of emissions not the coal; natural gas is cheaper than coal for businesses; US energy production increased during Obama's tenure; etc. References on request but FFS this is obvious stuff easily found.

Re: Kettle

You've got to enjoy the moment - being the first to give the authoritative, "No", in a "Just Do It" environment.

Defending your decision to people who assume they know more than you but don't realise it isn't your first rodeo and you read everything including the project history before you turned up on site is just the icing on the cake.

Re: Poor Mike

Yes, the sympathy gene was resonating a teensy bit with Mike there - not too much though. Listening to the audio you can hear the resignation in his voice and I could just picture the pre-meeting with Mike's management:

Mike: I've nothing to show. It's just bits of plastic and cables.

Management: Go on, Mike, we have every faith that you can spin this and make it look like gold.

Mike: But really I'm just the project lead. You've given me a fancy title and responsibility for the budget but I have no power and nothing to offer. We really should call it off.

Management: Look, Mike, it's like this. Either you go and sell this turd as if it's solid gold so we can get some more funding to polish the turd properly, or we fire you, you lose your health benefits and that nice house you live in.

Mike. Fine. Can I swing by the marketing office and take some Atari baseball caps with me - at least they work?

Re: Company selling security consultancy find security flaws shocker

> Agreed, but then again enterprise environments have the benefit of constant support and upgrades cycles.

Benefit? Of constant support and upgrade? Hey, that's a good one. I'm saving that for the pub tonight at half time in the match when we will all need to laugh hysterically if the team is 1-0 down to Tunisia.

Re: Losing access to Galileo has an advantage

> The EU. The only project you can invest billions in, then when you leave, you still owe money!

The differences between money you spent, money you have legally committed already, and money you have discussed spending but not committed to, shouldn't be that hard to understand.

Leaving the golf club doesn't immediately entitle you to a rebate on all the previous membership fees you've already paid (not even the remainder of this year's), or the generous contribution you already made to the ongoing building of the new car park which you haven't had the pleasure of parking your Jag on yet. But you probably don't need to honour a non-binding pledge to contribute to next year's planned bar rennovations.

As is so often the case with Brexit, there may be debate about exactly where the line is drawn, but the principle really isn't rocket science (except for Galileo, of course).

Re: Well

> As I keep pointing out we dont want a border and the Irish dont but the EU does.

The fact that the EU (negotiators) are stating that a border would be required does not equate to the EU stating that they want a border.

In a distopian future, Portugal votes to leave the EU (just because). The UK government, only a few short years after rejoining the EU and encouraged by patriotically feverish headlines from The Mail and The Sun about keeping close ties with our dear, departing Portuguese friends, is immediately lobbying hard encouraging EU member states to make a special exception for Portugal to maintain an open border with Spain. This in support of the deep cultural links the two countries have and the importance of Portugal maintaining all its trading benefits with the EU even once Portugal is outside the EU.

Nobody really wants a border with Portugal and it would be churlish to create a disadvantage for Portugal just for leaving. So we change the EU rules to give Portugal a special status that no other country in the world has, and everyone can agree to that, can't they? After all, everyone got right behind the idea of making such special exceptions for the UK over Ireland.

(Subtitute 'border with Ireland' for 'participate fully in Galileo' to get back on topic.)

Re: Auto-crash-pilot

you are thinking "is it going to brake? Am I supposed to take over? Oh shit it's not ..."

FTFY.