Jerry_Atrick

@Bruce - look around you.. How many of these constituents are in debt up to their eyeballs and focussing at keeping the wolves from the door while giving their kids and themselves every conceivable material possession and taxying their kids around from dawn to dusk on the weekends in the vain attempt to keep everyone happy. Too many people are probably angry but don't have time to vent and engage with democracy because they are too busy keeping their heads above water. And that is the way the pollies like it. Same in the UK, where 0% credit is prevalent fro everything from the weekend away to Paris for a few hundre pounds to many cars.

In financial services here, they have decided the path to avoding previous misdiscretions is to sort of do what they do in other high-risk industries such as aviation and have a proper audit trail of work done, inspections, etc (BTW, we don't have to sign a daily inspection like in Aus GA). Anyway, I was putting in new set of control systems for a specific business and the methodology had to be presented to the board for sign-off. I designed the methodology in conjunction with the head of the business, and the head of the business was to present the methodology for board approval. It could not be implemented without board approval, of which the meetings are well documented/minuted and decisions distributed to the senior leadership team.

About 3 days before the board meeting, my manager asked me if I had got approval of the methodology from the business head. I replied that we agreed it was the right way to go, but no formal sign-off. He got a little terse with me and gruffly responded that we needed to get business head approval before it could be presented to the board. I asked why as it was the board that would determine if it was acceptable and only their approval would allow it to be commissioned. He responded that we have to evidencce everything and the business head has to show is approves of the methodology. This bloke was normally level headed and I was a bit perplexed about it all. So I asked him to imagine in the board meeting, after he has presented the methodology and a board member asks if he agrees/approves of it. Will he say "No, someone else did it, I am just presenting it?". His response was "I can't believe we are watign this time arguing about it. Just do it" Was totall absurd, but i went to the business head and said something like, apparently I have to get formal approval from you that you approve of the methodology that you will submit to the board for approval. He rolled his eyes, shook his head and with a bemused smile tapped out an email to me stating exactly that.

Some time later, after my manager had gone to pastures much greener, an internal auditor rocks up to ensure we have complied with our project delivery approach, which is effectively did we get all the approvals we needed and is all the documentation in order - not did the darned thing deliver what it was supposed to. He asked about the business head approval before presenting to the board. I asked the same question as I did of my manager. His response was it is in our project delivery standards and we must do it. I asked him to point out where in the standards it is and he duly pointed out that the responsible officer has to sign off project specifications. I pointed out in this case the chairman of the board, which is the highest level of seniority/responsibility took business responsibility and it was absurd that a business head would in a minuted meeting, present something they didn't approve - and that should be evidence enough. He just folded his arms and said business head approval has failed in this project. I presented the approval and asked him to read it. He was happy his job of managing the quality of project delivery was done.

[edit] I now understand my manager's thougth process.

Didin't have a chance to go through all those redecoration faux pars, but I loved the ceiling fan "prop strike"...

I agree, but I have to admit, I still don't get cyber-bullying. What people say behing the protection of a pseudonym (sp?) shows how cowardly they are. Although, the only social network we allow our daighter on is instagram and there was a bit of an online fight going on. I doubt if it were in the playground, the insults traded would have been any different. In fact, at least the cyber-spat wasn't accompanied by fisticuffs.

I don't have a degree despite numerous attempts - basically got bored and then family came along - yet have done reasonably well both in Aus and the UK working in what are normally degree required professions. I would consider myself good at what I do and I don't tackle things I am not that good at (at least in a professional capacity). In one of my roles, I had to inteview people of certain maths qualities that were beyond bieng self-taught... Almost all applicants were PhDs in maths and at first I was embarrassed interviewing them. I didn't hire one of them because it was clear they knew the theory and were birght as buttons buthad a snowflake's chance in the warmer parts of applying it to practice.

Agree that if someone is illiterate, that is the fault of the primary school in the absence of learning or other difficulties (domestic issues, etc)..

Agree with all the above posts...

I recall another prime contractor that not only completely stuffed an implementation, but lied to the government owned corporation (that in itself is an oxymoron) saying it was on target until the last month of a 24 month project, where they finally admitted it would run late and had known for at least 12 months. The reaction from the corporation was that they were going to sue and the consultancy said they wold counter. The result, the corporation backed down and closed the project (and then came straight to us, and we delivered in 8 months). I was at a dinner with the managing consultant who was boasting what a success the project was. I knew the answer, but asked why, given it was cancelled and never got anywhere near live, he considered it successful. The answer was it was profitable for them as expected.. but it even surprised me.. 70% margin, no risk as the corporation was paying them monthly progress payments on nothing more than someone updating a gantt chart to say how much % complete they were.

Government - not their money; can't easily lose their jobs, can't claw things back... Why would you bother being diligent?

PV cells are a lot more efficient than they used to be and even on overcast days can reach a good level of capacity (> 50%), The reality is it will be a mix of central and distributed systems for some time - at least until local power storage works domestically and commercially. Still, solar cells, local wind turbines complemented with small module reactor sites would reduce the carbon footprint to about 1/10th of what it is now - and would be pretty reliable - all it takes is will power.

Is that like "twerking"?

I intentionally didn't give a currency nor state which department of which country I was referring to.. It could be the UK, Autralia or the US. However, suffice to say, they are all about the same, albeit with different methods. And that was a long time ago, too. Think September 11 and prior. Not plugged in any more. Teh NHS thing was splattered all over the news, so no more plugged in that you about that.

However, although I never had anythign to do with Blair, I did have the occasion to rub shoulders with one of his Australian counterpartsand I can say I would not be surprised if the story is true.

With her name, she was always going to head this way..

I think the correct prose is "trying to run away".... Can't use running.. period! (er, I better thingk of a better way to phrase that, too)

My mother and all fo her family are from QLD - dotted from Bowen to Jacobs Well. I lived in Brissie in the winter of '94 or '95. I loved the place to be honest. Everyone referred to it as a big country town, but it wasn't; Ot was relaxed, the city is aesthetic to the eye, Southbank was great in the warm winter evenings, fishing is pretty good; people are very firendly even to the Mexicans; Ray Wilkie would give his 5 day forecast as 23, fine; 23, fine;23, fine;23, fine;23, fine, and in the summer the storms were fantastic to watch. We had virtually the sunshine coast to ourselves in winter and would sneak down to the gold coast for Grumpys on the Wharf, overlooking some mighty fine boats. The food scene was pretty good - Eagle Street Pier, Oxleys (now gone), Southbank, etc. Of course, at the time, Aussie Rules was a little deficient, though I did stop at Coorparoo (sp?) and watch the occasional amatuer game. Glasshouse mountains, gold coast hinterland, Warwick area and Oakey airshow were all great unf. Archerfield wasn't a bad airfiedl and RQAC were a proper club back then; although I preferred Redcliffe (but as I lived in Carina, it was too far away). Hervey Bay and Mimi McPherson...er... whale watching.. yes.. whale watching, fantastic. I could have stayed but my then fiancee didn;t really warm to it. Happy to say though, that Brisbane was the beginning of the end of us, so another warm memory of the place.

Though, as I recall, the pizza was rubbish, except at the Sheraton at Noosa where they had a Victorian chef.

If you wantsomething great about QLD - look at these viedos:

I recall doing a civil/public service job where they wanted to replace the systems and they wanted to ensure only the big (and therefore very expensive) consultancies bid for the tender. So they decided they would insert a clause in the RFT to say a minimum of 2m public liability and professional indemnity was required. I was a contractor at the time and said, "great! I can bid for it" and produced my insurance certificates of 5m coverage each. They were dumbfounded and asked what would be a rasonable number. I suggested they look at what they think the value of the contract would be and add 50% to cover any legal fees. The requirement shot up to 30m.

Another department had all of the major consultancies working on a big rework of some of their support/shared services. The company I was working for was selected as the software supplier (we actually were a small managemnt consultancy that provided software to support the business we worked in - we didn't have to sell the software - the point is we knew this business pertty well and the consultancies were OK in a general sense but not experts in the business sense. Well, at its peak, it was costing this department around 1.5m/day, but was estimated to average out at aroun 800k/day and go for, I think abour 5 years. In our contract, it was forbidden for us to talk to the end client without the express authorisation of the design lead consutlancy and only about the subject and within the remit of that design authority.

Everything that the consultancies were coming up with was, to put it politely, nuts. The challenge was complicated, but any innovative thinking by our company - arguably at the time one iof the leading experts in the field - was dismissed and they concocted convoluted solutions that would take eons to build and cost the client dearly. Of course, that is what the consultancies wanted and the department seemed to be totally blind to it (despiet some off the record conversations we would have at social occasions - and it did involve airfields - so as I could fly to the client, we used to talk a bit off the record). I realised what the problem was. Does anyone remember the old adage, "No one got fired for buying IBM (mainframes)". Going with us was a relative risk as we were well known in our niche, but not to those embarking on it for the first time. The problem - no accountability in the civil/public service. No one loses their jobs for performance - I think breach of security and breach of discipline may lead to a relatively easy dismissal, but it's too hard to dismiss for lack of performance - so just promote them up. And when the project was canned (because government auditors cottoned on), many of the senior civil/public servants on the project magically had a job at one of the consultancies.

For what its worth, I breached the condition of not speaking to the end client without authorisation twice - once where we were invited as observers to discuss a particularly complex issue the business was trying to solve. The consultancy went through it with them and then went through the possible options - all of which were unworkable. They concluded that it was a business problem and the software isn't about solving business problems - the business has to solve business problems (I virutally quote that). My program director motioned me to keep quiet - but I thought stuff it. "Er, that is not quite correct if I may. Our sotware handles W, X and Y out of the box; We can probably do Z with a few changes to..." Well, my program director's eyes rolled and I could see him working out a strategy to defuse yet another terse conversation with the design lead. The end client thanked my and asked if it is viable - and if not - why not?

The second time was where we were designing some messaging protocol for distributed business units that ran under relatively slow communications lines that had a small window of operting each day. Design lead decided a proticl with long winded metadata (that basucally increased the message size x6) was called for as the industry standards were going that way. I coughed to give them some indication that they were BS-ing, but they pressed on. Even my prgram director nodded to let me rip. I excused my interruption to the conversation and pointed out that on the estimated message volumes, they would have to keep the lines open around 4 times as long as they would need if they simply sent the data without all the miumbo jumbo - since it was our systems sending it and our systems receiving it, there wasn't a need for all this self-definition of the data. Thankfully the client brought a technical architect to that meeting and he thanked my for not making the client tell the suppliers the best way to supply their systems.

Not too long after, the cancelled the project - It probably had cost in the vicinity of 100m by this time.

@Phil Perry - remember the cost of the failed medical records project for the NHS - was it not £5bn? Mr Perot thanks Mr. Blair very much...

<snip>I'm running Win10!

 

<snip>

You can't use running and Win10 in the same sentence (or prose, to be more accurate). You can use dragging, walking, crawling, struggling with, nurturing, etc. Running is something one cannot do with Win 10.

Indeed I have, Mr Perry - My son is yet to come aruond to his subtle and clever humour... it won't take long, though...

An episode of one of my son's and my favourite shows:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm8pKIVKUYM

And a snippet of another

(p.s why are Aussie IP owners so anal about putting stuff up on youtube... They will probably make much more money than flogging it through Myers and Amazon)

Either would be better than El Presidento Turnbull..

And therein lies the problem... I have a Volvo V50 which I used for my commute between Somerset and London. As you know, modern cars have all sorts of engine management and safety control systems. The common problem is if the mass airflow fliter gets bunged up, the car just stops. I was driving along the motorway back home and while the car was happily trundling along at nighr and a "tad over" 70mph, the on-board computer decides to shut down the engine. Car starts decellerating and cars behind are coming up quicker than anyone is comfortable. After hte obligatory "WTF?", I indicated and started moving to the left lane. I decided to keep rolling while I worked out what was happening (left lane is for slower traffic).. Nothing on the text display to show any fault, what sparese gauges I have read normal (have fuel, temps OK).. Could be a fuel block, so while rolling, switch off and switch back on again and with bit of relief, I am on my way again (with about 100 miles to go). Must have repeated the process maybe 10 times. To the garage with an imemdiately suspected mass air flow filter. Nope - it is fine. Took a bit of elimination but it seems that if the fuel pressure drops slightly for more than a few seconds, the programmer (and obviosuly regulators) thought what a good idea to just stop the engine without any notification or the fact that sufficeint fuel was still being delivered to carry on comfortably. There are many other "design features" that make me worried about totally autonomous vehicles with no override.

I think wihen these autonomous systems get themselves in a situation where they think there is something wrong, they should do the same as an ab initio student with an instructor: "Your vehicle" and let the driver take charge. Of course, that is simpler said than done given the time for the driver to wake up to the issue.

Sincere condolences to you and your family.

It's n interesting question, spacesailor. I am rather looking forward to them as in theory, I should be able to have a good meal, few drinks, stumple into the car where I have pre-programmed it to drive me home and I spend the nex morning cleaning out the stench resulting from my body's natural defence to over eating/drinking and then shaking it all about.

In theory, no, you shouldn't just like in theory you can get in pi$$ed as a parrot head home. In reality, I would imagine there may be some emergency procedures in case a couple of wires cross or some mud or grime gets flicked up into some control module (Range Rovers had an issue with the control box under the drivers seat ingesting moisture from steam cleaning the carpets, or something). Result is you will have to have a licence and stay sober in case you have to take charge, I would guess. At least for some of the cars and while there are non-autonomous cars on the road.

There are other obstacles to driverless cars Iheard - e.g. Mercedes Benz is designed to protect the occupants and to hell with other road users (within the regulations, of course). So is it to be programmed to mow down the errant child running onto the road chasing an equally errant football or is it to swerve erratically to miss, possibly colliding head on with a truck or into a pole (note, lowercase; this is no aversion to the Polish). Our reactions are normally to swerve to miss.

So, it will be a while before we see the removal of a requierment for a licence to drive, unless the autonomous cars have no manual emergency override function.

I had a girlfriend, once, who was of a certain faith but did not practice it at all. Not even during that faiths important religious calendar events - well she "celebrated" one, but it was really a time of the family getting together and spreading good cheer.

At some stage in our relationship, the conversation turned to the uncomfortable subject of getting married and there was no way in heaven's opposite she was not going to get married in the temple of her faith. I thought WTF? You have no connection to it at all; don't observe it and for all outwardly impressions, have no belief in it (or any other religion for that matter). For some reason there was some institutional influence and loyalty over her that even she admitted in the face of logic she could not shake.

When I first saw the picture, I took it as a dig at the the whitefella....

Feel for you and your sisters. Gareth. Can only echo what OME and FH have said.

I agree, though there are times when people made the decision when they could, but life's uncertainties has for some reason meant they can no longer (breadwinner dies in a car accident, for example and they have had the life insurance turned down and it is going through the courts -which can take years). We need a safety net for these situations a well.. Its a hard puzzle to solve.

I am sort of on the fence on this one. If someone decides to have umpteen kids, then surely that is their responsibilty amd why should they get more because they decide to have that many? It provides an incentive to spawn kids to get good welfare and the cost per child decreases with the increased number of children (i.e. 2 kids to a bedroom with a 4 bedroom house and it is the same fixed costs as if you had 1 kind in a bedroom in the same 4 bedroom house). OK - if you want to live in Melbuorne, Sydney, etc, it wil be a struggle unless you live in the less than celubrous areas. But you could live in a reasonable town, say Shepparton in a 4br (so 6 kids in double bunks nicely until one becomes a teenager, at least) on a touch over 16.5k a year - let's say 17K (21 Delatite Avenue Shepparton Vic 3630 - House for Rent #422752822 - realestate.com.au). I guess medicare is still free for those on benefits, so there's no medical costs. No school costs and I guess those on benefits still get subsidised power and transport (although transport options incountry towns are usually sparse to say the least). That would leave food, clothes (and all those hand me downs means they won't have to spend as much as of they purchased for each child), etc. On the assumption that parents aren't alchies, druggies or similar, that is enough to get by on reasonably comfortably but of course, foregoing some of lifes more questionable necessities and of course benefits can be topped up through the black economy (gardening services on the cheap, etc). And this of course spawns the benefits class because why should they work and they are used to living in such conditions.

But on the other hand, as a society, are we not all in some way our brother's keepers? Because many people who are on benefits are so because of some form of trauma in their lives? There are some who genuinely cannot work - be that through physical or mental incapacity. There are some who are on drugs and alcohol because of the sort of lives they have been born into or led. But there are some who are just plain lazy and have had it too good.. I would be happier if we directed our benefits to those in genuine need so they can lead a decent life without having to have too many kids. The others should be given a hand to get back onto an even keel; the lazy ones, well, they shou;d be given board and food/transport vouchers and maybe a little spending money as they have to have something to do. Or I don't see a problem in working for the benefits for many (even physically deisabled people have a lot to contibute in administrative or other physical was their bodies allow, and would love to given the chance). It tajkes political will and competence. Somthing most western societies are in stark shortages of.