* Posts by Bluenose

330 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2010

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Did NSA, GCHQ steal the secret key in YOUR phone SIM? It's LIKELY

Bluenose

Re: Any chance of clarification...

Do you have evidence that the activities to undertake these steps were unauthorised? I am pretty certain that they will have the necessary legal sign off to obtain this type of material. Remember the Security agencies of any country are not directly bound by the laws of the land to the extent that the national governments have given them a specific objective to achieve using techniques and activities necessary to the achievement of the objective.

Someone downloading tv/music or any other copyrighted material for their own use without agreement from the seller or approval from their government is theft.

Bluenose

Re: Does anyone still think this is only about terrorism? ...Its just too big a dragnet...

You're making the same mistake that everyone makes, blame the 5 Eyes members. What about China,Russia, North Korea, South Korea, Israel, Iran and all the other countries in the world with a semi technical literate intelligence service? The fact that Western democracies refuse to control in any material way their media outlets allows this type of story to come out. Meanwhile journalists in other countries are prohibited from publishing similar stories (to the extent that someone has not been killed before telling them) on risk of death or because the Govt controls what they print.

Billions are threatened by this but not because of the 5 Eyes members but because most intelligence services are doing it and those that aren't well they want to.

£100 MILLION poured down drain on failed UK.gov IT projects - in just ONE YEAR

Bluenose

Re: Government contracts

Government would have provided the contract and refused to negotiate on any of the terms.

Bluenose

Re: As a new start up...

Or you could simply apply to join one of the many Govt frameworks that are out there: G-Cloud, Network Services, Digital Services, Technology Services, etc. These are all designed to allow small companies to get their foot on the ladder of Govt. tendered work. Of course you will have to sign up to all the T&Cs but then most small companies never let an onerous contract term stop them from bidding :)

Bluenose

Re: Basically...

You must see some odd Govt contracts then since I deal with them daily and every contract I look at has clauses in that allow the customer to claim for actual loss if the supplier is late in delivery or does not deliver the services to specification. In fact I recently tried to amend one framework where suppliers does not get paid for any work performed if they are late in delivery by more than a fixed number of days. Govt would not even return the work products that were provided even though they had not paid.

Oh and by the way the reason there are no penalty clauses in UK Govt contracts is because under English Law you cannot seek a penalty in a commercial contract. Only damages to put you back in the position you would have been in had you not entered in to the contract and those clauses in Govt contracts are comparable with the IT industry norm for contracts.

'Tech' City hasn't got proper broadband and it's like BT doesn't CARE

Bluenose

Re: BT in GB and AT&T in the US

Of course they want to suck every penny out of the infrastructure, it cost them (or in BT's case the British taxpayer) hundreds of millions if not billions of pounds to implement that infrastructure and will now cost billions to upgrade it. The whole purpose of capitalism is to maximise the return from an investment in order to earn a profit and create the capital needed for future investments. Dumping an infrastructure before it has paid for itself or created the capital to replace it is a dumb idea.

In fact it is almost as dumb as a politician demanding that BT provide a service to their constituents. Why should BT have to be told what to do, if it believes it can maximise its profits by providing services elsewhere then that is its right as a private (although shareholder owned) company. If the politician really wants to be able to dictate where business invests its cash and seeks its profits then nationalise the company so that you have the right to make that demand.

HMRC fails to plan for £10.4bn contract exit... because it's 'too risky'

Bluenose

Re: Fraud Vs Incompetence

Only certain companies can bid because only certain companies can afford to accept the unlimited liabilities, bureaucracy, prevarication and constant change of requirements that goes with bidding for such a contract.

The people from the Internet world are employed and look at what a good job Martha Lane Fox did before she left. The remainder all work for Digital Services and they are doing a great job on the Government portal and various "Catalogue" sites that Govt customer are supposed to buy through these days.

And of course in all the commentary against this article no one has mentioned networks, firewalls, Govt required security lockdowns, the exceptions to those lock downs and all the other stuff that is needed to be in place before you can even start to build the application.

The change in value of Aspire would appear, based on an August 2014 article, a result of the most popular game in the Public Sector, buy A and then introduce change after change, after change, after... ad infinitum.

Finally, I would love to see the Internet world expert explain to the Dept how they can take their solution built on mainframes and written in ancient languages (like Cobol and Fortran) and easily convert them with a few lines of HTML code in to a brand new solution. In reality what they need is someone who stops them changing their mind about the functionality they need, when they need it and why imposing MI5 level encryption rather than the type used by Banks is a bad idea. Those are the people the Public Sector need but they are also the type of people politicians hate because they stop you implementing stupid ideas and policies by telling you how much it is going to cost.

Then there were 3: Another UK mobile network borged ...

Bluenose

Re: Wrong logic

Considering the limited scope of BT's plans for FTTC, it is more probable that they will only get a few thousand additional small cells and all of them will be in large urban conurbations. Us poor "country" dwellers will have to stick with Vodafone 3G or what ever other company sticks up a mast but doesn't bother extending its LTE to them.

Cheer up UK mobile grumblers. It's about to get even pricier

Bluenose

Re: Seriously?

But then again you could go and ask the same group about EU legislation and most of them wouldn't be able to tell you what EU legislation was the cause of the issues.

Most people are ignorant about the EU and believe whatever simple arguments are given to them because it is to hard to understand the complexities. More people believe that the EHCR is part of the EU than believe in Father Christmas.

That said I doubt that anyone supports UKIP because of mobile phone charges.

EU copyright law: Is the Pirate Party's MEP in FAVOUR of it?

Bluenose

Getting access to authors proved difficult?

I must admit I found the statement from the report that getting access to individual authors and other creative types was difficult. The fact that the people who speak on behalf of these people are also businesses with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo is a concern to me. How do we truly know, both the members and the recipients, that the case being put forward by such bodies is unbiased and correctly reflects the views of those whose work should be protected? Does the PRS actually seek input from its members in order to respond to questions from people like this MEP or do they create their own version of the truth as they see it?

Personnaly I think the report as reported here appears to be reasonably well balanced and attacks a few issues that I think need attacking for example the fact that if I buy an e-book I get only a license to use not ownership of the book. This limits my rights, versus those in physical goods space, to sell on something I no longer need or to loan it to someone else. Perhaps I should stick to buying the physical and ignore the electronic world, not least because the actual savings achieved are minimal if I am not a big purchaser of music or books or even DVDs.

Bluenose

Re: Double edged sword

So everyone should sell at the lowest possible price and then we can all live on $1.50 a day like the people in the rest of the world. Sounds fair enough of course it will put paid to the products that are developed in rich countries as they cannot to recruit people at $1.50 per day for some reason.

There will always be an imbalance between the cost of goods in under developed economies and those in developed economies, not least because of the exchange fluctuations that exist between economies, £1 in the UK is equal to Euro 1.3 today but maybe only Euro 1 tomorrow.

Economic control also drives up the price. The luxury good markets love China and other countries where the use of money is controlled by fixed exchange rates and limitations on peoples ability to travel. They are the countries where luxury goods sell for the full price whereas in the developed economies they sell below that price because people can go elsewhere to find it cheaper.

Nothing will ever be sold for the same price all around the world apart form U2 albums from Apple.

UK.gov prompt payment promise is POPPYCOCK - NAO

Bluenose

Whose fault is this?

The following is taken from the CCS model contract (framework agreement) which is used as the basis for all current Govt framework agreements including IT and is publicly available on the CCS website:

23.2.1 The Supplier shall ensure that all Sub-Contracts contain a provision:

(a) requiring the Supplier to pay any undisputed sums which are due from the Supplier to the Sub-Contractor within a specified period not exceeding thirty (30) days from the receipt of a valid invoice; and

So the Framework that suppliers sign requires them to include this in their contracts and the clause goes further insisting that the Supplier tell the Govt when they have not met the 30 days limit and gives the Govt the right to publicise this failure and still this is an issue??

The problem here that the NAO really needs to highlight is that Govt Contract Managers do not enforce the contracts they sign and CCS waste time putting clauses in to contracts that they never enforce. Perhaps if Civil Servants did their job things might change.

HP breaks for Xmas week - aka 'staff hols' - source

Bluenose

Re: Exactly, makes sense

You must be American, in the UK 4 days does not equal 50% of vacation

The police are WRONG: Watching YouTube videos is NOT illegal

Bluenose

The PR department said "may"

And therein lies the issue. It "may" be criminal dependent on the wording in the Terrorism Act 2006 if you regard You Tube or any other media site on which the video has been made available as passive and that therefore the act of transmission is initiated by the person who clicks on the play button for the video. As the police wish to stop people viewing this (and not necessarily for criminal purposes but for the protection of the public in general) then they may "choose" to interpret the law in such a way. As the PR wonk said, it is all down to interpretation.

It is important to remember that the police are not only required to respond to criminal incidents but to act in such a way as to protect the general public from the possibility of crime. By interpreting the law in a particular fashion they may well be able to restrict or prevent people from doing something criminal. For example by planting the suggestion that watching a certain type of video may be illegal they may be able to prevent young knobheads from circulating the link as a joke or windup or even threat ("grass us up and this is what will happen to you") which is according to the Act a crime. One only has to look on line at the idiots who pose with guns or the money from drug deals to see some of the idiots that the police have to contend with or even worse the drunks who piss on war memorials while their mates film them.

I am not friend to the police having seen members of my family suffer from their stupidity and desperate attempts to justify large sums on investigating non-crimes but at the end of the day they are a very thin line responsible for protecting a lot of people and have often given their lives in undertaking that duty and it appears to me that they may, given a more favourable view of their actions be seen as trying to prevent crime by implying that an innocent act could be interpreted as a crime.

Pentagon hacker McKinnon reinvents himself as SEO guru

Bluenose

So not just the rich and famous

are able to avoid taking responsibility for their action. Or does he count as "famous" now?

Microsoft's Euro cloud darkens: US FEDS can dig into foreign servers

Bluenose

why would the Irish know?

If the warrant has been served on Microsoft in the US on the basis that Microsoft controls Microsoft Ireland then the obtaining of the data would be an internal activity which would be out of site of the Irish courts. Unless the specific individual knew that a)they were being investigated and b)that the warrant had been issued so at to be able to seek an injunction from an Irish court then the Irish would have not involvement in the decision to hand the data over.

UK.gov's Open Source switch WON'T get rid of Microsoft, y'know

Bluenose

Re: Of course it won't get rid of MS

'I've no evidence to support this, but I suspect the vast majority of users don't use Macros and other fiddly bits in their day to day ops (we certainly don't) and wouldn't notice the difference.'

Does this mean that OO and other ODF based products are now capable of tracking document changes and presenting it as markup? That was the biggest problem that we had in my old company and why a lot of people didn't use the ODF products, they could not support the monitoring of text changes in documents which in organisations which collaboratively work on them is a bit of bind. Of course the move nowadays is to collaborative document editing in the Cloud which while clever is not always an effective use of people's time.

French authorities take lead in grilling Google on 'Right to be Forgotten'

Bluenose

Hmm Interesting Position

"Following widespread concern from digital civil liberties groups, who believe that profit-making companies should not be making judgments about what is in the public interest at all...."

I assume that these people obviously also disagree with the newspapers and other media outlets all of whom determine what is in the public interest when deciding their editorial policy. Of course it could be argued that Google is not making such a decision as they only provide the link to another publisher who has already decided that publishing the information is a matter of public interest (well at least at the time they published it) therefore in reality it is the requestor and not Google who is determining whether or not something is in the public interest by asking for the link to be removed on the basis it is no longer in the public interest.

Perhaps people should stop and think this whole thing through a bit better than the judges who still think Androids are called Marvin and act pretty miserable.

Seeking LTE expert to insert small cells into BT customers' places

Bluenose
Alert

On the other hand

Is this how they plan to overcome the costs of deploying fast broadband to the expensive users , by deploying LTE wireless routers in the home and doing away with fixed line communications in their entirety?

'Unsolicited texts' outrage: Man fined £4k for DPA breach

Bluenose

How to stop PPI calls & SMS

Banks & Govt agree that no claim for PPI made by a third party on behalf of an individual will be dealt with but that the Bank must contact the individual directly (with their information being provided by intermediary to the Bank for free) to determine if compensation is payable.

Thus the individual claim will still be dealt with but the pariah firms who rip people off wouldn't get a penny

Days since IBM last reported revenue growth: About 810

Bluenose

Not all shareholders.....

Demand their pound of flesh from IBM.

The bigger issue from my perspective as a shareholder is that the board's incentive scheme for the directors is focussed solely on increasing the dividend to shareholders. This means that the directors don't care about whether the company grows in financial terms only whether they can generate sufficient free cash to pay the shareholders and earn themselves huge buckets of dollars.

I think that this focus on returns to shareholders is driven by the directors and has nothing to do with the demands of Wall St. IBM's directors are in this business for one purpose alone, to make as much money as they personally can at the expense of the staff and the company.

Phone charging log helps to convict murderer

Bluenose

Re: @Russell Hancock

But if the power cut was local, i.e. the fuse blew for the circuit that the socket was on, then he could simply have said I got up and fixed the fuse.

The obligation to prove guilt lies with the prosecution so defence would not have had to provide anything, the prosecution would need to show that the fuse didn't blow or that he got up to fix it during the night when he claimed he was asleep, etc.

And finally, I bet the charging information is on the phone and therefore not something GSHQ or NSA need to force the ISP/phone company to keep. It probably also has a set size so wipes entries to maintain space.

ISPs 'blindsided' by UK.gov's 'emergency' data retention and investigation powers law

Bluenose

Re: Get a grip

To the best of my knowledge I have never committed a crime in the UK but I have made a number of political points on the internet. Why does the Govt need to have my ISP retain my metadata other than to monitor my political leanings and writings? Seems to me the Govt is in breach of my right to privacy there.

In addition the retention is not to prevent or deter crime rather it is a blunt instrument which would allow individuals to be identified who may well use UK telecommunication links to post online about their own countries. The retention of their metadata will allow countries such as Iran, Norks and others to identify those users (by hacking ISPs, seeking legal injunctions, etc) and take action against them. Therefore rather than deterring crime it is actually in a position to potentially improve the capability of foreign countries to act against their opponents in the UK in criminal ways. Or even domestic criminals who can look to trace people in the witness protection scheme.

Bluenose

Nick Clegg = Idiot

Just goes to show how thick Nick Clegg is, no Parliament is bound by the laws passed by a predecessor. Therefore all that happens is next Govt renews legislation in 2015, immediately after election, removing "poisoned pill" and hey presto its in place forever. As Nick and his mates won't be around in 2015 having received insufficient votes to elect an MP, the party in power will get its own way by enforcing three line whip to and threatening to link anyone who refuses to vote with the party line that they will make public dirt that the whip's office has on them.

Better to have the arguments about this legislation now while no party can force through this type of legislation instead of waiting until that is no longer an option.

Russian law will force citizens' personal data to be stored locally

Bluenose

And Edward Snowden looked down...

on his revelations and realised that in giving the game away for the UK and UK he had set in motion an onslaught of domestic regulation in many countries of the world determined to be able to do the same thing to their own citizens as the US and UK. And Edward thought "what a stupid f********r I have been". Or he would do if he was as bright as he thought he was.

Sometimes you have to accept that something wrong may need be tolerated in order to prevent something worse happening. The reality was once countries woke up to the fact that the US and UK were monitoring data stored in the local data centres and all the traffic coming in and out, they would all want to do it especially those with a poor record in relation to citizen privacy in the first place.

I suppose we can't blame him in for this directly but his revelations will have given ideas to those despots who are not particularly strong in new technology and they will not be out shopping for the hardware and software to do this.

NHS delivers swift kick to Microsoft's wallet over fee demands

Bluenose

Re: Ransom

Sorry but your post highlights your lack of knowledge about the NHS. Many of the products used within the NHS are niche, designed for a specific purpose and crucial to saving lives. I am not saying that the NHS does not use standard Microsoft products since they do but, Sourceforge and the general FOSS community do not produce applications that can be used to manage the millions of x-ray images that are generated every year, nor do they supply the pharmacetical patient records that are required to ensure people don't get the wrong medication. The cost of replacing these applications with FOSS based products would not only wide out any licence savings in respect of MS products but would also take some considerable time to produce. In the meantime people would die.

People who see the move to FOSS as the cure all for technology woes and Microsoft dominance do so through their own rose tinted glasses. The problem is that when you get down to it any migration of the Microsoft product set is beset by difficulties and additional costs to the organisation going that route.

An example from my own experience can be found in moving to Open Office since that product was unable to deal with tracking changes to the documents I authored which meant undertaking reviews was slow and complex when compared to the simple (if flawed) Microsoft track changes functionality.

VC who wants to split California REVEALED as Silk Road Bitcoin slurper

Bluenose

How long before.....

someone hacks their systems and nicks all the coins??

Snowden defends mega spy blab: 'Public affairs have to be known by the public'

Bluenose

Snowden is neither a whistleblower or hero

Snowden revealed what most people believed anyway so he wasn't a whistleblower. A whistleblower discloses what you don't know and cannot guess for example that the tobacco industry knew in the 50s that cigarettes killed people.

As for a hero; well let's think about that he spilled the beans on an employer who he had a contract with (breach of contract is a civil offence) and damaged the national security of both the UK & US (he may claim there has been no damage but he is not really in a position to judge sitting outside of those countries) and that is a criminal offence. On top of this his disclosure is unilateral and one sided in scope which means that Russia, China and Israel amongst many others now have a lot of detail of how the US and UK spy on them but the UK and US have no public visibility of how those countries are spying on us (not I don't say them because the likelihood is that those countries also undertake mass surveillance of both their own citizens and the citizens of other countries).

As for his defence that he went through the official channels at NSA to complain about what he believed where breaches of the law, does no one stop to wonder why the e-mails he claims to have sent have not been produced by the newspapers who supplied this material too? Surely he took a copy of his own e-mail file? But then perhaps the reality is as the NSA says, he never uttered a word to them.

I hate the idea that I am being spied on and I also dispute that you can spot patterns in the general population without having at least one person in whom you are interested but at the same time I dislike people who claim the high moral ground when actually they are simply a spy for the other side whether deliberately or by accident.

Please note this is not an AC post.

Shift over, TV firms: LTE Broadcast will nuke current mobile telly tech

Bluenose

Who cares?

At the end of the day countries will still need DTT for the simple fact that millions of people cannot get a 4G signal and the 3G they get is pretty crap too and that is just in the UK.

Auditors blast Blighty cops over binned multi-million pound IT project

Bluenose

What no termination for convenience clause!!

Simply amazed, no clause in the contract that says the police can cancel the contract for convenience and pay a sum for that privilege that is less than the final value of the contract (e.g. covers lost profit but not cost of staff). This is a standard in pretty much every public sector contract I have come across.

Satellite 'net hype ignores realpolitik

Bluenose

"Satellite is good for when you're stuck miles away from civilisation (eg; Amazon Jungle, Sahara Desert)" or when you live in a village in England that is only 2 miles from a town with fibre broadband or in the Highlands of Scotland or even in Wales.

Believe me satellite is slowly becoming an attractive option to those of us who don't live in places where BT need to compete with Virgin because despite all the bull, the reality is that BT are only looking to compete with Virgin and Sky and all the money in the worl (or even half a billion pounds) is not enough to get them to deploy fibre outside of small towns.

Piketty thinks the 1% should cough up 80%. Discuss

Bluenose

Another "stop picking on the rich" article

having read my earlier post I realised it did not communicate what I was trying to get across so withdrew it, Hopefully better second time around.

This article is typical of those who try to draw attention away from the facts; the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer both on an income and wealth basis. It is that widening gap that Picketty is trying to show and actually achieve in his book.

By using the word "benefits" the author is seeking to suggest that only the poor will benefit from state handouts perhaps saying Govt assistance might even the field because when use different language people start to think about tax breaks and financial assistance given to the rich as well as the income supplements and replacements that constitute "benefits". Who remembers all those rich people making huge financial returns because the govt did not tax tree plantations the same as other assets?

Wealth is measured on the basis of its economic utility. The NHS and state pension cannot be converted to cash since removing the NHS would not necessarily result in a fall in taxation and the state pension paid from general taxation has no underlying value only that which can be received at the point in time it is paid (and in most instances is an income replacement benefit).

The rich on the other hand have wealth that can be readily converted to cash. Selling the farm is swapping an asset for cash, as is selling shares. The liquidity means that the rich can move their money in to investments and activities that deliver a better rate of return which means that their wealth will always increase unless they make stupid investments. This is not an option available to people at the bottom who do not have the surplus income to get in to the wealth generation business nor to procure the services of those who will happily reduce the amount of tax an individual pays.

The author of this article is trying to defend the the indefensible, an increasing wealth gap is not good for society (as Czar Nicholas) there needs to be some sort of steady state position whereby there is a gap but it is not seen as unfair or subject to material change over long periods which is the problem today. One only has to look at the US to see even the mega wealthy there are concerned about this growing inequality in both wealth and income. Sensible people see the risks and want to address them. Foolish people write articles that try to hide the truth by distraction in an effort to continue the current trend.

IBM, HP, others admit products laced with NORK GOLD

Bluenose
Thumb Down

What a non-article

Lets have some basics here. North Korea is a pariah state in the eyes of western nations but that does not mean it is not a nation in the eyes of others. North Korea has a major ally who is also its biggest trading partner, it is called China. Who is the world's biggest producer of cheap electornics due to its large industrious low paid workforce, that's it, China a country which is not regarded as a pariah state despite the fact that its treatment of its populace is not exactly a million miles from the way North Korea treats its.

Now the big news, American corporate giants and those companies of other western nations who want to produce goods cheaply to sell at vast margins (talking about you here Apple) to customer's around the world, all buy their electronics in China.

I am amazed that anyone felt they had to do this research as it is abundantly clear that North Korean resources were likely to be used. In fact I would not be surprised to find out that Foxconn workers each rice produced in North Korea and that the slightly radioactive paint for watch dials used in the Chinese watch industry is also produced in North Korea in a factory next to where they test their nuclear weapons.

Vodafone turns to EU, asks it to FORCE 'fair' fibre pricing

Bluenose

Re: So how did EE manage to launch 4G?

They only launched 4G in selected areas (mainly large cities). By minimizing the likely market for customers they have managed to control the growth of data throughput thus reducing their current requirement for increased fibre bandwidth.

Once someone actually deploys a nationwide 4G network (which is Vodafone and O2s plan) the demand for data backhaul will increase exponentially with each new user added to the network since they will want access everywhere and not just in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, London, etc.

Bluenose

Not quite true either

BT made a significant investment in fibre in the main conurbations of the UK alongside Virgin's established network and has continued to make that investment in an attempt to a)compete against Virgin and b)to establish its own fibre monopoly in areas where Virgin are absent (although it does sell access to that fibre to other suppliers). No other telco has made anywhere near the investment BT has made in fibre.

Where government funding has come into play is in the rural (or allegedly rural) areas of the UK but even here BT still has to provide funding as part of the work.

Therefore the original poster is probably more accurate; BT has made a major investment in fibre and others have sat on their hands and waited to see what happens. They have then sought to prevent BT recovering a high margin on their investment by calling for price regulation on something that they could have done themselves but didn't bother to do.

How exec snatched $6m budget from his infosec team because he couldn't see ROI

Bluenose

Re: Sales Proficiencies

Back in the '80s there was talk of developing what were called hybrid managers to work in IT. These would be senior people who would bridge the gap between the business and this new place called the IT department. Regrettably the only companies who have actually managed to implement this model of the IT companies themselves. Companies like Google and Amazon (and yes I do see Amazon as an IT company).

Meantime the rest of the business world has looked at IT and identified that it can be used to get rid of people, do things faster whilst reducing the costs and as something they HAVE to do but don't really understand why. Security however is not something they understand unless it has a value associated with it that lets them see why it is important. For example if you have a warehouse full of goods that will be sold the value of paying £7 - £8 per hours for a security guard is a good security investment (value of lost goods minus guards salary = profit).

The same is also true for IT security lost value of company strategy minus cost of computer security equals profit. Exposure of company strategy plus head start of competitors = big loss. These are simple conversations and should be straightforward to have. Why we don't have them is strange because I can guarantee that every company worth its salt is currently getting its lawyers to include clauses in contracts that say if the supplier is responsible they will accept unlimited liability for data loss.

Bluenose

Re: Sales Proficiencies (@ Don Jefe)

You must have a lot of fun when abroad, tell me do you shout loudly whilst speaking slowly?

The board is full of people who think they know about business and their focus is on making money (allegedly for the shareholders but predominantly for them). The company (business) is their country and IT is the foreigner so the foreigner needs to learn to talk their language not the other way round.

Bluenose

Re: No appetite

So their risk appetite is to avoid all risk. There see they do have a risk appetite whether they know it or not. Everyone has a risk appetite just because they don't know what it means does not mean it doesn't exist.

The next step is to point out to them that they cannot avoid all risk (it is an impossibility as Donald Rumsfeld who said it all when talking about the unknown risks that we don't know about rather than the unknown risks we do).

Next point out that a failure to address security will allow someone to steal all their money leaving them with a set of accounts that the auditors won't sign off on.

Finally write to the company auditors explaining where the security risks are in the financial systems and watch the fireworks start.

Brit IT workers are so stressed that 'TWO-THIRDS' want to quit

Bluenose

Working Time Directive

According to the article this does not apply in the UK, sorry but that is very wrong (ask junior doctors). The directive applies and the time is calculated over a three month period however, individuals can elect under the UK implementation to waive their rights in this area so that they are not bound by the directive.

In my experience most people have "opted out" without actually knowing they had the right to be covered by the directive.

As to most of the posts on this article - lots of very biased individuals out there with their own stereotypes in mind from which they don't appear to want to move. Public sector is not an easy place to work for contractors, staff or outsourcer and I know having been on all sides of the fence.

Then again have seen the easy life in private business as well as the stress and strains that go with it. Funnily enough I find that the world is different in every single organisation I work in.

MPs attack BT's 'monopolistic' grip on gov-subsidised £1.2bn rural broadband rollout

Bluenose

BT must be loving this deal

I live in a small village of about 400 houses and businesses. Our local Duke has fibre to the premises which he paid for (lucky him, inherited wealth is so useful) while the rest of us are stuck with a maximum speed of 3mbps before the everyone finds out and piles on at which point it starts to fall (rapidly) to less than 2mbps. However because BT can provide upto 2mbps to the village we have been carved out of the local broadband plan.

Our local council sought out lots of ideas and feedback for their local superfast broadband plan a couple of years ago. I happily said I would pay up to £30 per month for fast (not even super) BB. Now they have published the plan and oh my all those small market towns of a couple of thousand properties and more being built every day are all due to get the upgrade. The fact that Virgin also has fibre in those towns can't have anything to do with it I suppose (ROFL).

Our village is further away from its exchange than it is from a small nearby town that has superfast broadband with FTTC. The cost of laying in some fibre from that exchange to the village and the green cabinets we have here should be fairly cheap but no, the local plan which is a partnership with two biggish towns means that we get bugger all. The two biggish towns are subsidising BT to install broadband in areas where there is already a reasonably strong economic argument to do the work anyway.

BT are telling the customer want they can have and ignoring what the customer wants/needs. Such an approach is OK where the customer budget is insufficient to provide what they want/need but in this instance it is wrong. Local councils should be prioritising those places they know BT cannot install to without a subsidy and BT should be paying in the more economic locations. But as usual councils are scared BT will walk away if they exercise their rights.

Bluenose

Re: Could competition have worked?

And the problem with that solution is that you find yourself needing to swap providers every year as all your neighbours pile on to the provider with the best performance.

I watched my TalkTalk service go from good to OK to very poor indeed. Switched to BT which was very good, has no gone to OK and by next year will be pretty awful.

While changing suppliers is straightforward it is a right pain and I don't want to be switching suppliers every year, I want to make use of the broadband.

Office of Fair Trading: UK.gov IT deals lack effective competition

Bluenose

No contract drafting required

On G-Cloud there is no need for the supplier to draft a contract that already exists in terms of the Call Off agreement. The suppliers only need to add specific terms and conditions for their offering as well as a service description and day rates (if required).

Most small suppliers are not in a position to negotiate changes to Govt contracts and to be honest most of the so called oligopoly are unable to get any material changes to the terms of such contracts. So everyone is shafted by the onerous terms and the need for everyone to be SC cleared even when cleaning windows from the outside.

MPs blast HMRC for using anti-terrorism laws against whistleblower

Bluenose

Re: We want action @Mad Mike

What on earth makes you think he'll end up in Guantanamo? That's the last place they will put him. There are lots of other places that we don't know about within easy reach of a learjet that they can send him.

Oxfam, you're full of FAIL. Leave economics to sensible bods

Bluenose

"negative wealth"

What the hell is negative wealth? Is it what people used to call debt? If you have £30K of student debt that is not wealth. You may regard it as an investment in an asset (a university degree) which may or may not result in an improvement in your overall wealth such that the debt is repaid but which ever way you look at it, debt is still debt.

With respect to the taxation of the rich, yes they are taxed in order to pay pensions, for the NHS, defence, policing, etc. But only partially for the benefit of the poorer people in society since believe it or not the availability of pensions, NHS, defence and policing et al is also provided to the rich and let's be clear the poor earning about a certain level also contribute to this at a level that is disproportionate to their income.

Oxfam are right to exclude the pensions and NHS plus all the other state provided elements of wealth from their calculation as these net out at zero in terms of value to all parties (rich and poor). The loss of paying for these items is however far greater for the poor whereas the value of state welfare is far more valuable the wealthy; think tax breaks for buying trees, not using farmland, investing in commercial property, etc. Also think about the tax breaks available for investing in other commercial ventures which mean you get the double whammy of reduced tax and potentially large investment returns.

As for the absurd statement that it is logical that 5 families own more of the UK's wealth than some 20% of the population, why is that logical? Why should it not be 5% of the UK has more wealth than the bottom 20%?

Redistribution of wealth is a bigger driver of progress than ownership by a few will ever be. Those at the bottom should and normally are always striving to improve their lot thus creating demand for goods and services primarily met by large scale industrialization and thus generation of employment and wealth. Those at the top always seem to be seeking greater returns thus generating more automation resulting in fewer jobs or paying of lower wages thus cutting consumption and reducing employment although not necessarily so in the country of low wages.

Wealth inequality will always exist it is something that cannot be changed but the question that Oxfam is really asking is to what should that level of inequality be; where those at the bottom have to rely on charity to feed themselves whilst the rich can pay over the odds for a tin of tuna? or should the inequality be reduced where all people are able to feed themselves to an acceptable level without having to go in to "negative wealth"?

Bitcoin bust litigants fling sueballs at Japanese bank

Bluenose

Desperation creeping in!

Can't see any legs in this one. The Bank would have had to know the customers in order to segregate their cash. As thebank's customer was Mt Gox can't see how Mr Greene would have been known to them therefore to remote from the claim and thus no chance of winning.

Reporters without Borders confirms, yes, lots of nations are spying on their citizens

Bluenose

Bit confused here....

Reporters without Borders says that:

The placement on the list puts the US and UK into a rather dubious group of nations that have been called out for censoring web access and cracking down on journalists.

So let's see the Guardian and other papers in the UK as well as various newspapers in the US have all been happily printing the press releases provided by Edward Snowden about how much spying is going on. Yet any other country on that so called list plus the majority of the others that are not on it would probably have shut down such newspapers, imprisoned the owners and probably shot the journalists. Please explain to me how spying on the citizens (and the extent to which the Govt actually looks at the citizens information is still unclear) equates to attacking and harming journalists.

I also note that like most trade unions or protective organisations there is no mention of those journalists who willingly print, present or communicate the lies and flummery of their own county's governments. For example are the journalists working for China State TV highlighted in their report as gang of toadies who will lie for money?

The whole issue of GCHQ and NSA is criminal in my view and without merit. As I have previously pointed out without actually having someone to watch looking for patterns in a massive load of data is probably worthless. But report such as this really piss me off as they are politically and emotionally biased in this instant in respect of two countries that actually do have, to the extent that it is reasonably possible in an imperfect world, a free press where journalists can go about their daily activities (phone tapping, processing stolen materials, snapping unsuspecting celebities in the street, etc) without fear of arrest or persecution (unless caught going about their daily activities).

Plusnet shunts blame for dodgy DNS traffic onto customers' routers

Bluenose

For me there is a basic question

Why are Plusnet users not using the Plusnet provided routers? Is it because they weren't provided with one, or perhaps the one they had is some what ancient and could really have done with a replacement when the owner extended their contract with Plusnet?

Trying to get users to do something more technical then plugging in the router in the first place is a waste of time and money. As the old adage goes "if you want something doing, do it yourself". Perhaps all ISPs should think about their strategy around routers and perhaps look at the cost benefit analysis of doing a users router replacement every other contract extension. Wouldn't stop the problem but might mitigate it.

PM Cameron leaps aboard Internet of Thingies

Bluenose

Jobs, efficiency, better living: Bull.....

The real money in the IoT is the advertising. Smart Meter, lets you be flooded with lots of ads about better deals, milk run out; get ready for a slew of ads recommending healthier calcium delivery systems.

If the IoT becomes a reality my advice is buy Google and ad company shares because they, like mobile gaming, are likely to be the only people making any money out of this.

British Pregnancy Advice Service fined £200k for Anon hack, data protection breaches

Bluenose

Why prosecute anyone?

I think people need to step back on this and think through why the BPAS was fined:

In accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 the Data Controller (BPAS) as responsible for putting in place appropriate organisational and technical processes and protections to avoid the information that they have collected being obtained by third parties unlawfully or as a result of the Data Controllers negligence. BPAS failed to comply with any part of this legislation. The fine is therefore imposed for what could be considered criminal negligence if such a term existed in English law.

The purpose of punishment under law is to a)ensure some form of retribution against the breaching person/organisation; b)to warn others who may be considering or already committing the same offence; c)to support a public policy objective (in this case to encourage others to protect the data they collect); and d) to show the general public that they are enforcing the laws fairly and unequivocally against all breaching persons or parties.

On the basis of the arguments presented on here no-one should be prosecuted of fined if no one has been injured even if the law has been broken. Would certainly save on court and legal aid costs as we wouldn't bother prosecuting people who go out and try to murder people but fail (no harm done then).

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