Doesn't matter whether it's public or private

No 5-year technology project can possibly 'succeed'. Even if you implement it to perfection, in 5 years:

1. The technology will have changed.

2. The people (especially the sponsors at the top) will have changed.

3. The business will have changed (though I hesitate to call the BBC a business, it still changes radically over a 5 year period).

So my rule is - no projects will be undertaken that can't be completed and delivering benefits in 6 months. Inevitably the cry goes up: "Oh, but my vital megaproject can't possibly be implemented in less than 5 years." To which the answer is: break it up into 10 subprojects each with deliverable benefits, or it ain't happening on my watch.

Re: Working OK?

I imagine that by 'attacks' they mean probes to find out if some well-known TCP port has been left open by mistake, rather than APTs.

Re: @Chris Miller

Apologies HFG, I didn't intend to insult arXiv which is a fantastic resource, with many great papers. But the fact remains that you can get a paper on there with no peer review process, which is what has been done in this case. When it gets published in Nature or PTRS, I'll give it another look.

"I wouldn't accept it for publication"

No-one would. That's why it's on arXiv.

Re: eh?

Actually, the 'solution du jour' for consultants is now 'insourcing'. In many cases exactly the same firms that dropped in 5/10 years ago and told management to outsource everything, are now returning, sucking their teeth, saying 'who sold you this, then?' and charging millions (again) to bring it all back. It would be funny if it weren't so bloody serious.

Re: London - same old, same old: Paris the historic past preserved

And Guy de Maupassant supposedly ate lunch in the Eiffel tower's restaurant every day, because it was the only place in Paris from which the Eiffel tower wasn't visible.

Exactly

I'd love the ability to achieve a (say) 1Mb data rate the full length of the M11 or the rail links to London (or the west/east-coast mainlines, for that matter), rather than planning for pointlessly* high data rates that can both flatten a battery and exhaust your annual data allocation in a few minutes.

* For truly mobile applications - no doubt there are some areas where fixed lines aren't practical and a high-speed over-the-air link is truly useful.

Re: more trouble than it's worth

My experience, too, is that HMRC are very helpful as long as you're playing straight. That can perfectly well include a reasonable amount to cover the 'cost' of using a spare room as an office (there are guidelines for such things, I think it's ~£750 pa, but I let my accountant look after that). Similarly, there's nothing wrong with paying your partner a reasonable amount for work that they genuinely carry out - it's 'paying' them £50k just for posting a few letters that will get you into bother.

Limited liability is an important consideration. My work has the potential to (say) crash a public web server generating substantial costs. I've got (what I believe to be) a solid contract to cover that, and PI insurance too, but I don't want to bet my house on them - that's what limited liability is for.

As a 20-year -old during WW2, Freeman Dyson worked at Bomber Command performing statistical analysis of the results of bomber raids. He and a colleague recommended removing the gun turrets, which were largely ineffective at shooting down enemy fighters. This would have allowed Lancasters to fly 50 mph faster and reduced casualties simply because there would be fewer crew in each bomber. He commented:

All our advice to the commander in chief [went] through the chief of our section, who was a career civil servant. His guiding principle was to tell the commander in chief things that the commander in chief liked to hear… To push the idea of ripping out gun turrets, against the official mythology of the gallant gunner defending his crew mates…was not the kind of suggestion the commander in chief liked to hear.

"The Children's Crusade" in Disturbing the Universe, 1979

Re: Other projects? Well, how about a "revolutionary" train set?

The problem with monorails is that junctions ('points') are horrendously slow and complex. For this reason almost all monorails running today are either point-to-point (airport shuttles, such as Düsseldorf or Newark) or circular (tourist lines, such as Sydney or Seattle).

If you're anywhere near Wuppertal, I can highly recommend the Schwebebahn - it looks (and, to an extent, is) bonkers, but it delivers a local transport system over the top of the Wupper river (the town is in a narrow valley and there was nowhere else to put it). The line is point to point with a circular loop at each end that allows the cars to turn round.

Re: What about Manchester to Liverpool?

I assume you're aware that it was a private company that built the line? And the benefits of the first railways were obvious to everyone - journeys that took days reduced to hours. In contrast, HS2 will deliver time savings of perhaps 25%, essentially negligible unless you live/work in a flat/office overlooking the station.

Switzerland

But not exactly high-speed.

@Neil

The Chiltern (my local line - great service BTW) is running on GCR track only as far as Aynho Junction (Banbury), where it joins the GWR Paddington-Oxford-Birmingham line.

Re: Pot and Kettle?

And the cunning use (she was an accountant before she was an MP) of family trusts to avoid inheritance tax. "DON'T LOOK OVER HERE - LOOK OVER THERE!"

Re: Past and future

Those pesky Victorians were falling over themselves to build railways through private investment, because there was money to be made. In the end, they overdid it and many companies went bust, but the infrastructure was still there. Today, no private company would swallow the nonsense on stilts that is the HS2 cost-justification, but luckily the taxpayers are awash with cash ... oh, wait

Re: Where will video conferencing be by the time HS2 is actually working

You're right about double deckers. But the DfT published a study that showed you could upgrade the WCML to full speed and introduce in-cab signalling to increase traffic density, lengthen the platforms (except Liverpool and Birmingham which are in deep cuttings) and electrify the Chiltern Line for ~1/4 the cost of HS2. The study has now been buried as another 'inconvenient truth' but Google should still be able to find it.

Yes, but not if there's some other project with a k>2 that doesn't get done because you've splurged all your cash on your train set. The object of the exercise should be (it isn't, of course) to maximise value, not to try to do everything (which can include almost anything) that generates a theoretical return on investment.

Re: Simple solution

But if you can access the records of a specific phone, it isn't difficult (in most cases) to work out where the owner lives and where they work. Not very anonymous now, is it?

Re: I've had mine since Friday

It's true my Nokia 6110 could run for a week on a 900mAh battery. But all it had to/could do was handle GSM voice calls. It's not surprising that a 4G/Wifi/GPS phone with a 1920x1080 screen needs an order of magnitude more power. It would be nice if batteries had improved to the same extent, but "ye cannae change the laws of physicselectrochemistry, Cap'n".

Re: Degenerate Dwarf?

It's standard astronomical parlance to talk about a white dwarf consisting of degenerate matter. A degenerate (white) dwarf is a bit of a tautology, but it sure sounds funny.

Re: I do hope .....

I have never heard anyone express such ideological opposition. If renewable sources could effectively meet our energy needs at a competitive price, I for one would joyously embrace them singing 'Glory, Hallelujah'. There's precious little sign, however, that such a contingency will arise in the lifetime of anyone now living.

Re: Business as usual

Politically impossible to take action? Not judging by the green tax on my monthly energy bill, the number of houses with pointless (in the UK) PV roofs, grotesque wind farms, etc etc.

Re: blimey

Correct, do not defrag an SSD, it will only contribute to wear. Speaking of which, SSDs don't fail gracefully - cells become unreadable after a finite number of R/W cycles. I'm paranoid, so use a 256GB SSD for my OS, but keep my data on a 2TB rust-bucket. Speed is excellent, and 6MB JPEGs open pretty much instantly even though they're stored on the HDD.

Re: Schmidt

I take it you haven't met many CEOs of tech companies. Schmidt is marginally above the median in his tech grasp - which explains many things.

Re: Ongoing Modelling

Give them a few days, and I'm sure new papers will appear. With all the free parameters in current climate models (even more than the 'Standard Model' of physics), matching the historical record is no great feat. As no less a scientist than John von Neumann remarked:

If you allow me four free parameters I can build a mathematical model that describes exactly everything that an elephant can do. If you allow me a fifth free parameter, the model I build will forecast that the elephant will fly.

Re: "Got a Windows XP end-of-life plan?"

If you're talking about a home PC, that sounds fine (my Win2k box recently quit after >10 years faithful service). But as a corporate strategy, it won't survive any risk assessment.

Re: Bubble bursts

In that case, you should fill your boots with Apple stock, while it's so cheap and the rest of us dunderheads foolishly undervalue it. And if you really believe that, I own an attractive bridge you may well be interested in.

Re: high risk and too cheap to be credible,

Indeed. And less chance of a directorship when you decide to cash in your 'public service' chips.

Re: Have we turned into El Graun?

I don't think so. It's usually a sign that the article has been amended thus rendering the post (at best) confusing. I've lost a few that way, myself.

I think the 'right' thing to do is use the 'Send corrections' facility, though I get the impression that comments sometimes provoke a swifter response.