Posts by smudge134 posts • joined Friday 8th August 2008 08:50 GMT
...he said he was just implementing the WEEE Directive.
The article says:
"Projects will also be allowed to exceed £100m where "a strong case can be made that doing so increases the overall cost to the taxpayer, notably increases the risk of failure or increases the security threat to the public body or government as a whole", the notice says."
Read that very carefully. Is this, at long last, an admission of how things really are? Or have the little words "by not" been omitted?
> Well, the latter was, at least recently, hardly ever a reason...
Well, this time it is. The article is about events in 1937. Turing didn't start work at BP until 1939.
"The contract, which is led by Capgemini and includes some 360 other suppliers.....
..... The department will also be able to control the Aspire subcontractors directly – previously the responsibility of Capgemini."
Even if they only try to control a small proportion of the 360, it'll all end in tears in a couple of years' time.
...but if a Government ITT asked us to do that, we would come up with a very competitive price.
Suspect it may be more than that. On the edge of St Albans I get about 2.7Mbps, and a BT engineeer told me "that's pretty good for round here". I know it's even slower on another - more recent - estate on the opposite side of town.
Yes I know I shouldn't generalise from my own experience, but....
Someone above said: "I'd say they have a bad rep because a lot of people don't understand probability. So if they say there's an 80% chance of rain, then if it doesn't rain people say they're wrong."
I DO understand percentages and probability, but I've never understood what "80% chance of rain" means. Does it mean:
a) that if I step outside during the day, there is an 80% chance that I will get wet - ie that it will be raining for 80% of the time
or
b) there is an 80% chance that it will rain on at least one occasion during the day?
I think they probably mean b), but then lots of other questions arise - mostly around how much rain there will be and how long it will last. There's a big difference between 80% chance of a 5 minute shower and 80% chance of a few hours solid rainfall.
...if everyone followed her example? Specifically her parents.
...if they'd named it after a real engineer - Dilbert!
CDs ARE digital music. Just at a higher bitrate than most downloads.
I don't manage my cards online and I'm pretty sure I've never given them an email address.
So how would they know when and where I was online?
Even if they knew my IP address, how could they know that it was me in front of the screen, and not the wife or kids?
"...as I got one of mine done, but then Jag suspended it .... I'm still waiting for the other one to be done"
You are John Prescott AICMFP.
Use the free hour? My Nan's always asleep at two in the morning.
The minister has to pick up just about any magazine these days to find an advert for the Brennan JB7, a non-portable format-shifting hard disk player which is functionally the equivalent of the iPod. And it's a British-developed product.
The more recent ads have included a statement saying that they have been asked to point out that format-shifting is technically illegal. But they also point out that no one has ever been prosecuted for it.
...as pissed off as they were when George Galloway DID appear at one of their hearings!
...postcode, age, gender, hospital visits, mental illness, etc.
You can deduce a hell of a lot from a database. Suggest you look up "database inference".
... a few years ago, and that's exactly what it says. Look for IAS 6 - Information Assurance Standard No. 6.
Royston must be just about the only place in Herts that doesn't have ANPR.
It's been in use in the county for seven years.
So I don't think they have much chance of blocking it.
The last two days of the tax year - 4th & 5th April - are the quietest time of the year?
Doesn't sound right, but I suppose that all the filing dates for tax returns and things are at other times of the year.
I am not an accountant.
The BBC report makes it clear what a total mess this is.
I await with interest the explanation of how someone can be caught "red-handed" when they were completely innocent.
I hope the three gentlemen are sufficiently rewarded so that they never have to work again. Because, despite everything, mud sticks, there's no smoke without fire, <insert French cliche here>, and they may find it difficult to get good work again.
Strengthens my resolve never to buy a Renault, even though some of them look quite good.
Paris because it's France, innit?
Presumably timing boards are usually flush with the end walls of the pool?
Because if not the pool would be two inches shorter at the surface than it would be a foot or two underneath the surface.
Or do the timing boards extend a long way down?
Two comments.
1) Data quality and coverage varies greatly from one database to another. IIRC the DVLA database is notoriously low quality. Merging data won't be easy. Trivial example - I am known by my middle name, so my name appears in a variety of forms in different databases. So how can they be sure that when they merge data they correctly assign my data - and only my data - to me?
Not saying it shouldn't be done, but it's not as easy as it sounds.
2) Data Protection Act says that data can only be used for the purposes for which it was collected. To use other databases for the Census, they would have to obtain the permission of the data subjects. That is, us - all of us, once each for every database which was being used.
Assuming that the database had correctly been given a pretty high security level (aka business impact level), then using the drives for "something else" would not have been permitted by the relevant HMG standard, IAS5.
Plus, as has been said, it's good PR.
The letter telling me about my refund arrived a couple of days ago, about two weeks after the money had appeared in my account.
Dunno when you got your refund, but maybe the letter's on its way...
And especially - given Renault's appalling reputation for electrical faults - spying on their electric car division?
Would have been better to let it continue as a deliberate feed of damaging information.
Paris cos it's France.
"Road safety minister Mike Penning said that where taxpayers' money is spent on speed cameras it is right that information about their effectiveness should be made public."
That's a novel idea. Freedom of information. Who'd have thunk it would come from a Tory?
...and well done to the Sun and the Mail for not commenting on her wearing the burka.
"Bail was refused because of fears he could be a target for unstable people"
That'll be the security services, then.
Other countries, including some which we were "friendly" with, had also bought Enigma machines - they were commercially available from the 1920s onwards.
We didn't "share codes" with these countries. They continued to use their machines - or in some cases we sold them machines that had been captured - and the real reason for all the secrecy around the Bletchley Park work is that we continued to decode Enigma messages for a long time after WW2.
Which is why I've never believed the story about everything from BP being destroyed at the end of the war....
He wasn't imprisoned - he was bound over for a year on condition that he underwent hormonal treatment. Disgusting and horrible, of course, but he was never locked up.
It's true that he helped crack the German WW2 codes, but that's not why these papers are important. His pre-war work is absolutely fundamental to modern computing, dealing with what can and can't be done with computers.
Even if he'd never worked at Bletchley Park, he would still be one of the most important British thinkers - he was a mathematician so I'm not calling him a scientist - of the 20th century.
....it's only an Apple 1 motherboard.
Having said that, if only 200 were made then they're much rarer than Enigma machines.
The description of the papers on Christies' website says "TURING MANUSCRIPT MATERIAL AND OFFPRINTS ARE OF THE UTMOST RARITY; THERE ARE NO RECORDS OF EITHER APPEARING AT AUCTION IN THE PAST 35 YEARS." (their capitals)
And Bletchley Park has an Enigma machine - which very famously got nicked and held to ransom a few years ago.
Greenwich is indeed on the zero meridian - some even call it the Greenwich meridian - but I completely fail to see the connection between your comment and the piece of the article that you have quoted.
Paris, because the French wanted the prime meridian to go through her^H^H^H it.
The Beeb says "thousands" turned out to see it. WTF were they doing?
And in this day and age wouldn't that be regarded as a security threat?
Is there really nothing better to do in Manchester than to go to the airport and watch the big white bird land?
No doubt this will be about the 20th comment saying "Where's AManFromMars when you need him?".
""His duty position and responsibilities did not offer him the situational awareness needed to validate his postings to the media," an IJC spokesman told Wired."
I believe that translates as "He didn't know what he was talking about."
But the fact that IJC spokesman chose to say it the way he did supports Col Sellin's case.
.... if you're too stupid to find the same thing much more than 50 quid cheaper elsewhere.
"To make the passports more secure, the chip which stores the holder's details has been moved to the inside of the passport cover so it will no longer be visible, the Home Office said."
Not trusting the Reg's reporting, I checked, and yes the Home Office website actually says "...moving the chip which stores the passport holder’s details to the inside of the passport cover where it won’t be visible. "
It's an RFID effing chip, FFS!! Whether it's visible or not makes eff all difference.
I wonder which consultancy trousered a small fortune of our money for providing that advice.
...by the Government. Can you guess which one?
...they can't ban adverts just for featuring repulsive characters. Then we wouldn't have seen a BT ad for years and years....
3 meg here on the edge of St Albans. Quote from BT Openreach engineer: "That's pretty good for round here." FFS!
I wish to retract my earlier comment that its desire to flee Cumbernauld indicated that it was a very intelligent bird.
If it was found near Falkirk then it's as bird-brained as any other avian.
I know Falkirk all too well - the best way of improving it would be for the Grangemouth refinery to explode and wipe it off the map. Looks its best in a rear-view mirror.
...anyone who DIDN'T immediately think "fit-up" when you first heard about the allegations.
That'll be 58,000 accidental pictures, then. Major accident!
NSA is for electronic gathering of information from all around the world, not just the USA.
The FBI is for internal intelligence within the USA.
...he really was filing copy for the Daily Express, and it really was the NSA, couldn't they just have waited a day or two and bought a copy? IIRC their budget should be able to stretch to that.
But if they're really pushed for cash they could get someone to pinch a copy from a library.
Anyone who knows Cumbernauld will sympathise with its desire to get the hell away from the place.
Paris cos she knows all about monstrous peckers.
Only at a sci-fi convention could a heterosexual man wanting to cop a feel of an attractive woman be classed as a pervert...
Wouldn't that affect the steerability of the ship? Mind you, I don't suppose carriers can turn on a sixpence anyway.
"You don’t just release this information for your ego, and you sure as hell can’t expect the US military to help you break the law. "
Don't need the military to do that. The US Patriot Act can compel employees of US companies (including non-US citizens) to disclose any information that they have that could be deemed useful to the US in the "war against terrorism". Private information such as medical records or financial records - corporate information such as business plans or details of new products.
Even if such disclosure is illegal in the country where the information was legally obtained - eg if it violates data privacy legislation.
In short, US legislation can compel people to break the law in other countries. But it's not US law they're breaking, so that's all right and it doesn't count.
They're going to raise money to promote tourism by charging people to enter the country?
Wouldn't it be better promotion if they payed us to visit the place?
Although even then I still wouldn't go.
Paris, cos she has never ever payed to enter anything.
