Posts by John Smith 19
6409 posts • joined Wednesday 10th June 2009 19:28 GMT
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Re: a useful tool if used correctly
"Children will need an understanding of how to use types of program like a spreadsheet or wordporcessor, and ICT gives the students that however that teaches them how to use Office 2010, and 2013's changes make that knowledge is obslite before they have even started learning it."
True.
But are you typing this on a phone?
Spell check is your friend.
A note on rockets and parachutes.
Soyuz is split into 3 segments and the landing compartment is the smallest. The Russians worked out you could optimize the weight of the whole system by basically dedicating a small part of it for this one function. Minimal volume -> minimal surface area to protect with (heavy) ablative and you can afford some retro rockets (triggered by a gamma ray altimeter).*
The US decided to go with a mult-function capsule with a proportionately bigger (much bigger) heat shield.
*A design which GE had proposed to NASA in one of the first govt/industry conferences on what would be Apollo. Before NASA announced that as the design had to fit the Saturn 1 they had essentially already decided what the design was and GE (and the other 22 companies who turned up) might as well not have bothered. GE was the #1 designer of re-entry vehicles on the planet at that time (they did the designs for ICBM's and knew a lot about real world re-entry heating.
"Engine room and war rooms? It's a spaceship!"
You've never read the surreal comic novel "T-minus tower" then?
It's the rotating restaurant.
Instant artificial gravity.
Was this not also the name BT gave its frone end to Phorn?
Sounds like a sweet deal for someone.
But who?
Re: Vulnerability fixed last year.
"When I was doing information assurance for the US DoD, if I didn't have every system on the installation patched within 10 days of a patch being approved by DISA, I had to explain to a rather irritated General why the systems weren't patched and vulnerable."
It sounds like you ran a tight ship.
The trouble is what sort of operation does everyone else run?
Unless your network is completely disconnected from other sites and other organizations you're as vulnerable as the least secure of those entities. They might be substantially more lax.
It's a dreadful old cliche but network security is everyone's business.
Apple CFO trousers $68m
Ever wondered why?
Yes folks a subsidiary domiciled nowhere for tax purposes hence no one to pay tax to.
This is truly the Special and General Theory of Relativity of tax dodging "income protection."
Mr CFO I salute you.
You'd all do it if you could (and believe me if it's still legal next year a bunch of super rich 'mericans will)
Re: Sweet and Sour
"Don't hack others if you don't like being hacked yourself."
But Stuxnet seemed like a brilliant idea at the time.
No one would know who did it and the Iranians would be unable to turn it against its developers.
Didn't work out so well.
Re: DAFUQ happened to common sense?
"Microsoft didn't give anything to anyone. Microsoft SOLD the source code to Windows. It did refuse to give the source code to the US Government though."
The gift that just keeps giving (to the Chinese).
Cheap at twice the price.
Which sort of tells you how much concern MS has for any of its customers.
Legal threat letters. The *first* resort of the scam artist.
AFAIK where I pay to have my work published that's called vanity publishing.
When they pay to publish my work that's called being an author (part time or otherwise).
I've never heard of this OMICS group but they'll need pretty deep pockets to pursue an author in another country. My instinct is they know once people start digging their facade will dissolve like a mud track after heavy rain.
Most useful "IT" skill I learned in school.
2 pass assembler construction? No.
Self modifying code? No.
Programming in an obsolete language? No.
Touch typing? Yes.
How many decades have we thought the QWERTY keyboard obsolete? How many decades has it continued to persist? For bulk data entry this is still the state of the art. How many people actually use voice recognition text entry? Pen?
If' you never do a "real" IT job it will still be damm handy.
The people of Xerox PARC introduced school children to computers as ways to enable the child's creativity, not to shackle them to the command sets of Windows applications forever.
Re: tools for the job - e.g. Rasberry pi
"The biggest problem is that the politicians have been playing political football with education for the last 50 - 60 years. "
I think you'll find in the UK that's more like the last century.
I just wonder how many more assumptions were made before people hit the panic button.
Thumbs up for going out there and studying the evidence.
Ophelia?
I think she's the crazy chick in "The Scottish Play."
Nealy on a par with IBM's Ferenghi.
So this is what Dell have with Wyse.
Colorado is also home to the NIST
I especially like they are running weather simulations.
Hopefully this will improve the next generation of GCMs.
But what of the winning teams over the last few years.
Where have they come from?
Impressive.
But I can't help feel that robot might do with a bit more environmental protection if it's on station for years at a time.
Re: the rustling of small leaves.
"I think we need a few smaller standard units too."
The milliEadon?
Vulnerability fixed last year.
So probably wide open on quite a lot of large groups of PCs.
Like the people on that list for example.
Gove. His hands on your childrens data.
It's a deeply unappetizing thought.
He'll be the first British 'naut to fly under a *British* flag
Ms Sharman was sponsored under the private "Juno" project, which (I did not know) was a private effort in the early 1990's
Tim Peake will be flying as the representative of the UK Space Agency (which did not even exist when Ms Shaman flew).
Prior to him other Brits have flown having taken US citizenship.
So the first of( hopefully not) "The few."
I met a women contractor on my first developer job out.
We had a mutual friend at university, but never met.
Very cute.
Very strange.
"Intel just doesn't want to lose the monopoly they have in producing x86 CPUs using genuine Intel designs."
At the genuine Intel price.
Re: " changes how people think about our past climate and what our future holds"
"I doubt ice sheet stability has been measured solely by shorelines. I suspect the history of the ice sheets has been determined from other sources such as cores from the ice sheets for example."
except this is not about how stable an ice sheet is, it's about what happens to the water after it melts.
The assumption has been so much water is melted that a "high tide" mark is left 10s of metres above it's current level.
Which now turns out to be a very dubious conclusion.
Re: This Cluster is so POWERFUL
"Only when they are behind a window..."
Quality work.
"AVUnit"
The DB Cooper of hacking?
We'll see. But to support the theory they are a stalking horse put up by some three letter agency they'd have to be the person who suggested they form a group in the first place. That does not hold up if Monsignor was their leader.
So it's a VM/dynamic linking loader running a semi-compiled intermediate language
from one tool chain and hosted by one browser.
Can you say "Cross platform proprietary lock in?"
Technically a formidable logistical exercise.
Cutting edge stuff in the 1970's and 80's.
Otherwise...
Intriguing
The higher frequency cutoff might mean the reason they've never been seen is all the existing detectors just can't respond fast enough. They've been damping the signal as structural distortion.
Well, it's possible.
56000 mph
That's about M73.
The good news is something that small hitting Earth's atmosphere would probably have burnt up long before it hit the ground.
Re: MSFT breeds Haters
"MSFT is not a benevolent institution and is fair game for haters."
True.
And that's before you delve into their their history and business methods.
Then you really learn how to hate them.
" changes how people think about our past climate and what our future holds"
Damm right too.
So the takeway from this.
Never rely on a single piece of evidence for making multi $Bn climate change mitigation decisions without studying the context.
Is anyone else astonished that (in effect) the wall the marks were made on might have moved up a few metres in the previous 3 000 milenia and no one considered this?
A big thumbs up for someone finally checking the assumptions behind the apparent evidence.
Re: Now ask me why ...
" Best option of a bad couple choices, at least if you're capable of thinking for yourself."
Sadly I think that's a fairly common situation in all elections.
Re: Start your conspiracy theories NOW
I think we've unmasked amanfromares1
Remember if it works and it's reproducible
It's no longer "AI"
Re: There is no such thing as Artificial Intellgence, and there never will be.
"that can write it's own code then it's only capable of doing so to the point you program it to be capable of doing so"
Never used LISP have you?
"He's right. The idea that intelligence/consciousness "emerges" just by crossing some threshold of informational complexity is silly, but it's one that seems to be prevalant in Computer Science (and popular culture)."
A fair point for machine intelligence.
So how did intelligence emerge in humans?
Was it just me thinking.
I could quite see the UK and the German entry on a mother/daughter night out.
Probably involving quite a lot of alcohol and a male strip show.....
Re: Let's hope LM get the accelerometer the right way up this time.
IIRC LM said it was something to do with someone reading the blue prints from the wrong side.
In an era of CAD/CAM systems plotters and high resolution laser printers I did not know anyone actually used them any more.
Hard to believe...
Re: It will only work to move people around the UK if the tickets are cheap!
" But the 4 hr round trip "
Just to be clear I have held a job with a 3 hour commute for years, but I don't think I could stomach a 4 hour round trip.
It's a case of what you are willing to accept, what are the start and end times and how common is (usually unpaid) overtime.
Let's hope LM get the accelerometer the right way up this time.
IIRC that was why the Stardust capsule (comet, not asteroid) plowing into the desert.
The $240m on the rocket suggests they will be using an Atlas but I wonder what the price for an F9H would be?
A lot can happen between now and launch day....
Reservations apart thumbs up for an exciting and demanding mission.
Re: Smart Phones Myth
I think the phrase "thrashed hard drives like a dominatrix who forgot the safe word" is quite telling as well.
Was I the only one reading...
"proposals that would see one car radio another to tell it when heavy drinking is required"
Re: Now ask me why ...
"... most of my personal fleet is restored pre-1970 vehicles."
Because your vacation home is a bunker in Montana?
Some days it's just too easy.
Re: Where will video conferencing be by the time HS2 is actually working
"At the time he was dead right. Now however, he's just dead."
That could have been more sensitively put.
Brunel's solution was right given the key constraints of the time.a)Trains not good at going up grades b)Flattening grades takes an army of (mostly Irish) hole diggers.
At the time it was SoA. But things have moved on. It's simpler to lay out a new (straighter) route than try and make it work better.
I'm curious why I got 2 down votes for this.
What is it about NHS IT architectures?
Flexible -> centralized monster database
Local -> grossly inflexible.
Perhaps hospitals might do better attempting to eliminate the 700+ "impossible" operating events.
@A Non 3-mouse
"Smells like a large government IT contract to me."
With the emphasis on the 1st syllable.
Wonder who "advised" them this was the best way to proceed this time.
Do you feel like you're being groomed?
Because you should.
Googleapi's invest web sites and you it's damm difficult to avoid them.
"It's "complimentary," it's not free.
Re: An open letter
"This comes down to the issue of somantics and what selling actually is"
I think it comes down to semantics
Somantics is
If you're going to talk language, get it right.
Re: Oh please
"Modern hydroponics lets you grow and eat just anything you want in one fourth the space as dirt farming with substantially less water and much higher yield rate."
Perhaps.
But when you've grown those plants the nutrients are bound.
So where does the next round of nutrients come from?
It's a closed system remember.
Re: Hmmmm.
"Actually it's insurmountable debt caused by Monsanto's monopolistic practices in a lot of the world."
Ah, they are not called that anymore.
Just as Windscale is now called "Sellafield."
Re: "Historical inevitablility" yadda yadda.
Oh yes and and the first reply will be an AC.
"When I started in this business in the 1980s all this stuff like smartphones, tablets, flat screens was regarded as part of the future among many of us, the tricky part being making it happen."
I think your revising your memories to tell a story. Phones getting smaller, yes. Phones becoming computers no.
Getting things smaller (essentially the practical application of Moore's Law) certainly. What to do with it is another.
Another "story" has mobile phone companies driving the evolution, storing the stuff on your phone on their servers (mainframes, server farm, "cloud" or whatever you want to call it). and transitioning into companies that offer personal informational management services. Like all the non search stuff the Google offers. Their goal? Maximise battery life so you run up bigger bills talking to your friends of course. A nudge here, a nudge there and the world you live in changes entirely.
"Certainly the shape of businesses built around technology is not inevitable, the exact nature of popular devices, or their role in society."
That is exactly the point. The future always comes. What it looks like is never that fixed. The interactions (between business, social behaviour, technology) is complex. I'm told 80% of people cannot touch type. There for cursive handwriting recognition is a guaranteed win, right. 30 years on it still hasn't happened.
Look up "Active Book Co" for an example.
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