I totally agree - I was an architect for a UK gov dept (many years ago) and whilst I was first to use Linux on a big scale in a secure environment; I couldn't get them to shift off Oracle - it was because they paid single figure % of list price, vastly lower than any financial organisation I've been at. I used Oracle 9iRAC and even their shitty Java Enterprise containers (this was before the Sun acquisition) because they were almost free and it would be rude not to. Proud that I got the first open source in there though, back then OSS in Gov was rare and when the Microsoft salesguy heard about this he went mental and did everything to spread FUD with whomever would listen.

Not quite. A large Indian outsourcer won a large part of work to maintain the CA7 schedule. Anyone has worked at a bank knows that the batch schedule is somewhat mystical and was put together by guys who had been at the bank for 20 yrs - replacing them with bright, but fresh out of uni, offshore outsourcers was a large part of the cause of the 2012 outage during an upgrade.

This outage hit the NatWest batches. The NatWest batches are far bigger than the RBS, Ulster(s) and IoM/Courts and are the first to run over and the hardest to rerun before the next batch window. So it looks like to me that a file was blocked causing the backlog (and no one noticed quick enough).

I thought Iain M Banks had a rather cute description of an alien fleet arriving in Consider Phleabas

1. the first "ships" arriving at high speed go straight past and drop drones to scan and gather intelligence. If we're smart enough we might detect that. Although, reasonably large asteroids zip past us all the time and we only notice them at the last minute. if you were a war faring civilisation then using asteroids or dressing up your "ships" to look like asteroids would probably be a good move.

2. Once intelligence has been received and analysed, the main "fleet" then power up to decelerate, from an Earth position would look like lots of blue "stars" of light in the night sky getting gradually brighter for a few days/weeks/months (delete as applicable).

3. err

4. alien profit

The commercial arm of the Royal Mail (not PostOffice Ltd) own the intellectual property of the PAF (Postal Address File) that has a strict data structure of how to store an address for verification purposes. See the PAF Digest PDF for a full 200 page specification of how to write a postal address.

important for orgs that process addresses and how to process data items like a "double dependent locality" and so on. many big UK companies totally fuck up addresses even though this is specified.

The main problem with this is that the Royal Mail was privitised so this publically funded data source has now been commercialised and the IPR owned by a company thanks to the tories.

one of the issues is that there are indeed *more eyes* but they are incentivised to look for exploits and sell them to the bug-buyers rather than report or fix them. I did a hands up poll (buyer beware) at our local OWASP chapter and over half had sold a bug to such an organisation. pretty shocking.

certainly, one of the first moderately important bugs I found, I was daft and got in touch with the software vendor and then faced legal action from them which luckily they saw sense and dropped. So many people nowadays just can't be bothered with that problem and can make a fast and low risk buck by selling the 0-day.

One of the most popular geotherm projects using a coal mine tunnel is in the centre of Glasgow, there's a report about it here (PDF). I understand it's a template for lots of other projects.

totally agree - it's pretty amazing how the investment in the decentralised grid is coming along. However, my point is that Scotland has had to invest massively in the grid to support the new renewable energy production facilities. Scotland is not quite there yet - but hopefully in a couple of years the renewable energy will all be switched on and we'll get to a much higher percentage without affecting "quiet day stability" or energy prices.

One of the biggest challenges on Scotland has been the decentralisation of energy supply. The grid (high voltage power lines) was built to connect power stations that were usually less than 30 miles from cities and then smaller grid segments out to the less densely populated areas such as the highlands & islands.

The challenge Scotland now faces is that a large amount of renewable energy is being produced in the highlands and islands and coastal projects resulting in power having to be shipped "the other way" through the grid. So Scotland has had an enormous new power line from Beauly in the north to Denny in central region to help. The scandal is that a lot of Scotland's renewable energy is idle or switched off because there is not enough capacity in the grid to use it until the new line comes on board. Nearly every loch in Argyll has some kind of hydro power generation capabuility but it is switched off (except Cruachan)

The new wave power production systems are fabulous, especially the inter-connected wavenet squid system.

we've been saying it for years and years but now that Microosft Windows has a package manager, is 2014 finally the year of the Windows desktop?

I forgot to mention that using an antenna (usually via a CRC9 connector port) doubles the bandwidth in most cases. I have a mag mount antenna for vehicles, a square directorional and a simple little plastic antenna that I use most of the time. A yagi directional would be even better. Antenna's make all the difference with 3G/4G connections (aka "Mobile Internet" in the UK)

Your Mileage Will Vary depending on where you are located; but I use 4G and 3G connections here in Scotland and in other parts of Europe and I never use WiFi hotspots.

1. Everything Everywhere Kite (a Huawei mifi device that looks like an iphone 4s)

2: unlocked Huawei E3276 with an external antenna

3: backup USB Huawei E353 devices (also with a CRC9 antenna connector)

All work with my Linux distro (Fedora) natively. So my EE contract allows VOIP (in plain) but the O2 contract does not. So I also have a bunch of SIM cards that also helps if I am in a zone with poor coverage for a particular operator. Maxes out at about 50 Mbs in good 4G areas but bear in mind that the latency is often a lot higher (10x) than copper connections and will make VOIP a bit laggier than you'd expect, even with a high bandwidth connection.

Lego got pissed off at the UK treasury who had used Lego minifigures as part of the UK campaign against Scotland's independence from the UK, see Scottish independence: Lego dropped from Treasury Buzzfeed

Lego, at the time, said they were politically neutral and would not allow their brand to be associated with any political stance.

I replaced 50x GU10 50W bulbs for 3W LED equivalents (no longer available) that were more expensive (slightly warmer light). Here in Scotland, energy prices are more than the USA - so the initial investment of 50 bulbs cost 20x as much as the GU10's burt due to the lower wattage (3W vs 50W) would pay back in 2 years (which they have) from lower overall electricity prices.

However, we've had a lot of failures. So far over 10% of the 50 have failed - usually blowing the main house fuse when they went. So the porblem at the moment is there is no way to assess the failure rate for LED household bulbs. This is having quite an impact on the payback period for the bulbs. .

There are currently riots by loyalists in the centre of Glasgow - which are being downplayed as "rivalry" by the bbc even though there are very few unionists or nationalists there. Just search twitter for "george square" for photos and on the scene twitterers to get the real picture.

Loyalists were supportive of the union (the orange order is registered with the electoral commission as a supporter of no) and are rioting because they won the vote. They are basically thugs with some ties to football and irish loyalism.

Scotland is a very dark place now.

People at work were crying today. The older retired baby boomer generation sold us out.

oh no, I would never say my vote was more important, nor indeed that I am somehow more correct than my fellow Scot. The points I was making were:

There has been a well documented bias in the media. Even the media here agree with that. There has been a huge discussion here in Scotland about the role of social media in this referendum, not unlike Tunisia, Egypt and so on. Politicians have said that things were out of control as both campaigns became alive oin social media. The pro-Yes media (aparty from one sunday paper) were online and largely funded by indigogo public funding campaigns.

This was the first poll we've had in living memory that has not had an exit poll; Lord Ashcroft's poll whilst not perfect is the closest we have to understand the voting demographic.

I ws making the correlation (not causation) link that over-65's were also the least connected in society. I admit I was also a bit rude about the over-65's.

Since I last posted, the pledge from the parties behind the No campaign for more devolution powers have already fallen apart. A lot of people voted no because they were promised a more federalised UK