Posts by Bluenose

Confused of Milton Keynes here

The article implies that this wonderful new proprietary solution will help the govt to understand where it is spending money, how much services cost, etc. and then I look at the solutions that were being considered and the winner is a ......

A company that designs websites and can help you with content management!!

So based on this I think that all that has been chosen here is a company who will pull some data in from somewhere and give a mandarin some kind of a web interface to lots of systems and the cost of this enterprise will be £100K.

I remember when organisations had their own developers who could write this type of thing for their employers and who knew where the data was and the structure it was stored in. Obviously the govt has managed to sack all these people as part of its budget cutting exercise. Or more realistically they have kicked off a project that they don't really know how to define and deliver but they know it needs to be a web based front end because everything looks that way now.

Fail because, well it just will

Designed to fail

the amount of duplicated petitions seems to indicate that this whole thing has been set up to fail. One wonders if that is why the govt allowed so many bring back hanging petitions as it knew it could split the vote and thus make reaching the 100K mark that much harder. Mind you that is also true for the leave EU, get rid of human rights act and of course the keep the ban on the death penalty.

Piss up and breweries comes to mind.................again

Oh look there's a number lets focus on that

Sometimes people make me laugh.

Forget the cost of the PC and look at some of the other statements here for exaple "some sources" and "doesn't collect the information" and "an SME". Excuse me but I think I really need to get the facts which this article seems and therefore one assumes the report, seem very short on. We can all make allegations and comments but without facts we can't actually deal with things.

So for example I bet the cost of PCs for MOD and particularly MI5 and MI6 aren't cheap. I bet the FCO also has quite expensive PC requirements and I am sure there are others. Either way that covers off the average price in "some" departments.

Day rates for consultants are massively over priced compared to an IT consultant from an agency. Of course that one man band will stand up to the costs of getting it wrong assuming he has Professional Indemnity insurance of greater than £1 million.

I have seen all this before from Govt and civil servants who seem not to understand a)how businesses work and b)why it is better from a risk perspective to choose a large supplier than a niche market player (a) = to make money and not like the civil service to consume it and b)'cos the big company has deeper pockets when it all goes wrong).

The reality is that big companies and govt don't get on well because most of the time they don't recognise each others strengths. I have seen to many projects where the govt dept throws a project out and expects the supplier to perform magic to fix all the problems that come with the deal at no cost. At the same time I have seen plenty of contracts where the customer outsources the work and then retains the bulk of the staff who used to do it, to keep doing the work because they don't trust the supplier. Farcical

But if no one wants to actually collect facts and data and understand the inter-realtionships around the why things happen or are done then the likelihood is that will continue to see big IT spend and lots of failing projects.

Mass production will bring the price down

They will soon be on sale over here for a few hundred quid.

Quickly followed by counterfeit Chinese versions which have just been washed with shampoo that shows up under ultraviolet light (or being Chines more likely infra red). Hang on a minute, how do we know this guy is the real McCoy? Didn' t some other Korean Phd cheat on his cloning test? I bet this dog has just been sprayed with the stuff that you find in washing powder that makes your whites look white under ultra violet light.

Who needs hacking....

When most of your stories are made up and the rest are based on intrusive pictures taken of people most of whom do not really want to be photographed at the time.

Lets put it all in to perspective

This was just a cheap Chinese copy and like most cheap chinese copies its no where as good as the real thing. In fact from what I read (and I had just got up) they had to slow the whole thing down by 500 nanoseconds just to measure it, no wonder it didn't go faster than the speed of light.

By the way is anyone else worried that the optical precursor goes faster than the photon? Does this mean we see the light before it arrives and worse still does this mean that the actual light does not go as fast as it should? If so can someone put another 50p in the meter to get it back up to speed please.

News International does not need to be financially sound....

or even to be widely read to have influence. It simply needs to identify a significant market segment (say like the Sun) and then to produce headlines and stories that play to that niche's perspective of the world in order to start to have influence over politicians and the public.

Murdoch's Fox New may only have 5.8 million viewers in the US but that is a guaranteed 5.8 million votes for the Republicans in the main. And it is on givens that parties build financial and solid bases to compete for power. The arguments around immigration and racist stories about muslims have had a major impact on the growth of parties like the BNP since the politician on the doorstep having their stories of favouritism re-inforced by the Sun, Mail and Express will have an impact.

People are like children, they trust those in power or seeking power to tell them the truth and the newspapers are seen as the people telling the truth, one only has to see the impact of the Telegraph's reporting of the MP expenses scandal (which was not always as accurate as we are led to believe) to see why the people believe them. And one good piece of journalism allows you to have lots of bad journalism which is all taken at face value.

The one piece in the article which is accurate however is that Murdoch is not the "Bad Man", media in general fits that role perfectly. At the end of the day all media sources have one objective to sell their view to the biggest possible audience and if that means publishing salacious gossip or using underhand tricks to generate stories then so be it. They all do it.

In terms of the new media, yes politicans now see the benefit of using Google and other internet outlets to increase their visibility and make them seem brave, clever and with it. The new media will do the same as the old and abuse that desire for their own personal (and I really mean personal) profit.

And they wonder why we don't want to vote or engage with politics; their mates in the media (the arbiters of the public interest) have shafted them.

Why is offshoring UK public services data and process a bad idea?

I think that is probably a good idea that this guidance is issued not least because it does actually start to establish that the biggest barriers to the off-shoring of public sector services is the PR hit and the fact that MPs will be up in arms when someone decides to move jobs to India or elsewhere.

The reality is that most process performed by the public sector could be done cheaper overseas and probably more securely than they are done in the UK. The types of operations being brought back on shore are call centres not the transactional activities that require little or no contact between the back office staff and customers (e.g. processing invoices, data input, processing forms, etc). If we got rid of these low value but extremely expensive bits of work then we should see a fall in the costs of doing government which should translate in to lower taxes at both the national and local level.

The other problem that this guidance will probably not address is what governance means and how many times a year the local mayor and their cronies will have to go to foreign parts to make sure that the system is working properly. That is where the screw up will be as council budgets for first class hotels, business flights, etc rocket as everyone sets off for a fortnight in Goa!

Of course all this is wishful thinking as the idea that off-shoring will ever work for the public sector is a non-starter. There are to many agendas in place to allow this to happen from the unions, to MPs, to local councillors and executives. They all have to maintain their jobs and positions and offshoring reduces the needs for all the middle managers that exist today and replaces them with a strong governance team who actually manage the contracts (something that govt has real problems doing today).

Why no smartphone for me?

Big fingers, bad eyesight, have a laptop that goes with me pretty much everywhere (with mobile internet access) and smartphones are expensive when all I need is the facility to check a train time or the footie scores.

Whilst I access Facebook and read the BBC and most importantly of all, I have to have access to the register, I don't need it all to the extent that I need to screw up my eyes to peer at some little screen.

As my old man used to say, horses for courses so mobile phones for phone calls, computers for work plus internate and standing on the terraces for football.

Having read the ruling

It seems to me that the person who wrote the opinion on which the decision was based has not really done a good enough job. Basically they argue that the overriding consideration in this case is that gender should not be a discriminating factor since it is not something over which the individual has control. This of course is incorrect since the same court allows men and women to change sex purely on the basis of some cosemetic surgery.

The bigger issue was the failure of the insurance companies and the EU to address the question of why gender should be carved out specifically in the case of insurance so that a specific gender can be discriminated against based on earlier judgements of the court relating to the fact that women and men should pay the same amount for a pension based on their salary and ignoring the fact that women live longer.

It therefore seems to me that this decision was the one wanted by all the parties so that the insuranc companies could put up their charges. I must admit that I could probably have put a better defence in to this case then the people who represented the EU and the Belgiums (the case related to one referred to the ECJ by the Belgian courts).

Clarity is the one thing this law does not provide

One can understand why Pinsent think this law is clear and good for business, its because they will earn huge sums of money writing contracts for their customers and giving their customer's subcontractors a hard time by demanding indemnities and making them comply with rules set by the customer as well as the ones set by the government and their own internal rules (three sets of rules to meet one Act of Parliament what a pay day for lawyers).

It is time the UK govt stopped trying to micro manage business and people's lives and let us get on with doing what we used to be good at, living our own lives and making money. If they are so worried about bribery stop giving corrup governments huge sums of cash to buy British goods or to be nice to us or to try an influence them do business with us.

Now that could be a good first test of the law, take the govt to court for bribing foreign states to buy British goods!

Just in time.....

for me to start sending my begging letters to try and get the cash for the annual family holiday in Southwold.

I assume the old 419ers will be watching the details with interest.

This idea is just plain stupid

The companies concerned won't invest in the US, labour (or labor in the US) is cheaper in places like China, India, Phillipines,etc. Therefore the investment will take place there and not in the US.

Payment of the savings to shareholders will provide some benefit to pension funds (mutuals) who hold shares but the biggest winners will be Jobs, Ballmer, Schmidt, et al who all own significant proportions of the shares in their companines and they don't need to spend it on the types of goods that most of us would spend it on. They will invest it though in companies who like them invest in the countries in the first point.

EU software firms will cry foul, such a reduction in tax could constitute unfair state funding for the IT industry in the US thus setting the stage for another US v WTO battle except unlike Antigua, Europe does have teeth and can certainly put in place barriers to trade that would hurt the US.

Countries where the money is currently held will simply offer better deals to the companies concerned around investment and corporatin tax in order to try and stop the repatriation of funds.

So anyone who thinks that this idea from someone paid a lot of money by some lobbyist to put forward this bill is going to help the US is just deluding themselves.

New stories of the day

I am waiting to hear that Friends of the Earth are claiming victory in their long standing battle with the Sun to stop using nuclear power as it is enviromentally unfriendly and means that we will have to live with the Sun sitting around for hundreds of thousands of year while we wait for the radiation to dissipated.

and headline number 2

Greenpeace blames human activity for the slow down in sun spot activity due to all the crap we keep launching into space which invariably finds its way in to the Sun due to space tides that take the bits of plastic from six packs of NASA oxygen cylinders and lets them wander across the solar system trapping and killing thousands of aliens which is why they never get to Earth.

Who decides the public interest

Lets be clear, newspapers disliike these injunctions because they prevent them from printing salacious gossip in order to obtain sales. The reality is the media has appointed itself the sole arbiter of what is "in the public interest" and that is determined by what they think will sell newspapers 'cos real news is no longer enough.

Personally, I don't find who is shagging who to be in my interest (being a member of the public) and wish that the papers would focus on real issues (like the Register). So as far as I am concerned who Imogen Thomas has been having fun with is something for her to and her friends. As to Fred Goodwin, if his affair is in part responsible for the collapse of the bank then I am all for the responsible reporting.

Just because somone is rich doesn't mean their bedroom antics should be printed all over the front page. Mind you this whole issue has meant that even without naming him the media has managed to shift a lot of papers just on the back of this issue. One has to ask why they did not make such a big stink over the Trafigura super injunction especially as that story was far more in the public interest.

Can't find the quality of coverage column...

Did they miss that off the table or is this survey like so many others; ask the questions that you need to get the result you want? I don't remember Tesco or any of the other supermarkets building their own phone network so I assume that they are in fact piggybacking on the existing services of the main suppliers (Vodafone, O2, Everything Everywhere, etc). In which case do they also piggy back on the billing systems of these companies as well.

I'm sticking with my current supplier from whom I have received excellent service at a price I like using phones I can buy from anywhere at a reasonable price

One side reports

As only Greenpeace can produce them. The "facts" in this report will be a significant subset of the complete facts and will have been chosed to emphasise Greanpeace's point of view which of course is what all one subject agenda groups are good at.

The next big growth in electricity consumption which will drive up the use of coal powered power stations will be electric cars which are also portrayed as being "good" for the environment. I await with unbaited breath for Greenpeace's report on that particular subject.

A big question not answered in this report is to what extent is the development of large cloud data centre's going to reduce the existing inefficient smaller but more plentiful data centres that exist today? Is this reduction plus or negative compared to the increase assumed for the cloud one's?

Greenpeace need to return to the world we live in and keep having wet dreams about returning to the stone age they are so deparate to return to. If only 2 in 100 Greenpeace members actually became real scientists and worked on solving the technological issues around renewable and newer fuel systems the whole issue of climate change could be quickly resolved and my facts behind this are probably as good as Greenpeace's for supporting wind power as an adequate source of power for the world.

Has anyone considered Climate Change

All the focus of the climate scientists is on telling us how hot things will be and that droughts will become so bad we will all die. However, climate change impacts all aspects of climate including wind. Therefore one wonders a)if climate change happens as forecast how will wind change and will that increase or reduce the amount of generation capacity from wind farms and b)if we reduce the impact of climate change, will this reduce/increase the amount of generation capacity of wind farms?

The problem is, as is so often the case, the single agenda community with their rash forecasts of disaster really don't have a clue as the impacts of whatever it is they are forecasting but simply force govts to act by spreading scare stories. And govts in their panic to make sure they retain power are happy to make changes to taxes with no idea as to whether it is a good or bad thing.

We need facts and this report sets some out. Now we need some more such as whether wind is actually a viable means of contributing power to the grid such that it meets user requirements and not the greedy fingers of the wind farmers. Unfortunately as we all know from the IT disasters, govts are not very good at looking at things from the end user point of view.

Interesting..

I had an e-mail over the weekend from a company explaining the situation as per some of the mails people have received. Interesting in a)it is not one of the companies named in the article or in this forum and b) the one company who is named that I know I would like to get a mail from has not bothered to send me anything and yet it is the one customer who does have valuable information about me (my hotel points!!!).

Wonder if they will get round to telling me or will they wait until I spot that my booking for three nights in the summer has been cancelled and instead I am now staying in Lagos.

Reduce the price reduce the supply!!

Your arguments over the stupidity of the reduction in duty on one hand and increasing taxes on the other is not a coherent argument. The majority of companies in the North Sea are dealing with a declining supply. Improving extraction will simply extend the life of the field, it has limited effect on supply from the field which is fairly constant based on flow through. Moreover, fuels are separate commodities to oil. The are all traded separately on the commodities market.

The Govt has simply sought to a zero cost solution by moving the tax from consumer to provider.

Making the product more expensive actually has massive downstream consequences for a much wider part of the economy than the actual oil exploration/extraction industries. If the price of goods increases to much they will not sell, manufacturers then go out of business, large numbers of people become unemployed, those still working cannot afford to go to work and ultimately you get civil disturbances on an Egyptian level (is this a new form of measurement for El Reg?).

The bigger problem is that demand outstrips supply and the issue of increasing supply is not a quick fix that can be achieved before the start of the riots. Building new refineries to increase capacity takes time (years) and the vagaries of global economics make it a risk ventre since there is no guarantee that the capactiy will still be required in x years (just think of all the electric cars that will have been sold in the meantime). It is only when the refining capacity increases that supply of oil becomes an issue and that is already being addressed by the number of new wells being sunk in places like the Gulf of Mexico.

In reality the Govt did the bare minimum to avoid civil unrest this summer (and even that is not a given) and when the cuts do start to happen they will have to make the harder decision, whether to reduce the rate at which they cut the defecit or risk marches every week from the unemployed benefit-less hordes and middle classes who have realised that £9k in 2012 is not the end but the start 'cos will be £10-12K by 2015.

Business Opportunity Here

Buy yourself a big warehouse, get a collective of small high street stores to stock it and they to can join Tesco and Amazon flogging things on the cheap to UK consumers. It will still destroy there local high street business but at least they will still be in business

New strategy

The cartels are using shipment via the ISS rather than Mexico due to the problems with the drug wars there.

I wonder if the British Govt.

Read the report and though, may be we should go and have a review to see if a)BAE has been flogging British knowledge and know-how on the sly to dodgy people and b)are they using British know-how and technology in the US and exposing it to third parties like they may have been doing with US technology? The answer of course if no because are Govt (irrespective of the party currently in power) are all wowed by the US and forget that the UK has some pretty good boffins who have come up with some excellent technologies over the years and that there is a value associated with those technologies.

there are already rumours that people like Qinteq have flogged some of the family silver to boost their credibility in the US and the odds are that BAE would probably not be reluctant do so based on their propensity for facilitiation payments and oiling of wheels.

As part of the job creation scheme

It appears that by pushing all claims into arbitration before the tribunal the Govt will create lots of jobs at ACAS to manage these claims and to do an assessment. Who said the condems don't know how to create jobs

Not impressed with his lawyers

Surely they should be asking for a dismissal of the charges on the basis that their client was not liable for the leak since others in America have claimed to show that that Wikileaks actually used Limewire to identify the huge volumes of confidential material loaded on to hard drives on machines using the P2P software as per the recent Reg article.

At worst they should be pushing for the hearing of the case on the basis that the delay in moving to court is a breach of their client's human rights to a fair trial. Waiting to see whether they can also get Julian Assange indicted before they try Manning is probably not lawful even in the US.

Sometimes you have to remember there are mutliple currencies involved

Whenever I see these types of article I do wonder if anyone ever has the sense to think about how international trade works. Company A sells and buys its goods primarily in AUS$, but decides to buy from company B who buys and sells in US$. Of course the plan is that company A will buy from company B set volumes over a period of time. During that period of time the AUS$ / US$ rate varies (in this case considerably) but as company A has either lost its crystal ball or does not have the fortune teller from Harry Potter working for them, they decide to hedge the currency risk this means that they buy US$ at a set rate for a set period or in a set amount. Meanwhile company B is also concerned about exchange rate movements so they base their selling price on a fixed exchange rate of say US$1 = AUS$ 1.5 for the next x months. Both companies are therefore ready for a movement in the exchange rate whichever way it goes and start transacting.

Therefore customers should not assume that the movements on a day by day basis in the exchange rates of currencies will automatically mean that the price of goods will change daily (unless of course its fuel which is one product that does change daily based on the spot price in the commodities market). It also means that stabilised pricing prevents inflation and that companies have a pretty good view of whether they are making or losing money.

However all that said, it is also true that companies have a habit (especially selling companies) of not adjusting their fixed sell rates very often. One company I know has used £1 = US$1.55 for at least 15 years to the best of my knowledge even when the actual rate was £1 = US$2. And retailers and distributors do use this exchange rate hedging as a method/excuse to keep the prices and therefore margins higher than they would be. But in the end over a reasonable period of time the pricing differences do tend to even out using this method and there will be times when pricing in one country is lower than in the US.

Cost of living

I am I the only person who thinks that even in the current climate it should be possible for a company to price in to a two year agreement some inflationary effect. Lets see last year inflation, depending on the measure you use (CPI, RPI, RPIx, ASHE, etc) would be in the range of 0 to 4% assume 2% and apply that to the charges hey presto two year fixed rate deal.

Mind you I would simply terminate the agreement and move to someone else, get a new phone improved pricing etc and when they up the charges move again. The administrative cost of doing that for lots of customers would soon outweigh any benefit of a small increase in the monthly charge.