Re: The Andersen Tapes

[José Luis Gómez Dans <nospam [at] sheffield.ac.uk>]

On Thu, Mar 23, 2000 at 11:35:06AM +0000, Richard wrote:
> Hello
> 
> I thought  that the following would be a good read for those of us who
> pay small amounts of tax or lots of it ?  The Computing IT Newspaper

	Still a _poor_ student (even though I pay tax for my
scholarship...)

> On the front page there is a picture of Dawn Primarilo and next to her
> picture are the words "Co-operating with Andersen is more important
> than securing compensation payments, admits the Treasury".   The
> headline says "WHITEHALL LETS ANDERSEN OFF REPAYMENTS".  The story is
> as follows......
> 
> "The Treasury has abandoned hopes of recovering millions of pounds in
> compensation for delays in the new national insurance system because
> it needs to preserve the relationship with the systems developer [rip
> off merchants], Andersen Consulting. [where to get a dodgy woman in
> three seconds ? ]

	That looks a bit like Ann Widdecombe's (not sure about spelling)
massive blunder with the asylum seeker's computer system that would
solve all problems.

> It does go on for a few more paragraphs but that's more or less the
> meat of it.  At page 4 there is a picture that looks strongly like the
> sort of snap that you see of American gangsters enjoying themselves in
> their own club before the FBI turn up.  Sort of Johnny and Reb
> celebrate the next deal ?  It says..

	Andersen Consulting you said? Well, there's an idea for an
application form :)

> Why are we throwing money away on MS Windows software when Linux can
> be used on the desktop instead and at a fraction of the cost ?

	I would have thought that the rebuff could be the eternal
discussion about linux desktop readiness. However, I don't see why
Governments don't realize that they could shell some money out to some
geezers to code the stuff they need for them, and then use that for
free. A bit of what NASA did with Beowulf (I mean, is there any card
without the Donald Becker signature on it? :D). I'm not too sure of the
details about NASA and Beowulf (was it Los Alamos or something along
those lines?), but basically, having somebody in-house to code the
drivers for the hardware you're gonna be using makes good money sense.
It would have been certainly far cheaper than paying all those so-called
Y2k "experts". But I suppose that it's far groovier to go for a drink
with Noel Gallagher than with Alan Cox... (Now, that WOULD be a sight!
The PM with ac!!!)

	Regards,
	José
-- 
José L Gómez Dans			PhD student
					Radar & Communications Group
					Department of Electronic Engineering
					University of Sheffield UK
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