* Posts by qzdave

33 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Apr 2011

Cisco raises axe above 14,000 staff – reports

qzdave

Baby bath water and aa the toys

So management are going to grow by getting smaller. Same as IBM. Shame that Mgmt couldn't read the market changes and plan accordingly. Maybe even do some, you know, training and development. Laying off 20% shows they are not in control of their business.

IBM storage revenues are very reliable. Four years of steady decline and counting

qzdave

Why storage?

Why the big focus on storage from El Reg? Lots of highlights and lowlights in the results that are all more interesting.

Boozing is unsafe at ‘any level’, thunders chief UK.gov quack

qzdave

Dismember them

On the basis of this new policy, the Members' bar a the Houses of Parliament should be closed immediately out of genuine concern for the members' health. No more boozed up lawmaking!

I can turn Yahoo! around claims hedge fund manager

qzdave
Holmes

Good stuff in there

It's easy to dismiss the activist investors as arrogant loud-mouths but sometimes what they say is good for the normal guy on the street with a bit invested.

I read most of the presentation and avoided The Reg's guided tour of the content. Yes, there were kind of nit-picky comments about fee lunches etc. But it also raised great questions. What about all those worthless acquisitions, many bought from her personal friends? Yahoo don't seem to have any business controls, any vision and less and less relevance. I thought the suggestion that they focus on getting better day by day on sport and business on mobile (and avoiding acquisition splurges) made a lot of sense. It's difficult to see how the strategy purported could be worse than what's going on now.

A question though - no mention of Yahoo 360 - did anyone here use it? IIRC they had Facebook before Facebook, and then discontinued it. Surprised that didn't make the list of f-ups, 'cos I quite liked it and don't understand what happened.

France says 'non' to Wi-Fi and Tor restrictions after terror attack

qzdave

Re: @080 @Uffish - "It seems...

Seems like damned if you do and damned if you don't. But particularly if you do, as you tell it.

US government pushing again on encryption bypass

qzdave

Phones don't kill people- guns kill people

It's sad and terrifying that there are 4 mass shootings every day in the USA . That's every bloody day. And the FBI wants to read text messages. No word on addressing the fact that the latest shooters had assault weapons and thousands of rounds of ammo.

Wow, what took you so long? Comcast bends net neutrality rules

qzdave

Re: Loophole Schmoophole

I'm not a tech, so I admit to not understanding the details. But is it not true that their network has finite bandwidth? As long as externally originated data are allowed down the pipe at the same speed that seems reasonable. Are they not trying an AOL play with a limited walled garden controlled and sold by them?

Be quick or be silent: Social media as a business tool

qzdave

social media is too often one way

Look at delta airlines lovely Facebook page, full of praise and compliments. The life expectancy of a criticism is about 4 mins. I know I've tried.

Firms who want to strangle the narrative shouldn't do social media, since it squanders the opportunity for a them to gain insight through the conversation and turns it in to advertising, which people tune out.

Dynamics CRM biz gobble lets bosses play fantasy league ... at work ... using sales reps

qzdave

gameification

About time the poor sales "leadership" got something to relieve the boredom of measuring every minutiae of the sales force's activity. Once we prise then off excel, who knows what could happen... perhaps they'll go meet a customer, our develop a coherent strategy. The possibilities are literally finite.

Dough! Dominos didn't register dominos.pizza – and now it's pizz'd off

qzdave

no pizza in name

They are running a campaign in the States right now, explaining they are taking 'pizza' out of their name, because they are 'about more than just pizza'. So by their own definition .pizza is not important.

US Air Force launches not-so-secret space plane. Thanks Russia

qzdave

Re: >or perhaps it's a sign that humanity can achieve more through cooperation?

And nothing drives war like tech

Remember that Big Blue Apple? Biz apps for iPads are here

qzdave

Re: Can't believe IBM is able to create something to Apple quality standards

Ouch. Whilst I'm not blind to IBM's weaknesses, thats unduly harsh.

Firstly Notes is 1000 years old. Cheap shot, congratulations, nuff said.

Secondly GBS doesn't develop software, its a consulting firm. Software is developed by Software Group. Which is a separate multi billion dollar business.

Thirdly the rhetoric... *All* software is tarnished? Incapable of 'minimal' useability?

What you meant to say was: "I hate Notes and don't know any other IBM software, but I'm surprised how good this looks."

UK slaps 25 per cent 'Google Tax' on tech multinationals

qzdave

Re: Slap an import duty on Trademark Rights being "imported"

That, sir, is pure genius.

SUPER-SUEBALL heading IBM's way in Australia

qzdave
FAIL

Fool and his money

Not only is a fool and his money easily parted, in this case, he is also dumb enough to waste even more of it hiring lawyers in an un-winnable trial. Nutcases.

Ireland's data cops: Yes, we probed LinkedIn. Don't ask what we found

qzdave
Coat

Lucky break

I was just about to write scathing comment about the stupid picture of a small general store -- accusing The Register of playing to stereotypes and not recognizing that Ireland is a modern economy....

Then I fact checked on Google, and the underwhelming building *is* actually where some of the world's largest website are policed from. Wow.

I'll get my coat.

Atlas plugged: Facebook hooks ads to profiles, smears 'em over the web

qzdave

Easy fix for this malarky...

Ghostery add-on to Firefox. Block 'em all, I say.

Man, its smartphones are SQUARE. But will BlackBerry make a comeback with them?

qzdave

I must be going soft in the head

Is it just me or is anyone else kinda hoping they can pull off a recovery? I just love an underdog (though they didn't start as one, admittedly)...and everyone loves the Canadians. The phone is like a pig dog...so ugly it's cute.

Tim Cook on pale, male Apple: 'As CEO, I'm NOT satisfied'

qzdave

Up the 9%

I can't say anything nice about this, so I won't. But it's heartening 9% refused to respond with their ethnicity.

Facebook: Want to stay in touch? Then it's Messenger or NOTHING

qzdave

can I has all your data?

Old Zuck doesn't want you using FB on web on mobile. The app gives him access to your location, phone book, accounts, call log etc etc. Right now you can use m.Facebook.com and do everything without an app install and he only gets what you give him on the site. So he's gonna put a stop to that pronto.

Microsoft takes on Chromebook with low-cost Windows laptops

qzdave
Happy

Re: Accessing data , and Chromebooks

I don't think you're right about that. In the last month Chromebooks (and Drive on Chrome) allows offline working, including new document creation. And it will work with MS native formats - so you can store locally if you want.

https://support.google.com/drive/answer/1628514?hl=en&ref_topic=1628465

Gay marriage foes outraged at Mozilla CEO flap, call for boycott

qzdave
Thumb Up

Re: Fresh Milk?

Well said, have an up-vote. Free speech is a two way street and seems to have worked. He weighed in on the public debate, then the public judges his contribution.

Queensland bans IBM from future work

qzdave
Holmes

You get what you (don't ) spec

Let's be clear on a couple of things here.

Firstly government departments are not victims: they employ banks of their own people to gather and articulate requirements, and to provide oversight and management of projects. Whenever a project goes tits up you must first ask what the buyers were doing.

Secondly, if you've ever tried to manage a project when the requirements keep changing, you'll appreciate that lining up a big team with a lot of contractors in such a way as to hit a moving target is a near-impossibility.

Lastly, it is true that consultancies make their money from 'change control'. I've even heard of firms bidding below cost, planning to make up the shortfall in the change control. But that takes me back to my first point - figure out what you want before you start building it.

Could well be that IBM dropped the ball, in fact probably did, but the Client had his day in court, so presumably had course to remedy.

Hundreds of UK CSC staff face chop, told to train Indian replacements

qzdave
Unhappy

Re: Isn't this illegal? @ Rob Fisher

Regrettably, in my experience most firms can make people redundant, notwithstanding the role is still very much required, by pretty easy redefinitions. e.g. sales manager becomes executive sales coordinator and the firm justifies a reshaped workforce with either or both of a) fewer people or b) cheaper people.

I heard anecdotally that Royal Bank of Scotland used that little ruse to cut through 100s of retail banking middle management jobs quite deftly.

Google rolls its eyes, gives Windows Phones five more months to sync

qzdave
Happy

Turn it all upside down

I think it's interesting how competitive advantage has turned upside down. By owning the desktop OS, MS pwned everyone through controlling the interface standards - even reputedly killing off Lotus through giving them garbage APIs whilst Office used private back-doors.

Now, despite prima facie control of their mobile OS they're having standards dictated to them by (what now passes for) the applications authors -- effectively their own tactics used against them.

How frustrating it must be for them to experience trying to innovate and win market share whilst the leaders in the ecosystem change the rules at will and keep you spinning your wheels.

Chromecast: We get our SWEATY PAWS on Google's tiny telly pipe

qzdave
Thumb Up

Energy saving, PS3 off occassionally?

Love it! Netflix and Google Play straight to the TV without the PS3 running. I've not metered the PS3's energy consumption, but judging by the noise of the fan alone, the Chromecast will get paid for in saved energy in a couple of months. And it's not hamstrung by another crappy remote (Apple tv's remote looks good but is a pain in the arse to use).

WAR ON PORN: UK flicks switch on 'I am a pervert' web filters

qzdave
Mushroom

FOI request

Since all MPs second home expenses are paid for by the taxpayer, then presumably we can get the smut setting on their broadband made available under freedom of information requests, since it's clearly in the public interest to not have our representatives looking at such 'abhorrent' images when they should be in the Commons bar getting pissed.

VMware waves goodbye to Zimbra

qzdave
Terminator

IBM

Maybe it's too much sun scrambling my brains, but would this not have made a good acquisition for IBM? It's cheap enough, and would give them access to a lot more clients to sell its(surprisingly good) social-business solutions to, whilst watering down the negative connotations of Notes (for which most people are still discovering offers an achingly bad user experience).

Arnie because convincing Notes to do any work is like trying to win a fight with him...

We want to put a KILL SWITCH into your PHONE, say Feds

qzdave
Holmes

Get the basics right?

The user should have the kill switch. I still don't understand (perhaps I'll be enlightened) by phone operators let stolen equipment function.

Sherlock, because that's what Verizon weren't. When my wife's IP4 was stolen they didn't care. But Verizon don't use a SIM card system, so presumably it was still on their network, just in the hands of a thief.

IBM hit hardest in UK server market bloodbath

qzdave
Alert

Cloud

Is it just me... or is this not the obvious reaction to all those lovely cloud revenues everyone is boasting about... you can't sell the same capacity twice.

Apple seeks techies, designers to revive iWork office suite

qzdave
FAIL

they don't get it

As has already been said on El Reg, they don't get it. iWork / iCloud only stores Apple docs to my knowledge. Connecting anything non-apple to iCloud for mail is a nightmare. Christ, when I got my first Ipad, you couldn't add an attachment... can you now?

On an unrelated note, I'm moving off mac. I had everything they sold, but they broke samba, Apple server is a mess, they haven't done anything useful with the OS in years, and when my macbook pro wouldn't connect to a run-of-the-mill bluetooth keyboard (that everything else in the house including a PS3 connected to) I gave up.

Oi, Microsoft, where's my effin' toolbar gone?

qzdave
Angel

Libre Office

Libre Office. Much, much quicker than MS on my Mac. I still have MS office for customer facing work when the formatting has to be exact. But the speed of Libre for quick and dirty work has helped enormously.

Sony unsure if PlayStation Network user data was stolen

qzdave
FAIL

cancelled lovefilm

Just cancelled it. Couldn't access LoveFilm on PS3 over 4 day bank holiday, and the online selection is shite, and it doesn't stream to my iPad anyway.