Posts by Cucumber C Face 229 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jul 2008
Hmm... efficiency not the whole story.
When solar panels have renewably sustained 99.9999999% of life on Earth (excluding hydrothermal vents) for a billion or so years AND while doing so laid down as much fossil fuel - get back to us.
>Running Ubuntu means there’s no reason why the NUC can’t be used to learn programming the way the Pi can<
Is there any reason that one can't learn most second or later generation languages on just about any mainstream OS running on any piece of hardware?
Brilliant marketing concept -
1. managers can get hard ons playing directly with 'Big Data' until the next buzzword comes along
2. they never understood RDBMS and SQL anyway
3. they never figured how to create a table in Microsoft Word
So as long as the graphical user interface looks like Excel these BI guys have a license to print money
Don't know why you're copping downvotes on this. I have to use a VPN on BT ADSL at my parent's place to get access to certain ports >at all< never mind BT's throttling, the obvious monitoring of URLs you attempt to visit etc.
I also use the VPN to get past T-Mobile oh so helpfully reducing image resolution and rewriting all the javascript on web pages you visit through their 3G service.
FWIW I use VyperVPN. Being a US company this probably also saves the CIA the effort of requesting my traffic logs from gov.uk ;-)
Say there is a 1 in 100 chance that a serious sexual assault on a child will be brought to justice - a depressingly low proportion but probaly not far from the mark IF you take within family offences into account.
The probability that 200 independent serious sexual offences will be committed with none being brought to justice is 99/100 to the power of 200 or about 0.13
So how lucky was Jimmy Savile feeling - or are a fair proportion of the allegations poppycock?
I've owned a Browning Hi-Power and fired Glock 9mm's. I've also shot .357 and .44 magnum handguns.
Both the 9 mm's allowed me to put 2-3 times as many bullets into a man size target at 20 metres per unit time.
If you get to draw, lift and perfectly aim your weighty Desert Eagle - and make that first shot count - fine. Otherwise you may achieve little more than deafen yourself and your target. But once you start trying to rapid fire the magnums you struggle with the recoil and getting the thing back on target.
I do work in UK healthcare IT - and have done for 15 years. I have no formal IT qualifications just clinical ones.
UK healthcare IT
1. Is totally dominated by one utterly ignorant, imbecilic and fickle customer - the NHS (or in fact the DoH)
2. The money is cr@p unless you can get on the increasingly elusive consultancy circuit. Gone are the heady days of Nu Labour and management consultancies throwing zillions at morons.
However that doesn't mean you shouldn't try this sector given your background.
Robet Helpman makes an excellent point. Domain knowledge is helpful and even valued by most sensible IT companies.
Also IT work is not restricted to taking a monkey wrench to hardware and cutting code. Good systems analysts, people who can read and write functional specs and documentation, trainers etc AND have worked in the industry the software is being supplied to are few. If you set out on that path you may find yorself with plenty of choice of work in this sector - but as I said - don't plan on retiring to the Caribbean at 35.
And don't kid yourself it's an escape from the NHS. If you work for a supplier to the NHS - you'll still be at the sharp end of the Political BS.
These are the simplest kinds of 'organic' chemicals - a single carbon atom with a variety of covalently bound functional groups. These can easily be (and have almost certainly have been) produced by mundane physical processes.
If they find polypeptides, chains of nucleic acids be impressed. Even an effing long chain fatty acid would cause one to raise an eyebrow - but this? Nothing to see here - move on.
Apparently phone hacking and bribing policemen was legal before Leveson noticed it wasn't.
Like killing patients was legal before Shipman.
Like hijacking and murder were legal before 9-11.
It's always easier to pass new legislation, launch a few new QUANGOs and implement new red tape at the taxpayer's expense, than enforce existing safeguards and laws.
I'd argue Cameron is possibly showing some balls for the first time.
Yeah - I save all my sympathy for the muppets who thought taking out 125% mortages of 7 times their income on properties worth 50% of what they paid on the expectation their property's price would treble per annum in perpetuity.
I also deeply respect the politicians who decided to exclude property prices from realistic contribution to inflation indices, ignored the unsustainable boom because it was a vote winner and ran with the absurdly low interest rates fuelling it.
Techs UK
Are you a car driver?
The basic user interface for automobiles coalesced fairly early - drivers from the 1930's or even earlier would have little difficulty adapting to the controls and instrumentation of a modern automobile.
Similarly a near optimum desktop computer UI paradigm was set in the 1980s by Apple.
The UI paradigm for tablets is different - arguably Apple nailed it first again - but it's nothing like the optimum 'power' desktop design!
Say when skateboards came along, car manufacturers had mandated that automobiles could henceforth only be steered using your feet and brakes applied by leaning backwards and clenching your buttocks?
Perhaps if you want to be have the option to drive your car with a flaky interface and it suits you - then brilliant. However why are UI designers (and it's not just MS) abandoning the rest of us?
Government 'outsources' to a multi-national consultancy, then change requirements and take their eyes off the ball. Heard that one before? When will these f****rs learn?
Sir Humphrey and the ministerial spinmeisters will pleased all the media flung mud is sticking to Buckles.
<snip>
06 December 2011
The Department of Culture, Media and Sport's Olympic progress report reveals that, following further consultation, the costs for security are likely to be £553m and the amount of security personnel required, 23,700. The report identifies "a significant recruitment challenge".
As a result, the Home Office begins discussions with the Ministry of Defence about the provision of military personnel "to act in security roles". The MoD is already seeking to cut its budget by 8 per cent as a result of the defence spending review.
</snip>
http://www.channel4.com/news/from-cheers-to-jeers-chronology-of-the-g4s-cock-up
If he'd wanted to kill the guy and hadn't had a gun he could have run him over with the pick up truck.
In fact therefore probably just as well he did have a gun.
Homicidal psychopaths are homicidal psychopaths. They will kill with a plastic spoon if nothing else come to hand. End of.
Your point about restrictions on jacking up prices on the exact spec within 90 days is well made.
However natural disasters in the Far East aside [and suppliers have a get out clause for this], in IT and telecoms the "exact spec" is usually cheaper on the open market within 90 days. So these suppliers are granted license to shift obsolete gear for years at premium fixed prices and have any risk underwritten by the taxpayer.
Trebles, 50 quid floppy discs and directorships all round.
>All of the suppliers hoping to get onto the list have been through e-auctions, held by the government, to determine which ones are offering the best prices<
And shall continue to offer the best prices once they are on this list for 3 , 2 , 1 , zero seconds. Too slow you missed it. Locked into the same old expensive suppliers yet again Sir Humphrey.
You could not effing make it up!
You must hand it to them - they walk their libetarianism like they talk it.
They have decriminalised marijuana, legalised prostitution and gambling. It's also home to gun ownership laws which stop just shy of allowing juveniles to pack tactical nuclear weapons.
Now driverless cars - excellent!
It's also one of the States with the lowest population density. Perhaps it's just as well.
Still it's high on my list for a fun holiday. See you at the Burning Man maybe.
To exploit asteroid resources wouldn't one have to bring the asteroid into Earth orbit and/or mount the mining gear etc. on the asteroid and fire the products back at Earth?
Either of those would be technically (and energetically) challenging..... I can't see the economics squaring up on this in any practical timeframe.
CSC have taken billions from the NHS in both real money and opportunity cost ...
http://www.ehi.co.uk/news/EHI/7666/csc-and-dh-talks-will-drag-on-to-june
Like Accenture they were seduced by iSoft in the procurement stages... that worked out really well
http://www.ehi.co.uk/news/EHI/7688/isoft-trial-told-of-%27forgery-kit%27
Only CSC were so impressed they subsequently bought the company....
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240105223/CSC-closes-acquisition-of-iSoft-ahead-of-NHS-IT-contract-renegotiations
There is however b*****r all to choose between the big management consultancies.
Basically IMO - if the answer is BT/Accenture/CSC/HP/Capita/etc - you're asking the wrong question. Unless the question is "how do I advance my personal PHB career from a undeserved six figure salary in the upper tier of the Public Sector into seven+."
There are large numbers of predictive models and a relatively small range of plausible outcomes (i.e. a trend of at most a few degrees C either way over decades or nothing). Inevitably, in retrospect, some are bound to have been 'right' whether their model was valid or not.
[No axe to grind here either way. Personal opinion is that C02 is smoke not the fire. If we could seal the excess CO2 in a box and magic it away we still have to address f*****g the planet with over-populatation, pollution, over-exploitation, deforestation etc.]
So everyone will be using these then?
No they won't be, because the use of encryption etc must inevitably be made a criminal offence also.
Won't happen eh? It's already an offence not to know the password any encrypted file (or maybe just a file containing random data) found on your computer.
Whoever you vote for, Sir Humphrey always gets in.
<snip>Tor has been easy to slow down/block for quite some time simply because so many idiots running Tor servers give them domain names like "I_am_a_tor_server.net"</snip>
More simply anyone can go to sites linked to the organisation and download CSV files containing the IP addresses of all Tor exit nodes and relays e.g. http://torstatus.blutmagie.de/
Speech reception, interpretation/comprehension and production are located in structurally and functionally distinct domains of the brain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broca%27s_area#Broca.27s_aphasia_vs._other_aphasias
After strokes or other brain injury, you can commonly find people who can't understand speech, but can speak reasonably well and vice versa. Deaf people can often learn to speak etc.
These brain regions are interconnected. However there is no reason to assume that your brain assembles what you either 'think' or about to say into the same encoding as what you are listening to.
Perhaps GPs oppose it because they realise that iGimmicks aren't what keep people out of hospital.
At least not until they can get people out of bed, give them their medicines, wipe a**es and share a cup of tea with them.
Also - just like in hospitals - each gizmo will raise false alarms, run flat, fall off the patient etc n times per day. Only instead of the nurse walking ten feet down a ward to switch the thing off - he has to drive out to the patient's house.
Still - offering glitzy high tech but futile NHS services gives great press releases to politicians. Plus we'll need to appoint more NHS admindroids to support them and pay management consultancies to roll them out. So trebles all round eh?
A desktop PC is smarter than any consumer TV is likely to be.
Am I the only person in the World who doesn't bother with a "TV" per se at all any more? TV cards and DVD playback on PCs has been around since the 90's.
Caveat - small apartment renders massive flatscreen pointless - albeit that doesn't stop most people in our neighborhood squatting 20 inches from their 80 inch status symbols.
For non-celebs IMO the main security and confidentiality risk faced by patients is being forced, cajoled or fooled into disclosing records to people who do not have their best interests at heart.
Dodgy employer - "If you keep throwing sickies you're going to have to prove you're really sick."
Jealous partner - "If you really loved me you'd show me your medical record"
Bullying parent - "You're on the pill you little sl*t. If not show me your medical records"
Impatient heir [How much bloody longer has granny got?] "Granny - we need your medical record login or you won't get your pension"
Electronic voting over the web is a crap concept for the same reason: only we never hear it!
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