[Gllug] I can't work out if this guy is a genius troll or just a complete fool

[Nix]

On Sat, 29 Apr 2006, Christopher Hunter yowled:
> On Saturday 29 Apr 2006 02:23, you wrote:
> 
>> Well, the ID cards debacle will not restrict civil liberties, because
>> the system will never work.
>>
>> It'll just be a vast waste of money.
> 
> It's bizarre that our remaining Civil Liberties largely depend on the 
> incompetence of the government's chosen IT supplier (EDS), and the 
> ineptitude of Bill Gates' corporation!

Hey, I'm happy. A solution that depends upon incompetence will always
succeed, for there is an unlimited supply, and you can always depend
upon it.

> It's good that it'll never work (no government IT project has EVER worked), 
> but it's bad that we'll all have to pay for it.

That's not why it won't work: the system as described cannot scale, and
is far more challenging than any other database-backed system ever
constructed in the history of mankind. Charlie Stross has an analysis:
<http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2006/03/31#id-card-2>.

-- 
`On a scale of 1-10, X's "brokenness rating" is 1.1, but that's only
 because bringing Windows into the picture rescaled "brokenness" by
 a factor of 10.' --- Peter da Silva
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